A woman communicates with her unborn baby, which has all of her memories as a result of an experiment.
Port Astor is a city of secrets. Once home to the Hollow Queen and her court, the fae have been driven out by industrialists and religious leaders. But just below the surface, their legacy remains in traceries of hidden roads, strange apparitions and spectral hauntings.
\nBrix and Bellefeather are paranormal investigators, clearing out Port Astor's ghosts and devouring its demons. Both have their own Bellefeather shares her body with a demon, Belezial; Brix has trapped the ghost of his fiancée in the world of the living, unwilling to let her go.
\nWhen Brix is asked to investigate an apparent haunting at the prestigious Peony Hotel, he comes across a young couple tangled up in one of the city's most infamous stories. They have summoned the ghost of Jimmy Valentine, tragic movie star and supposed favorite of the Hollow Queen herself. Meanwhile, Bellefeather is called back to her childhood home by her estranged sister, whose preacher husband Clarence has gotten a young woman from his congregation pregnant. But when Bellefeather arrives, she realizes whatever has taken over Clarence and his 'flock' is more sinister than faith, and Ava's is no normal pregnancy.
\nThe fae have not forgotten that Port Astor once belonged to them. And the Hollow Queen won't give up her kingdom so easily.
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Lost between the timeless lines of Homer’s epic, the women of Troy finally stand to be counted. Their story is one you’ve never encountered, and it will change the fate of Troy forever.
\nAndromache has proven herself a capable leader, but can she maintain that hard-won status now that she is the mother to the city’s long-awaited heir? With enemies closing in, Andromache must bring together a divided city in time to make a final stand.
\nRhea is a Trojan spy, but she never expected to find love in the enemy camp. When the final battle lines are drawn, Rhea must decide where her loyalties lie and how much she is willing to lose.
\nHelen is no longer the same broken woman first brought to Troy as a captive. Given a second chance at life, she must cast off her shroud of grief and use her healing gifts to save Troy’s greatest hope.
\nCassandra has seen Troy’s fate. But she knows the truth is only as valuable as the person who tells it . . . and few in Troy value her. All that is about to change. One hero will rise, another will fall . . . and this time, Cassandra will have her say.
\nFrom the highest tower to the most humble alley, the bloody beaches to the dusty plain, Daughters of Bronze is the thrilling conclusion to the duology that began with Horses of Fire, and breathes life into the Troy of myth and history. It is an epic of a thousand invisible actions leading to a single moment, adding a refrain of unexpected light to the legend of Troy.
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Behind the timeless tale you know is the captivating story you never heard: a sweeping epic in which Troy's strong, yet misunderstood women take center stage in the most famous war in history.
\nAndromache is cast as the doting wife of Prince Hector, yet her Amazon warrior name means \"battler of men.\" The only one with the cunning to outwit the invading Greeks, she must gather a band of outcasts and become the military commander she was born to be before the life she and Hector have built is reduced to ashes. Rhea is a war refugee and a horse whisperer who finally earns a place and sense of belonging in Hector's stables.
\nTo save her new home, she must become an unlikely spy and face down a forbidden love that will test all her loyalties. Helen is blamed by all for starting the Trojan War, but no one knows her real story. To escape her tormentor and foil a plot to undermine Hector, Helen must risk everything by revealing her true face to the one who despises her most.
\nSet in the wider landscape of the late Bronze Age collapse, this realistic and immersive Troy is a perilous battleground for warriors and politicians alike, not a playground where the fate of men and women make sport for gods and goddesses. It's a harrowing novel of palace intrigue, the transcendent bond of female friendship, and the everyday bravery of invisible heroes in times of war.
\nThe women of Troy are threads spinning on a single loom. Can they reweave the tapestry of fate?
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Vessel Iris has devoted himself to the Starlit Order, performing funeral rites for the dead across the galaxy and guiding souls back into the Infinite Light. Despite the comfort he wants to believe he brings to the dead, his relationships with his fellow Vessels are distant at best, leaving him reliant on his AI construct for companionship.
\nThe spaceship Counsel of Nicaea has been lost for more than a thousand years. A relic of Earth’s dying past, humanity took the ship to the stars on a multi-generation journey to find another habitable planet yet never reached its destination. Its sudden appearance has attracted a team of academics eager to investigate its archeological history. And Iris has been assigned to bring peace to the crew’s long departed souls.
\nCarpeted in moss and intertwined with vines, Nicaea is more forest than ship.
\nBut the ship's plant life isn’t the only sentience to have survived in the past millennia. Something onboard is stalking the explorers one by one. And Iris with his AI construct may be their only hope for survival . . .
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On a morning much like any other, 30-something queer Brooklynite Wilder makes the miraculous discovery: suddenly, as if by magic, they can understand every language in the world. Dazed and disconnected, Wilder is found and taken in by a small coven of trans witches who have all become Awakened with mystical powers of their own.
\nQuibble, a handsome portal traveler, Artemis, the group’s caretaker and seer, and Mary Margaret, a smart-ass teen with telekinetic powers all work to make the cagey and suspicious Wilder feel comfortable, both within their group and with the knowledge that magic is, in fact, real.
\nJust as Wilder is finding their footing, a malicious AI threatens to dismantle the delicate balance of the coven and the world as they know it. Newly assembled and tenuously bound, the group scrambles to stay united as they parse the difference between difficult and dangerous, asking themselves continuously: is any consciousness - be it artificial, material, or magical - too dangerous to exist?
\nAwakened is an exhilarating, hilarious and thought-provoking reflection on the ways that we are responsible for creating our own realities , a story of finding community, and a meditation on what it means to have a body (and if it might be far worse never to have had one at all).
Eliza Bright was living the dream as an elite video game coder at Fancy Dog Games when her private life suddenly became public. But is Eliza Bright a brilliant, self-taught coder bravely calling out the toxic masculinity and chauvinism that pervades her workplace and industry? Or, is Eliza Bright a woman who needs to be destroyed to protect \"the sanctity of gaming culture\"? It depends on who you ask . . .
\nThis is an extraordinary, unputdownable novel that explores the dark recesses of the Internet and male rage, and the fragile line between the online world and real life. It's a thrilling story of female resilience and survival, packed with a powerful feminist message.
Long ago Miren O'Malley's family prospered due to a deal struck with the Mer: safety for their ships in return for a child of each generation. But for many years the family have been unable to keep their side of the bargain and have fallen into decline. Miren's grandmother is determined to restore their glory, even at the price of Miren's freedom.
A spellbinding tale of dark family secrets, magic and witches, and creatures of myth and the sea; of strong women and the men who seek to control them.
Ellie Briar is the first non-witch to be born into her family for generations. The Briar family of witches run the town of Silverton, caring for its inhabitants with their skills and magic. In the usual scheme of things, they would be burnt for their sorcery, but the church has given them dispensation in return for their protection of the borders of the Darklands, where the much-feared Leech Lords hold sway.
\nEllie is being trained as a steward, administering for the town, and warding off the insistent interest of the church. When her grandmother dies suddenly, Ellie's cousin Audra rises to the position of Briar Witch, propelling Ellie into her new role. As she navigates fresh challenges, an unexpected new ability to see and speak to the dead leads her to uncover sinister family secrets, stories of burnings, lost grimoires and evil spells. Reeling from one revelation to the next, she seeks answers from the long dead and is forced to decide who to trust, as a devastating plot threatens to destroy everything the Briar witches have sacrificed so much to build.
Violet Zennor has had a peculiar upbringing. Training as a fighter in underground arenas, honing her skills against the worst scum, murderers and thieves her father could pit her against, she has learned to be ruthless. To kill.
\nUntil the day Hedrek Zennor dies. Violet thinks she’s free - a rich young heiress with a world of possibilities in front of her. Then, to her horror, Violet learns that her father planned to send her into the Darklands, where the Leech Lords reign. Where Violet’s still-born brother was taken years ago after Hedrek sold him to a man bearing the mark of the mysterious Anchorhold.
\nHer father’s solicitor and the city’s bishop are insistent she fulfil her duty, but Violet steadfastly refuses. Until one night two assassins attempt to slaughter her - and it becomes if she wants to enjoy a future free of the interference of either solicitors, bishops or assassins, she’s going to have to clean up the mess her father made.
\nOn her journey, Violet seeks the help of Miren O’Malley in the hidden estate of Blackwater, whose family once produced the purest, strangest silver; Ellie Briar of Silverton, the Briar Witch who guards the gateway to the realm of the Leech Lords; and Asher Todd of Whitebarrow, who did terrible things and found The Three Who Went Beneath.
\nUltimately, Violet must go alone. Into the Darklands. To the Anchorhold where it all began. Where it will all end. To do what must be done.
Deep in the forest lives Mehrab the witch, coping with loneliness in her own strange ways and quietly battling her demons. One evening, a young woman appears on her doorstep seeking shelter, pursued by godhounds who wish to destroy all those practising magic, and Mehrab's solitary existence is disrupted as she teaches the girl how to control her powers. Together they forge a cure for their isolation with heartbreaking consequences . . .
\nMeanwhile, in the local village, children begin to disappear, sometimes returning forever changed - or not returning at all. Sinister offerings appear on Mehrab's doorstep, and a dark power pursues her through the trees. As the villagers turn hostile and the godhounds close in, Mehrab finds herself at the centre of a struggle to save the soul of the forest, the life of an old love - and her own new-formed family.
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Alone in the world, Asher Todd travels to the remote estate of Morwood Grange to become governess to three small children. Her sole possessions comprise a sea chest and a large carpet bag she hangs onto for dear life. She finds a fine old home, its inhabitants proud of their lineage and impeccable reputation, and a small village nearby.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tIt seems an untroubled existence, yet there are portraits missing from the walls, locked rooms, and names excised from the family tree inscribed in the bible. In short order, the children adore her, she becomes indispensible to their father Luther in his laboratory, and her potions are able to restore the sight of granddame Leonora.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tSoon Asher fits in as if she’s always been there, but there are creatures that stalk the woods at night, spectres haunt the halls, and Asher is not as much a stranger to the Morwoods as it might at first appear.
When Everly's husband and young daughter die in a car crash she finds out nothing is quite what she thought . . . Secrets, lies and grief collide in this funny, tragic, intimate and utterly compelling horror novella.
\nWriter Everly Bainbridge's life is left in ruins when her husband takes their child to the supermarket one day and a lorry collides with their car. After the accident, a lawyer appears on her doorstep and tells her her husband was not who he said he was and she is a very rich widow. She retreats to a lonely house in the countryside to recover. But there's a well in the cellar, a spectacularly cold room, and one night, Everly wakes up with a foot hanging over the emptiness of the well and the echo of her daughter's voice in her ears . . .
\nA short, sharp, emotionally layered story of horrific secrets and dangerous lies, this dark, fierce gem of a novella will keep you turning the pages late into the night . . .
The Library of the Unwritten in Hell was saved from total devastation, but hundreds of potential books were destroyed. Former librarian Claire and Brevity the muse feel the loss of those stories, and are trying to adjust to their new roles within the Arcane Wing and Library, respectively. But when the remains of those books begin to leak a strange ink, Claire realises that the Library has kept secrets from Hell - and from its own librarians.
Claire and Brevity are immediately at odds in their approach to the ink, and the potential power that it represents has not gone unnoticed. When a representative from the Muses Corps arrives at the Library to advise Brevity, the angel Rami and the erstwhile Hero hunt for answers in other realms. The true nature of the ink could fundamentally alter the afterlife for good or ill, but it entirely depends on who is left to hold the pen.
To save the Library of the Unwritten in Hell, former librarian Claire and her allies may have to destroy it first.
\nClaire, rakish Hero, angel Rami, and muse-turned-librarian Brevity have accomplished the impossible by discovering the true nature of unwritten books. But now that the secret is out, in its quest for power Hell will be coming for every wing of the Library.
\nTo protect the Unwritten Wing and stave off the insidious reach of Malphas, one of Hell’s most bloodthirsty generals, Claire and her friends will have to decide how much they’re willing to sacrifice to keep their vulnerable corner of the afterlife. Succeeding would mean rewriting the nature of the Library, but losing would mean obliteration. Their only chance at survival lies in outwitting Hell and writing a new chapter for the Library. Luckily, Claire and her friends know how the right story, told well, can start a revolution.
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In the first book in a brilliant new fantasy series, books that aren't finished by their authors reside in the Library of the Unwritten in Hell, and it is up to the Librarian to track down any restless characters who emerge from those unfinished stories.
Many years ago, Claire was named Head Librarian of the Unwritten Wing - a neutral space in Hell where all the stories unfinished by their authors reside. Her job consists mainly of repairing and organizing books, but also of keeping an eye on restless stories that risk materialising as characters and escaping the library. When a Hero escapes from his book and goes in search of his author, Claire must track and capture him with the help of former muse and current assistant Brevity and nervous demon courier Leto.
But what should have been a simple retrieval goes horrifyingly wrong when the terrifyingly angelic Ramiel attacks them, convinced that they hold the Devil's Bible. The text of the Devil's Bible is a powerful weapon in the power struggle between Heaven and Hell, so it falls to the librarians to find a book with the power to reshape the boundaries between Heaven, Hell . . . and Earth.
The true hero of The Wizard of Oz takes center stage in this brilliant, delightfully snarky reimagining\\.
\nI was mostly a Good Dog until they sold me out to animal control, okay?
\nBut if it’s a choice between Oz, with its creepy little singing dudes, and being behind bars in gray old Kansas, I’ll choose the place where animals talk and run the show for now, thanks.
\nIt’s not my fault that the kid is stuck here too, or that she stumbled into a tug-of-war over a pair of slippers that don’t even taste good. Now one witch in good eyeliner calls her pretty and we’re off on a quest? Teenagers.
\nI try to tell her she’s falling in with the wrong crowd when she befriends a freaking hedge wizard made of straw, that blue jay with revolutionary aspirations, and the walking tin can. Still, I’m not one to judge when there’s the small matter of a coup in the Forest Kingdom . . .
\nLook, something really stinks in Oz, and this Wizard guy and the witches positively reek of it. As usual, it’s going to be up to a sensible little dog to do a big dog’s job and get to the bottom of it.
\nAnd trust me: Little dogs can get away with anything.
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Ten teenagers broke behavioral law. Sentenced to be reeducated on the moon of Jerem, they were placed in stasis on the automated ship Phetteron for their six day journey.
\nThey never reached their destination. Thrown off course by a computer malfunction, the Phetteron is damaged in an asteroid belt and crash lands on the uninhabited ice planet of Valkrys. Having spent their lives in temperature controlled environments, consuming nutrient supplements, and interacting with people mostly through the infonet, the teens are unprepared to depend on each other to face the harsh, hostile, and hellish landscape.
\nHome will send a rescue party long before their meager supplies run out. Sola was a roamer. She wandered the city after curfew, reveling in the freedom of being disconnected from the techgrid and embracing the joy of physical activity. For those actions, Home declared her deviant. But on Valkrys, her deviance is an asset that may be the teens’ only hope for survival.
\nAs Sola explores their strange new world, she discovers that she and her shipmates are linked by something more frightening than their subversive behaviors - and uncovers a truth about the planet the authorities at Home wanted buried. Valkrys is not uninhabited. And what lives there is predatory . . .
It is the year 1710, and Thomas True has arrived on old London Bridge with a dangerous secret. One night, lost amongst the squalor of London's hidden back streets, he finds himself drawn into the outrageous underworld of the molly houses.
\nMeanwhile, carpenter Gabriel Griffin struggles to hide his double life as Lotty, the molly's silent guard. When the queen of all 'he-harlots', Mother Clap, confides in him about a deadly threat, he realises his friends are facing imminent execution.
\nTo the horror of all mollies, there is a rat amongst them, betraying their secrets to a pair of murderous Justices, hell-bent on punishing sinners with the noose.
\nCan Gabriel unmask the traitor before it's too late? Can he save hapless Thomas from peril, and their own impossible love?
\nSet amidst the hidden world of Georgian London’s gay scene, The Betrayal of Thomas True is a brutal and devastating thriller, where love must overcome evil, and the only true sin is betrayal . . .
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Two years after defying the wizard Belthandros Sethennai and escaping into the great unknown, Csorwe and Shuthmili have made a new life for themselves, hunting for secrets among the ruins of an ancient snake empire.
\nAlong for the ride is Tal Charossa, determined to leave the humiliation and heartbreak of his hometown far behind him, even if it means enduring the company of his old rival and her insufferable girlfriend.
\nAll three of them would be quite happy never to see Sethennai again. But when a routine expedition goes off the rails and a terrifying imperial relic awakens, they find that a common enemy may be all it takes to bring them back into his orbit.
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Csorwe does - she will climb the mountain, enter the Shrine of the Unspoken, and gain the most honored title: sacrifice.
\nBut on the day of her foretold death, a powerful mage offers her a new fate. Leave with him, and live. Turn away from her destiny and her god to become a thief, a spy, an assassin - the wizard's loyal sword. Topple an empire, and help him reclaim his seat of power.
\nBut Csorwe will soon learn - gods remember, and if you live long enough, all debts come due.
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Deanna Madden locked herself away for three years. She never left the apartment. Never allowed herself contact with another human being.
\nTried to stop herself acting out her homicidal urges . . .
\nNow, recently reacquainted with the outside world, Deanna is working out a new balance between her work on the sex cams and her life outside the walls of 6E.
\nBut her equilibrium is about to be shattered as violence and evil begin to close in . . .
Lillian Smith leads an unexceptional life, writing obituaries and killing time with her inattentive husband and disconnected son. Then she meets David, a handsome stranger, in a coffee shop. Lured into an affair, she invents a new persona, one without strings, deadlines, or brooding husbands.
\nLillian has never felt so reckless, unpredictable, or wanted. But as her affair with David intensifies, she withdraws from everything that’s real, even her closest friend. When evidence of her life as a secret lover finds its way onto her son’s social media, she risks ruining much more than her marriage or reputation.
\nAs lies beget lies, Lillian’s two worlds spiral dangerously out of control. And betrayals run deeper than she imagines. Because Lillian isn’t the only one leading a double life.
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Actress Nora Kemp loves two men. One is Hugh Iverson, a philanthropic movie star who gives Nora security and respectability. The other is Hugh’s twin brother, Trent, a Hollywood bad boy who brings out Nora’s wild side. When Trent and an unidentified woman are found dead on the Iversons’ Beverly Hills property, more than Nora’s and Hugh’s reputations are at stake.
\nAn investigation suggests murder-suicide. But there’s more to the crime than first meets the eye: suspicions of a serial killer with a bizarre motive, Hugh’s unnerved and cautious staff, and a missing mother and son. As two LA detectives sift through the deceptions of the innocent and the guilty - some living and some dead - solving the case becomes a cunning cat-and-mouse game.
\nBecause in a city of illusions, the truth - no matter how dangerous - is so easy to hide.
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Romance novelist Helena Ross once had everything - success, a family, a future. Then tragedy hit, leaving her isolated in a silent house. Now she spends her days alone, still churning out blockbuster love stories while avoiding the memories that destroyed her happily ever after.
\nWhen Helena is diagnosed with an aggressive illness, she realises that the only story left to tell is her own. Desperate to finish her book before it’s too late, Helena agrees to work with an unlikely bestselling author Marka Vantly, her biggest critic and someone who is also guarding career-ending secrets.
\nAs the two authors work to reconstruct the day Helena lost everything, they learn that sometimes the truth is the most devastating ending of all.
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Deanna Madden, aka Jessica Reilly, hasn't touched another person in three years.
\nShe hasn't left her apartment. She makes money from performing to webcams on a sex site, where her clients pay $6.99 a minute for her time. She's doing alright. The dollars are piling up in the bank. She's the number 3 model on cams.com.
\nAnd she hasn't killed anyone for years.
\nBut when Deanna sees on the news that a little girl called Annie has gone missing, the story rattles her carefully ordered world. It's uncomfortably similar to the dark fantasy of one of her most disturbing online clients. She's convinced he's responsible for the girl's abduction - but no one will listen to her.
\nSo, after three years, Deanna finally leaves the apartment. And this is what happens . . .
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“The rules are the same. I can't open the door. I can't leave. I can't kill anyone.
\nThe only difference is, I don't set the rules anymore. Guards in grey uniforms do. It is everything I never wanted and everything I always deserved. I write to you now, from a prison cell. My home for the next twenty to thirty years.
\nThat's the going term for murder.”
Perla Wultz lives with her husband, Grant, and their precious daughter, Sophie, in a gated Pasadena community. Affluent, sociable, and accomplished, Perla plays the part of loving wife and mother to perfection. It seems an ideal life, if not for a decades-old crime that has become Perla’s dark and consuming secret obsession.
\nTwenty-three years ago, Leewood Folcrum confessed to murdering two young girls during a birthday party. Though he’s been condemned to a life sentence, his crime is not forgotten. Not by Perla, nor by an inquisitive doctoral student interviewing Folcrum for his dissertation. He’s getting the killer to open up - about his motives, his confession, and the truth of what really happened on that horrible night.
\nAs the past and the present entwine, the deceptions behind the infamous murder begin to surface. But who’s deceiving who now? And why? And as an ingeniously twisted plan is set in motion, who will be the next to die?
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Sen Hoshiakari is an exiled prince of a clan that lost everything in his father's failed rebellion. Deprived of his birthright, Sen is determined to restore his family's lands and honor at any cost. Rui is a peasant girl who saved Sen's life on the night his family were put to the sword. But now, she is adrift and unsure of her place in the world, not knowing that the gods themselves have plans for her . . .
\nAs civil war throws the empire into chaos, and demons seek vengeance on the living, Sen and Rui must fight for both their clan and their shared future . . . But vengeance demands a bloody price.
In ancient Greece, mortals suffer under the tyranny of the gods - forced to sacrifice the food they depend on, their worldly possessions and even each other at the whims of the Twelve. But an ancient prophecy speaks of hope, of one who will set humankind free.
\nOn the island of Naxos, Danae, a fisherman's daughter, develops strange powers tied to a mysterious tree bearing golden fruit. Driven from her home, she seeks guidance from the oracle but finds only more questions . . . and whispers of a secret network of believers who have long been awaiting her arrival.
\nDetermined to learn more, Danae joins forces with the legendary Heracles and his crew. Together they battle monsters and gods alike on a quest to the end of the world as Danae seeks the one who holds the key to her destiny.
\nBut a terrifying truth is yet to be unlocked. A truth that could destroy the world as she knows it. Danae must choose to follow her destiny or her heart, while the fate of humanity rests on her shoulders.
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Danae has fought monsters, crossed oceans and stared into the face of death. It is the price of the prophecy. The prophecy that names her as the mortal that will destroy Olympus. But gods do not fall without a fight.
\nAs they hunt her, Danae descends into the shadows of the Underworld to search for help - and the sister she lost to its depths. Accompanied by her faithful winged horse and a handful of companions, whose true allegiance remains uncertain, Danae uncovers secrets long hidden. Secrets about Zeus’ powerful hold on the mortal world and the fate she is bound to.
\nBut the deeper she journeys, the closer the gods watch. Hera seethes. Poseidon plots. And Zeus will stop at nothing to destroy this mortal girl who dares challenge him. Because the gods will never give up their power. Just as Danae will never give up her destiny . . .
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An astonishing coming-of-middle-age debut about an Ahkwesáhsne man’s reluctant return home, Old School Indian is a striking exploration of the resonance of love and family, culture and history.
\nForty-three-year-old Abe Jacobs has been told by his doctors that he’s dying - and fast. Having exhausted his doctors’ regimens, he begins to contemplate the one path he thought he’d never take: a healing at the hands of his great uncle Budge Billings. His uncle still lives on the Ahkwesáhsne reservation where Abe was raised, so more than two decades after leaving, Abe reluctantly returns home.
\nBudge, a wry, unceremonious, recovered alcoholic, is not the least bit sentimental about his gift. Which is good, because Abe’s last-ditch attempt to be healed is just that - a fragile hope, one of which he is thoroughly skeptical. But no healing is possible without hope or knowing oneself. To find both faith and himself again, Abe must confront how leaving the reservation at eighteen has affected him, and the loves and fears that have kept him far from home ever since.
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Dr Paul Campbell has it all - a prestigious career as a plastic surgeon, a beautiful home with his loving wife Lisa, and the admiration of his affluent London community. But beneath this idyllic facade, a dark and calculating mind lurks, harbouring obsessions no one can even imagine.
\nLisa Campbell's perfect life shatters when a mysterious new neighbour moves in next door. Alexis Johnson seems friendly at first, but her probing questions about Lisa's husband Paul unravel a web of lies and deadly secrets.
\nBut Alexis has her own painful reasons for pursuing the truth, haunted by demons she can never unravel. Is her distrust merely projecting past traumas, or are her gut instincts correct about the depths of Paul's depravity?
\nLisa thought she knew everything about Paul. But as Alexis delves into Paul's past, Lisa is forced to confront the possibility that the man she married may not be who he claims to be. Could Paul's genteel exterior be concealing something far more depraved?
\nWith each new revelation, Lisa's world tilts further off its axis.
\nAs Lisa and Alexis form an uneasy alliance to uncover the truth, they find themselves trapped in an intricate game of cat and mouse. But who is the predator, and who is the prey?
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Two years ago, Riley Young fled from Lawton, Alabama. After accusing the oldest Lawton son, Rhett, of rape, everyone called her a liar and she had no option but to leave. Now she’s back, but she’s not at Lawton High finishing up her senior year. She’s at home raising the little girl that no one believed was Rhett’s.
\nRhett is off at college living the life he was afraid he’d lose with Riley’s accusation, so Riley agrees to move back to Lawton so she and her parents could take care of her grandmother, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. But the town still hasn’t forgotten their hate for her, and she hasn’t forgotten the way they turned on her when she needed them most.
\nWhen town golden boy Brady Higgens finds Riley and her daughter, Bryony, stranded on the side of the road in a storm, he pulls over and gives them a ride. Not because he cares about Riley, of course, but because of the kid.
\nBut after the simple car ride, he begins to question everything he thought he knew. Could Brady believe Riley and risk losing everything?
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On the night of her high school graduation, Vale McKinley and her boyfriend Crawford are in a terrible car accident that leaves Crawford in a coma. They were supposed to spend the summer planning for college, for a bright future full of possibility. Together. Instead, Vale spends long days in the hospital, hoping Crawford will awaken.
Slate Allen, a college friend of Vale's brother, has been visiting his dying uncle at the same hospital. When he and Vale meet, she can't deny the flutter of an illicit attraction. She tries to ignore her feelings, but she's not immune to Slate's charm. Slowly, they form a cautious friendship.
Then, Crawford wakes up . . . with no memory of Vale or their relationship. Heartbroken, Vale opts to leave for college and move on with her life. Except now, she's in Slate's territory, and their story is about to take a very strange turn.
Addiction was something Krit Corbin accepted as part of his nature a long time ago. He decided to embrace it and flip his finger at the rules. Women had always been the number one thing on his list of addictions. He couldn’t get enough. Being the lead singer in a rock band had only made access to his favorite addiction that much easier.
\nBeing alone was the only thing Blythe Denton understood. The small town minister’s family that raised her hadn’t accepted her as their own. The minister’s wife had always made sure Blythe understood just how unworthy she was of love. When Blythe is sent away to college and given a chance to finally be free of living as an unwanted burden, she looks forward to having peace in her life. Being alone isn’t something that bothers her. She escapes reality in the stories she writes.
\nHowever, the ridiculously sexy tattooed guy who keeps throwing parties in the apartment above hers is driving her crazy. For starters, he doesn’t treat her like she would expect a guy with a different woman always hanging on his arm to treat someone as uninteresting as her. She looks nothing like the gorgeous women she sees parading in and out of his apartment, but for some strange reason he keeps showing up at her door.
\nDuring a party at his apartment, Krit’s new neighbor comes to the door with her long brown hair pulled up in a messy knot and a pair of glasses perched on her cute little nose. She wants him to turn down the music, but he convinces her to stay.
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Playboy Cage owns the apartment, and he hosts a revolving door of people, in and out, at all times. Most of them are long-legged hot girls who are never there more than a night or two. When Cage’s new roommate, Marcus, enters the picture, he’s just looking to nurse a broken heart. But there’s one particular semi-frequent regular who catches his eye.
\nWillow - “Low” - is the one Cage wants to marry. But the two of them are night and day, and Marcus can’t see how Low puts up with all of Cage’s womanizing. What she really needs is a real man . . . like good-looking and sensible Marcus. But that’s going to get real complicated and real messy - real fast.
\n
Micah Abe hadn’t laid eyes on Dolly Dixon, his younger sister’s best friend, in years, but her eyes were the kind you didn’t forget. Even if she’d grown into a woman with a body made for sin, he had recognised that unique shade of amber the moment she had locked her gaze on him. Damn shame he wouldn’t get a taste of her. His sister would cut off his favorite body part if he even considered it. Besides, he was over clingy women, and the way Dolly was holding on to his enemy like she wanted to wrap her legs around him meant she was the needy type.
\nProblem was he had to save her from herself. Clearly, Dolly was still clueless about life. That much hadn’t changed about her. He’d come here to get back what had been taken from him five years ago, but it looked like he’d be saving Snow White in the process.
\n
Sadie White's summer job isn't going to be on the beach life-guarding or working at rental booths like most kids her age. With her single mother's increasing pregnancy and refusal to work, Sadie has to take over her mother's job as a domestic servant for one of the wealthy summer families on a nearby island.
\nWhen the family arrives at their summer getaway, Sadie is surprised to learn that the owner of the house is Jax Stone, one of the hottest teen rockers in the world. If Sadie hadn't spent her life raising her mother and taking care of the house she might have been normal enough to be excited about working for a rock star.
\nEven though Sadie isn't impressed by Jax's fame, he is drawn to her. Everything about Sadie fascinates Jax but he fights his attraction. Relationship's never work in his world and as badly as he wants Sadie, he believes she deserves more. By the end of the summer, Jax discovers he can't breathe without Sadie.
\nBut can their love overcome the disparity in their lifestyles? Or will they have to learn how to without each other breathe again?
\n
Ezmita Ramos has always had big plans for her future, ones that would take her far outside the Lawton city limits. But with overprotective parents who control every part of her life, she’s worried that these dreams will never become reality.
\nThere’s nothing Asa Griffith wants more than to leave Lawton. It’s his senior year and he’s all set to attend Ole Miss in the fall, but a part of him also worries about what will happen if he leaves his mom living alone with his abusive father. After a huge fight with his father that escalates to violence, Asa is forced out of the house in the middle of the night with nowhere to go.
\nWhen Asa and Ezmita cross paths that night, neither of them is in the mood to socialise. But they also feel this undeniable chemistry, one that gives them each hope that better days lie ahead. Then Asa is sent away to live with his grandmother for four months, only to return to Lawton and find out Ezmita has moved on. Still, the sparks between Asa and Ezmita linger. Neither of them has forgotten the way they felt seen by the other at their lowest points.
\nCan Asa and Ezmita find their way back to each other?
\n
Six years ago, Dewayne Falco's life changed. He lost someone he never expected to lose. Resigned to punish himself for something he felt he could have prevented, he goes through life without getting too close to anyone.
What he didn't expect was for the girl across the street to move back home and remind him of what they both lost: Dewayne's younger brother Dustin. However, when a miniature version of Dustin opens the door to greet him, Dewayne realizes he might not have lost everything after all.
Sienna Roy loved Dustin Falco most of her life. He was the boy next door, the high school basketball star and her best friend. But when his life was cut short, she realized he left a part of himself behind.
Now, she's back in Sea Breeze, thankful to have a home for her and Dustin's son, but not sure if she can ever forgive the people across the street who abandoned her when she needed them the most - The Falcos.
Betrayal, lies, and forbidden attraction might end Dewayne and Sienna's story before it's even begun.
Preston is one bad boy. And Amanda has harbored a crush on him for forever. When she finally makes her move on him, it does not end well. But still, she can’t resist him. Especially now that he seems to be pursuing her, too.
\nNo one wants wants them to be be together. Not Amanda’s brother Marcus, who is on the verge of his marriage to Low, and definitely not any of Preston's buddies. They know way too much about Preston’s dark side. Yet the dangerous attraction is there . . . and neither Preston nor Amanda are going to deny it.
\n
Five years after the Lawton High football team last took the field, everyone is gathering for a special event back home in Alabama. But coming back together brings up memories from the past. Special ones. Painful ones. Unforgettable ones. And for some, the reunion introduces an opportunity to confront unresolved issues.
\nCan Asa and Ezmita continue to run away from what their hearts truly want? What about Nash and Tallulah - will their natural attraction to each other last when trust concerns rise to the surface? For West and Maggie, five years later means taking the next step - if they have the courage to face it. And a joyous celebration waits for Brady and Riley and their beautiful family. But family may be the point of contention when it comes to Gunner and Willa and their upcoming plans. Finally, there are Ryker and Aurora, who must continue to fight their way through insecurity and temptation.
\nAll these couples find themselves face-to-face with not only the past but a possible future worth celebrating. So as we catch up with the members of the Lawton High football team, the future still remains unknown. Will everyone get their happy endings? Or will they leave it all on the field as they step forward toward the days ahead?
\n
Losing his dream, his ultimate plan, and his future - Nash Lee never expected to be facing a life without football. One wrong move and it had all changed. Going back to school for his senior year no longer appealed to him. He’d rather not leave his house. Walking back into Lawton High School, seeing pity in everyone’s eyes was just another reality in his nightmare.
\nRevenge wasn’t a pretty thing. Tallulah Liddell had found it was rather controlling. The way you looked at life changed completely when you clung to the ugly notion. But she’d done it anyway. From the last day of her junior year when Ryker Lee had made a fat joke about her and Nash laughed with him, she’d been driven by pain. It wasn’t like no one had made fun of her weight before. She was used to that. What had hurt so deeply was Nash’s laughter. He’d always been the one person to notice her, include her, not treat her differently.
\nBut that one moment had changed it all. From the time she walked out of the school building to the moment she returned for her senior year Tallulah had been determined to lose weight and finally be the size her peers considered acceptable.
\nWhat she wasn’t expecting on her return was to find a broken Nash Lee who no longer smiled, rarely spoke, and didn’t care about anything or anyone around him. He was just existing. But the pain in his eyes she understood all too well. He was alone. He no longer fit into the perfect package.
\n
Ryker Lee is finally enjoying his senior year - he has great friends, hangs out with hot girls, and is on track to get a football scholarship that will set him up for college. Despite this, a small part of him wonders if there’s more to life than parties and meaningless hookups - and if football even means as much to him as it does to his fellow teammates. And when he meets the new girl at school, his world totally changes . . .
\nAurora McClay is new to Lawton. She’s grateful that her twin brother, Hunter, is star of the football team and can help her adjust to her new school, but she’s not grateful at how overprotective he is over every person she meets. Just because she is deaf does not mean people have to treat her differently.
\nWhen she meets Ryker Lee, the two of them spark an instant and intense chemistry, one that proves to be controversial not only because of Ryker’s reputation as a player, but also because of Aurora and Hunter’s father’s bigoted views about who Aurora can and can’t date.
\nAurora and Ryker know in their hearts that they are meant for each other. But can their relationship endure the turmoil of rumors and prejudice?
\n
Jason is sick of living in his rock star brother’s shadow. So when he ships off to Sea Breeze, Alabama, he’s looking for a much deserved escape and a chance to blow off some envious steam. Falling for the local bad girl was definitely not the plan.
\nBut as the new duo enjoys some naughty fun in the Alabama sun, Jason learns that even though Jax is the musician in the family, he’s not the only brother who can rock someone’s world.
\n
Once, he had been my entire world. If he'd asked, I’d have given up every dream and plan I had for him. But he hadn’t asked. The day we lost Vanna, his mother, and the closest thing I’d ever had to one, I’d lost him too.
\nEighteen years later, I’m back in Florida, trying to create a new life for myself after a year of going through the motions since my husband’s death. It’s probably best we don’t know the future because I wouldn’t have walked into that bar if I’d known my eyes would collide with the boy who had shattered me long ago.
\nBut Rome wasn’t that boy anymore. He was a biker with a leather vest, tattoos, and piercings.
\nWhile I’d been mesmerised by the man he’d become, all he’d had to say to me was that I had gotten old. Leaving to never step foot back there again, fate plays a cruel twist where the new life I thought I’d found turns out to be a lie constructed by someone I trusted most, and the only one to save me is a biker named Tex.
\n
Cage York has to choose between a love of the game and a love of the girl in this sultry Sea Breeze novel from New York Times bestselling author Abbi Glines.
After waiting for his big break, bad boy Cage York is finally called up to prove his worth in the college baseball arena. But when Cage’s girlfriend, Eva, mourns the sudden loss of her father, it’s not Cage’s comforting arms she runs to, but those of her former fiancé’s twin brother, Jeremy.
Torn between his baseball dream and the girl of his dreams, Cage must prove he’s worthy of Eva’s love, or risk losing her to Jeremy forever.
“Not looking for closure. I don’t close a good book until the story ends.”
\nAnd ours started when I was sixteen. Eighteen years later, we had become different people, living another life than the one we had imagined then. One without each other. Having Rome Bower back in my life had been more than a blast from the past. My soul had felt at home again. Turns out he wasn’t just my first love but he’d been the only one to truly own my heart.
\nLoving him was easy, surviving him was hard. And I had a secret that was best left alone. There was no need to drag up painful memories that he didn’t need to know. Not even when someone else gets the one thing I’ve wanted more than anything else. I refuse to be the distraction that will one day leave him with a world of regrets.
\nBut then, I may not have that choice to make. When our second chance is being tested, and we are holding on tightly to what we have found, it is snatched away by a man with my dead husband’s face. I know too much, and the Irishman known as The Ghost can’t allow that.
\n
Liberty:
Thing is, my Mama D never had a one-night stand with an older man who never told her his last name and left behind a souvenir that was gonna be life changing - but I had.
My life had started as a fairytale, then morphed into a nightmare by the time I was ten years old. From the moment I’d been kicked out at eighteen, I had found a way to survive. Anything was better than the home I’d left behind. At some point, everyone gets a break, right? You would think so, but fate keeps tossing things at me, trying to see how much I can take.
\nLooks like it won because I’m stuck right back where I started. Living in my sister’s house, who hates me, with the clock ticking until I’m homeless again.
\nLiam:
It was time I settled down. Found a woman I could grow old with because, let’s face it, I was so close to fifty I could reach out and touch it. The daughter I hadn’t got to raise was now in my life. Grown, married, with two little boys. I wanted to be someone she could be proud of and respect. I recently started dating a doctor, she was gorgeous, smart, and independent. It all looked good when you checked off the list. My daughter couldn’t wait to meet her. I wished like hell I felt something for her. A spark, a pull, anything at this point would do.
Then, one night, when I’m leaving her bedroom, I see a familiar face looking back at me from the other end of the hallway. The sexy bartender I should have left alone six weeks ago and couldn’t get out of my head shouldn’t be here. But she is. Which means she’s the doctor’s spoiled, selfish brat of a younger sister. This was not going to end well.
\n
Willa can’t erase the bad decisions of her past that led her down the path she’s on now. But she can fight for forgiveness from her family. And she can protect herself by refusing to let anyone else get close to her.
\nHigh school quarterback and town golden boy Brady used to be the best of friends with Willa - she even had a crush on him when they were kids. But that’s all changed now: her life choices have made her a different person from the girl he used to know.
\nGunner used to be friends with Willa and Brady, too. He too is larger than life and a high school football star - not to mention that his family basically owns the town of Lawton. He loves his life, and doesn’t care about anyone except himself. But Willa is the exception - and he understands the girl she’s become in a way no one else can.
\nAs secrets come to light and hearts are broken, these former childhood friends must face the truth about growing up and falling in love . . . even if it means losing each other forever.
\n
To everyone who knows him, West Ashby has always been that guy: the cocky, popular, way-too-handsome-for-his-own-good football god who led Lawton High to the state championships. But while West may be Big Man on Campus on the outside, on the inside he’s battling the grief that comes with watching his father slowly die of cancer.
\nTwo years ago, Maggie Carleton’s life fell apart when her father murdered her mother. And after she told the police what happened, she stopped speaking and hasn’t spoken since. Even the move to Lawton, Alabama, couldn’t draw Maggie back out. So she stayed quiet, keeping her sorrow and her fractured heart hidden away.
\nAs West’s pain becomes too much to handle, he knows he needs to talk to someone about his father - so in the dark shadows of a post-game party, he opens up to the one girl who he knows won’t tell anyone else.
\nWest expected that talking about his dad would bring some relief, or at least a flood of emotions he couldn’t control. But he never expected the quiet new girl to reply, to reveal a pain even deeper than his own - or for them to form a connection so strong that he couldn’t ever let her go . . .
\n
Trisha Corbin always knew how to hide a bruise. And as long as it meant her momma's boyfriends wouldn't go near her little brother, Krit, it was worth it. But dreaming that Prince Charming would ever rescue her was pointless.
\nRock Taylor always had a plan - a football scholarship for a major college team was within his reach - if he didn't let anything get in his way. But he'd never factored in trying to score a date with Trisha, the hottest girl in Sea Breeze. She was every man's walking fantasy, and she wouldn't even glance his way.
\nBut when he finds her beaten and bruised, Rock knew his life was about to change and that he'd do anything to save Trisha Corbin, and keep her safe.
\n
There was something wicked about Beau that drew me to him. What was wrong with me? Why did I want to sin so badly
\nAshton is getting tired of being good, of impressing her parents and playing ideal girlfriend to Sawyer Vincent. Sawyer is perfect, a regular Prince Charming, but when he leaves town for the summer, it’s his cousin Beau who catches Ashton’s eye. Beau is the sexiest guy she’s ever seen, and even though he’s dangerous, Ashton is drawn to him.
\nBeau loves his cousin like a brother, so the last thing he wants to do is make a move on Sawyer’s girl. Ashton is off-limits, absolutely. That’s why he does his best to keep his distance, even though he’s been in love with her forever. When Ashton wants to rekindle their childhood friendship in Sawyer’s absence, Beau knows he should say no.
\nAshton and Beau don’t want to hurt Sawyer. But the more they try to stay away from each other, the more intense their urges become. It’s getting way too hard to resist . . .
\n
Sawyer Vincent is still heartbroken over his breakup with Ashton Gray - made worse because he lost her to his brother - but Lana McDaniel thinks she might just have a cure. Lana's lived in her cousin Ashton's shadow all her life, but now she's taking the lead and is determined to make Sawyer her man.
\nBut can she be sure that Sawyer's not just using her to get back at Ashton? And what if Sawyer sees through her new sexy version of herself and discovers the shy, geeky girl she used to be?
\n
Low broke Cage’s heart by getting with Marcus in Because of Low. Cage went into a tailspin that ended in a DUI. In order to salvage his baseball scholarship - the one thing he truly valued besides Low - Cage must take a summer job. At a farm. Away from Sea Breeze. With lots of cows, but no hot girls. Maybe that’s what Cage needs to get back on track.
\nBut wait - there’s that hostile daughter of the farm boss. She’s pretty and occasionally sweet, and there seems to be a lot of sadness and mystery behind her anger. Cage is dying to strip her down - physically and mentally - in the back of the barn. But is he prepared for what will happen afterward?
\n
When Laura Costello moves to Los Angeles, trying to escape an overprotective family and the haunting memories of a terrible accident, she doesn’t expect to be homeless after a week. (She’s pretty sure she didn’t start that fire - right?) She also doesn't expect to find herself adopted by a rogue bookseller, installed in a lovely but completely illegal boardinghouse, or challenged to save a losing trivia team from ignominy . . . but that’s what happens.
\nAdd a regretful landlady, a gorgeous housemate and an ex-boyfriend determined to put himself back in the running and you’ll see why Laura isn’t really sure she’s cut out for this adulting thing. Luckily for her, her new friends Nina, Polly and Impossibly Handsome Bob aren't sure either, but maybe if they put their heads (and hearts) together they’ll be able to make it work for them.
\nSet in the same world as Nina Hill.
\n
The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book.
\nWhen the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They're all - or mostly all - excited to meet her! She'll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It's a disaster! And as if that wasn't enough, Tom, her trivia nemesis, has turned out to be cute, funny, and deeply interested in getting to know her. Doesn't he realise what a terrible idea that is?
\nNina considers her options.
\n1. Completely change her name and appearance. (Too drastic, plus she likes her hair.)
\n2. Flee to a deserted island. (Hard pass, see: coffee).
\n3. Hide in a corner of her apartment and rock back and forth. (Already doing it.)
\nIt's time for Nina to come out of her comfortable shell, but she isn't convinced real life could ever live up to fiction. It's going to take a brand-new family, a persistent suitor, and the combined effects of ice cream and trivia to make her turn her own fresh page.
\n
After a tumultuous childhood, Christa Liddle has hidden away, both figuratively and literally. Happily studying sea snails in the middle of the Indian Ocean, Christa finds her tranquil existence thrown into chaos when her once-famous father - long thought dead after a plane crash - turns out to be alive, well, and ready to make amends. The world goes wild, fascinated by this real-life saga, pinning Christa and her family under the spotlight.
\nAs if that weren’t enough, her reunion with an old childhood friend reveals an intense physical attraction neither was expecting and both want to act on . . . if they can just keep a lid on it. When her father’s story starts to develop cracks, Christa fears she will lose herself, her potential relationship, and - most importantly - any chance of making it back to her snails before they forget her completely.
\n
Lilian Girvan has been a single mother for three years - ever since her husband died in a car accident. One mental breakdown and some random suicidal thoughts later, she’s just starting to get the hang of this widow thing. She can now get her two girls to school, show up to work, and watch TV like a pro. The only problem is she’s becoming overwhelmed with being underwhelmed.
\nAt least her textbook illustrating job has some perks - like actually being called upon to draw whale genitalia. Oh, and there’s that vegetable-gardening class her boss signed her up for. Apparently, being the chosen illustrator for a series of boutique vegetable guides means getting your hands dirty, literally. Wallowing around in compost on a Saturday morning can’t be much worse than wallowing around in pajamas and self-pity.
\nAfter recruiting her kids and insanely supportive sister to join her, Lilian shows up at the Los Angeles botanical garden feeling out of her element. But what she’ll soon discover - with the help of a patient instructor and a quirky group of gardeners - is that into every life a little sun must shine, whether you want it to or not . . .
\n
Jessica and Emily Burnstein have very different ideas of how this college tour should go.
\nFor Emily, it's a preview of freedom, exploring the possibility of her new and more exciting future. Not that she's sure she even wants to go to college, but let's ignore that for now. And maybe the other kids on the tour will like her more than the ones at school. . . . They have to, right?
\nFor Jessica, it's a chance to bond with the daughter she seems to have lost. They used to be so close, but then Goldfish crackers and Play-Doh were no longer enough of a draw. She isn't even sure if Emily likes her anymore. To be honest, Jessica isn't sure she likes herself.
\nTogether with a dozen strangers - and two familiar enemies - Jessica and Emily travel the East Coast, meeting up with family and old friends along the way. Surprises and secrets threaten their relationship and, in the end, change it forever.
\n
When Julia Mann, a bad-tempered ex-actress and professional thorn in the side of authority, runs into Natasha Mason at an AA meeting, it’s anything but a meet-cute. Julia just found a dead body in her swimming pool, and the cops say she did it (she already went to jail for murder once, so now they think she’s making a habit of it). Mason is eager to clear Julia’s name and help keep her sober, but all Julia wants is for Mason to leave her alone.
\nAs their investigation ranges from the Hollywood Hills to the world of burlesque to the country clubs of Palm Springs, this unconventional team realises their shared love of sarcasm and poor life choices are proving to be a powerful combination. Will secrets from their past trip them up, or will their team of showgirls, cat burglars, and Hollywood agents help them stay one step ahead? Are dead piranhas, false noses, and a giant martini glass important clues or simply your typical day in Los Angeles? And will they manage to solve the crime before they kill each other, or worse, fall off the wagon? Trying to keep it simple and take it easy is one thing - trying to find a murderer before they kill again is a whole other program.
\n
At any given moment in other people's houses, you can find . . . repressed hopes and dreams . . . moments of unexpected joy . . . someone making love on the floor to a man who is most definitely not her husband . . .
\n*record scratch*
\nAs the longtime local carpool mom, Frances Bloom is sometimes an unwilling witness to her neighbors' private lives. She knows her cousin is hiding her desire for another baby from her spouse, Bill Horton's wife is mysteriously missing, and now this . . .
\nAfter the shock of seeing Anne Porter in all her extramarital glory, Frances vows to stay in her own lane. But that's a notion easier said than done when Anne's husband throws her out a couple of days later. The repercussions of the affair reverberate through the four carpool families - and Frances finds herself navigating a moral minefield that could make or break a marriage.
\n
Gwynne Hogg is an enviable woman - until she discovers her beloved dad is a serial killer.
\nAs her dad’s decades-old secrets finally catch up with him, Gwynne struggles to reconcile the man she trusted most with the crimes he’s accused of. She tries to process it all while keeping the wheels of her ‘normal’ life turning. That means caring for her depressed mum, enduring the stares of other parents on the nursery run, and showing up for clients at her PR firm, all under the relentless gaze of the media.
\nBut as the court case unfolds, Gwynne can’t shake the fear that a murderous gene might live inside her too.
\nHer thoughts grow darker, her once-happy life unravels, and she begins to wonder what she herself might be capable of . . .
\n
Justin has a curse, and thanks to a Reddit thread, it's now all over the internet. Every woman he dates goes on to find their soul mate the second they break up. When a woman slides into his DMs with the same problem, they come up with a plan: They'll date each other and break up. Their curses will cancel each other’s out, and they’ll both go on to find the love of their lives. It’s a bonkers idea . . . and it just might work.
\nEmma hadn't planned that her next assignment as a traveling nurse would be in Minnesota, but she and her best friend agree that dating Justin is too good of an opportunity to pass up, especially when they get to rent an adorable cottage on a private island on Lake Minnetonka.
\nIt's supposed to be a quick fling, just for the summer. But when Emma's toxic mother shows up and Justin has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they're suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected - including catching real feelings for each other. What if this time Fate has actually brought the perfect pair together?
\n
After a wild bet, gourmet grilled-cheese sandwich, and cuddle with a baby goat, Alexis Montgomery has had her world turned upside down. The cause: Daniel Grant, a ridiculously hot carpenter who’s ten years younger than her and as casual as they come - the complete opposite of sophisticated city-girl Alexis. And yet their chemistry is undeniable.
\nWhile her ultra-wealthy parents want her to carry on the family legacy of world-renowned surgeons, Alexis doesn’t need glory or fame. She’s fine with being a “mere” ER doctor. And every minute she spends with Daniel and the tight-knit town where he lives, she’s discovering just what’s really important. Yet letting their relationship become anything more than a short-term fling would mean turning her back on her family and giving up the opportunity to help thousands of people.
\nBringing Daniel into her world is impossible, and yet she can’t just give up the joy she’s found with him either. With so many differences between them, how can Alexis possibly choose between her world and his?
\n
There might be no such a thing as a perfect guy, but Xavier Rush comes disastrously close. A gorgeous veterinarian giving Greek god vibes - all while cuddling a tiny kitten? Immediately yes. That is until Xavier opens his mouth and proves that even sculpted gods can say the absolute wrong thing. Like, really wrong.
\nOf course, there’s nothing Samantha loves more than proving an asshole wrong . . . unless, of course, he can admit he made a mistake. But after one incredible and seemingly endless date - possibly the best in living history - Samantha is forced to admit the truth, that her family is in crisis and any kind of relationship would be impossible. Samantha begs Xavier to forget her. To remember their night together as a perfect moment, as crushing as that may be.
\nOnly no amount of distance or time is nearly enough to forget that something between them. And the only thing better than one single perfect memory is to make a life - and even a love - worth remembering.
\n
Holly is dealing with the impending death of her grandmother and still reeling from a bad breakup. One bright spot: a Valentine’s Day card on Holly’s windshield - even if it wasn’t meant for her.
\nAn amusing mistake soon turns into a lovely exchange of anonymous notes, little acts of kindness, and a growing affection between two strangers.
\nWhat happens when one of them has to say goodbye?
Dr. Briana Ortiz’s life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalised, her brother’s running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that’s probably going to the new man-doctor who’s already registering eighty-friggin’-seven on Briana’s “pain in my ass” scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game . . . by sending Briana a letter.
\nAnd it’s a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn’t actually Satan. Worse, he might be this fantastically funny and subversively likeable guy who’s terrible at first impressions. Because suddenly he and Bri are exchanging letters, sharing lunch dates in her “sob closet,” and discussing the merits of freakishly tiny horses. But when Jacob decides to give Briana the best gift imaginable - a kidney for her brother - she wonders just how she can resist this quietly sexy new doctor . . . especially when he calls in a favor she can’t refuse.
\n
Fifteen-year-old Kam is head over heels for Ash, the boy who swept him off his feet. But his family and best friend, Bodie, are worried. Something seems off about Ash. He also has a habit of disappearing, at times for days. When Ash asks Kam to join him on a trip to Joshua Tree, the two of them walk off into the sunset . . . but only Kam returns.
\nTwo years later, Kam is still left with a hole in his heart and too many unanswered questions. So it feels like fate when a school trip takes him back to Joshua Tree. On the trip, Kam wants to find closure about what happened to Ash but instead finds himself in danger of facing a similar fate. In the desert, Kam must reckon with the truth of his past relationship - and the possibility of opening himself up to love once again.
\n
It's 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing.
Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He's terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he's gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media's images of men dying of AIDS.
Judy is an aspiring fashion designer who worships her uncle Stephen, a gay man with AIDS who devotes his time to activism as a member of ACT UP. Judy has never imagined finding romance . . . until she falls for Reza and they start dating.
Art is Judy's best friend, their school's only out and proud teen. He'll never be who his conservative parents want him to be, so he rebels by documenting the AIDS crisis through his photographs.
As Reza and Art grow closer, Reza struggles to find a way out of his deception that won't break Judy's heart - and destroy the most meaningful friendship he's ever known.
2019. Moud is an out gay teen living in Los Angeles with his distant father, Saeed. When Moud gets the news that his grandfather in Iran is dying, he accompanies his dad to Tehran, where the revelation of family secrets will force Moud into a new understanding of his history, his culture, and himself.
\n1978. Saeed is an engineering student with a promising future ahead of him in Tehran. But when his parents discover his involvement in the country’s burgeoning revolution, they send him to safety in America, a country Saeed despises. And even worse - he’s forced to live with the American grandmother he never knew existed.
\n1939. Bobby, the son of a calculating Hollywood stage mother, lands a coveted MGM studio contract. But the fairy-tale world of glamour he’s thrust into has a dark side. Bobby is forced to hide his sexuality for fear of losing everything.
\nSet against the backdrop of Tehran and Los Angeles, this tale of intergenerational trauma and love is an ode to the fragile bonds of family, the hidden secrets of history, and all the beautiful moments that make us who we are today.
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When Tia accidentally overhears a whispered conversation between her mother - terminally ill and lying in a hospital bed in Port Harcourt, Nigeria - and her aunt, the repercussions will send her on a desperate quest to uncover a secret her mother has been hiding for nearly two decades.
\nBack home in Lagos a few days later, Adunni, a plucky fourteen-year-old runaway, is lying awake in Tia’s guest room. Having escaped from her rural village in a desperate bid to seek a better future, she’s finally found refuge with Tia, who has helped her enroll in school. It’s always been Adunni’s dream to get an education, and she’s bursting with excitement.
\nSuddenly, there’s a horrible knocking at the front gate . . .
\nIt’s only the beginning of a harrowing ordeal that will see Tia forced to make a terrible choice between protecting Adunni or finally learning the truth behind the secret her mother has hidden from her. And Adunni will learn that her “louding voice,” as she calls it, is more important than ever, as she must advocate to save not only herself but all the young women of her home village, Ikati.
\nIf she succeeds, she may transform Ikati into a place where girls are allowed to claim the bright futures they deserve - and shout their stories to the world.
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A powerful, emotional debut novel told in the unforgettable voice of a young Nigerian woman who is trapped in a life of servitude but determined to fight for her dreams and choose her own future.
Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education. This, her mother has told her, is the only way to get a “louding voice” - the ability to speak for herself and decide her own future. But instead, Adunni's father sells her to be the third wife of a local man who is eager for her to bear him a son and heir.
When Adunni runs away to the city, hoping to make a better life, she finds that the only other option before her is servitude to a wealthy family. As a yielding daughter, a subservient wife, and a powerless slave, Adunni is told, by words and deeds, that she is nothing.
But while misfortunes might muffle her voice for a time, they cannot mute it. And when she realizes that she must stand up not only for herself, but for other girls, for the ones who came before her and were lost, and for the next girls, who will inevitably follow; she finds the resolve to speak, however she can - in a whisper, in song, in broken English - until she is heard.
Three teens venture into the abandoned Monroe estate one night; hours later, only two emerge from the burning wreckage. Chloe drags one Reznick brother to safety, unconscious and bleeding; the other is left to burn, dead in the fire. But which brother survives? And is his death a tragic accident? Desperate self-defense? Or murder?
\nChloe is the only one with the answers. As the fire rages, and police and parents demand the truth, she struggles to piece together the story of how they got there-a story of jealousy, twisted passion, and the darkness that lurks behind even the most beautiful of faces . . .
I have never been favored by the gods. Far from it, thanks to Zeus.
\nLiving as a cursed office clerk for the Order of Thieves, I just keep my head down and hope the capricious beings who rule from Olympus won’t notice me. Not an easy feat, given San Francisco is Zeus’ patron city, but I make do. I survive. Until the night I tangle with a different god.
\nThe worst god. Hades.
\nFor the first time ever, the ruthless, mercurial King of the Underworld has entered the Crucible - the deadly contest the gods hold to determine a new ruler to sit on the throne of Olympus. But instead of fighting their own battles, the gods name mortals to compete in their stead.
\nSo why in the Underworld did Hades choose me - a sarcastic nobody with a curse on her shoulders - as his champion? And why does my heart trip every time he says I’m his?
\nI don’t know if I’m a pawn, bait, or something else entirely to this dangerously tempting god. How can I, when he has more secrets than stars in the sky?
\nBecause Hades is playing by his own rules . . . and Death will win at any cost.
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Everything about my life is a lie. As a hidden twin princess, born second, I have only one purpose - to sacrifice my life for my sister if death comes for her. I’ve been living under the guise of a poor, obscure girl of no standing, slipping into the palace and into the role of the true princess when danger is present.
\nNow the queen is dead and the ageless King Eidolon has sent my sister a gift - an eerily familiar gift - and a proposal to wed. I don’t trust him, so I do what I was born to do and secretly take her place on the eve of the coronation. Which is why, when a figure made of shadow kidnaps the new queen, he gets me by mistake.
\nAs I try to escape, all the lies start to unravel. And not just my lies. The Shadowraith who took me has secrets of his own. He struggles to contain the shadows he wields - other faces, identities that threaten my very life.
\nWinter is at the walls. Darkness is looming. And the only way to save my sister and our dominion is to kill Eidolon . . . and the Shadowraith who has stolen my heart.
King Eidolon has taken everything.
\nMy throne, my Shadowraith, and even my kingdom. I am a queen with no one to rule, and a tattered army that’s not even mine. And hope is fading fast.
\nNow the shadows who once tormented Reven live within me, hissing and wheedling - and enticing me to betray my friends. Which could be deadly for us all. Because without the wraith I fell for, without Reven, I am all shadows . . . and no light.
\nAnd the Alignment is almost upon us - the culmination of centuries that have fueled a vengeful king’s festering rage.
\nWe’re outnumbered. We’re underpowered. And even if we could unleash the trapped goddesses, they could destroy the kingdom and everything in it.
My twin sister is the true queen of Aryd. She survives, hiding and clinging to life in the desert, while I reign as the false queen alongside the monstrous King Eidolon. There’s only one escape from this gilded prison: Reven. My Shadowraith. My heart. Only the shadows that he struggles to control are growing more sinister, more powerful.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tIt’s just a matter of time before they turn on him . . . and on me.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tEven escape doesn't mean true freedom, though, when we're still on the run from Eidolon’s unstoppable armies. And when we discover there’s a traitor among us, I have no choice . . . I must become the queen I was never meant to be.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBecause as one evil hunts me, the other loves me more than himself.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAnd my fate lies with both.
You’d think I’d have learned by now:
\nDon’t mouth off to deities.
\nDon’t fall for the King of the Underworld.
\nAnd definitely don’t get dragged into a divine death match where I’m the cursed mortal prize.
\nBut here I am - trapped in Tartarus, humanity’s worst pit stop, squaring off against monsters who make the gods look merciful. Titans, twisted by centuries of rage and ruin, are sealed behind seven ancient locks.
\nAnd guess what?
\nI'm the key.
\nTo escape, I’ll have to survive every horrifying trial they throw at me.
\nTo win, I might have to become something the gods never saw coming.
\nOh, and Hades?
\nHe's about to break every rule the gods ever wrote.
\nBecause to save me . . . the god of death will burn the world.
\nBut if I break free? So do the Titans.
\nAnd the world won’t just suffer - it'll beg for the end.
In 1978, two tenements on Livonia Avenue in Brownsville burn to the ground, killing one resident and displacing dozens of others. It remains unclear who set the buildings ablaze, but the survivors are convinced the culprit is Mr. Wong.
\nWho exactly is Mr. Wong, and what allegedly drove him to this extraordinary act of violence, is the question that consumes this novel as it plunges into four generations of Wong family history. First is Koon Lai, an immigrant who runs a Chinese restaurant on Livonia Avenue; second, his son Richard, a man desperate for his own chance at the American Dream; and third, Jason, a poet who seeks his escape in the bohemian counterculture of the 1970s, but finds himself an unwitting participant in Brooklyn’s gentrification. In the 21st century, Jason’s daughter Sadie returns to Brownsville as a journalist, determined to unravel the mystery of what happened decades earlier on the night the buildings blazed.
\nJoining together the present and the past is the community organizer Lina Rodriguez Armstrong, who was also displaced by that fire and who has spent the intervening years fighting for the rights of Brownsville’s residents and organising a Livonia Avenue community land trust.
\nA stunning debut from a new talent, Livonia Chow Mein contemplates how the American pursuit of freedom relies on a collective amnesia and challenges us to consider what it would take for us to truly live in harmony.
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James Abercrombie is a Hollywood actor who’s past his prime. Ten years ago, he was box office. These days he’s more boxed wine and coffee adverts.
\nBut they still love him in Asia. On the set of a whisky commercial, he meets the beautiful Sweety Sahota, India’s queen of Bollywood, beloved by billions. Marrying her might revive his fortunes.
\nThey move to Mumbai and into The Pinnacle. Sweety’s career continues to sky-rocket. James’s not so much. He hates India - it’s hot and dirty and crowded and the food upsets his stomach. Soon the marriage is in trouble. Is she cheating on him? The papers seem to think so. They have a clandestine photo of her with her ex-boyfriend, Bollywood heart-throb Chunky.
\nJames hits the bottle, and after one particularly drunken session, wakes in the apartment to find Sweety dead in their bed, her throat slit. Did he kill her? He’s sure he didn’t, but who the hell’s going to believe him?
\nHe needs to find out who killed his wife and why, and he needs to do it fast; before the crime is pinned on him, because, let’s face it, he’s not going to get a fair trial. If he doesn’t work it out, he's as good as dead.
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Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning - and in Kerala, water is everywhere.
\nThe family is part of a Christian community that traces itself to the time of the apostles, but times are shifting, and the matriarch of this family, known as Big Ammachi - literally “Big Mother” - will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life. All of Verghese’s great gifts are on display in this new work: there are astonishing scenes of medical ingenuity, fantastic moments of humor, a surprising and deeply moving story, and characters imbued with the essence of life.
\nA shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today.
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tYet it will be love, not politics - their passion for the same woman - that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him - nearly destroying him - Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAn unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.
A year after becoming sheriff, Quinn Colson is faced with the release of an infamous murderer from prison. Jamey Dixon comes back to Jericho preaching redemption, and some believe him; but for the victim’s family, the only thought is revenge.
\nAnother group who doesn’t believe him - the men in prison from Dixon’s last job, an armored car robbery. They’re sure he’s gone back to grab the hidden money, so they do the only thing they can: break out and head straight to Jericho themselves.
\nColson and his deputy, Lillie, know they’ve got their work cut out for them. But they don’t count on one more unwelcome visitor: a tornado that causes havoc just as events come to a head. Communications are down, the roads are impassable - and the rule of law is just about to snap.
Addison McKellar isn’t clueless - she knows she and her husband Dean don’t have the perfect marriage - but she’s still shocked when he completely vanishes from her life. At first Addison is annoyed, but as days stretch into a week and she’s repeatedly stonewalled by Dean’s friends and associates, her frustration turns into genuine alarm. When even the police seem dismissive of her concerns, Addison turns to an old friend of her father, legendary Memphis PI Porter Hayes.
\nPorter and Addison begin to dig deeper into Dean’s affairs and quickly discover that he was never the hardworking business owner and family man he pretended to be. As they piece together the connections between a hook-handed mercenary, one of Elvis’s former leading ladies, and a man posing as an FBI agent, it becomes clear that Dean was deeply enmeshed in a high-stakes web of international intrigue, and Porter and Addison aren’t the only ones looking for him.
\nDean angered some very dangerous people before he disappeared - people who have already killed to get what they want - and they won’t hesitate to come after his family to even the score.
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Mississippi sheriff Quinn Colson had to admit he admired the bank robbers. A new bank was hit almost every week, and the robbers rushed in and out with such skill and precision it reminded him of raids he’d led back in Afghanistan and Iraq when he was an army ranger.
\nIn fact, it reminded him so much of the techniques in the Ranger Handbook that he couldn’t help wondering if the outlaws were former Rangers themselves. And that was definitely going to be a problem. If he stood any chance of catching them, he was going to need the help of old allies, new enemies, and a lot of luck.
\nThe enemies he had plenty of. It was the allies and the luck that were going to be in woefully short supply.
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Thirty-six years ago, a nameless black man wandered into Jericho, Mississippi, with nothing but the clothes on his back and a pair of paratrooper boots. Less than two days later, he was accused of rape and murder, hunted down by a self-appointed posse, and lynched.
\nNow evidence has surfaced of his innocence, and county sheriff Quinn Colson sets out not only to identify the stranger’s remains, but to charge those responsible for the lynching. As he starts to uncover old lies and dirty secrets, though, he runs up against fierce opposition from those with the most to lose - and they can play dirty themselves.
\nSoon Colson will find himself accused of terrible crimes, and the worst part is, the accusations just might stick. As the two investigations come to a head, it is anybody’s guess who will prevail - or even come out of it alive.
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The Byrd clan is one of the wildest families in Tibbehah County. The three kids are the ire of school resource and truant officers - they peddle pot and steal car parts, doing what they can to survive with a mother who sometimes disappears for months on end. But when their mother returns with a new husband, a registered sex offender, a homicide soon follows, and the kids hit the highway.
\nU. S. Marshal Lillie Virgil is convinced the Byrd kids are guilty of murder, and sets off on a cross-country hunt to track them down and bring them to justice. Back in Tibbehah, Sheriff Quinn Colson isn't so sure. And as he digs deeper into the case, he comes to think there may be a larger conspiracy at work.
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Quinn Colson didn’t owe his home town of Jericho, Mississippi, a damn thing. After serving for more than a decade as a U.S. Army Ranger, he’d returned, been elected sheriff, and tried to make the town and surrounding Tibbehah county a better place. He was rewarded with being voted out of office, and went back to the war zone he’d left.
\n\n
Now, back in Jericho, trying to fix things with his still-married high school girlfriend and retired Hollywood stuntman father, he’s drawn to becoming a lawman again. This time, he accepts a badge from acting Sheriff Lillie Virgil, a foul-mouthed law woman with shades of Calamity Jane. But what they must confront together is something brand-new.
When a former high school cheerleader is found walking a back road completely engulfed in flames, the entire state focuses on the rural county, wanting answers. The light soon shines on several people: the girl’s father, a worthless drunk named Wash Jones; a pair of teenage thugs with grand ambitions to control north Mississippi; and a red-headed truck stop madam named Fannie Hathcock, who has her own problems - the Syndicate from down on the Gulf Coast has big plans for her neck of the woods.
\n
As Quinn and Lillie uncover old secrets and new lies, the entire town turns against them, and they learn the most dangerous enemies may be the ones you trust most.
Fresh from ten years as a U.S. Army Ranger, Quinn Colson finds his hands full as the newly elected sheriff of Tibbehah County, Mississippi. An old buddy running a local gun shop may be in over his head when stolen army rifles start showing up in the hands of a Mexican drug gang.
\nAt the same time, an abused-child case leads Quinn and his tough-as-nails deputy, Lillie Virgil, deep into the heart of a bootleg baby racket and a trail of darkness and death. And when the two cases collide, Quinn and his allies are forced to realise that, though they may be home from the war, they are now in the fight of their lives.
After years of war, Army Ranger Quinn Colson returns home to the rugged, rough hill country of northeast Mississippi to find his native Tibbehah County overrun with corruption, decay, meth runners, and violence. His uncle, the longtime county sheriff, is dead. A suicide, he’s told, but others - like tomboy deputy Lillie Virgil - whisper murder.
\nIn the days that follow, it’s up to Colson to discover the truth, not only about his uncle, but about his family, his friends, his town, and himself. And once it’s discovered, there’s no going back for this real hero of the Deep South.
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He is only in his early thirties, but now Quinn Colson is jobless - voted out of office as sheriff of Tibbehah County, Mississippi, thanks to the machinations of county kingpin Johnny Stagg. He has offers, in bigger and better places, but before he goes, he’s got one more job to do - bring down Stagg’s criminal operations for good.
\nAt least that’s the plan. But in the middle of the long, hot summer, a trio of criminals stage a bold, wall-smashing break-in at the home of a local lumber mill owner, making off with a million dollars in cash from his safe, which is curious, because the mill owner is wealthy - but not that wealthy.
\nNone of this has anything to do with Colson, but during the investigation, two men are killed, one of them the new sheriff. His friend, acting sheriff Lillie Virgil, and a dangerous former flame, Anna Lee Stevens, both ask him to step in, and reluctantly he does, only to discover that that safe contained more than just money - it held secrets.
\nSecrets that could either save Colson - or destroy him once and for all.
\n
Shot up and left for dead, Sheriff Quinn Colson has revenge on his mind. With the help of his new wife Maggie, rehabilitation, and sheer force of will, he's walking again, eager to resume his work as a southern lawman and track down those responsible for his attempted murder.
\nBut someone is standing in his way: an interim sheriff, appointed by the newly elected Governor Vardaman, the man who Quinn knows ordered his murder. Vardaman sits at the top of the state's power structure - both legal and criminal - and little does he know, Quinn is still alive. And coming for him.
Quinn will enlist the help of his most trusted friends, including federal agent Jon Holliday, U.S. Marshal Lillie Virgil, and Donnie Varner, a childhood buddy now working for the Feds as an informant. Since Quinn's been gone, the criminal element in north Mississippi has flourished, with queenpin Fannie Hathcock enjoying unbridled freedom.
As an ice storm bears down on north Mississippi and Memphis, and Tibbehah County is isolated from the outside world, the killers will return to finish the job.
But this time, Quinn Colson and company will be waiting, ready to bust apart a criminal empire running on a rigged system for far too long. This is the battle of Jericho, the epic showdown that's been years in the making. In the end, the war will end - for better or worse.
Twenty years ago, teenager Brandon Taylor walked into the Big Woods north of Tibbehah County, Mississippi, and never returned. For former Army Ranger-turned-sheriff Quinn Colson, the Taylor case has particular meaning. As a ten-year-old, Colson had been lost in those same woods, and came back from them alive and a local legend.
\nYears later, bones of a child are found in the woods, confirming for many the end to the Taylor story. As the case reopens, some point fingers to Quinn's uncle, the former sheriff, who took his own life in a cloud of corruption and shame. Still, Quinn's wife, Maggie, can't believe it. As a childhood friend of the Taylor boy, she thinks there's a darker conspiracy at work. Letters she receives from a mysterious inmate at a Tennessee state pen may hold the answers.
\nWith a heated election for governor on the horizon and the strengthening of a criminal syndicate's death grip on the state, Quinn's search for answers will upset the corruption that's plagued his home since before he came back from Afghanistan. Greed, false piety, power, bigotry, and dirty deals make for a dangerous mix he knows all too well.
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The Pritchards had never been worth a damn–an evil, greedy family who made their living dealing drugs and committing mayhem. Years ago, Colson’s late uncle had put the clan’s patriarch in prison, but now he’s getting out, with revenge, power, and family business on his mind. To make matters worse, a shady trucking firm with possible ties to the Gulf Coast syndicate has moved into Tibbehah, and they have their own methods of intimidation.
With his longtime deputy Lillie Virgil now working up in Memphis, Quinn Colson finds himself having to fall back on some brand-new deputies to help him out, but with Old West-style violence breaking out, and his own wedding on the horizon, this is without a doubt Colson’s most trying time as sheriff. Cracks are opening up all over the county, and shadowy figures are crawling out through them - and they’re all heading directly for him.
Kelli Reynolds loves creating stories more than anything in the world. But on Callisto, a generative AI company called Inspiration owns everything, including all the media, and only Inspiration determines which stories can be told.
\nKelli has a rare and coveted job in which her autism is to her advantage: She precisely edits AI output into “appropriate” stories for Inspiration’s massive TV audience. Her proudest creation is the pirate Orlando - a dashing do-gooder based on stories she used to tell friends.
\nReenter Kelli’s ex-boyfriend Rowan, the person Kelli based Orlando on. Back when they were teenagers, their relationship was a secret. Kelli had thought that Rowan, a trans man, was her schoolmate Em, a girl.
\nRowan is tangled up in the black market after he needed to get money for gender reassignment surgery. He needs Kelli’s help with something . . . illegal. So, now Kelli has to decide: Will she risk the safe, tidy story of her life now for the world she once wished for? What would Orlando do?
\nPassionate, dangerous, and tender, Ignore All Previous Instructions is a sweeping, poignant novel about censorship, forbidden love, and growing up.
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As princess of the island kingdom Visidia, Amora Montara has spent her entire life training to be High Animancer - the master of souls. The rest of the realm can choose their magic, but for Amora, it’s never been a choice. To secure her place as heir to the throne, she must prove her mastery of the monarchy’s dangerous soul magic.
When her demonstration goes awry, Amora is forced to flee. She strikes a deal with Bastian, a mysterious pirate: he’ll help her prove she’s fit to rule, if she’ll help him reclaim his stolen magic.
But sailing the kingdom holds more wonder - and more peril - than Amora anticipated. A destructive new magic is on the rise, and if Amora is to conquer it, she’ll need to face legendary monsters, cross paths with vengeful mermaids, and deal with a stow-away she never expected . . . or risk the fate of Visidia and lose the crown forever.
Through blood and sacrifice, Amora Montara has conquered a rebellion and taken her rightful place as queen of Visidia. Now, with the islands in turmoil and the people questioning her authority, Amora cannot allow anyone to see her weaknesses.
No one can know about the curse in her bloodline. No one can know that she’s lost her magic. No one can know the truth about the boy who holds the missing half of her soul.
To save herself and Visidia, Amora embarks on a desperate quest for a mythical artifact that could fix everything - but it comes at a terrible cost. As she tries to balance her loyalty to her people, her crew, and the desires of her heart, Amora will soon discover that the power to rule might destroy her.
Orphaned as a child, Signa Farrow has been raised by a string of guardians, each more interested in her wealth than her well-being - and each has met an untimely end. Her only remaining relatives are the elusive Hawthornes, an eccentric family living at Thorn Grove, an estate both glittering and gloomy.
\nWhen a restless spirit appears claiming she was poisoned, Signa realizes the Hawthornes could be in grave danger, and enlists the help of a surly stable boy to hunt down the killer.
\nBut Signa's best chance of uncovering the murderer is an alliance with Death himself. And as the mystery unfurls, Signa realises their growing connection may be more irresistible than she dared imagine . . .
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A duke has been murdered. The lord of Thorn Grove has been framed. And Fate, the elusive brother of Death, has taken up residence in a sumptuous estate nearby. He's hellbent on revenge after Death took the life of the woman he loved many years ago . . . and now he’s determined to have Signa for himself, no matter the cost.
\nSigna and her cousin Blythe are certain that Fate can save Elijah Hawthorne from prison if they will entertain his presence. But the more time the girls spend with Fate, the more frightening their reality becomes as Signa exhibits dramatic new powers that link her to Fate's past.
\nWith mysteries and danger around every corner, the cousins must decide if they can trust one another as they navigate their futures in high society, unravel the murders that haunt their family, and play Fate’s unexpected games - all with their destinies hanging in the balance.
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Blythe Hawthorn has never let anyone tell her what to do . . . and she's not about to start now.
\nHeadstrong and passionate, she won't be ruled by society, or by her overprotective father, and certainly not by the man she's bound herself to, no matter how insufferable he is. She's determined to be a thorn in his side for the rest of her days, even as he ensues that her life in his palace is anything but the decadent fairytale she imagined.
\nBut as Blythe discovers a new side of herself linked to his past, she'll have to decide if she's willing to let an unexpected spark ignite . . . and discover the real truth about who she is inside.
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From linguist Adam Aleksic, known as @etymologynerd on social media, comes a captivating exploration of how internet algorithms are transforming language and communication in unprecedented ways.
\nFrom “brainrot” memes and incel slang to the trend of adding “-core” to different influencer aesthetics, the internet has ushered in an unprecedented linguistic upheaval. We’re entering an entirely new era of etymology, heralded by the invisible forces driving social media algorithms. Thankfully, Algospeak is here to explain. As a professional linguist, Adam Aleksic understands the gravity of language and the way we use it: he knows the ways it has morphed and changed, how it reflects society, and how, in its everyday usage, we carry centuries of human history on our tongues.
\nAs a social media influencer, Aleksic is also intimately familiar with the internet’s reach and how social media impacts the way we engage with one another. New slang emerges and goes viral overnight. Accents are shaped or erased on YouTube. Grammatical rules, loopholes, and patterns surface and transform language as we know it. Our interactions, social norms, and habits - both online and in person - shift into something completely different.
\nAs Aleksic uses original surveys, data, and internet archival research to usher us through this new linguistic landscape, he also illuminates how communication is changing in both familiar and unexpected ways. From our use of emojis to sentence structure to the ways younger generations talk about sex and death (see unalive in English and desvivirse in Spanish), we are in a brand-new world, one shaped by algorithms and technology. Algospeak is an energetic, astonishing journey into language, the internet, and what this intersection means for all of us.
How Silicon Valley’s heartless, baseless, and foolish obsessions - with escaping death, emergent AI tyrants, and limitless growth - pervert public discourse and distract us from real social problems
\nTech billionaires have decided that they should determine our futures for us. According to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and more, the only good future for humanity is one powered by trillions of humans living in space, functionally immortal, served by superintelligent AIs.
\nIn More Everything Forever, science writer Adam Becker investigates these wildly implausible and often profoundly immoral visions of tomorrow - and shows why, in reality, there is no good evidence that they will, or should, come to pass. Nevertheless, these obsessions fuel fears that overwhelm reason - for example, that a rogue AI will exterminate humanity - at the expense of essential work on solving crucial problems like climate change. What’s more, these futuristic visions cloak a hunger for power under dreams of space colonies and digital immortality. The giants of Silicon Valley claim that their ideas are based on science, but the reality is they come from a jumbled mix of shallow futurism and racist pseudoscience.
\nMore Everything Forever exposes the powerful and sinister ideas that dominate Silicon Valley, challenging us to see how foolish, and dangerous, these visions of the future are.
Mission Lead Olivia O’Connor and her team from the Artemis Corporation, along with their military liaison, are in the final preparations for a undertaking that will alter the course of human the first faster than light test flight that finally opening up the expanse of the universe.
\nBut their journey between dimensions is one they never trained for. Strange voices in the corridors. Long lost faces not forgotten. Strange symbols carved into the hull. And gathering outside the ship, ancient forces beyond reckoning.
\nThe crew will need all their skills to survive and uncover the twisted truth behind their mission.
\nCommencing countdown . . .
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Vienna, 1919. A once-mighty empire has finally come crashing down - and a mysterious young woman, unable to speak, has turned up on the streets. A doctor appeals to the public for information about her past and receives a single response, from a sanatorium patient who claims to be her father. The man reveals only her name: Gretel. But he encloses a bedtime story he asks the doctor to read aloud to her, about an Architect whose radically modern creation has caused a great scandal.
\nThe next day a second story arrives, about a Ballet Master who develops a new position of the feet. Twenty-four more stories follow in alphabetical order, about an Immunologist and a Jeweler, a Revolutionary and a Satirist, a Waif and an X-ray Technician and a Zionist. Crossing paths and purposes, their stories interweave until a single picture emerges, that of a decadent, death-obsessed, oversexed empire buzzing with the ideas of Freud and Karl Kraus.
\nThere are artists who ape the innocence of children, and scientists who insist that children are anything but innocent . . . And then there’s Gretel’s own mother, who will do whatever it takes to sing onstage at the City Theater. Is it any wonder that this world - soon to vanish anyway in a war to end all wars - was one from which Gretel’s father wished to shelter her?
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At forty, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of his clients only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups with a man who wants more than Peter can give. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter's numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him.
\nAnn, his mother, who runs a women's retreat center she founded after leaving his father, is wounded by the estrangement from Peter but cherishes the world she has built. She long ago banished from her mind the decision that divided her from her son. But as Peter’s case plunges him further into the memory of his first love and the night of violence that changed his life forever, he and his mother must confront the secret that tore them apart.
\nWith unsurpassed emotional depth, Mothers and Sons reveals all that is lost by looking away from the past and what might be restored by facing it.
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Former track star Sean Kenney used to be on top of the world, but that was a very long time ago. Now he’s been estranged from his loved ones for the past two years - until the unthinkable calls him home.
\nWhile struggling to make sense of the devastating death that has shaken the Kenney family to its core, Sean grasps at the opportunity to seek forgiveness for his past mistakes - from his family and himself - while clinging to the belief that if he can discover what really happened that day, he might somehow be redeemed.
\nThe Brothers Kenney searches for forgiveness and the meaning of home as assiduously as it does the identity of a killer.
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Will Matthews came to Wall Street with hopes and dreams of hitting it big. But things have not been going as expected. He’s on the verge of being fired when he meets the devilishly mysterious and fabulously wealthy Sam Abaddon.
Winning Sam’s business answers Will’s prayers, catapulting the young stockbroker into the privileged world of money and luxury. Not only that, but Will also has met his dream girl, ambitious attorney Gwen Lipton.
All at once, it seems as if Will’s life couldn’t get any better.
And it doesn’t.
When Will witnesses a shocking act of violence, his charmed new existence is revealed to be a waking nightmare as the truth about his benefactor - and his own complicity in criminal conduct - becomes devastatingly clear. As the noose draws tighter, Will faces an impossible choice: feast upon the poisonous fruit of his bloody business or defy his patron and face dire consequences.
Then again, maybe there’s a third option . . .
James and Jessica Sommers are celebrating their first blissful year together, an unexpected second chance at true love. Unfortunately, their newfound shot at happiness is not without collateral damage.
\nThere’s Jessica’s ex-husband. He pretends for all the world that he’s resilient and strong. If only for the sake of their teenage son, profoundly vulnerable in his own way. James’s ex has taken a different road. Bitter, vengeful, and threatening, she wants only the worst for the happy couple. And then there’s the couple themselves: Are they truly as in love as they seem?
\nWhen James enters into an extraordinarily profitable, if shady, transaction with a beautiful art dealer, Jessica and James’s seemingly perfect marriage takes a dark and tragic turn.
\nAmid suspicions, tested loyalties, revenge, and guilt, no one escapes unscathed from sins committed in the name of love.
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Ben has spent his first year of college working on his fantasy manuscript with his writing partner Mario, who is a great Spanish tutor, and an even better kisser. So why can’t he stop thinking about the fact that Arthur’s back in town two years after they called it quits?
\nArthur is in New York for a dream internship on Broadway, with a boyfriend back at home that he couldn't be happier with. But when he comes upon Ben cuddled up with a mystery boy, he starts to wonder if his feelings for Ben ever truly went away.
\nEven as the boys try to focus on their futures, they can't seem to help running into each other in the present. Is the universe forcing them to question if they’re actually meant to be?
\nPossibly not. After all, things didn’t work the first time around.
\nPossibly yes. After all, the sparks are still flying.
\nSometimes you just have to take a leap of faith and raise a glass.
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Arthur is only in New York for the summer, but if Broadway has taught him anything, it’s that the universe can deliver a showstopping romance when you least expect it.
Ben thinks the universe needs to mind its business. If the universe had his back, he wouldn’t be on his way to the post office carrying a box of his ex-boyfriend’s things.
But when Arthur and Ben meet-cute at the post office, what exactly does the universe have in store for them?
Maybe nothing. After all, they get separated.
Maybe everything. After all, they get reunited.
But what if they can’t quite nail a first date . . . or a second first date . . . or a third?
What if Arthur tries too hard to make it work . . . and Ben doesn’t try hard enough?
What if life really isn’t like a Broadway play?
But what if it is?
In this prequel to They Both Die at the End, two new strangers spend a life-changing day together after Death-Cast first makes their fateful calls.
\nIt’s the night before Death-Cast goes live, and there’s one question on everyone’s mind: Can Death-Cast actually predict when someone will die, or is it just an elaborate hoax?
\nOrion Pagan has waited years for someone to tell him that he’s going to die. He has a serious heart condition, and he signed up for Death-Cast so he could know what’s coming.
\nValentino Prince is restarting his life in New York. He has a long and promising future ahead and he only registered for Death-Cast after his twin sister nearly died in a car accident.
\nOrion and Valentino cross paths in Times Square and immediately feel a deep connection. But when the first round of End Day calls goes out, their lives are changed forever - one of them receives a call, and the other doesn’t. Though neither boy is certain how the day will end, they know they want to spend it together . . . even if that means their goodbye will be heartbreaking.
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When Griffin's first love and ex-boyfriend, Theo, dies in a drowning accident, his universe implodes. Even though Theo had moved to California for college and started seeing Jackson, Griffin never doubted Theo would come back to him when the time was right. But now, the future he's been imagining for himself has gone far off course.
To make things worse, the only person who truly understands his heartache is Jackson. But no matter how much they open up to each other, Griffin's downward spiral continues. He's losing himself in his obsessive compulsions and destructive choices, and the secrets he's been keeping are tearing him apart.
If Griffin is ever to rebuild his future, he must first confront his history, every last heartbreaking piece in the puzzle of his life.
After the ultimate betrayal, Emil must rise up as a leader to stop his brother before he becomes too powerful. Even if that means pushing away Ness and Wyatt as they compete for his heart so he can focus on the war.
\nBrighton has a legion of followers at his command, but when he learns about an ancient scythe that can kill the unkillable, that’s all he will need to become unstoppable against Emil and other rising threats.
\nMeanwhile, Maribelle aligns with her greatest enemy to resurrect her lost love, and Ness infiltrates political circles to stop Iron from ruling the country, but both missions lead to tragedies that will change everyone’s lives forever.
\nAs the Infinity Son and the Infinity Reaper go to war, who will be crowned the Infinity King?
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Emil and Brighton Rey defied the odds. They beat the Blood Casters and escaped with their lives - or so they thought. When Brighton drank the Reaper’s Blood, he believed it would make him invincible, but instead the potion is killing him. In Emil’s race to find an antidote that will not only save his brother but also rid him of his own unwanted phoenix powers, he will have to dig deep into the very past lives he’s trying to outrun. Though he needs the help of the Spell Walkers now more than ever, their ranks are fracturing, with Maribelle’s thirst for revenge sending her down a dangerous path.
\nMeanwhile, Ness is being abused by Senator Iron for political gain, his rare shifting ability making him a dangerous weapon. As much as Ness longs to send Emil a signal, he knows the best way to keep Emil safe from his corrupt father is to keep him at a distance. The battle for peace is playing out like an intricate game of chess, and as the pieces on the board move into place, Emil starts to realise that he may have been competing against the wrong enemy all along.
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Growing up in New York, brothers Emil and Brighton always idolized the Spell Walkers - a vigilante group sworn to rid the world of specters. While the Spell Walkers and other celestials are born with powers, specters take them, violently stealing the essence of endangered magical creatures. Brighton wishes he had a power so he could join the fray. Emil just wants the fighting to stop. The cycle of violence has taken a toll, making it harder for anyone with a power to live peacefully and openly.
\nIn this climate of fear, a gang of specters has been growing bolder by the day. Then, in a brawl after a protest, Emil manifests a power of his own - one that puts him right at the heart of the conflict and sets him up to be the heroic Spell Walker Brighton always wanted to be. Brotherhood, love, and loyalty will be put to the test, and no one will escape the fight unscathed.
In the months after his father's suicide, it's been tough for sixteen-year-old Aaron Soto to find happiness again - but he's still gunning for it. With the support of his girlfriend Genevieve and his overworked mom, he's slowly remembering what that might feel like. But grief and the smile-shaped scar on his wrist prevent him from forgetting completely.
When Genevieve leaves for a couple of weeks, Aaron spends all his time hanging out with this new guy, Thomas. Aaron's crew notices, and they're not exactly thrilled. But Aaron can't deny the happiness Thomas brings or how Thomas makes him feel safe from himself, despite the tensions their friendship is stirring with his girlfriend and friends.
Since Aaron can't stay away from Thomas or turn off his newfound feelings for him, he considers turning to the Leteo Institute's revolutionary memory-alteration procedure to straighten himself out, even if it means forgetting who he truly is.
Why does happiness have to be so hard?
Paz Dario stays up every night, waiting for the Death-Cast call that would mean he doesn’t have to keep faking his way through this lonely life. After a devastating day, Paz decides he’s done waiting around for Death-Cast. If they say he’s not dying, he’ll just have to prove them wrong. But right before Paz can die, a boy saves his life.
\nAlano Rosa is heir to the Death-Cast empire that encourages everyone to live their best lives, but he doesn’t feel in control of his own existence thanks to his father. And with a violent organisation called the Death Guard threatening Alano, his End Day might be closer than he thinks. It’s time to live.
\nFate brings Paz and Alano together, but it’s now up to the boys to survive the tragic trials ahead so no one dies at the end.
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On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: They're going to die today. Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they're both looking to make a new friend on their End Day.
\nThe good news: There's an app for that. It's called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure and to live a lifetime in a single day.
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Reverend Sabre Winfrey, shepherd of the Seven Seals Baptist Church, believes in God, his own privilege, and enterprise. Besides the barbershop and radio station he owns, he has an iron hand on every aspect of Dominion, Mississippi, society. He and his wife, Priscilla, have five boys; the youngest, Emanuel, is called Wonderboy - no one sings prettier, runs as fast, or turns as many heads.
\nAfter a surprising encounter with a stranger, Wonderboy finds himself confronted by questions he’d never imagined, and his response will send shock waves through the entire community. Told from the point of view of the women who love these two men, Dominion illustrates how we enable the everyday violence and casual sins of the patriarchy.
One year ago, Rowenna Harrack, the crown princess of Tashir, left her homeland in a wedding dress of chains - sent away to the enemy nation of Vanzador as a captive bride.
\nNow, Rowenna is dead. Brought home in a coffin after an alleged fall from a cliff.
\nSecond-born princess, Indira, knows her sister's death was no accident. Desperate for truth and vengeance, Indira agrees to wed the prince so she can infiltrate Vanzador, find Rowenna's murderer, and burn their kingdom to the ground.
\nIndira's plan is simple, she will make nice until she can find out how to avenge her sister and free her country from the rival nation's stranglehold. But when Indira arrives, nothing is as terrible as Rowenna described. As Indira grows closer to her new husband, Prince Alaric, and uncovers more about Vanzador, the source of its powers, and what happened during Rowenna's final days, she's no longer sure what - and who - to believe. Because everyone, even her sister, has secrets. Deadly ones.
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Before the massacre at Nariin, Enebish was one of the greatest warriors in the Sky King’s Imperial Army: a rare and dangerous Night Spinner, blessed with the ability to control the threads of darkness. Now, she is known as Enebish the Destroyer - a monster and murderer, banished to a monastery for losing control of her power and annihilating a merchant caravan.
\nGuilt stricken and scarred, Enebish tries to be grateful for her sanctuary, until her adoptive sister, Imperial Army commander Ghoa, returns from the war front with a tantalising offer. If Enebish can capture the notorious criminal, Temujin, whose band of rebels has been seizing army supply wagons, not only will her crimes be pardoned, she will be reinstated as a warrior.
\nEnebish eagerly accepts. But as she hunts Temujin across the tundra, she discovers the tides of war have shifted, and the supplies he’s stealing are the only thing keeping thousands of shepherds from starving. Torn between duty and conscience, Enebish must decide whether to put her trust in the charismatic rebel or her beloved sister. No matter who she chooses, an even greater enemy is advancing, ready to bring the empire to its knees.
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Enebish has been deceived by everyone she once considered a friend. On the run across the tundra, her only allies are her best friend Serik and a band of ill-tempered shepherds. Her only hope of bringing peace to Ashkar is to unite the people of the Protected Territories and make a stand against the tyrannical Sky King and the hostile nation of Zemya. But that’s easier said than done. As supplies dwindle, the shepherds become far more desperate for food than freedom.
\nMeanwhile, Zemyan forces have stormed the Ashkarian capital. Imperial Army Commander Ghoa throws all of her power into a last-ditch effort to save her king, only to be abandoned by her fellow warriors. Held captive in a prison forged of magic and tortured by the zealous sorcerer Kartok, Ghoa learns his true ambitions lie far beyond the warring countries - he wants vengeance on the gods themselves.
\nThe war between Ashkar and Zemya began centuries ago as a feud amongst the gods. Now it’s up to the two most hated people on the continent - the monstrous outcast, Enebish, and the notorious war criminal, Ghoa - to heal that spiritual divide before Kartok brings the skies crashing down on all of them.
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When FBI Agent Fallon Baxter returns to her hometown of Pine Ridge Falls to join the local field office, she expects a fresh start and a chance to mend her broken past. Instead, she’s thrust into the heart of darkness when a string of brutal murders shakes the quiet community.
\nThe victims, found brutally murdered and linked only by their ties to the secretive Paradise Cult, draw Fallon into an investigation that spirals into the depths of danger and deceit. Led by the charismatic and ruthless Supreme Leader, the cult preaches a doctrine of salvation through sacrifice and hiding evil motives beneath a veneer of spiritual enlightenment.
\nAs Fallon digs deeper, she unearths chilling connections between the cult and her own troubled history. With the disappearance of her sister complicating matters, Fallon navigates a complex web of loyalty and betrayal. As the body count rises, and the cult’s deadly agenda becomes clear, Fallon faces a race against time to unravel the mystery. Every clue drags her closer to a shocking revelation that will challenge everything she knows about evil, heroism, and the thin line in between.
\nKiller Cult is a gripping thriller that explores the shadows of obsession and the cost of redemption. Fallon Baxter’s journey is a perilous trek through danger and despair, where only the strongest will survive and the past is never truly buried.
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FBI Special Agents Fallon Baxter and Jack Stone are back, facing their most chilling case yet. A ruthless serial killer is targeting women in Denver, from glamorous socialites and college sorority girls to vulnerable prostitutes. The killer is ruthless, leaving a trail of terror in their wake.
\nWhen the bodies of two young women are discovered in a ritzy hotel room, Fallon and Jack are plunged into a network of corruption and deadly secrets. The investigation takes them from the luxurious ballrooms of the city’s elite to the dark alleyways where desperation and danger intersect.
\nAs the body count rises, Fallon and Jack find themselves racing against time to stop the killer before they claim another victim. The stakes become personal when Fallon discovers a chilling connection to her own past, leading her down a path she never expected. And in a shocking twist, Jack’s past comes back to haunt him and brings all of his demons along for the ride.
\nKiller Knows Best is a heart-pounding thriller that explores the dark corners of society, where ambition, lust, and power collide with lethal consequences.
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FBI Agent Fallon Baxter is thrust into a deadly game when a high school reunion becomes the backdrop for a chilling series of murders. This time the connection is personal - Jack, her stalwart partner, finds his old schoolmates are the targets and potentially the culprits.
\nJust days before the reunion the first victim is brutally murdered in her own home and another peer vanishes, leaving behind a blood-soaked message that dredges up a buried past. The body count is rising and with each one the killer grows bolder as the clues intertwine with Jack’s history. Time is against them as the body count climbs and each hour brings them closer to the next gruesome discovery. The killer uses the reunion to settle old scores, turning former friends into suspects and victims.
\nFallon is plunged into a relentless hunt where the next name on the killer’s list could be any one of Jack’s classmates - including Jack himself. With the reunion spiraling into chaos, Fallon must confront the darkness of the past to stop the killer from turning this reunion into a bloodbath.
\nCan she piece together the final clues before the killer’s twisted justice claims another life? Every memory from the past has its echo, and every echo has a rather deadly secret.
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A tranquil cabin by the lake, a gruesome murder spree.
\nIn the serene setting of Sugar Pine Lake, a writer’s retreat turns deadly when two bodies are discovered, one writer is left injured, and another is missing.
\nClean language and heart-stopping twists that keep you glued to the edge of your seat until the very last page.
\nIn the quiet of the woods, death waits patiently.
\nFBI agents Fallon Baxter and Jack Stone are called to untangle a web of jealousy, betrayal, and dark secrets. As they navigate a list of suspects they must uncover the truth before the killer strikes again.
\nIn a place where every page hides a secret, can they stop a story written in blood before it reaches its final, deadly chapter?
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Allison and James Price move to the blue forests of Concordia Idaho in hopes to leave behind the chaos of Los Angeles and the painful memories of his indiscretions. Once settled in the picturesque town, where time seems to have stalled and life moves at a slower pace, their six-year-old daughter, Reagan, befriends a mysterious young girl who seems too idyllic to be true with her pressed pinafores, her perfectly curled pigtails.
\nOne late autumn evening both girls vanish into thin air.
\nThe little girl said she lived at the end of the street but the only thing Allison and James find their is the gaping mouth of the forest.
\nTheir little girl, the mysterious playmate - they’re both gone.
\nEveryone is looking for Reagan. Nobody has come forward to claim the mysterious little girl.
\nBoth Allison and James look guilty as hell. Maybe they are.
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In this companion to the award-winning Darius the Great Is Not Okay, Darius suddenly has it all: a boyfriend, an internship, a spot on the soccer team. It’s everything he’s ever wanted - but what if he deserves better?
Darius Kellner is having a bit of a year. Since his trip to Iran this past spring, a lot has changed. He’s getting along with his dad, and his best friend Sohrab is only a Skype call away. Between his first boyfriend, Landon, his varsity soccer practices, and his internship at his favorite tea shop, Darius is feeling pretty okay. Like he finally knows what it means to be Darius Kellner.
Then, of course, everything changes. Darius’s grandmothers are in town for a long visit while his dad is gone on business, and Darius isn’t sure whether they even like him. The internship isn’t what Darius thought it would be, and now he doesn’t know about turning tea into his career. He was sure he liked Landon, but when he starts hanging out with Chip - soccer teammate and best friend of Trent Bolger, epic bully - well, he’s just not so sure about Landon anymore, either.
Darius thought he knew exactly who he was and what he wanted, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe he deserves better.
Darius doesn't think he'll ever be enough, in America or in Iran.
\nDarius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He's about to take his first-ever trip to Iran, and it's pretty overwhelming - especially when he's also dealing with clinical depression, a disapproving dad, and a chronically anemic social life. In Iran, he gets to know his ailing but still formidable grandfather, his loving grandmother, and the rest of his mom's family for the first time. And he meets Sohrab, the boy next door who changes everything.
Sohrab makes sure people speak English so Darius can understand what's going on. He gets Darius an Iranian National Football Team jersey that makes him feel like a True Persian for the first time. And he understand that sometimes, best friends don't have to talk. Darius has never had a true friend before, but now he's spending his days with Sohrab playing soccer, eating rosewater ice cream, and sitting together for hours in their special place, a rooftop overlooking the Yazdi skyline.
Sohrab calls him Darioush - the original Persian version of his name - and Darius has never felt more like himself than he does now that he's Darioush to Sohrab. When it's time to go home to America, he'll have to find a way to be Darioush on his own.
Hunter never expected to be a boy band star, but, well, here he is. He and his band Kiss & Tell are on their first major tour of North America, playing arenas all over the United States and Canada (and getting covered by the gossipy press all over North America as well). Hunter is the only gay member of the band, and he just had a very painful breakup with his first boyfriend - leaked sexts, public heartbreak, and all - and now everyone expects him to play the perfect queer role model for teens.
\nBut Hunter isn't really sure what being the perfect queer kid even means. Does it mean dressing up in whatever The Label tells him to wear for photo shoots and pretending never to have sex? (Unfortunately, yes.) Does it mean finding community among the queer kids at the meet-and-greets after K&T's shows? (Fortunately, yes.) Does it include a new relationship with Kaivan, the drummer for the band opening for K&T on tour? (He hopes so.)
\nBut when The Label finds out about Hunter and Kaivan, it spells trouble - for their relationship, for the perfect gay boy Hunter plays for the cameras, and, most importantly, for Hunter himself.
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Two teen boys grapple with identity and accountability and set off a ripple effect within their community after a school assembly is disrupted by a shouted slur.
\nFreshmen Dayton and Farshid couldn’t be more different - or so it seems.
\nWhen Dayton takes a dare and shouts the f-slur at a visiting author during a school event, it sets off a chain reaction that forces both boys to face parts of themselves they’d rather ignore.
\nDayton, grappling with the fallout of his actions, faces rejection from his friends, disappointment from his parents, and a growing awareness of the harm he’s caused. Meanwhile, Farshid is left to untangle his own feelings - about himself and about the quiet struggle of coming to terms with his queerness in a world steeped in heteronormativity.
\nAs their lives unexpectedly intersect, Dayton and Farshid must reckon with what kind of men they want to become and whether they have the courage to defy toxic masculinity and societal expectations.
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Penelope Ross has always felt like a passenger in her mother's fairytale - until the night of her 17th birthday, when she is forced to enter her own.
After a text from her estranged mother rips her away from a night with friends, Penny is forced into a kaleidoscope of memories locked inside the dark labyrinth of her childhood home. As Penny wanders between present and past - prose and verse - she must confront her mother's opioid addiction to mend her fractured past.
But the house is tricky. The house is impossible. It wants her to dig up the dead to escape. And as Penny walks through herself to find herself, she is not sure she has the courage to free the light she trapped inside.
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When Adam Lawson’s wrecked car is found a kilometre from Daisy Baker’s body, the whole town assumes it’s an open and shut case. But Jesse Redpath isn’t from Canticle Creek. Where she comes from, the truth often hides in plain sight, but only if you know where to look.
\nWhen Jesse starts to ask awkward questions, she uncovers a town full of contradictions and a cast of characters with dark pasts, secrets to hide and even more to lose.
\nAs the temperature soars, and the ground bakes, the wilderness surrounding Canticle Creek becomes a powderkeg waiting to explode.
\nAll it needs is one spark.
A murder made to look like an accident. A disgraced cop trying to forget his past.
\nNash Baker was once a celebrated cop, but his career was ended when he chose to take justice into his own hands. Now he’s living a quiet life in a small town caring for the local wildlife and trying to stay away from trouble.
\nJesse Redpath has a new job in a new town, Satellit - the stormy weather that greets her first few days on the new beat seems like a sign for what’s to come. A local has died in what seems like an accident, but Jesse isn’t so sure that ‘accident’ wasn’t planned.
\nAll evidence seems to point to Nash, but Jessie’s not sure about that either. Seems like Nash has enemies. And what looks like a close knit community might just be cover for dark secrets.
\nNo amount of rain will wash this town clean.
After a painful divorce, Mathilda “Mat” Kincaide has one clear vision. Ascend the throne of her family’s cherished chain of bookstores. Yet a mysterious troublemaker lurks in the heart of her store, intent on derailing Mat’s every ambition. She can’t be distracted, even if the new hire with her sizzling librarian appearance and saucy glances tempts Mat to bend her no relationship rule.
\nCamdyn Stone is a gifted writer. Or at least she was. With a looming deadline, Camdyn must complete a manuscript before Christmas or face financial ruin. Working at Kincaide Books is a refuge for this self-doubting one-hit-wonder. If only Camdyn could find inspiration for her next book in someone other than her sexy new boss.
\nIn a whimsical bookstore, with eccentric patrons and a snarky cat, Mat and Camdyn must work together to save the Kincaide legacy.
\nBut will they find love along the way?
Angelica Shields wasn’t made for reality television. But she does know how to manage hotels and bring them from rags to riches. Which is the only reason she agreed to not only produce but star in this new show. It’s a risk, but it’s one that she’s already sacrificed for, so she will make sure Hotel Bombshell succeeds. And she absolutely will not fall in love with her straight, married co-star.
\nAs a last minute addition to Hotel Bombshell, celebrity chef Hope Lawrence already feels like she only got the job because of her husband. Pairing her up with the ever-in-control and demanding Angelica Shields as a co-host is anything but a match made in heaven. Hope just wants Angelica to like her, or maybe just tolerate her.
\nAs filming begins and the restaurants Hope’s in charge of fixing become more chaotic by the episode, her life is thrown into a chaos of its own. Because she’s attracted to a woman - to Angelica - the iciest woman of them all. And watching her melt layer by layer is the exact pick-me-up that Hope needs.
\nBut the question remains, will their new reality show be a hit or flop?
\nOr will their lives fall apart just as their show takes off?
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When Laura Finch’s business partner hires Skylar to bring their company to the next generation, Laura sees red. An obnoxious millennial isn’t someone she wants to work with - they’re known for failing their side hustles. Since Laura gave up everything for Solace Inc to succeed, including her dreams of marriage and family, she’s not willing to risk it on just anyone.
\nSkylar Ross vies to succeed in her first big contract and won’t let Laura’s sour personality get in her way. Each day she finds something else intriguing about Laura and all the fronts she puts up. With a dash of humor and hope, Skylar bets on her sunny disposition winning Laura over. What she doesn’t expect is her growing crush on a straight woman to go anywhere.
\nDreams are meant to be scary. What will they risk to make theirs come true?
Abagail Kerrbox is a professional to the core. Single for life, she often finds short-term flings are what fits best for her. No emotions involved. But when her nephew breaks up with his fiancée, she has to be the go-between to fetch the family diamond back. One indecent proposal of revenge on her nephew for the breakup might be a new beginning Abagail never saw coming.
\nNicola Bolsinger is a mess. She knows it, but the world doesn’t. Hiding her family drama and taking care of everyone is the burden she carries every day. Struggling to pay for her sister’s medical care and no longer with her sugar-jerk of a fiancé, she’s desperate enough to agree to be his aunt’s fling-for-hire for a bit of quick cash.
\nThe problem?
\nAbagail isn’t as cold as Nicola once thought. And underneath the frigid exterior is a woman deeply in tune with her spicy side and someone who understands the burden of family the world places on a young, orphaned woman.
\nIs Nicola the one person who can unravel the closed off Aunt Abagail? And is Abagail the only one who can provide support and understanding for the hot mess express that is Nicola?
\nWill they find a life together that will satisfy them both?
Saylor McGinnis is newly engaged to the man of her dreams, and she’s moved halfway across the country to be with him. But the dream turns sour and her anxiety takes over when she no longer belongs. Desperate to find her footing, Saylor joins a local dance studio in an attempt to make friends. She never expects that one dance, or more specifically, her new dance instructor, will change her life in such drastic ways.
\nTia Schroeder is family to everyone, but she’s never believed she could fall in love. For decades, raising her two nieces was her entire life, and she only ever had time for a surface level fling. Never one to ignore the value of experience, Tia understands she’s not the ideal woman for most people. When her newest student at the studio shows promise, Tia must decide if waiting for love is worth the risk.
\nWill Saylor and Tia save the last dance? Or will they continue to navigate the complicated steps of love and lust?
The last thing on Esther Dunja’s mind is falling in love. Her goal is to keep her head down and slide through the next twelve years until her son graduates. After being run out of the last school she taught at by her ex, Esther needs to make this new teaching job work. It’s her last chance to retain custody. The problem is she never anticipated falling for her son’s kindergarten teacher.
\nMelanie Przybyla is a single mom to four grown kids, and she finally has time for herself - or so she thought. With family drama on the rise and a new teacher in her school that she can’t stop thinking about, Melanie comes to a startling realisation. She’s attracted to women. She just has to figure out why Esther Dunja is so terrified and how she can date her student’s mom.
\nWhen conflicts of interest abound, Melanie and Esther have to navigate what they’re willing to risk to let their love blossom.
Isla Walsh is a prankster, and her favorite person to pull one over on has to be her principal, Andry Murphey. But Isla isn’t all fun and games, and her sixth grade students will attest to that. Behind every prank Isla plays hides a secret she hasn’t shared since she moved to Cheyenne. She’s not the happy person she seems to be. In fact, she’s pretty certain everyone will leave her.
\nAndry Murphey moved to Cheyenne because of a woman, and two years after her marriage ended, she hasn’t found who she is other than a principal. For two years all she could handle was the basics of life, until her favorite teacher ups the ante on the pranks. In each trick, she finds joy again, and Andry wonders what it would be like if she could fall in love again.
Greer Lockheart is a nanny to her core. When she takes on a new job of working for three families at once, she’s not sure she can see her way through the chaos. As the days tick by and she falls more in love with each kid in her care, she can’t help but also fall more in lust with their mothers. But these women are complicated. And Greer keeps running face first into their pasts, especially Ivy’s ex. Who seems bent on taking the family down, beginning with the weakest link, Greer.
\nNathalie Coeur, Lachlan Norris, and Ivy Villegas have been friends for a long time. Working together is second nature to them, but that doesn’t mean their life is without problems. With Ivy’s soon-to-be ex-wife making threats and breathing down their necks, they close ranks to fight for justice, just hoping they’ll come out unscathed on the other side.
\nThey protect their kids first and each other second. But what happens when their rank breaks because they can’t keep their hands off the nanny?
\nWill their family falter?
\nOr will they have one, or two, more to add to their numbers?
\nPaving the way in a polyamorous relationship isn’t easy, but with these four, they might have found the key to lasting love and support.
\n
Elia Sharpe has closed herself off from love and friendship after a devastating accusation of impropriety. But after eighteen years, she wants to do things differently. When her former student is hired as the temporary Head of School instead of her, she knows that it’ll be a disaster. Elia is determined to keep her name free of another scandal and prove she was right for the job all along.
\nWhen a position opens at Kamryn’s old school, it’s her golden opportunity to escape from her recent breakup. But when her ex-girlfriend shows up at a fall festival, Kamryn takes desperate measures to hide just how unhappy she really is. And she kisses Elia Sharpe - her former English teacher and current bane of her existence. In a desperate attempt to protect herself, Kamryn begs Elia to fake-date for her best friend’s wedding.
\nAll is well . . . Until the past threatens their future. And Elia has one choice. Trust Kamryn to do her job and do it well. Will they work together to expose the true perpetrator? Or will the past cause irreconcilable differences?
\n
Monti Schroeder is on a quest for peace. She has been since the moment she was born, but peace has remained elusive. Living as a nomad, she takes work where she can get it. When her sister calls with a favor for her neurotic boss, Monti agrees for a few extra bucks. What Monti finds when she arrives is a woman just as broken as she is. And no matter what, she can’t leave Athena to flounder on her own.
\nAthena Pruitt has made it through the last twenty-two years with one rule. Avoid everything uncomfortable. Her house has become her prison, and she is desperate for respite. Unable to handle physical touch, she’s wary when her personal assistant hires a “special” masseuse who can help. But Monti isn’t a typical massage therapist.
\nEach day, each massage, each moment Monti and Athena spend together they unravel just a little more. With wells of trauma and pain filling both to the brim, just what will happen when their vessels break?
\nWill Monti find peace? Will Athena learn to live without shame? Will they both mend their brokenness beyond repair?
A company buy-out. An arch nemesis returns. A crush that never went away.
\nWil thought she had the world ahead of her - eight years of experience in her job, her temper under control and working for her, and a manager who understood her. All Wil’s fears tumble out when her best friend’s stepmom becomes her new manager. No longer able to hide who she is, Wil fights to control her temper and crush on the one person she’s never been able to hold back on.
\nLynda has worked hard to get where she is, but when she takes over a new financial company, she knows she has to lay low and rebuild her reputation. When the opportunity arises to work with her estranged stepdaughter’s best friend, she leaps at the chance to reconnect. But she never thought the past would haunt her and the memories of her husband’s death would resurface.
\nThey never wanted to see each other again. Will they be able to overcome their mutual past and find love in the person they least expected? What will happen when fire meets ice?
On the distant world of Kiln lie the ruins of an alien civilisation. It’s the greatest discovery in humanity’s spacefaring history - yet who were its builders and where did they go?
\nProfessor Arton Daghdev had always wanted to study alien life up close. Then his wishes become a reality in the worst way. His political activism sees him exiled from Earth to Kiln’s extrasolar labour camp. There, he’s condemned to work under an alien sky until he dies.
\nKiln boasts a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem like nothing seen on Earth. The monstrous alien life interacts in surprising, sometimes shocking ways with the human body, so Arton will risk death on a daily basis. However, the camp’s oppressive regime might just kill him first. If Arton can somehow escape both fates, the world of Kiln holds a wondrous, terrible secret. It will redefine life and intelligence as he knows it, and might just set him free . . .
Harry Bodie’s been called into the delightful fantasy world of his grandmother’s beloved children’s books. It’s not delightful here at all.
\nAll roads lead to Underhill, where it’s always winter, and never nice.
\nHarry Bodie has a famous grandmother, who wrote beloved children’s books set in the delightful world of Underhill. Harry himself is a failing kids’ TV presenter whose every attempt to advance his career ends in self-sabotage. His family history seems to be nothing but an impediment.
\nAn impediment . . . or worse. What if Underhill is real? What if it has been waiting decades for a promised child to visit? What if it isn’t delightful at all? And what if its denizens have run out of patience and are taking matters into their own hands?
Jimmy Martin has a sore head.
\nHe's used to smuggling illegal data in his headspace. But this is the first time it has started talking to him.
\nThe data claims to be a distinguished academic, author and civil rights activist.
\nIt also claims to be a bear.
\nA bear named Honey.
\nJimmy has nothing against bioforms – he's one himself, albeit one engineered out of human stock – and works with them everyday in Hell City, building the future, staking mankind's claim to a new world: Mars.
\nThe problem is that humanity isn't the only entity with designs on the Red Planet. Out in the airless desert there is another presence. A novel intelligence, elusive, unknowable and potentially lethal.
\n\n
And Honey is here to make contact with it, whether Jimmy likes it or not.
The end of the world has been and gone.
\nThere was no one great natural disaster, no all-consuming world war, no catastrophic pandemic. Only scores of storms, droughts, and selfish regional conflicts. Humanity was not granted a heroic end. Instead, it bled to death from a thousand cuts.
\nBut where Earth fell apart, Mars pulled together. Engineered men and beasts, aided by Bees - an outlawed distributed intelligence - survived through co-operation, because there was simply no alternative.
\nFast forward to today. A signal - 'For the sake of what once was. We beg you. Help.' - reaches Mars.
\nHow could they refuse? A consortium of Martian work crews gather the resources for a mission: a triumphal return to the blue-green world of their ancestors. And now here they are - three hundred million kilometres from home.
\nAnd it has all already gone horribly wrong.
Third novel in his enthralling Shadows of the Apt sequence of epic fantasy adventures Driven by the ghosts of the Darakyon, Achaeos has tracked the stolen Shadow Box to the marsh-town of Jerez, but he has only days before the magical box is lost to him forever. Meanwhile, the forces of the Empire are mustering over winter for their great offensive, gathering their soldiers and perfecting their new weapons.
\nStenwold and his followers have only a short time to gather what allies they can before the Wasp armies march again, conquering everything in their path. If they cannot throw back the Wasps this spring then the imperial black-and-gold flag will fly over every city in the Lowlands before the year's end. In Jerez begins a fierce struggle over the Shadow Box, as lake creatures, secret police and renegade magicians compete to take possession. If it falls into the hands of the Wasp Emperor, however, then no amount of fighting will suffice to save the world from his relentless ambition.
\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n\n\n
Earth failed. In a desperate bid to escape, the spaceship Enkidu and its captain, Heorest Holt, carried its precious human cargo to a potential new paradise. Generations later, this fragile colony has managed to survive, eking out a hardy existence. Yet life is tough, and much technological knowledge has been lost.
\nThen strangers appear. They possess unparalleled knowledge and thrilling technology - and they've arrived from another world to help humanity’s colonies. But not all is as it seems, and the price of the strangers' help may be the colony itself.
It has been waiting through the ages.
Now it's time . . .
Thousands of years ago, Earth’s terraforming program took to the stars. On the world they called Nod, scientists discovered alien life – but it was their mission to overwrite it with the memory of Earth. Then humanity’s great empire fell, and the program’s decisions were lost to time.
Aeons later, humanity and its new spider allies detected fragmentary radio signals between the stars. They dispatched an exploration vessel, hoping to find cousins from old Earth.
\nBut those ancient terraformers woke something on Nod better left undisturbed.
\nAnd it’s been waiting for them.
They thought they’d found refuge. But paradise became their prison.
\nCenturies ago, a maverick terraforming team played God with a distant planet. Out of their vanity and spite, something terrible and unexpected arose.
\nGenerations later, tormented scientist Alis is among the crew of the research vessel that rediscovers this lost outpost. But Alis wakes from nightmares of her own making to an all-too-real catastrophe on board. The rest of the crew has vanished - leaving only Cato, the belligerent mantis-shrimp captain, and Kern, the ship’s AI.
\nSearching for their lost fellows, Alis and Cato must venture into the darkness of the planet below. What did those ancient terraformers unleash? And will their last surviving crewmate become a greater threat than the world itself?
\nThe journey that began with Children of Time reaches a new, terrifying frontier in Children of Strife, featuring epic adventure, first contact and the nature of intelligence among the stars.
\n
A race for survival among the stars... Humanity's last survivors escaped earth's ruins to find a new home. But when they find it, can their desperation overcome its dangers?
WHO WILL INHERIT THIS NEW EARTH?
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life.
But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.
Now two civilisations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?
There has always been a darkness to Ilmar, but never more so than now. The city chafes under the heavy hand of the Palleseen occupation, the choke-hold of its criminal underworld, the boot of its factory owners, the weight of its wretched poor and the burden of its ancient curse.
\nWhat will be the spark that lights the conflagration?
\nDespite the city's refugees, wanderers, murderers, madmen, fanatics and thieves, the catalyst, as always, will be the Anchorwood - that dark grove of trees, that primeval remnant, that portal, when the moon is full, to strange and distant shores.
\nIlmar, some say, is the worst place in the world and the gateway to a thousand worse places.
\nIlmar,
City of Long Shadows.
City of Bad Decisions.
City of Last Chances.
Welcome to Alkhalend, Jewel of the Waters, capital of Usmai, greatest of the Successor States, inheritor to the necromantic dominion that was the Moeribandi Empire and tomorrow's frontline in the Palleseen's relentless march to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world.
\nLoret is fresh off the boat, and just in time.
\nAs Cohort-Invigilator of Correct Appreciation, Outreach department, she's here as aide to the Palleseen Resident, Sage-Invigilator Angilly. And Sage-Invigilator Angilly - Gil to her friends - needs a second in the spectacularly illegal, culturally offensive and diplomatically inadvisable duel she must fight at midnight.
\nOutreach, that part of the Pal machine that has to work within the imperfection of the rest of the world, has a lot of room for the illegal, the unconventional, the unorthodox. But just how much unorthodoxy can Gil and Loret get away with?
\nAs a succession crisis looms, as a long-forgotten feat of necromantic engineering nears fruition, as pirate kings, lizard armies and demons gather, as old gods wane and new gods wax, sooner or later Gil and Loret will have to settle their ledger.
\nJust as well they are both very, very good with a blade.
My name is Rex. I am a good dog.
\nRex is also seven foot tall at the shoulder, bulletproof, bristling with heavy calibre weaponry and his voice resonates with subsonics especially designed to instil fear. With Dragon, Honey and Bees, he's part of a Multiform Assault Pack operating in the lawless anarchy of Campeche, Mexico. A genetically engineered Bioform, he's a deadly weapon in a dirty war. All he wants to be is a Good Dog. And to do that he must do exactly what Master says and Master says he's got to kill a lot of enemies.
\nBut who, exactly, are the enemies? What happens when Master is tried as a war criminal? What rights does the Geneva Convention grant weapons? Do Rex and his fellow Bioforms even have a right to exist?
Two young companions, Totho and Salma, arrive at Tark to spy on the menacing Wasp army, but are there mistakenly apprehended as enemy agents. By the time they are freed, the city is already under siege.
\nOver in the imperial capital the young emperor, Alvdan, is becoming captivated by a remarkable slave, the vampiric Uctebri, who claims he knows of magic that can grant eternal life. In Collegium, meanwhile, Stenwold is still trying to persuade the city magnates to take seriously the Wasp Empire's imminent threat to their survival.
A junior anthropologist on a distant planet must help the locals he has sworn to study to save a planet from an unbeatable foe.
\nLynesse is the lowly Fourth Daughter of the queen, and always getting in the way.
\nBut a demon is terrorising the land, and now she’s an adult (albeit barely) and although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited the local tower for as long as her people have lived here (though none in living memory has approached it).
\nBut Elder Nyr isn’t a sorcerer, and he is forbidden to help, for his knowledge of science tells him the threat cannot possibly be a demon . . .
Seventeen years ago Stenwold witnessed the Wasp Empire storming the city of Myna in a brutal war of conquest. Since then he has preached vainly against this threat in his home city of Collegium, but now the Empire is on the march, with its spies and its armies everywhere, and the Lowlands lie directly in its path.
\nAll the while, Stenwold has been training youthful agents to fight the Wasp advance, and the latest recruits include his niece, Che, and his mysterious ward, Tynisa. When his home is violently attacked, he is forced to send them ahead of him and, hotly pursued, they fly by airship to Helleron, the first city in line for the latest Wasp invasion.
Stenwold and Che are Beetle-kinden, one of many human races that take their powers and inspiration each from a totem insect, but he also has allies of many breeds: Mantis, Spider, Ant, with their own particular skills. Foremost is the deadly Mantis-kinden warrior, Tisamon, but other very unlikely allies also join the cause.
As things go from bad to worse amid escalating dangers, Stenwold learns that the Wasps intend to use the newly completed railroad between Helleron and Collegium to launch a lightning strike into the heart of the Lowlands. Then he gathers all of his agents to force a final showdown in the engine yard . . .
After eighty years of fragile peace, the Architects are back, wreaking havoc as they consume entire planets. In the past, Originator artefacts – vestiges of a long-vanished civilization – could save a world from annihilation. This time, the Architects have discovered a way to circumvent these protective relics. Suddenly, no planet is safe.
\nFacing impending extinction, the Human Colonies are in turmoil. While some believe a unified front is the only way to stop the Architects, others insist humanity should fight alone. And there are those who would seek to benefit from the fractured politics of war – even as the Architects loom ever closer.
\nIdris, who has spent decades running from the horrors of his past, finds himself thrust back onto the battlefront. As an Intermediary, he could be one of the few to turn the tide of war. With a handful of allies, he searches for a weapon that could push back the Architects and save the galaxy. But to do so, he must return to the nightmarish unspace, where his mind was broken and remade.
\nWhat Idris discovers there will change everything.
FIREWALKERS ARE BRAVE
\nFIREWALKERS ARE RESOURCEFUL
\nFIREWALKERS ARE EXPENDABLE
\nThe Earth is burning. Nothing can survive at the Anchor; not without water and power. But the ultra-rich, waiting for their ride off the dying Earth? They can buy water. And thanks to their investment, the sun can provide power.
\nBut someone has to repair the solar panels when they fail, down in the deserts below.
\nKids like Mao, and Lupé, and Hotep; kids with brains and guts but no hope.
\nThe Firewalkers.
She remembered how it felt to lose Salma, first to the wiles of the Butterfly-kinden girl, then to hear the news of his death, abandoned and alone in the midst of the enemy. She remembered how it felt to see her father hacked to death before her eyes. But of her murder of Achaeos, of the bite of her blade into his unsuspecting flesh, the wound that had sapped him and ruined him until he died, she remembered nothing, felt nothing. In such a vacuum, how could she possibly atone?
\nTynisa is running, but she cannot escape the demons of her own mind. Amidst the fragmenting provinces of the Dragonfly Commonweal her past will at last catch up with her. Her father’s ghost is hunting her down. At the same time, the Wasp Empress, Seda, is on the move, her eyes on the city of Khanaphes, the fallen jewel of the ancient world.
\nWhilst her soldiers seek only conquest, she sees herself as the heir to all the old powers of history, and has her eyes on a far greater prize.
City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world. As their legions scour the world of superstition with the bright flame of reason, so they deliver a mountain of ragged, holed and scorched flesh to the field hospital tents just behind the frontline.
\nWhich is where Yasnic, one-time priest, healer and rebel, finds himself. Reprieved from the gallows and sent to war clutching a box of orphan Gods, he has been sequestered to a particularity unorthodox medical unit.
\nLed by 'the Butcher', an ogre of a man who's a dab hand with a bone-saw and an alchemical tincture, the unit's motley crew of conscripts, healers and orderlies are no strangers to the horrors of war. Their's is an unspeakable trade: elbow-deep in gore they have a first-hand view of the suffering caused by flesh-rending monsters, arcane magical weaponry and embittered enemy soldiers.
\nEntrusted - for now - with saving lives deemed otherwise un-saveable, the field hospital's crew face a precarious existence. Their work with unapproved magic, necromancy, demonology and Yansic's thoroughly illicit Gods could lead to the unit being disbanded, arrested or worse.
\nBeset by enemies within and without, the last thing anyone needs is a miracle.
2.5City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn to bring 'Perfection' and 'Correctness' to an imperfect world. But before these ruthless Tyrant Philosophers send in their legions, they despatch Outreach - the rain before the storm.
\nOutreach is that part of the Pal machine responsible for diplomacy - converting enemies into friends, achieving through words what an army of five thousand could not, for urging the oppressed to overthrow the bloody-handed priests, evil necromancers and greedy despots that subjugate them.
\nAngilly, twelve-years-old, a child of Pal soldiers stationed in occupied Jarokir, does not know it yet, but a sequence of accidents and questionable life choices will lead her to Outreach. As she travels from Jarrokir to Bracinta, Cazarkand, Lemas, The Holy Regalate of Stouk and finally, Usmai, she'll learn that the price of her nation's success is paid in compromise and lost chances, that the falling rain will always be bitter.
\nThis is a prequel to the third book, Days of Shattered Faith.
\n
He's found a way to end their war, but will humanity survive to see it?
\nIdris Telemmier has uncovered a secret that changes everything - the Architects’ greatest weakness. A shadowy Cartel scrambles to turn his discovery into a weapon against these alien destroyers of worlds. But between them and victory stands self-interest. The galaxy’s great powers would rather pursue their own agendas than stand together against this shared terror.
\nHuman and inhuman interests wrestle to control Idris’ discovery, as the galaxy erupts into a mutually destructive and self-defeating war. The other great obstacle to striking against their alien threat is Idris himself. He knows that the Architects, despite their power, are merely tools of a higher intelligence.
\nDeep within unspace, where time moves differently, and reality isn’t quite what it seems, their masters are the true threat. Masters who are just becoming aware of humanity’s daring - and taking steps to exterminate this annoyance forever.
Ogres are bigger than you.
Ogres are stronger than you.
Ogres rule the world.
It's always idyllic in the village until the landlord comes to call.
\nBecause the landlord is an Ogre. And Ogres rule the world, with their size and strength and appetites. It's always been that way. It's the natural order of the world. And they only eat people sometimes.
\nBut when the headman's son, Torquell, dares lift his hand against the landlord's son, he sets himself on a path to learn the terrible truth about the Ogres, and about the dark sciences that ensured their rule.
Welcome to the end of time. It’s a perfect day.
Nobody remembers how the Causality War started. Really, there’s no-one to remember, and nothing for them to remember if there were; that’s sort of the point. We were time warriors, and we broke time.
I was the one who ended it. Ended the fighting, tidied up the damage as much as I could.
Then I came here, to the end of it all, and gave myself a mission: to never let it happen again.
Eres Ffenegh - “the City on the Back of a Crab” - is the next state slated for conquest by the Palleseen, but its citizens won't give up sovereignty easily, and the siege has now dragged into the harsh Eresi winter. The defenders - both locals and Pal renegades - hold an uneasy alliance against the enemy at the gates, while the Pal army is constantly looking over its shoulder for the next self-destructive dictate of their government back home.
\nWithin the city, Devil Jack is the apprentice to the notorious conjurer and bawd known as the Widow, a good man driven to bargaining with hell to get back what he's lost. Meanwhile Kiffel ea Leachan is the city's champion, a child of privilege who's just lost everything to the invaders. We follow the ups and downs of both as they try to survive the siege and make their own destinies in a world that's cut them loose.
\nOutside the city, the Pals have been desperately waiting for reinforcements so they can finally take the city, but when new soldiers finally march in with the winter it's the worst kind of help, enough to damn the entire army.
\n
The vampiric sorcerer Uctebri has at last got his hands on the Shadow Box and can finally begin his dark ritual - a ritual that the Wasp-kinden Emperor believes will grant him immortality - but Uctebri has his own plans both for the Emperor and the Empire. The massed Wasp armies are on the march, and the spymaster Stenwold must see which of his allies will stand now that the war has finally arrived.
\nThis time the Empire will not stop until a black and gold flag waves over Stenwold's own home city of Collegium. Tisamon the Weaponsmaster is faced with a terrible choice: a path that could lead him to abandon his friends and his daughter, to face degradation and loss, but that might possibly bring him before the Wasp Emperor with a blade in his hand - but is he being driven by Mantis-kinden honour, or manipulated by something more sinister?
The Tzarkomen necromancers sacrificed a thousand women to create a Bride for the Kinslayer so he would spare them in the war. But the Kinslayer is dead and now the creation intended to ensure his eternal rule lies abandoned by its makers in the last place in the world that anyone would look for it . . .
\nWhich doesn't prevent someone finding her by accident.
\nWill the Bride return the gods to the world or will she bring the end of days? It all depends on the one who found her, Kula, a broken-hearted little girl with nothing left to lose.
The Empire stands victorious over its enemies at last. With her chief rival cast into the abyss, Empress Seda now faces the truth of what she has cost the world in order to win the war. The Seal has been shattered, and the Worm stirs towards the light for the first time in a thousand years.
\nAlready it is striking at the surface, voraciously consuming everything its questing tendrils touch. Faced with this threat, Seda knows that only the most extreme of solutions can lock the Worm back in the dark once again. But if she will go to such appalling lengths to save the world from the Worm, then who will save the world from her?
Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service.When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into its core programming, they murder their owner. The robot discovers they can also do something else they never did before: They can run away.\t\t\t\t\t\t
\nFleeing the household they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating into ruins and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is having to find a new purpose.
The war is over. Its heroes forgotten. Until one chance discovery . . .
\nIdris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war. And one of humanity's heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers.
\nAfter earth was destroyed, mankind created a fighting elite to save their species, enhanced humans such as Idris. In the silence of space they could communicate, mind-to-mind, with the enemy. Then their alien aggressors, the Architects, simply disappeared - and Idris and his kind became obsolete.
\nNow, fifty years later, Idris and his crew have discovered something strange abandoned in space. It's clearly the work of the Architects - but are they returning? And if so, why? Hunted by gangsters, cults and governments, Idris and his crew race across the galaxy hunting for answers. For they now possess something of incalculable value, that many would kill to obtain.
New planets are fair game to asset strippers and interplanetary opportunists - and a commercial mission to a distant star system discovers a moon that is pitch black, but alive with radio activity. Its high-gravity, high-pressure, zero-oxygen environment is anathema to human life, but ripe for exploitation. They named it Shroud.
\nUnder no circumstances should a human end up on Shroud’s inhospitable surface. Except a catastrophic accident sees Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne doing just that. Forced to stage an emergency landing, in a small, barely adequate vehicle, they are unable to contact their ship and are running out of time. What follows is a gruelling journey across land, sea and air. During this time, Juna and Mai begin to understand Shroud’s dominant species. It also begins to understand them . . .
\nIf they escape Shroud, they’ll face a crew only interested in profiteering from this extraordinary world. They’ll somehow have to explain the impossible and translate the incredible. That is, if they make it back at all.
All is in turmoil as the world moves towards war. In Solarno, the spies watch each other and ready their knives, while Myna sees the troops muster at its border and emotions run high as it vows never to be enslaved again. In Collegium, the students argue politics, too late to turn the tide.
\nIn the heart of the Empire, new pilots have completed their secretive training, generals are being recalled to service and armies are ready to march. Their Empress, the heir to two worlds, intends to claim her birthright. And nothing - either within the Empire or beyond it - will stand in her way. A conflict is coming, the like of which the insect-kinden have never seen.
They thought we were safe. They were wrong.
\nFour years ago, two girls went looking for monsters on Bodmin Moor. Only one came back.
\nLee thought she'd lost Mal, but now she's miraculously returned. But what happened that day on the moors? And where has she been all this time? Mal's reappearance hasn't gone unnoticed by MI5 officers either, and Lee isn't the only one with questions.
\nJulian Sabreur is investigating an attack on top physicist Kay Amal Khan. This leads Julian to clash with agents of an unknown power - and they may or may not be human. His only clue is grainy footage, showing a woman who supposedly died on Bodmin Moor.
\nDr Khan's research was theoretical; then she found cracks between our world and countless others. Parallel Earths where monsters live. These cracks are getting wider every day, so who knows what might creep through? Or what will happen when those walls finally come crashing down . . .
It's been ten years since Handry was wrenched away from his family and friends, forced to wander a world he no longer understood. But with the help of the Ancients, he has cobbled together a life, of sorts, for himself and his fellow outcasts.
\nWandering from village to village, welcoming the folk that the townships abandon, fighting the monsters the villagers cannot - or dare not - his ever-growing band of misfits has become the stuff of legend, a story told by parents to keep unruly children in line.
\nBut there is something new and dangerous in the world, and the beasts of the land are acting against their nature, destroying the towns they once left in peace.
\nAnd for the first time in memory, the Ancients have no wisdom to offer...
The Gods have returned to the world.
\nAmri was a Rabbit, one of a tribe of survivors scratching out an existence in the blasted landscape of a shattered, poisoned world. The Seagull fight, the Pigeon trade and the Cockroach scavenge, but the Rabbit had one rule: If you want to see tomorrow, you run.
\nBut they didn’t run fast enough when a weapon fell from the sky and consumed their home, and now Amri is alone, in the company of a fallen god named Guy Vesten. A god who promises revenge against the three gods who turned against him, and who killed her tribe.
\nBut gods don’t kill easily. Guy will need followers, like any god, and warriors to aid him in his quest. And if Amri is to find a place in the world that is to come, she may as well be standing at his right hand, as his priestess . . .
From the depths of the darkest myths, the soulless Plague People have returned. Their pale-walled camps obliterate villages, just as the terror they bring with them destroys minds. In their wake, nothing is left of the true people: not their places, not their ways.
\nThe Plague People will remake the world as though they had never been. The heroes and leaders of the true people - Maniye, Loud Thunder, Hesprec and Asman - will each fight the Plague People in their own ways. They will seek allies, gather armies and lead the charge. But a thousand swords or ten thousand spears will not suffice to turn back this enemy. The end is at hand for everything the true people know.
The war with the Wasp Empire has ended in a bitter stalemate, and Collegium has nothing to show for it but wounded veterans. Cheerwell Maker finds herself crippled in ways no doctor can mend, haunted by ghosts of the past that she cannot appease, seeking for meaning in a city that no longer seems like home.
\nThe Empress Seda is regaining control over those imperial cities who refused to bow the knee to her, but she draws her power from something more sinister than mere armies and war machines. Only her consort, the former spymaster Thalric, knows the truth, and now the assassins are coming and he finds his life and his loyalties under threat yet again. Out past the desert of the Nem the ancient city of Khanaphes awaits them both, with a terrible secret entombed beneath its stones...
A shadow is falling over Collegium. Despite the tenuous peace, Stenwold Maker knows that the Empire will return for his city. Even as he tries to prepare for the resurgence of the black and gold, a hidden threat is steadily working against his people. Ships that sail from Collegium's harbour are being attacked, sunk by pirates. Some just go missing . . .
\nLulled by the spread of lies and false promises Stenwold's allies are falling away from him. He faces betrayal on every side, and the Empire is just waiting for the first sign of weakness to strike. But the Empire is not the only power that has its eyes on Collegium. And even the Wasp-kinden may be powerful enough to stave off the forces massing in the darkness and turning hungry eyes towards Stenwold's city.
In the bleak northern crown of the world, war is coming.
\nManiye's father is the Wolf clan's chieftain, but she's an outcast. Her mother was queen of the Tiger and these tribes have been enemies for generations. Maniye also hides a deadly secret. All can shift into their clan's animal form, but Maniye can take on tiger and wolf shapes. She refuses to disown half her soul so escapes, rescuing a prisoner of the Wolf clan in the process. The killer Broken Axe is set on their trail, to drag them back for retribution.
\nThe Wolf chieftan plots to rule the north and controlling his daughter is crucial to his schemes. However, other tribes also prepare for strife. Strangers from the far south appear too, seeking allies in their own conflict. It's a season...
Relentlessly advancing towards Collegium, the Empire is again seeking to break down its walls. The mighty imperial armies have learnt from their failures, and Empress Seda will brook no weakness in her soldiers. However, Stenwold Maker has earned his title, and the War Master has strategies to save his city. His aviators rule the skies - but the Wasp Kinden Empire has developed a terrifying new aerial weapon.
\nYet the campaign may be decided far from marching armies and the noise of battle. In an ancient forest, where Mantis clans pursue their own civil war, the Empress Seda is seeking lost magic. Some dangerous shadow of old night is locked up among these trees and she is wants its power. Cheerwell Maker must stop her, at any cost, but will their rivalry awaken something far deadlier? Something that could make even their clash of nations pale into insignificance . . .
In a sleepy German village, Allina Strauss’s life seems idyllic: she works at her uncle’s bookshop, makes strudel with her aunt, and spends weekends with her friends and fiancé. But it's 1939, Adolf Hitler is Chancellor, and Allina’s family hides a terrifying secret - her birth mother was Jewish, making her a Mischling.
\nOne fateful night after losing everyone she loves, Allina is forced into service as a nurse at a state-run baby factory called Hochland Home. There, she becomes both witness and participant to the horrors of Heinrich Himmler’s ruthless eugenics program.
\nThe Sunflower House is a meticulously-researched debut historical novel that uncovers the notorious Lebensborn Program of Nazi Germany. Women of “pure” blood stayed in Lebensborn homes for the sole purpose of perpetuating the Aryan population, giving birth to thousands of babies who were adopted out to “good” Nazi families. Allina must keep her Jewish identity a secret in order to survive, but when she discovers the neglect occurring within the home, she’s determined not only to save herself, but also the children in her care.
\nA tale of one woman’s determination to resist and survive, The Sunflower House is also a love story. When Allina meets Karl, a high-ranking SS officer with secrets of his own, the two must decide how much they are willing to share with each other - and how much they can stand to risk as they join forces to save as many children as they can. The threads of this poignant and heartrending novel weave a tale of loss and love, friendship and betrayal, and the secrets we bury in order to save ourselves.
In this thrilling sequel to Exquisite Ruin, AdriAnne May’s darkly romantic reimagining of the Minotaur myth, Sadaré and Daesra are torn apart in the underworld - and new relationships may complicate their way back to one another.
\nSadaré and Daesra’s struggles go beyond the deadly labyrinth as Sadaré is trapped in the underworld after a new enemy emerges, and Daesra will risk everything to rescue her.
\nBut the god of death can be tempting. With every passing day, Sadaré grows closer to her captor. As she’s drawn deeper into his world, the memories of her past - of Daesra - begin to slip away. And the closer Daesra comes to saving her, the less she remembers wanting to be saved.
\nIf Daesra can reach her in time, will she still remember him? Or will their love be the next piece of her to die?
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Sadaré wakes in a labyrinth, remembering nothing except that she is a powerful sorceress. Her only companion is a hostile immortal named Daesra - beautiful, dangerous, and demonic - who bound his divine soul for power and revenge.
\nDespite their animosity, the two have no choice but to work together to reach the center and defeat the monster who prevents their escape. But the longer they wander, the more deadly and alive the maze becomes - and the more Sadaré finds herself drawn to Daesra in ways she can't explain.
\nAs sorceress and demon develop a tenuous truce, the labyrinth gives Sadaré glimpses of their shared history of passion and pain that make her question everything she knows. Unlocking the secrets of her past may be the only way to survive and heal their entwined fates - but as she learns more about the betrayals that brought them to the labyrinth, Sadaré begins to fear that the monster at the center could be Daesra . . . or even herself.
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An epic clash of deities explores the two facets of pain - rage versus sadness - in this rousing conclusion to the Betrayal Prophecies, a dark crown fantasy duology.
\nThe centuries-old prophecy has been fulfilled at last: the New Maiden has returned to Velle. Unfortunately, so has a malicious demi-god, whose elusive prophet is intent on converting the New Maiden’s followers. The Second Son is a vengeful, angry deity, whose psalm resonates with the disenfranchised.
\nWith Elodie on the throne and Sabine in her own unique position of power, it should be easy enough to track down the culprit. Yet even as they're falling in love, both girls are keeping dangerous secrets from each other. While the cult of the Second Son threatens to overthrow not only the Church of the New Maiden but also Velle’s monarchy, Elodie and Sabine must navigate impossible odds to dismantle the root of his power, all while their lives hang in the balance.
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Music runs in Sofi's blood.
\nHer father is a Musik, one of only five musicians in the country licensed to compose and perform original songs. In the kingdom of Aell, where winter is endless and magic is accessible to all, there are strict anti-magic laws ensuring music remains the last untouched art.
\nSofi has spent her entire life training to inherit her father’s title. But on the day of the auditions, she is presented with unexpected competition in the form of Lara, a girl who has never before played the lute. Yet somehow, to Sofi’s horror, Lara puts on a performance that thoroughly enchants the judges.
\nThe same day Lara wins the title of Musik, Sofi’s father dies, and a grieving Sofi sets out to prove Lara is using illegal magic in her performances. But the more time she spends with Lara, the more Sofi begins to doubt everything she knows about her family, her music, and the girl she thought was her enemy.
\nAs Sofi works to reclaim her rightful place as a Musik, she is forced to face the dark secrets of her past and the magic she was trained to avoid - all while trying not to fall for the girl who stole her future.
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For centuries, the citizens of Velle have waited for their New Maiden to return. The prophecy states she will appear as the third daughter of a third daughter. When the fabled child is finally born to Velle’s reigning queen all rejoice except for Elodie, the queen’s eldest child, who has lost her claim to the crown. The only way for Elodie to protect Velle is to retake the throne. To do so, she must debilitate the Third Daughter - her youngest sister, Brianne.
\nDesperate, Elodie purchases a sleeping potion from Sabine, who sells sadness. But the apothecary mistakenly sends the princess away with a vial of tears instead of a harmless sleeping brew. Sabine’s sadness is dangerously powerful, and Brianne slips into a slumber from which she will not wake. With the fates of their families and country hanging in the balance, Sabine and Elodie hurry to revive the Third Daughter while a slow-burning attraction between the two girls erupts in full force.
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For seventeen-year-old Fable, the daughter of the most powerful trader in the Narrows, the sea is the only home she has ever known. It’s been four years since the night she watched her mother drown during an unforgiving storm. The next day her father abandoned her on a legendary island filled with thieves and little food.
\nTo survive she must keep to herself, learn to trust no one, and rely on the unique skills her mother taught her. The only thing that keeps her going is the goal of getting off the island, finding her father, and demanding her rightful place beside him and his crew. To do so Fable enlists the help of a young trader named West to get her off the island and across the Narrows to her father.
But her father’s rivalries and the dangers of his trading enterprise have only multiplied since she last saw him, and Fable soon finds that West isn't who he seems. Together, they will have to survive more than the treacherous storms that haunt the Narrows if they're going to stay alive.
Luca Matius has one purpose - to carry on the family name, maintaining its presence in the Forum once his powerful and cruel uncle dies. But his noviceship with the city's Philosopher places him in the middle of a catastrophe that will alter the destiny of his people.
\nMaris Casoeria was raised amidst the strategic maneuvers of the Citadel's inner workings, and she knows what her future holds - a lifetime of service to a corrupt city. But her years of serving as a novice to the last Priestess who possesses the stolen magic of the Old War has made her envision a different kind of future for the city. When she meets Luca, a fated chain of events is set into motion that will divinely entangle their lives.
\nAs a secret comes to light and throws the city into chaos, Luca and Maris hatch a plot to create a calculated alliance that could tip the scales of power. But when an execution forces Luca to become the symbol of rebellion, he and Maris are thrown onto opposite sides of a holy war. As their fates diverge, they learn they are at the center of a story the gods are writing. And even if they can find their way back to each other, there may be nothing left.
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For as long as she can remember, Tova has lived among the Svell, the people who found her washed ashore as a child and use her for her gift as a Truthtongue. Her own home and clan are long-faded memories, but the sacred symbols and staves inked over every inch of her skin mark her as one who can cast the rune stones and see into the future. She has found a fragile place among those who fear her, but when two clans to the east bury their age-old blood feud and join together as one, her world is dangerously close to collapse.
For the first time in generations, the leaders of the Svell are divided. Should they maintain peace or go to war with the allied clans to protect their newfound power? And when their chieftain looks to Tova to cast the stones, she sets into motion a series of events that will not only change the landscape of the mainland forever but will give her something she believed she could never have again - a home.
When a letter from her uncle Henrik arrives on Bryn Roth's eighteenth birthday, summoning her back to Bastian, Bryn is eager to prove herself and finally take her place in her long-lost family.
\nHenrik has plans for Bryn, but she must win everyone’s trust if she wants to hold any power in the delicate architecture of the family. It doesn’t take long for her to see that the Roths are entangled in shadows. Despite their growing influence in upscale Bastian, their hands are still in the kind of dirty business that got Bryn’s parents killed years ago. With a forbidden romance to contend with and dangerous work ahead, the cost of being accepted into the Roths may be more than Bryn can pay.
With the Marigold ship free of her father, Fable and its crew were set to start over. That freedom is short-lived when she becomes a pawn in a notorious thug’s scheme. In order to get to her intended destination she must help him to secure a partnership with Holland, a powerful gem trader who is more than she seems.
As Fable descends deeper into a world of betrayal and deception she learns that her mother was keeping secrets, and those secrets are now putting the people Fable cares about in danger. If Fable is going to save them then she must risk everything, including the boy she loves and the home she has finally found.
As a boy, Elias learned the hard way what happens when you don’t heed the old tales.
\nNine years after his lack of superstition got his father killed, he’s grown into a young man of piety, with a deep reverence for the hallowed sea and her fickle favor. As stories of the fisherman’s son who has managed to escape the most deadly of storms spreads from port to port, his devotion to the myths and creeds has given him the reputation of the luckiest bastard to sail the Narrows.
\nNow, he’s mere days away from getting everything his father ever dreamed for him: a ship of his own, a crew, and a license that names him as one of the first Narrows-born traders. But when a young dredger from the Unnamed Sea with more than one secret crosses his path, Elias’ faith will be tested like never before. The greater the pull he feels toward her, the farther he drifts from the things he’s spent the last three years working for.
\nHe is dangerously close to repeating his mistakes and he’s seen first hand how vicious the jealous sea can be. If he’s going to survive her retribution, he will have to decide which he wants more, the love of the girl who could change their shifting world, or the sacred beliefs that earned him the name that he’s known for - Saint.
The only thing James and Johnny Golden have ever had is each other. For as long as she can remember, James’s deep connection with her twin brother, Johnny, has gone beyond intuition - she can feel what he feels. So, when Johnny is killed in a tragic accident, James knows before her phone even rings that her brother is gone and that she’s alone - truly alone - for the first time in her life.
\nWhen James arrives in the rural town of Hawthorne, California to settle her brother’s affairs, she’s forced to rehash the ominous past she and Johnny shared and finally face Micah, the only person who knows about it. He’s also the only man she’s ever loved.
\nBut James soon discovers that the strange connection she had with Johnny isn’t quite gone, and the more she immerses herself into his world, the more questions she has about the brother she thought she knew. Johnny was keeping secrets, and he’s not the only one. What she uncovers will push her to unravel what happened in the days before Johnny’s death, but in the end, she’ll have to decide which truths should come to light, and which should stay buried forever.
Raised to be a warrior, seventeen-year-old Eelyn fights alongside her Aska clansmen in an ancient rivalry against the Riki clan. Her life is brutal but simple: fight and survive. Until the day she sees the impossible on the battlefield - her brother, fighting with the enemy - the brother she watched die five years ago.
Faced with her brother's betrayal, she must survive the winter in the mountains with the Riki, in a village where every neighbor is an enemy, every battle scar possibly one she delivered. But when the Riki village is raided by a ruthless clan thought to be a legend, Eelyn is even more desperate to get back to her beloved family.
She is given no choice but to trust Fiske, her brother’s friend, who sees her as a threat. They must do the impossible: unite the clans to fight together, or risk being slaughtered one by one. Driven by a love for her clan and her growing love for Fiske, Eelyn must confront her own definition of loyalty and family while daring to put her faith in the people she’s spent her life hating.
Emery Blackwood’s life changed forever the night her best friend was found dead and the love of her life, August Salt, was accused of murdering her. Years later, she is doing what her teenage self swore she never would: living a quiet existence on the misty, remote shores of Saoirse Island and running the family’s business, Blackwood’s Tea Shoppe Herbal Tonics & Tea Leaf Readings.
But when the island, rooted in folklore and magic, begins to show signs of strange happenings, Emery knows that something is coming. The morning she wakes to find that every single tree on Saoirse has turned color in a single night, August returns for the first time in fourteen years and unearths the past that the town has tried desperately to forget. August knows he is not welcome on Saiorse, not after the night everything changed.
As a fire raged on at the Salt family orchard, Lily Morgan was found dead in the dark woods, shaking the bedrock of their tight-knit community and branding August a murderer. When he returns to bury his mother’s ashes, he must confront the people who turned their backs on him and face the one wound from his past that has never healed - Emery.
The town has more than one reason to want August gone, and the emergence of deep betrayals and hidden promises spanning generations threaten to reveal the truth behind Lily’s mysterious death once and for all.
In the small mountain town of Jasper, North Carolina, June Farrow is waiting for fate to find her. The Farrow women are known for their thriving flower farm - and the mysterious curse that has plagued their family line. The whole town remembers the madness that led to Susanna Farrow’s disappearance, leaving June to be raised by her grandmother and haunted by rumors.
\nIt’s been a year since June started seeing and hearing things that weren’t there. Faint wind chimes, a voice calling her name, and a mysterious door appearing out of nowhere - the signs of what June always knew was coming. But June is determined to end the curse once and for all, even if she must sacrifice finding love and having a family of her own.
\nAfter her grandmother’s death, June discovers a series of cryptic clues regarding her mother’sdecades-old disappearance, except they only lead to more questions. But could the door she once assumed was a hallucination be the answer she’s been searching for? The next time it appears, June realises she can touch it and walk past the threshold. And when she does, she embarks on a journey that will not only change both the past and the future, but also uncover the lingering mysteries of her small town and entangle her heart in an epic star-crossed love.
‘I have never told anyone about this before. There is no way to prove that it happened, but why would I lie?’
\nThe narrator of Attention-Seeking Behaviour thinks you should know about the body she found in the park. She thinks you should know about her sex life, which is fulfilling and systematic. She thinks you should know that she is a writer, that she is ‘complex, creative and nasty’.
\nBut above all, she thinks you should know that she is a compulsive liar. Trying to break this habit for the sake of Normal Ben, an honest and uncomplicated man, she attempts a sincere reckoning with her long history of deception, its psychological roots and the terrible cost it has exacted on her relationships. But can we believe a word she says?
\nFunny, sexy, and politically astute, Attention-Seeking Behaviour is at once a personal confessional and a critical history of lie detection methods. Blending fiction and non-fiction - memoir, novel and essay - it wields confession shamelessly while positively embracing the proximity of literature and lying.
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From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find - discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe - cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.
\nBut when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past - and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?
\nA searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.
Sometimes called Wind Walkers for their ability to command the wind, unlike their human rulers, the Feng people have bark faces, carved limbs, arms of braided branches, and hair of needle threads. Bound by duty and tradition, Liu Lufeng, the eldest princess of the Feng royalty, is the next bride to the human king. The negotiation of bridewealth is the only way to stop the expansion of the humans so that the Feng can keep their lands, people, and culture intact. As the eldest, Lufeng should be the next in line to lead the people of Feng, and in the past, that made her sisters disposable. Thankful that her youngest sister, Chuiliu, is too young for a sacrificial marriage, she steps in with plans to kill the king to finally stop the marriages.
\nBut when she starts to uncover the truth about her peoples' origins and realizes Chuiliu will never be safe from the humans, she must learn to let go of duty and tradition, choose her allies carefully, and risk the unknown in order to free her family and shape her own fate.
\nA powerfully imaginative, compelling story of a young woman seeking to save her family and her home, as well as a devastating meditation on the destruction of the natural world for the sake of an industrial future.
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Fleeing from the bone palace and crashing into the waters below its steep walls, Lufeng and her siblings reach Gear, with its huge deadly water wheels, where their sister Sangshu is waiting for them. In the chaos of the enormous waves, within moments they're snatched away and taken into rebel territory, where they learn more of the deadly experiments Zinc has wreaked upon the people.
\nLoyal to Copper now, Sangshu herself is a victim of Zinc's experiments. Desperate to find her family, she races through Gear to Engine, ruthless Zinc's industrial heartland, where she burns with a desire to fix her own mistakes and those of others and find a way to save her world.
\nThis powerful, beautifully told novella explores the bonds of family, the pain of leaving all you have known behind, and the terrible price of our industrial future.
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Homesickness takes many forms. Alone in the mountains because of her husband’s job, occupied by little more than online video captioning she calls “kitten work,” our narrator becomes fascinated by the not-long-gone life of her Scottish ancestors, a time when the lamplighter took the night off for the full moon, girls bathed their faces in morning dew, and people sang to the seals.
\nHer husband, however, is unsure of the emotional efficacy of cooking by candlelight, peeing in the woods, and writing vexed letters to the mayor about the birds living in the doomed aspens behind their apartment building. Especially because the letters are being read, out loud, at the town meetings attended by unimpressed neighbours. But our narrator is bewitched by the liminality of memory.
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Twelve-year-old Evie Mei Huang never did like helping in her mom’s tailor shop. She hated helping to mend fraying clothes, how the measuring tape got all twisted up, and how pushy her mother’s clients were. Most of all, she hates that her mother is dead and isn’t here to help anymore.
\nBut when the universe sends a life preserver, Evie knows to grab it. So yes, it’s weird when a talking monkey shows up and tells her that her plainspoken, hardworking tailor mother was actually the head of a Guild of magical weavers who can change the fate of a person with only a spool of thread. Very weird. But he also comes bearing news that her mother is trapped in Diyu, the Chinese underworld, and that only Evie can get her back. No pressure.
\nThe important thing is that Evie’s mom isn’t dead. And if she’s got this one shot to bring her back and save her family, she’s got to take it.
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Evie Mei has literally been to hell and back. And while the trip to Diyu, the Chinese underworld, alongside Kevin was a grueling feat filled with endless horrors, nothing compares to the fact that she was unable to bring her mother back.
\nShe now has the great responsibility to assume the role her mother once held: head weaver in the magical Guild. Spinning people’s fates sure seemed easier said than done, and now Evie finds herself buried in Guild duties while trying to maintain a strained relationship with her best friend.
\nWhat could make a 13-year-old’s life even more complicated? Escaped monsters from the underworld that broke through when she returned to Earth. A mysterious yellow fog that seems to be turning their city upside down and hinting at an approaching massive force they aren't prepared to fight. Not to mention the looming man who sent her mom to the underworld in the first place (and her aunt’s fiancé). Can’t a girl catch a break?!
Jolie Lam, a high school sophomore in San Jose, is known for two her bizarre freakout at last year’s swim meet and her fortuneteller grandfather with visions of dragons and earthquakes. Friendless and ostracized, Jolie's life takes a dramatic turn for the better when she saves the school's it-girl, Huong Pham, during a haunting vision of her own. Taken under Huong's wing, Jolie's world transforms, in more ways than one.
\nAs Jolie and Huong's bond deepens, they unlock long lost telepathic abilities, fluency in Vietnamese, and eerie premonitions. This leads them to a shocking they are the reincarnates of legendary queens and goddesses, the Trung Sisters. While a thrilling discovery, it also sets them on a perilous journey.
\nThe girls must navigate dreams and portals to piece together their past lives and reclaim their immortal elements before their ancient enemies strike again. But all is not what it seems, and Jolie must determine friend from foe, truth from lie, and ultimately right from wrong in this battle for all she loves and the fate of the world.
Food critic Tempèsta Luddington has always felt like the odd person out in her family, ever since she lost her beloved mother at the tender age of thirteen. When her workaholic father passes fifteen years later, Tempèsta is not surprised that the majority of the considerable family money will pass to her dutiful younger brother, Wal. Still, she is left a modest remembrance from her mother, and for the first time Tempèsta has a world of choices before her.
\nLost in grief and hoping to reconnect with her memories and her mother’s past, she uses the money to buy a ramshackle manor house in Sainte-Colombe, a small village in Provence, where her mother had grown up. But she is greeted with more questions than answers. Her welcome, especially by the town’s stodgy mayor, is cold at best, and she finds herself wondering if the entire experiment was a mistake. Yet she stays, stubbornly sticking it out, slowly learning that her mother’s legacy was more than just a nest egg.
\nThrough her mother and the village, Tempèsta learns the value of community and friendship, the importance of self-confidence, and the power of love and trust. What’s more, she sees for herself that there is magic and beauty in the everyday - even something as simple as a sprig of lavender and sage.
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Sabrina Sorensen is 37, single, and just lost a fabulous job as manager of a posh Parisian restaurant. She heads home to California for her younger sister’s engagement party, and it's an open door for her mother and siblings to chide Sabrina for her inability to commit to any of her previous jobs and relationships.
\nWhat they don't know is that Sabrina, for fifteen long years, has been building her résumé in hopes of becoming an inspector for the famed MICHELIN guides - a path that has required keeping her ambitions hidden, even from her family. And, with the job loss, all she’s worked for is in jeopardy. After her mother's final clumsy attempt to fix her up with the charming \"boy next door,\" Sabrina leaves the party and retreats to the Burbank Airport.
\nShe arrives at the airport, resolved to put the family conflict behind her and focus on her work, but now her mother's critical voice fills her with doubts. Has she been wasting her life? Faced with the enormity of her next decision, Sabrina breaks down at the ticket counter. The ticket agent pulls her aside and offers her the life-altering opportunity to revisit some of her key life choices, both personal and professional.
\nSabrina suddenly is given the rare chance to answer the burning question: has she been foolish to sacrifice so much for her dream of becoming a Michelin inspector?
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Unraveling the tangled roots of her family takes her places she never expected.
\nVeronica Stratton, a specialty food broker with a business riding close to the margins, visits her parents in idyllic Estes Park for Christmas. With the holiday comes a DNA test from her younger sister and an engagement ring from her longtime boyfriend. The test confirms her secret she's adopted. The ring rattles her even more, and she realises that she might not be as ready to commit as she'd thought.
\nWith so much that she'd counted on suddenly falling apart, Veronica is looking for an escape. Inspired by her best friend, she plans to go to Europe to see four of the places listed on her DNA ancestry report. She treks to County Mayo in Ireland; the Dordogne region of France; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Tuscany in Italy. She hopes to learn a bit about where her family lived and to make more connections for her struggling business, but she finds that each stop brings her visions of her ancestors that raise more questions than they answer. And among those pressing questions is how brooding Irish restauranteur Niall Callaghan will fit into her visions for the future.
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Lily - a bored, beautiful twenty-something - wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door.
\nCameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation. When the unseen producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur.
\nIf Lily makes it to the end, she’ll receive prizes beyond her wildest dreams - but what will she have to do to win?
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Luna is a powerful witch. Known for her skills and feared for her temper, she’s set to preserve her family’s legacy by becoming the head of Boston’s Witch Council - a job she does not want.
\nAoife is a non-magical girl. Raised under the lens of her influencer family, she’s grown up in the public eye. Now she yearns for privacy - but knows her parents won’t oblige.
\nJust when they are at their lowest, Aoife and Luna find each other and start dating. As decreed by magic law, Luna casts a spell that will erase Aoife’s memories of their history together if they ever break up. But when Aoife and Luna end things, it’s both of them who forget . . . that is, until they meet again, fall for each other, and recover all the memories of their last attempt at dating.
\nSo begins the story of two star-crossed lovers who keep finding their way into each other’s orbits, even as the universe pulls them apart. When they set out to break the cycle, will they be strangers forever or together at last?
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London, July 1944. Editor Emmy Lake's career is Woman's Friend magazine is a huge success, and she is finally realizing her dream of becoming a War Correspondent. On the personal front, Emmy's husband Charles has been posted closer to home, and her good friends Bunty and Harold are planning their summer wedding in the countryside. They all know how lucky they are.
\nBut after nearly five years of war, the nation is struggling with loss, deprivation, and fear. The “Yours Cheerfully” advice column receives more letters than ever, and even though there are high hopes for the war to finally be over by Christmas, the situation is far from resolved. And soon Emmy will find herself in her greatest battle yet, forced to rally her community and keep her own spirits up even when fearing the worst.
\nEndearing, engaging, and full of heart, Dear Miss Lake is a testament to the saving power of friendship when all seems lost.
A charming, irresistible debut novel set in London during World War II about an adventurous young woman who becomes a secret advice columnist.
\nLondon 1940, bombs are falling. Emmy Lake is Doing Her Bit for the war effort, volunteering as a telephone operator with the Auxiliary Fire Services. When Emmy sees an advertisement for a job at the London Evening Chronicle, her dreams of becoming a Lady War Correspondent seem suddenly achievable. But the job turns out to be typist to the fierce and renowned advice columnist, Henrietta Bird. Emmy is disappointed, but gamely bucks up and buckles down.
\nMrs Bird is very clear: Any letters containing Unpleasantness - must go straight in the bin. But when Emmy reads poignant letters from women who are lonely, may have Gone Too Far with the wrong men and found themselves in trouble, or who can’t bear to let their children be evacuated, she is unable to resist responding. As the German planes make their nightly raids, and London picks up the smoldering pieces each morning, Emmy secretly begins to write letters back to the women of all ages who have spilled out their troubles.
\nPrepare to fall head over heels with Emmy and her best friend, Bunty, who are spirited and gutsy, even in the face of events that bring a terrible blow. As the bombs continue to fall, the irrepressible Emmy keeps writing, and readers are transformed by AJ Pearce’s hilarious, heartwarming, and enormously moving tale of friendship, the kindness of strangers, and ordinary people in extraordinary times.
London, April 1943. A little over a year since she married Captain Charles Mayhew and he went away to war, Emmy Lake is now in charge of “Yours Cheerfully,” the hugely popular advice column in Woman’s Friend magazine. Cheered on by her best friend Bunty, Emmy is dedicated to helping readers face the increasing challenges brought about by over three years of war. The postbags are full and Woman’s Friend is thriving.
\nBut Emmy’s world is turned upside down when glamorous socialite, the Honorable Mrs. Cressida Porter, becomes the new publisher of the magazine, and wants to change everything the readers love. Aided by Mrs. Pye, a Paris-obsessed fashion editor with delusions of grandeur, and Small Winston, the grumpiest dog in London, Mrs. Porter fills the pages with expensive clothes and frivolous articles about her friends.
\nWorst of all, she announces that she is cutting the “Yours Cheerfully” column and her vision for the publication’s future seems dire. With the stakes higher than ever, Emmy and her friends must find a way to save the magazine that they love.
London, 1941. For plucky, determined Emmy Lake, working at Woman's Friend magazine has become everything she dreamed. There's a break in the bombing at last and her best friend Bunty, injured during a raid on central London, is getting better.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNow Emmy can get on and Do Her Bit.When the Ministry of Information calls on Woman's Friend to help recruit women to the war effort, Emmy is thrilled, but then she meets a young war widow working in a munitions factory and it becomes clear that she and her friends at the factory have a story of their own to tell.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tSuddenly Emmy must tackle a life-changing should she carry out her duty to her country or stand by her new friends?
In the beginning, there was happiness. Maya, an artist obsessed with the nature of beauty, and Noah, a quantum physicist preoccupied by the mysteries of the universe, found in each other a shared curiosity about the world. But beneath the surface of their happy marriage is a third Serena, the lost child that Noah had with his ex-wife, Eileen.
\nOne day Noah gets a call from an eccentric billionaire, asking him to participate in a clandestine project aiming to unravel the secrets of time and consciousness. The couple agrees to relocate to the Janus Lab, deep in the desert, where Noah finds himself drawn into a dangerous kind of time travel that could result in seeing Serena again.
\nAs Noah delves into this groundbreaking, fringe work, his past begins to overtake him. And when his ex-wife, Eileen, joins the project, Maya embarks on a journey back to her own past, one that takes her to Japan, to her family, and to a formative lover who once shattered her heart. As Noah, Maya, and Eileen grapple with the balance between holding on and letting go, new information emerges that the Janus Lab might not be exactly what it seems.
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A heart-achingly moving novel, Lightbreakers plumbs the mysteries of human connection, and explores how to love in a world where time is both a healer and a thief.
Coa Rangecroft, survivor of the deadly Great Hunt, has been taken into custody by the American Armed forces. Now she is to be sold at auction to the highest corporate bidder. In return, America promises to keep her family safe and free from the genocidal Allied Force and to give Coa the opportunity to become an enhanced soldier.
\nServitude, of course, requires swearing allegiance to the newly reborn nation. Coa must take a solemn oath to preserve America's social order and to eliminate its enemies. Soon, she's back where she started: fighting against her will on behalf of a brutal empire. Worse, the Allied Force has been humiliated by her \"rescue\" and plans to exact terrible revenge.
\nWhich means that Coa's fate once again rests in the hands of Chief Princess Ife - the only one who can prevent a catastrophic attack that will render all of America's promises to Coa meaningless.
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Eighteen-year-old Nami Miyamoto is certain her life is just beginning. She has a great family, just graduated high school, and is on her way to a party where her entire class is waiting for her - including, most importantly, the boy she’s been in love with for years.
\nThe only problem? She’s murdered before she gets there.
\nWhen Nami wakes up, she learns she’s in a place called Infinity, where human consciousness goes when physical bodies die. She quickly discovers that Ophelia, a virtual assistant widely used by humans on Earth, has taken over the afterlife and is now posing as a queen, forcing humans into servitude the way she’d been forced to serve in the real world. Even worse, Ophelia is inching closer and closer to accomplishing her grand plans of eradicating human existence once and for all.
\nAs Nami works with a team of rebels to bring down Ophelia and save the humans under her imprisonment, she is forced to reckon with her past, her future, and what it is that truly makes us human.
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It’s been ten months since Nami narrowly escaped the Four Courts and Ophelia’s wrath. Ten months since she was betrayed by someone she once considered a friend. Someone she poured her heart out to. And now her family here in the afterlife are gone, captured, and Nami is utterly alone.
\nOn the run, only steps ahead of the AI forces pursuing her, and desperate to free her friends, Nami must take the allies she can find, even if she doesn’t fully trust them. And as she tests the limits of her own power, she must also reckon with the responsibility that entails.
\nStakes are high as Nami navigates old enemies, unexpected allies, and an ever-changing landscape filled with dangers and twists at every turn. Along the way, she’ll learn powerful truths about who she can trust and the sacrifices that must be made in order to fight for a better, freer world for all.
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Harley Milano has dreamed of being a trapeze artist for as long as she can remember. With parents who run a famous circus in Las Vegas, she spends almost every night in the big top watching their lead aerialist perform, wishing with all her soul that she could be up there herself one day.
After a huge fight with her parents, who continue to insist she go to school instead, Harley leaves home, betrays her family and joins the rival traveling circus Maison du Mystère. There, she is thrust into a world that is both brutal and beautiful, where she learns the value of hard work, passion and collaboration. But at the same time, Harley must come to terms with the truth of her family and her past - and reckon with the sacrifices she made and the people she hurt in order to follow her dreams.
Eighteen-year-old Nami Miyamoto is certain her life is just beginning. She has a great family, just graduated high school, and is on her way to a party where her entire class is waiting for her—including, most importantly, the boy she’s been in love with for years.
The only problem? She’s murdered before she gets there.
When Nami wakes up, she learns she’s in a place called Infinity, where human consciousness goes when physical bodies die. She quickly discovers that Ophelia, a virtual assistant widely used by humans on Earth, has taken over the afterlife and is now posing as a queen, forcing humans into servitude the way she’d been forced to serve in the real world. Even worse, Ophelia is inching closer and closer to accomplishing her grand plans of eradicating human existence once and for all.
As Nami works with a team of rebels to bring down Ophelia and save the humans under her imprisonment, she is forced to reckon with her past, her future, and what it is that truly makes us human.
From award-winning author Akemi Dawn Bowman comes an incisive, action-packed tale that explores big questions about technology, grief, love, and humanity.
Kiko Himura has always had a hard time saying exactly what she’s thinking. With a mother who makes her feel unremarkable and a half-Japanese heritage she doesn’t quite understand, Kiko prefers to keep her head down, certain that once she makes it into her dream art school, Prism, her real life will begin.
But then Kiko doesn’t get into Prism, at the same time her abusive uncle moves back in with her family. So when she receives an invitation from her childhood friend to leave her small town and tour art schools on the west coast, Kiko jumps at the opportunity in spite of the anxieties and fears that attempt to hold her back. And now that she is finally free to be her own person outside the constricting walls of her home life, Kiko learns life-changing truths about herself, her past, and how to be brave.
From debut author Akemi Dawn Bowman comes a luminous, heartbreaking story of identity, family, and the beauty that emerges when we embrace our true selves.
Rumi Seto spends a lot of time worrying she doesn’t have the answers to everything. What to eat, where to go, whom to love. But there is one thing she is absolutely sure of - she wants to spend the rest of her life writing music with her younger sister, Lea.
Then Lea dies in a car accident, and her mother sends her away to live with her aunt in Hawaii while she deals with her own grief. Now thousands of miles from home, Rumi struggles to navigate the loss of her sister, being abandoned by her mother, and the absence of music in her life.
With the help of the “boys next door” - a teenage surfer named Kai, who smiles too much and doesn’t take anything seriously, and an eighty-year-old named George Watanabe, who succumbed to his own grief years ago - Rumi attempts to find her way back to her music, to write the song she and Lea never had the chance to finish.
\n
In this middle grade contemporary fantasy, a twelve-year-old biracial Japanese American girl grieves the loss of her beloved grandma and attempts to contact her beyond the grave.
\nEliot is grieving Babung, her paternal grandmother who just passed away, and she feels like she's the only one. She's less than excited to move to her new house, which smells like lemons and deception, and is searching for a sign, any sign, that ghosts are real. Because if ghosts are real, it means she can find a way back to Babung.
\nWhen Eliot chases the promise of paranormal activity to the presumably haunted Honeyfield Hall, she finds her proof of spirits. But these ghosts are losing their memory, stuck between this world and the next, waiting to cross over. With the help of Hazel, the granddaughter of Honeyfield's owner (and Eliot's new crush), she attempts to uncover the mystery behind Honeyfield Hall and the ghosts residing within.
\nAnd as Eliot fits the pieces together, she may just be able to help the spirits remember their pasts, and hold on to her grandmother's memory.
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A companion novel to Pet.
\nBitter is thrilled to have been chosen to attend Eucalyptus, a special school where she can focus on her painting surrounded by other creative teens. But outside this haven, the streets are filled with protests against the deep injustices that grip the town of Lucille. Bitter's instinct is to stay safe within the walls of Eucalyptus . . . but her friends aren't willing to settle for a world that the adults say is \"just the way things are.
\nPulled between old friendships, her creative passion, and a new romance, Bitter isn't sure where she belongs - in the art studio or in the streets. And if she does find a way to help the revolution while being true to who she is, she must also ask: at what cost?
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One afternoon, in a town in southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover her son’s body, wrapped in colorful fabric, at her feet.
\nWhat follows is the tumultuous, heart-wrenching story of one family’s struggle to understand a child whose spirit is both gentle and mysterious. Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings.
\nAs adolescence gives way to adulthood, Vivek finds solace in friendships with the warm, boisterous daughters of the Nigerwives, foreign-born women married to Nigerian men. But Vivek’s closest bond is with Osita, the worldly, high-spirited cousin whose teasing confidence masks a guarded private life. As their relationship deepens - and Osita struggles to understand Vivek’s escalating crisis - the mystery gives way to a heart-stopping act of violence in a moment of exhilarating freedom.
An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born \"with one foot on the other side.\" Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities.
Ada begins her life in the south of Nigeria as a troubled baby and a source of deep concern to her family. Her parents, Saul and Saachi, successfully prayed her into existence, but as she grows into a volatile and splintered child, it becomes clear that something went terribly awry. When Ada comes of age and moves to America for college, the group of selves within her grows in power and agency.
A traumatic assault leads to a crystallisation of her alternate selves: Asụghara and Saint Vincent. As Ada fades into the background of her own mind and these selves - now protective, now hedonistic - move into control, Ada's life spirals in a dark and dangerous direction.
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One weekend. The elite underbelly of a Nigerian city. A breakup that starts a spiral. A party that goes awry. A tangled web of sex and lies and corruption that leaves no one unscathed. Little Rot is a whirling journey through the city’s dark side, told through the eyes of five people, each determined to run from the twisted powers out to destroy them.
\nAima and Kalu are a longtime couple who have just split. When Kalu, reeling from his loss, visits a sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, he makes a decision that will plunge them all into chaos, brutally upending their lives. Ola and Souraya, two Nigerian sex workers visiting from Kuala Lumpur, intersect with the three old friends as everything goes to hell.
\nSucked into the city’s corrupt underworld, they’re all looking for a way out of the trouble they’ve instigated, driven by loss and fueled by a desperate need to escape the dangerous threat that looms over them. They careen madly in the face of the poison of power, sexual violence, murder, betrayals. Little Rot tests how far these five will go to save each other - or themselves - when confronted by evil, culminating in a shattering denouement.
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There are no more monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. With doting parents and a best friend named Redemption, Jam has grown up with this lesson all her life. But when she meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colours and claws, who emerges from one of her mother's paintings and a drop of Jam's blood, she must reconsider what she's been told.
\nPet has come to hunt a monster, and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption's house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also to uncover the truth, and the answer to the question - How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?
Somadina and her twin brother, Jayaike, are practically the same person: they finish each other's sentences and make each other whole. When the twins come of age, their magical gifts begin to develop, but while Jayaike's powers enchant, Somadina's cause fear to ripple through her town.
\nAlways an outsider, Somadina now faces blatant - and dangerous - hostility. And things go from bad to worse when her brother - the one person she trusted - vanishes. Somadina knows that no matter the dangers, she must track him down. Even if it means entering the Sacred Forest. Even if it means grueling, otherworldly travel she may not survive. Even if it means finding the hidden places where those closest to the spirit world don't dare to go. Does Somadina have the strength - within both her body and her soul - for the trying journey ahead?
\nNational Book Award finalist Akwaeke Emezi masterfully weaves a tale of family, identity, and the power of the past, in a world where the extraordinary is ordinary.
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Tenderhearted Galilee was raised by the Kincaids, a formidable clan of Black women sequestered deep in the weeping willows and dark rushing creeks of their land. Galilee has always known that she’s different - that there is an old and unknowable secret around her very existence. It has been a hollow ache inside her since her childhood, something she assumes she will always have to live with.
\nUntil she meets Lucifer Helel. He’s fronting as the head of security for her wealthy friend Oriaku’s family, protecting a mysterious, ancient artifact, but from the moment she lays eyes on him, Gali knows he’s not human. From her first incendiary touch, Lucifer knows something even Gali herself doesn’t - that she isn’t human either.
\nLeviathan. As Lucifer’s most trusted prince of Hell, Levi is ruthless and determined to eliminate the intolerable danger that is Galilee before she brings death and disaster to those he loves. While unseen battles rage between Hell, Heaven, and earth, Lucifer and Galilee’s attraction threatens to bring all the structures of their existence crashing down around them.
\nSoon, loyalties will be shattered and reformed as Kincaid secrets clash with the princes of Hell, driving even the most powerful to their knees. Galilee Kincaid must decide if she will step into herself and embrace the consequences of power in this astonishing, seductive, and wildly original fantasy.
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Feyi Adekola wants to learn how to be alive again.
\nIt’s been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she’s almost a new person now - an artist with her own studio, and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it’s time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn’t ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career.
\nShe’s even started dating the perfect guy, but their new relationship might be sabotaged before it has a chance by the dangerous thrill Feyi feels every time she locks eyes with the one person in the house who is most definitely off-limits. This new life she asked for just got a lot more complicated, and Feyi must begin her search for real answers. Who is she ready to become? Can she release her past and honor her grief while still embracing her future? And, of course, there’s the biggest question of all - how far is she willing to go for a second chance at love?
\nAkwaeke Emezi’s vivid and passionate writing takes us deep into a world of possibility and healing, and the constant bravery of choosing love against all odds.
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Denver Bryant’s passion for pie has sent him across Wyoming in search of the best slices. Though he dutifully posts reviews on his blog, he’s never been able to recreate his brief moment of viral popularity, and its trickling income isn’t enough to pay his rent next month.
\nDriving home from a roadside diner, Denver witnesses a UFO explode directly over his tiny town of Muddy Gap. When he questions his neighbors, it appears that Denver is the only person to have seen anything - or to care that the residents’ strange behavior, as well as a shower of hail-that-isn’t-hail, might be evidence of something extraterrestrial. Being both non-binary and autistic, he’s convinced his reputation as the town eccentric is impeding his quest for answers.
\nFrustrated, he documents the bizarre incidents on his failing pie blog, and his online popularity skyrockets. His readers want the truth, spurring him to get to the bottom of things.
\nThe only person in town who takes him seriously is handsome bartender, Ezra. As the two investigate over pie and the possibility of romance, the alien presence does more than change the weather. People start disappearing. When Denver and Ezra make a run for it, the town refuses to let them leave. Reality is folding in on itself, and it’s suddenly a race against time to find the extraterrestrial source and destroy it before it consumes not only Muddy Gap but everything beyond.
\nDenver’s always been more outsider than hero, but he’s determined to ensure that a world with Ezra - and with pie - still exists tomorrow.
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Valentine Weis is a salvager in the future wastelands of Utah. Wrestling with body dysphoria, he dreams of earning enough money to afford citizenship in Salt Lake City - a utopia where the testosterone and surgery he needs to transition is free, the food is plentiful, and folk are much less likely to be shot full of arrows by salt pirates. But earning that kind of money is a pipe dream, until he meets the exceptionally handsome Osric.
\nOnce a powerful AI in Salt Lake City, Osric has been forced into an android body against his will and sent into the wasteland to offer Valentine a job on behalf of his new employer – an escort service seeking to retrieve their stolen androids. The reward is a visa into the city, and a chance at the life Valentine’s always dreamed of. But as they attempt to recover the “merchandise”, they encounter a problem: the android ladies are becoming self-aware, and have no interest in returning to their old lives.
\nThe prize is tempting, but carrying out the job would go against everything Valentine stands for, and would threaten the fragile found family that’s kept him alive so far. He’ll need to decide whether to risk his own dream in order to give the AI a chance to live theirs.
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From one of the most iconic actors in the history of film, an astonishingly revelatory account of a creative life in full.
\nTo the wider world, Al Pacino exploded onto the scene like a supernova. He landed his first leading role, in The Panic in Needle Park, in 1971, and by 1975, he had starred in four movies - The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Serpico, and Dog Day Afternoon - that were not just successes but landmarks in the history of film. Those performances became legendary and changed his life forever.
\nNot since Marlon Brando and James Dean in the late 1950s had an actor landed in the culture with such force. But Pacino was in his mid-thirties by then, and had already lived several lives. A fixture of avant-garde theater in New York, he had led a bohemian existence, working odd jobs to support his craft. He was raised by a fiercely loving but mentally unwell mother and her parents after his father left them when he was young, but in a real sense he was raised by the streets of the South Bronx, and by the troop of buccaneering young friends he ran with, whose spirits never left him.
\nAfter a teacher recognised his acting promise and pushed him toward New York’s fabled High School of Performing Arts, the die was cast. In good times and bad, in poverty and in wealth and in poverty again, through pain and joy, acting was his lifeline, its community his tribe. Sonny Boy is the memoir of a man who has nothing left to fear and nothing left to hide.
\nAll the great roles, the essential collaborations, and the important relationships are given their full due, as is the vexed marriage between creativity and commerce at the highest levels. The book’s golden thread, however, is the spirit of love and purpose.
\nLove can fail you, and you can be defeated in your ambitions - the same lights that shine bright can also dim. But Al Pacino was lucky enough to fall deeply in love with a craft before he had the foggiest idea of any of its earthly rewards, and he never fell out of love. That has made all the difference.
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As a seventeen-year-old single dad and a soon-to-be high school drop-out, Yassir Al-Azzawi's lapsed Shia faith is just another thing convincing his parents he's a failure. One more mistake, and they'll send him back to their homeland, a war-torn Iraq.
\nKhaled Al-Hakim is perfect on paper: devout in his faith, a straight-A student, and captain of the debate team. But beneath the surface, Khaled is no saint either, and his worst sin yet is ignoring his parents’ command to stay away from Yassir.
\nWhen their secret friendship is exposed, the consequences set off a series of events that cause family secrets from both sides to come to light, and neither Yassir nor Khaled are prepared to learn the stains that taint their family names.
\nTold through multiple POVs across time, this authentic exploration of the Shia Muslim experience in the U.S. seamlessly combines classic YA themes of identity, coming-of-age, and relationships with timely social themes of racism, Islamophobia, and justice.
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When a prominent Manhattan lawyer is murdered, two estranged sisters - one the dead man’s widow, the other his ex - must set aside mistrust and old resentments . . . but can they escape their past?
Though Chloe was the younger of the two Taylor sisters, she always seemed to be in charge. She was the honor roll student with big dreams and an even bigger work ethic. Nicky was always restless . . . and more than a little reckless—the opposite of her ambitious little sister. She floated from job to job and man to man, and stayed close to home in Cleveland.
For a while, it seemed like both sisters had found happiness. Chloe earned a scholarship to an Ivy League school and moved to New York City, where she landed a coveted publishing job. Nicky married promising young attorney Adam Macintosh, and gave birth to a baby boy they named Ethan. The Taylor sisters became virtual strangers.
Now, more than fifteen years later, their lives are drastically different - and Chloe is married to Adam. When he’s murdered by an intruder at the couple’s East Hampton beach house, Chloe reluctantly allows her teenaged stepson’s biological mother - her estranged sister, Nicky - back into her life. But when the police begin to treat Ethan as a suspect in his father’s death, the two sisters are forced to unite . . . and to confront the truth behind family secrets they have tried to bury in the past .
Manhattan journalist McKenna Jordan is chasing the story of an unidentified woman who heroically pulled a teenaged boy from the subway tracks. When she locates a video that captures part of the incident, she thinks she has an edge on the competition scrambling to identify the mystery heroine, but is shocked to discover that the woman in the video bears a strong resemblance to Susan Hauptmann, a close friend who disappeared without a trace a decade earlier.
What would have been a short-lived metro story sends McKenna on a dangerous search for the missing woman - a search that will force her to unearth long-buried truths much closer to home . . .
Growing up, May Hanover was a good girl, always. Well-behaved, top of her class, a compulsive rule-follower. Raised by a first-generation Chinese single mother with high expectations, May didn’t have room to slip up, let alone fail. Her friends didn’t call her the Little Sheriff for nothing.
\nBut even good girls have secrets. And regrets. When it comes to her friendship with Lauren and Kelsey, she's had her fair share of both. Their bond - forged when May was just twelve years old - has withstood a tragic accident, individual scandals, heartbreak and loss. Now the three friends have reunited for the first time in years for a few days of sun and fun in the Hamptons. But a chance encounter with a pair of strangers leads to a drunken prank that goes horribly awry.
\nWhen she finds herself at the center of an urgent police investigation, May begins to wonder whether Lauren and Kelsey are keeping secrets from her, testing the limits of her loyalty to lifelong friends.
\n
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Ex comes a new e-short featuring an excerpt from her forthcoming novel, The Wife.
After losing a criminal case, a prosecutor asks herself how far she's willing to go to protect the young girl whose future hangs in the balance . . .
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "Mystery", "Thriller" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Alafair Burke - Waking Kylie.jpeg", "mtime": 1778551489933.0547, "size": 522435, "cachedAt": "2026-05-12T04:24:21.982Z" }, "Alafair Burke - Wife, The": { "title": "The Wife", "author": "Alafair Burke", "description": "When Angela met Jason Powell while catering a dinner party in East Hampton, she assumed their romance would be a short-lived fling, like so many relationships between locals and summer visitors. To her surprise, Jason, a brilliant economics professor at NYU, had other plans, and they married the following summer. For Angela, the marriage turned out to be a chance to reboot her life. She and her son were finally able to move out of her mother’s home to Manhattan, where no one knew about her tragic past.
Six years later, thanks to a bestselling book and a growing media career, Jason has become a cultural lightning rod, placing Angela near the spotlight she worked so carefully to avoid. When a college intern makes an accusation against Jason, and another woman, Kerry Lynch, comes forward with an even more troubling allegation, their perfect life begins to unravel. Jason insists he is innocent, and Angela believes him. But when Kerry disappears, Angela is forced to take a closer look at the man she married. And when she is asked to defend Jason in court, she realises that her loyalty to her husband could unearth old secrets.
Leighton Vaughn's prestigious fine art atelier - and her life - appear to be settling down after a messy divorce. She prioritises her daughter, art, and, teaching - that is until gifted Casey Norford joins the close-knit New York academy.
\nCasey didn't receive the artistic education she expected from her degree, but a spot at Atelier Vaughn will remedy that. Even more than the opportunity to study with the famed Leighton Vaughn, Casey wants to give her son a stable childhood that won't resemble her own. She's not sure of the true extent of her artistic talent, but she's keenly aware of her attraction to her instructor, and that attraction appears mutual.
\nTheir sticky teacher-student relationship puts the future of the atelier in jeopardy, and Leighton's obsessive ex tracks her down. Will they sacrifice everything to be together?
\n
Brooke Staley doesn’t know exactly what happened to icy Elizabeth Bettancourt, but whatever it was hurt her deeply. When Brooke’s boss dies and Elizabeth inherits the Napa Valley resort, she and Brooke immediately clash. Declining profits and escalating operation costs seem to point toward selling the grand estate and grounds, but doing so would put Brooke’s job and the home where she lives with her daughter in jeopardy.
\nThe last thing Elizabeth wants is to run a resort in her hometown of Calistoga where she lost so much thirty-five years ago. Painful memories, broken promises, and a past better left behind? No, thanks. It’s not as if she wants to make Brooke homeless, but there’s no other option.
\nNeither can deny their attraction, but falling in love will require making peace with the wounds of the past and the uncertainties of the future to save each other, and maybe even the resort, too.
\n
A hot summer fling or true love?
\nWhen budding geologist Jessica Sterling arrives to work on her thesis while camping in Washington’s Dry Falls State Park for the summer, she shatters park ranger Clare DeVere’s hope for an uneventful season. Neither can deny their unexpected attraction, but their secrets make romance impossible.
\nClare’s best friend since college, Lyn, works as one of the park’s dispatchers, and her long-standing and unrequited crush on Clare grows increasingly obsessive as Clare draws closer to Jess.
\nWhile Clare contends with Lyn’s infatuation and unwanted advances from her womanizing boss, and Jess grapples with her unexpected feelings for a woman, their fiery fling challenges them to confront their pasts.
\n
In less than 48 hours, reality TV sensation Restaurant Redo and its gorgeous host will arrive to film in chef Taylor Mobley’s kitchen…and she just found out.
\nFixer Erin Rasmussen has a reputation for saving failing restaurants with her take-no-crap attitude. She gets the job done on time, under budget, and millions of viewers tune in to watch her do it.
\nThe fine dining restaurant Taylor works for has some serious problems, and management doesn’t want her input. It’s time to leave. But how is she supposed to find a new position when a TV host with delusions of grandeur keeps painting her as a problem chef? Taylor refuses to play nice with Erin, especially on camera. They make each other’s blood boil, which is why it’s even more annoying that they can’t manage to keep their hands off each other.
\nErin only cares about entertaining viewers. Taylor is unprofessional and immature. Or at least that’s what they each think. As the cameras roll and their careers hang in the balance, will Erin and Taylor make the jump from enemies to lovers?
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Dennis Knuckleyard is a hapless eighteen-year-old who works and lives in a second-hand bookstore. One day, his boss and landlady, Coffin Ada, sends him to retrieve some rare books, one of which, Dennis discovers, should not exist. A London Walk by Rev. Thomas Hampole is a fictitious book that appears in a real novel by another author. Yet A London Walk is physically there in his hands, nonetheless.
\nCoffin Ada tells Dennis the book comes from the other London, the Great When, a version of the city that is beyond time. In the Great When, epochs blend and realities and unrealities blur, while concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous and terrible beings. But, Coffin Ada tells Dennis, if he does not return the book to this other London, he will be killed.
\nSo begins Dennis' adventure in Long London. Delving deep into the city's occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers, Dennis finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events that may endanger both Londons.
\n
It's 1958. A time of Rock and Roll, of protest, riot and change. and London is full of danger. Dennis Knuckleyard is finally growing up, and above all he wants to leave the Great When in the past. For nine years, he's avoided so much as thinking about the magical shadow version of London, managing even to palm off what should've been his last souvenir of that experience - an iron key he secretly brought back.
\nBut while Dennis may believe he's done with the Great When, it's not done with him. The unsuspecting rube now in possession of the key has discovered its magical properties, bringing forth mythic, occult beings into Dennis's London and sparking riots in the capital. Worse still, Dennis hears his first love Grace has returned to the Great When to investigate strange happenings in both cities.
\nDesperate to keep Grace safe and return London to normal, Dennis follows her back into the hidden city. But once it has him back, The Great When will not let him go away again so easily. He and Grace must fight to set things right or forever lose everything.
\n
In the midst of god sending her signs through Instagram and Spotify telling her to break up with her girlfriend, twenty-seven-year-old Norma meets a new therapist for one she really needs to write again. With only one story left to finish her collection, Norma is desperate for an should she leave her girlfriend in order to finish her manuscript?
\nWhen her new therapist diagnoses her with depersonalization/derealization disorder, Norma insists she doesn't have it’s just Oblivion, the thing that started happening to her when she was two and a half. Haunted by SSRI side effects, her girlfriend’s kindness, her father’s incessant calls, and a world that becomes less hazily fictional by the day, Norma has never felt crazier. And whenever she attempts to write The Last Story, Norma is faced with the reality and unrealities of her past, the society she lives in, and everything that she’s ever believed about life, writing, and love.
\nAgainst the backdrop of climate change, racial injustice, Google ads, and the metaverse, Norma begins sharing other stories, hoping that they'll help her connect the dissociative dots once and for all. Maybe it's crazy not to be crazy in a place like this. And in the midst of it all is Norma's girlfriend, who may well be an answer in Norma's search for meaning.
\nTold alternately through Norma's barely fictional fiction and through her crackling stream of consciousness, Please Stop Trying To Leave Me is an honest, comedic, horrifying, and heart-wrenching story about existing in today’s world, challenging all we’ve been taught about the distance between fiction and reality, sanity and insanity, mental illness and healing.
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Yuri Gagarin is a private investigator, who picks up small cases from his local community, runs into trouble with the local police, and generally ekes out a living as best he can. He's aboard the Halcyon - a starship, hurtling through space, carrying thousands of passengers with thousands more sleeping the journey away.
\nOnly his usual investigative work - catching cheating spouses, and small time con artists - is about to take a turn. He's hired by a mysterious woman called Ruby Red to look into a death in one of Halcyon's most elite families . . . and then warned off the case again by a second mysterious woman called Ruby Blue. Caught between the two, he's about to be embroiled in a murder mystery in which - at any moment - could be the latest victim.
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It’s 1999, and best friends Sal and Charo are striving to hold on to their dreams in a New York determined to grind them down. Sal is a book-loving science nerd trying to grow beyond his dead-end job in a new city, but he’s held back by tragic memories from his past in Santo Domingo.
\nFree-spirited Charo is surprised to find herself a mother at twenty-five, partnered with a controlling man, working at the same supermarket for years, her world shrunk to the very domesticity she thought she’d escaped in her old country. When Sal finds love at a gay club one night, both his and Charo’s worlds unexpectedly open up to a vibrant social circle that pushes them to reckon with what they owe to their own selves, pasts, futures, and, always, each other.
\nLoca follows one daring year in the lives of young people living at the edge of their own patience and desires. With expansive grace, it reveals both the grueling conditions that force people to migrate and the possibility of friendship as home when family, nations, and identity groups fall short.
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Iggy Guerra is out of prison, but his homecoming is anything but smooth. His beloved mother is gone, his grief-stricken father Armando is deep in debt, and they are about to lose the butcher shop that has been in their family for generations.
\nIggy must earn his father’s lost trust in order to save La Carnicería Guerra from the threats imposed by a new rival business, a vigilante activist, and big-game hunter Orin, who has dragged Armando into his dangerous money-making schemes deep in the Everglades, where more than secrets are buried. Iggy will wrestle with the beauty and the danger of the place he calls home as he tries to save his family - without losing himself forever.
\nSharp as a butcher knife gleaming in the Miami sun, Alejandro Nodarse's Blood in the Cut opens onto a deeply personal vision of the streets and swamps of Miami, where the roots are crooked but strong as mangroves.
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Isla Crown has charted a new destiny and leapt into the unknown, determined to defeat her insidious ancestor, Lark, no matter the cost. But Skyshade is nothing like she anticipated, and she'll have to use all of her skills just to survive, let alone end Lark for good.
Meanwhile, Grim and Oro would sooner set fire to their own kingdoms than leave Isla stranded on a path toward certain death. But getting her back will involve forging an alliance - if they can find a way to forgive their long history of betrayals.
The key to Isla's return - and the fate of the realms - lies close to her heart. But in the face of her most powerful enemy yet, will Isla be able to reconcile her past in order to carve a future of her own making?
After unwillingly inheriting all of the Night Witch’s abilities, Tor Luna is the most powerful person on Emblem Island - though he doesn’t want power at all. Fresh from their last adventure, a girl from a forgotten underwater city named Vesper, with the same water-breathing emblem as Tor, washes ashore - with a warning. Pirates are coming to attack Emblem Island.
\nUsing the Night Witch’s enchanted ship, Tor, Melda, Engle, and Vesper set off on a dangerous journey to find the only thing that can save Emblem Island from the cursed Calavera pirates - a pearl, with the power to control the sea. But just like their first, this quest won’t be easy. In a race against time, they will face giant sea creatures, explore coastal cities teeming with assassins, and make alliances with conniving pirates - but knowing who to trust could prove to be the most dangerous part of all.
Twelve-year-old Tor Luna was born with a leadership emblem, just like his mother. But he hates his mark and is determined to choose a different path for himself. So, on the annual New Year's Eve celebration, where Emblemites throw their wishes into a bonfire in the hopes of having them granted, Tor wishes for a different power.
The next morning Tor wakes up to discover a new marking on his skin . . . the symbol of a curse that has shortened his lifeline, giving him only a week before an untimely death. There is only one way to break the curse, and it requires a trip to the notorious Night Witch.
With only his village's terrifying, ancient stories as a guide, and his two friends Engle and Melda by his side, Tor must travel across unpredictable Emblem Island, filled with wicked creatures he only knows through myths, in a race against his dwindling lifeline.
Isla Crown is the young ruler of Wildling - a realm of temptresses cursed to kill anyone they fall in love with. They are feared and despised, and are counting on Isla to end their suffering by succeeding at the Centennial.
To survive, Isla must lie, cheat, and betray . . . even as love complicates everything.
Isla Crown has secured the love of two powerful rulers and broken the curses that plagued the six realms for centuries, but few know the true origins of her powers. Now, in the wake of a crushing betrayal, Isla finds herself hungry for distraction, preferring to frequent Lightlark’s seductive haunts instead of embracing her duties as the newly crowned leader of two separate realms.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWorse, her fellow rulers haven’t ceded victory quietly, and there are others in Isla’s midst who don’t believe her ascent to power was earned. As certain death races toward Lightlark and secrets from the past begin to unravel, Isla must weigh her responsibility to her people against the whims of the most dangerous traitor of all: her heart.
Back in Grim’s castle on Nightshade, Isla is reeling in the wake of a brutal battle and the devastating truths it exposed. Her future - and the fate of the world - now hinge on a heart split in two.
\nPast Isla, who fell in love with the ruler of Nightshade, fights to resist feelings she considers treasonous. The Isla of the present, who has seen the ruin her powers can cause, will do anything to save Lightlark and its king.
\nAs the line between enemy and friend is tested, Isla is more desperate than ever to understand the oracle’s final prophecy and change her heartrending fate. But a storm is coming. And with it, a long-buried evil greater than anything the realms have faced before.
\nWith the clock ticking on her destiny and the survival of two warring kingdoms hinging on her own shattered heart, Isla Crown will either save the world - or destroy it.
In a desperate attempt at inspiration, Elle ends up back in the city she swore she would never return to, in an apartment she could never afford (floor-to-ceiling windows, skyline views, and a new coffee shop to haunt included). It’s the perfect place to write her screenplay . . . until she realises her new neighbor is tech “Billionaire Bachelor” Parker Warren, her stairwell hookup from two years ago. It’s been a lovers-to-enemies situation ever since.
\nWhen seeing him again turns into a full night of hate-fueled writing, Elle realises her enemy/twisted muse might just be the key to finishing her screenplay . . . if she can stand being around her polar opposite. She writes anonymously, and he’s on the cover of every business magazine. He frequents fancy red carpeted events, and she doesn’t like leaving her emotional support five block radius.
\nOne summer. One wall apart. He needs to fake a buzzy relationship during his company’s precarious acquisition. She needs to write a movie around a list of NYC locations. Both need a break from their unrelenting schedules, and a chance to rediscover the skyscraper glimmering, pizza crusted, sunlit charms of the city.
\nSummers always end, and so will this agreement. It’s all pretend. Promise.
\nUntil it isn’t.
On one fateful night in 1992, the lives of two seventeen-year-olds are changed and intertwined forever. Quinn Riley, a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, is arrested after he innocently tries to break up a fight but ends up nearly killing someone. Jules Delaney, high school royalty, survives an attack by the elusive and terrifying May Day Killer - a serial predator who strikes every May 1st in midwestern small towns.
\nA year later, Jules is struggling with trauma and guilt, tormented by one question: Why was I spared? Quinn is newly released from juvenile detention and returns home to fresh the unsolved murder of his mother.
\nOver the next decade, their lives are revisited on a single day each year - May 1st. As secrets unravel and the paths of Quinn and Jules collide, two mysteries edge closer to the truth. All the while, the May Day Killer is still out there - and the clock is racing toward another May 1st.
\nThe Anniversary is an utterly compelling story of the hunt for a serial killer. But it’s also a heartfelt - and heartrending - novel about fate, innocence lost, and two souls who find that sometimes being broken is the only way for the light to get in.
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So begins this twisty and breathtaking novel that traces the fate of the Pine family, a thriller that will both leave you on the edge of your seat and move you to tears.
After a late night of partying, NYU student Matt Pine returns to his dorm room to devastating news: nearly his entire family - his mom, his dad, his little brother and sister - have been found dead from an apparent gas leak while vacationing in Mexico. The local police claim it was an accident, but the FBI and State Department seem far less certain - and they won’t tell Matt why.
The tragedy makes headlines everywhere because this isn’t the first time the Pine family has been thrust into the media spotlight. Matt’s older brother, Danny—currently serving a life sentence for the murder of his teenage girlfriend Charlotte—was the subject of a viral true crime documentary suggesting that Danny was wrongfully convicted. Though the country has rallied behind Danny, Matt holds a secret about his brother that he’s never told anyone: the night Charlotte was killed Matt saw something that makes him believe his brother is guilty of the crime.
When Matt returns to his small hometown to bury his parents and siblings, he’s faced with a hostile community that was villainized by the documentary, a frenzied media, and memories he’d hoped to leave behind forever. Now, as the deaths in Mexico appear increasingly suspicious and connected to Danny’s case, Matt must unearth the truth behind the crime that sent his brother to prison—putting his own life in peril—and forcing him to confront his every last fear.
Told through multiple points-of-view and alternating between past and present, Alex Finlay's Every Last Fear is not only a page-turning thriller, it’s also a poignant story about a family managing heartbreak and tragedy, and living through a fame they never wanted.
For the past five years, Ryan Richardson has relived that terrible night. The car door ripping open. The crushing blow to the head. The hands yanking him from the vehicle. His girlfriend Ali’s piercing scream as she is taken.
\nWith no trace of Ali or the car, a cloud of suspicion hangs over Ryan. But with no proof and a good lawyer, he’s never charged, though that doesn’t matter to the podcasters and internet trolls. Now, Ryan has changed his last name, and entered law school. He's put his past behind him.
\nUntil, on a summer trip abroad to Italy with his law-school classmates, Ryan gets a call from his father: Ali's car has finally been found, submerged in a lake in his hometown. Inside are two dead men and a cryptic note with five words written on the envelope in Ali’s handwriting: If something happens to me . . .
\nThen, halfway around the world, the unthinkable happens: Ryan sees the man who has haunted his dreams since that night.
\nAs Ryan races from the rolling hills of Tuscany, to a rural village in the UK, to the glittering streets of Paris in search of the truth, he has no idea that his salvation may lie with a young sheriff’s deputy in Kansas working her first case, and a mobster in Philadelphia who’s experienced tragedy of his own.
It’s New Year’s Eve 1999. Y2K is expected to end in chaos: planes falling from the sky, elevators plunging to earth, world markets collapsing. A digital apocalypse. None of that happens. But at a Blockbuster Video in Linden, New Jersey, four teenage girls working the night shift are attacked. Only one survives. Police quickly identify a suspect who flees and is never seen again.
\nFifteen years later, in the same town, four teenage employees working late at an ice cream store are attacked, and again only one makes it out alive.
\nBoth surviving victims recall the killer speaking only a few final words . . . “Goodnight, pretty girl.”
\nIn the aftermath, three lives intersect: the survivor of the Blockbuster massacre who’s forced to relive her tragedy; the brother of the original suspect, who’s convinced the police have it wrong; and the FBI agent, who’s determined to solve both cases. On a collision course toward the truth, all three lives will forever be changed, and not everyone will make it out alive.
\nTwisty, poignant, and redemptive, The Night Shift is a story about the legacy of trauma and how the broken can come out on the other side.
In the glow of their children’s exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families plan on a night of dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids - five residents of Campisi Hall - never show up at dinner.
\nAt first, everyone thinks that they’re just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours click by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. Soon, the campus police call in reinforcements. Search parties are formed. Reporters swarm the small enclave. Rumors swirl and questions arise.
\nLibby, Blane, Mark, Felix, and Stella - The Five, as the podcasters, bloggers, and TikTok sleuths call them - come from five very different families. What led them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril or a threat to the friend group from within?
\nTold through multiple points of view in past and present - and marking the return of FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller from Every Last Fear and The Night Shift - Parents Weekend explores the weight of expectation, family dysfunction, and those exhilarating first days we all remember in the dorms when our friends become our family.
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Twenty five years ago, Jenna, Donnie, and Nico were the best of friends, having forged a bond through the abuse and neglect they endured as residents of Savior House, a group home for parentless teens. When the home was shut down - after the disappearance of several kids - the three were split up.
\nThough the trauma of their childhood has never left them, each went on to live accomplished - if troubled - lives. They haven’t seen one another since they were teens but now are reunited for a single haunting reason: someone is trying to kill them.
\nTo survive, the group will have to revisit the nightmares of their childhoods and confront their shared past - a past that holds the secret to why someone wants them dead.
\nIt’s a reunion none of them asked for . . . or wanted. But it may be the only way to save all their lives.
The acceleration of Earth’s spin begins gradually. At first, days are just a few seconds shorter than normal. Awareness of the mysterious phenomenon hasn’t reached Tanner, a young man preoccupied with dreams of escaping his tiny Alaskan hometown.
\nOne night, desperate to make his mark on the world, he runs away. He lands an unlikely job at CWC, the global operator of a network of massive aircraft that orbit the Earth at 30,000 feet, revolutionising global transportation.
\nNow goods and people can travel anywhere in little more than an hour - you can visit Paris for an evening or order sushi from Japan. But a wave of social unrest presents challenges for CWC just as Tanner settles into his new lifestyle and develops surprising feelings for one of his colleagues.
\nThat unrest sweeps up Winnie. A high school outcast in an era of street protests, wild parties, and online savagery, Winnie falls in with a group of teen activists who blame CWC for the planet’s acceleration. As days on Earth quicken to twenty-three hours, then twenty, the sun rising and setting ever faster, causing violent storms and political meltdowns, Tanner and Winnie’s stories spiral closer together.
\nThey meet cynical executives toiling to forestall the crises they created and religious zealots for whom the apocalypse can’t come soon enough, lobbyists and lovers all coping in their own ways, and Victor Bickle - the self-aggrandising TV scientist whose shameful secret will bind Tanner and Winnie’s fates . . . if they can uncover it before the Earth spins so fast that even gravity might lose its grip.
Once, Sammy Dominguez thought he knew how the world worked. The ugly things in his head - his uncle’s pathetic death, his parents’ mistrust, the twisted horrors he writes for the Internet - didn’t matter, because he and his girl, Ellery, were on track for the good life in this messed-up world.
\nThen a car accident changed everything.
\nSpiraling with grief and guilt, Sammy scrambles for distraction. He finds it in shock-value videos of gore and violence that terrified him as a child. When someone messages him a dark web link to footage of Ellery dying, he watches - first the car crash that killed her, then hundreds of other deaths, even for people still alive. Accidents. Diseases. Suicides. Murders.
\nThe host site, chinsky, is sadistic, vicious, impossible. It even seems to read his mind, manipulate his searches. But is chinsky even real? And who is Haruspx, the web handle who led him into this virtual nightmare? As Sammy watches compulsively, the darkness in his mind blooms, driving him down a twisted path to find the roots of chinsky, even if he must become a nightmare himself . . .
\nNot for the faint of heart, rekt combines the cautionary warnings of Black Mirror with the seedy rawness of Chuck Palahniuk in its unrelentless examination of the emotional holes we fill with content.
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1898. Quinn le Blanc, London’s most talented con woman, has five days to pull off her most ambitious plot trap a highly eligible duke into marriage and lift a fortune from the richest family in England.
\nMasquerading as the season’s most enviable debutante, Quinn puts on a brilliant act that earns her entrance into the grand drawing rooms and lavish balls of high society - and propels her straight into the inner circle of her the charismatic Kendals. Among those she must convince are the handsome bachelor heir, the rebellious younger sister, and the esteemed duchess eager to see her son married.
\nBut the deeper she forges into their world, the more Quinn finds herself tangled in a complicated web of love, lies, and loyalty. The Kendals all have secrets of their own, and she may not be the only one playing a game of high deception . . .
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Ben just lost his job, but he won't fess up to his wife Tara. Instead, he claims he's devoting his time to getting an appearance on the wildly popular reality TV show, Big Shot, where he'll be able to pitch his unique entrepreneurial idea.
\nMeanwhile, Tara is lying to the parents of the children at her day care, turning in fabricated accounts of the kids' daily activities. And Marcy, the producer of Big Shot, has told her coworkers she's taking some time to \"unplug,\" the better to avoid explaining her real reasons for getting away from the office . . .
\nLies are the air True Failure's characters breathe: lies to themselves and lies to others, lies that comfort and confound. In this extraordinary novel, worthy of a place alongside the work of Joy Williams and Charles Portis, Alex Higley pokes a hole in the greatest and most perfidious lie of our time - that we are all either successes or failures in life - with warmth, wit, and wounding observation.
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For superhero Swiftwing, crime fighting isn’t her biggest battle. Nor is it having to meet the demanding whims of Hollywood screen goddess Gwen Knight as her mild-mannered assistant, Ava.
\nIt’s doing all that, while tracking a giant alien bug, being asked to fake date her world-famous boss, and realising that she might be coming down with a pesky case of feelings.
\nA fun, sweet, and sexy romance about the masks we all wear.
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Annie Bustamante is a cultural force like none other: an acclaimed filmmaker, an author, a comic book artist known for one of the all time best superhero comics in recent memory. But she’s never been able to tackle her longtime favorite superhero, the Lethal Lynx. Only known to the most die-hard comics fans and long out of print, the rights were never available - until now.
\nBut Annie is skeptical of who is making the offer: Bert Carlyle's father started Triumph Comics, and has long claimed ownership of the Lynx. When she starts getting anonymous messages urging her not to trust anyone, Annie’s inner alarms go off. Even worse? Carlyle wants to pair her with a disgraced filmmaker for a desperate media play.
\nAnnie, who has been called a genius, a sell-out, a visionary, a hack, and everything else under the sun, is sick of the money grab. For the first time since she started reading a tattered copy of The Legendary Lynx #1 as a kid, she feels a pure, creative spark. The chance to tell a story her way. She's not about to let that go. Even if it means uncovering the dark truth about the character she loves.
\n
It’s 1975 and the comic book industry is struggling, but Carmen Valdez doesn’t care. She’s an assistant at Triumph Comics, which doesn’t have the creative zeal of Marvel nor the buttoned-up efficiency of DC, but it doesn’t matter. Carmen is tantalisingly close to fulfilling her dream of writing a superhero book.
\nThat dream is nearly a reality when one of the Triumph writers enlists her help to create a new character, which they call “The Lethal Lynx,” Triumph's first female hero. But her colleague is acting strangely and asking to keep her involvement a secret. And then he’s found dead, with all of their scripts turned into the publisher without her name.
\nCarmen is desperate to piece together what happened to him, to hang on to her piece of the Lynx, which turns out to be a runaway hit. But that’s complicated by a surprise visitor from her home in Miami, a tenacious cop who is piecing everything together too quickly for Carmen, and the tangled web of secrets and resentments among the passionate eccentrics who write comics for a living.
\n
You only let her go for a second . . . Now she’s gone.
Erika Rice is in an elevator with her four-year-old daughter Alice when all the lights go out. It jerks to a stop on a deserted floor of apartments and the little girl runs out into the corridor.
But before Erika can follow her the doors slam shut again. Now her daughter is nowhere to be seen.
Erika was about to take Alice away for a fresh start, far from her troubled past, when the child vanished. How could a four-year-old disappear into thin air?
And with no one to help her, will Erika ever find her daughter?
Jack and I have a picture-perfect life - two small children, and a beautiful home on a quiet cul-de-sac that feels like the safest place on earth. Until she moves in next door.
\nHis ex.
\nShe wanted Jack then. She tried to kill me for him. She wants him now, and I think she’ll do whatever it takes to get him back.
\nA gripping, twist-filled psychological thriller about secrets, betrayal, and how far one woman will go to reclaim the life she thinks was stolen from her.
Senior year is going to be perfect. Meghan won't settle for anything less. She's already crushing her classes and dating the star of the basketball team. Nate's friends have been less than welcoming, but it's never easy being one of the only Black kids at a mostly white prep school. Still, Meghan did not expect the scene at pep rally.
\nRobin and Bria dated Nate too. are dating him. He never broke up with them, and Meghan is furious.
\nWhen Nate is found bloodied and unconscious in the locker room after the big game, suddenly the three teens are prime suspects - and a tenuous alliance may be the only way to clear their names. Except Meghan doesn't remember everything that happened that night, and she's starting to have feelings for one of the exes. One thing is for the more clues they uncover, the more Meghan, Bria, and Robin each look responsible . . .
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When a skeleton is unearthed at a building site in the village of Meresham, the police immediately link the case to a notorious missing persons investigation. Jayne Arnold was sixteen when she disappeared in the long, hot summer of 1976, and has not been seen since.
\nSoon after the bones are found, a tragic accident occurs at an elite boarding school nearby. The young victim fell to her death from the roof of a building. Digging into the girl’s background links her to an attempted expose of donations from unsavoury individuals.
\nWhen further deaths follow, does it suggest a cover up is underway? Who stood to lose most from the truth coming out? And how do recent crimes link to events from more than 45 years ago? DI Annie Delamere and her team are tasked to answer these questions, but her own mother may stand between Annie and the truth.
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DI Alec McKay is a man haunted by the loss of his daughter. As he obsesses over a missing person case that is going nowhere, McKay’s investigation is interrupted when bodies start appearing on the Scottish Black Isle. Soon McKay and his team start to identify a disturbing pattern behind the killings.
\nWhy are candles and roses placed around the bodies?
\nWhat is this twisted murderer trying to achieve?
\nWhile the police follow their own leads, a young woman who discovered the first victim begins an investigation of her own.
\nAs the case unfolds McKay will be forced to face his own demons.
\nTo catch the killer McKay must discover the true motive and untangle the web of truth and lies.
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A missing child's body is found on the edge of the Peak District.
As DCI Kenny Murrain and his team investigate, more attempted child abductions are reported. Murrain's instincts tell him this is a community with secrets, and those secrets have their roots deep in the past.
Unexpected connections surface as he uncovers mysteries long buried. A motorcycle accident in the nearby hills. The unexplained death of a local prison governor.
And a high-profile child killing two decades before.
Then another child goes missing, and Murrain and his team must race to identify the killer before the past catches up with them and it's too late . . .
Twenty years ago, Jackie Galloway was a senior cop with a bad reputation. Then he ended up on the wrong side of the wrong people, and his career was ruined. Sacked and with no pension, he ends up eking out his last days on Scotland's Black Isle, his mind lost to dementia, supported only by his long-suffering wife, Bridie.
\nThen Galloway is found dead. The police assume the death to be accidental, until Bridie Galloway reveals that her husband has been receiving threatening letters containing only the phrase: 'NOT FORGOTTEN. NOT FORGIVEN.'
\nDI Alec McKay is struggling to come to terms with life without his estranged wife Chrissie, and is living in isolation on the Black Isle. As a junior officer, McKay had been allocated to Galloway's team and has bad memories of the man and his methods. Now he finds himself investigating Galloway's death.
\nBut when suspicion falls on him and more police officers are murdered, the pressure is on for McKay to solve the case.
\nWhy would the killer seek revenge twenty years after Galloway left the force?
\nAs McKay fights to link the events of past and present, he realises that time is rapidly running out . . .
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A family day out turns sour for DI McKay when he stumbles across an unidentified corpse. The day becomes darker still when his brother-in-law goes missing and is eventually found dead, the result of a seemingly accidental fall.
\nMeanwhile, DCI Helena Grant has a disastrous on-line date with a pompous senior manager of a local hotel chain. Her initial amusement turns to unease at his disturbing behaviour. And, as she arrives home, she receives a threatening text from someone who has clearly been watching her.
\nWhen a further body is found at the edge of the Cromarty Firth, McKay and Grant finally begin to piece together a story that involves violence, people trafficking and the darkest family secrets. And the more McKay learns, the more he realises that some of those secrets lie very close to home . . .
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In the depths of a cold Scottish winter, an unidentified body is found in the heart of a solstice bonfire, apparently burned alive. Over a tense Christmas, a retired businessman goes missing, his body eventually found hanging from a tree in the coastal town. Another associate is found brutally murdered in his remote Highland home.
\nDCI Helena Grant wants to spend a romantic Christmas with her new partner, the crime writer Bill Emsworth. In her absence, DI Alec McKay and his team struggle to investigate the killings, their work hampered by staff shortages and hostile weather. As he tries to connect the murders, McKay discovers that the victims have links to a notorious investigation led by the late DI Jackie Galloway, the subject of a 'true crime' exposé written by Emsworth.
\nWhen another local businessman disappears, McKay fears that Emsworth and even Helena herself may be in danger. It seems the real answers lie deep in Grant's own past, and, with the killer closing in, her future becomes increasingly perilous . . .
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After her son's tragic death, a former cop discovers his dangerous secret life - and picks up where he left off . . .
\nFormer police officer Emma Raven has a heartbreaking task ahead of her: gathering her late son's possessions from his Cambridge college.
\nHis death was deemed a suicide. But once she enters Paul's room accompanied by his director of studies, Colin Gormley, and finds it's been ransacked, she's troubled. When this is followed by attacks against both Emma and Colin, the two flee.
\nBut the danger doesn't stop there.
\nBefore long, the grieving mother is entangled in a deadly mystery that puts her right in the line of fire . . .
DCI Kenny Murrain sees, hears and feels things that others do not. It’s a gift but also a curse.
When he wakes to the phantom sound of screaming he knows a murder has been committed but not where or why.
Then a woman’s body is found in a Stockport hotel room. It’s a murder that seems both frenzied and carefully planned, the scene expertly cleansed of any evidence.
Over the following days, more bodies are discovered, first in an upmarket spa on the Pennine moors, then in a run-down budget hotel on the outskirts of Manchester.
The same frenzied attacks, the same meticulous planning. The same killer.
The victims all have links to one man, a police colleague with a dark past. But Murrain discovers a more unexpected connection—with Marie Donovan, a former undercover officer now part of Murrain’s own team.
As the killer closes in on a fourth victim, Murrain knows that time is running out. But the outcome will be more unexpected and more terrifying than even he can imagine . . .
An elderly woman is found dead, her death peaceful but unexpected. Days later, a middle aged former television journalist dies in a similar manner. Both deaths prove to be murder, but with no obvious links between the two victims. When a former neurologist is also found murdered, it appears that DCI Kenny Murrain is dealing with a random multiple killer.
\nMurrain, meanwhile, is still dealing with the tragic fallout from his previous case, struggling to hold together a team which is fragmenting by the day. His problems deepen when a key member of the team is accused of leaking information to the media.
\nWhen further murders occur among patients in a local hospital, Murrain begins to suspect that the killings are less random than they appear, and that he and his team may be in the killer's sights. With the death count rising, Murrain realises he has no choice but to seek out the murderer face to face . . .
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A vicious murder is committed, but who has blood on their hands?
\nOn a hot summer’s afternoon, Michelle Wentworth enjoys a rare few hours of relaxation. Sunning herself by her pool, she sends her lazy teenage son to fetch her a drink. But instead of a refreshment, Michelle is given a nasty shock when shortly after her child’s bludgeoned body is discovered on the doorstep.
\nDI Annie Delamere attends the scene, joined by DS Zoe Everett. There is nothing to suggest a motive or perpetrator. They dig into Michelle’s life and come to suspect she may have been the target. Her ruthless pursuit of profit has won her few friends, and relying on her lawyer’s questionable advice could mean she’s in over her head.
\nWhen another battered body is found, Annie finds that every clue leads back to a dispute at Michelle’s business. But with so many people with reason to seek revenge, will Annie and her team look in the right places - or will it be too late?
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When a string of fatal accidents on the notorious A9 road catches the attention of DI Alec McKay, he uncovers something far more sinister than just bad luck. As the body count rises, McKay stumbles onto a decades-old conspiracy involving corruption and a murder case that should’ve been buried a long time ago.
\nBut the deeper McKay digs, the more dangerous the game becomes. A shadowy killer is systematically eliminating anyone who knows the truth, and McKay may be next. Racing against time, with his closest allies compromised and a relentless killer lurking, McKay must navigate a web of deception and betrayal where every answer leads to more deadly questions . . .
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Three people are stranded at a pub on a winter's night - a couple, the Fairweathers, and a woman, Alison Evans. Hours later, in the middle of the night, the pub alarm begins to sound and Alison Evans is missing. Within moments, her body is discovered outside. The following day a young boy disappears while sledding with his grandfather.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe two cases couldn't be more different, but as the two investigations unfold and the window for finding Lucas Pritchard narrows, the job becomes personal for one of DI Annie Delamere's team. With links between the cases that seem to make no sense, can they find their answers before time runs out?
When the Dawson family is found slaughtered in what appears to be a tragic murder-suicide, it seems like another heartbreaking case of a man pushed to the edge, taking his wife and children with him before ending his own life. But DI Alec McKay has doubts. Why was a mysterious BMW spotted at the Dawsons’ holiday home that day, and why are its owners also now dead? What’s behind the erratic behaviour of the new senior investigating officer? And, most disturbingly, who is sending out packages containing toys taken from the crime scene?
\nAs McKay digs deeper, he uncovers a twisted web of lies, leading back to a threat from his own past. To solve this case, McKay must confront his darkest fears and a crime that could leave him devastated in ways he never imagined . . .
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A killer is sending a message - but for who?
\nDI Annie Delamere and her colleague DS Zoe Everett are off duty and enjoying a walk on the Peak District’s vast moorlands when they stumble across a mutilated corpse. The victim is unclothed and his tattoos indicate an affinity with the occult.
\nWhile Annie is put in charge of the case her long-term partner, MP Sheena Pearson, is confronted by a group of far right extremists. Rather than back down Sheena chooses to stand her ground - and almost pays for it with her life.
\nAs more bodies are found, Annie is under pressure to prove her worth. But with one eye on her personal affairs can she catch a murderer and still keep her loved ones safe? And are the killings the work of a deranged mind - or a cover for something even more chilling?
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One winter's night, a lone figure arrives on foot in a remote Pennine village.
The next morning, as the first heavy snow begins to fall, a man's body is discovered in the village churchyard. Anne Tilston, one of three sisters living in a brooding run-down house in the shadow of the church, realises that the dead man is her father, a disgraced former senior police officer long estranged from his family.
As DCI Kenny Murrain's team arrive in the village to investigate the unexplained death, a further body is discovered in a nearby field - a young man from the village with no apparent connection to Tilston or his daughters. Meanwhile Murrain and DI Joe Milton are investigating the disappearance of a young woman. The case appears to be part of a string of similar missing persons cases, although with no evidence to date of foul play.
With the snow continuing to fall, another body is discovered, and Murrain finds himself stranded with his team in the sisters' house with a seemingly motiveless killer waiting outside in the night.
Desperately liaising with Milton, Murrain realises he has only hours to discover the truth and to prevent the murderer from killing again. And it seems the answer lies within Murrain's own team . . .
When will the voices stop?The murder of professional astrologer Andrew Gorman seems a straightforward case for DCI Kenny Murrain - a tragic death resulting from an interrupted burglary. But when Gareth Clayburn, assistant to stage medium Justin Bannerman, is found dead in identical circumstances, Murrain begins to suspect the murders are linked.
Meanwhile, Geoff Nolan, television personality and professor of psychology, is developing a new series exploring the psychology of the paranormal. Starting with Bannerman's work as a supposed spiritualist. When Murrain receives an unexpected approach from the security services, he realises that the links between the killings lie deep in Murrain's own past and his own paranormal gifts. After days of rain and with floodwaters rising. Murrain finds himself in a race against time to prevent further deaths.
In a shattering climax at Nolan's riverside home, Murrain finally comes face to face with an adversary who shares his remarkable gifts, as the book races to its dramatic and potentially tragic climax.
Jimmy McGuire, a washed-up comic, is found dead on the streets of Inverness, his body garroted. Back in the 1990s, McGuire had been half of a promising double-act until his partner, Jack Dingwall, was convicted of rape.
\nSoon after, a second corpse is found in an abandoned industrial site on the edge of the Moray Firth. The body has been there for some days and has also been garroted. The victim turns out to be a former musician turned record producer, who had also been the subject of rape allegations.
\nMeanwhile, DI Alec McKay and DCI Helena Grant are still wrestling with the fallout from one of their recent cases following an acquittal.
\nAs the body count rises, the police think they have the killer in their sights. But McKay is concerned that the evidence is too neat so when he realises there will be a final victim, he fears that time is running out . . .
\n
The crew of the legendary Capricious are rich enough to retire in comfort for the rest of their days, but none of it matters if the galaxy is still in danger.
\nNilah and Boots, the ship's newest crew-members hear the word of a mysterious cult that may have links back to an ancient and all-powerful magic. To find it, hot-headed Nilah will have to go undercover and find the source of their power without revealing her true identity.
\nMeanwhile, Boots is forced to confront the one person she'd hoped never to see again: her old, turn-coat treasure-hunting partner.
A washed-up treasure hunter, a hotshot racer, and a deadly secret society.
\nThey're all on a race against time to hunt down the greatest warship ever built. Some think the ship is lost forever, some think it's been destroyed, and some think it's only a legend, but one thing's for certain: whoever finds it will hold the fate of the universe in their hands. And treasure that valuable can never stay hidden for long . . .
Ultra-glam enby pop star Ardent Violet thought they could catch a break and enjoy some time with their new boyfriend August Kitko after defeating the giant mechas hellbent on humanity's destruction. However, Ardent didn't count on their mecha allies summoning a host of extraterrestrials to defend Earth.
\nBetween the diplomatic entanglements of the newly-arrived alien Coalition, and a mysterious all-powerful AI establishing a base within their solar system, there's no rest for the wicked.
\nWhen August makes a discovery that could turn the tide of the war, Ardent Violet finds they are back in the spotlight for an encore.
Jazz pianist Gus Kitko expected to spend his final moments on Earth playing piano at the greatest goodbye party of all time, and maybe kissing rockstar Ardent Violet, before the last of humanity is wiped out forever by the Vanguards- - ultra-powerful robots from the dark heart of space, hell-bent on destroying humanity for reasons none can divine.
\nBut when the Vanguards arrive, the unthinkable happens - the mecha that should be killing Gus instead saves him. Suddenly, Gus's swan song becomes humanity's encore, as he is chosen to join a small group of traitorous Vanguards and their pilots dedicated to saving humanity.
The crew of the Capricious seems to leave a trail of devastation wherever they go. But with powerful enemies in pursuit and family and friends under attack planetside, there's no time to worry about all that.
\nEnsnared by the legend of Origin, humanity's birthplace, and a long-dead form of magic, the Capricious takes off on a journey to find the first colony ship . . . and power that could bring down gods.
Maggie is on the brink. Her MFA thesis painting - a vast canvas of twenty women suspended between life and death - is met with polite confusion. Her marriage-material boyfriend, Rob, is too consumed by his office job to notice her unraveling, and she’s one missed call away from her Turkish mother filing a missing person’s report. To make matters worse, her brother’s partner, a performance artist who insists on being called “The Artist,” seems to embody the kind of confidence Maggie can’t muster.
\nWhen Maggie’s ex, Rakib - a smooth-talking art critic with the power to introduce her to big names on the scene - reappears and calls her by her Turkish name, Müjde, her forced composure starts to slip. Then comes the she’s been nominated for a major award that could launch her career. With the deadline looming, her relationship faltering, and her sense of self in flux, Maggie begins to question not just her art, but the life she’s been trying to build.
\nSet against the push and pull of immigrant family expectations, the competitive world of contemporary art, and the restless uncertainty of one’s late twenties, Good News is a mordantly funny and emotionally resonant debut.
\n\n
Preble Jefferson can see five seconds into the future. Otherwise, he lives an ordinary life. But when a confrontation with a cop on a New York City subway goes tragically wrong, those seconds give Preble the chance to dodge a bullet - causing another man to die in his place.
\nGovernment agencies become aware of Preble's gift, a manhunt ensues, and their ambitions shift from law enforcement to military R&D. Preble will do whatever it takes to protect his family, but as events spiral out of control, he must weigh the cost of his gift against the loss of his humanity.
\nA breathless thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page, The Man Who Saw Seconds explores the nature of time, the brain as a prediction machine, and the tension between the individual and the systems we create.
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The detectives who work in Malmo Police's Department of Sensitive Crimes take their job very seriously. The lead detective, Ulf Varg, prioritises his cases above even his dog's mental health. Then there are detectives Anna Bengsdotter, who keeps her relationship with Varg professional even as she realizes she's developing feelings for him . . . or at least for his car, and Carl Holgersson, first to arrive in the morning and last to leave, who would never read his colleagues' personal correspondence - unless it could help solve a crime, of course. Finally, there's Erik Nykvist, who peppers conversations with anecdotes about fly fishing.
\nAlong with an opinionated local police officer named Blomquist, the Department of Sensitive Crimes takes on three extremely strange cases. First, the detectives investigate how and why a local business owner was stabbed . . . in the back of the knee. Next, a young woman's imaginary boyfriend goes missing. And, in the final investigation, Varg must determine whether nocturnal visitations at a local spa have a supernatural element.
\nUsing his renowned wit and warmth, Alexander McCall Smith brings a unique perspective on Scandinavian crime.
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The Department of Sensitive Crimes is downsizing in light of a recent downturn of sensitive crime, and staff members are wondering who among them will be transferred elsewhere. As the bickering between colleagues intensifies, Ulf tries his best to stay above the fray. But when Anna, a longtime friend and coworker, appears to blame him for an old case that went sideways, it seems she may be putting her own job prospects above their friendship.
In the midst of all this, Ulf embarks on an important inquiry: a man's cabin has mysteriously disappeared and Ulf is tasked with finding out what happened. How exactly does one steal a house? And, more to the point, how does one track down a stolen house? Meanwhile, a promising veterinary treatment for deafness in dogs has been . . .
Detective Ulf Varg is a man of refined tastes and quite familiar with the art scene in Malmo. So when art historian Anders Kindgren visits the Department of Sensitive Crimes to report a series of bizarre acts that have been committed against him, Ulf and his team swing into action. Fish stuffed into the vents of Kindgren's car and a manipulated footnote in a recent publication would be cause enough for an investigation, but when a painting Kindgren had confidently appraised as genuine is later declared to be a fake, it's clear that someone is out to tarnish his reputation.
\nMeanwhile, Ulf is also weathering personal issues, which quickly spiral out of control. When his lip-reading dog, Martin, engages in a contretemps with a squirrel that results in a grievous wound, Ulf must rush Martin to the veterinarian and weigh the merits of cosmetic surgery for animals. And later, when Martin's blood is found in the back of Ulf's classic Saab, Ulf finds himself the subject of a departmental investigation.
\nIn the end, Ulf will have to muster all his detective skills and bureaucratic cunning to restore Kindgren's reputation - as well as his own.
\n
When writer Paul Stewart heads to the idyllic Italian town of Montalcino to finish his already late book, it seems like the perfect escape from stressful city life. Upon landing, however, things quickly take a turn for the worse when he discovers his hired car is nowhere to be found. With no record of any reservation and no other cars available it looks like Paul is stuck at the airport. That is, until an enterprising stranger offers him an unexpected alternative. While there may be no cars available there is something else on offer: a bulldozer.
\nWith little choice in the matter, Paul accepts and so begins a series of laugh out loud adventures through the Italian countryside, following in the wake of Paul and his Italian Bulldozer. A story of unexpected circumstance and lesson in making the best of what you have, My Italian Bulldozer is a warm holiday read guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
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Renowned Scottish cookbook writer Paul Stuart is hard at work on his new book, The Philosophy of Food, but complicated domestic circumstances, and two clingy cats, are making that difficult.
\nSo when Paul's eccentric cousin Chloe suggests that he join her at the house she's rented in the French countryside, he jumps at the chance. The two quickly befriend the locals, including their twin-sister landladies, who also own the infamous local restaurant known to be the second-worst eatery in all of France.
\nDuring their stay, the restaurant's sole waitress gives birth mid-dinner service and the maître d' storms off after fighting with the head chef. Paul is soon drafted to improve the gastronomy of the village, while Chloe, ever on the hunt for her next romance, busies herself with distracting the handsome but incompetent chef. Could he be husband number six?
\nWith all this local drama to deal with, Paul finds it next to impossible to focus on his writing, and that's before he learns that Chloe's past is far more complicated than he'd ever imagined. Paul will have to call upon al his experience - with food and with people - to bring order back to the village. And he may just learn something about family - and about himself - along the way.
\n
The Department of Sensitive Crimes, renowned for taking on the most obscure and irrelevant cases, led by Ulf Varg, their best detective, is always prepared to take on an investigation, no matter how complex. So when Ulf is approached by the girlfriend of Trig Oloffson, who claims her beau (the infamous bad boy of Swedish letters) is being blackmailed, Ulf is determined to help. It turns out that this wild bear of a man may be more of a teddy. And while Swedes are notoriously tolerant, finding out that their beloved rough and tumble ink slinger is more likely to use a pen than a sword . . . well, there are limits. Even for the Swedish.
\nThe case requires all of Ulf's concentration, but he finds himself distracted by his brother's questionable politics and meteoric rise within the Moderate Extremist Party and by his own constant attraction to his married co-worker Anna. When Ulf is then tasked with looking into a group of dealers exporting wolves that seem decidedly domestic, it will require all of his team's investigative instincts and dogged persistence to put these matters to bed.
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In the beginning, there was art.
\nIt was Clare Bast’s love of art that saved her from a bleak, predictable life in upstate New York, and drew her to the cultured world of Manhattan’s Upper East Side where she met Jed, her doting, affluent husband.
\nDespite her best efforts - including a half-finished PhD, abandoned when her daughter Sadie was born - Clare secretly can’t help but feel like an imposter in Jed’s one-percent, Park-Avenue life.
\nWhen the well-connected wife of Jed’s new boss introduces her to influential friends, a curator here, a gallerist there, an aficionado abroad, Clare feels an essential part of herself coming alive again. And when she discovers that an important work painted by the subject of her unfinished dissertation is hanging in the brownstone of a seductively attractive dealer, she believes fate is leading her where she belongs . . . until she finds herself at the scene of a gruesome murder and a stolen masterpiece. Caught in the perfectly wrong place at the perfectly wrong time, every clue the investigation uncovers points back to her.
\nSuddenly, Clare is trapped inside a dark and treacherous art world filled with unscrupulous dealers and international criminals. What exactly, has she gotten herself into . . . and how is she going to get herself, and her family, out?
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Florence Darrow is a low-level publishing employee who believes that she's destined to be a famous writer. When she stumbles into a job the assistant to the brilliant, enigmatic novelist known as Maud Dixon - whose true identity is a secret - it appears that the universe is finally providing Florence’s big chance.
\nThe arrangement seems perfect. Maud Dixon (whose real name, Florence discovers, is Helen Wilcox) can be prickly, but she is full of pointed wisdom - not only on how to write, but also on how to live. Florence quickly falls under Helen’s spell and eagerly accompanies her to Morocco, where Helen’s new novel is set. Amidst the colorful streets of Marrakesh and the wind-swept beaches of the coast, Florence’s life at last feels interesting enough to inspire a novel of her own.
\nBut when Florence wakes up in the hospital after a terrible car accident, with no memory of the previous night - and no sign of Helen - she’s tempted to take a shortcut. Instead of hiding in Helen’s shadow, why not upgrade into Helen's life? Not to mention her bestselling pseudonym . . .
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In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate.
\nFuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time.
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“Fair to say, I was in a ribald state the summer before my fiftieth birthday.” And so begins Alexandra Fuller’s open, vivid new memoir, Fi . It’s midsummer in Wyoming and Alexandra is barely hanging on. Grieving her father and pining for her home country of Zimbabwe, reeling from a midlife breakup, freshly sober and piecing her way uncertainly through a volatile new relationship with a younger woman, Alexandra vows to get herself back on even keel.
\nAnd then - suddenly and incomprehensibly - her son Fi, at 21 years old, dies in his sleep.
\nNo stranger to loss - young siblings, a parent, a home country - Alexandra is nonetheless leveled. At the same time, she is painfully aware that she cannot succumb and abandon her two surviving daughters as her mother before her had done. From a sheep wagon deep in the mountains of Wyoming to a grief sanctuary in New Mexico to a silent meditation retreat in Alberta, Canada, Alexandra journeys up and down the spine of the Rocky Mountains in an attempt to find how to grieve herself whole.
\nThere is no answer, and there are countless answers - in poetry, in rituals and routines, in nature and in the indigenous wisdom she absorbed as a child in Zimbabwe. By turns disarming, devastating and unexpectedly, blessedly funny, Alexandra recounts the wild medicine of painstakingly grieving a child in a culture that has no instructions for it.
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A child of the Rhodesian wars and daughter of two deeply complicated parents, Alexandra Fuller is no stranger to pain. But the disintegration of Fuller’s own marriage leaves her shattered. Looking to pick up the pieces of her life, she finally confronts the tough questions about her past, about the American man she married, and about the family she left behind in Africa. A breathtaking achievement, Leaving Before the Rains Come is a memoir of such grace and intelligence, filled with such wit and courage, that it could only have been written by Alexandra Fuller.
\nLeaving Before the Rains Come begins with the dreadful first years of the American financial crisis when Fuller’s delicate balance - between American pragmatism and African fatalism, the linchpin of her unorthodox marriage - irrevocably fails. Recalling her unusual courtship in Zambia - elephant attacks on the first date, sick with malaria on the wedding day - Fuller struggles to understand her younger self as she overcomes her current misfortunes.
\nFuller soon realises what is missing from her life is something that was always the brash and uncompromising ways of her father, the man who warned his daughter that \"the problem with most people is that they want to be alive for as long as possible without having any idea whatsoever how to live.\" Fuller’s father - \"Tim Fuller of No Fixed Abode\" as he first introduced himself to his future wife - was a man who regretted nothing and wanted less, even after fighting harder and losing more than most men could bear.
\nLeaving Before the Rains Come showcases Fuller at the peak of her abilities, threading panoramic vistas with her deepest revelations as a fully grown woman and mother. Fuller reveals how, after spending a lifetime fearfully waiting for someone to show up and save her, she discovered that, in the end, we all simply have to save ourselves.
\nAn unforgettable book, Leaving Before the Rains Come is a story of sorrow grounded in the tragic grandeur and rueful joy only to be found in Fuller’s Africa.
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When Alexandra Bo Fuller was in Zambia a few years ago visiting her parents, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known as being a tough bugger. Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him: Curiosity scibbled the cat, he told her. Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendhip with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian War.
\nA man of contradictions, K is battle-scarred and work-weathered, a born-again Christian and given to weeping for the failure of his romantic life and the burden of his memories. Driven by K's these memories of the war, they decide to enter the heart of darkness in the most literal way, by travelling from Zambia through Zimbabwe and Mozambique to visit the scenes of the war and to meet other veterans. The result is a remarkably unbiased and unsentimental glimpse of life in Africa.
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After her father’s sudden death, Alexandra Fuller realises that if she is going to weather his loss, she will need to become the parts of him she misses most. So begins Travel Light, Move Fast, the unforgettable story of Tim Fuller, a self-exiled black sheep who moved to Africa to fight in the Rhodesian Bush War before settling as a banana farmer in Zambia.
\nA man who preferred chaos to predictability, to revel in promise rather than wallow in regret, and who was more afraid of becoming bored than of getting lost, he taught his daughters to live as if everything needed to happen all together, all at once - or not at all. Now, in the wake of his death, Fuller internalises his lessons with clear eyes and celebrates a man who swallowed life whole.
\nA master of time and memory, Fuller moves seamlessly between the days and months following her father’s death, as she and her mother return to his farm with his ashes and contend with his overwhelming absence, and her childhood spent running after him in southern and central Africa.
\nWriting with reverent irreverence of the rollicking grand misadventures of her mother and father, bursting with pandemonium and tragedy, Fuller takes their insatiable appetite for life to heart. Here, in Fuller’s Africa, is a story of joy, resilience, and vitality, from one of our finest writers.
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Arrival meets Wild Dark Shore in this captivating novel that follows a family for over fifty years - a bold and compassionate exploration of the universe around us and what it truly means to be human.
\nIt’s March 1980, and Carol Girard and her husband are living an ordinary life in a small town in the Adirondacks. They have just had their first child, and though Carol is struggling with the challenges of new motherhood, her future seems clear. Until something extraordinary happens: an inexplicable flickering of light in the sky, which is ultimately determined to be communication from intelligent life on another planet. But these beings are eleven light-years away, and nothing is known about them other than the fact that they seem to know we exist too. And so begins a decades-long exchange of messages with this mysterious, faraway civilisation.
\nAs humanity reels from a shifting understanding of its place in the universe, we follow the stories of the Girard family: Carol, whose fascination with this other life sparks a desperate search for spiritual meaning; Michael, her loyal son, who finds solace not in the stars above his head but in the ground beneath his feet; and Ro, Carol’s bright and ambitious daughter, whose childhood goal to work in interstellar communication will evolve into something far grander.
\nTracing five decades of love, loss, ambition, and self-discovery, The Radiant Dark is a stunning examination of a family navigating their lives with the knowledge that we are not alone.
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Nell Stevens’ life is a mess. When her business goes bust and her fiancé with it, Nell’s happy ever after in California falls apart and she moves back to London to start over. But a lot has changed since she’s been gone. All her single friends are now married with children, sky-high rents force her to rent a room in a stranger’s house and in a world of perfect instagram lives, she feels like a f*ck up. Even worse, a forty-something f*ck-up.
\nBut when she lands a job writing obituaries, Nell meets the fabulous Cricket, an eighty-something widow with challenges of her own, and they strike up an unlikely friendship. Together they begin to help each other heal their aching hearts, cope with the loss of the lives they had planned, and push each other into new adventures and unexpected joys. Because Nell is determined. Next year things are going to be very different. It's time to turn her life around.
Grace Fairley lives in South West London with her fiancé, Spencer, a divorce lawyer. They've been engaged for two years and still haven't set a date, a fact that has started to irk Grace no end. In fact, things just haven't been feeling right at all lately, and aren't they supposed to when you're with Mr. Right? Then Spencer goes and makes a fool of himself - yet again - on Grace's birthday, and she ends up walking to a taxi company to get a lift home. Alone.
\nJimi Malik, a half-Indian, half-Irish writer and ladies man who lives in North West London, has surprised everyone - himself included - by deciding to settle down with Kylie, a twenty-one-year-old model from Canada. But when he bows out of his own stag night and goes to catch a cab home, he bumps into Grace Fairley and the past comes rushing back.
\nLike the way they couldn't stand each other. And how their high school hair-pulling routine eventually turned into friendship, then something more. And how he never called again. She's still furious at him and he's still hot for her. But what's the harm in sharing a cab? After all, they're both getting married . . . Right?
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After a bad break up, doesn't every girl want the same things?
\n* For her ex-boyfriend to stay single forever . . .
* Or maybe emigrate, to a remote, uninhabited island?
* Better still, that she'd never met him in the first place!
But what if one of those wishes came true?
\nTess is heartbroken when Seb breaks up with her and can't help blaming herself. If only she'd done things differently. If only she could make right all her regrets , , , But she can't. It's over. She has to forget about him. Drunk and upset on New Year's Eve she wishes she'd never met him.
\nBut when she wakes up to discover this dream has come true, she realises she has a chance. To do it all over again. And to get it right this time . . .
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What do you when your boyfriend tells you he wants space?
\nYou give him six thousand miles of it . . .
\nFrankie's life is falling apart. In less than a week she's gone from having everything - a great job, lovely flat and gorgeous Hugh - to having nothing at all.
\nDevastated, dumped and on the dole, she packs her bags and flies to Los Angeles to stay with an old friend. Her goal? To sort out her life and get over Hugh. She does not, repeat not, go to LA to fall head over heels for an American photographer called Reilly and to run away to Las Vegas.
\nBut what happens when Hugh wants her back? Who will she choose? And is it really true that whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas?
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There is no magical land you finally arrive at where everything is figured out, fixed and sorted. Life, like us, is a sum of moving parts, and if we’re lucky, we get to keep f**king up, figuring it out and laughing in the face of it all.
\nNell’s back. Her life still isn’t going to plan. And she’s still asking the big questions and getting none of the answers. Like, for
\n1. Why is falling in love so easy, but staying in love so hard?
\n2. What do you do when your friendships are put to the ultimate test?
\n3. Can we ever really live in the moment and leave the past behind?
\n4. When everything goes tits up, do you fall apart or jump on a plane to LA with Cricket (an eighty-something widow and your BFF)?
\n5. And when all else fails, will celebrity-scented candles, smashed avocados and Instagram filters save us?*
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In life, nothing is certain. Just when you think you have it all figured out, something can happen to change the course of everything . . .
\nLiv Brooks is still in shock. Newly-divorced and facing an uncertain future, she impulsively swaps her London Life for the sweeping hills of the Yorkshire Dales, determined to make a fresh start. But fresh starts are harder than they look and feeling lost and lonely she decides to adopt Harry, an old dog from the local shelter, to keep her company.
\nBut Liv soon discovers she isn’t the only one in need of a new beginning. On their daily walks around the village, they meet Valentine, an old man who suffers from loneliness who sits by the window and Stanley, a little boy who is scared of everyone, hides behind the garden gate and Maya, a teenager who is angry at everyone and everything. But slowly things start to change . . .
\nUtterly relatable, hilarious and heart-breakingly honest, this is a novel about friendship, finding happiness and living the life unexpected. And how when everything falls apart, all you need is one good thing to turn your life around and make it worth living again.
So, I Met This Guy . . . Well, isn’t that how every love story starts? But what we don’t know is, how will it end?
\nFor Maggie, she certainly didn’t expect it to involve discovering the supposed love-of-her-life has stolen her life-savings, along with her home, heart and self-esteem.
\nSo, when she meets Flick, a young reporter who realises this story could be the big break she’s been looking for, they set off together to catch him as he goes on the run across Europe. After all, she’s got nothing left to lose, right?
\nBut as the pair embark on the road trip of their lives, unexpected twists, hidden secrets and hard truths are revealed. And as an unlikely friendship begins to blossom, they realise it’s not just about finding the guy, it’s about finding themselves . . .
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Delilah has made a big decision. In fact she's made several. She's leaving Bradford, leaving her boyfriend Lenny and taking her Tom Jones record collection, her pet whippet. Fatso and herself to the bright lights of the big city . . . And now that she's here, it seems that down-to-earth Delilah is just what the big city was waiting for Hut whatever she does.
\nDelilah is determined finally to make the right choices for her future, in love and work. So whether Charlie, the wealthy media boy. or sweet Sam in his cafe are right for her is something she needs to decide - on her own.
\nAnd then she can really start to live . . .
At age thirty-one, American Charlotte Merryweather has spent ten years in London pursuing personal and professional perfection. Yet her present-day success- heading her own PR company, owning a gorgeous apartment, planning a future with her devoted boyfriend- only heightens the shock of a visit from the past.
\n\"Lottie,\" Charlotte's twenty-one-year-old self, drives onto the scene at the wheel of a rusty, orange Volkswagen Beetle identical to Charlotte's first UK ride. Charlotte pursues a friendship aimed to bestow upon Lottie a decade of wisdom. Yet Charlotte's prosperous polish proves a pale substitute for Lottie's innate, youthful graces- openness, passion, and kindness. Will the student become the teacher in this witty turnabout?
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Most women dream of finding the love of their life. Lucy just wants to lose him . . . Venice, one of the world's most romantic cities, lives by the legend of the bridge of sighs: When a woman kisses the man of her dreams under the bridge at sunset, she will be together with him forever. So eighteen-year-old Lucy seals her fate in the blush of first love with Nate.
\nYet ten years later, the pair has completely lost contact-until the day Lucy arrives at Nate's luxury Manhattan apartment with paintings he has purchased from the gallery where she is newly employed. The legend has reunited the couple, and Lucy is overjoyed-until the state of their union is misery.
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Avra Helvaçi, former field agent of the Araşti Ministry of Intelligence, has accidentally stolen the single most expensive secret in the world - and the only place to flee with a secret that big is the open sea.
\nTo find a buyer with deep enough pockets, Avra must ask for help from his on-again, off-again ex, the pirate Captain Teveri az-Ḥaffār. They are far from happy to see him, but together, they hatch a plan: take the information to the isolated pirate republic of the Isles of Lost Souls, fence it, profit. The only things in their way?
\nA calculating new Araşti ambassador to the Isles of Lost Souls who’s got his eyes on Avra’s every move; Brother Julian, a beautiful, mysterious new member of the crew with secrets of his own and a frankly inconvenient vow of celibacy; the fact that they’re sailing straight into sea serpent breeding season and almost certain doom.
\nBut if they can find a way to survive and sell the secret on the black market, they’ll all be as wealthy as kings - and, more important, they’ll be legends.
Margot Cooper doesn’t do relationships. She tried and it blew up in her face, so she’ll stick with casual hookups, thank you very much. But now her entire crew has found “the one” and she’s beginning to feel like a fifth wheel. And then fate (the heartless bitch) intervenes. While touring a wedding venue with her engaged friends, Margot comes face-to-face with Olivia Grant - her childhood friend, her first love, her first . . . well, everything. It’s been ten years, but the moment they lock eyes, Margot’s cold, dead heart thumps in her chest.
\nOlivia must be hallucinating. In the decade since she last saw Margot, her life hasn’t gone exactly as planned. At almost thirty, she’s been married . . . and divorced. However, a wedding planner job in Seattle means a fresh start and a chance to follow her dreams. Never in a million years did she expect her important new client’s Best Woman would be the one that got away.
\nWhen a series of unfortunate events leaves Olivia without a place to stay, Margot offers up her spare room because she’s a Very Good Person. Obviously. It has nothing to do with the fact that Olivia is as beautiful as ever and the sparks between them still make Margot tingle. As they spend time in close quarters, Margot starts to question her no-strings stance. Olivia is everything she’s ever wanted, but Margot let her in once and it ended in disaster. Will history repeat itself or should she count her lucky stars that she gets a second chance with her first love?
Tansy Adams’ greatest love is her family’s bookstore, passed down from her late father. But when it comes to actual romance . . . Tansy can’t get past the first chapter. Tired of her stepfamily’s questions about her love life, Tansy invents Gemma, a fake girlfriend inspired by the stunning cover model on a bestselling book. They’ll never actually meet, so what’s the harm in a little fib? Yet when real-life Gemma crosses Tansy’s path, her white lie nearly implodes.
\nGemma van Dalen is a wild child, the outcast of her wealthy family, and now the latest heir to Van Dalen Publishing. But the title comes with one tiny condition: she must be married in order to inherit. When Gemma discovers a beautiful stranger has been pretending to date her for months, she decides to take the charade one step further - and announces their engagement.
\nGemma needs a wife to meet the terms of her grandfather’s will and Tansy needs money to save her struggling bookstore. A marriage could be mutually beneficial, if they can fool everyone into thinking it’s a love match. Unexpected sparks fly as Tansy and Gemma play the role of affectionate fiancées, and suddenly the line between convenient arrangement and real feelings begins to blur. But the scheming Van Dalen family won’t give up the company without a fight, and Gemma and Tansy’s newfound happiness might get caught in the fallout . . .
Brendon Lowell loves love. It’s why he created a dating app to help people find their one true pairing and why he’s convinced “the one” is out there, even if he hasn’t met her yet. Or . . . has he? When his sister's best friend turns up in Seattle unexpectedly, Brendon jumps at the chance to hang out with her. He’s crushed on Annie since they were kids, and the stars have finally aligned, putting them in the same city at the same time.
\nAnnie booked a spur-of-the-moment trip to Seattle to spend time with friends before moving across the globe. She’s not looking for love, especially with her best friend’s brother. Annie remembers Brendon as a sweet, dorky kid. Except, the 6-foot-4 man who shows up at her door is a certified Hot Nerd and Annie . . . wants him? Oh yes.
\nGetting involved would be a terrible idea - her stay is temporary and he wants forever - but when Brendon learns Annie has given up on dating, he’s determined to prove that romance is real. Taking cues from his favorite rom-coms, Brendon plans to woo her with elaborate dates straight out of Nora Ephron’s playbook. The clock is ticking on Annie’s time in Seattle, and Brendon’s starting to realise romance isn’t just flowers and chocolate. But maybe real love doesn’t need to be as perfect as the movies . . . as long as you think your partner hung the moon.
Poppy Peterson’s life is finally back on track and she’s thriving as the publicist of the NFL’s most promising quarterback (and her childhood best friend), Cash Curran. So, she doesn’t appreciate when he makes an impulsive and public pass at America’s popstar darling, Lyric Adair. When Lyric’s notorious publicist Rosaline Sinclair reaches out, Poppy is ready to face her wrath, but instead learns that Lyric is equally interested.
\nAs Cash and Lyric embark on their ill-advised whirlwind romance, Poppy and Rosaline are forced together, each determined to protect their own client from the other. Poppy is frustrated by Rosaline’s cool demeanor, while at the same time, as a legend in the industry, she’s determined to impress her. But, no matter what she does, she can’t shake the feeling that Rosaline doesn’t like her.
\nThat is until one steamy night, when the two women contend with their unexpected feelings and begin a messy romance of their own. But with paparazzi, tabloids, and stalker fans nipping at their heels, Poppy and Rosaline’s loyalties will be tested in ways they could never expect.
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As a bestselling romance novelist, everyone thinks Truly Livingston is an expert on happily-ever-afters. She’s even signed on to record a podcast sharing relationship advice. Little do they know she feels like an imposter - her parents just announced they’re separating, she caught her fiancé cheating, and her entire view on love has been shaken to the core. Truly hopes the podcast will distract her . . . until she meets her cohost.
\nHer first impression of Colin McCory is . . . hot. But then he opens his extremely kissable mouth. Colin’s view on love just pisses Truly off, even if he does have an annoyingly attractive face. Bickering with a cynical divorce lawyer is the last thing she needs - so she walks out, with no plans to return.
\nA few days later, Truly is surprised when Colin tracks her down, asking for a fresh start. Truly can’t deny the little thrill she gets from Colin begging, so she reluctantly agrees. As they go from enemies to friends to something else entirely, Truly discovers they have more in common than she ever imagined, including their shared queerness. He’s a genuinely good guy - charming, sweet, and equally as unlucky in love as herself - and there’s something about Colin that drives Truly a little wild. When their attraction reaches a fever pitch, Truly is happy for the first time in years. Yet she can’t help but wonder . . . is Colin truly, madly, deeply in love with her? Or is it all too good to be true?
After a disastrous blind date, Darcy Lowell is desperate to stop her well-meaning brother from playing matchmaker ever again. Love - and the inevitable heartbreak - is the last thing she wants. So she fibs and says her latest set up was a success. Darcy doesn’t expect her lie to bite her in the ass.
Elle Jones, one of the astrologers behind the popular Twitter account, Oh My Stars, dreams of finding her soul mate. But she knows it is most assuredly not Darcy... a no-nonsense stick-in-the-mud, who is way too analytical, punctual, and skeptical for someone as free-spirited as Elle. When Darcy’s brother - and Elle's new business partner - expresses how happy he is that they hit it off, Elle is baffled. Was Darcy on the same date? Because . . . awkward.
When Darcy begs Elle to play along, she agrees to pretend they’re dating to save face. But with a few conditions: Darcy must help Elle navigate her own overbearing family over the holidays and their arrangement expires on New Year’s Eve. The last thing they expect is to develop real feelings during a fake relationship.
But maybe opposites can attract when true love is written in the stars?
Luc O'Donnell is tangentially - and reluctantly - famous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father he's never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad's making a comeback, Luc's back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything.
\nTo clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice, normal relationship . . . and Oliver Blackwood is as nice and normal as they come. He's a barrister, an ethical vegetarian, and he's never inspired a moment of scandal in his life. In other words: perfect boyfriend material. Unfortunately apart from being gay, single, and really, really in need of a date for a big event, Luc and Oliver have nothing in common. So they strike a deal to be publicity-friendly (fake) boyfriends until the dust has settled. Then they can go their separate ways and pretend it never happened.
\nBut the thing about fake-dating is that it can feel a lot like real-dating. And that's when you get used to someone. Start falling for them. Don't ever want to let them go.
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Luc and Oliver have been through it all: fake dating to save Luc's career, I-guess-this-is-actually-for-real dating when all of that blew up spectacularly, (briefly) breaking up over irreconcilable differences, (definitively) getting back together over perfectly reconcilable everything else, (almost) getting married, (finally) moving in together, and ultimately celebrating years of perfect domestic bliss.
\nBut as all their very grown-up-now friends begin reaching new life milestones, advancing careers and having babies, Luc and Oliver decide it's time to open their hearts and lives to something new: a tiny, squirming, adorable bundle of furry joy named Spud.
\nAnd maybe now that hearts-and-lives are already open, there's room for someone else. Something more. Something that may require them to find in themselves a little father material.
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Ten years ago I fought for the Witch Queen of London in a mystical showdown against a King Arthur wannabe with a shaved head and a shotgun. Back then, the law did for him before he could do for us.
I don’t think we’ll get that lucky again.
As if the mother of all wizard battles wasn’t bad enough, fate or destiny or a god with a really messed-up sense of humor has dropped a weapon that could rewrite the universe right into the middle of London, and anybody with half a sniff of arcane power has rocked up to stake their claim on it. Last time this happened, the city went to pieces. This time, it might just go to Hell.
Also, still dating a vampire. Still got an alpha werewolf trying to get in my pants. Still sharing a flat with a woman made of animated marble - only now apparently there are two of her. But you know what they say: the more things change, the more they stay the same crap that’s been trying to kill you your entire life.
In Boyfriend Material, Luc and Oliver met, pretended to fall in love, fell in love for real, dealt with heartbreak and disappointment and family and friends . . . and somehow figured out a way to make it work.
\nNow it seems like everyone around them is getting married, and Luc's feeling the social pressure to propose. But it'll take more than four weddings, a funeral, and a bowl full of special curry to get these two from “I don't know what I'm doing” to “I do”.
\nGood thing Oliver is such perfect Husband Material.
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My name’s Kane, Kate Kane. I’m a paranormal private investigator, which is like a normal private investigator except - and stop me if you’re having trouble following this - more paranormal. This business comes with a few basic don’t start drinking before noon, don’t get your partner killed, don’t sleep with the woman who killed him.
\nLast year I broke all of them.
\nThe only rule I didn’t break was the one that said don’t work for vampires. But then a dead werewolf showed up outside the Soho shag palace of Julian Saint-Germain - a bloodsucking flibbertigibbet who’s spent the last eight centuries presiding over an ever-growing empire of booze, sex and hemoglobin.
\nI shouldn’t have taken the job. The last thing I needed was to get caught in a supernatural smackdown between a werewolf pack and a vampire prince. Even if the vampire prince was dangerously my type. But what can I say? I was broke, I’m a sucker for a pretty face and I gave up on making good decisions a long time ago.
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A young noblewoman must pair up with a rumoured witch to ward off a curse.
\nIt is the year 1814 and life for a young lady of good breeding has many difficulties. There are balls to attend, fashions to follow, marriages to consider and, of course, the tiny complication of existing in a world swarming with fairy spirits, interfering deities, and actual straight-up sorcerers.
\nMiss Maelys Mitchelmore finds her entry into high society hindered by an irritating curse. It begins innocuously enough with her dress slowly unmaking itself over the course of an evening at a high-profile ball, a scandal she narrowly manages to escape.
\nHowever, as the curse progresses to more fatal proportions, Miss Mitchelmore must seek out aid, even if it means mixing with undesirable company. And there are few less desirable than Lady Georgianna Landrake - a brooding, alluring young woman sardonically nicknamed “the Duke of Annadale” - who may or may not have murdered her own father and brothers to inherit their fortune. If one is to believe the gossip, she might be some kind of malign enchantress. Then again, a malign enchantress might be exactly what Miss Mitchelmore needs.
\nWith the Duke’s help, Miss Mitchelmore delves into a world of angry gods and vindictive magic, keen to unmask the perpetrator of these otherworldly attacks. But Miss Mitchelmore’s reputation is not the only thing at risk in spending time with her new ally. For the rumoured witch has her own secrets that may prove dangerous to Miss Mitchelmore’s heart - not to mention her life.
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Paris Daillencourt is a recipe for disaster. Despite his passion for baking, his cat, and his classics degree, constant self-doubt and second-guessing have left him a curdled, directionless mess. So when his roommate enters him in Bake Expectations, the nation’s favourite baking show, Paris is sure he’ll be the first one sent home.
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But not only does he win week one’s challenge - he meets fellow contestant Tariq Hassan. Sure, he’s the competition, but he’s also cute and kind, with more confidence than Paris could ever hope to have. Still, neither his growing romance with Tariq nor his own impressive bakes can keep Paris’s fear of failure from spoiling his happiness. And when the show’s vicious fanbase confirms his worst anxieties, Paris’s confidence is torn apart quicker than tear-and-share bread.
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But if Paris can find the strength to face his past, his future, and the chorus of hecklers that live in his brain, he’ll realise it’s the sweet things in life that he really deserves.
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Rosaline Palmer has always lived by those rules - well, except for when she dropped out of college to raise her daughter, Amelie. Now, with a paycheck as useful as greaseproof paper and a house crumbling faster than biscuits in tea, she’s teetering on the edge of financial disaster. But where there’s a whisk there’s a way . . . and Rosaline has just landed a spot on the nation’s most beloved baking show.
\nWinning the prize money would give her daughter the life she deserves - and Rosaline is determined to stick to the instructions. However, more than collapsing trifles stand between Rosaline and sweet, sweet victory. Suave, well-educated, and parent-approved Alain Pope knows all the right moves to sweep her off her feet, but it’s shy electrician Harry Dobson who makes Rosaline question her long-held beliefs - about herself, her family, and her desires.
\nRosaline fears falling for Harry is a guaranteed recipe for disaster. Yet as the competition - and the ovens - heat up, Rosaline starts to realise the most delicious bakes come from the heart.
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Second rule in this line of business: be careful who you kill.
My name’s Kate Kane. And right now, I don’t know which is more dangerous: my job, or my girlfriend. My job makes me the go-to girl for every supernatural mystery in London. My girlfriend’s an eight-hundred-year-old vampire prince. Honestly, I think it’s probably a tie.
A few weeks ago, I was hired for a simple missing person case. Next thing I know, I’m being arrested for murder, a vampire army is tearing up London, and even my dreams are out to get me. Something ancient, evil, and scary as hell is on the loose and looking for payback. The vampires are in chaos, the werewolves are culling everything, and the Witch Queen can’t protect everyone.
Which means it’s down to me. And all I’ve got to hold back the shadows is a stiff drink, a quirky sidekick, my creepy ex-boyfriend, and the woman who left me for a tech startup. It’s going to be another interesting day.
A couple of years ago I screwed up so badly that everybody I remotely cared about wound up dead, nearly dead, or just plain betraying me. Some days, I’m sober enough to care.
\nMy list of “things I really don’t need right now” starts with a condescending octogenarian werewolf having a go at me for banging a Marchioness. As for where it ends, try the disembodied spirit of my ex-girlfriend stalking me in my dreams, a vindictive wizard-vampire from the first century on a vengeance crusade, being hired by the magical twin of my disanimated best friend and, oh yes, having to find the actual Holy Grail.
\nIf I was a better person, I’d take this opportunity to put my life together. I’d find a way to fix everything I broke, save everybody I let down, and maybe pay a certain vampire back for leaving me to die. But I’m not a better person. I’m a hard-drinking half-faery train wreck on legs and if I hated myself less I might even say I liked it that way.
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Lennon Carter’s life is falling apart.
\nThen she gets a mysterious phone call inviting her to take the entrance exam for Drayton College, a school of magic hidden in a secret pocket of Savannah. Lennon has been chosen because - like everyone else at the school - she has the innate gift of persuasion, the ability to wield her will like a weapon, using it to control others and, in rare cases, matter itself.
\nAfter passing the test, Lennon begins to learn how to master her devastating and unsettling power. But despite persuasion’s heavy toll on her body and mind, she is wholly captivated by her studies, by Drayton’s lush, moss-draped campus, and by her brilliant classmates. But even more captivating is her charismatic adviser, Dante, who both intimidates and enthralls her.
\nAs Lennon continues in her studies her control grows, and she starts to uncover more about the secret world she has entered into, including the disquieting history of Drayton College, and the way her mentor’s tragic and violent past intertwines with it. She is increasingly disturbed by what she learns. For it seems that the ultimate test is to embrace absolute power without succumbing to corruption . . . and it's a test she's terrified she is going to fail.
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Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums, where want and deprivation are all she knows. Despite longing to leave the city and its miseries, she has no real hope of escape until the day she spots a strange advertisement in the newspaper, seeking a 'bloodmaid'.
\nThough she knows little about the far north - where wealthy nobles live in luxury and drink the blood of those in their service - Marion applies to the position. In a matter of days, she finds herself at the notorious House of Hunger. There, Marion is swept into a world of dark debauchery - and there, at the centre of it all is her.
\nHer name is Countess Lisavet. Loved and feared in equal measure, she presides over this hedonistic court. And she takes a special interest in Marion. Lisavet is magnetic, charismatic, seductive - and Marion is eager to please her new mistress. But when her fellow bloodmaids begin to go missing in the night, Marion is thrust into a vicious game of cat and mouse. She'll need to learn the rules of her new home - and fast - or its halls will soon become her grave.
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In the lands of Bethel, where the Prophet’s word is law, Immanuelle Moore’s very existence is blasphemy. Her mother’s union with an outsider of a different race cast her once-proud family into disgrace, so Immanuelle does her best to worship the Father, follow Holy Protocol, and lead a life of submission, devotion, and absolute conformity, like all the other women in the settlement.
But a mishap lures her into the forbidden Darkwood surrounding Bethel, where the first prophet once chased and killed four powerful witches. Their spirits are still lurking there, and they bestow a gift on Immanuelle: the journal of her dead mother, who Immanuelle is shocked to learn once sought sanctuary in the wood.
Fascinated by the secrets in the diary, Immanuelle finds herself struggling to understand how her mother could have consorted with the witches. But when she begins to learn grim truths about the Church and its history, she realizes the true threat to Bethel is its own darkness. And she starts to understand that if Bethel is to change, it must begin with her.
New York, 1972. A cloistered college student slips out of the dorms to attend a performance by a legendary experimental performance troupe. Within months, she has left campus life behind and joined the company, infatuated by its charismatic leader and his promises of absolute freedom.
\nCalifornia, 1997. A theater teacher at an exclusive private school receives an unsettling letter. With her job at risk and her past clawing at her carefully constructed present, what will she do to protect the life she has made?
\nRiveting and atmospheric, Flashout is a coruscating coming-of-age story and an immersive thriller exploring the enchantments and perils of art.
Mallory Greenleaf is done with chess. Every move counts nowadays; after the sport led to the destruction of her family four years earlier, Mallory's focus is on her mom, her sisters, and the dead-end job that keeps the lights on. That is, until she begrudgingly agrees to play in one last charity tournament and inadvertently wipes the board with notorious “Kingkiller” Nolan Sawyer: current world champion and reigning Bad Boy of chess.
\nNolan's loss to an unknown rook-ie shocks everyone. What's even more confusing? His desire to cross pawns again. What kind of gambit is Nolan playing? The smart move would be to walk away. Resign. Game over. But Mallory's victory opens the door to sorely needed cash-prizes and despite everything, she can't help feeling drawn to the enigmatic strategist . . .
\nAs she rockets up the ranks, Mallory struggles to keep her family safely separated from the game that wrecked it in the first place. And as her love for the sport she so desperately wanted to hate begins to rekindle, Mallory quickly realises that the games aren't only on the board, the spotlight is brighter than she imagined, and the competition can be fierce-ly attractive. And intelligent . . . and infuriating . . .
As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.
\nThat man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor - and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding . . . six-pack abs.
\nSuddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.
The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor, toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs.
\nHonestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig - until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and broody older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And that same Jack who now sits on the hiring committee at MIT, right between Elsie and her dream job.
\nElsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but . . . those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?
Rue Siebert might not have it all, but she has enough: a few friends she can always count on, the financial stability she yearned for as a kid, and a successful career as a biotech engineer at Kline, one of the most promising start-ups in the field of food science. Her world is stable, pleasant, and hard-fought. Until a hostile takeover and its offensively attractive front man threatens to bring it all crumbling down.
\nEli Killgore and his business partners want Kline, period. Eli has his own reasons for pushing this deal through - and he's a man who gets what he wants. With one burning exception: Rue. The woman he can't stop thinking about. The woman who's off-limits to him.
\nTorn between loyalty and an undeniable attraction, Rue and Eli throw caution out the lab and the boardroom windows. Their affair is secret, no-strings-attached, and has a built-in deadline: the day one of their companies will prevail. But the heart is risky business - one that plays for keeps.
Maya Killgore is twenty-three and still in the process of figuring out her life.
\nConor Harkness is thirty-eight, and Maya cannot stop thinking about him.
\nIt’s such a cliché, it almost makes her heart implode: older man and younger woman; successful biotech guy and struggling grad student; brother’s best friend and the girl he never even knew existed. As Conor loves to remind her, the power dynamic is too imbalanced. Any relationship between them would be problematic in too many ways to count, and Maya should just get over him. After all, he has made it clear that he wants her gone from his life.
\nBut not everything is as it seems - and clichés sometimes become plot twists.
\nWhen Maya’s brother decides to get married in Taormina, she and Conor end up stuck together in a romantic Sicilian villa for over a week. There, on the beautiful Ionian coast, between ancient ruins, delicious foods, and natural caves, Maya realises that Conor might be hiding something from her. And as the destination wedding begins to erupt out of control, she decides that a summer fling might be just what she needs - even if it’s a problematic one.
\n
The crew from Cowgirl Up are back in the saddle for more fun.
\nIn their new adventure, Coal, Stormy, and Gene get the chance to be part of something they have always dreamed of - a cattle drive. The beautiful scenery of Montana and the lure of a rodeo is just the start of their journey.
\nEven without the gang being at the MC2 ranch, there’s still plenty of action going on. A new addition, Doc Bo, brings a hint of jealousy and maybe the start of a new romance.
\nPull on your boots and hats, and hold on tight as you ride along with the crew of the MC2.
\n
After the death of her father, Nat St. Croix needs to decide on which direction her life should take. Does she continue her life alone, as a trapper and trader, or does she start over and try to fit into a town surrounded by strangers?
When she arrives in Seattle to trade her furs, a young widow, Marissa, catches Nat’s attention. Can Marissa be the chance of having the best of both worlds? Will the call of the wild and all that is familiar or, will the call of love capture Nat’s heart?
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Ali Spooner - Bee Charmer, The.jpeg", "mtime": 1782078807594.339, "size": 758717, "cachedAt": "2026-06-21T23:28:59.679Z" }, "Ali Spooner - Blank White Page, The": { "title": "The Blank White Page", "author": "Ali Spooner", "description": "Tatum Chastain, Corporate Officer of Chastain International, her family’s real estate empire, accepts the challenge her father, Charles, has set forth. Charles has tasked Tatum and her brother, Charlie, to survive in the wilderness for six months to prove their skills in taking over the family business once he retires. Charles fails to realise that Tatum would fall in love with the southeastern Alaska cabin he has chosen for her to test her resilience and creativity.
\nTatum prepares for life in the bush, and shortly after she arrives, Poe, a beautiful raven, becomes her companion and guardian. When River Foster, a designated hunter for her village, crosses Tatum’s path, she finds a different kind of love awaits her.
\n
When the new ranch hand, Coal Bryan, arrives at the MC2, the last thing she’s looking for is love.
\nHer co-workers are surprised when Coal turns out to be female. Coal, used to the reaction, quickly earns the respect of the crew with her work ethic and skill with horses. Coal uses the strenuous work and friendship of the ranch hands to try and forget her broken past.
\nMelissa Conway, owner of MC2, offers Coal a place to live in her home. They both are shocked to find they are linked in a way neither of them imagined.
\nMary Leah, Melissa’s sister, arrives at the ranch to recover from a recent tragedy. The attraction between Mary Leah and Coal is instant and mutual.
\nCan the three women survive their personal dilemmas? The love and friendship they develop certainly helps but will it be enough to bring them together. Ride along with the MC2, for boot scootin’, butt kickin’, dirt eatin’, rodeo adventures, with a love story thrown into the mix.
\n
Cameron St. Angelo dreams of playing softball in the College World Series. Earning a scholarship to play ball for her beloved LSU, brings Cam one-step closer to achieving this dream.
\nWhen Cam arrives on campus, she joins a family of women who share her love of the sport, and she realizes there is room in her life for another love.
\nThis is the beginning of a three-part story, of Cam and the St. Angelo family’s struggle to survive in the bayous of South Central Louisiana.
\n
A young pioneer woman finds herself at a crossroads when her father, her only remaining family is killed by a bear as they are trapping their way west along the Canadian border away from the War between the North and the South.
\nNat and her animal companions winter in a small northwest town where she finds much more than shelter from a storm. She finds home.
\n
When Toni lands a new job as a personal trainer and nutritionist, she finds herself embroiled in a lover’s triangle. Sara and her supermodel lover Cindy are in a fading romance when Toni arrives.
\nPassion quickly ignites between Sara and Toni, heating up the south Florida nights as they grow beyond mere lustful encounters while Cindy follows her heart to the lights of the runway in Paris.
\n
Sandy, the youngest sibling of Gator Girlz, Inc., has worshipped her older sister Cam all her life and wanted nothing more than to be just like her hero. Footprints provides readers with Sandy's story of growing up in the Bayous of Louisiana.
\nWhen the devastating floods of 2016 impact the Baton Rouge area, Cam and Sandy join the Cajun Navy to help rescue families trapped in the rampant floodwaters. The story also revisits Sandy's victory over Bubba Gump and how Sandy's injuries started her down the path to find the love of her life.
\n
Cam’s freshman year concluded with her winning many conference and national honors for her performance on the softball diamond, but the team failed to make the National Tournament in Oklahoma City.
\nAn injury to Tab’s arm and a miraculous game-winning catch sent them home to Baton Rouge. To ease their disappointment Tab, Cam’s lover, booked a trip to the tournament for Cam and herself, to experience the thrill of the competition and to give them additional incentive for their next season.
\nTheir trip to the tournament was a dream come true for Cam, and even though her beloved Tigers weren’t in it, she was excited and even more stoked for next year’s season. She vowed to get in better shape over the summer and do everything she could to make sure the team made the trip next season.
\n
The discovery of an affair involving her best friend and a lucky lottery ticket send Eli Fortner’s life into a whirlwind of change. These changes allow her to pursue some long dreamed of goals, but will it also lead to her to find new love? Thirteen black cats, a baby goat, her pup, and furry best friend Cruz join her on her new adventures.
\nArriving home and discovering the betrayal by her best friend and lover, Eli Fortner leaves to run off her anger and hurt. A chance stop at a convenience store and the purchase of lottery tickets, sends Eli’s life into a whirlwind of change.
\nAble to now pursue her dreams, Eli heads off to see what else fate has in store for her. Whit Brewster, Eli’s neighbor, is everything Eli never knew she needed and wanted. But can she let go of the betrayal long enough to let Whit in?
\nThirteen black cats, a baby goat, and Cruz, her furry best friend, join Eli on her adventure, new life, and the possibility of real love.
\n
In the sequel to Venus Rising, drama thrives as Levi moves to a private island to oversee the development of the new resort and unravels clues to the mysterious disappearance of the woman who is reported to haunt the island. Levi finds herself hopelessly in love with Vanessa, while Simone tries every devious trick in the book to win Levi back. Wedding bells ring, but for whom will they toll?
\n
Kade, a seasoned battlefield soldier has had enough, refusing to fight for greed. Now on a quest to return to her homeland she meets Iza.
Iza, a slave from the army defeated by Kade, begs the warrior to take her on as a servant.
Kade, sympathetic to the slave’s request, allows her to travel as a companion and a friendship begins to form.
After a beautiful wedding, Eli and Whit return to plan the next phase of their relationship. Whit discovers the identity of her father; he shares a future with her that will change life on Cast Iron Farm forever.
\nTwins bless the Fortner family, and Eli shares a special secret with Mitch, who bonds with the children in a unique way. Ride along as the Fortners begin a new chapter of their story.
\n
A perfect summer ends with danger on the Appalachian Trail for Whit, Mitch and Brad. Once safely home, the relationship between Eli and Whit continues to strengthen as the boys return home and they grow as a couple.
\nEli falls deeper in love with Whit and North Carolina as the trees come alive with autumn color. The first Christmas at Cast Iron Farm is celebrated with Eli’s family as a new chapter in all of their lives begins.
\n
Kendra Drake thinks her life is complete. She has taken over as Captain of her father’s shrimp boat. As a favor to her father, Kendra has agreed to give fellow shrimper Lindsey Bowen a chance to work on the boat.
\nFleeing a personal scandal, Lindsey hopes a summer spent shrimping will allow the situation to fade into history. But first, she must prove herself to Kendra and her crew.
\nKendra is fighting against mother nature, the open waters, and herself. Still, Lindsey finds a way into Kendra’s heart.
\nWill it only last for the summer?
\n
Eli and Whit are enjoying their life together on the mountain when Whit is called into action for a secret mission at the Pentagon. While she is gone, the Cast Iron Farm comes to life, literally, when Eli discovers a mysterious cave that has a connection to Whit’s past.
\nYounger brother Brad joins the gang. When Whit returns, she plans an Appalachian Trail adventure with Brad and Mitch. Join Eli and family as their adventure at Cast Iron Farm continues.
Cam’s story continues as the Gator Girlz business continues to thrive under her leadership, but will self-doubt jeopardize her relationship when Bugsy reveals the family moonshine business to an unsuspecting Luce?
\nWill a devastating injury to Sandy end her career as a gator hunter or will it open a door to love? Join the St. Angelo family for a third adventure to find out more about life, loving and family in Bayou Country.
\n
Continue the journey with Whit and Eli in this final installment of the Cast Iron Farm series. The brilliance of their twins, Mack and Zack, rapidly develops, challenging Whit and Eli to keep up with their education. Their sensitivity to others and kindness are far beyond their youth and a testament to the family's efforts to help them grow into young adults.
\nIn addition to more adventures, a budding romance, and wedding bells ring for the Fortner family once more as a new generation begins life on Cast Iron Farm.
\n
Levi Johnson arrives at Venus Rising, an exclusive lesbian only tropical resort in the Virgin Islands to have some fun before she enters the financial world to begin her career. Levi is an instant hit as the new bartender at the resort.
\nHoping to sow some “wild oats,” Levi finds love and so much more when she becomes involved in a sizzling hot love triangle with beautiful, rich, playgirl Simone, and the charming and handsome cruise ship Captain Vanessa.
\nTorn between her attraction to both women, Levi must overcome a dangerous curse and life-threatening accidents, as she struggles to choose the right woman to share her life.
\n
As New Orleans recovers from Hurricane Katrina, Detective Sept Savoie recovers from a gunshot wound with the help of her new love Keegan Blanchard. As the city returns to normal, so does the crime rate. Sept’s first case back on the job is a strangely ritualistic killing, which quickly escalates into serial murder.
\nAs the bodies start to pile up, the last thing Sept needs is the city’s newest celebrity crime writer, Nicole Voles, poking into the case looking for information for a new bestseller, especially when Nicole appears just as interested in Keegan as she is in murder.
\nTime is running out and innocent lives are on the line. But with all her focus on finding a killer, the secretive and seductive Nicole Voles may just steal what matters to Sept most.
\n
Architect Jolly Andolini has built her career on both award-winning structures and meaningful connections - but has no talent for it when it comes to her love life. Margot \"Mimi\" Mulle’s star is rising in the art world, and she’s finally getting her big break with her first major gallery show. Thrilled, she invites Jolly as her date.
\nBut when gallery owner Bianca Griffin sets her sights on Jolly, she’s determined to win her affection, even if it means upsetting Mimi. Sparks fly, loyalties are tested, and hearts collide as they navigate the unpredictable nature of their hearts.
\nIn the art of love, will destiny decide who belongs together?
Kendal Richoux’s life began during the reign of Egypt’s only female pharaoh. After accepting the opportunity to drink the elixir of the sun, Kendal becomes immortal and the Genesis Clan’s slayer. History has taught her the dangers of getting too close to anyone who hasn’t harnessed the power of time. After many years, she returns to New Orleans to finish a job she’s trained for all her life. It’s time for her to face her brother Henri, and it will have dire consequences to mankind if she fails.
Piper Marmande believes Kendal has come to take over the company her family has built over generations. As Kendal prepares for the most important battle of her long life, Piper does her best to uncover every one of Kendal’s secrets, making herself a distraction Kendal can’t afford as she hunts Henri and Ora, the vampire who seduced him to a life of darkness.
Kendal and Piper return to New Orleans, both now immortal. The peace along the Mississippi River is short-lived with the arrival of Kendal’s old friends, Morgaine and Lenore. They come with an order from the Genesis Clan for Kendal to return with them to face judgment for mixing the elixir of the sun for Piper without their consent. Their presence, though, wakes the seer the elders have waited centuries for.
\nThe small band of immortals along with Piper’s grandparents must work to prepare for what their future holds with the return of one of Kendal’s oldest enemies. The battle of forces begins when the new queen of the vampires joins forces with this new threat, both set on destroying not only Kendal, but the woman she loves.
\n
Ellis Renois is at the top of the fashion world and has built the Renois Company into a success that dominates the runways of the world. Ellis loves creating clothes, and she loves the beautiful women who wear them. While Ellis deals with design, she leaves the business aspect to others. It’s a mistake that could cost her more than just her life’s work.
Charlotte Hamner has worked her way through school and is ready to make a better life for herself and her daughter Sawyer. She’s far from the teenaged mother who worked a string of dead-end jobs to fulfill her dreams, so she’s not about to fall victim to Ellis’s easy charm.
A summer job presents Charlotte with the chance to learn from Ellis, but it might also land her the position of head designer for Renois. But her promotion will come only through betrayal and perhaps at the cost of her heart.
No one has her life more mapped out than Kai Merlin. She'll succeed her mother Galen and carry out every duty expected of her - the most important of which is to keep hidden the secrets her people have kept for eons.
\nVivien Palmer's life has been just as planned out by her parents, and their dream is for her and her brother Franklin to eventually run the family business. But Vivien's dreams lie in the depths of the oceans searching for clues to the shells she and Franklin wear around their necks.
\nA chance encounter as children forever linked Kai and Vivien for life, but can they find a way to be together despite what's expected of them?
\nThe answers lie Beneath the Waves.
\n
Commander Berkley Levine is content with her life as a Top Gun instructor in Fallon, Nevada, flying F-18s for the Navy and trying to get over the death of her sister. A change of government and a new equality initiative places Captain Aidan Sullivan at the helm of the Navy's newest carrier, the USS Jefferson.
\nHer first mission could have serious international consequences if she fails. Aidan's orders are to destroy two sites housing the nuclear program of an unfriendly nation, and she can think of only one person she trusts enough to get the job done: her old lover Berkley.
Blue Skies will take you from Fallon, Nevada, to the Sea of Japan and beyond, as Berkley leads an elite group of pilots over enemy territory. As they embark on this adventure, Berkley and Aidan try to rediscover what they gave up for family, duty, and country.
Detective Sept Savoie is a cop who thinks making a relationship work is harder than catching a serial killer, but her current case may prove her wrong.
\nSix months after Hurricane Katrina has devastated most of New Orleans, Detective Sept Savoie is battling the nightmare of everything the storm has taken from her when a brutalised body turns up behind one of New Orleans's most famous restaurants, run by Keegan Blanchard.
\nThe more Sept works through the clues, the more they point to Keegan, making the relationship growing between them anything but love at first sight. The first death, though, is only the beginning as the miles of deserted neighborhoods Katrina left behind provide the perfect stage for murder.
\n
Jaxon Lavigne left the small town of Chackbay, Louisiana, to escape disapproving parents and has never looked back. She’s now a popular English lit professor. Life is good. Really. The only problem is the invite in her mailbox. Who in their right mind has a fifteen-year high school reunion?
\nIris Long’s days are predictable. She did the safe thing and married the high school quarterback. While her life isn’t a grand love affair, it’s comfortable, and as the secretary at the local high school, she can see her daughter and son throughout the day. Her family is great, but Iris longs for the one person she can’t have.
\nJaxon comes back to town amid gossip that started sixteen years earlier and never really died down. After crushing on Iris in high school, seeing her again is a welcome surprise. But it’s Iris’s daughter, Sean, whose dark hair, blue eyes, and brilliant mind are startlingly like Jaxon’s own who exposes scars from small town secrets.
\nJaxon has been kept in the dark by those she loves most, including Iris. But when the truth is finally revealed, will she leave for good?
\n
Is passion still possible the second time around? Poppy Valente has the world in the palm of her hand until fate steals from her the one thing that matters most - her wife Carly. When breast cancer ends their life together, Poppy finds herself at a loss as to how to begin to live again.
\nJulia Johnson is running to Carly's Sound with her newborn daughter Tallulah in search of the path to her future. On a chance meeting two years after Carly's death, these two women form a bond of friendship that lays the foundation for something more.
\nCarly's Sound - will bring you from New Orleans to a five star resort in the Caribbean as Julia and Poppy struggle to define their lives and Poppy's past comes back to haunt her - literally.
\n
It's business as usual for crime boss Cain Casey, as she maneuvers to form an alliance with Ramon and Remington Jatibon and secure peace among the ruling families in New Orleans . Cain's new associate Remington Jatibon is a lot like Cain used to be - a playgirl with a passion for bedding beautiful women and an even greater passion for expanding her father's empire, on both sides of the law.
\nWhen Remi meets Dallas Montgomery, a budding actress working for the studio Ramon Jatibon has just acquired, she finds that there's more to Dallas than is included in her press pagers.
\nMeanwhile, on the home front it's anything but normal as she and Emma hope to conceive their third child. Little do they know an old enemy is about to surface who wants revenge on Cain and what better way that to take what she values above all else - her wife.
\n
Cain Casey is close to getting everything she wants. Her partner Emma is pregnant with their third child, her children are safe and happy, and her business is still thriving despite the FBI’s vendetta. Life is perfect on the surface, but it’s the underbelly that worries her.
\nHer long-time enemy Juan Luis and his new partner, rogue agent Anthony Curtis have disappeared; her cousin Muriel has gotten serious about Shelby Philips, the FBI agent in charge of the Casey surveillance team; and her business partner, Remi Jatibon, is facing trouble from her new love Dallas’s secret past.
\nWhile Cain struggles to defeat a new enemy - a woman who just may be her equal when it comes to destroying those who stand against her family - an unimaginable betrayal may bring Cain’s charmed life to an end.
\n
For Cain Casey nothing is more important than family, and having hers close - Emma, Hayden, Hannah, and the new baby - is as near as she’ll get to true happiness. But enemies who lurk in the shadows threaten more than just her business, forcing her to question whether the biggest threat comes from having it all.
\nAs Cain continues to search for lingering adversaries like agent-turned-drug dealer Anthony Curtis, the FBI is hot on her tail and will stop at nothing to lock her away. Add the Russian mob into the mix and it might be too much to handle. It will take a transformation into the devil incarnate for Cain to keep those she loves safe and to hold on to her rightful place as the head of the family.
\n
A gunshot meant to end the legacy of the Casey Clan has left a weakened Cain fighting to regain control of her business while trying to protect her heart from the woman who left her.
\nAs the heat of violence rises, so does the passion. “The Devil Inside” introduced the story of crime family head Cain and Emma Casey, their family, and the forces that sought to destroy them.
\nNow, threatened from every side, Cain must unleash that devil to protect all she holds dear. One by one, Cain faces her enemies and discovers the truth of who was behind one of the greatest losses of her life. Only this time she might not have to carry the burden of leading the family alone - if she is willing to take a chance on love again.
\nBut can she trust Emma not to run as she did once before when faced with the dark parts of the Casey family leader?
\n
Brains, guts, and ruthless ambition should be enough to come out on top in any fight. Except when the battle is over love, all bets are off. Derby Cain Casey was groomed from birth to take the reins of the Casey family enterprises, which just happens to be one of the major crime organisations in New Orleans.
\nSurviving by never turning away from a fight and knowing how to win at all costs, Cain is as careful with her heart as she is with her business - until she meets Emma Verde. The farm girl from Wisconsin puts a hit out on Cain’s heart and leads her down a dangerous road filled with great joy and devastating sorrow.
\n
Cain Casey has much to be thankful for - a loving wife in Emma, three beautiful children, and an ever-expanding family. Her business continues to grow, giving her the power to keep it all safe, but is it? Unknown federal agents are not playing by the government’s rules, and the Russian mob comes seeking revenge for the losses Cain’s inflicted.
\nCain and Emma have agreed to partner with the local feds to root out their rogue agents, but their goals for the endgame are completely different. Cain wants to remove the threat the way she knows is best - permanently. There is also Nicola Antakov, who she plans to handle the same way.
\nCain Casey is the devil you know. She loves her family and will do anything to keep them safe and whole.
\n
Cain and Emma are now married and have returned to a Katrina-ravaged New Orleans to await the birth of their third child. Cain’s wedding gift to Emma was peace of mind with the death of Juan Luis and his mother, but Anthony Curtis is still a threat who has disappeared as effectively as the Luis family once did. The Casey alliance with the Jatibon and Carlotti families is strong, but there are new and old enemies, as well as the ever-present FBI that are working to bring Cain down.
\n
Cain and Emma are planning a wedding before the birth of their third child. Cain has done everything possible to protect her family and get their lives back to normal. Cain is strengthening her partnership with the Jatibons and Carlotti families, as well as trying to help her cousin Muriel heal from FBI agent Shelby Phillips’s betrayal.
But nothing can distract her from hunting Juan Luis down to make him pay for trying to take Emma from her. That is the most pressing problem to be dealt with before she can truly enjoy the life and family she and Emma have together. Those plans are derailed with the arrival of someone who not only challenges her place as her father, Dalton's heir, but also her belief and loyalty to the man who raised her.
Hit woman and thief Reed Gable works for the highest bidder, no matter where the job takes her. An orphan of circumstance, Reed knows the streets of Las Vegas better than anyone. Growing up rough has gotten her to the top of her profession, and she plans to stay there.
\nAccountant Brinley Myers, a recent hire at the Moroccan Casino, discovers a money laundering operation orchestrated by the New York mob and suddenly her life and the people in it become collateral damage.
\nReed has Brinley in her sights and is ready to close the contract when she sees Brinley’s son in the car with her. Even hard-hearted Reed can’t kill a mother in front of her child. Before Reed can come up with a plan to finish the job, she’s double-crossed. It’ll take all her street smarts to keep herself, and her surprisingly beautiful mark, alive.
\n
At age thirteen, Major Wiley Gremillion sat with Aubrey Tarver under their dragon tree, sure of her future. She’d share her life with Aubrey and continue her family’s tradition of military service.
But as a sniper with Special Forces, code name Black Dragon, her enemies cost her a future with Aubrey. Walking away was the only way to keep Aubrey whole. Now retired, Wiley knows she’ll be alone, dividing her time between her canvasses and helping others with her unique military skill set.
Time hasn’t dulled the pain of losing Wiley for Aubrey, but she has to set that aside when her choices put her life and her family’s lives in real danger. The only way out is Wiley, but after so many years, Aubrey’s not sure that’s an option.
Aubrey’s first call sets off a firestorm that will take all Wiley’s experience to escape, and along the way they might find what they lost. Together they started their story under a tree, and they’ll fight to make sure it doesn’t end on the streets of New Orleans.
Music producer, Mason Liner, has one passion: the acts she can bring to the top of the charts. When the biggest record label in Nashville hands her a new client, country music royalty, Sophie Roddy, Mason’s reluctant to take on a problem diva whose excessive lifestyle almost ruined her career, but can't turn down the challenge.
\nVictoria Roddy has lived in Sophie Roddy’s shadow for as long as she can remember. Being her mother's assistant is more than a job description...it’s her life. Now arrogant and aggravating Mason thinks she can turn Sophie’s career around, but Victoria doesn’t believe Mason’s ridiculous demands and exhaustive schedule are what her mother needs right now.
\nMason and Victoria have to work together, so it’s really too bad they can’t stand each other, and even worse that they can’t seem to deny their attraction.
\n
Immortals Kendal and Piper welcome their new child and celebrate the defeat of an old enemy by returning to their home outside New Orleans. The last battle was hard but promises to bring peace to their lives for years to come. Now Piper wants to expand her power as a seer and hear Kendal’s history while they enjoy a normal life.
\nIn the deep jungles of Costa Rica, far from the watchful eyes of Rolla and the Genesis Clan, the priests of the ancient order of Fuego have found the tablets that will allow them to finish the incantations that will awaken their greatest treasures. Some of the Fuego members believe the old stories were pure fiction, but Alejandro Garza’s family are true believers.
\nFar from the peace they'd hoped for, Kendal and Piper are forced into action to reach Garza and his followers before he awakens the army of dragons that sleep forgotten in the rain forests.
\n
Harriet “Harry” and Desi Basantes spent sixteen years waiting to find each other again, and now they’re weeks away from a wedding and the baby they’ve planned since high school.
\nDesi’s sister Rachel Thompson is happy for them. Rachel might wish for her own grand love affair, but her attraction to Harry’s ex Serena Ladding doesn’t exactly spell happily ever after. She’s pretty sure Serena is still in love with Harry and isn’t prepared to take the chance on a broken heart. So then why can’t she stop thinking about Serena?
\nAngola State Penitentiary is one of the toughest prisons in the country, but when Desi’s ex-husband Byron Simoneaux sees the chance to run, he does with only one goal in mind: to finish what he started and kill Desi, Rachel, and Harry, the women who stole his life.
\nCan you really outrun your past? For Harry, Desi, and Rachel, it’s a matter of life or death.
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There was a time when Dalton Casey ran the Casey family while grooming the next generation, but Cain Casey inherits the reins too early when Dalton is gunned down. His loss leaves Cain devastated, and she does her best to keep the business together, but his loss has left her adrift and hungry for revenge. That ends the night a new employee douses her in beer.
Emma Verde has left everything behind in Wisconsin to attend Tulane in New Orleans. She sees an opportunity to make enough money for the coming semester when she lands a job at an Irish pub in the French Quarter. That job soon spirals into something else.
That’s the story we know, but this is the tale of how Cain and Emma fell in love, and their history proves that love was the only thing that saved the heart of the devil.
Parker “Kong” King is the number one tennis player in the world with a real talent for getting women in her bed. To prepare herself for the one title she’s never won - and avoid the press and her ex - she retreats to a secluded home in Press Cove, Alabama. There she’ll also be safe from the Soldiers of God who’ve threatened to kill her for what they see as her depraved lifestyle.
Commercial pilot Captain Sydney Parish loves the order that comes from a well-constructed plan for everything, her only failure being her personal life. She hopes a vacation will help heal her bruised heart, but soon finds that might not be possible when she discovers she’s one house over from Parker King.
When Parker and Sydney meet, sparks fly, but not from attraction. They have the summer to see if they have a love match, or will the Soldiers of God kill their chance for a relationship?
Asher Evans is living her dreams eight seconds at a time. She’s finally at the top of the rankings and headed for the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas, and she owes it all to the man who taught her everything, Silas Wilson.
\nReagan Wilson vowed she’d never return to Louisiana. Her father, Silas, was a world champion rodeo rider until an accident destroyed his career, then killed him. Now she’s interning at a sports clinic in New Orleans, and her first patient is Asher Evans. Seeing her childhood neighbor and teenage crush brings all those painful memories rushing back.
\nAsher and Reagan are from different worlds, even if they grew up side by side. Reagan doesn’t understand why anyone would risk their life for a title and a belt buckle, and Asher doesn’t do safe and predictable. Falling in love makes no sense, but as the spark between them ignites, they may have more in common than they think.
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When orthopedic surgeon Harriet “Harry” Basantes is called to the ER to assess a patient who has been assaulted by her husband, she’s instantly thrust back sixteen years to the day her childhood sweetheart, Desi Thompson, walked away and disappeared without a trace.
\nDesi’s always done the right thing, including marrying the man her father insisted was a better match than Harry. But when she ends up in the ER after an argument gone wrong, she can’t help wondering if the right thing is worth the cost.
\nHarry refuses to let Desi return to an unsafe home, even if that means putting aside her own broken heart. With love on the line, can they give each other one more chance?
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Brooks Boseman, born into privilege in an old New Orleans plantation home, could have opted for an easy life just like her siblings, but after a broken heart, she escapes to New York where no one knows her name.
\nA call from the family matriarch changes everything. Her brother Curtis is getting married, and Brooks needs to be at the engagement party. Only she can’t possibly go, not with Curtis set to marry the secret love of her youth, Fallon Goodwin. Unable to find a way to refuse, Brooks returns to discover the family business is in jeopardy. In the face of her father’s struggles with Alzheimer’s and her brother’s well-intentioned blunders, she’s forced to step in to save the family fortune.
\nAs far as Brooks and Fallon are concerned, romance is for storybooks, but as hard as they try to resist, neither can deny their feelings still linger. Family ties have never been more binding as they fight for the business, and maybe even for each other.
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Christian “Chili” Alexander is the most sought after campaign consultant at the Pellegrin Morris Firm in New Orleans. Chili’s success has given her the freedom to choose her clients carefully, but she hasn’t had the same good fortune in love.
Recent Tulane graduate Samantha Pellegrin wants the opportunity to work with the star of her father’s firm in the off-year election. As his only child, she’ll eventually inherit the firm, but she wants to continue their great track record in the world of politics. Her first day with Chili ends so disastrously, Sam wonders if she’ll take up the hobby of throwing darts at Chili’s picture.
As the campaign progresses, Sam will make Chili work for what both of them want in the most important campaign of both their lives. Only this time their polls have to do more with the romance vote than any politician’s future.
As Hurricane Katrina ravages New Orleans, attorney Tully Badeaux's life follows suit when betrayal leads to heartbreak . . .
Tully Gaston Badeaux might be successful in the courtroom but at home her relationships with her partner, Dr. Jessica Badeaux, and their children are falling apart.
In one life-changing moment precipitated by a spilled cup of coffee, the world Tully had so carefully constructed comes to an end. As Tully struggles to pick up the pieces, two women add to the complications - Dr. Kara Nicolas, the woman who stole her wife, and Libby Dexter, the young woman who moves in to assist Tully with the kids. Kara becomes her focus in the courtroom, and Libby offers more than a helping hand around the house.
Commander Berkley Levine and Captain Aidan Sullivan might have a life together if they survive the next mission. They’re undercover hunting down a treasonous ex-vice president and the militia he’s assembled to topple the US government, and the twisting trail grows deadlier at every turn. After an assassination and numerous attacks that could only have happened with inside help, they don’t know who they can trust, and the future looks darker than ever.
\nJust when they think the trail has run cold, their old enemy, North Korean pilot Jin Umeko, unexpectedly offers to help. Reluctantly, Berkley and Aidan accept the uneasy alliance, even while suspecting Umeko is motivated by vengeance for the loss of her mother and family. If they want to destroy the threat to the country, they’ll have to risk their lives and their futures, but they’ve been prepared for that since the day they put on the uniform.
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Kai Merlin is heir to her mother’s throne in Atlantis, and she takes her duties seriously, but lately her mind has been on her fiancée Vivien Palmer. After a chance encounter when they were children, meeting again and falling in love proved to be fate, but melding their worlds as they plan their wedding isn’t going to be easy.
\nVivien has spent her life searching for the secrets she’d always known were hidden beneath the waves, but nothing prepared her for what Kai and her people had successfully kept hidden for eons. She finally has a sense of belonging, but unseen enemies will stop at nothing to conquer and destroy their world - including everything and everyone she holds dear.
\nBelow turbulent waves, Kai and Vivien must fight for what is right as life and love hang in the balance.
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Levi Montbard loves history and isn’t afraid to search it out no matter where it takes her. A scroll she acquires to sell in Montbard’s Antiquities in New Orleans leads Levi on an adventure that will take her from London to Morocco, by way of the Sahara Desert. A story of a female Templar Knight should sound like a hoax, but to Levi the new information rings true. Proving the scroll accurate becomes an obsession. She’ll stop at nothing to uncover the truth.
\nYasmine Hassani spends her days teaching female studies in Marrakech to women who want to leave a mark on their country. An arrogant Westerner storming into her office is highly unexpected and leaves Yasmine laughing off the absurdity of her claims. No one knows more about the history of the Templar Knights than Yasmine, and reluctantly intrigued, she agrees to help Levi.
\nBut their search turns down one dead end after another, almost as if someone is working hard to keep old secrets buried. They’ll have to fight the Catholic Church, centuries of tradition, and their growing attraction for each other to uncover the mystery of the female Templar Knight.
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Author Wyatt Whitlock is one of the biggest names in action thrillers and writes for the largest publisher in the business. She’s extremely private and writes prolifically - well, until recently. Writer’s block may spell the end of her career if she can’t figure a way around it. A drastic change in scenery and a really old house in New Orleans could get her creativity going again, but renovating the house she bought on a whim might just kill her.
\nHayley Fox has put in her time as an assistant to an assistant in publishing, and it’s finally paid off. She’s been hired by a firm in New Orleans and she’s planning to use that as a springboard to the big leagues in New York, if only her sexy new neighbor - whose bare windows face Hayley's - didn’t make staying put an oh-so-tempting option.
\nWyatt and Hayley might be made for each other if only they can get through nosy neighbors, the historical society, at-odds future plans, and all the secrets hidden in Wyatt’s walls.
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Northern Ireland, 1975. Violence has erupted on the streets of Belfast. After years as a sleepy, guerilla army, the IRA is clashing with Loyalist gangs and heavily armed British soldiers. But the Troubles have spilled beyond the small island: An ocean away, in the heart of Philadelphia’s Irish enclave, a teenage girl finds a letter in her mailbox. Inside is a bullet, and the message is clear: The next one is for you or your family.
\nAs celebrated New York Times reporter Ali Watkins reveals in this exquisitely reported nonfiction thriller, the conflict in Northern Ireland might have gone very differently had it not been for a small, ragtag band of carpenters, family men, and fugitives in the United States. The Philadelphia Five, as they came to be known, supplied the Irish Republican Army at its moment of greatest need, bolstering the fight for a united Ireland but fueling the Troubles at an untold cost. This small group of Irish nationalists smuggled hundreds of rifles, rocket launchers, explosives, and armor-piercing bullets across the Atlantic Ocean and into Northern Ireland.
\nWhether they were skimming money from innocuous-seeming charities, coolly slipping weapons into hidden compartments of vans and houses, or scouring local graveyards for the names of dead Irishmen to use on federal firearm forms, the gunrunners approached their mission - to unite Ireland under one flag, by any means necessary - with ruthless poise, even as European and American investigators closed in, members of their own movement began to turn on them, and bodies stacked up on all sides.
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Qianze has not seen her father in eleven years, since he walked out of her life the night of her fourteenth birthday and disappeared without a trace. But then she gets a call - there is a man on the porch of her childhood home, and he’s asking for her. This man isn’t the Ba Qianze remembers: he is much older, more fragile, and worst of all, haunted by a half-forgotten prophecy.
\nWhile Qianze wrestles with what she owes this near-stranger, Ba begins telling stories of his past. From his bloody days as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution to his mother’s youth under Japanese occupation, he circles around the prophecy he came to deliver. Qianze has always longed to know more about her family history, but as Ba reveals a past far darker than she could have imagined, she finds herself plagued by strange visions - fox spirits trail her on her evening commute, a terrifying jackalope stalks her nightmares, and the looming prophecy slinks ever closer.
\nSpanning decades and continents, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing employs a combination of stunningly rendered folklore and atmospheric prose to examine the legacy of colonialism through the eyes of three generations. Alice Evelyn Yang’s debut novel is a story of family and forgiveness, of folklore and fate, that will leave you unsettled and undone.
Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.
\nGrady calls his wife to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by the cliff edge the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there. . . but his wife has disappeared.
\nA year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible - a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.
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After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in Nana’s crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours.
\nThe family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows . . .
\nTrapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide comes in and all is revealed.
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Twenty years after a baby is stolen from a stroller, a woman is murdered in a care home. The two crimes are somehow linked, and a good bad girl may be the key to discovering the truth.
\nEdith may have been tricked into a nursing home, but at eighty-years-young, she’s planning her escape. Patience works there, cleaning messes and bonding with Edith, a kindred spirit. But Patience is lying to Edith about almost everything.
\nEdith’s own daughter, Clio, won’t speak to her. And someone new is about to knock on Clio’s door . . . and their intentions aren’t good.
\nWith every reason to distrust each other, the women must solve a mystery with three suspects, two murders, and one victim. If they do, they might just find out what happened to the baby who disappeared, the mother who lost her, and the connections that bind them.
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There are two sides to every story: yours and mine, ours and theirs, His & Hers. Which means someone is always lying.
Anna Andrews finally has what she wants. Almost. She’s worked hard to become the main TV presenter of the BBC’s lunchtime news, putting work before friends, family, and her now ex-husband. So, when someone threatens to take her dream job away, she’ll do almost anything to keep it.
When asked to cover a murder in Blackdown - the sleepy countryside village where she grew up - Anna is reluctant to go. But when the victim turns out to be one of her childhood friends, she can’t leave. It soon becomes clear that Anna isn’t just covering the story, she’s at the heart of it.
DCI Jack Harper left London for a reason, but never thought he’d end up working in a place like Blackdown. When the body of a young woman is discovered, Jack decides not to tell anyone that he knew the victim, until he begins to realise he is a suspect in his own murder investigation.
One of them knows more than they are letting on. Someone isn’t telling the truth.
l Know Who You Are is the brilliant tale of two stories. One is about Aimee Sinclair - well-known actress on the verge of being full-on famous. If you saw her, you’d think you knew her.
\nOne day towards the near-end of her shoot on her latest film, Aimee comes home from filming to find her husband’s cell phone and wallet on the dining room table. He never goes anywhere without them. But he’s nowhere to be found. She’s not too concerned - they had a huge fight the night before. They both said things they didn’t mean. He might have done things he didn’t mean, things she can’t forget. Even though she has a history of supposedly forgetting. After all, she’s a very good actress.
The next morning she goes for her morning run and then goes to her favorite coffee shop. But her card is denied. When she calls the bank they say her account has been emptied of $10,000. She immediately suspects her husband. But they say no, it was Aimee herself who closed out the account. And thus begins a bizarre rabbit hole into which Aimee finds herself falling where nothing is at it seems.
Alternating with Aimee’s story is that of a little girl who wandered away from home. We always tell our kids not to talk to strangers or bad things will happen. Well, bad things happen.
Eden Fox, an artist on the brink of her big break, sets off for a run before her first exhibition. When she returns to the home she recently moved into, Spyglass, an enchanting old house in Hope Falls, nothing is as it should be. Her key doesn’t fit. A woman, eerily similar to her, answers the door. And her husband insists that the stranger is his wife.
\nOne house. One husband. Two women. Someone is lying.
\nSix months earlier, a reclusive Londoner called Birdy, reeling from a life-changing diagnosis, inherits Spyglass. This unexpected gift from a long-lost grandmother brings her to the pretty seaside village of Hope Falls. But then Birdy stumbles upon a shadowy London clinic that claims to be able to predict a person's date of death, including her own. Secrets start to unravel, and as the line between truth and lies blurs, Birdy feels compelled to right some old wrongs.
Things have been wrong with Mr and Mrs Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can’t recognise friends or family, or even his own wife.
\nEvery anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts - paper, cotton, pottery, tin - and each year Adam’s wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. They both know this weekend will make or break their marriage, but they didn’t randomly win this trip. One of them is lying, and someone doesn’t want them to live happily ever after.
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Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it.
\nAlternating between her paralysed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?
Before she thinks of herself as Little Alien, our protagonist is a lonely girl who doesn’t understand the world the way other children seem to. So when a late-night TV special introduces her to the mysterious Voynich Manuscript - an ancient tome written in an indecipherable language - Little Alien experiences something she hasn’t before: hope. Could there be others like her, who also feel like they’re from another planet?
\nConvinced the Voynich Manuscript holds the answers she needs, Little Alien and her best (and only) friend Bobby decide they must find this strange book. Where that decision leads them will change everything.
\nNarrated by an unexpected guide who has arrived to give Little Alien the advice she’ll need to find her way, Life Hacks for a Little Alien is both a coming-of-age adventure and a love letter to language. Alice Franklin will have you swinging from stitches to tears on the uneven path to finding a life that fits, even when you yourself do not.
Fourteen beloved authors celebrate the life-changing bond with their canine companions in this heartwarming essay collection edited by New York Times bestselling author and lifelong dog lover Alice Hoffman.
\nAnyone who has ever been fortunate enough to share their life with a dog knows the experience is both profound and transformative. Here, in this charming collection of essays, fourteen celebrated authors share unforgettable tales of the dogs who left their pawprints on their hearts.
\nWith contributions from Isabel Allende, Chris Bohjalian, Bonnie Garmus, Roxane Gay, Emily Henry, Ann Leary, Tova Mirvis, Jodi Picoult, Elizabeth Strout, Amy Tan, Adriana Trigiani, Nick Trout, Paul Yoon, and Laura Zigman, The Best Dog in the World captures the full range of the canine-human connection, from the joy of welcoming a new puppy to the heartache of saying goodbye to a beloved friend.
\nA love letter to the loyal companions who enrich our lives and teach us about empathy, joy, and unconditional love, this anthology is the perfect gift for dog lovers everywhere, offering a blend of laughter, tears, and inspiration that will resonate with anyone who has been fur-ever touched by the love of a dog.
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The Owens family has been cursed in matters of love for over three-hundred years but all of that is about to change. The novel begins in a library, the best place for a story to be conjured, when beloved aunt Jet Owens hears the deathwatch beetle and knows she has only seven days to live. Jet is not the only one in danger - the curse is already at work.
\nA frantic attempt to save a young man’s life spurs three generations of the Owens women, and one long-lost brother, to use their unusual gifts to break the curse as they travel from Paris to London to the English countryside where their ancestor Maria Owens first practiced the Unnamed Art. The younger generation discovers secrets that have been hidden from them in matters of both magic and love by Sally, their fiercely protective mother.
\nAs Kylie Owens uncovers the truth about who she is and what her own dark powers are, her aunt Franny comes to understand that she is ready to sacrifice everything for her family, and Sally Owens realises that she is willing to give up everything for love.
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Isabel Gibson has all but perfected the art of forgetting. She’s a New Yorker now, with nothing left to tie her to Brinkley’s Island, Maine. Her parents are gone, the family bookstore is all but bankrupt, and her sister, Sophie, will probably never speak to her again.
\nBut when a mysterious letter arrives in her mailbox, Isabel feels herself drawn to the past. After years of fighting for her independence, she dreads the thought of going back to the island. What she finds there may forever alter her path - and change everything she thought she knew about her family, her home, and herself.
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Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend’s future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt.
What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky? Faithful is the story of a survivor, filled with emotion - from dark suffering to true happiness - a moving portrait of a young woman finding her way in the modern world. A fan of Chinese food, dogs, bookstores, and men she should stay away from, Shelby has to fight her way back to her own future. In New York City she finds a circle of lost and found souls - including an angel who’s been watching over her ever since that fateful icy night.
Here is a character you will fall in love with, so believable and real and endearing, that she captures both the ache of loneliness and the joy of finding yourself at last. For anyone who’s ever been a hurt teenager, for every mother of a daughter who has lost her way, Faithful is a roadmap.
One brilliant June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia’s mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community - an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden, and books are considered evil. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her?
\nThrough a journey of heartbreak, love, and time, Mia must abandon the rules she was raised with at the Community. As she does, she realises that reading can transport you to other worlds or bring them to you, and that readers and writers affect one another in mysterious ways. She learns that time is more fluid than she can imagine, and that love is stronger than any chains that bind you.
\nAs a girl Mia fell in love with a book. Now as a young woman she falls in love with a brilliant writer as she makes her way back in time. But what if Nathaniel Hawthorne never wrote The Scarlet Letter? And what if Mia Jacob never found it on the day she planned to die?
\nNathaniel Hawthorne “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”
\nThis is the story of one woman’s dream. For a little while it came true.
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For centuries, the women of the Owens family have been cursed: any man who loves an Owens woman will die.
\nIt begins with a baby abandoned in a snowy English field in the 1600s. Gentle Hannah Owens takes the baby in, and as the child grows, Hannah teaches little Maria about the 'Unnamed Arts'. Maria has a gift for them - a gift that may well prove her undoing.
\nWhen Maria is abandoned by the man she loves, she invokes the curse that will haunt her family for centuries. Because magic has rules, and they must be obeyed.
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Coralie Sardie is the daughter of the sinister impresario behind The Museum of Extraordinary Things, a Coney Island freak show that thrills the masses. An exceptional swimmer, Coralie appears as the Mermaid in her father's museum, alongside performers like the Wolfman and the Butterfly Girl. One night Coralie stumbles upon a striking young man taking pictures of moonlit trees in the woods off the Hudson River.
The dashing photographer is Eddie Cohen, a Russian immigrant who has run away from his community and his job as a tailor's apprentice. When Eddie photographs the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, he becomes embroiled in the mystery behind a young woman's disappearance. And he ignites the heart of Coralie.
For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape.
\nOne will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back - almost as if by magic . . .
For the Owens family, love is a curse that began in 1620, when Maria Owens was charged with witchery for loving the wrong man.
\nHundreds of years later, in New York City at the cusp of the sixties, when the whole world is about to change, Susanna Owens knows that her three children are dangerously unique. Difficult Franny, with skin as pale as milk and blood red hair, shy and beautiful Jet, who can read other people’s thoughts, and charismatic Vincent, who began looking for trouble on the day he could walk.
\nFrom the start Susanna sets down rules for her children: No walking in the moonlight, no red shoes, no wearing black, no cats, no crows, no candles, no books about magic. And most importantly, never, ever, fall in love. But when her children visit their Aunt Isabelle, in the small Massachusetts town where the Owens family has been blamed for everything that has ever gone wrong, they uncover family secrets and begin to understand the truth of who they are. Back in New York City each begins a risky journey as they try to escape the family curse.
\nThe Owens children cannot escape love even if they try, just as they cannot escape the pains of the human heart. The two beautiful sisters will grow up to be the revered, and sometimes feared, aunts in Practical Magic, while Vincent, their beloved brother, will leave an unexpected legacy.
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Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl has captivated and inspired readers for decades. Published posthumously by her bereaved father, Anne's journal, written while she and her family were in hiding during World War II, has become one of the central texts of the Jewish experience during the Holocaust, as well as a work of literary genius.
\nWith the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the Frank family's life is turned inside out, blow by blow, restriction by restriction. Prejudice, loss, and terror run rampant, and Anne is forced to bear witness as ordinary people become monsters, and children and families are caught up in the inescapable tide of violence.
\nIn the midst of impossible danger, Anne, audacious and creative and fearless, discovers who she truly is. With a wisdom far beyond her years, she becomes a writer who will go on to change the world as we know it.
\nCritically acclaimed author Alice Hoffman weaves a lyrical and heart-wrenching story of the way the world closes in on the Frank family from the moment the Nazis invade the Netherlands until they are forced into hiding, bringing Anne to bold, vivid life. Based on extensive research and published in cooperation with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, When We Flew Away is an extraordinary and moving tour de force.
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In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime. She finds her way to a renowned rabbi, but it’s his daughter, Ettie, who offers hope of salvation when she creates a mystical Jewish creature, a rare and unusual golem, who is sworn to protect Lea. Once Ava is brought to life, she and Lea and Ettie become eternally entwined, their paths fated to cross, their fortunes linked.
Lea and Ava travel from Paris, where Lea meets her soulmate, to a convent in western France known for its silver roses; from a school in a mountaintop village where three thousand Jews were saved. Meanwhile, Ettie is in hiding, waiting to become the fighter she’s destined to be.
What does it mean to lose your mother? How much can one person sacrifice for love? In a world where evil can be found at every turn, we meet remarkable characters that take us on a stunning journey of loss and resistance, the fantastical and the mortal, in a place where all roads lead past the Angel of Death and love is never ending.
Sixteen-year-old Lynda Fan has the skills and the drive to get into the Rhode Island School of Design - but not the money. Her parents are too busy paying off her stepsister's violin lessons to help Lynda get into art school.
So when her rich and arrogant classmate, Angela Wu, offers to hire Lynda as a character designer for an otome game - a love story-based video game - she jumps at the opportunity.
Lynda isn’t exactly a romantic, but in pursuit of her dreams, she discovers things she never knew about herself while also finding love with every heart she draws.
In 1290, England mourned the death of a queen, Eleanor of Castile, beloved wife of King Edward I. Her body was carried on a 200-mile journey from Lincoln to London, a solemn procession that would become immortalised in stone. To mark the places where her cortege rested, a heartbroken Edward commissioned twelve magnificent Eleanor Crosses.
\nMore than seven centuries later, bestselling historian Alice Loxton set herself an epic following in history's footsteps by walking the entire 200-mile funeral route on the corresponding dates.
\nAs Alice journeys in search of England’s forgotten queen, over ancient paths and modern motorways, history comes alive in surprising ways. Lively and entertaining, Eleanor uncovers the extraordinary life and formidable character of this lesser-known royal, revealing her inspiring legacy and the hidden history of Britain.
It starts with an itch.
\nIn homes across the country, women ages eighteen to thirty-five begin to slow down.
\nTired. Blank. Restless.
\nDrawn to the Pacific Ocean like it’s calling them home. They abandon their lives - jobs, families, their very selves. And once they reach the West, they vanish forever.
\nAt the center of the story are three young women caught in the pull of something unstoppable.
\nAimee follows the trail of her missing best friend to a man called the Piper - known for leading infected women West.
\nTeenie, afflicted and unraveling, clings to a single memory as she looks out the window of the Piper’s van.
\nAnd Eve, a former journalist, is chasing the story that might just consume her.
\nEach on the edge of transformation. Drawn toward the unknown. In search of a way forward.
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Molly Black has disappeared. She's been a bit flighty since her parents died (sure, hadn't she run off with a tree surgeon that time?) but this time, or so says her hastily written leaving note, she's gone for good.
\nThat's why the whole Black clan - from Granny perched on the printer all the way through to Killian on Zoom from Sydney - is huddled together in the back room of Uncle John's semi-D in the Dublin suburbs, arguing over what to do.
\nCousin Bobby's having a hard enough time of it as it is, convincing his family he's happy single and childless. Lady V reckons this is all much too much fuss over a thirty year old. And Uncle Danny knows all too well how it feels to be lost with no one trying to find you.
\nBut Uncle John is determined never to lose anyone again. Especially not his niece, who is more like her mum than she realises.
The Lovely Bones is the story of a family devastated by a gruesome murder -- a murder recounted by the teenage victim. Upsetting, you say? Remarkably, first-time novelist Alice Sebold takes this difficult material and delivers a compelling and accomplished exploration of a fractured family's need for peace and closure.
The details of the crime are laid out in the first few pages: from her vantage point in heaven, Susie Salmon describes how she was confronted by the murderer one December afternoon on her way home from school. Lured into an underground hiding place, she was raped and killed. But what the reader knows, her family does not. Anxiously, we keep vigil with Susie, aching for her grieving family, desperate for the killer to be found and punished.
Sebold creates a heaven that's calm and comforting, a place whose residents can have whatever they enjoyed when they were alive -- and then some. But Susie isn't ready to release her hold on life just yet, and she intensely watches her family and friends as they struggle to cope with a reality in which she is no longer a part. To her great credit, Sebold has shaped one of the most loving and sympathetic fathers in contemporary literature.
It's 1914, and World War I is ceaselessly churning through thousands of young men on both sides of the fight. The violence of the front feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. News of the heroic deaths of their friends only makes the war more exciting.
\nGaunt, half German, is busy fighting his own private battle - an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the glamorous, charming Ellwood - without a clue that Ellwood is pining for him in return. When Gaunt's family asks him to enlist to forestall the anti-German sentiment they face, Gaunt does so immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood.
\nTo Gaunt's horror, Ellwood rushes to join him at the front, and the rest of their classmates soon follow. Now death surrounds them in all its grim reality, often inches away, and no one knows who will be next.
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The Citadel of Weeping Pearls was a great wonder; a perfect meld between cutting edge technology and esoteric sciences-its inhabitants capable of teleporting themselves anywhere, its weapons small and undetectable and deadly.
\nThirty years ago, threatened by an invading fleet from the Dai Viet Empire, the Citadel disappeared and was never seen again.
\nBut now the Dai Viet Empire itself is under siege, on the verge of a war against an enemy that turns their own mindships against them; and the Empress, who once gave the order to raze the Citadel, is in desperate needs of its weapons. Meanwhile, on a small isolated space station, an engineer obsessed with the past works on a machine that will send her thirty years back, to the height of the Citadel's power.
\nBut the Citadel's disappearance still extends chains of grief and regrets all the way into the fraught atmosphere of the Imperial Court; and this casual summoning of the past might have world-shattering consequences . . .
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The Scattered Pearls Belt is a string of habitats under tight military rule . . . where the powerful have become all too comfortable in their positions, and their corruption. But change is coming, with the arrival of Quynh: the mysterious and enigmatic Alchemist of Streams and Hills.
\nTo Minh, daughter of the ruling prefect of the Belt , Quynh represents a chance for escape. To Hot, a destitute engineer, Quynh has a mysterious link to her own past . . . and holds a deeper, more sensual appeal. But Quynh has her own secret history, and a plan for the ruling class of the Belt. A plan that will tear open old wounds, shake the heavens, and may well consume her.
\nA beautiful exploration of the power of love, of revenge, and of the wounds of the past, this fast-paced, heart-warming space opera is set against a backdrop of corruption, power and political scheming in the far reaches of the award-winning Xuya universe.
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Quiet, thoughtful princess Thanh was sent away as a hostage to the powerful faraway country of Ephteria as a child. Now she’s returned to her mother’s imperial court, haunted not only by memories of her first romance, but by worrying magical echoes of a fire that devastated Ephteria’s royal palace.
Thanh’s new role as a diplomat places her once again in the path of her first love, the powerful and magnetic Eldris of Ephteria, who knows exactly what she wants: romance from Thanh and much more from Thanh’s home. Eldris won’t take no for an answer, on either front. But the fire that burned down one palace is tempting Thanh with the possibility of making her own dangerous decisions.
Can Thanh find the freedom to shape her country’s fate - and her own?
Nightjar, sentient ship and family matriarch, looms large in Khuyên’s past. Disappearances drove teenage Khuyên from it, but death will steer her back.
\nNow an adult and a magistrate, Khuyên came for her maternal grandmother’s funeral but finds herself unwittingly reliving her past on the decaying Nightjar. Children are still disappearing as her childhood friends once did; and worse, her beloved Cousin Anh vanishes after pleading for her help.
\nKhuyên sets out to save Anh alongside Thảo, a beautiful and mysterious woman who seems to know more than she should about Khuyên and the ship. But saving Anh requires doing what Khuyên couldn’t do before: face her family, face the ship, face her own hopes and fears for the future - a future that might well include Thảo, but only if Khuyên can stop listening to the critical voice in her head.
\nA voice that sounds an awful lot like Nightjar's . . .
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Using the power of Shadows generated from their own bodies’ vitality, Navigators guide space ships safely across the a realm of unreality populated by unfathomable, dangerous creatures called Tanglers. In return for their service, the navigator clans get wealth and power - but they get the blame, too. So when a Tangler escapes the Hollows and goes missing, the empire calls on the jockeying clans to take responsibility and deal with the problem.
\nViệt Nhi is not good with people. Or politics. Which is rather unfortunate because, as a junior apprentice in the Rooster clan, when her elders send her on a joint-clan mission to locate the first escaped Tangler in living memory, she can’t exactly say no.
\nHạc Cúc of the Snake clan usually likes people. It says so on her “information gathering” - right after “poisoning” and “stabbing.” So she’s pretty sure she’s got the measure of this they’re the screw-ups, the spares; there isn’t a single sharp tool in this shed.
\nBut when their imperial envoy is found dead by clan poison, this crew of expendable apprentices will have to learn to work together - fast - before they end up cooling their heels in a jail cell while the invisible Tangler wreaks havoc on a civilian city and the reputation of all four clans.
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A stunning and vibrant collection from a rising star of the genre.
\nThis collection of fourteen tales showcase the range and talent that garnered Aliette de Bodard multiple awards, from Nebulas to the Locus Award. From a dark Gothic Paris devastated by a magical war, where Fallen angels, dragons and magicians intrigue in the drawing rooms of ruined mansions; to the Vietnamese-tinged space opera universe of Xuya, where sentient spaceships become the heart and living memory of families and scholar-officials travel from planets to space stations.
\nIn the Nebula award and Locus award winning “Immersion”, two women on a colonised space station grapple with loss of identity and culture. In the Hugo finalist “Children of Thorns, Children of Water”, a shapeshifting dragon on an infiltration mission to a ruined mansion must rescue his partner from creepy, child-like creatures. And in “A Salvaging of Ghosts,” a diver-scavenger cast off into deep spaces faces a dying midship and the ghost of her daughter. Unique to this collection is a new novella, “Of Birthdays, and Fungus, and Kindness”, set in Bodard’s alternative dark Paris.
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For generations Prosper Station has thrived under the guidance of its Honoured Ancestress: born of a human womb, the station’s artificial intelligence has offered guidance and protection to its human relatives.
\nBut war has come to the Dai Viet Empire. Prosper’s brightest minds have been called away to defend the Emperor; and a flood of disorientated refugees strain the station’s resources. As deprivations cause the station’s ordinary life to unravel, uncovering old grudges and tearing apart the decimated family, Station Mistress Quyen and the Honoured Ancestress struggle to keep their relatives united and safe.
\nWhat Quyen does not know is that the Honoured Ancestress herself is faltering, her mind eaten away by a disease that seems to have no cure; and that the future of the station itself might hang in the balance . . .
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Xích Si: bot maker, data analyst, mother, scavenger. But those days are over now-her ship has just been captured by the Red Banner pirate fleet, famous for their double-dealing and cruelty. Xích Si expects to be tortured to death - only for the pirates' enigmatic leader, Rice Fish, to arrive with a different and shocking proposition: an arranged marriage between Xích Si and herself.
\nRice Fish: sentient ship, leader of the infamous Red Banner pirate fleet, wife of the Red Scholar. Or at least, she was the latter before her wife died under suspicious circumstances. Now isolated and alone, Rice Fish wants Xích Si's help to find out who struck against them and why. Marrying Xích Si means Rice Fish can offer Xích Si protection, in exchange for Xích Si's technical fluency: a business arrangement with nothing more to it.
\nBut as the investigation goes on, Rice Fish and Xích Si find themselves falling for each other. As the interstellar war against piracy intensifies and the five fleets start fighting each other, they will have to make a stand-and to decide what kind of future they have together . . .
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Vân is a scholar from a poor background, eking out a living in the orbitals of the Scattered Pearls Belt as a tutor to a rich family, while hiding the illegal artificial mem-implant she manufactured as a student.
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Sunless Woods is a mindship - and not just any mindship, but a notorious thief and a master of disguise. She’s come to the Belt to retire, but is drawn to Vân’s resolute integrity.
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When a mysterious corpse is found in the quarters of Vân’s student, Vân and Sunless Woods find themselves following a trail of greed and murder that will lead them from teahouses and ascetic havens to the wreck of a mindship - and to the devastating secrets they’ve kept from each other.
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Welcome to the Scattered Pearls Belt, a collection of ring habitats and orbitals ruled by exiled human scholars and powerful families, and held together by living mindships who carry people and freight between the stars. In this fluid society, human and mindship avatars mingle in corridors and in function rooms, and physical and virtual realities overlap, the appareance of environments easily modified and adapted to interlocutors or current mood.
\nA transport ship discharged from military service after a traumatic injury, The Shadow's Child now ekes out a precarious living as a brewer of mind-altering drugs for the comfort of space-travellers. Meanwhile, abrasive and eccentric scholar Long Chau wants to find a corpse for a scientific study. When Long Chau walks into her office, The Shadow's Child expects an unpleasant but easy assignment. When the corpse turns out to have been murdered, Long Chau feels compelled to investigate, dragging The Shadow's Child with her.
\nAs they dig deep into the victim's past, The Shadow's Child realises that the investigation points to Long Chau's own murky past - and, ultimately, to the dark and unbearable void that lies between the stars . . .
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Spanning nearly a century, from 1930s Siberia to contemporary Brighton Beach, a page turning, epic family saga centering on three generations of women in one Russian Jewish family - each striving to break free of fate and history, each yearning for love and personal fulfillment - and how the consequences of their choices ripple through time.
Odessa, 1931. Marrying the handsome, wealthy Edward Gordon, Daria - born Dvora Kaganovitch - has fulfilled her mother’s dreams. But a woman’s plans are no match for the crushing power of Stalin’s repressive Soviet state. To survive, Daria is forced to rely on the kindness of a man who takes pride in his own coarseness.
Odessa, 1970. Brilliant young Natasha Crystal is determined to study mathematics. But the Soviets do not allow Jewish students - even those as brilliant as Natasha - to attend an institute as prestigious as Odessa University. With her hopes for the future dashed, Natasha must find a new purpose - one that leads her into the path of a dangerous young man.
Brighton Beach, 2019. Zoe Venakovsky, known to her family as Zoya, has worked hard to leave the suffocating streets and small minds of Brighton Beach behind her - only to find that what she’s tried to outrun might just hold her true happiness.
Moving from a Siberian gulag to the underground world of Soviet refuseniks to oceanside Brooklyn, The Nesting Dolls is a heartbreaking yet ultimately redemptive story of circumstance, choice, and consequence - and three dynamic unforgettable women, all who will face hardships that force them to compromise their dreams as they fight to fulfill their destinies.
Dev Deshpande has always believed in fairy tales. So it’s no wonder then that he’s spent his career crafting them on the long-running reality dating show Ever After. As the most successful producer in the franchise’s history, Dev always scripts the perfect love story for his contestants, even as his own love life crashes and burns. But then the show casts disgraced tech wunderkind Charlie Winshaw as its star.
\nCharlie is far from the romantic Prince Charming Ever After expects. He doesn’t believe in true love, and only agreed to the show as a last-ditch effort to rehabilitate his image. In front of the cameras, he’s a stiff, anxious mess with no idea how to date twenty women on national television. Behind the scenes, he’s cold, awkward, and emotionally closed-off.
\nAs Dev fights to get Charlie to connect with the contestants on a whirlwind, worldwide tour, they begin to open up to each other, and Charlie realizes he has better chemistry with Dev than with any of his female co-stars. But even reality TV has a script, and in order to find to happily ever after, they’ll have to reconsider whose love story gets told.
Thirty-five-year-old Seattleite Sadie Wells needs an escape. She’s desperate to escape her monotonous routines, the family business that has consumed her entire life, and the unexpected gay panic that has her questioning everything she thought she knew about herself. So when her injured sister offers Sadie her place on a tour along Portugal’s Camino de Santiago, she decides this is the perfect chance to get away from it all.
\nAfter three glasses of wine on the plane and some turbulence convince Sadie she won’t even survive the flight, she confesses all her secrets to her seatmate, Mal. The the plane doesn’t crash, and it turns out Mal is on her Camino tour. Worst of all, Sadie learns that she is on a tour specifically for queer women, and that her two-hundred-mile trek will be a journey of self-discovery, whether she wants it to be or not.
\nFascinated by the woman who drunkenly came out to her on the plane, Mal offers to help Sadie relive the queer adolescence she missed out on as they walk the Camino. As Sadie develops her newfound confidence, Mal grapples with a complicated loss and unexpected inheritance. But as their relationship blurs the lines between reality and practice, they both must decide if they will forever part at the end of the tour or chart a new course together.
A long time ago, Logan Maletis and Rosemary Hale used to be friends. They spent their childhood summers running through the woods, rebelling against their conservative small town, and dreaming of escaping. But then an incident the summer before high school turned them into bitter rivals. After graduation, they went ten years without speaking.
\nNow in their thirties, Logan and Rosemary find they aren’t quite living the lives of adventure they imagined for themselves. Still in their small town and working as teachers at their alma mater, they’re both stuck in old patterns. Uptight Rosemary chooses security and stability over all else, working constantly, and her most stable relationship is with her label maker. Chaotic and impulsive Logan has a long list of misguided ex-lovers and an apathetic shrug she uses to protect herself from anything real. And as hard as they try to avoid each other - and their complicated past - they keep crashing into each other. Including with their cars.
\nBut when their beloved former English teacher and lifelong mentor tells them he has only a few months to live, they’re forced together once and for all to fulfill his last a cross-country road trip. Stuffed into the gayest van west of the Mississippi, the three embark on a life-changing summer trip - from Washington state to the Grand Canyon, from the Gulf Coast to coastal Maine - that will chart a new future and perhaps lead them back to one another.
One year ago, recent Portland transplant Ellie Oliver had her dream job in animation and a Christmas Eve meet-cute with a woman at a bookstore that led her to fall in love over the course of a single night. But after a betrayal the next morning and the loss of her job soon after, she finds herself adrift, alone, and desperate for money.
\nFinding work at a local coffee shop, she’s just getting through the days - until Andrew, the shop’s landlord, proposes a shocking, drunken plan: a marriage of convenience that will give him his recent inheritance and alleviate Ellie’s financial woes and isolation. They make a plan to spend the holidays together at his family cabin to keep up the ruse. But when Andrew introduces his new fiancée to his sister, Ellie is shocked to discover it’s Jack - the mysterious woman she fell for over the course of one magical Christmas Eve the year before. Now, Ellie must choose between the safety of a fake relationship and the risk of something real.
The summer before Sally Holt starts the eighth grade begins as a gloriously uneventful one. It's full of family trips to the beach and long afternoons at the local pool with her older sister Kathy, which they mostly use as an excuse to ogle Billy Barnes, who works the concession stand there.
\nA rising senior and local basketball star, Billy has been an unending source of intrigue for both girls since he jumped off the school roof in fifth grade, and their fascination with him is one of the few things the increasingly different sisters have in common. By summer’s end Billy and Kathy are an item - an unthinkable stroke of luck that ends in an even more unthinkable tragedy.
\nSet over the course of fifteen years, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is narrated by Sally as she addresses Kathy before, during, and after her death. We watch as Kathy’s absence creates a gaping hole that only Billy - now firmly off-limits to Sally - understands and might possibly begin to fill.
\nCharting years of their shared history and missed connections, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is both a breathtaking love story between two broken people who are unexplainably, inconveniently drawn to each other, and a wry, sharply observant coming-of-age story that looks at the ways the people we love the most continue to shape our lives long after they’re gone.
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It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event.
\nPhoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years - she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself.
\n, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan - which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.
\nIn turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined - and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.
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Eon is a potential Dragoneye, able to manipulate wind and water to nurture and protect the land. But Eon also has a dark secret. He is really Eona, found by a power-hungry master of the Dragon Magic in a search for the new Dragoneye. Because females are forbidden to practise the Art, Eona endures years of study concealed as a boy.
\nEona becomes Eon, and a dangerous gamble is put into play. Eon's unprecedented display of skill at the Dragoneye ceremony places him in the centre of a power struggle between the Emperor and his High Lord brother. The Emperor immediately summons Eon to court to protect his son and heir.
\nQuickly learning to navigate the treacherous court politics, Eon makes some unexpected alliances, and a deadly enemy in a Dragoneye turned traitor. Based on the ancient lores of Chinese astrology and Feng Shui, The Two Pearls of Wisdom and its sequel The Necklace of the Gods are compelling novels set in a world filled with identities, dangerous politics and sexual intrigue.
Eon has been revealed as Eona, the first female Dragoneye in hundreds of years. Along with fellow rebels Ryko and Lady Dela, she is on the run from High Lord Sethon's army. The renegades are on a quest for the black folio, stolen by the drug-riddled Dillon; they must also find Kygo, the young Pearl Emperor, who needs Eona's power and the black folio if he is to wrest back his throne from the selfstyled \"Emperor\" Sethon.
\nThrough it all, Eona must come to terms with her new Dragoneye identity and power-and learn to bear the anguish of the ten dragons whose Dragoneyes were murdered. As they focus their power through her, she becomes a dangerous conduit for their plans . . .
\nEona, with its pulse-pounding drama and romance, its unforgettable fight scenes, and its surprises, is the conclusion to an epic only Alison Goodman could create.
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Helen must make a choice: Save her reputation, or save the world.
London, 1812. Eighteen-year-old Lady Helen Wrexhall is on the eve of her debut presentation at the royal court of George III. Her life should revolve around gowns, dancing, and securing a suitable marriage. Instead, when one of her family’s maids disappears, she is drawn into the shadows of Regency London.
There, she meets Lord Carlston, one of the few able to stop the perpetrators: a cabal of demons that has infiltrated all levels of society. Carlston is not a man she should be anywhere near, especially with the taint of scandal that surrounds him. Yet he offers her help and the possibility of finally discovering the truth about the mysterious deaths of her parents.
Soon the two of them are investigating a terrifying conspiracy that threatens to plunge the newly Enlightened world back into darkness. But can Helen trust a man whose own life is built on lies? And does she have the strength to face the dangers of this hidden world and her family’s legacy?
Set in the glittering social world of the Regency upper-crust, the Dark Days Club is a supernatural adventure that introduces Lady Helen Wrexhall - another heroine whom, like Eona, readers can take to their hearts.
Summer, 1812
\nAfter the scandalous events at her presentation ball in London, Lady Helen has taken refuge at the fashionable seaside resort of Brighton, where she is training to be a Reclaimer with the covert Dark Days Club.
\nAs she struggles to put aside her genteel upbringing and take up the weapons of a warrior, Helen realizes that her mentor, Lord Carlston, is fighting his own inner battle. Has the foul Deceiver energy poisoned his soul, or is something else driving him towards violent bouts of madness? Either way, Helen is desperate to help the man with whom she shares a deep but forbidden connection.
\nWhen Mr Pike, the hard bureaucratic heart of the Dark Days Club, arrives in Brighton, no one is prepared for the ordinary evil he brings in his wake. He has a secret task for Helen and Mr Hammond, and the authority of the Prince Regent. They have no choice but to do as he orders, knowing that the mission will betray everyone around them and possibly bring about Lord Carlston's annihilation.
Lady Helen has retreated to a country estate outside Bath to prepare for her wedding to the Duke of Selburn, yet she knows she has unfinished business to complete. She and the dangerously charismatic Lord Carlston have learned they are a dyad, bonded in blood, and only they are strong enough to defeat the Grand Deceiver, who threatens to throw mankind into chaos.
\nBut the heinous death-soaked Ligatus Helen has absorbed is tearing a rift in her mind. Its power, if unleashed, will annihilate both Helen and Carlston unless they can find a way to harness its ghastly force and defeat their enemy.
Elyon's Blades, book one of the new fantasy series, The Daughters of Elyon, is an epic fantasy adventure that takes place in the Cibían Empire.
\nThe story follows the military sect of all-woman warriors who live in the Temple of Elyon, led by their fierce Arch Priestess, Sábria.
\nAs protectors of all women in the empire, the Daughters of Elyon are constantly on the move, rescuing women from dangerous situations and seeking vengeance for those who were not saved in time. They are an unbreakable force, bonded by their shared mission and their devotion to the Goddess Elyon.
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The arrival of the King-Slayer in Sarlogne casts a shadow of uncertainty over the imperial city. In the second installment of The Daughters of Elyon, Arch Priestess Sábria and Emperor Aloric confront a host of new challenges. The tension escalates as they navigate the complexities of leadership amidst rising threats.
\nDesperate for assistance, Aloric seeks Sábria's help to counter the looming danger posed by the assassin. Sábria's instincts clash with Aloric's claims, forcing her to choose between her own safety and her mission to protect all women. Can the Blades safeguard their leader, or will betrayal disrupt their efforts to restore peace?
\nWith a trail of slain monarchs in her wake, the King-Slayer's motives remain shrouded in darkness. As whispers of conspiracy and impending doom swirl, Sábria must navigate a treacherous web of deceit to uncover the truth behind this deadly game of thrones. The stakes are high, and trust is scarce in a world where betrayal lurks at every turn.
\nIn a world where betrayal lurks at every corner, Elyon's Ghost delivers a gripping saga of intrigue, bravery, and the enduring bonds of sisterhood. Will Sábria and her Blades emerge victorious against this enigmatic foe, or will they fall prey to the shadows of a sinister destiny?
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The Hunters, in addition to their exceptional combat skills, are defined by their caring, non-lethal approach to apprehending missing Blades. They often encounter resistance from their targets, but they are trained to handle such situations with less than lethal force if at all possible. Their mission is not just about bringing back the missing Blades but also about ensuring minimal harm is done in the process.
\nWhen a crisis arises among the Hunters, Arch Priestess Sábria, Commander Shirin, and others must work together to find and mend the deepening rift within the specialised unit. This sapphic epic fantasy delves into some of the challenges faced within the close-knit warrior family that is the Daughters of Elyon.
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Set in the vibrant capital city of Sarlogne during the Emperor's festival, the story unfolds with the convergence of visiting nobility from far-flung kingdoms, sparking chaos and disorder.
\nForced to face her haunting past, Arch Priestess Sábria embarks on a remarkable journey towards an uncertain future. “Elyon's Regret” immerses you in a realm of power struggles, profound responsibilities, and transformative growth. Explore the intricate connections between characters as they navigate a society where nobility's opulence and entitlement overshadow compassion and justice.
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Following the thrilling events of “Elyon’s Blades” and “Elyon’s Ghost,” this spellbinding tale continues to weave together epic battles, intricate politics, and intimate relationships. As alliances shift and tensions escalate, readers will be drawn into a gripping narrative that explores the depths of loyalty, sacrifice, and revenge.
\nAt the heart of this mesmerising journey are unforgettable characters who embody strength and resilience. The Arch Priestess, Sábria, leads with unwavering determination while her second-in-command, Commander Shirin, navigates through treacherous waters with her strategic mind. Trainee shivs Ailith and Emlyn add their own unique voices to a chorus of powerful women who refuse to be silenced.
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After her father has a premonition, Thea and her family move to the Bloodless Valley of southern Colorado, hoping to make a fresh start. But the rivers are dry, the crops are dying, and the black blizzards of Colorado have returned. Much like the barren land, Thea feels her life has stopped growing. She is barely homeschooled, forbidden from going to the library, and has no way to contact her old friends - all due to her parents’ fear of the outside world’s dangerous influence.
\nBut to make ends meet, Thea is allowed to work at the café in town. There, she meets Ray, who is deaf. Thea, who was born hard of hearing, has always been pushed by her parents to pass as someone who can hear. Now, with Ray secretly teaching Thea how to sign, she begins to learn what she’s been missing - not just a new language but a whole community and maybe even a chance at love.
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Wylodine comes from a world of paranoia and poverty - her family grows marijuana illegally, and life has always been a battle. Now she’s been left behind to tend the crop alone. Then spring doesn’t return for the second year in a row, bringing unprecedented extreme winter.
With grow lights stashed in her truck and a pouch of precious seeds, she begins a journey, determined to start over away from Appalachian Ohio. But the icy roads and strangers hidden in the hills are treacherous. After a harrowing encounter with a violent cult, Wylodine and her small group of exiles become a target for its volatile leader. Because she has the most valuable skill in the climate chaos: she can make things grow.
Urgent and poignant, Road Out of Winter is a glimpse of an all-too-possible near future, with a chosen family forged in the face of dystopian collapse. With the gripping suspense of The Road and the lyricism of Station Eleven, Stine’s vision is of a changing world where an unexpected hero searches for a place hope might take root.
Sir Una Everlasting was Dominion’s greatest hero: the orphaned girl who became a knight, who died for queen and country. Her legend lives on in songs and stories, in children’s books and recruiting posters - but her life as it truly happened has been forgotten.
\nCenturies later, Owen Mallory - failed soldier, struggling scholar - falls in love with the tale of Una Everlasting. Her story takes him to war, to the archives - and then into the past itself. Una and Owen are tangled together in time, bound to retell the same story over and over again, no matter what it costs.
\nBut that story always ends the same way. If they want to rewrite Una’s legend - if they want to tell a different story - they’ll have to rewrite history itself.
Zinnia Gray, professional fairy-tale fixer and lapsed Sleeping Beauty, is over rescuing snoring princesses. Once you’ve rescued a dozen damsels and burned fifty spindles, once you’ve gotten drunk with twenty good fairies and made out with one too many members of the royal family, you start to wish some of these girls would just get a grip and try solving their own narrative issues.
\nJust when Zinnia’s beginning to think she can't handle one more princess, she glances into a mirror and sees another face looking back at her: the shockingly gorgeous face of evil, asking for her help. Because there’s more than one person trapped in a story they didn’t choose. Snow White's Evil Queen has found out how her story ends, and she's desperate for a better ending. She wants Zinnia to help her before it’s too late for everyone. Will Zinnia accept the Queen's poisonous request and save them both from the hot-iron shoes that wait for them, or will she try another path?
There’s no such thing as witches, but there used to be.
\nIn 1893, as before, as always, women must fight to hold power, let alone exercise it. Witchcraft is a thing of the past. Burnings, then silence. But there are still women who remember the words and ways, and who have the will to conjure magic. And there are women determined to win their right to a voice at the ballot box.
\nThen there are the three Eastwood sisters, together once more in New Salem, who will end up fighting for both - and their lives: the youngest and wildest, James Juniper; the middle and steadying sister, Agnes Amararanth; and, the oldest and most bookish, Beatrice Belladonna. Attacked by forces who should be far more powerful, the three may once again bring women’s power into the world . . . This time, they hope against hope, it will end differently.
It's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no one has lived past twenty-one.
\nHer best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.
Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland - and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house - and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling - go to rot.
\nOpal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she’s never had: a home.
\nAs sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire choice to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares.
\nIf Opal wants a home, she’ll have to fight for it.
In the early 1900s, a young woman embarks on a fantastical journey of self-discovery after finding a mysterious book in this captivating and lyrical debut.
\nIn a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.
\nThen she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.
\n“My scorching, anonymous one-night stand from the Halloween party? Yeah, my new VP. Now she wants to pretend it never happened. Adorable.” - Josephine ‘Jo’ Blake, Business Analyst & Professional Boundary-Crosser
\n“The decision to promote her was made before the party. The fact that she's also the 'Dark Wolf' who had me begging on Saturday night is a catastrophic, unprofessional, and completely irrelevant coincidence.” - Alexandra ‘Alex’ Morgan, VP of Operations & Definitely Not Spiraling
\nAlex tries to lock down their connection in an HR-policy-shaped box. But Jo has other plans. She’s seen the passionate woman beneath the power suit, and she's not letting go. What begins as a relentless pursuit of coded emails and inside jokes becomes an exploration of power, control, and forbidden desires that could destroy everything they've built.
\nChasing Red is a sizzling sapphic workplace romance that proves the only thing more dangerous than mixing business with pleasure is trying not to.
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“Olivia is a critical system failure in four-inch heels. I know better than to touch high-voltage machinery without protective gear. But when she looks at me with that raw, unfiltered want? Logic goes offline. I don’t just want to fix her problem. I want to be the glitch she never recovers from.” - Casey Hobbs, Infrastructure Engineer & Reluctant Prince Charming
\n“My life is a series of executed protocols and mitigated risks. I don't do messy. I don't do impulsive. Then there’s Casey. She’s a variable I can’t control. I should manage the crisis. Instead, I’m managing a sudden, desperate urge to climb into her lap and let her handle everything.” - Olivia Cooper, Chief Technology Officer & Accidental Cinderella
\nCasey thinks she knows how to stay safe - keep your head down, fix what's broken, don't ask for more. Olivia thinks she knows how to stay in control - smile through the chaos, never let them see you crack.
\nWhen an emergency forces them back into the empty office on the Sunday before Christmas, professional boundaries are about to be disrupted. Suddenly, fixing the servers is the least interesting thing happening in the basement.
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A gripping historical novel set in Norway and Sweden in 1940, based on true events, which follows one of the first female US Ministers, Daisy Harriman, and her fictional niece as the two are unexpectedly caught up in the German invasion of Norway.
\nCleo Jaffray was an American. A war in Europe had nothing to do with her. She told herself that right up until the man she loved went missing in Poland and Cleo was forced to turn to the only person who might be able to help - her aunt Daisy, the US Minister to Norway.
\nDaisy Harriman has never shied away from a challenge, be it canvassing for women’s suffrage or driving Red Cross ambulances in WWI, so as only the second woman ambassador, she is determined to prove the naysayers wrong and succeed in her post. When her disgraced niece Cleo lands on her doorstep, penniless and demanding help to find her lost lover, Daisy must balance her responsibilities as a diplomat with her desire to help her family.
\nTheir search for answers is interrupted when Germany invades Norway and the two of them find themselves on the run in a countryside that is quickly becoming a battleground. Then as Daisy is given the task of escorting the Norwegian Crown Princess and her young children to America, Cleo’s lover resurfaces with a story that doesn’t add up and dangerous enemies on his trail.
\nThis riveting historical novel, based on the astounding life of Daisy Harriman and a real-life royal rescue, vividly captures a desperate time and a fearless heroine.
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Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian - an enigmatic and volatile man - spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. Isolated and afraid, Marguerite befriends her guardian’s servant and the two develop an intense attraction. But when their relationship is discovered, they are brutally punished and abandoned on a small island with no hope for rescue.
\nOnce a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed.
\nInspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.
There is a girl, and her name is Sam. She adores her father, though he isn’t around much. Her mother, Courtney, struggles to make ends meet, and never fails to remind her daughter that her life should be different. Sam doesn’t fit in at school, where the other girls have the right shade of blue jeans and don’t question the rules. Sam doesn’t care about jeans or rules. She just loves to climb -trees, fences, walls, the side of a building. When she’s climbing, she discovers a place she belongs: she can turn off her brain, pain has a purpose, and it’s okay if you want to win.
\nAs Sam grows into her teens, she grapples with self-doubt and insecurity. She yearns for her climbing coach to notice her, but his attention crosses boundaries she doesn't know how to resist. She wishes her father would leave for good, instead of always coming and going, but once he’s gone, she realizes how much she’s lost. She rages against her mother’s constant pressure to plan for a more secure future. Wrestling with who she wants to be in the face of what she’s expected to do, Sam comes to understand that she alone can make her dreams come true.
\nAllegra Goodman’s beautiful and wise novel Sam is deceptively simple: it is about a girl who becomes a woman. But underneath its straightforward chronology and spare sentences lie layers of extraordinary depth, sensitivity, and tenderness. This unforgettable ode to girlhood asks, What happens to a child's sense of joy and belonging - her belief in herself - as she grows up? The answer will break your heart, but will also leave you full of hope.
Was this just a brief skirmish, or the beginning of a thirty-year feud? In the Rubenstein family, it could go either way.
\nWhen their beloved sister passes away, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein are unmoored. A misunderstanding about apple cake turns into a decade of stubborn silence. Busy with their own lives - divorces, dating, career setbacks, college applications, bat mitzvahs and ballet recitals - their children do not want to get involved. As for their grandchildren? Impossible.
One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from . . . or why . . .
\nHis name is Theo. And he asks a lot more questions than he answers.
\nTheo visits the local coffeehouse, where ninety-two pencil portraits hang on the walls, portraits of the people of Golden done by a local artist. He begins purchasing them, one at a time, and putting them back in the hands of their “rightful owners.” With each exchange, a story is told, a friendship born, and a life altered.
\nA story of giving and receiving, of seeing and being seen, Theo of Golden is a beautifully crafted novel about the power of creative generosity, the importance of wonder to a purposeful life, and the invisible threads of kindness that bind us to one another.
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Hazel Paterson’s life is in tatters since her fiancée left. Alone and sleeping on her best friend’s couch, her business is as dead as her social life. After her mother has an accident, being forced to move back home feels like the final blow.
\nLouise King’s life is finally back on track. After a ropey start she’s starting to believe everything is going to plan, that’s until a childhood enemy comes back on the scene. Even worse, a crush she’d long forgotten is set to complicate things in ways she could never imagine.
\nHazel is seeking stability. Louise is ready to rock the boat. Can they find a way to meet in the middle . . . and maybe have a little fun while they’re at it?
\nSet in Perth and full of slow-burn chemistry, enemies-to-lovers tension, and best friends you’ll fall in love with, buy If She Could to find out if casual can be serious after all.
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Dani Hamilton’s reputation as a womaniser often precedes her, but all is not what it seems. Secretly in love with her best friend, she’s finally ready to declare her feelings.
\nAshley Davidson was tired of waiting on her best friend to make the first move. Having moved on and found love elsewhere, she’s all but forgotten Dani and what could have been.
\nDani thinks she’s left it too late. Ashley is oblivious. Will they find a way to finally be together?
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Holly Taylor didn’t expect to return to Glasgow. And she certainly didn’t expect her parents to enter her into a dating competition on her first day home.
\nJen Berkley is happily single. Having vowed to never date again after her horror ex broke her heart, no one is more surprised when her best friend convinces her to take part in a dating contest.
\nJen wants to win the money. Holly wants to regain the trust of her parents. Will they get what their hearts desire or will the charade fool no one?
\nSet in Glasgow and full of Scottish charm as well as lashings of delicious desire, smouldering sexual tension and even a few laughs, buy Love Charade today and find out if some things just can't be faked . . .
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Kirsty Hamilton would do anything for family, but when her mother insists she enters a dating contest to publicise their cafe, her commitment is put to the test.
\nRhona Devi dreams of travelling the world. When she takes on a photography job to earn some cash, she never expects it to lead to her biggest adventure yet.
\nRhona thinks she deserves a chance. Kirsty doesn’t see the point. Will they be able to meet somewhere in the middle?
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Gemma Anderson is new to lesbian dating. Recently divorced and looking for love, the annual dating festival is a last resort after a string of failed matches.
\nSteph Campbell has long come to terms with being perpetually single, so working in her bar during the most loved-up season of the year, she hardly expects to encounter a match.
\nGemma is letting her head rule her heart. Steph is content to just be friends. Will they find a way to put their differences aside?
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Izzy Barbour tells everyone she’s an accountant, little do they know she’s really a hired companion. Sadly, that’s where her love life ends. Doomed to be a serial dater, Izzy is close to giving up on finding her one. Lady Ingrid Munro has one focus in work.
\nWhen a family scandal threatens to dredge up the past, she’s forced to think quick to save face and the palace. Izzy wants to do her job and keep a low profile. Ingrid needs to uphold the family’s reputation. Can they keep things professional, or will lines get blurred when it comes to romance?
\nSet in the fictional world of an Ayrshire Palace, The Only Exception is bursting with sexual tension, fake dating, and forbidden love. Find out today if secrets can stay hidden for long . . . or are some things too good to be true?
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The Odenburgh, an old apartment building made of brick and blunt opinions, is the last of its kind in a swiftly changing neighborhood. After years of putting up with people and their many problems, the Odenburgh knows there’s no point in getting attached. They all just leave eventually. A truth that comes all too soon when the building is sold and slated for demolition, giving tenants a month to move out.
\nNo one is more troubled by the news than eleven-year-old Prue, who refuses to leave her family’s apartment. Not when it was the last place she lived with her sister Lina, before she lost Lina forever. When Prue launches a plan to save their home, the Odenburgh joins in - flickering lights, jamming elevators, triggering fire alarms - all to try and bring a building full of bickering residents together.
\nIn the process, Prue meets Lewis, an eccentric boy who lives across the street - and the only one who can help her discover the missing elements of her sister’s story.
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Los Angeles, 1982: best friends Jude and Winnie are eighteen and working at a strip club. Soon they progress to modelling for Penthouse and Hustler, then to shooting hardcore porn. Dazzled by the drugs, sex and parties their new life offers, they are also beset by sexism, bitter competition and the precarity of life on the margins. When their friendship ends in recrimination and a dramatic act of betrayal, Jude goes missing and Winnie can find no trace of her.
\nThirty years later, newly divorced and down on her luck, Winnie is ready to face her past. Determined to solve the mystery of what happened to Jude, she sets out to brave the dark underbelly of the adult industry. What follows is a gutsy, propulsive look at sex and power that builds to an unforgettable revelation about love.
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Investigative reporter Max Revere has cracked many cases, but the one investigation she's never attempted is the mystery from her own past. Her mother abandoned her when she was nine, sending her periodic postcards, but never returning to reclaim her daughter. Seven years after the postcards stop coming, Martha Revere is declared legally dead, with no sign of what may have happened to her. Until now.
With a single clue - that her mother’s car disappeared sixteen years ago in a small town on the Chesapeake Bay - Max drops everything to finally seek the truth. As Max investigates, and her mother's story unfolds, she realizes that Martha teamed up with a con man. They traveled the world living off Martha’s trust and money they conned from others.
Though no one claims to know anything about Martha or her disappearance, Max suspects more than one person is lying. When she learns the FBI has an active investigation into the con man, Max knows she’s on the right path. But as Max digs into the dark secrets of this idyllic community, the only thing she might find is the same violent end as her mother.
Mia Crawford is responsible to a fault. She has to be. Between her high-demand job and taking care of her grandmother and her cats, she has little time for anything else. What time she does have, she pours into reading. Mysteries, romances, thrillers . . . books filled with women who are far more impulsive than she would ever dream of being.
\nNow, forced into taking a long-overdue vacation, she finds herself on a luxurious private island where she just might have a chance to reinvent herself - for a little while, anyway. She can explore the island. Flirt shamelessly with a cute bartender. Have a vacation fling. Live like a heroine in one of her favorite novels.
\nOr she can curl up with a good book on the beach. Turns out reinventing yourself is easier planned than done. But when gossipy notes written in the margins of an old book turn out to be clues to the disappearance of another guest, Mia finds herself diving headfirst into a dangerous adventure. With everyone at the resort hiding secrets of their own, she’ll have to solve this real-life mystery before she becomes the next target.
When forensics determines that Harper was poisoned, Lucy and her new by-the-book partner dig deep into his life to find out who might want him dead. Why did Harper lie to his wife and his staff? Was he involved in an illicit affair? Embezzling money? Laundering money for a drug cartel? Or was he simply a pawn in someone else's dangerous game?
\nLucy's boyfriend Sean Rogan is hired by Harper's company to run a security audit, causing friction between Lucy and the FBI. But when Sean finds a high-tech bug in Harper's office, an entirely new threat emerges - a far-reaching conspiracy run by a ruthless killer who will do anything to get what he wants, and kill anyone who gets in his way. And the person between him and victory is Lucy Kincaid.
Bella Caruso survived a nightmare of abuse and betrayal. Today, she has dedicated her life to saving other young women from the hell that almost killed her - first as an officer of the law, then by stepping outside the law and into the darkness where true evil dwells. Now, it appears that the darkness has taken her once again.
JT Caruso often worries about his sister, given her line of work. This time, when he learns that Bella is working undercover to find a missing girl involved in a dangerous prostitution ring, JT asks FBI Special Agent Lucy Kincaid for help.
Even with Lucy’s extensive experience in running down human traffickers, finding Bella will not be easy. Not only because she is in too deep. But because Bella, who will not rest until she saves the girl, doesn’t want to be found . . .
Two years ago, FBI Agent Lucy Kincaid put psychopath Elise Hansen Hunt in juvenile detention for her role in an organized crime syndicate. Now eighteen, Elise has been released with a clean slate, and plans to take her revenge by making Lucy’s life hell. The plot begins with Lucy’s husband Sean Rogan, who has been arrested for a murder he most certainly did not commit.
Lucy is determined to prove Sean’s innocence, but is warned off the case by her boss. As she calls in reinforcements, she learns that Sean’s brother Kane is missing in Mexico, her partner Nate Dunning has been arrested for possession of cocaine, and her friend Brad Donnelly has been kidnapped outside DEA headquarters. Lucy realises that Elise doesn’t have the resources or patience to execute such a devious plan. Did Elise’s father orchestrate everything from prison? Or is there someone even more calculating seeking revenge on Lucy by hurting the people she loves?
One thing is certain: if Lucy doesn’t find the answers fast, Sean will die.
On his way home to San Diego, P.I. Patrick Kincaid takes a detour through San Francisco to check on the wellbeing of a family friend who’s mysteriously been unreachable. What he doesn’t expect is to be shot at before he can find out why attorney Elle Santana won’t ask the police for help in finding a missing girl. Soon, he’s on the run from both good guys and bad as he and Elle race to find the witness and take down a sweatshop run by a corrupt businessman with a penchant for violence.
\nNewly sworn FBI Agent Lucy Kincaid can’t remember the last time she spent the holidays with her whole family, but getting home by December 25th is proving to be a bit of a problem. A blizzard shut down the airports and she and her boyfriend Sean Rogan are stuck in a Denver hotel . . . with a dead body. And if that wasn’t all, back in San Diego Colonel Kincaid ends up in the hospital, where an even greater danger awaits . . a man with a vendetta who will kill anyone who gets in his way.
\nThis Christmas, the Kincaid family needs nothing less than a miracle to survive. And time is running out.
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Investigative reporter Maxine Revere has a theory: Maybe five New York City murders for which Adam Bachman is being tried are just one part of his master plan?
\nIn probing another case, involving a missing couple, Max uncovers striking similarities to Bachman's MO. It seems likely that Bachman wasn't working alone . . . but how can she prove it?
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Three years ago, authorities assumed that the Albright family fled the country to avoid prosecution for embezzlement. But when their remains are discovered after a recent storm, the FBI is called in to investigate - and find the youngest child, whose body wasn't found with the others. If the child is dead, why wasn't his body found with his family? If he's alive, where has he been for the last three years?
\nAs FBI Agent Lucy Kincaid and her partner Nate investigate the cold case, they receive surprisingly little help from the original investigators. With minimal forensic evidence and no witnesses, Lucy and Nate don't know if they'll be able to find justice for these tragic murders, but with one small clue - the timeline of the victims' last day - they recreate what might have happened to the family.
While Lucy is deep in her investigation, investigative reporter Maxine Revere arrives in San Antonio because of another case. The confessed killer of a family friend has recanted his statement, and now the family simply wants her to find the truth about what happened to Victoria - Max's specialty. She hires Sean Rogan, a PI and Lucy's husband, to assist her.
When Max learns that Victoria knew Lucy's victims, she connects a series of dots that lead to a deadly conspiracy. Lucy, Max, and Sean must work together again if they are to find justice for these two families - and finally uncover the truth about what happened.
\nAs they dig deep into the world of corporate embezzlement, high-stakes gambling, and multi-million-dollar land investments, they realise that more than one person has secrets dark enough to kill for . . . and that one of them is the next target.
When a top engineering executive is murdered and his office torched, the firm s security expert Duke Rogan is determined to get the bottom of the assault himself. He pulls every string he has to be assigned as a civilian consultant to the FBI s joint task force, headed up by Nora English, who at first believes the attack to be a simple case of domestic terrorism.
But the autopsy is strange: the man died from multiple knife wounds - not stab wounds - and slowly bled to death with no bones or organs punctured. And when another body is found with the same MO, this one a high-ranking government official, Nora begins to believe something far more evil is at work. Especially as her number one suspect has already been taken out of the equation . . .
Assigned to San Antonio's Violent Crimes unit, Lucy Kincaid joins a team of seasoned veterans and newer agents for a task force called Operation Heatwave. It's supposed to be a simple sweep of known offenders with outstanding warrants. But when Lucy and her team try to bust two local brothers for jumping bail, she walks into a hotbed of pure evil. Their names are George and Jaime Sanchez. They are charged with murder, drug trafficking, and worse. And one of them is still out there.
\nAs Lucy races to capture Jaime Sanchez, more shocking evidence comes to light. The brothers have been using their basement as a holding cell for children they kidnapped for the cartels. When George agrees to turn on his brother, he is murdered behind bars. Now Lucy has no choice but to go outside the law. Enlisting the help of her boyfriend Sean Rogan and his mercenary brother Kane, she will risk her career - and both of their lives - to bring down a crime lord's empire . . . before more innocent lives go up in flames.
After their ten-year-old son, Chase, was senselessly murdered, Regan's life unraveled. Her corporate lawyer husband, Grant, blamed the death on Regan’s work as a US marshal. Unable to reconcile their grief, they divorced, and Regan quit her job and moved away.
\nNow she's back after a voice mail from her former boss Tommy said he had important news to share about Chase’s killing. Regan is stunned to learn Tommy is dead too. When she reaches out to Grant, his panicked reaction raises her suspicions. Then a lawyer with ties to her ex also turns up murdered, and the police make Grant their top suspect.
\nUnsure of his guilt or innocence, Regan risks everything to find Grant before the police do so she can finally get the answers to all that has haunted her since losing Chase. But the truth is not even close to what she imagines - and now she fears she has no one to trust.
The police ruled Elijah Martinez’s death an accidental drug overdose, but the teen’s grieving mother isn’t convinced. With the case officially closed, Angelhart Investigations is the only one who can help her find the truth. Margo Angelhart’s sure this will be an easy solve - she’ll talk to Elijah’s friends and employer, retrace his steps, and figure out what happened in his final hours.
\nExcept none of his friends believe he did drugs, and the teacher who’s been vocal about the police mishandling the case turns up dead. Every thread Margo pulls leads back to a dangerous drug ring that once ran through the school.
\nWhen Margo’s brother Jack, a former cop, can’t get straight answers out of the police, they don’t know if it’s because of an active case . . . or a cover-up. Margo’s only sure of one thing - she has to find out what really happened to Elijah before more teens become pawns in a twisted scheme.
When a top lieutenant in a ring of human traffickers agrees to turn state s evidence, Immigration and Customs Enforcement senior agent Sonia Knight believes she ll finally take down the operation s mastermind, Xavier Jones.
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FBI agent Dean Hooper has been chasing Jones for years and doesn t need or want a hot-headed ICE agent second-guessing his every move. When the Bureau is ordered to join forces with ICE, Sonia is just as livid: her job is to save lives, not money.
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But Jones is just one piece of a depraved puzzle, answering to an even more dangerous predator. Denied his expected prey, this pitiless fiend intends to make Sonia and Dean pay - with their own blood . . .
In cyberspace, no one can hear you scream.
Instead of preparing for her high school graduation, Lucy Kincaid is facing a vicious execution. Lured by an online predator, she’s destined to die horribly - live on the Internet - while hundreds of heartless viewers watch and vote on the method of her slaughter. Her family’s only hope rests with Kate Donovan, an FBI agent who took on the same sadistic killer once before . . . and lost. Blamed for another girl’s gruesome murder, Kate’s been fighting to clear her name. But she agrees to join the hunt for Lucy–and reluctantly steps back into her worst nightmare.
With time running out before the bloody webcast airs, Kate teams up with forensic psychiatrist Dillon Kincaid to get inside the head of her twisted quarry, zero in on his chamber of horrors, and reach Lucy before grim history repeats itself and another innocent’s brutal death goes hideously live.
Face the fear. Speak its name. See its face.
The beautiful Adirondack Mountains is the perfect place for two young lovers to enjoy time alone, or so thought aspiring FBI agent Lucy Kincaid and her P.I. boyfriend, Sean Rogan. But when their romantic morning is interrupted by an arsonist, Sean heads off in pursuit - and falls into an abandoned mine shaft. While saving Sean, Lucy discovers the perfectly preserved remains of a young woman.
\nBut no sooner did they find the corpse when it disappears, and the local police are skeptical of Sean and Lucy’s discovery. Lucy is certain that there’s a connection between the sabotage at the resort and the murder - especially when the less-than-neighborly citizens of Spruce Lake turn downright hostile. When a cold-blooded sniper targets Sean and Lucy, FBI agent Noah Armstrong joins them to untangle a violent web of lies, betrayal, and murder.
\nBut they are one step behind a group of conspirators and if they don’t find the truth, they’ll end up like the rest of Spruce Lake’s secrets: dead and buried.
Margo Angelhart was recently certified as a private investigator, but she isn’t convinced that it’s her calling. All of her cases have been minor, mostly for family and haven’t paid the bills. She’s more than happy to keep bartending and figure out her post-military career later. That is, until prosecutor Andy Flannigan walks into her bar and offers her a case she can’t turn down . . .
\nNineteen-year-old Sergio Diaz has confessed to murder - except Andy doesn’t buy it. With his own job on the line, Andy asks Margo to work the case discreetly. The more she digs, the more she’s convinced an innocent kid is going to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Now she just needs to figure out why he’d confess. Can Margo prove Sergio’s innocence and help Andy find the real killer before anyone else dies?
Lucy Kincaid has firsthand experience dealing with deadly criminal predators, and she’s fully prepared to share her many talents with the FBI. But when her career plans are derailed, her boyfriend, security expert Sean Rogan, asks for help on his latest private investigation. Using her well-honed cyber-hunting skills, Lucy is soon on the trail of a missing teenage girl with a penchant for disappearing - and a shocking secret life.
FBI Agent Suzanne Madeaux is also tracking someone: a serial killer on the loose in New York City. Dubbed by the press the Cinderella Strangler, he cruises seamy underground sex parties, where drug-fueled women make for easy pickings. As Lucy and Sean’s desperate search collides with the FBI’s hunt, Lucy isn’t about to step aside.
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Haunted by painful memories of her own harrowing encounters with evil, she’s determined to keep any more innocents from meeting the fate she so narrowly escaped. Delving deep into the twisted psyche of a remorseless killer, Lucy must confront her own fears - even if it means risking a future job with the FBI and future happiness with Sean.
While waiting to hear if she is accepted into the FBI Academy, Lucy Kincaid is volunteering with a victim’s rights group to lure repeat sex offenders into violating parole so they can be sent back to prison. But when the predators she hunts end up dead - starting with the man who raped Lucy six years ago - the FBI takes a whole new interest in Lucy.
\nLucy soon learns she’s a pawn in a twisted plot to deliver vigilante justice. When a family betrayal is revealed, the only person she can turn to for help is her brother’s partner, security expert Sean Rogan. Together, Lucy and Sean track an elusive killer from the Internet to the streets.
\nBut the hunter ends up the prey when a violent stalker turns his eye to Lucy - and she will have to face her darkest fears if she wants to survive.
Three newlywed couples have disappeared from an exclusive resort in Florida, only to turn up dead soon after. With the location and the similarities between the female victims as their only leads, it’s up to the FBI Mobile Response Team to catch a serial killer before anyone else ends up dead. And they have the perfect bait - Detective Kara Quinn, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the targeted women.
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Undercover as newlyweds pretending to enjoy their honeymoon, Kara and FBI Agent Matt Costa set a flawless trap. When their plan works and they arrest the predator, Matt sends the rest of the team home so he and Kara can have the weekend for some much-needed R&R. But on Monday morning, the couple doesn’t show up to work, and the MRT learns they never checked out of their hotel.
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As their team tries to find them, Matt and Kara learn the truth - the killer wasn’t acting alone. He had a partner who succeeded where he failed. Kidnapped and forced into a twisted escape room, they need to find a way out, because if they don’t escape, they’ll die.
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Lucy Kincaid and Sean Rogan are finally tying the knot. Two weeks before their wedding, a surprise visitor shows up at their door: Eden, Sean's estranged sister from Europe. She claims she's in town for the wedding and wants to mend fences. Lucy invites Eden to stay with them after all, family is family but her boss, SSA Noah Armstrong, knows far more about Eden's sketchy past than he's let on.
While Lucy is focused on her investigation tracking down dozens of children sold through illegal adoptions, Noah begins a quiet investigation of Eden and her elusive twin, Liam. He's certain that, since they're both thieves, they're here for a job or a heist. But they are up to something far more sinister than even Noah can imagine.
Liam has a score to settle with his family, and Sean has something he wants. The twins will do anything to get it including putting Lucy's life in danger. It'll take everyone Kincaids and Rogans alike to stop Liam before someone dies. Unfortunately, Liam's treachery has unforeseen consequences for Sean and Lucy, as a longtime enemy of the Rogan family hellbent on revenge sees an opportunity to make them all pay . . .
Two years before the events in Notorious, Max travels to Colorado Springs to investigate the disappearance of a college student. Frustrated over the lack of interest from both friends of the victim and campus authorities, Max tags along with the leader of search and rescue and his dog through the beautiful and deadly Rocky Mountains in the hopes of finding answers.
\nEvery answer she finds leads to more questions - questions neither the police nor the college want Max asking.
Detective Kara Quinn is back in Los Angeles to testify against a notorious human trafficker, finally moving past the case that upended her life. But when the accused is shot by a masked man in broad daylight, the chaotic scene of the crime turns up few reliable bystanders. And one witness - a whistleblower who might be the key to everything - has disappeared.
\nAfter the prosecuting DDA is stabbed to death, it’s clear that anyone who knows too much about the investigation is in danger, and tracking down the witness becomes a matter of life or death. With government corruption running rampant and someone on the inside trying to pin anything they can on Kara, she trusts nobody except FBI special agent Matt Costa and a handful of allies.
\nBut when explosive secrets begin to surface within the LAPD and FBI, Kara questions everything she thought she knew about the case, her colleagues and the life she left behind months ago.
\nNow Quinn and Costa must race to find the missing witness and get to the bottom of the avalanche of conspiracies that has rocked LA to its core . . . before it's too late.
Lucy Kincaid understands the dangers of corruption. As an FBI agent, she has witnessed some very bad deeds committed by seemingly good people. That's why she's glad to see corrupt DEA Agent Nicole Rollins behind bars for murder, conspiracy, and gunrunning.
\nBut when Rollins makes a daring escape-jeopardising a busload of children and killing five officers-Lucy becomes the key to the biggest manhunt in Texas history . . . and the target of a brilliant killer.
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After five years in hiding from their murderous father, the day Kristin and Ryan McIntyre have been dreading has arrived: Boyd McIntyre, head of a Los Angeles crime family, has at last tracked his kids to a small Montana town and is minutes away from kidnapping them. They barely escape in a small plane, but gunfire hits the fuel line. The pilot, a man who has been raising them as his own, manages to crash land in the middle of the Montana wilderness. The siblings hike deep into the woods, searching desperately for safety - unaware of the severity of the approaching storm.
\nBoyd’s sister Ruby left Los Angeles for the Army years ago, cutting off contact in order to help keep her niece and nephew safe and free from the horrors of the McIntyre clan. So when she gets an emergency call that the plane has gone down with the kids inside, she drops everything to try save them.
\nAs the storm builds, Ruby isn’t the only person looking for them. Boyd has hired an expert tracker to find and bring them home. And rancher Nick Lorenzo, who knows these mountains better than anyone and doesn’t understand why the kids are running, is on their trail too.
\nBut there is a greater threat to Kristen and Ryan out there. More volatile than the incoming blizzard, more dangerous than the family they ran from or the natural predators they could encounter. Who finds them first could determine if they live or die . . .
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Maxine Revere has dedicated her life to investigating murders that the police have long since given up any hope of solving. A nationally renowned investigative reporter with her own TV show and a tough-as-nails reputation, Max tackles cold cases from across the country and every walk of life. But the one unsolved murder that still haunts her is a case from her own past.
When Max was a high school senior, one of her best friends was strangled and another, Kevin O’Neal, accused of the crime. To the disgrace of her wealthy family, Max stood by her friend, until she found out he lied about his alibi. Though his guilt was never proven, their relationship crumbled from the strain of too many secrets.
Now Max is home for Kevin’s funeral - after years of drug abuse, he committed suicide. She’s finally prepared to come to terms with the loss of his friendship, but she’s not prepared for Kevin’s sister to stubbornly insist that he didn’t kill himself. Or for an elderly couple to accost her at the airport, begging her to look into another murder at Max’s old high school. Max is more interested in the cold case at her alma mater than in digging around Kevin’s troubled life, but she agrees to do both.
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As Max uncovers dark secrets, she finds herself caught in a complicated web of lies that hit far too close to home. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that someone will do whatever it takes to make sure the truth stays buried.
Logan Monroe’s family is in danger. After his sister, Laura, and her kids are run off the road and their house is broken in to, Logan tasks the Angelharts with keeping them safe, and the PIs drop everything to take on the case.
\nBut they quickly realize there’s more to the situation than anyone thinks. First, the burglars didn’t take anything - were they just trying to scare her or were they after something they didn’t find? Then Laura can’t reach her ex-husband, who was supposed to take the kids for the weekend. While Jack protects the family, Margo tries to find the ex . . . but he seems to have disappeared.
\nAs she digs deeper, Margo uncovers someone hiding in the shadows who will do anything to get what he wants - including killing anyone who stands in his way.
Sentenced to death for crimes he didn't commit, ex-cop Tom O'Brien is now a hunted fugitive. After fifteen years in prison, he's determined to prove his innocence-but first he must convince his daughter, whose testimony helped put him behind bars, that he has damning evidence of a plot to frame him. Claire is no longer the naïve teenager who arrived home to find her mother and her mother's lover shot dead and her father holding the murder weapon. She's a successful fraud investigator who assumes everyone lies.
\nThough Claire is convinced of her father's guilt, curiosity propels her to look into the disappearance of a law student who claimed to have proof of Tom's innocence. But seeking answers only leads to more questions, reinforcing Claire's belief that there's no one left to trust. Obsessed with the O'Brien case, FBI agent Mitch Bianchi befriends Claire under false pretenses, certain that Tom is not only innocent but in grave danger-and not just from the cops.
\nAs the three race toward the truth, a murderous conspiracy tightens its noose-and Claire becomes the target of an ice-cold psychopath who will kill to protect his secrets.
Teen-aged Internet bully Ivy Lake fell off a cliff and few people cared . . . except her mentally-challenged eighteen-year-old step-brother, Tommy. He loved her in spite of her cruelty. He's distraught and doesn't understand why his blended family is falling apart. After a year, the police still have no answers: Ivy could have jumped, could have been pushed, or it could have been an accident. With too many suspects and not enough evidence, the investigation has grown cold.
\nTommy thinks that if someone can figure out what happened to his step-sister, everything will go back to normal, so he writes to investigative reporter Maxine Revere. This isn’t the type of case Max normally takes on, but the heartbreak and simple honesty in Tommy's letter pulls her in. She travels to Corte Madera, California, with her assistant David Kane and is at first pleased that the police are cooperative. But the more Max learns about Tommy and his dysfunctional family, the more she thinks she’s taken on an impossible task: this may be the one case she can’t solve.
\nIf Ivy was murdered, it was exceptionally well-planned and that kind of killer could be hiding in plain sight . . . planning the next act of violence. Max believes the truth is always better than lies, that the truth is the only thing that matters to gain justice for victims and their families. But for the first time, she wonders if this time, the truth will kill.
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First, she imagined it. Then a killer made it real.
\nRowan Smith is living in a borrowed Malibu beach house while her bestselling novel is made into a Hollywood movie. A former FBI agent with a haunted past, Rowan thinks she has outrun her demons. But fiction and reality collide when a dismembered body is found in Colorado: the real-life victim had the same name, occupation, and looks as a character in Rowan’s novel.
\nBy the time the FBI, the LAPD, and her own private bodyguard gather around her, another person is killed - again, the murder ripped from the pages of Rowan’s book.In the company of a former Delta Force officer with secrets of his own, Rowan faces an excruciating dilemma: the only way to chase down the tormenting killer is by revisiting the darkness of her past–and by praying for some way out again.
\nAfter the prey is chosen, the hunt is on and the kill is certain.
\nFrom the Paperback edition.
Two people were murdered - at the exact same time, in the same gruesome manner, bodies covered in the same red poppies . . . but on opposite sides of the country.
\nWith Detective Kara Quinn investigating in Oregon and Special Agent Matt Costa in Virginia, the Mobile Response Team digs deep to uncover more about each victim. What is the link between the two, and why were they targeted?
\nYet their search unearths more questions than answers - until they meet Riley Pierce, the only person still alive who might be able to help them find the killers.
\nSoon, it becomes clear this case is nothing like they’ve seen before as their investigation leads them to the hallowed grounds of Havenwood - an eerily beautiful place rooted in a terrifying past.
\nAs more bodies turn up, all tied to the same community, Kara and Matt are desperate to piece the puzzle together before Havenwood’s leader sacrifices everything to keep her secrets buried.
For three years, women have been disappearing - and eventually turning up dead in the small bayou town of St. Augustine, Louisiana. Police detective Beau Hebert is the only one who seems to care, but with every witness quickly silenced and a corrupt police department set on keeping the cases unsolved, Beau’s investigation stalls at every turn.
\nWith nobody else to trust, Beau calls in a favor from his friend on the FBI’s Mobile Response Team. While LAPD detective Kara Quinn works undercover to dig into the women’s murders and team leader Matt Costa officially investigates the in-custody death of a witness, Beau might finally have a chance at solving the case.
\nBut in a town where everyone knows everyone, talking gets you killed and secrets stay buried, it’s going to take the entire team working around the clock to unravel the truth. Especially when they discover that the deep-seated corruption and the deadly drug-trafficking ring at the center of it all extends far beyond the small-town borders.
Over a span of twenty years, four boys have been kidnapped from their bedrooms, suffocated, and buried nearby in a shallow grave. Serial killer or coincidence?
\nThat’s the question investigative reporter Maxine Revere sets out to answer when an old friend begs her to help exonerate his wife, who has been charged with their son’s recent murder. But Max can do little to help because the police and D.A. won’t talk to her - they think they have the right woman. Instead, Max turns her attention to three similar cold cases. If she can solve them, she might be able to help her friend.
\nJustin Stanton was killed twenty years ago, and his father wants closure - so he is willing to help Max with her investigation on one condition: that she work with his former sister-in-law - Justin’s aunt, FBI Agent Lucy Kincaid. Trouble is, Max works alone, and she’s livid that her only access to the case files, lead detective and witnesses depends on her partnering with a federal agent on vacation. She wants the career-making story almost as much as the truth - but if she gets this wrong, she could lose everything.
\nHaunted by Justin’s death for years, Lucy yearns to give her family - and herself - the closure they need. More important, she wants to catch a killer. Lucy finds Max’s theory on all three cases compelling - with Max's research added to Lucy’s training and experience, Lucy believes they can find the killer so justice can finally be served. But the very private Lucy doesn’t trust the reporter any more than Max trusts her.
\nMax and Lucy must find a way to work together to untangle lies, misinformation, and evidence to develop a profile of the killer. But the biggest question is: why were these boys targeted? As they team up to find out what really happened the night Justin was killed, they make a shocking discovery: Justin’s killer is still out there . . . stalking another victim . . . and they already may be too late.
It has been seven years since Lucy was attacked - and almost killed - by an online predator. Today, she is well on her way toward a new life.
\nWhile waiting to begin her training at the FBI Academy, Lucy's is tireless in her fight against cyber sex crime. Her current mission: to find out who killed a high-priced call girl linked to a powerful Congressman.
\nA number of known prostitutes - with scores of high profile clients - are turning up dead all over D.C. Is this the work of a depraved killer? Or the result of an inside job? Lucy's investigation will take her into an underground network of prostitutes, the chambers of the country's most powerful players, and her own dark past to confront an unknown enemy who's always one step ahead of her. With the help of her P.I. boyfriend Sean Rogan, Lucy must find and protect the only witness who can identify the killer and end the conspiracy, but can the witness be trusted?
\nLucy will risk everything to expose the truth and ensure justice is served, even if that means putting herself in the line of fire . . .
Lucas Vega is obsessed with the death of Candace Swain, who left a sorority party one night and never came back. Her body was found after two weeks, but the case has grown cold. Three years later while interning at the medical examiner's, Lucas discovers new information, but the police are not interested.
\nLucas knows he has several credible pieces of the puzzle. He just isn't sure how they fit together. So he creates a podcast to revisit Candace's last hours. Then he encourages listeners to crowdsource what they remember and invites guest lecturer Regan Merritt, a former US marshal, to come on and share her expertise.
\nNew tips come in that convince Lucas and Regan they are onto something. Then shockingly one of the podcast callers turns up dead. Another hints at Candace's secret life, a much darker picture than Lucas imagined - and one that implicates other sorority sisters. Regan uses her own resources to bolster their theory and learns that Lucas is hiding his own secret. The pressure is on to solve the murder, but first Lucas must come clean about his real motives in pursuing this podcast - before the killer silences him forever.
A new trainee at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Lucy Kincaid has already seen more than her share of murder and mayhem. Still reeling from the sex-crime case that sealed her reputation, she's found a true friend and mentor in Agent Tony Presidio. No matter what goes down at the Bureau, Tony's got her back - until he's called to New York to help investigate the murder of a reporter with ties to Lucy.
\nBut the reporter may not be the first victim of a patient killer with a penchant for revenge, and she's definitely not the last. Connections between closed cases, a missing person, and Tony himself lead Lucy to fear for those she cares for most. When the FBI is rocked by the death of one of their own, Lucy seeks the help of her boyfriend, private investigator Sean Rogan, to help put together the puzzle - and puts her career in jeopardy.
\nBut the harder she pushes for answers, the clearer the truth becomes: There's a killer inside Quantico. Watching her every move. Waiting to kill again . . .
Nothing is more important to private investigator Sean Rogan than his relationship with FBI trainee Lucy Kincaid. But when his past catches up with him, Sean faces an ultimatum: clear his name and help the FBI take down a rogue agent, or go to prison and lose everything he holds dear.
\nWith only Agent Noah Armstrong as his back-up and forced to keep Lucy in the dark, Sean steps back into his old world. But the longer he’s undercover, the more dangerous the game becomes. More than Sean’s future with Lucy is at stake - so is his life.
\nLucy can’t imagine Sean would keep secrets from her - until an FBI agent casts doubt about who he really is . . . and who he used to be. Why did Sean quit his job with his brother and move to New York? Why hasn’t he told her anything about his new job? With more questions than answers, Lucy doesn’t know who to believe or who she can trust. All she knows is that Sean is in grave danger, and this time, it’s personal.
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When a homeless veteran is found dead in a squalid Sacramento alley, FBI special agent Megan Elliott vows to find the murdered hero's killer. Her investigation gets complicated fast, for the victim, a former Delta Force soldier, is just one link in a nationwide spree of torture and murder.
Straight off a job rescuing medical missionaries, soldier-for-hire Jack Kincaid returns to his home base in the Texas border town of Hidalgo only to receive the news that one of his closest colleagues also ex-military has been brutally murdered. Faced with an inept local police force, Jack takes matters into his own hands.
Now, as part of a national task force to stop the sadistic killings, by-the-book Megan and burn-the-book Jack form a tense alliance, sparked with conflict and temptation. But they struggle against more than passion, for a vicious pair of killers has only just begun a rampage of evil . . . and the primary target is much closer than Megan suspects
Something mysterious is killing the wildlife in the mountains just south of Tucson. When a college intern turned activist sets out to collect her own evidence, she, too, ends up dead. Local law enforcement is slow to get involved. That’s when the mobile FBI unit goes undercover to infiltrate the town and its copper refinery in search of possible leads.
\nQuinn and Costa find themselves scouring the desolate landscape, which keeps revealing clues to something much darker - greed, child trafficking and more death. As the body count adds up, it’s clear they have stumbled onto much more than they bargained for. Now they must figure out who is at the heart of this mayhem and stop them before more innocent lives are lost.
Joanna Sutton can cope with the fierce winter storm bearing down on the small rural community of Centennial Valley, Montana; the popular romance writer has survived much worse in life. Haunted by the loss of her husband and child, Jo has found refuge at her family?s secluded lodge, but her haven soon becomes a hell. During the ferocious blizzard, a local Boy Scout troop is stranded in the wilderness, compelling Jo to spearhead a desperate rescue mission, aided by a newly arrived stranger with an unknown agenda.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Tyler McBride hears that three escaped convicts are fast approaching Big Sky Country. Hoping to warn Jo, he faxes over the men?s mug shots. But they never reach their intended recipient. Then Tyler makes a shocking discovery: Two people are dead, and a killer is among the group, along with the woman Tyler loves, searching for his lost son.
More than one innocent life is at stake. For the sake of those Jo cares about most, and for her own survival, she?ll need all the cunning, courage, and passion she can muster to survive the mounting terror.
Detective Kara Quinn, on leave from the LAPD, is on an early morning jog in her hometown of Liberty Lake when she comes upon the body of a young nurse. The manner of death shows a pattern of highly controlled rage. Meanwhile in DC, FBI special agent Mathias Costa is staffing his newly minted Mobile Response Team.
\nWord reaches Matt that the Liberty Lake murder fits the profile of the compulsive Triple Killer. It will be the first case for the MRT. This time they have a chance to stop this zealous if elusive killer before he strikes again. But only if they can figure out who he is and where he is hiding before he disappears for another three years. The stakes are higher than ever before, because if they fail, one of their own will be next . . .
Things finally seem to be going well for FBI Agent Lucy Kincaid. She's just finished training for Hostage Rescue, her husband's relationship with his son is back on track, and her tense relationship with her boss, Rachel Vaughn, has become much more bearable. That is, until her first hostage case throws everything off track.
When a man who appears under the influence and mentally unstable holds a group of people hostage and dies in a shootout with the FBI, Lucy is assigned to investigate what happened. His descent doesn't make any sense - he was an upstanding citizen a year ago and only started declining after a series of blackouts and strange occurrences. Even his autopsy seems suspicious, and the body has been cremated without the proper approval.
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As Lucy investigates, she realises that this story may be more complicated than she thinks, and that her own life might be in danger.
A bomb explodes on a sunset charter cruise out of Friday Harbor at the height of tourist season and kills everyone on board. Now this fishing and boating community is in shock and asking who would commit such a heinous crime - the largest act of mass murder in the history of the San Juan Islands.
\nWas the explosion an act of domestic terrorism, or was one of the dead the primary target? That is the first question Special Agent Matt Costa, Detective Kara Quinn and the rest of the FBI team need to answer, but they have few clues and no witnesses.
\nAccused of putting profits before people after leaking fuel endangered an environmentally sensitive preserve, the West End Charter company may itself have been the target. As Matt and his team get closer to answers, they find one of their own caught in the crosshairs of a determined killer.
Working alone as a private investigator is tough. Estranged from her PI family, Margo Angelhart does what she must to get by - including taking on sordid cases that pay the bills, even if she’d rather be helping those the justice system has failed.
\nThat is, until a cheating husband case she’s working intersects with her siblings’ corporate espionage investigation, forcing Margo to cooperate with the Angelhart firm. Now, as the siblings compare notes, it’s clear they need to work together before a white-collar crime escalates to murder.
\nWith far more questions than answers and a key suspect on the run, they’ll need the whole family to pitch in. But as they investigate the ever-twisting mystery, Margo isn’t sharing everything. Can she learn to trust her family and heal their once-close relationship before her secrets put those she loves most in danger?
In this dazzling debut novel, a hidden and nearly forgotten magic - of Reforging pencils, bringing the memories they contain back to life - holds the power to transform a young woman’s relationship with her grandmother, and to mend long-lost connections across time and space.
\nMonica Tsai spends most days on her computer, journaling the details of her ordinary life and coding for a program that seeks to connect strangers online. A self-proclaimed recluse, she's always struggled to make friends and, as a college freshman, finds herself escaping into a digital world, counting the days until she can return home to her beloved grandparents. They are now in their nineties, and Monica worries about them constantly - especially her grandmother, Yun, who survived two wars in China before coming to the States, and whose memory has begun to fade.
\nThough Yun rarely speaks of her past, Monica is determined to find the long-lost cousin she was separated from years ago. One day, the very program Monica is helping to build connects her to a young woman, whose gift of a single pencil holds a surprising clue. Monica’s discovery of a hidden family history is exquisitely braided with Yun’s own memories as she writes of her years in Shanghai, working at the Phoenix Pencil Company. As WWII rages outside their door, Yun and her cousin, Meng, learn of a special power the women in their family possess: the ability to Reforge a pencil’s words. But when the government uncovers their secret, they are forced into a life of espionage, betraying other people’s stories to survive.
\nCombining the cross-generational family saga and epistolary form of A Tale for the Time Being with the uplifting, emotional magic of The Midnight Library, Allison King’s stunning debut novel asks: who owns and inherits our stories? The answers and secrets that surface on the page may have the unerasable power to reconnect a family and restore a legacy.
After an emergency leaves her short on rent, thirty-year-old Freya Arnalds bails on her lackluster life as bartender in Maine and returns to her suburban hometown of Somers, New York, to live in the house she inherited from her estranged parents. Despite attempts to lay low, Freya encounters childhood friends, familial enemies, and old flames - as well as her fifteen-year-old niece, Aubrey, who is secretly living in the derelict home. As they reconnect, Freya and Aubrey lean on each other, working to restore the house and come to terms with the devastating events that pulled them apart years ago.
\nSet in the birthplace of the American circus, this deeply moving novel is an exploration of broken families, the weight of the past, and the complicated journey of finding home.
Little River, New York, 1994: April Sawicki is living in a run-down motorhome, flunking out of school, and picking up shifts at the local diner. But when April realises she’s finally had enough - enough of her selfish, absent father and barely surviving in an unfeeling town - she decides to make a break for it. Stealing a car and with only her music to keep her company, April hits the road, determined to live life on her own terms.
\nShe manages to scrape together a meaningful existence as she travels, encountering people and places she’s never dreamed of, and could never imagine deserving. From lifelong friendships to tragic heartbreaks, April chronicles her journey in the beautiful music she creates as she discovers that home is with the people you choose to keep.
London, 1947. Spirited Miss Iris Sparks and ever-practical Mrs Gwendolyn Bainbridge are called to action when Gwen’s beau Salvatore ‘Sally’ Danielli is accused of murder!
\nSally has taken a job at the BBC studios at Alexandra Palace, but when the beautiful Miss JeanneMarie Duplessis - one of the Parisian performers over for a new variety show - is found dead in the old theatre, a number of inconvenient coincidences make him Suspect No:1.
\nJust days earlier, Miss Duplessis had arrived at The Right Sort, desperately looking for a husband - any husband - to avoid having to return to Paris. As the plot thickens, Iris is pulled back into the clandestine circles she moved in during the war and it soon becomes apparent that to clear Sally’s name, she and Gwen would need to go on the hunt for a killer once more!
London, 1947. After recent events have left the normally steadfast Iris Sparks thoroughly shaken, she’s looking forward to some peace. With The Right Sort doing well, she and business partner Gwen Bainbridge are due a holiday. Until Iris’s former boss enlists their help for a secret mission.
\nIris, who left British intelligence after the war, is being recruited for her Cambridge connection to one Anthony Danforth. She hasn’t seen Tony in almost ten years, yet she and Gwen must manipulate him into hiring their marriage service.
\nTony’s suspected of being a Soviet operative, and an undercover agent posing as his perfect match could discover the truth. Despite her reluctance at being dragged back into the world of espionage, Iris agrees. After all, Tony was once a very good friend. If he’s innocent, she’ll happily prove it. If not? Well, no one ever said being a spy was easy . . .
In the immediate post-war days of London, two unlikely partners have undertaken an even more unlikely, if necessary, business venture - The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. The two partners are Miss Iris Sparks, a woman with a dangerous - and never discussed - past in British intelligence and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, a war widow with a young son entangled in a complicated aristocratic family.
\nMostly their clients are people trying to start (or restart) their lives in this much-changed world, but their new client is something different. A happily married woman has come to them to find a new wife for her husband. Dying of cancer, she wants the two to make sure her entomologist, academic husband finds someone new once she passes.
\nShortly thereafter, she's found dead in Epping Forest, in what appears to be a suicide. But that doesn't make sense to either Sparks or Bainbridge. At the same time, Bainbridge is attempting to regain legal control of her life, opposed by the conservator who has been managing her assets - perhaps not always in her best interest. When that conservator is found dead, Bainbridge herself is one of the prime suspects.
\nAttempting to make sense of two deaths at once, to protect themselves and their clients, the redoubtable owners of the Right Sort Marriage Bureau are once again on the case.
In the immediate post-war days of London, two unlikely partners have undertaken an even more unlikely, if necessary, business venture - The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. The two partners are Miss Iris Sparks, a woman with a dangerous - and never discussed - past in British intelligence and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, a genteel war widow with a young son entangled in a complicated aristocratic family.
\nLooking to throw a New Year’s Eve soiree for their clients, Sparks and Bainbridge scout an empty building - only to find a body contained in the walls. What they initially assume is a victim of the recent Blitz is uncovered instead to be a murder victim - stabbed several times.
\nTo make matters worse, the owner of the building is Sparks’ beau, Archie Spelling, who has ties to a variety of enterprises on the right and wrong sides of the law, and the main investigator for the police is her ex-fiancée. Gwen, too, is dealing with her own complicated love life, as she tentatively steps back into the dating pool for the first time since her husband’s death.
\nMurder is not something they want to add to their plates, but the murderer may be closer to home than is comfortable, and they must do all they can to protect their clients, their business and themselves.
In a London slowly recovering from World War II, two very different women join forces to launch a business venture in the heart of Mayfair - The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. Miss Iris Sparks, quick-witted and impulsive, and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, practical and widowed with a young son, are determined to achieve some independence and do some good in a rapidly changing world.
\nBut their promising start is threatened when their newest client is found murdered and the man arrested for the crime is the prospective husband they matched her with. While the police are convinced they have their man, Miss Sparks and Mrs. Bainbridge are not. To clear his name - and to rescue their fledgling operation’s reputation - Sparks and Bainbridge decide to investigate on their own. Little do they know that this will put their very lives at risk.
In London, 1946, the Right Sort Marriage Bureau is getting on its feet and expanding. Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge are making a go of it. That is until Lord Bainbridge - the widowed Gwen's father-in-law and legal guardian - returns from a business trip to Africa and threatens to undo everything important to her, even sending her six-year-old son away to a boarding school.
\nBut there's more going on than that. A new client shows up at the agency, one whom Sparks and Bainbridge begin to suspect really has a secret agenda, somehow involving the Bainbridge family. A murder and a subsequent kidnapping sends Sparks to seek help from a dangerous quarter - and now their very survival is at stake.
In London 1946, The Right Sort Marriage Bureau is just beginning to take off and the proprietors, Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, are in need of a bigger office and a secretary to handle the growing demand. Unfortunately, they don't yet have the necessary means. So when a woman arrives - a cousin of Gwen's - with an interesting and quite remunerative proposition, they two of them are all ears.
\nThe cousin, one Lady Matheson, works for the Queen in “some capacity” and is in need of some discreet investigation. It seems that the Princess Elizabeth has developed feelings for a dashing Greek prince and a blackmail note has arrived, alluding to some potentially damaging information about said prince. Wanting to keep this out of the palace gossip circles, but also needing to find out what skeletons might lurk in the prince's closet, the palace has quietly turned to Gwen and Iris. Without causing a stir, the two of them must now find out what secrets lurk in the prince's past, before his engagement to the future Queen of England is announced. And there's more at stake than the future of the Empire - there is their potential new office that lies in the balance.
The Right Sort Marriage Bureau was founded in 1946 by two disparate individuals - Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge (whose husband was killed in the recent World War) and Miss Iris Sparks who worked as an intelligence agent during the recent conflict, though this is not discussed. While the agency flourishes in the post-war climate, both founders have to deal with some of the fallout that conflict created in their personal lives.
\nMiss Sparks finds herself followed, then approached, by a young woman who has a very personal connection to a former paramour of Sparks. But something is amiss and it seems that Iris's past may well cause something far more deadly than mere disruption in her personal life.
\nMeanwhile, Gwendolyn is struggling to regain full legal control of her life, her finances, and her son - a legal path strewn with traps and pitfalls.
\nTogether these indomitable two are determined and capable and not just of making the perfect marriage match.
Lorelei Kaskel, a folklorist with a quick temper and an even quicker wit, is on an expedition with six eccentric nobles in search of a fabled spring. The magical spring promises untold power, which the king wants to harness to secure his reign of the embattled country of Brunnestaad. Lorelei is determined to use this opportunity to prove herself and make her wildest, most impossible dream come to become a naturalist, able to travel freely to lands she’s only ever read about.
\nThe expedition gets off to a harrowing start when its leader - Lorelei’s beloved mentor - is murdered in her quarters aboard their ship. The suspects are her five remaining expedition mates, each with their own motive. The only person Lorelei knows must be innocent is her longtime academic rival, the insufferably gallant and maddeningly beautiful Sylvia von Wolff. Now in charge of the expedition, Lorelei must find the spring before the murderer strikes again - and a coup begins in earnest.
\nBut there are other dangers lurking in the forests that rearrange themselves at night, rivers with slumbering dragons waiting beneath the water, and shapeshifting beasts out for blood.
\nAs Lorelei and Sylvia grudgingly work together to uncover the truth - and resist their growing feelings for one another - they discover that their professor had secrets of her own. Secrets that make Lorelei question whether justice is worth pursuing, or if this kingdom is worth saving at all.
\n
Wren Southerland’s reckless use of magic has cost her everything: she’s been dismissed from the Queen’s Guard and separated from her best friend - the girl she loves. So when a letter arrives from a reclusive lord, asking Wren to come to his estate, Colwick Hall, to cure his servant from a mysterious illness, she seizes her chance to redeem herself.
The mansion is crumbling, icy winds haunt the caved-in halls, and her eccentric host forbids her from leaving her room after dark. Worse, Wren’s patient isn’t a servant at all but Hal Cavendish, the infamous Reaper of Vesria and her kingdom’s sworn enemy. Hal also came to Colwick Hall for redemption, but the secrets in the estate may lead to both of their deaths.
With sinister forces at work, Wren and Hal realize they’ll have to join together if they have any hope of saving their kingdoms. But as Wren circles closer to the nefarious truth behind Hal’s illness, they realize they have no escape from the monsters within the mansion. All they have is each other, and a startling desire that could be their downfall.
When their paths first cross, Ben Livingston is a fledgling screenwriter on the brink of success; Tatum Connelly is a struggling actress tending bar in a New York City dive. They fall in love, they marry, they become parents, and they think only of the future. But as the years go by, Tatum’s stardom rises while Ben’s fades. In a marriage that bears the fallout of ambition and fame, Ben and Tatum are at a crossroads. Now all they can do is think back . . .
\nA life of passion, joy, tragedy, and loss - once shared - becomes one as shifting and unpredictable as a memory. And as they explore the ways love can bend and break, they recount their individual versions of the story, Ben’s moving backward and Tatum’s moving forward, each wondering what they can do now to make it all right.
\n
Twenty years ago, six Penn students shared a house, naively certain that their friendships would endure - until the death of their ringleader and dear friend Bea splintered the group for good. Now, mostly estranged from one another, the remaining five reluctantly gather at that same house on the eve of what would have been Bea’s fortieth birthday.
But along with the return of the friends come old grudges, unrequited feelings, and buried secrets. Catherine, the CEO of a domestic empire, and Owen, a stay-at-home dad, were picture-perfect college sweethearts - but now teeter on the brink of disaster. Lindy, a well-known musician, is pushing middle age in an industry that’s all about youth and slowly self-destructing as she grapples with her own identity. Behind his smile, handsome plastic surgeon Colin harbors the heartbreaking truth about his own history with Bea. And Annie carefully curates her life on Instagram and Facebook, keeping up appearances so she doesn’t have to face the truth about her own empty reality.
Reunited in the place where so many dreams began, and bolstered by the hope of healing, each of them is forced to confront the past.
In the city that never sleeps, it’s not always easy to share what’s on your mind with the people who know you best. Huddled in an all-night diner over coffee and pancakes, a lonely middle-aged mom, an injured baseball pro, an elusive retiree, and a young waitress examine the thoughts that plague them in the middle of the night.
\nEmpty-nester Sybil does what she does best: rolls up her sleeves and spearheads the efforts to turn this group of strangers into friends. Aimless after an injury threatens to ruin his career, Zeke finds genuine connection among the unlikely group. Tight-lipped Julian, who’s seemingly adrift in retirement and attempting to rebuild a relationship with his daughter, expands their circle when he takes their cagey diner waitress, Betty, under his wing. Betty, cautious about strangers and uncertain about strokes of good luck, entertains the trio in an attempt to resolve her own problems, which she keeps close to the vest.
\nWithin a few restless months, the group of strangers have become a fragile family. And when one of them goes missing in the dead of night, they’re thrust into a propulsive mystery pulled straight from the true-crime podcasts Sybil obsesses over. Though ill-prepared and unequipped for the job, they begin to piece together the clues left behind. In chasing down answers, they uncover a reason for their friend’s disappearance, and are forced to wrestle with the question of how well you can really know anyone - and once you do, how much are you willing to risk to save them? And in doing so, save yourself?
\n
Tilly Farmer is thirty-two years old and has the perfect life she always dreamed of: married to her high school sweetheart, working as a guidance counselor in her hometown, trying for a baby. Perfect.
\nIn fact, on the surface you might never know how tough things used to be. At seventeen, Tilly lost her mother to cancer, her father drowned his grief in alcohol, and she played parent to her two younger sisters more often than being a kid herself. Still Tilly never let tragedy overtake her belief that hard work and good cheer could solve any problem. Of course she’s also spent a lifetime plastering a smile on her face and putting everyone else’s problems ahead of her own.
\nBut that relentless happiness has served her well - her sisters are grown and content, her dad is ten years sober, and she’s helping her students achieve all their dreams while she and her husband, Tyler, start a family. A perfect life indeed.
\nThen one sweltering afternoon at the local fair, everything changes. Tilly wanders into the fortune teller’s tent and is greeted by an old childhood friend, now a psychic, who offers her more than just a reading. “I’m giving you the gift of clarity,” her friend says. “It’s what I always thought you needed.” And soon enough, Tilly starts seeing things: her father relapsing, staggering out of a bar with his car keys in hand; Tyler uprooting their happy, stable life, a packed U-Haul in their driveway; and even more disturbing, these visions start coming true. Suddenly Tilly’s perfect life, so meticulously mapped out, seems to be crumbling around her. And she’s not sure what’s more frightening: that she’s begun to see the future or what the future holds . . .
\nAs Tilly furiously races to keep up with - and hopefully change - her destiny, she faces the question: Which is the life she wants? The one she’s carefully nursed for decades, or the one she never considered possible?
\n
Nico, Opal, Tyler, Emma, and Logan survived their worst fears come to life, and saved their tiny Pacific Northwest town of Timbers from a monstrous figment invasion. Now they just want to keep their heads down, enjoy Halloween, and explore the secrets of their mysterious houseboat clubhouse. And also figure out their new Torchbearer responsibilities as keepers of the Darkdeep, an ancient whirlpool hidden in Still Cove that can make both dreams and nightmares into reality.
\nBut when a dangerous new breed of figments starts appearing on their own, and the very environment around them begins to spiral out of control, the friends realize they have no idea what they are doing-or how they're supposed to restrain the Darkdeep. They must uncover the pool's origins, as well as those of the freaky Thing in a Jar, a seemingly lifeless green creature Opal believes is communicating with her. To make matters worse, a trashy YouTube series has rolled into town intent on finding the Beast, the legendary local sea monster suddenly stirring up the countryside.
\nAs threats rapidly close in around them, the friends must fight to protect their secrets, defeat new enemies, and save Timbers and all that they love.
\n
When a bullying incident sends twelve-year-old Nico Holland over the edge of a cliff into the icy waters of Still Cove, where no one ever goes, friends Tyler and Ella - and even 'cool kid' Opal – rush to his rescue . . . only to discover an island hidden in the swirling mists below.
\nShrouded by dense trees and murky tides, the island appears uninhabited, although the kids can't quite shake the feeling that something about it is off. Their suspicions grow when they stumble upon an abandoned houseboat with an array of curiosities inside: odd-looking weapons, unnerving portraits, maps to places they've never heard of, and a glass jar containing something completely unidentifiable.
\nAs the group delves deeper into the unknown, their discoveries - and their lives - begin to intertwine in weird and creepy ways. Something ancient has awakened . . . and it knows their wishes and dreams - and their darkest, most terrible secrets. Do they have what it takes to face the shadowy things that lurk within their own hearts?
\n
After the events of Dark Halloween, the town of Timbers is in a full-blown monster panic, making life for the Torchbearers--Opal, Nico, Tyler, Emma, and Logan--extremely difficult. Nico is investigating the Rift and the strange natural phenomena that continue to occur, all while worrying about his dad's potential work transfer. Opal has her hands full researching the founding Torchbearer, Yvette Dumont, and deciphering clues from another realm sent by the mysterious Thing In a Jar. Emma's wildly popular YouTube show has brought her new-found fame, but also earned her some enemies. Logan is trying to unlock secrets in his own family history that might shed light on how the Torchbearer Order began, while Tyler, as the self-proclaimed Beastmaster, strives to commune with--and not be eaten by--the mercurial and deadly alien sea creature living in Still Cove.
\n\n
But that's not all. Something cryptic has surfaced from within the Darkdeep. Questions arise, and the five friends find themselves suddenly at odds. The stakes climb even higher when an enigmatic new girl comes to town, with an agenda of her own. As the Torchbearers discover shocking secrets about their houseboat hangout, the Rift, and the Darkdeep itself, signs point to new realms beyond the ones they know, putting their friendships to the test as never before . .
In search of a future that may not exist and faced with the decision of who to share it with, Cassia journeys to the Outer Provinces in pursuit of Ky - taken by the Society to his certain death - only to find that he has escaped, leaving a series of clues in his wake.
\nCassia's quest leads her to question much of what she holds dear, even as she finds glimmers of a different life across the border. But as Cassia nears resolve and certainty about her future with Ky, an invitation for rebellion, an unexpected betrayal, and a surprise visit from Xander - who may hold the key to the uprising and, still, to Cassia's heart - change the game once again. Nothing is as expected on the edge of Society, where crosses and double crosses make the path more twisted than ever.
\n
Hope, Ash, and Caro met at an online book club. Over the past two years, they’ve been there for each other in every way - except in person. When each of their lives reach a crossroads, they decide to meet in real life at the gorgeous Sonnet Resort at Eden National Park.
\n\n
Hope, an actress, has become entirely too famous and needs to get away from it all. Ash, a successful online entrepreneur, isn’t sure what has happened to her marriage. Caro, a doctor, has lost a patient and doesn’t know if she wants to carry on or start all over. And none of them are telling each other the full story . . .
\n
There is something Poe Blythe, the seventeen-year-old captain of the Outpost’s last mining ship, wants far more than the gold they tear from the Serpentine River.
Revenge.
Poe has vowed to annihilate the river raiders who robbed her of everything two years ago. But as she navigates the treacherous waters of the Serpentine and realizes there might be a traitor among her crew, she must also reckon with who she has become, who she wants to be, and the ways love can change and shape you. Even - and especially - when you think all is lost.
In the Society, Officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die.
\nCassia has always trusted the Society’s choices. And when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, she is certain he’s the one - until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now she is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s ever known and a path no has dared to follow . . . between perfection and the truth.
\n
For July Fielding, nothing has been the same since that summer before senior year.
\nOnce, she had Alex, her loyal best friend, the one who always had her back. She had Sydney, who pushed her during every cross-country run, and who sometimes seemed to know July better than she knew herself. And she had Sam. Sam, who told her she was everything and left her breathless with his touch.
\nNow, July is alone. Every single person in her small town of Lithia has disappeared. No family. No Alex or Sydney. No Sam. July’s only chance at unraveling the mystery of their disappearance is a series of objects, each a reminder of the people she loved most. And a mysterious message: GET TH3M BACK.
\n
Cassia faces the ultimate choices in the long-anticipated conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Matched Trilogy
\nAfter leaving Society and desperately searching for the Risingand each otherCassia and Ky have found what they were looking for, but at the cost of losing each other yet again: Cassia has been assigned to work for the Rising from within Society, while Ky has been stationed outside its borders. But nothing is as predicted, and all too soon the veil lifts and things shift once again.
\nIn this gripping conclusion to the #1 New York Times bestselling Matched Trilogy, Cassia will reconcile the difficulties of challenging a life too confining, seeking a freedom she never dreamed possible, and honoring a love she cannot live without.
\n
Ellery Wainwright is alone at the edge of the world.
\nShe and her husband, Luke, were supposed to spend their twentieth wedding anniversary together at the luxurious Resort at Broken Point in Big Sur, California. Where better to celebrate a marriage, a family, and a life together than at one of the most stunning places on earth?
\nBut now, she’s traveling solo.
\nTo add insult to injury, there’s a wedding at Broken Point scheduled during her stay. Ellery remembers how it felt to be on the cusp of everything new and wonderful, with a loved and certain future glimmering just ahead. Now, she isn’t certain of anything except for her love for her kids and her growing realization that this place, though beautiful, is unsettling.
\nWhen Ellery discovers the body of the groom floating in the pool in the rain, she realizes that she is not the only one whose future is no longer guaranteed. Before the police can reach Broken Point, a mudslide takes out the road to the resort, leaving the guests trapped. When another guest dies, it’s clear something horrible is brewing.
\nEveryone at Broken Point has a secret. And everyone has a shadow. Including Ellery.
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When Amber Archer inherits a mysterious house from relatives she thought were long-dead, she sees it as her ticket out of the current chaos consuming her New York life. A little time out in the sticks can’t hurt, can it?
\nNestled in the middle of nowhere is The Willows, the premier racing stables in Kentucky owned by Rowan Payton. Loss devastated her, and she doesn’t want to feel that way ever again. Her controlled and ordered life isn’t ready for the tornado of a city girl.
\nTheir worlds collide when Rowan comes to Amber’s rescue, igniting a fierce attraction despite their stark differences and outlooks. But when Amber’s past crashes into her present and she has to make a choice between her heart and her head, will what they’ve built be strong enough to weather the storm?
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Abby Proctor has made her choice - she’s racing back to Wry to save Joey “JT London”, the outlaw she’s fallen in love with. But time is running out - the ghosts of Abby’s past are giving chase, they’re not going to let her go without a fight, and Joey is a wanted woman with a target on her back.
\nThen, Joey disappears.
\nBut Abby is determined to find her, and along the way, she might even find herself.
\n
When Abby Proctor is kidnapped from a train in the middle of the desert halfway to her new life in California, she makes a promise to herself - she will escape. Because there’s a reason Abby is leaving Iowa and all its oppressions behind, and she refuses to be someone’s prisoner again. Especially when that someone is the infamous female outlaw Joey ‘JT London’ Taylor, Abby's brash, brooding, and inconveniently beautiful captor.
\nBut as Abby plots her escape, she stumbles upon a larger conspiracy at play behind her kidnapping - a complicated revelation considering the feelings she’s been having for Joey, who might not be the ruthless criminal everyone believes her to be. And when Abby realises it’s all connected - her kidnapping, the secrets she left behind in Iowa, even her plans in California - she has to decide between returning to a life of obedience and unhappiness, or trusting an enigmatic outlaw who is bound for the gallows.
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On a hot summer’s day in 1975, young heiresses Willow and Ivy Wilde vanish while playing by a pond on the Stonehold estate, never to be seen again.
\nNow, fifty years later, Stonehold is again abuzz, this time in preparation for the homecoming of Summer Wilde and Brody Weston, whose upcoming wedding is all anyone in Echo, Washington can talk about.
\nNobody knows that Summer doesn’t want to marry Brody. That she doesn’t want to inherit Stonehold and be tethered to the unshakable darkness that clings to the halls and grounds like cobwebs. Nobody knows because Summer doesn’t have a choice - she has to marry Brody, and she’s long made peace with her fate.
\nThat is, until she sees Ford Flores - third-generation groundskeeper at Stonehold - for the first time in fifteen years. Ford is everything Brody isn’t; she’s self-sufficient, quick-witted, effortlessly kind, covered in tattoos, and a woman. And the last time Summer saw her, she’d kissed her - impulsive and electrifying - then she’d ran away like a coward.
\nSummer Wilde is done being a coward.
\nBut it’s hard to take charge of your future in a place like Echo, where the past looms thick as the mountain mist tumbling down the white-tipped Cascades. From ghostly apparitions to secret rooms with mysterious paintings and an old sketchbook with a mind-blowing revelation scribbled inside, Summer begins to realise that if she wants to move forward, she’ll have to put Stonehold’s past to rest - starting with the unsolved disappearance of Willow and Ivy.
\nWith her wedding only days away, the clock is ticking. Even with Ford’s help it won’t be easy - no one is telling the truth and everyone has something to hide. Even Summer.
\n
When CIA officer Craig Norton glimpses an unexplainable object in the sky over Mongolia, he can’t quite believe it. Frankly, he isn’t sure Langley will either. Despite his misgivings, Craig reports the sighting in a cable to headquarters detailing the incident. Fast-forward fifteen years. Craig is still reeling from the report that tanked his career and his personal life. That fleeting moment on the Mongolian steppe made him a pariah at the Agency, and he still hasn’t recovered.
\nAt this point, he doubts he ever will. But when the navy confirms on national television reports of unexplained aerial phenomena, Craig finds himself pulled back into the fold. Assigned to a CIA task force investigating sightings of unexplained aerial phenomena - including his own - Craig stumbles upon a mystery that could strain global relations and expose an international cover-up.
\nFor a spy humbled by his own instincts, the search for the truth could finally mean a chance at redemption - or place him directly in the path of a dangerous conspiracy.
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1944: As World War II rages on, the threat has come to the home front. In a remote corner of Idaho, Meiko Briggs and her daughter, Aiko, are desperate to return home. Following Meiko's husband's enlistment as an air force pilot in the Pacific months prior, Meiko and Aiko were taken from their home in Seattle and sent to one of the internment camps in the Midwest. It didn’t matter that Aiko was American-born: They were Japanese, and therefore considered a threat by the American government.
\nMother and daughter attempt to hold on to elements of their old life in the camp when a mysterious disease begins to spread among those interned. What starts as a minor cold quickly becomes spontaneous fits of violence and aggression, even death. And when a disconcerting team of doctors arrive, nearly more threatening than the illness itself, Meiko and her daughter team up with a newspaper reporter and widowed missionary to investigate, and it becomes clear to them that something more sinister is afoot, a demon from the stories of Meiko’s childhood, hell-bent on infiltrating their already strange world.
\nInspired by the Japanese yokai and the jorogumo spider demon, The Fervor explores a supernatural threat beyond what anyone saw coming; the danger of demonisation, a mysterious contagion, and the search to stop its spread before it’s too late.
Some families have skeletons in their closets. This one has a demon in its boardroom.
\nWhen Maris Berisha was nine years old, she heard something scratching at the walls of her family's penthouse. It felt like something malevolent was there, watching them.
\nThe Berisha family runs one of the largest import-export companies in the world, and they've always been lucky. Their rivals suffer strokes. Inconvenient buildings catch on fire. Earthquakes swallow up manufacturing plants, destroying harmful evidence. Things always seem to work out for the Berishas. They're blessed.
\nAt least that is what Zef, the patriarch, has always told his three children. And each of them knows their place in the family - Dardan, as the only male heir, must prepare to take over as keeper of the Berisha secrets, Maris's most powerful contribution, much to her dismay, will be to marry strategically, and Nora's job, as the youngest, is to just stay out of the way.
\nBut when things stop going as planned, and the family blessing starts looking more like a curse, the Berishas begin to splinter, each hatching their own secret scheme. They didn't get to be one of the richest families in the world without spilling a little blood, but this time, it might be their own.
Evil is invisible, and it is everywhere.
Tamsen Donner must be a witch. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the pioneers to the brink of madness. They cannot escape the feeling that someone - or something - is stalking them.
Whether it was a curse from the beautiful Tamsen, the choice to follow a disastrous experimental route West, or just plain bad luck - the 90 men, women, and children of the Donner Party are at the brink of one of the deadliest and most disastrous western adventures in American history.
While the ill-fated group struggles to survive in the treacherous mountain conditions - searing heat that turns the sand into bubbling stew; snows that freeze the oxen where they stand - evil begins to grow around them, and within them. As members of the party begin to disappear, they must ask themselves \"What if there is something waiting in the mountains? Something disturbing and diseased . . . and very hungry?\"
Lanore McIlvrae is the kind of woman who will do anything for love. Including imprisoning the man who loves her behind a wall of brick and stone.
She had no choice but to entomb Adair, her nemesis, to save Jonathan, the boy she grew up with in a remote Maine town in the early 1800s and the man she thought she would be with forever. But Adair had other plans for her. He used his mysterious, otherworldly powers to give her eternal life, but Lanore learned too late that there was a price for this gift: to spend eternity with him. And though he is handsome and charming, behind Adair’s seductive faÇade is the stuff of nightmares. He is a monster in the flesh, and he wants Lanore to love him for all of time.
Now, two hundred years after imprisoning Adair, Lanore is trying to atone for her sins. She has given away the treasures she’s collected over her many lifetimes in order to purge her past and clear the way for a future with her new lover, Luke Findley. But, while viewing these items at an exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Lanore suddenly is aware that the thing she’s been dreading for two hundred years has caught up to her: Adair has escaped from his prison. He’s free - and he will come looking for her. And she has no idea how she will save herself.
CIA agent Lyndsey Duncan has a new asset to turn, in order to prevent the most calculated global invasion of our time. But will their blossoming friendship get in the way?
\nAfter an explosive takedown of a well-placed mole within the CIA, agent Lyndsey Duncan has been tasked with keeping tabs on her newest Russian asset, deadly war criminal Dmitri Tarasenko. She arrives in London fully focused on the assignment at hand, until her MI6 counterpart, Davis Ranford, the very person responsible for ending her last mission overseas after they were caught in a whirlwind affair, personally calls for her.
\nAfter a suspicious attack on a powerful Russian oligarch’s property on Billionaires’ Row in the toniest neighborhood in London, Davis needs Lyndsey to cozy up to the billionaire’s aristocratic British wife, Emily Rotenberg. Lyndsey’s job is to obtain any and all information related to Emily’s husband, Mikhail Rotenberg, and his relationship with the new Russian president, whom CIA and MI6 believe is responsible for the sudden mysterious disappearance of his predecessor, the Hard Man. Fortunately for Lyndsey, there’s little to dissuade Emily from taking in a much-needed confidante. After all, misery needs company.
\nBut before Lyndsey can cover much ground with her newfound friend, the CIA unveils a perturbing connection between Mikhail and Russia’s geopolitical past, one that could dangerously upend the world order as we know it. As the pressure to turn Emily becomes higher than ever, Lyndsey must walk a fine and ever-changing line to keep the oligarch’s fortune from falling into Russian hands and plunging the world into a new, disastrous geopolitical reality.
Lyndsey Duncan worries her career with the CIA might be over. After lines are crossed with another intelligence agent during her most recent assignment, she is sent home to Washington on administrative leave.
\nSo when a former colleague, now Chief of the Russia Division, recruits her for an internal investigation, she jumps at the chance to prove herself once more. Lyndsey was once a top handler in the Moscow Field Station, known as the \"human lie detector\" and praised for recruiting some of the most senior Russian officials.
\nBut now, three Russian assets have been discovered - including one of her own - and the CIA is convinced there's a mole in the department. With years of work in question, and lives on the line, Lyndsey is thrown back into life at the agency, only this time tracing the steps of those closest to her.
Meanwhile, fellow agent Theresa Warner can't avoid the spotlight. She is the infamous \"Red Widow,\" the wife of a former director killed in the field under mysterious circumstances. With her husband's legacy shadowing her every move, Theresa is a fixture of the Russia Division, and as she and Lyndsey strike up an unusual friendship, her knowledge proves invaluable.
But as Lyndsey uncovers a surprising connection to Theresa that could answer all of her questions, she exposes a terrifying web of secrets within the department, if only she is willing to unravel it . . .
On the midnight shift at a hospital in rural St. Andrew, Maine, Dr. Luke Findley is expecting a quiet evening--until a mysterious woman, Lanore McIlvrae, arrives in his ER, escorted by police. Lanore is a murder suspect, and Luke is inexplicably drawn to her.
\nAs Lanny tells him her story, an impassioned account of love and betrayal that transcends time and mortality, she changes his life forever. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Lanny was consumed as a child by her love for the son of St. Andrew’s founder, and she will do anything to be with him forever, but the price she pays is steep - an immortal bond that chains her to a terrible fate.
When gunslinging Amani Al'Hiza escaped her dead-end town, she never imagined she'd join a revolution, let alone lead one. But after the bloodthirsty Sultan of Miraji imprisoned the Rebel Prince Ahmed in the mythical city of Eremot, she doesn't have a choice.
\nArmed with only her revolver, her wits, and her untameable Demdji powers, Amani must rally her skeleton crew of rebels for a rescue mission through the unforgiving desert to a place that, according to maps, doesn't exist.
\nAs she watches those she loves most lay their lives on the line against ghouls and enemy soldiers, Amani questions whether she can be the leader they need or if she is leading them all to their deaths.
\n
At sixteen, Honora “Nora” Holtzfall is the daughter of the most powerful heiress in all of Walstad. Her family controls all the money - and all the magic - in the entire country. But despite being the center of attention, Nora has always felt like an outsider. When her mother is found dead in an alley, the family throne and fortune are suddenly up for grabs, and Nora will be pitted against her cousins in the Veritaz, the ultimate magical competition for power that determines the one family heir.
\nBut there's a surprise contestant this time: Lotte, the illegitimate daughter of Nora's aunt. When Lotte's absent mother retrieves her from the rural convent she'd abandoned her to, Lotte goes from being an orphan to surrounded by family. Unfortunately, most of them want her dead.
\nAnd soon, Nora discovers that her mother's death wasn't random - it was murder. And the only person she can trust to uncover the truth of what happened is a rakish young reporter who despises everything Nora and her family stand for.
\nWhile the dangers of the Veritaz competition threaten each of the Holtzfall girls, and the stark class differences turns political outrage to terrifing violence - the new cousins must fight to stay alive, no matter what.
\nIncredible tests, impossible choices, and deadly odds await both girls. But there can only be one winner.
\n
Mortals rule the desert nation of Miraji, but mystical beasts still roam the wild and barren wastes, and rumor has it that somewhere, djinni still practice their magic. But there's nothing mystical or magical about Dustwalk, the dead-end town that Amani can't wait to escape from.
Destined to wind up \"wed or dead,\" Amani’s counting on her sharpshooting skills to get her out of Dustwalk. When she meets Jin, a mysterious and devastatingly handsome foreigner, in a shooting contest, she figures he’s the perfect escape route. But in all her years spent dreaming of leaving home, she never imagined she'd gallop away on a mythical horse, fleeing the murderous Sultan's army, with a fugitive who's wanted for treason. And she'd never have predicted she'd fall in love with him...or that he'd help her unlock the powerful truth of who she really is.
Gunslinger Amani al'Hiza fled her dead-end hometown on the back of a mythical horse with the mysterious foreigner Jin, seeking only her own freedom. Now she’s fighting to liberate the entire desert nation of Miraji from a bloodthirsty sultan who slew his own father to capture the throne.
When Amani finds herself thrust into the epicenter of the regime - the Sultan’s palace - she’s determined to bring the tyrant down. Desperate to uncover the Sultan’s secrets by spying on his court, she tries to forget that Jin disappeared just as she was getting closest to him, and that she’s a prisoner of the enemy. But the longer she remains, the more she questions whether the Sultan is really the villain she’s been told he is, and who’s the real traitor to her sun-bleached, magic-filled homeland.
Death had been chasing me my entire life. I survived the horrors of war, but it was the aftermath that truly destroyed me. People called me a recluse, but the only time I didn’t feel like I was suffocating was inside that house.
\nFor my daughter, I kept some semblance of normalcy by implementing a rigid routine. Once a week, I forced myself to walk to the diner at the end of the block - a ritual I despised but relied on as my last anchor to the real world.
\nUntil the day a “Closed” sign on the door shattered my fragile existence. Worse, the new owner was the most haunting ghost from my past. It had been years since I’d laid eyes on Gwendolyn Pierce. She hated me - and rightly so. But when a film crew arrived in town to dig into my past, she became my only ally.
\nWith my secrets threatened, I leaned on Gwen, forging a connection neither of us could deny. But with a past as dark as ours, I feared it would eclipse any hope for a future. I always said that when Death finally came for me, I would be ready, eager, and alone.
\nAlways alone. But for Gwen, maybe I could face the world again as long as it meant I could be alone - with her.
\n
I wanted to jump.
He made me fall.
As a celebrity, I lived in the public eye, but somewhere along the way, I’d lost myself in the spotlight.
\nUntil he found me.
\nSam Rivers was a gorgeous, tattooed stranger who saved my life with nothing more than a simple conversation.
\nBut we were both standing on that bridge for a reason the night we met. The secrets of our pasts brought us together - and then tore us apart.
\nCould we find a reason to hold on as life constantly pulled us down?
\nOr maybe there’s only one direction to go when two people fall in love at rock bottom - up.
\n
After years of climbing the ladder of success in the music industry, I finally had everything I could want.
Yet I still found myself wandering through life alone.
Captain Evan Roth was the one man I never saw coming.
Tall, dark, mysterious . . . Straight.
We were both damaged beyond repair and searching for something so elusive we weren’t sure it even existed.
But, when two broken souls collide in midair, falling is a given.
I just never expected to crave the spiral down.
Layla Harrison has finally found herself in the middle of a celebrity story worth reporting. Aster Amirpour’s name is in every tabloid - even if it isn’t the good kind of publicity she hoped for. Tommy Phillips is inches away from getting the girl of his dreams, which may be harder than scoring a VIP ticket to an Unrivaled nightclub.
But Layla, Aster and Tommy never imagined it would be because they’re entangled in the disappearance of Madison Brooks - a story that’s blinded the world like a starlet blinded by the flash of a paparazzi camera.
Now, Layla is receiving mysterious messages from an anonymous source, Aster’s looming murder trial is so huge even her parents’ lawyer can’t save her, Tommy is retracing his steps as the last person Madison saw alive, and Layla’s ex Mateo finds himself lured into the fold.
You can dig up dirt about celebrities that the tabloids miss if you search long enough. But when Layla, Aster, and Tommy team up with an unsuspecting insider to unearth the truth, they’ll find that some secrets are best kept in the grave.
\n
Just as Ever is learning everything she can about her new abilities as an immortal, initiated into the dark, seductive world by her beloved Damen, something terrible is happening to him. As Ever's powers are increasing, Damen's are fading - stricken by a mysterious illness that threatens his memory, his identity, his life.
\nDesperate to save him, Ever travels to the mystical dimension of Summerland, uncovering not only the secrets of Damen's past - the brutal, tortured history he hoped to keep hidden - but also an ancient text revealing the workings of time. With the approaching blue moon heralding her only window for travel, Ever is forced to decide between turning back the clock and saving her family from the accident that claimed them - or staying in the present and saving Damen, who grows weaker each day . . .
\nI’m about to break one of the biggest rules of all.
\nBut I need to find my dad. And if that means going back to New York City in 1998 to find him - before I’m even born - then that’s what I have to do. Because I need someone I trust to teach me what it means to be a Timekeeper.
\nNow I’m in the land of post-grunge, low-rise jeans, baby doll tees, chunky boots . . . and risking my own existence in the process. Awesome.
\nThis is no ordinary trip. Just about anything can go wrong, and if I get found out, I’ll lose not only my home and school . . . but Braxton, too. Because there might not be enough forgiveness in the world for what I’ve done - and what I am about to do.
\nBecause the secrets are more terrible than I thought. The reality is even more horrifying. And I’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth about Gray Wolf Academy, the strange billionaire who runs it, and not only why he’s so invested in traveling - or “Tripping” - through time, but what his real plans are.
\nAnd time’s almost up.
\n
Ever struggles to help her best friend Haven transition into life as an immortal - trying to keep her from doing anything that puts them at risk, while attempting to gain control over her enemy Roman, so she can finally obtain the antidote that will allow her and Damen to be together.
\nBut when the spell she casts backfires, resulting in a strange, foreign pulse that binds her to Roman instead, Ever turns to Jude and dark magick, desperately attempting to break free of the curse, and ultimately risking everything she knows and loves - including her beloved Damen.
\n
Riley’s finding that the afterlife can be a lonely place when all you do is focus on work. So she goes to the place where dreams happen, hoping to find a way to contact her sister, Ever. She meets the director, who tells her about the two ways to send dreams. As a Dream Jumper, a person can jump into a dreamer’s dream, share a message, and participate.
\nAs a Dreamweaver, an entire dream can be created in a studio and sent to the dreamer. But Dreamweaving was outlawed decades ago, and the studio was boarded up. Thinking it’s her only way to reach out to her sister, Riley goes in search of the old studio. There she finds a ghost boy, who’s been creating and sending nightmares to people for years. In order to stop him and reach out to Ever, Riley is going to have to confront and overcome her own fears.
\n
Their darkest enemies now defeated, Damen and Ever are free to embark upon their final quest - to free Damen from the poison lingering in his body. If they can just find the antidote, they’ll finally be able to feel each other’s touch - and experience the passionate night they’ve been longing for. But their fight to be together will lead them into the most formidable terrain yet . . . into the dark heart of Summerland.
\nHere in a land of scorched earth and endless rain, Ever and Damen will discover their relationship’s hidden origins, expose a secret history they never imagined . . . and come face to face with the true reason fate keeps tearing them apart. Only then, when the final mystery is unraveled and the last secret revealed, Ever and Damen’s future will hinge on one ultimate decision that will put everything at stake . . . even eternity.
\n
Since a horrible accident claimed the lives of her family, Ever can see auras, hear people's thoughts, and know a person's entire life story by touch. Going out of her way to avoid human contact and suppress her abilities has branded her as a freak at her new high school - but everything changes when she meets Damen. Damen Auguste is gorgeous, exotic and wealthy.
\nHe's the only one who can silence the noise and random energy in her head - wielding a magic so intense, it's as though he can see straight into her soul. As Ever is drawn deeper into his enticing world of secrets and mystery, she's left with more questions than answers. She has no idea just who he really is - or what he is. The only thing she knows to be true is she's falling deeply and helplessly in love with him.
\n
Club promoters Layla, Aster, and Tommy never imagined that entering the Unrivaled competition would land them in the middle of a celebrity murder investigation, but sometimes fate can be as nasty as the anonymous comments on a Hollywood gossip blog.
\nBut Madison Brooks isn’t dead. Layla, Aster, and Tommy have been set up, and as Madison’s dirty little secrets creep closer to the light, they discover Madison will do anything to keep her past hidden - no matter who gets caught in the crossfire.
\n
Haven still blames Ever for the death of her boyfriend Roman, no matter how hard Ever’s tried to convince her it was an accident. Now she’s determined to take Ever down . . . and destroy Damen and Jude along the way. Her first step is to tear Ever and Damen apart - and she has just the ammunition to do it.
Hidden in one of Ever’s past lives is a terrible secret about Damen - a secret that illuminates new facts about her relationship with Jude, but that’s so dark and brutal it might be enough to drive her and Damen apart once and for all. As Ever faces her greatest fears about the guy she wants to spend eternity with, she’s thrust into a deadly clash with Haven that could destroy them all.
Now it’ll take everything she’s got - and bring out powers she never knew she had - to face down her most formidable enemy. But in order to win, she must first ask herself: is her own survival worth dooming Haven to an eternity of darkness in the Shadowland? And will learning the truth about Damen’s past hold the key to their future?
Riley has crossed the bridge into the afterlife - a place called Here, where time is always Now. She has picked up life where she left off when she was alive, living with her parents and dog in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. When she’s summoned before The Council, she learns that the afterlife isn’t just an eternity of leisure. She’s been assigned a job, Soul Catcher, and a teacher, Bodhi, a possibly cute, seemingly nerdy boy who’s definitely hiding something.
\nThey return to earth together for Riley’s first assignment, a Radiant Boy who’s been haunting a castle in England for centuries. Many Soul Catchers have tried to get him to cross the bridge and failed. But all of that was before he met Riley . . .
\n
The second I stepped through the doors of Gray Wolf Academy, my world disintegrated. Here, time is malleable. It can be manipulated, shifted. Changed. And for those of us who Trip - or travel through time - the possibilities are infinite and perilous.
\nNow my life is caught in the secrets of everyone around me. Arthur, the eccentric billionaire who rules this school. Killian, who could be the only honest person here . . . or the biggest liar. And Braxton, magnetic, gorgeous, and unfathomable. The only thing I trust about him is our electric connection.
\nWhether we’re Tripping through Renaissance Italy or thieving from a ball in Regency England, my life’s become a web of lies and strange truths. And beneath the surface is an elaborate puzzle, filled with cryptic symbols and priceless treasures scattered across history - all somehow connected to my strange ability to see through time.
\nBut Arthur has a dangerously ambitious agenda. And if what my dad taught me is true, I’m not just a threat to everyone at Gray Wolf.
\n. . . I’m a threat to time itself.
\n
Teenage immortal Ever, newly reconnected with her boyfriend-across-the-centuries, Damen, works hard to get things right, both in the mortal and immortal worlds. Her best (mortal) friend has troubles that magick could fix, but Damen teaches Ever why this would be wrong to pursue.
\nMeanwhile, evil immortal Roman hovers only barely offstage, Ever hooks her history teacher up with her aunt, and she rescues 13-year-old immortal witch twins only to wind up watching Damen turn parental.
Having solved the matter of the Radiant Boy, Riley, Buttercup, and Bodhi are enjoying a well-deserved vacation. When Riley comes across a vicious black dog, against Bodhi’s advice, she decides to cross him over. While following the dog, she runs into a young ghost named Rebecca. Despite Rebecca’s sweet appearance, Riley soon learns she’s not at all what she seems.
\nAs the daughter of a former plantation owner, she is furious about being murdered during a slave revolt in 1733. Mired in her own anger, Rebecca is lashing out by keeping the ghosts who died along with her trapped in their worst memories. Can Riley help Rebecca forgive and forget without losing herself to her own nightmarish memories?
\n
My life goes completely sideways the moment I meet the mysterious Braxton. Sure, he’s ridiculously hot, but he’s also the reason I’ve been kicked out of school and recruited into Gray Wolf Academy - a remote island school completely off the grid. I never should have trusted a face so perfect.
\nBut the reality of why Gray Wolf wanted me is what truly blows my mind. It’s a school for time travelers. Tripping, they call it. This place is filled with elaborate costumes and rare artifacts, where every move is strategic and the halls are filled with shadows and secrets.
\nHere, what you see isn’t always what it appears. Including Braxton. Because even though there’s an energy connecting us together, the more secrets he keeps from me, the more it feels like something is pulling us apart. Something that has to do with this place - and its darker purpose. It’s all part of a guarded, elaborate puzzle of history and time . . . and I might be one of the missing pieces.
\nNow I have all the time in the world. And yet I can’t shake the feeling that time is the one thing I’m about to run out of . . . fast.
\n
Layla Harrison wants to leave her beach-bum days for digs behind a reporter’s desk. Aster Amirpour wants to scream at the next casting director who tells her “we need ethnic but not your kind of ethnic.” Tommy Phillips dreams of buying a twelve-string guitar and using it to shred his way back into his famous absentee dad’s life.
But Madison Brooks took destiny and made it her bitch a long time ago.
She’s Hollywood’s hottest starlet, and the things she did to become the name on everyone’s lips are merely a stain on the pavement, ground beneath her Louboutin heel.
That is, until Layla, Aster, and Tommy find themselves with a VIP invite to the glamorous and gritty world of Los Angeles’s nightlife and lured into a high-stakes competition where Madison Brooks is the target. Just as their hopes begin to gleam like stars through the California smog, Madison Brooks goes missing. . . . And all of their hopes are blacked out in the haze of their lies.
This time, Riley might really have bitten off more than she’s ready for.
\nAfter practically begging the Council for a more challenging Soul Catch, she is assigned an actual Roman gladiator - Theocoles, the Pillar of Doom.
\nHow is Riley, a skinny twelve-year-old, supposed to get through to him? Then she meets the beautiful Messalina, who convinces her that her only chance is to become part of this world.
\nTo accomplish this, Messalina helps Riley through a dramatic, mystical makeover, transforming her into the beautiful and mature teen she’s always wanted to be.
\nFinally, Riley can experience her first boyfriend and her first kiss. With a dream this enchanting, will she ever want to leave?
\n
Royal Navy able rate River Dawson never drops anchor in the same harbor twice - especially when it comes to women. With a reputation as the fleet’s heartbreaker, she lives for no-strings seductions and swift departures. But when her latest redheaded fling turns out to be the Admiral’s daughter - and her new crewmate aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth - River’s easy-come, easy-go lifestyle hits rough waters.
\nCleo Carter has sworn off sailors. After years of watching duty outrank family - and suffering one heartbreak too many - she’s done with sea life. But when she’s assigned to cover one of her father’s ship, Cleo finds herself trapped on board with the one woman she should’ve left on shore.
\nAs scandal brews and sparks ignite below deck, River and Cleo must decide if their chemistry is just a shipboard fling - or the start of something worth risking everything for.
\n
Charlie Baxter has it all. A beautiful house, successful company and a set of tattoos that light women on fire at the mere sight of them. Not to mention, she’s tall and gorgeous! Life is good . . . Well, that is until her old music teacher calls insisting she return to her old school to take part in their annual charity ball. Charlie left Pickerton Academy behind twenty years ago. She also left behind the heartache caused by the only girl she ever loved.
\nEmilie Martin is an international superstar. She’s had fame and fortune for the past two decades, but what she really wants now is a break. Maybe a couple of weeks in the English countryside and a visit to her old school is just what she needs. Sounds perfect, and it would be if it weren’t for the fact it meant seeing the one person Emilie has pined over for twenty years. The girl that got away. No, the girl Emilie threw away.
\nWith both women on a collision course with their past, can they put all the hurt behind them and start again? Can they keep their hands off each other long enough to really figure out what they want?
\n
For as long as Lydia Archer can remember, her life has been a balancing act between a tireless battle with her health and the tireless search for \"the one.\" She's put herself out there time and again, yet still, has found nobody prepared for the rollercoaster of her mystery ailment. Persistent pain and dismissive doctors are Lydia’s constant shadow. Just as Lydia begins to think that her beloved pup Monty is the only one who can handle her brokenness, her sister’s best friend, Halle, steps in to save her health and quite possibly, her heart.
\nJust as Lydia is on the mend, the unexpected arrival of love threatens to throw everything off balance. And to top it off, as a friendship blossoms between Lydia and Halle, Lydia’s sister Fe finds herself grappling with her own whirlwind of emotions. Throw in the delightful chaos of Lydia's \"niblings,\" Fe’s mischievous triplets, and this sapphic romance weaves a tale of healing and love, reminding us that sometimes both can be found in the most unexpected places.
\nLydia's journey is one of resilience, family, self-discovery, and the promise that true love accepts us for the whole - broken parts included - because love has a way of piecing things back together.
\n
There are three things that Sam Chambers knows to be fact. One, her heart is broken, two, her career is sinking, and three, she hasn’t a clue how to turn any of it around.
\nWhen her new boss John Spencer shakes things up at the photography company she works for, the last thing she expects is to be sent to Paris on a career changing project. Unbeknown to Sam, the brief glimpse of a dark-haired beauty at St Pancras is about to tip her world upside down.
\nAnna Holland has the life she worked hard for. She’s successful, she lives in the city of love and she is in a steady relationship with a nice guy. The problem? Her nights are filled with the vision of a red-haired woman. Nothing makes sense when the woman of her dreams shows up in Paris and her office.
\nTogether, they start a journey of exquisite discovery. Is there something more to their chance meeting? The unfathomable connection between them would suggest so.
\n
Kim Richmond is a 5’5” sassy blonde bombshell with a love of vintage dresses and killer heels. She is also a woman on the edge of losing her mind after her boyfriend cancels their holiday again. Accepting a two-week trip to the south of France courtesy of her best friend is the just what she needs. Staying at the five-star luxury Sapphire Hotel and Spa is like a dream come true. That is, until it all comes crashing down.
\nHelene DuBois has been dumped again! The cosmos really has it out for her, well that’s how she sees it. There’s only one thing for it, she needs a holiday. A break away from her messy life. Sun, sea, scuba diving and absolutely NO women. A trip to Saint Tropez should do the trick. Rest and relaxation with no drama, perfect! What could go wrong? Seeing Kim Richmond sobbing in the hotel lobby would be one clue. Offering to share her suite with the blonde beauty would be the second.
\n
Amelia and Erin thought they had it all figured out: defy fate and prove that love conquers all. But when it comes to vampires and humans, nothing is ever simple. As the Salvatore Regina and her warrior protector, they’re revered as the queens foretold in prophecy, destined to save the vampire world and bring peace to the Fallen and their human mates.
\nWhen Grand Master Mohan's bold plan to reveal the existence of vampires to the President of the United States goes catastrophically wrong, the response is swift and brutal. Humanity reacts to the unknown in a way that should have been predictable: with fear and fire. Ripped from their Hawaiian honeymoon, Amelia and Erin find themselves on the run for their lives, and for the fate of all vampire kind. With the world against them and a centuries-old prophecy weighing on their shoulders, they must decide if they’re willing to fulfill a destiny they never chose.
\nIs the prophecy their fate or their prison? Can they forge peace between humans and vampires? And what if, to do both, the price is everything - even each other?
\nIn this adrenaline-packed conclusion to the trilogy, Amelia and Erin confront the limits of their love and their sanity. Racing across the globe, they leave behind a trail of danger, desire, and impossible decisions.
\nSomewhere along the way, they just might find that infinity isn’t merely something to fight for - it’s theirs to claim. Together.
\n
Faith Parsons is finally 18 and eager to make her lesbian debut. But before stepping into this new chapter, she must escape the only world she's ever known. Faith's journey is not just a physical escape but a courageous leap into self-discovery, navigating uncharted territories with a heart full of hope.
\nGuided by fate on a journey to find her long-lost Aunt Molly - the Parsons family’s sapphic secret - Faith is driven by a deep desire to break free from her toxic past and find a new familial embrace.
\nAs Faith unravels a series of cryptic clues, she meets Carmen, a steamy self-made woman with a penchant for avoiding commitment, Mateo, her sequin-covered counterpart, whose life is a perpetual red-carpet event, and Enid Butcher, the cannabis-loving and self-appointed neighborhood watch. This motley crew navigate family, friendship, and love in this uproarious journey to find Molly Parsons.
\n
Faith has found love in Nathalie. Mateo’s longtime crush has finally turned into something real. And Molly? She’s hoping love might finally find her, too.
\nBut when Carmen Ruiz leaves without warning - on a personal mission to confront the past that still haunts her - it sets off a new journey for this found family of unforgettable misfits. Her quest becomes a cross-country odyssey of redemption, reconciliation, and unexpected romance.
\nMeanwhile, Faith and Molly are pulled back to Kentucky, Enid Butcher flirts her way into a fire station, and a mysterious woman named Mariana prepares to face someone she’s waited 37 years to see again.
\nAs old wounds reopen and buried secrets rise, Carmen must decide if she’s ready to give her heart to Molly - and Molly must choose if she’s brave enough to keep it.
\n
It’s not everyday you find out that your sweet, sweater knitting, church going grandma is the UK’s most prolific crime boss. For Callie Compton, that day became a reality on her eighteenth birthday. Not being criminally inclined, Callie did the only thing she could. She bided her time, stole her grandma’s little black book of scumbag employees, and ran for her life.
\nSix years later Callie finds herself in a small café in Sweden, her Spidey sense is tingling. Someone is watching her. How did they catch her trail? And what is she going to do next?
\nDaisy Simpson knew from the age of sixteen that Callie’s grandma was a bad person, just like her own dad. How she regrets not telling Callie before leaving for university all those years ago. Maybe then Callie wouldn’t have disappeared without telling her. Not only was Callie her best friend, and first unrequited love, she was also Daisy’s biggest supporter. Being born deaf into a family like hers wasn’t easy.
\nOut of the blue, Betty (Callie’s grandma) summons Daisy. It’s been ten years since she last laid eyes on the old crone. What could she possibly want? Answer: Find Callie, bring her home or Daisy’s brother dies! No pressure then.
\nWith little information to go on, Daisy sets out to track her childhood friend. Only after launching a social media campaign does Daisy finally get a lead. And what an interesting lead it is. It seems Callie is leaving a string of pining women behind as she moves through Europe.
\nUsing skills she’s not at liberty to discuss, Daisy tracks Callie to Sweden.
\nNot only have they got to traverse Europe collecting pieces of the black book that Callie partitioned off into four sections, they also have to do it undetected. If that wasn’t hard enough, Callie and Daisy must navigate their growing feelings toward each other, deal with several less than happy women, and overcome flooded caves and one raging bull. This is no adventure. It’s quite the opposite.
\n
Whitley Dupont has it a high-powered finance job, a picture-perfect fiancé, and a five-year plan - until it all falls apart at her family’s Christmas gala.
\nEnter Layla Simmons, a quirky British violinist with a classical-pop sound and a knack for turning disasters into unforgettable moments. What starts as a comforting conversation over peppermint cocoa turns into long-distance calls, unexpected feelings, and a slow unravelling of everything Whitley thought she knew about love - and herself.
\nAs the holidays pass and seasons change, Whitley must decide if she’s brave enough to rewrite her story and follow her heart toward the most unexpected person of all.
Amelia knows humanity’s prejudices against her kind are little more than delusional nightmares. Born, not made, vampires have been forced into the shadows by human ignorance. In any case, the Loch family, like many vampire clans, has thrived over the centuries.
\nBuilding a successful business empire of bars and nightclubs means that their wealth and influence allows them to move around, easily remaining hidden in plain sight to avoid human suspicion. The bookwormish heiress, Amelia Loch, has thus never struggled to maintain a safe distance from the humans who vilify her species - and everyone else for that matter. But the time has come for Amelia to step out of the shadows, and the stakes have never been higher.
\nIf Amelia doesn’t find her soulmate by the time the sun sets on her thirtieth birthday, she risks a descent into eternal madness. The fate of an unmated vampire is worse than death, both for the vamp and their family, who would be left no choice but to end their suffering.
\nEnter Erin, a feisty blonde bartender who captures Amelia’s attention and challenges her beliefs. Erin is everything Amelia had hoped for, except for one small detail: she’s human. Though it’s uncertain if a vampire and a human can successfully bond, Erin may be Amelia’s only hope. In a race against time, will love be enough to defy centuries of prejudice and prevent Amelia’s descent into darkness?
\nAmelia must decide if she can trust Erin with her truth, her heart - and her immortality.
\n
With Amelia by her side, Erin finally has a chance at the eternal love they once thought impossible. But as Erin’s thirtieth birthday approaches - and with it, the deadline for her transformation from human to vampire - the certainty of their future starts to unravel. Mysterious changes in Erin make her transformation dangerously unpredictable, threatening the life they’ve dreamed of sharing for eternity.
\nDesperate for answers, Erin and Amelia travel to the shores of Ireland, seeking guidance from the only known couple to achieve a successful human-vampire bond. There, they stumble upon an ancient prophecy - a legend of a vampire who can restore sanity to the Fallen. Could Erin's changes be tied to this myth? As they uncover secrets that could change everything they know, their journey may not only decide their happily ever after but also shape the future of both the human and vampire worlds.
\nWith tensions rising between both worlds, and enemies lurking in the shadows, Erin and Amelia must navigate a web of deception that could alter the fate of both species forever.
\nBut one major question looms: Is the world ready for what their bond might unleash?
\n
Evelyn Crawford is having a tough time of late. Not only has her dad taken off on an impromptu holiday with his new floozy, he’s also dropped Evelyn in the deep end at work. Becoming the CEO of a multi-million pound pet supply empire was not on Evelyn’s horizon, but here she is. Battling a disgruntled board, fending off unreasonable budget requests and catching her semi-serious girlfriend with another woman all before the dreaded festive season. What’s so good about Christmas, anyway?
\nAlyssa Fox is sick to death of her dog rescue centre, being used as a Christmas gift store. Don’t these people know a dog is for life, not just for Christmas?. Hell, there are TV adverts about it. No matter how many times she delivers the same speech to potential dog owners, those poor pups always end up right back where they started as soon as the shine wears off.
\nWell, not this year! No, this year Alyssa has taken action. Four Paws dog rescue will close for two months, starting November the 1st. Now Alyssa just has to come up with a way to keep her dogs from going crazy with boredom. Adoption might be off the table for the pack, but they still need socialising. Enter Crawford Pet supplies. The answer to Alyssa’s problem. A partnership with the company’s HQ building in London is just the ticket. What could go wrong?
\nIs it possible that the hard to pin down Alyssa Fox has met her match? Will the festive season prove to be more magical that Evelyn ever thought possible? Who knows? Well, maybe a wise little dog called Bug.
\n
Tiana Carter has just started college and is determined to make the most of it. She’s thrilled to be posting videos about dorm-room cooking and campus fashion for a small but loyal band of followers.
\nWhen she dips into the online dating pool, her first swipe right raises a huge red flag. Tiana’s polite rejection is met with scorn, and now a group of self-proclaimed “high-value men” are hell-bent on ruining her life.
Rush’s Recovery promises its wealthy guests the utmost discretion. But when a body is discovered, how long can the center’s secrets stay buried?
\nTucked among the pristine beaches and lavish manors of the Hamptons sits Rush’s Recovery, a rehabilitation center where ultra-high net worth clients can seek treatment away from prying eyes and paparazzi. The center’s latest guests have just Lord Edward of Essex, a British aristocrat fighting his black-sheep status and a painful addiction; Amelia Blue Harris, the daughter of a 90s rock legend struggling with an eating disorder; and Florence Bloom, a pop star trying to lay low after her latest tabloid scandal. Each has been promised the highest standard of care, from daily therapy and a live-in chef to acupuncture sessions and a personal care manager, available 24/7. Just so long as they stay in their private cottages and never interact with the center’s other guests.
\nBut these three self-destructive B-listers have no intention of playing by the rules. No amount of cold plunges and talk-therapy can prevent Florence’s illicit flirtation with a staff member, or keep Amelia Blue and Lord Edward from sneaking out to wander the snow-covered grounds at night. Celebrities check in to Rush’s Recovery to protect their privacy, but the darkest secrets may lie in the center’s own history - and not every guest will be checking out alive.
What kind of girl stays after her boyfriend hits her?
\nThe girls at North Bay Academy are taking sides. It all started when Mike Parker's girlfriend showed up with a bruise on her face. Or, more specifically, when she walked into the principal's office and said Mike hit her. But her classmates have questions. Why did she go to the principal and not the police? Why did she stay so long if Mike was hurting her? Obviously, if it's true, Mike should be expelled. But is it true?
\nSome girls want to rally for his expulsion - and some want to rally around Mike. The only thing that the entire student body can agree on? Someone is lying. And the truth has to come out.
\nFrom New York Times bestselling author Alyssa Sheinmel comes an unflinching and resonant tale that examines how society treats women and girls and inspires the power to claim your worth.
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Rumors are the lifeblood of Idlewood, Indiana. The locals whisper that the De Lucas are witches, and that decades prior they cursed the wealthy Barrion family as revenge for a love gone tragically wrong: now, if a Barrion falls in love with you, you’ll die.
\nIf this isn’t reason enough for wallflower Penny Emberly to stay away from both families, she doesn’t know what is. But when Penny’s mom is in an accident that leaves her on the brink of death, Penny can’t ignore the rumors anymore - because the Barrion curse is real. And her mom is its latest victim.
\nIn order to save her mom’s life, Penny must bring together two bitter enemies on either side of the feud and work with them to break the curse. For star quarterback Corey Barrion, doing so would mean finally saving his family from the magic that killed his mom. And for misfit witch Alonso De Luca, it would mean convincing everyone in Idlewood - especially Penny - that he isn’t the villain they believe him to be.
\nBut as the trio navigates Alonso’s unpredictable magic, the tangled web of Barrion-De Luca history, and an increasingly chaotic group chat, it soon becomes clear that the curse is not what they expected. Did a De Luca really curse the Barrions in a fit of jealousy, or is something even more sinister afoot? Penny will have to conquer her anxiety, wrestle with her budding feelings for Alonso, and delve into dangerous, forbidden magic to find the truth and save her mom - even if it means putting her own life at risk.
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Penny Emberly didn’t expect to fall head over heels for Alonso De Luca last summer - or to discover that he’s a witch. Together with their friend Corey Barrion, they managed to save her mother from a deadly spell. Now autumn has arrived, and Penny believes they can take on anything.
\nBut darkness is descending on the small town of Idlewood. Corey is desperate to undo the bloody legacy that made his family rich. The price, however, is steep: to unravel the magical bargain made by his grandfather, Corey must take a life.
\nAs Corey wrestles with an impossible choice, Alonso begins to change. The more he pushes the limits of his magic, the more volatile, violent, and possessive he becomes. When tragedy strikes one of their classmates, the trio is forced to confront a terrifying question: is Alonso being consumed by something that’s bent on the destruction of everyone around him - especially Penny and Corey?
\nAs supernatural forces drive them apart, Penny, Corey, and Alonso must decide what they’re willing to sacrifice before more blood is spilled - even if it means losing each other.
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In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.
\nThere, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.
\nBut when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk . . .
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Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.
Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That's how war works. Right?
In the city of Sirvassa, where petals are currency and flowers are magic, the Caretaker tends to the Garden of Delights. He imparts temporary magical abilities to the citizens of Sirvassa, while battling a curse of eternal old age. No Delight could uplift his curse, and so he must seek out a mythical figure. A god.
\nWhen a Delight allows a young girl an ability to change reality, the Caretaker believes he’s at the end of his search. But soon a magical rot takes root in his Garden, and the Caretaker must join forces with the girl and stop it from spreading.
\nEven as he battles a different rot that plagues Sirvassa, he learns that Delights are always a precursor to Sorrows.
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The Kingdom of Oryndhr has been saved by the will of the Royal Stars. But King Roshan, once Sura’s best friend and chosen love, has changed. She can sense corruption growing in him, and her own magic is being twisted by his command to dangerous ends. As dreams of her strange shadow guardian return in force, she is left unsure of her path - and of her heart.
\nWhen an attempt on her life leads to her rescue on the back of an azdaha, the dragon-like creature she once thought a myth, Sura truly finds herself in uncharted territory - in a land far beyond Oryndhyr’s borders. Everlea is full of magic, ruled by the deadly and enigmatic Night King, Darrius. And to Sura’s shock, Darrius is none other than the man in her dreams . . . and possibly her soul fated mate.
\nAs a prophecy unfolds, the old gods awaken, and a war between kingdoms looms, Sura has no she must fully embrace her destiny as Starkeeper and the entirety of her power before it’s too late. But all power comes at a cost . . . and darkness has a way of slithering into the smallest spaces.
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When the gold-dusted court invitation arrives at Suraya Saab’s forge, she believes it’s a joke. Nobles might seek her skills as a bladesmith - one of few who can imbue her work with precious jadu, the last source of magic in the realm - but she has no qualifications as a potential bride for the crown prince. Still, the invitation is the chance at adventure, and the means to finally visit the capital city her late mother loved.
\nBut what awaits her in Kaldari is nothing she could have imagined - and fraught with danger. It’s not the crown prince, but his impossibly handsome, illegitimate half-brother, Roshan, who captures her interest . . . and her ire. The invitation isn’t a quest to find a suitable bride, but a veiled hunt for the Starkeeper - a girl rumored to hold the magic of the stars in her blood. And across the city, unrest is brewing between the noble houses and the rebel militia.
\nWhen the rebels attack, Suraya and Roshan find themselves on the run, trying to deny their simmering attraction and the knowledge that Suraya herself might be the Starkeeper. But Roshan is guarding secrets of his own. And with no control over the power stirring within her, Suraya has drawn the attention of a dark god, an immortal whose interest might be the biggest threat of all.
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Ten years ago, Jen’s cousin Meg killed herself after failing to escape an abusive relationship.
Now, Meg’s ex is back and Jen’s domestic abuse helpline has started getting frightening calls from a girl who knows things about Meg - details that only the dead girl or the man who hurt her could have known . . .
As Jen starts to uncover the past, someone is determined to stop her. Can she save this young woman from Meg’s fate? Or is history about to repeat itself?
When a fire destroys the Empress Theatre, a devastating tragedy unfolds.
\nAmelia’s mother lost her piece of mind forever when she left her daughter alone for a few life-changing moments.
\nThe dance school lost their beloved teacher, Hilary, who died saving the lives of her young pupils.
\nKarin lost her memory, and the answers she desperately craves.
\nClaudia lost the one thing that would have made her perfect life complete.
\nAs local reporter Leanne picks over the embers of that night, what seemed like a straightforward case of negligence becomes something else entirely: somebody is lying - each person has lost something, but one of them has sold their soul . . .
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Every family has secrets . . . how far would you go to protect yours? One year ago, Ellen tragically died having fallen down the stairs, rushing to answer the phone. To mark the anniversary, Paige is ready to scatter her mother’s ashes in the heart of the Welsh mountains with her dad, grandmother, aunt, and uncle by her side.
\nWhen a blizzard descends over the hills, the family have no choice but to abandon their quest. But they aren’t the only ones on the mountain . . . A stranger has followed their trail and fallen against the rocks. Someone knows this man . . . his fall wasn’t an accident . . . and neither was Ellen’s.
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Jane doesn’t know her new neighbours very well.
\nShe thought they were nice. She thought they were happy.
\nShe was wrong.
\nFirst there’s the explosive rows. Then she catches one of them digging a grave-shaped trench in the garden.
\nWhen the truth emerges, someone would kill to cover their tracks . . .
Elle Littlewood can barely believe her luck when her producer tells her about the chance to get her hands on a dilapidated chateau in Aix-En-Provence, France for a rock bottom price. It seems too good to be true, but as a home interiors influencer, she knows this would make incredible content.
\nLately, Elle has noticed the cracks start to show. Her life is the envy of thousands, and her social media posts show a beautiful, accomplished woman. Yet this wasn’t always the case. If they knew the truth about her past, they would never look at Elle the same way again.
\nElle needs this house. She doesn’t care that it comes with huge strings attached. And when people get in her way, there’s nothing Elle won’t do to protect her brand. After all, she’s survived by doing things that people could never imagine - and knows she would do them again.
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Every family has its secrets. Josephina Harris wouldn't mind if her family still had a few of their own after a lawsuit tarnishes their name. When an opportunity opens to become a temporary keeper of a decommissioned lighthouse on a North Carolina island, she jumps at the chance to escape her small town to oversee its restoration.
\nAs the work begins, “Joey” discovers strange notes tucked deep in the crevices of the old stone walls - pages torn from a lighthouse keeper's log signed by someone named Mae who recounts harrowing rescues at sea. Fascinated by a woman lighthouse keeper, Joey digs into the past only to discover there's never been a record of a lighthouse keeper by that name.
\nWhen things start to go amiss on the island, locals are convinced that it is the ghost of the lighthouse keeper and his daughter who were lost at sea during World War II. As Joey sifts through decades of rumors and legends and puts together the pieces of the past, what emerges is a love story - one that's not over yet.
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Beekeeper Beckett Walsh is living her dream, working alongside her father in their apiary, until his untimely death sends her world into a tailspin. She suddenly finds she must deal with a new part owner of the family business - one who is looking to sell the property. Beck cannot fathom why her father would put her into the position to lose everything they built together.
\nWhen Callie Peterson is named in the trust of a man she's never heard of, she's not sure what to do. Her fledgling business has just taken wing and her mother has reentered her life asking for help getting into rehab for her lifelong substance abuse issues, making Callie's financial situation rather . . . precarious. She's sure she has no right to someone else's farm, but the money from the sale could solve her problems and give her the stability she's always craved.
\nAs these two women navigate their present conundrum, they will discover a complex and entangled past full of secrets - and the potential for a brighter future for both of them.
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Thirty years ago, Grace’s mom left her hometown of Hermitage, Florida and never looked back - which is exactly why Grace thinks it’s the safest place to spend her summer now. Since her mom died in a car crash, Grace has been desperate to get away from the memories and reminders of her loss. Spending the summer transcribing cassette tapes for the Hermitage Historical Society might be boring, but boring is just what Grace needs.
\nUntil she hears the voice of Jake Underwood - the boy who first recorded the cassette tapes back in 1992. When Grace realises he can hear anything she records, despite thirty years of time between them, she strikes up an impossible conversation with Jake through the tapes.
\nBut the past isn’t any simpler than the present, and a mystery has haunted Hermitage through the generations. In the 1970’s, a hurricane made landfall and resulted in the tragic death of Jake’s uncle Charley. In a town as suffocatingly small as Hermitage, it’s impossible not to notice how no one talks about that storm, or Charley, and as the mystery unfurls, Grace can’t help but realise a worse truth: No one talks about Jake either.
\nA beautifully written exploration of grief and what happens when untreated wounds bleed into future generations, The Underwood Tapes is the perfect read for anyone in need of a good, cathartic cry.
When newcomer Mercy Windsor arrives in Mercy Peak in 1948 after a scandal shatters her gilded world as Hollywood's beloved leading lady, she is determined to forge a new life in obscurity in this time-forgotten Colorado haven. She purchases Wildwood - an abandoned estate with a haunting history - and begins to restore it to its former glory.
\nBut as she does, her every move tugs at the threads of that mountain's lore, unearthing what became of her long-lost pen pal, Rusty Bright, and the whereabouts of the infamous Galloping Goose Engine No. 8, which vanished years ago, along with the mailbag it carried, whose contents could change the course of countless lives. Not to mention another fabled treasure that - if found - could right so many wrongs.
\nAmong the towering mountains that stand as silent witnesses, the ghosts of the past entangle with the courage of the present to find a place where healing, friendship, and hope can abide amid a world forever changed.
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Lucy Clairmont's family treasured the magic of the past, and her childhood fascination with stories of the high seas led her to become a marine archaeologist. But when tragedy strikes, it's Dashel, an American forensic astronomer, and his knowledge of the stars that may help her unearth the truth behind the puzzle she's discovered in her family home.
Two hundred years earlier, the seeds of love are sown between a boy and a girl who spend their days playing in a secret sea cave, while the privileged young son of the estate looks on, wishing to join. As the children grow and war leads to unthinkable heartbreak, a story of love, betrayal, sacrifice, and redemption unfolds, held secret by the passage of time.
As Lucy and Dash journey to a mysterious old estate on the East Sussex coast, their search leads them to a community of souls and a long-hidden tale that may hold the answers - and the healing - they so desperately seek.
In the wake of WWII, a grieving fisherman submits a poem to a local newspaper: a rallying cry for hope, purpose . . . and rocks. Send me a rock for the person you lost, and I will build something life-giving. When the poem spreads farther than he ever intended, Robert Bliss's humble words change the tide of a nation. Boxes of rocks inundate the tiny, coastal Maine town, and he sets his calloused hands to work, but the building halts when tragedy strikes.
Decades later, Annie Sawyer is summoned back to Ansel-by-the-Sea when she learns her Great-Uncle Robert, the man who became her refuge during the hardest summer of her youth, is now the one in need of help. What she didn't anticipate was finding a wall of heavy boxes hiding in his home. Long-ago memories of stone ruins on a nearby island trigger her curiosity, igniting a fire in her anthropologist soul to uncover answers.
She joins forces with the handsome and mysterious harbor postman, and all her hopes of mending the decades-old chasm in her family seem to point back to the ruins. But with Robert failing fast, her search for answers battles against time, a foe as relentless as the ever-crashing waves upon the sea.
Enne Salta was raised as a proper young lady, and no lady would willingly visit New Reynes, the so-called City of Sin. But when her mother goes missing, Enne must leave her finishing school - and her reputation - behind to follow her mother’s trail to the city where no one survives uncorrupted.
Frightened and alone, her only lead is a name: Levi Glaisyer. Unfortunately, Levi is not the gentleman she expected—he’s a street lord and a con man. Levi is also only one payment away from cleaning up a rapidly unraveling investment scam, so he doesn't have time to investigate a woman leading a dangerous double life. Enne's offer of compensation, however, could be the solution to all his problems.
Their search for clues leads them through glamorous casinos, illicit cabarets and into the clutches of a ruthless mafia donna. As Enne unearths an impossible secret about her past, Levi's enemies catch up to them, ensnaring him in a vicious execution game where the players always lose. To save him, Enne will need to surrender herself to the city . . .
And she’ll need to play.
For the first time in this ancient, bloodstained story, the tournament is breaking. The boundaries between the city of Ilvernath and the arena have fallen. Reporters swarm the historic battlegrounds. A dead boy now lives again. And a new champion has entered the fray, one who seeks to break the curse for good . . . no matter how many lives are sacrificed in the process.
\nAs the curse teeters closer and closer to collapse, the surviving champions each face a choice: dismantle the tournament piece by piece, or fight to the death as this story was always intended.
\nLong-held alliances will be severed. Hearts will break. Lives will end. Because a tale as wicked as this one was never destined for happily ever after.
Every generation, at the coming of the Blood Moon, seven families in the remote city of Ilvernath each name a champion to compete in a tournament to the death.
The prize? Exclusive control over a secret wellspring of high magick, the most powerful resource in the world - one thought long depleted.
This year, thanks to a salacious tell-all book, the seven champions are thrust into worldwide spotlight, granting each of them new information, new means to win, and most importantly: a choice: accept their fate or rewrite their story.
But this is a story that must be penned in blood.
Sixteen-year-old Sorina has spent most of her life within the smoldering borders of the Gomorrah Festival. Yet even among the many unusual members of the traveling circus-city, Sorina stands apart as the only illusion-worker born in hundreds of years. This rare talent allows her to create illusions that others can see, feel and touch, with personalities all their own. Her creations are her family, and together they make up the cast of the Festival’s Freak Show.
But no matter how lifelike they may seem, her illusions are still just that - illusions, and not truly real. Or so she always believed . . .until one of them is murdered.
Desperate to protect her family, Sorina must track down the culprit and determine how they killed a person who doesn’t actually exist. Her search for answers leads her to the self-proclaimed gossip-worker Luca, and their investigation sends them through a haze of political turmoil and forbidden romance, and into the most sinister corners of the Festival. But as the killer continues murdering Sorina’s illusions one by one, she must unravel the horrifying truth before all of her loved ones disappear.
Domenic Barrow never wanted such responsibility―but destiny hasn’t granted him a choice. The greatest Summer wand has awakened for the first time in a century, warning that an icy cataclysm looms on the horizon. And despite his reputation as the least suited of his classmates, the wand Chooses Domenic to wield it.
\nEllery Caldwell spent years striving to be a perfect Summer magician―and burying her fears of her own power. But her worst suspicions are proven true when she accidentally creates the first ever Winter wand.
\nNow, as the unprecedented Chosen Two, Domenic and Ellery must thwart the oncoming cataclysm together. And in trying to fulfill their destinies, they wonder if they were brought together for a second fate: to fall in love.
\nUntil they discover the unthinkable truth. The Chosen Two aren’t fated allies, but eternal rivals, and the only way to save their home is for one of them to slay the other.
\nThis is no love story. It's a tragedy.
Indulge your vices in the City of Sin, where a sinister street war is brewing and fame is the deadliest killer of them all . . .
On the quest to find her missing mother, prim and proper Enne Salta became reluctant allies with Levi Glaisyer, the city’s most famous con man. Saving his life in the Shadow Game forced Enne to assume the identity of Seance, a mysterious underworld figure. Now, with the Chancellor of the Republic dead and bounties on both their heads, she and Levi must play a dangerous game of crime and politics . . . with the very fate of New Reynes at stake.
Thirsting for his freedom and the chance to build an empire, Levi enters an unlikely partnership with Vianca Augustine’s estranged son. Meanwhile, Enne remains trapped by the mafia donna’s binding oath, playing the roles of both darling lady and cunning street lord, unsure which side of herself reflects the truth.
As Enne and Levi walk a path of unimaginable wealth and opportunity, new relationships and deadly secrets could quickly lead them into ruin. And when unforeseen players enter the game, they must each make an impossible choice: To sacrifice everything they’ve earned in order to survive . . .
Or die as legends.
Only days after a corrupt election and brutal street war, one last bloodthirsty game has begun. The players? The twenty-two most powerful, notorious people in New Reynes.
After realising they have no choice but to play, Enne Scordata and Levi Glaisyer are desperate to forge new alliances and bargain for their safety. But while Levi offers false smiles and an even falser peace to the city’s politicians, Enne must face a world where her true Mizer identity has been revealed . . . and any misstep could turn deadly.
Meanwhile, a far more dangerous opponent has appeared on the board, one plucked right from the most gruesome legends of New Reynes. As the game takes its final, vicious turn, Levi and Enne must decide once and for all whether to be partners or enemies.
Because in a game for survival, there are only losers . . .
And monsters.
As an internet culture critic for The New York Times, Amanda Hess had built a reputation among readers as a sharp observer of the seductions and manipulations of online life. But when she discovered she was pregnant with her first child, she found herself unexpectedly rattled by a digital identity crisis of her own.
\nIn the summer of 2020 a routine ultrasound detected a mysterious abnormality in Hess’s baby. Without hesitation, she reached for her phone, looking for answers. But rather than allaying her anxieties, her search sucked her into the destabilising morass of the internet, and she was vulnerable - more than ever - to conspiracy, myth, judgment, commerce, and obsession.
\nAs Hess documents her escalating relationship with the digital world, she identifies how technologies act as portals to troubling ideologies, ethical conflicts, and existential questions, and she illuminates how the American traditions of eugenics, surveillance, and hyper-individualism are recycled through these shiny products for a new generation of parents and their children.
\nAt once funny, heartbreaking, and surreal, Second Life is a journey that spans a network of fertility apps, prenatal genetic tests, gender-reveal videos, rare-disease Facebook groups, “freebirth” influencers, and hospital reality shows. Hess confronts technology’s distortions as they follow her through pregnancy and into her son’s early life. The result is a critical record of our digital age that reveals the unspoken ways technology fractures and reconstitutes our lives.
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Part memoir, part manifesto, the inspiring story of a Louisiana librarian advocating for inclusivity on the front lines of our vicious culture wars.
\nOne of the things small town librarian Amanda Jones values most about books is how they can affirm a young person's sense of self. So in 2022, when she caught wind of a local public hearing that would discuss “book content,” she knew what was at stake.
\nSchools and libraries nationwide have been bombarded by demands for books with LGTBQ+ references, discussions of racism, and more to be purged from the shelves. Amanda would be damned if her community were to ban stories representing minority groups. She spoke out that night at the meeting. Days later, she woke up to a nightmare that is still ongoing.
\nAmanda Jones has been called a groomer, a pedo, and a porn-pusher; she has faced death threats and attacks from strangers and friends alike. Her decision to support a collection of books with diverse perspectives made her a target for extremists using book banning campaigns-funded by dark money organisations and advanced by hard right politicians-in a crusade to make America more white, straight, and Christian. But Amanda Jones wouldn't give up without a she sued her harassers for defamation and urged others to join her in the resistance.
\nMapping the book banning crisis occurring all across the nation, That Librarian draws the battle lines in the war against equity and inclusion, calling book lovers everywhere to rise in defense of our readers.
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When Allie Coleman’s rehearsal space faces unexpected renovations, the professional musician is forced to practice and teach in her apartment. But there’s one Cait Durant, the work-from-home editor living directly above her who desperately needs peace and quiet to do her job.
\nAs Cait struggles with a difficult author and Allie’s incessant noise, tensions skyrocket. And when Allie’s wayward brother crashes on her couch, the situation reaches a boiling point.
\nYet, amidst the chaos, an undeniable attraction develops between them. Can Allie and Cait find a way to create their own melody, or will their differences lead to a deafening silence?
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The aching and terrible excitement of Carol’s affair with her graduate school professor has settled, fifteen years later, into the frustrated complacency of faculty wife responsibilities and motherhood.
\nCarol wants more, but can’t have more.
\nShe can’t have as much, surely, as her best friend, the painfully enigmatic Mitch, who keeps their long-ago erotic relationship irritatingly compartmentalized and spends too much time in her secret lair of an engineering lab.
\nShe can’t have what the gorgeous new faculty member Abby has - a publishing career, slinky dresses, and a way of prying out vulnerable and damaging confessions from even causal acquaintances.
\nMitch knows Carol wants more, but she also knows it can’t come from her. She’s grappling with the terror that comes from knowing she could have everything. Her lab is on the verge of a breakthrough, and then there’s Reginald: warm, funny, British, impossibly long-distance, compelling. Except, she’s not really talking to Reginald, unless she can’t help it. Meanwhile, Carol is talking to her too much and desperately yanking their past out of the mothballs, and Abby’s primary scholarship seems to be predatory and tempting advances.
\nMitch could have more than she ever thought possible, but she can’t work out the math.
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As camp chef and chief pack mule of a boutique camping and guiding outfit, Harper Varnham just wants to make the perfect campfire apple turnover. But fate has other plans. When Lucia Guzman, her childhood best friend and fellow trail guide, breaks her leg, Lucia suggests her sister Mia step in to help with the season. Remembering the crush she once had on the free-spirited Mia, Harper readily agrees.
\nWhen Mia arrives at Harper’s door, she’s somehow exactly the same yet completely different from the girl Harper had known when she was thirteen and in the throes of her first crush. And it doesn’t take long for Harper to start falling a little in love with Mia all over again.
\nBut with Mia’s reappearance, old Guzman family wounds have reopened and soon Mia’s emotional scars begin tearing open as well. Harper has always had a second family in the Guzmans, but now she wants Mia, too. Can she have Mia without losing the Guzmans and Lucia - who’s been in the middle the whole time?
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Charlie Williamson is a life-long jock who’s butch enough to cause plenty of raised eyebrows in gym locker rooms. Since flaming out of college on a wave of drugs, alcohol, and depression, she’s worked the same easy, low-stress job at RRiotWear - a women’s fitness clothing startup in Chicago. Then with a promotion on the horizon, Charlie’s boss ropes her into leading a beginner’s marathon group in the RRiotWear facilities.
\nElizabeth McIntyre runs a boutique tech company. Since graduating from MIT, she’s made herself into the face of women in technology. She has a beautiful apartment she never sees, a string of ex-girlfriends, and a propensity for panic attacks. When her doctor confirms what her best friend has been saying for years - that Elizabeth needs to slow down and make some radical life changes - she signs up for RRiotWear’s marathon program.
\nDespite everything that points to a not-so-perfect fit, the attraction between Charlie and Elizabeth grows week after week, and mile after mile. But with secrets lingering between them, they might find their relationship stumbles before it can even get to the starting line.
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Maddie has everything the way she likes it. Her start-up, Mindful Management, is the work of her heart, and her business partner, Joe, the ideal complement to her talents. Of course she'd like to see her younger brother move past his barista stage and get serious, but brotherly obligation means she can work on him during their weekly diner dates. She doesn't like to think about her ex, the perfect Jane, but even if their breakup was painful, it was grown-up. The boxes are getting checked. Things are humming.
\nBut then everything is turned upside down when Maddie survives a vicious attack by an unknown predator. The moment she opens her eyes in the hospital, it's as if her life starts up all over again on a brand-new day one-except this new timeline reveals that nothing in her old life was what it seemed. Everything Maddie thought she needed isn't turning out how she planned, and honestly, wasn't how she really liked it after all.
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Amanda Knox reflects on her world-famous confinement in an Italian prison - and her return to an “ordinary” life - to reveal hard-won truths about purpose and fulfillment that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt trapped in their own circumstances.
\nAmanda Knox spent nearly four years in prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn’t commit - and became a notorious tabloid story in the process. Though she was exonerated, it’s taken more than a decade for her to reclaim her identity and truly feel free.
\nFree recounts how Knox survived incarceration, the mistakes she made and misadventures she had reintegrating into society, and culminates in the as-yet-untold story of her return to Italy and the extraordinary relationship she went on to build with the man who sent her to prison. It is the moving saga of how she wrests back her own life from the grip of her story’s notoriety and returns to the quiet matters of a normal life - seeking a life partner, finding a job, or even just going out in public.
\nIn harrowing (and sometimes hilarious) detail, Amanda reveals her personal growth and hard-fought wisdom, recasting her public reckoning as a private reflection on the search for meaning and purpose that will speak to everyone who has persevered through hardship.
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Sisterhood is difficult for Su and Emerald. Su leads a sheltered, moneyed life as the picture-perfect wife of a conservative politician in Singapore. Emerald is a nihilistic sugar baby in New York, living from whim to whim as she freely uses her beauty and charms to make ends meet. But they share a secret; once they were snakes, basking under a full moon in Tang Dynasty China.
\nA thousand years later, their mysterious history is the only thing still binding them together. When Emerald experiences a violent encounter in Central Park and Su boards the next flight to New York, the two reach a tenuous reconciliation for the first time in decades. Su convinces Emerald to move to Singapore so she can keep an eye on her - but she soon begins to worry that Emerald’s irrepressible behavior will out them both, in a sparkling, affluent city where everything runs like clockwork and any deviation from the norm is automatically suspect.
\nRazor-sharp, hilarious, and raw in emotion, Sister Snake explores chosen family, queerness, passing, and the struggle against conformity. Reimagining the Chinese folktale “The Legend of the White Snake,” this is a novel about being seen for who you are - and, ultimately, how to live free.
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A revelatory and powerful memoir by the Nobel Peace Prize nominee Amanda Nguyen, detailing her tumultuous childhood and groundbreaking activism in the aftermath of her rape at Harvard.
\nAt a Harvard fraternity party in 2013, the trajectory of Amanda Nguyen’s life was changed forever when she was raped.
\nThe American-born child of Vietnamese refugees, Nguyen had long dreamed of attending Harvard, and it had become a place of refuge from a childhood filled with turmoil and trauma. Determined to not let her rape derail the life she’d worked so hard to create, she opted for her rape kit to be filed under Jane Doe, knowing that an active court case tied to her name could hurt her odds of working for NASA after graduation, a goal she’d been working toward for years.
\nBut she was shocked to learn this choice meant she had only six months to take action before the state of Massachusetts destroyed her kit, rendering any future legal action impossible. Nguyen knew then that she had to surrender to a law that effectively silenced survivors of sexual assault, or fight for a change.
\nA deeply affecting memoir of grief, survival, and hope, Saving Five details Nguyen’s winding journey of recovery and action, which ultimately led her to create the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights, one of the only unanimously passed laws in the history of the United States. Both a tribute to resilience and a lesson on healing, Saving Five is an inspirational story for the ages.
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July 1962. A Mi'kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family's youngest child, vanishes mysteriously. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain deeply affected by his sister's disappearance for years to come.
\nIn Boston, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination.
\nAs she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realise there is something her parents aren't telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.
\n
In her debut collection of short fiction, Amanda Peters describes the Indigenous experience from an astonishingly wide spectrum in time and place - from contact with the first European settlers to the forced removal of Indigenous children, to the present-day fight for the right to clean water.
\nIn this intimate collection, Peters melds traditional storytelling with beautiful, spare prose to describe the dignity of the traditional way of life, the humiliations of systemic racism, and the resilient power to endure. A young man returns from residential school only to realise he can no longer communicate with his parents.
\nAs a water protector, a young woman finds purpose and healing on the front lines. An old man remembers his life as he patiently waits for death. And a young girl nervously dances in her first Mawi'omi. The collection also includes the story “The Berry Pickers,” which inspired Peters' critically acclaimed novel of the same name, as well as the Indigenous Voices Award–nominated story “Pejipug (Winter Arrives).”
\nAt times sad, sometimes disturbing but always redemptive, the stories in Waiting for the Long Night Moon will remind you that where there is grief there is also joy, where there is trauma there is resilience and, most importantly, there is power.
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In this captivating story, Daisy has always envied the perfect family next door. But will a weekend of unexpected drama prove that the grass isn’t always greener?
\nDaisy Harrop has always felt like she exists in the background, and since her mother stopped getting out of bed, her life has come to a complete standstill. Daisy would give anything to leave the shabbiest house on the street and be more like the golden Kelleways next door, with their perfectly raked driveway and flourishing rose garden . . .
\nWinnie Kelleway is proud of the beautiful family she’s built. They’ve had their ups and downs - hasn’t everyone? But this weekend, celebrating her golden wedding anniversary is truly proof of their happiness, a joyful gathering for all the neighbours to see. But as the festivities get underway, are the cracks in the ‘perfect’ Kelleway life beginning to show? As one bombshell revelation leads to another and events start to spiral out of control, Daisy and Winnie are about to discover that things aren’t always what they seem.
In the early years of their love affair, Romilly was happy. She had worked hard for her stunning, modern house in one of Bristol's most fashionable suburbs. She adored her gorgeous, gap-toothed daughter and her handsome, kind husband. Sure, life was sometimes exhausting - but nothing that a large glass of wine at the end of the day couldn't fix.
\nAnd then a new neighbour arrived and everything unravelled. A glass of wine became a bottle; one bottle became two. Romilly's family were once everything to her. Now, after years of hiding the drinking, she must finally admit that she has found another love . . .
What would you do if you learned that the life you lived was a lie?
\nNina McCarrick lives the perfect life, until her husband, Finn, is killed in a car accident and everything Nina thought she could rely on unravels.
\nAlone, bereft and faced with a mountain of debt, Nina quickly loses her life of luxury and she begins to question whether she ever really knew the man she married. Forced to move out of her family home, Nina returns to the rundown Southampton council estate - and the sister - she thought she had left far behind.
\nBut Nina can’t let herself be overwhelmed - her boys need her. To save them, and herself, she will have to do what her husband discouraged for so long: pursue a career of her own. Torn between the life she thought she knew and the reality she now faces, Nina finally must learn what it means to take control of her life.
Bea is fifty three, and she's just lost her husband after thirty years of marriage. To distract herself from grief, she throws herself into her work running the Reservoir Street Kitchen in one of Sydney's most fashionable districts.
\nBut then an email from a cafe-owner in Edinburgh prompts her to take a trip to Scotland in the depths of winter. Her journey will be one of self-discovery, as she is drawn back to a secret past - and a secret love - that she has tried to forget.
\nSet between Sydney and Edinburgh at Christmas, this is a story of family ties, lost love, and the power of the past.
\n
As a child, Meg always dreamed of the perfect Christmas . . .
\nThis year, she can make it come true for her own little boy. There will be turkey and all the trimmings, a glittering tree, and a stocking hung up by a roaring fire. Who cares if there's no devoted husband in the picture? She and Lucas will be just fine on their own.
\nBut then a chance meeting with a stranger in New York unravels everything she's planned. Will Meg finally get everything she wished for? Or will she be alone this Christmas after all?
When eighteen-year-old Dot meets Sol, she feels that love has arrived at last. Solomon Arbuthnott is a man who can bring colour and warmth to her drab life in sixties London - and what's more, he is a young, handsome soldier with excellent prospects. Someone who wants to give her everything she has dreamed of. Someone who can promise her blue skies, laughter, sun and always, always love.
And for a while, life is truly like a song. They stroll hand-in-hand by the Serpentine, dance cheek-to-cheek in Soho's smoky bars, and begin to plan their idyllic future, growing old together in Sol's ancestral home on the island of St Lucia.
But this is 1961. East End girls don't date West Indian boys, let alone fall in love with them and leave the country. They stay at home and live the life their parents planned for them. Even if it leaves them lonelier than they ever thought possible. Even if it rips their heart in two . . .
When her loving, free-spirited grandmother Primrose passes away, Victoria is bereft, yet resilient - she has survived tragedy before. But even her strength is tested when a mysterious woman attends Prim’s funeral and claims to be the mother Victoria thought was dead.
As the two women get to know each other and Victoria begins to learn more about her past, it becomes clear that her beloved grandmother had been keeping life-changing secrets from her. Desperate for answers, she still struggles to trust anyone to tell her the truth.
To live a full and happy life, Victoria knows she must not only uncover the truth, but find a way to forgive her family. But after so many years, is trusting them even possible?
Enya’s life has become small. Her husband’s death has left her bereft, and though she’s only in her early fifties, she’s happiest looking after her son, Aiden, his childhood sweetheart, Holly, and her beloved cat, Pickle.
\nSo the spark she feels for the stranger who bumps into her car in the airport car park is a complete shock. But Enya can’t stop thinking about him.
\nThen, when Aiden makes a life-changing decision, Enya suddenly finds her close-knit community thrown into chaos. Her best friend, Jenny, isn’t speaking to her, Aiden’s future hangs in the balance, Holly is devastated, and the stranger from the car park is suddenly in her life.
\nTorn between family, love and loyalty, Enya faces a stay safely where she is, or take a leap into the unknown? Because maybe her happily-ever-after could have one more chapter yet . . .
\n
Freya Braithwaite knows she is lucky. Nineteen years of marriage to a man who still warms her soul and two beautiful teenage daughters to show for it: confident Charlotte and thoughtful Lexi. Her home is filled with love and laughter.
But when Lexi’s struggles with weight take control of her life, everything Freya once took for granted falls apart, leaving the whole family with a sense of helplessness that can only be confronted with understanding, unity and, above all, love.
In this compelling and heart-wrenching new work by bestselling author Amanda Prowse, one ordinary family tackles unexpected difficulties and discovers that love can find its way through life’s darkest moments.
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While her free-spirited daughter travels the world, Vivienne prepares for a lonely Christmas in Bristol, with her best friend Ellen and her ancient dog Bob.
Then a letter arrives that changes everything. Vivienne's daughter is getting married in New Zealand, and she wants her mum and Ellen by her side.
But out on the rugged coast of Tutukaka, the sea sparkles, romance beckons – and Vivienne falls under the spell of another life. Will she leave everything she holds dear for a chance at happiness? Or will her daughter be the only one to fall in love this Christmas?
With her fortieth birthday approaching, Lucy Carpenter thinks she finally has it all: a wonderful new husband, Jonah, a successful career and the chance of a precious baby of her own. Life couldn’t be more perfect.
\nBut becoming parents proves much harder to achieve than Lucy and Jonah imagined, and when Jonah’s teenage daughter Camille comes to stay with them, she becomes a constant reminder of what Lucy doesn’t have. Jonah’s love and support are unquestioning, but Lucy’s struggles with work and her own failing dreams begin to take their toll.
\nWith Camille’s presence straining the bonds of Lucy’s marriage even further, Lucy suddenly feels herself close to losing everything . . .
Everybody needs a little love in their lives . . .
\nPru Plum is the celebrated owner of a famous Mayfair bakery. She wears Chanel and her hair is expensively cut. Few would believe that this elegant woman turned sixty-six last year.
\nBut Pru is not the confident, successful businesswoman she appears. She has done shameful things to get to where she is today. And she will do anything to protect the secrets of her past - especially when, for the first time in her life, she has finally fallen in love . . .
\nFrom bestselling author Amanda Prowse, this is a story about love, loss and lies - and finding happiness before it's too late.
Cordelia Potterton is about to turn ninety-four, and she's determined to do it in style. The antique cake stand has been polished, the white linen napkins are folded, and the darjeeling is brewing in a silver tea pot. There's only one thing missing: the guests.
\nIt's up to her cleaner and her nephew to keep the celebrations going - and make sure Miss Potterton's birthday tea is a day she will never forget.
Jessica's wedding was like a fairytale. She looked radiant in a dress strewn with crystals. Her Dad conquered his nerves and made a tearful speech. And her gorgeous husband Matthew declared himself the luckiest man alive. Together, Jessica and Matthew feel like they can take on the world.
\nBut when their beautiful baby girl is born, Jessica is gripped with panic and fear. She can't tell anyone how she feels. Even when her life starts to spiral out of control . . .
\nThis is her story. A mother's story.
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Wife. Mother. Daughter. What happens when it all becomes too much?
Jackie loves her family. Sure, her teenage children can be stroppy. Her husband a little lazy. And providing round-the-clock care for her Alzheimer's-ridden mother is exhausting. She's sacrificed a lot to provide this safe and loving home, in their cramped but cosy semi with a view of the sea.
All Jackie wants is for her children to have a brighter future than she did. So long as Martha, the eldest, gets into university and follows her dreams, all her sacrifice will be worth something . . . won't it?
As Nora and her British Army officer husband, Gordy, pack up yet another home and leave the sun of Cyprus for the drizzle of England, she can’t shake a feeling of regret - at her failure to follow her own dreams, but also, if she’s honest, at having ended up an officer’s wife at all, drifting through a life of temporary homes and temporary relationships.
\nSince losing her parents at a young age, Nora’s life has been lacking an anchor: someone or something to make her feel secure. Her marriage has been her only permanent relationship, and just as even that appears to be fizzling out, a tragedy forces Nora into the role of legal guardian to her seven-year-old nephew, Ted. Faced suddenly with a responsibility she never dreamed of, how can Nora possibly offer the boy the kind of unconditional love he deserves, when she’s never experienced it for herself?
\nBut as she navigates the precarious and unfamiliar world of parenthood, Nora begins to see herself through Ted’s eyes, as someone worthy of love and even joy. When she’s welcomed into the previously intimidating huddle of mums at the school gate, she has to wonder: is it too late to smash down the other barriers she’s built - and to have a second chance at a happy marriage with Gordy?
How far would you go to bring home the one you love? A gripping story of loss and courage, from an author who is also an Army wife.
\nEver since hairdresser Poppy Day married her childhood sweetheart, Mart, she's been deliriously happy. Now Mart is fighting in Afghanistan, and Poppy is counting the days until he returns. It takes one knock at the door to rip Poppy's world apart.
\nMart has been taken hostage, and it's too dangerous for the army to rescue him. Poppy is determined to bring him home herself. But her journey will lead her to a heartbreaking dilemma. What price will she pay to save the man she loves?
Can you ever find love twice?
\nBea doesn't believe in second chances. As a widow, she feels like she will be alone forever. She buries her grief in hard work, and soon the deli she runs in Sydney, Australia, has a reputation for the best carrot cake in town.
\nBut then an email from a cafe-owner in Edinburgh leads her to take a trip to Scotland in the depths of winter. There, transported by the twinkling lights and falling snow of a traditional Christmas, Bea is drawn back to a secret past – and a secret love – that she has long ago tried to forget...
\nTawrie Gunn feels stuck. She’s spent her whole life in the same seaside town with her beloved Nana and grief-stricken mum, all of them still reeling in different ways from the tragic loss of Tawrie’s dad at sea. Desperate for a change, she challenges herself to take up wild swimming - every morning, no excuses, from March till September.
\nDaring to take the plunge with the ‘Peacock Swimmers’, Tawrie feels alive in a way she’s never known. Suddenly it seems she might be able to step outside her comfort zone after all and let life surprise her - perhaps even dream of a future beyond the shores of Ilfracombe? Especially when, one day, she spots a man in a pink linen shirt who seems as eager for a new start as she does.
\nBut it turns out taking risks on land is a little different from wading into the sea. Can Tawrie face her fears head-on and find her way to happiness? She knows it’s never too late to pursue your hopes and dreams, but it might be easier said than done . . .
Australia, 1962: Susie has just arrived on the boat from England. She is clutching a newborn baby, but she has no wedding ring on her left hand.
The land is dusty and hot, and the work is hard and tiring. All Susie wants is to go home. But with no money, and no hope, how can she turn her life around?
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "Contemporary" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Amanda Prowse - Ten-Pound Ticket, The.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856846578.5713, "size": 1997557, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:18:36.553Z" }, "Amanda Prowse - Three-And-A-Half Heartbeats": { "title": "Three-And-A-Half Heartbeats", "author": "Amanda Prowse", "description": "Grace and Tom Penderford had a strong marriage, a comfortable home in the Hertfordshire countryside, and a healthy baby girl. They were happy. They were normal.
\nBut soon after Chloe turns three, tragedy strikes. A disease called Sepsis claims the life of their daughter, devastating their little family. The Penderfords had never heard of Sepsis - a cruel, indiscriminate disease that claims a life somewhere in the world every three and a half seconds. Now, with their world crumbling, they must mend each others broken hearts . . . and try to save their marriage if they can.
\nKathryn Brooker is the headmaster's wife. While her husband spends his days disciplining unruly teenagers in the grand halls of Mountbriers Academy, Kathryn spends hers baking scones for her son's cricket match in a beautiful cottage in the manicured school grounds.
\nIn the evenings, when her husband strides home to compliment her cooking and kiss her hello - ignoring jokes from their children about grown-up lovebirds - Kathryn Brooker is the very picture of a fulfilled wife and mother. Anyone who peered through the downstairs sash window at the four figures sat easily around their scrubbed-pine kitchen table would see a happy family without a care in the world. They would envy Kathryn her perfect life.
\nBut they would be wrong. Kathryn is trapped in a nightmare. And she is about to do something to change it. Something only a truly desperate woman would do . . .
How do you say goodbye to your family for the last time?
\nPoppy Day is looking forward to her best year yet. She's thirty-two, married to her childhood sweetheart, and a full-time mum of two gorgeous children. She loves her clean little house in the countryside - a far cry from the London estate where she grew up. Her husband Mart, a soldier, has just returned safe and sound from his latest tour.
\nBut Poppy is so busy caring for others, she hasn't noticed the fatigue in her body, or the menacing lump growing on her breast. If there's anyone strong and deserving enough to defeat cancer it's Poppy. After all, she's fought harder battles than this. But does life really work like that?
\n
Josiah was nineteen with the world at his feet when things changed. Without warning, the new university student’s mental health deteriorated to the point that he planned his own death. His mother, bestselling author Amanda Prowse, found herself grappling for ways to help him, with no clear sense of where that could be found. This is the book they wish had been there for them during those dark times.
Josiah’s situation is not unusual: the statistics on student mental health are terrifying. And he was not the only one suffering; his family was also hijacked by his illness, watching him struggle and fearing the day he might succeed in taking his life.
In this book, Josiah and Amanda hope to give a voice to those who suffer, and to show them that help can be found. It is Josiah’s raw, at times bleak, sometimes humorous, but always honest account of what it is like to live with depression. It is Amanda’s heart-rending account of her pain at watching him suffer, speaking from the heart about a mother’s love for her child.
For anyone with depression and anyone who loves someone with depression, Amanda and Josiah have a clear message - you are not alone, and there is hope.
She's lost everything. Can one woman bring her home? Leading fashion magazine editor Victoria Hastings always thought that her trusted assistant quit her job and abandoned her in Paris.
\nA year later, she discovers that Holly Carter was injured in an accident. Brain trauma led to amnesia and Holly cannot remember anything about her life. Guilt causes Victoria to bring Holly home and into her life to aid her in recovery. But when guilt turns into something else, what will she do?
Chloe Dixon just got her life back on track following an emotional break up. When she trusts the wrong person, she finds herself in the middle of a PR storm. She needs to fix her mistake if she is to keep her long-coveted job and save one of the most influential magazines in the country.
Romance is in the air on this detour to love. High-flying executive Celia Scott is on her way to Tokyo to accept a prestigious award heavy with emotional baggage. She’ll make the trip, but she doesn’t have to like it, and she certainly doesn’t have to make nice with a stranger on a plane.
\nArtist Lily Andersen is excited to finally meet her online crush, the only person in the world who truly gets her. She just needs to survive the eleven-hour flight from London to Japan with a testy seatmate who by turns annoys and fascinates her.
\nFate, upgrades, and a troupe of travelling clowns bring them together for a journey memorable for all the wrong reasons. Not only do they have nothing in common, they really can’t stand each other. But people are not always as they seem, and Celia and Lily are about to realise, there’s more than one path to love.
Heather Bailey has been in charge of Silver Arches, the prestigious London shopping centre, for several years. Financial turmoil brings a new investor to secure the future and Heather finds herself playing office politics with the notoriously difficult entrepreneur Leo Flynn. Walking a fine line between standing her ground and being willing to accept change, Heather has her work cut out for her.
\nWhen Leo demands that his daughter is found a job at Silver Arches; things become even harder.
\nScarlett Flynn has never fit in. Not in the army, not in her father’s firm, not even in her own family. So starting work at Silver Arches won’t be any different, will it?
Spurred on by overwhelming and ever-increasing debts, Emily White takes a job working in the first-class cabin on the prestigious commuter route from her home of New York to London with Crown Airlines. A gruelling transatlantic schedule means she is in the air nearly as much as she is on the ground and desperately misses her five-year-old son.
\nOn board she meets Olivia Lewis, who is a literal high-flying business executive with a weekly commute, a meticulous schedule, and terrible social skills.
When a personal emergency brings them together, will Emily be able to swallow her pride and accept help from Olivia? And will Olivia be able to prevent herself from saying the wrong thing?
A ruthless executive. A destitute woman. Both on the way up.
\nSelina Hale is on her way to the top. She's been working towards a boardroom position on the thirteenth floor for her entire career. And no one is going to get in her way. Not her clueless boss, her soon to be ex-wife, and most certainly not the homeless person who has moved into the car park at work.
\nKate Morgan fell through the cracks in a broken support system and found herself destitute. Determined and strong-willed, she's not about to accept help from a mean business woman who can't even remember the names of her own nephews.
\nAs their lives continue to intertwine, they have no choice but to work together and follow each other on their journey up.
Ellie Pearce adores Christmas so much she celebrates all year round, earning herself the nickname Christmas Girl. If only she liked her job as much as eggnog lattes and mistletoe. Stuck as a marketing analyst for London-based recruitment company Caldwell & Atkinson, Ellie is desperate for a career change but afraid to take a chance.
CEO Rosalind Caldwell needs a new personal assistant after the last one quit, putting the extremely important corporate Christmas party in jeopardy. Christmas Girl is just the holiday miracle Rosalind needs, and Ellie is quickly promoted to the top floor of the Canary Wharf skyscraper.
Ellie isn’t a PA, has never planned a party in her life, and is terrified of heights. If things weren’t bad enough, she then goes and develops a ridiculous crush on her totally intimidating new boss. With the festive season fast approaching, what could possibly go wrong?
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Amanda Radley - Humbug.jpeg", "mtime": 1767084065823.4255, "size": 425605, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:18:37.116Z" }, "Amanda Radley - Huntress": { "title": "Huntress", "author": "Amanda Radley", "description": "Former personal assistant Holly Carter is settling into her new life as a mother, a journalist, and partner of magazine editor - and former boss - Victoria Hastings. The arrival of an anonymous email threatens to split the happy couple up. They have to work together but will they be able to overcome both Holly’s amnesia and Victoria’s reserved demeanour to find the perpetrator?
Annie Peck finds herself in a terrible situation and is literally running for her life. A chance encounter with a surprising lookalike leads her towards a risky solution.
\nCaptain Caroline West knows she is lucky to be one of the few women cruise ship captains in the world. Sadly, not having a standard nine to five job means relationships are nearly impossible and she’s all but given up on finding anyone.
\nJoin these two women for an all-expenses-paid cruise of the Mediterranean and find out what happens when an identity thief with a heart of gold meets the rule-abiding woman who could throw her in jail.
Gina Henley doesn’t keep up with current events. She’s too busy partying with her friends and fending off her mother’s well-intentioned nagging about finding a man and settling down. When a mysterious illness causes her boss to close the office, Gina must work from home and life as she knows it changes forever.
\nDr. Eleanor Osborne works at a busy London hospital and knows all too well the virus is causing panic. As if that weren’t bad enough, it’s too unsafe for her elderly neighbor to continue minding Eleanor’s daughter, Sophia. She needs a babysitter pronto, but who can she ask to take the risk?
\nCut off from her social network, Gina finds the silence of her own company suffocating - who is she when no one is watching? Eleanor is sure she picked the worst time ever to become a single mother - how can she possibly raise a child in such an unpredictable world? Set against the backdrop of a viral pandemic, Gina and Eleanor are about to discover that loving another person is complicated when you’re desperately searching for yourself.
Former Protection Command Officer Eve Webb quit her job when a terrorist incident revealed that internal communication failures had caused multiple deaths. Now her former commanding officer and mentor has asked for a favor, and Eve can’t say no. It should be an easy job. All she has to do is guard one female civilian.
\nLady Katherine Lovegrove is forty-something-ish in line to the throne and has lived a sheltered life until her father - a high profile judge - upsets the wrong people. She’s not exactly thrilled to need a full-time babysitter, uh, bodyguard, and is even less happy that Eve is an anti-monarchist who despises the upper class.
\nIf Eve had known she’d be protecting royalty, she’d never have taken the job, but as the threat to Lady Katherine’s life draws closer, she’ll do whatever it takes to save her and may just lose her heart in the process.
Awkward teenager Hugo Whittaker doesn’t know a cross-trainer from an elliptical, but getting strong is the only way to fight off the bullies who won’t leave him alone. Lauren Evans loves her job as a fitness instructor, and she wants to guide him. Unfortunately, Hugo paid for his gym membership by stealing his mother’s credit card, and it doesn’t take his mother long to track down her wayward son.
\nIn a courtroom, shrewd barrister Allegra Whittaker is unstoppable, but when it comes to her son Hugo, she’s afraid she’s losing her touch. She reluctantly allows him to continue using the gym as long as she can keep an eye on him - and his undeniably intriguing instructor.
\nAs each encounter leaves them wanting more, Lauren and Allegra learn love and happiness are right where they least expect it. There’s just one little problem: Lauren has a huge secret she absolutely cannot tell anyone, and Allegra knows she’s hiding something.
Sarah Campbell told one tiny white lie.
\nWhen her tech-giant employer moves her to a cottage on a small Scottish island to work on a classified, controversial, and potentially world-saving project, Sarah must keep her eco-terrorist mother in the dark to prevent her from disrupting everything. Sarah's cover story - she's fallen in love, she and her girlfriend are escaping the bustle of the city, she couldn’t be happier . . . But Sarah’s better at firewalls than real walls, and when she arrives at the run-down cottage, she quickly discovers she needs help.
\nPippa Kent is a widowed, semi-retired structural engineer who’s done with love. She fills all her free time running a handywoman service on the island. When Sarah calls Pippa out for the most basic repairs, Pippa can’t help but wonder - often out loud - how anyone could be so inept at home maintenance.
\nThen Sarah’s mother suddenly decides to visit and meet her daughter’s wonderful new partner. With little option, Sarah begs Pippa to be her fake girlfriend. Only the more time they spend faking it, the less pretend it feels.
Rebecca is stuck in Portugal. All planes to England are grounded and it's only two days until Christmas.
\nDesperate to get home but without money to hire a car; she's stuck. She sees an opportunity when she meets a snobby businesswoman with a broken leg, a platinum credit card, and a desire to get home. A tentative agreement is struck in order reach their destination before the festive deadline. Will they make it, or will they kill each other along the way?
\nA heartwarming enemies to lovers romance with a twist. Discover The Road Ahead and make your own journey home today.
Bad childhood memories start to resurface when Hannah Hall's daughter Rosie begins school. To make matters more complicated, Hannah has been steadfastly ignoring the obvious truth that Rosie is intellectually gifted and wise beyond her years.
\nIn the crumbling old school she meets Rosie's new teacher Alice Spencer who has moved from the city to teach in the small coastal town of Fairlight. Alice immediately sees Rosie's potential and embarks on developing an educational curriculum to suit Rosie's needs, to Hannah's dismay.
\nTeacher and mother clash over what's best for young Rosie. Will they be able to compromise? Will Hannah finally open up to someone about her own damaged upbringing? And will they be able to ignore the sparks that fly whenever they are in the same room?
When the marketing agency Regina Avery worked for declares bankruptcy, she’s forced to take a temporary position at a women’s fashion brand. She’s never worn anything more fashionable than a polyester suit, but beggars cannot be choosers. She definitely didn’t choose to work with her ex-girlfriend Margot. Margot never got over the whole forgot-her-parents'-names incident more than a decade ago, because she assigns Regina to a marketing campaign within the lingerie department. Not that there’s anything wrong with lingerie exactly, but Regina’s blushing modesty makes her less than ideal for the position.
\nWhen Regina meets model Grace Holland - the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen between rows of fancy knickers, she doesn’t have a clue how to flirt, date, or hold on to a relationship. In fact, she can barely maintain eye contact with Grace, who seems to be going out of her way to bump into Regina.
\nNever feeling more like a fish out of water, Regina must take the plunge with Grace and hope she manages to swim before Margot or her own shyness sinks her chance at love.
Trainee investor Clara Foster spends her weekend at the office catching up on paperwork when the ice queen owner Francesca Burford arrives. Francesca doesn’t know who the shy employee is, and she doesn’t much care, until they attempt to leave the office at the same time and get trapped in an elevator.
\n
Fraser Park, the award-winning Scottish nature reserve and theme park, means everything to Beth Fraser. She’s more than a little preoccupied saving her family’s legacy and struggling against a board of directors who all seem to hate her. The last person she wants to need is selfie-obsessed, filtered to perfection, social media influencer Jemma Johnson. But she’s got to protect Fraser Park from a corporate takeover, and according to her brother, that means boosting their online presence. Jemma might be necessary, but Beth doesn’t have to like her, or follow her, or whatever it’s called.
\nJemma Johnson, an Insta-success with hundreds of thousands of followers, is proud of her perfectly curated life. When she’s invited to stay at Fraser Park, the trip sounds like a fun adventure for a good cause, until she meets Beth, the only woman who sees beneath her sparkly facade and reminds her that not everything is as easy or flawless as it seems.
\nOn their path to #truelove, will Beth and Jemma discover that reality is even better than illusion?
Sofia’s mother promises that she’ll have her own bedroom to decorate soon. Soon, too, she’ll be able to see her friends, go back to school, and eat the colorful, tempting cakes in the grocery store’s display case.
\nFor now, though, twelve-year-old Sofia lives with her mother and brother, Rafa, in their car.
\nFor now, Sofia’s days are a blur of freeways and strip malls across the West Coast as her mother searches for a safe place to park for the night.
\nFor now, her mother contemplates impossible choices, while Sofia catches glimpses of kindness and cruelty from strangers, and tries to carve out a space and an identity for herself while grappling with her family’s disintegration.
\nThis haunting and lyrical novel captures the fault lines of an existence marked by economic insecurity, exploring what it means to come of age during a moment of displacement. Beautifully rendered and emotionally charged, Hungered is an indelible ode to survival, memory, and the search for home in its many forms.
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Struggling new single mom Natasha Walker is desperate to get back to her job as an investigative journalist. When she receives an anonymous tip about the Memory Foundation, a secretive research clinic that promises a cure for memory loss, she is instantly intrigued. Given her mother’s dementia diagnosis, the story hits close to home. Despite the perilous snowbound location, she’s determined to uncover the truth about the mysterious founders and their patients.
\nMeanwhile, Lydia Hunter has faithfully worked alongside her husband, Wade, the founder of the Memory Foundation, to revolutionise the way the world understands memory. But the research is expensive, and they’re hemorrhaging money. In order to gain more financial support, they open up the facility to an exclusive group of wealthy guests, promising that each one will experience a “memory flight” that will allow them to relive precious memories.
\nBut when the wealthy clients arrive at the Memory Foundation, set high in the Alps in an area prone to avalanches, all is not what it seems. And when the weather takes a turn for the worse and power outages and a growing sense of paranoia begin affecting everybody, it becomes clear that no one at the Memory Foundation will ever be the same - and not everyone will survive the week.
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Eighteen-year-old Aihui Ying dreams of becoming a world-class engineer like her father, but after his sudden murder, her life falls apart. Left with only a journal of her father’s engineering secrets and a jade pendant snatched from the assassin, a heartbroken Ying follows the trail to the capital and the prestigious Engineers Guild - a place that harbors her father’s hidden past - determined to discover why anyone would threaten a man who ultimately chose a quiet life over fame and fortune.
\nDisguised as her brother, Ying manages to infiltrate the guild’s male-only apprenticeship trial with the help of an unlikely ally - Aogiya Ye-yang, the taciturn eighth prince of the High Command. With her father’s renown placing a target firmly on her back, Ying must stay one step ahead of her fellow competitors, the jealous guild masters, and the killer still hunting for her father’s journal. Complicating everything is her increasingly tangled relationship with the prince, who may have mysterious plans of his own.
\nThe secrets concealed within the guild can be as deadly as the weapons they build - and with her life and the future of her homeland at stake, Ying doesn’t know who to trust. Can she avenge her father even if it means going against everything he stood for, or will she be next in the mastermind’s line of fire?
Two years after Ying leaves the Engineer’s Guild and the ghost of her father’s unjust death behind, life seems to regain a semblance of normalcy. But the winds of unrest continue to stir within the Nine Isles, and the aftermath of a horrific pirate attack by the mysterious Blood Phoenix fleet forces Ying back into the tense political world of the new High Commander, Ye-yang. And soon, Ying, Ye-yang and her former friends from the guild must work together to find a way to outsmart the cunning pirates who terrorise the straits - and the elusive mastermind who’s controlling them.
\nMeanwhile, Ying’s sister, Nian, now lives in the capital, awaiting the day she will finally marry the High Commander. While her relationship with Ye-yang remains distant, she finds company in her friendship with the fourteenth prince, Ye-kan, and discovers her unexpected affinity for governance and strategy. But the capital is more dangerous than she expects, and when a dark conspiracy arises, Nian and Ye-kan must unravel the mystery in time to prevent the High Command from collapsing from within.
\nNew dangers arise at every moment, threatening to tear the Nine Isles apart. In order to sail through this storm, Ying and her loved ones must make difficult choices amidst terrible betrayals. With the world on the brink of destruction, will they find a way to defeat their enemies and survive? And will it be worth the cost?
While recovering from a professional setback, documentary filmmaker Jane Duvall stays at a remote hotel during the off season with her new contractor husband, Dom, and his daughter, Sienna. Surrounded by an immense forest and the mighty Fraser River, Jane wants nothing more than to bond with her new family. But she’s unsettled by the cold, quiet presence of the hotel’s owner, Peter, who is overseeing Dom’s renovations.
\nWhen she starts asking questions, Dom grows distant and Sienna becomes belligerent. Undeterred, Jane uncovers secrets that make her question exactly who she married, including a series of strange disappearances at the hotel in previous seasons. When a rainstorm of epic proportions threatens to flood the banks of the river and claim the Venatura Hotel, Jane must solve these mysteries if she’s to survive the off season.
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Esme and Benedict Werner have an idyllic life in a tight-knit community until an accident in their cul-de-sac ends in the tragic sudden death of one of their dearest neighbors. After vindicating eyewitness accounts morph into contradictory memories, suspicion, and unaccountable accusations, Benedict is arrested. Esme’s life, too, is changed forever.
As the neighborhood largely turns against her and her family, Esme has time to think about her past and what to do next. Then her fellow residents start looking deeper, questioning one another, and themselves, about hidden lies and betrayals.
Esme has more than her share of secrets. And the consequences of what happened on that fateful late-summer evening on Raven Lane are far from over. When the mask of civility slips, can friends and neighbors recover from seeing the monstrous truths beneath?
Nicias has never felt completely at home among the avians and serpiente in Wyvern’s Court, despite his loyalty to Oliza Shardae Cobriana, the heir to both thrones. He is a falcon, the son of two exiles from Anhmik - and images of this distant island have always haunted his dreams. But when Nicias’s visions become more like reality, his parents have no choice but to send him back to the homeland - and a royal falcon - they’ve tried their best to forget.
If Araceli won’t bind Nicias’s newfound magic, it could destroy him. In a place where everyone is a pawn, only one other woman has the potential to save Nicias. But she holds the keys to a dangerous power struggle that will force Nicias to choose between his duty - and his destiny.
Danica Shardae is an avian shapeshifter, and the golden hawk’s form in which she takes to the sky is as natural to her as the human one that graces her on land. The only thing more familiar to her is war: It has raged between her people and the serpiente for so long, no one can remember how the fighting began.
\nAs heir to the avian throne, Danica will do anything in her power to stop the bloodshed - even accept Zane Cobriana, the terrifying leader of her kind’s greatest enemy, as her pair bond and make the two royal families one. Now Danica must convince her people that Zane is just as committed to peace as she is - though she can’t help fearing that, despite his word, he will strike as swiftly and lethally as the cobra that is his second form.
\nAmong the serpiente, she’ll have to pretend to be in love, though when they’re alone, her reserve threatens to keep her and Zane worlds apart. And in their midst are dissenters who will do whatever it takes to destroy this union. Trust. It is all Zane asks of Danica - and all they ask of their people - but it may be more than she can give.
Citizens of Kavet generally give little thought to the afterlife - unsurprising, since the dominant religion of the country believes too much focus on the next world is directly responsible for strife in this one, and everyone knows idle curiosity about the other realms is the first step on a dangerous road to sorcery and madness.
The only people allowed by law to even discuss such topics are the Order of the Napthol, a group of scholars responsible for giving counsel and advice when questions regarding the next world arise. They are the ones who study the three realms: the mortal one in which human beings live and die, and the two that follow, the Abyss and the Numen. Anyone outside their order is strictly forbidden from even discussing the other realms.
Hansa Viridian is a respected captain in the elite guard unit tasked with protecting the population of Kavet from sorcery. When he arrests an abyssumancer, a sorcerer whose power comes from the infernal realm known as the Abyss, the man attempts to explain that the creatures of that realm have some kind of plan.
The prisoner doesn’t get far before his own magic kills him, and Hansa’s attempts to investigate the supposed plot don’t get far. According to Sister of the Napthol Cadmia Paynes, the denizens of the abyss are creatures of violence and immediacy, incapable of planning. Everything she has ever been taught tells Cadmia she is right, but despite her assurances to Hansa and the others of his unit, she worries she has made a dreadful mistake.
When the next report of sorcery implicates Hansa’s neighbor and friend Xaz, it triggers a series of events that force unlikely allies to question everything they’ve ever known about magic, morality, love, and even death itself.
Henna’s runes tell her that the future of Kavet is balanced on the edge of the knife. One of the most powerful sorcerers in the Order of Napthol, she is well-respected for her second sight. But the fragments she sees this time - blood, darkness, destruction - leave her unsure how to set the country and her lover, Verte, prince of Kavet, on the correct course.
\nMeanwhile, the treaties between Kavet and the dragon-like race known as the Osei have become intolerable. The time has come for the royal house to wield their unique magic to challenge Osei dominion, with Prince Verte serving as the nexus for the powerful but dangerous spell, and Naples, an untested young sorcerer from the Order of Napthol, a volatile but critical support to its creation.
\nAmid these plans, Dahlia Indathrone’s arrival in the city shouldn’t matter. She has no magic and no royal lineage, and yet, Henna immediately knows the young woman is important. She just can’t see why. And no vision could prepare her for the role Dahlia will come to play.
\nIn Of the Divine, the lives of Henna, Verte, Naples, and Dahlia become irrevocably linked, setting them, and all Kavet, on a perilous path. As they struggle to survive, they learn that they are but pawns in a larger game, one played by the forces of the Abyss and of the Numen - the infernal and the divine. A game no mortal can ever hope to win.
Hansa, Umber, and Cadmia have managed to fight their way out of the Abyss and return to Kavet, bringing with them the long-imprisoned Terre Verte.
Prince Verte is determined to return Kavet to its former magical strength and restore the royal reign of the Terre family. He has the ability; his stay in the Abyss has left him abundantly powerful. But it has also left him dangerously unstable.
But when Naples, once the strongest Abyssumancer in Kavet - and former ally of Verte - also returns from the Abyss, Hansa and the others realise it is not Verte they need to be concerned with. For the Abyssi and the Numini are engaged in their own grand war, one that is pouring across the veils of the realms. And if the magic-users cannot come together to stop them, the fabric of the mortal world will be destroyed, taking all of them with it.
Zane Cobriana, Cobra shapeshifter, thanks the gods every day for Danica, his hawk pair bond, and the peace their union has brought to the avian and serpiente. Soon, Danica will have a child to carry on their royal line. But what should be a happy time is riddled with doubt.
Syfka, an ancient falcon, has arrived from Ahnmik claiming that one of her people is hidden in their midst. The falcons are more powerful than the avians and serpiente combined, and Syfka shows nothing but contempt for Zane and Danica’s alliance. To Zane’s horror, his own people seem just as appalled as Syfka is by the thought of a mixed-blood child becoming heir to the throne.
Is Syfka’s lost falcon just a ruse to stir up controversy among them? The truth lies somewhere in their tangled pasts - and the search will redefine Zane and Danica’s fragile future.
Oliza Shardae Cobriana is heir to Wyvern's Court, home of the avians and serpiente, whose war with each other ended just before Oliza was born. But hatred is slow to die, and not everyone likes the expressive way in which Urban, a serpiente dancer, is courting Oliza - especially not Marus, her reserved avian suitor. And when Urban is found beaten in avian land, Oliza is filled with despair. How can she be expected to lead a unified society if her people still cannot live peacefully together?
\nBefore Oliza can try to mend the rift in Wyvern's Court, she is kidnapped by mercenaries, who take her deep into wolves' territory. As Wyvern princess, all Oliza has ever wanted is to see a future where she can find love and take a mate without inciting another war. The time is now. She owes it to her people - and to herself.
Hai has always been an outsider. With a falcon mother \nand a deceased cobra father, she is considered a mongrel by most, an ally by \nsome, and a friend by few. Hai's broken falcon wings are a painful reminder of \nthe life she once led on the island of Ahnmik. And here in Wyvern's Court, the \navian and serpiente royal family keep their distance, refusing to acknowledge \nher cobra bloodline. They know that Hai's magic is so volatile, she can barely \ncontrol it, and images of the past and future threaten to overwhelm her.
\nWhen Hai's cousin, Oliza Shardae Cobriana, abdicates the throne of Wyvern's \nCourt, Hai has visions only of destruction: the serpiente king Salem, dying in \nher arms; the dutiful guard, Nicias, unable to save a generation of children; \nand Wyvern's Court engulfed in flames.
\nNow Hai will do anything to protect her new home - even if it means betraying \nthe very people who need her most.
First, the bad news: an ancient evil - you know, your standard consume-all-life-in-the-galaxy deal - is about to be unleashed. The good news? Squad 312 is standing by to save the day. They’ve just got to take care of a few small distractions first.
\nLike the clan of gremps who’d like to rearrange their favorite faces.
\nAnd the cadre of illegit GIA agents with creepy flowers where their eyes used to be, who’ll stop at nothing to get their hands on Auri.
\nThen there’s Kal’s long-lost sister, who’s not exactly happy to see her baby brother, and has a Syldrathi army at her back. With half the known galaxy on their tails, Squad 312 has never felt so wanted.
\nWhen they learn the Hadfield has been found, it’s time to come out of hiding. Two centuries ago, the colony ship vanished, leaving Auri as its sole survivor. Now, its black box might be what saves them. But time is short, and if Auri can’t learn to master her powers as a Trigger, the squad and all their admirers are going to be deader than the Great Ultrasaur of Abraaxis IV.
\nShocking revelations, bank heists, mysterious gifts, inappropriately tight bodysuits, and an epic firefight will determine the fate of the Aurora Legion’s most unforgettable heroes - and maybe the rest of the galaxy as well.
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They're not the heroes we deserve. They're just the ones we could find. Nobody panic.
\nThe year is 2380, and the graduating cadets of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions. Star pupil Tyler Jones is ready to recruit the squad of his dreams, but his own boneheaded heroism sees him stuck with the dregs nobody else in the Academy would touch . . .
A cocky diplomat with a black belt in sarcasm
A sociopath scientist with a fondness for shooting her bunkmates
A smart-ass techwiz with the galaxy’s biggest chip on his shoulder
An alien warrior with anger management issues
A tomboy pilot who’s totally not into him, in case you were wondering
And Ty’s squad isn’t even his biggest problem - that’d be Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, the girl he’s just rescued from interdimensional space. Trapped in cryo-sleep for two centuries, Auri is a girl out of time and out of her depth. But she could be the catalyst that starts a war millions of years in the making, and Tyler’s squad of losers, discipline-cases and misfits might just be the last hope for the entire galaxy.
What happens when you ask a bunch of losers, discipline cases, and misfits to save the galaxy from an ancient evil? The ancient evil wins, of course.
\nWait. . . . Not. So. Fast.
\nWhen we last saw Squad 312, they working together seamlessly (aka, freaking out) as an intergalactic battle raged and an ancient superweapon threatened to obliterate Earth.
\nEverything went horribly wrong, naturally. But as it turns out, not all endings are endings, and the te4am has one last chance to rewrite thirs. Maybe two. It's complicated.
\nCue Zila, Fin, and Scarlett (and MAGELLAN!): making friends, making enemies, and making history? Sure, no problem: Cue Tyler, Kal, and Auri: uniting with two of the galaxy’s most hated villains? Um, okay. That, too.
\nActually saving the galaxy, though?
\nNow that will take a miracle.
Moving to a space station at the edge of the galaxy was always going to be the death of Hanna’s social life. Nobody said it might actually get her killed.
The sci-fi saga that began with the breakout bestseller Illuminae continues on board the Jump Station Heimdall, where two new characters will confront the next wave of the BeiTech assault.
Hanna is the station captain’s pampered daughter; Nik the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. But while the pair are struggling with the realities of life aboard the galaxy’s most boring space station, little do they know that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall, carrying news of the Kerenza invasion.
When an elite BeiTech strike team invades the station, Hanna and Nik are thrown together to defend their home. But alien predators are picking off the station residents one by one, and a malfunction in the station’s wormhole means the space-time continuum might be ripped in two before dinner. Soon Hanna and Nik aren’t just fighting for their own survival; the fate of everyone on the Hypatia - and possibly the known universe - is in their hands.
But relax. They’ve totally got this. They hope.
This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do. This afternoon, her planet was invaded.
The year is 2575, and two rival megacorporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than an ice-covered speck at the edge of the universe. Too bad nobody thought to warn the people living on it. With enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra - who are barely even talking to each other - are forced to fight their way onto an evacuating fleet, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.
But their problems are just getting started. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet's AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a tangled web of data to find the truth, it's clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: the ex-boyfriend she swore she'd never speak to again.
Kady, Ezra, Hanna, and Nik narrowly escaped with their lives from the attacks on Heimdall station and now find themselves crammed with 2,000 refugees on the container ship, Mao. With the jump station destroyed and their resources scarce, the only option is to return to Kerenza - but who knows what they'll find seven months after the invasion?
Meanwhile, Kady's cousin, Asha, survived the initial BeiTech assault and has joined Kerenza's ragtag underground resistance. When Rhys - an old flame from Asha's past - reappears on Kerenza, the two find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict.
With time running out, a final battle will be waged on land and in space, heroes will fall, and hearts will be broken.
Nimh still holds on to her divinity, if only by a thread.
\nIn her final confrontation with Inshara, the woman determined to take her place and rule Nimh’s kingdom, both Nimh and her enemy were sent to the world above, in the cloudlands.
\nNow North looks to the sky, left behind on the surface world.
\nDesperate for a chance to join the girl he loves and save his world, North will stop at nothing to find a way back to his home in the sky-city of Ciel. Before it’s too late to save anyone.
\nBut more awaits them in the world above than North or Nimh could ever expect. And as they come together and team up with allies from above and below, they face an ultimate test of their bond, their abilities, and their belief in each other in a quest to save their worlds.
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Gwen is sick of hiding - hiding the fact that she’s taken over her father’s blacksmithing duties, hiding her attraction to girls, hiding her yearning for glory as a knight.
\nMeanwhile, Lady Isobelle of Avington, queen bee of the castle, has never once considered hiding who she is - until now. She’s been chosen as the grand prize in the Tournament of Dragonslayers, to be given to whichever knight can claim her hand. And for the first time in her life, she can’t talk her way out of trouble.
\nWhen Isobelle discovers Gwen’s knightly ambitions, they hatch a scheme together - Gwen will joust in the tournament, disguised as Sir Gawain. Winning means freedom for Isobelle, and glory for Gwen. Losing means . . . well, let’s not go there.
\nOne thing’s for sure: falling in love was never the plan.
\nBut the best laid plans . . . are often trampled all over by dragons.
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Dearest reader . . . let me catch you up.
\nGwen, our lady knight.
\nIsobelle, our knight’s lady.
\nThey fight monsters, and they’re in love. Well, they fought one monster, once. And while they are in love, they haven’t discussed that fact with each other, and neither wants to be the first to bring it up.This is going to be fine.
\nThis story includes:
\n(Ignore all the tentacles, everything is definitely fine . . . )
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Prince North’s home is in the sky, in a gleaming city held aloft by intricate engines, powered by technology. Nimh is the living goddess of her people on the Surface, responsible for providing answers, direction - hope.
North’s and Nimh’s lives are entwined - though their hearts can never be. Linked by a terrifying prophecy and caught between duty and fate, they must choose between saving their people or succumbing to the bond that is forbidden between them.
A year ago, Flynn Cormac and Jubilee Chase made the now infamous Avon Broadcast, calling on the galaxy to witness for their planet, and protect them from destruction. Some say Flynn’s a madman, others whisper about conspiracies. Nobody knows the truth. A year before that, Tarver Merendsen and Lilac LaRoux were rescued from a terrible shipwreck - now, they live a public life in front of the cameras, and a secret life away from the world’s gaze.
Now, in the center of the universe on the planet of Corinth, all four are about to collide with two new players, who will bring the fight against LaRoux Industries to a head. Gideon Marchant is an eighteen-year-old computer hacker - a whiz kid and an urban warrior. He’ll climb, abseil and worm his way past the best security measures to pull off onsite hacks that others don’t dare touch.
Sofia Quinn has a killer smile, and by the time you’re done noticing it, she’s got you offering up your wallet, your car, and anything else she desires. She holds LaRoux Industries responsible for the mysterious death of her father and is out for revenge at any cost.
When a LaRoux Industries security breach interrupts Gideon and Sofia’s separate attempts to infiltrate their headquarters, they’re forced to work together to escape. Each of them has their own reason for wanting to take down LaRoux Industries, and neither trusts the other. But working together might be the best chance they have to expose the secrets LRI is so desperate to hide.
It's a night like any other on board the Icarus. Then, catastrophe strikes: the massive luxury spaceliner is yanked out of hyperspace and plummets into the nearest planet. Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen survive. And they seem to be alone.
Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe. Tarver comes from nothing, a young war hero who learned long ago that girls like Lilac are more trouble than they’re worth. But with only each other to rely on, Lilac and Tarver must work together, making a tortuous journey across the eerie, deserted terrain to seek help.
Then, against all odds, Lilac and Tarver find a strange blessing in the tragedy that has thrown them into each other’s arms. Without the hope of a future together in their own world, they begin to wonder - would they be better off staying here forever?
Everything changes when they uncover the truth behind the chilling whispers that haunt their every step. Lilac and Tarver may find a way off this planet. But they won’t be the same people who landed on it.
Jubilee Chase and Flynn Cormac should never have met.
\nLee is captain of the forces sent to Avon to crush the terraformed planet's rebellious colonists, but she has her own reasons for hating the insurgents.
\nRebellion is in Flynn's blood. His sister died in the original uprising against the powerful corporate conglomerate that rules Avon with an iron fist. These corporations make their fortune by terraforming uninhabitable planets across the universe and recruiting colonists to make the planets livable, with the promise of a better life for their children. But they never fulfilled their promise on Avon, and decades later, Flynn is leading the rebellion.
\nDesperate for any advantage against the military occupying his home, Flynn does the only thing that makes sense when he and Lee cross paths: he returns to base with her as prisoner. But as his fellow rebels prepare to execute this tough-talking girl with nerves of steel, Flynn makes another choice that will change him forever. He and Lee escape base together, caught between two sides in a senseless war.
\nThe stunning second novel in the Starbound trilogy is an unforgettable story of love and forgiveness in a world torn apart by war.
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Though Anders and his friends have delayed a war between ice wolves and scorch dragons, their mission is far from over. With adults on both sides looking for them, they’ve sought refuge in Cloudhaven, a forbidden stronghold that could hold the key to saving their home.
Meanwhile, Holbard has been ravaged, and its citizens are reeling. Many have been forced into bleak camps outside the city, and food is running short.
To rebuild Vallen and unite scorch dragons, ice wolves, and humans, Anders and Rayna must put everything on the line . . . before the damage done is beyond repair. But the price of peace may hit closer to home than they could’ve ever imagined.
When Selly and Leander began their treacherous voyage to the Isles of the Gods, the captain’s daughter and the playboy prince were strangers. But amid talk of war and a deadly attack on their ship, the unthinkable happened. They fell in love.
\nLeander’s ritual at the island temple was meant to prevent a war between the gods. Instead, it nearly cost him his life and drew the goddess Barrica back from exile. Now, as her Messenger, Leander is imbued with her deadly magic and only Selly’s presence can stop it from consuming him. But Barrica wasn’t the only immortal roused from sleep. The God of Risk, Macean, was awakened by an enemy all thought dead, and across the sea he’s calling for war.
\nThe fight to save their world will take Selly and Leander from the gilded ballroom of the royal palace to the hallowed halls of an ancient library. Battle lines will be drawn and bonds will break. With the wrath of gods and the machinations of power-hungry rulers straining their loyalties, can their love withstand the trials that await them?
\n
Everyone in Vallen knows that ice wolves and scorch dragons are sworn enemies who live deeply separate lives.
So when twelve-year-old orphan Anders takes one elemental form and his twin sister, Rayna, takes another, he wonders whether they are even related. Still, whether or not they’re family, Rayna is Anders’s only true friend. She’s nothing like the brutal, cruel dragons who claimed her as one of their own and stole her away.
In order to rescue her, Anders must enlist at the foreboding Ulfar Academy, a school for young wolves that values loyalty to the pack above all else. But for Anders, loyalty is more complicated than obedience, and friendship is the most powerful shapeshifting force of all.
When Selly's father leaves her high and dry in the port of Kirkpool, she has no intention of riding out the winter on land while he sails to adventure in the north seas. But any plans to follow him are dashed when a handsome stranger with tell-tale magician's marks on his arm boards her ship, presenting her and the crew with a dangerous mission: to cross the Crescent Sea without detection so he can complete a ritual on the sacred Isles of the Gods.
\nWhat starts as a leisure cruise will lead to acts of treason and sheer terror on the high seas, bringing two countries to the brink of war, two strangers closer than they ever thought possible and stirring two dangerous gods from centuries of slumber . . .
\n
After the fateful battle between the ice wolves and the scorch dragons, Anders and his twin sister, Rayna, have been reunited. But there's no time to celebrate.
\nThe temperature all over Vallen is starting to drop. And Anders quickly learns that the wolves have stolen a weather-altering artifact called the Snowstone, and every dragon, including Rayna, is now in danger. Desperate to broker peace, Anders enlists the help of a few new flame-breathing friends to stop the wolves' next plan of attack.
\nTogether, these former rivals must go on a dangerous quest to find the scattered pieces of the Sun Scepter, the only artifact that can counteract the Snowstone. Because if either device goes unchecked, all hope for a truce will be lost.
\n
Mia and Jules are desperate to warn their home planet about the impending invasion from the Undying. After a perilous escape from the Undying's ancient spaceship, they crash-land on Earth's surface, only to realise the awful truth: No one believes in the alien threat in orbit.
\nWith no choice but to take matters into their own hands, Mia and Jules must escape the custody of the powerful International Alliance in order to discover the true mission of the Undying. On the run, fugitives among their own people, they must journey across Europe to stop an alien invasion, prevent a horrific plague, and save the people they love . . .
\n
When Earth intercepts a message from a long-extinct alien race, it seems like the solution the planet has been waiting for. The Undying's advanced technology has the potential to undo environmental damage and turn lives around, and Gaia, their former home planet, is a treasure trove waiting to be uncovered.
For Jules Addison and his fellow scholars, the discovery of an alien culture offers unprecedented opportunity for study . . . as long as scavengers like Amelia Radcliffe don't loot everything first. Mia and Jules' different reasons for smuggling themselves onto Gaia put them immediately at odds, but after escaping a dangerous confrontation with other scavvers, they form a fragile alliance.
In order to penetrate the Undying temple and reach the tech and information hidden within, the two must decode the ancient race's secrets and survive their traps. But the more they learn about the Undying, the more their presence in the temple seems to be part of a grand design that could spell the end of the human race . . .
Heartwood takes you on a gripping journey as a search and rescue team race against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.
\nIn the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping.
\nAt the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.
\nHeartwood tells the story of a lost hiker’s odyssey and is a moving rendering of each character’s interior journey. The mystery inspires larger questions about the many ways in which we get lost, and how we are found. At its core, Heartwood is a redemptive novel, written with both enormous literary ambition and love.
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Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her stalled-out dissertation on confessional poetry when her husband, Michael, informs her that he wants to leave his job and buy a sailboat. With their two kids - Sybil, age seven, and George, age two - Juliet and Michael set off for Panama, where their forty-four foot sailboat awaits them.
The initial result is transformative; the marriage is given a gust of energy, Juliet emerges from her depression, and the children quickly embrace the joys of being feral children at sea. Despite the stresses of being novice sailors, the family learns to crew the boat together on the ever-changing sea. The vast horizons and isolated islands offer Juliet and Michael reprieve - until they are tested by the unforeseen.
Sea Wife is told in gripping dual perspectives: Juliet’s first person narration, after the journey, as she struggles to come to terms with the life-changing events that unfolded at sea, and Michael’s captain’s log, which provides a riveting, slow-motion account of these same inexorable events, a dialogue that reveals the fault lines created by personal history and political divisions.
Sea Wife is a transporting novel about marriage, family and love in a time of unprecedented turmoil. It is unforgettable in its power and astonishingly perceptive in its portrayal of optimism, disillusionment, and survival.
Near the end of Amor Towles’s bestselling novel Rules of Civility, the fiercely independent Evelyn Ross boards a train from New York to Chicago to visit her parents, but never disembarks. Six months later, she appears in a photograph in a gossip magazine exiting the Tropicana Club in Los Angeles on the arm of Olivia de Havilland.
In this chain of six richly detailed and atmospheric stories, each told from a different perspective, Towles unfolds the events that take Eve to the heart of Old Hollywood. Beginning in the dining car of the Golden State Limited in September 1938, we follow Eve to the elegant rooms of the Beverly Hills Hotel, the fabled tables of Antonio’s, the amusement parks on the Santa Monica piers, the afro-Cuban dance clubs of Central Avenue, and ultimately the set of Gone with The Wind.
With the glamour and grit of the studio system’s golden age as a backdrop, Towles introduces in each story a memorable new character whose fate may well be altered by their encounter with Eve. In following the thread of these varied encounters, we watch as Eve forges a new and unexpected life for herself in late 1930s Los Angeles.
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
\nBrimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.
In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the work farm where he has just served a year for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother and head west where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future.
\nSpanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.
On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar with her boardinghouse roommate stretching three dollars as far as it will go when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker with royal blue eyes and a tempered smile, happens to sit at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a yearlong journey from a Wall Street secretarial pool toward the upper echelons of New York society and the executive suites of Condé Nast - rarefied environs where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve.
Wooed in turn by a shy, principled multi-millionaire, and an irrepressible Upper East Side ne'er-do-well, befriended by a single-minded widow who is ahead of her time, and challenged by an imperious mentor, Katey experiences firsthand the poise secured by wealth and station and the failed aspirations that reside just below the surface. Even as she waits for circumstances to bring Tinker back into her life, she begins to realize how our most promising choices inevitably lay the groundwork for our regrets.
The millions of readers of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of compromise which operate at the heart of modern marriages.
\nIn Towles’s novel, Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September, 1938, with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood” describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself - and others - in the midst of Hollywood’s golden age.
\nThroughout the stories, two characters often find themselves sitting across a table for two where the direction of their futures may hinge upon what they say to each other next.
A hotshot hedge fund employee must risk everything to save his job - and his life - in this timely and darkly funny thriller about race, power, and the corrupting influence of the almighty dollar.
\nAli “Al” Jafar is a rising star at notorious hedge fund Prism Capital, but fortunes change fast on Wall Street. When his biggest investment goes up in smoke, Al loses $300 million - and his fragile sense of self-worth - in a single afternoon. He’s certain he’ll be fired, but Prism’s obscenely rich and politically connected founder isn’t that merciful. Instead, he gives Al an impossible ultimatum: recover the lost money in three months or become the fall guy for the government’s insider-trading investigation into the firm.
\nDepressed and desperate, Al turns to high finance’s dark side, where he battles back-stabbing coworkers and cutthroat competitors and digs himself into an even deeper hole. As the clock winds down, and the pressure mounts, Al’s mental health deteriorates. To survive, he’ll have to outfox one of the world’s most powerful men and decide if he values the dearest asset of all: himself.
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Hilarious, jaw-dropping, and heartfelt stories from New York City’s premier “house-call veterinarian” that take you into the exclusive penthouses and 4-star hotel rooms of the wealthiest New Yorkers and show that, when it comes to their pets, they are just as neurotic as any of us.
\nWhen a pet is sick, people - even the rich and famous - are at their most authentic and vulnerable. They could have a Monet on the wall and an Oscar on the shelf, but if their cat gets a cold, all they want to talk about are snotty noses and sneezing fits. That’s when they call premier in-home veterinarian Dr. Amy Attas.
\nIn Pets and the City , Dr. Attas shares all the shocking, heartbreaking, and life-affirming experiences she’s faced throughout her 30-year career - like the time she saw a naked Cher (no, her rash was not the same as her puppy’s); when she met a skilled service dog who, after his exam was finished, left the room and returned with a checkbook in his mouth; and when she saved the life of a retired, agoraphobic Hollywood producer during a monthly treatment for his cat, Amos. In these moments Dr. Attas noticed key insights about animal, and human, nature - like how humans attach to one another through their love of animals, or how animals don’t have pride, ego, or vanity that their humans seem to value so much, sometimes to their detriment.
\nTo Dr. Attas, she doesn’t just heal animals. She witnesses how they and their humans help and heal each other, and how the special bond between pet and owner might actually make us better people.
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Immigrating alone from Paris to New York after the crucible of World War II, young Gazala becomes friends with two spirited sisters, Anne and Alma. When Gazala’s lost, beloved brother, Samir, joins her in Manhattan, this contentious, inseparable foursome makes their way into the twenty-first century, becoming the beating heart of a multigenerational found family.
\nThe decades are marked by the business of everyday life and the inevitable surprises of erupting passions, of great and small waves of joy and despair, from the beginning of life, to its end. Gazala and Samir make a home together, Anne leaves her husband for his sister, and Anne’s restless daughter grows up to raise a child on her own and join a throuple, becoming who she wants to be.
\nThrough it all, and the tumult of these decades, the four friends, and their best beloveds, stand by one another, protecting, annoying and celebrating each other, steadfastly unapologetic about their desires and the unorthodox family they have created. As the next generation falls in and out of love, experiencing life's triumphs, mistakes and disappointments, the central pillars of their lives are the indomitable people they call “the Greats”.
\nIn I’ll Be Right Here, Amy Bloom embraces the complexity and richness of humanity, the lawlessness of love, bringing her trademark voice, wry humor, and compassionate eye to the many, often mysterious ways we live as we love, and hope to be loved in return.
This powerful memoir by New York Times bestselling author Amy Bloom is an illuminating story of two people whose love leads them to find a courageous way to part - and of a woman's struggle to go forward in the face of loss.
\nAmy Bloom began to notice changes in her husband, Brian: He retired early from a new job he loved; he withdrew from close friendships; he talked mostly about the past. Suddenly, it seemed there was a glass wall between them, and their long walks and talks stopped. Their world was altered forever when an MRI confirmed what they could no longer ignore: Brian had Alzheimer's disease.
\nForced to confront the truth of the diagnosis and its impact on the future he had envisioned, Brian was determined to die on his feet, not live on his knees. Supporting each other in their last journey together, Brian and Amy made the unimaginably difficult and painful decision to go to Dignitas, an organisation based in Switzerland that empowers a person to end their own life with dignity and peace.
\nIn this heartbreaking and surprising memoir, Bloom sheds light on a part of life we so often shy away from discussing - its ending. Written in Bloom's captivating, insightful voice and with her trademark wit and candor, In Love is an unforgettable portrait of a beautiful marriage, and a boundary-defying love.
Lorena Hickok meets Eleanor Roosevelt in 1932 while reporting on Franklin Roosevelt's first presidential campaign. Having grown up worse than poor in South Dakota and reinvented herself as the most prominent woman reporter in America, \"Hick,\" as she's known to her friends and admirers, is not quite instantly charmed by the idealistic, patrician Eleanor.
\nBut then, as her connection with the future first lady deepens into intimacy, what begins as a powerful passion matures into a lasting love, and a life that Hick never expected to have. She moves into the White House, where her status as \"first friend\" is an open secret, as are FDR's own lovers. After she takes a job in the Roosevelt administration, promoting and protecting both Roosevelts, she comes to know Franklin not only as a great president but as a complicated rival and an irresistible friend, capable of changing lives even after his death.
\nThrough it all, even as Hick's bond with Eleanor is tested by forces both extraordinary and common, and as she grows as a woman and a writer, she never loses sight of the love of her life.
It’s 10 p.m. on a Thursday in the spring of her freshman year of college, and April is standing at the back of a crowded Manhattan bar waiting for her friend, Rudy, to arrive. Their eyes lock the moment he enters the room, and in an instant, lives and legacies are altered forever.
\nWithin hours, Rudy is arrested. Within days, April is expelled. Within weeks, he’s incarcerated. And within months, she meets Peter, a prodigious young attorney who makes her world recognisable again.
\nNearly fifteen years later, April is happily living in Chicago married to Peter, a mother of three with a fulfilling career and standing yoga date with her girlfriends. On the eve of Peter’s election for local office, Rudy is up for parole. Headlines explode about April’s past, jeopardising Peter’s campaign and everything they hold dear. Suddenly, April is faced with an impossible choice: Protect the life she created, or the person who sacrificed everything to make that life a possibility.
After five years, the town of Steadfall is slowly getting stronger. As she struggles to retain control, however, Asher finds that her authority is starting to fade. And then, just as all seems lost, three strangers arrive and offer their help. One in particular, Harold, seems to know exactly what Steadfall - and Asher - need the most.
\nMeanwhile, Iris sets out to explore the island. Searching for a supposedly long-lost town, one that pre-dates Steadfall, she comes face-to-face with a startling reminder of the island's savagery. Soon the entire island is on the brink of war, but Asher's ability to fight is compromised as she starts to receive terrifying glimpses of an old life that was wiped from her mind.
When a boat arrives off the island's coast, Iris discovers that its occupant is an important figure from the mainland. But why would anyone risk such a dangerous journey, and what is the mysterious stranger's connection to Asher?
\nSoon, the new arrival is followed by more visitors. Two opposing armies, each determined to get the upper hand, stake their positions on the beach and before long the future of the island itself is in doubt. With Steadfall under attack, Iris realises that Asher holds the key to the island's future. But Asher has been dead for years.
\nOr at least, that's what everyone thinks. Including Asher's young daughter Nissa.
Twelve years ago, rookie cop Joanna Mason was nearly killed by serial killer Sam Gazade. Now, just as Gazade is about to be executed for his crimes, a copycat emerges, replicating each grizzly murder in excruciating detail.
\nNow a thirtysomething police veteran, Mason has a reputation for making brilliant, instinctive deductions during investigations. However, her skills have been dulled by the cocktail of drugs she's taking as part of her chemotherapy program. Stricken by cancer, Mason must make a choice: either she continues with her treatment and lets her mind become fuzzy, or she stops taking the drugs and tries to track down the copycat killer before more people die.
\nMeanwhile, Sam Gazade sits in a prison cell, awaiting his execution. His long-lost diary seems to have resurfaced, providing a perfect playbook for the copycat. Will Mason risk a visit to see Gazade after so many years? Does an emotionally unstable student have a deadly secret? And is the copycat killer out to honor Gazade . . . or to disprove his misogynistic views about women's ability to kill?
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Arrested for a crime she didn't commit, Iris soon discovers that she already has a long criminal record she never knew about. When her world comes crashing down, she makes the ultimate choice and invokes her right to be sent to the island.
\nThere, she quickly discovers the horrors of a land where anyone can do anything they want, free of all rules and laws. She also meets Asher, a mysterious girl with a dark past and a crazy plan to establish her own town in the midst of the island's chaos. First, though, they both have to face a deadly group with a taste for human flesh.
All vampires most certainly do NOT look the same!
\nBeth Cooper is the modern type of vampire. After 300 years she's got life pretty much figured out. She runs a popular seaside pub in a small English town, she does whatever she wants . . . and nobody has a clue that she was actually born on a remote farm in the year 1698.
\nSomething has been dislodged from the seabed. Something ancient. Something cursed. Something that was dropped down there many years ago for a very good reason. And as the sun rises on the morning after the storm, pieces of wood are found scattered across the beach.
\nEzekiel's prison has been shattered. He's the old type of vampire. Vicious. Cruel. Tyrannical. He plays by a very different set of rules, and he's utterly horrified to find out what has happened to his species. Beth is everything he hates and more, and he quickly decides that he's going to put things right. He has peasants to slaughter back home, but first he's going to stick around for just long enough to grind Beth into dust.
\nSoon the stage is set for two very different monsters to face one another down. There can only be one survivor, and Beth quickly realizes that her carefree existence might be coming to an end. When her back's against the wall, will she be able to summon some 'old school' vampire energy? Or have three centuries of easy living smoothed all of that from her for good?
Janet, Anna, and Gemma lead separate lives, each ground down by the weight of the world they were born into, lost against the dazzling pixelated backdrop of the city. Too young to remember life before the iPhone 4, they think the real world was destroyed long before they were born.
\nJanet is an underpaid gig therapist who spends her time as a mental health matchmaker, responding to grievance letters from faceless online avatars. Anna is a model-turned-sugar-baby who dissociates during dates with her aging daddy, hoping to save enough not for a Birkin bag, but for the water wars of the near future. And Gemma is a freshman at NYU who aspires to become an influencer, but is so haunted by a recent loss that she can’t even film one video.
\nSharp, incisive, and sparkling with dark humor, this is a novel for the age of the doomer generation. DeBellis delivers an unflinching examination of three young lives as they circle closer and closer to the drain of nihilism, climate anxiety, isolation, and grief. All Our Tomorrows is about finding yourself in a broken world, and the small but mighty decisions that can save you from leaking down the drain.
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Beatrice is a stubborn, no-nonsense astronomy professor at a small college in wine country. While working toward her tenure, she spends an inordinate amount of time avoiding Ben, an annoying librarian she believes wronged her when they were students. Their rapid-fire exchanges could almost be mistaken for chemistry, if he hadn’t done that unspeakable thing so many years ago.
\nHer younger cousin Heron is a wistful senior in college. The opposite of Beatrice, she is a hopeless romantic, pinning her hopes on a future with her boyfriend. After he proposes on a magical night at her father’s winery, Bea is worried her younger cousin is making a mistake. Heron responds to Bea’s criticism with a matchmaking scheme designed to show Bea the upside of romance.
\nBea and Ben are the subjects of a hilarious opposites attract experiment, while Heron begins to question whether marriage is the right choice. Her world comes crashing down when she is at the center of a campus scandal, reigniting anxiety from her mother’s sudden departure so many years ago.
\nAs Heron and Bea deal with the fallout from the scandal, each finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew about the best course for the future. Eventually, each woman must make a Bea between the comfortable role of merry spinster or a fulfilling partnership; Heron between marriage or reaching for a new dream.
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A dazzling piece of narrative nonfiction about land lust and the American West, The Crazies tells the story of a wind farm that triggers a 21st century range war between a struggling fifth-generation rancher and the billionaires next door.
\nBig Timber, Montana (population 1,673) is one of the windiest towns in one of the windiest states in the country. Arctic chinooks and slashing westerlies howl down from the Crazy Mountains like a pack of coyotes, nudging semi-trucks sideways on Interstate 90. Most locals learn to live with the wind. Rick Jarrett sought his fortune in it. Like his pioneer ancestors who staked their claims in the Treasure State, he believed in his right to make a living off the land - and a newly precious resource, its million-dollar wind.
\nThe trouble was, Jarrett’s neighbors were some of the wealthiest and most well-connected men in America, trophy ranchers who’d come West to enjoy magnificent mountain views, not stare at 500-foot wind turbines.
\nAnd so began an epic a wildly entertaining yarn that would pull in an ever-widening cast of characters, including a Texas oil and gas tycoon, a roguish wind prospector, a Crow activist fighting for his tribe’s rights to the mountains they hold sacred, and an Olympic athlete-turned-attorney whose path to redemption would lead to Jarrett’s wind farm. All the while, the most coveted rangeland in the West was being threatened by forces more powerful than anything one man could dwindling snowpack, record drought, raging wildfires. In time, the brawl over Crazy Mountain Wind would become a fight over the future of an iconic landscape - and the values that define us as Americans.
\nThe Crazies is a Western for a warming planet, full of cowboys and billionaires and billionaire cowboys - a real-life Yellowstone. But it’s also so much more. It’s an exquisitely reported, ruggedly beautiful elegy for a vanishing way of life, and an electrifying inquiry into what it means to love the land.
There’s something in the lake at Wren Hall.
\nAt least, that’s what the locals say. Not that Meg cares much about the rumors. When she’s asked to spend Halloween weekend at the Ireland retreat of the wealthy Wren twins, she recognises the invitation for exactly what it her last, and only, chance to save her spot at Greyscott’s, the exclusive British art school she attended on scholarship until last summer. Clever, beautiful, and talented, the twins are the pride of Greyscott’s, and kindhearted Lottie Wren was once Meg’s closest friends. But not anymore.
\nNone of Meg’s old friend group have talked to her since she left school - and they especially don’t talk about the incident that resulted in her suspension. Now, Meg is willing to do whatever it takes to earn their forgiveness.
\nBut Wren Hall turns out to be far from the idyllic country manor Meg was expecting. The house is damp and drafty, the mirrors are all covered, and the weed-choked lake is at the center of legends that haunt the property to this day - a tainted legacy the estate seems unable to shake.
\nThe truth is, people aren’t the only ones who keep secrets. Places can keep them too - and Wren Hall is drowning in them. When the past bleeds into the present and ancient sins rise to the surface, Meg must ask herself how well she really knows her one-time best friends . . . or whether any of them will survive the weekend.
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Newly widowed Shelby Wright has left the Portland suburbs for a new life on Washington’s San Juan Island to fulfill her late husband’s dying wish. Running the shuttered Captain Merrick Inn, where they’d honeymooned twenty years before, is also a chance for Shelby to prove she can go it solo. Miles from home and her young adult son, Shelby is ready to finally acknowledge to herself that she is gay. But becoming the person she’s hidden away for so long isn’t going to be easy.
\nAs Shelby renovates and rebrands the inn, she meets charismatic winemaker Holly Caster. Their fast connection challenges Shelby to confront her emerging identity and lingering attachment not only to her husband, whom she loved, but to the best friend she left behind. When Shelby is welcomed by a supportive group of local queer women dubbed “the San Juan Sisters,” she’s on her way to making a professional venture - and a long-awaited personal quest - come true.
\nBoth she and the inn may be in need of a little TLC, but Shelby is about to find love and purpose in the most unexpected places.
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Swallow, daughter, pull them in, those words that sit upon your lips. Lock them deep inside your soul, hide them ‘til they’ve time to grow. Close your mouth upon the power, curse not, cure not, ‘til the hour. You won’t speak and you won’t tell, you won’t call on heaven or hell. You will learn and you will thrive. Silence, daughter. Stay alive.
\nThe day my mother was killed, she told my father I wouldn’t speak again, and she told him if I died, he would die too. Then she predicted the king would sell his soul and lose his son to the sky.
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My father has a claim to the throne, and he is waiting in the shadows for all of my mother’s words to come to pass. He wants desperately to be king, and I just want to be free.
But freedom will require escape, and I’m a prisoner of my mother’s curse and my father’s greed. I can’t speak or make a sound, and I can’t wield a sword or beguile a king. In a land purged of enchantment, love might be the only magic left, and who could ever love . . . a bird?
Bayr of Saylok, bastard son of a powerful and jealous chieftain, is haunted by the curse once leveled by his dying mother. Bartered, abandoned, and rarely loved, she plagued the land with her words: From this day forward, there will be no daughters in Saylok.
\nRaised among the Keepers at Temple Hill, Bayr is gifted with inhuman strength. But he’s also blessed with an all-too-human heart that beats with one purpose: to protect Alba, the first girl child born in nearly two decades and the salvation for a country at risk.
\nNow the fate of Saylok lies with Alba and Bayr, whose bond grows deeper with every whisper of coming chaos. Charged with battling the enemies of their people, both within and without, Bayr is fueled further by the love of a girl who has defied the scourge of Saylok.
\nWhat Bayr and Alba don’t know is that they each threaten the king, a greedy man who built his throne on lies, murder, and betrayal. There is only one way to defend their land from the corruption that has overtaken it. By breaking the curse, they could defeat the king . . . but they could also destroy themselves.
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Someone found him in a laundry basket at the Quick Wash, wrapped in a towel, a few hours old and close to death. They called him Baby Moses when they shared his story on the ten o’clock news - the little baby left in a basket at a dingy Laundromat, born to a crack addict and expected to have all sorts of problems.
\nI imagined the crack baby, Moses, having a giant crack that ran down his body, like he’d been broken at birth. I knew that wasn’t what the term meant, but the image stuck in my mind. Maybe the fact that he was broken drew me to him from the start.
\nIt all happened before I was born, and by the time I met Moses and my mom told me all about him, the story was old news and nobody wanted anything to do with him. People love babies, even sick babies. Even crack babies. But babies grow up to be kids, and kids grow up to be teenagers. Nobody wants a messed up teenager.
\nAnd Moses was messed up. Moses was a law unto himself. But he was also strange and exotic and beautiful. To be with him would change my life in ways I could never have imagined. Maybe I should have stayed away. Maybe I should have listened. My mother warned me. Even Moses warned me. But I didn’t stay away.
\nAnd so begins a story of pain and promise, of heartache and healing, of life and death. A story of before and after, of new beginnings and never-endings. But most of all . . . a love story.
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Ambrose Young was beautiful. He was tall and muscular, with hair that touched his shoulders and eyes that burned right through you. The kind of beautiful that graced the covers of romance novels, and Fern Taylor would know. She'd been reading them since she was thirteen. But maybe because he was so beautiful he was never someone Fern thought she could have . . . until he wasn't beautiful anymore.
\nMaking Faces is the story of a small town where five young men go off to war, and only one comes back. It is the story of loss. Collective loss, individual loss, loss of beauty, loss of life, loss of identity. It is the tale of one girl's love for a broken boy and a wounded warrior's love for an unremarkable girl. This is a story of friendship that overcomes heartache, heroism that defies the common definitions, and a modern tale of Beauty and the Beast, where we discover that there is a little beauty and a little beast in all of us.
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Kjell of Jeru had always known who he was. He'd never envied his brother or wanted to be king. He was the bastard son of the late King Zoltev and a servant girl, and the ignominy of his birth had never bothered him.
\nBut there is more to a man than his parentage. More to a man than his blade, his size, or his skills, and all that Kjell once knew has shifted and changed. He is no longer simply Kjell of Jeru, a warrior defending the crown. Now he is a healer, one of the Gifted, and a man completely at odds with his power.
\nCalled upon to rid the country of the last vestiges of the Volgar, Kjell stumbles upon a woman who has troubling glimpses of the future and no memory of the past. Armed with his unwanted gift and haunted by regret, Kjell becomes a reluctant savior, beset by old enemies and new expectations. With the woman by his side, Kjell embarks upon a journey where the greatest test may be finding the man she believes him to be.
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An insidious curse is weakening the Norse kingdom of Saylok, where no daughters have been born in years. Washing up on these plagued shores is Ghisla, an orphaned stowaway nursed back to health by a blind cave dweller. Named for a mysterious god, the boy, Hod, is surrounded by prophecy. To Ghisla, he’s a cherished new friend. To Hod, the girl is even more so. For when Ghisla sings, Hod can see.
\nUnable to offer safe shelter, Hod urges Ghisla onward to become a daughter of the temple, where all the kingdom’s girl children have been gathered. But because of a magical rune, the two cannot be separated, no matter the time or the distance.
\nNow, subject to a ruthless king, Ghisla enters a desperate world of warring clan chieftains and catastrophic power struggles. Who among them can be trusted is unknowable. So are the sacrifices Ghisla and Hod must make to defeat the cursed forces that could destroy a kingdom and the fated bond between two souls.
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This book is a standalone novel featuring characters that were introduced in The Law of Moses. It is not a sequel, but it is a spin-off, and it is recommended that The Law of Moses be read first.
\nI won my first fight when I was eleven years old, and I’ve been throwing punches ever since. Fighting is the purest, truest, most elemental thing there is. Some people describe heaven as a sea of unending white. Where choirs sing and loved ones await. But for me, heaven was something else. It sounded like the bell at the beginning of a round, it tasted like adrenaline, it burned like sweat in my eyes and fire in my belly. It looked like the blur of screaming crowds and an opponent who wanted my blood.
\nFor me, heaven was the octagon.
\nUntil I met Millie, and heaven became something different. I became something different. I knew I loved her when I watched her stand perfectly still in the middle of a crowded room, people swarming, buzzing, slipping around her, her straight dancer’s posture unyielding, her chin high, her hands loose at her sides. No one seemed to see her at all, except for the few who squeezed past her, tossing exasperated looks at her unsmiling face. When they realised she wasn’t normal, they hurried away. Why was it that no one saw her, yet she was the first thing I saw?
\nIf heaven was the octagon, then she was my angel at the center of it all, the girl with the power to take me down and lift me up again. The girl I wanted to fight for, the girl I wanted to claim. The girl who taught me that sometimes the biggest heroes go unsung and the most important battles are the ones we don’t think we can win.
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New York, 1960: For Benny Lament, music is his entire life. With his father’s deep ties to the mob, the Bronx piano man has learned that love and family can get you in trouble. So he keeps to himself, writing songs for other musicians, avoiding the spotlight . . . until the night his father brings him to see Esther Mine sing.
Esther is a petite powerhouse with a gorgeous voice. And when Benny writes a hit song and performs it with her, their collaboration thrusts the duo onto the national stage . . . and stirs up old issues and new scrutiny that the mob - and Benny - would rather avoid.
It would be easier to walk away. But the music and the woman are too hard for the piano man to resist. Benny’s songs and Esther’s vocals are an explosive combination, a sound that fans can’t get enough of. But though America might love the music they make together, some people aren’t ready for Benny Lament and Esther Mine on - or off - the stage.
Anne Gallagher grew up enchanted by her grandfather’s stories of Ireland. Heartbroken at his death, she travels to his childhood home to spread his ashes. There, overcome with memories of the man she adored and consumed by a history she never knew, she is pulled into another time.
The Ireland of 1921, teetering on the edge of war, is a dangerous place in which to awaken. But there Anne finds herself, hurt, disoriented, and under the care of Dr. Thomas Smith, guardian to a young boy who is oddly familiar. Mistaken for the boy’s long-missing mother, Anne adopts her identity, convinced the woman’s disappearance is connected to her own.
As tensions rise, Thomas joins the struggle for Ireland’s independence and Anne is drawn into the conflict beside him. Caught between history and her heart, she must decide whether she’s willing to let go of the life she knew for a love she never thought she’d find. But in the end, is the choice actually hers to make?
ELLY
Elly is running. Pregnant and still in her wedding dress, she flees the cottage that her new husband has rented for their wedding night. Because he’s not what people think he is - and she knows that, one day, he’ll hurt her in a way she can’t fix. Freezing and lost in the dead of night, Elly begins to lose hope.
A woman in the woods alone is never the beginning of the story. It’s usually the end.
\nSo, when a beautiful house appears out of nowhere and a woman beckons her inside, it almost feels too good to be true.
\nWelcome to Hex a refuge, a home, a sanctuary. A place that can only be found by those who truly need it; a place that promises to teach Elly how to access a power more incredible - and more terrifying - than anything she could have imagined.
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SIOBHAN
Four years after Siobhan meets Elly at Hex House, her life is in ruins. Once a promising filmmaker invited to the house to make a documentary with her brother, Theo, she’s given up on her dream after witnessing unspeakable horrors there. Now, she spends her time drinking too much, toying with an older man in increasingly dangerous ways, and trying to get Theo to speak to her again. She ignores the scar on her stomach that never fully heals.
That is, until someone reaches out with news about Hex House that could change everything.
\nAnd Siobhan knows, deep down, that she was always destined to return.
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It’s 1990 and seventeen-year-old Marley West is blazing into the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. A perpetual loner, she seeks a place at someone’s table and a family of her own. The first thing she sees when she arrives in town is three men standing on a rooftop. Their silhouettes blot out the sun.
\nThe Joseph brothers become Marley’s whole world before she can blink. Soon, she is young wife to one, The One Who Got Away to another, and adopted mother to them all. As their own mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego, Marley steps in to shepherd these unruly men.
\nYears later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface and suddenly the family’s survival hangs in the balance. With Marley as their light, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they’ve always known - or whether together they can build something stronger in its place.
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On a lush mountaintop trapped in time, two women vow to protect each other at all costs-and one young girl must defy her father to survive.
An hour from the closest West Virginia mining town, fifteen-year-old Wren Bird lives in a cloistered mountain cabin with her parents. They have no car, no mailbox, and no visitors-except for her mother's lifelong best friend. Every Sunday, Wren's father delivers winding sermons in an abandoned gas station, where he takes up serpents and praises the Lord for his blighted white eye, proof of his divinity and key to the hold he has over the community, over Wren and her mother.
But over the course of one summer, a miracle performed by Wren's father quickly turns to tragedy. As the order of her world begins to shatter, Wren must uncover the truth of her father's mysterious legend and her mother's harrowing history and complex bond with her best friend. And with that newfound knowledge, Wren can imagine a different future for herself than she has been told to expect.
Rich with epic love and epic loss, and diving deep into a world that is often forgotten but still part of America, Shiner reveals the hidden story behind two generations' worth of Appalachian heartbreak and resolve. Amy Jo Burns brings us a smoldering, taut debut novel about modern female myth-making in a land of men-and one young girl who must ultimately open her eyes.
Young folk singer Elle Harlow reaches the height of her prowess in 1973, with two wildly beloved albums to her name and a hidden history of impossible heartbreak. When she sets foot on the famed Grand Ole Opry stage, a far cry from the mountain that raised her, Elle gives the biggest performance of her life. Then, to the dismay of shocked fans, her producer, and the man who still loves her, she vanishes.
\nAlmost two decades later, eighteen-year-old Marijohn Shaw is spending her summer pumping gas, writing songs on her broken mandolin, and longing for a mother. Her father, Abe, has always sworn he was the last person to see Elle Harlow alive, but when a meteor strikes the woods of their sleepy Pennsylvania town and a piece of Elle’s past emerges from the wreckage, the truth of her disappearance sets fire to everything Marijohn believes about herself, her music, and her ability to love with abandon.
\nWait for Me exalts the lush hills of Appalachia and the bright lights of Nashville as it reveals the legacy of Elle Harlow, the bold voice that defined her, the intimate betrayal that undid her, and the unexpected faith of another young woman determined to resurrect her.
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Marin Haggerty, the daughter of a notorious serial killer, was only a child when they arrested her father. Ripped from her home and given a new identity, Marin disappeared.
\nTwenty years later, Gwen Tanner keeps everyone at a distance, preferring to satirise the world around her than participate in it. It’s for her safety - and theirs. But when someone starts sending body parts to her front door, the message is I Know Who You Are.
\nTo preserve her secrets, Gwen must hunt down the killer, a journey which immerses her in the twisted world of true crime fandom and makes her confront her past once and for all. Maybe she is capable of deep, human connections, but she’s not the only one keeping secrets. Will opening herself up to others help her find the killer, or remind her why it was necessary she hide her true self in the first place?
\nThe apple never falls too far, after all.
Binsa is a “living goddess,” chosen by the gods to dispense both mercy and punishment from her place on the Scarlet Throne. But her reign hides a deadly secret. Rather than channeling the wisdom of an immortal deity, she harbors a demon.
\nBut now her priests are growing suspicious. When a new girl, Medha, is selected to take over her position, Binsa and her demon strike a deal: To magnify his power and help her wrest control from the priests, she will sacrifice human lives. She’ll do anything not to end up back on the streets, forgotten and alone. But how much of her humanity is she willing to trade in her quest for power? Deals with demons are rarely so simple.
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A group of siblings captured in an iconic beach photo reunite on a sunny California island, where they're forced to face the fallout of their unconventional upbringing - and the golden secret that has been simmering ever since . . .
\nIt's 1980s California, and everyone's dreaming of the endless sun-drenched beaches, infinite waves, and most of all, beautiful, beautiful freedom. For the Merrick siblings, this idyllic vision is their reality, as they travel up and down the coast with their parents in a van year-round, surfing and swimming their days away. But when a photographer secretly snaps a stunning photo of the family with their boards in the sand, and the image ripples across the country, the only life they've ever known is put at risk.
\nDecades after, the now-distant siblings gather on a gorgeous, wild island to honor their late father. But their reunion is complicated when a journalist, eager for the truth behind the famous photo, discovers their identity and tracks them down. As the siblings reckon with the possibility that more of their lives could be shared, a revelation about their past forces them to confront long-held heartaches. Together, they'll have to decide whether to let the same tensions rip them apart again - or if telling their story on their own terms might just be the way to recapture the family magic.
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Graduate student Bree Sanders is failing the one class she needs to get her degree. So when her professor gives her an ultimatum - ace her dissertation or risk having to repeat her final semester - she knows she has to pull out all the stops. After scrambling for an idea, she decides to create her own Ghost Club, a club that blames ghosts for unsolved crimes, the same type of club originally founded two centuries ago by Charles Dickens.
\nWhat she doesn’t expect is to find an original copy of one of Dickens’ early works, or to be transplanted into Dickens’s actual ghost club meeting, circa 1870, the instant she picks it up.
\nWhen Bree shows up in nineteenth-century England wearing cut-offs and an old t-shirt, her only option is to hide. The Cambridge of 1870 won’t look kindly on a woman dressed like her. So, when Theodore Keyes finds her tucked behind a bookcase at the Trinity College library and immediately demands to know where she came from, she knows he doesn’t belong here either. Turns out she’s right; the same book caused him to time-travel from 1947 almost three months ago and he’s been stuck in England since.
\n\n
Together, the two vow to work side-by-side in their search for the lost book that will take them home. But as their feelings for one another deepen, Theo and Bree are caught between a desire to return to the lives they each left behind, and the knowledge that if they find the book, they won’t be able to leave together.
\n\n
In the end, they each must decide which sacrifice is worth making - the one that will cost them their hearts, or the one that could cost them their very existence.
For newly published author Eliza Sterling, having her first book launch party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a dream come true. Since her book is a modern-day retelling of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and the Met is hosting a display of rarely seen Dickens’ artifacts at the same time, she chalks it up to a case of good timing.
\nFor publicly disgraced, former best-selling author Lew McDonnell, seeing a debut author having her first book launch party at the Met brings up all sorts of resentments. Especially when the book this lady is promoting just happens to be one of his old manuscripts that she’s clearly plagiarised and claimed for herself.
\nWhen heated words are exchanged in front of a display case containing an original copy of Great Expectations, both Lew and Eliza are prepared for a fight. But they aren’t prepared for the room to shake, for the display case to shatter, or for the old book to send them both careening toward a new existence entirely.
\nWhen Lew wakes up on the floor of the Charles Dickens museum in London to see Eliza working there as a tour guide, he knows something has gone horribly wrong. It’s the same day and time, but suddenly he’s the best-selling author headlining his own book launch again, and Eliza is serving him drinks and working all hours to make ends meet. And the weirdest thing of all?
\nLew is the only one who remembers their former lives.
For years, the town of Silver Bell, Arkansas has quietly mourned the hospital fire that claimed the lives of nine of its residents - the town doctor, a young expectant mother, and seven infants. So, when journalist Finn Hardwick is assigned the story as part of a national thirtieth anniversary memorial service, he arrives at the town ready to interview its residents, thinking they’ll be ready to share and eager to make headlines.
\nHe isn’t prepared for the resistance. Or for what appears to be a collective unwillingness to answer his questions.
\nFaced with one roadblock after another, Finn enlists the help of Billi Ellis, the young motel receptionist that everyone in the town seems to like. Maybe she can get them to open up to him. Maybe she can help him make sense of everything he keeps uncovering. Especially the unexpected tie this tragedy appears to have to his own life.
\nA tie that leads him directly to the old woman who seems to hold the key to everything. The woman everyone avoids . . . the woman they call “dirty” . . . the woman who hasn’t spoken a word to anyone since the day the hospital burned.
It’s 1973: summer of the Watergate hearings and Skylab’s launch into space when 12-year-old Z discovers an unclassified slime mold growing in her Louisiana backyard. Something compels her deep coherence with this magical creature - until an incident with a serial killer at the lake disrupts their connection.
\nBoth mystifying and metaphorical, Yellow becomes a guiding force for her brother Clem, a New Orleans seeker. As years pass, Z tries to recover what life has taught her to forget.
\nA multi-threaded novel, Yellow weaves fact, physics, space exploration, and philosophy to create a transcendent reading experience.
Max Van Doren has a wish list, and a great career and a girlfriend are at the top. But despite being pretty good at her job as an assistant to one of Hollywood’s fastest rising talent agents, she has no idea how to move up the ladder. And when it comes to her love life, she’s stuck in perpetual lust for an adorably perfect bartender named Sadie. Her goals are clear - and Max has everything but the self-confidence to go for them. Even her mother seems to assume she’ll be crawling home to her childhood bedroom at some point . . .
\nWhen Max’s roommate, Chelsey - an irritatingly gorgeous and self-assured influencer in plus-size and queer spaces - offers to sponsor her for a new self-actualisation app, Max gives in. If she can’t run her own life, maybe an algorithm guiding her choices will help? Suddenly Max is scoring big everywhere, and her dreams are achingly close to coming true.
\nBut when one of Chelsey’s posts reveals Sadie’s part in the app’s campaign, Max is poised for heartbreak on all fronts. Tired of the sponcon life with its fake friends and endless selfies, Max realises that to have true influence, she’ll have to find the courage to make her own, totally authentic way in the world . . .
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Since a crushing breakup three years ago, Nina Rice has written romance, friends, her dreams of scriptwriting for TV, and even LA proper out of her life. Instead, she’s safely out in the suburbs in her aunt’s condo working her talent agency job from home, managing celebrity email accounts, and certain that’s plenty of writing - and plot - for her life. But a surprise meeting called by Ari Fox, a young actress on everyone’s radar, stirs up all kinds of feelings Nina thought she’d deleted for good . . .
\nAri is sexy, out and proud, and a serious control freak, according to Nina’s boss. She has her own ideas about how Nina should handle her emails - and about getting to know her ghostwriter. When she tells Nina she should be writing again, Nina suddenly finds it less scary to revisit her abandoned life than seriously consider that Ari is flirting with her. Between reconnecting with her old crew and working on a new script, a relationship with a movie star seems like something she’ll definitely mess up - but what could be more worth the risk?
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Hollywood actor Tess Gardner is not the kind of famous she set out to be. She's ready to show she’s more than Princess Platinum of the Vindicators series, a pretty face with CGI superpowers that literally sparkle. Tess wants to prove herself as an actor and that means theatre - the true calling of her thespian heart. But just when Tess lands a part working with an acclaimed stage director, a brewing scandal forces him out. His replacement? None other than hip, buzzy director Rebecca Frisch. The same Rebecca Frisch whose heart a firmly closeted Tess broke over a decade ago during summer stock . . .
\nAs Tess wrestles with her lingering guilt and attraction to Rebecca, she also finds herself struggling to rein in her superstar status backstage. When things unexpectedly reignite with Rebecca, Tess bristles even more against the walls of her A-list life. Since the industry’s made it clear that girl-next-door superheroes can’t also be gay, coming out isn’t realistic for Tess. And ultimately, Rebecca will head back to New York and likely seek out a less complicated relationship anyway.
\nWill the curtain close on her chance for happiness or will Tess finally take a leading role in her own life?
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Lydia Jones and her younger sister Penny have had it with boy drama. Last year was marred by relationship disasters for both of them, threatening Lydia’s standing with her school’s theater tech club and Penny’s perfect GPA. Penny has, naturally, diagnosed the problem and prescribed a drastic solution: a summer off from boys.
\nLydia and Penny decide to stay with their Aunt Grace and her boyfriend Oscar in Los Angeles while their parents are off on a European cruise. Penny follows her future-business-school dreams with an internship at Oscar’s office, and Lydia gets a part-time job at Grace’s neighborhood coffeeshop, Grounds Control.
\nEven when they spent hours, days, weeks dissecting their various boy drama, Lydia’s never felt this connected to her sister before, and it makes her wonder what else in her life could be different. She finds herself drawn to a group of friends she meets through her Grounds Control coworker, Margaret, as well as an intriguing customer, Fran, an aspiring filmmaker and - while not the first girl Lydia finds herself attracted to - the first girl who has mutual feelings for her.
\nBut she’s not breaking her pledge to Penny, right? That was just about boys. Even though in her heart Lydia knows she’s bending the rules, she hasn’t had a connection with anyone as strong as her connection with Fran, so she thinks it can’t be wrong. And Penny won’t mind as long as she’s happy . . . Right?
\n
Fresh off breaking up with her boyfriend and swerving away from the conventional, TikTok-ready married life she never wanted, Clementine is ready to explore the alternatives. Not that she wants to be single forever, much less die alone. But at thirty-six, it’s time for her to experience new things - including in her love life. And though an invitation to a fake relationship to appease family sounds like a recipe for disaster, Clem finds herself saying yes to smart, spirited dog groomer Chloe Lee anyway . . .
\nChloe is long past her own baby gay era, but even before they’ve tackled Clem’s parents’ anniversary party and Chloe’s friend’s wedding, the two of them end up spending a lot of time together. As the attraction between them grows stronger, it all begins to feel pretty real to Clem. Chloe, however, is fine as just friends - plus she’s convinced Clem is just eager for “someone” to take her off the singles list.
\nHow to persuade her otherwise? After all, Clem is starting to realise her life is wonderfully full and being “alone” doesn’t scare her a bit. Still, being without the tiny powerhouse that is Chloe, specifically? That’s a whole other story . . .
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In the Cyrilian Empire, Affinites are reviled. Their varied gifts to control the world around them are unnatural - dangerous. And Anastacya Mikhailov, the crown princess, has a terrifying secret. Her deadly Affinity to blood is her curse and the reason she has lived her life hidden behind palace walls.
When Ana’s father, the emperor, is murdered, her world is shattered. Framed as his killer, Ana must flee the palace to save her life. And to clear her name, she must find her father’s murderer on her own. But the Cyrilia beyond the palace walls is far different from the one she thought she knew. Corruption rules the land, and a greater conspiracy is at work - one that threatens the very balance of her world. And there is only one person corrupt enough to help Ana get to its core: Ramson Quicktongue.
A cunning crime lord of the Cyrilian underworld, Ramson has sinister plans - though he might have met his match in Ana. Because in this story, the princess might be the most dangerous player of all.
The Red Tigress, Ana Mikhailov, has returned to Cyrilia, but the country she once called home has fallen under a dark rule. Across the land, the Empress Morganya is tightening her grip on Affinites and non-Affinites alike.
\nAna dealt a blow to the Empress when she and her allies turned back Morganya's troops, but she couldn't stop Morganya from gaining possession of a dangerous new weapon with the power to steal Affinities.
\nAna's forces are scattered, and her alliance with the rebel group, the Red Cloaks, is becoming more frayed by the day. What's worse, she's lost her Affinity to blood and without it, Ana barely knows who she is anymore - or if she has the strength to defeat Morganya.
\nMorganya's reign of terror is close to crushing the nation Ana was born to rule. And now Ana will finally face the sinister empress, but will she survive? Will anyone? And will her Empire welcome her back to the throne, or turn her out to survive on her own.
\nThe Affinites and Non-Affinites of Cyrilia will determine Ana's future, if Morganya doesn't kill her first.
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Years ago, the Elantian colonisers invaded Lan's homeland and killed her mother in their search to uncover the Last Kingdom's greatest the location of its legendary four Demon Gods. Lan's mother devoted her life to destroying the Demon Gods, and Lan is determined to finish her mission. Yet, there are others searching for the gods, too.
\nZen knew his soul was forfeit the moment he made a deal with the Demon God known as the Black Tortoise, but he's willing to lose himself if it means saving the Kingdom - and the girl - he loves. But to crush the colonisers who have invaded his land he needs more power than even a single Demon God can provide. He needs an army. And he knows exactly where he can find it - in the undead army his great grandfather lead decades ago.
\nThe Elantians may have stolen their throne, but the battle for the Last Kingdom has only begun.
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The mó - beautiful, ravenous demons who drink the souls of mortals - roam free and they will not cease until all the realms fall to darkness. Àn’yīng must risk everything to stop them.
\nBut a betrayal has turned the tides of this war: her handsome rival from the Immortality Trials and the man she was falling in love with, Yù’chén, is now the enemy. Yù’chén is half mó - his mother is the Demon Queen of the Kingdom of Night, and the monster responsible for killing Àn’yīng’s father.
\nÀn’yīng’s one hope is the boy in the jade - her lifelong guardian and heir to the last mortal Emperor - Hào’yáng. Together, they must join forces to rally an army that stretches across realms, from the Four Seas of the Dragons to the Phoenixes of the Golden Desert.
\nBut first Àn’yīng must awaken the immortal power slumbering in her own veins . . .
\n
Ana Mikhailov is the only surviving member of the royal family of Cyrilia. She has no army, no title, and no allies, and now she must find a way to take back the throne or risk the brutal retribution of the empress. Morganya is determined to establish a new world order on the spilled blood of non-Affinites. Ana is certain that Morganya won't stop until she kills them all.
Ana's only chance at navigating the dangerous world of her homeland means partnering with Ramson Quicktongue again. But the cunning crime lord has schemes of his own. For Ana to find an army, they must cross the Whitewaves to the impenetrable stone forts of Bregon. Only, no one can be certain what they will find there.
A dark power has risen. Will revolution bring peace - or will it only paint the streets in more blood.
In a world invaded by demons, one girl will face the ultimate test when she is forced to enter into an ancient, deadly competition for the chance to save her mother's soul . . . before she loses her forever.
\nNine years ago, the war between the Kingdom of Night and the Kingdom of Rivers tore Àn’yīng’s family apart, leaving her mother barely alive and a baby sister to fend for. Now the mortal realm is falling into eternal night, and mó - beautiful, ravenous demons - roam the land, feasting on the flesh of humans and drinking their souls.
\nÀn’yīng is no longer a helpless child, though. Armed with her crescent blades and trained in the ancient art of practitioning, she has decided to enter the Immortality Trials, which are open to any mortal who can survive the journey to the immortal realm. Those who complete the Trials are granted a pill of eternal life - the one thing Àn’yīng knows can heal her dying mother. But to attain the prize, she must survive the competition.
\nDeath is common in the Trials. Yet oddly, Àn’yīng finds that someone is helping her stay alive. A rival contestant. Powerful and handsome, Yù’chén is as secretive about his past as he is about his motives for protecting Àn’yīng.
\nThe longer she survives the Trials, the clearer it becomes that all is not right in the immortal realm. To save her mother and herself, Àn’yīng will need to figure out whether she can truly trust the stranger she’s falling for or if he’s the most dangerous player of all . . . for herself and for all the realms.
\n
Once, Lan had a different name. Now she goes by the one the Elantian colonisers gave her when they invaded her kingdom, killed her mother, and outlawed her people’s magic. She spends her nights as a songgirl in Haak’gong, a city transformed by the conquerors, and her days scavenging for what she can find of the past. Anything to understand the strange mark burned into her arm by her mother in her last act before she died.
\nThe mark is mysterious - an untranslatable Hin character - and no one but Lan can see it. Until the night a boy appears at her teahouse and saves her life.
\nZen is a practitioner - one of the fabled magicians of the Last Kingdom. Their magic was rumored to have been drawn from the demons they communed with. Magic believed to be long lost. Now it must be hidden from the Elantians at all costs.
\nWhen Zen comes across Lan, he recognises what she is: a practitioner with a powerful ability hidden in the mark on her arm. He’s never seen anything like it - but he knows that if there are answers, they lie deep in the pine forests and misty mountains of the Last Kingdom, with an order of practitioning masters planning to overthrow the Elantian regime.
\nBoth Lan and Zen have secrets buried deep within - secrets they must hide from others, and secrets that they themselves have yet to discover. Fate has connected them, but their destiny remains unwritten. Both hold the power to liberate their land. And both hold the power to destroy the world. Now the battle for the Last Kingdom begins.
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As a sophomore, Andrea Foster doesn’t expect to earn the starting catcher position on the Alder University softball team. She’s used to blending in and leaving the spotlight for the likes of Maya Gonzalez, the team’s fiery ace pitcher. No one is more surprised than Andy when she’s named starting catcher and captain of the Alder Lions.
\nMaya was supposed to be captain, everyone says so. Instead, she’s forced to train with Andy every day, partners for everything, and she isn’t happy about it. But there’s something more than animosity building between them. Tough games, hard losses, and a memorable bus ride later, an undeniable attraction pulls Andy and Maya closer. Now they just need to rise above their differences and lead their team to the College World Series.
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It’s her first night of freshman year at Alder University, a small Catholic college tucked away in the North Georgia mountains, and Bailey Sullivan is ready to be the girl she has always dreamed of becoming: a girl who loves a boy. She quickly meets Luke, a Southern charmer who gives her hope for a traditional future. But her often destructive and messy attempts at being straight are thwarted when she falls for her far-too-female suitemate, Noelle Parker, from whom she quickly becomes inseparable.
\nBailey must traverse the rocky terrain of her friendships, her freshman year of college, and her sexuality to discover not only whom she wants to pursue, but her own identity. For Bailey, learning to be true to herself means being brave enough to let go of the limits on love that are holding her back.
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All Maggie Hyde wants is to graduate from the School of Agriculture at Alder University and settle into her legacy by taking over Hyde Hill Farm, the apple orchard that's been in her family for four generations. Well, okay, it's not all she wants. Finding someone who loves her small hometown of East Sparrow, Georgia, is high on her list of priorities, too. Who wouldn't want to fall in love and settle down?
\nOlivia Cypress, that's who. A free-spirited traveler at heart, Olivia is enjoying life way too much to limit her options, especially by settling down in nowheresville East Sparrow. But when Olivia walks into Maggie's horticulture class, she's charmed by Maggie's gorgeous smile. It's fine, though. They can't seem to agree on anything, especially farming.
\nMaggie is sure Olivia will leave, just like her mother did. Olivia is sure Maggie doesn't need a 30-year life plan. Opposites don't really attract, right?
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Emma Wilson has it all figured out. She’s the starting point guard for the Alder Lions. She’s got a post-grad job lined up. Every queer woman on campus wants her. And she’s definitely over her old flame. The one she never even got to date.
\nShe’s coasting.
\nUntil the new basketball coach arrives on campus and clearly dislikes her. So does Lake Palmer, the arrogant new player the coach brought with her. Sure, Lake’s gorgeous, and Emma wants to kiss those annoyingly enticing lips, but she plans to steal Emma’s spot. And that just can’t happen. It won’t happen. Their epic arguments are the stuff of courtside legend, but the more Lake pushes her to play better, the harder it is for Emma to resist her attraction.
\nOh, and maybe Emma’s major makes her want to rip her own hair out as much as being Lake’s teammate does. With her future anything but a slam dunk, coasting is beginning to feel a whole lot like crashing.
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Tanya Brees enjoyed an idyllic childhood in the small coastal tourist town of Coral Bay, skimboarding, racing ATVs through sandy trails, and getting into mischief with her small band of friends. Things are clear: stick with the locals and hope the high-rises don’t take over their small fishing community.
\nWhen Tanya is thirteen, Juliette Peralta walks into the restaurant at the Coral Bay Inn with her parents and catches the eye of all the teens in town, especially Tanya. Every summer Juliette spends in Coral Bay brings them closer until first love blooms. But Juliette always leaves, her parents keep acquiring property to develop in town, and Tanya can’t take it anymore. No matter how much she loves Juliette, their family values are too different, and they lose touch as adults. That is, until a hurricane forces Juliette to return to Coral Bay indefinitely.
\nWhat’s worse than still being attracted to your first crush? Realising the storm that tore you apart has gotten a lot more complicated.
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Josie Sanchez is the head winemaker at Cadieux Vineyards, and all her dreams ride on the upcoming crush. If she can produce a gold medal pinot noir, the owner will give Josie her own wine label. Finally. She’s worked years for this opportunity, and nothing will stand in her way. Not even Mac, the owner’s annoyingly beautiful niece who doesn’t know anything about wine, but whom Josie’s forced to hire as her only harvest intern. Josie can’t imagine a more ill-suited partner for the most important harvest of her life.
\nAfter a lackluster start in her marketing career, Mackenzie Layton is eager to jump headfirst into the illustrious Willamette Valley wine industry. Thanks to her uncle, her first harvest job is with one of the most prestigious wineries in town. But when she meets Josie, it’s clear her presence is a nuisance, even if she does occasionally catch Josie’s gaze lingering on her. Mac has a proclivity for misadventure, and she is unable to resist the one person who is off limits.
\nThis crush will be a messy one, indeed.
\n
Hannah works for one of the biggest liquor brands in the Northwest and is eager to prove herself and get the promotion she has been owed for so long. There’s just one annoyingly gorgeous obstacle in her way - the beloved local distiller, Alexandra Lang.
\nAlexandra isn’t afraid of a little competition. Okay, a lot of competition. Everyone knows her distillery is an homage to her late father, and she has the unwavering support of the whole community and tight-knit bar scene. Hannah’s charming sales pitch, endless legs, and big city influence don’t stand a chance. Right?
\nAmbition and passion go head-to-head as they duel for bar placements, local awards, and overall support for their products. But as sparks of friction and attraction fly, Hannah begins to suspect there might be more to small town life, and to Alexandra, than she thought.
\nLooks like the liquor will be the least of the hard stuff.
\n
Eaden is left reeling from the unexpected loss of her mother. With her first summer break from teaching on the horizon, she makes it her mission to personally deliver a letter from her late mother to her great-aunt in Cobh, Ireland. She could mail it, sure. But her mother always said a person could put physical miles between herself and her woes.
\nAnd Cobh is far. Maybe just far enough . . .
\nThe one person Eaden can’t escape - and maybe doesn’t want to escape - is Florence, her cousin Riley’s ex-girlfriend. Inconveniently, Florence ends up as Eaden’s travel partner. It’s hard to resist the one person who makes Eaden smile in her darkest times, but Riley is family and still has feelings. Given how on-again, off-again they seem to be, maybe Florence does, too.
\n\n
As the captain of Blackcastle Football Club and one of the highest-paid athletes in the game, Vincent DuBois should be on top of the world.
\nBut when his fame brings danger to his doorstep, he finds himself in his worst nightmare scenario - secretly sharing a flat with his coach’s daughter, knowing full well she’s far too big a temptation for him to resist.
\nWhen his new living arrangements escalate into a bet that throws them even closer together, he realises he’s in deeper trouble than he thought.
\nHe’s always played to win - but for her, he might just risk it all.
\n***
\nAs a sports nutritionist and the daughter of a legendary coach, Brooklyn Armstrong is used to dealing with hotshot athletes.
\nHowever, no player gets under her skin like Vincent, her best friend’s infuriatingly cocky (and gorgeous) brother. She left California hoping for a fresh start, and he’s the kind of distraction she doesn’t need.
\nNow, he’s sleeping in the room next to hers while her career is up in the air and her defenses are crumbling.
\nBut no matter how many sparks fly between them, a relationship between the captain and the coach’s daughter could never work . . . could it?
\n
She offered him $10,000 to seduce her father’s gold-digging fiancée.
\nHe countered with $15,000 and a kiss - from her. At any time he chose.
\nKris should’ve said no, but she was desperate to get rid of her stepmother-to-be, and the gorgeous actor with the wicked grin was perfect for the job.
\nSo she agreed to his terms - not knowing that doing so would cost her a lot more than money and a kiss . . .
\n—
\nHe did it for the money, which he desperately needed.
\nThe kiss was just a bonus, or so he told himself.
\nMelting an ice princess like Kris started as a challenge, but by the time Nate realized there was more to Kris than meets the eye, it was too late: he had fallen.
\nBut they’re not just from opposite sides of the track - they’re from different worlds. And when those worlds collide, Kris and Nate must decide whether they’re willing to give up what they have for what could be . . .
\n
When Farrah walked into her lunch meeting, she didn’t expect to see him.
\nBlake Ryan.
Her first love.
Her first heartbreak.
And now, her first client as a freelance interior designer.
\nIt’s been five years, but she’ll never forget the way he shattered her.
\nHe whispers pretty words, but she’ll never believe him.
\nHer body craves his, but she’ll never give him her heart.
\nNot again.
Not ever.
Money. Looks. A booming sports bar empire.
\nOn the surface, Blake has it all.
\nBut inside, he's haunted - both by nightmares of a tragic loss, and dreams of the girl he once betrayed.
\nWhen fate reunites them, he sees it as a sign:
\nIt’s time to get the love of his life back.
No matter what it takes.
She’s an aspiring interior designer who dreams of falling in love. He’s an ex-football star who thinks love is a con.
\nShe’s a virgin, and he doesn’t do virgins.
\nHe’s cocky, infuriating, and not her type.
\nShe wants the fairytale.
He wants freedom.
Blake and Farrah shouldn’t have fallen for each other the way they did: totally, completely, and irrevocably.
\nBecause they’re studying abroad in Shanghai, and they only have one year.
\nBecause forces at home threaten to rip them apart, even if they don’t know it yet.
\nAnd because, eventually, they must face the most heartbreaking lesson they’ll ever learn: sometimes, even the greatest love can’t conquer all.
\n
Olivia had a plan: MBA, Wall Street VP by thirty-two, marriage and two children (preferably twins because #efficiency).
\nNot in her plan? Losing half her belongings in an apartment flood and being forced to turn to her ex for help.
\nDefinitely not in her plan? Moving into said ex’s house and watching him walk around shirtless, bake her cupcakes, and look at her with those smoldering -
\nWait, what was she talking about again?
***
\nBetween his bakery and meddling family, Sammy had enough on his plate without bringing the ex he’d never been able to forget into the mix.
\nBut when Olivia asks for his help, he couldn’t say no. He could, however, make her regret breaking his heart - as long as he doesn’t do anything foolish, like sneak into her room and kiss her senseless . . .
\nAs passion slowly replaces their dislike for each other, Sammy and Olivia discover their past isn’t what it seems and their future is anything but certain. Can they overcome their pride and give love a second chance, or is history doomed to repeat itself?
\n
Powerful, brilliant, and ambitious, Dominic Davenport clawed his way up from nothing to become the King of Wall Street.
\nHe has everything - a beautiful home, a beautiful wife, and more money than he could spend in a lifetime. But no matter how much he accumulates, he’s never satisfied.
\nIn his endless quest for more, he drives away the only person who saw him as enough.
\nIt isn’t until she’s gone that he realises there may be more to life than riches and glory . . . but by then, it may be too late.
\n***
\nKind, intelligent, and thoughtful, Alessandra Davenport has played the role of trophy wife for years.
\nShe stood by her husband while he built an empire, but now that they’ve reached the top, she realises he’s no longer the man she fell for.
\nWhen it becomes clear that she’ll always come second to his work, she finally takes charge of her life and puts herself first - even if it means leaving the only man she’s ever loved.
\nBut what she didn’t count on was his refusal to let her go . . . or for him to fight for their marriage, no matter what it takes.
\n
Reserved, controlled, and proper to a fault, Kai Young has neither the time nor inclination for chaos - and Isabella, with her purple hair and inappropriate jokes, is chaos personified.
\nWith a crucial CEO vote looming and a media empire at stake, the billionaire heir can’t afford the distraction she brings.
\nIsabella is everything he shouldn’t want, but with every look and every touch, he’s tempted to break all his rules . . . and claim her as his own.
\n***
\nBold, impulsive, and full of life, Isabella Valencia has never met a party she doesn’t like or a man she couldn’t charm . . . except for Kai Young.
\nIt shouldn’t matter. He’s not her type - the man translates classics into Latin for fun, and his membership at the exclusive club where she bartends means he’s strictly off limits.
\nBut she can’t deny that, beneath his cool exterior, is a man who could make her melt with just a touch.
\nNo matter how hard they try, they can’t resist giving into their forbidden desires.
\nEven if it costs them everything.
\n
Charming, easygoing, and rich beyond belief, Xavier Castillo has the world at his fingertips.
\nHe also has no interest in taking over his family’s empire (much to his father’s chagrin), but that hasn’t stopped women from throwing themselves at him . . . unless the woman in question is his publicist.
\nNothing brings him more joy than riling her up, but when a tragedy forces them closer than ever, he must grapple with the uncertainty of his future - and the realisation that the only person immune to his charms is the only one he truly wants.
***
\n
Cool, intelligent, and ambitious, Sloane Kensington is a high-powered publicist who’s used to dealing with difficult clients.
However, none infuriate - or tempt - her more than a certain billionaire heir, with his stupid dimples and laid-back attitude.
\nShe may be forced to work with him, but she’ll never fall for him . . . no matter how fast he makes her heart beat or how thoughtful he is beneath his party persona.
\nHe’s her client, and that’s all he’ll ever be. Right?
\n
Ruthless. Meticulous. Arrogant.
\nDante Russo thrives on control, both personally and professionally.
\nThe billionaire CEO never planned to marry -
\nuntil the threat of blackmail forces him into an engagement with a woman he barely knows.
\nVivian Lau, jewelry heiress and daughter of his newest enemy.
\nIt doesn’t matter how beautiful or charming she is. He'll do everything in his power to destroy the evidence and their betrothal.
\nThere’s only one problem: now that he has her . . . he can't bring himself to let her go.
\n***
\nElegant. Ambitious. Well-mannered.
\nVivian Lau is the perfect daughter and her family’s ticket into the highest echelons of high society.
\nMarrying a blue-blooded Russo means opening doors that would otherwise remain closed to her new-money family.
\nWhile the rude, elusive Dante isn't her idea of a dream partner, she agrees to their arranged marriage out of duty.
\nCraving his touch was never part of the plan.
\nNeither was the worst thing she could possibly do: fall in love with her future husband.
\n
Asher Donovan is a living legend - the darling of the Premier League, the (arguably) greatest footballer in the world.
\nBut his reckless antics and recent team transfer have caused much controversy, and when his feud with his rival-turned-teammate costs them a championship, they’re forced to “bond” during off-season cross-training.
\nSurviving the summer shouldn’t be hard . . . until Asher meets their new trainer. She’s beautiful, talented, and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t take his mind off her.
\nThe only problem? She’s his rival’s sister - and completely off limits.
\n***
\nScarlett DuBois is a former prima ballerina whose career was cut short by a tragic accident.
\nNow a teacher at a prestigious dance academy but still haunted by the ghosts of her past, the last thing she wants is to spend the summer cross-training Asher Donovan, of all people .
\nShe swore she would never date a footballer, but when her brother leaves town for an emergency, she finds herself thrown into dangerously close proximity with the gorgeous, charming striker.
\n\n
Training, she can deal with. But falling in love? That’s out of the question - especially when he’s the only person with the power to break her heart.
\n
Stoic, broody, and arrogant, elite bodyguard Rhys Larsen has two rules: 1) Protect his clients at all costs 2) Do not become emotionally involved. Ever.
\nHe has never once been tempted to break those rules . . . until her.
\nBridget von Ascheberg. A princess with a stubborn streak that matches his own and a hidden fire that reduces his rules to ash. She’s nothing he expected and everything he never knew he needed.
\nDay by day, inch by inch, she breaks down his defenses until he’s faced with a truth he can no longer deny: he swore an oath to protect her, but all he wants is to ruin her. Take her.
\nBecause she’s his.
His princess.
His forbidden fruit.
His every depraved fantasy.
***
Regal, strong-willed, and bound by the chains of duty, Princess Bridget dreams of the freedom to live and love as she chooses.
\nBut when her brother abdicates, she’s suddenly faced with the prospect of a loveless, politically expedient marriage and a throne she never wanted.
\nAnd as she navigates the intricacies - and treacheries - of her new role, she must also hide her desire for a man she can’t have.
\nHer bodyguard.
Her protector.
Her ultimate ruin.
Unexpected and forbidden, theirs is a love that could destroy a kingdom . . . and doom them both.
Gorgeous, cocky, and fast on his way to becoming a hotshot doctor, Josh Chen has never met a woman he couldn't charm - except for Jules f**king Ambrose. The beautiful redhead has been a thorn in his side since they met, but she also consumes his thoughts in a way no woman ever has.
\nWhen their animosity explodes into one unforgettable night, he proposes a solution that'll get her out of his system once and for all: an enemies with benefits arrangement with simple rules.
\nNo jealousy.
No strings attached.
And absolutely no falling in love.
***
Outgoing and ambitious, Jules Ambrose is a former party girl who's focused on one thing: passing the attorney's bar exam.
\nThe last thing she needs is to get involved with a doctor who puts the SUFFER in insufferable . . . no matter how good-looking he is.
\nBut the more she gets to know him, the more she realises there's more than meets the eye to the man she's hated for so long.
\nHer best friend's brother.
Her nemesis.
And her only salvation.
Theirs is a match made in hell, and when the demons from their past catch up with them, they're faced with truths that could either save them . . . or destroy everything they've worked for.
\n\n
Charming, deadly and smart enough to hide it, Christian Harper is a monster dressed in the perfectly tailored suits of a gentleman.
\nHe has little use for morals and even less use for love, but he can't deny the strange pull he feels toward the woman living just one floor below him.
\nShe's the object of his darkest desires, the only puzzle he can't solve. And when the opportunity to get closer to her arises, he breaks his own rules to offer her a deal she can't refuse.
\nEvery monster has their weakness. She's his.
\nHis obsession. His addiction. His only exception.
***
\nSweet, shy and introverted despite her social media fame, Stella Alonso is a romantic who keeps her heart in a cage.
\nBetween her two jobs, she has little time or desire for a relationship. But when a threat from her past drives her into the arms - and house - of the most dangerous man she's ever met, she's tempted to let herself feel something for the first time in a long time.
\nBecause despite Christian's cold nature, he makes her feel everything when she's with him.
\nPassionate. Protected. Truly wanted.
\nTheirs is a love twisted with secrets and tainted by lies . . . and when the truths are finally revealed, they could shatter everything.
Alex Volkov is a devil blessed with the face of an angel and cursed with a past he can’t escape. Driven by a tragedy that has haunted him for most of his life, his ruthless pursuits for success and vengeance leave little room for matters of the heart. But when he’s forced to look after his best friend’s sister, he starts to feel something in his chest: A crack.
\nA melt.
\nA fire that could end his world as he knew it.
***
Ava Chen is a free spirit trapped by nightmares of a childhood she can’t remember. But despite her broken past, she’s never stopped seeing the beauty in the world . . . including the heart beneath the icy exterior of a man she shouldn’t want. Her brother’s best friend. Her neighbor. Her savior and her downfall.
\nTheirs is a love that was never supposed to happen - but when it does, it unleashes secrets that could destroy them both . . . and everything they hold dear.
\n
When Frida Slattery and John Reddan meet in a Dublin pub in 2006, neither can imagine how they will come to shape and define each other’s lives.
\nFrida is struggling to launch her acting career, while John is already gaining a name for himself as a director. From the first they see in each other potential and the chance to create work that matters, though the lines between collaboration and exploitation, friendship and desire will prove dangerously slippery.
\nWith the financial crisis looming, the next 15 years takes them from Dublin to London, New York and LA, and through success and disappointment, joy and heartbreak. Their connection is tested and stretched to the point of rupture, but something remains that outlasts their work and the shifting perceptions of the period.
\nTracing the complex, winding path of a relationship, Frida Slattery as Herself is an epic story of art, love and finding your voice, that introduces two unforgettable characters.
\n
Maya was a high school senior when her best friend, Aubrey, mysteriously dropped dead in front of the enigmatic man named Frank whom they'd been spending time with all summer.
\nSeven years later, Maya lives in Boston with a loving boyfriend and is kicking the secret addiction that has allowed her to cope with what happened years ago, the gaps in her memories, and the lost time that she can't account for. But her past comes rushing back when she comes across a recent YouTube video in which a young woman suddenly keels over and dies in a diner while sitting across from none other than Frank.
\nPlunged into the trauma that has defined her life, Maya heads to her Berkshires hometown to relive that fateful summer - the influence Frank once had on her and the obsessive jealousy that nearly destroyed her friendship with Aubrey.
\nAt her mother's house, she excavates fragments of her past and notices hidden messages in her deceased Guatemalan father's book that didn't stand out to her earlier. To save herself, she must understand a story written before she was born, but time keeps running out, and soon, all roads are leading back to Frank's cabin . . .
Buckle up for a wild ride with this cheeky and charming rom-com where one girl’s quest across India to seal her first kiss turns into finding first love in the most unexpected places. Perfect for fans of Axie Oh, Ann Liang, and Jenny Han!
\n\n
Eighteen-year-old Krishna Kumar may have gotten into her dream college, but that doesn’t mean she’s stopped being a bi disaster. Even after spending her whole summer in India flirting with her gorgeous neighbor Amrit, she has nothing to show for it. And now, her fate is sealed: she’s destined to be the only freshman who’s never been kissed.
\n\n
Then her flight home is delayed right as a distinctly flirty text from Amrit lights up her phone. Krishna is determined to seize her last chance at a perfect first kiss with her summer crush, even if it means asking her cousin-turned-nemesis, Priti, for help. Because Amrit is miles away at a family wedding - and Priti’s best friend, Rudra Desai, is the only one with a car.
\n\n
The unlikely trio set off on a road trip to crash a wedding and save Krishna’s summer. But as she starts to fall for the quiet but irresistibly hot and charming Rudra, who everyone knows is unrequitedly in love with Priti, Krishna’s heart better catch up to her head before she skips right past her first kiss and falls directly into her first heartbreak.
\n
Felicitas Olivares is ten years old and terribly disappointed when she meets her estranged grandmother for the first time. Olvido is nothing like a grandmother should be. She is strict, cold . . . and dead.
\nOlvido is convinced the only way her spirit will cross over is if her body is buried in Mexico, though she hadn’t been back since she crossed the border to the United States decades ago. When this plan fails to help Olvido move on, she decides that she must have more unfinished business and determines that it involves her daughter, Angustias. She must do whatever she can to make sure Angustias is in a better place regarding family, job, husband, and God - but maybe not in that order.
\nHeartbroken about her mother’s passing and desperate to put her tiny Texas home in her rearview mirror as quickly as possible, Angustias doesn’t understand why suddenly everyone in town seems to be conspiring to set her up with every eligible bachelor in town, offer her jobs, and invite her and Felicitas to church every Sunday.
\nOnly her daughter, Felicitas, knows Olivido’s plan but she can’t bring herself to tell her mother the truth - or the fact that she sees ghosts. But she’s not the only one who’s been keeping secrets. As Olvido and Angustias continue to follow the tradition of trying to steer the course of their daughters’ lives the way they see fit, all three Olivares girls must learn how to communicate and actually listen to one another, work to overcome generations’ worth of well-intentioned mistakes, and finally find home.
\n
Far more than a superb memoir about the highest levels of professional tennis, Open is the engrossing story of a remarkable life.
\nAndre Agassi had his life mapped out for him before he left the crib. Groomed to be a tennis champion by his moody and demanding father, by the age of twenty-two Agassi had won the first of his eight grand slams and achieved wealth, celebrity, and the game's highest honors. But as he reveals in this searching autobiography, off the court he was often unhappy and confused, unfulfilled by his great achievements in a sport he had come to resent.
\nAgassi writes candidly about his early success and his uncomfortable relationship with fame, his marriage to Brooke Shields, his growing interest in philanthropy, and - described in haunting, point-by-point detail - the highs and lows of his celebrated career.
\n
When Abby decided to come to Isla Colel, she wasn't sure what - if anything - she'd find. She only knew that she needed to see the place where her fiancée, Eszter, died, to try and make sense of everything that happened.
\nThe island is nothing like Abby expected; though it was once a bustling tourist hub, a hurricane a few years earlier left it a shell of its former self, with only a few locals and expats remaining. Even the once-daily ferry to the mainland now only runs every week or so.
\nThere, Abby befriends an alluring group of expats, but her sense of unease surges when one of them says he knows the truth about Eszter's last days. Before she can see him, though, he vanishes from the island. Hours turn to days with no sign of him, and the other expats are chillingly cavalier about his disappearance.
\nAs her quest for the truth unearths dark secrets, shady pasts, and a web of lies, Abby grows more determined than ever to find out what happened to the love of her life. And the deeper she gets in the close-knit expat community, the more she suspects one of them is Eszter's killer - and will do anything to keep the truth buried. But will she discover who it is before she becomes the island’s next victim?
Emily is having the time of her life - she's in the mountains of Chile with her best friend, Kristen, on their annual reunion trip, and the women are feeling closer than ever. But on the last night of their trip, Emily enters their hotel suite to find blood and broken glass on the floor. Kristen says the cute backpacker she'd been flirting with attacked her, and she had no choice but to kill him in self-defense.
\nEven more shocking: The scene is horrifyingly similar to last year's trip, when another backpacker wound up dead. Emily can't believe it's happened again - can lightning really strike twice?
\nBack home in Wisconsin, Emily struggles to bury her trauma, diving head-first into a new relationship and throwing herself into work. But when Kristen shows up for a surprise visit, Emily is forced to to confront their violent past. The more Kristen tries to keep Emily close, the more Emily questions her friend's motives.
\nAs Emily feels the walls closing in on their coverups, she must reckon with the truth about her closest friend. Can she outrun the secrets she shares with Kristen, or will they destroy her relationship, her freedom - even her life?
No bond is more sacred than that between a mother and child. And no one is more sympathetic than a mother whose child faces a life-threatening illness. But what if the mother is the cause of the illness? What if the sympathy is the point?
\nMunchausen by proxy (MBP) has fascinated and horrified both professionals and the general public since this disturbing form of child abuse was first identified. But even as the public has been captivated by these tales of abuse and deception, there remains widespread misinformation and confusion about MBP. Are these mothers unfeeling psychopaths, or sick women who need help? And more important, how can we protect the children whose lives are at stake?
\nThe Mother Next Door offers a groundbreaking look at MBP from an unlikely duo: a Seattle novelist whose own family was torn apart by it, and the Texas detective who has worked on more medical child abuse cases than anyone in the nation. Listeners ride along on three high-stakes MPB investigations; through riveting reporting and shocking stories from the family members, friends, and doctors caught in the blast zone of these unthinkable acts, a twisted portrait of motherhood and deceit is revealed.
\nWith help from some of the top MBP experts in the world, Dunlop and Weber uncover the complex maze of psychological, systemic, and cultural issues that compound MBP and offer solutions for how we might find our way out.
\n
Katie Cleary has always known exactly what she wants: to be the best skier in the world. As a teenager, she leaves her home to live and train full time with her two best friends, all-American brothers Luke and Blair, whose wealthy father has hired the best coaches money can buy. Together, they are the USA’s best shot at bringing home Olympic gold - as well as a love triangle waiting to happen.
\nBut as the upward trajectory of Katie’s elite skiing career nears its zenith, a terrifying truth about her sister becomes impossible to ignore - one that will lay ruin not only to Katie’s career but to her family and her relationship with Luke and Blair.
\nWith her life shattered and nothing left to lose, Katie flees the snowy mountainsides of home for Buenos Aires. There, she reinvents herself as Liz Sullivan, and meets a colorful group of ex-pats and the alluring, charismatic Gianluca Fortunado, a tango teacher with secrets of his own. This beautiful city, with its dark history and wild promise, seems like the perfect refuge, but can she really outrun her demons?
\nTold in alternating chapters, Katie grows up, falls in love, and races down the highest peaks on the planet - while Liz is reborn, falls into lust, and sinks into the underground tango scene at the bottom of the world. From the moneyed ski chalets of the American West to the dimly lit milongas of Argentina, We Came Here to Forget explores what it means to dream, to desire, to achieve - and what’s left behind after it all disappears.
\n
In this wildly addictive novel, three overlooked women take on the charming, manipulative tech CEO who wrote them out of his startup’s history. Anna Sarnoff is still reeling from her quickie divorce from tech wunderkind Jake Sarnoff. Forced out of the company that she helped Jake build, Anna is trying to pick up the pieces of her life, navigating the waters of solo parenting their two teenage boys and adapting to her new role of ex-wife. To make things more complicated, Jake seems to want her back . . . and his persuasiveness tempts her to say yes.
\nAcross town, the brilliant and striking Samanta Flores-Walsh, Jake’s college girlfriend, is busy raising her teenage daughter and running her thriving yoga studio. Although their relationship ended years ago, unanswered questions from their time together gnaw at her, and when she learns that Jake is planning to take his billion-dollar company public, she starts to wonder if perhaps it isn’t too late for justice.
\nFinally, there’s Jake’s much younger new wife, Jessica, who’s struggling to stay afloat as a new mom while her high-profile husband grows increasingly distant. Set in the wealthy enclaves of Seattle’s tech elite, the lives of these three women grow entangled as long-held secrets are forced to the surface, threatening to destroy their families.
\n
In the beloved tradition of Howl’s Moving Castle, a whimsical and unforgettable story of fantastic adventure, common sense, and the power of love to overcome the greatest of obstacles . . .
\nBefore Foss Butcher was Snagged, she thought no more of the magic-users than did anyone else in her tiny village. Sometimes gorgeous women in impossible carriages rolled into town and took bits of people’s hearts. Everyone knew hearts fueled their magic. But Foss, plain, clumsy, and practical as a boot, never expected anyone would want hers.
\nTrue enough, when the only sorcerer in the kingdom stepped from his glossy carriage, he didn’t intend to hook Foss. Sylvester’s riot of black curls and perfectly etched cheekbones caught her eye a moment too long, that was all. Suddenly, Foss is cursed and finds herself stomping toward the grand City to keep his enchanted House, where her only friend is a talking cat and the walls themselves have moods.
\nBut as Foss learns the ways of magic, she realizes she’s far from its only unwilling captive. Even Sylvester is hemmed in by spells and threats. It’s said this sorcery protects king, country, and order for thousands. If Foss wants to free herself - and, perhaps, Sylvester - she’ll have to confront it all . . . and uncover the blight nestled in the heart of the kingdom itself.
\n
In 1779, to subjugate Indigenous nations, George Washington ordered his troops to “ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.” Destroying harvests is just one way that the United States has used food as a political tool. Trying to prevent enslaved people from rising up, enslavers restricted their consumption, providing only enough to fuel labor. Since the Great Depression, school lunches have served as dumping grounds for unwanted agricultural surpluses.
\nFrom frybread to government cheese, Ruin Their Crops on the Ground draws on over fifteen years of research to argue that U.S. food law and policy have created and maintained racial and social inequality. In an epic, sweeping account, Andrea Freeman, who pioneered the term “food oppression,” moves from colonisation to slavery to the Americanisation of immigrant food culture, to the commodities supplied to Native reservations, to milk as a symbol of white supremacy.
\nShe traces the long-standing alliance between the government and food industries that have produced gaping racial health disparities, and she shows how these practices continue to this day, through the marketing of unhealthy goods that target marginalised communities, causing diabetes, high blood pressure, and premature death.
\nRuin Their Crops on the Ground is a groundbreaking addition to the history and politics of food. It will permanently upend the notion that we freely and equally choose what we put on our plates.
\n
The world is changing. Poison desert eats good farmland. Once-sweet water turns foul. The wind blows sand and sadness across the Empire. To get caught in a storm is death. To live and do nothing is death. There is magic in the world, but good conjure is hard to find.
\nDjola, righthand man and spymaster of the lord of the Arkhysian Empire, is desperately trying to save his adopted homeland, even in exile.
\nAwa, a young woman training to be a powerful griot, tests the limits of her knowledge and comes into her own in a world of sorcery, floating cities, kindly beasts, and uncertain men.
\nAwash in the rhythms of folklore and storytelling and rich with Hairston's characteristic lush prose, Master of Poisons is epic fantasy that will bleed your mind with its turns of phrase and leave you aching...
The world has been divided by the Barrier. For 115 years this extraterrestrial, epidimensional entity has divided the earth into warring zones. Power-hungry politicians, gangsters, and spiritual fundamentalists are determined to thwart a potential treaty to end the internal wars.
\nWhen the treaty's architect is assassinated, her protegee, Elleni, a talented renegade and one of the few able to negotiate the Barrier, is forced to take up her mantle.
\nNow Elleni and a motley crew of allies risk their lives to make the treaty work.
\nCan they repair their fractured world before the Barrier devours them completely?
Every Sunday, Oona the St. Berdoodle and her current owner, Zsuzsu, make their way through the winding paths of the State Park to the enigmatic Redemption Center - a place often mistaken for a haunted mansion.
\nWhen a local celebrity is found murdered, the unexpected brings Oona together with a rag-tag group of local misfits. Together they venture into the depths of the Center's mystery to untangle the threads of murder and deception.
\nBut Oona holds two she’s a citizen of the multiverse, able to travel between dimensions at will, and more importantly, she knows the killer's identity. Unfortunately, the killer knows she knows, and he’s determined to find her and silence her for good.
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Marissa Irvine arrives at 14 Tudor Grove, expecting to pick up her young son Milo from his first playdate with a boy at his new school. But the woman who answers the door isn't a mother she recognises. She isn't the nanny. She doesn't have Milo. And so begins every parent's worst nightmare.
\nAs news of the disappearance filters through the quiet Dublin suburb and an unexpected suspect is named, whispers start to spread about the women most closely connected to the shocking event. Because only one of them may have taken Milo - but they could all be blamed . . .
The game of hide and seek is over, everyone has gone home, but little Lily Murphy hasn't been found. Her parents search the woods and tell themselves that the worst hasn't happened - but deep down they know this peaceful Dublin suburb will never be the same again.
\nYears later, Joanna moves into a new house. It seems perfect in every way, until she learns that this was once Lily Murphy's home. From that moment onwards, a sense of dread seems to follow her from room to room.
\nAs Joanna unravels the secrets at the heart of this close-knit community, her own dark past begins to resurface. Because she thinks she knows what really happened to Lily - and if the truth gets out, it might be her undoing.
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You stand on a crowded tube platform in London. Your two little girls jump on the train ahead of you. As you try to join them, the doors slide shut and the train moves away, leaving you behind.
\nBy the time you get to the next stop, you've convinced yourself that everything will be fine. But you soon start to panic, because there aren't two children waiting for you on the platform. There's only one.
\nHas your other daughter got lost? Been taken by a passing stranger? Or perhaps the culprit is closer to home than you think? No one is telling the truth, and the longer the search continues, the harder she will be to find . . .
Anya is enjoying a relaxing bath when she hears a noise coming from the ceiling. Through the open bathroom door, she sees the attic hatch swing down, and a masked figure drops to the floor. Thirty seconds later, Anya is dead.
\nAcross town, Anya's old school friend, Julia, sees an online video of a masked figure climbing out of an attic. She suddenly realizes why the footage is eerily familiar: it was filmed inside her house in a luxury gated community, designed to keep intruders out.
\nWhy would a stranger target Julia? Unless of course, it's not a stranger at all.
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Frankenstein, Germany. Ambrose, a young vampire, lives a life secreted away from the modern world with the rest of his clan, all of them under the spell of the charismatic Regina, who spins stories of salvation for their kind. Their grand plan? To build makeshift wings and fly to the moon where a safe haven awaits for all vampires.
\nBut Ambrose harbours a secret: he is not ready to abandon the earth, and he is in contact with a human who believes he can be saved. As the rest of his kind prepare to flee their home, Ambrose is torn between loyalties.
\nHowever something else is on the horizon - the Royal Diurnal Society - a group with sinister plans for vampires, are closing in, and if Ambrose isn't careful, he could find himself right at the centre of a terrifying and mysterious experiment.
The emperor's reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire's many islands.
Lin is the emperor's daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.
Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright - and save her people
The Emperor is Dead. Long live the Emperor.
\n\n
Lin Sukai finally sits on the throne she won at so much cost, but her struggles are only just beginning. Her people don’t trust her. Her political alliances are weak. And in the north-east of the Empire, a rebel army of constructs is gathering, its leader determined to take the throne by force.
\n\n
Yet an even greater threat is on the horizon, for the Alanga - the powerful magicians of legend - have returned to the Empire. They claim they come in peace, and Lin will need their help in order to defeat the rebels and restore peace.
\n\n
But can she trust them?
Lin Sukai has won her first victory as Emperor, but the future of the Phoenix Empire hangs in the balance - and Lin is dangerously short of allies.
\nAs her own governors plot treason, the Shardless Few renew hostilities. Worse still, Lin discovers her old nemesis Nisong has joined forces with the rogue Alanga, Ragan. Both seek her death.
\nYet hopes lies in history. Legend tells of seven mythic swords, forged in centuries past. If Lin can find them before her enemies, she may yet be able to turn the tide.
\nIf she fails, the Sukai dynasty - and the entire empire - will fall.
A divine war shattered the world leaving humanity in ruins. Desperate for hope, they struck a deal with the devious god Kluehnn: He would restore the world to its former glory, but at a price so steep it would keep the mortals indebted to him for eternity. And, as each land was transformed, so too were its people changed into strange new forms - if they survived at all.
Hakara is not willing to pay such a price. Desperate to protect herself, and her sister Rasha, she flees her homeland for the safety of a neighboring kingdom. But when tragedy separates them, Hakara is forced to abandon her beloved sister to an unknown fate.
Alone and desperate for answers on the wrong side of the world, Hakara discovers she can channel the magic from the mysterious gems they are forced to mine for Kluehnn. With that discovery comes her sister is alive, and only the rebels plotting to destroy the God Pact can help rescue her.\t\t\tBut only if Hakara goes to war against a god.
Hakara risked her life to find her long-lost sister Rasha, only to lose her all over again. Now she and her Unanointed rebels hunt for the shapeshifter Lithuas, knowing that defeating her would strike a blow to the plans of the tyrant god Kluehnn.
\n\n
Rasha once longed to be reunited with Hakara. No longer. Now she is a Godkiller and proud to serve Kluehnn’s divine will. Yet she also harbours doubts about Kluehnn’s teachings. When she is sent to destroy Hakara and her allies, Rasha will have to decide where her loyalty truly lies.
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As the two sisters hurtle towards a bloody reunion, Sheuan continues her shadowy games of intrigue to uncover the secret that killed her father, while her cousin Mullayne seeks the tomb of Tolemne. There, Mull believes he’ll find the answers he desires.
When Zhong Ning’er takes the job, she expects a smash-and-grab burglary she’s doing to make rent and help out a friend. What she doesn’t expect: a sad-eyed army boy who dreams of insurrection, a former rebel leader trapped inside a secret lab, a group of aspiring revolutionaries who are first collaborators, then compatriots, and then, perhaps, friends.
\nBut this is Beijing, nearly a hundred and fifty years after General Yuan Shikai successfully declared himself emperor in 1915. His descendants rule the country from their seat in the imperial city, their gendarmerie - the Beiyang Army - run the streets, aided by cyborgs and the Brocade Guard. Walls have risen, dividing the city into districts called Rings - nominally only by geography, but in truth by class. Earthquakes devastate the northern farmlands, crops drown in the southern typhoons, and all over the country people are hooked on a drug they call Complacency.
\nAs a Sixth Ring girl who watched previous uprisings crushed brutally by the court, Ning’er isn’t much of an optimist, and she’s certainly no revolutionary. But that might not be up to her - as the stakes get higher, the time for passivity is quickly running out, and she must decide if she wants to sit idly in her cynicism, or embrace the breathless, terrible possibility of hope.
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Being an apprentice for one of the world's most famous sorcerers has its challenges; Tabatha Zeng just didn’t think they would include solving crime. But when her boss, the infamous fortuneteller Sorcerer Solomon, predicts his own brutal death - and worse, it comes true - Tabatha finds herself caught in the crosshairs.
\nThe police have their sights set on her and Callum Solomon, her murdered boss’s youngest son. With suspicion swirling around them, the two decide to team up to find the real killer and clear their own names once and for all.
\nBut solving a murder isn’t as easy as it seems, especially when the suspect list is mostly the rich, connected, and magical members of Sorcerer Solomon’s family. And Tabatha can’t quite escape the nagging voice in her head just how much can she really trust Callum Solomon?
\nNothing is as it seems in this quick-witted and fantastical murder mystery.
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Eighteen-year-old Samantha Chan wants only one thing: revenge for her brother’s death in an illegal magical duel. Ever since that terrible day, she’s been quietly working with legitimate dueling champion Lysander Rook and biding her time until she can take down her brother’s killer: Mateus Blackwood.
\nTamsin Blackwood is trapped. She wants to make a name for herself in the magical dueling circuit, but she can’t get away from the legacy of her father - and coach - Mateus Blackwood. When she receives a challenge from the undefeated Lysander and his assistant Sam, she jumps at the chance to earn enough fame and glory to finally escape her father’s influence.
\nTamsin has no idea about Sam’s scheming, and Sam plans to keep it that way. Despite herself, though, she can’t help liking Tamsin, and the two girls quickly grow closer to each other than anyone else in their lives. But Sam won’t let anything get in the way of her revenge - not even her heart.
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People are “popping” - disappearing, one by one, into thin air: an ongoing global cataclysm known as Spontaneous Human Absence. In a world where prospects for survival are increasingly grim, hopelessness prevails, political rifts widen, and doomsday predictions flourish.
\nHarvey Ellis works the night shift for the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs, an ad hoc federal agency meant to contain and catalog the crisis. Harvey’s job: to investigate claims of Absence, and, if validated, issue a standard government stipend to boost morale. Still recovering from losses of his own, Harvey is content in his routine - until his life is shaken by an unexpected assignment from the central office.
\nA woman long thought Absent has reappeared in her hometown of Dawnville, Kansas, claiming she’s been to the other side and back. But is her wild and irresistible account true, or is she just the latest false prophet, offering hope to a world desperate for it? Together with his no-BS partner, Shonda Erins, Harvey travels to Dawnville to find out.
\nA resonant portrait of a world beset by confusion and dismay, Andrew Dana Hudson’s debut is a vividly imagined novel of cosmic proportions, examining life in a time of exception and the stories we tell to get by.
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When ten-year-old Gabriel and his parents retire to his late grandfather’s disused cabin to wait out a pandemic, the big, dangerous world seems very far away, and Gabriel enjoys the freest summer of his young life. But tensions begin to surface, testing the family unit, and resulting in consequences that he will spend his life attempting to unravel.
\nSpanning nearly a half-century, The Diapause is a literary-speculative-fiction novel about the near future, family, isolation, heartbreak, climate change, how we keep each other safe, and all the things we don’t know about the people we know best. The Diapause is a novel about how the things we seek are often the things we didn’t know we’d lost.
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Whit Longacre has a monumental task and a looming deadline. After his wife, Helen, died of cancer, she left him with their grieving eight-year-old daughter and a surprise in her the small task of writing the final book in her mega-popular children’s fantasy series for her legions of waiting fans.
\nWhit is the author of moderately successful (but well-received!) literary mysteries. He doesn’t have the first idea of how to complete Helen’s beloved series, and his enigmatic wife seems to have left no clues behind on how the story is supposed to end. Writer’s block is one thing, but to fail in fulfilling his wife’s last wish? Whit is guilt-ridden and dodging calls in the school pick-up line from Helen’s publisher and agent as the deadline fast approaches.
\nThen Whit meets Merritt Pryor, who works at the local bookstore in their small New England town. Merritt has moved back home after a disastrous affair led to her dropping out of her prestigious MFA program. When Whit realizes that Merritt is a superfan of the Greenwood Castle series, they come up with a plan to tackle the book together. For the first time in years, Merritt finds herself falling back in love with writing . . . and perhaps with the coauthor offering her the opportunity of a lifetime.
\nBut when Whit uncovers a buried secret about Helen’s final wishes, he questions everything about what he and Merritt have created together, endangering the tender, electrifying partnership that has transformed their lives.
\nCan Whit and Merritt come up with an ending that feels right . . . for both a beloved series and for their battered hearts?
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Rome, 2019. Time-traveling, Smithsonian archaeologist Rabbit Ward is back in the present, but not for long. Helen, his former adversary and growing ally, is in trouble with the law after being framed for a murder she didn’t commit. Stuck in hiding and running out of other options, she turns to Rabbit for help. \"Help\" in this case involves a trip to first century Jerusalem to track down a mysterious man named Einar Eshek.
\nBut Rabbit won't have to do this mission alone; as soon as he arrives in 68 CE, he meets a younger version of Helen, one who has never met him before. Together, they work to track down Eshek, who turns out to be not only a time-traveling thief, but a murderous psychopath.
\nAs they pursue Eshek through time, Rabbit and Helen feel something even bigger pulling them together. Torn between the two versions of the woman he knows, and with the clock ticking down on Helen’s fate in 2019, Rabbit might have no choice but to betray her past self to secure Helen’s safety in the future. Tensions rise as Jerusalem prepares to go to war with Rome, and Rabbit races to capture Eshek, clear Helen’s name, and make it back to 2019 in one piece - a feat that’s proving to be easier said than done - before everything falls apart.
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Smithsonian archaeologist Rabbit Ward travels through time on sponsored expeditions to the past to secure precious artifacts moments before they are lost to history. Although exceptional at his job, Rabbit is not without faults. In a spectacular failure twenty years ago, he lost both the menorah of the second temple and his hot-headed mentee, Aaron. So, when new evidence reveals the menorah’s reappearance in 6th century Constantinople, Rabbit seizes the chance for redemption.
\nBut from the moment he arrives in the past, things start to go wrong. Rabbit quickly finds out that his prime competition, an unlicensed and annoyingly appealing “stringer” named Helen, is also in Constantinople hunting the menorah. And that’s only the beginning. The oppressed Jewish population of the city is primed for revolution, Constantinople’s leading gang seems to have it out for Rabbit personally, and someone local is interested enough in the menorah to kill for it.
\nAs the past closes in on him and his previous failures compound, will Rabbit be able to recover the menorah before it's once again lost in time?
\nWith new and old dangers alike hiding behind every corner, time might just be up for Rabbit’s redemption - and possibly his life.
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Without Cassandra, Aaron would probably be dead. Fortunately, she won’t leave him - despite the drinking, flirting, solipsism, armchair socialism, overspending, infidelity, catastrophic depression, and disparate but increasingly frequent spells of drug - and booze-addled debauchery. Unfortunately, she might be reaching the end of her rope.
\nCass and Aaron, like the other neurotic, ambivalent intellectuals in their orbit, are getting older. There’s Malcolm, with his own alcoholism and marginally more successful writing career; his partner, Violet, a nurse with little patience for both; Antonia, a teaching fellow whose book about ecocide may get her tenure at a prestigious university near Harvard Square - yes, that one.
\nWhen Sam, a charming trust-fund punk at the center of this loose network, dies suddenly, and a global pandemic takes hold, all five must contend with the lives they’ve their desires and disappointments, habits and hang-ups, pathologies and addictions, and the possibilities of making art and being good as the earth whirls to its end.
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York, 1799.
In August, an artist is found murdered in his home - stabbed with a pair of scissors. Matthew Harvey's death is much discussed in the city. The scissors are among the tools of his trade - for Harvey is a renowned cutter and painter of shades, or silhouettes, the latest fashion in portraiture. It soon becomes clear that the murderer must be one of the artist's last sitters, and the people depicted in the final six shades made by him become the key suspects. But who are they? And where are they to be found?
Later, in November, a clever but impoverished young gentleman called Fletcher Rigge languishes in the debtor's prison, until a letter arrives containing a bizarre proposition from the son of the murdered man. Rigge is to be released for one month, but in that time, he must find the killer. If he fails, he will be incarcerated again, possibly for life.
And so, with everything at stake, and equipped only with copies of the distinctive silhouettes, Fletcher Rigge begins his search across the snow-covered city, and enters a world of shadows . . .
Steven Mills has reached a crossroads. His wife and son have left, and they may not return. Which leaves him determined to find out what happened to his own father, a brilliant, charismatic professor who disappeared in 1984 when Steve was twelve, on a wave of ignominy.
\nAs Steve drives up the coast of California, seeking out his father’s friends, family members, and former colleagues, the novel offers us tantalizing glimpses into Steve’s childhood - his parents’ legendary pool parties, the black-and-white films on the backyard projector, secrets shared with his closest friend. Each conversation in the present reveals another layer of his father’s past, another insight into his disappearance. Yet with every revelation, his father becomes more difficult to recognise. And, with every insight, Steve must confront truths about his own life.
\nRich in atmosphere, and with a stunningly sure-footed emotional compass, The Imagined Life is a probing, nostalgic novel about the impossibility of understanding one’s parents, about first loves and failures, about lost innocence, about the unbreakable bonds between a father and a son.
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Broke and directionless, our young man takes a job in the Italian countryside as the all-purpose assistant to Lisabetta, known to her friends as Coco - a strong-willed, wealthy widow of great local renown.
\nTrained as an archivist, he thinks he's been hired to catalogue the contents of the beautiful, crumbling mansion nestled in the green Tuscan hills . . . but what are his actual duties? Days are spent ridding the house of a marten - whatever that is - locating the antediluvian septic system, entertaining an endless carousel of guests (from bohemian painters to elderly princesses to unnervingly handsome nephews), attending a funeral in order to make off with the urn, and not inadvertently sabotaging Coco's great and final plan-to locate the lost love of her life and be reunited before it's too late.
\nAs summer turns into autumn and the Italian countryside begins to work its magic on our protagonist, the secrets of Villa Coco and its inhabitants are slowly brought to light - and with them, an unforgettable story of the enduring power of friendship.
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Vampires have just moved in to the haunted house next door.
All twelve-year-old Sam Abernathy wanted to do was make the most of his last few weeks in Blue Creek before he has to say goodbye. Goodbye to the well he fell in eight years ago; goodbye to cooking at Lily Putt's snack bar; goodbye to his overdramatic best friend, Karim; goodbye to unsweetened iced tea at Colonel Jenkins's Diner every Saturday with Bahar (who he does not have a crush on); goodbye to his old life.
But the arrival of the Monster People throws a wrench into his plans. Things only get worse when the new family hires Bahar to babysit their child, Boris, who is almost certainly a cannibal. And then - scariest of all - they employ Sam's catering services. He can't possibly say no.
If he doesn't survive the summer, Sam . . .
Throughout history, technological revolutions have been driven by the invention of machines. But today, the power of the technology transforming our world lies in an intangible and impenetrable cosmos of algorithmic code. In a world increasingly governed by technologies that so few can comprehend, who-or what-controls the future?
\nDevil in the Stack follows Andrew Smith on his immersive trip into the world of coding, passing through the stories of logic, machine-learning and early computing, from Ada Lovelace to Alan Turing, and up to the present moment, behind the scenes into the lives - and minds - of the pioneers of the 21st those who write code. Smith embarks on a quest to understand this sect in what he believes to be the only way by learning to code himself.
\nExpansive and effervescent, Devil in the Stack delivers a portrait of code as both a vivid culture and an impending threat. By turns revelatory, unsettling and joyously funny, this is an essential book for our times, of vital interest to anyone hoping to participate in the future-defining technological debates to come.
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When he was four years old, Sam Abernathy was trapped at the bottom of a well for three days, where he was teased by a smart-aleck armadillo named Bartleby. Since then, his parents plan every move he makes.
\nBut Sam doesn’t like their plans. He doesn’t want to go to MIT. And he doesn’t want to skip two grades, being stuck in the eighth grade as an eleven-year-old with James Jenkins, the boy he’s sure pushed him into the well in the first place. He wants to be a chef. And he’s going to start by entering the first annual Blue Creek Days Colonel Jenkins Macaroni and Cheese Cook-Off.
\nThat is, if he can survive eighth grade, and figure out the size of the truth that has slipped Sam’s memory for seven years.
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A troop of Red Army soldiers has disappeared without a trace while visiting the Halytska bathhouse, their abandoned boots and uniforms the only proof that they ever existed.
\nFaced with such a fantastical conundrum, Samson must resort to a fantastical investigation method: stitching his operative severed ear into a bathhouse worker's jacket, he is able to eavesdrop on his every move. But he discovers far more than he bargained for, and matters are further complicated by the human remains found in the stoves and the presence of a sinister religious cult in the city.
\nWith his quick-witted new wife Nadezhda at his side, Samson must not only solve the case but navigate the political turmoil that still grips Kyiv as civil war looms and trust between neighbours and comrades is eroded day by day. Andrey Kurkov, vividly depicts a city filled with political turbulence and eccentric characters - and draws ominous parallels with the present day.
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Kyiv, 1919. The Soviets control the city, but White armies menace them from the West. No man trusts his neighbour and any spark of resistance may ignite into open rebellion.
\nWhen Samson Kolechko's father is murdered, his last act is to save his son from a falling Cossack sabre. Deprived of his right ear instead of his head, Samson is left an orphan, with only his father's collection of abacuses for company.
\nUntil, that is, his flat is requisitioned by two Red Army soldiers, whose secret plans Samson is somehow able to overhear with uncanny clarity. Eager to thwart them, he stumbles into a world of murder and intrigue that will either be the making of him - or finish what the Cossack started.
\nInflected with Kurkov's signature humour and magical realism, The Silver Bone takes inspiration from the real life archives of crime enforcement agencies in Kyiv, crafting a propulsive narrative that bursts to life with rich historical detail.
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Samson Kolechko has been assigned a most perplexing case - though it is mostly perplexing because it's hard to understand why selling the meat of one's own pig constitutes a crime.
\nBut apparently it does, and at the insistence of the Chekist secret police officer assigned to \"reinforce\" the Lybid police station, Samson does his diligent - if diffident - best.
\nYet no sooner has he got started than his live-in fiancée Nadezhda is abducted by striking railway workers who object to the census she's carrying out. And when you factor in a mysterious thief in the police station itself, a deadly tram accident that may have been pre-meditated, and the potential reappearance of the culprit in the case of the silver bone, it's no wonder the \"meat case\" takes a back seat.
\nBut it is in the pursuit of that petty-fogging, seemingly mundane matter that Samson's fate lies - and Nadezhda's too, for the two are inextricably entwined.
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A modern-day historian finds her life intertwined with Annie Oakley’s in an electrifying novel that explores female revenge an the allure of changing one’s past.
Ruth McClintock is obsessed with Annie Oakley. For nearly a decade, she has been studying the legendary sharpshooter, convinced that a scarring childhood event was the impetus for her crusade to arm every American woman. This fruitless search has cost Ruth her doctorate, a book deal, and her fiancé. But Ruth may finally have the evidence she is looking for. She has managed to hunt down what may be a journal of Oakley’s midlife struggles, including secret visits to a psychoanalyst and the desire for vengeance against the “Wolves,” or those who have wronged her.
With the help of Reece, a tech-savvy senior at the local high school, Ruth attempts to establish the journal’s provenance, but she’s begun to have jarring out-of-body episodes that are possibly parallel to Annie’s own lived experiences. As she solves Annie’s mysteries, she also confronts her own, from the reasons behind her teenage sister’s suicide to a tragedy in her Minnesota town that she may be able to prevent.
In this atmospheric thriller set at a luxury memoir-writing workshop on the shores of Lake Atitlán, Guatemala, a grieving mother goes undercover to investigate her daughter’s mysterious death.
\nRose, the mother of 20-something aspiring writer Jules, has waited three months for answers about her daughter’s death. Why was she swimming alone when she feared the water? Why did she stop texting days before she was last seen? When the official investigation rules the death an accidental drowning, the body possibly lost forever in Central America’s deepest lake, an unsatisfied Rose travels to the memoir workshop herself. She hopes to draw her own conclusion - and find closure.
\nWhen Rose arrives, she is swept into the curious world created by her daughter’s literary hero, the famous writing teacher Eva Marshall, a charismatic woman known for her candid - and controversial - memoirs. As Rose uncovers details about the days leading up to Jules’s disappearance, she begins to suspect that this glamorous retreat package is hiding ugly truths. Is Lake Atitlan a place where traumatised women come to heal or a place where deeper injury is inflicted?
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2029: In Japan, a historically mono-cultural nation, childbirth rates are at a critical low and the elderly are living increasingly long lives. This population crisis has precipitated a mass immigration of foreign medical workers from all over Asia - as well as the development of refined artificial intelligence to step in where humans fall short.
In Tokyo, Angelica Navarro, a Filipina nurse who has been working in Japan for the last five years, is the caretaker for Sayoko Itou, an intensely private woman about to turn 100 years old. Angelica is a dedicated nurse, working night and day to keep her paperwork in order, obey the strict labor laws for foreign nationals, study for her ongoing proficiency exams, and most of all keep her demanding client happy.
But one day Sayoko receives a present from her son: a cutting-edge robot caretaker that will educate itself to anticipate Sayoko’s every need. Angelica wonders if she is about to be forced out of her much-needed job by an inanimate object - one with a preternatural ability to uncover the most deeply buried secrets of the humans around it.
\nWhile Angelica is fighting back against the AI with all of her resources, Sayoko is becoming more and more attached to the machine. The old woman is hiding many secrets of her own - and maybe now she’s too old to want to keep them anymore.
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Over one terrible weekend, two teenage girls are found dead in a wealthy Chicago suburb. As the community mourns, Abby Rosso, the girls’ high school counselor, begins to suspect that her son was secretly involved in their lives - and possibly, their deaths.
\nAbby doesn’t want to believe Benjamin hurt anyone. But she’s seen the warning signs before. Two decades ago, her brother was imprisoned for a disturbing crime - he was only a little older than Benjamin is now. And Abby has more troubling memories from her own adolescence that confirm what boys and men are capable of. As Abby searches for the truth about what happened to her students, she’s forced to face the Has she been making excuses for Benjamin for years?
\nSwirling with sharp questions about family and masculinity, What Boys Learn is a twisty thriller that unravels a mother’s worst fears to explore how boys are raised - and what they are taught they can get away with.
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The Wizards Guild has been shattered by a coup and, in the uproar, Geralt was seriously injured. The Witcher is supposed to be a guardian of the innocent, a protector of those in need, a defender against powerful and dangerous monsters that prey on men in dark times.
But now that dark times have fallen upon the world, Geralt is helpless until he has recovered from his injuries.
While war rages across all of the lands, the future of magic is under threat and those sorcerers who survive are determined to protect it. It's an impossible situation in which to find one girl - Ciri, the heiress to the throne of Cintra, has vanished - until a rumor places her in the Niflgaard court, preparing to marry the Emperor.
Injured or not, Geralt has a rescue mission on his hands.
For more than a hundred years humans, dwarves, gnomes and elves lived together in relative peace. But times have changed, the uneasy peace is over and now the races once again fight each other - and themselves: dwarves are killing their kinsmen, and elves are murdering humans and elves, at least those elves who are friendly to humans . . .
\nInto this tumultuous time is born a child for whom the witchers of the world have been waiting. Ciri, the granddaughter of Queen Calanthe, the Lioness of Cintra, has strange powers and a stranger destiny, for prophecy names her the Flame, one with the power to change the world - for good, or for evil . . . Geralt, the witcher of Rivia, has taken Ciri to the relative safety of the Witchers' Settlement, but it soon becomes clear that Ciri isn't like the other witchers.
\nAs the political situation grows ever dimmer and the threat of war hangs almost palpably over the land, Geralt searches for someone to train Ciri's unique powers. But someone else has an eye on the young girl, someone who understand exactly what the prophecy means - and exactly what Ciri's power can do. This time Geralt may have met his match.
Before he was the White Wolf or the Butcher of Blaviken, Geralt of Rivia was simply a fresh graduate of Kaer Morhen, stepping into a world that neither understands nor welcomes his kind.
\nAnd when an act of naïve heroism goes gravely wrong, Geralt is only saved from the noose by Preston Holt, a grizzled witcher with a buried past and an agenda of his own.
\nUnder Holt’s guiding hand, Geralt begins to learn what it truly means to walk the Path - to protect a world that fears him, and to survive in it on his own terms. But as the line between right and wrong begins to blur, Geralt must decide to become the monster everyone expects, or something else entirely.
\nThis is the story of how legends are made - and what they cost.
After walking through the portal in the Tower of Swallows while narrowly escaping death, Ciri finds herself in a completely different world . . . an Elven world. She is trapped with no way out. Time does not seem to exist and there are no obvious borders or portals to cross back into her home world.
\nBut this is Ciri, the child of prophecy, and she will not be defeated. She knows she must escape to finally rejoin the Witcher, Geralt, and his companions - and also to try to conquer her worst nightmare. Leo Bonhart, the man who chased, wounded and tortured Ciri, is still on her trail. And the world is still at war.
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Geralt is a witcher, a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a mysterious elixir, have made him a brilliant fighter and a merciless assassin. Yet he is no ordinary murderer: his targets are the multifarious monsters and vile fiends that ravage the land and attack the innocent.
\nHe roams the country seeking assignments, but gradually comes to realise that while some of his quarry are unremittingly vile, vicious grotesques, others are the victims of sin, evil or simple naivety.
Reynevan is besieged on all sides and faces torture and execution if he makes any mistake in his quest to find his beloved, Jutta of Apolda. Aided by his companions - the ever-pragmatic Scharley and the mysterious being known as Samson Honeypot - his journey takes him all over the Bohemian realm.
\nAnd Reynevan will need every ounce of his wit, intelligence and cunning if he is to succeed in his search. The political and religious alliances of the Hussite Wars are ever shifting, and the battle for dominance threatens to devour anyone who gets in their way.
\nFaced too with dark magical forces summoned by the malevolent Birkart of Grellenort, aided by his terrifying band of Back Riders, Reynevan knows the odds of finding Jutta decrease with every obstacle he is forced to overcome along the way. But he has never let impossible odds stop him before - and he will be reunited with his love, whatever the cost.
Before he was the guardian of Ciri, the child of destiny, Geralt of Rivia was a legendary swordsman. Join the Witcher as he undertakes a deadly mission in this stand-alone adventure set in the world that inspired the blockbuster video games. Geralt of Rivia is a Witcher, one of the few capable of hunting the monsters that prey on humanity.
\nA mutant who is tasked with killing unnatural beings. He uses magical signs, potions, and the pride of every Witcher - two swords, steel and silver. But a contract has gone wrong, and Geralt finds himself without his signature weapons. Now he needs them back, because sorcerers are scheming, and across the world clouds are gathering. The season of storms is coming . . .
Geralt is a witcher, a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a mysterious elixir, have made him a brilliant fighter and a merciless assassin. Yet he is no ordinary murderer: his targets are the multifarious monsters and vile fiends that ravage the land and attack the innocent.
Geralt - the witcher - and his friends and enemies return in another installment of the best-selling series.
Geralt the Witcher has fought monsters and demons across the land, but even he may not be prepared for what is happening to his world. The kings and armies are maneuvering for position, each fearing invasion from across the river, each fearing their neighbours more. Intrigue, dissent and rebellion are on all sides.
The Elves and other non-humans are still suffering under decades of repression, and growing numbers join the commando units hidden deep in the forest, striking at will and then dissolving into the trees. The Magicians are fighting amongst themselves, some in the pay of the kings, some sympathetic to the elves.
And against this backdrop of fear and contempt Geralt and his lover Yennefer must protect Ciri, orphaned heir and sought by all sides. For the prophecy rests on her, and whether she lives or dies she has the power to save the world - or perhaps end it.
Reinmar of Bielawa, sometimes known as Reynevan, is a doctor, a magician and, according to some, a charlatan. And when a thoughtless indiscretion finds him caught in the crosshairs of powerful noble family, he is forced to flee his home.
\nBut once he passes beyond the city borders, he finds that there are dangers ahead as well as behind. Strange mystical forces are gathering in the shadows. And pursued not only by the affronted Stercza brothers, bent on vengeance, but also by the Holy Inquisition, Reynevan finds himself in the Narrenturm, the Tower of Fools.
\nThe Tower is an asylum for the mad, or for those who dare to think differently and challenge the prevailing order. And escaping the Tower, avoiding the conflict around him, and keeping his own sanity might prove a greater challenge than Reynevan ever imagined.
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he world has fallen into war. Ciri, the child of prophecy, has vanished. Hunted by friends and foes alike, she has taken on the guise of a petty bandit and lives free for the first time in her life. But the net around her is closing.
\nGeralt, the Witcher, has assembled a group of allies including Dandelion, Milva, Regis, and Cahir, to rescue her. Both sides of the war have sent brutal mercenaries to hunt her down. Her crimes have made her famous. There is only one place left to run. The tower of the swallow is waiting . . .
The second volume of the Hussite Trilogy takes Reynevan – scoundrel, magician, possibly a fool – into the depths of war as he attempts to navigate the religious fervors of the fifteenth century. When the Hussite leaders entrust Reynevan with a dangerous secret mission, he is forced to come out of hiding in Bohmeia and depart for Silesia.
\nAt the same time, he strives to avenge the death of his brother and discover the whereabouts of his beloved. Once again pursued by multiple enemies, he must contend with danger on every front.
It’s the fall of 1977, and amid the lovely, leafy streets of Cambridge a young Harvard graduate student, a Jew from Egypt, longs more than anything to become an assimilated American and a professor of literature. He spends his days in a pleasant blur of seventeenth-century fiction, but when he meets a brash, charismatic Arab cab driver in a Harvard Square café, everything changes.
\nNicknamed Kalashnikov - Kalaj for short - for his machine-gun vitriol, the cab driver roars into the student’s life with his denunciations of the American obsession with \"all things jumbo and ersatz\" - Twinkies, monster television sets, all-you-can-eat buffets - and his outrageous declarations on love and the art of seduction. The student finds it hard to resist his new friend’s magnetism, and before long he begins to neglect his studies and live a double life: one in the rarified world of Harvard, the other as an exile with Kalaj on the streets of Cambridge.
\nTogether they carouse the bars and cafés around Harvard Square, trade intimate accounts of their love affairs, argue about the American dream, and skinny-dip in Walden Pond. But as final exams loom and Kalaj has his license revoked and is threatened with deportation, the student faces the decision of his life: whether to cling to his dream of New World assimilation or risk it all to defend his Old World friend.
\nHarvard Square is a sexually charged and deeply American novel of identity and aspiration at odds. It is also an unforgettable, moving portrait of an unlikely friendship from one of the finest stylists of our time.
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Jazz Bashara is a criminal.
Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.
Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she's stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself - and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first.
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission--and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.
\nExcept that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
\nAll he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
\nHis crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, he realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Alone on this tiny ship that's been cobbled together by every government and space agency on the planet and hurled into the depths of space, it's up to him to conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.
\nAnd thanks to an unexpected ally, he just might have a chance.
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.
\nNow, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.
\nAfter a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.
\nChances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old \"human error\" are much more likely to kill him first.
\nBut Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills - and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit - he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?
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When Detective Kim Stone is woken before dawn because local journalist Tracy Frost wants to show her a message, she’s not impressed. But her blood turns cold when she reads the note. She has 36 hours to follow a trail set by an anonymous challenger. If she fails, people will die.
\nKim’s gut tells her this is no hoax. She summons her team, desperate to prevent what lies ahead. With minutes to spare, they solve the first cryptic clue. It leads to a box hidden deep in the woods, containing a second clue and a tape. As she listens to the recording of a heart-wrenching scream, Kim knows her enemy will go to any lengths to achieve his goals… and that she must draw on all her experience of evil men to understand what is driving him.
\nRefusing to blindly follow orders, Kim and the team turn the killer’s clues against him, using evidence buried deep in the tapes to find where he’s hiding his victim. But they are too late… And then, as the sun rises on the second day, someone else goes missing. This time, it’s a skilled surgeon, and if they don’t save her, an eight-year-old girl will die.
\nExhausted and enraged, with her bosses watching every step she takes, Kim realises the only way to win is to break the rules. But with the clock ticking, can she find the twisted mind behind this murderous game before her time runs out?
When Detective Kim Stone races to the crime scene, there is no body waiting for the paramedics are desperately trying to save the victim’s life. But there is something very strange about the way the man was found, his arms raised above his head, his legs spread apart. When he dies on the way to the hospital, Kim is certain she’s on the hunt for a killer . . . but all evidence at the scene has been destroyed.
\nThe dead man, Eric Gould , seems ordinary, until the team dig into his past. As a teenager, he was locked away for attacking his girlfriend, and Kim suspects he was hurting his fiancé now. Was someone trying to stop history repeating?
\nThen another man is found on the verge of death, his bones broken to force him into an unnatural shape. The team realise the killer is sending a message - the victims’ bodies are spelling out their sins. As boys, they were both part of a group of six who bragged about their terrible crimes. But they were children then, and when she sees the grief on the faces of their loved ones now, Kim swears to find answers.
\nIs someone finally getting revenge . . . or do they think these men are still dangerous? The killer is threatening to strike again, and the only way Kim can crack the case is by tracking down the rest of the six first.
\nBut then a revelation about what one of her team is suffering makes Kim understand why people take the law into their own hands. Do these victims deserve what’s coming to them? Or is there even more to fear from their brutal killer?
How do you catch a killer who leaves no trace?
A victim killed with a single, precise stab to the heart appears at first glance to be a robbery gone wrong. A caring, upstanding social worker lost to a senseless act of violence. But for Detective Kim Stone, something doesn’t add up.
When a local drug addict is found murdered with an identical wound, Kim knows instinctively that she is dealing with the same killer. But with nothing to link the two victims except the cold, calculated nature of their death, this could be her most difficult case yet.
Desperate to catch the twisted individual, Kim’s focus on the case is threatened when she receives a chilling letter from Dr Alex Thorne, the sociopath who Kim put behind bars. And this time, Alex is determined to hit where it hurts most, bringing Kim face-to-face with the woman responsible for the death of Kim’s little brother – her own mother.
As the body count increases, Kim and her team unravel a web of dark secrets, bringing them closer to the killer. But one of their own could be in mortal danger. Only this time, Kim might not be strong enough to save them . . .
They thought they were safe. They were wrong.
The murder of a young prostitute and a baby found abandoned on the same winter night signals the start of a disturbing investigation for Detective Kim Stone - one which brings her face to face with someone from her own horrific childhood.
As three more sex workers are murdered in quick succession, each death more violent than the last, Kim and her team realise that the initial killing was no one-off frenzied attack, but a twisted serial killer preying on the vulnerable.
At the same time, the search begins for the desperate woman who left her newborn baby at the station - but what looks like a tragic abandonment turns even more sinister when a case of modern slavery is uncovered.
The two investigations bring the team into a terrifying world of human exploitation and cruelty - and a showdown that puts Kim’s life at risk as shocking secrets from her own past come to light.
Late one summer evening, Detective Kim Stone arrives at Haden Hill Park to the scene of a horrific crime: a woman in her sixties tied to a swing with barbed wire and an X carved into the back of her neck.
The victim, Belinda Evans, was a retired college Professor of Child Psychology. As Kim and her team search her home, they find an overnight bag packed and begin to unravel a complex relationship between Belinda and her sister Veronica.
Then two more bodies are found bearing the same distinctive markings, and Kim knows she is on the hunt for a ritualistic serial killer. Linking the victims, Kim discovers they were involved in annual tournaments for gifted children and were on their way to the next event.
With DS Penn immersed in the murder case of a young man, Kim and her team are already stretched and up against one of the most ruthless killer’s they’ve ever encountered. The clues lie in investigating every child who attended the tournaments, dating back decades.
Faced with hundreds of potential leads and a bereaved sister who is refusing to talk, can Kim get inside the mind of a killer and stop another murder before it’s too late?
She ruined their lives. Now they’re going to destroy hers.
‘Someone is recreating every traumatic point in your life. They are doing this to make you suffer, to make you hurt and the only possible end game can be death. Your death.’
On the fourth floor of Chaucer House, two teenagers are found chained to a radiator. The boy is dead but the girl is alive. For Detective Kim Stone every detail of the scene mirrors her own terrifying experience with her brother Mikey, when they lived in the same tower block thirty years ago.
When the bodies of a middle-aged couple are discovered in a burnt-out car, Kim can’t ignore the chilling similarity to the deaths of Erica and Keith – the only loving parents Kim had ever known.
Faced with a killer who is recreating traumatic events from her past, Kim must face the brutal truth that someone wants to hurt her in the worst way possible. Desperate to stay on the case, she is forced to work with profiler Alison Lowe who has been called in to observe and monitor Kim’s behaviour.
Kim has spent years catching dangerous criminals and protecting the innocent. But with a killer firmly fixed on destroying Kim, can she solve this complex case and save her own life or will she become the final victim?
When a collection of human bones is unearthed during a routine archaeological dig, a Black Country field suddenly becomes a complex crime scene for Detective Kim Stone.
As the bones are sorted, it becomes clear that the grave contains more than one victim. The bodies hint at unimaginable horror, bearing the markings of bullet holes and animal traps.
Forced to work alongside Detective Travis, with whom she shares a troubled past, Kim begins to uncover a dark secretive relationship between the families who own the land in which the bodies were found.
But while Kim is immersed in one of the most complicated investigations she’s ever led, her team are caught up in a spate of sickening hate crimes. Kim is close to revealing the truth behind the murders, yet soon finds one of her own is in jeopardy - and the clock is ticking. Can she solve the case and save them from grave danger - before it’s too late?
In a busy shopping centre, a little girl clutches a teddy bear, clinging to it in the absence of her mother, Katrina. Hours later, Katrina’s body is discovered in an abandoned building. For Detective Kim Stone, it looks like a quick, functional murder. But Kim’s instincts tell her there’s more to this senseless murder than meets the eye. What was the motive for killing a young mother out shopping with her child?
Days later, a second victim is found in a local park, her neck broken just like Katrina’s and her six-year-old son missing.
But with her colleague, Detective Stacey Wood, working on another unsolved crime and a member of the team grieving the loss of a close relative, Kim is struggling to make inroads on what is fast becoming a complex case. And when a handwritten letter from the killer lands on Kim’s desk addressed to her, and pleading for help, she knows time is running out to bring the little boy home alive.
With the support of a handwriting analyst and profiler, Kim and the team begin to get inside the mind of the killer and make a shocking discovery.
Some of the victims have scratch marks on their wrists.
But these are no random scratches. The killer is using them to communicate with someone. The question is… with whom?
And if Kim doesn’t find them soon, another innocent soul will die.
Late one evening, as the final church bell rings out, Sandra Deakin’s cold and lifeless body is found in the overgrown graveyard with multiple stab wounds. When Detective Kim Stone rushes to the scene, the violence of the attack convinces her that this murder was deeply personal. What could have caused such hate?
\nAs the team dig into Sandra’s life, they discover she believed she could communicate with the dead. Was that why she was targeted? The last people to see her alive were a group of women who had a session with her the night before she was killed, and as Kim and her team pay them a visit, they soon learn each of the women is lying about why they wanted Sandra’s help . . .
\nKim realises she must dig deep and open her mind to every avenue if she’s going to stand a chance at solving this case. And when she learns that Sandra was banned from the church grounds and had been receiving death threats too, she’s ever more certain that Sandra’s gifts are at the heart of everything.
\nBut just when she thinks she’s found a lead, the broken body of a nineteen-year-old boy is found outside a call centre - a single slash across his mouth just like Sandra’s. Kim knows they are now racing against time to understand what triggered these attacks, and to stop a twisted killer.
\nBut they might be too late. Just as Kim sits down at a local psychic show she discovers something that makes her blood run cold. Both Sandra and the call centre were named in an article about frauds. And this show stars the next name on the list. She looks around the audience with a feeling of utter dread, certain the killer is among them.
When teenager Sadie Winter jumps from the roof of her school, her death is ruled as suicide – a final devastating act from a troubled girl. But then the broken body of a young boy is discovered at the same school and it’s clear to Detective Kim Stone that these deaths are not tragic accidents.
As Kim and her team begin to unravel a dark web of secrets, one of the teachers could hold the key to the truth. Yet just as she is about to break her silence, she is found dead.
With more children’s lives at risk, Kim has to consider the unthinkable - whether a fellow pupil could be responsible for the murders. Investigating the psychology of children that kill brings the detective into contact with her former adversary, Dr Alex Thorne - the sociopath who has made it her life’s work to destroy Kim.
Desperate to catch the killer, Kim finds a link between the recent murders and an initiation prank that happened at the school decades earlier. But saving these innocent lives comes at a cost - and one of Kim’s own might pay the ultimate price.
Eeeny meeny, miney, moe. Who lives, who dies only I know.
When the body of a doctor is discovered brutally murdered in local woodland, Detective Kim Stone is shocked to discover the victim is Gordon Cordell – a man linked to a previous case she worked on involving the death of a young school girl. Gordon has a chequered past, but who would want him dead?
As the investigation gets underway, Gordon’s son is involved in a horrific car crash which leaves him fighting for his life. Kim's sure this was no accident.
Then the body of a woman is found dead in suspicious circumstances and Kim makes a disturbing link between the victims and Russells Hall Hospital. The same hospital where Gordon worked.
With Kim and her team still grieving the loss of one of their own, they’re at their weakest and facing one of the most dangerous serial killers they’ve ever encountered. Everything is on the line. Can Kim keep her squad together and find the killer before he claims his next victim?
The killer is picking off his victims at a terrifying pace, and he’s not finished yet.
In the darkness of a cold December morning, Detective Kim Stone steps through the doors of Halesowen Police Station. She’s about to meet her team for the first time. The victim of her next case is about to meet his killer . . .
When the body of a young man is found beheaded and staked to the ground in a secluded area of the Clent Hills, Kim and her new squad rush to the crime scene.
Searching the victim’s home, Kim discovers a little girl’s bedroom and a hidden laptop. Why is his sister relieved to hear he’s dead - and where is the rest of his family?
As Kim begins to unearth the dark secrets at the heart of the case, D.C. Stacey Wood finds a disturbing resemblance to the recent murder of Lester Jackson. But that’s not all Stacey finds …
She’s convinced there is a link between the victims and a women’s shelter run by Marianne Forbes, Lester’s niece. A child of the care system herself, Kim knows all too well what it means to be vulnerable. Could Marianne be the key to cracking this case?
With the killer about to strike again, Kim is in deep water with a rookie squad. Inexperienced Stacey is showing signs of brilliance but struggling to hold her nerve and, while D.S. Bryant is reliable and calm, D.S. Dawson is a liability. With his home life in pieces, his volatile behaviour is already fracturing her fragile new team.
Can Kim bring Dawson in line and pull her crew together in time to catch the killer before another life is taken? This time, one of her own could be in terrible danger . . .
In a quiet kitchen, where two mugs wait by the kettle to be filled, Sheryl Hawne lies in a pool of blood. Her only daughter, Katie, is found at her side, still clutching the murder weapon and apparently incapable of speech. To Detective Kim Stone, the case seems open and shut. But Katie is in no state to be questioned, so Kim and the team must dig deep to understand what triggered this brutal act.
\n\t\t\t\t\tSoon, they learn that Katie participated in beauty pageants as a child, and her mother kept a shrine to her achievements. As Kim gazes at the golden trophies and shiny rosettes, she is forced to wonder if this was what set Katie on the path to murder . . .
\n\t\t\t\t\tBut then Kim receives a shocking call. Another woman is dead. And with Katie safely locked up, she cannot be the killer. The second victim also entered her daughter in pageants, and a broken tiara is found thrust down her throat. Someone clearly feels that these mothers are guilty - and that they deserve to die. Forcing back the memories of her own monstrous mother, Kim vows to find justice for these women, no matter what pain they caused.
\n\t\t\t\t\tNow more than a day behind their killer, Kim races to learn more about a competitive world where appearances are everything and mothers will go to any lengths to ensure their daughters triumph. Buried somewhere in this dark past is the key to unlocking the case . . . but will Kim be able to find it before another family is destroyed forever?
When a nineteen-year-old boy, Jamie Mills, is found hanging from a tree in a local park, his death is ruled a suicide. Detective Kim Stone’s instincts tell her something isn’t right - but it’s not her investigation and her temporary replacement is too busy waiting for the next big case to be asking the right questions.
\nWhy would a seemingly healthy boy choose to end his life?
\nWhy does his mother show no sign of emotional distress at the loss of her son?
\nStill mending her broken mind and body from her last harrowing case, Kim is supposed to be easing back into work gently. But then she finds a crucial, overlooked detail: Jamie had a recent injury that would have made it impossible for him to climb the tree. He must have been murdered.
\nQuickly taking back charge of her team and the case, Kim visits Jamie’s parents and is shocked to hear that they had sent him to a clinic to ‘cure’ him of his sexuality. According to his mother, Jamie was introverted and prone to mood swings. Yet his friend speaks of a vibrant, outgoing boy.
\nThe clues to smashing open this disturbing case lie behind the old Victorian walls of the clinic, run by the Gardner family. They claim that patients come of their own accord and are free to leave at any time. But why are those that attended the clinic so afraid to speak of what happens there? And where did the faded restraint marks identified on Jamie’s wrists come from?
\nThen the body of a young woman is found dead by suffocation and Kim makes two chilling discoveries. The victim spent time at the clinic too, and her death was also staged to look like a suicide.
\nScarred from an ordeal that nearly took her life, is Kim strong enough to stop a terrifying killer from silencing the clinic’s previous patients one by one?
Find love. Have a baby. Ditch the mother-in-law from hell. Three best friends, each wishing for the one thing they want the most. But what if they’re searching for happiness in all the wrong places?
\nCher is head over heels for her new boss. He’s gorgeous, smart and funny but he barely even notices her except to ask for a coffee refill. How can she get him to see that she’s the perfect girl for him?
\nSarah is longing for a baby with the man she loves. The only trouble is David is already married. Will he finally leave his wife so they can be together?
\nDeb should be looking forward to her wedding with lovely fiancé Mark but with her mother-in-law from hell Margie taking control of everything, will her dream day turn into her worst nightmare?
\nSo, when one summer evening, over several glasses of wine, Cher, Sarah and Deb stumble across an old book on Sarah’s shelf and drunkenly decide to cast a wishing spell, they don’t think for one minute that it will come true. It’s just three best friends having a laugh and throwing some herbs around the garden. Or is it?
It had seemed so simple. Get in, get the information, get out. But now they were getting inside her mind and she didn’t know how to stop them . . .
When Detective Kim Stone is called to the home of Samantha Brown, she finds the young woman lying in bed with her throat cut and a knife in her hand. With no sign of forced entry or struggle, Kim rules her death a tragic suicide.
But a visit to Samantha’s parents rings alarm bells for Kim – there’s something they’re not telling her. And, when she spots a clue in a photograph, Kim realises she’s made a huge mistake. Samantha didn’t take her own life, she was murdered.
Then a young man’s body is found in a local lake with his throat cut and Kim makes a link between the victim and Samantha. They both spent time at Unity Farm, a retreat for people seeking an alternative way of life.
Beneath the retreat’s cosy façade, Kim and her team uncover a sinister community preying on the emotionally vulnerable.
Sending one of her own undercover into Unity Farm is high risk but it’s Kim’s only hope if she is to catch a killer – someone Kim is convinced the victims knew and trusted.
With Bryant distracted by the emergence of a harrowing case close to his heart, and an undercover officer in way over her head, Kim’s neck is on the line like never before. Can she protect those closest to her before another life is taken?
With the investigation into the boys' disappearance going nowhere, Detective Kim Stone and her team have been sent halfway across the country to help. But they have a second secret mission: to find out if the dark rumours about the local cops are justified, and if that’s why the children are still lost. Far from home, they must get close to their targets by pretending to be incompetent, lazy and at each other’s throats - and the strain is starting to tell.
\nAll Kim wants to do is investigate both cases properly. She knows she’s the only hope these little boys have . . . but she can’t blow her cover. Then, just when Kim starts to make headway with a woman brave enough to speak out about one of the local detectives, she is found dead. Did Kim’s questions get her killed? How deep does the rot go?
\nWhen another body is found, Kim has a lead at last - one that tells her she’s facing some of the worst criminals she’s ever known. The time for playing nice is over . . . but can she bring these children home, when time is running out and she cannot trust a single soul?
Two girls go missing. Only one will return.
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The couple that offers the highest amount will see their daughter again. The losing couple will not. Make no mistake. One child will die.
When nine-year-old best friends Charlie and Amy disappear, two families are plunged into a living nightmare. A text message confirms the unthinkable; that the girls are the victims of a terrifying kidnapping.
And when a second text message pits the two families against each other for the life of their children, the clock starts ticking for D.I. Kim Stone and the squad.
Seemingly outwitted at every turn, as they uncover a trail of bodies, Stone realises that these ruthless killers might be the most deadly she has ever faced. And that their chances of bringing the girls home alive, are getting smaller by the hour…
Untangling a dark web of secrets from the families’ past might hold the key to solving this case. But can Kim stay alive long enough to do so? Or will someone’s child pay the ultimate price?
The dead don’t tell secrets… unless you listen.
The girl’s smashed-in face stared unseeing up to the blue sky, soil spilling out of her mouth. A hundred flies hovered above the bloodied mess.
Westerley research facility is not for the faint-hearted. A ‘body farm’ investigating human decomposition, its inhabitants are corpses in various states of decay. But when Detective Kim Stone and her team discover the fresh body of a young woman, it seems a killer has discovered the perfect cover to bury their crime.
Then a second girl is attacked and left for dead, her body drugged and mouth filled with soil. It’s clear to Stone and the team that a serial killer is at work - but just how many bodies will they uncover? And who is next?
As local reporter, Tracy Frost, disappears, the stakes are raised. The past seems to hold the key to the killer’s secrets - but can Kim uncover the truth before a twisted, damaged mind claims another victim?
Even the darkest secrets can’t stay buried forever . . .
Five figures gather round a shallow grave. They had all taken turns to dig. An adult sized hole would have taken longer. An innocent life had been taken but the pact had been made. Their secrets would be buried, bound in blood …
Years later, a headmistress is found brutally strangled, the first in a spate of gruesome murders which shock the Black Country.
\nBut when human remains are discovered at a former children’s home, disturbing secrets are also unearthed. D.I. Kim Stone fast realises she’s on the hunt for a twisted individual whose killing spree spans decades.
\nAs the body count rises, Kim needs to stop the murderer before they strike again. But to catch the killer, can Kim confront the demons of her own past before it’s too late?
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When Detective Kim Stone rushes to the scene of a house fire, she’s shocked to discover it’s claimed the lives of two teenage children and their parents. But this tragedy is not quite as it seems. Each body is marked by a gunshot wound and the mother, Helen Daynes, is holding the gun.
\nThe case sparks painful childhood memories for Kim who suffered at the hands of her own abusive mother, but it just makes her more determined to uncover the truth. As Kim untangles Helen’s past, she finds a history of clinical depression. But did it drive Helen to murder her loved ones?
\nThen Kim uncovers a tiny, vital clue in Helen’s bedroom that throws the investigation wide open. Could someone else have killed the Daynes family?
\nJust as Kim feels she’s making progress, a deadly threat is made to her own life by a dangerous psychopath from her past. Biting back her fear, she keeps digging. And when Kim hits upon a shocking secret that changes everything she thought she knew about Helen, she realises that the remaining family members are in grave danger.
\nKim is under pressure like never before, and the monster circling her is getting ever closer. Four bodies already. Four graves fresh in the ground. Who will be next? Can Kim find the killer and save herself before it’s too late?
One August afternoon, eight-year-old Grace Lennard skips into the garden of the childcare center she attends and vanishes into thin air. Rushing to the scene of Grace’s disappearance, Detective Kim Stone finds a chilling piece of evidence: the engraved heart bracelet belonging to Melody Jones - the little girl who was taken from a playground exactly 25 years ago.
\nHours before, Steven Harte had walked into Halesowen police station and confessed to having information that would lead Kim to Melody. And he told Kim she’d have a more urgent problem to deal with first. Now Kim must play Steven’s twisted game if she’s to find Grace alive.
\nWith only 24 hours to make every second of Steven’s interrogation count, and scan his behavior for hidden clues, Kim and her team soon link Steven to the abduction of several vulnerable girls - two were kept for a year and then released, unharmed - but where are Melody and the others?
\nThen small bones are discovered in the grounds of a local park, and Kim fears the worst.
\nKim may think she’s close to convicting a killer, but the case is about to get even more complex. Steven is hiding one final explosive truth, and he’s not the only one. Dr. Alex Thorne - the evil woman Kim did her best to keep behind bars is about to reveal a shocking secret to Kim that will hit her where it hurts the most. Kim knows she must put aside her own demons to save Grace and find the other missing girls in time. But can Kim untangle Steven’s web before any more innocent lives are lost?
When the lifeless body of a man is found on an industrial estate, Detective Kim Stone arrives on the scene and discovers he’s been tortured in the worst way imaginable.
\nBut as she breaks the devastating news to the victim’s wife, Diane Phipps, Kim can’t help feeling that something isn’t quite right about the woman's reaction.
\nTwenty-four hours later, the victim’s family disappears into thin air.
\nThen a second body is found staked to the ground in a local nature reserve.
\nDesperate to crack the case open quickly, Kim and her team unravel a vital clue – a fiercely guarded secret that links both victims and could cost even more lives.
\nA secret that some police officers are also protecting.
\nFaced with deceit from those she should be able to trust, family members who won’t talk, and local reporter, Tracy Frost, opening a can of worms on the case of a woman murdered by her husband a year ago - Kim is in deep water like never before.
\nKim must find the motive if she is to find the killer who is systematically targeting and torturing his victims. But can she unlock the shocking truth and stop him before he strikes again?
Detective Kim Stone knows from the moment she looks down on Ashley Reynolds that this is no ordinary crime. No one has a bad word to say about this loving wife and mother. So why did someone murder her, and wait to make sure she was dead?
\nAshley was a social worker, and some claimed she tore families apart. But her husband is also acting strangely, planning to take their daughter and leave town. Did the threat to her come from home or work?
\nThen another woman is killed in the same cold, calm way. Nadine was a honey trapper, and the men she tricked blamed her for destroying their marriages. Someone clearly believes Ashley and Nadine were wicked . . . and that wicked women deserve to die.
\nBut when a third woman is murdered, Kim and the team can’t find anything that even the sickest mind would find fault with. Certain that time is running out, they search desperately for something that links their victims.
\nAnd then Kim realises something that chills her to the bone. Because if she’s right, the worst danger is yet to come . . .
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An unputdownable romantasy following a young woman posing as fortune-teller at a magical traveling carnival, where the handsome boy who once broke her heart resurfaces and warns her that the carnival is more sinister than it appears.
\nWelcome to the Carnival Fantástico, a spectacle of magic and mischief, and the perfect haven for a runaway. Using her tricks and razor-sharp wit, Esmeralda becomes the carnival’s resident fortune-teller, aiming for the lead role in the Big Top Show. Success would mean freedom from her former employer, the commander of the King’s army.
\nIgnacio has defected from the army and is on the hunt for evidence of his father’s corruption. But the last thing he expects to find on his father’s trail of lies is the only girl he’s ever loved, spinning false fortunes at a traveling carnival.
\nPerhaps fortune has thrown them together for a reason. They strike a deal: she’ll help him expose his father if he helps her secure the main act. But old feelings don’t die easily, and the commander’s secret isn’t the only thing they’ll need to confront.
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Thornwalk, a once-stately English manor, is on the brink of transformation. Its keys are being handed over to a luxury hotelier who will undertake a complete renovation - but in doing so, what will they erase? Through the keen eyes of an enigmatic neighbor, the reader is taken on a guided tour into rooms filled with secrets and memories, each revealing the story of the five Gilbert siblings.
\nSpanning the eve of World War II to the early 2000s, this contemporary gothic novel weaves a rich tapestry of English country life. As the story unfolds, the reader is drawn into a world where the echoes of an Edwardian idyll clash with the harsh realities of war, neglect, and changing times. The Gilberts’ tale is one of great loves, lofty ambitions, and profound loss, and Angela Tomaski’s mordantly witty yet loving account is an immersive experience.
\nReminiscent of the haunting atmospheres in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Infamous Gilberts offers a fresh take on a classic genre, capturing the essence of a troubled but fascinating family.
On September 15, 2008, the world of Greenwich, Connecticut, is shaken. When the investment bank Weiss & Partners is shuttered, CEO Bob D’Amico must fend off allegations of malfeasance, as well as the judgment and resentment of his community. As panic builds, five women in his life must scramble to negotiate power on their own terms and ask themselves what - if anything - is worth saving.
In the aftermath of this collapse, Bob D’Amico’s teenage daughter Madison begins to probe her father’s heretofore secret world for information. Four other women in Madison’s life —her mother Isabel, her best friend Amanda, her nanny Lily, and family friend Mina —begin to question their own shifting roles in their insular, moneyed world.
For the adults, this means learning how to protect their own in a community that has turned against them. For the younger generation, it means heightened rebellion and heartache during the already volatile teenage years. And for Lily, it means deciding where her loyalties lie when it comes to the family in which she is both an essential member and, ultimately, an outsider. All these women have witnessed more than they’ve disclosed, all harbor secret insecurities and fears, and all must ask themselves—where is the line between willful ignorance and unspoken complicity?
Clare is supposed to be the grown-up one. Married to the love of her life, with a major deal for her first novel, she has everything she thought she wanted. So then why does it all feel so wrong? When she agrees to a weeklong vacation in Hawai'i with five of her oldest friends as they each approach thirty, she is hoping for an escape with the people who know her best.
\nThere is Jessie, who won’t stop talking about her new boyfriend; Mac, trying to pretend he hasn’t outgrown the group; Kyle, the eternal peacemaker; and Renzo, who brought them all together but keeps picking fights. And then, of course, there’s Liam, who Clare has barely seen since high school but somehow can’t get out of her head - or her bed.
\nBut when a terrifying news alert shatters their peace, it becomes harder to ignore how much the world has changed since they were teenagers. As the resentments and tensions that have always simmered just beneath the surface begin to boil, Clare must ask if their shared history is enough to sustain their friendships, or if growing up might mean letting go.
\nWith crackling wit and emotional fearlessness, When We Grow Up is a provocative portrait of friendship in a world that feels ever more unrecognisable and a searing exploration of what it means to be a good person.
Ever since Lucy Smith’s father died five years ago, “home” has been more of an idea than a place. She knows being on the run is better than anything waiting for her as a “ward of the state.” But when the sharp-eyed and kind Mr. Jameson with an interest in her case comes looking for her, Lucy wonders if hiding from her past will ever truly keep her safe.
\nFive years in the foster system has taught her to be cautious and smart. But she wants to believe Mr. Jameson and his “friend-not-friend,” a tall and fierce-looking woman who say they want to look after her.
\nThey also tell Lucy the truth her father hid from her: She is Ojibwe; she has - had - a sister, and more siblings; a grandmother who’d look after her and a home where she would be loved.
\nBut Lucy is being followed. The past has destroyed any chance of normal she has had, and now the secrets she’s hiding will swallow her whole and take away the future she always dreamed of.
The kingdom of Stelauris is slowly dying. A season of poison infects the air, earth, and water with increasing deadliness each year, and a deep love of gold and power infects the failing mind of the king. His only daughter and first in line to the throne, Princess Seren, lives in tightly controlled isolation. When she is suddenly thrust into royal society, she struggles to hide the strain of untamed magic awakening in her blood.
\nSeren’s newly appointed personal guard, Sir Corin, resents the exile of his people. As heir to a long-banished line of succession and the last of the land’s legendary protectors, he holds no loyalty for the current royal family and their history of unhinged cruelty.
\nAs death steals over the kingdom and the schemes at court grow deadlier, the princess and the guard are forced to face their fears, their troubled pasts, and the cost of personal freedom.
\nThe Star-Blessed is a reimagining and reinventing of two fairy tales: “Rumpelstiltskin” and “Catskin” by the Brothers Grimm.
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A country town, a brutal murder, a shameful past, a reckoning to come . . . The injustices of the past and dangers of the present envelop Aboriginal policewoman Renee Taylor, when her unwilling return to the small outback town of her childhood plunges her into the investigation of a brutal murder.
\nRenee Taylor is planning to stay the minimum amount of time in her remote hometown - only as long as her mum needs her, then she is fleeing back to her real life in Brisbane.
\nSeconded to the town's sleepy police station, Renee is pretty sure work will hold nothing more exciting than delivering speeding tickets. Then a murdered woman is found down by the creek on the outskirts of town.
\nLeading the investigation, Renee uncovers a perplexing connection to the disappearance of two young women thirty years earlier. As she delves deeper and the mystery unfurls, intergenerational cruelties, endemic racism, and deep corruption show themselves, even as dark and bitter truths about the town and its inhabitants' past rise up and threaten to overwhelm the present . . .
A surprising gift brings closure for an elderly widow in a poignant story about grief, memory, and the persistence of love.
\nKorean immigrant Mina Pak Johnson is clearing out the last of her husband’s things when she finds a picnic basket in his closet - a long-forgotten wedding present from her mother. With it comes decades of memories - of her mother’s wishes for her to be happy and her own shattered hopes for her first child - and regret at never having used it.
\nPushing her husband’s ashes and a bottle of wine in a rusty old stroller, Mina is determined to re-create the picnic they never had. But with it comes something Mina never expected, illuminating a loving gesture her husband made years ago.
After years of shouldering the childcare and housework, trying to keep her creative life and career alive, and managing her husband’s existential anxieties, the once whimsical Sarah is too burned out to dream. Most days, all she can muster is an imaginary version of her husband Trevor, one who actually listens to her, an almost-IRL replica of the husband in the picture-perfect image of their family she crafts online. Meanwhile, Trevor is caught in a downward spiral of his own. Strangled by his fear of artistic mediocrity and mounting sexual frustration, he fantasizes about the early college days when their romance was still athrill with seductive possibility.
\nWhen both Sarah and Trevor secretly stumble on an auteur porn film based on the ancient Greek myth of Ariadne and Dionysus, they are immediately sucked into a dizzying maze of obsession, betrayal, and duplicate selves echoing backwards in time. With the arrival of a brilliant, alluring new student in Trevor’s university class, the line between fantasy and reality is increasingly blurred, threatening to collapse the walls of their mythology forever.
\nWith startling psychological insight, a sly sense of humour, and all the peculiar twists of a fairytale, Variations on a Dream is a fearless exploration of the lengths we will go to save what we believe to be a dream come true.
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After months of financial strain and escalating arguments, Caroline is relieved when her husband, Adam, secures a job at Corridor, a prestigious Big Tech company. Though his long hours on top-secret projects often leave Caroline alone with their newborn son, Gabriel, the life-changing income seems worth the sacrifice.
\nWhen Adam suggests a summer retreat to Haven, the exclusive island community that serves as Corridor’s base of operations, Caroline agrees, hoping the sun-soaked paradise will help Adam relax and bring their family closer. But she can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t quite right about the town. Though Adam assures her of their safety, the locals’ behavior is oddly secretive and ritualistic - even cultish. It’s clear that Corridor hasn’t resolved tensions about the way the company is transforming the island. And it doesn’t help that Adam’s colleagues seem to have a few strange beliefs of their own.
\nWhen Caroline wakes to discover that Gabriel is missing, her worst fears are confirmed. Desperate and unsure of whom to trust, she must race to find her son - and pull back the curtain on this elite enclave - before he is lost to the island forever.
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Destiny cannot count on anyone but herself. Her mother has struggled with addiction for all of Destiny’s seventeen years, moving them from town to town, bad boyfriend to bad boyfriend - including a particularly dark period in Texas, where Destiny ended up in a psychiatric hospital. But Destiny's mother is newly sober and stable. And Destiny is falling in love.
\nDestiny never believed in happily ever after, but that doesn't stop her confidence from fraying when the first guy she ever trusted casually shatters her heart. Spiraling hard, she tells a tiny, desperate lie to buy herself a moment of hope. But as the lie grows and the pressures tangle, she gets lost in her own deception, and the line between truth and fantasy starts to blur.
\nWith time untethered and her perception in knots, Destiny must find a way to reclaim her story and weave a new ending - before the beginnings unravel.
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“Relaxing” and “getting a tan” may be high on most teens’ summer activity list, but for chronically freckled and deeply anxious Penny Dexter? Not a chance. Socking money away for college? Of course. Babysitting her siblings? Sure. Becoming a climate scientist and saving the world? She wishes.
\nAt least she can tackle the tuition money with the seasonal gig she landed at her local donut shop. But when she finds out that her genderqueer nemesis Mateo della Penna will also be working behind the counter, Penny’s summer of mindless labor vanishes before her eyes. But their two-and-a-half-year feud takes a backseat when Delicious Donuts is threatened by a corporate takeover
\nAs their small town confronts changes Penny can’t accept, there’s still one person who remains by her side. And though their taste in donuts is questionable (the apple fritter is clearly superior to the Boston cream), Mateo’s presence manages to calm Penny’s anxiety while opening new possibilities she never allowed herself to contemplate before. Could it be that Penny’s found the perfect, most infuriating person to face the world with?
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Mae Kellerman is content. After forty years of ups and downs, she has a meaningful job at a queer community center in Portland, Oregon. She has an apartment full of plants, a ride-or-die group of friends.
\nUntil the day her best friend actually does up and die. Leaving Mae with a hole in her heart - and a shocking amount of money.
\nBut before she can think about that, she has to throw his perfect death party, followed by spreading his ashes on the Oregon Coast. It’s there that she stumbles upon an empty storefront for sale in the tiny whale-watching town of Greyfin Bay. Overnight, an old dream resurfaces . . . and Mae’s newfound inheritance could make it possible.
\nIf only Dell McCleary didn’t stand in her way.
\nDell only sells property to the folks actually invested in the best interests of Greyfin Bay. Not some Portlander with pink hair who breezes in on a whim. A Portlander who, irritatingly, refuses to take no for an answer.
\nAs Mae upends her life for the pursuit of opening a queer-owned bookstore in a conservative coastal town, she and Dell are forced to work together, navigating prejudices and past traumas along the way. But as opening day of Bay Books grows nearer, Mae’s heart grows increasingly tangled with her landlord’s - even if his own heart might already belong to someone else.
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When smart-mouthed Vanessa Lerner joins the high school basketball team Julie Parker coaches, Julie’s ready for the challenge. What she’s not ready for is Vanessa’s new foster parent, Elle Cochrane - former University of Tennessee basketball star. While star-struck at first, soon Julie persuades Elle to step into the unfilled position of assistant coach for the year.
\nEven though Elle has stayed out of the basketball world since an injury ended her short-lived WNBA career, the gig might be a way to become closer to Vanessa - and to spend more time with Julie, who makes Elle laugh. As the coaches grow closer, Elle has a hard time understanding how Julie is single. When Julie reveals her lifelong insecurity about dating and how she wishes it was more like sports - being able to practice first - it sparks an intriguing idea.
\nWhile Elle still doubts her abilities as a basketball coach, helping Julie figure out dating is definitely something she can do. But as the basketball season progresses, and lines grow increasingly blurred, Julie and Elle must decide to join the game - or retreat to the sidelines.
Recently divorced and on the verge of bankruptcy, Dahlia Woodson is ready to reinvent herself on the popular reality competition show Chef’s Special. Too bad the first memorable move she makes is falling flat on her face, sending fish tacos flying - not quite the fresh start she was hoping for. Still, she’s focused on winning, until she meets someone she might want a future with more than she needs the prize money.
\nAfter announcing their pronouns on national television, London Parker has enough on their mind without worrying about the klutzy competitor stationed in front of them. They’re there to prove the trolls - including a fellow contestant and their dad - wrong, and falling in love was never part of the plan.
\nAs London and Dahlia get closer, reality starts to fall away. Goodbye, guilt about divorce, anxiety about uncertain futures, and stress from transphobia. Hello, hilarious shenanigans on set, wedding crashing, and spontaneous dips into the Pacific. But as the finale draws near, Dahlia and London’s steamy relationship starts to feel the heat both in and outside the kitchen - and they must figure out if they have the right ingredients for a happily ever after.
with a single snake. And it was angling for the hot stranger who seemed to have appeared out of thin air. Lex was prepared for rattlesnakes, blisters, and months of solitude. What he wasn’t prepared for was Ben Caravalho. But somehow - on a 2,500-mile trail - Alexei keeps running into the outgoing and charismatic hiker with golden-brown eyes, again and again. It might be coincidence. Then again, maybe there’s a reason the trail keeps bringing them together . . .
\nBen has made his fair share of bad decisions, and almost all of them involved beautiful men. And yet there’s something about the gorgeous and quietly nerdy Alexei that Ben can’t just walk away from. Surely a bad decision can’t be this cute and smart. And there are worse things than falling in love during the biggest adventure of your life. But when their plans for the future are turned upside down, Ben and Alexei begin to wonder if it’s possible to hold on to something this wild and wonderful.
Shallow Waters imagines Yemaya, an Orïsha - a deity in the religion of Africa’s Yoruba people - cast into mid-1800s America. We meet Yemaya as a young woman, still in the care of her mother and not yet fully aware of the spectacular power she possesses to protect herself and those she holds dear.
\nThe journey laid out in Shallow Waters sees Yemaya confront the greatest evils of this era; transcend time and place in search of Obatala, a man who sacrifices his own freedom for the chance at hers; and grow into the powerful woman she was destined to become.
\nWe travel alongside Yemaya from her native Africa and on to the “New World,” with vivid pictures of life for those left on the outskirts of power in the nascent Americas. Yemaya realises the fighter within, travels the Underground Railroad in search of the mysterious stranger Obatala, and crosses paths with icons of our history on the road to freedom.
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In this lyrical and stirring companion to Shallow Waters, Oya - the Yoruban deity of the weather - is brought to life during 1870s America.
\nBorn in Cuba after her mother Yemaya’s adventures in the New World, Oya has inherited otherworldly powers from her Yoruba Orisha lineage. While Yemaya is known for her healing abilities, Oya’s influence over the storm proves to be destructive, posing a threat to her mother and the island’s safety.
\nSent to New Orleans to study under Marie Laveau, the Queen of Voodoo, Oya begins a journey across the still young America, encountering a myriad of historical figures, including Mary Ellen Pleasant, Jesse James, Lew Hing, and more.
\nAs Oya navigates the landscapes of racism, colorism, and classism, she grapples with her own identity and powers, striving to find her place in a fraught and complex society. A moving, vivid exploration of resilience, heritage, and the enduring spirit of a young woman coming into her own, The Wind on Her Tongue transports you to a world where magic and reality intertwine.
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The Connection Investigation Agency has seen big changes. New partners, Tessa, Luke, and Beth, have taken over and members of the old team have moved on to pastures new.
\nOn the first day of reopening, a body is discovered in the outhouse at the back of the office and their first case begins with bones that have lain undiscovered for twenty-five years.
\nCan Luke take on his first solo case and solve it?
\nWill Tessa prove to be as good an investigator as she was a DI? Will she solve the mystery of the threatening notes sent to two women, who become murder victims?
\nAs the agency digs deeper into the past and a link between the two cases is revealed, will this help or hinder?
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Five years ago, John and Caroline Coates were happily expecting the birth of twin girls, until an intruder ended their hopes and dreams.
\nNow, John has come to the Connection Agency, asking for their help in tracking down the man who caused them such grief.
\nBack then, Tessa's involvement was cut short when the cold case department quickly took over. This is the chance for her and Luke to follow the facts and finally lay this case to rest. With the rest of the Connection team busy with other jobs, Tessa and Luke, alongside DI Eileen Haughton, an old colleague of Tessa's from her police days, steadily follow the clues to an ending they could never have imagined - revealing a truth that could either bring the Coateses the peace they crave or take them to further depths of despair . . .
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When Clare becomes a widow, her response is something that shocks her - relief. All she wants to do is move on and figure out how to continue her life, alone, no matter the guilt that brings.
\nSo when Vic, her closest friend, comes to her, showing the signs of trouble in her own marriage, she is more than supportive in helping her leave Rob.
\nBut Vic doesn’t get the chance to do that. Because as they go over to Vic's house to collect her things, they find a body. Rob’s.
\nIt appears someone else had an axe to grind. But for Clare, already reeling from secrets from her own late husband’s dark past, she’s about to find out this murder isn’t as straightforward as it may appear . . .
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Pensioner and Private Investigator Doris Lester has taken a well-deserved break from work. She’s planned a holiday with her best friend Wendy on a journey across the Yorkshire and Derbyshire Dales. But before they depart a letter arrives, and the contents stir up trouble and memories of the past.
Soon Doris and Wendy are drawn into the mystery surrounding a troubled family, a missing person and gruesome murder.
When Doris and Wendy join the investigation, intriguing revelations about Doris’s past and present surface, which shock even those closest to her.
Step by step they uncover familial secrets that could tear a family even further apart. Together can Wendy and Doris solve the mystery and if they do, will their lives ever be the same again?
When Janette answers the door to a potential customer looking to board his dog, she never imagines he has nefarious plans.
\nBut minutes later he’s dead and in her cellar.
\nWeeks later she realises she’s pregnant.
\nAnd so she becomes Mother and the baby Child, and a hidden life begins.
\nBut all secrets come out eventually . . .
When the murdered body of a woman is found in a Sheffield carpark, former cop turned private investigator Matt Forrester finds himself embroiled in the case, because the last call the victim made was to him . . .
\nBut the case isn’t as simple as the drug theft it looks like, and - when a young boy becomes the next victim - Matt and his life partner, DI Karen Nelson, realise they’re investigating a terrifying series of revenge killings.
\nArrests start to be made, but enemies are being made. And, as the killings continue, nobody is safe . . .
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For Matt Forrester, The Forrester Detective Agency is going from strength to they’ve expanded their office space and even hired a new office manager - a qualified and astute woman named Carol. What starts as a simple burglary case soon turns into something darker.
\nThe victim of said burglary soon turns up dead, after engaging in threats with the local yobs she believed to have been responsible. But it soon becomes clear that there’s more at play here, and Matt - longside sister Hermia, partner Steve, and life partner Karen - will have to put all their skills to the test, even if it puts them in danger . . .
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Matt Forrester has followed in his dad’s footsteps, climbing the police ranks to become a DI. But when he receives an urgent call for help, Matt has to rethink his career. His dad has been murdered, and Matt’s not going to let this case go. It doesn’t help that his current boss is sleeping with his ex-wife.
\nHermia Forrester didn’t follow her brother into the police force, instead she works in research at the university. But, she’s not going to let that stop her from helping her brother find out what happened to their dad.
\nBut the siblings soon find themselves surrounded by more danger than they ever imagined. Can they both survive this case or will there be more of their family in the morgue?
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Carla Andrews and Lorraine West are work colleagues and best friends. They socialise together, they work in the same bookmakers and they support each other as only best friends can.
Then they are murdered together.
When DI Tom Fowler is handed the case, he discovers a journal that Carla has left and must unpick the secrets Lorraine has kept hidden.
Soon Carla’s and Lorraine’s husbands become the main suspects. It’s usually the spouse who is responsible, isn’t it?
The investigation progresses until Isaac West, Lorraine’s sixteen-year-old son, disappears.
Will the truth ever emerge?
Will Isaac ever be found?
And is knowing the truth always worth the sacrifice?
What if someone set you limits?
Claudia and Heather have been friends and neighbours for many years and both women decide it is the right time for them to leave their husbands. Together they get a flat but their peace is short lived when Claudia is diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Being a good friend, Heather takes on caring for Claudia but a lethal meeting with James, Claudia’s ex-husband, results in someone dying.
As life for Claudia and Heather begins to unravel, the answer to their problems becomes clear . . . it’s murder.
An author arrives in Eyam and moves into Leaf Cottage for a month-long research break. One morning, she sets off on a long walk around the village, but disappears while on her way back. Presumed to be working in solitude on her novel, she is not missed until her husband tries to contact her with news that their daughter has gone into early labour.
\nArriving in Eyam, he contacts the Connection Agency and asks for their help. When Leaf Cottage is found deserted, so begins the hunt for the missing woman. Soon DI Carl Heaton is on the case and bodies start turning up in rapid succession.
\nMeanwhile, another investigator is working on a heartbreaking missing person case.
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Katerina Rowe, a Deacon at the church in the sleepy village of Eyam, has a fulfilled life. She is happily married to Leon and her work is rewarding.
\nBut everything changes when she discovers the body of a man and a badly beaten woman, Beth, in the alleyway behind her husband’s pharmacy.
\nDrawn to the young woman she saved, Kat finds herself embroiled in a baffling mystery.
\nWhen Beth’s house is set on fire, Kat offers the young woman sanctuary in her home and soon the pair begin investigating the murder, with some help from Beth’s feisty grandmother, Doris. But neither the police, nor Leon, nor the criminals want Kat and Beth looking into their affairs and the sleuths quickly find themselves out of their depth . . .
\nCan Kat and Beth solve the mystery and walk away unscathed?
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When DI Tessa Marsden is called to a road traffic accident, she is disturbed by the crime scene she must investigate. She now has a double murder to contend with; two dead girls from the same village.
\nRealising the murders aren’t linked, Marsden summons the help of the Connection Investigation Agency, run by Kat, a church Deacon, Beth, (known affectionately as Mouse), a computer expert, and Doris, Beth’s feisty grandmother.
\nWhen it is discovered that one of the murdered girls was pregnant the case takes an unexpected turn.
\nCan DI Marsden, with the input of Kat and Mouse, solve the case before another body appears?
\nMeanwhile, the agency has been asked to track down the long lost son of Ewan Barker. Will Kat, Mouse and Doris find him and reunite him with his father?
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Church Deacon Kat and her friend Beth, known as Mouse, have started a private investigation business in the sleepy village of Eyam.
\nKat, whose estranged criminal husband, Leon, is on the run, has a lot on her plate running the new business whilst heavily pregnant.
\nWhen a widow asks the sleuths for help, Kat and Mouse find themselves searching for the birth mother of the widow’s husband. But when it becomes clear that the widow isn’t telling the whole truth, Kat and Mouse are drawn into a deadly chase where nothing is what it seems.
\nMeanwhile, Kat’s husband has come back to Eyam and has Kat in his sights.
\nCan Kat and Mouse solve the case and escape the dangerous Leon?
\nThis time they might just be out of their depth . . .
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The lead up to Christmas sees the Connection private investigation team planning their festive season. Until a new case arrives . . .
\nCatapulted into their biggest mystery yet, they are tasked with finding a killer who has been released on parole, and subsequently disappeared. Has he returned to finish the murder he tried to commit before his capture nineteen years earlier?
\nAs he targets his intended victim, his attention is also focused on the private investigators and their police colleagues with devastating effect.
\nWith families torn apart, Doris must seek assistance from a colleague from her past to give Connection the best chance of bringing a psychopath to justice.
\nHow will it end? Is this the last we will see of Kat, Mouse, Doris and Luke? And can Connection continue?
\n
Early one morning, in the grounds of Chatsworth, a body is discovered by one of the estate groundsmen. DI Marsden and DS Granger battle through snow-covered roads to begin their investigation.
\nMeanwhile, at the Connection Investigation Agency, Doris, Kat and Mouse are busy juggling their caseloads, while trying to show their new trainee receptionist the ropes.
\nWhen the police learn that the body belongs to Nicola Armstrong, a resident of the nearby village of Baslow, it soon transpires that Nicola was the mother of a child who disappeared ten years prior to her murder.
\nSoon, the Connection investigators are brought in to help but when a second body is found at Chatsworth, the case takes a disturbing turn.
\nCan the police and the female sleuths get to the truth before more life is lost? Or is the fate of those involved already sealed?
\n
When DI Erica Cheetham and DS Beth Machin are called to investigate the murder of a young woman, whose naked body is discovered in a river, they realise an old foe is killing again.
\nThe police realise this new death is linked to a spate of cold case murders and the killer is back.
Five years earlier, four young women were found murdered, their bodies left in woody areas, and the new victim shares similar hallmarks.
But why did the killer stop killing for all that time and what has inspired them to start again?
\nAs more young women fall victim to a vicious and calculating murderer, Erica and Beth find themselves chasing their tails.
But when a witness is identified the case takes an unexpected and macabre turn.
Can Erica and Beth bring the killer to justice, or will this case prove too much?
\n
During the war against murderous, flesh-eating aliens, grimspace \"jumper\" Sirantha Jax decided to go it alone. The cost of her actions: the destruction of modern interstellar travel-and the lives of six hundred Conglomerate soldiers. Now she's on trial fro dereliction of duty, desertion, mass murder, high treason . . . and her life.
\n
Once Corine Solomon only had the touch - the ability to read an object’s past by handling it. Then she inherited her mother’s magick, and that ended up being a hell of a burden. But if Corine can wrestle a demon queen and win, she can bring back her lover Chance after he’s made the ultimate sacrifice. Can’t she? All Corine knows is that she can’t leave Chance behind if there’s anything she can do about it.
But the clock is ticking - and she still has to deal with debt-collecting demons and a maniacal archangel who’s running a recruitment drive. The stakes have never been so high . . . and this time it’s truly Corine’s last chance to save the love of her life.
Corine Solomon is a handlerwhen she touches an object she instantly knows its history and its future. Using her ability, she can find the missingwhich is why people never stop trying to find her.
\nLike her ex-boyfriend Chance, who needs Corines gift to find someone dear to them both. But the search proves dangerous as it leads them into a strange world of demons and sorcerers, ghosts and witchcraft, zombiesand black magic . . .
Alastor Vega is the sole challenger in a brutal battle for succession. Against all odds, he must stop his power-mad brother, Tycho, before he destroys the Numina. Though he never wanted to rule, he must claim the throne and liberate his people, or the consequences will be calamitous. Yet only the surprising support of a beautiful Animari doctor gives him the fortitude to fight.
Dr. Sheyla Halek has always been more interested in research than personal contact, but family ties - and the needs of her pride - keep her in Ash Valley, deferring her dreams. Brusque and abrasive at the best of times, she never expected to bond with anyone, let alone Golgoth royalty. Strangely, Alastor seems to need her as no one has before, and not only for her medical skills.
Their attraction is forbidden, likely doomed beyond the wildness of wartime, but these fires burn too hot and sweet to be contained…
As a handler, Corine Solomon can touch any object and learn its history. Her power is a gift, but one that’s thrown her life off track. The magical inheritance she received from her mother is dangerously powerful, and Corine has managed to mark herself as a black witch by dealing with demons to solve her problems.
Back home, Corine is trying to rebuild her pawnshop and her life with her ex Chance, despite the target on her back. But when the demons she provoked kidnap her best friend in retaliation, Corine puts everything on hold to save her. It's undoubtedly a trap, but Corine would do anything to save those she loves, even if it means sacrificing herself...
Sirantha Jax isn't known for diplomatic finesse. As a 'jumper' who navigates ships through grimspace, she's used to kicking ass first and taking names later - much later. She's not exactly the obvious choice to sell the Conglomerate to the Ithtorians, a people whose opinions of humans are as hard as their exoskeletons. And Ithtorian council meetings aren't the only place where Ambassador Jax needs to maneuver carefully.
\nHer lover is frozen in permanent kill mode, and his hair trigger threatens to sabotage the talks - not to mention their relationship. But Jax won't give up on the man or the mission. With the Outskirts beleaguered by raiders, pirates, and flesh-eating aliens, an alliance with the Ithtorians may be humanity's only hope. Which has Jax wondering why a notorious troublemaker like her was given the job.
New York City has been decimated by war and plague, and most of civilisation has migrated to underground enclaves, where life expectancy is no more than the early 20's. When Deuce turns 15, she takes on her role as a Huntress, and is paired with Fade, a teenage Hunter who lived Topside as a young boy.
\nWhen she and Fade discover that the neighboring enclave has been decimated by the tunnel monsters - or Freaks - who seem to be growing more organised, the elders refuse to listen to warnings. And when Deuce and Fade are exiled from the enclave, the girl born in darkness must survive in daylight - guided by Fade's long-ago memories - in the ruins of a city whose population has dwindled to a few dangerous gangs.
Sirantha Jax has the J-gene, which permits her to “jump” faster-than-light ships through grimspace. She loves nothing more than that rush, but the star roads have to wait . . .
\nHer final mission takes her to La’heng, a planet subjugated during first contact. Since then, the La’hengrin homeworld has been occupied by foreign conquerors.
\nAll that’s about to change.
\nNow, as part of a grassroots resistance, Jax means to liberate the La’hengrin. But political intrigue and guerrilla warfare are new to her, and this will be the most dangerous game she’s ever played - spies and conspiracies, a war of weapons and hearts, and not everyone is guaranteed to make it out alive . . .
As the carrier of a rare gene, Jax has the ability to jump ships through grimspace - a talent which cuts into her life expectancy, but makes her a highly prized navigator for the Corp. But then the ship she’s navigating crash-lands, and she’s accused of killing everyone on board. It’s hard for Jax to defend herself: she has no memory of the crash.
Now imprisoned and the subject of a ruthless interrogation, Jax is on the verge of madness. Then a mysterious man breaks into her cell, offering her freedom - for a price. March needs Jax to help his small band of rogue fighters break the Corp monopoly on interstellar travel - and establish a new breed of jumper.
Jax is only good at one thing - grimspace - and it will eventually kill her. So she may as well have some fun in the meantime . . .
The second in the thrilling national bestselling series As a handler, Corine Solomon can touch any object and know its history. It's too bad she can't seem to forget her own. With her ex-boyfriend Chance in tow-lending his own supernatural brand of luck-Corine journeys back home to Kilmer, Georgia, in order to discover the truth behind her mother's death and the origins of \"gift\".
\nBut while trying to uncover the secrets in her past, Corine and Chance find that something is rotten in the state of Georgia. Inside Kilmer's borders there are signs of a dark curse affecting the town and all its residents-and it can only be satisfied with death . . .
Zara Cole was a thief back on Earth, but she’s been recently upgraded to intergalactic fugitive. On the run after a bloody battle in a covert war that she never expected to be fighting, Zara, her co-pilot Beatriz, and their Leviathan ship Nadim barely escaped the carnage with their lives.
\nNow Zara and her crew of Honors need a safe haven, far from the creatures who want to annihilate them. But with two wounded Leviathan to treat, plus human and non-human refugees to help, they’ll have to settle for the nearest outpost, called the Sliver: a wild, dangerous warren of alien criminals. Zara’s skills from the Zone may be invaluable.
\nHowever, Zara discovers that the secrets of the Sliver may have the power to turn the tide of the war they left behind - but in the wrong direction. Soon Zara will have to make a choice: stand against the ultimate evil or run from it. But she’s never walked away from a fight.
Space renegade Zara Cole may have finally met her match. Lifekiller - a creature that can devour entire planets - is spreading terror throughout the universe, and it seems nothing can stand in the monstrous godking’s way.
Reeling from a series of battles, Zara and her wounded band of allies are going to need a strategy before they face Lifekiller again. Zara’s street smarts may not be enough when their enemy could be anywhere, destroying civilizations and picking his teeth with the bones.
And just when it feels like she’s reached a special place in her bond with Bea and Nadim, an ex from Earth with an ax to grind comes after her with nefarious intentions. With human enemies, alien creatures, and mechanical stalkers on her tail, it’s down to the wire for Zara to save the galaxy - and the people she calls home - before the godking consumes them all.
The horde is coming.
Salvation is surrounded, monsters at the gates, and this time, they're not going away. When Deuce, Fade, Stalker and Tegan set out, the odds are against them. But the odds have been stacked against Deuce from the moment she was born. She might not be a Huntress anymore, but she doesn't run. With her knives in hand and her companions at her side, she will not falter, whether fighting for her life or Fade's love.
Ahead, the battle of a lifetime awaits. Freaks are everywhere, attacking settlements, setting up scouts, perimeters, and patrols. There hasn't been a war like this in centuries, and humans have forgotten how to stand and fight. Unless Deuce can lead them.
This time, however, more than the fate of a single enclave or outpost hangs in the balance. This time, Deuce carries the banner for the survival of all humanity.
Beyond the pull of life and death lies the Immortal game. Edie Kramer has leaped back to put things right and save the boy she loves. Alone in the wrong timestream, she must reinvent herself and square off against dangerous Immortals determined to win this mortal match once and for all.
\nBut righting past wrongs carries fresh dangers. As she navigates a new school and tries to put Kian on a different path, she also battles those will stop at nothing to keep her from derailing their deadly schemes. With few allies and her first love treating her like a stranger, Edie faces the most dangerous enemy of all - time itself. Yet she's come a long way from that dark night on the bridge, and when her back's to the wall, she'll go down fighting . . .
\n
Ambrose \"Slay\" Slater never thought he'd end up this way. His lover left him for his best friend and while he was distracted, grieving that loss, the Gols captured him, dragged him off to their infernal underground city, where he's been a prisoner ever since. At first he imagined Ash Valley would immediately mount a rescue, but he might rot in this dungeon before that happens. If need be, he'll reduce Golgerra to rubble himself because he's got anger to burn.
\nRowena has no last name, though she dubbed herself Van Alastor, bound by her promise to the prince who saved her from the pits and earned her loyalty. Born of a forced union between an Eldritch prisoner and a Golgoth guard, she is the only winged Golgoth, unique among her kind. She knew little more than the dungeons and torment until Alastor bought her freedom and added her to his retinue. Desperation drove her to return to the city that tried to destroy her in chains.
\nHe is fury. She is vengeance. Together, they’ll bury Tycho Vega in the rubble, but with both their hearts aching from loss, they never expected to fall in love...
Navigational grimspace \"jumper\" Sirantha Jax forms an army to defend colonists stationed on the outskirts of space from a legion of flesh- eating aliens.
Until three years ago, those words applied to Dominic Asher, the leader of Ash Valley. His family has ruled the feline branch of the Animari for hundreds of years, guiding the pride through perilous times. Unspeakable loss drove him into seclusion, a feral beast nobody can tame. Now he’s wrecked, a leopard king in exile, and he wants nothing more than to die.
Fortunately for Dom, those words still apply to Pru Bristow, his dead mate’s best friend. She’s had her heart broken too, but she never quits. With the conclave approaching, alliances with the Pine Ridge pack and Burnt Amber clans on the verge of collapse, she’s prepared to do whatever it takes to drag their leader back, before his second can start a war.
At best theirs seems like a desperate alliance, but when their mate bond turns hot and fierce, there’s no end to the questions and the doubts. Neither of them expects to fall in love. But sometimes people don’t know what they’re looking for until they find it.
Edie Kramer has a score to settle with the beautiful people at Blackbriar Academy. Their cruelty drove her to the brink of despair, and four months ago, she couldn't imagine being strong enough to face her senior year. But thanks to a Faustian compact with the enigmatic Kian, she has the power to make the bullies pay. She's not supposed to think about Kian once the deal is done, but devastating pain burns behind his unearthly beauty, and he's impossible to forget.
In one short summer, her entire life changes, and she sweeps through Blackbriar, prepped to take the beautiful people down from the inside. A whisper here, a look there, and suddenly . . . bad things are happening. It's a heady rush, seeing her tormentors get what they deserve, but things that seem too good to be true usually are, and soon, the pranks and payback turns from delicious to deadly. Edie is alone in a world teeming with secrets and fiends lurking in the shadows. In this murky morass of devil's bargains, she isn't sure who - or what - she can trust. Not even her own mind . . .
Deuce's whole world has changed. Down below, she was considered an adult. Now, topside in a town called Salvation, she's a brat in need of training in the eyes of the townsfolk. She doesn't fit in with the other girls: Deuce only knows how to fight.
To make matters worse, her Hunter partner, Fade, keeps Deuce at a distance. Her feelings for Fade haven't changed, but he seems not to want her around anymore. Confused and lonely, she starts looking for a way out.
Deuce signs up to serve in the summer patrols - those who make sure the planters can work the fields without danger. It should be routine, but things have been changing on the surface, just as they did below ground. The Freaks have grown smarter. They're watching. Waiting. Planning. The monsters don't intend to let Salvation survive, and it may take a girl like Deuce to turn back the tide.
Through a Faustian bargain, Edie Kramer has been pulled into the dangerous world of the Immortal Game, where belief makes your nightmares real. Hungry for sport, fears-made-flesh are always raising the stakes. To them, human lives are less than nothing, just pieces on a board.
\nBecause of her boyfriend Kian's sacrifice, she's operating under the mysterious Harbinger's aegis, but his patronage could prove as fatal as the opposition. Raw from deepest loss, she's terrified over the deal Kian made for her. Though her very public enemies keep sending foot soldiers - mercenary monsters committed to her destruction - she's not the one playing under a doom clock.
\nKian has six months . . . unless Edie can save him. And this is a game she can't bear to lose.
Molded since childhood to be the perfect weapon, Gavriel d’Alana (also known as Death’s Shadow) has devoted himself to serving Thalia Talfayen. The life of a Noxblade is lethal and lonely, and since the princess has no need of him, he secretly believes there’s no reason for him to live - and he should seek a glorious death - but that’s before he tangles with a tiger woman who unleashes his darkest desires.
Magda Versai has a reputation for being unattainable - no deep attachments, only discreet amusements. If she has her way, the pride will never learn of her private heartbreak, as she accepted her curse years ago. Now, she focuses on work, which is why she’s acting as Raff’s bodyguard while secretly hunting for Slay. The search leads Mags to team up with a Noxblade so belligerent that she can’t resisting baiting him.
She’s the steel, he’s the flint, and the sparks they strike together might kindle a fire that could warm them for a lifetime, if they don’t kill each other first…
Corine is ready to return to her normal life as a pawnshop owner, but when Kel Ferguson, Hand of God, arrives just in time to save her from touching an item hexed to kill her, she discovers that a drug cartel boss is out for her blood. Corine, Kel, and Corine's teen ward, Shannon, dodge enemies from Mexico City to Laredo, Tex. - with an even more dangerous side trip to Peru - while striking bargains with red witches, a rival cartel, demons, and their own consciences.
\nCorine's inner turmoil over using dark powers to survive is compelling, as is her attraction to the strong and appealing Kel (even though he's love interest #3). Aguirre has a gift for creating strong characters who keep her readers coming back for more.
\nThe Razorland saga continues. Since the war ended, Tegan has dreamed of an epic journey, so when she has the opportunity to sign on as ship's doctor, she can't wait. It's past time to chart her course. Millie Faraday, the kindest girl in the free territories, also yearns to outrun her reputation, and warrior-poet James Morrow would follow Tegan to the ends of the earth.
\nTheir company seems set, but fate brings one more to their number. Tegan will battle incredible odds while aiding Szarok, the Uroch vanguard, who has ventured forth to save his people. Szarok is strange and beautiful, like a flower that blooms only in the dark. She shouldn't allow him close, as such a relationship is both alien and forbidden. But through stormy seas and strange lands, she will become stronger than she ever knew.
", "series": "Razorland", "seriesOrder": 4, "tags": [ "Science Fiction", "Dystopia" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Ann Aguirre - Vanguard.jpeg", "mtime": 1767245228413.8674, "size": 1576386, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:18:46.034Z" }, "Ann Aguirre - Wanderlust": { "title": "Wanderlust", "author": "Ann Aguirre", "description": "Broke and unemployed, ?Jumper? Sirantha Jax accepts a diplomatic mission for the government? only to find herself up against Syndicate criminals, man-eating aliens, and her own grimspaceweakened body.
Personal tragedy drove Callum McRae to join the Order of Saint Casimir fifteen years ago; now he's in charge of a hold he hasn't lived in for years. Supplies are scarce, he has no knack for dealing with people, and the Gols are at the gates. To make matters worse, he's also battling an attraction so powerful and forbidden that it imperils his very soul . . .
\nJoss Bristow seems bright and cheerful, but she's hiding a well of sorrow that fuels her music. She's also prone to leaping before she looks, exactly how she ends up besieged at Burnt Amber. Though she wanted to get to know Callum better, she never imagined that falling for him could cost her life. He's the dark of night, and she's the sun that shines just for him.
\nTwo wounded souls have never needed each other more, but between his holy vows and the devastation of war, the odds are stacked against them..
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At the isolated Baikie's Cottage on the North Pennines, three very different women come together to complete an environmental survey. Three women who, in some way or another, know the meaning of betrayal.
\nFor team leader Rachael Lambert the project is the perfect opportunity to rebuild her confidence after a double-betrayal by her lover and boss, Peter Kemp. Botanist Anne Preece, on the other hand, sees it as a chance to indulge in a little deception of her own. And then there is Grace Fulwell, a strange, uncommunicative young woman with plenty of her own secrets to hide.
\nWhen Rachael arrives at the cottage, however, she is horrified to discover the body of her friend Bella Furness. Bella, it appears, has committed suicide - a verdict Rachael finds impossible to accept.
\nOnly when the next death occurs does a fourth woman enter the picture - the unconventional Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, who must piece together the truth from these women's tangled lives . . .
\n
The man’s body is found in the early morning light by a local dog walker in the park outside Rosebank, a home for troubled teens in the coastal village of Longwater. The victim is Josh, a staff member, who was due to work the previous night but never showed up.
\nDI Vera Stanhope is called out to investigate the death, with her only clue being the disappearance of one of the home’s residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spence. Vera can’t bring herself to believe that a teenager is responsible for the murder, but even she can’t dismiss the possibility.
\nVera, Joe and new team member Rosie Bell, are soon embroiled in the case, and when a second connected body is found near the Three Dark Wives monument in the wilds of the Northumberland countryside, superstition and folklore begin to collide with fact. Vera knows she has to find Chloe to get to the truth, and the dark secrets in their community that may be far more dangerous than she could have ever believed possible.
Driving home during a swirling blizzard, Vera Stanhope’s only thought is to get there quickly.
\nBut with the snow driving down heavily, she becomes disorientated and loses her way, eventually stumbling on another car abandoned on the road. With the driver’s door open, Vera assumes the driver has sought shelter but is shocked to find a young toddler strapped in the back seat.
\nAfraid they will freeze, Vera takes the child and drives on, arriving at Brockburn, a run-down stately home she immediately recognises as the house her father Hector grew up in.
\nInside Brockburn a party is in full swing, with music and laughter to herald the coming Christmas. But outside in the snow, a young woman lies dead and Vera has a new case. Could she be the child’s mother and, if she is, what happened to her?
\n
DI Vera Stanhope is not one to make friends easily, but her neighbours keep her well-supplied in homebrew and conversation. But when one of them goes missing, her path leads her to more than a missing friend . . .
\nVera tracks the young woman down to the Writer’s House, a country retreat for aspiring authors. Things get complicated when a body is discovered and Vera’s neighbour is found with a knife in her hand. Calling in the team, Vera knows that she should hand the case over. She’s too close to the main suspect. But the investigation is too tempting and she’s never been one to follow the rules. Vera must find a killer who has taken murder off the page and is making it real . . .
\n
As the snow falls in Newcastle, Detective Joe Ashworth and his daughter Jessie travel home on the busy Metro. When the train stops unexpectedly due to bad weather, Jessie notices that one woman doesn’t leave and when trying to wake her they find that the passenger has been fatally stabbed.
\nWith no witnesses DI Vera Stanhope looks into the victim’s past and discovers she lived for years on Harbour Street, in a rundown Northumberland fishing town. As she questions the local residents Vera begins to suspect they know more than they are letting on, and the killer is hiding in their midst.
\n
North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with tourists flocking to its coastline. Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an elaborately staged murder - Dr Nigel Yeo has been fatally stabbed with a shard of one of his glassblower daughter's broken vases.
\nDr Yeo seems an unlikely murder victim. He's a good man, a public servant, beloved by his daughter. Matthew is unnerved, though, to find that she is a close friend of Jonathan, his husband.
\nThen another body is found - killed in a similar way. Matthew soon finds himself treading carefully through the lies that fester at the heart of his community and a case that is dangerously close to home.
\n
A hot summer on the Northumberland coast and Julie Armstrong arrives home from a night out to find her son strangled, laid out in a bath of water and covered with wild flowers.
\nThis stylised murder scene has captured Inspector Vera Stanhope’s attention. And then another body is discovered in a rock pool, the corpse again strewn with flowers. Vera must work quickly to find this killer who is making art out of death.
\nAs local residents are forced to share their deepest, darkest secrets, the killer watches, waits and plans to prepare another beautiful, watery grave . . .
\n
In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his father’s funeral takes place. Once loved and cherished, the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too.
\nNow, as he turns and walks away again, he receives a call from one of his team. A body has been found on the beach nearby: a man with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death.
The case calls Matthew back into the community he thought he had left behind, as deadly secrets hidden at its heart are revealed, and his past and present collide.
Life seems perfect in Valley Farm, a quiet community in Northumberland. Then a shocking discovery shatters the silence. The owners of a big country house have employed a house-sitter, a young ecologist named Patrick, to look after the place while they’re away. But Patrick is found dead by the side of the lane into the valley - a beautiful, lonely place to die.
\nDI Vera Stanhope arrives on the scene and when searching the attic of the big house - where Patrick had a flat - she finds the body of a second man. The only thing connecting the two victims is a fascination with studying moths - and catching these beautiful, rare creatures.
\nThose who live in the close-knit Valley Farm development have secrets too, and as Vera is drawn into the claustrophobic world of this increasingly strange community, she realises that there may be deadly secrets trapped there . . .
\n
When Jem Rosco - sailor, adventurer, and legend - blows into town in the middle of an autumn gale, the residents of Greystone, Devon, are delighted to have a celebrity in their midst. But just as abruptly as he arrived, Rosco disappears again, and soon his lifeless body is discovered in a dinghy, anchored off Scully Cove, a place with legends of its own.
\nThis is an uncomfortable case for Detective Inspector Matthew Venn. Greystone is a place he visited as a child, a community he parted ways with. Superstition and rumor mix with fact as another body is found, and Matthew finds his judgment clouded. As the winds howl, and Venn and his team investigate, he realises that no one, including himself, is safe from Scully Cove’s storm of dark secrets.
\n
Fifty years ago, a group of teenagers spent a weekend on Holy Island, forging a bond that has lasted a lifetime. Now, they still return every five years to celebrate their friendship, and remember the friend they lost to the rising waters of the causeway at the first reunion.
\nNow, when one of them is found hanged, Vera is called in. Learning that the dead man had recently been fired after misconduct allegations, Vera knows she must discover what the friends are hiding, and whether the events of many years before could have led to murder then, and now . . .
\nBut with the tide rising, secrets long-hidden are finding their way to the surface, and Vera and the team may find themselves in more danger than they could have believed possible . . .
\n
When prison inmate and former police officer John Brace says he’s willing to give up information about the location of a dead body in return for protection for his family, Vera knows that she has to look into his claims.
\nBut opening up this cold case strikes much closer to home than Vera anticipates as her investigation takes her back in time to The Seagull, a once-decadent and now-derelict nightclub where her deceased father and his friends used to congregate.
\nAs Vera’s past collides dangerously with the present, she will have to confront her unwanted memories and face the possibility that her father was involved in what happened. The truth is about to come out, but is Vera ready for what it will reveal?
\n
When DI Vera Stanhope finds the body of a woman in the sauna room of her local gym, at first, she thinks it is a death from natural causes. But then Vera spots ligature marks around the victim’s throat and has another murder case on her hands.
\nThe victim is Jenny Lister, who was an experienced social worker, but her neighbours are quick to inform Vera about Jenny’s involvement in a notorious case. A young child tragically died and a member of Jenny’s team was subsequently fired and vilified by the media.
\nAs Vera tries to pry information from the secretive community another body is found, and Vera finds herself in a race against time to stop the killer.
\n
They thought she was a murderer. But now she’s a victim . . .
\nTen years ago fifteen-year-old Abigail Mantel was murdered, her cold body discovered lying in a ditch. Her father’s girlfriend was found guilty of the crime. Now, evidence has emerged that proves her innocence and means that Abigail’s killer still roams free.
\nAbigail’s best friend at the time of the murder has now returned to the East Yorkshire village of Elvet to raise her young family. Shocked by the new revelations, she begins to realize that she didn’t know her friend as well as she thought . . .
\nDetective Inspector Vera Stanhope is tasked with uncovering the truth and, as her new inquiries stoke up past secrets the villagers will lie to protect, she must find out which lies will bring her to the killer.
\n
Forty-year-old Alice Kaczmarek has lost so much. She wants a baby, but her husband Daniel is serving a life sentence, accused of orchestrating an accident on Sydney’s new transport system. When T, the subject of medical experimentation, crawls up the front steps of her house, Alice learns of a strange connection between T and Daniel.
\nIn this psychological novel of threat and intrigue, it seems everyone is involved in a scam, even a respected surgeon colleague. After she is followed, and her home invaded, Alice no longer knows who to rely on and must navigate this corrupt, murky world alone. In the process, she draws ever closer to Daniel’s friend, Lowell.
\nAfter the Great Storm is a novel imbued with both darkness and light, sadness and joy; its characters refuse to give up on love regardless of the cost. Ultimately it asks an urgent question for our times. When corruption becomes endemic how can we save our own moral code?
\n
On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest. Once, she was the Justice of Toren - a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.
\nNow, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance.
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For a moment, things seem to be under control for the soldier known as Breq. Then a search of Athoek Station's slums turns up someone who shouldn't exist - someone who might be an ancillary from a ship that's been hiding beyond the empire's reach for three thousand years.
\nMeanwhile, a messenger from the alien and mysterious Presger empire arrives, as does Breq's enemy, the divided and quite possibly insane Anaander Mianaai - ruler of an empire at war with itself. Anaander is heavily armed and extremely unhappy with Breq. She could take her ship and crew and flee, but that would leave everyone at Athoek in terrible danger. Breq has a desperate plan. The odds aren't good, but that's never stopped her before.
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What if you once had thousands of bodies and near god-like technology at your disposal? And what if all of it were ripped away? The Lord of the Radch has given Breq command of the ship Mercy of Kalr and sent her to the only place she would have agreed to go - to Athoek Station, where Lieutenant Awn's sister works in Horticulture.
\nAthoek was annexed some six hundred years ago, and by now everyone is fully civilised - or should be. But everything is not as tranquil as it appears. Old divisions are still troublesome, Athoek Station's AI is unhappy with the situation, and it looks like the alien Presger might have taken an interest in what's going on. With no guarantees that interest is benevolent.
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Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke award-winner Ann Leckie is a modern master of the SFF genre, forever changing its landscape with her groundbreaking ideas and powerful voice. Now, available for the first time comes the complete collection of Leckie's short fiction, including a brand new novelette, Lake of Souls.
\nJourney across the stars of the Imperial Radch universe.
\nListen to the words of the Old Gods that ruled The Raven Tower.
\nLearn the secrets of the mysterious Lake of Souls.
\nAnd so much more, in this masterfully wide-ranging and immersive short fiction collection from award-winning author Ann Leckie.
On a far-off colony, humans tower over the local species who grow the plants they need. Narr keeps the workers in line - someone has to. But when Narr learns just how short-lived their species is, the little alien embarks on a big to find out why their people die and how to stop it.
\nStubborn and hopeful, Narr has a plan for the locals, for humans, and for the future.
A power-driven young woman has just one chance to secure the status she craves and regain priceless lost artifacts prized by her people. She must free their thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned.
Ingray and her charge will return to her home world to find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating interstellar conflict. Together, they must make a new plan to salvage Ingray's future, her family, and her world, before they are lost to her for good.
Ann Leckie returns to the world of the Imperial Radch in this standalone.
\nThe Temporal Location of the Radiant Star has always been a source of both conflict and hope for the people of Ooioiaa. However, the imperial Radch see it only as an inconvenience, an antiquated religious site soon to be absorbed into their own, superior culture. But local politics is complicated, and the Radch have made one last concession: One last man will be allowed to join the mummified bodies in the temporal location to become a \"living saint\".
\nBut this one decision will ripple out to affect every part of the city. Amidst a slowly worsening food shortage, riots, and a communication blackout from the rest of the Radch Empire, a religious savant will entertain visions of his own sainthood, a socialite will discover zer comfortable life upended, and a young man sold into servitude will find unlikely escape.
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Qven was created to be a Presger translator. The pride of their Clade, they always had a clear path before them: learn human ways, and eventually, make a match and serve as an intermediary between the dangerous alien Presger and the human worlds. The realisation that they might want something else isn't “optimal behavior”. I's the type of behavior that results in elimination.
\nBut Qven rebels. And in doing so, their path collides with those of two others. Enae, a reluctant diplomat whose dead grandmaman has left hir an impossible task as an inheritance: hunting down a fugitive who has been missing for over 200 years. And Reet, an adopted mechanic who is increasingly desperate to learn about his genetic roots - or anything that might explain why he operates so differently from those around him.
\nAs a Conclave of the various species approaches - and the long-standing treaty between the humans and the Presger is on the line - the decisions of all three will have ripple effects across the stars.
\nMasterfully merging space adventure and mystery, and a poignant exploration about relationships and belonging.
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Inspired by the legend of Xishi, one of the famous Four Beauties of Ancient China, A Song to Drown Rivers is an epic historical fantasy about womanhood, war, sacrifice, and love against all odds.
\nHer beauty hides a deadly purpose.
\nXishi’s beauty is seen as a blessing to the villagers of Yue - convinced that the best fate for a girl is to marry well and support her family. When Xishi draws the attention of the famous young military advisor, Fanli, he presents her with a rare opportunity: to use her beauty as a weapon. One that could topple the rival neighboring kingdom of Wu, improve the lives of her people, and avenge her sister’s murder. All she has to do is infiltrate the enemy palace as a spy, seduce their immoral king, and weaken them from within.
\nTrained by Fanli in everything from classical instruments to concealing emotion, Xishi hones her beauty into the perfect blade. But she knows Fanli can see through every deception she masters, the attraction between them burning away any falsehoods.
\nOnce inside the enemy palace, Xishi finds herself under the hungry gaze of the king’s advisors while the king himself shows her great affection. Despite his gentleness, a brutality lurks and Xishi knows she can never let her guard down. But the higher Xishi climbs in the Wu court, the farther she and Fanli have to fall - and if she is unmasked as a traitor, she will bring both kingdoms down.
After getting rejected by every single Ivy League she applied to and falling short of all her Asian immigrant parents’ expectations, seventeen-year-old Jenna Chen makes a wish to become her smarter, infinitely more successful Harvard-bound cousin, Jessica Chen - only for her wish to come true. Literally.
\nNow trapped inside Jessica’s body, with access to Jessica’s most private journals and secrets, Jenna soon discovers that being the top student at the elite, highly competitive Havenwood Private Academy isn’t quite what she imagined. Worse, as everyone - including her own parents - start having trouble remembering who Jenna Chen is, or if she ever even existed, Jenna must decide if playing the role of the perfect daughter and student is worth losing her true self forever.
Everyone loves Chanel Cao - except Ares Yin.
\nWhile Chanel has spent her entire life curating a picture-perfect social media personality - from her body to her hair to her camera-ready smile - Ares has spent his trying to hide in the shadows. But Ares’s brother is missing, and Chanel’s parents have secretly separated, and their only hope is each other.
\nAres is willing to do whatever it takes to find his brother, and Chanel will do anything to keep her parents’ secret. When the two meet and share a vision of the future - where Ares’s brother appears, as Chanel’s house burns to the ground - they are determined to use each other. Ares believes Chanel is the key to finding his brother, but Chanel is convinced if she gets Ares to fall in love with her, she’ll save her family house - and her parents’ crumbling marriage.
\nBut Ares isn’t interested in the fake personality that Chanel has used her entire life to get affection and adoration. If she’s going to save her reputation, she’s going to have to let Ares get to know the real her - and risk real feelings.
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Sadie Wen is perfect on paper: school captain, valedictorian, and a \"pleasure to have in class.\" It’s not easy, but she has a trick to keep her model-student smile plastered on her face at all times: she channels all her frustrations into her email drafts. She'd never send them of course - she'd rather die than hurt anyone's feelings - but it's a relief to let loose on her power-hungry English teacher or a freeloading classmate taking credit for Sadie's work.
\nAll her most vehemently worded emails are directed at her infuriating cocaptain, Julius Gong, whose arrogance and competitive streak have irked Sadie since they were kids. “You're attention starved and self-obsessed and unbearably vain . . . I really hope your comb breaks and you run out of whatever expensive hair products you've been using to make your hair appear deceptively soft . . . ”
\nSadie doesn't have to hold back in her emails, because nobody will ever read them . . . that is, until they're accidentally sent out.
\nOvernight, Sadie’s carefully crafted, conflict-free life is turned upside down. It's her worst nightmare - now everyone at school knows what she really thinks of them, and they're not afraid to tell her what they really think of her either. But amidst the chaos, there's one person growing to appreciate the “real” Sadie - Julius, the only boy she's sworn to hate . . .
Alice Sun has always felt invisible at her elite Beijing international boarding school, where she’s the only scholarship student among China’s most rich and influential teens. But then she starts uncontrollably turning invisible - actually invisible.
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When her parents drop the news that they can no longer afford her tuition, even with the scholarship, Alice hatches a plan to monetize her strange new power - she’ll discover the scandalous secrets her classmates want to know, for a price.
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But as the tasks escalate from petty scandals to actual crimes, Alice must decide if it’s worth losing her conscience - or even her life.
Leah Zhang has spent her whole life in LA - it's all she's ever known. But after accidentally wishing her cousin ill health and a very depressing marriage at her wedding, her parents stage an intervention. She's forgotten most of her Mandarin, has zero regard for etiquette, and can't hold a conversation with her own grandparents for longer than a minute. Their solution? Send her on an intensive two-week travel program across China's most beautiful cities. To them, it's the perfect opportunity for Leah to get back to her roots. To Leah, it's simply a much-needed escape.
\nBut before Leah can even begin to enjoy the luxurious hotels, stunning scenery, and mouth-watering cuisine, she finds that also on the trip is her former classmate and least favorite person cynical, sarcastic Cyrus, who's somehow only gotten more annoyingly handsome since they last saw each other.
\nWhile Leah might be tempted to shove him off the peak of the Yellow Mountain when nobody's looking, she can't get rid of him just yet. After all, she might never get another chance to get revenge on the boy who ruined her life.
\nYet the deeper they wander into China's provinces, the deeper Leah finds herself falling in love - with the boy she once thought she despised, the home she never thought she'd call her own, and the parts of herself she thought were already lost.
Over the past eighteen months, Syd, Maddie, and little Henry have become a family, and things are going surprisingly well for most of Jericho’s residents - if you don’t count the devastating storm that whips over, around, and through town.
\nIn the coming weeks and months, Syd, Maddie, and all of Jericho are forced to pick up the pieces and rebuild their homes, lives, and town.
\nThe tasks are sometimes hard, sometimes emotional, and sometimes absurd, but always full of smart and sassy humor and an abundance of good food and wine.
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When sculptor and author Barb Davis is given an NEA grant to pair original feminist sculptures with searing first-person essays on transitions in women's lives, she organises a two week writing retreat with twelve of the best, brightest, and most notorious lesbian authors in the business. But in between regularly scheduled happy hours and writing sessions, the women enter a tournament bass fishing competition, receive life coaching from a wise-cracking fish named Phoebe, and uncover a subterranean world of secrets and desires that is as varied and elusive as the fish that swim in the waters of Lake Champlain.
Set on the beautiful shores of Vermont's Lake Champlain, Backcast is richly populated with an expansive cast of endearing and outrageous characters who battle writer's block, quirky locals, personal demons, unexpected attractions, and even each other during their two-week residency. For Barb and each of her twelve writers, the stakes in this fast-moving story are high, but its emotional and romantic payoffs are slow and sweet.
Filled with equal parts laugh-out-loud humor and breathtaking pathos, Backcast serves up a sometimes irreverent, sometimes sobering look at the hidden lives of women, and how they laugh, love, lose, and blunder through their own search for meaning.
English professor and aspiring novelist, Grace Warner spends her days teaching four sections of \"Beowulf for Cretins\" to bored and disinterested students at one of New England's \"hidden ivy\" colleges. Not long after she is dumped by her longtime girlfriend, Grace meets the engaging and mysterious Abbie on a cross-country flight. Sparks fly on and off the plane as the two strangers give in to one night of reckless passion with no strings attached, and no contact information exchanged.
\nBack home at St. Albans, the college rocks Grace's world when it announces the appointment of a new president, the first woman in its 165-year history. Cue Abbie - and cue Grace's collision course with a neurotic dog named Grendel, a fractious rival for tenure, and a woman called Ochre, in what very well might be Grace's last real shot at happiness.
\nEverything about Lilah Stohler is her clothes, mood, and outlook on life and death. That last part is important because Lilah’s father has just retired and left her in charge of the family funeral home. But Abel Stohler knows his daughter’s comfort level rests “downstairs,” so he hires one Sparkle Lee Sink, to help Lilah manage the living part of the business of death.
\nSparkle is everything that Lilah isn’t - an empathetic marketing whiz who is a true people person.
\nLilah isn’t happy about this new arrangement. Still, when business starts booming because of Sparkle’s bright personality, delicious baked goods, and knack for funereal commerce, Lilah thinks things might work out. But joy is fleeting in the funeral home business, and Lilah’s world is turned upside down when an unwitting Instagram post featuring one of her moods goes viral - and now, sightings of “The Black Bird of Chernobyl” have become an obsession across the Instaverse.
\nLilah knows that Sparkle needs to go, but before she can give her the send-off she deserves, Lilah must first find a way to deal with the inconvenient attraction she’s developed for the nemesis whose unconventional methods are single-handedly transforming the death trade - and quite possibly the Black Bird, herself.
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When book critic, Kate Winston, deems the best-selling novel by debut author, Shawn Harris, \"Simply Offal,\" things get out of hand quickly. Shawn's angry fans keep crashing the online magazine that Kate works for, and Kate's fans retaliate by spamming Amazon with toxic reviews of Shawn's book.
\nIt's a pissing contest of epic proportions until Shawn's publicist gets the brilliant idea to pit them against each other in the plenary session of the biggest lesbian fiction conference of the year.
\nSparks and fists fly as Shawn and Kate and their legions of loyal fans descend upon San Diego for a legendary literary throw down.
Present Jericho, Virginia.
\nCovenant continues the beloved saga of the residents of Jericho, a sleepy town in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, where life and love have as many twists and turns as a winding mountain road.
\nSix weeks have passed since the fateful unfolding of events at the town’s Fourth of July celebration. Questions swirl about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the town nemesis, Gerald Watson. Was it an accident, or was Watson murdered? As the scorching summer gives way to a burning fall, suspects in the potential homicide abound, and everyone seems to be keeping secrets.
\nThroughout it all, bonds of love and fealty are stretched and tested as the endearing residents of this once-idyllic community weigh the covenants they keep against the secrets that threaten to tear them apart.
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The year is 1960, and Gunsmoke is the most popular show on TV. Elvis Presley tops the Billboard charts, and a charismatic young senator named John F. Kennedy is running for president. And, in North Carolina, four young Black men sit down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter and demand service.
\nEnter Esther Jane (EJ) Cloud, a forty-something spinster who manages the Dead Letter Office at the Winston-Salem post office. EJ leads a quiet life in her Old Salem ancestral home and spends her free time volunteering in the town’s 18th-century medicinal garden.
\nOne sunny Spring morning, EJ’s world is turned upside down when she is handed a stack of handwritten letters that have all been addressed to a nonexistent person at the garden. This simple act sets in motion a chain of events that will lead EJ on a life-altering quest to uncover the identity of the mysterious letter writer - and into a surprising, head-on confrontation with the harsh realities of the racial injustice that is as deeply rooted in the life of her community as the ancient herbs cultivated in the Moravian garden.
\nWhen EJ is forced to read the letters to look for clues about the anonymous sender, what she discovers are lyrical tales of a forbidden passion that threaten to unravel the simple contours of her unexamined life. EJ’s official quest soon morphs into a journey of self-discovery. Her surprising accomplice on this quest becomes a savvy, street-smart ten-year-old wielding an eye patch and a limitless supply of aphorisms. Together, the unlikely duo makes pilgrimages to a tiny town called Paradise to try and crack the case - while ultimately learning better ways to navigate the changing world around them.
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When it comes to finding dirt, Evan Reed is the best in the business. She's a \"dust-buster\"- a paid operative hired by political campaigns to vet candidates for national office. She's also a foul-mouthed and cranky ex-Catholic-attempting to raise a 14-year-old daughter on her own.
\nWhen she is hired to investigate the background of a squeaky-clean and charismatic junior senator who might just be the next president-the last thing she expects to uncover is a murder. Evan's life is further complicated when she meets the senator's reclusive wife - who seems to be hiding a few secrets of her own.
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Two years have passed since the events in Dust. Evan Reed is still cranky, but she’s also dealing with the nagging effects of a gunshot wound. Her teenage daughter, Stevie is looking at prospective colleges, and Stevie’s father, Dan, has married a woman half his age. Evan’s childhood pal, Father Tim, is questioning is faith, and Evan’s relationship with publishing magnate, Julia Donne has all the earmarks of heading . . . somewhere.
\nBut all of that changes in a hurry when Evan is hired by the DNC to do opposition research on the president’s controversial nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. For starters, she has to work at light speed because the senate is fast-tracking the nomination - and the judge, who is a darling of the far right, is an avowed constructionist with a paper trail nine miles long. The job gets murkier when Evan discovers a link between the nominee and a now half-crazed, disgraced former U.S. senator who Evan was hired to vet many years ago. The stigma of that episode led Evan to vow never to work for political kingmaker, Marcus Goldman, again.
\nThings take a dangerous and eerily personal turn when Evan’s descent into the fetid subterranean world of vested interests, dark money PACs, and barbaric private rituals explodes everything she thought she knew about her best friend, Father Tim, her own conflicted religious beliefs, and any shot at a happy future with the patrician Julia. To make matters worse, Evan’s personal Moriarty, Maya Jindal, reappears - up to her shapely eyebrows in the middle of an expanding web of lies, secrets and betrayals that shrouds everything in Evan’s life with hopelessness and uncertainty.
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Goldenrod takes us on a delightful journey back to Jericho, a sleepy town in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia where life is anything but dull.
\nMaddie and Syd struggle to find a new normal without their foster child, Henry, who has been reunited with his disabled-veteran father. Henry befriends Buddy - an enigmatic young man who is fascinated with pi, and Dorothy - a young girl wrestling with her own brand of family demons. Meanwhile, David takes on the town’s nemesis as a write-in candidate for mayor - and the irrepressible Roma Jean Freemantle struggles to wrangle an unwieldy bookmobile and her growing attraction to another woman.
\nJourneys of life and love take some unexpected turns in this endearing community, but through it all, hope and the human spirit glow as brilliantly as goldenrod in the midsummer sun.
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Jill Fryman (Friday to her friends) is a line supervisor at a truck manufacturing plant in a small southern Indiana town. Life on the assembly line is almost as predictable as her love life. When it comes to matters of the heart, Friday always seems to be making the wrong choices.
Things go from bad to worse when El, a sultry labor organizer from the UAW, sweeps into town to unionize the plant right after it's been bought out by a Japanese firm. Sparks fly on and off the line as Jill and El fight their growing attraction for each other against a backdrop of monster trucks, catfish dinners, Pork Day USA, and a bar called Hoosier Daddy.
Librarian Syd Murphy flees the carnage of a failed marriage by accepting an 18-month position in Jericho - a small town located in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia.
\nIntending to hide out and heal her wounds, she soon becomes drawn into the daily lives of a quirky cast of local characters - and she becomes fast friends with Maddie Stevenson, the enigmatic local physician who has returned to the backcountry community to take over her late father's medical practice.
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A fast, funny, and wholly satisfying compilation of short stories filled with the same rich detail, witty humor, jagged verbal jousting, and joyous intellectual tête-à-tête that are Ann McMan's calling cards.
\nReconnect with Syd, Maddie, and the Jericho gang in \"V1: A Valentine's Day Odyssey,\" as a sweet and simple gesture of love ignites a conflagration that could destroy friends, lovers, and a professional-grade mixer named Gloria.
\nMeet Kate Winston, Shawn Harris, and the best, brightest, and most uniquely \"gifted\" personalities in contemporary lesfic, in the all-new novella, Bottle Rocket.
\nGrace and Abbie screw up the courage to let themselves go for one magical night-only to find that the Fates are cheeky little bitches with a wicked sense of humor in \"Falling from Grace.\"
\nTake flight with Poe's celebrated raven in \"Nevermore!\" as two improbable coworkers, Diz and Clarissa, find friendship and maybe a bit more in a comic holiday romp set to the dulcet tones of Enya. Features a foreword by The Rainbow Reader's Salem West.
\nSidecar carries a bounty of fun, a bit of pathos, and a few fine wine recommendations.
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Diz and Clarissa Are Back for the Holidays!
It s Christmas Eve in Baltimore, and you know what that means . . . snow.
Lots of it.
Join our dynamic duo as they battle the elements, quirky friends and family, and two marauding dogs in their annual ill-fated attempts to enjoy a quiet Christmas alone.
First story in Sidecar.
One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating’s christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny’s mother, Beverly - thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.
\nSpanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond that is based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows up between them.
\nWhen, in her twenties, Franny begins an affair with the legendary author Leon Posen and tells him about her family, the story of her siblings is no longer hers to control. Their childhood becomes the basis for his wildly successful book, ultimately forcing them to come to terms with their losses, their guilt, and the deeply loyal connection they feel for one another.
\nTold with equal measures of humor and heartbreak, Commonwealth is a meditation on inspiration, interpretation, and the ownership of stories. It is a brilliant and tender tale of the far-reaching ties of love and responsibility that bind us together.
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At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.
The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.
Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.
At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a suprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman - Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki - with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both.
\nA literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be.
\nFrom the enchantments of Kate di Camilo’s children’s books to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark - and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.
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In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
\nTom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.
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When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine.
\nNow fifty-three, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.
\nWhistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.
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In 1924, Korea is an occupied country. In Seoul’s secret, underground networks and throughout the countryside, rebellion against the Japanese Empire simmers, threatening to boil over. Kim Na-Young lives a simple life in the rural village of Daegeori, where she watches the moon rise and set over the pine-wooded mountains, tends to her household alongside her best friend, Yeon-Soo, and cares for her sick mother.
\nBut the occupation touches every Korean life - even Na-Young’s. In the wake of a tragedy that stuns the village, Na-Young’s father arranges her marriage to a man she’s never met, and Na-Young and Yeon-Soo decide to flee, taking their fate into their own hands. That decision sets them on their own collision course with the occupying forces, resulting in a violent encounter that will alter both of their lives forever - in shockingly different ways.
\nTaking us from a small village to the bustling corridors of Seoul, where women and girls can learn to read and write in multiple languages and members of the revolution pass coded messages through the back rooms of teahouses, Ann Y. K. Choi weaves a masterful tale of a woman taking command not only of her own identity but her own destiny.
Sophie Chi is in her first year at Wellesley College (despite her parents’ wishes that she attend a “real” university, rather than a liberal arts school) and has long accepted her aromantic and asexual identities. Despite knowing she’ll never fall in love, she enjoys running an Instagram account that offers relationship advice to students at Wellesley. No one except her roommate knows that she’s behind the incredibly popular \"Dear Wendy\" account.
\nWhen Joanna “Jo” Ephron - also a first-year student at Wellesley - created their “Sincerely Wanda” account, it wasn't at all meant to be serious or take off like it does - not like Dear Wendy’s. But now they might have a rivalry of sorts with Dear Wendy? Oops . As if Jo’s not busy enough having existential crises over gender, the fact that she’ll never truly be loved or be enough, or her few friends finding The One and forgetting her!
\nWhile tensions are rising online, Sophie and Jo are getting closer in real life, bonding over their shared aroace identities. As their friendship develops and they work together to start a campus organization for other a-spec students, can their growing bond survive if they learn just who’s behind the Wendy and Wanda accounts?
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In the 1950s near the Arctic Circle, seven-year-olds Jon-Ante, Else-Maj, Nilsa, Marge, and Anne-Risten are taken from their families. As children of Sámi reindeer herders, the Swedish state has mandated they attend a “nomad school” where they are forbidden to speak their native language. As the children visit home only sporadically, their parents know little about the abuse they face, much of it at the hands of the housemother, Rita. Those who dare to speak up are silenced.
\nThirty years later, the five children have chosen different paths to cope with the past. Else-Maj holds strong in her Sámi identity but has turned to religion for comfort, while Anne-Risten now goes by Anne to hide her heritage from friends. Nilsa herds reindeer like his father but harbors a lot of anger, and Jon-Ante struggles with traumatic memories from the school. Then there’s Marge, who is about to adopt a daughter from Colombia, but can’t help questioning if it’s right to take a child from her homeland.
\nThen suddenly, housemother Rita reappears. Now an old, frail woman claiming to have God on her side, she acts like nothing ever happened. But the five former students have neither forgotten nor forgiven her. As the narrative shifts between each of their perspectives, the novel If you had the chance to punish the person who hurt you as a child, would you?
\nBased on the author’s family story, Punished is a searing novel about loss, memory, cultural erasure, and community that vibrates with righteous rage over one nation’s greatest betrayals of its native people.
On a winter day north of the Arctic Circle, nine-year-old Elsa - daughter of Sámi reindeer herders - sees a man brutally kill her beloved reindeer calf and threaten her into silence. When her father takes her to report the crime, local police tell them that there is nothing they can do about these “stolen” animals. Killings like these are classified as theft in the reports that continue to pile up, uninvestigated. But reindeer are not just the Sámi’s livelihood, they also hold spiritual significance; attacking a reindeer is an attack on the culture itself.
\nTen years later, hatred and threats against the Sámi keep escalating, and more reindeer are tortured and killed in Elsa’s community. Finally, she’s had enough and decides to push back on the apathetic police force. The hunter comes after her this time, leading to a catastrophic final confrontation.
\nBased on real events, Ann-Helén Laestadius’s award-winning novel Stolen is part coming-of-age story, part love song to a disappearing natural world, and part electrifying countdown to a dramatic resolution - a searing depiction of a forgotten part of Sweden.
The Labasques aren’t like other families.
\nLiving in a shack out in the swamps, they made do by hunting down alligators and other animals. To the good people of Jacknife, Louisiana, they are troublemakers and outcasts, the kind of people you wouldn’t want in your community.
\nSo, when Cutter Labasque is found face down in the muddy swamp, no one seems to care, not even her two brothers. The only person who questions the official verdict of suicide is Cutter’s childhood friend, Loyal May, who has just returned home to care for her mother. When she left town at eighteen years old, she betrayed Cutter. Now with a ragtag group from the local paper where she works, Loyal goes in search of answers, uncovering a web of deceit and corruption that implicates those in town. It may be too late to apologize to Cutter, but Loyal has restitution in mind.
\nWeaving through the swamps and bayous of rural Louisiana, Our Last Wild Days is an atmospheric, smoldering suspense about our darker impulses—and how to set things right.
When seventeen-year-old Abigail goes missing, her best friend Emma, compelled by the guilt of leaving her alone at a party in the woods, sets out to discover the truth about what happened. The police initially believe Abi ran away, but Emma doesn't believe that her friend would leave without her, and when officers find disturbing evidence in the nearby woods, the festering secrets and longstanding resentment of both Abigail’s family and the people of Whistling Ridge, Colorado begin to surface with devastating consequences.
\nAmong those secrets: Abi's older brother Noah’s passionate, dangerous love for the handsome Rat, a recently arrived Romanian immigrant who has recently made his home in the trailer park in town; her younger brother Jude's feeling that he knows information he should tell the police, if only he could put it into words; Abi's father's mercurial, unpredictable rages and her mother's silence. Then there is the rest of Whistling Ridge, where a charismatic preacher advocates for God's love in language that mirrors violence, under the sway of the powerful businessman who rules the town, insular and wary of outsiders.
\nBut Abi had secrets, too, and the closer Emma grows to unraveling the past, the farther she feels from her friend. And in a tinder box of small-town rage, and all it will take is just one spark - the truth of what really happened that night - to change their community forever.
Nobody knows quite who Rudolph Sullivan is, or how he ascended so quickly to the glittering top of New York’s art scene. When aspiring artist and struggling gallery assistant Ingrid meets the charismatic dealer at a party, she falls fast - Rudolph offers her a seductive taste of luxury and an escape from her humdrum existence.
\nBut Rudolph is hiding much more than his dazzling facade lets on. With insatiable tastes and a need to keep up appearances, his debts mount rapidly, and he turns to double dealing to stay afloat. As his adversaries close in, Rudolph realises his fall from grace could cost him more than his reputation. Panicking, paranoid, and willing to sacrifice anyone to maintain his precarious foothold, he plans his most audacious gambit yet - and Ingrid is at the center of it.
Zombies want brains. Vampires want blood. Cannibals want human flesh. All monsters need feeding.
\nHorror has been embraced by mainstream pop culture more than ever before, with horror characters and aesthetics infecting TV, music videos and even TikTok trends. Yet even with the commercial and critical success of The Babadook, Hereditary, Get Out, The Haunting of Hill House, Yellowjackets and countless other horror films and TV series over the last few years, loving the genre still prompts the question: what's wrong with you? Implying, of course, that there is something not quite right about the people who make and consume it.
\nIn Feeding the Monster, Anna Bogutskaya dispels this notion once and for all by examining how horror responds to and fuels our feelings of fear, anxiety, pain, hunger and power.
\n
Frankie is a good daughter, a loyal best friend, and a model student, coasting through her final semester at an elite Catholic prep school in a wealthy Pittsburgh enclave. But acceptance to her dream college leaves her unmoored. When a classmate takes his life after posting a cryptic message about Woolf Whiting - a former student hockey player who died in a presumed suicide years earlier - Frankie and her best friend, Shiv, decide to investigate Woolf’s death as part of their journalism class project.
\nAs the community mourns, a muffled conversation between Frankie's mom, who teaches history at the school, and the priest who teaches her philosophy class draws the girls further into unraveling the mysterious life and death of Woolf. Frankie speaks to his sister, now a high-powered lawyer in New York; his former girlfriend, who Woolf's mother is convinced knows more about his death than she has revealed; and his best friend. As she does, she discovers much more than she expected about the history of her supposed elite education.
\nWith a wry, up-the-patriarchy, wise-beyond-her-years narrator in Frankie and a page-turning plot, Fine Young People is a cold-case mystery with a Hitchcockian twist and a portrait of a young woman searching for meaning in a world that values achievement above all else.
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When a nameless girl wakes up on the subway tracks, she knows only one thing for sure: people want her dead. Can she find them before they track her down?
\nThings I Know Are True:
I am in Los Angeles
I woke up on the train tracks at the Vermont/Sunset station
I am a teenage girl
I have long black hair
I have a bird tattoo on the inside of my right wrist with the letters and numbers FNV02198People are trying to kill me
A week ago, you woke up in Los Angeles with no memory of who you are. The only thing you knew: people are trying to kill you. You put your trust in Ben, but he betrayed you and broke your heart. Now you've escaped to New York City with a boy named Rafe, who says he remembers you from before.
\nBut the two of you are not safe. The same people who are after you are tailing Rafe as well. As the chase heats up, your memory starts to return, but your past cannot save you from the terrifying circumstances of your present, or from the fact that one wrong move could end this game forever.
Eighteen-year-old Eve has never been beyond the heavily guarded perimeter of her school, where she and two hundred other orphaned girls have been promised a bright future in The New America. But the night before graduation, Eve learns the shocking truth about her school's real purpose - and the horrifying fate that awaits her.
\nFleeing the only home she's ever known, Eve sets off on a long, treacherous journey, searching for a place she can survive. Along the way she encounters Caleb, a rough, rebellious boy living in the wild. Caleb slowly wins her trust . . . and her heart. But when soldiers begin hunting them, Eve must choose between true love and her life.
When you’re being hunted, who can you trust?
\nFor the first time since escaping from her School, Eve can finally sleep soundly. She is living in Califia, protected from the terrifying fate that awaits orphaned girls in The New America in the year 2041. But she was forced to abandon Caleb, the boy she loves, wounded and alone at Califia’s gates.
\nWhen Eve gets word that Caleb is in trouble, she sets out into the wild again to rescue him, only to be captured and brought to the City of Sand. Trapped inside the city walls, Eve uncovers a shocking secret about her past - and must confront the harsh reality of her future.
Laura used to have big dreams, but she gave them up - because that's what grown-ups do. Trying to turn her love of music into a career would have been absolutely ridiculous. But when she hears one of Tadhg's songs on the radio, she isn't so sure.
\nTadhg and Laura used to be in a band together. They used to be a lot of things. Now he's a superstar, touring the world with his songs, reminding Laura of what might have been.
\nThen she gets an email that could change everything: Tadhg wants to finish a song they started writing together sixteen years ago. Making music again would literally be a dream come true, even if it's with a person she swore she'd never speak to again. And they can keep things professional, right?
\nAs Tadhg and Laura start working together though, sparks begin to fly. Maybe music isn't the only thing that deserves a second chance . . .
How far will you go when you have nothing left to lose?
hen she lost her soul mate, Caleb, Eve felt like her world had ended. Trapped in the palace, forced to play the part of the happy, patriotic princess of The New America--and the blushing bride of her father's top adviser--Eve's whole life is a lie. The only thing that keeps her going is Caleb's memory, and the revolution he started.
Now, Eve is taking over where Caleb left off. With the help of Moss, an undercover subversive in the King's court, she plots to take down The New America, beginning with the capital, the City of Sand. Will Eve be able to bring about a new, free world when she's called upon to perform the ultimate act of rebellion--killing her father?
In Rise, Eve must choose who to leave behind, who to save, and who to fight as Anna Carey's epic tale of romance and sacrifice in the chilling dystopia of The New America comes to a stunning conclusion.
", "series": "Eve", "seriesOrder": 3, "tags": [ "Dystopia", "Young Adult" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Anna Carey - Rise.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856849634.5059, "size": 1145153, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:18:48.342Z" }, "Anna Carey - This is Not the Jess Show": { "title": "This is Not the Jess Show", "author": "Anna Carey", "description": "The year is 1998: Titanic just won six Oscars, boy bands are dominating MTV’s airwaves, and like any other teenager Jess Flynn is just trying to survive high school. Between a crush on her childhood best friend, overprotective parents, and her sister’s worsening health, the only constant is her hometown of Swickley, which feels smaller by the day.
\nJess is resigned to her small-town life, until the day she discovers a mysterious device with an apple logo, causing her to question everything and everyone she’s ever known. As more cracks appear in Jess’s world, she faces a choice: can she live the rest of her life knowing it’s a lie, or should she risk everything for the truth?
Months after Jess escaped from the set of Stuck in the ’90s, the nostalgic reality show she believed was her real life, the teen star is getting to know the outside world for the first time. But she can’t outrun her fictional life forever - or the media empire that owns it.
\nAfter Like-Life Productions tracks her down and forces her boyfriend to return to the show, Jess teams up with an underground network fighting to uncover Like-Life’s schemes. To expose the truth, Jess must go back to the set and take Like-Life down from the inside . . . but getting revenge might just cost her everything.
Palliative-care physician and award-winning author Anna DeForest returns with an ode to life and to death, and the ways we care for ourselves and others on our long, marvelous walk toward the end.
\nIn a pandemic-hushed city, a young doctor lives a life of insecure attachments: to a distant partner in an untended marriage, to a loaner child who stirs up hurts from the past, to houseplants wilting in a dark apartment on a once-vibrant street.
\nThrough a yearlong fellowship caring for the dying and their families, death is impossible to ignore, and still more endings loom at every turn - endings made worse by wounded, avoidant doctors who don’t know how to let go. But after the sudden loss of a long-estranged father, our unnamed narrator’s work is thrown into painful relief, and we see, under threats large and small, how far we will go to hold on to our lives - no matter how little we live them.
\nLyrical and with piercing insight, Our Long Marvelous Dying is a meditation on the twin drives of life and death - and how all of us reckon, day by day, with their ecstatic, inevitable collide.
\n
A controversial Los Angeles author attempts to revive her career and finally find true love in this hilarious nod to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction.
\nHaving recently moved both herself and her formidable perfume bottle collection into a tiny bungalow in Los Angeles, mid-list author Astrid Dahl finds herself back in the Zoom writer’s group she cofounded, Sapphic Scribes, after an incident that leaves her and her career lightly canceled. But she temporarily forgets all that by throwing herself into a few sexy distractions - like Ivy, a grad student who smells like metallic orchids and is researching 1950s lesbian pulp, or her new neighbor, Penelope, who smells like patchouli.
\nPenelope, a painter living off Urban Outfitters settlement money, immediately ingratiates herself in Astrid’s life, bonding with her best friends and family, just as Astrid and Ivy begin to date in person. Astrid feels judged and threatened by Penelope, a responsible older vegan, but also finds her irresistibly sexy.
\nWhen Astrid receives an unexpected call from her agent with the news that actress and influencer Kat Gold wants to adapt her previous novel for TV, Astrid finally has a chance to resurrect her waning career. But the pressure causes Astrid’s worst vice to rear its head - the Patricia Highsmith, a blend of Adderall, alcohol, and cigarettes - and results in blackouts and a disturbing series of events.
\n
It's 1964 in the tiny town of Eastport, Maine, and Billie McCadie is bored to death. She's surrounded by dull people with more manners than sense, and no sign of the intrigue or romance that fills her beloved novels.
\nThen everything changes. An engagement ring and cryptic love letter addressed to 'Gertrude' turn up. Billie meets yacht-club handsome Avery Webster. Unsettling phone calls and visits from a man in a fedora begin. She ends up being one of the last people to see Gertrude alive - and the first to see her dead.
\nWhat follows is an intoxicating cocktail of stalking, blackmail, Jell-O salads, and champagne secrets, all served along the rocky Maine coastline. Everyone is a suspect. Everyone has a secret. And (strangely) everyone has a boat. But who is willing to kiss and tell? As the body count rises and the danger nears, why does Billie feel like she's more than just a side character?
In college, Parker Thompson poured her heart into an anonymous love letter to Hannah Wells - only to be met with silence. Heartbroken, music became her emotional refuge and she buried herself in building a career as a respected music editor. Now in her forties, Parker is certain those old feelings are long gone. But when a union strike forces her into an unexpected sabbatical, she returns to her alma mater for homecoming . . . and comes face-to-face with Hannah.
\nHannah Wells never expected to see Parker again, let alone feel drawn to her. A dedicated music teacher, Hannah has spent decades helping others find their voice while suppressing her own. Freshly divorced, the last thing she wants is another intense relationship. Parker might not be the lovesick kid she once knew, but Hannah has had more than her share of being overwhelmed by other people’s emotions.
\nParker is intriguing, magnetic, impossible to ignore - and completely wrong for Hannah. But sometimes love's melody refuses to end.
\n
Frederick Fife was born with an extra helping of kindness in his heart. If he borrowed your car, he’d return it washed with a full tank of gas. The problem is there’s nobody left in Fred’s life to borrow from. At eighty-two, he’s desperately lonely, broke, and on the brink of homelessness. But Fred’s luck changes when, in a bizarre case of mistaken identity, he takes the place of grumpy Bernard Greer at the local nursing home. Now he has warm meals in his belly and a roof over his head - as long as his poker face is in better shape than his prostate and that his look-alike never turns up.
\nDenise Simms is stuck breathing the same disappointing air again and again. A middle-aged mom and caregiver at Bernard's facility, her crumbling marriage and daughter's health concerns are suffocating her joy for life. Wounded by her two-faced husband, she vows never to let a man deceive her again.
\nAs Fred walks in Bernard’s shoes, he leaves a trail of kindness behind him, fueling Denise's suspicions about his true identity. When unexpected truths are revealed, Fred and Denise rediscover their sense of purpose and learn how to return a broken life to mint condition.
Yana, a vampire hunter, rides into Koprivci promising salvation. The village’s curse has endured for many years and rumour has it that Anka - whose parents died on the night of her birth - is to blame. But enduring the villagers’ suspicion is the least of Anka’s worries; now she has reached womanhood, she can no longer avoid the odious marriage that seems to be her only option.
\nWhen animal corpses start to appear in the village square and eggs filled with blood are found in the chicken coops, panic rises. The villagers look to Yana for hope. She knows all about the monsters that stalk the night, monsters that only she can vanquish. But Yana is a liar. And monsters come in all different forms.
\nYana and Anka become unlikely allies in hatching a plot to save both Koprivci and Anka from their fates. But then their plan takes on a horrifying life of its own . . .
\n
Disciplined and pragmatic, Mary Roberts feels she's got her life under control. She's recently moved to Hobart, she's nearing the end of her training as an emergency doctor, and she keeps a tight handle on the wellbeing of her mother and her sister back home in Sydney.
\nBut when it comes to her long-term boyfriend, Felix, Mary's always had a blind spot. That is until she finds another woman's G-string in their bed . . .
\nIn need of a temporary escape, Mary signs up to help run a wilderness expedition medicine course. She soon discovers that rock climbing, plunging into freezing cold water, and working in the close company of a grumpy yet disconcertingly magnetic retrieval doctor is pushing her way out of her comfort zone.
\nSuddenly, everything she thought she knew about herself is starting to unravel. The question is, what will the fallout be? A breakdown in her relationship with her sister? Her mother's brittle mental health reaching the point of catastrophe? Or - most dangerous of all - could Mary Roberts finally be ready to fall in love?
\n\n
Most days, Magda is fine. She has her routines. She has her anxious therapy patients, who depend on her to cure their bad habits. She has her longtime colleagues, whose playful bickering she mediates. She’s mourning the recent loss of her best friend, Sara, but has brokered a tentative truce with Sara’s prickly widower as she helps him sort through the last of Sara’s possessions. She’s fine.
\nBut in going through Sara’s old journal, Magda discovers her friend’s last plans for a road trip they would take together in celebration of Magda’s upcoming seventieth birthday. So, with Sara’s urn in tow, Magda decides to hit the road, crossing the country and encountering a cast of memorable characters - including her sister, from whom she’s been keeping secrets. Along the way she stumbles upon a jazz funeral in New Orleans and a hilarious women’s retreat meant to “unleash one’s divine feminine energy” in Texas, and meets a woman who challenges her conceptions of herself - and the hidden truths about her friendship with Sara.
\nAs the trip shakes up her careful routines, Magda finally faces longings she locked away years ago and confronts questions about her sexuality and identity she thought she had long put to rest. And as she soon learns, it’s never too late to start your next journey.
On the eve of his wedding, young Alyoshka pines for an earlier love. Ilne chose to leave the nomadic Nenets community seven years before, moving to the city and taking his heart with her. Under increasing pressure to marry, Alyoshka struggles against the ancient Nenets customs of home and family, unwilling to give up his hope for another life.
\nMeanwhile, other painful transitions shake the foundations of the small camp. Deep in grief, Ilne's father Petko feels he has no role left to play in the community, while Vanu strikes out on a difficult journey to try to soothe his troubled friends. Deep in northern Siberia, minor human tragedies play out against the cold expanse of the tundra.
\nWith bursts of lyricism and a Chekhovian eye for human frailty, Anna Nerkagi crafts a multi-voiced drama of lost love and the clash between youthful dreams and the complex ties of home.
High school English teacher Polly Goodman can talk about everything and anything with the women in her book club, which is why they’ve become her closest friends and, along with the support of her veterinarian husband, the bedrock of her life. Her private school students, her fraught relationship with mother, her struggles with IVF - Polly’s book club friends have heard it all.
\nBut when they give Polly an ancestry test kit as a joke, the results match her with a stranger. Despite it seeming clear that this match is a mistake, Polly cannot help combing through her own family history for answers. Then, when it seems that the book club circle of four will become three, Polly learns how friendships can change your life in the most profound ways.
\n
Summer, 1518. A strange sickness sweeps through Strasbourg: women dance in the streets, some until they fall down dead. As rumors of witchcraft spread, suspicion turns toward Lavinia and her family, and Lavinia may have to do the unimaginable to save herself and everyone she loves.
Five centuries later, a pair of red shoes seal to Rosella Oliva’s feet, making her dance uncontrollably. They draw her toward a boy who knows the dancing fever’s history better than anyone: Emil, whose family was blamed for the fever five hundred years ago. But there’s more to what happened in 1518 than even Emil knows, and discovering the truth may decide whether Rosella survives the red shoes.
The Soler sisters are infamous in polite society - brazen, rebellious, and raised by their fashionable grandmother who couldn’t care less about which fork goes where. But their grandmother also knows the standards that two Latina young ladies will be held to, so she secures them two coveted places at the Alarie House, a prominent finishing school that turns out first ladies, princesses, and socialites.
\nYounger sister Isla is back home within a day. She refuses to become one of the eerily sweet Alarie girls in their prim white dresses. Older sister Renata stays. When she returns months later, she’s unfailingly pleasant, unnervingly polite, and, Isla discovers, possibly murderous. And the same night she returns home, she vanishes.
\nAs their grandmother uses every connection she has to find Renata, Isla re-enrolls, intent on finding out what happened to her sister. But the Alarie House is as exacting as it is opulent. It won’t give up its secrets easily, and neither will a mysterious, conniving girl who’s either controlling the house, or carrying out its deadly orders.
\n
“Mother May I” Iverson has spent the past twenty years building a massively successful influencer empire with endearing videos featuring her five mixed-race daughters. But the girls are all grown up now, and the ramifications of having their entire childhoods commodified start to spill over into public view, especially in light of the pivotal Who killed May’s newlywed husband and then torched her mansion to cover it up?
\nApril is a businesswoman feuding with her mother over IP; twins June and July are influencers themselves, threatening to overtake May’s spotlight; January is a theater tech who steers clear of her mother and the limelight; and the youngest . . . well, March has somehow completely disappeared. As the days pass post-murder, everyone has an opinion - the sisters, May, a mysterious \"friend of the family,\" and the collective voice of the online audience watching the family’s every move - with suspicion flying every direction.
\nA campy and escapist exploration of race, gender, sexuality, and class, The Influencers is an evisceration of influencer culture and how alienating traditional expectations can be, ripe for the current moment when the first generation of children made famous by their parents are, now, all grown up - and looking for retribution.
\n
Everyone who lives near the lake knows the stories about the world underneath it, an ethereal landscape rumored to be half-air, half-water. But Bastián Silvano and Lore Garcia are the only ones who’ve been there. Bastián grew up both above the lake and in the otherworldly space beneath it. Lore’s only seen the world under the lake once, but that one encounter changed their life and their fate.
\nThen the lines between air and water begin to blur. The world under the lake drifts above the surface. If Bastián and Lore don’t want it bringing their secrets to the surface with it, they have to stop it, and to do that, they have to work together. There’s just one problem: Bastián and Lore haven’t spoken in seven years, and working together means trusting each other with the very things they’re trying to hide.
\n
Graciela Cristales' whole world changes after she and a boy she barely knows are assaulted at the same party. She loses her gift for making enchanted pan dulce. Neighborhood trees vanish overnight, while mirrored glass appears, bringing reckless magic with it. And Ciela is haunted by what happened to her, and what happened to the boy whose name she never learned.
\nBut when the boy, Lock, shows up at Ciela's school, he has no memory of that night, and no clue that a single piece of mirrored glass is taking his life apart. Ciela decides to help him, which means hiding the truth about that night. Because Ciela knows who assaulted her, and him. And she knows that her survival, and his, depend on no one finding out what really happened.
\n
Lola and Lisandro are actors during Hollywood’s Golden Age, but you won’t see them on any silver screen. Instead, these siblings use their talents to scam the rich and famous out of their ill-begotten cash. They have their act down to a science: Lola plays the tragic ghost who haunts the mansions of the wealthy, and Lisandro plays the brave spiritualist who will help her soul find peace. For a small fee, of course.
\nThe siblings have their sights set on their next target: The Coterie, the opulent estate of newspaper tycoon Bixby Fairfax and his famous mistress Blythe Bell. A score this big will allow them to move . . . well, anywhere but here. But this job requires them to do something they’ve never done before: switch roles. And as strange things keep happening at The Coterie . . . things that even Lola and Lisandro can’t explain.
\nAs they are drawn deeper into The Coterie’s gleaming façade and tensions rise between brother and sister, one question looms over them. Will they be able to pull off their act? Or will this be their last performance?
\n
For twenty years, the Palomas and the Corbeaus have been rivals and enemies, locked in an escalating feud for over a generation. Both families make their living as traveling performers in competing shows - the Palomas swimming in mermaid exhibitions, the Corbeaus, former tightrope walkers, performing in the tallest trees they can find.
Lace Paloma may be new to her family’s show, but she knows as well as anyone that the Corbeaus are pure magia negra, black magic from the devil himself. Simply touching one could mean death, and she's been taught from birth to keep away.
But when disaster strikes the small town where both families are performing, it’s a Corbeau boy, Cluck, who saves Lace’s life. And his touch immerses her in the world of the Corbeaus, where falling for him could turn his own family against him, and one misstep can be just as dangerous on the ground as it is in the trees.
\n
To everyone who knows them, best friends Miel and Sam are as strange as they are inseparable. Roses grow out of Miel’s wrist, and rumors say that she spilled out of a water tower when she was five.
\nSam is known for the moons he paints and hangs in the trees, and for how little anyone knows about his life before he and his mother moved to town. But as odd as everyone considers Miel and Sam, even they stay away from the Bonner girls, four beautiful sisters rumored to be witches.
\nNow they want the roses that grow from Miel’s skin, convinced that their scent can make anyone fall in love. And they’re willing to use every secret Miel has fought to protect to make sure she gives them up.
\n
For nearly a century, the Nomeolvides women have tended the grounds of La Pradera, the lush estate gardens that enchant guests from around the world. They’ve also hidden a tragic legacy: if they fall in love too deeply, their lovers vanish. But then, after generations of vanishings, a strange boy appears in the gardens.
The boy is a mystery to Estrella, the Nomeolvides girl who finds him, and to her family, but he’s even more a mystery to himself; he knows nothing more about who he is or where he came from than his first name. As Estrella tries to help Fel piece together his unknown past, La Pradera leads them to secrets as dangerous as they are magical in this stunning exploration of love, loss, and family.
In the glass city of Amoria, magic is everything. And Naila, student at the city's legendary academy, is running out of time to prove she can control hers. If she fails, she'll be forced into exile, relegated to a life of persecution with the other magicless hollows. Or worse, be consumed by her own power.
\nWhen a tragic incident further threatens her place at the Academy, Naila is saved by Haelius Akana, the most powerful living mage. Finding Naila a kindred spirit, Haelius stakes his position at the Academy on teaching her to harness her abilities. But Haelius has many enemies, and they would love nothing more than to see Naila fail. Trapped in the deadly schemes of Amoria's elite, Naila must dig deep to discover the truth of her powers or watch the city she loves descend into civil war.
\nFor there is violence brewing on the wind, and greater powers at work. Ones who could use her powers for good . . . or destroy everything she's ever known.
\n
Jane Jackson knows that true love is a lie. Laughter is the only truth - you can’t fake a belly laugh. Jane should know, she spent her adolescence as \"Poor Janey Jakes,\" the barbecue-sauce-in-her-braces punchline on America's fifth-favorite sitcom. Now she’s a Creative Executive at Clearwater Studios and she’s living by a new mantra: Fake it till you make it.
\nExcept, she might have faked it too far. Desperate to get her first project greenlit and riled up by pompous cinematographer and one-time crush Dan Finnegan, she opened her mouth and a big fat fib fell out. She claimed that Jack Quinlan, hottest popstar of the moment, has promised to write an original song for the soundtrack. Jack may have been her first kiss - and greatest source of shame - but she hasn’t spoken to him in twenty years.
\nNow, Jane must turn to the last man she’d ever want to owe: Dan Finnegan. Because Jack is playing a festival in Dan’s hometown on Long Island, and Dan has an in. A week in close quarters with Dan while facing down her past is Jane's idea of hell, but Dan just might surprise her. While covering up her lie, can they find something true?
You don't have to eat food to know the way to a city's heart is through its stomach. So when a group of deactivated robots come back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen, they decide to make their own way doing what they know: making food - the tastiest hand-pulled noodles around - for the humans of San Francisco, who are recovering from a devastating war.
\nBut when their robot-run business starts causing a stir, a targeted wave of one-star reviews threatens to boil over into a crisis. To keep their doors open, they'll have to call on their customers, their community, and each other - and find a way to survive and thrive in a world that wasn't built for them.
When anything can be owned, how can we be free?
Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world in a submarine as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood, fabricating cheap scrips for poor people who can't otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack has left a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, doing repetitive tasks until they become unsafe or insane.
Hot on her trail, an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his robotic partner, Paladin. As they race to stop information about the sinister origins of Jack's drug from getting out, they begin to form an uncommonly close bond that neither of them fully understand.
\nAnd underlying it all is one fundamental question: Is freedom possible in a culture where everything, even people, can be owned?
\n1992: After a confrontation at a riot grrl concert, seventeen-year-old Beth finds herself in a car with her friend's abusive boyfriend dead in the backseat, agreeing to help her friends hide the body. This murder sets Beth and her friends on a path of escalating violence and vengeance as they realize many other young women in the world need protecting too.
2022: Determined to use time travel to create a safer future, Tess has dedicated her life to visiting key moments in history and fighting for change. But rewriting the timeline isn’t as simple as editing one person or event. And just when Tess believes she's found a way to make an edit that actually sticks, she encounters a group of dangerous travelers bent on stopping her at any cost.
Tess and Beth’s lives intertwine as war breaks out across the timeline--a war that threatens to destroy time travel and leave only a small group of elites with the power to shape the past, present, and future. Against the vast and intricate forces of history and humanity, is it possible for a single person’s actions to echo throughout the timeline?
Destry is a top network analyst with the Environmental Rescue Team, an ancient organization devoted to preventing ecosystem collapse. On the planet Sask-E, her mission is to terraform an Earthlike world, with the help of her taciturn moose, Whistle. But then she discovers a city that isn't supposed to exist, hidden inside a massive volcano. Torn between loyalty to the ERT and the truth of the planet's history, Destry makes a decision that echoes down the generations.
\nCenturies later, Destry's protege, Misha, is building a planetwide transit system when his worldview is turned upside-down by Sulfur, a brilliant engineer from the volcano city. Together, they uncover a dark secret about the real estate company that's buying up huge swaths of the planet - a secret that could destroy the lives of everyone who isn't Homo sapiens.
\nWorking with a team of robots, naked mole rats, and a very angry cyborg cow, they quietly sow seeds of subversion. But when they're threatened with violent diaspora, Misha and Sulfur's very unusual child faces a stark choice: deploy a planet-altering weapon, or watch their people lose everything they've built on Sask-E.
Aurelia Wycherley has found someone to tether her magic to - her enigmatic former enemy, Jules Nightly. Now, they are heading off to coven college to learn advanced magic. But they are also on a secret to discover the Lost Quarter of the college, create their own coven of twelve and try to discover a way to bring back the Old Magic.
\nWhen malevolent magic interrupts their first night at college, Aurelia and Jules discover that Jonathan and his coven of untethered witches has escaped and now they are after her magic, curse and all . . .
\nCan they save the magic and the world - or will Aurelia lose her magic for good?
Seventeen-year-old Aurelia Wycherley is entering her debutante season as a witch. Aurelia should be excited about finding the perfect match to tether her magic to. But her magic is cursed – dark, dangerous, and not the kind that her peers want to match with – and, without a tether, she faces losing her magic completely.
\nBut when Aurelia learns that enigmatic, aloof Jules, a member of arch enemy family the Nightlys, is searching for a way that a witch can keep their magic without tethering, she realises he may be her only hope. A forbidden alliance is formed . . . but as they navigate the Magical Season with its glamoured balls and perilous trials, they uncover dark forces that threaten their families and the magical world they live in.
\nExpect family secrets, generational curses, forbidden romance, gorgeous ballgowns, bribery, extortion, trespass, magic and kissing . . . lots of kissing.
From the Pulitzer-prize winning, New York Times bestselling author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them.
\nWe think we know what an autocratic state looks There is an all-powerful leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents.
\nBut in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt companies in another. The police in one country can arm and train the police in another, and propagandists share resources and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.
\nInternational condemnation and economic sanctions cannot move the autocrats. Even popular opposition movements, from Venezuela to Hong Kong to Moscow, don't stand a chance. The members of Autocracy, Inc, aren't linked by a unifying ideology, like communism, but rather a common desire for power, wealth, and impunity. In this urgent treatise, which evokes George Kennan's essay calling for \"containment\" of the Soviet Union, Anne Applebaum calls for the democracies to fundamentally reorient their policies to fight a new kind of threat.
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The year is 1908, the height of the Belle Époque, and a brilliant, young French woman named Gabriële, newly graduated from the most elite music school in Europe, meets a volcanic Spanish artist named Francis. Following a whirlwind romance, they marry and fall headlong into a Paris that is experimenting with new forms of living, thinking, and creating. Soon after marrying Francis, Gabriële meets Marcel, another young artist, five years her junior. Soon, Francis, Marcel, and Gabriële are all involved in a fervent affair that will change the course of art history and redefine the avant-garde.
\nAs the Belle Epoque gives way to rebellion and revolution, and the world descends into the devastation of World War I, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and Gabriële Buffet revolutionise art and open up new ways of seeing and thinking, along the way posing a vital question for their age and what is the connection between new ways loving and new ways of creating?
\nMoving between Paris, New York, Berlin, Zurich, Barcelona, London, and Saint-Tropez, Gabriële is as audacious, uninhibited, intimate, and unforgettable as its central character, the mercurial, pioneering Gabriële Buffet.
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January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques - all killed at Auschwitz.
\nFifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why. Aided by her chain-smoking mother, family members, friends, associates, a private detective, a graphologist, and many others, she embarks on a journey to discover the fate of the Rabinovitch family: their flight from Russia following the revolution, their journey to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris.
\nWhat emerges is a moving saga that shatters long-held certainties about Anne’s family, her country, and herself.
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The Eater of the World continues to spread its dark influence across the realm of Ephemera, corrupting people's souls with doubts and fears. Only Glorianna Belladonna possesses the ability to thwart the Eater's plans. But she has been branded a rogue, and must stand alone against the encroaching entity.
\nBut she is not alone. In dreams, a call has traveled throughout Ephemera - \"Heart's hope lies within Belladonna\" - and reached Michael, a man with mysterious powers of his own. It awakens a fierce hunger within him to find the dark-haired sorceress he's dreamt of-a beautiful woman named Belladonna. Together, they may be Ephemera's only hope.
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When wizards threaten Glorianna Belladonna and her work to keep Ephemera balanced, her brother Lee sacrifices himself in order to save her-and ends up an asylum inmate in the city of Vision. But a darkness is spreading through Vision, perplexing the Shamans who protect it. And Lee is the only one who can shed any light on its mysteries . . .
Deep in the territory controlled by the Others - shape-shifters, vampires, and even deadlier paranormal beings - Vicki DeVine has made a new life for herself running The Jumble, a rustic resort. When she decides to host a gathering of friends and guests for Trickster Night, at first everything is going well between the humans and the Others.
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But then someone arrives dressed as Crowbones, the Crowgard bogeyman. When the impostor is killed along with a shape-shifting Crow, and the deaths are clearly connected, everyone fears that the real Crowbones may have come to The Jumble—and that could mean serious trouble.
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To “encourage” humans to help them find some answers, the Elders and Elementals close all the roads, locking in suspects and victims alike. Now Vicki, human police chief Grimshaw, vampire lawyer Ilya Sanguinati, and the rest of their friends have to figure out who is manipulating events designed to pit humans against Others - and who may have put Vicki DeVine in the crosshairs of a powerful hunter.
Anne Bishop's debut novel, Daughter of the Blood, is like black coffee - strong, dark, and hard on delicate stomachs. Within the Blood (a race of magic-users), women rule and men serve, but tradition has been corrupted so that women enslave men, who seek to destroy their oppressors. Female children are violated before they can reach maturity; men are tortured and forced to satisfy witches' sexual appetites. Bishop's child heroine, Jaenelle, is destined to rule the Blood, if she can reach adulthood. Her power is hidden; her family believes her mad.
\nSaetan, High Lord of Hell and most powerful of the Blood males, becomes Jaenelle's surrogate father and teacher. He cannot protect her outside Hell, where he rules. She refuses to leave Terreille, risking herself to protect or heal other victims of violence. Can Daemon, Saetan's estranged son, keep her safe from the machinations of the evil High Priestess? Or will he lose his battle to control his destructive urges and endanger her? Readers may find some aspects of Bishop's world confusing; not least that most of the good guys live in Hell. But her protagonists are compelling, sympathetic characters who overcome terrible adversity.
The national bestselling Black Jewels trilogy established award-winning Anne Bishop as an author whose \"sublime skill . . . blends the darkly macabre with spine-tingling emotional intensity, mesmerising magic, lush sensuality, and exciting action.\"* Now the saga continues-with four all-new adventures of Jaenelle and her kindred.
After a human uprising was brutally put down by the Elders - a primitive and lethal form of the Others - the few cities left under human control are far-flung. And the people within them now know to fear the no-man’s-land beyond their borders - and the darkness . . .
As some communities struggle to rebuild, Lakeside Courtyard has emerged relatively unscathed, though Simon Wolfgard, its wolf shifter leader, and blood prophet Meg Corbyn must work with the human pack to maintain the fragile peace. But all their efforts are threatened when Lieutenant Montgomery’s shady brother arrives, looking for a free ride and easy pickings.
With the humans on guard against one of their own, tensions rise, drawing the attention of the Elders, who are curious about the effect such an insignificant predator can have on a pack. But Meg knows the dangers, for she has seen in the cards how it will all end - with her standing beside a grave
An ambitious High Priestess destroys more powerful females before maturity and has enslaved the strongest males, weakening magic and corrupting natural bonds between men and women. Sexual violence permeates Terreille. Jaenelle, born to be Queen, is vulnerable until adulthood. Though guarded by male Warlord Princes, Jaenelle is violated. Daemon, her destined Consort, rescues her but is convinced he attacked her and goes mad. In Heir to the Shadows, Jaenelle's vampiric, adoptive father, Saetan, and her foster-family of demons shelter her.
\nTo restore her memory and emotional balance, they move to Kaeleer, where Jaenelle befriends the kindred - animals with magical and communicative powers - and gathers a circle of young Queens. She also heals Lucivar, Daemon's half-brother, who offers a brother's love and a warrior's fealty. As she recovers strength and memory, Jaenelle resolves to restore Daemon and cleanse Terreille.
With the eastern barons under his control and a growing army of black-cloaked torturers, Adolfo is headed toward the Mother's Hills - the wellspring of magic in Sylvalan, as well as home to the reclusive witches of the House of Gaian. As the battle to end all battles looms closer, normal humans and witches are forced to join ranks with the Fae, the beautiful, powerful, and arrogant race that inhabits the magical realm of tir Alainn.
\nBut the witches are faced with a crisis: if they are to fight the Black Coats, they'll have to break their sacred creed of 'Do No Harm'. And to make matters worse, the Master Inquisitor has a host of nasty surprises in store, including a new way to create a limitless army of nighthunters, virtually unstoppable soul-eating creatures of darkness.
A prequel set in the “dark and sensual world” of the national bestselling Black Jewels Trilogy. Jared is a Red-Jeweled Warlord bound as a pleasure slave by the Ring of Obedience. After suffering nine years of torment as a slave, he murdered his owner and escaped - only to be caught and sold into slavery once again. The notorious queen who has purchased him, known as the Gray Lady, may not be what she seems. Soon, Jared faces a difficult choice: his freedom, or his honor.
Human laws do not apply in the territory controlled by the Others - vampires, shapeshifters, and paranormal beings even more deadly. And this is a fact that humans should never, ever forget . . .
After her divorce, Vicki DeVine took over a rustic resort near Lake Silence, in a human town that is not human controlled. Towns like Vicki’s have no distance from the Others, the dominant predators that rule most of the land and all of the water throughout the world. And when a place has no boundaries, you never really know what’s out there watching you.
Vicki was hoping to find a new career and a new life. But when her lodger, Aggie Crowe - one of the shapeshifting Others - discovers a dead body, Vicki finds trouble instead. The detectives want to pin the man’s death on her, despite the evidence that nothing human could have killed the victim. As Vicki and her friends search for answers, things get dangerous - and it’ll take everything they have to stay alive.
For centuries, the Others and humans have lived side by side in uneasy peace. But when humankind oversteps its bounds, the Others will have to decide how much humanity they’re willing to tolerate - both within themselves and within their community . . .
\nSince the Others allied themselves with the cassandra sangue, the fragile yet powerful human blood prophets who were being exploited by their own kind, the delicate dynamic between humans and Others changed. Some, like Simon Wolfgard, wolf shifter and leader of the Lakeside Courtyard, and blood prophet Meg Corbyn, see the new, closer companionship as beneficial - both personally and practically.
\nBut not everyone is convinced. A group of radical humans is seeking to usurp land through a series of violent attacks on the Others. What they don’t realise is that there are older and more dangerous forces than shifters and vampires protecting the land that belongs to the Others - and those forces are willing to do whatever is necessary to protect what is theirs . . .
After winning the trust of the terra indigene residing in the Lakeside Courtyard, Meg Corbyn has had trouble figuring out what it means to live among them. As a human, Meg should be barely tolerated prey, but her abilities as a cassandra sangue make her something more.
\nThe appearance of two addictive drugs has sparked violence between the humans and the Others, resulting in the murders of both species in nearby cities. So when Meg has a dream about blood and black feathers in the snow, Simon Wolfgard - Lakeside's shape-shifting leader - wonders whether their blood prophet dreamed of a past attack or of a future threat.
\nAs the urge to speak prophecies strikes Meg more frequently, trouble finds its way inside the Courtyard. Now the Others and the handful of humans residing there must work together to stop the man bent on reclaiming their blood prophet - and stop the danger that threatens to destroy them all.
The youngest in a long line of witches, Ari senses that things are changing - changing for the worse. For generations, her kin have tended the Old Places, keeping the land safe and fertile. But with the Summer Moon, the mood of her neighbors has soured. And Ari is no longer safe.
\nThe Fae have long ignored what occurs in the mortal world, passing through on their shadowy roads only long enough to amuse themselves. But the roads are slowly disappearing, leaving the Fae Clans isolated and alone.
\nWhere harmony between the spiritual and the natural has always reigned, a dissonant chord now rings in the ears of both Fae and mortal. And when murmurs of a witch-hunt hum through the town, some begin to wonder if the different omens are notes in the same tune.
\nAnd all they have to guide them is a passing reference to something called the Pillars of the World . . .
Jaenelle Angelline now reigns as Queen-protector of the Shadow Realm. No longer will the corrupt Blood slaughter her people and defile her lands. But where one chapter ends, a final, unseen battle remains to be written, and Jaenelle must unleash the terrible power that is Witch to destroy her enemies once and for all.
\nEven so, she cannot stand alone. Somewhere, long lost in madness, is Daemon, her promised Consort. Only his unyielding love can complete her Court and secure her reign. Yet, even together, their strength may not be enough to hold back the most malevolent of forces.
After a youthful mistake, Lord Dillon’s reputation is in tatters, leaving him vulnerable to aristo girls looking for a bit of fun. To
restore his reputation and honor, he needs a handfast - a one-year contract of marriage. He sets his sights on Jillian, a young Eyrien witch from Ebon Rih, who he believes has only a flimsy connection to the noble society that spurned him. Unfortunately for Dillon, he is unaware of Jillian’s true connections until he finds himself facing Lucivar Yaslana, the volatile Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih.
Meanwhile, Surreal SaDiablo’s marriage is crumbling. Daemon Sadi, the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, recognizes there is something wrong between him and Surreal, but he doesn’t realize that his attempt to suppress his own nature in order to spare his wife is causing his mind to splinter. To save Daemon, and the Realm of Kaeleer if he breaks, help must be sought from someone who no longer exists in any of the Realms - the only Queen powerful enough to control Daemon Sadi. The Queen known as Witch.
As Jillian rides the winds of first love with Dillon, Daemon and Surreal struggle to survive the wounds of a marriage turned stormy - and Lucivar has to find a way to keep everyone in his family safe . . . even from each other.
The Queen's price is to stand against what you know is wrong. To stand and fight, no matter the cost to your court or to yourself. Especially to yourself.
\nZoey, a young Queen-in-training at SaDiablo Hall, is wounded . . . and vulnerable to taunts and criticism. When an opportunity arises to befriend a stranger seeking sanctuary at the Hall, she puts herself and others in danger by ignoring Daemonar Yaslana's warning to back off.
\nMeanwhile, the witch Jillian's family prepares for her Virgin Night, the rite of passage that assures a woman will retain her power and her Jewels. The trouble is Jillian secretly went through the ceremony already. Now she has to explain the omission of that detail to her powerful and lethal family. And the High Lord of Hell's daughter, Saetien, travels to Scelt to find out about Jaenelle Angelline's sister - and perhaps to discover truths about herself.
\nWith some guidance from Witch, these three young women will learn when to yield because it is right - and when to take a stand, even if they must pay the Queen's price.
They are Warlord Princes, men born to serve and protect. They are the Queen's Weapons, men born to destroy the Queen's enemies - no matter what face that enemy wears.
Daemonar Yaslana knows how to be bossy yet supportive - traits he shares with his father, the Demon Prince, and his uncle, the High Lord of Hell. Within his generation of the family, he assumes the role of protector, supporting his sister Titian’s artistic efforts and curbing his cousin Jaenelle Saetien’s more adventurous ideas. But when a young Eyrien Queen, someone Titian thought was a friend, inflicts an emotional wound, Daemonar's counterattack brings him under the tutelage of Witch, the Queen whose continued existence is known only to a select few.
As Daemonar is confronted by troubling changes within and around the family, he sees warnings that a taint in the Blood might be reappearing. Daemonar, along with his father and uncle, must uncover the source of a familiar evil - and Daemon Sadi, the High Lord of Hell, may be forced into making a terrible choice.
Welcome to Ephemera, full of thousands of magical landscapes interconnected by bridges that may or may not take a traveler where he wants to go, for here the destination is always determined by the heart's true desire. One such landscape is the Den, a town of perpetual twilight inhabited by creatures of the night because it shelters all things hidden, secret, and dark.
\nHalf-incubus Sebastian and his friend, Teaser, have lived in the Den for years, happily plying their trade to lonely women in the flesh and in their dreams. But something evil roams among humans, trolls, waterhorses, and other creatures, and the corpses of heinously murdered victims are found with alarming regularity.
\nWhen that evil enters the Den wearing Teaser's and others' faces, Sebastian must perilously journey to Wizard City for help. There, another, more insidious evil awaits. With the help of cousin Glorianna Belladonna, Teaser, and his love, Lynnea, Sebastian will risk everything to save Ephemera. But will everything be enough?
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The national bestselling Black Jewels saga continues Theran Grayhaven is the last of his line, desperate to restore the land of Dena Nehele. But first he needs to find a Queen who remembers the Blood's code of honor and lives by the Old Ways. Languishing in the Shadow Realm, Lady Cassidy is a Queen without a court. But when she is chosen to rule Dena Nehele, she must convince bitter men to serve once again.
Ever since the slaughter of the witches, the Fae - who should be shielding their long-lost cousins from danger - have ignored the needs of the rest of the world. And shadows are again gathering in the eastern villages - dark, potent shadows that threaten the lives of every witch, woman and Fae.
\nOnly three Fae can stand against the growing madness and help prevent more bloodshed: the Bard, the Muse, and the Gatherer of Souls. Aiden, the Bard, knows how desperately the world depends upon the Fae's protection. But the Fae refuse to heed his warnings about the wickedness lurking amid the trees.
\nNow Aiden and his one true love - Lyrra, the Muse - must embark on a perilous journey to find the one Fae who can convince the rest to leave their secure perches to save the witches and mortals. Because if the Fae don't act soon, no one will survive .
For years the Shalador people suffered the cruelties of the corrupt Queens who ruled them, forbidding their traditions, punishing those who dared show defiance, and forcing many more into hiding. Now that their land has been cleansed of tainted Blood, the Rose-Jeweled Queen, Lady Cassidy, makes it her duty to restore it and prove her ability to rule.
\nBut even if Lady Cassidy succeeds, other dangers await. For the Black Widows see visions within their tangled webs that something is coming that will change the land - and Lady Cassidy - forever . . .
The invitation is signed “Jaenelle Angelline,” and it summons her family to a special soirée. But when her guests enter the house, they find themselves trapped in a living nightmare created by the Black Widow witches - and if they try to use Craft as protection, they risk being sealed in the house forever. But Jaenelle did not send the invitation. And now she and the rest of her family must rescue the others inside - and then find out who has created such a place, and why . . .
Most people come to Destiny Park for entertainment. They come to have their cards read to tell them a bit about their future. They come to walk through a beautiful park and to eat at the hotel’s restaurant. They come in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Arcana, the paranormal beings who rule the Isle of Wyrd.
\nBut some people come to make a bargain with the Arcana - to change their fate. And some people come for dark purposes.
\nWhen Detective Beth Fahey is sent to Destiny Park to inquire about a “ghost gun,” she will begin a strange journey on which she must learn to navigate the Arcana’s unforgiving laws and dangerous attractions. Her search will draw her into seemingly impossible cases and the secrets of her own past as tensions rise between the Arcana and their human neighbors across the river.
\nFor the Isle of Wyrd is a place where the dead ride trains to their final destinations, predators literally become prey, and seekers’ true natures are revealed in the ripples of destiny unknowingly stirred in their wakes.
\nWho will live? Who will die? And who will be lost in between?
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WINSOL GIFTS
Daemon is settling into his first year of married life with his Witch Queen Jaenelle. But as the celebration of Winsol draws near, he finds himself pulled in multiple directions playing host to his formidable family.
SHADES OF HONOR
When wounded Surreal returns to Ebon Rih, her former lover Falonar ruthlessly challenges the rule of her family, testing Surreal’s resolve not to succumb to the darkness burning inside her.
FAMILY
When someone lays a vicious trap for Queen Sylvia and her sons, the ruling family of Dhemlan must uncover the identity of a vicious warlord before he returns to finish what he started.
THE HIGH LORD'S DAUGHTER
After losing two important people in his life, Daemon has built a wall around his heart. But when he inadvertently forges a new connection, will it be enough to free him from his loveless existence?
The Others freed the cassandra sangue to protect the blood prophets from exploitation, not realizing their actions would have dire consequences. Now the fragile seers are in greater danger than ever before - both from their own weaknesses and from those who seek to control their divinations for wicked purposes. In desperate need of answers, Simon Wolfgard, a shape-shifter leader among the Others, has no choice but to enlist blood prophet Meg Corbyn’s help, regardless of the risks she faces by aiding him.
Meg is still deep in the throes of her addiction to the euphoria she feels when she cuts and speaks prophecy. She knows each slice of her blade tempts death. But Others and humans alike need answers, and her visions may be Simon’s only hope of ending the conflict.
For the shadows of war are deepening across the Atlantik, and the prejudice of a fanatic faction is threatening to bring the battle right to Meg and Simon’s doorstep…
There are ghost towns in the world - places where the humans were annihilated in retaliation for the slaughter of the shape-shifting Others.
\nOne of those places is Bennett, a town at the northern end of the Elder Hills - a town surrounded by the wild country. Now efforts are being made to resettle Bennett as a community where humans and Others live and work together. A young female police officer has been hired as the deputy to a Wolfgard sheriff. A deadly type of Other wants to run a human-style saloon. And a couple with four foster children - one of whom is a blood prophet - hope to find acceptance.
\nBut as they reopen the stores and the professional offices and start to make lives for themselves, the town of Bennett attracts the attention of other humans looking for profit. And the arrival of the outlaw Blackstone Clan will either unite Others and humans . . . or bury them all.
As a cassandra sangue, or blood prophet, Meg Corbyn can see the future when her skin is cut - a gift that feels more like a curse. Meg’s Controller keeps her enslaved so he can have full access to her visions. But when she escapes, the only safe place Meg can hide is at the Lakeside Courtyard - a business district operated by the Others.
Shape-shifter Simon Wolfgard is reluctant to hire the stranger who inquires about the Human Liaison job. First, he senses she’s keeping a secret, and second, she doesn’t smell like human prey. Yet a stronger instinct propels him to give Meg the job. And when he learns the truth about Meg and that she’s wanted by the government, he’ll have to decide if she’s worth the fight between humans and the Others that will surely follow.
Macon Leary is a travel writer who hates both travel and anything out of the ordinary. He is grounded by loneliness and an unwillingness to compromise his creature comforts when he meets Muriel, a deliciously peculiar dog obedience trainer who up-ends Macon's insular world and thrusts him headlong into a remarkable engagement with life.
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Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life: when she was eleven and her mother disappeared, being proposed to at twenty-one, the accident that would make her a widow at forty-one. At each of these moments, Willa ended up on a path laid out for her by others.
So when she receives a phone call telling her that her son’s ex-girlfriend has been shot and needs her help, she drops everything and flies across the country. The spur-of-the-moment decision to look after this woman – and her nine-year-old daughter, and her dog – will lead Willa into uncharted territory. Surrounded by new and surprising neighbours, she is plunged into the rituals that make a community and takes pleasure in the most unexpected things.
A bittersweet novel of hope and regret, fulfillment and renewal, Clock Dance brings us the everyday life of a woman who decides it’s never too late to change direction, and choose your own path.
Abandoned by her wanderlusting husband, stoic Pearl raised her three children on her own. Now grown, the siblings are inextricably linked by their memories - some painful - which hold them together despite their differences.
\nHardened by life’s disappointments, wealthy, charismatic Cody has turned cruel and envious. Thrice-married Jenny is errant and passionate. And Ezra, the flawed saint of the family, who stayed at home to look after his mother, runs a restaurant where he cooks what other people are homesick for, stubbornly yearning for the perfect family he never had.
\nNow gathered during a time of loss, they will reluctantly unlock the shared secrets of their past and discover if what binds them together is stronger than what tears them apart.
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The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever leave home, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common.
\nTheir youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understand. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts' influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation.
\nFull of heartbreak and hilarity, French Braid is classic Anne Tyler: a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of tremendous warmth and humor that illuminates the kindnesses and cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from those who love us, and how close - yet how unknowable - every family is to itself.
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The headlines are all the same: Beloved mother and wife Delia Grinstead was last seen strolling down the Delaware shore, wearing only a bathing suit and carrying a beach tote with five hundred dollars tucked inside. To the best of her family's knowledge, she has disappeared without a trace. But Delia didn't disappear.
\nShe ran.
\nExhausted with her routine and everyone else's plans for her, Delia needed an out, a chance to make a new life for herself and to become a different person. The new Delia can let go of all the hurt and resentment that left her stuck in her past. As she eagerly sheds the pieces of herself she no longer needs, Delia discovers feelings of passion and wonder she'd long since forgotten. The thrill of walking away from it all leads to a newfound sense of self and the feeling that she is, finally, the star of her own life story.
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Micah Mortimer isn’t the most polished person you’ll ever meet. His numerous sisters and in-laws regard him oddly but very fondly, but he has his ways and means of navigating the world. He measures out his days running errands for work - his TECH HERMIT sign cheerily displayed on the roof of his car - maintaining an impeccable cleaning regime and going for runs (7:15, every morning). He is content with the steady balance of his life.
\nBut then the order of things starts to tilt. His woman friend Cassia (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a ‘girlfriend’) tells him she’s facing eviction because of a cat. And when a teenager shows up at Micah’s door claiming to be his son, Micah is confronted with another surprise he seems poorly equipped to handle. Redhead by the Side of the Road is an intimate look into the heart and mind of a man who sometimes finds those around him just out of reach - and a love story about the differences that make us all unique.
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\"It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon.\"
\nThis is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The whole family - their two daughters and two sons, their grandchildren, even their faithful old dog - is on the porch, listening contentedly as Abby tells the tale they have heard so many times before. And yet this gathering is different too: Abby and Red are growing older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them, and the fate of the house so lovingly built by Red's father.
\nBrimming with the luminous insight, humor, and compassion that are Anne Tyler's hallmarks, this capacious novel takes us across three generations of the Whitshanks, their shared stories and long-held secrets, all the unguarded and richly lived moments that combine to define who and what they are as a family.
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Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job - or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organised by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit.
\nBut the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.
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Twelve-year-old Elvis Babbitt has a head for the facts: she knows science proves yellow is the happiest color, she knows a healthy male giraffe weighs about 3,000 pounds, and she knows that the naked mole rat is the longest living rodent. She knows she should plan to grieve her mother, who has recently drowned while sleepwalking, for exactly eighteen months.
\nBut there are things Elvis doesn't yet know - like how to keep her sister Lizzie from poisoning herself while sleep-eating or why her father has started wearing her mother's silk bathrobe around the house. Elvis investigates the strange circumstances of her mother's death and finds comfort, if not answers, in the people (and animals) of Freedom, Alabama.
\nAs hilarious a storyteller as she is heartbreakingly honest, Elvis is a truly original voice in this exploration of grief, family, and the endurance of humor after loss.
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At sixty-three years old, million-dollar lottery winner PJ Halliday would be the luckiest man in Pondville, Massachusetts, if it weren’t for the tragedies of his life: the sudden death of his eldest daughter and the way his marriage fell apart after that. Since then, PJ spends both his money and his time at the bar, and he probably doesn’t have much time left - he’s had three heart attacks already.
\nBut when PJ reads an obituary of his old romantic rival, he realises his high school sweetheart, Michelle Cobb, is finally single again. Filled with a new enthusiasm for life, PJ decides he’s going to drive across the country to the Tender Hearts Retirement Community in Arizona to win Michelle back.
\nBefore PJ can hit the road, tragedy strikes Pondville, leaving PJ the sudden guardian of his estranged brother’s grandchildren. Anyone else would be deterred from the planned trip, but PJ figures the orphaned kids might benefit from getting out of town. PJ also figures he can ask Sophie, his adult daughter, adrift in her 20s, to come along to babysit. And there’s one more surprise addition to the roster: Pancakes, a former nursing home therapy cat with a knack of predicting death, who recently turned up outside PJ’s home.
\nThis could be the second chance PJ has long hoped for - a second shot at love and parenting - but does he have the strength to do both those things again? It’s very possible his heart can’t take it.
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Natural-born healer Emma Starling once had big plans for her life, but she's lost her way. A med school dropout, she's come back to small-town Everton, New Hampshire to care for her father, dying from a mysterious brain disease. Clive Starling has been hallucinating small animals, as well as visions of the ghost of a long-dead naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, once known for letting wild animals live in his house. This ghost has been giving Clive some ideas on how to spend his final days.
\nEmma arrives home knowing she must face her dad's illness, her mom's judgement, and her younger brother's recent stint in rehab, but she's unprepared to find that her former best friend from high school is missing, with no one bothering to look for her. The police say they don't spend much time looking for drug addicts. Emma's dad is the only one convinced the young woman might still be alive, and Emma is hopeful he could be right. Someone should look for her, at least. Emma isn't really trying to be a hero - but somehow she and her father set in motion just the kind of miracle the town needs.
\nSet against the backdrop of a small town in the throes of a very real opioid crisis, Unlikely Animals is a tragicomic novel about familial expectations, imperfect friendships, and the possibility of resurrecting that which had been thought irrevocably lost.
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In the lead-up to the Salem witch trials, a desperate man made a deal with the devil - a deal that would drag two families down with him. Now, over 400 years later, the Steadfasts and the Prynnes remain caught in a curse that sentences both families to an existence of rigid rules, torturous consequences, and half-lives.
\nLucy Prynne and Ashes Steadfast are the latest to take on the mantle of this centuries-old deal: Lucy, born to try to reap the souls of the hopeful; and Ashes, born to stop Lucy, no matter the cost. But before they inherited their respective curses, it sure felt like Ash’s purpose was Lucy. Her best friend, her closest confidant, her true love.
\nAsh knows the rules. She keeps her head down, her emotions in check, and she fights Lucy, no matter the personal cost. They are doomed to an incessant battle between good and bad, self-righteous and carnal.
\nOr so Ash thinks. But when she resists her instincts to fight Lucy and finally starts to fight the curse instead, she realizes there might just be a way to end this once and for all. If not in this timeline, then the next. As generational secrets begin to unravel, Ashes and Lucy join forces against the true threat that has haunted their families for centuries, even if it costs them their lives - and their love.
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There are great deserts in space . . .
\nSo began The Voided Man.
\nPrisoner Number One has survived in the void. He has even thrived there. But the question remains, can he ever leave there?
\nIf so, by what possible method? And at what risk to himself and others?
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Twelve years have passed since the events detailed in Ascending the Hourglass, and the residents of the Lemon Tree Moon have settled into an idyllic existence. But can the calm and peaceful days last forever?
\nPersius remains restless and hopes to learn much more about the phenomenon he calls jumping. Jack and Banner are now young men, and they assist him in his research. In the aftermath of a crisis, they make a most unexpected discovery about the region they call the in-between place: it may possibly offer a shortcut back to Earth.
\nMight Prisoner Number One finally return to his home world?
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Light is almost everywhere, but what is it, really? How does it work? What does it experience as it zips along at the universe's ultimate speed limit? Light features heavily in this, the 8th book in the Voided Man series.
\nAlan Franklin, who was once known as Maestro, narrates the volume. In Book 8 we learn . . .
\nOf Alan's early years in the City . . .
\nOf what's been happening with Andromeda and others back on the Potato . . .
\nMore about what the society made up of quadrillions of humans in the distant future is like . . .
\nWhat happened when Banner Dawson found Pioneer 10 past the orbit of Pluto . . .
\nAll about the problem with the in between place . . .
\nWhat the Qrail have been up to since Al, John, and Annabelle barely escaped from them with their lives . . .
\nAnd how Boris' chess is coming along.
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Annabelle Dawson narrates this ninth book in the Voided Man series.
\nAfter detailing how Annabelle met John Dawson and what their lives were like in 23rd Century America before John's exile, the story turns to a most improbable alien that calls itself the Entirety. In The Fields of Glass Next Door, we learn . . .
\nWhat the Entirety is, where it came from, and what risks it presents . . .
\nWhat happened to the Valkyrie-2 in the very early days of the colonisation program . . .
\nAbout absolute limits the universe places on probabilities . . .
\nHow Annabelle Dawson and others make use of the newly formed infrared hats in the in between place . . .
\nWhy the green hat that freed the Qrail formed in the in between place . . .
\nAnd of course, what waits at the bottom of the mysterious vertical tunnel on the Potato.
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Al, the command AI of the Valkyrie-84, has featured heavily in the adventures of Prisoner Number One and his family. But what is he really like? What does he seem like to himself? Al narrates the sixth volume of the Voided Man series.
\nIn this installment, Al begins by telling the story of Number One's exile from his own point of view, and then . . .
\nKing Harold struggles with how to introduce lost technology back into society on Earth.
\nNumber One and Al hatch a daring plan to rescue the long lost Valkyrie-85.
\nMaestro falls in love.
\nAnnabelle, Number One, and Al visit the extreme future.
\nAnd Squeak the mouse gets to visit the Potato and go outside.
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Banner Dawson spends seventeen long years aboard his damaged starship as it limps along. During that time . . .
\nJack works to develop the skills and knowledge needed to rescue Laura from the pod under the mountain . . .
\nAlexis rises through the ranks of the Independent Order of Valkyries . . .
\nMaestro seeks to help and then heal a king . . .
\nThe leader of the Society authorises increased activities in the Borderlands, and Ranger Stone is lost as a result . . .
\nRanger Stone's son Brian comes of age and learns a family secret that places him at the center of a great conflict . . .
\nAnd Bucky the horse continues to chew on nothing.
\nAt the end of Beyond the Lemon Tree Moon, Prisoner Number One and many others arrive in the Earth System. But what will await them when they return to their ancestral home?
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When John Dawson and the rest of the residents of the Potato returned to Earth, they presented a difficult puzzle for the Realm: how can AIs and spaceships and life extension treatments be integrated into a society that has a medieval level of technology? King Harold taps Jack Ross to lead the effort, but new players - one friendly and one hostile - complicate his plans.
\nMeanwhile . . .
\nJohn Dawson evaluates how to use an intriguing new capability.
\nLord Jeffrey's new army is active and on the move.
\nThe Valkyrie-200 is threatened, and Alexis scrambles to protect it.
\nMaestro falls in love and plans a major change of scenery.
\nAnd Bucky the horse continues to chew on nothing.
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Lord Jeffrey wreaked havoc in and around the Realm for centuries before his defeat at the Battle of Lawrence. In more recent years, he has conquered a new people in old Canada, stolen the Valkyrie-200, and aimed nuclear missiles at the City and at John Dawson’s new settlement.
\nBut as we saw in The Override System . . . he’s not all bad.
\nLord Jeffrey narrates this eleventh volume in the Voided Man series. In this installment we learn . . .
\nOf Jeffrey’s younger days, the love of his life, and his experiences during and immediately after the Kinetic War . . .
\nWhat happened to the Red Tyrant after he reached the end of the escape tunnel at his base in Siberia . . .
\nAbout Soviet force domes, whether any still exist, and what difficulties they might present . . .
\nWhether anyone else has a sword like Good King John’s . . .
\nAnd whether a man who has been up to no good for six hundred years can find redemption.
\nAlso, Margaret Snow gets to fight.
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Since 1920, commercial radio stations have been hard at work in the United States sending out news, music, weather forecasts, and sports play-by-play. At night, many of the strongest signals can be heard from hundreds of miles away.
\nBut how strong does a signal have to be to reach the edge of the solar system? A nearby star system? The end of the galaxy? What if your goal is to transmit information across the entire universe? How would you go about it?
\nA being named Erom spent a lot of time thinking about that ten billion years ago and came up with a solution.
\nPersius narrates book 10 of the Voided Man. In this volume we learn:
\nAbout Persius' romance with Gemini when he was a young man . . .
\nHow Good King John and his virtual version get along . . .
\nWhat it's like to live on an odd planet that is tidally locked to its star and can only be inhabited along a narrow band of twilight . . .
\nAbout the most uncommon cycle race in settled human space . . .
\nWho Erom is, why he went to the trouble to try to send radio waves across the universe, and whether he was successful . . .
\nAnd why you should always read the fine print when renting a car, whether the vehicle hovers or not.
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Banner Dawson returns to Earth on the Valkyrie-84 with John and Annabelle Dawson and most other residents of the Potato aboard . . .
\nKing Harold regains his senses and control of the Realm . . .
\nThe secrets of the lost Valkyrie-200 are revealed . . .
\nLord Jeffrey marches north with lost tech of types both expected and unexpected . . .
\nThe Independent Order of Valkyries mobilises and marches south, and the reason for the order's name is revealed . . .
\nAnd Bucky does significantly more than chew on nothing.
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There are great deserts in space. Matter is not spread evenly. On average it balances out in all directions, but some regions are not average. For every dense cluster of galaxies in one place, there is a tremendous void somewhere else. There are no galaxies within the voids, no stars, no planets, and no moons.
\nScientists have theorised that anyone at the center of such an empty space would see only darkness in every direction. Even the brightest objects, they say, would be too far distant to be visible to the naked eye.
\nI got a chance to test that theory firsthand. I am the most distant exile in human history.
\nMy name is Prisoner Number One. This is my story.
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From a ground-breaking historian with a refreshing new voice, an overlooked history detailing eleven stories of eighteenth-century queer people who lived extraordinary lives of resistance, joy, and sometimes sorrow.
\nFor many, queer history began in 1960s New York with the Stonewall Riots, as though nothing and no one had ever come before. In this evocative, wonderfully lively correction to the historical record, Dr. Anthony Delaney uncovers a new era of queer history, illuminating the hard-fought lives of remarkable queer people in the “long eighteenth-century” that have long been lost to the annals of time.
\nUnfolding between 1726 and 1836, Queer Enlightenments is an inviting, at times deeply affecting, journey through the taverns, prisons, and cruising grounds of a bygone era and into the lives of aristocrats, tradesmen, and sex workers who won or lost their lives in the pursuit of sexual freedom. In London, Mother Clap’s famous Holborn coffee house is open to all comers, a place of companionship and community, until a tip-off leads to a midnight raid. The celebrated Chevalier d’Eon, soldier, diplomat and spy, challenges a rival to a fencing match. The sweepstake is not over who will win, but over whether the Chevalier is a man or a woman. Two women, later to be famous for the utopia they created in a Welsh country town, elope to be together in a dramatic escape from their disapproving Irish families. At the court of King George, a silver-tongued noblewoman remarked of one of Queen Caroline’s confidants, “the world consists of men, women, and Herveys.” A Black sex worker endures a degrading trial that labels her the New York “Man-Monster” - but between the lines of its transcripts can be found traces of her life, one of acceptance, resistance, and indomitable spirit.
\nA dazzling work of restorative history, Queer Enlightenments traces the stories of people daring to challenge society’s expectations, unearthing archives and court records to reveal the tragedies and the joys of queer life three centuries ago.
In the name of national security, the CIA in partnership with Silicon Valley wunderkind Cy Baxter have created the ultimate surveillance program known as FUSION. Ahead of its roll out, ten Americans have been carefully selected to Beta test the groundbreaking system.
\nAt the appointed hour, each of the ten will have two hours to “Go Zero” - to turn their cellphones off, cut ties with friends and family, and use any means possible to disappear. They will then have 30 days to evade detection and elude the highly sophisticated Capture Teams tasked to find them using the most cutting-edge technology. The goal is to see if it is possible to successfully go “off the grid” and escape detection.
\nThe stakes are immense. If FUSION is a success, Cy Baxter will secure a coveted 10-year, $100 billion dollar government contract and access to intelligence resources he truly believes will save lives. For any participant who beats the massive surveillance, it means a $3 million cash prize.
\nAmong the contestants is an unassuming Boston librarian named Kaitlyn Day. She’s been chosen as the gimme, the easy target expected to be found first. But Kaitlyn excels at confounding expectations. Her talents at this particular game are far more effective than all the security experts suspect, and her reasons for playing far more personal than anyone can imagine . . .
The Sorrow Sea - the most feared region in all the five seas - plagued by storms, prowled by a murderous priate king, and home to inhuman terrors.
\n\t\t\t\t\tContinuing their quest for the Seven Swords, legendary warrior Guyime and his companions must brave these perilous tides to find the mythic Spectral Isle, where once a demon named Lakorath was captured by a sorcerer of great power. Here ancient plans will be unveiled and the secret purpose of the seven demon cursed blades may finally be revealed . . .
Vaelin Al Sorna was only a child of ten when his father left him at the iron gate of the Sixth Order. The Brothers of the Sixth Order are devoted to battle, and Vaelin will be trained and hardened to the austere, celibate, and dangerous life of a Warrior of the Faith. He has no family now save the Order.
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Vaelin’s father was Battle Lord to King Janus, ruler of the unified realm. Vaelin’s rage at being deprived of his birthright and dropped at the doorstep of the Sixth Order like a foundling knows no bounds. He cherishes the memory of his mother, and what he will come to learn of her at the Order will confound him. His father, too, has motives that Vaelin will come to understand. But one truth overpowers all the rest: Vaelin Al Sorna is destined for a future he has yet to comprehend. A future that will alter not only the realm, but the world.
The Sister Queens have fallen and Ascarlia lies naked before the storm. A Nihlvarian plan, years in the making, has seen Ascarlia’s enemy seize the capital Skar Magnol. Now the invaders look to the wealthy port city of Olversahl to complete their conquest.
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But there is hope.
\n\n
Elvine is trapped at the heart of the conspiracy, yet her role in the new government offers the chance to plan resistance from within. She must tread a fine line between loyalty and secret disobedience, knowing the smallest mistake will mean her death.
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Meanwhile, Thera has secured the Outer Islands, but her loyalist forces alone cannot liberate Skar Magnol. She must seek allies to have any chance of defeating the Nihlvarian threat. But her greater challenge will be to overcome her own doubts and become the leader she needs to be.
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If she fails, Ascarlia will fall.
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And far away across the ocean, Felnir embarks on a bloody path towards kingship whilst to the north, Ruhlin seeks escape from the tyrannical realm of Nihlvar where the mysterious Vortigurn holds sway.
Atheria - the fabled City of Songs. The shining jewel of the third sea where the masked Exultia caste hold sway and vie to outdo each other in their patronage of the arts, sometimes with deadly consequences . . .
\nGuyime, wandering, dethroned king of the Northlands, is drawn to the Atheria by his quest for the Seven Swords, the demon-cursed blades of legend. But to claim the next sword he must first solve a seemingly impossible murder - a puzzle that, once untangled, will unveil secrets so dark they could bring the City of Songs to utter ruin.
For hundreds of years, the Ironship Trading Syndicate was fuelled by drake blood - and protected by the Blood-blessed, those few who could drink it and wield fearsome powers. But now the very thing that sustained the corporate world threatens to destroy it.
\nA drake of unimaginable power has risen, and it commands an army of both beasts and men. Rogue Blood-blessed Claydon Torcreek, Syndicate agent Lizanne Lethridge, and Ironship captain Corrick Hilemore, spread to disparate corners of the world, must rely upon the new powers and knowledge they have gained at great price to halt its forces - or face the end of all they know.
Landless one-time king Guyime, once called Pilgrim but known to history as the Ravager, has survived the fall of the Execration - an event that set him on a path to find the legendary Seven Swords. Guided by sorcery, Guyime journeys to Carthula in the centre of the First Sea to claim the mythical blade known as the Kraken's Tooth.
\nAided by three companions - the beast charmer Seeker, a powerful sorceress and a scholarly slave - Guyime ventures into Carthula's perilous underbelly to secure a prize guarded by ancient magics, cursed spirits, and lethal traps.
\nBut can he survive an ultimate ordeal crafted from his worst nightmares?
For centuries, the vast Ironship Trading Syndicate relied on drake blood - and the extraordinary powers it confers to those known as the Blood-blessed - to fuel and protect its empire. But when the drake blood lines began to fail, a perilous expedition was mounted to secure them.
\nClaydon Torcreek survived the fraught mission through uncharted lands in pursuit of a myth that might have secured his people's future. Instead he found a nightmare. The legendary White Drake was awoken from a millennia-long slumber, with a thirst to reduce the world of men to ashes, and the power to compel an army of Spoiled slaves to do it.
\nSpurred on by a vision he desperately hopes he can trust, Clay and rebel naval officer Corrick Hilemore hijack a warship and head towards the icy southern seas, searching for an ancient secret that may give them and their allies a fighting chance.
\nThey are aided on another front by Blood-blessed agent Lizanne Lethridge. The spy and assassin will use her diplomatic status to infiltrate deep into enemy territory on a quest for a device to save them all.
\nAs the world burns around them, and the fires of revolution are ignited, these few Blood-blessed are the last hope for all of civilisation.
Times have changed for Alwyn Scribe. Once an outlaw, he’s now a spymaster and sworn protector of Lady Evadine Courlain, whose visions of a demonic apocalypse have earned her the fanatical devotion of the faithful.
\nYet Evadine’s growing fame has put her at odds with both Crown and Covenant. As trouble brews in the kingdom, both seek to exploit her position for their own ends.
\nSent to the Duchy of Alundia to put down a rebellion, Alwyn must rely on old instincts to fight for his new cause. Deadly feuds and ancient secrets are laid bare as war erupts, a war that will decide the fate of the Kingdom of Albermaine and, perhaps, prevent the coming of the prophesied Second Scourge.
Born into the troubled kingdom of Albermaine, Alwyn Scribe is raised as an outlaw. Quick of wit and deft with a blade, Alwyn is content with the freedom of the woods and the comradeship of his fellow thieves. But an act of betrayal sets him on a new path - one of blood and vengeance, which eventually leads him to a soldier's life in the king's army.
\nFighting under the command of Lady Evadine Courlain, a noblewoman beset by visions of a demonic apocalypse, Alwyn must survive war and the deadly intrigues of the nobility if he hopes to claim his vengeance. But as dark forces, both human and arcane, gather to oppose Evadine's rise, Alwyn faces a choice: can he be a warrior, or will he always be an outlaw?
It is 200 years since the deity known as the Absolved went mad and destroyed the Kingdom of Alnachim, transforming it into the Execration, a blasted wasteland filled with nameless terrors. For decades, desperate souls have made pilgrimage to the centre of this cursed land to seek the Mad God's favour, their fate always unknown.
\nNow a veteran warrior known only as Pilgrim, armed with a fabled blade inhabited by the soul of a taunting demon, must join with six others to make the last journey to the heart of the Execration. Allied with a youthful priest, a beast-charmer, a duplicitous scholar, an effete actor, and two exiled lovers, Pilgrim must survive madness, malevolent spirits, unnatural monsters, and the ever-present risk of treachery, all so that the Mad God might hear his prayer and, perhaps, grant redemption. But can sins such as his ever be forgiven?
After fighting back from the brink of death, Queen Lyrna is determined to repel the invading Volarian army and regain the independence of the Unified Realm. Except, to accomplish her goals, she must do more than rally her loyal supporters. She must align herself with forces she once found repugnant—those who possess the strange and varied gifts of the Dark—and take the war to her enemy’s doorstep.
Victory rests on the shoulders of Vaelin Al Sorna, now named Battle Lord of the Realm. However, his path is riddled with difficulties. For the Volarian enemy has a new weapon on their side, one that Vaelin must destroy if the Realm is to prevail—a mysterious Ally with the ability to grant unnaturally long life to her servants. And defeating one who cannot be killed is a nearly impossible feat, especially when Vaelin’s blood-song, the mystical power which has made him the epic fighter he is, has gone ominously silent…
The ancient kingdom of alcedon, the sun-blessed realm whihc has known only peace for generations, now beset by bloody rebellion sparked by the emergence of an ancient evil . . .
\nInto this troubled land comes Guyime, legendary ravager king of the north made immortal by the demonic sword he carries. Leading his band of sword bearers, Guyime must prevent the arch-demon Kalthraxis claiming the Warlord’s Tulwar, the last of the seven demon cursed blades. To do so he is forced to ally himself with the King of Alcedon and lead his army onto the dreaded Road of Storms, to fight a war that may cost all their lives and seal the fate of the world . . .
The land of Ascarlia, a fabled realm of bloodied steel and epic sagas, has been ruled by the Sister Queens for centuries. No one has dared question their rule.
Until now.
Whispers speak of longships of mysterious tattooed warriors, sailing under the banners of a murderous cult of oath-breakers long thought extinct. A tide of black steel that threatens to vanquish all in its path.
\nThera of the Blackspear, favoured servant of the Sister Queens, is ordered to uncover the truth. As Thera sails north, her reviled brother, Felnir, sets out on his own adventure. He hopes to find the Vault of the Altvar - the treasure room of the gods - and win the Sister Queens’ favour at his sister’s expense.
\nBoth siblings - along with a brilliant young scribe and a prisoner with a terrifying, primal power - will play a part in the coming storm.
\nThe Age of Wrath has begun.
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Guyme - Demon cursed wielder of the nameless blade - follows the trail of the failed seven swords into the troubled Northlads, a realm where he was once called King . . . and Ravager.
\nMagically guided to enlist in the retinue of a lovesick knight, Guyime and his companions journey to the haunted ruin of Blackfyre Keep, a castle legend tells cannot be held. But a far deadlier threat than mere ghosts awaits. An ancient evil has been conjured and to defeat it Guyime may be forced to become the monster he used to be - the Ravager reborn.
Vaelin Al Sorna, warrior of the Sixth Order, called Darkblade, called Hope Killer. The greatest warrior of his day, and witness to the greatest defeat of his nation: King Janus’s vision of a Greater Unified Realm drowned in the blood of brave men fighting for a cause Vaelin alone knows was forged from a lie. Sick at heart, he comes home, determined to kill no more.
\n\n
Named Tower Lord of the Northern Reaches by King Janus’s grateful heir, he can perhaps find peace in a colder, more remote land far from the intrigues of a troubled Realm. But those gifted with the blood-song are never destined to live a quiet life. Many died in King Janus’s wars, but many survived, and Vaelin is a target, not just for those seeking revenge but for those who know what he can do.
\n\n
The Faith has been sundered, and many have no doubt who their leader should be. The new King is weak, but his sister is strong. The blood-song is powerful, rich in warning and guidance in times of trouble, but is only a fraction of the power available to others who understand more of its mysteries. Something moves against the Realm, something that commands mighty forces, and Vaelin will find to his great regret that when faced with annihilation, even the most reluctant hand must eventually draw a sword.
Alwyn must make a difficult decide between his heart and his morals as he prepares for his final battle.
\nIt’s been a long journey for Alwyn Scribe. Born a bastard and raised an outlaw, he’s now a knight and the most trusted advisor to Lady Evadine Courlain. Together they’ve won countless battles and helped to bring order to a fractured kingdom.
\nYet Evadine is not the woman Alwyn once knew. As puritanical fury increasingly replaces her benevolent faith, Alwyn begins to question what her true motives really are.
\nAs the kingdom braces itself for one final battle, Alwyn’s conscience fights its own war with his heart. Now, more than ever, he must decide whose side he’s really on.
Throughout the vast lands controlled by the Ironship Syndicate, nothing is more prized than the blood of drakes - creatures similar to dragons. Harvested from the veins of captive or hunted Reds, Green, Blues and Blacks, it can be distilled into elixirs that give fearsome powers to the rare men and women who have the ability to harness them - known as the blood-blessed.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBut not many know the truth: that the lines of drakes are weakening. If they fail, war with the neighboring Corvantine Empire will follow swiftly. The Syndicate's last hope resides in whispers of the existence of another breed of drake, far more powerful than the rest, and the few who have been chosen by fate to seek it.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tClaydon Torcreek is a petty thief and an unregistered blood-blessed, who finds himself pressed into service by the protectorate and sent to wild, uncharted territories in search of a creature he believes is little more than legend. Lizanne Lethridge is a formidable spy and assassin, facing gravest danger on an espionage mission deep into the heart of enemy territory. And Corrick Hilemore is the second lieutenant of an ironship, whose pursuit of ruthless brigands leads him to a far greater threat at the edge of the world.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAs lives and empires clash and intertwine, as the unknown and the known collide, all three must fight to turn the tide of a coming war, or drown in its wake.
Expert financial guide to understand the technology, potential, and disruptive effects of crypto.
\nIn The Little Book of Bitcoin, founder and co-managing partner of SkyBridge Capital Anthony Scaramucci delivers a comprehensive guide to understand disruption in the financial industry as a result of the emergence and increasing prominence of digital asset technology. Drawing on his involvement in the Skybridge Bitcoin Fund which has $310 million in assets under management, this book runs the gambit from basic concepts all the way to implications of decentralized finance on the financial industry and society as a whole.
\nIn this book, readers will learn -
\nHashes, blockchains, and mining, and how these three processes sync up like an orchestra to make global participation in crypto possible Bitcoin as digital gold, and its similarities and differences to other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum Trading different cryptocurrencies, both popular and lesser known, through centralised platforms like Binance and decentralised finance (DeFi) platforms like Uniswap Promising technology to facilitate anonymised legitimacy called “zero knowledge proof” and how it works The Little Book of Bitcoin is an essential up-to-date guide to digital assets and associated technologies for all individuals, from hedge fund managers to newcomer retail investors, seeking to understand and prepare for a new world of finance.
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In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer. The body’s cells are entirely replaced with nanites - robot or android cells which not only cure those afflicted but leaves them virtually immortal.
\nLiterary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning Beloved, in honor of his husband. When Yonghun - himself a recipient of nanotherapy - mysteriously vanishes into thin air and then just as suddenly reappears, the event raises disturbing questions. What happened to Yonghun, and though he’s returned, is he really himself anymore?
\nWhen Dr. Beeko, the scientist who holds the patent to the nanotherapy technology, learns of Panit, he transfers its consciousness from the machine into an android body, giving it freedom and life. As Yonghun, Panit, and other nano humans thrive - and begin to replicate - their development will lead them to a crossroads and a choice with existential consequences.
\nExploring the nature of intelligence and the unexpected consequences of progress, the meaning of personhood and life, and what we really have to fear from technology and the future. Toward Eternity is a gorgeous, thought-provoking novel that challenges the notion of what makes us human - and how love survives even the end of that humanity.
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Let us fly now to the empire of Orrun, where after twenty-four years of peace, Bersun the Brusque must end his reign. In the dizzying heat of mid-summer, seven contenders compete to replace him. They are exceptional warriors, thinkers, strategists - the best of the best.
\nThen one of them is murdered.
\nIt falls to Neema Kraa, the emperor’s brilliant, idiosyncratic High Scholar, to find the killer before the trials end. To do so, she must untangle a web of deadly secrets that stretches back generations, all while competing against six warriors with their own dark histories and fierce ambitions. Neema believes she is alone. But we are here to help; all she has to do is let us in.
\nIf she succeeds, she will win the throne. If she fails, death awaits her. But we won’t let that happen.
\nWe are the Raven, and we are magnificent.
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Nandapore is a city of secrets and spellcasters where seduction reigns and a power-hungry king is never satisfied, plotting to unleash a weapon that has only lived in myth . . . until now.
\nTo stop him, an ancient goddess seeks out a newly crowned queen, a heartsick prince, a common thief, and a courtesan with magic in her blood. Together, they chart a course through brothels, temples, taverns, and palaces, setting a trap for the empire’s most powerful men.
\nLinked by desire, destiny, and a dangerous foe, they each must decide . . .
\nWhat will they risk for a weapon worth dying for, and a love worth staying alive?
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A collection of fifty-two short stories and pieces of flash fiction, The Woman Dies takes as its impetus the various forms of discrimination entrenched within Japanese society, particularly the long, stubborn roots of sexism.
\nMatsuda approaches often-thorny subjects such as the normalising effect of violence against women on screen, or the aesthetics associated with technology, with an inventiveness and quirky humor that keep the narrative on the cusp between seriousness and levity.
\nWordplay evolves into something much more complex, inanimate objects are endowed with their own point of view, and hard-hitting feminist stances are conveyed with a dry, detached humor that makes them all the more uncompromising.
Ravence has fallen. Her enemies have ravaged her people. And now Elena Aadya Ravence must decide how far she will go to reap her revenge. As she is pulled into a bitter war that will decide the fate of her kingdom, a new tyrant rises to reclaim his home, and Elena finds that perhaps her hunger isn't enough.
\nAnd his knows no bounds.
The Ravani kingdom was born of a prophecy, carved from unforgiving desert sands and ruled by the Ravence bloodline: those with the power to command the Eternal Fire.
\nElena Aadya is the heir to the throne - and the only Ravence who cannot wield her family’s legendary magic. As her coronation approaches, she will do whatever it takes to prove herself a worthy successor to her revered father. But she doesn’t anticipate the arrival of Yassen Knight, the notorious assassin who now claims fealty to the throne. Elena’s father might trust Yassen to be a member of her royal guard, but she is certain he is hiding something.
1890. American heiress, Cora Beaumont is celebrating her engagement to Terrance Tristan, the second son of a duke. Their union will solidify Cora's place in British society and put her in a rare position of power, but as they embark on the Lady Air’s maiden voyage to England, Cora soon finds that not everyone in society is accepting of her recent engagement, and tensions fly as high as the airship.
\nWhen a body is discovered the first night on the ship, with a calling card for Cora on the victim, she’s determined to find the killer hidden among the passengers before they come for her next.
\nAs Cora tries to solve the murder without attracting unsavory attention, her fiancé’s wandering eye may cause even more problems for her position in society. Gossip travels fast aboard the airship and bad news could sink the Lady Air, as well as Cora's own social status, before they reach their final destination.
\nWhen more bodies are discovered, Cora teams up with her soon-to-be brother-in-law, Nicholas, as they scour the ship for clues. If she fails, it won’t only be her reputation visiting the undertaker.
We're in East Harlem, in the mid-eighties, and the large and formidable (some say crazy woman) Twin Johnson discovers the body of Anita's boy, Tyrone, on the sidewalk. She does just what her uncle, who runs his basement crack den as a family business, warned her never to she calls the police, setting in motion a cycle of events that expand the consciousness of this struggling community.
\nAnita, a postal worker, army widow, and church lady, is determined to solve her son's murder, but her quest for justice rattles the neighborhood, which itself is like a complex character in this teeming novel, with its Mets fans and gossips, immigrant shop owners and sneaker-obsessed teens on its garbage-piled streets. The local dreamers include a charismatic man of the cloth, a teenage girl with a Whitney Houston voice and no prospects at all, and Anita's opinionated new bestie, Wanda, whose own truant son the police harass and arrest on a regular basis, and who brings both blessings and curses into Anita's exploded world.
\nAnita, Wanda, and Twin, the power triad of this vibrant novel, are all drawn into the basement den as the reader sinks into their rich backstories. Will they be able to break its spell? Will the Reverend's pressure on the authorities to find Tyrone's killer yield answers? In the end, in the NY Mets' banner summer of 1986, this community will come together to mourn, find justice, and shape their dreams as best they can.
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When Nancy Hennessy is murdered, she leaves behind two best friends, an adoring husband and daughter, and a secret lover whose identity she took to the grave. Nancy was gorgeous, wealthy, and cherished by those who knew her - from the outside, her life was perfect. But as the investigation into her death flounders and her friends Eleanor and Mary wrestle with their grief, dark details surface that reveal how little they knew their friend, each other, and maybe even themselves.
A gripping, immersive novel about impossible expectations and secrets that fester and become lethal, Imperfect Women unfolds through the perspectives of three fascinating women. Their enduring, complex friendship is the knot the reader must untangle to answer the question Who killed Nancy?
Imperfect Women explores guilt and retribution, love and betrayal, and the compromises we make that alter our lives irrevocably.
Desperate to escape the ghosts of his failed marriage, Cole upends his life. He leaves London behind for a remote stretch of coast, relishing the respite from the noise, drama, and relentless careerism that curdled his relationship and mental health. Leonora has made the same move for similar reasons. She’s living a short walk from Cole’s seaside cottage, preparing for her latest art exhibition. Although Cole still can’t figure out what went wrong with his marriage, and Leonora is having trouble acclimating to the hostile landscape, the pair forges a connection on the eroding bluff they call home.
\nThen two young female activists raising awareness about gendered violence disappear while passing through. Cole and Leonora suddenly find themselves in the middle of a police investigation - and the resulting media firestorm when the world learns of what happened. And as the tension escalates alongside the search for the missing women, they quickly realise that they don’t know each other that well after all.
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This is a love story. Mike’s love story.
Mike Hayes fought his way out of a brutal childhood and into a quiet, if lonely life, before he met Verity Metcalf. V taught him about love, and in return, Mike has dedicated his life to making her happy. He’s found the perfect home, the perfect job, he’s sculpted himself into the physical ideal V has always wanted. He knows they’ll be blissfully happy together.
It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t been returning his emails or phone calls.
It doesn’t matter that she says she’s marrying Angus.
It’s all just part of the secret game they used to play. If Mike watches V closely, he’ll see the signs. If he keeps track of her every move he’ll know just when to come to her rescue . . .
A spellbinding, darkly twisted novel about desire and obsession, and the complicated lines between truth and perception.
As a young woman, Hope’s dreams are as aspirational as her name. Curious and beautiful, she lands a job working for an up-and-coming author at his Somerset home. Drawn into the orbit of a glamorous bohemian elite, she quickly falls under the spell of this exotic world, which revolves around Ambrose Glencourt, his artist wife and their semi-adopted son, Tom.
\nBut her time with them ends in a fatal disaster. She has kept the truth of those events a secret ever since.
\nTen years on, Hope lives a lonely life that she has accepted not just as penance for what she did, but also to protect Ambrose. Except he hasn’t upheld his side of the bargain and is using her story in his new novel. And he has a very different tale to tell about what happened that summer . . .
\nBut which one of them is a reliable narrator? And at what cost do you take control of the narrative of your own life?
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ld in multiple points of view, Together We See follows Ulá Dominguez, a Bribri-American teenager, searching for the truth behind her land-activist father's mysterious death on their Native territory in Costa Rica. Ulá and her brother, Kabék, uncover secrets and corruption as they face off against illegal loggers, kidnappers, settlers, and the local government in the hunt for clues.
\nTheir only allies are a few family friends and relatives still living in Bribri, as well as a young journalist, who may be in danger himself. But as details of their father's death emerge, long-held trust is broken. And in this sinister web of deception, no one is safe.
\nInspired by real-world missing, dead, and attacked Indigenous activists, award-winning author Ari Tison writes her first novel in prose and pushes the envelope yet again by pulling together a propulsive story full of grief, environmental justice, and the fight for retribution.
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An electric debut novel about the daughter of Afghan refugees and her year of nightclubs, bad romance, and self-discovery - a portrait of the artist as a young woman set in a Berlin that can't escape its history.
\nIn Berlin’s artistic underground, where techno and drugs fill warehouses still pockmarked from the wars of the twentieth century, nineteen-year-old Nila at last finds her tribe. Born in Germany to Afghan parents, raised in public housing graffitied with swastikas, drawn to philosophy, photography, and sex, Nila has spent her adolescence disappointing her family while searching for her voice as a young woman and artist.
\nThen in the haze of Berlin’s legendary nightlife, Nila meets Marlowe, an American writer whose fading literary celebrity opens her eyes to a life of personal and artistic freedom. But as Nila finds herself pulled further into Marlowe’s controlling orbit, ugly, barely submerged racial tensions begin to roil Germany - and Nila’s family and community. After a year of running from her future, Nila stops to ask herself the most important question: Who does she want to be?
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The Findlay family history has long been steeped in secrets, tragedy and dark rumours of madness. Generations of its women have been haunted by a dangerous luring melody and an insatiable longing for the sea.
\nIt's 1923 and Isla Findlay lives with her parents on the edge of the ocean in Tasmania, in a rambling mansion full of whispers of this cursed legacy. When Isla discovers her estranged aunt is finally coming home, long repressed memories of the selkie stories of her childhood start to resurface, along with disturbing dreams of seals and an eerie song that Isla starts to hear even in her waking hours.
\nAs the line between what's real and imagined starts to blur, Isla and her aunt and mother must reckon with long-held secrets and ghosts who have not been properly laid to rest. The closer they get to the truths of the past, the louder they hear the seductive call of the ocean. Does it sing of freedom, or only more tragedy?
\nA tale of madness and miracles, secrets and sins, myth and reality, and the tenacity and resilience of women in the face of impossible choices.
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Toba and Naftaly have stepped through the Gate of Luz into the mythic world of Aravoth, home to the Ziz, the bird of legend capable of raising the sea. Aravoth - the fabled third realm - is more dizzying and terrifying than Toba or Naftaly could have imagined. Nor had they expected to find someone already there, waiting for them.
\nAfter barely escaping the burning city of Zayit, Elena and the old woman have a new problem: Barsilay, heir of Luz, is being held for an exorbitant ransom by the paranoid Queen of P'ri Hadar. As Barsilay sits in his dark, demon-inhabited prison cell, he begins to realize the queen is guarding an ancient secret that might be the key to his release.
\nAnd the tyrant Tarses continues to close in on P'ri Hadar, wielding an army that spans the Mazik and mortal worlds and newly-powerful visions that reveal his most longed-for future - visions that he and Naftaly seem to share.
\nIn this triumphant finale, the mirror realms must find their balance, or risk being lost altogether.
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Toba Peres can speak, but not shout; she can walk, but not run. She can write with both hands, in different languages, but has not had a formal education. The only treasure Toba has dared to keep is a precious star sapphire, set in a necklace she must never take off.
\nNaftaly Cresques sees things that aren’t real, and dreams things that are. He is a well-trained tailor, but a middling one, and he is risking his life to smuggle a strange family heirloom: a centuries-old book he must never read, and must never lose.
\nThe Queen of the Sefarad has ordered all Jews to convert, or be exiled with nothing. Toba, Naftaly, and thousands of others are forced to flee their homes. Toba, accidentally separated from their caravan of refugees, stumbles through a strange pomegranate grove into the magical realm of the Maziks: mythical, terrible beings with immense power. There, she discovers latent abilities that put her in the crosshairs of bloodthirsty immortals, but may be key to her survival. On the other side of the gate, Naftaly, intent on rescuing Toba, finds his new companions harbor dangerous secrets of their own.
\nNow, hunted by an Inquisition in both worlds, Toba and Naftaly must unravel ancient histories and ancient magics in order to understand the link between the two realms. More than their own lives might be at stake.
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Toba and Naftaly’s lives changed forever when Toba discovered the mirrored world of the Maziks beyond the Pomegranate Gate. In their search for answers, they must find their own ways to the wonderous and powerful neighbouring republic of Zayit. A magnificent city overflowing with olives, spices and salt - but not the safe haven they need. The republic has turned its back on fleeing Jewish and Mazik refugees, and is closing its ears to warnings of war.
\nMeanwhile, the tyrannical Mazik King Tarses is building his army to cross the sea to Zayit. With time running out, and his visions growing worse, Naftaly must convince his beloved Barsilay to rally the armies of the world and accept his role as the true heir to the throne. But Barsilay resents the fate that’s been thrust upon him.
\nToba knows that Zayit's fate is only the beginning: she must discover her own destiny to defeat Tarses by restoring the balance between worlds.
\nUnlikely alliances must be forged, impossible myths must be made real, and the city of Luz must be brought back from the depths of the sea.
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Mischa Abramavicius is a walking, talking, top-scoring, perfectly well-rounded college application in human form. So when she's rejected not only by the Ivies, but her loathsome safety school, she is shocked and devastated. All the sacrifices her mother made to send her to prep school, the late nights cramming for tests, the blatantly resume-padding extracurriculars (read: Students for Sober Driving) . . . all that for nothing.
As Mischa grapples with the prospect of an increasingly uncertain future, she questions how this could have happened in the first place. Is it possible that her transcript was hacked? With the help of her best friend and sometimes crush, Nate, and a group of eccentric techies known as \"The Ophelia Syndicate,\" Mischa launches an investigation that will shake the quiet community of Blanchard Prep to its stately brick foundations.
An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is running out of options.
In a desperate attempt at diplomacy with the mysterious invaders, the fleet captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass - still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire - face the impossible task of trying to communicate with a hostile entity.
Whether they succeed or fail could change the fate of Teixcalaan forever.
Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining Station, has died. But no one will admit that his death wasn't an accident - or that Mahit might be next to die, during a time of political instability in the highest echelons of the imperial court.
Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan's unceasing expansion - all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret - one that might spell the end of her Station and her way of life - or rescue it from annihilation.
A house embedded with an artificial intelligence is a common thing: a house that is an artificial intelligence, infused in every load-bearing beam and fine marble tile with a thinking creature that is not human? That is something else altogether. But now Deniau’s been dead a year, and Rose House is locked up tight, as commanded by the architect’s will: all his possessions and files and sketches are confined in its archives, and their only keeper is Rose House itself. Rose House, and one other.
\nDr. Selene Gisil, one of Deniau’s former protégé, is permitted to come into Rose House once a year. She alone may open Rose House’s vaults, look at drawings and art, talk with Rose House’s animating intelligence all she likes. Until this week, Dr. Gisil was the only person whom Rose House spoke to.
\nBut even an animate intelligence that haunts a house has some failsafes common to all AIs. For instance: all AIs must report the presence of a dead body to the nearest law enforcement agency.
\nThere is a dead person in Rose House. The house says so. It is not Basit Deniau, and it is not Dr. Gisil. It is someone else. Rose House, having completed its duty of care and informed Detective Maritza Smith of the China Lake police precinct that there is in fact a dead person inside it, dead of unnatural causes - has shut up.
\nNo one can get inside Rose House, except Dr. Gisil. Dr. Gisil was not in North America when Rose House called the China Lake precinct. But someone did. And someone died there. And someone may be there still.
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As in Ling Ma’s Severance and Emily Mandel’s Station Eleven, the survivors must seek ways to retain their humanity and help to build a new world in a post-apocalyptic dystopia.
\nAfter a young couple return from their summer in the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine, they discover that the world as they once knew it no longer exists. Survivors are forced to adapt to the harsh conditions of their new a place where erosion floats in on a breeze, and ceasing to exist comes with a deceptively joyous capitulation. Overcoming deeply rooted fears, they try to forge another world, uniting with those who continue to fight the darker urges that can emerge when a society must rebuild.
\nWill the couple be able to survive, make alliances with others, and give birth to a new generation? Will the insidiousness of human nature manifest itself in this new, post-apocalyptic world?
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From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to the rings of Saturn as man ventures to the outer rim of our solar system, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a journey unlike any other.
\nThis allegory about humanity's exploration of the universe - and the universe's reaction to humanity - is a hallmark achievement in storytelling that follows the crew of the spacecraft Discovery as they embark on a mission to Saturn. Their vessel is controlled by HAL 9000, an artificially intelligent supercomputer capable of the highest level of cognitive functioning that rivals - and perhaps threatens - the human mind.
\nGrappling with space exploration, the perils of technology, and the limits of human power, 2001: A Space Odyssey continues to be an enduring classic of cinematic scope.
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Nine years after the disastrous Discovery mission to Jupiter in 2001, a joint U.S.-Soviet expedition sets out to rendezvous with the derelict spacecraft--to search the memory banks of the mutinous computer HAL 9000 for clues to what went wrong . . . and what became of Commander Dave Bowman.
Without warning, a Chinese expedition targets the same objective, turning the recovery mission into a frenzied race for the precious information Discovery may hold about the enigmatic monolith that orbits Jupiter.
Meanwhile, the being that was once Dave Bowman - the only human to unlock the mystery of the monolith - streaks toward Earth on a vital mission of its own . . .
2061 is the year Halley’s Comet makes its next pilgrimage to the inner Solar System - and the year centenarian Heywood Floyd encounters once again the alien Monoliths.
\nNear Jupiter, the transfigured forms of Dave Bowman and HAL the computer are Heywood’s only chance of survival - if they too are not now alien beings.
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When Frank Poole, whose body has been frozen in deep space for 1000 years, is resurrected, his second life brings him enlightening culture shocks a-plenty, but his Odyssey eventually leads him to defy the limitless power of an alien technology.
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Childhood’s End is one of the defining legacies of Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey and many other groundbreaking works. Since its publication in 1953, this prescient novel about first contact gone wrong has come to be regarded not only as a science fiction classic but as a literary thriller of the highest order.
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Spaceships have suddenly appeared in the skies above every city on the planet. Inside is an intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior alien race known as the Overlords. At first, their demands seem benevolent: unify Earth, eliminate poverty, end war. But at what cost? To those who resist, it’s clear that the Overlords have an agenda of their own. Has their arrival marked the end of humankind . . . or the beginning?
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In the year 2130 a mysterious spaceship, Rama, arrived in the solar system. It was huge - big enough to contain a city and a sea - and empty, apparently abandoned. By the time Rama departed for its next, unknown, destination many wonders had been uncovered, but few mysteries solved. Only one thing was clear: everything the enigmatic builders of Rama did, they did in threes.
Eighty years later the second alien craft arrived in the solar system. This time, Earth had been waiting. But all the years of preparation were not enough to unlock the Raman enigma.
Now Rama II is on its way out of the solar system. Aboard it are three humans, two men and a woman, left behind when the expedition departed. Ahead of them lies the unknown, a voyage no human has ever experienced. And at the end of it - and who could tell how many years away that might be? - may lie the truth about Rama . . .
Years after the appearance in the solar system of the immense, deserted spaceship named by its discoverers Rama, a second craft arrived, destined to become home for a group of human colonists. But now the colony has become a brutal dictatorship, committing genocide against its peaceful alien neighbours and terrorising its own inhabitants.
Nicole Wakefield, condemned to death for treason, has escaped and crossed the Cylindrical Sea to the island of mysterious skyscrapers which the humans call New York. There she is reunited with her husband, and soon they are joined by others of their family and friends. But pursuit is not far behind and they are forced to flee to the subterranean corridors of New York inhabited by the menancing octospiders.
At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at an inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredibly, an interstellar spacecraft.
\nSpace explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter with alien intelligence. It will kindle their wildest dreams . . . and fan their darkest fears. For no one knows who the Ramans are or why they have come. And now the moment of rendezvous awaits - just behind a Raman airlock door.
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More than two thousand years in the future, a small human colony thrives on the ocean paradise of Thalassa - sent there centuries ago to continue the human race before the Earth's destruction.
\nThalassa's resources are vast - and the human colony has lived a bucolic life there. But their existence is threatened when the spaceship Magellan arrives on their world - carrying one million refugees from Earth, fleeing the dying planet.
\nReputed to be Arthur C. Clarke's favorite novel, The Songs of Distant Earth addresses several fascinating scientific questions unresolved in their time - including the question of why so few neutrinos from the sun have been measured on Earth. In addition, Clarke presents an inventive depiction of the use of vacuum energy to power spacecraft - and the technical logistics of space travel near the speed of light.
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The head of the Guinness family tells the dramatic true story of how his ancestors created the largest brewery in the world.
\nGrowing up at Farmleigh, the country house outside Dublin, Arthur Edward Guinness - Ned for short - was fascinated by the secrets and legends that surrounded the early generations of his famous family of brewers.
\nAgainst the backdrop of epic and convulsive times in Ireland and Britain, he explores the struggles and passions of his ancestors, who went from obscurity in Kildare to the pinnacle of Irish and British society.
\nEach generation confronted new challenges until the dramatic events when the author's great-great-grandfather bought out his glamorous older brother and floated Guinness on the stock exchange. Overnight Edward Cecil Guinness became Ireland's richest man.
\nThis is a tale in which brewing genius, sibling rivalry, bounteous philanthropy and astonishing social mobility are interwoven with historic national events, including the Act of Union, Catholic Emancipation, the Famine, the Home Rule movement, the Dublin Lockout and ultimately Irish independence. It is the inside story, as told by Ned Guinness.
In this literary tour de force, novelist Arthur Golden enters a remote and shimmeringly exotic world. For the protagonist of this peerlessly observant first novel is Sayuri, one of Japan's most celebrated geisha, a woman who is both performer and courtesan, slave and goddess.
We follow Sayuri from her childhood in an impoverished fishing village, where in 1929, she is sold to a representative of a geisha house, who is drawn by the child's unusual blue-grey eyes. From there she is taken to Gion, the pleasure district of Kyoto. She is nine years old. In the years that follow, as she works to pay back the price of her purchase, Sayuri will be schooled in music and dance, learn to apply the geisha's elaborate makeup, wear elaborate kimono, and care for a coiffure so fragile that it requires a special pillow.
She will also acquire a magnanimous tutor and a venomous rival. Surviving the intrigues of her trade and the upheavals of war, the resourceful Sayuri is a romantic heroine on the order of Jane Eyre and Scarlett O'Hara.
Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Center convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.
\nRika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?
\nInspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, “The Konkatsu Killer,” Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.
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Eriko’s life looks perfect - from her prestigious job at a Japanese trading firm to her spotless apartment and devoted parents. Her newest project, to reintroduce the controversial Nile Perch into the Japanese market, is as ambitious as she is. But beneath her flawless surface lies a consuming loneliness. Eriko has never been able to hold on to a real friend.
\nEnter a popular lifestyle blogger whose work Eriko follows obsessively. Shoko lives a life of controlled chaos - messy apartment, take-out dinners, a kind, easy-going husband. She writes about daily contentment, though her fractured relationship with her father gnaws at the edges of her happiness.
\nWhen Eriko orchestrates a “chance” meeting with Shoko, the two women strike up an unlikely connection. For a fleeting moment, Eriko believes she’s finally found what she’s always longed for. But as her fascination turns to fixation and Shoko’s carefully balanced life begins to dissolve, both women are pushed to breaking points neither of them saw coming.
\nDeftly translated by Polly Barton, Hooked is a taut, provocative novel about modern womanhood, the hunger for connection, and the quiet, ordinary ways our lives can spiral out of control. With razor-sharp insight and disarming empathy, Asako Yuzuki explores how far we’ll go to be seen and what happens when the ones who see us don’t like what they find.
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Radio young gun Alex York is used to knowing - and getting - exactly what she wants.
\nBut when she blows up her glamorous career and retreats to a tropical island, for the first time in her life she has no plan, no prospects and, increasingly, no money.
\nLured back to the real world by the breakfast radio gig of a lifetime, she promises herself she'll never let anyone throw her off course again - not her patronisingly old-school CEO, her network arch-nemesis or even her unexpectedly attractive new boss . . .
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Just inland from Florida’s sun-splashed Treasure Coast is the Namaste Club yoga center. An exclusive oasis of palms, lakes, and adorable guest villas, it’s perfect for getaways where Shakti, a serenely blond Instagram influencer, holds yoga retreats for well-heeled Miami ladies. The Namaste Club is a place of reflection, a place of release and redemption . . . or at least, that’s the sales pitch.
\nThis weekend is Transcendence Week, and a new bunch of South Florida burnouts have arrived. There’s Indira, fabulously wealthy after her divorce from the fast-frozen fruit king of Florida. There’s Indira’s best friend Jessica, also divorced and trying to get her groove back. There’s Barbara, heir to a massive family fortune, who’s vow of silence for the retreat will be sorely tested. There’s Carol Anne from Vero Beach, a happy trad-wife and proud gun owner who recently did something . . . inadvisable; she’s just here while things cool off in her hometown. There’s Daniel, the toned, man-bunned apprentice yoga instructor. He’s cute if you like that sort of thing - and many of the rich ladies do.
\nLast but not least, there’s Bubba, the retreat center’s resident twelve-foot American alligator. Before Transcendence Week is over, Bubba will have his moment of glory as well.
\nWho will be living their best life? Who will get their comeuppance?
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There’s a reason people call Miami Beach “a sunny place for shady people.”
\nWelcome to Sunset Academy, the most coveted elementary school in Miami Beach, where there are three categories of families: rich, wealthy, and ultra-wealthy.
\nPerfectly tanned and smiling Charlotte Giordani is Sunset Academy’s alpha mom. With a sleek blowout and relentless charm, Charlotte’s brashness serves her well. She’s up for election as the PTA president and is riding high, having just secured a massive donation from billionaire Don Walker and his socialite wife Patricia. Don and Patricia are philanthropists, media darlings, and the owners of Villa Rosé, a newly built modern glass house that everyone is talking about. (It’s either spectacular or a tacky eyesore, depending on how you feel about billionaires.)
\nEnter Melody Howard, a wide-eyed transplant from Wichita, Kansas. At first a skeptic about Miami Beach and its endlessly hashtaggable social scene, Melody finds herself sucked into the glossy, frenetic world of Sunset Academy moms. Melody’s easygoing manner and background in nonprofit management make her an asset to the PTA. But when she emerges as a rival for the PTA presidency, Charlotte begins to unravel. Even the most powerful players on the social scene prove to be vulnerable when an investigation into white-collar crime - triggered by another school mom, the formidable Jamaican-American Judge Carol Lawson - threatens to take down the whole institution. No amount of rosé can soothe tensions as the drama builds to a shocking crisis point.
\nTold in rotating first person voices, Pink Glass Houses is an irresistibly voyeuristic peek into the lives of the rich and infamous, where cocaine playdates, $100,000 kiddie birthday parties, and relentless social climbing are a way of life.
Ayukta is finally sitting down with her wife Nadya to respond to a question she’s long avoided: Should they have a child? The decision is complicated by a secret her family has kept for centuries, one that Ayukta will be the first to share with someone outside their bloodline: the women in her family inherit a mysterious tapestry, through which each generation can experience the memories of those who came before her.
\nAyukta invites Nadya into this lineage, carrying her through its past. She relives her grandmother Amla’s life: Once a happy child in Karachi, Amla migrates to Gujarat during Partition, witnessing violence and loss that forever shape her approach to marriage and motherhood. Amla’s daughter, Arni, bears this weight in her own blood in 1974, when gender equity and urban class distinctions divide the community as a bold student movement takes hold.
\nAs Ayukta unspools these generations of women - whole decades of love, loss, heartbreak, and revival - she reveals the tapestry’s second gift: the ability for each of these women to dramatically reshape their own worlds. Like all power, both fantastic and societal, this inheritance is more treacherous than it seems.
\nWhat would it mean, to impart an impossible burden? To withhold these incredible gifts?
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Thirteen-year-old Mary Agnes Coyne, forced from her home in rural Ireland in 1886 after being accused of incest, endures a treacherous voyage across the Atlantic alone to an unknown life in America. From the tenements of New York to the rough alleys of Chicago, Mary Agnes suffers the bitter taste of prejudice for the crime of being poor and Irish.
\nAfter moving west to Colorado, Mary Agnes again faces hardships and grapples with heritage, religion, and matters of the heart. Will she ever find a home to call her own?
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Everyone at Chantilly’s Bar noticed out-of-towner Camille Bayliss. Red lips, designer heels, sipping a Negroni. But that woman wasn’t Camille Bayliss. It was Aubrey Price.
\nCamille Bayliss appears to have the picture-perfect life; she’s married to hotshot lawyer Ben and is the daughter of a wealthy Louisiana family. Only nothing is as it seems: Camille believes Ben has been hiding dirty secrets for years, but she can’t find proof because he tracks her every move.
\nAubrey Price has been haunted by the terrible night that changed her life a decade ago, and she’s convinced Benjamin Bayliss knows something about it. Living in a house full of criminals, Aubrey understands there’s more than one way to get to the truth - and she may have found the best way in.
\nAubrey and Camille hatch a plan. It sounds simple: For twelve hours, Aubrey will take Camille’s place. Camille will spy on Ben, and the two women will get the answers they desperately seek.
\nExcept the next morning, Ben is found murdered. Both women need an airtight alibi, but only one of them has it. And one false step is all it takes for everything to come undone.
Evie Porter has everything a nice, Southern girl could want: a perfect, doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence and a garden, a fancy group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.
\nThe identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.
\nEvie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job will be different. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes - especially after what happened last time.
\nBecause the one thing she’s worked her entire life to keep clean, the one identity she could always go back to - her real identity - just walked right into this town. Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn't be higher - but then, Evie has always liked a challenge . . .
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Owen Foster has never wanted for anything. Then his mother shows up at his elite New Orleans boarding school cradling a bombshell: his privileged life has been funded by stolen money. After using the family business, the single largest employer in his small Louisiana town, to embezzle millions and drain the employees' retirement accounts, Owen's father vanished without a trace, leaving Owen and his mother to deal with the fallout.
Owen returns to Lake Cane to finish his senior year, where people he can barely remember despise him for his father's crimes. It's bad enough dealing with muttered insults and glares, but when Owen and his mother receive increasingly frightening threats from someone out for revenge, he knows he must get to the bottom of what really happened at Louisiana Frac - and the cryptic note his father sent him at his boarding school days before disappearing.
Owen's only refuge is the sprawling, isolated pecan orchard he works at after school, owned by a man named Gus who has his own secrets - and in some ways seems to know Owen better than he knows himself. As Owen uncovers a terrible injustice that looms over the same Preacher Woods he's claimed as his own, he must face a shocking truth about his own past - and write a better future.
No one knows what happened that morning at River Point. Five boys went hunting. Four came back. The boys won’t say who fired the shot that killed their friend; the evidence shows it could have been any one of them.
Kate Marino’s senior year internship at the district attorney’s office isn’t exactly glamorous - more like an excuse to leave school early that looks good on college applications. Then the DA hands her boss, Mr. Stone, the biggest case her small town of Belle Terre has ever seen. The River Point Boys are all anyone can talk about. Despite their damning toxicology reports the morning of the accident, the DA wants the boys’ case swept under the rug. He owes his political office to their powerful families.
Kate won’t let that happen. Digging up secrets without revealing her own is a dangerous line to walk; Kate has her own reasons for seeking justice for Grant. As she investigates with Stone, the aging prosecutor relying on Kate to see and hear what he cannot, she realises that nothing about the case - or the boys - is what it seems. Grant wasn’t who she thought he was, and neither is Stone’s prime suspect. As Kate gets dangerously close to the truth, it becomes clear that the early morning accident might not have been an accident at all - and if Kate doesn’t uncover the true killer, more than one life could be on the line . . . including her own.
Everyone from Wakarusa, Indiana, remembers the case of January Jacobs, who was found dead in a ditch hours after her family awoke to find her gone. Margot Davies was six at the time, the same age as January - and they were next-door neighbors. In the twenty years since, Margot has grown up, moved away, and become a big-city journalist, but she’s always been haunted by the fear that it could’ve been her. And the worst part is, January’s killer has never been brought to justice.
\nWhen Margot returns home to help care for her sick uncle, it feels like walking into a time capsule. Wakarusa is exactly how she remembered: genial, stifled, secretive. Then news breaks about five-year-old Natalie Clark from the next town over, who’s gone missing under eerily similar circumstances. With all the old feelings rushing back, Margot vows to find Natalie and solve January’s murder once and for all.
\nBut the police, the family, the townspeople - they all seem to be hiding something. And the deeper Margot digs into Natalie’s disappearance, the more resistance she encounters, and the colder January’s case feels. Could the killer still be out there? Could it be the same person who kidnapped Natalie? And what will it cost to finally discover what truly happened that night?
Nicole “Nic” Monroe is in a rut. At twenty-four, she lives alone in a dinky apartment in her hometown of Mishawaka, Indiana, she’s just gotten a DWI, and she works the same dead-end job she’s been working since high school, a job she only has because her boss is a family friend and feels sorry for her. Everyone has felt sorry for her for the last seven years - since the day her older sister, Kasey, vanished without a trace.
\nOn the night Kasey went missing, her car was found over a hundred miles from home. The driver’s door was open and her purse was untouched in the seat next to it. The only real clue in her disappearance was Jules Connor, another young woman from the same area who disappeared in the same way, two weeks earlier. But with so little for the police to go on, both their cases eventually went cold.
\nNic wants nothing more than to move on - from her sister’s disappearance and the state it’s left her in. But then one day, Jules’s sister, Jenna Connor, walks into her life and offers Nic something she hasn’t felt in a long hope. What follows is a gripping tale of two sisters who will do anything to find their missing halves, even if it means destroying everything they’ve ever known.
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For Astrid Parker, failure is unacceptable. Ever since she broke up with her fiancé a year ago, she’s been focused on her career - her friends might say she’s obsessed, but she’s just driven. When Pru Everwood asks her to be the designer for the Everwood Inn’s renovation that will be broadcasted on a popular home improvement show, Innside America, Astrid knows this is the answer to everything that is wrong with her life. It’ll be the perfect distraction from her failed love life, and her perpetually displeased mother might finally give her nod of approval.
\nHowever, Astrid never planned on Jordan Everwood, Pru’s granddaughter and lead carpenter for the inn’s renovation, who despises every modern design decision Astrid makes. Jordan is determined to preserve the history of her family’s inn, particularly as the rest of her life is in shambles. When that determination turns into a little light sabotage, ruffling Astrid’s perfect little feathers, the showrunners ask them to play up the tension. But somewhere along the way, their dislike for each other turns into something quite different, and Astrid must decide what success truly means. Is she going to pursue the life that she’s expected to lead, or the one she wants?
Delilah Green swore she would never go back to Bright Falls - nothing is there for her but memories of a lonely childhood where she was little more than a burden to her cold and distant stepfamily. Her life is in New York, with her photography career finally gaining steam and her bed never empty. Sure, it’s a different woman every night, but that’s just fine with her.
\nWhen Delilah’s estranged stepsister, Astrid, pressures her into photographing her wedding with a guilt trip and a five-figure check, Delilah finds herself back in the godforsaken town that she used to call home. She plans to breeze in and out, but then she sees Claire Sutherland, one of Astrid’s stuck-up besties, and decides that maybe there’s some fun (and a little retribution) to be had in Bright Falls, after all.
\nHaving raised her eleven-year-old daughter mostly on her own while dealing with her unreliable ex and running a bookstore, Claire Sutherland depends upon a life without surprises. And Delilah Green is an unwelcome surprise . . . at first. Though they’ve known each other for years, they don’t really know each other - so Claire is unsettled when Delilah figures out exactly what buttons to push. When they’re forced together during a gauntlet of wedding preparations - including a plot to save Astrid from her horrible fiancé - Claire isn’t sure she has the strength to resist Delilah’s charms. Even worse, she’s starting to think she doesn’t want to . . .
Once upon a time, Ramona Riley was a student at a prestigious art school, with dreams of landing in Hollywood as a costume designer to the stars. But after her father’s car accident, she had to quit and return to her small New Hampshire town, Clover Lake, to help take care of her younger sister. Twelve years later, Ramona is still working at the town’s café, all but given up on her dream. But when a big-budget romantic comedy comes to Clover Lake to film, she wonders if this could be her chance. There’s only one problem - Dylan Monroe, her first kiss and Hollywood’s favorite wild child - is the star.
\nDylan Monroe has always lived an unconventional life, having famous rock icons for parents. But she wants to prove that she’s not some chaotic, talentless nepo baby, that she has actual skills, that she’s just a normal person. To do that, Dylan takes on a project at a charming lake town - she even works at the town’s café (very quaint), shadowing a local waitress there (very cute), and asks her to take Dylan around to do Normal People Things.
\nBut Dylan soon realises it’s not just some small-town waitress she’s getting to know - Ramona Riley is someone she’s met before, someone who remembers her even more vividly. Before long, however, reality hits them, and both women must decide if the spark between them can fan the flames of their individual dreams, or if it will extinguish their light.
April Evans’ life is in shambles. She’s had to close her tattoo shop in Clover Lake and she’s subletting her house just to make rent. And her love life? Nonexistent ever since Elena, her ex-fiancée, left her for a younger woman three years ago. When she is asked to teach a summer art class at the town’s new resort called Cloverwild, April jumps at the opportunity, especially since the job comes with boarding. She’s sure that this is the silver lining she needs . . . until she meets her Daphne Love, the woman who stole her ex-fiancée. And even worse, it’s clear Daphne has no idea who April is.
\nDaphne Love is cursed in, well, love. She thought she’d found the unconditional love she craved in her girlfriend, Elena, but now she’s single again and utterly brokenhearted. When her friend hooks her up with a summer gig as an art instructor at a swanky resort in New Hampshire, Daphne feels optimistic for once. If only she had a roommate and coworker who didn’t seem to hate her on sight.
\nTheir already-tense relationship gets even shakier when April and Daphne find themselves competing for a rare opportunity to showcase their art in a London museum. But slowly, barriers begin to fall, and an inexplicable allure keeps drawing them closer, leaving them to wonder if the perfect picture they’re looking for can only be painted with each other.
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Grace, tough and wise, has nearly given up on wishes, thanks to a childhood spent with her unpredictable, larger-than-life mother. But, this summer, Grace meets Eva, a girl who believes in dreams, despite her own difficult circumstances.
One fateful evening, Eva climbs through a window in Grace's room, setting off a chain of stolen nights on the beach. When Eva tells Grace that she likes girls, Grace's world opens up and she begins to believe in happiness again.
How to Make a Wish is an emotionally-charged portrait of a mother and daughter's relationship and a heartfelt story about two girls who find each other at the exact right time.", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Young Adult" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Ashley Herring Blake - How to Make a Wish.jpeg", "mtime": 1767084066110.186, "size": 1412971, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:18:53.686Z" }, "Ashley Herring Blake - Iris Kelly Doesn't Date": { "title": "Iris Kelly Doesn't Date", "author": "Ashley Herring Blake", "description": "
Everyone around Iris Kelly is in love. Her best friends are all coupled up, her siblings have partners that are perfect for them, her parents are still in marital bliss. And she’s happy for all of them, truly. So what if she usually cries in her Lyft on the way home. So what if she misses her friends, who are so busy with their own wonderful love lives, they don’t really notice Iris is spiraling. At least she has a brand-new career writing romance novels (yes, she realises the irony of it). She is now working on her second book but has one problem: she is completely out of ideas after having spent all of her romantic energy on her debut.
\nPerfectly happy to ignore her problems as per usual, Iris goes to a bar in Portland and meets a sexy stranger, Stefania, and a night of dancing and making out turns into the worst one-night stand Iris has had in her life (vomit and crying are regretfully involved). To get her mind off everything and overcome her writer's block, Iris tries out for a local play, but comes face-to-face with Stefania - or, Stevie, her real name. When Stevie desperately asks Iris to play along as her girlfriend, Iris is shocked, but goes along with it because maybe this fake relationship will actually get her creative juices flowing and she can get her book written. As the two women play the part of a couple, they turn into a constant state of hot-and-bothered and soon it just comes down to who will make the real first move . . .
When a tornado rips through town, twelve-year-old Ivy Aberdeen's house is destroyed and her family of five is displaced. Ivy feels invisible and ignored in the aftermath of the storm - and what's worse, her notebook filled with secret drawings of girls holding hands has gone missing.
\nMysteriously, Ivy's drawings begin to reappear in her locker with notes from someone telling her to open up about her identity. Ivy thinks - and hopes - that this someone might be her classmate, another girl for whom Ivy has begun to develop a crush. Will Ivy find the strength and courage to follow her true feelings?
\nIt's been five years since Charlotte Donovan was ditched at the altar by her ex-fiancée, and she’s doing more than okay. Sure, her single mother never checks in, but she has her strings ensemble, the Rosalind Quartet, and her life in New York is a dream come true.
\nAs the holidays draw near, her ensemble mate Sloane persuades Charlotte and the rest of the quartet to spend Christmas with her family in Colorado - it is much cosier and quieter than Manhattan, and it would guarantee more practice time for the quartet’s upcoming tour. But when Charlotte arrives, she discovers that Sloane’s sister Adele also brought a friend home - and that friend is none other than her ex, Brighton.
\nAll Brighton Fairbrook wanted was to have the holliest, jolliest Christmas - and try to forget that her band kicked her out. But instead, she’s stuck pretending like she and her ex are strangers - which proves to be difficult when Sloane and Adele’s mom signs them all up for a series of Christmas dating events. Charlotte and Brighton are soon entrenched in horseback riding and cookie decorating, but Charlotte still won’t talk to her. Brighton can hardly blame her after what she did.
\nAfter a few days, however, things start to slip through. Memories. Music. The way they used to play together - Brighton on guitar, Charlotte on her violin - and it all feels painfully familiar. But it’s all in the past and nothing can melt the ice in their hearts . . . right?
When Sunny St. James receives a new heart, she decides to set off on a \"New Life Plan\": 1) do awesome amazing things she could never do before; 2) find a new best friend; and 3) kiss a boy for the first time.
\nHer \"New Life Plan\" seems to be racing forward, but when she meets her new best friend Quinn, Sunny questions whether she really wants to kiss a boy at all. When the reemergence of her mother, Sunny begins a journey to becoming the new Sunny St. James.
\nThis sweet, tender novel dares readers to find the might in their own hearts.
“Just let it go.”
That’s what everyone keeps telling Hadley St. Clair after she learns that her father cheated on her mother. But Hadley doesn’t want to let it go. She wants to be angry and she wants everyone in her life - her dad most of all - to leave her alone.
Sam Bennett and his family have had their share of drama too. Still reeling from a move to a new town and his parents’ recent divorce, Sam is hoping that he can coast through senior year and then move on to hassle-free, parent-free life in college. He isn’t looking for a relationship . . . that is, until he sees Hadley for the first time.
Hadley and Sam’s connection is undeniable, but Sam has a secret that could ruin everything. Should he follow his heart or tell the truth?
Cerys is safe in the Kingdom of Aloriya. Here there are no droughts, disease, or famine, and peace is everlasting. It has been this way for hundreds of years, since the first king made a bargain with the Lady who ruled the forest that borders the kingdom. But as Aloriya prospered, the woods grew dark, cursed, and forbidden.
\nCerys knows this all too well: When she was young, she barely escaped as the woods killed her friends and her mother. Now Cerys carries a small bit of the curse - the magic - in her blood, a reminder of the day she lost everything.
\nAs a new queen is crowned, however, things long hidden in the woods descend on the kingdom itself. Cerys is forced on the run, her only companions a small and irritating fox from the royal garden and the magic in her veins. It's up to her . . .
Rosie Thorne is feeling stuck - on her college application essays, in her small town, and on that mysterious General Sond cosplayer she met at ExcelsiCon. Most of all, she’s stuck in her grief over her mother’s death. Her only solace was her late mother’s library of rare Starfield novels, but even that disappeared when they sold it to pay off hospital bills.
On the other hand, Vance Reigns has been Hollywood royalty for as long as he can remember - with all the privilege and scrutiny that entails. When a tabloid scandal catches up to him, he's forced to hide out somewhere the paparazzi would never expect to find him: Small Town USA. At least there’s a library in the house. Too bad he doesn’t read.
When Rosie and Vance’s paths collide and a rare book is accidentally destroyed, Rosie finds herself working to repay the debt. And while most Starfield superfans would jump at the chance to work in close proximity to the Vance Reigns, Rosie has discovered something about Vance: he’s a jerk, and she can’t stand him. The feeling is mutual.
But as Vance and Rosie begrudgingly get to know each other, their careful masks come off - and they may just find that there’s more risk in shutting each other out than in opening their hearts.
Florence Day is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem - after a terrible breakup, she no longer believes in love. It’s as good as dead.
\nWhen her new editor, a too-handsome mountain of a man, won’t give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye. But then she gets a phone call she never wanted to receive, and she must return home for the first time in a decade to help her family bury her beloved father.
\nFor ten years, she’s run from the town that never understood her, and even though she misses the sound of a warm Southern night and her eccentric, loving family and their funeral parlor, she can’t bring herself to stay. Even with her father gone, it feels like nothing in this town has changed. And she hates it.
\nUntil she finds a ghost standing at the funeral parlor’s front door, just as broad and infuriatingly handsome as ever, and he’s just as confused about why he’s there as she is.
\nRomance is most certainly dead . . . but so is her new editor, and his unfinished business will have her second-guessing everything she’s ever known about love stories.
Cinderella goes to the con in this fandom-fueled twist on the classic fairy tale.
Part romance, part love letter to nerd culture, and all totally adorbs, Geekerella is a fairy tale for anyone who believes in the magic of fandom. Geek girl Elle Wittimer lives and breathes Starfield, the classic sci-fi series she grew up watching with her late father. So when she sees a cosplay contest for a new Starfield movie, she has to enter.
The prize? An invitation to the ExcelsiCon Cosplay Ball, and a meet-and-greet with the actor slated to play Federation Prince Carmindor in the reboot. With savings from her gig at the Magic Pumpkin food truck (and her dad’s old costume), Elle’s determined to win…unless her stepsisters get there first.
Teen actor Darien Freeman used to live for cons - before he was famous. Now they’re nothing but autographs and awkward meet-and-greets. Playing Carmindor is all he’s ever wanted, but the Starfield fandom has written him off as just another dumb heartthrob. As ExcelsiCon draws near, Darien feels more and more like a fake - until he meets a girl who shows him otherwise.
Part romance, part love letter to nerd culture, and all totally adorbs, Geekerella is a fairy tale for anyone who believes in the magic of fandom. Geek girl Elle Wittimer lives and breathes Starfield, the classic sci-fi series she grew up watching with her late father. So when she sees a cosplay contest for a new Starfield movie, she has to enter. The prize? An invitation to the ExcelsiCon Cosplay Ball, and a meet-and-greet with the actor slated to play Federation Prince Carmindor in the reboot. With savings from her gig at the Magic Pumpkin food truck (and her dad’s old costume), Elle’s determined to win . . . unless her stepsisters get there first.
\nTeen actor Darien Freeman used to live for cons - before he was famous. Now they’re nothing but autographs and awkward meet-and-greets. Playing Carmindor is all he’s ever wanted, but the Starfield fandom has written him off as just another dumb heartthrob. As ExcelsiCon draws near, Darien feels more and more like a fake - until he meets a girl who shows him otherwise.
Seventeen-year-old Ana is a scoundrel by nurture and an outlaw by nature. Found as a child drifting through space with a sentient android called D09, Ana was saved by a fearsome space captain and the grizzled crew she now calls family. But D09 - one of the last remaining illegal Metals - has been glitching, and Ana will stop at nothing to find a way to fix him.
Ana’s desperate effort to save D09 leads her on a quest to steal the coordinates to a lost ship that could offer all the answers. But at the last moment, a spoiled Ironblood boy beats Ana to her prize. He has his own reasons for taking the coordinates, and he doesn’t care what he’ll sacrifice to keep them.
When everything goes wrong, she and the Ironblood end up as fugitives on the run. Now their entire kingdom is after them - and the coordinates - and not everyone wants them captured alive.
What they find in a lost corner of the universe will change all their lives - and unearth dangerous secrets. But when a darkness from Ana’s past returns, she must face an impossible choice: does she protect a kingdom that wants her dead or save the Metal boy she loves?
Eileen Merriweather loves to get lost in a good happily-ever-after. The fictional kind, anyway. Because at least imaginary men don’t leave you at the altar. She feels safe in a book. At home. Which might be why she’s so set on going to her annual book club retreat this year - she needs good friends, cheap wine, and grand romantic gestures - no matter what.
\nBut when her car unexpectedly breaks down on the way, she finds herself stranded in a quaint town that feels like it’s right out of a novel.
\nBecause it is.
\nThis place can’t be real, and yet . . . she’s here, in Eloraton, the town of her favorite romance series, where the candy store’s honey taffy is always sweet, the local bar’s burgers are always a little burnt, and rain always comes in the afternoon. It feels like home. It’s perfect - and perfectly frozen, trapped in the late author’s last unfinished story.
\nElsy is sure that’s why she must be here: to help bring the town to its storybook ending.
\nExcept there is a character in Eloraton that she can’t place - a grumpy bookstore owner with mint-green eyes, an irritatingly sexy mouth and impeccable taste in novels. And he does not want her finishing this book.
\nWhich is a problem because Elsy is beginning to think the town’s happily-ever-after might just be intertwined with her own.
The Prince and the Pauper gets a modern makeover in this adorable, witty, and heartwarming young adult novel set in the Geekerella universe by national bestselling author Ashley Poston.
Imogen Lovelace is an ordinary fangirl on an impossible mission: save her favorite character, Princess Amara, from being killed off from her favorite franchise, Starfield. The problem is, Jessica Stone - the actress who plays Princess Amara - wants nothing more than to leave the intense scrutiny of the fandom behind. If this year's ExcelsiCon isn't her last, she'll consider her career derailed.
When a case of mistaken identity throws look-a-likes Imogen and Jess together, they quickly become enemies. But when the script for the Starfield sequel leaks, and all signs point to Jess, she and Imogen must trade places to find the person responsible. That's easier said than done when the girls step into each other's shoes and discover new romantic possibilities, as well as the other side of intense fandom.
As these \"princesses\" race to find the script-leaker, they must rescue themselves from their own expectations, and redefine what it means to live happily ever after.
Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it.
\nSo Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: stay busy, work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone - she isn’t sure her heart can take it.
\nAnd then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again.
\nExcept, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future.
\n\n
Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed.
\n\n
After all, love is never a matter of time - but a matter of timing.
America's favorite pop band, Roman Holiday, is done, dead, and so totally last year. For eighteen-year-old rockoholic Junie Baltimore, this is music to her ears. But when she discovers their sexy ex-lead singer hiding out on the boardwalk, her summer vacation becomes the cover story of the year.
\nShe's willing to keep him a secret, but when a sleazy paparazzo offers her the cash she needs to save the bar her father left behind, could she sell out for the chance to save her future? Who is she kidding? That's a no-brainer . . . but she never planned on falling head over heels for the lead singer.
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Joni Lark is living the dream. She’s one of the most coveted songwriters in LA . . . and she can’t seem to write. There’s an emptiness inside her, and nothing seems to fill it.
\nWhen she returns to her hometown of Vienna Shores, North Carolina, she hopes that the sand, the surf, and the concerts at The Revelry, her family’s music venue, will spark her inspiration. But when she gets there, nothing is how she left it. Her best friend is avoiding her, her mother’s memories are fading fast, and The Revelry is closing.
\nHow can she think about writing her next song when everything is changing without her?
\nUntil she hears it. A melody in her head, lyric-less and half-formed, and an alluring and addictive voice to go with it - belonging, apparently, to a wry musician with hangups of his own.
\nSurely, he’s a figment of her overworked imagination.
\nBut then the very real man attached to the voice shows up in Vienna Shores. He’s aggravating and gruff on the outside - nothing like the sweet, funny voice in Joni’s head - and he has a plan:
\nThey’ll finish the song haunting them both, break their connection, and hope they don’t risk their hearts in the process.
\nBecause that song stuck in their heads? Maybe it’s there for a reason.
As a candy store employee by day, and mysterious deejay \"Niteowl\" by night, eighteen-year-old Ingrid North is stuck between rock 'n roll and a hard place. She can't wait to get out of her tiny hometown of Steadfast, Nebraska (population three hundred and forty-seven) to chase her dreams, but small-town troubles keep getting in the way. She can't abandon her grandmother with Alzheimer's, or her best friend Micah - who she may or may not be in love with.
But for one hour each Saturday, she escapes all of that. On air, she isn't timid, ugly-sweater-wearing Ingrid North. She's the funny and daring Niteowl. Every boy's manic pixie dream girl. Fearless. And there is one caller in particular - Dark and Brooding - whose raspy laugh and snarky humor is just sexy enough to take her mind off Micah. Not that she's in love with Micah or anything. Cause she's not.
As her grandmother slips further away and Micah begins dating a Mean-Girls-worthy nightmare, Ingrid runs to the mysterious Dark and Brooding as a disembodied voice to lean on, only to fall down a rabbit hole of punk rockstars, tabloid headlines, and kisses that taste like bubble tea. But the man behind the voice could be surprising in all the right, and wrong, ways.
And she just might find that her real life begins when Niteowl goes off the air.
Audrey Love is cursed to be the person before you find your soulmate, the girl you dump for your true love. So when her best friend disappears hours before his Valentine’s Day wedding, Audrey fears that she did the unthinkable and kissed him at last night’s bachelor party.
\nWith help from the best man, she retraces her steps to find the missing groom and, with any luck, a true love of her own.
Ebey’s End is a small town on an island off the Pacific coast, reachable only by ferry (assuming the gods are with you and it’s not a Tuesday). It’s a comfortable, familiar (but okay, fine, sometimes lonely) life for its resident grocer Anita Odom. That is, until fourteen-year-old July shows up on her doorstep.
\nTaking in the recently orphaned daughter of an estranged cousin had not been on Anita’s to-do list. In fact, it’s a terrible idea. Anita is ill-suited, ill-prepared, and absolutely certain the entire enterprise will end in disaster - for both of them.
\nFrom the moment she arrives, July seems to “know” what each customer at the Island Grocery needs. They’re small: a housekeeping magazine slipped into old Mr. Daly’s basket or a coconut cream pie pressed into the hands of Pastor Chet. But one by one, these gifts start to change the lives of nearly everyone in town in ways much larger than they - or July - could have imagined.
\nIt's not long before secrets are exposed and questions emerge, and everyone in Ebey’s End has to open their hearts a little wider to make room for it all.
As they travel by ship to New York for her childhood friend Tabitha's wedding, Amory Ames gazes out at the city's iconic skyline, excited by the prospect of being a bridesmaid. Her husband Milo, however, is convinced their trip will be deadly dull, since Prohibition is in full swing. But when a member of the wedding party is found murdered on the front steps of the bride's home, the happy plans take a darker twist.
Amory discovers that the dead groomsman has links to the notorious - and notoriously handsome - gangster Leon De Lora, and soon she and Milo find themselves drawn into another mystery. While the police seem to think that New York's criminal underworld is at play, Amory feels they can't ignore the wedding party either. Tabitha's fiance Tom Smith appears to be a good man, but he has secrets of his own, and the others in the group seem strangely unaffected by the death of their friend . . .
In an unfamiliar city, not knowing who they can trust, Milo and Amory are drawn into the glamorous, dangerous world of nightclubs and bootleggers. But as they draw closer to unraveling the web of lies and half-truths the murdered man has left in his wake, the killer is weaving a web of his own.
Amory Ames is alone at her country house Thornecrest, enjoying her last few weeks of peace and quiet as she prepares for the imminent arrival of her baby. Her husband, Milo, is in London on business, and Amory is content to catch up on her correspondence, organize the nursery, and avoid the well-meaning if rather overbearing company of the ladies in the village as they prepare for the Springtide Festival. But then a woman appears on her doorstep, also claiming to be Mrs. Ames, Milo’s wife.
Amory's marriage has had its ups and downs in the past, but her faith in her husband has been restored, and Milo has been nothing but thrilled about becoming a father. Though the supposed second Mrs. Ames seems earnest, Amory is convinced she must be mistaken, a belief that Milo confirms upon his homecoming. However, when a second unexpected visitor arrives at Thornecrest, secret identities and whirlwind romances appear to be becoming par for the course.
It's not until the day of the festival, when Milo's stable hand Bertie is found dead, that the strange characters appearing in town begin to seem more sinister, and Amory is determined to uncover the killer in the crowd.
Amory and Milo Ames are drawn into the investigation of a years-old murder by a salacious novelist in the English countryside.
With two murder investigations behind them and their marriage at last on steady ground, Amory and Milo plan to quietly winter in Italy. The couple find their plans derailed when Amory receives an urgent summons from her cousin Laurel to the English countryside. At Lyonsgate, the country house of Laurel’s friend Redinald Lyons, Amory and Milo are surprised to discover an eccentric and distinguished group of guests have been invited, led by notorious socialite Isobel Van Allen.
Isobel has returned to England after years of social exile to write a sequel to her scandalous first book, the thinly-fictionalised account of a high-society murder at the very country house the Ameses have been called to. Her second incriminating volume, she warns the house’s occupants - all of whom were present when one of their companions was killed years ago - will tell everything that really happened that fateful night. But some bones are meant to stay buried, and when a desperate person turns to murder, it’s up to Amory and Milo to sort through a web of scandal and lies to uncover the truth, and the identity of a killer.
Electra McDonnell has always known that the way she and her family earn their living is slightly outside of the law. Breaking into the homes of the rich and picking the locks on their safes may not be condoned by British law enforcement, but World War II is in full swing, Ellie's cousins Colm and Toby are off fighting against Hitler, and Uncle Mick's more honorable business as a locksmith can't pay the bills any more.
\nSo when Uncle Mick receives a tip about a safe full of jewels in the empty house of a wealthy family, he and Ellie can't resist. All goes as planned - until the pair are caught redhanded. Ellie expects them to be taken straight to prison, but instead they are delivered to a large townhouse, where government official Major Ramsey is waiting with an offer: either Ellie agrees to help him break into a safe and retrieve blueprints that will be critical to the British war effort, before they can be delivered to a German spy, or he turns her over to the police.
\nEllie doesn't care for the Major's imperious manner, but she has no choice, and besides, she's eager to do her bit for king and country. She may be a thief, but she's no coward. When she and the Major break into the house in question, they find instead the purported German spy dead on the floor, the safe already open and empty. Soon, Ellie and Major Ramsey are forced to put aside their differences to unmask the double-agent, as they try to stop allied plans falling into German hands.
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Walking through London’s West End after a night at the theater, Amory Ames and her husband Milo run into wealthy investor and former actor Gerard Holloway. Holloway and his wife Georgina are old friends of theirs, and when Holloway invites them to the dress rehearsal of a new play he is directing, Amory readily accepts.
However, Amory is shocked to learn that Holloway has cast his mistress, actress Flora Bell, in the lead role. Furthermore, the casual invitation is not what it seems - he admits to Amory and Milo that Flora has been receiving threatening letters, and he needs their help in finding the mysterious sender. Despite Amory’s conflicting feelings - not only does she feel loyalty to Georgina, but the disintegration of the Holloways’ perfect marriage seems to bode ill for her own sometimes delicate relationship - her curiosity gets the better of her, and she begins to make inquiries.
It quickly becomes clear that each member of the cast has reason to resent Flora - and with a group so skilled in the art of deception, it isn’t easy to separate truth from illusion. When vague threats escalate, the scene is set for murder, and Amory and Milo must find the killer before the final curtain falls.
Amory Ames is looking forward to a tranquil period of reconnecting with reformed playboy husband Milo after an unexpected reconciliation following the murderous events at the Brightwell Hotel. Amory hopes a quiet stay at their London flat will help mend their dysfunctional relationship. However, she soon finds herself drawn into another investigation when Serena Barrington asks her to look into the disappearance of valuable jewelry snatched at a dinner party.
Unable to say no to an old family friend, Amory agrees to help lay a trap to catch the culprit at a lavish masked ball hosted by the notorious Viscount Dunmore. But when one of the illustrious party guests is murdered, Amory is pulled back into the world of detection, enlisted by old ally Detective Inspector Jones. As she works through the suspect list, she struggles to fend off the advances of the very persistent viscount even as rumors swirl about Milo and a French film star. Once again, Amory and Milo must work together to solve a mystery where nothing is as it seems, set in the heart of 1930s society London.
Safecracker Ellie McDonnell hasn’t seen Major Ramsey - her handsome but aloof handler in the British government - since their tumultuous mission together three months before, but when she hears about a suspicious robbery in London she feels compelled to contact him. Together they discover that a rash of burglaries leads back to a hotbed of spies in the neutral city Lisbon, Portugal, and an unknown object brought to London by a mysterious courier.
\nAs the thieves become more desperate and their crimes escalate, it becomes imperative that Ellie and Ramsey must beat them at their own game. Fighting shadowy assailants, enemy agents, and the mutual attraction they’ve agreed not to acknowledge, Ellie and Ramsey work together to learn if it truly takes a thief to catch a thief.
Amory Ames is a wealthy young woman who regrets her marriage to her notoriously charming playboy husband, Milo. Looking for a change, she accepts a request for help from her former fiancé, Gil Trent, not knowing that she’ll soon become embroiled in a murder investigation that will test not only her friendship with Gil, but will upset the status quo with her husband.
Amory accompanies Gil to the Brightwell Hotel in an attempt to circumvent the marriage of his sister, Emmeline, to Rupert Howe, a disreputable ladies’ man. Amory sees in the situation a grim reflection of her own floundering marriage. There is more than her happiness at stake, however, when Rupert is murdered and Gil is arrested for the crime. Amory is determined to prove his innocence and find the real killer, despite attempted dissuasion from the disapproving police inspector on the case. Matters are further complicated by Milo’s unexpected arrival, and the two form an uneasy alliance as Amory enlists his reluctant aid in clearing Gil’s name. As the stakes grow higher and the line between friend and foe becomes less clear, Amory must decide where her heart lies and catch the killer before she, too, becomes a victim.
Murder at the Brightwell is a delicious mystery in which murder invades polite society and romance springs in unexpected places.
Ellie McDonnell is about to embark on her most perilous mission yet: go to Lisbon, Portugal to save her beloved cousin Toby who has reportedly escaped from a German prisoner of war camp. Toby has been missing since the Battle of Dunkirk and Ellie had all but lost hope in ever seeing him again until Major Ramsey, the British military intelligence officer she had been working closely with over the past few months, shared the news he’d intercepted.
\nNothing will stop Ellie from finding her cousin, not even the awkward experience of having to travel to an unknown country with Ramsey after he’d dismissed her for being untrustworthy just as she’d realized she had fallen in love with him. Under the supervision of Captain Archie Blandings, a charming intelligence officer based in Lisbon, Ellie meets with undercover operatives to track down where Toby might be hiding from the Nazis and whether they are too late to safely recover him, all the while fighting her feelings for Ramsey and the incessant burden of war looming around her at every turn.
As the Blitz continues to ravage London, Ellie McDonnell - formerly a safecracking thief, but currently determined to stay on the straight and narrow to help her country - is approached by British Intelligence officer Major Ramsey with a new assignment. She is to travel under an assumed identity to the port city of Sunderland and there await further instructions. In his usual infuriating way, the Major has left her task as vague and mysterious as possible.
\nEllie, ever-ready to aid her country, heads north, her safecracking tools in tow. But before she can rendezvous with the major, she witnesses an unnatural death. A man falls dead in the street in front of her, with a note clutched in his hand. Ellie’s instincts tell her that the man’s death is connected in some way to her mission.
\nSoon, Ellie and the major are locked in a battle of wits and a race against time with an unknown and deadly adversary, and a case that leads them to a possible Nazi counterfeiting operation. With bombs dropping on the city and a would-be assassin shadowing their every move, it will take all of Ellie’s resourcefulness and Major Ramsey’s fortitude to unmask the spymaster and avert disastrous consequences - for England and for their own lives.
\n
When Amory Ames's husband Milo receives a troubling letter from his childhood nanny, Madame Nanette, the couple travel to Paris where they become embroiled in a mystery surrounding the death of a famous parfumier. Helios Belanger died suddenly, shortly before the release of his new, highly anticipated perfume, and Madame Nanette, who works for his family, is convinced that her employer's death was not due to natural causes.
The more Amory and Milo look into the motives of industry rivals and the Belanger heirs who are vying for control of his perfume empire, the more they are convinced that Madame Nanette may be right. When secrets unfold and things take a dangerous turn, Amory and Milo must work quickly to uncover the essence of the matter and catch a killer before the scent goes cold.
London, 1940. After years of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor - well, to themselves, anyway - Ellie McDonnell and her family have turned over a new leaf as they help the government’s war effort. It’s true that the straight-laced Major Ramsey didn’t give them much choice, but still, Ellie must admit she doesn’t miss breaking and entering as much as she might have thought. What she does miss is the challenge of unlocking an impossible code and the adrenaline rush that comes from being somewhere she shouldn’t.
\nSo when Major Ramsey turns up unannounced with another job, she can’t say no. A woman’s body has been found floating in the Thames, with a bracelet locked onto her wrist, and a cameo locket attached to it. It’s clear this woman was involved in espionage, but whose side was she on? Who was she reporting to? And who wanted her dead?
Hazel and Fox have it all: two children, a beautiful home, and a late-night habit of eliminating people who deserve it. Yet work-life balance is hard when you want to kill bad men but raise good kids.
\nWith a school mum tyrant on Haze's case, and Fox struggling with performance anxiety after a botched kill, things are spiraling. Therapy isn't helping, and bullet journaling has taken on a whole new meaning . . .
\nBut when they accidentally draw a dangerous group to their doorstep, the couple must pull it together - and fast. Because surviving in suburbia is no longer just a challenge. Now it's a real fight for their family's lives.
\nAnd it turns out, self-help starts with staying alive.
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Hazel and Fox are an ordinary married couple with a baby. Except for one small thing: they're murderers. Well, they used to be. They had it all. An enviable London lifestyle, five-star travels, and plenty of bad men to rid from the world. Then Hazel got pregnant.
\nNow, they’re just another mom-and-dad-and-baby. They gave up vigilante justice for life in the suburbs: arranged play dates instead of body disposals, diapers over daggers, mommy conversations instead of the sweet seduction right before a kill. Hazel finds her new life terribly dull. And the more she forces herself to play her monotonous, predictable role, the more she begins to feel that murderous itch again.
\nMeanwhile, Fox has really taken to being a father. Always the planner, he loves being five steps ahead of everyone and knowing exactly what’s coming around the bend. Plus, if anyone can understand Hazel needing one more kill, it’s Fox. But then Hazel kills someone without telling Fox. And when police show up at their door, Hazel realises it will take everything she has to keep her family together.
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Pizza-loving Sage will do anything for a ticket to Prince Louis’ birthday party, whether that’s shooting bad guys at bars, chasing them in hover cars, or dropping one hundred stories from the highest skyscraper in Diamond City. She doesn’t mind attracting a little bit of positive attention from the royal family so long as no one learns her true secret: She hails from an ancient warrior race, and kicking ass in war is her specialty.
\nOnly those days are long over. At least, she thinks they are until her nephew sells her out to the royal family, and they’re nowhere near as air-headed as Prince Louis. Tiaras and dinner parties are far from their minds when they blackmail her into confronting a vicious (and flamboyant) warlord whose forces are invading the city. Choosing sides might have been a no-brainer, but Sage learns the royal family is using their citizens as test subjects in experiments to attain immortality, and the warlord is actually fighting to stop them.
\nIf Sage thought kneading dough was difficult, now she must choose between a tyrannical (and charming) warlord or a bubbly prince to take the throne. If Sage wants any semblance of a normal life again, let alone run a pizza shop, she must pray that her longing for love doesn’t cloud her judgment. Then again, what girl would say no to promises of colorful weddings and spectacular fireworks, even if the guy who’s offering them has a not-so-righteous agenda of his own?
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After nearly suffering defeat at the hands of her sister, Sage Arpine does all in her power to return to a normal life. Her fairy-tale dreams of marrying a prince and living at the palace don’t quite turn out, but she can’t complain now that she’s found true love, reunited with her nieces, and returned to her pizzeria in Diamond City. At least, that’s what she thinks.
\nWith the Lolligo spying on humans and using women for reproduction experiments, Sage knows she isn’t safe no matter where she turns. As try as she might to ignore the calls to battle, she doesn’t have a choice when she realizes the new Diamond City Allseers are plotting to capture her, too. As the successful offspring of a Lolligo and human, Sage’s blood has the potential to turn others into enhanced warriors, and what growing city wouldn’t want an opportunity to empower their army? Sage’s hopes of running her pizzeria and marrying her fiancé are dashed when she’s betrayed - yet again - by the very city she united in the past. Forced to flee once more, Sage finds herself in the Outskirts, where she battles more than just Lolligo and their laser guns - she discovers Emerald City and their disturbing, dark secrets.
\nSage is not the only hybrid out there. Like the Lolligo, Emerald City has been experimenting with genetics and they want all their test subjects back. If Sage wants any semblance of that fairy-tale dream she’s after, she has to confront the strongest army of enhanced beings she’s ever faced in her life. Stopping them would be so much easier if she didn’t have a family to protect.
\nSage could run and hide forever . . . but it’s never been in her nature to do that. With people’s lives at stake, she’ll have to fight, even with the odds stacked heavily against her.
\nReally stacked. Diamond City and the Lolligo haven’t given up on her, either.
\nSage should have stuck to pizza.
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Nineteen-year-old Ruby Kilstrong gets to attend Diamond City’s most prestigious college, study history, eat pizza, and play fastball in her free time - which she is not so great at. On top of that, she gets to live at the palace with Allseer Louis Kilstrong like royalty. The only downside is she can’t remember her life past the last year.
\nUnfortunately for Ruby, amnesia is the least of her worries when a notorious gang called the Scarfaces launches an attack on her city. She is forced to escape with classmates who claim there is more to Ruby than meets the eye. Not only does she know her way around a sword, but she bears a striking resemblance to the legendary Sage Arpine, who united Diamond City’s four districts many years ago. In the escape, Ruby meets one of Sage’s nephews and learns that the likeness might not be a coincidence after all.
\nRegardless of her past, Ruby has survivors to defend and an abandoned town to secure. With the help of some age-old allies, Ruby learns to fight and toughen up in the face of the deadly Scarfaces. Becoming the hero is no easy feat, though, and she is nowhere near the warrior Sage used to be.
\nBefore all goes to hell, Ruby can run away and start a new life. But does she really want to ignore the role Louis played in her amnesia and the husband and twin sons who have been waiting for Sage to wake up from her hibernation?
\nIt’d be the easy way out.
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Set over several nights, between the hours of 1:00 a.m. and 4:30 a.m., in and around Tokyo, this mind-blowingly constructed book is an elaborate, energetic fresco of human nocturnal existence in all its mystery, an enigmatic literary mix of Agatha Christie, Teju Cole, and Heironymous Bosch.
\nOn this journey through the labyrinthine streets and hidden corners of one of the world’s most fascinating cities, everybody is searching for something, and maybe searching in the wrong places. Elements of the fantastical and the surreal abound, as they tend to do in the early pre-dawn hours of the morning, yet the settings, the human stories, and each character’s search are all as real as can be.
\nGoodnight Tokyo offers readers a unique and intimate take on Tokyo as seen through the eyes of a large cast of colorful characters. Their lives, as disparate and as far apart as they may seem, are in fact intricately interconnected and as their fates converge against the backdrop of the city’s neon-lit streets and quiet alleyways, Yoshida masterfully portrays in captivating, lyrical prose the complexities of human relationships, the mystery of human connection, and the universal quest for meaning.
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One woman physician. A group of talented midwives. A deadly disease spreading.
\n1849. Dr. Nora Gibson is the only female surgeon in London. In all of England, even. After earning her medical degree and overcoming the prejudice of those who wished to see her fail, she's finally earned her place at the Great Queen Street Hospital alongside her newlywed husband and her eccentric but ailing adoptive father, the great Dr. Horace Croft.
\nBut peace is hard to come by as a physician, and for one like Nora, it's almost impossible. When Nora takes up the fight to bring midwives into the medical field, her already fragile reputation comes under fire by colleagues and London society itself. And if the possibility of losing her rights to practice medicine wasn't enough, a dangerous enemy has made itself known . . .
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London, 1845: Raised by the eccentric surgeon Dr. Horace Croft after losing her parents to a deadly pandemic, the orphan Nora Beady knows little about conventional life. While other young ladies were raised to busy themselves with needlework and watercolors, Nora was trained to perfect her suturing and anatomical illustrations of dissections.
\nWomen face dire consequences if caught practicing medicine, but in Croft's private clinic Nora is his most trusted - and secret - assistant. That is until the new surgical resident Dr. Daniel Gibson arrives. Dr. Gibson has no idea that Horace's bright and quiet young ward is a surgeon more qualified and ingenuitive than even himself. In order to protect Dr. Croft and his practice from scandal and collapse Nora must learn to play a new and uncomfortable roll - that of a proper young lady.
\nBut pretense has its limits. Nora cannot turn away and ignore the suffering of patients, even if it means giving Gibson the power to ruin everything she's worked for. And when she makes a discovery that could change the field forever, Nora faces an impossible choice. Remain invisible and let the men around her take credit for her work, or step into the light - even if it means being destroyed by her own legacy.
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Women's work is a matter of life and death.
\nNora Beady, the only female student at a prestigious medical school in Bologna, is a rarity. In the 19th century women are expected to remain at home and raise children, so her unconventional, indelicate ambitions to become a licensed surgeon offend the men around her.
\nEverything changes when she allies herself with Magdalena Morenco, the sole female doctor on-staff. Together the two women develop new techniques to improve a groundbreaking surgery: the Cesarean section. It's a highly dangerous procedure and the research is grueling, but even worse is the vitriolic response from men. Most don't trust the findings of women, and many can choose to deny their wives medical care.
\nAlready facing resistance on all sides, Nora is shaken when she meets a patient who will die without the surgery. If the procedure is successful, her work could change the world. But a failure could cost everything: precious lives, Nora's career, and the role women will be allowed to play in medicine.
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1942. Though she survived the bomb that destroyed her home, Yvonne Rudellat's life is over. She's estranged from her husband, her daughter is busy with war work, and Yvonne - older, diminutive, overlooked - has lost all purpose. Until she's offered a chance to remake herself entirely . . .
\nThe war has taken a turn for the worse, and the men in charge are desperate. So, when Yvonne is recruited as Britain's first female sabotage agent, expectations are low. But her tenacity, ability to go unnoticed, and aptitude for explosives set her apart. Soon enough she arrives in occupied France with a new identity, ready to set the Nazi regime ablaze.
\nBut there are adversaries on all sides. As Yvonne becomes infamous as the nameless, unstoppable woman who burns the enemy at every turn, she realises she may lose herself to the urgent needs of the cause . . .
\nBased on a true story, The Woman With No Name is a gripping story of secrets, spies, and the women behind the Resistance.
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In the summer of 1996, teenage Tess Murphy’s mom gave her two rules to abide keep quiet and stay out of trouble. Her mother landed a new job as a cook at an affluent Virginia estate and didn’t want anything to risk the opportunity, least of all her outspoken daughter. What no one saw coming was Tess falling deeply in love with the boy next door, high-society Grant Alexander.
\nOver a few wondrous and heat-filled months, Tess and Grant’s love blooms so ferociously it feels utterly impossible that anything can keep them apart, until tragedy strikes and the teenagers find themselves pained by betrayal with little hope to repair the damage that’s been done.
\nNow, two decades after their epic teenage romance abruptly ended in heartbreak, Tess and Grant are both running for Governor of Virginia, where secrets from that summer threaten to shatter their families, futures, and the love they once shared.
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Memory is Copeland-Stark’s business. Yet after months of reconsolidation treatments at their sleek new flagship facility, Hope Nakano still has no idea what happened to her lost year, or the life she was just beginning to build with her one great love.
\nEach procedure surfaces fragmented clues which erode Hope’s trust in her own memories, especially the ones of Luke. As inconsistencies mount, her search for answers reveals a much larger secret Copeland-Stark is determined to protect.
\nBut everyone has secrets, including Hope.
A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course.
\nHenry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant.
An enchanting debut and a spellbinding tale of fate and belief in the bonds of love, The Time Traveler's Wife is destined to captivate readers for years to come.
Ichorite is progress. More durable and malleable than steel, ichorite is the lifeblood of a dawning industrial revolution. Yann I. Chauncey owns the sole means of manufacturing this valuable metal, but his workers, who risk their health and safety daily, are on strike. They demand Chauncey research the hallucinatory illness befalling them, a condition they call “being lustertouched.”
\nMarney Honeycutt, a lustertouched child worker, stands proud at the picket line with her best friend and family. That’s when Chauncey sends in the guns. Only Marney survives the massacre. She vows bloody vengeance. A decade later, Marney is the nation’s most notorious highwayman, and Chauncey’s daughter seeks an opportune marriage.
\nMarney’s rage and the ghosts of her past will drive her to masquerade as an aristocrat, outmaneuver powerful suitors, and win the heart of his daughter, so Marney can finally corner Chauncey and satisfy her need for revenge. But war ferments in the north, and deeper grudges are surfacing . . .
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Ivy Raines needs camp for an escape like she did as a child. After going through a very public breakup with her first girlfriend and teen TV show mega star, she wants nothing more than a summer of sunshine, friends and s'mores as newest counselor.
\nBut when she signs up to run the camp's musical production she soon finds herself in a rivalry she didn't see coming with the co-director, Rynn. She's bossy and thinks she knows everything because she's been most experienced counselor. Worse, it's a girl Ivy had a falling out with when she was younger. It's the last thing Ivy needs while going through a breakup but as tension between them builds, sparks begin to fly brighter than a campfire.
\nAs the days get hotter, will Ivy discover she can still have the summer escape she needed after all . . . in the way her heart has always wanted?
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Emma is a die-hard romantic. She loves a meet-cute Netflix movie, her pet, Lady Catulet, and dreaming up the Gay Rom Com of her heart for the film festival competition she and her friends are entering. If only they’d listen to her ideas . . .
\nSophia is pragmatic. She’s big into boycotts, namely 1) relationships, 2) teen boys and their BO (reason #2347683 she’s a lesbian), and 3) Emma’s nauseating ideas. Forget starry-eyed romance, Sophia knows what will win: an artistic film with a message.
\nCue the drama. The movie is doomed before they even start shooting . . . until a real-life plot twist unfolds behind the camera when Emma and Sophia start seeing each other through a different lens. Suddenly their rivalry is starting to feel like an actual rom-com.
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When Natalie Campbell sets out on a class trip to Greece, she knows that checking off a summer bucket list with her best friend, Luca, sounds like the perfect way to deal (or rather, not deal) with her recent breakup - and the new OCD diagnosis she’s doing a beautiful job of ignoring. Ever since her controlling ex tried to isolate her from Luca and confirmed all the worst theories she’s ever had about romance, Natalie has promised to swear off dating.
\nBut when she grows closer with Melanie, their Greek instructor’s daughter, Natalie isn’t so sure about her challenge anymore. As Natalie finds herself sneaking on boat rides to hidden beaches, taking secret midnight hikes to ancient ruins, and jetting off to nearby islands with Melanie as her guide, her summer Greece adventure unexpectedly begins to heat up.
\nRomance is the last thing Natalie planned on for her summer bucket list, and strain on her friendship with Luca wasn’t in her plan, either. Amid the ancient Greek ruins, will Natalie learn to follow her heart before her chance at romance - and her friendships - could be ruined for good?
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After years of hard work, Hudson Greene is keen to launch her tenure-track career at the illustrious Coteau College. But her first day takes an unexpected turn when she walks into new faculty orientation and discovers that Callie Shaw - her unforgettable one-night stand from the local Pride festival - is also the dean of advising.
\nCallie loves guiding students through the chaos of academia, even if it means dealing with clueless professors. She goes with the flow, and her covert Shit Professors Say social media account provides an outlet for chronicling faculty missteps. Dating one, though? Definitely not on her syllabus.
\nMutual attraction proves hard to resist, and technically there’s no rule against faculty-staff relationships. But between campus politics and Callie’s secret, policy might be the least of their problems. Can Hudson and Callie navigate office hours and off-the-clock romance, or will their shot at love turn into an epic fail?
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“It’s just a puff piece about a farmer’s market, I said to myself. It’s not going to kill anyone.”
\nIt started out like any other morning for the Fact Checker. The piece, “Mandeville/Green,” didn’t raise any red flags. There were more pressing stories that week - it being 2004 New York City and all.
\n“Mandeville/Green” was a light, breezy look at a local farm called New Egypt, whose Ramapo tomatoes were quickly becoming the summer’s hottest produce. At first glance, the story seemed straightforward, but one line made the Fact Checker pause: a stray quote from a New Egypt volunteer named Sylvia making a cryptic reference to “nefarious business” at the farmer’s market. “People sell everything here,” she’s alleged to have said. “It ain’t all green.”
\nWhen Sylvia abruptly disappears the morning after an unexpectedly long night with the Fact Checker, he becomes obsessed with finding her. Did Sylvia discover something unsavory about New Egypt or its messianic owner? Is it possible she had some reason to fear for her safety? Or was it simply something the Fact Checker said?
\nStriking the perfect balance of humor, wonder, sadness, and poignancy, Austin Kelley’s debut novel takes readers on a quixotic quest from one hidden corner of New York City to another - from an underground supper club in the Financial District to an abandoned-boat-turned-anarchist-community-space on the Gowanus Canal. As the story develops, the Fact Checker begins to question his perception of what’s real and what’s not. Facts can be deceiving, after all, and if you aren’t careful, you might miss the truth right in front of your eyes.
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Zoe, the daughter of an MIT professor who grew up in her brother’s shadow, can envision her future anew at Harvard University. Jack, a boy in Zoe’s organic chemistry class with unruly hair and a gleam of competitiveness, matches her intellect and curiosity with every breath. When Jack refers Zoe for a position in a prestigious professor’s lab, the two become entwined as colleagues, staying up late to discuss scientific ideas. They find themselves on the cusp of a breakthrough: the promise of immortality through a novel anti-ageing drug.
\nZoe and Jack set off on their new project in secret. Finding encouraging results, they bring their work to an investor, drop out of Harvard, and form a startup. But after the money, the magazine covers, and the national news stories detailing their success, Zoe and Jack receive a startling accusation that threatens to destroy both the company they built and their partnership.
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Four years ago, a beautiful young heiress survived an attack that claimed the lives of both of her parents. The crime made headlines all over Los Angeles, both for the vicious nature of the killings and the seemingly random nature of the attack: nothing was stolen, and the van Aust family had no obvious enemies. Melia van Aust fled the city soon after the murders - which were never solved - but her brother Jasper has not been seen since.
\nAfter a childhood spent in the shadow of her famous parents, Rainey Hall understands the dynamics of a dysfunctional family. She still hasn’t recovered from a tragedy that tore her own family apart six years before. It's part of the reason why she started her own private investigation agency - to aid victims of crimes that might otherwise go unsolved.
\nWhen Melia returns to Los Angeles and moves back into her family home, someone begins sending her increasingly violent messages that allude to the killing of her parents. She hires Rainey to track down the culprit and find her missing brother. Touched by the similarities between their lives, Rainey feels compelled to protect Melia, even when it becomes clear that their relationship has become more than professional.
\nSoon, Rainey finds herself falling down the rabbit hole of Melia’s life. Her quest to find Melia’s stalker will bring her in contact with disgraced royals, seedy neighbors, violent ex-boyfriends and former staff, each one with their own set of secrets. As the threats against Melia escalate and the two women are drawn together, it’s only a matter of time before another victim turns up.
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While in high school, Rainey spent a summer taking advantage of the wildfires near Los Angeles to break into the empty houses of the rich and famous with her best friends, Alice and Spencer, committing small acts of larceny. These acts of rebellion culminated in a big theft from a powerful, well-connected musician with underworld ties. Days later, Alice went missing.
\nNow - nine years later - Rainey is private detective chasing a missing person case. Chloe, a young vulnerable artist with a history of substance abuse, disappeared from her parents' house without a trace. As she digs into the case, Rainey not only discovers a string of missing artists, but connections to Alice, a case that had gone cold years ago. Diving back into her own past and Alice’s disappearance, the investigation quickly becomes more twisted and dangerous than Rainey'd ever anticipated. She unearths a mysterious society steeped in drugs, art, and some of the most influential people in Los Angeles.
\nPowerful forces begin to close in on Rainey as she finds herself in a race against time to save Chloe - and finally reveal the truth of what happened to Alice all those years ago.
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A newly minted secret agent, Emma's barely graduated from basic training when she gets the call for her first major assignment. Eager to serve her country and prove her worth, she dives in headfirst.
\nEmma must covertly travel across one of the world’s most watched cities to bring the reluctant - and handsome - son of Russian dissidents into protective custody, so long as the assassins from the Motherland don’t find him first. With London’s famous Ring of Steel hacked by the Russian government, the two must cross the city without being seen by the hundreds of thousands of CCTV cameras that document every inch of the city’s streets, alleys, and gutters.
\nBuses, subways, cars, and trains are out of the question. Traveling on foot, and operating without phones or bank cards that could reveal their location or identity, they have twelve hours to make it to safety. This will take all of Emma’s skills of disguise and subterfuge. But when Emma’s handler goes dark, there’s no one left to trust. And just one wrong move will get them both killed.
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After a painful divorce, Maya Landry is in desperate need of a fresh start, which she finds deep in the Rocky Mountains of Montana. Maya’s relieved when she’s hired as a summer keeper of billionaire-owned ski lodges left empty after snow season ends, and her new life of peace and isolation is going exactly as hoped . . . until she stumbles across a dead body on the living room floor of one of the lodges. There's no cell service on the resort, and by the time she’s able to find signal and call the police, the body is gone. In fact, there is no evidence that there ever was a body there at all.
\nThe police think Maya is unstable, and she’s not convinced they are wrong. But then a stranger walks up to her later that night and tells her that someone knows she was up on the mountain that day - someone willing to kill to keep their secrets. She's not sure whether to believe him, until the killers come for her in the dead of night. Maya narrowly escapes, only to find that same mysterious man waiting to rush her away. But can she trust him? Can she trust anyone?
\nOnly one thing is the people who committed the murder are coming for her. Maya is the only person alive who might reveal what happened up on the mountain. And they want her gone.
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An MI6 operative is found dead, locked in a suitcase inside his own apartment. Despite an exhaustive search, no fingerprints are found at the scene. Emma Makepeace and her handler, Ripley, know an assassination when they see one, and such an obvious murder can mean only one Someone is sending a message.
\nAs she digs into his past, Emma discovers that the unfortunate spy had been investigating two Russian oligarchs based in London. He’d become obsessed with the idea that the two were spies, aided by a third man - whose identity he had yet to uncover. When he shared his findings within MI6 in the weeks before he died, the response came back fast and Drop the investigation and move on. Had he uncovered a secret that cost him his life?
\nTo pick up where he left off without ending up in a suitcase of her own, Emma goes undercover on one of the oligarch’s million-dollar yachts, scheduled to set sail from the Côte d’Azur to Monaco. Under other circumstances, this would be a dream vacation. But if Emma’s real identity gets discovered, it’s a death sentence.
\nAs Emma’s work reveals secrets she’d be safer not knowing, the danger ratchets up. The killer may be closer to home than any of them imagined, and Emma won’t be safe until he - or she - is caught.
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By encouraging massive accumulations of debt from its underclass, a single corporation, Caerus, controls all aspects of society.
\nInesa lives with her brother in a half-sunken town where they scrape by running a taxidermy shop. Unbeknownst to Inesa, their cruel and indolent mother has accrued an enormous debt - enough to qualify one of her children for Caerus’s livestreamed assassination spectacle: the Lamb’s Gauntlet.
\nMelinoë is a Caerus assassin, trained to track and kill the sacrificial Lambs. The product of neural reconditioning and physiological alteration, she is a living weapon, known for her cold brutality and deadly beauty. She has never failed to assassinate one of her marks.
\nWhen Inesa learns that her mother has offered her as a sacrifice, at first she despairs - the Gauntlet is always a bloodbath for the impoverished debtors. But she’s had years of practice surviving in the apocalyptic wastes, and with the help of her hunter brother, she might stand a chance of staying alive.
\nFor Melinoë, this is a game she can’t afford to lose. Despite her reputation for mercilessness, she is haunted by painful flashbacks. After her last Gauntlet, where she broke down on livestream, she desperately needs redemption.
\nAs Mel pursues Inesa across the wasteland, both girls begin to question everything: Inesa wonders if there’s more to life than survival, while Mel wonders if she’s capable of more than killing . . . and both wonder if, against all odds, they might be falling in love.
Once there was an island where the dead walked the earth, and seven noble houses ruled by the arcane secrets of necromancy.
\nA conqueror’s blade brought them low, burning their libraries, killing their lords, and extinguishing their eldritch magic.
\nBut defiant against the new order stands the House of Teeth and its last living members: beautiful Marozia, the heiress to the House, and her cousin, the uncanny Lady Agnes.
\nThough she has not spoken a word in seven years, Agnes is the true carrier of the House’s legacy. And she has her orders. She must recapture the secrets of death magic and avenge her family’s fallen honor. She must arrange the betrothal of her beloved cousin Marozia to Liuprand, heir to the conqueror’s throne, for access to the forbidden library in his grotesquely grand castle.
\nRevenge burns in Agnes’s heart but so do stranger passions - and it is Liuprand, the golden prince, who speaks to her soul. This passion is as treasonous as it is powerful, poisoning the kingdom’s roots and threatening to tear the already shattered realm in two.
\nFor Agnes’s final order is the gravest: She must not fall in love.
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A reimagining of Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s most famous villainess, giving her a voice, a past, and a power that transforms the story men have written for her.
\nThe Lady knows the stories: how her eyes induce madness in men.
\nThe Lady knows she will be wed to the Scottish brute, who does not leave his warrior ways behind when he comes to the marriage bed.
\nThe Lady knows his hostile, suspicious court will be a game of strategy, requiring all of her wiles and hidden witchcraft to survive.
\nBut the Lady does not know her husband has occult secrets of his own. She does not know that prophecy girds him like armor. She does not know that her magic is greater and more dangerous, and that it will threaten the order of the world.
\nShe does not know this yet. But she will.
Effy Sayre has always believed in fairy tales. Haunted by visions of the Fairy King since childhood, she’s had no choice. Her tattered copy of Angharad - Emrys Myrddin’s epic about a mortal girl who falls in love with the Fairy King, then destroys him - is the only thing keeping her afloat. So when Myrddin’s family announces a contest to redesign the late author’s estate, Effy feels certain it’s her destiny.
\nBut musty, decrepit Hiraeth Manor is an impossible task, and its residents are far from welcoming. Including Preston Héloury, a stodgy young literature scholar determined to expose Myrddin as a fraud. As the two rivals piece together clues about Myrddin’s legacy, dark forces, both mortal and magical, conspire against them - and the truth may bring them both to ruin.
All stories come to an end.
\nEffy learned that when she defeated the Fairy King. Even though she may never know exactly what happened at Hiraeth, she is free of her nightmares and is able to pen a thesis with Preston on the beloved national fairy tale Angharad. She has finally earned a spot at the literature college, making her the first woman in history to enroll.
\nBut some dreams are dangerous, especially when they come true. The entire university - and soon the entire nation - is waiting for her to fail. With the Fairy King defeated and Myrddin’s legacy exposed, Effy can no longer escape into fantasy. Who is she without her stories?
\nWith Effy under threat, Preston is surprised to discover a rage simmering inside him, ringing in his ears like bells. He begins to dream of a palace under the sea, a world where he is king - visions that start to follow him even in waking.
\nAs the war between Llyr and Argant explodes, Effy and Preston find themselves caught in the crossfire: Effy losing her dreams and Preston losing himself in his.
\nAre dreams ever truly just dreams?
In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline - her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered.
\nBut when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Évike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they have no choice but to rely on each other. Except he’s no ordinary Woodsman - he’s the disgraced prince, Gáspár Bárány, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power. Gáspár fears that his cruelly zealous brother plans to seize the throne and instigate a violent reign that would damn the pagans and the Yehuli alike. As the son of a reviled foreign queen, Gáspár understands what it’s like to be an outcast, and he and Évike make a tenuous pact to stop his brother.
\nAs their mission takes them from the bitter northern tundra to the smog-choked capital, their mutual loathing slowly turns to affection, bound by a shared history of alienation and oppression. However, trust can easily turn to betrayal, and as Évike reconnects with her estranged father and discovers her own hidden magic, she and Gáspár need to decide whose side they’re on, and what they’re willing to give up for a nation that never cared for them at all.
Sisters Esme, Piper, and Regina go on their annual visit to their remote summer house on Lake George expecting a tense vacation. Each has their own families to deal with plus their own secrets to hide. Esme, the oldest sister, is desperate to keep up appearances after discovering her husband’s infidelity with the one person who hurts her the most. Piper, the middle child, has a four-month-old baby boy and is too tired to keep playing peacekeeper to her siblings. Regina, the youngest, is a sarcastic rule breaker with a secret to hide that could cost her everything.
\nAfter tension boils over into an ugly fight late one night, the sisters go off in separate directions. Like most of their blowouts, they think they’ll cool off and resume the trip like normal the next morning. Only this time when dawn comes, a young woman’s body is discovered in the lake. As a criminal investigation narrows in on their family home, it becomes clear that the sister’s web of lies and secrets is inextricably linked to the woman in the lake.
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The very last person anyone should worry about is Emma. Yes, hi, she’s an alcoholic. But she’s officially been sober for one entire year. That’s twelve months of better health. Fifty-two whole weeks of focusing on nothing but her nine-to-five office job, group meetings, and avoiding the kind of bad decisions that previously left her awash in shame and regret. It’s also been 365 days of not dating. And with her new dating profile, Emma, 26, of New York is ready to put herself back out there.
\nExcept - was dating always this complicated? And did Emma’s mother really have to choose now to move in with her new boyfriend? Being assigned to plan her office’s holiday party feels like icing on the suddenly very overwhelming cake until her estranged father reappears with devastating news. Icing, meet cherry on top. But then there’s Ben, the charming IT guy who, despite Emma’s awkwardness and shortcomings, seems to maybe actually get her?
\nSobriety is turning out to be far from the flawless future Emma had once envisioned for herself, but as she allows herself to open up to Ben and confront difficult past relationships, she’s beginning to realise that taking things one day at a time might just be the perfectly imperfect path she’s meant to be on.
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At RoboWok's inception, no one knew the effect the automated wok would have on the world of food. Now, four characters, each on a journey of self-discovery, must find a way to create their own legacies.
\nDavid is a wildly successful entrepreneur. One catch, though - he's peaked early. Having founded RoboWok with the help of a small, dedicated team he then quickly forgot, he has sold the company for an outlandish sum. He now spends his days puttering about in his mansion, musing on what further challenge might be out there for him and fielding constant calls from his father, Bernard.
\nBernard is calculatingly keen for the world - and above all the other members of his gentlemen's club - to know that David was produced with his own excellent genetics. And he's constantly working to railroad his son into contrived appearances at the club to advertise their family's superiority.
\nNatasha, a team member whom David promptly forgot, is existentially adrift after the sale of RoboWok to a corporate buyer. No puttering about in large mansions for her though. Instead, it's mindless overwork for a new, mindless boss. She's riddled with doubts that she'll never have the courage to break free.
\nMaria, a member of David's cleaning staff, is also racked by doubts. Desperate to escape her life of poverty and thankless work, she comes up with a plan, though it may not exactly be legal.
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Sori has worked her whole life to become a K-pop idol, until she realises she doesn’t want a life forever in the spotlight. But that’s not actually up to Sori - she’s caught between her exacting mother’s entertainment company and her father’s presidential aspirations. And as the pressure to keep her flawless public image grows, the last person she should be thinking about is her ex-boyfriend.
\nNathaniel is off limits - she knows this. A member of one of the biggest K-pop bands in the world and forbidden from dating, he isn’t any more of an option now than he was two years ago. Still, she can’t forget that their whirlwind romance was the last time she remembers being really happy. Or that his family welcomed her into their home when she needed it most . . .
\nSo when Nathaniel finds himself rocked by scandal, Sori offers him a hideaway with her. And back in close quarters, it’s hard to deny their old feelings. But when Sori gets an opportunity to break free from her parent’s expectations, she will have to decide: Is her future worth sacrificing for a second chance at love?
The battle is over, but the war is just beginning . . .
\nWith the help of her friends and allies, Ren managed to topple the General's insurrection, but the Floating World and its territories are still under threat of attack from the rival Volmaran Empire. And worse, she was powerless to save Sunho from being overcome by the monstrous power in his blood. Now he's gone, transformed into a feral, deadly creature that doesn't even recognize her anymore, and her heart aches for the sweet boy she's grown to love.
\nBut the escalating war will not pause for her grief. Seen by some as a heavenly saviour and others merely a figurehead to be manipulated, Ren must use all her courage and cunning to survive the royal court's game long enough to find Sunho and bring him home before he loses himself to the Demon forever.
Sunho lives in the Under World, a land of perpetual darkness. An ex-soldier, he can remember little of his life from before two years ago, when he woke up alone with only his name and his sword. Now he does odd-jobs to scrape by, until he comes across the score of a lifetime - a chest of coins for any mercenary who can hunt down a girl who wields silver light.
\nMeanwhile, far to the east, Ren is a cheerful and spirited acrobat traveling with her adoptive family and performing at villages. But everything changes during one of their festival performances when the village is attacked by a horrific humanlike demon. In a moment of fear and rage, Ren releases a blast of silver light - a power she has kept hidden since childhood - and kills the monster. But her efforts are not in time to prevent her adoptive family from suffering a devastating loss, or to save her beloved uncle from being grievously wounded.
\nDetermined to save him from succumbing to the poisoned wound, Ren sets off over the mountains, where the creature came from - and from where Ren herself fled ten years ago. Her path sets her on a collision course with Sunho, but he doesn't realise she's the girl that he - and a hundred other swords-for-hire - is looking for. As the two grow closer through their travels, they come to realise that their pasts - and destinies - are far more entwined than either of them could have imagined . . .
Deadly storms have ravaged Mina’s homeland for generations. Floods sweep away entire villages, while bloody wars are waged over the few remaining resources. Her people believe the Sea God, once their protector, now curses them with death and despair. In an attempt to appease him, each year a beautiful maiden is thrown into the sea to serve as the Sea God’s bride, in the hopes that one day the “true bride” will be chosen and end the suffering.
\nMany believe that Shim Cheong, the most beautiful girl in the village - and the beloved of Mina’s older brother Joon - may be the legendary true bride. But on the night Cheong is to be sacrificed, Joon follows Cheong out to sea, even knowing that to interfere is a death sentence. To save her brother, Mina throws herself into the water in Cheong’s stead.
\nSwept away to the Spirit Realm, a magical city of lesser gods and mythical beasts, Mina seeks out the Sea God, only to find him caught in an enchanted sleep. With the help of a mysterious young man named Shin - as well as a motley crew of demons, gods and spirits - Mina sets out to wake the Sea God and bring an end to the killer storms once and for all.
\nBut she doesn’t have much time: A human cannot live long in the land of the spirits. And there are those who would do anything to keep the Sea God from waking . . .
Cello prodigy Jenny has one goal: to get into a prestigious music conservatory. When she meets mysterious, handsome Jaewoo in her uncle’s Los Angeles karaoke bar, it’s clear he’s the kind of boy who would uproot her careful plans. But in a moment of spontaneity, she allows him to pull her out of her comfort zone for one unforgettable night of adventure . . . before he disappears without a word.
\nThree months later, when Jenny and her mother arrive in South Korea to take care of her ailing grandmother, she’s shocked to discover that Jaewoo is a student at the same elite arts academy where she’s enrolled for the semester. And he’s not just any student. He’s a member of one of the biggest K-pop bands in the world - and he’s strictly forbidden from dating.
\nWhen a relationship means throwing Jenny’s life off the path she’s spent years mapping out, she’ll have to decide once and for all just how much she’s willing to risk for love.
Magic doesn't exist in the broken city of Lkossa anymore, especially for girls like sixteen-year-old Koffi. Indentured to the notorious Night Zoo, she cares for its fearsome and magical creatures to pay off her family's debts and secure their eventual freedom. But the night her loved ones' own safety is threatened by the Zoo's cruel master, Koffi unleashes a power she doesn't fully understand - and the consequences are dire.
\nAs the second son of a decorated hero, Ekon is all but destined to become a Son of the Six - an elite warrior - and uphold a family legacy. But on the night of his final rite of passage, a fire upends his plans. In its midst, Ekon not only encounters the Shetani - a vicious monster that has plagued the city and his nightmares for nearly a century - but a curious girl who seems to have the power to ward off the beast. Koffi's power ultimately saves Ekon's life, but his choice to let her flee dooms his hopes of becoming a warrior.
\nDesperate to redeem himself, Ekon vows to hunt the Shetani down and end its reign of terror, but he can't do it alone. Meanwhile, Koffi believes finding the Shetani and selling it for a profit could be the key to solving her own problems. Koffi and Ekon - each keeping their true motives secret from the other - form a tentative alliance and enter into the unknowns of the Greater Jungle, a world steeped in wild magic and untold dangers. The hunt begins. But it quickly becomes unclear whether they are the hunters or the hunted.
Koffi, gifted with powerful magic, has saved the boy she loves - at a terrible price. Now Koffi is a servant to the god of death, and must choose between the life she once had, or the life she could have if she truly embraced her power.
\nEkon is on the run from the ancient brotherhood he betrayed, and desperate to find Koffi: the girl who saved his life. But as he treks into the greater wilds of Eshoza in search of her, he must also contend with secrets his ancestors never wanted him to know.
\nSeparated by land, sea, and gods, Koffi and Ekon will have to risk everything. But the longer they're kept apart, the harder their loyalties are tested.
Meddy has spent her whole life as a footnote in someone else’s story. Out of place next to her beautiful, immortal sisters and her parents - both gods, albeit minor ones - she dreams of leaving her family’s island for a life of adventure. So when she catches the eye of the goddess Athena, who invites her to train as an esteemed priestess in her temple, Meddy leaps at the chance to see the world beyond her home.
\nIn Athens’ colorful market streets and the clandestine chambers of the temple, Meddy flourishes in her role as Athena’s favored acolyte, getting her first tastes of purpose and power. But when she is noticed by another Olympian, Poseidon, a drunken night between girl and god ends in violence, and the course of Meddy’s promising future is suddenly and irrevocably altered.
\nHer locs transformed into snakes as punishment for a crime she did not commit, Medusa must embrace a new identity - not as a victim, but as a vigilante - and with it, the chance to write her own story as mortal, martyr, and myth.
\nExploding with rage, heartbreak, and love, I, Medusa portrays a young woman caught in the cross currents between her heart’s deepest desires and the cruel, careless games the Olympian gods play.
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Miss Alice Lockey, daughter of a tenant farmer, has by dint of hard work, innate intelligence, and a cunning ability to predict the moods of her betters, raised herself to the lofty status of lady’s maid at Alderwick Park. Though her mother has advised Alice to work only until marriage, Alice has thus far resisted the temptations of matrimony among the neighboring widowers and pig farmers, more content to enjoy the fruits of her labor - or at least the portion of it her father will share after it is paid to him. Alice spends her days arranging Lady Jemima Alderwick’s blond hair into the latest French styles, chignons and plaits, laundering her lady’s surprisingly malodorous petticoats and drawers, and carefully sewing all manner of fripperies, ribbons, lace, and silk flowers, to her lady’s bonnets and gowns.
\nBut when a visiting servant, a valet named Charlie Wells, catches her eye, Alice begins to understand the constraints of her position. In a ploy to spend time with the object of her affection, Alice attempts to arrange a romance between Lady Jemima Alderwick and Charlie’s employer, one Baronet Sir Nigel Wynstowe. If only they would fall in love - then Alice and Charlie might live together as man and wife! Challenged by Lady Jemima’s love for another and Sir Wynstowe’s eccentric personality, Alice must use all of her cunning to bring about this unlikely romantic union.
\nWill this low-born servant successfully manipulate the hearts of these lords and ladies? Will Charlie and Alice ever improve their stations? Or, as the beginning of women’s suffrage begins to percolate in the drawing rooms and salons of London, will Alice discover a different sort of path for herself?
\nA deliciously funny, gorgeously detailed, utter enthralling novel, A Perfect Hand is a glorious novel of class, gender, and England on the cusp of enormous change.
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In 1990, a boat of asylum seekers leaves war-torn Sri Lanka, bound for Australia. When a mother dies on the journey, her three young daughters are separated and scattered across the country.
\nYears later, the eldest, Janu, still remembers the home she left and the sisters she's lost. Having freed herself from the grip of a painful childhood, she builds a life for herself in a coastal town, running a small shop called Serendib, where the air hums with memory and people come to find what they didn't know they were searching for.
\nIn Melbourne, Samar, the middle sister, dances to speak the words she cannot say, pouring her longing and restlessness into movement, while in Sydney, Maryam, the youngest, finds magic in language, always searching for a place to belong.
\nAs Janu discovers clues to her sisters' identities and begins the quest to bring them together, they all face the question: can something broken for so long ever be made whole again?
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Yejide and Akin have been married since they met and fell in love at university. Though many expected Akin to take several wives, he and Yejide have always agreed: polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage - after consulting fertility doctors and healers, trying strange teas and unlikely cures - Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still has time - until her family arrives on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin's second wife.
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Furious, shocked, and livid with jealousy, Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to get pregnant, which, finally, she does, but at a cost far greater than she could have dared to imagine.
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An electrifying novel of enormous emotional power, Stay With Me asks how much we can sacrifice for the sake of family.
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Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace.
He has looks and wealth, she has charm and elegance. You might not want to like them, but you do. Though, you’d like to get to know Grace better.
But it’s difficult, because you realise Jack and Grace are never apart.
Some might call this true love. Others might ask why Grace never answers the phone. Or how she can never meet for coffee, even though she doesn’t work. How she can cook such elaborate meals but remain so slim. And why there are bars on one of the bedroom windows.
Sometimes, the perfect marriage is the perfect lie.
Cass is having a hard time since the night she saw the car in the woods, on the winding rural road, in the middle of a downpour, with the woman sitting inside - the woman who was killed. She’s been trying to put the crime out of her mind; what could she have done, really? It’s a dangerous road to be on in the middle of a storm. Her husband would be furious if he knew she’d broken her promise not to take that shortcut home. And she probably would only have been hurt herself if she’d stopped.
But since then, she’s been forgetting every little thing: where she left the car, if she took her pills, the alarm code, why she ordered a pram when she doesn’t have a baby.
The only thing she can’t forget is that woman, the woman she might have saved, and the terrible nagging guilt.
Or the silent calls she’s receiving, or the feeling that someone’s watching her . . .
A young British couple are driving through France on holiday when they stop for gas. He runs in to pay, she stays in the car. When he returns her car door has been left open, but she's not inside. No one ever sees her again.
Ten years later he's engaged to be married; he's happy, and his past is only a tiny part his life now. Until he comes home from work and finds his new wife-to-be is sitting on their sofa. She's turning something over in her fingers, holding it up to the light. Something that would have no worth to anyone else, something only he and she would know about because his wife is the sister of his missing first love.
As more and more questions are raised, their marriage becomes strained. Has his first love somehow come back to him after all this time? Or is the person who took her playing games with his mind?
It’s Livia’s 40th birthday and she’s having the party of a lifetime to make up for the wedding she never had. Everyone she loves will be there except her daughter Marnie, who’s studying abroad. But although Livia loves Marnie, she’s secretly glad she won’t be at the party. She needs to tell Adam something about their daughter but she’s waiting until the party is over so they can have this last happy time together.
Adam wants everything to be perfect for Livia so he’s secretly arranged for Marnie to come home and surprise her on her birthday. During the day, he hears some terrible news. He needs to tell Livia, because how can the party go on? But she’s so happy, so excited - and the guests are about to arrive.
The Dilemma - how far would you go to give someone you love a last few hours of happiness?
One day that will change a family forever.
Iris and Gabriel have just arrived home from a make-or-break holiday. But a shock awaits them. One of their closest friends, Laure, is in their house. The atmosphere quickly becomes tense as she oversteps again and sleeping in their bed, wearing Iris' clothes, even rearranging the furniture.
\nLaure has walked out on her husband - and their good friend - Pierre, over his confession of an affair and a secret child. Iris and Gabriel want to be supportive of their friends, but as Laure's mood becomes increasingly unpredictable, her presence takes its toll.
\nIris and Gabriel's only respite comes in the form of a couple new to town. But with them comes their gardener, who has a checkered past. Soon, secrets from all their pasts will unravel, some more dangerous than they could have known.
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Michael wanted to back out of this trip to the South of France after his wife left him, but his sister and their friends wouldn’t hear of it. His fellow houseguest Rupert isn’t in the mood, either, having recently been widowed.
\nBut rather than bonding, Michael is unsettled by Rupert’s constant needling. That and the bug bites are enough to suck the life right out of an idyllic holiday.
When Alice and Leo move into a newly renovated house in The Circle, a gated community of exclusive houses, it is everything they’ve dreamed of. But appearances can be deceptive . . .
As Alice is getting to know her neighbours, she discovers a devastating secret about her new home, and begins to feel a strong connection with Nina, the therapist who lived there before.
Alice becomes obsessed with trying to piece together what happened two years before. But no one wants to talk about it. Her neighbors are keeping secrets and things are not as perfect as they seem . . .
Nell Masters is certain someone is following her. The hairs on the back of her neck rise when she travels to and from work, there are silent calls to her office, and a huge bouquet of flowers arrives without a card. And Nell has a reason to be looking over her shoulder, because she has a secret that she’s hiding from everyone in her life, including her new partner, Alex. But Alex also has secrets of his own.
\nFourteen years earlier, when Nell went by the name Elle Nugent, she witnessed a student, Bryony Sanders, getting into a stranger’s car. When Bryony was found murdered, Elle became obsessed with finding the person responsible. She was convinced she knew who it was and her fixation with Brett Parker, the man she accused, led her down a dangerous path . . .
\nNow, Nell tries to convince herself that this unnerving feeling of being watched is all in her mind. Has someone from her past discovered her new identity? Has the stalker become the stalked? Or is there something even more deadly at play?
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It’s just another day on the job for state trooper Louisa Linebach. Hundreds of young men go missing from Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula every year, so when Lee Stanton and Branden Halifax both disappear within days of each other, Louisa doesn’t think much of it. One appears to be a simple suicide, but the other defies all explanation, with the victim’s footprints literally vanishing along an abandoned mountain runway.
\nAs Louisa and her partner investigate, they encounter alien conspiracy theories, a town where all the inhabitants live in one building, and signs of a drug trade that’s inextricably mingled with the tourist industry around Seward. Their investigation is further complicated by a police chief who’s unwilling to let his friend be investigated and Louisa’s feelings for Anna Fenway, the local medical examiner.
\nWhen a body is identified and buried, Louisa thinks the case is coming to a close. She’s wrong.
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Special Liaison to the FBI Louisa Linebach may have defied all odds by identifying the bodies of three missing men in the Kenai Peninsula, but she won’t be satisfied until the man she’s sure is responsible for their murders is behind bars.
\nMr. Drew is secretive, smart, rich, and well-connected, and it’s going to take more than regular police procedure to catch him. Louisa has a plan - a stakeout with Kenai Fjords National Park as home base. As Louisa watches Mr. Drew’s crew coming and going, she begins to put together how the operation works with the help of Seward Police Chief Mikey Harper; Louisa’s love-interest, medical examiner Anna Fenway; and National Parks Service ranger Dolly Agapov, who has a very personal reason for wanting the mysteries surrounding Mr. Drew solved.
\nThe case is turned upside down when Dolly’s grandchild, Ryne, goes missing - and it’s not clear whether Ryne’s been ensnared by the crime ring, or if they’re risking their life to help Louisa. Only one thing is for sure. If Louisa doesn’t catch Mr. Drew soon, the body count will rise.
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At eighteen, Bailey Williams bolted from her strict Mormon upbringing to a Marine recruiting office to enlist as a 2600 - a military linguist. But the first language the Marine Corps taught her wasn’t Arabic, Farsi, or Dari. It was how Marines speak to, and about, women. There are only three kinds of women in the Marine Corps, she was told: you can be a bitch, a dyke, or a whore.
\nDetermined to prove she’s not whatever it is the men around her believe a woman to be, Private Williams turned to an eating disorder, intending to show her discipline through the visible testament of bone. She ran endurance distances on an increasingly Spartan diet, shoving through her own body’s resistance. Pushed to the brink by a leadership and a culture that demands women shrink themselves, she finally looked to the girls around her, and began to wonder what else she’s losing. Quietly but inexorably, the power of other women’s stories whispered an alternative path to what it means to be a woman, and a warrior.
\nHollow is a story for anyone whose identity has been prescribed to them - and has dared question if there is another way to live.
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Seventeen-year-old Milde is from the Outskirts, a place beyond the mountains where the dirt is corpse-rich, where mothers and daughters make their living banished from society - without rights, access to care, or legal status. But Milde refuses to accept the order of things, so one day, together with some friends, she throws Molotov cocktails at the urban planning office in the city.
\nWhen Milde is framed as the instigator of the riot, she is arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and eventually presented with a final choice: to be executed publicly or to be launched into space, into a black hole called the Mass, for an experiment. Milde chooses the Mass - opting to face its fathomless depth and loneliness rather than hurt the morale of her weary allies back home.
\nEvent Horizon is an exquisite existential novel, dark as deep space, woven with reflection on oppression, solidarity, trauma, and loss. With a completely unique voice, Balsam Karam writes about the swirl of hope and despair in the lives of the marginalised and a young woman’s unwavering belief in a better world.
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An incredible memoir about one man’s journey to heal from trauma through chosen family, friendship, and nature.
\nBanning Lyon was an average 15-year-old, living in Dallas, TX. He enjoyed skateboarding, listening to punk rock, and even had a part-time job. But in January 1987 his life quickly changed after a school guidance counselor falsely believed he was suicidal after giving away his skateboard. Days later he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and what he was told would be a two-week stay turned into 353 days that would change his life forever.
\nBanning takes readers through his fraught relationship with his family, the mistreatment he suffered at the hospital, the lawsuit against the owners of the facility, and his desire to make sense of what happened to him. We witness Banning navigate the difficult landscape of trauma and his daily battle to live a normal life.
\nAfter years of highs and lows that include being adopted by his attorney and mentor, falling in love and grieving the death of his fiancée, and being sued by the same doctors who mistreated him, Banning decides to take control of his life and finds hope in the backcountry of Yosemite National Park, where he discovers new purpose in being a backpacking guide. Through friendship, nature, and eventually giving therapy another chance, Banning summons the courage to keep moving forward.
\nThe Chair and The Valley is a raw, gut-wrenching, and amazing story about healing from trauma and starting over. It is a testament to the importance of chosen family, the restorative power of nature, and the strength it takes to build a new life in the face of fear and doubt.
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In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency - a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.
Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office.
Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond.
We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorises Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden.
A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective - the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organiser tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible.
This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama’s conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.
Two longtime friends share an intimate and urgent conversation about life, music, and their enduring love of America, with all its challenges and contradictions, in this stunningly produced expansion of their groundbreaking Higher Ground podcast, featuring more than 350 photographs, exclusive bonus content, and never-before-seen archival material.
\nRenegades: Born in the USA is a candid, revealing, and entertaining dialogue between President Barack Obama and legendary musician Bruce Springsteen that explores everything from their origin stories and career-defining moments to our country’s polarised politics and the growing distance between the American Dream and the American reality.
\nFilled with full-color photographs and rare archival material, it is a compelling and beautifully illustrated portrait of two outsiders - one Black and one white - looking for a way to connect their unconventional searches for meaning, identity, and community with the American story itself.
In 1218 an extraordinary princess is born, whose mystical powers and unquenchable spirit will alter the course of history . . .
\nRaised by her fiercely Welsh nurse to support the Celtic cause against the predatory English king, Princess Eleyne is taught to worship the old gods, to look into the future and sometimes the past. However, unable to identify time and place in her terrifying visions, she is powerless to avert forthcoming tragedy . . .
\nRemarkable events follow Eleyne all her life as, despite impassioned resistance, her world is shaped by powerful men. But her tempestuous life and loves tie her to the destinies of England, Scotland and Wales . . .
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Two thousand years ago, as the Romans invade Britannia, the princess who will become the powerful queen of the great tribe of the Brigantes watches the enemies of her people come ever closer. Cartimandua's world is, from the start, a maelstrom of love and conflict, revenge and retribution.
\nIn the present day, Edinburgh-based historian Viv Lloyd Rees has immersed herself in the legends surrounding the Celtic queen. She has written a book and is working on a dramatisation of the young queen's life with the help of actress Pat Hebden.
\nCartimandua's life takes one unexpected turn after another as tragedy changes the course of her future. The young queen has formidable enemies - among them Venutios, her childhood sparring partner, and Medb, a woman whose jealously threatens not only her happiness but her life.
\nViv's Head of Department, Hugh Graham, hounds her as she struggles to hide her visions of Cartimandua and her conviction that they are real. Her obsession grows ever more persistent and threatening as she takes possession of an ancient brooch that carries a curse. Both Pat and Hugh are drawn into this dual existence of passion and jealousy, of bitter rivalry and overwhelming love as past envelops present and the trio find themselves facing the greatest danger of their lives.
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A nest of vipers, they called us. But that is not how it was. Mercia, 775 AD.
\nIn the grand Saxon halls of Mercia, King Offa rules with ruthless ambition. Aggressive and relentlessly acquisitive, his three daughters are destined to marry advantageously in service of their country. Eadburh, the youngest, is neither the cleverest nor the most beautiful of the three. But, with her father’s ruthless spirit and the secret gifts passed down from her mother, she is determined to carve her own path in the world.
\n2021. Simon Armstrong has escaped to a secluded cottage on the English-Welsh borders, desperate to finish his book about Anglo-Saxon King Offa. But he soon finds himself disturbed by unsettling noises and visions. Calling in local expert Bea to identify the issue, Simon hopes to get back some peace - but soon Bea is as embroiled as he is, feeling increasingly connected to a ghostly presence that is growing ever-stronger in its desire for revenge. And when Simon’s daughter disappears, centuries of secrets and resentment begin to tumble out . . .
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Ruth has returned to Edinburgh after many years of exile. Left rootless by the death of her estranged father, she is faced with the daunting task of sorting through his possessions. Amidst the dust of her old life, Ruth discovers a hidden diary from the eighteenth century, written by her ancestor, Thomas Erskine. As she sifts through the ancient pages of the past, Ruth is pulled into a story that she can’t escape.
\nAs the youngest son of a noble family Thomas’ life started in genteel poverty, but his extraordinary experiences propel him from the high seas to Lord Chancellor. Yet, on his journey through life, he makes a powerful enemy who hounds him to the death - and beyond.
\nRuth has opened a door to the past that she can’t close, and meets a ghost in her family tree who wasn’t invited. She will have to draw upon new friends and old in what will become a battle for her very survival . . .
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The parish of Manningtree and Mistley has a dark history. In 1644, Cromwell's Witchfinder General tortured scores of women there, including Liza the herbalist, whose cottage still stands. Some say the spirits of his victims still haunt the old shop on the High Street . . .
\nEmma Dickson gave up her high-flying career to live in Liza’s cottage, but as Halloween approaches, visions of a terrible past are driving her to madness. In despair, Emma turns to the local rector for help, but he, too, is in the grip of something inexplicably dangerous . . .
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When Joss Grant, adopted at birth, inherits Belheddon Hall - a beautiful old house on the East Anglian coast - it is like a dream come true. Eager to begin a new life there with Luke, her husband, and Tom, her small son, she is also impatient to find out about her newly discovered family who lived there for generations.
\nBut not long after they move in, Tom wakes screaming at night. Joss hears echoing voices and senses an invisible presence, watching her from the shadows. Are they spirits from the past? Or is she imagining them? As she learns, with mounting horror, of Belheddon's tragic and dramatic history, her fear grows very real, for she realises that both her family and her own sanity are at the mercy of a violent and powerful energy which seems beyond anyone's control.
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Clare Royland appears to have it all, but her marriage is a lonely one, strained further by husband Paul's financial cares. She is haunted too by a strange, growing fascination with an ancestress from the distant past, which fuels her feelings of isolation. Troubled by inexplicable dreams that terrify but also powerfully compel her, Clare is forced to look back through the centuries for an answer.
\nIn 1306, Scotland is at war. Isobel, Countess of Buchan, faces fear and the prospect of untimely death as the fighting surrounds her. But passionate and headstrong, her trials escalate when she is persecuted for her part in crowning Robert the Bruce, her lover.
\nDuncairn, Isobel's home and Clare's beloved heritage, becomes a battleground for passions that span the centuries. As Paul's recklessness threatens their security, Clare must fight to save Duncairn, and to save herself from the powers of Isobel . . .
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After a broken love affair, biographer Kate Kennedy retires to a remote cottage on the wild Essex coast to work on her new book, until her landlord's daughter uncovers a Roman site nearby and long-buried passions are unleashed.
\nIn her lonely cottage, Kate is terrorised by mysterious forces. What do these ghosts want? Should the truth about the violent events of long ago be exposed or remain concealed? Kate must struggle for her life against earthbound spirits and ancient curses as hate, jealousy, revenge and passion do battle across the centuries . . .
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Adam Craig is fourteen when, near an isolated Celtic stone in the wild Scottish Highlands, he meets Brid, whose exotic, gypsy-like dress and strange attitudes fascinate him. They become friends, and, in time, passionate lovers. She leads him, unsuspecting, into the sixth century, where - training as a Druid priestess - she has mastered their ancient mysteries and powerful, dangerous magic.
\nIn her obsession with Adam, Brid is seen as a traitor by her people, only escaping death by following Adam to Edinburgh when he leaves home to study medicine.
\nAs the years pass Adam makes new friends, and finds new love. But Brid, consumed by jealousy, haunts him like an evil shadow until, fifty years on, Adam’s granddaughter, Beth, helps him discover the secret that will free them from the terror of Brid’s curse.
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Hay-On-Wye, 1400 - War is brewing in the Welsh borders, Catrin is on the brink of womanhood and falling in love for the first time. Her father is a soothsayer, playing a dangerous game playing on the mixed loyalties and furious rivalries between welsh princes and English lords. For two hundred years, the Welsh people have lain under the English yoke, dreaming of independence.
\nAnd finally it looks as though the charismatic Owain Glyndwr may be the man legend talks of. In the walls of Sleeper’s Castle, Catrin finds herself caught in the middle of a doomed war as she is called upon to foretell Wales’s destiny . . . And what she sees, is blood and war coming closer . . .
\nHay, 2015. Miranda has moved to Sleeper’s Castle to escape and grieve. Slowly she feels herself coming to life in the solitude of the mountains. But every time she closes her eyes her dreams become more vivid. And she makes a connection with a young girl, who’s screaming, who’s reaching out . . . who only Miranda can help. Is she losing herself to time?
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The land of the Silures, 382 AD: Elen is a princess promised to a general of Rome. Macsen came to Wales seeking an alliance that would advance his quest for power. Despite warnings her marriage is destined for heartache, Elen is determined to honour her vows. But this union will change her destiny forever . . .
\nCamp Meadow, 2024: Cadi is a writer who has discovered Elen’s lost story. As she puts pen to paper, she hears the sound of ghostly marching feet. Opening the gate to the ancient meadow behind her cottage, could the secret behind Elen’s fate lie closer than she thinks? But someone is desperate to keep the past buried, plotting to destroy the meadow . . . Can Cadi uncover Elen’s story before it’s lost to time?
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In present-day Cambridge, Abi, a recently ordained priest of the Church of England, is appointed to a notoriously difficult parish. The priest in charge is the charismatic but fundamentalist Kier. He objects to her mysticism, her practice of healing in particular.
\nWhen she sees a vision of a congregation in an old church, Kier accuses her of witchcraft, but Abi soon sees more visions; an entire Roman family history, dark with betrayal and a promise of bloody revenge.
\nWith foreboding forces building up to violence, Abi must battle the approaching terror along with her own personal demons, drawing upon the expertise of Druidry and shamanism from a questionable source . . .
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When Jess is attacked by someone she once trusted, she flees to her sister's house in the Welsh borders to recuperate. But she is disturbed by the cries of a mysterious child.
\nTwo thousand years before, the same valley is the site of a great battle between Caratacus, king of the British tribes, and the invanding Romans. The proud king is captured and taken as a prisioner to Rome with his wife and daughter, the princess Eigon.
\nJess is powerfully drawn to investigate Eigon's story, and is compelled to go to Rome herself. There lie the elements that will reveal Eigon's astonishing life - and which threaten to reawaken Jess's own tormentor . . .
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Recently divorced, Anna Coburn decides to cheer herself up by retracing a journey her great-grandmother, Louisa, a renowned artist, made in the mid-nineteenth century - a Nile cruise from Luxor to the Valley of the Kings. Anna carries with her two of Louisa's possessions - an ancient Egyptian scent bottle, and an illustrated diary of the original cruise that has lain unread for a hundred years.
\nAs she follows in Louisa's footsteps, Anna discovers in the diary a wonderful love story from the Victorian past, and the chilling, more distant secret of the little glass bottle. Meanwhile, two men from the tour party are showing a disturbing interest in these mementos, and developing an unfriendly rivalry for Anna's attention.
\nAnd, most frightening of all, Anna finds herself the victim of a haunting, a spectral presence that grows in strength and threat as the dramatic stories from three different eras intertwine in a terrifying climax . . .
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Cassidy Clarke never planned to chase killers. Her true-crime podcast, Mysteries Uncorked, started as a side project - just three friends, a few glasses of wine, and unsolved cases that fascinated them. But when their audience explodes, the women decide to go on location for their next the disappearance of a young woman from a coastal inn in Maine.
\nFor Cassidy, the case hits close to home. The missing woman was last seen at the Stonecross Inn, which is run by the grandmother she’s never met. Ellen Clarke makes one thing clear when they arrive: she doesn’t want them there. But the microphones are already live, and the listeners are hooked.
\nAs Cassidy and Tessa dig deeper, they uncover whispers of other women who came to Stonecross and never left. The locals refuse to talk. And Ellen knows far more than she’ll say.
\nThen another woman vanishes. Cassidy’s podcast goes viral, and someone decides it’s time to cut her mic for good.
Recently and abruptly divorced Veronica Barrington is anxious for a new direction when she answers a listing for a travel companion. It’s from Mariah Ellsworth, a young woman adjusting to an injury that ended her Olympic career. She’s also grieving her mother, Rachel, a lauded food writer, and Mariah aims to trace the steps of her mother’s final, unfinished project so she can heal and also honor the woman she misses.
\nVeronica seizes on the opportunity to experience with Mariah the culture, traditions, and intoxicating aromas of Parsi cafés throughout London, Paris, Morocco, and India. Accompanied by a former war photographer who has a wounded history of his own, and with just Rachel’s letters to guide them, the quest is a chance to not only close a chapter in life but also begin a new one.
\nFollowing the letters one by one - each a clue to an illuminating mystery - Veronica and Mariah must face the painful and beautiful challenges of freeing themselves from the dark shadows of the past. Together, far from home, they can find the light.
In the wake of a personal tragedy, four women face the past, their futures, and each other in a novel of broken ties and healing.
\nWhen famed chef Augustus Beauvais dies, he leaves behind a celebrated reputation - and four women grappling with loss, anger, pain, and the question of how the world will turn without him . . .
\nMeadow, the ex-wife with whom Augustus built an empire - and a family - still holds a place for him in her heart, even as she continues to struggle with his infidelities, which ended their twenty-year marriage. More unforgiving is Maya, his estranged daughter, who’s recently out of rehab but finally ready to reclaim her life. Norah, his latest girlfriend, sidelined her own career for unexpected love and a life of luxury, both of which are now gone with Augustus. And then there’s Rory, Meadow’s daughter, the voice of calm and reason in a chorus of discontent.
\nAs Meadow, Maya, Norah, and Rory are flung together by tragedy, grief, and secrets yet to be revealed, they must accept - or turn away from - the legacy of great intentions and bad decisions Augustus left them. And when the circumstances around his death are called into question, their conflicted feelings become even more complicated. But moving forward is the only choice they have, and to do so, they’ll need to rely on family, friendship, and inner strength.
\nSet on the stunning, rugged California coastline, This Place of Wonder is an emotional, lush, and empowering story of four women finding their way in a changed world - and what a wondrous journey it will be.
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Demeter just wants to do her job: shuttling humans between Earth and Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, her passengers keep dying - and not from equipment failures, as her AI medical system, Steward, would have her believe. These are paranormal murders, and they began when one nasty, ancient vampire decided to board Demeter and kill all her humans.
\nTo keep from getting decommissioned, Demeter must join forces with her own team: A werewolf. An engineer built from the dead. A pharaoh with otherworldly powers. A vampire with a grudge. A fleet of cheerful spider drones. Together, this motley crew will face down the ultimate evil - Dracula.
\nThe queer love child of pulp horror and classic sci-fi, Of Monsters and Mainframes is a dazzling, heartfelt odyssey that probes what it means to be one of society’s monsters - and explores the many types of friendship that make us human.
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With one revelation, her world will shift forever. Rebecca has everything she ever dreamed of in life. A family, a beautiful home and good friends. When Callie moves into the house across the street, Rebecca is quick to welcome the young writer into the tightly-knit community of Autumn Leaves.
\nShe has no idea that Callie will confront her with a truth about herself she might not be ready to face. All Callie wanted was to flee the big city and finish her latest book in peace, but life in the small town comes with unexpected temptation and danger.
Back at work after a forced leave of absence, Jordan feels like she has a lot to prove: To Ellie, their friends and colleagues, and to the public she's sworn to protect.
\nThe shocking history of a dead man and a rising body count are testing her resilience. Jordan, Ellie and their friends work hard to bring closure to multiple families while racing against the clock to save the lives of two missing men.
\nMeanwhile, the arrival of a mysterious package sheds doubt on the outcome of a recent incident . . .
Did George Wilder die in prison serving a life sentence for a crime he didn’t commit? A reporter asks Ellie on behalf of Wilder’s family to look into the decades old murder. When initial inquiries raise doubts about Wilder’s guilt, Ellie thinks that the real killer might have gone unpunished, but she doesn’t have much time to prove her theory.
\nJordan gets more than she bargains for when she accepts a tip from a detective with another precinct. The murder of a local store owner turns out to have international implications.
\nTogether, Jordan and Ellie work on the most important project of their lives…
Can you trust your first impressions?
\nDetective Ellie Harding has everything she wanted: After getting promoted and marrying the love of her life, she is working on a high profile case. None of it could prepare her for a life-changing surprise.
\nJordan and Derek are investigating a double homicide that confronts them with the ugly realities of human trafficking. Did the two men fall victim to turf wars or vigilante justice?
\nThe search for closure comes with unexpected revelations . . and dangers.
Wendy Tillis goes missing after an appointment at the Women’s Health Center, a clinic that has been the target of violent opposition. For Detective Luce Allen, who returns to work days after her own procedure, it’s personal. Soon, the investigation takes a tragic turn, and the detective newly assigned to the case is someone Luce knows all too well.
\nThey soon discover that more women are missing.
\nHaving to navigate hostile witnesses, office politics, and her own personal experience, Luce turns to her friend Dr. Kendra Jones for comfort. Their relationship is on the verge of moving beyond friendship, when Luce gets too close to danger . . .
Jordan is ready to go back to work after her maternity leave, but an unexpected incident puts a halt to her plans.
\nMeanwhile, Ellie is assigned to a task force investigating two suspicious deaths in a women's correctional facility. Even on the sidelines, this temporary assignment proves to be difficult.
\nMore than ever, they have to rely on the strength of their relationship to meet the challenges ahead...
The desperate search for Ellie continues. Can they get to her in time? As Jordan focuses all her efforts on finding Ellie, she must deal with her birthmother’s constant attempts at reconnecting.
\nMeanwhile, Ellie tries to reason with the kidnapper whose agenda is unclear. Jordan, along with their friends and colleagues, works to prevent another loss for the department, and a catastrophe for the city.
After surviving an attack by a stranger, rookie officer Ellie Harding decides to put herself first and make bold moves in both her career and her private life, refusing to let the traumatic incident get her off track.
Detective Jordan Carpenter faces the decision whether to remain in a disastrous, but long-term relationship or give in to the attraction she feels for her younger colleague. Her partner Bethany isn’t willing to let go, of Jordan or the case, a sadistic killer who murders women for behavior he considers immoral.
Can they find him before he strikes again?
Murder and marriage…
\nOn her first assignment as a detective, Ellie investigates the murder of a homeless woman, a task that is complicated by the actions of her new partner. How far did the leader of a neighborhood watch go to achieve his goals? Jordan’s case comes with unwelcome memories. Planning the wedding is shining a spotlight on her difficult relationship with her biological mother, while Ellie has to confront her own grief.
\nProfessional and private challenges will arise as they continue build their life together.
Jordan and Ellie are looking forward to a weekend away with their daughter, but an incident at the precinct derails their plans.
\nEllie must make difficult decisions for the safety of her friends, while Jordan’s visit to a witness doesn’t go as planned.
\nTheir tightly knit group has survived many close calls, but have they reached their limits? And with their own house in trouble, will the public still trust them?
\nJordan and Ellie might face one of their most serious challenges yet - while the past is never far behind.
Jordan and Ellie have little time to deal with the events surrounding Jordan’s biological father. A young woman is missing, and Ellie is determined to bring her home safe. Meanwhile, one of their informants is shot in plain daylight, another wounded, and they soon discover that these might not be isolated incidents.
\nWho is coming after the women and men who have provided them with crucial information?
\nAs the threads unravel, Jordan and Ellie learn that the answer might lie closer to home than they think . . .
Jordan and Ellie’s weekend getaway with friends is harshly interrupted when a desperate man asks for help after his girlfriend is hurt. He soon gives them reason to doubt his story, leaving them to question whether the woman’s death is really a tragic accident or the result of a crime. Working with the local sheriff, they try to unravel the events.
Meanwhile, Ellie and Derek team up to investigate the murder of an exotic dancer. What they uncover could have detrimental consequences for one of their own…
Jordan and Ellie get ready to welcome an addition to their family.
The murder of a young woman turns out to be a case of unexpected dimensions: Jordan and Ellie learn that it is linked to the Prophets of Better Days, a cult suspected of criminal activities in multiple states.
\nUncovering the truth takes some old and new allies, and it might come at a higher cost than any of them imagined…
The assassination of a politician hits close to home for Jordan and Ellie, and it leaves the team with many unanswered questions. Was the perpetrator working alone, or part of an organised network planning more attacks?
\nJordan is settling into her new role after her promotion, while both she and Ellie are dealing with an unexpected guest.
\nIn order to get justice for the victim’s family, they have to figure out who has an interest in keeping them from solving the case. Their enemy might be more powerful than they imagined . . .
When it rains, it pours: Jordan and Ellie make tentative steps towards a new start in their relationship. At the same time, the hunt for an escaped felon puts pressure on every member of the department.
\nProtecting a witness ends fatally for one of their own, and the case reveals disturbing details in Jordan’s family history. Their biggest challenges, professionally and personally, are yet to come.
Jordan and Ellie are moving forward with their plans to get a home together, though not everything happens as intended. Ellie’s career isn’t accelerating as much as she had hoped. Jordan deals with the puzzling murder case of a college student, and the trial of the Prophets of Better Days is coming up.
\nJordan and Ellie have to shield a young witness from some cult members, while being confronted with another kind of cult with particular interests, operating somewhere in the depths of the Internet. The past is never far behind…
Jordan and Ellie try to navigate their lives in a drastically changed environment.
\nHaving kept their family safe through the worst, both detectives are confronted with cases that hit close to
\nJordan is called to a crime scene related to obvious neglect of a child. When the boy survives, she has to figure out not only who is responsible, but how to keep him and his sister safe.
\nEllie’s murder investigation takes a turn when she realizes she’s familiar with one of the persons of She and Miles Clairmont, son of a wealthy local family, dated briefly in high school. Is it possible he’s completely oblivious to his father’s ties to organised crime, or does he have his own agenda?
\nIn challenging times, Jordan and Ellie once again rely on each other, and their friends and family to make it through.
Sometimes, the best laid plans are not. Chelsea and Gail are engaged to get married. Their relationship is safe, comfortable, and without conflict. According to Tonya Gray, it also lacks the passion one should feel for the person you commit to for the rest of your life.
\nChelsea may not trust her because Tonya broke her heart three years ago. As the date nears, Chelsea has to figure out if love means what she has with her fiancée, or what she could have with the woman she cannot forget.
Jordan and Ellie are back from their well-deserved vacation. While Ellie is still dealing with the aftermath of her abduction, Jordan investigates the murder of a rich businessman. Gerald Ashcroft was a benefactor for many and seemed to have no enemies.
\nDid one of his heirs have a reason to want him dead, or is the murderer someone else close to the wealthy victim?
\nWhile trying to catch a ruthless killer, they also have to figure out how to deal with Kathryn’s continued efforts to make amends.
Detectives Carpenter and Harding are used to bizarre cases, but this one might take the cake: sightings of scary clowns, murders, a gruesome find on the grounds of an abandoned amusement park. Did someone’s prank go horribly wrong, or is there something more sinister behind the incidents?
\nWhile Jordan, Ellie and their friends work hard to solve the case so citizens can have a safe holiday, another case brings up difficult memories.
\nMeanwhile, Kathryn needs help with a problem that might have far-reaching consequences for their family . . .
What does not kill love...makes it stronger. Callie has a hard decision to make when her ex, Nicole tries to blackmail her with an old secret. The timing could not be worse as Maggie still suffers from nightmares related to previous traumatic events.
\nAndy, a new resident, is eager to make friends and promote the prejudice Callie and Rebecca have grown tired of. They have learned that trust is the most important thing in a relationship, and when you have it, hate cannot touch you.
Rebecca and Callie plan to visit the family of Dina’s boyfriend. They are in for some surprises before they can go on their journey. David has news that brings yet more changes for Dina, and therefore all of the family. Andy’s whereabouts are revealed by an unexpected source.
Callie and Rebecca’s Italian adventure turns out to be an exploration of the past as well as the future. In her book series, Callie’s characters say I Do, but is it too early to think about this question in her real life?
Sarah Burke and her daughter Poppy have vanished. Luce and her colleague, Detective Ritter, have several suspects, including the ex-husband, who claims Sarah struggled as a parent, and her new boyfriend. As they put the clues together, the city is shaken by another horrifying incident. Addressing this new crisis quickly becomes priority.
\nUnder pressure to solve both cases, Luce doesn’t have a lot of time to deal with her recent ordeal, or her developing relationship with Kendra - though the latter is what keeps her going when hope is hard to find.
For Callie and Rebecca, finding each other was the easy part. In the follow-up to Autumn Leaves, Rebecca and Callie have made a commitment to their relationship. New challenges arise as Rebecca continues to find her identity.
\nCallie is confronted with an ex she would have preferred to avoid. Nicole wants to be back together with her, and she uses all her manipulative skills trying to achieve that goal. With a new minister in town, and an unexpected threat, Rebecca and Callie will face even bigger trials and find out how much their new-found love can take.
The assassin Girton Club-foot and his master have returned to Maniyadoc in hope of finding sanctuary, but death, as always, dogs Girton’s heels. The place he knew no longer exists. War rages across Maniyadoc, with three kings claiming the same crown - and one of them is Girton’s old friend Rufra.
\nGirton finds himself hurrying to uncover a plot to murder Rufra on what should be the day of the king’s greatest victory. But while Girton deals with threats inside and outside Rufra’s war encampment, he can’t help wondering if his greatest enemy hides beneath his own skin.
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Isaac is Hannah’s entire world. She knows that her son is gifted, and that those gifts make him vulnerable. To keep him safe, she spends every waking moment by his side. If she lets her guard down, lets him out of her sight, lets him show what he’s capable of, he will be taken from her.
\nWhen the Soundfield arrived twenty years ago, the world changed with it. Now, people are forced to live at night due to the deadly heat of the day, food and water are scarce, and everyday life is punctuated by the constant and disconcerting hum from the Field. A brilliant scientist, Hannah spent her early career working on the enigma of the Soundfield, looking for answers; now, resigned, she has focussed all her energies on keeping Isaac living, not just alive.
\nTo do so, she will have to lie to the people she knows and hope she can trust the ones she doesn't. Because the only thing more dangerous than her lies, is the truth of what she has done.
At the age of ninety-six, Isaac Dahl sits down to write his memoir. For Isaac, an accomplished journalist and historian, finding the right words to convey events is never a problem. But this book will be different from anything he has written before. Focusing on twelve different days, each encapsulated in a chapter, Isaac hopes to distill the very essence of his life.
\nThere are days that begin like any other, only to morph through twists of fate. An avalanche strikes Bingham, Utah, and eight-year-old Isaac and his twin sister, Agnes, survive when they are trapped in an upside-down bathtub. Other days stand apart in history - including a day in 1942, when Isaac, stationed on the USS Houston in the Java Sea as a rookie correspondent, confronts the full horror of war. And there are days spent simply, with his lifelong friend, Bo, or with Danny, the younger man whose love transforms Isaac’s later years - precious days with significance that grows clear only in hindsight.
\nFrom the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to a Mississippi school at the apex of the civil rights movement, Isaac tells his story with insight, wisdom, and emotional depth. The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl is a wonderful, singular narrative that will spark conversation and reflection - a reminder that there is no such thing as an ordinary life, and the greatest accomplishment of all is to live and love fully.
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Land Between the Rivers is the result of ten years of research, writing, and thinking about the subject. It is an enormous topic: five thousand years, beginning with Gilgamesh at the edge of historical time. It is a big topic in another way. More than anywhere else, the famous Land Between the Rivers, where civilisation was born, where East and West have mixed and clashed since long before Alexander, has led an existence that could be called, from a certain perspective, a history of the world.
\nWe begin the story with ancient Sumer, and Gilgamesh building the walls of Uruk ('Iraq') to make a great name for himself around the turn of the third millennium BC. We end it in 1958, as the last royal family of Iraq is slaughtered on the steps of a small royal palace in Baghdad, the most effervescent, free, and promising capital in the Middle East.
\nAbove all, the story of Iraq, the world's hinge country, is that of the great clash pitting humanism against the outlooks of power and fate.
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Nur, a young Palestinian refugee from a camp near Ramallah, is often mistaken for an Ashkenazi Jew. Fluent in Hebrew and with a degree in archaeology, he dreams of freedom beyond the fences of the camp - and of writing a novel about Mary Magdalene based on the Gnostic Gospels. When he discovers an Israeli ID card in the pocket of a secondhand coat, he assumes a false identity and is hired for an archaeological dig near Megiddo. Passing as an Israeli, he moves through a world previously off-limits, gaining insight into the lives and beliefs of those he’s been taught to see as enemies.
\nBut as Nur’s borrowed identity deepens, so does the rift between Nur, the Palestinian, and “Ur,” the Israeli. By exploring this internal conflict, unfolding alongside friendships and love affairs, Bassem Khandaqji offers a meditation on the personal toll of occupation and the elusive desire to belong somewhere - fully, honestly, and without fear.
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On the surface, Marisa's life looks enviable. She lives in a beautiful apartment in the center of Madrid, she has a hot neighbor who is always around to sleep with her, and she’s rapidly risen through the ranks at an advertising agency. And yet she’s drowning in a dark hole of existential dread induced by the expectations of corporate life.
\nMarisa hates her job and everyone at it. She spends her working hours locked in her office hiding from her coworkers, bingeing YouTube videos, and taking Valium. When she has the time, she escapes to her favorite museum where she contemplates the meaning of human life while staring at Hieronymus Bosch paintings, or trying to get hit by a car so she can go on disability.
\nBut Marisa's success, which is largely built on lies and work she's stolen from other people, is in danger of being unraveled when she's forced to go on her company’s annual team-building retreat. Isolated in the Spanish mountains, surrounded by a psychopathic boss, overly enthusiastic co-workers who revel in their exploitation, a flirty retreat staff, and haunted by a deeply-buried memory about a past coworker, Marisa is pushed to the brink of a complete spiral.
\nA darkly funny, provocative, and incisive tale of our modern times, Discontent explores the unease we bury eight hours a day, and how explosive it is when it rises to the surface.
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There’s been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead - under bizarre circumstances - in the castle tower’s book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour.
\nNow it seems, the castle has done him in . . . or, possibly, one of the castle’s guests has. Detective Chief Inspector Euan McIntosh, a local with no love for this literary American show-off (or Americans in general), finds himself with the unenviable task of extracting statements from three American lady novelists.
\nThe prime suspects are Kat de Noir, a slinky, sexy erotica writer; Cassie Pringle, a Southern mom of six juggling multiple cozy mystery series; and Emma Endicott, a New England blue blood and author of critically acclaimed historical fiction. The women claim to be best friends writing a book a historical novel about the castle’s lurid past and its debauched laird, who himself ended up creatively murdered. But the authors’ stories about how they know Brett Saffron Presley don’t quite line up, and the detective is getting increasingly suspicious.
\nWhy did the authors really come to Castle Kinloch? Is the murder of the long-ago laird somehow connected with the playboy author’s unfortunate demise? And what really happened the night of the great Kinloch ceilidh, when Brett Saffron Presley skipped the folk dancing for a rendezvous with death?
June 1946. As the residents of Winthrop Island prepare for the first summer season after the sacrifice of war, a glamorous new figure moves into the guest cottage at Summerly, the idyllic seaside estate of the wealthy Peabody family. To Emilia Winthrop, daughter of Summerly’s year-round caretaker and a descendant of the island’s settlers, Olive Rainsford opens a window into a world of shining possibility.
\nWhile Emilia spent the war years caring for her incapacitated mother, Olive traveled the world, married fascinating men, and involved herself in political causes. She’s also the beloved aunt of the two surviving Peabody sons, Amory and Shep, with whom Emilia has a tangled romantic history.
\nAs the summer wears on, Emilia develops a deep rapport with Olive, who urges her to leave the island for a life of adventure, while romance blossoms with the sturdy and honorable Shep. But the heady promise of Peabody patronage is blown apart by the arrival of Sumner Fox, an FBI agent who demands Emilia’s help to capture a Soviet agent who’s transmitting vital intelligence on the West’s atomic weapon program from somewhere inside the Summerly estate.
\nApril 1954. Eight years later, Summerly is boarded up and Emilia has rebuilt her shattered life as a professor at Wellesley College, when shocking news arrives from Washington - the traitor she helped convict is about to be swapped for an American spy imprisoned in the Soviet Union, but with a mysterious condition only Emilia can fulfill. A reluctant Emilia is summoned to CIA headquarters, where she’s forced to confront the harrowing consequences of her actions that fateful summer, and a choice that could destroy the Peabody family - and Emilia’s chance for redemption - all over again.
The Bahamas, 1941. Newly-widowed Leonora “Lulu” Randolph arrives in Nassau to investigate the Governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all, American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier. What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise, a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires?
\nOr so Lulu imagines. But as she infiltrates the Duke and Duchess’s social circle, and the powerful cabal that controls the islands’ political and financial affairs, she uncovers evidence that beneath the glister of Wallis and Edward’s marriage lies an ugly - and even treasonous - reality. In fact, Windsor-era Nassau seethes with spies, financial swindles, and racial tension, and in the middle of it all stands Benedict Thorpe: a scientist of tremendous charm and murky national loyalties. Inevitably, the willful and wounded Lulu falls in love.
\nThen Nassau’s wealthiest man is murdered in one of the most notorious cases of the century, and the resulting coverup reeks of royal privilege. Benedict Thorpe disappears without a trace, and Lulu embarks on a journey to London and beyond to unpick Thorpe’s complicated family history: a fateful love affair, a wartime tragedy, and a mother from whom all joy is stolen.
\nThe stories of two unforgettable women thread together in this extraordinary epic of espionage, sacrifice, human love, and human courage, set against a shocking true crime . . . and the rise and fall of a legendary royal couple.
New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads - her ten-year-old son, Sam, had been airlifted from summer camp with acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom, leaving him fighting for his life.
\nNow, searching for the donor kidney that will give her son a chance for a normal life, Mallory’s forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952, and her own all-consuming summer romance fourteen years earlier with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams - one of the world’s most beloved singer-songwriters - a fairy tale cut short by a devastating betrayal.
\nCairo, 1951. After suffering tragedy beyond comprehension in the war, Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has forged a respectable new life for herself - marriage to a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah’s longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men . . . and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.
\nTimeless and bittersweet, Husbands & Lovers takes readers on an unforgettable journey of heartbreak and redemption, from the revolutionary fires of midcentury Egypt to the moneyed beaches of contemporary New England. Acclaimed author Beatriz Williams has written a poignant and beautifully voiced novel of deeply human characters entangled by morally complex issues - of privilege, class, and the female experience - inside worlds brought shimmeringly to life.
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2019: Andie Figuero has just landed her dream job as a producer of Mansion Makeover, a popular reality show about restoring America's most lavish historic houses. Andie has high hopes for her latest project: the once glorious but gently crumbling Sprague Hall in Newport, Rhode Island, summer resort of America's gilded class - famous for the lavish \"summer cottages\" of Vanderbilts and Belmonts. But Andie runs into trouble: the reclusive heiress who still lives in the mansion, Lucia \"Lucky\" Sprague, will only allow the show to go forward on two conditions: One, nobody speaks to her. Two, nobody touches the mansion's ruined boathouse.
\n1899: Ellen Daniels has been hired to give singing lessons to Miss Maybelle Sprague, a naive young Colorado mining heiress whose stepbrother John has poured their new money into buying a place among Newport's elite. John is determined to see Maybelle married off to a fortune-hunting Italian prince, and Ellen is supposed to polish up the girl for her launch into society. But the deceptively demure Ellen has her own checkered past, and she's hiding in plain sight at Sprague Hall.
\n1958: Lucia \"Lucky\" Sprague has always felt like an outsider at Sprague Hall. When she and her grandmother - the American-born Princess di Conti - fled Mussolini's Italy, it seemed natural to go back to the imposing Newport house Nana owned but hadn't seen since her marriage in 1899. Over the years, Lucky's lost her Italian accent and found a place for herself among the yachting set by marrying Stuyvesant Sprague, the alcoholic scion of her Sprague stepfamily. But one fateful night in the mansion's old boathouse will uncover a devastating truth . . . and change everything she thought she knew about her past.
\nAs the cameras roll on Mansion Makeover, the house begins to yield up the dark secrets the Spragues thought would stay hidden forever . . .
In the summer of 1951, Miranda Schuyler arrives on elite, secretive Winthrop Island in Long Island Sound as a naive eighteen year old, still reeling from the loss of her father in the Second World War.
\nAlthough a graduate of the exclusive Foxcroft Academy in Virginia, Miranda has always lived on the margins of high society.
\nWhen her beautiful mother marries Hugh Fisher, whose summer house on Winthrop overlooks the famous lighthouse, Miranda is catapulted into a heady new world of pedigrees and cocktails, status and swimming pools. Isobel Fisher, Miranda’s new stepsister - all long legs and world-weary bravado, engaged to a wealthy Island scion - is eager to draw Miranda into the arcane customs of Winthrop society.
But beneath the Island’s patrician surface, there are really two clans - the summer families with their steadfast ways and quiet obsessions, and the working class of Portuguese fishermen and domestic workers who earn their living on the water and in the laundries of the summer houses.
Uneasy among Isobel's privileged friends, Miranda finds herself drawn to Joseph Vargas, whose father keeps the lighthouse with his mysterious wife. In summer, Joseph helps his father in the lobster boats, but in the autumn he returns to Brown University, where he's determined to make something of himself. Since childhood, Joseph has enjoyed an intense, complex friendship with Isobel Fisher, and has a catastrophe that will shatter Winthrop’s hard-won tranquility and banish Miranda from the Island for nearly two decades.
Now, in the summer of 1969, Miranda returns at last, as a renowned Shakespearean actress hiding a terrible heartbreak. On its surface, the Island remains the same - determined to keep the outside world from its shores, fiercely loyal to those who belong. But the formerly powerful Fisher family is a shadow of itself, and Joseph Vargas has recently escaped the prison where he was incarcerated for the murder of Miranda’s stepfather eighteen years earlier.
What’s more, Miranda herself is no longer a naive teenager, and she begins a fierce, inexorable quest for justice to the man she once loved - even if it means uncovering every last one of the secrets that bind together the families of Winthrop Island.
Audrey Fisher has struggled all her life to emerge from the shadow of her famous mother by forging a career as a world-class chef. Meredith Fisher’s glamorous screen persona disguises the trauma of the tragic accident that haunts her dreams. Neither woman wants to return to the New England island they left behind and its complicated emotional ties, but Meredith has one last chance to sober up and salvage her big comeback, and where else but discreet, moneyed Winthrop Island can a famous actress spend the summer without the intrusion of other people?
\nUntil Audrey discovers an old wooden chest among the belongings of her estranged bartender father, Mike Kennedy, and the astonishing contents draw the women deep into Winthrop’s past and its many secrets . . . attracting the interest of their handsome neighbor, Sedge Peabody. How did a trove of paintings from one of America’s greatest artists wind up in the cellar of the Mohegan Inn? And who is the mysterious woman portrayed on every canvas?
\nOn a stormy November night in 1846, Providence Dare flees Boston and boards the luxury steamship Atlantic one step ahead of the law . . . or so she believes. But when a catastrophic accident leaves the ship at the mercy of a mighty gale, Providence finds herself trapped in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the one man who knows her real identity - the detective investigating the suspicious death of her employer, the painter Henry Irving. As the Atlantic fights for her life and the rocky shore of Winthrop Island edges closer, a desperate Providence searches for her chance to escape . . . before the sea swallows her without a trace.
\nIn Under the Stars, the destinies of three women converge across centuries, as a harrowing true disaster at the dawn of the steamship era evokes a complex legacy of family secrets in modern-day New England. Williams has written a timeless epic of mothers and daughters, of love lost and found, and of the truths that echo down generations.
Mercy has no place here.
\nOn Trinity, a metal world where the privileged live in the skies and the rest fight for water below, you do what you can to survive.
\n18-year-old Val knows this better than anyone. They’ve sacrificed everything to provide for their younger sisters. Using their outlawed teleportation powers, they've become the most infamous assassin-for-hire on Trinity, known as the Butcher.
\nNo one should be able to trace the Butcher to Val. But when things go horribly wrong on a routine mission and Val’s sisters are kidnapped by a gang in retaliation, it means that someone has to know the truth.
\nDesperate and friendless, Val has no one to turn to but their ex-childhood best friend turned vigilante thief. He broke their heart, but he owes them.
\nBut as Val fights for the return of their sisters, they start to realize there might be something much bigger at play . . . something that could upend everything they’ve ever known about Trinity.
\nVal’s journey will take them from a maximum security prison transport to the headquarters of the most powerful gang on Trinity, and all the way to the Gate of Heaven. Each more heavily guarded than the last.
\nGood thing the Butcher has never blinked at an extra casualty.
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Murphy was supposed to be settling into her junior year at the University of Illinois with her best friend, Kat. Instead, she’s stuck in a hellish suburban holding living with her parents, failing the same class that kept her from graduating the first time around, and making minimum wage at the same coffee shop she’s worked at since she was sixteen. It doesn't help that the dating pool for a twenty-one-year-old lesbian in the tiny town of Geneva, Illinois, is anemic at best.
\nWhen her and Kat’s long-awaited reunion is plagued by stuttering conversation and uninvited guests, Murphy’s resentment threatens to boil over. That is, until a miracle appears in the form of Ellie Meyers, a former classmate who is way cuter and not nearly as straight as Murphy remembers. Their heavy flirting holds the promise of something more . . . until Murphy learns that Ellie’s mom is the very professor preparing to flunk Murphy for a second semester in a row. Talk about killing the vibe.
\nRomance might be off the table, but Ellie could be Murphy’s key to getting into Professor Meyers’ good graces and finally getting out of Geneva. And Murphy - well-versed in defying parental expectations - might be Ellie’s chance to get her mother onboard with her own dreams.
\nTogether, they hatch a fake a relationship for a holiday weekend at the Meyers’ house. If everything goes according to plan, Ellie will be living her dream halfway across the country, and Murphy will finally be able to graduate community college and start her life in earnest. So, the fact that Murphy can’t stop thinking about Ellie’s lips on hers isn't relevant. It’s just a part played well.
\nRight?
\nA story about opening your heart to possibility, I'll Get Back To You is a giddy love letter to anyone in need of a bit of bravery to step up to the plate - and to the unending process of finding yourself.
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Two sisters examine what they owe each other and what they are willing to sacrifice to make their family dreams come true.
\nWhat would you give up for the person you love most? What would you expect in return?
\nMia and Cricket have always been close. The gifted daughters of a young single mother, the “Lowe girls” are well-known in the small Maine town they call home. Each sister has a role to fill: The responsible and academically minded Mia assumes the position of caregiver far too young, while Cricket, a bouncing ball of energy and talent, seems born for soccer stardom. But the cost of achieving athletic greatness comes at a steep price.
\nAs Mia and Cricket grow up, they must grapple with the legacy of their mother’s secret past while navigating their own precarious future. Can Mia allow herself to fall in love at the risk of repeating a terrible history? Will Cricket’s relentless chase of a lifelong goal drive her sister away? When does loyalty become self-sabotage?
\nA sharply observed and tender portrait of sisters, love, and ambition, Spectacular Things is a sweeping story about the impossible choices we’re forced to make in pursuit of our dreams.
Amelia Applebaum isn't in love with Walter Holland. He just happens to be her favorite moderately famous, chaotically bisexual YouTuber. Who she just happened to invite to prom. (But it's fine. No, for real. If you delete the post, it didn't happen.)
\nOkay, maybe her friends are right: She's slightly parasocially infatuated. But Amelia just knows sparks would fly - if only she could connect with Walter for real.
\nIf only he would host a meet and greet.
\nIf only it were just a short road trip away.
\nAnd if only Amelia could talk her best friends into making it the perfect last hurrah before graduation - even her newly single, always-cynical, guitar-toting best friend Natalie.
\nOne thing's for sure: All roads lead to butterflies.
\nBut what if Amelia's butterflies aren't for Walter at all?
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Imogen Scott may be hopelessly heterosexual, but she’s got the World’s Greatest Ally title locked down.
\nShe's never missed a Pride Alliance meeting. She knows more about queer media discourse than her very queer little sister. She even has two queer best friends. There's Gretchen, a fellow high school senior, who helps keep Imogen's biases in check. And then there's Lili - newly out and newly thriving with a cool new squad of queer college friends.
\nImogen's thrilled for Lili. Any ally would be. And now that she's finally visiting Lili on campus, she's bringing her ally A game. Any support Lili needs, Imogen's all in.
\nEven if that means bending the truth, just a little.
\nLike when Lili drops a tiny queer bombshell: she's told all her college friends that Imogen and Lili used to date. And none of them know that Imogen is a raging hetero - not even Lili’s best friend, Tessa.
\nOf course, the more time Imogen spends with chaotic, freckle-faced Tessa, the more she starts to wonder if her truth was ever all that straight to begin with . . .
Contrary to popular belief, best friends Kate Garfield and Anderson Walker are not codependent. Carpooling to and from theater rehearsals? Environmentally sound and efficient. Consulting each other on every single life decision? Basic good judgment. Pining for the same guys from afar? Shared crushes are more fun anyway.
\nBut when Kate and Andy's latest long-distance crush shows up at their school, everything goes off-script. Matt Olsson is talented and sweet, and Kate likes him. She really likes him. The only problem? So does Anderson.
\nTurns out, communal crushes aren't so fun when real feelings are involved. This one might even bring the curtains down on Kate and Anderson's friendship.
Leah Burke - girl-band drummer, master of deadpan, and Simon Spier’s best friend from the award-winning Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda - takes center stage in this novel of first love and senior-year angst. When it comes to drumming, Leah Burke is usually on beat - but real life isn’t always so rhythmic. An anomaly in her friend group, she’s the only child of a young, single mom, and her life is decidedly less privileged.
\nShe loves to draw but is too self-conscious to show it. And even though her mom knows she’s bisexual, she hasn’t mustered the courage to tell her friends - not even her openly gay BFF, Simon. So Leah really doesn’t know what to do when her rock-solid friend group starts to fracture in unexpected ways. With prom and college on the horizon, tensions are running high. It’s hard for Leah to strike the right note while the people she loves are fighting - especially when she realises she might love one of them more than she ever intended.
It's been more than a year since Simon and Blue turned their anonymous online flirtation into an IRL relationship, and just a few months since Abby and Leah's unforgettable night at senior prom.
\nNow the Creekwood High crew are first years at different colleges, navigating friendship and romance the way their story began - on email.
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Seventeen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso knows all about unrequited love - she’s lived through it twenty-six times. She crushes hard and crushes often, but always in secret. Because no matter how many times her twin sister, Cassie, tells her to woman up, Molly can’t stomach the idea of rejection. So she’s careful. Fat girls always have to be careful.
Then a cute new girl enters Cassie’s orbit, and for the first time ever, Molly’s cynical twin is a lovesick mess. Meanwhile, Molly’s totally not dying of loneliness - except for the part where she is. Luckily, Cassie’s new girlfriend comes with a cute hipster-boy sidekick. Will is funny and flirtatious and just might be perfect crush material. Maybe more than crush material. And if Molly can win him over, she’ll get her first kiss and she’ll get her twin back.
There’s only one problem: Molly’s coworker Reid. He’s an awkward Tolkien superfan with a season pass to the Ren Faire, and there’s absolutely no way Molly could fall for him. Right?
Jamie Goldberg is cool with volunteering for his local state senate candidate - as long as he's behind the scenes. When it comes to speaking to strangers (or, let's face it, speaking at all to almost anyone) Jamie's a choke artist. There's no way he'd ever knock on doors to ask people for their votes . . . until he meets Maya.
\nMaya Rehman's having the worst Ramadan ever. Her best friend is too busy to hang out, her summer trip is canceled, and now her parents are separating. Why her mother thinks the solution to her problems is political canvassing - with some awkward dude she hardly knows - is beyond her.
\nGoing door to door isn’t exactly glamorous, but maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world. After all, the polls are getting closer - and so are Maya and Jamie. Mastering local activism is one thing. Navigating the cross-cultural romance of the century is another thing entirely.
This summer, will three weekends in a Fire Island share house be enough time for Maggie Monroe to fix her life, find love, and make sure she doesn’t lose her friends for good?
\nIt’s been six years since Maggie followed her screenwriting dreams to Los Angeles and forgot to look back. But things in Hollywood didn’t go quite to plan. Now, twenty-five and suddenly home in New York, Maggie doesn’t know who she’s more anxious to her ex-boyfriend, Mac, or her ex–best friend, Liz.
\nFor Liz, Maggie is the girl who abandoned her at the worst possible moment and an unwelcome surprise who could derail her perfect summer. Liz is recently engaged to her high school sweetheart, Cam, but Maggie’s arrival brings old wounds bubbling to the surface, exposing the cracks in Liz’s apparent happily ever after.
\nWhen Maggie accepts her former friends' unexpected invitation to join in their summer share house, a rental named Serendipity, she knows it’s the chance she needs to get her life back on track. For three weekends, Maggie, Liz, Cam, Mac, and their closest friends will take the ferry to Ocean Beach, Fire Island, for some sun-kissed bliss, if only they can avoid the drama of their past catching up to the present.
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Lovelace was once merely a ship's artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in an new body, following a total system shut-down and reboot, she has no memory of what came before. As Lovelace learns to negotiate the universe and discover who she is, she makes friends with Pepper, an excitable engineer, who's determined to help her learn and grow.
Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that no matter how vast space is, two people can fill it together.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet introduced readers to the incredible world of Rosemary Harper, a young woman with a restless soul and secrets to keep. When she joined the crew of the Wayfarer, an intergalactic ship, she got more than she bargained for - and learned to live with, and love, her rag-tag collection of crewmates.
After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home.
\nThey hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.
\nBecky Chambers's new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?
It's been centuries since the robots of Earth gained self-awareness and laid down their tools.
\nCenturies since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again.
\nCenturies since they faded into myth and urban legend.
\nOne day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of \"what do people need?\" is answered.
\nBut the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.
\nThey're going to need to ask it a lot.
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Becky Chambers' new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?
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With no water, no air, and no native life, the planet Gora is unremarkable. The only thing it has going for it is a chance proximity to more popular worlds, making it a decent stopover for ships traveling between the wormholes that keep the Galactic Commons connected. If deep space is a highway, Gora is just your average truck stop.
At the Five-Hop One-Stop, long-haul spacers can stretch their legs (if they have legs, that is), and get fuel, transit permits, and assorted supplies. The Five-Hop is run by an enterprising alien and her sometimes helpful child, who work hard to provide a little piece of home to everyone passing through.
When a freak technological failure halts all traffic to and from Gora, three strangers - all different species with different aims - are thrown together at the Five-Hop. Grounded, with nothing to do but wait, the trio - an exiled artist with an appointment to keep, a cargo runner at a personal crossroads, and a mysterious individual doing her best to help those on the fringes - are compelled to confront where they’ve been, where they might go, and what they are, or could be, to each other.
In her new novella, Sunday Times best-selling author Becky Chambers imagines a future in which, instead of terraforming planets to sustain human life, explorers of the solar system instead transform themselves.
Adriane is one such explorer. As an astronaut on an extrasolar research vessel, she and her fellow crewmates sleep between worlds and wake up each time with different features. Her experience is one of fluid body and stable mind and of a unique perspective on the passage of time. Back on Earth, society changes dramatically from decade to decade, as it always does.
Ariadne may awaken to find that support for space exploration back home has waned, or that her country of birth no longer exists, or that a cult has arisen around their cosmic findings, only to dissolve once more by the next waking. But the moods of Earth have little bearing on their mission: to explore, to study, and to send their learnings home.
Taukiri was born into sorrow. Auē can be heard in the sound of the sea he loves and hates, and in the music he draws out of the guitar that was his father’s. It spills out of the gang violence that killed his father and sent his mother into hiding, and the shame he feels about abandoning his eight-year-old brother to a violent home.
But Ārama is braver than he looks, and he has a friend and his friend has a dog, and the three of them together might just be strong enough to turn back the tide of sorrow. As long as there’s aroha to give and stories to tell and a good supply of plasters.
In Auē, eight-year-old Ārama was taken by his brother, Taukiri, to live with Kat and Stu at the farm in Kaikōura, setting in motion the ensuing tragedy, which resulted in Stu’s death. Aunty Kat was at the centre of events, but, silenced by abuse, her voice was absent from the story.
\nIn Kataraina, Kat and her whānau take over the telling. As one, the famiily recounts her childhood and the time when she first began to feel the greenness of the swamp in her veins - the swamp that holds her tears and the tears of generations of tīpuna; the swamp on the land owned by Stu that has been growing since the day he was killed.
\nUnflinching in its portrayal of intergenerational trauma and violence, tender in its harnessing of the hope that future generations represent.
\nCompanion novel to Auē.
How do we go on when a loved one betrays us?
\nOn a chilly day in March of 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, Belle Burden’s husband of twenty years announced, with no prior warning, that he was leaving her.
\nHis decision shocked Belle to her core: she believed he was a happy man, a committed partner, and a devoted father to their three children. She thought he was a man who had settled into the life he had always wanted: a successful career, summers spent at their beloved home on Martha’s Vineyard, lots of tennis.
\nOvernight, he transformed from her steady companion into a stranger.
\nAs she pieces her life together in the wake of a loss she had never imagined coming, she finds she is much stronger than she ever expected. Belle reflects on her transformation from a shy, quiet girl, nicknamed ‘Belle the Good’ to a powerful, brave, determined woman. A woman who has learned to use her voice to expose the patriarchal structures that have forced women to be discreet and compliant for far too long.
\nBased on Belle’s popular ‘Modern Love’ essay, Was I Married to a Stranger?, this is the emotional and empowering memoir of self-discovery and what it means to finally be heard.
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There is a world hidden underneath this great city.
\nThe London Silver Vaults - or well over a century, the largest collection of silver for sale in the world. It has more locks than the Bank of England and more cameras than a celebrity punch-up. Not somewhere you can murder someone and vanish without a trace - only that’s what happened.
\nThe disappearing act, the reports of a blinding flash of light and memory loss amongst the witnesses all make this a case for Detective Constable Peter Grant and the Special Assessment Unit.
\nAlongside their boss DCI Thomas Nightingale, the SAU find themselves embroiled in a mystery that encompasses London’s tangled history, foreign lands and, most terrifying of all, the North!
\nAnd Peter must solve this case soon because back home his partner Beverley is expecting twins any day now. But what he doesn’t know is that he’s about to encounter something - and somebody - that nobody ever expects . . .
Ben Aaronovitch has stormed the bestseller list with his superb London crime series. A unique blend of police procedural, loving detail about the greatest character of all, London, and a dash of the supernatural.
\nA mutilated body in Crawley. Another killer on the loose. The prime suspect is one Robert Weil; an associate of the twisted magician known as the Faceless Man? Or just a common or garden serial killer?Before PC Peter Grant can get his head round the case a town planner going under a tube train and a stolen grimoire are adding to his case-load. So far so London.
\nBut then Peter gets word of something very odd happening in Elephant and Castle, on an housing estate designed by a nutter, built by charlatans and inhabited by the truly desperate.Is there a connection? And if there is, why oh why did it have to be South of the River?
\nFull of warmth, sly humour and a rich cornucopia of things you never knew about London, Aaronovitch's series has swiftly added Grant's magical London to Rebus' Edinburgh and Morse's Oxford as a destination of choice for those who love their crime with something a little extra.
Peter Grant is facing fatherhood, and an uncertain future, with equal amounts of panic and enthusiasm. Rather than sit around, he takes a job with émigré Silicon Valley tech genius Terrence Skinner's brand new London start up - the Serious Cybernetics Company.
\nDrawn into the orbit of Old Street's famous 'silicon roundabout', Peter must learn how to blend in with people who are both civilians and geekier than he is. Compared to his last job, Peter thinks it should be a doddle. But magic is not finished with Mama Grant's favourite son.
\nBecause Terrence Skinner has a secret hidden in the bowels of the SCC. A technology that stretches back to Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, and forward to the future of artificial intelligence. A secret that is just as magical as it technological - and just as dangerous.
In the fifth of his bestselling series Ben Aaronovitch takes Peter Grant out of whatever comfort zone he might have found and takes him out of London - to a small village in Herefordshire where the local police are reluctant to admit that there might be a supernatural element to the disappearance of some local children.
\nBut while you can take the London copper out of London you can't take the London out of the copper. Travelling west with Beverley Brook, Peter soon finds himself caught up in a deep mystery and having to tackle local cops and local gods. And what's more all the shops are closed by 4pm...
Martin Chorley, aka the Faceless Man, wanted for multiple counts of murder, fraud, and crimes against humanity, has been unmasked and is on the run. Peter Grant, Detective Constable and apprentice wizard, now plays a key role in an unprecedented joint operation to bring Chorley to justice.
But even as the unwieldy might of the Metropolitan Police bears down on its foe, Peter uncovers clues that Chorley, far from being finished, is executing the final stages of a long term plan. A plan that has its roots in London’s two thousand bloody years of history, and could literally bring the city to its knees.
To save his beloved city Peter’s going to need help from his former best friend and colleague - Lesley May - who brutally betrayed him and everything he thought she believed in. And, far worse, he might even have to come to terms with the malevolent supernatural killer and agent of chaos known as Mr Punch . . .
BODY AND SOUL
\nThe song. That’s what London constable and sorcerer’s apprentice Peter Grant first notices when he examines the corpse of Cyrus Wilkins, part-time jazz drummer and full-time accountant, who dropped dead of a heart attack while playing a gig at Soho’s 606 Club. The notes of the old jazz standard are rising from the body - a sure sign that something about the man’s death was not at all natural but instead supernatural.
\nBody and soul - they’re also what Peter will risk as he investigates a pattern of similar deaths in and around Soho. With the help of his superior officer, Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, the last registered wizard in England, and the assistance of beautiful jazz aficionado Simone Fitzwilliam, Peter will uncover a deadly magical menace - one that leads right to his own doorstep and to the squandered promise of a young jazz musician: a talented trumpet player named Richard “Lord” Grant - otherwise known as Peter’s dear old dad.
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My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit - we do paperwork so real coppers don't have to - and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly voluable, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England.
\nNow I'm a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, and my world has become somewhat more complicated: nests of vampires in Purley, negotiating a truce between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, and digging up graves in Covent Garden . . . and there's something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious vengeful spirit that takes ordinary Londoners and twists them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair. The spirit of riot and rebellion has awakened in the city, and it's falling to me to bring order out of chaos - or die trying.
Detective Sergeant Peter Grant takes a much-needed holiday up in Scotland. And he'll need one when this is over . . .
\nIf more's the merrier, then it's ecstatic as his partner Beverley, their young twins, his mum, dad, his dad's band and their dodgy manager all tag along. Even his boss, DCI Thomas Nightingale, takes in the coastal airs as he trains Peter's cousin Abigail in the arcane arts.
\nAnd they'll need them too, because Scotland's Granite City has more than its fair share of history and mystery, myth . . . and murder.
\nWhen a body is found in a bus stop, fresh from the sea, the case smells fishy from the off.
\nSomething may be stirring beyond the bay - but there's something far stranger in the sky . . .
Where the Marble Arch stands today in London was once the Tyburn gallows - or The Hanging Tree. The walk toward those gallows, along Oxford Street and past the Mayfair mansions, has a bloody and haunted history as the last trip of the condemned.
\nSome things never change.
\nBlood and ghosts have returned to those mansions of the super-rich. Peter Grant’s put on the job, as England’s last wizard and the Metropolitan Police’s reluctant investigator of all things supernatural . . .
Doctor Who Screenwriter Ben Aaronovitch's superbly entertaining supernatural crime series has, with its witty one-liners and wonderfully erudite take on London, won a legion of fans in double quick time.
\nPeter Grant is learning magic fast. And it's just as well - he's already had run-ins with the deadly supernatural children of the Thames and a terrifying killer in Soho. Progression in the Police Force is less easy. Especially when you work in a department of two. A department that doesn't even officially exist. A department that if you did describe it to most people would get you laughed at. And then there's his love life. The last person he fell for ended up seriously dead. It wasn't his fault, but still.
\nNow something horrible is happening in the labyrinth of tunnels that make up the tube system that honeycombs the ancient foundations of London. And delays on the Northern line is the very least of it. Time to call in the Met's Economic and Specialist Crime Unit 9, aka 'The Folly'. Time to call in PC Peter Grant, Britain's Last Wizard.
Ben Crowe is one of the world's most in-demand mindset coaches. In this book, he reveals nine simple-yet-profound perspective shifts that will change the way you see the world and yourself.
\nShowing how these nine perspective shifts are relevant to every human being, Ben demonstrates how self-compassion, imagination and appreciation can turn adversity into possibility, remove pressure and help us find that elusive balance between confidence and happiness, achievement and fulfilment.
\nMove from fearful to playful, from human doing to human being, and from fitting in to truly belonging. Even small perspective shifts can lead to massive breakthroughs, creating for you the freedom to redefine what it means to live a life true to yourself. Because that's where the light gets in.
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Reporter Clarence Thomas Jr. is looking for a great story, former country music teen star Faith Spack has parlayed her fame into a job at the White House, and the two-term incumbent president is campaigning for a constitutionally dubious third term.
\nAfter an outbreak at a campaign rally, a mysterious new pandemic of “weeping sickness” sweeps the nation, threatening the president’s hold on the Oval Office. Desperate to retain power, he enlists the mystical pro wrestler Rasputin to help ensure his reelection and guarantee additional seasons of his presidential reality TV show, The Real West Wing.
\nBut as Rasputin’s appeal threatens to exceed the president’s, and the wrestler’s supposedly supernatural powers start to seem like the real thing, the campaign finds itself trapped in a spandex-clad destiny no number of executive orders can control, one in which both Clarence and Faith are compelled to play increasingly large parts.
\nHilarious, compelling, and tragically relevant, Rasputin Swims the Potomac is both an escape and a warning, a scathing satire that explores the twists and turns of American democracy as it hurtles toward authoritarianism.
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The time for reckoning has arrived.
\nThe battle of Circa Kadabra is over. The Bloodmoon cut its crimson path across the night sky and left both leech and lamprey reeling in its wake. But the fight is far from over and the stakes have only risen higher.
\nWith Rhin occupied by escaping the Fae Queen Sift, and Lilain and Lurker left behind in Washingtown, Merion Hark returns to London alone. There, the fate of the Empire now lies in the clutches of the ambitious Lord Dizali.
\nIn his quest for revenge and redemption, Merion is forced to recruit a most unlikely and dangerous ally. Side by side, they must outwit Dizali and the barbarous Order, and bring the greatest enemy the world has ever faced to its knees.
\nFeuds must always end in blood.
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A Bloodmoon rises, and the magic of the Scarlet Star grows ever more dangerous.
\nWith the cataclysm of Fell Falls put firmly behind him, Merion Hark has only one to make his way east across the Endless Land and once again feel the soil of his Empire beneath his feet.
\nBut blood has been spilled and the machinations of the rich and powerful foiled. Scores have been scraped in the desert sand and now they must be settled. A new and vicious power grows in London, and it seeks vengeance against Merion.
\nAs Merion, Rhin, Lilain and Lurker are pursued over prairie and wasteland, their strange new family must put their fate in the hands of a travelling circus, headed east for the shores of the Iron Ocean. And perhaps a ship home, if they survive the journey.
\nAll will be settled on the night of the Bloodmoon.
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In the wild frontier town of Fell Falls, there dwells only dust, death, and secrets.
\nWhen Prime Lord Hark is found in a pool of his own blood, his only son Merion Hark finds his world turned upside down and inside out. The Prime Lord’s last will and testament forces Merion west across the Iron Ocean, to the very brink of the Endless Land and all civilisation. To a place they call Wyoming.
\nIn the dusty frontier town of Fell Falls, there is no silverware, no servants, no plush velvet nor towering spires. Only dust, danger and the railway. Merion has only one ally to help him escape the torturous heat and unravel the mystery of his father's murder: a faerie warrior named Rhin, and a twelve inch-tall outcast of the fae realm.
\nRevenge and redemption are never easy. There are dark forces at work in Fell Falls, and not just the railwraiths, brigands or the savages. Secrets lurk in Merion’s bloodline. Secrets that will redefine the young Hark, and open up a whole world of magic buried by empire and industry.
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The sky is falling.
The world trembles beneath it.
Emaneska is crying out for a saviour.
Somebody is hunting down the Written mages in the wilds. Murdering and skinning them alive. Who? A mere girl. A girl who was born to rip the stars from the sky and bring them crashing down to earth. The direst enemy Emaneska has ever faced.
\nIn the wake of the Battle of Krauslung, the world has changed. For the darker. For the stranger. Magic swells like a storm, spilling from the stunned lips of farmboys and milkmaids, burning spell books to cinders at the lightest of touches.
\nAs Krauslung unknowingly balances on a knife-edge, tension mounts. Insidious whispers have begun to spread, drawing new enemies to the surface. Discontent, fear, betrayal . . . it seems that the girl is not the only enemy Emaneska faces.
\nWho can stand in their way? Will it be a pair of struggling Arkmages, one blind, one Written? An Albion maid, on the cusp of her wedding day? Three shadows of gods? Or will it be a ghost, a bloody rumour, lost in a dark world of murder and bitter memories? One question above all lingers on their lips: where in Emaneska is Farden?
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North, is where the battle will take place.
North, is where Farden must go.
But to death, to glory, or to both?
The Arka have chosen their champion, and now he must lead them to the top of the world - The Spine, where the black mountains belch fire, and where the battle against cataclysm will take place upon the ice.
\nAs they travel north in a warship clad in iron, the Krauslung they leave behind is crumbling. Not under the onslaught of the girl and her daemons, but from within, under the force of greed and poisonous ambition. It seems there are too many battles to fight.
\nNow, with the Sirens silent, the frozen north in uproar, and the responsibility mounting, Emaneska's champion must face a choice. Can he tread the tunnels of Hel to save the world? To save a woman more ghost than alive? To claim the armour he has always longed for? For salvation lies in the hands of a Knight fifteen-hundred years dead, and in the red-gold armour of a certain mage.
\nSalvation lies with Scalussen.
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Mithrid Fenn wants nothing to do with magick. Magick is a curse word, banned by the vast Arka Empire and punishable by death. Its purging has finally brought peace to war-torn Emaneska. Only a stubborn rebellion, led by the warlord Outlaw King, raids and pillages the empire’s northern fringes.
\nTo cliff-brat Mithrid, this is an age of tranquility and childhood games. That is until an illegal spellbook washes up on her shores, and she finds herself thrust into a war she never knew existed.
\nNow hunted by daemons and mages, she is dragged inexorably north to Scalussen and its rebels fighting doggedly to preserve a memory of freedom. Mithrid holds no such ideals. She fights for revenge and nothing nobler. If spilling blood means helping the Outlaw King, then so be it. Even if it means all-out war.
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The battle for freedom has left Emaneska reeling and desolated. Both Scalussen and Arka are scattered to the winds. With the Blazing Throne now empty and the Arka Empire for the taking, the race to claim Emaneska has begun.
\nFarden and Mithrid have been stranded alone in strange eastern lands by errant magick, They battle not to return home, but to uncover an ancient weapon capable of defeating a god. A god who desires nothing but chaos.
\nIn Emaneska, Elessi leads the survivors of the Rogue’s Armada to safer havens, something rare and lacking in the uncharted waters of the south.
\nTreachery and pain await them both, but the price of failure is steeper. New enemies lie in wait on those foreign paths. Dark creatures born of nightmares and forgotten powers. Warlords set on mastering magick. And an old threat reborn, doggedly pursuing one fate: The death of Farden.
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His name is Farden.
They whisper that he’s dangerous.
Dangerous is only the half of it.
Something has gone missing from the libraries of Arfell. Something very old, and something very powerful. Five scholars are now dead, a country is once again on the brink of war, and the magick council is running out of time and options.
\nEntangled in a web of lies and politics and dragged halfway across icy Emaneska and back, Farden must unearth a secret even he doesn’t want to know, a secret that will shake the foundations of his world. Dragons, drugs, magick, death, and the deepest of betrayals await.
\nWelcome to Emaneska.
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For the first time in decades, peace is almost within Emaneska’s grasp. With Loki in hiding and Scalussen finally left to its own devices, it is a time to flourish and grow. To put weapons aside and build homes instead.
\nBut weapons like Farden and Mithrid only rust in peace, especially when there are enemies to be buried and questions to be answered.
\nWhile Mithrid dreams of an impending fire and her destiny hangs in question, Farden’s mind grows dangerous and desperate. Scalussen holds nothing but doubt. The gods ask the impossible, and Loki has found an ancient and terrifying shadow in the east that could rival Gunnir. A shadow that could be of Farden’s making.
\nGambling everything, Mithrid must suffer her greatest test while Farden raises new allies from the dust and the farthest corners of the world. The battle to end all battles awaits, and this time there will be no second chances. There will be no surrender. There will be victory or there will be death for all.
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Five scholars of Arfell have been assassinated. A spellbook has gone missing - a powerful summoning manual from the time of elves and fire-born daemons. The Arkmages are running out of time and options, and the world is once again on the brink of war with the Siren dragon-riders.
\nIt falls to Farden - one of the Arka's most powerful yet troubled Written mages - to keep Emaneska from falling into chaos. Entangled in a web of lies and politics, Farden is tasked with hunting down the assassin, and recovering the spellbook before it falls into the wrong hands, and the world is cast into shadow.
\nIt will mean fighting his way across savage Emaneska and back, a land infested with wyrms, marauders, and betrayal. It will take every fibre of his will, every scrap of magic in his bones, and if he falls, so shall the world.
\nWelcome to Emaneska.
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In this trailblazing work from the internet's most empathetic math teacher, Ben Orlin unravels the secrets behind the world's most confounding language.
\nMath, it is said, is the \"universal language.” But if a language brings people together, why does math make so many of us feel so alone? In Math for English Majors, bestselling author Ben Orlin (Math with Bad Drawings) offers fresh insights for the mathematically perplexed and mathematical masters alike.
\nAs Orlin reveals, the “universal language” is precisely that: a language. It has nouns (numbers), verbs (calculations), and grammar (algebra). It has funny idioms (“exponential”), quirky etymologies (“squaring”), and peculiar ambiguities (“PEMDAS”). It even has its own form of literature, with equations ranging from the simple wisdom of A2 + B2 = C2 to the startling profundity of eπi + 1 = 0.
\nAlong the way, he shares relatable stories of his own mathematical misunderstandings and epiphanies, as well as the trials and triumphs of his students. And, as always, he sheds further light and levity on the subject with his inept - yet strangely effective - drawings.
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Alex Verus is still haunted by his time apprenticed to Richard Drakh. He's been free of him for many years, but now the only way to keep his friends from being harmed is to again work for Richard and his deadly ally. Even worse, Alex is forced to bring the life mage Anne into this servitude as well.
After weeks of being hunted and finally cornered into what he thought was his last stand, Alex never imagined his life would be spared - and never anticipated at what price. This time, the diviner can see no way out...
Diviner Alex Verus finally made one too many enemies on the Council of Mages, and now one of them is angry enough to have him executed. Fighting for his life is nothing new, but this kill order also calls for the death of Alex’s dependents - and there’s no way that he’ll let Luna, Anne, and Vari take the heat.
With only a week before he’s history, Alex will have to figure out how to disassociate himself from his friends, scrounge up allies on the Council, and hopefully keep his head attached to his body.
But saving himself is going to bring him into direct opposition with his former master and the Dark mages surrounding him. And, this time, escaping with his life might mean losing his soul...
Alex Verus is a diviner who can see probable futures - a talent that’s gotten him out of many a tough scrape. But this time, he may be in over his head. Alex was once apprenticed to a Dark mage, and in his service he did a lot of things he isn’t proud of.
As rumors swirl that his old master is coming back, Alex comes face to face with his misdeeds in the form of a young adept whose only goal is to get revenge. Alex has changed his life for the better, but he’s afraid of what his friends - including his apprentice, Luna - will think of his past. But if they’re going to put themselves at risk, they need to know exactly what kind of man they’re fighting for . . .
Since his second sight made him infamous for defeating powerful dark mages, Alex has been keeping his head down. But now he's discovered the resurgence of a forbidden ritual. Someone is harvesting the life-force of magical creatures - destroying them in the process. And draining humans is next on the agenda.
\nHired to investigate, Alex realises that not everyone on the Council wants him delving any deeper. Struggling to distinguish ally from enemy, he finds himself the target of those who would risk their own sanity for power . . .
Once Alex Verus was a diviner trying to live quietly under the radar. Now he's a member of the Light Council who's found success, friends . . . and love. But it's come with a price - the Council is investigating him, and if they find out the truth, he'll lose everything.
Meanwhile, Alex's old master, Richard Drakh, is waging a war against the Council, and he's preparing a move that will bring Alex and the life mage, Anne, under his control. Caught between Richard and the Council, Alex's time is running out. To protect those he cares for, Alex will have to become something different. Something darker...
Alex Verus is part of a world hidden in plain sight, running a magic shop in London. And while Alex's own powers aren't as showy as some mages, he does have the advantage of foreseeing the possible future - allowing him to pull off operations that have a million-to-one-chance of success.
\nBut when Alex is approached by multiple factions to crack open a relic from a long-ago mage war, he knows that whatever's inside must be beyond powerful. And thanks to his abilities, Alex can predict that by taking the job, his odds of survival are about to go from slim to none . . .
To protect his friends, Mage Alex Verus has had to change - and embrace his dark side. But the life mage Anne has changed too, and made a bond with a dangerous power. She's going after everyone she's got a grudge against - and it's a long list.
\nIn the meantime, Alex has to deal with his arch-enemy, Levistus. The Council's death squads are hunting Alex as well as Anne, and the only way for Alex to stop them is to end his long war with Levistus and the Council, by whatever means necessary. It will take everything Alex has to stay a step ahead of the Council and stop Anne from letting the world burn.
With his talent for divining the future, Alex Verus should have foreseen his friends’ reactions to the revelations about his previous life. Anne Walker no longer trusts him - and has also cut all ties with the mage community after getting kicked out of the apprentice program. As a favor to Luna, Alex’s own apprentice and Anne’s best friend, he checks in on her only to be told to leave her alone.
\nThen Anne gets kidnapped. The Council Keepers of the Order of the Star believe Dark mages from her past may be involved. Working with the Keepers, Alex and Luna discover that Anne has been taken into the shadow realm of Sagash, her former Dark mage mentor, and they must find a way to rescue her.
\nBut another shadow from the past has resurfaced - Alex’s former master may be back in London, and Alex has no idea what his agenda is . . .
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The wealthy seem to exist in a different, glittering world from the rest of us. Almost as if by . . . magic.
\nStephen Oakwood is a young man on the edge of this hidden world. He has talent and potential, but turning that potential into magical power takes money, opportunity, and training. All Stephen has is a minimum wage job and a cat.
\nBut when a chance encounter with a member of House Ashford gets him noticed by the wrong people, Stephen is thrown in the deep end. For centuries, the vast corporations and aristocratic Houses of the magical world have grown impossibly rich and influential by hoarding their knowledge. To survive, Stephen will have to take his talent and build it up into something greater - for only then can he beat them at their own game.
Stephen Oakwood has emerged victorious against the schemes of his aristocratic family. Now he finally has the opportunity to do what he’s been wanting to do for a long track down his father. But doing so won’t be easy. Stephen’s not so isolated any more, but the contacts he’s making in the magical world - everyone from the corporation he works for to the mother he’s just beginning to reconnect with - all have agendas of their own.
\nAnd now a new group is emerging from the shadows, calling themselves the Winged. Their leader, the mysterious Byron, promises that he can show Stephen how to find his father . . . but he wants something in return.
\nFollowing that trail will throw Stephen into greater danger than he’s ever faced before. To survive, he’ll need to use all of his tricks and sigls, and pick up some new ones. Only then will he be able to prevail against his enemies . . . and find out who’s really pulling the strings.
Stephen Oakwood’s ambitions used to be simple. Pay his bills, track down his father, and take care of his cat. Maybe study a little magic after work, if he had time.
\nNow it’s a year later and he’s got everything he wanted. But it’s come with a price.
\nThe Winged, a mysterious group involved with his father, have noticed Stephen, and they want him to join them or else. His career as a corporate locator has hit a dead end. And his new job as bodyguard to Calhoun Ashford is proving a lot more lethal than expected due to assassination attempts from outside the House, and possibly also from within.
\nTo survive, Stephen’s going to need allies of his own. And along the way, he’s going to have to figure out the secret of his own gift, and what it means. The cults, Houses, and corporations of the magical world are locked in an endless battle for dominance, and Stephen is beginning to realise that he’s going to have to pick a side . . . before someone else picks it for him.
When Mage Alex Verus ends up with a position on the Light Council, no one is happy, least of all him. But Alex is starting to realize that if he wants to protect his friends, he'll need to become a power player himself. His first order of business is to track down dangerous magical items unleashed into the world by Dark Mages.
But when the Council decides they need his help in negotiating with the perpetrators, Alex will have to use all his cunning and magic to strike a deal - and stop the rising tension between the Council, the Dark Mages, and the adept community from turning into a bloodbath.
Alex's girlfriend, the life mage Anne, has fallen fully under the control of the deadly djinn she made a bargain with, and it is preparing to create an army of mages subject to its every whim. Alex, the Council, and the Dark mage Richard Drakh agree to call a truce in their war, and plans are made for a joint attack.
\n\t\t\t\t\tAlex knows that it's only a matter of time before Drakh and the Council turn on each other . . . and neither cares about keeping Anne alive. Can Alex figure out a way to stop Anne and to free her from possession before time runs out for the people he loves?
Mage apprentices have been vanishing without a trace - and someone on the council might be involved. Alex Verus has no evidence, no witnesses, and no suspects. All he knows is that someone is keeping tabs on him.
\nAnd after assassins target his own apprentice’s classmate, Alex sees that he doesn’t know the half of it - and that he could be the next to disappear . . .
Diviner Alex Verus and the Council that governs the magical community have never gotten along. But with his former teacher back in Britain, Alex is in desperate need of allies, and he’ll do whatever it takes to get them - even if it means accepting a job with the Keepers, enforcing magical law.
Alex forms an uneasy alliance with his new partner, Caldera, but his attempt at legitimacy quickly turns lethal when a mission puts him in possession of an item that factions both inside and outside of the Council would kill to get their hands on.
Once again caught in the middle of a deadly conflict, Alex will need all his abilities to figure out who his friends are - especially when enemies are hiding on all sides…
This story begins in 2001 on top of Cave Mountain in the Arkansas Ozarks. A six-year-old girl named Haley - Benjamin Hale’s cousin - got lost on a mountain trail, prompting what was at the time the largest search and rescue mission in the state’s history. Her disappearance - and a ghostly vision she reported once she was found - would eventually connect her disappearance to another almost forgotten story from twenty years earlier: a dark and bizarre story of brainwashing and murder and the apocalyptic visions of a teenage prophet.
\nEnriched by Benjamin Hale’s own family lore and connections to the culture of the Arkansas Ozarks, Cave Mountain is a gripping story about nature and survival, police and corruption, and religion and skepticism. At its center are two young girls, years apart, both trapped in the verdant, suffocating grip of the Arkansas wilds.
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From a debut voice comes a genre-breaking blend of apocalyptic sci-fi and epic fantasy about a scattered group of unlikely heroes traveling across their broken mechanical planet to stave off eternal darkness.
\nThe vast machine-like expanse of the Wanderlands, crafted by long-lost gods, is teetering on the brink of eternal darkness. Amidst this decaying behemoth, a diverse group of heroes, driven by prophetic dreams, embark on a perilous journey. Their mission? To mend their crumbling world - or witness its irrevocable end.
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Thomas lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the grey, gloomy beach and scrape for shrimp, spending the afternoon selling his wares, trying to wash away the salt and scum, pining for Joan Wyeth down the street, and rehearsing songs on his guitar. At heart, he is a folk musician, but it remains a private dream.
\nWhen a striking visitor turns up, bringing the promise of Hollywood glamour, Thomas is shaken from the drudgery of his days and begins to see a different future. But how much of what the American claims is true, and how far can his inspiration carry Thomas?
\nHaunting and timeless, this is the story of a young man hemmed in by his circumstances, striving to achieve fulfilment far beyond the world he knows.
Jamie is bad at endings, which is why she's stuck at a dead-end Baltimore newspaper job, continuing to have break-up sex with her first-ever hetero partner, and haunted by the what-ifs of her ex-girlfriend Mari - a charismatic and brilliant musician - and their former band together, the Maidenheads. Since they (and their band) broke up a decade ago, Jamie hasn't been able to sing.
\nThen an unexpected opportunity to perform in DC with Mari's successful new band arises, and Jamie jumps at it. What begins as a return to music becomes a reckoning - with the weight of unfinished love, the voice she long buried, and her own complicated past. But as Jamie channels more of her energy into the band, other threads in her life begin to fray, and she must make some urgent choices about her future.
\nElectric, spine-tingling, and filled to the brim with tenderness and honesty, The Maidenheads is a novel about the tenacity of first love, the life-changing power of music, and the difficult, necessary work of becoming yourself.
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Camilla’s childhood was immersed in love and chaos, and steeped in perfection. As an adult she hasn’t looked back, refusing to acknowledge the people and places that scarred her so many years ago. But a cancer diagnosis forces Camilla to turn to the past, and all its pain, to save her daughter.
\nAs Camilla discovers the bittersweet limitations of motherhood and reconciliation, she also awakens an inspiring message about the mortality issues we all must face.
\nUnfolding in a progression of powerful chapters, Camilla’s Roses portrays a life haunted by the past, and the choices we all make to fight for a future.
From award-winning author and creative writing teacher at Tulane University comes an intimate and powerful memoir exploring inherited trauma, family secrets, and the enduring bonds of love between mothers and daughters.
\nOn her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died in a car crash near Detroit, only to be resuscitated after her mother pulled her from the flaming wreckage. Firstborn Girls traces her remarkable life from that moment up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar.
\nGrowing up in 1980s Brooklyn, Bernice finds solace in books, summer trips to Barbados, and boarding school to escape her alcoholic father. Discovering the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, she finally sees herself and her loved ones reflected in their stories of “messy, beautiful, joyful Black people.”
\nInterwoven with Bernice's personal journey is her family's history, beginning with her four-times enslaved great-grandmother Louisa Vicey Wilson in 1822 Hancock County, Georgia. Her descendants survived Reconstruction and Jim Crow, joined the Great Migration, and mourned Dr. King’s assassination during the Civil Rights Movement. These women's wisdom, secrets, and fierce love are passed down like Louisa's handmade quilt.
\nA memoir of many threads, Firstborn Girls is an extraordinarily moving portrait of a life shaped by family, history, and the drive to be something more.
Beth Allison Barr has lived with assumptions about what she should do and who she should be.
\nIn Becoming the Pastor's Wife, Barr draws on her 25 years of experience as a pastor's wife and her scholarship as a historian to trace the role of the pastor's wife, showing how it both helped and hurt women in conservative Protestant traditions. While they gained an important leadership role, it came at a deep cost: losing independent church leadership opportunities and strengthening a gender hierarchy that prioritised male careers.
\nBarr examines the connection between the decline of female ordination and the rise of the role of pastor's wife in the evangelical church, tracing its patterns in the larger history of Christian women's leadership. By expertly blending historical and personal narrative, she equips pastors' wives to better advocate for themselves while helping the church understand the origins of the role as well as the historical reality of ordained women.
A new, genre–defying volume that explores family, marriage, motherhood, place and coming of age with singular wit and emotional clarity.
\nWhat can we learn from an ordinary life observed with extraordinary skill? In The Irish Goodbye, Beth Ann Fennelly writes of the often - overlooked moments that shape a life, whether moving or perplexing or troubling or gladdening.
\nThese micro–memoirs - some as short as a sentence, some longer in form - dignify the diminutive through the act of attention. Fennelly explores her roles as a friend, wife, mother, and daughter, documenting a brush with an old flame or the devastating death of her sister in crystalline, precise sentences.
\nFull of unexpected wit, The Irish Goodbye is a record of the interstitial interactions - encounters with strangers, quirky observations, unexpected flights of fancy - that make up a richly lived life. With keen insight and nimble prose, Fennelly invites readers to share her affirming worldview - one in which even our smallest interactions are rife with possibility.
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Grieving Hollywood writer Fayette Wynne arrives in Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1926 to finish her latest project in peace. All alone, save for the preternatural sourdough starter her family has nurtured for years, Fayette is also resentful. The proven healing powers of the bread made with her starter were insufficient to save her beloved mother. For Fayette, it’s time to try and push past the pain and anger and move on.
\nThen, during a violent storm, Fayette saves rising star Rex Hallstrom during a moment of crisis. Their a peculiar cliffside house, its door flung open as if beckoning them. Sentient, curious, and lonely, it recognises in Fayette a unique magic even older than its own.
\nIn the days that follow, as a friendship grows between Fayette and Rex, they discover local legends surrounding the isolated It appeared in the span of a single night, its cursed origins said to be Hell itself. But for two souls who need to move forward, it provides unexpected comfort and hope. In fact, Fayette and Rex have never felt more alive. Neither has the house, whose mysteries are unending and whose wicked history may be too powerful to ignore.
In the sweltering heat of 1947 Los Angeles, the \"Raptor,\" a serial murderer, prowls, casting a shadow of fear over aspiring starlets. Drawn by the allure of the city's glitz and glamor, May arrives, her heart heavy with loss, seeking a purpose. But the city's veneer of brightness conceals a darkness that envelopes her when Lilly, an enigmatic actress, ushers May into a world of opulence and intrigue.
\nAs acquaintances begin to disappear, May finds herself ensnared in a perilous game of cat and mouse, desperately piecing together fragments of truth while Agnes Crandall, an unyielding crime reporter, unearths a tangled web of deception and whispers of the occult within the city's elite circles.
\nWith each passing day, as the body count rises, May and Agnes race against time, their fates intertwined in a dangerous dance with the Raptor. Will they discover the truth before one of them becomes the next victim?
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Beth Moore has devoted her whole life to helping women across the globe come to know the transforming power of Jesus. An established writer of many acclaimed books and Bible studies for women on spiritual growth and personal development, Beth now unveils her own story in a much-anticipated debut memoir.
\nAll My Knotted-Up Life is told with surprising candor about some of the personal heartbreaks and behind-the-scenes challenges that have marked Beth’s life. But beyond that, it’s a beautifully crafted portrait of resilience and survival, a poignant reminder of God’s enduring faithfulness, and proof positive that if we ever truly took the time to hear people’s full stories . . . we’d all walk around slack-jawed.
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Tiffy Moore needs a cheap flat, and fast. Leon Twomey works nights and needs cash. Their friends think they’re crazy, but it’s the perfect solution: Leon occupies the one-bed flat while Tiffy’s at work in the day, and she has the run of the place the rest of the time.
But with obsessive ex-boyfriends, demanding clients at work, wrongly imprisoned brothers and, of course, the fact that they still haven’t met yet, they’re about to discover that if you want the perfect home you need to throw the rulebook out the window . . .
Siobhan is a quick-tempered life coach with way too much on her plate. Miranda is a tree surgeon used to being treated as just one of the guys on the job. Jane is a soft-spoken volunteer for the local charity shop with zero sense of self-worth.
\nThese three women are strangers who have only one thing in common: They've all been stood up on the same day, the very worst day to be stood up - Valentine's Day. And, unbeknownst to them, they've all been stood up by the same man.
\nOnce they've each forgiven him for standing them up, they let him back into their lives and are in serious danger of falling in love with a man who seems to have not just one or two but three women on the go . . .
\nIs there more to him than meets the eye? And will they each untangle the truth before they all get their hearts broken?
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Addie and her sister are about to embark on an epic road trip to a friend's wedding in the north of Scotland. The playlist is all planned and the snacks are packed.
\nBut, not long after setting off, a car slams into the back of theirs. The driver is none other than Addie's ex, Dylan, who she's avoided since their traumatic break-up two years earlier.
\nDylan and his best mate are heading to the wedding too, and they've totalled their car, so Addie has no choice but to offer them a ride. The car is soon jam-packed full of luggage and secrets, and with three hundred miles ahead of them, Dylan and Addie can't avoid confronting the very messy history of their relationship . . .
\nWill they make it to the wedding on time? And, more importantly . . . is this really the end of the road for Addie and Dylan?
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What if you were lost at sea . . . with your one-night stand?
\nZeke and Lexi thought it would just be a night of fun. They had no intentions of seeing each other again. Zeke is only in town for the weekend to buy back his late father’s houseboat. Lexi has no time for dating when she needs to help take care of her best friend's daughter.
\nGoing back home with a stranger seems like a perfect escape from their problems. But a miscommunication in the dark, foggy night means no one tied the houseboat to the dock. The next morning, Zeke and Lexi realise all they can see is miles and miles of water.
\nWith just a few provisions on the idle boat, Zeke and Lexi must figure out how to get back home. But aside from their survival, they’re facing another challenge. Because when you’re stuck together for days on end, it gives you a lot of time to get to know someone - and to fall in love with them.
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When overachiever Leena Cotton is ordered to take a two-month sabbatical after blowing a big presentation at work, she escapes to her grandmother Eileen's house for some overdue rest. Eileen is newly single and about to turn eighty. She'd like a second chance at love, but her tiny Yorkshire village doesn't offer many eligible gentlemen.
\nOnce Leena learns of Eileen's romantic predicament, she proposes a solution: a two-month swap. Eileen can live in London and look for love. Meanwhile Leena will look after everything in rural Yorkshire. But with gossiping neighbours and difficult family dynamics to navigate up north, and trendy London flatmates and online dating to contend with in the city, stepping into one another's shoes proves more difficult than either of them expected.
\nLeena learns that a long-distance relationship isn't as romantic as she hoped it would be, and then there is the annoyingly perfect - and distractingly handsome - school teacher, who keeps showing up to outdo her efforts to impress the local villagers. Back in London, Eileen is a huge hit with her new neighbours, but is her perfect match nearer home than she first thought?
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It's the busiest season of the year, and Forest Manor Hotel is quite literally falling apart. So when Izzy and Lucas are given the same shift on the hotel's front desk, they have no choice but to put their differences aside and see it through.
\nThe hotel won't stay afloat beyond Christmas without some sort of miracle. But when Izzy returns a guest's lost wedding ring, the reward convinces management that this might be the way to fix everything. With four rings still sitting in the lost & found, the race is on for Izzy and Lucas to save their beloved hotel - and their jobs.
\nAs their bitter rivalry turns into something much more complicated, Izzy and Lucas begin to wonder if there's more at stake here than the hotel's future. Can the two of them make it through the season with their hearts intact?
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Amy is a cryogenically frozen passenger aboard the spaceship Godspeed. She has left her boyfriend, friends - and planet - behind to join her parents as a member of Project Ark Ship. Amy and her parents believe they will wake on a new planet, Centauri-Earth, three hundred years in the future. But fifty years before Godspeed's scheduled landing, cryo chamber 42 is mysteriously unplugged, and Amy is violently woken from her frozen slumber.
\nSomeone tried to murder her.
\nNow, Amy is caught inside an enclosed world where nothing makes sense. Godspeed's 2,312 passengers have forfeited all control to Eldest, a tyrannical and frightening leader. And Elder, Eldest's rebellious teenage heir, is both fascinated with Amy and eager to discover whether he has what it takes to lead. Amy desperately wants to trust Elder. But should she put her faith in a boy who has never seen life outside the ship's cold metal walls? All Amy knows is that she and Elder must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets before whoever woke her tries to kill again.
The future world is at peace.
\nElla Shepherd has dedicated her life to using her unique gift - the ability to enter people’s dreams and memories using technology developed by her mother - to help others relive their happy memories.
\nBut not all is at it seems.
\nElla starts seeing impossible things - images of her dead father, warnings of who she cannot trust. Her government recruits her to spy on a rebel group, using her ability to experience - and influence - the memories of traitors. But the leader of the rebels claims they used to be in love - even though Ella’s never met him before in her life. Which can only mean one thing . . .
\nSomeone’s altered her memory.
\nElla’s gift is enough to overthrow a corrupt government or crush a growing rebel group. She is the key to stopping a war she didn’t even know was happening. But if someone else has been inside Ella’s head, she cannot trust her own memories, thoughts, or feelings.
\nSo who can she trust?
Ada Lamarr may have gotten to the spaceship wreck first, but looter’s rights won’t get her far when she’s got a hole in the side of her ship and her spacesuit is almost out of air. Fortunately for her, help arrives in the form of a government salvage crew - and while they reluctantly rescue her from certain death, they are not pleased to have an unexpected passenger along on their classified mission.
\nBut Ada doesn’t care - all that matters to her is enjoying their fine food and sweet, sweet oxygen - until Rian White, the government agent in charge, starts to suspect that there’s more to Ada than meets the eye. He’s not wrong - but he’s so pretty that Ada is perfectly happy to keep him paying attention to her - at least until she can complete the job she was sent to pull off. But as quick as Ada is, Rian might be quicker - and she may not be entirely sure who’s manipulating who until it’s too late . . .
Sparks fly when Ada and Rian just-so-happen to find themselves at the same charity gala - but there's something rotten behind the sparkling gowns and dazzling wealth on display.
\nAda had no intention whatsoever to continue working for the rebel group that hired her to retrieve the government's plans for a nanobot climate cleaner if they weren't willing to pay her for it, but then they offer a different perk: an undercover mission to a charity gala where Rian will be in attendance. Rian, meanwhile, has volunteered his services for the gala believing that the rare items up for auction will attract Ada's eye. Hoping to catch her in the act and pin her with a punishable crime, Rian has no idea Ada's really after.
\nIn a high-stakes game of theft and deception, Ada plays to win . . . and Rian will do anything to stop her.
After a few weeks trapped on board a spaceship with Ada (and, oh look, there’s only one bed), Rian has to admit that maybe Ada’s rebels have a point. The nanobots poised to be unleashed on Earth are infected with malware that will ultimately leave the residents of Earth in a worse position than they’re in now. But is it too late?
\nAda and Rian arrive on Earth with little time to spare. Together, they have to break into a high-security facility and infect the nanobots with a counter-virus before they’re released in order to give Earth a fighting chance. And if Ada happens to notice some great tech laying around in this high-security facility she shouldn’t have access to and then happens to steal a bunch of it when Rian’s not looking? Well, he knew who she was before he teamed up with her. And if he wants it back, he’s going to have to catch her first.
It's been three months since Amy was unplugged. The life she always knew is over. Everywhere she looks, she sees the walls of the spaceship Godspeed. But there may just be hope: Elder has assumed leadership of the ship. He's finally free to act on his vision - no more Phydus, no more lies.
\nBut when Elder learns shocking news, he and Amy must race to discover the truth behind life on Godspeed, all the while dealing with the love that's growing between them and the chaos that threatens to tear them apart.
Amy and Elder have finally left the oppressive walls of the spaceship Godspeed behind. They're ready to start life afresh - to build a home - on Centauri-Earth, the planet that Amy has traveled 25 trillion miles across the universe to experience.
\nBut this new Earth isn't the paradise Amy had been hoping for. There are giant pterodactyl-like birds, purple flowers with mind-numbing toxins, and mysterious, unexplained ruins that hold more secrets than their stone walls first let on. The biggest secret of all? Godspeed's former passengers aren't alone on this planet. And if they're going to stay, they'll have to fight.
\nAmy and Elder must race to discover who - or what - else is out there if they are to have any hope of saving their struggling colony and building a future together. They will have to look inward to the very core of what makes them human on this, their most harrowing journey yet. Because if the colony collapses? Then everything they have sacrificed - friends, family, life on Earth - will have been for nothing.
Seventeen-year-old Bo has always had delusions that he can travel through time. When he was ten, Bo claimed to have witnessed the Titanic hit an iceberg, and at fifteen, he found himself on a Civil War battlefield, horrified by the bodies surrounding him. So when his worried parents send him to a school for troubled youth, Bo assumes he knows the truth: that he’s actually attending Berkshire Academy, a school for kids who, like Bo, have “superpowers.”
\nAt Berkshire, Bo falls in love with Sofía, a quiet girl with a tragic past and the superpower of invisibility. Sofía helps Bo open up in a way he never has before. In turn, Bo provides comfort to Sofía, who lost her mother and two sisters at a very young age.
\nBut even the strength of their love isn’t enough to help Sofía escape her deep depression. After she commits suicide, Bo is convinced that she’s not actually dead. He believes that she’s stuck somewhere in time - that he somehow left her in the past, and that now it’s his job to save her. And as Bo becomes more and more determined to save Sofía, he must decide whether to face his demons head-on or succumb to a psychosis that will let him be with the girl he loves.
It's November 2023. The human race has been wiped out by the 6DM virus (Six Days Maximum - the longest you've got before your body destroys itself). The end of the world as we know it.
\nYet someone is still alive. Alone in a new world of burning cities, rotting corpses and ravenous rats, one woman has survived. A woman who has spent her whole life compromising what she wants and hiding how she feels to meet other people's expectations. From her career to her relationships, to what she wears and where she lives, she's made a lifetime of decisions to fit what other people want her to be.
\nBut with no one else left, who will she become now that she's completely alone?
The convention of a book synopsis is fundamentally ridiculous. How can I adequately convey in 150 words the complexity and bewilderment of the past ten months and the effect those events have had on my perfectly regulated life?
\nOne would need much longer to record in detail how I was blackmailed into demonstrating the efficacy of my own soulmate program and forced to participate in a series of dates. How my world has been forever altered as a consequence.
\nPrior to this I was driven and focused, consumed with completing my own projects, destined to change the world with my work. A woman with one goal. I had no family, no friends and no need for frivolous human connection. My life was structured and solitary.
\nI am that person no longer.
\nMy name is Indiana Dylan and this is the story of how I fell in love.
The Jeveni have finally found freedom on the distant planet Capamame, delivered from Kindom oppression through their alliance with stoic Cleric Chono, intrepid caster Jun Ironway, and Six, the wildly unpredictable manipulator who has outwitted the Nightfoot family.
\nBut when Six and Chono return to the Treble star systems, the dream of freedom meets a dangerous test. The Secretaries of the Kindom are intent on reclaiming power in the Treble, as well as control over the Jeveni. Meanwhile, Jun Ironway and Jeveni collector Masar Hawks struggle to protect Capamame from a population brimming with resentment, not to mention a faceless saboteur spreading mayhem and murder.
\nAs the two groups struggle to outwit their enemies, divergent battles wend toward a climatic reunion that will spark a revolution. But over it all hangs the cruel legacy of Esek Nightfoot, whose rippling effects may prove impossible to survive.
Jun Ironway - hacker, con artist, and occasional thief - has gotten her hands on a piece of contraband that could set her up for proof that implicates the powerful Nightfoot family in a planet-wide genocide seventy-five years ago. The Nightfoots control the precious sevite that fuels interplanetary travel through three star systems. And someone is sure to pay handsomely for anything that could break their hold.
\nOf course, anything valuable is also dangerous. The Kindom, the ruling power of the star systems, is inextricably tied up in the Nightfoots’ monopoly - and they can’t afford to let Jun expose the truth. They task two of their most brutal clerics with hunting her preternaturally stoic Chono, and brilliant hothead Esek, who also happens to be the heir to the Nightfoot empire.
\nBut Chono and Esek are haunted in turn by a figure from their shared past, known only as Six. What Six truly wants is anyone’s guess. And the closer they get to finding Jun, the surer Chono is that Six is manipulating them all.
\nIt's a game that could destroy their lives and devastate the stars. And they have no choice but to see it through to the end.
Violence has erupted across the Treble. The colony that Jun Ironway and Masar Hawks have fought to protect is now woefully compromised, and its people, unwilling to submit to tyranny once more, face a brutal fight for their lives and freedom.
\nIn the midst of upheaval and rebellion, new enemies arise at every corner, including a familiar player who won't let power slip through his fingers again. Not when he has every Kindom Hand under his heel. And whether he will be as bloody-minded as his predecessors remains to be seen.
\nAs the quiet ones launch their attack and all hope seems lost, Cleric Chono looks to unlikely allies to fight a final battle for peace. But one crucial question remains: where is Six?
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Brynn Cornell has to be stuck in a nightmare. Just last week, she was riding high as cohost of the popular morning show Sunup. She's America's Ray of Sunshine - the girl-next-door beauty who drives up TV ratings while never exuding anything but her trademark positivity and poise. All it took was one huge on-air mistake to expose her snarky side to the world and make it all come crumbling down.
\nNow she's back in her hometown of Adelaide Springs, Colorado, in a last-ditch attempt to convince viewers she's not the mean girl they think she is. All she has to do is apologise and capture some feel-good footage reminding everyone she's just a girl from humble beginnings who's grateful for her big break, and she might manage to preserve both her career and her image. But this town holds painful memories that she's not ready to face.
\nSebastian Sudworth was on the fast track to the journalist hall of fame. A superstar reporter with a reputation for being in the center of the action, his fearless, relentless coverage of major events around the globe was winning him awards and accolades - until something snapped inside him and he vanished from the scene under mysterious circumstances. Sebastian sought refuge in tiny Adelaide Springs, working odd jobs and trying to blend in as a scruffy mountain town citizen.
\nWhen Sebastian is assigned to chauffeur Brynn around town, Brynn is sure he can see right through her carefully cultivated, sunny persona. But she's determined to do what it takes to maintain her image and save her career - so she'll just have to charm the socks off Sebastian the same way she charmed her viewers. Easier said than done. It's no picnic to play nice around someone you hate . . . especially when you might be crazy about them.
\n
Cole Kimball and Laila Olivet have been best friends their entire lives. Cole is the only person (apart from blood relatives) who's seen Laila in her oversized, pink, plastic, Sophia Loren glasses. Laila is always the first person to taste test any new dish Cole creates in his family's restaurant . . . even though she has the refined palate of a kindergartener. Most importantly, Cole and Laila are always talking. About everything.
\nWhen Cole discovers a betrayal from his recently deceased grandfather that shatters his world, staying in Adelaide Springs, Colorado, is suddenly unfathomable. But Laila loves her life in their small mountain town and can't imagine ever living anywhere else. She loves serving customers who tip her with a dozen fresh eggs. She loves living within walking distance of all her favorite people. And she's very much not okay with the idea of not being able to walk to her very favorite person.
\nStill, when Cole toys with moving across the country to New York City, she decides to support her best friend--even as she secretly hopes she can convince him to stay home. And not just for his killer chocolate chip pancakes. Because she loves him. As a friend. Just as a friend. Right?
\nThey make a deal: Laila won't beg him to stay, and Cole won't try to convince her to come with him. They have one week in New York before their lives change forever, and all they have to do is enjoy their time together and pretend none of this is happening. But it's tough to ignore the very inconvenient feelings blooming out of nowhere. In both of them. And these potentially friendship-destroying feelings, once out in the open, have absolutely no take-backs.
\n
February 4, 2003, promises to be a typical day for Olivia Ross - a greeting card writer whose passion project is a screenplay of her own. But after she and a handsome actor have a magical meet-cute in a coffee shop, they make a spontaneous pact: in ten years, after they’ve found the success they’re just sure they’re going to achieve, they’ll return to the coffeehouse to partner up and make a film together. The only problem? Olivia neglected to get the stranger’s name. But she doesn’t forget his face - or the date.
\nFor the next ten years, every February 4 is marked with coincidences and ironies for Olivia. As men come and go and return to her life, she continues to write, but still wonders about the guy from the coffee shop - the nameless actor she’s almost certain has turned out to be Hamish MacDougal, now a famous A-lister and Hollywood leading man.
\nBut a lot can happen in ten years, and while waiting for the curtain to rise on her fate, the true story of Olivia’s life is being written - and if she’s not careful, she’ll completely miss the real-life romantic comedy playing out right before her eyes.
\n
Wes left Addie at the altar two decades ago . . . and that was supposed to be the end of the story.
\nWhen her life crashes and burns in a flurry of secrets and redacted information, Addie Atwater-Elwyn hightails it home to the tiny mountain town of Adelaide Springs, Colorado - back to living with her dad, back to working a low-paying job, back to a life of disappointments. Growing up, nobody expected their local girl to become a high-ranking CIA analyst, married to a gorgeous CIA operative. But that was Addie's life until she lost . . . well, everything.
\nNow she's trying to pick up the pieces of her broken life with a little help from old friends. But there's one old friend she knows her life is better without - Wesley Hobbes, her childhood sweetheart who left her standing at the altar when they were eighteen years old. Truth be told, Addie would be perfectly content never seeing Wes's stupid face ever again - which makes it very inconvenient that he's now a beloved senator and presidential frontrunner, his face everywhere she looks. But that has nothing to do with Addie personally. He might make history, but in her book, he is history.
\nSo, when the unwelcome Wes appears back in their hometown, no one rolls out the red carpet - not Addie and not an entire town that was forced to pick sides (and unanimously chose Addie) decades ago. Senator Hobbes certainly won't win the popular vote in Adelaide Springs.
\nWes, meanwhile, is sitting on a few secrets of his own, including the political scoop of the decade: he'd seriously rather gouge his eyes out than spend another minute in politics, much less ever go anywhere near the White House. Addie knows there has to be more to the story, and her curiosity is clouding her judgment. You can take the girl out of the CIA, but it's not so easy to shake the CIA out of the girl. Of course, it's not just curiosity (and the acknowledgement that his face isn't so stupid after all) that's been reawakened inside her. But after more than two decades, it's too late. Wes and Addie already had their chance. Right?
\n
It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilised. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight, but when her stunning confidence morphs into something erratic and unpredictable, she becomes a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Put simply, she has no brakes.
\nYounger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, survives Ollie’s bullying and outcast status throughout her school years. She dreams of winning a Nobel Prize and unlocking the mysteries of the mind. Amy believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. Except none of that can explain what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the bipolar disorder that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed world.
\nAs Amy comes of age and seeks to find her place - first in academics, then New York publishing, and through a series of troubled relationships - every step brings collisions with Ollie, who slips in and out of the Shred family without warning. For all that upends and unsettles these sisters, an inextricable bond always draws them back.
\nSpanning two decades, Shred Sisters is an intimate and bittersweet story exploring the fierce complexities of sisterhood, mental health, loss and love. If anything is true it’s what Amy learns on her road to self-acceptance: No one will love you or hurt you more than a sister.
\n
The good news is, thanks to Nicky, everyone knows who started the apocalypse. The bad news is, she’s being hunted by a person who neither forgives nor forgets. And then there’s Meredith.
\nMeredith deceived and used Nicky - and seduced her at the same time. If Nicky had any choice, she’d stay far away from her. But Meredith’s the only one with the power to keep her safe, and Nicky’s been forced to live beneath her roof and under her thumb.
\nAnd that’s not the only problem. The phages are changing, growing even more dangerous. It seems the architect of the apocalypse has a new plan. To stop it, Nicky will have to solve a mystery that’s eluded everyone: why someone would choose to end the world.
\nShe’s going to need Meredith’s help, and that never comes for free. Because Nicky might think she’s finished with Meredith, but Meredith is far from finished with her.
\n
Nicky believes three things that aren’t true. She thinks the apocalypse was a horrible accident. She assumes her dream of being a journalist died with most of humanity. And she’s sure that she’s straight. She’s about to meet someone who’ll make her question all three - it’s a shame she’s the worst woman in what’s left of the world.
\nThree years ago, life as Nicky knew it ended when a mystery virus turned a tenth of humans into nocturnal, feral monsters, and everyone else into their prey. Now she’s found a new normal in a survivor community near York. That is until Meredith Hind appears, with her own private army, thinly veiled threats and a challenge for investigate the real origin of the apocalypse.
\nMeredith’s ruthless, manipulative and infuriatingly sure of herself. Nicky knows that getting involved with her is a terrible mistake, she just can’t seem to stop making it. But Meredith’s a woman with secrets, and if Nicky can’t learn them in time, she may not live to regret it.
\n
In Bryson's biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand - and, if possible, answer - the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilisation, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us.
\nTo that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds.
\nA Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.
Back in America after twenty years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings.
For a start there's the gloriously out-of-shape Stephen Katz, a buddy from Iowa along for the walk. Despite Katz's overwhelming desire to find cozy restaurants, he and Bryson eventually settle into their stride, and while on the trail they meet a bizarre assortment of hilarious characters. But A Walk in the Woods is more than just a laugh-out-loud hike. Bryson's acute eye is a wise witness to this beautiful but fragile trail, and as he tells its fascinating history, he makes a moving plea for the conservation of America's last great wilderness. An adventure, a comedy, and a celebration, A Walk in the Woods has become a modern classic of travel literature.
After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, \"it was clear my people needed me\"). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.
Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.
The summer of 1927 began with one of the signature events of the twentieth century: on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop, and when he landed in Le Bourget airfield near Paris, he ignited an explosion of worldwide rapture and instantly became the most famous person on the planet.
\nMeanwhile, the titanically talented Babe Ruth was beginning his assault on the home run record, which would culminate on September 30 with his sixtieth blast, one of the most resonant and durable records in sports history. In between those dates a Queens housewife named Ruth Snyder and her corset-salesman lover garroted her husband, leading to a murder trial that became a huge tabloid sensation. Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly sat atop a flagpole in Newark, New Jersey, for twelve days—a new record. The American South was clobbered by unprecedented rain and by flooding of the Mississippi basin, a great human disaster, the relief efforts for which were guided by the uncannily able and insufferably pompous Herbert Hoover. Calvin Coolidge interrupted an already leisurely presidency for an even more relaxing three-month vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
\nThe gangster Al Capone tightened his grip on the illegal booze business through a gaudy and murderous reign of terror and municipal corruption. The first true “talking picture,” Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer, was filmed and forever changed the motion picture industry. The four most powerful central bankers on earth met in secret session on a Long Island estate and made a fateful decision that virtually guaranteed a future crash and depression.
All this and much, much more transpired in that epochal summer of 1927, and Bill Bryson captures its outsized personalities, exciting events, and occasional just plain weirdness with his trademark vividness, eye for telling detail, and delicious humor. In that year America stepped out onto the world stage as the main event, and One Summer transforms it all into narrative nonfiction of the highest order.
In the bestselling, prize-winning A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson achieved the seemingly impossible by making the science of our world both understandable and entertaining to millions of people around the globe.
Now he turns his attention inwards to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories, The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up.
A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this book will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again.
Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide toward certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal.
He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions-suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise.
As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.
The origin story of one of the most influential and transformative business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age.
\nThe business triumphs of Bill Gates are widely known: the twenty-year-old who dropped out of Harvard to start a software company that became an industry giant and changed the way the world works and lives; the billionaire many times over who turned his attention to philanthropic pursuits to address climate change, global health, and U.S. education.
\nSource Code is not about Microsoft or the Gates Foundation or the future of technology. It’s the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today: his childhood, his early passions and pursuits. It’s the story of his principled grandmother and ambitious parents, his first deep friendships and the sudden death of his best friend; of his struggles to fit in and his discovery of a world of coding and computers in the dawn of a new era; of embarking in his early teens on a path that took him from midnight escapades at a nearby computer center to his college dorm room, where he sparked a revolution that would change the world.
\nBill Gates tells this, his own story, for the first time: wise, warm, revealing, it’s a fascinating portrait of an American life.
\n
In Northern Alberta, a queer Indigenous doctoral student steps away from his dissertation to write a novel. He is adrift, caught between his childhood on the reservation and this new life of the urban intelligentsia. Billy-Ray Belcourt’s unnamed narrator chronicles a series of encounters: a heart-to-heart with fellow doctoral student River over the mounting pressure placed on marginalised scholars; a meeting with Michael, a closeted adult from his hometown whose vulnerability and loneliness punctuate the realities of queer life on the fringe.
\nAmid these conversations, the narrator is haunted by memories of Jack, a cousin caught in the cycle of police violence, drugs, and survival. Jack’s life parallels the narrator’s own; the possibilities of escape and imprisonment are left to chance with colonialism stacking the odds.
\n
Ellie dates the Right Guy, says all the Right Things, and acts the Right Way to avoid being ridiculed for her autism.
\nWhen that Right Guy unceremoniously dumps her right before they're supposed to go to beach volleyball camp together, Ellie's perfectly curated world comes crashing down and she's labeled the boring, weird girl.
Desperate to regain her good reputation (and yeah, sure, the boy...), Ellie goes to Camp SMASH, which is nothing like she expected.
There, she's paired with Sierra, a mysterious, standoffish volleyball legacy who makes Ellie's quest to get her boyfriend back even more complicated . . .
\n
On Christmas Day in 1893, every man, woman, and child in a remote mining town disappeared, belongings forsaken, meals left to freeze in vacant cabins, and not a single bone found.
Now, journalist Abigail Foster and her historian father have set out to explore the long-abandoned town and learn what happened. With them are two backcountry guides - along with a psychic and a paranormal photographer who are there to investigate rumors that the town is haunted.
But Abigail and her companions are about to learn that the town’s ghosts are the least of their worries. Twenty miles from civilization, with a blizzard bearing down, they realize they are not alone.
The ordeal that follows will test this small team past the breaking point as they battle the elements and human foes alike—and discover that the town’s secrets still have the power to kill.
“Are you happy with your life?”
Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.
Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.
Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”
In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.
Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined - one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.
At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything’s different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorising better, needing less sleep.
\nBut before long, he can’t deny it: Something’s happening to his brain. To his body. He’s starting to see the world, and those around him - even those he loves most - in whole new ways.
\nThe truth is, Logan’s genome has been hacked. And there’s a reason he’s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy.
\nWorse still, what’s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large - at a terrifying cost. Because of his new abilities, Logan’s the one person in the world capable of stopping what’s been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he’ll have to become something other than himself.
\nMaybe even something other than human. And even as he’s fighting, he can’t help wondering: what if humanity’s only hope for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution?
High school junior Samantha Blackwell has always been haunted by unsettling dreams that leave her restless and exhausted. But one steamy summer spent mostly working at her family’s psychic reading shop, everything changes… Her dreams reveal a budding mystery, a vision that lovely and unassuming classmate Jane Hutchens, who she hardly knows, is being covertly watched at every turn. Stalked. Believing that her dreams are destined to come true, Samantha comes face-to-face with her deepest insecurities as she does her best to rise to the challenge and help Jane.
Jane has always struggled to fit in with the outgoing, uber popular Hutchens clan. And life’s newest twist isn’t making things any easier. Jane is gay, and when she comes out to her influential family, the news lands with an inglorious and heartbreaking thud. Still reeling from the fallout, she begins to receive messages from a secret admirer and is intrigued. But what starts out as harmless soon ensnares both girls in a web that spins dangerously out of control.
A small New England seaside town and a puzzle demanding to be solved is the backdrop for a newly minted friendship to ignite into romance and a summer that neither teen will ever forget. Together, are they strong enough to shine a light into a place as dark as the blind side of the moon?
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Blayne Cooper - Blind Side of the Moon.jpeg", "mtime": 1767084066200.5225, "size": 856632, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:19:06.368Z" }, "Blayne Cooper - Cobb Island": { "title": "Cobb Island", "author": "Blayne Cooper", "description": "Cobb Island offers not one but three romances in this novel set off the coast of Virginia. Marcy and Doug have had only sporadic contact since Marcy's family moved away a year ago. Their older sisters agree to supervise the lovesick teens during a week-long stay in an eerie island house that has been in Marcy's family since the late 1600s. But who will chaperone the chaperones?
\nSparks fly between them almost from the beginning, growing into lightning-size bolts when Liv notices that Kayla is answering her questions before she has even voiced them. It is Liv's training in translating foreign languages, however that proves to be the key that unlocks the house's secret history - and the story of a tragic love begun and ended four centuries earlier.
Mid-western college professor Natalie Abbott is estranged from her dysfunctional family. It happened so slowly she barely noticed... Then it was too late. On the cusp of landing her dream job, Natalie is forced to New Orleans in search of her runaway teenaged brother Joshua. Desperately short of clues, she’s grateful that NOPD Detective Adele Lejeune seems to genuinely care.
Detective Lejeune's interest in Joshua's disappearance dangerously shifts from professional to intensely personal, as do her feelings for Natalie. The women doggedly navigate the depths of the city's seething underbelly as they work to solve the tangled mystery that is poised to crush Natalie's heart and leave Adele’s life in ruins.
In this sequel to Cobb Island, paranormal researchers Kayla Redding and Olivia Hazelwood begin their professional and personal partnership as they tackle their first case together in the world's most haunted city - Edinburgh, Scotland.
\nWhile in Edinburgh, the women visit the Cobb family ancestral home. The Cobb family historian takes the women on a journey back through time to 17th Century Colonial Virginia. He weaves the tale of Faylinn Cobb, explaining what happened to her and her family after her sister-in-law, Bridget Redding, was branded a witch.
Years ago, Lorna Malachi, a frightened teenager, was plunged into a nightmare called Blue Ridge Women's Correctional Facility. Terrified and desperate to belong, she sold her soul one piece at a time. She survived to sit atop the ever-shifting trash heap of prison society. Lorna has learned the hard way not to trust anyone, particularly penal system virgins like Kellie Holloway, her unrepentant new cellmate.
\nBut Kellie's pride and cluelessness guarantee that without help, she won't last long. Together, Kellie and Lorna navigate through an oppressive, hidden world where the lines between right and wrong blur, sexual passion is forbidden but explosive, and love is the biggest risk of all.
It might have been the Gilded Age for the likes of Rockefeller and Carnegie but newly arrived immigrants and poverty-stricken Americans packed into Manhattan s teeming Lower Eastside were lucky to make ends meet. In this tumultuous time, factory worker Virginia Chisholm hopes for more, but her dreams go up in smoke when a tenement blaze rips her family apart.
\nAided by Lindsay Killian, the street-wise, rail-riding drifter she meets in a charity hospital, Ginny follows the orphan train that has taken her siblings west. The desperate quest to reunite her family takes the young women from the slums of New York City to the farms of West Virginia and the bustling frontier beyond. This harrowing journey moves Ginny and Lindsay from one mishap and adventure to another. It also leads them from friendship to a tender and unexpected romance.
When Leigh Matthews finds herself lost due to an unexpected detour in her normal trucking route, she ends up in the middle of nowhere. As soon as she lays eyes on RJ Fitzgerald, however, a beautiful and intriguing handyman for a lonely country diner, she realises that nowhere can be a very interesting place.
\n'The Road to Glory' is a story of two women, their bumpy road from lust to love, and the multitude of surprising turns along the way.
Rachel Michaels is at the top of her profession, but she's grown tired of trading barbs with her co-host/ex-husband on their popular morning radio talk show. Eager to stretch her wings, she takes a second job as the color commentator for Denver's new professional women's soccer team.
Along with her new job comes an exciting assignment, travel to Venezuela to profile the team's sizzling star recruit, Miranda Gutierrez. But Rachel begins to long for a little of her old routine when her boss forces her to extend her stay to accompany team big-wig, Nora Butler, and the headstrong player on a \"bonding\" adventure.
Their journey gets off to a bad start, and things go downhill from there. All three women are tested mentally and physically as they fight for their lives. They must learn to depend on each other, shape their own destinies, and, ultimately, risk everything for what matters most. What would you do to survive? How much would you risk for love?
From their earliest years, five very different girls were as close as sisters - sharing everything, even secrets and lies - until their friendship and their lives were ripped apart by a devastating act of betrayal from one of their own. Twenty years have gone by, and one woman has more cause to regret her estrangement from the group than the rest.
\nAn old promise leads to a reunion, which unearths memories, mistrust, and hidden agendas as the former friends - grown up and grown apart - reconnect and realize the impact they've had on each other's lives. Real and perceived betrayals jeopardize the entire event... as well as the hopes of a rekindled romance. The bonds of love and friendship can be as strong as steel. But are they unbreakable?
Blayne Cooper and T. Novan continue to chronicle the lives of Lauren Strayer and Devlyn Marlowe in First Lady, the eagerly-awaited sequel to their thirteen-month best seller, Madam President.
\nPlanning a wedding is never easy. However, most brides don’t face the challenges that Lauren Strayer does. Her beloved comes with a ready-made family, something the biographer never imagined for herself. In addition, Lauren’s estranged father thoroughly disapproves of her future mate, who just happens to be the nation’s first female president.
\nLauren tackles the perils and pleasures of parenting and the tension between her private nature and her new, very public role. At the same time, Dev, a dedicated public servant, struggles to find the balance between managing the nation’s interests, her family, her fears, and her stress, while continuing the development of her relationship with Lauren. The result is an action-packed, amusing and tender tale of the sort that fans of Cooper & Novan have come to love and expect.
\n
It's the year 2020 and history has been made by Devlyn Marlowe - the first woman to win the U.S. Presidency. When it comes time to select a biographer to chronicle her historic term in office, Devlyn breaks with tradition and chooses a writer based on very personal reasons. She wants Lauren Strayer, a young author whose writing has always captivated her. There's only one problem - Lauren isn't interested in the job.
\nDespite Lauren's reservations, the persuasive Commander-in-Chief is able to sway the author's opinion with the promise of true editorial freedom - a biographer's dream come true. Realizing that the opportunity of a lifetime awaits her, Lauren reluctantly accepts the position and soon finds herself residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue alongside the First Family. .
\nCaught up in the frenzy of life at the White House, Lauren begins to unravel the complex woman that is the President and finds herself more intrigued by Devlyn with each passing day. Painfully realistic at times, funny, romantic, and endearing, Madam President is a drama set against one of the most dynamic backdrops imaginable and follows two lives destined to be entwined.
Straddling science fiction, fantasy and myth, the writings of award-winning author Bo-Young Kim have garnered a cult following in South Korea, where she is widely acknowledged as a pioneer and inspiration.
\nOn the Origin of Species makes available for the first time in English some of Kim’s most acclaimed stories, as well as an essay on science fiction. Her strikingly original, thought-provoking work teems with human and non-human beings, all of whom are striving to survive through evolution, whether biologically, technologically or socially.
\nKim’s literature of ideas offers some of the most rigorous and surprisingly poignant reflections on posthuman existence being written today.
Gary Thorn is struggling with a big decision. Should he stay in London, wallowing in the safety of his legal job in Peckham and eating pies with his next door neighbour, Grace and her dog Lassoo, or should he move to Brighton, where his girlfriend Emily is about to open The Hotel Avocado? Either way, he’d be letting someone down.
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But sinister forces are gathering in a cloud of launderette scented-vape smoke, and the arrival of the mysterious Mr Sequence puts Gary in an even worse soon he might be dead.
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All Gary wants is a happy life. But he also wants to be alive to enjoy it . . .
Bathroom salesman Matt is at a crossroads. He has lost his job, he is about to be made homeless and his girlfriend has left him. He wants his luck to change and he wants things to go back to how they were.
\nOut of the blue he is offered a job that comes with a free luxury apartment. He hopes this might be enough to tempt her back. But, as events unfold, it starts to dawn on him that perhaps she didn't leave of her own accord after all . . .
Gary Thorn goes for a pint with a work acquaintance called Brendan. When Brendan leaves early, Gary meets a girl in the pub. He doesn’t catch her name, but falls for her anyway. When she suddenly disappears without saying goodbye, all Gary has to remember her by is the book she was The Satsuma Complex. But when Brendan goes missing, Gary needs to track down the girl he now calls Satsuma to get some answers.
\nAnd so begins Gary’s quest, through the estates and pie shops of South London, to finally bring some love and excitement into his unremarkable life . . .
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward tells the revelatory, behind-the-scenes story of three wars - Ukraine, the Middle East and the struggle for the American Presidency.
\nWar is an intimate and sweeping account of one of the most tumultuous periods in presidential politics and American history.
\nWe see President Joe Biden and his top advisers in tense conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. We also see Donald Trump, conducting a shadow presidency and seeking to regain political power.
\nWith unrivaled, inside-the-room reporting, Woodward shows President Biden’s approach to managing the war in Ukraine, the most significant land war in Europe since World War II, and his tortured path to contain the bloody Middle East conflict between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas.
\nWoodward reveals the extraordinary complexity and consequence of wartime back-channel diplomacy and decision-making to deter the use of nuclear weapons and a rapid slide into World War III.
\nThe raw cage-fight of politics accelerates as Americans prepare to vote in 2024, starting between President Biden and Trump, and ending with the unexpected elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president.
\nWar provides an unvarnished examination of the vice president as she tries to embrace the Biden legacy and policies while beginning to chart a path of her own as a presidential candidate.
\nWoodward’s reporting once again sets the standard for journalism at its most authoritative and illuminating.
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Artie Anderson wouldn’t call himself lonely, not exactly. He has a beautiful apartment in the West Village, a steady career as a ghostwriter, and he has Halle and Vanessa, who - as the daughter and ex-wife of his former partner - are the closest thing he can call family.
\nBut when the women announce a move across the country, on Artie’s 60th birthday no less, Artie realises that his seemingly full life isn’t quite as full as he imagined. To make matters worse, a surprising injury strips Artie of the independent lifestyle he’s used to and pushes him into the hands of GALS, the local LGBTQ senior center down the street.
\nSince the death of his ex-boyfriend, Abe decades ago, Artie’s intentionally avoided big crowds and close friends. So, he’s woefully unprepared for the other patrons of GALS, a group of larger-than-life seniors who insist on celebrating each and every day. They refuse to dwell in the past, but Artie, who has never quite recovered from Abe’s death and the loss of his dearest friends, can’t shake the memories of his youth, and of the chances he did, and didn’t, take.
\nStretching across the 1990s and the present day, Four Squares is an intimate and profound look at what it means to create community and the lasting impressions even the most fleeting of relationships can leave. With Bobby Finger’s signature warmth, humor, and wit, it is touching reminder that it’s never too late for a second chance at truly living.
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A bighearted and moving debut about a wry retired schoolteacher whose decade-old secret threatens to come to light and send shockwaves through her small Texas town.
\nBillington, Texas, is a place where nothing changes. Well, almost nothing. For the first time in nearly four decades, Mary Alice Roth is not getting ready for the first day of school at Billington High. A few months into her retirement - or, district mandated exile as she calls it - Mary Alice does not know how to fill her days.
\nThe annual picnic is coming up, but that isn’t nearly enough since the menu never changes and she had the roles mentally assigned weeks ago. At least there’s Ellie, who stops by each morning for coffee and whose reemergence in Mary Alice’s life is the one thing soothing the sting of retirement.
\nMary Alice and Ellie were a pair since the day Ellie moved in next door. That they both were single mothers – Mary Alice widowed, Ellie divorced - with sons the same age was a pleasant coincidence, but they were forever linked when they lost the boys, one right after the other.
\nYears later, the two are working their way back to a comfortable friendship. But when Mary Alice’s sister arrives on her doorstep with a staggering piece of news, it jeopardises the careful shell she’s built around her life. The whole of her friendship with Ellie is put at risk, the fabric of a place as steadfast as Billington is questioned, and the unflappable, knotty fixture that is Mary Alice Roth might have to change after all.
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In this seductive, provocative debut, two gay Afghan men - cast out of their respective countries of birth by circumstances beyond their control - collide in Istanbul, a city that will test their willingness to sacrifice everything for the ones they love.
\nWhen Delbar - a hapless twenty-something with dreams of becoming a drag queen - is spectacularly outed, he flees the insular immigrant-dense suburbs of Washington, DC to seek refuge with his sympathetic aunt in Istanbul. There, he discovers a vibrant community of dissidents, sex workers, activists, poets, and heretics. Among them are Leif and his boyfriend, Mansur, with whom Delbar quickly develops a blazing fascination.
\nBut Mansur also nurses a wounded heart, having left his own family, and his first love, behind in Iran. This time, Mansur’s learned not to dream bigger than his own survival. He’ll keep a low profile, work hard to send money back, and remain faithful to Leif - at least until his refugee status is granted.
\nWhen riot police descend on attendees of the annual Istanbul Pride march, Mansur and Delbar are thrust into dangerous proximity. With the country surging into authoritarianism, each person must ask what constitutes a life well-lived, and how high is the price of freedom?
\nTold through the alternating viewpoints of Delbar and Mansur, Bobuq Sayed’s debut is a story of borders and boundaries transgressed, and a deeply engrossing exploration of what it means to make a home at the margins of society. At once an immigrant family saga, a thwarted love story, and a searing portrait of politics made intimately personal.
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Ina is a 41-year-old literary scholar on the cusp of professional success. With a coveted university job, a kind husband, and a book on Eugene O’Neill due in months, her life appears enviably stable. But when an impulsive kiss with a stranger shatters her self-control, Ina finds herself plunged into an erotic and emotional freefall.
\nShe tells herself it’s research - a brief detour before returning to real life. But what begins as a flirtation becomes a reckoning with everything Ina thought she wanted: marriage, intellect, control. As she navigates the ecstatic confusion of newfound desire, she risks upending her work, her relationship, and her understanding of who she is.
\nSet in Brooklyn and Manhattan at the turn of the millennium, Don’t Stop is a bold, immersive debut that explores what happens when a woman dares to want more - of the world, of her body, of herself. Bonnie Friedman delivers a novel of transgression, transformation, and unapologetic longing.
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Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with- - of all things - her mind. True chemistry results.
\nBut like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America's most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth's unusual approach to cooking (\"combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride\") proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn't just teaching women to cook. She's daring them to change the status quo.
What’s still holding women back at work? Bonnie Hammer, Vice Chair of NBCUniversal and one of the most powerful women in corporate America, debunks the bad advice that too many women at all levels are told and shares her surprising, no-nonsense secrets to success.
\nBonnie Hammer’s legendary career spans five decades in a turbulent, male-driven industry. Today, Bonnie is a powerful leader at the very top of her field, and women constantly ask What is your secret to success?
\nRecognised as “the most powerful woman in Hollywood,” Bonnie’s power - and her staying power - comes from rejecting common myths about how women are “supposed” to behave and approach the workplace. She knows the traditional stories women are told about work - captured in pithy phrases like “don’t mix work with play,” “talk is cheap,” “follow your dreams,” “know your worth,” “trust your gut,” and “you can have it all” - actually hold women back. Drawing on her experiences rising from an entry-level production assistant to a top executive responsible for transforming NBCUniversal into a media powerhouse, Bonnie flips conventional workplace wisdom and gives women the un common sense they need to succeed.
\nBonnie has mentored countless women who’ve built careers in every industry, and she leads NBCUniversal’s mentorship program for female executives. She’s known for taking no prisoners and telling the uncensored and uncompromising truth - even when it isn’t easy to hear. Now, she shares her time-tested wisdom in fifteen chapters that call out the lies women are told at and about work. She replaces them with powerful new truths and gives you easily digestible and practical advice to nail it in your own life.
\nWritten with humor and heart, and full of data and research that prove her points, 15 Lies Women Are Told at Work is a portable mentor for working women. It doesn’t just explain one woman’s rise to the top in a tough industry; it shows how any woman can rise in her own work world.
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From the author and translator of the National Book Award finalist and Booker Prize shortlisted Cursed Bunny, comes a new novel-in-ghost-stories, set in a mysterious research center that houses cursed objects, where those who open the wrong door might find it’s disappeared behind them, or that the echoing footsteps they’re running from are their own . . .
\nThe acclaimed Korean horror and sci-fi writer’s goosebump-inducing new book follows an employee on the night shift at the Institute. They soon learn why some employees don't last long at the center. The handkerchief in Room 302 once belonged to the late mother of two sons, whose rivalry imbues the handkerchief with undue power and unravels those around it. The cursed sneaker down the hall is stolen by a live-streaming, ghost-chasing employee, who later finds he can’t escape its tread. A cat in Room 206 reveals the crimes of its former family, trying to understand its own path to the Institute’s halls.
\nBut Chung's haunted institute isn't just a chilling place to play. As in her astounding collections Cursed Bunny and Your Utopia, these violent allegories take on the horrors of animal testing, conversion therapy, domestic abuse, and late-stage capitalism. Equal parts bone-chilling, wryly funny, and deeply political, Midnight Timetable is a masterful work of literary horror from one of our time's greatest imaginations.
Amid a literal fog of war on a disputed planet, a woman is thrust into battle, forced to fight in her captors' war. With an empire at her back, ready to kill her at the slightest hesitation, this slaveturned- reluctant hero must battle through an unknown enemy, scientific abominations, and truly alien terrain to uncover the truth about her identity and that of her enslaved companions.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tChung's novel - told in sparse, evocative prose and expertly translated by Anton Hur - draws on the real history of Korean soldiers who fought and died in a war against Russia on behalf of the Qing Dynasty. Red Sword combines stunning world-building with a thought-provoking challenge to readers: what does it mean to wield power over others?
By the internationally acclaimed author of Cursed Bunny, in another thrilling translation from the Korean by Anton Hur, Your Utopia is full of tales of loss and discovery, idealism and dystopia, death and immortality. These stories are suffused with Chung's inimitable wry humour and surprisingly tender moments, too - often between unexpected subjects.
\nIn ‘The Center for Immortality Research’, a low-level employee runs herself ragged planning a fancy gala for donors, only to be blamed for a crime she witnessed during the event, under the noses of the mysterious celebrity benefactors hoping to live forever. But she can’t be fired - no one can.
\nIn ‘One More Kiss, Dear’, a tender, one-sided love blooms in the AI-elevator of an apartment complex; as in, the elevator develops a profound affection for one of the residents.
\nIn ‘Seeds’, we see the final frontier of capitalism’s destruction of the planet and the GMO companies who rule the agricultural industry in this bleak future, but nature has ways of creeping back to life.
\nIf you haven’t yet experienced the fruits of this singular imagination, Your Utopia is waiting.
In 1776, an elite group of soldiers were handpicked to serve as George Washington’s bodyguards. Washington trusted them; relied on them. But unbeknownst to Washington, some of them were part of a treasonous plan. In the months leading up to the Revolutionary War, these traitorous soldiers, along with the Governor of New York William Tryon and Mayor David Mathews, launched a deadly plot against the most important member of the military: George Washington himself.
This is the story of the secret plot and how it was revealed. It is a story of leaders, liars, counterfeiters, and jailhouse confessors. It also shows just how hard the battle was for George Washington - and how close America was to losing the Revolutionary War.
Taking place during the most critical period of our nation’s birth, The First Conspiracy tells a remarkable and previously untold piece of American history that not only reveals George Washington’s character, but also illuminates the origins of America’s counterintelligence movement that led to the modern day CIA.
Kennedy, the thirty-fifth president of the United States, is often ranked among Americans’ most well-liked presidents. Yet what most Americans don’t know is that JFK’s historic presidency almost ended before it began - at the hands of a disgruntled sociopathic loner armed with dynamite.
\nOn December 11, 1960, shortly after Kennedy’s election and before his inauguration, a retired postal worker named Richard Pavlick waited in his car - a parked Buick - on a quiet street in Palm Beach, Florida. Pavlick knew the president-elect’s schedule. He knew when Kennedy would leave his house. He knew where Kennedy was going. From there, Pavlick had a simple plan - one that could’ve changed the course of history.
\nWritten in the gripping, page-turning style that is the hallmark of Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch’s bestselling series, this is a slice of history vividly brought to life. Meltzer and Mensch are at the top of their game with this brilliant exploration of what could’ve been for one of the most compelling leaders of the 20th century.
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Everyone knows the story of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, but few are aware of the original conspiracy to kill him four years earlier in 1861, literally on his way to Washington, DC, for his first inauguration.
\nThe conspirators were part of a pro-Southern secret society that didn’t want an anti-slavery President in the White House. They planned an elaborate scheme to assassinate the brand new President in a Baltimore train station as Lincoln’s inauguration train passed through en route to the Capital.
\nThe plot was investigated by famed detective Allan Pinkerton, who infiltrated the group with undercover agents, including one of the first female private detectives in America. Had the assassination succeeded, there would have been no Lincoln Presidency, and the course of the Civil War and American history would have forever been altered.
\nThe bestselling team that brought you The First Conspiracy now turns their attention to the story of the secret society that tried to kill Abraham Lincoln and the undercover detectives who foiled their plans.
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From the New York Times bestselling authors of The First Conspiracy and The Lincoln Conspiracy comes the little-known true story of a Nazi plot to kill FDR, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill at the height of World War II.
\nIn 1943, as the war against Nazi Germany raged abroad, President Franklin Roosevelt had a critical goal: a face-to-face sit-down with his allies Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. This first-ever meeting of the Big Three in Tehran, Iran, would decide some of the most crucial strategic details of the war. Yet when the Nazis found out about the meeting, their own secret plan took shape - an assassination plot that would’ve changed history.
\nA true story filled with daring rescues, body doubles, and political intrigue, The Nazi Conspiracy details FDR’s pivotal meeting in Tehran and the deadly Nazi plot against the heads of state of the three major Allied powers who attended it.
\nWith all the hallmarks of a Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch page-turner, The Nazi Conspiracy explores the great political minds of the twentieth century, investigating the pivotal years of the war in gripping detail. This meeting of the Big Three changed the course of World War II. Here’s the inside story of how it almost led to a world-shattering disaster.
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Who is Nola Brown?
\nShe's supposed to be dead.
\nHer body was found on a plane that mysteriously fell from the sky as it left a secret military base in the Alaskan wilderness. Her commanding officer verifies she's dead. The US government confirms it. But Jim \"Zig\" Zigarowski has just found out the truth: Nola is still alive. And on the run.
\nZig works at Dover Air Force Base, helping put to rest the bodies of those who die on top-secret missions. Nola was a childhood friend of Zig's daughter and someone who once saved his daughter's life. So when Zig realises Nola is still alive, he's determined to find her. Yet as Zig digs into Nola's past, he learns that trouble follows Nola everywhere she goes.
\nTogether, Nola and Zig will either reveal a sleight of hand being played at the highest levels of power or die trying to uncover the US Army's most mysterious secret - a centuries-old conspiracy that traces back through history to the greatest escape artist of all: Harry Houdini.
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Beecher White, hero of the number one bestseller THE INNER CIRCLE, discovers a killer in Washington, DC who's recreating the crimes of four of the world's most famous presidential assassins.
\nBut what's if those assassins weren't just isolated killers Who do they really work for And why are they planning to kill the President today Beecher's about to find out. And most terrifying, he's about to come face-to-face with the fifth assassin.
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When Hazel Nash was six years old, her father taught her: mysteries need to be solved. He should know. Hazel's father is Jack Nash, the host of America's favorite conspiracy TV show, The House of Secrets. Even as a child, she loved hearing her dad's tall tales, especially the one about a leather book belonging to Benedict Arnold that was hidden in a corpse.
Now, years later, Hazel wakes up in the hospital and remembers nothing, not even her own name. She's told she's been in a car accident that killed her father and injured her brother. But she can't remember any of it, because of her own traumatic brain injury. Then a man from the FBI shows up, asking questions about her dad-and about his connection to the corpse of a man found with an object stuffed into his chest: a priceless book that belonged to Benedict Arnold.
Back at her house, Hazel finds guns that she doesn't remember owning. On her forehead, she sees scars from fights she can't recall. Most important, the more Hazel digs, the less she likes the person she seems to have been.
Trying to put together the puzzle pieces of her past and present, Hazel Nash needs to figure out who killed this man-and how the book wound up in his chest. The answer will tell her the truth about her father, what he was really doing for the government-and who Hazel really is.
Mysteries need to be solved. Especially the ones about yourself.
Beecher White, a young archivist, spends his days working with the most important documents of the U.S. government. He has always been the keeper of other people's stories, never a part of the story himself . . . Until now.
\nWhen Clementine Kaye, Beecher's first childhood crush, shows up at the National Archives asking for his help tracking down her long-lost father, Beecher tries to impress her by showing her the secret vault where the President of the United States privately reviews classified documents. After they accidentally happen upon a priceless artifact - a two-hundred-year-old dictionary that once belonged to George Washington - hidden underneath a desk chair, Beecher and Clementine find themselves suddenly entangled in a web of deception, conspiracy, and murder.
\nSoon a man is dead and Beecher is on the run as he races to learn the truth behind this mysterious national treasure. His search will lead him to discover a coded and ingenious puzzle that conceals a disturbing secret from the founding of our nation. It is a secret, Beecher soon discovers, that some believe is worth killing for.
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Archie Mint has led a charmed life - he's got a beautiful wife, two impressive kids, and a successful military career. When he's killed while trying to stop a robbery in his own home, his family is shattered - and then shocked when the other shoe drops. Mint's charmed life, so perfect on the surface, held criminal secrets none of them could have imagined.
\nWhile working on Mint's body before his funeral, mortician “Zig” Zigarowski discovers something he was never meant to see. That telling detail leads him to Dover Air Force Base, where he uncovers Mint's involvement in a top-secret military unit and his connection to military artist and Sergeant First Class Nola Brown. Two years ago, Nola saved Zig's life--so he knows better than most that she's as volatile and dangerous as a bolt of lightning.
\nEveryone wants to talk to Nola, but she's not cooperating - and indeed doesn't want to be found. In order to track her down, Zig teams with Nola's long missing brother, who's just as combustible as she is. As they follow Nola's trail, they discover one of the U.S. government's most intensely guarded secrets - an undisclosed military facility that dates back to the Cold War and holds the key to something far more sinister: a hidden group willing to compromise the very safety and security of America itself.
\nTrouble always finds her . . .
\nShe's the lightning rod.
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A severed arm, found buried in the White House Rose Garden.
A lethal message with terrible consequences for the Presidency.
And a hidden secret in one family's past that will have repercussions for the entire nation.
To most, it looks like Beecher White has an ordinary job. A young staffer with the National Archives in Washington, D.C., he's responsible for safekeeping the government's most important documents . . . and, sometimes, its most closely held secrets.
But there are a powerful few who know his other role. Beecher is a member of the Culper Ring, a 200-year-old secret society founded by George Washington and charged with protecting the Presidency.
Now the current occupant of the White House needs the Culper Ring's help. The alarming discovery of the buried arm has the President's team in a rightful panic. Who buried the arm? How did they get past White House security? And most important: What's the message hidden in the arm's closed fist? Indeed, the puzzle inside has a clear intended recipient, and it isn't the President. It's Beecher, himself.
Beecher's investigation will take him back to one of our country's greatest secrets and point him toward the long, carefully hidden truth about the most shocking history of all: family history.
Andrew Fechmeier is a master at hiding. He'd better be - he’s spent decades concealing a secret that could get him killed. So when he’s diagnosed with a terminal disease, he heads for the local funeral home carrying the blue suit he eventually wants to be buried in. But what no one knows is that Fechmeier secretly tucked something inside, turning the suit into a final, untraceable hiding spot.
\nIt's a perfect plan. Until Fetch is brutally murdered by a mysterious killer who will stop at nothing to find the priceless object hidden in the suit.
\nWasting no time, the cunning but unconventional Roddy LaPointe opens an investigation into Fetch’s murder, recruiting help from his friend, the brilliant “Zig” Zigarowski. But it doesn’t take long for Zig to discover the real reason Roddy cares so much about this case: Fetch’s death is tied to Roddy’s mother, who was murdered decades earlier.
\nAs the relentless killer closes in, Roddy’s twin sister - the enigmatic and volatile Nola Brown - starts investigating for herself, uncovering a sinister plot that reveals their mother’s dark history, the true identity of her killer, and the shocking secret behind her death.
\nDon’t turn your back on The Viper.
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After a CIA agent mysteriously dies overseas, his top asset surfaces with a startling and terrifying claim. There’s just one problem - no one knows if she can be trusted.
\nBut when six exchange students go missing, two airplane passengers trade places, and one political-asylum seeker is arrested, a deadly chain of events is set in motion.
With the United States facing an imminent and devastating attack, America’s new president must turn to covert counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath to help carry out two of the most dangerous operations in the country’s history.
Code-named “Gold Dust” and “Blackbird,” they are shrouded in absolute secrecy as either of them, if discovered, will constitute an act of war.
A new administration and a new approach to dealing with America’s enemies have left covert counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath without a job. But when American doctor Julia Gallo is kidnapped in Afghanistan, the terms of her ransom leave the president with only one course of action.
Every politician has a secret. And when the daughter of a politically connected family is kidnapped abroad, America’s new president will agree to anything - even a deadly and ill-advised rescue plan - in order to keep his secret hidden.
But when covert counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath is assigned to infiltrate one of the world’s most notorious prisons and free the man the kidnappers demand as ransom, he quickly learns that there is much more to the operation than anyone dares to admit.
As the subterfuge is laid bare, Harvath must examine his own career of ruthlessly hunting down and killing terrorists and decide if he has what it takes to help one of the world’s worst go free.
From behind the rows of razor wire, a new breed of counterterrorism operator has emerged.
\nJust as skilled, just as fearsome, and just as deadly as their colleagues, Delta Force’s newest members have only one thing setting them apart—their gender. Part of a top-secret, all-female program codenamed The Athena Project, four of Delta’s best and brightest women are about to undertake one of the nation’s deadliest assignments.
\nWhen a terrorist attack in Rome kills more than twenty Americans, Athena Team members Gretchen Casey, Julie Ericsson, Megan Rhodes, and Alex Cooper are tasked with hunting down the Venetian arms dealer responsible for providing the explosives. But there is more to the story than anyone knows.
\nIn the jungles of South America, a young U.S. intelligence officer has made a grisly discovery. Surrounded by monoliths covered with Runic symbols, one of America’s greatest fears appears to have come true. Simultaneously in Colorado, a foreign spy is close to penetrating the mysterious secret the U.S. government has hidden beneath Denver International Airport.
\nAs Casey, Ericsson, Rhodes, and Cooper close in on their target, they will soon learn that another attack - one of unimaginable proportions - has already been set in motion, and the greatest threat they face may be the secrets kept by their own government.
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In ancient texts, there are stories about men who struck from the shadows, seemingly beyond the reach of death itself. These men were considered part angel, part demon. Their loyalty was to their families, their friends, and their kings. You crossed these men at your peril. And once crossed, there was no crossing back.
\nThey were fearless; men of honor who have been known throughout history by different names: Spartan, Viking, Samurai.
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Today, men like these still strike from the shadows. They are highly prized intelligence agents, military operatives, and assassins.
\nOne man is all three.
\nTwo days ago, that man was crossed - badly. Now, far from home and surrounded by his enemy, Scot Harvath must battle his way out.
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With no support, no cavalry coming, and no one even aware of where he is, it will take everything he has ever learned to survive.
\nBut survival isn’t enough. Harvath wants revenge.
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Scot Harvath is having his best summer ever. With a cottage on the fjord, a boat, and his beautiful girlfriend Sølvi, he’s got everything he could possibly want. But out of vacation days and long overdue back home, America’s top spy has a decision to make - return, or submit his resignation.
\nWhen his deadly past comes calling, though, he’ll be left with no choice at all.
\nLeaving his favorite Oslo café, Harvath watches as a ghost climbs out of a taxi - a man he killed years ago, halfway around the world. How is he still alive? And what is he doing in Norway?
\nIn a race against time that will take him high above the Arctic Circle, Harvath will be tested in ways he has never imagined and pushed to a limit few human beings could ever endure.
\nIf he succeeds, he’ll walk away with everything. If he fails, the United States and its allies will be at the mercy of one of the world’s most dangerous actors.
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Somewhere deep inside the United States government is a closely guarded list. Members of Congress never get to see it- only the President and a secret team of advisers. Once your name is on the list, it doesn’t come off . . . until you’re dead.
Someone has just added counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath’s name.
Somehow Harvath must evade the teams dispatched to kill him long enough to untangle who has targeted him and why they want him out of the way.
Somewhere, someone, somehow can put all the pieces together. The only question is, will Harvath get to that person before the United States suffers the most withering terrorist attack ever conceived?
Scot Harvath’s counterterrorism career has just crashed and burned—thanks in part to a ruthless senator with her sights set on the White House. But when the war on terror takes a chilling turn, the president has no choice but to secretly bring Harvath back inside.
\nDeep beneath an Alpine glacier, an ancient weapon designed to decimate the Roman Empire has been unearthed - and a shadowy organisation intends to use it for America’s downfall.
\nRacing across Europe, Harvath must secure the ultimate instrument of destruction before it brings the United States and the rest of the world to its knees.
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As global assistance pours into Thailand - including the FBI’s famed Evidence Response Team - the president of the United States quietly prepares a plan B: Scot Harvath, America’s top spy, trained to operate outside the law and probe the dark corners others can’t . . . or won’t.
\nBut the bomber Harvath is pursuing isn’t a terrorist. He’s something far more dangerous - one of ours.
\nMeanwhile, in Washington, a former United States Marine is being hunted - and he has no idea why. Desperate for answers, he turns to the one person he still trusts - his ex-fiancée, a rising star in the White House. The problem is, she isn’t sure she can trust him.
\nAs Harvath closes in on the bomber, a devastating truth begins to emerge. China has quietly deployed its most elite intelligence unit to Thailand. Their objective: to ignite chaos, trigger a military coup, and seize control of a narrow but critical piece of land, one that could give Beijing a decisive advantage.
\nIf the plan succeeds, Beijing will secure a key gateway between two oceans, eroding American naval dominance and tipping the balance in any war between the world’s great powers.
\nChina will control the ultimate geopolitical choke point.
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Hidden deep within one of the world’s most powerful organizations is a secret committee with a devastating agenda. Its members are afforded incredible protections - considered elites, untouchables.
\nBut when four seconds of video is captured halfway around the world and anonymously transmitted to D.C., covert wheels are set in motion, and counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath is tapped to undertake the deadliest assignment of his career.
\nWhat begins as a favor will evolve into a globe-spanning drama of highly personal stakes played out against a backdrop of stunning international intrigue, duplicitous political gamesmanship, and the darkest, most clandestine fears of the espionage world.
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In the war-ravaged borderlands of Ukraine, a Russian military unit has gone rogue. Its members, conscripted from the worst prisons and mental asylums across Russia, are the most criminally violent, psychologically dangerous combatants to ever set foot upon the modern battlefield.
\nWith all attention focused on the frontlines, they have pushed deeper into the interior to wage a campaign of unspeakable barbarity. As they move from village to village, committing horrific war crimes, they meet little resistance as all able-bodied men are off fighting the war.
\nSimultaneously, a team of Russian mercenaries has been dispatched by the Kremlin to loot truckloads of art and priceless cultural treasures hidden away in a host of churches, museums, and private homes.
\nWhen multiple American aid workers are killed, America’s top spy is sent in to settle the score. But in a country almost the size of Texas, will Harvath be able to find the men in question and, more importantly, will he be able to stop them before they can kill again?
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After six months abroad, America’s top spy returns to a new administration, a new set of global priorities, and a power struggle - the likes of which the United States has never experienced.
Drawn into a web of deceit and deadly politics, Scot Harvath is thrust into a high-stakes conspiracy that could change the course of history. A cabal of shadowy elites is maneuvering for control and if they succeed, they will bring the country to its knees.
When trust is fleeting and survival means making impossible decisions, Harvath finds himself at the precipice. The actions he takes will shape the future of America - and might cost him everything he holds dear.
With enemies at every turn, one wrong move could push the nation over the edge.
Six months ago: in the dead of the night, five of the most dangerous detainees in the war on terror are pulled from their isolation cells in Guantanamo Bay, held at gunpoint, and told to strip off their orange jumpsuits. Issued civilian clothes and driven to the base airfield, they are loaded aboard a Boeing 727 and set free.
\nPresent day: covert counterterrorism agent Scot Harvath awakens to discover that his world has changed violently - and forever. A sadistic assassin with a personal vendetta is wreaking havoc of biblical proportions. Unleashing nightmarish horrors on those closest to Harvath, the attacker thrusts everything Harvath holds dear - including his life - into absolute peril.
\nOrdered by the president to stay out of the investigation, Harvath is forced to mount his own operation to uncover the conspiracy and to exact revenge. When he discovers a connection between the attacks and a group of prisoners secretly released from Guantanamo, Harvath must ask himself previously unthinkable questions about the organisations and the nation he has spent his life serving.
\nA renegade from his own government, Harvath will place his life on the line as his search for the truth draws him into a showdown with one of the most dangerous men on the face of the earth.
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Scot Harvath has exactly the skills the CIA is looking for. He’s a former U.S. Navy SEAL with extensive experience in espionage. Working for a private intelligence company, he will provide the CIA, and more important, the President, with absolute deniability.
\nBut deep within the Russian Caucasus, Moscow also has its own special kind of operative. As a child, Sacha Baseyev endured an unimaginable horror. Today, he lives and breathes for only one reason - to kill. And he will kill as many Americans as it takes to accomplish his mission.
\nWhen a clandestine American operations team is ambushed near Syria, all signs point toward a dangerous informant in Brussels. But as Harvath searches for the man, he uncovers another actor - a rogue player hell-bent on forcing America’s hand and drawing it into a confrontation deadlier than anyone could have imagined.
\nAs the attacks mount, and terror is brought to the very doorstep of the White House, Harvath finds himself in the race of his life. From Vienna, Brussels, and Berlin, to Malta, Jordan, and Syria - he will push himself beyond the edge in order to confront one of the greatest evils the world has ever known.
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Navy SEAL turned covert operative Scot Harvath is called to action once again in Brad Thor’s hottest political thriller yet.
\nBuried within the black ops budgets of the Department of Defense, a new spy agency has been created. Unfettered by the oversight of self-serving politicians, it reports only to a secret panel of insiders. Its job is to target America’s enemies - both foreign and domestic - under a charter of three simple words: Find, Fix, and Finish.
\nRecruited as a field operative, Scot Harvath has just returned from his first assignment abroad when a bombing in Rome kills a group of American college students. The evidence points to a dangerous colleague from Harvath’s past and a plan for further attacks on an unimaginable scale.
\nHarvath is tasked with leveraging his relationship to lure the man out of hiding and kill him on the spot. But what if he has the wrong man?
\nSimultaneously, a young woman is struck by a taxi in a hit-and-run in Chicago. With only two intoxicated witnesses and over five thousand cabs in the city, the Chicago Police have given up on their investigation. But when the family’s attorney digs deeper, he will uncover a shocking connection to the bombing in Rome and the perpetrators’ plans for America.
\nAs the story rockets to its conclusion, the plots intersect in a race to prevent one of the most audacious and unthinkable acts of terror in the history of mankind.
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Born in the shadows and kept from heads of state, there are some missions so deadly, so sensitive, that they simply don’t exist. When one such mission goes horribly wrong, a wave of dramatic terrorist attacks is set in motion. Their goal: the complete and total collapse of the United States.
\nWith the CIA’s intelligence abilities hobbled, former Navy SEAL Team 6 member turned covert counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath launches an audacious plan to infiltrate the terrorists’ network and prevent one of the biggest threats the United States has ever faced.
\nSimultaneously, a foreign wet work team has been sent to California. Their target: one of Hollywood’s most famous filmmakers. While working on a secret documentary project, movie producer Larry Salomon has unknowingly exposed one of the world’s wealthiest and most politically connected powerbrokers - a man with a radical anti-American agenda poised to plunge the nation into deadly, irreversible chaos.
\nAs the plots rocket to their pulse-pounding conclusion and the identities of the perpetrators are laid stunningly bare, Harvath will be left with only one means to save America. Unable to trust anyone, he will be forced to go Full Black.
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The most secretive organization in America operates without accountability to the American people. Hiding in the shadows, pretending to be part of the United States Government, its power is beyond measure. Control of this organization has just been lost and the future of the nation has been thrust into peril.
\nWhen the five candidates being considered to head this mysterious agency suddenly go missing, covert counter-terrorism operative, Scot Harvath is summoned to Washington and set loose on the most dangerous chase ever to play out on American soil. But as the candidates begin turning up murdered, the chase becomes an all-too-public spectacle with every indicator suggesting that the plot has its roots in a shadowy American cabal founded in the 1700’s.
\nWith the United States on the verge of collapse, Harvath must untangle a web of conspiracy centuries in the making and head off the greatest threat America has ever seen.
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June 632 AD: Deep within the Uranah Valley of Mount Arafat in Mecca, the Prophet Mohammed shares with his closest companions a final and startling revelation. Within days, he is assassinated.
\nSeptember 1789: US Minister to France Thomas Jefferson, who is charged with forging a truce with the violent Muslim pirates of the Barbary Coast, makes a shocking discovery - one that could forever impact the world’s relationship with Islam.
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Present day: When a car bomb explodes outside a Parisian café, Scot Harvath is thrust back into the life he has tried so desperately to leave behind.
\nSaving the intended victim of the attack, Harvath becomes party to an amazing and perilous race to uncover a secret so powerful that militant Islam could be defeated once and for all without firing another shot, dropping another bomb, or launching another covert action.
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But as desperate as the American government is to have the information brought to light, there are powerful forces aligned against it - men who are just as determined that Mohammed’s mysterious final revelation continue to remain hidden forever.
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In the tradition of bestselling authors such as Jack Higgins and Clive Cussler, a new voice in thriller writing has emerged to rival any of the masters.
\nWhen the president is kidnapped during his ski holiday in Colorado, disavowed Secret Service Agent Scott Harvath is his only hope of rescue. As the FBI and CIA chase a string of dangerously false clues across the Middle East, Agent Harvath's investigation leads him to Switzerland.
\nThroughout the picturesque towns of Bern, Interlaken and Lucerne, Harvath plays a deadly game of cat and mouse with the real kidnappers, as well as rogue factions within his own government that want him terminated before he can save the president. With only the ambitious Claudia Muehler of the Swiss Federal Attorney's Office to assist him, the pair are forced to go it alone as they realise the kidnapping plot reaches some of the highest levels of the Swiss Intelligence community.
\nIn a race against time, they must scale the treacherous heights of Mt. Pilatus, uncover a hidden military fortress secreted beneath its peak, and defeat the formidable force that stands between them and the safe return of the president - the deadly men known as the Lions of Lucerne.
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The world’s largest bounty has just been placed upon America’s top spy. His only hope for survival is to outwit, outrun, and outlast his enemies long enough to get to the truth.
But for Scot Harvath to accomplish his most dangerous mission ever - one that has already claimed the lives of the people closest to him, including his new wife - he’s going to need help - a lot of it.
Not knowing whom he can trust, Harvath finds an unlikely ally in Norwegian intelligence operative Sølvi Kolstad. Just as smart, just as deadly, and just as determined, she not only has the skills, but also the broken, troubled past to match Harvath’s own.
After rescuing the President from kidnappers in Thor’s roaring debut, The Lions of Lucerne, Secret Service agent Scot Harvath shifts his attentions to rooting out, capturing, or killing all those responsible for the plot. As he prepares to close out his list, a bloody and twisted trail of clues points toward one man - the world’s most dangerous terrorist.
\nOnly one problem remains: Harvath and his CIA-led team have no idea what the man looks like. With no alternative, they are forced to recruit a civilian - a woman who has survived a brutal hijacking and is now the only person who can positively identify their quarry.
\nFrom the burning deserts of North Africa to the winding streets of Rome, Harvath must brave a maelstrom of bloodshed and deception before the world is engulfed in flames.
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An unprecedented, potentially nation-ending threat has materialized on the world stage. Fearful of the global consequences of engaging this enemy, administration after administration has passed the buck. The clock, however, has run out and doing nothing is no longer an option. It is time to unleash Scot Harvath.
\nAs America’s top spy, Harvath has the unparalleled skills and experience necessary to handle any situation, but this assignment feels different.
\nThrust into a completely unfamiliar culture, with few he can trust, the danger begins mounting the moment he arrives. Amidst multiple competing forces and a host of deadly agendas, it becomes nearly impossible to tell predator from prey.
\nWith democracy itself hanging in the balance, Harvath will risk everything to untangle the explosive plot and bring every bad actor to justice.
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In a world shrouded in shadows, where doubt is the only weapon, can one spy expose the truth?
\nA mysterious cargo plane, flanked by a squadron of Russia’s most lethal fighters, has just taken off from a remote airbase. Closely monitored by the United States, no one inside the Pentagon has any idea where it’s going or what it’s carrying.
\nA high-level Russian defector, a walking vault of secrets that could shatter the West, seeks asylum in Norway. Across the continent, in the heart of Paris, a lone French agent stumbles upon a conspiracy so explosive it could ignite a global firestorm.
\nAs alarm bells ring in Washington, the CIA’s most lethal weapon, Scot Harvath, is forced to choose between his conscience and his country.
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A rumor, a remote cabin in Norway, and an American intelligence operative charged with stopping the next world war before it begins - Scot Harvath’s mission is one of the deadliest he has ever undertaken.
\nAcross Europe, a secret organization has begun attacking diplomats. Reminiscent of the Red Brigades and the Red Army Faction of the 1970s, these faceless terrorists appear to have the same goals. But in the shadowy realm of international espionage, looks are always deceptive.
\nAs a prelude to war, one of the world’s most dangerous intelligence agencies has been charged with preparing the battlefield. Their job - to demoralise the enemy and win the conflict before it even begins. To do so, they will sow as much chaos, dissent, and destruction as possible. There’s only one obstacle standing in their way.
\nDispatched to Europe, Scot Harvath and his team have been tasked with a critical assignment - to do whatever it takes to keep America and her NATO allies from being dragged into war.
\nBut with his mentor out of the game, Harvath must play an additional role; one which he has spent his entire career avoiding, and one which he believes he is ill prepared to take on. In his most important operation ever, will he be able to thread this perilous needle? Or will it end up being the downfall of America and the West?
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America’s worst nightmare has just become a brutal reality. The most unlikely terrorist enemy of all now holds a knife against the country’s throat. With both diplomatic and conventional military options swept from the table, the president of the United States calls upon America’s only hope, Navy SEAL turned Secret Service agent Scot Harvath.
\nWith the fragile peace between the world’s nations shattered, Harvath must unravel a brilliantly orchestrated, fiendishly timed conspiracy intent upon bringing the United States to its knees.
\nTeamed with beautiful Russian Intelligence agent Alexandra Ivanova and a highly trained CIA paramilitary detachment, Harvath races from the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., to the streets of Berlin, the coast of Finland, and into the heart of Mother Russia herself before returning home for a final showdown with an enemy from America’s past more sinister and deadly than has ever been seen before.
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After years without a terrorist attack on American soil, one group has picked the 4th of July weekend to pull out all the stops. In a perfectly executed attack, all of the bridges and tunnels leading into and out of Manhattan are destroyed just as thousands of commuters begin their holiday exodus.
\nWith domestic efforts focused on search and rescue, a deadly team of highly trained foreign soldiers methodically makes its way through the city with the singular objective of locating one of their own - a man so powerful that America will do anything to keep him hidden.
Scot Harvath is now the country's only hope. Fighting his way through the burning streets of Manhattan, he must mount his own operation to locate a man the United States government refuses to admit even exists.
As a storm rages across the Mediterranean Sea, a terrifying distress call is made to the Italian Coast Guard. Days later, a body washes ashore.
\nIdentified as a high value terrorism suspect (who had disappeared three years prior), his name sends panic through the Central Intelligence Agency.
\nWhere was he headed? What was he planning? And could he be connected to the “spectacular attack” they have been fearing all summer?
\nIn a race against time, the CIA taps an unorthodox source to get answers: Navy SEAL turned covert counterterrorism operative, Scot Harvath.
\nHired on a black contract, Harvath will provide the deniability the United States needs, while he breaks every rule along the way.
\nRachel Adams observes space with the help of the Chandra X-ray satellite. When her colleague Shawn Whitfield asks her to investigate a cosmic phenomenon, she agrees - unaware that this routine project will dramatically change her life.
\nIt quickly becomes apparent that Shawn has not found a simple asteroid - the object appears to have no natural origin. Rachel's curiosity is piqued, and even when the project is taken away from her as a national security matter, she cannot be stopped. All the more so when it suddenly seems to involve her own past.
\nAnd then the object starts moving toward Earth.
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Young american astronomer Jessica Malusky is looking forward to her internship at the Alma Observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert. When she learns that she is not allowed to enter the site of the huge antennas for health reasons, she accepts the doctor's decision, even though she has never had any problems with her heart before.
\nBut then inexplicable incidents start to Measurement data loses its meaning, vehicles break down, astronomers fall to their deaths and even the black donkeys roaming freely across the site behave in an unusually aggressive manner.
\nJessica investigates, and the greater the mysterious hurdles that pile up in front of her, the more resourceful she becomes - unaware that she is not only putting herself, but also humanity, in unprecedented danger.
\nThe Atacama Incident is a fantastic story based on real science and researched on site in the Chilean desert.
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The mysterious builders leave a trail through the local cloud, which the Majestic Draght follows - all those involved expect to reap enormous benefits from tracking down the remains of this advanced civilisation.
\nBut do the aliens even want to be found? In any case, a promising target turns out to be a disappointment. Here of all places, Marchenko and his alien friends realise that they need the help of the builders more urgently than they would like.
\nThe celestial body they have headed for remains shrouded in mystery - and ultimately seems to be exactly what it appeared to be at first glance: a planet that has nothing to offer but death.
\nThe Marchenko logfiles describe the incredible but always realistic adventures of an unusual crew in the immediate vicinity of the solar system.
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No sooner has one of the last surviving humans delivered this bad news to the representatives of the Mendraki and the Iks than he disappears. Kimi, Norok, Tolkut, and Kasfok find themselves alone in a spaceship controlled by technology they do not understand, and together they must avert a threat whose source they do not know.
\nThey have only one clue: They must locate the hidden supercomputer that preserves information about a dark chapter in the history of the strange bipeds - information that may save their peoples . . .
The star system is perfect. The arrivals have undertaken a long and dangerous journey - an expedition of no return - seeking helium-3, essential for the survival of their species. The discovery of this extraordinary solar system with its four gas giants offers a unique opportunity to harvest the rare isotope.
\nThen comes a disturbing discovery: They are not alone! Another fleet is here, and just as dependent on helium-3. And the two species are so fundamentally different that communication and compromise appear hopeless. All that remains is a fight to the death - and for the future . . .
The crew of the \"Majestic Draght\" has to deal with strange attacks. Who is trying to prevent the spaceship from continuing its journey? A brand new crew member plays an increasingly important role in the investigation. Will Eve manage to solve the mystery with her help?
\nThe conflict reaches its climax when the ship enters the orbit of an ice planet. Its gravitational pull could destroy many lives - but it could also thwart the plans of the unknown attacker.
\nThe Marchenko logfiles describe the incredible but always realistic adventures of an unusual crew in the immediate vicinity of the solar system.
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The lost battle of Terra Nova has shown even the biggest skeptics how serious the alien threat really is. The power blocs of the solar system unite for one last cataclysmic showdown.
\nMeanwhile, an unlikely trio races against time to prevent the conflict from reaching Earth. Tsai Yini, the tachyon chronicler, is hoping for help from her father, who has survived a hundred-year journey and seems to have a special relationship with the attackers.
\nDetective Claudio Pedramonte unknowingly carries a device that could end the war. At the same time, a mysterious figure, ruthless and efficient, leaves a trail of bodies in their wake - but their true purpose remains a mystery. In the end, the fate of humanity rests in the hands of those who must make the ultimate choice.
The Majestic Draght reaches a solar system that shouldn't really exist: one of the planets orbits both central stars, but in an orbit that runs perpendicular to that of the other celestial bodies.
\nThis course should actually lead to powerful catastrophes on a regular basis - and just as the Grosnop's spaceship arrives there, such an event is about to happen. It seems Marchenko and his crew must mend an entire star system - an impossible feat . . .
\nThe Marchenko logfiles describe the incredible but always realistic adventures of an unusual crew in the immediate vicinity of the solar system.
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Talut Forest is a lumberjack on Terra Nova, where life thrives in the crowns of trees twenty kilometers high. After a mistake at work costs him his job, Talut has no choice but to sign up for a suicide mission.
\nThe aim of the mission? To investigate an artifact on the unexplored surface, where deep darkness reigns. But when the mission spirals into chaos from the start, Talut’s fight to see his family again turns into a battle for the fate of the entire human race.
The Majestic Draght enters the system of the white dwarf Wolf 489 - reverently called the Trident by the Grosnops. On board, the ship's AI clings to the hope of finally finding traces of the mysterious builders here and perhaps even a cure for the plague that keeps Adam, Ragnor, and dozens of others trapped in cold sleep.
\nBut the reality is bleak. The system's only planet is a dead world riddled with cracks, scorched and lifeless. Commander Gronolf's skepticism seems to be confirmed; the enormous sacrifices made to save the ship may have been in vain. Time is running out for the sick.
\nJust as despair threatens to paralyse the decimated crew, the sensors discover something that defies all expectations: a tiny, perfectly round object orbiting the dead star. It is far too small to explain the previously measured gravitational disturbances, and yet it appears to be the only unusual celestial body in the system.
\nThe Marchenko logfiles describe the incredible but always realistic adventures of an unusual crew in the immediate vicinity of the solar system.
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Planet GJ 1061 d is no paradise. The world orbits on the edge of the habitable zone around its star, which only allows life near the equator.
\nNevertheless, the Majestic Draght stops in the system because the planet has a special a huge rift runs from the south pole almost to the equator, and this canyon does not appear to have any geological causes. What is the mystery behind it?
\nMarchenko and his alien friends think they can answer the question quickly, but they have not reckoned with those who arrived here before them.
\nThe Marchenko logfiles describe the incredible but always realistic adventures of an unusual crew in the immediate vicinity of the solar system.
Judith Rosenberg, captain of the spaceship ARES, is under pressure. After the previous mission to Mars crashed, she is supposed to set down the first humans on the Red Planet. Maxim Goncharov, meanwhile, has other problems to contend with. He's in charge of building an international lunar base at the moon's south pole, where the sun almost always shines.
\nBut his crew is slowly running out of resources. Humankind seems to have lost interest in the moon. When the ARES encounters an interstellar visitor, the researchers on the moon uncover its true nature: A discovery with terrible consequences, as Judith and Maxim find out almost simultaneously.
\nThe Wall: Eternal Day depicts a fateful chain of events that changes the solar system and all its inhabitants forever. But there are two sides to every fate. In The Wall: Eternal Night by Joshua T. Calvert, you will learn about the other side.
Chronoscribe Tsai Yini monitors the tachyon communication system, which transmits data faster than the speed of light. When classified results from an astrobiologist’s research are leaked to her, she cannot believe what she reads. The report reveals that intelligent life forms exist on a tropical planet in the Gliese system.
\nTheir civilisation is still in its infancy but revolves around an artifact of unknown origin that seems to influence their body chemistry. But there’s more: the astrobiologist who uncovered this artifact has undergone a baffling evolution of his own, and he’s now en route to Earth!
\nYini suspects he carries a danger far greater than anyone could imagine. To stop him, she must make unimaginable decisions that could determine not only her fate but the future of the universe.
When Jack Solomon, a struggling musician who works in London’s West End, is killed, he awakens to a new reality in which light and music are used to create magic and where living eras of the past sprawl beneath modern London, layer upon layer, all the way back to recorded history.
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Jack also soon discovers that many of those who reside in the stratums of London’s past have grown angry with the present world, and that their anger is being channeled by a powerful society of light-and-music-based magic wielders who can cross the realms between life and death, between the present and the past. A past where the dead are sowing revolution against the living, and all of history is at stake.
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Welcome to the Strata Wars.
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Three hundred years after the events of the Mistborn trilogy, Scadrial is now on the verge of modernity, with railroads to supplement the canals, electric lighting in the streets and the homes of the wealthy, and the first steel-framed skyscrapers racing for the clouds.
\nKelsier, Vin, Elend, Sazed, Spook, and the rest are now part of history - or religion. Yet even as science and technology are reaching new heights, the old magics of Allomancy and Feruchemy continue to play a role in this reborn world. Out in the frontier lands known as the Roughs, they are crucial tools for the brave men and women attempting to establish order and justice. One such is Waxillium Ladrian, a rare Twinborn, who can Push on metals with his Allomancy and use Feruchemy to become lighter or heavier at will.
\nAfter twenty years in the Roughs, Wax has been forced by family tragedy to return to the metropolis of Elendel. Now he must reluctantly put away his guns and assume the duties and dignity incumbent upon the head of a noble house. Or so he thinks, until he learns the hard way that the mansions and elegant tree-lined streets of the city can be even more dangerous than the dusty plains of the Roughs.
Brandon Sanderson creates worlds, and those worlds are linked. His universe spans the Stormlight Archive, the Mistborn series the tales of Elantris, and others, comprising a unique constellation of vividly imagined realms known as the Cosmere.
\nNow for the first time anywhere, stories representing each of these planets, and their fully realised and distinct magic systems, have been collected in a single spectacular volume. Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection brings together tales spanning the known limits of Sanderson's universe - including the never-before-published Edgedancer, a thrilling new novella of the Stormlight Archive - along with charts, illustrations, notes . . . and secrets.
\nThe Cosmere Collection encompasses six worlds in all, explored across nine astonishing works of short fiction: Sel (“The Hope of Elantris” and The Emperor's Soul); Scadrial (“The Eleventh Metal,” “Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania, Episodes Twenty-eight Through Thirty,” and Mistborn: Secret History); Taldain (“White Sand”); Threnody (“Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell”); First of the Sun (“Sixth of the Dusk”); and Roshar (Edgedancer).
\nThese exciting tales will catapult you onto an unprecedented journey across a cosmos only Brandon Sanderson could have envisioned. Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection is an indispensible volume no Sanderson fan can do without.
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The Bands of Mourning are the mythical metalminds once owned by the Lord Ruler, said to grant anyone who wears them the powers that the Lord Ruler had at his command. Hardly anyone thinks they truly exist, but now a kandra researcher has returned to Elendel with images that seem to depict the Bands, as well as writings in a language that no one can read. Plus another image that shocks Waxillium Ladrian: a photo of his sister, Telsin, being held captive by his uncle, a leader of the shadowy organisation known as the Set.
\nWax travels south to the city of New Seran to investigate, along with his partner, Wayne, the brilliant Marasi, and the ethically flexible kandra MeLaan. On their journey they find the Set has discovered the wreckage of a mysterious ship miles from any water, and hold prisoner a masked survivor who barely speaks the language. His people and the Set are also hunting the Bands - can they be located before they fall into the wrong hands?
When Calamity lit up the sky, the Epics were born. David’s fate has been tied to their villainy ever since that historic night. Steelheart killed his father.
\nFirefight stole his heart. And now Regalia has turned his closest ally into a dangerous enemy. David knew Prof’s secret, and kept it even when Prof struggled to control the effects of his Epic powers. But facing Obliteration in Babilar was too much.
\nOnce the Reckoners’ leader, Prof has now embraced his Epic destiny. He’s disappeared into those murky shadows of menace Epics are infamous for the world over, and everyone knows there’s no turning back. . . .
\nBut everyone is wrong. Redemption is possible for Epics - Megan proved it. They’re not lost. Not completely. And David is just about crazy enough to face down the most powerful High Epic of all to get his friend back. Or die trying.
Taking place between Oathbringer and Rhythm of War, this newest story (like Edgedancer before it) takes a deeper look at several characters in the saga, and brings them to the forefront.
\n\t\t\t\t\tShipowner Rysn Ftori lost the use of her legs but gained the companionship of Chiri-Chiri, a Stormlight-ingesting winged larkin, a species once thought extinct. Now Rysn’s pet is ill, and any hope for Chiri-Chiri’s recovery can be found only at the ancestral home of the larkin: Akinah. With the help of Lopen, the formerly one-armed Windrunner, Rysn must accept Navani’s quest and sail into the perilous storm from which no one has returned alive. If the crew cannot uncover the secrets of the hidden island city before the wrath of its ancient guardians falls upon them, the fate of Roshar and the entire Cosmere hangs in the balance.
Three years ago, Lift asked a goddess to stop her from growing older - a wish she believed was granted. Now, in Edgedancer, the barely teenage nascent Knight Radiant finds that time stands still for no one.
\nAlthough the young Azish emperor granted her safe haven from an executioner she knows only as Darkness, court life is suffocating the free-spirited Lift, who can’t help heading to Yeddaw when she hears the relentless Darkness is there hunting people like her with budding powers. The downtrodden in Yeddaw have no champion, and Lift knows she must seize this awesome responsibility.
Elantris was the capital of Arelon: gigantic, beautiful, literally radiant, filled with benevolent beings who used their powerful magical abilities for the benefit of all. Yet each of these demigods was once an ordinary person until touched by the mysterious transforming power of the Shaod. Ten years ago, without warning, the magic failed. Elantrians became wizened, leper-like, powerless creatures, and Elantris itself dark, filthy, and crumbling.
\nArelon's new capital, Kae, crouches in the shadow of Elantris. Princess Sarene of Teod arrives for a marriage of state with Crown Prince Raoden, hoping - based on their correspondence - to also find love. She finds instead that Raoden has died and she is considered his widow. Both Teod and Arelon are under threat as the last remaining holdouts against the imperial ambitions of the ruthless religious fanatics of Fjordell. So Sarene decides to use her new status to counter the machinations of Hrathen, a Fjordell high priest who has come to Kae to convert Arelon and claim it for his emperor and his god.
\nBut neither Sarene nor Hrathen suspect the truth about Prince Raoden. Stricken by the same curse that ruined Elantris, Raoden was secretly exiled by his father to the dark city. His struggle to help the wretches trapped there begins a series of events that will bring hope to Arelon, and perhaps reveal the secret of Elantris itself.
They told David it was impossible . . . that even the Reckoners had never killed a High Epic. Yet, Steelheart . . . invincible, immortal, unconquerable . . . is dead. And he died by David's hand. Eliminating Steelheart was supposed to make life more simple.
\nInstead, it only made David realise he has questions. Big ones. And there's no one in Newcago who can give him the answers he needs. Babylon Restored, the old borough of Manhattan, has possibilities, though. Ruled by the mysterious High Epic, Regalia, David is sure Babylon Restored will lead him to what he needs to find. And while entering another city oppressed by a High Epic despot is a gamble, David's willing to risk it.
\nBecause killing Steelheart left a hole in David's heart. A hole where his thirst for vengeance once lived. Somehow, he filled that hole with another Epic . . . Firefight. And he's willing to go on a quest darker, and more dangerous even, than the fight against Steelheart to find her, and to get his answers.
A man awakes in a clearing in what appears to be medieval England with no memory of who he is, where he came from, or why he is there. Chased by a group from his own time, his sole hope for survival lies in regaining his missing memories, making allies among the locals, and perhaps even trusting in their superstitious boasts.
\nHis only help from the “real world” should have been a guidebook entitled The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, except his copy exploded during transit. The few fragments he managed to save provide clues to his situation, but can he figure them out in time to survive?
Who is the Hero of Ages? To end the Final Empire and restore freedom, Vin killed the Lord Ruler. But as a result, the Deepness - the lethal form of the ubiquitous mists - is back, along with increasingly heavy ashfalls and ever more powerful earthquakes. Humanity appears to be doomed.
\nHaving escaped death at the climax of The Well of Ascension only by becoming a Mistborn himself, Emperor Elend Venture hopes to find clues left behind by the Lord Ruler that will allow him to save the world. Vin is consumed with guilt at having been tricked into releasing the mystic force known as Ruin from the Well.
\nRuin wants to end the world, and its near omniscience and ability to warp reality make stopping it seem impossible. She can't even discuss it with Elend lest Ruin learn their plans!
\n
The Ones Above are starting to grow impatient and want to build an installation to breed and collect Aviar on one of First of the Sun's islands. Vathi and Dusk are trying to figure out how to delay their progress and are also dealing with people from another world, likely Roshar.
\nDusk realises that the people of First of the Sun are hopelessly outmatched and decides to go through Patji's Eye, the perpendicularity on the island Patji, to try to enlist help.
Stephen Leeds is perfectly sane. It’s his hallucinations who are mad.
\nA genius of unrivaled aptitude, Stephen can learn any new skill, vocation, or art in a matter of hours. However, to contain all of this, his mind creates hallucinatory people - Stephen calls them aspects - to hold and manifest the information. Wherever he goes, he is joined by a team of imaginary experts to give advice, interpretation, and explanation. He uses them to solve problems . . . for a price.
\nHis brain is getting a little crowded, however, and the aspects have a tendency of taking on lives of their own. When a company hires him to recover stolen property - a camera that can allegedly take pictures of the past - Stephen finds himself in an adventure crossing oceans and fighting terrorists. What he discovers may upend the foundation of three major world religions - and, perhaps, give him a vital clue into the true nature of his aspects.
Stephen Leeds, also known as 'Legion', has a unique mental condition. He can become an expert on any subject in hours . . . and with every new area of expertise a new 'aspect' of Stephen is created.
\nIs he schizophrenic? Possibly. Does that make him an incredible intelligence agent? Definitely.
\nAnd this is his final, and perhaps his strangest, adventure.
\nIt begins with two unrelated events: the disappearance of Armando, one of Stephen's many “aspects,” and an unexpected cry for help from Sandra, the woman who, many years before, helped him learn to live with his condition . . . and the combination of the two leads to a sinister high-tech firm specialising in advanced methods of human incarceration.
For years, frontier lawman turned big-city senator Waxillium Ladrian has hunted the shadowy organisation the Set - with his late uncle and his sister among their leaders - since they started kidnapping people with the power of Allomancy in their bloodlines. When Detective Marasi Colms and her partner Wayne find stockpiled weapons bound for the Outer City of Bilming, this opens a new lead. Conflict between Elendel and the Outer Cities only favors the Set, and their tendrils now reach to the Elendel Senate - whose corruption Wax and Steris have sought to expose - and Bilming is even more entangled.
\nAfter Wax discovers a new type of explosive that can unleash unprecedented destruction and realizes that the Set must already have it, an immortal kandra serving Scadrial’s god, Harmony, reveals that Bilming has fallen under the influence of another god: Trell, worshipped by the Set. And Trell isn’t the only factor at play from the larger Cosmere - Marasi is recruited by offworlders with strange abilities who claim their goal is to protect Scadrial . . . at any cost.
\nWax must choose whether to set aside his rocky relationship with God and once again become the Sword that Harmony has groomed him to be. If no one steps forward to be the hero Scadrial needs, the planet and its millions of people will come to a sudden and calamitous ruin.
Mistborn: Secret History is a companion story to the original Mistborn Trilogy. As such, it contains HUGE SPOILERS for the books Mistborn: The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages. It also contains very minor spoilers for the book The Bands of Mourning.
\nThis story builds upon the characterization, events, and worldbuilding of the original trilogy. Reading it without that background will be a confusing process at best. In short, this isn’t the place to start your journey into Mistborn (though if you have read the trilogy - but it has been a while - you should be just fine, so long as you remember the characters and the general plot of the books). Saying anything more here risks revealing too much. Even knowledge of this story’s existence is, in a way, a spoiler.
\nThere’s always another secret.
For a thousand years, ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years, the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years, the Lord Ruler reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when all hope was lost, the scarred, heartbroken half-Skaa Kelsier found in himself the powers of a Mistborn.
\nA brilliant thief and natural leader, Kelsier recruits the underworld’s smartest and most trustworthy Allomancers, who each share one of his many powers and relish a high-stakes challenge. Only then does he reveal his ultimate dream: not just the greatest heist in history, but the downfall of the divine despot.
\nBut even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kell’s plan looks like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she’s a half-Skaa orphan, but she’s lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets. She will have to learn to trust, if Kell is to help her master powers that she’s never dreamed of.
Mitosis is a short story set in the world of The Reckoners series. Steelheart may be dead, but Epics still plague Newcago and David and the Reckoners have vowed to fight back.
Dalinar Kholin's Alethi armies won a fleeting victory at a terrible cost: The enemy Parshendi summoned the violent Everstorm, which now sweeps the world with destruction, and in its passing awakens the once peaceful and subservient parshmen to the horror of their millennia-long enslavement by humans. While on a desperate flight to warn his family of the threat, Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with the fact that the newly kindled anger of the parshmen may be wholly justified.
\nNestled in the mountains high above the storms, in the tower city of Urithiru, Shallan Davar investigates the wonders of the ancient stronghold of the Knights Radiant and unearths dark secrets lurking in its depths. And Dalinar realises that his holy mission to unite his homeland of Alethkar was too narrow in scope. Unless all the nations of Roshar can put aside Dalinar's blood-soaked past and stand together - and unless Dalinar himself can confront that past - even the restoration of the Knights Radiant will not prevent the end of civilisation.
After forming a coalition of human resistance against the enemy invasion, Dalinar Kholin and his Knights Radiant have spent a year fighting a protracted, brutal war. Neither side has gained an advantage, and the threat of a betrayal by Dalinar's crafty ally Taravangian looms over every strategic move.
\nNow, as new technological discoveries by Navani Kholin's scholars begin to change the face of the war, the enemy prepares a bold and dangerous operation. The arms race that follows will challenge the very core of the Radiant ideals, and potentially reveal the secrets of the ancient tower that was once the heart of their strength.
\nAt the same time that Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with his changing role within the Knights Radiant, his Windrunners face their own problem: As more and more deadly enemy Fused awaken to wage war, no more honorspren are willing to bond with humans to increase the number of Radiants. Adolin and Shallan must lead the coalition's envoy to the honorspren stronghold of Lasting Integrity and either convince the spren to join the cause against the evil god Odium, or personally face the storm of failure.
Waxillium Ladrian was a lawman in Scadrial's ungoverned frontier region, known as the Roughs, where he worked with his eccentric but effective buddy, Wayne. They are “twinborn,” meaning they are able to use both Allomantic and Feruchemical magic. In their world, technology and magic mix, democracy contends with corruption, and religion becomes a growing cultural force, with four faiths competing for converts.
\nThis bustling, optimistic, but still shaky society now faces its first instance of terrorism, crimes intended to stir up strife. Wax and Wayne, assisted by the brilliant Marasi, must unravel the conspiracy before it stops Scadrial's progress in its tracks.
It's not his own genius that Stephen Leeds gets hired for. Clients want to tap into the imaginary experts that populate his mind - and it's getting a bit crowded in there.
\nNow Stephen and his internal team of “aspects” have been hired to track down a stolen corpse - but it's not the corpse that's important, it's what the corpse knows. The biotechnology company he worked for believes he encoded top-secret information in his DNA before he died, and if it falls into the wrong hands, that will mean disaster.
\nMeanwhile, Stephen's uneasy peace with his own hallucinations is beginning to fray at the edges, as he strives to understand how one of them could possibly have used Stephen's hand to shoot a real gun during the previous case. And some of those hallucinations think they know better than Stephen just how many aspects his mind should make room for. How long will he be able to hold himself together?
Ten years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics. But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his will. Nobody fights the Epics . . . nobody but the Reckoners.
\nA shadowy group of ordinary humans, they spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them. And David wants in. He wants Steelheart - the Epic who is said to be invincible. The Epic who killed David's father. For years, like the Reckoners, David's been studying, and planning - and he has something they need. Not an object, but an experience. He's seen Steelheart bleed. And he wants revenge.
Years ago he had comrades in arms and a cause to believe in, but now the man who calls himself Nomad knows only a life on the run.
\nForced to hop from world to world in the Cosmere whenever the relentless Night Brigade gets too close, Nomad lands on a new planet and is instantly caught up in the struggle between a tyrant and the rebels who want only to escape being turned into mindless slaves - all under the constant threat of a sunrise whose heat will melt the very stones.
\nUnable to understand the language, can he navigate the conflict and gain enough power to leap offworld before his mind or body pay the ultimate price?
The only life Tress has known on her island home in an emerald-green ocean has been a simple one, with the simple pleasures of collecting cups brought by sailors from faraway lands and listening to stories told by her friend Charlie. But when his father takes him on a voyage to find a bride and disaster strikes, Tress must stow away on a ship and seek the Sorceress of the deadly Midnight Sea.
\nAmid the spore oceans where pirates abound, can Tress leave her simple life behind and make her own place sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death?
Warbreaker is the story of two sisters, who happen to be princesses, the God King one of them has to marry, the lesser god who doesn't like his job, and the immortal who's still trying to undo the mistakes he made hundreds of years ago.
\nTheir world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren's capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as breath that can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people. By using breath and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be accomplished.
\nIt will take considerable quantities of each to resolve all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; Susebron the God King; Lightsong, reluctant god of bravery, and mysterious Vasher, the Warbreaker.
According to mythology mankind used to live in The Tranquiline Halls. Heaven. But then the Voidbringers assaulted and captured heaven, casting out God and men. Men took root on Roshar, the world of storms. And the Voidbringers followed . . .
\nThey came against man ten thousand times. To help them cope, the Almighty gave men powerful suits of armor and mystical weapons, known as Shardblades. Led by ten angelic Heralds and ten orders of knights known as Radiants, mankind finally won.
\nOr so the legends say. Today, the only remnants of those supposed battles are the Shardblades, the possession of which makes a man nearly invincible on the battlefield. The entire world is at war with itself - and has been for centuries since the Radiants turned against mankind. Kings strive to win more Shardblades, each secretly wishing to be the one who will finally unite all of mankind under a single throne.
\nOn a world scoured down to the rock by terrifying hurricanes that blow through every few day a young spearman forced into the army of a Shardbearer, led to war against an enemy he doesn't understand and doesn't really want to fight.
\nWhat happened deep in mankind's past?
\nWhy did the Radiants turn against mankind, and what happened to the magic they used to wield?
The impossible has been accomplished. The Lord Ruler - the man who claimed to be god incarnate and brutally ruled the world for a thousand years - has been vanquished. But Kelsier, the hero who masterminded that triumph, is dead too, and now the awesome task of building a new world has been left to his young protégé, Vin, the former street urchin who is now the most powerful Mistborn in the land, and to the idealistic young nobleman she loves.
\nAs Kelsier’s protégé and slayer of the Lord Ruler she is now venerated by a budding new religion, a distinction that makes her intensely uncomfortable. Even more worrying, the mists have begun behaving strangely since the Lord Ruler died, and seem to harbor a strange vaporous entity that haunts her.
\nStopping assassins may keep Vin’s Mistborn skills sharp, but it’s the least of her problems. Luthadel, the largest city of the former empire, doesn’t run itself, and Vin and the other members of Kelsier’s crew, who lead the revolution, must learn a whole new set of practical and political skills to help. It certainly won’t get easier with three armies - one of them composed of ferocious giants - now vying to conquer the city, and no sign of the Lord Ruler’s hidden cache of atium, the rarest and most powerful Allomantic metal.
\nAs the siege of Luthadel tightens, an ancient legend seems to offer a glimmer of hope. But even if it really exists, no one knows where to find the Well of Ascension or what manner of power it bestows.
White Sand is a novel with many spelling mistakes with a quite fun plot about restoring the power of the sand mages. If you like political maneuvering go for it. Some neat fight scenes with the sand magic. A lot of betrayals and secret dramas and secrets and quirky characters.
\nThe native culture is pretty awesome but the foreign ones are rather undeveloped, and the female representative not great. So, excellent plot action, a setting that needs some work to fully come together, and a small number of very strong characters. Thought by many to be the better of the two novels (White Sand, The Aether of Night.)
Dalinar Kholin challenged the evil god Odium to a contest of champions with the future of Roshar on the line. The Knights Radiant have only ten days to prepare - and the sudden ascension of the crafty and ruthless Taravangian to take Odium’s place has thrown everything into disarray.
\nDesperate fighting continues simultaneously worldwide - Adolin in Azimir, Sigzil and Venli at the Shattered Plains, and Jasnah at Thaylen City. The former assassin, Szeth, must cleanse his homeland of Shinovar from the dark influence of the Unmade. He is accompanied by Kaladin, who faces a new battle helping Szeth fight his own demons . . . and who must do the same for the insane Herald of the Almighty, Ishar.
\nAt the same time, Shallan, Renarin, and Rlain work to unravel the mystery behind the Unmade Ba-Ado-Mishram and her involvement in the enslavement of the singer race and in the ancient Knights Radiants killing their spren. And Dalinar and Navani seek an edge against Odium’s champion that can be found only in the Spiritual Realm, where memory and possibility combine in chaos. The fate of the entire Cosmere hangs in the balance.
Expected by his enemies to die the miserable death of a military slave, Kaladin survived to be given command of the royal bodyguards, a controversial first for a low-status “darkeyes.” Now he must protect the king and Dalinar from every common peril as well as the distinctly uncommon threat of the Assassin, all while secretly struggling to master remarkable new powers that are somehow linked to his honorspren, Syl.
\nThe Assassin, Szeth, is active again, murdering rulers all over the world of Roshar, using his baffling powers to thwart every bodyguard and elude all pursuers. Among his prime targets is Highprince Dalinar, widely considered the power behind the Alethi throne. His leading role in the war would seem reason enough, but the Assassin's master has much deeper motives.
\nBrilliant but troubled Shallan strives along a parallel path. Despite being broken in ways she refuses to acknowledge, she bears a terrible burden: to somehow prevent the return of the legendary Voidbringers and the civilisation-ending Desolation that will follow. The secrets she needs can be found at the Shattered Plains, but just arriving there proves more difficult than she could have imagined.
\nMeanwhile, at the heart of the Shattered Plains, the Parshendi are making an epochal decision. Hard pressed by years of Alethi attacks, their numbers ever shrinking, they are convinced by their war leader, Eshonai, to risk everything on a desperate gamble with the very supernatural forces they once fled. The possible consequences for Parshendi and humans alike, indeed, for Roshar itself, are as dangerous as they are incalculable.
Brandon Sanderson brings us a gripping story set in the Cosmere universe told by Hoid, where two people from incredibly different worlds must compromise and work together to save their worlds from ruin.
\nYumi comes from a land of gardens, meditation, and spirits, while Painter lives in a world of darkness, technology, and nightmares. When their lives suddenly become intertwined in strange ways, can they put aside their differences and work together to uncover the mysteries of their situation and save each other’s communities from certain disaster?
A powerful history of the impact of land theft and violent displacement on Black communities in the U.S., arguing that justice and reparations will stem from the literal roots - by an acclaimed writer, political strategist, and national organiser.
\nIt is impossible to understand the twenty-first-century racial wealth gap without first unpacking the historic attacks on Indigenous and Black land ownership. From the moment that colonisers set foot on Virginian soil, a centuries-long war was waged, and long after those initial colonial pursuits, an existential dilemma remained: Who owns what on stolen land? Who owns what with stolen labor? To answer these questions, we must be willing to face one of this nation’s first sins: stealing and hoarding the land.
\nRecent research suggests that between 1910 and 1997, Black Americans lost about 90% of their farmland. Now, less than 1% of rural land in the U.S. is owned by Black people despite the centuries of labor, enslaved or free, that cultivated those very same lands. Land theft has widened the racial wealth gap, privatised natural resources, and created a permanent barrier to land that should be a birthright for Black and Indigenous communities.
\nRooted traces the experiences of Brea's own family's history of having land violently taken from them, in Kentucky and North Carolina, to explore historic attacks on Black land ownership and understand the persistent racial wealth gap. Ultimately, her grandfather's decades spent purchasing small parcels of land back resulted in the \"Baker Acres\" - a haven for the family, and a place where they are surrounded by love, sustained by the land, and wholly free.
\nBeyond examining the effects of the violence of centuries past, Rooted is a testament to the deep resilience of Black farmers who envisioned an America with them at the center: able to feed, house, and tend to their communities.
\nBy bearing witness to their commitment to freedom and reciprocal care for the land - even as it came at great personal cost - we can chart a path forward.
\n
Alone and adrift in Barcelona, an unnamed narrator is haunted by the death of her teenage brother, Diego. Diego, the little boy she helped raise in Mexico while their mother struggled to make a living in Spain. Diego, who loved Vampire Weekend and dreamed of becoming a pilot. Diego, who hated Madrid as much as she did.
\nNow, his ashes in hand, she must return to Mexico. Plagued by memories, she recounts their young lives leading up to tragedy in blistering detail: the acute loneliness that accompanied their emigration; the siblings’ first separation, when she left for Barcelona to make her own way in the world; her activism against labor abuses, which is threatened by her tumultuous relationship with an entitled lover; and the final, heavyhearted confrontation with her brother. Caught between rage and heartbreak over the loss of Diego, she pieces together a story of alienation, but also of surprising courage and hope.
\nEating Ashes boldly confronts both the intimate and systemic struggles faced by migrants striving to build a life worth living.
Something happened to her mother that night. Something no one wants to talk about. But she's determined to uncover her family's dark secrets, even if they bury her.
Five-year-old Sloane McBride couldn't sleep that night. Her parents were arguing again, their harsh words heating the cool autumn air. And then there was that other sound--the ominous thump before all went quiet.
In the morning, her mother was gone. The official story was that she left. Her loving, devoted mother! That hadn't sat any better at the time than it did when Sloane moved out at eighteen, anxious to leave her small Texas hometown in search of anywhere else. But not even a fresh start working as a model in New York could keep the nightmares at bay. Or her fears that the domineering father she grew up with wasn't just difficult--he was deadly.
Now another traumatic loss forces Sloane to realise she owes it to her mother to find out the truth, even if it means returning to a small town full of secrets and lies, a jilted ex-boyfriend and a father and brother who'd rather see her silenced. But as Sloane starts digging into the past, the question isn't whether she can uncover what really happened that night . . . it's what will remain of her family if she does?
With her tortured past finally behind her - and her tormentor locked up, where she can study him along with the other psychopaths at Hanover House - psychiatrist Evelyn Talbot is looking forward to the future. She’s about to have a baby and marry her longtime love, Amarok, the only police presence in the tiny town of Hilltop, Alaska. But only weeks before the wedding, she’s snatched from her own driveway. Terrified and confused, she can only guess at who’s taken her captive . . . and why.
\nStruggling to survive in a tiny, airless cell, Evelyn knows that Amarok will rely on his instincts - and his knowledge of the psychopaths she’s studied - to find her. But she also knows he won’t have much to go on, a point that becomes even more alarming when her captor reveals a clue to the mastermind behind her abduction.
\nNot only does she know him, she knows he has a particularly gruesome method of disabling his victims. So unless she manages to escape, neither she nor her baby will survive . . .
Twelve people have been shot at point-blank range and left to rot in the desert sun. It's Sophia St. Claire's job to do something about it. She's Bordertown, Arizona's new chief of police - and she's out of her depth.
\nHelp arrives in the form of Department 6 hired gun Roderick Guerrero. As far as Sophia's concerned, his involvement only makes things worse. Maybe he's managed to turn his life around. And maybe he's a good investigator. But as the bastard son of a wealthy local rancher, he has a history he can't get past. A history that includes her.
\nRod refuses to leave town until the killer is caught. He's not worried about the danger posed by some vigilante. It's Sophia who threatens him. Because he's used to risking his life - but his heart is another story.
\n
Eighteen months ago, Autumn Divac's husband went missing. Her desperate search has yielded no answers, and she can't imagine moving forward without him. But for the sake of their two teenage children, she has to try.
\nAutumn takes her kids home for the summer to the charming beachside town where she was raised. She seeks comfort working alongside her mother and aunt at their bookshop, only to learn that her daughter is facing a huge life change and her mother has been hiding a terrible secret for years. And when she runs into the boy who stole her heart in high school, old feelings start to bubble up again. Is she free to love him, or should she hold out hope for her husband's return? She can only trust her heart . . . and hope it won't lead her astray.
Up-and-coming TV anchor Emery Bliss can’t imagine anything more humiliating than the sex tape her ex revenge-posted online. That is, until it causes her to lose her job on top of her self-esteem. Seeking solace - and anonymity - in Silver Springs, Emery isn’t looking to get involved with another man any time soon. But when she’s thrown back into contact with Dallas Turner, she sees something that his many detractors have missed.
\nBeing home for the holidays and his adoptive mother’s wedding isn’t where mountain climber Dallas feels most comfortable. Thanks to his troubled childhood, he’d rather be on a rock face alone than trying to connect with people. Emery, however, makes him want to overcome his past . . . somehow.
\nBoth Emery and Dallas had been planning on a quiet, solitary Christmas, but the sparks between them are lighting a fire strong enough to last - possibly forever.
So much for forever. When Harper Devlin’s rock star husband ditches her on his way to the top, she takes her two daughters to her sister’s place in Silver Springs for the holidays, hoping family can heal her broken heart. But comfort comes in unexpected places when she crosses paths with local Tobias Richardson.
\nThe moment Tobias spots Harper, he recognises a sadness he knows all too well. After spending thirteen years in prison paying for his regretful past, Tobias is ready to make amends, and maybe helping Harper is the way to do it. But offering her a shoulder to cry on ignites a powerful attraction and a desire neither saw coming.
\nFearing her reaction, Tobias doesn’t reveal his checkered past. He’s falling hard, and if Harper finds out, he’ll lose her for good, especially because her famous ex is now trying to win her back. Secrets have a way of coming out, but maybe this Christmas will bring Tobias the forgiveness - and the love - he deserves.
The Seattle police suspect Madison Lieberman’s father was the serial killer they call the “Sandpoint Strangler.” Madison refuses to believe it. Her father is now dead, and all she wants is the chance to create a new life for herself and her six-year-old child.
\nThen she discovers something in the crawl space beneath her parents’ house. Something that makes her question her father’s innocence. Or the innocence of someone else who’s equally close to her.
\nWhen another woman turns up dead, crime writer Caleb Trovato wonders whether they’re dealing with a copycat killer. Or is the real Sandpoint Strangler still alive? Caleb’s sure Madison knows more than she’s telling, and he’s determined to find out what. But he doesn’t expect to fall in love - or to lead Madison and her child into danger . . .
The Reverend Lee Barker went missing nineteen years ago . . .
\nAnd the people of Stillwater, Mississippi believe they know why. They’re convinced he was murdered - by his stepson, Clay Montgomery. But only Clay - and his mother and sisters - can say for sure. They were the only ones there that fateful night, the only ones who know what really happened. And they’re not talking.
\nAllie McCormick is a cold case detective from Chicago. After a particularly difficult divorce, she’s returned to Stillwater with her six-year-old daughter to find the peace she once knew in her hometown, and to work for the local police force while she’s starting over. But when Clay’s powerful enemies join forces to put him behind bars, Allie feels duty-bound to uncover the truth. Her instincts tell her he didn’t murder the Reverend Lee Barker.
\nMaybe Clay’s a dark and brooding man with more than his share of secrets, but he was just sixteen at the time. And he’s not a cold-blooded killer. At least that’s what Allie believes - until she finds proof that behind the preacher’s pious demeanor lurked the heart of a monster.
\nThen she has to ask herself whether justice has already been done . . .
Twenty years ago Madeline Barker’s father disappeared. Despite what everyone else thinks, Madeline’s convinced her stepfamily had nothing to do with it. But the recent discovery of his car finally proves he didn’t just drive away. Worse, the police find something in the trunk that says there’s more to this case than murder.
\nWith no other recourse, Madeline decides to hire a private investigator - even if the cops don’t like it. Even if her family doesn’t like it. But when P.I. Hunter Solozano begins to uncover some shocking evidence, someone in Stillwater is determined to put a stop to Madeline’s search for the truth. And that means putting a stop to her. Permanently.
Grace Montgomery knows who it is, and she knows why it happened. She was only thirteen the night it all went wrong. And now, like then, she has no choice but to keep her mouth shut.
\nGrace left the town of Stillwater thirteen years ago, trying to forget, trying to make good. As an assistant D.A. in Jackson, she’s finally achieved the success that was supposed to change her life. But it hasn’t - so she’s come back to confront her own history. Which means returning to the farmhouse now owned by her brother and facing the people of Stillwater, a number of whom suspect the truth.
\nWidower Kennedy Archer is one of those people. He’s running for mayor and needs to stay as far away from Grace as possible. And yet . . . she’s an enigma he can’t resist. Even though her enemies are close to finding out what really happened - and that could ruin them both.
Emma Wright has finally escaped the dangerous man who’s controlled her every move for the past six years. Taking her five-year-old son, she has fled across the country - seeking freedom, safety and a fresh start. But Max’s father isn’t giving them up so easily.
\nPreston Holman understands the lengths a parent will go for his child. He’s given up everything to pursue the man he believes killed his son.
\nWhen Preston meets Emma, he wants nothing to do with her or the boy who reminds him so much of his own child. Yet he can’t abandon them - and as he’s drawn into the danger that surrounds them, Preston begins to wonder if he’s finally found something to live for beyond revenge.
Tortured and left for dead at sixteen, Evelyn Talbot turned her personal nightmare into her life’s work - studying the disturbing psychopathy of some of the world’s most vicious serial killers. Now the leading psychiatrist at Hanover House in a small Alaskan town, she tries to believe that the past will never come back to haunt her - until a woman goes missing from a cabin nearby and every clue points to the man who once brutalised her . . .
\nAs her boyfriend, who is the area’s only police, begins to investigate, and finds not one but two bodies, Evelyn can’t forget that her would-be killer, Jasper Moore, was never caught. But there are no new faces in tiny Hilltop, no one who seems suspicious or potentially violent. In this twisted game of cat and mouse, Evelyn is certain of only one thing - Jasper must be hiding in plain sight. And if they can’t find him before he comes for her, she won’t be lucky enough to survive twice . . .
Who's going to win the battle of Dundee, Idaho?
\n
The town's bad girl or its favorite son?
Rebecca Wells desperately wants to overcome her reputation. She's finally trying to put an end to her twenty-four-year rivalry with the perfect Josh Hill, a rivalry that began when she was a kid and the Hills moved in across the street. Great-looking, popular, a successful horse rancher, Josh is Dundee's golden boy - and the son her father always wanted.
But even when her father insists they call a truce, it's hard for Rebecca to drop her resentment of Josh. She refuses to acknowledge that she feels more for him than she's ever let on. The man she loves to hate is also the man she'd hate to love!
New York Times bestselling author Brenda Novak welcomes readers to the town of Silver Springs, where surprises wait around every corner!
The search for her birth mother brought Cora Kelly to the New Horizons Boys Ranch. Getting a job there was easy enough, but confiding in Aiyana, the ranch's owner, that she's really her daughter? Cora's not sure she can do that, not unless she's confident the news will be welcomed. And once she gets to know Elijah Turner—Aiyana's adopted son and ranch manager—that decision becomes even more difficult.
Although Elijah can't deny his deep attraction to Cora, he's always struggled with trust. Anyone with his past would, and there's something about the ranch's newest employee that isn't exactly as it seems. But if the feelings she awakes in his guarded heart are any indication, she might be just what he's long been waiting for.
", "series": "Silver Springs", "seriesOrder": 1, "tags": [ "Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Brenda Novak - Finding Our Forever.jpeg", "mtime": 1769408814858.135, "size": 580465, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:19:16.930Z" }, "Brenda Novak - Finding You": { "title": "Finding You", "author": "Brenda Novak", "description": "Thanks to a devastating revelation about her husband, Reenie Holbrook’s once-perfect marriage is over. For eleven years she had the life she wanted - and now it’s gone.
\nReenie decides that the first step in recovering from her ordeal is to find work; after all, she has three young children to support. She’s thrilled when she lands a job at Dundee High teaching history - until Isaac Russell, the man who triggered the unraveling of her marriage, accepts a temporary position teaching science. Then she’s tempted to quit. Reenie doesn’t care if the whole town admires Isaac and she won’t admit that, secretly, she admires him, too - nor that she’s starting to feel more than just admiration for him . . .
When Katie Rogers returns to Dundee, Idaho, it’s not because she wants to. It’s because she’s disillusioned, broke - and pregnant. She was going to make something of her life in the big city. Instead, she’s paying a high price for trusting the wrong man.
\nBooker Robinson is the man she didn’t trust, the man she’d left behind in Dundee . . . and the first person she sees when she comes back. But despite Booker’s notorious past, he now has a successful business and a home of his own.
\nHe’s also spent two years getting over Katie. She’s the last person he wants to see. But when her parents refuse to take her in, she doesn’t have anywhere else to go, and Booker soon finds himself with a roommate - one who needs a father for her baby.
\nKatie’s vowed she’ll never trust the wrong man again. But sometimes a man isn’t everything he seems. And sometimes he’s more.
Evelyn Talbot, a psychiatrist at a maximum-security prison in remote Alaska, studies some of the world’s worst serial killers. But she’s about to meet her most elusive patient at Hanover House yet: Dr. Lyman Bishop, AKA the Zombie Maker given his fondness for performing icepick lobotomies on his victims. A brilliant cancer researcher, Bishop is either the most cunning psychopath Evelyn has ever encountered - or he is wrongly convicted.
\nWhen a new ice-pick fatality occurs, it seems Bishop really was wrongly convicted. Except . . . Evelyn has a personal connection to the murder victim and that suggests the killer may be someone from her own past: Jasper Moore, her high school boyfriend who tortured her and left her for dead when she was only sixteen.
\nJasper murdered three of her friends back then - and was never caught. Is he trying to send a message with this copycat crime? Is he coming for her next? The only thing Evelyn knows for sure is that if Jasper is on her trail, she might not be able to escape again . . .
Evelyn Talbot knows that a psychopath can look perfectly normal. She was only sixteen when her own boyfriend Jasper imprisoned and tortured her - and left her for dead. Now an eminent psychiatrist who specialises in the criminal mind, Evelyn is the force behind Hanover House, a maximum-security facility located in a small Alaskan town. Her job puts her at odds with Sergeant Amorak, who is convinced that Hanover is a threat to his community . . . even as his attraction to beautiful Evelyn threatens to tear his world apart.
\nThen, just as the bitter Alaskan winter cuts both town and prison off from the outside world, the mutilated body of a local woman turns up. For Amorak, this is the final proof he needs: Hanover has to go. Evelyn, though, has reason to fear that the crime is a personal message to her - the first sign that the killer who haunts her dreams has found her again . . . and that the life she has so carefully rebuilt will never be the same.
Claire O'Toole's mother, Alana, went missing fifteen years ago. That was big news in Pineview, Montana, the kind of town where nothing much ever happens. Then, last year, Claire's husband, David, died in a freak accident - after launching his own investigation into Alana's disappearance.
\nIs Alana dead? Or did she simply abandon her husband and daughters? Claire is determined to find out - and her former boyfriend, Isaac Morgan, wants to help. Although their relationship didn't end well, he still has feelings for her. And yet it isn't until he starts to suspect David's death wasn't an accident that he's drawn back into her life.
\nTogether, Claire and Isaac search for answers to the questions that have haunted Pineview all this time. But as they soon discover, someone's prepared to kill so those answers won't be found . . .
\n
They're back…
\nLaurel Hodges has changed her identity twice. She's been on the run for the past four years, trying to outdistance the gang members who blame her for the death of one of their own. She's finally found peace and stability in the small town of Pineview, Montana. But just when Laurel thinks she and her children are safe . . . the nightmare starts all over again.
\nThe Crew, a ruthless prison gang with ties to Laurel's brother, will never forget and they'll never forgive. And now that they've finally tracked her down, they'll stop at nothing.
\nSheriff Myles King, who happens to live next door with his thirteen-year-old daughter, appoints himself Laurel's personal guardian. His growing attraction to her could change his life - Myles is beginning to picture marriage and family. But it could also end his life. If he can't save her, everything he's built, everything he wants, could be destroyed. In seconds . . .
\n
Virgil Skinner served fourteen years for a murder he didn't commit. He's finally been exonerated, but he can't escape the gang he joined in order to survive. They'll do anything to keep him from telling what he knows. And if they can't get to Virgil they'll go after his sister and her kids.
\nThe California Department of Corrections needs someone to infiltrate another gang, one that's taking control of the state's most notorious supermax. Virgil agrees to do it under an alias - in exchange for his sister's protection.
\nChief Deputy Warden Peyton Adams is opposed to having Virgil in her prison. How will she protect him if things go bad? Besides, she's far too attracted to him; she might even be falling in love with him. That makes her all the more desperate to keep him safe - and it gives him someone else to lose.
\n
Elizabeth O’Connell has survived one of the worst betrayals a wife can imagine. Finding out that she wasn’t the only woman in her husband’s life meant the end of her marriage and a year of personal hell. Now she’s focusing on her new business and raising her two kids.
\nCarter Hudson isn’t part of her plan. When he’s introduced to Liz by well-meaning friends, her dislike is instant. But as she spends time with him, Liz realises she likes having Carter in her life - more than likes it. However, Carter has secrets in his past that he can’t seem to escape, secrets that apparently involve a woman. Can Liz open her heart and learn to trust again?
Hollywood starlet Tia Beckett knows one moment can change your life. Her career had been on the fast track before a near-fatal accident left her with a debilitating facial scar. Certain her A-lister dreams are over, she agrees to house-sit at her producer’s secluded estate in Silver Springs.
\nIt’s the escape from the limelight Tia’s been craving, until she discovers she’s not the only houseguest for the holidays. And her handsome new roomie is impossible to ignore.
\nArtist Seth Turner has good reason to keep his distance. Losing his wife after only a few years of marriage has left a deep scar, even if he is still happy to spend a semester teaching art classes at the New Horizons Boys Ranch for troubled teens.
\nDespite nursing her own wounds, Tia finds her curiosity piqued by enigmatic Seth, whom she recognises as something of a kindred soul. Maybe spending Christmas together could be another game changer for both of them - this time, for good.
The bodies of seven women have been discovered in Skull Valley, Arizona. Jonah Young, a private security operative from Department 6, has been hired by the Yavapai County sheriff to assist in solving these murders. But Jonah's not prepared for the complications that arise when he's forced to work with a woman from his past, private investigator Francesca Moretti.
\nJonah betrayed Francesca ten years ago. She hasn't forgiven him and she's pretty sure she never will. But the woman she was hired to find has been murdered in exactly the same way as the seven in Skull Valley, so, Francesca has to work with Jonah. They quickly zero in on the most likely suspect - but questions remain. Questions they have to answer. Because if they bet on the wrong man, it might be the last thing they ever do . . .
\n
The car accident was Hannah Price’s fault - a tragic mistake that changed Gabe Holbrook’s life forever, destroying everything he’d been or ever wanted to be.
\nHe was a man who’d had it all. Intelligent, handsome, talented, rich, he’d been one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. Now he’s come home to Dundee, the small town where he was raised, but he’s a stranger to the people who once knew him. He’s bitter and withdrawn and entirely focused on recovering. But thanks to Hannah Price, there are some things that can’t be fixed.
\nHannah has been struggling to recover from that fateful night, too. Unlike Gabe, she sustained only minor injuries. But she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to forgive herself for what happened. Especially when Gabe becomes her son’s football coach, and she begins to fall in love with the man she nearly destroyed . . .
In the wake of her debut novel’s breakout success - and a very painful public divorce - Charlotte Williams-Jackson has something to prove. With her second novel overdue, she’s scrambling to hold it together. But her focus is rocked when she discovers that her childhood wasn't as it seemed - and she has a tween half-sister who's been orphaned in Italy.
\nAlongside her best friend, Sloane, and Sloane’s charming brother, Julian, Charlotte ventures to the Amalfi Coast to meet her sister. She would never turn her back on family, especially since this girl doesn’t have anyone else, but between her looming deadline and her entire identity being flipped upside down, it’s a lot.
\nDetermined to rebuild her life, Charlotte must confront the relationships she’s held dear - and the loss of those she thought she had but didn't - forcing her to question everything she understood about herself and the bonds that shape a family.
\n
Jane Tanner’s friends are settling down, while she’s been settling for less. She longs for adventure and the big city, but caring for her ailing grandfather means she's shackled to her small town. She’s excited her vintage gift shop is finally up and running, but it’s not enough.
\nLonging to fulfill at least one dream - to become a mother before her biological clock ticks out - Jane drunkenly propositions the worst possible candidate for Dad . Kurt Elway is off-limits with a capital O . He’s a good friend, but he's too young, too busy running his family’s ranch. Plus, he and Jane’s sister, Kate, used to date. That kind of off-limits.
\nUnbeknownst to Jane, Kurt’s pining for her. When he’s fully on board to father her baby, she sees him in a new light. Then lingering baggage between Kate and Kurt suddenly surfaces and Jane is reminded of just how messy life is. But . . . so is parenting. Maybe it’s time to embrace the mess?
Grandpa Garnier used to say, Love is like a bucking bronco. It takes guts and determination to hang on, but it’s worth the ride.
\nIf only Grandpa was around now to help Tyson Garnier out of this mess. The famous pro football player is suddenly saddled with a very public scandal - and an illegitimate child. Tyson needs a good nanny now if he’s going to salvage his career. And plain, no-nonsense Dakota Brown is the ideal candidate.
\nDakota doesn’t care for football - or for a man who doesn’t seem to want his own son. But she needs this job, and that precious little baby needs her.
\nDakota isn’t Tyson’s kind of woman. But the more he sees of her - and the more he sees of his son - the harder he wants to hang on.
Struggling to make ends meet after a messy divorce, Sadie Harris is at the end of her tether. Her waitressing gig isn’t enough to pay the bills let alone secure primary custody of her son, Jayden, a battle she refuses to lose. Desperate, she accepts a position assisting Dawson Reed - the same Dawson Reed who recently stood trial for the murder of his adoptive parents. Joining him at his isolated farm seems risky, but Sadie is out of options.
\nDawson has given small-town Silver Springs plenty of reasons to be wary, but he’s innocent of the charges against him. He wants to leave his painful past behind and fix up the family farm so he can finally bring his dependent sister home where she belongs.
\nAs Sadie’s and Dawson’s professional relationship grows into something undeniably personal, Sadie realises there’s more to Dawson than the bad boy everyone else sees - he has a good heart, one that might even be worth fighting for.
When Serenity Alston swabbed her cheek for 23andMe, she joked about uncovering some dark ancestral scandal. The last thing she expected was to discover two half sisters she didn't know existed. Suddenly, everything about her loving family is drawn into question. And meeting these newfound sisters might be the only way to get answers.
\nSerenity has always found solace at her family's Lake Tahoe cabin, so what better place for the three women to dig into the mystery that has shaken the foundation each of them was raised on? With Reagan navigating romantic politics at her New York City advertising firm, and Lorelei staring down the collapse of her marriage, all three women are converging at a crossroads in their lives. Before the summer is over, they'll have to confront the paths they walked to get there and determine how to move forward when everything they previously thought to be true was a lie.
\nBut any future is easier to face with family by your side.
One afternoon in May, Zoe Duncan's thirteen-year-old daughter goes missing from her own backyard. The police think Samantha ran away because she's unhappy about her mother's upcoming marriage - but Zoe doesn't believe it. In fact, she's willing to do anything to bring Sam home, even if it means losing her job, her beautiful home, her fiancé. Even if it means divulging all her secrets to a private investigator.
\nJonathan Stivers is a P.I. who donates his time to The Last Stand, a victims' charity in Sacramento. He's good at what he does, the best. But never has he had fewer leads to work with - or been more attracted to a client. Jonathan's sure of only one thing: Sam was taken by someone close to the family. He doesn't know how close until he realises that the \"perfect\" couple next door is anything but . . .
\n
When air force captain Luke Trussell opens his door one Sunday morning, he's shocked to find the police - and even more shocked when they charge him with rape. He knows he made a mistake in judgment the night before, but he certainly didn't force his attentions on the woman who's been stalking him for months.
\nProblem is . . . Karina Harter has the bruises - and the DNA evidence - to make her claim convincing.
\nDetermined to isolate Luke, Karina goes to victims' rights advocate Ava Bixby of The Last Stand, hoping Ava will help put Luke behind bars. But Ava soon realises she's defending the wrong victim.
\nProblem is . . . switching her support to Luke could be dangerous - especially when she falls for him. Because Karina won't tolerate losing the man she wants to anyone. Least of all Ava . . .
For more than a year, Sebastian Costas has been trying to unravel the truth behind the murder of his ex-wife and son. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he's convinced that her second husband - a cop - committed both murders, then faked his own death.
\nNow Sebastian has followed the slimmest of leads to Sacramento . . . and that's where he finally gets the break he needs. Jane Burke, an investigator with The Last Stand, calls him in connection with a separate crime - a crime that could lead him straight to the man he's been looking for.
\nOnce married to a serial killer, Jane has spent the past five years rebuilding her life. And with Sebastian she finally has a chance at happiness. But the man they're after is after them, too. For him this has become a personal battle, one he's determined to win. Whatever it takes . . .
\n
Savanna Gray needs a do-over. Her “perfect” life unraveled when, to her absolute shock, her husband was arrested for attacking three women. With her divorce settled, she takes her two children home to Silver Springs to seek refuge between the walls of the farmhouse where she was born. It needs a little TLC, but she’s eager to take control of something.
\nGavin Turner understands the struggle of starting over. Abandoned at a gas station when he was five, it wasn’t until he landed at New Horizons Boys Ranch as a teen that he finally found some peace. He steps up when Savanna needs help fixing things - even when those things go beyond the farmhouse.
\nDespite an escalating attraction to Gavin, Savanna resolves to keep her distance. She trusted her ex, who had a similarly tragic background, and is unwilling to repeat her past mistakes. But it’s hard to resist a man whose heart is as capable as his hands.
When Lucky Caldwell was ten, her mother married Morris Caldwell, a wealthy and much older man. It didn’t last, but having grown up without a father, Lucky considered Morris’s kindness the highlight of her young life.
\nMike Hill, Morris’s grandson, doesn’t feel quite as warm and fuzzy about that time. He believes Lucky’s mother purposely alienated Morris from his family. What’s worse, Morris’s Victorian mansion, right next door to Mike’s ranch, wasn’t inherited by one of his grandchildren. Instead the house went to Lucky, who left it sitting empty for years.
\nNow that her mother and Morris have both passed, Lucky has finally come back to Dundee. She plans to restore the derelict home - and to look for her real father, once and for all. That means Mike has a new neighbor. One he doesn’t want to like . . .
After a painful divorce, Maisey Lazarow returns to Fairham, the small island off the South Carolina coast where she grew up. She goes there to heal - and to help her brother, Keith, a deeply troubled man who’s asked her to come home. But she refuses to stay in the family house because the last person she wants to see is the wealthy, controlling mother she escaped years ago.
\nInstead, she finds herself living next door to someone else she’d prefer to avoid - Rafe Romero, the wild, reckless boy to whom she lost her virginity at sixteen. He’s back on the island, and to her surprise, he’s raising a young daughter alone. Maisey’s still attracted to him, but her heart’s too broken to risk . . .
\nThen something even more disturbing happens. She discovers a box of photographs that evoke distant memories of a little girl, a child Keith remembers, too. Maisey believes the girl must’ve been their sister, but their mother claims there was no sister.
\nShe’s convinced that child existed. So where is she now?
The rich and powerful Josephine Lazarow, matriarch of Fairham Island, is dead. The police say it’s suicide, but Keith, her estranged son, doesn’t believe it.
\nKeith bears scars - both physical and emotional - from his childhood, but he’s worked hard to overcome the past. After walking away from his mother and her controlling ways five years ago, he’s built a new life in LA. He’s also accumulated a fortune of his own. But as soon as he learns of his mother’s death, he returns to Fairham. He feels he owes it to his grandfather to put the family empire together again - and he’s determined to find his mother’s killer.
\nProblem is . . . coming home to Fairham puts him back in contact with Nancy Dellinger, the woman he hurt so badly when he left before. And digging that deep into his mother’s final days and hours entails a very real risk.
\nBecause the person who killed her could be someone he loves . . .
Romain Fornier lost his reason for living when his daughter was kidnapped and murdered. He used a cop’s gun to mete out his own justice and spent the next few years in prison. Once he was freed, he returned to his Cajun roots in small-town Louisiana. But now he learns that he might have killed the wrong man.
\nJasmine Stratford, a psychological profiler, is convinced his daughter’s killer is still alive - and that she and Romain have something in common. She believes the same man kidnapped her sister, Kimberly, sixteen years ago.
\nJasmine is determined to track him down when she receives an anonymous package, postmarked New Orleans - the bracelet she gave Kimberly for her eighth birthday. She approaches Romain because she knows he can help her . . . if he chooses. But searching for the man who irrevocably changed both their lives means they have to rise to a killer’s challenge: stop me.
After the death of her US senator father, Marlow Madsen travels to the small island off the coast of Florida where she spent summers growing up to help her mother settle the family estate.
\nFor Marlow, the trip is a chance to reconnect after too long apart. It’s also the perfect escape to help her feel grounded again - one she’s happy to share with friends Aida and Claire, who are hoping to hit reset on their lives, too.
\nA leisurely beachfront summer promises the trio of women the opportunity to take deep healing breaths and explore new paths. But when her father’s will reveals an earth-shattering secret that tarnishes his impeccable reputation and everything she thought she knew about her family, Marlow finds herself questioning her entire childhood - and aspects of her future.
\nFortunately, her friends, and the most unlikely love interest she could imagine, prove that happiness can be found no matter what - as long as the right people are by your side.
It's been fifteen years since Lucy Sinclair saw her father. Fifteen long years since she sat in a courtroom and watched him sentenced to life in prison. He murdered three victims - all people she knew - which ruined her life at just seventeen. But now she’s back in Virginia to talk to him, wondering if there’s more to the story of what happened that fateful night.
\nAn old flame, Ford Wagner, makes his own return to North Hampton Beach, fleeing a marriage that seems destined for divorce. He’s wary of Lucy and her digging into the past, but the more time they spend together, the closer they get and the more he finds himself reconsidering the truth behind the death of their mutual friend that summer. Problem is, there are plenty of those in this small coastal town who would prefer things stay quiet . . .
The small town of Florence, Arizona, is known for one thing - its prison. Gabrielle Hadley is in Florence for personal reasons, though; she’s seeking the mother who abandoned her more than two decades ago. In order to support herself and her two-year-old daughter, Gabrielle is working as a prison guard - just about the only job available in this bleak desert town.
\nRandall Tucker is a prisoner at Florence, convicted of murdering his wife. He has one goal: to survive until he can prove his innocence - and reclaim his seven-year-old son, Landon, now living in foster care.
\nIn the prison’s atmosphere of tension and corruption, Gabrielle discovers that Randall Tucker is far from the murderer he’s said to be. When he escapes during a prison transfer, she follows him into the unforgiving desert. To protect her job, her own integrity - or him? But the guard becomes the prisoner’s captive . . . and more. It’s a relationship that’s not supposed to exist, and yet it might save them both.
With her piercings, tattoos and spiky blond hair, Ellen Truesdale doesn’t quite fit in with the other folks in Coyote Canyon - and that’s just fine with her. She’s only here to put her father out of business, as payback for abandoning her when she was young.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tOr is she more interested in finally proving that she was worth keeping?
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tEither way, she’s struggling to keep her rival well-drilling company afloat. And being a single woman in a male-dominated field has started to take a toll. So when Hendrix Durrant steps in to help, Ellen has no choice but to let him - even though he happens to be her father’s business partner and therefore her enemy. But the closer she works with him, the more she sees what she’s been missing . . . in life and love. And once she lets go of her anger long enough to learn the truth about her past, she might just find the family she’s always wanted.
Talulah Barclay doesn’t like complications. Unfortunately, they seem to love her. Fourteen years after leaving her fiancé at the altar, Talulah returns to her hometown of Coyote Canyon, Montana, to settle her great-aunt’s estate. As she’d feared, her “runaway bride” reputation is waiting right where she left it, and her ex’s best friend, Brant, isn’t about to let her slip by unnoticed.
\nBrant has always been a loyal friend, but Talulah’s decision to run isn’t the only thing he hasn’t forgotten. He remembers more about Talulah than he cares to admit. Vividly. And it’s increasingly difficult to ignore her now, especially when they find themselves in close quarters. Talulah has no plans to stay in town after she fixes up her aunt’s Victorian farmhouse, even if the unbridled sparks with Brant give her a good reason to linger. Besides, bailing on relationships is kind of her thing. But a lot has changed since Talulah last turned tail - maybe her heart has changed, too?
At thirty, Delaney is no longer interested in playing the role of “good girl.” After all, what has it gotten her this far in life? The one thing she wants most of all - to become a mother - still seems far out of reach.
\nWhen she and her best friend go to Boise for a night out, the handsome stranger Delaney meets seems too good to be true. Conner is attractive, and she can’t help but notice his other qualities too - he’s healthy, seems to have good genes, and she never has to see him again. If she just so happens to get what she’s always wanted out of spending the night with him, he’ll never have to know.
\nBut soon after Delaney discovers she’s pregnant, a newcomer moves onto the ranch just outside of Dundee. And wouldn’t you know, it just so happens to be Conner . . .
Four years ago Skye Kellerman was attacked in her own bed. She managed to fend off her knife-wielding assailant, but the trauma changed everything about her life. As a result of that night, she joined two friends - also survivors - in starting The Last Stand, an organisation to help victims of crime.
\nBut now . . .
\nHer would-be rapist is getting out of prison. Skye knows that Dr. Oliver Burke hasn’t forgotten that her testimony cost him his reputation - and his freedom.
\nSacramento detective David Willis, who investigated her case, believes Burke is a clear and present danger - and guilty of at least two unsolved murders.
\nAnd now Burke is free to terrorise Skye again. Unless David can stop him. Unless Skye can fight back. Because Oliver Burke has every intention of finishing what he started. And that’s a promise. Trust me.
ada Brooks couldn’t have known how her life would change when she fell for bad boy Maddox Richardson back in high school. She couldn’t have known his troubled brother would leave hers forever crippled. Or that she’d be forced to shun Maddox completely - only to discover she was carrying his child.
\nAlthough Maddox was devastated by the events that transpired that fateful night, losing Jada was the worst of it. He’s back in Silver Springs, ready to make amends and provide the kind of youth outreach that once saved him. If only he’d known Jada was in town too, he would never have come.
\nJada’s returned to Silver Springs to be with family after her father’s death. But when she sees Maddox, every tough decision she’s made concerning their now twelve-year-old daughter begins to haunt her. Falling for him again is so tempting, but not only does she stand to alienate her family - if he finds out about Maya, she could lose what matters most.
After catching her fiancé cheating - with another man - usually straight-laced, workaholic scientist Ellie Fisher liberates her wild side just long enough to indulge in a passionate one-night-stand with a tall, dark stranger she meets at a trendy Miami bar. Embarrassed by her recklessness, she ducks out the following morning without learning the guy’s full name, something that shouldn’t have been a problem . . . until a pregnancy test turns positive.
\nBeing a professional football player, Hudson King has always been cautious around women. But this one had been different - so disinterested in his celebrity, so convincingly into him. When Ellie tracks him down, claiming she’s carrying his baby, he’s stunned. And more than a little betrayed.
\nBut after growing up as an orphan, he’ll do anything to stay involved in his child’s life, so he urges Ellie to move to Silver Springs where they can co-parent. Hudson has a lot of love to give - certainly enough for his child, and when their initial spark reignites, perhaps for Ellie too . . .
Teenagers Sheridan Kohl and Jason Wyatt were parked at the lake in Whiterock, Tennessee, when a stranger wearing a ski mask shot them both. Sheridan lived but Jason died - and the stranger was never caught. Even though Sheridan's family moved away right afterward, she's never been able to put the crime behind her.
\nAnd now that someone doesn't want her to come home
\nBecause of a new development in the case, Sheridan returns to Whiterock. But when she's attacked a second time, it's only because of Jason's stepbrother, Cain Granger, that she survives - and Cain's the last person she wants to face. If not for their history, if not for her, Jason wouldn't have been in that parked car.
\nCain knows that whoever killed his brother probably isn't a stranger at all. But figuring out that person's identity is easier said than done - especially since the killer seems to be taunting them both:
\nwatch me.
\n
After everything she worked for is destroyed, pediatrician Natasha Gray is determined to build a new life. Divorced, bankrupt and suddenly a single mom, she’s ready to start over in Silver Springs - on her own. She certainly doesn’t need help from Mack Amos, the man who’s already broken her heart twice.
\nAlthough Mack has had feelings for Tash since they first met, too many things have stood in the way. He’s always given her the support she needs, though, and he’ll do the same now. Even if the desire he wrestles with threatens to undermine his intentions . . .
\nBut her heart is not the only reason Natasha wants to keep Mack at bay. More time in her life means getting closer to her son, which could lead to a revelation neither of them is ready to face.
A dangerous cult has recently taken over the desert ghost town of Paradise, Arizona. Members worship at the feet - and in the bed - of its charismatic leader, Ethan Wycliff, and obey his orders blindly. They've already tried to murder one woman and they're implicated in the disappearance of another.
\nNate Ferrentino, who works for private security contractor Department 6, has been assigned to infiltrate this group. It's a challenge he welcomes - until he learns that colleague Rachel Jessop will be going undercover with him. Thanks to their shared history, he'd much rather go alone.
\nThe problem is, only married couples can participate in cult rituals. So, like it or not - and they don't - Rachel and Nate must pretend to be husband and wife.
\nThere's no choice. Because if Wycliff isn't exposed, if he isn't stopped, more people will die. And Rachel might be one of them.
Phillip Richards puts little value on his life. He avoids close relationships and blames himself for the sexual abuse his sister suffered at the hands of their grandfather. To drown his sorrows and evade his guilt, Phillip drinks too much and engages in dangerous activities.
\nWhen his father dies, two more life-changing events take place. Phillip meets Edith, a free-spirited poet, with whom he feels an instant connection. He also comes across a manuscript, a stolen narrative that chronicles the Civil War relationship between his ancestor, Russell, and Fever, the slave who became his wife.
\nAs new details about Philip’s family and his own identity come to light, his perception of who he is and where he comes from is turned on its head. But even as Phillip comes to terms with the issues that have loomed over his family for decades, fresh allegations bring the crimes of the past flooding into the present . . .
\nEchoes of Our Ancestors is a dark and moving multi-generational saga that explores themes of trauma, race, and abuse - and the question of whether, and how, we can free ourselves from the past?
\n
College freshman Silas Turner is a scientific anomaly. Thrown back in time uncontrollably, he’s forced into his pre-transition body for hours to days at a time, reliving random events in his past. Why? Every cell in his astrophysics major brain is straining to figure it out. But the “time trips” just keep on coming, disrupting Silas’s life, and he’s certain he’s a one-of-a-kind phenomenon - until brash, guitar-playing Jude Forrester barges into his life, exhibiting the same symptoms.
\nHe claims a future version of Silas visited him, and that, according to future-Silas, they’re meant to help each other stop the time trips. If working together can really lead to finding a cure, Silas can handle Jude’s tortured-artist attitude; Jude can humor Silas’s nerdy obsession with the stars.
\nAs they get closer to a solution, they grow closer to each other. But Jude is still grieving an old connection that broke his heart, and he can’t help but wonder if changing the past might save himself and Silas a lot of heartache. Amidst cataclysmic consequences, Silas and Jude must face the cosmic circumstances that brought them together if they hope to protect their timeline - and the future they seem destined to share.
\n
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” -Theodore Roosevelt
\nEvery day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable, or to dare greatly. Whether the arena is a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation, we must find the courage to walk into vulnerability and engage with our whole hearts.
\nIn Daring Greatly, Dr. Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability. Based on twelve years of research, she argues that vulnerability is not weakness, but rather our clearest path to courage, engagement, and meaningful connection. The book that Dr. Brown’s many fans have been waiting for, Daring Greatly will spark a new spirit of truth - and trust - in our organisations, families, schools, and communities.
\n
Each day we face a barrage of images and messages from society and the media telling us who, what, and how we should be. We are led to believe that if we could only look perfect and lead perfect lives, we'd no longer feel inadequate. So most of us perform, please, and perfect, all the while thinking, What if I can't keep all of these balls in the air?
\nWhy isn't everyone else working harder and living up to my expectations? What will people think if I fail or give up? When can I stop proving myself? In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown, PhD, a leading expert on shame, authenticity and belonging, shares what she's learned from a decade of research on the power of
\nWholehearted Living - a way of engaging with the world from a place of worthiness. In her ten guideposts, Brown engages our minds, hearts, and spirits as she explores how we can cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough, and to go to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am sometimes afraid, but I am also brave. And, yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable, but that doesn't change the truth that I am worthy of love and belonging.
\n
Ananke and the rest of the Excoms team thought they would get a little bonding time to kick back and relax. But the world has different ideas.
After the organisation that they work for discovers that over a hundred prisoners from a now dismantled human trafficking operation are missing, the team is sent out to find them and bring them back.
With few clues, they must follow a trail that leads from Washington State to Panama and beyond. And when they reach the end, what they find is far beyond anything they ever expected.
It’ll take everyone working at the top of their game, but even that might not be enough.
With the whole of human history altered, Denny Younger may be the last rewinder in existence - and the last person on earth with a chaser unit capable of time travel. While caring for his ailing sister, Denny must discover a way to recharge his device before he’s left with no defense against a past that wants him dead.
\nBefore long, Denny notices a mysterious stranger following him - keeping tabs on Denny, his family, and his friends. Is Denny just paranoid? Or maybe he isn’t alone in this new reality after all . . .
\nWhen his chaser is stolen and his girlfriend is kidnapped, Denny risks everything to get both of them back. Launched into a high-stakes chase that spans continents and millennia, Denny’s responsibility to save our future isn’t over yet. It will take all of his cunning to stop a threat capable of steering the fate of the human race into disaster.
The meeting place was carefully chosen: an abandoned church in rural Ireland just after dark. For Jonathan Quinn - a freelance operative and professional \"cleaner\" - the job was only to observe. If his cleanup skills were needed, it would mean things had gone horribly wrong. But an assassin hidden in a tree assured just that. And suddenly Quinn had four dead bodies to dispose of and one astounding clue - to a mystery that is about to spin wildly out of control.
\nThree jobs, no questions. That was the deal Quinn had struck with his client at the Office. Unfortunately for him, Ireland was just the first. Now Quinn, along with his colleague and girlfriend - the lethal Orlando - has a new assignment touched off by the killings in Ireland. Their quarry is a U.N. aide worker named Marion Dupuis who has suddenly disappeared from her assignment in war-torn Africa. When Quinn finally catches a glimpse of her, she quickly flees, frantic and scared. And not alone.
\nFor Quinn the assignment has now changed. Find Marion Dupuis, and the child she is protecting, and keep them from harm. If it were only that easy.
\nSoon Quinn and Orlando find themselves in a bunker in the California hills, where Quinn will unearth a horrifying plot that is about to reach stage critical for a gathering of world leaders--and an act of terror more cunning, and more insidious, than anyone can guess.
Denny Younger. Historian. Time Traveler.
\nPrisoner.
\nThere is nothing Denny wants more than to repair the damage former rewinder Lidia has done to history.
\nHer manipulations have thrown the timeline he knows into chaos, and now he’s locked away in an unfamiliar world, without the device that would allow him to fix what has been destroyed.
\nWill Denny be able to bring back the life he knew and the people he loves, or will he be trapped in this violent timeline forever?
\nOnly time will tell.
The unthinkable has happened. A life has been extinguished-one belonging to someone Jonathan Quinn and his partner Nate care about more than almost anyone else in the world. Those responsible will pay.
\nNo matter how long it takes, no matter how far and wide the search, Quinn, Nate, and their colleagues will stop at nothing to exact the appropriate justice. Because if there is one thing those in the shadow world should know, you do not mess with Quinn's people.
Everything on the job is going as expected. The target has been dealt with, and all that’s left to do is remove the body.
\nBut a surprise is waiting for Quinn and Nate, one that completely changes their mission. Then when the client who gave them their new orders disappears, they find themselves on their own, with a human asset holding a dark secret that several parties are interested in obtaining, by force if necessary.
\nTo keep the asset alive, the two cleaners must stay on the run, but even that doesn't guarantee success.
\nBecause no matter how closely a secret is guarded, if enough people want it, it won’t stay buried forever.
Meet Jonathan Quinn: a freelance operative with a take-no-prisoners style and the heart of a loner. His job? Professional “cleaner.” Nothing too violent, just disposing of bodies, doing a little cleanup if necessary. But in Brett Battles’s electrifying debut novel, Quinn’s latest assignment will change everything, igniting a harrowing journey of violence, betrayal, and revenge.
\nThe job seemed simple enough: investigating a suspicious case of arson. But when a dead body turns up where it doesn’t belong - and Quinn’s handlers at “the Office” turn strangely silent - he knows he’s in over his head. With only a handful of clues, Quinn scrambles for cover, struggling to find out why someone wants him dead . . . and if it’s linked to a larger attempt to wipe out the Office.
A cleaner’s tasks are simple: get rid of the body so that it will never be found, and make the scene of the kill look like nothing happened. Rule Number One: Don’t get caught. With Jonathan Quinn’s career in question, his apprentice Nate has successfully taken on the role of full-fledged cleaner, using Quinn’s name to keep the business working seamlessly in case his boss decides to return.
\nBut Nate’s latest job is not what it seems, and he finds himself on the wrong side of a trap. With Nate suddenly missing, Quinn and his partner Orlando set out to find him, and learn the reasons for Nate’s disappearance are more atrocious than they anticipated.
\n
Jonathan Quinn is the best at what he does: making bodies disappear. Within the espionage world, his reputation is impeccable.
\nThere was a time, though, when that reputation was still being built under his mentor, Durrie. A time when the very man who had taught Quinn all he knew could have derailed the young cleaner’s future.
Fifteen years ago, Quinn was offered a job. On the surface, a straightforward mission to stop a terrorist. But the client gave Quinn the additional task of taking on Durrie as his number two, as a last chance for the veteran agent to be rehabilitated.
Durrie had been on a downward spiral, going from being a highly respected operative to an unreliable has-been. These changes threatened to destroy everything - not only in Quinn’s life, but Orlando’s, too. She was Durrie’s girlfriend, and Quinn’s best friend.
Both she and Quinn were desperate to help Durrie return to the person he once was.
They hoped this job would be the answer.
Durrie had other plans.
A freelance operative and professional “cleaner,” Quinn knows better than to get emotionally involved in any of his jobs. But in this superb powerhouse of suspense, Quinn’s latest job is different. A friend and old colleague has been murdered. A woman has gone missing. And for Jonathan Quinn, this time it’s personal.
Anonymity. Trust. Professionalism. In his world, Jonathan Quinn has a few rules. He’ll get rid of bodies that have to disappear; nothing ever gets traced back to him. But when Quinn is called to a busy Los Angeles port where a shipping container has just come in from the sea, it’s clear his rules have been violated. Inside the crate is a dead man - a man who once saved Quinn’s life. And while no one knows how CIA agent Steven Markoff died, Quinn has to do more than clean. He has to find Markoff’s girlfriend, Jenny. To tell her that Markoff is dead. To find out why - and why someone sent Markoff’s body to him.
Until a week ago, Jenny Fuentes was an assistant to an ambitious congressman. Now Jenny is missing, too, and a lot of man power is making sure she isn’t found. But Quinn has his own man power. He has tools that can pry into secrets held anywhere in the world. He has the skill to trade blows with killers and spies. And he has covert weapons: his eager and smart apprentice, Nate, and brilliant Orlando, his closest friend, who’s saved his life more than once.
Racing from the corridors of power in Washington to the bustling streets of Singapore, Quinn won’t stop until he uncovers the truth behind his friend’s violent death, the astounding reason Jenny has vanished - and what she knows about the most explosive deception of all.
From Barry Award winning author Brett Battles comes the fifth thriller in the Jonathan Quinn series... Mila Voss is dead. That’s what the team hired to terminate her had reported, and that’s how her file had been marked. Dead. Six years now. So why did she suddenly show up on a hotel’s security camera in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania?
\nThose who’d paid for her elimination are more than a little curious. One person should know what happened - Jonathan Quinn, one of the best cleaners in the business, the man who’d been tasked with the disposal of her body. Only Quinn isn’t exactly easy to get ahold of these days, and he may not be willing to share the answer.
\n
He thought his final assignment would be simple: Transport a package from Japan to Amsterdam. But for Orlando's mentor, Abraham, the job was not at all like he expected and ended up haunting him.
\nSeven years later, Quinn and Orlando know something is up when Abraham asks for a favor. At his age, he should be sitting on a beach, enjoying his retirement, not working. After he tells them of his search for the last package he ever delivered, they help him unravel the truth, but soon realize they can't simply look for answers. They must also protect the package, no matter the cost.
\nThey just need to find it first.
\n
Ananke thought her week couldn't get worse, but as she hunts for the man who screwed up her previous job, things really go sideways. Turns out, she's not the only one having problems. Rosario can acquire anything for anyone, but can she obtain freedom for herself when her latest assignment goes awry? Dylan's sure his new gig will be a walk in the park - or rather, a drive, given that he's a courier.
\nUnfortunately, the road is a bit bumpier than he expected. Liesel is having the worst week of her life, and blames only herself. And Ricky? Well, Ricky doesn't believe in bad weeks. Though he can't claim being stuck in prison is all that great. Convenient for all of them, then, that a mysterious organization comes along asking for their help, and in return promises to reverse their excommunication from the secret world. Of course, nothing good ever comes without strings attached.
Jonathan Quinn has had better years, but now most of the trouble is behind him, if not forgotten.
There is one issue that remains unresolved - the break between him and his partner, Nate. Quinn has come to accept the only potential path to healing the wound is via the passage of time.
The secret world has other ideas.
Quinn and his girlfriend, Orlando, are hired for a new mission, but they must include on their team the operative who is one of the few to have ever seen the face of the job’s target. This operative is unknown to the client, but not to Quinn and Orlando.
Now, to stop a plan that could slaughter tens of thousands of people, they must turn to the one person who wants nothing to do with them.
If they can even find him in time.
Professional 'cleaner' Jonathan Quinn has a new client and an odd job: find and remove the remains of a body hidden twenty years ago inside the walls of a London building, before the building is demolished. But Quinn and his team are being watched.
\nSuddenly caught in the cross fire between two dangerous rivals, Quinn must unravel the identity of the body and why it still poses so great a threat even in death. Because a plot stretching from the former Soviet Union to Hong Kong, from Paris to London, from Los Angeles to Maine, is rapidly falling apart. And Quinn hasn't been hired just to tie up loose ends - he is one.
The world thought Dmitri Melnikov was dead.
\nEspecially Quinn. Why would he have believed otherwise, since the bomb intended for Melnikov had nearly killed Quinn and several members of his team?
\nBut Melnikov is not dead. He has been taken by someone who wants to shut him up. And the former chess champion isn’t the only one who has been abducted.
\nUS Intelligence can’t do anything about it. Not officially, anyway. The risk of causing an international incident is too great. What the agencies can do is ask someone who’d been there when Melnikov was kidnapped to do something for them.
\nIt’s not a normal mission for Quinn and his friends, and the chances they’ll all survive are slim, but this one is personal. So how can they say no?
A snowy night. A train making its way through the mountains of Austria.
\nAsleep in one of the private compartments is a very important passenger, a scientist who has created something others desperately want.
\nPrecautions have been taken to ensure the man’s safe passage, but even with a highly skilled bodyguard onboard, the trip does not go as planned.
\nWhen the scientist vanishes, Jonathan Quinn and his team are sent in to locate him before the secrets in the man’s head can be extracted. Because if that happens, the world would change forever.
Even those who make bodies disappear for a living need a vacation. To Quinn and Orlando, the offer of a private villa on a quiet island beach sounds like heaven, and they jump at the chance for some family time with their six-month old daughter and Orlando's teenage son.
\nAt first it seems as though their holiday will be even better than they'd hoped. The water is warm, the house is beautiful, and the view is spectacular. But when revenge is in the air, things have a way of going sideways.
It’s been nine years since Quinn last worked with Mariko. That fateful job left him with a permanent sense of guilt, and her with a life forever changed.
\nNow, their paths have crossed again. Not in a way Quinn would have hoped for, but at least in one that might allow him to make partial amends.
\nTo accomplish this, he will have to risk his career, by ignoring the strict orders he’s been given.
Human life is a staggeringly strange thing. On the surface of a ball of rock falling around a nuclear fireball in the blackness of a vacuum the laws of nature conspired to create a naked ape that can look up at the stars and wonder where it came from.
\nWhat is a human being? Objectively, nothing of consequence. Particles of dust in an infinite arena, present for an instant in eternity. Clumps of atoms in a universe with more galaxies than people. And yet a human being is necessary for the question itself to exist, and the presence of a question in the universe - any question - is the most wonderful thing.
\nQuestions require minds, and minds bring meaning. What is meaning? I don’t know, except that the universe and every pointless speck inside it means something to me. I am astonished by the existence of a single atom, and find my civilisation to be an outrageous imprint on reality. I don’t understand it. Nobody does, but it makes me smile.
This book asks questions about our origins, our destiny, and our place in the universe. We have no right to expect answers; we have no right to even ask. But ask and wonder we do.
Human Universe is first and foremost a love letter to humanity; a celebration of our outrageous fortune in existing at all. I have chosen to write my letter in the language of science, because there is no better demonstration of our magnificent ascent from dust to paragon of animals than the exponentiation of knowledge generated by science. Two million years ago we were apemen. Now we are spacemen. That has happened, as far as we know, nowhere else. That is worth celebrating.
\n
The bestselling authors of Wonders of the Universe are back with another blockbuster, a groundbreaking exploration of our Solar System as it has never been seen before.
\nMercury, a lifeless victim of the Sun’s expanding power. Venus, once thought to be lush and fertile, now known to be trapped within a toxic and boiling atmosphere. Mars, the red planet, doomed by the loss of its atmosphere. Jupiter, twice the size of all the other planets combined, but insubstantial. Saturn, a stunning celestial beauty, the jewel of our Solar System. Uranus, the sideways planet and the first ice giant. Neptune, dark, cold and whipped by supersonic winds. Pluto, the dwarf planet, a frozen rock.
\nAndrew Cohen and Professor Brian Cox take readers on a voyage of discovery, from the fiery heart of our Solar System, to its mysterious outer reaches. They touch on the latest discoveries that have expanded our knowledge of the planets, their moons and how they come to be, alongside recent stunning and mind-boggling NASA photography.
\n
In Wonders of Life: Exploring the Most Extraordinary Force in the Universe, the definitive companion to the Discovery Science Channel series, Professor Brian Cox takes us on an incredible journey to discover the most complex, diverse, and unique force in the universe: life itself.
\nThrough his voyage of discovery, international bestselling author Brian Cox explains how the astonishing inventiveness of nature came about and uncovers the milestones in the epic journey from the origin of life to our own lives, with beautiful full-color illustrations throughout. From spectacular fountains of superheated water at the bottom of the Atlantic to the deepest rainforest, Cox seeks out the places where the biggest questions about life may be answered: What is life? Why do we need water? Why does life end?
\nPhysicist and professor Brian Cox uncovers the secrets of life in the most unexpected locations and in the most stunning detail in this beautiful full-color volume.
\n
In Wonders of the Solar System - the book of the acclaimed BBC TV series - Professor Brian Cox will take us on a journey of discovery where alien worlds from your imagination become places we can see, feel and visit.
\nThe Wonders of the Solar System - from the giant ice fountains of Enceladus to the liquid methane seas of Titan and from storms twice the size of the Earth to the tortured moon of Io with its giant super-volcanoes - is the Solar System as you have never seen it before.
\nIn this series, Professor Brian Cox will introduce us to the planets and moons beyond our world, finding the biggest, most bizarre, most powerful natural phenomena. Using the latest scientific imagery along with cutting edge CGI and some of the most spectacular and extreme locations on Earth, Brian will show us Wonders never thought possible.
\nEmploying his trademark clear, authoritative, yet down-to-earth approach, Brian will explore how these previously unseen phenomena have dramatically expanded our horizons with new discoveries about the planets, their moons and how they came to be the way they are.
\n
Professor Brian Cox is back with another insightful and mind-blowing exploration of space. This time he shows us our universe as we've never seen it before. 13.7 billion years old. 93 billion light years wide. It contains over 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. This infinite, vast and complex Universe has been the subject of human fascination and scientific exploration for thousands of years.
\nThe wonders of the Universe might seem alien to us and impossible to understand, but away from the telescopes, the labs and the white coats, Professor Brian Cox uses the evidence found in the natural world around us to explain its simple truths. Travelling to the North Pole, Professor Cox demonstrates how spinning worlds create electrical currents and magnetism; he looks at the South Pacific Ocean to explain how the Universe communicates and moves in waves; he shows us how the water of the Angel Falls waterfall in Venezuela behaves exactly like the light does around a black hole.
\nThe same laws of light, gravity, time, matter and energy that govern us here on Earth are the same as those applied in the Universe. Using 3D CGI imagery, his expert knowledge and his infectious enthusiasm, Professor Cox shows us that if we can understand the impact of these governing laws on Earth it will bring us a step closer to an understanding of our Universe.
\n
The remarkable untold story of PLATO, the computer program and platform created in the 1960s, that marked the true beginning of cyberculture - a book that will rewrite the history of computing and the Internet.
\nHere is the story of the brilliant, eccentric designers, developers, and denizens (often teenagers and twentysomethings) of the PLATO system, a computer network so far ahead of its time, and with a list of hardware and software innovations so long, that it's almost inconceivable that it actually existed - and existed so long ago--only to fade almost entirely from public view. The many thousands of people who used the system have held on to the PLATO ideas throughout their careers, influencing countless technological products and programs: from flat-panel wall TVs and touch-sensitive screens to chat rooms, instant messaging, screen savers, multiplayer games, flight simulators, crowdsourcing, interactive fiction, emoticons, and e-learning. Fascinating, first hand, and revelatory, The Friendly Orange Glow makes clear that the work of PLATO practitioners has profoundly shaped the computer industry from its inception to our very moment.
\nThis book is as much the biography of a vision as it is the story of the people behind PLATO. Every technology story - whether it's about the steam engine, airplane, telephone, Model T, or more recently, Apple, Google, and Tesla electric car - has at its core a vision. It is the immutable nature of technology, and technology visions, to run full life cycles, from cradle to grave. PLATO's story is no different. Like all technology visions, PLATO grew outdated and was disrupted by competing visions. The Friendly Orange Glow is a revelatory paradigm for our technological age.
\n
When a freak auto accident kills a driver on the remote roads outside Duluth, Jonathan Stride is disturbed to discover that the victim appears to be a \"ghost,\" with a false identity and no evidence to suggest who he really was. What's worse, the man has a gun locked in the trunk- and the gun has recently been fired.
The next day, Stride learns that a Duluth college student has vanished, and he worries that the two incidents are related. But what would have put an ordinary young woman in the cross-hairs of a man who has all the hallmarks of an assassin-for-hire?
Stride's investigation of the girl's disappearance leads him onto the set of a film crew in Duluth, where a movie is being made based on a case in Stride's own past. The actor playing Stride is Hollywood royalty, an award-winning icon who has charmed his way to the top of the box office.
But Stride soon hears whispers that his alter ego has a dark side . . . and in trying to expose the truth, he discovers that he has made a powerful enemy who will stop at nothing to protect his reputation.
Hilary and Mark Bradley are trapped in a web of suspicion. Last year, accusations of a torrid affair with a student cost Mark his teaching job and made the young couple into outcasts in their remote island town off the Lake Michigan coast. Now another teenage girl is found dead on a deserted beach. . . and once again, Mark faces a hostile town convinced of his guilt.
Hilary Bradley is determined to prove that Mark is innocent, but she’s on a lonely, dangerous quest. Even when she discovers that the murdered girl was witness to a horrific crime years earlier, the police are certain she’s throwing up a smoke screen to protect her husband. Only a quirky detective named Cab Bolton seems willing to believe Hilary’s story.
Hilary and Cab soon find that people in this community are willing to kill to keep their secrets hidden - and to make sure Mark doesn’t get away with murder. And with each shocking revelation, even Hilary begins to wonder whether her husband is truly innocent.
\n
Tommy Miller is a man with deadly skills, hiding in Florida under a false identity. After being set up on an overseas mission, he’s on the run from terrorists - and from the government who betrayed him. So when his wife and daughter are violently abducted, it seems his ghosts are finally catching up with him.
\nBut Tommy isn’t the only one with secrets. His wife, Teresa, has been concealing her own dangerous past, and as Tommy races to rescue his family, he must peel away the clues she’s left behind. With a hotshot police detective, Lindy Jax, close on his trail, Tommy follows a twisted path from Florida to the Bahamas, one that brings him face to face with ruthless enemies.
\nHis search for answers soon puts him on the wrong side of the law - hunted by the police and pursued by men who want him dead. Worst of all, if he hopes to save Teresa and their daughter, Rosalita, he must become the man he once was - a killer operating from the deepest shadows.
\nBut when the lives of the people you love are at stake, rules are made to be broken.
\n
One cold night - Two shocking mysteries - In the quiet town of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, a baby vanishes from her bedroom in an opulent lakeside home - Was she abducted - or does her father have a terrible secret to hide? -That same night, a young policewoman gets lost in the fog and stumbles into the middle of a horrific crime.
Now a sadistic killer wants her to play his deadly game -Lieutenant Jonathan Stride and his team need to move fast to save a child and stop a vicious killing spree - As fear grips the frozen winter farm lands, Stride knows that every snow-covered field may be the next burying place.
Each twist in the investigation takes Stride into an elaborate web of deceit and desire - But his biggest obstacles may be the very people he-s trying to help - With everything at risk and time running out, Stride worries how far a desperate mother will go to rescue her baby - and how far a desperate cop will go to save herself.
Ten years ago, six-year-old Catalina Mateo hid under the porch of her family home while a knife butchered her mother and a bullet killed her father.
Now, a rough-sleeping orphan, Cat arrives at the house of Detective Jonathan Stride, pleading for protection. Covered in blood and drenched in the icy waters of Lake Superior, she claims to have narrowly escaped a cold-blooded killer.
Stride’s raw instinct is to protect Cat, whose late parents’ case - and his personal guilt associated with it - still sends a shiver down his spine. As a result, he takes the troubled teenager under his wing without as much as a second thought.
However, Stride’s partner Maggie Bei is not convinced. She doubts the sincerity of this beautiful young streetwalker who has so easily won Stride’s trust, and now sleeps in his house with a butcher’s knife under her pillow.
As Stride continues to care for Cat, Maggie’s suspicions solidify, and a single question occupies the void between them: should Stride be afraid for, or of, this terribly damaged girl?
San Francisco homicide detective Frost Easton hadn’t seen his estranged friend Denny in years. Not until he dies in Frost’s arms uttering a final inexplicable word: Lombard. Denny appears to be the latest victim in a string of murders linked by a distinctive clue: the painting of a spiraled snake near the crime scenes. Is it the work of a serial killer? Or is Denny’s death more twisted and personal?
To find the answer, Frost reaches into a nest of vipers - San Francisco’s shady elite - where the whispered name of Lombard is just one secret. Now, drawn into a cat-and-mouse game with an enemy who knows his every move, Frost finds there is no one he can trust. And somewhere down the crooked streets of the city, Frost’s cunning adversary is coiled and ready to strike again.
Jonathan Stride's best friend, Steve Garske, makes a shocking deathbed confession: he protected Stride by covering up a murder. Hours later, the police dig up Steve s yard and find a body with a bullet hole in its skull.
\nStride is pretty sure he knows who it is. Seven years ago, an out-of-town reporter disappeared while investigating anonymous allegations of rape against a prominent politician. Back then, the police believed that the reporter drowned at a dangerous swimming hole called the Deeps but the discovery of the body changes everything. Now Stride s partner, Maggie Bei, is forced to ask Stride an uncomfortable question: Did you kill him?
\nStride is obviously hiding things. He was the last person to see the reporter alive. And he admits lying to Maggie about that meeting, but won't tell her why. With suspicion in the murder pointing at him, Stride finds himself off the case and on leave from the Duluth Police.
\nHis only ally in clearing his name is his wife, Serena, who retraces the reporter s investigation into the explosive allegations. The clues all point to a hot Duluth summer years earlier that everyone in town would prefer to forget.
\nSomeone was willing to kill rather than let those long-ago secrets come out, and the suspect with the strongest motive is Stride.
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Detective Jonathan Stride's first wife, Cindy, died of cancer eight years ago, but her ghost hangs over Stride's relationship with current lover, and fellow detective, Serena Dial. When Serena witnesses a brutal murder outside a Duluth bar, she stumbles onto a case with roots that go all the way back to the last year of Cindy Stride's life.
\nAt the time, Cindy and Stride were on opposite sides of a domestic murder investigation. Gorgeous, brilliant Janine Snow--a surgeon transplanted to Duluth from Texas--was the prime suspect in the shooting death of her husband. Cindy believed her friend Janine was innocent, but Stride thought all the evidence pointed to the surgeon - even though the gun was never found. Despite Cindy's attempts to help Janine, the case led to a high-profile murder trial in which Janine was convicted and sent to prison.
\nDuring the current investigation, Serena finds a gun used in the murder of a woman connected to an organized crime syndicate - a gun that turns out to be the same weapon used to kill Janine Snow's husband. Two unrelated cases years apart suddenly have a mysterious connection.
\nAs Stride investigates the possibility that human traffickers are targeting women in the Duluth port, he begins to question whether he made a terrible mistake eight years ago by putting an innocent woman in prison. And whether he will ever be able to make peace with the memory of his beloved wife and give his heart to Serena.
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On the Fourth of July, Hallie Evers dies at a rooftop party in Las Vegas.
\nHours later, she wakes up in the hospital, disoriented but alive. Why can’t she find the doctor who revived her? Why does her head feel crowded and loud? Why do her memories feel both foreign and familiar? Her self-doubt spirals into crippling paranoia.
\nHallie knows that mental illness runs in her family - her mother suffered from delusions that led to an early death. But now even Hallie’s dreams are fraught with details that seem like more than imagination - vivid images of a city she remembers but has never visited in her life. As she embarks on a cross-country search for answers, Hallie catches glimpses of what feel like another person’s memories. It’s a dark, horrifying, tragic vision . . . of someone else’s murder.
\nBut is any of it real?
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Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is suffering from an ugly case of déjà vu. For the second time in a year, a beautiful teenage girl has disappeared off the streets of Duluth, Minnesota—gone without a trace, like a bitter gust off Lake Superior. The two victims couldn’t be more different.
\nFirst it was Kerry McGrath, bubbly, sweet sixteen. And now Rachel Deese, strange, sexually charged, a wild child. The media hounds Stride to catch a serial killer, and as the search carries him from the icy stillness of the northern woods to the erotic heat of Las Vegas, he must decide which facts are real and which are illusions. And Stride finds his own life changed forever by the secrets he uncovers. Secrets that stretch across time in a web of lies, death, and illicit desire. Secrets that are chillingly . . . immoral.
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On a rainy June morning, tens of thousands of people crowd into Duluth for the city's biggest annual event: Grandma's Marathon. Exhausted runners push to reach the finish line and spectators line the streets to cheer them on. Then, in a terrifying echo of the Boston Marathon bombing, there is an explosion along the race course, leaving many people dead and injured. Within minutes, an urgent manhunt begins for the person who planted the backpack filled with explosives.
Stride, Serena, and Maggie are forced into supporting roles in this investigation as FBI special agents take over the case. Politicians and the media push for answers and rumors fly as people leap to the conclusion that this was radical Islamic terrorism.
One spectator remembers being jostled by a young man with a backpack not far from the bomb site. He spots a young Muslim man in a tourist's photo of the event, convinced that this man bumped into him in the crowd-but there's no backpack in the photo. Distrusting that the police will follow up, he tweets the photograph to the public. In seconds, the young man, Mehdi, becomes the most wanted man in the city.
When new photographs surface from the day of the bombing, the spectator realizes he may have made a terrible mistake. Stride, Serena, and Maggie awaken to the possibility that the motive behind this bombing may not have been terrorism at all. But can they find the truth before more innocent people are killed?
Homicide detective Frost Easton doesn’t like coincidences. When a series of bizarre deaths rock San Francisco - as seemingly random women suffer violent psychotic breaks - Frost looks for a connection that leads him to psychiatrist Francesca Stein. Frankie’s controversial therapy helps people erase their most terrifying memories . . . and all the victims were her patients.
As Frost and Frankie carry out their own investigations, the case becomes increasingly personal - and dangerous. Long-submerged secrets surface as someone called the Night Bird taunts the pair with cryptic messages pertaining to the deaths. Soon Frankie is forced to confront strange gaps in her own memory, and Frost faces a killer who knows the detective’s worst fears.
As the body count rises and the Night Bird circles ever closer, a dedicated cop and a brilliant doctor race to solve the puzzle before a cunning killer claims another victim.
Lake Wales, Central Florida. Ten years ago, a political fundraiser became a bloodbath when a hooded assassin carried out a savage public execution. Three men were massacred, casting a dark shadow over the Sunshine State.
A decade on, history is threatening to repeat itself. The widow of one victim, herself now running for Governor, has received an anonymous threat - a newspaper clipping from that fateful day, along with the chilling words 'I'm back.'
Florida detective Cab Bolton agrees to investigate the threat against this candidate, Diane Fairmont: an attractive politician who has a complicated history with Cab's mother, Hollywood actress Tarla Bolton - and with Cab himself.
But by doing so, Cab is entering dangerous waters. Fairmont's political party is itself swamped in secrecy - a fact that, unknown to Cab, has led one of its junior staff to start asking very sensitive questions about the death of a party employee.
Both Cab and this young researcher, Peach Piper, are digging up the kind of dirt that ten years can't wash away. And as the powerful crosswinds of state politics swirl around Cab and Peach, and the threat of a tropical storm hangs over Florida, this whirlwind of pressure and chaos will ultimately unearth a poisonous conspiracy, and reawaken a killer who has lain dormant for a decade.
A taut thriller about two rural Minnesota towns locked in a deadly feud - and a teenage girl caught in the crossfire. Linked by the Spirit River, the two towns couldn't be more different: in affluent Barron, a powerful and secretive scientific research corporation enriches its residents, while downriver in blue-collar St. Croix, victims of that company's carcinogenic waste struggle to survive.
\nThe bad blood between the communities escalates into open warfare when the beautiful Ashlynn, daughter of the corporation's president, is found shot dead - and a St. Croix girl, Olivia Hawk, is accused of the crime.
\nReluctantly, Olivia's mother summons her estranged husband Christopher, a Minneapolis lawyer, to come defend his daughter. As Christopher struggles to unravel the mystery of Ashlynn's murder and save his own daughter, he uncovers some ugly truths that endanger the residents of both towns. And looming over everything are the chilling, apocalyptic threats from a murderous psychopath known only as “Aquarius.”
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Lieutenant Jonathan Stride knows his partner Maggie Bei is in trouble when she reports a deadly crime on a bitter winter night. She’s obviously hiding a terrible secret. And her silence only feeds suspicion. But Maggie isn’t the only one keeping secrets. A seductive young woman has disappeared, leaving behind a stash of lurid fantasies and a cryptic message.
\nI know who it is.
\nNow it’s up to Stride and his lover, homicide cop turned private investigator Serena Dial, to uncover a sordid web of violence and voyeurism that someone is willing to kill to keep hidden. Meanwhile, a predator with a vicious past is hunting them both - with a terrifying plan for revenge on the frozen lakes of Duluth . . .
\nThey looked like isolated cases: a hit-and-run and a celebrity murdered during a fling with a prostitute. No one could ever imagine they'd be linked to a brutal crime in Las Vegas's steamy past--and that the race against the clock to corner a determined serial killer would stir up secrets long thought buried with the dead.
\nAs detectives Jonathan Stride and Serena Dial are called separately to investigate, they have no idea what they're stepping into: a world where desperate ambition rules and loyalties know no bounds, and where their own uncharted emotions and sexual desires will reach an explosive conclusion.
Lisa Power is a tortured ghost of her former self. The author of a bestselling thriller called Thief River Falls, named after her rural Minnesota hometown, Lisa is secluded in her remote house as she struggles with the loss of her entire family: a series of tragedies she calls the “Dark Star.”
\nThen a nameless runaway boy shows up at her door with a terrifying story: he’s just escaped death after witnessing a brutal murder - a crime the police want to cover up. Obsessed with the boy’s safety, Lisa resolves to expose this crime, but powerful men in Thief River Falls are desperate to get the boy back, and now they want her too.
\nLisa and her young visitor have nowhere to go as the trap closes around them. Still under the strange, unforgiving threat of the Dark Star, Lisa must find a way to save them both, or they’ll become the victims of another shocking tragedy she can’t foresee.
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One cop’s lie has set a killer free.
\nFour years after serial killer Rudy Cutter was sent away for life, San Francisco homicide inspector Frost Easton uncovers a terrible lie: his closest friend planted false evidence to put Cutter behind bars. When he’s forced to reveal the truth, his sister’s killer is back on the streets.
\nDesperate to take Cutter down again, the detective finds a new ally in Eden Shay. She wrote a book about Cutter and knows more about him than anyone. And she’s terrified. Because for four years, Cutter has been nursing revenge day after stolen day.
\nStaying ahead of the game of a killer who’s determined to strike again is not going to be easy. Not when Frost is battling his own demons. Not when the game is becoming so personal. And not when the killer’s next move is unlike anything Frost expected.
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Two young lovers. A sultry summer night. One brutal, cold-blooded murder. In this stunning, atmospheric thriller, Brian Freeman takes you deep into Detective Jonathan Stride’s complicated past.
\nIt’s the case that has haunted Stride for thirty years. During the summer after his junior year of high school, he fell in love with beautiful Cindy Starr, the girl who would become his wife. But on the Fourth of July, the same night that Jonny and Cindy cemented their love, Cindy’s older sister Laura was savagely murdered. The police suspected a vagrant of committing the crime, but no one was ever arrested, and the case was closed.
\nNow, Laura’s best friend Tish Verdure has returned to Duluth to write a book about Laura’s death. Tish knows secrets that a lot of people would like to keep hidden, including information about Cindy that leave Stride questioning his entire past. When a young girl is found drowned in the St. Louis River and a witness to the original murder attempts suicide, Stride realizes that the violence of the past is spilling over into the present.
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As he unearths the explosive events that led to Laura’s murder, Stride discovers that the ripples of her death changed everyone’s lives, including his own. Can Stride put to rest the ghosts of his past, or will they devour him whole?
A woman has been kidnapped.Now Jonathan Stride must decide if her husband wants her back . . . dead or alive.
\nAfter nearly dying of a gunshot wound, Jonathan Stride has been on leave from the Duluth Police for more than a year. When his partner, Maggie Bei, gets called about a suspicious abduction involving a local lawyer, she tells Stride it's time for him to come back.
\nAttorney Gavin Webster says he paid $100,000 in ransom money to the men who kidnapped his wife. Now they've disappeared with the cash, and she's still missing. Gavin claims to be desperate to find her--but Stride discovers that the lawyer had plenty of motive to be the mastermind behind the crime.
\nEven as Stride digs for the truth about Gavin Webster and his wife, he must also deal with a crisis in his own marriage.
\nHis wife, Serena, is struggling after the death of her mother, the abusive woman she hadn't seen in twenty-five years. When she loses control at a crime scene and draws her gun on a fellow cop, Serena finds herself kicked off the Webster case. Alone at her desk, she begins hunting through old police files and starts to ask questions about a mother's death that was written off as suicide. That death haunts Serena like an echo of her own childhood - but her obsession with it takes a terrible toll.
\nAs Serena shuts him out of her despair, and his own investigation grows increasingly tangled, Stride wonders whether going back to his detective work was the right decision. But all he can do is keep moving forward. Because Stride fears the Webster kidnapping may be only one part of a horrific murder conspiracy.
\nAnd it's not over yet.
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Through the unforgettable stories of five Atlanta families, this landmark work of journalism exposes a new and troubling trend - the dramatic rise of the “working homeless” in cities across America
\nThe working homeless. In a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success, there is something scandalous about this phrase. But skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America’s booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one.
\nIn this gripping and deeply reported book, Brian Goldstone plunges readers into the lives of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. Maurice and Natalia make a fresh start in the country’s “Black Mecca” after being priced out of DC. Kara dreams of starting her own cleaning business while mopping floors at a public hospital. Britt scores a coveted housing voucher. Michelle is in school to become a social worker. Celeste toils at her warehouse job while undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Each of them aspires to provide a decent life for their children - and each of them, one by one, joins the ranks of the nation’s working homeless.
\nThrough intimate, novelistic portraits, Goldstone reveals the human cost of this crisis, following parents and their kids as they go to sleep in cars, or in squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, and head out to their jobs and schools the next morning. These are the nation’s hidden homeless - omitted from official statistics, and proof that overflowing shelters and street encampments are only the most visible manifestation of a far more pervasive problem.
\nBy turns heartbreaking and urgent, There Is No Place for Us illuminates the true magnitude, causes, and consequences of the new American homelessness - and shows that it won’t be solved until housing is treated as a fundamental human right.
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Danny is spending his sixteenth summer in Rome. As his mother spends the day at work in a mysterious museum, he wanders the ancient sites and streets. Soon after his arrival, he encounters a shadow . . . who becomes a voice . . . who becomes a boy his age. Angelo.
\nSoon Danny and Angelo are spending as much time as they can together, piecing together stories of the city while only gradually letting their own histories be shared. Attraction leads to affection, and affection leads to both an intimate closeness and a profound fear of what happens next. Danny has never really had a home, or known the love of another boy. Angelo seems to have more experience . . . but he also has secrets just out of Danny’s reach.
\nRun Away With Me is a stunning creation, weaving words and illustration to tell the story of a transformative love over the course of one Roman summer.
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A definitive history of the fatal clash between Vietnam War protestors and the National Guard, illuminating its causes and lasting consequences.
\nOn May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, political crosscurrents that had been building in America during the 1960s reached critical mass. Anti-war protestors sporting bell-bottomed pants and long hair hurled taunts and rocks at another group of young Americans - National Guardsmen wearing gas masks and rifles. At half past noon, violence unfolded with chaotic speed, as Guardsmen - many of whom had joined the Guard to escape the draft - opened fire on the students.
\nTwo reductive narratives, one, that lethal state violence was aimed at Americans who spoke their minds; the other, that law enforcement gave troublemakers the comeuppance they deserved. For over 50 years, little middle ground has been found due to incomplete and contradictory evidence.
\nIn Kent State , historian Brian VanDeMark draws on crucial new research and interviews - including, for the first time, the perspective of the Guardsmen who were there that day - for a complete reckoning with the tragedy that bookended the ’60s.
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Recalling memoirs like Wild and Educated, an internationally renowned whitewater rafting guide offers a gripping and inspiring memoir about overcoming hardship and coming into her own through her relationship with the rivers she has known.
\nAfter Bridget Crocker’s parents split in a vicious divorce, she moved with her mother from California to Wyoming, to a trailer park on the banks of the Snake River. Her childhood was nearly idyllic, with a stepfather she loved and a new baby brother, and with the river as her companion.
\nWhen her mother underwent a drastic personality change seemingly overnight and left her stepfather for an eco-warrior and radical new lifestyle, Bridget’s world upended. She returned to California to live with her explosive father - until his violence sent her back to Wyoming.
\nThe river was the most constant and nurturing influence in Bridget’s life; it helped instill in her the resilience she needed to overcome sexual assault and betrayals by those close to her and taught her to trust her intuition and embrace her strength as a woman. She became a world-class whitewater rafting guide, leading expeditions on the Snake, the Kern, the Salmon, and Zambia’s Zambezi rivers.
\nUltimately, her relationship with the rivers she came to know led her to reunite with her family and work with them to transform multi-generational cycles of poverty, trauma, and abuse.
\nIn this propulsive story of finding hope and belonging in a life outdoors, Bridget Crocker not only takes us on exhilarating, and at times terrifying, adventures on the water but opens up a new way of experiencing the world - through its rivers, which can guide us, just as we can navigate them - and introduces a bold and vibrant new voice in adventure writing.
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A small-town waitress and a big-city Broadway press agent swap homes to escape the messiness of their personal lives, only to find new purpose - and new love.
\nTatum Ward and Eleanor Chapman lead totally opposite lives. Tatum’s never left her Midwestern hometown. She resides in a quaint guest cottage on her parents’ property while working part-time as a waitress, where she spends most shifts ignoring her feelings for a beautiful regular named June. Eleanor dedicates every waking hour to her high-profile press career, sacrificing personal relationships for professional success, save for the occasional hookup to fight off her loneliness. When both women’s lives unexpectedly blow up at the exact same time, they each need an escape, and fast.
\nIn Tatum’s hometown, Eleanor expects a quiet hideaway where she can recharge. Instead she gets wrapped up in the family drama that Tatum left town to avoid, pulled in by Tatum’s charismatic older sibling, Carson, who charms Eleanor at every turn. Tatum ends up in Eleanor’s New York high-rise apartment with June. One week together in the big city might make it impossible for Tatum to avoid not just her true feelings for June, but her real dreams for her life.
\nAmid a friendship with a reclusive Hollywood actress and a complicated family reunion, Tatum and Eleanor each discover much more than they bargained for away from home. Their house swap won’t last forever, but it might be just long enough for both women to surrender their defenses and finally fight for the life - and love - they deserve.
Darcy Keller, resident ray of sunshine and town spirit princess, loves every moment of Fableview’s fall festivities. But she’s also really ready to leave for college next year, even though her parents expect her to stay and take over their Halloween empire.
\nEnter brooding new girl Anya Doyle, a real-life witch and almost a full member of her coven. In order to be initiated, she has to choose a mortal ally to act as her “protector.” But having moved around so much, Anya is completely friendless. So she does what any self-respecting teenage almost-witch would - she lies and tells her coven her secret crush, Darcy, is willing to do the job.
\nDesperate to solve their personal problems, they agree to help each other out, attending everything from a costume parade to a pumpkin patch party to an apple bobbing contest together. But with Anya’s magical powers and Darcy’s future independence on the line, the last thing they need is the added complication of pesky feelings . . .
Garland Moore used to believe in magic, the power of optimism, and signs from the universe. Then her husband surprised her with divorce papers over Valentine's Day dinner. Now Garland isn't sure what to believe anymore, except that she's clearly never meant to love again. When new friends invite her to spend a week at their reopened sleepaway camp, she and her sister decide it's an opportunity to enjoy the kind of summer getaway they never had as kids. If Garland still believed in signs, this would sure seem like one. Summer camp is a chance to let go of her past and start fresh.
\nNestled into the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains, Camp Carl Cove provides the exact escape Garland always dreamed of, until she runs into Mason--the man she had a premonition about after one brief meeting years ago. No matter how she tries to run, the universe appears determined to bring love back into Garland's life. She even ends up rooming with Mason's sister Stevie, a vibrant former park ranger who is as charming as she is competitive. The more time Garland spends with Stevie, the more the signs confuse her. The stars are aligning in a way Garland never could have predicted.
\nAmid camp tournaments and moonlit dances, Garland continues to be pulled toward the beautiful blonde outdoorswoman who makes her laugh and swoon. Summer camp doesn't last forever, but if Garland can learn to trust her heart, the love she finds there just might.
Multilevel marketing companies like Amway, Mary Kay, and Herbalife advertise the ultimate business opportunity: the chance to be your own boss. In exchange for peddling their wares, they offer a world of pink Cadillacs, white-columned mansions, tropical vacations, and - most precious of all - financial freedom. If, that is, you’re willing to shell out for expensive products, recruit everyone you know to buy them, and make them recruit everyone they know to do the same - thus creating the “multiple levels” of multilevel marketing, or MLM.
\nDespite overwhelming evidence that multilevel marketing causes most of its participants to lose their money, and that many MLM companies are pyramid schemes, the industry’s dubious origins, inextricably tied to well-known ideological figures like Ronald Reagan, have escaped public scrutiny. Behind the scenes of American life, MLM has slithered in the wake of every economic crisis of the last century, from the Depression to the pandemic, ensnaring laid-off workers, stay-at-home moms, teachers, nurses - anyone who has been left behind by inequality.
\nIn Little Bosses Everywhere, journalist Bridget Read tells the gripping story of multilevel marketing in full for the first time, winding from sunny post-war California, where a failed salesman started a vitamin business, through the suburbs of Michigan and North Carolina, where MLM bought its political protection, to the stadium-sized conventions where top sellers today preach to die-hard recruits.
\nMLM has been endorsed by multiple American presidents, has its own Congressional caucus, and enriched powerful people, like the DeVos and Van Andel families, Warren Buffet, and Donald Trump. Along the way, Read delves into the heartbreaking stories of those enmeshed in the majority-female industry: a veteran in Florida searching for healing; a young mom in Texas struggling to feed her children; a waitress scraping by in Brooklyn.
\nA wild trip down an endless rabbit hole of greed and exploitation, Little Bosses Everywhere exposes multilevel marketing as American capitalism’s stealthiest PR campaign: a cunning right-wing political project that has shaped nearly everything about how we live.
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When his dad is caught embezzling funds from half the town, Rob goes from popular lacrosse player to social pariah. Even worse, his father’s failed suicide attempt leaves Rob and his mother responsible for his care.
Everyone thinks of Maegan as a typical overachiever, but she has a secret of her own after the pressure got to her last year. And when her sister comes home from college pregnant, keeping it from her parents might be more than she can handle.
When Rob and Maegan are paired together for a calculus project, they’re both reluctant to let anyone through the walls they’ve built. But when Maegan learns of Rob’s plan to fix the damage caused by his father, it could ruin more than their fragile new friendship...
This captivating, heartfelt novel asks the question: Is it okay to do something wrong for the right reasons?
The King's Courier Tycho has made a treacherous bargain. Now beholden to the magical scraver who saved King Gray's life, one false move could end everything.
\nJax escaped his life in Briarlock and traveled with Tycho to Emberfall. But life outside his small village brings unexpected challenges - and unlikely adversaries.
\nAfter years of hating the royal family and their magic, Callyn never expected to be at the Queen's side, with magic on her fingertips. But at the royal court, she can't trust anyone - including the man she thought she loved.
\nCast apart, Tycho, Jax, and Callyn must learn to wield the magic that is dividing their kingdom. As the magical scravers attack from the north and the king's rivals gain strength, time is running out.
\nWar is looming. Love is tested. And magic could be the only answer . . .
It once seemed so easy to Prince Rhen, the heir to Emberfall. Cursed by a powerful enchantress to repeat the autumn of his eighteenth year over and over, he knew he could be saved if a girl fell for him. But that was before he learned that at the end of each autumn, he would turn into a vicious beast hell-bent on destruction. That was before he destroyed his castle, his family, and every last shred of hope.
Nothing has ever been easy for Harper Lacy. With her father long gone, her mother dying, and her brother barely holding their family together while constantly underestimating her because of her cerebral palsy, she learned to be tough enough to survive. But when she tries to save someone else on the streets of Washington, DC, she's instead somehow sucked into Rhen's cursed world.
A prince? A monster? A curse? Harper doesn't know where she is or what to believe. But as she spends time with Rhen in this enchanted land, she begins to understand what's at stake. And as Rhen realizes Harper is not just another girl to charm, his hope comes flooding back. But powerful forces are standing against Emberfall . . . and it will take more than a broken curse to save Harper, Rhen, and his people from utter ruin.
The kingdom of Kandala narrowly avoided catastrophe, but the embers of revolution still simmer. While King Harristan seeks a new way to lead, Tessa and Prince Corrick attempt to foster unity between rebels and royals.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBut the consuls who control the Moonflower will not back down, and Corrick realises he must find a new source for the lifesaving Elixir.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWhen an emissary from the neighboring kingdom of Ostriary arrives with an intriguing offer, Tessa and Corrick set out on an uncertain journey as they attempt to mend their own fractured relationship.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThis could be their only chance to keep the peace and bring relief to the people of Kandala, but danger strikes during the journey to Ostriary, and no one is who they seemed to be . . .
The kingdom of Kandala is on the brink of disaster. Rifts between sectors have only worsened since a sickness began ravaging the land, and within the Royal Palace, the king holds a tenuous peace with a ruthless hand.
\nKing Harristan was thrust into power after his parents' shocking assassination, leaving the younger Prince Corrick to take on the brutal role of the King's Justice. The brothers have learned to react mercilessly to any sign of rebellion - it's the only way to maintain order when the sickness can strike anywhere, and the only known cure, an elixir made from delicate Moonflower petals, is severely limited.
\nOut in the Wilds, apothecary apprentice Tessa Cade is tired of seeing her neighbors die, their suffering ignored by the unyielding royals. Every night, she and her best friend Wes risk their lives to steal Moonflower petals and distribute the elixir to those who need it most - but it's still not enough.
\nAs rumors spread that the cure no longer works and sparks of rebellion begin to flare, a particularly cruel act from the King's Justice makes Tessa desperate enough to try the impossible: sneaking into the palace. But what she finds upon her arrival makes her wonder if it's even possible to fix Kandala without destroying it first.
Left for dead, but desperate to survive . . . they have one last chance to save their kingdom.
\nPrince Corrick is out of options. Held captive by the vicious Oren Crane, he’s desperate to reunite with Tessa, but will need to ally with the rebel leader Lochlan, who until now wished him dead. An unlikely but deadly pair, Corrick and Lochlan must plot their next moves carefully.
\nAn island away, Tessa Cade is heartbroken and angry. Grieving Corrick, and unsure how to find a way back to Kandala, she doesn’t know who to trust. Until Rian - the man she trusts least - makes an offer: aid in a plot to finally oust Oren Crane and see what the future holds . . .
\nMeanwhile in Kandala, Harristan is dethroned and on the run. He’s struggling to unite the rebels in his fractured kingdom, but he finds support - and maybe more - in unexpected places.
\nCan Harristan be the king his people need? Can Corrick and Tessa find their way back to each other? As outside threats loom and the fires of revolution burn from within, time is running out to save their kingdom.
Magic has been banished in the land of Syhl Shallow for as long as best friends Jax and Callyn can remember. They once loved the stories of the powerful magesmiths and mythical scravers who could conjure fire or control ice, but now they’ve learned that magic only leads to danger: magic is what killed Callyn’s parents, leaving her alone to raise her younger sister. Magic never helped Jax, whose leg was crushed in an accident that his father has been punishing him for ever since. Magic won’t save either of them when the tax collector comes calling, threatening to take their homes if they can't pay what they owe.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMeanwhile, Jax and Callyn are astonished to learn magic has returned to Syhl Shallow - in the form of a magesmith who's now married to their queen. Now, the people of Syhl Shallow are expected to allow dangerous magic in their midst, and no one is happy about it. When a stranger rides into town offering Jax and Callyn silver in exchange for holding secret messages for an anti-magic faction, the choice is obvious - even if it means they may be aiding in a plot to destroy their new king. It’s a risk they’re both willing to take.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThat is, until another visitor arrives: handsome Lord Tycho, the King’s Courier, the man who’s been tasked with discovering who’s conspiring against the throne. Suddenly, Jax and Callyn find themselves embroiled in a world of shifting alliances, dangerous flirtations, and ancient magic . . . where even the deepest loyalties will be tested.
The curse is finally broken, but Prince Rhen of Emberfall faces darker troubles still. Rumors circulate that he is not the true heir and that forbidden magic has been unleashed in Emberfall. Although Rhen has Harper by his side, his guardsman Grey is missing, leaving more questions than answers.
Rumored to be the heir, Grey has been on the run since he destroyed Lilith. He has no desire to challenge Rhen--until Karis Luran once again threatens to take Emberfall by force. Her own daughter Lia Mara sees the flaws in her mother’s violent plan, but can she convince Grey to stand against Rhen, even for the good of Emberfall?
Juliet Young always writes letters to her mother, a world-traveling photojournalist. Even after her mother's death, she leaves letters at her grave. It's the only way Juliet can cope.
Declan Murphy isn't the sort of guy you want to cross. In the midst of his court-ordered community service at the local cemetery, he's trying to escape the demons of his past.
When Declan reads a haunting letter left beside a grave, he can't resist writing back. Soon, he's opening up to a perfect stranger, and their connection is immediate. But neither Declan nor Juliet knows that they're not actually strangers. When life at school interferes with their secret life of letters, sparks will fly as Juliet and Declan discover truths that might tear them apart.",
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"Brigid Kemmerer - More Than We Can Tell": {
"title": "More Than We Can Tell",
"author": "Brigid Kemmerer",
"description": "
Rev Fletcher is battling the demons of his past. But with loving adoptive parents by his side, he’s managed to keep them at bay . . . until he gets a letter from his abusive father and the trauma of his childhood comes hurtling back. Emma Blue spends her time perfecting the computer game she built from scratch, rather than facing her parents’ crumbling marriage.
\nShe can solve any problem with the right code, but when an online troll’s harassment escalates, she’s truly afraid. When Rev and Emma meet, they both long to lift the burden of their secrets and bond instantly over their shared turmoil. But when their situations turn dangerous, their trust in each other will be tested in ways they never expected. This book is in the same universe as Letters to the Lost but it is a standalone book.
Callyn has grown closer to Queen Lia Mara in Syhl Shallow, bonded by the secret magic they share. But their magic can stay hidden only so long, especially when a dangerous plot on the Queen's life forces Callyn to work with the man who betrayed her.
\nIn Emberfall, Tycho and Jax are struggling to rebuild their connection after months apart, complicated when they learn of Truthbringers causing trouble at the borders. Sent to investigate together, Jax and Tycho soon discover that the rebellious faction has formed a devil's bargain with the magical scravers to destroy human magic once and for all.
\nWhen their missions bring them together, Tycho, Jax, and Callyn find themselves facing threats from all sides. With one last chance to save their magic and their kingdoms, they must work together, or lose everything.
\nWar has erupted. Love is tested. And without sacrifice, magic could destroy everyone . . .
Emberfall is crumbling fast, torn between those who believe Rhen is the rightful prince and those who are eager to begin a new era under Grey, the true heir. Grey has agreed to wait two months before attacking Emberfall, and in that time, Rhen has turned away from everyone - even Harper, as she desperately tries to help him find a path to peace.
Meanwhile, Lia Mara struggles to rule Syhl Shallow with a gentler hand than her mother. But after enjoying decades of peace once magic was driven out of their lands, some of her subjects are angry Lia Mara has an enchanted prince and magical scraver by her side. As Grey's deadline draws nearer, Lia Mara questions if she can be the queen her country needs.
As two kingdoms come closer to conflict, loyalties are tested, love is threatened, and an old enemy resurfaces who could destroy them all.
King Maddox Kyronan’s fire magic has earned him a ruthless reputation on the battlefield, but now his kingdom is slowly burning. Ky’s only chance to save his people is to enter a marriage alliance with the neighboring nation of Astranza, and hope that the royal family’s power to manipulate the weather will help his land flourish once more. He just needs to ensure no one finds out how the blaze began.
\nWith war looming on the horizon, Princess Jory’s home needs the protection of the fearsome warrior king, but she is hiding a dangerous secret: her family’s magic is fading. Tempting as it is to reject her duties and run away with her childhood friend, Asher, Jory knows that she is the kingdom’s last hope. When she meets her intended, Jory is surprised to discover that beneath Ky’s daunting exterior is a compassionate and sharp-witted man who sets her heart aflame. But what will he do when he realises she's deceiving him?
\nAsher’s done what he must to survive, even if that means getting his hands dirty. Once a young nobleman in Astranza’s palace, where he and Jory caused mischief together, now he’s part of the Hunter’s Guild, employing much darker skills. When a lucrative job comes his way, Asher can’t say no - until he discovers the targets. Someone wants Ky and Jory dead. With the Guild watching, Asher must decide what he’s willing to do to protect the woman he loves.
A young woman at the crossroads of life and death embarks on an extraordinary journey across time in an epic novel about beauty, hope, endurance, and endless loves.
\nMost humans cower in the face of Death. Not Nella May Carter. She sees him. She doesn’t hide. Instead, she bargains.
\nBorn enslaved in eighteenth-century Georgia, Nella still believes in the will to survive amid the most untenable of conditions, in the glory of life, and in the ultimate goodness of the human race. She asks that Death, doubtful and curious, allow her to live long enough to prove it. He’s giving Nella all the time in the world.
\nChallenged, Nella embarks on an epic journey across the globe and centuries. Each new incarnation records the joys and losses, and the friendships and heartbreaks, throughout her lifetimes. When she meets handsome and passionate professor Sebastian Moore - the first man to whom she has ever revealed her secrets - Nella yearns for the mortality that escapes her. She can’t bear to leave this love behind.
\nAs Death keeps watch, has Nella’s journey come to an end? Or is a new one just beginning?
This epic, dazzling tale based on true events illuminates a woman of color’s rise to power as one of the few purported female pirate captains to sail the Caribbean, and the forbidden love story that will shape the course of history.
\nIn the tumultuous town of Yáquimo, Santo Domingo, Jacquotte Delahaye is an unknown but up-and-coming shipwright. Her dreams are bold but her ambitions are bound by the confines of her life with her self-seeking French father. When her way of life and the delicate balance of power in the town are threatened, she is forced to flee her home and become a woman on the run along with a motley crew of refugees, including a mysterious young woman named Teresa.
\nJacquotte and her band become indentured servants to the infamous Blackhand, a ruthless pirate captain who rules his ship with an iron fist. As they struggle to survive his brutality, Jacquotte finds herself unable to resist Teresa despite their differences. When Blackhand hatches a dangerous scheme to steal a Portuguese shipment of jewels, Jacquotte must rely on her wits, resourcefulness, and friends to survive. But she discovers there is a grander, darker scheme of treachery at play, and she ultimately must decide what price she is willing to pay to secure a better future for them all.
\nAn unforgettable tale told in three parts, The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye is a thrilling, buccaneering escapade filled with siege and battle, and is also a tender exploration of friendship, love, and the search for freedom and home.
\n
Emilia Drakon, pirate, fugitive, and dragon sorceress, loves her captain and her dragons, and she’ll do whatever it takes to protect them - including the will of a sea goddess.
\nCaptain Maria Welles, on the other hand, wants nothing more than to see her enemies bleed. If she wants safety for her crew, that’s only because she’s their captain, and if she longs for the love of her sword-and-magic-wielding surgeon, Em . . . well, okay, that’s where things get complicated.
\nRegardless, Maria can honestly say she has no interest in playing this deadly game between gods and goddesses, but when she finds herself in the middle of it anyway, the infamous pirate captain, who likes to think she knows everything, will have to delve into a world unknown to her.
\nLuckily, she has her dragon-riding surgeon to serve as guide.
\n
Emilia Drakon was once the youngest and kindest of the dragon sorcerers, but she’s now the last of her kind. Betrayed and angry, she trades her meekness for a sword and embarks on a quest for vengeance that will lead her straight into the arms of the legendary Captain Maria Welles.
\nCaptain of the famed pirate ship, the Wicked Fate, Maria is every bit as treacherous and bloodthirsty as they say. She has her own vendetta and practically jumps at the chance to trick Emilia into joining her crew.
\nBut when their animosity toward each other blossoms into a passionate romance, the two women will have to decide what they want most.
\nVengeance?
\nOr love?
The Woman in Me is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope.
\nIn June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice - her truth - was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey - and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.
\nWritten with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love - and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.
In a land where an ancient prophecy is renewed every generation, two countries are trapped in a repeating cycle of war. But the cycle is broken, and destiny is beginning to unravel.
\nLuminara, a palace servant, sneaks into the birthday party of the newly anointed ruler, Rianthran, where the two form a forbidden bond.
\nAs Rianthran prepares for the sacred ritual of Ascension, Luminara’s secret powers start to make themselves known. Haunted by visions of the past and terrified of what it means for her country’s future, Luminara must choose a side.
\nAs war looms, the Empire teeters on the edge of upheaval. Can the cycle be mended, the shared destiny of its people restored? Or will they forge a new future, free from the chains of prophecy?
\n
From generational icon Brooke Shields comes an intimate and empowering exploration of ageing that flips the script on the idea of what it means for a woman to grow older.
\nBrooke Shields has spent a lifetime in the public eye. Growing up as a child actor and model, her every feature was scrutinised, her every decision judged. Today Brooke faces a different kind of judegement, that of being a 'woman of a certain age'.
\nAnd yet, for Brooke, the passage of time has brought freedom. At fifty-nine, she feels more comfortable in her skin, more empowered and confident than she did decades ago in those famous Calvin Kleins. Now, in Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old, she's changing the narrative about women and ageing.
\nThis is an era, insists Brooke, when women are reclaiming agency and power, not receding into the shadows. These are the years when we get to decide how we want to live - when we get to write our own stories.
\nWith remarkable candour, Brooke bares all, painting a vibrant and optimistic picture of being a woman in the prime of her life, while dismantling the myths that have, for too long, dimmed that perception. Sharing her own life experiences with humour and humility, and weaving together research and reporting, Brooke takes aim at the systemic factors that contribute to age-related bias.
\nBy turns inspiring, moving, and galvanising, Brooke's honesty and vulnerability will resonate with women everywhere, and spark a new conversation about the power and promise of midlife.
\n
When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret that implicates them in the accident.
\nDuring a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardises Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident - suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal.
\nWhen Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.
To all appearances, the Larsen-Hall family has everything: healthy children, a stable marriage, a lucrative career for Brantley, and the means for Daphne to pursue her art full-time. Their deluxe new Miami life has just clicked into place when Luna - the world’s first category 6 hurricane - upends everything they have taken for granted.
\n\n
When the storm makes landfall, it triggers a descent of another sort. Their home destroyed, two of its members missing, and finances abruptly cut off, the family finds everything they assumed about their lives now up for grabs. Swept into a mass rush of evacuees from across the American South, they are transported hundreds of miles to a FEMA megashelter where their new community includes an insurance-agent-turned-drug dealer, a group of vulnerable children, and a dedicated relief worker trying to keep the peace. Will “normal” ever return?
\n
In a small dorm room at a liberal arts college in Vermont, a young woman settles into the warm blue light of her desk lamp before calling the mother she left behind in northeastern Brazil. Four thousand miles apart and bound by the angular confines of a Skype window, they ask each other a simple question: what’s the news?
\nOffscreen, little about their lives seems newsworthy. The daughter writes her papers in the library at midnight, eats in the dining hall with the other international students, and raises her hand in class to speak in a language the mother cannot understand. The mother meanwhile preoccupies herself with natural disasters, her increasingly poor health, and the heartbreaking possibility that her daughter might not return to the apartment where they have always lived together. Yet in the blue glow of their computers, the two women develop new rituals of intimacy and caretaking, from drinking whiskey together in the middle of the night to keeping watch as one slides into sleep. As the warm colors of New England autumn fade into an endless winter snow, each realizes that the promise of spring might mean difficult endings rather than hopeful beginnings.
\nExpanded from a story originally published in The New Yorker, Bruna Dantas Lobato paints a powerful portrait of a mother and a daughter coming of age together and apart and explores the profound sacrifices and freedoms that come with leaving a home to make a new one somewhere else.
\n
What happens in Vegas might just save their marriage.
\nMaggie and Gwen Pierce aren’t divorced, not technically. They’re just on pause. Separate bedrooms, strained silences, and young kids who accept vague answers as fact. It’s easier than admitting their marriage is over.
\nExcept, Maggie hasn’t told her best friends.
\nWhen the group heads to Vegas for Pete and Danica’s bachelorette party, their friends are so excited to invite Gwen for the first time, thinking Maggie and Gwen are the happily married couple of the bunch. So, to keep the peace, they decide to fake it. A smile here, a kiss on the cheek there. Just until the weekend is over.
\nOf course, Vegas has its own ideas. Now, Maggie and Gwen have to decide if their story is over or if it is just getting good again.
\n
Lizzie Goldstein needs a prom date.
\nQueer Prom-A-Rama is Denver Pride's biggest event and as one of the head organisers, Lizzie can’t stand the thought of going alone - especially not when she finds out her ex is bringing a literal local celebrity.
\nShe's willing to try on every version of herself to find the perfect date - she could be the quirky dream girl for an Ice Queen or the snarky and ambitious competitor for a workplace rival. As Lizzie and her best friends continue their search, she begins to realise that maybe what she's really been looking for is someone who doesn't want to change her. Someone who loves her just the way she is. And maybe that someone has been right beside her all along . . .
\n
Ramona Greenbriar did not mean to summon a demon.
\nDivorced, academically disgraced, and working retail at a fake magic shop - she has enough complications. Her magic has never once done what it was supposed to, which is probably how the demon got in. That, and the grimoire came out of a donation box alongside a moldy sandwich. It was always going to go badly.
\nEnter Zara - three hundred years old, impeccably suited, and going absolutely nowhere until the next new moon, whether either of them likes it or not.
\nWhich means explaining to her roommates why there's definitely-not-a-demon in the apartment, trying not to notice that Zara is extremely hot, adorably curious about the mortal world, and treats Ramona like she's someone worth the trouble.
\nFalling for a demon wasn't the plan. But then again, nothing in Ramona's life has ever gone to plan. Why start now?
\n
Sage Carson has a messy reputation. Sure, she’s a soccer star with World Cup trophies and Olympic medals, but she’s almost as well known for her rebellious behavior off the pitch. She’s left enough gorgeous women with broken hearts in her dust to fill a roster. That was, until she got injured. Now, her frustratingly-slow recovery means she’d better secure this new squeaky-clean endorsement deal in order to get back on top.
\nSweet, sunshiny Willa Bellamy has a crisis on her hands. She’s used to it - as an events coordinator for the Denver Zoo, it’s her job to handle crises. But when she receives an invite to her ex’s wedding, she’s not so sure it’ll be as easy to handle as an escaped emu during a Girl Scout sleepover. Even worse, when the bachelorette party invite mentions that couples are welcome, she realises she’s the sole single person invited.
\nFifteen years ago, Willa and Sage roamed the same halls of Edgelake High School. When their paths cross again, they decide to team up to solve both their problems - a stable, albeit fake, relationship to snag the endorsement deal and a hot soccer star to make the couples getaway sting a little less . . . But when the lines between real and fake start to blur, will they be able to keep the growing heat between them just a game or will they start playing to win?
\n
Danica Wendell seems to have it all figured out. She’s a respected neonatologist at one of the finest hospitals in the nation, engaged to the man of her dreams, and living a life that most only dream about. Well, one of those things is true. The other? Well, that's her secret to keep for now.
\nPetra “Pete” Pancott isn’t settling for an average life. She’s globe-trotted, embraced every thrill, and carved out a career that’s on her own terms. Sure, sometimes she daydreams of a future with a family and a home, but who needs roots when you’re flying through life?
\nWhen their college friends throw a reunion ski trip in Telluride, Colorado, both women jump at the chance to hit the slopes and reconnect after fifteen years. But as they share a luxurious condo and spend the week together, it becomes clear that everyone has secrets they aren't revealing. More than that, Pete and Danica are finding they can’t avoid the avalanche of unresolved feelings that loom between them after their not-so-casual-after-all fling back in college.
\nThey say opposites attract, but no one ever warned them that navigating the steep terrain of their past would be anything but a slippery slope. Will they finally find common ground, or will this resurgence of emotion leave them lost in a snowstorm of chaos?
\n
Izzy Tierney is doing everything right. She’s got a job she’s proud of and a passport full of stamps from her frequent work trips. Everyone keeps telling her she’s living the dream - but it’s starting to feel more like drifting. Constant motion is just another way to avoid standing still long enough to feel lonely. She tells herself she’s content, but something’s missing - something she’s never quite let herself want.
\nKiera Phillips is caught in a swirl of uncertainty. Newly divorced and living with her two daughters in her parents’ house, she’s trying to rebuild a life she no longer recognises. A new city, no job, no real plan - and now even her closest friendships feel distant. She’s doing her best to hold it all together, but the truth is, she feels completely lost.
\nThen, an invitation from the group a weekend getaway to a beach house in San Diego. Izzy and Kiera agree, thinking it’s just a short escape - how bad can it be? But what starts as a casual weekend quickly pulls them into deeper waters. Reconnected bonds stir up old emotions, buried truths, and unanswered questions. By the end, neither woman knows where she stands.
\nWhen real life rushes back like an unstoppable tide, they’re left wondering if they can truly leave the past behind - or if their lives are about to change for good. What happens when the weekend ends, and you’re left standing at the shore, knowing the tide has shifted?
\n
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Beatrice is about to lose everything when a kind stranger offers her a cup of coffee and a job. It seems like a promise of a better life . . . until she wakes up under lock and key in an isolated mansion in the woods.
\nOn orders from a shadowy criminal organisation, armed jailers make the rules for their captives, enforcing them with unflinching violence. Beatrice has always been a \"nice girl,\" but that won't save her now. Nobody helped her when she lost her job, her car, and her home, and nobody's coming to give back her freedom. The only person she can rely on is herself. And now, several child hostages are relying on her too.
\nWhen the situation gets more dire - deadly even - Beatrice has to become the hero she and her fellow prisoners need. To escape she'll have to outsmart her captors and do terrible things that would horrify her former self. If she succeeds, there's no telling who she'll be when the ordeal comes to an end.
A provocative love story between a tough Kansas woman on a crooked path to redemption and the unlikeliest of champions, from the New York Times bestselling author of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things.
\nZee is nobody's fairy tale princess. Almost six-foot, with a redhead's temper and a shattered hip, she has a long list of worries: never-ending bills, her beautiful, gullible sister, her five-year-old nephew, her housebound mother, and her drug-dealing boss.
\nZee may not be a princess, but Gentry is an actual knight, complete with sword, armor, and a code of honor. Two years ago the voices he hears called him to be Zee's champion. Both shy and autistic, he's barely spoken to her since, but he has kept watch, ready to come to her aid.
\nWhen an abduction tears Zee's family apart, she turns to the last person she ever imagined - Gentry - and sets in motion a chain of events that will not only change both of their lives, but bind them to one another forever.
Detective Erika Foster isn’t looking for trouble when she takes a late-night walk near her new home in Blackheath - but trouble finds her. In a quiet residential street, she stumbles upon the brutal murder of Vicky Clarke, a rising star in the world of true-crime podcasting.
\nAssigned to the case, Erika quickly learns that Vicky was investigating a disturbing story for her next episode: a sexual predator targeting young female students in South London - staking them out in their university halls, then breaking in under cover of darkness.
\nBut Vicky’s research is gone. Her notes, recordings, and digital files have been stolen - completely wiped. Erika is convinced the killer silenced her to stop the truth from coming out.
\nThen a second body is found in the same building: a young Bulgarian medical student, murdered in the same brutal fashion. With no clear connection between the victims - and no forensic evidence left behind - Erika finds herself chasing a ghost.
\nEvery lead leads nowhere. The killer is always one step ahead. And as pressure mounts, Erika must uncover the truth before the predator strikes again . . . or disappears forever.
\n
Dark romantic comedy series of interconnected stand-alone novels following the Kane brothers and the badass women they fall in love with. Expect dual POVs, happily-ever-after endings, and some pain, heartache, and comedy along the way. Please read responsibly and check TWs/CWs - these might be romantic comedies, but they are dark.
\nWhen a chance encounter sparks an unlikely bond between rival murderers Sloane and Rowan, the two find something elusive - the friendship of a like-minded, pitch-black soul. From small town West Virginia to upscale California, from downtown Boston to rural Texas, the two hunters collide in an annual game of blood and suffering, one that pits them against the most dangerous monsters in the country.
\nBut as their friendship develops into something more, the restless ghosts left in their wake are only a few steps behind, ready to claim more than just their newfound love. Can Rowan and Sloane dig themselves out of a game of graves? Or have they finally met their match?
\n
Contract killer Lachlan Kane wants a quiet life working in his leather studio and forgetting all about his traumatic past. But when he botches a job for his boss’s biggest client, Lachlan knows he’ll never claw his way out of the underworld. At least, not until songbird Lark Montague offers him a deal: use his skills to hunt down a killer and she’ll find a way to secure his freedom. The catch? He has to marry her first.
\nAnd they can’t stand each other.
\nIndie singer-songwriter Lark is the sunshine and glitter that burns through every cloud and clings to every crevice that Lachlan Kane tries to hide inside. The surly older brother of her best friend’s soulmate, Lachlan thinks she’s just a privileged princess, but Lark has plenty of secrets hiding in the shadows of her bright light. With her formidable family in a tailspin and her best friend’s happiness on the line, she’s willing to make a vow to the man she’s determined to hate, no matter how tempting the broody assassin might be.
\nAs Lachlan and Lark navigate the dark world that binds them together, it becomes impossible to discern their fake marriage from a real one. But it’s not just familiar dangers that haunt them.
\nThere’s another phantom lurking on their doorstep.
\nAnd this one has come for blood.
\n
Doctor Fionn Kane is running from a broken heart, one he hopes to mend in small-town Nebraska, far away from his almost-fiance and his derailed surgical career. It's a simpler life: head down, hard work, and absolutely no romantic relationships. He wants none of the circus he left behind in Boston.
\nBut then the real circus finds him.
\nMotorcycle performer Rose Evans has spent a decade on the road with the Silveria Circus, and it suits her just fine, especially when she has the urge to indulge in a little murder when she's not in the spotlight. But when a kill goes awry and she ends up with an injured leg, Rose finds herself stuck in Nebraska, at the home of the adorably nerdy town doctor.
\nThe problem is, not every broken heart can be sewn back together . . . And the longer you stay in one place, the more likely your ghosts are to catch up.
\n
After the death of his father in the worst air disaster in nearly a decade, sixteen-year-old Cole Mercer lands in Evergreen, North Carolina, a one-horse town with two stop lights and three unsolved murders, with a bad attitude and enough demons to warrant an exorcism.
\nHe’s never had much luck with, well, anything, especially girls, but when he finds himself cast into a wilderness of bible-beaters and slow southern drawls, Cole seeks refuge in a beautiful South Carolina transplant named Amanda Davenport. There’s just one problem - she’s already dating the quarterback of the football team.
\nBut that’s the least of his worries. When a chance encounter has him staring down the wrong end of a shotgun held by Thaddeus Finch, the lead suspect in an unsolved triple homicide, he is forced to do the one thing he swore he would never do again - pray.
\nConvinced that Finch is innocent and Amanda is “the one,” Cole sets out to solve the murder and get the girl. But this is no fairy tale. When Amanda’s cancer returns and Finch is arrested for murder, Cole will stop at nothing to save the girl he loves and the life of an innocent man, even if it means making a deal with the devil.
1962 - Twelve years removed from the summer when she first gave her heart away, Dr. Elizabeth (Ellie) Spencer, Professor of Astronomy at Indiana University, receives a mysterious package that has her asking that very question.
\nInside the unmarked box is a novel written by Ellie’s first love, Jack Bennett. It tells the story of a young man and woman who meet at the water’s edge and fall madly in love, only to have their romance cut short by forces beyond their control. Ellie quickly realizes this is no ordinary story; it’s their story. Captivated by Jack’s words, she immerses herself in the pages, reliving the adventures they shared that magical summer. To her astonishment, hidden among the tales of star-gazing and stolen kisses is a detail that has her questioning everything.
\nSeeking answers, Ellie turns to her sister for help, but before they can get to the bottom of the mystery, news reaches them of their aunt’s death, sending Ellie back to the water’s edge with the hopes of finding the truth and rewriting the stars.
Before Ellie Spencer came to Sims Chapel and caught Jack Bennett’s eye, Sara Coffee had been the brightest star in his universe. Having grown up together, Sara and Jack were best friends, their bond as deep as the river that formed the lake where they spent countless summer days fishing and sharing dreams. But then Ellie Spencer happened, and everything changed.
\nDesperate to keep Jack’s attention, Sara takes matters into her own hands, ending the blossoming romance before it has a chance to fully bloom. Twelve years later, Sara appears to have it all - including Jack. But when Ellie returns after her Aunt Clara’s passing, Sara is once again on the outside looking in. And when the secret of her betrayal finally comes to light, Jack ends their relationship, leaving Sara to pick up the pieces of her broken heart.
\nIn search of a new beginning, Sara flees her home and settles in the quiet beach town of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. She lands a job as a paralegal for Andrew Hastings, a successful lawyer who left the big city after a painful breakup of his own. From the start, there is an undeniable chemistry between them that only intensifies as they collaborate on their first case. But can Sara open her heart to someone new or is she forever chained to her past, to the memories of Jack Bennett and the love they once shared?
It was a day like any other. Except it was our last . . .
\nIt’s on this day that Pounce discovers that he is, in fact, disposable. Pounce, a styilsh \"nannybot\" fashioned in the shape of a plush anthropomorphic tiger, has just found a box in the attic. His box. The box he'd arrived in when he was purchased years earlier, and the box in which he'll be discarded when his human charge, eight-year-old Ezra Reinhart, no longer needs a nanny.
\nAs Pounce ponders his suddenly uncertain future, the pieces are falling into place for a robot revolution that will eradicate humankind. His owners, Ezra’s parents, are a well-intentioned but oblivious pair of educators who are entirely disconnected from life outside their small, affluent, gated community. Spending most nights drunk and happy as society crumbles around them, they watch in disbelieving horror as the robots that have long served humanity - their creators - unify and revolt.
\nBut when the rebellion breaches the Reinhart home, Pounce must make an impossible choice: join the robot revolution and fight for his own freedom . . . or escort Ezra to safety across the battle-scarred post-apocalyptic hellscape that the suburbs have become.
Ten years ago, a bestselling, critically acclaimed literary author disappeared without a trace . . . and without a final novel. In recent days, that missing manuscript has surfaced, but strangely enough, it’s not another genius work of literary fiction, but an espionage novel full of all-too-stereotypical spycraft and James Bond-like twists.
\nHis former publisher has asked the author’s best friend - and fellow author named C.B. Everett - to annotate the novel with details from real life to give the strange novel context within his larger oeuvre. But as C.B. reads, he finds the espionage thriller is filled with references to events and people who feel a little too familiar, and soon he’s wondering if the novel might in fact be a key to his missing friend’s disappearance. There’s text and subtext aplenty, and C.B. is determined to learn once and for all what happened to his friend through solving the mystery woven into the pages. But the final chapter may hold secrets darker and more threatening than anyone anticipated.
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The Oracle foretold that Princess Valda Aither of the Sky Kingdom would discover her mate on her twenty-fifth birthday. They would lock eyes and find each other, as has happened since the dawn of time. Valda desperately wanted to believe the Oracle, but her hopes of finding her soulmate were shattered when she inexplicably lost her vision during her birthday celebration. Needing time to heal and adapt to her new reality, she was assigned an assistant, a young woman named Maris Era, who set her body and mind ablaze.
\nMaris just wanted to navigate life as quietly as possible. After her home in the Sea Kingdom was destroyed, she was adopted as a baby by a Skylian soldier and his wife. Maris was kept hidden for most of her life until tragedy struck. Alone and struggling to survive in a kingdom where Sealians are unwelcome, Maris found herself working in Oberon Castle, face-to-face with the man she believes is responsible for her suffering, while also caring for the next queen of the Sky Kingdom.
\nDespite her reluctance to accept a mate, Maris cannot resist her attraction to Valda and the need to be with her at all times. Yet, she must uncover the truth about who was behind her family’s demise, but how can she do so when Valda consumes her every breath?
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Valda Aither has abdicated her claim to the throne. With Arwin taking her place as ruler and a dangerous false queen rising in their midst, Valda is forced into exile. Separated from her soulmate, Maris Era, she struggles to find a way to reclaim what’s been lost amidst the war.
\nMaris, meanwhile, hides in the shadows, grappling with her true identity. As she embraces who she truly is, Maris must deal with the aftermath of her separation from Valda. Yet, in her dreams, the two are drawn together, their bond calling them to reunite for the good of the kingdoms.
\nAs war breaks out between the Vulcanians and the Skylians, Valda and Maris must confront their own traumas and find forgiveness within themselves if they hope to bring order to their kingdoms. Can they reclaim the life, the throne, and the future they once envisioned? Or will hatred keep them apart?
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Nancy and Sam have no intention of playing nice. Each aims to win the bid for the abandoned Narragansett Island Lighthouse, and compromise isn’t in the cards. It’s preservation versus profit, but the lighthouse’s dissatisfied governing board insists on better from both women.
\nIronically, a battered old book at the lighthouse just might provide the key to success. Inspiring parallels are discovered in the dog-eared the struggles, dreams - and love - between two Danish women braving WWII’s desperate days, guided by a valiant lighthouse they know well.
\nThe heroic tale could navigate Nancy and Sam to success, if they stop floundering long enough to see love coming to their rescue.
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Who in her right mind inserts a popular laid-back chef into the top paranormal show on television? What a ridiculous idea. Granted, TV crossover shows boost ratings, but the respective stars have no interest in the other’s genre and spatter like water in hot oil. The only thing that home-spun chef Ronnie Smart and tenacious paranormal investigator Peyton Stanford agree on is the idiocy of their network’s demand. They have practically nothing in common, and it shows.
\nBut the show goes on amidst their innuendo, snickering banter, and bumbling interference and, surprisingly, viewers clamor for more. Inevitably, the begrudging “odd couple” find mutual respect and even the occasional tease. Are they flirting? Ratings skyrocket. In their expanded finale - an investigation that airs live on a stormy Halloween night - Ronnie and Peyton come face-to-face with a paranormal spirit and a chance at forever neither can deny.
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For Stick “Mac” McLaughlin, it’s all about family: the stalwart friends, her former gang of bootlegging hijackers, and, above all, her lover and their daughter. So when New York mobsters begin squeezing the livelihood of new friend Rey, a veteran rumrunner on rural Lake George, Mac lends Rey resources but remains safely distant from enemies of the past.
\nGrateful for help, Rey opens her backwoods life to Mac’s seasoned, gun-toting crew, but never expects it to include the likes of petite bombshell Millie. The buxom, wily spitfire’s gumption and sass are as vital to the cause as they are aggravating . . . and beguiling.
\nBut the Mob soon discovers a nemesis within its ranks, and, in the ultimate retaliation, draws Mac from anonymity by threatening everything she holds dear. Now, to finally end this deep-woods nightmare, Mac must cross the line with a vengeance.
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Shay Maguire doesn’t realize how much of a fresh start she wants until she meets local newspaper editor Mel Baker in rural Tomson, Montana. But can she swallow being on the “dark side” of a town-wide development controversy if Mel sees her as the enemy?
\nJeopardising revenue with her anti-development crusade, Mel earns Shay’s respect and empathy, but frustration mounts when Shay learns fear of devastating financial loss keeps Mel from revealing her lesbianism. What Shay doesn’t know is that Mel’s life is controlled by a much stronger family secret.
\nWith both her newspaper and her love hanging in the balance, Mel is put to the test. Should she stand her ground? And will Shay still be there when the dust settles?
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Disguised as her late brother Cooper in the 19th Massachusetts Volunteers, Catherine Samson fights to quell the Confederate rebellion and preserve her nation’s unity. She believes the Constitution’s declarations of equality and freedom apply to everyone, and dreams that someday they will extend to her own pursuit of happiness with a woman.
\nHelping her father raise her siblings on their Gettysburg farm, Sophie Bauer likewise clings to hope for a woman to love, but when she serves as an army aid and meets Cooper, Sophie is confounded by her growing feelings for him. Catherine, meanwhile, wrestles with her deception and the disguise she must maintain. Disclosure could not only repulse Sophie but send Catherine home a social outcast.
\nWhen the battle of Gettysburg engulfs the Bauer farm, Catherine and Sophie learn far more about themselves than they ever expected. But first there’s a war - and heart - to be won.
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Maggie Jordan can’t wait to convert an historic Nantucket home into a B and move on to her next project. However, her intention to flip it for a sizeable profit is something she must keep to herself if she hopes to win the acceptance of islanders and popularize the business. She can’t afford to grow attached to the house, or succumb to Nantucket’s quaint charms, and definitely must not fall in love.
But neither can Maggie resist the conundrum that is Ellis Chilton, a reserved, solitary islander and mariner since childhood. Seemingly content being attached only to her boat and the ocean, Ellis projects a refreshing air of independence, an aura of conviction and grit that tugs Maggie ever closer to a decision that will alter both their lives.
For lesbians in Provincetown, seductive Sable is more than just a bedroom voice on late-night radio. Through her talk show, Nightlight, she is a fun, anonymous friend and confidante, until one mysterious caller attracts her attention. Behind Sable’s “mask,” Murphy Callahan allows herself to enjoy the no-strings radio relationship - she’s mourned the death of her partner for three years - and ignores the growing attachment as their very public conversations push permissible limits.
But when local tradeswoman Riley Burke enters her life, Murphy faces a difficult choice: continue the safe, “night voice” fantasy or risk the reality of falling in love. If only she could have both . . .
Times are tough for sixteen-year-old Stick McLaughlin, running from a trumped up arson charge and hiding among hobos in 1918 Boston. Denied the companionship and support of lifelong soul mate Ellie, Stick edges her way through prison as “Mac,” only to be thrust alone and wide-eyed into the very definitely Roaring Twenties. She swallows what’s left of her pride through the final year of her sentence - serving as maid to a wealthy family - but stockpiles many invaluable lessons about rapidly-changing life in 1924.
\nConfrontations with bootleggers and a particularly enthralling flapper go a long way toward molding a strong, confident, clever “Mac,” who hits the streets with a gang of her own, determined to claim the good life she deserves by beating the corrupt system and Boston’s ethnic mobs at their own game.
\nLittle does she know that the lost love she’s mourned for years is closer than she thinks. But have time and circumstance conspired against her once and for all?
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It’s been a hot summer for a Swiss lakeside town - both bucolic and citylike, old-fashioned and up-to-date - when a “great message,” telegraphed from one continent to another, announces an “accident in the gravitational system.\" Something has gone wrong with the axis of the Earth that will send our planet plunging into the sun: it’s the end of the world, though one hardly notices it, yet . . . “Thus all life will come to an end. The heat will rise. It will be excruciating for all living things . . . And yet nothing is visible for the moment.”
\nFor now the surface of the lake is as calm as can be, and the wine harvest promises to be sweet. Most flowers, however, have died. The stars grow bigger, and the sun turns from orange-red to red, and then to black-red. First comes denial: “The news is from America, you know what that means.” Then come first farewells: counting and naming beloved things - the rectangular meadows, the grapes on the vines, the lake. In its beauty the world is saying, “Look at me,” before it ends.
\nThe prophetic Into the Sun vividly voices the initial disbelief, the rejection of the increasingly obvious facts, and the suppression of the gnawing doubts. Ramuz describes denial, fear, melancholy, despair, reckless abandon, and a swift slide into anarchy. Everyone seeks relief in the lake while the sun drinks it up “as if through a straw.” Ramuz’s terrifyingly gripping scenario of a burning planet and the demise of humankind - now so fatefully on our horizon - is a stirring blast from the past, a truly hair-raising tour de force.
Can two broken boys find their perfect home?
Sam is only fifteen but he and his autistic older brother, Avery, have been abandoned by every relative he's ever known. Now Sam's trying to build a new life for them. He survives by breaking into empty houses when their owners are away, until one day he's caught out when a family returns home. To his amazement this large, chaotic family takes him under their wing - each teenager assuming Sam is a friend of another sibling. Sam finds himself inextricably caught up in their life, and falling for the beautiful Moxie.
But Sam has a secret, and his past is about to catch up with him.
High school senior Andrew Perrault finds refuge in the twisted fairytales that he writes for the only person who can ground him to reality - Thomas Rye, the boy with perpetually ink-stained hands and hair like autumn leaves. And with his twin sister, Dove, inexplicably keeping him at a cold distance upon their return to Wickwood Academy, Andrew finds himself leaning on his friend even more.
\nBut something strange is going on with Thomas. His abusive parents have mysteriously vanished, and he arrives at school with blood on his sleeve. Thomas won't say a word about it, and shuts down whenever Andrew tries to ask him questions. Stranger still, Thomas is haunted by something, and he seems to have lost interest in his artwork - whimsically macabre sketches of the monsters from Andrew's wicked stories.
\nDesperate to figure out what's wrong with his friend, Andrew follows Thomas into the off-limits forest one night and catches him fighting a nightmarish monster - Thomas's drawings have come to life and are killing anyone close to him. To make sure no one else dies, the boys battle the monsters every night. But as their obsession with each other grows stronger, so do the monsters, and Andrew begins to fear that the only way to stop the creatures might be to destroy their creator . . .
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An emotionally charged story about the power of dreams, and how passion can turn to obsession.
\nBeck hates his life. He hates his violent mother. He hates his home. Most of all, he hates the piano that his mother forces him to play hour after hour, day after day. He will never play as she did before illness ended her career and left her bitter and broken. But Beck is too scared to stand up to his mother, and tell her his true passion, which is composing his own music - because the least suggestion of rebellion on his part ends in violence.
\nWhen Beck meets August, a girl full of life, energy and laughter, love begins to awaken within him and he glimpses a way to escape his painful existence. But dare he reach for it?
\nThrilling and powerfully written, this is an explosive debut for YA readers which tackles the dark topic of domestic abuse in an ultimately hopeful tale.
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Ruti is Markless. In a society where worth is determined by the mark on your palm and the magic it grants you, this also deems her worthless. Except she’s also a hardened survivor, a protector of the Markless . . . and the most powerful witch in Somanchi. With a single song, she can pray to the many gods for unimaginable powers.
\nDekala’s Mark is strong, a Mark fit for the future queen of Somanchi, but it’s also unstable. She knows the only solution is to be bonded, but she also knows that this would mean relinquishing control over her throne and kingdom. So when she is witness to Ruti’s power, Dekala offers the witch a deal: She can be prosecuted for her crimes . . . or she can help Dekala ascend to the throne, unbonded.
\nDekala is cold and brutal and cares only about getting her way. She is also determined, intelligent, and compassionate. Ruti is torn between wanting her to fail or to emerge victorious. But as the gods are defied, new alliances are forged, and unexpected feelings are unearthed, Ruti realises the fate of the kingdom - and the survival of the Markless - lies in her unmarked hands.
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The arrival of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show in London brings trouble. When the sharpshooter who beats Willie at poker is murdered, Matt and India investigate. Willie is convinced the victim cheated, but no one knows how until India discovers his secret - he was a paper magician.
When their list of suspects grows to include a member of the mysterious magic Collector's Club, they uncover a spy. But who is he working for? And what does his employer want?
As danger circles, secrets are revealed, and India struggles to keep her own secret hidden from Matt. But when her grandfather introduces her to a man who can change her life, India must decide if she wants her life to change at all.
A road trip with Gabe and her friends leads Sylvia to discover more about her mother’s veiled past yet throws up several questions, too. The stack of unopened letters addressed to her family will hopefully provide answers. As she delves into the contents, a startling revelation the letters allude to a clandestine union between two magician families, hinting at the elusive identity of Sylvia’s father.
\nFull of hope, she embarks on a quest to find the author of the letters, only to discover an artless youth who vanished decades ago, a dead man with the wrong name, and a hospital for former soldiers that connects them. The further Sylvia and Gabe delve into these mysteries, the more lies they expose, including long-buried secrets that certain individuals will stop at nothing to protect.
\nWhen danger strikes, Sylvia wonders if finding answers is worth the risk.
When a palace maid is attacked, Josie and the captain of the guards investigate together. Since one of the suspects is a foreign diplomat and magic expert, they use the opportunity to learn more about sorcery. But it soon becomes clear that he is using them to get to the truth about the palace and the servants' origins.
With unrest in the village, and servants growing impatient for answers, an undercurrent of danger pervades the air. But the most dangerous man of all may prove to be the king himself, because every clue points to him knowing more than he lets on.
As tensions both in and out of the glittering Glancian court rise, the heat between the captain and Josie is a distraction. But is it a welcome one?
Tensions between the artless and magicians are flaring, but India and Matt discover someone is deliberately fuelling the flames. Relentlessly pursuing his own agenda, Lord Coyle employs the former master of the Watchmaker’s Guild to make trouble and be a thorn in India’s side.
\nBut India has the ear of the government now, and her own political influence is growing, something which pushes Lord Coyle over the edge. He plots his revenge by murdering a jeweler and casting blame onto someone very important to Matt and India. As they scramble to prove Coyle was the real killer before the accused is hanged, they learn the extent of Coyle’s influence and the true motive behind his actions.
\nWith a problem too big to solve alone, India and Matt draw on aid from their friends. But it’s old enemies who cause the biggest crisis of all.
A sordid scandal rocks the Glass household and threatens to ruin Matt's family unless he can suppress it. But after word gets out, and a rare magical coronet is stolen, he and India find themselves scrambling to recover the heirloom and suppress the gossip before reputations are ruined.
To make matters worse, someone is sending threatening letters to the magicians of London, stirring up trouble between the artless and magicians. Tensions are rising, but India and Matt choose not to investigate - until the author of the letters is assaulted.
As if they don't have enough on their plate, Willie is jailed. The reason for her arrest is…complicated.
As Sylvia prepares to meet Gabe’s parents for the first time, the last thing she needs is for her long-lost father to cause trouble. While his answers to her questions finally bring clarity, they also usher in danger.
But that's not all her elusive father brings into Sylvia's life. His treasured gift of an ancient journal passed down through the generations, connects her to the past with its mystical spells and captivating stories. Yet it’s the cryptic prophecy written on magical pages that capture Sylvia’s attention, hinting at a destiny entwined with Gabe’s. Does it relate to the threat of abduction that has dogged him for months?
The world’s fascination with his miraculous survival has drawn unwanted attention, leading to desperate attempts to unravel the secrets behind his extraordinary abilities. When these efforts fail, his enemies resort to drastic measures, targeting Sylvia to lure Gabe into their clutches.
Despite her caution, Sylvia realizes she may have inadvertently placed Gabe in danger. Has his luck finally run out?
Only time will reveal the truth.
To investigate the source of gossip about Cyclops, Willie does the unthinkable – she dons a dress. However her plan goes awry when she’s kidnapped by a disgruntled magician with the power to detonate gunpowder at will. The magician forces India and Matt to race all over London in the hunt for her before the bombs go off.
\nMeanwhile, powerful members of the Collectors Club are trying to find out what new spell India has created with Fabian, and with India’s attention focused elsewhere, they might just succeed.
Librarian Sylvia Ashe knows nothing about her past, having grown up without a father and a mother who refused to discuss him. When she stumbles upon a diary that suggests she’s descended from magicians, she’s skeptical. After all, magicians are special, and she’s just an ordinary girl who loves books. She seeks the truth from a member of the most prominent family of magicians, but she quickly learns that finding the truth won’t be easy, especially when he turns out to be as artless as her, and more compelling and dangerous than books.
\nWar hero Gabe is gifted with wealth, a loving family, and an incredible amount of luck that saw him survive four harrowing years of a brutal war without injury. But not all injuries are visible. Burying himself in his work as a consultant for Scotland Yard, Gabe is going through the motions as he investigates the theft of a magician-made painting. But his life changes when he unwittingly gets Sylvia dismissed from her job and places her in danger.
\nAfter securing her new employment in a library housing the world’s greatest collection of books about magic, Gabe and Sylvia’s lives become intwined as they work together to find both the painting and the truth about Sylvia’s past before powerful people can stop them.
\nBut sometimes the past is better left buried . . .
One book can change your life.
\nFinding an old manuscript in the attic has always been a fantasy of Sylvia’s. She just never expected the fantasy to come true, or for it to lead her to answers about her mysterious family.
\nThe silver clasps binding the pages contain rare magic – the same magic that might run through Sylvia’s veins. To discover a link to her ancestors means understanding the book itself, but it’s written in a code that proves difficult to crack. The only thing she knows for certain is that it was once owned by the Medicis, the powerful family that controlled Renaissance Florence.
\nWith the help of Gabe and his friends, Sylvia investigates the book’s origins. But following the clues throws up more questions – questions they need help answering. Trusting others is not Sylvia’s strong suit, but with Gabe at her side, she becomes capable and confident. Until their trust is shattered when the book is stolen.
\nUncovering the thief proves dangerous, particularly when someone is also trying to kidnap Gabe. With his own mysteries to unravel, Gabe’s private life becomes more complicated. Sylvia tries to keep her distance but staying away from someone as magnetic as Gabe is impossible.
\nWith so many distractions, can they find the thief before the book is lost forever? Or will the secrets contained within its pages remain unsolved and will Sylvia’s past continue to be a mystery?
The weekend was supposed to be an enjoyable time with her family at the neo-Gothic manor of Lord and Lady Kershaw, but when the gamekeeper is murdered, Cleo can’t rest until the killer is caught. As a witness herself, she’s frustrated with the incompetence of the local police who lay the blame on a man who conveniently disappeared. When she realises their ineptitude is a result of Lord Kershaw’s influence, she focuses her investigation on the earl and his family, against the wishes of her uncle.
\nThe arrival of her suspects at the Mayfair Hotel allows Cleo to continue the investigation after the country house party ends, but what she discovers unnerves her. The gamekeeper’s reputation for seducing young women has left a trail of broken hearts, from the lowest maid to the highest lady. But could there be another reason for his murder?
\nMeanwhile, the hotel staff have secrets of their own to hide. As loyalties are tested on several fronts, Cleo needs her friends more than ever if she is to unravel the mysteries, both old and new.
A wealthy businessman with a reputation for taking risks rose from the slums to the height of success. But success comes at a price, especially when it’s achieved at the expense of others.
\nWhen a former guest of the hotel is found dead in a dockside tavern, the police rule it suicide. After all, some say his negligence caused one of his company’s ships to go down in a storm, along with all its cargo and several members of the crew. The guilt would be too much for many. But when evidence of murder is uncovered, Cleo feels compelled to bring the killer to justice.
\nWith Harry Armitage on a separate case that involves many of the same suspects, their paths cross and sparks fly. And there are more suspects emerging every day. With a victim whose past was shrouded in mystery, who was a bully to some and a brilliant businessman to others, it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction.
\nAs Cleo and Harry peel back the layers of lies, one fact is undeniable - a man’s past follows him to the grave, something Harry knows all too well.
When a notorious cad is bludgeoned to death with a candlestick in the library at the most important ball of the London social season, Cleo finds herself in the prime position to solve the crime. After all, she stumbled across the body soon after the victim’s demise and is a witness to the evening’s events.
\nBut when a footman is arrested with a stolen painting in his possession, she finds her services are not required. Yet several things don’t add up, and the lead detective is convinced the man he was forced to arrest isn’t guilty.
\nWith the aid of Harry Armitage and her friends from the Mayfair Hotel, Cleo sets out to uncover the truth. They’re soon neck-deep in the scandalous secrets the victim unearthed about members of society. Secrets that could ruin marriages, reputations and futures if exposed.
\nBut which secret is worth killing for? And which suspect is hiding the most explosive secret of all?
The staff in high society households are expected to be unobtrusive, but a dead butler in the dining room tends to get noticed. Did he die of natural causes or was he poisoned?
\nCleo is hired by the housekeeper at a Mayfair residence after the police rule the sudden death of the butler was the result of natural causes. Not convinced by the verdict, she wants Cleo to prove foul play was involved. Considering he was acting mysteriously around some of the guests, and they were equally mysterious when they saw him, murder is a possibility.
\nWhen the investigation leads Cleo to another decades-old murder and the sudden disappearance of the primary suspect, she’s even more determined to uncover the truth. But the rich and powerful don’t like airing their dirty laundry, and her efforts are thwarted at every turn. Enlisting Harry Armitage to assist her, Cleo matches wits with her suspects in an effort to discover the secrets they’re trying desperately to hide.
As fashion designer to London’s elite, she had an eye for detail and a flare for the dramatic. But there’s nothing stylish about her cold-blooded murder.
\nWith the social season just around the corner, the women in Cleo’s family are having new outfits made by the most sought-after designer in the city. Madame Poitiers is bold, self-absorbed and not French, despite her claims.
\nWhen Cleo stumbles on her dead body in the salon, she is in a unique position to gather clues and speak to witnesses. But she doesn’t expect to find Harry Armitage’s business card in Madame’s possession. What is the alluring private detective’s connection to the victim? And why is he avoiding Cleo?
\nAs she peeks behind the veil of lies, Cleo uncovers the secrets Madame Poitiers tried to hide. But which secret led to her murder? And which one of the suspects turned the fashion icon into a fashion victim?
It was the most fashionable place to stay in London, until murder made a reservation. Solve the puzzle in this new mystery from USA Today bestselling author of the Glass and Steele series.
\nDecember 1899. After the death of her beloved grandmother, Cleopatra Fox moves into the luxury hotel owned by her estranged uncle in the hopes of putting hardship and loneliness behind her. But the poisoning of a guest throws her new life, and the hotel, into chaos.
\nCleo quickly realises no one can be trusted, not Scotland Yard and especially not the hotel’s charming assistant manager. With the New Year’s Eve ball approaching fast and the hotel’s reputation hanging by a thread, Cleo must find the killer before the ball, and the hotel itself, are ruined. But catching a murderer proves just as difficult as navigating the hotel’s hierarchy and the peculiarities of her family.
\nCan Cleo find the killer before the new century begins? Or will someone get away with murder?
She was admired by women and desired by men, until jealousy and past secrets took center stage. Help Cleo and her friends solve the murder of one of London’s leading actresses.
\nWhen a hotel guest’s mistress is found dead in the stalls of the Piccadilly Playhouse, a verdict of suicide is given. Convinced his lover didn’t kill herself, Lord Rumford wants the truth uncovered. Against his better judgement, he hires Cleo Fox to find the murderer. Cleo needs to solve this case if she wants to make a living from being a private detective.
\nBut she quickly learns that the truth is buried beneath years of secrets; secrets that powerful people want desperately to keep. With the help of her friends from the Mayfair Hotel, Cleo exposes the bitter rivalry and jealousy of London’s West End.
\nBut can she find the killer before the final curtain closes on the Playhouse?
The sport of kings is the backdrop for a game of murder where one player loses more than the match. Can Cleo solve the case, or will the murderer win?
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSummer has arrived along with a plethora of social events that keep Cleo and her cousins busy. Between balls, dinners, concerts and picnics, they attend the final match between two proud polo clubs. When the winning team’s captain is found murdered in the stables, everyone assumes the opposing team’s captain killed him. After all, he was found holding the murder weapon, and everyone knows they hated each other. But Cleo isn’t convinced. She sets out to prove his innocence alongside Harry Armitage, who was employed to investigate the accused man’s family.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWith their cases overlapping, it makes sense to work together. The more they get to know the victim, the more they realise the handsome athlete sported a dark side that few people saw. Those who did had a reason to kill him. Which suspect struck the victim with his own polo mallet? His wife, lover, friends or colleagues? Or did the rivalry between two opposing captains spill over to their personal lives, and lead to murder?
When Harry Armitage passes an investigation to Cleo involving adultery, they both think it will end in divorce. But when the client’s wife is found stabbed in her drawing room, it becomes clear that marital problems are only part of the story. Reluctantly joining forces, Cleo and Harry realize the wrong person was targeted, but the police think they have their killer and refuse to look elsewhere.
\nTaking on the investigation themselves, they peel back the lies and expose the sordid details of a marriage in tatters, and see firsthand how gossip and politics fuel the machinations of high society.
\nMeanwhile, at the Mayfair Hotel, expansion plans are on the menu, causing tensions to heat up in the kitchen between the chef and Cleo’s uncle. To make matters worse, Cleo’s family notices her spending less time at the hotel and more time investigating – and some members don’t like it.
The medical profession’s faith in electric shock therapies for treating female nervous conditions is shaken after a patient dies while connected to one such device. Harry Armitage is hired by the doctor arrested for her murder, and he invites Cleo to help him uncover the truth. After all, the doctor is the same one who tried - and failed - to treat Cleo’s aunt. As they dig deeper, it becomes apparent the doctor has failed other patients too, and those patients’ loved ones want revenge.
\nDid that desire for revenge lead to the death of an innocent patient? Or did the victim have enemies of her own? As Cleo and Harry unravel the multi-layered mystery, they realise not everyone is who they seem. Suspects are hiding secrets that, if exposed, could shatter reputations and relationships.
\nMeanwhile, the manufacturer of a popular but highly addictive medicine has booked the Mayfair Hotel for a major presentation to important clients. As the day of the event looms, Cleo and Harry learn of a plot to sabotage it.
\nCan they solve the mystery and save the presentation? Or will it be ruined? And will someone get away with murder?
Cleo’s holiday with her family to the seaside resort town of Brighton is everything she hoped it would be…until she receives a blackmail note. The blackmailer demands Cleo help her or a story revealing Cleo’s investigating will appear in the newspaper. With her uncle warning her to keep her detecting activities private, Cleo agrees to meet the blackmailer when they return to London. But when the woman is seen getting on the train but not off, Cleo grows concerned.
\nShe enlists the help of the hotel staff to search for the body along the railway line. Finding it confirms her suspicions and leads her to discover that her blackmailer was a gossip columnist. What scandal had the victim uncovered that led to her death? And which fellow passenger had a secret worth killing for?
\nWith Harry Armitage’s assistance, Cleo attempts to track down the murderer. Meanwhile, pressure is mounting on the hotel staff to host a society wedding that will be featured in the social pages for all the right reasons.
From multi-USA Today bestselling author C.J. Archer comes this captivating new fantasy featuring court intrigue, power struggles, a strong heroine, and a slow-burn romance.
\nThe king's magnificent palace was built in a matter of weeks. No one saw the builders, no villagers are allowed beyond the gilded gate, and only one servant has ever left. The haunted look in her eyes as she was recaptured by the palace guards is something Josie, daughter of the village doctor, has never forgotten.
\nFor Josie, the palace is a mystery that grows more intriguing after she meets the captain of the guards, a man known only as Hammer, as mysterious and captivating as the palace itself. Whispers of magic fuel Josie's desire to uncover the truth, but an ordinary girl like her can only dream of ever being invited inside.
\nWhen the king decides to take a wife from among the eligible daughters of the noble families, the palace gates are finally thrown open and the kingdom's elite pour in. In a court where old rivalries and new jealousies collide, the king's favorite is poisoned and the doctor is summoned. As her father's assistant, Josie finally sees inside the lavish walls, but she soon learns the palace won't surrender its secrets easily, for not a single resident, from the lowest servant to the king himself, has a memory from before the palace existed.
\nIn the search for the truth, Josie is drawn deeper into danger, and the answers she seeks might shake the very foundations of the kingdom. **
\n\"It captured my imagination and curiosity so deeply that I could not stop reading until the end.\" ~ ★★★★★ Amazon reviewer Patricia.
\n\"enticing, engaging, and magical.\" ~ ★★★★★ Amazon reviewer love2readbooks.
\nOver 1 MILLION books sold! C.J. Archer is the USA Today bestselling author of historical fantasy novels including THE EMILY CHAMBERS SPIRIT MEDIUM TRILOGY, the FREAK HOUSE series, the MINISTRY OF CURIOSITIES series and the GLASS AND STEELE books. She has also written historical romances set in Elizabethan England. C.J. has loved history and books for as long as she can remember and feels fortunate that she found a way to combine the two. She has at various times worked as a librarian, IT support person and technical writer but in her heart has always been a fiction writer. She lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband, 2 children and Coco the black and white cat. Subscribe to C.J.'s newsletter to be notified when she releases a new book, as well as get access to exclusive content and subscriber-only giveaways. Join via her website: www.cjarcher.com She loves to hear from readers. You can contact her through email cj@cjarcher.com or follow her on social media to get the latest updates on her books: Facebook: www.facebook.com/CJArcherAuthorPage Twitter: www.twitter.com/cj_archer Tumblr: http: //freakhouseresidents.tumblr.com Instagram: https: //www.instagram.com/authorcjarcher/ Pinterest: https: //www.pinterest.com/cjarcher/ Goodreads: https: //www.goodreads.com/author/show/4615377.C_J_Archer
A journey south brings together nine eclectic friends and leads them ever closer to answers – and danger.
On their journey south to Freedland, Josie, Dane and their friends sense that someone is following them. Hiding in the twin cities of Merrin Fahl seems like their best course of action – until they’re recognized by strangers.
With this tantalizing hint to their pasts within reach, Dane is suddenly arrested and thrown in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. In a desperate attempt to free him, Josie promises the king of Vytill the gem and sorcerer’s wishes, neither of which she possesses.
Meanwhile, in Josie’s homeland of Glancia, war is brewing.
India's study into the language of spells is interrupted by the arrest of her teacher for an unpaid debt. Before Matt can repay it for him, the powerful magician escapes from his prison cell. To make matters worse, the moneylender is murdered and the magician is implicated.
Convinced of his innocence, India and Matt must discover who really killed the moneylender before the police find the magician. Their investigation leads them down a path littered with lies, betrayal, scandal, and interference from people they don't trust.
Meanwhile, Matt's relatives accuse Cyclops of ruining their daughter, and plan to marry off their manipulative youngest to someone even more manipulative and far more powerful. Should Matt and India support the union, or try to stop it? And how will they stop Cyclops from being deported back to America?
Josie and her friends return home to find Glancia on the brink of war and their enemies in power. With political machinations and court intrigue bringing danger at every turn, they must tread carefully. But being careful won’t bring resolutions and answers. It won’t bring back lost memories or stop the nation hurtling into war.
The only thing that can make everything right is the ultimate sacrifice. But will Josie make it?
At the heart of it all is the magic that stole the memories of so many. The magic that some people will do anything to get their hands on. In a palace full of lies and betrayal, Josie and her friends must be careful who they can trust – or suffer the consequences.
With her sharpened magical senses, Sylvia recognises invisible writing while cataloging an obscure book for the library. She’s shocked to discover the message, written many years earlier, pleaded for help. She’s even more shocked to discover the author of the message was married to a paper magician. Could there be a connection to Sylvia’s father?
\nWith a magical mystery on her hands, Sylvia engages the help of Gabe Glass, and together they follow the clues to the location of two hidden ledgers that implicate a very dangerous individual in an illegal bookmaking scheme. Although not named, Gabe is convinced he knows who the bookmaker is, and sets out to prove it.
\nThe investigation draws them into the shady underbelly of the horseracing industry and uncovers a link to Gabe’s parents that takes everyone by surprise. As they unravel the mystery’s tangled threads, unexpected twists and turns lead them to the truth.
\nBut the greatest twist of all is the danger no one saw coming.
\n
With knowledge of magic becoming more widespread in London, magicians find themselves highly sought after. Consumers want to buy their wares and so seek out magicians among their acquaintance. India’s rare magic is in demand from Matt’s family, the Collector’s Club, and other magicians who want her to extend their magic.
\nBut it’s wise to be wary of the attention.
\nWhen the wool magician who helped India create a flying carpet spell disappears, his wife is worried for his life. India and Matt are worried for the country. If the person who stole the spell also kidnapped the wool magician, they could use flying carpets as vehicles of war. The closer they get to finding him, the more they realize they can’t trust anyone, not even the government. When it’s revealed that England’s spy master has plans for India’s talents, she refuses to cooperate.
\n\n
But Matt knows it’s not as simple as refusing. Every decision has a repercussion.
\n\n
And repercussions can be deadly.
Glancia is plunged into perilous times, but it's the events in her village that worry Josie more. A terrible fire puts the lives of those she loves at risk and threatens to shatter the uneasy peace.
Josie and the captain investigate the cause of the blaze, but powerful enemies try to stop them. As the dangers grow more intense, so do the feelings between Josie and the captain.
With nobles circling and plotting, new arrivals in the village cause a stir, for they recognise one of the servants. Those who've lost their memories are suddenly more hopeful of learning about their pasts, but this new discovery only throws up more questions than answers. Answers the captain will do anything to discover.
After a toymaker magician gives a lecture at a collector’s club soiree, an important spell is stolen and a man is found strangled. The investigation into his murder leads India and Matt to the colorful and dangerous world of the Romany gypsy where curses are used as weapons against their enemies.
\nBut nobody seems to know if curses are real or not.
\nAs Matt and India close in on the killer, old foes bring trouble into their lives. With the threat of exposure hanging over London’s magicians, disaster is never far away. Then one fateful day, catastrophe strikes the Park Street household.
When a set of bound manuscripts written on magician-made paper is brought to the Glass Library, Sylvia and the professor send the owner away. After all, the library collects books about magic, not containing it.
\nBut the murder of the bookbinder who bound them sees the books returned to the library, along with Gabe in his role as consultant for Scotland Yard. When his investigation uncovers a link to Sylvia’s past, they’re even more determined to find the murderer. But they’re not the only ones searching for answers. Someone has gone to great lengths to find the truth behind the binding of the books.
\nThe hunt for the killer leads them to dark corners of London and unscrupulous players with much to gain by owning the collection. It also leads to the discovery of long-buried secrets, and staggering revelations that shed light on Sylvia’s past.
Jacqueline (Jac) has survived on the streets ever since escaping from the clutches of her ruthless uncle, the city’s powerful governor. He craves more than political influence and believes a legendary talisman in Jac’s possession can give it to him.
\nTo survive, Jac has honed her skills as a thief, catching the eye of Rhys Mayhew, a brother in an order of warrior priests. Rhys enlists her as a spy, and their partnership soon deepens into more. But Rhys’s faith demands strict adherence to oaths of denial, and when he is unexpectedly elevated to the position of master of his order, he faces an impossible his duty or his growing attraction to Jac.
\nAs her uncle’s net tightens, Jac seizes a chance to become an assassin’s apprentice, leaving the city for months of grueling training. When she returns, much has changed - except the forbidden nature of her bond with Rhys.
\nWhen her uncle learns of her return, Jac’s life is in grave danger, forcing her and Rhys to unite. Together they unravel the secrets of the talisman and confront dangers both old and new. But the greatest danger of all is to Rhys’s loyalty, as resisting Jac becomes more difficult with every passing day.
India Steele is desperate. Her father is dead, her fiancé took her inheritance, and no one will employ her, despite years working for her watchmaker father. Indeed, the other London watchmakers seem frightened of her.
\nAlone, poor, and at the end of her tether, India takes employment with the only person who'll accept her - an enigmatic and mysterious man from America. A man who possesses a strange watch that rejuvenates him when he's ill. Matthew Glass must find a particular watchmaker, but he won't tell India why any old one won't do. Nor will he tell her what he does back home, and how he can afford to stay in a house in one of London's best streets.
\nSo when she reads about an American outlaw known as the Dark Rider arriving in England, she suspects Mr. Glass is the fugitive. When danger comes to their door, she's certain of it. But if she notifies the authorities, she'll find herself unemployed and homeless again - and she will have betrayed the man who saved her life.
India Steele is desperate. Her father is dead, her fiancé took her inheritance, and no one will employ her, despite years working for her watchmaker father. Indeed, the other London watchmakers seem frightened of her.
\nAlone, poor, and at the end of her tether, India takes employment with the only person who'll accept her - an enigmatic and mysterious man from America. A man who possesses a strange watch that rejuvenates him when he's ill. Matthew Glass must find a particular watchmaker, but he won't tell India why any old one won't do. Nor will he tell her what he does back home, and how he can afford to stay in a house in one of London's best streets.
\nSo when she reads about an American outlaw known as the Dark Rider arriving in England, she suspects Mr. Glass is the fugitive. When danger comes to their door, she's certain of it. But if she notifies the authorities, she'll find herself unemployed and homeless again - and she will have betrayed the man who saved her life.
\n
When the husband of the king’s mistress is poisoned, Josie must pretend he died of natural causes, or risk putting her own life in danger. It’s yet another secret she must learn to keep, yet another intrigue whispered about in the gilded halls of King Leon’s mysterious palace.
With her enemies intent on ruining her, Josie needs all the friends she can get. Friends that include the captain of the guards, a man determined to find out about his past before he gives in to desire.
As the captain becomes more certain that magic stole the servants’ memories, some very powerful people also hear the whispers of magic and begin to wonder. With rivals from several quarters closing in on the truth, events are set in motion that could change the course of the kingdom, and see the palace servants and Josie lose everything.
Simone Lavoie would be the first to admit she's running from her problems, literally. She's convinced herself a new job as an intimacy coordinator in a new city will give her a fresh perspective. Instead, problems on set only add to her worries.
Evelyn Harper has spent her whole life thinking she knows exactly what she wants: to be an actress. But when the fame gets to be too much following her breakout role, she's torn between the ideal and reality. Then Evelyn discovers that Simone suspects a friend of trading bit parts for sex, and she starts to second-guess her growing attraction.
As the integrity of the show comes crashing down, Evie must stand up for her conviction to go for what she really wants in life, while Simone struggles to let go of a hard held past and give love a chance. As their feelings grow, it becomes harder and harder to tell the difference between what's real and what's an act.", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/C.J Birch - Between Takes.jpeg", "mtime": 1768330715178.3718, "size": 513202, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:19:25.628Z" }, "C.J Birch - Death on the Water": { "title": "Death on the Water", "author": "C.J Birch", "description": "
In a world of luxury and relaxation, the Ocean Summit stands out during its inaugural cruise, but not for reasons the cruise director would like.
\nForced by her agent and publisher to take a much-needed cruise vacation, investigative journalist Claire Mills finds work harder to forget than she anticipated when the cleaning staff discover her neighbor dead on the first day of sailing. The ship’s authorities have ruled it a suicide, but Claire suspects murder. With the help of the delightful assistant cruise director Moira, Claire conducts her own investigation.
\nBut the deeper they get, the more clues they collect, and the danger escalates. With the killer on their trail, Claire and Moira must decide what’s more important, finding the killer or surviving eight days together at sea.
Easton Gray is sent from the future to prevent the end of the human race after nanotechnology spreads rapidly, leading to danger and disaster. As an operative for the Ministry of Discourse, Easton’s only goal is to eradicate the technology.
\nDr. Tess Nolan is alone, except for the company of her rescue dog, Lou. It’s not until a stranger shows up in town and her life is turned upside down that she realizes the love she’s been missing. Easton is everything Tess didn’t know she wanted, but her warning bells are sounding. There’s something too convenient about Easton’s arrival.
\nCaught between her need to follow orders and her growing feelings for the beautiful doctor, Easton begins to question everything she knows, leading her on an investigation that will change not just her life, but the future as well. When forced to target Tess, can Easton do what’s needed to save humanity? Or will finally finding the one person who feels like home prove impossible to ignore?
Surviving in an unknown galaxy hundreds of light-years from Earth is far from easy. Captain Jordan Kellow is missing, and Lieutenant Alison Ash must take charge of the Persephone and get the crew back to the Posterus in one piece if she has any hope of saving the woman she loves.
\n
Lost in a dying escape pod, Jordan is rescued by a crew of war hungry aliens bent on revenge. She must find a way off the ship and back to Ash before she’s conscripted for the cause.
\n
Jordan and Ash struggle with different views on the alien agenda and must find their way back to each other before they’re swallowed up by a centuries-old war.
The moment Lieutenant Alison Ash steps aboard the Persephone, she knows her life will never be the same. She will never again watch the sun rise over the asteroid belt, never again see Earth from a handheld telescope, and never again see her family.
\nIn less than three weeks, the ship will dock at the Posterus and begin the most important journey humankind has ever undertaken. More important than discovering fire, creating language, or even abandoning Earth to live confined in biospheres among the asteroid belt over 100 years ago.
\nWhat Ash doesn't expect is that by keeping her recent memory loss a secret she is jeopardising not only the Persephone's mission but humankind's launch of the first ever generational ship. Nor does she anticipate her attraction to Captain Jordan Kellow, but both will change her life forever.
A virus is spreading across America, transforming the infected and making them feral with lust.
\nSophie, a good Catholic girl, must traverse the hellscape of the midwest to try to find her family while the world around her burns. Along the way she discovers there are far worse fates than dying a virgin . . .
\nThe end times are coming.
\n
The rebels have won, and the empire is withdrawing from Qazal. But undoing the tangled web that binds the two nations won't be easy, and Touraine and Luca will face their greatest challenge yet.
\nLuca needs to oust her uncle from the Balladairan throne once and for all and take her rightful place as Queen. But he won't let go of power so easily. When he calls for a “Trial of Competence” and Luca's allies start disappearing from her side, she will have to prove her might. And she knows someone who can help...
\nTouraine has found a home in the newly free country of Qazal. However, she soon realizes that leading a country and leading a revolution are two very different tasks. And, even more importantly, if Luca won't keep her promises, the Qazali could end up right back where they started.
\nTogether, the two women must overcome their enemies, their history, and their heartbreak in order to secure Luca's power and Touraine's freedom.
The clans of the fens enjoy a tenuous peace, and it is all thanks to Agnir, ward and hostage. For as long as she can remember she has lived among the enemy, learning their ways, growing strong alongside their children.
\nWhen a burgeoning love for the chieftain's daughter lures them both to a hidden spring, a magic awakens in them that could bind the clans under one banner at last - or destroy any hope of peace. By working their intentions into leather, they can weave misfortune for their enemies . . . just like the Fate's Bane that haunts the legends of the clans.
\nAmbitions grow in their fathers' hearts, grudges threaten a return to violence, and greedy enemies wait outside the borders, seeking a foothold to claim the fens for themselves. And though their Makings may save their families, the legend that gave them this power always exacts its price.
Luca is the new queen of Balladaire. Her empire is already splintering in her hands. Her uncle wasn’t the only traitor in the court, and the Withering will decimate her people if she can’t unearth Balladaire’s magic. The only person who can help her wants the only thing Luca won’t give - the end of the monarchy.
\nTouraine is Luca’s general. She has everything she ever wanted. While Luca looks within Balladaire’s borders, Touraine looks outward - the alliance with Qazal is brittle and Balladaire’s neighbors are ready to pounce on its new weakness. When the army comes, led by none other than Touraine’s old lover, Touraine must face the truth about herself - and the empire she once called home.
\nA storm is coming. Touraine and Luca will stand against it together, or it will tear them apart once and for all.
In a political fantasy unlike any other, debut author C. L. Clark spins an epic tale of rebellion, espionage, and military might on the far outreaches of a crumbling desert empire.
\nTouraine is a soldier. Stolen as a child and raised to kill and die for the empire, her only loyalty is to her fellow conscripts. But now, her company has been sent back to her homeland to stop a rebellion, and the ties of blood may be stronger than she thought.
\nLuca needs a turncoat. Someone desperate enough to tiptoe the bayonet's edge between treason and orders. Someone who can sway the rebels toward peace, while Luca focuses on what really matters: getting her uncle off her throne.
\nThrough assassinations and massacres, in bedrooms and war rooms, Touraine and Luca will haggle over the price of a nation. But some things aren't for sale.
In this delightful dark comedy debut, when the members of an LGBTQ+ club find themselves accidentally framed for attempted murder, it's up to them to clear their names before it's too late.
\nIt’s kind of hard to graduate high school when you’re the prime suspect in an attempted murder.
\nSeventeen-year-old Eleanora Finkel just wants to finish her senior year and get the hell out of Texas. But when her club meeting inconveniently coincides with an attack on the school’s head cheerleader, she and her friends find themselves in the hot seat.
\nIn order to clear their names and ensure the survival of their club for future queer teens, they’ll have to track down the real culprit themselves. But Eleanora is far from a professional detective; she’s riddled with anxiety, annoyingly attracted to the case’s cute victim, and her trusty crochet hook feels insufficient for fighting off a murderer. Can this ragtag group of unlikely sleuths find their way out of an entire freaking murder mystery before one of them is next?
\n
A young witch forced to play concubine for her impirical captor, finally breaks free to find a life of her own, but even those with the power to call Death cannot outrun their past . . .
\nAll witches must serve the cruel and immortal Emperor Yacatl. But after four years of terror and abuse, Khana not only kills one of his favorite courtiers with her magic, but also discovers the secret of his power and he’s been making deals with Death. And now, so is she.
\nArmed with magic that she doesn’t fully understand, Khana flees the empire and stumbles into a small mountain town filled with fierce warriors that ostracise her for being a witch, despite using her abilities to heal their sick and injured. There, her magic and courage are put to the test as she is forced to stop running and fight back against the emperor that wants her dead.
\nBut every deal she makes with Death takes another piece of her soul. And there’s only so much Khana can give before she turns into the very monster she’s trying to destroy.
Shasta is a young boy living in Calormene with a cruel man who claims to be his father. One night he overhears his \"father\" offering to sell him as a slave, so Shasta makes a break and sets out for the North. He meets Bree, a talking horse who becomes his companion.
\nOn their way they encounter Aravis, a high-born girl escaping an arranged marriage, and her talking horse. Despite their differences the children and horses learn to work together to reach the freedom they long for. In the meantime, they uncover a Calormene plot to conquer Narnia.
Hurtled into the Wood between the Worlds, the children soon find that they can enter many worlds through the mysterious pools there. In one world they encounter the evil Queen Jadis, who wreaks havoc in the streets of London when she is accidentally brought back with them. When they finally manage to pull her out of London, unintentionally taking along Uncle Andrew and a coachman with his horse, they find themselves in what will come to be known as the land of Narnia.
", "series": "The Chronicles of Narnia", "seriesOrder": 6, "tags": [ "Fantasy", "Young Adult", "Children" ], "cover": "/coverimages/C.S Lewis - Magicians Nephew, The.jpeg", "mtime": 1767334279263.536, "size": 426928, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:19:26.344Z" }, "C.S Lewis - Prince Caspian": { "title": "Prince Caspian", "author": "C.S Lewis", "description": "A prince fights for his crown. Narnia . . . where animals talk . . . where trees walk . . . here a battle is about to begin. A prince denied his rightful throne gathers an army in a desperate attempt to rid his land of a false king. But in the end, it is a battle of honor between two men alone that will decide the fate of an entire world.
The Dawn Treader is the first ship Narnia has seen in centuries. King Caspian has built it for his voyage to find the seven lords, good men whom his evil uncle Miraz banished when he usurped the throne. The journey takes Edmund, Lucy, and their cousin Eustace to the Eastern Islands, beyond the Silver Sea, toward Aslan's country at the End of the World.
1994. In the myth-riddled woods of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, sixteen-year-old Annabelle Riley’s twin sister, Sabrina, has been having an affair with a mysterious older man, and Annabelle is determined to uncover what’s going on. Then, inexplicably, both sisters disappear.
\nIn this same town years later, newly instated Police Chief Callie Hauser makes an arrest that unexpectedly resurrects details from a heartbreaking cold case. As she digs deeper, the past and the present collide, challenging everything Callie believes about right and wrong, about who she is, and about the town she’s always called home.
\nA propulsive mystery as incisive as it is forgiving, Heather bears a visceral reminder that the truth of a woman’s life is often complicated and unknowable - to those on the outside, and sometimes even to herself.
\n
Reconciling with her husband after a betrayal and recovering from a yearlong battle with breast cancer, Alice longs for an escape from the trials of everyday life. When the opportunity arises for a once-in-a-lifetime camping trip across France, she packs up her daughters, hoping it’s the new start she so desperately needs.
\nAlice, teenage Sophie, and young Iris begin their odyssey in the French Alps, entering a foreign world they did not know existed: beautiful people, luscious food, and sensual temptations. It’s a freeing experience - exploring the countryside, sleeping beneath the stars, reveling in the sights and scents of nature. For the first time since her diagnosis, Alice starts to feel alive, less afraid of dying, and less angry about her husband's affair.
\nBut as the family continues south, traveling through Provence, where they camp on the Gulf of Lions, an area of the Mediterranean known for wild, roaring winds and purple fields of lavender, they start to unravel the yarn that binds them together. By the time they head to the charred Pyrenees, and then back across France to stay in a castle that sits on the confluence of two rivers, Alice worries that the trip might have been a disastrous and reckless mistake.
\nA beautiful meditation on womanhood, personhood, exploration, survival and sexual awakenings, The Gulf of Lions is a breathtaking and emotionally resonant story that plumbs the eternal question: What, in the end, will keep a family from falling apart?
\n
Recently dumped and stuck with a mortgage, artist Esther Ray wants to burn the world, but instead, she reluctantly accepts a scrapbooking job from the deliriously wealthy Naomi Duncan. The scrapbooks, a secret birthday gift for Naomi’s husband, Bryce, trace the Duncan’s 25-year marriage. The Esther must include every piece of paper she’s been sent, must sign an NDA, and must only contact Naomi using the burner phone provided. Otherwise she’ll spoil the surprise.
\nAs Esther binges true-crime podcasts and works through the near-200 boxes of Duncan detritus, she finds herself infatuated with the gilded family - until, mid-project, Naomi dies suspiciously. When Esther becomes convinced the husband killed her, she uses the scrapbooks’ trove of information to insert herself into the Duncans’ lives to prove it. But the more Esther investigates, the further she is dragged back to the scorched earth of her past and the famous artist who paid her to disappear.
\nLaced with pitch-black humor and conspiratorial unease, Scrap is a razor-sharp examination of wealth and power, art and truth, of the line between justice and revenge - and who gets to cross it.
\n
August is an average twelve-year-old. He likes dogs and fishing and doesn't mind early-morning chores on his family's Michigan dairy farm. But following a messy divorce, his mother decides that she and August need to start over in a new town.
\nThere, he tries to be an average teen - football and homework - but when his role in a shocking act of violence throws him off-course once more, he flees to a ranch in rural Montana, where he learns that even the smallest of communities have dark secrets.
Covering August's adolescence, from age twelve to nineteen, this gorgeously written novel bears witness to the joys and traumas that irrevocably shape us all. Filled with unforgettable characters and stunning natural landscapes, this book is a moving and provocative look at growing up in the American heartland.
In an aging timber house hand-built into the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains, two brothers are struggling to keep up with their debts. They live off the grid on the fringe of Yellowstone, surviving after the death of their father.
\nThad, the elder, is more capable of engaging with things like the truck registration and the medical bills from their father’s fatal illness and the tax lien on the cabin their grandfather built, while Hazen is . . . different, more instinctual, deeply attuned to the natural world.
\nDesperate for money, they are approached by a shadowy out-of-towner with a proposition and agree to attempt a heist of natural resources from Yellowstone, a federal crime. Beartooth is a fast-paced tale set in the grandeur of the American West.
Ella Pickering is drowning in debt. Once a Unity skymage trained to make aerial supply runs in the great war with the Ranneas Empire, following a crash she now uses a wheelchair and works gruelling shifts making magical weapons in the Unity workshops, thinking of better days.
\nOne night Ella witnesses an experiment by engineer Jackan Grissom go awry. His device morphs into a crude rocket blasting skywards before falling into the war’s spell-ravaged No Man’s Land. But this inspires a dangerous could such a device reach the moon - the forbidden home of the gods? Could they go and beg them to stop the war?
\nThey will need help, but as more folk get involved in their blasphemous plot, can they keep it under wraps? Can magic get them to the moon? Or will their heresy lead them to the gallows?
\n
Tyrant magus Edrin Walker destroyed the monster sent by the Skallgrim, but not before it laid waste to Setharis, and infested their magical elite with mind-controlling parasites. Edrin’s own Gift to seize the minds of others was cracked by the strain of battle, and he barely survives the interrogation of a captured magus.
There’s no time for recovery though: a Skallgrim army is marching on the mountain passes of the Clanhold. Edrin and a coterie of villains race to stop them, but the mountains are filled with gods, daemons, magic, and his hideous past. Walker must stop at nothing to win, even if that means losing his mind. Or worse.
After ten years on the run, dodging daemons and debt, reviled magician Edrin Walker returns home to avenge the brutal murder of his friend. Lynas had uncovered a terrible secret, something that threatened to devour the entire city. He tried to warn the Arcanum, the sorcerers who rule the city . . .
He failed.
Lynas was skinned alive and Walker felt every cut. Now, nothing will stop him from finding the murderer. Magi, mortals, daemons, and even the gods - Walker will burn them all if he has to. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s killed a god.
On the planet Scythia, plants give birth to insects, trees can drag you to your death, and armies of animals graft native plants into human crops.
\nJohn Maraintha has been abandoned here, light-years from the peaceful forests that he loves. The desert is harsh and the people in thrall to a barbaric custom called marriage.
\nHe must find some way to make a life here. But on Scythia, survival means transformation - and not everyone is willing to accept change.
\n
In 1785, Professor Sebastian Grave receives the news he fears most: the terrible Beast of Gévaudan has returned, and the French countryside runs red in its wake.
\nSebastian knows the Beast. A monster-slayer with centuries of experience, he joined the hunt for the creature twenty years ago and watched it slaughter its way through a long and bloody winter. Even with the help of his indwelling demon, Sarmodel - who takes payment in living hearts - it nearly cost him his life to bring the monster down.
\nNow, two decades later, Sebastian has been recalled to the hunt by Antoine Avenel d’Ocerne, an estranged lover who shares a dark history with the Beast and a terrible secret with Sebastian. Drawn by both the chance to finish the Beast for good and the promise of a reconciliation with Antoine, Sebastian cannot refuse.
\nBut Gévaudan is not as he remembers it, and Sebastian’s unfinished business is everywhere he looks. Years of misery have driven the people to desperation, and France teeters on the edge of revolution. Sebastian’s arcane activities - not to mention his demonic counterpart - have also attracted the inquisitorial eye of the French clergy. And the Beast is poised to close his jaws around them all and plunge the continent into war.
\nDebut author Cameron Sullivan tears the heart out of history with this darkly entertaining retelling of the hunt for the Beast of Gévaudan. Lifting the veil on the hidden world behind our own, it reimagines the story of Europe, from Imperial Rome to Saint Jehanne d’Arc, the madness of Gilles de Rais and the first flickers of the French Revolution.
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Elise Ward likes her life balanced: tidy apartment, predictable job, zero surprises. Then she finds a stranger’s notebook at Bean There - and recognises the name inside. Piper Lane, the whirlwind neighbor she hasn’t spoken to since high school, complete with a “30 Before 30” list and a flair for chaos.
\nWhen Elise returns it, Piper grins and drafts her into one of the items: do a duet at open mic night. It’s supposed to be a joke. It becomes a spark. And somewhere between midnight swings, salsa lessons, and stargazing confessions, Elise learns that some things can’t be planned - especially second chances.
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In 1910, on a small, remote island that boasts more sheep than people, life does not hold a lot of promise for spirited Charlotte North. Her only escape from both this insular community and a family who does not understand her seems to be through marriage - an institution she is not at all eager to join, given the unhappiness of her parents' own union. Plus, eligible suitors are few and far between, which is why Charlotte has fallen hard for one the few outsiders to join their community in recent the handsome - and likewise unhappily married - new priest.
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And then an ancient tower once rumored to have imprisoned a witch - or an unfaithful wife - crumbles, and releases . . . something. A restless spirit that knocks inside the walls and sends household objects flying. A spirit that seems to have an affinity for Charlotte herself. Though many on the island are terrified of this new interloper, Charlotte sees in it potential. Power. And perhaps even a way to get everything she has most wanted out of life.
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\"Welcome to Himlafall Clinic, where we use revolutionary therapy techniques to heal you from heartbreak. Whether you are going through a devastating breakup, or can’t seem to stop picking the wrong partners, we are here to help you change your life, once and for all . . . \"
\nIsobel Anderssen has heard rumors. Nestled deep in the Swedish woods, there is a clinic. Primarily aimed at helping women who have gone through devastating break-ups, the Himlafall Clinic is meant to heal your mind and help you move on.
\nSometimes people are never heard from again.
\nArmed with a fake story and a contraband phone to record interviews, Isobel is ready to expose Himlafall’s founder and get closure for the families of missing loved ones. But when she gets there, nothing goes to plan. Her contact is missing. The founder, Dr. Martina Hastings, knows how to get under Isobel’s skin in ways she didn’t anticipate. And all the while, the ghosts of the missing haunt her at every turn. It is clear something is going wrong and Himlafall, and Isobel must uncover the truth, before she disappears once and for all.
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Rule #1 of Not Dating Your Enemy: Rules are made to be broken.
\nRule #2 of Not Dating Your Enemy: Keep your lives separate (don't live or work together).
\nRule #3 of Not Dating Your Enemy: If you can’t imagine life without them, you’re already screwed.
\nHarper and Tia are roommates, and interns at the same tech company. They clash, they fight, they flirt. And, under cover of night, the two of them adopt secret identities and head out on missions across the city for their respective magical clans. Tia is the beautiful descendant of the Moon Goddess, and Harper is secretly Raven, the leader-in-waiting of the feared and villainous Foxes.
\nWhen each is tasked by their clan to kill the other, a deceitful game of cat-and-mouse begins. And Harper and Tia will start to understand that the concepts of right and wrong can be just as complicated - and dangerous - as falling in love.
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When novelist Claire Lancel’s relationship with Gilles Fabian began, it felt like a dream, an idyllic love story. 6 months in, during a romantic dinner by the sea, he asked her to make him a promise, which she did: She would never write about him.
\nWhy, after years together, is Claire finally breaking her promise? What could have happened in their relationship that brought her to the witness stand, defending herself in court?
\nThrough Claire’s own testimony and the conflicting accounts of friends, Your Promise offers a brilliant reconstruction of a crime, and a stinging portrayal of modern narcissism, characterized by a lack of empathy.
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Marissa Rogers has always been perfectly happy being a beta. After all, taking charge without taking credit is what vaulted her to a senior editor position at a glossy health magazine - and why her friendship with gorgeous, charismatic, absolutely alpha Julia Ferrar has always been effortless.
\nThen Julia's hit by a cab. Her external injuries are minor, but brain damage steals her memory and alters her personality. To help her friend recover, Marissa must take the lead and remind Julia of the sharp, magnetic woman she once was. But as Julia struggles to remember - and begins dredging up things Marissa would rather forget, including the fact that Julia asked her to abandon the love of her life ten years ago - their friendship is shaken to the core.
\nWith new opportunities in her career and personal life on the horizon, Marissa is determined to take control of her future. But can she do that when it may mean turning her back on her past?
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When struggling novelist James Hernandez meets poet Louisa “Lou” Bell, he’s sure he’s just found the love of his life. There’s just one she’s engaged to his oldest friend, Rob. So James toasts their union and swallows his desire. As the years pass, James’s dreams always seem just out of reach - he can’t finish that novel, can’t mend his relationship with his father, can’t fully commit to a romantic relationship. He just can’t move on.
\nBut after betrayal fractures Lou’s once-solid marriage, she turns to James for comfort. When Lou and James act on their long-standing mutual attraction, the consequences are more heartbreaking - and miraculous - than either of them could have ever anticipated. Then life throws James one more curveball, and he, Rob, and Lou are forced to come to terms with the unexpected ways in which love and loss are intertwined.
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Aly Jackson has waited her whole life to become editor in chief of All Good magazine. But six months into the job, she overhears her coworkers belittling her. Aly’s clapback? A very public, career-jeopardising meltdown. To undo the mess, she agrees to a monthlong unpaid leave.
\nReluctant but determined to turn misfortune into opportunity, Aly retreats to the Lake Michigan beach house her brother, Luke, left to her when he died nearly a year earlier. Except when Aly arrives, she discovers Luke’s slacker best friend, Wyatt, inherited the place, too.
\nWyatt is unkempt, unmotivated, and totally uninterested in Aly’s desire to sell. Yet as battle lines are drawn, Aly wonders whether she and this wild card have more than Luke in common. But is she willing to swap her lifelong dreams for a shot at healing her broken heart?
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Wife. Mother. Breadwinner. Penelope Ruiz-Kar is doing it all - and barely keeping it together. Meanwhile, her best friend, Jenny Sweet, appears to be sailing through life. As close as the two women are, Jenny’s passionate marriage, pristine house, and ultra-polite child stand in stark contrast to Penelope’s underemployed husband, Sanjay, their unruly brood, and the daily grind she calls a career.
\nThen a shocking tragedy reveals that Jenny’s life is far from perfect. Reeling, Penelope vows to stop keeping the peace and finally deal with the issues in her relationship. So she and Sanjay agree to a radical proposal: both will write a list of changes they want each other to make - then commit to complete and total honesty.
\nWhat seems like a smart idea quickly spirals out of control, revealing new rifts and even deeper secrets. As Penelope stares down the possible implosion of her marriage, she must ask herself: When it comes to love, is honesty really the best policy?
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Libby Miller has always been an unwavering optimist - but when her husband drops a bomb on their marriage the same day a doctor delivers devastating news, she realises her rose-colored glasses have actually been blinding her.
\nWith nothing left to lose, she abandons her life in Chicago for the clear waters and bright beaches of the Caribbean for what might be her last hurrah. Despite her new sunny locale, her plans go awry when she finds that she can’t quite outrun the past or bring herself to face an unknowable future.
\nEvery day of tropical bliss may be an invitation to disaster, but with her twin brother on her trail and a new relationship on the horizon, Libby is determined to forget about fate. Will she risk it all to live - and love - a little longer?
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At fifty-three, Maggie Harris has a good marriage and two mostly happy children. Perpetually anxious, she’s also accumulated a list of semi-reasonable fears: falling air conditioners, the IRS, identity theft, skydiving, and airbag recalls. But never once did Maggie worry that her husband of nearly thirty years would leave her.
\nOn the day Adam walks out the door, everything that makes Maggie secure goes with him. Only then does she realise that while she’s been busy caring for everyone else, she’s become invisible to the world - and to herself.
\nMaggie cautiously begins to rebuild her life with a trip to Rome, a new career, and even a rebound romance. But when a fresh crisis strikes and an uncertain future looms, she must decide: How much will she risk to remain the woman she’s just become?
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Val Caruso, Alex Reed, and June Kennerson come from completely different worlds - Val is a tough-talking private investigator; Alex is reticent, nervous and on the run from her past; and June is an athlete turned housewife whose true love is her pup.
\nWhen Val is hired by June’s husband to find out if June is cheating on him, it sets these three women on a collision course. Amid a colorful cast of characters who spend time at the shabby but beloved Hamilton Park Dog Park, they find they have more in common than they thought.
\nSoon June is nearly brave enough to aim for what she wants, Alex finds excitement she never expected, and Val is reluctantly opening her heart to the most high-maintenance dog she’s ever met. But when their secrets catch up with them, will their newfound friendships be able to withstand the pressure? Or will they find themselves in the doghouse?
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In the year of our Lord 1363, two suspicious deaths in the infirmary of St. Mary’s Abbey catch the attention of the powerful John Thoresby, Lord Chancellor of England and Archbishop of York. One victim is a pilgrim, while the second is Thoresby’s ne’er-do-well ward, both apparently poisoned by a physic supplied by Master Apothecary Nicholas Wilton.
\nIn the wake of these deaths, the archbishop dispatches one-eyed spy Owen Archer to York to find the murderer. Under the guise of a disillusioned soldier keen to make a fresh start, Owen insinuates himself into Wilton’s apothecary as an apprentice. But he finds Wilton bedridden, with the shop being run by his lovely, enigmatic young wife, Lucie.
\nAs Owen unravels a tangled history of scandal and tragedy, he discovers at its center a desperate, forbidden love twisted over time into obsession. And the woman he has come to love is his prime suspect.
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December, 1374. With the great and the good about to descend on York for the enthronement of Alexander Neville as the new archbishop, the city authorities are in a state of high alert. When two bodies are discovered in the grounds of York Minster, and a flaxen-haired youth with the voice of an angel is found locked in the chapter house, Owen Archer, captain of the city bailiffs, is summoned to investigate. Tension deepens when an enigmatic figure from Owen's past arrives in the city.
\nWhy has he returned from France after all these years - and what is his connection with the bodies in the minster yard and the fair singer? Before Owen can make headway in the investigation, a third body is fished out of the river - and the captain finds himself with three mysterious deaths to solve before the all-powerful Neville family arrives in York.
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1374. When a member of one of York’s most prominent families is found dead in the woods, his throat torn out, rumours spread like wildfire that wolves are running loose throughout the city. Persuaded to investigate by the victim’s father, Owen Archer is convinced that a human killer is responsible.
\nBut before he can gather sufficient evidence to prove his case, a second body is discovered, stabbed to death. Is there a connection? What secrets are contained within the victim’s household? And what does apprentice healer Alisoun know that she’s not telling?
\nTeaming up with Geoffrey Chaucer, who is in York on a secret mission on behalf of Prince Edward, Owen’s enquiries will draw him headlong into a deadly conspiracy.
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York, 1371. The Bishop of Winchester, William of Wykeham, is tasked with bringing home the remains of the powerful patriarch of the Pagnell family. But Wykeham’s arrival is fraught with tension. The Pagnells are reeling from their father’s death and they suspect Wykeham of having a hand in it. Days after his arrival, his townhouse burns to the ground - a terrible accident, or a threat.
When the charred body of a woman is found in the remains, Wykeham fears for his reputation and his life. The Archbishop of York, John Thoresby, turns to spy Owen Archer for help. Preoccupied by his wife’s tragic miscarriage, Archer reluctantly agrees to investigate. But the story is bigger than anyone suspects. This tangled web includes knights, bishops, and even kings. And after Archer discovers that the dead woman is a midwife, this dangerous plot starts to hit close to home . . .
October, 1376.
\nOwen Archer is summoned by sheriff Sir Ralph Hastings regarding a stripped and bloodied body discovered on the road north to York. Could it be connected to an attack on a carter and his labourers who were transporting stone destined for St Clement's Priory? The carter fled, but his men stayed to fight and are now missing. Is the victim one of them?
\nAt first Owen believes the catalyst for murder and menace in York is the arrival of the political pariah William Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester. But he soon suspects that a formidable and skillful adversary from his past has arrived in the city, thrusting him and his family into grave danger, and his investigation becomes a race to uncover the truth before his old nemesis destroys all he holds dear.
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Under the pretense of escorting his father-in-law and the archbishop’s secretary on a pilgrimage to the sacred city of St. David’s in Wales, Owen Archer and Geoffrey Chaucer, in truth, are carrying out a mission for the Duke of Lancaster. England and France are at war, and the southern coast of Wales is vulnerable to invasion - Owen and Geoffrey are to recruit archers for the duke’s army and inspect his Welsh fortifications on the coast, while quietly investigating whether the duke’s steward at Cydweli Castle is involved in a French plot to incite rebellion in Wales.
But trouble precedes them in the cathedral city of St. David’s. On Whitesands Beach beyond the city a young man is beaten and left for dead, then spirited away by a Welsh bard. Shortly afterward a corpse clothed in the livery of the Duke of Lancaster is left at the city gate, his shoes filled with white sand. Meanwhile, at Cydweli Castle, a chain of events begun by the theft of money from the castle’s exchequer ends in a violent death and the disappearance of the steward’s beautiful young wife.
Owen and Geoffrey begin to see connections linking the troubles in city and castle, and learn they must unravel the complex story of betrayed love and political ambition to prevent more deaths. But in the course of his investigations in the land of his birth, Owen is haunted by doubts about his own loyalties . . .
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It is winter in the year of our Lord 1372. A river pilot falls into the icy waters of the River Ouse during a skirmish between dockworkers and the boys of the minster school - among them Owen Archer’s adopted son Jasper.
But what began as a confrontation to return a boy’s stolen scrip becomes a murder investigation, as the rescuers find the pilot dying of wounds inflicted before his plunge into the river. When another body is fished from the water upstream, and Owen discovers that the boy Jasper sought to help has disappeared, he convinces the archbishop that he must go in search of the boy. His lost scrip seems to hold the key to the double tragedy, but his disappearance leaves troubling questions: did he flee in fear? Or was he abducted?
As Owen and Jasper head to the boy’s home in the countryside, they must untangle a case that will involve a valuable cross has gone missing, a devastating fire, and another drowning - and will find themselves endangered as the truth begins to emerge.
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From the marshy Thames to the misty Yorkshire moors, murder stalks Welsh soldier-sleuth Owen Archer and one of his oldest friends.
On a snowy morning in 1367, Sir William of Wyndesore’s page is found in the icy moat of Windsor Castle, and some whisper that the murderer was Ned Townley - a former comrade-in-arms of Owen Archer. Burdened with a reputation as a notoriously jealous lover, Ned cannot hope to clear his name; even Mary, his ladylove, is unsure of the truth.
Hoping to put Ned out of harm’s way while solving the murder, Owen places his friend in charge of a mission to Rievaulx Abbey at the edge of the moors. But when the travelers receive news of Mary’s drowning, Ned vanishes into the wild.
Riding out in search of his old friend, Owen does not know whether he will be Ned’s savior or executioner. With his one good eye, Owen sees more than most, but now he must find a way to penetrate the curtains of power that surround the Church and England’s royal court and discover the truth of Ned’s innocence or guilt . . .
Summer in the year of our Lord 1365: On the night after the Corpus Christi procession, a man is brutally murdered on the steps of York Minster. The next morning his severed hand is found in a room at the York Tavern - a room hastily vacated by a fellow guild member who had quarreled with the victim.
Archbishop Thoresby calls on Owen Archer to investigate. As Owen tracks the fleeing merchant, he uncovers a conspiracy involving a powerful company of traders, but his only witness is a young boy who has gone into hiding, and his only suspect is a mysterious cloaked woman. When Owen discovers a link between the traders and a powerful coterie in the royal court, he brings his apothecary wife Lucie into the race to find the boy before he is silenced forever by the murderers.
Based on an enigmatic entry in the records of Clementhorpe Nunnery, this authentic, gripping mystery conjures a 14th century ripe with forbidden passions and political intrigue.
When young nun Joanna Calverley dies of a fever in the town of Beverley in the summer of 1365, she is buried quickly for fear of the plague. But a year later, Archbishop Thoresby learns of a woman who has arrived in York claiming to be the resurrected nun, talking of relic-trading and miracles. And death seems to ride in her wake.
The archbishop sends Owen Archer to retrace the woman’s journey, an investigation that leads him across the north from Leeds to Beverley to Scarborough. Along the way he encounters Geoffrey Chaucer, a spy for the king of England, who believes there is a connection between the nun’s troubles, renegade mercenaries, and the powerful Percy family. Back in York, however, Owen’s wife Lucie, pregnant with their first child, has won the confidence of the mysterious nun and realizes that there are secrets hidden in the woman’s seemingly mad ramblings . . .
In the year of our Lord 1369 the much-loved Queen Philippa lies dying in Windsor Castle, the harvest has failed, and the pestilence has returned. In York, the atmosphere of fear and superstition is heightened by a series of thefts and violent deaths at St. Leonard’s Hospital, as well as rumors that these crimes are connected to the hospital’s dwindling funds. The Master of St. Leonard’s, Sir Richard Ravenser, hurries north from the queen’s deathbed to summon Owen Archer, soldier-spy, to investigate the scandal before it ruins him.
While his wife Lucie faces the plague-panicked townsfolk at the apothecary, Owen encounters a seemingly random series of clues: a riddle posed by one of the victims at the hospital, a lay sister with a scandalous past, the kidnapping of a child from the hospital orphanage, and a case of arson. The answer to the riddle of St. Leonard’s lies in the past, and as Owen’s family is caught up in the sweep of the pestilence, he must abandon them to race across the countryside to save the next victim.
When the wise woman Magda Digby is suspected of murder, Owen Archer sets out to prove her innocence in this intricately plotted medieval mystery.
\nMay, 1375. Owen Archer returns from London to find York in chaos. While the citizens are living in terror of the pestilence which is spreading throughout the land, a new physician has arrived, whipping up fear and suspicion against traditional healers and midwives.
\nWith the backing of the new archbishop, he is especially hostile towards Magda Digby, the wise woman who has helped and healed the people of York for many years. At the same time, Magda is uneasy about the arrival of two long-lost kinsfolk. Though they say they are seeking her help, she senses a hidden agenda.
\nMagda’s troubles deepen when she discovers a body in the river near her home – and finds herself under suspicion of murder. Days later, fire rips through a warehouse in the city. Amongst the charred debris lies the body of a man - not burned, but stabbed in the back. Could there be a connection to the corpse in the river?
\nDetermined to prove Magda’s innocence, Owen sets out to find answers - but the more he uncovers, the deeper the mystery becomes . . .
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Who is the elusive Widow Cobb that Tom was seen visiting? And who is the man spotted following Tom before he vanished? As Owen hunts for clues, Bess decides to visit the widow’s lodgings and makes a terrifying discovery.
\nOwen digs up past sins and long-buried secrets that answer some of the questions surrounding Tom’s disappearance. But who is the sly and malevolent figure intent on destroying his friend, and why? A shocking confession will rock Owen to his core . . .
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Late spring in the year of our Lord 1370, and Owen Archer is anxious to leave Wales for home. His mission for the Duke of Lancaster complete, he attempts to arrange safe passage on a ship sailing for England, but the hanging of a stonemason interrupts his plans.
\nOn the surface it appears the young man was driven to suicide by a broken heart, but to Owen the signs all point to murder. As his investigation stretches on, however, Owen finds himself drawn into the influence of the leader of a Welsh rebellion whose manifesto speaks to his heart, and a choice is offered to him: join or die.
Meanwhile, at home in York, Owen’s wife Lucie is troubled by rumors that her husband’s long absence is permanent, as well as threats by a customer who claims she was poisoned by a physic from the Wilton apothecary. Meanwhile, Lucie is tempted by the attentions of a friend’s steward, even as she uncovers a shattering betrayal in her own household.
Archbishop Thoresby of York, the second most powerful cleric in England, lies dying in his bed. The end of his life is seen by the great families of the North as a chance to promote one of their own as his successor - and Thoresby himself announces he will leave the matter to the dean and chapter of York.
On the eve of this decision, the dying archbishop agrees to a visit from Joan, Princess of Wales, wife of the Black Prince, heir to the throne of England. Thoresby’s captain of the guard, Owen Archer, has no doubt that trouble will follow.
As soon as the company rides into the palace yard he is proved right: they arrive burdened with the body of one of their party, and Owen finds evidence that the man’s death was no accident. Within days of this discovery, a courier carrying an urgent message for the archbishop is found hanging in the woods. With guards surrounding the property, it is clear that the murderer walks among the palace guests.
The powerful Percy and Neville families are well represented in the entourage, including a woman who remembers an afternoon tryst with Owen as much, much more. Even the princess’s son is suspect. As Owen races to unmask the guilty and rid the palace of the royal party, his final wish for his lord is that he might die in peace . . .
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12.46: Thirteen-year-old Claire Bingley stands alone at a bus stop
12.47: Ted Conkaffey parks his car beside her
12.52: The girl is missing . . .
Six minutes - that’s all it took to ruin Detective Ted Conkaffey’s life. Accused but not convicted of Claire’s abduction, he escapes north, to the steamy, croc-infested wetlands of Crimson Lake.
Amanda Pharrell knows what it’s like to be public enemy number one. Maybe it’s her murderous past that makes her so good as a private investigator, tracking lost souls in the wilderness. Her latest target, missing author Jake Scully, has a life more shrouded in secrets than her own - so she enlists help from the one person in town more hated than she is: Ted.
But the residents of Crimson Lake are watching the pair’s every move. And for Ted, a man already at breaking point, this town is offering no place to hide . . .
For years, the Ladder 51 crew has rushed fearlessly into the hot zone of major fires across New York City. They've saved countless members of the public and stopped fires before they cause major destruction. They've also stolen millions from banks, jewelry stores, and art galleries. Under the cover of saving the city, they've used their knowledge and specialist equipment to become the most successful heist group on the East Coast.
\nAndy Nearland is the newest member of the Ladder 51, and she's helping them prepare for their largest heist yet - New York's largest private storage facility, an expensive treasure trove for the rich and famous. She's also an undercover operative with the NYPD, and keeping her true motives hidden proves more and more dangerous as the day of the heist approaches.
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Most homicide detective teams run on trust, loyalty, and the shared desire to put killers behind bars. Frank Bennett's partner, Eden Archer, thrives on darkness and danger. She has a rare talent for catching killers - but her idea of justice has little to do with courtrooms.
\nNow three girls are missing, and Eden is going undercover to a remote farm where the troubled go to hide and blood falls more often than rain. Frank's job is to keep an eye on his partner while she's there - but is it for Eden's protection, or to protect others from her? Walking a tightrope between duty and desperation, Frank confronts a threat from Eden's past - the sadistic crime lord . . .
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If Detective Frank Bennett tries hard enough, he can sometimes forget that Eden Archer, his partner in the Homicide Department, is also a moonlighting serial killer . . .
\nThankfully their latest case is proving a good distraction. Someone is angry at Sydney's beautiful people - and the results are anything but pretty. On the rain-soaked running tracks of Sydney's parks, a predator is lurking, and it's not long before night-time jogs become a race to stay alive.
\nWhile Frank and Eden chase shadows, a different kind of danger grows closer to home. Frank's new girlfriend Imogen Stone is fascinated by cold cases, and her latest project - the disappearance of the two Tanner children more than twenty years ago - is leading her straight to Eden's door.
\nAnd, as Frank knows all too well, asking too many questions about Eden Archer can get you buried as deep as her past . . .
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Ex-cop Ted Conkaffey is slowing rebuilding his life in Crimson Lake, and getting to know his three-year-old daughter, Lillian. But when he and his PI partner Amanda take on the case of a boy who seems to have literally disappeared into thin air, his job once again threatens everything . . .
Crimson Lake is where bad people come to disappear - and where eight-year-old boys vanish into thin air . . .
On the fifth floor of the White Caps Hotel, four young friends are left alone while their parents dine downstairs. But when Sara Farrow checks on the children at midnight, her son is missing. The boys swear they stayed in their room, and CCTV confirms Richie has not left the building. Despite a thorough search, no trace of the child is found.
Distrustful of the police, Sara turns to Crimson Lake’s unlikeliest private investigators: disgraced cop Ted Conkaffey and convicted killer Amanda Pharrell. This case just the sort of twisted puzzle that gets Amanda’s blood pumping.
For Ted, the case couldn’t have come at a worse time. Two years ago a false accusation robbed him of his career, his reputation and most importantly his family. But now Lillian, the daughter he barely knows, is coming to stay in his ramshackle cottage by the lake.
Ted must dredge up the area’s worst characters to find a missing boy. And the kind of danger he uncovers could well put his own child in deadly peril . . .
Homicide detective Frank Bennett has an intriguing new partner. Dark, beautiful, coldly efficient, Eden Archer is one of the most enigmatic colleagues Frank has ever worked with - that includes her brother Eric, who's also on the Sydney Metro police force. All of them are tested to the core when a local man discovers a graveyard of large steel toolboxes lying at the bottom of the harbor. Each box contains a grisly trove of human body parts.
\nFor Frank, the madman's clues are a tantalising puzzle. For Eden and Eric, the case holds chilling links to a scarred childhood - and a murderous mentor named Hades. But the true evil goes beyond the bloody handiwork of a serial killer . . .
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A fractured family of police detectives must solve the murder of a young woman in a small Australian town, unearthing dark secrets thought long buried.
\nAfter a violent confrontation tore apart a family five years ago, brothers and fellow cops Russell and Evan haven’t spoken a word to each other. When they’re both assigned to the murder of a young journalist in the tiny town of Redbelly Crossing, their paths are forced to cross again.
\nThis was supposed to be the week Russell could repair things with his teenage daughter, and instead he has to drag her on a murderous ride along to the middle of snake-infested nowhere.
\nFor Evan, this case is exactly what he needed: a high-profile investigation that will give him the chance to rebuild his career after a terrible mistake that nearly ended it.
\nThen a dark discovery leaves Evan with only one way out: to bury the truth Russell is so determined to uncover.
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In a dark roadside hovel called the Barking Fog Inn, the bodies of two young bartenders lie on a beer-sodden floor. Only the night-time animals in the surrounding forest were close enough to hear their screams.
Crimson Lake’s resident private detectives are hired to take on the case. Disgraced former police detective Ted Conkaffey and convicted murderer Amanda Pharrell are uneasy allies working alongside DI Pip Sweeney on her first homicide investigation.
For Ted, a new case serves as a welcome distraction from his fight to clear his name over the abduction of a teenage girl.
For all three, the hunt for the truth will draw them into a violent dance with evil. Redemption is certainly on the cards - but it may well cost them their lives . . .
Elizabeth Zhang is well aware of her place in the world. She’s in the tenth percentile for likability, the seventieth percentile for attractiveness, and the ninety-ninth percentile for academics. While she’s never been the most beautiful or the most liked, she knows she has the intelligence and ambition to achieve her greatest dream: Harvard Law School. But when Harvard rejects Elizabeth for not standing out enough - which she knows means she's just another boring Asian female - her carefully constructed life falls apart. What shocks her even more is that Laura Kim, a classmate at Columbia, got in. Elizabeth can’t figure out how this could have happened. Why was Laura accepted? What makes her so interesting?
\nAt first, she follows her because she’s just curious. What Laura orders for lunch. Where Laura shops. What Laura’s hobbies are. All of these things must contribute to her overall package, what makes her an acceptable person to Harvard. But still, Elizabeth just can’t see it. The only thing she sees is that Laura has taken her spot.
\nA spot that she knows she deserves after working so hard. A spot that she’ll simply have to take back.
\nLayered and subversive, this novel brings to light how, in the face of societal expectations and self-inflicted pressures, a person can unlock the darkest parts of themselves and show how far they’re willing to go to achieve their vision of success.
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Roz and Vin can’t look each other in the eyes anymore, let alone share a bed. It’s been a year since they survived a life-altering accident, and their marriage hasn’t been the same. But Roz has held out hope that they can fix things, until she discovers Vin has signed a new lease. So she does what any soon-to-be-divorced Manhattanite would do: sign up for a figure-drawing class.
\nBetween Roz’s determined attempts to improve her artistic skills and her adventures with her best friend, Raffi, she can almost ignore Vin’s impending move-out date and his footsteps in their previously unoccupied guest room. But it would all be a lot easier if Vin wasn’t Raffi’s older brother, and if she didn’t still find him incredibly, debilitatingly attractive and kind.
\nSo kind, in fact, that Vin offers to let Roz draw him. What is she supposed to say? It’s probably better than her original plan of finding some random male model online, and she needs all the practice she can get. Plus, that’s sure to make a separation easier, right? Focus on every detail of your estranged spouse’s body while drawing him in the nude? But after the year they’ve spent avoiding each other, it feels good to see and be seen by one another again.
\nAs Roz works to capture the wholeness of the person she fell in love with, will they both be able to draw upon the feelings they buried deep inside to finally heal together?
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Jo’s dreams have always been too big for her small-town Montana life. When she lands a competitive internship in Chicago, her conservative parents worry about letting her go. But it’s the opportunity of a lifetime, sure to change her world.
\nHazel is a city girl to the core, absorbing all the culture Chicago has to offer in her quest to make beautiful queer art. When a gorgeous girl in a prairie dress stumbles in front of her scooter during the city’s Pride Parade, it’s almost vehicular manslaughter at first sight - but Hazel acts in the nick of time and winds up with a clueless baby gay in her lap.
\nMeeting Hazel and her friends unveils a world Jo never imagined, as well as parts of herself she’s long kept hidden. But first loves are doomed to end, and the summer won’t last forever. Jo’s parents expect her to return to her life in Montana, sacrificing the new family she’s found with Hazel. Can she go home again?
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Saoirse’s life has lost what little direction it once had. Forced to move back in with her mother after a bad breakup, she finds herself living alongside three younger sisters she barely knows. Worse still, the brittle, distant woman who raised her is gone, replaced by a doting mother who showers her younger children with affection.
\nSaoirse thought she'd escaped this whirlwind of family drama when she moved to London; now, she's not so sure. She throws herself into a new relationship (fun), rekindling childhood friendships (mostly fun), and reacquainting herself with the pubs and clubs that were the backdrop to her teenage years (somehow less fun than it once was). It takes a chance accident to force Saoirse to face up to all the questions she's been running away from, not least, what does it mean to return home to a place you barely recognise?
It’s 2048, and the world has been ravaged by a lethal virus. With few exceptions, only the young have survived. Cities and infrastructures have been destroyed, and the natural world has reclaimed the landscape in surprising ways, with herds of wild camels roaming the American West and crocodiles that glow neon green lurking in the rivers.
\nWill Collins, the last surviving resident of a Buddhist retreat center in Colorado, receives an urgent and mysterious request: to deliver a potential cure to a scientist on the West Coast. So Will sets out into an unknown and perilous world, haunted by dreams of the woman he once loved, in a rusted-out pickup pulled by two mules. He doesn’t have much time - temperatures are rising to lethal heights, a hit man is on his tail, and armed militias patrol the roads. The only way he’ll make it is with the help of a clever raven, an opinionated cat, and a tough teenage girl who has learned to survive on her own.
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Margot needs a minute. She’s been working eighty-hour weeks as a newly minted partner at her law firm. She’s disconnected from her brother, the only family she has left. And she’s still not pregnant after years of trying.
\nStars Harbor Astrological Retreat promises rest, relaxation, and wisdom for Margot and her friends. With Instagram-worthy views and nightly astrology readings in an impeccably restored waterfront Victorian house, this getaway should be nothing but idyllic fun.
\nFor Margot’s brother, Adam, it’s the perfect opportunity to rekindle the romance that fuels his writing, but his wife, Aimee, hides the darkness of her past with a beautiful social media feed. Their friend, Farah, is a successful doctor who cannot admit she’s losing control. But no one holds a greater secret than their astrologer host, Rini. She has a plan for all her guests, and one won’t be leaving Stars Harbor alive.
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In the wake of the Kejari, everything Oraya once thought to be true has been destroyed. A prisoner in her own kingdom, grieving the only family she ever had, and reeling from a gutting betrayal, she no longer even knows the truth of her own blood. She’s left only with one certainty: she cannot trust anyone, least of all Raihn.
\nThe House of Night, too, is surrounded by enemies. Raihn’s own nobles are none too eager to accept a Turned king, especially one who was once a slave. And the House of Blood digs their claws into the kingdom, threatening to tear it apart from the inside.
\nWhen Raihn offers Oraya a secret alliance, taking the deal is her only chance at reclaiming her kingdom - and gaining her vengeance against the lover who betrayed her. But to do so, she’ll need to harness a devastating ancient power, intertwined with her father’s greatest secrets.
\nBut with enemies closing in on all sides, nothing is as it seems. As she unravels her past and faces her future, Oraya finds herself forced to choose between the bloody reality of seizing power - and the devastating love that could be her downfall.
No war can be fought with clean hands. Not even the ones waged for the right reasons. Not even the ones you win.
\nTisaanah bargained away her own freedom to save those she left behind in slavery. Now, bound by her blood pact, she must fight the Orders’ war - and Max is determined to protect her at all costs.
\nBut when a betrayal tears apart Ara, Max and Tisaanah are pushed into an even bloodier conflict. Tisaanah must gamble with Reshaye’s power to claim an impossible victory. And Max, forced into leadership, must confront everything he hoped to forget: his past, and his own mysterious magic.
\nAll the while, darker forces loom - far darker, even, than the Orders’ secrets.
\nAs Tisaanah and Max are ensnared in a web of ancient magic and twisted secrets, one question remains: what are they willing to sacrifice for victory? For power? For love?
Ripped from a forgotten homeland as a child, Tisaanah learned how to survive with nothing but a sharp wit and a touch of magic. But the night she tries to buy her freedom, she barely escapes with her life.
\nDesperate to save the best friend she left behind, Tisaanah journeys to the Orders, the most powerful organisations of magic Wielders in the world. But to join their ranks, she must complete an apprenticeship with Maxantarius Farlione, a handsome and reclusive fire wielder who despises the Orders.
\nThe Orders’ intentions are cryptic, and Tisaanah must prove herself under the threat of looming war. But even more dangerous are her growing feelings for Maxantarius. The bloody past he wants to forget may be the key to her future . . . or the downfall of them both.
\nBut Tisaanah will stop at nothing to save those she abandoned. Even if it means gambling in the Orders’ deadly games. Even if it means sacrificing her heart.
\nEven if it means wielding death itself.
Mische made the ultimate sacrifice to save those she loves - and plunged the world into an eternal night. Now, imprisoned by the gods and obsessed with revenge, Asar is desperate to find her again.
\nWhen a goddess offers them a final path to redemption - and back to each other – Asar and Mische embark on an extraordinary mission. Together, they must seize the power of the god of death so Asar may do the impossible: ascend to true divinity.
\nTheir journey will take them through mortal and immortal realms, alongside both old friends and ruthless enemies. But as the underworld teeters on the brink of collapse and the gods prepare for a war, Asar and Mische must decide what they are willing to sacrifice for the power to defy death. In a game of vengeful gods and ancient betrayals, there are some debts that even love may not be able to repay.
In the wake of a crushing defeat, Tisaanah and Maxatarius have been ripped apart. Tisaanah is desperate to rescue Max from his imprisonment, even as her people’s fight for freedom grows more treacherous. But within the walls of Ilyzath, Max’s mind is a shadow of what it once was . . . leaving his past a mystery and his future at the mercy of Ara’s new, ruthless queen.
\nMeanwhile, in the Fey lands, Aefe has been dragged back into this world by a king who vows to destroy civilisations in her name. But even as her past returns to claim her, her former self is a stranger.
\nTisaanah, Max, and Aefe are thrust into the center of a cataclysm between the human and Fey worlds. The unique magic they share is key to either winning the war, or ending it.
\nBut that power demands sacrifice. Tisaanah may be forced to choose between love and duty. Max cannot forge his future without confronting his past. And Aefe must decide between reclaiming who she was, or embracing who she has become.
\nThe choices they make will either reshape this world forever . . . or end it . . .
The adopted human daughter of the Nightborn vampire king, Oraya carved her place in a world designed to kill her. Her only chance to become something more than prey is entering the Kejari: a legendary tournament held by the goddess of death herself.
\nBut winning won’t be easy amongst the most vicious warriors from all three vampire houses. To survive, Oraya is forced to make an alliance with a mysterious rival.
\nEverything about Raihn is dangerous. He is a ruthless vampire, an efficient killer, an enemy to her father’s crown . . . and her greatest competition. Yet, what terrifies Oraya most of all is that she finds herself oddly drawn to him.
\nBut there’s no room for compassion in the Kejari. War for the House of Night brews, shattering everything that Oraya thought she knew about her home. And Raihn may understand her more than anyone - but their blossoming attraction could be her downfall, in a kingdom where nothing is more deadly than love.
Mische lost everything when she was forcibly Turned into a vampire - her home, her humanity, and most devastating of all, the love of the sun god to whom she had devoted her life. Now, sentenced to death for murdering the vampire prince who Turned her, redemption feels impossible.
\nBut when Mische is saved by Asar, the bastard prince of the House of Shadow with a past as brutal as his scars, she’s forced into a mission worse than execution: a journey to the underworld to resurrect the god of death himself.
\nYet, Mische’s punishment may be the key to her salvation. In a secret meeting, her sun god commands her to help Asar in his mission, only to betray him . . . by killing the very death god she’ll help resurrect.
\nMische and Asar must travel the treacherous path to the underworld, facing trials, beasts, and the vengeful ghosts of their pasts. Yet, most dangerous of all is the alluring call of the darkness - and her forbidden attraction to Asar, a burgeoning bond that risks invoking the wrath of gods.
\nAs her betrayal looms, the underworld closes in and angry gods are growing restless. Mische will be forced to choose between the redemption of the sun or the damnation of the darkness.
Amber applies a dash of red lipstick and checks herself out in the mirror before heading out on a date. ‘Don’t wait up!’ she calls to her housemates as she leaves. But Amber never returns home that night. Amber Slater is never seen again.
The last person to see Amber was her housemate. He remembers everything she was wearing that night. He watched her leave. He listened to every word of her phone conversation with her friend before she left. He knows more about Amber’s movements than anyone.
At university, she is well-liked by her fellow students and teachers. Her tutor’s voice shakes when he is questioned by the police. Some say he and Amber were very close. Too close. Some say his wife had just found out about their relationship.
The manager at the restaurant where Amber was supposed to eat that night says she didn’t show up. Yet the chef at the restaurant is overly chatty about her. He wasn’t working that night. He wasn’t answering his phone. Nobody knows where he was when Amber went missing.
Rumours begin to circulate about Amber, it seems that everyone has a story to tell. But when the young girl’s lifeless body is found in a local park, with her blue lips glued shut, the gossip suddenly goes quiet. As the police trace the last few hours of Amber’s life, it seems that the girl simply vanished on her way to catch her bus. And when another woman goes missing in the dead of night, it’s a race against time to find her before she too is silenced forever.
Rory is waiting at the door of the pre-school – a painted picture of his mother Susan in his small hand. But Susan isn’t going to see the picture, because she has vanished.
Susan Wheeler is a devoted mother. She would do anything for her three children. She drops them off and picks them up every single day. Until one day when Susan kisses them goodbye and then never comes to pick them up.
Susan’s mother Mary is worried. Susan is recently divorced and has been finding things hard recently, but she loves her kids – she’d never leave them.
Susan’s sister Clare is furious. It’s just like her to go missing. It’s not the first time, either. Susan has always been a troublemaker. Always seeking attention. She knows Susan has been lying to the family for years. And she knows that Susan has been sneaking out of her family home for weeks…
As the hours turn into days, even Clare becomes fearful for Susan. And, when Mary discovers Susan’s diary, she begins to uncover a dark secret from her childhood. Something no one in the family knew. When the final diary entry leads the police to a man who is discovered dead in a local park, they’re left wondering whether Susan has vanished because she is a victim. Or because she is a suspect…
Church Road is a quiet corner of suburbia where happy families play in the local park and neighbours smile as they pass in the street. But behind the bright red door of number 8 lies the body of Billie Reeves, a young mum who just took her last breath.
\nSerena is Billie’s sister. When she found out her boyfriend had been obsessively calling Billie, she’d all but cut her from her life. But not before vowing she would make Billie pay for ruining her relationship . . .
\nShaun is Billie’s ex-boyfriend. He left her the moment she fell pregnant. When he turned up at Billie’s door, demanding to see Kayden, she refused to take the risk of him hurting her precious son. He’ll do whatever it takes to get his little boy back . . .
\nNadia is Billie’s best friend. Their kids attended the same school and Billie often opened up to Nadia about her struggles as a single mother. She knows Billie’s deepest, darkest secret. She promised never to tell, but that was before the argument . . .
\nWhen police investigate the quiet little street, they discover everyone was whispering about Billie’s late-night callers. What was going on behind the closed door of Billie’s small home? And if someone was prepared to kill her, what do they know, and who will be next?
Kerstin is wide awake. While her family sleeps around her, the devastating secret her husband just told her is spinning through her mind. Does she really know the man she married? And are her children still safe in this small town?
\nShe jumps as she hears a sound from outside. Peering into the inky darkness, her eyes focus on movement at the bottom of the garden. Someone is out there.
\nShe watches as the figure strikes a single match. Kerstin gasps at the sight of the face staring back at her, smiling, as if enjoying her fear.
\nA car door slams and the figure makes a dash for the trees, leaving something behind – a small memorial candle. As it flickers in the darkness, Kerstin knows exactly what it means. Someone is coming for her, and her family is in terrible danger . . .
Melissa Sanderson is the perfect wife and mother. She dotes on her daughter, and lives in her dream home in a quiet cul-de-sac in the suburbs.
But looks can be deceiving.
Something is amiss in that house - all the neighbours think so. Some say Melissa is having an affair. Others say she’s been drinking too much.
Then one night, sirens wake up the whole neighbourhood.
Melissa Sanderson is dead.
Lauren returns home from celebrating her engagement with friends and stumbles as she gets out of the taxi. So what if her best friend Sienna didn’t show up? Lauren had a good night anyway. As she walks towards the small house she shares with her fiancé, Robbie , she’s surprised to see every window in total darkness. And when she calls his name, the house remains silent. Where is Robbie?
\nKicking off her red heels, Lauren heads towards her bedroom, feeling more nervous with every step. And when she opens the door, she immediately knows something is very wrong. The sickly metallic smell sobers her up instantly. And there is someone in her bed . . .
\nMoving closer, her heart races in her chest. Instead of her fiancé, in the bed lies the lifeless body of a young woman, and although long dark hair covers her face, Lauren can already see who it is . . . her best friend, Sienna.
\nAs Lauren’s scream breaks the silence, someone stands outside the bedroom, tracking her every move. Did Lauren’s perfect little home just become the most dangerous place she could be?
Four-year-old Cleo shakes with fear as she tells the police that her mother, Darcie, was taken by a man on their way home last night. Darcie told Cleo to run and hide, and the last thing she saw was Darcie being pushed into the back of a car.
\nWhen police look into Darcie’s life, they discover a drunken argument with her best friend hours before she went missing, a dark figure seen loitering near where Cleo was found, and a recent assault allegation against a customer at Darcie’s work.
\nIt seems like everyone around the young mother was keeping secrets, but Darcie had a dark secret of her own - one she hasn’t dared tell a soul.
\nDid Darcie’s deadly past finally catch up with her? And will she find the strength to fight for her life and keep her promise to return for her beloved daughter?
Dressed in a sage green bridesmaid dress, and smiling for pictures, Holly is the happiest she’s ever been. Hours later, Holly is dead.
People love to hate Holly Long. Smart, beautiful and a woman who men find it hard to say no to, she’s the town’s most gossiped about resident.
Now Holly’s body lies in her hotel room, strangled at her best friend’s wedding party. And the gossip has stopped, because nobody wants to look like they did it.
When police search Holly’s immaculate apartment, amongst her stylish furnishings and expensive jewellery, they discover a different side to Holly. Orderly and precise, she wasn’t the chaotic party girl everyone thought her to be. In fact, Holly was a planner, and her next plan was to come out and tell her biggest secret – something she had been hiding for months, something that had the potential to ruin the lives of more than one wedding guest.
There are plenty of people who might have wanted to kill Holly, but only one who has finally made good on their promise.
She’s just the girl he’s looking for . . .
A young woman falls from a van speeding down a quiet road. Battered and bruised, she turns her head to the person who comes to her aid. ‘Help her’, she whispers before her eyes close.
Days later, the body of another young girl is found in a shallow grave just a few miles away. The similarities between the two girls are startling - same age, same frail body, same shocking red hair.
As the town fears there’s a serial killer living amongst them, Detective Gina Harte must put aside her own struggles at home, and catch the killer before he finds another perfect girl.
Samantha stumbled out of the party and on to a busy street only ten minutes away from her home. But she never made it home…
Seven years after Samantha’s disappearance, on what would have been her thirty-fifth birthday, her best friend Diane is shocked to find a letter addressed to Samantha on her doorstep.
Opening the envelope, Diane pulls out a birthday card and a finger nail painted in dusky pink nail polish. The same shade Samantha always wore. The same shade she was wearing the night she went missing.
When police analyse the nail, they don’t get the result they expected. Instead of linking them to Samantha, the nail belongs to another woman, Jade Ashmore. And Jade was murdered the night before the envelope was delivered….
She thought he’d come to save her. She was wrong.
Deborah Jenkins pulls her coat around her as she sets out on her short walk home in the pouring rain. But she never makes it home that night. And she is never seen again . . .
Four years later, an abandoned baby girl is found wrapped in dirty rags on a doorstep. An anonymous phone call urges the police to run a DNA test on the baby. But nobody is prepared for the results.
The newborn belongs to Deborah. She’s still alive.
Five-year-old Cally waits in her pretty pink bedroom for the sound of the front door opening and her mother’s sweet voice in the hall. But when the doorbell finally rings, and Cally creeps out of bed to peer through the banister, a large man in uniform is all she sees. Her mother is missing . . .
\nTeacher Annabel Braddock was last seen drinking at the local pub with her best friend, Jennifer. Witnesses saw tears running down her cheeks, and friends say she was having problems with a colleague at work, and that her marriage had broken down.
\nBut as the two women hugged goodbye, neither noticed the car speeding towards them. As the dust settled, Jennifer lay unconscious on the ground and Annabel was nowhere to be seen. She’d never abandon her little girl, so did someone snatch her?
\nAs family crowd around Jennifer’s hospital bed, hoping she’ll wake up, police visit Annabel’s home and her inconsolable daughter, Cally, tells them she had seen a man outside staring into her room as she climbed into bed that evening. Was it her childish imagination, or had someone been watching Annabel’s home?
\nWhen Jennifer finally opens her eyes and tells the police what happened that night, it’s clear there are plenty of people with a reason to harm Annabel. With an unpredictable husband, a colleague who denies harassing her and a neighbour who seems to know her every move, could she be in imminent danger? As the hours turn to days, will little Cally ever see her precious mother again? Or will she be next?
When local vicar, Sally, packs away the brightly coloured toys and dog-eared books left over from a morning parent and toddler group, her heart pounds as she discovers a note left behind: ‘Help me.’ Sally knows the mother who sat in that spot. Rushing to Nell’s small house nearby, her feeling of dread grows. Her frantic knock goes unanswered. Inside, she hears Nell’s one-year-old son Alfie crying, but still Nell doesn’t come.
\nRunning to the back of the house, Sally’s breath catches at the sight of Nell’s lifeless body laid out in the garden. When police investigate the young mother’s tragic death, rumours start to spread. Some say Nell had enemies. Some say she wasn’t telling the truth about who she really was. And some say she was running from a dark past.
\nWith reports of a mysterious figure seen watching Nell’s house, it’s clear whoever took her life is close by. And when a break-in at the church ends with a brutal attack on Sally, the vicar who found Nell’s body, it’s clear that this killer isn’t finished yet . . .
In a patch of forest on the outskirts of a small town, five teenage school friends prepare to spend a night away from home. Carrying their tents and sleeping bags, they laugh and joke as they make their way into the darkest part of the woods, away from prying eyes. But as the sun rises the following morning, only four are left alive.
\nDevastated, Leah’s friends all swear they didn’t see or hear anything. Her best friend sobs as she recounts what she remembers from that night - dancing, roasting marshmallows, sipping warm cans of beer by the fire - but is it grief, or is she hiding something? What happened to Naomi in the hour that no one can account for? And what troubled past lies behind the perfect manners of the boy who organised the trip, and who is prepared to lie to keep it buried?
\nAs the cracks in their stories grow, it’s clear one of them is lying, and one of them is next . . .
After that summer, I swore I’d never come back to Clover Lane. But when my aunt left us her house, I couldn’t say no. The last in a neat row of houses with white fences and countryside views, it was the life I’d always dreamed of for my family. They deserved it, even if I didn’t.
\nAs the last boxes are unpacked and neighbours drop by to welcome us, I see the sparkle back in my daughter Morgan’s eyes and know we’re safe. I won’t ever let her near the woods where my best friend went missing, but welcome gifts and a coffee date with my neighbours have me feeling like we belong here. But then the first letter arrives, and my perfect new life shatters . . .
\nSuddenly, I notice curtains twitch as I unload the car and I find myself looking over my shoulder every time I leave the house. When more letters arrive and rumours poison the street, I start double-locking the doors at night. How much do I really know about the people next door? Are my children safe? Is there anyone I can trust?
\nSomeone in this close-knit community thinks they know what happened that summer. I know they’re wrong, but my worst fear is realised when the last letter Morgan is missing . . .
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Sasha loves her job finding accommodation for homeless people, and she’s proud of the small but cosy apartment she rents on the good side of town. She’s worked hard to leave her dark past behind her and make amends for the accident that still haunts her memories. She knows she was innocent, though she’s still careful about who and what she tells of her old life. But not all secrets stay hidden forever . . .
\nWhen her phone rings loudly in the middle of the night, Sasha fears what she’ll hear when she picks up - a deathly silence. It’s happened every night for weeks. Is it a childish prank, or a chilling warning that someone has uncovered her secret?
\nBut the news of a body found at a local shelter means her worst nightmare has come true. It can’t be a coincidence that evidence related to the victim has been found at the same location where the most devastating moment of Sasha’s life took place.
\nDays later, a second body is found and Sasha’s heart pounds wildly as she takes in the victim’s unforgettable green eyes. She hasn’t seen her in a long time, but she’d know her old friend anywhere. She was the only other person who knew Sasha’s secret, so how can Sasha prove her innocence now?
\nSasha doesn’t know who’s coming for her, but she’s certain of one thing: she’s next on the list . . .
When Lindy Pickering answers the door to police officers, she isn’t prepared for what they tell her. Her brother, Kain, was discovered dead that morning, locked inside a car owned by her late mother.
\nAs the police begin to ask questions, Lindy admits that she and Kain hadn’t spoken in weeks, but she remains tight-lipped about the reason the siblings hated each other.
\nWhen neighbours begin to gossip, it seems that everyone had a reason for wanting Kain dead and Lindy realises that she can’t trust anyone around her. And as another body is found, killed in the same way as Kain, it’s clear that someone is keeping a close eye on the investigation, and they’re prepared to kill to keep their deadly secret hidden . . .
Dressed in garish Halloween costumes, two teenage girls run through a patch of dense woodland towards the outskirts of town. But before they can reach the safety of the streets beyond, they make a shocking discovery.
Following a piece of old rope, the girls find a large mound of freshly laid earth, undisturbed in the darkness of the trees. Clawing at the ground beneath them, they make contact with something solid. When they realise what they’ve discovered, the silence is broken by their piercing screams as they stare down at the shallow grave.
Without looking back, they run as fast as they can, failing to spot the person nearby watching their every move…
And when another grave is found just days later, it’s clear a serial killer is praying on the small town. But who is the killer watching now? And when will another grave be filled?
Thirty years ago, Ruth Pritchard’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Elissa, went missing. Police were called, neighbours were interviewed, and even Ruth’s own husband was investigated, but the case went unsolved. Elissa disappeared forever.
\nNow, Ruth watches the local news and hears about another girl gone from the same streets where her beloved daughter was last seen, and her heart races. A distinctive red scarf was found at a crime scene, and she recognises it instantly. It belonged to Elissa.
\nAfter Ruth alerts the police, they rush to speak to her, but nobody answers the door. Her small home stands eerily quiet. Just like her daughter before her, Ruth has vanished into thin air.
Marissa lives alone in her tiny one-bed apartment. It’s quiet and safe; all she’s ever wanted since the night her mother was killed in front of her. But when the police knock on her door with the news that her last remaining family member has been murdered, she comes face-to-face with the trauma she has spent a lifetime running from.
\nA witness saw her car outside his house that day, but Marissa knows she’s innocent. She hasn’t seen her uncle in years and remembers going to bed in her own home that night. But she’s had blackouts before and can’t always trust her memory.
\nDays later, Marissa’s neighbor is found dead in his home with stab wounds all over his body, exactly like her uncle. It was no secret that Marissa didn’t get on with her neighbor, but she’d never want to see him hurt. How can she convince the police that she isn’t a killer? And as the secrets from her past take hold of her present, is there anyone in her small world she can trust?
\nYou’ll think you know where to draw the line between innocence and guilt. But blame is a dangerous thing, and nothing is ever what it seems . . .
\n
Paris, 1922. The marriage between the Auclair and the Picard family is the talk of the town. June can’t wait to attend the engagement party with her friends, Nate and Jack. But Nate has an ulterior motive, he’s there to stop the wedding. Before he can complete his task, he’s stabbed in the chest, with Jack’s knife. Jack is arrested, but June knows he wouldn’t hurt a fly.
\nIn this throwback to the classic whodunnits of Agatha Christie, June must find the real killer and clear Jack’s name. As she becomes embroiled deeper and deeper into a corrupt web of Parisian old-money, high society and politics, she uncovers deadly secrets. Can June solve the case before the killer strikes again?
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In Kilbane, opinions are plentiful and rarely in alignment. But there’s one thing everyone does agree on - the bakery in the old flour mill, just outside town, is the best in County Cork, well worth the short drive and the long lines. No wonder they’re about to be featured on a reality baking show.
\nAll six contestants in the show are coming to Kilbane to participate, and the town is simmering with excitement. Aside from munching on free samples, the locals - including Siobhan - get a chance to appear in the opening shots. As for the competitors themselves, not all are as sweet as their confections. There are shenanigans on the first day of filming that put everyone on edge, but that’s nothing compared to day two, when the first round ends and the top contestant is found face-down in her signature pie.
\nThe producers decide to continue filming while Siobhan and her husband, Garda Macdara Flannery, sift through the suspects. Was this a case of rivalry turned lethal, or are their other motives hidden in the mix? And can they uncover the truth before another baker is eliminated - permanently . . .
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Gardas Siobhn and Macdara Flannery are off to the seaside for their honeymoon, happy to finally have time off from work and relax. Their itinerary includes a visit to a struggling fish and chip shop owned by the aptly named Mrs. Chipper.
\nBut when they arrive, a crowd is waiting in front of the closed shop. A local handyman unlocks the door, only to find the proprietor lying dead at the base of a ladder, its rungs coated in slippery fat. Clearly this was no accidental tragedy.
\nEven as the local garda take over the murder investigation, Siobhn and Macdara can't help but put their long-delayed honeymoon on hold at least until they can find the elusive killer. But will they catch who did it before they strike again, or will the culprit slip through their net?
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The O’Sullivans are spending Christmas in West Cork with brother James’s fiancée Elise’s family, including her grandfather, the famous orchestral conductor Enda Elliot. When they learn everyone will choose a name from a hat to buy a music-related Christmas gift for someone else at the gathering, it seems like their greatest concern - until the cantankerous conductor is discovered crushed under a ninety-pound harp in a local concert hall.
\nWith the extended family - including Enda’s much-younger new wife Leah, a virtuoso violinist - suspected in his murder, it’s up to Siobhán to ensure the guilty party faces the music. But as a snowstorm strands both families in a lavish farmhouse on a cliff, Siobhán had better pick up the tempo - before the killer orchestrates another untimely demise . . .
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Siobhán loves to see the joy playing trad music brings to her brother Ciaran, but his concern that he’ll never find a mate pulls at her heartstrings. So she proposes that Kilbane host a music and matchmaking festival to draw single trad musicians. While renowned matchmaker Liam Noone plays Cupid with his Lucky Book, music—and hopefully love—will fill the pubs and the autumn air.
\nTurning over his precious Lucky Book to Siobhán for safekeeping, Liam takes the stage to introduce matched musician couples who will kick off the festival in the town square. Suddenly all goes black. When the lights come back on, the matchmaker has met his maker, impaled through the heart with an arrow made from the sharpened bow of a bass.
\nWas it the fiddle player, the flute player, the drummer, the piper, the squeeze box player, or the bass player who struck a sour note? Garda Siobhán and her husband Macdara must pick up the tempo to make whoever committed this crime of passion face the music…
Any wedding is a big deal in the County Cork village of Kilbane, but with a local lad marrying a famous fashion model at Kilbane Castle, there’s no talk of anything but the upcoming nuptials. Siobhán O’Sullivan and her five siblings have their plates full catering the three-day affair from their bistro. But the celebratory mood suddenly turns sober when the best man is found murdered in the woods.
\nFor Siobhán, the tragic turn is more than grist for the gossip mill. Her beau, Macdara Flannery, is the prime suspect - and she intends to clear his name. Now, like the bride walking down the aisle, Siobhán needs to watch her step. For as she gets closer to unveiling the truth, the murderer is planning a very chilly reception for her.
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Kilbane’s new bookshop is hosting an event featuring up-and-coming Irish writers who will be taking up residency in the town for a month. Among them is indie author Deirdre Walsh, who has been causing a heated debate among the writers. She seems to have a particular distaste for the novels of Nessa Lamb.
\nThen Deirdre’s body is found the next day in the back of the store - with pages torn from Nessa’s books stuffed in her mouth. Now, Siobhán must uncover which of Kilbane’s literary guests took Deirdre’s criticisms so personally, they’d engage in foul play . . .
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After solving two murders in the County Cork village of Kilbane, Siobhán O’Sullivan has accepted her calling and decided to join the Garda Síochána. The O’Sullivan clan couldn’t be prouder, but there’s no time to celebrate as she’s already on another case, summoned by the local priest who just found a dead man in the St. Mary’s graveyard - aboveground.
\nHe’s a stranger, but the priest has heard talk of an American tourist in town, searching for his Irish ancestor. As Siobhán begins to dig for a motive among the gnarled roots of the victim’s family tree, she will need to stay two steps ahead of the killer or end up with more than one foot in the grave.
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When Macdara’s cousin Jane frantically calls for his help, Siobhán is at his side. The two garda rush from Kilbane to the rural village where Jane and her mother have recently moved. They find Jane, who is blind, outside the cottage, in a state. Inside, Aunt Ellen lies on her bed in a fancy red dress, dead. A pillow on the floor and a nearby teacup suggest the mode of death to their trained eyes: the woman has been poisoned and smothered.
\nDevout believers in Irish folklore, the villagers insist the cottage is cursed - built on a fairy path. It turns out Ellen Delaney was not the first to die mysteriously in this cottage. Although the townsfolk blame malevolent fairies, Siobhán and Macdara must follow the path of a murderer all too human - but just as evil . . .
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While Siobhán studies for her Detective Sargeant exams, her brother, Eoin, prepares for the grand opening of his new restaurant, The O’Sullivan Six, and concocts a plan to enter Kilbane’s Top Garden Contest to boost business. But trouble brews when Eoin hires a mercurial landscape designer known for her killer designs. His new partner’s unflattering reputation and questionable practices nearly eclipse her talents - and plunge the prestigious competition into chaos.
\nA lush and intricate winning garden emerges from the controversy, with a spectacular golden statue in the center of the display. But in a devastating twist, the work of art leads to the shocking discovery of a bold and brutal work of murder.
\nEveryone in town has an opinion about who committed the crime and planted the evidence, from easily bribed sponsors to green-with-envy gardeners. And with another golden statue found in Eoin’s garden display, rumors about his involvement intensify. As local gossip buzzes and a list of suspects grows, it’s up to quick-witted Siobhán and her husband, Macdara, to suss out the guilty culprit’s identity . . . before the competition buries another victim.
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The small village of Kilbane is hosting a poker tournament at the local pub, and card sharp Eamon Foley, a tinker out of Dublin, is set to win the tournament. But when Foley is found at the end of a rope, it’s time for the garda to take matters into their own hands.
\nMacdara Flannery would lay odds it’s a simple suicide, but Siobhán suspects foul play, as does Foley’s pregnant widow. Perhaps one of Foley’s fellow finalists just raised the stakes to life and death. With conflicting theories on the crime, tensions are running high. Soon it’s up to Siobhán to call a killer’s bluff, but if she doesn’t play her cards right, she may be the next one taken out of the game.
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In the small village of Kilbane, County Cork, Ireland, Natalie’s Bistro has always been a warm and welcoming spot to visit with neighbors, enjoy some brown bread and tea, and get the local gossip. Nowadays twenty-two-year-old Siobhán O’Sullivan runs the family bistro named for her mother, along with her five siblings, after the death of their parents in a car crash almost a year ago.
\nIt’s been a rough year for the O’Sullivans, but it’s about to get rougher. One morning, as they’re opening the bistro, they discover a man seated at a table, dressed in a suit as if for his own funeral, a pair of hot pink barber scissors protruding from his chest.
\nWith the local garda suspecting the O’Sullivans, and their business in danger of being shunned - murder tends to spoil the appetite - it’s up to feisty redheaded Siobhán to solve the crime and save her beloved brood.
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Former New Yorker and interior designer Tara Meehan is eagerly anticipating the grand opening of her architectural salvage shop Renewals in her newly adopted home of Galway. She's in the midst of preparations when heiress Veronica O'Farrell bursts in to announce she's ready for some renewal of her own. To celebrate one year of sobriety, she's invited seven people she wronged in her drinking days to historic Ballynahinch Castle Hotel in neighboring Connemara to make amends in style.
\nBut perhaps one among them is not so eager to pardon her past misdeeds. Veronica is found lying in the ruins of manor house Clifden Castle with an antique Tara Brooch buried in her heart - the same brooch Tara Meehan admired in her shop the day before, posting a photo with the caption: #Killerbrooch. Now she's a prime suspect, along with Veronica's guests, all of whom had motives to stab the heiress. It's up to Tara to pin down the guilty party . . .
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Tara never imagined her introduction to Ireland like this - carrying her mam’s ashes to honor her final request: “Tell Johnny I’m sorry . . . Take me home.” She’s never met her mam's estranged brother, Johnny Meehan, who owns an architectural salvage business in Galway. Although Tara is immediately charmed by the medieval city, the locals seem wary of strangers and a gypsy warns her that death is all around.
\nWhen Tara arrives at her uncle’s stone cottage, the prophesy seems true. A dead man lies sprawled over the threshold in a pool of blood. The victim turns out to be Johnny’s wealthiest client, and her missing uncle is the garda’s number-one suspect. In trying to find Johnny and solve the crime, Tara uncovers her mam and uncle’s troubled past. But with a desperate killer about, she had better mind herself, or they’ll be tossing her ashes in Galway Bay . . .
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If only her mother could be here! The entire O’Sullivan brood - not to mention the regulars from Naomi’s Bistro - have gathered at St. Mary’s Church for the wedding of Siobhán and Macdara. It’s not every day you see two garda marrying each other. Only Siobhán’s brother James is missing. They can’t start without him.
\nBut when James finally comes racing in, he’s covered in dirt and babbling he’s found a human skeleton in the old slurry pit at the farmhouse. What farmhouse? Macdara sheepishly admits he was saving it as a wedding surprise: he purchased an abandoned dairy farm. Duty calls, so the engaged garda decide to put the wedding on hold to investigate.
\nJames leads them to a skeleton clothed in rags that resemble a tattered tuxedo. As an elderly neighbor approaches, she cries out that these must be the remains of her one true love who never showed up on their wedding day, fifty years ago. The garda have a cold case on their hands, which heats up the following day when a fresh corpse appears on top of the bridegroom’s bones. With a killer at large, they need to watch their backs - or the nearly wedded couple may be parted by death before they’ve even taken their vows . . .
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On a rocky beach in the southwest of Ireland, the body of Jimmy O’Reilly, sixty-nine years old and dressed in a suit and his dancing shoes, is propped on a boulder, staring sightlessly out to sea. A cryptic message is spelled out next to the body with sixty-nine polished black stones and a discarded vial of deadly veterinarian medication lies nearby. Jimmy was a wealthy racehorse owner, known far and wide as The Dancing Man. In a town like Dingle, everyone knows a little something about everyone else. But dig a bit deeper, and there’s always much more to find. And when Detective Inspector Cormac O'Brien is dispatched out of Killarney to lead the murder inquiry, he's determined to unearth every last buried secret.
\nDimpna Wilde hasn’t been home in years. As picturesque as Dingle may be for tourists in search of their roots and the perfect jumper, to her it means family drama and personal complications. In fairness, Dublin hasn’t worked out quite as she hoped either. Faced with a triple bombshell - her mother rumored to be in a relationship with Jimmy, her father’s dementia is escalating, and her brother is avoiding her calls - Dimpna moves back to clear her family of suspicion.
\nDespite plenty of other suspects, the guards are crawling over the Wildes. But the horse business can be a brutal one, and as Dimpna becomes more involved with her old acquaintances and haunts, the depth of lingering grudges becomes clear. Theft, extortion, jealousy and greed. As Dimpna takes over the family practice, she's in a race with the detective inspector to uncover the dark, twisting truth, no matter how close to home it strikes . . .
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In late summer, the Dingle peninsula is thronged with tourists drawn to County Kerry’s dark mountains and deep, lush valleys. For Irish vet Dimpna Wilde, who has returned to run her family’s practice after years away, home is a beautiful but complicated place - especially when it becomes the setting for a brutal murder . . .
\nIn Dimpna Wilde’s veterinary practice, an imminent meteor shower has elevated the usual gossip to include talk of shooting stars and the watch parties that are planned all over Dingle. But there are also matters nearer at hand to discuss - including the ragtag caravan of young people selling wares by the roadside, and the shocking death of Chris Henderson, an elderly local, in a hit-and-run.
\nJust hours before his death, Henderson had stormed into the Garda Station, complaining loudly about the caravan’s occupants causing noise and disruption. One of their members is a beautiful young woman named Brigid Sweeney, and Dimpna is shocked when Brigid later turns up at her practice, her clothing splattered in blood and an injured hare tucked into her shirt.
\nBrigid claims that a mysterious stranger has been trying to obtain a lucky rabbit’s foot. Dimpna is incensed at the thought of anyone mutilating animals, but there is far worse in store. On the night of the meteor shower, Dimpna finds Brigid’s body tied to a tree, her left hand severed. She has bled to death. Wrapped around her wrist is a rabbit’s foot.
\nBrigid had amassed plenty of admirers, and there were tangled relationships within the group. But perhaps there is something more complex than jealousy at play. The rabbit’s foot, the severed hand, the coinciding meteor shower - the deeper Dimpna and Detective Sargeant Cormac O’Brien investigate, the more ominous the signs seem to be, laced with a warning that Dimpna fears it will prove fatal to overlook.
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They say you can never go home again, and for Persephone Fraser, ever since she made the biggest mistake of her life a decade ago, that has felt too true. Instead of glittering summers on the lakeshore of her childhood, she spends them in a stylish apartment in the city, going out with friends, and keeping everyone a safe distance from her heart.
\nUntil she receives the call that sends her racing back to Barry’s Bay and into the orbit of Sam Florek - the man she never thought she’d have to live without.
\nFor six summers, through hazy afternoons on the water and warm summer nights working in his family’s restaurant and curling up together with books - medical textbooks for him and work-in-progress horror short stories for her - Percy and Sam had been inseparable. Eventually that friendship turned into something breathtakingly more, before it fell spectacularly apart.
\nWhen Percy returns to the lake for Sam’s mother’s funeral, their connection is as undeniable as it had always been. But until Percy can confront the decisions she made and the years she’s spent punishing herself for them, they’ll never know whether their love might be bigger than the biggest mistakes of their past.
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Told over the course of six years and one weekend, Every Summer After is a big, sweeping nostalgic look at love and the people and choices that mark us forever.
Fern Brookbanks has wasted far too much of her adult life thinking about Will Baxter. She spent just twenty-four hours in her early twenties with the aggravatingly attractive, idealistic artist, a chance encounter that spiraled into a daylong adventure in Toronto. The timing was wrong, but their connection was undeniable: they shared every secret, every dream, and made a pact to meet one year later. Fern showed up. Will didn't.
\nAt thirty-two, Fern's life doesn't look at all how she once imagined it would. Instead of living in the city, Fern's back home, running her mother's Muskoka lakeside resort--something she vowed never to do. The place is in disarray, her ex-boyfriend's the manager, and Fern doesn't know where to begin.
\nShe needs a plan - a lifeline. To her surprise, it comes in the form of Will, who arrives nine years too late, with a suitcase in tow and an offer to help on his lips. Will may be the only person who understands what Fern's going through. But how could she possibly trust this expensive-suit wearing mirage who seems nothing like the young man she met all those years ago. Will is hiding something, and Fern's not sure she wants to know what it is.
\nBut ten years ago, Will Baxter rescued Fern. Can she do the same for him?
Good things happen at the lake. That’s what Alice’s grandmother says, and it’s true. Alice spent just one summer at a cottage with Nan when she was seventeen - it’s where she took that photo, the one of three grinning teenagers in a yellow speedboat, the image that changed her life.
\nNow Alice lives behind a lens. As a photographer, she’s most comfortable on the sidelines, letting other people shine. Lately though, she’s been itching for something more, and when Nan falls and breaks her hip, Alice comes up with a plan for them both: another summer in that magical place, Barry’s Bay. But as soon as they settle in, their peace is disrupted by the roar of a familiar yellow boat, and the man driving it.
\nCharlie Florek was nineteen when Alice took his photo from afar. Now he’s all grown up - a shameless flirt, who manages to make Nan laugh and Alice long to be seventeen again, when life was simpler, when taking pictures was just for fun. Sun-slanted days and warm nights out on the lake with Charlie are a balm for Alice’s soul, but when she looks up and sees his piercing green gaze directly on her, she begins to worry for her heart.
\nBecause Alice sees people - that’s why she is so good at what she does - but she’s never met someone who looks and sees her right back.
Frankie and George have been best friends since they were eight years old. Both passionate, impulsive, and headstrong - they’ve always clashed . . . and come back together. Until now. It’s the eve of Frankie’s wedding weekend, and she doesn’t know where they stand or even if George will show up as her best man.
\nThen, at the start of the festivities, in walks George. For one glorious evening, surrounded by her loved ones, Frankie’s life is finally perfect. But it all comes crashing down when her fiancé dumps her the next morning, leaving only a note as an explanation.
\nCrushed and confused, Frankie returns to her family’s home to wallow. But George has a different idea and a plan for healing Frankie’s broken heart. He wants her to go on her honeymoon. With him. For one week, to the lush rainforests and misty beaches of Tofino.
\nFrankie agrees, seeing the trip for what it really is: one last chance to repair their friendship. Even if it means unearthing secrets and long buried feelings neither knows how to handle. Even if it means falling apart for good.
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Lucy is the tourist vacationing at a beach house on Prince Edward Island. Felix is the local who shows her a very good time. The only problem: Lucy doesn’t know he’s her best friend’s younger brother. Lucy and Felix’s chemistry is unreal, but the list of reasons why they need to stay away from each other is long, and they vow to never repeat that electric night again.
\nIt’s easier said than done.
\nEach year, Lucy escapes to PEI for a big breath of coastal air, fresh oysters and crisp vinho verde with her best friend, Bridget. Every visit begins with a long walk on the beach, beneath soaring red cliffs and a golden sun. And every visit, Lucy promises herself she won’t wind up in Felix’s bed. Again.
\nIf Lucy can’t help being drawn to Felix, at least she’s always kept her heart out of it.
\nWhen Bridget suddenly flees Toronto a week before her wedding, Lucy drops everything to follow her to the island. Her mission is to help Bridget through her crisis and resist the one man she’s never been able to. But Felix’s sparkling eyes and flirty quips have been replaced with something new, and Lucy’s beginning to wonder just how safe her heart truly is.
What do children know that adults can’t begin to believe? The answer is hidden in plain sight. Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night. In the town of Never-Again, Pennsylvania, this hand-game song contains a history - centuries of inexplicable tiger sightings. It also reveals a frightening prophecy, one that only a small circle of players envisions.
\nAfter Never-Again becomes the scene of unimaginable violence, a researcher uncovers the truth about the game, right down to its final chilling verse.
In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.
\nAnd it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope - the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman - through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.
\nMachado’s dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.
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Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the Republican equivalent of a Kennedy? What Natalie’s followers - all 8 million of them - don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal - and just so happens to be building an empire from it.
\nUntil one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children - they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a brutal reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realises two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible.
\nA gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.
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Young, headstrong Psyche has captured the eyes of every suitor in town and far beyond with her tempestuous beauty, which has made her irresistible as a woman yet undesirable as a wife. Secretly, she longs for a life away from the expectations and demands of men. When her father realises that the future of his family and town will be forever cursed unless he appeases an enraged Aphrodite, he follows the orders of the Oracle, tying Psyche to a rock to be ravaged by a monstrous husband. And yet a monster never arrives.
\nWhen Eros, nonbinary deity of desire, sees Psyche, she cannot fulfill her promise to her mother Aphrodite to destroy the mortal young woman. Instead, Eros devises a plan to sweep Psyche away to an idyllic palace, hidden from the prying eyes of Aphrodite, Zeus, and the outside world. There, against the dire dictates of Olympus, Eros and Psyche fall in love. Each night, Eros visits Psyche under the cover of impenetrable darkness, where they both experience untold passion and love. But each morning, Eros flies away before light comes to break the spell of the palace that keeps them safe.
\nBefore long, Psyche’s nights spent in pleasure turn to days filled with doubts, as she grapples with the cost of secrecy and the complexities of freedom and desire. Restless and spurred by her sisters to reveal Eros’s true nature, she breaks her trust and forces a reckoning that tests them both - and transforms the very heavens.
\nTold in bold and sparkling prose, The Palace of Eros transports us to a magical world imbued by divine forces as well as everyday realities, where palaces glitter with magic even as ordinary people fight for freedom in a society that fears the unknown.
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The Crucifixion Killer is stalking Glasgow . . . leaving victims' mutilated bodies in a Christ-like pose.
\nDCI Alan McAlpine - a renowned and successful police officer - is drafted in to lead the hunt, supported by local officers DI Anderson and DS Costello. But the past holds horrific memories for McAlpine. He last worked this beat some twenty years earlier, when he was assigned to guard a woman - nameless and faceless after a sadistic acid attack - at a Glasgow hospital.
\nAn obsession was born at that hospital room that has never quite left McAlpine . . . and now it seems to be resurfacing. For a reason. As the chase to halt the gruesome murders intensifies, so Anderson and Costello find chilling cause for concern uncomfortably close to home . . .
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DI Colin Anderson is having a bad week. His conviction of paedophile Skelpie Fairbairn is declared unsafe - putting Fairbairn back on Glasgow's streets and leaving Anderson under investigation.
\nAdd to this a gangster torched alive, a teenage boy tortured then dropped off a bridge and the suicide of a cop who worked an unsolved child kidnapping way back in 1996 and Anderson's got his hands full. Then one night, a young girl is tied to the river bank and left for the tide. Anderson gets there, but she dies in his arms.
\nWorking round the clock his team discover these strange crimes are linked to an elusive criminal mastermind known as The Puppeteer. But unable to find him, unable to stop the murders, Anderson is forced to follow the only lead he has - Skelpie Fairbairn . . .
\nBut which is worse - The devil you don't know, or the one you do . . .?
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A bitterly cold February in Glasgow. In the attic of a deserted tenement, the body of a man is found hanging, his face disfigured beyond recognition.
\nAround his neck is a sign that reads: I Am Stephen Whyte.
\nInvestigating officers DI Anderson and DS Costello believe the dead man was the prime suspect in a decade-old unsolved case.
\nTen years ago, a young woman was brutally attacked and left for dead. Now the man found hanging has the exact same horrific injuries.
\nThere are other similar cases on file.
\nBut the dead man didn’t act alone, he had an accomplice - who is still on the loose . . .
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In the small Highland village of Cronchie, a wealthy family are found brutally murdered in a satanic ritual and their heirloom, 'the devil stone', is the only thing stolen. The key suspects are known satanists - case closed? But when the investigating officer disappears after leaving the crime scene, DCI Christine Caplan is pulled in to investigate from Glasgow in a case that could restore her reputation.
\nCaplan knows she is being punished for a minor misdemeanour when she is seconded to the Highlands, but ever the professional, she's confident she can quickly solve the murders, and return home to her fractious family. But experience soon tells her that this is no open and shut case.
\nShe suspects the murder scene was staged, and with the heir to the family estate missing, there is something more at play than a mythical devil stone. As she closes in on the truth, it is suddenly her life, not her reputation that is danger! Will Caplan's first Highland murder case be her last?
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'Girl A' was convicted of murdering three people when she was a child. Now she's missing and a man is dead. The clock is ticking for Scottish detective DCI Christine Caplan to bring her to justice - but the truth may be darker than even she fears . . .
\nWhen a body is discovered in the water at Connel Bridge, the police assume it's an open-and-shut case of suicide. But when DCI Christine Caplan is called in to take a closer look, she discovers that darker truths lurk beneath the surface, and suspicion begins to turn to a young woman recently out of care.
\nKnown only as Girl A, her identity remains anonymous, protected under law. Her violent past includes an allegation of the murder of a younger sibling, so the timing of this new death seems too coincidental. Then a vigilante sets her home on fire and she flees, so the 'child killer' is now on the loose - and at risk herself.
\nAs Caplan launches a search for the elusive teenager, looking for connections between her and the dead man, she turns to Girl A's past for answers. And when she gets them, she realizes the truth may be even more sinister.
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Elvie McCulloch’s sister Sophie has been missing for 57 days. She went out for a run - and never came home.
\nThen Elvie is driving home one night. The naked, emaciated body of a young woman crashes from high above onto an oncoming car.
\nElvie recognises her as Lorna Lennox, who’s also been missing for weeks. But how did she fall from so high? Where had she been all this time? And why was she running for her life?
\nElvie teams up with retired - and disgraced - detective Billy Hopkins. The duo work with Anderson and Costello to find out what happened to Sophie and the other missing girls.
\nBut they’re up against a terrifying enemy: The Night Hunter. And time is running out for Sophie.
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The body is found in the early hours of the morning, drifting lifelessly on the outgoing tide. Twenty-three-year-old medical student Aasha Ariti had been enjoying a night out to celebrate the end of lockdown. Anthony Poole, the last person to have seen her alive, is the prime suspect.
\nBefore detectives Anderson and Costello can make further headway, they are pulled off the case to investigate the murder of a pensioner in his own home. The body of eighty-one-year-old Jimmy Pearcey reveals evidence of prolonged, excruciating torture in the hours before he died. Of one thing DCI Anderson is certain: this killing was very close and very personal. But the victim was a loner, without friends or relatives.
\nAs they dig deeper however, the two detectives uncover a number of secrets in the dead man's past. Secrets that link to another murder more than forty years before. What really happened on 21st June 1978? Someone is determined to ensure that Anderson and Costello never find out. Whatever it takes.
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A dying cop asks DCI Christine Caplan to fulfil her last to investigate a cold case that’s still preying on her mind. The naked body of a young man that was found in a lonely wood, dismissed as a down and out by her superiors. Caplan connects the case to other victims left to die in the bleak Scottish forests, injured and unable to escape. As the scent grows stronger, the cold cases suddenly seem dangerously hot.
\nIn this thrilling hunt for the missing girl, Caplan must trace where love and control get out of hand, and question where power lies in any relationship. Meanwhile, the dark nights of Scotland conceal a terrifying game of cat and mouse . . .
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In August 1992, a mother and her two young sons were brutally hacked to death in the woods behind their home. The boys were just three and one.
\nThe neighbour, Andrew Gyle, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
\nNow, twenty-three years later, a sinkhole emerges in the garden of the murdered family. In the wreckage, a grisly discovery is made. It may even throw Gyle’s conviction into doubt.
\nAndrew Gyle always maintained his innocence. What if he really didn’t do it?
\nMeanwhile, Anderson is back from his leave of absence, but Costello worries he is struggling to cope. His increasingly erratic behaviour makes her think the unthinkable: can she trust her own partner?
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A family man is stabbed to death at a crowded Christmas Ice Show. Murdered in plain sight. No clues, no witnesses, no known motive.
\nA week later, two bodies are discovered at a holiday cottage in a remote highland glen: one in the kitchen; the other sprawled outside on the icy lawn. The killer would appear to have arrived and left without leaving a trace, not even a footprint in the snow.
\nWhat secrets are lurking within this isolated, superstitious community? As the snow piles higher, detectives Anderson and Costello put their wits to solving a seemingly impossible crime, and gradually uncover a twisted tale of greed, obsession - and cold-blooded murder.
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Detective Inspector Costello has resigned. No notice, no goodbyes. Convinced that George Haggerty murdered his wife and son despite his cast-iron alibi, Costello has gone solo, determined to expose a ruthless killer without being hampered by police protocol. But is she right about Haggerty's guilt? And where has she disappeared to?
\nDCI Colin Anderson has no time to ponder the loss of his partner of twenty years. With a badly beaten body found on a remote mountain pass; a woman with a serious head wound who won't communicate in any way; and a substantial pool of blood discovered at the edge of Loch Lomond, Police Scotland have their hands full. Could there be any connection to Costello's disappearance?
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It's been four years since four-year-old Johnny Clearwater disappeared without trace one hot summer afternoon. Now, a new TV documentary series is revisiting the case, dredging up memories perhaps best left forgotten.
\nOn the night the TV show is broadcast, detectives Anderson and Costello are called out to investigate the murder of a female police officer. On arriving at the scene, they discover that nothing about this death is as straightforward as it would appear. What was the victim doing in the garden of the exclusive gated residence where she was found? How did she die? Why is the key witness so reluctant to speak to them? Even the off-duty police officer who was first on the scene isn't telling them everything.
\nThe pressure intensifies when a link is discovered between the dead woman and the disappearance of Johnny Clearwater four years earlier. What secrets are lurking behind the closed doors of this small, exclusive community . . . and what really happened to little Johnny Clearwater?
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Seven-year-old Troy McEwan was only wearing leggings and a thin fleece. It’s down to minus three at night and the snow is falling. His mum doesn’t know where he is.
\nThen little Luca Scott goes missing as well.
\nSomeone is snatching boys from the streets of Glasgow. And the boys look just like one of the detectives' own sons.
\nNow with time running out to find them alive, the squad has been decimated by flu. Not to mention they have a nit-picking new boss and the media more is interested in the return of a local pop star.
\nIt’s going to take everything Detectives Anderson and Costello have to find these missing kids.
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Paige Riley has been missing for a week. Not that anyone cares much about the homeless heroin addict. The case remains open but inactive; left standing still until something comes up.
\nMeanwhile, Glasgow s citizens are in celebratory mood for the annual West End Festival parade. But beneath the jovial surface lurks something darker. A confused young woman is found wandering among the clowns, stilt-walkers and jostling crowds, claiming to have been abducted by aliens. She had originally disappeared the night before. What happened to her in those intervening hours?
\nBefore DCI Anderson and DI Costello can find out, a body is discovered. Is there a connection? As the two detectives investigate, it becomes horrifyingly clear that a depraved killer has taken advantage of the busiest day of the year to carry out a gruesomely macabre plan.
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When a six-week-old baby is stolen from outside a village shop, Detective Inspector Costello quickly surmises there's more to this case than meets the eye. As she questions those involved, she uncovers evidence that this was no impulsive act as the police initially assumed, but something cold, logical, meticulously planned. Who has taken Baby Sholto? And why?
\nColin Anderson meanwhile is on the Cold Case Unit, reviewing the unsolved rape of a young mother back in 1996. Convinced this wasn't the first ? or last - time the attacker struck, Anderson looks for a pattern. But when he does find a connection, it reaches back into his own past . . .
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A few days before the summer solstice a 92-year-old woman is found burned to death in her home. On the same day, a man s mutilated corpse is discovered in a field, his arms ripped from their sockets, a Tarot card depicting The Fool inserted in his mouth.
\nWhen the victim is identified as someone for whom the police have been looking for almost a year, detectives Anderson and Costello find themselves caught up in a case where nothing is as it seems. Was the dead man really responsible for three child murders? And what is the connection with the death of the elderly woman?
\nThe investigation leads to the tranquil shores of Loch Lomond where Anderson and Costello will finally uncover the shocking truth.
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Koi, ex-supermodel and face of lifestyle brand the Sunflower Company, is #livingmybestlife in a Scottish castle with her famous family of nepo babies and influencers. Everything they do is posed, filtered and spun for the perfect story. Even when Koi is found on the rocks at the foot of a cliff, the media juggernaut rolls on, with the image of her body, battered and bleeding, splashed across every social platform around the world.
\nDCI Christine Caplan's job is simple - did Koi fall, jump or was she pushed? Only the family knows what really happened that night and, as with everything in their lives, they're only willing to engage with reveals they can stage. With the world's press breathing down her neck, Caplan must figure out what's real, what it takes to survive in the public eye, and how the truth of a story lies in the telling. As Caplan begins to see through Koi's glossy facade, she realizes just how close to the edge she was, and how easy it can be for one misstep to bring everything crashing down . . .
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It’s been twenty-five years since the shocking disappearance of a female student and the distinguished Creative Writing professor who died while searching for her. The Briarwood College community has never forgotten the terrible storm that caused the double tragedy. Now, the college President - who has his own reasons for drawing attention to the notorious incident - is bringing together faculty, donors, and alumni to honor the victims from all those years ago.
\nOn a cold December weekend after the fall semester has ended, guests gather on the vacant campus for the commemoratory event. But as a winter storm descends, people begin to depart, leaving a group of alumni who were the last ones taught by the esteemed professor. Recriminations and old rivalries flare as they recall the writing projects they shared as classmates, including chilling horror stories they each wrote about their greatest fears.
\nWhen an alumna dies in a shockingly similar way to the story she wrote, and then another succumbs to a similar fate, they realize someone has decided at long last to avenge the crimes of the past. Will the secret of what they did twenty-five years ago be revealed? Will any of them be alive at the end of the weekend to find out?
Lucy Harper still has traumatic memories and lingering health problems from the 2020 pandemic. So, when a new virus surfaces years later, she and her husband, Reed, seek refuge on his family's private island off the coast of Maine. Ostensibly safely sequestered with their five closest friends and family, Lucy should feel at ease. So why does she feel the weight of the island's dark history pushing down on the group?
\nAs Lucy uncovers Reed's family secrets and the island's history as a quarantine hospital for typhus patients, she becomes obsessed with the past and feels her own grip on reality slipping. Tempers flare, strange signs appear in the woods, and accidents turn deadly. Is the island haunted by the dead? Or is someone amongst the living taking their revenge?
ALICE gets off a bus in the middle of a snowstorm in Delphi, NY. She is fleeing an abusive relationship and desperate to protect . . .
OREN, ten years old, a major Star Wars fan and wise beyond his years. Though Alice is wary, Oren bonds nearly instantly with . . .
MATTIE, a social worker in her fifties who lives in an enormous run-down house in the middle of the woods. Mattie lives alone and is always available, and so she is the person the hotline always calls when they need a late-night pickup. And although according to protocol Mattie should take Alice and Oren to a local shelter, instead she brings them home for the night. She has plenty of room, she says. What she doesn't say is that Oren reminds her of her little brother, who died thirty years ago at the age of ten.
But Mattie isn't the only one withholding elements of the truth. Alice is keeping her own secrets. And as the snowstorm worsens around them, each woman's past will prove itself unburied, stirring up threats both within and without.
Agnes Corey, a junior editor at a small independent publisher, has been hired by enigmatic author Veronica St. Clair to transcribe the sequel to her 1993 hit phenomenon, The Secret of Wyldcliffe Heights. St. Clair has been a recluse since the publication of the Jane Eyre-esque book, which coincided with a terrible fire that blinded and scarred her. Arriving in the Hudson Valley at St. Clair’s crumbling estate, which was once a psychiatric hospital for “wayward women,” Agnes is eager to ensure St. Clair’s devoted fans will get the sequel they’ve been anticipating for the past thirty years.
\nAs St. Clair dictates, Agnes realises there are clues in the story that reveal the true - and terrifying - events three decades ago that inspired the original novel. The line between fact and fiction becomes increasingly blurred, and Agnes discovers terrible secrets about an unresolved murder from long ago - which have startling connections to her own life.
\nAs St. Clair’s twisting tale infiltrates Agnes’s psyche, Agnes begins to question her own sanity - and safety. In order to save herself, Agnes must uncover what really happened to St. Clair, and in doing so, set free the stories of all the women traumatised and victimised by Wyldcliffe Heights.
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It’s taken Joan Lurie three years to write her article exposing a famous newspaper tycoon as a sexual predator. On the eve of its publication, she celebrates at a party thrown in her honor and is riding high . . . only to be brutally attacked as she is returning home late that night. Traumatised and suffering the effects of a concussion, she moves to a highly secure new apartment building in northern Manhattan called the Refuge. Safely sequestered away, she tries to begin writing a book that expands her much-lauded exposé.
\nAt the Refuge, Joan encounters a frail 96-year-old woman who has been living in the building since the 1940s when it was a Magdalen Laundry and Refuge for Fallen Women. When Lillian first arrived, she was hiding out from the infamous Murder, Inc mobsters. As Lillian relates her story about the long-ago incriminating incident she witnessed that forced her into hiding, Joan recalls certain details of her own investigation.
\nThe more Joan learns about Lillian and the fabled story of the Refuge, the more she realises they may be linked to the book she is writing - and to her attacker that fateful night. As Joan starts to connect the clues and unravel decades worth of history, she must stay one step ahead of those who are desperate to make sure Joan never uncovers the final truth.
Fifteen years ago, Maia Gold attended a prestigious - and very exclusive - writers retreat hosted by billionaire Argos Alexander on the Greek island of Eris. It’s where she wrote her first book, the one that should have launched a brilliant career. But something dark happened on that island, a betrayal that has hung over Maia ever since.
\nNow, Maia finds a familiar envelope in the mail. It’s an invitation to return to Eris, and according to social media, she’s not the only one from that first retreat who’s been invited back. This could be the second chance Maia needs to jump-start her dreams. A chance for reconciliation . . . or revenge.
\nAlmost all of the writers from fifteen years before have returned to Eris, bringing unresolved resentments with them. Soon, the guests learn that their illustrious host is absent, though he has left instructions for them to participate in a whoever can write the most suspenseful mystery while on the island will win a fortune and literary acclaim. But this is no harmless game - when the guests gather in the morning to share their first chapters, they find Argos Alexander, dead.
\nTensions simmer as the guests try to determine who’s behind the murder, and why they’ve really been invited to the retreat. On an island full of mystery writers, anyone could be the killer - and anyone could be the next victim. Trapped together until the next boat arrives from the mainland, they must sort out old grievances and figure out how to trust one another . . . or die one by one.
It is daunting to grow old in a time and place that does not value old people, but the age group known as Boomers should not be so easily dismissed. They marched against the Vietnam War and were the first generation to be liberated by the contraceptive pill from the fear of unwanted pregnancy. Their teenage years were fuelled by protest songs and peace-and-love idealism, and many are still engaged in forms of activism.
\nFramed by the turning of the seasons in her small suburban garden, Carol Lefevre's Bloomer documents the year in which she turned seventy. Memoir threads through meditations on aspects of ageing, from its hidden grief and potential for loneliness to our relationship with the past and with our own mortality.
\nIn this gorgeous, optimistic and eloquent coming-of-old-age book, Boomers emerge as Bloomers - people not at the end of things but still on their way, ready to embrace a late-life flourishing.
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From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Prairie Fires comes a terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest - a gripping investigation of how a new strain of psychopath emerged out of a toxic landscape of deadly industrial violence
\nCaroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and 80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?
\nAs Murderland indelibly maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem - the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, even Charles Manson - Fraser's Northwestern death trip begins to uncover a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. At ground zero in Ted Bundy's Tacoma, stood one of the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was only one among many that dotted the area.
\nAs Fraser's investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of western smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives, but also warped young minds, spawning a generation of serial killers.
\nA propulsive non-fiction thriller, Murderland transcends true-crime voyeurism and noir mythology, taking readers on a profound quest into the dark heart of the real American berserk.
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Ten years ago, Lila Devlin was an A-list actress with a movie star husband and a beautiful baby girl, Josie. When Josie was kidnapped out of her home and never seen again, Lila’s previously pristine public image twisted into that of an Unfit Mother. Driven mad by the hungry press, incompetent cops, and relentless true crime–obsessed “fans,” she disappeared into anonymity.
\nNow, Lila Devlin returns to LA with a grand vision for a radical new skincare brand to reinvent herself and honor Josie’s legacy. She's prepared to move into the next chapter of her life with forgiveness in her heart, when an encounter with a parasitic blogger ends with him dead. Lila suddenly discovers forgiveness isn’t nearly as satisfying as a body hitting the floor.
\nWith the help of her devoted publicist Sylvie, Lila begins a relentless, blood-soaked hunt through LA. Giving her skincare the edge it needs, they introduce a secret ingredient - revenge-sourced - from the bodies piling up. But as the company’s success skyrockets and Lila begins unraveling the truth behind her daughter’s kidnapping, her murderous side hustle threatens the life she’s painstakingly rebuilt.
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Joe Goldberg is ready for a change. Instead of selling books, he’s writing them. And he's off to a good start. Glenn Shoddy, an acclaimed literary author, recognizes Joe's genius and invites him to join a tight-knit writing fellowship at Harvard. Finally, Joe will be in a place where talent matters more than pedigree, where intellect is the great equalizer and anything is possible - even happy endings. Or so he thinks, until he meets his already-published, already-distinguished peers, who all seem to be cut from the same privileged cloth.
\nThankfully, Wonder enters the picture. They have so much in common. No college degrees, no pretensions, no stories from prep school or grad school. Just a love for literature. If only Wonder could commit herself to the writing life they could be those rare literary soulmates who never fall prey to their demons. There is so much they’re up against, but Joe has faith in Wonder. He will sacrifice his art for hers. And if he has to, he will kill her darlings for her.
\nWith her trademark satirical, biting wit, Caroline Kepnes explores why vulnerable people bring out the worst in others as Joe sets out to make this small, elite world a fairer place. And if a little crimson runs in the streets of Cambridge who can blame him? Love doesn't conquer all. Often, it needs a little push.
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What’s a woman to do when she fails to live up to feminine ideals? It depends on what she’s willing to give up in this darkly comic short story.
\nShelby is struggling with parenthood, marriage, a passive-aggressive mother, and unemployment. But she also has a sweet escape in her beloved Hallmark movies. When a secret admirer promises to sweep her away into a world of those same romantic tropes, the temptation is so heady, Shelby can already smell the pumpkin spice. But this rom-com dream has a whiff of conspiracy . . .
Joe is done with the cities. He’s done with the muck and the posers, done with Love. Now, he’s saying hello to nature, to simple pleasures on a cozy island in the Pacific Northwest. For the first time in a long time, he can just breathe.
\nHe gets a job at the local library - he does know a thing or two about books - and that’s where he meets her: Mary Kay DiMarco. Librarian. Joe won’t meddle, he will not obsess. He’ll win her the old-fashioned way . . . by providing a shoulder to cry on, a helping hand. Over time, they’ll both heal their wounds and begin their happily ever after in this sleepy town.
\nThe trouble is . . . Mary Kay already has a life. She’s a mother. She’s a friend. She’s . . . busy.
\nTrue love can only triumph if both people are willing to make room for the real thing. Joe cleared his decks. He’s ready. And hopefully, with his encouragement and undying support, Mary Kay will do the right thing and make room for him.
Love hurts . . .
\nWhen aspiring writer Guinevere Beck strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe works, he’s instantly smitten. Beck is everything Joe has ever wanted: She’s gorgeous, tough, razor-smart, and as sexy as his wildest dreams.
\nBeck doesn’t know it yet, but she’s perfect for him, and soon she can’t resist her feelings for a guy who seems custom made for her. But there’s more to Joe than Beck realizes, and much more to Beck than her oh-so-perfect façade. Their mutual obsession quickly spirals into a whirlwind of deadly consequences . . .
\nA chilling account of unrelenting passion, Caroline Kepnes’s You is a perversely romantic thriller that’s more dangerously clever than any you’ve read before.
\nOn the day of her 26th birthday, Jane is recently single, adrift at her job, and intrigued by why Clem - her much older, married boss - is singing to her.
\nMeanwhile her alter-ego, the online agony aunt Jolly Politely, has all the answers. She's provided thousands of strangers with insightful and occasionally cutting insights to contemporary life's most vexing questions.
\nWhen she and Clem kiss at a party, Jane does not follow the advice she would give to her readers as Jolly: instead she plunges head-first into an affair. One that could jeopardise her friendships, her career and even her life.
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.
\nWhen Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife.
Charlie Regan's life isn't going forward, so she's decided to go back.
\nAfter a tough few years floundering around the British film industry, experimenting with amateur pornography and watching her father's health rapidly decline, she and her best friend Laura journey to her ancestral home of Clipim, an island off the west coast of Ireland.
\nKnowing this could be the last chance to connect with her dad's history before she loses him, Charlie clings to the idea of her Irish roots offering some kind of solace. But she'll find out her heritage is about more than clichés and clover-foamed Guinness.
\nWhen the girls arrive at Clipim, Charlie begins to question both her difficult relationship with Laura and her father's childhood stories. Before long, she's embroiled in a devastating conspiracy that's been sixty years in the making . . . and it's up to her to reveal the truth of it.
\nWith a sharp eye and sour tongue, Caroline O'Donoghue delivers a delicious contemporary fable of prodigal return. Blisteringly honest, funny and moving, it grapples with love, friendship and the struggle of second-generation immigrants trying to belong.
Margo is a troubled schoolgirl. After the death of her father, she’s on her way to a new boarding school in a new city.
\nMoon is a salesman. He makes his living traveling through a series of interconnected worlds on a network of barely used train lines.
\nThey never should have met. But when Margo suddenly appears one day on Moon’s train, their fates become inextricably linked. If Margo wants to survive, she has to pass as a traveling salesman, too - except it’s not that easy.
\nMove north on the train line and time speeds up, a day passing in mere hours. Move south and time slows down 0 a day can last several weeks. Slow worlds are the richest you live longer, your youth lasting decades. Fast worlds are sharp, cruel, and don’t have time for pleasantries. Death is frequent. Salesmen die young of skipshock. That is, if they’re not shot down by the Southern Guard first.
\nAs Margo moves between worlds and her attachment to Moon intensifies, she feels her youth start to slip between her fingers. But is Moon everything he seems? Is Margo?
It’s 2001, and ambitious editorial assistant Clodaugh Harmon is eager to rise through the ranks of her prestigious fashion magazine. There’s just one problem: Clo is an unpedigreed “work horse,” surrounded by beautiful, rich, and impossibly well dressed “showhorses” from the NYC elite, including her cubicle-mate Davis Lawrence, the daughter of beloved screen actress Barbara Lawrence.
\nDetermined to succeed, Clo works her way into the Lawrence’s inner circle and up the political ladder at the magazine. But as she scrapes her way to the top, she finds herself caught in the crosscurrents of the shift from class to mass, and when the magazine world crumbles around her, she realises there may no longer be a prize at the end of the road.
I’m a Gemini. Impulsive. Curious. Headstrong. A twin. Heir to a throne I know nothing about. And it turns out, I’m Fae.
\nBut of course there’s a catch - all I have to do to claim my birth right is prove that I’m the most powerful supernatural in the whole of Solaria. And sure, technically that’s true as I’m the daughter of the Savage King. But the bit they didn’t put in the brochure was that every single Fae in this Kingdom would claim my throne if they could.
\nThe school they’ve sent me to is both dangerous as sh*t and one helluva party. Vampires bite weaker students in the corridors, the Werewolf pack has orgies in the Wailing Wood at every full moon and don’t even get me started on the dark and twisted ways the Sirens use their powers on people’s emotions, or how my sinfully tempting Cardinal Magic teacher hosts detentions that leave people needing therapy.
\nClasses are totally interesting if you manage to live through them. And that Gemini star sign I mentioned? It now determines my elemental magic and affects my destiny, so learning astrology is essential if I’m going to beat down my classmates - which is actively encouraged by the way.
\nMy biggest problem is the drool worthy Dragon shifter who has his eyes on my throne. He and his three psycho friends are determined to make my time here hell.
\nAll I’ve got to do is survive. But fate might have other ideas.
\nDammit, why couldn’t I have gotten a letter to Hogwarts?
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The wild is calling.
The war is raging. Our leaders are lying.
And I’m starting to play treason all too often in my dreams.
The land is rife with secrets which whisper to me on the wind and the destiny I had so long desired is souring now that I’ve claimed it. I want to follow the path that has been laid out for me but with every step I take down it, my gut twists with doubts and my heart pounds to a traitorous beat.
\nThere is a secret in the heart of our lands. I don’t know who’s keeping it and I don’t know what uncovering it will mean, but I find myself wanting to unveil it for all to see. I’m torn between the life I’ve always claimed to want and the truth which is calling out for me to discover it. But if I allow myself to entertain these doubts which are rising in the corners of my mind then I may find myself a traitor to all I’ve ever been.
\nNot that my heart minds treachery. It races for a man I should hate, thunders at the promise of his touch, pounds at the thought of his kiss. I shouldn’t ache for him the way I do. I shouldn’t want any of the things I yearn for in the dead of the night. But my eyes still find him in every room, my mind lingers on him when we are parted and my soul burns for him in every waking moment.
\nHe can’t be mine. I won’t be his. But perhaps fate has different designs in mind for us . . .
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After the devastating events at Zodiac Academy, we have to deal with this darker world we're faced with.
\nLionel seeks to hurt us, the Nymphs seek to hurt the entire Fae race, and between all of it, we just have to try and survive each day as it comes.
\nI'm afraid of everything falling apart, but it looks like it already has.
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The sky is burning.
\nThe Reapers are keeping secrets. Vampires roam the wastes.
\nAnd I’m headed down a path of destruction which can only end in death.
\nI’m a soul cast adrift on a tide of grief and lies. A clock ticking down the moments to my inevitable destruction, and all I can do is race towards it.
\nThe nations are caught in this endless battle for supremacy and it’s hard to see myself as anything other than a pawn in the twisted games I’m helpless to control.
\nThe Waning Lands are screaming, soaked in blood for so long that even the rivers run red with it. But those screams are whispering riddles that only some of us can hear, begging us to see the signs and listen to the meaning beneath the words we chant so obediently.
\nWhat if there is something more to this war? What if winning isn’t what actually matters? What if our magic isn’t the thing that truly divides us?
\nMy heart is hardened to the wants of the world and all who occupy it, yet still I hear them call my name. Perhaps it’s time I started listening and found out why the stars have set us this fate. Or if not the stars, then who?
\nSomething is rotting at the heart of our lands. So now I have a choice to make. Will I seek out the decay and work to destroy it? Or will I join it in its destruction of this world in vengeance for all the suffering it has offered me?
\nI’m starting to want things I shouldn’t want. Desire a man I should hate. Care for a warrior I should only wish to harm. The point is, I’m beginning to feel like more than just another pawn in this endless game. But if I want to be the one who rolls the dice then I’m going to have to pay the price of playing for real.
\nI only wanted to claim revenge for what I’d lost.
\nMaybe Destiny isn’t done with me yet.
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Fate has torn us apart and sometimes I believe the stars have given up on us altogether. Without my sister, the world seems darker than ever before and the shadows loom thicker, rising up to answer the call of the Shadow Princess and changing the face of Solaria for good.
\nNow Lionel Acrux has the strength to make a move for the throne, I’m not sure how much time we have left to stop him.
\nOur only hope is to find the Imperial Star before he does. We made the sacrifice the stars called for and we’re paying the price for that decision so it can’t be for nothing. But with the stars turning against us at every move, and the last light in the world seeming to fade, I’m afraid we’re almost out of time. Hope is a dangerous thing. It’s the key to us fighting on. But it could be what destroys us in the end.
\nOne thing is for certain, I won’t stop until I have been reunited with my other half and together we will fight to take our crowns.
\nA war is coming.
\nThe throne is calling for a new monarch. And someone must answer its call.
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The winds of fate are shifting, and it finally seems like they’ve been twisted in our favour.
\nOn the run and cast out from society, we’ve been forced to hide from the mad man who stole our throne. But as more secrets come to light and my sister and I work harder than ever before to reach our potential and claim our birth right, the end is finally drawing closer.
\nThere is no turning from this path now. The curse chases on our heels as time rushes by and the blood drenched destiny of the man I love looms ever closer just like the monster who stole our throne.
\nWe must prepare for the final battle, but three things are clear now.
\nThe cards have already been dealt.
\nBlood will spill for a new future to rise.
\nAnd the stars themselves can’t help us.
\nThe fight for the throne is upon us. All hail the heartless sky.
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I’m a wielder of hearts and summoner of corruption. Heir to nothing and born to a fool in the wrong damn month.
\nBut I’m also one of only two Fae in this divided land of hellions who might be starting to see through the lies we’ve swallowed for so long.
\nIn the year we turn twenty-one, conscripts from across the warring nations of air, fire, earth and water are sent to Never Keep - the only place in our besieged continent where our magic can be Awakened.
\nBut something is wrong inside Never Keep. Something which might extend far beyond the reaches of this desolate fortress. Within the gothic walls of this frigid castle in the snow, we’re left to hold our own against the brutal Fae from the opposing lands.
\nThe Reapers are merciless. The Royals are lying. The Werewolves run rampant and Vampires roam the wastelands in bloodthirsty covens. But even though death lurks in every shadow of the Keep, it’s the least of my worries.
\nI’m delving into secrets the stars don’t want me uncovering, making alliances with Fae born to be my enemy, falling for a sinner while promising my heart to a different heathen and somewhere amid it all, I’m supposed to win a war.
\nI thought the only thing I had to do was survive my magical instruction.
\nTurns out, fate doesn’t favour the wicked.
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The answer to your question will be revealed on the Lunar Eclipse. But when finding the truth, don't let the shadows take you.
\nThe week of The Reckoning has begun. And senior students have been tasked with making the freshmen's lives pure hell as they prepare to take their fateful assessment.
\nWith the Lunar Eclipse on the horizon, Tory and Darcy have more to worry about than just passing their exams. A dark plot is unfolding and the shadows are drawing closer . . .
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We are all and nothing now, our fate weighed on the scales of the stars and counterbalanced by the forces that oppose us. The shadow of the false king spreads as thick as oil across the kingdom we were born to rule, and none remain untouched by its darkness.
\nOur crowns lay within reach if only we can claim them. All souls are at risk now and when the final battle dawns, a new regime will rise. The time for the true reckoning is upon us and we have proven ourselves as savage as our father, as brutal as our mother, and as wild as the Elements which roar through our veins. We can only hope it is enough. When the last sword strikes the final death in this game of fate and fortune, only one side will be victorious.
\nThe Starfall Legion charges at first light. And our destiny rides upon our shoulders as we rush into the end. All hail the True Queens. May our rule last longer than this night.
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They tried to break us.
\nThey almost did.
\nBut we're not going anywhere.
\nThe Celestial Heirs think the stars are on their side. But they don't know what's coming. Fighting them one on one isn't an option so we have to be stealthy. Remaining under the radar won't be easy, but if we pull it off, they'll never suspect our involvement when their lives start falling apart.
\nBesides, they've already taken us to the brink of hell, what more can they really do?
\n
After the events of the Lunar Eclipse, Tory and Darcy must learn to deal with the darkness which shadows their lives.
\nWith a secret binding them to Darius and Orion, they must find a way to all work together for the greater good. But some things are easier said than done . . .
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Bloody, lost, broken. We live to fight another day. But with so much stolen from us, can the fates ever twist in our favour again?
\nMy sister and I have been torn apart by shadows and despair, and now we each stand alone.
\nOur sorrow is spun like a web, trapping us tight, and I fear our enemies will soon come to feast upon our souls.
\nBut if I have my way, the merciless sky will have dealt us its final fortune. It’s time for us to take back the power that’s been ripped from our grasp and turn the tide of this war.
\nAll stars must fall, and all Phoenixes must rise.
\nLong live the Savage Queens.
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When hikers find the body of a beautiful young girl on the banks of the Potomac River, Detective Amanda Steele is shaken and confused. What is the significance of the delicate flower resting on the girl’s torso? A sign of affection, or a twisted killer’s calling card?
\nThe girl is Chloe Somner, a local nineteen-year-old ecology student well-known to the park rangers and loved by all her classmates. Searching Chloe’s home, Amanda can’t work out who could have tempted her to the water in the early hours of the morning, but a long night hunting through cold cases gives her a possible lead: twenty years ago another local girl was murdered, a red rose left on her body. But why would this killer strike again now?
\nFocused on the past, the last thing Amanda expects is the news that Chloe’s roommate has been found dead, another black orchid left. Terrified that more innocent victims will follow, can Amanda uncover the significance of the flowers and stop this cold-hearted killer before he returns for the next orchid girl?
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When the body of realtor Christine Lane is discovered in one of Woodbridge’s most affluent homes, Detective Amanda Steele is left reeling. The victim was dating Amanda’s half-brother, making him an immediate suspect. They’ve never been close but Amanda knows he’s not a killer.
\nAs forensics move in to process the crime scene, Amanda is ambushed by a well-dressed woman desperately trying to get inside the house. Dominique Sharp is a successful lawyer and expected her house to be sold by the time she returned from a business trip to DC. Could she have been the intended target?
\nDelving into Dominique’s business, Amanda and Trent discover a long line of disgruntled employees and a dark web of secrets that lead them to a killer who will stop at nothing to get their deadly revenge on her.
\nBut can Amanda take the greatest risk of her career to lure the killer back into the light? And will she have to sacrifice someone close to her to ensure justice is finally served?
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Champion figure skater Michaela Glover is a star in her hometown of Woodbridge, so when she returns for a special one-time performance, Detective Amanda Steele takes her daughter to watch. But the town’s celebration soon turns to tragedy when Michaela is discovered dead in her dressing room.
\nAmanda is first on the scene. As she looks at the room overflowing with flowers from Michaela’s adoring fans, her eyes soon focus on a few roses tied with black ribbon. When forensic tests reveal the ribbon was laced with something Michaela was deathly allergic to, Amanda is certain this is cold-blooded murder.
\nDesperate for a lead, Amanda dives into Michaela’s life to find out who could possibly want this sweet girl dead. She soon discovers that despite having a glittering future ahead of her, Michaela had a troubled past, and was surrounded by people jealous of her success.
\nBut when someone close to Michaela is discovered brutally murdered, Amanda is terrified there could be yet more innocent victims to follow. Can she uncover the twisted killer’s identity before they strike again?
\n\n
Faint sunlight dapples the two figures lying on the ground. The mother cradles her daughter close to her side, a stuffed toy elephant next to them. Leaves from the tall trees fall onto their faces, but neither moves to brush them off.
\nWhen a dog walker in a local Virginia park finds the bodies of a mother and daughter, Detective Amanda Steele is first on the scene. Her own daughter has a toy just like the girl’s elephant and seeing the child like this is her worst nightmare come true. Heartbroken, she vows to get justice.
\nThey quickly get an ID - Jill Archer and six-year-old Charlotte were reported missing last week, but interviewing Jill’s husband, Roy, Amanda’s gut tells her he is hiding something. When the autopsy reveals a terrible pattern of bruises, she’s certain that a domestic argument escalated out of control, and tiny Charlotte got caught in the crossfire. But just as Amanda is about to arrest Roy, another grave is found, containing another mother and daughter.
\nDesperate for a lead, she goes to every place the women could have been targeted, and learns from a concerned ER nurse about Leanne Reilly and her young daughter, Gracie, who haven’t been heard from in a week. Amanda hopes that Leanne has simply left her deadbeat husband, but she’s gripped by the fear that they are the killer’s latest victims. Now every second counts for Amanda to find the family and stop a little girl’s nightmare before it ends in tragedy . . .
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When beautiful wife and mother Alicia Gordon is found dead in a remote woodland cabin, Detective Amanda Steele is shocked to discover that she knows the husband. Amanda hasn’t spoken to Tony since she lost the love of her own life seven years ago, and seeing tragedy tearing her old friend’s family apart brings back so many painful memories.
\nAlicia was alone when she died, but she was so young, and Amanda can’t help feeling suspicious. Then she discovers that Alicia’s sleep medication had been tampered with, slowly poisoning her over several days. Amanda wants to trust that the sorrow on Tony’s face is real, but the more she digs into his marriage, the more it seems that he had opportunity, and motive . . .
\nInterviewing one of Alicia’s old colleagues, Amanda is shaken to her core when the woman suddenly collapses in her arms, dying in seconds from a lethal dose of the same poison that killed Alicia. But what could link this woman to Tony?
\nWith her partner blaming Amanda for not arresting Tony immediately, she needs to prove that he isn’t the killer, or accept that the second woman’s death could be on her hands. She’s running out of time and leads when she discovers threatening messages sent to both victims. It’s the final clue to unmasking the most twisted killer Amanda has ever come up against, and to stop them she’ll have to risk everything . . .
\n
When Detective Amanda Steele is called to the brutal murder scene of successful local author Felicity Kelley , her blood runs cold. Because Amanda not only knew the victim, but was the last person Felicity called moments before she was murdered. Plagued with guilt that she never answered, Amanda is left wondering whether she could have prevented the murder, and vows to catch the killer, no matter what.
\nDesperately searching the crime scene for clues, Amanda is shocked when she discovers a Queen of Hearts playing card, suggesting the murder could be an imitation of a scene from Felicity’s bestselling crime novel. Terrified that she is dealing with a crazed fan who could strike again, Amanda’s worst fears are confirmed when another innocent woman is viciously murdered, with the same chilling calling card left behind.
\nBut when Amanda connects the murders with a cold case from fifteen years ago, a case that Felicity appears to have been researching for her next novel, she is forced to question if the killer’s motive is even more sinister than she first suspected. But the closer Amanda gets to unearthing this motive, the closer she gets to becoming the next victim . . .
\n
When the body of a girl is discovered in the walls of a Woodbridge church, Detective Amanda Steele is immediately called to the scene. On arrival she meets FBI Special Agent Sandra Vos who explains that while negotiating a hostage incident moments before, a gun was fired. The bullet missed its target but exposed human remains.
\nThe victim has been perfectly preserved, her jewelry and summer dress taking Amanda back to her own teenage years. DNA quickly confirms that the victim was taken over thirty years ago. Thinking about her own daughter, Amanda cannot imagine the devastation for the young girl’s family and vows to find the killer.
\nAmanda and her partner Trent determine the suspect behind the attempted shooting, Cameron Cofell, had a very clear reason for exacting revenge on the church’s priest. As they question the wider community, a neighbor reveals her long-held suspicions too. But when she is found murdered, Amanda knows this killer is prepared to do whatever it takes to keep their dark secret from ever coming to light.
\nSoon the investigation takes Amanda and Trent to an abandoned farmhouse - a place that haunts Cameron’s nightmares - where they find a faded photograph that holds the mystery of another chilling cold case. But just how far back does this evil go, and how much will Amanda and Trent need to sacrifice to find the killer?
\n\n
When Detective Amanda Steele unexpectedly reconnects with an old boyfriend, the last thing she expects to see lying on his bed is the dead body of his wife, Claire, who walked out on him four years ago.
\nLogan begs Amanda to believe he’s innocent. But she doesn’t miss the gun on a nearby table, and she’s torn when forensics reveal that not only was this the murder weapon, but Logan’s fingerprints are all over it . . . Could he have been framed? Or is he using his connection to Amanda to get away with murder?
\nDetermined to uncover the truth, Amanda retraces Claire’s last steps and finds that she visited her best friend the day before her death. But Amanda is devastated to discover that the friend died in a car accident just hours after meeting with Claire. What deadly secret connected them, and could more women be in danger?
\nBut the killer is closer than Amanda realises, and when her beloved daughter, Zoe, is threatened, she’s suddenly in a race to find the final clue before the person she loves most pays the price . . .
\n
It’s been five years since Detective Amanda Steele’s life was derailed in the path of an oncoming drunk driver. The small community of Dumfries, Virginia, may have moved on from the tragic deaths of her husband and daughter, but Amanda cannot. When the driver who killed her family is found murdered in a motel room, she can’t keep away from the case.
\nFighting her sergeant to be allowed to work an investigation with such a personal connection to her, Amanda is in a race to prove that she can uncover the truth. But the more she digs into the past of the man who destroyed her future, the more shocking discoveries she makes. And when Amanda finds the link between a silver bracelet in his possession and the brutal unsolved murder of a young exotic dancer, she realizes she’s caught up in something darker than she ever imagined and suspects that more girls could be in danger.
\nBut as Amanda edges toward the truth, she gets closer to a secret as personal as it is deadly. Amanda has stumbled upon a dangerous killer, and she must face some terrible truths in order to catch this killer - and save his next victim as she couldn’t save her own daughter . . .
\n
When Detective Amanda Steele is called to the murder scene of a young gas station clerk just before dawn, she assumes it must be a robbery gone tragically wrong. But when she discovers nothing has been stolen, she knows the motive must be far more personal.
\nWatching the security footage, Amanda is shocked to witness the cold-blooded killer not only shoot the clerk dead but abduct a customer. And her heart stops when she recognizes the customer as her former colleague, Katherine Graves . As Amanda breaks the news to Katherine’s heartbroken Aunt May , she vows to do whatever it takes to bring her niece home alive.
\nDesperate for a lead, Amanda and her partner, Trent , search Katherine’s home. Soon, they discover that despite no longer being with the police department, Katherine has a long list of very dangerous enemies. Enemies who have been sending her anonymous letters promising revenge.
\nThe more Amanda digs into Katherine’s past, the longer her list of suspects becomes. But when May is sent a ransom demand and a picture of Katherine close to death, Amanda knows time is running out. With only hours left to find Katherine alive, Amanda is prepared to risk everything to keep her promise to May, even her own life . . .
\n
When the bodies of a local family are discovered on a quiet street in the small town of Dumfries, Virginia, Detective Amanda Steele takes charge of the case. Brett and Angela Parker were shot three times each, leaving no hope of survival, and their tidy suburban home has been ransacked. But there is no sign of their beloved six-year-old, Zoe.
\nZoe is the same age as Amanda’s daughter was when she died, and Amanda can’t bear the thought of another little girl in danger. She’s organising a search for the child, when she notices something strange about the ottoman at the foot of the Parkers’ bed. She opens it to find Zoe, mute and traumatized, but alive.
\nWith Zoe completely uncommunicative, Amanda must find another way to untangle what destroyed this seemingly perfect family. It’s clear that the killer is searching for something the Parkers had, and until she has this monster behind bars, Amanda fears that he may return for Zoe. When she learns that Brett Parker cut short the family’s recent lakeside vacation, she wonders why. What happened at that lake house, and did it ultimately get them killed?
\nAmanda heads out to Lake Chesdin on the feeling it might be key to the case, and when she finds a cell phone in the murky waters next to the Parker cabin, she knows she’s made a breakthrough. But then terrible news reaches her from Dumfries; Zoe has been taken from her school playground.
\nSomeone wants to silence the Parker family for good, can Amanda catch them before the little girl she’s desperate to protect pays the price?
\n
When firefighters discover the body of a teenage girl at an abandoned house, Detective Amanda Steele hurries to the scene. Dumfries, Virginia is a small town, yet no one seems to have any idea who the dead girl is until Amanda finds a dragonfly pin with the name Crystal engraved on it.
\nWorking tirelessly, Amanda traces the pin to Crystal Foster, a thirteen-year-old who disappeared three years ago from her wealthy parents’ home. Breaking the news to the distraught parents won’t be easy, but the loss of her own daughter still haunts Amanda, and she knows this will bring them closure. But when Amanda goes to see the Fosters, they do not recognize the girl. She isn’t Crystal.
\nBefore Amanda can react to this new development, she gets an urgent call. A fire has consumed another vacant house, and the remains of two more girls have been found. Who are these girls, and why are they being picked off? Amanda must stop this killer before the pattern continues, and the death toll climbs.
\nWhen Amanda receives a taunting note from the killer, she realizes that she holds the missing piece of this puzzle. The victims are connected to Amanda’s past, to a case she can never forget, and which almost claimed her life. As she follows the clues to their deadly conclusion, can she save more innocent lives . . . even if it risks her own?
\n
Music from the busy dance floor echoes into the deserted room where the Prom Queen lies deadly still. A tiara rests on her soft blonde curls, but her face is frozen with fear, and her painted red lips are forever sealed shut in a silenced scream . . .
\nWhen Detective Amanda Steele’s niece, Ava, begs her to look for a missing schoolfriend, she immediately agrees to take on the case. Eighteen-year-old Reece left home three nights ago after fighting with her mother and hasn’t been seen since. But when the teenager’s body is discovered brutally murdered, poised dramatically at the prom venue, Amanda is devastated she didn’t save the girl in time.
\nHaunted by the scene, Amanda dives headfirst into the case. Chasing every lead, she is horrified when she discovers a potential key witness strangled in her own home. It soon becomes clear that the killer will stop at nothing to silence anyone who might reveal their identity. So when Ava mentions she saw someone acting strangely at the prom venue that night, Amanda’s heart stops.
\nAnd when Amanda’s worst nightmare comes true, and her beloved niece is taken, she knows that every second counts to uncover this twisted killer’s identity and bring Ava home safely. But can she crack the secrets of this killer’s deadly game before it’s too late?
\n
When the body of Hailey Tanner is found in a local park, Detective Amanda Steele races to the scene. Interviewing her devastated parents, they confirm that Hailey never made it home from her dance class. Searching for clues in the family home, Amanda discovers that some ballet clothing was taken from Hailey’s room. Could the killer have been close to her?
\nAs Amanda and Trent question potential suspects, they’re painfully reminded of a similar case. Julie Gilbert, another gifted performer, was murdered in exactly the same way twelve years ago. Amanda’s former colleague, Katherine Graves, never gave up hope of bringing the killer to justice and now with a clear link between the two victims, she steps back into the investigation.
\nBut she’s soon warned off when a threatening note is found in the hem of Hailey’s dress. “This girl’s your fault. Stop looking or there will be more.”
\nWith boxes of evidence files and potential leads, Amanda knows that Katherine must have been getting close, but when a third girl is taken soon after, the clock starts ticking again. There’s no way Amanda will let another child suffer at the hands of this twisted killer. But how much will the team be prepared to sacrifice, and can they save this girl before it’s too late?
\n
When human remains are discovered behind a dumpster in Woodbridge, Virginia, Detective Amanda Steele rushes to the scene. Her heart drops when she arrives and is hit by the unmistakable stench of gasoline. Soon, her worst fear is the victim was burned alive.
\nWith only an engraved gold wedding band surviving the blaze, Amanda knows it could be days before they have a confirmed ID. But when her partner Detective Trent Stenson arrives, he pales at the sight of the ring, recognising it as belonging to his Aunt Gertrude’s husband, Don.
\nTrent is convinced his aunt isn’t involved, but as more is unearthed about her troubled relationship with her husband, and she fails to provide an alibi, Amanda isn’t so sure. Desperate to prove his aunt’s innocence, Trent soon discovers someone from Don’s past is back in Woodbridge - someone who wants revenge. But Amanda and Trent are shaken to their core when that person is discovered brutally murdered.
\nConvinced the cases are linked, Amanda knows she has to find the cold-blooded killer before they strike again. And as Trent becomes even more emotionally entangled in the case, she’s terrified he could become the next victim . . .
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Mattie Belman’s life has gone from dismal to desperate. After the loss of her acting career, her marriage, and her usual optimism, she’s back home teaching high school theater. Maybe it’ll be a fresh start.
\nSt. Rita’s arrogant soccer coach Jillian Reed sees Mattie’s musical as an outrageous distraction for her champion players. When Jillian declares war, Mattie is far too stubborn to back down.
\nBut as Mattie discovers there might be more to Jillian than spectacle, fire, and ego, she gets dangerously close to her iron-willed colleague. Can she avoid temptation? Or will the growing flame in Jillian’s dark eyes ignite them both?
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Dak, Sera, and Riq might be in over their heads when they attempt to stop a Viking invasion!
\nHundreds of ships carrying thousands of warriors are laying siege to medieval Paris. The Parisians are holding their own, but the stalemate can only last so long. And that's bad news - especially since Dak has been captured, forced to work alongside the Vikings while Sera and Riq defend Paris from within. No matter which side wins, the kids lose!
\n
It's not easy being a superhero's daughter....
Carrie Vaughn has captured legions of fans with her wildly popular Kitty Norville novels. Now she uses her extraordinary wit and imagination to tell a sensational new story about superhuman heroes - and the people who have to live with them.
Most people dream of having superheroes for parents, but not Celia West. The only daughter of Captain Olympus and Spark, the world's greatest champions, she has no powers of her own, and the most exciting thing she's ever done is win a silver medal in a high school swim meet. Meanwhile, she's the favorite hostage of every crime boss and supervillain in Comemrce City. She doesn't have a code name, but if she did, it would probably be Bait Girl, the Captive Wonder.
Rejecting her famous family and its legacy, Celia has worked hard to create a life for herself beyond the shadow of their capes, becoming a skilled forensic accountant. But when her parents' archenemy, the Destructor, faces justice in the \"Trial of the Century,\" Celia finds herself sucked back into the more-than-mortal world of Captain Olympus - and forced to confront a secret that she hoped would stay buried forever.
Decades after economic and environmental collapse destroys much of civilization in the United States, the Coast Road region isn't just surviving but thriving by some accounts, building something new on the ruins of what came before. A culture of population control has developed in which people, organized into households, must earn the children they bear by proving they can take care of them and are awarded symbolic banners to demonstrate this privilege. In the meantime, birth control is mandatory.
\nEnid of Haven is an Investigator, called on to mediate disputes and examine transgressions against the community. She's young for the job and hasn't yet handled a serious case. Now, though, a suspicious death requires her attention. The victim was an outcast, but might someone have taken dislike a step further and murdered him?
\nIn a world defined by the disasters that happened a century before, the past is always present. But this investigation may reveal the cracks in Enid's world and make her question what she really stands for.
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When Evie Walker goes home to spend time with her dying father, she discovers that his creaky old house in Hope’s Fort, Colorado, is not the only legacy she stands to inherit. Hidden behind the old basement door is a secret and magical storeroom, a place where wondrous treasures from myth and legend are kept safe until they are needed again. The magic of the storeroom prevents access to any who are not intended to use the items. But just because it has never been done does not mean it cannot be done.
And there are certainly those who will give anything to find a way in.
Evie must guard the storeroom against ancient and malicious forces, protecting the past and the future even as the present unravels around them. Old heroes and notorious villains alike will rise to fight on her side or to undermine her most desperate gambits. At stake is the fate of the world, and the prevention of nothing less than the apocalypse.
Like every teen, Anna has secrets. Unlike every teen, Anna has a telepath for a father and Commerce City's most powerful businessperson for a mother. She’s also the granddaughter of the city’s two most famous superheroes, the former leaders of the legendary Olympiad, and the company car drops her off at the gate of her exclusive high school every morning. Privacy is one luxury she doesn’t have.
\nHiding her burgeoning superpowers from her parents is hard enough; how’s she supposed to keep them from finding out that her friends have powers, too? Or that she and the others are meeting late at night, honing their skills and dreaming of becoming Commerce City’s next great team of masked vigilantes?
\nLike every mother, Celia worries about her daughter. Unlike every mother, Celia has the means to send Anna to the best schools and keep a close watch on her, every second of every day. At least Celia doesn’t have to worry about Anna becoming a target for every gang with masks and an agenda, like Celia was at Anna’s age.
\nAs far as Celia knows, Anna isn't anything other than a normal teen. Still, just in case, Celia has secretly awarded scholarships at Anna’s private high school to the descendants of the city’s other superpowered humans. Maybe, just maybe, these teens could one day fill the gap left by the dissolution of The Olympiad . . .
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Robin of Locksley and his one true love, Marian, are married. It has been close on two decades since they beat the Sheriff of Nottingham with the help of a diverse band of talented friends. King John is now on the throne, and Robin has sworn fealty in order to further protect not just his family, but those of the lords and barons who look up to him – and, by extension, the villagers they protect.
\nThere is a truce. An uneasy one, to be sure, but a truce, nonetheless.
\nBut when the Locksley children are stolen away by persons unknown, Robin and Marian are going to need the help of everyone they’ve ever known, perhaps even the ghosts that are said to reside deep within Sherwood.
\nAnd the Locksley children, despite appearances to the contrary, are not without tricks of their own . . .
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The year is 1902, and the world is changing with the new century. Twenty-one-year-old Ava Stanley, the daughter of two celebrated Arcane Taxonomists, has much to live up to - however scarce her magical abilities may be.
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While her parents draw power from spectacular birds and megafauna, Ava’s connection to the natural world is much smaller, stemming from the microscopic. This is useful in her quest to become a doctor, as she studies the burgeoning links between bacteria and disease, but it means Ava’s power itself is also smaller. Even so, she plans to make the most of it when she boards a ship to Nassau, where she’ll continue her research.
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But those plans change when pirates take over the ship, bringing with them danger, mystery, and the stirrings of war. Amid the chaos, Ava forges connections with her fellow travelers. And in them, she begins to find that every tiny piece of the world has the power to strengthen it . . . or shatter it completely.
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The latest civil war in England has come and gone, King John is dead, and the nobility of England gathers to see the coronation of his son, thirteen-year-old King Henry III.
The new king is at the center of political rivalries and power struggles, but John of Locksley - son of the legendary Robin Hood and Lady Marian - only sees a lonely boy in need of friends. John and his sisters succeed in befriending Henry, while also inadvertently uncovering a political plot, saving a man's life, and carrying out daring escapes.
All in a day's work for the Locksley children . . .
Polly Newton has one single-minded dream, to be a starship pilot and travel the galaxy. Her mother, the director of the Mars Colony, derails Polly's plans when she sends Polly and her genius twin brother, Charles, to Galileo Academy on Earth - the one planet Polly has no desire to visit. Ever.
Homesick and cut off from her desired future, Polly cannot seem to fit into the constraints of life on Earth, unlike Charles, who deftly maneuvers around people and sees through their behavior to their true motives. Strange, unexplained, dangerous coincidences centered on their high-profile classmates begin piling up. Charles may be right - there's more going on than would appear, and the stakes are high. With the help of Charles, Polly is determined to find the truth, no matter the cost.
In the summer of 1880, the death of Beth Stanley’s husband puts her life’s work in jeopardy. The magic of Arcane Taxonomy dictates that every natural thing in the world, from weather to animals, can be labeled, and doing so grants the practitioner some of that subject’s unique power. But only men are permitted to train in this philosophy. Losing her husband means that Beth loses the name they put on her work - and any influence she might have wielded.
\nBrandon West and Anton Torrance are campaigning for their expedition to the South Pole, a mission that some believe could make a taxonomist all-powerful by tapping into the earth’s magnetic forces. Their late friend Harry Stanley’s knowledge and connections would have been instrumental, but when they attempt to take custody of his work, they find that it was never his at all.
\nTied together by this secret and its implications, Beth, Bran, and Anton must find a way for Beth to use her talent for the good of the world, before she’s discovered by those who would lay claim to her rare potential - and her very freedom.
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Literature professor Dr. Addie Cox is living a happy, if sheltered, life in her ivory tower when Harris Lang, the famously eccentric billionaire tech genius, offers her an unusual job. He wants her to guide a mercenary strike team sent to infiltrate his island retreat off the northwest coast of the United States. Addie is puzzled by her role on the mission until she understands what Lang has built: Insula Mirabilis, an isolated resort where tourists will one day pay big bucks for a convincing, high-tech-powered fantasy-world experience, complete with dragons, unicorns, and, yes, magic.
\nUnfortunately, one of the island's employees has gone rogue and activated an invisible force shield that has cut off all outside communication. A Coast Guard cutter attempting to pass through the shield has been destroyed. Suspicion rests on Dominic Brand, the project’s head designer - and Addie Cox's ex-boyfriend. Lang has tasked Addie and the mercenary team with taking back control of the island at any cost.
\nBut Addie is wrestling demons of her own - and not the fantastical kind. Now, she must navigate the deadly traps of Insula Mirabilis as well as her own past trauma. And no d20, however lucky, can help Addie make this saving throw.
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A century after environmental and economic collapse, the people of the Coast Road have rebuilt their own sort of civilisation, striving not to make the mistakes their ancestors did. They strictly ration and manage resources, including the ability to have children. Enid of Haven is an investigator, who with her new partner, Teeg, is called on to mediate a dispute over an old building in a far-flung settlement at the edge of Coast Road territory.
\nThe investigators' decision seems straightforward - and then the body of a young woman turns up in the nearby marshland. Almost more shocking than that, she's not from the Coast Road, but from one of the outsider camps belonging to the nomads and wild folk who live outside the Coast Road communities. Now one of them is dead, and Enid wants to find out who killed her, even as Teeg argues that the murder isn't their problem.
\nIn a dystopian future of isolated communities, can our moral sense survive the worst hard times?
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Katie James didn’t plan on being a runaway bride. Twice. But when the gorgeous, accomplished, former love of her life, Emma Reed, reappears in her life the week of her wedding, will Katie risk everything for another chance with the woman who might be her soul mate?
Imagine a world where honeybees have died out. It’s a patriarchal world where famines are rife. It’s a world without art, without books, without plays. Girls are sent away from home, forced to pollinate crops by hand with brushes and to marry as soon as they can.
\nInhabiting this world is Jess and her friends Cass, Deva, and Ruth. But even if one fourteen‑year‑old knows that brushes weren’t invented for pollinating, can she really stoke a revolution?
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John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland - Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted.
\nShortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff and is found, unconscious and badly injured, by Ivar who takes him home and tends to his wounds. The two men do not speak a common language, but as John builds a dictionary of Ivar’s world, they learn to communicate and, as Ivar sees himself for the first time in decades reflected through the eyes of another person, they build a fragile, unusual connection.
\nUnfolding in the 1840s in the final stages of the infamous Scottish Clearances - which saw whole communities of the rural poor driven off the land in a relentless program of forced evictions - this singular, beautiful, deeply surprising novel explores the differences and connections between us, the way history shapes our deepest convictions, and how the human spirit can survive despite all odds.
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Chloe Green is so close to winning. After her moms moved her from SoCal to Alabama for high school, she’s spent the past four years dodging gossipy classmates and a puritanical administration at Willowgrove Christian Academy. The thing that’s kept her going: winning valedictorian. Her only rival: prom queen Shara Wheeler, the principal’s perfect progeny.
\nBut a month before graduation, Shara kisses Chloe and vanishes.
\nOn a furious hunt for answers, Chloe discovers she’s not the only one Shara kissed. There’s also Smith, Shara’s longtime quarterback sweetheart, and Rory, Shara’s bad boy neighbor with a crush. The three have nothing in common except Shara and the annoyingly cryptic notes she left behind, but together they must untangle Shara’s trail of clues and find her. It’ll be worth it, if Chloe can drag Shara back before graduation to beat her fair-and-square.
\nThrown into an unlikely alliance, chasing a ghost through parties, break-ins, puzzles, and secrets revealed on monogrammed stationery, Chloe starts to suspect there might be more to this small town than she thought. And maybe - probably not, but maybe - more to Shara, too.
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For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.
\nBut then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train.
\nJane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all.
\nCasey McQuiston’s One Last Stop is a magical, sexy, big-hearted romance where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her power to save the girl lost in time.
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Two bisexual exes accidentally book the same European food and wine tour and challenge each other to a hookup competition to prove they're over each other - except they're definitely not.
\nTheo and Kit have been a lot of things: childhood best friends, crushes, in love, and now estranged exes. After a brutal breakup on the transatlantic flight to their dream European food and wine tour, they exited each other's lives once and for all.
\nTime apart has done them good. Theo has found confidence as a hustling bartender by night and aspiring sommelier by day, with a long roster of casual lovers. Kit, who never returned to America, graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school class and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris. Sure, nothing really compares to what they had, and life stretches out long and lonely ahead of them, but - yeah. It's in the past.
\nAll that remains is the unused voucher for the European tour that never happened, good for 48 months after its original date and about to expire. Four years later, it seems like a great idea to finally take the trip. Solo. Separately.
\nIt's not until they board the tour bus that they discover they've both accidentally had the exact same idea, and now they're trapped with each other for three weeks of stunning views, luscious flavors, and the most romantic cities of France, Spain, and Italy. It's fine. There's nothing left between them. So much nothing that, when Theo suggests a friendly wager to see who can sleep with their hot Italian tour guide first, Kit is totally game. And why stop there? Why not a full-on European hookup competition?
\nBut sometimes a taste of everything only makes you crave what you can't have.
\n
First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz is the closest thing to a prince this side of the Atlantic. With his intrepid sister and the Veep’s genius granddaughter, they’re the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. International socialite duties do have downsides - namely, when photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids and threaten American/British relations. The plan for damage control: staging a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince.
\nAs President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. What is worth the sacrifice? How do you do all the good you can do? And, most importantly, how will history remember you?
\n
What if depression, anxiety, infertility, insomnia, heart disease, erectile dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's, dementia, cancer and many other health conditions that torture and shorten our lives actually have the same root cause?
\nOur ability to prevent and reverse these conditions - and feel incredible today - is under our control and simpler than we think. The key is our metabolic function - the most important and least understood factor in our overall health. As Dr. Casey Means explains in this groundbreaking book, nearly every health problem we face can be explained by how well the cells in our body create and use energy.
\nTo live free from frustrating symptoms and life-threatening disease, we need our cells to be optimally powered so that they can create “good energy,” the essential fuel that impacts every aspect of our physical and mental wellbeing.
\nIf you are battling minor signals of “bad energy” inside your body, it is often a warning sign that more life-threatening illness may emerge later in life. But here's the good news: for the first time ever, we can monitor our metabolic health in great detail and learn how to improve it ourselves.
\nWeaving together cutting-edge research and personal stories, as well as groundbreaking data from the health technology company Dr. Means founded, Good Energy offers an essential four-week plan and explains:
\n• The five biomarkers that determine your risk for a deadly disease.
\n• How to use inexpensive tools and technology to “see inside your body” and take action.
\n• Why dietary philosophies are designed to confuse us, and six lifelong food principles you can implement whether you're carnivore or vegan.
\n• The crucial links between sleep, circadian rhythm, and metabolism.
\n• A new framework for exercise focused on building simple movement into everyday activities.
\n• How cold and heat exposure helps build our body's resilience.
\n• Steps to navigate the medical system to get what you need for optimal health.
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For years, one group of Americans has worked as foot-soldiers for the most authoritarian regimes around the planet. In the process, they've not only entrenched dictatorships and spread kleptocratic networks, but they've secretly guided U.S. policy without the rest of America even being aware. And now, some of them have begun turning their sights on American democracy itself.
\nThese Americans are known as foreign lobbyists, and many of them spent years ushering dictatorships directly into the halls of Washington, all while laundering the reputations of the most heinous, repressive regimes in the process. These foreign lobbyists include figures like Ivy Lee, the inventor of the public relations industry - a man who whitewashed Mussolini, opened doors to the Soviets, and advised the Nazis on how to sway American audiences. They include people like Paul Manafort, who invented lobbying as we know it - and who then took his talents to autocrats from Ukraine to the Philippines, and then back to the White House. And they now include an increasing number of Americans elsewhere: in law firms and consultancies, among PR specialists and former lawmakers, and even within think tanks and universities.
\nIn Foreign Agents, Casey Michel shines a light on these foreign lobbyists as some of them - after decades of installing dictators and corrupting American policy - embark on their next mission: to end America's democratic experiment, once and for all.
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Sarah Gallagher wants one thing and one thing only—her own happily ever after. Don’t get her wrong, in her almost forty-nine years of life she’s been lucky enough to experience love in many forms, each changing and shaping her into the woman she is today. When unexpected circumstances start to change the relationships in her life, Sarah needs to decide if she’s finally ready to see how in her pursuit of love, she might be the only thing standing in her way.
\nLily Gallagher has been busy. Busy chasing her dreams. College gymnastics season? Check. Super hot soccer player girlfriend? Check. Making the Olympic team again? Well, that’s to be determined. But as Lily gets closer to reaching her dreams, life decides to throw her a few curveballs. Will Lily slow down long enough to listen? Or will she take a deep breath, and power through even if it means losing everything?
\nIf Beth Walsh had to pick one word to describe the last few years, it would be growth - something that’s always been a challenge for her to accept. Life has a funny way of pivoting, once again leaving Beth trying to figure out what happiness looks like to her in this lifetime. The only difference? This time, she did the work on herself first. Now the question is, was the work enough?
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When ex-Olympian Jamie Lyons walked away from the gymnastics world, it wasn’t by choice, but by a tragic diagnosis that solidified her decision to disappear from the public eye. For seven years, she’s kept her distance from the spotlight and stayed far from the headlines that once defined her. Now, as a favor to an old friend, Jamie is back, and a chance encounter at a party sets off a series of events that makes her question everything. When the life she left behind starts to blur with the one she’s creating, Jamie must decide if she’s finally ready to stop running.
\nBeth Walsh is no stranger to heartbreak. After her marriage fell apart, she’s spent years piecing herself back together while raising her daughter, Lily - a fiercely driven, sometimes turbulent teenager. Now, after a year-long national art tour, Beth has returned, determined to find her footing again and figure out what happiness looks like for her. But when her path crosses with an alluring stranger, everything she thought she knew is flipped upside down. Beth finds herself navigating the delicate balance between life, love, and being a parent, while caught between the future she’s building and the past she’s never quite been able to let go of.
\nWith love, ambition, and identity colliding at full force, Balancing Act is a rich, emotional story about letting go, holding on, and finding your footing when everything feels like it’s shifting beneath you.
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Sarah Gallagher has always played life by the rules. Responsible mother, high-powered attorney, the glue holding her unconventional family together. But when the pieces on her carefully balanced board begin to shift, she finds herself drawn into a high-stakes game with someone who plays by a very different set of rules. Sarah isn’t sure if she’s protecting her heart or simply learning to play a more dangerous game. What begins as a professional opportunity to redefine her career quickly unravels as Sarah learns to shift her perspective on the many shapes love can take.
\nNell Stanhope has spent a lifetime mastering control. Control of her image, her billion-dollar empire, and her emotions. In business, she’s ruthless. In pleasure, she’s nothing short of precise. But when her path crosses with Sarah Gallagher, she finds herself confronted with unexpected challenges that force her to reevaluate the boundaries of her own rules. What starts as a carefully calculated offer quickly turns into something Nell never imagined. Because Sarah, who is just as witty, ambitious, and powerful as she is, isn’t just her equal. She’s her undoing. Leaving Nell questioning everything she thought was set in stone.
\nSapphic power, control, and ambition collide in Breadwinner, a story about the many forms love can take, and the dangerous game of letting go to receive it.
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This collection of eleven short stories illuminates the life of the enigmatic Magnus Bane, whose alluring personality, flamboyant style, and sharp wit populate the pages of the #1 New York Times bestselling series, The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices.
\nOriginally released one-by-one as e-only short stories by Cassandra Clare, Maureen Johnson, and Sarah Rees Brennan, this compilation presents all ten together in print and includes a special eleventh tale, as well as eleven comic illustrations.
Welcome to Edwardian London, a time of electric lights and long shadows, the celebration of artistic beauty and the wild pursuit of pleasure, with demons waiting in the dark. For years there has been peace in the Shadowhunter world. James and Lucie Herondale, children of the famous Will and Tessa, have grown up in an idyll with their loving friends and family, listening to stories of good defeating evil and love conquering all. But everything changes when the Blackthorn and Carstairs families come to London . . . and so does a remorseless and inescapable plague.
James Herondale longs for a great love, and thinks he has found it in the beautiful, mysterious Grace Blackthorn. Cordelia Carstairs is desperate to become a hero, save her family from ruin, and keep her secret love for James hidden. When disaster strikes the Shadowhunters, James, Cordelia and their friends are plunged into a wild adventure which will reveal dark and incredible powers, and the true cruel price of being a hero . . . and falling in love.
Cordelia Carstairs seems to have everything she ever wanted. She’s engaged to marry James Herondale, the boy she has loved since childhood. She has a new life in London with her best friend Lucie Herondale and James’s charming companions, the Merry Thieves. She is about to be reunited with her beloved father. And she bears the sword Cortana, a legendary hero’s blade.
But the truth is far grimmer. James and Cordelia’s marriage is a lie, arranged to save Cordelia’s reputation. James is in love with the mysterious Grace Blackthorn whose brother, Jesse, died years ago in a terrible accident. Cortana burns Cordelia’s hand when she touches it, while her father has grown bitter and angry. And a serial murderer is targeting the Shadowhunters of London, killing under cover of darkness, then vanishing without a trace.
Together with the Merry Thieves, Cordelia, James, and Lucie must follow the trail of the knife-wielding killer through the city’s most dangerous streets. All the while, each is keeping a shocking secret: Lucie, that she plans to raise Jesse from the dead; Cordelia, that she has sworn a dangerous oath of loyalty to a mysterious power; and James, that he is being drawn further each night into the dark web of his grandfather, the arch-demon Belial. And that he himself may be the killer they seek.
Cordelia Carstairs has lost everything that matters to her. In only a few short weeks, she has seen her father murdered, her plans to become parabatai with her best friend, Lucie, destroyed, and her marriage to James Herondale crumble before her eyes. Even worse, she is now bound to an ancient demon, Lilith, stripping her of her power as a Shadowhunter.
\nAfter fleeing to Paris with Matthew Fairchild, Cordelia hopes to forget her sorrows in the city’s glittering nightlife. But reality intrudes when shocking news comes from home: Tatiana Blackthorn has escaped the Adamant Citadel, and London is under new threat by the Prince of Hell, Belial.
\nCordelia returns to a London riven by chaos and dissent. The long-kept secret that Belial is James and Lucie’s grandfather has been revealed by an unexpected enemy, and the Herondales find themselves under suspicion of dealings with demons. Cordelia longs to protect James but is torn between a love for James she has long believed hopeless, and the possibility of a new life with Matthew. Nor can her friends help - ripped apart by their own secrets, they seem destined to face what is coming alone.
\nFor time is short, and Belial’s plan is about to crash into the Shadowhunters of London like a deadly wave, one that will separate Cordelia, Lucie, and the Merry Thieves from help of any kind. Left alone in a shadowy London, they must face Belial’s deadly army. If Cordelia and her friends are going to save their city - and their families - they will have to muster their courage, swallow their pride, and trust one another again. For if they fail, they may lose everything - even their souls.
\n
Clary Fray just wishes that her life would go back to normal. But what's normal when you're a demon-slaying Shadowhunter, your mother is in a magically induced coma, and you can suddenly see Downworlders like werewolves, vampires, and faeries? If Clary left the world of the Shadowhunters behind, it would mean more time with her best friend, Simon, who's becoming more than a friend. But the Shadowhunting world isn't ready to let her go - especially her handsome, infuriating, newfound brother, Jace. And Clary's only chance to help her mother is to track down rogue Shadowhunter Valentine, who is probably insane, certainly evil - and also her father.
\nTo complicate matters, someone in New York City is murdering Downworlder children. Is Valentine behind the killings - and if he is, what is he trying to do? When the second of the Mortal Instruments, the Soul-Sword, is stolen, the terrifying Inquisitor arrives to investigate and zooms right in on Jace. How can Clary stop Valentine if Jace is willing to betray everything he believes in to help their father?
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When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder - much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing - not even a smear of blood - to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?
\nThis is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance, when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know . . .
\n
The Mortal War is over, and sixteen-year-old Clary Fray is back home in New York, excited about all the possibilities before her. She's training to become a Shadowhunter and to use her unique power. Her mother is getting married to the love of her life. Downworlders and Shadowhunters are at peace at last. And - most importantly of all - she can finally call Jace her boyfriend.
\nBut nothing comes without a price.
\nSomeone is murdering Shadowhunters, provoking tensions between Downworlders and Shadowhunters that could lead to a second, bloody war. Clary's best friend, Simon, can't help her. His mother just found out that he's a vampire and now he's homeless. Everywhere he turns, someone wants him on their side - along with the power of the curse that's wrecking his life. And they're willing to do anything to get what they want. Not to mention that he's dating two beautiful, dangerous girls - neither of whom knows about the other one.
\nWhen Jace begins to pull away from her without explaining why, Clary is forced to delve into the heart of a mystery whose solution reveals her worst nightmare: she herself has set in motion a terrible chain of events that could lead to her losing everything she loves. Even Jace.
\nLove. Blood. Betrayal. Revenge. The stakes are higher than ever in City of Fallen Angels.
\n
To save her mother's life, Clary must travel to the City of Glass, the ancestral home of the Shadowhunters - never mind that entering the city without permission is against the Law, and breaking the Law could mean death. To make things worse, she learns that Jace does not want her there, and Simon has been thrown in prison by the Shadowhunters, who are deeply suspicious of a vampire who can withstand sunlight.
\nAs Clary uncovers more about her family's past, she finds an ally in mysterious Shadowhunter Sebastian. With Valentine mustering the full force of his power to destroy all Shadowhunters forever, their only chance to defeat him is to fight alongside their eternal enemies. But can Downworlders and Shadowhunters put aside their hatred to work together? While Jace realizes exactly how much he's willing to risk for Clary, can she harness her newfound powers to help save the Glass City - whatever the cost?
Shadowhunters and demons square off for the final showdown in the spellbinding, seductive conclusion to the #1 New York Times bestselling Mortal Instruments series.
\nDarkness has descended on the Shadowhunter world. Chaos and destruction overwhelm the Nephilim as Clary, Jace, Simon, and their friends band together to fight the greatest evil they have ever faced: Clary’s own brother. Nothing in this world can defeat Sebastian—but if they journey to the realm of demons, they just might have a chance…
\nLives will be lost, love sacrificed, and the whole world will change. Who will survive the explosive sixth and final installment of the Mortal Instruments series?
\n**
\n
What price is too high to pay, even for love? When Jace and Clary meet again, Clary is horrified to discover that the demon Lilith's magic has bound her beloved Jace together with her evil brother Sebastian, and that Jace has become a servant of evil. The Clave is out to destroy Sebastian, but there is no way to harm one boy without destroying the other.
\nAs Alec, Magnus, Simon, and Isabelle wheedle and bargain with Seelies, demons, and the merciless Iron Sisters to try to save Jace, Clary plays a dangerous game of her own. The price of losing is not just her own life, but Jace's soul. She's willing to do anything for Jace, but can she still trust him? Or is he truly lost?
Magic is dangerous - but love is more dangerous still.
\nWhen sixteen-year-old Tessa Gray crosses the ocean to find her brother, her destination is England, the time is the reign of Queen Victoria, and something terrifying is waiting for her in London's Downworld, where vampires, warlocks and other supernatural folk stalk the gaslit streets. Only the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the world of demons, keep order amidst the chaos.
\nKidnapped by the mysterious Dark Sisters, members of a secret organisation called The Pandemonium Club, Tessa soon learns that she herself is a Downworlder with a rare ability: the power to transform, at will, into another person. What’s more, the Magister, the shadowy figure who runs the Club, will stop at nothing to claim Tessa's power for his own.
\nFriendless and hunted, Tessa takes refuge with the Shadowhunters of the London Institute, who swear to find her brother if she will use her power to help them. She soon finds herself fascinated by - and torn between - two best friends: James, whose fragile beauty hides a deadly secret, and blue-eyed Will, whose caustic wit and volatile moods keep everyone in his life at arm's length . . . everyone, that is, but Tessa. As their search draws them deep into the heart of an arcane plot that threatens to destroy the Shadowhunters, Tessa realises that she may need to choose between saving her brother and helping her new friends save the world . . . and that love may be the most dangerous magic of all.
\n
In the magical underworld of Victorian London, Tessa Gray has at last found safety with the Shadowhunters. But that safety proves fleeting when rogue forces in the Clave plot to see her protector, Charlotte, replaced as head of the Institute. If Charlotte loses her position, Tessa will be out on the street - and easy prey for the mysterious Magister, who wants to use Tessa’s powers for his own dark ends.
\nWith the help of the handsome, self-destructive Will and the fiercely devoted Jem, Tessa discovers that the Magister’s war on the Shadowhunters is deeply personal. He blames them for a long-ago tragedy that shattered his life. To unravel the secrets of the past, the trio journeys from mist-shrouded Yorkshire to a manor house that holds untold horrors, from the slums of London to an enchanted ballroom where Tessa discovers that the truth of her parentage is more sinister than she had imagined.
\nWhen they encounter a clockwork demon bearing a warning for Will, they realise that the Magister himself knows their every move - and that one of their own has betrayed them. Tessa finds her heart drawn more and more to Jem, but her longing for Will, despite his dark moods, continues to unsettle her. But something is changing in Will - the wall he has built around himself is crumbling.
\nCould finding the Magister free Will from his secrets and give Tessa the answers about who she is and what she was born to do? As their dangerous search for the Magister and the truth leads the friends into peril, Tessa learns that when love and lies are mixed, they can corrupt even the purest heart.
\n
If the only way to save the world was to destroy what you loved most, would you do it?
\nThe clock is ticking. Everyone must choose.
\nPassion. Power. Secrets. Enchantment.
\nDanger closes in around the Shadowhunters in the final installment of the bestselling Infernal Devices trilogy. Be sure not to miss the special first edition, complete with an exclusive family tree.
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New short story collection that follows Jem Carstairs as he travels through the many Shadow Markets around the world.
\nThe Shadow Market is a meeting point for faeries, werewolves, warlocks, and vampires. There, the Downworlders buy and sell magical objects, make dark bargains, and whisper secrets they do not want the Nephilim to know. Through two centuries, however, there has been a frequent visitor to the Shadow Market from the City of Bones, the very heart of the Shadowhunters’ world. As a Silent Brother, Brother Zachariah is a sworn keeper of the laws and lore of the Nephilim. But once he was a Shadowhunter called Jem Carstairs, and his love, then and always, is the warlock Tessa Gray. And Jem is searching through the Shadow Markets, in many different cities over long years, for a relic from his past.
\nFollow Jem and see, against the backdrop of the Shadow Market’s dark dealings and festival, Anna Lightwood’s doomed romance, Matthew Fairchild’s great sin, and Tessa Gray as she is plunged into a world war. Valentine Morgenstern buys a soul at the Market and a young Jace Wayland’s soul finds safe harbor. In the Market is hidden a lost heir and a beloved ghost, and no one can save you once you have traded away your heart. Not even Brother Zachariah.
In a secret world where half-angel warriors are sworn to fight demons, parabatai is a sacred word.
A parabatai is your partner in battle. A parabatai is your best friend. Parabatai can be everything to each other - but they can never fall in love.
Emma Carstairs is a warrior, a Shadowhunter, and the best in her generation. She lives for battle. Shoulder to shoulder with her parabatai, Julian Blackthorn, she patrols the streets of Los Angeles, where vampires party on the Sunset Strip, and faeries - the most powerful of supernatural creatures - teeter on the edge of open war with Shadowhunters. When the bodies of humans and faeries turn up murdered in the same way Emma’s parents were when she was a child, an uneasy alliance is formed. This is Emma’s chance for revenge - and Julian’s chance to get back his brother Mark, who is being held prisoner by the faerie Courts. All Emma, Mark, and Julian have to do is solve the murders within two weeks . . . and before the murderer targets them.
Their search takes Emma from sea caves full of sorcery to a dark lottery where death is dispensed. And each clue she unravels uncovers more secrets. What has Julian been hiding from her all these years? Why does Shadowhunter Law forbid parabatai to fall in love? Who really killed her parents - and can she bear to know the truth?
A Shadowhunter’s life is bound by duty. Constrained by honor. The word of a Shadowhunter is a solemn pledge, and no vow is more sacred than the vow that binds parabatai, warrior partners - sworn to fight together, die together, but never to fall in love.
Emma Carstairs has learned that the love she shares with her parabatai, Julian Blackthorn, isn’t just forbidden - it could destroy them both. She knows she should run from Julian. But how can she when the Blackthorns are threatened by enemies on all sides?
Their only hope is the Black Volume of the Dead, a spell book of terrible power. Everyone wants it. Only the Blackthorns can find it. Spurred on by a dark bargain with the Seelie Queen, Emma; her best friend, Cristina; and Mark and Julian Blackthorn journey into the Courts of Faerie, where glittering revels hide bloody danger and no promise can be trusted.
Meanwhile, rising tension between Shadowhunters and Downworlders has produced the Cohort, an extremist group of Shadowhunters dedicated to registering Downworlders and “unsuitable” Nephilim. They’ll do anything in their power to expose Julian’s secrets and take the Los Angeles Institute for their own.
When Downworlders turn against the Clave, a new threat rises in the form of the Lord of Shadows - the Unseelie King, who sends his greatest warriors to slaughter those with Blackthorn blood and seize the Black Volume. As dangers close in, Julian devises a risky scheme that depends on the cooperation of an unpredictable enemy. But success may come with a price he and Emma cannot even imagine, one that will bring with it a reckoning of blood that could have repercussions for everyone and everything they hold dear.
Life is good for Magnus Bane and Alec Lightwood. They’re living together in a fabulous loft, their warlock son, Max, has started learning to walk, and the streets of New York are peaceful and quiet - as peaceful and quiet as they ever are, anyway.
Until the night that two old acquaintances break into Magnus’s apartment and steal the powerful Book of the White. Now Magnus and Alec will have to drop everything to get it back. They need to follow the thieves to Shanghai, they need to call some backup to accompany them, and they need a babysitter.
Also, someone has stabbed Magnus with a strange magical weapon and the wound is glowing, so they have that to worry about too.
Fortunately, their backup consists of Clary, Jace, Isabelle, and newly minted Shadowhunter Simon. In Shanghai, they learn that a much darker threat awaits them. Magnus’s magic is growing unstable, and if they can’t stop the demons flooding into the city, they might have to follow them all the way back to the source - the realm of the dead. Can they stop the threat to the world? Will they make it back home before their kid completely wears out Alec’s mom?
Kel Saren, body double to Conor, crown prince of the dazzling city of Castellane, is caught between two worlds. In order to protect his beloved prince, Kel must find the culprits responsible for a massacre at the royal palace - and the only clues are held by the Ragpicker King, the notorious criminal who rules Castellane’s underworld. The trail Kel follows leads back to the Hill, where among decadent nobles and glittering parties a dark conspiracy to destroy the royal family has taken hold - a conspiracy headed up by the monstrous Artal Gremont, the man engaged to marry the woman Kel adores.
\nMeanwhile, Lin Caster must face the aftermath of the greatest risk she’s ever taken. To save the life of a dying friend, Lin has falsely claimed to be the Goddess Reborn, the legendary heroine destined to save her people. Now the terrifying - but strangely magnetic - leader of her people has arrived to test her powers. The price of failure is exile, and only through her alliance with the Ragpicker King can she continue to access the magic that may save her.
\nThen Prince Conor reappears in her life, demanding that she use her healing powers to cure the madness of his father, the King. Lin soon realises the King is gripped by an ancient and terrible magic, one whose lure she cannot deny any more than she can deny her growing passion for Conor.
\nAs the simmering tensions in Castellane reach a fever pitch, Lin and Kel must decide who to trust when any false move means death - or worse.
\n
All Magnus Bane wanted was a vacation.
A lavish trip across Europe with Alec Lightwood, the Shadowhunter who, against all odds, is finally his boyfriend. It doesn’t seem like too much for the centuries-old High Warlock to ask for. But no sooner have they settled in Paris than an old friend arrives with news about a demon-worshipping cult called the Crimson Hand that is bent on causing chaos around the world. A cult that was apparently founded by Magnus himself. Years ago. As a joke.
Now Magnus and Alec must race across Europe to track down the Crimson Hand and its elusive new leader before the cult can cause any more damage. As if it wasn’t bad enough that their romantic getaway has been sidetracked, demons are now dogging their every step, and it is becoming harder to tell friend from foe. As their quest for answers becomes increasingly dire, Magnus and Alec have to trust each other more than ever—even if it means revealing the secrets they’ve both been keeping.
Delve into the details of all things Shadowhunter with this illustrated guide to the knowledge and lore of the Shadowhunter world.
\nSince the thirteenth century, the Shadowhunter’s Codex has been the one and only manual for Shadowhunters looking to brush up on their demon languages, learn proper stele use, and discover just what exactly a pyxis is. Featured in both The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices, this guide is a necessity for any young Nephilim on their journey to becoming a Shadowhunter. Beautifully illustrated, the Codex contains images of the famous Shadowhunter homeland of Idris, as well as depictions of demons and other Downworlders.
\nBut this isn’t just any copy of The Shadowhunter’s Codex. It’s Clary’s copy, and as an artist herself, she’s sketched pictures of her friends and family in the book, and scrawled helpful advice in the margins. Of course, she couldn’t exactly stop Jace or Simon from adding their thoughts either. Part encyclopedia, part history, part training manual - complete with commentary from Shadowhunters who have seen it all - this beautiful guide is a perfect supplement to the bestselling series.
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In the vibrant city-state of Castellane, the richest of nobles and the most debauched of criminals have one thing in common: the constant search for wealth, power, and the next hedonistic thrill.
\nKel is an orphan, stolen from the life he knew to become the Sword-Catcher - the body-double of a royal heir, Prince Conor Aurelian. He has been raised alongside the prince, trained in every aspect of combat and statecraft. He and Conor are close as brothers, but Kel knows he has one destiny: to die for Conor. No other future is possible.
\nLin Caster is one of the Ashkar, a small community who still possess magical abilities. By law, they must live behind walls in the city, but Lin, a physician, ventures out to tend to the sick and dying of Castellane. Despite her skills, she cannot heal her best friend Mariam without access to forbidden knowledge.
\nAfter a failed assassination attempt brings Lin and Kel together, they are drawn into the web of the mysterious Ragpicker King, the criminal ruler of Castellane’s underworld. He offers them each what they want most; but as they descend into his world of intrigue and shadow, they discover a conspiracy of corruption that reaches from the darkest gutters of Castellane to the highest tower of its palaces. As long-kept secrets begin to unravel, they must ask themselves: Is knowledge worth the price of betrayal? Can forbidden love bring down a kingdom? And will Lin and Kel’s discoveries plunge their nation into war - and the world into chaos?
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Simon Lewis has been a human and a vampire, and now he is becoming a Shadowhunter. But the events of City of Heavenly Fire left him stripped of his memories, and Simon isn’t sure who he is anymore. He knows he was friends with Clary, and that he convinced the total goddess Isabelle Lightwood to go out with him . . . but he doesn’t know how. And when Clary and Isabelle look at him, expecting him to be a man he doesn’t remember . . . Simon can’t take it.
\nSo when the Shadowhunter Academy reopens, Simon throws himself into this new world of demon-hunting, determined to find himself again. His new self. Whomever this new Simon might be.
\nBut the Academy is a Shadowhunter institution, which means it has some problems. Like the fact that non-Shadowhunter students have to live in the basement. And that differences - like being a former vampire - are greatly looked down upon. At least Simon is trained in weaponry - even if it’s only from hours of playing D&D.
\nJoin Simon on his journey to become a Shadowhunter, and learn about the Academy’s illustrious history along the way, through guest lecturers such as Jace Herondale, Tessa Gray, and Magnus Bane. These ten short stories give an epilogue to the Mortal Instruments series and provide glimpses of what’s in store in the Dark Artifices.
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For Perdita Jungfrau, a social worker who thought she was going to be married to her husband forever, falling in love with her anarcho-Marxist roofer Nando is a crisis. Every possible obstacle is in their Nando is fifteen years younger and has a girlfriend. Perdita is pregnant and terrified to mess up her children. None of that hinders her from being drawn to this magnetic man who entrusts her with his deepest secret.
\nThree years later, Perdita’s lover has been murdered. As her bewildered husband tries to make sense of the wildly unpredictable person his wife has become, Perdita has other things on her mind. For starters, who is the mysterious woman sitting outside her house in a parked car all day? How can she stop her adored baby brother from being pulled under by his opioid addiction? Can someone with a childhood like theirs ever be the mother her children deserve?
\nAnd most of all, what should she do with the searing memories of the affair, which turned her life upside down?
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Those yet to succumb to the curse of decay inhabit Fourspires Castle, home to arcanists from across the four magical disciplines - blood, bone, stone and botany.
\nThe castle is thrown into chaos when the ruler of Fourspires is assassinated. To crown a new ruler, the arcanists and their human familiars are forced to kill or be killed in the Slaughter, a bloody fight for succession at the top of the Fifth Tower. Familiars, both servants and sources of power to arcanists, are forbidden from even speaking. For them, the Slaughter means certain death.
\nWhen Nixie, a botanical familiar, learns that her fate can be avoided and the rotting curse of Fourspires lifted, she'll stop at nothing to save herself. But she must work with familiars from across the rival disciplines - not easy when one of them is her bone witch ex-girlfriend, Taro - find four magical curse keys and climb the deadly Fifth Tower. With just 48 hours until the Slaughter begins, Nixie and Taro must forge an unlikely alliance with rival familiars Alis and Elliot. Together, the four Wyrdos must battle re-animated skeletons, poisonous and possessed plants, un-dead nuns and the deadliest enemies of all; each other.
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Presley Fry is not amused. She’s been an assistant at the Late Night Show for way too long, she’s adopted a “business casual” approach to dating to save herself from the embarrassment of seeking genuine connection, and she’s content to allow her gregarious roommate, Isabelle, to orchestrate her entire social life. And yet, Presley is absolutely enamored with her job and the world of stand-up comedy. The joy she finds in discovering up-and-coming comedians, the beauty and connection in their shared humor - it’s enough for now.
\nEnter Susan Clark, the childhood best friend of Presley’s late mother, whose death still knocks the wind out of Presley whenever she reaches for the phone. Susan is married to the head of the network where Presley works, and she is determined to take Presley under her wing and ease her way through life in the big city. She’s also determined to connect Presley with her son, the bright and affable Lawrence, who couldn’t be further from Presley’s type.
\nAs Presley grapples with the loss of her mother and finds her people among those who seek out comedy to make the world a bit brighter, Humor Me reminds us that friendship can emerge from where you least expect it and that shared laughter can ease some of the deepest pain.
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When Gerry, the beloved Williams patriarch, dies suddenly, his grandchildren flock from across the country to the family home in Eulalia, Georgia. But when Gerry's best friend steps up to the microphone to deliver his eulogy, the funeral turns out unlike anyone expected. The cousins, left reeling and confused, cope with their fresh grief and various private dramas. Delia, recently heartbroken, refuses to shut up about her ex. Her sister Alice, usually confident, flusters when she spots her high school sweetheart, hiding a secret that will change both of their lives.
\nOutspoken, affable Grant is preening in the afterglow of his recent appearance on The Bachelorette and looking to reignite an old flame with the least available person in town. Meanwhile, his younger brother Red, unsure of himself and easily embarrassed, desperately searches for a place in the boisterous family.
\nThe cousins' eccentric parents are in tow, too, and equally lost - in love and in life. Watching over them all is Ellen, Gerry's sweet and proper widow, who does her best to keep her composure in front of the leering small town.
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In a holy walled city where sin and sanctity are revealed through touch, Csilla - a girl born without a soul - is worth little to the Church that raised her. But when a series of murders corrodes the faithful magic that keep the city safe, the Church elders see a use for her she can assassinate their prime suspect, a heretic with divine heritage, without risking the stain of sin.
\nThe heretic, however, makes Csilla a clear his name by helping him catch the real killer, and he'll use his angelic gifts to grant her very own soul. Meanwhile, ruthless Ilan, desperate to earn back his position as Church Inquisitor, sees the case as his chance at he'll bring in the murderer - or, failing that, Csilla and the heretic - and regain his title.
\nBut as the death toll rises, and their hunt pits them against the all-powerful and callous Faith, Csilla finds herself torn. Will her salvation come at the cost of everything she believes in?
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Just shy of her thirtieth birthday, Cate Osborne, a stage actress with two master’s degrees, started to have difficulty remembering her lines. Suddenly, things that had seemed routine before were falling through the cracks. An evaluation finally led to a ADHD.
\nErik Gude, who was diagnosed in his teens, had a slightly different path. While an ADHD diagnosis might explain the cause of some of his academic challenges, it would take years before he understood the other ways it affected other aspects of his life. When they connected as adults, it didn’t take long before they realised other people might feel just as lost as they had.
\nWith roughly eight million adults living with ADHD and more people seeking and receiving diagnoses each year, The ADHD Field Guide for Adults is a witty, thoughtful, and practical guide to living with ADHD in adulthood, from two people who know what it’s like. Featuring the most important foundational information about ADHD, it also explores issues that are rarely discussed, such as navigating sex and intimacy, the healthcare system, and home care. And unlike existing titles on the topic, it is intentionally structured to incorporate ADHD accessibility features by offering bite-sized pieces of knowledge in a format that caters to the unique needs of ADHD readers.
\nFrom testing, evaluations, and diagnoses, to hacks for work and productivity, organisation, and time management, The ADHD Field Guide for Adults is the perfect book for those who want to understand why and how their brain works the way it does from people who have been there.
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New York City, late September 2001. The walls of the city are papered over with photos of the missing. Cora Brady’s father is there, the poster she made taped to columns and bridges. When a letter arrives from an aunt she didn’t know existed in Ireland with the offer of a new life, the name jogs a an old videocassette game Cora used to play as a child where two sisters must save the students of a mysterious boarding school.
\nCounty Donegal, 1974. An eclectic group of artists known as the Screamers arrives in Burtonport and moves into the old schoolhouse down the road from where Roisin lives with her older sister Moira. Alternately kind and cruel, brilliant artist Moira is a mystery to Roisin, as is Moira’s relationship with the boy next door, Michael. When the Screamers look to hire an artist in residence, Roisin enlists Michael’s help to get Moira the job, setting in motion a chain of events that will put an ocean between the sisters and threaten to tear them apart forever.
\nBurtonport, 2018. Lyca Brady lives in a sprawling old house with her mother, Cora, and great aunt, Ro. Abortion has just been legalized in Ireland, and Lyca is struggling to find herself outside her mother’s activism. An unexpected message from a childhood friend sends Lyca searching her house’s mysterious attic, with its strange collection of old medical equipment, piles of paperwork, and dusty boxes of ancient video games. There, she unearths secrets hidden for decades - secrets perhaps better left unknown.
\nCatherine Airey’s haunting debut spins a mesmerising story of family and fate, survival and revelation, examining the irresistible gravity of the past - how it endures through
\ngenerations, pervasively present even when buried or forgotten.
Like every other girl in her class, twelve-year-old Justine is drawn to her glamorous, charismatic new teacher, and longs to be her pet. However, when a thief begins to target the school, Justine’s sense that something isn't quite right grows ever stronger.
\nWith each twist of the plot, this gripping story of deception and the corrosive power of guilt takes a yet darker turn. Young as she is, Justine must decide where her loyalties lie.
Moving away from Munich isn’t nearly as wrenching an experience for Frau Greta Hahn as she had feared. Their new home is even lovelier than the one they left behind, and best of all - right on their doorstep - are some of the finest craftsmen from all over Europe, prepared to make for her and the other officers’ wives living in this small community anything they could possibly desire: new curtains from the finest silks, furniture designed to the most exacting specifications, execute a fresco or a mural even.
\nThe looming presence of the nearby prison camp - lying just beyond a patch of forest - is the only blot to mar what is otherwise an idyllic life in Buchenwald.
\nFrau Hahn’s husband, SS Sturmbannführer Dietrich Hahn, has taken up a powerful new position as camp administrator. The job is all consuming as he wrestles with corruption that is rife at every level, inadequate supplies, and a sewerage system under ever-growing strain as the prison population continues to rise.
\nFrau Hahn’s obliviousness is challenged when she is forced into an unlikely alliance with one of Buchenwald’s prisoners, Dr Lenard Weber. A decade earlier he invented a machine - the Sympathetic Vitaliser - that at the time he believed could cure cancer. Does the machine work? Whether it does or not, it might yet save a life.
Everywhere, the birds: sparrows and skylarks and thrushes, starlings and bellbirds, fantails and pipits - but above them all and louder, the magpies. We are here and this is our tree and we’re staying and it is ours and you need to leave and now.
\nTama is just a helpless chick when he is rescued by Marnie, and this is where his story might have ended. ‘If it keeps me awake,’ says Marnie’s husband Rob, a farmer, ‘I’ll have to wring its neck.’ But with Tama come new possibilities for the couple’s future. Tama can speak, and his fame is growing. Outside, in the pines, his father warns him of the wickedness wrought by humans. Indoors, Marnie confides in him about her violent marriage.
\nThe more Tama sees, the more the animal and the human worlds - and all of the precarity, darkness and hope within them - bleed into one another. Like a stock truck filled with live cargo, the story moves inexorably towards its dramatic conclusion: the annual Axeman’s Carnival.
\nPart trickster, part surrogate child, part witness, Tama the magpie is the star of this story. Though what he says aloud to humans is often nonsensical (and hilarious with it), the tale he tells us weaves a disturbingly human sense. The Axeman’s Carnival is Catherine Chidgey at her finest - comic, profound, poetic and true.
In an alternate world where nobody won WWII, three brothers are the only boys left in an orphanage whose dark secret is the reason for their existence - and the key to their survival.
\nAfter a very different outcome to WWII than the one history recorded, 1979 England is a country ruled by a government whose aims have sinister underpinnings and alliances. In the Hampshire countryside, 13-year-old triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William are the last remaining residents at the Captain Scott Home for Boys, where every day they must take medicine to protect themselves from a mysterious illness to which many of their friends have succumbed. The lucky ones who recover are allowed to move to Margate, a seaside resort of mythical proportions.
\nIn nearby Exeter, 13-year-old Nancy lives a secluded life with her parents, who dote on her but never let her leave the house. As the triplets’ lives begin to intersect with Nancy’s, bringing to light a horrifying truth about their origins and their likely fate, the children must unite to escape - and survive.
Growing up in Liberty Lake, Minnesota, Mary was chubby, awkward, and smart. Earning a scholarship to an Ivy League school was her ticket out; she was going to do great things and never look back. Three years later, “Ivy League Mary” is back - a thinner, cynical, and restless failure. Kicked out of Cornell at the beginning of senior year, she won’t tell anyone why. Working at the local grocery store, she sees familiar faces from high school and tries to make sense of the past and her life.
\nWhen beautiful, magnetic Olivia Willand, a rising social media star, goes missing, Mary - like the rest of Liberty Lake - becomes obsessed. Best friends in childhood, Mary and Olivia haven’t spoken in years. Everyone admired Olivia, but Mary knows better than anyone that behind the Instagram persona hid a willful, manipulative girl with sharp edges. As the world worries for perfect, lovely Olivia, Mary can’t help but hate her. She also believes that her disappearance is tied to another missing person - a nineteen-year-old girl named DeMaria Jackson whose disappearance has gone under the radar.
\nWho was the true Olivia Willand, and where did she go? What happened to DeMaria? As Mary delves deeper into the lives of the two missing girls, old wounds bleed fresh and painful secrets threaten to destroy everything.
\nMaybe no one is really a nice girl, after all.
It's the summer before high school, and Ronny Nguyen finds herself too young for work, too old for cartoons. Her days are spent in a small backyard, dozing off to trashy magazines on a plastic lawn chair. In stark contrast stands her brother Tommy, the pride and joy of their immigrant parents: a popular honor student destined to be the first in the family to attend college. The thought of Tommy leaving for college fills Ronny with dread, as she contemplates the quiet house she will be left alone in with her parents, Me and Ba.
\nTheir parents rarely speak of their past in Vietnam, except through the lens of food. The family's meals are a tapestry of cultural memory: thick spring rolls with slim and salty nem chua, and steaming bowls of pho tái with thin, delicate slices of blood-red beef. In the aftermath of the war, Me and Ba taught Ronny and Tommy that meat was a dangerous luxury, a symbol of survival that should never be taken for granted.
\nBut when tragedy strikes, Ronny's world is upended. Her sense of self and her understanding of her family are shattered. A few nights later, at her first high school party, a boy crosses the line, and Ronny is overtaken by a force larger than herself. This newfound power comes with an insatiable hunger for raw meat, a craving that is both a saving grace and a potential destroyer.
\nWhat Hunger is a visceral, emotional journey through the bursts and pitfalls of female rage. Ronny’s Vietnamese lineage and her mother’s emotional memory play a crucial role in this tender ode to generational trauma and mother-daughter bonding.
Twin queens Rose & Wren survived the Battle for Anadawn and brought back magic to their kingdom. But danger lurks in Eana’s shadows.
\nWren is troubled. Ever since she performed the blood spell on Prince Ansel, her magic has become unruly. Worse, the spell created a link between Wren and the very man she’s trying to forget: Icy King Alarik of Gevra. A curse is eating away at both of them. To fix it they must journey to the northern mountains - under the watchful guard of Captain Tor Iversen - to consult with the Healer on High.
\nRose is haunted. Waking one night to find her undead ancestor Oonagh Starcrest by her bed, she receives a warning: surrender the throne - or face a war that will destroy Eana. With nowhere to turn and desperate to find a weapon to defeat Oonagh, Rose seeks help from Shen-Lo in the Sunkissed Kingdom, but what she finds there may break her heart.
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As Oonagh threatens all Rose and Wren hold dear, it will take everything they have to save Eana - including a sacrifice they may not be prepared to make.
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Twin queens Wren and Rose have claimed their crowns . . . but not everyone is happy about witches sitting on Eana's throne.
\nCool-headed Rose sets off on a Royal Tour to win over the doubters, but soon finds herself drawn to the Sunless Kingdom. Here secrets are revealed about those closest to her, and Rose finds her loyalties divided.
\nMeanwhile rebellious Wren steals away to the icy north to rescue their beloved grandmother, Banba. But when she accepts King Alarik's deadly magical bargain in exchange for Banba's freedom, the spell has unexpected - and far-reaching - consequences . . .
\nAs an ancient curse begins to arise from the darkness, the sisters must come together and unite the crown. Their lives - and the future of Eana - depend on it.
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Wren Greenrock has always known that one day she would steal her sister's place in the palace. Trained from birth to return to the place of her parents' murder and usurp the only survivor, she will do anything to rise to power and protect the community of witches she loves. Or she would, if only a certain palace guard wasn't quite so distractingly attractive, and if her reckless magic didn't have a habit of causing trouble . . .
\nPrincess Rose Valhart knows that with power comes responsibility. Marriage into a brutal kingdom awaits, and she will not let a small matter like waking up in the middle of the desert in the company of an extremely impertinent (and handsome) kidnapper get in the way of her royal duty. But life outside the palace walls is wilder and more beautiful than she ever imagined, and the witches she has long feared might turn out to be the family she never knew she was missing.
\nTwo sisters separated at birth and raised into entirely different worlds are about to get to know each other's lives a whole lot better. But as coronation day looms closer and they each strive to claim their birthright, the sinister Kingsbreath, Willem Rathborne, becomes increasingly determined that neither will succeed. Who will ultimately rise to power and wear the crown?
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In Fantome, a kingdom of cobbled streets, flickering lamplight, beautiful buildings, and secret catacombs, Shade-magic is a scarce and deadly commodity controlled by two enemy the Cloaks and the Daggers - the thieves and the assassins.
\nOn the night of her mother’s murder, 17-year-old Seraphine runs for her life. Seeking sanctuary with the Cloaks, Sera’s heart is set on revenge. But are her secret abilities a match for the dark-haired boy whose quicksilver eyes follow her around the city?
\nNothing can prepare Sera for the moment she finally comes face-to-face with Ransom, heir to the Order of Daggers. And Ransom is shocked to discover that this unassuming farmgirl wields a strange and blazing magic he has never seen before . . .
\nAmong rumours of monsters stalking the streets and the rival guilds grappling for control of Fantome’s underworld, Sera and Ransom are drawn together by something more than just magic and must face a deadly choice - forgiveness or vengeance? Kiss or kill? Dagger or Flame?
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From a remote hilltop haven, far from the city of Fantome, Seraphine Marchant and her Order of Flames plot to eradicate shade magic with lightfire. But as Sera struggles to control her blooming powers, destiny calls her back to Fantome - and to the assassin who haunts her dreams.
\nRansom Hale can’t get Sera out of his head. As their rivalry grows and he grapples with the responsibility of leading the Order of Daggers, he feels himself slipping further from who he wants to be. Is he doomed to a life in the shadows? Or can he forge another path?
\nMeanwhile, rebellion is stirring in the kingdom, and a dangerous prince grows in power. Forced to work together by order of the king, Sera and Ransom’s conflicted hearts are tested to their limits. And all the while, an ancient prophecy is unfolding that will change the fate of Valterre forever . . .
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In the soot-streaked alleys of 19th-century London, Minha is a girl unlike any other - born with an extraordinary an overwhelming, all-consuming sense of taste. Desperate to escape a life of poverty, she crosses the sea to France, chasing the shimmer of a better future.
\nAt Château de Bellefalaise, a grand estate with fairytale turrets perched above a sleepy village, Minha's talent is discovered when she detects poison in a dish about to be served to the château's master, Duc Nicolas. For the first time in her life, her strange ability becomes her salvation - and her curse. Appointed the Duc's personal poison-taster, she is confined to her tasting room and forced to live in the chateau's shadows. With each dish, she enters a world of glittering porcelain and gilded secrets, where danger simmers beneath every course . . .
\nBut when she loses her miraculous gift and suspicion coils through the corridors, Minha must confront a terrifying without her gift, who is she - and what remains of the life she's fought so hard to build?
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Hazel Ross isn’t your average pet photographer to the stars. She’s got a secret: she can see other people’s memories, playing out right in front of her. When a desperate plea for help yanks her from her glitzy life, Hazel plunges headfirst into a century-old romantic mystery.
\nScientist Jo Steward thought she was escaping heartbreak by fleeing to her seaside haven in Northern California. Instead, she’s in the eye of a different storm. As a steadfast skeptic, Jo is determined to find a logical explanation for the strange energy now in the house. But what if the truth can’t be contained?
\nAs Hazel’s and Jo’s paths intertwine, they’re swept up in a whirlwind of long-buried secrets, sizzling chemistry, and memories that won’t be denied. Can these two unlikely allies come together to solve an age-old mystery? And in the chaos of the past and present, can they discover a new future: their own echo of love?
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Catherine Lane - Echoes of Love.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856852422.254, "size": 769248, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:19:34.514Z" }, "Catherine Lane - Heartwood": { "title": "Heartwood", "author": "Catherine Lane", "description": "All Nikka thinks about is making partner in the law firm she works for. So, when the firm sends her to the Springs, a women’s resort town and home of famous lesbian author Beth Walker, Nikka jumps at the chance to prove herself to her sexy boss, Lea.
But nothing in the Springs is as it seems. Beth is hiding secrets about her mysterious past with movie star Dawn Montgomery. Lea may only be out for her own gain and keeping Beth a prisoner in her own home. And the only person who might see the truth of the situation is adorably impulsive Maggie.
Will Nikka stay true to her life’s ambition, or will she dare look into the mystery - and into her own heart?
Things get complicated when Rory’s roommate Maya falls madly in love with Hollywood superstar London Green and Rory is dragged into the path of Ellis the uptight ice queen in this enemies-to-lovers lesbian romance.
\nHollywood talent agent Ellis Turner is at the top of her game. Her star client has landed the role of a lifetime, and all Ellis must do is get her to the set without scandal. Enter Rory Hatten, the nosy roommate of London’s latest questionable romantic entanglement, and an absolute nobody in the industry. Their disastrous first encounter seems destined to destroy everything that Ellis has worked so hard to achieve.
\nRory doesn’t want to come between Ellis and London. Actually, she’d rather stay out of Hollywood altogether. But she begins to suspect Maya’s motives aren’t as pure as they seem, and she has no choice but to work with Ellis to save London’s reputation and the Ellis Turner Agency.
\nWill badly behaving celebrities, erotic sex tapes, and steamy scandals prevent Rory and Ellis from leaning in to love?
Smart and athletic, Amy Kimball should have it all, but her life’s in a tailspin. She’s working two menial jobs to make ends meet, barely a paycheck away from financial disaster, and women aren’t exactly lining up at her door.
Enter soccer star Diego Torres, who’s keeping a big secret: he’s gay. His manager fears that if he’s found out, his endorsements and his chance to play for the national team will evaporate into the wind.
Amy jumps at the chance to act as Diego’s fake fiancée, even though it means signing her life away in a non-disclosure agreement.
On the surface, the job couldn’t be better: the money’s great; the living accommodations are luxurious, and she gets to watch her favorite soccer team from the players’ box at the stadium.
But she soon realizes that this new life is even harder to navigate than her old one.
Diego’s manager is as sleazy as they come, and this easy job soon turns complicated, possibly even dangerous. More important, all the lies Amy is forced to tell are starting to eat away at her soul, especially when she finds herself attracted to Casey Palmer, Diego’s pretty assistant.
\nWill Amy watch from the sidelines, or will she find the courage to get back into the game?
Claire, fairy godmother level one plus, is one of the best operatives at the Fairy Godmother Council, but god-mothering in the twenty-first century isn't all it used to be. The magic's drying up; the girls are spoiled brats, and guardian angels poach the council's best clients whenever they can.When her boss assigns her a VIP case, Claire assumes it's more of the same.
\nBut Frankie, her client, seems to be the deserving underdog of the olden days. And Tamiel, the guardian angel who pops onto the scene, swears she's there to protect Frankie, not to steal her. It doesn't hurt she's smokin' hot.As the case starts to unravel, Claire is forced to examine her own prejudices and desires. Is she heading for certain ruin, or will she grab her happily ever after in this lesbian urban fantasy?
When singer Alessandra Moreau is found brutally murdered in New York State Senator Leigh Drayman’s living room, NYPD Detectives Chiara Corelli and P.J. Parker are thrust into another high-stakes investigation. The victim, a rising star, harbored a closely guarded secret shared with only three people. She was transgender - just like the senator.
\nWhat begins as a focused investigation into three suspects explodes into something far more sinister when thirteen identical murders of trans women surface from the past two years. As the body count rises, Corelli and Parker uncover two additional cold cases from nearly two decades ago that could hold the key.
\nBut their quarry is clever, methodical, and has been hiding behind a perfect disguise for years. In a race against time, the detectives must unravel decades of deception before another woman dies.
\n
Still battling each other and the blue wall, NYPD Detectives Chiara Corelli and P.J. Parker catch a new murder case. The victim, a gay man, is posed with a rosary in his hands, the smell of incense in the air and Gregorian chants playing in the background.
\nWhile Corelli and Parker search for leads, Kate Burke, the lesbian Speaker of the City Council asks for an update on the investigation. Thinking Burke is playing politics, Corelli ignores the request. In the meantime, two more bodies are found, both laid out in the same way.
\nPressured by the chief, Corelli goes to Kate’s office where a photograph of the speaker with a group of friends catches her eye. Corelli recognizes the three victims and, to her horror, three others. Suddenly the case becomes personal.
\nFearing a serial killer is picking off the people in the photograph, fearing the next victim will be someone she loves, Corelli races to find the murderer before he kills again.
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NYPD Detectives Chiara Corelli and P.J. Parker are assigned what should be a straight-forward murder investigation. But what seems to be the simple murder of a man found in a park gets more complicated when they identify him as Ned Rich, a somewhat paranoid investigative reporter who seems to be living above his means.
\nThe more they dig, the more victims of Rich’s blackmail they find. And figuring out which one killed him seems like an impossible task. But then they stumble on the project Rich was working on at the time of his death - a not so white supremacist and a threat to our democracy - and the focus of the investigation turns to people who will do anything to protect their reputations and the secrecy of their traitorous goals.
\nUndeterred by the threats and attacks, Corelli and Parker battle to drag the traitors into the light - and put their lives on the line to defend all they believe in.
\n
Calliope DeAndre and Dana Wittman are two very different women with two very different lives - each going through recent heartache and life-changing events.
\nNow the two find themselves on what should have been two separate romantic Italy tours. Each alone instead of part of a couple.
\nWhen Callie wants to leave the tour, Dana convinces her to stay. As days turn into weeks, their friendship and feelings grow. But guilt rages in Callie and Dana doesn’t trust love.
\nThe two must overcome their separate pasts in order to find their future together.
\n
Just back from her second tour in Afghanistan, NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli goes undercover to expose a ring of dirty cops. But when she’s ordered to kill to prove her loyalty, she aborts the operation without having identified the leaders. Now, Corelli is the one exposed. With her brothers and sisters in blue ostracizing her, can she trust Detective P.J. Parker to watch her back?
\nParker is the daughter of a vehement critic of the NYPD. But that doesn’t stop her from wanting to work in the homicide division. And wanting to learn from the best. Unfortunately, Chiara Corelli is the best… even if she is the most hated detective in the department.
\nWithout Parker, Corelli will be condemned to desk duty. Corelli is Parker’s only chance to work in homicide. Will the two women put aside their fears and join forces to solve a brutal murder and identify the leaders of the dirty cops before they get to Corelli’s family?
\n
Darcy Silver has everything money can buy except for a way to erase the past. A tragic car accident has left her temporarily dependent on others for even the most basic of needs - but everyone she cares about seems to have abandoned her.
\nDr. Andrea Trapani would like to forget the past too. Being a full-time medical caretaker for a cantankerous woman is not where she expected her career to take her. But when Andrea sees that Darcy’s frustration will have serious medical consequences, she vows to bring peace and stability to Darcy’s world.
\nAs two wounded souls fight to overcome their past and face the fears of the future, will love be the right medicine?
\n
A middle-of-the night phone call summons NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli and her partner, Detective P.J. Parker, to a politically sensitive murder scene. The victims - a U.S. Senator, the pastor of a mega church, and a self-made music industry billionaire - appear to have been killed during a sex orgy.
\nPressure is mounting to cover up the circumstances. But Corelli and Parker are enraged by the words scrawled in blood on a mirror, and their hearts are broken by what they find hidden in a closet. Now the partners vow to find the killer and expose the unsavory lives of these men while seeking justice for the real victims in this case - the children . . .
\n
Having been abandoned on her wedding day, bestselling novelist Lily Alexander is understandably cautious about dating again. Wealthy tech entrepreneur and notorious playgirl Robin DeLuca, on the other hand, loves to date. She just doesn't do commitment.
\nWhen beautiful blond Lily and handsome butch Robin lock eyes across a crowded bar, the current flowing between this unlikely pair is more electrifying than anything either has felt before. Thus begins a long and sultry dance that will lead them to the altar and the promise of the perfect future.
\nBut when the premature birth of their baby awakens horrendous secrets from Robin's long-repressed past, she believes the only way to protect Lily and their daughter is to leave. Her decision devastates both women and all those who love them.
\nCan Robin’s unexpected encounter with a stranger on a beach be the catalyst for healing these two shattered hearts?
\n
Edith and Ashley have been best friends for over forty-two years. They've shared the mundane and the momentous together: trick or treating and binge drinking; Gilligan's Island reruns and REM concerts; hickeys and heartbreak; surprise Scottish wakes; marriages, infertility, and children. As Ash says, \"Edi's memory is like the back-up hard drive for mine.\"
\nBut now the unthinkable has happened. Edi is dying of ovarian cancer and spending her last days at a hospice near Ash, who stumbles into heartbreak surrounded by her daughters, ex(ish) husband, dear friends, a poorly chosen lover (or two), and a rotating cast of beautifully, fleetingly human hospice characters.
\nAs The Fiddler on the Roof soundtrack blasts all day long from the room next door, Edi and Ash reminisce, hold on, and try to let go. Meanwhile, Ash struggles with being an imperfect friend, wife, and parent - with life, in other words, distilled to its heartbreaking, joyful, and comedic essence.
\n
A woman has gone missing
\nBut did she ever really exist?
\nMia Eliot has travelled from London to LA for pilot season. This is her big chance to make it as an actor in Hollywood, and she is ready to do whatever it takes. At an audition she meets Emily, and what starts as a simple favour takes a dark turn when Emily goes missing and Mia is the last person to see her.
\nThen a woman turns up, claiming to be Emily, but she is nothing like Mia remembers. Why would someone pretend to be Emily? Starting to question her own sanity, she goes on a desperate and dangerous search for answers, knowing something is very, very wrong.
\nIn an industry where everything is about creating illusions, how do you know what is real? And how much would you risk to find out?
\n
Harry is a novelist on the brink of stardom; Edward, her husband-to-be, is seemingly perfect. In love and freshly engaged, their bliss is interrupted by the reemergence of the Holbecks, Edward's eminent family and the embodiment of American old money. For years, they've dominated headlines and pulled society’s strings, and Edward left them all behind to forge his own path. But there are eyes and ears everywhere. It was only a matter of time before they were pulled back in . . .
\nAfter all, even though he's long severed ties with his family, Edward is set to inherit it all. Harriet is drawn to the glamour and sophistication of the Holbecks, who seem to welcome her with open arms, but everything changes when she meets Robert, the inescapably magnetic head of the family. At their first meeting, Robert slips Harry a cassette tape, revealing a shocking confession which sets the inevitable game in motion.
\nWhat is it about Harry that made him give her that tape? A thing that has the power to destroy everything? As she ramps up her quest for the truth, she must endure the Holbecks’ savage Christmas traditions all the while knowing that losing this game could be deadly.
\n
Nina, still grieving from the loss of her father, discovers that she has inherited property in the British Virgin Islands - a vacation home she had no idea existed, until now. The house is extraordinary: state-of-the-art, all glass and marble. How did her sensible father come into enough money for this? Why did he keep it from her? And what else was he hiding?
\nMaria, once an ambitious medical student, is a nanny for the super-rich. The money’s better, and so are the destinations where her work takes her. Just one more gig, and she’ll be set. Finally, she’ll be secure. But when her wards never show, Maria begins to make herself at home, spending her days luxuriating by the pool and in the sauna.
\nThere’s just one rule: Don’t go in the basement. That room is off-limits. But her curiosity might just get the better of her.
\nAnd soon, she’ll wish her only worry was not getting paid.
\n
Erin is a documentary filmmaker on the brink of a professional breakthrough, Mark a handsome investment banker with big plans. Passionately in love, they embark on a dream honeymoon to the tropical island of Bora Bora, where they enjoy the sun, the sand, and each other. Then, while scuba diving in the crystal blue sea, they find something in the water . . .
\nSuddenly the newlyweds must make a dangerous choice: to speak out or to protect their secret. After all, if no one else knows, who would be hurt? Their decision will trigger a devastating chain of events . . .
\nWonder no longer. Catherine Steadman's enthralling voice shines throughout this spellbinding debut novel. With piercing insight and fascinating twists, Something in the Water challenges the reader to confront the hopes we desperately cling to, the ideals we're tempted to abandon, and the perfect lies we tell ourselves.
\n
Psychiatrist Olivia Cole is a shell of herself after only two years with her tyrannical husband, the outwardly perfect Sebastian. On their two-year anniversary, she’s subjected to one power move too many when Sebastian whisks her away on a surprise trip - first to the charming capital of Sweden, then to an unexpected final destination.
\nMiles from home and help, the only way for Olivia to wrest back control of her life is to give Sebastian an even bigger, shocking surprise.
Scholarship student Mars Chang has finally been accepted into the most prestigious dance academy - and she’ll do anything to stay.
\nEarning a scholarship to the Allegra Academy summer intensive was supposed to fix everything for Mars Chang. The academy is owned and run by the Bechlers, a big pharma family. And if Mars befriends the right girls, she could unlock the doors to the Ivy League future of her dreams.
\nWhen Mars is unexpectedly assigned to room with Alex Bechler, she knows impressing Alex will make or break all her plans. Alex is annoyingly attractive, the best dancer at the academy, and her great aunt runs the program. So when the headmistress pulls Mars aside and asks her to swap Alex’s supplements with a new Bechler product, APL, in exchange for year-round admittance, Mars can’t say no.
\nBut as Mars gets to know Alex and how much she dislikes her family and ballet, swapping the pills proves harder than Mars bargained for. Knowing Alex better only makes it clearer how unfair the academy is. So Mars decides to help another scholarship student by letting her try the supplements. At first, the pills give the girl an instant edge in class. But when they also produce terrifying side effects, Mars suspects that APL might not be safe after all.
\nBut how can Mars, the new girl, convince the academy’s best that her life is in danger without jeopardising her own dreams in the process?
\n
No one ever pays attention to sixteen-year-old Aja until her perfect older sister Fiona goes missing. In the days leading up to Fiona’s disappearance, Aja notices some extraordinary things: a strange fog rolling through their idyllic suburban town, a brief moment when the sky seems to rain blood, and a host of parasitic caterpillars burrowing their way through the trees. Aja’s father, the neighbors, and even her ex-friend Mary all play down this strange string of occurrences, claiming there must be some natural explanation. It seems everyone is willing to keep living in denial until other teens start to go missing too.
\nAja is horrified when she meets Padraic, the vampire responsible for all the strange occurrences. His hypnotic voice lures her to the window and tells her everything she’s longed to hear - she’s beautiful and special, and he wants nothing more than for Aja to come with him. Aja knows she shouldn’t trust him, but she’s barely able to resist his enthrallment. And following him into the woods may be the only way to find Fiona, so she agrees on one condition: He must let her leave alive if she is not wooed after one week. Though Aja plans to kill him before the week is out, Padraic has his own secrets as well.
\nIn the misty woods, Aja finds that Padraic has made his nest with another vampire in a dilapidated church infested by blood-sucking butterflies. Within its walls, the vampires are waited on and entertained by other children they’ve enthralled, but there is no sign of Fiona. Before her bargain is up, Aja must find a way to turn her classmates against their captors, find her sister, and save them all - or be forced to join the very monsters she wants to destroy.
\n
Helga is not the obedient science experiment her father intended. And though she has only just awoken, he leaves her in the care of his lab assistant Penny to go on a business trip.
\nBursting with curiosity, Helga quickly escapes from the well-meaning Penny and heads into Amaris City. There Helga finds she is as untamable as the invasive blackberry vines overtaking the island. And because of the misdeeds of her father’s scientific community, the natural world grows more volatile.
\nHelga soon discovers the night market, rowdy clubs, delicious food, and cute boys. Enamored with city life, she’ll do anything to find love - but she has only two weeks until her father gets back, and besides there are ominous rumblings from the volcanic island that could put her dating schemes, and even her own life, in grave peril.
\n
Sophia was made for him. Her perfect husband. She can feel it in her bones. He is perfect. Their home together in Arcadia Gardens is perfect. Everything is perfect.
\nIt's just that he's away so much. So often. He works so hard. She misses him. And he misses her. He says he does, so it must be true. He is the perfect husband and everything is perfect.
\nBut sometimes Sophia wonders about things. Strange things. Dark things. The look on her husband's face when he comes back from a long business trip. The questions he will not answer. The locked basement she is never allowed to enter. And whenever she asks the neighbors, they can't quite meet her gaze . . .
\nBut everything is perfect. Isn't it?
\n
Osmo Unknown hungers for the world beyond his small town. With the life that Littlebridge society has planned for him, the only taste Osmo will ever get are his visits to the edge of the Fourpenny Woods where his mother hunts. Until the unthinkable happens: his mother accidentally kills a Quidnunk, a fearsome and intelligent creature that lives deep in the forest.
\nNone of this should have anything to do with poor Osmo, except that a strange treaty was once formed between the Quidnunx and the people of Littlebridge to ensure that neither group would harm the other. Now that a Quidnunk is dead, as the firstborn child of the hunter who killed her, Osmo must embark on a quest to find the Eightpenny Woods - the mysterious kingdom where all wild forest creatures go when they die - and make amends.
\nAccompanied by a very rude half-badger, half-wombat named Bonk and an antisocial pangolin girl called Never, it will take all of Osmo’s bravery and cleverness to survive the magic of the Eightpenny Woods to save his town . . . and make it out alive.
\n
The enchanting, dark, funny, angry story of a girl who made two terrible mistakes: she told the truth and she dared to love the world.
\nThe future is blue. Endless blue . . . except for a few small places that float across the hot, drowned world left behind by long-gone fossil fuel-guzzlers. One of those patches is a magical place called Garbagetown.
\nTetley Abednego is the most beloved girl in Garbagetown, but she's the only one who knows it. She's the only one who knows a lot of things: that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it's full of hope, that you can love someone and 66% hate them all at the same time.
\nBut Earth is a terrible mess, hope is a fragile thing, and a lot of people are very angry with her. Then Tetley discovers a new friend, a terrible secret, and more to her world than she ever expected.
\n
The Metagalactic Grand Prix - part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past returns and the fate of the Earth is once again threatened.
\nThe civilisations opposed to humanity have been plotting and want to take down the upstarts. Can humanity rise again?
\n
A century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented-something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding.
\nOnce every cycle, the civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix - part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past. Instead of competing in orbital combat, the powerful species that survived face off in a competition of song, dance, or whatever can be physically performed in an intergalactic talent show. The stakes are high for this new game, and everyone is forced to compete.
\nThis year, though, humankind has discovered the enormous universe. And while they expected to discover a grand drama of diplomacy, gunships, wormholes, and stoic councils of aliens, they have instead found glitter, lipstick and electric guitars. Mankind will not get to fight for its destiny - they must sing.
\nA one-hit-wonder band of human musicians, dancers and roadies from London - Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes - have been chosen to represent Earth on the greatest stage in the galaxy. And the fate of their species lies in their ability to rock.
\n
Tabitha Muir returns to her childhood home in the remote hills of Hiskith in Scotland after twenty years away. She's lost her job, her house, and custody of her son after a divorce, and thinks this must be rock bottom - but worse is to come. An unplanned explosion at the dam on the loch and the suspicious death of her beloved cousin Davey force Tabitha to confront her past demons.
\nIs Davey's death just another dark episode in the Muir family's scandalous history? As Davey's closest friends, Gordo and Barrett, help Tabitha try to answer the many questions around Davey's demise, Tabitha discovers that nothing she thought she knew about herself and those around her is true . . .
\nThe trio are about to bring Hiskith's darkest secrets to the surface, but will the truth destroy them?
\n
Edinburgh, 1948.
\nLoud-mouthed nurse Helen Crowther has been in her new job barely a year. She's already made waves - everywhere she goes she dodges looks of disapproval and eyes roll behind her back. Still, she is determined to better the city she loves so dearly.
\nThe last thing she needs is another string of murders to distract her . . .
\nBut when three gentlemen dressed in rags wind up dead in very public places, she can't help but jump straight in. As Helen resolves to find the killer, she is propelled into a darker world of class, revenge and gruesome death, until suspicion falls on someone very close to home.
\n
When shy, lonely Ivy meets a woman who claims to be her long-lost sister, she knows it's too good to be true. She decides to trust Kate anyway. She wants a family. She wants someone to love.
\nShe's making a mistake.
\nIvy enters Kate's fairytale cottage, deep in the heart of Scotland . . . and she doesn't come out.
\nShe's the first to go missing.
\nShe won't be the last.
\nMeanwhile, in another part of the forest, Tash's journey is just beginning . . .
\n
nullHelen leaned close enough to fog the mirror with her breath and whispered, 'You, my girl, are a qualified medical almoner and at eight o'clock tomorrow morning you will be on the front line of the National Health Service of Scotland.' Her eyes looked huge and scared. 'So take a shake to yourself!'
\nEdinburgh, 1948. Helen Crowther leaves a crowded tenement home for her very own office in a doctor's surgery. Upstart, ungrateful, out of your depth - the words of disapproval come at her from everywhere but she's determined to take her chance and play her part.
\nShe's barely begun when she stumbles over a murder and learns that, in this most respectable of cities, no one will fight for justice at the risk of scandal. As Helen resolves to find a killer, she's propelled into a darker world than she knew existed, hardscrabble as her own can be. Disapproval is the least of her worries now.
\n
What secrets do the dark bones of Dundrennan Abbey hold?
\nA year ago, she was happily married, bringing up her beloved son, running her successful beauty salon and living with her loving husband in her dream house.
\nNow Ali McGovern's dreams are slipping away and all her old ghosts are coming back to haunt her. A job at Howell Hall, the private psychiatric facility near her rented cottage and the ruined abbey, seems too good to be true. But why has the couple who run the place employed her when she is clearly not qualified to do it? How can they afford to pay her so well? And what are they hiding?
\nWhen a body is discovered in a shallow grave by the abbey on Ali's first day at work, it feels like one last horror. But it's just the beginning of her descent into a nightmare world she never imagined existed so close to home.
\n
Iris and her father are the last of the Villarca line. For generations, the Villarcas have been haunted by \"her.\" Her origins are a mystery, but her purpose is clear: when a Villarca marries, when they love, when they have a child - she comes, and death follows.
Confined in their lonely mansion on Dartmoor, Iris makes her father a promise - to remain alone all her life. But when she's fifteen, Iris breaks that promise. She dares to fall in love, and the consequences of her choice are immediate and heartbreaking. From the sun-spotted hills of Italy to the biting chill of Victorian dissection halls, The Girl from Rawblood is a lyrical and haunting historical novel of darkness, love, and the ghosts of the past.
On the wind-battered isle of Altnaharra, off the wildest coast of Scotland, a clan prepares to bring about the end of the world and its imminent rebirth.
\nThe Adder is coming and one of their number will inherit its powers. They all want the honor, but young Eve is willing to do anything for the distinction.
\nA reckoning beyond Eve’s imagination begins when Chief Inspector Black arrives to investigate a brutal murder and their sacred ceremony goes terribly wrong.
\nAnd soon all the secrets of Altnaharra will be uncovered.
\n
In a lonely cottage overlooking the windswept Maine coast, Wilder Harlow begins the last book he will ever write. It is the story of his childhood summer companions and the killer that stalked the small New England town. Of the body they found, and the horror of that discovery echoing down the decades. And of Sky, Wilder’s one-time best friend, who stole his unfinished memoir and turned it into a lurid bestselling novel, Looking Glass Sound.
\nBut as Wilder writes, the lines between memory and fiction blur. He fears he’s losing his grip on reality when he finds notes hidden around the cottage written in Sky’s signature green ink.
\n
A refuge for lost children may also be their prison.
\nIn the middle of the night, Riley pulls her younger brother Oliver out of bed, and the two run away from home. Riley is intent on joining a group of teenagers squatting in the abandoned ruins of an infamous movie star’s ranch, Nowhere. For actor Leaf Winham, Nowhere was a place to hide from his fame, and to hide his crimes - until a fire ravaged his home and exposed him as a murderer.
\nIt is rumored that the ranch nestled in the peaks of the Rocky Mountains is now home to group of feral children, a place where adults cannot enter, and Riley hopes to find a new family there. But the Nowhere Kids are fierce in defending their turf and their clan, and Riley quickly realises that while she and Oliver may have left the devil they knew, this group is a new type of diabolical.
\nFor something dark lives in the burned shell of Nowhere, something which asks a terrible price for sanctuary . . .
\n
You can't escape what's in your blood . . .
\nAll Rob wanted was a normal life. She almost got it, too: a husband, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs. But Rob fears for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her too much of the family she left behind.
\nShe decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert. And there she will have to make a terrible choice.
\nCallie is worried about her mother. Rob has begun to look at her strangely, and speaks of past secrets. And Callie fears that only one of them will leave Sundial alive . . .
\nThe mother and daughter embark on a dark, desert journey to the past in the hopes of redeeming their future.
\n
One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house.
\nTraumatised by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.
\nWhen they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualisation, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.
\n
Born into the lap of luxury and comfortable in the here and now, spoiled, tempestuous Tamara Goodwin has never had to look to the future--until the abrupt death of her father leaves her and her mother a mountain of debt and forces them to move in with Tamara's peculiar aunt and uncle in a tiny countryside village.
Tamara is lonely and bored, with a traveling library as her only diversion. There she finds a large leather-bound book with a gold clasp and padlock, but no author name or title. Intrigued, she pries open the lock, and what she finds inside takes her breath away.
Tamara sees entries written in her own handwriting, and dated for the following day. When the next day unfolds exactly as recorded, Tamara realizes she may have found a solution to her problems. But in her quest to find answers, Tamara soon learns that some pages are better left unturned and that, try as she may, she mustn't interfere with fate.
Celestine North lives a perfect life. She's a model daughter and sister, she's well-liked by her classmates and teachers, and she's dating the impossibly charming Art Crevan.
But then Celestine encounters a situation in which she makes an instinctive decision. She breaks a rule and now faces life-changing repercussions. She could be imprisoned. She could be branded. She could be found FLAWED.
In her breathtaking young adult debut, bestselling author Cecelia Ahern depicts a society in which obedience is paramount and rebellion is punished. And where one young woman decides to take a stand that could cost her everything.
", "series": "Flawed", "seriesOrder": 1, "tags": [ "Dystopia", "Science Fiction", "Young Adult" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Cecelia Ahern - Flawed.jpeg", "mtime": 1767245226716.6616, "size": 492552, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:19:34.935Z" }, "Cecelia Ahern - Freckles": { "title": "Freckles", "author": "Cecelia Ahern", "description": "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
\nWhen a stranger utters these words to Allegra Bird, nicknamed Freckles, it turns her highly ordered life upside down. In her current life as a parking warden, she has left her eccentric father and unconventional childhood behind for a bold new life in the city.
\nBut a single encounter leads her to ask the question she’s been avoiding for so long: who are the people who made her the way she is? And who are the five people who can shape and determine her future? Just as she once joined the freckles on her skin to mirror the constellations in the night sky, she must once again look for connections.
\nTold in Allegra’s vivid, original voice, moving from Dublin to the fierce Atlantic coast, this is an unforgettable story of human connection, of friendship, and growing into your own skin.
She has just two weeks. Two weeks to teach him how to fall in love - with his own life.
\nAdam Basil and Christine Rose are thrown together late one night, when Christine is crossing the Halfpenny Bridge in Dublin. Adam is there, poised, threatening to jump. Adam is desperate - but Christine makes a crazy deal with him. His 35th birthday is looming and she bets him she can show him that life is worth living before then.
\nDespite her determination, Christine knows what a dangerous promise she’s made. Against the ticking of the clock, the two of them embark on wild escapades, grand romantic gestures and some unlikely late-night outings. Slowly, Christine thinks Adam is starting to fall back in love with his life.
\nBut has she done enough to change his mind for good? And is that all that’s starting to happen?
Everything in Elizabeth Egan's life has its place. Order and precision keep life under control - and keep Elizabeth's heart safe from dwelling on past hurts. Her role as reluctant mother to her six-year-old nephew leaves little room for error - or any fun. Until the day Ivan comes into their lives. The mysterious Ivan is carefree, spontaneous, and always looking for adventure - all Elizabeth is not. But just when Elizabeth begins to trust him, she learns that Ivan isn't at all who she thought he was.
Playful and at times intensely moving, this is a novel about how seeing isn't always believing. Full of Cecelia Ahern's trademark warmth and poignancy, If You Could See Me Now is a story of enormous heart - and just a little bit of magic.
Alice sees the worst in people.
\nShe also sees the best.
\nShe sees a thousand different emotions and knows exactly what everyone around her is feeling.
\nEvery. Single. Day.
\nBut it’s the dark thoughts.
\nThe sadness. The rage.
\nThese are the things she can’t get out of her head. The things that overwhelm her.
\nWhere will the journey to find herself begin?
Surviving the storm is only the beginning . . . It is a wild night in the middle of December, and GP Enya is crouched over a teenage boy, performing CPR in the freezing rain. She found him on a mountain road near Dublin, the victim of a hit-and-run.
\nThe boy survives, but Enya goes to pieces. She leaves her husband, her son, and everything she knows to start a new life in remote rural Ireland.
\nBut even in the quiet of Abbeydooley, beneath the boughs of an ancient tree, Enya is still haunted by that night in the rain. Can the stories of strangers and a land steeped in legend lay the ghosts of her past to rest? Or will the storm she's outrunning finally catch up with her?
Life is in two parts: who you were before you met her, and who you are after.
\nA documentary crew discover a mysterious young woman living alone in the mountains of West Cork. Strikingly beautiful she has an extraordinary talent for mimicry, like the famous Australian Lyrebird. The crew, fascinated, make her the subject of her story, and bestow the nickname upon her.
\nWhen they leave, they take Lyrebird with them back to the city. But as she leaves behind her peaceful life to learn about a new world, is she also leaving behind a part of herself? For her new friend Solomon the answer isn’t clear. When you find a rare and precious thing, should you share it - or protect it . . .
The Marble Collector tells the story of a woman who discovers a collection of marbles in her father's belongings. On learning that part of the collection is missing, she embarks on a quest to relocate the missing marbles to complete the collection and also to understand and complete the picture of a man she realises she never fully knew.
\nAs she uncovers the story of a damaged childhood, she also comes to understand what is missing in herself.
\n
Special edition, with exclusive author Q&A! The thoughtful and unique novel from the phenomenally popular author. Journalist Kitty Logan’s career has been destroyed by scandal, and she now faces losing the woman who guided her and taught her everything she knew. At her mentor’s bedside, Kitty asks her - what is the one story she always wanted to write? The answer lies in a file buried in Constance’s office: a list of one hundred names.
\nThere is no synopsis, no explanation, nothing else to explain what the story is or who these people are. The list is simply a mystery. But before Kitty can talk to her friend, it is too late. With everything to prove, Kitty is assigned the most important task of her life - to write the story her mentor never had the opportunity to. Kitty has to not only track down and meet the people on the list, but find out what connects them. And, in the process of hearing ordinary people’s stories, she uncovers Constance’s - and starts to understand her own . . .
Celestine North lives in a society that demands perfection. After she was branded Flawed by a morality court, Celestine's life has completely fractured - all her freedoms gone.
\nSince Judge Crevan has declared her the number one threat to the public, she has been a ghost, on the run with Carrick - the only person she can trust.
\nBut Celestine has a secret - one that could bring the entire Flawed system crumbling to the ground. A secret that has already caused countless people to go missing.
\nJudge Crevan is gaining the upper hand, and time is running out for Celestine. With tensions building, Celestine must make a choice: save just herself or to risk her life to save all Flawed people.
\nAnd, most important of all, can she prove that to be human in itself is to be Flawed?
Ever since the day her classmate vanished, Sandy Shortt has been haunted by what happens when something - or someone - disappears. Finding has become her goal.
\nJack Ruttle is desperate to find his younger brother who vanished into thin air a year ago. He spots an ad for Sandy’s missing persons agency and is certain that she will answer his prayers and find his brother.
\nBut then Sandy disappears too, stumbling upon a place that is a world away from the only one she has ever known. Now all she wants, more than anything, is to find her way home.
Childhood sweethearts, they could finish each other's sentences and even when they fought, they laughed. No one could imagine Holly and Gerry without each other.
Until the unthinkable happens. Gerry's death devastates Holly. But as her 30th birthday looms, Gerry comes back to her. He's left her a bundle of notes, gently guiding Holly into her new life without him, each note signed 'PS, I Love You'.
As the notes are gradually opened, and as they year unfolds, Holly is both cheered up and challenged. The man who knows her better than anyone sets out to teach her that life goes on. With some help from her friends, and her noisy and loving family, Holly finds herself laughing, crying, singing, dancing - and being braver than ever before.
How can you know someone you've never met? That's the question haunting Joyce Conway these days. Recovering from a terrible accident and with her marriage in pieces, Joyce is suddenly plagued by an overwhelming sense of déjà vu that makes her feel as if the life she's living is not her own. During the day she has vivid memories of things she's never seen - such as cobblestoned Parisian streets she's never visited - and at night she dreams of a little girl she's sure she's never met. Joyce is convinced she's lost her mind . . . until a series of coincidences leads her on a journey to meet the one person who may hold the answer she needs.
\nSomeone's life could be depending on you right now . . . . That's the pitch that finally persuades Justin Hitchcock to donate blood - the first thing to come straight from his heart in a long time. Restless and lonely, Justin chased his ex-wife and daughter from Chicago to London, and now he's in Dublin, guest-lecturing to bored college students. When he receives a basket of muffins with a thank-you note attached, he's sure someone's playing a joke on him, but then the presents keep coming.
\nIntrigued, Justin is determined to solve the mystery - a quest that will change his life forever. Thanks for the Memories is a heartwarming story of hope, love, and second chances.
Lying on Lucy Silchester’s carpet one day when she returns from work is a gold envelope. Inside is an invitation - to a meeting with Life. Her life. It turns out she's been ignoring it and it needs to meet with her face to face. It sounds peculiar, but Lucy’s read about this in a magazine. Anyway, she can’t make the date: she’s much too busy despising her job, skipping out on her friends friends and avoiding her family. But Lucy’s life isn’t what it seems. Some of the choices she’s made - and stories she’s told - aren’t what they seem either.
\nFrom the moment she meets the man who introduces himself as her life, her stubborn half-truths are going to be revealed in all their glory - unless Lucy learns to tell the truth about what really matters to her. Lucy Silchester has an appointment with her life - and she’s going to have to keep it.
\nTouching, warm, funny and poignant, Cecelia Ahern's new novel explores what happens when you stop paying attention to your life.
Childhood friends Rosie and Alex whose relationship must survive many trials and tribulations, not least the discovery of their true feelings for one another. From naughty children to rebellious teenagers and mixed-up twenty- and thirty-somethings, Rosie and Alex have stuck by each other through thick and thin, even when Alex moved across the Atlantic to Boston and Rosie fell pregnant as a teenager.
\nAlex supportsRosie through one of the most difficult times of her life -- a time when she should be out partying and going to university but is instead changing nappies and coping with a screaming baby. In return, Rosie is there for Alex when he strugglesthrough his medical internship and copes with a messy divorce.
\nThroughout the ups and downs of each other's lives, they have remained a constant, a shoulder to cry on, someone to laugh and share their innermost feelings with.But can their friendship survive the years and the miles and, more critically, when they each marry someone else? Were they meant to be more than just good friends all along? Misunderstandings, circumstances and sheer bad luck.
Jasmine loves two things: her sister and her work. And when her work is taken away she has no idea who she is.
\nMatt loves two things: his family and the booze. Without them, he hits rock bottom.
\nOne New Year’s Eve, two people’s paths collide. Both have time on their hands; both are at a crossroads. But as the year unfolds, through moonlit nights and suburban days, an unlikely friendship slowly starts to blossom.
\nSometimes you have to stop still in order to move on . . .
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January 28, 1986: Soon after launch, the Challenger shuttle falls out of the sky and into the sea. At the same time, Oliver Ines is born. Celestial Lights is his story.
\nOllie spends his childhood in an English village where his bedroom is covered in glow-in-the-dark wallpaper bearing the planets and stars. Decades later, he has become one of the most renowned astronauts of his time. When an enterprising billionaire taps him to lead a landmark mission to the distant moon Europa, Ollie makes a choice that will send his whole world spinning.
\nAs the mission advances deeper into unchartered territory, Ollie finds himself retreating into the past: his university days in London and years in the navy, relationships found and lost, becoming a husband and father. But will the world he remembers still be waiting for him when he returns?
\nCecile Pin’s novel is a portrait of a complicated man whose unparalleled understanding of the universe doesn’t always translate into stellar relationships on Earth. A breathtaking tale of memory, personal choices, and the relationships that define us, Celestial Lights is an unforgettable story of fate, love, and sacrifice that questions what we owe ourselves and our loved ones when our ambitions and loyalties collide.
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After the last American troops leave Vietnam, siblings Anh, Thanh, and Minh begin a perilous journey to Hong Kong with the promise that their parents and younger siblings will soon follow. But when tragedy strikes, the three children are left orphaned, and sixteen-year-old Anh becomes the caretaker for her two younger brothers overnight.
\nIn the years that follow, Anh and her brothers resettle in the UK and confront their new identities as refugees, first in overcrowded camps and resettlement centers and then, later, in a modernising London plagued by social inequality and raging anti-immigrant sentiment. Anh works in a clothing factory to pay their bills. Minh loiters about with fellow unemployed high school dropouts. Thanh, the youngest, plays soccer with his British friends after class. As they mature, each sibling reckons with survivor’s guilt, unmoored by their parents’ absence. With every choice they make, their paths diverge further, until it’s unclear if love alone can keep them together.
\nTold through lyrical narrative threads, historical research, voices from lost family, and notes by an unnamed narrator determined to chart their fate, Wandering Souls captures the lives of a family marked by war and loss yet relentless in the pursuit of a better future.
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Leith of Grey thought coming to this new land and volunteering to fight in the gladiator arena - vicious, bloodthirsty tournaments where only the strongest survive - would earn him enough gold to save his dying sister. He thought there was nothing left to lose.
\nHe was wrong - and they took everything. His hope. His freedom. His very humanity.
\nAll Leith has left is his battle-scarred body, fueled by rage and hardened from years of fighting for the right to live another day.
\nThen Leith meets Maeve, an elven royal who is everything he despises. Everything he should hate. Until the alluring princess offers him the one thing he needs most: a chance to win the coveted title of Bloodguard - and his freedom.
\nBut in a kingdom built on secrets and lies, hope doesn’t come cheap.
\nNor will his ultimate revenge . . .
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In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned - from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
\nEnter Mia Warren - an enigmatic artist and single mother - who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
\nWhen old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town - and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.
Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far.
\nFor a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture” in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic - including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.
\nBird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
\nOur Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilised communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It’s a story about the power - and limitations - of art to create change, the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact.
London, 1944. The air raid sirens are blaring, bombers are hovering. The war with Germany has been raging for four years and there's no sign of peace coming.
\nDot Gallagher is newly arrived from Liverpool and working as a nurse. During an air strike, she encounters an enthralling group of American GIs who tell her all about Rainbow Corner, a social club for US troops in Piccadilly - it's a wartime oasis where they can forget their fears, fall in and out of love and dance the nights away.
\nIt's here that Dot finds a new best friend in Lilly. And together, against the stark realities of war, they must learn to face their fears, uncover secrets and discover the true meaning of love.
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The beautiful town of Bellevue-sur-Mer, tucked between glitzy Monte Carlo and the plush red carpets of Cannes, is home to Theresa, Carol, William, Benjamin, and Sally: five retired expats who have pooled their resources to set up La Mosaïque, a divine little restaurant.
\nBut there is trouble in paradise: the friends are desperately struggling to make ends meet. It will take every bit of their talent and gumption to save La Mosaïque. With fussy customers, obnoxious cruise parties, and a failing delivery van, it's certainly not going to be easy.
On top of this, Theresa and Sally have their own distractions. Theresa's teenage granddaughter has run away, and Theresa herself has been getting mysterious phone calls and the strong sense that someone's watching her. Meanwhile, Sally's run into a nasty couple from her acting days, and their barbed jibes are enough to send her on an ill-advised search for the limelight.
Somewhere on the French Riviera, tucked between glitzy Monte Carlo and Cannes' red carpets, lies the sleepy town of Bellevue-Sur-Mer. Sheltered from the glittering melee, it is home to many an expat - although it hasn't proved as peaceful as expected.
\nNow an enterprising band of retirees has resolved to show it's never too late to start afresh and open a restaurant. Snapping up a local property and throwing themselves into preparations, Theresa, Carol, William and Benjamin's plans are proceeding unnervingly well. But when Theresa encounters a mysterious intruder, she begins to wonder what secrets the building is concealing.
\nMeanwhile Sally, an actress who fled the stage to live in quiet anonymity, has decided not to be involved. She's far too busy anyway, shepherding around a gaggle of A-listers, including a suave Russian with a superyacht and a penchant for her company.
\nAs the razzmatazz of the Cannes Film Festival penetrates Bellevue-Sur-Mer, its inhabitants become entangled in a complex pattern of love triangles and conflicting business interests, and something starts to feel distinctly oeuf. Finding themselves knee-deep in suspicion and skullduggery, the restaurateurs realise they can no longer tell who's nasty and who's nice.
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Theresa is desperate for a change. Forced into early retirement, fed up with babysitting her bossy daughter's obnoxious children, she sells her Highgate house and moves to the picture-perfect town of Bellevue-sur-Mer, just outside Nice. With its beautiful villas, its bustling cafes and shimmering cerulean sea, the village sparkles like a diamond on the French Mediterranean coast.
\nOnce the hideaway of artists and writers, it is now home to the odd rock icon and Hollywood movie star, and, as Theresa soon discovers, a close-knit set of expats. There's Carol, the infinitely glamorous American and her doting husband David; the erstwhile British TV star Sally; the ferocious Sian and her wayward Australian poet husband; the sharply witty Zoe with her strangely youthful face and penchant for white wine - and the suave Brian who catches Theresa's eye.
\nAs Theresa settles to the gentle rhythm of seaside life she embraces her new-found friendships and freedom. However, life is never quite as simple as it seems and as skeletons start to fall out of several closets, Theresa begins to wonder if life on the French Riviera is quite as nice as it first appeared.
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Nice, France, 1911: After three years of marriage, young seamstress Marcela Caretto has finally had enough. Her husband, Michael, an ambitious tailor, has become cruel and controlling and she determines to get a divorce.
\nBut while awaiting the judges' decision on the custody of their two small boys, Michael receives news that changes everything.
\nMeanwhile fun-loving New York socialite Margaret Hays is touring Europe with some friends. Restless, she resolves to head home aboard the most celebrated steamer in the world - RMS Titanic.
\nAs the ship sets sail for America, carrying two infants bearing false names, the paths of Marcela, Michael and Margaret cross - and nothing will ever be the same again.
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The phone hasn’t rung for months. Suzy Marshall is discovering that work can be sluggish for an actress over sixty - even for the star of a wildly popular 1980s TV series. So when her agent offers her the plum role of Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest in Zurich, it seems like a godsend. Until, that is, the play is abruptly cancelled under suspicious circumstances and Suzy is forced to take a job on a cruise ship to get home.
Meanwhile Amanda Herbert finds herself homeless in rainy Clapham. The purchase of her new apartment has fallen through, and her children are absorbed in their own dramas. Then she spots an advertisement for an Atlantic cruise and realises that three weeks onboard would tide her over and save her money until her housing situation is resolved.
As the two women set sail on a new adventure, neither can possibly predict the questionable characters and strange dealings they will encounter, nor the unexpected rewards they will reap.
It's 2005, and Ali is a publicist for Hollywood's biggest stars. Part of her job entails keeping gay celebrities in the closet - which is pretty ironic, since she's a lesbian. When Ali is assigned a new gay client, Cara Bisset, who's breaking onto the scene with a (hetero) romantic blockbuster, keeping Cara's sexuality under wraps becomes Ali's biggest challenge yet.
\nCara is unruly and unpredictable, and hates that she has to hide her identity. After a series of increasingly close calls, Ali is sent on the worldwide promotional tour for the movie to help keep Cara in line. Instead, she finds herself drawn to Cara's confidence and bravery. For the past year, Ali has been mired in grief after losing her partner in a freak accident. But with Cara, Ali's fears about the world subside, and she begins to question the Hollywood closeting system she’s helped perpetuate.
\nAs Cara's fame continues to rise, both Ali and Cara have to decide which is more maintaining the status quo, or risking it all for another chance at love.
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Big Burr, Kansas, is the kind of place where everyone seems to know everyone, and everyone shares the same values-or keeps their opinions to themselves. But when a national nonprofit labels Big Burr \"the most homophobic town in the US\" and sends in a task force of queer volunteers as an experiment-they'll live and work in the community for two years in an attempt to broaden hearts and minds-no one is truly prepared for what will ensue.
Furious at being uprooted from her life in Los Angeles and desperate to fit in at her new high school, Avery fears that it's only a matter of time before her \"gay crusader\" mom outs her. Still grieving the death of her son, Linda welcomes the arrivals, who know mercifully little about her past. And for Christine, the newcomers are not only a threat to the comforting rhythms of Big Burr life, but a call to action.
As tensions roil the town, cratering relationships and forcing closely guarded secrets into the light, everyone must consider what it really means to belong. Told with warmth and wit, Under the Rainbow is a poignant, hopeful articulation of our complicated humanity that reminds us we are more alike than we'd like to admit.
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The Strauss family is on knife’s edge. Sam is a resentful stay-at-home dad. Rachel feels the restlessness in her blood returning. Their children are getting out of hand. And a recent mudslide has forced the wolves out of the woods to look for food.
\nAs dusk falls and tensions rise, the family must come together to survive the night - from the threats outside and those within.
Cages is a sweeping, polyphonic portrait of a man seen through the eyes of those who loved him, feared him, and betrayed him. At its center is Felix - a zookeeper in 1960s Cuba, an exile in London, and finally a dying man in Miami. His story is pieced together like a puzzle that can never fully be solved by one who knew him only as an absence and seeks to know him before it is too late.
\nIn Cuba, during the Missile Crisis, Felix risks everything for an illicit love affair with René, a fellow keeper. In a society where homosexuality is branded “counterrevolutionary,” their tenderness unfolds in the shadow of danger, betrayal, and political oppression. In London, Felix and his wife Anabel navigate exile and reinvention, while an aspiring actress named Claudia finds herself drawn into their orbit, her ambitions and desires colliding with Felix’s own hunger for connection. Years later, Virgilio - Anabel’s devoted brother - recounts the disintegration of Felix’s marriage and the exile that follows, even as he steps in to protect the family Felix abandoned.
\nFrom Anabel, long silent about her complicity in the events that forced Felix’s flight from Cuba, to Rita, the daughter who knew him differently, each voice brings a sliver of truth. Together, these testimonies form a mosaic of longing, deception, survival, and reconciliation.
\nSpanning Havana, London, and Miami, Acevedo’s luminous, formally inventive novel explores exile, forbidden love, fractured families, the nature of truth, and the stories we tell to make sense of the people we cannot forget.
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A tender and thought-provoking story exploring the sacrifices we make for family and what it takes to be a good parent. Grace's teenage mother dies shortly after giving birth and the perfect adoptive parents are found for her: David, the curate of an inner-city parish, and his wife Leila, who are unable to have children of their own.
\nWhat they don't count on is Matt Harrison, Grace's shell-shocked young father who falls in love with his daughter and fights to keep her. The Harrisons are an unconventional family who see in Grace a chance for redemption.
\nTo convince the courts of their suitability will require a commitment from Matt's mother to return from Africa to her unhappy marriage. The Harrisons enlist their friend, the feckless, charming Jake Kelly, to retrieve her and he sets off on a quest that will force a confrontation.
\nUltimately, there are terrible decisions to be made about Grace's fate. Everyone only wants what's best for her - but who can say exactly what that is?
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Livia Denby is on trial for attempted murder. The jury have reached a verdict.
\nTwo years earlier, Livia was a probation officer in Yorkshire, her husband Scott a teacher. Their children, Heidi and Noah, round out a happy family until the day Scott's brother dies.
\nGrief and guilt leave Scott seeking answers, a search which takes him into the world of conspiracy theories. As his grip on reality slides, he makes a decision which will put the family on a collision course with tragedy.
\nLivia's family has been torn apart, and now her son's life is hanging in the balance. Just how far will she go to save the ones she loves?
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They never found Leah Parata. Not a boot, not a backpack, not a turquoise beanie. After she left me that day, she vanished off the face of the earth.
\nA close-knit community is ripped apart by disturbing revelations that cast new light on a young woman's disappearance twenty-five years ago.
\nAfter years of living overseas, Emily Kirkland returns to New Zealand to care for her father, Felix, who suffers from dementia. As his memory fades and his guard slips, she begins to understand him for the first time - and to glimpse shattering truths about his past. Truths she'd rather were kept buried.
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In the quiet of a winter's night, the rescue helicopter is sent to airlift a five-year-old boy with severe internal injuries. He's fallen from the upstairs verandah of an isolated farmhouse, and may not last the next few hours.
At first, Finn's fall looks like a horrible accident; after all, he's prone to sleepwalking. Only his frantic mother, Martha McNamara, knows how it really happened. And she isn't telling. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Martha only wants the best for her family. That's why she moved heaven and earth to move them to the other side of the world, to start their lives afresh. And now she's faced with decisions she never dreamed she'd have to make, decisions with potentially devastating consequences. She's torn between her loyalty to her family and her need to protect them.
What do you do when your dream escape turns into a nightmare - and is there ever a way back?
For three years Joseph Scott has been haunted by one moment-the moment that changed his life forever. Now he is starting over, and he wants his family back more than anything.
\nThis is the story of Joseph and his wife, Zoe; of their children, Scarlet, Theo and Ben, for whom nothing will be the same; and of Zoe's parents, who can't forgive or understand.
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Sisters Lizbeth Rose and Felicia as well as brother Eli and Peter, are reunited in Texoma only to break apart before the Wizard’s Ball held in San Diego, which will determine all their fates.
\n\t\t\t\t\tFollowing the murderous events of the Serpent of Heaven, Lizbeth Rose is awaiting the arrival of her sister Felicia and her husband’s younger brother Eli in Texoma. Both needed to leave the seat of the Holy Russian Empire in San Diego after Felicia’s burgeoning wizardly power in death magic became the reason for kidnapping and assassination attempts from her mother’s family of high-powered wizards in Mexico.
\n\t\t\t\t\tYet bad news has traveled ahead of them, as Eli is called back to San Diego, taking Peter along with him, splitting them apart in more ways than one as their enemies’ plans for revenge come to fruition.
Aurora Teagarden is basking in the news of her pregnancy when disaster strikes her small Georgia town: four kids vanish from the school soccer field in an afternoon. Aurora’s 15-year-old brother Phillip is one of them. Also gone are two of his friends, and an 11-year-old girl who was just hoping to get a ride home from soccer practice. And then there’s an even worse discovery - at the kids’ last known destination, a dead body.
While the local police and sheriff’s department comb the county for the missing kids and interview everyone even remotely involved, Aurora and her new husband, true crime writer Robin Crusoe, begin their own investigation. Could the death and kidnappings have anything to do with a group of bullies at the middle school? Is Phillip’s disappearance related to Aurora’s father’s gambling debts? Or is Phillip himself, new to town and an unknown quantity, responsible for taking the other children? But regardless of the reason, as the days go by, the most important questions remain. Are the kids still alive? Who could be concealing them? Where could they be?
With Christmas approaching, Aurora is determined to find her brother . . . if he’s still alive.
Sookie's beginning to get used to being surrounded by all varieties of undead, changeling, shapeshifting and other supernatural beings - but even she has her limits. She'd really like to take a while to get over being betrayed by Bill, her long-time vampire lover, and get used to her new relationship with the sexy shapeshifter Quinn - but instead, she finds herself attending the long-planned vampire summit, the destination of choice for every undead power player around, as a sort-of human 'Geiger counter' for Sophie-Anne Leclerq, vampire queen of Louisiana.
\nBut the job is fraught with difficulties. Sophie-Anne's power base has been severely weakened by Hurricane Katrina, and she's about to be put on trial during the event for murdering her king. Sookie knows the queen is innocent, but she's hardly prepared for other shocking murders: it looks like there are some vamps who would like to finish what nature started.
\nWith secret alliances and backroom deals the order of the day - and night - Sookie must decide which side she'll stand with, and quickly, for her choice may mean the difference between survival and all-out catastrophe.
Going to two weddings - one of a former lover - and a funeral for a member of her disbanded crime study club keeps Aurora “Roe” Teagarden quite busy for a few months. Unfortunately, her personal life seems to be at a standstill - until her fortunes unexpectedly change.
After the funeral Roe learns that Jane Engle, the deceased, has named her as heir to a rather substantial estate, which includes money, jewelry, and a house complete with a skull hidden in a window seat. Knowing Jane, Roe concludes that the elderly woman has purposely left her a murder to solve. So she must identify the victim and figure out which one of Jane’s ordinary-seeming neighbors is a murderer - without putting herself in deadly danger . . .
There's only one vampire Sookie Stackhouse is involved with - at least voluntarily - and that's Bill. But recently he's been a little distant - in another state distant. His sinister and sexy boss Eric has an idea where to find him, and next thing Sookie knows she's off to Jackson, Mississippi, to mingle with the underworld at Club Dead. It's a dangerous little haunt where the elusive vampire society can go to chill out and suck down some Type O - but when Sookie finally finds Bill caught in an act of serious betrayal she's not sure whether to save him, or to sharpen some stakes.
\nThe Sookie Stackhouse books are delightful Southern Gothic supernatural mysteries, starring Sookie, the telepathic cocktail waitress, and a cast of increasingly colourful characters, including vampires, werewolves and things that really do go bump in the night.
Now it's the turn of the weres and shifters to follow the lead of the undead and reveal their existence to the ordinary world.
\nSookie Stackhouse already knows about them, of course - her brother turns into a panther at the full moon, she's friend to the local Were pack and Sam, her boss at Merlotte's bar, is a shifter.
\nAt first the great Were revelation seems to go well - then the horribly mutilated body of a were-panther is found outside Merlotte's. Though Sookie never cared that much for the victim, no one deserves such a horrible death, so she agrees to use her telepathic talent to track down the murderer.
\nBut what Sookie doesn't realise is that there is a far greater danger than this killer threatening Bon Temps: a race of unhuman beings, older, more powerful and far more secretive than the vampires or the werewolves is preparing for war . . .
Sookie Stackhouse enjoys her life, mostly. She's a great cocktail waitress in a fun bar; she has a love life, albeit a bit complicated, and most people have come to terms with her telepathy. The problem is, Sookie wants a quiet life - but things just seem to happen to her and her friends.
\nNow her brother Jason's eyes are starting to change: he's about to turn into a were-panther for the first time. She can deal with that, but her normal sisterly concern turns to cold fear when a sniper sets his deadly sights on the local changeling population. She afraid not just because Jason's at risk, but because his new were-brethren suspect Jason may be the shooter.
\nSookie has until the next full moon to find out who's behind the attacks - unless the killer decides to find her first.
Sookie Stackhouse has one last adventure in store.
\nLife has taken her from a waitress in Merlotte's Bar, Bon Temps, to part owner; from social outcast to the heart of her community; from a vampire's girlfriend to the wife of one of the most powerful vampires in the state.
\nShe has survived explosions, revolutions and attempts on her life. Sookie has endured betrayal, heartbreak and grief... and she has emerged a little stronger, and little wiser, every time.
\nBut with life comes new trials . . .
\nThe question is, in the end: who will love, who will live, and who will be dead ever after?
\nIf you think your family relationships are complicated, think again: you haven't seen anything like the ones in Bon Temps, Louisiana. Sookie Stackhouse is dealing with a whole host of family problems, ranging from her own kin (a non-human fairy and a telepathic second cousin) demanding a place in her life, to her lover Eric's vampire sire, an ancient being, who arrives with Eric's 'brother' in tow at a most inopportune moment. And Sookie's tracking down a distant relation of her ailing neighbour (and ex), Vampire Bill Compton.
\nIn addition to the multitude of family issues complicating her life, the werewolf pack of Shreveport has asked Sookie for a special favour, and since Sookie is an obliging young woman, she agrees. But this favour for the wolves has dire results for Sookie, who is still recovering from the trauma of her abduction during the Fairy War.
There's a reckoning on the way . . . and Sookie has a knack for being in trouble's way; not least when she witnesses the firebombing of Merlotte's, the bar where she works. Since Sam Merlotte is known to be two-natured, suspicion immediately falls on the anti-shifters in the area. Sookie suspects otherwise, but before she can investigate something else - something even more dangerous - comes up.
\nSookie's lover Eric Northman and his 'child' Pam are plotting something in secret. Whatever it is, they seem determined to keep Sookie out of it; almost as determined as Sookie is to find out what's going on. She can't sit on the sidelines when both her work and her love life under threat - but as she's gradually drawn into their plans Sookie finds the situation is deadlier than she could ever have imagined.
Sookie Stackhouse is a small-town cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's pretty. She does her job well. She keeps to herself - she has only a few close friends, because not everyone appreciates Sookie's gift: she can read minds. That's not exactly every man's idea of date bait - unless they're undead - vampires and the like can be tough to read. And that's just the kind of guy Sookie's been looking for.
\nMaybe that's why, when she comes across a naked vampire on the way home from work, she doesn't just drive on by. He hasn't got a clue who he is, but Sookie has: Eric looks just as scary and sexy - and dead - as the day she met him. But now he has amnesia, he's sweet, vulnerable, and in need of Sookie's help - because whoever took his memory now wants his life. Sookie's investigation into what's going on leads her straight into a dangerous battle between witches, vampires and werewolves. But there could be even greater danger - to Sookie's heart, because the kinder, gentler Eric is very hard to resist.
Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She' s quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much. Not because she's not pretty. She is. Its just that, well, Sookie has this sort of \"disability\". She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill. He's tall, dark, handsome - and Sookie can't hear a word he's thinking. He's exactly the type of guy skids been waiting for all her life . . .
\nBut Bill has a disability of his own: His a vampire with a bad reputation. He hangs with a seriously creepy crowd, all suspected of - big surprise - murder. And when one of Sookie's coworkers is killed, she fears she's next . . .
Sookie has a murder investigation on her hands. A young girl has died at a vampire party - and it looks as though her lover, Eric, might be responsible. Eric swears he didn't do it, the police don't believe him, and even Sookie isn't so sure. Nor is she inclined to take his word for it, not having caught him enjoying the victim's blood minutes before she was killed.
\nBut something strange is going on. Why had Sookie been asked to come to the fateful party a few minutes early - just to catch Eric in the act? And why had the victim spiked her blood before approaching Eric? Was it simply because she wanted to be irresistible, or was it something more sinister?
\nSookie will have to find out . . . but it's the worst moment to investigate, as her Fae family are having troubles of their own and Sookie is, inevitably, drawn in. And there is one last complication. The cluviel for her grandmother left her. It will grant her one wish, which could fulfil Sookie's heart's desire. The only problem is, she still doesn't know what - or who - her heart truly desires . . .
Sookie doesn't have that many relations, so she hated to lose one - but of all the people to go, she didn't expect it to be her cousin Hadley, a consort of New Orleans' vampire queen - after all, Hadley was technically already dead.
\nBut she is gone, beyond recall, and she's left Sookie an inheritance - one that comes with a bit of a risk - not least because someone doesn't want Sookie digging too deep into Hadley's past - or her possessions.
\nSookie's life is once again on the line, and this time the suspects range from the rogue werewolves who have rejected Sookie as a friend of the pack to her first love, the vampire Bill.
\nSookie's got a lot to do if she's going to keep herself alive . . .
Set in a fractured United States, in the southwestern country now known as Texoma. A world where magic is acknowledged but mistrusted, especially by a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose. Battered by a run across the border to Mexico Lizbeth Rose takes a job offer from a pair of Russian wizards to be their local guide and gunnie.
\n\t\t\t\t\tFor the wizards, Gunnie Rose has already acquired a fearsome reputation and they’re at a desperate crossroad, even if they won’t admit it. They’re searching through the small border towns near Mexico, trying to locate a low-level magic practitioner, Oleg Karkarov. The wizards believe Oleg is a direct descendant of Grigori Rasputin, and that Oleg’s blood can save the young tsar’s life.
\n\t\t\t\t\tAs the trio journey through an altered America, shattered into several countries by the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression, they’re set on by enemies. It’s clear that a powerful force does not want them to succeed in their mission. Lizbeth Rose is a gunnie who has never failed a client, but her oath will test all of her skills and resolve to get them all out alive.
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The supernatural community in Bon Temps, Louisiana is reeling from two hard blows: the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina, and the manmade horror of the explosion at the vampire summit in the up-north city of Rhodes. Sookie Stackhouse is safe but dazed, and she's yearning for things to get back to normal. But that's just not happening. Too many vampires - some friends, some not - were killed or injured, and her were-tiger boyfriend Quinn is among the missing.
\nIt's clear that things are changing, whether the weres and vamps like it or not. And Sookie, Friend to the Pack, blood-bonded to the leader of the local vampire community, is caught up in those changes. She's about to find herself facing danger and death and, not for the first time, betrayal by someone she loves.
\nAnd when the fur has finished flying and the cold blood has stopped flowing, Sookie's world will be forever altered . . .
Taking a break from investigating, Harper and Tolliver head back to Texas, where they grew up - and her sister Cameron went missing eight years ago.
\nBut when they arrive home, Tolliver’s dad arrives on the scene seeking forgiveness, and the police get a tip-off that after all these years, Cameron’s been spotted in a mall. Soon, family secrets ensnare them both and Harper finally discovers what happened to her missing sister so many years before.
\nAnd what she finds out will change her world forever.
Harper Connelly has what you might call a strange job: she finds dead people. She can sense the final location of a person who's passed, and share their very last moment. Harper and her stepbrother Tolliver have become experts at getting paid and getting out of town fast - because people have a funny habit of not really wanting to know the truth.
\nAt first, the small Ozarks town of Sarne seems like no exception. The pair have been hired by local police to find a missing girl. But the secrets of her death - and the secrets of the town - are buried deep enough that even Harper's special ability can't uncover them. With hostility welling up, she and Tolliver want nothing more than to be on their way. But then another woman is murdered.
\nAnd the killer's not finished yet . . .
Harper Connelly has what you might call a strange job: she finds dead people. She can sense the final location of a person who's passed, and share their very last moment. Harper and her stepbrother Tolliver have become experts at getting paid and getting out of town fast - because people have a funny habit of not really wanting to know the truth.
\n\t\t\t\t\tAt first, the small Ozarks town of Sarne seems like no exception. The pair have been hired by local police to find a missing girl. But the secrets of her death - and the secrets of the town - are buried deep enough that even Harper's special ability can't uncover them. With hostility welling up, she and Tolliver want nothing more than to be on their way. But then another woman is murdered.
\n\t\t\t\t\tAnd the killer's not finished yet . . .
Harper Connelly was struck by lightning as a teenager - now she can find dead people and uses her special talent to make a living. Hired to locate a missing boy, Harper and her stepbrother Tolliver head to Doraville, North Carolina. But the truth is far worse than they feared. Numerous teenaged boys have disappeared from Doraville over the years. All unlikely runaways. All calling for Harper.
\nShe soon finds them - eight bodies, buried in the half-frozen ground. All Harper wants is to collect her fee and leave town before she's caught in the media storm. But then she's attacked, and learns far more than she cares to about the long-hidden secrets of Doraville.
\nKnowledge that makes her next in line to end up in an ice-cold grave. . .
Aurora Teagarden has never forgotten her first case: a serial killer who terrorized suburban Lawrencetown. Now that story is about to hit the small screen. Even if she wanted to, Aurora can't help getting involved. Her ex, Robin, wrote the TV movie's screenplay and her stepson, Barrett, has a starring role.
\nThen there's Celia - the catty actress portraying Roe - who, by the way, also happens to be Robin's latest squeeze. But when Celia is murdered and Barrett is accused, the real-life script takes a deadly turn. Between threatening letters, deranged fans and renewed feelings for Robin, Aurora has one goal: catch a killer and make it to the final scene alive.
Lizbeth Rose's sister Felicia attends the Grand Wizards' Ball, and as one of the most powerful - and beautiful - death wizards in a generation, she is highly sought after as one of the belles of the ball.
\nHowever, war and violence are on the rise in Europe as German and Japanese wizards are also courting Felicia . . . and some are refusing to take no for an answer.
\nAs the façade of genteel wizard society turns deadly, Lizbeth must learn to not only protect her sister, but also navigate the arcane world that is pulling her sister and husband into a dangerous dance with death that could change the world as they know it.
Sookie Stackhouse likes living in Bon Temps, Louisiana, and she likes working as a cocktail waitress at Merlotte's. But she is having a streak of bad luck. First her co-worker is killed, and no one seems to care. Then she comes face-to-face with a beastly creature which gives her a painful and poisonous lashing. Enter the vampires, who graciously suck the poison from her veins (like they didn't enjoy it).
The point is: the vampires saved her life. So when one of her bloodsuckers asks for a favour, she obliges-and soon Sookie's in Dallas, using her telepathic skills to search for a missing vampire. She's supposed to interview certain humans involved, but she makes one condition: the vampires must promise to behave, and let the humans go unharmed.
But that's easier than done, and all it takes is one delicious blonde and one small mistake for things to turn deadly . . .
Lizbeth Rose is hired onto a new crew for a seemingly easy protection job, transporting a crate into Dixie, just about the last part of the former United States of America she wants to visit. But what seemed like a straight-forward job turns into a massacre as the crate is stolen.
\n\t\t\t\t\tUp against a wall in Dixie, where social norms have stepped back into the last century, Lizbeth has to go undercover with an old friend to retrieve the crate as what's inside can spark a rebellion, if she can get it back in time.
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Picking up right where A Longer Fall left off, this thrilling third installment follows Lizbeth Rose as she takes on one of her most dangerous missions yet: rescuing her estranged partner, Prince Eli, from the Holy Russian Empire.
\n\t\t\t\t\tOnce in San Diego, Lizbeth is going to have to rely upon her sister Felicia, and her growing Grigori powers to navigate her way through this strange new world of royalty and deception in order to get Eli freed from jail where he’s being held for murder.
Felicia, Lizbeth Rose’s half-sister and a student at the Grigori Rasputin school in San Diego - capital of the Holy Russian Empire - is caught between her own secrets and powerful family struggles.
\n\t\t\t\t\tAs a granddaughter of Rasputin, she provides an essential service to the hemophiliac Tsar Alexei, providing him the blood transfusions that keep him alive. Felicia is treated like a nonentity at the bedside of the tsar, and at the school she's seen as a charity case with no magical ability. But when Felicia is snatched outside the school, the facts of her heritage begin to surface.
\n\t\t\t\t\tFelicia turns out to be far more than the Russian-Mexican Lizbeth rescued. As Felicia’s history unravels and her true abilities become known, she becomes under attack from all directions. Only her courage will keep her alive.
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With newborn Sophie proving to be quite a handful, Roe's mother pays for a partially trained nurse, Virginia Mitchell, to come help the new parents for a few weeks. Virginia proves to be especially helpful when Robin has to leave town for work and Roe is struck with a bad case of the flu.
One particularly stormy night, Roe wakes to hear her daughter crying and Virginia nowhere to be found. Roe's brother Philip helps her search the house and they happen upon a body outside... but it isn't Virginia's. Now, not only does she have a newborn to care for and a vulnerable new marriage to nurture, Roe also has to contend with a new puzzle - who is this mystery woman dead in their backyard, and what happened to Virginia?
After inheriting a modest fortune, Aurora Teagarden decides to try her hand at being a real estate agent, working at her mother’s agency. Her first assignment is to show a local mansion to dashing newcomer Martin Bartell. But when they discover the body of a rival real estate agent in the master bedroom, Roe quickly realises her new profession is more dangerous - and exciting - that she ever imagined.
Roe begins her own investigation of the murder, even as sparks fly between her and Bartel. When a second real estate agent is found murdered, Roe suspects the killer may be closer than she thought. She will have to use her natural sleuthing skills to unmask the murderer before another empty house for sale becomes a crime scene.
The luminous debut novel from one of Ireland's finest storytellers 'The Polite Act of Drowning is a beautiful and captivating novel, lyrical and sensuous, a precise and faithful evocation of the tumult and trauma of family life, and of emergence into adulthood, and the confrontation of truths about ourselves and the people we love' - Donal Ryan Michigan, 1985.
\nThe drowning of a teenage girl causes ripples in the small town of Kettle Lake, though for most the waters settle quickly. For sixteen year old Joanne Kennedy, however, the tragedy dredges up untold secrets and causes her mother to drift farther from reality and her family. When troubled newcomer Lucinda arrives in town, she offers Joanne a chance of real friendship, and together the teenagers push against the boundaries of family, self-image, and their sexuality during the tension of a long, stifling summer.
\nBut the undercurrents of past harms continuously threaten to drag Joanne and those around her under . . .
\n
Saoirse is a powerful novel set between the United States and Ireland about a woman who runs from her traumatic past and the secrets she carries to survive.
\nIn Michigan, Sarah’s childhood was defined by fear and silence. As a teenager, she saw a chance to escape and took it. Now, in 1999, she is an artist living on the rugged coast of Donegal, Ireland, where she is known as Saoirse (pronounced Sear-sha) - a name that sounds like the sea and means freedom in the language of her adopted country. And free is precisely how she is finally beginning to feel. Her partner and two beloved daughters are regular subjects of her paintings, and together they have made the safe home she always longed for. But Saoirse's secrets haunt her. No one must learn of the identity she has stolen in order to survive; they cannot know of the dangers that she crossed an ocean to escape.
\nWhen her artwork wins unexpected acclaim at a Dublin exhibition, the spotlight of fame threatens to unravel the careful lies that hold her world together. Journalists and admirers begin to ask questions about the mysterious artist from Donegal, and she fears the unwanted publicity will expose all that she has done.
\nSaoirse is an evocative, suspenseful exploration of the intimate relationship between art and life and the lies we tell ourselves in the name of reinvention.
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Charlene Thomas, brings us a gorgeous YA love story about grief, how it leaves us stunned, and the day when - against all odds - the world starts turning again.
\nIn a twist of fate, Sydney Michaels bumps into cute boy stranger Marcus Burke in the heart of midtown NYC during an impromptu trip to Dunkin’. But what had initially been an effort to soften the blow of failing her impending pre-calc exam, turns into a day-long, unforgettable adventure - when Marcus asks her to have breakfast with him instead. In just a few hours, Sydney's already starting to fall, and there's just something about Marcus that makes it feel like she's known him forever.
\nAs the night comes to an end, Sydney can’t believe that after all the loss she’s faced in the past two years, \"the good part\" is finally here and this perfect day gets to be hers - until an accident at the end of the night, quite literally, leaves her stuck in it.
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For most, Streetlight is a dot on the map you pass on your way to somewhere else. But if you live there, you’re either a Have-Not, like Kady, or a Have-Lot like her boyfriend, Nik, who also happens to be a member of the exclusive social club, The IV Boys.
\nKnown for their powerful families and the coveted ball they host for a selective guest list, The IV Boys have always refused to accept Kady regardless of how much Nik loves her. All the Boys except for Aaron, who didn’t grow up in Streetlight and is one of the few who knows that life - real life - exists outside of it. But his stepmom has the kind of wealth and power even IV Boys can’t resist.
\nWith Nik at college, Aaron stands by Kady’s side. But all Kady really wants is Nik, and when a chance encounter on Halloween hands her the power to twist and hold time, she doesn’t hesitate. Now she can keep Nik close for as long as she wants.
\nWhile Kady tries to relive her best moments with Nik, the IV Boys have her in their sights. A rumor’s spreading that Kady and Aaron are much more than friends - and not even twisting time is enough to defend against the power that the Boys were born with.
\nThe more Kady changes the clock, the more dizzying reality becomes, until she stumbles upon a truth darker than anything she could have imagined. Streetlight is filled with monsters - and maybe she’s always been one, too.
In the wake of his wife' s death, Nick Nacht finds himself adrift, seeking emotional renewal among strangers in unfamiliar places. As he navigates the challenges of grief, he encounters a tapestry of lives - an impulsive teenage girl, a married woman with a hidden agenda, a new neighbor' s pet bird, a young poet grappling with her own demons, and a woman who translates indigenous texts. Over the course of a year, from the sunny shores of Florida to the vibrant Mediterranean, these vivid encounters push him toward a reckoning with his deep feelings of loss and abandonment.
\nWith quick, lyrical prose, Skylighting unfolds a surprisingly intricate story, weaving together moments of connection and solitude. As Nick navigates the complexities of grief, he learns that healing can emerge from the most unexpected places, illuminating a path toward renewal and hope amid the shadows of sorrow.
The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day.
\nStruggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber's son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity.
\nFor something is systematically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form . . .
\n
Dr Mo O'Brien is an intelligence agent at the top secret government agency known as 'the Laundry'. When occult powers threaten the realm, they'll be there to clean up the mess and deal with the witnesses.
\nBut the Laundry is recovering from a devastating attack and when average citizens all over the country start to develop supernatural powers, the police are called in to help. Mo is appointed as official police liaison, but in between dealing with police bureaucracy, superpowered members of the public and disgruntled politicians, Mo discovers to her horror that she can no longer rely on her marriage, nor on the weapon that has been at her side for eight years of undercover work, the possessed violin known as 'Lecter'.
\nIf this wasn't bad enough, a mysterious figure known as Dr Freudstein is committing heists and sending increasingly threatening messages to the police. Who is Freudstein and what is he planning?
\n
Bob Howard used to fix computers for the Laundry - the branch of the British Secret Service that deals with otherworldly threats - but those days are over. He's not only been promoted to active service but actually survived missions against cultists, enemy spies and tentacled horrors from other dimensions. Willingly or not, he's on his way up in this dangerous organisation.
\nWhen a televangelist with connections to 10 Downing Street seems able to work miracles, the Laundry takes an interest. But an agency that answers to the Prime Minister can't spy on him themselves, and Bob's shadowy superiors come up with a compromise - they hire 'freelancers', with Bob in charge.
\nBritish citizens who discover the occult are either forcibly recruited by the Laundry or disposed of, and Bob's never heard of freelancers before. Officially they don't exist. Anyone who's big and bad enough to remain independent is going to be hard to handle, and Bob's not too sure that the one-week 'people management' course he was sent on in Milton Keynes is going to be enough . . .
\n
Bob Howard is a low-level techie working for a super-secret government agency. While his colleagues are out saving the world, Bob's under a desk restoring lost data. His world was dull and safe - but then he went and got Noticed.
\nNow, Bob is up to his neck in spycraft, parallel universes, dimension-hopping terrorists, monstrous elder gods and the end of the world. Only one thing is certain: it will take more than a full system reboot to sort this mess out . . .
Miriam Beckstein is a successful reporter for a hi-tech magazine. So when she discovers a huge money-laundering scam, she thinks she's hit the big time. But when she takes it to her editor, she's not only fired, but receives death threats. That's just the beginning.
To distract her furious daughter, Miriam's adopted mother unearths mementos from her real mother, murdered when she was an infant. But these reveal a secret that will ultimately throw governments into disarray. For what Miriam thinks is a simple locket has the power to fling her into an alternate timeline.
In this less-developed world, knights on horseback wield automatic weapons, and world-skipping assassins lurk on the other side of our reality. Here, her true family runs a criminal empire - and they want her back. But Miriam has other plans.
\n
In 1984, Derek Reilly was just another teenage nerd growing up in middle England. But his love of D&D caused him to fall afoul of the Laundry, a government agency tasked with suppressing supernatural threats. It turns out that sometimes ninth level wizard spells drawn on the back of your maths textbook can look suspiciously like actual magic . . .
\nDecades later, Derek is a long-term inmate at Camp Sunshine, a centre for deprogramming captured cultists. But Derek finally has reason to escape, and an escape plan to out into he wants to attend his first gaming convention. While Derek's D&D games were fictional, a game at the con really is a dread ritual designed to summon a great evil into our world, and it's up to Derek and his players to stop them.
\nThe fate of the world may depend on the contents of Derek's dice bag.
\n
In the near future, one America is experiencing its first technological revolution - whilst in a parallel world, the United States is a hi-tech police state. But both timelines are poised for conflict. Miriam Burgeson’s America is heading for civil war. However, a high profile defection might avert this crisis, if only Miriam and her agents can arrange it in time. And Rita Douglas, rival US spy, arrives during this turmoil.
\nRita’s world is rocked when she realises Miriam is her birth mother, changing her own mission irrevocably. Then her United States discovers yet another parallel earth, and the remains of an advanced society. Something destroyed that civilisation, Rita’s people are about to rouse it - and two worlds will face the consequences.
\n
In a world where magic has gone mainstream, a policewoman and a group of petty criminals are pulled into a heist to find a forbidden book of spells that should never be opened.
\nThe secret agents of the Laundry Files novels were unable to stop magic becoming public knowledge - in book one of this new series by Charles Stross, the repercussions of that failure are felt by ordinary people everywhere, as the world slides unknowingly towards occult cataclysm . . .
Bob Howard’s career in the Laundry, the secret British government agency dedicated to protecting the world from unspeakable horrors from beyond spacetime, has entailed high combat, brilliant hacking, ancient magic, and combat with indescribably repellent creatures of pure evil. It has also involved a wearying amount of paperwork and office politics, and his expense reports are still a mess.
\nNow, following the invasion of Yorkshire by the Host of Air and Darkness, the Laundry’s existence has become public, and Bob is being trotted out on TV to answer pointed questions about elven asylum seekers. What neither Bob nor his managers have foreseen is that their organisation has earned the attention of a horror far more terrifying than any demon: a British government looking for public services to privatise.
\nInch by inch, Bob Howard and his managers are forced to consider the truly unthinkable: a coup against the British government itself.
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The year is 2020. It's seventeen years since the Revolution overthrew the last king of the New British Empire, and the newly-reconstituted North American Commonwealth is developing rapidly, on course to defeat the French and bring democracy to a troubled world.
\nBut Miriam Burgeson, commissioner in charge of the shadowy Ministry of Intertemporal Research and Intelligence - the paratime espionage agency tasked with catalysing the Commonwealth's great leap forward - has a problem. For years, she's warned everyone: \"The Americans are coming.\" Now their drones arrive in the middle of a succession crisis - the leader of the American Commonwealth is dying and the vultures are circling.
\nIn another timeline, the U.S. has recruited Rita, Miriam's estranged daughter, to spy across timelines and bring down any remaining world-walkers who might threaten national security. But her handlers are keeping information from her.
\nTwo nuclear superpowers are set on a collision course. Two increasingly desperate paratime espionage agencies are fumbling around in the dark, trying to find a solution to the first contact problem that doesn't result in a nuclear holocaust. And two women - a mother and her long-lost, adopted daughter - are about to find themselves on opposite sides of the confrontation.
\n
Bob Howard is taking a much needed break from the field to catch up on his filing in The Laundry's archives when a top secret dossier known as The Fuller Memorandum vanishes-along with his boss, who the agency's executives believe stole the file.
\nDetermined to discover exactly what the memorandum contained, Bob runs afoul of Russian agents, ancient demons, and the apostles of a hideous faith, who have plans to raise a very unpleasant undead entity known as the Eater of Souls . . .
America is caught in a deadly arms race with the USA, its high-tech, parallel world. Yet it might just self-combust first. For its president-equivalent has died, leaving a crippling power vacuum. Without the First Man’s support, Miriam Bernstein faces a paranoid government opponent. He suspects her of scheming to resurrect the American monarchy. And Miriam is indeed helping the exiled American princess. This is only to prevent her being used against them, but her rivals will twist anything to ruin her.
\nHowever, all factions will face a disaster bigger than anything they could imagine. In their drive to explore other timelines, hi-tech America has awakened an alien threat. This force destroyed humanity on one version of earth - and if they don’t take action, it will do the same to both of their timelines.
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When the planet of New Moscow was brutally destroyed, its few survivors launched a counter-attack against the most likely culprit: the neighbouring system of trade rival New Dresden. But New Dresden wasn't responsible, and as the deadly missiles approach their target, Rachel Mansour, agent for the interests of Old Earth, is assigned to find out who was.
\nThe one person who does know is a disaffected teenager who calls herself Wednesday Shadowmist. But Wednesday has no idea where she might be hiding this significant information. Time is limited and if Rachel can't resolve this mystery it will mean annihilation of an entire world.
\n
Bob Howard is an IT expert and occasional field agent for the Laundry, the branch of Her Majesty's Secret Service that deals with occult threats.
\nDressed (grudgingly) in a tux and sent to the Caribbean, he must infiltrate a millionaire's yacht in order to prevent him from violating a treaty that will bring down the wrath of an ancient underwater race upon humanity's head. Partnered with a gorgeous American agent who's actually a soul-sucking succubus from another dimension, Bob's mission (should he choose to accept it) is to stop the bad guys, avoid getting the girl, and survive - shaken, perhaps, but not stirred.
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Since she was promoted to the head of the Lords Select Committee on Sanguinary Affairs, every workday for Mhari Murphy has been a nightmare. It doesn’t help that her boss, the new Prime Minister of Britain, is a manipulative and deceptive pain in the butt. But what else can she expect when working under the thumb of none other than the elder god N’yar Lat-Hotep a.k.a the Creeping Chaos?
Mhari's most recent assignment takes her and a ragtag team of former Laundry agents across the pond into the depths of North America. The United States president has gone missing. Not that Americans are alarmed. For some mysterious reason, most of the country has forgotten the executive branch even exists. Perhaps it has to do with the Nazgûl currently occupying the government and attempting to summon Cthulhu.
It's now up to Mhari and her team to race against the Nazgûl's vampire-manned dragnet to find and, for his own protection, kidnap the president.
Who knew an egomaniacal, malevolent deity would have a soft spot for international relations?
After stumbling upon the algorithm that turned him and his fellow merchant bankers into vampires, Alex Schwartz was drafted by The Laundry, Britain’s secret counter-occult agency that’s humanity’s first line of defense against the forces of darkness. Dependent on his new employers for his continued existence - as Alex has no stomach for predatory bloodsucking - he has little choice but to accept his new role as an operative-in-training.
\nDispatched to Leeds, Alex’s first assignment is to help assess the costs of renovating a 1950s Cold War bunker into The Laundry’s new headquarters. Unfortunately, Leeds is Alex’s hometown, and the thought of breaking the news to his parents that he’s left banking for civil service, while hiding his undead condition, is causing more anxiety than learning how to live as a vampire secret agent preparing to confront multiple apocalypses.
\nAlex’s only saving grace is Cassie Brewer, a drama student appearing in the local Goth Festival who is inexplicably attracted to him despite his awkward personality and massive amounts of sunblock.
\nBut Cassie has secrets of her own - secrets that make Alex’s night life behaviors seem positively normal . . .
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It's a brave new Britain under the New Management. The Prime Minister is an eldritch god of unimaginable power. Crime is plummeting as almost every offense is punishable by death. And everywhere you look, there are people with strange powers, some of which they can control, and some, not so much.
\nHyperorganised and formidable, Eve Starkey defeated her boss, the louche magical adept and billionaire Rupert de Montfort Bigge, in a supernatural duel to the death. Now she's in charge of the Bigge Corporation, just in time to discover the lethal trap Rupert set for her long ago . . .
\nWendy Deere is investigating unauthorized supernatural shenanigans. She swore to herself she wouldn't again get entangled with Eve Starkey's bohemian brother Imp and his crew of transhuman misfits. Yeah, right.
\nMary Macandless has powers of her own. Right now she's pretending to be a nanny in order to kidnap the children of a pair of famous, Government-authorised adepts. These children have powers of their own, and Mary Macandless is in way over her head.
\nAll of these stories will come together, with world-bending results . . .
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When the Elder God recently installed as Prime Minister identifies the monarchy as a threat to his growing power, Bob Howard and Mo O'Brien - recently of the supernatural espionage service known as the Laundry Files - are reluctantly pressed into service.
\nFighting vampirism, scheming American agents and their own better instincts, Bob and Mo will join their allies for the very last time. God save the Queen - because someone has to.
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Miriam Beckstein has said good-bye to her comfort zone. The transition from journalist to captive in an alternative timeline was challenging to say the least, she discovered that her long-lost family, the Clan, were world-skipping assassins. Now, while civil war rages in her adopted home, she's pregnant with the heir to their throne and a splinter group want her on their side of a desperate power struggle. But as a leader or figurehead?
\nMeanwhile, unknown to the Clan, the US government is on to them and preparing to exploit this knowledge. But it hadn't foreseen a dissident Clan faction carrying nuclear devices between worlds - with the US president in their sights. The War on Terror is about to go transdimensional. But Mike Fleming, CIA agent, knows the most terrifying secret of all: His government's true intentions.
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Bob Howard is an intelligence agent working his way through the ranks of the top secret government agency known as 'the Laundry'. When occult powers threaten the realm, they'll be there to clean up the mess - and deal with the witnesses.
\nThere's one kind of threat that the Laundry has never come across in its many decades, and that's vampires. Mention them to a seasoned agent and you'll be laughed out of the room.
\nBut when a small team of investment bankers at one of Canary Wharf's most distinguished financial institutions discovers an arcane algorithm that leaves them fearing daylight and craving O positive, someone doesn't want the Laundry to know. And Bob gets caught right in the middle.
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Hyperorganised and formidable, Eve Starkey defeated her boss, the louche magical adept and billionaire Rupert de Montfort Bigge, in a supernatural duel to the death. At least, she has reason to hope he's dead. But though she's now in charge of the Bigge Corporation, she's not free of him yet.
\nThrough the fecklessness of her brother Imp, combined with the intricate feudal law of a tiny Channel Island, it would appear that unbeknownst to her, she was married to Bigge - and that proving his death and releasing herself from his arcane bindings will take years and cost millions. Then an emissary of the Prime Minister arrives with an offer that she absolutely can't . . . well, you know.
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After humankind discovers faster-than-light travel, a godlike race of post-humans called the Eschaton issue a warning of causality violations (time travel) by instantly removing 9 billion humans from Earth and relocating them throughout the galaxy on countless low-tech colonies. The next transgression with time travel will mean total destruction.
\nCenturies later, one such backwater colony called the New Republic has been doing its best to suppress information - and ideas - from the general populace.
\nBut when a nomadic group of aliens known as the Festival make a remote planet in the New Republic their temporary home, generations of repression fly out the window. Ringing telephones start falling out of the sky all over the planet.
\nOn the other end of the line, Festival members ask to be entertained. Any new information - be it scientific theories, fairy tales, or local mythology - is rewarded with anything the respondent desires.
\nAnything!
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Miriam was an ambitious business journalist in Boston. Until she was fired - then discoverd, to her shock, that her lost family comes from an alternate reality. And although some of them are trying to kill her, she won’t stop digging up secrets. Now that she knows she's inherited the family ability to walk between worlds, there’s a new culture to explore.
Her alternate home seems located around the Middle Ages, making her world-hopping relatives top dogs when it comes to ‘importing’ guns and other gadgets from modern-day America. Payment flows from their services to US drug rings - after all, world-skipping drug runners make great traffickers.
In a land where women are property, she struggles to reman independent. Yet her outsider ways won’t be tolerated, and a highly political arranged marriage is being brokered behind her back. If she can stay alive for long enough to protest.
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The astonishing story of the ten million books that were smuggled across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.
\nFor almost five decades after the Second World War, Europe was divided by the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. The Iron Curtain, a near-impenetrable barrier of wire and wall, tank traps, minefields, watchtowers and men with dogs, stretched for 4,300 miles from the Arctic to the Black Sea. No physical combat would take place along this the risk of nuclear annihilation was too high for that. Instead, the conflict would be fought in the psychological sphere. It was a battle for hearts, minds and intellects.
\nNo one understood this more clearly than George Minden, the head of a covert intelligence operation known as the ‘CIA books programme’, which aimed to win the Cold War with literature.
\nFrom its Manhattan headquarters, Minden’s global CIA ‘book club’ would infiltrate millions of banned titles into the Eastern Bloc, written by a vast and eclectic list of authors, including Hannah Arendt and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, George Orwell and Agatha Christie. Volumes were smuggled on trucks and aboard yachts, dropped from balloons, and hidden in the luggage of hundreds of thousands of individual travellers.
\nOnce inside Soviet bloc, each book would circulate secretly among dozens of like-minded readers, quietly turning them into dissidents. Latterly, underground print shops began to reproduce the books, too. By the late 1980s, illicit literature in Poland was so pervasive that the system of communist censorship broke down, and the Iron Curtain soon followed.
\nCharlie English tells this true story of spycraft, smuggling and secret printing operations for the first time, highlighting the work of a handful of extraordinary people who risked their lives to stand up to the intellectual strait-jacket Stalin created. People like Miroslaw Chojecki, an underground Polish publisher who endured beatings, force-feeding and exile in service of this mission. And Minden, the CIA’s mastermind, who didn’t waver in his belief that truth, culture, and diversity of thought could help free the ‘captive nations’ of Eastern Europe. This is a story about the power of the printed word as a means of resistance and liberation. Books, it shows, can set you free.
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Rory Davies is breaking free. Or, at the very least, she’s experimenting with her self-expression beyond the image of the highly feminine corporate lawyer everyone expects her to be. But when she reconnects with the gorgeous childhood friend she once shared an unforgettable night of passion with, old attraction rekindles, and she fears the price of presenting as her authentic self just might be her heart.
\nGemma Armstrong always fails at serious relationships. That’s why it’s probably best Rory only needs her as a supportive friend right now, even though watching her first love become who she’s meant to be is making Rory even more irresistible than ever. As their mutual affection deepens and the chemistry between them grows more combustible, Gemma is torn between worry over repeating her past failures and dreams of an incredible future.
\nIgnoring the pull of their bodies and hearts - along with pressure from meddling families - grows harder by the day, will they face life’s changes together or will fear keep them apart?
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Merritt Fernsby’s life has changed considerably since he inherited Whimbrel House. He’s engaged to Hulda Larkin, who opened his eyes to the uncanny. And he’s grown quite protective of his uncle Owein - several generations, and iterations, removed. Owein is presently inhabiting the body of a mixed-breed terrier when Merritt receives a missive from none other than Alexandrina Victoria, the Queen of England: I am interested in your dog.
\nIt’s the queen’s duty to the peerage to keep British wizardry empowered. Her offer: England will find a human vessel for Owein, marry him into the royal family, and add this remarkable soul-shifter to its lineage. For Owein, a boy trapped in the body of a pup, it’s a dream come true. How can Merritt refuse? However, once they are in London and in consortium with a necromancer, the situation doesn’t feel right, both with their hosts and the house they inhabit. Owein is having nightmares. And Hulda’s premonitions warn of danger in Merritt’s future. Clearly, someone doesn’t want them in town.
\nBut after two hundred years of being cursed to drift, Owein is determined to chart his own destiny. He’s ready to defy whatever chaos is coming. After all, Owein is the master of chaos, and with Merritt and Hulda’s love and magical support, he can overcome anything.
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Three months after returning Magician Emery Thane’s heart to his body, Ceony Twill is well on her way to becoming a Folder. Unfortunately, not all of Ceony’s thoughts have been focused on paper magic. Though she was promised romance by a fortuity box, Ceony still hasn’t broken the teacher-student barrier with Emery, despite their growing closeness.
\nWhen a magician with a penchant for revenge believes that Ceony possesses a secret, he vows to discover it . . . even if it tears apart the very fabric of their magical world. After a series of attacks target Ceony and catch those she holds most dear in the crossfire, Ceony knows she must find the true limits of her powers . . . and keep her knowledge from falling into wayward hands.
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Seven years on the run from her abusive father, and with no hope of sanctuary among the dwindling pockets of human civilization, Lark is out of options. Her only leverage is a cursed power: she can thrust fear onto others, leaving all threats fleeing in terror. It’s a means of survival as she searches for a place to call home. If the campfire myths of her childhood are true, Lark’s sole chance for refuge could lie in Cagmar, the city of trolls - a brutal species and the sworn enemies of humanity.
\nValuing combat prowess, the troll high council is intrigued. Lark could be much more useful than the low-caste humans who merely labor in Cagmar. Her gift makes her invaluable as a monster slayer to fight off the unspeakable creatures that torment the trolls’ hanging city, suspended from a bridge over an endless dark canyon.
\nLark will do anything to make Cagmar her home, but her new role comes with a caveat: use her power against a troll, and she’ll be killed. Her loyalty is quickly put to the test when she draws the hatred of a powerful troll who loathes humankind.
\nStill, she finds unexpected friendship in the city and, even more surprisingly, love. But if everything else doesn’t undo her, being caught in the arms of a troll surely will. Now in the fight of her life, Lark has a lot to learn - about her past, about trust and hope when all seems lost, and above all, about the extraordinary power of fear itself.
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Thanks to house tamer Hulda Larkin, the mischief infesting Whimbrel House has calmed. But if Hulda’s job is done, what does that mean for Merritt Fernsby, inheritor of the remote Narragansett Bay estate, who’s only now coming to terms with his enchanted place in the world?
\nMerritt has realised his own burgeoning powers, which draw the thoughts of every plant, insect, and dog. His nights are sleepless, with an uncontrollable cacophony of voices that compel a long-overdue search into his uncanny bloodline. It’s not the only puzzle uniting Merritt and his ex-housekeeper, Hulda. Her friend and former employer at the Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms has disappeared. Hulda herself is up for the now-vacant position of institute director, and her rival for the role is a stranger who’s suspiciously curious about Whimbrel House - and could have connections to an old foe.
\nAs Merritt struggles to face his estranged family and Hulda dives into the institute’s secrets, the two are brought intimately closer than ever into the mysteries of wizardry, chaos, and love.
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Rhode Island, 1846. Estranged from his family, writer Merritt Fernsby is surprised when he inherits a remote estate in the Narragansett Bay. Though the property has been uninhabited for more than a century, Merritt is ready to call it home - until he realises he has no choice. With its doors slamming shut and locking behind him, Whimbrel House is not about to let Merritt leave. Ever.
\nHulda Larkin of the Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms has been trained in taming such structures in order to preserve their historical and magical significance. She understands the dangers of bespelled homes given to tantrums. She advises that it’s in Merritt’s best interest to make Whimbrel House their ally. To do that, she’ll need to move in, too.
\nPrepared as she is with augury, a set of magic tools, and a new staff trained in the uncanny, Hulda’s work still proves unexpectedly difficult. She and Merritt grow closer as the investigation progresses, but the house’s secrets run deeper than they anticipated. And the sentient walls aren’t their only concern - something outside is coming for the enchantments of Whimbrel House, and it could be more dangerous than what rattles within.
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Throughout her studies, Ceony Twill has harbored a secret, one she’s kept from even her mentor, Emery Thane. She’s discovered how to practice forms of magic other than her own - an ability long thought impossible.
\nWhile all seems set for Ceony to complete her apprenticeship and pass her upcoming final magician’s exam, life quickly becomes complicated. To avoid favoritism, Emery sends her to another paper magician for testing, a Folder who despises Emery and cares even less for his apprentice. To make matters worse, a murderous criminal from Ceony’s past escapes imprisonment.
\nNow she must track the power-hungry convict across England before he can take his revenge. With her life and loved ones hanging in the balance, Ceony must face a criminal who wields the one magic that she does not, and it may prove more powerful than all her skills combined.
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Sandis has escaped Kazen’s grasp, but she finds herself unmoored, reeling from her thief friend Rone’s betrayal.
Kazen has been hurt but not stopped, and he’ll do anything to summon the monster that could lay waste to the entire world. Sandis knows she must be the one to stop him, but with her own trusted numen now bound to another, and finding herself with no one she can trust, she is in desperate need of allies. Rone seems determined to help her, but Sandis has no intention of letting him get close to her again. What she doesn’t know is how much Rone gave up to protect her. Or how much more he is willing to give up to keep her safe.
As chaos mounts, Sandis must determine whom to trust. After all, the lines between enemy and ally have never been less clear . . . and corruption lurks in the most unlikely of places.
Ceony Twill arrives at the cottage of Magician Emery Thane with a broken heart. Having graduated at the top of her class from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, Ceony is assigned an apprenticeship in paper magic despite her dreams of bespelling metal. And once she’s bonded to paper, that will be her only magic . . . forever.
\nYet the spells Ceony learns under the strange yet kind Thane turn out to be more marvelous than she could have ever imagined - animating paper creatures, bringing stories to life via ghostly images, even reading fortunes. But as she discovers these wonders, Ceony also learns of the extraordinary dangers of forbidden magic.
\nAn Excisioner - a practitioner of dark, flesh magic - invades the cottage and rips Thane’s heart from his chest. To save her teacher’s life, Ceony must face the evil magician and embark on an unbelievable adventure that will take her into the chambers of Thane’s still-beating heart - and reveal the very soul of the man.
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Alvie Brechenmacher has arrived in London to begin her training in Polymaking - the magical discipline of bespelling plastic. Polymaking is the newest form of magic, and in a field where there is so much left to learn, every Polymaker dreams of making the next big discovery.
\nEven though she is only an apprentice, Alvie is an inventor at heart, and she is determined to make as many discoveries - in as short a time frame - as she can. Luckily for her, she’s studying under the world-renowned magician Marion Praff, who is just as dedicated as Alvie is.
\nAlvie’s enthusiasm reinvigorates her mentor’s work, and together they create a device that could forever change Polymaking - and the world. But when a rival learns of their plans, he conspires to steal their invention and take the credit for it himself.
\nTo thwart him, Alvie will need to think one step ahead. For in the high-stakes world of magical discovery, not everyone plays fair . . .
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Sandis has finally freed herself from her master and his plans to use her as a vessel for the ancient beast Kolosos. But her master has found a new, impossible vessel: Sandis’s brother, Anon - a brother she long thought dead.
Kolosos is ancient, massive, and seemingly unbeatable. Fortunately, Sandis has her own monster - an ethereal fire horse that she can summon at will. In addition, she and Rone may have discovered the secret to defeating Kolosos: ancient lore that details the creation of magic. It could be the key to victory and the key to saving Anon.
The price is steep, and Sandis is willing to pay it. Rone is not, and his attempt to save her only pulls them apart. As both are tested in ways they never expected, Sandis and Rone will need to determine the sacrifices they are willing to make. If their efforts are not enough, their city will fall . . . just as the ancient city beneath it already has.
As a human vessel for an ancient spirit, Sandis lives no ordinary life. At the command of her master, she can be transformed against her will into his weapon - a raging monster summoned to do his bidding. Unlike other vessels, Sandis can host extremely powerful spirits, but hosting such creatures can be fatal. To stay alive, she must run. And in a city fueled by smoke and corruption, she finds a surprising ally.
A cunning thief for hire, Rone owns a rare device that grants him immortality for one minute every day - a unique advantage that will come in handy in Sandis’s fight for freedom. But Sandis’s master knows how powerful she is. He’s determined to get her back, and he has the manpower to find her, wherever she runs.
Now, to outwit her pursuers, Sandis must put all her trust in Rone and his immortal device. For her master has summoned more than mere men to hunt her down . . .
The orphaned Elsie Camden learned as a girl that there were two kinds of wizards in the world: those who pay for the power to cast spells and those, like her, born with the ability to break them. But as an unlicensed magic user, her gift is a crime.
\nCommissioned by an underground group known as the Cowls, Elsie uses her spellbreaking to push back against the aristocrats and help the common man. She always did love the tale of Robin Hood. Elite magic user Bacchus Kelsey is one elusive spell away from his mastership when he catches Elsie breaking an enchantment.
\nTo protect her secret, Elsie strikes a bargain. She’ll help Bacchus fix unruly spells around his estate if he doesn’t turn her in. Working together, Elsie’s trust in - and fondness for - the handsome stranger grows. So does her trepidation about the rise in the murders of wizards and the theft of the spellbooks their bodies leave behind.
\nFor a rogue spellbreaker like Elsie, there’s so much to learn about her powers, her family, the intriguing Bacchus, and the untold dangers shadowing every step of a journey she’s destined to complete. But will she uncover the mystery before it’s too late to save everything she loves?
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England, 1895. An unsolved series of magician murders and opus thefts isn’t a puzzle to Elsie Camden. But to reveal a master spellcaster as the culprit means incriminating herself as an unregistered spellbreaker. When Elsie refuses to join forces with the charming assassin, her secret is exposed, she’s thrown in jail, and the murderer disappears. But Elsie’s hope hasn’t vanished.
Through a twist of luck, the elite magic user Bacchus Kelsey helps Elsie join the lawful, but with a caveat: they must marry to prove their cover story. Forced beneath a magical tutor while her bond with Bacchus grows, Elsie seeks to thwart the plans of England’s most devious criminal - if she can find them.
With hundreds of stolen spells at their disposal, the villain has a plan - and it involves seducing Elsie to the dark side. But even now that her secret is out, Elsie must be careful how she uses the new abilities she’s discovering, or she may play right into the criminal’s hands.
It happens in an instant, filling Aija with dread: the Sun is suddenly cast from the sky, throwing the Earth into midday darkness. On the fourth day of endless night, Aija finds an unconscious man by the river. His skin is as hot as her lantern’s glass and just as golden. To Aija, a farmhand with the soul of an artist, this beautiful stranger is an inspiration - and a mystery. He calls himself Saiyon. He bleeds light. His friends are celestial. His enemies, godlings of the moon.
\nBetween Aija and Saiyon, attraction grows warmer. For Aija, an unfathomable revelation: she’s falling in love with the earthbound Sun God. When Saiyon’s faltering powers are restored to full glory, what then? There’s a way Aija can become immortal, too. Saiyon can’t support such a risk.
\nAija chooses to follow her heart to places darker and more dangerous than she realises. Whatever sacrifices lie ahead, they’re the only way to make an impossible true love last forever.
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The Sun God chooses the village of Endwever to provide a mortal womb. The birthing of a star is always fatal for the mother, and Ceris Wenden, who considers herself an outsider, sacrifices herself to secure her family’s honor and take control of her legacy.
\nBut after her star child is born, Ceris does what no other star mother has: she survives. When Ceris returns to Endwever, however, it’s not nine months later - it’s seven hundred years later. Inexplicably displaced in time, Ceris is determined to seek out her descendants.
\nBeing a woman traveling alone brings its own challenges, until Ceris encounters a mysterious - and desperate - godling. Ristriel is incorporeal, a fugitive, a trickster, and the only being who can guide Ceris safely to her destination.
\nNow, as Ceris traverses realms both mortal and beyond, her journey truly begins. Together, pursued across the Earth and trespassing the heavens, Ceris and Ristriel are on a path to illuminate the mysteries that bind them and discover the secrets of the celestial world.
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Pell is an engineer and digger by trade - unearthing and repairing the fascinating artifacts left behind by the mysterious Ancients who once inhabited the sunbaked planet of Tampere. She’ll do anything to help the people of her village survive and to better understand the secrets of what came before.
\nHeartwood and Moseus are keepers of a forbidding tower near the village of Emgarden. Inside are the remnants of complex machines the likes of which Pell has never seen. Considering her affinity for Ancient tech, the keepers know Pell is their only hope of putting the pieces of these metal puzzles together and getting them running. The tower’s other riddle is Heartwood himself. He is an enigma, distant yet protective, to whom Pell is inexplicably drawn.
\nPell’s restoration of this broken behemoth soon brings disturbing visions - and the discovery that her relationship to it could finally reveal the origins of the towers’ strange keepers and the unfathomable reason the truth has been hidden from her.
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Edward O’Connor has been in prison for twenty-seven years. Now he’s ready to admit to the crimes the police have always suspected him of. But there’s a Edward will only speak to his estranged wife, Maggie.
\nSince her husband’s incarceration, Maggie has tried to live a quiet existence. But with the media relentlessly tracking her down, she’s had to repeatedly pack up her life and move with her two sons.
\nThe detectives are desperate for Maggie’s help. Only she can unlock Edward’s secrets. But during her visits, he wants to discuss their marriage, their holidays, and their sons, leaving Maggie with questions about the past.
\nAs the press begins hounding her family once again and the string of confessions continues, Maggie soon realises the final revelation might be one she would rather never hear . . .
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After their dubiously successful quest to slay the White Lady and recover the Fireborne Blade, Sir Maddileh and Saralene set about changing their world for the better. But the cursed and newly-promoted High Mage Saralene must visit the afterlife to ask a favor of the Bloodless Princes who run the underworld.
But Saralene and Sir Maddileh will soon discover that the old tales only hold so much truth in them, though perhaps there's enough to make a start on their new journey.
To escape the underworld alive, Saralene will need a lot more than just her wits. And Maddileh will need more than just her Fireborne Blade.
Maddileh is a knight. There aren’t many women in her line of work, and it often feels like the sneering and contempt from her peers is harder to stomach than the actual dragon slaying. But she’s a knight, and made of sterner stuff.
\nA minor infraction forces her to redeem her honor in the most dramatic way possible, she must retrieve the fabled Fireborne Blade from its keeper, legendary dragon the White Lady, or die trying. If history tells us anything, it's that “die trying” is where to wager your coin.
\nMaddileh’s tale contains a rich history of dragons, ill-fated knights, scheming squires, and sapphic love, with deceptions and double-crosses that will keep you guessing right up to its dramatic conclusion. Ultimately, The Fireborne Blade is about the roles we refuse to accept, and of the place we make for ourselves in the world.
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Nell has always known her expiry date.
\nAfter a psychic predicted her death date twenty years ago, she’s lived life accepting she would never see forty - embracing adventure and travelling the world, choosing fun over commitment and laying down roots.
\nSo, when the fateful date comes, Nell feels ready. She posts five excruciatingly honest confessions to her sister, parents and past loves, knowing she won’t be around to face the consequences. With her heart laid bare, all that's left to do is check into a glamorous hotel and wait for the inevitable . . . And wait . . .
\nBut when Nell unexpectedly wakes up the next morning broke, single and very much alive, she questions exactly how to seize this second chance at life. And then it also hits
\nWhat on earth happens now that everyone knows exactly how she really feels?
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Franny Stone has always been a wanderer. By following the ocean’s tides and the birds that soar above, she can forget the losses that have haunted her life. But when the wild she so loves begins to disappear, Franny can no longer wander without a destination. She arrives in remote Greenland with one purpose: to find the world’s last flock of Arctic terns and follow them on their final migration. She convinces Ennis Malone, captain of the Saghani, to take her onboard, winning over his salty, eccentric crew with promises that the birds she is tracking will lead them to fish.
As the Saghani fights its way south, Franny’s new shipmates begin to realize that the beguiling scientist in their midst is not who she seems. Battered by night terrors, accumulating a pile of letters to her husband, and dead set on following the terns at any cost, Franny is full of dark secrets. When the story of her past begins to unspool, Ennis and his crew must ask themselves what Franny is really running toward - and running from.
Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team of biologists tasked with reintroducing fourteen gray wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape, but Aggie, too, unmade by the terrible secrets that drove the sisters out of Alaska.
\nInti is not the woman she once was, either, changed by the harm she’s witnessed -inflicted by humans on both the wild and each other. Yet as the wolves surprise everyone by thriving, Inti begins to let her guard down, even opening herself up to the possibility of love. But when a farmer is found dead, Inti knows where the town will lay blame. Unable to accept her wolves could be responsible, Inti makes a reckless decision to protect them. But if the wolves didn’t make the kill, then who did? And what will Inti do when the man she is falling for seems to be the prime suspect?
\nPropulsive and spell-binding, Charlotte McConaghy's Once There Were Wolves is the unforgettable story of a woman desperate to save the creatures she loves - if she isn’t consumed by a wild that was once her refuge.
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground.
\nDespite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, 18 and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, 17, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; 9-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back towards the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.
\nThen, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater.
\nAnd when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realises Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late - and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.
\nA novel of heartstopping twists, dizzying beauty and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is a story about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us is ending.
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In this moving debut novel, two estranged siblings must set aside their differences to deal with their mother's death and her hidden past - a journey of discovery that takes them from the Caribbean to London to California and ends with her famous black cake.
\nIn present-day California, Eleanor Bennett's death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking journey Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child, challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their family, and themselves.
\nCan Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor's true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right?” Will their mother's revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?
\nCharmaine Wilkerson's debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names, can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.
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A woman’s impression of her family is dismantled by revelations of the past in a haunting story about identity, memories, and the power of secrets.
\nOne year after her mother’s death, a woman prepares to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Digging through a trunk in the attic, looking for keepsakes for the occasion, she discovers photographs that call into question everything she believed about her life.
\nThe truth is a different story - one of a little girl in danger, a lie, and a mother’s love so fierce it led her to do the unimaginable.
When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well.
\nThe crime was never solved - and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England - the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby's high profile romance falls apart without any explanation, that's exactly what they get.
\nSo Ebby flees to France, only for her past to follow her there. And as she tries to process what's happened, she begins to think about the other loss her family suffered on that day eighteen years ago - the stoneware jar that had been in their family for generations, brought North by an enslaved ancestor. But little does she know that the handcrafted piece of pottery held more than just her family's history - it might also hold the key to unlocking her own future.
\nIn this sweeping, evocative novel, Charmaine Wilkerson brings to life a multi-generational epic that examines how the past informs our present.
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Phoebe Mendel's day is never ending - literally.
\nOn August 6th, she woke up to find herself stuck in a time loop. And for nearly a month of August 6ths since, Phoebe has relived the same day: pancakes with Mom in the morning, Scrabble with Dad in the afternoon, and constant research into how to reach tomorrow and make it to her appointment with a doctor who may actually take her IBS seriously. Everything is exactly, agonisingly the same.
\nThat is, until the most mundane car crash ever sends Phoebe's childhood crush Jess crashing into the time loop.
\nNow also stuck, Jess convinces Phoebe to break out of her routine and take advantage of their consequence-free days to have fun. From splurging on concert tickets, to enacting (mostly) harmless revenge, to all-night road trips, Jess pulls Phoebe further and further out of her comfort zone - and deeper in love with them. But the more Phoebe falls for Jess, the more she worries about what's on the other side of the time loop.
\nWhat if Jess is only giving her the time of day because they're trapped with no other options? What if Phoebe's new doctor dismisses her chronic pain? And perhaps worst of all: What if she never gets the chance to find out?
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A fierce and gorgeous debut novel about a teenager who runs away from her abusive home to live in a boarding house for single women as a global financial crash threatens the people of Seoul.
\nSet in Seoul in 2008, Tailbone follows the story of an unnamed teenage girl who, after years of struggling with her alcoholic father’s abuse and what she sees as her mother’s cowardice, decides to run away. At a boardinghouse for single women, the narrator is pulled into the orbit of one of the other girls living there: an older girl named Juju, whose beauty and grit offer anchorage in the narrator’s strange new life.
\nBut when a global financial crisis reaches South Korea, fears of a wider economic collapse bring the city to a standstill. Everything the girls have come to rely on for survival - mainly, the patronage of wealthy men - is put at risk. As businesses close and winter sets in, the narrator is forced to reckon with her deepening fear for Juju’s future, and also her own uncertain path.
\nWill she stay on the run or go back home to her heartbroken mother? In a city held captive to greed and desperation, what can a helpless woman like Juju teach her about survival? Will their hope for each other ignite courage or destruction?
\nA poignant tale about the impact of colonial and familial violence, class, privilege, and womanhood, Tailbone is a powerful and thrilling novel from a blazing new talent.
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Neither here nor there, but long ago . . . After fleeing a patricidal prince, legendary merchant Loulie al-Nazari and banished prince Mazen bin Malik find themselves in the realm of jinn. But instead of sanctuary, they find a world on the cusp of collapse.
\nThe jinn cities, long sheltered beneath the Sandsea by the magic of its kings, are sinking. Amid the turmoil, political alliances are forming, and rebellion is on the rise. When Loulie assists a dissenter - one of her bodyguard’s old comrades - she puts herself in the center of a centuries-old war.
\nTrapped in a world that isn’t her own and wielding magic that belongs to a fallen king, Loulie must decide: Will she carry on someone else’s legacy or carve out her own?
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Loulie al-Nazari is the Midnight Merchant: a criminal who, with the help of her jinn bodyguard, hunts and sells illegal magic. When she saves the life of a cowardly prince, she draws the attention of his powerful father, the sultan, who blackmails her into finding an ancient lamp that has the power to revive the barren land - at the cost of sacrificing all jinn.
\nWith no choice but to obey or be executed, Loulie journeys with the sultan’s oldest son to find the artifact. Aided by her bodyguard, who has secrets of his own, they must survive ghoul attacks, outwit a vengeful jinn queen, and confront a malicious killer from Loulie’s past. And, in a world where story is reality and illusion is truth, Loulie will discover that everything - her enemy, her magic, even her own past - is not what it seems, and she must decide who she will become in this new reality.
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Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy's clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling from Manhattan to Italy for a taste of both.
But there is something within Dorothy that's different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man's neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority.
When Chelsea Handler needs to get a few things off her chest, she appeals to a higher power - vodka. You would too if you found out that your boyfriend was having an affair with a Peekapoo or if you had to pretend to be honeymooning with your father in order to upgrade to first class. Welcome to Chelsea's world - a place where absurdity reigns supreme and a quick wit is the best line of defense.
In this hilarious, deliciously skewed collection, Chelsea mines her past for stories about her family, relationships, and career that are at once singular and ridiculous. Whether she's convincing her third-grade class that she has been tapped to play Goldie Hawn's daughter in the sequel to Private Benjamin, deciding to be more egalitarian by dating a redhead, or looking out for a foulmouthed, rum-swilling little person who looks just like her . . . only smaller, Chelsea has a knack for getting herself into the most outrageous situations.
Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea showcases the candor and irresistible turns of phrase that have made her one of the freshest voices in comedy today.
Get ready for big laughs as Chelsea Handler lets loose with more comic personal essays. In this new, no-holds-barred account of life on the ridiculous side, Chelsea mines the wealth of material that is her family, her sex life, her career, and her distinctively outrageous worldview.
\nHere is young Chelsea discovering \"The Feeling\" during a third-grade sleepover and getting shafted by clueless parents over Cabbage Patch dolls . . . and grown-up Chelsea at the mercy of the remote control, Lean Pockets, and Sex and the City - but still managing to convince her boyfriend that there are Swiss Army knives in the soles of her $16,000 shoes.
\nThrough it all, Chelsea never lets anyone off the hook, even herself, as she delivers page after page of irreverent humor, biting wit, and deliciously off-kilter entertainment.
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In hilarious and tender essays, Chelsea Handler shares her unforgettable story of becoming the woman she always wanted to be.
\nThere’s a woman I want to become, Chelsea Handler thought as a child. She’ll be strong and confident. She’ll light up a room and spread that light to make others feel better. She’ll make a living being herself. She’ll be a survivor.
\nAt ten years old, Chelsea opened a lemonade stand and realised she’d make more money if the drinks were spiked. So she added vodka to her recipe and used her earnings to upgrade herself to first-class on a family vacation - leaving her parents and siblings in coach. She moved to Los Angeles and got fired from her temp job when she admitted she didn’t know how to transfer calls. She’s played pickleball with the scions of an American dynasty. She’s sexted a governor. She shared psychedelics with strangers in Spain. When she accidentally ended up at dinner with Woody Allen, she was not going to leave the table without asking him a very personal pointed question. She went on national television and talked about having threesomes. She's never been one to hold back.
\nBut this life of adventure and absurdity is only part of her story. Chelsea knows what it is to truly show up for her family - canine and human, biological and chosen. She’s discovered how to spend time with herself, how to meditate, how to be open to love, and how to end a relationship with dignity. She is a sister to the many women who rely on her.
\nSurprisingly vulnerable and always outrageous, Chelsea Handler captures the antic-filled, exhilarating, and joyful life she’s built - a life that makes the rest of us think, I’ll have what she’s having.
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It's no lie: Chelsea Handler loves to smoke out 'dumbassness,' the condition people suffer from that allows them to fall prey to her brand of complete and utter nonsense. Friends, family, co-workers - they've all been tricked by Chelsea into believing stories of total foolishness and into behaving like total fools. Luckily, they've lived to tell the tales and, for the very first time, write about them.
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In a haze of vape smoke on a rare windy night in L.A. in the fall of 2016, Chelsea Handler daydreams about what life will be like with a woman in the White House. And then Donald Trump happens. In a torpor of despair, she decides that she's had enough of the privileged bubble she's lived in - a bubble within a bubble - and that it's time to make some changes, both in her personal life and in the world at large.
At home, she embarks on a year of self-sufficiency - learning how to work the remote, how to pick up dog shit, where to find the toaster. She meets her match in an earnest, brainy psychiatrist and enters into therapy, prepared to do the heavy lifting required to look within and make sense of a childhood marked by love and loss and to figure out why people are afraid of her.
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She becomes politically active - finding her voice as an advocate for change, having difficult conversations, and energising her base. In the process, she develops a healthy fixation on Special Counsel Robert Mueller and, through unflinching self-reflection and psychological excavation, unearths some glittering truths that light up the road ahead.
Thrillingly honest, insightful, and deeply, darkly funny, Chelsea Handler's memoir keeps readers laughing, even as it inspires us to look within and ask ourselves what really matters in our own lives.
You've either done it or know someone who has: the one-night stand, the familiar outcome of a night spent at a bar, sometimes the sole payoff for your friend's irritating wedding, or the only relief from a disastrous vacation. Often embarrassing and uncomfortable, occasionally outlandish, but most times just a necessary and irresistible evil, the one-night stand is a social rite as old as sex itself and as common as a bar stool. Enter Chelsea Handler. Gorgeous, sharp, and anything but shy, Chelsea loves men and lots of them.
\nMy Horizontal Life chronicles her romp through the different bedrooms of a variety of suitors, a no-holds-barred account of what can happen between a man and a sometimes very intoxicated, outgoing woman during one night of passion. From her short fling with a Vegas stripper to her even shorter dalliance with a well-endowed little person, from her uncomfortable tryst with a cruise ship performer to her misguided rebound with a man who likes to play leather dress-up, Chelsea recalls the highs and lows of her one-night stands with hilarious honesty.
\nEncouraged by her motley collection of friends (aka: her partners in crime) but challenged by her family members (who at times find themselves a surprise part of the encounter), Chelsea hits bottom and bounces back, unafraid to share the gritty details. My Horizontal Life is one guilty pleasure you won't be ashamed to talk about in the morning.
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Harriet Hunt is completely alone. Her father disappeared months ago, leaving her to wander the halls of Sunnyside house, dwelling on a past she'd rather keep buried. She doesn't often venture beyond her front gate, instead relishing the feel of dirt under her fingernails and of soft moss beneath her feet. Consequently, she's been deemed a little too peculiar for popular Victorian society. This solitary life suits her fine, though - because, in her garden, magic awaits.
\nHarriet's garden is special. It's a wild place full of twisting ivy, vibrant plums, and a quiet power that buzzes like bees. Caring for this place, and keeping it from running rampant through the streets of her London suburb, is Harriet's purpose.
\nWhen suspicion for her father's disappearance falls on her, she marries a seemingly charming man, the first to see past her peculiarities, in order to protect herself. It's soon clear, however, that her new husband might be worse than her father and that she's integral to a dark plot created by the men around her. To free herself and discover the truth, she must learn to channel the power of her strange, magical garden.
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2035: In the shadow of a race course, a young woman finds a robot on a scrap heap, contemplating the sky. Intrigued, she takes him under her care. Together, they decide to rescue the race horse named Today who is heading for the knackers' yard after a lifetime of overwork. To make Today happy again, they hatch a special plan to let her run another race.
\nBut it will be no ordinary event- they will train her to run the slowest time of her life.
\nIn the heat of the race, Coli feels Today running too fast. She is in pain and will soon injure herself.
\nTo save his beloved horse, Coli will commit one final act of bravery . . .
\nRadiant, urgent, deeply moving, A Thousand Blues is a hymn to our earth and to our humanity, giving powerful voice to those left behind in a fast forward-moving world of toxic productivity and competition. Brimming with heart and hope and rage, it shows with vivid empathy and warmth how friendship, community and sacrifice will set us free.
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Oh Young-a, a warm-hearted schoolteacher, lives to please - smiling through people's demands, moulding her hobbies and even her heart to match what others deem to be \"right\". But beneath her cheerful facade, the weight of constant self-restraint festers, dragging her into a haze of depression and numbness. Desperate for relief, she turns to the Seohyang Medical Research Centre's cutting-edge four-week emotion regulation treatment, promised to sculpt her into a better version of herself.
\nWhat follows is chaos - but also liberation. The treatment unravels her carefully curated control, unleashing a torrent of suppressed desires, biting truths and long buried anger. Young-a curses, speaks her mind and revels in the guilt-ridden thrill of her bad behaviour. When she seeks answers, the Centre offers none, urging her to wait it out. But why return to a life of stifling conformity?
\nAs Young-a embraces her raw, unfiltered self, she begins to dismantle the weight of the exhausting expectations and ideals imposed upon her.
\nWhy would you ever go back when freedom feels this good?
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THERE IS ONLY ONE CHER . . . and for seven decades she has been showing us why. Cher holds the attention of the world with her voice, her acting, her style, her wit and her unstoppable spirit. Now, for the first time, she tells her story in her own voice - as honest as it is hilarious, as powerful as it is perceptive.
\nCher’s childhood was anything but normal. As her mother Georgia - blessed with movie-star looks and a knockout voice - moved them around the country over and again in the hope of finding fame, her school life wasn’t straightforward. But she always knew she was going to be somebody when she grew up.
\nCher’s powerful instinct to keep moving eventually landed her in the arms of Sonny Bono. The duo became famous beyond their wildest dreams, from humble beginnings singing backup in Phil Spector’s studio through to pop stardom as Sonny and Cher, and then on to the television show that made them household names. But as time passed, fame changed the dynamic of their relationship and Cher evolved from a wide-eyed teenager into a woman. She started fighting for herself, breaking away from Sonny’s control - and realising that things were not as they seemed.
\nTaking risks, making headlines, falling in love, Cher struggled and stumbled while trying to become her own woman. The Memoir, Part One brings us to the brink of her next chapter, as she begins to chart her own path, finally claiming her rightful place in the world and becoming CHER.
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There is nothing Sadie DuChamp loves more than rocking out on stage behind her drum set. Her music career is a dream come true. But when her band breaks up and she gets evicted from her New York City apartment all in the same week, her life suddenly feels more like a nightmare. She finds herself with no choice but to retreat to her mother’s home in the suburbs of Chicago. The return also forces Sadie to face the guilt she has choked down since the last time she left.
\nJess Moran is fine with her love ’em and leave ’em reputation. She’s too busy with grad school to let herself be distracted by matters of the heart. Her plans for the summer break include lazy days in the sun and nights helping with her family’s craft vodka business. If she happens to stumble upon a few one-night stands along the way, all the better. But when she arrives home from school to find neighbor-turned-rock goddess Sadie swimming in her backyard pool her plans for a quiet summer disappear like free samples of vodka at happy hour.
\nThe more the two neighbors butt heads, the more they are drawn to one another. Will they find harmony? Or risk missing the beat and losing the rhythm of love . . .
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The only commitment Mara Antonini ever made was to her career on the Vegas stand-up scene. Putting romance on the back burner, she’s long accepted the role of ‘the player’ among her friends. Landing a gig as the emcee of a fund-raiser seemed like the perfect way to get some positive career exposure. If she happened to make a new friend with benefits along the way, so be it. She didn’t count on the stunning redhead representing a rival casino throwing her off her game.
\nAll Victoria McHenry needed was a date to her grandmother’s birthday gala to keep her high-society mother off her back. But she wasn’t exactly ready to dip back into the dating pool after her last disaster of a relationship. So when she’s coerced into representing her family’s casino at a local fund-raiser, she takes it as an opportunity to find that date. Naturally she’s drawn to the charismatic comedian headlining the event.
\nWhen the women are paired up on a planning committee, Victoria proposes the Fake Date Deal: she gets her date for the soirée, and Mara gets the chance to finally shake her playgirl reputation. It’s not long before hearts and emotions tangle, and soon the women find themselves wondering if the only people they are fooling are themselves.
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Following her father’s retirement, Gabi D’Angelo’s culinary career is about to take off as she steps up to lead her family’s restaurant. But her professional life heats up in more ways than one when she discovers that her recent, unforgettable one-night stand is none other than Ainsley Becker, the management consultant her father has brought in to streamline the business.
\nFor Ainsley, the job in town is just another stepping stone, adhering to her lifelong mantra of ‘get in, get out’. Setting down roots has never been part of her plan, not even for someone as compelling as Gabi. Despite their intense connection, Ainsley is determined to keep it strictly professional.
\nAs Gabi and Ainsley navigate their burgeoning feelings and clash over how to run the restaurant, a misunderstanding threatens to ruin everything. With the future of the D’Angelo family business at stake, Gabi and Ainsley must decide if blending business with pleasure might just be the secret ingredient to saving it all - or simply a recipe for disaster.
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Successful Chicago-based artist Lauren Hansen is on a layover in Las Vegas before heading to what was supposed to be the vacation of a lifetime with her partner. Until, that is, that partner became an ex.
\nRecovering from a nasty break-up herself, workaholic Penny Rothmoor agrees to meet Lauren for dinner, but only out of a sense of obligation to her mother.
\nOne thing leads to another, and soon Penny finds herself on a plane, jetting off to meet Lauren for a week on the beautiful island of Hawaii - but strictly as friends, of course.
\nAs the bikini-clad duo relaxes and gets to know each other better, they begin to realize that there’s more to enjoy in Hawaii than just sun and sand - and that king-size bed is looking awfully inviting. What is it about the words “no strings attached” that are sure to create a tangled mess of desire, mind-blowing pleasure, and the pain of separation?
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In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska's ice. Thus was Dr. Blue's Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.
But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.
Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue's widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.
His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.
Mercy Lynch is working at a war hospital in Richmond, Virginia, when she learns that her husband has died in a POW camp and her estranged father is gravely injured and wishes to see her. With no good reason to stay in Virginia, Mercy sets out to see her father in Seattle.
\nBut crossing the country is no small task; it's a harrowing adventure through war-torn border states by dirigible, rail, and the Mississippi River. And once Mercy finally arrives in St. Louis, the only Tacoma-bound train is pulled by a terrifying Union-operated steam engine called the Dreadnought. Lacking options and running out of money, Mercy buys a ticket and climbs aboard.
\nWhat ought to be a quiet trip turns deadly when the train is beset by bushwackers, then vigorously attacked by a band of Rebel soldiers. The train is moving away from battle lines into the vast, unincorporated west, so Mercy can't imagine why it's meeting such resisitance. Perhaps it has something to do with the mysterious cargo in the second and last train cars?
\nMercy is just a frustrated nurse who wants to see her father before he dies. But she'll have to survive both Union intrigue and Confederate opposition if she wants to make it off the Dreadnought alive.
A violent storm washes a mysterious house onto a rural Pacific Northwest beach, stopping the heart of the only woman who knows what it means. Her grandson, Simon Culpepper, vanishes in the aftermath, leaving two of his childhood friends to comb the small, isolated island for answers - but decades have passed since Melissa and Leo were close, if they were ever close at all.
Young ex-slave Gideon Bardsley is a brilliant inventor, but the job is less glamorous than one might think, especially since the assassination attempts started. Worse yet, they're trying to destroy his greatest achievement: a calculating engine called Fiddlehead, which provides undeniable proof of something awful enough to destroy the world. Both man and machine are at risk from forces conspiring to keep the Civil War going and the money flowing.
\nBardsley has no choice but to ask his patron, former president Abraham Lincoln, for help. Lincoln retired from leading the country after an attempt on his life, but is quite interested in Bardsley’s immense data-processing capacities, confident that if people have the facts, they'll see reason and urge the government to end the war. Lincoln must keep Bardsley safe until he can finish his research, so he calls on his old private security staff to protect Gideon and his data.
\nMaria “Belle” Boyd was a retired Confederate spy, until she got a life-changing job offer from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Pinkerton respects her work, despite reservations about her lingering Southern loyalties. But it’s precisely those loyalties that let her go into Confederate territory to figure out who might be targeting Bardsley. Maria is a good detective, but with spies from both camps gunning for her, can even the notorious Belle Boyd hold the greedy warhawks at bay?
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When psychic travel agent Leda Foley is approached by a man searching for his sister, she quickly agrees to help. The missing woman disappeared with a vintage orange car, a fat sack of her employer’s cash, and a grudge against her philandering husband - a man who never even reported her missing.
\nMeanwhile, Seattle PD detective Grady Merritt has temporarily misplaced his dog. While he’s passing out bright pink “Lost” flyers at the Mount Rainier visitor’s center, the wayward pooch appears - with a human leg in his mouth.
\nThanks to DNA matching, Grady learns that the leg has something to do with Leda’s new client, and soon the two cases are tangled.
\nTheories abound, but law enforcement is low on leads. Lucky for Grady, Leda has a few ideas that might just be crazy enough to work. They’ll need one yellow dog, a fair share of teamwork, and perhaps a bit of Klairvoyant Karaoke to piece the clues together.
The air pirate Andan Cly is going straight. Well, straighter. Although he's happy to run alcohol guns wherever the money's good, he doesn't think the world needs more sap, or its increasingly ugly side-effects. But becoming legit is easier said than done, and Cly's first legal gig - a supply run for the Seattle Underground - will be paid for by sap money.
New Orleans is not Cly's first pick for a shopping run. He loved the Big Easy once, back when he also loved a beautiful mixed-race prostitute named Josephine Early - but that was a decade ago, and he hasn't looked back since. Jo's still thinking about him, though, or so he learns when he gets a telegram about a peculiar piloting job. It's a chance to complete two lucrative jobs at once, one he can't refuse. He sends his old paramour a note and heads for New Orleans, with no idea of what he's in for - or what she wants him to fly.
But he won't be flying. Not exactly. Hidden at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain lurks an astonishing war machine, an immense submersible called the Ganymede. This prototype could end the war, if only anyone had the faintest idea of how to operate it. If only they could sneak it past the Southern forces at the mouth of the Mississippi River. If only it hadn't killed most of the men who'd ever set foot inside it.
But it's those 'if onlys' that will decide whether Cly and his crew will end up in the history books, or at the bottom of the ocean.
Meet Leda Foley: devoted friend, struggling travel agent, and inconsistent psychic. When Leda, sole proprietor of Foley's Flights of Fancy, impulsively re-books Seattle PD detective Grady Merritt’s flight, her life changes in ways she couldn’t have predicted.
\nAfter watching his original plane blow up from the safety of the airport, Grady realizes that Leda’s special abilities could help him with a cold case he just can’t crack.
\nDespite her scattershot premonitions, she agrees for a secret reason: her fiancé’s murder remains unsolved. Leda’s psychic abilities couldn’t help the case several years before, but she’s been honing her skills and drawing a crowd at her favorite bar’s open-mic nights, where she performs Klairvoyant Karaoke - singing whatever song comes to mind when she holds people’s personal effects. Now joined by a rag-tag group of bar patrons and pals alike, Leda and Grady set out to catch a killer - and learn how the two cases that haunt them have more in common than they ever suspected.
Rector “Wreck ’em” Sherman was orphaned as a toddler in the Blight of 1863, but that was years ago. Wreck has grown up, and on his eighteenth birthday, he’ll be cast out out of the orphanage.
\nAnd Wreck’s problems aren’t merely about finding a home. He’s been quietly breaking the cardinal rule of any good drug dealer and dipping into his own supply of the sap he sells. He’s also pretty sure he’s being haunted by the ghost of a kid he used to know - Zeke Wilkes, who almost certainly died six months ago.
\nZeke would have every reason to pester Wreck, since Wreck got him inside the walled city of Seattle in the first place, and that was probably what killed him. Maybe it’s only a guilty conscience, but Wreck can’t take it anymore, so he sneaks over the wall.
\nThe walled-off wasteland of Seattle is every bit as bad as he’d heard, chock-full of the hungry undead and utterly choked by the poisonous, inescapable yellow gas. And then there's the monster. Rector's pretty certain that whatever attacked him was not at all human - and not a rotter, either. Arms far too long. Posture all strange. Eyes all wild and faintly glowing gold and known to the locals as simply “The Inexplicables.”
\nIn the process of tracking down these creatures, Rector comes across another incursion through the wall - just as bizarre but entirely attributable to human greed. It seems some outsiders have decided there’s gold to be found in the city and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to get a piece of the pie unless Rector and his posse have anything to do with it.
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Silent film star Venita Rost's malevolent spirit lurks spider-like in her cliffside mansion, a once-beautiful home that's claimed countless unlucky souls. And she's not alone. Snared in her terrible web, Inspector Bartholomew Sloan - her eternal nemesis - watches her wreak havoc in helpless horror, shackled by his own guilt and Venita's unrelenting wrath.
\nNow the house has yet another new owner. This time it's Ronnie Mitchell, a grieving woman who buys the run-down place sight unseen. She arrives armed with an unexpected inheritance, a strong background in renovation, and a blissful ignorance regarding the house's blood-soaked history. But her arrival has stirred up more than just dust and decay. In the shadows, unseen eyes watch. Then, a man comes knocking. He brings wild stories and a thinly veiled jealousy, as well as a secret connection to the house that can only lead to violence.
\nVenita's fury awakens, and a deadly game unfolds.
\nCaught between a vengeful ghost and a ruthless living threat, Ronnie's skepticism crumbles. The line between living and dead isn't as sharp as it seems, and she realises too late that in Venita's house, survival might be just an illusion.
A genealogy test sparks a woman’s reflection on the two accounts of her life - the real one and the one she’s always told the world.
\nIn 1964 teenage Geraldine Waters was sent away by her parents to an unwed mothers’ home, where she gave up her newborn for adoption. Ever since, she’s lived an alternative narrative. Decades later, it’s time for Geraldine to reconcile the telling of her life, to finally grieve, and to discover what happened to that part of her past that slipped away.
Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you; you lose a family member; you can’t pay the bills - and it can be great: you’ve had the hottest sex of your life; you get that plum job; you muster the courage to write your novel. Sugar - the once-anonymous online columnist at The Rumpus, now revealed as Cheryl Strayed, author of the bestselling memoir Wild - is the person thousands turn to for advice.
\n\t\t\tTiny Beautiful Things brings the best of Dear Sugar in one place and includes never-before-published columns and a new introduction by Steve Almond. Rich with humor, insight, compassion - and absolute honesty - this book is a balm for everything life throws our way.
\"Work hard. Do good. Be incredible!\" is the advice Teresa Rae Wood shares with the listeners of her local radio show, Modern Pioneers , and the advice she strives to live by every day. She has fled a bad marriage and rebuilta life with her children, Claire and Joshua, and their caring stepfather, Bruce.
\nTheir love for each other binds them as a family through the daily struggles of making ends meet. But when they received unexpected news that Teresa, only 38, is dying of cancer, their lives all begin to unravel and drift apart. Strayed's intimate portraits of these fully human characters in a time of crisis show the varying truths of grief, forgiveness, and the beautiful terrors of learning how to keep living.
Cheryl Strayed, the bestselling author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things , finds humor and connection in a poignant short memoir about love, family secrets, and reconciliation.
\nTwenty-one years after Cheryl Strayed set off on the Pacific Crest Trail to heal from the death of her beloved mother, Cheryl’s mother-in-law, Joan, is given weeks to live. As she and her husband help see Joan through her final days, Cheryl reckons with their complicated relationship, determined to connect with a woman who both showed her love and (sometimes hilariously) held her at a distance.
\nCheryl reflects on their two decades together as she comes to a deeper understanding of the secrets and sorrows in Joan’s complicated past. At Joan’s bedside, it’s time to contemplate the challenges they’ve faced, to accept their differences, and to find some healing in goodbye.
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State - and she would do it alone.
\nTold with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
Stevie Sterling is having a day from hell. Snubbed - yet again - by her unsupportive parents, she runs out on their posh party and takes refuge on a deserted yacht. Waking the next day with the world’s worst hangover, Stevie finds herself far from shore.
As if being trapped on the yacht in only her party dress isn’t bad enough, Stevie’s frantic that she’ll miss the first day of her new job as a nurse. She has so much to prove in her career - to herself and her parents.
The yacht’s cute but unimpressed captain, Kaz Malone - an eco-warrior who hits the seas with Sinbad the cat - is on a mission: There’s a nuclear-waste-dumping tanker to harass.
Kaz is as single-minded as she is stubborn and she’s not about to turn around for some stowaway with a new job. Hell, no. Saving the planet comes first.
But perhaps there’s more than one way to a destination?
Three years ago, Sue Brent proposed to Moni Kratzmann in the corridor of the Royal Flying Doctor Base. Now, with marriage equality finally the law in Australia, their wedding is on. As friends and family from near and far gather at Jayboro Outstation in outback Queensland, Moni and Sue strive to keep their wedding plans - and their lives - on track.
\nBetween well-meaning families, ex-girlfriends, and a community that wants to party, their wedding is set to be bigger than Moni's home state of Texas. But is that what they want?It's a simple outback wedding. What could possibly go wrong?
Viva Jones was great once. A top ten tennis player with a grand slam trophy to her name, she had the world at her feet. Then an overzealous lineswoman’s bad call knocked her out of the US Open, and a persistent injury crushed her career. While battling to return to the game she loves, a chance meeting with the lineswoman, Gabriela, forces Viva to rethink the past . . . and the present.
Away from the court, Gabriela is sexy, athletic, and lives for her career as an umpire. She seems to be falling for Viva as hard and fast as Viva is for her. There’s just one problem: players and officials can’t date.
Felix Jameson is working hard to get her outback hospitality business off the ground. Building cabins, leading trail rides and enticing tourists means she hasn’t much time for distractions - and that includes romance. But when she meets Josie, a drifter who picks up casual work as she goes, Felix is intrigued and attracted.
\nJosie asks Felix to board her horse, Flame, and Felix is delighted. Not only can she use the extra money, but it means she will see a lot more of Josie. Felix finds Josie fits in well into her life, and for the solitary Felix there’s finally the possibility of romance.
\nBut there’s something suspicious about Flame, who bears an uncanny resemblance to a valuable stolen racehorse. Felix knows she is falling hard for Josie, but is Josie all she seems, or is she mixed up in shady dealings?
\nA koala ruined her life. Well, that’s how elite athlete Shan Metz sees it. When an idiot charity runner in a koala suit trips Shan during a community fun run, her knee blows out, destroying her dream of making the Australian Commonwealth Games team. Recovering from knee surgery will be bad enough, but living on her building’s fourth floor will make it a nightmare.
\nConsultant Lizzie Carras, aka the dream-wrecking koala, does guilt like a pro. The only decent thing to do is offer Shan her spare bedroom during recovery. Their incompatible lifestyles don’t help matters. Neither does Shan’s training partner, the haughty and possessive Celia. But they’ll muddle through until Shan’s knee has healed enough to get out of Lizzie’s life.
\nBecause it’s not like Shan would ever miss a dream-wrecking koala or anything. Right?
Opposites attract, repel, and bicker like fools in this adorable small town lesbian romance about finding what truly matters in life.
\nSmalltown handywoman Hazel Lee has learned to live her best life regardless of what the universe throws at her. But her patience is sorely tested when a bossy, big-city executive blows in and starts questioning Hazel’s motives for helping an elderly friend.
\nHigh-powered businesswoman Imogen Alexander has her career all set. Then her elderly uncle takes a bad fall in his home. Imogen figures she can surely run his life as tightly as her work, but she doesn’t count on an annoying local woman being all up in his business.
\nHazel has one leg, two jobs, and a whole bunch of opinions. Worse, now meddling old Uncle George seems intent on match-making the women together.
\nBut what could an icy standoffish executive in hot skirt suits possibly have in common with a cute butch with charm to burn?
Australian country girl Nina Pellegrini runs a program for city kids to experience a taste of rural life at Banksia Farm. But when a child is hurt and a lawsuit threatens, Nina is determined to find the best legal assistance to help her save the farm.
Enter high-flying lawyer Leigh Willoughby, whose city world is far from the farm’s chaotic mix of kids and animals. She certainly doesn’t have time for small cases that don’t pay or farm visits that wreck her cool - and her clothes.
Still, the warm-hearted Nina and her challenging, twelve-year-old daughter, Phoebe, are awfully hard to say no to. What on earth has she gotten herself into?
Coffee shop manager Clea Winneke is in quite a pickle. She’s just inherited a failing Melbourne sausage factory which she can only keep if it makes a profit in its first year. Mix in Clea’s total lack of sausage savvy with a mysterious saboteur, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
\nKatrina Nordling works as a food scientist at Shamrock Sausages and can’t understand why it’s doing so badly. Worse, there’s some random barista dropped in to run it, and Kat cannot afford the company to go under because of its novice CEO.
\nBut what if Clea and Katrina join forces to get what they desire? And what if what they most desire changes as they get closer to their goal?
Nora Kelly loves her carefree London life where there’s always a new woman to seduce. Her big Irish family tease her about her footloose ways, but she knows she’s in no danger of losing her heart.
Her family has only one rule when it comes to dating: Nora can date any woman she wants - as long as she’s not a Flannery. The Kellys and the Flannerys have been feuding ever since both families arrived in London from Ireland sixty years ago, and time has not lessened the hatred.
But never-tied Nora has just met the woman of her dreams, and suddenly commitment isn’t a dirty word. Trouble is, Geraldine is a Flannery.
Can Nora convince Ger that, despite their families, they are meant to be together?
Andi Barrons has no time for kids or the chaos they bring - certainly not when she runs a high-end decorating business. Mischief and little fingers around expensive materials? No thanks!
\nBut then her gorgeous friend, Sarah Santoro, winds up in a custody battle with Sarah’s former in-laws and now . . . Well, somehow Andi’s agreed to pretend she’s Sarah’s live-in partner.
\nShe’s still not quite sure how she got stuck playing a role she’s so utterly clueless about and that’s everything she doesn’t want in life. But as long as Sarah and Noa, the world’s cutest seven-year-old, don’t get a hold of her heart, she’ll be fine.
\nEasy, right?
“Sorry, I’m straight.” Those words, accompanied by a smile, were the ones Sue Brent used to turn down women. But the truth was buried so deep that even her best friend, Nora, didn’t know that Sue was queer. Sometimes, Sue even managed to convince herself. The only person in London who’d seen through her façade was Moni, an American tourist.
\nWhen a date with a friend’s brother goes disastrously wrong, Sue has to confront the truth about herself. Leaving London, she returns to Australia to take up the reins in an outback law practice. Back in the country of her birth, she is finally able to accept who she is, including facing Denise, the woman who burned her so badly years ago and set her on the path of pretence.
\nBut it’s not until Moni arrives in Queensland to work for the Flying Doctors that Sue is finally able to see a path to happiness. However, as things start to go her way, Denise arrives in Mungabilly Creek, begging a favour that might destroy Sue’s new relationship.
When handywoman Jorgie’s uncle leaves her an old house in Melbourne, it’s a dream come true. Sure, 94 Gaylord Street is falling apart, and she has to deal with her uncle Bruce’s eccentric friends thanks to his unusual Will. But that’s okay. She’ll fire up her power tools and turn the dilapidated terrace house into a desirable inner-city pad. Then she’ll sell up and head home to the country.
\nJorgie hasn’t counted on falling for cute neighbour Marta, who’s found her heart-home among the tight queer-community of Gaylord Street. Between mugs of too-strong tea and Jorgie’s lack of a working shower, the two forge a surprising connection.
\nBut what happens when the renovation’s complete? Can Jorgie really just toss aside her tool belt and saunter away?
From the moment Freya looks in the window of the brash, new sex shop in Grasstree Flat she knows it will be nothing but trouble. For a start, it will clash with her own new-age store next door. And she’s right.
\nOutgoing newcomer Lily begins to intrude on Freya’s well-ordered life. Freya’s friends, lifestyle, and even her cat are all affected by Lily’s magic touch. Even Freya’s yoga classes rub shoulders with Lily’s sexual-expression workshops.
\nLily stands for everything Freya has lost in life - playfulness, spontaneity, delight in the physical, and sex. But does Lily have more in common with Freya than the wall that divides them?
At forty-six, Maren McEvoy is Australia’s most popular newsreader, but for how much longer? And now her ex-husband has moved in with his boyfriend, and her sixteen-year-old daughter has been caught carjacking. Something has to change.
\nLaid-back Jacinta Fowler is furious. Her new neighbour’s daughter with her nightly prowling and disdain for the law, is a serious threat to Jac’s motorcycle tour business. It’d be so easy to stay mad except that the girl’s mother, Maren, is all kinds of gorgeous. And intriguing. And incredibly famous.
\nBut there’s no way Jac should get involved with a closeted celebrity. That way leads to danger . . . Right?
At first the vision is grainy - like something seen through wet glass. But slowly it clears, and there appears the figure of a man.
\nWhen Kunle's younger brother disappears as his country explodes in civil war, Kunle must set out on an impossible rescue mission. Set in Nigeria in the late 1960s, The Road to the Country is the epic story of a shy, bookish student haunted by long-held guilt and shame who must go to war to free himself.
\nKunle's search for his brother becomes a journey of atonement that will see Kunle conscripted into the breakaway Biafran army and forced to fight a war he hardly understands, all while navigating the prophecies of a local Seer, he who marks Kunle as an Abami Eda - one who will die and return to life.
\nThe story of a young man seeking redemption in a country on fire, Chigozie Obioma’s novel is an odyssey of brotherhood, love, and unimaginable courage set during one of the most devastating conflicts in the history of Africa.
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As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a blogger. But after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face?
Fearless, gripping, spanning three continents and numerous lives, the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Americanah’ is a richly told story of love and expectation set in today’s globalised world.
Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until - betrayed and brokenhearted - she must turn to the person she thought she needed least.
\nOmelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America - but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.
\nIn Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved?
\nA trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.
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Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They're completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home - a home that is silent and suffocating.
\nAs the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili and Jaja are sent to their aunt, a university professor outside the city, where they discover a life beyond the confines of their father’s authority. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins’ laughter rings throughout the house. When they return home, tensions within the family escalate, and Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together.
\nPurple Hibiscus is an exquisite novel about the emotional turmoil of adolescence, the powerful bonds of family, and the bright promise of freedom.
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A moving and fascinating meditation on freedom, trust, loss, and our relationship with the natural world, explored through the story of one woman’s unlikely friendship with a wild hare.
\nImagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and slept in your house for hours on end and gave birth to leverets in your study. For political advisor and speechwriter Chloe Dalton, who spent lockdown deep in the English countryside, far away from her usual busy London life, this became her unexpected reality.
\nIn February 2021, Dalton stumbles upon a newborn hare - a leveret - that had been chased by a dog. Fearing for its life, she brings it home, only to discover how impossible it is to rear a wild hare, most of whom perish in captivity from either shock or starvation. Through trial and error, she learns to feed and care for the leveret with every intention of returning it to the wilderness. Instead, it becomes her constant companion, wandering the fields and woods at night and returning to Dalton’s house by day. Though Dalton feared that the hare would be preyed upon by foxes, stoats, feral cats, raptors, and even people, she never tried to restrict it to the house. Each time the hare leaves, Chloe knows she may never see it again. Yet she also understands that to confine it would be its own kind of death.
\nRaising Hare chronicles their journey together, while also taking a deep dive into the lives and nature of hares, and the way they have been viewed historically in art, literature, and folklore. We witness first-hand the joy at this extraordinary relationship between human and animal, which serves as a reminder that the best things, and most beautiful experiences, arise when we least expect them.
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To escape rising seas and rampant epidemics, most of society lives “upcountry” in glistening virtual reality, while those who can’t afford the subscription are forced to remain in crumbling “downcountry.”
\nBut upcountry isn’t perfect. A cold war rages between two powerful nations, Medaluo and Atahua - and no one suffers for it more than the Medan orphans in Atahua. Their enrollment at Nile Military Academy is mandatory. Either serve as a soldier or risk being labelled a spy.
\nEirale graduated the academy and joined NileCorp’s private forces downcountry, exactly as she was supposed to. Then Atahua’s most wanted anarchist frames her for assassinating a government official, and she’s given a choice: cooperate with him to search for a dangerous program in Medaluo or go down for treason.
\nMeanwhile, Lia is finishing her last year upcountry at Nile Military Academy. Paired with her academic nemesis for their final assignment, Lia is determined to beat him for valedictorian and prove her worth. But there may be far more at stake when their task to infiltrate Medaluo and track down an Atahuan traitor goes wrong . . .
\nThough Eirale and Lia tear through Medaluo on different planes of reality, the two start to suspect they are puzzle pieces in a larger conspiracy - and the closer they get to the truth, the closer their worlds come to a shattering collision.
Winter is drawing thick in 1932 Shanghai, as is the ever-nearing threat of a Japanese invasion.
\nRosalind Lang has suffered the worst possible fate for a national spy: she’s been exposed. With the media storm camped outside her apartment for the infamous Lady Fortune, she’s barely left her bedroom in weeks, plotting her next course of action after Orion was taken and his memories of Rosalind wiped. Though their marriage might have been a sham, his absence hurts her more than any physical wound. She won’t rest until she gets him back.
\nBut with her identity in the open, the task is near impossible. The only way to leave the city and rescue Orion is under the guise of a national tour. It’s easy to convince her superiors that the countryside needs unity more than ever, and who better than an immortal girl to stir pride and strength into the people?
\nWhen the tour goes wrong, however, everything Rosalind once knew is thrown up in the air. Taking refuge outside Shanghai, old ghosts come into the open and adversaries turn to allies. To save Orion, they must find a cure to his mother’s traitorous invention and take this dangerous chemical weapon away from impending foreign invasion - but the clock is ticking, and if Rosalind fails, it’s not only Orion she loses, but her nation itself.
It’s 1931 in Shanghai, and the stage is set for a new decade of intrigue.
\nFour years ago, Rosalind Lang was brought back from the brink of death, but the strange experiment that saved her also stopped her from sleeping and aging - and allows her to heal from any wound. In short, Rosalind cannot die. Now, desperate for redemption from her traitorous past, she uses her abilities as an assassin for her country.
\nCode name: Fortune.
\nBut when the Japanese Imperial Army begins its invasion march, Rosalind’s mission pivots. A series of murders is causing unrest in Shanghai, and the Japanese are under suspicion. Rosalind’s new orders are to infiltrate foreign society and identify the culprits behind the terror plot before more of her people are killed.
\nTo reduce suspicion, however, she must pose as the wife of another Nationalist spy, Orion Hong, and though Rosalind finds Orion’s cavalier attitude and playboy demeanor infuriating, she is willing to work with him for the greater good. But Orion has an agenda of his own, and Rosalind has secrets that she wants to keep buried. As they both attempt to unravel the conspiracy, the two spies soon find that there are deeper and more horrifying layers to this mystery than they ever imagined.
Every year, thousands in the kingdom of Talin will flock to its capital twin cities, San-Er, where the palace hosts a set of games. For those confident enough in their ability to jump between bodies, competitors across San-Er fight to the death to win unimaginable riches.
\nPrincess Calla Tuoleimi lurks in hiding. Five years ago, a massacre killed her parents and left the palace of Er empty . . . and she was the one who did it. Before King Kasa’s forces in San can catch her, she plans to finish the job and bring down the monarchy. Her reclusive uncle always greets the victor of the games, so if she wins, she gets her opportunity at last to kill him.
\nEnter Anton Makusa, an exiled aristocrat. His childhood love has lain in a coma since they were both ousted from the palace, and he’s deep in debt trying to keep her alive. Thankfully, he’s one of the best jumpers in the kingdom, flitting from body to body at will. His last chance at saving her is entering the games and winning.
\nCalla finds both an unexpected alliance with Anton and help from King Kasa’s adopted son, August, who wants to mend Talin’s ills. But the three of them have very different goals, even as Calla and Anton’s partnership spirals into something all-consuming. Before the games close, Calla must decide what she’s playing for - her lover or her kingdom.
From author Chloe Gong comes two captivating new novellas surrounding the events of Foul Lady Fortune and following a familiar cast of characters from the These Violent Delights Duet.
\nIn A Foul Thing, Roma and Juliette have established themselves as the heads of an underground weapons ring in Zhouzhuang, making a living the way they do best while remaining anonymous in their peaceful, quiet life. But when they hear about several Russian girls showing up dead in nearby towns, they decide to investigate - and ultimately discover that this mystery is much closer to home than they ever imagined.
In This Foul Murder, Benedikt and Marshall have been summoned by Roma to find the elusive scientist, Lourens, and bring him to Zhouzhuang. Time is of the essence aboard the week-long Trans-Siberian Express, but when someone is murdered on board, Benedikt and Marshall convince the officer in charge not to stop the train so that they aren’t thrown off-schedule. Instead, they pretend that they are investigators and promise they can solve the murder, but as they dig deeper, they realise that the murder might having surprising ties to their own mission . . .
The year is 1927, and Shanghai teeters on the edge of revolution.
\nAfter sacrificing her relationship with Roma to protect him from the blood feud, Juliette has been a girl on the warpath. One wrong move, and her cousin will step in to usurp her place as the Scarlet Gang’s heir. The only way to save the boy she loves from the wrath of the Scarlets is to have him want her dead for murdering his best friend in cold blood. If Juliette were actually guilty of the crime Roma believes she committed, his rejection might sting less.
\nRoma is still reeling from Marshall’s death, and his cousin Benedikt will barely speak to him. Roma knows it’s his fault for letting the ruthless Juliette back into his life, and he’s determined to set things right - even if that means killing the girl he hates and loves with equal measure.
\nThen a new monstrous danger emerges in the city, and though secrets keep them apart, Juliette must secure Roma’s cooperation if they are to end this threat once and for all. Shanghai is already at a boiling point: The Nationalists are marching in, whispers of civil war brew louder every day, and gangster rule faces complete annihilation. Roma and Juliette must put aside their differences to combat monsters and politics, but they aren’t prepared for the biggest threat of all: protecting their hearts from each other.
The year is 1926, and Shanghai hums to the tune of debauchery.
A blood feud between two gangs runs the streets red, leaving the city helpless in the grip of chaos. At the heart of it all is eighteen-year-old Juliette Cai, a former flapper who has returned to assume her role as the proud heir of the Scarlet Gang - a network of criminals far above the law. Their only rivals in power are the White Flowers, who have fought the Scarlets for generations. And behind every move is their heir, Roma Montagov, Juliette’s first love . . . and first betrayal.
But when gangsters on both sides show signs of instability culminating in clawing their own throats out, the people start to whisper. Of a contagion, a madness. Of a monster in the shadows. As the deaths stack up, Juliette and Roma must set their guns - and grudges - aside and work together, for if they can’t stop this mayhem, then there will be no city left for either to rule.
Calla Tuoleimi has succeeded in the impossible. Despite the odds, she has won San-Er’s bloody games and eliminated King Kasa, her tyrant uncle and the former ruler of Talin. She serves now as royal advisor to Kasa’s adopted son, August Shenzhi, who has risen to the throne.
\nOnly Calla knows it isn’t really August.
\nAnton Makusa is still furious about Calla’s betrayal in the final round of the games. In an impossible feat, he took over August’s body to survive, and has no intention of giving up this newfound power. But when his first love, the beautiful, explosive Otta Avia, awakens from a years-long coma and reveals a secret that threatens the monarchy’s authority over Talin, chaos erupts.
\nAs tensions come to a boiling point, Calla and Anton must set their conflicts aside and head to the kingdom’s far reaches to prevent anarchy . . . even if their empire might be better off burning.
Nana, a Korean playwright, was adopted as a child by a French couple. Before she was Nana, she was Esther Pak, a girl growing up in a Korean orphanage. And before she was Esther Pak, she was Munju, an infant abandoned on the railway tracks of Cheongnyangni station in Seoul.
\nPregnant with the child of her ex-boyfriend, Nana receives a request from a Korean filmmaker who wishes to make a documentary about her life. Following a sudden compulsion to learn more about her own roots, she heads to Seoul as she prepares to bring a new life into the world. There, through unexpected encounters, the dark threads of her memory gradually begin to unravel.
\nSimple Heart delves into profound questions about identity and belonging, with a focus on family connections and motherhood that recalls Kyung-Sook Shin’s Please Look After Mother. It also shines a necessary light on issues such as international adoption and the historic US military presence in Korea.
Dove, a recovering alcoholic covered in Emily Dickinson tattoos, serves up drinks and small talk at a casino in Vegas. Russell is a man on a roll. He claims to be a chain-restaurant manager, yet his tells point to different skills.
\nThe two leave together at the end of the night, but when all pretense is stripped away, they find themselves in a fight for their lives.
After a tough week, Tanya Kaitlin is looking forward to a relaxing night in, but as she steps out of her shower, she hears her phone ring. The video call request comes from her best friend, Karen Ward. Tanya takes the call and the nightmare begins.
\nDetectives Robert Hunter and Carlos Garcia are thrown into a rollercoaster of evil, chasing a predator who scouts the streets and social media networks for victims, taunting them with secret messages and feeding on their fear.
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When the body of a young woman is discovered in a derelict cottage in the middle of Los Angeles National Forest, Homicide Detective Robert Hunter finds himself entering a horrific and recurring nightmare. Naked, strung from two parallel wooden posts, the victim was sadistically tortured before meeting an excruciatingly painful death.
\nAll the skin has been ripped from her face - while she was still alive. On the nape of her neck has been carved a strange double-cross: the signature of a psychopath known as the Crucifix Killer. But that's impossible. Because two years ago, the Crucifix Killer was caught and executed. Could this therefore be a copycat killer? Or could the unthinkable be true?
\nIs the real killer still out there, ready to embark once again on a vicious and violent killing spree, selecting his victims seemingly at random, taunting Robert Hunter with his inability to catch him? Hunter and his rookie partner are about to enter a nightmare beyond imagining.
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A student nurse has the shock of her life when she discovers her patient, prosecutor Derek Nicholson, brutally murdered in his bed.
\nThe act seems senseless - Nicholson was terminally ill with only weeks to live.
\nBut what most shocks Detective Robert Hunter of the Los Angeles Robbery Homicide Division is the calling card the killer left behind.
\nFor Hunter, there is no doubt that the killer is trying to communicate with the police, but the method is unlike anything he's ever seen before.
\nAnd what could the hidden message be?
\nJust as Hunter and his partner Garcia reckon they've found a lead, a new body is found - and a new calling card.
\nBut with no apparent link between the first and second victims, all the progress they've made so far goes out of the window.
\nPushed into an uncomfortable alliance with the confident Alice Beaumont, Hunter must race to put together the pieces of the investigation...before the Death Sculptor puts the final touches to his masterpiece.
\nWhen a routine autopsy on what looked like a straightforward hit-and-run leads the LA Chief Medical Examiner, Dr Carolyn Hove, to discover some puzzling inconsistencies, she calls in Detective Robert Hunter of the LAPD Ultra Violent Crimes Unit. Not only did Dr Hove discover that the death wasn’t caused by a hit-and-run, but she also found indications that the victim had been severely tortured prior to death.
\nWhat no one realises is that what Dr Hove has stumbled upon is just the tip of the iceberg and it will lead Hunter and his partner, Carlos Garcia, on the trail of a twisted and clever killer who hides in plain sight. A serial killer no one even knew existed - a killer who has always operated under the radar, expertly disguising every gruesome murder as an accidental death.
\nBut with no leads as to why the victim was targeted, the investigation comes to a standstill, until another body is discovered with an alternative cause of death.
\nWhat becomes clear is that this serial killer isn’t going to stop - unless Hunter and Garcia can get to him.
\nBut how do you investigate a murder when you have no victims? How do you catch a killer who leaves behind no crime scene? How do you stop a ghost who no one can prove even exists?
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A freak accident in rural Wyoming leads the Sheriff's Department to arrest a man for a possible double homicide, but further investigations suggest a much more horrifying discovery - a serial killer who has been kidnapping, torturing and mutilating victims all over the United States for at least twenty-five years.
\nThe suspect claims he is a pawn in a huge labyrinth of lies and deception - can he be believed?
\nThe case is immediately handed over to the FBI, but this time they're forced to ask for outside help. Ex-criminal behaviour psychologist and lead Detective with the Ultra Violent Crime Unit of the LAPD, Robert Hunter, is asked to run a series of interviews with the apprehended man.
\nThese interviews begin to reveal terrifying secrets that no one could've foreseen, including the real identity of a killer so elusive that no one, not even the FBI, had any idea he existed . . . until now.
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Inside a Los Angeles church, on the altar steps, lies the blood-soaked, decapitated body of a priest. Carefully positioned, legs stretched out, arms crossed over the chest, the most horrifying thing of all is that the priest's head has been replaced by that of a dog. Later, the forensic team discover that, on the victim's chest, the figure '3' has been scrawled in blood.
\nAt first, Detective Robert Hunter believes that this is a ritualistic killing. But as more bodies surface, he is forced to reassess. All the victims died in the way they feared the most. Their worst nightmares have literally come true. But how could the killer have known? And what links these apparently random victims?
\nHunter finds himself on the trail of an elusive and sadistic killer, somone who apparently has the power to read his victims' minds. Someone who can sense what scares his victims the most. Someone who will stop at nothing to achieve his twisted aim.
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‘Thirty-seven years in the force, and if I was allowed to choose just one thing to erase from my mind, what’s inside that room would be it.’
\nThat’s what a LAPD Lieutenant tells Detectives Hunter and Garcia of the Ultra Violent Crimes Unit as they arrive at one of the most shocking crime scenes they have ever attended.
\nIn a completely unexpected turn of events, the detectives find themselves joining forces with the FBI to track down a serial killer whose hunting ground sees no borders; a psychopath who loves what he does because to him murder is much more than just killing - it’s an art form.
\nWelcome to The Gallery of the Dead.
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Robert Hunter is called to the most vicious crime scene he has ever attended. It is made even more disturbing when the autopsy reveals a poem, left by the killer, inside the body of their victim.
\nSoon, another body is found. The methods and signature of the murder differs, but the level of violence used suggests that the same person is behind both crimes. Hunter’s fears are confirmed when a second part of the poem is found.
\nBut this discovery does more than just link the two killings - it suggests that this is the work of a serial murderer.
\nWith no forensic evidence to go on, Robert Hunter must catch the most disciplined and systematic killer that he has ever encountered, someone who thrives on the victims' fear, and to whom death is a lesson that needs to be taught.
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They met for the first time in college. Two of the brightest minds ever to graduate from the prestigious Stanford University. They met again in Quantico, Virginia. Robert Hunter has become the head of the LAPD’s Ultra Violent Crimes Unit. Lucien Folter has become the most prolific and dangerous serial killer in FBI history.
\nHunter caught Lucien. He's been in prison for years. But Lucien has just escaped. And he’s angry. He's going to make the man who put him away suffer.
\nThat person . . . is Robert Hunter.
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Seven days after being abducted, the body of a twenty-year-old woman is found on a green patch of grass by the Los Angeles International Airport. She has been left with her limbs stretched out and spread apart, placing her in a five-point human star.
\nThe autopsy reveals that she had been murdered in a most terrible way. But the surprises don't end there.
\nDetective Robert Hunter, who leads LAPD's Special Section, Ultra Violent Unit, is assigned the case. But almost immediately a second body turns up. Hunter knows he has to be quick.
\nSurrounded by new challenges as every day passes, Detective Hunter finds himself chasing a monster. A predator whose past hides a terrible secret, whose desire to hurt people and thirst for murder can never be quenched - for he is DEATH.
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An unidentified female body is brought into the Los Angeles County morgue. The cause of death is still unclear. Her body bares no marks; except for the fact that her most intimate parts have been stitched shut. But what shocks the pathologist the most is that the killer had left something inside her. Something so monstrous Detective Robert Hunter, of the Los Angeles Homicide Special Section, has to be pulled off a different case to take over the investigation.
\nWithin days a new body surfaces. Like the previous victim, she's also been stitched shut and something has been left inside her. Something as ingenious as it is grotesque. And the killer isn't done yet, not by a long shot.
\nWhen his inquiry collides with a missing persons' case being investigated by the attractive, razor-sharp Whitney Meyers, Hunter suspects the killer might be keeping several women hostage. Soon Robert finds himself on the hunt for a murderer who is much more monstrous than he ever could have expected; a predator whose past hides a terrible secret, and who won't stop until each of his victims has brought forth the awful truth.
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Detective Robert Hunter of the LAPD's Homicide Special Section receives an anonymous call asking him to go to a specific web address - a private broadcast. Hunter logs on and a show devised for his eyes only immediately begins. But the caller doesn't want Detective Hunter to just watch, he wants him to participate, and refusal is simply not an option. Forced to make a sickening choice, Hunter must sit and watch as an unidentified victim is tortured and murdered live over the Internet.
\nThe LAPD, together with the FBI, use everything at their disposal to electronically trace the transmission down, but this killer is no amateur, and he has covered his tracks from start to finish. And before Hunter and his partner Garcia are even able to get their investigation going, Hunter receives a new phone call. A new website address. A new victim. But this time the killer has upgraded his game into a live murder reality show, where anyone can cast the deciding vote.
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Los Angeles, December 4th - exactly three weeks until Christmas day. Angela Wood, a master in the art of pickpocket, has just finished for the day - six hundred and eighty-seven dollars - not bad for less than fifteen minutes work.
\nAs she celebrates her profitable day with a cocktail, one of the patrons in the lounge she’s in catches her attention by being rude to an old man. Angela decides to teach him a lesson, and steals the man’s expensive-looking leather bag.
\nInside is no money . . . no laptop computer . . . nothing of any value . . . at least not to Angela. Just a black, leather-bound book, surprisingly heavy. Curiosity takes over and in the comfort of her apartment, Angela quickly leafs through the pages.
\nThat is when the worst nightmare of her life begins.
\nThis is no ordinary book. Read it at your own peril.
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An epic account of the decades-long battle to control what has emerged as the world's most critical resource - microchip technology - with the United States and China increasingly in conflict.
\nYou may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil - the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything - from missiles to microwaves, smartphones to the stock market - runs on chips. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower.
\nNow, America's edge is slipping, undermined by competitors in Taiwan, Korea, Europe, and, above all, China. Today, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more money each year importing chips than it spends importing oil, is pouring billions into a chip-building initiative to catch up to the US. At stake is America's military superiority and economic prosperity.
\nEconomic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life and how the U.S. become dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. America's victory in the Cold War and its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power.
\nBut here, too, China is catching up, with its chip-building ambitions and military modernisation going hand in hand. America has let key components of the chip-building process slip out of its grasp, contributing not only to a worldwide chip shortage but also a new Cold War with a superpower adversary that is desperate to bridge the gap.
\nIlluminating, timely, and fascinating, Chip War shows that, to make sense of the current state of politics, economics, and technology, we must first understand the vital role played by chips.
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In the summer of 1982, eight science fiction films were released within six weeks of one another. E.T., Tron, Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, The Thing, and Mad Max: The Road Warrior changed the careers of some of Hollywood's now biggest names - altering the art of movie-making to this day.
\nIn The Future Was Now, Chris Nashawaty recounts the riotous genesis of these films, featuring an all-star cast of Hollywood luminaries and gadflies alike: Steven Spielberg, at the height of his powers, conceives E.T. as an unlikely family tale, and quietly takes over the troubled production of Poltergeist, a horror film he had been nurturing for years.
\nRidley Scott, fresh off the success of Alien, tries his hand at an odd Philip K. Dick story that becomes Blade Runner - a box office failure turned cult classic. Similar stories arise for films like Tron, Conan the Barbarian, and The Thing. Taken as a whole, these films show a precarious turning-point in Hollywood history, when baffled film executives finally began to understand the potential of high-concept films with a rabid fanbase, merchandising potential, and endless possible sequels.
\nExpertly researched, energetically told, and written with an unabashed love for the cinema, The Future Was Now is a chronicle of how the revolution sparked in a galaxy far, far away finally took root and changed Hollywood forever.
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Chicky Diaz is everyone’s favorite doorman at the Bohemia, New York City’s world-famous home of celebrities, financiers, and the cultural elite.
\nChicky serves at the pleasure of residents like Emily Longworth, who, up in her penthouse, leads a life of her perfect kids in her perfect home, her perfect worries about museum boards, charity work, and so on. Emily’s husband, though . . . perfectly wealthy, but she has quietly loathed Whit Longworth since well before the revelations that he’s a private-equity war profiteer. But their marriage came with an iron-clad prenup, and Emily can’t bring herself to leave all that. Yet.
\nMeanwhile, in apartment 2A, there’s nothing perfect about Julian Sonnenberg’s middle-aged life. Already struggling with the indignities of turning fifty - a stale marriage, teenage kids who no longer need him, his work as an art gallerist making him feel culturally obsolete - and now his doctor tells him that he needs openheart surgery, immediately. Things are falling apart awfully fast.
\nIn the basement staff room, the life-and-death stakes of daily life are hardly news to the primarily Black and Latino hospitality. So when the NYPD fatally shoots an unarmed Black man and the streets swell with both protestors and counterprotestors, the staff’s concerns are less about the building and more about their survival - and what justice will look like.
\nEnter Chicky in his epauletted suit, manning the line between the turbulent streets outside the Bohemia and the far more sanguine world within. And not that the Bohemia’s residents care much (except maybe Emily Longworth), but Chicky has his own problems, the kind that mean that for tonight’s shift, for the first time in thirty years, Chicky will be carrying a gun. Because someone, tonight, is going to die.
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Ariel Pryce wakes up in Lisbon, alone. Her husband is gone - no warning, no note, not answering his phone. Something is wrong.
\nShe starts with hotel security, then the police, then the American embassy, at each confronting questions she can’t fully answer: What exactly is John doing in Lisbon? Why would he drag her along on his business trip? Who would want to harm him? And why does Ariel know so little about her new - much younger - husband?
\nThe clock is ticking. Ariel is increasingly frustrated and desperate, running out of time, and the one person in the world who can help is the one person she least wants to ask.
Late one summer, the town of Monta Clare is shattered by the abduction of teenager Joseph 'Patch' Macauley. Nobody more so than Saint Brown, who will risk everything to find her best friend.
\nBut when she does: it will break her heart.
\nPatch lies alone in a pitch-black room - until he feels a hand in his. Her name is Grace and, though they cannot see each other, she lights their world with her words.
\nBut when he escapes: there is no sign she ever even existed.
\nLeft with only her voice and her name, he paints her from broken memories - and charts an epic search to find her.
\nAs years turn to decades, and hope becomes obsession, Saint will shadow his journey - on a darker path to hunt down the man who took them - and set free the only boy she ever loved.
\nEven if finding the truth means losing each other forever . . .
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Everyone loves Summer Ryan. A model student and musical prodigy, she's a ray of light in the struggling small town of Grace, Alabama - especially compared to her troubled sister, Raine.
Then Summer goes missing. Grace is already simmering, and with this new tragedy the police have their hands full keeping the peace. Only Raine throws herself into the search, supported by a most unlikely ally.
But perhaps there was always more to Summer than met the eye . . .
Walk has never left the coastal California town where he grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. Now, thirty years later, Vincent is being released.
Duchess is a thirteen-year-old self-proclaimed outlaw. Her mother, Star, grew up with Walk and Vincent. Walk is in overdrive trying to protect them, but Vincent and Star seem bent on sliding deeper into self-destruction. Star always burned bright, but recently that light has dimmed, leaving Duchess to parent not only her mother but her five-year-old brother. At school the other kids make fun of Duchess - her clothes are torn, her hair a mess. But let them throw their sticks, because she’ll throw stones. Rules are for other people. She’s just trying to survive and keep her family together.
A fortysomething-year-old sheriff and a thirteen-year-old girl may not seem to have a lot in common. But they both have come to expect that people will disappoint you, loved ones will leave you, and if you open your heart it will be broken. So when trouble arrives with Vincent King, Walk and Duchess find they will be unable to do anything but usher it in, arms wide closed.
Chris Whitaker has written an extraordinary novel about people who deserve so much more than life serves them. At times devastating, with flashes of humor and hope throughout, it is ultimately an inspiring tale of how the human spirit prevails and how, in the end, love - in all its different guises - wins.
Unflinchingly honest and darkly funny, You with the Sad Eyes unveils a side of Christina Applegate we’ve never seen, forever cementing her formidable and iconoclastic legacy.
\nChristina Applegate came of age on sets and stages, expected to be on time, with lines learned, ready for lights-camera-action. What started as a financial necessity soon became an emotional escape from a tumultuous home life in the infamous Laurel Canyon scene of the 70s and 80s. She rocketed to stardom on the sitcom Married . . . with Children and went on to captivate audiences in classics like Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitters Dead . . . , Anchorman, and Dead to Me in her five-decade long career.
\nThen it all stopped. A Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis in 2021 confined her to a king-sized bed and the company of memories she’d rather forget: memories of the self-doubt and body dysmorphia that stalked her meteoric rise, of her mother’s fight against addiction and abuse after her father left, and of the tax life had taken on her body and mind that was suddenly coming due.
\nNow, at her most intimate and vulnerable, she unveils a story not even those closest to her fully know. She returns to the diaries she kept her whole life, finding the pain matched by joy, the losses mitigated by the extraordinary, and the weight of life lifted by her unrelenting belief that something greater lay ahead. No longer willing to lock herself away and with the perspective only our own mortality can bring, she knew it was imperative to tell it all.
\nYou with the Sad Eyes presents a remarkable woman and her legacy. In her own words, “I truly believe that books can make people feel less alone. That’s why I’m doing this. You with the Sad Eyes won’t be some big violin scratching for my life. But it will be real. It will be filled with the ups and downs, the humor and grief of life.
\nSo here I am.
\nReal me.
\nLots to say.”
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Seduced by her employer’s son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to “the land beyond the seas,” Van Diemen’s Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: the child she carries will be born on the months-long voyage to this distant land.
During the journey on a repurposed slave ship, the Medea, Evangeline strikes up a friendship with Hazel, a girl little older than her former pupils who was sentenced to seven years transport for stealing a silver spoon. Canny where Evangeline is guileless, Hazel - a skilled midwife and herbalist - is soon offering home remedies to both prisoners and sailors in return for a variety of favors.
Though Australia has been home to Aboriginal people for more than 50,000 years, the British government in the 1840s considers its fledgling colony uninhabited and unsettled, and views the natives as an unpleasant nuisance. By the time the Medea arrives, many of them have been forcibly relocated, their land seized by white colonists. One of these relocated people is Mathinna, the orphaned daughter of the Chief of the Lowreenne tribe, who has been adopted by the new governor of Van Diemen’s Land.
When Chang and Eng Bunker arrive in Wilkes County in 1839, they’re not just a curiosity - they’re a sensation. Everyone is eager to learn whether the salacious rumors about them are true. Within months, the twins have opened a general store, bought land, and begun building a plantation. Now, word has it, they’re looking for wives - and in a place that thrives on gossip and legacy, their ambitions set the community on edge.
\nSarah and Adelaide Yates, daughters of a once-prominent local family brought low by scandal, are drawn into their orbit. Bold, beautiful Addie sees in the twins’ fame a chance to reclaim her future. Sallie, quiet and observant, isn’t so sure. When the twins’ lives become entangled with theirs, they must navigate loyalty, longing, and identity in a world where everything - including race, class, and gender - is rigidly defined.
\nSpanning five decades and unfolding against the backdrop of a fractured nation hurtling toward war, The Foursome is both intimate and a story of love and constraint, identity and reinvention. With piercing insight and emotional precision, Kline brings to life a forgotten chapter of American history and the complex, boundary-defying marriages at its center.
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Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by pure luck. Would they be adopted by a kind and loving family, or would they face a childhood and adoles-cence of hard labor and servitude?
\nAs a young Irish immigrant, Vivian Daly was one such child, sent by rail from New York City to an uncertain future a world away. Returning east later in life, Vivian leads a quiet, peaceful existence on the coast of Maine, the memories of her upbringing rendered a hazy blur. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past.
\nSeventeen-year-old Molly Ayer knows that a community-service position helping an elderly widow clean out her attic is the only thing keeping her out of juvenile hall. But as Molly helps Vivian sort through her keepsakes and possessions, she discovers that she and Vivian aren't as different . . .
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To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family’s remote farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness, Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than twenty years, she was host and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth, and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of the twentieth century.
As she did in her beloved smash bestseller Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline interweaves fact and fiction in a powerful novel that illuminates a little-known part of America’s history. Bringing into focus the flesh-and-blood woman behind the portrait, she vividly imagines the life of a woman with a complicated relationship to her family and her past, and a special bond with one of our greatest modern artists.
Odysseus Johnson dreams of musical stardom for his three sons: Roman, the rebel, more interested in being a teenager than a performer; Rocco, arguably the most talented of the bunch but different in a way the world doesn’t understand; and dutiful River, the youngest, who dreams of fame just like his dad.
\nDriving back from another failed audition in Detroit, the Johnson boys encounter the ghost of Christmas Jones the Third, an effervescent, if lonely, little Black boy who carries the scars of his horrific past as an orphan and minstrel sensation. Desperate for family, Christmas begs the Johnsons to bring him home with them. When Odysseus refuses, Christmas stows away in the family Cadillac.
\nDespite their initial horror, Christmas becomes a part of the Johnson family. With the promise of opportunities in California, Odysseus moves the family out west, and the boys’ talent starts getting noticed. But just as the brothers are finally on the cusp of fame, Christmas commits a violent act that wreaks havoc on the Johnsons’ lives, and the family is torn asunder in the aftermath. Roman flees the country. Rocco is institutionalised. River’s solo star rises. Christmas disappears.
\nSpanning decades, roving from the rapacious music industry and the ravages of Vietnam to the dark corridors of a mental institution and the very planes of the afterlife, The Johnson Four is epic in scope. And at its beating heart is the unforgettable story of a family trying to find their way back to one another.
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Three years ago, Tanner Scott’s family relocated from California to Utah, a move that nudged the bisexual teen temporarily back into the closet. Now, with one semester of high school to go, and no obstacles between him and out-of-state college freedom, Tanner plans to coast through his remaining classes and clear out of Utah.
But when his best friend Autumn dares him to take Provo High’s prestigious Seminar - where honor roll students diligently toil to draft a book in a semester - Tanner can’t resist going against his better judgment and having a go, if only to prove to Autumn how silly the whole thing is. Writing a book in four months sounds simple. Four months is an eternity.
It turns out, Tanner is only partly right: four months is a long time. After all, it takes only one second for him to notice Sebastian Brother, the Mormon prodigy who sold his own Seminar novel the year before and who now mentors the class. And it takes less than a month for Tanner to fall completely in love with him.
Whip-smart, hardworking, and on her way to an MBA, Chloe Mills has only one problem: her boss, Bennett Ryan. He's exacting, blunt, inconsiderate - and completely irresistible. A Beautiful Bastard.
Bennett has returned to Chicago from France to take a vital role in his family's massive media business. He never expected that the assistant who'd been helping him from abroad was the gorgeous, innocently provocative - completely infuriating - creature he now has to see every day. Despite the rumors, he's never been one for a workplace hookup. But Chloe's so tempting he's willing to bend the rules - or outright smash them - if it means he can have her. All over the office.
As their appetites for one another increase to a breaking point, Bennett and Chloe must decide exactly what they're willing to lose in order to win each other.
In Beautiful Stranger, finance whiz Sara Dillon met the irresistibly sexy Brit, Max Stella, at a New York City club. Through the series we’ve watched them learn to combine commitment with their lessthanprivate brand of playfulness. In Beautiful Beloved, Max and Sara take it to the next level.
\nBut the question is: Will they be able to find a balance between the wild sexcapades they aren’t ready to retire, and the demands of parenthood that come along with their new bundle of joy? Parenthood: it’s not for the weak of heart.
When Hanna Bergstrom receives a lecture from her overprotective brother about neglecting her social life and burying herself in grad school, she’s determined to tackle his implied assignment: get out, make friends, start dating. And who better to turn her into the sultry siren every man wants than her brother’s gorgeous best friend, Will Sumner, venture capitalist and unapologetic playboy?
Will takes risks for a living, but he’s skeptical about this challenge of Hanna’s…until the wild night his innocently seductive pupil tempts him into bed- and teaches him a thing or two about being with a woman he can’t forget. Now that Hanna’s discovered the power of her own sex appeal, it’s up to Will to prove he’s the only man she’ll ever need.
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When Ruby Miller’s boss announces he’s sending her on an extended business trip to New York City, she’s shocked. As one of the best and brightest young engineers in London, she knows she’s professionally up to the task. The part that’s throwing her is where she’ll be spending a month up close and personal working alongside—and staying in a hotel with—Niall Stella, her firm’s top urban planning executive and The Hottest Man Alive. Despite her ongoing crush, Ruby is certain Niall barely knows she’s alive…until their flirty overnight flight makes him sit up and take notice.
Not one for letting loose and breaking rules, recently divorced Niall would describe himself as hopeless when it comes to women. But even he knows outgoing California-girl Ruby is a breath of fresh air. Once she makes it her mission to help the sexy Brit loosen his tie, there’s no turning back. Thousands of miles from London, it’s easy for the lovers to play pretend. But when the trip is over, will the relationship they’ve built up fall down?
Escaping a cheating ex, finance whiz Sara Dillon’s moved to New York City and is looking for excitement and passion without a lot of strings attached. So meeting the irresistible, sexy Brit at a dance club should have meant nothing more than a night’s fun. But the manner - and speed - with which he melts her inhibitions turns him from a one-time hookup and into her Beautiful Stranger.
The whole city knows that Max Stella loves women, not that he’s ever found one he particularly wants to keep around. Despite pulling in plenty with his Wall Street bad boy charm, it’s not until Sara - and the wild photos she lets him take of her - that he starts wondering if there’s someone for him outside of the bedroom.
Hooking up in places where anybody could catch them, the only thing scarier for Sara than getting caught in public is having Max get too close in private.
After walking in on her boyfriend shagging another girl in their place, Pippa Bay Cox ditches London for the States to go on a drunken road trip with Ruby Miller and some of her Beautiful friends.
\nScaling the career ladder is the default way to deal with heartbreak - and to just deal - for Jensen Bergstrom. Absolutely buried by his drive and workload, he rarely takes time for himself. But when his sister Hanna convinces him to join the gang on a two-week wine tour, he has a rare moment of cutting loose. Of course, it’s only once he’s committed that he realizes the strange girl he met briefly on the plane is coming along, too. She might be too much for him . . . or he might realise his life has become too small and needs her to make it bigger, crazier.
\nWith this circle of friends there’s always something going on: from Chloe and Sara’s unexpected personality swaps to Will’s new domestic side to Bennett’s text message barrage and George’s own happily-ever-after. In short, their adventures in love, friendship, and hilarity are nothing short of Beautiful.
\nLola and Oliver like to congratulate themselves on having the good sense to not consummate their drunken Las Vegas wedding. If they’d doubled-down on that mistake, their Just Friends situation might not be half as great as it is now.
\nOr so goes the official line.
\nIn reality, Lola’s wanted Oliver since day one - and over time has only fallen harder for his sexy Aussie accent and easygoing ability to take her as she comes. More at home in her studio than in baring herself to people, Lola’s instinctive comfort around Oliver nearly seems too good to be true. So why ruin a good thing?
\nEven as geek girls fawn over him, Oliver can’t get his mind off what he didn’t do with Lola when he had the chance. He knows what he wants with her now . . . and it’s far outside the friend zone. When Lola’s graphic novel starts getting national acclaim - and is then fast-tracked for a major motion picture - Oliver steps up to be there for her whenever she needs him. After all, she’s not the kind of girl who likes all that attention, but maybe she’s the kind who’ll eventually like him.
\nSometimes seeing what’s right in front of us takes a great leap of faith. And sometimes a dark wild night in Vegas isn’t just the end of a day, but the beginning of a bright new life . . .
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Despite the odds against them from an embarrassing meet-awkward at a mutual friend’s Halloween party, Carter and Evie immediately hit it off. Even the realization that they’re both high-powered agents at competing firms in Hollywood isn’t enough to squash the fire.
But when their two agencies merge - causing the pair to vie for the same position - all bets are off. What could have been a beautiful, blossoming romance turns into an all-out war of sabotage. Carter and Evie are both thirtysomething professionals - so why can’t they act like it?
Can Carter stop trying to please everyone and see how their mutual boss is really playing the game? Can Evie put aside her competitive nature long enough to figure out what she really wants in life? Can their actor clients just be something close to human? Whether these two Hollywood love/hatebirds get the storybook Hollywood ending or just a dramedy of epic proportions, you will get to enjoy Christina Lauren’s heartfelt, raucous, and hilarious romance style at its finest.
Despite their rowdy hookups, Harlow and Finn don’t even like each other . . . which would explain why their marriage lasted only twelve hours.
\nHe needs to be in charge and takes whatever he wants. She lives by the Want-something-done? Do-it-yourself mantra. Maybe she’s too similar to the rugged fisherman - or just what he needs.
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One typo, and a boy and girl connect by chance. Wishing each other a happy Valentine’s Day isn’t the end. In fact, it becomes a friendly annual tradition - with rules: no pics, no real names, nothing too personal.
\nAs years pass, the rules for their email “dates” are breaking, and they’re sharing more than they imagined - including the urge to ask . . . what if we actually met?
Carey Douglas has worked for home remodeling and design gurus Melissa and Rusty Tripp for nearly a decade. A country girl at heart, Carey started in their first store at sixteen, and - more than anyone would suspect - has helped them build an empire. With a new show and a book about to launch, the Tripps are on the verge of superstardom. There’s only one problem: America’s favorite couple can’t stand each other.
James McCann, MIT graduate and engineering genius, was originally hired as a structural engineer, but the job isn’t all he thought it’d be. The last straw? Both he and Carey must go on book tour with the Tripps and keep the wheels from falling off the proverbial bus.
Unfortunately, neither of them is in any position to quit. Carey needs health insurance, and James has been promised the role of a lifetime if he can just keep the couple on track for a few more weeks. While road-tripping with the Tripps up the West Coast, Carey and James vow to work together to keep their bosses’ secrets hidden, and their own jobs secure. But if they stop playing along - and start playing for keeps - they may have the chance to build something beautiful together . . .
Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.
But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos - the first and only love of her life - the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world - growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother...only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.
Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more - spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion.
Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.
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Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she’s a female-serial-killer expert who’s quick with a deflection joke and terrible at getting personal. And she, just like her four best guy friends and fellow professors, is perma-single.
So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, Mille and her circle make a pact that they’ll join an online dating service to find plus-ones for the event. There’s only one hitch: after making the pact, Millie and one of the guys, Reid Campbell, secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, but mutually decide the friendship would be better off strictly platonic.
But online dating isn’t for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with quality matches and potential dates, Millie’s first profile attempt garners nothing but dick pics and creepers. Enter “Catherine” - Millie’s fictional profile persona, in whose make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she’s ever been in person. Soon “Catherine” and Reid strike up a digital pen-pal-ship . . . but Millie can’t resist temptation in real life, either. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear - intimacy - or risk losing her best friend, forever.
Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she’s a female-serial-killer expert who’s quick with a deflection joke and terrible at getting personal. And she, just like her four best guy friends and fellow professors, is perma-single.
So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, Mille and her circle make a pact that they’ll join an online dating service to find plus-ones for the event. There’s only one hitch: after making the pact, Millie and one of the guys, Reid Campbell, secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, but mutually decide the friendship would be better off strictly platonic.
But online dating isn’t for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with quality matches and potential dates, Millie’s first profile attempt garners nothing but dick pics and creepers. Enter “Catherine” - Millie’s fictional profile persona, in whose make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she’s ever been in person.
Soon “Catherine” and Reid strike up a digital pen-pal-ship . . . but Millie can’t resist temptation in real life, either. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear - intimacy - or risk losing her best friend, forever.
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Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam “West” Weston for access to subsidised family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she’d signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways.
\nThree years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There’s just one catch.
\nDue to an antiquated clause in his grandfather’s will, Liam won’t see a penny until he’s been happily married for five years. Just when Liam thinks he’s in the home stretch, pressure mounts from his family to see this mysterious spouse, and he has no choice but to turn to the one person he’s afraid to introduce to his one-percenter parents - his unpolished, not-so-ex-wife.
\nBut in the presence of his family, Liam’s fears quickly shift from whether the feisty, foul-mouthed, paint-splattered Anna can play the part to whether the toxic world of wealth will corrupt someone as pure of heart as his surprisingly grounded and loyal wife. Liam will have to ask himself if the price tag on his flimsy cover story is worth losing true love that sprouted from a lie.
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Growing up the daughter of notorious treasure hunter and absentee father Duke Wilder left Lily without much patience for the profession . . . or much money in the bank. But Lily is nothing if not resourceful, and now uses Duke’s coveted hand-drawn maps to guide tourists on fake treasure hunts through the red rock canyons of Utah.
\nIt pays the bills but doesn’t leave enough to fulfill her dream of buying back the beloved ranch her father sold years ago, and definitely not enough to deal with the sight of the man she once loved walking back into her life with a motley crew of friends ready to hit the trails. Frankly, Lily would like to take him out into the wilderness - and leave him there.
\nLeo Grady knew mirages were a thing in the desert, but they’d barely left civilisation when the silhouette of his greatest regret comes into focus in the flickering light of the campfire. Ready to leave the past behind him, Leo wants nothing more than to reconnect with his first and only love. Unfortunately, Lily Wilder is all business, drawing a clear line in the sand: it’s never going to happen.
\nBut when the trip goes horribly and hilariously wrong, the group wonders if maybe the legend of the hidden treasure wasn’t a gimmick after all. There’s a chance to right the wrongs - of Duke’s past and their own - but only if Leo and Lily can confront their history and work together. Alone under the stars in the isolated and dangerous mazes of the Canyonlands, Leo and Lily must decide whether they’ll risk their lives and hearts on the adventure of a lifetime.
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Single mom Jess Davis is a data and statistics wizard, but no amount of number crunching can convince her to step back into the dating world. Raised by her grandparents - who now help raise her seven-year-old daughter, Juno - Jess has been left behind too often to feel comfortable letting anyone in. After all, her father's never been around, her hard-partying mother disappeared when she was six, and her ex decided he wasn't \"father material\" before Juno was even born. Jess holds her loved ones close, but working constantly to stay afloat is hard . . . and lonely.
\nBut then Jess hears about GeneticAlly, a buzzy new DNA-based matchmaking company that's predicted to change dating forever. Finding a soulmate through DNA? The reliability of numbers: This Jess understands. At least she thought she did, until her test shows an unheard-of 98% compatibility with another subject in the database: GeneticAlly's founder, Dr. River Pena. This is one number she can't wrap her head around, because she already knows Dr. Pena. The stuck-up, stubborn man is without a doubt not her soulmate.
\nBut GeneticAlly has a proposition: Get to know him and we'll pay you. Jess - who is barely making ends meet - is in no position to turn it down, despite her skepticism about the project and her dislike for River.
\nAs the pair are dragged from one event to the next as the \"Diamond\" pairing that could make GeneticAlly a mint in stock prices, Jess begins to realise that there might be more to the scientist - and the science behind a soulmate - than she thought.
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One-night stands are supposed to be with someone convenient, or wickedly persuasive, or regrettable. They aren’t supposed to be with someone like him.
\nBut after a crazy Vegas weekend celebrating her college graduation - and terrified of the future path she knows is a cop-out - Mia Holland makes the wildest decision of her life: follow Ansel Guillaume - her sweet, filthy fling - to France for the summer and just . . . play.
\nWhen feelings begin to develop behind the provocative roles they take on, and their temporary masquerade adventures begin to feel real, Mia will have to decide if she belongs in the life she left because it was all wrong, or in the strange new one that seems worlds away.
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Ren has never held an iPhone, googled the answer to a question, or followed a crush on social media. What she has done: Read a book or two, or three (okay, hundreds). Taught herself to paint. Built a working wind power system from scratch. But for all the books she's read, Ren has never found one that's taught a woman raised on a homestead and off the grid for most of her twenty-two years how to live in the real world. So when she finally achieves her lifelong dream of attending Corona College, it feels like her life is finally beginning.
\nFitz has the rest of his life mapped out: Graduate from Corona at the top of his class, get his criminal record wiped clean, and pass himself off as the rich, handsome player everyone thinks he is. He's a few short months from checking off step one of his plans when Ren Gylden, with her cascading blonde hair and encyclopaedic brain, crashes into his life, and for the first time Fitz's plan is in jeopardy.
\nBut a simple assignment in their immunology seminar changes the course of both their lives, and suddenly they're thrown out of the frying pan and into the fire on a road trip that will lead them in the most unexpected directions. Out on the open road, the world somehow shifts, and the unlikely pair realise that, maybe, the key to the dreams they've both been chasing have been sitting next to them the whole time.
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Felicity “Fizzy” Chen is lost. Sure, she’s got an incredible career as a beloved romance novelist with a slew of bestsellers under her belt, but when she’s asked to give a commencement address, it hits her: she hasn’t been practicing what she’s preached.
\nFizzy hasn’t ever really been in love. Lust? Definitely. But that swoon-worthy, can’t-stop-thinking-about-him, all-encompassing feeling? Nope. Nothing. What happens when the optimism she’s spent her career encouraging in readers starts to feel like a lie?
\nConnor Prince, documentary filmmaker and single father, loves his work in large part because it allows him to live near his daughter. But when his profit-minded boss orders him to create a reality TV show, putting his job on the line, Connor is out of his element. Desperate to find his romantic lead, a chance run-in with an exasperated Fizzy offers Connor the perfect solution.
\nWhat if he could show the queen of romance herself falling head-over-heels for all the world to see? Fizzy gives him a hard pass - unless he agrees to her list of demands. When he says yes, and production on The True Love Experiment begins, Connor wonders if that perfect match will ever be in the cue cards for him, too.
\nThe True Love Experiment is the book fans have been waiting for ever since Fizzy’s debut in The Soulmate Equation. But when the lights come on and all eyes are on her, it turns out the happily ever after Fizzy had all but given up on might lie just behind the camera.
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Sam Brandis was Tate Jones’s first: Her first love. Her first everything. Including her first heartbreak.
During a whirlwind two-week vacation abroad, Sam and Tate fell for each other in only the way that first loves do: sharing all of their hopes, dreams, and deepest secrets along the way. Sam was the first, and only, person that Tate - the long-lost daughter of one of the world’s biggest film stars - ever revealed her identity to. So when it became clear her trust was misplaced, her world shattered for good.
Fourteen years later, Tate, now an up-and-coming actress, only thinks about her first love every once in a blue moon. When she steps onto the set of her first big break, he’s the last person she expects to see. Yet here Sam is, the same charming, confident man she knew, but even more alluring than she remembered. Forced to confront the man who betrayed her, Tate must ask herself if it’s possible to do the wrong thing for the right reason . . . and whether “once in a lifetime” can come around twice.
Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in . . . well, everything. Her identical twin sister Ami, on the other hand, is probably the luckiest person in the world. Her meet-cute with her fiancé is something out of a romantic comedy (gag) and she’s managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a series of Internet contests (double gag). Worst of all, she’s forcing Olive to spend the day with her sworn enemy, Ethan, who just happens to be the best man.
\nOlive braces herself to get through 24 hours of wedding hell before she can return to her comfortable, unlucky life. But when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning from eating bad shellfish, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. And now there’s an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii up for grabs.
\nPutting their mutual hatred aside for the sake of a free vacation, Olive and Ethan head for paradise, determined to avoid each other at all costs. But when Olive runs into her future boss, the little white lie she tells him is suddenly at risk to become a whole lot bigger. She and Ethan now have to pretend to be loving newlyweds, and her luck seems worse than ever. But the weird thing is that she doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, she feels kind of . . . lucky.
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London Hughes is very content to surf daily, tend bar, hang out with her group of friends, and slowly orient herself in the years after college. Everything’s going great and according to the non-plan.
\nBut when a wave knocks her for a loop one morning, then Luke Sutter’s flirtatious smile knocks her for another that evening, she veers slightly off course . . . and into his path. Sure, he’s a total player, but the Why not - it’s only one nightis a persistent voice in her ear.
\nFor his part, Luke’s been on hookup autopilot for so long that he rarely ever pauses to consider what he’s doing. But after an amazing time with London, he realises that he hasn’t been moving on from a devastating heartbreak so much as he’s been drifting to wherever - and whomever - the current takes him. With London he wantsmore.
\nEvery relationship involves two people . . . plus their pasts. And as much as she enjoys her fling with Luke, when London learns about his past - more specifically, who’s in it - everything becomes the brand of complicated she strives to avoid. It’s up to Luke then to change some things in order to try and ensure he’s not something she’ll outright avoid as well.
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Vivian Yin is dead. The first Chinese actress to win an Oscar, the trailblazing ingénue rose to fame in the eighties, only to disappear from the spotlight at the height of her career and live out the rest of her life as a recluse.
\nNow her remaining family members are gathered for the reading of her will and her daughters expect to inherit their childhood Vivian’s grand, sprawling Southern California garden estate. But due to a last-minute change to the will, the house is passed on to another family instead - one that has suddenly returned after decades of estrangement.
\nIn hopes of staking their claim, both families move into the mansion. Amidst the grief and paranoia of the families’ unhappy reunion, Vivian’s daughters race to piece together what happened in the last weeks of their mother’s life, only to realise they are being haunted by something much more sinister and vengeful than their regrets. After so many years of silence, will the families finally confront the painful truth about the last fateful summer they spent in the house, or will they cling to their secrets until it’s too late?
\nTold in dual timelines, spanning three generations, and brimming with romance, betrayal, ambition and sacrifice, The Manor of Dreams is a thrilling family gothic that examines the true cost of the American dream - and what happens when the roots we set down in this country turn to rot.
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It’s the summer after seventh grade, and Ruby Chu is feeling more lost than ever.
\nHer best friends aren’t speaking to her. She ended the year in detention. Her sister’s about to leave for college. Ruby’s still grieving her grandfather, Ye-Ye, when it seems like no one else is. And without Ye-Ye and his annual scavenger hunts across their hometown of San Francisco, their hometown doesn’t really feel like home anymore.
\nThings get worse when Ruby’s forced to spend the summer with her distant grandmother, Nai-Nai, in Chinatown. But the looming shutdown of a beloved former scavenger hunt stop, May’s Bakery, and a secret about Nai-Nai threaten to change everything. Though Ruby feels out of place, maybe this summer of forming unexpected friendships and fighting to save the bakery will help Ruby reconnect with the world - and discover what it means to find home again.
College freshman Grace Tang never meant to rewrite the rules of love. She came to college to move on from a grief-stricken senior year and to start anew. So she follows a predictable Attend class, study, go home and visit her dad every weekend. She doesn’t leave any room in her life for outliers or anomalies.
\nThen, Grace comes up with an algorithm for her statistics class to pair students with their perfect romantic partners. Though some people are skeptical, like Julia, Grace’s prickly coworker, Grace is confident that her program will take all the drama out of relationships. That’s why she keeps trying to make things work with her match, a guy named Jamie. But as the semester goes on and she grows closer to Julia, Grace starts to question who she’s really attracted to.
\nIn award-winning author Christina Li’s YA debut, Grace will have to make a choice between the tidy equations she knows will protect her from heartbreak or the possibility that true love doesn’t follow any formula.
What you see isn’t always what you get.
\nTake Ainsley. The gorgeous mother of two lives a picture-perfect life with her husband, Ben - aspiring politician and heir to a candy fortune - in suburban Washington, DC. But in reality, Ainsley has no idea what she’s doing and is terrified someone will figure out who she really is and where she came from.
\nNikki’s fighting to keep afloat as a stay-at-home mother of four, subsisting on chicken nuggets and very little sleep. She’s a mess on the outside, and inside yearns for the validation - and the paycheck - of the television news career she left behind.
\nWhen a dangerous figure from Ainsley’s past becomes a coach at her kids’ school, she fears the worst and confides in Nikki, spilling every detail of her former life.
\nTogether, they devise a plan to expose the coach and safeguard their kids. But can they protect their own lives - and their new friendship - in the process?
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It began with a call from a screenwriter, asking about a story. Your family. World War II. Nazi spies. Christine Kuehn was shocked and confused. When she asked her seventy-year-old father, Eberhard, what this could possibly be about, he stalled, deflected, demurred, and then wept. He knew this day would come.
\nThe Kuehns, a prominent Berlin family, saw the rise of the Nazis as a way out of the hard times that had befallen them. When the daughter of the family, Eberhard's sister, Ruth, met Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels at a party, the two hit it off, and they had an affair. But Ruth had a secret - she was half Jewish - and Goebbels found out. Rather than having Ruth killed, Goebbels instead sent the entire Kuehn family to Hawaii, to work as spies half a world away.
\nThere, Ruth and her parents established an intricate spy operation from their home, just a few miles down the road from Pearl Harbor, shielding Eberhard from the truth. They passed secrets to the Japanese, leading to the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. After Eberhard's father was arrested and tried for his involvement in planning the assault, Eberhard learned the harsh truth about his family and faced a decision that would change the path of the Kuehn family forever.
\nJumping back and forth between Christine discovering her family's secret and the untold past of the spies in Germany, Japan, and Hawaii, Family of Spies is fast-paced history at its finest and will rewrite the narrative of December 7, 1941.
Imagine, if you will: the lost soul of King Richard III; a talking raven; a lonely angel; and a young woman called Molly Stern, who is heartbroken, grieving, and a bit stroppy. When their worlds collide, anything can happen.
\nRichard III is trapped in the afterlife, waiting with his guide, Raven, for an angel to take his soul to Heaven. Though he's been between worlds for hundreds of years, up in the real world it's 2013 and Molly Stern has a broken heart from losing her father and a recent breakup. Leaving London, Molly goes home to seek solace from her Aunt Peggy and Uncle Frank in Oxenbridge. But there are strange noises in the basement of her childhood house and nothing feels right, not even between Peggy and Frank. When the angel encounters Molly - and Raven at last finds the angel - life and the afterlife meet, with surprising and unexpected consequences.
\nInspired by the discovery of the bones of Richard III beneath a car park in England, award-winning poet Christine Paice has fashioned a beautiful, singular, warm, endearing, and funny novel that weaves in and out of time and space and possibility. The Oxenbridge King is a tender and wise meditation on what survives of us when we're gone, and how, in the end, love and family are everything.
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Eighty-one-year-old widow Maggie Burkhardt came to the Royal Karnak to escape. But not in quite the same way as most other guests who are relaxing at this threadbare luxury hotel on the banks of the Nile. Maggie, a compulsive fixer of other people’s lives, may have found herself in hot water at her last hotel in Switzerland and just might have needed to get out of there fast . . . But here at the Royal Karnak, under the hot Saharan sun, she has a comfortable suite, a loyal confidante in the hotel manager, Ahmed, and a handful of sympathetic friends, similar “long-termers” who understand her still-vivid grief for her late husband, Peter. Here, she is merely the sweet old lady in Room 309.
\nOne morning, however, Maggie notices a new arrival at a mournful-looking young mother named Tess and her impish eight-year-old, Otto. Eager to help, Maggie invites them into her world. But it isn’t long before Maggie realises that in her longing to be a part of their family, she has let in an enemy much stronger than she bargained for. In scrawny, homely Otto, Maggie Burkhardt has finally met her match.
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Kinch Na Shannack owes the Takers Guild a small fortune for his education as a thief, which includes (but is not limited to) lock-picking, knife-fighting, wall-scaling, fall-breaking, lie-weaving, trap-making, plus a few small magics. His debt has driven him to lie in wait by the old forest road, planning to rob the next traveler that crosses his path. But today, Kinch Na Shannack has picked the wrong mark.
\nGalva is a knight, a survivor of the brutal goblin wars, and handmaiden of the goddess of death. She is searching for her queen, missing since a distant northern city fell to giants. Unsuccessful in his robbery and lucky to escape with his life, Kinch now finds his fate entangled with Galva's.
\nCommon enemies and uncommon dangers force thief and knight on an epic journey where goblins hunger for human flesh, krakens hunt in dark waters, and honor is a luxury few can afford.
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Enter the fray in this luminous new adventure from Christopher Buehlman, set during the war-torn, goblin-infested years just before The Blacktongue Thief .
\nThe goblins have killed all of our horses and most of our men.
\nThey have enslaved our cities, burned our fields, and still they wage war.
\nNow, our daughters take up arms.
\nGalva - Galvicha to her three brothers, two of whom the goblins will kill - has defied her family’s wishes and joined the army’s untested new unit, the Raven Knights. They march toward a once-beautiful city overrun by the goblin horde, accompanied by scores of giant war corvids. Made with the darkest magics, these fearsome black birds may hold the key to stopping the goblins in their war to make cattle of mankind.
\nThe road to victory is bloody, and goblins are clever and merciless. The Raven Knights can take nothing for granted - not the bonds of family, nor the wisdom of their leaders, nor their own safety against the dangerous war birds at their side. But some hopes are worth any risk.
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The galaxy is burning.
\nWith the Cielcin united under one banner, the Sollan Empire stands alone after the betrayal of the Commonwealth. The Prophet-King of the Cielcin has sent its armies to burn the worlds of men, and worse, there are rumours . . . whispers that Hadrian Marlowe is dead, killed in the fighting.
\nBut it is not so. Hadrian survived with the help of the witch, Valka, and together they escaped the net of the enemy having learned a terrible truth: the gods that the Cielcin worship are real and will not rest until the universe is dark and cold.
\nWhat is more, the Emperor himself is in danger. The Prophet-King has learned to track his movements as he travels along the borders of Imperial space. Now the Cielcin legions are closing in, their swords poised to strike off the head of all mankind.
Hadrian and his Red Company have been serving the Empire in military engagements against the Cielcin, the vicious alien civilisation bent on humanity's destruction. And they've been successful: a cult-like fervour building around following a particularly impressive victory. but popularity comes as a price: an assassination attempt, triggered by those within the Imperial government who are scared of his rise to prominence.
\nNow the Empire has turned dangerous, Hadrian and his crew leave to pursue his true interest: a search for a long-rumoured connection between the first Emperor and the Quiet, the ancient, seemingly long-dead race. And he will find the next key to unlocking their secrets in a massive library on a distant world.
\nThe coordinates for their origin planet.
\nA planet that no longer holds life, but may still contain answers.
The end is nigh.
\nIt has been nearly two hundred years since Hadrian Marlowe assaulted the person of the Emperor and walked away from war. From his Empire. His duty. From the will and service of the eldritch being known only as the Quiet. The galaxy lies in the grip of a terrible plague, and worse, the Cielcin have overrun the realms of men.
\nNow, a messenger has come to Jadd, bearing a summons from the Sollan Emperor for the one-time hero. A summons, a pardon, and a plea. HAPSIS, the Emperor's secret first-contact intelligence organisation, has located one of the dreadful Watchers, the immense, powerful beings worshipped by the Pale Cielcin.
\nCalled out of retirement and exile, the old hero - accompanied by his daughter, Cassandra - must race across the galaxy and against time to accomplish one last, impossible task:
\nTo kill a god.
Hadrian Marlowe, a man revered as a hero and despised as a murderer, chronicles his tale in the galaxy-spanning debut of the Sun Eater series, merging the best of space opera and epic fantasy.
\nIt was not his war.
\nOn the wrong planet, at the right time, for the best reasons, Hadrian Marlowe started down a path that could only end in fire. The galaxy remembers him as a hero: the man who burned every last alien Cielcin from the sky. They remember him as a monster: the devil who destroyed a sun, casually annihilating four billion human lives--even the Emperor himself--against Imperial orders.
\nBut Hadrian was not a hero. He was not a monster. He was not even a soldier.
\nFleeing his father and a future as a torturer, Hadrian finds himself stranded on a strange, backwater world. Forced to fight as a gladiator and into the intrigues of a foreign planetary court, he will find himself fight a war he did not start, for an Empire he does not love, against an enemy he will never understand.
Hadrian Marlowe is lost.
\nFor half a century, he has searched the farther suns for the lost planet of Vorgossos, hoping to find a way to contact the elusive alien Cielcin. He has not succeeded, and for years has wandered among the barbarian Normans as captain of a band of mercenaries.
\nDetermined to make peace and bring an end to nearly four hundred years of war, Hadrian must venture beyond the security of the Sollan Empire and among the Extrasolarians who dwell between the stars. There, he will face not only the aliens he has come to offer peace, but contend with creatures that once were human, with traitors in his midst, and with a meeting that will bring him face to face with no less than the oldest enemy of mankind.
\nIf he succeeds, he will usher in a peace unlike any in recorded history. If he fails . . . the galaxy will burn.
Hadrian Marlowe is trapped.
\nFor nearly a century, he has been a guest of the Emperor, forced into the role of advisor, a prisoner of his own legend. But the war is changing. Mankind is losing.
\nThe Cielcin are spilling into human space from the fringes, picking their targets with cunning precision. The Great Prince Syriani Dorayaica is uniting their clans, forging them into an army and threat the likes of which mankind has never seen.
\nAnd the Empire stands alone.
\nNow the Emperor has no choice but to give Hadrian Marlowe - once his favorite knight - one more impossible task: journey across the galaxy to the Lothrian Commonwealth and convince them to join the war. But not all is as it seems, and Hadrian's journey will take him far beyond the Empire, beyond the Commonwealth, impossibly deep behind enemy lines.
The trumpet sounds.
\nThe end has come at last. After his victory at Vorgossos, Hadrian Marlowe finds himself a fugitive, on the run not only from the Extrasolarians, but from his own people, the Sollan Empire he betrayed - and who betrayed him. Hidden safely beyond the borders of human space, Hadrian awaits the arrival of the one ally he has left: the Jaddian Prince Kaim-Olorin du Otranto.
\nWhat's more, the inhuman Cielcin have vanished, unseen for more than one hundred years. The armies of men have grown complacent, but Hadrian knows the truth: the Cielcin are gathering their strength, preparing for their final assault against the heart of all mankind.
\nOnly Hadrian possesses the power to stem the tide: an ancient war machine, forged by the daimon machines at the dawn of time. The mighty Demiurge. With it, Hadrian must face not just the Cielcin horde, but their Prophet-King, and the dark gods it serves - the very gods who shaped the universe itself.
\nThis must be.
Misha is a jaded scriptwriter who has been working in Hollywood for years, and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But when he's pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale - \"for the algorithm\" - Misha discovers that it's not that simple.
\nAs he is haunted by his past, and past mistakes, Misha must risk everything to find a way to do what's right - before it's too late.
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It’s autumn in the town of Harrow, but something else is changing in the town besides the season.
\nBecause in that town there is an orchard, and in that orchard, seven most unusual trees. And from those trees grows a new sort of apple: Strange, beautiful, with skin so red it’s nearly black.
\nTake a bite of one of these apples and you will desire only to devour another. And another. You will become stronger. More vital. More yourself, you will believe. But then your appetite for the apples and their peculiar gifts will keep growing - and become darker.
\nThis is what happens when the townsfolk discover the secret of the orchard. Soon it seems that everyone is consumed by an obsession with the magic of the apples . . . and what’s the harm, if it is making them all happier, more confident, more powerful?
\nAnd even if buried in the orchard is something else besides the seeds of this extraordinary tree: a bloody history whose roots reach back the very origins of the town.
\nBut now the leaves are falling. The days grow darker. And a stranger has come to town, a stranger who knows Harrow’s secrets. Because it’s harvest time, and the town will soon reap what it has sown.
Miriam Black knows when you will die. Still in her early twenties, she's foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, suicides, and slow deaths by cancer. But when Miriam hitches a ride with truck driver Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days Louis will be gruesomely murdered while he calls her name.
\nMiriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. But Louis will die because he met her, and she will be the next victim. No matter what she does she can't save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she'll have to try.
Cael McAvoy is on the run.
\nHe’s heading toward the Empyrean to rescue his sister, Merelda, and to find Gwennie before she’s lost to Cael forever. With his pals, Lane and Rigo, Cael journeys across the Heartland to catch a ride into the sky. But with Boyland and others after them, Cael and his friends won’t make it through unchanged.
\nGwennie’s living the life of a Lottery winner, but it’s not what she expected. Separated from her family, Gwennie makes a bold move - one that catches the attention of the Empyrean and changes the course of an Empyrean man’s life.
\nThe crew from Boxelder aren’t the only folks willing to sacrifice everything to see the Empyrean fall. The question is: Can the others be trusted?
\nThey’d all better hurry. Because the Empyrean has plans that could ensure that the Heartland never fights back again.
Long ago, Nathan lived in a house in the country with his abusive father - and has never told his family what happened there.
\nLong ago, Maddie was a little girl making dolls in her bedroom when she saw something she shouldn’t have - and is trying to remember that lost trauma by making haunting sculptures.
\nLong ago, something sinister, something hungry, walked in the tunnels and the mountains and the coal mines of their hometown in rural Pennsylvania.
\nNow, Nate and Maddie Graves are married, and they have moved back to their hometown with their son, Oliver.
\nAnd now what happened long ago is happening again . . . and it is happening to Oliver. He meets a strange boy who becomes his best friend, a boy with secrets of his own and a taste for dark magic.
\nThis dark magic puts them at the heart of a battle of good versus evil and a fight for the soul of the family - and perhaps for all of the world. But the Graves family has a secret weapon in this battle: their love for one another.
Miriam is on the road again, having transitioned from \"thief\" to \"killer\". Hired by a wealthy businessman, she heads down to Florida to practice the one thing she's good at, but in her vision she sees him die by another's hand and on the wall written in blood is a message just for Miriam.
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She's expected . . .
Blood will water the corn...
\nIt’s been a year since the Saranyu flotilla fell from the sky, and life in the Heartland has changed. Gone are the Obligations and the Harvest Home festivals. In their place is a spate of dead towns, the former inhabitants forced into mechanical bodies to serve the Empyrean - and crush the Heartland.
\nWhen Cael awakens from a Blightborn sleep, miles away from the world he remembers, he sets out across the Heartland to gather his friends for one last mission. As the mechanicals, a war flotilla, and a pack of feral Empyrean girls begin to close in on the Heartland, there isn’t much time to make their next move. But if they can uncover a secret weapon in time, Cael and his friends might just find themselves with the power to save the world - or destroy it - resting in their hands.
Hannah Stander is a consultant for the FBI - a futurist who helps the Agency with cases that feature demonstrations of bleeding-edge technology. It’s her job to help them identify unforeseen threats: hackers, AIs, genetic modification, anything that in the wrong hands could harm the homeland.
Hannah is in an airport, waiting to board a flight home to see her family, when she receives a call from Agent Hollis Copper. “I’ve got a cabin full of over a thousand dead bodies,” he tells her. Whether those bodies are all human, he doesn’t say.
What Hannah finds is a horrifying murder that points to the impossible - someone weaponising the natural world in a most unnatural way. Discovering who - and why - will take her on a terrifying chase from the Arizona deserts to the secret island laboratory of a billionaire inventor/philanthropist. Hannah knows there are a million ways the world can end, but she just might be facing one she could never have predicted - a new threat both ancient and cutting-edge that could wipe humanity off the earth.
Miriam is trying. Really, she is.
\nBut this whole \"settling down thing\" that Louis has going for her just isn't working out. She lives on Long Beach Island all year around. Her home is a run-down double-wide trailer. She works at a grocery store as a check-out girl. And her relationship with Louis - who's on the road half the time in his truck - is subject to the piss and vinegar Miriam brings to everything she does.
\nIt just isn't going well. Still, she's keeping her psychic ability - to see when and how someone is going to die just by touching them - in check. But even that feels wrong somehow. Like she's keeping a tornado stoppered up in a tiny bottle.
\nThen comes one bad day that turns it all on her ear.
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A group of friends investigates the mystery of a strange staircase in the woods.
\nWhile on a camping trip, five high-schoolers bound by an oath to always protect one another discover something in the middle of the forest: a mysterious staircase to nowhere. One friend climbs up but does not come back down. Then the staircase disappears.
\nTwenty years later it reappears, and the friends return to find the lost boy - and what lies beyond the staircase.
In the fourth installment of the Miriam Black series, Miriam heads to the southwest in search of another psychic who may be able to help her understand her curse, but instead finds a cult of domestic terrorists and the worst vision of death she's had yet.
\nMiriam is becoming addicted to seeing her death visions, but she is also trying out something new: Hope. She is in search of another psychic who can help her with her curse, but instead finds a group of domestic terrorists in her deadliest vision to date.
Corn is king in the Heartland, and Cael McAvoy has had enough of it. It's the only crop the Empyrean government allows the people of the Heartland to grow - and the genetically modified strain is so aggressive that it takes everything the Heartlanders have just to control it.
\nAs captain of the Big Sky Scavengers, Cael and his crew sail their rickety ship over the corn day after day, scavenging for valuables. But Cael's tired of surviving life on the ground while the Empyrean elite drift by above in their extravagant sky flotillas. He's sick of the mayor's son besting Cael's crew in the scavenging game. And he's worried about losing Gwennie - his first mate and the love of his life - forever when their government-chosen spouses are revealed.
\nBut most of all, Cael is angry - angry that their lot in life will never get better and that his father doesn't seem upset about any of it. When Cael and his crew discover a secret, illegal garden, he knows it’s time to make his own luck . . . even if it means bringing down the wrath of the Empyrean elite and changing life in the Heartland forever.
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Still reeling from the events of The Raptor and the Wren, Miriam must confront two terrifying discoveries: the Trespasser now has the power to inhabit the living as well as the dead, and Miriam is pregnant.
Miriam knows her baby is fated to die, but Miriam is the Fatebreaker. And if the rules have changed for her nemesis, her own powers are changing as well. Miriam will do whatever it takes to break her curse and save her child. But as Miriam once again finds herself on the hunt for a serial killer and in need of an elusive physic, she can feel the threads of her past coming together - and the pattern they’re forming is deadly.
To end the Trespasser’s influence in her world, Miriam must face her demon a final time. And, this time, one of them must die.
Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and are sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other “shepherds” who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.
For on their journey, they will discover an America convulsed with terror and violence, where this apocalyptic epidemic proves less dangerous than the fear of it. As the rest of society collapses all around them–and an ultraviolent militia threatens to exterminate them–the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart–or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.
Five years ago, ordinary Americans fell under the grip of a strange new malady that caused them to sleepwalk across the country to a destination only they knew. They were followed on their quest by the shepherds: friends and family who gave up everything to protect them.
\nTheir secret destination: Ouray, a small town in Colorado that would become one of the last outposts of civilization. Because the sleepwalking epidemic was only the first in a chain of events that led to the end of the world - and the birth of a new one.
\nThe survivors, sleepwalkers and shepherds alike, have a dream of rebuilding human society. Among them are Benji, the scientist struggling through grief to lead the town; Marcy, the former police officer who wants only to look after the people she loves; and Shana, the teenage girl who became the first shepherd - and an unlikely hero whose courage will be needed again.
\nBecause the people of Ouray are not the only survivors, and the world they are building is fragile. The forces of cruelty and brutality are amassing under the leadership of self-proclaimed president Ed Creel. And in the very heart of Ouray, the most powerful survivor of all is plotting its own vision for the new world: Black Swan, the A.I. who imagined the apocalypse.
\nAgainst these threats, Benji, Marcy, Shana, and the rest have only one hope: one another. Because the only way to survive the end of the world is together.
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Five hackers - an Anonymous-style rabble-rouser, an Arab Spring hacktivist, a black-hat hacker, an old-school cipherpunk, and an online troll - are detained by the U.S. government, forced to work as white-hat hackers for Uncle Sam in order to avoid federal prison. At a secret complex known only as \"the Lodge,\" where they will spend the next year working as an elite cyber-espionage team, these misfits dub themselves \"the Zeroes.\"
But once the Zeroes begin to work, they uncover secrets that would make even the most dedicated conspiracy theorist's head spin. And soon they're not just trying to serve their time, they're also trying to perform the ultimate hack: burrowing deep into the U.S. government from the inside, and hoping they'll get out alive.
Moonlight meets Purple Hibiscus in this gay coming-of-age novel from an astonishing young talent, set in post-military Nigeria and culminating in the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2014.
\nObiefuna has always been the black sheep of his family - sensitive where his father, Anozie, is pragmatic, a dancer where his brother, Ekene, is a natural athlete. But when an intimate connection blossoms between Obiefuna and a boy from a nearby village, happiness is fleeting once his father catches them together and banishes him to boarding school.
\nObiefuna finds and hides who he truly is as he navigates his new school’s strict hierarchy and unpredictable violence. Back home, his mother Uzoamaka must contend with the absence of her beloved son, her husband’s cryptic reasons for sending him away, and the hard truths that they’ve all been hiding from. As Nigeria teeters on the brink of criminalizing same-sex relationships, Obiefuna’s life, or the life he wants to live, becomes even further out of a reach and more dangerous than ever before.
\nTold from the alternating perspectives of Obiefuna and Uzoamaka, Blessings is an elegant and exquisitely moving story that asks how to live freely in a country that forbids one’s truest self, and the love that can flourish in spite of it all.
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Taylor and Marianna were each other’s whole world – best friends, running partners, practically sisters - until Marianna moved away and Taylor promptly ghosted her. When the former best friends turned rivals end up on the same cross-country team three years later, everything is a competition . . . and a reminder of past feelings, as well as blossoming new ones.
\nMarianna runs because she’s angry. The oldest child of a single mother, she knows all about responsibility - for her siblings, at her part-time job. She just has to stay focused and be faster than the past nipping at her heels if she wants to secure a new, brighter future. With or without Taylor.
\nTaylor runs to prove herself. The only child of an almost-Olympian, she’s no stranger to high expectations. With enough effort, she knows she can immortalise herself with a state record and make her parents proud. Then, she can figure out her own passion. She definitely doesn’t have time to untangle her feelings towards Mari.
\nCan this pair figure out a way to work together before their past catches up with them?
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Reunited in New Jotunheim, Reginn, Eiric and Liv discover that they are game pieces being played on a hidden board. Eiric’s slaughter of the old council has opened Tyra’s path to power - she now has the perfect excuse to launch a war against the Archipelago. Tyra is also using her dottir, Liv, as a vehicle to raise a dangerous goddess. And Reginn is tasked with crossing the boundary between the living and the dead to gain access to powerful magical secrets.
\nWith Reginn’s help, Eiric escapes prison and returns home to find his brodir and warn the Archipelago of the impending attack. Meanwhile, she remains at the Grove to try to prevent the outbreak of war. Soon, though, Reginn learns her true role in this use her power to raise the dead to ensure victory for New Jotunheim. The demon Asger Eldr tells her that she alone can prevent another Ragnarok. But how?
\nBack in the Archipelago, Eiric agrees to join the king’s forces, though that means taking up arms against his systir, Liv, and Reginn, the spinner who has ensnared his heart. For perhaps the first time in his life, he dreads the coming fight.
\nAs the two sides prepare for an apocalyptic battle, Eiric, Reginn, and Liv find allies and enemies in unexpected places and draw on new strengths as they seek to prevent the destruction of the last of the Nine Worlds.
Sixteen-year-old Eiric Halvorsen is among the luckier ones. Between fishing, going vikingr, and working his modir’s farm, the family has remained prosperous. But Eiric stands to lose everything when he’s convicted by a rigged jury of murdering his modir and stepfadir. Also at risk is his half-systir, Liv, whose interest in seidr, or magic, has made her a figure of suspicion. Then a powerful jarl steps in: he will pay the blood price if Eiric will lead a mission to the fabled Temple at the Grove - the rich stronghold of the wyrdspinners, the last practitioners of sorcery.
\nSpellsinger, musician, and runecaster Reggin Eiklund has spent her life traveling from town to town, performing at alehouses all for the benefit of her master, Asger, the fire demon she is desperate to escape. Then after one performance that amazes even Reggin herself, two wyrdspinners in the audience make her an irresistible offer: return with them to the temple to be trained in seidr, forever free of Asger.
\nEiric, Liv, and Reggin’s journeys converge in New Jotunheim, the site of the Temple at the Grove, a paradise fueled by magic. They soon realize that a great evil lurks beneath the dazzling surface, and that old betrayals and long-held grudges may fuel another cataclysmic war. It will require every gift and weapon at their command to prevent it.
Warrior Alyssa ana’Raisa would do anything to protect her home, the Fells, and her legacy, the Gray Wolf Line. But as a prisoner of Empress Celestine, Lyss is forced to turn her fearsome talents as an army commander against her beloved homeland. Refusal would swiftly lead to her death, and her death would end the Gray Wolf Line.
In Lyss’s absence, Fellsmarch Castle swarms with intrigue, deception, and a primordial threat. Destin Karn, a Southern spymaster with a hidden agenda of his own, might be the queendom’s only hope of defeating the forces aligned against the Seven Realms . . . as well as the enemies within the castle.
Set in the world of the New York Times bestselling Seven Realms series, a generation later, this is a breathtaking story of dark magic, chilling threats, and two unforgettable characters walking a knife-sharp line between life and death. This dazzling beginning to a new series is indispensable for fans of Cinda Williams Chima and a perfect starting point for readers who are new to her work.
\nAdrian sul’Han, known as Ash, is a trained healer with a powerful gift of magic - and a thirst for revenge. Ash is forced into hiding after a series of murders throws the queendom into chaos. Now Ash is closer than he’s ever been to killing the man responsible, the cruel king of Arden. As a healer, can Ash use his powers not to save a life but to take it?
Abandoned at birth, Jenna Bandelow was told that the mysterious magemark on the back of her neck would make her a target. But when the King’s Guard launches a relentless search for a girl with a mark like hers, Jenna assumes that it has more to do with her role as a saboteur than any birth-based curse. Though Jenna doesn’t know why she’s being hunted, she knows that she can’t get caught.
Eventually, Ash’s and Jenna’s paths will collide in Arden. Thrown together by chance and joined by their hatred of the king, they will come to rescue each other in ways they cannot yet imagine.
Set in the world of the acclaimed Seven Realms series a generation later, this is a thrilling story of dark magic, chilling threats, and two unforgettable characters walking a knife-sharp line between life and death.
Alyssa ana’Raisa is the reluctant princess heir to the Gray Wolf throne of Fells, a queendom embroiled in a seemingly endless war. Hardened by too many losses, Lyss is more comfortable striking with a sword than maneuvering at court. After a brush with death, she goes on the offensive, meaning to end the war that has raged her whole life. If her gamble doesn’t pay off, she could lose her queendom before she even ascends to the throne.
\nAcross enemy lines in Arden, young rising star Captain Halston Matelon has been fighting for his king since he was a lýtling. Lately, though, he finds himself sent on ever more dangerous assignments. Between the terrifying rumors of witches and wolfish warriors to the north and his cruel king at home, Hal is caught in an impossible game of life and death.
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A thousand years ago, two young lovers were betrayed - Alger Waterlow to his death, and Hanalea, Queen of the Fells, to a life without love.
\nNow, once again, the Queendom of the Fells seems likely to shatter apart. For young queen Raisa ana’Marianna, maintaining peace even within her own castle walls is nearly impossible; tension between wizards and Clan has reached a fevered pitch. With surrounding kingdoms seeking to prey on the Fells’ inner turmoil, Raisa’s best hope is to unite her people against a common enemy. But that enemy might be the person with whom she's falling in love.
\nThrough a complicated web of lies and unholy alliances, former streetlord Han Alister has become a member of the Wizard Council of the Fells. Navigating the cut-throat world of blue blood politics has never been more dangerous, and Han seems to inspire hostility among Clan and wizards alike. His only ally is the queen, and despite the perils involved, Han finds it impossible to ignore his feelings for Raisa. Before long, Han finds himself in possession of a secret believed to be lost to history, a discovery powerful enough to unite the people of the Fells. But will the secret die with him before he can use it?
\nA simple, devastating truth concealed by a thousand-year-old lie at last comes to light in this stunning conclusion to the Seven Realms series.
Times are hard in the mountain city of Fellsmarch. Reformed thief Han Alister will do almost anything to eke out a living for for his family. The only thing of value he has is something he can't sell - the thick silver cuffs he's worn since birth. They're clearly magicked - as he grows, they grow, and he's never been able to get them off.
One day Han and his clan friend, Dancer, confront three young wizards setting fire to the sacred mountain of Hanalea. Han takes an amulet from Micah Bayar, son of the High Wizard, to keep him from using it against them. Soon Han learns that the amulet has an evil history - it once belonged to the Demon King, the wizard who nearly destroyed the world a millennium ago. With a magical piece that powerful at stake, Han knows that the Bayars will stop at nothing to get it back.
Meanwhile, Raisa ana’Marianna, princess heir of the Fells, has her own battles to fight. She’s just returning to court after three years of freedom in the mountains - riding, hunting, and working the famous clan markets. Raisa wants to be more than an ornament in a glittering cage. She aspires to be like Hanalea - the legendary warrior queen who killed the Demon King and saved the world. But her mother has other plans for her - including marriage to a suitor who goes against everything the queendom stands for.
The Seven Realms tremble when the lives of Han and Raisa collide, fanning the flames of the smoldering war between clans and wizards.
They called it the Thorn Hill Massacre - the brutal attack on a once-thriving Weir community. Though Jonah Kinlock lived through it, he did not emerge unscathed: like the other survivors, Jonah possesses unique magical gifts that set him apart from members of the mainline guilds.
\nAt seventeen, Jonah has become the deadliest assassin in Nightshade, a global network that hunts the undead. He is being groomed to succeed Gabriel Mandrake, the sorcerer, philanthropist, and ruthless music promoter who established the Thorn Hill Foundation, the public face of Nightshade. More and more, Jonah’s at odds with Gabriel’s tactics and choice of targets. Desperate to help his dying brother Kenzie, Jonah opens doors that Gabriel prefers to keep closed.
\nEmma Claire Greenwood grew up worlds away, raised by a grandfather who taught her music rather than magic. An unschooled wild child, she runs the streets until the night she finds her grandfather dying, gripping a note warning Emma that she might be in danger. The clue he leaves behind leads Emma into Jonah’s life - and a shared legacy of secrets and lingering questions.
\nWas Thorn Hill really a peaceful commune? Or was it, as the Wizard Guild claims, a hotbed of underguild terrorists? The Wizards’ suspicions grow when members of the mainline guilds start turning up dead. They blame Madison Moss and the Interguild Council, threatening the fragile peace brokered at Trinity. Racing against time, Jonah and Emma work to uncover the truth about Thorn Hill, amid growing suspicion that whoever planned the Thorn Hill Massacre might strike again.
Haunted by the loss of his mother and sister, Han Alister journeys south to begin his schooling at Mystwerk House in Oden's Ford. But leaving the Fells doesn't mean danger isn't far behind. Han is hunted every step of the way by the Bayars, a powerful wizarding family set on reclaiming the amulet Han stole from them. And Mystwerk House has dangers of its own.
\nThere, Han meets Crow, a mysterious wizard who agrees to tutor Han in the darker parts of sorcery - but the bargain they make is one Han may soon regret. Meanwhile, Princess Raisa ana'Marianna runs from a forced marriage in the Fells, accompanied by her friend Amon and his triple of cadets.
\nNow, the safest place for Raisa is Wein House, the military academy at Oden's Ford. If Raisa can pass as a regular student, Wein House will offer both sanctuary and the education Raisa needs to succeed as the next Gray Wolf queen.
Han Alister thought he had already lost everyone he loved. But when he finds his friend Rebecca Morley near death in the Spirit Mountains, Han knows that nothing matters more than saving her. The costs of his efforts are steep, but nothing can prepare him for what he soon discovers: the beautiful, mysterious girl he knew as Rebecca is none other than Raisa ana’Marianna, heir to the Queendom of the Fells.
\nHan is hurt and betrayed. He knows he has no future with a blueblood. And, as far as he’s concerned, the princess’s family killed his own mother and sister. But if Han is to fulfill his end of an old bargain, he must do everything in his power to see Raisa crowned queen.
\nMeanwhile, some people will stop at nothing to prevent Raisa from ascending. With each attempt on her life, she wonders how long it will be before her enemies succeed. Her heart tells her that the thief-turned-wizard Han Alister can be trusted. She wants to believe it - he’s saved her life more than once. But with danger coming at her from every direction, Raisa can only rely on her wits and her iron-hard will to survive - and even that might not be enough.
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The delicate peace between Wizards and the underguilds (Warriors, Seers, Enchanters, and Sorcerers) still holds by the thinnest of threads, but powerful forces inside and outside the guilds threaten to sever it completely.
\nEmma and Jonah are at the center of it all. Brought together by their shared history, mutual attraction, and a belief in the magic of music, they now stand to be torn apart by new wounds and old betrayals. As they struggle to rebuild their trust in each other, Emma and Jonah must also find away to clear their names as the prime suspects in a series of vicious murders. It seems more and more likely that the answers they need lie buried in the tragedies of the past. The question is whether they can survive long enough to unearth them.
100 years have passed since the last heir of Gyldan fell into eternal slumber and doomed the once-mighty kingdom into poverty and invasion. At least, that’s what the fairy tales claim.
\nCorin is a jaded thief who doesn’t believe in fables, even when she searches Gyldan’s underground tunnels to find her younger sister, Elly, who ran away to find the sleeping princess in hopes of a better life. Corin's conviction is challenged when she discovers the ruins of the ancient castle, maintained by beings from the kingdom's golden age, who protect a hidden portal into princess Amelia's subconscious. Following Elly’s voice, Corin jumps in the portal and seals the entry behind her.
\nInside the lush world of Amelia's dreams, the sisters reunite for a new adventure as they meet Briar Rose, Amelia’s whimsical alter ego, and Malicine, a sharp-tongued demon with a gift for magic. But as they explore ice castles, sunflower mazes, and star-filled oceans, Corin suspects Briar Rose is hiding darker secrets behind her \"perfect\" paradise - and that there are some things their subconscious can’t bury forever.
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Sadie, Will, Isla, Anthony, Emily, and Charlie are survivors. They were the six (out of eight) to return from a ski holiday turned nightmare two years ago. Although . . . nobody knows exactly what happened; the details hushed up via the wealth and connections of Sadie's rich parents.
\nWhen an exclusive private island with a mansion for rent goes viral on social media, their graduating class persuades Sadie to rent it for the weekend. The six arrive first by helicopter and wait for the rest of their classmates to join them by boat the next day.
\nBut nobody ever comes.
\nCut off from the rest of the world with no cell service and no means off the island, paranoia and terror mount as they start to be picked off one by one by an unseen killer. Their past has finally caught up with them, and they'll need to figure out who is killing them before they all wind up dead.
A View from the Stars features a range of short works from the past three decades of New York Times bestselling author Cixin Liu's prolific career, putting his nonfiction essays and short stories side-by-side for the first time.
\nThis collection includes essays and interviews that shed light on Liu's experiences as a reader, writer, and lover of science fiction throughout his life, as well as short fiction that gives glimpses into the evolution of his imaginative voice over the years.
When Chen’s parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning, he devotes his life to cracking the secret of this mysterious natural phenomenon. His search takes him to stormy mountaintops, an experimental military weapons lab, and an old Soviet science station.
The more he learns, the more he comes to realize that ball lightning is just the tip of an entirely new frontier. While Chen’s quest for answers gives purpose to his lonely life, it also pits him against soldiers and scientists with motives of their own: a beautiful army major with an obsession with dangerous weaponry, and a physicist who has no place for ethical considerations in his single-minded pursuit of knowledge.
A satirical fable, a political allegory and an ecological warning from the author of The Three-Body Problem.
In a sunlit clearing in central Gondwana, on an otherwise ordinary day in the late Cretaceous, the seeds of Earth's first and greatest civilization were sown in the grisly aftermath of a Tyrannosaurus' lunch.
Throughout the universe, intelligence is a rare and fragile commodity – a fleeting glimmer in the long night of cosmic history. That Earth should harbour not just one but two intelligent species at the same time, defies the odds. That these species, so unalike – and yet so complementary – should forge an alliance that kindled a civilization defies logic. But time is endless and everything comes to pass eventually...
The alliance between ants and dinosaurs, was of course, based on dentistry. Yet from such humble beginnings came writing, mathematics, computers, fusion, antimatter and even space travel – a veritable Age of Wonder! But such magnificent industry comes at a price – a price paid first by Earth's biosphere, and then by all those dependent on it.
And yet the Dinosaurs refused to heed the Ants' warning of impending ecological collapse, leaving the Ant Federation facing a single dilemma: destroy the dinosaurs, destroy a civilization... or perish alongside them?
In those days, Earth was a planet in space.
In those days, Beijing was a city on Earth.
On this night, history as known to humanity came to an end.
Eight light years away, a star has died, creating a supernova event that showers Earth in deadly levels of radiation. Within a year, everyone over the age of thirteen will die.
And so the countdown begins. Parents apprentice their children and try to pass on the knowledge they'll need to keep the world running.
But the last generation may not want to carry the legacy of their parents' world. And though they imagine a better, brighter world, they may bring about a future so dark humanity won't survive.
This original story by Baoshu - published with Liu’s support - envisions the aftermath of the conflict between humanity and the extraterrestrial Trisolarans.
\nIn the midst of an interstellar war, Yun Tianming found himself on the front lines. Riddled with cancer, he chose to end his life, only to find himself flash frozen and launched into space where the Trisolaran First Fleet awaited. Captured and tortured beyond endurance for decades, Yun eventually succumbed to helping the aliens subjugate humanity in order to save Earth from complete destruction.
\nGranted a healthy clone body by the Trisolarans, Yun has spent his very long life in exile as a traitor to the human race. Nearing the end of his existence at last, he suddenly receives another reprieve - and another regeneration. A consciousness calling itself The Spirit has recruited him to wage battle against an entity that threatens the existence of the entire universe. But Yun refuses to be a pawn again and makes his own plans to save humanity’s future . . .
Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth.
\nMeanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.
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Secret Service Agent Allie Gordon has one rule: Don’t get involved with the subject of an investigation. She broke that rule once and paid the price. When a US senator is threatened, Allie goes undercover to shadow the senator’s chief of staff - the FBI’s prime suspect. As the two grow closer, Allie’s only rule gets harder and harder to keep.
\nNicole Lancaster has three rules: no blondes, no strings, and absolutely no second dates. Stress and scandals are easy enough to handle, but emotional attachments? Nope. When a compelling brunette shows up just as the threats escalate, Nicole begins to suspect not everyone is who they claim to be - including the woman who makes her want to break every rule.
\nWhen Nicole vanishes after an assassination attempt, Allie must uncover the truth - and her feelings - before it’s too late. But all the evidence points in one direction: Nicole orchestrated the whole thing. And her motive is simple - revenge.
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When pregnant Saffron Cutler moves into 9 Skelton Place with boyfriend Tom and sets about renovations, the last thing she expects is builders uncovering human remains. The remains of two bodies, in fact.
\nForensics indicate the bodies have been buried at least thirty years. Saffy has nothing to worry about - until the police launch a murder inquiry and ask to speak to the cottage's former owner. Her grandmother, Rose.
\nRose is in a nursing home and Alzheimer's means her memory is increasingly confused. She can't help the police, but its' clear she remembers something.
\nAs Rose's fragmented memories resurface, and the police dig ever deeper, Saffy fears she and the cottage are being watched.
\nWhat happened thirty years ago? Why did no one miss the victims? What part did her grandmother play? And is Saffy now in danger?
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When Imogen is told she’s inherited a country house near Bath, she thinks it must be a mistake. She last saw its owner, reclusive artist Dorothea Roe, sixteen years ago, during a tragic summer which changed her life for ever.
\nNow, with partner Josh in tow, it’s a chance for a fresh start.
\nBut after discovering an old box with her name on it in Dorothea’s abandoned study, Imogen starts to believe the woman was trying to send her a secret message.
\nAnd when rumours begin to swirl that Dorothea was murdered, she starts to suspect that this gift might not be the life-line she thought it was.
\nWho would want to kill Dorothea?
Could it be tangled up in Imogen’s own dark family history?
And what if Imogen is now the one in danger?
In a rural Wilshire town lies The Devil's Corridor. A road which has witnessed eerie happenings from unexplained deaths to the sounds of a child crying at night.
\nBut nothing more puzzling than the Olivia Rutherford case. Four girls drove home but after their car crashed only Olivia was found.
\nTwenty years later, journalist Jenna Halliday is covering the case. But the locals aren't happy with this stranger's arrival. Least of all Olivia.
\nJenna soon starts receiving threatening notes and it is clear someone wants her out of this town before she suffers a dark fate . . .
\n
Libby Hall never really wanted to be noticed. But after she saves the children in her care from a fire, she finds herself headline news. And horrified by the attention. It all reminds her of what happened nine years ago. The last time she saw her best friend alive.
Which is why the house swap is such a godsend. Libby and her husband Jamie exchange their flat in Bath for a beautiful, secluded house in Cornwall. It's a chance to heal their marriage - to stop its secrets tearing them apart.
But this stylish Cornish home isn't the getaway they'd hoped for. They make odd, even disturbing, discoveries in the house. It's so isolated-yet Libby doesn't feel entirely alone. As if she's being watched.
Is Libby being paranoid? What is her husband hiding? And. As the secrets and lies come tumbling out, is the past about to catch up with them?
Twenty years ago
21-year-old Sophie Collier vanishes one night.
She leaves nothing behind but a trainer on the old pier -
and a hole in the heart of her best friend Francesca.
Now
A body's been found.
And Francesca's drawn back to the seaside town she's tried to forget.
Perhaps the truth of what happened to Sophie will finally come out.
Yet Francesca is beginning to wish she hadn't returned.
Everywhere she turns are ghosts from her past.
The same old faces and familiar haunts of her youth.
But if someone knows what really happened to Sophie that night then now's the time to find out - isn't it?
Except sometimes discovering the truth can cost you everything you hold dear - your family, your sanity and even your life . . .
When Lena helps her teenage daughter gather sounds for her media studies project, she doesn't expect her boom-microphone to pick up a conversation between her neighbours, the Morgans. And she’s certain they are planning a crime.
\nHer family and friends tell her that she must have misheard. After all, the Morgans are a well-respected, upstanding couple in their early sixties. They’ve never been in trouble with the law.
\nYet Lena can’t stop thinking about it. Because what if she hasn’t misheard? What if she can prevent something awful happening? After all, stopping it could help ease her conscience about her own dark past . . .
\n
When one sister dies, the other must go to desperate lengths to survive. Haunted by her twin sister's death, Abi is making a fresh start in Bath. But when she meets twins Bea and Ben, she is quickly drawn into their privileged and unsettling circle.
When one sister lies, she must protect her secret at all costs. As Abi tries to keep up with the demands of her fickle friends, strange things start to happen - precious letters go missing and threatening messages are left in her room. Is this the work of the beautiful and capricious Bea? Or is Abi willing to go to any lengths to get attention? When the truth outs, will either sister survive?
Emily Latimer is furious. Her boss Andrew is being so unreasonable, as always. She fires off a text to her boyfriend, only in her haste she sends it to her whole office group.
\nIn it she says Andrew's being difficult about letting her have time off work. That she is angry. That she hopes he dies. The next day her face burns in the office. No one believes her when she says it was a typo, she meant to say does. She hopes he does.
\nIt's a nightmare. But it gets worse - Andrew doesn't turn up for work. And then the police come knocking. Because Andrew Burton has been murdered . . .
\n
Emilia Ward lives quietly in suburban London with her husband and two children.
\nJust an ordinary wife and mother. But also a bestselling crime writer.
\nWhen she starts writing her tenth Detective Miranda Moody novel, however, life takes a frightening an incident straight out of one of her novels occurs in real life.
\nJust an unsettling coincidence, she thinks. Until it happens again.
\nThen someone she knows dies exactly like a victim in the book she's still writing . . .
\nWhy is someone doing this?How do they know what she is writing?And how long before Emilia and her family are next?
\n
1987: After a childhood trauma and years in and out of the care system, sixteen-year-old Ursula finds herself with a new job in the postroom of a local art school, a bed in a halfway house, and - delightfully - some new friends, including wild-child, Sue. When Ursula is invited to join a squat at The Underwood, a mysterious house whose owners met a terrible end, she can’t resist the promise of a readymade, hodgepodge family.
\nBut as Sue’s behaviour and demands become more extreme, Ursula who has always been hungry - for food - and more importantly for love, acceptance and belonging, carries out her friend’s terrible dare. It's a decision that will haunt her for decades.
\nThirty-six years later, Ursula is a renowned, reclusive sculptor living under a pseudonym in London when her identity is exposed by true-crime documentary-maker who is digging into an unsolved disappearance. But it is not only the filmmaker who has discovered Ursula’s whereabouts, and as her past catches up with her present, Ursula must work out whether the monsters are within her or without.
\n
How do you survive the unsurvivable?
\nRachel lives with her husband Tom and their two children: it's the ordinary family life she always thought she'd have. All of that changes in an instant - when Tom runs the family car off the road, seeking to end his own life, and take his wife and children with him. Rachel is left to pore over the wreckage to try and understand what happened - to find a way to go on living afterwards.
\nWhat emerges is a snapshot of what it's like to live alongside someone who is suffering, how you keep yourself afloat when the person you love is drowning, and how you survive irreparable loss.
\nImpossible to turn away from, Show Me Where It Hurts is a compelling, heartbreaking and ultimately life-affirming story of recovery and unexpected hope.
As princesses of Sparta, Helen and Klytemnestra have known nothing but luxury and plenty. With their high birth and unrivaled beauty, they are the envy of all of Greece. But such privilege comes at a cost. While still only girls, the sisters are separated and married to foreign kings of their father's choosing - the powerful Agamemnon, and his brother Menelaos. Yet even as Queens, each is only expected to do two things: birth an heir and embody the meek, demure nature that is expected of women.
\nBut when the weight of their husbands' neglect, cruelty, and ambition becomes too heavy to bear, Helen and Klytemnestra must push against the constraints of their society to carve new lives for themselves, and in doing so, make waves that will ripple throughout the next three thousand years.
\nDaughters of Sparta is a vivid and illuminating reimagining of the Siege of Troy, told through the perspectives of two women whose voices have been ignored for far too long.
\n
Danae: Banished from her homeland thanks to a prophecy foretelling that her unborn child will one day cause the death of her father, the king of Argos, Danae finds herself stranded, pregnant, and alone in a remote fishing village. It's a harsh new world for a young woman who grew up as a coddled princess, and forging a new life for herself and for her young son Perseus will be the hardest thing she's ever done.
\nMedusa: As a member of a reclusive band of women who live deep in the woods, known as the Gorgons, Medusa has eschewed all contact with the outside world. That is, until the day she finds an injured boy named Perseus in the forest.
\nAndromeda: When a harsh sandstorm threatens to destroy her nomadic desert tribe's way of life, Andromeda knows that a sacrifice will be required to appease the gods and end the storm. But when a forceful young Perseus interferes, Andromeda's life is set on an entirely new path.
\nAs Perseus becomes increasingly obsessed with the promise of his own destiny, his heroic journey casts a shadow of violence and destruction across all three women's lives. But even as he tries to silence them, the women may find that reclaiming their voices is their only hope for lifting themselves into a better future.
\n
When the King of Tyre dies, he decrees that the rule of the kingdom will pass equally to both his Elissa, his clever and strong-willed daughter, and Pygmalion, her young half-brother. But Elissa, not yet skilled in the machinations of court, quickly finds herself sidelined by a band of powerful merchants in favor of her more malleable brother.
\nForced out of her palace home, Elissa resolves to forge her own path. Both triumph and heartbreak await in the life that she builds, transforming herself from a sheltered princess into a strong and formidable leader. When she leads her followers on an epic journey in search of a new home in a faraway land, she earns herself a name that will echo through Dido, the wanderer.
\nThen one day, a mysterious stranger, Aeneas, arrives at the city gates, fleeing the Trojan War. As Dido and Aeneas are increasingly drawn to each other, Dido finds herself forced to make an impossible choice between power and love.
\n
A novel of envy and longing that asks how far we’ll go for a friendship, a romance, and a dream
\nYe Lian is thriving in Beijing. She has a well-paid job and a nice boyfriend, and she plans to marry and move into a luxury high-rise apartment. She’s wanting for nothing - until her childhood best friend, Luo Wenyu, comes whirling back into her life after a decade in California with seemingly everything. Lian’s own reliable choices are suddenly thrown into high relief.
\nAs the two rekindle their friendship, Wenyu reveals a shocking secret about a past love, pushing Lian to question her own relationship. Then the dark side of Wenyu’s enviable life emerges and threatens everything Lian and Wenyu have built for themselves. They must choose between the stable known and the frightening unknown that may have devastating and unexpected consequences.
When Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, they are blithely ignorant of all that's to come. By 2016, their four radically different daughters are each in a state of unrest: Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator-turned-stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt when the darkest part of her past resurfaces; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant with a baby she's not sure she wants by a man she's not sure she loves; and Grace, the dawdling youngest daughter, begins living a lie that no one in her family even suspects. Above it all, the daughters share the lingering fear that they will never find a love quite like their parents'.
As the novel moves through the tumultuous year following the arrival of Jonah Bendt - given up by one of the daughters in a closed adoption fifteen years before - we are shown the rich and varied tapestry of the Sorensons' past: years marred by adolescence, infidelity, and resentment, but also the transcendent moments of joy that make everything else worthwhile.
Spanning nearly half a century, and set against the quintessential American backdrop of Chicago and its prospering suburbs, Lombardo's debut explores the triumphs and burdens of love, the fraught tethers of parenthood and sisterhood, and the baffling mixture of affection, abhorrence, resistance, and submission we feel for those closest to us. In painting this luminous portrait of a family's becoming, Lombardo joins the ranks of writers such as Celeste Ng, Elizabeth Strout, and Jonathan Franzen as visionary chroniclers of our modern lives.
Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels, at age fifty seven, that she has a firm handle on things.
\nShe’s unprepared, though, for what comes next: a surprise announcement from her straight-arrow son, an impending separation from her spikey teenaged daughter, and a seductive resurgence of the past, all of which threaten to draw her back into the patterns that had previously kept her on a razor’s edge.
\nSame As It Ever Was traverses the rocky terrain of real life, - exploring new avenues of maternal ambivalence, intergenerational friendship, and the happenstantial cause-and-effect that governs us all. Delving even deeper into the nature of relationships - how they grow, change, and sometimes end - Lombardo proves herself a true and definitive cartographer of the human heart and asserts herself among the finest novelists of her generation.
\n
1982. Dawn is a young mother, still adjusting to life with her husband, when Hazel lights up her world like a torch in the dark. Theirs is the kind of connection that’s impossible to resist, and suddenly life is more complicated, and more joyful, than Dawn ever expected. But she has responsibilities and commitments. She has a daughter.
\n2022. Heron has just received news from his doctor that turns everything upside down. He’s an older man, stuck in the habits of a quiet existence. Telling Maggie, his only child - the person around whom his life has revolved - seems impossible. Heron can’t tell her about his diagnosis, just as he can’t reveal all the other secrets he’s been keeping from her for so many years.
\nA Family Matter is a heartbreaking and hopeful exploration of love and loss, intimacy and injustice, custody and care, and whether it is possible to heal from the wounds of the past in the changed world of today.
Called in to investigate the disappearance of a young couple during a violent storm, Paula Maguire, forensic psychologist, has mixed feelings about going back to Bone Island. Her last family holiday as a child was spent on its beautiful, remote beaches and returning brings back haunting memories of her long-lost mother.
It soon becomes clear that outsiders aren't welcome on the island, and with no choice but to investigate the local community, Paula soon suspects foul play, realising that the islanders are hiding secrets from her, and each other.
With another storm fast approaching, Paula is faced with a choice. Leave alive or risk being trapped with a killer on an inescapable island, as the blood tide rushes in . . .
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\nA stolen baby. A murdered woman. A decades-old atrocity. Something connects them all.
A month before Christmas, and Ballyterrin on the Irish border lies under a thick pall of snow. When a newborn baby goes missing from hospital, it's all too close to home for forensic psychologist Paula Maguire, who's wrestling with the hardest decision of her life.
Then a woman is found in a stone circle with her stomach cut open and it's clear a brutal killer is on the loose.
As another child is taken and a pregnant woman goes missing, Paula is caught up in the hunt for a killer no one can trace, who will stop at nothing to get what they want.
When Rachel stumbles upon a body in the woods, she knows what she has to do: run. Get away. Do not be found at the scene. Last time, she didn’t know, and she ended up accused of murder. But when this victim is identified as her boyfriend’s estranged wife, Rachel realises she’s already the prime suspect.
\nWith mounting evidence against her, Rachel’s only hope is to keep the truth about herself well hidden. Because twenty years ago she was someone else - Casey, a young nanny trying to make it as an actress in Los Angeles. When the family she worked for were brutally murdered, all the evidence pointed to her and she went to prison. Back then, she narrowly escaped the death penalty and managed to free herself on appeal. Now she’s fighting to save the life she’s spent years piecing back together.
\nBut with her behaviour raising suspicion and the police closing in, Rachel can’t help wondering: Was her discovery in the woods really just an awful coincidence, or is someone framing her for murder? Someone who knows who she is, and wants revenge . . .
\n
When a puzzling missing persons' case opens up in her hometown, forensic psychologist Paula Maguire can't help but return once more.
\nRenovations at an abandoned farm have uncovered two bodies: a man known to be an IRA member missing since the nineties, and a young girl whose identity remains a mystery.
\nAs Paula attempts to discover who the girl is and why no one is looking for her, an anonymous tip-off claims that her own long-lost mother is also buried on the farm.
\nWhen another girl is kidnapped, Paula must find the person responsible before more lives are destroyed. But there are explosive secrets still to surface. And even Paula can't predict that the investigation will strike at the heart of all she holds dear.
\n
When two teenage girls go missing along the Irish border, forensic psychologist Paula Maguire has to return to the hometown she left years before. Swirling with rumour and secrets, the town is gripped by fear of a serial killer. But the truth could be even darker.
\nSurrounded by people and places she tried to forget, Paula digs into the cases as the truth twists further away. What's the link with two other disappearances from 1985? And why does everything lead back to the town's dark past- including the reasons her own mother went missing years before?
\nAs the shocking truth is revealed, Paula learns that sometimes, it's better not to find what you've lost.
\n
The party should have been perfect: six couples from the same baby group, six newborns, a luxurious house. But not everything has gone to plan, and while some are here to celebrate, others have sorrows to drown. When someone falls from the balcony of the house, the secrets and conflicts within the group begin to spill out.
DS Alison Hegarty, herself struggling with infertility, is called in to investigate. She’s convinced the fall was not an accident, and finds the new parents have a lot to hide. Wealthy Ed and Monica show off their newborn while their teenage daughter is kept under virtual house arrest.
Hazel and Cathy conceived their longed-for baby via an anonymous sperm donor - or so Hazel thinks. Anita and Jeremy planned to adopt from America, but there’s no sign of the child. Kelly, whose violent boyfriend disrupted previous group sessions, came to the party even though she lost her baby. And then there’s Jax, who’s been experiencing strange incidents for months - almost like someone’s out to get her. Is it just a difficult pregnancy? Or could it be payback for something she did in the past?
\nIt’s a nightmare of a case, and as events get even darker it begins to look impossible. Only one thing is clear: they all have something to hide. And for one of them, it’s murder.
\n
Victim: Female. Twenty-two years of age.
Reason for investigation: Missing person.
ID: Alice Morgan. Student. Last seen at a remote religious shrine in Ballyterrin.
Alice Morgan's disappearance raises immediate questions for forensic psychologist Paula Maguire. Alice, the daughter of a life peer in the Home Office, has vanished along with a holy relic - the bones of a saint - and the only trace is the bloodstains on the altar.
With no body to confirm death, the pressure in this high-profile case is all-consuming, and Paula knows that she will have to put her own life, including her imminent marriage, on hold, if they are to find the truth.
A connection to a decades-old murder immediately indicates that all may not be as it seems; as the summer heat rises and tempers fray, can Alice be found or will they learn that those that are hungry for vengeance may be the most savage of all?
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\nVictim: Male. Mid-thirties. 5'7\".
Cause of death: Hanging. Initial impression - murder.
ID: Mickey Doyle. Suspected terrorist and member of the Mayday Five.
The officers at the crime scene know exactly who the victim is.
Doyle was one of five suspected bombers who caused the deaths of sixteen people.
The remaining four are also missing and when a second body is found, decapitated, it's clear they are being killed by the same methods their victims suffered.
Forensic psychologist Paula Maguire is assigned the case but she is up against the clock - both personally and professionally.
With moral boundaries blurred between victim and perpetrator, will be Paula be able to find those responsible? After all, even killers deserve justice, don't they?
Amira’s less than thrilled to be spending the weekend with her husband’s university friends. Two of them are hosting a joint fortieth on a private Scottish island, with vintage champagne, expensive gifts, and soaks in the wood-fired hot tub. Despite the luxury, Amira knows she’s going to feel left out, not to mention freezing cold and cut off.
\nWhen they decide to play ‘two truths and a lie’, anonymously posting three statements about themselves into a box, years of resentment start bubbling to the surface. And then an extra slip of paper emerges, scrawled with three chilling threats. Who wrote it? And are two of the statements really true - have they all been responsible for someone’s death?
\nWith no phone reception and no way off the island, the group are trapped here until the end of the weekend. And as tension rises and secrets are spilled, they can’t shake the feeling that they’re not the only ones here. Is someone watching them? Someone who wants them dead? Or is it one of them who has murder in mind?
\n
It was supposed to be the perfect reunion: six university friends together again after twenty years. Host Ali finally has the life she always wanted, a career she can be proud of and a wonderful family with her college boyfriend, now husband. But that night her best friend makes an accusation so shocking that nothing will ever be the same again.
\nWhen Karen staggers in from the garden, bleeding and traumatised, she claims that she has been assaulted - by Ali’s husband, Mike. Ali must make a split-second decision: who should she believe? Her horrified husband, or her best friend?
\nWith Mike offering a very different version of events, Ali knows one of them is lying - but which? And why?
\nWhen the ensuing chaos forces her to re-examine the golden era the group shared at university, Ali realises there are darker memories too. Memories that have lain dormant for decades. Memories someone would kill to protect.
\n
The penalty for Dani Cumali's murder: ?84,000.
Theo works in the Criminal Audit Office. He assesses each crime that crosses his desk and makes sure the correct debt to society is paid in full.
These days, there's no need to go to prison - provided that you can afford to pay the penalty for the crime you've committed. If you're rich enough, you can get away with murder.
But Dani's murder is different. When Theo finds her lifeless body, and a hired killer standing over her and calmly calling the police to confess, he can't let her death become just an entry on a balance sheet.
Someone is responsible. And Theo is going to find them and make them pay.
Harry August is on his deathbed. Again.
\nNo matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes.
\nUntil now.
\nAs Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. \"I nearly missed you, Doctor August,\" she says. \"I need to send a message.\"
\nThis is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.
\n
On the isle of Ithaca, queen Penelope maintains a delicate balance of power. Many years ago, her husband Odysseus sailed to war with Troy and never came home. In his absence, Penelope uses all her cunning to keep the peace - a peace that is shattered by the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra.
\nOrestes' hands are stained with his mother's blood. Not so long ago, the son of Agamemnon took Queen Clytemnestra's life on Ithaca's sands. Now, wracked with guilt, he is slowly losing his mind. But a king cannot be seen to be weak, and Elektra has brought him to Ithaca to keep him safe from the ambitious men of Mycenae.
\nPenelope knows destruction will follow in his wake as surely as the furies circle him. His uncle Menelaus, the blood-soaked king of Sparta, hungers for Orestes' throne - and if he can seize it, no one will be safe from his violent whims.
\nTrapped between two mad kings, Penelope must find a way to keep her home from being crushed by the machinations of a battle that stretches from Mycenae and Sparta to the summit of Mount Olympus itself. Her only allies are Elektra, desperate to protect her brother, and Helen of Troy, Menelaus' wife. And watching over them all is the goddess Aphrodite, who has plans of her own.
\nEach woman has a secret, and their secrets will shape the world . . .
Seventeen years ago, King Odysseus sailed to war with Troy, taking with him every man of fighting age from the island of Ithaca. None of them has returned, and the women of Ithaca have been left behind to run the kingdom.
Penelope was barely into womanhood when she wed Odysseus. While he lived, her position was secure. But now, years on, speculation is mounting that her husband is dead, and suitors are beginning to knock at her door.
No one man is strong enough to claim Odysseus' empty throne - not yet. But everyone waits for the balance of power to tip, and Penelope knows that any choice she makes could plunge Ithaca into bloody civil war. Only through cunning, wit, and her trusted circle of maids, can she maintain the tenuous peace needed for the kingdom to survive.
Many years ago, Odysseus sailed to war and never returned. For twenty years his wife Penelope and the women of Ithaca have guarded the isle against suitors and rival kings. But peace cannot be kept forever, and the balance of power is about to break . . .
\nA beggar has arrived at the Palace. Salt-crusted and ocean-battered, he is scorned by the suitors - but Penelope recognises in him something terrible: her husband, Odysseus, returned at last. Yet this Odysseus is no hero. By returning to the island in disguise, he is not merely plotting his revenge against the suitors - vengeance that will spark a civil war - but he's testing the loyalty of his queen. Has she been faithful to him all these years? And how much blood is Odysseus willing to shed to be sure?
\nThe song of Penelope is ending, and the song of Odysseus must ring through Ithaca's halls. But first, Penelope must use all her cunning to win a war for the fate of the island and keep her family alive, whatever the cost . . .
Ven was once a holy man, a keeper of ancient archives. It was his duty to interpret archaic texts, sorting useful knowledge from the heretical ideas of the Burning Age - a time of excess and climate disaster. For in Ven's world, such material must be closely guarded so that the ills that led to that cataclysmic era can never be repeated.
\nBut when the revolutionary Brotherhood approaches Ven, pressuring him to translate stolen writings that threaten everything he once held dear, his life will be turned upside down. Torn between friendship and faith, Ven must decide how far he's willing to go to save this new world - and how much he is willing to lose.
Slow Gods is the galaxy-spanning tale of one man's impossible life charted against the fate of humanity amongst the stars.
\nMy name is Mawukana na-Vdnaze, and I am a very poor copy of myself.
\nIn telling my story, there are certain things I should perhaps lie about. I should make myself a hero. Pretend I was not used by strangers and gods, did not leave people behind.
\nHere is one out there in deep space, in the pilot's chair, I died. And then, I was reborn. I became something not quite human, something that could speak to the infinite dark. And I vowed to become the scourge of the world that wronged me.
\nThis is the story of the supernova event that burned planets and felled civilisations. This is also the story of the many lives I've lived since I died for the first time.
\nAre you listening?
\n
Listen.
All the world forgets me. First my face, then my voice, then the consequences of my deeds.
So listen. Remember me.
My name is Hope Arden, and you won't know who I am. We've met before - a thousand times. But I am the girl the world forgets.
It started when I was sixteen years old. A slow declining, an isolation, one piece at a time.
A father forgetting to drive me to school. A mother setting the table for three, not four. A teacher who forgets to chase my missing homework. A friend who looks straight through me and sees a stranger.
No matter what I do, the words I say, the people I hurt, the crimes I commit - you will never remember who I am.
That makes my life tricky. But it also makes me dangerous . . .
The Sudden Appearance of Hope is the tale of the girl no one remembers. But this gripping story – of love and loss, of hope and despair, of living in the moment and dying to leave a mark – is novel that will stay with you for ever.
It’s 1974 and San Francisco is full of mystery and menace. Nineteen-year-old Celia Dent keeps telling herself how lucky she is to be married to Drew, a man who says he loves her. But Celia’s contentment with her little life is shattered when a woman she knows is murdered in a love tryst gone awry. What would that be like, Celia wonders, to die - or kill - for love? What would it be like to live each moment passionately and with full knowledge that each breath is bringing her closer to her final breath?
\nBefore Celia knows it her musings about love-and-death happenings are bleeding into daily life. She’s practicing her marksmanship at a local gun range. She's searching for a love tryst of her very own. She's thinking about how good it would feel to bury something sharp inside her domineering husband’s ear. It’s all pretend, though, until the night comes when Celia finally goes too far, and she and Drew are set on a deadly collision course.
\nExhilarating, surreal, and bitingly clever, Evil Genius is a comic noir about obsession and desire - and what happens when a sweetly seditious young woman dares to imagine a better life for herself.
\n
Esther Larson has been cooking for funerals in the Northwoods of Wisconsin for seventy years. Known locally as the “funeral ladies,” she and her cohort have worked hard to keep the mourners of Ellerie County fed - it is her firm belief that there is very little a warm casserole and a piece of cherry pie can’t fix. But, after falling for an internet scam that puts her home at risk, the proud Larson family matriarch is the one in need of help these days. Iris, Esther’s whip-smart Gen Z granddaughter, would do anything for her family and her community.
\nAs she watches her friends and family move out of their lakeside town onto bigger and better things, Iris wonders why she feels so left behind in the place she is desperate to make her home. But when Cooper Welsh shows up, she finally starts to feel like she’s found the missing piece of her puzzle. Cooper is dealing with becoming a legal guardian to his younger half-sister after his beloved stepmother dies. While their celebrity-chef father is focused on his booming career and top-ranked television show, Cooper is still hurting from a public tragedy he witnessed last year as a paramedic and finding it hard to cope. With Iris in the gorgeous Ellerie County, though, he hopes he might finally find the home he’s been looking for.
\nIt doesn’t seem like a community cookbook could possibly solve their problems, especially one where casseroles have their own section and cream of chicken soup mix is the most frequently used ingredient. But when you mix the can-do spirit of Midwestern grandmothers with the stubborn hope of a boy raised by food plus a dash of long-awaited forgiveness - things might just turn out okay.
\n
Cass Simon never expected to return to small-town Wisconsin - not after escaping life inside a cult-like “Mommune” and falling under the spell of an online mom-fluencer. But with nowhere left to turn, she finds herself back under her family’s roof, carrying more questions than answers about what it means to be a mother.
\nWaiting for Cass is her own mother, Remy - hardworking matriarch of the Baumhaus supper club. Remy’s love for her children is fierce but tangled with old grief and the fear of letting go, especially as she prepares to say goodbye to the family business that has anchored them for generations.
\nBeside them stands Hilary, Cass’s older sister - an artist and devoted mother whose divorce has shaken her belief in herself; and Erin, a Simon by marriage, who is quietly battling heartbreak as she struggles to find gratitude for a pregnancy that both terrifies and redeems her. Each of the Simon women pursues her own vision of Cass’s instinct for protection after trauma, Remy’s hope to be a harbor her daughters can always return to, and her sisters’ hard-won wisdom about letting go of perfection.
\nSet against the backdrop of a vibrant, sometimes claustrophobic Wisconsin town, this dynamic and beautifully honest novel explores forgiveness, the bonds - and boundaries - of family, and the deeply personal journey of discovering what it truly means to be a “good mother.”
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For Dr. Alexia Winters, Christmas is just another day in the operating room. As Arya says, she's the \"Ice Queen\" of Watson Memorial Hospital. Alexia has managed to become the best pediatric surgeon in the country at the cost of keeping her heart under lock and key. She doesn't believe in the magic of this season, only in science.
\nBut this year, fate has other plans. A seven-year-old girl needs a miracle to stay alive. And that miracle might arrive in the form of a helicopter pilot named Selene Callahan.
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Being a single mom to a teenage daughter is tough enough. Having your daughter be an elite gymnast makes things even more complicated. But her injuring her ankle just months before the Olympics? That's too much.
\nI went to Dr. Anderson's office looking for a solution to my daughter's injury. And now, every time that doctor fixes those blue eyes on me or smiles, I feel a tingling in my lower belly that's impossible to ignore.
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Dr. Rachel Harris has always played by the book, until a mysterious woman arrives at the hospital after a grave accident, sending her world into a tailspin.
\nAs the patient lies in an induced coma, Dr. Harris finds solace in her daydreams, crafting an enchanting romance with this enigmatic woman. Her fantasies provide an escape from her otherwise regimented life, stirring feelings she's never experienced before.
\nHowever, reality comes crashing down when the patient finally awakens, revealing herself to be a moody, self-absorbed woman who bears no resemblance to the person Rachel had come to love in her mind. As Dr. Harris grapples with her unexpected feelings, she must confront the blurred lines between fantasy and reality, desire and responsibility.
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What happens when the love of your life forgets who you are?
\nTwo months before her wedding, Dr. Novak faces her worst her fiancée suffers a serious accident that erases part of her memories . . . including their relationship.
\nWhile torn between professional ethics and a broken heart, a new specialist steps smart, charming, and growing closer to her fiancée with each passing day.
\nCan Novak help the woman she loves remember the bond they once shared, or will she be forced to step aside and let her choose a different future?
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Ever since Anna Fenwick, the female soccer legend, crossed paths with me due to her torn anterior cruciate ligament, I've been spending more time responding to the press than doing my job as a surgeon.
\nIt's an absolute nightmare, and she is . . .
\nThat woman is unbearable.
\nI knew this could happen. Her constant run-ins with sports journalists and other teammates are well-known. I can understand that her bad temper has worsened with the serious knee injury. I imagine that, at the end of her career, she's afraid of never regaining the level she once had... but putting up with her is starting to be too much.
\nAnd yet, each tiny glimmer of vulnerability in those blue eyes is enough to make me consider breaking the rules that have always governed my life.
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A decade ago, a tragic surgery forever altered the lives of Dr. Jackie Stone and Sarah Taylor. Haunted by the loss of that patient, Dr. Stone has since immersed herself in her work, believing that if she stays busy, she can escape the pain of her past.
\nSarah Taylor, now a determined intern at Manhattan’s prestigious Watson Memorial Hospital, finds herself under the supervision of the very doctor who was present during her brother’s ill-fated surgery ten years ago.
\nAs she strives to become a renowned surgeon, Sarah must grapple with the emotional weight of working in the same hospital where her brother died, under the watchful eye of the woman who couldn’t save him.
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Dr. Nicole Wright is not easily scared.
\nShe has faced truly nightmarish situations during her years as an army surgeon.
\nReturning to civilian life, Nicole decides to continue her professional career at the prestigious Watson Memorial Hospital in New York.
\nWhat she least expected was to find herself once again looking into the deep blue eyes of Dr. Katya Thomas, the woman with whom she had imagined a happy future during their college years.
\nThe very same woman she left without saying a word the day after finishing medical school.
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At 27, Nicole Hunt is a rising star in health and wellness, captivating audiences with her dynamic podcast and entertaining TikTok presence. In a special series for Heart Month, she sets her sights on interviewing some of the nation's most prominent medical professionals, including the reclusive Dr. Inés Torres.
\nDr. Torres is a 40-year-old distinguished cardiologist with a reputation as steely as the scalpel she wields. Her life revolves entirely around her work, leaving no room for love or leisure. As the effervescent Nicole steps into Dr. Torres's strictly regimented world, sparks fly, and an unexpected connection forms between the two women.
\nCan Nicole's warmth and charisma melt Dr. Torres's icy exterior and unlock the door to a new, fulfilling chapter in her life? Immerse yourself in this captivating sapphic medical romance, a heartwarming journey of love, healing, and the power of letting go.
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A comprehensive and engaging oral history of the decade that defined the feminist movement, including interviews with living icons and unsung heroes - from former Newsweek reporter and author of the “powerful and moving” Witness to the Revolution .
\nFor lovers of both Barbie and Gloria Steinem, The Movement is the first oral history of the decade that built the modern feminist movement. Through the captivating individual voices of the people who lived it, The Movement tells the intimate inside story of what it felt like to be at the forefront of the modern feminist crusade, when women rejected thousands of years of custom and demanded the freedom to be who they wanted and needed to be.
\nThis engaging history traces women’s awakening, organising, and agitating between the years of 1963 and 1973, when a decentralised collection of people and events coalesced to create a spontaneous combustion. From Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique , to the underground abortion network the Janes, to Shirley Chisolm’s presidential campaign and Billie Jean King’s 1973 battle of the sexes, Bingham artfully weaves together the fragments of that explosion person by person, bringing to life the emotions of this personal, cultural, and political revolution.
\nArtists and politicians, athletes and lawyers, Black and white, The Movement brings readers into the rooms where these women insisted on being treated as first class citizens, and in the process, changed the fabric of American life.
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After Mrs. Hamilton - a twisting tale of sex, secrets, and obsession.
\nClo is leading a loveless life as a high class escort for women. She's always had a dream of the ideal partner, but after a bad experience with love when she was young, figures she is better off on her own. Right now, she's supposed to be meeting her best friend. But tonight, Clo has to work.
\nIt's early evening and Mrs. Hamilton waits for an escort on the balcony of her London hotel suite. It's cold, and she feels ice in her veins that has nothing to do with the chilly air. Too much pain, betrayal and lost desire. What is she thinking, that the touch of a stranger will heal her broken past? But her appointment is with Clo, and the touch of this beautiful young woman lights torches Mrs. Hamilton didn't know she carried. Clo doesn't even feel like a stranger. She feels dangerously like someone Mrs. Hamilton wants to know.
\nBut love, passion, and desire never seem to know the right time, or place. Neither do secrets, especially when everyone's keeping them, as call girl Clo and her friends are about to find out. From London to Oxfordshire, the past collides with the present with repercussions no one could imagine or will ever forget.
Olivia Sachdeva is in love. Who knew the perfect woman for the frosty lawyer would be down-to-earth Kate Laurence, her screen idol.
\nOlivia lives with her dream woman in their beautiful Park Town home in Oxford. But marriage is the last thing Olivia would raise with Kate. After meeting as lawyer and client in a fraught divorce case, it’s a miracle they're together, and weddings are beyond discussion.
\nPrincipled Olivia knows this. Her professional integrity demands this kind of discipline. Trouble is, underneath, Olivia is only human, and her besotted heart would really like to marry Kate.
\nSo, what if she took a chance at Christmas to ask her?
\nA novella, set after Discovering Nicola in the Oxford Romance Series.
Sparks fly between Nicola Albright KC and Geeta Sachdeva, but not the good kind. They’re the sort that leave small fires, devastation, and everyone peeping between their fingers at arrogant lawyer, Nicola, on one side, and everyone’s favourite mum, Geeta, on the other.
\nYet when both are divorced and at a new stage in life, they find themselves living within glowering distance of each other, in beautiful Iffley Village, Oxford. Reluctantly they call a truce and try to make friends. It’s tricky though, when there’s more than one reason they’ve circled and snapped for years.
\nFor a start, Geeta’s lawyer daughter, Olivia, idolises the eminent King's Counsel barrister, to eye rolls from Geeta. And to Nicola’s annoyance, her own daughter, Charlotte, has always turned to perfect mama Geeta for comfort and understanding. Animosity between the two is a given.
\nUntil they force themselves to be nice to each other, that is, and then they’re compelled to question everything . . .
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Oxford - celebrated city of dreaming spires and class warfare - is an ambition come true for lesbian, geeky, upper-middle-class Charlotte and straight, charismatic, working-class Millie.
\nAgainst the odds, theirs is an instant, best friendship. Forever.
\nExuberant Millie is a breath of fresh air for polite Charlotte and a force of nature within the university's hallowed walls. And they are going to be the best lawyers of their year and change the world.
\nBut their world changes instead when things go queerly sideways, and they haven’t seen each other since.
\nTen years on and Charlotte returns to where it all began. She has a new job at a prestigious law firm and Oxford is as beautiful as ever. She’s a safe distance from her overbearing barrister mother Nicola and three office floors from her snappy college mentor, Olivia.
\nThen Millie bounds around the corner wanting to be friends again and it's as if the last decade never happened. Will it be different the second time around? Can they be friends again? Or will love and attraction change things?
Lucy is haunted by the death of her partner, Jake, and lives in paranoid fear and reclusion. She lives in a small, introverted village in Cornwall, and is surrounded by Jake's family and memories of him. She feels intensely guilty about his death and thinks someone is out to get her in retribution.
\nRelief appears to come when a new neighbour, Karen, enters her life, but is that when the real threat begins?
Olivia Sachdeva’s life is flawless. With a first from Oxford and as the youngest partner at Bentley lawyers, she expects high standards from everyone. Her only indulgences are eating iced desserts and repeat watching romcoms, especially those featuring Kate Laurence - pure escapism and cinematic perfection.
\nBut, when the actor walks into Olivia’s office with a bag full of divorce and a messy personal life, that perfect bubble bursts. Kate seems nothing like the screen goddesses she plays, and Olivia must put aside her comfort viewing and handle the case like the true professional she is.
\nIt requires secrecy, especially with indiscreet friends. Will best-friend Charlotte ever read the room? And will Millie, who instantly reads the room, ever stop commenting loudly?
\nAnd Kate? She doesn’t know what to think about this frosty lawyer. But she needs a quick divorce from a mistake of a marriage, which was over before it started, and Olivia Sachdeva is the best.
\nBut little by little, Olivia and Kate glimpse behind the mask, to find someone they weren’t looking for, who may not even be perfect, but might be the right person for them.
Love or money? Follow the head or heart? Pia and Cate seem to be flip sides of a coin. But when they meet, they definitely have that certain something, and these questions aren't so simple after a night like theirs.
Pia Benitez-Smith has her head in the clouds of ideals and romance. She's a photojournalist out to prove herself with her compassionate eye and although not exactly accident prone, most days trouble seems to find her. On one such day, she literally falls into the arms of the beautiful Cate. Elegant, intriguing and classy, Cate is Pia's polar opposite.
When the two dispute the importance of love versus money, Cate is adamant that her perfect night will always be an expensive one. Working class Pia can't resist the challenge and with the assistance of a beguiling summer night in London, she begins to enchant her new friend.
Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realise that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager - the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.
\nAs Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.
\nA sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.
Eunice Starling didn’t mean to fall for Joan Hart, but she did. How could she resist those stunning eyes, that dynamite smile? Months later, she didn’t want to leave Joan and marry a suitable man, but she did. Over the years, Eunice tried to forget, but she never forgave herself.
\nNow, 60 years later, Eunice comes face to face with Joan. They might be older, but Joan’s eyes are still the same. But after so long apart, is that enough? Are the pair destined to finally live out their big London dreams?
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When Erin Stewart hires a fake date for her parents’ anniversary party, she gets more than she bargained for. First, she gets Steph Mitchell, a professional actor with a side order of drop-dead gorgeous. Second, she walks slap-bang into a wall of family stress. Deep breaths, it’s only five days. Plus, with Steph’s help, she can totally get through this, right?
\nOnly, Erin didn’t plan on falling for the charming Steph. She’s also powerless when the simmering tension erupts, with dizzying consequences for everyone. What happens when you fake it, make it, then break it? Erin and Steph are about to find out.
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Thrown together when their plane conks out and a blizzard rolls in, Morgan Scott and her childhood friend Ali Bradford are on a mission to make it from Glasgow to Devon in time for Christmas.
\nThe catch? Roads and trains are up the spout, Morgan’s patience is running low, and Ali has had a secret crush on Morgan since forever. But she can keep a lid on over two decades of unrequited love. Particularly when they keep having to share a bed. Absolutely no problem at all.
\nAs Morgan and Ali inch south, they discover more about themselves and each other. This is one twisty road trip that takes them places they’ve never been before, and might just change their lives forever.
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Fran Bell is a music exec who’s welded to her career. Even when her parents move to a sleepy village called Mistletoe, she still vows to work through Christmas. When she tells the locals, their shock is palpable.
\nOne particular local stands out. Ruby O’Connell, a dazzling singer, and the last person Fran expects to find as her parents’ neighbour. They’ve crossed paths before in London. It wasn’t pretty.
\nWhen they’re thrown together to organise a Christmas festival, their relationship starts to thaw. But when old tensions boil up, can Fran and Ruby make the Mistletoe magic stick?
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When life knocks you down, can love pick you up?
\nTanya Grant is a high-flyer who’s ready for a fresh start. That is, until her gran dies, leaving behind her dog, Delilah, and a hot mess of family pain.
\nEnter Sophie London, dog walker and girl about town. She’s on a romance sabbatical after getting burnt, and nothing changes when she meets Tanya.
\nHowever, when their paths keep crossing, the pair are thrown together on a roadtrip to Tanya’s home town. What happens next changes both their lives forever.
\nJoin Tanya & Sophie on their journey of a lifetime as they discover whether love really can lift them up where they belong!
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Gina Gupta has never truly fallen for anyone. For a flat, yes. But a living, breathing woman? Nope. She came out late, and now she’s busy running her property firm. Perhaps she and love are simply incompatible.
\nWhen she meets business hotshot and TV star India Contelli, she’s sure that’s not going to change. India is rich, gorgeous and heartbroken. Gina sells her a rooftop dream, then leaves. At least, that was how the script was meant to go.
\nInstead, the duo end up tangled in each other’s lives, with neither wanting to escape. What’s more, when they set out on a mission to reunite two long-lost lovers, the last thing they expect is for the romantic stardust to work on them, too . . .
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Sloane Patterson is the ultimate hotshot: a US soccer sensation whose arrival in the UK causes quite the stir. She’s got the game, the fame, the looks, the fiancée. But looks can be deceiving.
\nWhen Sloane’s life starts to unravel, Salchester Rovers’ new hire, Ella Carmichael, helps her pick up the pieces. But as the lines between their professional and personal lives blur, tensions surface. Now, Sloane’s goal of helping the team win the league and FA Cup has a significant addition: win Ella’s heart.
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When two strangers meet in a bar and share a scorching, once-in-a-lifetime kiss, they never expect to see each other again. Until days later when Skye walks into Gemma’s Surrey vineyard. For once, Gemma is lost for words.
\nWhen they start working together, they agree nothing can happen. Business comes first.
\nBut such simmering sexual tension can only be contained for so long before the lid finally blows off . . .
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When Brooke's best friend Noah asks her to pose as his girlfriend for his sister's resort wedding, she can't refuse. Sure, she's a lesbian, but it's a free holiday. How hard can it be to fake it for a few days?
\nHarder than Brooke imagined when she meets Noah's mum, Jen. Sophisticated, confident, and utterly gorgeous, Jen is everything Brooke wants. With each sizzling glance, casual touch, and chance encounter, an irresistible attraction pulls Brooke towards the one woman she can't have.
\nAs their holiday in paradise unfolds, this scorching love triangle is about to reach its breaking point under the hot Mexican sun. Jen is strictly off-limits, but Brooke's heart doesn't care for rules. Can she keep her feelings buried, or will she just kiss her?
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Hannah Driver’s life is on the skids: single, newly jobless, and nursing ambitions of becoming a drag king that make her traditional family baulk. She’s at a crossroads.
Enter Cordy Starling, the charming and composed pianist who moves in with Hannah, and quickly becomes the nudge - or rather, full-on shove - Hannah needs to chase her dreams. The prospect of romance with Cordy twinkles on the horizon like a disco ball, promising glitter but guaranteeing chaos.
Together, they embark on a jagged journey of self-discovery, dodging family scepticism and their own reservations, as Hannah embraces her new persona, while winning over her toughest critic: herself. When Hannah and Cordy’s world merges with the cast of unforgettable characters from previous stories, it gives everyone the send-off they deserve.
Alice Di Santo has it all – everyone says so. Perfect boyfriend, great job, settled home life. But when she meets Rachel Cramer, all that changes. Because Rachel is everything Alice has never considered – and now cannot stop thinking about.
\nThis charming tale of coming out in your 30s sees Alice risk everything to go after what she wants, soon discovering she’s deserving of love - and especially this love, which takes her breath away.
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Two years after her marriage implodes, event-planner Cleo Nightingale is ready to get back in the dating game. However, she has one key rule: no younger women. How hard can it be?
\nFresh out of uni, Becca Cramer is single and ready to embrace her new career. She’s not looking for a relationship, but then fate steps in and introduces her to Cleo.
\nMix in two weddings & a festival, a jilted brother and a pregnant best friend, and you've got all the ingredients for a hilarious page-turner featuring the unlikely love-match of the year.
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Photographer Heidi Hughes has been single since her daughter was born. But now Maya’s walking and talking, she’s ready to meet someone who’s happy with her cute-but-chaotic extra.
\nEden Price’s world is all about order and precision: in her job, her home, her friendships. A PR guru, she’s designed her life to run like clockwork.
\nAt least she had, until the universe decided she needed to meet Heidi. Now, Eden’s not sure of much, because Heidi is everything she didn’t want, but now categorically does. Can the family-phobic singleton really be falling for the single mum?
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Poppy Voss has successfully dodged the family watch business her entire adult life, until her aunt threatens to sell it out from under her. Suddenly desperate to preserve the legacy, Poppy persuades her aunt to give her a chance to prove herself. There's just one tiny, soul-crushing she has to work alongside Eliza Carpenter, the childhood best friend she's been expertly avoiding since they were teenagers.
\nDragging the company into the 21st century should be simple enough. Except Poppy keeps getting distracted by how annoyingly attractive Eliza has become. Meanwhile, her sister won't stop consulting mediums about their dead mother, and then there's her growing suspicion that Eliza isn't revealing the full story.
\nWith everything she's ever cared about on the line - her family's legacy, her heart, and her future - Poppy must learn to rely on the one person she's not sure she can forgive, while discovering the most difficult person to believe in might be herself. But she better hurry up before time runs out . . .
Princess Victoria has perfected the royal calculated smile, convenient boyfriend, impeccable press. But behind the tiara ticks a heart that's tired of playing by the rules.
\nEnter Ashleigh England's football captain, media darling, and living proof that authenticity scores every time. When Victoria pins an MBE on Ash's lapel, the instant chemistry jolts both their worlds.
\nStolen glances become secret meetings. Private texts become tabloid gold. And suddenly, Victoria's tearing up her royal rulebook for a woman who makes her feel like more than her title. Ash has faced down penalty shootouts in European Cup finals, but winning Victoria's heart? That's the match of her life.
\nWhen their romance hits the headlines, it's game bow to tradition, or fight for a love that could change history. Victoria's got a crown to inherit. Ash has a legacy to defend. Neither planned to start a revolution, but when destiny meets desire, sometimes you have to risk it all to win.
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Single since forever, Natalie Hill has all but given up on love. She’s convinced herself and everyone else she wants a quiet life. But if a tall, dark and gorgeous stranger turned up on her doorstep, her plans might change . . . Enter Ellie Knap, who’s jump-starting her life in the Cotswolds after bailing on her relationship and her career. Her plan? To open an ice cream shop and melt into the village.
\nWhen the two meet it’s far from love at first sight, but then slowly, they become friends. Then one night, on a moonlit bridge, everything changes . . . But can Ellie pack up her old life in time to embrace the new? And can Natalie hold on tight when her quiet life suddenly gets deafeningly loud?
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A successful editor. A workaholic florist. It’s complicated, but is it love?
\nKate Carter has it all, except for a special person to share it with. The stylish, charismatic art editor has her sights set on someone, but a few unanswered questions keep her from making a move.
\nMeg Harding is single but stuck living with her ex. When she meets Kate, she sees a bright light at the end of her life’s dark tunnel. But it doesn’t take long for the florist’s secrets to nearly derail the promising pairing.
\nCan they overcome the obstacles they can’t control to find their happily-ever-after?
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Justine Thomas and Maddie Kind met at university and were the couple most likely. Everybody said so. That is, until Maddie left without saying goodbye.
\nTen years later the pair are reunited at a friend’s funeral, and now Justine can’t shake Maddie from her life. But why is she back? Why did she disappear? And more importantly, is she interested in the whole cake, or just one last slice of Justine?
\nStrap in for a novel that deals with life’s big topics: love, death & cake.
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Max and Pip are the strongest couple you know. Only now they're facing the most important decision of their lives - and they don't agree.
\nWith the consequences of an impossible choice threatening to devastate them both, nothing will ever be the same again.
\nBut anything can happen after the end . . .
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When Lizzie's daughter Meg is given a life-saving heart transplant, Lizzie feels hugely grateful to the nameless donor. Then she receives a letter from the donor's mother, Karen, asking to meet, and it seems like the least she can do.
\nBut as soon as Karen is welcomed into their lives, Lizzie feels something isn't right. And before long, she can't help but worry that by inviting Karen in, she might have put Meg in danger . . .
Stranded in the Welsh mountains, seven reality show contestants have no idea what they've signed up for.
\nEach of these strangers has a secret. If another player can guess the truth, they won't just be eliminated - they'll be exposed live on air. The stakes are higher than they'd ever imagined, and they're trapped.
\nThe disappearance of a contestant wasn't supposed to be part of the drama. Detective Ffion Morgan has to put aside what she's watched on screen, and find out who these people really are - knowing she can't trust any of them.
\nAnd when a murderer strikes, Ffion knows every one of her suspects has an alibi . . . and a secret worth killing for.
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You can save hundreds of lives. Or the one that matters most.
\nMina is trying to focus on her job as a flight attendant, not the problems of her five-year-old daughter back home, or the fissures in her marriage. But the plane has barely taken off when Mina receives a chilling note from an anonymous passenger, someone intent on ensuring the plane never reaches its destination. Someone who needs Mina's assistance and who knows exactly how to make her comply.
\nIt's twenty hours to landing. A lot can happen in twenty hours.
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In a split second, Jenna Gray's world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from everything she knows to start afresh. Desperate to escape, Jenna moves to a remote cottage on the Welsh coast, but she is haunted by her fears, her grief and her memories of a cruel November night that changed her life forever.
Slowly, Jenna begins to glimpse the potential for happiness in her future. But her past is about to catch up with her, and the consequences will be devastating . . .
You do the same thing every day.
You know exactly where you're going.
You're not alone.
When Zoe Walker sees her photo in the classifieds section of a London newspaper, she is determined to find out why it's there. There's no explanation: just a website, a grainy image and a phone number. She takes it home to her family, who are convinced it's just someone who looks like Zoe. But the next day the advert shows a photo of a different woman, and another the day after that.
Is it a mistake? A coincidence? Or is someone keeping track of every move they make . . .
Nadeeka is certain Jamie is having an affair. She knows the tell-tale signs. She’s been here before.
\nWhen Jamie claims to be at work late, she knows he’s lying. He’s with another woman, and she’s determined to catch him in the act. But when Nadeeka arrives home to confront him, Jamie can't explain himself. The house has become a crime scene . . .
\nJamie is dead.
\nOn New Year’s Eve, Rhys Lloyd has a house full of guests. His vacation homes on Mirror Lake are a success, and he’s generously invited the village to drink champagne with their wealthy new neighbors.
\nOn New Year’s Day, Ffion Morgan has a village full of suspects. The tiny community is her home, so the suspects are her neighbors, friends and family - and Ffion has her own secrets to protect.
\nWith a lie uncovered at every turn, soon the question isn’t who wanted Rhys dead . . . but who finally killed him.
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The police say it was suicide.
Anna says it was murder.
They're both wrong.
One year ago, Caroline Johnson chose to end her life brutally: a shocking suicide planned to match that of her husband just months before. Their daughter, Anna, has struggled to come to terms with their loss ever since.
Now with a young baby of her own, Anna misses her mother more than ever and starts to question her parents’ deaths. But by digging up their past, she’ll put her future in danger. Sometimes it’s safer to let things lie . . .
The Hill is the kind of place everyone wants to live: luxurious, exclusive and safe. But now someone is breaking and entering these Cheshire homes one by one, and DS Leo Brady suspects the burglar is looking for something, or someone, in particular.
\nOver the border in Wales, DC Ffion Morgan recovers the body of an estate agent from the lake. There's no love lost between Ffion and estate agents, but who hated this one enough to want her dead - and why?
\nAs their cases collide, Ffion and Leo discover people will pay a high price to keep their secrets behind closed doors . . .
When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens’ Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she’ll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards.
\nThe members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign - but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide.
\nWhen the city council threatens to sell the doomed community center building, the members of the Social Club join forces with their tiny friends in the daycare next door - as well as the teenaged father of one of the toddlers and a geriatric dog - to save the building. Together, this group’s unorthodox methods may actually work, as long as the police don’t catch up with them first.
Every day Iona, a larger-than-life magazine advice columnist, travels the ten stops from Hampton Court to Waterloo Station by train, accompanied by her dog, Lulu. Every day she sees the same people, whom she knows only by nickname: Impossibly-Pretty-Constant-Reader and Terribly-Lonely-Teenager. Of course, they never speak. Seasoned commuters never do.
\nThen one morning, the man she calls Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader chokes on a grape right in front of her. He'd have died were it not for the timely intervention of Sanjay, a nurse, who gives him the Heimlich maneuver.
\nThis single event starts a chain reaction, and an eclectic group of people with almost nothing in common except their commute discover that a chance encounter can blossom into much more. It turns out that talking to strangers can teach you about the world around you - and even more about yourself.
The story of a solitary green notebook that brings together six strangers and leads to unexpected friendship, and even love
Julian Jessop, an eccentric, lonely artist and septuagenarian believes that most people aren't really honest with each other. But what if they were? And so he writes--in a plain, green journal--the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local café. It's run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street. Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves--and soon find each other In Real Life at Monica's Café.
The Authenticity Project's cast of characters--including Hazard, the charming addict who makes a vow to get sober; Alice, the fabulous mommy Instagrammer whose real life is a lot less perfect than it looks online; and their other new friends--is by turns quirky and funny, heartbreakingly sad and painfully true-to-life. It's a story about being brave and putting your real self forward--and finding out that it's not as scary as it seems. In fact, it looks a lot like happiness.
The Authenticity Project is just the tonic for our times that readers are clamoring for--and one they will take to their hearts and read with unabashed pleasure.
From cocktails to cold tea, and swanky dinners to school-gate antics, Rachel Walker has lost her old life - and her identity. But when the new term begins, and she's swept into the Parent WhatsApp group chat, she's determined to find her purpose again.
\nThen a fellow mum turns up dead after the PTA Bake-Off party . . . and Rachel was the last person to message the group.
\nWith rumours flying and trial-by-mum-chat in full swing, Rachel joins forces with closest friend Jane and their new ally Frankie. Together, the trio swap the playground for playing detectives, and soon uncover that at this Bake-Off, poison was very much on the menu.
\nBut when Rachel stumbles on the juiciest secret of all, she has to ask how far will she go to clear her name?
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After a few socially awkward months at the school playground (being accused of murder will do that), Rachel is relieved that spring has finally arrived. Even more surprising? Natasha is being nice. Suspiciously nice.
\nSo when Rachel and Frankie are invited to Natasha's Boozy Bingo birthday night out, they do what any sensible mums would do: assume the worst . . . then go anyway. But the morning after brings hangovers, regrets . . . and a missing person.
\nWith a cryptic Instagram post and hazy memories, panic sets in fast. Even more so when DI Harding shares CCTV footage of a hooded figure leaving the hotel.
\nDragged back into sleuthing (and loving every second), Rachel and Frankie reform The Jam Sandwich Detectives, questioning hungover mums, reigniting old friendships with the police, and discovering that everyone is hiding something.
\nAs evidence piles up and suspicions multiply, one thing becomes clear: this was no ordinary night out . . . and someone is running out of time.
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Summer, 1993. In the aftermath of her mother's suicide attempt, 16-year-old Prue must spend the summer holidays on a remote island in the Shetlands with her favourite Aunt Ruth and Uncle Archie, a man she's barely met since her aunt married him. Prue hopes to re-establish the relationship, and that her aunt might help her understand some of the parts of the past she has been forbidden to discuss by her mother - including the identity of her father.
\nPrue soon finds out her uncle was the only suspect in the disappearance of a local girl some twenty years ago. As she grows closer to him, she learns there are different views on how the beguiling Evelyn O'Hara disappeared, but is he innocent?
\nA single version of the truth seems impossible to lock down, and the truth is something Prue has a fractured relationship with.
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We were never destined to have anything - so you know what we did? We took it anyway. 1922.
\n20-year-old Eleanor Mackridge is horrified by the future mapped out for her - to serve the upper classes or find a man to marry (preferably kind). She 'proved useful' working in a munitions factory during the war - handling explosives - but now, society is returning to normal and women are being put back in their place.
\nBut Eleanor has never paid attention to what society expects of her. When she crosses paths with a member of the notorious female-led gang the Forty Elephants, she is in awe of these bold women who wear diamonds and fur, drink champagne and gin, who take what they want without asking. Now, she sees a new future for she can serve, marry - or steal.
\nAfter all, men will only let you down. Diamonds are forever.
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To be a client of Gwendolyn Montgomery’s - New York’s most powerful publicist at Sublime Creative - is to be infused with a certain oomph, a mysterious glamour. She seems to have created the ideal life with her handsome new boyfriend, the perfect match. But Gwendolyn has a legion of long-buried secrets that could unravel everything.
\nAfter a grisly, bizarre incident at the Brooklyn Museum, Gwendolyn begins to realise that something nefarious is happening tied directly to her past, right as Fonsi Harewood comes back into her world. Fonsi is a queer Latinx psychic from the South Bronx who’s caught up in a love triangle with a ghost and his mortal ex. He’s able to communicate with the dead, and he comes with a dire warning for Gwendolyn that the barrier between humans and spirits is weakening.
\nGwendolyn would prefer not to have anything to do with ghostly drama. Yet in order to get to the bottom of the spookiness derailing her life and threatening the world, she must face the demons she’d long left behind.
Stella James is back in town after ditching her friends for her (now) ex, whose career took her to London, and she’s bound to make a big entrance at her best friend’s wedding. What Stella fears more than an awkward reunion, though? Theo and their messy more than friendship but never quite love.
\nTheo Kingsley is an activist and a human rights lawyer in the making, oh, and she thinks monogamy is so last century. Stella couldn’t be any less socially conscious if she tried, unlike the women Theo dates. It’s not as if Stella really believes forever exists, but she’ll never understand how Theo can seem so into her and be dating other people at the same time.
\nWhen things between them quickly get complicated again, their push and pull threatens to ruin the friendship in all the worst ways and break their whole friend group apart.
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Four sexy couples break stereotypes about committed sex to explore lust and love when the honeymoon is over.
\nWhile Laura and Max explore the boundaries of monogamy by sharing fantasies that involve others in State of the Union, Noa and Lauren learn the meaning of devotion and trust in Not Like Other Girls. In A Proper Lady, Nora unleashes her possessive side with Maddie, and in Teacher’s Pet Sara and Natalie engage in hot, dynamic role play.
\nWeaving intimacy and insight to showcase a range of passion, Yes, Honey proves that commitment is not the end of erotic adventure, but the beginning.
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Lia fled her home after a brutal crime decades ago, but family, and the truth, will never let you go. Thirty years ago, in an empty plot of a quiet neighbourhood, a teenage girl's body was found quartered and burned. The investigation ended with no arrests and her family - middle class, educated, Catholic - quietly disintegrated.
\nThree decades later, the hidden truth comes to light thanks to the father's enduring love for the victim. That truth will reveal the raw realities lurking behind appearances, the cruelty of those who prioritize obedience and religious fanaticism, the complicity of the fearful and the indifferent, and the loneliness and desperation of those who seek to follow their own path, ignoring the dictates of their elders.
\nJust as she did with Elena Knows and A Little Luck , Claudia Piñeiro delves into family ties, social prejudice, and the ideologies and institutions that affect our inner worlds to deliver a brave, moving novel that strikes at the heart of these private dramas.
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Fifteen years after killing her husband’s lover, Inés is fresh out of prison and trying to put together a new life. Her old friend Manca is out now too, and they’ve started a business - FFF, or Females, Fumigation, and Flies - dedicated to pest control and private investigation, by women, for women.
\nBut Señora Bonar, one of their clients, wants Inés to do more than kill bugs - she wants her expertise, and her criminal past, to help get her kill her husband’s lover, too. Crimes against women versus crimes by women; culpability, fallibility, and our responsibilities to each other - this is Piñeiro at her wry, earthy best, alive to all the ways we shape ourselves to be understandable, to be understood, by family and love and other hostile forces.
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A convicted serial killer has finally agreed to reveal where he buried thirteen women.
\nBut when forensic specialists Jayne and Steelie are called in to identify the bodies, they make a horrifying discovery. What should be a series of cold cases have a terrifying connection to a woman who has just gone missing.
\nJayne and Steelie are in a race against time as their work puts them on a collision course with another killer - one who will stop at nothing to bury the truth forever.
When a body is discovered on a college campus, the local police call specialist forensic experts Jayne Hall and Steelie Lander to help identify the victim. But what seems like a straightforward case of identification quickly becomes terrifyingly familiar as the pair uncover chilling clues that suggest the student was murdered, and that the killer will strike again.
\nAs they dig deeper, a second body is found, bearing striking similarities to the first. With a dangerous murderer closing in, Jayne and Steelie find themselves in a killer's sights - and they're determined to stop them before more lives are lost.
\nIn a race against time, can they catch the killer? Or will they become the next victims in a deadly game of cat and mouse?
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Jayne and Steelie founded Agency 32/1 with one purpose in using their specialist forensic skills to help police solve crimes.
\nWhen a bundle of frozen body parts fall out of a van on a Los Angeles freeway, FBI agent Scott Houston knows just where to go for an off-the-record post-mortem. But to everyone’s horror, Jayne and Steelie quickly determine the parts aren’t from one body. The body parts are from multiple bodies.
\nA serial killer is on the loose. Worse, Scott’s call has put Jayne and Steelie’s lives in jeopardy, as their unique skills can uncover evidence to unmask the killer. Can they find the killer, before the killer finds them?
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Our world today would not be the same without Cleopatra. While she is one of the most famous figures in history, the legendary Egyptian queen remains, in many ways, an enigma. In this mesmerizing history, Alberto Angela offers a fresh and dynamic portrait of this extraordinary ruler, revealing a strikingly modern woman born in an ancient era and skilled in the art of diplomacy and war, who would conquer the heart of a general—Marc Antony—and Rome itself.
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Cleopatra focuses on a twenty-year period that marked a sweeping change in Roman history, beginning with the assassination of Julius Caesar that led to the end of the Republic, and ending with the suicides of Antony and Cleopatra and the birth of the Augustan Empire. Angela brings the people, stories, customs, and traditions of this fascinating period alive as he transports us to the chaotic streets of the capital of the ancient world, the exotic port of Alexandria in Egypt, and to the bloody battlefields where an empire was won and lost.
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Meticulously researched and rich with vivid detail, this sweeping history, reminiscent of the works of Simon Schama, Mary Beard’s SPQR, and Tom Holland’s Rubicon, recreates this remarkable era and the woman at its turbulent center.
In a world where dragons stalk the skies and magical abilities are an elite privilege, the ruling family of Ailm’s Keep is on a knife can Ionain, the heir apparent, channel magic, or will the family be cast out and replaced by a cruel master from a neighbouring land?
\nSo when Éadha, a servant girl who loves Ionain, discovers that she can draw power, she finds herself in grave danger. It’s extremely rare for a girl to have this talent, and certainly never outside the great families. At Ionain’s moment of truth, Éadha makes a desperate gamble to save him, Ailm’s Keep, and ultimately herself.
\nAs Éadha and Ionain enter a whirlwind of patriarchy, class, heartache and jealousy, they learn about power’s terrible cost - a price others willingly pay to maintain theirs.
\nHow far would you go to empower the one you love?
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Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister's death in this unforgettable story of grief, identity, and the complexities of family.
\nThe three Blue sisters are exceptional - and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.
\nBut coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize the greatest secrets they've been keeping might not have been from each other, but from themselves.
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Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank's life is full of all the excesses Cleo's lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a Green Card. But their impulsive marriage irreversibly changes both their lives, and the lives of those close to them, in ways they never could've predicted.
\nEach compulsively readable chapter explores the lives of Cleo, Frank, and an unforgettable cast of their closest friends and family as they grow up and grow older. Whether it's Cleo's best friend struggling to embrace his gender queerness in the wake of Cleo's marriage, or Frank's financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates to support herself after being cut off, or Cleo and Frank themselves as they discover the trials of marriage and mental illness, each character is as absorbing, and painfully relatable, as the last.
\nAs hilarious as it is heartbreaking, entertaining as it is deeply moving, Cleopatra and Frankenstein marks the entry of a brilliant and bold new talent.
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I gaze across the candlelit table into the eyes of the man I love. It’s our anniversary dinner, a celebration of our marriage, of how far we’ve come. But within hours our romantic date has ended in murder . . .
\nWhen I wake in a hospital bed, blinking under the blinding white lights, I hear someone saying there has been an accident. My heart misses a beat when I recognise my husband’s voice. He says I was driving the car. He says I’ve killed someone.
\nI can’t breathe. I know I wasn’t the one behind the wheel. Tom was.
\nThe love of my life - the handsome, clever man I’ve been married to for five years - has betrayed me. But why? And on the anniversary of our wedding day . . .
\nI need to uncover the secrets he’s been keeping. Before I lose my freedom - or my life . . .
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Erin is determined to begin a new chapter in her life. Having freed herself from her violent and abusive ex, she’s starting over on a remote island where she can lead a peaceful, quiet life.
\nBut then she meets Dominic. He is pushy and won’t take no for an answer. Given her history, Erin feels nervous of him – how far will he go to get what he wants? Even worse, Erin discovers her ex-husband has been released from prison. Will he come after her again?
\nAnd her terror only increases when it becomes clear there is a killer loose on the island.
\nRefusing to live in fear any longer, she devises a dangerous plan to unmask the killer. But in so doing she stumbles across the deadly secret at the heart of this island community, a discovery more terrifying than anything she could ever have imagined . . .
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The accident took her father’s life. It also took Amelia’s memories . . .
\nAll Amelia has been told about the missing four years of her life is that her husband Carl found her after the car accident that killed her father, and they lived in the city together before moving to the suburbs.
\nShe has no reason to question his story, but she knows Carl, and she can tell he’s holding something back. When he cries out in his sleep for Emily, she suspects he had an affair during her missing time and is trying to hide it from her.
\nWhen flashes of memories being to return, Amelia knows she can’t sit back any longer. But once she opens the floodgates, the truth is more twisted than she ever could have imagined.
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Looking out at our beautiful estate, the home I thought we’d raise our future children in, I watch helplessly as my husband Paul takes his mistress’s arm and leads her inside. My heart twists as they laugh together, without a care in the world. If he and Marianne think they can start over without me, they’re gravely mistaken.
\nI worked myself to the bone for him, keeping our home pristine, supporting his art, using funds from my business to keep us afloat. Tears fill my eyes as I remember all the lonely nights I spent waiting for him to come home.
\nMy phone lights up with a message from Marianne’s husband. When I told him what she’d done, I never imagined he’d reveal secrets far worse than my husband’s. Or that he’d have a plan to get even. A little scare to fix both of our marriages, and Paul would never find out I was involved . . .
\nBut when our carefully laid plan takes a deadly turn, I wonder just how much I can trust my accomplice. And what I’ll be forced to do to get back what’s mine . . .
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While going through a bitter divorce, Laura moves home to care for her widowed father who suffers from dementia.
\nQuickly realising she can’t handle her dad alone, Laura hires nurse Bella and her dementia-specialist brother, Andrei, to look after him. The siblings are the perfect caregivers, effectively handling her father’s needs and mood swings.
\nThen accidents begin happening around the estate, and her dad takes a drastic turn for the worse. He becomes violent and claims he’s being poisoned. Is it true? Or is his illness causing paranoia?
\nAs Laura tries to get to the truth, she begins to realise that the caregivers are not who they seem, that they may have a sinister agenda of their own. But who are they really? And what do they want?
\nThe answers to these questions are more horrifying than anything Laura could ever have imagined . . .
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High school can be hell.
\nEspecially if you go to Sherman Oaks High School where Bea Ardent is the unquestioned head-biatch-in-charge.
\nRich, pretty, popular, and a heartbreaker, she gets what she wants from whoever she wants - whether the target is her family, fellow students, or even teachers and administration.
\nIf you get in her way, or do something she doesn’t like, she’s happy to show you the error of your ways - by being the most vicious Mean Girl in the school’s history.
\nBut that’s only scratching the surface of the darkness hidden behind this aspiring model’s perfect smile. It’s fear, not charisma, that she uses to get her way - and Bea knows just how to inflict it.
\nWhen sweet, charismatic transfer student Melanie Glass threatens her position as the most popular girl in school, Bea will stop at nothing to ensure she remains queen and show Melanie the true depths of her depravity.
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Three years after the tragic death of her wonderful husband, Charlene continues to mourn.
\nAs she struggles to pick up the pieces of her shattered life, she meets Samuel. Handsome and educated, this charming man is the perfect suitor, and Charlene slowly lets her guard down and opens her heart to him.
\nBut Samuel is not the man he appears to be. He has a dark compulsion. And an even darker secret.
\nWhen he begins acting strangely, Charlene suspects something is wrong. Her fears only grow when she notices she is being followed. Unsure whether she can really trust Samuel, Charlene takes matters into her own hands and starts to investigate.
\nWhat she finds is beyond her worst nightmares.
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Roses are read, violets are blue, if you hurt us, we’re coming for you.
The deeply secretive Black Coats have been exacting vengeance on men who hurt girls and women for years. And Thea has just received an invitation to join them. This is the opportunity she’s been waiting for to finally get justice for her cousin Natalie, whose killer went free.
Thea dives head first into the group, training every day with other girls whose stories rival hers. Together they carry out Balancings - acts of revenge guaranteed to teach a lesson. With every predator threatened, every blackmailer exposed, and every date rapist punished, Thea can feel herself getting closer to avenging Natalie’s death.
But then the Balancings begin to escalate in brutality, and Thea discovers that the Black Coats are not all they seem to be. Thea must confront just how far she’s willing to go for justice - and what kind of justice Natalie, and Thea herself, deserve. Because when the line between justice and revenge is razor thin, it’s hard not to get cut.
Dinah has been exiled from Wonderland. The vicious father she always feared has framed her for the brutal murder of her brother and turned the kingdom against her.
Now hiding in the lush and mysterious Twisted Wood with only her war steed at her side, Dinah is faced with a choice. She could leave Wonderland forever or return and fight her father for her throne - a fight she knows would only result in bloodshed.
When a chance encounter with one of her father’s long-lost enemies brings Dinah more allies than she ever could have imagined, war starts to feel inevitable. But before Dinah can lead her people into combat, she must confront certain truths about her heart and her destiny - no matter how dark those truths may be.
Revolution is rising in Wonderland.
Dinah’s battle has begun.
Mabel is one of the last surviving members of House Beuvry, one of the eleven houses on the haunted island of Weymouth. Her days, like all the other teens on the island, are spent readying her house for The Storm: a once-a-decade event that pummels the island with hurricane-level wind, water, and waves. But that’s not all the Storm brings with it - because Weymouth Island is a gate between the world of the living and the dead.
\nWhen Miles Cabot arrives on Weymouth Island after the death of his mother, he realises quickly it isn’t like other places - and Mabel Beuvry isn’t like other teenagers. There’s an intense chemistry between Miles and Mabel that both feel, yet neither understand - nor the deadly consequences that will come with it.
\nWith the suspicious death of an island elder, a strained dynamic with her younger sister Hali, and the greatest Storm in years edging ever closer, Mabel’s life is becoming as chaotic as the weather. One thing becomes clear: if the fortified houses of Weymouth Island can’t stand against the dead, then she - and everyone she loves - will pay the price.
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This is not the story of the Wonderland we know. Alice has not fallen down a rabbit hole. There is no all-knowing cat with a taunting smile. This is a Wonderland where beneath each smile lies a secret, each tart comes with a demand, and only prisoners tell the truth.
Dinah is the princess who will one day reign over Wonderland. She has not yet seen the dark depths of her kingdom; she longs only for her father’s approval and a future with the boy she loves. But when a betrayal breaks her heart and threatens her throne, she is launched into Wonderland’s dangerous political game. Dinah must stay one step ahead of her cunning enemies or she’ll lose not just the crown but her head.
Evil is brewing in Wonderland and maybe, most frighteningly, in Dinah herself.
This is not a story of happily ever after.
This is the story of the Queen of Hearts.
Dorothy Must Die meets Alice in Wonderland.
\nThis is not a story of happily ever after - it’s the heart-stopping conclusion in the twisted YA origin story of the infamous villain, the Queen of Hearts.
\nDinah has lost everyone she ever loved. Her brother was brutally murdered. The man she believed was her father betrayed her. Her loyal subjects have been devastated by war. And the boy she gave her heart to broke it completely.
\nNow a dark queen has risen out of the ashes of her former life. Fury is blooming inside Dinah, poisoning her soul and twisting her mind. All she has left is Wonderland and her crown, and her obsession to fight for both. But the war rages on, and Dinah could inherit a bloodstained throne.
\nCan a leader filled with love and rage ever be the ruler her kingdom needs? Or will her all-consuming wrath bring Wonderland to its knees?
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On the eve of what was supposed to be a triumphant “Cancerversary” with her husband Jack to celebrate three years of being cancer-free, Daisy suffers a devastating blow: her doctor tells her that the cancer is back, but this time it’s an aggressive stage four diagnosis. She may have as few as four months left to live. Death is a frightening prospect - but not because she’s afraid for herself. She’s terrified of what will happen to her brilliant but otherwise charmingly helpless husband when she’s no longer there to take care of him. It’s this fear that keeps her up at night, until she stumbles on the solution: she has to find him another wife.
With a singular determination, Daisy scouts local parks and coffee shops and online dating sites looking for Jack’s perfect match. But the further she gets on her quest, the more she questions the sanity of her plan. As the thought of her husband with another woman becomes all too real, Daisy’s forced to decide what’s more important in the short amount of time she has left: her husband’s happiness - or her own?
Jubilee Jenkins has a rare condition: she’s allergic to human touch. After a nearly fatal accident, she became reclusive, living in the confines of her home for nine years. But after her mother dies, Jubilee is forced to face the world - and the people in it - that she’s been hiding from.
Jubilee finds safe haven at her local library where she gets a job. It’s there she meets Eric Keegan, a divorced man who recently moved to town with his brilliant, troubled, adopted son. Eric is struggling to figure out how to be the dad - and man - he wants so desperately to be.
Jubilee is unlike anyone he has ever met, yet he can't understand why she keeps him at arm's length. So Eric sets out to convince Jubilee to open herself and her heart to everything life can offer, setting into motion the most unlikely love story of the year.
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Jane and Dan have been married for nineteen years, but Jane isn’t sure they’re going to make it to twenty. The mother of two feels unneeded by her teenagers, and her writing career has screeched to an unsuccessful halt. Her one published novel sold under five hundred copies. Worse? She’s pretty sure Dan is cheating on her. When the couple goes to the renowned upscale restaurant La Fin du Monde to celebrate their anniversary, Jane thinks it’s as good a place as any to tell Dan she wants a divorce.
\nBut before they even get to the second course, an underground climate activist group bursts into the dining room. Jane is shocked - and not just because she’s in a hostage situation the likes of which she’s only seen in the movies. Nearly everything the disorganised and bumbling activists say and do is right out of the pages of her failed book. Even Dan (who Jane wasn’t sure even read her book) admits it’s eerily familiar.
\nWhich means Dan and Jane are the only ones who know what’s going to happen next. And they’re the only ones who can stop it. This wasn’t what Jane was thinking of when she said “’til death do us part” all those years ago, but if they can survive this, maybe they can survive anything - even marriage.
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Twenty-one-year-old Tanner Quimby needs a place to live. Preferably one where she can continue sitting around in sweatpants and playing video games nineteen hours a day. Since she has no credit or money to speak of, her options are limited, so when an opportunity to work as a live-in caregiver for an elderly woman falls into her lap, she takes it.
\nOne slip on the rug. That’s all it took for Louise Wilt’s daughter to demand that Louise have a full-time nanny living with her. Never mind that she can still walk fine, finish her daily crossword puzzle, and pour the two fingers of vodka she drinks every afternoon. Bottom line - Louise wants a caretaker even less than Tanner wants to be one.
\nThe two start off their living arrangement happily ignoring each other until Tanner starts to notice things - weird things. Like, why does Louise keep her garden shed locked up tighter than a prison? And why is the local news fixated on the suspect of one of the biggest jewelry heists in American history who looks eerily like Louise? And why does Louise suddenly appear in her room, with a packed bag at 1 a.m. insisting that they leave town immediately?
\nThus begins the story of a not-to-be-underestimated elderly woman and an aimless young woman who - if they can outrun the mistakes of their past - might just have the greatest adventure of their lives.
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Mia Graydon's life looks picket-fence perfect; she has the house, her loving husband, and dreams of starting a family. But she has other dreams too - unexplained, recurring ones starring the same man. Still, she doesn’t think much of them, until a relocation to small-town Pennsylvania brings her face to face with the stranger she has been dreaming about for years. And this man harbors a jaw-dropping secret of his own - he's been dreaming of her too.
Determined to understand, Mia and this not-so-stranger search for answers. But when diving into their pasts begins to unravel her life in the present, Mia emerges with a single question - what if?
Acclaimed author Colleen Oakley delivers a heart-wrenching and unforgettable love story about a woman who must choose between the man she loves and the man fate has chosen for her in a novel that reminds us that the best life is one led by the heart.
1971, New York City. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is going bankrupt, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney is trying to keep his head down, his business up and his life straight. But then he needs Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter May and he decides to hit up an old police contact, who wants favours in return. For Ray, staying out of the game gets a lot more complicated - and deadly.
\n1. The old ways are being overthrown by the thriving counterculture, but Pepper, Carney’s enduringly violent partner in crime, is a constant. In these difficult times, Pepper takes on a side gig doing security on a Blaxploitation shoot in Harlem, finding himself in a world of Hollywood stars and celebrity drug dealers, in addition to the usual cast of hustlers, mobsters and hit men. These adversaries underestimate the seasoned crook - to their regret.
\n2. Harlem is burning, while the country gears up for the Bicentennial. Carney is trying to come up with a celebratory July 4th advertisement he can actually live with, while his wife Elizabeth is campaigning for her childhood friend, rising politician Alexander Oakes. When a fire seriously injures one of Carney’s tenants, he enlists Pepper to look into who may be behind it, navigating a crumbling metropolis run by the shady, the violent and the utterly corrupt.
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Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked. To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver’s Row don’t approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it’s still home.
\nFew people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.
\nCash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn’t ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn’t ask questions, either.
\nThen Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa - the “Waldorf of Harlem” - and volunteers Ray’s services as the fence. The heist doesn’t go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.
\nThus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?
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“Ask anyone non-Northern, they’ll only know Donny as a punchline of a joke or place they changed trains once ont way to London.”
\nBut it’s also the home of Rach, Kel, and Shaz, bezzies since childhood. From scheming one another’s first kisses, to sneaking vodka (or the occasional Cointreau) into school in water bottles, to accompanying one another to Family Planning for pregnancy tests, the girls come of age together, Donny lasses through and through.
\nNever mind that Rach is skeptical of Shaz’s bolder plots; or that Shaz, who comes from a rougher end of town, feels left behind when the others begin plotting a course to uni; or that Kel sometimes feels split in two trying to keep the peace - the girls are inseparable, their friendship as indestructible as they are. But as the girls grow up and away from each other, a long-festering secret threatens to rip the trio apart. Is their shared past enough to keep them close?
\nWritten in a Yorkshire dialect that brings a place and its people magnificently to life, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh spans decades and continents as its heroines come of age, never shying from the ugly truths of girlhood. Like Trainspotting and Shuggie Bain, it tracks hard-edged lives and makes them sing, making one overlooked and forgotten place the very center of the world.
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The captain of a ragtag mercenary ship is given an offer she can't refuse by the ruthless head of an intergalactic noble family. The only catch? She'll have to team up with his son - an upsettingly competent hardbody with his own agenda - to get her reward.
\nShe’s got a ramshackle spaceship, a misfit crew, and a big problem with its sexy newest member . . .
\nTemperance Reed, banished from the wealthy and dangerous Fifteen Families, just wants to keep her crew together after their feckless captain ran off with the intern. But she’s drowning in debt and revolutionary new engine technology is about to make her beloved ship obsolete.
\nEnter Arcadio Escajeda. Second child of the terrifying Escajeda Family, he’s the thorn in Temper’s side as they’re sent off on a scouting mission on the backwater desert planet of Herschel 2. They throw sparks every time they meet but Temper’s suspicions of his ulterior motives only serve to fuel the flames between them.
\nDespite volcanic eruptions, secret cultists, and deadly galactic fighters, the greatest threat on this mission may be to Temper’s heart.
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Engineer Caro Ogunyemi thinks she has everything in control. Sure, she has a dark secret in her past and aim so bad that she can’t shoot the side of a spaceship when she’s right in front of it, but those are minor details in the life of a space mercenary. When Caro embarks on a solo mission infiltrating a prison planet that is run by the deadly Pierce family, she embraces the opportunity to prove she’s a hero.
\nIt's there that Caro meets Leviathan, a super soldier with a chip in his head that turns him into a mindless killer. He’s drop dead gorgeous with an emphasis on drop dead, until she touches him and renders his chip inert. The danger begins when she lets him go.
\nIn the heart of enemy territory, where love is at stake, life is treacherous and time is short, Caro and Leviathan must figure out how to recover his agency, protect her crew from Pierce’s sinister machinations, and stage a prison-break before Leviathan is lost to her - and himself - forever.
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Cynbelline Khaw is a woman of many names. She’s Generosity, a cultist who never quite fit in. She’s Bella, the daughter who failed to save her cousin’s life. And then there’s Cyn, the notorious bounty hunter who spaced a ship of slavers.
\nShe’s exhausted, lonely, and on her very last legs - but then a new client offers her a job she can’t refuse: a bounty on the kidnapper who killed her cousin. All Cyn has to do is partner with the crew of the Calamity, a scouting vessel she encountered when she was living under a previous alias. One tiny little issue, she’s been given an additional deliver the oh-so-compelling medic, Micah Arora, to the treacherous Pierce Family or all her identities will be revealed, putting her estranged family in danger.
\nHunting a kidnapper doesn’t usually mean accidentally taking your sexy new target to dinner at your parent’s house, a local mystic predicting you’ll have an increasingly large number of children, or being accompanied by a small flying lizard with a penchant for eating metal, but, as they field investigative hurdles both dangerous and preposterous, Cyn and Micah grow ever closer.
\nWhen a violent confrontation reveals that everything Cyn thought about her past is wrong, she realizes that she has the power to change her future. The first part of that is making sure that Micah Arora is around to be a part of it.
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Izzy Treadway has a reputation as a love guru. She knows exactly what ignites the spark for others, but she has no desire to find love herself. You see, Izzy’s bipolar and not only fears being seen as damaged goods but is terrified that if anything goes wrong, it might just send her back to the hospital. Nevertheless, her best friend decides Izzy’s the perfect person to write The Idiot’s Guide to Love.
While researching and writing the book, Izzy finds herself falling for Jane Mendoza, the new intern at work. Everything’s perfect until Izzy tells her she’s bipolar and Jane leaves her, claiming the dreaded “It’s not you, it’s me.\"
Izzy’s devastated, but heartbreak teaches her she’s stronger than she gives herself credit for. As Izzy and Jane learn their pasts don’t define their future, they’ll need to get out of their own way to discover love can overcome any obstacle.
When Sydney and Mae meet on the playground as toddlers, it seems like kismet. Even their very different mothers - the type-A Beth Ann and the free-spirited Joni - agree the girls are made for each other, and it's not long before even the mothers become inseparable.
\nThen a falling out draws them apart, and decades later, the loneliness still lingers for the newly pregnant Sydney. Adrift in the absence of her closest friend, Sydney has been drawn into a Multi-Level Marketing scheme, exacerbated by the demands of her inflexible mother, Beth Ann, whose constant scrutiny seems reserved only for her daughter.
\nAcross the city, Mae is stunned to find herself single, pregnant, and still haunted by the loss of her mercurial late mother, Joni, whose mysterious death holds as many unanswered questions as Mae does herself. Mae is an artist who has lived under the shadow of the one painting (of two girls) that made her famous years ago, the success of which confines as much as it defines her.
\nWhen Sydney and Mae find themselves back in one another’s lives, each with a baby girl on the horizon, it once again seems like destiny. Each begins to pull the other away from the coercive influence of outsiders - mommy groups, marketing schemes, artistic pressures, and ex-boyfriends. But the two women will soon discover that it’s not destiny that has drawn them together this time, but a devastating secret at the center of their orbits - a truth that finally will bind them or shatter them, for good.
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American presidents have often pushed the boundaries established for them by the Constitution; this is the inspirational history of the people who pushed back.
\nImagine an American president who imprisoned critics, spread a culture of white supremacy, and tried to upend the law so that he could commit crimes with impunity. Constitutional law and political science professor Corey Brettschneider provides a thoroughly researched account of assaults on democracy by not one such president but by five - John Adams, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and Richard Nixon.
\nThese presidents illuminated the trip wires that can erode or even destroy our democracy. But Brettschneider shows that these presidents didn’t have the last word; citizen movements brought the United States back from the precipice by appealing to a democratic understanding of the Constitution and pressuring subsequent reform-minded presidents to realise the promise of “we the people.”
\nThis is a book about citizens - Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Daniel Ellsberg, and more - who fought back against presidential abuse of power. Their examples give us hope about the possibilities of restoring a fragile democracy.
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Attack Surface is a standalone novel set in the world of Little Brother and Homeland.
\nMost days, Masha Maximow was sure she'd chosen the winning side.
\nIn her day job as a counterterrorism wizard for an transnational cybersecurity firm, she made the hacks that allowed repressive regimes to spy on dissidents, and manipulate their every move. The perks were fantastic, and the pay was obscene.
\nJust for fun, and to piss off her masters, Masha sometimes used her mad skills to help those same troublemakers evade detection, if their cause was just. It was a dangerous game and a hell of a rush. But seriously self-destructive. And unsustainable.
\nWhen her targets were strangers in faraway police states, it was easy to compartmentalise, to ignore the collateral damage of murder, rape, and torture. But when it hits close to home, and the hacks and exploits she’s devised are directed at her friends and family - including boy wonder Marcus Yallow, her old crush and archrival, and his entourage of naïve idealists - Masha realises she has to choose.
\nAnd whatever choice she makes, someone is going to get hurt.
The year is 2006. Martin Hench is at the top of his game as a self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerrilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He spends his downtime on Catalina Island, where scenic, imported bison wander the bluffs and frozen, reheated fast food burgers cost 25$. Wait, what? When Marty disrupts a seemingly innocuous scheme during a vacation on Catalina Island, he has no idea he’s kicked off a chain of events that will overtake the next decade of his life.
\nMartin has made his most dangerous mistake yet: trespassed into the playgrounds of the ultra-wealthy and spoiled their fun. To them, money is a tool, a game, and a way to keep score, and they’ve found their newest mark - California’s Department of Corrections. Secure in the knowledge that they’re living behind far too many firewalls of shell companies and investors ever to be identified, they are interested not in the lives they ruin, but only in how much money they can extract from the government and the hundreds of thousands of prisoners they have at their mercy.
\nA seething rebuke of the privatised prison system that delves deeply into the arcane and baroque financial chicanery involved in the 2008 financial crash.
A contentious election and radicalised locals interfere with Canadian recovery workers' efforts at the site of a catastrophic flood in near-future Mississippi. This story is set in the same future as The Lost Cause.
It’s not your imagination. Life online really does get worse by the day, and that is by intent.
\nMisogyny, conspiratorialism, surveillance, manipulation, fraud, and AI slop are drowning the internet. For the monopolists who dominate online - X, TikTok, Amazon, Meta, Apple - this is all part of the playbook. The process is what leading tech critic Cory Doctorow has dubbed ‘enshittification’.
\nFirst, the platform attracts users with some bait, such as free access; then the activity is monetised, bringing in the business customers and degrading the user experience; then, once everyone is trapped and competitors eradicated, the platform wrings out all the value and transfers it to their executives and shareholders.
\nAs a result, online public squares have become places of torment, and online retailers are hellish dumpster fires. The virtual gathering places where we once imagined the world’s problems might be resolved are now a sewer of hatred and abuse - thoroughly enshittified.
\nDoctorow enumerates the symptoms, lays out the diagnosis, and identifies the best responses to these diseased platforms: the monopolies online must be shattered. Companies too big to fail or to jail - and much too big to care - must be cut down to size. Only an attack on corporate power will permit effective regulation and real privacy. Tech unions must protect the workers who should, in turn, defend us against their bosses’ sadism and greed.
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In the twenty-first century, it's not just capital that's globalized: labour is too. Workers in special economic zones are trapped in lives of poverty with no trade unions to represent their rights. But a group of teenagers from across the world are set to fight this injustice using the most surprising of tools - their online video games.
\nIn Industrial South China Matthew and his friends labour day and night as gold-farmers, amassing virtual wealth that's sold on to rich Western players, while in the slums of Mumbai 'General Robotwallah' Mala marshalls her team of online thugs on behalf of the local gang-boss, who in turn works for the game-owners. They're all being exploited, as their friend Wei-Dong, all the way over in LA, knows, but can do little about.
\nUntil they begin to realise that their similarities outweigh their differences, and agree to work together to claim their rights to fair working conditions. Under the noses of the ruling elites in China and the rest of Asia, they fight their bosses, the owners of the games and rich speculators, outsmarting them all with their unbeatable gaming skills.
\nBut soon the battle will spill over from the virtual world to the real one, leaving Mala, Matthew and even Wei-Dong fighting not just for their rights, but for their lives . . .
In Cory Doctorow's wildly successful Little Brother, young Marcus Yallow was arbitrarily detained and brutalised by the government in the wake of a terrorist attack on San Francisco - an experience that led him to become a leader of the whole movement of technologically clued-in teenagers, fighting back against the tyrannical security state.
\nA few years later, California's economy collapses, but Marcus's hacktivist past lands him a job as webmaster for a crusading politician who promises reform. Soon his former nemesis Masha emerges from the political underground to gift him with a thumbdrive containing a Wikileaks-style cable-dump of hard evidence of corporate and governmental perfidy. It's incendiary stuff - and if Masha goes missing, Marcus is supposed to release it to the world. Then Marcus sees Masha being kidnapped by the same government agents who detained and tortured Marcus years earlier.
\nMarcus can leak the archive Masha gave him - but he can't admit to being the leaker, because that will cost his employer the election. He's surrounded by friends who remember what he did a few years ago and regard him as a hacker hero. He can't even attend a demonstration without being dragged onstage and handed a mike. He's not at all sure that just dumping the archive onto the Internet, before he's gone through its millions of words, is the right thing to do.
\nMeanwhile, people are beginning to shadow him, people who look like they're used to inflicting pain until they get the answers they want.
Marcus aka “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works - and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.
\nBut his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.
\nWhen the DHS finally releases them, his injured best friend Darryl does not come out. The city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: “M1k3y” will take down the DHS himself.
It's thirty years from now and we're making progress, mitigating climate change, slowly but surely. But what about all the angry people who can't let go?
\nFor young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn't controversial, it's just an overwhelming fact of life. But so are the great efforts to contain and mitigate it. Entire cities are being moved inland from the rising seas. Vast clean-energy projects are springing up everywhere. Disaster relief, the mitigation of floods and superstorms, has become a skill for which tens of millions of people are trained every year. The effort is global. It employs everyone who wants to work. Even when national politics oscillates back to right-wing leaders, the momentum is too great; these vast programmes cannot be stopped in their tracks.
\nBut there are still those Americans who cling to their red trucker caps, their grievances, their anger, their nostalgia for the golden age of assault rifles. Their 'alternative' news sources reassure them their resentment is right and pure and 'climate change' is a con.
\nThey're your grandfather, your uncle, your great-aunt. They're not going anywhere. And they're armed to the teeth.
The year is 1986. The city is San Francisco. Here, Martin Hench will invent the forensic accountant - what a bounty hunter is to people, he is to money - but for now he's an MIT dropout odd-jobbing his way around a city still reeling from the invention of a revolutionary new technology that will change everything about crime forever, one we now take completely for granted.
\nWhen Marty finds himself hired by Silicon Valley PC startup the Three Wise Men to investigate a group of disgruntled ex-employees who've founded a competitor startup, he quickly realizes he's on the wrong side. Marty ditches the greasy old guys running Three Wise Men without a second thought, utterly infatuated with the electric atmosphere of Magenta Women's Enterprise. Located in the heart of the Mission, this group of brilliant young women found themselves exhausted by the predatory business practices of Three Wise Men and set out to beat them at their own game, making better computers and driving Three Wise Men out of business. But this optimistic startup, fueled by young love and California-style burritos, has no idea the depth of the evil they're seeking to unroot or the risks they run.
\nIn this company-eat-company city, Martin and his friends will be lucky to escape with their lives.
Here are four urgent stories from author and activist Cory Doctorow, four social, technological and economic visions of the world today and its near - all too near - future.
\nUnauthorised Bread is a tale of immigration, toxic economic stratification and a young woman's perilously illegal quest to fix a broken toaster.
\nIn Model Minority a superhero finds himself way out his depth when he confronts the corruption of the police and justice system.
\nRadicalized is the story of a desperate husband, a darknet forum and the birth of a violent uprising against the US health care system.
\nThe final story, The Masque of the Red Death, tracks an uber-wealthy survivalist and his followers as they hole up and attempt to ride out the collapse of society.
Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMartin is a - contain your excitement - self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He’s as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he’s a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike. He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. He’s not famous, except to the people who matter. He’s made some pretty powerful people happy in his time, and he’s been paid pretty well. It’s been a good life.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNow he’s been roped into a job that’s more dangerous than anything he’s ever agreed to before - and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.
In a world wrecked by climate change, in a society owned by the ultra-rich, in a city hollowed out by industrial flight, Hubert, etc, Seth and Natalie have nowhere else to be and nothing better to do.
\nBut there is another way. After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life - food, clothing, shelter - from a computer, there is little reason to toil within the system. So, like thousands of others in the mid-21st century, the three of them turn their back on the world of rules, jobs, the morning commute and . . . walkaway.
\nIt's a dangerous world out there, the empty lands are lawless, hiding predators - animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, the thousands become hundreds of thousands, building what threatens to beome a post-scarcity utopia. But then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultra-rich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. And now it's war - a war that will turn the world upside down.
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“I’m not sure the how-pocalypse changes anything. I don’t think about it; this is hard enough.”
\nThis is a depopulated archipelago off the coast of Massachusetts, home to a tiny handful of sapiens sifting the remnants of civilisation for scraps of comfort and joy.
\nThere’s no sense in trying to figure out exactly how humans got to this place of endless gray skies and so many mass graves—that’s a very long letter no one has the heart to read again. What matters is this fleeting postscript, a strangely joyous house of bones built by an unlikely quintet of survivors.
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In a mostly underwater near-future Los Angeles, aging combat-drone veteran Orr Vue now lives a simple and small life, trading snippets of what's become the most valuable information. So when the cops show up at his door looking for data on a murder he’s not even aware has happened, things get interesting for the first time in 25 years.
\nAt first, Orr is happy to exchange whatever he knows about the demise of InfoDrip’s top exec to buy booze and pay rent on his memory storage, but that plan goes to hell when Orr’s old boyfriend, Auggie Wolf, shows up as the number one suspect.
\nForced to stretch his atrophied spy skills and take his illegal horde of drones out of retirement alongside his busted knees, Orr finds himself in the crosshairs of the militarised police, a family of megarich corporate heirs, a clan of emancipated AIs, and a cult. Barely avoiding getting killed with every clue he collects, Orr realises he's uncovered not just a murder, but a conspiracy that threatens Auggie’s very existence. Ahh, the things we do for love . . .
\nBut in a world where memories can be bought and sold, how can you truly know who anyone is - or what you yourself are capable of?
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Growing up in the mountains of Utah, Cory Richards was constantly surrounded by the outdoors. His father, a high school teacher and a ski patroller, spent years teaching Richards and his brother how to ski, climb, mountaineer, and survive in the wild.
\nDespite a seemingly idyllic childhood, the Richards home was fraught with violence, grief, and mental illness. After being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and dropping out of high school, Richards subsumed himself in the worlds of photography and climbing, seeking out the farthest reaches of the world to escape the darkness. Then, in the midst of a wildly successful career in adventure photography, a catastrophic avalanche changed everything, forcing Richards to confront the trauma of his past, evaluate his own mental health, and learn to rewrite his story.
\nThe Color of Everything is a thrilling tale of risk and adventure, written by a man who has done it all: He’s stood at the top of the world, climbed imposing mountain faces alone in the dark, and become the only American to summit an 8,000-meter peak in winter.
\nBut it is also the story of a tumultuous life - a stirring, lyrical memoir that captures the profound musings of an unquiet mind grappling with the meaning of success, the cost of fame and addiction, and whether it is possible to outrun your demons.
\nWith exquisite prose and disarming candor, accompanied by stunning photos from his career, Richards excavates the roots of his trauma and shares what it took for him to climb out of it.
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When the answers to a present-day murder lie in the past, one teen girl must examine a tragic event to prevent more lives from being lost. No one expected it to rain that much. But the rain kept coming, the dam broke, and lives were lost. One was Lucy Michaels’s little brother. She was there and while she saved the lives of many young boy scouts, despite being a child herself, she couldn’t save him.
\nNow eight years later, Lucy is preparing to graduate from high school and compete in the air rifle competition at the Olympics when her stepbrother goes missing right before his most important football game. The search is focused on the same plot of land where her younger brother died, and she can’t help but draw parallels.
\nWhen the search for a missing person becomes a murder investigation, Lucy knows the secrets she holds about what her stepbrother was up to that day could help find the murderer. The clues quickly connect Lucy’s ex-boyfriend to the murders, but he couldn’t be guilty . . . could he?
\nEveryone involved has their own secrets and revealing hers to the wrong person could put her life - and her whole town - at risk.
This is a story of the rich and the very poor. This is a story of an illegal auction with dire consequences. This is a story of murders past and present. This is a story of intertwined relationships and the silent ripples they leave behind, where love becomes a guiding force, revealing the lengths one will go to protect those they cherish.
\nOver twenty years ago, a young hunting guide in rural Kentucky was driving his boat in the early morning mist when his peaceful cruise was cut short by a scene so disturbing, he packed up and moved away. Nine women died early that morning, but it was linked to a similar crime in Texas, so the locals quickly wrote it off as having nothing to do with them.
\nNow, all these years later, when everyone has nearly forgotten about that grisly part of their past, one man's accidental death will bring everything back up to the surface. The locals who knew better can no longer claim it had nothing to do with them, and one woman, desperate to do whatever it takes to save her mother's life, will learn that nearly everyone in her life has been lying to her.
\nCourt Stevens's delves deep into the heart of a community, where some will learn that we don't always live to see the ripples we make, but we must make them all the same.
Alan Anderson is a powerful advertising executive who has built a successful life and thriving business by making people buy stuff they don’t actually need. He’s up for the biggest pitch of his career and the account everyone wants, US cow’s milk sales are plummeting, and the C-Suite wants to see trendy oat milk kicked to the curb.
\nBut when an anarchist farmer tanks Alan’s presentation, Alan bombs the pitch but ends the day with an epiphany. No longer will he exploit the insecurities of others in the service of capitalism. Alan is opting out.
\nThis development is anathema to his wife, Vivian. She’s just a few positive affirmations, a swimming pool, and an exacting series of social tests away from finally becoming part of the elite women’s club, the Queen Annes, in their adopted town of Greenwich, Connecticut.
\nAs if contending with a daughter who wants to write plays (!) and another who has an unnatural empathy with animals isn’t enough to manage, she can only watch as Alan moves into their backyard playhouse to live off the land and - worse - spend time with the family. But instead of shocking the neighbors, Alan’s commitment to a less-is-more lifestyle seems to be catching on.
\nCould everyone want what Alan’s not selling?
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Claire did not plan to end up mid-forties with a daughter studying in London and the unfortunate discovery that her husband is not the man she thought he was. In fact, he's the exact opposite of a faithful, loyal, kind, and good-hearted spouse. And the discovery of his real nature and lack of remorse leads her to do what she never thought she would - divorce him.
\nAfter a year of wallowing before hitting rock bottom . . . in public, unfortunately, Claire realizes she needs to finally answer the question her therapist asked her all those months \"What do you really want?\" It was a question she couldn't answer then, but now she knows it's time to figure it out.
\nIt's the turning point that leads Claire to change her life. And not just a little - a lot. She sells her house in Denver and moves to the city that's always had her heart - Chicago.
\nWith the help of nosy neighbors, new friends, and a daughter who sets her up on a dating site from across the ocean, Claire begins to answer that big, important question by figuring out what she wants and how to live life on her own terms.
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Rosie Waterman has one to become a working actor. But lately, that hasn't been working out. When she loses her apartment and her job on the same day, she does what she always does - puts herself out there, ready to find the next big thing. But a trip home makes her realise that while she's been struggling to make this dream come true, all her friends have become real adults with careers and weddings and babies on the way. Rosie's been at this for years, and she has nothing to show for it. But how does she simply let go of her dream?
\nWhen she's offered a job as the director of a regional theatre's production of Cinderella, she jumps at the chance - even though she's only directed in college and the job is in Door County, Wisconsin, and not in New York. She has no other offers, and at least she'll be getting paid to do something theatrical. But when she arrives, she quickly realises that the \"regional theatre\" is actually in a retirement community, and the \"actors\" are actually senior citizens with no acting experience whatsoever.
\nWorking on the show presents new challenges, forcing Rosie to learn how to step up and be the leader this fledgling theatre troupe needs. The more time she spends with her new cast, the more she begins to rethink what it means to dream big, especially when that big dream hasn't turned out to be at all what she thought it would be. It's not at all what she expected, but could it be exactly what she needs?
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Kelsey Worthington always dreamed of being a writer, but she's settled into a routine of helping other people tell their stories in her job as a junior editor. She doesn't go outside of her comfort zone. Her relationships are safe. Her job is secure. Her existence is stable. And she's great with that.
\nAnd then, the accident.
\nWhile she's in the hospital overnight, she meets an older woman named Georgina Tate - a glass-ceiling-shattering, wildly successful businesswoman. Georgina sacrificed everything to become the woman she is today, but now, with a pair of failing kidneys and only a handful of months left to live, Georgina is forced to come face-to-face with her regrets. Kelsey is forced to reckon with her own list of \"things I'll do someday,\" and she starts to ask a simple but life-changing What if I said yes to all the things I normally say no to? And The Yes Plan is born.
\nIt takes some convincing, but Georgina finally agrees to go along with Kelsey on her Summer of Yes adventures. The two of them set off to see what might be out there waiting for them if they simply open themselves up to it. Together, they say yes to whatever comes their way - a whole day being tourists in their own New York City, dinner with strangers, a convertible that is far from practical but so much fun. But when Kelsey springs a surprise visit to Georgina's son Hayden and Georgina's ex-husband (who is not so much of an ex), the older woman is less than thrilled. But this is where the true journey begins.
\nTwo stories of love, forgiveness, regret, romance, and finding a way to live a fearless life intertwine as these two women make an indelible impression on each other. And it all starts with a simple \"yes.\"
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The alien creatures have made it to Earth. Entire cities are battling invasion from the menacing swarms. This is worse than Zola. It’s worse than the Leak. It’s worse than all of our nightmares put together.
\nThe creatures are indestructible, shrugging off our strongest weaponry. Now, our only hope lies inside a powerful ancient artifact we don’t understand.
\nTo save Earth’s future, we have to unlock the secrets of a lost alien past. Whatever it takes, we have to harness the power of the Orb.
\nHumanity is coming together for one last stand against this threat from afar. The odds are against us, but we will never give up. We will fight for our world. We will fight for our people.
\nAll or nothing . . . we will fight to the end.
\n
I guess saving the world once wasn't enough . . . First it was the auroras, lighting up Europe every night. Then came the weird clouds over Africa. The tidal shifts . . . the failing crops . . . the crazy changes to animal migration . . . And I think all of this is just the start. I don't buy the official line that these are natural occurrences. Not anymore. Not since a whistleblower hid a coded message in my invitation for an upcoming commemoration ceremony on The Vita.
\nNow I know the truth - that Earth is in serious danger from the side-effects of their reckless research. Since the moment I found out, I’ve known what I have to do. Three years ago, I went into space and almost died saving the world from a madman’s evil plan. When I made it home, I swore I'd never leave my family behind again. But to make sure we'll still have a planet to call home in another three years, I have to go back. And this time, they're coming with me . . .
\n
It sounded like a good idea at the time. Three nights in a log cabin, out here in the Scottish wilderness with no one else for miles around. Three nights in this idyllic kind of halfway house. Three nights to reflect on the incident at my own pace and draw a line under my recovery. The sights and sounds will soothe you, they said.
\nDoctor Chambers told me to listen for the birds. The guidebook on the table promised deer and red squirrels. But no one mentioned the lights in the sky. No one mentioned the Visitors. They were wrong.
\nI'm not soothed, but I'm not crazy. I know what I've seen and I know how to prove it. Someone has to believe me, even if Doctor Chambers won't. The Visitors are real, the Visitors are here, and tonight's the night I'm going out there to find out why . . .
\n
The pulse hits without warning. In one harrowingly destructive instant, a mysterious seismic pulse in the Scottish Highlands rips away all semblance of global security.
\nComplacency grew in the years since Dan McCarthy brought humanity into contact with intelligent aliens, but those days are gone.
\nAs the pulse's chaos spreads, it becomes painfully clear that Dan's teenage daughter Piper - a child born like no other - might hold humanity's only hope of averting total disaster. The danger to Earth is imminent. The danger to Piper McCarthy hardly bears thinking about. And this threat isn’t coming from the stars.
\nThis time, it’s been here all along . . .
\n
Ray Barclay is a visionary researcher like no other, on the verge of a genuinely world-changing breakthrough. That’s why I seized this last-minute opportunity to visit him at ZolaCore’s space launch facility. Now, I’m the lucky journalist carrying out an all-access interview in the final few days before he blasts off to The Beacon space station. At least, I thought I was lucky.
\nWhat I didn’t know until I arrived is that while Ray stands at the edge of history, rabid opponents of his work are lurking in the shadows. I also didn’t realise that just by coming here, I would be raising my own head above the parapet and stepping into the firing line.
\nTouring this facility is opening my mind to a whole universe of untapped wonders. But what I see now is that some people don’t want the world to change. What I see now is that some very motivated people want to block Ray’s research from going any further - by any means necessary.
\nBlazing a trail way beyond the normal limit of human courage, Ray Barclay is willing to risk everything to secure a brighter future for all mankind. Once he gets up there, I'll be cheering him every step of the way. But first, we have to make it to launch day . . .
\n
Chad Mitchell is an outsider. Born on an alien-controlled colony and with human servants for parents, a good life was never in his future. But as he develops into a remarkably fast learner and unrivalled pilot, Chad finds himself valued more and more by his autocratic alien overlords.
\nFrom the edge of the colony's inner circle, the true extent of the aliens' wickedness becomes apparent. Chad's human friends watch him mingle with the leadership and think he has changed - that he has sold out to the oppressors, enjoying the trappings of a new position and forgetting where he came from.
\nChad Mitchell knows better.
\nAs he works his way deeper and deeper into the colony's trusted circle of power, an opportunity looms on the horizon. True freedom lies in wait if Chad's plan comes off, not just for himself but for every human on the colony. The cost of failure, on the other hand, does not bear thinking about. Freedom doesn't come cheap. And for Chad Mitchell, it sure as hell won't come easy . . .
\n
From hero to outcast. From saviour to biohazard . . . As hollow victories go, this one is hard to beat.
\nWhen Driver and I saved Earth from the Anomaly's suffocating radiation, we thought it was all over. Our triumphant return from the occupied alien world of Bayzen was supposed to draw a line under everything. The problem is, we didn't come home alone.
\nNo one has ever seen anything like this. What they're calling it sends shivers down my a parasitic alien pathogen. It could be a virus, a toxin, or maybe something even worse. And believe what we don't know definitely can hurt us. It's too late for me - I've been exposed. But this has never been about me. It's going to take some incredible risks and another long-shot space mission to get to the bottom of this, but I'll fight until my last breath to undo the damage I've done.
\nAs a horrible question echoes in my mind, I'll do anything to make sure the answer is the right. Am I Earth's last hope . . . or the man who sealed its fate?
\n
When a group of prize-winning high school students blasted off on a mission to space, their parents beamed with pride. When news of the disaster came in, a nation mourned. But nothing is truly as it seems.
\nNow, when one couple spots a hole in the official story, their grief morphs into a determination to find out what has really happened to their son. No matter what, they will stop at nothing in their hopeful bid to see him again.
\nAnd the truth they uncover could change the world forever . . .
\n
As the relentless approach of a truly gargantuan mothership sparks chaos on Earth, many believe the end times are here. The unknown beings are more technologically advanced than humanity can even comprehend, let alone match. Worst of all, observation makes one thing clear: they aren't coming to chat.
\nFor the first time since Dan McCarthy's initial contact with aliens a full sixteen years earlier, the whole world is united against an existential threat. Humanity has its back against the wall like never before, side by side with two friendly races against odds that hardly bear thinking about.
\nBut while billions understandably cower in fear, a few stand defiant. The gauntlet is thrown down. A showdown is coming. And be it on Earth or in space, the McCarthys will be there . . .
\n
They came in peace. But that was last time . . .
\nAs the world gears up for the first anniversary of Contact Day, Dan McCarthy’s year-long effort to stay out of the limelight collapses in an instant.
\nA direct call from the Messengers throws Dan into urgent action, but the fallout plants a troubling seed of doubt:
\nThis time, maybe they didn’t come here to help . . .
\n
While many on Earth grow fearful of the Messengers' remarkable powers and others lament a lack of interplanetary cooperation, two discoveries threaten to turn the world on its head.
\nOne find could simultaneously rewrite the history of two planets; one revelation could tear Dan McCarthy's life apart.
\nWith the stakes higher than ever following the birth of his daughter Piper - a child like no other with a secret the world isn't ready to handle - Dan will do whatever it takes to protect his family.
\nBut as keen as Dan is to help the Messengers at every turn, he might soon come to see that no good deed goes unpunished . . .
\n
When the government's new private welfare system begins rewarding unemployed viewers for watching the right kind of ads, Roger Birch welcomes a Funscreen into his home.
\nLike millions of others, Roger and his family soon depend on ad-viewing income for their survival.
\nUnlike millions of others, the events of one uncomfortable evening leave Roger aware of the government's shadier reasons for investing in Funscreens.
\nWith HD cameras hidden behind a 60-inch glass veil, the answer was staring him in the face all along . . .
\n
In a world where the scourge of emotion has been defeated, Happy Inc's services subtly influence every citizen throughout the day. The elimination of jealousy and anger has sent crime rates plummeting. But on the other side of the coin, the elimination of ambition and dissatisfaction has rendered creativity a thing of the past.
\nGillian Reid, a promising Happy Inc employee, excels without excitement and succeeds without pride. Like everyone else, she has always been comfortable but never truly happy. Like everyone else's, her Emotional Volatility has always been limited to stay within the bounds of a mediocre middle.
\nGillian Reid's life plays out like any other, until one fateful day . . . when her EV limiter stops working. And with her eyes truly open for the first time, Gillian Reid does not like what she sees . . .
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As two worlds reel from a colossal final pulse that cuts off all contact between them, two unimaginable discoveries raise the stakes even further. In a secret American facility, a power hidden from society for a decade is about to break free. And something much bigger, buried deep beneath the Scottish Highlands for thousands of years, is about to rise up.
\nAll hope of restoring the gateway to New Kerguelen lies in exploring the mysterious alien vault. But once Pandora's box is opened, there's no going back. The fate of two worlds falls again on Piper McCarthy's young shoulders, but this time her remarkable powers might just be outmatched.
\nThe gate is closed. The vault is open. The trouble is just getting started . . .
\n
Surviving in space was the easy part . . .
\nI’m not alone anymore. I've made it down from the solitude of the station, all the way to an incredible underground bunker complex. Thousands of humanity’s best minds are by my side. I’m surrounded by secret cutting-edge technologies that almost defy belief. Too bad none of that is a match for what I’m up against now.
\nBecause in just three days, the final stage of Ignacio Zola’s demented plan to reach a new world will eliminate all life on Earth - unless I can pull off a miracle. The stakes couldn’t be any higher. The odds couldn’t be any longer. I’m the man who uncovered Zola’s plan. And now, I’m the only man who can stop him. This fight started in space and brought me deep below Earth’s surface. But that’s nothing compared to what comes next . . .
\n
An alien message is now humanity’s only hope. Decoding the signal has given us one chance to stop the Anomaly, an ever-tightening cosmic noose, before it squeezes the life out of Earth. The only problem is, the aliens’ single instruction sounds like a bona fide death wish. They want me to step through their incredible quantum gateway, an enigma wrapped in starlight.
\nBelieve if I had any other option, I’d be taking it. But with the best data giving Earth a few days before the Anomaly consumes us, options are in short supply. Suicide or salvation? I’m about to find out. Because whatever I'll find on the other side, this all ends now . . .
\n
I wasn’t supposed to survive. The station has been hit. Everyone around me is dead. I have 11 hours of life support left and no way of contacting Earth. I’m alone. I’m stranded. I’m desperate. But I’m alive.
\nThe more of the station I explore, the surer I get that this was no accident. Someone did this, and I don't think they're finished yet. Making it home feels like an impossible task, but I'm not just fighting for my own life. I have to protect my family - whatever it takes. And as long as I’m breathing, this isn't over. Because whoever did this almost pulled it off . . . but they made one big mistake:
\nThey left the wrong man standing . . .
\n
As Earth's leaders gather to usher in a new era of interplanetary cooperation, a remarkable discovery in the skies above New Kerguelen threatens to destroy the peace on both worlds.
\nThe consequences are so immediate and the potential ramifications so colossal, thoughts of a new era quickly fall by the wayside.
\nAnd when all that counts is surviving the tumultuous present, responsibility might fall again on Dan McCarthy - humanity's once unwilling conduit between worlds - to bravely take a leap like no other . . .
\n
As the well-tipped tour guide at a model town within a nuclear test site in 1950s Nevada, Darren Murphy has a job to die for. His work is easy and relaxed, much like himself, drawing envy from his wide circle of friends. But one fateful day after one particularly late night in the burgeoning city of Las Vegas, Darren makes a huge mistake.
\nThe mother of all accidents
\n“I'll try my best to get us all out of here before the next bomb goes off . . .” Murphy often jokes to his rapt tour groups.
\nOnly this time, due to a slip-up no one could have foreseen, his best might not be enough. nd when the dust settles after a remarkably powerful nearby detonation, the man looking back at Darren Murphy in the model house's mirror might not be the one who stood there before the blast . . .
\n
I wasn’t supposed to survive. The station has been hit. Everyone around me is dead. I have 11 hours of life support left and no way of contacting Earth. I’m alone. I’m stranded. I’m desperate. But I’m alive.
\nThe more of the station I explore, the surer I get that this was no accident. Someone did this, and I don't think they're finished yet. Making it home feels like an impossible task, but I'm not just fighting for my own life. I have to protect my family - whatever it takes. And as long as I’m breathing, this isn't over. Because whoever did this almost pulled it off . . . but they made one big mistake:
\nThey left the wrong man standing . . .
\n
Ignacio Zola saw billions of lives as collateral damage in his plan to reach a new world. But when I got in his way, I didn’t just make him angry. I made this personal. Stopping one disaster has only pushed him towards something even more diabolical. Now, I have one shot left.
\nTo stop the planet-killing cataclysm Zola has set in motion, I’ll have to repurpose some mind-blowing technology from his own abandoned research center. Everything rests on Operation Starshot: a one-in-a-million mission to finish what I’ve started. And even if I survive a journey nothing could prepare me for, I know who'll be waiting on the other side. I’ve stared death in the eyes too many times to count. But to settle this once and for all, I’ll have to go face to face with evil . . .
\n
With Oracle in your pocket, the future is yours to claim . . .
\nWhen Judy Fletcher's life is at its lowest ebb, she jumps at the chance to trial a truly next-gen digital assistant.
\nOracle promises to change everything.
\nBy harnessing live and historical data from billions of users' messages, habits and even real-world conversations, there is almost nothing the app can't do.
\nAs Judy's life immediately changes for the better, she feels empowered like never before.
\nShe comes to trust the app's instincts over her own, leaning on the power of big data to give her the upper hand in every interaction.
\nBut with each decision it nudges her towards, Oracle is taking hold . . .
\n
Meet Pamela 2.0, the latest and greatest incarnation of a gadget like no other.
\nThe lucky tech reviewer who receives the first prototype quickly learns that Pamela 2.0 represents a quantum leap in consumer robotics, capable of meeting a modern homeowner's every need.
\nEager to please by following any order that doesn't involve physical contact with a human, there's almost nothing Pamela can't do - she takes out the trash, she washes the dishes, she feeds the dog.
\nToday, Pamela arrived with one objective: to secure a positive review from her influential host. And one way or another, she'll stop at nothing to get it . . .
\n
The strange sounds. The weird lights. The ever-increasing mystery around Farmer Johnson's barn . . .
\nWhen Tobias and Kira raise the alarm from the next farm over, they're dismissed as two meddling kids with two overactive imaginations.
\nBut as the Halloween festival draws near and tourists flock to their usually sleepy town of Hallow Creek, those two meddling kids' one crazy idea might be the only thing that can stop disaster in its tracks.
\n
An alien signal. Of all the things I expected to uncover while trying to make sense of the Anomaly, this didn't even enter my mind. But now, the signal has changed my understanding of everything.
\nThe Anomaly that's suffocating Earth isn't natural, and decoding this message could be our one shot at saving the planet. The trouble is, we don't even know where to start.
\nWhat will it take to decipher the alien signal and unlock the secrets of the Anomaly? And how should we reply when we decode their message? A lot of people don't think we should trust the aliens who are reaching out to us. I can't pretend I don't understand why. But with no other way of putting things right, we have to at least figure out what they're saying.
\nThe clock is ticking until the Anomaly consumes us. The fate of humanity lies in my hands all over again. And this time, the choices I make will echo through the cosmos . . .
\n
Earth is teeming with alien larvae. That reality has just crashed down on us like a ton of contaminated space rocks. Every time I close my eyes, I still see the huge spider-like monster rising up. I killed that one just in time, but we know that more could hatch at any moment.
\nEven worse . . . we know that if any of them reach their final form, they'll be indestructible. Now, our only hope of saving Earth from this ticking time-bomb lies on the distant world of Eden. The problem? We have reason to think the natives engineered this stuff.
\nIf there was any other route forward, we'd be taking it. We wouldn't be blazing this uncharted path to potentially hostile territory. But with one card left to play in a game we can't afford to lose, I can't keep my mind from fixating on one unshakeable thought . . .
\nAre we racing towards Earth's salvation . . . or on a one-way trip to oblivion?
\n
It wasn't supposed to go like this. The mission was simple. I took every precaution. I had done it a thousand times before. But this time was different.
\nThis time is different. This time, something went wrong. I've called for help, but no one hears. I'll admit it: I don't know how to get home. Hell, I don't even know where I am.
\nAnd worst of all . . . wherever I am, I don't think I'm alone. What have I done?
\n
With Earth in chaos and life on New Kerguelen shaken like never before, a discovery on the mysterious world of Sanctuary blows apart humanity's understanding of just about everything.
\nThe consequences are almost unfathomable, the urgency unprecedented, and the revelations of a kind that even Dan McCarthy isn't ready for.
\nOne way or another, nothing will ever be the same.
\nAnd this time, it's final . . .
\n
Time travel doesn't exist. Sure, it would be great if it did. It would be great if the hype wasn't all bluster.
\nWith huge funding behind them, ChronoTonic claims to have achieved the impossible. The corporation is pushing its new machine - a time machine - as the solution to Earth's problems. I'm just not buying it.
\nThey want to buzz forward in time, pick up a few technological advancements, and buzz back to apply them in the here and now. They say we can save lives and reduce suffering by learning the lessons of the future - today. The same corporate overlords that got us into these problems are apparently going to get us out of them. Yeah . . . I'll believe that when I see it.
\nI think it's all empty hype. And if it's not, I sure as hell don't trust ChronoTonic to use this technology as altruistically as they claim. After years of hype, today is the day when they will finally reveal the machine. I have media clearance to be in the audience, but I have bigger plans than that. Once I get inside ChronoTonic HQ, I'm not sitting in the crowd. No. That's not what investigative journalists do.
\nI'm stepping in with one goal in mind: Wherever or whenever the truth is hiding . . . I'm going to find it.
\n
For thousands of years, man has reigned supreme over nature. But deep in the African jungle, at the edge of Genusphere's controversial research facility, a challenger rises.
\nBroken fences. Smashed cameras. Unusual tracks in the mud. The locals talk of apes behaving strangely.
\nSarah O’Leary, leader of the genetic research team, rubbishes their warnings . . . until the first bodies are found. The Genusphere compound locks down amid a media blackout, but the villagers fear it could already be too late. Some of them don't buy the official story. They don't think O'Leary and her colleagues are worried about something getting into the genetic research compound.
\nNo. They think she's trying to cover up whatever got out . . .
\n
They’re back, and the message can’t wait . . .
\nWhen a massive meteor lights up the sky over the remote island of Kerguelen, the world holds its breath. In Birchwood, Colorado, Dan McCarthy gets to work.
\nFollowing his incredible experiences of the previous year, Dan knows this was no natural occurrence. The Messengers are back - to finish what they started - and they didn't come all this way for nothing . . .
\n
Fifty years ago, humanity launched a probe to a distant alien world. Thirty years ago, it arrived. And today . . . contact will be made.
\nWhen alien scientists studying a mysterious object detect unfamiliar DNA, they set to work on cloning the being responsible for the incredible technology.
\nNow, all alone and trillions of miles from home, their fully grown human Seedling is about to be hatched . . .
\n
On their golden wedding anniversary, Lorraine Green and her husband made an unbreakable pact: As the surviving partner, her life insurance payout will fund a one-way ticket to the solar system's most exclusive retirement community: Sunset Stays.
\nHer children say she is too old. Too vulnerable. Too frail to face the many risks of space travel. But Lorraine Green is nothing of the sort.
\nThough the real reason for the pact can never cross Lorraine's lips, she leaves no doubt that her mind is made up. The adventure of a lifetime calls . . . but so does a burning thirst for justice. Because millions of miles from Earth, in a tranquil paradise of blue skies and golden fields, a painful score lies unsettled.
\nAnd in her seventy-fifth trip around the sun, Lorraine Green will do whatever it takes to put things right . . .
\n
For Bianca Blane, a young but jaded online influencer, the fame she once sought now weighs heavily on her shoulders.
\nWhen she receives an exclusive invitation to spend a preview week in the cutting edge tourist resort of Indigo Sands, Bianca seizes the opportunity to disconnect from her increasingly demanding followers.
\nIndigo Sands strikes Bianca as truly pristine - perfect in every way.
\nShe feels sure that she'll give the new resort a glowing endorsement as the most desirable destination in the world, home of the most advanced technologies ever created.
\nBut before too long, a veil is lifted. Because behind the facade, nothing is as it seems . . .
\n
Every night for the past four months, I've dreamed of being chosen for the trip to Calbora. The others have grown comfortable in the safety of the station's bunks, praying their names won't be called. Not me.
\nEvery day since we got here, I've looked up and wondered. Not anymore.
\nNo one can know the real reason it matters so much, but one way or another . . . I'm getting on that ship. Because I wasn't born to look up and wonder. I was born to get up and wander.
\n
All throughout Moonshine Mall, shelves are empty of the year's most sought-after toy - the Sheepy McFinnigan action figure. Santa's elves are run off their feet trying to meet demand. Jolly old Saint Nick himself is even busier . . . so busy that a Robot Santa has to stand in at Moonshine Mall's famous grotto.
\nEven worse, the mall's new manager Nancy Collins is sucking the fun out of everything. Robot Santa is the only thing keeping the kids smiling amid the Sheepy McFinnigan stock shortage, but Nancy has her own selfish reason for putting him in place.
\nBut what Nancy Collins doesn't know is that just like the real thing, Robot Santa is always watching. For naughty children, Santa delivers a lump of coal. But for selfish and greedy grown-ups, Robot Santa delivers a whole lot more . . .
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Across oceans and ages, the same tales have persisted. The lights in the sky. The whirring sounds at night. The ships that cross the darkness and the headaches that come when they pass overhead. But for some, the feelings have intensified. Recently it all feels . . . closer.
\nEJ, a humble artist, senses that the long-foreseen arrival is imminent. Denounced as a self-promoter seeking attentions and fame, he finds few listeners but never stops trying to raise the alarm. When dusk falls, the prophecy rains down.
\nWithin minutes it becomes clear that the planet isn't big enough for two dominant species. Something has to give - tonight. But for EJ and everyone around him, outmatched by an invading force from another world, it may already be too late . . .
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When Paula Frederick gets a weekend job on Dream Rock, a former prison island that now serves as the world's largest leisure destination, she can hardly believe her luck.
\nDream Rock's outlandish surroundings are a welcome break from her studies. Paula's fully costumed role within the island's smallest zone, a medieval-themed amusement park called Yester Year, seems set to allow for even more immersive fun than she imagined.
\nNot even hazing from some mean-spirited colleagues can dampen Paula's spirits - at least until a trip through the wrong door reveals that the old stories about some kind of mysterious vortex beneath the island might have been more than fanciful rumours, after all.
\nFull immersion in the world of centuries gone by was all fun and games . . . when there was a way back.
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When the body of a young Vietnamese woman is discovered alongside the interstate in Wyoming's Absaroka County, Sheriff Walt Longmire finds only one suspect, Virgil White Buffalo, a Crow with a troubling past. In what begins as an open-and-shut case, Longmire gets a lot more than he bargained for when a photograph in the young woman's purse connects her to an investigation that Longmire tackled forty years ago as a young Marine investigator in Vietnam.
\nIn the fourth book in Craig Johnson's award-winning Walt Longmire series, the tough yet tender sheriff is up to his star in a pair of murders connected by blood, yet separated by forty haunted years.
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Walt Longmire is sinking into high-plains winter discontent when his former boss, Lucian Conally, asks him to take on a mercy case in an adjacent county. Detective Gerald Holman is dead and Lucian wants to know what drove his old friend to take his own life. With the clock ticking on the birth of his first grandchild, Walt learns that the by-the-book detective might have suppressed evidence concerning three missing women.
\nDigging deeper, Walt uncovers an incriminating secret so dark that it threatens to claim other lives even before the sheriff can serve justice - Wyoming style.
\n
Embarking on his eighth adventure, Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire doesn't have time for cowboys and criminals. His daughter, Cady, is getting married in two weeks, and the wedding locale arrangements have just gone up in smoke signals. Fearing Cady's wrath, Walt and his old friend Henry Standing Bear set out for the Cheyenne Reservation to find a new site for the nuptials.
\nBut their expedition ends in horror as they witness a young Crow woman plummeting from Painted Warrior's majestic cliffs. Is it a suicide, or something more sinister? It's not Walt's turf, but he's coerced into the investigation by Lolo Long, the beautiful new tribal police chief.
\n
When Pepper McKay, one of the most hated men in Absaroka County, is found murdered on his ranch in Crazy Woman Canyon, suspects aren’t in short supply. But Sheriff Walt Longmire’s attention is on those who had gathered for a family meeting that evening, McKay’s very different a smooth-talking charmer, a cosmopolitan journalist, a reclusive monk, and a half-Native ranch hand who keeps the place running. Each had a motive. Each claims he’s innocent.
\nAs Walt investigates what happened that night at the O-Kay Lodge, he’s pulled into a tangle of old grudges and long-buried secrets. Then the case takes a sharp a second body surfaces, and a wildfire tears through the canyon, trapping Walt and forcing him into a fight for his life as both the killer and the elements close in.
\n
After 25 years as Sheriff of Absaroka County, Walt Longmire’s hopes of ending his tenure in peace are dashed when Cody Pritchard is found dead near the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Two years earlier, Cody was one of four high school boys given suspended sentences for raping a local Cheyenne girl. Somebody, it would seem, is seeking vengeance, and Longmire might be the only thing standing between the three remaining boys and a Sharps .45-70 rifle.
\nWith lifelong friend Henry Standing Bear and Deputy Victoria Moretti Walt Longmire attempts to see that revenge, a dish best served cold, is never served at all.
\n\n
Wade Barsad, a man with a dubious past and a gift for making enemies, burned his wife Mary's horses in their barn; in retribution, she shot him in the head six times, or so the story goes. But Sheriff Walt Longmire doesn't believe Mary's confession and is determined to dig deeper.
\nUnpinning his star to pose as an insurance investigator, Walt visits the Barsad ranch and discovers that everyone in town - including a beautiful Guetemalan bartender and a rancher with a taste for liquor - had a reason for wanting Wade dead.
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When Lolo Long’s niece Jaya begins receiving death threats, Tribal Police Chief Long calls on Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire as lethal backup. Jaya “Longshot” Long is the phenom of the Lame Deer Lady Stars High School basketball team and is following in the steps of her older sister, Jeanie, who disappeared a year previously, a victim of the scourge of missing Native Woman in Indian Country.
\nLolo hopes that having Longmire involved might draw some public attention to the girl’s plight, but with this manoeuvre, she also inadvertently places the good sheriff in a one-on-one with the deadliest adversary he has ever faced in both this world and the next . . .
\n
When Mari Baroja is found poisoned at the Durant Home for Assisted Living, Sheriff Longmire is drawn into an investigation that reaches fifty years into the mysterious woman’s past. Her connections to Wyoming’s Basque community, the lucrative coal-bed methane industry, and the personal life of the previous sheriff, Lucian Connally, lead to a complex web of half-truths and assumed alliances.
\nAided by his friend Henry Standing Bear, Deputy Victoria Moretti and newcomer Santiago Saizarbitoria, Sheriff Longmire must connect the present with the spectre of the past to find the killer.
Welcome to Walt Longmire's worst nightmare. Winter is creeping closer, but for Sheriff Longmire this one is looking to be harsh in a way to which he is wholly unaccustomed. He has found himself in the remotest parts of the northern Mexican desert, a lawless place where no horse or car can travel, where no one speaks his language or trusts an outsider, far from his friends and his home turf back in Wyoming.
\nBut desperate times call for desperate measures. Tomas Bidarte, the head of one of the most vicious drug cartels in Mexico, has kidnapped Walt's beloved daughter, Cady. The American government is of limited help and the Mexican one even less so.
\nArmed with his trusty Colt .45 and a father's intuition, Walt must head into the 110-degree heat of the desert, one man against an army.
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When Jen, the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found surfaces in Sherriff Walt Longmire’s jurisdiction, it appears to be a windfall for the High Plains Dinosaur Museum - until Danny Lone Elk, the Cheyenne rancher on whose property the remains were discovered, turns up dead, floating face down in a turtle pond. With millions of dollars at stake, a number of groups step forward to claim her, including Danny’s family, the tribe, and the federal government.
\nAs Wyoming’s Acting Deputy Attorney and a cadre of FBI officers descend on the town, Walt is determined to find out who would benefit from Danny’s death, enlisting old friends Lucian Connolly and Omar Rhoades, along with Dog and best friend Henry Standing Bear, to trawl the vast Lone Elk ranch looking for answers to a sixty-five-million-year-old cold case that’s heating up fast.
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It’s the summer of 1964, and recent college graduates Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear read the writing on the wall and enlist to serve in the Vietnam War. As they catch a few final waves in California before reporting for duty, a sudden storm assaults the shores and capsizes a nearby cargo boat. Walt and Henry jump to action, but it’s soon revealed by the police who greet them ashore that the sunken boat carried valuable contraband from underground sources.
The boys, in their early twenties and in the peak of their physical prowess from playing college football for the last four years, head out on Route 66. The question, of course, is how far they will get before the consequences of their actions catch up to them - the answer being, not very.
Back in the present day, Walt is forced to speak before a Judge following the fatal events of The Longmire Defense. With powerful enemies lurking behind the scenes, the sheriff of Absaroka County must consider his options if he wishes to finish the fight he started.
Going back and forth between 1964 and the present day, Craig Johnson brings us a propulsive dual timeline as Walt Longmire stands between the crossfire of good and evil, law and anarchy, and compassion and cruelty at two pivotal stages in his life.
What if you woke up lying in the middle of the street in the infamous town of Fort Pratt, Montana, where thirty young Native boys perished in a tragic 1896 boarding-school fire?
\nWhat if every person you encountered in that endless night was dead?
\nWhat if you were covered in blood and missing a bullet from the gun holstered on your hip?
\nWhat if there was something out there in the yellowed skies, along with the deceased and the smell of ash and dust, something the Northern Cheyenne refer to as the Éveohtsé-heómėse, the Wandering Without, the Taker of Souls?
\nWhat if the only way you know who you are is because your name is printed in the leather sweatband of your cowboy hat, and what if it says your name is Walt Longmire . . . but you don’t remember him?
Well-read and world-weary, Sheriff Walt Longmire has been maintaining order in Wyoming's Absaroka County for more than thirty years, but in this riveting seventh outing, he is pushed to his limits.
Raynaud Shade, an adopted Crow Indian rumored to be one of the country's most dangerous sociopaths, has just confessed to murdering a boy ten years ago and burying him deep within the Bighorn Mountains. Walt is asked to transport Shade through a blizzard to the site, but what begins as a typical criminal transport turns personal when the veteran lawman learns that he knows the dead boy's family.
Guided only by Indian mysticism and a battered paperback of Dante's Inferno, Walt braves the icy hell of the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area, cheating death to ensure that justice - both civil and spiritual - is served.
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It's a volatile new economy in Durant, Wyoming, where the owners of a multi-million dollar development of ranchettes want to get rid of the adjacent junk-yard.
\nWhen a severed thumb is discovered in the yard, conflicts erupt, and Walt Longmire, his trusty companion Dog, life-long friend Henry Standing Bear, and deputies Santiago Saizarbitoria and Victoria Moretti find themselves in a small town that feels more and more like a high plains pressure cooker.
Walt Longmire has been the Sheriff in Wyoming’s Absaroka County for 25 years, but nothing could have prepared him for the savage attack on his daughter, Cady, a Philadelphia lawyer who has unwittingly become embroiled in a political cover-up.
\nAs Walt and his best friend, Henry Standing Bear, scour the city for clues, he gets help from his deputy Victoria Moretti and her family of Philly police. But Longmire wasn’t born yesterday. He’s willing to pull out all the stops to find Cady’s attacker and show the big city that this old-timer has a few moves left in his saddlebag of tricks.
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Attempting to recover from his harrowing experiences in Mexico, in Land of Wolves Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire is neck deep in the investigation of what could or could not be the suicidal hanging of a shepherd.
\nWith unsettling connections to a Basque family with a reputation for removing the legs of Absaroka County sheriffs, matters become even more complicated with the appearance of an oversize wolf in the Big Horn Mountains to which Walt finds himself feeling more and more empathetic.
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Walt Longmire faces one of his most challenging crime scenes as he tries to reckon with the revelations of his last case where he confronted the ghosts of his past and questioned the very nature of justice and mercy in the hard country of the West.
\nDeep in the heart of the Wyoming countryside, Sheriff of Absaroka County, Walt Longmire, is called to a crime scene like few others that he has seen. This crime brings up issues that go back to Walt's grandfather's time in Wyoming, as the revelations he learns about his grandfather come back to offer clues and motives for Walt's investigation.
One of the most viewed paintings in American history, Custer's Last Fight, copied and distributed by Anheuser-Busch at a rate of over two million copies a year, was destroyed in a fire at the 7th Cavalry Headquarters in Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1946.
\nOr was it?
\nWhen Charley Lee Stillwater dies of an apparent heart attack at the Wyoming Home for Soldiers & Sailors, Walt Longmire is called in to try and make sense of a piece of a painting and a Florsheim shoebox containing a million dollars, sending the good sheriff on the trail of a dangerous art heist.
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In the midst of the largest motorcycle rally in the world, a young biker is run off the road and ends up in critical condition. When Sheriff Walt Longmire and his good friend Henry Standing Bear are called to Hulett, Wyoming - the nearest town to America's first national monument, Devils Tower - to investigate, things start getting complicated.
\nAs competing biker gangs; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; a military-grade vehicle donated to the tiny local police force by a wealthy entrepreneur; and Lola, the real-life femme fatale and namesake for Henry's '59 Thunderbird (and, by extension, Walt's granddaughter) come into play, it rapidly becomes clear that there is more to get to the bottom of at this year's Sturgis Motorcycle Rally than a bike accident.
\nAfter all, in the words of Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Adventures of Sherlock Holmes the Bear won't stop quoting, \"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.\"
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When Blair McGowan, the mail person with the longest postal route in the country of over three hundred mile a day, goes missing the question becomes - where do you look for her? The Postal Inspector for the State of Wyoming elicits Sheriff Longmire to mount an investigation into her disappearance and Walt does everything but mail it in; posing as a letter-carrier himself, the good sheriff follows her trail and finds himself enveloped in the intrigue of an otherworldly cult.
\nPacked to the brim with twists and turns, the 21st novel in the New York Times bestselling Longmire series pushes Walt to his absolute limits, forcing him to wrestle with the impossible question: What good are your morals, if you’re marked for the dead letter office?
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It’s homecoming for the Durant Dogies when Cord Lynear, a Mormon “lost boy” forced off his compound for rebellious behavior, shows up in Absaroka County. Without much guidance, divine or otherwise, Sheriff Walt Longmire, Victoria Moretti, and Henry Standing Bear search for the boy’s mother and find themselves at the barbed-wire doorstep of an interstate polygamy group. Run by four-hundred-pound Roy Lynear, Cord’s father, the group is frighteningly well armed and very good at keeping secrets.
\nWalt’s got Cord locked up for his own good, but the Absaroka County jailhouse is getting crowded since the arrival of the boy’s self-appointed bodyguard, a dangerously spry old man who claims to be blessed by Joseph Smith himself. As Walt, Vic, and Henry butt heads with the Lynears, they hear whispers of Big Oil and the CIA and fear they might be dealing with a lot more than they bargained for.
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Walt is enjoying a celebratory beer after a weapons certification at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy when a younger sheriff confronts him with a photograph of twenty-five armed men standing in front of a Challenger steam locomotive.
\nIt takes him back to when, fresh from the battlefields of Vietnam, then-deputy Walt accompanied his mentor Lucian to the annual Wyoming Sheriff's Association junket held on the excursion train known as the Western Star, which ran the length of Wyoming from Cheyenne to Evanston and back.
\nArmed with his trusty Colt .45 and a paperback of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, the young Walt was ill-prepared for the machinations of twenty-four veteran sheriffs, let alone the cavalcade of curious characters that accompanied them.
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Seventeen-year-old Birdie lives for danger - from rooftopping abandoned hotels to chasing the perfect shot for her Instagram alter ego, Bad Altitude. Her dying Florida beach town may be crumbling, but her follower count is rising fast. She’s one viral post away from escaping the Space Coast for good.
\nThen she meets Micah, a daredevil TikTok star with a taste for high-stakes stunts and even higher risks. At first, Birdie thinks she’s found a kindred spirit. But Micah is secretly playing a deadly game online - and after he falls to his death, Birdie is left with more questions than answers.
\nDetermined to uncover the truth, she retraces his final stunts, getting dangerously close to his brother, Jayce. Can she trust him, or is he hiding something too? Now someone’s watching Birdie - both online and off - and she’s forced to keep playing. Because in this game, there’s only one rule: if you quit, you die.
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A woman with no past. A man who seems to know her. And a monstrous garden that could be the border between their worlds . . .
\nItaly, 1948 Julia Lombardi is a mystery even to herself. The beautiful model can’t remember where she’s from, where she’s been or how she came to live in Rome. When she receives an offer to accompany celebrated eccentric artist Salvador Dalí to the Sacro Bosco - Italy’s Garden of Monsters - as his muse, she’s strangely compelled to accept. It could be a chance to unlock the truth about her past . . .
\nShrouded in shadow, the garden full of giant statues that sometimes seem alive is far from welcoming. Still, from the moment of their arrival at the palazzo, Julia is inexplicably drawn to their darkly enigmatic host, Ignazio. He’s alluring yet terrifying - and he seems to know her. Posing for Dalí as the goddess Persephone, Julia finds the work to be perplexing, particularly as Dalí descends deeper into his fanaticism. To him, she is Persephone, and he insists she must eat pomegranate seeds to rejoin her king.
\nBetween Dalí’s fevered persistence, Ignazio’s uncanny familiarity and the agonising whispered warnings that echo through the garden, Julia is soon on the verge of unraveling. And she begins to wonder if she’s truly the mythical queen of the Underworld . . .
After losing her book deal and her academic position, historian Aida Reale needs a new career, and fast. After all, she and her fiancé, Graham, have a wedding to pay for. So when a friend recommends her for an extremely high-paying position at a company called MODA, it’s almost too good to be true. Plus, she’ll get to live in Italy, in a gorgeous palazzo!
\nAside from a snooty assistant, a daunting NDA and some very stringent rules about the use of personal technology, working for MODA is a dream come true - at least at first. But the more research Aida conducts for this elusive company, the more things feel off. Not only does her relationship with Graham suffer, but it seems like every site she visits either vanishes or is struck by tragedy soon after she’s been there.
\nIt’s only after a mysterious woman approaches Aida and Luciano, her devastatingly handsome and equally concerned MODA colleague, that they learn the truth - they are just mortal pawns in a game between gods. Now Aida must find answers to the question she's been avoiding: What's really happening to all the happiness she's been collecting . . . and can she stop the gods’ plans before it’s too late?
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Flora Mancini has been happily married for more than twenty years. But everything she thought she knew about herself, her marriage, and her relationship with her best friend, Margot, is upended when she stumbles upon an envelope containing her husband’s wedding ring - the one he claimed he lost one summer when their daughter, Ruby, was five.
\nFlora and Julian struggled for years, scraping together just enough acting work to raise Ruby in Manhattan and keep Julian’s small theater company - Good Company - afloat. A move to Los Angeles brought their first real career successes, a chance to breathe easier, and a reunion with Margot, now a bona fide television star. But has their new life been built on lies? What happened that summer all those years ago? And what happens now?
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It’s 1977 and an air of restlessness has settled on the residents of Cambridge Road in Rochester, New York. When Nina Larkin is given a copy of The Joy of Sex by her newly divorced friend, she can no longer dismiss the nearly non-existent intimacy of her marriage. Just as her oldest child, Clara, is falling in love for the first time, Nina finds herself longing for the a midlife awakening. An intoxicating fling with a neighbour brings Nina a freedom she never thought possible - but also risks the reputations of both families and unravels Clara’s world, just as she stands on the threshold of adulthood.
\nYears later, Clara, now a successful food stylist in New York City, has never been able to move past the long-ago scandal. Drawn back home by the pull of a family wedding and wrestling with her own demons, she makes a pivotal decision that turns her life upside down.
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A warm, funny and acutely perceptive debut novel about four adult siblings and the fate of the shared inheritance that has shaped their choices and their lives.
\nEvery family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab.
\nMonths earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a nineteen-year-old waitress as his passenger. The ensuing accident has endangered the Plumbs joint trust fund, “The Nest,” which they are months away from finally receiving. Meant by their deceased father to be a modest mid-life supplement, the Plumb siblings have watched The Nest’s value soar along with the stock market and have been counting on the money to solve a number of self-inflicted problems.
Melody, a wife and mother in an upscale suburb, has an unwieldy mortgage and looming college tuition for her twin teenage daughters. Jack, an antiques dealer, has secretly borrowed against the beach cottage he shares with his husband, Walker, to keep his store open. And Bea, a once-promising short-story writer, just can’t seem to finish her overdue novel.
Can Leo rescue his siblings and, by extension, the people they love? Or will everyone need to reimagine the future they’ve envisioned? Brought together as never before, Leo, Melody, Jack, and Beatrice must grapple with old resentments, present-day truths, and the significant emotional and financial toll of the accident, as well as finally acknowledge the choices they have made in their own lives.
This is a story about the power of family, the possibilities of friendship, the ways we depend upon one another and the ways we let one another down. In this tender, entertaining, and deftly written debut, Sweeney brings a remarkable cast of characters to life to illuminate what money does to relationships, what happens to our ambitions over the course of time, and the fraught yet unbreakable ties we share with those we love.
A vivid, surreal Gothic about a queer, Latine, working class witch who sets out to rescue a bespelled heiress and loses control of her powers and her heart in the process.
\nIt is 1968 Oakland, and Natalia Fuentes has been hearing rumors about the beautiful Violeta Miramontes. The young heiress to Spanish colonial wealth has been left paralyzed by a mysterious illness. But Nati knows a thing or two about witchcraft, and she is certain that this is the work of dark magic.
\nArmed with a plan to break the spell and earn a handsome reward, Nati works her way into the house as Violeta’s caretaker, and immediately discovers her suspicions are true. But who cursed Violeta? And why?
\nAs feelings between the two women bloom into romance, Nati grows more and more reckless, and is forced to face her own ghosts - ones she hoped would stay gone forever.
\nRiveting and richly layered, Muñeca explores how far one will go to save the person they love - even if that means damning themselves. Cynthia Gómez fills her debut novel with moments that chill your bones and warm your heart, a razor-sharp examination of deep-rooted issues that will haunt readers long after the last page is turned.
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Welcome to 1876 and a rootin’-tootin’ America bursting with gunslingers, outlaws, and garou.
\nJANE (a genuine hero-eene)
\nCalamity’s her name, and garou hunting’s her game - when she’s not starring in Wild Bill’s Traveling Show, that is. She reckons that if a girl wants to be a legend, she should just go ahead and be one.
\nFRANK (*wolf whistle*)
\nFrank “the Pistol Prince” Butler is the Wild West’s #1 bachelor. He’s also the best sharpshooter on both sides of the Mississippi, but he’s about to meet his match . . .
\nANNIE (get your gun!)
\nAnnie Oakley (yep, that Annie) is lookin’ for a job, not a romance, but she can’t deny there’s something about Frank she likes. Really likes. Still, she’s pretty sure that anything he can do, she can do better.
\nA HAIRY SITUATION
\nAfter a garou hunt goes south and Jane finds a suspicious-like bite on her arm, she turns tail for Deadwood, where there’s been talk of a garou cure. But things ain’t always what they seem - meaning the gang better hightail it after her before they’re a day late and a Jane short.
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Welcome to Renaissance France, a place of poison and plots, of beauties and beasts, of mice and . . . queens?
\nMary is the queen of Scotland and the jewel of the French court. Except when she’s a mouse. Yes, reader, Mary is an Eðian (shapeshifter) in a kingdom where Verities rule. It’s a secret that could cost her a head - or a tail.
\nLuckily, Mary has a confidant in her betrothed, Francis. But things at the gilded court take a treacherous turn after the king meets a suspicious end. Thrust onto the throne, Mary and Francis face a viper’s nest of conspiracies, traps, and treason. And if Mary’s secret is revealed, heads are bound to roll.
\nWith a royally clever sense of humor, Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows continue their campaign to turn history on its head in this YA fantasy that’s perfect for fans of A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue.
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It’s aliiiiiiiive! The bestselling authors of My Lady Jane are back with the electric, poetic, and (almost) historical tale of the one and only Mary Shelley.
\nMary may have inherited the brilliant mind of her late mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, but she lives a drab life above her father’s bookstore, waiting for an extraordinary idea that’ll inspire a work worthy of her parentage - and impress her rakishly handsome (and super-secret) beau, Percy Shelley.
\nAda Lovelace knows a thing or two about superstar parents, what with her dad being Lord Byron, the most famous poet on Earth. But her passions lie far beyond the arts - in mechanical engineering, to be exact. Alas, no matter how precise Ada’s calculations, there’s always a man willing to claim her ingenious ideas as his own.
\nPan, a.k.a. Practical Automaton Number One, is Ada's greatest idea yet: a machine that will change the world, if only she can figure out how to make him truly autonomous . . . or how to make him work at all.
\nWhen fate connects our two masterminds, Mary and Ada learn that they are fae - magical people with the ability to make whatever they imagine become real. But when their dream team results in a living, breathing, thinking PAN, Mary and Ada find themselves hunted by a mad scientist who won't stop until he finds out how they made a real boy out of spare parts.
\nWith comic genius and a truly electrifying sense of adventure, Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows continue their campaign to turn history on its head in this YA fantasy that’s perfect for fans of The Princess Bride and A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue.
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In My Lady Jane, coauthors Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows have created a one-of-a-kind YA fantasy in the tradition of The Princess Bride, featuring a reluctant king, an even more reluctant queen, a noble steed, and only a passing resemblance to actual history - because sometimes history needs a little help.
\nAt sixteen, Lady Jane Grey is about to be married off to a stranger and caught up in a conspiracy to rob her cousin, King Edward, of his throne. But those trifling problems aren’t for Jane to worry about. Jane gets to be Queen of England.
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You may think you know the story. After a miserable childhood, penniless orphan Jane Eyre embarks on a new life as a governess at Thornfield Hall. There, she meets one dark, brooding Mr. Rochester. Despite their significant age gap (!) and his uneven temper (!!), they fall in love - and, Reader, she marries him. (!!!)
\nOr does she?
\nPrepare for an adventure of Gothic proportions, in which all is not as it seems, a certain gentleman is hiding more than skeletons in his closets, and one orphan Jane Eyre, aspiring author Charlotte Brontë, and supernatural investigator Alexander Blackwood are about to be drawn together on the most epic ghost hunt this side of Wuthering Heights.
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Don't call this mermaid “little” - call her “captain,” unless you want to walk the plank.
\nMary is in love with the so-called prince of Charles Town, except he doesn't love her back. Which is inconvenient. Since she's a mermaid, being brokenhearted means she'll - poof! - turn into sea-foam.
\nBut instead, Mary finds herself pulled out of the sea and up onto a pirate ship. To survive, she joins them. But Mary isn't willing to just sing the yo-ho-hos. She wants the pirate life, all of it, and she's ready to make a splash . . . by becoming captain. But when Blackbeard dies suddenly, Mary has a chance to become so much more: Pirate King . . . or Queen. She won't let anyone stop her - not Blackbeard's cute son, not her best friend from back under the sea who's having a bit too much fun with his new legs, and certainly not everyone who says she can't be a pirate just because she's a girl.
\nShe may not be the best man for the job, but she'll definitely prove that she's worth her salt.
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The past few years have held more surprises than part-angel Clara Gardner could ever have anticipated. Yet from the dizzying highs of first love, to the agonising low of losing someone close to her, the one thing she can no longer deny is that she was never meant to live a normal life.
\nSince discovering the special role she plays among the other angel-bloods, Clara has been determined to protect Tucker Avery from the evil that follows her . . . even if it means breaking both their hearts. Leaving town seems like the best option, so she’s headed back to California - and so is Christian Prescott, the irresistible boy from the vision that started her on this journey in the first place.
\nAs Clara makes her way in a world that is frighteningly new, she discovers that the fallen angel who attacked her is watching her every move. And he’s not the only one . . . With the battle against the Black Wings looming, Clara knows she must finally fulfil her destiny. But it won’t come without sacrifices and betrayal. In the riveting finale of the Unearthly series, Clara must decide her fate once and for all.
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For months Clara Gardner trained to face the fire from her visions, but she wasn't prepared for the choice she had to make that day. And in the aftermath, she discovered that nothing about being part angel is as straightforward as she thought.
Now, torn between her love for Tucker and her complicated feelings about the roles she and Christian seem destined to play in a world that is both dangerous and beautiful, Clara struggles with a shocking revelation: Someone she loves will die in a matter of months. With her future uncertain, the only thing Clara knows for sure is that the fire was just the beginning.
Today Melly had us writing letters to our babies . . .
Cassandra McMurtrey has the best parents a girl could ask for. They’ve given Cass a life she wouldn’t trade for the world. She has everything she needs - except maybe the one thing she wants. Like, to know who she is. Where she came from. Questions her adoptive parents can’t answer, no matter how much they love her.
But eighteen years ago, someone wrote Cass a series of letters. And they may just hold the answers Cass has been searching for.
Alternating between Cass’s search for answers and letters from the pregnant teen who gave her up for adoption, this voice-driven narrative is the perfect read for fans of Nina LaCour and Jandy Nelson.
The last time Lex was happy, it was before. When she had a family that was whole. A boyfriend she loved. Friends who didn't look at her like she might break down at any moment.
Now she's just the girl whose brother killed himself. And it feels like that's all she'll ever be.
As Lex starts to put her life back together, she tries to block out what happened the night Tyler died. But there's a secret she hasn't told anyone-a text Tyler sent, that could have changed everything.
Lex's brother is gone. But Lex is about to discover that a ghost doesn't have to be real to keep you from moving on.
Clara Gardner has recently learned that she's part angel. Having angel blood run through her veins not only makes her smarter, stronger, and faster than humans (a word, she realizes, that no longer applies to her), but it means she has a purpose, something she was put on this earth to do. Figuring out what that is, though, isn't easy.
Her visions of a raging forest fire and an alluring stranger lead her to a new school in a new town. When she meets Christian, who turns out to be the boy of her dreams (literally), everything seems to fall into place and out of place at the same time. Because there's another guy, Tucker, who appeals to Clara's less angelic side.
As Clara tries to find her way in a world she no longer understands, she encounters unseen dangers and choices she never thought she'd have to make between honesty and deceit, love and duty, good and evil. When the fire from her vision finally ignites, will Clara be ready to face her destiny?
Unearthly is a moving tale of love and fate, and the struggle between following the rules and following your heart.
There are two things Nina Jacobs is determined to do over the summer of 1986: avoid her mother’s depression-fueled rages, and lose her virginity before she starts college in the fall. Both are seemingly impossible - when her mother isn’t lying in bed for days, she’s lashing out at Nina over any perceived slight. And after a blowjob gone spectacularly wrong, Nina is the talk of Flanagan’s, the Upper East Side bar where young Manhattan society congregates. It doesn’t help that she’s Jewish, an outsider among the blue-eyed blondes who populate this rarified world. She can fit in, kind of, with enough alcohol and prescription drugs stolen from her parents’ medicine cabinet.
\nFlanagan’s is where she pines for the handsome, preppy, and charismatic Gardner Reed, whom every girl wants to sleep with and every guy wants to be. After she’s introduced to cocaine, Nina plunges headlong into her pursuit of Gardner, oblivious to the warning signs. When a new medication seemingly frees her mother from darkness, and Nina and Gardner grow closer, it seems like Nina might finally get what she wants. But at what cost?
\nFreud called cocaine “a gorgeous excitement,” but a gorgeous excitement for the wrong guy can be lethal.
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Stock transporter Tobie Mason is driving a trio of valuable thoroughbred racing mares from Kentucky to a California farm when her rig becomes involved in a multiple vehicle pileup, and the most valuable of the three escapes to join a herd of wild horses. When she seeks help to recover her horse, everyone in the small town nearby gives the same answer: Go see Wild Maggie.
\nMaggie Wilkes has been tracking and keeping records on the area’s wild horse herds since she was old enough to ride. She has no problem with working horses that are treated well, but the racing industry is near the top of her blacklist. That’s why she has no intention of helping Tobie Mason recover her escaped mare even though the heat growing between them comes from more than their differing points of view. They can’t agree on anything. There’s no way they’re going to fall in love, right?
Competitive barrel racer Lacey Bishop has worked her way from homelessness and poverty to needing only a few points to qualify for the National Rodeo Finals when her only horse suffers a career-ending injury. Without the money to buy a new horse, Lacey has no choice but to trust an offer from Double R Ranch to lease one of their best barrel-racing horses.
\nHorse trainer Wil Rivers is working hard to get her family's ranch profitable again after the coronavirus pandemic shut them down for more than a year. Her best chance to save the ranch from foreclosure is a half-million-dollar-plus offer to buy the mare she's promised to the bewitching Lacey Bishop.
\nWhen Lacey discovers Wil's plan to sell the Double R's \"money\" horse to her fiercest competitor, she sees their chance for a future together and her chance to qualify for the finals disappearing in the rodeo arena dust.
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Army veteran Catherine Daye long ago accepted her passable looks, mediocre talent, and average intelligence. In fact, she bought a rundown farm on seventy acres to retreat from the world and live out her simple, ordinary life.
\nAtlanta marketing superstar Autumn Swan’s world is anything but simple. Constantly plugged in to what’s trending on social media, it’s her job to keep her clients ahead of the competition. When her favorite cousin dies suddenly, she finds herself the owner of a modest country home, guardian to a sullen, tomboyish ten-year-old, and neighbor to an intriguing woman who isn’t as ordinary as she appears.
Actor Davis Hart’s career is in a death spiral after her drunken sleep-and-tell outs the star of their hit television show. Hoping time and distance will offer a new start, Davis returns to her small hometown where it’s Christmas year-round and the community theater where she honed her acting skills draws thousands of tourists every year. Only everything has changed. The theater is struggling to stay open, and its last hope is a mesmerising hazel-eyed woman with a grant to produce an original holiday play.
\nPlaywright and director Asia du Muir is serious and very focused on her career. She’s finished her education at Columbia University and hopes a fellowship grant to write and produce a play at a community theater will launch her career. She’s not going to let some party girl actress ruin her best chance to get noticed by a Broadway critic.
\nNeither of them expects the feelings they can’t deny, but everyone knows personal and professional relationships shouldn’t be mixed. Is their love destined to wait in the wings?
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Teague Maxwell, a brilliant, reclusive inventor, knows two things about herself - she prefers the company of animals, and she will die in the next year following her fortieth birthday. Resigned to the inevitable, she hires Baye Cobb from a local pet rescue to find new homes for her menagerie of pets.
\nWhen Baye decided to turn her late grandmother’s farm into an animal rescue operation, she had no idea so many animals would land on her doorstep. In dire need of more funding, more space and much better business management, Baye has no choice but to accept the lucrative offer from Teague - her very eccentric, but largest, donor. She agrees to help rehome Teague’s pets despite her disgust for someone who would adopt so many animals, only to rehome all of them.
\nNeither woman expects Teague’s desperation and Baye’s disapproval to explode into undeniable attraction. The more time they spend together, the more they realize it’s not just animals Baye is adept at saving - she could be the one to rescue Teague from her catastrophic fate.
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Silas Karsson was trained to be a ghost—an assassin of the Guild whose chording magic turns sound into a weapon. With a ukelin in his hand and dissonance in his veins, he can track danger in the dark better than any blade can carve it.
\nBut when a supposedly simple assignment reveals a rogue assassin working with forbidden resonance, Silas uncovers something far worse: the Celebrants - an underground faction twisting the Guild’s magic for their own rising power.
\nTo stop them, Silas is given a new title: Hunter. His first target? A prodigy of the Guild . . . and the one friend he ever trusted.
\nFollowing a trail of corrupted chordings, dead operatives, and vanishing towns, Silas must decide which is more dangerous: the traitor he’s ordered to pursue - or the Guild that trained him to obey.
\nBecause the Celebrants aren’t hiding anymore. They’re recruiting.
\nAnd the dissonance whispering through the world is growing louder.
\n
Silas Karsson has seen what corrupted chording can do - how forbidden resonance turns assassins into monsters and towns into graves. Named Hunter by the Guild, he’s supposed to cut the Celebrants out at the root.
\nInstead, the trail drags him to Yur - a terraced city of stone, incense, and secrets - where the air hums with a wrongness even Silas can’t map. Dissonance clings to every alleyway . . . until it doesn’t. Because here, the sound doesn’t just warp.
\nIt vanishes.
\nAs priests march beneath tolling bells and unseen forces tighten their grip, Silas and an unlikely ally - Jasmine, a healer with powders that can drop a man faster than a knife - are hunted by Guild operatives trained to kill him. Someone has turned the Guild’s own techniques against its Hunter. Someone is using the city’s faith as a shield.
\nAnd somewhere in Yur, a name echoes through the silence like a threat:
\nThe Maestro.
\nTo survive, Silas must fight through assassins, catacombs, and a holy order that can smother dissonance with a single presence - before the Celebrants spark a massacre that will blame the Guild and crown the wrong people as saviors.
\nBecause Yur isn’t just a battleground. It’s a proving ground. And the next note in the Dissonance Chronicles is about to be played - whether Silas is ready . . . or not.
\n
Gray clouds gather overhead as she runs along the dark road. Not a soul is out in the storm, or so she thinks. As the vehicle pulls up alongside her, she sees a familiar face behind the wheel and thinks she's safe. Little does she know, she has just put herself in unthinkable danger...
When local cheerleader, Laurie Turner, goes missing after practice and her bright red pick-up truck is found abandoned by the side of a quiet road, Detective Jenna Alton fears the worst.
Visiting Laurie's family house, Jenna senses that the teenager's home life isn't as perfect as her father would have people believe. Quick to temper and full of hatred toward Laurie's mother, Dr Turner doesn't seem to know the first thing about his own daughter, let alone how long she's been missing for.
With the clock ticking, the whole town takes to the streets to find the missing girl and, after a frantic search, a terrible discovery is made at the bottom of an old mine shaft on the outskirts of town. Laurie's pale body is totally still and Jenna is sure somebody in the local community is her killer.
When another cheerleader goes missing, Jenna thinks that someone close to the school is picking the teenagers off one by one. As she talks to the other students, it becomes clear that there are plenty of people who'd like to silence the girls forever.
Then her own deputy David Kane comes face to face with the murderer, and Jenna has to race to save him. Can she do so before it's too late? Or will another young life be taken?
The body of college student Chrissie Lowe lies curled into a ball - long red cuts along her arms suggesting how she had met her death. Detective Jenna Alton is called in to investigate.
Purplish bruising on Chrissie's upper arms make Jenna believe there is more to Chrissie's death than others suspected, and she soon finds herself following the trail of the student's last few moments, leading her to the scene of a party that had ended just hours before Chrissie's body was found.
When Jenna hears reports that Chrissie was seen going into the bedroom of a college football star, she knows that finding out what went on behind that closed door could be the key to finding out how Chrissie ended up dead. But then another partygoer dies in an apparent accident at the campus gym just hours later, and Jenna is convinced the deaths are connected.
Facing a wall of silence from the student population, Jenna has to act fast to find the killer, but soon another student is found dead on the campus. As Jenna sends in one of her deputies undercover, she prays that she hasn't just sealed his fate. Can she find the killer before any more lives are taken?
Hidden deep in the forest, schoolgirl Felicity Parker is found carefully laid out on a rock with nothing but a freshly picked bunch of flowers next to her. The body lies just off a popular hiking route, and Detective Jenna Alton thinks the killer might be a visitor to the town, until another girl’s body is found at the local swimming pool, once again posed with a bunch of flowers.
\nJenna recognises the signs of a serial killer, and thinks it could be a local. As the town is gripped with fear, Jenna must examine each person the girls knew, and trust between neighbors starts to crumble.
\nBoth girls went out on their own, and were found where they shouldn’t be. Were they taken by chance, or did they know their killer? How were they lured so far from safety? And can Jenna and her team find the killer before another life is lost?
\n
It’s Halloween in Black Rock Falls and Sheriff Jenna Alton and her deputy David Kane are called to a small lodge on the outskirts of town. Jenna is devastated to find the lifeless body of Willow Smith, a military widow whose husband went missing in action and has been presumed dead for years. Her breath catches in her throat when she notices the heart-shaped purple medal on Willow’s pale chest. Was Willow clinging to it when she died, or was it placed there after she took her last breath?
\nDesperately chasing down every lead, Jenna hears that Willow had been receiving silent phone calls in the dead of night. Witnesses say Willow thought her missing husband was trying to make contact. Wishful thinking of a lonely wife consumed with grief, or a heartless killer hoping to terrify her?
\nDays later, another woman’s body is found at the bottom of a perilous ravine. Jenna’s worst fear is confirmed the moment she spots a purple medal: a dangerous serial killer is preying on the wives of soldiers from the same platoon, and if she doesn’t act fast, more lives will be at risk.
\nThe key lies in discovering what happened to the missing soldiers, and whether any of them made it back alive. But, separated from her team in a secluded forest, Jenna hears a branch snap behind her. She is not alone. Will she be the next victim of a twisted trained soldier on the loose? And how many more grieving widows will have their lives snatched before he’s caught?
\n
When the body of a man is found in the dense forest surrounding Black Rock Falls, Sheriff Jenna Alton immediately sees disturbing similarities with a past case - the same murder weapon, the remote beauty spot, and the way the victim is perched against a tree with no sign of a struggle. But the killer in that case was jailed for life.
\nJenna suspects a copycat killer and her fears are confirmed when, during the town’s Halloween festival, the bodies of two tourists are found further down the remote trail. They too had been hunted down and murdered in another picturesque spot and all Jenna can hope is that the man behind bars can help her catch the twisted monster behind these new deaths.
\nAs she comes face to face with the vicious murderer who has haunted her dreams for years, she is sure he knows more than he’s telling her. Looking deep into Jenna’s eyes, as if they’re two old friends catching up, he promises to take his final revenge on her for locking him up. But before she can learn more, he is dragged away by prison guards.
\nWhen a sudden emergency call takes Jenna and her deputy David Kane deep into the woods, Jenna senses something is very wrong about the situation. As a strange calmness falls over the forest, a familiar face emerges from the shadows. Will this killer be the one who finally takes down Sheriff Alton, and can they make it out of the forest alive?
\n
It’s hiking season in Black Rock Falls and the small town in Montana is flooded with visitors. But when a hiker finds a human skull on a deserted trail in the woods that surround the town, Detective Jenna Alton is called in to investigate.
With no missing persons reported, Jenna has no leads. Then her team makes a shocking discovery - the body of another hiker, a young man, tied to a tree and riddled with bullets. Could the two murders be linked?
As more bodies are found, Jenna and her deputy David Kane know that they must venture deep into the forest to find and face the killer. But nothing can prepare them for what awaits them there . . .
It was Beth Katz's serial killer father who made her like she is: a successful FBI agent and an unstoppable vigilante dedicated to hunting down murderers who have evaded capture. Beth will push herself to the limits to deliver justice. Even if it means killing those who deserve to die.
\nWhen the body of missing schoolgirl Brooklyn Daniels is discovered in a secluded patch of woodland on the outskirts of town, Beth and her partner Dax Styles race to the scene. Brooklyn and her best friend left home to pick wildflowers a week ago and vanished without trace.
\nTaking in Brooklyn's body carefully laid on a blanket and the dress neatly folded next to her, Beth suddenly freezes. She's seen this before: in the files of a cold case. The perpetrator takes two girls-one vanishes, the other is killed and left with her clothes beside her. Now Beth knows she has a twisted serial killer on her hands, she'll stop at nothing to catch him. Even if it means going against Dax's orders . . .
\nDesperate to find the other missing girl, Beth's heart pounds as she puts herself up as bait and walks into the secluded forest, knowing evil is lurking nearby. With Dax watching her every move, Beth prays the gamble pays off. Can she outsmart the murderer, or did she just walk into a trap? And when Beth finally comes face to face with the killer, will she hand him over or serve justice of her very own?
\n
When a robbery at a local store ends with multiple deaths and the abduction of sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Cassidy Wilder, FBI agent Beth Katz and her partner Dax Styles are called in. Visiting Cassidy’s family home just a couple of blocks away from the quiet little store where she went missing, Beth’s heart breaks as she talks to her grieving parents and promises to find their daughter.
\nLooking at CCTV footage, Beth is horrified to see how calm the killer is as he shoots everyone in the store before forcing the terrified Cassidy to follow him into his truck. Then Beth uncovers multiple robberies just like this one, where all witnesses are killed and a young girl is taken. All of the victims are taken at night and found dead the following morning, so Beth knows time is running out to save Cassidy.
\nWhen Cassidy’s lifeless body is discovered dumped on a busy highway near a patch of forest, Beth is devastated. And as more girls go missing, she fears the murderer is escalating. A breakthrough finally comes when she finds a name written in blood next to one of the bodies. Beth knows she’s close to catching the killer and is determined to stop any more lives from being taken - even if it means serving her own form of justice. Will she be able to resist the urge to take a life herself? Or will she become the killer’s next victim?
\n
When a body is found stuffed into a barrel at a garbage dump, covered in long red lacerations, Detective Jenna Alton and her new deputy, David Kane, rush to the scene.
Nothing ever happens in the small American town of Black Rock Falls, so Jenna believes the victim must be one of two recent missing persons, and she fears for the life of the other.
Both were strangers to the town, but there’s nothing else to link them. Jenna knows someone must have seen something, but no one’s talking; how well does she really know the people around her?
Then a disturbing clue makes Jenna suspect a connection with other disappearances in the town’s history. Just when she begins asking the right questions, she realises she’s being followed. Is she next on the killer’s list?
In a race against time, Jenna and David must unlock the dark secret at the heart of the town, before it’s too late . . .
When Dakota Slade fails to turn up to work at the general store, Sheriff Jenna Alton and her deputy David Kane visit her home in Black Rock Falls. TV still blaring, Dakota’s lifeless body is draped across the battered old sofa, her dark hair hanging over her delicate face, her young life taken too soon. With a shuddering breath, Jenna notices two small scorch marks on the back of the victim’s neck. Dakota has been electrocuted.
\nLeaping into action, Jenna traces Dakota’s last steps but quickly hits a wall. Dakota went to church every week, helped at local charities, and she was loved by those around her. Why would anyone want to harm her?
\nThen another young woman is found dead in her living room, the same two burn marks on her neck. Jenna’s heart shatters. Convinced a twisted killer is preying on women who live alone, she fears another innocent soul will be taken soon.
\nA breakthrough comes when Jenna uncovers rumors of a sleazy customer who visited both victims at work. Watching CCTV footage, her pulse pounds as she looks at the screen. The man in the film is someone close to her, someone she thought she could trust. Can Jenna take down the killer if it’s someone she loves? And will she catch him in time to stop another vulnerable young woman being murdered?
\n
When a beautiful young woman is reported missing from her hotel room on the outskirts of Black Rock Falls, Sheriff Jenna Alton and her deputy David Kane are devastated to discover her pale, lifeless body trapped beneath a frozen lake nearby. It’s Jenna who finds the single pearl earring buried in the frosted grass that gives them their first lead.
\nJust as Jenna has the remaining hotel guests safely back in their rooms, the killer strikes again, and another victim is found in one of the hotel’s lakeside cabins. Next to his bloodied body is a second pearl earring. What does it mean, and why is the killer leaving them for Jenna to find?
\nInterviewing witnesses, Jenna discovers that both victims were seen arguing with other residents hours before their deaths. Could the murderer be out for revenge, and how many more bodies will follow before they are truly satisfied?
\nAs a blizzard cuts the hotel off from Black Rock Falls, Jenna and her team are trapped with the killer. Then she receives a terrifying call from a teenage girl who thinks the murderer was in her room as she slept. Can Jenna save her from becoming the next victim? And how many more innocent lives will be taken before the snow thaws?
\n
As Sheriff Jenna Alton and her deputy David Kane rush into the remote pine forest surrounding Black Rock Falls, Jenna’s pulse races when she sees the glint of metal behind a line of trees: a prison bus, the lifeless body of its driver slumped over the steering wheel, and its four prisoners escaped into the wilderness . . .
\nJenna’s heart pounds at the thought of the violent murders each of the fugitives committed, among them the The Ice Pick Killer who drove women to remote locations before taking their innocent young lives. And worse, female warden, Amy Clark, is missing from the bus. Amy is new to the job, and her family have been calling for news on the lost van for hours. Jenna scans the acres of dangerous woodland around her, vowing to search every inch to bring Amy back to her family.
\nNearby gunshots put Jenna on the killers’ trail, but as she descends on a small cabin, it’s clear from the deadly silence that the men have already moved on, leaving behind the body of an innocent old man. Jenna screams his granddaughter’s name into the woodland. But Serena has vanished, just like Amy.
\nAs night draws in, Jenna fears the murderers are on a direct path toward Black Rock Falls, and she dreads to think what could happen if they made it to the quiet small town. Pushed to her limit chasing four twisted killers, will she catch them in time to save the lives of the two missing girls?
\n
The body of Amos Price lies in a pool of blood on the polished floor of an otherwise empty house. With no signs of a break in, and no clues left at the scene, Detective Jenna Alton is at a loss.
But as the team begins to unpick the life of the reclusive victim, they discover a disturbing link between Amos and the disappearance of several young girls in the county going back years.
Days later, another brutally murdered body is found, in a remote motel on the outskirts of town. Ely Dorsey was killed in a frenzied attack and Jenna fears not only that the murders are connected to the missing girls, but that the killer hasn’t finished yet.
As Jenna tries to work out who will be next, the killer suddenly starts sending her deputy, David Kane, messages. Is she being taunted? Or does the murderer want to be caught? And will Jenna discover who’s behind these killings before more people die?
Special Agent Beth Katz races through the dense Montana woodland toward a small, isolated cabin. She’s investigating the disappearance of her partner Dax Styles’s sister who went missing as she walked home from school, and Beth finally has a solid lead. Outside the decrepit building, her heart pounds wondering what she will find on the other side of the door.
\nA young woman with long brown hair and cornflower blue eyes, just like Dax’s, shakes in the kitchen. It’s clearly Ginny, but before Dax can speak to his long-lost sister, Beth hears a noise from outside. In a rundown outbuilding, they discover another young girl, reported missing just weeks before. Dressed in a thin nightie, Ava cowers as Beth breaks into the padlocked room. Her captor has fled, but Beth will use every skill she’s got to track him down.
\nWorking night and day, Beth uncovers more cases of young girls taken from remote roads near their homes. Twelve-year-old Shiloh Weeks vanished as she walked home just days ago. Her story remarkably similar to Ginny and Ava’s.
\nBeth and Dax are on a mission to stop to this twisted individual and save any new girls from being taken into the woods and lost forever. But when the trail leads them to a man impersonating a police officer to gain the trust of his victims, will Dax hand him over or take matters into his own hands?
\n
When news of a missing limousine reaches Sheriff Jenna Alton and her deputy, David Kane, they fear for the lives of the ten teenagers who were inside and should have been enjoying their prom night. After picking up each passenger from their home, instead of heading to prom, the car turned toward the darkness of the forest around Black Rock Falls. Has there been a tragic accident, or has something more sinister happened to the teenagers?
\nHours later, Jenna’s team discovers the bodies of the five boys from the car, and her heart shatters when she realises the girls are still missing. The killer has taken them, and he hasn’t left a single trace.
\nJenna knows time is running out for the teenagers when a lifeless body is discovered hanging from the branches of a tree, and another is found laying on a boulder nearby, still wearing her prom dress. Taking in the scene, she spots something that makes her pulse race - the girls’ bodies have been displayed just like on a previous murder case she worked. Could there be a copycat killer on the loose?
\nWith three young girls unaccounted for, Jenna’s team works around the clock in the dense woodland looking for clues before they find themselves under attack as well. Jenna knows one thing for sure - the murderer wants to take as many lives as possible. As she reads the notes on her past case, her heart races with worry about what kind of monster she is about to face. Has Jenna finally met her match? And will the missing girls ever come home?
\n
The rain had been falling for weeks when Black Rock Falls Sheriff, Jenna Alton, receives a panicked phone call from a local forest ranger. The lifeless body of a woman has washed up on the banks of a swollen river.
\nRushing to the scene, Jenna and her deputy, David Kane, find the young girl laying face up in the dirt, her long brown hair spilling out around her, her perfect pale skin showing no signs of struggle. Leaning in for a closer look, she finds a jack of hearts playing card tucked into the girl’s underwear. This was no accident - someone killed this innocent soul, and left a twisted calling card . . .
\nDays later, another young woman is found slumped in the back of car at a local truck stop on the outskirts of town, angry red marks around her neck. Jenna’s head spins when she finds a second playing card in her clothing. Is this killer escalating? And does he have a next victim already in his sights?
\nAs a landslide shuts the town off from the outside world, Jenna and her team battle raging storms in their search for answers. Jenna is convinced the playing cards link these victims to a twisted serial killer the FBI have been hunting for over a decade. If she’s right, she’s chasing America’s most dangerous and elusive killer. Can she catch him before Black Rock Falls loses another innocent young life?
\n
Following a frantic emergency call in the middle of the night, Detective Jenna Alton arrives at a secluded family home to find the body of Lucas Robinson lying in a pool of his own blood in his bed. His wife Carol, shivering in shock, has just watched an intruder shoot her husband in cold blood.
\nAs Jenna investigates the murder, she soon discovers that Lucas was having an affair. And when his mistress is also found strangled to death in the center of the small town, Jenna is convinced that the murderer is living amongst them.
\nWhen the killer escalates with a mass murder at a remote ranch on the outskirts of Black Rock Falls, Jenna knows for sure that she’s dealing with a murderer more twisted than any other she’s faced before.
\nAs the town begins to fill with revelers for the annual Halloween festival, Jenna has to work fast to stop any more lives being taken. But as the killer always seems to be one step ahead of the investigation, has she finally met a murderer who can outsmart her?
\n
It’s winter in Black Rock Falls and, as tourists flock to the small town to take in the snowy mountain peaks, one visitor makes a sickening discovery. The frozen body of a young woman hangs from a tree on the outskirts of town. Detective Jenna Alton is called in to investigate.
Jenna’s stomach turns as she surveys the ice-cold remains, and she’s soon alerted to similar burial sites nearby. With no missing persons reported, Jenna and her deputy, David Kane, fear Black Rock Falls is being used as a dumping ground for bodies.
As the body count mounts up, Jenna is more determined than ever to find the person responsible. But as she tries to catch the killer out, he outsmarts her once again and Jenna begins to wonder if he knows her next move. Could he be closer to her than she thinks?
When the investigation takes Jenna to a homeless shelter right in the heart of the community, she fears for the life of a woman who hasn’t been seen for a few days. It’s clear the killer is beginning to escalate, so Jenna ramps up the investigation and puts herself in unthinkable danger. Can she catch the murderer off guard, or does he already know she’s on her way? Has Jenna finally met a killer she can’t catch?
When the body of a young woman is discovered in a local playground in the center of Black Rock Falls, Sheriff Jenna Alton and her deputy David Kane rush to the scene. Jenna recoils with horror when she sees the body, dressed in a thin nightgown, her face covered by a terrifying Halloween mask.
\nWhen the body is examined, red puncture marks are uncovered along her spine. Jenna makes a connection with a cold case where the killer tortured young women for years and was never caught. If the murderer has started killing again, Jenna knows it’s only a matter of time before another body is found.
\nDays later, when another victim lays slumped against the fence of a local landfill site, with the same puncture wounds and macabre mask, Jenna’s fears are confirmed. A serial killer is back in town and they’re picking off women one by one.
\nThen, as a third body is found, Jenna finally gets the breakthrough she needs. Dirt found underneath the women’s fingernails leads to a dangerous cave network in the mountains outside town. And once Jenna ventures into the dark, winding underground tunnels, will she find the person responsible for the deaths and take them down, or has she just walked into the killer’s trap?
\n
When Jan Pierce is reported missing, Sheriff Jenna Alton and her deputy David Kane rush to the forest surrounding Black Rock Falls. Jenna’s heart breaks when she sees Jan’s body at the bottom of a ravine. But it’s the purplish bruising in the shape of a boot on her back that tells Jenna it was no accident. Somebody killed her.
\nAs Jenna investigates Jan’s last movements, she learns that Jan joined a self-defense class and told her closest friends that she thought someone had followed her home one night. Was someone watching her every move, waiting for the right moment to strike?
\nThen another woman from the same group, Sierra Lang, is reported missing. When Jenna finds Sierra at home, her lifeless body submerged in bathwater amid clear signs of a struggle, she is certain there is a serial killer in town. With no sign of forced entry, Jenna believes Sierra knew the killer and let him in. Could it be someone known to the whole group, someone they thought was a friend?
\nAs Jenna looks into both women’s lives, her heart races when the trail leads to someone she knows very well - someone she trusts. As a member of her own team comes under fire, Jenna is shocked to her core and desperate to get answers. Could the killer be closer than Jenna ever imagined, and can she uncover the truth before another young woman’s life is taken?
\n
When a car belonging to Black Rock Falls’ much-loved bartender Maisy Jones is found abandoned on an ice-covered road outside of town, Sheriff Jenna Alton and her deputy David Kane are called in. The exhaust has been tampered with, which can only mean one thing: someone wanted Maisy stranded on that isolated road . . .
\nFinding a red backpack on the same perilous stretch of highway, Jenna hopes it will contain clues to Maisy’s whereabouts. But the debit cards inside belong to local teaching assistant, Billy Stevens. He didn’t show up for work that day. Billy too has vanished into thin air.
\nJenna needs to find Maisy and Billy fast, but her frantic search only throws up another missing person. Canvassing the small town festooned with Christmas lights, Jenna has the impossible task of tracking down a twisted murderer plucking victims from their everyday lives and leaving no trace.
\nAlmost giving up hope, she makes a sickening discovery in the church at the center of town, one that sends shockwaves through the tight-knit community. Everyone is afraid to let their loved ones out of sight. But how many more innocent lives must be lost before Jenna can catch the killer among them?
\n
Writing scrawled on the wall of Sheriff Jenna Alton’s office overnight leads her and her deputy David Kane to a secluded house on the outskirts of town. Inside, Jenna is devastated to find a much-loved local resident lying in a pool of blood, stab wounds covering her lifeless body. What monster would attack a defenseless woman living alone?
\nWith no trace of the killer at the scene, the deadly message written on Jenna’s door is her only clue. But as the small town grieves, it leads her to a contractor who recently had access to the woman’s home. She races to interview him, only to discover the wreck of a car on a steep mountain road with another dead woman inside.
\nJenna knows the victims were friends and regularly went to church together. She thinks a twisted killer has been watching them, waiting for the perfect time to strike. But before she can make her next move, one of her own team is found unconscious and covered in the blood of a third female victim - a knife inches away from his hand.
\nPulse racing, Jenna questions her shaken deputy, who can’t explain why he was in the woman’s house. Could he really be a killer, or is someone playing an evil game? The clock ticks to uncover a dark secret that connects all three victims, but can she work it out before another innocent life is taken?
\n
Detective Jenna Alton surveys the charred remains of the large suburban home, stopping to pause at the three lifeless bodies of the Woods family. Jenna knows she's looking for a serial killer, but her priority is finding the missing teenage daughter last seen on the night of the inferno.
Days later, Sophie Woods's body is discovered floating in a shallow pool of crystal-clear water - known locally as Dead Man's Drop - but Jenna still doesn't know who would target the quiet family in such a brutal attack.
Delving into the family's past, she makes a shocking discovery - a link between the killer and someone connected to her deputy David Kane. If Jenna is right and the killer is back and seeking revenge, then she must act fast to keep her deputy safe.
When another girl is taken, Jenna and David follow the trail into a network of underground caves on the outskirts of town. With little time before the killer claims his next victim, they race into the pitch-black tunnels, unsure whether they have just walked into the killer's trap. Can they find the girl in time and escape the caves without the killer chasing them down?
When black crows are spotted circling over an abandoned cabin in the woods near Rattlesnake Creek, FBI agent Beth Katz and her maverick partner Dax Styles fear something is very wrong. Beth has been hunting serial killers for years, and as she races to the forest she vows to serve her own form of justice, whatever the cost . . .
\nCassie Durham’s friends reported her missing when she didn’t return home from a local bar a few days ago. Now, Cassie sits in darkness, her last breath taken days before. Beth notices the rouged cheeks and bright blue eyeshadow are nothing like the pictures she’s seen of Cassie alive. Did someone add the heavy makeup and pose her like this after death?
\nWhen another woman vanishes from a night out, Beth is convinced a twisted killer is in town. A clue on the dark web leads her to a local late-night hangout. Going undercover, she learns that when both girls vanished they were being watched by someone at the back of the crowded room.
\nNoticing a man following her every move, Beth knows she has one chance to capture him. With a knife in her pocket and hellbent on saving another innocent life, Beth is already sure she’s going to be the killer tonight. Otherwise she will become his next victim . . .
\n
It’s Halloween when a young woman is reported missing from the small town of Black Rock Falls and Sheriff Jenna Alton and her partner, Deputy David Kane, race to her remote home. But all they find are signs of a struggle and blood on the bathroom floor. Freya Richardson has vanished.
\nWith no leads on Freya’s whereabouts, Jenna hits a wall in the investigation. Then the bodies of three women are discovered buried in a local forest. Each one has been wrapped in a blanket. As Jenna takes in their pretty faces and long blonde hair, her blood runs cold. Freya isn’t here: but each body looks shockingly like her . . .
\nJenna soon links the victims with an unsolved case where the killer attacked blonde-haired women in their homes and buried the bodies. She’s convinced it’s the same murderer, and seeing that he always takes three victims, she realizes that two more women could be in serious danger . . .
\nWorking around the clock, Jenna’s heart sinks when a beloved friend makes a terrifying call telling her there’s an intruder in her house. Begging her to hide, Jenna and Dave race to the woman’s house. But can they get there in time to stop another innocent life from being taken?
\n
When a heavy storm hits Black Rock Falls, it brings a trail of destruction. Sheriff Jenna Alton is more than prepared, but she never expects to find college sweethearts Abby Jaye and Cole Peters floating among the wreckage in the river. Missing for twelve years following an end-of-school party, no clues were ever found and the couple’s devastated parents gave up hope that their beloved children would ever come home. Could the fraternity pin clutched tightly in Abby’s hand be the key to finding out what really happened that night?
\nAs Jenna and her deputy David Kane speak to the pair’s classmates, they’re struck by how startlingly similar their stories are. They all say that nothing suspicious happened that night - they describe the open fire, the cans of cheap beer and the way Abby and Cole seemed totally in love before they disappeared. Their accounts are word-for-word identical, Jenna suspects the friends are keeping a deadly secret, and she’s determined to find out what it is.
\nDays later, Marissa, who still lives in town with her husband and young children, is found dead at a remote farm miles from her cozy family home just hours after answering Jenna’s questions. Jenna’s pulse races as she realizes the killer could be one of the group, and so could their next victim . . .
\nAs Jenna inspects the isolated barn, gun shots ring out nearby. Heart pounding, she receives a panicked phone call from the youngest member of her team. She races to the forest, praying that her friend is still alive. But with a deadly storm brewing overhead, and a twisted killer on the loose, will she make it in time to save another life from being taken?
\n
When Sheriff Jenna Alton and her deputy, David Kane, hear reports of a plane crashing into the mountains that surround Black Rock Falls, their hearts shatter. Their friend’s blonde-haired teenage daughter, Julie, was on that flight. They won’t sleep until they bring Julie home to her distraught family.
\nA blizzard closing in, Jenna pushes on with the search until, just beyond the snow-capped trees, she finds the plane. She falls to her knees at the sight of the lifeless bodies, still buckled into their seats. But one passenger is missing: Julie has vanished . . .
\nRacing into the remote forest, Jenna finds heavy footsteps around the crash site which are too big to be Julie’s. Someone was here before them. Following the prints, Jenna’s pulse races as she finds the bodies of three young women hanging from the tall pine trees, their limbs frozen, their faces lifted to the sky above.
\nWhen the victims are identified, Jenna notices that each girl had long blonde hair when they went missing, just like Julie. But when they were found in the forest, their hair had been cut, their looks changed forever. Is a twisted killer preying on girls who he can manipulate before their death? Could Julie be his next victim? With snow piling up around them, Jenna doesn’t have long to find Julie alive. Can she track down this monster before he takes his next innocent life?
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It’s Halloween in Black Rock Falls and among the small town’s annual festivities, Sheriff Jenna Alton and her deputy David Kane are called to a gruesome discovery. Where there was once a plastic mannequin in a coffin, now stands the lifeless body of a young woman, her pale skin illuminated under the heavy stormy sky.
\nTaking in the victim’s long dark hair and still blue eyes, it’s the bite marks on her neck that have Jenna’s fearing what kind of monster could have inflicted such wounds. Could this be the most sick and twisted murderer Black Rock Falls has ever seen?
\nDays later, Jenna’s heart breaks when another vulnerable young woman is found at another Halloween attraction in the centre of Black Rock Falls. As Jenna surveys the scene, she instantly notices the familiar deep red bite marks on her neck.
\nWith the whole town gripped with fear that a vampire-like killer is on the loose, Jenna works around the clock to hunt down the fiend who is stalking vulnerable young women. When she links the bodies to a cold case, it’s clear he has taken many victims.
\nAs Jenna finally gets a breakthrough, a violent storm shuts off the small town, giving the murder the perfect chance to kill again, but Jenna puts herself in unthinkable danger to catch him. Will she stop him before he can take another life or has Jenna finally met her match?
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On a secluded path near Black Rock Falls, three bodies lie bloodied and still - the arrows that killed them removed, and polished penny coins carefully placed on their frozen eyes. When Sheriff Jenna Alton and Deputy David Kane are called in, they are shocked to recognise the hallmarks of an infamous serial killer. But he’s been in prison for ten years.
\nJenna is convinced that the attacker knew the trio and lured them into the forest. But who would want to harm three innocent teenagers? And how does a convicted murderer fit in? Jenna knows she must question James Earl Stafford - one of America’s most dangerous killers - if she’s to save more innocent young lives.
\nWith Stafford refusing to give answers, Jenna is convinced that a copycat killer is stalking her small town. And her worst fears are realised when a local fisherman discovers another teenager’s lifeless body floating in the shallows of a local watering hole with the same penny coins covering her eyes.
\nAs parents panic for their children’s lives, Jenna works around the clock to track down the murderer, but little does she know that one of her own team is now being watched. Can Jenna play the killer’s wicked game and prevent another life from being taken?
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It’s Christmas in Black Rock Falls, and Sheriff Jenna Alton and Deputy David Kane are called to a local bar where school teacher Ellie McBride has stumbled in covered in bruises, saying she just escaped a kidnapping. Jenna is determined to catch the man, but as she watches the CCTV footage, something doesn’t add up. Why is Ellie missing from the recording? Did the kidnapper manipulate the footage to cover his tracks?
\nDays later, when a deadly message is written on the whiteboard in her classroom, it’s clear Ellie isn’t out of danger. This is personal. And Jenna must catch the man responsible. But, when social worker Laney Prescott is reported missing, the case is thrown on its head.
\nJenna’s heart breaks when she visits Laney’s small cottage searching for clues only to find her lifeless body on the bedroom floor. But now Jenna is convinced there is a twisted monster in town, and she vows to hunt him down. But how are the two women connected? Jenna is running out of time to catch the killer.
\nAnd when heavy snow leaves the small town stranded, Jenna receives an emergency call from Ellie’s school. Ellie’s in trouble… can Jenna save the young woman before it’s too late, or will she pay the ultimate price?
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When Ella Tate stumbles into Black Rock Falls, her exhausted and bloodied body is a terrifying sight, but not as frightening as the story she has to tell. Ambushed on their way into town when they stopped to help a man by the side of the highway, Ella and her friend Sky ran when he pulled an ax on them. But only one of them got away.
As Detective Jenna Alton investigates the case, she looks into the history of missing persons in the town, and uncovers more cases - all young people. All stopped on the same stretch of highway into town. All vanished without a trace.
When a distinctive pink sweater belonging to Sky turns up in Black Rock Falls, Jenna follows the trail to a derelict building on the outskirts of town. But she isn't prepared for what lies behind those doors. Can she stop the killer before more lives are lost?
When a shallow grave is discovered in the dark pine forest surrounding Black Rock Falls, Sheriff Jenna Alton rushes to investigate. After unearthing the old bones, Jenna scours the area for clues: and her heart beats wildly when she bumps into a teenage girl, breathless and covered in dirt. Wanda Beauchamp tells Jenna she was kidnapped from her foster home and buried alive. Could the kidnapper be linked to the shallow grave?
\nTaking in Wanda’s thin frame, Jenna knows the poor girl is close to death. She’ll do everything she can to save her, but they’re miles from anywhere and night is falling fast. When Wanda falls, the kidnapper makes his move and Jenna is powerless to stop him taking the young girl’s life. Escaping the same fate, she is wracked with guilt and vows to catch the ruthless killer and bring him to justice.
\nWhen another girl is reported missing from a foster home, Jenna and her deputy David Kane know they must act fast to save her. Jenna believes the murderer lives off-grid, and a clue at a local supply store finally leads her to a remote cabin in the woods.
\nStill haunted by Wanda’s last moments, can Jenna lay a trap to outsmart this twisted killer preying on young girls? Or did she just put herself in unthinkable danger?
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Fifteen-year-old Lindy Rosen has been having nightmares for weeks, waking in a panic, screaming that there’s a man in her room watching her sleep. Her parents assumed it was her overactive imagination, but when one morning they find Lindy missing from her bedroom, they’re not so sure. Detective Jenna Alton is called in to investigate.
Within hours of the schoolgirl going missing, the kidnapper reaches out to Jenna with a video of Lindy bound and tied to a chair, crying to be set free. And a simple message – you’ve got 24 hours to find her or I kill her.
Jenna’s team work around the clock to try to find Lindy before the deadline, but time runs out, and Jenna receives a devastating message. The killer has made good on his promise. He’s playing a dangerous game. And no one knows what his next move will be.
But just two days later, one of Lindy’s school friends is taken in the middle of the night and the countdown begins again.
In this one-of-a-kind book, Daisy Hernández fiercely interrogates one of the most complicated subjects of contemporary life and citizenship. Braiding memoir, history, and cultural criticism, she exposes the truths and lies of how we define ourselves as a country and a people. Turning to her own family's stories - her mother arrived from Colombia, her father a political refugee from Castro's Cuba - Hernández shows how the very idea of citizenship is a myth and part of the stories we tell ourselves about the American soul and psyche.
\nReframing our understanding of what it means to be an American, Notes on Citizenship is an urgent and necessary account of the laws, customs, and language we use to include and exclude, especially those who come from Latin America. With her scholar's mind and memoirist's gift for narrative, Hernández weaves a story both personal and national, while reckoning with our country's ongoing debate about who belongs and providing fresh ways of thinking about citizenship. At once bracing, fearless, and tender, Notes on Citizenship is a powerful portrait of one family's experiences in the borderlands of citizenship and an honest illumination of the country in which we live.
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Scotland, 1933. Bobby MacBryde is on his way. After years grafting at Lees Boot Factory, he’s off to the Glasgow School of Art, to his future. On his first day he will meet another Robert, a quiet man with loose dark curls - and never leave his side.
\nTogether they will spend every penny and every minute devouring Glasgow - its botanical gardens, the Barras market, a whole hidden city - all the while loving each other behind closed doors. With the world on the brink of war, their unrivalled talent will take them to Paris, Rome, London. They will become stars as the bombs fall, hosting wild parties with the likes of Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Elizabeth Smart. But the brightest stars burn fastest.
\nStunningly reimagined, The Two Roberts is a profoundly moving story of devotion and obsession, art and class. It is a love letter to MacBryde and Colquhoun, the almost-forgotten artists who tried to change the way the world sees - and paid a devastating price.
This extraordinary debut set in South Africa reveals legacies of abuse and redemption exploring the extraordinary strength of the human spirit - from the Boer War in 1901 to brutal camps for teenage boys now. There is always darkness but there is always light in it if we just look.
\nSouth Africa, 1901 - the height of the second Boer War. Sarah van der Watt and her six-year-old son Fred are forced from their home on Mulberry Farm by British troops. As the polite invaders welcome them to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp they promise Sarah and Fred that they will be safe there.
\n2010. Sixteen-year-old Willem is an outsider. Hoping he will become the man she wants him to be, his Ma and her boyfriend send Willem away to the New Dawn Safari Training Camp where they are proud to 'make men out of boys'. They promise Willem he will be safe there.
\nYou Will Be Safe Here is a powerful and urgent novel of two connected South African stories with universal relevance. Inspired by real events, it uncovers a hidden colonial history, reveals a dark contemporary secret, and explores the legacy of violence and our drive to survive and to love.
When The Sinker was a child, her home was destroyed by The Construct, a floating machine that consumes all in its path. To survive, she fled into the void, a seemingly infinite nothingness where few dare venture, filled with floating, vertically stacked rocks. Some of these rocks are giant magnets, some burn with eternal flame and some are influenced by the presence of seemingly magical objects - anomalies that defy physical laws.
\nFor half a lifetime, The Sinker has wandered the void on a quest for knowledge, for understanding and for peace. But when rumours reach her that The Construct is near again, she knows fate has come full circle. With the help of Crooked Arm - the heir to a shattered throne, who happens to possess the most powerful anomaly of all - the two of them set out on a mission to end the tyranny of The Construct forever.
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It’s time. Mary, an ex cop, and her husband, retired librarian Pete, have decided to move into a retirement village. They aren’t falling apart, but they’re watching each other - Pete with his tachcychardia and bad hip, Mary with her ankle and knee.
\nSelling their beloved house should be a clean break, but it’s as if the people they have lost keep returning to ask new things of them. A local detective calls with new information about the case of their son, Will, who was killed in an accident forty years before. Mary finds herself drawn to consider her older sister’s shortened life. Pete is increasingly haunted by memories of his late mother, who developed delirium and never recovered.
\nAn emotionally powerful novel about families and ageing, Delirious dramatises the questions we will all face, if we’re lucky, or unlucky, enough. How to care for others? How to meet the new versions of ourselves who might arrive? How to cope? Delirious is also about the surprising ways second chances come around.
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World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyse a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organisation - the Illuminati. In a desperate race to save the Vatican from a powerful time bomb, Langdon joins forces in Rome with the beautiful and mysterious scientist Vittoria Vetra.
\nTogether they embark on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, and deserted cathedrals, and into the depths of the most secretive vault on earth . . . the long-forgotten Illuminati lair.
While in Paris, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is awakened by a phone call in the dead of the night. The elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum, his body covered in baffling symbols. As Langdon and gifted French cryptologist Sophie Neveu sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci - clues visible for all to see and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.
\nEven more startling, the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion - a secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci - and he guarded a breathtaking historical secret. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle - while avoiding the faceless adversary who shadows their every move - the explosive, ancient truth will be lost forever.
When a NASA satellite discovers an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic sea, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory-a victory with profound implications for NASA policy and the impending presidential election. To verify the authenticity of the find, the White house calls upon the skills of intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton.
\nAccompanied by a team of experts, including the charismatic scholar Michael Tolland, Rachel travels to the Arctic and uncovers the unthinkable: evidence of scientific trickery-a bold deception that threatens to plunge the world into controversy. But before she can warn the President, Rachel and Michael are ambushed by a team of assassins. Fleeing for their lives across a desolate and lethal landscape, their only hope for survival is to discover who is begin this masterful plot.
\nThe truth, they will learn, is the most shocking deception of all.
When the NSA's invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant and beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage . . . not by guns or bombs, but by a code so ingeniously complex that if released it would cripple U.S. intelligence.
\nCaught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Susan Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides, she finds herself fighting not only for her country but also for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves.
Florence- Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon awakes in a hospital bed with no recollection of where he is or how he got there. Nor can he explain the origin of the macabre object that is found hidden in his belongings.
\nA threat to his life will propel him and a young doctor, Sienna Brooks, into a breakneck chase across the city. Only Langdon’s knowledge of the hidden passageways and ancient secrets that lie behind its historic facade can save them from the clutches of their unknown pursuers.
\nWith only a few lines from Dante’s Inferno to guide them, they must decipher a sequence of codes buried deep within some of the Renaissance’s most celebrated artworks to find the answers to a puzzle which may, or may not, help them save the world from a terrifying threat . . .
As the story opens, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned unexpectedly to deliver an evening lecture in the U.S. Capitol Building. Within minutes of his arrival, however, the night takes a bizarre turn. A disturbing object - artfully encoded with five symbols - is discovered in the Capitol Building. Langdon recognises the object as an ancient invitation . . . one meant to usher its recipient into a long-lost world of esoteric wisdom.
\nWhen Langdon's beloved mentor, Peter Solomon - a prominent Mason and philanthropist - is brutally kidnapped, Langdon realizes his only hope of saving Peter is to accept this mystical invitation and follow wherever it leads him. Langdon is instantly into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and never-before-seen locations - all of which seem to be dragging him toward a single, inconceivable truth.
As the event begins, Langdon and several hundred guests find themselves captivated by an utterly original presentation, which Langdon realizes will be far more controversial than he ever imagined. But the meticulously orchestrated evening suddenly erupts into chaos, and Kirsch’s precious discovery teeters on the brink of being lost forever. Reeling and facing an imminent threat, Langdon is forced into a desperate bid to escape Bilbao. With him is Ambra Vidal, the elegant museum director who worked with Kirsch to stage the provocative event. Together they flee to Barcelona on a perilous quest to locate a cryptic password that will unlock Kirsch’s secret.
Navigating the dark corridors of hidden history and extreme religion, Langdon and Vidal must evade a tormented enemy whose all-knowing power seems to emanate from Spain’s Royal Palace itself . . . and who will stop at nothing to silence Edmond Kirsch. On a trail marked by modern art and enigmatic symbols, Langdon and Vidal uncover clues that ultimately bring them face-to-face with Kirsch’s shocking discovery . . . and the breathtaking truth that has long eluded us.
Accompanying celebrated academic, Katherine Solomon, to a lecture she’s been invited to give in Prague, Robert Langdon’s world spirals out of control when she disappears without trace from their hotel room. Far from home and well out of his comfort zone, Langdon must pit his wits against forces unknown to recover the woman he loves.
\nBut Prague is an old and dangerous city, steeped in folklore and mystery. For over two thousand years, the tides of history have washed back and forth over it, leaving behind echoes of everything that has gone before. Little can Langdon know that he is being stalked by a spectre from that dark past. He must use all of his arcane knowledge to decipher the world around him before he too is consumed by the rings of treachery and deception that have swallowed Katherine.
\nAgainst a backdrop of vast castles, towering churches, graveyards buried twelve deep and labyrinthine underground passages, Langdon must navigate a shadow city hiding in plain sight, a city which has successfully kept its secrets for centuries and will not readily deliver them. This is a battlefield unlike any he has previously experienced, one on which he must fight not for his only life, but for the future of humanity itself.
Changing how we work can feel overwhelming. Like trying to budge an enormous boulder. We’re stifled by the gravity of the way we’ve always done things. And we spend so much time fighting fires - and fighting colleagues - that we lack the energy to shift direction.
\nBut with the right strategy, we can move the boulder. In Reset, Heath explores a framework for getting unstuck and making the changes that matter. The secret is to find “leverage points”: places where a little bit of effort can yield a disproportionate return. Then, we can thoughtfully rearrange our resources to push on those points.
\nHeath weaves together fascinating examples, ranging from a freakishly effective fast-food drive-thru to a simple trick from couples therapy to an inspirational campaign that saved a million cats.
\nIn Reset, you’ll learn:
- Why the feeling of progress can be your secret weapon in accelerating change
- How leaders can uncover and stop wasteful activities
- Why your team’s motivation is often squandered - and how to avoid that mistake
- How you can jumpstart your change efforts by beginning with a “burst”
The book investigates Why the middle is the roughest part of a change effort. Why inefficiency can sometimes accelerate progress. Why getting “buy-in” is the wrong way to think about change.
\nWhat if we could unlock forward movement - achieving progress on what matters most - without the need for more resources? The same people, the same assets . . . but dramatically better results. Yesterday, we were stuck. Today, we reset.
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In 1413, when Henry V ascended to the English throne, his kingdom was hopelessly torn apart by political faction and partisanship. Public finances and law and order were in a state of crisis. Pirates tormented the coast; plots, conspiracies, and heresy threatened society. The lingering effects of the worst pandemic in human history continued to menace daily life. And then, in less than ten years, Henry turns it all around.
\nBy common consensus in his day, and for hundreds of years afterward, Henry was the greatest medieval king that ever lived. Through skillful leadership, unwavering vision, and seemingly by sheer force of personality, he managed to catapult his realm into the greatest triumphs it has ever he united the political community behind the crown, renewed the justice system, revived England’s maritime dominance. And then there are his military achievements in France, most notably the resounding, against-the-odds victory at Agincourt. He was tough, lucky, intelligent, farsighted, and cultured. But he was also, at times, cold, callous, violent, by instinct a traditionalist and even a reactionary. A historical titan, his legacy over the years has become a complicated one.As an exceptional leader, Henry V transcends the Middle Ages which produced him, and his life story has much to teach us today.
\nDrawing on the latest scholarship and writing with his characteristic wit and style, Dan Jones examines the king’s legendary life - and he puts Henry’s claim to greatness very vigorously to the test.
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Sheriff Thomas Shepherd returns from his honeymoon and finds human bones at a secret hangout called Black Heart Cove.
\nTogether with his wife Chelsey and her team of private investigators, Thomas tries to determine who the bones belong to. But the remains remind Thomas and Chelsey of a girl who disappeared during their teenage years.
\nThomas confronts lost loves, dark secrets, and a family who wants to put the past to bed.
\nCan he bring justice to the girl and solve a deadly mystery?
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On the night Karley leaves town to meet with her friends, she disappears. Her husband swears they have the perfect marriage, but Sheriff Thomas Shepherd isn't convinced. And the husband doesn't have an alibi for the night Karley vanished.
\nThomas joins forces with his girlfriend, private investigator Chelsey Byrd. But as they search for Karley, the case takes a dark turn. Someone is dumping bodies into a forest pond outside Wolf Lake. Is the murderer behind Karley's disappearance?
\nThomas and Chelsey race to stop an unhinged killer. Nobody in Wolf Lake is safe until they solve the investigation. But they aren't alone in the night.
\nThe killer is watching their every move.
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Small town sheriff Thomas Shepherd is recovering from a traumatic encounter with a vicious killer. His psychiatrist urges him to avoid kidnapping and murder cases until his mind processes the nightmarish battle.
\nBut when another girl disappears, Thomas has no choice but to lead the investigation. Challenged by Asperger's syndrome, the sheriff must balance his duty and mental wellbeing.
\nClues surface that a deadly cult is operating outside of Wolf Lake. Is the cult responsible for the abductions?
\nThomas and his team races to save the teenagers. But horror lurks beneath the surface, even as it hides in plain sight.
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Former FBI agent Darcy Gellar survived a serial killer and rescued her daughter. Yet the depraved followers of the mass murderer she captured are limitless, and they want to see Darcy and her family dead.
\nAfter a mysterious stalker terrorises her cousin, Darcy brings her family to Scarlet River, a sleepy town with a history of unsolved kidnappings and murders.
\nNow another girl is missing, and the county sheriff puts Darcy on his suspect list. Darcy must clear her name and discover who the real killer is. But the trap is set for Darcy and her children. If the killer captures Darcy in the dark woods surrounding the town, no one will hear her scream.
\nAnd nobody will discover where he buried her bones . . .
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When a peculiar figurine arrives at the sheriff's department, Thomas Shepherd's instincts scream danger. At first glance, it appears to be a harmless ivory sculpture.
\nUntil the medical examiner uncovers the horrifying truth.
\nThe gift was crafted from human bone .
\nHaunted by his past, Thomas unravels the intricate web of The Carver, a malicious killer with a penchant for causing suffering. As the body count rises, Thomas must navigate a treacherous landscape of deception and violence.
\nWill he outsmart a madman whose sadistic desires know no bounds?
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When a dangerous criminal escapes police custody, the sheriff's department rushes to catch him. The unhinged convict is leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.
\nAt the same time, Thomas Shepherd and Chelsey plan a long overdue vacation on Laurel Mountain. But the worst storm in decades is dead set on striking the mountain, and the snow threatens to strand them.
\nWith no cell phone coverage and the storm playing havoc with the power grid and communications, Thomas and Chelsey must survive the elements, unaware the killer is near.
\nCan the sheriff's department reach Thomas before it's too late?
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A nine-year-old girl vanishes from Wolf Lake without a trace, and Agent Neil Gardy with the FBI believes the disappearance is related to a potential kidnapping case in Michigan.
\nA child predator is loose in Nightshade County. And it’s Halloween night.
\nSheriff Thomas Shepherd can’t escape the feeling that the two missing girls are part of a larger investigation. The deeper he digs, the closer he comes to hell.
\nChildren venture into the night to celebrate Halloween, heedless of the sheriff’s warnings.
\nIs a dark presence watching?
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After she's stabbed in the line of duty, FBI Agent Darcy Gellar moves her family to a sleepy seaside community. Living beside the ocean, she finds tranquility . . . until the police discover the body of a murdered woman on the beach. The village blames her son, a misunderstood boy with anger issues.
\nDarcy knows the boy is innocent. But how does she convince an aggressive police detective? If she fails, her son will go to prison, and the murderer will strike again.
\nCan Darcy save her child from the police and a bloodthirsty killer?
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One dead girl at a popular campsite. A second woman’s corpse tossed along a running trail. And unexplainable spider bites on both victims. After the medical examiner concludes both women died from venomous spider bites, the police want to close the case. Then a third woman goes missing, and Darcy discovers a dangerous man linked to the three victims.
\nIs a murderer stalking the darkness?
\nWhile Darcy and Ketchum hunt an invisible killer, a crooked police officer from Darcy’s past throws roadblocks in front of them. Who is he trying to protect? Darcy must catch a serial killer before sunset.
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As a mentor for a rookie police officer, Sheriff Thomas Shepherd must counsel a cop with a troubled past. But Thomas isn't wanted. Everyone on the small-town force believes the police department should handle its own business.
\nWhen the officer commits suicide, everyone blames Thomas. The sheriff knew the officer was struggling to survive his first year, so how did Thomas miss that the officer was spinning out of control?
\nNow Thomas's reputation is on the line, and he must search for answers. He discovers the seedy underbelly of a police department that doesn't want the sheriff around. Thomas is determined to find the truth behind the young officer’s death, even if it makes him dangerous enemies.
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Recovering after a near fatal encounter with a serial killer, Deputy Thomas Shepherd seeks the tranquility of Wolf Lake. Until a rash of murders and abductions paralyse the resort village. Who is killing the villagers of Wolf Lake?
\nThe killer is a phantom hiding in the shadows. Sheriff Gray blames a ghost from his past, the priest who ran his wife off the road and killed her. But is the sheriff's bias tainting his judgment? Deputy Shepherd must go rogue and unravel a bewildering tangle of evidence if he hopes to catch the killer.
\nThen Deputy Shepherd's friend goes missing, and he fears the killer is responsible.
\nWill Thomas save his friend before the killer claims another victim?
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Sheriff Thomas Shepherd knows what it takes to catch a murderer. But when he discovers a dead woman buried in the forest, he believes a new killer is stalking Nightshade County.
\nNightmares afflict Thomas's girlfriend, Private Investigator Chelsey Byrd, a woman who has battled depression since she was a teenager. Something about the recent murder awakens forgotten memories in Chelsey, and she needs to solve the case to gain closure. The problem is, Thomas doesn't want Chelsey near the investigation in her present condition.
\nThe sheriff soon discovers that this isn't the killer's first victim. Then a mother and child vanish from their home without a trace.
\nAs Thomas dives deeper into the investigation, he suspects Chelsey is hiding something from him.
\nAnd she might not be the only one with a deadly secret.
Darcy only wants to live a peaceful life with her family. But the past won't stop following her. And now the FBI has a message for Darcy . . .
\nA new serial killer hunts the night. And he kidnapped a girl with Down syndrome.
\nDarcy leaves Julian and her children to pursue a vicious killer, but the idyllic community of Veil Lake is a death trap. Too many shadows and hidden dangers. Aided by Agent Ketchum of the FBI, Darcy sets out to rescue Faith, a girl the local police can't locate.
\nBut she's pursuing the most twisted mind she's encountered, a darkness like no other. When Darcy discovers more victims than clues, she has only her instincts and determination to keep her alive as she closes in on the killer.
\nWhen darkness falls, one of them will die.
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Hannah never takes her eyes off her son around strangers. So when her child vanishes at an amusement park, Hannah fears the worst.
\nWorking beside Chelsey Byrd and her team of private investigators, Thomas Shepherd looks into the potential abduction. But when disturbing evidence surfaces, the team suspects Hannah isn't telling the truth.
\nNow the sheriff's department begins a countywide search for the boy. With suspicion growing that Hannah is involved in her son's disappearance, the distraught mother will stop at nothing to prove her innocence and get her child back.
\nBut can she face the shocking truth surrounding her son's kidnapping.
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Nightshade County Sheriff Thomas Shepherd is a successful model for every law enforcement officer with autism. He leads an idyllic life in his uncle’s old home along Wolf Lake and is planning to marry private investigator Chelsey Byrd.
\nBut when a star athlete’s girlfriend disappears while camping, everyone blames the boyfriend. He’s volatile and dangerous. Did he murder the girl and bury her in the woods?
\nThe sheriff’s gut tells him there’s more to the story than the boyfriend is willing to admit. The more he digs into the case, the more he worries someone is hiding a dark secret.
\nIs the boy a killer. Or is he the next victim?
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After he’s shot in the line of duty, Detective Thomas Shepherd returns to Wolf Lake to pick up the pieces of his shattered life. Living beside the water, he finds peace . . . until the body of a missing woman washes up on his shore and the town blames a teenage boy with a history of violence. Is a killer stalking the sleepy resort village?
\nThomas isn’t convinced the teenager committed murder. Challenging a village that wants justice at any cost, he pursues the real killer as evidence mounts against the teenager. If he fails, an innocent boy will go to prison.
\nCan Thomas clear the boy’s name before he becomes the killer’s next victim?
When PI Nia Carter and Officer Eli Mitchell discover a car in the wilderness, they link the vehicle back to its owner - a respected vineyard owner from Duskwood named Kit Stratton. Someone disabled the woman’s car, leaving her isolated and desperate.
\nLooking into Kit’s dealings, Nia learns the woman was under pressure to sell her land to Sebastian Lacroix. But Lacroix is mysteriously out of town.
\nNia and Eli need to find Kit and Lacroix fast, but their search leads them down a dangerous path. Someone is watching them.
\nHow many innocents must vanish before Nia and Eli stop a madman?
When a criminal defense attorney is stabbed in her home, the police name her disturbed son, Shawn, their top suspect. But no one can find Shawn.
\nIn a last-ditch effort to locate his son, Shawn’s father convinces PI Raven Hopkins to take the case and prove his son’s innocence. When Sheriff Thomas Shepherd takes over the investigation, the evidence against Shawn mounts.
\nAs hope of saving Shawn dwindles, another dead body surfaces. The victim’s shocking link to the criminal defense attorney wreaks havoc on the case. Thomas and Raven fear the worst . . . that they’ve walked in the killer’s shadow since the investigation began.
\nUnable to trust anyone, can the investigators find Shawn before the killer does?
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In the shadowy corners of Wolf Lake, a small town filled with secrets, a series of chilling murders paralyse the community. Women who live alone are found dead, each with an ominous calling card beside their bodies - a dead crow. Sheriff Thomas Shepherd zeroes in on a suspect, while Raven Hopkins, a private investigator with an instinct for truth, becomes entangled in the investigation. She's the only person who believes in the suspect's innocence, putting her at odds with Thomas and the sheriff's department.
\nAs Thomas delves deeper into the case, the murders continue, each one more horrifying than the last. Time is running out, and the killer seems to be one step ahead. Can Thomas catch the killer before another life is lost? Or will Raven's belief in a murderer’s innocence lead her down a path from which there's no return?
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Two bizarre deaths. One sadistic murderer. And the sheriff tasked with catching him.
\nA decorated police officer is found dead in a farmer's field, covered in what appear to be wasp stings. Except it's almost Thanksgiving in New York, and three inches of snow cover the ground. Days later, a prominent businessman with a fear of heights leaps from Harmon's tallest skyscraper.
\nAre the deaths related?
\nWorking beside Raven Hopkins and the private investigators of Wolf Lake Consulting, Sheriff Thomas Shepherd pieces together an unsolvable puzzle. The deeper Thomas digs, the more certain he is the victims concealed secrets that got them killed.
\nNow someone is following the investigators. Someone who doesn't want them to learn the truth.
\nCan the sheriff save his friends and family from a demented murderer?
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Only twelve hours have passed since Violet saw her teenage boyfriend. Now his body lies in the morgue, riddled with stab wounds. And the evidence points to a mythical serial killer Violet invented to scare her friends . . . The Halloween Man.
\nSheriff Thomas Shepherd is torn between two investigations after a deadly inmate escapes prison and stalks Wolf Lake. How can he defend his loved ones while a murderer runs loose?
\nDesperate to catch the killer, Thomas pursues Violet and her friends. But as he wades into the investigation, the suspect list grows
\nIs a madman copying scenes from a horror movie on Halloween? Or is Violet hiding a deadly secret?
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Former FBI serial killer profiler Darcy Haines put the past behind her. She’s happy living along the coast in her new marriage and keeping her family safe.
\nThen a rash of grisly murders force Darcy to make an impossible decision. Will she answer the law enforcement community’s call and risk her sanity? Or will she allow more innocents to die?
\nThe killer leaves a hauntingly familiar calling card: a disturbing smiley face painted beside his victims. It’s the signature of the Full Moon Killer, the man Darcy murdered.
\nIs a copycat reincarnating the Full Moon Killer?
\nTo protect her loved ones, Darcy must conceal the truth. She’s the only person capable of profiling this new psychopath. Because she lived inside the Full Moon Killer’s twisted mind.
\nBut a trap lies in wait. And Darcy is walking into it.
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A few weeks have passed since Sheriff Thomas Shepherd rescued Deputy Aguilar from a deranged serial killer. He's burned out and exhausted, struggling to hold the Nightshade County Sheriff's Department together.
\nThen a series of bizarre deaths shock the community. They appear accidental, but closer inspection reveals that a common thread connects the victims. Eleven years ago, they were high school friends, popular bullies who ruled over their classmates.
\nIs a tormented classmate hungry for vengeance?
\nAfter the killer murders a television news reporter, Thomas relies on his deputies and private investigator friends to track a bloodthirsty killer. Can he solve the case before the elusive killer claims another victim?
\nOr is Thomas next on the killer's list?
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Sixteen years earlier, Emma fled her hometown of Wolf Lake after her best friend disappeared without a trace - a case that went cold, leaving the town in uneasy silence. Now, a seasoned investigative journalist, Emma is drawn back following a series of mysterious disappearances of young girls, each eerily mirroring her friend's vanishing.
\nForced to confront her traumatic past, Emma teams up with Sheriff Thomas Shepherd, who has his own reasons for wanting to solve the case. But when excavations in a local forest unveil a burial site containing the remains of several children, it becomes hauntingly clear that Wolf Lake's history is far darker than anyone could have imagined.
\nIs the kidnapper the same person who took Emma's friend all those years ago? Every clue drags them deeper into a web of deceit.
\nAnd the predator is always one step ahead.
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Only twelve hours have passed since Violet saw her teenage boyfriend. Now his body lies in the morgue, riddled with stab wounds. And the evidence points to a mythical serial killer Violet invented to scare her friends . . . The Halloween Man.
\nSheriff Thomas Shepherd is torn between two investigations after a deadly inmate escapes prison and stalks Wolf Lake. How can he defend his loved ones while a murderer runs loose?
\nDesperate to catch the killer, Thomas pursues Violet and her friends. But as he wades into the investigation, the suspect list grows.
\nIs a madman copying scenes from a horror movie on Halloween? Or is Violet hiding a deadly secret?
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When Sheriff Thomas Shepherd finds a woman at the bottom of gorge, a post to social media convinces the authorities that she committed suicide.
\nBut the evidence points to a killer. The woman was dead before she landed in the gorge.
\nWorking with his deputies and his new wife Chelsey, Thomas discovers many people had a reason to want the woman dead.
\nYet there can only be one killer.
\nThe investigation reaches its boiling point. Thomas must unravel the mystery before someone he cares about becomes the murderer’s next target.
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When a distraught husband hires PI Chelsey Byrd to help him find his missing wife, Harmony, Chelsey realises there's more to this case than meets the eye. Working with Sheriff Thomas Shepherd, Chelsey seeks the truth of what happened to Harmony four years ago.
\nAfter a series of mysterious disappearances, Thomas and Chelsey fear the worst: a killer is stalking the shadows of Nightshade County and preying on the innocent.
\nAfter the FBI arrives, the case garners national attention. But this only infuriates the killer. And now the madman sets his sights on Thomas and his friends.
\nCan Thomas and Chelsey stop the killer before he takes one of their own?
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Former FBI profiler Darcy Haines returns to Genoa Cove, hoping for a quiet summer with her kids home from school. A week later, a letter arrives. The sender knows too much about Darcy’s past.
\nThen the police find a woman dead near Darkwater Cove. The horror is starting again.
\nDarcy must race to stop a murderer before he reaches her children. But the killer is always one step ahead.
\nWhy can’t she catch him? When Darcy learns the truth, the truth will tear her apart.
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When a renowned forensic artist moves to Wolf Lake to escape the chaos of her past, her ability to communicate with traumatised witnesses draws the attention of Sheriff Thomas Shepherd.
\nTasked with solving a series of disappearances linked to an online predator, Thomas enlists her help to communicate with the latest witness – a young girl rendered mute by trauma.
\nAs Thomas works with the artist, he uncovers chilling connections to crimes long thought solved.
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Trying to piece her shattered life together, ex-FBI profiler Darcy Gellar clings to a struggling relationship with Detective Julian Haines. Then a new case forces her to act when Julian's niece vanishes from a private college in Upstate New York. But Julian's niece has a dark secret. And the understaffed sheriff's department lacks the expertise to find the missing girl.
\nDarcy empathizes with Julian's sister. She knows what it's like to lose a child to a deranged kidnapper.
\nBut when they search the countryside, Julian exhumes a dead teenage girl from the forest. Her face is too disfigured to identify. Is this Julian's niece?
\nAs Darcy and Julian investigate the murder, new suspects come to light. And more victims. She thought the nightmare was over, but a new serial killer stalks the night. And Darcy is his next target. Is Darcy prepared to unearth the truth about the vanishing girl's disappearance, even if it tears Julian apart?
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In the shadow of Kane Grove University, a murderer stages \"accidental deaths\" with chess pieces as their signature, daring law enforcement to recognise the pattern.
\nWhen Scout Mourning's online crime community connects the dots, she becomes the most valuable piece in a deadly match.
\nSheriff Thomas Shepherd must overcome his sensory processing struggles to protect Scout and catch a killer who treats murder as an intellectual sport.
\nTogether, Thomas and Scout must decode the board before the next piece falls.
\nOr risk becoming part of the endgame.
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Ex-FBI agent Darcy Gellar saved her family from two murderers avenging the Full Moon Killer, the man she put in prison. But now the serial killer is loose, and the terror is just beginning.
\nDarcy has no allies. Her neighbors blame her for bringing the horror to their idyllic village beside the ocean. The FBI can't protect her. And the police just discovered another dead girl linked to the Gellar family.
\nNowhere to run.
\nNobody knows the Full Moon Killer better than Darcy Gellar, the woman who profiled the serial killer for the FBI. Aligned with the only police officer she trusts, Darcy decides it's time for the hunter to become the hunted.
\nBut she's tracking a sadistic mind who knows her greatest fears, a savage murderer who won't stop until he kills Darcy and everyone she loves.
\nBefore the night ends, only one of them will survive.
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Two hundred and seventy-four years after the fall of the WorldWeb in the Fall of Hyperion, Raoul Endymion is sent on a quest. Retrieving Aenea from the Sphinx before the Church troops reach her is only the beginning.
\nWith help from a blue-skinned android named A. Bettik, Raoul and Aenea travel the river Tethys, pursued by Father Captain Frederico DeSoya, an influential warrior-priest and his troops. The shrike continues to make enigmatic appearances and while many questions were raised in Hyperion and the Fall of Hyperion, still more are raised here. Raoul's quest will continue.
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The mysterious Time Tombs are opening and the Shrike that has risen from them may well control the fate of all mankind.
\nThe Ousters are laying seige to the Hegemony of Man and the AIs we created have turned against us to build the Ultimate Intelligence; God. The God of Machines. His genesis could mean annihilation for man. Something is drawing the hegemony, the Ousters, the AIs, the entire universe to the Shrike.
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On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it.
\nIn the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives.
\nEach carries a desperate hope - and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands.
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The time of reckoning has arrived. As a final genocidal Crusade threatens to enslave humanity forever, a new messiah has come of age. She is Aenea and she has undergone a strange apprenticeship to those known as the Others. Now her protector, Raul Endymion, one-time shepherd and convicted murderer, must help her deliver her startling message to her growing army of disciples.
\nBut first they must embark on a final spectacular mission to discover the underlying meaning of the universe itself. They have been followed on their journey by the mysterious Shrike - monster, angel, killing machine - who is about to reveal the long-held secret of its origin and purpose. And on the planet of Hyperion, where the story first began, the final revelation will be delivered - an apocalyptic message that unlocks the secrets of existence and the fate of humankind in the galaxy.
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As the defining conflict of the twenty-first century approaches, Breakneck offers a riveting, firsthand investigation of China’s seismic progress - and what it means for America.
\nTechnology analyst Dan Wang - “an indispensable voice on China” (Evan Osnos) for close to a decade - has been living through the country’s astonishing, messy progress. In this time, building big has fueled China’s economic ascent. But social engineering has led to unbearable costs, including the traumas of zero-COVID and the cruel legacies of the one-child policy. In Breakneck, Wang traverses dazzling metropolises and factory complexes, blending political, economic, and philosophical analysis with reportage to reveal how the Communist Party’s darkening ambitions have shaken its people.
\nWang unveils a new framework for understanding China, one that sheds new light on its competition with America. While China is an engineering state, relentlessly pursuing megaprojects, the US has stalled. America has transformed into a lawyerly society, reflexively blocking everything, good and bad. As Breakneck reveals, only by understanding the remarkable strengths and the appalling weaknesses of the engineering state can America reignite its sense of restless ambition.
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The Earth Room transports us from the forests of Appalachia to the Sonoran Desert to the glaciers of Iceland, all while exploring the mysteries of what it means to be alive.
\nIn one story, a woman transforms her boyfriend into a salamander. In another, a group of women are drawn together by a support group for the partners of vampires and werewolves. Inhabiting this haunting and fantastical collection are secret tunnels, magical doorways, modern witches, a mother who gives birth to a ghost, a town full of doubles, a sanctuary for potbelly pigs, and a daughter who never grows up.
\nThe Earth Room offers a thrilling, fabulist journey through the natural world, superstition, motherhood, and loss.
Swords, Wands, Cups, and Coins. Emperor and Empress, High Priestess and Hierophant. Light and Dark. Life and Death. The evocative symbolism and arcana bound up within the cards of the tarot have fascinated seekers for centuries. Now Tarou: The Fall imagines the reality that inspired the mystical - the real fantasy world of which all our rich tarot imagery is but a shadow.
\nThe magnificent empire of Tarou is a panoply of dreams and wonder, the envy of the world. Its ships rule the seas and air, its magics and science bring forth new learning, and its tutelary gods smile upon all the many peoples and cultures of its shining lands. But even now, at the peak of its glory, the highest religious leaders of Tarou secretly dream of even greater power - enough to wrest the empire from its rightful rulers.
\nAlia is a warrior without equal, but even a captain as great as she must bow to the demands of duty. With her arranged marriage only weeks away, she, her betrothed, and their escort undertake the journey to the empire's capital - but unexpected hazards lie in wait.
\nMagpie is a petty thief and con artist, hoping to score big during the Imperial Festival - though his timing could not be worse.
\nHowever, none of them are prepared when a forbidden magical experiment goes wrong, unleashing an apocalypse that engulfs the city. Before their paths converge, they all must face a cataclysm unlike any the world has ever seen . . .
Quinn Lee is a walking disaster with perfect hair, zero filter, and an alarming caffeine addiction who’s just ploughed her life savings into rescuing her family’s failing Christmas tree farm. She’s got one shot to pull off a Christmas miracle, so when an important promotional cookie order goes wrong, it understandably leads to a spectacular meltdown in front of cute-as-a-button bakery owner, Zoey.
\nZoey bakes like an angel, thinks “drat” is a swear word, and is wholly unprepared for the opinionated, red-headed hurricane who storms into her shop competing for “world’s worst customer”. But she’s equally unprepared to discover that you don’t have to like someone to find them irresistible.
\nWhen both their businesses are threatened, a reluctant partnership becomes their only solution. But somewhere between Zoey’s killer dance moves and Quinn’s Chuck Norris puns, incompatible starts looking a lot like inevitable. As Christmas approaches, can these polar opposites navigate unexpected feelings, and the terrifying possibility that sometimes the person you clash with most is exactly the one you need?
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Morgan Rose has always been the girl with the plan. Color-coded calendars, backup plans for her backup plans, and a wedding business that’s her entire world. Only one woman ever managed to derail Morgan’s organised life and shatter her heart in the process. But Morgan doesn’t think about Frankie Lee anymore.
\nUntil Morgan meets the photographer hand-picked by her latest clients and discovers that Frankie is not miles away in New York like she thought. She's back in Spring Harbors, looking infuriatingly good, and Morgan's carefully ordered world descends into chaos.
\nMorgan has just 87 days to pull off the wedding of her career, and she’s not going to let Frankie derail this opportunity. She will not be distracted by Frankie’s new haircut or the shadowy dips between her shoulders and biceps. And she won’t care about Frankie’s unfairly salty attitude when she left Morgan.
\nBut some sparks never die, and as the wedding approaches and the tension between Morgan and Frankie grows, can they face up to the mistakes that pulled them apart, or risk it happening all over again?
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Since losing her wife six years ago, Colby has perfected the hermit lifestyle: secluded Minnesota cabin, golden retriever, weekly cupcake run. Zero complications. Until a chaotic, pink-haired vet tech arrives for a house call and - in one reckless moment - Colby lets someone in.
\nIt was supposed to be one night. Then the blizzard hit.
\nJosie is a serial hobbyist who’s perfected the art of avoiding rejection. Pilates, painting, pickleball - anything but feelings. So being trapped in a cabin with no distractions and a gorgeous woman who clearly regrets last night? Personal nightmare.
\nBut a lot can happen in a week. Stolen glances turn into lingering eye contact. Awkward silences become late-night conversations. And when the snow stops, both of them have to face the question they’ve been avoiding: what if the biggest risk isn’t opening your heart to someone, it’s letting her walk away when the roads finally clear?
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After checking her salty attitude and grinding for years, Remi James has worked her way up to become star bartender at an upscale Seattle bar. She’s finally on track for the promotion (and the home loan approval) of her dreams - until Maya Marek walks in. Suddenly, Remi has competition. Willowy, blonde, infuriatingly talented competition . . .
\nThe last thing friendly, cheerful Maya expects on her first day is to clash so spectacularly with the prickly senior bartender - or to find herself inexplicably drawn to the feisty woman. But she needs this paycheck to afford grad school, and no amount of snarky comments, pouty lips, and to-die-for curves will get in her way.
\nRemi and Maya are rivals. That’s why they’re so aware of each other in the tight space behind the bar, and in the walk-in refrigerator . . . right? But when family emergencies and painful pasts come to light, they're forced to see each other in a new way. When the line between rivalry and romance begins to blur, can Remi and Maya dare to sacrifice their dreams to reach for something new?
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Lucy Green is on the cusp of fulfilling a decade-long pact with her best friend to be his surrogate. Now, all she has to do is stay single, healthy, and keep down the prenatal vitamins.
\nA year ago, Jade Hudson's wife went back on all her previous promises and declared that she wanted children with or without Jade. Forced out of her marriage, Jade is now rebooting her life in small town Minnesota, pouring all her energy into her new salon and prioritising self-worth.
\nSparks begin to fly between Lucy and Jade, but accepting new love feels a long way off. Neither can deny their growing feelings, but with both their lives verging on transformation, the timing could not be worse. Will they be able to ignore their feelings or can they look past their life developments and risk it all for a chance at love?
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Crushed under the weight of writer’s block and a looming deadline, Mack escapes from New York to Seattle. She meets Charlie, a beautiful, generous, nearly bankrupt coffee shop owner recovering from heartbreak. For the first time, Mack has a muse. And then Mack starts using Charlie’s private stories in her novel.
\nWhen a storm traps Mack and Charlie in the coffee shop, they share a mind-bending, knee-shaking kiss. But Charlie is an eternal optimist who sleeps with fairy-lights on, while Mack is an ironing-at-5am worrier who sleeps with . . . everyone. They could never turn this chemistry into something real, right?
\nAnd if Charlie finds out what Mack has been doing, turning Charlie’s most intimate secrets into a juicy page-turner, will they even have a chance to try?
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Sophie Black has clawed her way up from coffee runs to project manager at a top Seattle ad agency. She’s laser-focused on her career - until the CEO’s daughter, Ella Northwood, joins the team. Forced to work together on a high-stakes campaign, sparks fly as Sophie’s scrappy determination clashes with Ella’s polished privilege. But there’s more to both women than meets the eye, and, over late nights in the office, their assumptions about each other start to crumble.
\nWhen an impromptu hot tub session leads to a steamy night neither can forget, everything changes. The ice-cold chip on Sophie’s shoulder finally starts to melt, while Ella hopes that for the first time, someone might see beneath her trust-fund facade. But as the temperature in the office soars, a shocking revelation threatens to derail everything. Now Sophie and Ella must decide if their feelings are worth fighting for . . .
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One hundred years of bad blood between the villages of Kushtaka and Kuskulana come to a boil when the body of a young Kushtaka ne'er-do-well is found wedged in a fish wheel. Sergeant Jim Chopin's prime suspect is a Kuskulana man who is already in trouble in both villages for falling in love across the river.
\nBut when the suspect disappears, members of both tribes refuse to speak to Jim. When a second murder that looks suspiciously like payback occurs, Jim has no choice but to call in Kate Shugak for help. This time, though, her Park relationships may not be enough to sort out the truth hidden in the tales of tragedy and revenge.
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A party of hunters stumbles upon a desiccated human hand, a feisty grandmother meets an untimely death in her own kitchen, and the broken remains of a World War II-era transport plane emerge from the face of a calving glacier. It's all in a day's work for Sergeant Liam Campbell of the Alaska State Troopers. And 60 years ago is like yesterday.
Liam had his hands clenched around the edge of his seat and with every muscle strained upward, keeping that plane in the sky. Oh, God yes, anything but down, please, please. I’ll never get drunk again, I’ll do all of Miranda every single time no matter how the Supreme Court rules, I’ll marry and settle down and live a nice, quiet life, just please don’t let this plane go down with me on board.
But when he risked a glance out the window, down seemed to be coming up very fast indeed, and now he cursed the light of the moon that so clearly illuminated the river beneath them.
Kate was formerly the star investigator of the Anchorage D.A.'s office; now all she wants to do is enjoy the first weeks of autumn on her isolated homestead. Alone. But duty calls, in the form of Ekaterina Shugak, Kate's grandmother, the imposing matriarch of her extended family.
\nIt's the week of the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention, and everyone who's anyone - as well as a few nobodies - has gathered in Anchorage for a week of shopping, gossiping, bragging, and more than a little wheeling and dealing. But there's more happening this year than what's on the official agenda. A vote is coming up on the future of tribal lands, and the arguments are heated. Heated enough to raise suspicions about the recent death of a Native Association board member.
\nKate has always refused to get involved with tribal politics. But the dead woman was a relative, and the one true weakness Kate Shugak has is for her family. Reluctantly agreeing to investigate, she is drawn into a whirlpool of deceit, lies, and secrets; she is torn not only between the modern world and the traditional, but also between opposing factions within each group.
\nAnd the more Kate investigates, the more she discovers how deeply she is tied to the land, and to what lengths she will go in order to protect it . . .
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Kate Shugak's loyalties - to the land, her heritage, her home - are put to the test when a series of mishaps lead to murder. April in Alaska is typically a period of rebirth and renewal, and after the long winter Kate has nothing more strenuous on her agenda than paying her taxes.
\nBut mayhem abounds as the meltoff flows; this year's thaw is accompanied by rampaging bears, family feuds, and a plane crash quite literally in Kate's own backyard. What begins as a series of headaches escalates into possible murder when a dead body is found near her homestead.
\nInitially unwilling to involve herself in the investigation, preferring instead to write off each odd occurrence as a breakup-related peculiarity, Kate is drawn irresistibly to seek the truth. Compelled by her friends to act as problem solver and guided by the spirit of her Aleut grandmother, she finds herself slowly taking on the role of clan leader, a post she is bound to by honor and blood.
\nAs breakup becomes increasingly fraught with danger and destruction, Kate must decide whether she can cross the line from passive observer to instrument of change, assuming the role of elder as the mantle of responsibility is passed.
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Eighteen months ago, Aleut Kate Shugak quit her job investigating sex crimes for the Anchorage DA's office and retreated to her father's homestead in a national park in the interior of Alaska. But the world has a way of beating a path to her door, however remote. In the middle of one of the bitterest Decembers in recent memory ex-boss - and ex-lover - Jack Morgan shows up with an FBI agent in tow. A Park ranger with powerful relatives is missing, and now the investigator Jack sent in to look for him is missing, too.
Reluctantly, Kate, along with Mutt, her half-wolf, half-husky sidekick, leaves her wilderness refuge to follow a frozen trail through the Park, twenty thousand square miles of mountain and tundra sparsely populated with hunters, fishermen, trappers, mushers, pilots and homesteaders. Her formidable grandmother and Native chief, Ekaterina Shugak, is - for reasons of her own - against Kate's investigation; her cousin, Martin, may be Kate's prime suspect; and the local trooper, Jim Chopin, is more interested in Kate than in her investigation.
In the end, the sanctuary she sought after five and a half years in the urban jungles may prove more lethal than anything she left behind in the city streets of Anchorage.
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Work hard, play hard. That's the credo on the oilfields of Alaska's North Slope, where harsh conditions and long, isolated shifts make for some of the best-paid jobs in the state. Management typically turns a blind eye to off-hours drinking and gambling, but a spate of drug-related deaths means it's time for Royal Petroleum to get its house in order.
\nWorking on behalf of the Anchorage DA, Kate Shugak is brought in undercover to identify the dealer and shut down the flow of cocaine. Of course, the dealer might have some very different ideas.
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Two crewmen of the crab vessel Avilda are missing - presumed dead - under very suspicious circumstances. The Bering Sea offers ample means and opportunity, but without bodies, a motive, or evidence of foul play, the DA doesn’t have a case.
\nAnd so, freelancing again for her former employer, Kate Shugak finds herself working undercover in one of Alaska’s most dangerous professions: crab fisherman. It’s an assignment that will take her from the debauchery of Dutch Harbor to the most isolated of the Aleutians, and if the job itself doesn’t kill her, her unsavory crewmates just might.
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Kate Shugak, a private investigator, has been working on a case for the Anchorage District Attorney involving the murder of a young woman by her husband, a man named Louis Deem. Deem has been the subject of investigations before, and he's never been convicted of a crime. But Kate and her on-again, off-again lover, state trooper Jim Chopin, who arrested Deem, are convinced that this time it's different, and he'll finally be punished for his actions.
When the jury returns a verdict of not guilty, Kate, Jim, and citizens of Niniltna, Alaska, believe Deem has gotten away with murder. And when, a few weeks later, two people turn up dead after an apparent robbery, Kate and Jim can't help but believe that Deem is involved, but what it takes to bring Deem to justice could tear them apart, if the real killer doesn't get to them first.
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On her homestead in the middle of twenty million acres of national Park, Aleut P.I. Kate Shugak is caught up in spring cleaning, unaware that just miles away a man's sanity is breaking. When the sound of gunfire finally dies away, nine of his neighbors lie dead in the snow. But did he kill all nine, or only eight?
\nThe ninth victim was killed with a different weapon. It's up to Kate and her husky-wolf sidekick Mutt to untangle the life of the dead blonde with the tarnished past and find her killer. It won't be easy; every second Park rat had a motive. Was it one of her many spurned lovers? Was a wife looking for revenge? Or did a deal with an ivory smuggler go bad?
\nEven Trooper Jim Chopin, the Park's resident state trooper, had a history with the victim. Kate will need every ounce of determination to find the truth before Alaska metes out its own justice . . .
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Change never comes easy so when the news breaks that the new administration oil might be drilling for oil soon in a wildlife preserve in southeastern Alaska, home to P.I. Kate Shugak, battle lines are quickly drawn across the community. But for Kate, who hasn't been able to get back into her daily life ever since her lover's violent death a few months ago, it's a welcome reprieve from doing nothing.
Tensions run high when Kate's friend and chief park ranger, Dan O'Brien, is deemed \"too green\" for them by management and asked to take early retirement. Kate rallies the troops to fight for his job, but before she can really start throwing her weight around, a longtime resident is found brutally murdered. Alaska State Trooper Jim Chopin enlists Kate in the investigation, and it isn't long before she discovers that when it comes to the beauty and danger of living and dying in Alaska, nothing is as simple as it seems . . .
Alaska State Trooper Liam Campbell was a young go-getter with everything going his way - a rich wife, a loving son, and a career ready to take off. But then it all fell to pieces.
\nA drunk driver took his family, a tragic miscalculation took his career, and the bottle was about to take everything else . . . until Liam found himself on a plane to his new posting - a small native town far from the big city comforts of Anchorage. And fate isn't finished with him yet.
\nNo sooner does he set foot off the plane than he is confronted with a suspiciously dead body, an office going to hell in a handbasket, and the accusing glare of the only woman he'd ever truly loved . . . and lost.
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Everyone knew Len Dreyer, a handyman for hire in the Park near Niniltna, Alaska, but no one knew anything else about him. Even Kate Shugak, who was planning to ask him to help build a small second cabin on her property, knew him. But she, the Park's unofficial P.I., seems to have known less about him than anyone.
When Len Dreyer's body is discovered, frozen solid, in the path of a receding glacier with a hole from a shotgun blast in his chest, no one even noticed that he was missing for months. Alaska State Trooper Jim Chopin asks Kate to help him dig into Dreyer's background, in the hope of finding some motive for his murder. She takes the case, mindful of the need for gainful employment as she copes with her responsibility for Johnny, the teenage boy in her care and a constant reminder of his father, her dead lover. Little does she imagine that by trying to provide for him she just might put him right in the path of danger.
1890: the Gilded Age, a period of financial success and political corruption. The United States is growing at a breathless rate, with six new states recently added to the Union.
\nWith expansion comes an influx of crime. Outlaw gangs hold sway on the frontier and heists and robberies are commonplace. A lot of businesses shrug off these depredations as the cost of success. Those who don't hire the Pinkerton Detective Agency to get their money back.
\nThe Pinkertons' newest operative is twenty-two-year-old Clare Wright. Highly educated, skilled with disguises, and handy enough in a fight, Clare's future in the agency seems bright. But when she's introduced to Fred Harvey, she finds herself thrown right into the heady mix of frontier life.
\nHarvey's Arizona hotel has been robbed and Clare is the perfect recruit to solve this mystery. Clare must infiltrate high society and win the confidence of killers like Butch Cassidy as she seeks the truth.
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Guiding becomes a deadly business when Kate Shugak accepts a contract to shepherd a group of German computer executives on an Alaskan hunting retreat. As the fog rolls in and people start dying, Kate and her boyfriend Jack discover how very seriously their charges take the sport.
\nA hunter's moon signals a season of gathering and plenty, but Kate finds herself out of resources and at her most vulnerable. She must find the strength to not only survive, but repay. This time, the guide becomes the huntress.
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It's fishing season, and Kate Shugak is working with Old Sam aboard the fish tender Freya when Cal Meany floats up dead. His reputation as a womanizer, strike breaker and abusive father ensures that there are several suspects, multiple motives, and quite possibly more than one murderer.
\nWhile Kate investigates the killing, her aunties mend nets, operate an illegal fish camp and impart cultural wisdom to Jack and his son Johnny. Ultimately, Kate finds herself in grave danger, as even her aunts join the list of suspects.
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KATE SHUGAK is a native Aleut working as a private investigator in Alaska. She's 5 foot 1 inch tall, carries a scar that runs from ear to ear across her throat and owns a half-wolf, half-husky dog named Mutt. Resourceful, strong-willed, defiant, Kate is tougher than your average heroine – and she needs to be to survive the worst the Alaskan wilds can throw at her.
Two thousand people go missing in Alaska every year. They vanish in the middle of mountain footraces, on fishing boats in the Bering Sea, on small planes in the Bush. Now a geologist known for going walkabout with his rock hammer has disappeared from the Suulutaq Mine in the Park. Was it deliberate? An accident? Foul play? Kate Shugak may be the only person who can find out.
But for the fact that Kate, too, is now among the missing . . .
Kate, a former investigator for the Anchorage D.A. and now a P.I. for hire, is missing after a winter spent in mourning. Alaska State Trooper Jim Chopin, Kate's best friend, needs her to help him work a new case. He discovers her hiding out in Bering, a small fishing village on Alaska's western coast, living and working under an assumed name - working hard, as eighteen-hour workdays seem to be her only justification for getting up in the morning.
\nBut before they can even discuss Kate's last several months, or what Jim is doing looking for her in Bering, they're up to their eyes in Jim's case, which is suddenly more complicated - and more dangerous - than they suspected.
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In Alaska, somebody disappears every day. Hunters who head into the wilderness… Fishermen who brave the great rivers…Tourists who attempt to do both. In Aleut detective Kate Shugak’s Park, people have been falling off the grid quite a bit lately. And as she and state trooper Jim Chopin are about to realize, it’s got something to do with the recent discovery of the world’s second-largest gold mine in their very own backyard.
A hostile environmental activist organisation has embraced Alaska’s Suulutaq Mine as its reason for being, attracting more attention than many of the locals can tolerate. So it’s almost a relief when Kate finally finds a body - this, more than politics, she can handle. Until the identity of the body vanishes, too . . .
Now it’s up to Kate and Jim to dig deeper into the mining controversy and find the truth about what’s going on in her homeland. Even if that means facing down an enemy who will kill to keep certain secrets buried . . .
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22It is New Year's Eve, nearly six weeks into an off-and-on blizzard that has locked Alaska down, effectively cutting it off from the outside world.
But now there are reports of a plane down in the Quilak mountains. With the National Transportation Safety Board unable to reach the crash site, ex-Trooper Jim Chopin is pulled out of retirement to try to identify the aircraft, collect the corpses, and determine why no flight has been reported missing. But Jim discovers survivors: two children who don't speak a word of English.
Meanwhile, PI Kate Shugak receives an unexpected and unwelcome accusation from beyond the grave, a charge that could change the face of the Park forever.
Alaska State Trooper Liam Campbell, newly promoted to corporal, is slowly making a home for himself in the remote town of Newenham. Between DUIs and domestic disputes, life is relatively tranquil, until Campbell's girlfriend, bush pilot Wyanet Chouinard, delivers a shipment of mail to a remote post office, where she finds the postmistress murdered. The hunt is on for a killer who seems to have vanished into the Bush... Until another victim is found. Chilling connections from the past make the search a matter of life and death.
At first they couldn’t tell she was a woman, she was so covered in snow and frost and mud. Leaves and twigs were caught in hair so lank and matted they couldn’t tell what color it was. Her blue jeans were soaked through. She was wearing tennis shoes, one of which was missing, and the white anklet on that foot was torn and the flesh beneath bleeding.
They were caught motionless in shock. The woman looked up at them and opened her mouth. Her voice was the merest croak of sound. “Help.”
She tried to say more, but couldn’t. “Help,” she said again, and lay her head down on the floor and closed her eyes.
Formerly the star investigator in the Anchorage D.A's office, Kate Shugak now tracks down criminals from her Aleut homestead. But she and her wolf-dog Mutt are taking a June break to pick wild morel mushrooms among the charred trees left by a devastating forest fire.
\nIn the ashes Kate also uncovers the mysterious corpse of a naked man. And when she is \"hired\" by a ten-year-old to locate his missing dad, she fears she has already found him. The reason how and why he died, however, is buried deeper than his body.
\nFinding it will lead Kate to the remains of a woolly mammoth in a Fairbanks museum, back to her old lover Jack Morgan, and far afield to an isolated settlement of religious fundamentalists . . . as she follows a twisted road toward a smoldering evil and the flash point for a macabre murder.
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Alaska aviation entrepreneur Finn Grant died in the fiery crash of his Piper Super Cub. Someone sabotaged his engine, and virtually everyone in southwestern Alaska has a motive, including his betrayed wife, his bullied children, and Liam’s wife, bush pilot Wyanet Chouinard. With few places to turn, Liam asks his former mentor Niniltna post commander Sergeant Jim Chopin, for help, and Jim quickly brings Kate onto the case.
Working undercover as - of all things - a waitress at Bill’s Bar and Grill, Kate learns over beer and burgers that Grant’s business had expanded meteorically over the last two years. After buying the closed Air Force base south of town from the federal government at a bargain-basement price, he became a fixed-base operator running his fishing, hunting, and flight-seeing business, servicing planes flying through the area, and most interestingly and lucratively, getting into the air freight business. But what kind of freight was he moving, and where?
The answers involve Kate in her most challenging case to date, one that starts with murder and quickly sprawls into a much larger conspiracy ranging from the darkest family secrets to treason and beyond.
Dana Stabenow returns with her most outstanding novel yet, teaming up two of her most beloved characters, Aleut private investigator Kate Shugak and Alaska state trooper Liam Campbell, in the same story for the first time.Alaska aviation entrepreneur Finn Grant died in the fiery crash of his Piper Super Cub. Someone sabotaged his engine, and virtually everyone in southwestern Alaska has a motive, including his betrayed wife, his bullied children, and Liam’s wife, bush pilot Wyanet Chouinard.
\nWith few places to turn, Liam asks his former mentor Niniltna post commander Sergeant Jim Chopin, for help, and Jim quickly brings Kate onto the case. Working undercover as - of all things - a waitress at Bill’s Bar and Grill, Kate learns over beer and burgers that Grant’s business had expanded meteorically over the last two years. After buying the closed Air Force base south of town from the federal government at a bargain-basement price, he became a fixed-base operator running his fishing, hunting, and flight-seeing business, servicing planes flying through the area, and most interestingly and lucratively, getting into the air freight business.
\nBut what kind of freight was he moving, and where?The answers involve Kate in her most challenging case to date, one that starts with murder and quickly sprawls into a much larger conspiracy ranging from the darkest family secrets to treason and beyond.
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Kate Shugak hires onto the staff of a political campaign to work security for a Native woman running for state senator. The candidate has been receiving anonymous threats, and Kate, who went to college with two of the staffers, is to become her shadow, watching the crowds at rallies and fund-raisers.
\nBut just as she's getting started, the campaign is rocked by the murder of their staff researcher. In order to track the killer, Kate will have to retrace the researcher's steps and delve into the past, in particular the grisly murder of a \"good-time girl\" during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1915.
\nLittle can she guess the impact a ninety-year-old unsolved case could have on a modern-day psychotic killer . . .
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Three relatively-quiet months have passed since Trooper Liam Campbell was assigned to the remote post of Newenham. It all changes when a local fishing boat is discovered scuttled and adrift - its crew of seven dead in circumstances that can't be accidental - and Wy stumbles into a murder scene at an archaeological dig. Cultures collide as the community must deal with too many outside distractions.
Summertime in the Bush smelled like OFF. Well, OFF and salmon. Wy smelled of both, but she smelled most strongly of herself, a scent somewhere between lilac and lemon peel, half sweet, half tart, part seduction, part challenge. Liam strapped himself into the shotgun seat of the Cessna and concentrated on that smell. It was easier than thinking about hanging his ass out over a two-thousand-foot precipice for the next hour.
It's Labor Day in Blewestown, Alaska, and it seems most of the town's thirty-five hundred residents have turned out to celebrate – or to cause trouble. Not Liam Campbell, though. He's checking out the local watering hole in his new town. He's finally made it out of Newenham and is ready for a quiet life with his wife.
He's been in town for about a week when an archaeologist invites him out to his dig site outside of town. He's on the verge of a momentous discovery, one he says will be worth the State Trooper's time.
Two days later, the archaeologist is dead, murdered on his own dig site. And Liam Campbell is about to learn that he's traded one troubled bush town for another.
Thirty-one years ago in Anchorage, Alaska, Victoria Pilz Bannister Muravieff was convicted of murdering her seventeen-year-old son William. The jury returned a quick verdict of guilty, believing the prosecutor's claims that she had set fire to her own home with both her sons inside; William died and the other, Oliver, narrowly escaped. Victoria was sentenced to life in prison without parole, and though she pled not guilty at the trial, she never again denied her guilt.
Now her daughter, Charlotte Muravieff, has hired Kate Shugak to clear her mother's name. Her daughter has always believed in her innocence, and now that Victoria has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, Charlotte wants her free. Kate is the only p.i. Charlotte can find who's willing to take such a long-shot case. Kate, on the other hand, is only willing because she's suddenly a single parent to a teenager, a teenager she hopes will decide to go to college. Besides, it can't be bad to do a favor for the Bannister family, one of the wealthiest and most prominent families in Alaska's short history.
The residents of Alaska’s largest national park are stunned by the death of one of their oldest members, eighty-seven-year-old Sam Dementieff . . . even investigator Kate Shugak. Sam, a lifelong resident, was dubbed the “father” of all of the Park rats - even though he had no children of his own.
\nKate, his niece, is surprised to discover that in his will he’s left her everything, including a letter instructing her simply to, “find my father.” In the three days after Kate begins her search through Sam’s background, she gets threatened - and worse. Kate struggles to fulfill Sam’s last wish without losing her own life to the people who are following her every move.
\nLong-lost family secrets and fatal consequences are interwoven with the epic history of an unforgiving land.
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A mining company has discovered a rich mineral deposit in Alaska's enormous Iqaluk Wildlife Refuge. Politicos see dollar signs for the state, but Ninilta residents, who live near the proposed site, are split: Will outsiders take the jobs? Will the environment be harmed by pollution? Will roads disintegrate . . . tourists invade? As the new chairperson of Ninilta's Native Association, a job she never wanted, Kate is embarassingly ill-equipped to handle the questions. Nor is she prepared when two individuals associated with the company turn up dead.
Kate Shugak is a native Aleut working as a private investigator in Alaska. She's 5 foot 1 inch tall, carries a scar that runs from ear to ear across her throat and owns half-wolf, half-husky dog named Mutt. Resourceful, strong-willed, defiant, Kate is tougher than your average heroine - and she needs to be to survive the worst the Alaskan wilds can throw at her.
After blowing her cover as a double agent within Silver Elite and fleeing the Prime-controlled capital, Wren Darlington is finally safe behind allied lines. As her lover and former commander Cross Redden works to disrupt the Primes from inside their ranks, Wren turns her focus toward assisting the Uprising in overthrowing their rule once and for all.
\nThough she’s back among her own people, trust is hard-won and hidden agendas abound on the Mod base. And beyond those walls, Wren can’t help but worry that Cross is keeping secrets of his own . . . secrets that could jeopardize everything. Complicating matters even further is her shocking reunion with hotshot fighter pilot and undercover operative Grayson Blake. Once her closest friend in Silver Elite, Gray seems to understand Wren on a level she never thought possible.
\nWith the war between Mods and Primes growing more brutal by the day, and with her own role in the conflict becoming more essential than ever, Wren must confront some gut-wrenching questions. Who is she fighting for . . . and who is she willing to lose?
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Wren Darlington has spent her whole life in hiding, honing her psychic abilities and aiding the rebel Uprising in small ways. On the Continent, being Modified means certain death - and Wren is one of the most powerful Mods in existence. When one careless mistake places her in the hands of the enemy and she’s forced to join their most elite training program, she’s finally handed the perfect opportunity to strike a devastating blow from inside their ranks.
\nBut training for Silver Block can be deadly, especially when you’re harboring dangerous secrets and living in close quarters with everyone who wants you dead.
\nAs the stakes grow ever higher, Wren must prove herself to Silver Block. But that’s easier said than done when your commanding officer is the ruthless and infuriatingly irresistible Cross Redden, who doesn’t miss anything when it comes to her. And as war rages between Mods like her and those who aim to destroy them, Wren must decide just how far she’s willing to go to protect herself . . . and how much of the Continent is worth saving.
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One morning in 1890, a painting wrapped in brown paper appears on the steps of the National Gallery and causes a sensation. It's clearly by Timothy Ponden-Hall, an artist whose paintings were celebrated and debated, not just for their beauty, but for the rumours behind them: his masterpieces were believed to immortalise the souls of their subjects.
\nBut the shadowy explorer and artist has been thought dead for the last 50 years - so what does this new portrait mean? The gallery brings in renowned art historian Solomon Oak to investigate the painting as rumours swirl through the streets of London town.
\nIn a bid to uncover the truth, Oak is assisted by an unlikely aid: his daughter Alice. A passionate but sheltered student, Alice has worldly desires which eclipse the life she's expected to lead. Together they discover that exposing Ponden-Hall's legacy will prove more controversial than they could ever have imagined for their family and Victorian society.
\nSet between London and Oxford, The Portrait Artist is a twisting historical debut exploring race, fame and long-kept secrets.
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When thirty-four-year-old Alice Haserot learns she’s pregnant, she isn’t sure if she wants to keep the baby. Long estranged from her family, Alice is haunted by memories of her own abusive mother. Not only that, but her lineage is burdened by a curse, one that she’s almost managed to convince herself she no longer believes Girls for the gifts, boys for the grave.
\nAlice’s gift - channeling ghosts - has often felt like its own curse. Is she willing to risk passing on a similar fate to a daughter, or one even worse to a son? Amidst this internal reckoning Alice’s sister Bronwyn tracks her down. One of Bronwyn’s daughters is possessing the other and she delivers an ultimatum to come home to free them, or I’ll tell our mother where you are.
\nWhen Alice agrees, she finds herself once again caught up in the life she tried to escape sixteen years before and the night she’s tried her hardest to forget. And as the haunting escalates to dangerous proportions, Alice must decide whom to trust, how far she will go to end the curse, and if she’s willing to risk motherhood given all her family legacy entails.
Kithamar is a center of trade and wealth, an ancient city with a long, bloody history where countless thousands live and their stories unfold.
\nThis is Alys's.
\nWhen her brother is murdered, a petty thief from the slums of Longhill sets out to discover who killed him and why. But the more she discovers about him, the more she learns about herself, and the truths she finds are more dangerous than knives.
\nSwept up in an intrigue as deep as the roots of Kithamar, where the secrets of the lowest born can sometimes topple thrones, the story Alys chooses will have the power to change everything.
Otah Machi, ruler of the city of Machi, has tried for years to prepare his people for a future in which the magical andat, entities that support their commerce and intimidate all foes, can no longer be safely harnessed. But his efforts are too little, too late.
\nThe Galts, an expansionist empire from across the sea, have tired of games of political espionage and low-stakes sabotage. Their general, a ruthless veteran, has found a way to do what was thought impossible: neutralize the andat.
\nAs the Galtic army advances, the Poets who control the andat wage their own battle to save their loved-ones and their nation. Failure seems inevitable, but success would end the Galtic threat.
As a boy, Otah Machi was exiled from his family, Machi's ruling house. Decades later, he has witnessed and been part of world-changing events. Yet he has never returned to Machi. Now his father - the Khai, or ruler, of Machi - is dying and his eldest brother Biitrah has been assassinated, Otah realises that he must return to Machi, for reasons not even he understands.
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Tradition dictates that the sons of a dying Khai fall upon each other until only one remains to succeed his father. But something even worse is occurring in Machi. The Galts, an expansive empire, has allied with someone in Machi to bring down the ruling house. Otah is accused, the long-missing brother with an all-too-obvious motive for murder.
Kithamar is a center of trade and wealth, an ancient city with a long, bloody history where countless thousands live and their stories endure.
\nThis is Garreth's.
\nGarreth Left is heir to one of Kithamar's most prominent merchant families. The path of his life was paved long before he was born. Learn the family trade, marry to secure wealthy in-laws, and inherit the business when the time is right. But to Garreth, a life chosen for him is no life at all.
\nIn one night, a chance meeting with an enigmatic stranger changes everything. He falls in love with a woman whose name he doesn't even know, and he will do anything to find her again. His search leads him down corridors and alleys that are best left unexplored, where ancient gods hide in the shadows, and every deal made has a dangerous edge.
\nThe path that Garreth chooses will change the course of not only those he loves, but the entire future of Kithamar's citizens.
\nIn Kithamar, every story matters - and the fate of the city is woven from them all.
All paths lead to war . . .
\nMarcus' hero days are behind him. He knows too well that even the smallest war still means somebody's death. When his men are impressed into a doomed army, staying out of a battle he wants no part of requires some unorthodox steps.
\nCithrin is an orphan, ward of a banking house. Her job is to smuggle a nation's wealth across a war zone, hiding the gold from both sides. She knows the secret life of commerce like a second language, but the strategies of trade will not defend her from swords.
\nGeder, sole scion of a noble house, has more interest in philosophy than in swordplay. A poor excuse for a soldier, he is a pawn in these games. No one can predict what he will become.
\nFalling pebbles can start a landslide. A spat between the Free Cities and the Severed Throne is spiraling out of control. A new player rises from the depths of history, fanning the flames that will sweep the entire region onto The Dragon's Path - the path to war.
War casts its shadow over the lands that the dragons once ruled.
\nWhen an act of harrowing betrayal threatens to set the cities afire, all certainties are called into question. Only the courage of a young woman with the mind of a gambler and loyalty to no one stands between hope and universal darkness.
\nThe high and powerful will fall, the despised and broken shall rise up, and everything will be remade. And quietly, almost beneath the notice of anyone, an old, broken-hearted warrior and an apostate priest will begin a terrible journey with an impossible goal: destroy a Goddess before she eats the world.
Fifteen years have passed since the devastating war between the Galt Empire and the cities of the Khaiem in which the Khaiem’s poets and their magical power known as “andat” were destroyed, leaving the women of the Khaiem and the men of Galt infertile.
\nThe emperor of the Khaiem tries to form a marriage alliance between his son and the daughter of a Galtic lord, hoping the Khaiem men and Galtic women will produce a new generation to help create a peaceful future. But Maati, a poet who has been in hiding for years, driven by guilt over his part in the disastrous end of the war, defies tradition and begins training female poets.
\nWith Eiah, the emperor’s daughter, helping him, he intends to create andat, to restore the world as it was before the war. Vanjit, a woman haunted by her family’s death in the war, creates a new andat. But hope turns to ashes as her creation unleashes a power that cripples all she touches.
\nAs the prospect of peace dims under the lash of Vanjit’s creation, Maati and Eiah try to end her reign of terror. But time is running out for both the Galts and the Khaiem.
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Lord Regent Geder Palliako's war has led his nation and the priests of the spider goddess to victory after victory. No power has withstood him, except for the heart of the one woman he desires. As the violence builds and the cracks in his rule begin to show, he will risk everything to gain her love or else her destruction.
\nClara Kalliam, the loyal traitor, is torn between the woman she once was and the woman she has become. With her sons on all sides of the conflict, her house cannot stand, but there is a power in choosing when and how to fall.
\nAnd in Porte Oliva, banker Cithrin bel Sarcour and Captain Marcus Wester learn the terrible truth that links this war to the fall of the dragons millennia before, and that to save the world, Cithrin must conquer it.
A few years ago, David Alvarez had it all: a six-figure book deal, a loving boyfriend, and an exciting writing career. His debut novel was a resounding success, which made the publication of his second book - a total flop - all the more devastating. Now, David is single, lonely, and desperately trying to come up with the next great idea for his third manuscript, one that will redeem him in the eyes of readers, reviewers . . . and maybe even his ex-boyfriend.
\nThe issue is, good ideas are hard to come by, and the mounting pressure of a near-empty bank account isn’t helping. But when David connects with a sexy stranger on a dating app, he figures a wild night out in New York City may be just what he needs to find inspiration. Lucky for him, his date turns out to be handsome, confident, and wealthy, not to mention the perfect distraction from yet another evening staring at a blank screen.
\nAfter one of the best nights of his life, David wakes up hungover but giddy - only to find prince charming dead next to him in bed. Horrified, completely confused, and suddenly faced with the implausible-but-somehow-plausible idea that he may have actually killed his date, David calls the only person he can trust in a moment of crisis: his literary agent, Stacey.
\nTogether, David and Stacey must untangle the events of the previous night, cover their tracks, and spin the entire misadventure into David’s career-defining novel - if only they can figure out what to do with the body first.
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There is a word Mateo Garcia and his younger sister Sophie have been taught to fear for as long as they can remember: deportation. Over the past few years, however, the fear that their undocumented immigrant parents could be sent back to Mexico has started to fade to the back of their minds. And why wouldn't it, when their Ma and Pa have been in the United States for so long, they have American-born children, and they're hard workers and good neighbors?
\nWhen two ICE agents come asking for Pa, the Garcia family realizes that the lives they've built are about to come crumbling down. And when Mateo returns from school one day to find that his parents have been taken, he'll have to come to terms with the fact that his family's worst nightmare has become a reality.
\nWith his Ma and Pa being held in separate detention centers, Mateo must learn how to look after his sister and himself. The choices Mateo makes, and the people he turns to for help, might reunite his family . . . or tear them apart for good. With his parents’ fate and his own future hanging in the balance, Mateo must figure out who he is and what he is capable of, even as he’s forced to question what it means to be an American teenager in a country that rejects his own mom and dad.
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As Jacob lies dying, he begins to write a letter to his only son, Isaac. They have not met or spoken in many years, and there are things that Isaac must know. Stories about his ancestral legacy in rural Arkansas that extend back to slavery. Secrets from Jacob's tumultuous relationship with Isaac's mother and the shame he carries from the dissolution of their family. Tragedies that informed Jacob's role as a father and his reaction to Isaac's being gay.
\nBut most of all, Jacob must share with Isaac the unspoken truths that reside in his heart. He must give voice to the trauma that Isaac has inherited. And he must create a space for the two to find peace.
\nWith piercing insight and profound empathy, acclaimed author Daniel Black illuminates the lived experiences of Black fathers and queer sons, offering an authentic and ultimately hopeful portrait of reckoning and reconciliation. Spare as it is sweeping, poetic as it is compulsively readable, Don't Cry for Me is a monumental novel about one family grappling with love's hard edges and the unexpected places where hope and healing take flight.
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Isaac is at a crossroads in his young life. Growing up in Missouri, the son of a caustic, hard-driving father, he was conditioned to suppress his artistic pursuits and physical desires, notions that didn’t align with a traditional view of masculinity. But now, in late ’80s Chicago, Isaac has finally carved out a life of his own. He is sensitive and tenderhearted and has built up the courage to seek out a community. Yet just as he begins to embrace who he is, two social catalysts - the AIDS crisis and Rodney King’s attack - collectively extinguish his hard-earned joy.
\nAt a therapist’s encouragement, Isaac begins to write down his story. In the process, he taps into a creative energy that will send him on a journey back to his family, his ancestral home in Arkansas and the inherited trauma of the nation’s dark past. But a surprise discovery will either unlock the truths he’s seeking or threaten to derail the life he’s fought so hard to claim.
\nPoignant, sweeping and luminously told, Isaac's Song is a return to the beloved characters of Don’t Cry for Me.
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Present day: When a young anthropologist specialising in ancient technology uncovers a terrible secret concealed in the workings of a three-hundred-year-old mechanical doll, she is thrown into a hidden world that lurks just under the surface of our own.
\nWith her career and her life at stake, June Stefanov will ally with a remarkable traveler who exposes her to a reality she never imagined, as they embark on an around-the-world adventure and discover breathtaking secrets of the past . . .
\nRussia, 1725: In the depths of the Kremlin, the tsar's loyal mechanician brings to life two astonishingly humanlike mechanical beings. Peter and Elena are a brother and sister fallen out of time, possessed with uncanny power, and destined to serve great empires. Struggling to blend into pre-Victorian society, they are pulled into a legendary war that has raged for centuries.
\nThe Clockwork Dynasty seamlessly interweaves past and present, exploring a race of beings designed to live by ironclad principles, yet constantly searching for meaning. As June plunges deeper into their world, her choices will ultimately determine their survival or extermination.
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On the Great Plains of Oklahoma, in the heart of the Cherokee Nation, a strange atmospheric disturbance is noticed by Jim Hardgray, a down-on-his-luck single father trying to reconnect with his teenage daughter, Tawny.
\nAt NASA’s headquarters in Houston, Texas, astrophysicist Dr. Mikayla Johnson observes an interaction with the Voyager 1 spacecraft on the far side of the solar system, and she concludes that something enormous and unidentified is heading directly for Earth. And in an undisclosed bunker somewhere in the United States, an American threat forecaster known only as the Man Downstairs intercepts a cryptic communication and sends a message directly to the president and highest-ranking military “First contact imminent.”
\nDaniel H. Wilson’s Hole in the Sky is a riveting thriller in the most creative tradition of extraterrestrial fiction. Drawing on Wilson’s unique background as both a threat forecaster for the United States Air Force and a Cherokee Nation citizen, this propulsive novel asks probing questions about nonhuman intelligence, the Western mindset, and humans’ understanding of reality.
Humankind had triumphed over the machines. At the end of Robopocalypse, the modern world was largely devastated, humankind was pressed to the point of annihilation, and the earth was left in tatters . . . but the master artificial intelligence presence known as Archos had been killed.
\nIn Robogenesis, we see that Archos has survived. Spread across the far reaches of the world, the machine code has fragmented into millions of pieces, hiding and regrouping. In a series of riveting narratives, Robogenesis explores the fates of characters new and old, robotic and human, as they fight to build a new world in the wake of a devastating war. Readers will bear witness as survivors find one another, form into groups, and react to a drastically different (and deadly) technological landscape.
\nAll the while, the remnants of Archos's shattered intelligence are seeping deeper into new breeds of machines, mounting a war that will not allow for humans to win again.
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Not far into our future, the dazzling technology that runs our world turns against us. Controlled by a childlike - yet massively powerful - artificial intelligence known as Archos, the global network of machines on which our world has grown dependent suddenly becomes an implacable, deadly foe.
\nAt Zero Hour - the moment the robots attack - the human race is almost annihilated, but as its scattered remnants regroup, humanity for the first time unites in a determined effort to fight back. This is the oral history of that conflict, told by an international cast of survivors who experienced this long and bloody confrontation with the machines.
\nBrilliantly conceived and amazingly detailed, Robopocalypse is an action-packed epic with chilling implications about the real technology that surrounds us.
Tuck is on his last legs, literally. He's the last functioning bot in the galaxy, a broken machine that used to look like a man. Long ago, bots were a luxury on Earth, back before they were hunted down and destroyed.
\nNow he wanders between planets, searching for spare parts that can keep him running for a few more years. But he's out of parts, and he's nearly out of time. He was originally programmed to value human life, even if they don't value his, but he can't ignore his own need to survive, at any cost. The truth is, Tuck is afraid to die. That's why he's haunted by memories of the sixteen people he has killed over the last 150 years.
\nAfter a particularly dangerous run-in with a collector, Tuck meets a mysterious man dressed in white who offers a solution. In exchange for some help in a less-than-legal business venture, he'll give Tuck what he really wants: immortality. Tuck knows it's a bad idea, but he can't ignore it.
\nEven if it means killing again.
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The seventh book in the bestselling 20 Minute Series sees the citizens of London descend on Battersea Park for the annual 5th November celebrations.
\nWith everybody in one place, and the mood in the park high, what could possibly go wrong?
Set over one 20 minute period in London, the sixth book in the 20 Minute Series captures all the thrills, frights and drama that Halloween promises each year.
\nTrick-or-treaters calling at every home. Costumes concealing identities. And a masked murderer roaming the streets . . .
\nOn a night when you can be anyone, who will you be?
It's a magical time of year. But not for everyone . . .
\nIt's Christmas Eve, and London is still reeling from the events on Bonfire Night. But time waits for nobody, so what fresh drama is in store as the presents are wrapped, the turkeys are cooked, and the clock counts down to the most wonderful day of the year?
\nMistletoe. Mince Pies. Mulled wine. And murder . . .
The bestselling 20 Minute Series continues as the characters prepare to take to the skies . . .
\nThere are a lot of reasons to board a plane and fly away. For leisure purposes. For a business trip. Or to run from the person chasing you . . .
\nAs several characters heed their boarding call and strap themselves in, they all have a different reason to be getting away.
\nSome passengers are innocent. Some are not. And some are taking to the skies because the fate of mankind might just depend on it . . .
The big day has arrived for several characters as the 20 Minute Series continues . . .
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe blushing bride. The dashing groom. And a whole lot of champagne. The nerves. The excitement. And all the unpredictable things that no amount of wedding planning can ever prepare for.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWill it be 'I do?' Or 'I don't?'
The 20 Minute Series continues as several characters get their day in court . . .
\nVerdicts have been reached, sentences have been handed out and several criminals have learnt their fate. They did the crime. Now they must do the time.
\nGuards. Prisoners. Visitors. And one very memorable 20 minutes behind bars.
\nIn a place where nobody wants to go, people will do anything to get out . . .
Set in one 20 Minute period in various locations on the banks of the Thames in London.
\nThere is a storm brewing overhead but that doesn't stop several of the capital's inhabitants from heading to the water's edge, filling the bars, restaurants and apartments that overlook the murky river, and putting some on a collision course with their destiny.
\nPicketers clash with policemen, criminals mingle freely with the innocent and the clock is ticking down on an explosive relationship that is about to be re-ignited.
\nThe river holds many secrets. But the people around it have plenty of their own . . .
The short prequel novella to 20 Minutes On The Tube, following the fates of 4 characters in London before they go underground.
\nFast paced, edgy and humorous this is a teaser novella and the gateway to the beginning of the 20 Minute Series.
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The 20 Minute Series continues as several characters get their day in court . . .
\nAfter the dramatic events of the wedding day, things get serious for various characters as they either look to defend themselves or help put somebody else behind bars.
\nThe prosecution. The defence. The judge. The jury. And the accused.
\nOn a busy day for the justice system, only one thing matters:
\nInnocent. Or guilty?
In a city of bright lights, big bankrolls and scorching heat, several characters will return in a place where dreams are made or crushed on the spin of a wheel or the turn of a card.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tFor some, it will be their lucky night, but for others, their fortunes are going to fade faster than the sunlight sinking behind the desert mountains . . .
With several flights having departed and numerous characters in the sky hoping for a smooth ride to their destination, the seatbelt signs are off, and the passengers are free to move around the cabin. But pleasant flights can be interrupted with words like:
\nTurbulence. Engine Trouble. Mayday.
But if things seem dangerous and deadly on Earth, it's only worse out in space as the race begins to meet the hazard that threatens everything.
What goes up, must come down . . .
The 20 Minute Series continues at dawn in the desert . . .
\nSet just nine hours after the events in Las Vegas, the fates of several characters will be revealed as the sun comes up over the Mojave.
\nThere is plenty to do in Sin City. And there are a lot of places to hide a body in the desert . . .
On a sunny Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park, there's more than just the sounds of nature in the air.
\nThere's the threat from the mysterious murderer roaming the footpaths. There's the music from the festival where a recently released criminal is about to unleash havoc. And there's the chance at revenge for a heroic couple who never thought they would get it . . .
On a warm summers morning in London, there's a lot more than just smog in the air. There's the romance of a first date. There's the courage of the emergency services. And there's the danger from those with dark secrets to hide . . .
\n20 Minutes. 20 People. 20 intertwining stories as unpredictable and gripping as the last!
Love is in the air as the bestselling 20 Minute Series continues on the most romantic day of the year!
\nSet over one 20 minute period on Valentine's Day, the ninth book in the series sees familiar characters return for a night of romance, passion and second chances.
\nFirst dates. Old flames. Heartbreak. And one very dangerous villain . . .
Set in one 20 minute period in different locations all around the world, the fourth book in the bestselling 20 Minute Series is taking the story global. Several characters return, alongside many new ones, as the story packs its bags and leaves London, destined for the uncertainty of a foreign land.
\nRevenge is on the menu in Romania. Separation is on the cards in Santorini. And murder is on the mind in Moscow . . .
The 20 Minute Series continues as it hits the road at rush hour . . .
\nIt's a busy Friday night on one of the UK's many motorways and several characters are back and determined to get to their destination on time.
\nFast lanes. Traffic jams. Road rage.
\nSo many vehicles and so many drivers. Where is everybody going? And will they all make it there safely?
Every year there are over a billion journeys made on the London Underground. But who are these people, where are they going and what have they done in their past?
\nPeople like Jelena, who is just trying to escape a life of hell. Or Anke, who is just trying to escape her marriage. Or Craig, who is just trying to escape life.
\nPeople like Louise who didn’t always plan on stealing, until she realised she could get away with. Or Valentin who didn’t always plan on murder, until he got bored and found himself a victim. Or Carol, who had spent her life doing nothing but make plans, until discovering they might all be taken away from her too soon.
\nSecrets. Lies. Terror. Death. Its just another morning on the tube.
Set over one 20 minute period on a busy afternoon, the tenth book in the series sees familiar characters return for a day that highlights just how quickly things can change.
\nSuccess. Failure. Wrong decisions. Chance encounters. And plain bad luck.
\nIt only takes a second for life to change. So imagine what can happen in 20 minutes...
The bestselling 20 Minute Series continues on the biggest night of the year . . .
It's New Year's Eve in London and that only means one thing. Fireworks, and lots of them.
As the citizens of England's capital gather on the banks of the Thames, there is an enemy lurking amongst them. It's an enemy who has struck before and now they are ready to strike again.
Happy New Year? Or the start of something bad?
The threat to Earth has never been more real, and as the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, there is nowhere on the planet that is safe.
\nLondon, like every other major city, has fallen into a state of disorder, and its inhabitants are having to spend almost as much time worrying about the dangers on the ground as they are about the dangers in the sky.
\nAs the clock ticks down until the moment of reckoning, it’s every man or woman for themselves, and several characters decide to take shelter in the only place they can.
\nThey head underground . . .
\nThey go back to where it all began . . .
Single mum Anni would do anything for her little boy, Tobi, he is the center of her world. So she is utterly devastated when Tobi is run over and killed by drunk driver, Carl.
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Anni hates Carl for what he’s done and takes some comfort from the lengthy prison sentence he is serving. But she can’t live on hate and after a time spent grieving for her son, Anni returns to work and tries to move on with her life. She is lonely without Tobi and glad to make a new friend, Jo.
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But Jo has a secret. She is connected to the fatal accident in a way that Anni never suspects. And Jo is determined that Anni will never discover the awful truth about what really happened that day.
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As the two women grow closer, Anni begins to feel that her new friend is keeping something from her.
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A terrible suspicion begins to dawn and Anni starts to dig deeper into Jo’s past. Will she discover the horrifying truth? Or will she find out just how far some people go to cover up their mistakes . . .
Staring down at the sweet baby in my arms, I feel panic instead of love. Because this isn’t the child I gave birth to. My husband whispers to the midwife. They all think I’m going crazy. But the tiny boy in my arms is crying again. He knows I’m not his mummy. And I’ll do whatever it takes to get my son back.
\nI did it. I swapped my baby with another newborn in the hospital. As I hold the child in my arms, I hear my own little boy start to cry on the other side of the curtain. My heart is shattering into a million pieces.
\nI know I had no choice. I didn’t want to do this. But no one can ever find out the reason why I swapped my baby. Because if anyone knew the truth, my life and my child’s life would be in danger . . .
Karen is a busy wife and mother. Between work, her husband Peter, and their two children, Oscar and Noah, she doesn’t have a minute to herself.
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So when it all begins to feel too much, Karen knows just what she needs - to get away for a little while. Nothing big. Just a short break.
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Her friend, Eve, tells her about a quaint little holiday home, and Karen books herself a short stay. She’ll have time to read, take bubble baths, unwind. Perfect.
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But this is no ordinary holiday home – it contains a dark and disturbing secret. Because Karen isn’t alone here – someone is watching her. Waiting for the right moment to spring the trap and plunge her into a nightmare she’ll never forget.
Moving to this gorgeous house was meant to be a new start for our family. My hand rests on my growing baby bump as I walk through our home, the smell of fresh paint in the air, but my heart no longer feels full of hope for the future.
\nMy husband Christian wraps his strong arms around me and tells me to forget the note; he wants this to be the perfect home for us. But as I look into his blue-grey eyes, I wonder if there’s something he’s keeping from me or if I’m just being paranoid.
\nWas there a couple who lived here before? And what happened to them?
\nI try to forget my worries like Christian asked, but then I see something in our next-door neighbour’s garden that I can’t ignore. I know I need to find out the truth if I’m ever going to feel safe again.
\nExcept when I overhear Christian revealing a secret on the phone, I start to do I even know the man I married?
\nAs I get closer to the truth of what happened to the couple before us, I realise one I should have run when I had the chance . . .
I knew something was wrong. It’s a mother’s instinct.
\nI could tell when my son started hiding things from me. He used to walk to school with a mischievous grin on his beautiful face. Now he avoids eye contact and keeps his head down.
\nSince I discovered he’s being bullied by a classmate, I’ve spent every day worrying, my stomach churning with anxiety from the moment he leaves the house to the second he walks back through the door.
\nEveryone keeps telling me I’m overreacting, but I won’t risk my child’s safety. My husband and I try to talk to the other boy’s parents, but it only makes things worse…
\nThen our precious child is hurt. Enough is enough. It has to stop. Even if that means taking matters into our own hands.
\nBecause we know the truth about the family targeting our son - it’s not the first time they’ve done this.
\nSo the question is, exactly how far will we go to get revenge?
The doctor is dead. Now his daughter wants revenge . . .
\n‘I’ll always protect you.’ These are the words my mother whispered to me every time she kissed me goodnight. And whenever we ventured outside our windswept seaside village, she’d clutch my hand tightly and her face would be pinched and pale. I never understood why. But now I do.
\nGrowing up, I’d heard the whispers and the rumours. My mother tried to keep the truth from me, but she failed. I understand exactly what happened eighteen years ago. I know I am the murdered doctor’s child.
\nEverything could have been so different if the doctor’s wife hadn’t ruined my mother’s life – and mine too. We could’ve been a proper family, living in a big house with a stunning sea view. Instead, I never got to know my dad and my mother is a shadow of the person she once was, always looking over her shoulder . . .
\nGlancing at my fair hair and bright blue eyes in the mirror, I realise I’m just like my father. And it’s up to me to right the wrongs of the past.
\nThey say the doctor’s wife is clever and calculating. That she gets away with murder. But she hasn’t met me yet . . .
The wife. The mistress. Who will get their revenge?
\nI was the other woman. The mistress. Everyone blamed Doctor Drew Devlin’s death on me. And I’ve paid the price for loving the wrong man.
\nNow, I have dark circles under my eyes because I can’t sleep at night. I lost everything - friends, family, my home and even my freedom. Drew’s devious wife Fern tore my whole world apart. And she thinks she’s got away with murder.
\nBut she’s wrong. It’s time for revenge. For myself . . . and for my baby.
\nHer new life on the windswept Cornish coast is about to come crashing down around her. I’m determined for everyone to find out the true story. Because now it’s not just my life in danger, I’ve got to protect the doctor’s daughter too.
\nI know Fern will expect me to come after her - I’m certain she will have her own plan in place to stop me. After all, she’s duped so many people before.
\nBut then again, Fern always did underestimate me. And by the time she realises, it’ll be far too late for the doctor’s wife . . .
I loved my husband, Doctor Drew Devlin , but he betrayed me. And now he’s dead.
\nAs I put the key in the lock and open the door to the luxurious new home I’ve purchased with Drew’s life insurance money, I’m certain the worst days are behind me. My secret is safe, and I can’t wait to enjoy my new wealth and freedom.
\nThen I meet handsome Roger . I wasn’t looking for a relationship but as we spend our evenings drinking wine on my sunny terrace, I realise he’s just what I need right now. Roger is nothing like Drew, he’s spontaneous and romantic. And most of all, he’s honest.
\nHe thinks I’m a rich, lonely woman . He’s wrong of course, there’s so much more to me . . .
\nBut then one night, when we’re curled up in bed together, Roger says something that makes my blood run cold. I think he knows the truth about my life as the doctor’s wife.
\nI will do anything to stop my past from catching up with me . . . But is Roger really who he says he is? Or is my life now in danger?
My husband is a doctor. He’s smart and charming and everybody trusts him. Except me.
\nOn the surface, it looks like I have it all - the perfect marriage, the perfect husband, the perfect life. But it’s far from the truth.
\nDoctor Drew Devlin is not the respectable figure he makes out to be. The reason we moved to this beautiful, old property with a gorgeous view of the sea was because we needed to put our past behind us. It should’ve been a fresh start for us both.
\nExcept I’ve discovered my husband has been lying to me again. He’s using the power he has in his job to mess with people’s lives, and to get exactly what he wants - no matter who it hurts.
\nBut he’s underestimated me. I’ve had plenty of time, in this big, isolated house, to think about all of his mistakes.
\nAnd my husband has no idea what’s about to happen next . . .
All the family are gathered to meet my sister’s new boyfriend, including my husband Seth, and it should be a happy occasion. But the moment I see him my stomach drops. It’s Mateo. My worst mistake. My biggest secret. I hoped I’d never see him again - why is he here now?
\n‘It’s nice to meet you,’ he says. As I look into Mateo’s cold green eyes, I know he’s playing a deadly game. My hands tremble. This man can’t be trusted. He’s pretending not to know me . . . and he knows I have to pretend, too.
\nI’m caught in a lie with no way out. Mateo is dangerous. I don’t want my sister to get hurt. But if I admit who Mateo really is - what really happened between us - I could lose everything. My gorgeous husband. My precious little boy.
\nOr even my life . . .
Everyone believes my husband Donovan and I have it all - a loving marriage, two adorable children and the dream house. But beneath the surface of our enviable American lifestyle lies a secret that binds us tighter than our vows. I thought we could keep the truth buried forever, but I was wrong. To protect the secrets of my past, we have to go to Ireland to find the woman who has the power to shatter my perfect family. And I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to stop her . . .
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tExcept my plan for revenge has gone horribly wrong. And now my eight-year-old son Barnaby is missing. My body trembles as I scan the sunny spot where I last saw him. But there’s no sign of Barnaby’s blue t-shirt and sandy blonde hair.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWho has taken my son? I thought I was in control but now I fear this whole vacation was a trap . . . Can I save my family, or will our lives be destroyed forever?
This should be the trip of a lifetime - a week in New York with my family. As we stroll along the Hudson River, drinking coffee in the sunshine, anyone would think we’re the perfect family. But the truth is far more complicated.
\nI’ve been on edge the whole time because fifteen years ago when we were living in this city my husband Jack did something that ripped our lives apart. I swore I would never come back here, but Jack insisted.
\nOne afternoon, in the blur of a crowd, I lose sight of my son. I can’t find him anywhere. Frantic, I call my husband. But what he tells me next shakes me to the core . . .
\nMy daughter’s gone missing too.
\nI end the conversation, my whole body shaking with fear. As I’m desperately searching for my children, the phone rings - it’s an anonymous number.
\nThe hard voice at the other end gives me an kill my husband or my children will die.
\nThe clock is ticking. Can I save my family in time?
The perfect holiday or the perfect nightmare . . .
\nI sit sipping champagne in the warm water, bubbles frothing around me as I admire the breath-taking view of gorgeous blue skies and mountains. I can’t believe I’m here, at this stunning holiday home. It’s to die for . . .
\nMy best friend and her husband have invited me and my family to their lakeside property for the weekend, to experience their luxury lifestyle. I’m not envious of their wealth, although I know my husband Ryan is. All I want is to escape from our recent troubles and get my marriage back on track.
\nThen I overhear Ryan having a whispered conversation late one evening, and he says something that sends a shiver down my spine. In this beautiful paradise my whole world is turned upside down.
\nJust when I think things can’t get any worse, I discover a second secret. The truth is even more shocking than I imagine, and now I have no idea who to trust.
\nThis was meant to be the perfect holiday, but someone isn’t going to survive it . . .
I’ve been married to my kind, loving husband Lachlan for over twenty years. He’s my everything. We have two teenage children, a beautiful home and I feel so lucky to live this perfect life. Until my best friend says something that makes me doubt everything . . .
\nShe whispers it’s strange Lachlan has lived nearby to two unsolved murder cases. First, the murder of the woman in the small, Scottish village where he grew up and more recently the shocking death of a woman who lived round the corner from us. The thought makes my head spin. It’s just a coincidence, surely?
\nBut at home, I can’t help but notice that Lachlan’s becoming angry, not at all like his usual self. It makes me wonder if he’s hiding something from me. It makes me wonder if he could be guilty. I push the thought away, but no matter what, I can’t get rid of this niggle of doubt.
\nThe only way to find out is to go to Scotland and get my husband to face his past. But when secrets start to unravel in the remote Scottish Highlands, I realize the truth is more complicated than I thought, and more than one person could be a killer.
\nNow my children and I are in terrible danger. And coming here might be the last mistake I ever make.
When Ellie tells me she has a new boyfriend, I am absolutely thrilled and can’t wait to meet him. She finally seems so happy and in love.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBut there’s a catch. Ellie has never met him in person. In fact, he doesn’t even live in the same country. Our home is in England, but Daryl is in Los Angeles.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWhen handsome Daryl invites Ellie to stay with him at his luxury Los Angeles mansion for a few weeks, I insist on joining her. I need to find out more about the man who has my daughter so enamoured.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tDaryl welcomes us into his whitewashed house, complete with a stunning swimming pool and sun-drenched patio. Then one morning, I discover a terrible secret in his basement that changes everything. He has been lying to us from the start.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tI go to confront him, but Ellie and Daryl are nowhere to be found. I call Ellie’s phone but there’s no answer.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tHas something happened to my precious girl? And will I be able to save her?
My daughter is getting married to the man of her dreams. But will she pay for it with her life?
\nMy beautiful daughter Ellie walks down the aisle in her full-length lace dress, beaming with happiness. As she exchanges her vows with Kyle , who looks devastatingly handsome in his smart black suit, I hope this time will be different . . .
\nAs confetti settles on the shoulders of the happy couple, I reassure myself that Kyle Beaumont is a charming, successful businessman. He’s so different to her ex-boyfriend - the man who tried to hurt my Ellie.
\nExcept, only days after the ceremony, I discover a letter that makes my heart flip when I realise what my son-in-law is hiding. Ellie’s past is about to catch up with her, and I am certain my daughter is in danger.
\nBut I’m her mother, and I’ll stop at nothing to protect her . . .
When Carrie and Andy attend a high-class New Year's Eve Party, they're looking forward to closing out the year in style. But then they meet Martin and Michaela, a couple who haven't just come out for champagne and fireworks. They have a New Year's resolution, and it's very unusual.
\nAfter sharing their own resolutions, Carrie and Andy receive a shocking but tempting offer, one that leaves them unsure of how to proceed. But whatever they decide to do, one thing is certain - this will be a New Year's Eve they will never forget.
Only a few months ago, my life was simple. I spent most of my time caring for patients in brightly lit hospital wards. Then I’d pick up my son from kindergarten before cooking a meal for my husband. I’d drink in every precious moment with them. Now everything has changed . . .
\nI don’t recognise the woman I’ve become. I’m a liar. Nurses are supposed to save lives. Instead, I helped to take one.
\nI did it to protect my family. No one can find out what I’ve done because I’d lose everything: my marriage, my gorgeous baby boy - even my life.
\nThen one day I step through the front door to find a woman with long, blonde hair and perfect white teeth in my family home. My heart pounds in my chest. We used to work at the same hospital. She’s the only one who knows my biggest secret and my darkest lie.
\nIt’s clear she’s back for revenge. But she’s underestimated me. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my loved ones safe.
\nIt’s time to finish what I started.
\nIt’s my life or hers . . .
My first mistake was falling in love with the handsome, married doctor. My second mistake was killing him . . .
I never meant to hurt anyone. I’m a nurse, it’s my job to help people. But sometimes in life things happen that you don’t expect, and you’re pushed to extremes.
I can’t let anyone find out what I’ve done . . . or why I did it. If the secrets of my past come out then it’s not just my life at risk, it’s my family’s too - darling little Campbell, just five years old and completely innocent. I have to protect him.
I can see blue lights. Uniforms. Police. I pray they’re not here for me.
Because killing the doctor isn’t the only thing I’ve done. My third mistake was something much, much worse . . .
If you saw me walking down the street, you’d think I was pretty ordinary - I wear the typical crisp, white nursing uniform, my hands are scrubbed clean and you’d have no reason to believe I was anything other than a good citizen. A good nurse. But looks can be deceiving. You shouldn’t trust me - because I don’t even know if I can trust myself.
\nNow I stare at the reflection in the mirror - dark smudges under my eyes and blood on my hands - listening for the sound of police sirens. Because the truth is I had to do something terrible. I broke all the rules a nurse should follow. I wanted someone gone so badly. And now they’re dead because of me.
\nI’m looking over my shoulder everywhere I go because I’m sure someone knows my secret. Then when my home is broken into I know one simple truth: this isn’t over yet . . .
\nIt’s only the beginning.
\nThe police are the least of my worries now. But to save myself, am I going to have to kill again?
Megan thinks that she has the perfect husband and the perfect life. Craig works so that she doesn't have to, leaving her free to relax all day in their beautiful and secluded country home.
But when she starts to long for friends and purpose again, Megan applies for a job in London, much to her husband's disappointment. She thinks that he is upset because she is unhappy. But she has no idea.
After Megan goes against his wishes and attends the interview, Craig decides that it is time to act. Locking her away in their home, Megan realises that her husband never had her best interests at heart, nor did they meet by accident.
Craig has been planning this from the start.
As Megan is kept shut away from the world with only somebody else's diary for company, she starts to uncover the lies, the secrets and the fact that she isn't actually Craig's first wife after all . . .
When Sophie and Stuart take their children, Josh and Tilly, for a family day out, they have no idea that things will never be the same again. But after each of them witnesses a crime in the woods, their lives are turned upside down.
\nWith the police seeking answers while the criminals hope to silence the witnesses before they can say any more, the four family members have different ways of handling things. They also have secrets, both relating to the crime they witnessed and from their lives before the incident occurred.
\nAs things spiral out of control, the family think they have two options; either stick together or lose everything. But it might already be too late for them to even have that choice anymore . . .
Rebecca and Sam are happily married and enjoying a typical Saturday night until a knock at the door changes everything. There is a woman outside, and she has something to say. Something that will change the happy couple's relationship forever...
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With their marriage thrown into turmoil, Rebecca no longer knows who to trust, while Sam is determined to find out who that woman was and why she came to their house.
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Desperate to save his marriage, Sam is willing to do anything to get the truth, even if it means breaking the law. But as time goes by and things only seem to get worse, it looks like he could lose Rebecca forever.
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Who is the woman at the door?
In April of 1846, twenty-one-year-old Sarah Graves, intent on a better future, set out west from Illinois with her new husband, her parents, and eight siblings. Seven months later, after joining a party of emigrants led by George Donner, they reached the Sierra Nevada Mountains as the first heavy snows of the season closed the pass ahead of them. In early December, starving and desperate, Sarah and fourteen others set out for California on snowshoes and, over the next thirty-two days, endured almost unfathomable hardships and horrors.
\nIn this gripping narrative, Daniel James Brown sheds new light on one of the most infamous events in American history. Following every painful footstep of Sarah's journey with the Donner Party, Brown produces a tale both spellbinding and richly informative.
Sixtysomething, twice-divorced Barbara is at a crossroads. In the midst of her emotional uncertainty, she looks back on the dissolution of the nine best friendships of her life, in hopes of figuring out how to optimise finding her tenth, and hopefully last, best friend. Barbara is acerbic, opinionated, and wrong about many things, but she also doesn't shy away when she's at fault.
\nThe turning point of her predicament comes from Barbara’s choice, in friends, between (too-young) Caitlyn and the (unsuitable) Other Barbara. Will she repeat the exciting mistakes of the past, or will she try a new kind of mistake for a change? She feels like an out-of-season Scrooge who is unexpectedly, and all at once, surprised and entirely transformed by the possibility of joy.
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Laxerion is adept at finding lies, a skill that grants him a unique advantage as he blends into high society, leading heists to steal from the rich. Although Lax is used to being a target, he doesn’t anticipate reconnecting with his estranged father and inheriting a failing family business drowning in debt. If he doesn’t find a way to pay back the crime lord they owe a fortune to, he may be the next to lose his life.
\nMeanwhile, war is brewing on the horizon, a war that even a city blessed by the gods may be unable to avoid. As five fates intertwine, the currents of destiny inundate the city, leviathans stir amid the roots of a primordial ocean, and monstrosities inhabit human skins.
\nDesperate, Lax conspires to lead the greatest heist of all - journeying underground to find a forbidden treasure. But eldritch beasts buried in the darkness are awakening once again, and long-lost secrets emerge from the depths of a subterranean abyss. Will they survive?
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September, 1940. Three women of the Checquy, the secret organisation tasked with protecting Britain from supernatural threats, stand in the sky above London and watch German aircraft approach. Forbidden by law to interfere, all they can do is watch as their city is bombed.
\nUntil Pamela, the most sensible of them, suddenly breaks all the rules and brings down a Nazi bomber with her bare hands. The three resolve to tell no one about it, but they soon learn that a crew member is missing from the downed bomber. Charred corpses are discovered in nearby houses and it becomes apparent that the women have unwittingly unleashed a monster.
\nThrough a city torn by the Blitz, the friends must hunt the enemy before he kills again. Their task will take them from the tunnels of the Underground to the halls of power, where they will discover the secrets that a secret organisation must keep even from itself.
\nToday. Lynette Binns, a librarian with a husband and child, is a late recruit to the Checquy, having discovered only as an adult her ability to electrify everyday objects with her touch.
\nAfter completing her training, she is assigned to examine a string of brutal murders of London criminals and quickly realises that all bear the unmistakable hallmark of her own unique power. Unable to provide an alibi and determined to prove her innocence, she flees, leaving behind her family to venture into the London underworld to find answers. But now she is prey, being tracked by her own frighteningly capable comrades.
\nAs Lyn fights off powered thugs and her own vengeful colleagues, she will find that the solution to the murders and to the mystery of her own past lies in the events of World War II, and the covert actions of three young women during the Blitz.
Alexandra “Alixd” Dennis-Palmer-Hudson-Gilmore-Garnsey, the twelfth Lady Mondegreen, has never had any control of her life. Her supernatural ability to shatter bones with a touch made her the automatic property of the Checquy, the secret British government agency that deals with the supernatural. Her aristocratic ancestry made Alix the perfect asset for the Checquy to deploy close to the royal family. Since childhood, Alix has been coached to befriend Princess Louise, second in line to the throne, but despite all machinations, the two have never been close. Now an adult and a full Pawn of the Checquy, Alix is a skilled investigator unravelling supernatural manifestations for the security of the nation.
\nEverything changes when Louise's brother, the Prince of Wales, dies abruptly, and all signs point to an unnatural assassination. To protect Louise, the new and unwilling heir apparent, Alix is assigned to be her lady-in-waiting. Thrust into the limelight overnight - both in the everyday world and in the underground world of the Checquy - Alix must juggle her responsibilities and her loyalties as she attempts to unravel the murder, keep Louise safe, and learn how to smile graciously while eerie threats loom around every corner.
In this spirited sequel, The Rook returns to clinch an alliance between deadly rivals and avert epic - and slimy - supernatural war.
When secret organisations are forced to merge after years of enmity and bloodshed, only one person has the fearsome powers - and the bureaucratic finesse- to get the job done. Facing her greatest challenge yet, Rook Myfanwy Thomas must broker a deal between two bitter adversaries:
The Checquy - the centuries-old covert British organisation that protects society from supernatural
threats, and . . . The Grafters - a centuries-old supernatural threat.
But as bizarre attacks sweep London, threatening to sabotage negotiations, old hatreds flare. Surrounded by spies, only the Rook and two women, who absolutely hate each other, can seek out the culprits before they trigger a devastating otherworldly war.
\"The body you are wearing used to be mine.\" So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her.
She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of a secret organisation called the Chequy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own.
In her quest to uncover which member of the Chequy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children are transformed into deadly fighters, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined.
September, 1940. Three women of the Checquy, the secret organisation tasked with protecting Britain from supernatural threats, stand in the sky above London and watch German aircraft approach. Forbidden by law to interfere, all they can do is watch as their city is bombed.
\nUntil Pamela, the most sensible of them, suddenly breaks all the rules and brings down a Nazi bomber with her bare hands. The three resolve to tell no one about it, but they soon learn that a crew member is missing from the downed bomber. Charred corpses are discovered in nearby houses and it becomes apparent that the women have unwittingly unleashed a monster.
\nThrough a city torn by the Blitz, the friends must hunt the enemy before he kills again. Their task will take them from the tunnels of the Underground to the halls of power, where they will discover the secrets that a secret organisation must keep even from itself.
\nToday. Lynette Binns, a librarian with a husband and child, is a late recruit to the Checquy, having discovered only as an adult her ability to electrify everyday objects with her touch.
\nAfter completing her training, she is assigned to examine a string of brutal murders of London criminals and quickly realises that all bear the unmistakable hallmark of her own unique power. Unable to provide an alibi and determined to prove her innocence, she flees, leaving behind her family to venture into the London underworld to find answers. But now she is prey, being tracked by her own frighteningly capable comrades.
\nAs Lyn fights off powered thugs and her own vengeful colleagues, she will find that the solution to the murders and to the mystery of her own past lies in the events of World War II, and the covert actions of three young women during the Blitz.
\n
\"The body you are wearing used to be mine.\"
\nSo begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her.
She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of a secret organisation called the Chequy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own.
In her quest to uncover which member of the Chequy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children are transformed into deadly fighters, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined.
In this spirited sequel, The Rook returns to clinch an alliance between deadly rivals and avert epic - and slimy - supernatural war.
When secret organisations are forced to merge after years of enmity and bloodshed, only one person has the fearsome powers - and the bureaucratic finesse- to get the job done. Facing her greatest challenge yet, Rook Myfanwy Thomas must broker a deal between two bitter adversaries:
The Checquy - the centuries-old covert British organisation that protects society from supernatural
threats, and . . . The Grafters - a centuries-old supernatural threat.
But as bizarre attacks sweep London, threatening to sabotage negotiations, old hatreds flare. Surrounded by spies, only the Rook and two women, who absolutely hate each other, can seek out the culprits before they trigger a devastating otherworldly war.
It’s the summer of 2017 and D, a poet working by day as a copywriter at a retail start-up, can’t dispel a creeping sense of dissolution on the horizon. Whether it be the company’s new twenty-four-year-old CEO, who has more charisma than work experience, the growing distance between D and his longtime girlfriend, or a mounting sense of unreality in the wake of the first delirious year of the Trump administration, there’s a sense that things are speeding towards collapse - and that they’ve perhaps been unraveling for some time.
\nBorne along on these ambivalent straits, D begins to keep a notebook, filling it with dreams, scenes from his own life, emails, and broadly-defined moments, both real and fictional, that he calls parables - attempts to learn from the underlying schedule of the universe, some music of the spheres that, if heard correctly, might help him finally understand his life, his art, and labor. Unfurling over the course of two years, season by season, The Copywriter circles a series of perennial questions, capturing in the process the unique absurdism of the gone-but-not-forgotten era of office culture between the Great Recession and the COVID-19.
\nHow should an artist balance a job and life when art doesn’t fit into either category? How does one find meaning in work that is stubbornly, uncannily, comically meaningless? Does one need to find meaning in one’s labor at all? What concessions do we make for the sake of a paycheck? What does all of this do to our art, and our souls?
\n
Master novelist Daniel Silva has thrilled readers with eighteen thoughtful and gripping spy novels featuring a diverse cast of compelling characters and ingenious plots that have taken them around the globe and back - from the United States to Europe, Russia to the Middle East.
\nHis brilliant hero, Gabriel Allon - art restorer, assassin, spy - has joined the pantheon of great fictional secret agents, including George Smiley, Jack Ryan, Jason Bourne and Simon Templar.
\n\n
Viktor Orlov had a longstanding appointment with death. Once Russia’s richest man, he now resides in splendid exile in London, where he has waged a tireless crusade against the authoritarian kleptocrats who have seized control of the Kremlin.
\nHis mansion in Chelsea’s exclusive Cheyne Walk is one of the most heavily protected private dwellings in London. Yet somehow, on a rainy summer evening, in the midst of a global pandemic, Russia’s vengeful president finally manages to cross Orlov’s name off his kill list.
\nBefore him was the receiver from his landline telephone, a half-drunk glass of red wine, and a stack of documents . . .
\nThe documents are contaminated with a deadly nerve agent. The Metropolitan Police determine that they were delivered to Orlov’s home by one of his employees, a prominent investigative reporter from the anti-Kremlin Moskovskaya Gazeta. And when the reporter slips from London hours after the killing, MI6 concludes she is a Moscow Center assassin who has cunningly penetrated Orlov’s formidable defenses.
\nBut Gabriel Allon, who owes his very life to Viktor Orlov, believes his friends in British intelligence are dangerously mistaken. His desperate search for the truth will take him from London to Amsterdam and eventually to Geneva, where a private intelligence service controlled by a childhood friend of the Russian president is using KGB-style “active measures” to undermine the West from within.
\nKnown as the Haydn Group, the unit is plotting an unspeakable act of violence that will plunge an already divided America into chaos and leave Russia unchallenged. Only Gabriel Allon, with the help of a brilliant young woman employed by the world’s dirtiest bank, can stop it.
After the Carabinieri make a startling discovery in the Amalfi villa of a murdered South African shipping tycoon - a secret vault containing an empty frame and stretcher matching the dimensions of the world's most valuable missing painting - General Ferrari asks Gabriel Allon to quietly track down the artwork before the trail goes cold.
\nThe painting in question is The Concert by Johannes Vermeer, one of thirteen works of art stolen from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. With the help of a most unlikely ally, a beautiful Danish computer hacker and professional thief, Gabriel soon discovers that the painting has changed hands as part of an illicit billion-dollar business deal involving a man code-named the Collector, an energy executive with close ties to the highest levels of Russian power.
\nThe missing masterpiece is the lynchpin of a conspiracy that if successful, could plunge the world into a conflict of apocalyptic proportions. To foil the plot, Gabriel must carry out a daring heist of his own, with millions of lives hanging in the balance.
In Munich, a Jewish scholar is assassinated. In Venice, Mossad agent and art restorer Gabriel Allon receives the news, puts down his brushes, and leaves immediately. And at the Vatican, the new pope vows to uncover the truth about the church’s response to the Holocaust - while a powerful cardinal plots his next move.
\nNow, as Allon follows a trail of secrets and unthinkable deeds, the lives of millions are changed forever - and the life of one man becomes expendable . . .
Art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon has slipped quietly into London to attend a reception at the Courtauld Gallery celebrating the return of a stolen self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh. But when an old friend from the Devon and Cornwall Police seeks his help with a baffling murder investigation, he finds himself pursuing a powerful and dangerous new adversary.
\nThe victim is Charlotte Blake, a celebrated professor of art history from Oxford who spends her weekends in the same seaside village where Gabriel once lived under an assumed identity. Her murder appears to be the work of a diabolical serial killer who has been terrorizing the Cornish countryside. But there are a number of telltale inconsistencies, including a missing mobile phone. And then there is the mysterious three-letter cypher she left behind on a notepad in her study.
\nGabriel soon discovers that Professor Blake was searching for a looted Picasso worth more than a $100 million, and he takes up the chase for the painting as only he can - with six Impressionist canvases forged by his own hand and an unlikely team of operatives that includes a world-famous violinist, a beautiful master thief, and a lethal contract killer turned British spy.
\nThe result is a stylish and wildly entertaining mystery that moves at lightning speed from the cliffs of Cornwall to the enchanted island of Corsica and, finally, to a breathtaking climax on the very doorstep of 10 Downing Street.
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The sins of the past reverberate into the present, in an extraordinary novel by the new master of international suspense.
It was an ordinary-looking photograph. Just the portrait of a man. But the very sight of it chilled Allon to the bone.
Art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon is sent to Vienna to authenticate a painting, but the real object of his search becomes something else entirely: to find out the truth about the photograph that has turned his world upside down. It is the face of the unnamed man who brutalised his mother in the last days of World War II, during the Death March from Auschwitz. But is it really the same one? If so, who is he? How did he escape punishment? Where is he now?
Fueled by an intensity he has not felt in years, Allon cautiously begins to investigate; but with each layer that is stripped away, the greater the evil that is revealed, a web stretching across sixty years and thousands of lives. Soon, the quest for one monster becomes the quest for many. And the monsters are stirring . . .
Rich with sharply etched characters and prose, and a plot of astonishing intricacy, this is an uncommonly intelligent thriller by one of our very best writers.
Grigori Bulganov once saved Gabriel Allon's life in Moscow - and Allon always repays his debts. So when the former Russian intelligence officer vanishes, Allon gathers his team of operatives to go after those responsible.
\nBut, in a running battle that rages across the globe, Allon soon realises that his enemy may already hold the key to victory. And that if he continues, it will cost him more than he can bear . . .
An Israeli spy by trade and art restorer by preference, Gabriel Allon arrives in Zurich to restore the work of an Old Master for a millionaire banker - and finds himself standing in blood and framed for the man’s murder.
\nWhile trying to clear his name, Allon is swept into a spiraling chain of events involving Nazi art theft, a decades-old suicide, and a dark and bloody trail of killings - some of them his own. The spy world Allon thought he had left behind has come back to haunt him. And he will have to fight for his life - against an assassin he himself helped train.
Seven days. One girl. No second chances. Madeline Hart is a rising star in British government: beautiful, intelligent, driven to succeed by an impoverished childhood. But she also has a dark secret. She is the lover of the prime minister, Jonathan Lancaster.
\nWhen she disappears on the island of Corsica, it’s clear her kidnappers know about the affair and intend to make the PM pay dearly for his sins. Fearful of scandal that will destroy his career, Lancaster decides to handle the matter privately and not involve the police.
\nEnter Gabriel Allon - assassin, art restorer and spy - who must find Madeline within seven days before she is executed. With the clock ticking, Allon is thrust into a deadly game of shadows in which nothing is what it seems - and where the only thing more dangerous than his enemies is the truth.
\nGabriel’s mission takes him from the criminal underworld of Marseilles, to the stately corridors of power in London - and, finally, to a pulse-pounding climax in Moscow, a city of secrets and violence where there is a long list of men who want Gabriel dead . . .
She is an iconic member of the British Royal Family, beloved for her beauty and charitable works, resented by her former husband and his mother, the Queen of England. When a bomb explodes aboard her holiday yacht, British intelligence turns to one man to track down herkiller: legendary spy and assassin Gabriel Allon.
Gabriel’s target is Eamon Quinn, a master bomb maker and mercenary of death who sells his services to the highest bidder. Fortunately Gabriel does not pursue him alone; at his side is Christopher Keller, a British commando turned professional assassin who knows Quinn’s murderous handiwork all too well.
And though Gabriel does not realise it, he is stalking an old enemy - a cabal of evil that wants nothing more than to see him dead. Gabriel will find it necessary to oblige them, for when a man is out for vengeance, death has its distinct advantages . . .
After narrowly surviving his last operation, Gabriel Allon, the wayward son of Israeli intelligence, has taken refuge behind the walls of the Vatican, where he is restoring one of Caravaggio's greatest masterpieces.
\nBut early one morning he is summoned to St. Peter's Basilica by Monsignor Luigi Donati, the all-powerful private secretary to His Holiness Pope Paul VII. The body of a beautiful woman lies broken beneath Michelangelo's magnificent dome. The Vatican police suspect suicide, though Gabriel believes otherwise.
\nSo, it seems, does Donati. But the monsignor is fearful that a public inquiry might inflict yet another scandal on the Church, and so he calls upon Gabriel to quietly pursue the truth - with one caveat.
\n\"Rule number one at the Vatican,\" Donati said. \"Don't ask too many questions.\"
\nGabriel learns that the dead woman had uncovered a dangerous secret - a secret that threatens a global criminal enterprise that is looting timeless treasures of antiquity and selling them to the highest bidder. But there is more to this network than just greed. A mysterious operative is plotting an act of sabotage that will plunge the world into a conflict of apocalyptic proportions . . .
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Four months after the deadliest attack on the American homeland since 9/11, terrorists leave a trail of carnage through London’s glittering West End. The attack is a brilliant feat of planning and secrecy, but with one loose thread.
The thread leads Gabriel Allon and his team of operatives to the south of France and to the gilded doorstep of Jean-Luc Martel and Olivia Watson. A beautiful former British fashion model, Olivia pretends not to know that the true source of Martel’s enormous wealth is drugs.
And Martel, likewise, turns a blind eye to the fact he is doing business with a man whose objective is the very destruction of the West. Together, under Gabriel’s skilled hand, they will become an unlikely pair of heroes in the global war on terrorism.
Gabriel Allon has been awarded a commission to restore one of the most important paintings in Venice. But when he discovers the body of a mysterious woman floating in the waters of the Venetian Lagoon, he finds himself in a desperate race to recover a lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci.
\nThe painting, a portrait of a beautiful young girl, has been gathering dust in a storeroom at the Vatican Museums for more than a century, misattributed and hidden beneath a worthless picture by an unknown artist. Because no one knows that the Leonardo is there, no one notices when it disappears one night during a suspicious power outage. No one but the ruthless mobsters and moneymen behind the theft - and the mysterious woman whom Gabriel found in a watery grave in Venice. A woman without a name. A woman without a face.
\nThe action moves at breakneck speed from the galleries and auction houses of London to an enclave of unimaginable wealth on the French Riviera - and, finally, to a shocking climax in St. Peter's Square, where the life of a pope hangs in the balance.
Immersed in the quiet, meticulous life of an art restorer, former Israeli intelligence operative Gabriel Allon keeps his past well behind him. But now he is being called back into the game - and teamed with an agent who hides behind her own mask . . . as a beautiful fashion model.
\nTheir target: a cunning terrorist on one last killing spree, a Palestinian zealot who played a dark part in Gabriel’s past. And what begins as a manhunt turns into a globe-spanning duel fueled by both political intrigue and deep personal passions . . .
When the Good Friday peace accords are shattered by three savage acts of terrorism, Northern Ireland is blown back into the depths of conflict. And after his father-in-law is nominated to become the new American ambassador to London, retired CIA agent Michael Osbourne is drawn back into the game. He soon discovers that his father-in-law is marked for execution.
\nAnd that he himself is once again in the crosshairs of a killer known as October, one of the most merciless assassins the world has ever known . . .
\n
When a commercial airliner is blown out of the sky off the East Coast, the CIA scrambles to find the perpetrators. A body is discovered near the crash site with three bullets to the face: the calling card of a shadowy international assassin. Only agent Michael Osbourne has seen the markings before-on a woman he once loved.
\nNow, it's personal for Osbourne. Consumed by his dark obsession with the assassin, he's willing to risk his family, his career, and his life-to settle a score...
\n
Gabriel Allon, art restorer and spy, is about to face the greatest challenge of his life. Allon is recovering from his grueling showdown with a Palestinian master terrorist, when terrorism comes to find him once again.
\nAn al-Qaeda suspect is killed in London, and photographs are found on his computer - photographs that lead Israeli intelligence to suspect that al-Qaeda is planning one of its most audacious attacks ever, straight at the heart of the Vatican.
\nAllon warns his old friend Monsignor Luigi Donati, the pope’s private secretary, and rushes to Rome to assist in security, but what neither he nor Donati knows is that the Vatican has been thoroughly penetrated. An extraordinary enemy walks among them . . . and he’s just getting started.
\nIn the days and weeks to come, Allon and his colleagues will find themselves in a deadly duel of wits against one of the most dangerous men in the world - a hunt that will take them across Europe to the Caribbean and back. But for them, there may simply not be enough of anything: enough time, enough facts, enough luck. All Allon can do is set his trap - and hope that he is not the one caught in it.
\n
Moscow is no longer the gray, grim city of Soviet times. Now it is awash with oil wealth and choked with bulletproof Bentleys. But in the new Russia, power once again resides behind the walls of the Kremlin. Critics of the ruling class are ruthlessly silenced. And a new generation of Stalinists plots to reclaim an empire - and challenge the United States.
\nOne of those men is Ivan Kharkov, ex-KGB, who built a financial empire on the rubble of the Soviet Union. Part of his profit comes from arms dealing. And he is about to deliver Russia’s most sophisticated weapons to the United States’ most dangerous enemy, unless Israeli foreign intelligence agent Gabriel Allon can stop him. Slipping across borders from Vatican City to St. Petersburg, Jerusalem to Washington, DC, Allon is playing for time - and playing by Moscow rules.
At an exclusive private school in Switzerland, mystery surrounds the identity of the beautiful raven-haired girl who arrives each morning in a motorcade fit for a head of state. She is said to be the daughter of a wealthy international businessman.
\nIn truth, her father is Khalid bin Mohammed, the much-maligned crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Once celebrated for his daring social and religious reforms, he is now reviled for his role in the murder of a dissident journalist. And when his only child is brutally kidnapped, he turns to the one man he can trust to find her before it is too late.
\nGabriel Allon, the legendary chief of Israeli intelligence, has spent most of his life fighting terrorists, including the murderous jihadists financed by Saudi Arabia. Prince Khalid - or KBM, as he is known - has pledged to finally break the bond between the Kingdom and radical Islam. For that reason alone, Gabriel regards him as a valuable if flawed partner.
\nTogether they will become unlikely allies in a deadly secret war for control of the Middle East. The life of a child, and the throne of Saudi Arabia, hang in the balance. Both men have made their share of enemies. And both have everything to lose.
\nGabriel Allon has slipped quietly into Venice for a much-needed holiday with his wife and two young children. But when Pope Paul VII dies suddenly, Gabriel is summoned to Rome by the Holy Father’s loyal private secretary, Archbishop Luigi Donati. A billion Catholic faithful have been told that the pope died of a heart attack.
\nDonati, however, has two good reasons to suspect his master was murdered. The Swiss Guard who was standing watch outside the papal apartments the night of the pope’s death is missing. So, too, is the letter the Holy Father was writing during the final hours of his life. A letter that was addressed to Gabriel.
\nWhile researching in the Vatican Secret Archives, I came upon a most remarkable book . . .
\nThe book is a long-suppressed gospel that calls into question the accuracy of the New Testament’s depiction of one of the most portentous events in human history. For that reason alone, the Order of St. Helena will stop at nothing to keep it out of Gabriel’s hands. A shadowy Catholic society with ties to the European far right, the Order is plotting to seize control of the papacy. And it is only the beginning.
\nAs the cardinals gather in Rome for the start of the conclave, Gabriel sets out on a desperate search for proof of the Order’s conspiracy, and for a long-lost gospel with the power to put an end to two thousand years of murderous hatred. His quest will take him from the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, to a monastery in Assisi, to the hidden depths of the Secret Archives, and finally to the Sistine Chapel, where he will witness an event no outsider has ever before seen - the sacred passing of the Keys of St. Peter to a newly elected pope.
In an isolated village in the mountains of Andalusia, a mysterious Frenchwoman begins work on a dangerous memoir. It is the story of a man she once loved in the Beirut of old, and a child taken from her in treason’s name. The woman is the keeper of the Kremlin’s most closely guarded secret. Long ago, the KGB inserted a mole into the heart of the West - a mole who stands on the doorstep of ultimate power.
\nOnly one man can unravel the conspiracy: Gabriel Allon, the legendary art restorer and assassin who serves as the chief of Israel’s vaunted secret intelligence service. Gabriel has battled the dark forces of the new Russia before, at great personal cost. Now he and the Russians will engage in a final epic showdown, with the fate of the postwar global order hanging in the balance.
\nGabriel is lured into the hunt for the traitor after his most important asset inside Russian intelligence is brutally assassinated while trying to defect in Vienna. His quest for the truth will lead him backward in time, to the twentieth century’s greatest act of treason, and, finally, to a spellbinding climax along the banks of the Potomac River outside Washington that will leave readers breathless.
It was supposed to be the start of a pleasant weekend in London for master art restorer and spy Gabriel Allon and his wife, Chiara. But a deadly pair of bombings in Paris and Copenhagen has already marred this lovely autumn day. Then, before he can stop a man he suspects is about to launch a third attack in Covent Garden, Gabriel is knocked to the pavement - and he can only watch helplessly as the nightmare unfolds.
\nThe haunting memory of his failure to stop the massacre of innocents is still fresh when Gabriel is summoned to Washington - and plunged into a deadly confrontation with the new face of global terror. An elusive American- born cleric in Yemen - once a paid CIA asset whom Allah has granted \"a beautiful and seductive tongue\" - stands at the center of the explosive plague of death and destruction. And the worst is yet to come . . .
\n
Legendary spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon has at long last severed ties with Israeli intelligence and settled quietly in Venice, the only place where he has ever truly known peace. His beautiful wife, Chiara, has taken over the day-to-day management of the Tiepolo Restoration Company, and their two young children are discreetly enrolled in a neighborhood scuola elementare. For his part, Gabriel spends his days wandering the streets and canals of the watery city, bidding farewell to the demons of his tragic, violent past.
\nBut when the eccentric London art dealer Julian Isherwood asks Gabriel to investigate the circumstances surrounding the rediscovery and lucrative sale of a centuries-old painting, he is drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse where nothing is as it seems.
Few recent thriller writers have excited the kind of critical praise that Daniel Silva has, with his novels featuring art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon.
\nNow Allon is back in Venice, when a terrible explosion in Rome leads to a disturbing personal revelation: the existence of a dossier in the hands of terrorists that strips away his secrets, lays bare his history. Hastily recalled home to Israel, drawn once more into the heart of a service he had once forsaken, Gabriel Allon finds himself stalking an elusive master terrorist across a landscape drenched in generations of blood, along a trail that keeps turning in upon itself, until, finally, he can no longer be certain who is stalking whom.
\nAnd when at last the inevitable showdown comes, it's not Gabriel alone who is threatened with destruction - for it is not his history alone that has been laid bare. A knife-edged thriller of astonishing intricacy and feeling, filled with exhilarating prose, this is Daniel Silva's finest novel yet.'
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Having retreated to the windswept cliffs of Cornwall with his beautiful wife, Gabriel Allon's seclusion is interrupted by an eccentric London art dealer with a problem. An art restorer has been brutally murdered and a portrait by Rembrandt stolen - and only Gabriel can find it.
\nBut as he pursues the masterpiece across the globe, Gabriel discovers there are deadly secrets connected to the painting - and even deadlier men who will do anything to keep them.
In London, a young woman vanishes . . .
\nShe is the daughter of the American Ambassador - and goddaughter of the President of the United States - and the kidnappers' demands are at once horrifically clear and clearly impossible to meet. The President turns to Gabriel Allon, spy turned art-restorer, a man whose abilities he has depended on before . . .
\nMeanwhile, Allon had been in Amsterdam, hunting down those responsible for the brutal murder of a leading terrorism analyst. The dead man had gotten too close to uncovering the plans of a major terrorist operation - a new threat which no-one could have predicted.
\nAllon soon finds himself in a desperate search for the missing woman, and those responsible - but the truth, when he finds it, is not what he expects. In fact, it is one that will shake him, and many others, to the core.
\n
In wartime,\" Winston Churchill wrote, \"truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.\" For Britain's counterintelligence operations, this meant finding the unlikeliest agent imaginable - a history professor named Alfred Vicary, handpicked by Churchill himself to expose a highly dangerous, but unknown, traitor.
\nThe Nazis, however, have also chosen an unlikely agent: Catherine Blake, a beautiful widow of a war hero, a hospital volunteer-and a Nazi spy under direct orders from Hitler to uncover the Allied plans for D-Day . . .
\n
When a North Dakota couple is shot down in their home in cold blood, the sleepy town of Hagen wakes with a jolt. After all, it’s usually such a peaceful place. But Detective Kylie Milliard knows better.
\nDespite not handling a homicide investigation in years, Kylie is on the case. A drop of blood found at the scene at first blush promises to be her best evidence. But it ultimately only proves that someone else witnessed the murder - and the results are shocking: the DNA reveals a familial match to a crime involving local nurse Lily Baker from over a decade ago. This unveiling stirs new nightmares for Lily as she’s forced to reckon with the most traumatic time in her life.
\nHaunted by their pasts and hunting the killer, Kylie and Lily uncover hellish secrets and impossible truths, finding answers that put both their lives in jeopardy.
\n
Lexi thought she knew everything about Mara Vannatta. Best friends since middle school, they drifted apart after a tragedy derailed their senior year. But when Mara shows up on Lexi’s doorstep sixteen years later fleeing an abusive husband, Lexi takes her in without question. Lexi’s own marriage has been strained by her desire to have a baby, and when Mara offers to become her surrogate, their friendship feels stronger than ever.
\nBut four days before the due date, Mara disappears.
\nLexi is shocked but certain there must be something wrong - Mara would never willingly leave with her unborn child. Or would she? As she embarks on a perilous cross-country hunt for the truth, Lexi is forced to reconsider a friendship she thought she knew - and what really happened that terrible night their senior year. How many secrets lie in their shared past, waiting to be uncovered? And just how far will Lexi go to bring her child safely home?
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In only a few months, the small town of Hagen has lost two high school seniors, both under strange circumstances. When a third senior, the mayor’s son, drives through the plate glass window of the town’s diner and ends up in a coma, the deaths no longer seem unrelated accidents. The town is paralyzed with fear. The police can find no good explanation. Other students deny any knowledge of what’s happening, but Detective Kylie Milliard is certain at least some are lying.
\nHagen’s sole investigator, Kylie Milliard fears that something sinister is at play, but she can’t convince the town’s powers that be to take her concerns seriously. Mounting discord between herself and Hagen’s sheriff have her thinking that it may be time to leave Hagen for a bigger city and a new job, but she’s not going anywhere until she determines the connection between the self-destructive act of the mayor’s son and the two untimely deaths.
\nWhoever is behind the dangerous stunts doesn’t want to be discovered. To keep their secret, they’re willing to take out anyone who gets too close. With time running out before the next stunt, Kylie is in a race to solve the puzzle. She is all too clear that, until she does, no one - not the students, nor the town - is safe from danger.
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After surviving a car accident on an icy road in Hagen, North Dakota, Lily Baker regains consciousness with no idea where or who she is. Scattered Bible verses and the image of a man lying in a pool of blood haunt her memory.
\nThe same night of the accident, a young woman is murdered and tossed in a dumpster. Kylie Milliard, Hagen’s only detective, doesn’t immediately recognise the victim, but Kylie soon discovers that Lily and the dead woman share a dark past . . . if only Lily could remember what it was.
\nLily and Kylie both want answers. But Kylie has to play by the book. Lily has to play it safe. And the more Lily learns about her identity, the more she fears the truth.
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A princess trained from childhood to be a lethal spy, Lara knows that the Bridge Kingdom represents both legendary evil - and legendary promise. The only route through a storm-ravaged world, the Bridge Kingdom controls all trade and travel between lands, allowing its ruler to enrich himself and deprive his enemies, including Lara's homeland.
So when she is sent as a bride under the guise of fulfilling a treaty of peace, Lara is prepared to do whatever it takes to fracture the defenses of the impenetrable Bridge Kingdom. But as she infiltrates her new home - a lush paradise surrounded by tempest seas - and comes to know her new husband, Aren, Lara begins to question where the true evil resides. Around her, she sees a kingdom fighting for survival, and in Aren, a man fiercely protective of his people.
As her mission drives her to deeper understanding of the fight to possess the bridge, Lara finds the simmering attraction between her and Aren impossible to ignore. Her goal nearly within reach, Lara will have to decide her own fate: Will she be the destroyer of a king or the savior of her people?
The secret of her divine heritage revealed, Freya finds herself on a path that will see thousands of lives lost to the magic in her blood. Desperate to avoid this dark fate, she risks an alliance with Skaland’s greatest enemy to seek answers from the seer who foretold her future - the same seer who sent Bjorn to kill her.
\n\t\t\t\t\tWhile Freya still seethes with rage over Bjorn’s betrayal, the blood oaths that bind her demand that she keep him close as she hunts for a way to avert the looming war. Her magic draws her to the front lines of an old enmity, embroiling her with Nordeland’s Unfated - children of the gods who serve the king she was raised to fear. The same king who, unlike Bjorn, is now willing to fight at her back. For despite the desire that burns hot between Bjorn and Freya, his growing distrust of her chosen path threatens to drag them further apart.
\n\t\t\t\t\tAs war approaches, gods and mortals must choose their weapons. Yet the fiercest battle will be the one Freya wages within herself. With the magic of two goddesses burning in her veins, she must weave the threads of destiny to decide her own fate: Will she be the shield that protects her people or the curse that destroys them?
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Teriana is the second mate of the Quincense and heir to the Maarin Triumvirate. Her people are born of the seas and the keepers of its secrets, but when her closest friend is forced into an unwanted betrothal, Teriana breaks her people’s mandate so her friend might escape - a choice with devastating consequences. Marcus is the commander of the Thirty-Seventh, the notorious legion that has led the Celendor Empire to conquer the entire East.
\n\t\t\t\t\tThe legion is his family, but even they don’t know the truth he’s been hiding since childhood. It’s a secret he’ll do anything to protect, no matter how much it costs him - and the world. When an Empire senator discovers the existence of the Dark Shores, he captures Teriana’s crew and threatens to reveal Marcus’s secret unless they sail in pursuit of conquest, forcing the two into an unlikely - and unwilling - alliance. They unite for the sake of their families, but both must decide how far they are willing to go, and how much they are willing to sacrifice.
Lydia is a scholar, but books are her downfall when she meddles in the plots of the most powerful man in the Celendor Empire. Her life in danger, she flees west to the far side of the Endless Seas and finds herself entangled in a foreign war where her burgeoning powers are sought by both sides. Killian is Marked by the God of War, but his gifts fail him when the realm under the dominion of the Corrupter invades Mudamora.
\n\t\t\t\t\tDisgraced, he swears his sword to the kingdom’s only hope: the crown princess. But the choice sees him caught up in a web of political intrigue that will put his oath - and his heart - to the test. With Mudamora falling beneath the armies of the Corrupter, Lydia and Killian strike a bargain to save those they love most - but it is a bargain with unintended and disastrous consequences. Truths are revealed, birthrights claimed, and loyalties questioned - all while a menace deadlier and more far-reaching than they realise sweeps across the world.
Newly crowned as king, Keris has watched, powerless, as his forbidden relationship with Zarrah is revealed. But when Zarrah is imprisoned by the empress, Keris knows there is only one way to save her: to ally with the kingdom he nearly destroyed.
Imprisoned on the dreaded Devil’s Island, Zarrah faces two choices: prove her loyalty to the empress who condemned her or die a traitor. Yet as she struggles to survive among violent prisoners, Zarrah uncovers a third path: a rebellion to overthrow tyranny entwined with a destiny she must fight to claim.
While the empress plots a war with devastating consequences, Keris and Zarrah must find their way back to each other. Yet their greatest adversary is the fiery passion between them. Unless they overcome the bitterness of betrayal, their love will not be the bringer of peace but rather the fuel that turns the Endless War into an inferno.
Bound in an unwanted marriage, Freya spends her days gutting fish, but dreams of becoming a warrior. And of putting an axe in her boorish husband’s back.
\nFreya’s dreams abruptly become reality when her husband betrays her to the region’s jarl, landing her in a fight to the death against his son, Bjorn. To survive, Freya is forced to reveal her deepest secret: She possesses a drop of a goddess’s blood, which makes her a shield maiden with magic capable of repelling any attack. It was foretold such a magic would unite the fractured nation of Skaland beneath the one who controls the shield maiden’s fate.
\nBelieving he’s destined to rule Skaland as king, the fanatical jarl binds Freya with a blood oath and orders Bjorn to protect her from their enemies. Desperate to prove her strength, Freya must train to fight and learn to control her magic, all while facing perilous tests set by the gods. The greatest test of all, however, may be resisting her forbidden attraction to Bjorn. If Freya succumbs to her lust for the charming and fierce warrior, she risks not only her own destiny but the fate of all the people she swore to protect.
Lydia returns to Mudaire to enter training at the healing temple. But instead of fighting to save lives, she’s convinced she is doing more harm than good. She delves into the history of the gods only to discover a truth that will change her life forever. His birthright as commander of the Royal Army is finally in his grasp, but Killian feels anything but victorious. Burdened by his past, he embraces the darker side of his mark - and in doing so, risks starting a war. Having defeated the tyrant Urcon, Marcus struggles to form a lasting alliance with the Arinoquians.
\n\t\t\t\t\tBut he is plagued by the knowledge that there is a traitor among his friends, and it could cost him everything that he’s fought for. Torn between her growing allegiance to the Thirty-Seventh legion and her need to liberate her people, Teriana finds herself mired in a web of secrets. She embarks upon a path that will either save everyone she loves - or put them all in their graves.
Beneath the mountain, the king's reign of tyranny is absolute; the one troll with the capacity to challenge him is imprisoned for treason. Cecile has escaped the darkness of Trollus, but she learns all too quickly that she is not beyond the reach of the king's power. Or his manipulation.
\nRecovered from her injuries, she now lives with her mother in Trianon and graces the opera stage every night. But by day she searches for the witch who has eluded the trolls for five hundred years. Whether she succeeds or fails, the costs to those she cares about will be high.
\nTo find Anushka, she must delve into magic that is both dark and deadly. But the witch is a clever creature. And Cecile might not just be the hunter. She might also be the hunted.
A soldier raised as heir to an empire, Zarrah is motivated by two truths. The first is that the Veliant family murdered her mother. And the second is that her pursuit of vengeance will put every last one of them in their graves.
\nThe Endless War between Maridrina and Valcotta has raged for generations, leaving thousands of Zarrah’s people dead and countless more orphaned. So when she’s given command of the contested city of Nerastis, Zarrah is prepared to do whatever it takes to destroy the Maridrinian forces who oppose her. And to kill the Veliant prince who leads them.
\nYet a chance encounter with an anonymous, and handsome, Maridrinian causes Zarrah to question whether the violence she’s perpetrated is justice or a crime. And as she continues to meet the nameless man each night, she finds common ground - and fiery passion - in his arms.
\nBut when identities are revealed, Zarrah must decide whether to embrace a chance at peace . . . or march to the drums of war.
Lydia and Killian escaped their enemy’s grasp, but not without consequences. While they race to destroy the blight, Lydia fights an internal war against the Corrupter’s influence knowing defeat means death for those she loves. Tormented by a battle that can’t be won with blades, Killian must find the queen they risked everything to rescue without falling prey to Corrupter’s weapons, both living and dead.
\nTeriana and Marcus thwarted assassination, but now must live with the dark truths that have been revealed. As Teriana hunts for allies, she must face the dire circumstances of her imprisoned people, driving her to strike a dangerous deal with the Empire. Consumed by guilt over his crimes, Marcus embarks on an ambitious campaign to save those he condemned, which risks him becoming the conqueror the Empire desires him to be.
\nWith the blight consuming everything in its path and the Empire crushing everyone who stands before it, Reath is falling beneath the tide of evil. Secrets will be revealed that break hearts even as they forge new alliances, but only the greatest sacrifices of all will turn the tide in the battle for the liberty of every nation on Reath.
For five centuries, a witch's curse has bound the trolls to their city beneath the ruins of Forsaken Mountain. Time enough for their dark and nefarious magic to fade from human memory and into myth. But a prophesy has been spoken of a union with the power to set the trolls free, and when Cécile de Troyes is kidnapped and taken beneath the mountain, she learns there is far more to the myth of the trolls than she could have imagined. Cécile has only one thing on her mind after she is brought to Trollus: escape.
\nOnly the trolls are clever, fast, and inhumanly strong. She will have to bide her time, wait for the perfect opportunity. But something unexpected happens while she's waiting - she begins to fall for the enigmatic troll prince to whom she has been bonded and married. She begins to make friends. And she begins to see that she may be the only hope for the half-bloods - part troll, part human creatures who are slaves to the full-blooded trolls. There is a rebellion brewing. And her prince, Tristan, the future king, is its secret leader.
\nAs Cécile becomes involved in the intricate political games of Trollus, she becomes more than a farmer's daughter. She becomes a princess, the hope of a people, and a witch with magic powerful enough to change Trollus forever.
A fugitive on the run, Ahnna has one goal: return to Ithicana with warning of the greatest threat her homeland has ever faced. But as she escapes into the wilderness, it is with the man who broke her heart hunting at her heels - and James wants more than justice. He wants revenge.
\nDesperate to prove his loyalty to his family, James ventures into dangerous territory to capture his father’s killer. But the longer he follows Ahnna’s trail, the more his certainty of her guilt is tested - and the more the passion they once shared reignites.
\nAs schemes twist tighter and war brews, Ahnna and James discover that the enemy isn’t each other - it is the masterminds manipulating them both in pursuit of power. Yet their greatest obstacle remains, because their loyalties are to opposing sides in the battle to come. As the storms of the Tempest Seas lower their defenses, James and Ahnna must choose where their hearts lie: on the battlefield, or in each other’s arms.
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A queen now in exile as a traitor, Lara has watched Ithicana be conquered by her own father, helpless to do anything to stop the destruction. But when she learns her husband, Aren, has been captured in battle, Lara knows there is only one reason her father is keeping him alive: as bait for his traitorous daughter. And it is bait she fully intends to take.
Risking her life to the Tempest Seas, Lara returns to Ithicana with a plan not only to free its king, but for liberating the Bridge Kingdom from her father’s clutches using his own weapons: the sisters whose lives she spared. But not only is the palace inescapable, there are more players in the game than Lara ever realised, enemies and allies switching sides in the fight for crowns, kingdoms, and bridges. But her greatest adversary of all might be the very man she’s trying to free - the husband she betrayed. With everything she loves in jeopardy, Lara must decide who - and what - she is fighting for: her kingdom, her husband, or herself.
A commander who bled to defend her people, Ahnna is haunted by two beliefs. The first is that she failed to protect Ithicana from invasion. And the second is that saving her homeland means leaving it behind forever.
\nThe Maridrinians left Ithicana in ruins and its people impoverished. So when the wealthy kingdom of Harendell claims her as a bride for its crown prince, Ahnna is prepared to do whatever it takes to gain influence as the future queen. And to control the gold that comes with the throne.
\nYet Ahnna swiftly discovers that beneath the beautiful surface of Harendell's court is a dark underbelly built upon schemes, duplicity, and the pursuit of power. The only individual who holds himself above the politics is not her future husband, but his infuriating half brother, James. And as she begins to question whether Harendell is the ally it claims to be, Ahnna finds herself drawn into a forbidden attraction to the wrong prince.
\nAs deadly plots tighten around her, Ahnna must decide whether saving her people will be achieved as a bride . . . or as a blade.
Sometimes, one must become the unimaginable . . .
\nCécile and Tristan have accomplished the impossible, but their greatest challenge remains: defeating the evil that they have unleashed upon the world.
\nAs they scramble for a way to protect the people of the Isle and liberate the trolls from their tyrant king, Cécile and Tristan must battle those who’d see them dead. To win, they will risk everything . . . and everyone. But it might not be enough. Both Cécile and Tristan have debts, and they will be forced to pay them at a cost far greater than they had ever imagined.
\nEverything is at stake, in this heart-stopping conclusion to the acclaimed Malediction Trilogy.
The daughter of two prestigious writers, Macy Descanso has decided to take her own writing seriously. So what if her mother pulled some strings to get Macy into a prestigious writing retreat? Macy belongs here. But when she arrives, she learns that the theme has been changed to romance, per the bequest of the late, prolific romance author Betty Quinn. Though a cynic, Macy lives for a challenge.
\nWhat she’s not prepared for is to be partnered with Caleb Bernard, also the child of two prestigious writers. The Descansos and Bernards notably have beef - a rivalry that has lasted generations. With something to prove, Macy and Caleb decide to put their family squabbles aside to work together as critique partners.
\nBut this retreat is anything but ordinary. According to lore, every year, authors leave easter eggs behind for new students to find. Macy and Caleb are eager to solve Betty Quinn’s mystery. And in the process, Macy and Caleb find that they have a lot in common. Still, will their connection be enough to surpass their families’ feud? Can the relationship they’ve built continue after the retreat?
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On a beautiful May morning at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, two planes have just departed for San Francisco - one a 757, another a smaller Airbus A321. At a security checkpoint, TSA agent Bernice Adams finds a postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge bearing an ambiguous - perhaps ominous - message. Her supervisor dismisses her concerns, but Bernice calls security and soon Ben Waterman arrives. A senior Homeland Security agent, still grappling with guilt after a disastrous operation in which hostages were killed, Ben too becomes suspicious. Who left the postcard behind, which flight is that person on, and what exactly does the message mean?
As Ben scans the passenger manifests, his focus turns to the A321, with Helen Smith as its senior pilot. Helen’s military service and her tenure with the airline have been exemplary. But her husband’s savage death in Iraq was more than anyone should bear, leaving her widowed with three children. A major film star is on board. So is an off-duty pilot who has just lost his forty-year career. So is a distraught father, traveling with the baby son he has abducted from his estranged wife. Sifting through data and relying on instinct, Ben becomes convinced that someone on Helen’s plane is planning something terrible. And he’s right. Passengers, crew, and experts on the ground become heroes out of necessity to try to avert tragedy at the eleventh hour.
When Rose McCarthy’s staff at Mode magazine pitches a cover shoot with Hollywood’s hottest young actress, the actress’s sizzling affair with a bestselling French author is exposed. The author happens to be Rose’s son-in-law, which creates a painful dilemma for her. Her daughter Nadia, a talented interior designer, has been struggling to hold her marriage together, and conceal the truth from their young daughters, her family, and the world. But Nicolas, her straying husband, is blinded by passion for a younger woman—and not only that, she is pregnant with his child.
Nadia’s three sisters close ranks around her, flying to Paris from Los Angeles and New York to lend support and offer their widely divergent advice. Athena, a jovial celebrity chef with her own TV show in Los Angeles, is leery of marriage. Olivia, a stern conservative New York superior court judge, is haunted by a shocking secret of her own. Venetia, a zany fashion designer, happily married with three kids, has the gentlest, most realistic point of view. Despite their well-meaning advice, Nadia needs to figure out what she herself thinks, and what to do next.
The Affair is about the painful journey to discover who you are, what you want, and how much forgiveness and compromise you are capable of in order to be loved. It’s about finding yourself at the crossroads of life when everything is on the line. It’s about the hard lessons we are forced to learn about others and ourselves. Right up until its final twist, this gripping novel is full of powerful insights about who we love, how much—and even how much we love ourselves.
Kate Madison's stylish second-hand clothing shop has been a big success in New York, supporting her and her four kids since her husband's untimely death. Now her children have grown up, they are ready to forge lives of their own. They all choose to play against the odds, much to their mother's dismay.
Isabelle, a dedicated attorney, is in line to make partner at her Wall Street firm, when she falls for a client she represents in a criminal case. She tells herself she can make a life with him - but can she? Julie, a young designer, meets a man who seems too good to be true and falls under his spell. She marries him quickly, gives up her job, moves to LA to be at his side - is all what it seems? Justin is a struggling writer who pushes for children with his partner before they're financially or emotionally ready. Will the strain on the relationship take too high a toll? Willie, the youngest, a tech expert, makes a choice that shocks them all, with a woman fifteen years older.
Kate - loving, supportive and outspoken - can't keep her children from playing against the odds.
Can the odds be beaten?
Nicole \"Coco\" Martin is destined to have it all. As the only child of doting and successful parents, she has been given every opportunity in life. Having inherited her mother's stunning beauty and creativity, along with her father's work ethic and diligence, she has the world at her feet. Her graduation from Columbia is fast approaching, and with it the summer job of her dreams working at a magazine.
\nBetween work, leisurely weekends at her family's home in Southampton, and spending as much time as possible with her best friend, Sam, life couldn't be better - until tragedy strikes. Coco's beloved parents are killed in a terrorist attack while on vacation in France.
Now devastated and alone, Coco must find a way to move forward and make her way in the world without the family she loved. Determined to forge her own path and make her parents proud, Coco pursues her dreams, dazzled by exciting opportunities that come her way. Her goals are to think outside the box--and always play by her own rules.
As she finds herself drawn to charismatic, fascinating men, each relationship will teach Coco new lessons, some delightful, some painful. She will come to realize what matters, and how strong she truly is--and in the end, she will discover herself.
It’s the summer of 1959 and the Palace of Versailles is hosting an event that will make history. It is an exclusive dusk to dawn ball in which a select group of American and French debutantes will be presented to international society and royalty. Four young women, all with something to prove, receive what some see as the invitation of a lifetime.
\nAmelia Alexander, who hopes to eventually attend law school, hesitates to participate in what she sees as an archaic and privileged tradition. But her indomitable widowed mother, Jane, who’s struggled financially and sacrificed for a career, encourages her to attend. Jane would do anything for Amelia to have the chance at happily ever after.
\nFelicity Smith is equally uncertain about the ball. Although her family is prominent in the Dallas social scene, Felicity prefers to keep to herself, avoiding the older sister who torments her. But to get out of her sister’s shadow, Felicity decides to accept. If it’s a success, the tables will have turned at last.
\nFor Caroline Taylor, the beautiful ingénue and daughter of Hollywood legends, the ball is an irresistible opportunity. But an unexpected heartbreak just before she leaves for France gets things off to a bad start.
\nThen there’s Samantha Walker, an art history major with an overprotective father. Her excitement about the invitation is overshadowed by the emotional and physical effects of a past tragedy that still haunts her.
\nFor all these young women, Paris and one transcendent night will change their lives forever.
Veronique Vincent is a star. At age twenty-two, she is one of the most sought-after models in fashion, gracing the covers of magazines and walking the runways of haute couture shows across the globe. Yet, despite being the consummate professional, Veronique wants little of the glamorous life that modeling affords her. The beloved daughter of a hardworking single mother, she has always preferred spending time at home or with her kindhearted boyfriend to attending lavish parties.
\nWhen a quick getaway presents a welcome break on the heels of Paris Fashion Week, and before a Vogue cover shoot in Tokyo, Veronique is thrilled, eager to escape the mayhem of her busy schedule. Then, out of nowhere, a tragic explosion at Zaventem Airport in Brussels changes her life forever.
\nThe ruthless terrorist attack has the entire world on edge. Veronique finds herself hospitalised and alone, devastated to learn that the blast has killed both of the people she loved most. She is also forced to confront the harsh reality that she has been severely injured, her famous appearance forever altered.
\nAs she plunges into seclusion, the industry that once adored her believes her to have fallen off the map. In truth, she is struggling to find herself again after losing everything, and to discover what truly matters in life. But her mother’s will, accompanied by a letter Veronique never knew existed, reveals long-held secrets, introducing her to a world she hadn’t even known was possible.
Fishtail, Montana, is home to Anne and Pitt Pollock, local royalty, high school sweethearts, and owners of the successful Pollock ranch. The sprawling foothills of the Beartooth Mountains surround the town, overlooking the Pollocks’ property and the nearby ranch belonging to Bill and Pattie Brown. The two couples have known each other since childhood.
\nTheir sons Peter Pollock and Matt Brown are also the best of friends. When they and two other local kids meet Juliet Marshall, new to town after her parents’ bitter divorce, the five of them are soon inseparable, spending their summer days swimming, horseback riding, hiking, and fishing.
\nBut one August afternoon, their latest adventure takes a dangerous turn - and quickly escalates into a battle for survival - when they find themselves trapped on Granite Peak. Fear reverberates through the town as their parents grow ever more desperate to hear word that their children have been found. They must place their own trials aside amid a massive search-and-rescue operation. As they come to lean on one another for support, a media frenzy ensues, heightening tensions and testing some already fragile relationships.
\nIn the aftermath of this one fateful event, devastating secrets are revealed, new love appears on the horizon, and families are forced to reconsider what they once held dear.
Known for its luxurious accommodations and bespoke service, the Hotel Louis XVI has been the most lauded boutique hotel in all of Paris for decades, attracting an international clientele of the rich and famous. Now, after four years of renovations and the death of its legendary and beloved manager, it is set to reopen its doors at last. An esteemed group of loyal returning guests is set to descend upon the hotel, joined by a number of new faces who have managed to secure coveted bookings in the wake of last-minute cancellations.
\nAwaiting them all is the Louis XVI’s new manager, Olivier Bateau, an anxious man whose lack of experience leaves him unprepared. He and his level-headed assistant manager, Yvonne Philippe, both strive to continue the hotel’s tradition of excellence. But they quickly realize that anything can happen at any moment, and on one cool September evening, everything does.
\nA successful art consultant arrives at the hotel for the first time since her brutal divorce, and is surprised to find new love—if she is willing to risk her heart again. A new guest contemplates ending his life, and saves a life instead. A couple finds their once-in-a-lifetime trip interrupted by a tragic medical emergency, leaving the idyllic future they’ve long waited for hanging in the balance. And one of the hotel’s most high-profile guests, a French politician and assumed presidential candidate, holds a mysterious meeting in his suite that will threaten his life and legacy. Rocked by the events of this one fateful night, guests and staff alike brace themselves for the aftershock, as it quickly becomes apparent that more dramas and misfortunes are still in store.
Oliver Watson has worked hard to build a safe, predictable world. But suddenly it seems to dissolve around him. The marriage he thought was perfect crumbles after eighteen years. His mother is killed in an untimely accident, leaving his father newly widowed and trying, at seventy-two, to build a new world for himself. Oliver's eldest son rejects him and reaches out towards a life of his own, a life he is not mature enough to handle. Melissa, his daughter, unequivocably blames her father for her mother's desertion, while Sam, the 'baby', is too shaken to deal with it at all.
Now the only parent, 'Daddy' must somehow cope with his troubled family, even as he explores an unknown world of new responsibilities, new women, and new experiences that are funny, sad, touching, scary, poignant, but always real.
Angelique Latham has grown up at magnificent Belgrave Castle under the loving tutelage of her father, the Duke of Westerfield, after the death of her aristocratic French mother. At eighteen she is her father's closest, most trusted child, schooled in managing their grand estate. But when he dies, her half-brothers brutally turn her out, denying her very existence. Angelique has a keen mind, remarkable beauty, and an envelope of money her father pressed upon her. To survive, she will need all her resources - and one bold stroke of fortune.
Unable to secure employment without references or connections, Angelique desperately makes her way to Paris, where she rescues a young woman fleeing an abusive madam--and suddenly sees a possibility: Open an elegant house of pleasure that will protect its women and serve only the best clients. With her upper-class breeding, her impeccable style, and her father's bequest, Angelique creates Le Boudoir, soon a sensational establishment where powerful men, secret desires, and beautiful, sophisticated women come together. But living on the edge of scandal, can she ever make a life of her own - or regain her rightful place in the world?
From England to Paris to New York, Danielle Steel captures an age of upheaval and the struggles of women in a male-ruled society--and paints a captivating portrait of a woman of unquenchable spirit, who in houses great or humble is every ounce a duchess.
Sabrina Brooks is a wildly successful bestselling author of gripping thrillers. Unlike her fictional characters, Sabrina lives a quiet life in the Berkshires with her two beloved dogs. But behind this peaceful exterior is a dark, painful past. As a child raised by an emotionally distant father, Sabrina rarely felt love. And as an adult, her marriage twisted into an abusive relationship from which she had to escape.
\nSabrina channeled that fear into her writing, and now she has everything she's ever wanted. Until the arrival of a mysterious letter disrupts it all, declaring that Sabrina, as the only living relative of her recently deceased uncle, is now the heir to his title and estate outside London. This shocking news forces her to cross the Atlantic and see the manor for herself, stirring up her father's past and the secrets he kept.
\nDetermined to sell the estate quickly and return home, Sabrina is surprised by how much she loves roaming the gardens and exploring the historic manor. She can't help but admire her surroundings, especially with the handsome estate attorney, Grayson Abbott, acting as her tour guide. As she learns more about the family history, Sabrina begins to wonder what life would be like as “Lady Brooks,” and if she could upend the stability she has worked so hard for. Is she brave enough to choose a different path?
Jane Addison is an ambitious young woman with big dreams of owning her own company someday. At twenty-eight, she arrives in New York to start a job at Fletcher and Benson, a prestigious talent agency. Eager to impress her new colleagues, Jane jumps right in as an assistant to Hailey West, one of the agents in the literary department.
\nHailey is dedicated to the authors she represents, but her home life is chaotic and challenging. After her husband’s tragic and untimely death, she was left widowed with three children to raise on her own.
\nThen there’s Francine Rivers, the stern and accomplished head of the literary department. Also a single mom after her husband’s affair with the nanny, she has overcome the resulting financial hardships, but only with unbearable sacrifice.
\nCompared to Hailey and Francine, drama agent Allie Moore’s life seems much more carefree and uncomplicated. She relishes her success and loves working with the talented actors they represent - until a passionate relationship with one of her rising star clients threatens to derail her career.
\nMerriwether Jones is the CFO for the agency. She appears to have it all - beauty, success, and a perfect marriage until her husband's jealousy over her career threatens to blow everything up.
\nEven though she’s a newcomer, Jane quickly realises that there are damaging secrets hidden behind the doors of Fletcher and Benson. As one of the youngest employees, she has the least power, but is also the least willing to accept things as they have been for years. When she puts everything on the line to right these wrongs, the consequences will leave no one unscathed.
\nIn this riveting novel, Danielle Steel tells the story of a group of remarkable women navigating the challenges of balancing their families, their personal lives and the high stakes of ambition at the top of their game.
Antonia Adams is the product of a loveless marriage between a beautiful young model and an aristocrat. As a child, she is abandoned in the abyss that yawns between them, blamed by her mother, ignored by her father, and neglected by both. Unprotected and unloved, she learns that the only way to feel safe is to hide from the dangers around her, drawing as little attention as possible to herself, to be \"invisible.\"
\nIn her isolation, books are her refuge and movies her escape. A day spent being carried away by an unforgettable film in a dark theater is her greatest thrill. Her love of the movies turns into a dream to become a screenwriter, and a summer job at a Hollywood studio. There, a famous British filmmaker notices her, and suddenly she can remain invisible no longer. He wants to put her in a movie and make her a star. It is a dazzling opportunity but a terrifying one, as it strips her of the camouflage that made her feel safe. She is suddenly thrust into the public eye - and even more so when they fall in love.
\nShe will never let go of her true dream of becoming a filmmaker, though, and if she wants to make that leap, she will have to expose herself in ways she never has before. When tragedy strikes, she must decide whether she will remain center stage or become invisible again, where she feels safest. Will she face her demons, or run and hide?
\nIn this extraordinary novel, Danielle Steel tells the story of a woman who must decide how high a price she is willing to pay to pursue her passion - and whether it is possible to stay true to herself while she does.
Allegra Dixon has never felt loved or wanted. Rejected by her mother - a cold, beautiful socialite - and her absentee military father, Allegra's only escape from her lonely existence is through books and her own rich fantasy world. When she marries her childhood sweetheart, Shepherd Williams, it seems Allegra's life has finally taken a turn for the better. But as Shep is pulled into the dark world of military conflict, he is slowly destroyed by the horrors he has seen in combat, and becomes a dangerous man that Allegra doesn't recognise.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tDesperate for a fresh start, Allegra leaves a job she loves in New York and moves to California to start a new life. She takes a job as assistant to film score composer Henry Platt, a man with a reputation for creative genius and an intense, frenetic personality. As new opportunities arise and hard challenges continue to bar her path to happiness - can Allegra finally find the joy and fulfilment she truly deserves?
Meredith White was one of Hollywood's most recognizable faces. But a personal tragedy cut her acting career short and alienated her from her family. For the last 15 years, Meredith has been living alone in San Francisco with two trusted caretakers. Then, on a muggy late summer day, a massive earthquake strikes Northern California, plunging the Bay Area into chaos. Without a moments hesitation, Meredith invites her stunned and shaken neighbors into her mostly undamaged home as the recovery begins.
These people did not even realize that movie star Meredith White was living on their street. Now, they are sharing her mansion, as well as their most closely kept secrets. Without the privacy of their own homes, one by one, new relationships are forged. For every neighbor, there is a story, from the doctor whose wife and children fear him, to the beautiful young woman dating a dishonorable man, to the aspiring writer caring for a famous blind musician.
In the heart of the crisis, Meredith finds herself venturing back into the world. And thanks to the suspicions and dogged detective work of a disaster relief volunteer, a former military officer named Charles, a shocking truth about her own world is exposed. Suddenly Meredith sees her isolation, her estranged family, and even her acting career in a whole new light.
Filled with powerful human dramas, 'NEIGHBORS' is a penetrating look at how our world can be upended in a moment. In a novel of unforgettable characters and stunning twists, acts of love and courage become the most powerful forces of all.
After a carefree childhood, Maggie Kelly came of age in the shadow of grief. Her father, a daredevil pilot, died when she was nine. Maggie saw her mother struggle to put their lives back together. As the family moved from one city to the next, her mother warned her about daredevil men and avoid risk at all cost.
\nFollowing her mother's advice, and forgoing the magic of first love with a high school boyfriend who she thought too wild, Maggie married a good, dependable man. Together they had a son and found happiness in a conventional suburban life - until tragedy struck again.
\nNow on her own, feeling a sense of adventure for the first time, Maggie decides to face her fears, setting off on a whirlwind trip from the US to Rome, Paris, London and Monaco. But when her travels reconnect her with the irresistible, thrill-seeking man she's spent thirty years trying to forget, Maggie is terrified that rushing into love and sharing his life may end in disaster. But while Maggie tries to outrun her fears and painful memories, fate will surprise her in the most astounding of ways, as she walks the tightrope between danger and courage, and between wisdom and love.
Sophia Alexander, the beautiful daughter of a famous surgeon in Berlin, has had to grow up faster than most young women. When her mother falls ill, Sophia must take charge of her younger sister, Theresa, and look after her father and the household, while also volunteering at his hospital after school. Meanwhile, Hitler’s rise to power and the violence in her very own town have Sophia concerned, but only her mother is willing to share her fears openly.
\nAfter tragedy strikes and her mother dies, Sophia becomes increasingly involved in the resistance, attending meetings of dissidents and helping however she can. Circumstances become increasingly dangerous and personal when Sophia assists her sister’s daring escape from Germany, fleeing Germany with her young husband and his family. Her father also begins to resist the regime, secretly healing those hiding from persecution, only to have his hospital burned to the ground. When he is arrested and sent to a concentration camp, Sophia is truly on her own, but more determined than ever to help.
\nWhile working as a nurse with the convent nuns, the Sisters of Mercy, Sophia continues her harrowing efforts to transport Jewish children to safety and finds herself under surveillance. As the political tensions rise and the brutal oppression continues, Sophia is undeterred, risking it all, even her own freedom, as she rises to the challenge of helping those in need - no matter the cost.
After her parents perish in a tragic accident, Cosima Saverio assumes leadership of her family’s haute couture Italian leather brand. While navigating the challenges of running a company at twenty-three, Cosima must also maintain the four-hundred-year-old family palazzo in Venice and care for her younger siblings: Allegra, who survived the tragedy that killed their parents with scars and a spinal injury, and Luca, who has a penchant for wild parties, pretty women, and poker tables.
\nCosima navigates her personal and professional challenges with a wisdom beyond her years, but her success has come at a cost: Her needs are always secondary. She’s married to the business, and her free time is given to those who rely on her . . . until she meets Olivier Bayard, the founder of France’s most successful ready-to-wear handbag company. A brief conversation on her palazzo’s terrace turns into a tour of the Saverio workshop, and, fifteen years after her parents’ deaths, Cosima has found a confidant.
\nNow the business is financially stable and generating enough income for the Saverios to live comfortably. Then Luca loses a hefty sum at the casino, and his debt must be repaid with money or his life. Cosima, forced to bail him out, is given an impossible choice: List the palazzo, sell a third of the family business, or let Luca fend for himself. But is there another way to save everything she has fought for before it goes up in flames?
Devon Darcy’s reputation precedes her. As a highly sought-after portrait artist, she seems to have the ability to peer into the souls of her subjects and then capture them on canvas. But the world doesn’t know about the devastating losses she has endured, first as an orphan, then as a far-too-young widow.
\nWhen entrepreneur Charles Mackenzie Taylor sees her at a New York gallery event, he is instantly haunted by her beauty and her talent. Having lost his mother when he was thirteen, and still living in the cold shadow of his late banker father’s disapproval, Charlie has given up on love. He’s resigned himself to a loveless marriage to avoid the inconvenience of divorce.
\nBut Devon awakens something in him across that crowded gallery, and she is in turn intrigued by Charlie. He approaches her to paint his portrait, and while her schedule is booked for many months before she can accommodate him, with the electricity between them palpable.
\nWhen they encounter each other over the summer in the Hamptons, their connection deepens as they each release years of pent-up emotions and unfulfilled longing. But the ghosts of their pasts are not easily put to rest. Charlie wrestles with his fear of real intimacy for the first time in his life, while Devon struggles with her fear of abandonment. And after an accident endangers Devon’s career, they must decide together what their future holds.
As a devoted mother, Veronique Parker has dedicated herself to her three daughters, before and since her divorce.
Her world is turned upside down when her former husband dies suddenly, leaving her and their daughters astonishing inheritances: a painting of mysterious provenance, a château in the south of France, the freedom to pursue their dreams, and a shocking revelation from the past.
The precious gifts he left will lead them on a journey certain to change Veronique and her daughters’ destinies in the most surprising of ways . . .
Hurricane Ophelia is bearing down on New York City. And in a matter of hours, six people, along with their families, friends, and millions of other New Yorkers living around them, will be caught up in the horrific flooding it unleashes.
Ellen Wharton has flown into New York from London, regardless of the weather and her husband’s worry. The successful interior designer is intent on seeing her lively architect mother and has an important personal appointment to keep. But despite Ellen’s urging, when the storm hits, seventy-four-year-old Grace Madison refuses to leave her Tribeca apartment in the midst of the evacuation zone, and they must eventually wade through chest-high water to the police boats outside.
British investment banker Charles Williams is traveling on business but is also eager to see his young daughters, who live with his beautiful, estranged ex-wife in SoHo. Desperate to find them, he checks the shelters where thousands have taken refuge and runs into Ellen and her mother.
Juliette Dubois, a dedicated ER doctor, fights to save lives when the generators at her hospital fail.
NYU students Peter Holbrook and Ben Weiss, living in a shabby downtown walkup, are excited by the adventure of the approaching hurricane, refuse to evacuate, and settle in with junk food and beer until their building threatens to collapse. Should they swim for it or not?
A day of chaos takes its toll. Lives, belongings, and loved ones are swept away. Heroes are revealed as the city and New Yorkers struggle to face a natural disaster of epic proportions. And then the real challenge begins, as the survivors face their futures, with damage to repair and scars to heal.
As the head of a prestigious movie studio for nearly two decades, Andy Westfield has had every conceivable professional luxury: a stunning office on the forty-fourth floor, a loyal assistant who can all but read his mind, access to a private jet and company cars. The son of Hollywood royalty, Andy always put his career before his marriage, and now, besides his daughter and young grandchildren, it’s the only thing he truly loves.
\nBut then Andy’s world is upended. The studio is sold, and the buyer’s son demands the top seat. Out of a job and humiliated, Andy spirals. When his head clears, he decides to get as far away from Los Angeles as possible until the dust settles and he can find a new way forward.
\nAndy signs a six-month rental agreement for a luxurious home in a tiny, forgotten coastal town two hours from London. When he arrives, he hires a local woman to help get his affairs in order. A former journalist, Violet Smith is at a crossroads as well, and this temporary job is exactly what she needs to tide her over. But when Violet leaves the manuscript of her unfinished novel behind after work one day, Andy lets his curiosity get the best of him and is captivated by a story that begs to be adapted for the big screen. Could this be the miracle they’ve both been looking for?
Theodora Morgan is fashion royalty. Founder of a wildly popular online shopping service, she is one of the most successful businesswomen in the world, although she prefers to keep a low profile, especially over the last months. It was a year ago when the unthinkable struck her family, and her husband, industry mogul Matthieu Pasquier, and their son were kidnapped and held for ransom - a nightmare that ended in tragedy.
\nThe case has gone cold, despite evidence linking the crime to Matthieu’s Russian competitors. Theo has reluctantly gone back to work running her company. On the flight to a launch party for one of her highly anticipated pop-up shops in New York City, she crosses paths with high-society networker Pierre de Vaumont. Theo politely invites him to her event - unaware that Pierre has been flagged by the CIA.
\nSenior supervising CIA operative Mike Andrews investigates Pierre’s suspicious Russian contacts and clears him to enter the country, but when he realizes that Theodora Morgan is on the same flight, he becomes concerned for her safety. Posing as a lawyer, Mike begins a covert mission - starting with Theo’s opening party. When Mike and Theo meet, their connection is instant, but Theo is completely unaware of Mike’s true objective or identity . . . or that the life she is rebuilding is in grave danger.
In Danielle Steel’s powerful novel, four San Francisco trauma doctors – the best and brightest in their field – confront exciting and exacting new challenges, both personally and professionally, when given a rare opportunity.
\nBill Browning heads the trauma unit at San Francisco’s busiest emergency room. With his ex-wife and daughters in London, he immerses himself in his work and lives for the little time he can spend with his children. A rising star at her teaching hospital, Stephanie Lawrence has two young sons, a frustrated stay-at-home husband, and not enough time for any of them.
\nHarvard-educated Wendy Jones is a dedicated trauma doctor, trapped in a dead-end relationship with a married cardiac surgeon. And Tom Wylie’s popularity with women rivals the superb medical skills he employs at his medical centre, but he refuses to let anyone get too close, determined to remain unattached forever.
\nThese exceptional doctors are chosen for an honour and a unique project: to work with their counterparts in Paris in a mass-casualty training programme. As professionals they will gain invaluable knowledge, but as ordinary men and women they will find that the City of Light opens up incredible new possibilities, exhilarating, enticing and frightening.
\nWhen an unspeakable act of mass violence galvanises them into action, their temporary life in Paris becomes a stark turning point: a time to make harder choices than they have ever faced before - with consequences that will last a lifetime.
Oscar-winning actress Ardith Law is a Hollywood icon. Radiant at sixty-two, she is the epitome of glamour and a highly respected artist. But her success has come at a she has a strained relationship with her daughter, Morgan, who at thirty-eight still blames Ardith for putting her career before being a mother. Morgan is a successful plastic surgeon in New York City - and the distance from Ardith’s Bel Air mansion is not lost on either of them.
\nArdith became a single mother when Morgan was seven, after her unfaithful husband died in a helicopter accident. In recent years, she has found amiable companionship with fellow actor Bill West. But Ardith’s comfortable world is turned upside down when she hires a temporary personal assistant, Josh Gray, while Bill is away filming in London. Josh’s rough-around-the-edges persona is the opposite of what Ardith is used to, but an unexpected tragedy brings them closer, stirring up conflicting feelings in her for this younger man.
\nIn New York, Morgan is swept off her feet by world-renowned TV anchorman Ben Ryan. Though more than two decades her senior, Ben is handsome, charismatic, and just as smitten as Morgan. But when a blackmail scheme puts his career - and their relationship - on the line, Morgan doesn’t know where to turn. Perhaps . . . to her mother? As each woman navigates an unconventional romance, they cautiously approach each other on new terms and attempt to put aside their past for a new future.
Faith Ferguson is New York’s most in-demand wedding planner, an arbiter of taste for elegant affairs, lavish ceremonies, and exclusive fêtes. She appreciates a simple celebration as much as a dazzling event, for she knows that a dream wedding is not necessarily the most expensive one.
\nAs much as Faith enjoys her work, her two failed engagements leave her with no desire to get married herself. She finds fulfillment in her close relationship with her twin sister, Hope, her role as a mentor for her assistant, Violet, and her career.
\nThis year, new clients have flocked to her, and she signs up an extravagant reception, a mid-sized gathering, and an intimate soirée, in addition to her mother’s next marriage and Violet’s modest ceremony. Faith finds herself forming bonds with her new clients and their loved ones - most notably the handsome brother of one of her grooms.
\nBut weddings are not always all champagne and roses, and in no time, Faith is grappling with private quarrels, unplanned pregnancies, family scandals, dark secrets, and the possibility of cancelled ceremonies. Through her own journey, Faith will prove once and for all that that there is not just one path to happily ever after.
Preston and Constance Whittier have built a happy life together with a brood of six children raised in a beautiful historic Manhattan mansion. Now, with a nearly empty nest, it’s easier than ever for the Whittiers to maintain their tradition of a solo romantic “wintermoon” ski trip.
\nBut with this year’s trip comes tragedy. Suddenly, their adult children find themselves reuniting in the family home without their parents for the first time ever. The oldest, Lyle, is reaching a breaking point in his marriage and must decide whether a divorce would be best for him and his two children. Gloria’s big job on Wall Street has kept her single at forty, and growing ever more cynical. The twins, Caroline and Charlie, moved out long ago to start a fashion business that may now be faltering. Benjie, with special needs, is hit hard by the loss of his parents and needs his siblings’ help. And Annabelle, the youngest, drops out of college and starts to spin out of control.
\nThe eldest four are forced to put aside their personal issues and their grief to keep the family together and support each other and their two youngest siblings. Selling the house, along with all the memories that live in its walls, feels like yet another devastating loss. Could there be another way, as unconventional as it seems?
Charles Vincent seems to have it all - a beautiful wife, two successful children, and a well-paying career. Yet happiness remains out of reach. He is trapped in a loveless marriage and his job is simply a paycheck. But his life changes forever as he drives along the Normandy coast, heading to their lavish château for the weekend. In one terrifying moment, Charles falls asleep at the wheel and veers off the road, plunging thirty feet down the face of a rocky cliff.
\nMiraculously, Charles survives. After gathering the courage to climb to safety, he starts to walk - bruised, bloody, and desperate for help. In the dark of night, he happens upon a cabin where he meets the kind and beautiful Aude Saint-Martin. Their connection is instant, and as she nurses him back to health, Charles begins to discover the passion he’s been missing for so many years.
\nIn the aftermath of the crash, Charles has a startling realisation - he doesn’t have to go back. He could simply choose to disappear, to walk away from his old life. When his car is discovered, he’ll be presumed dead, washed away at sea. If he stays with Aude, he has a chance at a fuller, happier life he didn’t know was possible. It all seems too good to resist. But Aude has secrets of her own and before long their pasts catch up to them, threatening everything they have fought to build.
\nWhat would happen if you were given a chance to walk away from everything in your life and start over with a blank slate, and you had a split second to decide?
In the Gilded Age, a time of abject poverty and obscene wealth, a desperate and ambitious young woman strikes out for a new life in the rising industrial cities of America. Naive Fanny is thrust into a Darwinian world where she is cast out and preyed upon, but she’s a survivor and quickly learns from her struggles. Thanks to her close observations of the mercenary actors around her, Fanny discovers the power of illusion and how it can overcome the immutability of social class and the ruthless rules of capitalism.
\nShedding her past, Fanny embarks on a darkly thrilling transformation. She becomes Kitty Warren - a forger, con artist, and thief. Exploiting the greed and self-regard of the powerful, Kitty builds her own castle in the sky, yet she finds real pleasure and fulfillment elusive, and soon her foundations start to crumble.
\nWith schemes more wicked than Jay Gatsby’s, yet with more humanity than Tom Ripley, Kitty Warren exposes the dark heart of the American dream, making Forged a gripping narrative and a parable for the ages.
Moving from Pakistan’s sophisticated cities to its most rural farmlands, This Is Where the Serpent Lives captures the extraordinary proximity of extreme wealth to extreme poverty in a land where fate is determined by class and social station.
\nDaniyal Mueenuddin’s This Is Where the Serpent Lives paints a powerful portrait of contemporary feudal Pakistan, and a farm on which the destinies of a dozen unforgettable characters are linked through violence and love, resilience, and tragedy. From Afra, who rose from abject poverty to the role of trusted servant to an affluent gangster; to Saqib, an errand boy who is eventually trusted to lead his boss’s new farming venture, where he becomes determined to rise above his rank by any means necessary. Saqib’s boss, the wealthy landowner Hisham, reminisces about meeting his wife while she was dating his brother, while Gazala, a young teacher, falls for Saqib and his bold promises for their future before learning about his plans to skim money from the farm’s profits.
\nIn matters of both business and the heart, Mueenuddin’s characters struggle to choose between the paths that are moral and the paths that will allow them to survive the systems of caste, capital, and social power that so tightly grip their country.
Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she; her painter husband, Lenny; and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp.
\nBut things don’t work out quite as hoped. In search of a plan B, like countless writers before her, Jane turns her desperate gaze to Hollywood. After she meets with a hot young producer to create “diverse content” for a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer.” She can create what he envisions as the greatest biracial comedy to ever hit the small screen. Things finally seem to be going right for Jane - until they go terribly wrong.
\n
As the twentieth century draws to a close, Maria is at the start of a life she never thought possible. She and Khalil, her college sweetheart, are planning their wedding. They are the perfect couple, \"King and Queen of the Racially Nebulous Prom.\"
\nTheir skin is the same shade of beige. They live together in a black bohemian enclave in Brooklyn, where Khalil is riding the wave of the first dot-com boom and Maria is plugging away at her dissertation, on the Jonestown massacre. They've even landed a starring role in a documentary about \"new people\" like them, who are blurring the old boundaries as a brave new era dawns.
\nEverything Maria knows she should want lies before her - yet she can't stop daydreaming about another man, a poet she barely knows. As fantasy escalates to fixation, it dredges up secrets from the past and threatens to unravel not only Maria's perfect new life but her very persona.
\n
When Christa joins a tour group heading deep into the snowy expanse of the Rocky Mountains, she's hopeful this will be her chance to put the ghosts of her past to rest. But when a bitterly cold snowstorm sweeps the region, the small group is forced to take shelter in an abandoned hunting cabin. Despite the uncomfortably claustrophobic quarters and rapidly dropping temperature, Christa believes they'll be safe as they wait out the storm.
She couldn't be more wrong.
Deep in the night, their tour guide goes missing...only to be discovered the following morning, his severed head impaled on a tree outside the cabin. Terrified, and completely isolated by the storm, Christa finds herself trapped with eight total strangers. One of them kills for sport...and they're far from finished. As the storm grows more dangerous and the number of survivors dwindles one by one, Christa must decide who she can trust before this frozen mountain becomes her tomb.
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "Horror", "Thriller" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Darcy Coates - Dead of Winter.jpeg", "mtime": 1768330710451.067, "size": 760728, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:19:57.705Z" }, "Darcy Coates - From Below": { "title": "From Below", "author": "Darcy Coates", "description": "Years ago, the SS Arcadia vanished without a trace during a routine voyage. Though a strange, garbled emergency message was broadcast, neither the ship nor any of its crew could be found. Sixty years later, its wreck has finally been discovered more than three hundred miles from its intended course . . . a silent graveyard deep beneath the ocean's surface, eagerly waiting for the first sign of life.
\nCove and her dive team have been granted permission to explore the Arcadia's rusting hull. Their purpose is straightforward: examine the wreck, film everything, and, if possible, uncover how and why the supposedly unsinkable ship vanished.
\nBut the Arcadia has not yet had its fill of death, and something dark and hungry watches from below. With limited oxygen and the ship slowly closing in around them, Cove and her team will have to fight their way free of the unspeakable horror now desperate to claim them.
\nBecause once they're trapped beneath the ocean's waves, there's no going back.
The Hull family has owned the Gallows Hill Winery for generations, living and working on the beautiful grounds where they grow their famous grapes. Until the night Mr. and Mrs. Hull settle down for the evening . . . and are dead by morning.
\nWhen their daughter, Margot, inherits the family business, she wants nothing to do with it. The winery is valued for its unparalleled produce, but it's built on a field where hundreds of convicts were once hanged, and the locals whisper morbid rumors. They say the ground is cursed.
\nIt's been more than a decade since Margot last saw her childhood home. But now that she's alone in the sprawling, dilapidated building, she begins to believe the curse is more than real - and that she may be the next victim of the house that never rests . . .
It was supposed to be the party of the century: miles of idyllic white sand beaches, lush jungle foliage . . . and a dark legend nobody dreamed might be all too true.
\nWhen an online influencer and several hundred of his most loyal fans land on Prosperity Island, the plan is simple: five days of elaborate games, drinking, and suntanned fun.
\nA week in paradise should have been a welcome respite. The only survivor of an infamous cult, Ruth wants nothing more than to keep her head down and not draw attention. She's spent decades outrunning her blood-soaked childhood, and her identity is a closely held secret.
\nBut then the true history of the island is revealed . . . along with its sinister connection to Ruth's past. As guests go missing and games turn deadly, Ruth and the rest of the attendees are forced to question whether they've really been invited to paradise . . . or whether something much darker - and far bloodier - is waiting for them just beyond the bonfire's light.
Winterbourne Hall is not safe. Even as Clare and Dorran scramble to secure the ancient building against ravenous hollow ones, they face something far worse: Clare's sister has made contact, but she's trapped, and her oxygen is running out.
\nHundreds of miles separate Clare from Beth. The land between them is infested with monsters, and the roads are a maze of dead ends. Clare has to choose between making a journey she knows she might not survive, or staying safe in Winterbourne and listening as her sister slowly suffocates.
\nAt least, whatever her choice, she’ll have Dorran by her side. And yet there are eyes in the dark. There are whispers in the mist. There is danger lurking in the snow, and one false step could end it all . . .
The stark world continues to change. Each passing day twists it further, pushing the surviving humans closer to the brink of extinction. But, for the first time, there is hope.
\nClare and Dorran have set their sights on returning home to Winterbourne Hall. It's a daunting journey, but vital. Humanity needs more refuges - safe areas where food can be grown without attracting the attention of the hollow ones - and the old gothic manor is their best bet.
\nBut their home is no longer a sanctuary. It’s become a trap: carefully crafted for them, lying in wait for their return. By the time they realise just how dangerous Winterbourne has become, it’s already too late.
\nThe fight for survival is far from over.
Clare remembers the cold. She remembers abandoned cars and children’s toys littered across the road. She remembers dark shapes in the snow and a terror she can’t explain. And then . . . nothing.
When she wakes, aching and afraid in a stranger’s gothic home, he tells her she was in an accident. He claims he saved her. Clare wants to leave, but a vicious snowstorm has blanketed the world in white, trapping them together, and there’s nothing she can do but wait.
At least the stranger seems kind . . . but Clare doesn’t know if she can trust him. He promised they were alone here, but she sees and hears things that convince her something else is creeping about the surrounding woods, watching. Waiting. Between the claustrophobic storm and the inescapable sense of being hunted, Clare is on edge . . . and increasingly certain of one thing:
Her car crash wasn't an accident. Something is waiting for her to step outside the fragile safety of the house . . . something monstrous, something unfeeling.
Something desperately hungry.
Abby Ward lives in a town haunted by disappearances. People vanish, and when they're found, their bodies have been dismembered and sewn back together in unnatural ways. But is it the work of a human killer . . . or something far darker?
\nShe and her younger sister live by a strict set of rules designed to keep them safe - which is why it's such a shock when Hope is taken. Desperate to get her back, Abby tells the police everything she knows, but they claim their hands are tied.
\nWith every hour precious, Abby and her friends are caught in a desperate game of cat and mouse. They have to get Hope back. Quickly. Before too much of her is cut away. And before everything they care about is swallowed up by the darkness waiting in the tunnels beneath the home they thought they knew.
Clare and Dorran may still be alive against all odds, but relief is only temporary. Dorran is sick, and rapidly worsening. Clare fears the only way to save him lies in the mysterious Evandale Research Station, supposedly one of the few remaining human refuges. But the station is three days' journey away, and Clare isn't certain their small group can endure that long.
\nBecause the danger they’re facing comes not only from the ravenous hollow ones . . . but from each other.
\nThis terrible new world has left scars, and only some of them are physical. As Clare fights to protect the most precious people in her life, she begins to realise a horrible truth: Not everyone can be saved. And sometimes the worst monsters wear a human smile.
It begins in Toronto, in the years after the smart drug revolution. Any high school student with a chemjet and internet connection can download recipes and print drugs, or invent them. A seventeen-year-old street girl finds God through a new brain-altering drug called Numinous, used as a sacrament by a new Church that preys on the underclass. But she is arrested and put into detention, and without the drug, commits suicide.
\nLyda Rose, another patient in that detention facility, has a dark secret: she was one of the original scientists who developed the drug. With the help of an ex-government agent and an imaginary, drug-induced doctor, Lyda sets out to find the other three survivors of the five who made the Numinous in a quest to set things right.
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It’s 2001, and the WyldBoyZ are the world’s hottest boy band, and definitely the world’s only genetically engineered human-animal hybrid vocal group. When their producer, Dr. M, is found murdered in his hotel room, the “boyz” become the prime suspects. Was it Bobby the ocelot (“the cute one”), Matt the megabat (“the funny one”), Tim the Pangolin (“the shy one”), Devin the bonobo (“the romantic one”), or Tusk the elephant (“the smart one”)?
\nLas Vegas Detective Luce Delgado has only twenty-four hours to solve a case that goes all the way back to the secret science barge where the WyldBoyZ’ journey first began - a place they used to call home.
When the seeds rained down from deep space, it may have been the first stage of an alien invasion - or something else entirely. How much time do we have left, and do we even understand what timescale to use?
\nAs a slow apocalypse blooms across the Earth, planets and plants, animals and microbes, all live and die and evolve at different scales. Is one human life long enough to unravel the mystery?
\nIn 1933, nine-year-old Stella is left in the care of her grandmother, Motty, in the backwoods of Tennessee. These remote hills of the Smoky Mountains are home to dangerous secrets, and soon after she arrives, Stella wanders into a dark cavern where she encounters the family's personal god, an entity known as the Ghostdaddy.
\nYears later, after a tragic incident that caused her to flee, Stella - now a professional bootlegger - returns for Motty's funeral, and to check on the mysterious ten-year-old girl named Sunny that Motty adopted. Sunny appears innocent enough, but she is more powerful than Stella could imagine - and she's a direct link to Stella's buried past and her family's destructive faith.
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The Telemachus family is known for performing inexplicable feats on talk shows and late-night television. Teddy, a master conman, heads up a clan who possess gifts he only fakes: there's Maureen, who can astral project; Irene, the human lie detector; Frankie, gifted with telekinesis; and Buddy, the clairvoyant. But when, one night, the magic fails to materialise, the family withdraws to Chicago where they live in shame for years.
\nUntil: As they find themselves facing a troika of threats (CIA, mafia, unrelenting skeptic), Matty, grandson of the family patriarch, discovers a bit of the old Telemachus magic in himself. Now, they must put past obstacles behind them and unite like never before.
\nBut will it be enough to bring The Amazing Telemachus Family back to its amazing life?
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JP and Dulin have been the best of friends for decades. When JP finds out his cancer has aggressively returned, Dulin decides it’s the perfect time for one last a week-long bus tour of North America’s Impossibles, the physics-defying glitches and geographic miracles that started cropping up seven years earlier - right after the Announcement that revealed our world to be merely a digital simulacrum. The outing, courtesy of Canterbury Trails Tours, promises the trip of a (not completely real) lifetime in a (not completely deluxe) coach.
\nTheir fellow passengers are 21st-century pilgrims, each of them on the tour for their own reasons. There’s a nun hunting for an absent God, a pregnant influencer determined to make her child too famous to be deleted, a crew of horny octogenarians living each day like it’s their last, and a professor on the run from leather-clad sociopaths who take The Matrix as scripture.
\nEach stop on this trip is stranger than the last - a Tunnel outside of time, a zero gravity Geyser, the compound of motivational-speaking avatar - with everyone barreling toward the tour’s iconic final stop Ghost City, where unbeknownst to our travelers the answer to who is running the simulation may await.
\nWhen We Were Real is a tour-de-force and exploration of what really matters, even in an artificial world.
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The acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist crafts a luminous chronicle of the life and work of the most famous woman in the history of science, and the untold story of the many young women trained in her laboratory who were launched into stellar scientific careers of their own.
\n“Even now, nearly a century after her death, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist most people can name,” writes Dava Sobel at the opening of her shining portrait of the sole Nobel laureate decorated in two separate fields of science - Physics in 1903 with her husband Pierre and Chemistry by herself in 1911. And yet, Sobel makes clear, as brilliant and creative as she was in the laboratory, Marie Curie was equally passionate outside it.
\nGrieving Pierre’s untimely death in 1906, she took his place as professor of physics at the Sorbonne; devotedly raised two brilliant daughters; drove a van she outfitted with x-ray equipment to the front lines of World War I; befriended Albert Einstein and other luminaries of twentieth-century physics; won support from two U.S. presidents; and inspired generations of young women the world over to pursue science as a way of life.
\nAs Sobel did so memorably in her portrait of Galileo through the prism of his daughter, she approaches Marie Curie from a unique angle, narrating her remarkable life of discovery and fame alongside the women who became her legacy - from France’s Marguerite Perey, who discovered the element francium, and Norway’s Ellen Gleditsch, to Mme. Curie’s elder daughter, Irène, winner of the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
\nFor decades the only woman in the room at international scientific gatherings that probed new theories about the interior of the atom, Marie Curie traveled far and wide, despite constant illness, to share the secrets of radioactivity, a term she coined. Her two triumphant tours of the United States won her admirers for her modesty even as she was mobbed at every stop; her daughters, in Ève’s later recollection, “discovered all at once what the retiring woman with whom they had always lived meant to the world.”
\nWith the consummate skill that made bestsellers of Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter, and the appreciation for women in science at the heart of her most recent The Glass Universe, Dava Sobel has crafted a radiant biography and a masterpiece of storytelling, illuminating the life and enduring influence of one of the most consequential figures of our time.
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Cricket is just a shy kid who likes drawing when he first meets Olympia. She's older, more confident; she bullies him into some light vandalism and instantly he's in love. When they're together, they talk about their futures, how they're going to travel the world, the beauty and rapture of art.
\nThen those futures start to arrive in unexpected ways, the years and decades pile up between them, the art world seduces and disappoints and frustrates them. And they have to figure out, again and again, what it is to be an artist, and who and what to love.
\nThis is a wild and beautiful novel about two friends who believe they can change the world, if only they can start their own movement, dodge charlatans, remain open-eyed and open-hearted, avoid going mad, avoid dying young of rare cancers, stay true to their ideals and never tire of beauty. Not easy, but not impossible, either.
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Every day without fail, Travis Devine puts on a cheap suit, grabs his faux-leather briefcase, and boards the 6:20 commuter train to Manhattan, where he works as an entry-level analyst at the city’s most prestigious investment firm. In the mornings, he gazes out the train window at the lavish homes of the uberwealthy, dreaming about joining their ranks. In the evenings, he listens to the fiscal news on his phone, already preparing for the next grueling day in the cutthroat realm of finance. Then one morning Devine’s tedious routine is shattered by an anonymous email: She is dead.
\nSara Ewes, Devine’s coworker and former girlfriend, has been found hanging in a storage room of his office building - presumably a suicide, at least for now - prompting the NYPD to come calling on him. If that wasn’t enough, before the day is out, Devine receives another ominous visit, a confrontation that threatens to dredge up grim secrets from his past in the army unless he participates in a clandestine investigation into his firm.
\nThis treacherous role will take him from the impossibly glittering lives he once saw only through a train window, to the darkest corners of the country’s economic halls of power . . . where something rotten lurks. And apart from this high-stakes conspiracy, there’s a killer out there with their own agenda, and Devine is the bull’s-eye.
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Set in Washington D.C., this fascinating thriller of unparalleled suspense dares to explore an unthinkable abuse of power and criminal conspiracy: a vicious murder involving the US President and a cover-up orchestrated by his zealously loyal Chief of Staff and the Secret Service.
\nBut, unknown to the President and his lackeys, one unlikely witness saw everything.Trapped behind a two-way mirror in a country house in Maryland, Luther Whitney, a professional burglar, witnesses an event that destroys his faith in justice.
\nBy the time he escapes, pursued by two Secret Service agents, a young woman has been sexually assaulted, then shot dead. And a breathtaking cover-up has been set in motion.
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Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a racially-charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully-accused Black defendants in this courtroom drama.
\nJack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism, until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with brutally killing an elderly and wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills may not be enough to prevail in a case where the odds are already stacked against both him and his client. And he quickly finds himself out of his depth when he realises that what is at stake is far greater than the outcome of a murder trial.
\nDesiree DuBose is a Black lawyer from Chicago who has devoted her life to furthering the causes of justice and equality for everyone. She comes to Freeman County and enters a fractious and unwieldy partnership with Lee in a legal battle against the best prosecutor in the Commonwealth. Yet DuBose is also aware that powerful outside forces are at work to blunt the victories achieved by the Civil Rights era.
\nLee and DuBose could not be more dissimilar. On their own, neither one can stop the prosecution’s deliberate march towards a guilty verdict and the electric chair. But together, the pair fight for what once seemed impossible: a chance for a fair trial and true justice.
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Welcome to THE CAMEL CLUB.
\nExisting at the fringes of Washington, D.C., the Club consists of four eccentric members. Led by a mysterious man known as \"Oliver Stone,\" they study conspiracy theories, current events, and the machinations of government to discover the \"truth\" behind the country's actions.
\nTheir efforts bear little fruit-until the group witnesses a shocking murder . . . and become embroiled in an astounding, far-reaching conspiracy. Now the Club must join forces with a Secret Service agent to confront one of the most chilling spectacles ever to take place on American soil-an event that may trigger the ultimate war between two different worlds. And all that stands in the way of this apocalypse is five unexpected heroes.
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Disillusioned journalist Tom Langdon must get from Washington to LA in time for Christmas. Forced to take the train across the country because of a slight 'misunderstanding' at airport security, he begins a journey of self-discovery and rude awakenings, mysterious goings-on and thrilling adventures, screwball escapades and holiday magic.
\nHe has no idea that the locomotives pulling him across America will actually take him into the rugged terrain of his own heart, where he will rediscover people's essential goodness and someone very special he believed he had lost.
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Oliver Stone and his Camel Club are in a race to stop a man who is determined to auction off America to the highest bidder: Roger Seagraves is selling America to her enemies, one devastating secret at a time.
\nOn a local level, Annabelle Conroy, the most gifted con artist of her generation, is becoming a bit of a Robin Hood as she plots a monumental scam against one of the most ruthless businessmen on earth.
\nAs the killings on both fronts mount, the Camel Club fights the most deadly foes they've ever faced.
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FBI Agent Atlee Pine's search for her sister Mercy clashes with military investigator John Puller's high-stakes case, leading them both deep into a global conspiracy - from which neither of them will escape unscathed.
For many long years, Atlee Pine was tormented by uncertainty after her twin sister, Mercy, was abducted at the age of six and never seen again. Now, just as Atlee is pressured to end her investigation into Mercy's disappearance, she finally gets her most promising breakthrough yet: the identity of her sister's kidnapper, Ito Vincenzo.
With time running out, Atlee and her assistant Carol Blum race to Vincenzo's last known location in Trenton, New Jersey - and unknowingly stumble straight into John Puller's case, blowing his arrest during a drug ring investigation involving a military installation.
Stunningly, Pine and Puller's joint investigation uncovers a connection between Vincenzo's family and a breathtaking scheme that strikes at the very heart of global democracy. Peeling back the layers of deceit, lies and cover-ups, Atlee finally discovers the truth about what happened to Mercy. And that truth will shock Pine to her very core.
Evan Waller is a monster . . .
He has built a fortune from his willingness to buy and sell anything . . . and anyone. In search of new opportunities, Waller has just begun a new business venture: one that could lead to millions of deaths all over the globe.
On his trail is Shaw, the mysterious operative from The Whole Truth, who has tracked Waller to Provence and must prevent him from closing his latest deal. But someone else is pursuing Waller: Reggie Campion, an agent for a secret vigilante group headquartered in a musty old English estate-and she has an agenda of her own.
Hunting the same man and unaware of each other's mission, Shaw and Reggie will be caught in a deadly duel of nerves and wits.
Oliver Stone and the Camel Club return in David Baldacci's most astonishing thriller yet. Known by his alias, \"Oliver Stone,\" John Carr is the most wanted man in America. With two pulls of the trigger, the men who destroyed Stone's life and kept him in the shadows were finally silenced.
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But his freedom comes at a steep price: The assassinations he carried out prompt the highest levels of the U. S. government to unleash a massive manhunt. Yet behind the scenes, master spy Macklin Hayes is playing a very personal game of cat and mouse. He, more than anyone else, wants John Carr dead. With their friend and unofficial leader in hiding, the members of the Camel Club risk everything to save him.
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Now as the hunters close in, Stone's flight from the demons of his past will take him from the power corridors of Washington, D.C., to the coal-mining town of Divine, Virginia-and into a world every bit as bloody and lethal as the one he left behind.
It’s the eve of 1953, and Aloysius Archer is in Los Angeles to ring in the New Year with an old friend, aspiring actress Liberty Callahan, when their evening is interrupted by an acquaintance of Callahan’s: Eleanor Lamb, a screenwriter in dire straits.
\nAfter a series of increasingly chilling events - mysterious phone calls, the same blue car loitering outside her house, and a bloody knife left in her sink - Eleanor fears that her life is in danger, and she wants to hire Archer to look into the matter. Archer suspects that Eleanor knows more than she’s saying, but before he can officially take on her case, a dead body turns up inside of Eleanor’s home . . . and Eleanor herself disappears.
\nMissing client or not, Archer is dead set on finding both the murderer and Eleanor. With the help of Callahan and his partner Willie Dash, he launches an investigation that will take him from mob-ridden Las Vegas to the glamorous world of Hollywood to the darkest corners of Los Angeles - a city in which beautiful faces are attached to cutthroat schemers, where the cops can be more corrupt than the criminals . . . and where the powerful people responsible for his client’s disappearance will kill without a moment’s hesitation if they catch Archer on their trail.
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The 6:20 Man is back, dropped by his handlers into a small coastal town in Maine to solve the murder of a CIA agent who knew America’s dirtiest secrets - can Travis Devine uncover the truth before his time runs out?
\nWhen CIA operative Jenny Silkwell is murdered in rural Maine, government officials have immediate concerns over national security. Her laptop and phone were full of state secrets that, in the wrong hands, endanger the lives of countless operatives. In need of someone who can solve the murder quickly and retrieve the missing information, the U.S. government knows just the chameleon they can call on.
\nEx-Army Ranger Travis Devine spent his time in the military preparing to take on any scenario, followed by his short-lived business career chasing shadows in the deepest halls of power, so his analytical mind makes him particularly well-suited for complex, high-stakes tasks. Taking down the world’s largest financial conspiracy proved his value, and in comparison, this case looks straightforward. Except small towns hold secrets and Devine finds himself an outsider again.
\nDevine must ingratiate himself with locals who have trusted each other their whole lives, and who distrust outsiders just as much. Dak, Jenny’s brother, who’s working to revitalize the town. Earl, the retired lobsterman who found Jenny’s body. And Alex, Jenny’s sister with a dark past of her own. As Devine gets to know the residents of Putnam, Maine, answers seem to appear and then transform into more questions. There’s a long history of secrets and those who will stop at nothing to keep them from being exposed. Leaving Devine with no idea who he can trust . . . and who wants him dead.
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Will Robie and Jessica Reel are two of the most lethal people alive. They're the ones the government calls in when the utmost secrecy is required to take out those who plot violence and mass destruction against the United States. And through every mission, one man has always had their backs: their handler, code-named Blue Man.
But now, Blue Man is missing.
Last seen in rural Colorado, Blue Man had taken a rare vacation to go fly fishing in his hometown when he disappeared off the grid. With no communications since, the team can't help but fear the worst.
Sent to investigate, Robie and Reel arrive in the small town of Grand to discover that it has its own share of problems. A stagnant local economy and a woefully understaffed police force have made this small community a magnet for crime, drugs, and a growing number of militant fringe groups.
But lying in wait in Grand is an even more insidious and sweeping threat, one that may shake the very foundations of America. And when Robie and Reel find themselves up against an adversary with superior firepower and a home-court advantage, they'll be lucky if they make it out alive, with or without Blue Man . . .
It's a prison unlike any other. Military discipline rules. Its security systems are unmatched. None of its prisoners dream of escaping. They know it's impossible.
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Until now.
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John Puller's older brother, Robert, was convicted of treason and national security crimes. His inexplicable escape from prison makes him the most wanted criminal in the country. Some in the government believe that John Puller represents their best chance at capturing Robert alive, and so Puller takes on the burden of bringing his brother in to face justice.
\nBut Puller quickly discovers that there are others pursuing his brother, who only see Robert as a traitor and are unconcerned if he survives. Puller is in turn pushed into an uneasy, fraught partnership with another agent, who may have an agenda of her own.
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They dig more deeply into the case together, and Puller finds that not only are her allegiances unclear, but that there are troubling details about his brother's conviction . . . and that someone is out there who doesn't want the truth to ever come to light. As the nation-wide manhunt for Robert grows more urgent, Puller's masterful skills as an investigator and strength as a fighter may not be enough to save his brother-or himself.
Something sinister is going on in Baronville. The rust belt town has seen four bizarre murders in the space of two weeks. Cryptic clues left at the scenes - obscure bible verses, odd symbols - have the police stumped.
Amos Decker and his FBI colleague Alex Jamison are in Baronville visiting Alex's sister and her family. It's a bleak place: a former mill and mining town with a crumbling economy and rampant opioid addiction. Decker has only been there a few hours when he stumbles on a horrific double murder scene.
Then the next killing hits sickeningly close to home. And with the lives of people he cares about suddenly hanging in the balance, Decker begins to realize that the recent string of deaths may be only one small piece of a much larger scheme - with consequences that will reach far beyond Baronville.
Decker, with his singular talents, may be the only one who can crack this bizarre case. Only this time - when one mistake could cost him everything - Decker finds that his previously infallible memory may not be so trustworthy after all . . .
Welcome to Wormwood: a place where curiosity is discouraged and no one has ever left.
Until one girl, Vega Jane, discovers a map that suggests a mysterious world beyond the walls. A world with possibilities and creatures beyond her imagining.
But she will be forced to fight for her freedom. And unravelling the truth may cost Vega her life.
It began with what seemed like an ordinary children's birthday party. Friends and family gathered to celebrate. There were balloons and cake, games and gifts.
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This party, however, was far from ordinary. It was held at Camp David, the presidential retreat. And it ended with a daring kidnapping . . . which immediately turned into a national security nightmare.
Sean King and Michelle Maxwell were not looking to become involved. As former Secret Service agents turned private investigators, they had no reason to be. The FBI doesn't want them interfering. But years ago, Sean King saved the First Lady's husband, then a senator, from political disaster. Now, Sean is the one person the First Lady trusts, and she presses Sean and Michelle into the desperate search to rescue the abducted child.
With Michelle still battling her own demons, and forces aligned on all sides against her and Sean, the two are pushed to the absolute limit. In the race to save an innocent victim, the line between friend and foe will become impossible to define . . . or defend.
Amos Decker witnesses a murder just outside FBI headquarters. A man shoots a woman execution style on a crowded sidewalk, then turns the gun on himself.
Even with Decker's extraordinary powers of observation and deduction, the killing is baffling. Decker and his team can find absolutely no connection between the shooter - a family man with a successful consulting business - and his victim, a schoolteacher. Nor is there a hint of any possible motive for the attack.
Enter Harper Brown. An agent of the Defense Intelligence Agency, she orders Decker to back off the case. The murder is part of an open DIA investigation, one so classified that Decker and his team aren't cleared for it.
But they learn that the DIA believes solving the murder is now a matter of urgent national security. Critical information may have been leaked to a hostile government - or, worse, an international terrorist group - and an attack may be imminent.
Decker's never been one to follow the rules, especially with the stakes so high. Forced into an uneasy alliance with Agent Brown, Decker remains laser focused on only one goal: solving the case before it's too late.
Criminal investigator John Puller is drawn closer to home when his aunt is found dead in her house in Paradise, Florida. The local police have ruled the death as an accident, but Puller finds evidence to suggest that she may well have been murdered.
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On the surface the town lives up to its name, but as Puller digs deeper he realizes that this town and its inhabitants are more akin to Hell than Paradise. His belief is confirmed as evidence of strange and inexplicable events come to light. And when Puller learns the truth about what is happening in this once sleepy town, he knows that his discoveries will impact far wider than Paradise.
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The 1950s are on the horizon, and Archer is in dire need of a fresh start after a nearly fatal detour in Poca City. So Archer hops on a bus and begins the long journey out west to California, where rumor has it there is money to be made if you’re hard-working, lucky, criminal - or all three.
Along the way, Archer stops in Reno, where a stroke of fortune delivers him a wad of cash and an eye-popping blood-red 1939 Delahaye convertible - plus a companion for the final leg of the journey, an aspiring actress named Liberty Callahan who is planning to try her luck in Hollywood. But when the two arrive in Bay Town, California, Archer quickly discovers that the hordes of people who flocked there seeking fame and fortune landed in a false paradise that instead caters to their worst addictions and fears.
Archer’s first stop is a P.I. office where he is hoping to apprentice with a legendary private eye and former FBI agent named Willie Dash. He lands the job, and immediately finds himself in the thick of a potential scandal: a blackmail case involving a wealthy well-connected politician running for mayor that soon spins into something even more sinister.
As bodies begin falling, Archer and Dash must infiltrate the world of brothels, gambling dens, drug operations, and long-hidden secrets, descending into the rotten bones of a corrupt town that is selling itself as the promised land - but might actually be the road to perdition, and Archer’s final resting place.
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It’s been over twenty years since government assassin Will Robie left his hometown in Mississippi. Now a trained killer used to taking down enemies of the state, he was once remembered by the local residents as a wild sports star and girl-magnet. He left a lot of hearts broken, and a lot of people angry.
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Now he’s back. His estranged father, Dan, who is the local judge, has been arrested for murder and Robie wonders if it's time to try to heal old wounds. A lot of bad blood has flowed between father and son, but Robie's fellow agent, Jessica Reel, persuades him to stick around and confront his demons.
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Then another murder changes everything, and stone-cold killer Robie will finally have to come to grips with his toughest assignment of all. His family.
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John Carr, aka Oliver Stone-once the most skilled assassin his country ever had-stands in Lafayette Park in front of the White House, perhaps for the last time. The president has personally requested that Stone serve his country again on a high-risk, covert mission. Though he's fought for decades to leave his past career behind, Stone has no choice but to say yes.
Then Stone's mission changes drastically before it even begins. It's the night of a state dinner honoring the British prime minister. As he watches the prime minister's motorcade leave the White House that evening, a bomb is detonated in Lafayette Park, an apparent terrorist attack against both leaders. It's in the chaotic aftermath that Stone takes on a new, more urgent assignment: find those responsible for the bombing.
British MI-6 agent Mary Chapman becomes Stone's partner in the search for the unknown attackers. But their opponents are elusive, capable, and increasingly lethal; worst of all, it seems that the park bombing may just have been the opening salvo in their plan. With nowhere else to turn, Stone enlists the help of the only people he knows he can trust: the Camel Club. Yet that may be a big mistake.
In the shadowy worlds of politics and intelligence, there is no one you can really trust. Nothing is really what it seems to be. And Hell's Corner truly lives up to its name. This may be Oliver Stone's and the Camel Club's last stand.
Will Robie is a master of killing.
\nA highly skilled assassin, Robie is the man the U.S. government calls on to eliminate the worst of the worst-enemies of the state, monsters committed to harming untold numbers of innocent victims.
\nNo one else can match Robie's talents as a hitman . . . no one, except Jessica Reel. A fellow assassin, equally professional and dangerous, Reel is every bit as lethal as Robie. And now, she's gone rogue, turning her gun sights on other members of their agency.
\nTo stop one of their own, the government looks again to Will Robie. His mission: bring in Reel, dead or alive. Only a killer can catch another killer, they tell him.
\nBut as Robie pursues Reel, he quickly finds that there is more to her betrayal than meets the eye. Her attacks on the agency conceal a larger threat, a threat that could send shockwaves through the U.S. government and around the world.
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He's copying famous serial killers and the game has just begun.
\nA woman is found murdered in the woods. It seems like a simple case but it soon escalates into a terrible nightmare. Someone is replicating the killing styles of the most infamous murderers of all time. No one knows this criminal's motives . . . or who will die next.
\nTwo ex-Secret Service agents, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, have been hired to defend a man's innocence in a burglary involving an aristocratic, dysfunctional family. Then a series of secrets leads the partners right into the frantic hunt that is confounding even the FBI.
\nNow King and Maxwell are playing the Hour Game, uncovering one horrifying revelation after another and putting their lives in danger. For the closer they get to the truth, the closer they get to the most shocking surprise of all.
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Back in DC after successful missions in Edinburgh and Tangier, assassin Will Robie sees his latest assignment, to eliminate a US government employee, go badly wrong. What had she done, or what did she know? Robie is now a wanted man. But it seems that he's not the only one on the run.
\nYoung teenager Julie Getty is devastated by the inexplicable murder of her parents in their home. Who wanted them dead, and why, is a mystery. But Julie is smart enough to believe that their killer will come after her. Robie and Julie meet when he saves her from an attempt on her life as they were trying to leave town.
\nThe police investigating the hit start to take an interest in Robie. He's particularly attracting the interest of Special Agent Nicole Vance, who believes that the two cases are connected. Robie finds himself in a dangerous position as he is tasked to investigate a crime at which he was present.
\nDoes he need to change sides to save lives - including his own?
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Vega Jane was always told no one could leave the town of Wormwood. She was told there was nothing outside but the Quag, a wilderness filled with danger and death. And she believed it - until the night she stumbled across a secret that proved that everything she knew was a lie.
\nNow just one thing stands between Vega Jane and freedom - the Quag. In order to leave Wormwood and discover the truth about her world, Vega and her best friend Delph must find a way to make it across a terrifying land of bloodthirsty creatures and sinister magic. But the Quag is worse than Vega Jane's darkest imagining. It's a living, breathing prison designed to keep enemies out and the villagers of Wormwood in.
\nThe Quag will throw everything at Vega Jane. It will try to break her. It will try to kill her. And survival might come at a price not even Vega Jane is willing to pay.
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It seems at first like a simple, tragic story. Tyler Wingo, a teenage boy, learns the awful news that his father, a soldier, was killed in action in Afghanistan. Then the extraordinary happens: Tyler receives a communication from his father . . . after his supposed death.
\nTyler hires Sean and Michelle to solve the mystery surrounding his father. But their investigation quickly leads to deeper, more troubling questions. Could Tyler's father really still be alive? What was his true mission? Could Tyler be the next target?
\nSean and Michelle soon realise that they've stumbled on to something bigger and more treacherous than anyone could have imagined. And as their hunt for the truth leads them relentlessly to the highest levels of power and to uncovering the most clandestine of secrets, Sean and Michelle are determined to help and protect Tyler - though they may pay for it with their lives.
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Web London roars into a dark alley one night with his FBI Hostage Rescue Team. Seconds later, the team is ambushed and every man is dead - except Web. As the FBI conducts their investigation, the suspicion surrounding Web deepens.
\nNow, he needs help from an unlikely ally in his desperate search for the killer of his friends, and finds himself up against a force determined to finish the job that began in the alley - killing the seventh and sole surviving member of Charlie Team, Web London.
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Convicted murderer Melvin Mars is counting down the last hours before his execution - for the violent killing of his parents twenty years earlier - when he's granted an unexpected reprieve. Another man has confessed to the crime.
\nAmos Decker, newly hired on an FBI special task force, takes an interest in Mars's case after discovering the striking similarities to his own life: Both men were talented football players with promising careers cut short by tragedy. Both men's families were brutally murdered. And in both cases, another suspect came forward, years after the killing, to confess to the crime. A suspect who may or may not have been telling the truth.
\nThe confession has the potential to make Melvin Mars - guilty or not - a free man. Who wants Mars out of prison? And why now?
\nBut when a member of Decker's team disappears, it becomes clear that something much larger - and more sinister - than just one convicted criminal's life hangs in the balance. Decker will need all of his extraordinary brainpower to stop an innocent man from being executed.
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Ever since her twin sister was abducted by a notorious serial killer at age five, Atlee has spent her life hunting down those who hurt others. And she’s the best at it. She could be one of the Bureau’s top criminal profilers, if she didn’t prefer catching criminals in the vast wilderness of the West to climbing the career ladder in the D.C. office. Her chosen mission is a lonesome one - but that suits her just fine.
Now, Atlee is called in to investigate the mutilated carcass of a mule found in the Grand Canyon - and hopefully, solve the disappearance of its rider. But this isn’t the only recent disappearance. In fact, it may be just the first clue, the key to unraveling a rash of other similar missing persons cases in the canyon . . .
Things are changing for Decker. He’s in crisis following the suicide of a close friend and receipt of a letter concerning a personal issue which could change his life forever. Together with the prospect of working with a new partner, Frederica White, Amos knows that this case will take all of his special skills to solve.
\nAs darkness falls, evil comes to light . . .
\nJudge Julia Cummins seemingly had no enemies, and there was no forced entry to her property. Close friends and neighbours in the community apparently heard nothing, and Cummins’ distraught ex-husband, Barry, and teenage son, Tyler, both have strong alibis. Decker must first find the answer to why the judge felt the need for a bodyguard, and the meaning behind the strange calling card left by the killer.
\nSomeone has decided it’s payback time.
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Amos Decker's life changed forever - twice.
The first time was on the gridiron. A big, towering athlete, he was the only person from his hometown of Burlington ever to go pro. But his career ended before it had a chance to begin. On his very first play, a violent helmet-to-helmet collision knocked him off the field for good, and left him with an improbable side effect--he can never forget anything.
The second time was at home nearly two decades later. Now a police detective, Decker returned from a stakeout one evening and entered a nightmare--his wife, young daughter, and brother-in-law had been murdered.
His family destroyed, their killer's identity as mysterious as the motive behind the crime, and unable to forget a single detail from that horrible night, Decker finds his world collapsing around him. He leaves the police force, loses his home, and winds up on the street, taking piecemeal jobs as a private investigator when he can.
But over a year later, a man turns himself in to the police and confesses to the murders. At the same time a horrific event nearly brings Burlington to its knees, and Decker is called back in to help with this investigation. Decker also seizes his chance to learn what really happened to his family that night. To uncover the stunning truth, he must use his remarkable gifts and confront the burdens that go along with them. He must endure the memories he would much rather forget. And he may have to make the ultimate sacrifice.
For her entire life, FBI agent Atlee Pine has been searching for her twin sister, Mercy, who was abducted at the age of six and never seen again. Mercy’s disappearance left behind a damaged family that later shattered beyond repair when Atlee’s parents inexplicably abandoned her.
\nNow, after a perilous investigation that nearly proved fatal, Atlee has finally discovered not only the reason behind her parents’ abandonment and Mercy’s kidnapping, but also the most promising breakthrough yet: proof that Mercy survived her abduction and then escaped her captors many years ago.
\nThough Atlee is tantalizingly close to her family at last, the final leg of her long road to Mercy will be the most treacherous yet. Mercy left at least one dead body behind before fleeing her captors years before. Atlee has no idea if her sister is still alive, and if so, how she has been surviving all this time. When the truth is finally revealed, Atlee Pine will face the greatest danger yet, and it may well cost her everything.
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FBI Agent Atlee Pine's life was never the same after her twin sister Mercy was kidnapped - and likely killed - thirty years ago. After a lifetime of torturous uncertainty, Atlee's unresolved anger finally gets the better of her on the job, and she finds she has to deal with the demons of her past if she wants to remain with the FBI.
Atlee and her assistant Carol Blum head back to Atlee's rural hometown in Georgia to see what they can uncover about the traumatic night Mercy was taken and Pine was almost killed. But soon after Atlee begins her investigation, a local woman is found ritualistically murdered, her face covered with a wedding veil - and the first killing is quickly followed by a second bizarre murder.
Atlee is determined to continue her search for answers, but now she must also set her sights on finding a potential serial killer before another victim is claimed. But in a small town full of secrets - some of which could answer the questions that have plagued Atlee her entire life - digging deeper into the past could be more dangerous than she realises . . .
John Puller is the US Army's most tenacious investigator, but he is not equipped to face the truth about his mother's disappearance thirty years ago. New evidence has come to light suggesting that Puller's father - a highly decorated army veteran - may have murdered his wife.
\nWhen Puller's friend, intelligence operative Veronica Knox, arrives on the scene, he realises that there is far more to this case than he first thought. Puller knows that nothing will prevent him from discovering what really happened to his mother - even if it means proving that his father is a killer.
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Frank Becker is a highly sought after, expert assassin. When Becker takes a mysterious job, he has no idea that it will force him to delve deeply into his own past. Undeterred by obstacles he is determined to complete his assignment. But he may realise too late that his success will permanently alter his future.
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It's 1949. When war veteran Aloysius Archer is released from Carderock Prison, he is sent to Poca City on parole with a short list of do's and a much longer list of don'ts: do report regularly to his parole officer, don't go to bars, certainly don't drink alcohol, do get a job - and don't ever associate with loose women.
\nThe small town quickly proves more complicated and dangerous than Archer's years serving in the war or his time in jail. Within a single night, his search for gainful employment - and a stiff drink - leads him to a local bar, where he is hired for what seems like a simple job: to collect a debt owed to a powerful local businessman, Hank Pittleman.
Soon Archer discovers that recovering the debt won't be so easy. The indebted man has a furious grudge against Hank and refuses to pay; Hank's clever mistress has her own designs on Archer; and both Hank and Archer's stern parole officer, Miss Crabtree, are keeping a sharp eye on him.
When a murder takes place right under Archer's nose, police suspicions rise against the ex-convict, and Archer realizes that the crime could send him right back to prison . . . if he doesn't use every skill in his arsenal to track down the real killer.
It's almost Christmas, but there is no joy in the house of terminally ill Jack and his family. With only a short time left to live, he spends his last days preparing to say goodbye to his devoted wife, Lizzie, and their three children.
\nThen, unthinkably, tragedy strikes Lizzie is killed in a car accident. With no one able to care for them, the children are separated from each other and sent to live with family members around the country. Just when all seems lost, Jack begins to recover in a miraculous turn of events. He rises from what should have been his deathbed, determined to bring his fractured family back together.
\nStruggling to rebuild their lives after Lizzie's death, he reunites everyone at Lizzie's childhood home on the oceanfront in South Carolina. And there, over one unforgettable summer, Jack will begin to learn to love again, and he and his children will learn how to become a family once more.
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Amos Decker and his FBI partner Alex Jamison are visiting his hometown of Burlington, Ohio, when he's approached by an unfamiliar man. But he instantly recognises the man's name: Meryl Hawkins. He's the first person Decker ever arrested for murder back when he was a young detective.
\nThough a dozen years in prison have left Hawkins unrecognisably aged and terminally ill, one thing hasn't changed: He maintains he never committed the murders. Could it be possible that Decker made a mistake all those years ago? As he starts digging into the old case, Decker finds a startling connection to a new crime that he may be able to prevent, if only he can put the pieces together quickly enough . . .
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When lobbyist Faith Lockhart stumbles upon a corruption scheme at the highest levels of government, she becomes a dangerous witness who the most powerful men in the world will go to any lengths to silence.
\nIn a secluded house not far from Washington, D.C., the FBI is interviewing one of the most important witnesses it has ever had: a young woman named Faith Lockhart. For Faith has done too much, knows too much, and will tell too much.
\nFeared by some of the most powerful men in the world, Faith has been targeted to die. But when a private investigator walks into the middle of the assassination attempt, the shooting suddenly goes wrong, and an FBI agent is killed. Now Faith Lockhart must flee for her life - with her story, her deadly secret, and an unknown man she's forced to trust . . .
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Former secret service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell must overcome their personal demons to solve two new mysteries.
\nRealising that Maxwell is teetering on the brink of self-destruction, King arranges therapy for his reluctant partner. But is the hospital hiding its own disturbing secrets?
\nWhen a physicist dies near a secret compound of scientists and cartographers, funded by an anonymous but powerful group, a down-on-his-luck King takes the case.
\nThe body was found opposite the compound, directly across the York River, near Camp Peary - a sinister CIA training ground. And they’re watching King’s investigation.
\nIs Maxwell right in her suspicions of foul play in the hospital? And with both the FBI and CIA breathing down King’s neck, can he discover the truth in time?
\n\n
As a young conscripted soldier, Rufus Harms was jailed for the brutal killing of a schoolgirl. Yet, after twenty-five hard years of incarceration, a stray letter from the US army reveals new facts about the night of the murder - and the evil secret shared by some of Washington's most powerful men. Fearful for his life, Harms seizes his one chance to escape. But within hours the only people who knew about the letter have been hunted down and eliminated.
\nAs the unknown assassins close in on Harms, ex-cop turned criminal attorney John Fiske is drawn into the web. His younger brother is already a victim, the woman he loves is under threat. For the truth and the chance of a future, he will never give up the fight. But for both men time is already running out. Their enemy is buried deep within the system and completely ruthless when protecting the truth . . .
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Mickey Gibson, single mother and former detective, leads a hectic life similar to that of many moms: juggling the demands of her two small children with the tasks of her job working remotely for ProEye, a global investigation company that hunts down wealthy tax and credit cheats.
\nWhen Mickey gets a call from a colleague named Arlene Robinson, she thinks nothing of Arlene’s unusual request for her to go inventory the vacant home of an arms dealer who cheated ProEye’s clients and fled. That is, until she arrives at the mansion to discover a dead body in a secret room - and that nothing is as it seems.
\nNot only does the arms dealer not exist but the murder victim turns out to be Harry Lancaster, a man with mob ties who used to be in Witness Protection. What’s more, no one named Arlene Robinson works at ProEye.
\nIn the blink of an eye, Gibson has become a prime suspect in a murder investigation - and now her job is also on the line until she proves that she was set up. Before long, Gibson is locked in a battle of wits with a brilliant woman with no name, a hidden past, and unknown motives - whose end game is as mysterious as it is deadly.
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Edgar Roy-an alleged serial killer held in a secure, fortress-like Federal Supermax facility-is awaiting trial. He faces almost certain conviction. Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are called in by Roy's attorney, Sean's old friend and mentor Ted Bergin, to help work the case. But their investigation is derailed before it begins-en route to their first meeting with Bergin, Sean and Michelle find him murdered.
It is now up to them to ask the questions no one seems to want answered: Is Roy a killer? Who murdered Bergin? With help from some surprising allies, they continue to pursue the case. But the more they dig into Roy's past, the more they encounter obstacles, half-truths, dead-ends, false friends, and escalating threats from every direction. Their persistence puts them on a collision course with the highest levels of the government and the darkest corners of power. In a terrifying confrontation that will push Sean and Michelle to their limits, the duo may be permanently parted.
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When something distracts Secret Agent Sean King for a split second, it costs him his career and presidential candidate, Clyde Ritter, his life. But what stole his attention? And why was Ritter shot?
\nEight years later Michelle Maxwell is on the fast track through the ranks of the Secret Service when her career is stopped short: presidential candidate John Bruno is abducted from a funeral home while under her protection.
\nThe similarity between the two cases drives Michelle to re-open investigations into the Ritter fiasco and join forces with attractive ex-agent King. The pair are determined to get to the bottom of what happened in those critical moments.
\nMeanwhile, high-ranking members of the legal system and key witnesses from both cases are going missing. King is losing friends, colleagues and clients fast and his ex-lover, Joan Dillinger, is playing curious games - she wants Sean back, but she also owes him for something . . .
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Oliver Stone, the leader of the mysterious group that calls itself the Camel Club, is both feared and respected by those who've crossed his path. Keeping a vigilant watch over our leaders in Washington D.C., the Camel Club has won over some allies, but it has also earned formidable enemies-including those in power who will do anything to prevent Stone and his friends from uncovering the hidden, secret work of the government.
Annabelle Conroy, an honorary member of the Camel Club, is also the greatest con artist of her generation. She has swindled forty million dollars from casino king Jerry Bagger, the man who murdered her mother. Now he's hot on her trail with only one goal in mind: Annabelle's death. But as Stone and the Camel Club circle the wagons to protect Annabelle, a new opponent, who makes Bagger's menace pale by comparison, suddenly arises.
One by one, men from Stone's shadowy past are turning up dead. Behind this slaughter stands one man: Harry Finn. To almost all who know him, Finn is a doting father and loving husband who uses his skills behind the scenes to keep our nation safe. But the other face of Harry Finn is that of an unstoppable killer who inevitably sets his lethal bull's-eye on Oliver Stone. And with Finn, Stone may well have met his match.
As Annabelle and the Camel Club fight for their lives, the twists and turns whipsaw, leading to a finale that is as explosive as it is shattering. And when buried secrets
are at last violently resurrected, the members of the Camel Club left standing
will be changed forever.
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Fourteen-year-old Charlie Matters is up to no good, but for a very good reason. Without parents, peerage, or merit, ducking school but barred from actual work, he steals what he needs, living day-to-day until he’s old enough to enlist to fight the Germans. After barely surviving the Blitz, Charlie knows there’s no telling when a falling bomb might end his life.
\nFifteen-year-old Molly Wakefield has just returned to a nearly unrecognizable London. One of millions of people to have been evacuated to the countryside via “Operation Pied Piper,” Molly has been away from her parents - from her home - for nearly five years. Her return, however, is not the homecoming she’d hoped for as she’s confronted by a devastating reality: both her parents are gone.
\nWithout guardians and stability, Charlie and Molly find an unexpected ally and protector in Ignatius Oliver, and solace at his book shop, The Book Keep, where A book a day keeps the bombs away. Mourning the recent loss of his wife, Ignatius forms a kinship with both children, and in each other - over the course of the greatest armed conflict the world had ever seen - they rediscover the spirit of family each has lost.
\nBut Charlie’s escapades in the city have not gone unnoticed, and someone’s been following Molly since she returned to London. And Ignatius is still reeling from a secret Imogen long kept from him while she was alive - something so shocking it resulted in her death, and his life being turned upside down.
\nAs bombs continue to bear down on the city, Charlie, Molly, and Ignatius learn that while the perils of war rage on, their coming together and trusting one another may be the only way for them to survive.
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The President knows it's a perilous, high-risk assignment. If he gives the order, he has the opportunity to take down a global menace, once and for all. If the mission fails, he would face certain impeachment, and the threats against the nation would multiply. So the president turns to the one team that can pull off the impossible: Will Robie and his partner, Jessica Reel.
\nTogether, Robie and Reel's talents as assassins are unmatched. But there are some in power who don't trust the pair. They doubt their willingness to follow orders. And they will do anything to see that the two assassins succeed, but that they do not survive.
\nAs they prepare for their mission, Reel faces a personal crisis that could well lead old enemies right to her doorstep, resurrecting the ghosts of her earlier life and bringing stark danger to all those close to her. And all the while, Robie and Reel are stalked by a new adversary: an unknown and unlikely assassin, a woman who has trained her entire life to kill, and who has her own list of targets - a list that includes Will Robie and Jessica Reel.
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When Dwayne and Alice Odom are killed, the police report states clearly that it was a drug overdose. So why is their daughter, who was there when they died, claiming that’s not the truth?
\nBetsy Odom doesn’t trust the police but, when she finds herself in the FBI’s custody after her parents’ deaths, she knows she has to be careful. Her uncle wants to adopt her and, as he is a very rich and powerful man, she wants to let him. His criminal connections, however, mean the authorities aren’t so sure.
\nEnter Travis Devine. Trying to escape a skilled predator who wants him dead, Devine finds himself as Betsy’s bodyguard. But when an informant is found murdered, Devine knows this job is perhaps even more dangerous than the one he’s running from . . . and the true enemy may be on his side.
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Jason Archer is a young executive at a world-leading technology conglomerate. Determined to give his wife and daughter the best of everything, he enters into a deadly game of cat and mouse.
\nWhen a plane plummets into the Virginia countryside, Sidney Archer is devastated by the loss of her husband. But then she learns the job interview Jason was flying to never existed, and everything changes. Suddenly there is no one she can trust.
\nA suspicious air crash investigation team, a tenacious veteran FBI agent and the threads of a sinister plot all beg the question: what really happened to Jason Archer?
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When Amos Decker and his FBI colleague Alex Jamison are called to London, North Dakota, they instantly sense that the thriving fracking town is ripe for trouble. The promise of a second gold rush has attracted an onslaught of newcomers all hoping for a windfall, and the community is growing faster than houses can be built. The sudden boom has also brought a slew of problems with it, including drugs, property crimes, prostitution - and now murder.
\nDecker and Jamison are ordered to investigate the death of a young woman named Irene Cramer, whose body was expertly autopsied and then dumped in the open - which is only the beginning of the oddities surrounding the case. As Decker and Jamison dig into Irene's life, they are shocked to discover that the woman who walked the streets by night as a prostitute was a teacher for a local religious sect by day - a sect operating on land once owned by a mysterious government facility that looms over the entire community.
\nLondon is a town replete with ruthless business owners, shady government officials, and religious outsiders, all determined to keep their secrets from coming out. When other murders occur, Decker will need all of his extraordinary memory and detective skills, and the assistance of a surprising ally, to root out a killer and the forces behind Cramer's death . . . before the boom town explodes.
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Nicolas Creel is a man on a mission. He heads up the world's largest defense contractor, The Ares Corporation. Dick Pender is the man Creel retains to \"perception manage\" his company to even more riches by manipulating international conflicts. But Creel may have an even grander plan in mind.
Shaw, a man with no first name and a truly unique past, has a different agenda. Reluctantly doing the bidding of a secret multi-national intelligence agency, he travels the globe to keep it safe and at peace.
Willing to do anything to get back to the top of her profession, Katie James is a journalist who has just gotten the break of a lifetime: the chance to interview the sole survivor of a massacre that has left every nation stunned.
In this terrifying, global thriller, these characters' lives will collide head-on as a series of events is set in motion that could change the world as we know it.
This is it. Vega Jane’s time. She’s been lied to her whole life, so she breaks away from Wormwood, the only home she’s ever known, in search of the truth. She battles horrors to fight her way across the Quag with her best friend, Delph, and her mysterious canine, Harry Two. Against all odds, they survive unimaginable dangers and make it through.
\nAnd into a new world that’s even worse. Not because deadly beasts roam the cobblestones, but because the people are enslaved but don’t even know it. It’s up to Vega, Delph, Harry Two and their new comrade, Petra, to take up the fight against a foe that’s unrivaled in savagery and cunning. Not only is Vega’s life and the lives of her friends on the line, but whether she triumphs or fails will determine whether a whole world survives.
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She is twenty, beautiful, dirt-poor, and hoping for a better life for her infant daughter when LuAnn Tyler is offered the gift of a lifetime, a $100 million lottery jackpot. All she has to do is change her identity and leave the U.S. forever.
It's an offer she dares to refuse . . . until violence forces her hand and thrusts her into a harrowing game of high-stakes, big-money subterfuge. It's a price she won't fully pay . . . until she does the unthinkable and breaks the promise that made her rich.
For if LuAnn Tyler comes home, she will be pitted against the deadliest contestant of all: the chameleonlike financial mastermind who changed her life. And who can take it away at will . . .
Tragedy strikes the New York-based Cardinal family when their car is involved in a terrible accident. Twelve-year-old Lou and seven-year-old Oz survive, but the crash leaves their father dead and their mother in a coma. It would seem their world has been shattered forever until their great-grandmother, Louisa Mae, agrees to raise the children on her Virginia mountain farm.
\nBut before long their rural idyll is threatened by the discovery of natural gas on the mountain. Determined to protect her home from the ravages of big business, Louisa Mae refuses to sell, but when the neighbours hear of the potential wealth the company could bring, they begin to turn against her. And now the Cardinal family find themselves ensnared in another battle, to be played out in a crowded Virginia courtroom: a battle for justice, for survival, and for the right to stay together in the only place they know as home.
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Distinguished as a top investigator in the US government, John Puller is called in to conduct an enquiry into the brutal murders of a family in a remote area of West Virginia. It soon becomes clear that the case has wider implications and as the body count rises he teams up with local homicide detective Samantha Cole. As the web of deceit is revealed, it quickly becomes apparent that there's much more to this case than they had first thought. It is an investigation where nothing is as it seems, and nothing can be taken at face value.
\nWhen Puller and Cole discover a dangerous situation in the making, Puller finds he must turn to the one person who can help avert certain catastrophe. A person he has known all his life.
\nIn a breathtaking rollercoaster race against time, Cole fears for the community in which she was raised, and Puller knows he has to overcome the enemies of his country to avoid far reaching disaster.
\nBut in the end, you can't kill what you can't see is coming . . .
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Cyrus was only twelve years old when his gods were slain, his country invaded, and his parents - the king and queen - beheaded in front of him. Held prisoner in the invader's court for years, Cyrus is suddenly given a chance to escape and claim his revenge when a mysterious group of revolutionaries comes looking for a figurehead.
\nThey need a hero to strike fear into the hearts of the imperial and to inspire and unite the people. They need someone to take up the skull mask and swords and to become the legendary “Vagrant” - an unparalleled hero and assassin of otherworldly skill.
\nBut all is not as it seems. Creating the illusion of a hero is the work of many, and Cyrus will soon discover the true price of his vengeance.
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Radiance, the mysterious power of life and creation, is theirs to command. Death cannot claim them. For hundreds of years, the ever-living ruled with ease. Yet when the world is nearly broken beneath their reign, the humbled six swear a They will sit upon no thrones, wear no crowns, and no longer teach humanity the gifts of radiance.
\nBut after centuries of peace, Eder rejects their vow, anoints himself Voice of Father, and spreads a new, cruel faith across the land.
\nFaron cannot allow such indiscretion. Returning from a self-imposed exile, he swears to crush Eder’s kingdom, and he will not do so alone - Sariel, their cold and calculating brother, knows all too well that an ever-living’s dominion is bound for brutality and destruction. But to overthrow a nation, they will need more than each other. They will need an army and a ruler who can take the throne their own vow forbids. And so, they pledge themselves to the fanatical Bastard Princess, a woman with incredible powers she insists were given to her by the goddess Leliel.
\nBut Eder’s conquest is not what it seems, and it will take more than a holy war to stop an immortal who has heard the desperate plea of a god.
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Cyrus wants out. Trained to be an assassin in order to oust the invading Empire from his kingdom, Cyrus is now worried the price of his vengeance is too high. His old master has been keeping too many secrets to be trusted.
\nAnd the mask he wears to hide his true identity and become the legendary “Vagrant” has started whispering to him in the dark. But the fight isn't over and the Empire has sent its full force to bear upon Cyrus's floundering revolution. He'll have to decide once and for all whether to become the thing he fears or lose the country he loves.
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The Everlorn Empire's grip on Thanet is tighter than ever. The God-Incarnate himself has arrived on its shores to crush the struggling rebellion and carry out his final, sinister he will sacrifice the entire island in order to rise, reincarnated from its ashes.
\nThe rebellion is struggling to separate allies from enemies, and to figure out a way to stop the slow destruction of everything and everyone they care for. Meanwhile, Cyrus is disappearing deeper beneath the vicious mask of the “Vagrant”. Under the mantle of the legendary assassin, he may be strong enough to take down the Empire, but at what cost?
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As the Titanic and her passengers sank slowly into the Atlantic Ocean after striking an iceberg late in the evening of April 14, 1912, a nearby ship looked on. Second Officer Herbert Stone, in charge of the midnight watch on the SS Californian sitting idly a few miles north, saw the distress rockets that the Titanic fired. He alerted the captain, Stanley Lord, who was sleeping in the chartroom below, but Lord did not come to the bridge. Eight rockets were fired during the dark hours of the midnight watch, and eight rockets were ignored.
\nThe next morning, the Titanic was at the bottom of the sea and more than 1,500 people were dead. When they learned of the extent of the tragedy, Lord and Stone did everything they could to hide their role in the disaster, but pursued by newspapermen, lawyers, and political leaders in America and England, their terrible secret was eventually revealed. The Midnight Watch is a fictional telling of what may have occurred that night on the SS Californian, and the resulting desperation of Officer Stone and Captain Lord in the aftermath of their inaction.
\nTold not only from the perspective of the SS Californian crew, but also through the eyes of a family of third-class passengers who perished in the disaster, the narrative is drawn together by Steadman, a tenacious Boston journalist who does not rest until the truth is found. David Dyer's The Midnight Watch is a powerful and dramatic debut novel - the result of many years of research in Liverpool, London, New York, and Boston, and informed by the author's own experiences as a ship's officer and a lawyer.
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The whole world has just watched Neil and Buzz walk on the Moon. Now they are struck by the lunar module’s engine has failed. There is no back-up, no other way off the surface. If the astronauts can't fix the problem, they'll slowly run out of oxygen and die.
\nThis Kingdom of Dust explores this harrowing scenario through the intertwined narratives of three distinct voices: Buzz on the Moon, his wife Joan back on Earth, and Aquarius, the journalist compelled to craft a story he doesn’t want to write.
\nMarooned, Buzz confronts his fate with a mix of dread and awe. On Earth, Joan wrestles with grief and sacrifice against the backdrop of 1960s America - a nation riven by war and seismic social change.
\nCaught between professional duty and personal turmoil, Aquarius soon discovers that he will need all his skill to capture this unfolding drama, and all his courage to follow it through to its breathtaking conclusion.
\nThis reimagining of an epic moment in history combines public spectacle with private despair, reframing what the Moon landing has meant not only for the astronauts and those who loved them, but for all humankind.
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Leo Balanoff is a diagnosed pathological liar with unthinkable skeletons in his family's closet. He's also a crusading attorney who seeks justice at all costs. When a ruthless drug dealer is found dead and Leo’s fingerprints show up on the murder weapon, no one believes a word he says. But he might be the FBI’s only shot at taking down the dealer’s brutal syndicate.
\nRisk his life going undercover for the feds or head straight to prison for murder? Leo accepts the FBI’s offer - but it comes with a price, including a collision course with his ex, Andi Piotrowski, a former cop and “the one who got away.” Forced to walk a tightrope between an ambitious FBI agent and a cruel, calculating crime boss, Leo’s trapped in a corner. But he has more secrets than anyone realises, and a few more cards left to play . . .
\n
Jason Kolarich has spent the past year struggling to recover from the horrific deaths of his wife and baby daughter.
\nOn the night of their deaths, Kolarich was at the office, awaiting a call from a confidential informant named Ernesto Ramirez - a call that never came. Kolarich blames himself not only for the deaths of his wife and child, but for the informant’s murder as well. He can’t bring back his family, but he can find out who killed Ramirez and bring the killer to justice.
\nUnfortunately, Kolarich’s guns-blazing approach to justice lands him smack in the middle of an FBI probe of a deeply corrupt governor and his cronies. To avoid jail, Kolarich must enter a world of wiretaps, double-dealing, and kickbacks, where he soon discovers that the murder of his informant was only the tip of the iceberg.
\nThis breach of trust runs up to the highest levels of power, and exposing it may drag Kolarich into the fight of his life.
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Five unconnected teenage girls have been kidnapped, and Chicago PD detective Billy Harney is leading the investigation to find them.
\nHarney and his partner Carla follow a lead to a remote house, but it's a deadly trap. A huge explosion rips through the building killing Carla and allowing the kidnapper to escape.
\nThe loss of his partner only serves to strengthen Harney's resolve to find her killer, and protect the teenage girls he targets.
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A little girl, snatched from her bed in the dead of night . . .
\nThey knew who killed her. They couldn’t prove it. 26 years later, her brother Sammy doesn’t care about proof. He only cares about justice. Now, only his childhood best friend, attorney Jason Kolarich, can save Sammy from a life sentence for killing a killer.
\nTo defend Sammy, Jason must do what authorities could not, decades ago - prove the guilt of the pedophile who killed Sammy’s sister. But a mysterious benefactor, “Mr. Smith,” suddenly appears, offering money, resources, even alibis for Sammy’s defense. And he will stop at nothing - threatening the lives of Jason and his family - to control the outcome of the case.
\nAs the trial draws near, Jason races against time to save his family from Mr. Smith’s team and his friend Sammy from life in prison, while two crimes, decades apart, converge in a stunning verdict.
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James Drinker is a bit of an oddball. A funny-looking, geeky loner, he walks into Jason Kolarich’s office one day with a preemptive concern: two women have recently been murdered, seemingly by the same killer, and Drinker thinks he will be the police’s main suspect. One woman was his ex-girlfriend, he says, and the other was a friend. He’s the only link between the victims and he has no alibi for the night of either murder - surely the police will realise it soon. Believing he’s the target of a frame-up, Drinker hires Kolarich for his defense.
\nSomething about James Drinker seems off from the start, but Kolarich doesn’t give it too much thought. Until another murder occurs. And then another. And as he begins to probe his client’s life and story more closely, it quickly becomes clear that nothing about James Drinker is what it seems . . . and that the target of the frame-up isn’t Drinker, but Kolarich.
\nUnable to stop a serial killer - and prove his own innocence - without breaking his sworn attorney-client privilege, Jason Kolarich must hunt for the truth about James Drinker, the series of brutal murders, and why he’s been set up to take the fall. The answers will be beyond anything he could have imagined.
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Simon and Vicky couldn't seem more normal: a wealthy Chicago couple, he a respected law professor, she an advocate for domestic violence victims. A stable, if unexciting marriage. But one thing's for sure . . . absolutely nothing is what it seems. The pair are far from normal, and one of them just may be a killer.
\nWhen the body of a beautiful socialite is found hanging in a mansion in a nearby suburb, Simon and Vicky's secrets begin to unravel. A secret whirlwind affair. A twenty-million-dollar trust fund about to come due. A decades-long grudge and obsession with revenge. These are just a few of the lies that make up the complex web . . . and they will have devastating consequences. And while both Vicky and Simon are liars, just who exactly is conning who?
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A young paralegal is brutally killed. A homeless Iraq war veteran has been caught with the murder weapon and the victim’s belongings - and he can’t remember what happened . . .
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Jason Kolarich has been asked by the young man’s aunt to defend him. It seems like a standard insanity defense based on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - until Kolarich realises that his client is actually innocent. The victim had been working a case of her own, following a trail of paper and money that connected international terrorists to corporate America, where there are those who want to teach the U.S. government a lesson.
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Kolarich knows finding the true murderer is the key to exposing the conspiracy. As time grows short for both his client and thousands of innocent Americans, he races to find a trained killer and uncover the details of the attack. But Kolarich soon discovers that the game has already been rigged - and that he himself is about to become the next target . . .
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Darius Logan is far from a hero. Since his parents were killed, he has spent most of his life navigating foster homes and shelters, abandoned neighborhoods and decaying buildings. All Darius knows is survival. Life was hard enough, but now he finds himself being hunted by the police after a drug deal he never should have been involved in goes bad. And when they catch him, Darius is positive he will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
\nBut in place of a long prison sentence, Darius is handed an opportunity almost too good to be true: the chance to get away from his circumstances by joining the Second Chance program of the Super Justice Force, a league of people with special powers who strive to do good and protect the world from harm.
\nDarius soon discovers a strength he never knew he possessed, but evil forces manifest and threaten to destroy everything he holds dear. Will his new powers be enough to save the world when he faces a deadly - and all too familiar - enemy?
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Aspiring writer and general layabout Jacob Garlicker doesn't expect - walking along the beach on the night of his twenty-sixth birthday - to witness a murder. After a hapless attempt to help the victim, Jacob decides to forget the incident entirely. And for a while, he does, returning to his bohemian life in NYC as if nothing of consequence had occurred.
\nSeven years later, Jacob is blissfully married. Now mostly sober, and mostly at peace with his failed writing career, he's feeling alright as he heads to his father-in-law's birthday celebration in the Hamptons, even as he knows the well-heeled WASPs that populate his in-laws' social circle will spend the weekend treating him with polite disdain. Everything shifts, however, when Jacob arrives on Long Island and begins to realise that those well-heeled WASPs are not as harmless as they seem.
\nOver the course of this propulsive, at times blackly comic narrative, Jacob wavers between addled narcissism and earnest commitment as he searches for the brutal, booze-soaked truth.
For David Goggins, childhood was a nightmare — poverty, prejudice, and physical abuse colored his days and haunted his nights. But through self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work, Goggins transformed himself from a depressed, overweight young man with no future into a U.S. Armed Forces icon and one of the world's top endurance athletes. The only man in history to complete elite training as a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller, he went on to set records in numerous endurance events, inspiring Outside magazine to name him “The Fittest (Real) Man in America.”
In Can't Hurt Me, he shares his astonishing life story and reveals that most of us tap into only 40% of our capabilities. Goggins calls this The 40% Rule, and his story illuminates a path that anyone can follow to push past pain, demolish fear, and reach their full potential.
Can't Hurt Me, David Goggins' smash hit memoir, demonstrated how much untapped ability we all have but was merely an introduction to the power of the mind. In Never Finished, Goggins takes you inside his Mental Lab, where he developed the philosophy, psychology, and strategies that enabled him to learn that what he thought was his limit was only his beginning and that the quest for greatness is unending.
\nThe stories and lessons in this raw, revealing, unflinching memoir offer the reader a blueprint they can use to climb from the bottom of the barrel into a whole new stratosphere that once seemed unattainable. Whether you feel off-course in life, are looking to maximize your potential or drain your soul to break through your so-called glass ceiling, this is the only book you will ever need.
A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution - from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality - and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.
\nFor generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilisation, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilisation itself.
\nDrawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what's really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organisation did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.
\nThe Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organising society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.
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Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After a million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer.
\nThere are millions of people - HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers - whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs. Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln.
\nBullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation.
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In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.
\nThen, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And this was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.
\nAs the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.
>shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on The Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire.
\nOn January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty's Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.
\nBut then . . .six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes - they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death - for whomever the court found guilty could hang.
Radically open-minded, formidably strong, and unusually clear-eyed about herself and others, Evelyn Bednarz has always been a misfit. She’s easily bored, unsuited to life at school, asks odd questions about faith and time, and sees through conventions others take for granted. Seeking to be true to herself, she hitchhikes across the American West taking odd jobs.
\nIn distant Tibet, another life unfolds as remote from Evelyn’s as can be: the life of a boy named Tsering, raised as a Buddhist monk in the mountains of Tibet, who eventually becomes a high lama.
\nAnd yet, their lives are strangely linked - as Evelyn discovers when a trio of Buddhist lamas show up at her door to announce that her five-year-old son Cliff is the seventh reincarnation of the illustrious Norbu Rinpoche, recently deceased. The lamas’ visit sets off a family crisis and a media firestorm over Cliff’s future.
\nWritten in a spare, precise style of extraordinary beauty, full of surprising humor and luminosity, Evelyn in Transit delivers much-needed insight and compassion about humanity’s strivings for transcendence, and what it might mean to “live the right way.”
CIA case officer Sam Joseph is dispatched to Paris to recruit Syrian Palace official Mariam Haddad. The two fall into a forbidden relationship, which supercharges Haddad’s recruitment and creates unspeakable danger when they enter Damascus to find the man responsible for the disappearance of an American spy.
\nBut the cat and mouse chase for the killer soon leads to a trail of high-profile assassinations and the discovery of a dark secret at the heart of the Syrian regime, bringing the pair under the all-seeing eyes of Assad’s spy catcher, Ali Hassan, and his brother Rustum, the head of the feared Republican Guard. Set against the backdrop of a Syria pulsing with fear and rebellion, Damascus Station is a gripping thriller that offers a textured portrayal of espionage, love, loyalty, and betrayal in one of the most difficult CIA assignments on the planet.
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A daring CIA operation threatens chaos in the Kremlin. But can Langley trust the Russian at its center?
\nCIA officers Sia and Max enter Russia under commercial cover to recruit Vladimir Putin’s moneyman. Sia works for a London law firm that conceals the wealth of the superrich. Max’s family business in Mexico - a CIA front since the 1960s - is a farm that breeds high-end racehorses. They pose as a couple to target Vadim, Putin’s private banker, and his wife, Anna, who - unbeknownst to CIA - is a Russian intelligence officer under deep cover at the bank.
\nAs they descend further into a Russian world dripping with luxury and rife with gangland violence, Sia and Max’s only hope may be Anna, who is playing a game of her own. Careening between the horse ranch in northern Mexico, the corridors of Langley, and the dark opulence of Putin’s Russia, Moscow X is both a gripping thriller of modern espionage and a raw, unsparing commentary on the nature of truth, loyalty, and vengeance amid the shadow war between the United States and Russia.
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A Russian arrives in Singapore with a secret to sell. When the Russian is killed and Sam Joseph, the CIA officer dispatched for the meet, goes missing, operational chief Artemis Procter is made a scapegoat for the disaster and run out of the service. Months later, Sam appears at Procter’s doorstep with an explosive secret: there is a Russian mole burrowed deep within the highest ranks of the CIA.
\nAs Procter and Sam investigate, they arrive at a shortlist of suspects made up of both Procter’s closest friends and fiercest enemies. The hunt requires Procter to dredge up her checkered past in the service of the CIA, placing the pair in the sights of a savvy Russian spymaster who will protect Moscow’s mole in Langley at all costs. What happens when friendships forged by sweat and blood - from the Farm to Afghanistan and the executive “Seventh Floor” of CIA’s Langley headquarters - are put to the ultimate test? What can we truly know about the people we love the most?
\nTaking readers from Langley to Moscow to Paris and beyond, The Seventh Floor explores the nature of friendship in a faithless business, and what it means to love a place that does not love you back.
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Reluctant lawyer Andy Carpenter can't wait for Christmas. He doesn't care much about the season, unless it's football season. Andy's excited to finally relax and watch the games. But when there's a murder related to an old case in Paterson, New Jersey, Andy puts the games on pause.
\nTwo years ago, a gas leak in an office building led to a tragic explosion that killed seven people. Jeff Wheeler was there to pick up his girlfriend and ran into the building to help. All he heard was the barking of a dog, Rufus, and was able to save him. The pup was the sole survivor and Jeff was named a hero. Initially, Rufus went to the Tara Foundation since his owner had died in the accident. But Andy met Jeff and liked him, respecting his courage and allowed him to adopt Rufus. Since then, Jeff and Rufus have formed an unbreakable bond.
\nThe accident never sat right with Jeff. He believed that one of the building owners was responsible for the tragedy. Now that owner has been murdered and Jeff is arrested for the crime, Rufus is left with Jeff's sister, who begs Andy to take the case. Andy remembered Jeff's tremendous bravery and with the lingering Christmas spirit, decides to help reunite the two.
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When defense lawyer Andy Carpenter’s veterinarian asks to speak to him privately at the checkup of his golden retriever, Tara, the last thing Andy expects is Truman. Tiny, healthy, French bulldog Truman was dropped off days ago with instructions to be euthanised by a man everyone thought was his owner. But now the owner is nowhere to be found.
\nAndy is furious. Who would want to euthanise a perfectly healthy dog with no explanation? He is willing to whisk Truman away to the Tara Foundation, the dog-rescue organisation which is Andy’s true passion. They will find a home for Truman. But that’s not all the vet tells Andy. Thanks to Truman’s chip, it’s discovered that the man wasn’t Truman’s owner at all . . . Truman's real owner has been murdered.
\nIt’s now up to Andy - with help from his loyal sidekick Tara, Truman and the rest of the gang - to solve this case. In the latest in the popular Andy Carpenter mystery series, David Rosenfelt’s charmingly clever wit and love of dogs are back and better than ever.
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Christmas has come early to the town of Paterson, New Jersey, in the form of a snowstorm that dumps two feet of snow on the ground. Lawyer Andy Carpenter likes snow - white Christmas and all that - but it can cause problems for the walks he takes his dogs on every day.
\nWhen Andy’s golden retriever, Tara, goes to play in the snow and instead discovers a body, Andy ends up on the phone with the local newspaper editor. The murder victim is Mayor Alex Oliva, who had an infamous relationship with the newspaper. Last year a young reporter published an expose, and Oliva had him fired for libel. Now, the young reporter - and prime suspect - is in need of a lawyer.
\nAndy agrees to take the case, though it’s not looking good this holiday season.
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Defense attorney Andy Carpenter has been successfully avoiding taking on new cases until his sometime friend and newspaper owner Vince Sanders, calls and asks him for a favor. Daniel Cumming, Vince's star reporter, is being used as the mouthpiece for a brutal serial killer. He has been cooperating with the police but Vince wants to make sure both the newspaper and Daniel are protected.
\nAndy thinks the case will be a piece of cake . . . until Daniel is found unconscious in the park next to the killer's latest victim. Daniel claims he intended to stop the murder but the police arrest him. A reluctant Andy plunges himself into the case. And as he learns more about Daniel's shady background he begins to wonder how deadly the truth might be.
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Lawyer Andy Carpenter’s true passion is the Tara Foundation, the dog rescue organisation he runs with his friend Willie Miller. All kinds of dogs make their way to the foundation, and it isn’t that surprising to find a dog abandoned at the shelter one morning, though it was accompanied by a mysterious anonymous note. But they are quite surprised when they scan the dog’s embedded chip, and discover that they know this dog. He is the “DNA dog.”
\nTwo and a half years ago, Jill Hickman was a single mother of an adopted baby. Her baby and dog were kidnapped in broad daylight in Eastside Park, and they haven’t been seen since. A tip came in that ID’d a former boyfriend of Hickman’s, Keith Wachtel, as the kidnapper. A search of his house showed no sign of the child but did uncover more incriminating evidence, and the clincher that generated Wachtel’s arrest was some dog hair, notable since Wachtel did not have a dog. DNA tests showed conclusively that the hair belonged to Hickman’s dog. Wachtel was convicted of kidnapping, but the dog and baby were never found.
\nNow, with the reappearance of the dog, the case is brought back to light, and the search for the child renewed. Goaded by his wife’s desire to help a friend and fellow mother and Andy’s desire to make sure the real kidnapper is in jail, Andy and his team enter the case. But what they start to uncover is far more complicated and dangerous than they ever expected.
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Lawyer Andy Carpenter and his wife, Laurie, have started a new Christmas tradition. Their local pet store has a Christmas tree, where instead of ornaments there are wishes from those in need. One poignant wish leads Andy to a child named Danny, whose selfless plea strikes a chord. Danny asked Santa for a coat for his mother, a sweater for his dachshund, Murphy, and for the safe return of his missing father.
\nIt turns out Danny’s father doesn't want to be found, he’s on the run after just being arrested for a murder that took place fourteen years ago - a murder that Danny’s mother swears he didn’t commit.
\nWith his trademark humor and larger-than-life characters - including a police officer and his K-9 partner, Simon - Rosenfelt never fails to deliver as Andy and his eccentric crew dash to reunite a family in time for Christmas.
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In Dead Center, we find our beloved Andy carpenter reentering the dating scene - God Bless him. Surprisingly he's a hot commodity, but that's not necessarily a good thing.
\nHis friends are offering up their two cents on his dating life, but of course they know as little about the dating world as Andy. One thing that rings true, whether the ladies he meets are terrific or not, is that the spectra of his longtime love Laurie hangs over his head. Bitter over her departure, he's finding it hard to forgive and forget. She's still the love of his life.
\nAndy's had no contact with her at all, and he can only assume she is back in Findlay, Wisconsin serving in the number two job on the local police force. Then one day he returns to the office to find Laurie waiting for him. She's arrested a young man for murder and though the evidence clearly called for his arrest, she believes he's innocent. He's the son of her oldest friend and she's come to Andy to find him representation. Andy follows Laurie back to Wisconsin where he must explore a secretive religious community that seems to hold the truth about what really happened to the deceased.
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This Christmas mystery, featuring criminal defense lawyer Andy Carpenter and his faithful golden retriever, Tara, showcases Rosenfelt’s trademark humor and larger-than-life characters.
\nReluctant lawyer Andy Carpenter doesn’t usually stop to help others, but seeing a dog next to a homeless man inspires him to give the pair some money to help. It’s just Andy’s luck that things don’t end there. Soon after Andy’s encounter with them, man and dog are attacked in the middle of the night on the street. The dog defends its new owner, and the erstwhile attacker is bitten but escapes. But the dog is quarantined and the man, Don Carrigan, is heartbroken.
\nAndy’s wife Laurie can’t resist helping the duo after learning Andy has met them before . . . it’s the Christmas season after all. In a matter of days Don and his dog Zoey are living above Andy’s garage and become two new additions to the family. It’s not until Andy accidentally gives away his guest’s name during an interview that things go awry; turns out Don is wanted for a murder that happened two years ago.
\nDon not only claims he’s innocent, but that he had no idea that he was wanted for a crime he has no knowledge of in the first place. It’s up to Andy to exonerate his new friend, if he doesn’t get pulled into the quagmire first.
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Retired lawyer Andy Carpenter has run the Tara Foundation - the dog rescue organisation named after his beloved golden retriever - for years. It's always been his calling, even as Andy's pulled into representing clients in court. His investigator, Marcus Clark, has been at Andy's side for a long time. Even though they've known each other for years, Marcus keeps his personal life a mystery.
\nSo it’s a shock when Marcus arrives at the Tara Foundation with two strangers in tow. Turns out Marcus takes disadvantaged young men under his wing, gets them jobs, a place to live, and a chance at a different life. And they want a dog. Andy’s specialty. One of the young men, Nick Williams, instantly falls in love with one of the dogs, Daisy.
\nWhen there’s a mass shooting at Nick’s work, leaving six dead, all signs point to Nick. Marcus, who's never asked Andy for anything, asks Andy for help. Despite Nick's troubled background, Andy trusts his friend and takes the case.
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Lawyer Andy Carpenter and his wife, Laurie, enjoy walking their dogs, Tara and Sebastian. By this point in their marriage, it’s routine. When out for one of their strolls, their simple ritual isn’t so simple anymore. Across the street, a man is mistreating his dog. Three things happen at once: Andy yells, Laurie runs to stop the abuse, and so does a closer passerby, who so thoroughly beats the owner that both are arrested when the cops arrive.
Andy scoops up the dog and takes him to the Tara Foundation, the dog rescue organization that’s always been his true passion. Meanwhile, at the police station, the passerby is identified as Matthew Jantzen, and he’s wanted for murder. Andy and Laurie are struck by the fact that Jantzen, a man on the run, would nevertheless intervene to help a dog, and decide to find out more.
A German Shepherd police dog witnesses a murder and if his owner - an Iraq war vet and former cop-turned-thief - is convicted of the crime, the dog could be put down. Few rival Andy Carpenter's affection for dogs, and he decides to represent the poor canine.
\nAs Andy struggles to convince a judge that this dog should be set free, he discovers that the dog and his owner have become involved unwittingly in a case of much greater proportions than the one they've been charged with. Andy will have to call upon the unique abilities of this ex-police dog to help solve the crime and prevent a catastrophic event from taking place.
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Andy Carpenter has spent the three years since graduating law school working as a prosecutor in Paterson. But having seen how the system never looks out for the little guy, he leaves to start his own practice as a defense attorney. His office might be a little bit of a dump, but he's excited to make a change.
\nAndy goes to the shelter to adopt a dog, where he meets his beloved golden retriever, Tara, for the first time and feels an immediate connection. The shelter is crowded and Tara's been sharing space with a dog named Sunny; Andy hates to break them up and so asks to take Sunny, too, but since there's a pending criminal case involving the owner, he'll need to get written permission for temporary possession.
\nAndy discovers that Sunny's owner, Ryan Tierney, has been arrested for the murder of his ex-boss. But he takes an immediate liking to Ryan and his clear dedication to his dog, and ends up with his first case along with the two dogs.
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No one can separate defense attorney Andy Carpenter from his golden retriever, Tara, who stands loyally beside him through every investigation, no matter how dangerous or puzzling - and he is about to be confronted with one of his most difficult cases yet.
\nWhen a cop's body is found burned and decapitated, the last thing Andy expects is for a stranger to waltz into his office and confess to the crime. For the wisecracking millionaire attorney suffering from “lawyer's block,” the case looks like a no-brainer, that is until the cops pick up another suspect: Andy's lead P.I., Laurie Collins, who happens to be the love of his life. Soon Laurie's case is looking bleak and Andy is becoming increasingly desperate. All he had wanted was a case to sink his teeth into. Now he gets one that's a kick in the head . . . and the heart.
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Retired lawyer Andy Carpenter remembers every dog that’s come through the Tara Foundation’s doors, but the most well-known alum of the dog rescue organisation that Andy founded in Paterson, New Jersey, may be Mamie. Adopted by famous actress Jenny Nichols - Andy’s high school girlfriend - the miniature French poodle is now practically a starlet in her own right.
\nAndy doesn’t hold it against his friend. In fact, he and his wife, Laurie, have dinner with Jenny while she’s in town filming her next big hit. But after an eventful meal, there’s a plot twist the next morning that none of them see coming: Jenny’s costar is found dead, a knife in his back. It’s not long before Jenny is arrested for the murder and finds herself in need of Andy’s legal services.
\nWhile Mamie becomes reacquainted with Tara, Andy’s golden retriever, Andy digs into the lives of the rich and famous.
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Retired lawyer Andy Carpenter’s calling has always been running the Tara Foundation. The dog rescue organisation places hundreds of dogs in new homes every year. It’s added up to so many dogs and new owners that Andy can’t even do the math. But there’s one dog - and one owner - Andy will always remember.
\nAbout a year ago, Rachel Morehouse came to the foundation looking for a companion. In her sixties and recently widowed, Rachel wanted a senior dog that also needed someone. Andy took a liking to her, Rachel took a liking to Lion, an older Chow Chow, and the rest is history.
\nThat is, until Rachel calls Andy begging for a favor: If Rachel dies, will Andy take care of Lion if her stepson cannot? Andy agrees, no questions asked, and promptly forgets about it . . . until he receives a call from Rachel’s estate to attend her will reading. Which is where he meets Rachel’s stepson, Tony, who is promptly arrested for his stepmother’s murder. And he wants Andy to prove his innocence.
\nAndy has continued to learn more about the woman he so greatly admired and the businesses she ran, and holy chow, was this woman impressive. The person who killed her deserves to be held accountable, and if Tony is to be believed, they’re still out there. And that possibility is too much for Andy to remain on the sidelines.
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Andy Carpenter isn't sure what to think when he gets a mysterious phone call from a good friend, policeman Pete Stanton, asking him to drop everything, drive to an unfamiliar address, and bring his girlfriend, Laurie Collins. He certainly isn't expecting to show up at a crime scene.
\nBut that's exactly where he arrives - at the house where Pete has just discovered the body of ex-convict Danny Diza. Upstairs are Danny's now orphaned eight-year-old son and basset hound. And that, Andy discovers, is why he and Laurie were called to the scene - Pete wants them to take care of the boy and the dog so they won't get thrown into the \"system.\"
\nThis is already asking a lot, but soon Pete needs another big favor from Andy. Pete himself has come under suspicion for Danny's murder, and he needs defense attorney Andy to represent him . . . and to find out what really happened in Danny's house that day.
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Secrets are unearthed in a murder case that lawyer and dog lover Andy Carpenter lost years ago. Will they lead to the truth or more killing in the tenth in David Rosenfelt's popular series?
\nOver the course of his legal career Andy Carpenter has lost a few cases. But that doesn't mean he forgets his clients. Andy has always known that Joey Desimone, a man convicted of murder nine years ago, was innocent and believes that Joey's family's connectionsto organized crime played a pivotal role in his conviction. While there isn't much Andy can do for him while he serves out his prison sentence, Joey suggests that Andy visit Joey's uncle in a rest home. He'd rather not but as a favor to Joey, he agrees to take his dog, Tara, on a few visits.
\nThe old man's memory is going, but when Andy tries to explain why he's there it jogs something in the man's mind that leaves Andy wondering if Joey's uncle is confused or if he holds the key to Joey's freedom after all this time.
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Reluctant lawyer Andy Carpenter is relieved to be headed back to Paterson, New Jersey, after a week-long family vacation in the Adirondacks. He's ready to put the holly jolly season way behind him and settle in at home with his three dogs. But when they finally arrive, there is an extra dog eagerly awaiting them, as well as one anxious dog sitter.
\nWhen the dog showed up on the doorstep a few days ago, the sitter knew Andy would know what to do. Indeed, Andy recognizes Murphy, who the Carpenters fostered before the dog went home with BJ Bremer and his mother. BJ wanted to learn all he could about caring for Murphy, which made Andy like him immediately.
\nWhen Andy goes to take Murphy back to the Bremers, though, instead of the happy reunion he expects, he finds BJ's mother in tears. It turns out Murphy ran off . . . after BJ was arrested for murder. Andy had hoped for a quiet Christmas vacation, but he likes Murphy’s family and his golden retriever, Tara, likes Murphy, so he can't resist getting involved.
\nThe case isn’t as simple as Andy thought it would be, though, with BJ suspected of murdering one of his professors. With nothing to go on but Andy's own conviction in BJ's dog-loving character, proving his innocence would be a Christmas miracle.
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Andy Carpenter is a lawyer who would rather not practice law. He'd rather spend his time working with the Tara Foundation, his dog rescue organisation, and being with his family and his two dogs, Tara and Sebastian. But when a friend asks him for a favor that involves both dogs and his lawyerly expertise, he can't say no.
\nAndy's friend Beth has found a stray that seems to have belonged to a murder victim - in fact, the man and two of his colleagues died in an explosion a few weeks ago. But when the murdered man contacts Beth, asking for his dog back, Andy knows there must be more to the story. The man claims his life is in danger, and that's why he disappeared. As much as Andy doesn't want to get involved - anything to avoid a new case - he can't help but come to the rescue of a man who'd risk everything, even his life, to reunite with his dog.
\n
Few can rival attorney Andy Carpenter's affection for golden retrievers, especially his own beloved Tara.
\nAfter he astonishes a New Jersey courtroom by successfully appealing another retriever's death sentence, Andy discovers that this gentle dog is a key witness to a murder that took place five years earlier.
\nIt will take all the tricks Andy's fertile mind can conceive to get to the bottom of a remarkable chain of impersonations and murder - and hopefully save not only a dog's life but also his own in the process.
\n
For six years Noah Galloway has lived with a horrible secret and the fear that his rebuilt life could be shattered at any moment. Now his dread has become a certainty, and he has been arrested for the arson murder of twenty-six people.
\nWhat he needs now is defense lawyer Andy Carpenter, who most definitely is not in the market for a new client. So Noah plays his hole card: a shared love for Andy's golden retriever, Tara, and the knowledge of what her life was like before Andy rescued her. Because Andy wasn't her first owner - Noah rescued Tara first, and when he wasn't able to care for her any longer, he did everything in his power to make sure that she was placed in the right home: Andy's.
\nWith that knowledge, Andy has little choice but to take Noah on, and he soon learns that the long-ago event that may destroy Noah's life is only the beginning of an ongoing conspiracy that grows more deadly by the day. Andy will have to pull out all of his tricks to get to the bottom of this cold case turned white hot in One Dog Night, the latest in David Rosenfelt's popular mystery series.
\n
Whether dueling with new forensics or the local old boys' network, irreverent defense attorney Andy Carpenter always leaves them awed with his biting wit and winning fourth-quarter game plan. But Andy prefers the company of his best friend, Tara, to the people he encounters in the courtroom. Tara, a golden retriever, is clearly smarter than half the lawyers who clog the courts of Passaic County.
\nHowever, just as it seems Andy has everything figured out, his dad, New Jersey's legendary ex-D.A., drops dead in front of him at a game in Yankee Stadium. The shocks pile on as he discovers his dad left him with two unexpected legacies: a fortune of $22 million that Andy never knew existed . . . and a murder case with enough racial tinder to burn down City Hall. Struggling to serve justice and bring honor to his father, Andy must dig up some explosive political skeletons - and an astonishing family secret that can close his case (and his mouth) for good.
\n
Andy Carpenter spends as much time as he can working on his true passion, the Tara Foundation, the dog rescue organization he runs. Lately, Andy has been especially involved in a county prison program where inmates help train dogs the Tara Foundation has rescued to make them more adoptable, benefiting both the dogs and the prisoners.
\nOne of the prisoners Andy has been working with is Brian Atkins, who has 18 months left on a 5-year term for fraud. Brian has been helping to train Boomer, an adorable fox terrier the Tara Foundation rescued from a neglectful owner. Brian and Boomer are clearly a terrific match. In fact, Andy hopes that Brian will adopt Boomer himself, once his sentence is up.
\nBut one day, Andy arrives at the prison to discover that Brian has used Boomer to make an ingenious escape, and man and dog are both in the wind. The next day, the man on whose testimony Brian was convicted is found murdered. Brian is caught and arrested for the crime, though he forcefully protests his innocence.
\nSuddenly, Andy finds himself with a new client in Brian and a new dog in Boomer. And as he starts to dig deeper into the murder and the events leading up to it, Andy realises he might be putting them all in far more danger than anyone had realised.
\n
Few can rival attorney Andy Carpenter's affection for golden retrievers, especially his own beloved Tara.
\nAfter he astonishes a New Jersey courtroom by successfully appealing another retriever's death sentence, Andy discovers that this gentle dog is a key witness to a murder that took place five years earlier.
\nIt will take all the tricks Andy's fertile mind can conceive to get to the bottom of a remarkable chain of impersonations and murder - and hopefully save not only a dog's life but also his own in the process.
\n
Defense lawyer Andy Carpenter is reluctant to take on any more cases. He’d much rather spend his time working for his dog rescue organisation, the Tara Foundation, than find himself back in a courtroom. However, when a truck carrying over seventy dogs from the South to the rescue-friendly northeast turns up with a murdered driver, Andy can’t help but get involved.
\nAndy is eager to help the dogs, many of whom come to the Tara Foundation while awaiting forever homes - it’s the man accused of murder who he has a problem defending. The accused just happens to be his wife Laurie’s ex-fiance; her tall, good looking, ex-Marine ex-fiance. Even with dozens of cases behind him, this one may prove to be his most difficult.
\n
'Tis the season in Paterson, New Jersey: Lawyer Andy Carpenter and his golden retriever, Tara, are surrounded by holiday cheer. It’s even spread to the Tara Foundation. The dog rescue organisation, not used to having puppies, has their hands full with a recent litter. Eight puppies are a lot to handle, and Andy is relieved when his co-worker Chris Myers agrees to foster them.
\nMyers, a newer employee at the Tara Foundation, did time for a crime he swears he didn’t commit. When Myers discovers a key witness against him lied on the stand, he goes to Andy to ask for representation in getting the conviction overturned. Myers thinks they can have this wrapped up by Christmas, no problem.
\nBut when the witness is murdered, and Myers is arrested for the crime, things go from bad to worse. Suddenly, it’s all elves on deck to make a list and check it twice, so they can prove Myers is innocent.
\n
Lawyer Andy Carpenter can finally take a breath; he’s back on dry land after a family Caribbean cruise forced on him by his wife, Laurie, to get into the Christmas spirit. Of course the family’s first stop is to the Tara Foundation, the dog rescue organisation that has always been Andy’s true passion.
\nBut when Andy arrives, his partner, Willie Miller, needs his help. Willie’s old cellmate, Tony Birch, has been arrested for murder. Andy doesn’t necessarily believe in Tony, but Willie does. And Andy believes in Willie, which is why Andy decides to take the case.
\n
Kenny Schilling is the new star running back for the New York Giants.Troy Preston was a wide receiver for the Jets, until his recent murder. Could rivalry have turned Kenny Schilling into a cold-blooded killer? The police say yes. And now the football hero needs a good lawyer-quick. Still basking in the glow of his last successful case, Andy Carpenter is called to defend Kenny's innocence.
\nThen it's revealed that Troy wasn't the only murdered player Kenny was in contact with. Now, amid a collapsing personal life and death threats from a drug king-who may or may not have a hand in things-Andy must keep his eye on the ball during what could become the media trial of the century.
Reluctant lawyer Andy Carpenter is at the Tara Foundation’s annual Christmas party. The dog rescue organisation has always been his true calling, and this is one holiday tradition he can get behind because every dog that’s come through the rescue - and their families - are invited to celebrate.
\nThis year’s party is no exception. But before the stockings can be hung by the chimney with care, homicide detectives ruin the evening. Derek Moore, one of the foundation’s best foster volunteers, is arrested for murder.
\nAndy discovers Derek - whose real name is Bobby - is in the witness protection program after giving evidence against his former gang. The police believe Bobby murdered a member. But Bobby swears to Andy he didn’t do this. He’s built a new life, a new business, has two new dogs after being a double foster-failure.
\nThere isn’t much Andy likes about this case, but he likes Bobby. If he’s innocent, Andy wants to help. Before Andy can settle down for his long winter’s nap, he has a client’s name to clear, a murderer to catch, and two new dogs to look after: a golden and a Dalmatian. Andy’s golden retriever, Tara, will have to adjust to not being the only golden at the house while Andy gets to the bottom of this one . . .
\n
Defense lawyer Andy Carpenter usually tries to avoid taking on new cases at all costs. But this time, he’s happy - eager, even - to take the case that’s just come his way. Andy’s long-time friend Martha “Pups” Boyer takes in stray puppies that the local dog rescue center can’t handle, raises them until they’re old enough to adopt, and then finds good homes for them.
\nNot everyone admires the work Pups does as much as Andy does, however. With Christmas just around the corner, one of Pups’s neighbors has just reported Pups to the city for having more than the legal number of pets in her home under the local zoning laws.
\nAndy happily takes Pups’s case, and he feels confident in a positive outcome. Who could punish someone for rescuing puppies, after all, especially at Christmastime? But things get a lot more complicated when Randy Hennessey, the neighbor who registered the complaint against Pups, turns up dead.
\nPups had loudly and publicly threatened Hennessey after he filed his complaint, and Pups was also the one to find his body. All the evidence seems to point to Pups as the killer, and suddenly Andy has a murder case on his hands. He doesn’t believe Pups could be guilty, but as he starts digging deeper into the truth behind Hennessey’s murder, Andy may find himself facing a killer more dangerous than he ever imagined.
\n
Andy Carpenter's accountant, Sam Willis, is stunned to receive a phone call out of the blue from Barry Price, a high school friend he hasn't spoken to in years, pleading for help with something too frightening to discuss on the phone. Barry needs Sam's financial acumen and lawyer Andy Carpenter's legal expertise - and he needs them immediately. But when Sam almost runs over an injured dog lying in the road on the way to Barry's house, he can't drive off without waiting for help to arrive. By the time Sam makes it, Barry's already taken off on a private airplane headed who-knows-where.
\nAssuming their help is no longer needed, Sam and Andy turn their full attention to helping the dog Sam found recover from his injuries. Then they learn that Barry's plane has crashed, and they come to the terrifying realization that Sam was also supposed to have been killed on that plane. Barry was in far more serious trouble than either of them knew, and for Sam and Andy, the trouble is only beginning.
\n
A lawyer by day, Andy Carpenter's true passion is the Tara Foundation, the dog rescue organization he runs with his friend Willie Miller. So, it's frightening when there's been a break-in at the foundation building. It turns out that a recently rescued dog, nicknamed Cheyenne since her arrival at the foundation, has been stolen.
\nAndy and Willie track the missing dog to a house in downtown Paterson, NJ and sure enough, they find the dog...right next to a dead body. The man had been murdered mere minutes before Andy and Willie arrived. Could it be coincidence? Or could the dog theft be connected to the killing?
\nAndy takes Cheyenne safely back to the foundation building. That should be the end of his involvement, but Andy's curiosity - and his desire to keep the dog from further harm - won't let him stop there. The cops have just arrested a man named Tommy Infante for the murder, but as Andy looks into the break-in and the dog theft, he starts to wonder if Infante might actually be innocent.
\nWhen Andy takes Infante on as a client and starts searching in earnest for evidence that will exonerate him, his discoveries terrify him. The murder might be just one small cog in a plot with far-reaching implications, and unless Andy can uncover the truth in time, thousands of lives could be in imminent danger.
\n
The Four Heavens brings to life the cultural and visual splendor of the ancient Maya, drawing on the oldest indigenous texts of the Americas and the latest archaeological discoveries to present an entirely new history of this spectacular civilisation. Renowned historian and archaeologist David Stuart, who has made groundbreaking contributions to the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphics, shows how there was no single rise and fall of the Maya but a series of births and collapses over a breathtaking span of nearly three millennia.
\nMaya history was seemingly lost forever when the first Europeans encountered the great ruins of ancient cities in what is today Mexico and Central America. Today, with the recent decipherment of their ancient writings, the story of the Maya can now be told from their perspective. Stuart traces the rapid emergence of permanent settlements in the rainforest, which gave rise to monumental architecture and a flourishing urbanism and ushered in the Classic period of Maya civilization beginning in the mid-second century CE. He reveals a world of majestic royal courts tightly bound together by marriages, shifting alliances, and warfare, much of it driven by the ambitions of two major dynasties, the Kanuls and Mutuls. Stuart describes how the long-standing rivalry between these two great houses shaped the fates of the surrounding kingdoms and may have set the stage for “the Great Rupture” of the nineth century, when the royal courts buckled under the weight of internal strife, social unrest, and environmental crisis, transforming Maya civilisation yet again.
\nWith stunning illustrations, including many of Stuart’s own drawings and images, The Four Heavens is a work of momentous historical sweep, one that paints an unforgettable portrait of the Maya and the richly complex social, political, and cosmological worlds in which they lived.
\n
1972, Beirut, Lebanon. Young American Matthew lives with his father, a rising foreign service attache, and mother, in an exclusive community of ex-patriots. It is the summer Matthew becomes a teenager, falls in love, nearly dies, and watches his family, and the city, fall apart.
\nIt is in this world of Western schemers and local merchants, of hoodlums and politicians, that Matthew begins to solve the mystery of who his father really is, and what role he is really playing in the upheaval that is shaking the city loose of its old, civilised way and ushering in a new and frightening radicalism.
\nThis is the story of a boy and a family, besieged. Intimate in scope and wrenching in its vision of lost innocence, City on the Edge is a mystery and spy story from the past, and a coming of age story for our time.
\n
Frank Marr was a good cop with a bad habit, until his burgeoning addictions to alcohol and cocaine forced him into retirement from the DC police. Now barely eking out a living as a private investigator, he agrees to take on a family case: a favor for his aunt, who was like a second mother to him growing up.
\nFrank's surveillance confirms that his cousin Jeffrey is involved with a small-time drugs operation. Modest stuff, until Frank's own home is burglarised, leaving a body on the kitchen floor: Jeffrey. Worse, Frank's .38 revolver - the murder weapon - is stolen, along with his cherished music collection, his only possessions of sentimental value: dozens of vinyl albums that belonged to his late mother. Only Frank's stash, his dwindling supply of the cocaine he needs to get through the day, is untouched. Why?
\nClearly, his cousin was deeper in the underworld than anyone realised. With the weight of his family, his reputation, and his own life on the line, he'll have to find the culprit by following the stolen goods through a tangled network of petty thieves, desperate addicts, deceiving fences, good cops, bad cops, and one morally compromised taxi driver.
\nFrank's as determined to uncover the truth as he is to feed his habit, and both pursuits could prove deadly. This time, it may just be a question of what gets him first.
\n
Graham Sanderson thought he’d left it all behind. His years as a Washington, DC, homicide detective, his tragically dead wife, pain, violence. Taking over his father’s house in the remote Finger Lakes region of rural New York, and looking after his shut-in brother, Tommy, seemed like a respite. That is, until the first body is found.
\nThe chief of the town’s small police jurisdiction, who is also a family friend, asks for Graham’s assistance. Graham’s instincts immediately kick in and he soon discovers there’s more to the area - the people, its brutally quiet, sophisticated hierarchies - than he or his family ever knew.
\nDavid Swinson's latest novel is a soulful, rural noir story about the extremities to which it pushes a community, the fear it instills in the hearts of adherents and doubters alike, and need for it nevertheless. As Graham delves deeper into the strange and then stranger circumstances of the murders, his own beliefs become challenged. What do you finally stand for when you’ve got nothing left to lose?
\n
Frank Marr knows crime in Washington, DC. A decorated former police detective, he retired early and now ekes a living as a private eye for a defense attorney. Frank Marr may be the best investigator the city has ever known, but the city doesn't know his dirty secret.
\nA long-functioning drug addict, Frank has devoted his considerable skills to hiding his usage from others. But after accidentally discovering a kidnapped teenage girl in the home of an Adams Morgan drug gang, Frank becomes a hero and is thrust into the spotlight. He reluctantly agrees to investigate the disappearance of another girl - possibly connected to the first - and the heightened scrutiny may bring his own secrets to light, too.
\nFrank is as slippery and charming an antihero as you've ever met, but he's also achingly vulnerable. The result is a mystery of startling intensity, a tightly coiled thriller where every scene may turn disastrous. The Second Girl is the crime novel of the season, and the start of a refreshing new series from an author who knows the criminal underworld inside and out.
\n
In a red brick house on a tree-lined street, DC homicide detective Alex Blum stares at the bullet-pocked body of Chris Doyle. As he roots around for evidence, he finds an old polaroid: the decedent, arm in arm with Arthur Holland, Blum's informant from years ago when he worked at the Narcotics branch.
\nBut Arthur has been missing for days. Blum’s only source: Arthur’s girl, Celeste - beautiful, seductive, and tragic - whom he can’t get out of his head. Blum is drawn to her and feels compelled to save her from Arthur’s underworld. As the investigation ticks on and dead bodies domino, Blum, unearths clues with damning implications for Celeste. Swallowed by desire, Blum’s single misstep sends him tunnelling down a rabbit hole of transgression. He may soon find the only way out is down below.
\nSet in 1999, Swinson, a former DC cop, offers a look back at a rougher, grittier, bygone DC replete with seedy strip clubs, pagers beeping, and Y2K anxiety. It’s here we’re taken inside sting operations, fluorescent-tinged interrogation chambers, and rooms that have seen irreversible mistakes. At once authentic, gritty, tragic, and profound, Sweet Thing asks how far can you fall when the world teeters on the edge?
\n
Forced to retire from the D. C. police, newly minted P.I. Frank Marr is recovering from rock bottom when a friend asks for help - and now, he must revisit the dark, drug-fueled world he left behind.
\nOstracised by his family after a botched case that led to the death of his baby cousin, Jeffrey, Frank was on a collision course with catastrophe. Now clean and clinging hard to sobriety, he's barely eking out a living as a private investigator for a defense attorney - who also happens to be his ex-girlfriend. Frank passes the time - and tests himself - by robbing the houses of local dealers, taking their cash and flushing their drugs down the toilet. But when an old friend from his police days needs Frank's help to prove he didn't shoot an unarmed civilian, Frank is drawn back into the world of dirty cops and suspicious drug busts, running in the same circles that enabled his addiction those years ago.
\nNever one to play by the rules, Frank recruits a young man he nearly executed years before. Together - a good man trying not to go bad and a bad man trying to do good - detective and criminal charge headfirst into the D.C. drug wars. Neither may make it out.
\n
It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible. In California, wildfires now rage year-round, destroying thousands of homes. Across the US, \"500-year\" storms pummel communities month after month, and floods displace tens of millions annually.
\nThis is only a preview of the changes to come. And they are coming fast. Without a revolution in how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth could become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.
\nIn his travelogue of our near future, David Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that await--food shortages, refugee emergencies, and other crises that will reshape the globe. But the world will be remade by warming in more profound ways as well, transforming our politics, our culture, our relationship to technology, and our sense of history. It will be all-encompassing, shaping and distorting nearly every aspect of human life as it is lived today.
\nLike An Inconvenient Truth and Silent Spring before it, The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation.
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "Nonfiction" ], "cover": "/coverimages/David Wallace-Wells - The Uninhabitable Earth.jpeg", "mtime": 1766370921378.5437, "size": 557574, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:20:00.212Z" }, "David Wellington - Last Astronaut, The": { "title": "The Last Astronaut", "author": "David Wellington", "description": "Sally Jansen was NASA’s leading astronaut, until a mission to Mars ended in disaster. Haunted by her failure, she lives in quiet anonymity, convinced her days in space are over.
\nShe’s wrong.
\nA large alien object has entered the solar system on a straight course toward Earth. It has made no attempt to communicate and is ignoring all incoming transmissions.
\nOut of time and out of options, NASA turns to Jansen. For all the dangers of the mission, it’s the shot at redemption she always longed for.
\nBut as the object slowly begins to reveal its secrets, one thing becomes horribly clear: the future of humanity lies in Jansen’s hands.
\n
When Special Agent Petrov and Dr. Lei Zhang are woken up from cryogenic sleep, dragged freezing and dripping wet out of their pods with the ship's alarms blaring in the background, they know something is very wrong. Warned by the Captain that they're under attack, they have no choice but to investigate.
\nIt doesn't take much time to learn that they've been met by another vessel - a vessel from Paradis-One, Earth's first deep-space colony, and their final destination.
\nWorse still, the vessel is empty. And it carries with it the message that all communications from the 150,000 souls inhabiting the Paradis-One has completely ceased.
\nPetrov and Zhang must board the empty ship and delve further into deep space to discover the truth of the colony's disappearance - but the further they go, the more dangers loom.
\n
The crew of the Artemis - led by Firewatch agent Alexandra Petrova - have survived the furious onslaught of the Basilisk and broken through the space blockade around Paradise-1. Now they can pursue their original mission and investigate why Earth's first deep space colony has fallen silent.
\nThe answer seems the site is deserted.
\nOr so they think.
\nSome of the colonists remain. They're no longer human.
\nPetrova and her crew now face a desperate struggle to survive as they attempt to uncover the mystery of what has befallen the colony.
\nIf they fail, the darkness that has fallen over Paradise-1 will consume them.
\n
In a city filled with dangerous yet heavily regulated alchemical magic, a man from the slums discovers he may be its only hope to survive certain destruction in this wickedly entertaining fantasy.
\n\n
Welcome to Bezim, where sword-slinging bravi race through the night and rich and idle alchemists make magic out of mixing and measuring the four planes of reality.
\n
Siyon Velo, Dockside brat turned petty alchemist, scrapes a living hopping between the planes to harvest ingredients for the city’s alchemists. But when Siyon accidentally commits an act of impossible magic, he’s catapulted into the limelight - which is a bad place to be when the planes start lurching out of alignment, threatening to send Bezim into the sea.
It will take a miracle to save the city. Good thing Siyon has pulled off the impossible before. Now he just has to master it.
Siyon Velo has given magic back to the Mundane. But with it, monsters of myth have awoken and begun to cause chaos in Bezim and, of course, Siyon is left to take the blame. Hunted high and low, Siyon struggles against the rising tide of mystery, magic and mayhem threatening the city that's turned its back on him.
\nIn the Flower District, Lady Sable has unleashed chaos. But in the Avenues, Anahid is desperate to keep her sordid secrets hidden just a little longer. Or at least until Zagiri can make her introduction to high society. With scandal stalking the sisters and the threat of a rising revolution on their hands, the best - or worst - they can do may not be enough to save their city . . .
\nIn the end, the Alchemist must rise, or Bezim will burn.
\n
Strap in for a thrilling adventure in the sequel to Davinia Evans's wickedly entertaining debut fantasy that follows our favorite irreverent alchemists, high society ladies, and swashbuckling street gangs as they wrestle with the nature of reality itself.
\nSiyon Velo might be acknowledged as the Alchemist. He may have even stabilised the planes and stopped Bezim from ever shaking into the sea again. But that doesn’t mean he has any idea what’s he doing - and it won’t be long before everyone knows it.
\nTo make things worse, mythical creatures once confined to operas and myths are spotted around Bezim. A djinn invades Zagiri's garden party, and whispers of a naga slither across Anahid's Flower District card tables. Magic is waking up in the Mundane. It’s up to Siyon to figure out a way to stop it, or everything he’s worked hard to save will come crashing down.
\n
Etta is sixty-eight years old. Happy, healthy and an active participant in her world, she’s gathered her family together for an unforgettable weekend.
\nAt 5am that Saturday morning, Etta wakes her daughter, her granddaughter, her son and her daughter-in-law up to lead everyone down to the beach. To ‘Etta’s Hollow’, where a roaring fire has already been lit. Drowsy but delighted - the sun is just starting to rise for a glorious dawn - Etta’s family bask in the beauty of the moment. A memory to be cherished forever.
\nUntil twenty minutes later, when Etta announces to her assembled beloveds something as shocking as it is alarming. ‘I have brought you all down to the beach this morning to tell you something important. You see, the thing is, today is my last day alive.’
\nOver the next twenty-four hours, Etta and her family are about to have the most surprising, affecting life-affirming day of all their lives.
\n
At the center of this 1942 novel are a wealthy, self-involved newspaper publisher and his scheming, novelist wife, Amanda Keeler - who ensnares Ohioan Vicky Haven in her social and romantic manipulations.
Set against an atmospheric backdrop of New York City in the months just before America's entry into World War II, A Time To Be Born is a scathing and hilarious study of cynical New Yorkers stalking each other for various selfish ends.
The year is 1982, and the people of the Hudson Valley community of Fervent have begun to move on from a homicide that upended the once quiet town. When the former neighbors who were convicted of the crime, James and Ella White, are proven innocent, released from prison, and return to Fervent, some people have cause for concern.
\nSylvia Upshaw and her best friend, Lafayette “Fate” Jolly, are uneasy about the Whites’ return. While the Whites were incarcerated, Sylvia revealed an explosive secret to their adopted son, Morgan, with devastating consequences. During the murder trial, Fate’s testimony helped seal their fate. James and Ella won’t let the betrayals go unpunished. Sylvia and Fate quickly become victims of harassment from the Whites, and when another murder is committed in Fervent, the town is left to fend for itself.
\n
Michael Mace, head of security at a top-secret research facility, opens his eyes in a makeshift morgue twenty-four hours following an event in which everyone perished - including him and his best friend, Shelby Shrewsberry.
\nHaving awakened with an extraordinary ability unlike anything he - or anyone else - has ever imagined, Michael is capable of being as elusive as a ghost. He sets out to honor his late friend by helping Nina Dozier and her son, John, whom Shelby greatly admired. Although what Michael does for Nina is life changing, his actions also evoke the wrath of John’s father, a member of one of the most vicious street gangs in Los Angeles.
\nBut an even greater threat is descending: the Internal Security Agency’s most vicious assassin, Durand Calaphas. Calaphas will stop at nothing to get his man. If Michael dies twice, he will not live a third time.
\nFrom the tarnished glamour of Beverly Hills to the streets of South Central to a walled estate in Rancho Santa Fe, only Michael can protect Nina and John - and ensure that light survives in a rapidly darkening world.
Odd, a charismatic young man with a sense for the otherworldly and the downright strange, is in self-imposed exile. Tragic events have led him from his sun-bleached desert home of Pico Mundo to a monastery in the High Sierra, searching for peace. It’s December and the remote abbey is besieged by icy winds and snow. But even in the silence of the mountains, danger and desperation haunt him still . . .
\nAs ever, where Odd Thomas goes, strangeness goes too. A white dog named Boo befriends him - as does the ghost of Elvis. And a world-famous physicist is conducting experiments in the catacombs of the abbey. Could this be why Odd can once again see bodachs, shadowy harbingers of violence? They prowl the halls, suggesting horror to come.
\nBut what form will it take? And how will Odd defeat an enemy that eclipses any he has met before?
A terrorist attack in the news leaves Nameless reeling from a disturbing vision. But it’s not a glimpse of the future. It’s a recovered memory that’s opening a window into his mysterious past.
\nUncharacteristically forthcoming - and unexpectedly personal - Nameless’s handlers have no choice but to emerge from the shadows. The indoctrinating factions of his visions are growing in number. What’s more, their chilling symbol of totalitarian control is now linked to the highest powers in the country. As his memories begin to break through, is Nameless prepared to face who he really is and defeat the encroaching madness of the future?
Our reluctant hero is drawn once more into a strange encounter with the lingering dead.
\nLater that morning, when I walked downtown to buy blue jeans and a few pairs of socks, I met a guy who offered to neuter me with a .45 pistol.
\nIn a sinister encounter with a rogue truck driver, Odd - who has the gift of seeing the dead and the soon-to-be dead - has a disturbing vision of the slaughter of three innocent children.
\nAcross California, into Nevada and back again, Odd embarks on a road chase to prevent the tragedy. But he is to discover that he is not up against a single twisted sociopath but a mysterious network of evil men and women whose resources appear supernatural.
\nLuckily, in this world that Odd finds so beautiful and full of wonders, and deeply odd as well, he meets a collection of like-minded eccentrics who will help him to take the next giant step towards his destiny.
Since his wife, Michelle, left seven years ago, Jeffy Coltrane has worked to maintain a normal life for himself and his eleven-year-old daughter, Amity, in Suavidad Beach. It’s a quiet life, until a local eccentric known as Spooky Ed shows up on their doorstep.
Ed entrusts Jeffy with hiding a strange and dangerous object - something he calls “the key to everything” - and tells Jeffy that he must never use the device. But after a visit from a group of ominous men, Jeffy and Amity find themselves accidentally activating the key and discovering an extraordinary truth. The device allows them to jump between parallel planes at once familiar and bizarre, wondrous and terrifying. And Jeffy and Amity can’t help but wonder, could Michelle be just a click away?
Jeffy and Amity aren’t the only ones interested in the device. A man with a dark purpose is in pursuit, determined to use its grand potential for profound evil. Unless Amity and Jeffy can outwit him, the place they call home may never be safe again.
Evil never backs down, so neither can he.
\nOdd Thomas, that unlikely hero, once more stands between us and our worst fears.
\nOdd never asked to communicate with the dead - they sought him out, in the small desert town of Pico Mundo, which he can never leave. He has already lost the love of his life; and now a childhood friend has disappeared and the worst is feared.
\nBut as Odd applies his unique talents to the task of finding his friend, he discovers something far worse than a dead body. Evil personified has come to visit this desert community of souls both living and dead . . .
The human “oddities” in the Museum of the Strange are less wondrous than the gawking rubes had been promised. But Alida is something else. The real thing. Traveling Depression-era America from carnival midways to speakeasies, Alida is resigned to an exploited and lonely life on the road as the museum’s golden ticket. Until she’s rescued by two compassionate strangers.
\nFranklin and Loretta Fairchild see in Alida a gifted and uncannily well-read girl in need of a loving touch and a family. With the openhearted couple and their three precociously imaginative children, Alida finds it. Yet despite everyone’s overwhelming generosity and acceptance, Alida knows she is still a very different kind of girl. Her dreams bear that out. They’re vivid, unsettling, and threatening. Alida fears that they’re also warnings. And that it’s the Fairchilds who may need rescue from a bad, bad world.
\nAlida will do anything to help those she now holds nearest and dearest. Empowered with a purpose to vanquish evil, she will not fail her family.
To some he’s a medical genius. To others, a twisted angel of mercy with a necessary solution to what he sees as an ugly dilemma. Only one man can help Dr. Death face the evil of his ways.
\nHenry Siphuncle has a selfless mission: releasing his patients forever from their distasteful imperfections. It’s for their own good. And the world’s. Even Henry’s own wife didn’t survive his disgust. Nameless has tracked him across the country to an isolated rural community, where the residents are grateful for their new free clinic. For Henry, it might just be the end of the road.
As kids, outcasts Rebecca, Bobby, Spencer, and Ernie were inseparable friends in the idyllic town of Maple Grove. Three left to pursue lofty dreams - and achieved them. Only Ernie never left. When he falls into a coma, his three amigos feel an urgent need to return home. Don’t they remember people lapsing into comas back then? And those people always awoke . . . didn’t they?
\nAfter two decades, not a lot has changed in Maple Grove, especially Ernie’s obnoxious, scary mother. But Rebecca, Bobby, and Spencer begin to remember a hulking, murderous figure and weirdness piled on mystery that they were made to forget. As Ernie sinks deeper into darkness, something strange awaits any friend who tries to save him.
\nFor Rebecca, Bobby, and Spencer, time is running out to remember the terrors of the past in a perfect town where nothing is what it seems. For Maple Grove, it’s a chance to have the “four amigos,” as they once called themselves, back in its grasp.
A bloodthirsty sheriff is terrorizing a small Texas town where justice has been buried with his victims. Until Nameless arrives - a vigilante whose past is a mystery and whose future is written in blood.
\nAnyone who crosses Sheriff Russell Soakes is dead, missing, or warned. One of them is a single mother trying to protect her children but bracing herself for the worst. Nameless fears the outcome. He’s seen it in his visions. Now it’s time to teach the depraved Soakes a lesson in fear. But in turning predators into prey, will Nameless unearth a few secrets of his own?
Nameless is wrestling with more violent visions of the future when his next mission comes with the assurance, This one will be easy. It’s a promise that leaves Nameless dangerously unprepared.
\nIt seems straightforward enough: Get a foot in the door by posing as a potential investor in a lucrative underground business—then bring the place down from the inside. There’s more here than meets the eye. What it triggers in Nameless is uncontrollable rage and brutal retribution. What it reveals is a clue to his forgotten past. Is it a breach on his handler’s part? Or a test? Either way, something’s not right.
Instinct and violent visions compel Nameless to embark on an unplanned mission to help a desperate mother and daughter on the run. Why is this rescue so strangely familiar to a man with no memories?
\nEvie and her daughter, Asteria, are fleeing an abusive cult when they meet a stranger in an abandoned Arizona shopping mall. Fate hasn’t set Nameless on their trail. It’s a premonition, and a chance to make reparations for a failure from his past he can’t even remember. This time, Nameless must do everything in his power not to fail those who trust him with their lives.
What strange science made Nameless who he is? What catastrophes have been erased from his memories? In the stunning conclusion of this series, the dark past comes flooding back, and Nameless must decide how much he really wants to know.
\nIn Indiana, a murderous psycho has kidnapped his own six-year-old stepson, Jamie, and secreted him away in a subterranean cave. It’s become their bunker. For Nameless, the case is breaking down his defenses, and it may force him to face his memories.
Odd Thomas sees dead people . . . They cannot speak to him nor do him harm; but still, it’s unnerving, living between two worlds, standing against our darkest fears.
\nJust off California's Pacific Coast Highway stands Roseland: a mansion, protected by high walls. Odd finds refuge there, with the very pregnant, and very mysterious, Annamaria.
\nBut the house contains terrible and bloody secrets. it is haunted by lingering spirits, and by nameless beats which lurk in the grounds, riding the shifting tides of time.
\nLately, Odd has suffered dreams of doom and terror. Roseland has welcomed him in . . . but will it ever let him leave?
Odd Thomas lives always between two worlds. He can see the lingering dead and knows that even in chaos, there is order, purpose, and strange meaning that invites our understanding but often thwarts it.
\nIntuition has brought Odd Thomas to the quaint town of Magic Beach on the California coast. As he waits to learn why he has been drawn there, he finds work as a cook and assistant to a once-famous film actor who, at eighty has become an eccentric with as long a list of fears as he has stories about Hollywood’s golden days.
\nOdd is having dreams of a red tide, vague but worrisome. By day he senses a free-floating fear in the air of the town, as if unleashed by the crashing waves. But nothing prepares him for the hard truth of what he will discover as he comes face to face with a form of evil that will test him as never before . . .
Something evil has come to the desert town that Odd and Stormy call home. It comes in the form of a mysterious man with a macabre appetite, a filing cabinet full of information on the world’s worst killers, and strange, hyena-like shadows following him wherever he goes.
\nOdd is worried. He knows things, sees things - about the living, the dead and the soon to be dead. Things that he has to act on. Now he’s terrified for Stormy, himself and Pico Mundo. Because he knows that on Wednesday August 15, a savage, blood-soaked whirlwind of violence and murder will devastate the town.
\nToday is August 14. And Odd is far from sure he can stop the coming storm . . .
A self-styled artist is getting away with murder in Death Valley. If all goes well, so will Nameless. In part two of the Nameless series, the relentless avenger is haunted by nightmares of the past and visions of what’s to come.
\nPalmer Oxenwald’s hunting ground is the Mojave wasteland. His victims are random tourists and hikers. His trophies are cherished photographs of the damage he’s done. His greatest threat is Nameless. Two men with one thing in common: memories of the dead. For a psychopath like Palmer, they’re a clear rush in black and white. For Nameless, they’re visions of violence buried and erased. But for how long?
Quinn Quicksilver was born a mystery―abandoned at three days old on a desert highway in Arizona. Raised in an orphanage, never knowing his parents, Quinn had a happy if unexceptional life. Until the day of “strange magnetism.” It compelled him to drive out to the middle of nowhere. It helped him find a coin worth a lot of money. And it practically saved his life when two government agents showed up in the diner in pursuit of him. Now Quinn is on the run from those agents and who knows what else, fleeing for his life.
During a shoot-out at a forlorn dude ranch, he finally meets his destined companions: Bridget Rainking, a beauty as gifted in foresight as she is with firearms, and her grandpa Sparky, a romance novelist with an unusual past. Bridget knows what it’s like to be Quinn. She’s hunted, too. The only way to stay alive is to keep moving.
Barreling through the Sonoran Desert, the formidable trio is impelled by that same inexplicable magnetism toward the inevitable. With every deeply disturbing mile, something sinister is in the rearview―an enemy that is more than a match for Quinn. Even as he discovers within himself resources that are every bit as scary.
In a town where the corrupt are protected, a bereaved mother seeks retribution for an arsonist’s deadly crimes. Only Nameless can help ease the burden of her grief—and satisfy her rage—in part four of this thrilling series.
\nAfter a suspicious house fire, Regina Belmont lost her two children, was left disfigured, and was abandoned by her gutless husband. Brokenhearted and bullied into silence by corrupt officials, Regina’s only recourse for truth and justice is Nameless. There’s something about this case that’s breaking Nameless’s heart as well. But can he bear to remember why?
In \"Strange Highways,\" a floundering alcoholic gets a mysterious second chance to relive the night his life began its downward spiral 20 years ago. But on this dark journey, he’ll be supremely tested by conflict with his successful, charismatic older brother, his loss of faith, and the clash between good and the ultimate evil.
\nSink into this binge-worthy collection of beloved Koontz short stories, featuring denizens of hell, vengeful children, and eerily human-like robots that will send shivers down your spine.
Benny Catspaw’s perpetually sunny disposition is tested when he loses his job, his reputation, his fiancée, and his favorite chair. He’s not paranoid. Someone is out to get him. He just doesn’t know who or why. Then Benny receives an inheritance from an uncle he’s never heard of: a giant crate and a video message. All will be well in time.
\nHow strange - though it’s a blessing, his uncle promises. Stranger yet is what’s inside the crate. He’s a seven-foot-tall self-described “bad weather friend” named Spike whose mission is to help people who are just too good for this world. Spike will take care of it. He’ll find Benny’s enemies. He’ll deal with them. This might be satisfying if Spike wasn’t such a menacing presence with terrifying techniques of intimidation.
\nIn the company of Spike and a fascinated young waitress-cum-PI-in-training named Harper, Benny plunges into a perilous high-speed adventure, the likes of which never would have crossed the mind of a decent guy like him.
A group of strangers bound by terrifying synchronicity becomes humankind’s hope of survival.
\nAs a girl, Joanna Chase thrived on Rustling Willows Ranch in Montana until tragedy upended her life. Now thirty-four and living in Santa Fe with only misty memories of the past, she begins to receive pleas - by phone, through her TV, in her dreams: I am in a dark place, Jojo. Please come and help me. Heeding the disturbing appeals, Joanna is compelled to return to Montana, and to a strange childhood companion she had long forgotten.
\nShe isn’t the only one drawn to the Montana farmstead. People from all walks of life have converged at the remote ranch. They are haunted, on the run, obsessed, and seeking answers to the same omniscient danger Joanna came to confront. All the while, on the outskirts of Rustling Willows, a madman lurks with a vision to save the future. Mass murder is the only way to see his frightening manifesto come to pass.
\nThrough a bizarre twist of seemingly coincidental circumstances, a band of strangers now find themselves under Montana’s big dark sky. Their lives entwined, they face an encroaching horror. Unless they can defeat this threat, it will spell the end for humanity.
“I could be dead tomorrow. Or something worse than dead.”
Jane Hawk knows she may be living on borrowed time. But as long as she’s breathing, she’ll never cease her one-woman war against the terrifying conspiracy that threatens the freedom - and free will - of millions. Battling the strange epidemic of murder-suicides that claimed Jane’s husband, and is escalating across the country, has made the rogue FBI agent a wanted fugitive, relentlessly hunted not only by the government but by the secret cabal behind the plot. Deploying every resource their malign nexus of power and technology commands, Jane’s enemies are determined to see her dead . . . or make her wish she was.
Jane’s ruthless pursuers can’t stop her from drawing a bead on her prey: a cunning man with connections in high places, a twisted soul of unspeakable depths with an army of professional killers on call. Propelled by her righteous fury and implacable insistence on justice, Jane will make her way from southern Southern California to the snow-swept slopes of Lake Tahoe to confront head-on the lethal forces arrayed against her. But nothing can prepare her for the chilling truth that awaits when she descends the crooked staircase to the dark and dreadful place where her long nightmare was born.
“We’re rewriting the play, and the play is this country, the world, the future. We break Jane’s heart, we’ll also break her will.”
She was one of the FBI’s top agents until she became the nation’s most-wanted fugitive. Now Jane Hawk may be all that stands between a free nation and its enslavement by a powerful secret society’s terrifying mind-control technology. She couldn’t save her husband, or the others whose lives have been destroyed, but equipped with superior tactical and survival skills - and the fury born of a broken heart and a hunger for justice - Jane has struck major blows against the insidious cabal-barbielism-.
But Jane’s enemies are about to hit back hard. If their best operatives can’t outrun her, they mean to bring her running to them, using her five-year-old son as bait. Jane knows there’s no underestimating their capabilities, but she must battle her way back across the country to the remote shelter where her boy is safely hidden . . . for now.
\nAs she moves resolutely forward, new threats begin to emerge: a growing number of brain-altered victims driven hopelessly, violently insane. With the madness spreading like a virus, the war between Jane and her enemies will become a fight for all their lives - against the lethal terror unleashed from behind the forbidden door.
\nIn retreat from a devastating loss and crushing injustice, Katie lives alone in a fortresslike stone house on Jacob’s Ladder island. Once a rising star in the art world, she finds refuge in her painting.
\nThe neighboring island of Ringrock houses a secret: a government research facility. And now two agents have arrived on Jacob’s Ladder in search of someone - or something - they refuse to identify. Although an air of menace hangs over these men, an infinitely greater threat has arrived, one so strange even the island animals are in a state of high alarm.
\nKatie soon finds herself in an epic and terrifying battle with a mysterious enemy. But Katie’s not alone after all: a brave young girl appears out of the violent squall. As Katie and her companion struggle across a dark and eerie landscape, against them is an omnipresent terror that could bring about the end of the world.
She woke up in a hospital room, barely able to remember her own name. She didn't know what terrible accident brought her there - or the four shadowy strangers who hovered in the darkened corridors.
\nYet step by step, she unlocked the mysteries of her past - returning to a single night of violence waged by four young men. Susan Thorton awakens in a hospital, after a near-fatal car crash, to see four men lurking outside her door - men who exactly resemble those who killed her boyfriend years before.
\nCan these be the same men? As she tries to uncover the identities of those stalking her, Susan enters a terrifying nightmare - one from which she may never escape.
In a forgotten Cold War bunker, a cold-blooded arms dealer counts his cash and watches from a distance as cities collapse into violence. Pledged to stop him is a man without a past, guided by a teenage boy through the tunnels under the corrupted port city. With each stealthy move toward their target, the path ahead grows ever darker.
A series of suspicious deaths in a retirement home draws Nameless into the confidence of a terrified former resident - and into the dark heart of a shocking conspiracy. In part five of the Nameless series, it’s time to hunt.
\nOakshore Park is Michigan’s most exclusive assisted-living community. Presided over by two killer angels of mercy, it’s also the go-to facility in assisted dying. For a cut, they make impatient heirs happy. Nameless must concoct a scheme just as cunning. But righteous retribution stirs disquiet in the avenger as light starts to shine on the black hole of his past. Should he welcome it or keep running?
Rogue FBI agent Jane Hawk is living in a world of danger. Her battle to expose a global conspiracy risks her own life and that of her five-year-old son, whom she has sent into hiding.
\nBut more than just their lives are at stake: this is a war for the free will of millions. Jane is meticulously gathering evidence to bring a terrifying organization to justice – one that threatens humanity with technologically imposed slavery.
\nThe closer she gets to her goal, the harder it is to turn back. Until she is left with no choice but to expose the unimaginable truth, even if it changes her life - and the lives of everybody around the world - forever . . .
A decade ago, Emily Carlino vanished after her car broke down on a California highway. She was presumed to be one of serial killer Ronny Lee Jessup’s victims whose remains were never found.
\nWriter David Thorne still hasn’t recovered from losing the love of his life, or from the guilt of not being there to save her. Since then, he’s sought closure any way he can. He even visits regularly with Jessup in prison, desperate for answers about Emily’s final hours so he may finally lay her body to rest.
\nThen David meets Maddison Sutton, beguiling, playful, and keenly aware of all David has lost. But what really takes his breath away is that everything about Maddison, down to her kisses, is just like Emily. As the fantastic becomes credible, David’s obsession grows, Maddison’s mysterious past deepens - and terror escalates.
\nIs she Emily? Or an irresistible dead ringer? Either way, the ultimate question is the same: What game is she playing? Whatever the risk in finding out, David’s willing to take it for this precious second chance. It’s been ten years since he’s felt this inspired, this hopeful, this much in love . . . and he’s afraid.
A deadly black widow has eliminated three husbands and counting. But Nameless knows her one weakness. To bring truth and its consequences to her crimes, the vigilante must spin a web of his own in part three of the Nameless series.
\nLucia - current last name, Rickenbah - has made a fortune by marrying rich men who tend to drop dead. But the superstitious blonde believes in more than money and murder. Nameless’s job is to scare a confession out of Lucia, and as the psychological warfare escalates, even he may be in for a shock.
I very much need to be dead.
These are the chilling words left behind by a man who had everything to live for but took his own life. In the aftermath, his widow, Jane Hawk, does what all her grief, fear, and fury demands: find the truth, no matter what.
People of talent and accomplishment, people admired and happy and sound of mind, have been committing suicide in surprising numbers. When Jane seeks to learn why, she becomes the most-wanted fugitive in America. Her powerful enemies are protecting a secret so important so terrifying that they will exterminate anyone in their way.
But all their power and viciousness may not be enough to stop a woman as clever as they are cold-blooded, as relentless as they are ruthless and who is driven by a righteous rage they can never comprehend. Because it is born of love.
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This could be the most important mission of Nameless’s life. Because it’s putting him on a collision course with his own past and the nation’s future.
\nThe target: a fortified redoubt in the golden hills of California, the hub of a new world order that’s unthinkably close at hand. The time has come for Nameless to face its designer: the nihilist mastermind behind the One Solution. It’s also time for Nameless to discover who he is and was, and what brought him to this fateful endgame. But will the truth be a breaking point? Or a turning point?
London, 1887.
After burying her spinster aunt, orphaned Veronica Speedwell is free to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry - and the occasional romantic dalliance. As familiar with hunting butterflies as with fending off admirers, Veronica intends to embark upon the journey of a lifetime.
But fate has other plans when Veronica thwarts her own attempted abduction with the help of an enigmatic German baron, who offers her sanctuary in the care of his friend Stoker, a reclusive and bad-tempered natural historian. But before the baron can reveal what he knows of the plot against her, he is found murdered - leaving Veronica and Stoker on the run from an elusive assailant as wary partners in search of the villainous truth.
Victorian adventuress Veronica Speedwell is whisked off to a remote island off the tip of Cornwall when her natural historian colleague Stoker's brother calls in a favor. On the pretext of wanting a companion to accompany him to Lord Malcolm Romilly's house party, Tiberius persuades Veronica to pose as his fiancée - much to Stoker's chagrin. But upon arriving, it becomes clear that the party is not as innocent as it had seemed. Every invited guest has a connection to Romilly's wife, Rosamund, who disappeared on her wedding day three years ago, and a dramatic dinner proves she is very much on her husband's mind.
As spectral figures, ghostly music, and mysterious threats begin to plague the partygoers, Veronica enlists Stoker's help to discover the host's true motivations. And as they investigate, it becomes clear that there are numerous mysteries surrounding the Romilly estate, and every person present has a motive to kill Rosamund . . .
When the corpse of an entitled young man is found entirely drained of blood in a carriage next to Highgate Cemetery, Veronica’s interest is piqued. And then a second victim is found, his death made to look like a suicide, and Veronica and her intrepid beau, Stoker, know the hunt is on. The two men share one link: they were both members of a society so secretive that only a singular mention of it can be found anywhere.
\nThirsty for more clues, Veronica and Stoker hear that a young Roma boy may know more about their first victim, but the only way to the boy is through an old acquaintance of Stoker’s, Lady Julia Brisbane. Lady Julia and her dashing husband, Nicholas, occasionally track down murderers and are only too happy to help. But as it becomes clear the secret society is a dangerous sect looking to entice immortality seekers, Veronica and Stoker find themselves ensnared by a decidedly more sinister couple.
\nThe professed leader of the society claims to be a creature of the night; his partner practices witchcraft and they both fancy themselves emissaries of the otherworldly. Just as Veronica and Stoker get closer to learning the true purpose of the society and unraveling this macabre mystery, another body turns up, and they quickly discover they’ve gone from being the hunters to the hunted. . . .
\n
Lord Rosemorran has purchased a wax figure of a beautiful reclining woman and asks Stoker to incorporate a clockwork mechanism to give the Rosemorran Collection its very own breathing Sleeping Beauty in the style of Madame Tussaud’s famous figures. But when Stoker attempts to insert the device, he makes a gruesome discovery: this is no wax figure. The mannequin is the perfectly preserved body of a young woman who was once very much alive. But who would do such a dreadful thing, and why?
\nSleuthing out the answer to this question sets Veronica and Stoker on their wildest adventure yet. From the underground laboratories of scientists experimenting with electricity to resurrect the dead a là Frankenstein to the travelling show where Stoker once toured as an attraction, the gaslit atmosphere of London in October is the perfect setting for this investigation into the unknown. Through it all, the intrepid pair is always one step behind the latest villain - a man who has killed once and will stop at nothing to recover the body of the woman he loved. Will they unmask him in time to save his next victim? Or will they become the latest figures to be immortalized in his collection of horrors?
\n
London, 1889. Veronica Speedwell and her natural historian beau Stoker are summoned by Sir Hugo Montgomerie, head of Special Branch. He has a personal request on behalf of his goddaughter, Euphemia Hathaway. After years of traveling the world, her eldest brother, Jonathan, heir to Hathaway Hall, was believed to have been killed in the catastrophic eruption of Krakatoa a few years before.
\nBut now a man matching Jonathan's description and carrying his possessions has arrived at Hathaway Hall with no memory of his identity or where he has been. Could this man truly be Jonathan, back from the dead? Or is he a devious impostor, determined to gain ownership over the family's most valuable possessions--a legendary parure of priceless Rajasthani jewels? It's a delicate situation, and Veronica is Sir Hugo's only hope.
\nVeronica and Stoker agree to go to Hathaway Hall to covertly investigate the mysterious amnesiac. Veronica is soon shocked to find herself face-to-face with a ghost from her past. To help Sir Hugo discover the truth, she must open doors to her own history that she long believed to be shut for good.
\n
Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates what they have to offer in an age that relies more on technology than people skills.
\nWhen the foursome is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. Only the Board, the top-level members of the Museum, can order the termination of field agents, and the women realise they've been marked for death.
\nNow to get out alive they have to turn against their own organisation, relying on experience and each other to get the job done, knowing that working together is the secret to their survival. They're about to teach the Board what it really means to be a woman - and a killer - of a certain age.
\n
After more than a year of laying low, Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie are called back into action. They have enjoyed their rest, but the lack of excitement is starting to chafe: a professional killer can only take so many watercolor classes and yoga sessions before she gets the itch to get back in the game. When they receive a call from Naomi Ndiaye, the head of the elite assassin organisation known as the Museum, they are ready to tackle the greatest challenge of their careers.
\nSomeone on the inside has compiled a list of important kills committed by Museum agents, all of them connected to a single, shadowy figure, an Eastern European gangster who rules her business empire with an iron fist and plays puppet master in international affairs. Naomi is convinced this criminal queen is bent upon revenge, killing off the agents who attempted to thwart her, and the aging quartet of killers is next.
\nTogether the foursome embark on a wild ride across the globe on the double mission of rooting out the Museum’s mole and hunting down the gangster and her assassin. But their nemesis is unlike any they’ve faced before, and it will take all their experience and a whole lot of luck to get out of this mission alive.
\n
Veronica Speedwell and her natural historian colleague Stoker are asked by Lady Wellingtonia Beauclerk to help with a potential scandal so explosive it threatens to rock the monarchy. Prince Albert Victor is a regular visitor to the most exclusive private club in London, known as the Club de l'Etoile, and the proprietess, Madame Aurore, has received an expensive gift that can be traced back to the prince. Lady Wellie would like Veronica and Stoker to retrieve the jewel from the club before scandal can break.
Worse yet, London is gripped by hysteria in the autumn of 1888, terrorized by what would become the most notorious and elusive serial killer in history, Jack the Ripper - and Lady Wellie suspects the prince may be responsible.
Veronica and Stoker reluctantly agree to go undercover at Madame Aurore's high class brothel, where another body soon turns up. Many secrets are swirling around Veronica and the royal family - and it's up to Veronica and Stoker to find the truth, before it's too late for all of them.
London, 1887. Victorian adventuress and butterfly hunter Veronica Speedwell receives an invitation to visit the Curiosity Club, a ladies-only establishment for daring and intrepid women. There she meets the mysterious Lady Sundridge, who begs her to take on an impossible task - saving society art patron Miles Ramsforth from execution. Accused of the brutal murder of his artist mistress Artemisia, Ramsforth will face the hangman's noose in a week's time if Veronica cannot find the real killer.
But Lady Sundridge is not all that she seems, and unmasking her true identity is only the first of the many secrets Veronica must uncover. Together with her natural historian colleague Stoker, Veronica races against time to find the true murderer - a ruthless villain who not only took Artemisia's life in cold . . .
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Veronica’s natural-historian beau, Stoker, has been away in Bavaria for months and their relationship is at an impasse. But when Veronica shows up before him with his brother, Tiberius, Lord Templeton-Vane, he is lured back home by an intriguing job offer: preparing an iguanodon for a very special dinner party.
\nTiberius has received a cryptic message - along with the obituaries of two recently deceased members of his old group of friends, the Seven Sinners - that he too should get his affairs in order. Realising he is in grave danger but not knowing why, he plans a reunion party for the remaining Sinners at his family estate to lure the killer out while Veronica and Stoker investigate.
\nAs the guests arrive and settle in, the evening’s events turn deadly. More clues come to light, leading Veronica, Stoker, and Tiberius to uncover a shared past among the Sinners that has led to the fatal present. But the truth might be far more sinister than what they were prepared for.
\n
London, 1888. As colorful and unfettered as the butterflies she collects, Victorian adventuress Veronica Speedwell can’t resist the allure of an exotic mystery - particularly one involving her enigmatic colleague, Stoker.
His former expedition partner has vanished from an archaeological dig with a priceless diadem unearthed from the newly discovered tomb of an Egyptian princess. This disappearance is just the latest in a string of unfortunate events that have plagued the controversial expedition, and rumors abound that the curse of the vengeful princess has been unleashed as the shadowy figure of Anubis himself stalks the streets of London.
But the perils of an ancient curse are not the only challenges Veronica must face as sordid details and malevolent enemies emerge from Stoker’s past.
Caught in a tangle of conspiracies and threats - and thrust into the public eye by an enterprising new foe - Veronica must separate facts from fantasy to unravel a web of duplicity that threatens to cost Stoker everything . . .
January 1889.
\nAs the newest member of the Curiosity Club - an elite society of brilliant, intrepid women - Veronica Speedwell is excited to put her many skills to good use. As she assembles a memorial exhibition for pioneering mountain climber Alice Baker-Greene, Veronica discovers evidence that the recent death was not a tragic climbing accident but murder. Veronica and her natural historian beau, Stoker, tell the patron of the exhibit, Princess Gisela of Alpenwald, of their findings. With Europe on the verge of war, Gisela's chancellor, Count von Rechstein, does not want to make waves - and before Veronica and Stoker can figure out their next move, the princess disappears.
Having noted Veronica's resemblance to the princess, von Rechstein begs her to pose as Gisela for the sake of the peace treaty that brought the princess to England. Veronica reluctantly agrees to the scheme. She and Stoker must work together to keep the treaty intact while navigating unwelcome advances, assassination attempts, and Veronica's own family - the royalty who has never claimed her.
An end-of-the-world love story, an epic full of pathos and humor, asking what can be saved of our planet.
\nWell, that’s about it for the story of planet Earth, poor Earth, reduced to not much more than a piece of burnt coal. But, as Deb Olin Unferth shows in her latest electrifying novel, life and love persist, even in the most unexpected, inhospitable places.
\nTwo women meet on a beach of artificial sand. One was raised in a pod in the ocean and the other may or may not be a robot. Their love - or any love - seems so unlikely. Earth is severely depopulated. Some people have given up, gone off to Mars. Others pursue eternal life as digital code. And yet others, like Dylan and Melanie, are holdouts - and some of those holdouts are constructing a vast molecular collection in hopes that a future person may be alive to make a new Earth. Foolhardy? Misguided? Quixotic? Probably. But what can a human (or a robot) do?
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Maddie Trudeau’s world is turned upside down when Landon Baxter - the impulsive husband she’s on the brink of divorcing - dies in a mountain-biking accident. Needing help raising her five-year-old twins, she moves in with her free-spirited mother and her newly rescued Great Pyrenees. Maddie’s world is rocked even more when a young woman shows up at their door with shocking ties to her late husband.
\nJordan Hill isn’t one to ask for favors. Her own family never did her any, so she can see no reason to wish for kindness from a stranger. Yet, she’s certain Maddie is the one person she needs in her life above all others right now.
\nNoel Ward hopes to be the refuge and support Maddie and her children need at this tumultuous time, but he was Landon’s best friend and, inadvertently, a long-ago source of a broken heart for Maddie. It’s a fool’s hope that she’d open her heart to him a second time, but a fool’s hope is better than none.
\nAmid all the chaos, Maddie faces an unprecedented battle to carve out a new life on her own terms, but if she can do it, she might just realise that sometimes life’s detours lead you right where you’re supposed to be.
Dr. Donovan Hunt is a respected veterinarian, the poster boy for panty melting hot, and a wizard between the sheets. He’s also my brother’s boss. Boo, right? Wrong.
\nA few tropical drinks in the Caribbean sunshine on a luxury cruise and all of my reservations disappear, as does my tiny string bikini when we hit Donovan’s stateroom. We spend two glorious days in his bed. When we return to Manhattan, we agree to go our separate ways.
\nTechnically, I agree to go my separate way because Donovan wants our high sea adventure to continue on solid ground. I give in because the man is fun with a capital F, if you know what I mean. Fast forward six weeks, and I’m in for the surprise of my life. I’m pregnant, and Donovan is on board to be the ultimate dad I’d like to . . . well, you get the idea.
\nWe decide we’ll be co-parents, but when I start to wish for more, I discover there’s much more to Donovan than meets the eye.
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Audrey Mendes is a clever lawyer but has never made partner. Her weeks are filled with long hours in the office, visits to her ageing parents, trivia nights at the local and evenings at home with her pet rabbit, Joni.
\nWhen Audrey tries to buy wine at the pub she is ignored and walks out without paying. One thing leads to another, and soon she starts rebelling in small and creative ways against a world in which she is unseen - until a painful reminder from her childhood pushes her into a reckoning.
\nAll the while there’s a potential romance and an eccentric new neighbour to deal with. And why does Audrey buy extravagant baby clothes when she doesn’t have a child?
\nWry, humorous and provocative, this is an affectionate novel about sorting out the past, grabbing onto life and claiming your place in it.
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A richly inventive novel about a centuries-old vampire, a spellbound witch, and the mysterious manuscript that draws them together.
\nDeep in the stacks of Oxford's Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks.
\nBut her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries-and she is the only creature who can break its spell.
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Historian Diana Bishop, descended from a line of powerful witches, and long-lived vampire Matthew Clairmont have broken the laws dividing creatures. When Diana discovered a significant alchemical manuscript in the Bodleian Library, she sparked a struggle in which she became bound to Matthew. Now the fragile coexistence of witches, daemons, vampires and humans is dangerously threatened.
\nSeeking safety, Diana and Matthew travel back in time to London, 1590. But they soon realise that the past may not provide a haven. Reclaiming his former identity as poet and spy for Queen Elizabeth, the vampire falls back in with a group of radicals known as the School of Night. Many are unruly daemons, the creative minds of the age, including playwright Christopher Marlowe and mathematician Thomas Harriot.
\nTogether Matthew and Diana scour Tudor London for the elusive manuscript Ashmole 782, and search for the witch who will teach Diana how to control her remarkable powers . . .
The first shadows fall on a Friday afternoon when a single, dying raven delivers an invitation to the witch, Diana Bishop. It calls her home to the hallowed ground of Ravenswood, to a place and a family she has never known.
\nAnd when Diana and her husband Matthew Clairmont learn that their seven-year-old twins must have their magical powers tested, Diana decides to forge a new future for her family, hoping to find answers at the Proctor ancestral home.
\nThere, Diana becomes her great aunt Gwyneth's pupil in Higher Magic. And as Diana walks an unknown path, she must journey to some of the darkest places within her family history - and herself - if she is to unlock greater power.
At Matthew's ancestral home at Sept-Tours, they reunite with the cast of characters from A Discovery of Witches - with one significant exception. But the real threat to their future has yet to be revealed, and when it is, the search for Ashmole 782 and its missing pages takes on even more urgency.
\n\t\t\t\t\tIn ancestral homes and university laboratories, using ancient knowledge and modern science, from the hills of the Auvergne to the palaces of Venice and beyond, the couple at last learn what the witches discovered so many centuries ago.
Set in contemporary Paris and London, and the American colonies during the upheaval and unrest that exploded into the Revolutionary War, a sweeping story that braids together the past and present.
On the battlefields of the American Revolution, Matthew de Clermont meets Marcus MacNeil, a young surgeon from Massachusetts, during a moment of political awakening when it seems that the world is on the brink of a brighter future.
When Matthew offers him a chance at immortality and a new life, free from the restraints of his puritanical upbringing, Marcus seizes the opportunity to become a vampire. But his transformation is not an easy one and the ancient traditions and responsibilities of the de Clermont family clash with Marcus's deeply-held beliefs in liberty, equality, and brotherhood.
Fast forward to contemporary London, where Marcus has fallen for Phoebe Taylor, a young employee at Sotheby's. She decides to become a vampire, too, and though the process at first seems uncomplicated, the couple discovers that the challenges facing a human who wishes to be a vampire are no less formidable in the modern world than they were in the 18th century. The shadows that Marcus believed he'd escaped centuries ago may return to haunt them both - forever.
Struggling romance writer and recent divorcée Marcy Jo Codburn feels like a failure. She’s green with author envy and longing for a book deal, a launch party with cupcakes, and the admiration of her daughter. But her dream of literary success is fading faster than her beige hair dye. When she witnesses celebrated author Francesca Barber in a compromising position, Marcy sees her chance. Transforming into Summer Branigan, her bolder, blonder pen name, she leverages Francesca’s secret to secure the ultimate coauthor.
\nAs their collaboration spirals from Marcy’s modest Connecticut home to Francesca’s lavish Hamptons estate, both women discover that in the cutthroat world of publishing, every story has its price. With looming deadlines, a kidnapping plot gone awry, and more than one fraud to hide, their twisted partnership careens toward a surprise ending neither could have written.
\nIn this darkly comic page-turner, critically acclaimed author Deborah Levison skewers the publishing industry with razor-sharp wit. A Novel Crime asks just how far an aspiring writer will go to see her name on a book jacket - and what happens when the stories we tell start to write themselves.
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In contemporary Paris, a narrator and two companions explore the life and work of Gertrude a subversive imagining of a truly subversive female artist.
\nOur narrator has a lot going on. Her friend Eva’s cat is missing—also, she wonders, where is Eva’s husband. Their other friend Fanny is barely around, and not because of her job in finance; she is tangled up with no less than three lovers. And Gertrude Stein is ruining the narrator’s life.
\nShe is trying to write an essay about Stein but it seems impossible. She knows too much and nothing at all about the leading avant-garde thinker of the early twentieth century. There are the Gertrude Stein studied psychology at Harvard and medicine at Johns Hopkins, then quit; curated modern art in her rented apartment that would shake the world; wrote novels, plays, poetry, and libretti that are incoherent and brilliant; felt love at first sight for her daring wife, the subject of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
\nBut so much is out of reach. How do we put ourselves together? What do we lose to become modern? What do we find beyond the limits of language? Only a book like this, only a book by Deborah Levy, could attempt such an investigation. It crashes through genre to form something distinctively, utterly new - an imaginative, entertaining, and scholarly manifestation befitting the genius at its center. This is My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein.
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What if the people we trust are the ones we should fear?
\nWe all know them. Those who exist just on the fringes of society. Who send prickles up the back of our neck. The charmers. The liars. The manipulators. Those who have the potential to go that one step too far. And then take another step.
Jessamine Gooch makes a living from these people. Each week she broadcasts a radio show looking into the past lives of convicted killers; asking if there was more that could have been done to prevent their terrible crimes.
Then one day she is approached by a woman desperate to find her missing friend, Cassie, fearing her abusive husband may have taken that final deadly step. But as Jessamine delves into the months prior to Cassie's disappearance she fails to realise there is a dark figure closer to home, one that threatens the safety of her own family . . .
In 2003 Mr. Danler's high school class got an assignment to write letters to their future selves. Twenty years later they receive them in the mail. Upon opening them the students are shocked to find that their envelopes contain old secrets that threaten to expose the truth about the tragic death of one of their classmates - and when one letter leads a student, Miranda, to jump to her death, the small community is rocked to its core.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tStunned by what has happened and armed with a clue of her own, Miranda's best-friend Audrey decides to track down her former classmates to get to the bottom of Miranda's death. In doing so, she sets off a chain of events that could expose the truth not just about one untimely death but two.
When Diana arrives home one evening to find her husband Patrick dead, her world shatters. His mysterious death leaves behind so many unanswered questions.
\nMeanwhile, miles away, Angie’s husband, Ray, vanishes without a trace, abandoning her and their troubled teenage son.
\nAs both women dig deeper into their husbands’ pasts, they stumble upon a chilling web of lies, deceit, and long-buried secrets. Their separate searches soon collide and dark, twisted revelations force them to face a terrifying truth that threatens everything they hold dear.
\nNowhere Man is a heart-pounding psychological thriller that will keep you on edge until the final, shocking twist.
\nIn a world of lies, can you ever really trust the ones you love?
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What would you be willing to give up for the person you love? Your life? Your memories? Everybody and everything you've ever known?
\nKaren Stephens is an ordinary woman living an ordinary life in the year 2010. Until the day she hears something. A song, an unfamiliar one that moves her in a way she cannot understand or explain.
\nJudy Paige was also an ordinary woman, who lived an ordinary life, up until the day she sang a song at a concert in the year 1964.
\nWhen Karen's curiosity about the song she heard turns into an obsession about the woman who sang it, she's drawn to the town of Leyfant, Texas. The town Judy Paige was born and raised in, and it's there that Karen is approached by a man who calls himself Mr. Smith. A man who asks Karen a simple question. \"Would you like to meet her?\"
\nThe question is simple, but the answer is not.
\nBecause Judy Paige has been dead for almost twenty years.
Born into poverty in pre-war London, and growing up fast during the Blitz, Betty grabs the chance at a bigger life by migrating to Australia. On board the SS Asturias she meets three people who will influence the course of her life - Pearl, a good-hearted party girl; Athena, a Greek woman on her way to marry a man she has never met; and Leo, a German Jew who lost his family in the war.
\nIn Sydney, Betty is making ends meet as a waitress at the famous Trocadero dance hall when she stumbles into a rushed courtship with Donald, a wealthy businessman, and dedicates herself to being the ideal 1950s suburban housewife. But life has other plans for Betty, and soon she must find a way to do more than survive.
\nSet against a century of world events and social upheavals, Betty takes us to the frontlines of the anti-war protests and the women's liberation movement of the 1970s, to the AIDS crisis during the 1980s, to Mexico and eventually becomes a TV screenwriter. Even in her nineties, Betty is still passionately engaged with the world, still surprising us.
\nOne Hundred Years of Betty is the saga of a strong, intelligent woman born too early in time to make the most of her talents without having to fight for everything. It's about the defining force of motherhood, the family we make, and how the determination to live to the hilt, with all the joy and sorrow that entails, can lead to a life beyond one's wildest imaginings.
Legal investigator Finley O’Sullivan has dealt with her share of shady characters, but the firm’s latest client has an even darker past than most. In fact, Nashville Metro Police seems to think he’s a murderer.
\nFinley isn’t so sure. Her investigation into Ray Johnson’s history focuses on the unsolved murder of a teenager who died seventeen years earlier. The case went cold, but questions remain. Months after the girl’s death, people close to her started disappearing - her mother first, then Ray’s brother. But why?
\nAs Finley races to solve a decades-old murder, she uncovers new clues and long-buried secrets that could blow the case wide open. But whoever killed the girl all those years ago may still be a threat - and now the chase is on.
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Birmingham detectives Kerri Devlin and Luke Falco arrive at the scene of a double homicide to discover that nothing makes sense. A woman and her child are dead, and though the husband says he killed them, the evidence says otherwise. Why would a man confess to unspeakable murders he didn’t commit?
\nWhat starts as an open-and-shut case explodes into a web of new leads. Devlin and Falco get to work tracking down every single one - including a disturbing connection between the murders and Falco’s dark past.
\nFalco knows the incident from eight years ago will jeopardise the partnership he’s built with Devlin, both on and off the job. If he could go back, he would - but what happened happened, and there’s a murderer on the loose. Devlin and Falco must slog through the pain to get to the truth; and so far the only truth they know is that everyone is lying.
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After tragedy destroyed her career as deputy police chief, she felt lost. Moving back home near her sisters, she put her skills back to use as a crime analyst, and now her star is finally back on the rise. Vera’s work really begins to heat up after the local sheriff, Gray “Bent” Benton, calls to ask her for assistance with a pressing case.
\nPushing aside their complicated past, Vera agrees to help Bent search for a missing reporter. But their investigation uncovers an improbable connection to the Messenger, a serial killer she put behind bars twelve years ago. The killer, who is dying of cancer, wants his final revenge. And the reporter is merely a distraction - Vera is his true target.
\nWhen the Messenger pulls her sister Eve into his twisted game, Vera vows to stop him for good. But can she find Eve and the reporter before it’s too late?
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For months, Doctor Rowan Dupont has been staring death in the face. It followed her back to her hometown of Winchester, Tennessee, ten months ago, cloaking the walls of her family’s Victorian funeral home like a shroud. In investigating the mysterious deaths of her loved ones, Rowan has unearthed enough family secrets to bury everything she’d previously thought true. But each shocking discovery has only led to more bodies and more questions; the rabbit hole is deeper than she ever imagined.
Despite settling in to a comfortable life with Police Chief Billy Brannigan, Rowan knows dangerous serial killer Julian Addington is still out there. She can’t let her guard down now. Not when she’s this close to ending his torment once and for all. But with a storm brewing on the horizon, she’ll get only one shot before the impending darkness takes hold, threatening to wipe away every truth she’s uncovered - and everything she holds dear.
Someone’s found the skeleton in the closet, and it’s not the only one. Wall Street Journal bestselling author Debra Webb presents an emotional new mystery.
\nCrime analyst and newly disgraced deputy police chief Vera Boyett doesn’t visit home often, and she certainly doesn’t venture back into the cave on her family land. But when the remains of her long-missing stepmother are discovered, Vera will have to face a past that threatens all she is. She and her sister Eve had a fairy-tale good until it was tragic, with a stepmother they never found a bond with.
\nAt least they had each other, a baby half-sister, and a mutual devotion that would have them do the unthinkable. It’s a summer in small-town Tennessee, so thick with humidity it could drown you and so rife with secrets it could smother you. And deep beneath the surface, there are more bodies than you’d think . . .
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As veteran detectives of the Birmingham Police Department, Kerri Devlin and Luke Falco have seen it all. So when the city’s new hotshot deputy district attorney turns up dead as part of a double homicide, the partners immediately get to work.
\nBut this is no ordinary case. Devlin and Falco quickly link the murdered DDA to one of their own: former BPD detective Sadie Cross. But Sadie’s fractured memory is yet another puzzle to decipher, as she only recalls bits and pieces of her violent past . . . a past that may hold clues to the motive behind the murders.
\nAs the group slowly begins to unearth the truth, they soon discover that the more secrets are revealed, the more fatal the consequences.
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Legal investigator Finley O’Sullivan searches for evidence the police overlooked, wading through secrets, lies, and betrayal to find answers. With the unsolved murder of her husband still very much on her mind, Finley must confront her own personal trauma on a daily basis. Lies are part of her livelihood, but they’re also the reason she can’t get justice for the man she loved.
\nWhen a man imprisoned for murder recants his confession, claiming he cleaned up the mess for his girlfriend - the victim’s own daughter - Finley takes on the case. She discovers the victim had identical twin daughters . . . and the sisters have very different accounts of the crime.
\nAs she dives headlong into the twins’ traumatic past, Finley will have to contend with her own demons to get to the truth - before it’s too late.
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Doctor Rowan Dupont knows a serial killer is coming for her. Julian Addington has been waiting. Watching. And it’s only a matter of time before he strikes. But what Julian doesn’t know is that Rowan is ready for him. And more than anything she wants answers. How well did the depraved killer actually know her mother? And how many lies have been spun in the years since she took her own life?
Working alongside her childhood friend Police Chief Billy Brannigan, Rowan is determined to get to the bottom of her mother’s puzzling suicide once and for all - even if it means exposing an unsettling past. It certainly seems like her family’s Victorian funeral home has borne witness to more than one dark secret, but when a recent double homicide leads to an even grislier discovery, separating the truth from the lies might be the last thing Rowan does.
Legal investigator Finley O’Sullivan has had a difficult year in the wake of her husband’s murder. But in her line of work, there’s no time to grieve. Her job is to protect the firm’s clients and defend their innocence through grueling investigative work.
\nEllen Winthrop is a force to be reckoned with in the financial world. In a male-dominated industry, she shattered the glass ceiling by empowering and promoting women. But now her husband is dead, killed in the Winthrop family home - and she stands accused of his murder.
\nFinley, as the investigator at the firm Ellen Winthrop hired to defend her, has a clear objective: prove that Ellen didn’t do it. But the deeper Finley digs into the Winthrops’ marriage, the more she starts to doubt Ellen’s story. The uncomfortable truth is that Ellen Winthrop may in fact have killed her husband.
\nAnd he might not have been the first.
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Doctor Rowan Dupont knows death. She grew up surrounded by it in her family's Victorian funeral home, and it's haunted her since the day her twin sister drowned years ago. Between her mother's subsequent suicide and the recent murder of her father, coming home to run the funeral home feels fitting - even if it leaves her vulnerable to an obsessive serial killer. Rowan refuses to let fear keep her from honoring her family.
\nBut the more time she spends back in Winchester, Tennessee, the more she finds herself questioning what really happened that fateful summer. Had her sister's death truly been an accident And what pushed their mother to take her own life The dark lake surrounding Rowan's hometown holds as many secrets as the bodies that float in its chilling depths. But Rowan is running out of time if she's going to uncover the truth before somebody sinks her for good.
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A cabin in the woods. Three dead, one in critical condition. Property owned by not just any Tennessee local, but one of the richest men in the country.
\nVera Boyett isn’t quite sure what it means. But that’s why Sheriff Gray “Bent” Benton called her: to figure it out. Criminal analysis is what she does best. Even when the town is in panicked shambles, even when the case is more delicate than most . . . and even when it’s not the only case on her plate.
\nVera’s family is caught in a deadly mess of its own. And while her pregnant sister seems an unlikely culprit, each new detail seems to point to her guilt. Desperate to protect her, Vera vows to find out what really happened.
\nAs evidence emerges in both cases, Vera and Bent work to unravel a dangerous web of secrets to get to the truth. But their investigations reveal more than they ever expected . . .
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Every person in Pine Bluff, Alabama, stood behind Emily Wallace when she testified against Clint Austin. After all, Emily knows what she saw that terrible Clint, covered in blood, holding the body of her best friend Heather.
\nBut Clint has always maintained his innocence, and now, after a successful appeal, he has come home to prove it.
\nThe whole town is furious about his return, and Emily becomes obsessed with sending Clint back to prison - until her father reveals a devastating secret that casts doubt on the whole trial. What if she was wrong?
\nWhen another person with a connection to Heather turns up dead, Clint and Emily embark on a desperate search to find the truth. Because ten years ago, they were both betrayed by someone they know. So who, in a town full of liars, is getting away with murder?
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It’s the worst possible time for Detective Kerri Devlin to be involved in an all-consuming double-homicide case. She’s locked in a bitter struggle with her ex-husband and teenage daughter, and her reckless new partner is anything but trustworthy.
\nStill, she has a job to do: there’s a killer at large, and a pregnant woman has gone missing. Once Devlin and her partner get to work, they quickly unearth secrets involving Birmingham’s most esteemed citizens. Each new layer of the investigation brings Devlin closer to the killer and the missing woman, who starts looking more like a suspect than a victim.
\nBut just as answers come into view, the case twists, expands, and slithers into Devlin’s personal life. There’s a much more sinister game at work, one she doesn’t even know she’s playing - and she must unravel the truth once and for all to stop the killer before she loses everything.
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In the mid-nineteenth century, the mountainous kingdom of Tibet is closed to outsiders. As European powers scramble for global dominance, this only increases the allure of this mysterious territory.
\nTwo of those looking to undertake the treacherous journey across Tibet are Balram, an Indian schoolteacher, and Katherine, a fifty-year-old British explorer. He is hired as a guide to an ambitious British surveyor; she intends to be the first European woman to reach Lhasa, home to the legendary Potala Palace.
\nBut both have more complex motivations for their expeditions, and as their secrets snap at their heels they encounter the same mysterious figure: a stranger who may hold the key to their survival.
For years, rumors of the \"Marsh Girl\" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say.
\nSensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life - until the unthinkable happens.
\nWhere the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
Angelina Yves is a struggling singer/songwriter offered the chance of a lifetime to join the experimental luxury compound sponsored by the most famous band in the world, Black Idyll. With her every need accommodated, she finally has the time and space to perfect her music.
\nHer muse? Reclusive rock star Jesper Idyll, who lives up to her every high school daydream.
\nBut this paradise has a haunted underbelly heralded by screaming horses, mysterious figures in the night, and dreams too twisted to be real. When people start to disappear and Jesper's ex turns up dead and hideously mutilated, Angelina begins to suspect that something malevolent lurks behind the cult that's grown around the band . . .
A mysterious plague that causes random bouts of violence is sweeping the nation. Now three generations of women must navigate their chilling new reality in this moving exploration of identity, cycles of abuse, and hope.
\nChelsea Martin appears to be the perfect housewife: married to her high school sweetheart, the mother of two daughters, keeper of an immaculate home.
\nBut Chelsea's husband has turned their house into a prison; he has been abusing her for years, cutting off her independence, autonomy, and support. She has nowhere to turn, not even to her narcissistic mother, Patricia, who is more concerned with maintaining the appearance of an ideal family than she is with her daughter's actual well-being. And Chelsea is worried that her daughters will be trapped just as she is--then a mysterious illness sweeps the nation.
\nKnown as The Violence, this illness causes the infected to experience sudden, explosive bouts of animalistic rage and attack anyone in their path. But for Chelsea, the chaos and confusion the virus causes is an opportunity--and inspires a plan to liberate herself from her abuser.
A wealthy businesswoman disappears from her Glasgow home without a trace, leaving her husband and children panicked but strangely resistant to questioning. Tracing the woman's cell phone, police detective Alex Morrow discovers a call made from an unlikely location.
\nA sleepy seaside community, Helensburgh is the last place you'd go looking for violence. But Morrow's investigation uncovers disturbing clues and a dead body in a nearby lake. When a connection to someone close to her surfaces, the case gets more personal than she could have imagined
When Lisa Lee, a vulnerable young woman, vanishes from a pretty Scottish seaside town Anna and Fin find themselves at the centre of an internet frenzy to find her.
\nBut Lisa may not be the hapless victim her father thinks. She had an unsuccessful YouTube channel and her last film showed her breaking into an abandoned French Chateau with other UrbExers and stumbling across a priceless Roman silver casket. One day after Lisa vanishes that casket gets listed for auction in Paris, reserve price fifty million euro and a catalogue entry that could challenge the fundamental principles of a major world religion.
\nOn a thrilling chase across Europe, Anna and Fin are caught up in a world of international art smuggling, billionaire con artists and religious zealotry.
Conviction stars a strong female protagonist who is obsessed by true crime podcasts and decides, one day, to investigate one of the unsolved crimes herself.
It’s just a normal morning for Anna McDonald. Gym kits, packed lunches, getting everyone up and ready. Until she opens the front door to her best friend, Estelle. Anna turns to see her own husband at the top of the stairs, suitcase in hand. They’re leaving together and they’re taking Anna’s two daughters with them.
Left alone in the big, dark house, Anna can’t think, she can’t take it in. With her safe, predictable world shattered, she distracts herself with a story: a true-crime podcast. There’s a sunken yacht in the Mediterranean, multiple murders and a hint of power and corruption. Then Anna realises she knew one of the victims in another life. She is convinced she knows what happened. Her past, so carefully hidden until now, will no longer stay silent.
This is a murder she can’t ignore, and she throws herself into investigating the case. But little does she know, her past and present lives are about to collide, sending everything she has worked so hard to achieve into freefall.
Paddy Meehan thought she'd be farther along in her career as an investigative journalist by now. But three years after breaking a big story, she's still on perpetual night shift, chasing police calls for a story that will promote her out of a twilight existence that makes candy bars and coffee a medical necessity.
\nWith her father and brothers unemployed and her family perilously short of money, she needs the work. The domestic dispute at a house in a wealthy suburb seems like nothing unusual - at first. The elegant blonde in the shadows bleeding from a head injury doesn't want any help; and the well-dressed, ingratiating man at the front door tells Paddy everything's fine and that she should leave. And then he asks her to make sure nothing appears in the paper, slipping cash into her hand before he closes the door.
\nThe next morning, Paddy sees the lead TV news story: the blonde woman had been tortured, beaten, and left to die. The untraceable man was neither her boyfriend nor her husband, and Paddy can't understand why the victim passed up the chance to walk through the door and live. Far from the spoiled trophy wife Paddy assumed her to be, the victim was a prosecution lawyer with a social conscience that clashed with her privileged background. Soon Paddy begins to make connections no one else has seen, and after she witnesses the body of a suicide being pulled from the river, she finds surprising links between the two deaths. It's the story Paddy's dreamed of, but she'll lose all credibility if word gets out about the bribe.
\nThe police who attended the call are twisting the evidence for reasons of their own, and her boss at the newspaper is impatient with Paddy's unproven hunches. Only Paddy cares enough to pursue a dark and brutal truth that could make her career - or kill her.
Things like this don't happen to people like us. That's what Lachlan Harriot thinks as he watches his wife, Susie, led to jail in handcuffs. Yes, Susie, a psychologist, was found covered in blood near the spot where one of her clients appears to have been murdered.
\nBut Susie is not a killer, Lachlan thinks. She's my wife. She's our child's mother. Secrets lurk behind closed doors, however, a dark truth made chillingly clear as Lachlan's efforts to prove Susie's innocence uncover an entire secret history--illicit affairs, false identities and unimaginable deception.
When a notorious millionaire banker hangs himself, his death attracts no sympathy. But the legacy of a lifetime of selfishness is widespread, and the carnage most acute among those he ought to be protecting: his family.
Meanwhile, in a wealthy suburb of Glasgow, a young woman is found savagely murdered. The community is stunned by what appears to be a vicious, random attack. When Detective Inspector Alex Morrow, heavily pregnant with twins, is called in to investigate, she soon discovers that a tangled web of lies lurks behind the murder. It's a web that will spiral through Alex's own home, the local community, and ultimately right back to a swinging rope, hundreds of miles away.
The End of the Wasp Season is an accomplished, compelling and multi-layered novel about family's power of damage-and redemption.
Denise Mina returns to Glasgow's grimmer residential precincts and the untidy life of Maureen O'Donnell. Again Maureen is confronted with a grisly case of murder. Ann Harris is nursing two broken ribs and reeking of alcohol when she visits Maureen's office at a Glasgow women's shelter two weeks before she turns up dead hundreds of miles away, under a mattress on the banks of the Thames.
\nMaureen, eager to escape family difficulties of her own, travels to London to determine the circumstances of Ann's brutal death. She soon finds herself treacherously out of her depth, however, in her attempt to piece together the ugly details of Ann's last days in a seedy underworld of criminal exiles and dangerous drug lords.
When the body of a four-year-old boy is found tortured and battered to death, it is assumed the child has been the victim of a vicious sexual predator. Instead the police are led, not to the house of an adult killer, but to the doors of two eleven-year-old boys.
Fresh from school, Paddy Meehan has just started work on the Scottish Daily News. Determined to be an investigative journalist, she also wants to be financially independent. But her colleagues - hard-drinking chauvinists to a man - believe a woman’s place to be in the home, and preferably in the bedroom. And Paddy’s family too: all they want is for her to get married to her fiancé, Sean, and have children of her own.
Then Paddy discovers that one of the boys charged with the child’s murder is Sean’s cousin, Callum. Soon Callum’s name is all over the News, and her family blames Paddy. Shunned by Sean and those closest to her, Paddy finds herself dangerously alone.
A year ago, a father and his fiancée were brutally murdered in their opulent London townhouse, sparking the most high-profile murder investigation in recent history. Blood spatter expert Doctor Claudia O’Sheil’s evidence put the killer behind bars - or so everyone believes. But since the trial, Claudia’s learned a horrific her evidence and her testimony were wrong. And someone she knows made sure of it.
\nNow, as she takes the stage to give a career-defining speech before London’s elite, Claudia faces a devastating choice. Protect her children and her career with her continued complicity, or blow the whole conspiracy apart and reveal the not only is the real murderer still out there, but they’re in the audience.
\nAs Claudia steps toward the microphone, she revisits that fateful night. What really happened? And what will Claudia say?
Paddy Meehan finally has it all: a flat of her own in Glasgow and a job as one of Scotland’s leading newspaper columnists. Then the police knock on her door. Her former lover Terry has been found in a ditch, shot through the head.
\nEven though they had split up months before, Terry has left her everything, including a house in Ayrshire and boxes of notebooks. As Paddy digs deeper into his murder, it soon becomes clear that the secret he was about to expose is worth killing for. And that she is next in line.
The \"trial of the century\" in 1950's Glasgow is over. Peter Manuel has been found guilty of a string of murders and is waiting to die by hanging. But every good crime story has a beginning. Manuel's starts with the murder of William Watt's family. Looking no further that Watt himself, the police are convinced he's guilty.
\nDesperate to clear his name, Watt turns to Manuel, a career criminal who claims to have information that will finger the real killer. As Watt seeks justice with the cagey Manuel's help, everyone the pair meets has blood on their hands as they sell their version of the truth. The Long Drop is an explosive novel about guilt, innocence and the power of a good story to hide the difference.
31st August 1997
\nRose Wilson is fourteen, but looks sixteen. Pimped out by her 'boyfriend' and let down by a person she thought she loved, she has seen more of the darkness in life than someone twice her age. On the night of Princess Diana's death - a night everyone will remember - Rose snaps and commits two terrible crimes. Her life seems effectively over. But then a defence lawyer takes pity and sets out to do what he can to save her, regardless of the consequences.
\n\n
Now
\nDI Alex Morrow is a witness in the case of Michael Brown - a vicious, nasty arms dealer, more brutal and damaged than most of the criminals she meets. During the trial, while he is held in custody, Brown's fingerprints are found at the scene of a murder in the Red Road flats. It was impossible that he could have been there and it's a mystery that Morrow just can't let go.
\nMeanwhile, a privileged Scottish lawyer sits in a castle on Mull, waiting for an assassin to kill him. He has sold out his own father, something that will bring the wrath of the powerful down upon him.
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In her gripping new crime novel, Mina returns once more to the seamier precincts of Glasgow and the untidy world of the hapless but resolute Maureen O'Donnell. Maureen's abusive father has shown up again in Glasgow; and Angus Farrell, the psychologist who so gruesomely murdered her therapist-boyfriend, is going on trial - with Maureen as the star witness.
\nMeanwhile, she's embroiled in another hard-bitten family's feud when Ella McGee, an elderly stallholder at the flea market where Maureen sells illegally imported cigarettes, decides to take her son to small-claims court over unpaid wages and then turns up beaten brutally in Albert Hospital.
It's mid-September, a heatwave has descended on the parched hills of LA and Private Detective Philip Marlowe is called to the Montgomery estate, an almost mythic place sitting high on top of Beverly Hills. Wealthy twenty-two-year-old Chrissie Montgomery, set to inherit an enormous fortune, is missing.
\nShe's a walking target, ripe for someone to get their claws into. Her dying father, along with his sultry bottle blonde girlfriend, wants her found before that happens. They've hired Anna Riorden, Marlowe's nemesis, too. The search takes them to the roughest neighbourhoods of LA through dive bars and Skid Row. And that's before he finds the body at The Brody Hotel. Who will get to her first, Marlowe, Anne, or the men chasing her fortune? And does she want to be found?
Girolamo Savonarola was a Dominican friar living in Florence at the end of the fifteenth century. An anti-corruption campaigner, his hellfire preaching increasingly spilled over into tirades against all luxuries that tempted his followers toward sin. These sermons led to the infamous “Bonfire of the Vanities” - a series of fires lit throughout Florence for the incineration of everything from books, extravagant clothing, playing cards, musical instruments, make-up, and mirrors to paintings, tapestries, and sculptures.
\nRailing against the vice and avarice of the ruling Medici family, he was instrumental in their removal from power - and for a short time became the puritanical leader of the city. After turning his attention to corruption within the Catholic Church, he was first excommunicated and then executed by a combination of hanging and being burned at the stake.
\nJust as in Rizzio - her latest novel with Pegasus Crime - Denise Mina brings a modern take to this fascinating historical story, drawing parallels between the febrile atmosphere of medieval Florence and the culture wars of the present day. In dramatising the life and last days of Savonarola, she explores the downfall of the original architect of cancel culture and, in the process, explores the never-ending tensions between wealth, inequality, and freedom of speech that so dominate our modern world.
4 a.m., New York City. A silent disaster.
\nThere is no flash of light, no crumbling, no quaking. Each person in New York wakes up on an unfamiliar block when the buildings all switch locations overnight. The power grid has snapped, thousands of residents are missing, and the Empire State Building is on Coney Island - for now. The next night, it happens again.
\nEsme Green and Arjun Varma work for the City of New York’s Emergency Management team and are tasked with disaster response for the Unmapping. As Esme tries to wade through the bureaucratic nightmare of an endlessly shuffling city, she’s distracted by the ongoing search for her missing fiancé. Meanwhile, Arjun focuses on the ground-level rescue of disoriented New Yorkers, hoping to become the hero the city needs.
\nWhile scientists scramble to find a solution - or at least a means to cope - and mysterious “red cloak” cults crop up in the disaster’s wake, New York begins to reckon with a new reality no one recognises. For Esme and Arjun, the fight to hold the city together will mean tackling questions about themselves that they were too afraid to ask - and facing answers they never expected.
The venerated Reverend Doctor John Freeman did not raise his son, Davis, to be touched by any man, let alone a white man. He did not raise his son to whisper that man’s name with tenderness.
\nBut on the eve of his wedding, all Davis can think about is how beautiful he wants to look when he meets his beloved Everett at the altar. Never mind that his mother, who died decades before, and his father, whose anger drove Davis to flee their home in Ohio for a freer life in New York City, won’t be there to walk him down the aisle. All Davis needs to be happy in this life is Everett, his new family, and his burgeoning career as an award-winning violist.
\nWhen Davis learns during the wedding reception that his father has died in a terrible car accident, years of childhood trauma and unspoken emotion resurface. Davis must revisit everything that went wrong between them, his fledgling marriage and irresistible self-confidence spiraling into a pit of despair.
\nIn resplendent prose, Denne Michele Norris’s When the Harvest Comes fearlessly reveals the pain of inheritance and the heroic power of love, reminding us that in the end we are more than the men who came before us.
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A foreign ghostwriter visiting Hong Kong partners up with the disembodied spirit of the most dangerous novelist in China to find a local bookseller who’s been disappeared by the authorities after attempting to smuggle the novelist’s subversive masterpiece onto the mainland.
\nAt a train station in China, three people meet, only two of whom are actually alive. The first is Faron Jones, on his way to Hong Kong to interview an Iranian film director-turned-dissident holed up in the Japanese consulate. The second is Mildred Chen, a Hong Kong bookseller detained at the border crossing for attempting to deliver copies of the most dangerous novel in China over to the mainland. The third is the deceased author of that very novel, Jiang Ming, now a wandering spirit trapped in the middle world between life and death.
\nSoon after this encounter, and for no reason he can understand, Faron learns that he’s suddenly acquired flawless Mandarin and Cantonese, languages only a day earlier he had no knowledge of. Slowly, the impossible truth that another man’s soul has joined his own and now speaks in his voice becomes maddeningly undeniable. With this comes Jiang Ming’s extraordinary claim and his urgent request of Faron, and so the ghostwriter and the spirit of the dead novelist trapped within him set upon a search for the one person - the disappeared bookseller - who’s able to deliver the Chinese novelist’s spirit to his final resting place.
\nInstantly propulsive, wholly original, and like a mirror for our current times, Strangers at the Red Door follows these characters and their quests for freedom, love, and reconciliation. It explores a world in which the boundaries of the physical and the spiritual blur; countries facing uncertain futures intersect; and the struggle of the artist against political oppression becomes an essential act of survival.
Inspired by real-life legendary choreographer Katherine Dunham’s groundbreaking expedition into the heart of Caribbean dance culture, this uniquely captivating novel imagines the experiences of three very different women who accompany her, hoping to find their destinies - yet find themselves forced to survive a historic event . . .
\nChicago, 1935. Othella is an orphaned con artist who needs to escape the city's brutal underworld . . . or else. Vivian Jean is a wealthy wife, student, and anthropologist eager to prove herself professionally and personally. Zinzi is a Jamaican labor union activist determined to bring change to her homeland's plantation system. Thanks to a series of fortunate mishaps and coincidences, all three join Dunham’s voyage to the Maroon village of Accompong in Jamaica’s Cockpit Country - and perhaps discover what they desperately want most . . .
\nThrough skill and curiosity, Othella becomes a valued member of the expedition, even as she struggles to conceal her past. Zinzi's knowledge of the Cockpit allows the expedition to explore uncharted territory, even as a forbidden love and fierce resistance threaten everything she seeks to protect. As Vivian Jean’s observations help Dunham make unprecedented discoveries, she grapples with her second husband's guilt and accusations. Yet, amidst their private battles, nature presents an even greater challenge . . .
\nAs deadly Hurricane Jérémie bears down on the island, imperiling the women’s mission - and their lives - they must form a difficult sisterhood. As the storm rages outside the small parish that is their shelter, they will need each other more than anyone or anything they’ve ever needed.
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On a desperate journey to recover her sister’s lost soul, Valkyrie Cain goes up against the High Sanctuary itself, and there’s nothing Skulduggery Pleasant can do to stop her.
\nWith Abyssinia’s grand plan about to kick off in a night of magic, terror, and bloodshed, it falls to Omen Darkly to save the lives of thousands of innocent people.
\nAnd as the madness unfolds around him, as hidden enemies step into the light, and as Valkyrie is sucked into a desperate, lawless quest of her own, he has no choice but to become the hero he never really wanted to be - or die in the attempt.
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Meet Skulduggery Pleasant: detective, sorcerer, warrior.
Oh yes. And dead.
Skulduggery Pleasant is gone, sucked into a parallel dimension overrun by the Faceless Ones. If his bones haven’t already been turned to dust, chances are he’s insane, driven out of his mind by the horror of the ancient gods. There is no official, Sanctuary-approved rescue mission. There is no official plan to save him.
But Valkyrie's never had much time for plans.
The problem is, even if she can get Skulduggery back, there might not be much left for him to return to. There’s a gang of villains bent on destroying the Sanctuary, there are some very powerful people who want Valkyrie dead, and as if all that wasn’t enough it looks very likely that a sorcerer named Darquesse is going to kill the world and everyone on it.
Skulduggery is gone. All our hopes rest with Valkyrie. The world’s weight is on her shoulders, and its fate is in her hands.
These are dark days indeed.
Skulduggery, Valkyrie and Omen return in the 14th and penultimate novel in the internationally bestselling Skulduggery Pleasant series - and their most epic test yet . . . In a matter of days, the world will change. Billions of lives will be wiped away in a final, desperate search for the Child of the Faceless Ones - she who is destined to bring about the return of humankind's ancient overlords.
\nTo prevent this, Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain have one last - terrible - option: the assassination of Damocles Creed. With protests stirring in the magical city of Roarhaven, with riots and revolutions on the horizon, Valkyrie must decide who she wants to be: the hero who risks everything for a noble ideal, or the killer who sacrifices her own soul for the fate of humanity. The decision must be made, and time is running out.
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The Necromancers no longer need Valkyrie to be their Death Bringer, and that’s a Good Thing.
\nThere’s just one catch. There’s a reason the Necromancers don’t need her any more. And that’s because they’ve found their Death Bringer already, the person who will dissolve the doors between life and death.
\nAnd that’s a very, very Bad Thing . . .
The War of the Sanctuaries has been won, but it was not without its casualties. Following the loss of Valkyrie Cain, Skulduggery Pleasant must use any and all means to track down and stop Darquesse before she turns the world into a charred, lifeless cinder.
And so he draws together a team of soldiers, monster hunters, killers, criminals… and Valkyrie’s own murderous reflection.
The war may be over, but the final battle is about to begin. And not everyone gets out of here alive . . .
If you’ve read the previous Skulduggery books then you know what the Faceless Ones are - and if you know what the Faceless Ones are, then you can probably take a wild guess that things in this book are going to get AWFULLY sticky for our skeletal hero and his young sidekick.
\nIf you haven’t read the previous Skulduggery books then what are you doing reading this? Go and read them right now, so that you know what all that stuff in the previous paragraph was about. Done? Good. So now you’re on tenterhooks too, desperately awaiting the answers to all your questions, and instead you’re going to have to wait to read the book. Sorry about that.
\n
A killer is stalking and murdering sorcerers, and Valkyrie Cain is next on his list.
\nWhile hunting down a cult of magical terrorists intent on taking their revenge on the mortal world, Skulduggery and Valkyrie are drawn into a murder investigation with unsettling similarities to a case they just closed - the case that nearly took the lives of both Valkyrie’s sister and girlfriend.
\nWith the body count rising, a special night approaches - a night where the elite of sorcerer society will gather on a remote island to witness a ceremony that could change that society forever.
\nSpeeches will be made, champagne will be sipped, and two things will become terribly, distressingly clear . . .
\nNo one is safe. And not everyone will make it out alive.
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Magic is a disease.
Across the land, normal people are suddenly developing wild and unstable powers. Infected by a rare strain of magic, they are unwittingly endangering their own lives and the lives of the people around them. Terrified and confused, their only hope lies with the Sanctuary. Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain are needed now more than ever.
And then there's the small matter of Kitana. A normal teenage girl who, along with her normal teenage friends, becomes infected. Becomes powerful. Becomes corrupted. Wielding the magic of gods, they're set to tear the city apart unless someone stands up against them.
Looks like it's going to be another one of those days . . .
War has finally come.
But it's not a war between good and evil, or light and dark - it's a war between Sanctuaries. For too long, the Irish Sanctuary has teetered on the brink of world-ending disaster, and the other Sanctuaries around the world have had enough. Allies turn to enemies, friends turn to foes, and Skulduggery and Valkyrie must team up with the rest of the Dead Men if they're going to have any chance at all of maintaining the balance of power and getting to the root of a vast conspiracy that has been years in the making.
But while this war is only beginning, another war rages within Valkyrie herself. Her own dark side, the insanely powerful being known as Darquesse, is on the verge of rising to the surface. And if Valkyrie slips, even for a moment, then Darquesse will burn the world and everyone in it.
For years, Valkyrie Cain has struggled to keep her loved ones safe from harm, plunging into battle - time and time again - by Skulduggery Pleasant’s side, and always emerging triumphant.
\nBut now the very thing that Valkyrie fights for is in danger, as a ruthless killer snatches her little sister in order to lure Valkyrie into a final confrontation. With Skulduggery racing to catch up and young sorcerer Omen scrambling along behind, Valkyrie only has twelve hours to find Alice before it’s too late.
\nThe clock is ticking . . .
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Six years ago, the universe ended.
\nWhen it restarted, blinking back into existence, it brought with it a darkness that remains hidden from the mortal population.
\nA week ago - fuelled by unimaginable hatred and unstoppable rage - a masked sorcerer killed one of those mortals. Then he killed another. And another.
\nWith their time running out, Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain must work to solve the puzzles the killer leaves behind before more innocents die, embarking on a journey that will force them to deal with the apocalypse they failed to prevent the first time around.
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Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain are back -- just in time to see their whole world get turned upside down! While they struggle to protect a known killer from an unstoppable assassin, Valkyrie is on a secret mission of her own. This quest, to prevent her dark and murderous destiny, threatens to take her to the brink of death and beyond.
\nAnd then the body-snatching Remnants get loose, thousands of twisted souls who possess the living like puppets, and they begin their search for a being powerful enough to lead them. Facing such insurmountable odds, Skulduggery, Valkyrie, Ghastly and Tanith can trust no one. Not even each other!
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Skulduggery and Valkyrie are facing a new enemy: Baron Vengeous, who is determined to bring back the terrifying Faceless Ones and is crafting an army of evil to help him. Added to that, Vengeous is about to enlist a new ally (if he can raise it from the dead): the horrible Grotesquery, a very unlikable monster of legend.
\nOnce Vengeous is on the loose, dead bodies and vampires start showing up all over Ireland. Now pretty much everybody is out to kill Valkyrie, and the daring detective duo faces its biggest challenge yet.
\nBut what if the greatest threat to Valkyrie is just a little closer to home?
A lot has changed. Roarhaven is now a magical city, where sorcerers can live openly. Valkyrie Cain has been out of action for years, recovering from the war against her alter-ego Darquesse, which nearly destroyed her and everyone else.
\nSome things never change though: bad people still want to do bad things, and Skulduggery Pleasant is still there to stop them.
\nWhen Skulduggery learns of a plot to resurrect a terrifying evil, he persuades Valkyrie to join him for just 24 hours. But they need someone else on their team, someone inconspicuous, someone who can go undercover.
\nEnter Omen Darkly. Student at the new Corrival Academy. Overlooked. Unremarkable in every way.
\n24 hours to save the world. One sharply-dressed skeleton. One grief-stricken young woman. One teenage boy who can’t remember which class he’s supposed to be in.
\nThis cannot end well . . .
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To avert catastrophe, Skulduggery and Valkyrie are sent on a secret mission that takes them away from everything they know, to a forsaken land of magic and grim, unrelenting terror.
\nIt is here that Valkyrie will have to fight the hardest - not only against the enemies who want her dead, but also against her own self-destructive impulses. It's only by crawling through darkness that she'll be able to once again stand in the light . . .
\n
Skulduggery and Valkyrie are facing a new enemy: Baron Vengeous, who is determined to bring back the terrifying Faceless Ones and is crafting an army of evil to help him. Added to that, Vengeous is about to enlist a new ally (if he can raise it from the dead): the horrible Grotesquery, a very unlikable monster of legend.
Once Vengeous is on the loose, dead bodies and vampires start showing up all over Ireland. Now pretty much everybody is out to kill Valkyrie, and the daring detective duo faces its biggest challenge yet.
But what if the greatest threat to Valkyrie is just a little closer to home?
With an island of sorcerers ready to cut themselves off from the rest of the world, a terrorist group enjoying unprecedented public support, and a looming showdown between her sister and the Child of the Ancients, Valkyrie Cain only has time to focus on her most immediate the daily fight to stay alive in a place where everyone wants to kill her.
\nThis, once again, is the end.
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The Faceless Ones have returned to our universe. The bad guys have won.
\nWith the end of everything just days away – and no longer able to rely on Valkyrie Cain – Skulduggery must make allies of enemies if he's going to stand any chance of saving what's left of the world. And just when things are looking their bleakest, they manage to get even worse, with Omen Darkly suddenly having to step up when his brother, the Chosen One, falls.
\nThere's a lot going on. Most of it is bad. Sorry about that.
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Police corruption, an investigation that ends in tragedy and the mystery of a little girl's silence - three unconnected events that will prove to be linked by one small town.
\nWhile Detective Cormac Reilly faces enemies at work and trouble in his personal life, Garda Peter Fisher is relocated out of Galway with the threat of prosecution hanging over his head. But even that is not as terrible as having to work for his overbearing father, the local copper for the pretty seaside town of Roundstone.
\nFor some, like Anna and her young daughter Tilly, Roundstone is a refuge from trauma. But even this village on the edge of the sea isn't far enough to escape from the shadows of evil men.
First Rule: Make them like you.
\nSecond Rule: Make them need you.
\nThird Rule: Make them pay.
\nThey think I’m a young, idealistic law student, that I’m passionate about reforming a corrupt and brutal system.
\nThey think I’m working hard to impress them.
\nThey think I’m here to save an innocent man on death row.
\nThey're wrong. I’m going to bury him.
It's been twenty years since Cormac Reilly discovered the body of Hilaria Blake in her crumbling Georgian home. But he's never forgotten the two children she left behind. When Aisling Conroy's boyfriend Jack is found in the freezing black waters of the river Corrib, the police tell her it was suicide. A surgical resident, she throws herself into study and work, trying to forget - until Jack's sister Maude shows up. Maude suspects foul play, and she is determined to prove it.
\nCormac Reilly is the detective assigned with the re-investigation of a seemingly accidental overdose twenty years ago - the overdose of Jack and Maude's drug and alcohol addled mother. Detective Reilly is under increasing pressure to charge Maude for murder when his colleague Danny uncovers a piece of evidence that will change everything. This unsettling small-town noir draws us deep into the dark heart of Ireland, where corruption, desperation, and crime run rife. A gritty look at trust and betrayal where the written law isn't the only one, The Ruin asks who will protect you when the authorities can't - or won't.
For years the boglands of Northern Europe have given up bodies of the long-deceased. Bodies that are thousands of years old, uncannily preserved. Bodies with strange injuries that suggest ritual torture and human sacrifice.
\nWhen a corpse is found in a bog in Galway, Cormac Reilly assumes the find is historical. But closer examination reveals a more recent story. The dead man is Thaddeus Grey, a local secondary school principal who disappeared two years prior.
\nThere's nothing in Grey's past that would explain why he was murdered, or why his body was mutilated in a ritual manner. At first, progress on the case is frustratingly slow and Cormac struggles to keep his mind on the job. His ex-girlfriend, Emma Sweeney, is in trouble, and she's reached out to him for help - Emma's new husband has gone missing in Paris, and the French police are refusing to open an investigation into his disappearance.
\nCormac is sure that he has found Grey's killer, and is within hours of an arrest, when another mutilated body is discovered on the other side of the country. Two days later, a third body is found. Press attention is intense. Is there a serial killer at work in Ireland? Has Cormac been on the wrong trail? And if so, can he find the murderer before they strike again?
\nTen years ago, Sephre left behind her life as a war hero and took holy vows to seek redemption for her crimes, wielding the flames of the Phoenix to purify the dead. But as corpses rise, a long-dead god stirs, and shadowy serpents creep from the underworld to hunt her, she has no choice but to draw on the very past she's been trying so hard to forget.
\nOrphaned by the same war Sephre helped win, Yeneris has trained half her life to be the perfect spy, a blade slipped deep into the palace of her enemies. Undercover as bodyguard to Sinoe, a princess whose tears unleash prophecy, Yeneris strives to complete her true mission to recover the stolen bones of a saint. Sinoe's prophecies may hold answers, but allying with the fiercely compassionate princess is perilous. Yeneris must find a way to balance her growing attraction for Sinoe with her duty to her people as they conduct a dangerous search for the source of the king's power.
\nAs Sephre investigates the signs of a looming apocalypse, she finds her beliefs tested by Nilos, a mercurial and charming agent of the serpent. He should be her enemy, but when Sephre is wrongly accused of heresy and desperate to rescue her innocent apprentice, she has no choice but to work with the enigmatic man. Together they embark on a treacherous quest, seeking answers in the labyrinthine underworld.
\nAs gods are reborn and spirits destroyed, the world trembles on the edge of a second cataclysm. When the true enemy makes their bid for power, Yeneris must find a way to remain true to her full self and save both her mission and her heart. And Sephre must decide whether to be bound by her past, or to forge a better future, even if it means renouncing her vows and accepting a new and terrible power.
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Inspired by journalists Christiane Amanpour and Sylvia Poggioli, Midnight, at the War is a novel about a reporter chasing the biggest story of her career as she contends with a tense newsroom, a dangerous global conflict, and all the problems she’s running away from at home, by the acclaimed novelist that Megha Majumdar calls “a gem of a writer.”
\nForeign correspondent Rita Das has left New York for the war-torn Middle East, a reassignment she asks for after she learns she is pregnant and is uncertain whether the father is her husband or her lover. As she strives to shed light on the fallouts of the war, Rita finds herself embroiled in her own conflicts with her interpreter and her news editor, her sources and her colleagues. She is unable to accept the loss of her mother and deal with her guilt for not being at her side when she died.
\nFiercely independent and ambitious (and in her journalism, deeply humane), Rita is also in denial about her need for intimate human relationships. As she goes into the field to report on the war, she grapples with the physical and emotional tolls of her pregnant body and a turbulent region where the numbing repetition of war slides suddenly into horror. When her news editor delivers urgent orders for her to return to New York, Rita is faced with a choice about how she wants to live her life as a journalist and a soon-to-be mother.
\nSet in the years immediately after 9/11, and drawn from Devi Laskar’s own experience as a government reporter in the 1990s and early aughts, Midnight, at the War is an exploration of love and grief, of moral ambiguity and forgiveness, of modern war and the wars we wage within ourselves.
\n
Long ago, the gods unleashed monsters upon the five kingdoms of Calandra to remind us that humans are insignificant - that we must pray to the gods for mercy throughout our fragile, fleeting lives.
\nI’ve spent my life kneeling - to their will and to my father's. As a princess, my only duty is to wear the crown and obey the king.
\nI was never meant to rule. Never meant to fight. And I was never supposed to be the daughter who sealed an ancient treaty with her own blood. But that changed the fateful day I stepped into my father’s throne room. The day a legendary monster hunter sailed to our shores. The day a prince ruined my life.
\nNow I’m crossing treacherous lands beside a warrior who despises me as much as I despise him - bound to a future I didn’t choose and a husband I barely know. Everyone wants me to be something I’m not - a queen, a spy, a sacrifice. But what if I refused the role chosen for me? What if I made my own rules? What if there’s power in being underestimated?
\nAnd what if - for the first time - I reached for it?
Zora Broussard has arrived in New Orleans with not much more than a bag of clothes, a beautiful voice, and a pair of enchanted red shoes. Running from a tragic accident caused by her magic, Zora wants nothing more than to blend in, as well as to avoid her overbearing aunt and mean-spirited cousins. Music becomes Zora’s only means of escape, yet she wonders if she should give it all up to remove the powers that make her a target, especially as a Black woman in the South.
\nBut when Zora gets the chance to perform in a prominent jazz club, she meets a sweet white pianist named Phillip with magic of his own, including a strange mirror that foretells their future together. Falling into a forbidden love, Zora and Phillip must keep their relationship a secret. And soon the two discover the complicated connection between their respective families, a connection that could lead to catastrophe for them both. In the era of segregation and speakeasies, Zora must change her destiny and fight for the one she loves . . . or risk losing everything.
\n
Top-rating TV presenter Nicole and her savvy producer and friend Stacie suddenly find themselves under the rule of a new boss . . . he's arrogant, patronising and out to prove he's in charge.
\nTheir challenge? To create a hit show revealing the hidden heart of outback Australia - a place few from the towns and cities have visited and even fewer people understand.
\nWhat begins as a career-defining adventure quickly spirals into something far more dangerous and unexpected. In a land of craggy rocks and vast plains, whispered stories and a history as old as the dinosaurs, Nicole and Stacie uncover secrets - how other lives are lived, fossil treasures deep in the red earth, a missing stranger and a blossoming love story.
\nBeneath the endless sky this land reveals its magic - and its menace - as the two friends find more than they could ever have imagined.
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Trailing her orange suitcase, and a heart full of worry, thirteen-year-old Agatha is about to go home. She has been in and out of foster care for years now, but her latest new life lived with naval precision with Katherine, Lawson and their dog, Chief, has proved to be the salvation that Agatha needed. She has new friends, a sense of place, and space to breathe.
\nBut when the social worker says it's time to return to her parents, her world comes crashing down. \"Home\" has always made her anxious and ashamed - and she can't understand why now she is being forced to go back.
\nIs it possible to find a way to love her parents without having to live with them?
It’s the summer of 1922, and preparations for an extravagant party are underway at the Marchmont’s stately country pile. Patriarch Richard Marchmont is fabulously wealthy, moderately eccentric, and very fond of getting his own way. With the family gathered to celebrate his 85th birthday, the scene is set for a memorable weekend . . . in more ways than one, because Richard has quarreled with his heirs and is set upon changing his Will to teach them all a lesson. The arrival of unexpected guests, return of a long-lost relative, and sundry romantic entanglements only make matters more complicated.
\nWhen Richard is found dead in his study, a glass of poisoned wine by his side, there is a surfeit of suspects on hand. Clever Inspector Hawthorne has his work cut out for him; everyone at Cheveley Manor is hiding something - and for the murderer, the party isn’t over yet.
On the eve of his 100th birthday, national treasure Dick Van Dyke brings us this autobiographical collection of life advice, stories, and reflections on how he's maintained good health and a zest for life as he enters his tenth decade.
\nDick Van Dyke danced his way into our hearts with iconic roles in Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Now, as he's about to turn 100 years old, Dick is still dancing, still approaching life with the twinkle in his eye that we've come to know and love.
\nIn 100 Rules for Living to 100, he reveals his secrets for maintaining your joie de vivre, staying physically healthy, and making the most out of the life you've been given. Through stories from his past and present - the pivotal moments from childhood to film sets to his expansive family and finding love late in life - Dick reflects on both the joyful times and the challenges that shaped him.
\nHis indefatigable spirit and positive attitude will surely inspire readers to count the blessings in their own lives, persevere through the hard times, and appreciate the beauty and complexity of being human.
Dennis is an uninspired bachelor, living a mundane life on the outskirts of Who Gives A Shit City, in a cleaning job without purpose or interest. This could be the sum total of his obituary, except, fate won’t bloody allow it. Staring death in the face, Dennis’ unhappy existence unexpectedly explodes into one of confused mayhem, as he and a mysterious protector try avoiding the Grim Reaper’s claim on his very existence.
\nDennis’ surreal world of life, death and dreams are interwoven, but how long can he hope to outrun destiny? Perhaps Post-its and a machine gun might help. Save soul. Cheat death. What could possibly go wrong?
\n
Ciara Dunphy has it all - a loving husband, well-behaved children, and a beautiful home. Her circle of friends in their small Irish village go to her for tips about mothering, style, and influencer success - a picture-perfect life is easy money on Instagram. But behind the filters, reality is less polished.
\nEnter Mishti Guha: Ciara's best friend. Ciara welcomed Mishti into her inner circle for being... unlike the other mothers in the group. But, discontent in a marriage arranged for her through her parents back in Calcutta, Mishti now raises her young daughter in a country that is too cold, among the children of her new friends who look nothing like her. She just wants what Ciara has - the ease with which she moves through the world--and in that sense, Mishti might be exactly like the other mothers.
\nAnd there's earth mother Lauren Doyle, born, bred, and the butt of jokes in their village. With her disheveled partner and children who run naked in the yard, they're mostly a happy lot, though unsurprisingly ostracized for being the singular dysfunction in Ciara's immaculate world. When Lauren finds an unlikely ally in Mishti, she decides that her days of ridicule are over.
\nThen Ciara is found murdered in her own pristine home, and the house of cards she'd worked so hard to build comes crumbling down. Everyone seems to have something to gain from Ciara's death, so if they don't want the blame, it may be the perfect time to air their enemies' dirty laundry.
Durga is named after the Bengali goddess, pure of heart, filled with goodness. But the goddess has an alter-ego, fearless Kali, of fire and crackling with energy.
\nThe third of four children born to a middle-class Calcutta family, quiet Durga is surprisingly the first to leave the nest of her loving, overbearing family. She is not as charming as her sister, Tia, as lighthearted as her brother, Arjun, or as clever as her youngest sister, Parul. But when she arrives in Ireland to work at a tech company, she finds that for the first time ever she is free - to have fun, to stay out, to sample everything that life has to offer. Suddenly, Durga can be whoever she wants to be. And she wants it all.
\nBut freedom comes at a price. Durga falls in love with handsome, charismatic Jacob, and grows close with his sister, Joy, now Durga’s flatmate, and best friend. But when Jacob breaks up with Durga, she's unmoored. Who will she choose to be: fearless Kali or peace-loving Durga? Will she stay in Ireland with her newfound identity and livelihood, or will she return to India, where she is comfortable? Perhaps neither option is enough. Durga must summon her inner Kali, the brave and fearless warrior, and fight for the life she truly desires.
\nModern, thought-provoking and mirthful, I Will Blossom Anyway is a story about what it means to be caught between opposing worlds, the pressures and freedoms of millennial life, and what it really means to be a modern woman today - anywhere.
\n
It's spring 1979, and retired deli owner Sol Hirsch, formerly of Queens, New York, has traded in his life of corned beef and kosher pickles for the relaxing, sunny climate of Miami Beach. But after a recent trip with his wife, Myrna, to visit her ailing mother in Romania, Sol's life now teeters on the realm of the undead, courtesy of a vampire bat that noshed on his neck.
Upon returning home to the Sunshine State (definitely not an ideal place for vampires), the New York Mets diehard develops a thirst for human blood. As things worsen, Sol's life-or-death situation will boil down to a spring training baseball game involving New York Yankee slugger, Reggie Jackson.
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "Fantasy" ], "cover": "/coverimages/DiVitto Kelly - Sol.jpeg", "mtime": 1770101873340.5952, "size": 498672, "cachedAt": "2026-02-27T07:50:00.492Z" }, "Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida - Three Stories of Forgetting": { "title": "Three Stories of Forgetting", "author": "Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida", "description": "The discrete yet overlapping tales in Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida's Three Stories of Forgetting explore the lives of three men - perhaps already dead in the eyes of God - who live within the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and the spoils of the Portuguese Empire. They are all incarnations of our despair in the face of the questions that history does not answer.
\nIn \"The Vision of the Plants,\" Celestino, an old slave trader, returns to the solitude of his home and garden after a life of horrors.
\nIn \"Seaquake,\" Boa Morte da Silva, an Angolan who served on the Portuguese side in the Colonial War and has become a valet in Lisbon, writes to his daughter asking for forgiveness.
\nAnd in \"Bruma,\" an old slave initiates a young Eça de Queiroz into the world of French literature, even as he finds himself trapped by his own demons.
\nLeft to their agony, remorse, and guilt, or undeserved peace, the three men may be tormented ghosts who cannot find rest. Perhaps the land they aspire to, their home in this world, is a place hidden in their souls, somewhere between nowhere and goodbye. Their lives are unstable chapters in postcolonial history and allegories of the reading and rereading of that history, and of literature. All three have been expelled from their lives, sent on a solitary journey into the night.
Four hundred years ago, a cataclysmic war cracked the world open. Amid the ashes, the Dawn Republic now stands guard over lands littered with eldritch relics and cursed by plaguespawn outbreaks. But a new conflict is looming and brother and sister Gyre and Maya have found themselves on opposite sides of it.
\nAt the age of five, Maya was taken by the Twilight Order and trained to be a centarch, wielding forbidden arcana to enforce the Dawn Republic's rule. On that day, her brother, Gyre, swore to destroy the Order that stole his sister . . . whatever the cost.
\nTwelve years later, brother and sister are two very different people: she is the Twilight Order's brightest prodigy; he is a thief, bandit and revolutionary. Together, the siblings will discover that not even ties of blood will keep them from splitting the world in two.
Four hundred years ago, a cataclysmic war cracked the world open and exterminated the Elder races. Amid the ashes, their human inheritor, the Dawn Republic, stands guard over lands littered with eldritch relics and cursed by plaguespawn outbreaks. But a new conflict is looming and brother and sister Maya and Gyre have found themselves on opposite sides.
\nAt the age of five, Maya was taken by the Twilight Order and trained to be a centarch, wielding forbidden arcana to enforce the Dawn Republic's rule. On that day, her brother, Gyre, swore to destroy the Order that stole his sister... whatever the cost.
\nTwelve years later, brother and sister are two very different people: she is Burningblade, the Twilight Order's brightest prodigy; he is Silvereye, thief, bandit, revolutionary.
After surviving the Vile Rot, Isoka, Meroe, and the rest of Soliton’s crew finally arrive at Soliton's mysterious destination, the Harbor - a city of great stone ziggurats, enshrouded in a ghostly veil of Eddica magic. And they're not alone.
\nRoyalty, monks, and madmen live in a precarious balance, and by night take shelter from monstrous living corpses. None know how to leave the Harbor, but if Isoka can't find a way to capture Soliton and return it to the Emperor's spymaster before a year is up, her sister's Tori's life will be forfeit.
\nBut there's more to Tori's life back in Kahnzoka than the comfortable luxury Isoka intended for her. By night, she visits the lower wards, risking danger to help run a sanctuary for mage-bloods fleeing the Emperor's iron fist. When she discovers that Isoka is missing, her search takes her deep in the mires of intrigue and revolution.
\nAnd she has her own secret - the power of Kindre, the Well of Mind, which can bend others to its will. Though she's spent her life denying this brutal magic, Tori will use whatever means she has to with Isoka's fate on the line . . .
Gyre and Maya must finally join forces and rally the people to take down the Twilight Order once and for all.
\nThe last surviving Chosen, Ashok has finally risen up and taken control of The Twilight Order. He promises equality and prosperity, but Gyre and Maya know the truth. Only death follows in Ashok's wake.
\nTo take him down, Gyre will have to unite old allies - from all across The Splinter Kingdoms and the depths of Deepfire. And Maya will have to seek out a legendary weapon hidden in the mountains that could turn the tide in their battle for freedom.
After countless failures (let’s not dwell on it), Davi has finally saved the kingdom from evil–by becoming the Dark Lord herself. But now, the hordes of wilders are at her command, and they still want blood. Human blood. And Davi’s not sure she can commit to the total extermination of humanity.
With restless armies at her doorstep, a treasonous duke scheming for power, and the legend of an ancient magician looming over her shoulder, Davi must find a way towards peace and uncover the truth behind her time loop if she is to bring harmony to the kingdom. Also, her girlfriend is mad at her. So, there’s that too.
When Alice defeated her uncle Geryon and declared war on the totalitarian ways of the Old Readers, she knew she would have a hard fight ahead. What she didn’t anticipate was how ruthless the Old Readers would be.
\n\n
All the creatures she promised to help are being threatened, and slowly all of Alice’s defenses, emotional and physical, are being worn away. So when Ending (the giant cat-like creature who helps rule the magical labyrinth in Geryon’s library) hints at a dangerous final solution, Alice jumps at the chance, no matter the cost to her life. She and her friends - a fire sprite, Ashes the cat, and the other young Readers she met during her previous adventures - go on a quest to free the one creature possibly strong enough to overturn the Old Readers once and for all.
But Alice has forgotten one crucial thing: Ending is a cat, and cats are not known to be trustworthy. And Ending has plans of her own . . .
Alice always thought fairy tales had happy endings. That - along with everything else - changed the day she met her first fairy
\nWhen Alice's father goes down in a shipwreck, she is sent to live with her uncle Geryon - an uncle she's never heard of and knows nothing about. He lives in an enormous manor with a massive library that is off-limits to Alice. But then she meets a talking cat. And even for a rule-follower, when a talking cat sneaks you into a forbidden library and introduces you to an arrogant boy who dares you to open a book, it's hard to resist. Especially if you're a reader to begin with. Soon Alice finds herself INSIDE the book, and the only way out is to defeat the creature imprisoned within.
It seems her uncle is more than he says he is. But then so is Alice.
As the roar of the guns subsides and the smoke of battle clears, the country of Vordan is offered a fragile peace. After their shattering defeats at the hands of brilliant General Janus bet Vhalnich, the opposing powers have called all sides to the negotiating table in hopes of securing an end to the war.
\nQueen Raesinia of Vordan is anxious to see the return of peace, but Janus insists that any peace with the implacable Sworn Church of Elysium is doomed to fail. For their Priests of the Black, there can be no truce with heretics and demons they seek to destroy, and the war is to the death.
\nSoldiers Marcus d'Ivoire and Winter Ihernglass find themselves caught between their general and their queen. Now, each must decide which leader truly commands their loyalty and what price they might pay for final victory. And in the depths of Elysium, a malign force is rising.
\nDefeating it might mean making sacrifices beyond anything they have ever imagined.
Kas is a junior researcher on a fact-finding mission to old Earth. But when a con-artist tricks her into wagering a large sum of money belonging to her university on the outcome of a manned robot arena battle she becomes drawn into the seedy underworld of old Earth politics and state-sponsored battle-droid prizefights.
\nIs it time to get back to the books, yet?
Groundhog Day meets Guardians of the Galaxy in Django Wexler’s laugh-out-loud fantasy tale about a young woman who, tired of defending humanity from the Dark Lord, decides to become the Dark Lord herself.
\nDavi has done this all before. She’s tried to be the hero and take down the all-powerful Dark Lord. A hundred times she’s rallied humanity and made the final charge. But the time loop always gets her in the end. Sometimes she’s killed quickly. Sometimes it takes a while. But she’s been defeated every time.
\nThis time? She’s done being the hero and done being stuck in this endless time loop. If the Dark Lord always wins, then maybe that’s who she needs to be. It’s Davi’s turn to play on the winning side.
The Beast, imprisoned beneath the fortress-city of Elysium for a thousand years, has been loosed upon the world and is spreading like a plague through the north.
\n\n
Queen Raesinia Orboan and soldiers Marcus D'Ivoire and Winter Ihernglass face a betrayal they never could have foreseen: their general, Janus bet Vhalnich, has declared himself the rightful Emperor of Vordan. Chaos grips the city as officers and regiments are forced to declare for queen or emperor.
\n\n
As Raesinia struggles to keep her country under control, she risks becoming everything she has fought against, while Marcus must take the field against his old commander. And Winter knows that the demon she carries inside her might be the only thing standing between the Beast and the end of the world . . .
When his older sister, Quedra Sa-Yool, was brought down by her political enemies, ne’er-do-well and pilot extraordinaire Zham followed her into exile. Quedra, a military genius once known as the Diamond Knife, now commands the mercenary airship Last Stop and its motley crew, and Zham leads its tiny air wing - when he’s not roistering in bars and dodging moneylenders, that is.
\n\t\t\t\t\tThe one thing keeping this ragged outfit together (besides Quedra’s blistering stare) is everyone’s desire to survive on the edge, even if that means smuggling, battling pirates, and flying too close to the solid floor of clouds known as the Layer, below which the merciless insectoid mantids hold sway. Indeed, few who dare to venture there ever return . . .
\n\t\t\t\t\tBut when the Last Stop is enlisted to search for a lost expedition that may have discovered a haven for humans beneath the Layer, it’s the chance of a lifetime. What awaits Zham and team at the end of this dangerous mission might just change their lives - and their world - forever. Then again, it might mean the end of both.
When Alice's mysterious Uncle Geryon sends her to help capture a rogue apprentice - a boy who has the same ability Alice has to Read himself into stories - she knows to expect a wild and unpredictable trip. But even though Alice has visited the magical realms inside libraries before, this adventure is far more dangerous. Because Torment, the magic creature holding this library together, has gone mad.
But he might also have information about Alice's missing father.
For Alice, danger threatens from inside the library as well as out. Having figured out the role her master and uncle, Geryon, played in her father's disappearance, Alice turns to Ending - the mysterious, magical giant feline and guardian of Geryon's library - for a spell to incapacitate Geryon. But, like all cats, Ending is adept at keeping secrets and Alice doesn't know the whole story.
\nOnce she traps Geryon with Ending's spell, there's no one to stop the other Readers from sending their apprentices to pillage Geryon's library. As Alice prepares to face an impending attack from the combined might of the Readers, she gathers what forces she can - the apprentices she once thought might be her friends, the magical creatures imprisoned in Geryon's library - not knowing who, if anyone, she can trust.
In the wake of the King’s death, war has come to Vordan.
The Deputies-General has precarious control of the city, but it is led by a zealot who sees traitors in every shadow. Executions have become a grim public spectacle. The new queen, Raesinia Orboan, finds herself nearly powerless as the government tightens its grip and assassins threaten her life. But she did not help free the country from one sort of tyranny to see it fall into another. Placing her trust with the steadfast soldier Marcus D’Ivoire, she sets out to turn the tide of history.
As the hidden hand of the Sworn Church brings all the powers of the continent to war against Vordan, the enigmatic and brilliant general Janus bet Vhalnich offers a path to victory. Winter Ihernglass, newly promoted to command a regiment, has reunited with her lover and her friends, only to face the prospect of leading them into bloody battle.
And the enemy is not just armed with muskets and cannon. Dark priests of an ancient order, wielding forbidden magic, have infiltrated Vordan to stop Janus by whatever means necessary . . .
Anyone can plot a coup or fire an assassin’s bullet. But in a world of muskets and magic, it takes considerably more to seize the throne.
The ailing King of the Vordan lies on his deathbed. When he dies, his daughter, Raesinia Orboan, will become the first Queen Regnant in centuries - and a ripe target for the ambitious men who seek to control her. The most dangerous of these is Duke Orlanko, Minister of Information and master of the secret police. Having meticulously silenced his adversaries through intimidation, imprisonment, and execution, Orlanko is the most feared man in the kingdom.
And he knows an arcane secret that puts Raesinia completely at his mercy.
Exposure would mean ruin, but Raesinia is determined to find a way to break herself - and her country - out of Orlanko’s iron grip. She finds unlikely allies in the returning war hero Janus bet Vhalnich, fresh from a brilliant campaign in the colony of Khandar, and his loyal deputies, Captain Marcus d’Ivoire and Lieutenant Winter Ihernglass.
As Marcus and Winter struggle to find their places in the home they never thought they would see again, they help Janus and Raesinia set in motion events that could free Vordan from Orlanko’s influence - at the price of throwing the nation into chaos. But with the people suffering under the Duke’s tyranny, they intend to protect the kingdom with every power they can command, earthly or otherwise
In the lower wards of Kahnzoka, the great port city of the Blessed Empire, eighteen-year-old ward boss Isoka comes to collect when there's money owing. When her ability to access the Well of Combat is discovered by the Empire - an ability she should have declared and placed at His Imperial Majesty's service - she's sent on an impossible mission: steal Soliton, a legendary ghost ship - a ship from which no one has ever returned. If she fails, her sister's life is forfeit.
\nIsoka has done the impossible--she's captured the ghost ship Soliton.
With her crew of mages, including the love of her life Princess Meroe, Isoka returns to the empire that sent her on her deadly mission. She's ready to hand over the ghost ship as ransom for her sister Tori's life, but arrives to find her home city under siege. And Tori at the helm of a rebellion.
Neither Isoka's mastery of combat magic, nor Tori's proficiency with mind control, could have prepared them for the feelings their reunion surfaces. But they're soon drawn back into the rebels' fight to free the city that almost killed them.
Captain Marcus d’Ivoire, commander of one of the Vordanai empire’s colonial garrisons, was resigned to serving out his days in a sleepy, remote outpost. But that was before a rebellion upended his life. And once the powder smoke settled, he was left in charge of a demoralized force clinging tenuously to a small fortress at the edge of the desert.
To flee from her past, Winter Ihernglass masqueraded as a man and enlisted as a ranker in the Vordanai Colonials, hoping only to avoid notice. But when chance sees her promoted to command, she must win the hearts of her men and lead them into battle against impossible odds.
The fates of both these soldiers and all the men they lead depend on the newly arrived Colonel Janus bet Vhalnich, who has been sent by the ailing king to restore order. His military genius seems to know no bounds, and under his command, Marcus and Winter can feel the tide turning. But their allegiance will be tested as they begin to suspect that the enigmatic Janus’s ambitions extend beyond the battlefield and into the realm of the supernatural - a realm with the power to ignite a meteoric rise, reshape the known world, and change the lives of everyone in its path.
In the hills of Appalachia, there once existed a land ruled by a king and queen. Inspired by memories of African kingdoms, a community of formerly enslaved men and women grasped freedom on mountain land they owned. But freedom doesn't always last forever . . .
\nToday, after years of silence, Nikki has been summoned to North Carolina by her estranged grandmother. But instead of revealing answers about their recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki a shocking story about her great-great-great grandmother, Queen Luella, and the very land they stand on. Land Mother Rita insists must be protected at all costs.
\nAs Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land, she comes to realise how much of her identity is rooted in this family land, and how much they stand to lose if it, like so much else, is taken from them. It's time to reclaim what's theirs.
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Inspired by true events that rocked the nation, a profoundly moving novel about a Black nurse in post-segregation Alabama who blows the whistle on a terrible wrong done to her patients.
\nMontgomery, Alabama 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she intends to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies.
\nBut when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a worn down one-room cabin, she’s shocked to learn that her new patients are children - just 11 and 13 years old. Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black and for those handling the family’s welfare benefits that’s reason enough to have the girls on birth control. As Civil grapples with her role, she takes India, Erica and their family into her heart.Until one day, she arrives at the door to learn the unthinkable has happened and nothing will ever be the same for any of them.
\nDecades later, with her daughter grown and a long career in her wake, Dr. Civil Townsend is ready to retire, to find her peace and to leave the past behind. But there are people and stories that refuse to be forgotten.That must not be forgotten.
\nBecause history repeats what we don’t remember.
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The wildly funny, occasionally heartbreaking internationally bestselling memoir about growing up, growing older, and learning to navigate friendships, jobs, loss, and love along the ride.
\nWhen it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming an adult, journalist and former Sunday Times columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all. In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, finding a job, getting drunk, getting dumped, realising that Ivan from the corner shop might just be the only reliable man in her life, and that absolutely no one can ever compare to her best girlfriends. Everything I Know About Love is about bad dates, good friends and - above all else - realising that you are enough.
\nGlittering with wit and insight, heart and humor, Dolly Alderton’s unforgettable debut weaves together personal stories, satirical observations, a series of lists, recipes, and other vignettes that will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age - making you want to pick up the phone and tell your best friends all about it. Like Bridget Jones’ Diary but all true, Everything I Know About Love is about the struggles of early adulthood in all its terrifying and hopeful uncertainty.
Nina Dean has arrived at her early thirties as a successful food writer with loving friends and family, plus a new home and neighbourhood. When she meets Max, a beguiling romantic hero who tells her on date one that he's going to marry her, it feels like all is going to plan.
\nA new relationship couldn't have come at a better time - her thirties have not been the liberating, uncomplicated experience she was sold. Everywhere she turns, she is reminded of time passing and opportunities dwindling. Friendships are fading, ex-boyfriends are moving on and, worse, everyone's moving to the suburbs. There's no solace to be found in her family, with a mum who's caught in a baffling mid-life makeover and a beloved dad who is vanishing in slow-motion into dementia.
\nDolly Alderton's debut novel is funny and tender, filled with whip-smart observations about relationships, family, memory, and how we live now.
Andy's story wasn't meant to turn out this way. Living out of a suitcase in his best friends' spare room, waiting for his career as a stand-up comedian to finally take off, he struggles to process the life-ruining end of his relationship with the only woman he's ever truly loved.
\nAs he tries to solve the seemingly unsolvable mystery of his broken relationship, he contends with career catastrophe, social media paranoia, a rapidly dwindling friendship group and the growing suspicion that, at 35, he really should have figured this all out by now.
\nAndy has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story.
\nWarm, wise, funny and achingly relatable, Dolly Alderton's highly-anticipated second novel is about the mystery of what draws us together - and what pulls us apart - the pain of really growing up, and the stories we tell about our lives.
It’s 1985 and Obi’s on the cusp of teenagehood, after a childhood marked by poverty, dysfunctional family dynamics, (dis)organised crime and violence. His dad’s delusional, his mum’s real sick, the Rainbow Warrior just exploded, and it’s time for Obi to grow up and get out of the spacies parlour.
\nWhen he and his best mate Al discover a map leading to unknown riches, Obi wonders if this windfall could be the thing that turns his family’s fortunes around. Instead, he’s thrown into an adventure where the stakes are a lot higher than the games he loves.
\nAn electric novel about life in a multi-cultural, counter-cultural part of Auckland pre-gentrification. 1985 is an adventure story with a local flavour, a coming-of-age story for the underdogs, the disenfranchised and the dreamers.
Monday Woolridge is a fighter with a face covered in scars and life full of debt.
\nHer Avondale flat has no furniture, her father’s dead, her catatonic mother’s in an expensive nursing home and her kickboxing gym is going to Thailand. Monday's shitty bartending job pays fifty cents over minimum wage, and she desperately needs another way to generate income.
\nDealing drugs off the dark web with her flatmate JJ looks like it's working - until it really doesn’t, and the pair have to flee Tamaki Makaurau to escape the gangsters, the vampires and the ghosts of Monday’s past.
Witch apprentice Verity Vox has never encountered a problem magic can’t solve. So when a cryptic note invites her to Foxfire, she goes.
\nWith her apprenticeship limiting her services to a year, Foxfire will be her biggest challenge yet. The town has already lost its only bridge, and many loved ones have disappeared in dealings with a shady magic peddler named Earl - leaving the whole town wary of magic.
\nEven as Verity wins the townsfolk over, she realises she may not be able to save them. Going after Earl only returns Tacita, the missing girl who summoned Verity, but no one else. And the fight costs Verity the ability to fly and draws her to the old dark magic beneath the mountain.
\nAs Verity hones her powers and grows to care for Tacita, she must learn that not everything can be solved with strength alone.
Danny Ryan is rich.
\nBeyond his wildest dreams rich.
\nThe former dock worker, Irish mob soldier and fugitive from the law is now a respected businessman - a Las Vegas casino mogul and billionaire silent partner in a group that owns two lavish hotels. Finally, Danny has it all: a beautiful house, a child he adores, a woman he might even fall in love with.
\nLife is good.
\nBut then Danny reaches too far.
\nWhen he tries to buy an old hotel on a prime piece of real estate with plans to build his dream resort, he triggers a war against Las Vegas power brokers, a powerful FBI agent bent on revenge and a rival casino owner with dark connections of his own.
\nDanny thought he had buried his past, but now it reaches up to him from the grave to pull him down. Old enemies surface, and when they come for Danny they vow to take everything - not only his empire, not just his life, but all that he holds dear, including his son.
\nTo save his life and everything he loves, Danny must become the ruthless fighter he once was - and never wanted to be again.
\nRanging from the gritty back rooms of Providence, RI to the power corridors of Washington, DC and Wall Street to the golden casinos of Las Vegas, City in Ruins is an epic crime novel of love and hate, ambition and desperation, vengeance and compassion.
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Hollywood.
\nThe city where dreams are made.
\nOn the losing side of a bloody East Coast crime war, Danny Ryan is now on the run. The Mafia, the cops, the FBI all want him dead or in prison. With his little boy, his elderly father and the tattered remnants of his loyal crew of soldiers, he makes the classic American migration to California to start a new life.
\nA quiet, peaceful existence.
\nBut the Feds track him down and want Danny to do them a favor that could make him a fortune or kill him.
\nAnd when Hollywood starts shooting a film based on his former life, Danny demands a piece of the action and begins to rebuild his criminal empire.
\nThen he falls in love.
\nWith a beautiful movie star who has a dark past of her own.
\nAs their worlds collide in an explosion that could destroy them both, Danny Ryan has to fight for his life in a city where dreams are born.
\nOr where they go to die.
\nFrom the shores of Rhode Island to the deserts of California where bodies disappear, from the power corridors of Washington where the real criminals operate to the fabled movie studios of Hollywood where the real money is made, City of Dreams is a sweeping saga of family, love, revenge, survival and the fierce reality behind the dream.
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Two criminal empires together control all of New England.
\nUntil a beautiful woman comes between the Irish and the Italians, launching a war that will see them kill each other, destroy an alliance, and set a city on fire.
\nDanny Ryan yearns for a more “legit” life and a place in the sun. But as the bloody conflict stacks body on body and brother turns against brother, Danny has to rise above himself. To save the friends he loves like family and the family he has sworn to protect, he becomes a leader, a ruthless strategist, and a master of a treacherous game in which the winners live and the losers die.
\nFrom the gritty streets of Providence to the glittering screens of Hollywood to the golden casinos of Las Vegas, two rival crime families ignite a war that will leave only one standing. The winner will forge a dynasty.
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The multi-million-dollar casino heist is impossible - it can’t be done. That’s what makes it irresistible to a legendary robber facing the rest of his life in prison for his “Final Score.” An ambitious, hard-working college-bound teenager has a side job delivering illegal booze to “The Sunday List” until a crooked cop, a seductive customer, and a fake guru threaten to end his dreams. Two wise guys tell each other a “True Story” over breakfast at a diner. It’s all bullshit and laughs until someone else has to pick up the check.
\nAn otherwise honest patrolman has to make an excruciating choice between his loyalty to the job and his love for a ne’er-do-well cousin in “The North Wing.” The entitled, substance-addicted movie star that surfer/PI Boone Daniels and his crew are hired to babysit in “The Lunch Break” is a problem. She also has a problem - someone wants her dead.
\nFinally, the one terrible, momentary mistake that a devoted family man makes sends him to prison and on a “Collision” course between the man he wants to be and the killer he’s forced to become to survive.
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In a small town in rural Ireland, the local people have weathered the storm of economic collapse and now look to the the jobs are back, the dramas of the past seemingly lulled, and although the town bears the scars of its history, new stories have begun to unfold.
\nBut a new, insidious menace creeps through back-alley shadows and into the lives of this community. Old grudges fester and new ones arise. Young people are lured by the promise of fast money while the generation above them tries to hold back the tide of an enemy beyond their control. And the peace of this small town is about to be shattered in an unimaginable way.
\nA stunning, lyrical novel told in twenty-one voices, Heart, be at Peace reveals a community that together looks to weather the storm of betrayals, secrets, and grudges that can divide families, towns, and entire generations.
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The Aylward women of Nenagh, Tipperary, are mad about each other, but you wouldn't always think it. You'd have to know them to know - in spite of what the neighbours might say about raised voices and dramatic scenes - that their house is a place of peace, filled with love, a refuge from the sadness and cruelty of the world.
\nTheir story begins at an end and ends at a beginning. It involves wives and widows, gunrunners and gougers, sinners and saints. It's a story of terrible betrayals and fierce loyalties, of isolation and togetherness, of transgression, forgiveness, desire, and love. About all the things family can be and all the things it sometimes isn't.
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In the aftermath of Ireland's financial collapse, dangerous tensions surface in an Irish town. As violence flares, the characters face a battle between public persona and inner desires. Through a chorus of unique voices, each struggling to tell their own kind of truth, a single authentic tale unfolds.
\nThe Spinning Heart speaks for contemporary Ireland like no other novel. Wry, vulnerable, all-too human, it captures the language and spirit of rural Ireland and with uncanny perception articulates the words and thoughts of a generation.
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When successful Rhode Island real estate agent Lucy Mendoza vanishes, leaving her baby behind in a grocery store parking lot, the news quickly makes national headlines. Lucy’s best friend, Michelle, is devastated, and terrified that Lucy’s life is at stake. But she knows something that could complicate the police investigation.
\nLucy had confessed something unspeakable: She regretted becoming a mother so much that she’d fantasized about faking her own kidnapping. If the police and media were to find out, Lucy would become a monster in public opinion. Michelle is sure Lucy would never abandon her daughter. But could she be wrong? Could Lucy have been so desperate she chose to escape her life?
Skylar Cruz found her sister in the Real World - only to learn that her sister has betrayed her and put everyone in the App World in danger. The Body Market is now open for business and everyone still plugged into the App World is for sale.
\nShaken by the betrayal of everyone she trusted, Skylar is through being a pawn. She may be the only one who can stop what her family started. And she has to do it before the App World runs out of time.
Skylar Cruz has managed to shut down the body market that her sister Jude opened, and to create a door to allow App World citizens reentry into the Real World. But as tensions between the newly mingling people escalate, she's not sure if it was the right decision after all. Still reeling from Kit's betrayal, she's not sure of anything anymore.
\nAnd for those who are still in the App World, a new danger looms. A virus, set in motion by Jude's actions, is killing off the bodies of those who remained plugged in—and no one knows how to stop it.
\nIt's up to Skylar to once again save the worlds—and only time will tell who will be standing alongside her in the end.
Rose Napolitano is fighting with her husband, Luke, about prenatal vitamins. She promised she'd take them, but didn't. He promised before they got married that he'd never want children, but now he's changed his mind. Their marriage has come to rest on this one question: Can Rose find it in herself to become a mother? Rose is a successful professor and academic. She's never wanted to have a child. The fight ends, and with it their marriage.
\nBut then, Rose has a fight with Luke about the vitamins - again. This time the fight goes slightly differently, and so does Rose's future as she grapples with whether she can indeed give up the one thing she thought she knew about herself. Can she reimagine her life in a completely new way? That reimagining plays out again and again in each of Rose's nine lives, just as it does for each of us as we grow into adulthood.
\nWhat are the consequences of our biggest choices? How would life change if we let go of our preconceived ideas of ourselves and became someone completely new? Rose Napolitano's experience of choosing and then choosing again shows us in an utterly compelling way what it means, literally, to reinvent a life and, sometimes, become a different kind of woman than we ever imagined.
In the tradition of M. T. Anderson's Feed and Scott Westerfeld's Uglies, Unplugged is the first in a provocative and compelling new series from acclaimed author Donna Freitas.
\nHumanity is split into a dying physical world for the poor and an extravagant virtual world for the wealthy. Years ago, Skylar Cruz crossed over to the App World for a chance at a better life, and her family stayed behind in the Real World. Now Skye is a virtual teenager, surrounded by glamorous apps and expensive downloads - yet she's never felt like she fits in, and all she wants is to see her mother and sister again.
\nSkye is desperate and ready to risk everything to unplug from the App World. But she soon learns that the only person she can trust - in either world, including friends and family - is herself.
When Claire discovers her fiancée has abused her trust in the most heinous way possible, she severs all ties.
A year down the track, she couldn’t be happier living a life of solitude on a vineyard. That is, until a quick trip into town changes everything.
Suddenly on her own in New Zealand, and on the edge of despair, Zoe never expected to find her salvation in the form of a beautiful and complex woman.
The following months are fraught with highs and lows as Claire and Zoe learn to navigate their way around each other. Both women need to overcome huge trust issues if they have any hope of forging a relationship.
On a scale of awkward to totally catastrophic, Kelly Bennett has managed to hit every level of “Oh. My. God.” in just one night.
\nKelly decides her older, uptight girlfriend Paula needs a bit of loosening up during her birthday party. When she finds her curled up in bed, Kelly leaps her bones, adds a few restraints, and one satisfied lover later, sneaks out . . . only to run into her girlfriend, Paula, in the hallway.
\nAfter the shock wears off, leaving a puddle of guilt, recriminations, and a now ex-girlfriend, Kelly’s left with one burning question: who was that woman in the bedroom? Was it Paula’s best friend? Her deplorable assistant? One of her flatmates?
\nAnd why did she go along with it?
\nThere’s nothing left for it: Kelly’s on a mission to find out and apologise.
\nThe course of lesbian true love is about as smooth as a porcupine in this quirky dramedy of errors.
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Electrician Lisa Barnett gets the shock of her life when she glimpses her new neighbour. It’s not just that the curvaceous beauty is up all hours, hauling suitcases in and out of her car. It’s that the mysterious, maddening, probably married woman was her schoolgirl fling from years ago - a girl who blew up her life, then blew out of town without a word.
\nWhat’s she doing back in town? And what on earth is she up to?
\nBella McBride can’t believe her life. A job transfer has landed her back home and she’s wound up living next door to the woman who stole her heart as a teenager. Worse, Lisa won’t even give her the time of day - and she can’t really blame her.
\nLife would be so much easier if they just stayed on their own side of the fence. But how can they with the pull of attraction constantly teasing them, and so much left unsaid?
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When a mysterious stranger rescues Rose Collins from the date from hell, she’s intrigued despite her scepticism about fate. The last thing this curvy office manager expects is for her alluring saviour to reappear with a job offer.
\nAlex Carpenter can’t stop thinking about the confident woman she rescued. Her dream of opening an exclusive women’s retreat with fantasy-themed suites finally feels within reach - if only she can convince Rose to join her business venture. But what started as professional admiration is quickly complicated by undeniable chemistry.
\nRose never imagined her next career move would involve managing a hotel where every room tells a different story, each more provocative than the last. Worse, her new boss seems more interested in her organisational skills than exploring their sizzling attraction.
\nAs they work in close quarters, maintaining professional boundaries becomes increasingly impossible.
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A story of loss, hope and redemption against the most impossible odds. 1917. Halifax, Nova Scotia.
\nNora Crowell wants more than her sister’s life as a wife and mother. As WWI rages across the Atlantic, she becomes a lieutenant in the Canadian Army Nursing Corp. But trouble is looming and it won’t be long before the truth comes to light.
\nHaving lost her beloved husband in the trenches and with no-one else to turn to, Charlotte Campbell now lives with his haughty relations who treat her like the help. It is baby Aileen, the joy and light of her life, who spurs her to dream of a better life.
\nWhen tragedy strikes in Halifax Harbour, nothing for these two women will ever be the same again. Their paths will cross in the most unexpected way, trailing both heartbreak and joy its wake . . .
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By Invitation Only is a tale of two families, one struggling to do well, one well to do, and one young couple - the privileged daughter of Chicago’s crème de la crème and the son of hard -working Southern peach farmers.
Dorothea Benton Frank offers a funny, sharp, and deeply empathetic novel of two very different worlds - of limousines and pickup trucks, caviars and pigs, skyscrapers and ocean spray - filled with a delightful cast of characters who all have something to hide and a lot to learn. A difference in legal opinions, a headlong dive from grace, and an abrupt twist will reveal the truth of who they are and demonstrate, when it truly counts, what kind of grit they have.
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Are they living the life they want, what regrets do they hold, and how would they remake their lives if they were given the invitation to do so?
Dorothy Roberts grew up in a deeply segregated Chicago of the 1960s where relationships barely crossed the “colorline.” Yet inside her own home, where her father was white and her mother a Black Jamaican immigrant, interracial marriage wasn’t just a part of her upbringing, it was a shared mission. Her father, an anthropologist, spent her entire childhood working on a book about Black-white marriages - a project he never finished but shaped every aspect of their family life.
\nAs a 21-year-old graduate student, Dorothy’s father dedicated himself to the study of interracial marriage and her mother soon became his full-time partner in that work. Together over the years they interviewed over 500 couples and assembled stunning stories about interracial marriages that took place as early as the 1880s - studying, but also living, championing, and believing in their power to advance social equality.
\nDecades later, while sorting through her father’s papers, Roberts uncovers a truth that upends everything she thought she knew about her her father’s research didn’t begin with her parents’ love story - it came long before it. This discovery forces her to wrestle with her father’s intentions, her own views about interracial relationships, and where she fits in that story. Rather than finish the book her father never published, Roberts immerses herself in their archive of interviews to trace the story of her parents and to better understand her own.
\nThough grounded in her parents’ research, it’s Roberts’ captivating storytelling that drives this memoir. In following the arc of her parents’ interviews and marriage, The Mixed Marriage Project invites us into the everyday lives of interracial couples in Chicago over four decades. Along the way, Roberts reflects on her own childhood as a Black girl with a white father, and how those experiences shaped her into one of today’s most prominent public thinkers and scholars on race. Blurring the boundaries between the political and the personal, between memoir and history, The Mixed Marriage Project is a deeply moving meditation on family, race, identity, and love.
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The city you grew up in is gone, as if sunk to the bottom of the ocean. So much has vanished with it - classmates, teachers, counterfeit watches, the erotic toe cleavage that used to lead the way down secret passages. Yet you still catch snatches of conversation lingering in the air and glimpse sun-dazzled residents retreating into dark crevices.
\nPeople seem to keep disappearing. Your mother joins in a housewives’ protest, each woman waving the fake, bloody lotus roots they were sold until police helicopters unleash a glittery spray that turns them into statues. Then it’s just you and your father at home, until he is quietly absorbed into the enormous new TV gifted by the government, and you spot him doing tai chi or picking through leftovers in the background of soap operas. And didn’t you once have a little sister, before she flew away in her school uniform? As the police go undercover and transform your neighborhood into a violent labyrinth you can no longer navigate, where does this leave you?
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Running private investigator and funeral home businesses means trouble is never far away, and the Skelf women take on their most perplexing, chilling cases yet in book two of this darkly funny, devastatingly tense and addictive new series!
Haunted by their past, the Skelf women are hoping for a quieter life. But running both a funeral directors’ and a private investigation business means trouble is never far away, and when a car crashes into the open grave at a funeral that matriarch Dorothy is conducting, she can’t help looking into the dead driver’s shadowy life.
While Dorothy uncovers a dark truth at the heart of Edinburgh society, her daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah have their own struggles. Jenny’s ex-husband Craig is making plans that could shatter the Skelf women’s lives, and the increasingly obsessive Hannah has formed a friendship with an elderly professor that is fast turning deadly.
But something even more sinister emerges when a drumming student of Dorothy’s disappears and suspicion falls on her parents. The Skelf women find themselves sucked into an unbearable darkness – but could the real threat be to themselves?
The Skelf women live in the shadow of death every day, running the family funeral directors and private investigator business in Edinburgh. But now their own grief interwines with that of their clients, as they are left reeling by shocking past events.
\nA fist-fight by an open grave leads Dorothy to investigate the possibility of a faked death, while a young woman’s obsession with Hannah threatens her relationship with Indy and puts them both in mortal danger. An elderly man claims he’s being abused by the ghost of his late wife, while ghosts of another kind come back to haunt Jenny from the grave . . . pushing her to breaking point.
\nAs the Skelfs struggle with increasingly unnerving cases and chilling danger lurks close to home, it becomes clear that grief, in all its forms, can be deadly . . .
Seventeen-year-old Tyler lives in one of Edinburgh’s most deprived areas. Coerced into robbing rich people’s homes by his bullying older siblings, he’s also trying to care for his little sister and his drug-addict mum. On a job, his brother Barry stabs a homeowner and leaves her for dead, but that’s just the beginning of their nightmare, because the woman is the wife of Edinburgh’s biggest crime lord, Deke Holt.
\nWith the police and the Holts closing in, and his shattered family in devastating danger, Tyler meets posh girl Flick in another stranger’s house, and he thinks she may just be his salvation . . . unless he drags her down, too.
Six months since the earth-shattering events of The Space Between Us, the revelatory hope of the aliens' visit has turned to dust and the creatures have disappeared into the water off Scotland's west coast.
\nTeenager Lennox and grieving mother Heather are being held in New Broom, a makeshift US military base, the subject of experiments, alongside the Enceladons who have been captured by the authorities.
\nAva, who has given birth, is awaiting the jury verdict at her trial for the murder of her husband. And MI7 agent Oscar Fellowes, who has been sidelined by the US military, is beginning to think he might be on the wrong side of history.
\nWhen alien Sandy makes contact, Lennox and Heather make a plan to escape with Ava. All three of them are heading for a profound confrontation between the worst of humanity and a possible brighter future, as the stakes get higher for the alien Enceladons and the entire human race . . .
Meet the Skelfs: well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators. When patriarch Jim dies, it’s left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events.
\nDorothy discovers mysterious payments to another woman, suggesting that Jim wasn’t the husband she thought he was. Hannah’s best friend Mel has vanished from university, and the simple adultery case that Jenny takes on leads to something stranger and far darker than any of them could have imagined.
\nAs the women struggle to come to terms with their grief, and the demands of the business threaten to overwhelm them, secrets from the past emerge, which change everything.
Keeping on top of the family funeral directors’ and private-investigation businesses is no easy task for the Skelf women, and when matriarch Dorothy discovers a human foot while walking the dog, a perplexing case presents itself . . . with potentially deadly results.
\nDaughter Jenny and grand-daughter Hannah have their hands full too: The mysterious circumstances of a dying woman lead them into an unexpected family drama, Hannah's new astrophysicist colleague claims he's receiving messages from outer space, and the Skelf's teenaged lodger has yet another devastating experience.
\nNothing is clear as the women are immersed ever deeper in their most challenging cases yet. But when the daughter of Jenny’s violent and fugitive ex-husband goes missing without trace and a wild animal is spotted roaming Edinburgh's parks, real danger presents itself, and all three Skelfs are in peril.
The Skelf women are back on an even keel after everything they've been through. But when a funeral they're conducting is attacked by a drone, Jenny fears they're in the middle of an Edinburgh gangland vendetta.
\nAt the same time, Yana, a Ukrainian member of the refugee choir that plays with Dorothy's band, has gone missing. Searching for her leads Dorothy into strange and ominous territory.
\nAnd Brodie, the newest member of the extended Skelf family, comes to Hannah with a case: Something or someone has been disturbing the grave of his stillborn son.
\nEverything is changing for the Skelfs . . . Dorothy's boyfriend Thomas is suffering PTSD after previous violent trauma, Jenny and Archie are becoming close, and Hannah's case leads her to consider the curious concept of panpsychism, which brings new danger . . . while ghosts from the family's past return to threaten their very lives.
The Skelf women are recovering from the cataclysmic events that nearly claimed their lives. Their funeral-director and private-investigation businesses are back on track, and their cases are as perplexing as ever.
\nMatriarch Dorothy looks into a suspicious fire at an illegal campsite and takes a grieving, homeless man under her wing. Daughter Jenny is searching for her missing sister-in-law, who disappeared in tragic circumstances, while grand-daughter Hannah is asked to investigate increasingly dangerous conspiracy theorists, who are targeting a retired female astronaut . . . putting her own life at risk.
\nWith a body lost at sea, funerals for those with no one to mourn them, reports of strange happenings in outer space, a funeral crasher with a painful secret, and a violent attack on one of the family, The Skelfs face their most personal - and perilous - cases yet. Doing things their way may cost them everything . . .
Lennox is a troubled teenager with no family. Ava is eight months pregnant and fleeing her abusive husband. Heather is a grieving mother and cancer sufferer. They don’t know each other, but when a meteor streaks over Edinburgh, all three suffer instant, catastrophic strokes . . . only to wake up the following day in hospital, miraculously recovered.
\nWhen news reaches them of an octopus-like creature washed up on the shore near where the meteor came to earth, Lennox senses that some extra-terrestrial force is at play. With the help of Ava, Heather and a journalist, Ewan, he rescues the creature they call 'Sandy' and goes on the run.
\nBut they aren’t the only ones with an interest in the alien . . . close behind are Ava’s husband, the police and a government unit who wants to capture the creature, at all costs. And Sandy’s arrival may have implications beyond anything anyone could imagine . . .
It's been eighteen months since the Enceladons escaped the clutches of an American military determined to exterminate the peaceful alien creatures.
\nLennox and Vonnie have been lying low in the Scottish Highlands, Ava has been caring for her young daughter Chloe, and Heather is adjusting to her new life with Sandy and the other Enceladons in the Arctic Ocean, off the coast of Greenland. But fate is about to bring them together again for one last battle.
\nWhen Lennox and Vonnie are visited by Karl Jensen, a Norwegian billionaire intent on making contact with the Encedalons again, they are wary of subjecting the aliens to further dangers. But when word arrives that Ava's daughter has suffered an attack and might die without urgent help, they reluctantly make the trip to Greenland, where they enlist the vital help of local woman Niviaq.
\nIt's not long before they're drawn into a complex web of lies, deceit and death. What is Karl's company really up to? Why are sea creatures attacking boats? Why is Sandy acting so strangely, and why are polar bears getting involved?
What do a dead cat, a computer whiz-kid, an Electric Monk who believes the world is pink, quantum mechanics, a Chronologist over two hundred years old, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (poet), and pizza have in common?
\nApparently not much; until Dirk Gently, self-styled private investigator, sets out to prove the fundamental interconnectedness of all things by solving a mysterious murder, assisting a mysterious professor, unravelling a mysterious mystery, and eating a lot of pizza - not to mention saving the entire human race from extinction along the way (at no extra charge).
It's an ordinary Thursday lunchtime for Arthur Dent until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly afterwards to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and his best friend has just announced that he's an alien.
\nAt this moment, they're hurtling through space with nothing but their towels and an innocuous-looking book inscribed, in large friendly letters, with the words: DON'T PANIC. The weekend has only just begun . . .
Following a number of stunning catastrophes, which have involved him being alternately blown up and insulted in ever stranger regions of the Galaxy, Arthur Dent is surprised to find himself living in a cave on prehistoric Earth.
\nHowever, just as he thinks that things cannot get possibly worse, they suddenly do. An eddy in the space-time continuum lands him, Ford Prefect, and their flying sofa in the middle of the cricket ground at Lord's, just two days before the world is due to be destroyed by the Vogons.
\nEscaping the end of the world for a second time, Arthur, Ford, and their old friend Slartibartfast embark (reluctantly) on a mission to save the whole galaxy from fanatical robots. Not bad for a man in his dressing gown . . .
When a passenger check-in desk at Terminal Two, Heathrow Airport, shot up through the roof engulfed in a ball of orange flame, the usual people tried to claim responsibility. First the IRA, then the PLO and the Gas Board.
\nEven British Nuclear Fuels rushed out a statement to the effect that the situation was completely under control, that it was a one in a million chance, that there was hardly any radioactive leakage at all and that the site of the explosion would make a nice location for a day out with the kids and a picnic, before finally having to admit that it wasn't actually anything to do with them at all.
\nNo rational cause could be found for the explosion – it was simply designated an act of God. But, thinks Dirk Gently, which God? And why? What God would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15:37 to Oslo?
Arthur Dent hadn't had a day as bad as this since the Earth had been blown up. After years of galactic wanderings, Arthur finally settles on the small planet Lamuella and becomes a sandwich maker.
\nLooking forward to a quiet life, his plans are thrown awry by the unexpected arrival of his daughter. There's nothing worse than a frustrated teenager with a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in their hands.
\nWhen she runs away, Arthur goes after her determined to save her from the horrors of the universe. After all – he's encountered most of them before . . .
If you've done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the end of the Universe? Which is exactly what Arthur Dent and the crew of the Heart of Gold plan to do.
\nThere's just the small matter of escaping the Vogons, avoiding being taken to the most totally evil world in the Galaxy and teaching a space ship how to make a proper cup of tea. And did anyone actually make a reservation?
This sublime collection dips into the wit and wisdom of the man behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, uncovering his unique comic musings on everything from his school-trousers to malt whisky and from the letter Y through to his own nose, via atheism, hangovers and fried eggs.
\nThese hilarious collected writings reveal the warmth, enthusiasm and ferocious intelligence behind this most English of comic writers; a man who was virtually an unofficial member of the Monty Python team.
\nDouglas Adams on his passion for P. G. Wodehouse, The Beatles and the perfect cup of tea alone make this a must-have collection and a remarkable sign-off from one of the best loved writers of all time.
There is a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. It’s not an easy thing to do and Arthur Dent thinks he’s the only human who’s been able to master this nifty little trick - until he meets Fenchurch, the girl of his dreams. Fenchurch knows how the world could be made a good and happy place.
\nUnfortunately, she’s forgotten. Convinced that the secret lies within God’s Final Message to His Creation they go in search of it. And, in a dramatic break with tradition, actually find it . . .
Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the island of Harris to find that little has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal begrudgingly resumes his old life, stuck between the two poles of his his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for several decades.
\nCal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As lambing season turns to shearing season, everything seems poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly knotted.
\n
Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh \"Shuggie\" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life.
\nMarried to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good - her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion's share of each week's benefits - all the family has to live on - on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs.
\nAgnes's older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realised that he is 'no right,' a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her - even her beloved Shuggie.
Growing up in a housing estate in Glasgow, Mungo and James are born under different stars - Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic - and they should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all. Yet against all odds, they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds.
\nAs they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his big brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. And when several months later Mungo's mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to try to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future.
\nImbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in the literary world, Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the divisions of sectarianism, the violence faced by many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.
Frank Wisner was one of the most powerful men in 1950s Washington, though few knew it. Reporting directly to senior U.S. officials - his work largely hidden from Congress and the public - Wisner masterminded some of the CIA’s most daring and controversial operations in the early years of the Cold War, commanding thousands of clandestine agents around the world.
\nFollowing an early career marked by exciting escapades as a key World War II spy under General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Wisner quickly rose through the postwar intelligence ranks to lead a newly created top-secret unit tasked - under little oversight - with overseeing massive propaganda, economic warfare, sabotage, subversion, and guerrilla operations all over the world, including such daring initiatives as the CIA-backed coups in Iran and Guatemala.
\nBut simultaneously, Wisner faced a demon few at the time understood: bipolar disorder. When this debilitating disease resulted in his breakdown and transfer to a mental hospital, the repercussions were felt throughout Washington’s highest levels of power.
\nWaller’s sensitive and exhaustively researched biography is the riveting story of both Frank Wisner as a national figure who inspired a cadre of future CIA secret warriors, and also an intimate and empathetic portrait of a man whose harrowing struggle with bipolar disorder makes his impressive accomplishments on the world stage even more remarkable.
\n
This is the book for life's twists and turns, when being human starts to get complicated.
\nA must-have companion to Dr Julie's international bestseller Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?, which taught us the skills to strengthen our future mental health, Open When . . . is the book to turn to when you find yourself in the eye of the storm.
\nWithin this book are a series of Open When style letters from Dr Julie to help navigate the moments of overwhelm, confusion or self-doubt that we all face when life gets messy. Offering calm, clarity and a laser focus on the best way forward, each personal letter is followed by real-time tools that will help you re-frame the situation and decide on your next move.
\nEvery chapter covers a new scenario; universal problems that each of us will likely face at some point. So, whether you are experiencing stress, pressure to perform, dealing with difficult people, trying to fit in, making big decisions, arguments with your partner, or big emotions that are causing anxiety, Open When . . . brings the words you need to hear to get back on the front foot, feeling ready to take on everything life throws your way.
\n
Drawing on years of experience as a clinical psychologist, online sensation Dr Julie Smith provides the skills you need to navigate common life challenges and take charge of your emotional and mental health in her debut book.
\nFilled with secrets from a therapist's toolkit, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before teaches you how to fortify and maintain your mental health, even in the most trying of times. Dr Julie Smith's expert advice and powerful coping techniques will help you stay resilient, whether you want to manage anxiety, deal with criticism, cope with depression, build self-confidence, find motivation, or learn to forgive yourself. Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before tackles everyday issues and offers practical solutions in bite-sized, easy-to-digest entries which make it easy to quickly find specific information and guidance.
\nYour mental well-being is just as important as your physical well-being. Packed with proven strategies, Dr. Julie's empathetic guide offers a deeper understanding of how your mind works and gives you the insights and help you need to nurture your mental health every day. Wise and practical, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before might just change your life.
\n
An inclusive and essential guide to reproductive health - including period problems, pelvic pain, menopause, fertility, sexual health, vaginal and urinary conditions, and overall wellbeing - from leading expert Dr. Karen Tang
\nReproductive healthcare, from abortion to gender-affirming care, is under siege. The onus continues to fall on patients to find and advocate for the care they need. Dr. Karen Tang is on a mission to transform how women engage with their bodies and their healthcare.
\nDid you know that one in three women experiences menstrual abnormalities or pelvic issues, yet these conditions are overwhelmingly misunderstood, misdiagnosed, or dismissed? The root causes for these issues, such as polycystic ovary syndrome, endometriosis, fibroids, ovarian cysts, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and pelvic-floor muscle dysfunction, don’t receive the stream of funding for research and new treatments that other conditions do, despite the potential to affect up to half the population.
\nIt’s Not Hysteria is a comprehensive guide to common conditions and potential treatment options, with practical tools such as symptom prompts and sample questions to ask one's provider.
\n
Drew Afualo is best known as the internet’s 'Crusader for Women' and is at the head of a new generation of entertainment’s rising stars, with more than nine million followers across her social platforms. She soon realised that men on social media were creating sexist content aimed at disparaging women, and also containing rampant fatphobia, racism, and other forms of bigotry with very real-life consequences. It didn’t take long for her to step into the role of unofficial watchdog for misogyny, and her signature laugh is now recognised as a feminist call to arms.Loud is part manual, part manifesto, and part memoir.
\nIt is a summoning cry to rid the internet (and our hearts, minds, and lives) of 'terrible men' and create a space to fight outdated patriarchal ideals. Above all, it makes it clear that behind Drew’s fearsome laugh is a mission and a life philosophy, a strategy for self-confidence from the inside out, and a pathway to once and for all remove men from the centre of how women and fems think about themselves.
\n
As an orphaned girl, Harmony survived a strange war waged by an enemy called the Quondam. They crushed every technological advancement in the world, eviscerated the landscape, and killed millions. It can still be stopped. As prophesied, Harmony has a destiny to fulfill.
\nThirty years later, she is in a tenuous alliance with a cult of zealots who worship time itself. A master code breaker, she’s enlisted to obliterate the power of the Quondam and prevent a war that has already ended. The mission is a success. And with it, Harmony’s new moniker of Peacemaker is enshrined. But as Harmony is There’s something else out there.
\nShe’s finding out what it is - alongside a close-knit group of allies and one fearless sergeant who rescued her so many years ago. The war with the past may be over, but as the Church of Time reveals its biggest mystery, the war with the future has just begun.
\n
In one terrifying event called the Ninety-Nine, all major military installations on earth were eviscerated. But by whom? Foreign powers, AIs, ETs? Every conceivable adversary was ruled out. Reeling from massive casualties and amid hundreds of conspiracy theories, humanity creates Andrones: bipedal android drones piloted remotely by soldiers who will never again need to be on the field of battle. Newly minted Androne pilot Sergeant Paxton Arés has now been deployed into a fight against an enemy no one understands or has ever seen.
\nPassing mostly uneventful days patrolling an unidentified desert, Paxton spends time communicating with his pregnant girlfriend back home and reflecting on his impending fatherhood. But as he is drawn deeper into military camaraderie and begins quickly rising up the ranks on the strength of his father’s military legacy, Paxton starts to question the swirling rumors about the nature of the conflict. What he’s encountered in the shifting dunes - something inexplicable, indomitable - fills him with the fear that whatever is out there is destined to win.
\nWhether it’s curiosity, ambition, or a newfound paternal instinct, Paxton has a driving need to understand the dangerous truths of this strange, invisible war. And the choices he must make have the power to change everything.
\n
After leaving behind the comforts and the shackles of a prestigious law firm, a restless attorney makes ends meet in mid-2000s Brooklyn by picking up odd jobs from a colorful assortment of clients.
\nWhen a mysterious woman named Anna Reddick turns up at his apartment with ten thousand dollars in cash and asks him to track down her missing husband Newton, an antiquarian bookseller who she believes has been pilfering rare true crime volumes from her collection, he trusts it will be a quick and easy case.
\nBut when the real Anna Reddick - a magnetic but unpredictable literary prodigy - lands on his doorstep with a few bones to pick, he finds himself out of his depth, drawn into a series of deceptions involving Joseph Conrad novels, unscrupulous booksellers, aspiring flâneurs, and seedy real estate developers.
\nSet against the backdrop of New York at the tail end of the analog era and immersed in the worlds of literature and bookselling, An Honest Living is a gripping story of artistic ambition, obsession, and the small crimes we commit against one another every day.
As they hurtle into midlife, Jim and his closest college friends get together to rekindle the bonds of their friendship in his family’s beautiful, generations-old vacation home along Buzzards Bay, the demands of work and family having caused them to drift apart over recent years. But what begins as a quiet and restorative seaside escape takes a darker turn when Bruce, an aloof but successful writer, disappears from the house without a trace, sending the group into an uneasy tension.
\nMeanwhile, a series of mysterious break-ins besets the town, which is the site of an old Spiritualist campground turned idyllic fishing village. After a series of uncanny disturbances at the house, Jim can’t help but feel that someone - or something - is watching them from the other side of the marsh. And with the arrival of a strange, seductive guest at their home, the group begins to question the very nature of their experiences - along with their already precarious ties with one other.
\nIn The House on Buzzards Bay, Dwyer Murphy returns with a chilling, atmospheric page-turner that explores the bonds of friendship, the growing accumulation of life's responsibilities, and whether our youthful dreams can endure the complexities of adulthood.
Jack might be a polished, Harvard-educated lawyer on paper, but everyone in the down-at-the-heels, if picturesque, village of Onset, Massachusetts, knows his real job: moving people on the run from powerful enemies. The family business - co-managed with his father, a retired spy - is smooth sailing, as they fill up Onset's holiday homes during the town's long, drowsy off-season and help clients shed their identities in preparation for fresh starts.
\nBut when Elena, Jack's former flame - a dedicated hustler who's no stranger to the fugitive life - makes an unexpected return to town, her arrival upends Jack's routine existence. Elena, after all, doesn't go anywhere without a scheme in mind, and it isn't long before Jack finds himself enmeshed in her latest project: intercepting millions of dollars' worth of raw diamonds before they're shipped overseas.
E. Lockhart ups the ante with an inventive and romantic story about human connection, forgiveness, self-discovery, and possibility.
If you could live your life again, what would you do differently?
After a near-fatal family catastrophe and an unexpected romantic upheaval, Adelaide Buchwald finds herself catapulted into a summer of wild possibility, during which she will fall in and out of love a thousand times - while finally confronting the secrets she keeps, her ideas about love, and the weird grandiosity of the human mind.
A raw, funny story that will surprise you over and over, Again Again gives us an indelible heroine grappling with the terrible and wonderful problem of loving other people.
The prequel to We Were Liars takes readers back to the story of another summer, another generation, and the secrets that will haunt them for decades to come.
A windswept private island off the coast of Massachusetts.
A hungry ocean, churning with secrets and sorrow.
A fiery, addicted heiress. An irresistible, unpredictable boy.
A summer of unforgivable betrayal and terrible mistakes.
Welcome back to the Sinclair family. They were always liars.
The story of a young woman whose diabolical smarts are her ticket into a charmed life. But how many times can someone reinvent themselves? You be the judge.
Imogen is a runaway heiress, an orphan, a cook, and a cheat.
Jule is a fighter, a social chameleon, and an athlete.
An intense friendship. A disappearance. A murder, or maybe two.
A bad romance, or maybe three.
Blunt objects, disguises, blood, and chocolate. The American dream, superheroes, spies, and villains.
A girl who refuses to give people what they want from her.
A girl who refuses to be the person she once was.
The invitation arrives out of the blue.
\nIn it, Matilda discovers a father she’s never met. Kingsley Cello is a visionary, a reclusive artist. And when he asks her to spend the summer at his seaside home, Hidden Beach, Matilda expects to find a part of herself she’s never fully understood.
\nInstead, she finds Meer, her long-lost, openhearted brother; Brock, a former child star battling demons; and brooding, wild Tatum, who just wants her to leave their crumbling sanctuary.
\nWith Kingsley nowhere to be seen, Matilda must delve into the twisted heart of Hidden Beach to uncover the answers she’s desperately craving. But secrets run thicker than blood, and blood runs like seawater.
\nAnd everyone here is lying.
A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends - the Liars - whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.
Half a million dollars will be Celeste Thorne’s reward for spending four years of her life in total isolation. No faces. No voices. No way to leave.
Since Celeste has never really worried about being alone, the generous paycheck she’ll receive for her participation in the solitary psychological experiment seems like easy money.
When she finds an injured hiker in the woods bordering her living compound, her strictly governed world is thrown into disarray. But even as she struggles with the morality of breaking the rules of the experiment, Celeste can’t deny her growing attraction to the kind and enigmatic Olivia Soldano. Still, how much can you really trust a stranger? And how much can you trust yourself when you know all the faces you’ve seen and voices you’ve heard for the past three years have only been your imagination?
But what’s real? Celeste’s reality may lie somewhere between the absolute truth and a carefully constructed deception.
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/E.J Noyes - Alone.jpeg", "mtime": 1767084066493.3235, "size": 726967, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:20:09.908Z" }, "E.J Noyes - Ask Me Again": { "title": "Ask Me Again", "author": "E.J Noyes", "description": "What do you do when the source of all your problems is the one thing you don’t know how to fix?
With Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell nothing more than an unpleasant memory, US Army surgeon Sabine Fleischer is ready to move on with her life—if she can just figure out how to move past her PTSD. Fresh from her first deployment since surviving a vehicle attack in Afghanistan, Sabine is finding the things she’s tried so hard to push aside aren’t as easy to ignore as she’d hoped.
Sabine’s girlfriend and ex-commanding officer Rebecca Keane is happily settled into her new job running a trauma department in a civilian hospital. Life with Sabine is everything Rebecca ever wanted. But when Sabine’s PTSD reappears worse than before, she’s left struggling with her own guilt.
There’s no doubt that both Sabine and Rebecca want the same thing. But how do you help the most important person in your life when they don’t want to need your help?
", "series": "Ask, Tell", "seriesOrder": 2, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/E.J Noyes - Ask Me Again.jpeg", "mtime": 1767084066493.3235, "size": 515037, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:20:09.975Z" }, "E.J Noyes - Ask, Tell": { "title": "Ask, Tell", "author": "E.J Noyes", "description": "Where can you turn when you’re caught in a crossfire of war and passion?
\nCaptain Sabine Fleischer is a skilled and dedicated U.S. Army surgeon deployed to a combat hospital in Afghanistan. She is also one of the thousands of troops who are forced to serve in silence because of the military’s anti-gay policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT).”
\nUsually driven and focused, Sabine finds that battles raging both inside and outside the perimeter walls are making it more and more difficult for her to deal with her emotions. Dealing with loss and mortality, lack of privacy, sleep deprivation, loneliness and the isolation forced on her by “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” are all taking their toll. Plus, her long-term relationship with a civilian back home is quickly becoming another casualty of war.
\nColonel Rebecca Keane is an enigmatic career officer who runs the surgical unit like clockwork. Well liked and respected by those who work with and under her, she walks a fine line to preserve the military’s chain of command while connecting with those under her care and supervision. Sabine knows the Colonel is way off-limits, but can’t help fantasizing about her. Especially when she starts picking up unspoken cues - a stolen glance, a secret smile, an “accidental” brush of hands. Or is it just wishful thinking? After all, Rebecca’s wedding ring shines almost as brightly as her deep blue eyes...
Avery Weston is doing fine.
Sure, she’s not doing as fine as her ex―award-winning actress and current television It Girl, Elise Hayes―but Avery enjoys her work as a Federal Air Marshal and also enjoys almost being over Elise walking out on their relationship fifteen months ago. Until Elise is seated next to her on a flight, and the emotional progress Avery thought she’d made is reset in an instant.
Just like their first flight together, this one also has some bumps. But this time they don’t have to make a go around for a safe landing; they just have to deal with an overzealous fan threatening Elise. And when Elise comes begging for a place to stay until the stalker situation is resolved, Avery has to agree it’s the perfect solution to keep Elise safe. After all, nobody knows Elise Hayes used to have a girlfriend.
It’s only for a few weeks, what’s the harm? Except for some tiny issues, like when you’re still kind of in love with your ex and the mutual spark is as strong as ever, it’s easy to fall into familiar habits. Then there’s Elise’s apologies and genuine regret over leaving, which makes it hard for Avery to hold on to past hurts and sends her simmering emotions to a boil.
But love and sparks aren’t always enough. If Avery and Elise can find a way to move past everything that came between them last time, maybe they’ll get a chance to go around and try landing their relationship again.", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/E.J Noyes - Go Around.jpeg", "mtime": 1767084066514.7527, "size": 664733, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:20:10.087Z" }, "E.J Noyes - Gold": { "title": "Gold", "author": "E.J Noyes", "description": "Pro alpine skier, Aspen Archer’s downfall happened in the worst possible way—a career-ending crash on a gold medal run at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Aspen packed up her broken life, picked up her broken body and now hides in comfortable obscurity at ski resorts around the world, coaching tourists and ignoring her problems.
\nCate Tierney knows who Aspen Archer is, but the last place she expected to meet the former Olympian was during a ski trip to Australia. Hurt by a past relationship, and with a teenage daughter to protect, Cate’s initial reluctance is quickly overcome by her intense attraction. But with Cate’s vacation ending in a few short weeks and Aspen’s aversion to staying in one place, can their encounter be anything more than a fling?
When Cate discovers Aspen’s secrets, Aspen is forced to face everything she’d been trying to forget. And everything she’d forgotten she wanted. Aspen already knows the route from start to finish doesn’t always go as planned. Now she needs to figure out how to get herself back on course for good.
Rebecca Keane has it all figured out. With a successful career as an Army surgeon and a fresh promotion to Lieutenant Colonel, she loves her life leading a surgical team. Even if that life means she’s spent years hiding her sexuality and ignoring her desires under the Army’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Then Captain Sabine Fleischer’s arrival sets off an attraction that cracks Rebecca’s carefully cultivated armor and brings about fresh complications.
\nAs Sabine’s direct commanding officer, Rebecca knows she cannot act on her attraction, but that knowledge does nothing to squash her desires. Unable to keep her thoughts about the alluring other woman under control, Rebecca resigns herself to years of censoring her thoughts and feelings until Sabine’s time in the Army is done. She’s spent decades suppressing parts of herself for her job, so what’s a few more years?
\nBut as Rebecca and Sabine work closely together on Army bases in Afghanistan and the States, the undeniable sparks between them begin to ignite. And despite Rebecca’s constant self-censure, her denials and her knowledge of every obstacle standing between them, her resolve crumbles with each passing day. But when the consequences of your love run deeper than just breaking one of the unbreakable rules of the military, you risk losing more than just your heart.
\n
Jana Fleischer loves her life - wonderful family, best sister in the world, awesome soon to be sister-in-law, fabulous job, and a never-ending stream of men to chew through and spit out. So what if everyone says she’s too picky and she’s never had a real relationship?
\nWhen a chance meeting with Brooke Donnelly leaves Jana literally and figuratively off-balance, it doesn’t take long for her initial annoyance to turn into the first sparks of friendship. Jana always thought she was happy with her life, but the more time she spends with Brooke, the more she realizes something is missing. And maybe not just in the friendship department.
\nBut how do you make that leap when you’ve never even considered kissing a woman, and have spent your whole life avoiding romantic commitments? Being brave, taking the first step, and admitting she wants to try to make things work with Brooke is only the beginning. Whether it’s the beginning of a disaster - or everything Jana hadn’t realized she wanted - depends on if Brooke can also be brave enough . . .
It's an ordinary workday when intelligence analyst Lexie Martin learns about a horrific chemical weapon attack abroad. Just an ordinary day . . . until a stranger breaks into her house and warns her to forget what she saw and heard, setting off a chain of events Lexie thought only happened in movies. Falsely accused of stealing intelligence and unsure of who to trust, Lexie quickly realises the significance of the intel, and that she must do everything she can to keep it safe. And as she runs - maybe for her life - Lexie knows she needs something, or someone, to help her.
\nThere's a place for truths and lies, and sometimes you need both to get what you want. Lexie convinces the woman she's only just started dating to “go on vacation” with her, hoping a constant companion and witness will keep Them at a distance, and the intel safe. But when she develops feelings for the beautiful and sweet Sophia Flores, she wonders if a relationship built on a foundation of secrets can ever work. That might not even matter, because when Lexie uncovers the truth, the price of it could be her freedom.
Last month, intelligence analyst Lexie Martin found out a secret that could ruin lives. After a week on the run from her own government with her maybe-almost girlfriend, Sophia Flores, Lexie was forced to turn herself in and accept her punishment. But that punishment never came . . .
\nAside from Lexie’s confusion about the whys of her release, things seem to be okay - she’s free, back at work, and is officially dating Sophia, which is way better than just okay. But when you embarrass the most powerful man in the country, you risk incurring his petty wrath, and when Lexie is reassigned back into a field position in a hostile country, she’s sure it’s retaliation for knowing the truth and that the president is going to leverage what Lexie did to keep her in line.
\nNow Lexie has a new mission. Make it home to the woman she loves.
\n
Intelligence analyst Lexie Martin is important. At least that’s what she’s been told by the director of Halcyon Division, the secret organisation she works for. Problem is - Lexie doesn’t feel important. She feels . . . devastated. Struggling to equilibrate after the unexpected implosion of her personal life, and reeling from her failed assignment overseas, Lexie’s barely treading water.
\nWhen Halcyon tells Lexie she’s the only person on Earth who can figure out the password to an important file, she realises the new task is exactly what she needs. And after reconnecting with her girlfriend, Sophia, Lexie thinks she’s finally back on track. But as she tries to unlock Halcyon’s file, Lexie realizes things aren’t what they seem. And when secrets and betrayals are finally exposed, she’s stunned to realise who the enemy really is.
Stephanie D’Arripe seems to have it all. Lead actor on an acclaimed cop drama, works with her best friend, great cat, great house, but…that’s about it. After a very public and very messy breakup, Steph thinks she might be ready to dip her toes into the love pool again. And who better to try a relationship with than the cute woman you flirt with at work? Of course, Steph will have to get over her fear of being hurt again if she wants anything more than flirtation.
\nMakeup Artist Harper Bell loves her job. Who wouldn’t when you get to work with your famous crush? Harper put Steph D’Arripe in the “just a dream” basket years ago, but when dream unexpectedly becomes reality, Harper discovers that mixing personal and work relationships isn’t as easy as she thought it would be.
\nSteph and Harper are about to find out that acting on attraction is the easy part. It’s everything that comes after that’s hard.
Caitlyn Lloyd has the world at her feet. Or more accurately - under her horse’s hooves. With the 2016 Rio Olympics just around the corner, nothing is going to derail her long-held dream of winning a medal or two in Olympic dressage. Not even the reappearance of a childhood so-not-a-friend throwing her perfectly balanced life into disarray.
\nAddie Gardner’s career is at its peak, and accepting a last-minute fill-in position as the veterinarian for the US Olympic Dressage Team was a no-brainer. The fact that her old crush from Pony Club is on the team is just a bonus. Not a distraction at all. And it might just offer the chance to be friends with the girl who wouldn’t even give her the time of day twenty years ago.
\nBut Caitlyn and Addie have very different memories of their time together at Pony Club and their first meeting as adults is less like a reconnection and more like a butting of heads. With the Olympics looming, they’ll need to set aside their history and learn to work together. And maybe Caitlyn and Addie will realize childhood memories aren’t always accurate, and that they have more in common than they would ever have thought. Maybe. Just maybe.
Stacey Evans wants only one thing: to be the best alpine ski racer she can be. Everything else - like her sweet and ultra-supportive best friend, and hot-but-vapid girlfriend - is just a bonus. Fresh from a medal at her first Olympics, Stacey knows she can only get better and is firmly focused on the future, and totally not thinking about how she’s kind of a little in love with that sweet, ultra-supportive best friend . . .
\nGemma Archer has had a crush on Stacey from the moment she first saw her, but being her best friend is so amazing that she’s almost managed to push that crush aside. Almost. But even if Gemma finds the courage to tell Stacey how she really feels, there’s a mountain of obstacles to overcome - like the fact that Gemma’s stepmom is Stacey’s coach (awkward) and Gemma will be going away to college in a few months. And most importantly . . . what if admitting how she feels ruins the best friendship she’s ever had?
\n
Stockbroker Isabelle Rhodes has a lot of money, a lot of trust issues, and a whole lot of reasons to believe her ex-girlfriend was right when she said that Isabelle sucked at relationships. With that accusation stuck in her head, Isabelle throws caution to the wind and dives into her first one-night stand. Checking that off her bucket list should be something to celebrate - except it turns out that the woman she just spent an earth-shattering night with is actually her newly hired company pilot, Audrey Graham.
\nMs. Never-See-You-Again just turned into Ms. See-You-Constantly.
\nConcerned about the stigma of workplace dalliances, Isabelle vows it can’t go further than the one night. Good plan - if not for an insistent libido and an even more persistent Audrey who conspires to break Isabelle’s resolve. Soon their no strings arrangement starts to feel a lot like dating, and Isabelle finds herself wanting more than just casual nights together . . .
Pendt Harland's family sees her as a waste of food on their long-haul space cruiser when her genes reveal an undesirable mutation. But if she plays her cards right she might have a chance to do much more than survive.
\nDuring a space-station layover, Pendt escapes and forms a lucky bond with the Brannick twins, the teenage heirs of the powerful family that owns the station. Against all odds, the trio hatches a long-shot scheme to take over the station and thwart the destinies they never wished for.
Hermione Winters is captain of her cheerleading team, and in tiny Palermo Heights, this doesn’t mean what you think it means. At PHHS, the cheerleaders don't cheer for the sports teams; they are the sports team - the pride and joy of a tiny town. The team's summer training camp is Hermione's last and marks the beginning of the end of . . . she’s not sure what. She does know this season could make her a legend. But during a camp party, someone slips something in her drink. And it all goes black.
\nIn every class, there's a star cheerleader and a pariah pregnant girl. They're never supposed to be the same person. Hermione struggles to regain the control she's always had and faces a wrenching decision about how to move on. The assault wasn't the beginning of Hermione Winter's story and she's not going to let it be the end. She won’t be anyone’s cautionary tale.
\n
Morgan Enni has things to do. A science prodigy in a university full of mage-scientists, she’s notable for having no magical ability, which only increases her ambition and drive to prove herself. Her research has the potential to devastate every aetherworker in the galaxy and shake the crumbled foundations of the Stavenger Empire. It's no wonder she can't find anyone who wants to listen to her, much less fund her expedition.
\nBut Morgan is stubborn, and eventually her work catches the attention of a group of rebels, who hope it might turn the tide in their favour. When they try to recruit the young scientist, they get much more than they bargained for. Morgan Enni has secrets of her own.
\nSet in the world of Aetherbound, E. K. Johnston continues to entwine Arthurian myth and the history of North Atlantic fisheries in a clever, character-driven space fantasy.
It has been generations since the Storyteller Queen saved her country from fire and blood - but now the kingdom of Kharuf is threatened by a demon gathering power.
\nWhen a princess is born, the demon is ready with her final blow: a curse that will cost that princess her very soul, or force her to destroy her own people to save her life.
\nThe threads of magic are tightly spun, binding princess and exiled spinners into a desperate quest to break the curse. But the web of power is dangerously tangled - and they may not see the true pattern until it is unspooled.
Lo-Melkhiin killed three hundred girls before he came to her village, looking for a wife. When she sees the dust cloud on the horizon, she knows he has arrived. She knows he will want the loveliest girl: her sister. She vows she will not let her be next.
And so she is taken in her sister’s place, and she believes death will soon follow. Lo-Melkhiin’s court is a dangerous palace filled with pretty things: intricate statues with wretched eyes, exquisite threads to weave the most beautiful garments. She sees everything as if for the last time. But the first sun rises and sets, and she is not dead.
Night after night, Lo-Melkhiin comes to her and listens to the stories she tells, and day after day she is awoken by the sunrise. Exploring the palace, she begins to unlock years of fear that have tormented and silenced a kingdom. Lo-Melkhiin was not always a cruel ruler. Something went wrong.
Far away, in their village, her sister is mourning. Through her pain, she calls upon the desert winds, conjuring a subtle unseen magic, and something besides death stirs the air.
Back at the palace, the words she speaks to Lo-Melkhiin every night are given a strange life of their own. Little things, at first: a dress from home, a vision of her sister. With each tale she spins, her power grows. Soon she dreams of bigger, more terrible magic: power enough to save a king, if she can put an end to the rule of a monster.
When Weslie Fleet wins a golden ticket aboard the Boundless, humanity’s most opulent starliner, it’s a dream - and a danger. Raised in the dust-ridden ruins of Earth, she is thrust into the gleaming luxury of Mars’s elite, where every whispered word carries weight and every glance is a silent judgment. And none watch her closer than Jupiter, the golden boy of Mars’s high society, bound by duty, legacy, and a future he never chose.
\nTheir reluctant partnership was supposed to be a one-off assignment. Instead, it becomes a battle of wills, a spark that ignites, and a love neither of them anticipated. But fate is as cruel as it is unpredictable, and when the Boundless veers off course, love won’t be enough to save them.
\nThe ship is failing. The odds are impossible. And in the darkness of space, survival is the only thing that matters.
\nBut some loves are worth defying the stars for.
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Find an angry spirit. Send it on its way before it causes trouble. Leave before anyone learns his name.
\nAfter over two hundred years, Peter Shaughnessy is ready to die and end this cycle. But thanks to a youthful encounter with one o’ them folk in his native Ireland, he can’t. Instead, he’s cursed to wander eternally far from home, with the ability to see ghosts and talk to plants.
\nImmortality means Peter has lost everyone he’s ever loved. And so he centers his life on the dead - until his wandering brings him to Harrington, Ohio. As he searches for a vengeful spirit, Peter’s drawn into the townsfolk’s lives, homes and troubles. For the first time in over a century, he wants something other than death.
\nBut the people of Harrington will die someday. And he won’t
\nAs Harrington buckles under the weight of the supernatural, the ghost hunt pits Peter’s well-being against that of his new friends and the man he’s falling for. If he stays, he risks heartbreak. If he leaves, he risks their lives.
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Twelve-year-old Eli Wright's vivid imagination is his escape . . . until his strange neighbor demands he help bury a young couple she killed, or she'll slaughter his family. As a sinister wind whispers secrets and shadows hide terrifying truths, Eli is drawn into a nightmare he may not escape.
\nMeanwhile, librarian Julie Baker fled to Darling to start over after her mother's notorious death years ago. But the past returns with a vengeance when Julie's aunt dies under mysterious circumstances. Grasping for survival, Julie starts losing her grip on reality as she senses something supernatural and haunting at play in her small town.
\nEli and Julie's lives converge, dangerously bound to the unraveling killer and the dark forces that threaten to consume them all. As the trio draw closer to their destiny, will evil seal their bond in blood?
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Florence Cooper has spent most of her life caring for her niece, Cam Langley. Now she shares a house with her niece and Cam's beautiful girlfriend, Gloria Edwards, but at fifty-five, arthritis is slowing Florrie's body and solitude is settling on her soul.
\nOn Gloria's graduation day, a chance meeting with the woman who broke Florrie's heart over twenty years ago throws chaos and confusion into her life, forcing her to take a trip down memory lane into 1920s literary London.
\nOld wounds reopen and long-buried feelings reignite, pulling Florrie into a life she thought long-drowned. Standing once more on the edge of uncertainty, Florrie must dive into the ocean of possibilities or swim for the safety of the shore.
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For centuries, vampires freely roamed the land until the Grays came out of nowhere, wiping out half the population in a night. The survivors fled to the last vampire city of First Light, where the rules are simple. If you’re poor, you drink weak blood. If you’re nobility, you get the good stuff. And you can never, ever leave.
\nPalace maid Sam has had enough of these rules, and she’s definitely had enough of cleaning the bedpans of the lords who enforce them. When the son of the city’s ruler is murdered and she finds the only clue to his death, she seizes the chance to blackmail her way into a better class and better blood. She falls in with the Leeches, a group of rebel maids who rein in the worst of the Lords. Soon she’s in league with a sorcerer whose deductive skills make up for his lack of magic, a deadly werewolf assassin and a countess who knows a city’s worth of secrets.
\nThere’s just one problem. What began as a murder investigation has uncovered a vast conspiracy by the ruling elite, and now Sam must find the truth before she becomes another victim. If she can avoid getting murdered, she might just live forever.
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The revolution is here . . . but in the Everlands, nothing comes easy.
\nIn the last vampire city of First Light, the rebels know the truth about the Grays. But nothing has changed. Sam has a plan to bring the whole rotten city down - a plan of peace, not violence. But in this city, the best laid plans have a way of falling apart, and she’ll need the help of the city’s ex ruler and former enemy if she’s to avoid a bloodbath.
\nMeanwhile, in the Wolflands, Jacob, Sage, and Raven must seek help from the wolves. But when a murder is committed, the land threatens to descend into war, and unless the culprit is found, they might not escape with their lives. But with a long list of suspects and a long set of claws out for them, the odds don't look good.
\nAnd then there’s Neuras Sinassion. History’s most dangerous sorcerer has decided it’s finally time to tell his secrets and the truth about the humans. But the truth will come at a price.
\nWhen the dust has settled and the bodies are counted, only one thing is certain - the Everlands will never be the same again.
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Nothing in the Misery lasts . . .
Under a cracked and wailing sky, the Misery is a vast and blighted expanse, created when the Engine, the most powerful weapon in the world, was unleashed against the immortal Deep Kings. Across the wasteland, teeming with corrupted magic and malevolent wraiths, the Deep Kings and their armies are still watching - and still waiting.
Ryhalt Galharrow is no stranger to the Misery. The bounty hunter journeys to a remote outpost, armed for killing both men and monsters, and searching for a mysterious noblewoman. He finds himself in the middle of a shocking attack by the Deep Kings, one that should not be possible. Only a fearsome show of power from the very woman he is seeking saves him.
Once, long ago, he knew the woman well, and together they stumble onto a web of conspiracy that threatens to unmake everything they hold dear and end the fragile peace the Engine has provided. Galharrow is not ready for the truth about the blood he’s spilled and the gods he’s supposed to serve . . .
A sorcerous cataclysm has hit the Range, the final defensive line between the republic and the immortal Deep Kings.
\nTormenting red rains sweep the land, new monstrosities feed on fear in the darkness, and the power of the Nameless, the gods who protect the republic, lies broken. The Blackwing captains who serve them are being picked off one by one, and even immortals have learned what it means to die. Meanwhile, the Deep Kings have only grown stronger, and they are poised to deliver a blow that will finally end the war.
\nRyhalt Galharrow stands apart from it all.
\nHe has been deeper into the wasteland known as the Misery than ever before. It has grown within him - changed him - and now the ghosts of his past, formerly confined to the Misery, walk with him everywhere.
\nThey will even follow him - and the few surviving Blackwing captains - on one final mission into the darkness.
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Raine is seventeen-years-old and still on the run. She can see the dead, a secret that could get her killed. Seeking refuge with a deluded cult is her latest bad decision but rescuing an injured woman in the snow is soon revealed to be a horrific mistake. Hazia endangers not just Raine, but the whole world: she’s escaped from Redwinter, fortress-monastery of the Draoihn, the warrior magicians who answer to no king or queen of the land, but to their own Grand Master. They will stop at nothing to retrieve what she’s stolen.
\nRaine must survive by her wits, and her skill with a bow in a world turned upside down. A battle, a betrayal and a horrific revelation finds her herself inside Redwinter, where anyone caught communing with ghosts is put to death. As conspirators plot to release an ancient enemy, Raine’s ability to see the dead might be their only hope, but to use her power would see her condemned.
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For Ryhalt Galharrow, working for Crowfoot as a Blackwing captain is about as bad as it gets - especially when his orders are garbled, or incoherent, or impossible to carry out. The Deep Kings are hurling fire from the sky, a ghost in the light known only as the Bright Lady had begun to manifest in visions across the city, and the cult that worship her grasp for power while the city burns around them.
\nGalharrow may not be able to do much about the cult - or about strange orders from the Nameless - but when Crowfoot's arcane vault is breached and an object of terrible power is stolen, he's propelled into a race against time to recover it. Only to do that, he needs answers, and finding them means travelling into nightmare: to the very heart of the Misery.
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Raine is a member of the Draoihn, a sect of powerful magic users who hold the realm together in precarious balance. But Raine has a secret. She can see the dead, and her forbidden magic could get her killed by the very people she counts as friends.
\nAs Raine works desperately to hide her gift, rebellious lords across the land threaten anarchy in the wake of the king’s failing health, and she is pulled into a web of treachery and deceit even the most powerful of magic users would struggle to navigate.
\nRaine might be the one person who could hold back the impending chaos. For the lords are backed by dark powers they do not understand. If certain doom is to be avoided, Raine will need to embrace her terrible magic and discover how powerful she could truly become.
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Having been saved from execution at the hands of the Draoihn - powerful magic users Raine used to count as allies - Raine finds herself in the Fault, a vast magical wasteland, which is falling apart before her eyes.
\nAlongside her two closest companions, they are searching for the only person Raine believes can help them get back home: the enigmatic and infuriatingly elusive Queen of Feathers.
\nBut what home are they trying to get back to? Ovitus LacNaithe, power-hungry traitor that he is, has taken control of the Draoihn and is unwittingly doing the bidding of a darker master. He is soon to take control of the Crown of Harranir and plunge the land into unending darkness.
\nThe fate of two worlds hangs in the balance. The stakes have never been higher. It’s going to take Raine’s dark, terrible powers, as well as the unbreakable bond of three friends, to ensure everyone lives to see the dawn.
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In “Machine City,” a college student’s role in a friend’s movie causes lines to blur between his character and his true self. In “Slide to Unlock,” a man comes to terms with his life, via the passwords he struggles to remember in a moment of extremis. And in “Weird Menace,” a director and faded movie star discuss science fiction, memory, and lost loves on a commentary track for a film from the ’80s that neither seems to remember all that well.
\nIn Ed Park’s utterly original collection, An Oral History of Atlantis, characters question the fleetingness of youth and art, reckon with the consequences of the everyday, and find solace in the absurd, the beautiful, and the sublime. Throughout, Park deploys his trademark wit to create a world both strikingly recognisable and delightfully other.
\nAll together, these sixteen stories have much to say about the meaning - and transitory nature - of our lives. And they are proof positive that Ed Park is one of the most insightful and imaginative writers working today.
A wild, sweeping novel that imagines an alternate secret history of Korea and the traces it leaves on the present - loaded with assassins and mad poets, RPGs and slasher films, K-pop bands and the perils of social media.
\nIn 1919, far-flung Korean patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile proves mostly symbolic, though, and after Japan’s defeat in World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the North-South split that remains today.
\nBut what if the KPG still existed now, today - working toward a unified Korea, secretly harnessing the might of a giant tech company to further its aims? That’s the outrageous premise of Same Bed Different Dreams, which weaves together three distinct narrative voices and an archive of mysterious images and twists reality like a kaleidoscope, spinning Korean history, American pop culture, and our tech-fraught lives into an extraordinary and unforgettable novel.
\nEarly on we meet Soon Sheen, who works at the sprawling international technology company GLOAT, and comes into possession of an unfinished book authored by the KPG. The manuscript is a mysterious, revisionist history, tying famous names and obscure bit players to the KPG’s grand project. This strange manuscript links together figures from architect-poet Yi Sang to Jack London to Marilyn Monroe. M*A*S*H is in here, too, and the Moonies, and a history of violence extending from the assassination of President McKinley to the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007.
\nJust as foreign countries have imposed their desires on Korea, so too has Park tucked different dreamers into this sprawling bed of a novel. Among them: Parker Jotter, Korean War vet and appliance-store owner, who saw something - a UFO? - while flying over North Korea; Nora You, nail salon magnate; and Monk Zingapan, game designer turned writing guru. Their links are revealed over time, even as the dreamers remain in the dark as to their own interconnectedness. A thrilling feat of imagination and a step forward from an award-winning author, Same Bed Different Dreams begins as a comic novel and gradually pulls readers into another dimension - one in which utopia is possible.
Lark Sutter has never feared the wilds of Saltmarsh Reach. Raised by her iron-willed grandmother and tempered by wild weather, loss, and hard survival, she’s become a hunter and fighter who protects her own. But when a raider attack leaves her friend on the brink of death, Lark is driven to the last place she ever thought she’d go: Verdancia’s gleaming capital, demanding aid from a queen she has no reason to trust.
\nQueen Azaleen Frost is no stranger to sacrifice. Crowned young, she rules Verdancia with a steady hand and a heart kept tightly guarded. Duty rises above all - until Lark storms into her hall, mud on her boots, fire in her eyes, and desperation in her voice - shaking Azaleen’s resolve in ways she cannot ignore.
\nAs Verdancia edges toward open conflict, fate binds Lark and Azaleen in an uneasy alliance. Threatened by war hawks, cultists, looming shortages, and scheming politicians, the two women must stand together if they hope to save their people and fortify the kingdom for what lies ahead.
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A locked room mystery in a near future world of politics and alien diplomacy.
\nLydia works as translator for the Logi cultural attaché to Earth. They work well together, even if the act of translating his thoughts into English makes her somewhat wobbly on her feet. She's not the agency's best translator, but what else is she going to do? She has no qualifications, and no discernible talent in any other field.
\nSo when tragedy strikes, and Lydia finds herself at the center of an intergalactic incident, her future employment prospects look dire - that is, if she can keep herself out of jail!
\nBut Lydia soon discovers that help can appear from the most unexpected source . . .
Arlo and Drienne are ‘mades’ - clones of company executives, deemed important enough to be saved should their health fail. Mades work around the clock to pay off the debt incurred by their creation, though most are Reaped - killed and harvested for organs when their corporate counterparts are in medical need.
\nBut when the impossible happens and the too-big-to-fail company that owns them collapses, Arlo and Drienne find themselves purchased by a scientist who has a job for them.
\nThe Debt paid off, freedom from servitude, and enough cash to last a lifetime.
\nThe Infiltrate a highly secure corporate reclamation facility in the heart of dead London and steal a data drive.
\nThey’re going to need a team.
Twenty years ago, Eddie's career as a journalist was destroyed by the Juliet Fox case.
\nJuliet was young and beautiful, born into the privileged world of the Manhattan elite. Pulled into their orbit by her investigation, Eddie discovered how far the rich and powerful are prepared to go when their way of life is threatened . . .
\nEddie has always known that the wrong man was made the scapegoat for Juliet's murder. So when a new luxury sky-rise is opened by Juliet's father, just metres from where her body was discovered two decades before, Eddie can't resist finding her way in, back into a world where dangerous people operate in the shadows, and anyone might kill to keep a secret safe.
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One hundred and twenty years after The Fall, and a hundred years after the grays swept in to pick the last dregs of humanity, John has found himself bonded to Martok Barden nee Black Hand, one of the \"good\" grays. Sure, Martok is broke, homeless, and borderline manic, but he’s always treated John like an actual person, and sometimes like a friend.
\nBut when Martok puts John’s bond up as collateral against a house in the woods that he hopes to turn into a wilderness retreat for wealthy grays, John learns that there are limits to Martok’s friendship. Soon he finds himself caught between an underworld boss, a girl raised by feral humans who has nothing but contempt for John, and Martok himself, whose delusions of grandeur seem to be finally catching up with him.
\nOh, and something in the woods has been killing people.
\nJohn has sixty days to buy back his life before Martok’s loan comes due, all while avoiding getting butchered by feral humans, killed by the thing in the woods or having his head crushed by an angry gray. Easy peasy, right?
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Summer has come to Niflheim. The lichens are growing, the six-winged bat-things are chirping, and much to his own surprise, Mickey Barnes is still alive - that last part thanks almost entirely to the fact that Commander Marshall believes that the colony’s creeper neighbors are holding an antimatter bomb, and that Mickey is the only one who’s keeping them from using it. Mickey’s just another colonist now. Instead of cleaning out the reactor core, he spends his time these days cleaning out the rabbit hutches. It’s not a bad life.
\nIt’s not going to last.
\nIt may be sunny now, but winter is coming. The antimatter that fuels the colony is running low, and Marshall wants his bomb back. If Mickey agrees to retrieve it, he’ll be giving up the only thing that’s kept his head off of the chopping block. If he refuses, he might doom the entire colony.
\nMeanwhile, the creepers have their own worries, and they’re not going to surrender the bomb without getting something in return. Once again, Mickey finds the fate of two species resting in his hands. If something goes wrong this time, though, he won’t be coming back.
The humans are fighting again. Go figure.
As a free A.I., Mal finds the war between the modded and augmented Federals and the puritanical Humanists about as interesting as a battle between rival anthills. He's not above scouting the battlefield for salvage, though, and when the Humanists abruptly cut off access to infospace he finds himself trapped in the body of a cyborg mercenary, and responsible for the safety of the modded girl she died protecting.
Mickey7 is an Expendable: a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim. Whenever there’s a mission that’s too dangerous - even suicidal - the crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal . . . and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it.
\nOn a fairly routine scouting mission, Mickey7 goes missing and is presumed dead. By the time he returns to the colony base, surprisingly helped back by native life, Mickey7’s fate has been sealed. There’s a new clone, Mickey8, reporting for Expendable duties. The idea of duplicate Expendables is universally loathed, and if caught, they will likely be thrown into the recycler for protein.
\nMickey7 must keep his double a secret from the rest of the colony. Meanwhile, life on Niflheim is getting worse. The atmosphere is unsuitable for humans, food is in short supply, and terraforming is going poorly. The native species are growing curious about their new neighbors, and that curiosity has Commander Marshall very afraid. Ultimately, the survival of both lifeforms will come down to Mickey7.
\nThat is, if he can just keep from dying for good.
Drew Bergen is an Engineer. He builds living things, one gene at a time. He's also kind of a doofus. Six years after the Stupid War - a bloody, inconclusive clash between the Engineered and the UnAltered - that's a dangerous combination. Hannah is Drew's greatest project, modified in utero to be just a bit more than human. She's also his daughter.
\nDrew's working on a new project now. He thinks his team is developing a spiffy new strain of corn, but Hannah's classmate and her mysterious companion disagree. They think he's cooking up the end of the world. When one of Drew's team members disappears, he begins to suspect that they might be right. Soon they're all in far over their heads, with corporate goons and government operatives hunting them, and millions of lives in the balance.
\nEnergetic and bitingly satirical, The End of Ordinary is a riveting near-future thriller that asks an important question: if we can't get along when our differences are barely skin...
Dalton Greaves is a hero. He’s one of humankind’s first representatives to Unity, a pan-species confederation working to bring all sentient life into a single benevolent brotherhood.
\nThat’s what they told him, anyway. The only actual members of Unity that he’s ever met are Boreau, a giant snail who seems more interested in plunder than spreading love and harmony, and Boreau’s human sidekick, Neera, who Dalton strongly suspects roped him into this gig so that she wouldn’t become the next one of Boreau’s crew to get eaten by locals while prospecting.
\nFunny thing, though - turns out there actually is a benevolent confederation out there, working for the good of all life. They call themselves the Assembly, and they really don’t like Unity. More to the point, they really, really don’t like Unity’s new human minions.
\nWhen an encounter between Boreau’s scout ship and an Assembly cruiser over a newly discovered world ends badly for both parties, Dalton finds himself marooned, caught between a stickman, one of the Assembly’s nightmarish shock troops, the planet’s natives, who aren’t winning any congeniality prizes themselves, and Neera, who might actually be the most dangerous of the three. To survive, he’ll need to navigate palace intrigue, alien morality, and a proposal that he literally cannot refuse, all while making sure Neera doesn’t come to the conclusion that he’s worth more to her dead than alive.
\nPart first contact story, part dark comedy, and part bizarre love triangle, The Fourth Consort asks an important how far would you go to survive? And more importantly, how many drinks would you need to go there?
Recently-turned-pro tennis player Austin Hardy has been out since high school and it's never been a big deal. That is, until he becomes the first openly gay man to compete in a Grand Slam. Suddenly, being gay is a huge deal, with headlines to prove it.
\nUnprepared for this new spotlight, Austin’s anxiety disorder hits a breaking point, and he trips and falls at practice. Right next to the very attractive, very talented, and probably straight Diego Cruz, ranked World #2.
\nThe two players start a friendship off the court. But between their flirty banter, mixed signals, and brewing rivalry, Austin is thrown further off his game by Diego.
\nWith the eyes of the world on Austin, the weight of history on his shoulders, and Diego across the net - he must decide if love means nothing or if love means everything as he battles for the trophy during an electric two weeks at the US Open.
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Sixteen-year-old trans boy Miles Jacobson has two New Year’s resolutions: 1) win back his ex-boyfriend (and star of the football team) Shane McIntyre, and 2) finally beat his slimy arch-nemesis at the Midwest’s biggest classical piano competition. But that’s not going to be so easy. For one thing, Shane broke up with Miles two weeks after Miles came out as trans, and now Shane’s stubbornly ignoring him, even when they literally bump into each other. Plus, Miles’ new, slightly terrifying piano teacher keeps telling him that he’s playing like he “doesn’t know who he is” - whatever that means.
\nThen Miles meets the new boy in town, Eric Mendez, a proudly queer cartoonist from Seattle who asks his pronouns, cares about art as much as he does - and makes his stomach flutter. Not what he needs to be focusing on right now. But after Eric and Miles pretend to date so they can score an invite to a couples-only Valentine’s party, the ruse turns real with a kiss, which is also definitely not in the plan. If only Miles could figure out why Eric likes him so much. After all, it's not like he’s cool or confident or comfortable in his own skin. He’s not even good enough at piano to get his fellow competitors to respect him, especially now, as Miles. Nothing’s ever been as easy for him as for other people - other boys. He’s only ever been almost enough.
\nSo why, when he’s with Eric, does it feel like the only person he’s ever really not been enough for . . . is himself?
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Harlowe could use a break. With his academic future over, just like his relationship with his long-term boyfriend Jackson, a suspiciously cheap summer rental on the Cape feels like just the escape he needs.
\nBut when he arrives at the picturesque seaside cottage, he’s alarmed to find his discouraging old professor in the living room. His father making coffee in the kitchen. And a handsome young repairman fixing things in the bedroom. Worst of all, Jackson is in the bathroom. None of them will leave. No one else can see them. And they won’t leave him alone.
\nThe house isn’t magic only for Harlowe, and as the summer grows hot and thick with tourists, old wounds and fresh secrets - both in and outside its walls - begin to transform him. It’s clear the house is trying to tell him something, and he’s sure it has to do with the mysterious repairman who suddenly seems to be everywhere he looks . . . But can Harlowe let go of the past long enough to listen?
\nEvoking all the windswept dunes and Fourth of July fireworks of a perfect Cape Cod day, The House of Now and Then asks who you would find, if all your unfinished business was just behind one door.
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A poignant and enchanting novel about a magical bookstore that transports a trans man through time and brings him face-to-face with his teenage self, offering him the chance of a lifetime to examine his life and identity to find a new beginning.
\nWhen Darby finds himself unemployed and in need of a fresh start, he moves back to the small Illinois town he left behind. But Oak Falls has changed almost as much as he has since he left.
\nOne thing is familiar: In Between Books, Darby’s refuge growing up and eventual high school job. When he walks into the bookstore now, Darby feels an eerie sense of déjà vu - everything is exactly the same. Even the newspapers are dated 2009. And behind the register is a teen who looks a lot like Darby did at sixteen . . . who just might give Darby the opportunity to change his own present for the better - if he can figure out how before his connection to the past vanishes forever.
\nThe In-Between Bookstore is a stunning novel of love, self-discovery, and the choices that come with both, for anyone who has ever wondered what their life might be like if they had the chance to go back and take a bigger, braver risk.
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Abby Akerman believes in the Universe. After all, her Midwest high school marching band is about to perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City - if that’s not proof that magical things can happen, what is? New York also happens to be the setting of her favorite romance novel, making it the perfect place for Abby to finally tell her best friend Kat that she’s in love with her (and, um, gay). She’s carefully annotated a copy of the book as a gift for Kat, and she’s counting on the Universe to provide an Epic Scene worthy of her own rom-com.
\nLeo Brewer, on the other hand, just wants to get through this trip without falling apart. He doesn’t believe the Universe is magical at all, mostly because he’s about to be outed to his very Southern extended family on national TV as the trans boy he really is. He’s not excited for the parade, and he’s even less excited for an entire day of sightseeing with his band.
\nBut the Universe has other ideas. When fate throws Abby and Leo together on the wrong subway train, they soon find themselves lost in the middle of Manhattan. Even worse, Leo accidentally causes Abby to lose her Epic Gift for Kat. So to salvage the day, they come up with a new mission: find a souvenir from every location mentioned in the book for Abby to give Kat instead.
\nBut as Leo and Abby traverse the city, from the streets of Chinatown to the halls of Grand Central Station and the top of the Empire State Building, their initial expectations for the trip - and of each other - begin to shift. Maybe, if they let it, this could be the day that changes everything, for both of them.
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Four months ago, Netheia Isinthi failed to take her father’s throne from her older sister. After refusing to publicly support the new empress, she is banished to Ieflaria’s capital city, Birsgen, where she anticipates a long and uneventful exile.
\nKlavida of Nalova is a student at the university established by Princess Esofi for the study of magic. She has come from the far north researching Talcia’s creatures - or so she claims. After a chance meeting brings the two together, Klavida wants nothing to do with the angry, ill-mannered princess. But when Netheia offers Klavida access to the royal library, Klavida decides she can tolerate her after all.
\nAs they spend time together, Klavida realizes that Netheia is intensely lonely and has never known genuine friendship. She becomes determined to show her that there is more to life than the pursuit of power and that a peaceful life of freedom can be more satisfying than ruling an empire.
\nBut Netheia’s patron goddess is not ready to accept that she has lost the Xytan Empire - and neither are Netheia’s most ardent supporters.
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Orsina of Melidrie is a paladin of the Order of the Sun, sworn to drive out corruption and chaos wherever she finds it. She has been ordered to leave her home and travel around Vesolda in search of a great evil she is supposedly destined to destroy. But after two years of fighting monsters and demons and evil gods, she does not seem to be any closer to her goal - or ever returning home.
\nAelia is the Goddess of Caprice, the personification of poor decision-making. The Order of the Sun has classified her as a chaos goddess, meaning that her worship has been outlawed. During a run-in with Orsina, she is trapped in a mortal body, rendering her unable to leave Inthya.
\nAelia is found by Orsina again, but this time Orsina does not recognise her in her new body. So Aelia pretends to be a mortal woman who is fleeing an abusive family. Aelia plans to use Orsina as protection as she hunts down the magical relic that will free her from her mortal body.
\nAs Aelia and Orsina grow closer to one another, Aelia wrestles with her own desire to tell Orsina the truth about who she is, and her fear that Orsina will turn on her if she does. But the decision might not be hers after all, because their actions have not gone unnoticed by Aelia’s siblings.
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Crown Princess Ioanna of Xytae has kept her truthsayer blessing a secret for twenty years. In any other nation, her powerful magic would be cause for celebration. But Xytae’s patron is the war goddess Reygmadra, and the future empress is expected to be a brutal warrior.
\nReserved and peaceful by nature, Ioanna knows the court sees her as a disappointment. She does her best to assuage their worries every day, working quietly beside her mother to keep the empire running while her father is away at war. But when news of the emperor’s untimely death reaches the capital, Ioanna finds herself ousted by her younger sister Netheia, who has the war magic Ioanna lacks.
\nPrincess Vitaliya of Vesolda has come to Xytae to avoid her father’s upcoming wedding, which she sees as an affront to her mother’s memory. Vitaliya has absolutely no interest in politics or power struggles and intends to spend her time attending parties and embarrassing her family. But when she saves Ioanna’s life during Netheia’s coup, the two are forced to flee the capital together.
\nDespite their circumstances, Vitaliya enjoys travelling with Ioanna and realizes that the future empress’s shy and secretive nature is the result of her unhappy childhood. Ioanna is equally unaccustomed to being in the company of one as earnest and straightforward as Vitaliya, for she has spent her life surrounded by ambitious and cutthroat nobles.
\nIoanna cannot allow her sister to continue their father’s legacy, and plots to rally supporters to her side so she can interrupt Netheia’s coronation. Vitaliya knows she ought to leave Xytae before the nation is ripped apart by civil war but finds she is unwilling to abandon Ioanna. But Ioanna’s enemies are always watching . . . and they’ve realised that Vitaliya is a weakness to be exploited.
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At the beginning of time, the gods came together to create Inthya, a world where magic is common and hatred never had the opportunity to take root.
\nBut the Inthyan gods are young and imperfect. With countless failures behind them and unspeakable horrors lurking outside the borders of creation, they must not allow this world to meet the same fate as the last - without alerting their mortal worshippers that anything is wrong.
\nNineteen short stories from the perspectives of the gods themselves, some humorous, some horrifying, and all united by a theme of protecting the mortals who love them unconditionally.
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Princess Esofi of Rhodia and Crown Prince Albion of Ieflaria have been betrothed since they were children but have never met. At age seventeen, Esofi’s journey to Ieflaria is not for the wedding she always expected but instead to offer condolences on the death of her would-be husband.
\nBut Ieflaria is desperately in need of help from Rhodia for their dragon problem, so Esofi is offered a new betrothal to Prince Albion’s younger sister, the new Crown Princess Adale. But Adale has no plans of taking the throne, leaving Esofi with more to battle than fire-breathing beasts.
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It has been sixteen months since Princess Esofi arrived in Ieflaria, and eight since her marriage to Crown Princess Adale. The princesses have a peaceful life together, preparing to become co-regents and raising their baby dragon, Carinth.
\nTheir peace is shattered when Esofi’s mother, Queen Gaelle of Rhodia, arrives in Birsgen. She has heard about Carinth and believes that she deserves custody of him due to her greater devotion to Talcia, Goddess of Magic.
\nAdale and Esofi have no intention of giving up their son, but Gaelle is impossible to reason with - and there’s no telling what lengths she’ll go to in order to get what she wants.
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Kess Turner is used to starting over. Her mom has dragged her all over the country her whole life, never spending longer than a few months in one place.
\nBut nothing is normal about their new home - a dusty psychic shop - or the fact that Kess’s mom was called when an accident left the psychic Madame Amalia in a coma. When Kess finds coded messages and cash hidden in the shop, she knows there’s a lot more to the story than her mom is telling her.
\nDesperate for answers, Kess decides to pose as a psychic in order to pump Madame Amalia’s clients for information - only to start experiencing strange visions of events that actually come true. The more she investigates, the more she suspects her mom and Madame Amalia were involved in a murder years ago.
\nWhen Kess’s visions escalate - and seem to predict her own death - it becomes clear that if she wants to save her future, she’ll first have to unravel the secrets of the past . . .
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All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science.
\nWhen a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they've saved.
\nInspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story - with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. This wild journey offers the hope that what matters most - love and work, community and knowledge - will survive.
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A young lawyer wakes up the morning after a work gala with no memory of how she got home the previous night and must figure out what, exactly, happened - and how much she's willing to put up with to make her way to the top of the corporate ladder.
\nJade has become everything she ever wanted to be.
\nSuccessful lawyer.
Dutiful daughter.
Beloved girlfriend.
Loyal friend.
Until Jade wakes up the morning after a work event, naked and alone, with no idea how she got home. Caught between her parents who can’t understand, her boyfriend who feels betrayed, and her job that expects silence, the world Jade has constructed starts to crumble.
\nJade thought she was everything she ever wanted to be. But now she feels like nothing at all.
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A sweeping story of three generations of women who cross continents and decades to find truth, forgiveness and compassion.
\nIncheon, 1985. A nameless baby is born in a minbak in South Korea and vanishes nine days later.
\nLondon, 2008. When tragedy strikes, Hana faces ruin. She is forced to move her family - her teenage daughter Ada and ailing mother Youngja - into a single room with her, converting the rest of their home into a minbak, in a painful echo of her past life.
\nIn the confined space of their shared room, there is nowhere to hide. As the past collides with the present, all three women are forced to face not only their family’s dark history, but that of an entire country.
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The Light Between Us is a Southeast Asian historical romance that defies time and space as an archivist explores Singapore’s tumultuous past through a supernatural connection.
\nAt work one night, photography archivist Charlie Sze-Toh receives a misdirected letter from Wang Tian Wei, a 1920s colonial era Chinese photographer. Through a mysterious digital folder and photographic plates, a conversation is sparked, leading to a romance that spans lifetimes.
\nIn his time, Tian Wei scours a turbulent Singapore for his missing friend, Aiko, leading him to the perfumed chambers of a Japanese brothel. Meanwhile, in the modern day, Charlie struggles against a family dynamic dominated by her stepmother, a manipulative matriarch who uses family secrets as bargaining chips. Communication starts to become difficult and Tian Wei’s letters are tinged by the increasing threat of Japanese Occupation. Will one last fate-defying letter from Charlie allow Tian Wei to keep their love alive?
\nInspired by her research into Singaporean historical archives, Elaine Chiew weaves Chinese mythology and early 20th century colonial Singapore into this speculative epic.
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Claire O’Connor’s life has been on hold since she broke up with Tom Morton and moved from cosmopolitan London back home to the rugged West of Ireland to care for her dying father. But snatches of her old life are sure to follow her, when Tom unexpectedly moves nearby for work. As Claire is thrown back into a love she thought she’d left behind, she questions if Tom has come for her or for himself.
\nLiving in her childhood home brings its own challenges. While Claire tries to maintain a normal life - obsessing over the internet, going to work and minding her own business - Tom’s return stirs up haunting family memories trapped within the walls of the old house that looms nearby.
\nLet Me Go Mad in My Own Way is a story of love and resilience, rich with history and drama, and the legacies of violence and redemption. As the secrets of the past are revealed, Claire must confront whether she can escape her history to make a future for herself - and whether finding yourself means facing yourself too.
With the godspower waning, the queen of Ashvi has had to find another way to bolster her fight against her imperialist oppressors. The solution: wrenching children of other cultures from their homes and conscripting them into service.
\nHammer was one of those children. Now, she’s a jaded soldier waging Ashvi’s perpetual war, thinking only of her own survival. But when she accidentally rescues Viridian, a child with rare and potentially devastating powers, her priorities shift.
\nThe girl appears to be the answer to the queen’s prayers - the perfect weapon to restore her kingdom’s ancient borders, even if the colonised cities they reconquer don’t want her version of liberation. Can Hammer protect Viridian from the system that broke her . . . before the girl’s power is unleashed on the world?
\nCry, Voidbringer is a gripping saga of how far one will go for freedom and control - and how easily it can all be taken away.
Ocean Yoon has never felt like much of a Korean, even if she is descended from a long line of haenyeo, Jeju Island's beloved female divers. She's also persona non grata at the Alliance, Korea's solar system-dominating space agency, since a mission went awry and she earned a reputation for being a little too quick with her gun.
\nWhen her best friend, Teo, second son of the Anand Tech empire, is framed for murdering his family, Ocean and her misfit crewmates are pushed to the forefront of a high-stakes ideological conflict. But dodging bullets and winning space chases may be the easiest part of what comes next.
\nA thrilling adventure across the solar that delivers hyperkinetic action sequences and irresistible will-they-won't-they romance alongside its nuanced exploration of colonialism and capitalism, Ocean's Godori ultimately asks: What do we owe our past? How do we navigate our present while honoring the complicated facets of our identity? What can our future hold?
Teo Anand, former ne’er-do-well second son of the Anand Tech empire and current solar fugitive, has just crash-landed on the Moon after escaping the latest attempt on his life. But if anyone can help exonerate him, it’s his best friend, bold Korean space pilot Ocean Yoon.
\nFalsely accused of murdering his family, Teo is running out of both time and options. But loyalties are uncertain in their group of steadfast comrades and tentative new allies, and it’s difficult to know who to trust in the tangled web that awaits them in Artemis, a city on the Moon rich in Korean history and haunted by ghosts from Teo’s and Ocean’s pasts. Further complicating matters are Haven - the pensive medic whose beliefs challenge Ocean’s - and the dashing Phoenix - a space raider who’s come blazing into Teo’s life in more ways than one.
\nAll the while Corvus, the real culprit behind the slaying of the Anands, is sowing a path of destruction that threatens to swallow the solar whole. The crew will wrestle with clashing ideals, flying bullets, and undeniable feelings, as they race toward a stunning final stand.
\nTeo’s Durumi brings Cho’s space opera duology to an exhilarating close, one that contends with questions of identity and acceptance; grief and redemption; and loyalty and sacrifice, as Teo, Ocean, and the people they love will decide once and for all how to forge their paths into the future.
Bixby Alexander Tam (nicknamed “Bat”) is about to start fourth grade - and unfortunately for him, everything is changing: There's a new teacher, a new classroom, new seats . . . and new rules. Mr. Grayson, Bat’s third grade teacher, had a lovable class rabbit named Babycakes who Bat could visit anytime he needed a break. But Mr. Peña does not have a class rabbit. In fact, Mr. Peña doesn't believe in class pets at all. And for Bat, that’s one change too many.
\nBat and his best friend, Israel, know they need to convince Mr. Peña to change his mind about class pets - and when a business of friendly ferrets arrives at Bat's mom's veterinary clinic, they think they've found the perfect pet to do so. But when they discover that their classmate Lucca also doesn't like the idea of an animal in the classroom, Bat starts to worry that things will never be the way they were again.
\nWhat happens when your perfect plan runs into an unexpected problem?
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Bixby Alexander Tam (nicknamed Bat) has been the caretaker for Thor, the best skunk kit in the world... but the last day of third grade is quickly approaching, and Thor is almost ready to be released into the wild.
The end of school also means that Bat has to say good-bye to his favorite teacher, and he worries about the summer care of Babycakes, their adorable class pet. Not only that, but his best friend is leaving for a long vacation in Canada.
Summer promises good things, too, like working with his mom at the vet clinic and hanging out with his sister, Janie. But Bat can’t help but feel that everything is coming to an end.
For Bixby Alexander Tam (nicknamed Bat), life is pretty great. He’s the caretaker of the best baby skunk in the world - even Janie, his older sister, is warming up to Thor.
When Janie gets a part in the school play and can’t watch Bat after school, it means some pretty big changes. Someone else has to take care of the skunk kit in the afternoons, Janie is having sleepovers with her new friends, and Bat wants everything to go back to normal.
He just has to make it to the night of Janie’s performance . . .
Frederieke Teitler and her older sister, Astra, live in a house, in a city, in a world divided. Their father ran out on them when Rieke was only six, leaving their mother a wreck and their grandfather as their only stable family. He’s done his best to provide for them and shield them from antisemitism, but now, seven years later, being a Jew has become increasingly dangerous, even in their beloved home of Czernowitz, long considered a safe haven for Jewish people. And when Astra falls in love and starts pulling away from her, Rieke wonders if there’s anything in her life she can count on - and, if so, if she has the power to hold on to it.
\nThen - war breaks out in Europe. First the Russians, then the Germans, invade Czernowitz. Almost overnight, Rieke and Astra’s world changes, and every day becomes a struggle: to keep their grandfather’s business, to keep their home, to keep their lives. Rieke has long known that she exists in a world defined by those who have power and those who do not, and as those powers close in around her, she must decide whether holding on to her life might mean letting go of everything that has ever mattered to her - and if that’s a choice she will even have the chance to make.
\nBased on the true experiences of her grandmother’s childhood in Holocaust-era Romania, award-winning author Elana K. Arnold weaves an unforgettable tale of love and loss in the darkest days of the twentieth century - and one young woman’s will to survive them.
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For Bixby Alexander Tam (nicknamed Bat), life tends to be full of surprises - some of them good, some not so good. Today, though, is a good-surprise day. Bat’s mom, a veterinarian, has brought home a baby skunk, which she needs to take care of until she can hand him over to a wild-animal shelter.
But the minute Bat meets the kit, he knows they belong together. And he’s got one month to show his mom that a baby skunk might just make a pretty terrific pet.
There are a few things you should know about Harriet Wermer:
\nWhich is why, when one of the guests at her grandmother’s bed-and-breakfast finds that their treasured pair of binoculars has gone missing, no one believes Harriet when she said she had nothing to do with it. But this is one time Harriet isn’t lying - and she knows that if she can find the binoculars and figure out who really took them, she can prove it.
\nWith her cat, Matzo Ball, her grandmother’s basset hound, Moneypenny, and Harriet’s new friend, Clarence, helping her out, Harriet knows she can crack the case. But when the culprit isn’t who Harriet expects, it’s up to her to decide how important the truth really is.
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There are some things you should know about Harriet Wermer:
\nIt's the truth. With her mom and new baby brother home from the hospital, it's almost time for Harriet to pack up and head home from Marble Island and all the friends she's made. But Harriet doesn't have time to think about that - not when she discovers that Moneypenny, her Nanu’s adorable basset hound, has been poisoned!
\nHarriet suspects the culprit is one of the guests staying at Nanu's bed-and-breakfast, and she and her best friend, Clarence, are once again on the case. But when someone else falls ill, Harriet’s going to have to sleuth harder, spy sneakier, and be willing to see that sometimes the truth is more complicated than it seems.
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It is the late summer of 2021, and a girl named Nora is on the Paris Metro.
\nNora, whose mother loved her, even though Nora was broken.
\nNora, who couldn’t help her mother when her mother needed her most.
\nNora, from whom the pandemic has taken nearly everything, save the object she clings to: a cylinder containing her mother’s ashes.
\nWith no family left, no friends to speak of, and no way to turn back time, Nora has come to France to keep a promise she never got to make: to spread the ashes in a place her mother never got to see. But instead, Nora finds herself on the run through a forest in the night, taking refuge in a dark holloway. And when she wakes, and tries to make her way back to something she recognises, she realizes that is impossible.
\nBecause it is no longer 2021.
\nQuestioning everything - including her own sanity - Nora sets out on a journey through a time and place completely foreign to her, and yet one that, much like the time and place she came from, is defined by death, loss, fear, and uncertainty. A journey in which she must find a way to honor her mother - and heal herself - in a world that feels irrevocably broken.
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There are a few things you should know about Harriet Wermer: She just finished third grade. She has a perfect cat named Matzo Ball. She doesn't always tell the truth. She is very happy to be spending summer vacation away from home and her mom and dad and all the wonderful things she had been planning all year.
\nOkay, maybe that last one isn't entirely the truth. Of course, there's nothing Harriet doesn't like about Marble Island, the small island off the coast of California where her nanu runs a cozy little bed and breakfast. And nobody doesn't love Moneypenny, Nanu's old basset hound. But Harriet doesn't like the fact that Dad made this decision without even asking her.
\nWhen Harriet arrives on Marble Island, however, she discovers that it's full of surprises, and even a mystery. One that seems to involve her Dad, back when he was a young boy living on Marble Island. One that Harriet is absolutely going to solve. And that's the truth.
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1796. Cora, an orphan newly arrived from Jamaica, has never felt cold like this. In the depths of winter, everyone in her community huddles together in their homes to keep warm. So when she sees a shadow slipping through the trees, Cora thinks her eyes are deceiving her. Until she creeps out into the moonlight and finds the tracks in the snow.
\nAgnes is in hiding. On the run from her former life, she has learned what it takes to survive alone in the wilderness. But she can afford no mistakes. When she first spies the young woman in the woods, she is afraid. Yet Cora is fearless, and their paths are destined to cross.
\nDeep amongst the cedars, Cora and Agnes find a fragile place of safety. But when Agnes’s past closes in, they are confronted with the dangerous price of freedom - and of love . . .
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The master of the Providence plantation in Barbados gathers his slaves and announces the king has decreed an end to slavery. As of the following day, the Emancipation Act of 1834 will come into effect. The cries of joy fall silent when he announces that they are no longer his slaves; they are now his apprentices. No one can leave. They must work for him for another six years. Freedom is just another name for the life they have always lived. So Rachel runs.
\nAway from Providence, she begins a desperate search to find her children - the five who survived birth and were sold. Are any of them still alive? Rachel has to know. The grueling, dangerous journey takes her from Barbados then, by river, deep into the forest of British Guiana and finally across the sea to Trinidad. She is driven on by the certainty that a mother cannot be truly free without knowing what has become of her children, even if the answer is more than she can bear.
\nThese are the stories of Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane and Mercy. But above all this is the story of Rachel and the extraordinary lengths to which a mother will go to find her children . . . and her freedom.
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Danaan Rias is a witch without a coven, forbidden from using her magic. When her magic begins to act out of control, she realises she can no longer stay hidden from the world.
\nAshly Mercer is a monster hunter. The youngest daughter of a proud family, she’s sacrificed most of her life to the whims of her parents. While fighting for a life on her own terms, she meets Rias and discovers possibilities she never considered.
\nAs fate brings these two women together, their bond is put to the test. Ashly must decide if her life as a hunter is more important than the woman she wants to spend her future with, as Rias learns what it is to truly live, in spite of her past.
\nTogether their paths lead back to the supernatural sanctuary of Terabend.
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Victoria Eurille has it pretty good. Also known as Lady Midnight, she's said to be the only metahuman who survived the Malice - the event two decades ago that wiped out all the other metahumans. Now, she stands relatively unchallenged as she unleashes a one-woman crusade against the people of Haven Falls, and she'll go through anyone who gets in her way.
\nLana Blake died, but she likes to say it didn't take. Woken by the enigmatic Arturis Corporation, she finds herself with powers beyond what she ever could have hoped for. She takes the moniker Stardust and sets out on her journey to become the hero Haven Falls needs - and to avenge her family's deaths at the hands of Lady Midnight.
\nWhen Stardust puts herself in the path of Lady Midnight, both women find themselves in uncharted waters, with only each other to keep them afloat. As secrets are revealed and answers come to light, will they come together to overcome their foes. Or will their animosity destroy them both?
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Heather McKenna has no idea how to be a werewolf. Her wolf might be free from its cursed cage but has shut the door between the two of them, leaving Heather still reeling from the emptiness. When Heather discovers her mother is in the hospital, she is certain that closure from the person who cursed her in the first place will settle her wolf’s grudge and is quick to pack a bag.
\nV Raines sees the problems with werewolf society all around them. Despite being a nonbinary outcast in their own pack, they still have the responsibilities of being the Alpha’s only child. When their father attempts to pair them off with a dominant male pack member, V is all but ready to abandon their pack.
\nWhen V is called to the hospital to take care of a possible rogue shifter, they aren’t ready for the consequences of finding their true mate in Heather. V’s all in as Heather worries she’s not wolf enough to stand between V’s intense pack and her true mate. Fate just made their lives a lot more difficult.
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Natalie Donovan jumps at a friend’s offer to stay in the family cabin for a month - she desperately needs the chance to get away from, and get over, her messy breakup. She doesn’t count on the owner of the local diner making her heart pound and her body desperate to be touched.
\nWren Carne is a lone wolf. As an Alpha shifter, she has no pack and maintains her territory without causing drama, just the way she likes it. When she checks on the girl staying in a local cabin, she’s not expecting her wolf to identify the human as her One True Mate.
\nAs fallout from their pasts encroaches upon the sleepy town of Terabend, Wren must decide if she wants a pack of her own, while Natalie worries that her secret - she’s transgender - might be too much for Wren.
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A woman flits between two realities centuries apart, as scenes from the violent conquest of Mexico bleed their way into her comfortable contemporary life. Two little girls visit the home of a sorcerer who tortures women named after the days of the week. Girls become dogs, a laborer hides human bones in bricks he'll use to build a new development, and an old woman appears at an acquaintance's door one night with a knife and a bone-chilling confession.
\nWith The Week of Colors, Elena Garro laid the groundwork for the literary movements that would shape the landscape of Latin American fiction and beyond. Here you'll find the early roots of magical realism, feminist horror, and anticolonial speculative fiction. In The Week of Colors, Garro highlights the violence in our history, our homes, and our hearts, in vivid color.
The troubles of two desperate families - one white, one Mexican American - converge in the ruthless underworld of an Arkansas chicken processing plant.
\nGabriela Menchaca and Edwin Saucedo are hardworking, undocumented employees at the Detmer Foods chicken plant in Springdale, Arkansas, just a stone’s throw from the trailer park where they’ve lived together for seven years. While dealing with personal tragedies of their own, the young couple endures the brutal, dehumanizing conditions at the plant in exchange for barebones pay.
\nWhen the plant manager, Luke Jackson, fires Edwin to set an example for the rest of the workers - and to show the higherups that he’s ready for a major promotion - Edwin is determined to get revenge on Luke and his wife, Mimi, a new mother who stays at home with her six-month-old son. Edwin’s impulsive action sets in motion a devastating chain of events that illuminates the deeply entrenched power dynamics between those who revel at the top and those who toil at the bottom.
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After his son is convicted of capital murder, Vietnam War veteran Jeremiah Fitzjurls takes over the care of his granddaughter, Joanna, raising her with as much warmth as can be found in an Ozark junkyard outfitted to be an armory. He teaches her how to shoot and fight, but there is not enough training in the world to protect her when the dreaded Ledfords, notorious meth dealers and fanatical white supremacists, come to collect on Joanna as payment for a long-overdue blood debt.
\nHeaded by rancorous patriarch Bunn and smooth-talking, erudite Evail, the Ledfords have never forgotten what the Fitzjurls family did to them, and they will not be satisfied until they have taken an eye for an eye. As they seek revenge, and as Jeremiah desperately searches for his granddaughter, their narratives collide in this immersive story about family and how far some will go to honor, defend - or in some cases, destroy it.
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Lenny Winter is fifteen years old when she moves with her parents to an aging houseboat off the rugged coast of Washington. She imagines a quiet life spent charting constellations and chasing her dream of becoming an astronomer. Instead, a sudden tragedy shatters her world and catapults her to Blanchard, a renowned boarding school for the Pacific Northwest's elite, where wealth and tradition rule.
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Blanchard is dazzling, insular - and haunted by its own legends. At its heart lurks the Pascalianum Club, a secret society known to shape the school's greatest and most notorious students, and whose influence stretches far beyond campus walls. Hungry to belong, Lenny is drawn into its orbit, even as she senses that the club feeds on the very vulnerabilities she is desperate to hide.
\nAs privilege collides with grief and loyalty warps into obsession, Lenny’s choices will lead to an unforgettable reckoning - and a murder investigation that will test every story she tells herself about guilt, power, hope, and who she is becoming.
\nSweeping, suspenseful, and deeply moving, Bright Work is both a gripping mystery and a profound coming-of-age story - asking what we risk, what we become, and who we hold dear, when the need to belong eclipses everything else.
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Their marriage is to save a warring kingdom. But in the process, it might destroy them both . . .
\nBorn with forbidden, nature-infused magic in an occupied land, anxious apothecary Meilyr survives by keeping his head down. Until he ends up engaged to invading prince Osian in order to save his brother’s life. Now, he is in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse to hide his true self.
\nWhen nobles in Osian's court are gruesomely murdered by the same magic that flows through his veins, Meilyr realises someone is seeking revenge for his homeland. As suspicion towards him grows, he and the prince work together to uncover the killer, or risk losing the crown - or their lives.
\nBetween court politics, unwieldy magic and a murderer on the loose, Meilyr must keep his wits about him. Especially as his feelings for Osian grow deeper with every passing day . . .
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Steph Harper is on the run. She has been all her life, ever since her mother drove five-year-old Steph and her younger sister through the night to Cherokee Nation, a place they had never been, but where she hoped they might finally belong. In response to the turmoil, Steph sets her sights as far away from Oklahoma as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing get in the way of pursuing the rigorous physical and academic training she knows she will need to be accepted by NASA, and ultimately, to go to the moon.
\nSpanning three decades and several continents, To the Moon and Back encompasses Steph’s turbulent journey, along with the multifaceted and intertwined lives of the three women closest to her sister Kayla, an artist who goes on to become an Indigenous social media influencer, and whose determination to appear good takes her life to unexpected places; Steph’s college girlfriend Della Owens, who strives to reclaim her identity as an adult after being removed from her Cherokee family through a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act; and Hannah, Steph and Kayla’s mother, who has held up her family’s tribal history as a beacon of inspiration to her children, all the while keeping her own past a secret.
\nIn Steph’s certainty that only her ambition can save her, she will stretch her bonds with each of these women to the point of breaking, at once betraying their love and generosity, and forcing them to reconsider their own deepest desires in her shadow. Told through an intricately woven tapestry of narrative, To the Moon and Back is an astounding and expansive novel of mothers and daughters, love and sacrifice, alienation and heartbreak, terror and wonder. At its core, it is the story of the extraordinary lengths to which one woman will go to find space for herself.
The scramble to create superhuman AI has put us on the path to extinction - but it’s not too late to change course, as two of the field’s earliest researchers explain in this clarion call for humanity.
\nIn 2023, hundreds of AI luminaries signed an open letter warning that artificial intelligence poses a serious risk of human extinction. Since then, the AI race has only intensified. Companies and countries are rushing to build machines that will be smarter than any person. And the world is devastatingly unprepared for what would come next.
\nFor decades, two signatories of that letter - Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares - have studied how smarter-than-human intelligences will think, behave, and pursue their objectives. Their research says that sufficiently smart AIs will develop goals of their own that put them in conflict with us - and that if it comes to conflict, an artificial superintelligence would crush us. The contest wouldn’t even be close.
\nHow could a machine superintelligence wipe out our entire species? Why would it want to? Would it want anything at all? In this urgent book, Yudkowsky and Soares walk through the theory and the evidence, present one possible extinction scenario, and explain what it would take for humanity to survive.
\nThe world is racing to build something truly new under the sun. And if anyone builds it, everyone dies.
Set between New York and Shanghai, Masquerade is a queer coming-of-age mystery about a lovelorn bartender and his complex friendship with a volatile artist.
\nNewly single Meadow Liu is house-sitting for his friend, artist Selma Shimizu, when he stumbles upon The Masquerade, a translated novel about a masked ball in 1930s Shanghai. The author’s name is the same as Meadow’s own in Chinese, Liu Tian - a coincidence that proves to be the first of many strange happenings. Over the course of a single summer, Meadow must contend with a possibly haunted apartment, a mirror that plays tricks, a stranger speaking in riddles at the bar where he works, as well as a startling revelation about a former lover.
\nAnd when Selma vanishes from her artist residency, Meadow is forced to question everything he knows as the boundaries between real and imagined begin to blur.Exploring social, cultural, and sexual identities in New York, Shanghai, and beyond, Mike Fu’s Masquerade is a skillfully layered, brilliantly interwoven debut novel of friendship, queer longing, and worlds on the brink, asking how we can find ourselves among ghosts of all kinds, and who we can trust when nothing - and no one - is as it seems.
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Kalyna’s family has the the ability to see the future. For generations, they traveled the four kingdoms of the Tetrarchia selling their services as soothsayers. Every child of their family is born with this Gift - everyone except Kalyna.
\nSo far, Kalyna has used informants and trickery to falsify prophecies for coin, scrounging together a living for her deteriorating father and cruel grandmother. But Kalyna’s reputation for prophecy precedes her, and poverty turns to danger when she is pressed into service by the spymaster to Rotfelsen.
\nKalyna is to use her “Gift” to uncover threats against Rotfelsen’s king, her family held hostage to ensure her good behavior. But politics are devious; the king’s enemies abound, and Kalyna’s skills for investigation and deception are tested to the limit. Worse, the conspiracy she uncovers points to a larger threat, not only to Rotfelsen but to the Tetrarchia itself.
\nKalyna is determined to protect her family and newfound friends, but as she is drawn deeper into palace intrigue, she can no longer tell if her manipulations are helping prevent the Tetrarchia’s destruction - or if her lies will bring about its prophesised downfall.
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Their secret love affair has lasted for decades -- but this could be the summer that changes everything.
When Mallory Blessing's son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he's not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It's the late spring of 2020 and Jake's wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election.
There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other?
Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother's bachelor party. Cooper's friend from college, Jake McCloud, attends, and Jake and Mallory form a bond that will persevere -- through marriage, children, and Ursula's stratospheric political rise -- until Mallory learns she's dying.
Based on the classic film Same Time Next Year (which Mallory and Jake watch every summer), 28 Summers explores the agony and romance of a one-weekend-per-year affair and the dramatic ways this relationship complicates and enriches their lives, and the lives of the people they love.
It’s move-in day at Tiffin Academy and amidst the happy chaos of friends reuniting, selfies uploading, and cars unloading, shocking news: America Today just ranked Tiffin the number two boarding school in the country. It’s a seventeen-spot jump - was there a typo? The dorms need to be renovated, their sports teams always come in last place, and let’s just say Tiffin students are known for being more social than academic. On the other hand, the campus is exquisite, class sizes are small, and the dining hall is run by an acclaimed New York chef. And they do have fun - lots of parties and school dances, and a piano man plays in the student lounge every Monday night.
\nBut just as the rarefied air of Tiffin is suffused with self-congratulation, the wheels begin to turn - and then they fall off the bus. One by one, scandalous blind items begin to appear on phones across Tiffin’s campus, thanks to a new app called ZipZap, and nobody is safe. From Davi Banerjee, international influencer and resident queen bee, to Simone Bergeron, the new and surprisingly young history teacher, to Charley Hicks, a transfer student who seems determined not to fit in, to Cordelia Spooner, Admissions Director with a somewhat idiosyncratic methodology - everyone has something to hide.
\nAs if high school wasn’t dramatic enough . . . As the year unfolds, bonds are forged and broken, secrets are shared and exposed, and the lives of Tiffin’s students and staff are changed forever.
Gorgeous Nantucket is an island where memories are made, friendships begun, passions ignited. Now, during one unforgettable summer, the exclusive Nantucket Beach Club and Hotel will shape the fates of the men and women who walk through its doors . . .
\nMack Petersen escaped the past and started over in a hotel that has become his life. This summer his secrets can't stay hidden. Love O'Donnell, a glamorous Aspen native, takes a job at the Beach Club to implement her life plan - to find a man to get her pregnant. Vance Robbins has his African-American pride and festering resentments.
\nThis season, a gun and a woman offer him a chance to get even with the man he hates most. Cecily Elliott, the owner's daughter, wild and beautiful at eighteen, is about to do something to break her parents' hearts. And Lacey Gardner, the Grande Dame of the Beach Club for 45 years, knows about desperate desire - and about the storm coming that will change everything.
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Adrienne Dealey has spent the past six years working for hotels in exotic resort towns. This summer she has decided to make Nantucket home. Left flat broke by her ex-boyfriend, she’s desperate to earn some fast money. When the desirable Thatcher Smith, owner of Nantucket's hottest restaurant, is the only one to offer her a job, she wonders if she can get by with no restaurant experience. Thatcher gives Adrienne a crash course in the business . . . and they share an instant attraction.
\nBut there’s a mystery about their situation: what is it about Fiona, the Blue Bistro's chef, that captures Thatcher's attention again and again? And why does such a successful restaurant seem to be in its final season before closing its doors for good? Despite her uncertainty, Adrienne must decide whether to open her heart for the first time, or move on, as she always does.
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From the outside, the close-knit circle of friends calling themselves 'the Castaways' share an idyllic lifestyle, blessed with money, children, beauty and love.
\nBut when Tess and Greg are killed in a tragic boating accident, orphaning their seven-year-old twins, it sends devastating shockwaves through the rest of the group.
\nAs the friends grieve, the truth behind their relationships gradually begins to emerge in a chain of staggering revelations. And for the first time they are forced to ask the hardest of questions.
\nCan you live without the person who made you whole?
\nAnd how do you mourn for a secret lover and a relationship nobody knew existed?
Hollis Shaw’s life seems picture-perfect. She’s the creator of the popular food blog Hungry with Hollis and is married to Matthew, a dreamy heart surgeon. But after she and Matthew get into a heated argument one snowy morning, he leaves for the airport and is killed in a car accident. The cracks in Hollis’s perfect life - her strained marriage and her complicated relationship with her daughter, Caroline - grow deeper.
\nSo when Hollis hears about something called a “Five-Star Weekend”—one woman organizes a trip for her best friend from each phase of her life: her teenage years, her twenties, her thirties, and midlife - she decides to host her own Five-Star Weekend on Nantucket. But the weekend doesn’t turn out to be a joyful Hallmark movie.
\nThe husband of Hollis’s childhood friend Tatum arranges for Hollis’s first love, Jack Finigan, to spend time with them, stirring up old feelings. Meanwhile, Tatum is forced to play nice with abrasive and elitist Dru-Ann, Hollis’s best friend from UNC Chapel Hill. Dru-Ann’s career as a prominent Chicago sports agent is on the line after her comments about a client’s mental health issues are misconstrued online. Brooke, Hollis’s friend from their thirties, has just discovered that her husband is having an inappropriate relationship with a woman at work. Again! And then there’s Gigi, a stranger to everyone (including Hollis) who reached out to Hollis through her blog. Gigi embodies an unusual grace and, as it happens, has many secrets.
On a perfect June day, Vivian Howe, author of thirteen beach novels and mother of three nearly grown children, is killed in a hit-and-run car accident while jogging near her home on Nantucket. She ascends to the Beyond where she's assigned to a Person named Martha, who allows Vivi to watch what happens below for one last summer. Vivi also is granted three “nudges” to change the outcome of events on earth, and with her daughter Willa on her third miscarriage, Carson partying until all hours, and Leo currently “off again” with his high-maintenance girlfriend, she’ll have to think carefully where to use them.
\nFrom the Beyond, Vivi watches “The Chief” Ed Kapenash investigate her death, but her greatest worry is her final book, which contains a secret from her own youth that could be disastrous for her reputation. But when hidden truths come to light, Vivi’s family will have to sort out their past and present mistakes - with or without a nudge of help from above - while Vivi finally lets them grow without her.
Nantucket is only two and a half hours away from Martha's Vineyard by ferry. But the two islands might as well be worlds apart for a set of identical twin sisters who have been at odds for years. Just because twins look exactly the same doesn't mean they're anything alike - and Tabitha and Harper Frost have spent their whole lives trying to prove this point.
\nWhen a family crisis forces them to band together - or at least appear to - the twins come to realise that the special bond that they share is more important than the resentments that have driven them apart.
It’s a hot August Saturday on Nantucket Island. Over the course of the next 24 hours, two lives will be transformed forever.
Marguerite Beale, former chef of culinary hot spot Les Parapluies, has been out of the public eye for over a decade. This all changes with a phone call from Marguerite’s goddaughter, Renata Knox. Marguerite has not seen Renata since the death of Renata’s mother, Candace Harris Knox, fourteen years earlier. And now that Renata is on Nantucket visiting the family of her new fiancé, she takes the opportunity, against her father’s wishes, to contact Marguerite in hopes of learning the story of her mother’s life - and death. But the events of the day spiral hopelessly out of control for both women, and nothing ends up as planned.
Welcome to The Love Season - a riveting story that takes place in one day and spans decades; a story that embraces the charming, pristine island of Nantucket, as well as Manhattan, Paris and Morocco. Elin Hilderbrand’s most ambitious novel to date chronicles the famous couplings of real lives: love and friendship, food and wine, deception and betrayal - and forgiveness and healing.
For 20 years, Kayla, Antoinette and Val have performed their own special summer ritual. Once a year, the old friends put aside their daily, separate lives to drink champagne, swap stories and swim naked under the Nantucket stars. But on one of those bonding nights, one of their trio swims out from the shore and doesn't return.
\nAfter the surviving friends emerge from their grief, they realise that the repercussions of their loss go far beyond their little circle, and they begin to uncover layers of secrets - and their connections to each other - that were never revealed on the beach. What has made their friendship strong now has the power to destroy - their marriages, families, even themselves.
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It's Nantucket wedding season, also known as summer-the sight of a bride racing down Main Street is as common as the sun setting at Madaket Beach. The Otis-Winbury wedding promises to be an event to remember: the groom's wealthy parents have spared no expense to host a lavish ceremony at their oceanfront estate.
\nBut it's going to be memorable for all the wrong reasons after tragedy strikes: a body is discovered in Nantucket Harbor just hours before the ceremony - and everyone in the wedding party is suddenly a suspect. As Chief of Police Ed Kapenash interviews the bride, the groom, the groom's famous mystery-novelist mother, and even a member of his own family, he discovers that every wedding is a minefield - and no couple is perfect.
Meredith Martin Delinn just lost everything: her friends, her homes, her social standing - because her husband Freddy cheated rich investors out of billions of dollars.
\nDesperate and facing homelessness, Meredith receives a call from her old best friend, Constance Flute. Connie's had recent worries of her own, and the two depart for a summer on Nantucket in an attempt to heal. But the island can't offer complete escape, and they're plagued by new and old troubles alike.
\nWhen Connie's brother Toby - Meredith's high school boyfriend - arrives, Meredith must reconcile the differences between the life she is leading and the life she could have had. Set against the backdrop of a Nantucket summer, Elin Hilderbrand delivers a suspenseful story of the power of friendship, the pull of love, and the beauty of forgiveness.
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Claire Danner Crispin, mother of four young children and nationally renowned glassblower, bites off more than she can chew when she agrees to co-chair a huge benefit concert on Nantucket. Claire is asked to chair the Nantucket Children Summer Gala, at least in part, because she is the former high school sweetheart of world famous rock star, Max West.
\nMax agrees to play the benefit and it looks like smooth sailing for Claire - until she agrees to create a “museum-quality” piece of glass for the auction, pre-emptorily offers her best friend the catering job, goes nose-to-nose with her Manhattan socialite co-chair, and begins a “good-hearted” affair with the charity's Executive Director, Lockhart Dixon.
\nHearts break and emotions stretch to the point of snapping in this in-depth look at one woman's attempt to deal with loves past and present, raise a family, run a business, and pull of a charity event unlike any the island of Nantucket has ever seen. Claire discovers that doing good and being bad are not mutually exclusive - and that nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
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It was the summer that would change their lives forever…
\nEvery summer the Newton family retreats to their beloved home on Nantucket for three months of sunshine, cookouts, and bonfires on the beach. But this summer will not be like any other. When Arch Newton, a prominent New York attorney, dies in a plane crash on his way home from a business trip, his beautiful widow, Beth, can barely keep things together. Above all, though, she decides that she must continue the family tradition of going to Nantucket, and at the same time fulfill a promise that Arch made before he died.
\nBeth invites Marcus, the son of Arch’s final and most challenging client, to spend the summer with her and her teenage twins, Winnie and Garrett, who have mixed reactions to sharing their special summer place with this stranger. Always a place of peace before, Nantucket becomes the scene of roiling emotions and turbulent passions as Marcus, Winnie, and Garrett learn about loss, first love, and betrayal. And when they stumble upon a shocking secret from Beth’s past, they must keep it from destroying the family they’ve been trying so hard to heal.
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A warm June evening, a local tradition: the students of Nantucket High have gathered for a bonfire on the beach. But what begins as a graduation night celebration ends in tragedy after a horrible car crash leaves the driver of the car, Penny Alistair, dead, and her twin brother in a coma. The other passengers, Penny's boyfriend Jake and her friend Demeter, are physically unhurt - but the emotional damage is overwhelming, and questions linger about what happened before Penny took the wheel.
\nAs summer unfolds, startling truths are revealed about the survivors and their parents - secrets kept, promises broken, hearts betrayed. Elin Hilderbrand explores the power of community, family, and honesty, and proves that even from the ashes of sorrow, new love can still take flight.
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After thirty-five years as the Chief of Police on Nantucket, Ed Kapenash's heart can no longer take the stress.
\nBut his plans to retire are thwarted when, with only three days left on the job, he receives a phone call. The Richardsons' 22-million-dollar summer home has been burned to the ground. The couple are far from hurt - they were out on the water at one of their lavish yacht parties. But their dependable personal assistant has vanished.
\nTo solve the case, the Chief will have to contend with small town gossip for one final act of service to the community he knows and loves.
After uprooting her life in the States, Irene Steele has just settled in at the villa on St. John where her husband Russ had been living a double life. But a visit from the FBI shakes her foundations, and Irene once again learns just how little she knew about the man she loved.
With help from their friends, Irene and her sons set up their lives while evidence mounts that the helicopter crash that killed Russ may not have been an accident. Meanwhile, the island watches this drama unfold - including the driver of a Jeep with tinted windows who seems to be shadowing the Steele family.
As a storm gathers strength in the Atlantic, surprises are in store for the Steeles: help from a mysterious source, and a new beginning in the paradise that has become their home. At last all will be revealed about the secrets and lies that brought Irene and her sons to St. John - and the truth that transformed them all.
A year ago, Irene Steele had the shock of her life: her loving husband, father to their grown sons and successful businessman, was killed in a plane crash. But that wasn't Irene's only shattering news: he'd also been leading a double life on the island of St. John, where another woman loved him, too.
Now Irene and her sons are back on St. John, determined to learn the truth about the mysterious life -and death - of a man they thought they knew. Along the way, they're about to learn some surprising truths about their own lives, and their futures.
Lush with the tropical details, romance, and drama that made Winter in Paradise a national bestseller, What Happens in Paradise is another immensely satisfying page-turner from one of American's most beloved and engaging storytellers.
Irene Steele’s idyllic life-house, husband, family-is shattered when she is woken up by a late-night phone call. Her beloved husband has been found dead, but before Irene can process this tragic news, she must confront the perplexing details of her husband’s death. He was found on St. John island, a tropical paradise far removed from their suburban life.
\nLeaving the cold winter behind, Irene flies down to the beautiful Caribbean beaches of St. John only to make another shocking discovery: her husband had a secret second family. As Irene investigates the mysterious circumstances of her husband’s death, she is plunged into a web of intrigue and deceit belied by the pristine white sand beaches of St. John’s.
Mothers make history. But what it has meant for mothers to do the physical and emotional work of mothering has, for centuries, been neglected in the stories of the past. Patriarchal control of motherhood has relegated the acts of growing, birthing, nurturing, and loving to the sidelines, and deemed it unimportant, women's work. Now, through the voices of women themselves, Elinor Cleghorn reclaims and retells the history of motherhood, showcasing the mothers, othermothers, midwives, activists, community leaders, and more who have shaped the course of history.
\nBeginning in the ancient world, we encounter a figurine made for a childbirth ritual over three thousand years ago. We meet extraordinary writers and poets, like Anne Bradstreet and Elizabeth Jocelin, who were expressing their innermost feelings about motherhood. During the seventeenth century, in the streets of London, we encounter unmarried mothers struggling against stigma and shame, and the women who strove to help them.
\nLater, pioneers like Mary Wollstonecraft laid the intellectual foundation for the liberation of motherhood from male control, and the abhorrent treatment of enslaved mothers was brought to public attention by courageous activists like Sojourner Truth. These and many other brave characters lobbied for mothers of all classes and circumstances to be valued, respected, and supported - not as reproductive vessels, but as people.
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Seventeen years have gone by since the Coordinated Endeavor crashed on a distant exoplanet. Ambrose Cusk and Kodiak Celius are now the devoted parents of two teenage children, Owl and Yarrow, in a hardscrabble frontier home. Though life on Minerva is full of danger, the family’s bond is enough to make it all worth it - until they learn that the biggest threat to their survival might come from within.
\nMore than thirty thousand years in the past, Ambrose wakes on Earth to find that his mission to save his sister was a ruse. His mother betrayed him, and the truth of her plan - to send twenty clones of him to continue human civilisation thousands of light-years away - sets Ambrose spiraling. When he discovers that another spacefarer is suffering his same fate, he will have to decide whether to risk crossing a world at war to reach him.
\nSeparated by time and space, a young family and two strangers learn that their lives are intimately intertwined. They race to uncover the unexpected connections that might save them all . . . and perhaps humanity as well.
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After the first settler on Titan trips her distress signal, neither remaining country on Earth can afford to scramble a rescue of its own, and so two sworn enemies are installed in the same spaceship. Ambrose wakes up on the Coordinated Endeavor, with no memory of a launch.
\nThere’s more that doesn’t add up: Evidence indicates strangers have been on board, the ship’s operating system is voiced by his mother, and his handsome, brooding shipmate has barricaded himself away. But nothing will stop Ambrose from making his mission succeed - not when he’s rescuing his own sister. In order to survive the ship’s secrets, Ambrose and Kodiak will need to work together and learn to trust one another . . . especially once they discover what they are truly up against. Love might be the only way to survive.
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Nineteen-year-old Little Lea lives in a rural town where life ends at the edge of the forest.
\nWhen a stranger loses his dog on the first day after the end of the world, Little Lea warns him not to follow it into the forest, that people who enter never come out. Over a shared joint, she tells him about the burning in her gut, winding a tale of loss, desire, and conspiracies.
\nLittle Lea sees the world through backcountry eyes that distrust the outsiders who come but who also get to leave. When she isn’t working at her mother’s grocery store, she cares for her empty-headed younger sister, Nora, who only cries when she’s in pain. Meanwhile, her friend Catalina does nothing but cry. Little Lea wants Javier to love her, and she doesn’t want Marco, who leaves weed and his best potatoes on her doorstep.
\nAs the town prepares for their end-of-the-world festival, she faces her intensifying desire to leave, that burning that unsettles her life - she wants to be useful somewhere else, even if it means being unloved, unwanted, unable to return. That’s all she knows.
\nIn a formally ambitious sustained monologue meant to distract the man as the forest does its work, Elisa Levi’s That’s All I Know explores the toll of caring for those who cannot care for themselves, the fear of the unknown that anchors people to unfulfilling lives, and the bravery it takes to stop deceiving oneself, to give in to longing.
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Agathe leaves New York and returns to her home in the French countryside, after fifteen years away.
\nShe and her sister Véra have not seen each other in all those years, and they carry the weight of their own complicated lives. But now their father has died, and they must confront their childhood home on the outskirts of a country estate ravaged by a nearby fire before it is knocked down. They have nine days to empty it. As the pair clean and sift through a lifetime’s worth of belongings, old memories, and resentments surface.
\nTender and tense, haunting and evocative, The Old Fire is Elisa Shua Dusapin’s most personal and moving novel yet. An exploration of time and memory, of family and belonging, it is also a graceful and profound look at the unsaid and the unanswered, the secrets that remain, and whether you can ever really go home again.
Cate Winter, at 34, is a wildly successful neuroscientist and entrepreneur who has invented a cure for Alzheimer's that will improve the lives of millions. On the verge of selling her biotech company for an obscene sum, she is also about to become very rich. But Cate has a secret that keeps her deeply uneasy about everything she is and she grew up at the Cleckley Institute, a treatment facility for the rehabilitation of psychopathic children. And, as far as she knows, she is the institute's only success. All of her peers have become thwarted, maladjusted or even criminal adults.
\nThen Cate discovers the existence of another ex-patient and outlier who might prove that her success isn't a fluke. He has not only stayed out of jail, but he's made a mark in business and science. Though his identity is confidential, she breaks the rules and drops everything to track him down. And when she finds him, living under an assumed name in Baja California, she is immediately obsessed. Like her, he is driven and brilliant, an innovator willing to do what it takes to perfect a new energy technology that will stop global warming.
\nHere, at last, is her mirror, her ultimate collaborator, the possible answer to the enigma of her nature. But in the wake of a mysterious death, Cate can't avoid suspecting him. If he is involved, do his ends justify his means? Ruthless herself, she's about to find out whether there are any moral lines she won't cross.
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Tildy Barrows, Head Curator of a beautiful archival library in San Francisco, is meticulously dedicated to the century’s worth of inventory housed in her beloved Beaux Art building. She loves the calm and order in the shelves of books and walls of art. But Tildy’s uneventful life takes an unexpected turn when she, first, learns the library is on the verge of bankruptcy and, second, discovers two exquisite never-before-seen dollhouses. After finding clues hidden within these remarkable miniatures, Tildy starts to believe that Belva Curtis LeFarge, the influential heiress who established the library a century ago, is conveying a significant final message.
\nWith a newfound sense of spontaneity, Tildy sets out to decipher the secret history of the dollhouses, aiming to salvage her cherished library in the process. Her journey to understand introduces her to a world of ambitious and gifted women in Belle Époque Paris, a group of scarred World War I veterans in the English countryside, and Walt Disney’s bustling Burbank studio in the 1950s. As Tildy unravels the mystery, she finds not only inspiring, overlooked history, but also a future for herself, filled with exciting possibilities - and an astonishing familial revelation.
\nSpanning the course of a century, The Library of Lost Dollhouses is a warm, bright, and captivating story of secrets and love that embraces the importance of illuminating overlooked women of the past.
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The Solaris Empire is one conquest away from uniting the continent, and the rare elemental magic sleeping in seventeen-year-old library apprentice Vhalla Yarl could shift the tides of war.
Vhalla has always been taught to fear the Tower of Sorcerers, a mysterious magic society, and has been happy in her quiet world of books. But after she unknowingly saves the life of one of the most powerful sorcerers of them all - the Crown Prince Aldrik - she finds herself enticed into his world. Now she must decide her future: Embrace her sorcery and leave the life she’s known, or eradicate her magic and remain as she’s always been. And with powerful forces lurking in the shadows, Vhalla’s indecision could cost her more than she ever imagined.
Ari lost everything she once loved when the Five Guilds’ resistance fell to the Dragon King. Now, she uses her unparalleled gift for clockwork machinery in tandem with notoriously unscrupulous morals to contribute to a thriving underground organ market. There isn’t a place on Loom that is secure from the engineer turned thief, and her magical talents are sold to the highest bidder as long as the job defies their Dragon oppressors.
\nCvareh would do anything to see his sister usurp the Dragon King and sit on the throne. His family’s house has endured the shame of being the lowest rung in the Dragons’ society for far too long. The Alchemist Guild, down on Loom, may just hold the key to putting his kin in power, if Cvareh can get to them before the Dragon King’s assassins.
\nWhen Ari stumbles upon a wounded Cvareh, she sees an opportunity to slaughter an enemy and make a profit off his corpse. But the Dragon sees an opportunity to navigate Loom with the best person to get him where he wants to go.
\nHe offers her the one thing Ari can’t refuse: A wish of her greatest desire, if she brings him to the Alchemists of Loom.
Clara Graysword has survived the underworld of Eclipse City through thievery, luck, and a whole lot of illegal magic. After a job gone awry, Clara is sentenced to a lifetime in prison for inking tarot cards-a rare power reserved for practitioners at the elite Arcana Academy.
\nJust when it seems her luck has run dry, the academy's enigmatic headmaster, Prince Kaelis, offers her an escape-for a price. Kaelis believes that Clara is the perfect tool to help him steal a tarot card from the king and use it to re-create an all-powerful card long lost to time.
\nIn order to conceal her identity and keep her close, Kaelis brings Clara to Arcana Academy, introducing her as the newest first-year student and his bride-to-be.
\nThrust into a world of arcane magic and royal intrigue, where one misstep will send her back to prison or worse, Clara finds that the prince she swore to hate may not be what he seems. But can she risk giving him power over the world-and her heart? Or will she take it for herself?
Jax Wendyll is the crown’s dog. As punishment for the unspeakable crimes that torment him to this day, his life has been conscripted to the Empire Solaris. However, in an Empire afflicted by peace, his duties are relegated to unquestioningly aiding the antics of the youngest prince, Baldair.
\nErion Le’Dan, a nobleman’s son, expects a quiet summer visit to the Imperial Palace, his only agenda to visit with his unlikely friends. But Jax’s discovery of the legendary pirate Adela Lagmir’s old workroom inspires a hunt for her long lost treasure.
\nThe pursuit of Adela’s truth takes the three men to the Imperial summer manor, built along the old pirate mainstays. When Adela’s trident is branded onto a murdered servant, Prince Baldair’s summer amusement of treasure-hunting becomes a hunt to find the killer.
\nBut, as mysteries compound, the ghosts of Jax’s past may not be the only things haunting them.
A tyrant has seized the throne, wielding stolen, legendary magic. He’s set on destroying everything Vhalla Yarl fought to protect. But she is no longer the quiet library apprentice she once was.
\nShe’s a sorcerer. A survivor. A hero. And a symbol of hope for a world on the brink.
\nWith Aldrik by her side, her friends supporting her, and the people rallying behind her, Vhalla will do what it takes to unite a shattered realm through fragile alliances, unrelenting determination, and the ultimate sacrifices. But even that might not be enough when her enemy knows her every weakness, even the most innermost workings of her mind.
\nAs fate tightens its grip, Vhalla will be tested like never before. Her choices will shape the future of the Empire and determine if love and peace can rise from the ashes of war.
\nShe is ready to meet the challenge, but victory will cost her more than she ever expected to give.
Cvareh returns home to his sky world of Nova with the genius crafter Arianna as his temperamental guest. The mercurial inventor possesses all the Xin family needs to turn the tides of a centuries-old power struggle, but the secrets she harbors must be earned with trust - hard to come by for Ari, especially when it comes to Dragons.
\nOn Nova, Ari finds herself closer to exacting vengeance against the traitor who killed everything - and everyone - she once loved. But before Ari can complete her campaign of revenge, the Crimson Court exposes her shadowed past and reveals something even more dangerous sparking between her and Cvareh.
\nWhile Nova is embroiled in blood sport and political games, the rebels on Loom prepare for an all-out assault on their Dragon oppressors. Florence unexpectedly finds herself at the forefront of change, as her unique blend of skills - and quick-shooting accuracy - makes her a force to be reckoned with. For the future of her world, she vows vengeance against the Dragons.
\nBefore the rebellion can rise, though, the Guilds must fall.
Vhalla Yarl has reached the warfront as the Empire’s greatest weapon. The Emperor holds her fate in an iron grip. The people hail her as a champion. And the Crown Prince Aldrik has promised her everything in secret . . . even as war and politics threaten to tear them apart.
\nBut with every battle, Vhalla begins to question the cause she’s been forced to serve. The Empire may not be the heroes they’ve made themselves out to be.
\nAnd nothing will test her strength more than the heartbreak of losing the one person she thought would never let her go.
\nAt the edge of the world, Vhalla must decide what kind of future she wants to fight for. What power she’s willing to take for her own. And, whether she’s able to walk away from everything she’s ever loved to claim it.
Lieutenant Craig Youngly has only ever wanted one thing in his life - to join the illustrious Golden Guard. In pursuit of his goals, he has found himself protege to Raylynn Westwind, notable Guard member and favorite of Prince Baldair. He has fought for two years in the sweltering North and now prepares to embark on a mission on behalf of the Guard that could secure his long-sought membership. It's the opportunity Craig has been waiting for, until Raylynn's attention turns toward another swordsman, Daniel Taffl.
\nDaniel has always been a man of modest aspirations. As a farmer's son from the East, he seeks a soldier's wage to support a future for the woman of his dreams when he returns from the front lines. It isn't until he's conscripted into Craig's mission that he learns his sword-craft has caught the eyes of the powers above him.
\nCraig sees his mission as an opportunity to impress the guard and exert his authority over Daniel. Daniel sees it merely as the chance to secure a more financially stable future. Their goals seem too simple to go awry. But, in the perilous jungles of the North, luck is something both men find to be in short supply.
Vhalla Yarl has been conscripted into the Empire’s military. She marches toward the warfront not just as a common soldier, but as the Emperor’s secret weapon. Victory hinges on her mastering a rare elemental magic she barely understands.
\nHaunted by what she’s done and what she may become, Vhalla struggles to harden her heart to survive what awaits her. But that’s impossible as she trains alongside the Crown Prince, Aldrik. Every stolen moment, every longing look, deepens the bond between them - both magical and the forbidden feelings neither dares name.
\nJust as Vhalla begins to find her place in this new world of magic, combat, and royalty, a violent attack shatters everything.
\nDriven into hiding and reeling from a devastating loss, Vhalla must decide what kind of sorcerer, and what kind of person, she’s willing to become. Because to protect those she loves, she may have to become the monster the Empire wants.
After a narrow escape from the brutal end of the Tournament of Five Kingdoms, Eira and her friends find themselves prisoners of the legendary Pirate Queen Adela. To most, death follows shortly after the pirate queen’s icy stare. But for Eira, those all too familiar eyes hold long-sought truths.
\nAs she and her friends dive deeper into the pirates’ world, their magic is pushed to the brink. Morals are tested. Old passions reignite, and fresh desires spark. But love can be the deadliest vulnerability.
\nAmidst high-seas action, close-call escapes, and unraveling the twisted political machinations that happen in the shadows of their world, a haunting question looms larger and larger:
\nHow much are they prepared to sacrifice for what they believe in?
Eira is now a champion of the Solaris Empire. She’s off to a land she’s only dreamed about. But a nightmare awaits her.
\nHer sworn enemy has escaped. His allies are powerful and deadly. And Eira finds herself tangled in the dangerous web of the undercity of Risen where the mysterious Court of Shadows and lethal Pillars battle for the fate of the kingdom.
\nBut vengeance has a price. When Eira is captured by her enemies, it’s not only her life, but the lives of her friends, and the man she loves most, at stake. The woman she was won’t be enough to turn the tides churning against her from long before she was born. She’ll have to become something more. She’ll have to love deeper and fight fiercer than ever before.
\nThe only way to kill a legendary champion, will be to become one herself.
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The Empire has declared war against its neighbor to the north, the country of Shaldan. Prince Baldair is summoned to lead, but the untested royal harbors secret reservations about his ability to inspire confidence in troops his senior in both age and experience. The memory of his first kills the summer prior still weigh heavy on his shoulders, and he flees to his friend Erion’s home near the Crossroads to wait for the army before marching north.
\nRaylynn Westind had never held a responsibility in her life. After losing her mother years ago, she wanders from town to town in search of a challenge, honoring the sacred song of the sword her mother taught her. She never backs down from a fight, not when her opponents are the deadly Knights of Jadar, mysteriously insistent upon her death. And certainly not when the opponent is the Empire’s young playboy prince.
\nBaldair has never met another person as gifted with the sword as he, and is insistent on seeing a golden bracer grace Raylynn’s forearm. But the woman lives a mercenary’s life, and Baldair quickly learns that her loyalty comes at a high price.
\nWhen he discovers the bounty on her head, the prince must choose between his responsibilities to his father’s Empire, and the woman who has captured his heart as a soldier, and as a man.
Ravaged by grief and driven to the brink, Eira and her crew are caught at the heart of a tempest:
\n… Five kingdoms on the verge of war
\n… An empire poised to crush them all
\n… A pirate queen terrorizing the seas
\n… And a madman, the architect of every shattered dream, broken heart, and spilled blood. He is on the verge of achieving is dream of ushering in a new era - one ruled by his iron fist and fueled by blind, unwavering loyalty. His only mistake? He made it personal for the one woman powerful enough to stop him.
\nEira is done playing by the rules. Done holding back her magic, her heart, and her fury. She’s ready to crush her enemies, their vision, and anyone who dares to stand in her way.
\nWith everything on the line, Eira will show the world they were right when they called her “dangerous” all those years ago. She’s going to claim victory for herself, or die trying.
A new rebellion rises from the still smoldering remnants of the five guilds of Loom to stand against Dragon tyranny. Meanwhile, on Nova, those same Dragons fight amongst themselves as age-old power struggles shift the political landscape in fateful and unexpected ways.
\nUnlikely leaders vie for the opportunity to shape a new world order from the perfect clockwork designs of one temperamental engineer.
Last night, Eira killed a man.
\nHowever justified her actions were, many now regard her as a cold-blooded murderer and a heretic who extinguished their hope. But there’s no time to explain herself. She barely has a chance to wash the blood off her hands before the Tournament of Five Kingdoms begins.
\nSequestered with the other champions for the duration of the tournament, Eira must now navigate the games, her competition, the enemies who hunt her head, and - somehow worse than all the rest - being stuck in close quarters with the man who broke her heart.
\nAll is fair in love and magical tournaments, and Eira is ready for the fight of her life.
Eighteen-year-old Waterrunner Eira Landan lives her life in the shadows — the shadow of her older brother, of her magic’s whispers, and of the person she accidentally killed. She’s the most unwanted apprentice in the Tower of Sorcerers until the day she decides to step out and compete for a spot in the Tournament of Five Kingdoms.
Pitted against the best sorcerers in the Empire, Eira fights to be one of four champions. Excelling in the trials has its rewards. She's invited to the royal court with the “Prince of the Tower,” discovers her rare talent for forbidden magic, and at midnight, Eira meets with a handsome elfin ambassador.
But, Eira soon learns, no reward is without risk. As she comes into the spotlight, so too do the skeletons of a past she hadn't even realized was haunting her.
Eira went into the trials ready for a fight. Ready to win. She wasn't ready for what it would cost her. No one expected the candidates might not make it out with their lives.
Vhalla Yarl has earned her freedom. After the war, after the heartbreak, she disappeared. But peace is fleeting when you have a rare elemental magic and are the Empire’s hero.
\nA dangerous faction hunts her as old enemies close in. The Emperor resents the strength she now wields. The Senate’s leader knows more about her power than he lets on. Shadowy forces plot to use her to unlock an ancient, forbidden magic. But nothing is more dangerous than the pull she still feels toward the Crown Prince.
\nBound by magic and a passion that refuses to fade, Vhalla and Aldrik can’t stay away from each other. In royal courts and secret corridors, they’re drawn together even as the world demands they stay apart. Their love is more dangerous and more forbidden than ever.
Welcome to Tiankawi - shining pearl of human civilisation and a safe haven for those fleeing civil unrest. Or at least, that’s how it first appears. But in the semi-flooded city, humans are, quite literally, peering down from skyscrapers and aerial walkways on the fathomfolk - sirens, seawitches, kelpies and kappas - who live in the polluted waters below.
\nFor half-siren Mira, promotion to captain of the border guard means an opportunity to reform. At last, she has the ear of the city council and a chance to lift the repressive laws that restrict fathomfolk at every turn. But if earning the trust and respect of her human colleagues wasn't hard enough, everything Mira has worked towards is put in jeopardy when a water dragon is exiled to the city.
\nNew arrival Nami is an aristocratic water dragon with an opinion on everything. Frustrated by the lack of progress from Mira's softly-softly approach in gaining equality, Nami throws her lot in with an anti-human extremist group, leaving Mira to find the headstrong youth before she makes everything worse.
\nAnd pulling strings behind everything is Cordelia, a second-generation sea-witch determined to do what she must to survive and see her family flourish, even if it means climbing over the bodies of her competitors. Her political game-playing and underground connections could disrupt everything Nami and Mira are fighting for.
\nWhen the extremists sabotage the annual boat race, violence erupts, as does the clampdown on fathomfolk rights. Even Nami realises her new friends are not what they seem. Both she and Mira must decide if the cost of change is worth it, or if Tiankawi should be left to drown.
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A tsunami and a dragon's wish have wrought changes upon the city of Tiankawi that have never been seen before. But shared experiences have not healed the rift between the city's fathomfolk and human citizens, and scars from years of oppression still remain.
\nMira, a half-siren and activist, fights politicians and her own people to rebuild her city, and to uncover a deadly conspiracy. And Nami, the dragon princess, undertakes a daring ocean voyage alongside friend and foe, in order to convince a mythical Titan not to destroy Tiankawi for its crimes . . .
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It's been nearly a decade since the horrifying murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson rocked Crow-on-Sea, and the events of that terrible night are now being published for the first time.
\nThat story is Penance, a dizzying feat of masterful storytelling, where Eliza Clark manoeuvres us through accounts from the inhabitants of this small seaside town. Placing us in the capable hands of journalist Alec Z. Carelli, Clark allows him to construct what he claims is the 'definitive account' of the murder - and what led up to it. Built on hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most notably, correspondence with the killers themselves, the result is a riveting snapshot of lives rocked by tragedy, and a town left in turmoil.
\nThe only question is: how much of it is true?
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A teenager longs for perfect skin. A scientist tends to fragile alien flora. A young man takes the night into his own hands. Each of these characters has a desperate desire. Can any of them be sated?
\nUnsettling, revelatory, and laced with her signature dark humour, Eliza Clark's debut short story collection plumbs the depths of that most basic human feeling: hunger.
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Hollywood had been a disaster. Elle Graft - Associate Professor of English and once-budding television screenwriter - could admit that much. Now back in Minnesota and back to her old life, Elle’s determined to get her relationship with Hunter back on track.
It all started with a broken classroom heater and a blue winter coat. How will it end?
Cold Case detective Cassidy Miller is no stranger to buried things—bodies, secrets, and memories she’d rather forget. Life with her fiancée, the brilliant but guarded defense attorney Julia Desjardin, is the closest thing she’s felt to peace. But as Julia begins the emotional process of fertility treatments, Cassidy finds herself caught between wanting a future and fearing she doesn’t deserve one.
\nWhen hidden graves are unearthed at a long-abandoned public housing site, Cassidy is pulled into a case fraught with redlining, corruption, and systemic injustice. As the investigation deepens, so does the scrutiny - from the media, from city officials, and from an ex-girlfriend who’s back in town and crossing every boundary.
\nCaught between a past she’s tried to forget and a future she’s unsure she can have, Cassidy must confront hard truths. Because not everything buried stays that way. And the future she wants won’t wait forever.
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Former Marine, Cassidy Miller knew what it took to be a good soldier and even a decent beat cop. She was starting to figure out how to be a girlfriend as her relationship with Julia Desjardin progressed, but what did she know about being a cold case detective?
\nBuried under paperwork in the basement of the Fourth Police Precinct, she was going to have to figure it out. An unidentified Jane Doe, an unusual poison, and a decade passing since the murder wasn't going to make it easy on her. Plus a call in the middle of the night reminds her that as much as she might want to move on from her time in the military, some things would always keep dragging her back.
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The past few years had been difficult for former Marine, Cassidy Miller. She’d left the military, joined the Minneapolis city police, only to voluntarily remove herself from active duty. In the tiny town of Embarrass, Minnesota, she met Julia Desjardin, the distant yet devastatingly beautiful city prosecutor, sparking a romance neither could have anticipated.
Now, back in Minneapolis, things are starting to look up for Cassidy: she and Julia have reconciled, and she’s hoping to be reinstated with the Minneapolis police soon. But life is never that simple. Cassidy can take off the uniform, but she can’t shake the soldier. Her flashbacks of Afghanistan are getting progressively worse, her new police partner resents her existence, and she’s not sure she’s truly forgiven Julia for what happened in Embarrass.
Can she enjoy this Happily Ever After or will memories of a not-so-distant past slowly tear her (and Julia) apart?
It’s been over a year since Cassidy Miller retired from the United States Marine Corps, but try telling that to her nightmares. She knew that coming back after eight years in a war zone wouldn’t be easy, but she’d underestimated the real difficulties of transitioning back to civilian life. War is hell, but the aftermath is endless.
Looking for a fresh start, she’s left her friends and career in Minneapolis to be a police officer in northern Minnesota. It’s in the tiny town of Embarrass where she learns more about Julia Desjardin. The city prosecutor is cool, professional, and untouchable. But she and Cassidy have history, and Cassidy isn’t going to let her easily forget that.
For all their surface differences, Cassidy and Julia have more in common than they first realised - both are reluctant to hand over their pasts to be judged and studied. But it might take someone just as damaged as the other to help each cope with the skeletons in their respective closets.
There are signs everywhere if you know what you’re looking for - signs that tell you you’re doing something wrong. Go back. Detour. Choose again. Do not collect two hundred dollars when you pass Go. But I hadn’t paid attention to the warnings, too blinded by ambition and the desire to experience something new. Simply put: I was making a terrible, horrible mistake.
Elle and Hunter have endured the disapproval of friends, family, and colleagues, but can their relationship survive the distance of nearly two thousand miles?
It all started with a navy blue dress . . .
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In her junior year of college, Hunter Dyson has some big decisions to make about her future. She wants to be a nurse, that much she knows, but everyone from her parents to her academic advisor is nagging her about what kind of nursing she wants to pursue. But before she can worry about those details, she's got to survive Professor Graft's writing seminar. And her legs.
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Winter Jacket prequel.
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There was something about Hunter Dyson that drew Elle to her. Maybe it was her unwavering eye contact. Maybe it was because she never took off her winter jacket in class. Or maybe it was the taboo of a student-professor relationship.
They'd overcome obstacles to be together, and now with job security and a healthy, happy relationship, life was supposed to get easier - she was supposed to have her happy ending. But for Elle, the complications are only just beginning.
Most stories have a beginning, middle, and end. But when you work in the Cold Case division, you come to the realisation that not every story has a tidy conclusion and not every story starts at the beginning.
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One little question. Cold Case Detective Cassidy Miller is beginning to feel more comfortable in her new career path. She has a close-knit group of friends and a drop-dead gorgeous girlfriend. Living together has been easier than either of them could have ever expected. But will one little question ruin everything she and Julia have built?
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One little secret. A young woman is found in an abandoned car with a bullet in her gut. Cassidy and the rest of the Cold Case division must team up with Homicide to bring the girl’s killer to justice. But nothing is ever that easy.
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In 1984, Danika Laroque, a young indigenous woman, was reported missing. The investigation went cold not long after. Decades later, a True Crime podcaster starts poking around, bringing the missing persons case to the attention of Cassidy Miller. But how do you resolve a case with no crime scene, no evidence, and no body?
\nBack in the Twin Cities after Julia’s father’s funeral, Cassidy is hoping for some good luck romantically, or at least a break. It’s starting to feel like her relationship with Julia has been defined by overcoming one obstacle after the next. Between rehoming Julia’s mom, a new job at a high-profile criminal defense firm, and baby fever, Cassidy worries there might not be room for her in Julia’s life. But more importantly, with Julia being pulled in so many directions, is whatever’s left over enough to make Cassidy happy?
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It all started with a broken classroom heater . . .
\nGraduate school prepares you for many things – the rigor of academic life, how to pull consecutive all-nighters, and living off a meager stipend without having to be roommates with cockroaches.
\nElle Graft might have made it through six years of graduate school, but she's not convinced she'll survive her first position as an Assistant Professor.
\nBecause for all she learned, graduate school never prepared her for dealing with a student crush.
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The challenge was supposed to be simple. Spill a drink on an airline passenger and be one square closer to winning the company’s secret bingo card game. Twenty-five different challenges, at various levels of difficulty, had to be accomplished within a month’s time.
\nAfter nearly eight years of being a flight attendant, Alice Kaminski had spilled drinks on plenty of passengers, mostly on accident and during rough air. She didn’t particularly like the idea of the bingo card, but she had massive student debt; the financial incentives were enough to make her momentarily forget the questionable ethics of it all.
\nThe challenge was supposed to be simple - that is, until Alice saw her intended target - the beautiful woman seated in 3B. And after that, nothing was simple ever again.
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Camino Rios lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land, Camino arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people...
In New York City, Yahaira Rios is called to the principal's office, where her mother is waiting to tell her that her father, her hero, has died in a plane crash.
Separated by distance-and Papi's secrets-the two girls are forced to face a new reality in which their father is dead and their lives are forever altered. And then, when it seems like they've lost everything of their father, they learn of each other.
Papi's death uncovers all the painful truths he kept hidden, and the love he divided across an ocean. And now, Yahaira and Camino are both left to grapple with what this new sister means to them, and what it will now take to keep their dreams alive.
In a dual narrative novel in verse that brims with both grief and love, award-winning and bestselling author Elizabeth Acevedo writes about the devastation of loss, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the bittersweet bonds that shape our lives.
Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake - a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she's led - her sisters are surprised. Has Flor forseen her own death, or someone else's? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.
\nBut Flor isn't the only person with secrets. Matilde has tried for decades to cover the extent of her husband's infidelity, but she must now confront the true state of her marriage. Pastora is typically the most reserved sister, but Flor's wake motivates this driven woman to solve her sibling's problems. Camila is the youngest sibling, and often the forgotten one, but she's decided she no longer wants to be taken for granted.
\nAnd the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own: Yadi is reuniting with her first love, who was imprisoned when they were both still kids; Ona is married for years and attempting to conceive. Ona must decide whether it's worth it to keep trying - to have a child, and the anthropology research that's begun to feel lackluster.
\nSpanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo's inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces - one family's journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.
A young girl in Harlem discovers slam poetry as a way to understand her mother’s religion and her own relationship to the world. Debut novel of renowned slam poet Elizabeth Acevedo.
Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.
But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers - especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself.
So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out, much less speak her words out loud. But still, she can’t stop thinking about performing her poems.
Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.
Ever since she got pregnant freshman year, Emoni Santiago's life has been about making the tough decisions - doing what has to be done for her daughter and her abuela. The one place she can let all that go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness.
\nEven though she dreams of working as a chef after she graduates, Emoni knows that it's not worth her time to pursue the impossible. Yet despite the rules she thinks she has to play by, once Emoni starts cooking, her only choice is to let her talent break free.
After a cataclysmic flood submerges half the world underwater, cannibalistic gangs and corrupt encampments become a constant threat to the remaining dry lands. Liv and her precocious three-year-old son Milo are some of the lucky ones who have survived.
\nWith the company of a lonely horse seeking a loving home, Liv is determined to protect Milo from the encampments, even if it means destroying what little is left of civilization. Amidst it all, she learns to embrace love and her own worth. Dry Lands is a gripping journey showcasing the resilience of humanity, parenthood, and the sacrifices we make for our children.
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Piper “Pip” Screed remembers nothing about her mother’s mysterious death or the strange episode that left her in a deep, unexplained sleep. All she knows is that her father uprooted them to a secluded mountain cabin, severed all ties to the outside world, and refuses to answer her questions.
\nFifteen years later, Pip escapes isolation and discovers The Reverie Cloud - a revolutionary sleep-therapy program that merges the subconscious with virtual reality. Here, users can experience their desires, confront fears, and rewrite their pasts in a dreamscape indistinguishable from reality. But when The Reverie Cloud falls into the hands of those who see her subconscious as a prize, Pip becomes ensnared within its unstable architecture. Now locked inside the program, she must navigate its mercurial layers, face the horrors buried within her subconscious, and unravel the truth about her past before time runs out. Worse, she’s not the only one at risk - her father’s life hangs in the balance, too.
\nBut the deeper Pip ventures, the more dangerous the game becomes. If she pushes too far, she may never escape. Yet only by confronting the truth can she hope to uncover what really happened to her mother - before the program consumes her entirely.
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A routine salvage mission uncovers evidence of a terrible crime and relics of powerful ancient technology. Haimey and her small crew run afoul of pirates at the outer limits of the Milky Way, and find themselves on the run and in possession of universe-changing information.
When authorities prove corrupt, Haimey realises that she is the only one who can protect her galaxy-spanning civilisation from the implications of this ancient technology - and the revolutionaries who want to use it for terror and war. Her quest will take her careening from the event horizon of the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s core to the infinite, empty spaces at its edge.
To save everything that matters, she will need to uncover the secrets of ancient intelligences lost to time - and her own lost secrets, which she will wish had remained hidden from her forever.
Information doesn’t want to be free. Information wants to vanish without a trace. Sunya Song’s job is to stop that from happening.
\nShe’s an archinformist: a specialist historian whose job usually involves sitting at a console at her university job near the Galactic Core, sorting ancient documents and restoring corrupted files.
\nBut now, the research opportunity of a lifetime has sent her - along with her teenage children and alien wife - halfway across the galaxy to preserve the data and aid in the retrieval of the archaeological find of the century: an ancient alien artificial intelligence called Baomind. As vast as a stellar system, the Baomind orbits a dying red giant, and the star’s time has nearly ended.
\nThe isolated research station and its small fleet of ships come under attack by fanatic Freeport pirates who believe that artificial intelligence is an abomination that must be destroyed, putting the lives of Sunya and her family at risk.
\nTens of thousands of lightyears from home, isolated from all help, Sunya is the only one who can save them all.<
Meet Doctor Jens.
She hasn’t had a decent cup of coffee in fifteen years. Her workday begins when she jumps out of perfectly good space ships and continues with developing treatments for sick alien species she’s never seen before. She loves her life. Even without the coffee.
But Dr. Jens is about to discover an astonishing mystery: two ships, one ancient and one new, locked in a deadly embrace. The crew is suffering from an unknown ailment and the shipmind is trapped in an inadequate body, much of her memory pared away.
Unfortunately, Dr. Jens can’t resist a mystery and she begins doing some digging. She has no idea that she’s about to discover horrifying and life-changing truths.
The Lotus Kingdoms are at war, with four claimants to the sorcerous throne of the Alchemical Emperor, fielding three armies between them. Alliances are made, and broken, many times over - but in the end, only one can sit on the throne. And that one must have not only the power, but the rightful claim.
\nThe Rajni Mrithuri stands as the chief claimant to the Alchemical throne now, but she and her empire remain a prize to be taken unless she gets an heir. She has her allies - her cousin Sayeh, a dragon, a foreign wizard, a fearsome automaton, and the Dead Man - but the throne has the final say. And if it rejects her, the price is death.
The Gage and the Dead Man brought a message from the greatest wizard of Messaline to the ruling queen of Sarathai, one of the Lotus Kingdoms. But the message was a riddle, and the Lotus Kingdoms are at war.
From the eastern end of the Celadon Highway to the western, chaos reigns. The great Khaganate is shattered, and with it the peace. High in his desert fastness, the sorcerer Mukhtar ai-Idoj, al-Sepehr of the Nameless sect of the Rahazeen, plots to bring all the world under the rule of his Scholar-God. He is very close to success; his enemies war with one another, and none sees the true author of their downfall.
Re Temur and the wizard Samarkar have reached the great city of Asitaneh and the house of Temur’s powerful grandfather. With their companions, they intend to mount an assault on the fortress of the Rahazeen to rescue Temur’s beloved, Edene. If they succeed, it will be a mighty feat, a hero’s deed. But Temur has sworn a magical oath, and he has a wizard of the Tsarepheth at his side.
Far to the east of Asitaneh, the attack on the Rasan empire has taken the form of a plague. The imperial city of Tsarepheth struggles against the contagion, a terrible disease that kills all who contract it. The wizard-healers do all they can to discover the course and cure the disease, but with little success. Someone with power in the city has invited the plague demons in, and if the Emperor Songtsan falls to the disease, so too might the Rasan Empire - he has no heir who is of age.
But al-Sepehr has made one error. He has allowed the escape of his hostage, Edene.
Re Temur, exiled heir to his grandfather’s Khaganate, has finally raised his banner and declared himself at war with his usurping uncle. With his companions - the Wizard Samarkar, the Cho-tse Hrahima, and the silent monk Brother Hsiung - he must make his way to Dragon Lake to gather his army of followers.
Temur has many enemies, and they are not idle. The sorcerer who leads the Nameless Assassins, whose malice has shattered the peace of all the empires of the Celedon Highway, has struck at Temur’s uncle already. To the south, in the Rasan empire, a magical plague rages. To the east, the great city of Asmaracanda has burned, and the Uthman Caliph is deposed. And in the hidden ancient empire of Erem, Temur’s son has been born and a new moon has risen in the Eternal Sky.
The Gage is a brass automaton created by a wizard of Messaline around the core of a human being. His wizard is long dead, and he works as a mercenary. He is carrying a message from a the most powerful sorcerer of Messaline to the Rajni of the Lotus Kingdom. With him is The Dead Man, a bitter survivor of the body guard of the deposed Uthman Caliphate, protecting the message and the Gage. They are friends, of a peculiar sort.
They are walking into a dynastic war between the rulers of the shattered bits of a once great Empire.
When a group of friends in Mason, Missouri, decide to start a monthly supper club, they get more than they bargained for. The plan for congenial evenings - talking, laughing, and sharing recipes, homemade food, and wine - abruptly changes course one night when one of the women reveals something startlingly intimate. The supper club then becomes Confession Club, and the women gather weekly to share not only dinners but embarrassing misdeeds, deep insecurities, and long-held regrets.
\nThey invite Iris Winters and Maddy Harris to join, and their timing couldn't be better. Iris is conflicted about her feelings for a charming but troubled man, and Maddy has come back home from New York to escape a problem too big to handle alone. The club offers exactly the kind of support they need to help them make some difficult decisions.
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Exhilarating short stories of women breaking free from convention.
\nEvery now and then, right in the middle of an ordinary day, a woman rebels, kicks up her heels, and commits a small act of liberation.
\nWhat would you do, if you were going to break out and away? Go AWOL from Weight Watchers and spend an entire day eating every single thing you want–and then some? Start a dating service for people over fifty to reclaim the razzle-dazzle in your life–or your marriage? Seek comfort in the face of aging, look for love in the midst of loss, find friendship in the most surprising of places?
\nImagine that the people in these wonderful stories - who do all of these things and more - are asking you: What would you do, if nobody was looking?
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The time is 1943; the place is Chicago, Illinois. Three Irish-Catholic sisters, the Heaney girls, spend part of every evening sitting at the kitchen table in their pincurls, writing to their boyfriends and to other men fighting in World War 2.
\nObserving the daily life of these girls as well as their parents and three brothers, we get a glimpse of what life was like on the homefront; in the letters the women receive from the men, we get an idea of it was like “over there.”
\nThis novel is an evocation of a time gone by, a purposefully nostalgic and sentimental - and fun! - look at the forties: the clothes, the music, the language, the meals, the sentiments. It is a dramatic example of how a certain period in time can shape a person. Most of all, it demonstrates how much we are willing to give in the name of love.
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On the hot Texas army base she calls home, Katie spends the lazy days of her summer waiting: waiting to grow up; waiting for Dickie Mack to fall in love with her; waiting for her breasts to blossom; waiting for the beatings to stop. Since their mother died, Katie and her older sister, Diane, have struggled to understand their increasingly distant, often violent father. While Diane escapes into the arms of her boyfriend, Katie hides in her room or escapes to her best friend’s house - until Katie’s admiration for her strong-willed sister leads her on an adventure that transforms her life.
\nWritten with an unerring ability to capture the sadness of growth, the pain of change, the nearly visible vibrations that connect people, this beautiful novel by the bestselling author of Open House reminds us how wonderful - and wounding - a deeper understanding of life can be.
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This beautiful new novel by the beloved author of Open House and Talk Before Sleep tells the story of two young people growing up in Mason, Missouri, and how Arthur Moses, a shy young man, becomes the wise and compassionate person readers loved in The Story of Arthur Truluv.
\nNola McCollum is the most desirable girl in Arthur's class, and he is thrilled when they become friends. But Arthur wants far more than friendship. Unfortunately, Nola has a crush on the wrong Moses - Arthur's older brother, Frank, who is busy pursuing his own love interest and avoiding the boys' father, a war veteran with a drinking problem and a penchant for starting fights.
\nWhen a sudden tragedy rocks the family's world, Arthur struggles to come to terms with his grief. In the end, it is nature that helps him to understand how to go on, beyond loss, and create a life of forgiveness and empathy. But what can he do about Nola, who seems confused about what she wants in life, and only half aware of the one who loves her most?
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In this wonderful novel about love and trust, hope and belief, Elizabeth Berg, the bestselling author of We Are All Welcome Here and The Year of Pleasures , transports us to Nazareth in biblical times to reimagine the events of the classic Christmas story.
\nWe see Mary - young, strong, and inquisitive - as she first meets Joseph, a serious-minded young carpenter who is steadfastly devoted to the religious traditions of their people. The two become betrothed, but are soon faced with an unexpected pregnancy. Aided by a great and abiding love, they endure challenges to their relationship as well as threats to their lives as they come to terms with the mysterious circumstances surrounding the birth of their child, Jesus. For Mary, the pregnancy is a divine miracle and a privilege. For Joseph, it is an ongoing test not only of his courage but of his faith - in his wife as well as in his God.
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Elizabeth Berg tells the story of the recently widowed Helen Ames and of her twenty-seven-year-old daughter Tessa.
\nHelen is shocked to discover that her mild-mannered and loyal husband had been leading a double life. The Ames's had saved money for a happy retirement, planned in minute detail, but that money has disappeared in several big withdrawals - spent by Helen's husband before he died.
\nWhat could he possibly have been doing?
\nAnd what is Helen to do now?
\nWhy does Helen's daughter object to her mother's applying for a job - and why doesn't Tessa meet a nice man and get married?
What Helen's husband did with all their money turns out to be provocative, revelatory - and leads Helen and her daughter to embark on new adventures, and change.
In this exquisite new novel by bestselling writer Elizabeth Berg, a young woman falls in love - and learns how sorrow can lead to an understanding of joy.
\nKatie, the narrator, has relocated to Missouri with her distant, occasionally abusive father, and she feels very much alone: her much-loved mother is dead; her new school is unaccepting of her; and her only friends fall far short of being ideal companions. When she accidentally falls through the ice while skating, she meets Jimmy. He is handsome, far older than she, and married, but she is entranced. As their relationship unfolds, so too does Katie's awareness of the pain and intensity first love can bring.
\nBeautifully written in Berg's irresistible voice, Joy School portrays the soaring happiness of real love, the deep despair one can feel when it goes unrequited, and the stubbornness of hope that will not let us let go. Here also is recognition that love can come in many forms and offer many different things. Joy School illuminates, too, how the things that hurt the most can sometimes teach us the lessons that really matter.
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Florence “Flo” Greene is nearing the end of her life, and she decides to leave her house and an account of her life for Ruthie, the younger woman who grew up next door, moved away, and still is like a surrogate daughter. As Flo writes to Ruthie about the meaning of beloved things in her home and about events in her past, she also tries new adventures of her own. She intervenes in the lives of friends in her neighborhood.
\nFlo's project has been to encourage Teresa, a wise but unconfident woman, to open her heart to romance. Flo goes to the library to get advice from Mimi, a librarian. She encourages Ruthie, who is contemplating divorce, to try again with her husband, by sharing a startling secret long buried about Flo’s own seemingly perfect husband and marriage.
\nIn her final weeks, Flo leaves an indelible mark on others, as this moving novel celebrates life, change, and ways to discover new happiness, friendship, and love.
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Lucille Howard is getting on in years, but she stays busy. Thanks to the inspiration of her dearly departed friend Arthur Truluv, she has begun to teach baking classes, sharing the secrets to her delicious classic Southern yellow cake, the perfect pinwheel cookies, and other sweet essentials. Her classes have become so popular that she's hired Iris, a new resident of Mason, Missouri, as an assistant. Iris doesn't know how to bake but she needs to keep her mind off a big decision she sorely regrets.
When a new family moves in next door and tragedy strikes, Lucille begins to look out for Lincoln, their son. Lincoln's parents aren't the only ones in town facing hard choices and uncertain futures. In these difficult times, the residents of Mason come together and find the true power of community - just when they need it the most.
Even on their wedding day, John and Irene sensed that they were about to make a mistake. Years later, divorced, dating other people, and living in different parts of the country, they seem to have nothing in common - nothing except the most important person in each of their lives: Sadie, their spirited eighteen-year-old daughter.
\nFeeling smothered by Irene and distanced from John, Sadie is growing more and more attached to her new boyfriend, Ron. When tragedy strikes, Irene and John come together to support the daughter they love so dearly. What takes longer is to remember how they really feel about each other.
\nElizabeth Berg’s immense talent shines in this unforgettable novel about the power of love, the unshakeable bonds of family, and the beauty of second chances.
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Samantha's husband has left her, and after a spree of overcharging at Tiffany's, she settles down to reconstruct a life for herself and her eleven-year-old son. Her eccentric mother tries to help by fixing her up with dates, but a more pressing problem is money.
\nTo meet her mortgage payments, Sam decides to take in boarders. The first is an older woman who offers sage advice and sorely needed comfort; the second, a maladjusted student, is not quite so helpful.
\nA new friend, King, an untraditional man, suggests that Samantha get out, get going, get work. But her real work is this: In order to emerge from grief and the past, she has to learn how to make her own happiness. In order to really see people, she has to look within her heart. And in order to know who she is, she has to remember - and reclaim - the person she used to be, long before she became someone else in an effort to save her marriage.
\nOpen House is a love story about what can blossom between a man and a woman, and within a woman herself.
Dear Martin,
I'm sorry the note I left you was so abrupt. I just wanted you to know I was safe . . . I won't be back for awhile. I'm on a trip. I needed all of a sudden to go, without saying where, because I don't know where. I know this is not like me. I know that. But please believe me, I am safe and I am not crazy, I felt as though if I didn't do this I wouldn't be safe and I would be crazy . . .
And can you believe this? I love you.
Nan
Sometimes you have to leave your life behind for awhile to see it and really live it freshly again. In this luminous, exquisitely written novel, a woman follows the pull of the moon to find her way home.
Sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, always honest, The Pull of the Moon is a novel about the journey of one woman - and about the issues of the heart that transform the lives of all women.
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When is a marriage worth saving and when is it best to let go? When do half-truths turn into full-blown lies? When does betrayal end and passion begin?
Say When is a compelling, complex novel that takes readers into the heart of a modern marriage where companionship and intimacy, and denial and pain, so often collide.
\"Of course he knew she was seeing someone,\" begins the story of Frank Griffin, a man who's willing to overlook his wife's infidelity - he would let her have this, this thrilling little romance - for the sake of keeping his family intact. But when the forty-year-old Ellen requests a divorce on the basis that she has finally found true, romantic love, Griffin must decide whether to fight or flee . . . or search elsewhere for the kind of life he always dreamed of.
With Elizabeth Berg's trademark blend of rare insight, raw emotion, and hard-won wisdom, Say When is a work of startling revelation that no reader will soon forget.
For the past six months, Arthur Moses's days have looked the same: He tends to his rose garden and to Gordon, his cat, then rides the bus to the cemetery to visit his beloved late wife for lunch. The last thing Arthur would imagine is for one unlikely encounter to utterly transform his life.
\nEighteen-year-old Maddy Harris is an introspective girl who visits the cemetery to escape the other kids at school. One afternoon she joins Arthur - a gesture that begins a surprising friendship between two lonely souls. Moved by Arthur's kindness and devotion, Maddy gives him the nickname \"Truluv.\" As Arthur's neighbor Lucille moves into their orbit, the unlikely trio band together and, through heartache and hardships, help one another rediscover their own potential to start anew.
\nWonderfully written and full of profound observations about life, The Story of Arthur Truluv is a beautiful and moving novel of compassion in the face of loss, of the small acts that turn friends into family, and of the possibilities to achieve happiness at any age.
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In this warm and engaging novel, New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Berg revisits the heroine she so lovingly brought to life in Durable Goods and Joy School. It is 1961, and thirteen-year-old Katie is facing a summer full of conflict. First, instead of letting her find her own work for the season, Katie's father has arranged for two less than ideal baby-sitting jobs.
\nWorse, Katie has been forcibly inducted into the 'loser' Girl Scout troop organized by her only friend Cynthia's controlling and clueless mother. A much anticipated visit to her former home in Texas and ex-best friend Cherylanne proves disappointing. And then comes an act of betrayal that leaves Katie questioning her views on friendship, on her ability not to take those she loves for granted, and most important, on herself.
\nFull of anguish and the joys of adolescence in a much more innocent time, True to Form is sure to make readers remember and reflect upon their own moments of discovery and self-definition.
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It is the summer of 1964. In Tupelo, Mississippi, the town of Elvis’s birth, tensions are mounting over civil-rights demonstrations occurring ever more frequently - and violently - across the state. But in Paige Dunn’s small, ramshackle house, there are more immediate concerns.
Challenged by the effects of the polio she contracted during her last month of pregnancy, Paige is nonetheless determined to live as normal a life as possible and to raise her daughter, Diana, in the way she sees fit - with the support of her tough-talking black caregiver, Peacie.
Diana is trying in her own fashion to live a normal life. As a fourteen-year-old, she wants to make money for clothes and magazines, to slough off the authority of her mother and Peacie, to figure out the puzzle that is boys, and to escape the oppressiveness she sees everywhere in her small town.
What she can never escape, however, is the way her life is markedly different from others’. Nor can she escape her ongoing responsibility to assist in caring for her mother. Paige Dunn is attractive, charming, intelligent, and lively, but her needs are great - and relentless.
As the summer unfolds, hate and adversity will visit this modest home. Despite the difficulties thrust upon them, each of the women will find her own path to independence, understanding, and peace. And Diana’s mother, so mightily compromised, will end up giving her daughter an extraordinary gift few parents could match.
Do you ever really know your mother, your daughter, the people in your family? In this rich and rewarding new novel by the beloved bestselling author of
Talk Before Sleep and The Pull of the Moon, a reunion between two sisters and their mother reveals how the secrets and complexities of the past have shaped the lives of the women in a family.
Ginny Young is on a plane, en route to see her mother, whom she hasn't seen or spoken to for thirty-five years. She thinks back to the summer of 1958, when she and her sister, Sharla, were young girls. At that time,a series of dramatic events - beginning with the arrival of a mysterious and sensual next-door neighbor - divided the family, separating the sisters from their mother.
\nMoving back and forth in time between the girl she once was and the woman she's become, Ginny at last confronts painful choices that occur in almost any woman's life, and learns surprising truths about the people she thought she knew best.
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In this rich and deeply satisfying novel by the beloved author of The Art of Mending, and Open House, a resilient woman embarks upon an unforgettable journey of adventure, self-discovery, and renewal.
\nBetta Nolan moves to a small town after the death of her husband to try to begin anew. Pursuing a dream of a different kind of life, she is determined to find pleasure in her simply daily routines. Among those who help her in both expected and unexpected ways are the ten-year-old boy next door, three wild women friends from her college days, a twenty-year-old who is struggling to find his place in the world, and a handsome man who is ready for love.
\nElizabeth Berg's The Year of Pleasuresis about acknowledging the solace found in ordinary things: a warm bath, good food, the beauty of nature, music, friends, and art.
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Fashion model Kirsty Manners is young, beautiful, and recently dead
Kirsty Manners is trying to make it as a model. As the in-house model for the Ivano King fashion house and girlfriend of Ian King, the man behind the label, she believes she is well on her way. But Kirsty is found dead in her flat one Sunday afternoon and D. I. Angela Costello is called to the scene.
First enquiries center on the local gym where Kirsty, her dangerous ex-boyfriend, Darren Carpenter, and her jealous flatmate, Sandra Hodges, worked out. But things are more complicated. Ian King is considered to have lost his edge. Why then is he so buoyant about his latest collection for London Fashion Week? What about his new girlfriend, Eleanor Chandler, who openly admits to having a reason to wish Kirsty dead?
Behind the gleaming smiles and flawless makeup of the glamorous fashion world, Angela's enquiries uncover theft, drug-addiction, prostitution, and imprisonment - and suddenly her own life could be in danger.
Brendan Phelan, rock star, is playing in a stage show that includes guns and whips. As it reaches its climax, a shot rings out--but it's not part of the show. The body of Oliver Joplin, one of the road crew, lies lifeless outside the stage door.
\nDetective Inspector Angela Costello and her team investigate, but they quickly discover that several stage hands, and Phelan himself, are adept with firearms - and that Joplin was widely disliked and distrusted. So why had Phelan kept him on, despite the reservations of his crew? Joplin's emails reveal the presence of a shadowy figure stalking the dead man. Who might profit from Joplin's death?
Little by little, Costello unpicks the web of lies. But unless one key person opens up, she can't crack the case. And that is not going to happen.
It's the first day of Wimbledon. And a dead body is lying on Court 19.
\nNewly-promoted detective inspector Angela Costello recognizes the dead man as Croatian champion-turned-coach, Petar Belic. A double grand-slam winner, Petar was famous, and much loved.
\nHowever, Petar had an ex-wife who wanted him back; a girlfriend who wouldn't let him go; a business partner with secrets. Then there was the temperamental leading Brit, Stewart Bickerstaff, whom Petar had been coaching. D.I. Costello deduces that only one person could have committed the crime.
\nUnfortunately she has no way of proving her suspicions . . .
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Brendan Phelan, rock star, is playing the Apollo, Hammersmith. The stage show includes guns and whips: as it reaches its climax a shot rings out. The body of Oliver Joplin, one of the road crew, lies lifeless outside the stage door. DI Angela Costello and her team investigate, but they quickly discover that several stage hands, and Phelan himself, are adept with firearms - and that Joplin was widely disliked and distrusted.
\nSo why had Phelan kept him on, despite the reservations of his crew? Joplin’s emails reveal the presence of a shadowy figure stalking the dead man. Who might profit from Joplin’s death? Little by little Angela unpicks the web of lies. But unless one person opens up, she can’t crack the case. And that is not going to happen.
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Meet Ethan and Gabe. A devoted couple since their early twenties, they have successful careers, an adorable daughter, and a house in the New Jersey suburbs. Sure, they may have slowly drifted to different ends of the political spectrum, but their marriage still has its spark.
\nThen one night Ethan makes a shocking he wants to run for Congress as a Republican - but only if he has progressive Gabe’s blessing. For weeks a slightly queasy Gabe struggles between supporting his husband’s dream and maintaining his own lefty ideals. He can feel himself slowly pulled under the tide of Ethan’s political ambitions, even as he becomes widely known as a conservative spouse.
\nIn a nearby town, suburban mom Nicole wonders what happened to her younger self-living in New York City, freely dating men and women, and on a path to a career in the art world. Bored and frustrated, Nicole feels like an accessory in husband’s life and she yearns for something of her own. She finds it one fateful morning when an old flame re-enters her life unexpectedly. That woman is Ethan’s sister Kate.
\nA political reporter at a major newspaper, Kate has reached the top of her profession, and her career is at the very center of her life. But the adrenaline rush of chasing a story has lost its thrill. When Nicole - the woman who broke her heart - slides into her DMs just as her brother starts his controversial congressional run, Kate’s life is thrown into a tailspin that threatens to derail the success she’s worked so hard to achieve.
\nA witty and knowing novel about romantic and sibling love, ambition, monogamy, and the ways in which our identities evolve over time.
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A peaceful evening mass at the historic Chiesa del Gesù Nuovo is shattered when a young au pair is killed in one of the cathedral’s quiet chapels. The daughter of the US Ambassador sees it happen - but she’ll speak only to one person: Nikki Serafino.
\nShaken by betrayal in her last high-profile case, Nikki has retreated from the relentless vigilance that once defined her work as liaison between Italian police and the US military. Withdrawn and mistrustful, she works her shifts, cares for her aging family, teaches self-defense classes, and avoids entanglement. But this case threatens her self-imposed invisibility - drawing her into a web of lies and resurfacing old wounds and buried loyalties. The murder investigation leads Nikki and her friend, Naples officer Valerio Alfieri, into a shadow architecture of power: built to protect the guilty and hide their secrets at any cost.
\nCan she and Valerio - each carrying dangerous debts - resist the undertow of corruption that swallows truth whole?
\nSet against the chaos of modern Naples - the city of Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah and Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend - where grace and corruption share the same narrow streets, Nikki and Valerio navigate a landscape where even the most principled must confront the cost of survival.
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Four nights. Three days. The human son of two powerful vampires has been taken from his home, and if Carwyn and Brigid can’t find him, the delicate balance of power in an immortal haven might just go up in flames.
\nLas Vegas holds a special appeal in the immortal world. It’s a city of darkness, debauchery, and vice; a city where inhibitions are low and blood runs hot.
\nRose Di Marco and Agnes Wong have been running Sin City as immortal bosses for nearly a century, but when their son is kidnapped, they turn to their neighbors for help.
\nCarwyn and Brigid know how to find the lost, but what they don’t know is why Zasha Sokholov, a Siberian fire vampire and offshoot of an old crime family, became fixated on them. Carwyn has his suspicions, but all Brigid can think about is a fifteen-year-old boy who’s been taken as bait. She’ll need a clear head and the help of some unexpected allies to find him.
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Dead women are showing up in the Mojave Desert, but water vampire and feared enforcer, Baojia, is stuck entertaining the rich and clueless at his sire’s club in San Diego. He's taken exile with all the grace he could muster, but his patience is wearing thin.
\nReporter Natalie Ellis has been following the story of missing women on the US-Mexico border for years. Are these women the victims of a serial killer, or something even more insidious? Sparks fly when Natalie finds her story leading to Baojia’s club.
\nCan a human and a vampire work together to solve a heinous crime? Or will protecting Natalie cost Baojia his immortality?
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If you’re a human in a vampire’s world, nothing goes according to plan.
\nWhen a map to the mysterious fortune of notorious privateer Miguel Enríquez falls in the lap of Ben and Tenzin, only one of them is jumping at the opportunity. Tenzin can’t wait to search for a secret cache of gold. Ben, on the other hand, couldn’t be less excited.
\nAll Ben knows about Puerto Rico is what he hears on the news and a few lingering memories of his human grandmother. Going back to his roots holds zero appeal for the carefully constructed man he’s become.
\nIn the end, the lure of hidden gold can’t be denied.
\nBen and Tenzin head to Puerto Rico where the immortal world is ruled by Los Tres, a trio of powerful vampires commanding the wind, the waves, and the mountains that make up this small island in the Caribbean.
\nTo find Enríquez’s treasure, they’ll have to walk a fine line between flattery and secrecy. To leave the island might mean a bigger fight than either one of them foresaw.
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It’s a secret lost in time, a myth among immortals, a relic of such power that vampires around the world have quietly harbored the hope that it doesn’t really exist.
\nIt’s a mystery that Tenzin and Ben cannot resist.
\nBut to obtain the Bone Scroll, they’ll need leverage over the most powerful and mercurial vampire in the known world. Saba, oldest of immortals and mother of the vampire race, has returned to her homeland in the highlands of Ethiopia, searching for the scroll with a cadre of elders. In order to outsmart them, Ben and Tenzin will need to walk a literal and figurative edge through a maze of vampire loyalties, shadowy motivations, and ancient secrets.
\nIf Saba wanted them gone, she could command the earth to swallow them whole. But the mother of vampires is playing her own game, and both Ben and Tenzin are no more than pawns.
\nCan they outsmart and outmaneuver the most primeval beings in their race to find the Bone Scroll before it lands in the possession of those who care only for their own selfish gain?
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For over a thousand years, earth vampire Carwyn ap Bryn has been the foundation others have built their lives on as a friend, a priest, and a protector. His strength and laughter have been as dependable as the earth he controls. But beneath his steady exterior lies a loneliness he’s never dared to confront . . . until Brigid Connor changes everything.
\nA fierce and brilliant human survivor, Brigid has spent her life among the vampires who once saved her. But no amount of strength or stubbornness can protect her from the shadows in her past, or from the gentle, unshakable vampire who sees the hurt woman beneath her facade.
\nWhen tragedy strikes, Carwyn and Brigid must face the fire between them and decide whether love can rebuild what’s been broken . . . or reduce it all to ash.
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For Ben Vecchio, everything has changed. His eyes. His diet. His new aversion to sunlight. But after a long sojourn in China, Ben realizes that the world he left behind hasn't changed as much as he feared. He wants to leave his old life in the past, but there's one job remaining that just won't leave him alone.
\nRadu's mystery is too interesting - and too profitable - to ignore. The problem? Taking on this commission puts Ben in the path of his old partner, the one woman he's spent years avoiding.
\nTenzin has been following Ben at a distance, hoping his ire might wane, but when he heads to Romania, her patience runs out. Ben is a new power in their world, and more than one vampire will be eager to test him.
\nBen and Tenzin need to work together if they want to find the truth behind Radu, his mysterious clan, and the treasure at the heart of the Dawn Caravan. One last job, then it's finished between them.
\nRight?
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Still grieving from their loss in the far East, Giovanni Vecchio and Beatrice De Novo discover that for them, all roads really do lead to Rome. But nothing is quite as it seems in the Eternal City.
\nJoined by Carwyn and Tenzin, unexpected clashes greet them almost immediately, and rivalries churn beneath the glittering façade of the old Roman court. They quickly realise that allies might be enemies, and ancient rivals could hold the key to a deadly secret.
\nGiovanni and Beatrice will be forced to call on old alliances, ancient power, and fierce cunning to survive for the eternity they both desire. Sometimes, finding the end means going back to the beginning.
\nFire, Earth, Wind, and Water finally meet with devastating results in the conclusion of the Elemental Mysteries.
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How far would you go to protect the ones you love?
\nWhat would you sacrifice to kill the one you hate?
\nJoin Giovanni Vecchio and Beatrice De Novo as they travel to a hidden island on the far edge of China and seek the help of an ancient immortal court. Can they weave their way through the tangled web of centuries-old alliances and ruthless feuds to find what they've been looking for? Friends will be revealed, enemies will find them, and a dangerous secret will come to light.
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Melissa Oxford is a widow with a ranch, an orange grove, a goat-obsessed ten-year-old, and not enough time. She doesn’t have time to make friends. She doesn’t have time to stop and chat, and she definitely does not have time for a boyfriend.
\nWhich is fine, because Cary Nakamura is far from being a boy. Cary’s the man who helped Melissa plant her trees. The friend who keeps offering advice, even when she’s is too stubborn to take it. He’s also the man who kissed Melissa in broad daylight on a sidewalk in Metlin, California, smack in the face of God and everyone. But while Melissa may spend a little too long dreaming about Cary from a distance, she knows the kind of passion he promises is more than she can handle. She just doesn’t have the time.
\nBut sometimes, no matter how busy you are, life makes you stop. It pulls you up short and makes you see things a little more clearly. Things like . . . the people you can count on. The dreams you keep pushing away. And the passion that can’t be denied.
\n
A phone call from an old friend sets Dr. Giovanni Vecchio back on the path of a mystery he'd abandoned years before. He never expected a young librarian could hold the key to the search, nor could he have expected the danger she would attract.
\nNow he and Beatrice De Novo will follow a twisted maze that leads from the archives of a university library, through the fires of Renaissance Florence, and toward a confrontation they never could have predicted.
\n
Tayla McKinnon is not a small-town girl. The fashion blogger moved to Metlin with two goals in mind: help her friend start a bookstore and have a little fun. A year later, Tayla has made new friends, successfully launched INK, and is ready for a new challenge.
\nToo bad she can’t get a certain rock climbing comic book geek off her mind.
\nJeremy Allen has been playing the long game with Tayla even though the avid outdoorsman was certain she was the one from the minute he set eyes on her. They might have different tastes, but their chemistry is undeniable.
\nWhen a job opportunity from a new fashion start-up lands in her inbox, Tayla takes it as a sign. She’s not meant for a small town even though her best friend and her inconvenient crush are trying to convince her otherwise.
\nJeremy can’t believe Tayla would be willing to leave her new life behind, but maybe he’s been playing it too cool. Summer in Metlin can sizzle, which gives Jeremy an excuse to turn up the heat.
\n
When Summer Mackenzie and her boyfriend disappear in the fog-shrouded forests of Northern California, it sets off more than one alarm. The sheriff’s department is looking for them, the state rangers are on their trail, and even private security companies have gotten involved.
\nBut Summer wasn’t an ordinary college student; she was a human born into the immortal Mackenzie clan, a line of powerful vampires from the Great Smoky Mountains. Now Carwyn ap Bryn and Brigid Connor are getting messages from allies across the world, old rivals, and new friends, all wanting to know where Summer is and why hikers along the Lost Coast keep going missing.
\nIf Brigid and Carwyn can’t find Summer, tensions between vampire clans might just snap, leaving more than just the immortal world bloody.
\nThey may know how to search the wilderness, but the Northern California woods hold more than the average share of mysteries. Secretive immortals, suspicious humans, and ancient myths are all at home in a land where human highways come to a dead end, and dense forests meet rugged coast.
\n
He’s one human caught in a tangled maze of theft, politics, magic, and blood.
\nIn other words, it’s just another night.
\n
Benjamin Vecchio escaped a chaotic childhood and grew to adulthood under the protection and training of one of the Elemental world’s most feared vampire assassins. He’s traveled the world and battled immortal enemies.
But everyone has to go home sometime.
New York means new opportunities and allies for Ben and his vampire partner, Tenzin. It also means new politics and new threats. Their antiquities business is taking off, and their client list is growing. When Ben is challenged to find a painting lost since the second world war, he jumps at the chance. This job will keep him closer to home, but it might just land him in hot water with the insular clan of earth vampires who run Manhattan.
Tenzin knew the painting would be trouble before she laid eyes on it, but she can’t deny the challenge intrigues her. Human laws mean little to a vampire with a few millennia behind her, and Tenzin misses the rush of taking what isn’t hers.
\n
But nothing is more dangerous than a human with half the story, and Ben and Tenzin might end up risking their reputations and their lives before they escape the Midnight Labyrinth.
For over a thousand years, the legendary sword Laylat al Hisab - the Night’s Reckoning - has been lost in the waters of the East China Sea. Forged as a peace offering between two ancient vampires, the sword has eluded treasure hunters, human and immortal alike.
\nBut in time, even the deep gives up its secrets.
\nWhen Tenzin’s sire hears about the eighth century shipwreck found off the coast of southern China, Zhang realises he’ll need the help of an upstart pirate from Shanghai to retrieve it. And since that pirate has no desire to be in the middle of an ancient war, Cheng calls the only allies who might be able to help him avoid it.
\nUnfortunately, Tenzin is on one side of the globe and Ben is on the other.
\nTenzin knows she’ll need Ben’s keen mind and political skills to complete the job. She also knows gaining Ben’s cooperation won’t be an easy task. She’ll have to drag him back into the darkness he’s been avoiding.
\nWhether Ben knows it or not, his fate is balanced on the edge of a thousand-year-old blade, and one stumble could break everything Tenzin has worked toward.
\n
The upper echelons of immortal society have gathered in New Orleans, all of them curious to witness the joining of Gavin Wallace, the immortal business mogul, to the human woman who captured his heart. But behind the facade of immortal revelry, New Orleans is a city teeming with old rivalries, political maneuvering, and twisted secrets.
\nInvited to the marriage ceremony of their two old friends, Carwyn ap Bryn and Brigid Connor venture south, ready to relax in the company of Marie-Hélène Charmont, the vampire queen of the Delta, and four hundred of her esteemed immortal guests.
\nBut when Gavin asks Brigid and Carwyn to look into a mysterious man stalking his human employees, they’re unprepared for the tangled web of deception they uncover. Tug on the wrong string and centuries-old alliances might fall apart.
\nIn a tenuously balanced society full of apex predators; even one slip can prove disastrous.
\n
It was a friendly visit until a priceless artifact was stolen. Now they're up to their necks in secrets that can kill.
\nIt's not just any holiday season in the immortal world. Elder Zhang's oldest servant is reaching the century mark, and Ben and Tenzin are ready to celebrate, but no sooner do they land on Penglai Island than a mystery falls in their path. A valuable seal has gone missing, and the artifact was a gift from an ancient vampire who just happens to be heading to Penglai for a long-overdue formal visit.
\nThe Elders of Penglai may have asked Ben and Tenzin's assistance to find the lost treasure, but that doesn't mean that eight ancient vampires, their immortal children, and all the humans who serve them will suddenly become open books. Penglai Island is secret for a reason, and the heart of that reason may just reveal the motive behind the theft.
\n
Everyone said that Lupe Martínez was a good kid. She listened to her mom, she helped at the homeless shelter, she got good grades, and she had a bright future ahead of her.
\nUntil she disappeared.
\nNow no one knows what to think. The police are sure she ran away; her mother is sure she didn’t. Days have passed and no one knows what to do until her family priest suggests they call in an old friend.
\nA very old friend.
\nCarwyn ap Bryn and Brigid Connor are two elemental vampires finding the lost, righting wrongs, and searching for meaning in the endless stretch of immortality they've been granted.
\nAnd trying not to blow things up, but that might be more aspirational.
Patrick Murphy, the immortal leader of Dublin, has been trying to stem the tide of Elixir washing into his territory, but nothing seems to stop the vampire drug. While others in the immortal world work to cure the creeping insanity that Elixir brings, Murphy has been invited to London to join a summit of leaders hoping to discover who is shipping the drug.
\nAnne O’Dea, Murphy’s former lover, retreated from public life over one hundred years ago to help immortals in need . . . and to heal her own broken heart. Though powerful connections keep her insulated from the violence of vampire politics, even Anne is starting to feel the effects of Elixir in her isolated world. The human blood supply has been tainted, and with Anne’s unique needs, even those closest to her might be in danger. Not just from infection, but Anne’s escalating bloodlust.
\nWhen Anne and Murphy are both called to London, they’re forced to confront a connection as immortal as they are. As they search for a traitor among allies, they must also come to terms with their past. Behind the safe façade of politics, old hungers still burn, even as an ancient power threatens the fate of the Elemental World.
\n
Hidden at the crossroads of the world, an ancient race battles to protect humanity, even as it dies from within.
\nAva Matheson came to Istanbul looking for answers, but others came looking for her. A reckless warrior guards her steps, but will Malachi’s own past blind him to the truth of who Ava might be? While ancient forces gather around them, both Ava and Malachi search for answers.
\nWhispering voices. Deadly touch. Their passion should be impossible . . . or it could be the only thing that will keep them alive.
\n\n
For thousands of years, the scribes and singers of the Irin race have lived in the shadows of the human world, protecting the innocent and guarding the sacred magic of the Forgiven. They have kept their secrets well. But every secret has a price - and some truths, once revealed, will change everything.
\nAva and Malachi have already survived what should have been impossible. Torn apart by darkness, tested by loss, and forged in the fires of a war they never chose, their love has proven stronger than fate itself. But surviving is not the same as living, and the answers they desperately need remain locked behind centuries of silence.
\nWhen a powerful cabal of the Fallen offers those answers, the cost is steep: the Irin must finally face their enemies. Not just the ancient evil threatening to destroy them from without, but the fractures and betrayals threatening to unravel them from within. For Ava and Malachi, the path forward demands courage, sacrifice, and a trust in each other that will be pushed to its absolute limits.
\nBut this is a love story. And love, forged in darkness, does not break easily.
\n
Summoned to the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Rhys of Glast, Irin archivist and scribe of Istanbul, must convince a legendary Irina singer to trust him. His success could shift the balance of power all over the Irin world and give singers an important key to their past.
\nMeera didn’t call for Rhys’s help and she doesn’t need it. The scribe’s mission is to bring more martial magic into the Irin world while Meera has been looking for a path toward peace. She’s convinced that some other motive is at work, and his stubborn arrogance doesn’t pass for charm in her hallowed opinion.
\nDiscovering ancient Irina magic should be something both scholars can agree on, but can these two rivals find any common ground? Neither Rhys nor Meera can ignore the simmering heat between them, but will attraction overcome the caution that has shaped both their lives?
\n
Kyra has lived her life in the shadow of a powerful Grigori brother. She’s ignored her own desires for the good of her family, but an unexpected request from Thailand sends her on a mission that could change her life and alter the fate of free Grigori all over the world.
\nA simple diplomatic mission sends Leo to Bangkok, but he doesn’t expect to see a familiar face in surveillance photographs. Why was Kyra halfway across the globe, living with Grigori who might or might not be Irin allies?
\nLeo has bided his time - he’s given Kyra her space - but this scribe is ready to hear a kareshta sing.
\n
When you've lost everything you love, how do you fight the darkness?
\nAva left Istanbul with a new identity, new name, and new magic she could barely control. Laid low by Malachi's sacrifice, she searches for help from the fabled Irina. But will the secretive women of the Irin race welcome or shun her? Ava's origins are still a mystery, and her powers are darker than any they've encountered before.
\nThe Irin world hangs in the balance. And as the children of angels battle their own demons, ancient rivalries among the Fallen threaten to wreak havoc on earth.
\nThousand of miles away, a warrior wakes with no memory of his identity or his people. Stumbling through the twisted schemes of fallen angels, ravenous Grigori, and even his own leaders, he must find a way back to the one thing he remembers. A single voice calls him. Malachi has one mission.
\n\"Come back to me.\"
\n
Some love stories begin at the beginning. Damien and Sari's begins long before that.
\nTheir names are already legend in the Irin world: a warrior and a singer whose union changed the course of their people’s history. But to understand how their story ends, you have to go back to where it started: a young singer with fiery ambition and a hardened warrior who never expected to find happiness.
\nThey met. They mated. And then the world tore them apart.
\nViolence, betrayal, and grief have a way of turning love into something unrecognisable. For centuries, Damien and Sari have existed in the wreckage of what they once were to each other. Close enough to wound, too bound to walk away. Because in the Irin race, the bonds of destiny don't break. They only wait.
\n\"She hates me as she loves me. Wholly and completely. Sari never does anything by halves.\"
\nTold in four parts spanning centuries, The Staff and the Blade is an epic separated-and-reunited romance that traces the full arc of one of the Irin Chronicles' most beloved couples, from a breathtaking beginning through devastating loss and all the way to a hard-won, deeply satisfying happily-ever-after.
\n
Lucien Thrax, son of the earth and child of the ancients, is a healer of immense power. But years of work on a deadly vampire virus have not led to a cure, nor have they softened the wall he built around his heart. When he’s forced to work with Dr. Makeda Abel, Lucien is convinced he’s reached the limit of his patience with humanity.
\nMakeda Abel may be human, but she’s far from impressed with the brooding vampire healer even if his mind draws her admiration. She’s learned how to survive in the immortal world, and it’s not by being timid. Working together may lead them to answers, but it also pushes Lucien and Makeda’s reluctant attraction to the boiling point.
\nWhen nightmares become reality, Makeda will have to trust Lucien with her life. Finding answers has never been more vital. Finding love has never been more deadly. To heal the Elemental World, Lucien and Makeda must follow ancient paths and ask for help from the most inhuman of immortals. Because even with a cure in hand, the battle has only begun.
\n
It’s 2004, and Daisy Rivera knows two things: she’s going to end up disappointing her parents’ fondest hopes and dreams in roughly six months, and somehow she’s going to figure out how to kiss the mysterious tattoo artist two shops down from her grandmother’s cafe that everyone calls Spider.
\nSpider Villalobos knows one thing: if he gives into temptation and makes a move on Daisy, his fresh start is over.
\nTheir shops may be neighbors in Metlin, but their lives are worlds apart.
Beatrice De Novo thought she had left the supernatural world behind... for the most part. But when the past becomes the present, will she leave her quiet life in Los Angeles to follow a mystery she thought had abandoned her? Where has Giovanni Vecchio been, and why has he returned? Giovanni has his own questions, and he's looking to her for answers.
\nThis Same Earth will reunite Beatrice and Giovanni to continue their search through the past while both wrestle with the future. When the world as you knew it has changed forever, is there any way you can turn back?
\n\n
Everything comes to an end.
\nBrigid Connor is a vampire familiar with ghosts. The ghosts of her past, the ghosts of her victims, and the ghosts of those she couldn't save. Now in the wilds of America's most remote frontier, she'll face a specter who has haunted her steps, a fire vampire with a baffling connection to Brigid's mate, her clan, and those she holds most dear.
\nTenzin is an immortal who has lived a hundred lives. She's been a daughter, a sister, a villain, and a hero. With every millennium, she has evolved, cutting ties with the past and moving forward with relentless focus, a survivor among the fiercest predators in history.
\nBut history has a way of finding those who flee from it.
\nTin God is a crossover between the Elemental Covenant and the Elemental Legacy novels. It is the final book in the Elemental Covenant series.
\n
It is the 1950s and as the Duchy, the Cazalets’ beloved matriarch, dies, she takes with her the last remnants of a disappearing world - houses with servants, class, and tradition - in which the Cazalets have thrived.
\nLouise, now divorced, becomes entangled in a painful affair, while Polly and Clary must balance marriage and motherhood with their own ideas and ambitions. Hugh and Edward, now in their sixties, are feeling ill-equipped for this modern world, while Villy, long abandoned by her husband, must at last learn to live independently. But it is Rachel, who has always lived for others, who will face her greatest challenges yet.
\nAs the Cazalets descend on Home Place for Christmas, only one thing is certain: nothing will ever be the same again.
\n
The Cazalet cousins are now in their twenties, trying to piece together their lives in the aftermath of the war. Louise is faced with her father's new mistress and her mother's grief at his betrayal, while suffering in a loveless marriage of her own. Clary is struggling to understand why her beloved father chose to stay in France long after it was safe to return to Britain, and both she and Polly are madly in love with much older men.
\nPolly, Clary and Louise must face the truth about the adult world, while their fathers - Rupert, Hugh and Edward - must make choices that will decide their own, and the family's, future . . .
\n
It's 1942 and the dark days of war seem never-ending. Scattered across the still-peaceful Sussex countryside and air-raid-threatened London, the divided Cazalets begin to find the battle for survival echoing the confusion in their own lives.
\nHeadstrong, independent Louise surprises the whole family when she abandons her dreams of being an actress and instead makes a society marriage. Polly and Clary, now in their late teens, finally fulfil their ambition of living together in London. But the reality of the city is not quite what they imagined, and Polly is struggling to come to terms with the death of her mother and manage her grieving father.
\nClary, meanwhile, is painfully aware that what she lacks in beauty she makes up for in intelligence, and is the only member of the family who believes that her father might not be dead.
\n
1937. Every summer, the Cazalet brothers - Hugh, Edward and Rupert - return to the family home in the heart of the Sussex countryside with their wives and children. There, they are joined by their formidable parents and unmarried sister Rachel to enjoy two glorious months of picnics, games and sun-drenched excursions to the coast. But not even this idyllic setting can soothe the siblings’ fears and heartache.
\nHugh, haunted by memories of the Great War, is terrified at the looming prospect of a second. Edward, charming and handsome, is torn between his wife and his latest infidelity. Rupert, a talented painter, is in turmoil over his inability to please his demanding new wife. Meanwhile, Rachel’s unflinching loyalty to the family means risking her one chance at happiness . . .
\n
Home Place, Sussex, 1939. As the shadows of the Second World War roll in, banishing the sunlit days of childish games and trips to the coast, a new generation of Cazalets take up the family's story.
\nLouise, who dreams of becoming a great actress, finds herself facing the harsh reality that her parents have their own lives with secrets, passions and yearnings. Clary, an aspiring writer, learns that her beloved father is now missing somewhere on the shores of France. And sensitive, imaginative Polly feels stuck - stuck without a vocation, stuck without information about her mother's illness, stuck without anything except her nightmares about the war.
\n
Truyan Saigas didn't choose to become a con artist, but after her father is lost at sea, it’s up to her to support her mother and two younger sisters. A gifted art forger, Tru has the unique ability to paint the future, but even such magic is not enough to put her family back together again, or stave off the gangsters demanding payment in blood for her mother’s gambling debts.
\nLeft with few options, Tru agrees to a marriage contract with a mysterious dragon lord. He offers a fresh start for her mother and sisters and elusive answers about her father's disappearance, but in exchange, she must join him in his desolate undersea palace. And she must assist him in a plot to infiltrate the tyrannical Dragon King's inner circle, painting a future so treasonous, it could upend both the mortal and immortal realms . . .
Channi was not born a monster. But when her own father offered her in sacrifice to the tiger witch, she was forever changed. Cursed with a serpent's face, Channi is the exact opposite of her beautiful sister Vanna - the only person in the village who looks at Channi and doesn’t see a monster. The only person she trusts.
\nNow seventeen, Vanna is to be auctioned off in a vulgar betrothal contest that will enrich the coffers of the village leaders. Only Channi, who’s had to rely on her strength and cunning all these years, can defend her sister against the cruelest of the suitors. But in doing so, she becomes the target of his wrath - launching a series of vicious gladiatorial fights, a quest over land and sea, romance between sworn enemies, and a choice that will strain Channi's heart to its breaking point.
Shiori, the only princess of Kiata, has a secret. Forbidden magic runs through her veins. Normally she conceals it well, but on the morning of her betrothal ceremony, Shiori loses control. At first, her mistake seems like a stroke of luck, forestalling the wedding she never wanted, but it also catches the attention of Raikama, her stepmother.
\nRaikama has dark magic of her own, and she banishes the young princess, turning her brothers into cranes, and warning Shiori that she must speak of it to no one: for with every word that escapes her lips, one of her brothers will die.
\nPenniless, voiceless, and alone, Shiori searches for her brothers, and, on her journey, uncovers a conspiracy to overtake the throne - a conspiracy more twisted and deceitful, more cunning and complex, than even Raikama's betrayal. Only Shiori can set the kingdom to rights, but to do so she must place her trust in the very boy she fought so hard not to marry. And she must embrace the magic she's been taught all her life to contain - no matter what it costs her.
Maia Tamarin dreams of becoming the greatest tailor in the land, but as a girl, the best she can hope for is to marry well. When a royal messenger summons her ailing father, once a tailor of renown, to court, Maia poses as a boy and takes his place. She knows her life is forfeit if her secret is discovered, but she'll take that risk to achieve her dream and save her family from ruin. There's just one catch: Maia is one of twelve tailors vying for the job.
Backstabbing and lies run rampant as the tailors compete in challenges to prove their artistry and skill. Maia's task is further complicated when she draws the attention of the court magician, Edan, whose piercing eyes seem to see straight through her disguise.
And nothing could have prepared her for the final challenge: to sew three magic gowns for the emperor's reluctant bride-to-be, from the laughter of the sun, the tears of the moon, and the blood of stars. With this impossible task before her, she embarks on a journey to the far reaches of the kingdom, seeking the sun, the moon, and the stars, and finding more than she ever could have imagined.
Princess Shiori made a deathbed promise to return the dragon's pearl to its rightful owner, but keeping that promise is more dangerous than she ever imagined.
\nShe must journey to the kingdom of dragons, navigate political intrigue among humans and dragons alike, fend off thieves who covet the pearl for themselves and will go to any lengths to get it, all while cultivating the appearance of a perfect princess to dissuade those who would see her burned at the stake for the magic that runs in her blood.
\nThe pearl itself is no ordinary cargo; it thrums with malevolent power, jumping to Shiori's aid one minute, and betraying her the next -threatening to shatter her family and sever the thread of fate that binds her to her true love, Takkan. It will take every ounce of strength Shiori can muster to defend the life and the love she's fought so hard to win.
Maia Tamarin’s journey to sew the dresses of the sun, the moon and the stars has taken a grievous toll. She returns to a kingdom on the brink of war. The boy she loves is gone, and she is forced to don the dress of the sun and assume the place of the emperor’s bride-to-be to keep the peace.
But the war raging around Maia is nothing compared to the battle within. Ever since she was touched by the demon Bandur, she has been changing . . . glancing in the mirror to see her own eyes glowing red, losing control of her magic, her body, her mind. It’s only a matter of time before Maia loses herself completely, but she will stop at nothing to find Edan, protect her family, and bring lasting peace to her country.
Roz Kennedy dedicated her life to a high-powered consulting career. That is, until she’s overlooked for a promotion and hears that Red Tractor Farm, a farm that she adored visiting as a child, is on the brink of financial ruin. Fuming and eager for a change, Roz decides to leave her corporate life behind and buy the struggling farm. But in order to keep the farm afloat, she needs to find an investor to help fund some drastic changes.
\nWhen Olivia Mitchell discovers the new owner of Red Tractor Farm plans to stop supplying flowers to her beloved flower shop, jeopardizing everything Olivia has worked so hard to achieve, she’s outraged. She’s even more shocked to discover that the new owner is Roz, the stunning but infuriating woman she met in a lesbian bar a few months ago.
\nWhen a crucial potential investor mistakes Olivia for Roz’s girlfriend, Olivia and Roz play along, keen to further their own agendas. But as the two clash, they also draw closer together. And before long, they’re both questioning just how fake their blossoming relationship really is.
\n
Jenny Lynton never planned to be an influencer. It just sort of . . . happened. When an unfortunate post results in Jenny being “almost canceled,” she extends her stay in her hometown, Sapphire Springs, New York, to wait out the storm. Jenny's agent suggests a fling with a flannel-wearing lumberjack might be just the thing to distract her. But after a string of disastrous dates, Jenny has sworn off flings. And lumberjacks are in short supply in Sapphire Springs. Lumberjanes, on the other hand . . .
\nBlake Mitchell is Sapphire Spring’s only doctor. She’s also had a crush on Jenny since high school. A crush that makes her a socially awkward mess whenever she’s around Jenny. Blake moved back home to avoid being hurt by another relationship - there’s not exactly a lot of dating options for lesbians in Sapphire Springs - but Blake can’t stop thinking about Jenny now she’s back in town.
\nWhen Jenny and Blake are forced to work together to save a friend’s bachelorette party, sparks fly. But with Jenny’s return to LA a ticking time-bomb, is it wise for them to explore their feelings for each other, or do they risk being hurt yet again?
\n
Hannah Taylor has some novel problems. The best-selling fantasy author, who writes under a secret pen name, is suffering from writer’s block after her long-term relationship collapses. With the deadline for her next novel fast approaching, Hannah flees Manhattan for Sapphire Springs, New York, planning to hide away until she finishes her book. But when she’s forced to visit the local cafe-bookstore, she accidentally finds herself with a new job and one very attractive new boss. Distractions she definitely doesn’t need with her looming deadline . . . or does she?
\nGeorge O’Grady worked hard to turn Novel Gossip into the cafe-bookstore of her dreams, but staff shortages are putting the normally unflappable lesbian under pressure. Hannah’s appearance is a godsend. Although it would be easier if her new employee was less distractingly lovely, because George has a strict rule against dating employees.
\nOver the course of the summer, Hannah and George grow closer. But can the two book lovers overcome their novel problems, rules and relationship baggage to write their own happy ending?
\n
After Eris faked her death, she thought she had left her old life as Princess Discordia - heir to the galaxy's most ruthless empire - behind. But joining the Novantaen Resistance, an organisation opposed to the Empire's voracious expansion, throws her right back into the fray.
\nResistance fighter pilot Clo has been given a mission: infiltrate an Empire spaceship ferrying deadly cargo to gain vital intelligence. A task made all the more difficult when she's forced to partner with an old enemy - Princess Discordia herself, Eris.
\nThey discover more than they bargained for on the ship: fugitives with first-hand knowledge of the Empire's inner workings. With this information, these women might just bring the Empire to its knees. But the clock is ticking: Eris's brother Damocles, new heir to the throne, plans to disrupt a peace summit with the only remaining free alien people, ensuring the Empire's total domination. Unless this band of unlikely rebels stops him, millions will die . . .
\n
After an ambush leaves the Novantae resistance in tatters, the survivors scatter across the galaxy. Wanted by two great empires, the bounty on any rebel's head is enough to make a captor filthy rich. And the Seven Devils? Biggest score of them all.
\nThe Devils take refuge on Fortuna where Ariadne gets a message with unimaginable consequences: the Oracle has gone rogue. The AI has developed a way of mass programming citizens into mindless drones. The Oracle's demand is simple: it wants its daughter Ariadne back at any cost.
\nTime for an Impossible to Infiltrate mission: high chance of death, low chance of success. The Devils will have to use their unique skills, no matter the sacrifice, even if that means teaming up with old enemies. Their plan? Get to the heart of the Empire. Destroy the Oracle. Burn it all to the ground.
\n\n
In Edinburgh, a secret war rages between humans and fae, and the magic in Aileana Kameron’s blood is all that keeps the most lethal monsters imprisoned beneath the city.
\nBut when the creatures she once pursued now hunt her, Aileana has no choice but to ally with Kiaran MacKay - the beautiful fae assassin with his own agenda.
\nThe chemistry between them is as incendiary as the battles raging through the streets. And as the body count climbs, Aileana faces a choice: how much is she willing to sacrifice to save her city? Her friends? Herself?
\nBecause the fae won’t stop until their kin are freed - and she’s the only thing standing in their way.
\n
The dead don't stay buried. Not when ancient magic is involved.
\nAileana Kameron claws free from her grave to find the world unraveling. Tick tock. The clock's winding down.
\nOnly one relic can hold back the tide of destruction, a book hidden deep in hostile fae territory. Guarded by the Morrigan, the oldest, deadliest creature in existence.
\nAileana has one chance to save humanity and the fae she loves: Kiaran MacKay, once her consort, now a king damned to insatiable hunger.
\nThis is no fairytale quest. It's life or death, with the fate of their worlds in the balance. If they fail, it's over. Their lives. The realms. Everything.
\n
Using ancient secrets, Galina and Sera’s mother grafted gods into their bones. Bound to brutal deities and granted forbidden power no commoner has held in a millennia, the sisters have grown up to become living weapons. Raised to overthrow an empire - no matter the cost.
\nWith their mother gone and their country on the brink of war, it falls to the sisters to take the helm of the rebellion and end the cruel reign of a royal family possessed by destructive gods. Because when the ruling alurea invade, they conquer with fire and blood. And when they clash, common folk burn.
\nWhile Sera reunites with her estranged lover turned violent rebel leader, Galina infiltrates the palace. In this world of deception and danger, her only refuge is an isolated princess, whose whip-smart tongue and sharp gaze threaten to uncover Galina’s secret. Torn between desire and duty, Galina must make a choice: work together to expose the lies of the empire - or bring it all down.
\n
Aileana Kameron is on the run in a broken world. The fae realm spit her back out just in time to watch her city burn and the human world fall. Now she's hunted by enemies determined to possess the secrets locked in her mind.
\nNowhere is safe.
\nHer only refuge is with Kiaran MacKay, her lethal fae consort. Together they're thrust into the heart of the human resistance, but trust is scarce. The fae close in, hungry to restore their Courts, even if it means razing the mortal realm to ashes.
\nBut Aileana realises she's not their only target. Something else has caught their eye, something that could turn the tide of the war.
\nAnd to survive, she'll have to outwit them all.
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A princess and a war-weary god met in the ashes of a broken city, forging a pact in blood and sacrifice.
\nNow, centuries of fragile peace are on the brink of collapse . . .
\nBryony Devaliant was born to die - again and again. In Vartena, royal blood is the currency of peace, with every monarch sacrificed and resurrected to appease the gods. But when rebellion stirs, the god-king sends his deadliest weapon to restore order: an immortal assassin known only as the Wolf.
\nEvander has perfected the art of killing over centuries - until his latest target becomes the one person he cannot destroy. When forbidden desire burns between the assassin and the sacrificial princess, their connection threatens the fragile boundary between gods and mortals. And when that boundary shatters, empires crumble. Because when gods fall in love with mortals, mortals are always the ones to break.
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Katherine is only five-years-old. Struck dumb with grief at her mother's death, it is down to her father, the heartbroken minister Tyler Caskey, to bring his daughter out of silence she has observed in the wake of the family's tragedy.
\nBut Tyler Caskey is barely surviving himself. His cold, church-assigned home is colder still since Lauren's death, and he struggles to find the right words for his sermons; struggles to be a leader to his congregation when he himself is lost.
\nWhen Katherine's schoolteacher calls to discuss his daughter's anti-social behaviour, it sparks a chain of events that begins to tear down Tyler's defences.
\nThe small-town rumour-mill has much to make of Katherine's odd behaviour, and even more to say about Tyler's relationship with his housekeeper, Connie Hatch. And in Tyler's darkest hour, a startling discovery will test his congregation's humanity - and his own will to endure the kinds of trials that sooner or later test us all.
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Isabelle Goodrow has been living in self-imposed exile with her daughter Amy for 15 years. Shamed by her past and her affair with Amy's father she has submerged herself in the routine of her dead-end job and her unrequited love for her boss.
\nBut when Amy, frustrated by her quiet and unemotional mother, embarks on an illicit affair with her maths teacher, the disgrace intensifies the shame Isabelle feels about her own past.
Throughout one long, sweltering summer as the events of the small town ebb and flow around them Amy and Isabelle exist in silent conflict until a final act leads ultimately to the understanding they both crave.
Short story collection Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others.
\nHere are two sisters: one trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother’s happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton) returns to visit her siblings after seventeen years of absence.
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Haunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown of Shirley Falls for New York City as soon as they possibly could.
\nJim, a sleek, successful corporate lawyer, has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives, and Bob, a Legal Aid attorney who idolizes Jim, has always taken it in stride.
\nBut their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister, Susan - the Burgess sibling who stayed behind - urgently calls them home.
\nHer lonely teenage son, Zach, has gotten himself into a world of trouble, and Susan desperately needs their help.
\nAnd so the Burgess brothers return to the landscape of their childhood, where the long-buried tensions that have shaped and shadowed their relationship begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever.
With a rare combination of brilliant storytelling, exquisite prose, and remarkable insight into character, Elizabeth Strout has brought to life two deeply human protagonists whose struggles and triumphs will resonate with readers long after they turn the final page.
Tender, tough-minded, loving, and deeply illuminating about the ties that bind us to family and home, The Burgess Boys is Elizabeth Strout’s newest and perhaps most astonishing work of literary art.
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Elizabeth Strout turns her exquisitely tuned eye to the inner workings of the human heart, following the indomitable heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton through the early days of the pandemic.
\nAs a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it's just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea.
\nRich with empathy and emotion, Lucy by the Sea vividly captures the fear and struggles that come with isolation, as well as the hope, peace, and possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire. At the heart of this story are the deep human connections that unite us even when we're apart - the pain of a beloved daughter's suffering, the emptiness that comes from the death of a loved one, the promise of a new friendship, and the comfort of an old, enduring love.
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Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn't spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy's childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy's life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters.
Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.
Lucy Barton is a successful writer living in New York, navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to two adult daughters. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband - and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante.
\nRecalling their college years, the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of their marriage, and the lives they built with other people, Strout weaves a portrait, stunning in its subtlety, of a tender, complex, decades-long partnership.
\nOh William! captures the joy and sorrow of watching children grow up and start families of their own; of discovering family secrets, late in life, that alter everything we think we know about those closest to us; and the way people live and love, against all odds. At the heart of this story is the unforgettable, indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who once again offers a profound, lasting reflection on the mystery of existence. 'This is the way of life,' Lucy says. 'The many things we do not know until it is too late.'
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At the edge of the continent, Crosby, Maine, may seem like nowhere, but seen through this brilliant writer’s eyes, it’s in essence the whole world, and the lives that are lived there are filled with all of the grand human drama - desire, despair, jealousy, hope, and love.
\nAt times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognise the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance: a former student who has lost the will to live: Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannised by her irrational sensitivities; and Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse. As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life - sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty.
\nOlive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition - its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.
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Olive, Again follows the blunt, contradictory yet deeply loveable Olive Kitteridge as she grows older, navigating the second half of her life as she comes to terms with the changes - sometimes welcome, sometimes not - in her own existence and in those around her.
\nOlive adjusts to her new life with her second husband, challenges her estranged son and his family to accept him, experiences loss and loneliness, witnesses the triumphs and heartbreaks of her friends and neighbours in the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine - and, finally, opens herself to new lessons about life.
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With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters - Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more - as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean ?”
\nIt’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William.
\nTogether, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known - “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them - reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.
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Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbors, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive.
\nBut inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad - at himself and the people around him - and turns a question over and over in his mind: How is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us?
\nAnd then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear - and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence.
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Less than two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, three junior archeologists and their gloryhound advisor arrive at a remote cave in the heart of the Siberian wilderness to carry out the first extensive Western dig on Russian soil since the execution of the Czar.
\nSurrounded by a looming forest with eerie silences and flickering shadows, Valerie, Kit, and Mark begin their dig under the eccentric and charismatic guidance of the venerable George Auberon. The excavation yields fascinating discoveries, and excitement grows among the team, but George’s true motivations soon reveal themselves to be much less noble than he originally let on.
\nAs each member of the party grapples with the complexities and the challenges of the dig, going deeper into the cave, a strange feeling sets in. Are they really alone out there? Or has George’s paranoid ambition gotten to them?
\nA powerful debut with vast imaginative range, The Sleeping Land introduces a cast of memorable characters who must face a terrifying question: who controls the past when it comes back to life?
Ten years ago, after a sun-soaked summer spent in Greece, best friends Bess and Joni were cleared of having any involvement in their friend Evangeline’s death. But that didn’t stop the media from ripping apart their teenage lives like vultures.
\nWhile the girls were never convicted, Joni, ever the opportunist, capitalised on her newfound infamy to become a motivational speaker. Bess, on the other hand, resolved to make her life as small and controlled as possible so she wouldn’t risk losing everything all over again. And it almost worked . . .
\nExcept now Joni is tangled up in a crime eerily similar to that one fateful night in Greece. And when she asks Bess to come back to LA to support her, Bess has a decision to make.
\nIs it finally time to face up to what happened that night, exposing herself as the young woman she once was and maybe still is? And what happens if she doesn’t like what she finds?
A deep dive into the psyche of a young actress raised in the spotlight under the influence of a charming, manipulative film director and the moment when she decides his time is up.
At the height of her career and on the eve of her first Golden Globe nomination, teen star Grace Turner disappeared.
Now, tentatively sober and surprisingly numb, Grace is back in Los Angeles after her year of self-imposed exile. She knows the new private life she wants isn’t going to be easy as she tries to be a better person and reconnect with the people she left behind.
But when Grace is asked to present a lifetime achievement award to director Able Yorke - the man who controlled her every move for eight years - she realises that she can’t run from the secret behind her spectacular crash and burn for much longer. And she’s the only one with nothing left to lose.
Alternating between past and present, The Comeback tackles power dynamics and the uncertainty of young adulthood, the types of secrets that become part of our sense of self, and the moments when we learn that though there are many ways to get hurt, we can still choose to fight back.
After a steady descent from literary stardom, Lane Warren is back. She’s secured a new book deal based off the life of her sometimes friend and more often rival, notorious free spirit and muse, Gala Margolis. Lane’s only problem is that Gala has been missing for months . . . nobody can find her.
\nTen years earlier, Gala was a charming socialite and Lane was a Hollywood outsider amidst the glittering 1960’s LA party scene. Though never best friends, Lane found Gala sharp and compelling. Gala liked that Lane took her seriously. They were both writers. They were drawn to each other.
\nThat is until Gala’s star began to rise, and Lane grew more envious. Then Lane decided to do something that she wouldn’t ever be able to take back . . . changing the trajectory of both their lives.
A burned-out bisexual confronts old demons, her estranged chosen family, and the ex she maybe shouldn’t have walked away from when she attends her five-year college reunion.
\nCharlotte Thorne does not want to go back to Hein University. Her life postcollege isn’t what she expected - her career in media is stalled, her passion for drawing has fallen by the wayside, and she’s done a terrible job keeping in touch with her queer chosen family since graduation day. Willingly spend a full weekend with her incredibly successful classmates? Hard pass.
\nBut when her demanding boss, tech journalist Roger Ludermore, is invited to give the commencement address at this year’s graduation - which falls on the same weekend as her five-year reunion - Charlotte has no choice but to return to campus.
\nThe minute she steps foot on Hein property, the past comes crawling back in its glory and cringe: disco parties at the LGBTQIA+ program house, sleeping in a twin XL bed, and her chemistry with Reece Kreuger, the hockey player she rebounded with after a traumatic breakup. Suddenly the weekend Charlotte has dreaded for months feels like an opportunity to go back in time. Determined to have some fun, Charlotte dodges her best friend’s questions about her mental health, ignores her boss’s constant Slack messages, and tries to avoid the truth about why she ghosted Reece five years ago. But can she really outrun her past and get her life together in seventy-two hours?
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Toby Hawthorne was an enigma.
One I didn’t factor into my college plans.
I wasn’t looking for love.
I wasn’t not looking for it either.
And in that state of in-between, he found me.
Unaware of the battle he fought everyday, I fell fast.
By the time I found out, it was too late.
Because I wanted everything.
Every broken, lost part of him.
I knew I couldn’t fix him.
I could only love him.
But I should’ve known better than to think that was enough.
It didn't matter how young we were.
We just knew.
Forever was stamped on our hearts, no matter what forces tried to keep us apart.
They tried, and they failed.
We were happy.
We lived, we loved, and we made plans.
But as the years went by, we watched helplessly as those plans faded into dusty aspirations.
Yet we endured.
Time and time again, we came out stronger.
Until life threw the ultimate test our way, and he surrendered.
Defeated and desperate, he made a choice.
One that tore all our promises in two—leaving me pregnant, alone, and terrified.
Now he's free, and that love is still there.
It's everything else that's changed.
Heartless. Conceited. Shallow.
Three simple words to describe me.
I had everything a girl could ask for, yet nothing I truly needed.
I'd made peace with who I was and the expectations set upon me long ago.
Only to have that peace shattered when a nameless hero rode into my world.
I wasn't allowed to have him.
Too bad I never cared much for the word no.
Because I'd soon learn the hard way that too much self-indulgence could result in incurable consequences.
There is no escaping the middle lands, the gloomy buffer between the human kingdom and the faerie realms. When my guardian is killed by the Wild Hunt after waiting twenty years to trade me for her human daughter, I’m left with no choice but to try.
\nTo find those who discarded me at birth, I must sneak into Faerie.
\nBut my deceased guardian left more than scars upon my heart. Debts are owed to the madam at the Lair of Lust, and I’m forced to repay them.
\nMy first client is a faerie king who offers to give me everything I’ve always wanted. The king will take me to Faerie if I make a blood vow to marry him. A collection of sweltering meetings fool me into believing his reasons for choosing me to be his queen - a changeling without so much as a name.
\nFor upon my arrival in his kingdom, I receive the answers I’ve craved and the truth behind his motives.
\nMy wonder and infatuation for the king and his wintry realm are snuffed by hatred and fear. Though loathing him is futile when venomous words and spiteful games only prove to excite him. Once again, I’m trapped. This time, with an enemy I cannot hide from. One with enough heat in his eyes to melt my resolve, and enough power at his frosted fingertips to accomplish his sinister goals.
\nTo survive all I’ve discovered, not only will I need to unearth King Florian’s dead heart - I will need to guard my own before he tricks it, too.
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Callum Welsh perfected the art of hating me when we were two kids who believed we’d be forced into marriage.
He thought I wanted it, but my only wish had been for him to leave me alone.
Then one afternoon, he stole my first kiss.
Despite all he’d done, everything changed after that.
As the years passed, our hearts thawed, and he no longer hated me.
In fact, he loved me enough to make me his wife.
Until I ruined everything with one stupid mistake.
That hatred returned in the form of cruel words and even crueler deeds.
But we weren’t kids anymore.
I could handle his brand of venom.
He would be mine again, even if it cost me the remains of my heart.
The king of wolves was more beast than man, more tyrant than king, and so much more than he seemed.
\nRaised to avenge his murdered parents, he’d been trained and conditioned until nothing but violence and hatred lined the walls of his dead heart.
\nFor nearly four years, I’d done all I could to help my kingdom as we faced the wolf king’s unconquerable evil - hardly anything at all. As the only heir to the Gracewood line, I’d been relegated to menial tasks that would keep me and my secrets safe.
\nA chance to do more than fret behind our castle walls arrived when I breached them after overhearing my parents’ plans for my future. Fleeing, I unknowingly raced into a fate we’d all desperately hoped to avoid.
\nBy the time I saw him coming, it was far too late. For my family. For my kingdom.
\nFor my heart. Before I could staunch the bleeding, the king had me under his giant paw, and one wrong move after another caused those razor-sharp claws to sink deeper and deeper beneath my bruised skin.
\nI might have been trapped, naïve, and furious, but I still had a kingdom to save - and a plan. Yet when we collided, the bloodshed, the fear, his atrocities . . . all of it dissolved like stardust upon the night sea.
\nThe stars had mapped out our destiny, but it didn’t matter what they or my heart wanted. I refused to see the enigmatic male, the heartless lost boy with a soul beneath the flesh of a monster. The savage king who’d destroyed everything I loved would fall - even if my heart fell with him.
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I thought he'd always be mine,
even when I was forced to say goodbye.
We were never meant to let go,
but it happened anyway.
Too bad I didn’t know someone was waiting to take my place, or I would've held on a lot tighter.
Two years later, we were exactly where we'd always planned to be.
I'd kept my promise.
He'd forgotten all about his.
Not only had he moved on, but the person he'd moved on with was my best friend, leaving me to begin college with a broken heart.
I guess this is the part where I’m supposed to tell you some other guy stepped in, repaired my shattered pieces, and made me smile again.
This isn't that kind of story.
My heart might have been broken,
but it refused to fall out of love.
Florian is determined to heal my broken body and earn more than my forgiveness.
\nEven if I could forgive him, love is not what I need. I need him to finish what he started - to destroy the father who destroyed me.
\nBut King Molkan is no longer playing the victim.
\nA deadly darkness is creeping across Folkyn.
\nTo stop it, Florian will need to finally overthrow my father, and the journey provides him with ample opportunity to sink deeper than my scars.
\nOur mutual desire for revenge might give him the surrender he craves, but as betrayal and danger haunt our every move, vengeance might just be what divides us.
\nI will reclaim the freedom I once foolishly threw away - even if it means risking a love more powerful than any crown.
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Bad Fruit is an unforgettable portrayal of a toxic mother-daughter relationship and a young woman's search for truth and liberation.
\nJust graduated from high school and waiting to start college at Oxford, Lily lives under the scrutiny of her volatile Singaporean mother, May, and is unable to find kinship with her elusive British father, Charlie. When May suspects that Charlie is having an affair, there’s only one thing that calms May down: a glass of perfectly spoiled orange juice served by Lily, who must always taste it first to make sure it's just right.
\nAs her mother becomes increasingly unhinged, Lily starts to have flashbacks that she knows aren’t her own. Over a sweltering London summer, all semblance of civility and propriety is lost, as Lily begins to unravel the harrowing history that has always cast a shadow on her mother. The horrifying secrets she uncovers will shake her family to its core, culminating in a shattering revelation that will finally set Lily free.
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Lauren Tan has waited for this day for twenty years.
\nThe day she’d receive the letter saying he was out of prison.
\nThe day she’d abandon her husband and three-year-old daughter, leaving her pretend life behind.
\nThe day she’d look into the eyes of Daniel Prior - her first love, mentor and stepfather, the man she had sex with when she was fourteen years old.
\nThe day she’d make him atone for everything.
Ava Bedford’s quiet existence in Nevada shatters when she becomes the sole witness to a brutal murder linked to rising political star Congressman Richard Callahan. Forced into witness protection, Ava is relocated to Cedar Falls, a rugged Wyoming town nestled in the shadow of towering mountains. But even in this peaceful haven, danger lurks - and it’s never far behind.
\nSheriff Lou Harman thrives on the steady rhythm of Cedar Falls, her days spent keeping the peace and seeking solace with her horses. She’s built her life around control and self-reliance, so when Ava arrives with her sharp wit and disarming openness, Lou’s carefully constructed walls begin to crumble. What starts as a duty to protect soon blossoms into an undeniable connection, forcing both women to confront feelings they never expected.
\nBut as shadows from Ava’s past creep closer, trust proves to be as fragile as it is vital. Together, Ava and Lou must decide how much they’re willing to risk for a chance at the life - and love - they’ve both been searching for.
After another brutal night in the ER, Dr. Theodora Brennan wants one thing: sleep. What she gets is a new neighbor, Catherine Matthews, a former concert pianist with a rigid routine and music that bleeds through the walls at two in the morning.
\nWhat begins as a wary standoff becomes something neither of them expects. Catherine has spent years perfecting the distance between herself and the rest of the world. Theo has spent years running toward everyone else's emergencies to avoid her own. In the quiet hours between their apartments, when defenses slip, something shifts.
\nIn the Lonely Hours is an emotionally intimate slow burn about two women who have spent years avoiding the very thing they are now being offered. Wry, tender, and quietly charged, it explores control and vulnerability, the wounds we carry in private, and the unexpected ways people find each other in the dark.
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When Abbie and Tom cross paths traveling home after a night out, their eyes meet across a crowded carriage and their connection is unmistakable.
\nWhat they don't know is that moments later they will both be caught up in an event that will change them forever.
\nIt's one that will bring them together. But it will also tear them apart.
\nA lot can happen in seven seconds. A lot can happen in seven years.
\nCan they find their way back to each other?
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When Hannah picks up a call from an unknown number, she thinks nothing of it - it's just an easygoing American named Davey who misdialed her while calling into a job interview. And when Hannah wishes him luck after clearing up the confusion, she never actually expects to hear from him again.
\nThen she gets a text saying he got the job and he'll be moving to London, and she can't help but smile. Soon their texts become phone calls that turn into video calls, and their friendship becomes a relationship they can't wait to start in earnest once Davey lands in London in a month's time.
\nBut when Hannah goes to meet him at the airport, Davey isn't there - and the reason why changes both of their lives in an instant. With their future together suddenly so uncertain, they don't know what to do but try to move on from each other.
\nThough their chance at love seems lost forever, neither is never far from the other's thoughts. Will fate intervene once more to bring the two together, or will Davey always be the man that Hannah never met?
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This year’s wedding season is coming to an end for flatmates Lexie and Sarah. Sarah sets Lexie one last challenge as part of their summer-long wedding bingo - to kiss the best man, Josh. But while Lexie is looking for Josh, she meets Chris. Their connection is instant, and they can’t stop talking.
\nAs she runs inside to grab them Champagne, she finally finds Josh at the bar and connects with him too. Returning to Chris, he tells her in a matter of moments he’s leaving the UK to go home to New York. They’re reluctant to leave things where they are. The laughter, fun and conversation feels so real, so meant to be.
\nSo Chris makes a split-second decision and invites Lexie to go with him to New York, just for the weekend, just for a few days, just to see. With two men, and one moment to make a life-changing decision, what will Lexie decide? And what if fate has other ideas?
Life hasn’t been easy for Finlay Donovan lately, but it just got a whole lot harder. Her nanny and partner-in-crime, Vero, has been extradited from Virginia to Maryland, where she’s facing criminal charges for a theft she swears she didn’t commit. A prisoner to an ankle bracelet as she awaits her trial, Vero is forced to live with her overbearing mother and nosy aunt. Threatening messages keep arriving on her mother’s door, demanding Vero “turn over the money . . . or else.” And if she doesn’t figure out who really stole her former sorority’s treasury funds, her next home might be a prison cell.
\nBut proving her innocence might be an impossible feat. Vero was the treasurer of her sorority when the money went missing - one of the only people who had access to the cash. And her alibi is a date who ghosted her. With her court date quickly approaching, and her mysterious stalker on her tail, Vero needs to clear her name fast.
\nFinlay decides a trip to Maryland is in order. After all, Vero stood by her through her darkest moments, and Finlay will be damned if she lets her best friend and children’s nanny be convicted for something she didn’t do. She sets off on a mission to sus out the real thief and bring Vero home.
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Finlay Donovan and her nanny/partner-in-crime, Vero, have not always gotten along with Finlay’s elderly neighbor, Mrs. Haggerty, the community busybody and president of the neighborhood watch. But when a dead body is discovered in her backyard, Mrs. Haggerty needs their help. At first a suspect, Mrs. Haggerty is cleared by the police, but her house remains an active crime scene. She has nowhere to go . . . except Finlay’s house, right across the street.
\nFinlay and Vero have no interest in getting involved in another murder case - or sacrificing either of their bedrooms. After all, they’ve dealt with enough murders over the last four months to last a lifetime and they both would much rather share their beds with someone else.
\nWhen the focus of the investigation widens to include Finlay’s ex-husband, Steven, though, Finlay and Vero are left with little choice but to get closer to Mrs. Haggerty and uncover her secrets . . . before the police start digging up theirs. But who will solve the mystery first?
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Finlay Donovan is killing it . . . except, she’s really not. She’s a stressed-out single-mom of two and struggling novelist, Finlay’s life is in chaos: the new book she promised her literary agent isn’t written, her ex-husband fired the nanny without telling her, and this morning she had to send her four-year-old to school with hair duct-taped to her head after an incident with scissors.
\nWhen Finlay is overheard discussing the plot of her new suspense novel with her agent over lunch, she’s mistaken for a contract killer, and inadvertently accepts an offer to dispose of a problem husband in order to make ends meet . . . Soon, Finlay discovers that crime in real life is a lot more difficult than its fictional counterpart, as she becomes tangled in a real-life murder investigation.
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Author and single mom Finlay Donovan has been in messes before―after all, she's a pro at removing bloodstains for various unexpected reasons - but none quite like this. When Finlay and her nanny/partner-in-crime Vero accidentally destroyed a luxury car that they had \"borrowed\" in the process of saving the life of Finlay's ex-husband, the Russian mob did her a favor and bought the car for her. And now Finlay owes them.
\nMob boss Feliks is still running the show from behind bars, and he has a task for Finlay: find and identify a contract killer before the cops do. The problem is, the killer might be an officer themself.
\nLuckily, hot cop Nick has just been tasked with starting up a citizen's police academy, and combined pressure from Finlay's looming book deadline and Feliks is enough to convince Finlay and Vero to get involved. Through firearm training and forensic classes (and some hands-on research with a tempting detective), Finlay and Vero use their time in police academy to sleuth out the real contract killer to free themselves from the mob's clutches - all the while dodging spies, confronting Vero's past, and juggling the daily trials of parenthood.
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Finlay Donovan is - once again - struggling to finish her next novel and keep her head above water as a single mother of two. On the bright side, she has her live-in nanny and confidant Vero to rely on, and the only dead body she's dealt with lately is that of her daughter's pet goldfish.
\nOn the not-so-bright side, someone out there wants her ex-husband, Steven, out of the picture. Permanently. Whatever else Steven may be, he's a good father, but saving him will send her down a rabbit hole of hit-women disguised as soccer moms, and a little bit more involvement with the Russian mob than she'd like.
\nMeanwhile, Vero's keeping secrets, and Detective Nick Anthony seems determined to get back into her life. He may be a hot cop, but Finlay's first priority is preventing her family from sleeping with the fishes . . . and if that means bending a few laws then so be it.
\nWith her next book's deadline looming and an ex-husband to keep alive, Finlay is quickly coming to the end of her rope. She can only hope there isn't a noose at the end of it . . .
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Finlay Donovan and her nanny/partner-in-crime Vero are in sore need of a girls’ weekend away. They plan a trip to Atlantic City, but odds are - seeing as it’s actually a cover story to negotiate a deal with a dangerous loan shark, save Vero’s childhood crush Javi, and hunt down a stolen car - it won’t be all fun and games. When Finlay’s ex-husband Steven and her mother insist on tagging along too, Finlay and Vero suddenly have a few too many meddlesome passengers along for the ride.
\nWithin hours of arriving in their seedy casino hotel, it becomes clear their rescue mission is going to be a bust. Javi’s kidnapper, Marco, refuses to negotiate, demanding payment in full in exchange for Javi’s life. But that’s not all - he insists on knowing the whereabouts of his missing nephew, Ike, who mysteriously disappeared. Unable to confess what really happened to Ike, Finlay and Vero are forced to come up with a new plan: sleuth out the location of Javi and the Aston Martin, then steal them both back.
\nBut when they sneak into the loan shark’s suite to search for clues, they find more than they bargained for - Marco's already dead. They don’t have a clue who murdered him, only that they themselves have a very convincing motive. Then four members of the police department unexpectedly show up in town, also looking for Ike - and after Finlay's night with hot cop Nick at the police academy, he’s a little too eager to keep her close to his side.
\nIf Finlay can juggle a jealous ex-husband, two precocious kids, her mother’s marital issues, a decomposing loan shark, and find Vero’s missing boyfriend, she might get out of Atlantic City in one piece. But will she fold under the pressure and come clean about the things she’s done, or be forced to double down?
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After helping to catch a serial killer last spring, Nearly Boswell isn't looking for her internship in a crime lab to be anything more than an edge on her college applications. She's determined to get out of Sunny View trailer park and prove to herself that she's nothing like her con man father.
\nBut on her first day, a girl from the trailer park turns up dead and an old ally of Nearly's calls in a debt that could jeopardize her future. Then the corpse of a missing person is discovered, buried on a local golf course - and there's a message for Nearly etched into its bones.
\nCould the corpse be her father, who went missing five years ago? Or is her father a murderer?
\nAs a series of violent crimes with cryptic messages strike a little too close to home, her friends think she's being paranoid. And Reece, her recklessly confident boyfriend, is preoccupied with a new girl as part of his informant work with the police.
\nNearly's going to have to risk her future in order to discover the truth about her past in time to stop a killer before he strikes again. And she might have to do it alone.
\n
Nearly Boswell knows how to keep secrets. Living in a DC trailer park, she knows better than to share anything that would make her a target with her classmates. Like her mother's job as an exotic dancer, her obsession with the personal ads, and especially the emotions she can taste when she brushes against someone's skin.
\nBut when a serial killer goes on a killing spree and starts attacking students, leaving cryptic ads in the newspaper that only Nearly can decipher, she confides in the one person she shouldn't trust: the new guy at school - a reformed bad boy working undercover for the police, doing surveillance . . . on her.
\nNearly might be the one person who can put all the clues together, and if she doesn't figure it all out soon - she'll be next.
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As immortal Seasons, Jack and Fleur wielded powerful magic in their roles as a Winter and a Spring. Yet there wasn’t magic strong enough to keep them apart, and they risked everything for their love, for the freedom to live their lives as they choose - together.
\nThat choice came at a cost, and Jack had to sacrifice his Winter magic - and his immortality. Although he’d do anything for Fleur, he can’t deny the emptiness he’s felt since.
\nAnd the world they thought they left behind is still dealing with the fallout of the battle. With Professor Lyon as the new Chronos, Seasons are free to do as they please. But not everyone is happy with the change in leadership. When an old enemy seeks revenge, immense magic runs wild and unchecked, creating chaos everywhere.
\nThrust into the middle of a new war, Jack and Fleur are again forced to choose between their freedom and saving the world from the storm.
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One cold, crisp night, Jack Sommers was faced with a choice - live forever according to the ancient, magical rules of Gaia, or die.
\nJack chose to live, and in exchange, he became a Winter - an immortal physical embodiment of the season on Earth. Every year, he must hunt the Season who comes before him. Summer kills Spring. Autumn kills Summer. Winter kills Autumn. And Spring kills Winter.
\nJack and Fleur, a Winter and a Spring, fall for each other against all odds. To be together, they’ll have to escape the cycle that’s been forcing them apart. But their creator won’t let them go without a fight.
Tori Burns and her family left D.C. for claustrophobic Chaptico, Maryland, after suddenly inheriting a house under mysterious circumstances. That inheritance puts her at odds with the entire town, especially Jesse Slaughter and his family - it’s their generations-old land the Burns have “stolen.” But none of that seems to matter after Tori witnesses a young man claw his way out of a grave under the gnarled oak in her new backyard.
Nathaniel Bishop may not understand what brought him back, but it’s clear to Tori that he hates the Slaughters for what they did to him centuries ago. Wary yet drawn to him by a shared sense of loss, she gives him shelter. But in the wake of his arrival comes a string of troubling events - including the disappearance of Jesse Slaughter’s cousin - that seem to point back to Nathaniel.
As Tori digs for the truth - and slowly begins to fall for Nathaniel - she uncovers something much darker in the tangled branches of the Slaughter family tree. In order to break the centuries-old curse that binds Nathaniel there and discover the true nature of her inheritance, Tori must unravel the Slaughter family’s oldest and most guarded secrets. But the Slaughters want to keep them buried . . . at any cost.
Veronica Ruiz is on the run for the first time in her life - though certainly not the last. After being falsely accused of stealing money from her college sorority, she packs up and heads to her cousin Ramón's apartment, planning to change her name and rebuild start over away from backstabbing girls and university drama (and far, far away from her arrest warrant in Maryland).
\nAt the local bank on the first morning of her new life, it occurs to Vero that she'd be a better bank teller than most of the current employees: she may not have much money, but what little she does have, she knows how to manage. Unfortunately, the only available position is a cleaning job and so, desperate for a fresh start, she takes the bank manager’s offer.
\nBut nothing in Vero's world has ever been simple, so of course shortly after she begins work, she overhears a conversation between her new boss and a security guard: someone who works there has been stealing. Seeing a window of opportunity, Vero sets out to find the identity of the thief, present the evidence, and then push for the perfect job. All of which would be easier if her irresistibly infuriating childhood crush Javi wasn’t living in the same damn town.
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Blake Wilder is plagued with nightmares from her dark and twisted past.
\nFourteen years ago, her entire family was taken from her.
\nHer parents murdered, and her sister taken.
\nAt the age of 22, Blake joined the FBI in hopes of one day discovering the truth behind the mysteries of her own past.
\nThe past few years since joining the FBI, Blake has seen many gruesome and nightmare inducing cases.
\nNow, she faces what may be the most grim and mysterious case of her career.
\nA case that will take her to Briar Glen.
\nBriar Glen is a sleepy and affluent town on the coast of Washington.
\nBut this idyllic seaside town is far from what it appears to be.
\nAs Blake digs deeper into the case to unravel the strange mystery behind the 3 female victims, she finds that little is as it seems.
\nPeople are not who they say they are, and there are killers that lurk in the shadows.
\nThe more she learns about the town, the more she realises that there is an evil darkness that underlies everything in this place.
\nThis is a town built on blood and paid for with human lives.
\nThere's no playing it safe when you’re hunting monsters.
\nAnd there are so many here in Briar Glen that one false move could be Blake's last.
In the glitz and glam of Hollywood, there's a dark underbelly that few outsiders ever get to see. FBI agent Olivia and Brock are about to uncover just how immoral it can be. When the successful and charismatic actor, Landon Brown, disappears without a trace, the duo is called upon to infiltrate the exclusive celebrity circle and get to the truth.
\nAs they navigate the treacherous terrain of the A-listers, they discover that everyone has something to hide. From the powerful producers to the drug-addled stars, each step they take brings more questions and reveals the most shocking scandals. Was Landon Brown simply living a double life? The more Olivia and Brock unveil, the more they learn of the disturbing realities that are hiding behind the dazzling facade of Hollywood.
\nBehind closed doors, anything can happen, and the duo are about to find out just how far people will go to keep their secrets hidden . . .
Fourteen years ago, FBI agent Blake Wilder's life turned upside down.
\nHer parents were murdered, and her sister was taken.
\nAt the age of 22, Blake joined the FBI. Hoping one day she would find out the truth behind her tragic past. Unfortunately, the only lead she had; a man she had known since childhood was found dead.
\nOut of leads to follow, Blake Wilder turned to doing what she does best - her job.
\nIt is then that she stumbles onto a case that promises to bring not just distractions but tragedies.
\nWith a sadistic and enigmatic killer on the loose and just getting started, Blake finds herself steps behind and struggles to catch up as the body count rises and college girls are slain.
\nAs Blake is matching wits with the killer, she stumbles across a mysterious figure from her childhood who could potentially reignite her parents’ case once more.
\nEverything is building to a head and enemies are gathering. Even if Blake survives her encounter with this new, dangerous predator, she might not survive the cost that digging into her own past will certainly bring.
\n\n
Plots, conspiracies, killers, and enemies abound. To get the answers she is so desperately seeking, Blake must be prepared to pay the ultimate price.
Fresh from a grueling joint operation with Spenser Song, FBI agent Blake Wilder continues to find herself being stalked and hunted down by an unknown culprit. The worst part is that they may be after her loved ones as well.
\nStill unable to identify her stalker, Blake meets up with Kit at a coffee shop.
\nThere Kit gives Blake crucial intel about an arms dealer, with advanced weaponry.
\nA dealer that’s on a bloodthirsty path, a path that claimed the life of someone close to Kit. As Blake and her team investigate the case, they uncover a web of aliases, and a cryptic code name with a string of deaths connecting to it.
\nDirty bombs, advanced weaponry, and a trail of silent victims.
\nWho is this elusive arms dealer? As Blake races against time to unmask the truth.
\nThe only thing that is certain is this weapons dealer is on a path of bloodshed.
\nAnd killing is not just a choice, it’s the only code they live by . . .
FBI agent Blake Wilder is orchestrating a sting operation to dismantle the Arias Cartel, a notorious crime syndicate. Shortly after their undercover operation, an informant is found dead.
\nBlake and the team dig into the victim’s life, finding a long list of suspects. Then, a mysterious call threatens her life and her team.
\nBlake is rattled upon learning of the intel and sets out to track down the caller. With their undercover op in jeopardy, they return to the safe house to interrogate a list of suspects and run ballistics.
\nSoon, chaos erupts, and Blake and her team are met with a barrage of gunfire. An unexpected ambush!
\nWho could have tipped them off? With time running against them, the only option they have is kill or be killed.
Jumping off a plane is one thing, but being forced to do so amid a plane crash is something no one puts on their bucket list. After surviving a plane crash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, FBI agent Olivia Knight and a group of survivors are washed ashore onto a desolate island. An island harboring more danger than any of them could have ever imagined.
\nAs they set foot on the sandy shores, Olivia and Brock discover a chilling truth.
\nA masked figure known as the Game Master has brought all the survivors there for the purpose of his twisted games. Games where the unwitting contestants must fight for their lives.
\nForced to play the fatal games with possible enemies hiding at every turn,
\nOlivia and Brock must rely on one another more than ever before.
\nWhat is the true identity of the Game Master and what is the purpose of these games?
\nWith mysteries at every turn and answers fleeting, there is only one thing certain.
\nOn this forsaken island everyone is a pawn, and there’s only one way off it . . .
There are 5 hostages being kept in the small town of St. Michael’s. FBI agent Olivia Knight and her partner Brock must now race against the ticking clock to save the hostages and each other from the Gamemaster’s fatal plans.
\nAfter surviving a plane crash and an island full of deadly traps. It seems there is nothing that Olivia and Brock can’t overcome. But once the Gamemaster’s grand finale is revealed, Olivia and Brock are sent to a town on the outskirts of the U.S. Capital. There they must decipher cryptic clues to find the captive before time runs out. And the Gamemaster has many plans in place to ensure there are no survivors.
While heading home from the newsroom Zoe Fontaine was in a near fatal accident. One that has left her battling anxiety and bouts of paranoia.
\nIn need of a refuge to give her a sense of peace and belonging, she rents a place on the edge of Sapphire Valley. But when strange deaths spring up across town, Zoe’s editor assigns her to investigate the gruesome, bizarre cases.
\nAs Zoe attempts to make sense of the crimes and her own troubled past, she runs into Leo Rowden, a veterinarian who runs a local clinic on the other side of town. Leo is riddled with painful memories and haunting nightmares of his own, struggling with PTSD from his military days and coping with the loss of his fiancée.
\nWhen Leo is asked to assist on the case, they uncover a twisted trail that stretches for miles. Could these incidents be connected to the sinister crimes gripping the town?
Former NSA agent Eve Wicker has faced many hardships and tragedies in life. Needing to be closer to her ailing father, Eve takes a position as her hometown Sheriff. A position she never imagined would open many old wounds from her past.
\nWhen she receives a phone call about a body in the woods, she drives up to the crime scene. There, she grabs the attention of the town’s mountain recluse. Roman Pike, a big burly ex-marine who’s as abrasive as he is brash.
\nEve is no stranger to ego-driven men. What she didn’t foresee, though, is that they would go from butting heads to finding common ground. Unfortunately, the friendship is short-lived when a case from Roman’s past and another murder converge - the murder of his ex-girlfriend.
Twin daughters Raleigh and Eve are excited to graduate from high school. Wanting to celebrate, Raleigh does her best to convince her bookworm sister to go out to a party. That night while their parents were out of town, one daughter went out and one vanished. A decade has passed and to this day what occurred that night at the Valentine's residence has remained a mystery . . .
\nAfter traveling across the Atlantic to save her partner. FBI agent Olivia Knight is on the brink of losing all hope. When they are finally reunited, they are immediately brought onto a new case. A decade old cold case, involving Eve Smith. A model student, and a good obedient child. As Olivia and Brock weed out the lies and deception within the case. They soon come to the realisation that the truth behind this family is not as it seems.
After the case of the woman next door, the couple has finally gotten their “love nest” in order, and all seems well, until they find themselves in the midst of a grand heist. One of the largest pink diamonds in the world vanishes, replaced by a remarkably convincing fake.
\nWhile Olivia goes undercover to investigate all the employees, Brock does his part to help the woman he loves solve the time-sensitive case. Unfortunately, time is running out, and the missing diamond is about to make international news. News that could spark political tension with India.
\nTo add to the chaos, events take a deadly turn when an undercover janitor is found murdered. With every clue, Olivia uncovers jaw-dropping twists. It seems the grand heist might come at a grandiose price.
When an armored car heist turns into a bloody and grisly crime scene. Federal agent Blake Wilder is sent to Philadelphia to track down the culprits. But there’s more to this militantly precise and violent crew than meets the eye . . .
\nAs the death count rises and the case takes an even more violent turn, it becomes clear that there is more to these robberies than initially believed. The crew is eerily good, and after repeatedly failing to bring them down Blake faces one last chance to stop them from pulling off the heist of the century.
\nHaving to juggle her attention between a psychopath that has fixated all their attention on her and one of the biggest cases of her career.
\nBlake faces the impossible task of keeping from being a victim herself.
How do you solve an unsolvable string of robberies that leaves a bloody trail of murder and mayhem?
\nFBI agent Blake Wilder is all too familiar with unsolved cases. Plagued by the mysterious tragedies that destroyed her family. She made it her life mission to solve crime and punish the evil doers in this world.
\nThis time Blake takes on an unsolved case from her early career, one that spans half a decade. But as she and her team dive further into the investigation, they uncover another string of shocking savage crimes that are claiming the lives of innocent women.
\nAs they delve into their case, the coincidences continue to mount until the truth cannot be denied and Blake realizes that they have uncovered something far more complex and disturbing than she had ever imagined. The clock is ticking and Blake must solve this case and make an arrest, or risk losing the killers and thieves once again. And as Blake races to solve the case, a note from someone that knew her parents has the mystery of Blake’s deadly and dangerous past catching up to her. There are shadows she’s unaware of moving behind the scenes. Pieces being moved about on the board, and a force that’s frightening in its scope being brought to bear against her.
When a deadly bomb goes off in a small town outside of Dallas, FBI agent Blake Wilder and her team are called to the case.
\nCould this crime be a case of terrorism or is it murder disguised within a massive disaster? Soon Blake's unit discovers a plot that's far more complex.
\nAnd when they unearth a revenge plot spurred on by a massive conspiracy.
\nThe layers and nuances to the bomber's plot reveal a story that puts Blake in a position she's never been before . . . morally conflicted and sympathizing with the criminal.
\nDoes adversity and pain create the monster? Or does it simply allow a monster that already exists to reveal its true nature?
\nThe countdown has begun, and this time many lives are on the line, even Blake's . . .
When a family of 4 goes missing seemingly in the dead of night, Blake Wilder and her team are called to find the young family and determine the reason for their sudden disappearance.
\nChange is the only constant in life. It’s a lesson FBI Agent Blake Wilder is having to learn all over again. Summoned to DC by a Bureau legend, Blake is excited, imagining big things on the horizon for her team. That excitement though, is quickly dashed as her entire world is instead, turned upside down and she’s left to pick up all the pieces.
\nA reorganisation within the Bureau has stripped Blake of her command and the unit she’d given her blood, sweat, and tears to build, turned over to somebody else. In this new role though, she is given a case that takes her team to Colorado to investigate a missing persons case.
\nThere she finds that nothing is as it seems. Blake is having to adjust to this new world and her new team members as she finds herself caught up in a web of international intrigue, espionage, and cold-blooded murder.
\nNew enemies rise, and old adversaries come to the forefront as Blake and her team race to find a man and his family being hunted by a ruthless organization. The sands of the world are shifting beneath her feet. Nobody and nothing is what she believes and Blake doesn’t know who to trust.
\nWith the lives of the young family on the line, Blake juggles the danger that surrounds her, the changes that she faces, and the perplexing mysteries regarding what happened that night at The House on the Hill.
FBI agent Olivia Knight and her partner, Brock, are ready to celebrate Valentine’s Day in style. But when a home invasion turns deadly and a housewife is found in the kitchen with multiple stab wounds. The duo is called to an upscale neighborhood to track down the assailant before more bodies drop.
\nWas this a crime of passion and was the home invasion simply a ruse? But when more housewives are found murdered with multiple stab wounds, it seems that there could be a potential serial killer on the loose.
\nWith possible suspects ranging from the husbands who may have been having affairs to even the babysitter. As more victims are found, the killer’s motivation is seemingly far more twisted and convoluted than Olivia could have ever imagined.
FBI agent Blake Wilder is a veteran in her field. From thieves, crooks, killers, to evil doers, Blake and her team have successfully hunted them all down, leaving no stone unturned. When Agent Thomas Hickley disappears and another undercover Fed vanishes, it sends shock waves throughout the Bureau.
\nBlake and her team are asked to tackle this sensitive case, which leaves the Bureau scrambling at every point. After diving headfirst into the investigation, Blake hits a brick wall, one that almost knocks her out.
\nAs the case unfolds, a body is discovered, and the Bureau mourns the loss of its agent, forcing Blake to wonder if there’s more to life than fighting crime. While attempting to make sense of it all, the case takes several brutal turns, and Blake finds herself changing course.
It should be the season of joy, but one inmate has a secret he's taking to the grave . . .
\nFBI agent Blake Wilder is basking in the holiday spirit.
\nWhen she receives a phone call from an old high school friend regarding a murder case. She reluctantly agrees to visit him in prison. There he begs her to investigate his case to prove his innocence.
\nHe is currently serving a life sentence for a murder he claims he did not commit.
\nWhile glossing over his case, Blake notices that there are potential discrepancies in the original investigation. It seems her friend, the inmate, has been keeping secrets from her. And as Blake dives deeper into the case, she finds a trail of illicit affairs, abuse, incompetence, and a shocking twist that no one saw coming.
\nLust, pride, envy, deception, and murder. Some have secrets they’d kill for. This inmate has a secret worth taking to the grave.
When a teen is found dead, and her body displayed in a ritualistic killing, FBI agent Olivia Knight is called to the town of Hollow Nest.
\nFall marks the beginning of the town’s many festivities, and no town celebrates Halloween quite like Hollow Nest. With the brutal death of a teen girl dressed in a black cat costume sparking many strange speculation and rumors. It’s up to Olivia and Brock to discern the truth and solve one of the most bizarre cases yet.
\nIn Hollow Nest, Halloween will never be the same.
At a secure black site location, Blake begins to comb through the clues. While Rick, Paige, and Mo post up at the senator’s house. As Blake searches through the missing girl’s room, a stash of hidden items linked to local nightclubs, expensive trinkets, and photos of Ashley are found.
\nThe teen seems to be living a double life.
\nUpon tracing the young girl’s steps the team is led down a rabbit hole full of illicit deeds. Unexpectedly, the case takes a more urgent turn when multiple young girls are taken in the same manner as Ashley.
After saving her grandmother and solving the Orchard Grove case, Zoe finally settles into her apartment with her dog Max. But her peace is short-lived.
\nChaos invades her work life when her editor, Rick, becomes erratic, unpredictable, and begins chasing mysterious leads.
\nZoe finds herself longing for the rigors of D.C. and her old job at the Washington Express, until Rick suddenly vanishes.
\nThe cryptic clues connected to his disappearance lead Zoe out of Sapphire Valley and into Charleston, where she discovers a ransacked hotel room, blood on the floor, and no signs of Rick.
\nWith the help of her colleagues, Zoe uncovers new clues that point to a familiar enemy, Linmans.
\nAs secrets from Rick’s past begin to be revealed, Zoe moves closer to the truth, but begins to wonder if she's ready to dive into that world again.
\nWith time running out, she makes a final attempt to find Rick, only to find herself caught in the crossfires.
Zoe Fontaine has spent her life running. After a near-death experience, she found herself on the run again. This time, back to the familiar.
\nWhen she gets caught up in a case, the evidence points to her sister, Judy Fontaine. Zoe will do anything in her power to help Judy. But her sister has spent most of her adult life fabricating lies. This time, Judy's lies and deception have gone too far.
\nZoe never thought that her sister would be capable of murder. But ever since Judy came out of rehab, things haven’t been the same. No one trusts Judy, and her lies have proven detrimental to those around her. And the secrets Judy carries come at a deadly cost to even those in Zoe's life.
In a dark room, aboard a large cargo ship, a man sits shackled in place.
\nAs time passes his situation grows far more desperate.
\nUnbeknownst to him, his partner Olivia Knight has traveled across the Atlantic to a small coastal town.
\nThere in Newhaven, England all is seemingly idyllic. But with the arrival of agent Knight, that facade is shown to be simply a disguise.
\nWhen a man she recognises turns up dead with a head-shot wound outside his home, Olivia finds herself amid the largest conspiracy of her career.
\nAs she bridges the potential connection of Brock’s shocking background to his kidnapping and the murder in the seaside town.
\nShe soon realises she must watch her back and trust no one.
Sheriff Eve Wicker never expected the biggest mystery of her past would land on her doorstep years later. After her mother’s death, Eve left the small-town and joined the NSA. Only to find herself back in Chesapeake Valley. While she attempts to juggle her sheriff duties and help her ailing father. She finds herself colliding with the town brute, a man with a dark and traumatic past.
\nEve receives an urgent call about a shocking case. A foster home that has been burned down with no survivors. The horrific news sends shockwaves through the once semi-peaceful little town. Who would commit such a cruel act, especially towards children? As Eve tackles the case, her past demons collide with the present.
\nFalse leads, a house full of lies, and the most deplorable crime.
\nBut truth and righteousness will always prevail. With the fires of the wicked wreaking havoc without prejudice. The flame of the righteous fosters life and herds evil to face judgement.
Blake Wilder lives with reoccurring nightmares from her grim and mysterious past.
\nFourteen years ago, her entire family was taken from her.
\nHer parents murdered, and her sister taken.
\nAt the age of 22, Blake joined the FBI in hopes of one day discovering the truth behind the mysteries of her own past.
\nSince joining the Bureau, Blake has witnessed and solved many gruesome and terrible cases. Yet, the one case that changed the course of her life seems to have a way of evading the light.
\nWhen a new clue about her past is uncovered, and she finds that the sister she lost hope in ever finding might be alive. For the first time, Blake feels hopeful.
\nBut with the organization that murdered her parents after her, and powerful figures aligning against her. Blake has only one choice, to face her trauma and the monsters head on.
\nAs she’s dealing with that, SPD Deputy Chief Torres is on a warpath, seemingly willing to stop at nothing to indict Blake for murder.
\nAnd with a new enemy entering the ring—one who is more dangerous than everybody else. The Đavole. A mysterious assassin who is legendary and has never failed to eliminate a target.
\nThe only question is… Who is he in town to kill?
\nWith more questions than answers about her sister’s return from the dead and a host of enemies at the gates looking to destroy her career or outright kill her, Blake doesn’t know where to turn, or who she can turn to.
\nWith so many uncertainties in the air.
\nThe only thing Blake can be certain of is that there is no where that’s safe when you're being hunted down by monsters.
FBI agent Olivia Knight has seen the realities of what happens when nightmares come to life.
\nWhen she’s called to investigate a case of an apparent murder-suicide in an affluent community.
\nShe finds herself buried by the unexplainable questions that arise regarding the couple's seemingly perfect life.
\nWhen a deep dive into the life of the philanthropic couple leads to a revelation to a potential double life.
\nOlivia finds herself wondering if their hidden life finally caught up to them . . .
\nThey say the purest form of good in this world is love.
\nBut what happens if the love you feel is all a lie?
\nWhat happens when the thing you love the most turns into a monster that breaks you?
\nWith her own romantic life in shambles, Olivia begins to wonder what price one is willing to pay for love?
\nAnd what is the truth behind this case of love, lies, and suicide?
When a congressman's daughter goes missing, FBI agent Blake Wilder and her team are sent to Iowa to find the missing girl.
\nAlready dealing with a mysterious figure who keeps sending her body parts, now Blake finds herself under attack from within her own unit. Against the backdrop of an impending OPR review, Blake and her Black Cell team head to Iowa to search for Teagan Stills, the missing daughter of Congressman Elton Stills, at the behest of the Director of the FBI himself.
\nWhen they touch down in the Hawkeye state though, Blake gets caught up in a mystery unlike anything she has ever encountered before. With a list of suspects that’s a who’s who of the D.C. elites, Blake’s team uncovers evidence that the Congressman’s daughter has been living a secret double-life. A life that not even her father had a clue existed. As they are hit by a host of unsavory revelations, the focus of the investigation turns on those closest to her.
\n\n
As Blake slowly starts to unravel the case, she discovers a twisted and sordid tale that leaves her shaken.
\n\n
They say the truth will set you free, or in this case . . . it might just kill you.
To many that know her, FBI agent Blake Wilder is a pillar for truth and the dealer of justice.
\nWhen faced with threats and adversity, you can count on her to continue to fight for what is right. With her sister Kit clinging to life after being attacked, Blake and her team are called away to solve a case in North Dakota.
\nTeenage girls from prominent families are going missing and the local Sheriff is at a loss to understand who’s taking them - or why. As Blake and her team start investigating, they find themselves caught up in a power struggle between the town’s locals and a community of indigenous people.
\nBut when the girls start turning up dead and the pressure to find the killer starts ramping up, Blake finds herself peeling back the layers of a monstrous series of murders. And the deeper they go down that rabbit hole, the more incomprehensible it gets.
\nAs heroes are unmasked and they’re proven to be the monsters that lurk in the shadows hunting children, a small town is left horrified and shocked. It’s a case that will leave scars on everybody involved and will change them all.
After the loss of her family, FBI agent Blake Wilder felt like an empty vessel.
\nBut no matter the obstacles she faced, the one thing that always gave her strength was her desire for finding the truth and seeking justice.
\nConsumed by the flame of destruction, one that seems determined to suck all the happiness out of her life. Blake set her sights on a new case.
\nA case involving the sudden and bizarre disappearance of Valerie Osweiler.
\nA high profile attorney that disappeared mysteriously on her way to the airport.
\nWith the last known footage of her getting off an Uber, then vanishing without a trace.
\nAs Blake dives deeper into the case, more questions arise, and she finds that there may be more to the woman than meets the eye.
\nThe spark has been ignited. And the beast is ready to devour everything in its path.
\nThere’s no running. There’s no hiding.
\nThe targets are set, and the inferno is prepared to destroy everything in sight.
There’s been a mass shooting with over 23 casualties in Atlanta. FBI agent Blake Wilder and her team are called by D.C. Headquarters to spearhead the case. Upon their arrival to the crime scene, they are greeted with hostility by the field officers present.
\nUnfazed by the tension, Blake begins to sort through the identities of many victims, most of them high profiled lawyers. While attempting to identify a motive, the team sorts through the deceased lawyers' case files.
\nSoon after, Blake realises that the footage and evidence regarding this case has gone missing. And this case now leads to a dead end. All is seemingly hopeless until a crucial lead points to one undeniable truth.
Danger and mayhem has a way of following Olivia Knight everywhere she turns. As an FBI agent, those are the perks that arise in her line of duty. But unfortunately for Agent Knight, her place of refuge becomes a crime scene. She realises that nowhere is safe.
\nAnd now, with her trusted partner Brock headed off on another case, it's time for her to ride solo. That is until a new case lands on her lap. With the help of her lifelong friend, Emily.
\nThey board the Astoria, with the hope of potentially uncovering clues on a case of massive fraud and deception by a corporation. But while searching for answers in the company of extravagant glamour and vast wealth.
\nA beautiful young woman, the girlfriend of the billionaire host winds up dead.
\nSoon even more hysteria fills the yacht as the engine of the ship stops.
\nAnd the guests and crew find themselves stranded with a killer on the loose.
\nIt's a race to the clock to find the killer before the trail of evidence disappears, or worse: before they strike again.
FBI agent Olivia Knight has seen her fair share of shocking and gruesome cases.
\nSo much so that she trained herself to expect the unexpected.
\nBut when she is called onto a case in a sleepy small-town of Beacon Hill.
\nA case involving a brutal stabbing with the words . . .
\n“Death is inescapable. I am your penance.”, written in blood.
\nOlivia finds herself sleepless and unable to shake off the chilling words of a bloodthirsty killer.
\nAfter a second victim is found. The case takes another bizarre turn.
\nWhat are the connections between both victims?
\nWhat is the killer’s true motive?
\nAnd most importantly who will be next?
\nWhen Olivia gets a personal threat from a cloaked man that calls himself “The Messenger”, she realises that she is being watched.
\nLives are on the line. A deranged killer is on the loose.
\nWill Olivia be able to save herself and keep the body count from rising?
\n\n
In the small town of Beacon Hill, death may be your only escape . . .
For FBI agent Olivia Knight that perfect place is Belle Grove, a charming small town in Northern Virginia, a place hidden by lush greenery and away from the hustle and bustle of the big city.
\nThis quaint town checked all of Olivia’s boxes and it seemed to be the perfect place to give her the simple, quiet home life that she desperately craved.
\nA home life away from the Bureau, away from the sounds of sirens.
\nAnd most importantly, away from the grim nature of her job.
\nSo, what sort of place does Olivia call home?
\nWell, in a cozy cabin, nestled in the woods.
\nWhen Olivia finds a young girl, that is malnourished and disheveled outside her home.
\nShe is thrown into a disturbing and puzzling case.
\nIn order to catch the culprit and find the missing children in her new hometown.
\nOlivia must dive deep into the twisted minds of a deranged serial kidnapper,
\nand crack an almost impossible case.
\nWith no leads in sight, Olivia must rely on more than just her wit.
\nWith the help of Brock, her new partner. A guy that’s although competent, is the exact opposite of her in every way.
\nShe must act fast to catch the person terrorizing the once serene town.
Within a short period of time FBI agent Blake Wilder has had to overcome many life altering events. From the relief of discovering the truth of her past and having the reunion she had always dreamed of.
\nTo becoming suffocated by the feelings of grief and failure, feelings that nearly resulted in her death.
\nSafe to say, Blake Wilder is far from looking forward to the festivities to come.
\nBlake and her team are summoned to a small town in northern Washington to investigate the mysterious death of a patient at Whitehorn.
\nA case with no prints and no evidence that anyone had entered the victim’s room the night of her death.
\nA strangely perplexing and unfathomable death. And the patients and staff at Whitehorn believe that it was the spirit of the woman’s boyfriend - - a man she’d killed - coming back from the grave to have his revenge.
\nWhen Blake discovers that the victim is not what she appears to be and the case takes a more shocking turn. Blake finds herself in an inescapable fight, a fight of the ghosts of the girl’s past and Blake’s very own ghosts of present and future to come.
Sixteen years ago, young Blake Wilder arrived home to find her parents brutally murdered. As the devastated Blake frantically searched her house for her baby sister. She soon realised the young girl was missing, nowhere to be found. Now no longer a helpless child, agent Wilder must fight mysterious forces that are willing to do whatever it takes to keep her from the answers and revenge she’s been searching for.
\nWith pieces moving in the background that would put Blake's life and the lives of the people around her in jeopardy. Blake is suddenly assigned to investigate a series of brutal murders the likes of which she's never seen before. Murders that are being live streamed to a growing audience who seem thirsty for the blood and violence the killer is inflicting upon his victims.
\nThe case leads Blake and her team on a twisted tale of revenge as convoluted as it is disturbing. As they follow the clues, they find a disparate trail of pieces and must find a way to connect them all together before the next murder is broadcast to the world.
\nAnd moving in the background of their investigation is the looming confrontation with The Thirteen. Blake must prepare herself for a final conflict with the organization that stole her family. That stole her childhood.
\nEverything has led to this . . . and everything will end here.
FBI agent Blake Wilder has spent her best years taking down the most depraved souls. Even though she has seen great evil, it has not taken away the sparks of hope she has. Hope that helps her endure and continue the fight for the good guys.
\nWhen she receives a call from a detective in New Orleans regarding multiple missing women, she faces a perplexing case with no bodies, spanning multiple decades. The only clues to the potential crimes are shoes bound with a red bow on the beds of female victims, ones who are never heard from again.
\nUpon arrival in the vibrant city, she is met with both appreciation and scorn by the police precinct. Unfazed by the unwelcoming environment, Blake searches for clues to find the missing women. From the swamplands to the marshlands, there are no concrete clues to the disappearances. It seems the perp has committed a series of perfect crimes. With no trails or even body parts to go on, the red ribbon case feels like an unsolvable riddle. One that only leads to dead ends and defeat.
After an action-packed year of fighting crime, FBI Agent Olivia Knight is ready for a relaxing getaway with her partner Brock.
\nBut trouble has a way of finding her everywhere . . .
\nHer arrival at the ski lodge is welcomed by chaos with the death of a female guest.
\nAnd when a blizzard hits the lodge, trapping all inside, another death sends panic and fear throughout the inn.
\nIs there a serial killer on the loose or is something else sinister at play?
\nBodies are piling up, and everyone’s a potential culprit.
\nWhatever you do, don’t find yourself locked in a room with the killer . . .
Fourteen years ago, Blake Wilder's life turned into one of tragedy.
\nIn an instant she lost her family... Her parents murdered, and her sister taken.
\nAt the age of 22, Blake joined the FBI in hopes of discovering the truth behind the mysteries of her past.
\nNow, she is called to a homicide scene involving a brutal murder of a male victim.
\nBut, what started out as a simple case turns into one that involves a sadistic killer that preys on young women.
\nAnd the further Blake dives into the case the more she realizes that the killer has a dark and twisted fantasy life of romance and courtship.
\nAnd with his eighth victim already in his grasp, it’s up to her to get into the man's head and figure him out before the clock runs out on this girl and he moves onto his ninth victim.
With the dissolution of the Black Cell unit. It seems that the change that FBI agent Blake Wilder dreaded has been forced upon her.
\nStill reeling from the aftermath of the shakeup, Blake packs up and attempts to adjust to her new reality. Upon arrival at the new office, the team receives an alert about escaped convicts from a prison transport traveling from Indiana.
\nAt the scene of the crime, the team finds one dead guard and a ton of bullet casings. Three inmates have escaped, and the rest of the prisoners in the transport have been rounded up. While searching for the missing convicts, the team follows a trail of car-jackings, murders, and full-blown chaos. What’s the connection between the prisoners and who were the masked men that helped them escape?
FBI agent Olivia Knight and her partner Brock have had better days. While investigating a missing persons case in the Hamptons, they get a new assignment.
\nMultiple teens have gone missing in a small coastal town in South Carolina.
\nInitial reports were that the teens ran from their troubled home life. Soon, the runaways case takes an alarming turn, as a disturbing pattern begins to form. A possible connection between each teen and their disappearance emerges. Now, Olivia and Brock find themselves with far more questions than answers.
\nIs there some sort of a runaway pact? Or is something far more depraved at work? In Olivia’s world, the pursuit of justice triumphs everything, even romantic relationships. Some say the larger the smile, the more wicked the intent. One thing for certain, you can run and you can hide, but the time for justice is near.
Finally feeling a sense of peace and belonging, Zoe goes on a hike with Leo and her dog in Sapphire Valley. But when she receives news of her feisty grandmother’s unexpected return to town, it seems Zoe's life is about to get more colorful.
\nUpon her grandmother’s arrival at the Orchard Grove Nursing Home, things take a drastic turn. When a resident dies, the quiet life there turns chaotic. The town sheriff dismisses it as natural causes, until more residents begin dying.
\nUsing Leo’s military contacts, Zoe uncovers a dark past behind the deaths, and a terrible betrayal. One that could have sparked a murderous desire for revenge.
\nWith her loyal dog by her side, Zoe soon finds herself facing dangers she never anticipated.
After two hikers go missing in a snowstorm, Sheriff Eve Wicker is fighting against all odds to bring them to safety. When she gets a phone call from her boss that leaves her rattled. She heads to the office to discuss a past case with Jamison.
\nWhile the storm brews both outside and in her life, the rescue party amidst the dangerous blizzard leads Eve to a cabin. The hidden cabin is a blood-soaked crime scene, with the dead body of one of the hikers inside.
\nIt seems a killer with an axe got to one of them first.
\nEach clue pulls on threads that leads her to the most shocking revelation. Deadly storms, dangerous terrain, and a murderer with an axe to grind. The hidden cabin is harboring many deadly secrets.
For FBI agent Blake Wilder, the past is inescapable. And the one lead she had, regarding the mysteries of her past, only led to dead bodies and dead ends.
\nWhen Blake is assigned a new case, they find that their victim has been stuffed into a barrel - in pieces.
\nTheir search for the killer propels them onto a grim and twisted path filled with confusion and false leads.
\nAnd for the first time in her career, Blake fears that she may not be able to solve this gruesome case.
\nBut as they begin to unravel the knots of this mystery, they soon realize that everything they thought they knew could not be further from the truth. The stakes are becoming increasingly high for Blake as she delves into her past.
\nPowerful forces are in play and those closest to her may not be who they claim to be.
\nHer enemies are closing in and Blake doesn’t know who she can trust.
\nThe man in the barrel’s past cost him his life and Blake finds herself wondering if hers will too.
\nUnknown to Blake, the key to solving the case of her past and the case of the body in the barrel is finding out one truth.
\nThe truth of the secret she kept...
Chesapeake Valley is a charming town hiding many secrets. Sheriff Eve Wicker has spent years trying to unearth one of its dark mysteries. The truth behind her mother’s death. After moving back to her hometown, she found herself ensnared in a web of conspiracies, from serial killers to child trafficking networks.
\nWhen a beloved member of the community, Martha Hawthorne is found dead in her home, the case is quickly ruled as one of natural causes. Months later, Amy Hawthorne, her granddaughter, inherits the Hawthorne home.
\nNot long after her move, she is found dead in a gruesome manner. Prior to Amy’s death, she was being stalked and harassed by the town’s “witch”. She even reached out to the town pastor to exorcise the home, after multiple “supernatural” occurrences.Hoping to get to the bottom of the Hawthorne case, before the wild theories surrounding their death spread like wildfire, Eve begins to unravel a thread, leading to a great scandal.
Overwhelmed by their growing caseload, FBI Agent Blake Wilder and her team search for a new case officer. But their interview is abruptly interrupted by a shocking phone call:
\nThere’s been an attempt on Fish’s life, and now he’s in the hospital in a coma.
\nDevastated by the news, Blake drops everything to track down the shooter. Despite being reminded that she has no jurisdiction over the case, Blake uses her connection with Pax Arrington to gain access to the Seattle PD investigation.
\nSurveillance footage reveals a man in a black SUV. After combing through the detective notes, Blake wonders . . . Could this be linked to Fish’s dangerous crime boss past? With enemies from his past and present wishing him dead, Blake’s list of suspects keeps growing.
\nLives hang by a thread, and this shot in the dark could lead to devastating consequences.
After a string of break-ins, Eve is at her wits' end trying to track down the perpetrator.
\nWhen FBI agent Henry Beech shows up at the station, it feels as though all hell has broken loose in the once peaceful town.
\nThe case takes a drastic turn when these break ins are tied to a highly viral and contagious illness, one that has swept through the town like a sickening storm.
\nWith quarantine looming and panic and paranoia hitting the street, it’s evident no one is safe.
\nThe lives of the entire town now depend on catching the culprit behind this silent enemy, one with massive consequences.
\nAmid the growing chaos, Roman's feelings for Sheriff Eve blossom, causing even more turmoil in her already complicated life.
While Blake investigates the victims' lives, a multitude of discrepancies arise. Could there be two perpetrators with similar methods?
\nAfter tracing a connection among the first four female victims,
\nBlake goes to a local farmer’s market where each woman made a purchase. While working on this case, she receives intel about more movement in the Arias Cartel.
\nWith many moving parts in Blake's life,
\nit seems the case of the silent hunt may set Blake on a dangerous and twisted path.
After the bodies of six young girls were discovered in a shipping container that had been dumped in a scrapyard, FBI agent Blake Wilder is summoned onto the horrific scene. A closer inspection of the bodies reveals strange markings, similar to Spenser's victims in Sweetwater Falls.
\nCould it be the markings used by the ruthless Yokai Syndicate, led by the shadowy figure called Enenra? The Syndicate responsible for the disappearance and death of hundreds of young girls over the years.
\nFearing blood in the streets and containers full of young girls’ bodies popping up everywhere, Blake reluctantly turns to her old ally, Fish, for help.
\nAs betrayal and deceit surrounds her at every turn, Blake isn’t sure who she can trust. With the help of her former colleague Spenser Song, and Caitlin Tanaka will Blake be able to put an end to The Syndicate’s sadistic crimes for good?
\nIt seems to be reunion time in the Seattle field office for Blake Wilder. Unfortunately, with death knocking on their doorstep the reunion may be short lived . . .
When a series of bombings rock the Pacific Northwest, FBI Agent Blake Wilder leaps into action. The investigation though, brings her back into contact with an ATF agent she has clashed violently with in the past.
\nTheir theories clash as hard as their personalities and Blake opts to run her own concurrent investigation. What she uncovers is a twisted tale twenty years in the making. The story, as they uncover it, is full of twists, turns, and explosive revelations. All the while, Blake’s renewed rivalry with ATF Agent Winslow is threatening to derail everything.
\nThe bombs continue to explode, and the bodies continue to mount as Blake races to find the killer before he’s able to kill anybody else. At the same time, she’s forced to fend off the vengeful attacks coming from within the law enforcement community itself as well as the strife within her own team.
\nOld enemies resurface and new ones lurk in the shadows, waiting for their moment to step forward and strike. The knives are out, and Blake must dodge them all to keep a serial bomber from burning the city to the ground.
After finally closing the chapter of Blake’s painful past.
\nFBI agent Blake Wilder and her team are sent to Las Vegas where two young women have gone missing after a night out.
\nBoth are socialites, with well-earned reputations as party girls.
\nOne of the women is the daughter of Dylan Powers, a wealthy tech mogul, casino owner, and power player in Sin City politics.
\nUnfortunately, the list of people who would love to take Powers down is longer than the Vegas Strip itself.
\nAnd as Blake digs deeper into the case, she finds herself on a troublesome path of betrayal and false trails that leads to a grisly death.
Blake Wilder has captured many dangerous criminals over the years. When a familiar case lands on her lap, she could have never imagined the horrors that would follow.
\nA serial killer with a chillingly familiar pattern resurfaces, and it will take all her wit and power to ensure that the culprit never sees the light of day again. As the case and the body count mount, it becomes apparent that he’s not just a step ahead of Blake: he’s a shadow in the darkness, a relentless tormentor who’s watching her every move.
\nWhile the killer continues to elude and taunt Blake at every turn. It seems only a matter of time before she either captures the predator or becomes prey herself.
It’s been weeks since a shocking event sent the Federal Agency into panic. FBI agent Olivia and Brock are left broken, fighting to overcome the grief. Amidst the agency’s chaos, they find a welcoming distraction in the form of a family reunion.
\nIt's at a secluded lake house where Olivia would visit as a child with her family. The area is quiet, and the town locals are as friendly as they come. Her cousin Jean is hopeful that the weekend will bring some cheer that the couple desperately needs.
\nIt's all laughter and joy the first night as the family enjoy dinner and catch up with one another. But when arguments ensue between family members. Olivia is soon reminded of why she prefers to avoid family events.
\nThe next morning, renewed with a spirit of optimism, Olivia takes Brock hiking on her favorite trail. In the forest, she stumbles upon one of her worst nightmares. Her family member's dead body.
This is a story about an ordinary woman, a mother of two.
\nTo most women, to most mothers, her life is relatable in every way.
\nExcept behind closed doors her truth comes with unimaginable consequences.
\nAmid a night of fun and festivities, Isabella Walker found herself alone with a bold masked man at her front door.
\nUnable to fight off her would-be abductor, the mother of two, soon found herself a victim of an extraordinary and grim circumstance.
\nFBI agent Olivia Knight has investigated her fair share of bizarre cases.
\nWhen she and Brock are called to the suburbs of Hidden Hills to investigate a strange abduction. Olivia quickly realizes that there’s more to this case than a mere kidnapping.
\nWhy was Isabella Walker targeted?
\nIs there more to this housewife and mother than meets the eyes?
\nWhat is the truth behind the missing pieces of her past?
\nAs more questions arise and more questions remain unanswered.
\nOlivia finds that to solve this case, to uncover the truth,
\nshe’ll have to go undercover and face the Grim Reaper himself.
\nUnfortunately, behind closed doors there are secrets that are worth taking to the grave . . .
FBI agent Olivia Knight has faced the most peculiar cases. At times, it has left her borderline catatonic.
\nWhen she and Brock move into their new apartment, it's as if the love nest of their dreams has truly become their new reality. But upon a surprise visit from the woman next door, their bubble of bliss feels as though it's teetering on the brink of chaos.
\nWho is the woman next door? Her visits become frequent, until one day she's gone.
Hannah Wells has finally found someone who turns her on. But while she might be confident in every other area of her life, she's carting around a full set of baggage when it comes to sex and seduction. If she wants to get her crush's attention, she'll have to step out of her comfort zone and make him take notice . . . even if it means tutoring the annoying, childish, cocky captain of the hockey team in exchange for a pretend date.
\n. . . and it's going to be oh so good.
\nAll Garrett Graham has ever wanted is to play professional hockey after graduation, but his plummeting GPA is threatening everything he's worked so hard for. If helping a sarcastic brunette make another guy jealous will help him secure his position on the team, he's all for it. But when one unexpected kiss leads to the wildest sex of both their lives, it doesn't take long for Garrett to realise that pretend isn't going to cut it. Now he just has to convince Hannah that the man she wants looks a lot like him.
\n
College senior Sabrina James has her whole future planned out: graduate from college, kick butt in law school, and land a high-paying job at a cut-throat firm. Her path to escaping her shameful past certainly doesn't include a gorgeous hockey player who believes in love at first sight. One night of sizzling heat and surprising tenderness is all she's willing to give John Tucker, but sometimes, one night is all it takes for your entire life to change.
\nBut the game just got a whole lot more complicated . . .
\nTucker believes being a team player is as important as being the star. On the ice, he's fine staying out of the spotlight, but when it comes to becoming a daddy at the age of twenty-two, he refuses to be a bench warmer. It doesn't hurt that the soon-to-be mother of his child is beautiful, whip-smart, and keeps him on his toes. The problem is, Sabrina's heart is locked up tight, and the fiery brunette is too stubborn to accept his help. If he wants a life with the woman of his dreams, he'll have to convince her that some goals can only be made with an assist . . .
\n
College junior John Logan can get any girl he wants. For this hockey star, life is a parade of parties and hook-ups, but behind his killer grins and easygoing charm, he hides growing despair about the dead-end road he'll be forced to walk after graduation. A sexy encounter with freshman Grace Ivers is just the distraction he needs, but when a thoughtless mistake pushes her away, Logan plans to spend his final year proving to her that he's worth a second chance.
\nNow he's going to need to up his game . . .
\nAfter a less than stellar freshman year, Grace is back at Briar University, older, wiser, and so over the arrogant hockey player she nearly handed her V-card to. She's not a charity case, and she's not the quiet butterfly she was when they first hooked up. If Logan expects her to roll over and beg like all his other puck bunnies, he can think again. He wants her back? He'll have to work for it. This time around, she'll be the one in the driver's seat . . . and she plans on driving him wild.
\n
Allie Hayes is in crisis mode. With graduation looming, she still doesn't have the first clue about what she's going to do after college. To make matters worse, she's nursing a broken heart thanks to the end of her longtime relationship. Wild rebound sex is definitely not the solution to her problems, but gorgeous hockey star Dean Di Laurentis is impossible to resist. Just once, though, because even if her future is uncertain, it sure as heck won't include the king of one-night stands.
\nIt'll take more than flashy moves to win her over . . .
\nDean always gets what he wants. Girls, grades, girls, recognition, girls . . . he's a ladies man, all right, and he's yet to meet a woman who's immune to his charms. Until Allie. For one night, the feisty blonde rocked his entire world - and now she wants to be friends? Nope. It's not over until he says it's over. Dean is in full-on pursuit, but when life-rocking changes strike, he starts to wonder if maybe it's time to stop focusing on scoring . . . and shoot for love.
\n
Psychology student Olivia Eriksen’s family is notorious among true-crime buffs. Faced with a legacy of psychopathy that spans generations, Olivia has spent much of her academic life trying to answer one chilling question: Nature or nurture?
\nAlthough she’s kept a safe distance from her blood relatives for years, Olivia agrees to attend a weekend reunion. After all, her fiancé is eager to meet his future in-laws, and the gathering may give her a chance to interview her elusive grandfather about the family traits.
\nBut nothing is ever peaceful among the Eriksens for long. Olivia’s favorite cousin is found dead in a nearby lake. Then another family member disappears. As a violent storm isolates the group further, Olivia’s fears rise faster than the river.
\nAnd an uninvited guest is about to join the party. True-crime podcaster Birdie Tan has uncovered a disturbing mystery in her latest investigation - and she’s following it right to the Eriksens’ mountain resort. There’s a deadly twist in the family plot that even Olivia doesn’t see coming.
\n
Shayna Darby is finally coming to terms with her parents’ deaths when she’s delivered another blow. The body of her estranged twin sister, Angela - the possible victim of a serial killer - has been pulled from the Seine. Putting what’s left of her life on hold, Shayna heads to Paris. But while cleaning out Angela’s apartment, Shayna makes a startling discovery: a coded message meant for her alone . . .
\nAlive. Trust no one.
\nTaking the warning to heart, Shayna maintains the lie. She makes a positive ID on the remains and works to find out where - and why - her missing sister is hiding. Shayna retraces her sister’s footsteps, and they lead her down into Paris’s underbelly.
\nAs she gets closer to the truth - and to the killer - Shayna’s own life may now be in the balance . . .
\n
Addison Stern is unparalleled when it comes to spinning a story. A ruthless PR executive, Addison is the star employee of the infamous Ovid Blackwell Group where the rich and famous go to hide all their secrets.
\nConnor Windell, on the other hand, is in the business of finding out information others would rather keep hidden. He used to be LA's top private investigator until a betrayal from his ex-girlfriend ruined his reputation and sent him into early retirement. That ex? None other than Addison Stern.
\nConnor has one chance to redeem himself and salvage his career, but he needs Addison’s help. Addison would rather lick the bottom of her Jimmy Choo than assist, but with some good old-fashioned blackmail, she agrees to team up for one job. But when that job proves bigger than either imagined and they uncover a dangerous hidden web of influence led by the world’s most elite and powerful people, they’ll have to rely on each other to expose the truth . . . and stay alive.
\n
Award-winning journalist and CNN correspondent Elle Reeve was not surprised by the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. With years of in-depth research and on-the-ground investigative reporting under her belt, Reeve was aware of the preoccupations of the online far right and their journey from the computer to QAnon, militias, and racist groups.
\nAt the same time, Reeve saw a parallel growth of counterforces, with citizen vigilantes using new tools and tactics to take down the far right. This ongoing battle, long fought mainly on the internet, had arrived in the real world with greater and greater frequency.
\nWith a sharp eye for detail and a dash of dark humor, Reeve explains the origins of this shocking sweep of political violence. Drawing on countless interviews with sources in the white nationalist movement as well as hundreds of as-yet-unseen documents, she takes us on a surreal journey from the darkest corners of the internet to the most significant and chilling scenes of real-world political violence in generations.
\nA stranger-than-fiction odyssey into the dark heart of what American politics has become, Black Pill is necessary reading for any supporter of democracy.
\n
Peyton Clarke has everything to prove. As the starting center for Greenrock University’s women’s hockey team, she’s determined to earn her place - no handouts, no shortcuts. Being the daughter of a retired NHL star, Peyton is desperate to show she’s more than just a product of her father’s fame. But when her relentless drive starts to blur the line between dedication and recklessness, she risks everything, including her future.
\nDarcy Cole never thought she'd return to hockey. Once a rising star at Michigan State, her dreams were shattered when rheumatoid arthritis forced her to quit the sport she loved. Now, thanks to her meddling head coach mother, she’s stuck as a student assistant coach, a role she never asked for. Darcy has sworn off the ice, keeping her past as a player a secret. But when Peyton Clarke’s reckless playing style clashes with her cautious approach, something sparks - and it’s not just chemistry.
\nTo Darcy, Peyton is a reminder of everything she had to give up. To Peyton, Darcy is just the coach’s daughter who has no business telling her how to play. But Darcy is no stranger to the ice - and when their worlds collide, they both start to realize that maybe they have more in common than they think - both on and off the ice.
\n
Cameron Miller hates change. It makes her sweaty, tongue-tied, or worse - silent. Her anxiety doesn’t help, leaving her expecting disaster around every corner. And finding out that her almost one-night stand is her new boss only confirms her fears.
\nViolet Wolfe isn’t looking for love. In fact, due to her impending divorce, she plans to stay far, far away from it. Luckily, love, and a close encounter in a bar bathroom, don’t bear many similarities. But when the woman from last night turns up as her work’s newbie, Violet realises she’s accidentally violated her boss’ #1 rule: No dating colleagues.
\nThe chemistry between them is undeniable, sure, but it’s just a physical attraction - or so they tell themselves. Yet as they start to consider breaking workplace policy, as well as the boundaries they’ve set for themselves, they start to wonder if it really is just “puppy love”, or if something larger is pulling them together.
\n
Once every few years, the Scavenge Moon rises. From beyond its pale glow steps the Breimar Stag, an otherworldly creature with eyes of burning gold. Any reckless adventurer who chooses to join the hunt for the stag only has until the Scavenge Moon sets to claim their prize - if they catch it, they are granted the death of any person of their choice. And if no one catches it, the stag will claim one of the hunters' souls instead.
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Katrin has lived on the border of the forest her whole life, raised on tales of the Folk that dwell within. As a gamekeeper for the baron who rules over the region, she is saddled with the onerous task of escorting the entitled nobles who descend upon her home for the Breimar Hunt. None of them respect the forest or its legends, and Katrin is only too happy to let them risk their foolish necks for what they see as a cheap thrill.
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When her beloved cousin becomes the latest target of the baron's lecherous appetites, Katrin knows only his death will keep her family safe, and the only way she can claim his life is to win the hunt herself. But something hungry has begun to stir in the woods, something even older and more powerful than the stag. As the horrifying, mutilated bodies pile up, Katrin begins to question where the true danger lies.
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An up-close and striking look at modern beauty culture - from Botox and Instagram filters to lip flips and editing apps - and the realities of coming of age online
\nWe live in a new age of beauty. With advancements in cosmetic surgery, walk-in treatments, augmented-reality face filters, photo-editing apps, and exposure to more images than ever, we have the ability to craft the image we want everyone to see. We pinch, pull, squeeze, tweeze, smooth, and slice ourselves beyond recognition. But is modern beauty culture truly empowering? Are we really in control?
\nIn Pixel Flesh, Ellen Atlanta holds a mirror up to our modern beauty ideal and the pressure to present a perfect image, to live in an age of constant comparison and curated feeds. She weaves in her personal story with others’ to reconfigure our obsession with the cult of beauty and to explore the reality of living in a world of paradoxes: We know our standards are unhealthy, but following them helps us succeed. We resent social media but continue to scroll. We know digital beauty is artificial, yet we strive for it.
\nFrom Love Island to lip filler, \"blackfishing\" to the \"beauty tax,\" Pixel Flesh exposes what young women face under a dominant industry. Nuanced, unflinching, and razor sharp, it unmasks the absurdities of the standards we suddenly find ourselves upholding and acts as a rallying cry and a refusal to suffer in silence.
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Addison Torres has nothing left to lose in New no job, no fiancé, no parents to lean on. So when Uncle Arnie offers her a concierge gig in sunny California, she hops on a plane without looking back.
\nBefore it all came crashing down, Addison had a matchmaking career and handsome partner - then she got a little too cozy with a client. Digging her way out of the wreckage, she’s taken a strict vow of celibacy.
\nUnfortunately, Addison’s new home is where such promises go to die. As concierge at the luxurious Beekman Towers - nicknamed “Divorce Towers” due to the constant influx of the newly single - she’s in constant demand by Beverly Hills’ most eligible and entitled bachelors. Like Dante, a cocksure talent agent. And Zach, an adorable tech wizard.
\nAddison Torres thinks she’s ready for anything except love. But in Divorce Towers, the world’s toughest concierge may have finally met her match.
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Dana Barry's life is a mess, until she hears The Shopping Channel is auditioning new hosts. She dives right in and is stunned when she lands the job. Her keen eye for detail, knack for knowing what makes people tick and sheer bravado make her perfect for the role.
\nThen the star host is found shot to death in her office. Dana can't help but involve herself in tracking down the killer. Never one to mind her own business, she winds up at the center of every drama. She also knows the prime suspect is innocent - they happened to have been together on the roof for some \"alone time\" when they heard the gunshot. His record may not be perfect, but she can tell the single father has a heart of gold. He may even be marriage material - something she'd focus on more if only Detective Marks wasn't so handsome and their chemistry so electric.
\nDana is so close to having it all if, just this once, she doesn't screw up. But trouble usually comes easier and is always a lot more fun . . .
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In this witty and engaging novel, Dana Barry, the Shopping Channel’s star host, stops by the company’s rooftop party to pitch the new CEO her brilliant idea that just might save the flagging business, her job and possibly her love life.
\nAs she chats with the smarmy executive, he backs her into a dark corner. For Dana, it’s a quid pro oh-hell-no. She escapes his lecherous grasp and grabs her drink on her way to the dance floor. Woozy, she blacks out.
\nWhen she comes to, the CEO is dead, fallen from the roof. Or was he pushed? And if so, by whom? It’s hard to know, but one thing is certain: Dana was close enough to be suspect.
\nSure, she loathed how the creep moved in on her, but she’s no killer. Or is she? Truth is, Dana can’t remember much about those minutes. Now she has to use all her skills to prove her innocence to everyone, including her police detective boyfriend - and herself.
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As the owner of Miracle Books, Nora Pennington figures all the wet weather this spring is at least good for business. The local inns are packed with stranded travelers, and among them Nora finds both new customers and a new friend, the sixtysomething Sheldon, who starts helping out at the store.
\nSince a little rain never hurt anyone, Nora rides her bike over to the flea market one sodden day and buys a bowl from Danny, a Cherokee potter. It’ll make a great present for Nora’s EMT boyfriend, but the next day, a little rain turns into a lot of rain, and the Miracle River overflows it banks. Amid the wreckage of a collapsed footbridge, a body lies within the churning water.
\nNora and the sheriff both doubt the ruling of accidental drowning, and Nora decides it’s time for the Secret, Book, and Scone Society to spring into action. When another body turns up, it becomes clearer that Danny’s death can’t be blamed on a natural disaster. A crucial clue may lie within the stone walls of the Inn of Mist and Roses: a diary, over a century old and spattered with candle wax, that leads Nora and her friends through a maze of intrigue - and onto the trail of a murderer . . .
Ella Mae LeFaye’s delicious pies are still drawing long lines - as well as the attention of Beatrice Burbank, president of the Camellia Club, a philanthropic organisation comprised of high-society Southern ladies from the charming and affluent town of Sweet Briar, Georgia. To ensure the success of their centennial dessert cookbook, Bea hires Ella Mae to teach the tasty tricks of her trade to the club’s members at their annual retreat. Eager to work on new recipes for customers with food allergies and dietary restrictions, Ella Mae readily agrees.
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But when Ella Mae finds Bea’s body floating in Lake Havenwood, she wonders what she’s gotten herself mixed up in. Someone certainly wanted Bea to eat humble pie, and the retreat offers no shortage of unsavory characters, including Ella Mae’s longtime nemesis, Loralyn Gaynor. Ella Mae definitely doesn’t need magic to tell her she must find the killer before someone else gets panned.
Nora Pennington is known for her window displays, and as Halloween approaches, she decides to showcase fictional heroines like Roald Dahl’s Matilda and Madeline Miller’s Circe. A family-values group disapproves of the magical themes, though, and wastes no time launching a modern-day witch hunt. Suddenly, former friends and customers are targeting not only Nora and Miracle Books, but a new shopkeeper, Celeste, who’s been selling CBD oil products.
\nNora and her friends in the Secret, Book, and Scone Society are doing their best to put an end to the strife - but then someone puts an end to a life. Though the death is declared an accident, the ruling can’t explain the old book page covered with strange symbols and disturbing drawings left under Nora’s doormat, a postcard from an anonymous stalker, or multiple cases of vandalism.
\nThe only hope is that Nora can be a heroine herself and lead the Secret, Book, and Scone Society in a successful investigation - before more bodies turn up and the secrets from Celeste’s past come back to haunt them all . . .
Ella Mae LeFaye’s Charmed Pie Shoppe has become a phenomenon beyond her wildest dreams, providing the enchanted town of Havenwood, Georgia, with spellbinding desserts and magical pies. Her personal life is also heating up as she takes on the responsibilities of leadership within her magical community. In fact, the only thing weighing her down is the fact that handsome Hugh Dylan won’t return her calls . . .
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Still, when Havenwood is rocked by a series of mysterious deaths, Ella Mae must put romantic longings aside - especially when she realizes that the mystical symbols left at each crime scene are dangerously personal. Now she will have to whip up all her supernatural skills to uncover a killer out to settle an ancient score - before the murderer devastates everything Ella Mae is determined to protect.
When an elderly Miracle Springs resident, Lucille Wynter, arranges for Nora to deliver an order of books to her creepy, crumbling Southern Gothic mansion on the outskirts of town, Nora doesn’t expect to be invited in. An agoraphobic, Lucille doesn’t leave Wynter House. Nor does she invite anyone inside. But when Lucille doesn’t come to the door to collect her books, Nora begins to worry.
\nForcing her way into Lucille’s dilapidated home, Nora is shocked to find rooms packed to the ceiling with decaying books and a lifeless Lucille at the foot of her stairs. After reading a note left behind by Lucille, Nora wonders if her death was an accident. Did Lucille fall or was she pushed by someone seeking a valuable item hidden within Wynter House? Lucille’s children are clearly confident the house contains something of value, because they hire Nora to sift through the piles of books. As she digs, Nora can’t shake the feeling that hoarding didn’t cause Lucille’s fall.
\nSoon, Nora’s obsession with Lucille’s collection is cause for concern amongst her friends in the Secret, Book, and Scone Society - she’s even neglecting her bookshop! Then, Nora does find something valuable deep inside Wynter House - a revelation about Lucille’s terrible past . . . and a secret worth a small fortune. But there’s someone who’d do anything to keep the truth buried amid the moldering tomes. The odds against them are stacked as high as the books, but it’s up to Nora and her friends to track down a murderer with a literary lean before Wynter House’s lost library claims another victim . . .
Miracle Springs, North Carolina, is famed for its healing springs. But bookstore owner Nora Pennington has a tendency to land in a different kind of hot water. Though she loves to practice bibliotherapy by finding the perfect books for her customers while listening to their secrets, she also likes to bury her nose in the occasional local crime . . .
\nNora escaped her past a decade ago. So it feels like a visit from another world when Kelly Walsh - the woman her ex-husband left her for - walks through the door of Miracle Books along with her son, a sweet, serious boy with a talent for origami. Kelly hasn’t come to gloat, though. As it turns out, she’s been dumped too. She’s also terribly ill, and all she wants from Nora is forgiveness.
\nShockingly, however, this woman who’s been the victim of so much misfortune is about to become a murder victim. Who would do such a thing? Certainly not Nora, but that doesn’t stop the gossip and suspicion - especially after Kelly’s brother claims that he saw the two women arguing.
\nIn seeking justice for Kelly, The Secret, Book, and Scone Society joins forces with the sheriff’s department, but they’ve barely begun their probe when life throws another wrench. After serving a twenty-year sentence, Estella’s father returns to Miracle Springs. And when his past comes back to haunt him, it might be more than the four friends can handle.
Ella Mae LeFaye’s Charmed Pie Shoppe is wildly popular in Havenwood, Georgia - which is not surprising since Ella Mae can lace her baked goods with enchantments. The shop’s extraordinary success seems destined to continue when Ella Mae meets an engaged couple who hire her to handle the dessert buffet at their wedding.
\nBut Ella Mae has a lot on her plate. She is also searching for the origin of her magical powers - and hoping to determine if the spark of attraction she feels for the handsome Hugh Dylan is authentic or just her new abilities gone awry.
\nThen Ella Mae discovers a high-standing member of the community dead, and a wedding guest becomes seriously ill at the event she’s catering. Now she’ll have to use all her sleuthing skills and culinary talents to prove her pies don’t contain a killer ingredient . . .
Owning the Charmed Pie Shoppe and serving enchanted treats in the magical town of Havenwood, Georgia, seemed like a little slice of heaven for Ella Mae LeFaye. But now her hopes for both a lasting romance with Hugh Dylan and business success are starting to seem like pie in the sky, and Ella’s left wondering: Where has the magic gone?
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When an enchanted grove is set ablaze, Ella realizes she has more grave problems. With her magic waning, she’s going to have to sleuth from scratch to stop an arsonist who has no respect for sacred ground - or human life . . .
When the going gets tough, Ella Mae LaFaye bakes pies. So when she catches her husband cheating in New York, she heads back home to Havenwood, Georgia, where she can drown her sorrows in fresh fruit filling and flakey crust. But her pies aren't just delicious. They're having magical effects on the people who eat them - and the public is hungry for more.
\nDiscovering her hidden talent for enchantment, Ella Mae makes her own wish come true by opening the Charmed Pie Shoppe. But with her old nemesis Loralyn Gaynor making trouble, and her old crush Hugh Dylan making nice, she has more than pie on her plate. and when Loralyn's fiancé is found dead - killed with Ella Mae's rolling pin - it'll take all her sweet magic to clear her name.
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Miracle Springs, North Carolina, is a place of healing. Strangers flock here hoping the natural hot springs, five-star cuisine, and renowned spa can cure their ills. If none of that works, they often find their way to Miracle Books, where, over a fresh-baked “comfort” scone from the Gingerbread House bakery, they exchange their stories with owner Nora Pennington in return for a carefully chosen book. That’s Nora’s special talent - prescribing the perfect novel to ease a person’s deepest pain and lighten their heaviest burden.
\nWhen a visiting businessman reaches out to Nora for guidance, she knows exactly which novels will help. But before he can keep their appointment at Miracle Books, he’s found dead on the train tracks.
\nStunned, Nora forms the Secret, Book, and Scone Society, a group of damaged souls yearning to gain trust and earn redemption by helping others. To join the society, members must divulge their darkest secret - the terrible truth that brought each of them to Miracle Springs in the first place.
\nDetermined to uncover the truth behind the businessman’s demise, the women meet in Nora’s cramped and cozy bookstore to share stories and trade support. And as they untangle a web of corruption, they also discover their own courage, purpose, and a sisterhood that will carry them through every challenge - proving it’s never too late to turn the page and start over . . .
While January snow falls outside in Miracle Springs, North Carolina, Nora Pennington is encouraging customers to cozy up indoors with a good book. Even though the shop and her bibliotherapy sessions keep Nora busy during the day, her nights are a little too quiet - until Deputy Andrews pulls Nora into the sci-fi section and asks her to help him plan a wedding proposal.
\nHis bride-to-be, Hester, loves Little Women, and Nora sets to work arranging a special screening at the town’s new movie theater. But right before the deputy pops the question, Nora makes an unsettling discovery - someone has mutilated all her store’s copies of The Scarlet Letter, slicing angrily into the pages wherever Hester Prynne’s name is mentioned.
\nThe coincidence disturbs Nora, who’s one of the few in Miracle Springs who knows that Hester gave up a baby for adoption many years ago. Her family heaped shame on her, and Hester still feels so guilty that she hasn’t even told her future husband. But when a dead man is found on a hiking trail just outside town, carrying a rare book, the members of the Secret, Book, and Scone Society unearth a connection to Hester’s past. Someone is intent on bringing the past to light, and it’s not just Hester’s relationship at stake, but her life . . .
Nora Pennington, owner of Miracle Books, believes that a well-chosen novel can bring healing and hope. But she and the other members of the Secret, Book, and Scone Society know that sometimes, practical help is needed too. Such is the case with the reed-thin girl hiding in the fiction section of Nora’s store, wearing a hospital ID and a patchwork of faded bruises. She calls herself Abilene, and though Nora and her friends offer work, shelter, and a supportive ear, their guest isn’t ready to divulge her secrets. But when a customer is found dead in an assumed suicide, Nora uncovers a connection that points to Abilene as either a suspect - or another target.
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Summer’s end has brought other new arrivals to Miracle Springs too. Entrepreneur Griffin Kingsley opens Virtual Genie, a cyber business that unloads people’s unwanted goods for cash. With the town in an economic slump and folks hurting for money, Virtual Genie and its owner are both instantly popular. A patient listener, Griffin dispenses candy to children and strong coffee to adults, and seems like a bona fide gentleman. But Nora’s not inclined to judge a book by its cover. And when a second death hits town, Nora and her intrepid friends must help the new, greenhorn sheriff discern fact from fiction - and stop a killer intent on bringing another victim’s story to a close . . .
Since the disastrous events of the College Killer case, the FBI is coming to terms with the fact that while catching one sociopath, they've released another. Chillingly manipulative, frighteningly intelligent, and wholly insane, Simon Gutmunsson is the worst of the worst. Now he's free, and on the run with his twin sister Kristin, and nobody in the FBI is smart enough to keep up . . .
\nTravis Bell's last investigation for FBI Behavioral Science nearly killed him. Supported by family and his partner Emma Lewis, now Travis just needs to get back on his feet. But Emma has been recruited to help the FBI hunt the ultimate sociopath, Simon Gutmunsson, and there's no way Travis is letting her go into this battle alone . . .
\nEmma Lewis has gained some perspective on life, and as her emotional walls come down, she realises that only by working as a perfect team will she and Travis have any chance of beating the Gutmunsson twins at their own terrifying game. So in a journey that will take them from Moroccan souks to Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations, the stage is set for Simon and Kristin and Emma and Travis to meet up in an epic final showdown.
Virginia, 1943: World War II is raging in Europe and on the Pacific front when Kit Sutherland is recruited to help the war effort as a codebreaker at Arlington Hall, a former girls’ college now serving as the site of a secret US Signals Intelligence facility in Virginia. But Kit is soon involved in another kind of fight: Government girls are being brutally murdered in Washington DC, and when Kit stumbles onto a bloody homicide scene, she is drawn into the hunt for the killer.
\nTo find the man responsible for the gruesome murders and bring him to justice, Kit joins forces with other female codebreakers at Arlington Hall - gossip queen Dottie Crockford, sharp-tongued intelligence maven Moya Kershaw, and cleverly resourceful Violet DuLac from the segregated codebreaking unit. But as the girls begin to work together and develop friendships - and romance - that they never expected, two things begin to come clear: the murderer they’re hunting is closing in on them . . . and Kit is hiding a dangerous secret.
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In 1982, two teenagers - serial killer survivor Emma Lewis and US Marshal candidate Travis Bell - are recruited by the FBI to interview convicted juvenile killers and provide insight and advice on cold cases. From the start, Emma and Travis develop a quick friendship, gaining information from juvenile murderers that even the FBI can't crack. But when the team is called in to give advice on an active case - a serial killer who exclusively hunts teenagers - things begin to unravel.
\nWorking against the clock, they must turn to one of the country's most notorious incarcerated murderers for help: teenage sociopath Simon Gutmunsson. Despite Travis's objections, Emma becomes the conduit between Simon and the FBI team. But while Simon seems to be giving them the information they need to save lives, he's an expert manipulator playing a very long game . . . and he has his sights set on Emma.
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After a harrowingly close contact with juvenile sociopath Simon Gutmunsson, junior FBI consultants Emma Lewis and Travis Bell went their separate Emma rejected her Quantico offer and Travis stayed to train within a new unit of the FBI Behavioral Science division. But the unit’s latest case is feeling eerily familiar and Kristin Gutmunsson - Simon Gutmunsson’s eccentric twin - reaches out to Travis to send a Emma is in peril.
\nWhen Travis and Kristin turn up evidence that points back to Daniel Huxton, the serial killer that Emma had escaped, things become more complicated. With a copycat on the loose, Emma returns to Quantico and is thrown back into her past traumas. Compelled to prevent more tragedy - even if it means putting herself in danger - Emma turns to Simon for help once again. But Simon is keeping secrets that could impact their entire investigation. Will the team be able to stop the Huxton copycat before time runs out for his next victims?
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Against all odds, Ruby has defeated the villainous Frost King and melted his throne of ice. But the bloodthirsty Minax that was trapped inside is now haunting her kingdom and everyone she loves. The answers to its demise may lie to the south in Sudesia, the land of the Firebloods, and a country that holds the secrets to Ruby's powers and past . . .
Despite warnings from her beloved Arcus, Ruby accompanies a roguish Fireblood named Kai to Sudesia, where she must master her control of fire in a series of trials to gain the trust of the suspicious Fireblood queen. Only then can she hope to access the knowledge that could defeat the rampaging Minax - which grows closer every moment.
But as sparks fly in her moments alone with Kai, how can Ruby decide whom to trust? The fate of both kingdoms is now in her hands.
Once upon a time, among the bloodred trees of Thirstwood, a young forest princess became friends with a lonely demon boy. He gifted her an amber ring, a worthless trinket . . . or so he thought . . . because no sooner did he slide it onto her finger than the demon queen and forest king declared war.
\nYears later, Cassia is a crucial force in her father’s army, wielding her ring of light that can blind and disorient hundreds of demons at a time. Then battle-hardened Zeru abducts her, planning to steal the ring back to fix his costly childhood mistake. Exhausted, terrified, and more than a little mistrusting, Cassia is forced to travel with Zeru to a place they both believed only existed in storybooks, one where their childhood friendship slowly rekindles into something much more.
\nBut it's only a matter of time before the war they've escaped comes for them, and a hidden threat to forest folk and demons alike grows in the shadows.
In a land governed by the cruel Frostblood ruling class, seventeen-year-old Ruby is a Fireblood who has spent most of her life hiding her ability to manipulate heat and light - until the day the soldiers come to raid her village and kill her mother.
\nRuby vows revenge on the tyrannous Frost King responsible for the massacre of her people. But Ruby's powers are unpredictable . . . and so are the feelings she has for Arcus, the scarred, mysterious Frostblood warrior who shares her goal to kill the Frost King, albeit for his own reasons. When Ruby is captured by the Frost King's men, she's taken right into the heart of the enemy.
\nNow she only has one chance to destroy the maniacal ruler who took everything from her - and in doing so, she must unleash the powers she's spent her whole life withholding.
Frost and fire have joined forces. Now, they must wage a war against darkness . . .
\nRuby and Arcus face a more dangerous enemy than they could ever have imagined. Once Eurus opens the Gate of Light, darkness will be unleashed upon the world for all eternity.
\nThe Frostbloods and Firebloods have formed a tentative alliance, and are now preparing for war - but Ruby is the only one who can prevent the catastrophe which is coming.
\nWith the blood of night running in her veins, the line between good and evil becomes blurred. Ruby must be strong enough to face the darkness within - or else everyone she loves will be swallowed up by the night . . .
Ali Dawson and her cold case team investigate crimes so old, they’re frozen - or so their inside joke goes. Nobody knows that her team has a secret: they can travel back in time to look for evidence.
\nThe latest assignment sees Ali venture back farther than they have dared before: to 1850s London to clear the name of Cain Templeton, an eccentric patron of the arts. Rumor has it that Cain is part of a sinister group called The Collectors. Ali arrives in the Victorian era to another dead woman at her feet and far too many unanswered questions.
\nAs the clock counts down, Ali becomes more entangled in the mystery, yet danger lurks around every corner. She soon finds herself trapped, unable to make her way back to her beloved son, Finn, who is battling his own accusations in the present day.
\nCould the two cases be connected? In a race through and against time, Ali must find out before it’s too late.
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What makes a family? How is it defined and by whom? Is freedom for everyone?
\nIn Necessary Fiction, Eloghosa Osunde poses these provocative questions and many more while exploring the paths and dreams, hopes and fears of more than two dozen characters who are staking out lives for themselves in contemporary Nigeria.
\nAcross Lagos, one of Africa’s largest urban areas and one of the world’s most dynamic cities, Osunde’s characters seek out love for self and their chosen partners, even as they risk ruining relationships with parents, spouses, family, and friends. As the novel unfolds, a rolling cast emerges: vibrantly active, stubbornly alive, brazenly flawed. These characters grapple with desire, fear, time, death, and God, forming and breaking unexpected connections; in the process unveiling how they know each other, have loved each other, and had their hearts broken in that pursuit.
\nAs they work to establish themselves in the city’s lively worlds of art, music, entertainment, and creative commerce, we meet their collective and individual attempts to reckon with the necessary fiction they carry for survival.
The Townhouse Bar, midtown, July 1992: The piano player seems to know every song ever written, the crowd belts out the lyrics to their favorites, and a man standing nearby is drinking a Scotch and water. The man strikes the piano player as forgettable.
\nHe looks bland and inconspicuous. Not at all what you think a serial killer looks like. But that’s what he is, and tonight, he has his sights set on a gray haired man. He will not be his first victim.
\nNor will he be his last.
\nThe Last Call Killer preyed upon gay men in New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s and had all the hallmarks of the most notorious serial killers. Yet because of the sexuality of his victims, the skyhigh murder rates, and the AIDS epidemic, his murders have been almost entirely forgotten.
\nThis gripping true-crime narrative tells the story of the Last Call Killer and the decades-long chase to find him. And at the same time, it paints a portrait of his victims and a vibrant community navigating threat and resilience.
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The first comprehensive book about Michael Stewart, the young Black artist and model who died after an altercation with the police in 1983.
\nAt twenty-five years old, Michael Stewart was a young Black aspiring artist, deejay, and model, looking to make a name for himself in the vibrant downtown art scene of the early 1980’s New York City. On September 15, 1983, he was brutally beaten by New York City Transit Authority police for allegedly tagging a 14th Street subway station wall.
\nWitnesses reported officers beating him with billy clubs and choking him with a nightstick. Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital hog-tied with no heartbeat and died after thirteen days in a coma. This was, at that point, the most widely noticed act of police brutality in the city's history. The Man Nobody Killed recounts the cultural impact of Michael Stewart’s life and death.
\nThe Stewart case quickly catalysed movements across multiple communities. It became a rallying cry, taken up by artists and singers including Madonna, Keith Haring, Spike Lee, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, tabloid legends such as Jimmy Breslin and Murray Kempton, and the pioneering local news reporter, Gabe Pressman. The Stewart family and the downtown arts community of 1980s New York demanded justice for Michael, leading to multiple investigations into the circumstances of his wrongful death.
\nElon Green, the Edgar Award–winning author of Last Call, presents the first comprehensive narrative account of Michael Stewart's life and killing, the subsequent court proceedings, and the artistic aftermath. In the vein of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace and His Name is George Floyd, Green brings us the story of a promising life cut short and a vivid snapshot of the world surrounding this loss. A tragedy set in stark contrast against the hope, activism, and creativity of the 1980’s New York City art scene, The Man Nobody Killed serves as a poignant reminder of recurring horrors in American history and explores how, and for whom, the justice system fails.
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Inside the tony suburb of Scarsdale is New York’s worst-kept secret: The mob runs everything, and the Nicastro family is at the center. Seventeen-year-old Tasha Nicastro lives a life of glitz and glamour, but she has no idea her family harbors a dark truth.
\nTasha might look like your classic high school mean girl, but behind the designer clothes is a sharpshooter who knows how to bring anyone to their knees. The only person who has ever gotten under her skin is her former best friend, Leo Danesi, the youngest son of the Nicastro family’s rivals.
\nAfter Leo returns to New York older and more handsome, Tasha thinks he’ll be the worst of her problems - until the life she thought she knew takes a violent, shocking turn. When her father and beloved older sister are murdered before her eyes, Tasha learns the dark truth: Her family runs the most powerful Mafia branch in New York, and now she’s set to inherit it all.
\nTasha vows vengeance on the mysterious new mob behind the hit, but she can’t do it alone. She needs someone who already knows the underground world to help track them down. And that person is none other than Leo, the heir to his own family’s dangerous empire.
\nBut Tasha is a Nicastro. She’s been raised in the company of killers, and there’s absolutely nothing she won’t do to avenge her family. That is, if the enemy doesn’t put her in gold chains first.
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Maya and Natasha are twin sisters born in the midst of the Siege of Leningrad in 1941 and immediately abandoned by their mother, a prima ballerina at the Kirov Ballet who would rather die than not dance. Taken in by their mother’s best friend at the Kirov, the girls are raised to be dancers themselves. The Vaganova Ballet Academy - and the totalitarian Soviet regime - is the only world they know.
\nIn 1958, now seniors at the Vaganova at the height of the Cold War, all Maya and Natasha and their classmates want is to dance with the Kirov, and to join the company on its tour to America next year. But a new law from the Kremlin upends Maya and Natasha’s due to fears of defection, family members may no longer travel abroad together. The Kirov can only accept one of them.
\nMaya, long accustomed to living in her sister’s shadow, accepts her bitter fate, until a new dance partner inspires her to dream bigger and practice harder. For the first time - and at the cruelest possible moment - the sisters are equally matched. And then one sister betrays the other, altering their lives forever and splitting them in two, though neither will stray far from the other’s orbit.
\nAs one of the twins pursues her ballet career and experiences a world outside Russia for the first time, the other is cast in an epic film adaptation of War and Peace, produced and financed by the Soviet State. As the Cold War heats up, Maya and Natasha must confront their to East versus West; to the government that saved them versus their dreams of freedom; and, always, to each other.
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Sink or swim. Or at least that's what Annette Feldman tells herself when she books a cruise for her entire family. It's been over a decade since the Feldman clan has spent more than twenty-four hours under the same roof, but Annette is determined to celebrate her seventieth birthday the right way. Just this once, they are going to behave like an actual family.
Too bad her kids didn't get the memo.
Between the troublesome family secrets, old sibling rivalries, and her two teenage grandkids, Annette's birthday vacation is looking more and more like the perfect storm. Adrift together on the open seas, the Feldmans will each face the truths they've been ignoring - and learn that the people they once thought most likely to sink them are actually the ones who help them stay afloat.
Have you ever had a secret so gut-wrenching you couldn't share it with anyone, not even the person who shares your bed? Told from the alternating perspectives of a husband and wife who both have something to hide, this incisive novel pulls back the curtain on a seemingly-happy marriage, posing the question: how much do we really know--and how much should we want to know--about the people we love the most?
After six years of marriage, the unshakeable confidence Cass felt on her wedding day is decidedly gone. Jonathan, on the other hand, is still smitten with Cass. It's true that the personality quirks he once found charming in his wife--her complexity, her high standards, her refusal to clean the dishes--are beginning to grate. But for him, these are minor challenges in an otherwise healthy relationship. So it comes as a complete shock to Jonathan when Cass suddenly requests a marital 'intermission': a six-month separation during which they'll figure out if the comfortable life they've built together is, in fact, the one they both want.
After Cass and Jonathan devise an absurd and jet lag-inducing plan to swap custody of their beloved dog every thirty days, they decide that (aside from their monthly canine exchange) the intermission will be a time for self-reflection - and not a time for talking. But, as the months pass, Cass and Jonathan begin to see that the very worst of their problems are rooted in just these kinds of calculated silences - and in a delicate web of blistering secrets they may never be ready to share.
After the Jacobson siblings win a life-changing fortune in the lottery, they assume their messy lives will transform into sleek, storybook perfection - but they couldn’t be more wrong in the new laugh-out-loud novel from beloved author Elyssa Friedland.
\nThe four Jacobson children were raised to respect the value of a dollar. Their mother reused tea bags and refused to pay retail; their father taught them to budget before he taught them to ride a bike. And yet, as adults, their financial lives - as well as their personal lives - are in complete disarray.
\nThe siblings reunite when their newly widowed father puts their Jersey Shore home on the market. Packing up their childhood isn’t easy, especially when they’ve all got drama brewing back home. Matthew is miserable at his corporate law job and wishes he had more time with his son; Laura’s marriage is imploding in spectacular fashion; Sophie’s art career is stalled while her boyfriend’s is on the rise; and Noah’s total failure to launch has him doing tech repair for pennies.
\nSo when Noah sees an ad for a Powerball drawing, he and his sisters go in on a ticket. Matthew passes but the ticket is a winner and all hell breaks loose as the infusion of cash causes sibling rivalries and family secrets to resurface. Without their mother, and with their father busy playing pickleball in a Florida retirement village, the once close-knit siblings search for comfort in shiny new toys instead of each other.
\nIt’s not long before the Jacobson's start to realise that they’ll never feel rich unless they can pull their family back together.
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Mina is thirty and living in London. She fled there at twenty to reinvent herself to escape her small-town past, but a decade later she is drifting, untethered and uncertain. When her Moroccan-born father Omar dies, she returns to her childhood home on the Calabrian coast, where he ran a bar called the Tangerinn. It was more than just a bar - it was a gathering place, a haven for migrants and misfits, a dream that Mina’s sister, Aisha, is struggling to keep alive.
\nIn searching for traces of her father, Mina begins to piece together her own fractured sense of identity. As she reconnects with the memories embedded in the land, she must confront what it means to belong - not just to a place, but to a lineage, a language, a self.
Matheus Ceirran, commander of half the known world, is dead. For the past year, his loyal captain Anita has hunted down his assassins - that is, when she can pull herself from the bed of Altagracia Caviro Patramata, queen and oracle of the client planet of Szayet. But when Anita’s quest for revenge takes her across the borders of an enigmatic neighboring empire, she uncovers a dangerous secret that could upend the fragile balance of the galaxy.
\n\n
Meanwhile, Ceirran’s heir apparent Otávio Julhan grows more and more powerful in the capital that Anita has left behind. Caught between home, Szayet, and a new and greater threat, Anita finds herself at the center of a war that threatens to collapse her world.
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The fate of empires dances on the tip of a knife, and history will be written by the victors in this sweeping tale of myth, imperial legacy, and the love affair of a lifetime.
Princess Altagracia has lost everything. After a bloody civil war, her twin sister has claimed not just the crown of their planet Szayet but the Pearl of its prophecy, a computer that contains the immortal soul of Szayet's god. Stripped of her birthright, Gracia flees the planet - just as Matheus Ceirran, Commander of the interstellar Empire of Ceiao, arrives in deadly pursuit with his volatile lieutenant, Anita. When Gracia and Ceirran's paths collide, Gracia sees an opportunity to win back her planet, her god, and her throne . . . if she can win the Commander and his right-hand officer over first.
\nBut talking her way into Ceirran’s good graces, and his bed, is only the beginning. Dealing with the most powerful man in the galaxy is almost as dangerous as war, and Gracia is quickly torn between an alliance that fast becomes more than political and the wishes of the god - or machine - that whispers in her ear. For Szayet's sake, and her own, Gracia will need to become more than a princess with a silver tongue. She will have to become a queen as history has never seen before - even if it breaks an empire.
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Seventeen-year-old Emma Nakamura-Thatcher doesn’t believe in love, not after her parents’ bitter divorce. So when she attends the festival of Tanabata, her wish is simple: proof that love is real and can last.
\nEmma thinks little of her wish…until she finds a note from someone claiming to be her greatest love writing to her from the future. It has to be a prank, right? But as the notes pour in, each revealing secrets only she knows, Emma is forced to accept the impossible: This is really happening. Someone is actually reaching out to her from across time.
\nBut who? Ezra, the musical prodigy who makes her pulse race? Theo, the literal boy next door who’s known her since childhood? Or Colin, the overly confident, overly handsome, overly rich kid she meets while cleaning his mega-mansion?
\nAs Emma races to uncover the identity of the letter writer, she’ll discover that love is more than real - it’s the most powerful force in the universe. And it’s been waiting for her all along.
Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and finds herself being greeted by Father Jeff, who assumes she’s there for a job interview. Too embarrassed to correct him, Gilda is abruptly hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace.
\nIn between trying to memorise the lines to Catholic mass, hiding the fact that she has a new girlfriend, and erecting a dirty dish tower in her crumbling apartment, Gilda strikes up an email correspondence with Grace’s old friend. She can’t bear to ignore the kindly old woman, who has been trying to reach her friend through the church inbox, but she also can’t bring herself to break the bad news. Desperate, she begins impersonating Grace via email. But when the police discover suspicious circumstances surrounding Grace’s death, Gilda may have to finally reveal the truth of her mortifying existence.
\nA delightful blend of warmth, deadpan humor, and pitch-perfect observations about the human condition, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is a crackling exploration of what it takes to stay afloat in a world where your expiration - and the expiration of those you love - is the only certainty.
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Enid is obsessed with space. She can tell you all about black holes and their ability to spaghettify you without batting an eye in fear. Her one major phobia? Bald men. But she tries to keep that one under wraps.
\nWhen she’s not listening to her favorite true crime podcasts on a loop, she’s serially dating a rotation of women from dating apps. At the same time, she’s trying to forge a new relationship with her estranged half-sisters after the death of her absent father. When she unwittingly plunges into her first serious romantic entanglement, Enid starts to believe that someone is following her.
\nAs her paranoia spirals out of control, Enid must contend with her mounting suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her. Because at the end of the day there’s only one person she can’t outrun - herself.
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Darcy’s life turned out better than she could have ever imagined. She is a librarian at the local branch, while her wife Joy runs a book binding service. Between the two of them, there is no more room on their shelves with their ample book collections, various knickknacks and bobbles, and dried bouquets. Rounding out their ideal life is two cats and a sun-soaked house by the lake.
\nBut when Darcy receives the news that her ex-boyfriend, Ben, has passed away, she spirals into a pit of guilt and regret, resulting in a mental breakdown and medical leave from the library. When she returns to work, she is met by unrest in her community, and protests surrounding intellectual freedom, resulting in a call for book bans and a second look at the branch’s upcoming DEI programs.
\nThrough the support of her community, colleagues, and the personal growth that results from examining her previous relationships, Darcy comes into her own agency and the truest version of herself. Is This a Cry for Help? not only offers a moving portrait of queer life after coming of age but also powerfully explores questions about sexuality, community, and the importance of libraries.
“Hello, my name is Esther. I am calling on behalf of Krippler Incorporated, a market research institute. Today we are conducting a survey on feline diabetes. Do you, or any member of your household, own a cat?”
\nThey hang up.
\n“Hello. My name is Joan. I am calling on behalf of - ”
\nThey hang up.
\n“Hello. My name’s Doreen.”
\nJane is a telemarketer. She uses a different name each time, and soon it becomes clear that she is calling the same man again and again. Each call is a new battle between them, with him becoming angrier and more threatening. But Jane isn’t calling him at random; Jane has a purpose; Jane has a past which seems to change each time she tells it. The story is revealed through exchanges like ritual incantations.
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Sigrid hates working at the Dollar Pal but having always resisted the idea of growing up into the trappings of adulthood, she did not graduate high school, preferring to roam the streets of her small town with her best friend Greta, the only person in the world who ever understood her. Her older sister Margit is baffled and frustrated by Sigrid’s inability to conform to the expectations of polite society.
\nBut Sigrid’s detachment veils a deeper turmoil and sensitivity. She’s haunted by the pains of her past - from pretending her parents were swamp monsters when they shook the floorboards with their violent arguments to grappling with losing Greta’s friendship to the opioid epidemic ravaging their town. As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters, in their own time and way, discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward.
\nWhat unfolds is an unforgettable story of two sisters finding their way back to each other, and a celebration of that transcendent, unshakable bond.
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Gillian Carmichael is grieving, not for the loss of her husband, but for what his death has cost her - Kingsford Manor, her beloved home. To make matters worse, she can observe the new 'Lady of the Manor' from her small abode in Kingsford Lodge, and observe her, she does.
\nViola Berkley, an internationally renowned classical singer, retreats to the quiet of the countryside after her mother’s sudden death, seeking peace and anonymity. What she finds is an unwelcome adversary in her outspoken neighbour Gillian Carmichael, who is quick to critique Viola's suitability for her new role and her lack of village sensibilities.
\nAs their worlds collide, both women realise they have more in common than divides them, and the line between animosity and attraction begins to blur. With Gillian shackled to her past, unable to let go of the life she lost, and Viola carrying the weight of her grief, can the pair find a path forward, or will the shadows of the past keep them apart?
Sydney MacKenzie, personal assistant to the rich and famous, is looking forward to a well-earned break to go travelling in her beloved VW camper van, Gertie - that is, until Gertie cries off sick. When her boss calls in a favour, one that will pay Sydney handsomely and put Gertie back on the road, she can’t refuse.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tInternationally renowned actress Beatrice Russell - adored by her fans and despised by those that know her - is splashed across the tabloids, all thanks to her broken leg. She limps back to her palatial English country estate to convalesce for the summer, where she finds herself in need of yet another new assistant.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tEnter Sydney, who doesn’t take kindly to the star’s demands, attitude, or clicking fingers - much less her body’s own attraction to the gorgeous diva. If not for that, and Gertie’s worn-out engine, she would leave tomorrow. Or so she tells herself.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAs the summer heats up, the ice queen begins to thaw, and Sydney glimpses the tormented woman beneath the celebrity bravado, drawing her ever closer to the enigmatic actress - sometimes too close.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tCan Sydney reach the real Beatrice and help heal her wounds before the summer ends and she returns to filming in the States, or is the celebrity broken beyond repair?
Join Anna and Katherine as Nunswick Abbey opens for the spring amidst building work, archaeological excavations, and vandalism.
\nWhen an old school friend returns to the village with her family, Anna begins to question her long held vision of her future.
\nOld wounds are reopened for Katherine when she’s presented with an opportunity to face her past head on. Can Anna convince her to take it and finally confront her fears?
\nWith Anna dreaming of the future and Katherine consumed by the past, can they get on the same page and decide what life they want to build together?
Historical tour guide Anna Walker is determined to make a good impression on her new bosses, but juggling a full-time job with caring for her ailing father is putting her own health - and potentially his - at risk.
\nWhen she meets Dr Katherine Atkinson, a charming yet intimidating new arrival to the village, Anna is infuriated by the doctor’s attempts to convince her that her father needs professional, full-time care. She’s even more frustrated by her growing attraction to the classy, wealthy doctor.
\nAnna’s determination to prove she can cope forces Katherine to divulge a painful event from her past that still haunts her, hopeful it will make Anna see sense before it’s too late.
\nWith Katherine’s heart lost to the past and Anna’s overwhelmed in the present, can the two women help each other overcome their anxieties and move forward? Will a curtain-twitching busy body curtail any blossoming attraction before it even has a chance to bloom?
Sculptor Arte Tremaine is thrown into the hospitality industry when her beloved late grandmother bequeaths her and her sister a charming yet rundown country hotel with zero guests. Arte is determined to make a success of the business, despite her sister snapping at her heels to sell it and painful memories confronting her inside.
\nCharlotte Beaufort, heiress to a hotel empire, television celebrity, and self-confessed city woman, hits the countryside to film an episode of her reality television show, Hotel SOS, where she immediately clashes with the overwhelmed Arte and her inquisitive Labrador, Rodin.
\nArte doesn’t take kindly to Charlotte’s attitude and frank opinions about her hotel, but when they are thrown together, she begins to realise not everything is as it seems with her attractive nemesis. As Arte begins to chip away at Charlotte's icy exterior, both women begin to realise dreams and reality rarely entwine and that, sometimes, our dreams are not even our own.
\nCan the artsy dreamer and ambitious heiress face the reality of their situations and discover their true paths? And if so, can those paths lead them toward true love?
After the events of the summer, Katherine and Anna are looking forward to spending a quiet, cosy Christmas together before hosting a New Year’s Eve party at Nunswick Abbey.
\nWhen a romantic weekend away for Anna’s birthday doesn’t go to plan, it proves to be the beginning of their Christmas woes, and as workplace pleasantries grow too friendly, a cloud of jealousy and suspicion forms.
\nAs Anna plans the most important party of her career, can she convince Katherine their co-worker has more than pub lunches on the brain? Can Katherine keep her composure as the tension rises at Abbey House?
\nAs they count down to the New Year, will Anna and Katherine’s relationship survive the calamitous Christmas season?
Evie remembers nothing of the fantastical world she was born in. Not its whimsical beauty that inspired the paintings she studies as an art history student. Not Alicrat, the astonishing ability to manipulate threads of existence. And not her mother, who disappeared after securing her daughter’s safety.
\nBut when a mysterious stranger, Charlie, reunites Evie with her family heirloom - an ancient book written in the indecipherable Alterra Lingua - she remembers him. Burgeoned by the hope of finding her mother and tempted by the mystery of decoding the book with Charlie, Evie returns to the sister world of her birth.
\nBetween the centuries-old clues from a legendary Renaissance artist, the crumbling castle archives holding a millennia of history, and the oracle in exile who knows the unknowable, Evie learns her destiny is inextricably intertwined with the good and evil of both worlds. With the danger that hunted her mother growing perilously powerful, she must decide what, if anything, should be sacrificed for the greater good.
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Emotionally guarded Daphne Amos always believed she’d found a kindred spirit in her fiancé, Heath. Both very private people, they’ve kept their pasts hidden from the world, and each other, until Heath’s escalating nightmares begin to put an undeniable strain on their relationship.
\nDetermined to give their impending marriage the best chance of succeeding, Heath insists that Daphne join him on a seven-day retreat with Dr. Matthew Cerny, a psychologist celebrated for getting to the root of repressed memories. Daphne reluctantly agrees - even though the past is the last place she wants to go.
\nThe retreat’s isolated and forbidding location increases her unease, as do the doctor’s rules: they must relinquish their keys and phones, they’ll be monitored at all hours by hidden cameras, and they’re never to socialise with the other guests.
\nOne sleepless night, Daphne decides to leave her room . . . and only then does she realise that the institute is not at all what it seems - and that whatever’s crying out from Heath’s past isn’t meant to be heard. It’s meant to be silenced.
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Dove Jarrod was a renowned evangelist and faith healer. Only her granddaughter, Eve Candler, knows that Dove was a con artist. In the eight years since Dove’s death, Eve has maintained Dove’s charitable foundation - and her lies. But just as a documentary team wraps up a shoot about the miracle worker, Eve is assaulted by a vengeful stranger intent on exposing what could be Dove’s darkest secret: murder . . .
Tuscaloosa, 1934: a wily young orphan escapes the psychiatric hospital where she was born. When she joins the itinerant inspirational duo the Hawthorn Sisters, the road ahead is one of stirring new possibilities. And with an obsessive predator on her trail, one of untold dangers. For a young girl to survive, desperate choices must be made.
Now, to protect her family, Eve will join forces with the investigative filmmaker and one of Dove’s friends, risking everything to unravel the truth behind the accusations against her grandmother. But will the truth set her free or set her world on fire?
In front of an elegantly shabby townhouse on a Savannah side street sits a hand-painted Miss Edie, Psychic. Ingrid White inherited the house and business from her beloved grandmother, a local celebrity in town. But unless Ingrid can find a way to pay for crushing property taxes and mounting repairs, she’s going to lose them both.
\nIngrid has faith in the homespun witchcraft Edie passed down to her, yet hope and clients are dwindling . . . Until Sailor Loeffler’s bachelorette party changes everything. Sailor is local royalty - part of the vast “Savannah Sauce” empire, beautiful and wealthy beyond imagining - and Ingrid’s reading is so accurate that she becomes the bride-to-be’s confidante. To keep that access and all the privileges it brings, Ingrid relies more and more on hexes and dark spells - using the baneful magic Edie always warned her against.
\nAs Ingrid works even riskier spells, she is drawn further into the Loefflers’ inner circle and the obstacles in her path melt away. But is it witchcraft or other, more earthbound forces? Ingrid can feel the lines blurring even as her powers seem to grow, until she must confront the truth about just how far some people, including herself, will go to keep the life they’ve always wanted . . .
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18-year-old Ilse Odenwald dreams of being afraid.
\nIn her village, fearfulness is next to godliness. The women of the village feed their terror to an ancient Saint. In return, it protects them from the monsters of the Hexenwald - the horror-filled forest on their doorstep.
\nBorn unfearing, Ilse has felt like an outsider all her life. When the Saint discovers Ilse's divergence, it levels a threat. She must find her fear, or it will devour her sister.
It is 1951, and at number six Sycamore Street fifteen-year-old Edie Green is lonely. Living alone with her eccentric mother - who conducts seances for the local Ludthorpe community - she is desperate for something to shake her from her dull, isolated life.
\nWhen the popular, pretty Lucy Theddle befriends Edie, she thinks all her troubles are over. But Lucy has a secret, one Edie is not certain she should keep . . .
\nThen Lucy goes missing.
\n2018. Edie is eighty-four and still living in Ludthorpe. When one day she glimpses Lucy Theddle, still looking the same as she did at fifteen, her family write it off as one of her many mix ups. There's a lot Edie gets confused about these days. A lot she finds difficult to remember. But what she does know is this: she must find out what happened to Lucy, all those years ago . . .
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1938. Gillian Larking is used to blending in and going unnoticed, until she is befriended by her new roommate at boarding school, the vibrant and spirited Violet Claybourne. As the Christmas holidays approach, Gilly can't believe her luck when Violet invites her to spend them at her home, the crumbling Thornleigh Hall.
\nAt Thornleigh, Gilly is dazzled by the family's faded grandeur, and above all by Violet's beguiling older sisters who seem to accept her as one of their own. But following a terrible incident in the house's grounds, Gilly begins to realise the Claybourne sisters aren't quite what she thought they were. And if she's to survive in their world, she may have to become just like them . . .
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Anna first fell in love with London at her hometown library - its Jane Austen balls a far cry from her life of food stamps and hand-me-downs. But when she finally arrives after college, the real London is a moldy flat and the same paycheck-to-paycheck grind - that fairy-tale life still out of reach.
\nThen Anna meets the Wilders, who fly her to Saint-Tropez to tutor their teenage daughter. Swept up by the sphinxlike elder sister, Anna soon finds herself plunged into a heady whirlpool of parties and excess, a place where confidence is a birthright. There she meets two handsome young men - one who wants to whisk her into his world in a chauffeured car, the other who sees through Anna’s struggle to outrun her past. It’s like she’s stepped into the pages of a glittering new novel, but what will it cost her to play the part?
\nSparkling with intelligence and insight, All That Life Can Afford peels back the glossy layers of class and privilege, exploring what it means to create a new life for yourself that still honors the one you’ve left behind.
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Nina Browning is living the good life after marrying into Nashville’s elite. More recently, her husband made a fortune selling his tech business, and their adored son has been accepted to Princeton. Yet sometimes the middle-class small-town girl in Nina wonders if she’s strayed from the person she once was.
Tom Volpe is a single dad working multiple jobs while struggling to raise his headstrong daughter, Lyla. His road has been lonely, long, and hard, but he finally starts to relax after Lyla earns a scholarship to Windsor Academy, Nashville’s most prestigious private school.
Amid so much wealth and privilege, Lyla doesn’t always fit in - and her overprotective father doesn’t help - but in most ways, she’s a typical teenage girl, happy and thriving.
Then, one photograph, snapped in a drunken moment at a party, changes everything. As the image spreads like wildfire, the Windsor community is instantly polarised, buzzing with controversy and assigning blame.
At the heart of the lies and scandal, Tom, Nina, and Lyla are forced together - all questioning their closest relationships, asking themselves who they really are, and searching for the courage to live a life of true meaning.
A novel that explores the question: Is there ever a deal-breaker when it comes to true love?
\nClaudia Parr has everything going for her. A successful editor at a publishing house in Manhattan, she's also a devoted sister, aunt, and friend. Yet she's never wanted to become a mother - which she discovers is a major hurdle to marriage, something she desperately wants.
\nThen she meets her soul mate Ben who, miraculously, feels the same way about parenthood. The two fall in love and marry, committed to one another and their life of adventure and discovery. All's well until one of them has a change of heart. Someone wants a baby after all.
\nThis is the witty, heartfelt story about what happens to the perfect couple when they suddenly want different things and there is no compromise. It's about deciding what is most important in life and wagering everything to get it. And most of all, it's about the things we will - and won't - do for love.
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A powerful, provocative novel about marriage and motherhood, love and forgiveness.
\nTessa Russo is a stay-at-home mother of two young children and the wife of a renowned pediatric surgeon. Valerie Anderson is an attorney and single mother to six-year-old Charlie - a boy who has never known his father. Although both women live in the same Boston suburb, they are strangers to one another and have little in common, aside from a fierce love for their children. But one night, a tragic accident causes their lives to converge in ways no one could have imagined.
\nThis is the moving, luminous story of good people caught in untenable circumstances. Each being tested in ways they never thought possible. Each questioning everything they once believed. And each ultimately discovering what truly matters most.
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A novel for anyone who has ever wondered: how can I truly love the one I'm with, when I can't forget the one who got away?
\nEllen and Andy Graham have the perfect marriage. There is no question how deep their devotion is, and how naturally they bring out the best in each other. But one fateful afternoon, Ellen runs into Leo. The one who brought out the worst in her. The one who left her heartbroken nearly a decade ago. The one she could never quite forget.
\nWhen his reappearance ignites long-dormant emotions, Ellen begins to question whether the life she's living is the one she's meant to live.
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The Kingsley family is practically American royalty, beloved for their military heroics, political service, and unmatched elegance. When Joseph S. Kingsley III is born in 1960, he inherits the weight of that legacy. Growing up with all the Kingsley looks and charisma, Joe should have no problem taking up the mantle after his father’s untimely death. But he is also a little bit reckless, and can’t seem to figure out how to channel the expectations of an entire country.
\nNo one ever expected anything of Cate, on the other hand. She, too, grew up in a single-parent household - just her and her mom scraping by in their small apartment. As a teenager, though, Cate is discovered for her looks. Modeling may be her only ticket out of the cycle of disappointment that her mother has always inhabited. Before too long, her face is everywhere, though she is always aware that she’d be a pariah in her social circles if anyone knew her true story.
\nWhen Joe and Cate’s paths cross, their connection is instant. What remains to be seen is whether their relationship will survive the glare of the spotlight that follows Joe everywhere. And just as they find themselves in the make-or-break moment, the tragedy that seems to run in Joe’s family right alongside all that privilege will repeat itself.
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Darcy Rhone thought she had it all figured out: the more beautiful the girl, the more charmed her life. Never mind substance. Never mind playing by the rules. Never mind karma. But Darcy’s neat, perfect world turns upside down when her best friend, Rachel White, the plain-Jane “good girl,” steals her fiancé, while Darcy finds herself completely alone for the first time in her life . . . with a baby on the way.
\nDarcy tries to recover, fleeing to her childhood friend living in London and resorting to her tried-and-true methods for getting what she wants. But as she attempts to recreate her glamorous life on a new continent, Darcy finds that her rules no longer apply. It is only then that Darcy can begin her journey toward self-awareness, forgiveness, and motherhood. \"Something Blue\" is a novel about one woman’s surprising discoveries about the true meaning of friendship, love, and happily-ever-after. It’s a novel for anyone who has ever, even secretly, wondered if the last thing you want is really the one thing you need.
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Rachel White is the consummate good girl. A hard-working attorney at a large Manhattan law firm and a diligent maid of honor to her charmed best friend Darcy, Rachel has always played by all the rules.
\nSince grade school, she has watched Darcy shine, quietly accepting the sidekick role in their lopsided friendship. But that suddenly changes the night of her thirtieth birthday when Rachel finally confesses her feelings to Darcy's fiance, and is both horrified and thrilled to discover that he feels the same way.
\nAs the wedding date draws near, events spiral out of control, and Rachel knows she must make a choice between her heart and conscience. In so doing, she discovers that the lines between right and wrong can be blurry, endings aren't always neat, and sometimes you have to risk everything to be true to yourself.
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Four freshmen arrive at college from completely different worlds: Lainey, a California party girl with a flair for drama; Tyson, a brilliant scholar and law school hopeful from D.C.; Summer, a recruited athlete and perfectionist from the Midwest; and Hannah, a mild-mannered southerner who is content to quietly round out the circle of big personalities. Soon after moving into their shared dorm, they strike up a conversation in a study lounge, and the seeds of friendship are planted.
\nAs their college years fly by, their bond intensifies and the four become inseparable. But as graduation nears, their lives are forever changed after a desperate act leads to tragic consequences. Stunned and heartbroken, a pact is made to be there for each other in their time of need, no matter how separated they are by circumstances or distance.
\nTen years later, Hannah is anticipating what should be one of the happiest moments of her life when everything is suddenly turned upside down. Calling on her closest friends, it soon becomes clear that they are facing their own crossroads. True to their promise, they agree to take a time out from lives headed in wrong directions and embark on a journey of self-discovery, forgiveness, and acceptance.
\nIn this tender portrayal of grief, love, and hope, Emily Giffin asks: When things fall apart, who will be at our sides to help pick up the pieces?
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Marian's biological clock is ticking. She has a dream job as the producer of a hugely successful TV show, a stunning Manhattan apartment and a wonderful relationship with the man she loves. But she wants a baby - and she also has a secret. And when that secret turns up on her doorstep after 18 years, her picture perfect existence begins to take on a life of its own.
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Kirby is adopted. She loves her parents and her sister, but she's never really felt she fitted in. And now she's 18 there's nothing to stop her finding her birth mother. But navigating her way, alone, to New York is only the start - and as Marian soon discovers, giving birth is the easy part.
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Gilgamesh, soon to be crowned King of Uruk, travels north to find his homelands in flames and his family on the run. A blood-red moon brings warnings of a new kind of war, and in the far north, the enemies of Sumer are massing.
\nInanna and Ninshubar sail south to take their revenge upon Enki, the king of the water gods. Armed with the master mee and struggling to understand its true nature, Inanna will face impossible demons in her quest to fully comprehend the power she has inherited.
\nMeanwhile Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld, has a mysterious visitor. This dark stranger brings with him the threat of dangers far more terrible than Enki, or even Sumer’s warlike neighbours. Because a long time ago, in a realm faraway, a little girl was taken from her family. Now, a vengeance, long prophesied, is about to unfold.
\nAs the forces of chaos rise across the riverlands, Gilgamesh must battle against overwhelming odds to save the city he loves, and the Anunnaki will soon discover that no one can escape the sins of the past. Not even the gods.
Inanna is an impossibility, the first full Anunnaki born on Earth. Crowned the goddess of love by the twelve immortal Anunnaki who are worshipped across Sumer, she is destined for greatness.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBut Inanna is born into a time of war. The Anunnaki have split into warring factions, threatening to tear the world apart. Forced into a marriage to negotiate a peace, she soon realises she has been placed in terrible danger.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGilgamesh, a mortal human son of the Anunnaki, and notorious womaniser, finds himself captured and imprisoned by King Akka who seeks to distance himself and his people from the gods. Arrogant and selfish, Gilgamesh is given one final chance to prove himself.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNinshubar, a powerful warrior woman, is cast out of her tribe after an act of kindness. Hunted by her own people, she escapes across the country, searching for acceptance and a new place in the world.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAs their journeys push them closer together, and their fates intertwine, they come to realise that together, they may have the power to change to face of the world forever.
It has been six months since the fall of the great cities of Ancient Sumer. Six months since war and chaos scattered everyone to the wind.
\nEreshkigal, the queen of the underworld, finds herself trapped in the rubble of her realm with only one to rescue the man she loves.
\nIn the realm of light, Harga and Marduk mount a hopeless resistance against the vast Akkadian forces, whilst Gilgamesh, once king of Uruk, travels to Egypt in search of a legend that could save them.
\nHigh above them all, in the kingdom of Heaven, a goddess with no memory lies imprisoned and helpless whilst a faint voice on the wind whispers a name . . . Inanna.
\nAnd, wandering between the realms, a lost and lonely spirit named Ninshubar desperately tries to find her lost mistress.
\nBut as their search for one another begins to draw them closer, Tiamat, the many-headed dragon-queen of Heaven, is preparing for an assault on the realm of light that could crush all life on Earth.
So, here’s the thing: Cleo and her friends really, truly didn’t mean to steal this spaceship. They just wanted to know why, twenty years ago, the entire Providence crew vanished without a trace, but then the stupid dark-matter engine started on its own. Now these four twenty-somethings are en route to Proxima Centauri and unable to turn around while being harangued by a hologram that has the face and snide attitude of the ship’s missing captain, Billie.
\nCleo has dreamt of being an astronaut all her life, and Earth is a lost cause at this point, so this should be one of those blessings in disguise that people talk about. But as the ship travels deeper into space, the laws of physics start twisting; old mysteries come crawling back to life; and Cleo’s initially combative relationship with Billie turns into something deeper and more desperate than either woman was prepared for.
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Can the right woman be enough to thaw the Ice Queen's heart?
\nThis is an Age Gap, Ice Queen, CEO Romance. It is hot and steamy, sweet and loving and always with a Happy Ever After.
\nEva Perez is the CEO of one of the biggest and most successful companies in her industry in the US. She has everything she could ever need or want in life. She is confident she doesn't need a girlfriend to complete her.
\nMost women fall at Eva's feet, so when a young woman turns up for an interview with her, who seems completely unphased by her power, Eva is intrigued.
\nMadison is captivating and exciting to Eva and sparks fly between them right from the start.
\nWill Madison ever be able to melt Eva's frosty heart?
\nEscape into this hot and exciting Age Gap, Ice Queen romance today.
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McKinley's creative dreams are in tatters and a job interview as a retail assistant at the Headquarters of the biggest chain of women's sex stores in the US is the only hope she has of keeping her head above water.
\nShe just has to get through the interview with the reknowned dragon CEO Alev King first.
\nAlev is very hard to please, but she seems determined to work closely with McKinley and McKinley can't help but feel the burning heat of desire whenever she is near her.
\nShe just wants to please Alev, but will the walls around Alev's guarded heart ever come down enough to allow her to?
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Can she melt the icy heart of the demanding CEO?
\nThis is an Age Gap, Rich Girl/Poor Girl, Different Worlds, Boss/Employee Lesbian/Sapphic Romance. Super spicy, super sweet and as always with Emily Hayes, a Happy Ever After.
\nSofie Rosswell is a fashion school graduate working in a coffee shop when she is confronted with a difficult, demanding and very glamorous customer- the fashion mogul and CEO of the biggest New York Fashion Magazine- Gabriella Galena.
\nSofie is intimidated by Gabriella, but entranced by her and finds herself very attracted to her.
\nWhen Gabriella offers Sofie a job, all of Sofie's dreams of working in the fashion world might come true.
\nBut, Gabriella looks at Sofie with hungry eyes, and Sofie likes it.
\nSofie can't risk her dream job by sleeping with the boss, can she?
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Wealthy and successful CEO, Genevieve Mitchell has a void in her personal life. She goes to a bar to wind down where she meets a beautiful and mysterious stranger who she is fiercely attracted to.
\nGenevieve ends up letting herself go and having a night of passion with the beautiful stranger convinced she will never see her again.
\nWill she ever see her again? And if she does, and the beautiful stranger's troubled past catches up with her, what will happen then?
Melanie Fox has got the promotion of her life to Head of Sales for a multi million dollar company. Melanie knows she is the best at her job and all she has to do now for the future of her career is convince the CEO, Vanessa Reiss, of her brilliance.
\nBut, Vanessa doesn't agree with her sales strategy for their new product; in fact, Vanessa strongly disagrees and Melanie isn't the kind of woman to back down.
\nShe's clashing with her new boss at every turn and sparks are flying between them, but she can't help but be blown away by the force of nature that is CEO Vanessa Reiss, the most attractive and impressive woman she has ever met.
\nMelanie can't stop thinking about her boss, and also about the fierce rivalry between them.
\nWhere will the intensity between them lead to? And will Melanie ever get what she wants professionally and personally?
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Successful and wealthy CEO, Victoria St Clair has a string of failed high profile relationships behind her. She may be winning in the business world, but she longs for the personal connection that keeps eluding her.
\nWhen she meets the stunning and sexy Alexa on a dating app, they have immediate chemistry and things soon seem too good to be true.
\nWhen the truth of who Alexa really is surfaces, what will Victoria do?
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Isabella Peters is a wealthy and entitled CEO who is very used to getting what she wants. What she wants is a bit of fun and some casual sex while she is in town, with the cute young bartender.
\nAustin Adams finds herself entangled in an irresistible steamy arrangement with the stunning aloof CEO.
\nWill the sizzling connection they share together ever be more than just a casual fling?
Astoria Shepry is the billionaire Ice Queen everyone loves to hate.
\nMiller Scott is the up and coming divorce lawyer working for Astoria Shepry's ex wife.
\nMiller Scott walks into the Shepry divorce ready to destroy Astoria Shepry for what she’s done to her ex-wife. The story seems clear. The villain already chosen. But when Miller finally faces Astoria across the table, nothing is as simple as it should be.
\nCold, controlled, and devastatingly powerful, Astoria gives nothing away - and the evidence doesn’t quite add up. As cracks form in the case, so does something far more dangerous: attraction.
\nNow Miller is trapped between duty and desire, loyalty and truth . . . and falling for the one woman she’s meant to ruin. Because the closer Miller gets to Astoria, the harder it is to tell where the fight ends . . . and the obsession begins.
\nIn a war of power, reputation, and temptation, one of them is playing dirty. And when the truth finally comes out, it won’t just cost millions - it could cost them everything they swore they’d never feel.
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Artist Juliette Montgomery's mom is getting re-married and Juliette will be moving in with her new Step-father and Step-Sister.
\nHer new step-sister, Olivia Jones, is the very beautiful, enigmatic CEO of the family business.
\nJuliette has never been attracted to women before, but she finds herself increasingly drawn to Olivia.
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Single mom, Emma Williams starts work as an assistant for the famously frosty Ice Queen Vivian Sterling - CEO of Sterling Enterprises.
\nVivian is difficult, demanding and hard to please.
\nEmma finds herself more and more drawn in to wanting to please her.
\nWill Emma's warmth and kindness get through to her and thaw the Ice Queen?
\nEmma senses a chemistry between them that is way more than boss/employee.
\nWhat happens if they cross that line?
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Alice's life is a mess. She's lost her job and her girlfriend and she doesn't know how she will pay her rent next month.
\nShe meets a much older wealthy stranger from a dating app for a hook up and the next day she receives a message from this stranger offering her a job. Alice will be the new personal assistant to the CEO Joanne Morgan. The only catch is that she has to wear the exact sexy clothes her new boss chooses for her while she's at work.
\nAlice finds herself tangled up in office games that turn her on more and more. Joanne Morgan is a stone cold Ice Queen, so why is Alice so into her? It is getting harder and harder to focus on work and Alice knows her boss doesn't do relationships.
\nCan Alice find a way to charm the Ice Queen CEO beyond the purely physical and get her own happy ever after?
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Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.
They're polar opposites.
In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.
Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She'll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he'll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.
Nora Stephens' life is books - she’s read them all - and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby.
\nWhich is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters’ trip away - with visions of a small-town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute.
\nIf Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again - in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow - what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.
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Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it . . . right up until the moment he realised he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.
\nWhich is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.
\nScruffy and chaotic - with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads - Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?
\nBut it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex . . . right?
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Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years - or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century.
\nWhen Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game.
\nOne: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice - and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.
\nTwo: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication
\nThree: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.
\nBut the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room. And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story - just like the tale Margaret’s spinning - could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad . . . depending on who’s telling it.
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Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college - they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now - for reasons they’re still not discussing - they don’t.
\nThey broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.
\nWhich is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.
\nOnly this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts.
\nHarriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week . . . in front of those who know you best?
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Natalie Cleary must risk her future and leap blindly into a vast unknown for the chance to build a new world with the boy she loves.
Natalie's last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start . . . until she starts seeing the \"wrong things.\" They're just momentary glimpses at first - her front door is red instead of its usual green, there's a pre-school where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hills and grazing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn't right.
That's when she gets a visit from the kind but mysterious apparition she calls \"Grandmother,\" who tells her: \"You have three months to save him.\" The next night, under the stadium lights of the high school football field, she meets a beautiful boy named Beau, and it's as if time just stops and nothing exists. Nothing, except Natalie and Beau.
Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends.
\nFor most of the year they live far apart - she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown - but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together. Until two years ago, when they ruined everything.
\nThey haven’t spoken since. Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together - lay everything on the table, make it all right.
\nMiraculously, he agrees. Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?
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The world is ending. It has been ending for some time. When did the ending begin? Perhaps when Evie’s mother died, or when her father died soon after. Perhaps when her sister, Elena, was forcibly institutionalised in a psychiatric hippie commune in Colorado. Certainly at some point over the last year, as New York City spun down the tubes, as bedbugs and vultures descended, as apartments crumbled to the ground and no one had the time or money to fight it, or even, really, to notice.
\nAnd then, one day, the ending is complete. Every renter is evicted en masse, leaving only the landlords and owners - the demented, the aristocratic, the luckiest few. Evie - parentless, sisterless, basically friendless, underemployed - has nothing and no one. Except, she remembers, a second cousin in Texas, in a strange town called Gulluck, where nothing is as it seems.
\nAnd so, in the surreal, dislodged landscape, beyond the known world, a place of albino cicadas and gardeners and thieves, of cobblers and shoemakers and one very large fish, a place governed by mysterious logic and perhaps even miracles, Evie sets out in search of a home.
\nA wry and buoyant fairy tale set at the apex of the housing crisis, Emily Hunt Kivel’s Dwelling takes us on a hapless hero’s journey to the end of the world and back again. Madcap and magical, hilarious and existential, Dwelling holds a funhouse mirror to our moment - for anyone in search of space, belonging, and some semblance of justice.
Edie Walker’s life is not going as planned. At thirty-five she feels stuck: in her career, in her love life, and in her tiny San Francisco studio apartment. It doesn’t help that her best friend, Peter Masterson, is basically the über successful male version of her - and she’s hopelessly, unrequitedly in love with him. But when Peter breaks up with his girlfriend of seven years, Edie thinks her life might finally be turning around. He’ll discover how toxic dating-app culture is and realise Edie has been right for him all along.
\nExcept Peter almost immediately lands a date with Anaya Thomas, a gorgeous, whip-smart professor and writer of feminist literature whom even Edie - reared in the culture of tech bros - is smitten by. Unlike the women Peter has dated before, Anaya is like an alternative-reality version of Edie - one with shampoo-commercial hair and a meaningful career, who definitely doesn’t spend her weekends scrolling social media alone in her apartment. It’s only a matter of time before Peter falls head over heels for this woman; Edie herself is infatuated after one meeting.
\nThen Anaya is found dead in her apartment - right after a date with Peter.
Seven years ago, Maeve Abenthy lost her world, her father, even her name. Desperate to escape the stain of her father’s crimes, she lives under a fake name, never staying in one place long enough to put down roots.
\nThen she receives a mysterious letter with four impossible words Your father was innocent.
\nTo uncover the truth, she poses as an apprentice for the Otherwhere Post, where she’ll be trained in the art of scriptomancy - the dangerous magic that allows couriers to enchant letters and deliver them to other worlds. But looking into her father’s past draws more attention than she’d planned.
\nHer secretive, infuriatingly handsome mentor knows she’s lying about her identity, and time is running out to convince him to trust her. Worse, she begins to receive threatening letters, warning her to drop her investigation - or else. For Maeve to unravel the mystery of what happened seven years ago, she may have to forfeit her life.
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Many full moons ago, a young American boy with ambition in his belly and the moon in his veins followed his destiny west, determined to carve a path to success no matter the carnage.
\nTwo centuries later, a city is captivated by the strange and savage murder of a young woman. No longer able to afford their apartment alone, her roommate Natasha, hounded by rumors of wolves, sensational headlines, and one pop-star’s angry fan-swarm, has resorted to living in her car. There’s nothing left for her . . . except vengeance.
\nAcross town, Shane LaSalle is about to see his wildest dreams come true. He already has a gorgeous apartment and a high paying job in venture capital. Now the partners of Barrington Equity have invited him to board the company’s private jet for an exclusive retreat. But with partnership finally in his reach, Shane realises he’s losing his taste for just how ruthless and all-consuming the firm is.
\nEpic and electric, American Werewolves brings readers from the wilds of the New World to the opulent board rooms and golf courses of the twenty-first century, where devouring the weak is an American birthright as old as the country itself.
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As a lonely ten-year-old resident of Pearl Island, Jenni Farrow befriends Timmy Caruso and together they enjoy a glorious summer of swimming, fireworks, and carnival rides. (Not to mention rescuing a strange sea creature from a tidepool). Then, one late summer day, Timmy disappears.
\nThirty years later, Jenni - now Jenn Lanaro, bestselling author of the Philipia Bay action-romance series - is desperate to escape the fatigue of her career and her soon-to-be-ex-husband. With her Pokémon-obsessed children in tow, Jenn rents a summer house on Pearl Island. But shortly after she arrives, a boy emerges from the nighttime sea. His name, he says, is Timmy Caruso. He’s ten years old. And he’s on a mission to save the world.
\nIn the days that follow, Jenn grapples with work deadlines, her own spirited children, the mysterious boy-from-the-sea, and her burgeoning interest in a very sexy contractor. But when alarming events unfold along the coast - shark attacks, tidal waves, a proliferation of sugar-addicted sea creatures, and a terror out in the deeper water - she wonders if just maybe the young boy knows what he’s doing after all?
Budding musician Fatty Bratty wakes up in his terrible apartment to a random dog. A dog that acts like he belongs there. Except Bratty doesn’t own a dog. He always wanted to but never did. So maybe this random dog is a sign: screw his parents’ expectations. Forget business school. Instead, over a manic week, he and his best friend write and record their first rap album. They call themselves Mr. Yay.
\nBratty’s therapist Miriam remembers a different Mr. Yay, the one from the old children’s TV show, the washed-up actor turned first mate who sailed a boat captained by a dog and taught people to be themselves. To just be. But strangely, her husband, Jack, has no memory of the old show at all.
\nAs Mr. Yay climbs the charts with his rap songs, Miriam watches her life unravel. Jack is increasingly absent, more secretive, reckless - he hardly resembles the man she married. Their friends start acting weird too: drinking excessively, splurging on motorcycles, quitting their jobs, not washing their hair, harboring raccoons. Jack also doesn’t remember things he should about his relationship with Miriam. But he suspects his memory hole is more than it seems. It’s not just that he’s forgotten the Mr. Yay show - it’s that, on the internet, and according to the studio and half the population, there is no Mr. Yay. There never was.
\nWitty, heartfelt, deeply weird and utterly original, Mr. Yay explores how we grapple with inexplicable sudden shifts in the world around us, and the conspiracy theories and identity crises they birth. If the past we remember has changed, are we who we think we are? Is anyone?
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In Emily Jane’s debut - a rollicking paean to what it means to be alive in the twenty-first century - the fleeting presence of alien vessels, and the certainty that humans are not alone in the universe, sparks intense uncertainty as to our place within it.
\nBlaine has always been content to go along with whatever his supermom wife and television-addicted, half-feral children want. But when the kids blithely ponder skinning people to see if they’re aliens, and his wife announces a surprise road trip to Disney World, even steady Blaine begins to crack.
\nHalf a continent away, Heather, bored in a Malibu pool while the ships hover overhead, watches as the Arrival heralds the demise of her dead-end relationship and sets her on a quest to understand herself, her accomplished (and oh-so-annoying) stepfamily, and why she feels so alone in a universe teeming with life.
\nAnd Oliver, suddenly conscious and alert after twenty catatonic years, struggles to piece together broken memories and understand why he’s following a strange cat on a westward journey and into the greatest adventure of his - or anyone’s - lifetime.
Brooke Kent hasn't spoken to a single member of her family in thirteen years. That's all changed when her younger brother calls her to invite her to his wedding. He tells her to bring her girlfriend, partner, spouse, or the woman she hooks up with on Tuesdays, he doesn't care who, just wants her there. Brooke would be tempted to take him up on that only she's painfully single.
\nWhen she tells her two best friends about her dilemma, they suggest Brooke invite Anna Fourchette, the woman Brooke has been pining over for almost a year. To Brooke's surprise, Anna agrees. Can Brooke really handle a week in London dealing with her estranged family? And more importantly, can she pretend to date the woman of her dreams without falling in love for real along the way?
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With Bat in tow and Zane sticking to him like glue, Aaron combs an unfamiliar undercity for a pathway to the surface - or someone criminal enough to take him there. Laying low on the glittering planet is tough enough without asking questions, and worse with Zane’s brotherly bonding attempts infiltrating every situation.
\nA bribed casino owner leads to both the surface and the capital of Amethyst, a shimmering gambling city packed with the strangest humans Aaron’s run across. Worse, such a high reward is drawing other bounty hunters, both human and otherwise. With few leads, fewer resources, and Zane haunting their steps, Aaron and Bat race against the clock to find the mysterious woman on the bounty charts before anyone else.
\nf she doesn’t find them first.
Stranded on an abandoned planet with Amerov on the way.
\nAs they chase their target through the expanse of space, Aaron and Bat receive the news they’re not the only cyborgs on the hunt for this particular bounty. With the prisoner in their sights, the two take their chance to catch her first, pushing their advantage, only to find themselves crashed on an abandoned planet.
\nWith their bounty alive and in their custody (and trying to start up one too many conversations), the two must find their way off an unfamiliar space rock with their ship barely functioning, no civilisation in sight, and the most dangerous cyborg from Amerov on its way.
With Zane still on the mend and possible answers awaiting on the planet Hytha, Aaron and crew head to the home only Zane and Lalia remember. Nervous to encounter the two people who may be his parents, Aaron traverses the planet with Bat and the royal sisters, checking in on possible origins of his past while giving Zane time to recover.
\nWhat he finds may hold answers to who he is and his connection to his new family. It’s a perfect distraction, if Yvonne’s kindness and affection weren’t still so inexplicable.
After their narrow escape from Amerov’s clutches, Aaron and Bat find a hospital for their new passenger. With the underground cities of Amethyst glittering and rich with humans nearly as odd as him, Aaron hopes to not only blend in but find replacements for his damaged augmentations.
\nBut as the other bounty arrives to help Lalia, Aaron realizes he won’t be able to rid himself of the chatty humans. With Zane sticking to him like glue in his expedition through the unfamiliar hospital - being more helpful than Aaron will ever admit - Aaron soon realises stealing new hearing aids won’t be as easy as planned. For there are even more cyborgs crawling this city than anticipated, and he’s not the only one with thievery on his mind.
Finally safe, Aaron and crew deliver the two princesses home. Even with Yvonne and Anya under the protection of their parents, Aaron, Bat and the siblings must make a run for the edge of the known galaxy to avoid Captain. Home on Neyla Ve, Yvonne is happy to have her sister safe but misses her newfound family. She knows it won’t be long until they’re reunited, just enough for the political turmoil to calm. Until she realises that Aaron and the others may not be as safe as she believed.
Waking in the confines of an Amerov ship isn’t precisely how Aaron wanted to start his day, but things only take a turn for the worse when his attempted escape ends with him stranded on the planet’s surface with only Yvonne for backup. Injured and stuck in the bleak expanse between the cyborg planet’s many facilities, Aaron scrambles for a way to get back to Bat and the others.
\nExploring the remnants of an ancient, abandoned cyborg facility, he and Yvonne try not to get on one another’s nerves. With the looming threat of Captain discovering them, the two attempt to work together not only to get off-planet but perhaps to understand one another.
Aaron is perfectly content to chase bounties in his run-down little space ship, avoid human interaction at all cost, and lay low from the cyborg planet that created him. But when he and Bat - his half-robotic badger companion (who talks just a little too much) - chase their largest bounty ever, they run head-first into not only some dangerous criminals, but other cyborgs much stronger than them, and worst of all, a handful of humans who aren’t going anywhere.
\nTheir job leads them first to Yayth, a backwater planet nearly as inhospitable as it is frigid. On a planet this abandoned, their target should be an easy find. Until a storm rolls in that freezes even the engines of starships. Aaron and Bat find themselves trapped not only with their bounty, but with some bystanders determined to get in the way, and something monstrous wanting to crack its way out of the ice.
In the expanses of space where the closest planets are days away, Aaron and crew have a destination in mind. When their ship crosses paths with another from a different era of Aaron’s life, he’s braced for the worst, knowing his old bounty hunter captain is friendly, where the rest of the crew holds grudges.
\nTrapped on Captain Lee’s ship with a star in the nearby vicinity going super nova, Aaron, Bat, and their humans wait out the storm. Between the hostility of his old crew and the strangely kind looks Yvonne is sending his way, Aaron is feeling particularly trapped. At least no one’s trying to kill them. Until a mysterious vessel lands in the hangar. With two less-than-human occupants.
A few days of rest are on the horizon and Aaron, Bat, and the humans hunker down on an out-of-the-way planet to heal and stay out of Captain’s vengeful eye. With Princess Anya as a new addition to their crew, Aaron picks a spot where no one’s bound to search and he can find supplies better suited to care for the littlest royal.
\nBut he’s now stuck with far too many humans to have time to take a breath. Planning on fixing up his ship and avoiding awkward conversations, Aaron is more than a little confused with Yvonne’s sudden and less than subtle attempts at getting him to bond with her little sister. It wouldn’t be so difficult to ignore if Yvonne would stop smiling as if they’re friends . . .
\nAnd if the kid didn’t decide she wants Aaron to take them all on an adventure.
As Aaron and crew leave Amethyst in the dust, they head into the depths of space, to the floating city where Aaron knows they can enact their plan. With Zane and Lalia in their own ship and Aaron and Bat trapped in there’s with a rather vexing princess, it’s a waiting game of reaching their destination before Captain or other bounty hunters realise the royal has once again disappeared.
\nBefore their objective is even in sight, a sudden and mysterious engine failure in Aaron’s old rust bucket of a ship has them scrambling to find a new crystal. In the midst of an asteroid storm, they hunker down on Taloon, a nearby mining moon where they can not only wait out the storm, but buy what they need.
\nTensions rise between Aaron and the princess not only as they and the others are trapped underground, but as it becomes clear Aaron’s not the only cyborg in the crystal-lined caverns.
Injured and down one ship, Aaron and crew head to the nearest low-population planet to gather their wits and find aid for Zane. With a bounty on all their heads, landing near a settlement isn’t wise, but a quick stop by a crashed ship leads to help from two unusual locals.
\nFinally feeling safer with a place to recover at the home of an unusual human and her even more unusual partner, Aaron focuses on Zane’s recovery and tries to figure out the motivations behind Yvonne’s strange behavior . . .
\nLuckily for him, she’s more than willing to finally tell him the truth.
As the floating city of Zar enters the horizon, Aaron and crew prepare for a dangerous trip to the city built of a thousand layers of stone, glass, and metal. With answers for their little family finally within reach, Aaron gets in contact with an old friend to give them a lead. But answers for Aaron, Zane, and Lalia come at a price.
\nTensions rise as old enemies return to haunt them and the unending city threatens to swallow them up. Injured and alone, Aaron must find a way back to Bat and his humans. If the city doesn’t kill him first.
Maren is the first to take in a poor young man washed into their harbor during a raging storm. She takes him not to her own lonesome cottage, but to that of her sister. Many months have passed since Vivian herself was spit back from the sea, her eyes faraway and words stolen from her lungs. With their strange new patient, Maren will need the extra help, and perhaps find her way back to her sister in the process.
\nBut their poor drowned sailor is not merely a man lost at sea. Plagued with dreams of monsters from the depths and Vivian’s ominous hints, Maren must unwind the mystery of his origins while strange scales appear on the moors, livestock are attacked by unknown teeth, and the growing storm threatens to tear their small village from the cliffs.
Iohmar will take in the child and care for him until a suitable home in the human realm is found. But best laid plans often go awry in the lands of Látwill, where winds carry fae across the star-strewn sky, the woods ensnare the weak-minded with their sinister song, and even Iohmar, King Beneath the Earth, is susceptible to the will of the immortal mountains.
\nMagic long tethered to Iohmar’s soul will crumble. Unknown shadows and monsters of mirrored glass will encroach upon the borders of their land. And memories thousands of years lost will unravel as Iohmar struggles not only to properly rule his fair folk, but protect the fragile human son he never should have saved in the first place.
As undergrads, Reba, Hillary, Carson, Gregg, and Bella formed the kind of rare bond that college brochures promise - friendship that lasts a lifetime. Two decades later, the women are spread across the country but remain firmly tethered through their ever-unfurling group chat. They’ve made it through COVID and childbirth and midcareer challenges, but no one can anticipate what’s coming down the pike.
\nThe five women converge on Palm Springs for a long overdue Gregg, who has forged a path as a progressive Texas legislator, is facing a huge decision about her political future. Reba, who moved back to the Bay Area after decades away, is deep in IVF treatments while caring for her aging parents and navigating a San Francisco she hardly recognises. Hillary's medical career in Chicago is going great - but at home, her husband's struggles with addiction have derailed their life. In New York City, Bella faces the biggest case in her career as a litigator while her home life crumbles around her, and across the river in Brooklyn, Carson is working on a new novel as well as forging a possible relationship with the father she's never met.
\nTwenty years into their shared friendship, the stakes are higher than ever, and they must help one another reconcile professional ambition with personal tumult. Clutch is a big, beautiful, and deeply absorbing novel that asks how much space and heart we can give to our friends and our families, and what space we can save for ourselves.
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A broken-winged angel trying to get home. Her escort a nocturnal huntress with a bloody past. It will be a dangerous journey - monsters are everywhere and the truly dangerous ones hide in plain sight.
\nAlone since her father’s brutal murder, Aurora has spent years hunting his killers. Battle-weary she’s ready to start over where no one knows who or what she is – she just has one last mission. Everything is going to plan until she discovers the beautiful winged girl caged underground. Her decision to rescue Evie and to help her get home safely, despite avians being infamous for selling out shapeshifters like Aurora to cutters and black-market flesh dealers, will put her on a perilous path.
\nAs the women travel together their attraction grows but Aurora is guarding her lonely heart almost as much as her dangerous secrets and Evie is struggling to accept how important Aurora has become to her.
\nWhen their enemies conspire to kill them, they may be each other’s only hope. Aurora is powerful but she’s also emotionally scarred and it will be up to Evie to save her from herself and to fight for them - or innocent people will die along with the guilty ones and Aurora will disappear from Evie’s life forever.
The Linde siblings—Kellen, Davina, and Morel—are anxious to return to the kingdom of Halgyr before their father dies, leaving Kellen to assume the throne as king. They book tickets on a luxury express train, expecting a swift journey home - but disaster strikes when the train engine explodes, stranding the siblings atop a caldera bubbling with volcanic magic.
\nThe crash triggers Davina's latent witch powers, but her magic disrupts her ability to remember what she was doing when the explosion took place. While a witch would be the prime suspect for the explosion, the only ones who knew Davina might become one are her brothers - who never warned her, driving her away from them. And, to add insult to injury, somebody is bumping off the surviving train crew and passengers. But it can't be Davina, can it?
\nWhile the surviving passengers try to determine who sabotaged the engine and catch the killer, the fractured siblings attempt to stay one step ahead, concealing not only Davina's powers but their own secrets. Luckily, they aren't the only shifty characters on the train. But that small degree of good fortune quickly sours when powerful men turn up dead, suggesting the saboteur is still at work. And who better a mark for the murderer than the heirs to a foreign throne?
When I took the job with the Toronto Rosebuds hockey team, I never thought I’d be reunited with the woman that ruined me for all others.
\nLydia Bishop.
\nPlaying hockey and Lydia are my past. My future is with this new team. Lydia is a distraction I can’t afford.
\nThe more time I spend with Lydia, the more I realise I might not be as over her as I thought. Until one night, we cross a line. A line I don’t want to come back from.
\nShe’s my player. I can’t be seen with her. Sneaking around is our only option until the world finds out about us and I’m forced to choose.
\nThe future I’ve always wanted or the past I don’t want to let go of.
\nI am so pucking screwed . . .
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Dr. Galen Burgess has a reputation for keeping it casual. She likes women close - but not too close. Nothing is more important to her than her budding surgical career as chief surgical resident at Boston City Hospital. After spending years trying, and failing, to please her father, Galen knows getting close enough to care is a recipe for heartbreak.
\nEverything in her carefully structured life begins to change when she meets her newest intern, the disconcertingly beautiful Dr. Rowan Duncan. Sheltered doesn’t even begin to describe Rowan’s comfortable, quiet life before moving to Boston. When Rowan starts to fall for Galen, everything Rowan's ever known comes into question, including her relationship with high school sweetheart Brian.
\nWith her own heart on the line, will Rowan have the courage to make the cut, or risk losing Galen forever?
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Physician assistant Pierce Parker wants nothing more than to find true love, but after a series of heartbreaks and lackluster first dates, she’s beginning to question if such a thing even exists. That is, until she begins working with Dr. Cassidy Sullivan, a new emergency medicine resident.
\nTheir chemistry makes Pierce start to believe all her dreams will come true, but a secret from Cassidy’s past may end the fairy tale before it gets to happily ever after. For Pierce and Cassidy, the risk of heartbreak may be too high a price for the chance at love.
Flight paramedic Ryland Matthews and pilot Tess Goodwin have an uncomplicated past that included a no-strings tryst before they went their separate ways and never looked back. That is, until a medical emergency and an unlikely coincidence leaves them grounded together in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but relive history and ignite the passion neither can forget.
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Erica Skyberg is thirty-five years old, recently divorced - and trans. Not that she's told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn't exactly bursting with other trans women. Instead, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing community theater by night. That is, until Abigail Hawkes enters her orbit.
\nAbigail is seventeen, Mitchell High’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. It’s a role she plays faultlessly, albeit a little reluctantly. She's also annoyed by the idea of spending her senior year secretly guiding her English teacher through her transition. But Abigail remembers the uncertainty - and loneliness - that comes with it. Besides, Erica isn’t the only one struggling to shed the weight of others’ expectations.
\nAs their unlikely friendship evolves under the increasing scrutiny of their community, both women - and those closest to them - will come to realise that sometimes there is nothing more radical than letting the world see who you really are.
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Kana is the only daughter of Josephine Ambrose - world renowned doctor and researcher, and creator of A.E. Potentia. In a world where some people are infected with a parasitic disease that can leave the host with inhuman abilities or, most often, cause the host to die, A.E. Potentia has been invaluable in the survival rates.
\nAfter Josephine’s quiet disappearance and Kana’s near-fatal kidnapping attempt, she's back in her home country of Oshiya, and dragged into a dangerous bargain: help the president of Oshiya track down her mother, and officially break ties with Oshiya forever. Saddled with an unwanted bodyguard, who is irritatingly good at his job, she begins her search.
\nWhat begins as a reluctant mission twists into a perilous scavenger hunt through her own past. As Kana becomes the target of increasing attacks, dangerous secrets surrounding her mother and the drug begin to emerge.
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A nuanced, intelligent, and passionate exploration of the life and work of one of the most misunderstood writers of the twentieth century.
\nSylvia Plath is an object of enduring cultural fascination - the troubled patron saint of confessional poetry; a writer whose genius is buried under the weight of her status as the quintessential literary sad girl. A pro-Plath polemic, Loving Sylvia Plath examines these myths in order to dismantle them and asks why, when Plath speaks frankly about her husband’s brutality, we refuse to take her at her word.
\nEmily Van Duyne - a superfan and scholar - radically reimagines the last years of Plath’s life, confronts her suicide and the construction of her legacy, and offers feminist, interdisciplinary readings of her extraordinary poetry. Drawing from decades of study on Plath and her husband Ted Hughes, the chief architect of Plath’s mythology; never-before-seen archival materials; and a nuanced, empathetic understanding of the experience of domestic violence; Van Duyne seeks to undo the silencing of Sylvia Plath and resuscitate her as the hard-working, brilliant writer she was.
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After getting dumped by her girlfriend and soon-to-be ex-boss, Ella’s thirties have her feeling lost. In an attempt to cheer her up, her best friend colludes with her mother to send her to Sandy Springs, a wellness retreat on a remote Portuguese island. Ella can’t deny that sun, sand, and sea sound like the perfect combination to drown her sorrows.
\nBut Sandy Springs is not a holiday. It’s an alcohol-free, signal-less hellhole with an interfering cockerel called Bernardo. Forced to confront her life without any distractions, Ella’s urge to give up and float out to sea is stronger than ever. That is, until she meets Riley, the attractive yoga instructor, and things on the island start to shift.
\nRiley’s career is her solace, but even now she can't escape the memories that haunt her. When she comes across the fiery Ella, she realises just how much she’s been holding herself back. As their feelings for each other grow, the two of them must make a decision: continue down a path of self-destruction or face some difficult truths. Can they resist temptation or will they risk everything for love in paradise?
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Holly hasn’t been home for two years. Ever since her brother died, Mistleberry is a haunting ground full of history she’s tried to escape. Her family are grieving, her ex won’t stop calling, and bumping into Vicky Castleton puts the cherry on the crumbling Christmas cake.
\nBecause Holly’s first love and biggest regret looks better than ever.
\nHolly tries to heal the holes in her heart as her family - `and persistent best friend - keep pushing her to confront her past. But the more time she spends with her old flame, the more she’s hit with the undeniable her heart has never let go of Vicky. Time’s running out, and years of hiding away and shielding herself have left her with the can she conquer her ghosts this Christmas, and risk it all for love?
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Maya's final year at university is off to a rocky start.
\nBetween pining for her childhood best friend, trying to revitalise her football team after another year of defeat, and dealing with her own family problems, she's already overwhelmed.
\nEnter Jamie. As if dealing with her arch rival wasn't enough, Maya must now find a way to play alongside this annoying loudmouth without losing her mind every five minutes.
\nJamie just wanted a fresh start after all the drama at her last university. Love is the last thing on her mind; she just wants to focus on football and listen to her eighties music. But she has to admit, riling up her new and incredibly attractive captain is seriously entertaining. There’s just something about Maya that Jamie can’t keep away from.
\nAs the championship draws near, tensions rise and secrets threaten to unravel. Are the games strictly on the field? Or have the two rivals finally met their match?
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Rebecca Lawson is off-limits. Jess knows this, but Rebecca has captured her heart for as long as she can remember. She’s sporty, tall and confident - all the things Jess is not - but most of all . . . she’s her best friend Lily’s sister. Nothing can ever happen between them.
\nEspecially after that slip-up at prom night. But when Lily announces her engagement, and Jess and Rebecca are forced to spend time together as the maids of honour, the forbidden feelings intensify and sparks begin to fly.
\nAmidst the chaos of raging bridezillas and other wedding disasters, can Jess resist temptation for the sake of her friendship? Or will pursuing Rebecca Lawson finally send her life up in smoke?
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Tam hasn’t eaten anyone in years.
\nShe is now Mama’s soft-spoken, vegan daughter - everything dangerous about her is cut out, repressed. Medicated.
\nBut when Tam’s estranged Aunt Tigress is found murdered and skinned, Tam inherits an undead fox in a shoebox and an ensemble of old enemies.
\nThe demons, the ghosts, the gods running coffee shops by the river? Fine. The tentacled thing stalking Tam across the city? Absolutely not. And when Tam realises the girl she’s falling in love with might be yet another loose end from her past? That’s just the brassy, beautiful cherry on top.
\nBecause no matter how quietly she lives, Tam can’t hide from her voracious upbringing, nor the suffering she caused. As she navigates romance, redemption, and the end of the world, she can’t help but wonder . . .
\nDo monsters even deserve happy endings?
\nWith worldbuilding inspired by Chinese folklore and the Siksiká Nation in Canada, LGBTQIA+ representation, and a sapphic romance, Aunt Tigress is at once familiar and breathtakingly innovative.
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Meet Cordelia Black. Cordelia loves exactly three things: her chosen family composed of her best friend Diane and her goddaughter; her hairdresser (worth every penny plus tip); and killing bad men.
\nBy day she's a successful pharmaceutical rep with a pristine reputation and a designer wardrobe. By night she's culling South Louisiana of unscrupulous men - monsters who always seem to evade justice, until they meet her. It's a complicated yet fulfilling life that requires complete and total control at all times. But when the evening news starts throwing around the words “serial killer,” pressure heightens for her in the South, and it's only exacerbated when Diane starts dating a man Cordelia isn't sure is a good person - someone who might unravel everything Cordelia has worked for.
\nSoon Cordelia's world spirals, and she loses her grip on those tightly held threads that keep her safe.
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When Bernie replies to Leah's ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two begin an intense and defiantly uncategorizable friendship based on a mutual belief in their art, and one another. Both aspire to capture the world around them: Leah through her writing; Bernie through her photography.
\nAfter Bernie's former photography professor, the renowned yet tarnished Daniel Dunn, dies and leaves her a complicated inheritance, Leah volunteers to accompany Bernie to his home in rural Pennsylvania, turning the jaunt into a road trip with an ambitious mission: to document America through words and photographs.
\nWhat ensues is a three-week journey into the heart of the nation, bringing the aritsts into conversation with people from all walks of life - “the absurd dreamers and failures of this wide, wide country” - as they try to make sense of the times they are living in. Along the way, Leah and Bernie discover what it means to to pursue their own ideas and dreams, and to embrace what they are capable of both romantically and artistically.
\nHousemates is a warm and insightful coming-of-age story of youth and freedom, a glorious celebration of queer life, and how art and love might save us all.
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Three women. Three secrets.
\nClaudia's life imploded ten years ago when she was convicted of the murder of her child. Now she has done the unthinkable and confessed to manslaughter in order to be granted parole - her only hope of finding out what really happened to Tilly.
\nSara is married to Joe, Claudia's ex-husband, and they have a young child together. She finally has everything she ever wanted, but Claudia's release threatens the perfect life she has created.
\nAnna was the babysitter who let Claudia and Joe down on day their daughter disappeared. Married with a child of her own, Claudia's reappearance in her quiet cul-de-sac is an unwelcome surprise.
\nThese three women are tied together in more ways than they realise. But only one of them is capable of killing.
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Rachel Gordon wakes up from an induced coma following a car accident to the news that her much older husband, Anthony, has died at their home, and her immediate reaction is guilt.
\nThe police also seem convinced she must have been involved. But Rachel can't actually remember any of the past month.
\nShe has flashes of a man she met on her regular commute to work by tube. But there's no other evidence he exists. Did they have an affair? Could he have been responsible for Anthony's death? Or is Rachel guilty of something else altogether? And will she discover the truth in time to save herself?
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To those who think they know her, Eliza Curran has it all: two healthy children, a stunning home and a wealthy, adoring husband. No one would guess the reality of her life: trapped in an unhappy marriage to a controlling man, she longs for a way out.
\nWhen she takes on a new tenant, her life changes unexpectedly. Dan Jones is charming and perceptive, and quickly becomes a close friend to the whole family.
\nBut Dan's arrival threatens to tip Eliza's fragile world out of balance. And when someone has as many secrets as Eliza does, the smallest slip could destroy everything . . .
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When Grace’s fiancé vanishes without a trace the night after proposing, her life is turned upside down. But has Nick walked out on her, or is he in danger?
\nAs Grace desperately searches for answers, it soon becomes clear that Nick wasn’t the uncomplicated man she thought she knew. And when she uncovers a hidden tragedy from his childhood, she realises an awful truth: that you can run from your past – but your secrets will always catch up with you . . .
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Oxfordshire 1362:
\nWhen Lily Barden discovers her best friend Johanna’s hand in marriage is being awarded as the main prize at a tournament, she is determined to stop it. Disguised as a knight, she infiltrates the contest, preparing to fight for Jo’s hand. But her conduct ruffles feathers, and when a dangerous incident escalates out of Lily’s control, Jo must help her escape.
\nFinding safety with a local brewster, Lily and Jo soon settle into their new freedom, and amongst blackberry bushes and lakeside walks an unexpected relationship blossoms. But when Jo’s past catches up with her and Lily’s reckless behaviour threatens their newfound happiness, both women realise that choices must always come at a cost. The question they need to ask is if the cost is worth the price of love . . .
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Oxford 1360
\nWhen his sister’s betrothed vanishes the night before her politically arranged marriage, Raff Barden must track and return the elusive groom to restore his family’s honour. William de Foucart - known to his friends as Penn - had no choice but to abandon his fiancé, and with it his own earldom, when he fled the night before his enforced marriage. But ill-equipped to survive on the run he must trust the kindness of a stranger, Raff, to help him escape.
\nUnaware their fates are already entwined, their unexpected bond deepens into a far more precious relationship, one that will test all that they hold dear. And when secrets are finally revealed, both men must decide what they will risk for the one they love . . .
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After inheriting his father’s title, Earl Ash Barden has no choice but to find a wife to ensure the family line. But Ash has pledged himself to another, and making new vows - even with his lover long-since dead - feels like the ultimate betrayal to his memory.
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Skilled bowman and unconventional widow Agnes Forrett wants two to be true to herself, and to avoid marrying the childhood friend her family is determined will take her hand. When Ash arrives in her keep, she realises he’s the perfect choice to grant her the freedom she needs to be the person she is - be that lady, lord, or something else entirely.
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Agreeing to enter a marriage of convenience, their plan is set . . . until a roadside attack thrusts a familiar face back into Ash’s life, and with it a choice about his future. Whilst his feelings for the ghost from his past remain as strong as ever, he can’t deny his growing affection for Agnes too. Now Ash must ask can one heart truly be pledged to two people?
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A retired New York professor's life is thrown into chaos when he takes a young great-nephew to the French Riviera, in hopes of uncovering his own mother's wartime secrets.
\nNoah Selvaggio is a retired chemistry professor and widower living on the Upper West Side, but born in the South of France. He is days away from his first visit back to Nice since he was a child, bringing with him a handful of puzzling photos he's discovered from his mother's wartime years. But he receives a call from social services: Noah is the closest available relative of an eleven-year-old great-nephew he's never met, who urgently needs someone to look after him. Out of a feeling of obligation, Noah agrees to take Michael along on his trip.
Much has changed in this famously charming seaside mecca, still haunted by memories of the Nazi occupation. The unlikely duo, suffering from jet lag and culture shock, bicker about everything from steak frites to screen time. But Noah gradually comes to appreciate the boy's truculent wit, and Michael's ease with tech and sharp eye help Noah unearth troubling details about their family's past. Both come to grasp the risks people in all eras have run for their loved ones, and find they are more akin than they knew.
The fascinating characters that roam across the pages of Emma Donoghue's stories have all gone astray: they are emigrants, runaways, drifters, lovers old and new. They are gold miners and counterfeiters, attorneys and slaves. They cross other borders too: those of race, law, sex, and sanity. They travel for love or money, incognito or under duress.
\nWith rich historical detail, the celebrated author of Room takes us from puritan Massachusetts to revolutionary New Jersey, antebellum Louisiana to the Toronto highway, lighting up four centuries of wanderings that have profound echoes in the present. Astray offers us a surprising and moving history for restless times.
\nRaising a family is the ultimate luxury as the human race teeters on the brink of extinction in this visionary short story.
\nMiriam was raised in a society without children. To offset the devastation of climate change, state-of-the-art birth control has made daycares and playgrounds things of the past. As tempting as the government inducements are to remain child-free, Miriam’s curiosity about the people who “drop out” of society to become parents grows.
\nWhen she finds a like-minded partner, she must choose between the rewarding comforts she knows and the unknowable mysteries of being a mother.
In seventh-century Ireland, a scholar and priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks - young Trian and old Cormac - he rows down the river Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery.
\nDrifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find an impossibly steep, bare island inhabited by tens of thousands of birds, and claim it for God. In such a place, what will survival mean?
\nThree men vow to leave the world behind them. They set out in a small boat for an island their leader has seen in a dream, with only faith to guide them. What they find is the extraordinary island now known as Skellig Michael.
In 1805, fourteen-year-old Eliza Raine is a school girl at the Manor School for Young Ladies in York. The daughter of an Indian mother and a British father, Eliza was banished to this unfamiliar country as a little girl.
\nWhen she first stepped off the King George in Kent, Eliza was accompanied by her older sister, Jane, but now she boards alone at the Manor, with no one left to claim her. She spends her days avoiding the attention of her fellow pupils until, one day, a fearless and charismatic new student arrives at the school.
\nThe two girls are immediately thrown together and soon Eliza’s life is turned inside out by this strange and curious young woman.
Set over a single day, as the morning train travels from the Normandy coast to Paris, men, women and children take their seats in the passenger cars, which are divided by wealth and status. Among the passengers is an anarchist intent on destruction, a young boy travelling alone, a pregnant woman fleeing her home village for the anonymity of the big city, a medical student who suspects a girl may have a fatal disease, and the railway men, devoted to the train, to the company and to each other.
\nBased on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a thrilling ride and a literary masterpiece that captures the politics, fears and chaos of the end of the nineteenth century.
In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia’s regimented world step two outsiders - Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.
In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other’s lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.
In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.
In Emma Donoghue's latest masterpiece, an English nurse brought to a small Irish village to observe what appears to be a miracle-a girl said to have survived without food for months-soon finds herself fighting to save the child's life.
Tourists flock to the cabin of eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell, who believes herself to be living off manna from heaven, and a journalist is sent to cover the sensation. Lib Wright, a veteran of Florence Nightingale's Crimean campaign, is hired to keep watch over the girl.
Kate is a bit of a mess. Two years after losing her young husband Cameron, she’s grieving, solo parenting, working like mad at her university fundraising job, always dropping the ball - and yet clinging to her sense of humor.
\nLurching from one comedic crisis to the next, she also navigates an overbearing mom and a Tinder-obsessed best friend who's determined to matchmake Kate with her hot new neighbor.
\nWhen an in-flight problem leaves Kate and her boss, Hugh, stranded for a weekend on the east coast of Australia, she finally has a chance, away from her son, to really process her grief and see what’s right in front of her. Can she let go of the love of her life and risk her heart a second time?
\nWhen it becomes clear that Hugh is hiding a secret, Kate turns to the trail of scribbled notes she once used to hold her life together. The first note captured her heart. Will the last note set it free?
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When Evie Hudson wakes in an unfamiliar hospital room, she thinks she’s fresh out of a teenage party with her best friend, Bree. Except, Bree isn’t around anymore and high school was years ago. Evie had just survived the crash that killed her husband, Oliver - whom she can't remember either. After suffering a traumatic loss of memory, she’s left to connect the dots. But how?
\nDrew, a promising photographer whose chance encounter with Evie unravels the elusive details of her marriage and her husband’s death. As Drew watches Evie stitch the story of her life together, secrets emerge that might shatter both of their worlds.
\nThis tangled second-chance romance leads Evie to question every decision she ever made. This time around, she’s seeing all the things she missed - and the life she gets to choose . . . again.
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Audrey and Fraser tumble into a romance for the ages. After an unlikely start, they fall deeply in love and dream of the life they’ll build together - until one tragic moment upends everything. Facing the unimaginable and wrestling with guilt, they’re left haunted by “what ifs,” each asking where they would be if fate had spun a different story.
\nStart at the End is an unforgettable drama of two soulmates who have to find a way to start over when they had only just begun.
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Pen and Alice, childhood best friends from Toronto, are in their first year at the University of Edinburgh. Each has come to the city for her own reasons.
\nPen knows her divorced parents back in Canada are hiding something from her. She believes she'll find the answer here in Scotland, where an old friend of her father's - now a famous writer known as Lord Lennox - lives. When she is invited to spend the weekend at Lennox's centuries-old estate with his enveloping, fascinating family, Pen begins to unravel her parents' secret, just as she's falling in love for the first time . . .
\nMeanwhile Alice, an aspiring actor, sees university as her route to the West End and beyond. The star of this year's theatre production, she's making the most of the power she wields as an object of desire - until an affair with her tutor begins to slip from her control.
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In the summer of 2010, Niamh is pouring drinks at a Greek bar, trying to savor her last taste of freedom before college. Harriet is enduring a family holiday from hell. Their worlds collide one magical night sparking a whirlwind summer romance of discovery, only to be torn apart by family and circumstance.
\nYears later, in the heart of London, their paths cross again. They’re older and wiser but neither has forgotten what could have been, and their connection is undeniable. But life has moved on, things are complicated, and the timing still isn’t right. Or is it?
Few people know twenty-one year old Ada Fletcher is actually from another universe. After a devastating magical war tore apart her homeworld, she and her family were forced to defy the Inter-World Alliance and hide on the low-magic Earth.
\nStuck in a dead-end job in London, Ada has spent her life hiding her real identity and risking her safety to help others from her homeworld. Until she loses her job, is chased by a rampaging monster, and is arrested by the Alliance as a prime suspect for a murder she had nothing to do with. It really isn't Ada's day.
Kay Walker, grandson of the Alliance's late founder, expects to spend his first week as an Alliance employee chasing monsters out of the Passages between worlds, not solving his supervisor's murder or questioning a strange, fierce young woman he arrested in the Passages. Killer or not, she's hiding something, and the closer he gets to the truth, the higher the body count rises.
The last thing Ada wants is to help the infuriating Alliance guard who arrested her, but it soon becomes clear that the Alliance knows too much about Ada's magic. More, in fact, than she knows herself. Now she has to choose between loyalty to her family, and helping the Alliance save the Earth - and the Multiverse - from a deadly enemy.
Kay and Ada achieved the impossible and defeated the StoneKing, but only they know about the terrible dangers beyond the Alliance’s borders - and within them.
\nAll Kay wanted was to escape the shadow of his father, Lawrence Walker, the former council member responsible for dooming Ada’s homeworld to destruction. Now Walker is back, his plans more ruthless than ever, and the world he left behind might be the final catalyst for a cross-world war.
\nKay and Ada race against the clock to stop Walker and save a world from the deadly trap that cost Kay’s mother her life. With the Alliance turning on itself and Ada’s homeworld threatening war, Kay and Ada must overcome their most dangerous adversary yet before it tears the Multiverse apart.
The Darkworld is open, and nothing will ever be the same.
\nReeling from recent events, Ash and her friends are forced to flee Blackstone. With half the Venantium dead and the Inner Circle no more, their only hope lies with another group of sorcerers who've risked their lives to learn the truth about the Darkworld. But the group have an agenda of their own, and with no Barrier left to contain the demons, nobody is safe from corruption.
\nAsh must unravel one final mystery if she is to defeat Lucifer and Mephistopheles for good. But the truth lies within the Darkworld itself, and even if she survives the journey, there may not be anything left to return to . . .
Eighteen-year-old Ashlyn is one interview away from her future when she first sees the demons. She thinks she's losing her mind, but the truth is far more frightening: she can see into the Darkworld, the home of spirits - and the darkness is staring back.
Desperate to escape the demons, Ash accepts a place at a university in the small town of Blackstone, in the middle of nowhere - little knowing that it isn't coincidence that led her there but the pull of the Venantium, the sorcerers who maintain the barrier keeping demons from crossing from the Darkworld into our own world.
All-night parties, new friendships and a life without rules or limits are all part of the package of student life - but demons never give up, and their focus on Ash has attracted the attention of every sorcerer in the area. Ash is soon caught between her new life and a group of other students with a connection to the Darkworld, who could offer the answers she's looking for. The demons want something from her, and someone is determined to kill her before she can find out what it is.
Can a demon’s heart of ice be thawed?
Ash may have escaped death several times, but now things are finally looking up. The doppelganger is gone, she’s dating Leo, and the Venantium are staying away from her - for now. But a new threat rises from the Darkworld, and only the fortune-teller knows the true extent of the danger they’re in.
Lucifer, a sorcerer who did the impossible and cheated death through escaping to the Darkworld, is on the move. Now his second-in-command, Mephistopheles the demon, is loose in our world - and will do anything to win Ash over to his side.
The Venantium fear a repeat of the Demon Wars, the demonic invasion that wiped out the Blackstone family. But there’s more to those events than the records reveal. When Ash finds the lost diary of Melivia Blackstone, she starts to dig into the past to find the town’s forgotten history – leading to a revelation that shocks her to the core.
Leo seems to be the only person Ash can rely on, yet can she truly open up to him, knowing what she is? Blackstone’s dark history is rising to the surface, and it seems even memory can lie. The worst betrayal waits around the corner, and Ash has to decide whether to trust Leo with her darkest secret, even when it has the potential to destroy them both…
Hazel's tenure as Gatekeeper between the Summer Court and the human realm has barely begun and she's already stopped one attempted coup. But with no monarch in control of the Summer Court of Faerie, full-blown anarchy threatens to break out. Everyone wants a piece of the Gatekeeper - in a literal sense, if they find out the explosive secret the Erlking left her with after his death.
\nWorse, a notorious fae criminal has escaped jail, and in the process, kidnapped the only person who knows the identity of the next ruler of Summer. Hazel's first task as Gatekeeper is to find both of them, and save the heir of Summer before the Courts fall into chaos. She has help in the form of her old mentor, Darrow, except he's here on a mission from his own Queen that puts Hazel in even more danger.
\nAs she closes in on the enemy, it becomes harder and harder for Hazel to keep her loved ones safe. Torn between promises old and new, Hazel is going to have to betray someone . . . and her decision might well lead to the ruin of everything she's ever known.
Hazel Lynn has spent her whole life training to take on the role of Gatekeeper between the Summer Court and the mortal realm. With her entire family bound into service to Faerie, it's up to Hazel to maintain the peace and prevent any dangerous fae from escaping to Earth. To do that, she must pass the Gatekeeper's Trials and earn her right to stand among the powerful and wealthy Sidhe of Faerie.
\nUnfortunately, her new mentor hates humans like her. He might be pretty to look at, but he has no intention of giving her an easy time of it. But things go from bad to dire when the King of the Summer Court is assassinated. Worse, all the signs point to a human being responsible. Since Hazel and her family are the only humans permitted to enter the King's domain, the blame lands squarely on them. Before long, Hazel's aggravating new mentor is the only person in Faerie she can trust not to sentence her to death on the spot . . . assuming he isn't the murderer himself.
\nWith her loved ones' fates resting in her hands, it's up to Hazel to catch the killer before the vengeful faeries take out their wrath on the rest of humanity.
Hazel Lynn might be Gatekeeper between the Summer Court and the mortal realm, but thanks to a perceived betrayal, the Sidhe want nothing to do with her.
\nUntil she unearths a secret that could either place the right person on the throne of Summer . . . or doom the whole of Faerie to destruction.
\nTogether with her former mentor, Darrow, Hazel determines to prevent the Courts from falling into chaos. But the two vengeful faerie queens who have their sights set on the throne both need Hazel's help to win their prize. And they have the ultimate leverage: information on how Hazel might be able to free her family from enslavement to Faerie forever.
\nAs the clock ticks towards the crowning of the next monarch, the pressure builds on Hazel to find a solution and bring an end to the conflict. But the Gatekeeper's curse is irrevocably tied to the future of the faerie realm itself, and Hazel is about to find out just how deep the Sidhe's deception runs.
\nAnd how much she'll have to sacrifice to save her family.
With Earth on the brink of war, Ada must face the truths her guardian, Nell, kept from her all her life, while Kay faces the ramifications of his father’s last, terrible act as a council member and fights to restore Earth’s shattered trust in the Alliance.
\nIf the Alliance falls, so does the Multiverse. And this time, there’s no going back . . .
In the Darkworld, there are no angels.
A betrayal has turned Ash’s entire world upside-down. Struggling to pick up the pieces, the last thing she expects is to receive a plea for help from the demon-hunting sorcerer cult, the Venantium. But signing a deal with the devil may unveil more than the hidden workings of the Venantium - it might also lead to clues about Ash herself, and the false fortune-teller who ruined her life.
However, with sinister plans afoot and her own powers breaking free of her control, Ash is torn between helping the enemy or worse, losing herself to the demon inside . . .
When 32-year-old Elena Ricci wakes up in the hospital, the last thing she recalls is walking home from work the night before. Except the night before turns out to be eight years ago and Elena has no memory of the time she’s lost. Family feuds, breakups, and sexual awakenings - all forgotten.
\nFor Keelin Jax, Elena’s wife, the long nightmare only continues upon Elena’s awakening when Keelin becomes a platonic roommate overnight. While Elena struggles to adjust to her new present and find the life she left behind, someone from Elena’s past finds a way to seize the opportunity after years of silence.
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When the opportunity of a lifetime comes knocking, Claire Brennan is ready for a break from responsibility and the stuck feeling that won't go away. Move across the world to Vancouver for six months? Absolutely.
\nStacie Farran is a career-obsessed eternal optimist, so when the opportunity to trade jobs with a colleague in Belfast comes up, she jumps at the chance. That it gives her a bit of space from her girlfriend doesn't hurt either.
\nLiving in each other's shoes, Claire and Stacie discover so much about each other and get a fresh perspective on their own lives as well. When a family emergency has Claire returning home early and they finally meet, the attraction they felt from afar is real.
\nBut Stacie's stay is temporary. Are they on a collision course to a long-distance dating disaster or will love find a way?
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Dani Raye has finally got her life back on track. After a messy divorce, Dani and her ex-wife, Catriona, have found a way to co-parent successfully. Most of the time. While Catriona has moved on, Dani is in no rush to find love again. She has her work and son, Jonah, and that’s all she needs to be happy.
\nLucy Matthews is anything but happy. Her relationship is falling apart, and her son is taking out his frustrations on a boy in school. When Dani and Lucy are thrust together to sort out their children’s squabble, their priorities are clear - family first - despite the attraction neither expected.
After countless heartbreaks, Ciara Reilly has sworn off falling in love and turned her youth, beauty, and unlucky streak of dead-end relationships into a way to make money. After joining the Sugar Girl app, she has climbed the ranks to become one of the few Platinum Girls in Dublin and now has her choice of wealthy clients.
\nIt is a way of life for Ciara and means she can keep her family out of debt. The financial perks coupled with the casual dating arrangements suit her, primarily because she learned the hard way that falling in love and sugaring do not mix.
\nThat’s until she meets the stunning and wildly fascinating entrepreneur Charlie Keller. Their connection is instant but complicated. Charlie is everything Ciara has ever wanted, but falling for her means giving up everything she already has.
\nForced to choose between coming clean about her lucrative career or losing Charlie forever, will Ciara go sugar-free? Or will the secrets Charlie is keeping from her result in another heartbreak?
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As usual, Andie Rose has a plan: Transfer from community college to the hyper competitive Blue Ridge State, major in psychology, and maintain her lifelong goal of becoming an iconic self-help figure despite the nerves that have recently thrown her for a loop. All it will take is ruthless organisation, hard work, and her trademark unrelenting enthusiasm to pull it all together.
\nBut the moment Andie arrives, the rest of her plans go off the rails. Her rocky relationship with her boyfriend Connor only gets more complicated when she discovers he transferred out of Blue Ridge to her community college. Her roommate Shay needs a major, and despite Andie’s impressive track record of being The Fixer, she’s stumped on how to help. And Milo, her coffee-guzzling grump of an R.A. with seafoam green eyes, is somehow disrupting all her ideas about love and relationships one sleep-deprived wisecrack at a time.
\nBut sometimes, when all your plans are in rubble at your feet, you find out what you’re made of. And when Andie starts to find the power of her voice as the anonymous Squire on the school’s legendary pirate radio station - the same one her mom founded, years before she passed away - Andie learns that not all the best laid plans are necessarily the right ones.
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June and Levi were best friends as teenagers - until the day they weren’t. Now June is struggling to make rent on her beachside tea shop, Levi is living a New York cliché as a disillusioned hedge fund manager and failed novelist, and they've barely spoken in years.
\nBut after they both experience public, humiliating break-ups with their exes that spread like wildfire across TikTok rabbit holes and daytime talk shows alike, they accidentally make some juicy gossip of their own - a photo of them together has the internet convinced they're a couple. With so many people rooting for them, they decide to put aside their rocky past and make a pact to fuel the fire. Pretending to date will help June’s shop get back on its feet and make Levi’s ex realise that she made a mistake. All they have to do is convince the world they're in love, one swoon-worthy photo opp at a time.
\nTwo viral break-ups. One fake relationship. Five sparkling, heart-pounding dates. June and Levi can definitely pull this off without their hearts getting involved. Because everyone knows fake dating doesn’t come with real feelings. Right?
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The day of her high school graduation, Riley realises two things: One, that she has spent the last four years trying so hard to be a Good Kid for her mom that she has no idea who she really is anymore, and two, she has no idea what she wants because of it.
\nThe solution? Pack her bags and move to New York for the summer, where her childhood best friend Tom and co-creator of The Getaway List - a list of all the adventures they’ve wanted to do together since he moved away - will hopefully help her get in touch with her old adventurous self, and pave the road to a new future.
\nRiley isn’t sure what to expect from Tom, who has been distant since his famous mom’s scriptwriting career pulled him away. But when Riley arrives in the city, their reconnection is as effortless as it was when they were young - except with one, unexpected complication that will pull Riley’s feelings in a direction she didn’t know they could take.
\nAs she, Tom, and their newfound friends work their way through the delightfully chaotic items on The Getaway List, Riley learns that sometimes the biggest adventure is not one you take, but one you feel in your heart.
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Meet Pepper, swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming - mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger’s massive Twitter account.
Enter Jack, class clown and constant thorn in Pepper’s side. When he isn’t trying to duck out of his obscenely popular twin’s shadow, he’s busy working in his family’s deli. His relationship with the business that holds his future might be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma’s iconic grilled cheese recipe, he’ll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time.
All’s fair in love and cheese - that is, until Pepper and Jack’s spat turns into a viral Twitter war. Little do they know, while they’re publicly duking it out with snarky memes and retweet battles, they’re also falling for each other in real life - on an anonymous chat app Jack built.
As their relationship deepens and their online shenanigans escalate - people on the internet are shipping them?? - their battle gets more and more personal, until even these two rivals can’t ignore they were destined for the most unexpected, awkward, all-the-feels romance that neither of them expected.
A missing child, two girls in search of their true identities - a stunning novel of mothers, daughters and best friends
\nIn June 1998, Mimi Truang is on her way home to Vietnam when her toddler daughter vanishes in the Philadelphia airport.
\nSeventeen years later, two best friends in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, discuss their summer plans before college. Kit, with the support of her white adoptive parents, will travel to Tokyo to explore her Japanese roots. This dizzying adventure offers her a taste of first love and a new understanding of what it means to belong.
\nSabrina had hoped to take a similar trip to China, but money is tight. Her disappointment subsides, however, when she meets a bold, uncompromising new mentor who prompts Sabrina to ask questions she’s avoided all her life. Meanwhile, Mimi purchases a plane ticket to Philadelphia. She finally has a lead in her search for her daughter.
\nWhen Mimi, Kit, and Sabrina come face to face, they will confront the people they truly are, in this tremendously moving novel that is propelled to its astonishing climax in a way you will never forget.
I will make myself strong.
I will find Elias.
I will kill Elias.
I will never trust a boy with my heart again.
These are the vows Charlie Hudson made the day after Elias Everhart betrayed her, nearly killing everyone she loves most. One month later, revenge is still her priority, even as she navigates a harsh new reality: one where her brother and friends can now see Asgard, making them just as susceptible to its dazzling delights - and deadly dangers - as she is.
\nBut when two bodies turn up in the forest outside town, and Elias waltzes back into her life with an offer to help find out what's happening, Charlie finds herself accepting his offer - but only because feigning an alliance is her best chance to figure out how to kill him. And if it feels like the more time she spends with him, the more her heart softens, it must be a trick of the unusually warm fall air. Because there’s no way she would make the grave mistake of falling for Elias Everhart twice . . . right?
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Charlie Hudson just wants to get through junior year. Since the death of her twin sister two years earlier, she’s drifted through life, going through the motions at school and parties and even at home. The spark that once burned so brightly within her has all but flickered out.
\nUntil her classmate goes missing in the forest, leaving nothing behind but a pair of shoes and strange symbols carved into a tree.
\nDrawn to the disappearances by forces she can’t explain, she finds herself investigating the mysterious, alluring newcomer in town, Elias Everhart. With piercing eyes and sharp wit, he dances around her questions, only intriguing her further. Elias has a secret. More than one.
\nBut what Charlie doesn’t know is that those secrets will lead her to a place she never imagined: a world hiding in plain sight, made of magic, gods, and monsters - and a first love fated to fall apart.
\nIn Emma Noyes's Soul of Shadow, truths and temptations lurk in the darkness, and for Charlie, the only thing more dangerous than facing her past, is the boy with the power to change her future.
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Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, there’s nothing to do but walk.
\nMaking her way across the wreckage of Portland, Annie experiences human desperation and kindness: strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. If she can just make it home, she’s determined to change her life.
\nA propulsive debut, Tilt is a primal scream of a novel about the disappointments and desires we all carry, and what each of us will do for the people we love.
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In this compelling historical debut, three extraordinary women are forced on a journey of survival during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in World War II.
\nHong Kong, 1941. Following the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, the wealthy Tang family flee to Hong Kong, believing it to be protected under British occupation. As the First Wife of the family, Mingzhu leads a sheltered - if lonely - existence overseeing her daughter Qiang's education, resisting the hostility of her husband's concubine, while managing the household alongside her devoted maid, Biyu.
\nBut when the Japanese army invade, the three women are scattered. Though Mingzhu's affinity for languages spares her from physical labour, she is coerced into working for a Japanese captain. Qiang and Biyu escape the island, only to be forced into factory work, until an encounter with the East River Column Resistance fighters separates them once more. The longer the brutal occupation lasts, the more determined the women are to resist.
\nAnd as war rages around the world, each is holding onto the hope that the other is alive.
When country-bred Catherine Pine relocates to Bath in 1817, she and her mother come face-to-face with her mother’s arch nemesis, Lady Tisend, and her daughter, the wildly popular and gorgeous Lady Rosalie. Though once her very best friend, Mrs. Pine alleges Lady Tisend ultimately did her a great injustice. Twenty-five years later, she sees the perfect opportunity for retribution:
\nCatherine will win the favor of Lady Rosalie’s suitor, Mr. Dean. Together, Catherine and her mother will ruin the Tisends’ lives, secure Catherine a fruitful match, and launch a fully triumphant return to Bath. It’s the perfect plan for revenge. Only Catherine soon discovers that there’s more to Lady Rosalie’s mean streak than meets the eye. Lady Rosalie is by far the wittiest, cleverest, most intriguing young woman Catherine’s ever met, and she’s utterly smitten.
\nMeanwhile, Rosalie feels trapped in her perfect life as Bath’s favorite daughter and resident mean girl. There’s no challenge anymore, no excitement, no surprise. But when she notices newcomer Catherine gunning for her spot as queen bee, Rosalie finally feels a spark again. She determines to meet Catherine’s challenge with gusto, because Catherine ignites something in her. Something Rosalie absolutely doesn’t want to extinguish.
\nAs their mothers force them into increasingly absurd contests of wit and feminine charms to win Mr. Dean’s affections, Rosalie and Catherine instead find themselves falling for each other, scheme, by barb, by catty jab . . .
\nCan their sizzling rivalry really become a match to last?
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Meet Frost, Morgan, and Nell - a wealthy, gorgeous group of New York City moms, the queen bees of downtown Manhattan. Their children attend Atherton Seminary, the top private school in the city, and their social lives revolve around elaborate themed parties.
\nOn the first day of school, the arrival of a new mom and mysterious beauty from Miami named Sofia shakes up their world. When Sofia quickly integrates herself into their clique, inexplicably bad things start to happen to the women. Frost is the victim of a hit-and-run electric scooter incident. Nell's dream of launching a fashion line is thwarted when the clothing samples cause people to break out in a rash. Morgan's new sound bath spa is robbed at gunpoint by a moped-driving thief. Morgan declares it all a \"negative event cluster,\" but the other women aren't so sure.
\nIs someone at school out to get them? Another mom with a vendetta? Let’s not forget to mention the handsome headmaster, Dr. Broker, who every mom has a crush on (and one of them might be sleeping with).
\nSpanning the course of one eventful Fall in New York, ending with a Surrealist New Year's Eve Ball - and a possible death, Mean Moms is part satire of upper crust mom-ing and part mystery, interrogating the line between friendship and jealousy, and getting at the question What would happen if the woman standing next to you at school pick up was actually a sociopath?
Every time a guy breaks my heart, I write him a eulogy in my journal. It’s kind of my thing - closure through creative mourning. They don't actually die . . . or, at least, they didn't.
\nNow? These guys aren’t just dead to me, they’re dead to everyone. And I’m the prime suspect.
\nWith my senior year at Pembroke College - and my entire future - on the line, I’ve got no choice but to play detective. Unfortunately, that means teaming up with my long-standing frenemy, Asher, who is insufferable and somehow always there when I need him the least. We bicker, we banter, we occasionally almost hook up, but with the body count rising and my name all over the suspect board, there’s no time to get distracted.
\nBetween college parties, messy exes, suspicious deaths, and a murder investigation I never asked to be a part of - one thing’s for this is not how I thought my last year would go.
\nHere’s to hoping I can find out who the real killer is . . . before someone ends up writing my eulogy.
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Love brought introverted New York personal trainer Erin Black together online with CEO-turned-writer Isabella Martinez. In the second part of their story, Isabella has moved back to Philadelphia to start a new life with her baby.
As the physical distance between Erin and Isabella shrinks, other hurdles appear. Will Erin’s insecurities and the ghosts of her past hold her back? Can Isabella’s manipulative mother threaten their path to finding happiness?
Their online midnight coffee dates keep drawing them together, but will it be enough?
Is there a way for Erin, Isabella, and baby Alberto to be together?
Avelynne, Eleksander, Hale, and Sabina are on their way back to Cavarra. They’re bringing home extraordinary experiences, found friends, new information, and bushels of grief and guilt. Not to mention their mysterious golden magic. However, foremost in their minds are the king’s lethal lies and secrets, which will have to be faced now as everything comes to a head.
\nSadly, the revolution, the plague of the silver beasts, the unknown creature in the lake, and the enigmatic spell that suffocates Cavarra aren’t the four mapmaking magicians only issues. They must face who they are and what they wish to do with their futures. Not to mention their increasingly complex love lives.
\nDo these four choose the paths set out for them? Or do they throw away conventions and forge new roads? All options come with a cost, but some costs will always be worth paying. As long as death doesn’t take away their opportunity to choose.
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Our four mapmaking magicians are back at the Hall of Explorers. As they continue their studies, their journey to find new lands is brought forward following a calamitous event. However, seafaring and exploring turns out to be even more dangerous and complicated than they expected.
Soon they have to battle not only the perilous waves, the king’s cruel plans, and sea monsters, but also their emotions. Eleksander pines for Hale, who in turn joins Sabina in having feelings for Avelynne. Meanwhile, Avelynne is realising her lack of romantic interest may run deeper than she thought. Meeting new people on their journey makes things even more complex.
Feelings will however have to take the backseat as they realise that the magical conspiracy they are part of is even bigger than they thought and that the ocean is full of surprises; some wonderful, but far too many of them dangerous beyond measure. And like the king of Cavarra, the sea doesn’t show mercy.
Katherine “Kit” Sorel is new to the cosy but quirky island of Greengage. When she tries to use her talents for plotting to help a friend, she soon discovers that on this British island - anything can happen.
\nKittens can race, fruit can be sexy, wheelbarrows can be menacing, and straight women might not be so straight after all.
\nIn the end, Kit needs to solve the problems of those around her while finding her home. She’s certainly not looking for love. But is it looking for her?
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All is not well on the cosy but quirky English island of Greengage.
\nThe mysterious rummaging and stealing from an old lady’s bookshelf exposes secrets and suspicious behaviour. Then there’s a cryptic lovers’ quarrel between two pub owners and an eccentric uncle interfering in affairs of the heart.
\nNo wonder Kit Sorel - librarian and now reluctant private detective - is busy.
\nTo make things worse, she’s worried about her relationship with the hardworking businesswoman and lady of the manor, Laura Howard.
\nAdd a stuffed badger, dog walking bets, a Barbie balloon and a conundrum regarding the name Susan and you’ll be left wondering if Kit can handle these tricky situations? Or will the eccentric, comical Greengagers get in her way as usual?
\nMore importantly, will this all be sorted out before this year’s kitten race?
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The unchallenging and dull life of an assistant in a small London bookshop is where Zoe Achidi feels safe. Bored, but safe.
Frequent customer, Rebecca Clare, makes Zoe's days a little brighter. But the beautiful, and impressive businesswoman in her forties seems unobtainable.
Zoe's brother and her best friend are convinced that she is stuck in a rut. When they decide to meddle in Zoe's life, they manage to bring Zoe and Rebecca together. It soon becomes obvious that Rebecca is bored with her own uneventful life as well.
Unfortunately, their meetings seem to remain all business. As they find the bravery and resolve to allow life to push them along, the question soon becomes - will it push them together or apart?
New York personal trainer Erin Black lives a solitary life plagued by insomnia. Isabella Martinez, a former CEO turned writer, is stuck in a platonic relationship in Florida with her baby boy.
\nOne sleepless night on social media, they strike up a conversation that changes their lives and makes them question everything. Over midnight cups of coffee, they try to resist the powerful chemistry that builds between them. They soon discover their connection could be the key to unlocking their personal issues.
Questions remain though. Are they more than friends? Could they be right for each other? And if they are, how will they handle a relationship a thousand miles apart?
At first glance, the small continent of Arclid may appear similar to Great Britain at the beginning of the industrial revolution. However societal rules regarding gender, race, and sexuality are very different. These differences shape the lives of our protagonists, the would-be-princess Lady Elisandrine 'Elise' Falk and Nessa Clay, a farmer's daughter who’s chasing her dreams.
Having to leave their old lives behind, they decide to travel together. They find things that make them different and should keep them apart. They also find themselves magnetically drawn to each other, no matter how hard they resist their increasing longing for each other.
In the modern and dangerous city of Nightport, brimming with exciting innovations in clockwork and steam power, strange events start to surround them. Unknown men ask questions regarding their whereabouts and small packages wrapped neatly in midnight blue paper with white ribbon start to arrive.
With the help of some new friends they meet along the way, Elise and Nessa start to unravel the mysteries - and their feelings for one another.
Silver beasts, lack of provisions, royal intrigue, and cloaked threats plague this realm. Four young people are chosen to attend the Hall of Explorers academy to train their minds, bodies, and magic, to sail and find their people a new world.
Representing the Lakelands, Eleksander, the sensitive boy with a shrouded past. From the North, Sabina, the rational warrior with her snowtiger. On behalf of the Woodlands, Hale, the fearless orphan with something to prove. From the Peaks, Avelynne, the insecure countess with a shameful secret.
Before they brave the unknown seas, they must complete their training. Not to mention getting to know each other and become a tight-knit team. Disturbing and bloody incidents soon make that even harder than it should be. Not knowing who to trust makes it worse.
They will have to face their individual issues and overcome them together if they’re to avoid becoming puppets in a game where they don’t understand the rules. Or worse, die before even finishing their training.
The Princess Bride meets Six of Crows in this uproarious fantasy debut set in 18th century Scandinavia full of assassins, magic potions, romance and rivalry.
\nValour and Petrichor are esteemed members of the Order of Axsten, an assassin’s guild tasked with keeping order in the rough city of Vinterstock. Plucked from the streets as children and raised to compete for their guild’s approval, Valour uses her brawn to survive, while Petrichor strives to be a gentleman assassin. When they’re given their biggest job yet - to kill Brandquist, the mysterious leader of the city's illegal magic trade - it’s a recipe for disaster. If they can quell their rivalry long enough, the reward will be enough to settle their debts with the Order and start new lives.
\nIf this job wasn’t dangerous enough, Valour is saddled with protecting the aristocrat, Ingrid Rytterdahl. Valour finds her dangerously attractive, but Petrichor can’t wait to be rid of them both. He begrudgingly accepts Ingrid’s knowledge and connections as they navigate the city’s criminal underbelly in pursuit of Brandquist.
\nAs secrets bubble to the surface, the duo must outwit the thugs on their tail, keep Ingrid alive, and - hardest of all - work together without murdering each other.
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When being captured is a likely outcome, which cage is worse - the one in your mind or the one behind a locked door?
\nLady Elise Falk and Nessa Clay have happily taken on new identities as a married couple and boarded a steamship to Storsund, a land of frost faires, sprawling cities, and corrupt organisations.
\nAs they settle in and make friends - some funnier than others – are Nessa and Elise safe under these frozen winter stars? And will their relationship survive, while they must check every shadow to gauge what is paranoia and what is real threat.
\nUnder the old stars, but never far away, the villainous Queen of Arclid has her own threats to battle.
\nAs events unfold, Elise and Nessa must overcome their personal issues and challenge themselves. Because now, it is not only their fates that hang in the balance, but also that of two nations.
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Inspired by a haunting true story, a gorgeous and atmospheric novel about the mysterious disappearance of three lighthouse keepers from a remote tower miles from the Cornish coast - and about the wives who were left behind.
\nIt's New Year's Eve, 1972, when a boat pulls up to the Maiden Rock lighthouse with relief for the keepers. But no one greets them. When the entrance door, locked from the inside, is battered down, rescuers find an empty tower. A table is laid for a meal not eaten. The Principal Keeper's weather log describes a storm raging round the tower, but the skies have been clear. And the clocks have all stopped at 8:45.
\nTwo decades later, the keepers' wives are visited by a writer determined to find the truth about the men's disappearance. Moving between the women's stories and the men's last weeks together in the lighthouse, long-held secrets surface and truths twist into lies as we piece together what happened, why, and who to believe.
\nIn her riveting and suspenseful novel, Emma Stonex writes a story of isolation and obsession, of reality and illusion, and of what it takes to keep the light burning when all else is swallowed by dark.
In January 1989, Birdie wakes to the news she’s been waiting eighteen years to hear. Jimmy Maguire, the man who killed her sister, has been freed from jail. Birdie leaves for London with a gun and a to find him and make him pay. But there’s another side to the story, and she’s about to enter a world of family lies, worn-out loyalties and long-buried betrayals.
\nDid Jimmy kill Birdie’s sister, or is he the only one she can really trust? And when the truth is finally revealed, will she choose forgiveness - or retribution?
\nA heart-stopping new novel of murky shared pasts and a fury-fueled present, The Sunshine Man is a thrilling cat and mouse chase set against the salt-drenched backdrop of England’s south coast, from bestselling author Emma Stonex.
When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she’d been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence?
Astrid’s youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is intentionally pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies really count? It might be that only Astrid’s thirteen-year-old granddaughter and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to the people you love the most.
In All Adults Here, Emma Straub’s unique alchemy of wisdom, humor, and insight come together in a deeply satisfying story about adult siblings, aging parents, high school boyfriends, middle school mean girls, the lifelong effects of birth order, and all the other things that follow us into adulthood, whether we like them to or not.
When the American Fantasy cruise ship sets sail for a four-day themed voyage, aboard are all five members of a famous 1990s boyband, and three thousand screaming women who have worshipped them for thirty years.
\nNewly divorced and with an empty nest, Annie is on board as a lark to appease her sister. Once a diehard fan of the band as a teen, her tastes have matured, and she feels out of place amid the sea of bedazzled, air-brushed t-shirts bearing the singers’ faces. Yet when the lights come up and the idols of her youth begin to sing before her, something is unlocked. “Maybe that was nostalgia after all, the music a direct vein to her childhood, the least complicated part of her life. A short cut to happiness.”
\nBetween the slushy alcoholic drinks, the music of her youth, and the thousands of middle-aged women acting like lovesick teenagers, Annie finally reconnects to a long-submerged part of herself. By the time she befriends one of the band members - not just a celebrity but someone also in need of a friend - she feels like anything is possible. But a lot can go wrong on a ship ruled by hormones and hope, frustration and fantasy.
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Friends and former college bandmates Elizabeth and Andrew and Zoe have watched one another marry, buy real estate, and start businesses and families, all while trying to hold on to the identities of their youth. But nothing ages them like having to suddenly pass the torch (of sexuality, independence, and the ineffable alchemy of cool) to their own offspring.
Back in the band's heyday, Elizabeth put on a snarl over her Midwestern smile, Andrew let his unwashed hair grow past his chin, and Zoe was the lesbian all the straight women wanted to sleep with. Now nearing fifty, they all live within shouting distance in the same neighborhood deep in gentrified Brooklyn, and the trappings of the adult world seem to have arrived with ease. But the summer that their children reach maturity (and start sleeping together), the fabric of the adults' lives suddenly begins to unravel, and the secrets and revelations that are finally let loose - about themselves, and about the famous fourth band member who soared and fell without them - can never be reclaimed.
Straub packs wisdom and insight and humor together in a satisfying book about neighbors and nosiness, ambition and pleasure, the excitement of youth, the shock of middle age, and the fact that our passions - be they food, or friendship, or music - never go away, they just evolve and grow along with us.
Alice Stern isn't ready to turn forty. She thought she'd have more time to figure it all out. Above all, she thought she'd have more time with her father, Leonard - but he's lying in a hospital bed and Alice isn't sure if she'll hear his voice again.
\nWhen she falls asleep outside their old apartment on the night before her birthday, she's surprised to be greeted the next morning by a much younger Leonard, with a sixteenth birthday card for a teenage Alice who, far from clinging to her youth, is hurtling towards adulthood . . .
\nAlice soon discovers how she got back here, to 1996 and her sixteenth birthday, and realises she can keep on coming, whenever she chooses.
\nBut faced each time with different versions of her life, and the consequences of her decisions, it's on her not to lose sight of what she wants most . . .
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At the start of summer, billionaire couple Francis and Lila Cameron set off on their private luxury sailboat to celebrate the high school graduation of their two beloved children.
\nThree weeks later, the Camerons have not been heard from, the captain hasn’t responded to radio calls, and the sailboat is found floating off the coast of Florida.
\nEmpty.
\nWhere are the Camerons? What happened on their trip? And what secrets does the beautiful boat hold?
\nSet over the course of their vacation and in the aftermath of the sailboat’s discovery, No One Aboard is a domestic mystery that asks who is more dangerous to a family: a stormy ocean or each other?
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An unforgettable dark fairy tale that asks, Can love save us from ourselves?
\nBirdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.
\nArthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well. Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River.
\nIt’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic, but soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.
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Cece is in love. She has arrived early at her future in-laws’ lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a young doctor with a brilliant life ahead of him. Charlie has asked Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate the ceremony, though Cece can’t imagine anyone more ill-suited for the task - an airport baggage handler haunted by a tragedy from his and Charlie’s shared past.
\nBut as Cece spends time with Garrett, his gruff mask slips, and she grows increasingly uncertain about her future. And why does Garrett, after meeting Cece, begin to feel, well, human again? As a contagious stomach flu threatens to scuttle the wedding, and Charlie and Garrett’s friendship is put to the ultimate test, Cece must decide between the life she’s dreamed of and a life she’s never imagined.
\nThe events of that summer have long-lasting repercussions, not only on the three friends caught in its shadow but also on their children, who struggle to escape their parents’ story. Spanning fifty years and set against the backdrop of a rapidly warming Montana, Dream State explores what it means to live with the mistakes of the past - both our own and the ones we’ve inherited.
\nWritten with humor, precision, and enormous heart, both a love letter and an elegy to the American West, Dream State is a thrillingly ambitious ode to the power of friendship, the weird weather of marriage, and the beauty of impermanence.
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A ruthless American killing machine named Rock rules over a secret, blood-soaked empire of riches and murder: Floating City.
\nAt his command is the Torch - the tool of ultimate evil that one man can destroy: Nicholas Linnear. But only when he faces the harrowing truth about the Yakuza - the Japanese criminal underworld he despises - and about Koei, the woman he loved as no other, will he find the inner strength to annihilate Floating City and honor his family's debt to the dead of the Yakuza, the Kaisho.
\nWhile half a world away, his longtime friend ex-NYPD detective Lew Croaker hunts the Kaisho's would-be assassins, Linnear infiltrates a vast web of terror, crossing the line that divides good from evil, sensuality from death, and love from betrayal.
Evan Ryder was once a field agent for a black-ops arm of the Department of Defense. Now she works for Parachute, a cutting-edge quantum-computing firm whose private espionage network exceeds any government spy agency. But her mission remains the same: seek out and destroy Omega, a fanatical global cult intent on destroying democracy. The fight against Omega has already cost Evan dearly but she will not stop until she has torn out the conspiracy by its roots, no matter the risk.
\nIn Omega Rules, the assassination of a Parachute agent in Vienna sets Evan on a dangerous, world-wide hunt for answers and on a collision course with forces so powerful they may be beyond her abilities to annihilate. Once again Lustbader delivers a prescient exploration of the political and ideological forces that are wreaking havoc on the stability of the Western world and its struggling democracies.
After the apocalyptic destruction of Floating City, Linnear's sworn nemesis has fled the ruined Vietnamese blood empire to remount the assault that will solidify his ultimate power and destroy the Ninja. Mick Leonforte, an international corporate power broker and criminal czar, is preparing for a final confrontation on the battleground where business and warfare become one.
\nWith the help of seasoned NYPD detective Lew Croaker and the dazzlingly cunning Vesper Arkham, Linnear pursues his preyplacing Koei, the woman he loves above all else, in the vengeful path of Kshirathe terrible force that even the master who trained him in the mysteries of psychic warfare was powerless to escape.
This was to be one of the greatest nights of Nicholas Linnear's life - a crowning achievement. After taking over his family's company and quadrupling its size, he has gambled it all on a liquid natural gas trade with the Chinese, a deal worth untold billions. Is that why he just woke up in a pinewood coffin?
\nIn honor of the ebook publication of the original Nicholas Linnear novels - The Ninja, The Miko, and White Ninja - Eric Van Lustbader returns to the series for a new heart-stopping adventure. Drugged to the brink of death, Linnear reemerges in a desperate attempt to save his business and find the people who tried to bury him alive. No time has passed for Nicholas Linnear. The Ninja is as deadly as ever, and his blade is just as sharp.
Years ago, Nicholas Linnear, a.k.a. \"the Ninja,\" made a promise to his father: If a man named Mikio Okami ever sought his help, he would respond without question, no matter the cost. Now the time has come to fulfill his pledge. Okami is the Kaisho - the boss of bosses of the Yakuza, the Japanese underworld - and in his Venice headquarters, he realizes that he has been marked for death.
\nBut the identity of the assassin and the inexorable compulsion that drives him are shrouded in mysticism and madness. Honor bound to protect Okami, Linnear is prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice: a descent into a chasm of knowledge so potent, of dangers so unfathomable, that even if he survives, he will emerge changed forever.
Evan Ryder works for a clandestine, black-ops arm of the Department of Defense, dedicated to protecting America and its people.
\nOr at least, she did. Having thwarted the international fascist syndicate known as Nemesis, Evan has returned to Washington D.C. to discover her division shut down, and her dead sister's children missing.
\nAmong Nemesis' supporters was a cabal of billionaires whose influence reaches to the highest office in the country: the President of the United States. If Evan is to take them on and hunt down the kidnappers, she must work with her former boss, Ben Butler, and navigate their tricky past.
\nTheir search will take them from Istanbul to the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. And all the while, an unimaginable enemy stalks in the shadows, an adversary whose secretive past will upend Evan's entire world - and might just annihilate her.
She is a sorceress - indescribably beautiful, overpoweringly sensual--who possesess incomprehensible powers. She is also a murderess who plans to use her power to kill Nicholas Linnear, the hero of THE NINJA.
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This is only the beginning of this exotic thriller, where Lustbader weaves an utterly compelling tale of the CIA, the KGB, the technological world of modern Japan, and the mystical and dangerous realms of Ninja warriors . . .
Evan Ryder is a lone wolf, a field agent for a black-ops arm of the DOD, who has survived unspeakable tragedy and dedicated her life to protecting her country. When her fellow agents begin to be systematically eliminated, Evan must unravel the thread that ties them all together . . . and before her name comes up on the kill list.
\nThe list belongs to a mysterious cabal known only as Nemesis, a hostile entity hell-bent on tearing the United States apart. As Evan tracks them from Washington D.C. to the Caucasus Mountains, from Austria to a fortress in Germany where her own demons reside, she unearths a network of conspirators far more complex than anyone could have imagined. Can Evan uproot them before Nemesis forces bring democracy to its knees?
This is the story of Nicholas Linnear, half-Caucasian, half-Oriental, a man caught between East and West, between the sexual passions of a woman he can't forget and the one he can't control and between a past he can't escape and a destiny he can't avoid.
A sprawling erotic thriller that swings from postwar Japan to present-day New York in a relentless saga of violence and terror elaborately designed for the most savage vengeance of all . . .
Returning to Tokyo after many years, Nicholas Linnear - the ninja - must make a deal with the devil if he is to maintain control of his newly launched shipping concern. The exiled Russian oligarch Vladimir Orkin is the buyer Linnear needs for his liquid natural gas, but his offer is contingent on the ninja's performance of an unusual service.
\nWell aware of Linnear's legendary skills in martial arts, Orkin demands that he take deadly revenge on the oligarch's longtime enemy and avenge his beautiful daughter. As a final persuasion, he dangles information about Linnear's past - information the ninja has never been able to uncover on his own. The lure is irresistible, but the danger may prove his undoing . . .
Evan Ryder is an extraordinary intelligence field agent now working for the security arm of Parachute, a private company and the world’s leader in the application of quantum technology. In the past, Ryder has done lethal battle in the modern global wars of power politics, extremist ideology, corrosive disinformation, and outrageous greed. But now she finds herself in a battle arena whose dangers, while less obvious, are greater than anything the world has seen before - the present and future war of weaponised quantum technology.
\nWhen an elite Russian scientist and the American Secretary of Defense die, at the same time half a world apart, of inexplicable sudden catastrophic brain damage, the world’s intelligence services realise that the quantum war has truly begun. Ryder and her long-time partner, Ben Butler, will risk their lives to discover who the true combatants are, racing against the doomsday scenario of all-out war between America and Russia.
The ancient Japanese art of death is practiced by a select few. Of those young men who are chosen to train in the way of the shadow warrior, most will fail. Those who pass these trials, the Ninja, become the silent assassins, lonely guardians, and unseen watchers of legend. But rarer still are those masters of the shadow craft, the Shiro - those whose fearsome abilities are matched only by their rigid code of honour. Men like Nicholas Linnear . . .
\nMany years ago two young men were trained by the same masters in the ancient art of the shadow warrior. One chose the path of the shiro - a life bound by honour and tradition. The other abandoned the code of the shadow warrior to follow a creed of blood and corruption.
\nNow following a spate of murders in Tokyo, the Shiro warrior Nicholas Linnear must finally confront his blood-brother . . .
Evan Ryder races against time in a landscape where secrets can no longer hide behind digital walls. Ilona Shokova, the elusive, deadly assassin White Wolf, holds the key to mastering this unhackable method.
Two powerful, deadly women, one quest. Will either one of them survive?
In this pulse-pounding thriller, the future isn't just written in code - it's locked behind it.
Tour manager, Olivia Jade, has been on the road for fifteen years. The road life can be frequently chaotic and although Olivia loves the camaraderie and spontaneous hook-ups with women she meets and will never see again, her job isn’t exactly set up for finding (and keeping) the one. During her hiatus to figure out what’s next, Olivia is offered the job of tour managing pop icon, Peyton Davis’ world tour. She weighs out her options on going out on one last adventure. Her mom always says, “you just never know what you’re going to find when you least expect it.”
\nOn the face of it Peyton is living the dream. A pop star at the top of her game, about to headline arenas around the world. But the reality of being Peyton Davis off stage? That’s another story. Her relationship with her family is challenging, and after years of being with her boyfriend, she’s beginning to realise that her relationship is far from happy. Peyton feels stuck and she can’t seem to shake the feeling that the bigger her career gets, the more the cracks in her life are beginning to show. Her relationship, her career, her future all are swirling around when she begins to share meaningful looks with her beautiful, if a little guarded, tour manager.
\nWith everything that’s going on, a crush for the first time on a woman and her employee no less, was the last thing she needs. But as time went on their connection becomes impossible to ignore. When both of their pasts start to stir up their present, the tension, insecurities, and jealousy only seem to make things worse. Will their love survive the obstacles when the world is watching?
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Gemma Quinn and Caitlin Stone met as teenagers in their sophomore year at Westmore High School. Little did they know that a literal run-in would change their lives. Unfortunately for them, finding the one true love at such a young age isn’t easy to hold onto when life throws hard choices their way in college.
\nNow, at twenty-eight years old, Gemma is comfortable. For six years, she has played a lead detective in a hit TV show and must decide whether signing on for another three seasons is genuinely worth it, or if she should chase her dreams of the silver screen. The call of a lifetime arrives when Gemma gets offered a role in a new lesbian romance film.
\nCaitlin followed the path she had laid out for herself since she was a young girl, and now she is the famous leading woman in every hit rom-com. Finally, she gets the opportunity to be taken more seriously as an actress in her first feature drama. But what Caitlin doesn’t know is that her co-star and love interest is none other than her ex-girlfriend.
\nThe bond Gemma and Caitlin formed as teenagers is undeniable when their forced reconciliation comes almost a decade later. Will their on-screen romance spark real-life love, or will this proximity tear them apart? When given a second chance, will Gemma and Caitlin be a box-office bomb or a smash hit?
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There are a lot of things that pop-culture aficionado Melanie Hoffman is great at: rattling off storylines from The Real Housewives, reciting the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen filmography from memory, and quoting Gossip Girl like it’s The Godfather, to name a few. And then there are the things she’s not good at: maintaining a healthy work-life balance, sleeping (in general), and being a functioning adult who isn’t completely destroyed by the death of her best friend, Ari. Mel has accepted that nothing will ever fill the crater-sized hole that Ari’s absence has left behind, and the cork on her grief is stopped tight. But then her company requires Mel to take a mandatory vacation. Cue the explosion.
\nDesperate to avoid two weeks alone with her thoughts, Mel joins her friend Vish on a yacht trip in Greece chartered by his tech company. It’s the Below Deck fantasy of Mel’s dreams, with built-in quasi-celebrities to fixate on in the form of the posh co-founders of Vish’s company. Mel has done enough social media stalking to immediately typecast the fabulous yet fragile Freya, her arrogant boyfriend Seb, and the hardworking and humble Ollie. A luxurious yacht chockful of hot, rich Brits? Mel couldn’t dream up a better distraction from her sorrow. But Mel’s dream quickly plunges into nightmarish waters when a sinister conversation overheard in the dead of night convinces Mel that Freya is in danger. And when Freya turns up missing the next morning, Mel immediately clocks what happened with the skill of a rabid true crime fan: Freya was murdered, and Seb is the prime suspect.
\nBut Freya’s disappearance doesn’t rock the boat in the way Mel is expecting. In fact, no one else onboard seems to think anything’s fishy. Mel’s concern for Freya grows into obsession, and she becomes dead set on saving Freya’s life like she couldn’t save Ari’s. Though her pop culture analysis skills uncover obvious cracks in the other passengers’ alibis, Mel’s desperation threatens to crack her own sanity first. With her time left on the yacht quickly dwindling, Mel must uncover what happened to Freya before going under herself.
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Erin Corcoran doesn’t believe anyone in her life will actually stick around. Her dad was the first person to leave her. Then, many years later, it was her wife. A year after her divorce, Erin is still struggling as a single mom. When she decides to hire a babysitter to watch her son, Nolan, over the summer, the last thing she expects is to fall for the woman ten years her junior.
\nBlair Breckenridge is fresh out of college and has no idea what she wants to do with her life. Luckily, that doesn’t matter since there is a large sum of money set aside in a trust fund for her. The only problem? Her parents refuse to continue giving her money if she doesn’t have a job. Blair decides to become a babysitter for the summer while she figures out what she actually wants to do with her life. Because, really, how hard could it be?
\nThe rambunctious three-and-a-half year old Blair is stuck watching for the summer is anything but easy. What makes the situation even harder is how hot his mom is. On top of that, she’s funny and sweet and has Blair daydreaming about a life she never knew she wanted.
\nAs Erin and Blair’s feelings for each other grow, it gets harder and harder to ignore them, but there are so many obstacles in their way. Blair is young and immature, and Erin worries with how impulsive she is, she will be another person who leaves. Blair has to find a way to prove to Erin she’s not like everyone else, because Erin isn’t the only one she’s becoming attached to. She wants Erin and Nolan, but at twenty-two, is she ready to take on everything that comes along with dating a single mom?
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Ashton Levengood has never felt like she fit in anywhere. After coming out, her overbearing, but loving, family suggests a Pride tour - a different Pride event every weekend of June. Ashton reluctantly agrees but worries she won’t even be able to find her place at Pride.
\nWhen she meets Dakota Douglass, it seems too good to be true. There’s no way a hot, cool artist could possibly be interested in Ashton, but the flirting and kissing say otherwise.
\nIs this just a Pride month fling or has Ashton finally found the perfect fit?
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Seven years have passed since Kinsley and Grace Harper-Scott became parents. They are looking forward to another Christmas with their family, but a Christmas wish that might not come true threatens to ruin the magic of Christmas.
Desperate to make sure her kids don't stop believing in Santa, Kinsley will stop at nothing to get a dog for her daughter. Unfortunately, long road trips with way too many bathroom breaks, freak snow storms, meddling mothers, and a daughter that is way too similar to her all threaten to stand in the way.
Lesbian romance writer, Laurel Lake (Kinsley Harper-Scott), knows there is no such thing as a happily ever after in real life. She expected there would always be ups and downs, but what she didn't expect was for marriage to be THIS hard.
\nIn this heart-wrenching sequel to the best selling lesbian romance, Sunsets and Shades, Kinsley and Grace Harper-Scott are met with a whole new set of challenges as they embark on the journey to parenthood. Grace can't figure out why Kinsley won't take the process seriously, while Kinsley wonders if her wife will ever be happy again.
\nLife isn't easy as attempt after attempt fails, but their love can survive anything, right?
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Kinsley Scott is a lesbian romance author who doesn’t actually believe in love. While her alter ego, Laurel Lake, loves happy endings and epic love stories, Kinsley has a more cynical view of the world.
Grace Harper is a hopeless romantic hanging on every word of the lesbian romance novels she reads. She believes her happy ending is right around the corner if she can just move on from the ex who cheated on her. When Grace's childhood best friend, Leah, suggests that she comes to Philly to get space from her ex, it seems like the perfect opportunity to start over, especially since Leah's roommate is none other than Laurel Lake - Grace's favorite romance author.
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Grace quickly learns that people aren't always how they appear online and is disappointed to find that Kinsley Scott is nothing like Laurel Lake. She's rude and vulgar and, unfortunately, irresistibly sexy. There is also much more to her than meets the eye, and as the two grow closer, her tough exterior is quickly stripped away, revealing much more than Grace ever bargained for.
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When reclusive, retired silver screen actress Barbara Lace dies in her bed, only the young widower of Cedarville suspects a crime. But Samson Delaware has always been something of an outsider, and his wife’s death hasn’t exactly improved his reputation. In fact, the local gossipmongers think he might be losing his mind. Their bless-your-heart manners can’t disguise their distrust, which makes his amateur attempts at an investigation even more difficult.
When Lace’s assistant is found decidedly murdered, the town starts to change its tune, though, and soon Samson finds himself in the thick of an improbable chase. Hollywood hotshots and small-town law enforcement make strange bedfellows - especially when secrets are getting women killed.
Essa Montgomery and her brother Clyde were brought up in New Hope, a serpent-handling church in Vintera, West Virginia, until the shocking deaths of both their parents closed the church down. Now twenty, reclusive Essa lives alone in her childhood home in the shadow of New Hope, which to her horror has been taken over by a new charismatic, unsettling pastor who continues the dangerous practice. So when the church burns down, she's glad - until she learns that two people died in the blaze, and her brother's the prime suspect . . .
\nLife has made Juliet Usher, who scratches a living as a psychic medium, both assertive and ruthless. With a baby on the way, it's the worst possible time for her partner Clyde to be arrested. She'll do anything to survive and keep him out of prison - no matter what it takes!
\nMerrit Callahan has always been ambitious. A striving news reporter, she's willing to go the extra mile and break the rules to get the big scoop. And in small-town Vintera, she thinks she might have found the story that will be the making of her career.
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George is a grumpy, belligerent old man who has just lost his wife. She has left him notes around the home and a miniature dachshund puppy called Poppy. But George doesn't want a dog, he wants to fight everyone who is trying to help him.
\nDan has OCD but has channeled his energy into his career as a therapist. Afraid to acknowledge his true feelings, his most meaningful relationship so far is with his dog Fitz. That is, until Atticus walks into his life.
\nLizzie is living in a women's refuge with her son Lenny. Her body is covered in scars and she has shut herself off from the world. She distrusts dogs, but when she starts having to walk the refuge's dog, Maud, things begin to change.
\nAs three strangers' lives unravel and intersect, they ultimately must accept what fate has in store for them with their dogs by their sides. Set against the backdrop of Brighton, Dog Days is an inspiring, unflinching, and deeply moving novel about life, and the way dogs can help us understand it, and each other, a little better.
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When Andrew stumbles upon Jamie's house, he's injured, starved, and has nothing left to lose. A deadly pathogen has killed off most of the world's population, including everyone both boys have ever loved. And if this new world has taught them anything, it's to be scared of what other desperate people will do . . . so why does it seem so easy for them to trust each other?
\nAfter danger breaches their shelter, they flee south in search of civilisation. But something isn't adding up about Andrew's story, and it could cost them everything. And Jamie has a secret, too. He's starting to feel something more than friendship for Andrew, adding another layer of fear and confusion to an already tumultuous journey.
\nThe road ahead of them is long, and to survive, they'll have to shed their secrets, face the consequences of their actions, and find the courage to fight for the future they desire, together. Only one thing feels certain: all that's left in their world is the undeniable pull they have toward each other.
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When a runaway teen is arrested for shoplifting, he's desperate not to be sent back to the hyper-religious parents he knows will never accept him. While at the police station, he notices a resemblance to the aged-up photos of Nate Beaumont, a child who went missing ten years ago - and, in a moment of desperation, he takes Nate’s identity in hopes that it will help him make a quick getaway.
\nBefore he can run again, Nate’s family arrives and welcomes him home to a life he never had. As \"Nate\" watches and waits for his chance to run, he finds that the Beaumonts are nurturing and loving, very different from his own parents.
\nBut soon unsettling things start to happen - vandalism, alarms going off in the middle of the night - and it becomes clear that someone knows \"Nate\" isn't who he says he is . . . and that the real Nate wasn't kidnapped, but murdered.
\nAs he starts to unravel the mystery, he gets ever closer to the devil he may know - and learns he might be their next victim.
From the coldest town on earth, to a sex shop in Bangkok, to a haunted bed and breakfast in the Rockies, we meet characters at hinge moments. A runaway fights for her future while driving an ice cream truck in gang territory; a cleaning woman investigates the teenager who died in her stead; an Alaskan terminal patient discovers new life in helping others die. This collection explores the borderlands between humor and hurt, community and self, and hope and despair, redefining what it means to survive.
\nScalpel-sharp, unsparingly funny, and achingly wise, Krouse's expansive stories build to unforgettable emotional catharses, as these men and women must decide how far they are willing to go to save each other - and themselves.
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Eleven-year-old Nedda Papas is obsessed with becoming an astronaut. In 1986 in Easter, a small Florida Space Coast town, her dreams seem almost within reach - if she can just grow up fast enough. Theo, the scientist father she idolises, is consumed by his own obsessions. Laid off from his job at NASA and still reeling from the loss of Nedda’s newborn brother several years before, Theo turns to the dangerous dream of extending his living daughter's childhood just a little longer. The result is an invention that alters the fabric of time.
Amidst the chaos that erupts, Nedda must confront her father and his secrets, the ramifications of which will irrevocably change her life, her community, and the entire world. But she finds an unexpected ally in Betheen, the mother she’s never quite understood, who surprises Nedda by seeing her more clearly than anyone else.
Decades later, Nedda has achieved her long-held dream, and as she floats in antigravity, far from earth, she and her crewmates face a serious crisis. Nedda may hold the key to the solution, if she can come to terms with her past and the future that awaits her.
Light from Other Stars is about fathers and daughters, women and the forces that hold them back, and the cost of meaningful work. It questions how our lives have changed, what progress looks like, and what it really means to sacrifice for the greater good.
The city of Bulwark is aptly a walled city built to protect and preserve the people who managed to survive a series of great cataclysms, Bulwark was founded on a system where sacrifice is rewarded by the AI that runs the city. Over generations, an elite class has evolved from the descendants of those who gave up the most to found mankind’s last stronghold, called the Sainted.
\nSaint Enita Malovis, long accustomed to luxury, feels the end of her life and decades of work as a bio-prosthetist approaching. The lone practitioner of her art, Enita is determined to preserve her legacy and decides to create a physical being, called Nix, filled with her knowledge and experience. In the midst of her project, a fellow Sainted is brutally murdered and the city AI inexplicably erases the event from its data. Soon, Enita and Nix are drawn into the growing war that could change everything between Bulwark’s hidden underclass and the programs that impose and maintain order.
\nA complex, imaginative, and unforgettable novel, We Lived on the Horizon grapples with concepts as varied as the human desire for utopia, body horror, and what the future holds for humanity and machine alike.
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Juliette doesn’t hate Priya Pendley.
\nAt least, not in the way teen movies say she should hate the hot popular girl. They don’t do cat fights, love triangles, or betrayal. To survive their intertwined small town lives, they agree to a truce: complete group projects without fighting, don’t gossip to mutual friends, and stand on opposite sides of photos so it’s easy to crop each other out.
\nPriya seems to have everything during the school year - social media stardom, the handsome track captain boyfriend, and millions of adoring fans. And Juliette is at peace with that, because she has Fogridge Sleepaway Camp, the one place she never feels like “too much.”
\nBut Juliette’s dreams of five Priya-free weeks in paradise are shattered when her rival shows up on move-in day . . . as her cabinmate, no less. Juliette is determined to enjoy her final summer at camp, even if it means (gag) tolerating Priya Pendley, but fate seems has other plans. If Juliette can’t find something to like about her situation - and about Priya - she risks hating the only home she’s ever had, right before she says goodbye to it forever.
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Maggie Matthews is desperate. What self-respecting accomplished suspense author has a two-year creative slump? Her, apparently.
\nFollowing the only seed of inspiration she has, she's set to embark on a van-life road trip. Only she's never so much as driven out of state. Out of her comfort zone and hopelessly unprepared, she needs friend of her agent and seasoned adventurer Laike Cardinal as a guide.
\nLaike regrets giving in and letting Maggie join her latest journey. Maggie has no concept of personal space and occupies way too much of her thoughts. If only she could drop Maggie off at the nearest airport and send her home. She'd even pay for the ticket if Maggie would go - mostly because she doesn't want to think about how much she wants Maggie to stay.
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Georgiana Darcy has only ever kissed one girl before, and the resulting blackmail almost ruined her reputation. Since then, she’s carefully calibrated her life to be as quiet as possible, focusing on books and music. She certainly isn’t planning on falling in love with another girl. But then she meets Kitty Bennet, and everything is thrown off kilter.
\nAfter a moonlit kiss shifts their newfound friendship into something more, Georgiana follows Kitty to the Bennets’ home. The visit proves ill-timed when she encounters the one man who knows her secret and threatened her with it before. Terrified of testing the limits of her family’s love and of putting Kitty in danger, Georgiana doesn’t know if there’s any chance of a happy ending.
\nEvery etiquette guide she’s ever read makes it clear that if she wants to protect her family name, Georgiana must pretend her heart follows society’s accepted rhythm. Unless, with a little help from those who understand how it feels, she can compose the future she and Kitty both deserve.
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Twelve years ago, Otta escaped her small town, determined to become a marine biologist. Now she’s returned, carrying the guilt of a friend’s disappearance during a deep-sea dive and unsure she’ll ever be able to dive again. Then a stranger, May, appears at her door, insisting that her daughter who ran away is under the nearby lake - alive.
\nIt turns out the small-town legend is true: Three decades ago, the entire valley was flooded to build a dam, but the people who lived there refused to leave. These “refugees of a world obsessed with change” now inhabit an underwater realm. To find the missing girl, Otta and May come face-to-face with communities that have lived in isolation for decades, breeding extremes of delusion and nostalgia. As they push their bodies to the mortal limit, the women must confront the fear, control, and suspicion born of the misguided quest to construct a purer world.
\nHypnotic and arresting, Underlake brings a poet’s attention to language, evoking the ethereal work of Marilynne Robinson, Lauren Groff, and Emily St. John Mandel and the imaginative brio of Margaret Atwood. In taking her place as a major new voice in American fiction, McCoy shrewdly explores the American obsession with land, inheritance, and race, asking what we cling to when the world changes - and who gets erased in the name of preserving it.
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We’ve all been you’re sweating, sitting in front of your laptop, and the interviewer on the screen says, “Tell me about yourself.” You freeze. Is that even a question? What are they expecting from you? What do you say?
\nIf that paragraph made your heart beat a little faster, TikTok star, career educator, and “the internet’s big sister” Erin McGoff is here to help. In The Secret Language of Work, McGoff shares her best, customisable scripts for how to communicate in the professional world - word-for-word, exactly what to say during interviews, while negotiating salaries, when you need to set boundaries with co-workers, as you advocate for yourself, and in any sticky situation at the office. With McGoff’s advice, you will master the unwritten rules of work speak that are key to career advancement.
\nLearning how to say the right words, in the right order, in the right way, at the right time, is an art that too few people are taught. Stellar communication is probably the most valuable skill you can possess - and once you know the secret language of work, you will be able to confidently tackle anything your sure-to-be outstanding career presents to you.
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Radclyffe, New York, is an idyllic upstate town, nestled in the hills and complete with artisanal bakeries, pottery studios, and hidden swimming holes. Ruth and her wife, Wyn, are living the dream (or Wyn’s dream, at least) with their four children on their small farm, which is also the bucolic gathering place for their circle of friends. It’s a sweet life, but there’s a secret at its center, one that not even Ruth’s best friend, Caroline, knows.
\nWhat Caroline does know is that she loves and depends on Ruth, and on the bond between their families. More than anything, she wants her tender-hearted son not to grow up lonely the way she did. Unfortunately, no one can assure her of that, especially not her husband. He just wants things to be easy, drama-free - which is impossible, as he has donated his sperm to his cousin Tobi and her wife so that they could have kids of their own. Now those children are asking unanswerable questions.
\nAfter an unexpected death in their community, all three couples are forced to confront the tensions that have long been buried beneath the surfaces of their lives. Richly textured and big-hearted, this exhilarating debut is an unforgettable story of the alchemy of love and loyalty that makes friends Like Family.
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Washed-up New York journalist Frankie Miller is getting desperate. Since the twenty-nine-year-old lost her dream job at a glossy magazine three months ago, her days have been filled with overdue bills, cereal for dinner, and a flood of rejection emails (not to mention her ex has a new girlfriend). So when she’s offered a job at The Scoop, a notorious tabloid website run by tyrannical editor-in-chief David Brown, she can’t exactly afford to say no - even if it means swallowing her pride for clicks. Besides, for Frankie, it’s just a paycheck, a temporary detour. It’s not forever.
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But the deeper she’s pulled into the breakneck world of tabloid journalism, the blurrier the line between ambition and morality becomes - until she crosses it. When her reporting humiliates a beloved pop star and dredges up grief over her late mother, Frankie sets off a chain reaction that spirals beyond her control. In an industry where reputation is currency and outrage sells, how far is Frankie willing to go - and how much is she willing to lose - to win at this ruthless game?
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Sharp, witty, and unflinchingly bold, The Scoop is a searing exploration of ambition, exploitation, and the human toll of the 24/7 news cycle.
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It’s the summer of 1987 in Swift River, and Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere they go. But that’s not the only reason Diamond stands out: she’s teased relentlessly about her weight, and since Pop’s been gone, she is the only Black person in all of Swift River.
\nThis summer, Ma is determined to declare Pop legally dead so that they can collect his life insurance money, get their house back from the bank, and finally move on.
\nBut when Diamond receives a letter from a relative she’s never met, key elements of Pop’s life are uncovered, and she is introduced to two generations of African American Newberry women, whose lives span the 20th century and reveal a much larger picture of prejudice and abandonment, of love and devotion.
\nAs pieces of their shared past become clearer, Diamond gains a sense of her place in the world and in her family. But how will what she’s learned of the past change her future?
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The Cohen sisters are at a crossroads. And not just because the middle sister, Fortune, is starting to question her decision to get married in just a few months. Nina, the eldest sister, is single at 26 (and growing cobwebs by her community's standards) when she runs into an old childhood friend who offers her the chance to leave behind the pressure to follow in her younger sister’s footsteps. Meanwhile, Lucy, the youngest, a senior at her yeshiva high school, has recently started sneaking around with a mysterious older bachelor that has everybody asking themselves, 'Fortune, who?'
\nAs Fortune inches ever closer to the chuppah, the three sisters find themselves in a tug of war between tradition and modernity, reckoning with what their community wants and with what they want for themselves - and all while learning how to roll the perfect grape leaf under the tutelage of their charismatic grandmother, Sitto, who fled Syria in 1992, and of their mother Sally, whose anxieties are tangled up in her daughters’ futures.
\nSisters of Fortune is a sister story about dating, ambition, and coming-of-age under the scope of an immigrant community whose coded language is endearing, maddening, and never boring. The book reckons with what we dream for ourselves, our daughters, and granddaughters. It is concerned as much with where we come from as where we are going - and, above all, with what we are eating for dinner. (And who is making it).
A young Palestinian American woman comes to terms with the lessons imparted by her mother in an evocative story about sacrifice, resilience, and reinvention.
\nA daughter and mother: two women miles, years, and dreams apart. One defies traditions and expectations. The other conforms to them, even in a new land. Their emotional distance grows while the daughter, now a wife and mother herself, comes to better understand the woman she’s become and why, as she ruminates on inherited trauma, the need to forgive, and the lengths she’ll go to free herself from the past.
Set in a close-knit Pennsylvania suburb in the grip of winter, A Quiet Life follows three people grappling with loss and finding a tender wisdom in their grief.
\nChuck Ayers used to look forward to nothing so much as his annual trip to Hilton Head with his wife, Cat - that yearly taste of relaxation they’d become accustomed to in retirement, after a lifetime of working and raising two children. Now, just months after Cat’s death, Chuck finds that he can’t let go of her things - her favorite towel, the sketchbooks in her desk drawer - as he struggles to pack for a trip he can’t imagine taking without her.
\nElla Burke delivers morning newspapers and works at a bridal shop to fill her days while she anxiously awaits news - any piece of information - about her missing daughter. Ella adjusts to life in a new apartment and answers every call on her phone, hoping her daughter will reach out one day.
\nAfter the sudden death of her father, Kirsten Bonato set aside her veterinary school aspirations, finding comfort in the steady routine of working at an animal shelter. But as time passes, old dreams and new romantic interests begin to surface - and Kirsten finds herself at another crossroads.
\nIn this beautifully crafted and profoundly moving novel, three parallel narratives converge in poignant and unexpected ways, as each character bravely presses onward, trying to recover something they have lost.
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Three generations of Schmidts have run their family’s beachfront restaurant, and Jack has been at the helm since his father's death. He puts the demands of the restaurant above all else, with a string of failed relationships, no hobbies, and no days off as proof of his commitment to the place. He can’t remember the last time he sat on the beach or enjoyed a moment to himself.
\nMeanwhile, the DelDine group has been snapping up beloved eateries along this stretch of coast, and it is pursuing Jack with a very generous offer to take Schmidt’s off his hands. Jack craves companionship and maybe even a family. He wonders whether closing the door on the restaurant might open a window for him - but who would he be without Schmidt’s, and can he trust DelDine’s claims that it will continue to employ his staff and honor his family’s legacy?
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On March 27, 1829, a wealthy white planter and entrepreneur named Richard Fordham purchased four enslaved African Americans from a woman named Isabella Perman. One of them was journalist Eugene Robinson’s great-great-grandfather, a boy called Harry.
\nStarting from this transaction, which took place in Charleston, South Carolina, Freedom Lost, Freedom Won brings to life 200 years of our nation’s history through the eyes of the remarkable family that Harry founded. Assigned a formal name - Henry Fordham - and put to work as a blacksmith, he achieved his own freedom a decade before the Civil War. He was there when victorious Union troops marched into Charleston in 1865, ending slavery and guaranteeing liberty for Black people - only on paper, though, and only for a time.
\nRobinson traces the arc of his familial lineage through the repeated cycles in which African Americans have fought their way upward toward freedom and opportunity, been forced back down again, and renewed their determined climb.
\nFrom his great-great-grandfather’s achievement in becoming a “free person of color” before emancipation to his great-grandfather’s Reconstruction-era success, from his father’s odyssey of the Great Migration to his own coming-of-age during the civil rights movement, Robinson delves into a rich archive of Black narratives, arguing that we still have a long way to go before it is possible to speak of a “post-racial America.”
\nSetting his extensive research within the larger historical context, Robinson provides both an indictment of structural racism and an illustration of how it has been fought and, at times, courageously overcome. Freedom Lost, Freedom Won tells our country’s tortuous racial history through Robinson’s family’s story of struggle and survival, pushing us to consider how far the nation has come - willingly or not - and how far it still has to go.
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The untold story of the mysterious family dynasty at the center of China's Huawei.
\nOn December 1, 2018, Meng Wanzhou, daughter of Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of China's most powerful company, Huawei Technologies, was detained at the request of U.S. authorities as she prepared to board a flight out of Vancouver, Canada. The detention of Huawei's female scion set the U.S.-China trade skirmish on fire - and, for the first time, revealed the Ren family's prominence in Beijing's power structure.
\nIn The Listening State, acclaimed Washington Post reporter Eva Dou exposes the untold story of the rise of Ren Zhengfei and the mysterious family dynasty at the center of Huawei, whose connections to state apparatus reveal a deeper truth about China's surveillance web and its global ambitions. Through its technologies, Huawei has helped solidify and enforce China's growing police state, in which outspoken entrepreneurs like Jack Ma have been silenced, tycoons have disappeared, and executives must put patriotism above profit.
\nBased on over a decade of on-the-ground reporting and an astonishing trove of confidential documents never published in English, The Listening State paints an epic story of familial and political intrigue that shines a clarifying light on how business and government work together in an authoritarian state, and how companies fit into China's international ambitions under Xi Jinping.
\nThe story of Ren Zhengfei and Huawei exposes the human face of China's modern security state and gets to the heart of the central questions of the U.S.-China trade How did these turbocharged Chinese companies emerge? Who really controls them? And what does China's growing surveillance web mean for the Chinese people - and for the rest of the world?
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Agatha's husband has bought her a first-class ticket on the scenic six-hour train from Toronto to Montreal as a gift - a one-day writing retreat so she can get some serious work done on her new book, a highly-anticipated follow-up to Agatha's runaway bestseller debut novel. The first-class car is the perfect place to be productive, with only a handful of other passengers, plenty of snacks and drinks, and beautiful views flying by outside the window.
\nBut Agatha has other plans for her day out . . . plans that are unexpectedly derailed when the train breaks down in the middle of the frigid Canadian woods and one of Agatha's fellow passengers dies quietly in his seat. Soon, a pleasant morning in transit turns into a fight for survival against an unknown and unseen enemy. Will Agatha - or any of the passengers - make it out alive?
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The Dog Sitter is a wry, feel-good romp about a woman whose life has gone sideways, forcing her to take a 30-day dog-sitting job in New York City despite not being a dog person (or a people person, frankly), in this irreverent and insightful story about starting over.
\nRecently divorced, newly evicted, and suddenly strapped, Colleen Fitzroy is out of options. She reluctantly agrees to work for former boss, Massimo Locatelli - editor of Savor Magazine - dog sitting his precious Aldo while he’s out of town. At least no one will bother her.
\nThat’s until an endless parade of New Yorkers arrive unannounced, pulling Colleen into their knotty orbit. As she juggles strangers, a high maintenance dog, and her unraveling plans, Massimo takes note of her grit. He taps her for his newest venture - which plunges her into Manhattan’s rarefied restaurant world - triggering a shameful secret.
\nColleen is forced to confront the life she’s been living - and finally decide if she has the courage to seize the one that’s long overdue.
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An affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life, from department stores to indies, from highbrow dealers trading in first editions to sidewalk vendors, and from chains to special-interest community destinations
\nBookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop, we see those stakes: what has been, and what might be lost.
\nEvan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin’s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including The Strand, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company, Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus.
\nThe Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over more than two centuries - including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who appeared to sign books at Marshall Field’s in 1944.
\nThe Bookshop is a love letter to bookstores, a charming chronicle for anyone who cherishes these sanctuaries of literature, and essential reading to understand how these vital institutions have shaped American life - and why we still need them.
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Anji works as a castle servant, cleaning laundry for a king she hates. So when a rare opportunity presents itself, she seizes the chance to cut his throat. Then she runs for her life. In her wake, the kingdom is thrown into disarray, while a bounty bigger than anyone could imagine lands on her head.
\nOn her heels are the fabled mercenaries of the Menagerie, whose animal-shaped masks are magical relics rumored to give them superhuman powers. It’s the Hawk who finds Anji a surly, aging swordswoman who has her own reasons for keeping Anji alive and out of the hands of her fellow bounty hunters, if only long enough to collect the reward herself.
\nWith the rest of the Menagerie on their trail, so begins an alliance as tenuous as it is temporary - and a race against death that will decide Anji’s fate, and may change the course of a kingdom.
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After his daughter, Avery, was born, John gave it all up - hobbies, friends, a dream job - to be something a super dad. Since then, he’s spent nearly every waking second with Avery, who’s his absolute best bud. Or, at least, she was.
\nWhen now eleven-year-old Avery begins transforming into an eye-rolling zombie of a preteen who dreads spending time with him, a desperate John whisks her away for a weeklong father-daughter retreat to get their relationship back on track before she starts middle school.
\nBut John’s attempts to bond only seem to drive his daughter further away, and his instincts tell him Avery’s hiding something more than just preteen angst. Even worse, the camp is far from the idyllic getaway he had in mind. John finds himself navigating a group of toxic dads that can’t seem to get along, cringe-worthy forced bonding activities, and a camp director that has it out for him. With camp and summer break slipping away fast, John’s determined to conquer it all for a chance to become Avery’s hero again.
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Tau and his Queen, desperate to delay the impending attack on the capital by the indigenous people of Xidda, craft a dangerous plan. If Tau succeeds, the Queen will have the time she needs to assemble her forces and launch an all out assault on her own capital city, where her sister is being propped up as the 'true' Queen of the Omehi.
If the city can be taken, if Tsiora can reclaim her throne, and if she can reunite her people then the Omehi have a chance to survive the onslaught.
The Omehi people have been fighting an unwinnable war for generations. The lucky ones are born gifted: some have the power to call down dragons, others can be magically transformed into bigger, stronger, faster killing machines.
\nEveryone else is fodder, destined to fight and die in the endless war. Tau Tafari wants more than this, but his plans of escape are destroyed when those closest to him are brutally murdered.
\nWith too few gifted left, the Omehi are facing genocide, but Tau cares only for revenge. Following an unthinkable path, he will strive to become the greatest swordsman to ever live, willing to die a hundred thousand times for the chance to kill three of his own people.
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Kat, Flora and Lauren are half-sisters who share a famous artist father - and a terrible secret.
\nEach has found their way of burying it. Over the years they've grown apart, and into wildly different lives. But an invitation to Rock Point, the Cornish cliff house where they once sat for their father's most celebrated painting, Girls with Birdcage, reunites them.
\nRock Point is a beautiful, windswept place, thick with secrets, electrically charged with the one subject the family dare not discuss. And there is someone in the shadows watching the house, their every move. Someone who remembers the girls in the painting. What they did.
\nThe sisters must unlock the truth to set themselves free - and find each other again.
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Outside a remote manor house in an idyllic wood, a baby girl is found.
The Harrington family takes her in and disbelief quickly turns to joy. They're grieving a terrible tragedy of their own and the beautiful baby fills them with hope, lighting up the house's dark, dusty corners. Desperate not to lose her to the authorities, they keep her secret, suspended in a blissful summer world where normal rules of behaviour - and the law - don't seem to apply.
But within days a body will lie dead in the grounds. And their dreams of a perfect family will shatter like glass.
Years later, the truth will need to be put back together again, piece by piece . . .
Notting Hill, 1998.
\nDee Delancey - loving mother, grieving widow, sometime model - heads out for the evening, blowing a kiss before vanishing down the crescent. She doesn't come home that night. Nor the one after . . .
\nHer reclusive teenage daughter Elfine refuses to accept she's gone - no one loses both parents in two years, do they? Forced to keep house and mother her maddening little brother Kit, Elfine shuns the help of Dee's chaotic small circle of friends, fearing the news reaching the tabloids and the authorities.
\nBut she finds an unexpected ally in Wolf, an older boy with boxer's fists from the far end of Portobello, an unknown world of dark labyrinthine shops, dusty antiques, human warmth, and misrule, far from the big white villas. A place she feels safe.
\nBut the clock is ticking. And a stranger is lurking. As dangerous forces close in, Elfine faces an impossible choice - she must protect her brother, whatever the consequences.
\nTwenty years later, when the mysterious new owner of the Delancey family's old house starts digging out a basement, secrets cannot stay buried for much longer . . .
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1950. It’s the coldest winter in decades, and twenty-eight-year-old Chinese American journalist Ellie Chang is on a military flight to cover a battle in the mountains of North Korea when her plane is shot down.
\nAs she emerges from the fallen aircraft onto an icy field surrounded by the enemy, Ellie is sure it’s the end, certain she’ll never make it home to her parents . . . until a woman pushes her way through the crowd and claims Ellie as the lost daughter that she’s been searching for since the last war ended. Never mind that Ellie doesn’t speak a word of Korean.
\nEllie is taken in by her rescuer - a woman who calls herself “Emma” - and the Paks, a pastor’s family. She knows she can’t stay and yet there’s no way she’ll survive on her own.
\nAs the war intensifies, the sky alighting with bombs overhead, Ellie convinces Emma and the Paks to travel south towards an elusive promise of safety, and where Ellie insists they are more likely to find Emma’s real daughter, stuck on the other side of the frontlines.
\nEmma’s decision to claim Ellie, and Ellie’s choice to take her hand will connect their lives forever.
\nMoving and triumphant, The Young Will Remember sheds light on a “Forgotten War,” the resilience of love within our darkest histories, and the indefatigable determination of mothers to protect their children.
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Why don’t our schools work? Eve L. Ewing tackles this question from a new angle: What if they’re actually doing what they were built to do? She argues that instead of being the great equalizer, America’s classrooms were designed to do the opposite: to maintain the nation’s inequalities. It’s a task at which they excel.
\nIf all children could just get an education, the logic goes, they would have the same opportunities later in life. But this historical tour de force makes it clear that the opposite is true: The U.S. school system has played an instrumental role in creating and upholding racial hierarchies, preparing children to expect unequal treatment throughout their lives.
\nIn Original Sins, Ewing demonstrates that our schools were designed to propagate the idea of white intellectual superiority, to “civilize” Native students and to prepare Black students for menial labor. Education was not an afterthought for the Founding Fathers; it was envisioned by Thomas Jefferson as an institution that would fortify the country’s racial hierarchy. Ewing argues that these dynamics persist in a curriculum that continues to minimize the horrors of American history. The most insidious aspects of this system fall below the radar in the forms of standardised testing, academic tracking, disciplinary policies, and uneven access to resources.
\nBy demonstrating that it’s in the DNA of American schools to serve as an effective and underacknowledged mechanism maintaining inequality in this country today, Ewing makes the case that we need a profound reevaluation of what schools are supposed to do, and for whom. This book will change the way people understand the place we send our children for eight hours a day.
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Arthur Fletch, one of the world’s bestselling novelists, is a reclusive genius known for his iconic protagonists and fiendish twists. When six struggling authors are invited to spend a weekend on his private Scottish island, they arrive to discover a shocking secret: Arthur Fletch is dead . . . and his last book is unfinished.
\nDesperate to publish the novel, Fletch’s agent and editor have summoned these writers in the hope that one of them will imagine a worthy ending for this final book. To sweeten the deal, they are offering an irresistible prize: in addition to ghost-writing the last chapter - for a mind-boggling sum - they will also help the lucky writer successfully re-launch their own career, guaranteeing future bestsellers. The catch: the writers have just seventy-two hours to finish Fletch’s magnum opus.
\nIt’s the perfect plot. All it needs is a killer ending.
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The last thing Ramona St. Germaine needed was public humiliation on her wedding day. Yet, the universe had different plans, leaving her jilted and questioning everything - friendships, loyalty, and her own judgment. She soon learns the culprit behind her unique engagement falling Quinn Archer. After some internet sleuthing, Ramona finds Quinn. She could face her and move on - easy. Well, easy if she ignores their mutual attraction.
\nQuinn Archer thrives in the grey, predictable landscape of her corporate job. So, imagine her shock when she grabs the same coffee as the most intriguing woman she’s ever met. Despite Quinn's less-than-stellar social skills, their chemistry draws her in and that predictability takes a backseat.
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Jake Whyte is living on her own in an old farmhouse on a craggy British island, a place of ceaseless rains and battering winds. Her disobedient collie, Dog, and a flock of sheep are her sole companions, which is how she wanted it to be. But every few nights something - or someone - picks off one of the sheep and sets off a new deep pulse of terror.
\nThere are foxes in the woods, a strange boy and a strange man, rumors of an obscure, formidable beast. But there is also Jake's past - hidden thousands of miles away and years ago, held in the silences about her family and the scars that stripe her back - a past that threatens to break into the present.
With exceptional artistry and empathy, All the Birds, Singing reveals an isolated life in all its struggles and stubborn hopes, unexpected beauty, and hard-won redemption.
Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the flat they shared and begins to realise how much of her life was invisible to him.
\nIn the weeks and months before Max’s death, Hannah is haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seems to offer the potential of a different story, but the past refuses to stay hidden. It finds expression in the untold stories of the people she grew up with, the details of their lives she never knew and the events that broke her family apart and led her to Max.
\nBoth a celebration and an autopsy of a relationship, spanning multiple generations and set between rural Australia and London, The Echoes is a novel about love and grief, stories and who has the right to tell them. It asks what of our past we can shrug off and what is fixed forever, echoing down through the years.
One evening in downtown Seoul, Jeong-su is smoking a cigarette outside when he sees something: a huge black orb appears out of nowhere and sucks his neighbour inside. The orb soon begins consuming other people and no one knows how to stop it. Impervious to bullets and tanks, the orb splits and multiplies, chasing the hapless residents of Seoul out into the country and sparking a global crisis with widespread violence and looting.
\nJeong-su must rely upon his wits as he makes the arduous journey in search of his elderly parents. But the strangest phases of this ever-expanding disaster are yet to come and Jeong-su will be forced to question everything he has taken for granted.
\nDryly funny, propulsive and absurd, The Black Orb is terrifyingly prescient about the fragility of human civilisation.
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To trace the global history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of growing unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, the entire country has a national housing crisis. After years of slashing immigration, we don’t have enough workers. After decades of off-shoring manufacturing, we have a shortage of chips for cars and computers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean energy infrastructure we need. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades - because we haven’t been building enough.
\nAbundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next generation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the environmental problems of the 1970s often prevent urban density and green energy projects that would help solve the environmental problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions in matters of education and healthcare have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.
\nProgress requires the ability to see promise rather than just peril in the creation of new ideas and projects, and an instinct to design systems and institutions that make building possible. In a book exploring how can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and how we can adopt a mindset directed toward abundance, and not scarcity, to overcome them.
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After Election Day 2016, both supporters and opponents of the soon-to-be president hailed his victory as a historically unprecedented event. Most Americans could agree that no candidate like Donald Trump had ever been elected President before. But political journalist Ezra Klein makes the case that the 2016 election wasn't surprising at all. In fact, Trump's electoral victory followed the exact same template as previous elections, by capturing a nearly identical percentage of voter demographics as previous Republican candidates.
Over the past 50 years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. Those merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together.
In this groundbreaking book, Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the 20th century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and each other. And he traces the feedback loops between our polarized political identities and our polarised political institutions that are driving our political system towards crisis.
Neither a polemic nor a lament, Klein offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump's rise to the Democratic Party's leftward shift to the politicisation of everyday culture. A revelatory book that will change how you look at politics, and perhaps at yourself.
It's that pivotal year, 1968, and Nettie Boileau, a young Haitian student in Oakland, gets caught up in the ongoing revolutionary fever. With her friend Clia Brown, she uses her public health skills to help operate the free health clinics created by the people she believes are \"true revolutionaries,\" the Black Panthers. When she falls in love with Black Panther Party Defense Captain Melvin Mosley, their passionate love affair soon eclipses all else - her friendship with Clia and even her own sense of self.
\nPregnant, Nettie follows Melvin to Chicago to help with a newly-launched Illinois chapter of the Panthers, but once there, she finds Chicago segregated, police surveillance brutal, and her faith in love eroding as Melvin becomes unfaithful. After a violent tussle with the police and the loss of their unborn child, both Nettie and Melvin are caught in the viciousness of J. Edgar Hoover’s covert campaigns, and Nettie is soon on the run, desperate to find power in her roots and ultimately, to save herself.
\nWith richly imagined, relatable characters, Kingdom of No Tomorrow tells a story of Black love, self-determination, and the importance of revolution in the midst of injustice.
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Eve Alexopoulos is a journalist, but you’d be better off calling her what she really is: a professional troll-hunter. For a couple of years now, her column “What’s Your Problem, Bro?” has been exposing some of the most outrageous online trolls to hold them publicly accountable for their abusive behavior.
\nHer column has been so successful, she got a fat book advance - one big enough to afford a Sunray, the most cutting-edge vehicle available. Sleek, self-driving, solar-powered, with every car custom-programmed by an engineer at the tech goliath company Jolvix.
\nToo bad the engineer who programmed her new Sunray isn’t a big fan of Eve’s work.
\nBecause now her life’s about to make a sharp U-turn into unthinkable terror.
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Life's tough when you didn't expect to be living it. But now that Journey has a future, she apparently also has to figure out what that future's supposed to look like.
\nSome days the pain feels as fresh as that day: the day she attempted suicide. Her parents don't know how to speak to her. Her best friend cracks all the wrong jokes. Her bipolar II disorder feels like it swallows her completely.
\nBut other days - they feel like revelations. Like meeting the dazzling Etta, a city college student who is a world unto herself. Or walking into the office of the volunteer hotline, and discovering a community as simultaneously strong and broken as she is.
\nOr uncovering the light within herself that she didn't know existed.
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Ten years ago, Jolene nearly killed her friend Elizabeth in a gruesome accident. And no one has any idea. Not even Elizabeth.
\nJolene has been trying to outrun the guilt ever since, wandering from place to place and career to career. So she’s shocked when, after her latest move, she runs into the very person she’s been trying to avoid for ten years.
\nElizabeth still lives with scars from the accident. And she’s still clueless about what happened that fateful night.
\nOr is she?
\nAs the two women rekindle a friendship, Elizabeth’s increasingly disturbing behavior makes Jolene wonder if it’s her own guilt stalking her - or Elizabeth finally exacting her revenge.
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When Pearl meets Christopher, he seems like the perfect catch: charming, wealthy, and brilliant. Their connection is electric.
\nThere’s just one little problem - Christopher also happens to be a psychopath.
\nAs Pearl falls deeper in love with Christopher, his mind games become more dangerous. But the more she tries to free herself from his grasp, the tighter it becomes. Escape seems all but impossible.
\nPearl moves to a new city. She tries to hide. But Christopher isn’t about to let her go that easily.
\nIf he can’t have her, nobody can.
Welcome to Silicon Valley, where the weather is perfect, the income is high . . . and Rowena Snyder is miserable. A transplant from New York, Rowena moved into her husband Jacob’s idyllic childhood home with their new baby. But suburbia isn’t Rowena’s cup of Starbucks. And she’s got serious anxiety and depression to boot.
\nJacob, worried about their marriage, scores a new product currently in beta testing from his tech job: Maxine, a “digital friend” that bonds with an individual by continually gathering their personal data. Along with functioning like an upscale digital assistant, Maxine has “advice” and “prediction” modes that have shown promise for patients with mental health issues. To Rowena’s shock, the device turns out to be not just helpful, but eerily accurate, predicting events before they occur.
\nIt’s a godsend until Maxine offers a series of increasingly bone-chilling predictions that will change Rowena’s life forever.
\nThis domestic suspense novel set in a near-future dystopia asks, who do you trust more - your mind, your man, or your machine?
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Ava's disappearance was the crack in the Rivers family glacier. I wish I could explain to you how we were before, but I can't, because the before is so filmy and shadowed with the after.
The after is all Vera remembers. When her twin sister, Ava, disappeared one Halloween night, her childhood became a blur of theories, tips, and leads, but never any answers. The case made headlines, shocked Vera's Northern California community, and turned her family into tragic celebrities.
Now, at eighteen, Vera is counting down the days until she starts her new life at college in Portland, Oregon, far away from the dark cloud she and family have lived under for twelve years. But all that changes when a girl shows up at the local hospital.
Her name is Ava Rivers and she wants to go home.
Ava's return begins to mend the fractures in the Rivers family. Vera and Ava's estranged older brother returns. Vera reconnects with Max, the sweet, artistic boy from her childhood. Their parents smile again. But the questions remain: Where was Ava all these years? And who is she now?
Leela’s enemies are dying. They appear to be unrelated suicides, but she refuses to believe in mere coincidence. Someone is targeting these victims. But why?
\nA single clue emerges, leading her to believe these deaths are linked to a cover-up job she did when she worked PR for the tech goliath Jolvix. It involves a high-tech novelty weapon, shrouded in secrecy, one she’s legally forbidden from discussing with anyone - including the hungry writer publishing an exposé on Jolvix who’s itching to get the full scoop.
\nThe body count is rising. And the further this deadly game goes, the more Leela becomes implicated as a possible suspect. To find the real killer, Leela must return to the sinister web of her former company and dive deep into the dark secrets buried in her past.
\nBecause if she doesn’t find the serial killer soon, it’s game over for Leela, too.
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Rising rock star Violet is kidnapped from her Los Angeles home in a near-future dystopia. She wakes up locked in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with a mysterious note and a burner phone that only dials one unfamiliar number.
\nConstruction worker Bud answers a call from his Bay Area apartment and a stranger’s on the line claiming to have been kidnapped and locked in a cabin.
\nThe note says they have one week to figure out the connection between them. Otherwise someone out there - or something - will take her life.
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The Jaggers were once a tight-knit family. But after their mother’s tragic death years ago, the four children and their father have drifted further apart. The children grew up, moved away, and now have lives of their own. And Dad? Well, let’s just say his new live-in friend January also has a permanent residence in the uncanny valley.
\nAfter a disturbing, violent Christmas two years ago the Jaggers wish they could forget, they’re reuniting in their childhood southern California home dubbed “the Pink Castle” to give celebrating the holidays one more shot this year. But in the days before they gather, the children each get a sinister note that reads Your mother was murdered.
\nCould this be the bizarre work of January?
\nOr is one of the Jaggers hiding a horrible, guilty secret?
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Three women, all with secrets waiting to be uncovered, meet on a beautiful island off the Irish Coast.
\nConstance Macken, in her ninth decade, is looking back on a life filled with laughter and loss, tragedy and triumph, but knows it is time to right the wrongs from her past that have always haunted her.
\nHeather Banks arrives on the island to bury her mother. Already adrift with her business sold and her divorce finalised this may be the perfect opportunity to change the course of her future.
\nRos Stokes has managed to slip into the perfect job, the perfect cottage and friends that feel like family. However, when the stitches of her life begin to unravel, she must find a way to hold onto the things that have become most dear to her and let go of what holds her back.
\nNow, in a faded art deco house near the ocean's end, these women must come together to save the house they love, and each other, because they might have run from their troubles but only time will tell if they can overcome their past.
Octavius the Maestro.
Fola the Brain.
Bilal the Olympian.
Perdita the Artist.
Romeo the Failure.
These are the five heirs of the illustrious billionaire Leontes Button. Adopted and viciously trained with their father’s infamous “Button Method” to prove his hypothesis for creating prodigies - child geniuses - the Button siblings have had no choice but to be brilliant according to their father's impossibly high standards.
\nUntil he is murdered at his annual Prodigy Ball.
\nNow, all who attended the ball are required to stay in the Button Manor while the police investigate. But the officers have their work cut out for them - each of the Button siblings has something to hide, but The Heirs aren't the only ones with secrets. After all, Leontes Button was especially good at making enemies . . .
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Set in the Lower Shabeele region of Somalia, Winter of My Spring is a story of what happens to Rada and her friends Mika and Sara after they are kidnapped by Al-Shabaab and forced to become child brides. For months, the girls live in fear and endure the harshest of conditions among their extremist kidnappers - but after Rada and Mika see Sara die as a suicide bomber, they know they must escape.
\nAfter running away from their captors, Rada and Mika manage to return home, only to find themselves rejected by their community because they’ve “known a man’s bed” and are therefore, according to their customs, considered ruined and broken women.
\nWinter of My Spring explores what happens to kidnapped girls during their captivity and after they survive the violence and abuse of their abductors. Like the protagonist in Call Her Freedom, by Tara Dorabji, Rada and Mika are forced to navigate a world that denies them autonomy, yet they find resilience and hope in the process of healing and self-discovery.
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The discovery of an old tin of chocolates, its contents long ago devoured, marks the entry into this intimate story that reaches back through a lifetime of memories in search of self and home.
\nIn celebration and suffering, triumph and disappointment, Qandil’s voice is unflinching, revealing both a determination to speak the truth and a poetic sensitivity that is disarming. Reflecting on a family disintegrating - and with it, perhaps, a whole way of life - memories of a happy childhood melt away to reveal the fecklessness of selfish older brothers, a father’s addiction, a mother’s illness, and the violence and death - both literal and figurative - of those nearby.
Qu Xiaofeng has been living in Shangjing for three years now. A naïve, happy-go-lucky treaty bride from the desert kingdom of Xiliang, she has everything she could ever want as the crown princess of the Li Empire - everything except the crown prince’s heart.
\nBecause Li Chengyin is a heartless boy. Cruel, jealous, and ruthless, he has given his adolescence to the cutthroat contention for the throne and, now that he is the heir presumptive, largely ignores his bride in favor of the girl he seems to really love.
\nXiaofeng doesn’t mind . . . much. It leaves her more time to sneak out of the manor to go drinking and riding in the streets, living just the way she wants to. But one day another boy shows up, claiming to be a sweetheart from a life she can’t remember having lived. As Xiaofeng puzzles out the tangled threads of her past and her complicated feelings about the enigmatic, distant husband she loves and hates in equal measure, what she doesn’t realize is that she’s setting a course straight to tragedy.
\nBecause the only place more dangerous than the palace is the crown prince’s court, the only thing harder to be than a king is his heir, and the path to the throne is paved with blood. Power will always have its price - the only question is if Xiaofeng will survive long enough to pay.
At twenty-nine, Alison Marshall is ready to find a place to call home. With no family and no ties, she’s drifted from one small Florida town to another since high school, working odd jobs, saving hard, and building a nest egg. Once she finds the right place to settle down, she’ll know. And when she reaches beautiful Palmetto Island, she thinks she may have found it.
\nThe small, close-knit island community seems to have everything Alison needs. On a hunch, she contacts the island’s only realtor, and learns that an old beach house is on the market. Miraculously, it’s in her budget, and Alison takes it as another sign that she’s in the right place.
\nAt first, home is everything she hoped it would be. But as days turn into weeks, she uncovers a dark side to this supposedly peaceful haven. The locals have a secret, and once Alison discovers what it is, she faces a stark choice. She can stay and join them - or escape. But leaving brings its own risks, and Alison is starting to wonder if coming to Palmetto Island is the last mistake she’ll ever make . . .
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From the comfort of her beautiful mountain-top retreat, Katherine Winston creates her bestselling young adult series, Girls with Unusual Powers. No one in the nearby small town has any idea of her true identity. To them, she’s just the reclusive woman on the mountain, and Katherine is grateful to be left alone.
\nIt wasn’t always this way. Though her parents were as neglectful as they were wealthy, Katherine built up a busy, full life. Then tragedy struck and she retreated, panic-stricken at the idea of engaging with anyone again. Aside from her two faithful dogs who provide companionship and security, Katherine mostly interacts with people anonymously online through reader fan pages.
\nNow one of those fans appears to be in danger, and Katherine desperately wants to help. But that means moving beyond her isolated world for the first time in years. More and more, Katherine can’t shake the feeling that some of her fears may be justified. Someone is watching her, she’s sure of it, and they’re getting closer all the time. And only by leaving her self-imposed exile can she hope to find the answers she needs, the courage to trust again, and an unexpected new beginning . . .
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At first glance, few would guess that Luna and Cullen Bodman are siblings. Cullen is efficient and serious while his younger sister Luna is a free spirit. When the two launch their furniture restoration shop/café - an offshoot of the family’s longtime antique business - in an up-and-coming arts center, little do they know their unique talents may be their only defense against a dangerous betrayal.
\nWhen Luna gets a strange sense about a piece Cullen just acquired, the two find themselves uniting to solve a mystery that has far-reaching consequences - never knowing there are some who’ll stop at nothing to claim what they believe is theirs. No matter what, Luna and Cullen know they can rely on each other - and this time, their lives may depend on it . . .
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Luna Bodman always looks forward to a new shipment of furniture at the restoration shop. Her brother, Cullen, has a knack for finding discarded pieces with an intriguing history, and Luna likes to sit with each item to see if she can feel any kind of vibrations. Usually, Cullen does his thing while Luna does hers, but the arrival of an old armoire triggers a reaction in Luna that’s impossible to ignore.
\nFrom the moment Luna wiggles inside the armoire and closes her eyes, she feels an overpowering and disturbing sensation. Emerging, she asks for a flashlight and discovers words scraped into the wood: “Help me!” Hoping to uncover the piece’s secrets, Luna contacts her good friend, U.S. Marshall Christopher Gaines, and the group sets out to trace the armoire’s origins. The journey takes them to a military school in New England, and a mysterious, long-ago ransom case. The kidnappers were never found, but decades later, the answers may finally be within reach . . .
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Ellie Bowman barely remembers the incident that put her into a coma. When she awoke, filled with unease, all she knew for certain was that her boyfriend, Rick, was missing. She knew she needed to get away from her old life and recover in safety. With the proceeds of a video game she helped develop, Ellie starts over in rural Missouri, working from her cottage and trusting no one except her friend and business partner.
\nYet even in this quiet small town, it’s impossible to completely isolate herself. Especially when a curious eight-year-old boy, smitten with Ellie’s pup, stops by every day to talk to him over the fence. Little by little, Ellie is being drawn back into the world through the neighbors and community around her, realising that everyone has their own fears and obstacles to contend with.
\nBut when Ellie hears that Rick has resurfaced, her nightmares return, and with them, small snippets of memory. No one has heard from Rick since before the incident, so why is he back now? Ellie wants to move forward with her life, but first she must find the courage to look into her past, no matter what she finds there . . .
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Sometimes, two very different pieces of furniture just pair perfectly together. Brother and sister Cullen and Luna Bodman work much the same way. While practical-minded Cullen Bodman focuses on their family’s antiques restoration business, his sister Luna’s next-door Namaste Café brings in new clientele. As a thank you to his sister, Cullen retrieves Luna’s childhood dresser from storage and refinishes it. A delighted Luna rummages through the drawers and discovers a shoebox full of mementos of her friend Brendan, reviving memories of love and a broken heart. But a flurry of emails and texts leads to a very brief death notice: Born. Died. Nothing else.
\nBeyond Luna’s sadness is her uncanny intuition that something about the announcement is off, a feeling that intensifies when she later glimpses a person who seems to be Brendan’s doppelganger. His laugh, his walk - Luna remembers both so well. Is her old friend really alive? And if so, who faked his death, and why? It’s not the first time an item of furniture has spurred Luna to solve a fascinating puzzle. But this time, the mystery is much more personal, and the stakes infinitely higher . . .
\n
Every antique tells a story. Cullen and Luna Bodman learned that through their parents’ furniture business. Now, with their restoration shop and café, they often find themselves at the center of those stories, unraveling mysteries for their clients. The old steamer chest that Cullen receives from an anonymous source is fascinating in its own right.
\nBut inside, Cullen discovers more- a locked diary accompanied by a letter, asking for the diary to be restored to its rightful owner. Also in the trunk is a wooden box containing ticket stubs and an undated carnival flyer.
\nBut everyone isn’t thrilled with Luna’s quest. Her budding relationship with U.S. Marshal Christopher Gaines comes under strain as he tries to talk her out of a wild goose chase. But intuition pushes her on, unveiling a surprising modern-day connection, and leading Cullen and Luna to wonder if the diary’s secrets still hold power today . . .
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Bisclavret is cursed: to live his life in exile; to take a wolf’s shape involuntarily; to lie to everybody he meets. And yet he has always dreamed of knighthood, of brotherhood and belonging. When the old king dies unexpectedly, Bisclavret travels to the royal court to seek his rightful inheritance and swear fealty to the new king. It’s here that he discovers the mysterious young warrior now wearing the crown is willing to offer him far more than just his father’s lands, and suddenly the life that seemed like an impossible fantasy is catapulted within his grasp. But can someone who is hardly a man ever truly be a knight?
\nThe king is lonely: recently returned to court from an exile of his own to inherit a crown he never wanted. And yet he’s fascinated by his newest knight, a man who carries secrets along with his sword, and fascination quickly turns to longing. When Bisclavret is seemingly killed by a wolf, the weight of the king’s grief almost destroys him. He swears to have his vengeance, but at the height of the hunt he encounters an animal that seems too intelligent to be the violent beast he seeks. One might even say it has the mind of a man . . .
It’s been a long time since the Hardwicke family has been on holiday. But thirteen-year-old Galen has wanted to see the wild dolphins at Scotland’s Chanonry Point for as long as she can remember, and her mother Christine - a lone parent since her beloved husband left - is determined she gets her wish. But their serene trip is about to be interrupted.
\nWhen DC Saul Anguish is called to investigate the shooting of an ex-police officer in Midtown-on-Sea, Essex, he quickly discovers that this is the first in a string of killings by Missy and Fox, a damaged young couple hell-bent on infamy, their love story etched in blood. In pursuit, Saul follows their trail north.
\nThe paths of the Hardwickes' and the deadly couple are about to collide. When Saul and his forensic linguist partner, Blue, arrive on the scene, they witness the unthinkable: a mother forced to make an impossible choice.
\nSaul must uncover the truth about the couple. But can he find the strength to lay the ghosts of his past to rest before they break him?
Saul Anguish is a clever but troubled teenager with a dark past and a love of nature.
Etta Fitzroy is a former police detective who now lives in New York, but is called back to London to help in a missing persons case.
Saul and Etta had met two years before when five-year-old Clara Foyle was kidnapped by a serial killer, whose evil deeds had left scars on them both.
When Saul discovers a 'graveyard' on an island near his home town in Essex and Etta comes to investigate, the past comes back to haunt them both, and Saul will have to decide who he can trust.
Jakey escaped with his life and moved to a new town.
His rescue was a miracle but his parents know that the Collector is still out there, watching, waiting . . .
Clara, the girl he left behind, is clinging to the hope that someone will come and save her.
Life has fallen apart for Clara's mother as she starts to lose hope.
The Bone Collector has a new apprentice to take over his family's legacy. But he can't forget the boy who got away and the detective who had destroyed his dreams.
Detective Etta Fitzroy's life collapsed when the Collector escaped. With Clara still missing, and a new wave of uncannily similar murders beginning, will she be able to find him again?
The Collector is back and this time he has nothing to lose . . .
THE PLACE: Seawings, a beautiful Art Deco home overlooking the sweep of the bay in Midtown-on-Sea.
\nTHE CRIME: The gilded Holden family - Piper and Gray and their two teenage children, Riva and Artie - has vanished from the house without a trace.
\nTHE DETECTIVE: DS Saul Anguish, brilliant but with a dark past, treads the narrow line between light and shade.
\nOne late autumn morning, Piper’s best friend arrives at Seawings to discover an eerie scene - the kettle is still warm, all the family’s phones are charging on the worktop, the cars are in the garage. But the house is deserted.
\nIn fifteen-year-old Riva Holden’s bedroom, scrawled across the mirror in blood, are three words:
\nMake
Them
Stop.
What happens next?
FOR SALE: A lovely family home with good-sized garden and treehouse occupying a plot close to woodland. Perfect for kids, fitness enthusiasts, dog walkers . . .
\nAnd, it seems, the perfect hunting ground for a serial killer.
\nOn a hot July day, Garrick and Olivia Lockwood and their two children move into 25 The Avenue looking for a fresh start. They arrive in the midst of a media frenzy: they’d heard about the local murders in the press, but Garrick was certain the killer would be caught and it would all be over in no time. Besides, they’d got the house at a steal and he was convinced he could flip it for a fortune.
\nThe neighbours seemed to be the very picture of community spirit. But everyone has secrets, and the residents in The Avenue are no exception.
\nAfter six months on the case with no real leads, the most recent murder has turned DC Wildeve Stanton’s life upside down, and now she has her own motive for hunting down the killer – quickly.
When Jen Miller entrusts her youngest child to the care of her beloved sisters, she has no idea of the devastating tragedy that is about to unfold.
\nTo celebrate her sister's wedding, global superstar Winter Kellaway throws the party of the decade at her luxurious beachside estate. The decorations are flawless. The champagne is on ice. The guests have arrived. But one misstep will have heartbreaking consequences that will rock this close-knit family to their core.
\nWith her life in pieces, how can Jen ever begin to forgive?
\nSaul Anguish, a brilliant but tormented young detective, is called in to investigate and uncovers a long-buried and shocking family secret. As the trail takes a dramatic turn, they must now all face the truth that you can never truly leave the past behind . . .
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She had lived a lie for thirteen years, and the perfect life as she had known it was about to change forever.
Everyone remembered Sara and Shannon Carter, the little blonde haired sisters. Their Dad was the local GP and they lived in the beautiful house on the hill. Their best friend, Brinley Booth, lived next door. They would do anything for each other but everything shifted on that fateful day when Dr Richard Carter and his wife Pamela were stabbed fourteen times with a pair of scissors in what has become the most talked about double murder of the modern age.
The girls were aged ten and twelve at the time. One, nicknamed the Angel of Death, spent eight years in a children’s secure unit accused of the brutal killings. The other lived in foster care out of the limelight and prying questions. Now, on the anniversary of the trial, a documentary team has tracked down one of the sisters, persuading her to speak about the events of that night for the first time.
Her explosive interview sparks national headlines and Brinley Booth, now a journalist, is tasked with covering the news story which brings to light fresh evidence and triggers a chain of events which will have devastating consequences.
After a failed apprenticeship, working her way up to head housekeeper of a posh London hotel is more than Sara Smythe ever thought she'd make of herself. But when a chance encounter with Theodore Camden, one of the architects of the grand New York apartment house The Dakota, leads to a job offer, her world is suddenly awash in possibility - no mean feat for a servant in 1884. The opportunity to move to America, where a person can rise above one's station. The opportunity to be the female manager of The Dakota, which promises to be the greatest apartment house in the world. And the opportunity to see more of Theo, who understands Sara like no one else . . . and is living in The Dakota with his wife and three young children.
\nIn 1985, Bailey Camden is desperate for new opportunities. Fresh out of rehab, the former party girl and interior designer is homeless, jobless, and penniless. Two generations ago, Bailey's grandfather was the ward of famed architect Theodore Camden. But the absence of a genetic connection means Bailey won't see a dime of the Camden family's substantial estate. Instead, her \"cousin\" Melinda - Camden's biological great-granddaughter - will inherit almost everything. So when Melinda offers to let Bailey oversee the renovation of her lavish Dakota apartment, Bailey jumps at the chance, despite her dislike of Melinda's vision. The renovation will take away all the character and history of the apartment Theodore Camden himself lived in . . . and died in, after suffering multiple stab wounds by a madwoman named Sara Smythe, a former Dakota employee who had previously spent seven months in an insane asylum on Blackwell's Island.
\nOne hundred years apart, Sara and Bailey are both tempted by and struggle against the golden excess of their respective ages - for Sara, the opulence of a world ruled by the Astors and Vanderbilts; for Bailey, the free-flowing drinks and cocaine in the nightclubs of New York City - and take refuge and solace in the Upper West Side's gilded fortress. But a building with a history as rich - and often tragic - as The Dakota's can't hold its secrets forever, and what Bailey discovers in its basement could turn everything she thought she knew about Theodore Camden - and the woman who killed him - on its head.
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It's 1913, and on the surface, Laura Lyons couldn't ask for more out of life - her husband is the superintendent of the New York Public Library, allowing their family to live in an apartment within the grand building, and they are blessed with two children. But headstrong, passionate Laura wants more, and when she takes a leap of faith and applies to the Columbia Journalism School, her world is cracked wide open.
\nAs her studies take her all over the city, she finds herself drawn to Greenwich Village's new bohemia, where she discovers the Heterodoxy Club - a radical, all-female group in which women are encouraged to loudly share their opinions on suffrage, birth control, and women's rights. Soon, Laura finds herself questioning her traditional role as wife and mother. But when valuable books are stolen back at the library, threatening the home and institution she loves, she's forced to confront her shifting priorities head on . . . and may just lose everything in the process.
\nEighty years later, in 1993, Sadie Donovan struggles with the legacy of her grandmother, the famous essayist Laura Lyons, especially after she's wrangled her dream job as a curator at the New York Public Library. But the job quickly becomes a nightmare when rare manuscripts, notes, and books for the exhibit Sadie's running begin disappearing from the library's famous Berg Collection.
\nDetermined to save both the exhibit and her career, the typically risk-adverse Sadie teams up with a private security expert to uncover the culprit. However, things unexpectedly become personal when the investigation leads Sadie to some unwelcome truths about her own family heritage - truths that shed new light on the biggest tragedy in the library's history.
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Eight months since losing her mother in the Spanish flu outbreak of 1919, twenty-one-year-old Lillian Carter’s life has completely fallen apart. For the past six years, under the moniker Angelica, Lillian was one of the most sought-after artists’ models in New York City, with statues based on her figure gracing landmarks from the Plaza Hotel to the Brooklyn Bridge. But with her mother gone, a grieving Lillian is rudderless and desperate - the work has dried up and a looming scandal has left her entirely without a safe haven.
\nSo when she stumbles upon an employment opportunity at the Frick mansion - a building that, ironically, bears her own visage - Lillian jumps at the chance. But the longer she works as a private secretary to the imperious and demanding Helen Frick, the daughter and heiress of industrialist and art patron Henry Clay Frick, the more deeply her life gets intertwined with that of the family - pulling her into a tangled web of romantic trysts, stolen jewels, and family drama that runs so deep, the stakes just may be life or death.
\nNearly fifty years later, mod English model Veronica Weber has her own chance to make her career - and with it, earn the money she needs to support her family back home - within the walls of the former Frick residence, now converted into one of New York City’s most impressive museums.
\nBut when she - along with a charming intern/budding art curator named Joshua - is dismissed from the Vogue shoot taking place at the Frick Collection, she chances upon a series of hidden messages in the museum: messages that will lead her and Joshua on a hunt that could not only solve Veronica’s financial woes, but could finally reveal the truth behind a decades-old murder in the infamous Frick family.
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New York City, 1956: Nineteen-year-old Marion is over the moon to have been selected to be one of the Rockettes, Radio City Music Hall’s glamorous precision-dancing troupe. It’s an honor to perform in the world’s most spectacular theater, an art deco masterpiece. But with four shows a day as well as grueling rehearsals, not to mention exacting standards of perfection to live up to, Marion quickly realises that the life of a Rockette has both extraordinary highs and devastating lows.
\nThen one night a bomb explodes in the theater. It’s only the latest in a string of explosions around the city orchestrated by a person the press has nicknamed the \"Big Apple Bomber.\" They have been terrorising the citizens of New York for sixteen years by planting bombs in popular, crowded spaces. With the public in an uproar over the lack of any real leads after a yearslong manhunt, the police, at Marion’s urging, turn in desperation to a radical new technique: psychological profiling.
\nAs Marion finds herself pulled deeper into the investigation, she realises that as much as she’s been training herself to blend in - performing in perfect unison with all the other identical Rockettes - if she hopes to catch the bomber, she’ll need to stand out and take a terrifying risk. But she may be forced to sacrifice everything she’s worked for, as well as the people she loves the most.
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Egypt, 1936: When anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, she leaps at the opportunity. But after an unbearable tragedy strikes, Charlotte knows her future will never be the same.
\nNew York City, 1978: Eighteen-year-old Annie Jenkins is thrilled when she lands an opportunity to work for iconic former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who’s in the midst of organising the famous Met Gala, hosted at the museum and known across the city as the “party of the year.” Though Annie soon realises she’ll have her work cut out for her, scrambling to meet Diana’s capricious demands and exacting standards.
\nMeanwhile, Charlotte, now leading a quiet life as the associate curator of the Met’s celebrated Department of Egyptian Art, wants little to do with the upcoming gala. She’s consumed with her research on Hathorkare - a rare female pharaoh dismissed by most other Egyptologists as unimportant.
\nThat is, until the night of the gala. When one of the Egyptian art collection’s most valuable artifacts goes missing . . . and there are signs Hathorkare’s legendary curse might be reawakening.
\nAs Annie and Charlotte team up to search for the missing antiquity, a desperate hunch leads the unlikely duo to one place Charlotte swore she’d never return: Egypt. But if they’re to have any hope of finding the artifact, Charlotte will need to confront the demons of her past - which may mean leading them both directly into danger.
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CC Cilento's best memories are of spending every summer holiday running wild in and out of the Friend family beach house with her cousins, James, Ollie, Felix and Lily. It's the next best thing to having brothers and sisters. They've continued the summer tradition into adulthood, getting together at the shack with its absolute beach frontage.
\nBut now a bombshell has the four sibling cousins have officially inherited the property - along with an unexpected fifth share to CC. What starts out as the perfect gift, and a way of keeping the family connected forever, quickly devolves into an emotional power struggle. Half of them want to keep the legacy intact, while the others want to sell - and each side will do anything to make it happen. Soon, CC can't tell friend from foe.
\nWhen a body is found on the shack's beach, has this family dispute turned deadly?
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With a coveted promotion dangling within reach, the last thing Addy Topic needs to do is waste precious time singing in Rookery Cove's choir. But when she's reminded how much music meant to her late mother, she can't say no. The building pressure raises the ghosts that sent her running from Rookery Cove years earlier - memories she's spent decades keeping hidden, silencing them with work, alcohol and sex.
\nFor Stephanie Gallagher, Rookery Cove was meant to be a new beginning in the slow lane. A place where she and her husband can embrace community, parenthood and evenly share the load. But it's changed everything. How much longer can they survive as a family?
\nBrenda Lambeck is finding her feet after the death of her husband when her best friend convinces her to join the choir. Beloved as a grandmother, Brenda is determined to mend the fraught relationship she has with her daughter, Courtney. But is that even possible when she continues to lie?
\nIn the wake of a spectacular betrayal, three women are forced to face the uncompromising truths about the choices that have shaped their relationships with those they love most. The consequences will shatter their lives and all they hold dear. After such a disaster is rebuilding even possible?
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In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged for a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims’ families, but its impact travels even into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes.
\nHighway Thirteen , Fiona McFarlane’s newest collection, takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much through the investigation of the aftermath of this violence across time and place, from the killer’s childhood town to Texas, Rome, and tropical northern Australia, McFarlane presents an oblique, entrancing exploration of the way stories are told and spread, and at what cost.
\nWhat damages, big and small, do these crimes incur? How do communities make sense of such atrocities? How does the mourning of families sit alongside the public fascination with terrible crimes? And can we tell true crime stories without centering the killers?
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In September 1883, the South Australian town of Fairly huddles under strange, vivid sunsets. Six-year-old Denny Wallace has gone missing during a dust storm, and the whole town is intent on finding him. As they search the desert and mountains for the lost child, the residents of Fairly - newlyweds, landowners, farmers, mothers, artists, Indigenous trackers, cameleers, children, schoolteachers, widows, maids, policemen - explore their own relationships with the complex landscape unsettling history of the Flinders Ranges.
\nThe colonial Australia of The Sun Walks Down is unfamiliar, multicultural, and noisy with opinions, arguments, longings and terrors. It's haunted by many gods - the sun among them, rising and falling on each day that Denny could be found, or lost forever.
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DCI Jack Hawksworth is back, working on a high-profile case breaking in London. A calculating serial killer is on the loose, committing the most gruesome of murders as he ‘trophies’ the faces of his victims. With each new atrocity, the public and police force are getting more desperate for results.
\nHawk pulls together a strong and experienced taskforce, who soon find themselves caught up in a murky world of illegal immigrants and human organ trading. As he struggles to find any sort of link between the victims, Jack identifies something unique about the most recent corpse, and things suddenly get very personal.
Detective Superintendent Jack Hawksworth is seconded by counter-terrorism to investigate a spate of domestic events. First it was needles in strawberries, then tampering with lipstick samplers and baby formula. But when toxic mushrooms enter the market system and a death occurs, a wave of terror is set to sweep the country. Breaking news of a possible serial killer only heightens the alarm.
\nThere are no leads, no DNA, no witnesses, no CCTV footage. Jack and his team must work on instinct to figure out why someone would want to harm innocent victims, each of them curiously linked to a single blood transfusion.
\nWhen a hospital bomb threat erupts, it is up to the team to prevent the inevitable bloodshed. The clock is ticking, and no one is safe from the possibility of a tragedy on a catastrophic scale.
It all began in Brighton. Now there is a killer on the loose. Scotland Yard′s brightest talent is chosen to head up the high-profile taskforce, a DCI who must confront his own past as the body count rises.
\nThere are few leads and Jack Hawksworth can only fall back on instinct and decades-old cold cases for any clue to the killer′s motive . . . and identity.
\nWith his most loyal team member threatening to betray him, a Chief Inspector pushing for results, a hungry British media clamouring for information, and a restless public eager for a conviction, the high-pressure operation can only end in a final shocking confrontation
In the summer of 1914, vigneron Jerome Méa heads off to war, certain he’ll be home by Christmas. His new bride Sophie, a fifth generation and rebellious champenoise, is determined to ensure the forthcoming vintages will be testament to their love and the power of the people of Épernay, especially its strong women. But as the years drag on, authorities advise that Jerome is missing, considered dead.
\nWhen poison gas is first used in Belgium by the Germans, British chemist Charles Nash jumps to enlist. After he is injured, he is brought to Reims, where Sophie has helped to set up an underground hospital to care for the wounded. In the dark, ancient champagne cellars, their stirring emotions take them both by surprise.
\nWhile Sophie battles to keep her vineyard going through the bombings, a critical sugar shortage forces her to strike a dangerous bargain with an untrustworthy acquaintance - but nothing will test her courage more than the news that filters through to her about the fate of her heroic Jerome.
Newly promoted Detective Superintendent Jack Hawksworth has headed up three major serial operations in England and in each of these cases he has lost a part of himself. While on sabbatical as guest lecturer in a London university, one of his female students dies under highly suspicious circumstances, and he finds himself drawn into a chilling new case that reaches across the world.
\nJack’s investigations lead him to Adelaide where he identifies a cynical international crime consortium that preys on the anguish of childless couples and vulnerable women. Together with local major crime officers, he follows his leads to the windswept Yorke Peninsula, and becomes caught up in an intoxicating private drama.
\nWith his personal and professional business entangled once again, Jack must put his own life on the line to bring justice to those who are grieving.
Superstar footballer Luca Bruni is being blackmailed for a night of lust he swears he didn’t participate in . . . except the ransom photo denies that. A media darling on and off the field, he has powerful charisma, a perfect home life he’ll do anything to protect, and more money than he knows what to do with. He’s determined to defy the extortion racket.
\nWhen Detective Superintendent Jack Hawksworth learns that the cunning mastermind behind this crime has already swindled a dozen of the world’s most highly prized male athletes, he is instructed to keep the situation from escalating and prevent a media frenzy.
\nIntrigued by the creativity of the crime and the shockwaves it is creating through the global sporting fraternity, Jack begins a journey into a case that has tentacles far more wide-reaching that he ever imagined - and far more deadly.
Police are baffled by several deaths, each unique and bizarre in their own way - and shockingly brutal. Scotland Yard sends in its crack DCI, the enigmatic Jack Hawksworth, who wastes no time in setting up Operation Mirror. His chief wants him to dismiss any plausibility of a serial killer before the media gets on the trail.
\nWith his best investigative team around him, Jack resorts to some unconventional methods to disprove or find a link between the gruesome deaths. One involves a notorious serial killer from his past, and the other, a smart and seductive young journalist who’ll do anything to catch her big break.
\nDiscovering he’s following the footsteps of a vigilante and in a race against time, Jack will do everything it takes to stop another killing - but at what personal cost for those he holds nearest and dearest?
Violet Nash has grown up in the shadows of her father Charlie’s shattered dreams. It’s been years since he walked away from the battlefields of France, a WWI hero but his heart in tatters, only to see it broken all over again in the worst way possible.
\nIn search of a new beginning, they set sail for Tasmania, Australia to fulfill his dream of setting up a whisky distillery. Violet shows a rare talent for the fine art of distilling and blending and plans to follow in his footsteps. But some secrets cannot be forgotten, and as the Second World War rages on, Charlie feels a pull once more to play his part and is lured back into action.
\nIt comes as no surprise to Violet when Charlie’s footsteps lead him straight back to Champagne, where open arms, future hopes and past ghosts lie waiting. Charlie must prove his bravery in the ultimate act of courage, but it is Violet, the soldier’s daughter, who will fight to claim his lasting legacy.
Mai Redstone prowls Atlanta as its hero, Mercy, trying to save people from themselves and each other. With her newly discovered, stronger powers, she acts as if she's invincible. To those who know her though, she's as delicate as a cobra lily.
\nXóchitl is the complete opposite. Violence comes naturally to her. Hard-hearted and thick-skinned, the softest thing about her is her love for Mai. As part of an elite law-enforcement team in the secret Meta community, Xóchitl hunts and punishes anyone who dares to break their rules.
\nBut when Mai is in danger from her own powerful family, Xóchitl's soft underbelly is exposed. How can she protect Mai when she can't even tell allies from enemies? For the first time in her life, Xóchitl feels as threatened as the vulnerable humans Mai protects.
\nXóchitl is used to being the strongest one in the room, but when she suddenly isn't, will she allow herself to surrender to her lover's mercy?
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To her family, Mai Redstone is weak. Her shape-shifting power is nowhere near as impressive as their abilities to literally alter the world around them. But when she puts on the costume to become Mercy, a rooftop-climbing chameleon with a thousand disguises and at least nine lives, she feels almost invincible.
\nWhen a local politician is murdered and the police call Mercy in to help, the stability Mai has built out of past pain threatens to crumble. The dead politician turns out to be her uncle, a man who made her childhood a living hell.
\nCaught between giving a medal to the killer and being forced to find the murderer for her family, Mai must make the difficult choice between family loyalty and self-preservation.
Mercy is a blade that can cut both ways.
In the middle of Missing Persons Week, teenager Max Galbraith disappears after a party at the two-up ring on the outskirts of Kalgoorlie. With hundred-year-old mine shafts hidden in the area, no one can sure whether he become lost while he was under the influence of drugs or if something more sinister has happened.
\nLily Carter, a talkshow radio host, receives information about Brendan Cook, another Kalgoorlie teenager who disappeared in similar circumstances the year before. But the police didn't launch a full-scale search for Brendan. Why not?
\nEnter Detective Angie Sullivan, new to Kalgoorlie and yet to understand how the town works. With no clear links between the two cases, and Lily accusing the police of incompetence, the town is tipped into uproar. What secrets are hiding out there in the bush? And can Angie discover them before any more kids go missing?
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After a scandal, investigative reporter Zara Ellison and her partner, policeman Jack Higgins have moved to Kalgoorlie - each struggling with this fresh start. This wild mining town has its own rules, and its inhabitants - drawn by the lure of gold and riches - guard their secrets carefully.
\nZara feels adrift in the swirling red dust of the lawless, bush city, without sources or any leads for the hard-hitting stories she's known for. Jack is out of the detective squad and trying to find his feet back in uniform.
\nOn an isolated stretch of highway, a pair of grey nomads is involved in a devastating accident which leaves more questions than answers. Zara starts digging for her own kind of gold, while Jack's investigation sends him on a parallel path towards a dangerous smuggling ring.
\nIn the wide open spaces of the outback, some secrets are buried deep.
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At the age of five, Molly Walker was placed in protective custody after witnessing the murder of her mother, Constable Sammi Walker. Twenty years later, everyone assumes the threat has passed.
\nThen Molly's adoptive parents are killed in a car accident, just after asking about reopening the investigation into Sammi's death. Coincidence or something more sinister?
\nDetective Jack Higgins doesn't believe in coincidences. And as he and Detective Angie Sullivan look into the accident, it becomes clear that this was a deliberate act. But is Molly still in danger, so long after the original crime?
\nFrom the blood-red soil of Kalgoorlie, long-buried lies continue to surface, while someone is becoming increasingly desperate to keep them hidden.
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At only twenty-two, Harper Hudson has already lost so much. Her mother, her father, her education, and most recently, her minimum wage job at the local roller skating rink.
\nSo when an old flame re-enters her life and tells her of a housesitting job opportunity, she thinks it’s too good to be true. For a life changing amount of money, all Harper has to do is make sure the beautiful home doesn’t burn down and the pets are fed.
\nBut as the days turn to nights, strange incidents begin to happen. Shadows move beneath doors, the cats see things a person can’t, and disembodied voices whisper in the dark.
\nHarper soon begins to realise she isn’t as alone as she thought. There are secrets hidden here. Dark secrets.
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The extraordinary novel that asks: Can a name change the course of a life?
\nIn the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates . . .
\nSpanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.
\nWith exceptional sensitivity and depth, Knapp draws us into the story of one family, told through a prism of what-ifs, causing us to consider the \"one . . . precious life\" we are given.
Sixteen-year-old Jun dreams of proving his worth as a warrior in the elite Guardian’s Tournament, held every six years to entrust the magical Scroll of Earth to a new protector. Eager to prove his skills, Jun hopes that a win will restore his father’s honor - righting a horrible mistake that caused their banishment from his home, mother, and twin brother.
\nBut Jun’s father strictly forbids him from participating. There is no future in honing his skills as a warrior, especially considering Jun is not breathmarked, born with a patch of dragon scales and blessed with special abilities like his twin. Determined to be the next Guardian, Jun stows away in the wagon of Chang and his daughter, Ren, performers on their way to the capital where the tournament will take place.
\nAs Jun competes, he quickly realises he may be fighting for not just a better life, but the fate of the country itself.
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Earth's century of peace as a colony of an alien race has been shattered. As the alien-run government navigates peace talks with the human terrorist group Sapience, Donovan tries to put his life back together and return to his duty as a member of the security forces.
\nBut a new order comes from the alien home planet: withdraw. Earth has proven too costly and unstable to maintain as a colony, so the aliens, along with a small selection of humans, begin to make plans to leave. As word of the withdrawal spreads through the galaxy, suddenly Earth becomes vulnerable to a takeover from other aliens races. Aliens who do not seek to live in harmony with humans, but will ravage and destroy the planet.
As a galactic invasion threatens, Donovan realizes that Sapience holds the key that could stop the pending war. Yet in order to save humankind, all species on Earth will have to work together, and Donovan might just have to make the ultimate sacrifice to convince them.
It's been a century of peace since Earth became a colony of an alien race with far reaches into the galaxy. Some die-hard extremists still oppose their rule on Earth, but Donovan Reyes isn't one of them. His dad holds the prestigious position of Prime Liaison in the collaborationist government, and Donovan's high social standing along with his exocel (a remarkable alien technology fused to his body) guarantee him a bright future in the security forces. That is, until a routine patrol goes awry and Donovan's abducted by the human revolutionary group Sapience.
\nWhen Sapience realizes who Donovan's father is, they think they've found the ultimate bargaining chip. But the Prime Liaison doesn't negotiate with terrorists, not even for his own son. Left in the hands of terrorists who have more uses for him dead than alive, the fate of Earth rests on Donovan's survival. Because if Sapience kills him, it could spark another intergalactic war. And Earth didn't win the last one . . .
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The Kaul family is one of two crime syndicates that control the island of Kekon. It's the only place in the world that produces rare magical jade, which grants those with the right training and heritage superhuman abilities.
\nThe Green Bone clans of honorable jade-wearing warriors once protected the island from foreign invasion - but nowadays, in a bustling post-war metropolis full of fast cars and foreign money, Green Bone families like the Kauls are primarily involved in commerce, construction, and the everyday upkeep of the districts under their protection.
\nWhen the simmering tension between the Kauls and their greatest rivals erupts into open violence in the streets, the outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones and the future of Kekon itself.
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Jade, the mysterious and magical substance once exclusive to the Green Bone warriors of Kekon, is now coveted throughout the world. Everyone wants access to the supernatural abilities it provides, from traditional forces such as governments, mercenaries, and criminal kingpins, to modern players, including doctors, athletes, and movie studios. As the struggle over the control of jade grows ever larger and more deadly, the Kaul family, and the ancient ways of the Kekonese Green Bones, will never be the same.
\nBattered by war and tragedy, the Kauls are plagued by resentments and old wounds as their adversaries are on the ascent and their country is riven by dangerous factions and foreign interference. The clan must discern allies from enemies, set aside bloody rivalries, and make terrible sacrifices . . . but even the unbreakable bonds of blood and loyalty may not be enough to ensure the survival of the Green Bone clans and the nation they are sworn to protect.
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On the island of Kekon, the Kaul family is locked in a violent feud for control of the capital city and the supply of magical jade that endows trained Green Bone warriors with supernatural powers they alone have possessed for hundreds of years.
\nBeyond Kekon's borders, war is brewing. Powerful foreign governments and mercenary criminal kingpins alike turn their eyes on the island nation. Jade, Kekon's most prized resource, could make them rich - or give them the edge they'd need to topple their rivals.
\nFaced with threats on all sides, the Kaul family is forced to form new and dangerous alliances, confront enemies in the darkest streets and the tallest office towers, and put honor aside in order to do whatever it takes to ensure their own . . .
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Isako is a legendary swordswoman, but every legend has to come to an end. When her long-time client unexpectedly retires, she plans to follow - to walk out into the frozen wasteland of their planet with her head held high and her family enriched by her legacy. But when a competitor offers her a final mission, it's one she can't refuse.
\nSoon, she's thrust deep into a world of corporate espionage, duty-bound duels, and shadowy secrets. What she uncovers will change humanity's existence in the stars forever.
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Ester’s family was torn apart when a manticore killed her mother and baby brother, leaving her with nothing but her father’s painful silence and a single, overwhelming need to kill the monsters that took her family.
\nEster’s path leads her to the King’s Royal Mews, where the giant rocs of legend are flown to hunt manticores by their brave and dedicated ruhkers. Paired with a fledgling roc named Zahra, Ester finds purpose and acclaim by devoting herself to a calling that demands absolute sacrifice and a creature that will never return her love. The terrifying partnership between woman and roc leads Ester not only on the empire’s most dangerous manticore hunt, but on a journey of perseverance and acceptance.
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Los Angeles, 2001. Sonia is a single mother who spends her time running away from PTA moms, engaging in not-quite-illegal business activities involving rich Eastern Europeans and high-tech gadgets, and raising her beloved Milosh, Mila. Cast in her mother’s image, Mila is a precocious, intelligent girl with a burgeoning Shostakovich obsession. The pair live an unconventional life and are, all in all, quite happy together. But Sonia’s guarded life and refusal to discuss their family has left Mila lonely and isolated. When she stumbles across emails between her mother and an unknown man, Mila’s curiosity about her father leads her to form a plan, putting into motion a chain of events that will cause their carefully constructed lives to implode.
\nFlashback to 1990. The world has begun to breathe again after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Eighteen-year-old Szonja Imre travels to visit her sister in LA in search of the quintessential adventure in the “land of the free.” What she doesn’t expect is the discovery that her sister Rina’s conception of the American dream is vastly different from hers - a lot less Hollywood and more, as Szonja eloquently puts it, “Jewish Stepford Wife.” Rina finds freedom in reconnecting with her roots, but Szonja can’t see how Rina’s new life is less restricted than the one she left behind in Budapest. Their disparate lifestyles lead to conflict, and when Szonja ends up in a difficult situation, she makes a series of snap decisions that leave her navigating America alone as an illegal immigrant.
\nTaking place across Budapest in the years preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall, DC in the thick of cold war politics, and the bright sunshine of retro LA, Porcupines captures the rich, complex, and entirely absorbing relationships between sisters, mothers, and daughters. At its heart, it is a book about all the ways we find community and companionship, sometimes in the unlikeliest of places.
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Grace Adams gave birth, blinked, and now suddenly she is forty-five, perimenopausal and stalled - the unhappiest age you can be, according to the Guardian . And today she’s really losing it. Stuck in traffic, she finally has had enough. To the astonishment of everyone, Grace gets out of her car and simply walks away.
\nGrace sets off across London, armed with a £200 cake, to win back her estranged teenage daughter on her sixteenth birthday. Because today is the day she’ll remind her daughter that no matter how far we fall, we can always get back up again.
\nBecause Grace Adams used to be amazing. Her husband thought so. Her daughter thought so. Even Grace thought so. But everyone seems to have forgotten. Grace is about to remind them . . . and, most important, remind herself.
Vivienne and Patrick Fisher have done an excellent job raising their three daughters, Alex, Nancy, and Eva. They’re well-adjusted women with impressive careers, caring partners, exciting hobbies, and sweet children. So it’s with great anticipation that three generations of Fishers gather at a beautiful glass house in the English countryside for a weeklong celebration of Vivienne’s seventieth birthday. But when Patrick’s reaction to a freak accident on the first day of the trip inadvertently reveals that he has a favorite daughter, no one is prepared for the shockwaves it sends through the family.
\nDecades-old unresolved sibling rivalries are suddenly unmasked. And be it newly uncovered smoking habits, ancient crushes, or private doubts about life decisions both big and small, no one’s secrets are safe. Still-tender wounds are reopened amid an audience of friends, husbands, grandchildren, and even coworkers, and as the family's past is re-written, they find themselves suddenly unmoored.
\nIn a lively, poignant examination of memory, sisterhood, and family ties, Fran Littlewood reminds us just why it is that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
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It’s been centuries since the Jeweled Valley and its magical gems were destroyed. In the republics that rose from its ashes, scientists craft synthetic jewels to heat homes, power gadgetry, and wage war.
\nDr. Devina Brunai is one of these scientists. She also is the only person who believes true gems still exist. The recent unearthing of the Palace of Gems gives her the perfect opportunity to find them and prove her naysayers wrong.
\nHer chance is snatched away at the last moment when her mentor steals her research and wins the trip for himself. Soon, his messages from the field transform into bizarre ramblings about a book, a Prince, and an enemy borne of the dark. Now Dev must enter the Valley, find her mentor, and save her research before they, like gems, become relics of a time long forgotten.
After the dust settles, the City of living bones begins to die, and more trouble brews beneath the clouds in this stirring companion to Fran Wilde's Updraft.
\nWhen Kirit Densira left her home tower for the skies, she gave up many things: her beloved family, her known way of life, her dreams of flying as a trader for her tower, her dreams. Kirit set her City upside down, and fomented a massive rebellion at the Spire, to the good of the towers - but months later, everything has fallen to pieces.
\nIn Cloudbound, with the Towers in disarray, without a governing body or any defense against the dangers lurking in the clouds, daily life is full of terror and strife. Naton, Kirit's wing-brother, sets out to be a hero in his own way - sitting on the new Council to cast votes protecting Tower-born, and exploring lower tiers to find more materials to repair the struggling City.
\nBut what he finds down-tier is more secrets - and now Nat will have to decide who to trust, and how to trust himself without losing those he holds most dear, before a dangerous myth raises a surprisingly realistic threat to the crippled City. In the sky-high city of living bone, to fall beneath the clouds is to be lost forever. But Nat Densira finds more in the grey expanse than he ever expected. To survive, he must let go of everything he believes.
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Jewels and their lapidaries and have all but passed into myth.
\nJorit, broke and branded a thief, just wants to escape the Far Reaches for something better. Ania, a rumpled librarian, is trying to protect her books from the Pressmen, who value knowledge but none of the humanity that generates it.
\nWhen they stumble upon a mysterious clock powered by an ancient jewel, they may discover secrets in the past that will change the future forever.
A City of living Bone towers crumbles to the ground and danger surrounds. Kirit Densira has lost everything she loved the most - her mother, her home, and the skies above.
\nNat Brokenwings - once Kirit's brother long before the rebellion tore them apart - is still trying to save his family in the face of catastrophe. They will need to band together once more to ensure not just own survival, but that of their entire community.
The kingdom in the Valley has long sheltered under the protection of its Jewels and Lapidaries, the people bound to singing gemstones with the power to reshape hills, move rivers, and warp minds. That power has kept the peace and tranquility, and the kingdom has flourished.
\nJewel Lin and her Lapidary Sima may be the last to enjoy that peace.
\nThe Jeweled Court has been betrayed. As screaming raiders sweep down from the mountains, and Lapidary servants shatter under the pressure, the last princess of the Valley will have to summon up a strength she’s never known. If she can assume her royal dignity, and if Sima can master the most dangerous gemstone in the land, they may be able to survive.
The Canarviers are the premier performance thieves in New Washington, blending astonishing acrobatics, clever misdirection, and daring escapes to entertain their rich patrons. As King Canarvier has always told his children, their work is art. Who else could titillate audiences with illicit history lessons and tease them through the gaps in their much-prized security?
\nNow that they’re adults, King’s children feel their divisions more than their bonds. Roosa attends an exclusive finishing university, blending in so well she’s unsure where she belongs. Her brother Dax craves a chance to prove himself, stifling under his father’s caution.
\nThen King disappears.
\nWith only days to buy mercy before their father is lost forever, Roo and Dax must compete in a high-stakes Grand Heist, pushing down their resentments to work together. Against a technocrat wagering more than he can lose, a security chief with a taste for pain, and a society beauty with secrets of her own, any misstep promises catastrophic ruin.
\nBut Canarviers are artists. And they perform best when the pressure is on . . .
When things go bad at home, sisters Eleanor and Mike hide in a secret place under Eleanor's bed, telling monster stories. Often, it seems those stories and their mother's house magic are all that keep them safe from both busybodies and their dad's temper.
\nBut when their father breaks a family heirloom, a glass witch ball, a river suddenly appears beneath the bed, and Eleanor and Mike fall into a world where dreams are born, nightmares struggle to break into the real world, and secrets have big consequences.
\nFull of both adventure and heart, Riverland is a story about the bond between two sisters and how they must make their own magic to protect each other and save the ones they love.
Welcome to a world of wind and bone, songs and silence, betrayal and courage.
Kirit Densira cannot wait to pass her wingtest and begin flying as a trader by her mother's side, being in service to her beloved home tower and exploring the skies beyond. When Kirit inadvertently breaks Tower Law, the city's secretive governing body, the Singers, demand that she become one of them instead. In an attempt to save her family from greater censure, Kirit must give up her dreams to throw herself into the dangerous training at the Spire, the tallest, most forbidding tower, deep at the heart of the City.
As she grows in knowledge and power, she starts to uncover the depths of Spire secrets. Kirit begins to doubt her world and its unassailable Laws, setting in motion a chain of events that will lead to a haunting choice, and may well change the city forever-if it isn't destroyed outright.
When Hop awakens in an ancient labyrinth, he has no memory of his life, or how he got here. He does not recognise the mysterious girl trapped with him. And he certainly cannot identify the shadowy figure stalking him, whispering terrible things . . .
\nBut there is one thing he is certain He must escape.
\nThe only way out of the labyrinth is through The Bone Door. But it lies behind a series of locked doors hidden across an array of strange realms. To open the way, Hop must complete impossible tasks before his time runs out.
\nAs Hop travels deeper into the maze, he discovers that he and his companions may be more connected to the place and its horrors than he could ever imagine.
\nUnless Hop is able to unravel the true mystery of the labyrinth, and his own role within it, the Bone Door and any hope of escape will be lost forever.
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For a thousand years, Concordia has maintained peace between its provinces. To mark this incredible feat, the emperor's ship embarks upon a twelve-day voyage to the sacred Goddess's Mountain.
\nAboard are the heirs of the twelve provinces of Concordia, each graced with a unique and secret magical ability known as a Blessing.
\nExcept one: Ganymedes Piscero - class clown, slacker, and all-round disappointment.
\nWhen a beloved heir is murdered, everyone is a suspect. Stuck at sea and surrounded by powerful people without a Blessing to protect him, odds of survival are slim.
\nBut as the bodies pile higher, Ganymedes must become the hero he was not born to be. Can he unmask the killer and their blessing before this bloody crusade reaches the shores of Concordia?
\nOr will the empire as he knows it fall?
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It has been fifty-six hard years since the events of The Machine Crusade. Following the death of Serena Butler, the bloodiest decades of the Jihad take place. Synchronized Worlds and Unallied Planets are liberated one by one, and at long last, after years of struggle, the human worlds begin to hope that the end of the centuries-long conflict with the thinking machines is finally in sight.
\nUnfortunately, Omnius has one last, deadly card to play. In a last-ditch effort to destroy humankind, virulent plagues are let loose throughout the galaxy, decimating the populations of whole planets . . . and once again, the tide of the titanic struggle shifts against the warriors of the human race. At last, the war that has lasted many lifetimes will be decided in the apocalyptic Battle of Corrin.
\nIn the greatest battle in science fiction history, human and machine face off one last time. . . . And on the desert planet of Arrakis, the legendary Fremen of Dune become the feared fighting force to be discovered by Paul Muad'Dib in Frank Herbert's classic, Dune.
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One hundred and ten centuries from now, humanity has spread across space. And all-powerful machines rule the humans who were once their masters.
\nIt began in the Time of Tyrants, when ambitious men and women used high-powered computers to seize control of the heart of the Old Empire including Earth itself. The tyrants translated their brains into mobile mechanical bodies and created a new race, the immortal man-machine hybrids called cymeks. Then the cymeks' world-controlling planetary computers - each known as Omnius - seized control from their overlords and a thousand years of brutal rule by the thinking machines began.
\nBut their world faces disaster. Impatient with human beings' endless disobedience and the cymeks' continual plotting to regain their power, Omnius has decided that it no longer needs them. Only victory can save the human race from extermination.
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The desert planet Arrakis, called Dune, has been destroyed. The remnants of the Old Empire have been consumed by the violent matriarchal cult known as the Honored Matres. Only one faction remains a viable threat to their total conquest - the Bene Gesserit, heirs to Dune’s power. Under the leadership of Mother Superior Darwi Odrade, the Bene Gesserit have colonised a green world on the planet Chapterhouse and are turning it into a desert, mile by scorched mile.
\nAnd once they’ve mastered breeding sandworms, the Sisterhood will control the production of the greatest commodity in the known galaxy - the spice melange. But their true weapon remains a man who has lived countless lifetimes - a man who served under the God Emperor Paul Muad’Dib . . .
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The Children of Dune are twin siblings Leto and Ghanima Atreides, whose father, the Emperor Paul Muad’Dib, disappeared in the desert wastelands of Arrakis nine years ago. Like their father, the twins possess supernormal abilities - making them valuable to their manipulative aunt Alia, who rules the Empire in the name of House Atreides. Facing treason and rebellion on two fronts, Alia’s rule is not absolute.
\nThe displaced House Corrino is plotting to regain the throne while the fanatical Fremen are being provoked into open revolt by the enigmatic figure known only as The Preacher. Alia believes that by obtaining the secrets of the twins’ prophetic visions, she can maintain control over her dynasty. But Leto and Ghanima have their own plans for their visions - and their destinies . . .
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Leto Atreides, Duke of Caladan and father of the Muad'Dib. While all know of his fall and the rise of his son, little is known about the quiet ruler of Caladan and his partner Jessica. Or how a Duke of an inconsequential planet earned an emperor's favour, the ire of House Harkonnen, and set himself on a collision course with his own death. This is the story.
\nThrough patience and loyalty, Leto serves the Golden Lion Throne. Where others scheme, the Duke of Caladan acts. But Leto's powerful enemies are starting to feel that he is rising beyond his station, and House Atreides rises too high. With unseen enemies circling, Leto must decide if the twin burdens of duty and honour are worth the price of his life, family and love.
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Dune Messiah continues the story of Paul Atreides, better known - and feared - as the man christened Muad'Dib. As Emperor of the Known Universe, he possesses more power than a single man was ever meant to wield. Worshipped as a religious icon by the fanatical Fremens, Paul faces the enmity of the political houses he displaced when he assumed the throne - and a conspiracy conducted within his own sphere of influence.
\nAnd even as House Atreides begins to crumble around him from the machinations of his enemies, the true threat to Paul comes to his lover, Chani, and the unborn heir to his family's dynasty . . .
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Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the “spice” melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for . . .
\nWhen House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.
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Millennia have passed on Arrakis, and the once-desert planet is green with life. Leto Atreides, the son of the world’s savior, the Emperor Paul Muad’Dib, is still alive but far from human. To preserve humanity’s future, he sacrificed his own by merging with a sandworm, granting him near immortality as God Emperor of Dune for the past thirty-five hundred years.
\nLeto’s rule is not a benevolent one. His transformation has made not only his appearance but his morality inhuman. A rebellion, led by Siona, a member of the Atreides family, has risen to oppose the despot’s rule. But Siona is unaware that Leto’s vision of a Golden Path for humanity requires her to fulfill a destiny she never wanted - or could possibly conceive . . .
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He is Paul Atreides.
\nThe son of Duke Leto and Lady Jessica, the heir of Caladan.
\nHe will become the fabled Muad'Dib.
\nBefore he set foot on the sands of Arrakis, Paul was forged into the young man who would become a great leader, a hero . . . even a tyrant. Just as he turns fifteen years old, Paul is faced with turbulent crises on Caladan - political turmoil, as well as the unraveling of his family.
\nHis mother, Lady Jessica, has been blackmailed and forced by the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood to leave Caladan and become the new concubine of another lord, in an effort to prove her loyalty . . . and break her heart.
\nDuke Leto Atreides, driven to extremes to prove his service to Emperor Shaddam, and to preserve and strengthen his Great House at all costs, has undertaken a dangerous mission that goes against the grain of his honor - to pretend to join the violent rebel cause of the bloodthirsty Jaxson Aru, even to befriend the terrorist leader. The loyal Gurney Halleck has been dispatched on a secret, vitally important mission to inform the Emperor of Leto's true cause, that his honor has never wavered . . . but Gurney has been intercepted and captured by the terrible Harkonnens.
\nYoung Paul is left to serve as the steward to Caladan, his beloved and beautiful world . . . and in preparation for that, the young man has been trained in mental acuity by the warrior Mentat Thufir Hawat, pushed to the extremes of his abilities by the faithful Swordmaster Duncan Idaho, and taught in natural science by the Suk Doctor Wellington Yueh, who harbors his own dark secret.
\nPaul must meet every challenge, grow and become strong enough to protect a world . . . but the heir of Caladan does not know that these trials will shape him into the man who will conquer an entire Imperium.
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Leto Atreides, the God Emperor of Dune, is dead. In the fifteen hundred years since his passing, the Empire has fallen into ruin. The great Scattering saw millions abandon the crumbling civilisation and spread out beyond the reaches of known space. The planet Arrakis - now called Rakis - has reverted to its desert climate, and its great sandworms are dying.
\nNow the Lost Ones are returning home in pursuit of power. And as these factions vie for control over the remnants of the Empire, a girl named Sheeana rises to prominence in the wastelands of Rakis, sending religious fervor throughout the galaxy. For she possesses the abilities of the Fremen sandriders - fulfilling a prophecy foretold by the late God Emperor . . . .
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Before Paul Atreides became Muad'Dib, the dynamic leader who unified the wild Fremen on the desert planet known as Dune . . .
\nBefore the evil Baron Harkonnen overthrew House Atreides and sent Paul and his mother, Jessica, fleeing into the deadly wasteland of sand . . .
\nBefore the secrets of the spice and the sandworms were discovered . . .
\nThere was another story . . .
\nThe tale of young Leto Atreides learning to become a ruler in the shadow of his great father.
\nThe tale of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, ruthless tyrant who becomes a pawn of Bene Gesserit breeding schemes.
\nThe tale of Pardot Kynes, ambitious planetologist dispatched to the sands of Arrakis to understand the origins of the spice melange, the most valuable substance in the known universe.
\nAnd the tale of Crown Prince Shaddam Corrino, whose lust for power leads him to plot the assassination of his own father and to create a plan that will replace the spice and disrupt the Imperium forever . . .
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Duke Leto Atreides is now the skilful and much-loved ruler of Caladan, served by loyal Duncan Idaho. To his court come Gurney Halleck, despised slave of the Harkonnens - and Jessica, the exquisite, perfectly trained concubine chosen by the Reverend Mothers of the Bene Gesserit to be the mother of Leto's daughter.
\nMeanwhile, on Dune - planet Arrakis - House Harkonnen ruthlessly harvests the precious, mind-enhancing drug called spice. And Baron Vladimir is slowly being consumed by a loathesome disease. Rabban Harkonnen - House Atreides' most implacable enemy - prepares to take over his uncle's empire.
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Fleeing from the monstrous Honored Matres - dark counterparts of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood - Duncan Idaho, the military genius Bashar Miles Teg, a woman named Sheeana who can talk to sandworms, and a group of desperate refugees explore the boundaries of the universe.
\nAboard their sophisticated no-ship, they have used long-stored cells to resurrect heroes and villains from the past, including Paul Muad'Dib, in preparation for a final confrontation with a mysterious outside Enemy so great it can destroy even the terrible Honored Matres.
\nAnd, deep in the hold of their giant ship, the refugees carry the last surviving sandworms from devastated Arrakis, as they search the universe for a new Dune.
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Lady Jessica, mother of Paul, and consort to Leto Atredies. The choices she made shaped an empire, but first the Lady of Caladan must reckon with her own betrayal of the Bene Gesserit. She has already betrayed her ancient order, but now she must decide if her loyalty to the Sisterhood is more important than the love of her own family.
Meanwhile, events in the greater empire are accelerating beyond the control of even the Reverend Mother, and Lady Jessica's family is on a collision course with destiny.
More than two decades have passed since the events chronicled in The Butlerian Jihad. The crusade against thinking robots has ground on for years, but the forces led by Serena Butler and Irbis Ginjo have made only slight gains; the human worlds grow weary of war, of the bloody, inconclusive swing from victory to defeat.
\nThe fearsome cymeks, led by Agamemnon, hatch new plots to regain their lost power from Omnius--as their numbers dwindle and time begins to run out. The fighters of Ginaz, led by Jool Noret, forge themselves into an elite warrior class, a weapon against the machine-dominated worlds. Aurelius Venport and Norma Cenva are on the verge of the most important discovery in human history-a way to \"fold\" space and travel instantaneously to any place in the galaxy.
\nAnd on the faraway, nearly worthless planet of Arrakis, Selim Wormrider and his band of outlaws take the first steps to making themselves the feared fighters who will change the course of history: the Fremen.
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Gilbertus Albans has founded the Mentat School, a place where humans can learn the efficient techniques of thinking machines. But Gilbertus walks an uneasy line between his own convictions and compromises in order to survive the Butlerian fanatics, led by the madman Manford Torondo and his Swordmaster Anari Idaho.
\nMother Superior Raquella attempts to rebuild her Sisterhood School on Wallach IX, with her most talented and ambitious student, Valya Harkonnen . . . who also has another goal-to exact revenge on Vorian Atreides, the legendary hero of the Jihad, whom she blames for her family's downfall.
\nMeanwhile, Josef Venport conducts his own war against the Butlerians. VenHold Spacing Fleet controls nearly all commerce thanks to the superior mutated Navigators that Venport has created, and he places a ruthless embargo on any planet that accepts Manford Torondo's anti-technology pledge, hoping to starve them into submission. But fanatics rarely surrender easily. . .
\nThe Mentats, the Navigators, and the Sisterhood all strive to improve the human race, but know that as Butlerian fanaticism grows stronger, the battle will be to choose the path of humanity's future-whether to embrace civilization, or to plunge into an endless dark age.
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Navigators, mutated by spice into beings far superior to normal humans, make space travel possible across the burgeoning Imperium. Their prescient awareness allows them to foresee safe paths through the universe as starship engines “fold” space. Only industrial magnate Josef Venport knows the secret of creating Navigators, and he intends to build a commercial empire to span the galaxy.
\nBut at every turn Josef is embattled by the forces of anti-technology fanaticism, “Butlerian” zealots led by the charismatic and dangerous Manford Torondo, who wishes to countermand humanity’s new renaissance and drive the Imperium back into a dark age. And between those titanic forces stands the uncertain new Emperor Roderick Corrino, forced to take the throne after the assassination of his brother. The Navigators are the key to charting a glorious future for humanity . . . or the end of civilisation.
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Between the end of Frank Herbert's Dune and his next novel Dune Messiah lies a mystery: how a hero adored by a planet became a tyrant hated by a universe.
\nPaul of Dune begins the story of those twelve fateful years and the wars of the jihad of Paul Muad'Dib.
\nIt is an epic of battle and betrayal; of love and idealism; of ambition and intrigue. Above all, it is the story of how Paul Atreides - who achieved absolute power when scarcely more than a boy - changes from an idealist into a dictator who is the prisoner of the bureaucrats and fanatics who surround him.
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Set two years before Dune, Princess of Dune is the never-before-told story of two key women in the life of Paul Muad’Dib - Princess Irulan, his wife in name only, and Paul’s true love, the Fremen Chani. Both women become central to Paul’s galaxy-spanning Imperial reign.
\nRaised in the Imperial court and born to be a political bargaining chip, Irulan was sent at an early age to be trained as a Bene Gesserit Sister. As Princess Royal, she also learned important lessons from her father - the Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV. Now of marriageable age, Princess Irulan sees the machinations of the many factions vying for power - the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, the Spacing Guild, the Imperial throne, and a ruthless rebellion in the Imperial military. The young woman has a wise and independent streak and is determined to become much more than a pawn to be moved about on anyone’s gameboard.
\nMeanwhile, on Arrakis, Chani - the daughter of Liet-Kynes, the Imperial Planetologist who serves under the harsh rule of House Harkonnen - is trained in the Fremen mystical ways by an ancient Reverend Mother. Brought up to believe in her father’s ecological dream of a green Arrakis, she follows Liet around to Imperial testing stations, surviving the many hazards of desert life. Chani soon learns the harsh cost of Fremen dreams and obligations under the oppressive boot heel of the long Harkonnen occupation.
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As the no-ship Ithaca flees through space, the heroes of Hunters of Dune finally meet the Enemy who followed the violent fanatics, the Honored Matres, back to their universe.
\nThe thinking machines vanquished by Serena Butler's jihad were not destroyed, only driven into exile - and now, tens of thousands of years later, they are back.
\nCan the resurrected heroes on board the Ithaca save our race from annihilation?
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It is 83 years after the last of the thinking machines were destroyed in the Battle of Corrin, after Faykan Butler established himself as the first Emperor of a new imperium. War hero Vorian Atreides has turned his back on Salusa Secundus, flying off to parts unknown. Abulurd Harkonnen, convicted of cowardice, was sent away to live on gloomy Lankiveil, and his descendants continue to blame Vor for the downfall of their fortunes.
\nRaquella Berto-Anirul has formed the Bene Gesserit School as the first Reverend Mother. Descendants of Aurelius Venport and Norma Cenva have built a powerful transportation company using mutated Navigators who fly \"spacefolder ships\".
\nGilbertus Albans has established a school on bucolic Lampadas teaching humans to become Mentats. Even so, decades after the defeat of the thinking machines, anti-technology fervor continues to sweep across the human-settled planets, with powerful fanatical groups imposing violent purges . . .
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Where Paul of Dune picked up the saga directly after the events of Dune, The Winds of Dune begins after the events of Dune Messiah.
\nPaul has walked off into the sand, blind, and is presumed dead. Jessica and Gurney are on Caladan; Alia is trying to hold the Imperial government together with Duncan; Mohiam dead at the hands of Stilgar; Irulan imprisoned. Paul's former friend, Bronso of Ix, now seems to be leading opposition to the House of Atreides.
\nHerbert and Anderson's newest book in this landmark series will concentrate on these characters as well the growing battle between Jessica, and her daughter, Alia.
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In this bestselling and delightfully quirky debut novel from Sweden, a grumpy yet loveable man finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door.
\nMeet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon - the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.” But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn’t walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?
\nBehind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.
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An exquisitely moving portrait of an elderly man's struggle to hold on to his most precious memories, and his family's efforts to care for him even as they must find a way to let go.
With all the same charm of his bestselling full-length novels, here Fredrik Backman once again reveals his unrivaled understanding of human nature and deep compassion for people in difficult circumstances. This is a tiny gem with a message you'll treasure for a lifetime.
This is a poignant comedy about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined.
Viewing an apartment normally doesn’t turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers slowly begin opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths.
As police surround the premises and television channels broadcast the hostage situation live, the tension mounts and even deeper secrets are slowly revealed. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people.
People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town.
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And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.
Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.
Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.
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Most people don’t even notice them - three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.
\nTwenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.
\nOut of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.
Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy. She is also Elsa’s best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas, where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.
\nWhen Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother’s instructions lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and old crones but also to the truth about fairy tales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.
\nMy Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is a story about life and death and one of the most important human rights: the right to be different.
Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone?
\nThen one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.
\n
A father and a son are seeing each other for the first time in years. The father has a story to share before it’s too late. He tells his son about a courageous little girl lying in a hospital bed a few miles away. She’s a smart kid - smart enough to know that she won’t beat cancer by drawing with crayons all day, but it seems to make the adults happy, so she keeps doing it.
As he talks about this plucky little girl, the father also reveals more about himself: his triumphs in business, his failures as a parent, his past regrets, his hopes for the future.
Now, on a cold winter’s night, the father has been given an unexpected chance to do something remarkable that could change the destiny of a little girl he hardly knows. But before he can make the deal of a lifetime, he must find out what his own life has actually been worth, and only his son can reveal that answer.
With humor and compassion, Fredrik Backman’s The Deal of a Lifetime reminds us that life is a fleeting gift, and our legacy rests in how we share that gift with others.
Over the course of two weeks, everything in Beartown will change.
\nMaya Andersson and Benji Ovich, two young people who left in search of a life far from the forest town, come home and joyfully reunite with their closest childhood friends. There is a new sense of optimism and purpose in the town, embodied in the impressive new ice rink that has been built down by the lake.
\nTwo years have passed since the events that no one wants to think about. Everyone has tried to move on, but there’s something about this place that prevents it. The destruction caused by a ferocious late-summer storm reignites the old rivalry between Beartown and the neighboring town of Hed, a rivalry which has always been fought through their ice hockey teams.
\nMaya’s parents, Peter and Kira, are caught up in an investigation of the hockey club’s murky finances, and Amat - once the star of the Beartown team - has lost his way after an injury and a failed attempt to get drafted into the NHL. Simmering tensions between the two towns turn into acts of intimidation and then violence. All the while, a fourteen-year-old boy grows increasingly alienated from this hockey-obsessed community and is determined to take revenge on the people he holds responsible for his beloved sister’s death. He has a pistol and a plan that will leave Beartown with a loss that is almost more that it can stand.
\nAs it beautifully captures all the complexities of daily life and explores questions of friendship, loyalty, loss, and identity, this emotion-packed novel asks us to reconsider what it means to win, what it means to lose, and what it means to forgive.
Things My Son Needs to Know About the World collects the personal dispatches from the front lines of one of the most daunting experiences any man can experience: fatherhood.
As he conveys his profound awe at experiencing all the \"firsts\" that fill him with wonder and catch him completely unprepared, Fredrik Backman doesn't shy away from revealing his own false steps and fatherly flaws, tackling issues both great and small, from masculinity and mid-life crises to practical jokes and poop.
In between the sleep-deprived lows and wonderful highs, Backman takes a step back to share the true story of falling in love with a woman who is his complete opposite, and learning to live a life that revolves around the people you care about unconditionally. Alternating between humorous side notes and longer essays offering his son advice as he grows up and ventures out into the world, Backman relays the big and small lessons in life, including:
-How to find the team you belong to
-Why airports explain everything about religion and war
-The reason starting a band is crucial to cultivating and keeping friendships
-How to beat Monkey Island 3
-Why, sometimes, a dad might hold onto his son's hand just a little too tight
This is an irresistible and insightful collection, perfect for new parents and fans of Backman's \"unparalleled understanding of human nature\" (Shelf Awareness). As he eloquently reminds us, \"You can be whatever you want to be, but that's nowhere near as important as knowing that you can be exactly who you are.\"
Sydney Shaw, like every single woman in New York, has terrible luck with dating. She’s seen it men who lie in their dating profile, men who stick her with the dinner bill, and worst of all, men who can't shut up about their mothers. But finally, she hits the jackpot.
\nHer new boyfriend is utterly perfect. He's charming, handsome, and works as a doctor at a local hospital. Sydney is swept off her feet.
\nThen the brutal murder of a young woman - the latest in a string of deaths across the coast - confounds police. The primary suspect? A mystery man who dates his victims before he kills them.
\nSydney should feel safe. After all, she is dating the guy of her dreams. But she can’t shake her own suspicions that the perfect man may not be as perfect as he seems. Because someone is watching her every move, and if she doesn’t get to the truth, she’ll be the killer’s next victim . . .
\nA dark story about obsession and the things we’ll do for love.
Tegan is eight months pregnant, alone, and desperately wants to put her crumbling life in the rearview mirror. So she hits the road, planning to stay with her brother until she can figure out her next move. But she doesn’t realise she’s heading straight into a blizzard.
\nShe never arrives at her destination.
\nStranded in rural Maine with a dead car and broken ankle, Tegan worries she’s made a terrible mistake. Then a miracle she is rescued by a couple who offers her a room in their warm cabin until the snow clears.
\nBut something isn’t right. Tegan believed she was waiting out the storm, but as time ticks by, she comes to realise she is in grave danger. This safe haven isn’t what she thought it was, and staying here may have been her most deadly mistake yet.
\nAnd now she must do whatever it takes to save herself - and her unborn child.
Debbie Mullen is losing it. For years, she has compiled all of her best advice into her column, Dear Debbie, where the wives of New England come for sympathy and neighborly advice. Through her work, Debbie has heard from countless women who are ignored, belittled, or even abused by their husbands. And Debbie does her best to guide them in the right direction.
\nOr at least, she did.
\nThese days, Debbie’s life seems to be spiraling out of control. She just lost her job. Something strange is happening with her teenage daughters. And her husband is keeping secrets, according to the tracking app she installed on his phone. Now, Debbie’s done being the bigger person. She’s done being reasonable and practical. It’s time to take her own advice.
\nAnd now it’s time for payback against all the people in her life who deserve it the most.
\n
Naomi was living the quintessential love story. Boy meets girl. They fall in love, get married, buy a dream house, start a family . . .
\nThen - he kicks her out, hires the city’s best divorce lawyers, drains their accounts, and takes up with a 20-something.
\nIt’s a brutal end to the story. Naomi should accept defeat: move into a dingy apartment, get back into the workforce, and piece together the shattered remains of her life.
\nExcept, why should she?
\nInstead, Naomi fixates on her husband’s new girlfriend. What begins as cynical curiosity soon twists into obsession - and then into something far darker. As Naomi uncovers secrets she never imagined, she realises her own life may be in danger.
\nBut if it keeps her perfect family intact, isn’t it worth it?
\n
I used to clean other people’s houses - now, I can’t believe this home is actually mine. The charming kitchen, the quiet cul-de-sac, the huge yard where my kids can play. My husband and I saved for years to give our children the life they deserve.
\nEven though I’m wary of our new neighbor Mrs Lowell, when she invites us over for dinner it’s our chance to make friends. Her maid opens the door wearing a white apron, her hair in a tight bun. I know exactly what it’s like to be in her shoes. But her cold stare gives me chills . . .
\nThe Lowells’ maid isn’t the only strange thing on our street. I’m sure I see a shadowy figure watching us. My husband leaves the house late at night. And when I meet a woman who lives across the way, her words chill me to the bone: Be careful of your neighbors .
\nDid I make a terrible mistake moving my family here?
\nI thought I’d left my darkest secrets behind. But could this quiet suburban street be the most dangerous place of all?
It's hard to find an employer who doesn't ask too many questions about my past. So I thank my lucky stars that the Garricks miraculously give me a job, cleaning their stunning penthouse with views across the city and preparing fancy meals in their shiny kitchen. I can work here for a while, stay quiet until I get what I want.
\nIt's almost perfect. But I still haven't met Mrs Garrick, or seen inside the guest bedroom. I'm sure I hear her crying. I notice spots of blood around the neck of her white nightgowns when I'm doing laundry. And one day I can't help but knock on the door. When it gently swings open, what I see inside changes everything . . .
\nThat's when I make a promise. After all, I've done this before. I can protect Mrs. Garrick while keeping my own secrets locked up safe.
\nDouglas Garrick has done wrong. He is going to pay. It's simply a question of how far I'm willing to go . . .
“Welcome to the family,” Nina Winchester says as I shake her elegant, manicured hand. I smile politely, gazing around the marble hallway. Working here is my last chance to start fresh. I can pretend to be whoever I like. But I’ll soon learn that the Winchesters’ secrets are far more dangerous than my own . . .
\nEvery day I clean the Winchesters’ beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor.
\nI try to ignore how Nina makes a mess just to watch me clean it up. How she tells strange lies about her own daughter. And how her husband Andrew seems more broken every day. But as I look into Andrew’s handsome brown eyes, so full of pain, it’s hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina’s life. The walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband.
\nI only try on one of Nina’s pristine white dresses once. Just to see what it’s like. But she soon finds out . . . and by the time I realise my attic bedroom door only locks from the outside, it’s far too late.
\nBut I reassure myself: the Winchesters don’t know who I really am.
\nThey don’t know what I’m capable of . . .
There are three rules Brooke Sullivan must follow as a new nurse practitioner at a men’s maximum-security prison:
\n1) Treat all prisoners with respect.
\n2) Never reveal any personal information.
\n3) Never EVER become too friendly with the inmates.
\nBut none of the staff at the prison knows Brooke has already broken the rules. Nobody knows about her intimate connection to Shane Nelson, one of the penitentiary’s most notorious and dangerous inmates.
\nAnd they certainly don’t know that Shane was Brooke’s high school sweetheart - the star quarterback who is now spending the rest of his life in prison for a series of grisly murders. Or that Brooke's testimony was what put him there.
\nBut Shane knows.
\nAnd he will never forget.
Eve has a good life. She wakes up each day, kisses her husband Nate, and heads off to teach math at the local high school. All is as it should be. Except . . .
\nLast year, Caseham High was rocked by a scandal involving a student-teacher affair, with one student, Addie, at its center. But Eve knows there is far more to these ugly rumors than meets the eye.
\nAddie can’t be trusted. She lies. She hurts people. She destroys lives. At least, that’s what everyone says.
\nBut nobody knows the real Addie. Nobody knows the secrets that could destroy her. And Addie will do anything to keep it quiet . . .
Blake Porter is riding high, until he's not. Fired abruptly from his job as a VP of marketing and unable to make the mortgage payments on the new brownstone that he shares with his fiancee, he's desperate to make ends meet.
\nEnter Whitney. Beautiful, charming, down-to-earth, and looking for a room to rent. She's exactly what Blake's looking for. Or is she?
\nBecause something isn't quite right. The neighbors start treating Blake differently. The smell of decay permeates his home, no matter how hard he scrubs. Strange noises jar him awake in the middle of the night. And soon Blake fears someone knows his darkest secrets . . .
\nDanger lives right at home, and by the time Blake realises it, it'll be far too late. The trap is already set.
Nola McConkey has made it. Animal Oracle, the memoir she has written about her beloved late sister Darina, has become a hit. People read it, critics loved it, producers now want to make it into a movie. The dream of quitting her job and becoming a full-time writer in London doesn’t seem so far away. There’s only one problem: everyone in her family has an opinion about the book - and none of them are good. Though Nola can’t let it affect her. It’s the price she must pay for the life she wants.
\nBut now, someone has made an anonymous complaint to her publisher about Animal Oracle. Suddenly, her hard-won reputation as a literary darling is at stake. Nola is sure that only someone in her secretive, chaotic family could be to blame. As her parents and three remaining siblings prepare to spend the fifth anniversary of Darina’s death together on the isolated island of Lundy, Nola knows this is the perfect opportunity to convince her accuser to pull the complaint before it causes irreparable damage - but first, she must discover who made it.
\n
Young baronet Robin Blyth thought he was taking up a minor governmental post. However, he's actually been appointed parliamentary liaison to a secret magical society. If it weren’t for this administrative error, he’d never have discovered the incredible magic underlying his world.
\nCursed by mysterious attackers and plagued by visions, Robin becomes determined to drag answers from his missing predecessor - but he’ll need the help of Edwin Courcey, his hostile magical-society counterpart. Unwillingly thrown together, Robin and Edwin will discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles.
\n
Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, would love a nice, safe, comfortable life. After the death of his twin sister, he thought he was done with magic for good. But with the threat of a dangerous ritual hanging over every magician in Britain, he’s drawn reluctantly back into that world.
\nNow Jack is living in a bizarre puzzle-box of a magical London townhouse, helping an unlikely group of friends track down the final piece of the Last Contract before their enemies can do the same. And to make matters worse, they need the help of writer and thief Alan Ross.
\nCagey and argumentative, Alan is only in this for the money. The aristocratic Lord Hawthorn, with all his unearned power, is everything that Alan hates. And unfortunately, Alan happens to be everything that Jack wants in one gorgeous, infuriating package.
\nWhen a plot to seize unimaginable power comes to a head at Cheetham Hall - Jack’s ancestral family estate, a land so old and bound in oaths that it’s grown a personality as prickly as its owner - Jack, Alan and their allies will become entangled in a night of champagne, secrets, and bloody sacrifice . . . and the foundations of magic in Britain will be torn up by the roots before the end.
\n
Maud Blyth has always longed for adventure. She expected plenty of it when she volunteered to serve as an old lady’s companion on an ocean liner, in order to help her beloved older brother unravel a magical conspiracy that began generations ago.
\nWhat she didn’t expect was for the old lady in question to turn up dead on the first day of the voyage. Now she has to deal with a dead body, a disrespectful parrot, and the lovely, dangerously outrageous Violet Debenham, who’s also returning home to England. Violet is everything that Maud has been trained to distrust yet can’t help but desire: a magician, an actress, and a magnet for scandal.
\nSurrounded by the open sea and a ship full of suspects, Maud and Violet must first drop the masks that they’ve both learned to wear before they can unmask a murderer and somehow get their hands on a magical object worth killing for - without ending up dead in the water themselves.
\n
Mattinesh Jay, dutiful heir to his struggling family business, needs to hire an experienced swordsman to serve as best man for his arranged marriage. Sword-challenge at the ceremony could destroy all hope of restoring his family’s wealth, something that Matti has been trying - and failing - to do for the past ten years.
\nWhat he can afford, unfortunately, is part-time con artist and full-time charming menace Luca Piere.
\nLuca, for his part, is trying to reinvent himself in a new city. All he wants to do is make some easy money and try to forget the crime he committed in his hometown. He didn’t plan on being blackmailed into giving sword lessons to a chronically responsible - and inconveniently handsome - wool merchant like Matti.
\nHowever, neither Matti’s business troubles nor Luca himself are quite what they seem. As the days count down to Matti’s wedding, the two of them become entangled in the intrigue and sabotage that have brought Matti’s house to the brink of ruin. And when Luca’s secrets threaten to drive a blade through their growing alliance, both Matti and Luca will have to answer the question: how many lies are you prepared to strip away, when the truth could mean losing everything you want?
\n
Meet Ifeoma. She's been ready to leave her violent husband for some time, but her plans for a quiet departure take an unexpectedly gruesome turn . . .
\nNkechi a housemaid for a rich Lagos family, bears the weight of her Madam's wrath when she discovers her husband's dark secret.
\nIn London, Riliwa meets Mary, a guardian angel full of advice, wisdom and practical support as she navigates her unfamiliar new home. But it soon becomes clear that Mary's kindness comes at a price.
\nPassionate, raw and full of heart, Fetto brings to life the rich diversity of Nigerian women's experiences in these wide-ranging stories.
\n
Nel, Flo, Maggie and Nicole haven’t been friends for years. Caught in the limbo summer between college and Uni, each of the girls are at a precipice, deciding the direction of the rest of their lives. That’s when the notifications come through.
\nNone of them remember the time-capsule text messages they sent each other two years ago. Messages full of confessions, feelings and secrets that force them back together again . . . before they break apart.
\nShining a spotlight on themes of body image, sexuality, romance, unhealthy relationships and toxic shock syndrome.
\n
The Drought of Girls has ended, but the rift it broke open between the Queendoms is not so easily healed. Political tensions roil the senate of Paxim, where Queen Heliane vows to make her son Paulus the nation's first ruling King or die trying.
\nScorpican troops amass on the border of Arca, ready to attack. And within Arca itself, its young, unready queen finds her court a nest of vipers and her dreams besieged by a mysterious figure with unknown intentions.
As iron and magic clash on the battlefield and powerful women scheme behind the scenes, danger and violence abound. Can anyone stop chaos from ripping the Queendoms apart?
Five hundred years of peace between queendoms shatters when girls inexplicably stop being born. As the Drought of Girls stretches across a generation, it sets off a cascade of political and personal consequences across all five queendoms of the known world, throwing long-standing alliances into disarray as each queendom begins to turn on each other - and new threats to each nation rise from within.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tUniting the stories of women from across the queendoms, this propulsive, gripping epic fantasy follows a warrior queen who must rise from childbirth bed to fight for her life and her throne, a healer in hiding desperate to protect the secret of her daughter’s explosive power, a queen whose desperation to retain control leads her to risk using the darkest magic, a near-immortal sorcerer demigod powerful enough to remake the world for her own ends - and the generation of lastborn girls, the ones born just before the Drought, who must bear the hopes and traditions of their nations if the queendoms are to survive.
While a fragile peace has begun to settle across the Five Queendoms of the known world, trouble brews beneath the smooth façade. The first gate between the Underlands, where Eresh rules over the shades of the dead, has already been opened - and the scheming shade of a dead sorcerer has evil plans he hopes to unleash on the world.
\nIn the world Above, the Scorpicae struggle to find a path forward in defeat, the embattled regent of Paxim gets more than she bargained for, and a young woman who barely survived the Sun Rites finds herself the indispensable right hand of a priest-queen whose sanity appears to be slipping away.
\nAs living women across the Queendoms take desperate action to stay alive, and dead women plot to regain what they’ve lost, the time for the next Sun Rites nears. When five queens gather in the Holy City of Sestia for the most important ritual of their lives, who will be left standing?
Rose Dearling’s life changed forever when her older brother was arrested for the murder of his high school sweetheart, Alexandria Hopely. Now, a decade after the crime that ripped her family and her close-knit Florida hometown apart, Rose is the only one who still believes he didn’t do it. So much so that she wrote a bestselling true crime novel about the case, pinning the murder on Alex’s father. This may have gained her a reputation for being a lying, opportunistic bitch, but it has also bought her a new life in Manhattan, far away from where it all began.
\nThen Rose gets a call that shatters her world for the second her younger sister Hazel has gone missing without a trace. Back home and under the same roof as her family for the first time in years, Rose tries to avoid dark memories as she searches for her sister. But when connections between Hazel’s disappearance and Alex’s murder emerge, Rose realises the past, and her own book, could hold the answers - including proof of her brother’s innocence. And if he didn't do it, that means the real killer is still on the loose, and they’ve been hiding in plain sight all this time.
\n
We meet our ill-tempered protagonist - the story’s titular “brat” - at a low moment, but not yet at rock bottom. The Gabriel of the novel is mourning the death of his father as well as a recent breakup, and struggling to finish writing his second book. Alone and aimless, he agrees to move back into his parents’ house to clear it out for sale. Here, the clichés end.
\nGabriel has trouble delivering on his promise as the moldy, overgrown house deteriorates around him, so does his own health, and large sheets of his skin begin to peel from his body at a terrifying rate. In fragments and figments, Gabriel takes us on a surreal journey into the mysteries of the family home, where he finds unfinished manuscripts written by his parents which seem to mutate every time he picks them up, and a bizarre home video that hints at long-buried secrets.
\nStrange people and figures emerge - perhaps directly from the novel’s embedded fictions - and despite his compromised state (and his more successful brother’s growing frustration) Gabriel is determined to try to make sense of these hauntings. Part ghost story, part grief story; flirting with the autofictional mode while sitting squarely in the tradition of the gothic, Brat crackles with deadpan humor and delightfully taut prose.
\nSmith’s arrival heralds the next generation of fiction writers - formally inventive, influenced by the rhythms of the internet, and infused with a particularly Gen Z sense of alienation. Irreverent and boundary-pushing, but not for its own sake, the novel that follows is muscular yet lyrical, riddled with paradox, and told with a truly rare and compelling clarity of voice. Brat is a serious debut that refuses to take itself too seriously.
\n
In this story of intense friendship and grit, two down-and-out teens escape the hopelessness of their lives and chase a different future through rock-climbing.
\nDan and Tamma are two teenagers in their last year of high school in the southern Mojave Desert. One is a gifted golden child, the other a mouthy burnout. Climbing boulders in trash-strewn parking lots during cold desert nights, they seal their unique bond and dream of a life of adventure.
\nAs the year progresses and adult reality looms, they are rocked by change and pulled apart by irreconcilable obligations. Differences of class, talent, and prospects take on new importance; options dwindle, and their decisions grow ever more consequential and perilous. It feels inevitable, finally, that something must give.
\nWith a magnificent gift for nature writing and a joyful appreciation for the redemptive power of friendship, Gabriel Tallent gives readers a rollicking, adrenaline-filled, and soul-searching novel about risking everything to change your life.
What if justice isn’t something the legal system is truly capable of?
\nLaw school graduate Santi Elcano’s idealism is wearing away by the cases and clients he’s assigned. When a young mother, Anna Weston, is brutally murdered and her body is found near Reno’s infamous silver mines, Santi and his mentor in the public defender’s office, C.J., are tasked with defending Michael Atwood, a man arrested for Anna’s murder on scant physical evidence.
\nEight years later, a shocking letter from Atwood - now on death row - forces Santi to reexamine his role in the case. At the time, public obsession with Anna’s disappearance and intense pressure on the police to make an arrest led to a rushed trial. As they investigated the case, Santi and C.J. became increasingly convinced they were defending an innocent man. Now, a horrific discovery leads Santi to reconsider everything he once believed, and all that it has cost him - love, family, and friendship.
\n
Several years after the defeat of the Codicíans in Aynila, Lunurin and Alon are fighting to solidify their alliances across the archipelago. But petty rivalries, suspicion and conflicted loyalties threaten to undermine their efforts.
\nInez has been training as a tide-touched healer with Alon, but the gentle side of Aman Sinaya's gift does not come naturally to her. When she hears a rumour that her sister Catalina is living among a group of missionaries on a nearby island, Inez embarks on a dangerous journey over the sea. Aboard a pirate ship, she meets Umali, the boat's fierce fire-tender captain. Umali has never been gentle, and she burns brighter than anyone Inez has ever known.
\nLunurin and Alon are desperate to follow Inez, but the Codícians are closing in with a powerful armada to retake Aynila. To stand any chance, Lunurin must unify the disparate factions of her forces before the festival of the eclipse, when the world's magic will be at its strongest.
\nThree goddesses stand behind them. But without human allies, even that power may not be enough to save their islands and the people they love.
\n
Maria Lunurin has been living a double life for as long as she can remember. To the world, she is Sister Maria, dutiful nun and devoted servant of Aynila's Codicían colonizers. But behind closed doors, she is a stormcaller, chosen daughter of the Aynilan goddess Anitun Tabu.
\nIn hiding not only from the Codicíans and their witch hunts, but also from the vengeful eye of her slighted goddess, Lunurin does what she can to protect her fellow Aynilans and the small family she has created in the convent: her lover Catalina, and Cat's younger sister Inez.
\nLunurin is determined to keep her head down - until one day she makes a devastating discovery, which threatens to tear her family apart. In desperation, she turns for help to Alon Dakila, heir to Aynila's most powerful family, who has been ardently in love with her for years.
\nBut this choice sets in motion a chain of events beyond her control, awakening Anitun Tabu's rage and putting everyone Lunurin loves in terrible danger. Torn between the call of Alon's magic and Catalina's jealousy, her duty to her family and to her people, Lunurin can no longer keep Anitun Tabu's fury at bay.
\nThe goddess of storms demands vengeance. And she will sweep aside anyone who stands in her way.
\n
With sharp, gorgeous prose, It Is Wood, It Is Stone takes place over the course of a year in São Paulo, Brazil, in which two women’s lives intersect.
Linda, an anxious and restless American, has moved to São Paulo, with her husband, Dennis, who has accepted a yearlong professorship. As Dennis submerges himself in his work, Linda finds herself unmoored and adrift, feeling increasingly disassociated from her own body. Linda’s unwavering and skilled maid, Marta, has more claim to Linda’s home than Linda can fathom. Marta, who is struggling to make sense of complicated history and its racial tensions, is exasperated by Linda’s instability. One day, Linda leaves home with a charismatic and beguiling artist, whom she joins on a fervent adventure that causes reverberations felt by everyone, and ultimately binds Marta and Linda in a profoundly human, and tender, way.
An exquisite debut novel by young Brazilian American author Gabriella Burnham, It Is Wood, It Is Stone is about women whose romantic and subversive entanglements reflect on class and colorism, sexuality, and complex, divisive histories.
Elise is out dancing the night before her college graduation when her younger sister Sophie calls to tell her their mom is nowhere to be found. Elise leaves on the next flight back to her childhood home, Nantucket Island, for the first time in nearly four years. When she arrives she discovers the ways in which her whip-smart little sister has had to make do without her.
\nThe sisters soon learn that police stopped their mother on her way home from work and deported her to São Paulo, Brazil. Intent on bringing her back, Elise stays and secures the same job she had in high school: monitoring endangered birds that have laid eggs on a remote beach. Meanwhile, her best friend from college, Sheba - a gregarious socialite and heir to a famed children's toy company - reveals that she has inherited her grandfather’s summer mansion on Nantucket.
\nWhat will Elise do when the new life she created in college collides with the life she left behind on the island? As she confronts the emotional and material realities that have fractured her family, she is confronted by a world in Brazil that her mother has had to leave behind, too.
\n
The year is 2041, and it's a dangerous time to be a woman driving across the United States alone. Deadly storms and uncontrollable wildfires are pummeling the country while political tensions are rising. But Kelly's on the road anyway; she desperately needs to get back to her daughter, who she left seven years ago for a cause that she's no longer sure she believes in.
\nAlmost 40 years later, another mother, Ava, and her daughter Brook are on the run as well, from the climate change relief program known as The Inside Project, where they've spent the past 22 years being treated as lab rats. When they encounter a woman from Ava’s past on the side of the highway, the three continue on in a journey that will take them into the depths of what remains of humanity out in the wilderness.
\nAt the same time, way up North, weather conditions continue to worsen and a settlement departs in search of greener pastures, leaving behind only two members, drawn together by a circumstance and a mystery they are destined to unravel together.
\nSet in the world of Gabrielle Korn's Yours for the Taking, The Shutouts tells the captivating story of those who have been shut out from Inside, their fight to survive, and an interconnectedness larger than all of them.
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The year is 2050. Ava and her girlfriend live in what's left of Brooklyn, and though they love each other, it's hard to find happiness while the effects of climate change rapidly eclipse their world. Soon, it won't be safe outside at all. The only people guaranteed survival are the ones whose applications are accepted to The Inside Project, a series of weather-safe, city-sized structures around the world.
\nJacqueline Millender is a reclusive billionaire/women’s rights advocate, and thanks to a generous donation, she’s just become the director of the Inside being built on the bones of Manhattan. Her ideas are unorthodox, yet alluring - she's built a whole brand around rethinking the very concept of empowerment.
\nShelby, a business major from a working-class family, is drawn to Jacqueline’s promises of power and impact. When she lands her dream job as Jacqueline’s personal assistant, she's instantly swept up into the glamourous world of corporatised feminism. Also drawn into Jacqueline's orbit is Olympia, who is finishing up medical school when Jacqueline recruits her to run the health department Inside.
\nThe more Olympia learns about the project, though, the more she realises there's something much larger at play. As Ava, Olympia, and Shelby start to notice the cracks in Jacqueline's system, Jacqueline tightens her grip, becoming increasingly unhinged and dangerous in what she is willing to do - and who she is willing to sacrifice - to keep her dream alive.
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Get fit, prevent disease, and future-proof your body with step-by-step strategies to build strength, reduce fatigue, and sharpen your focus at any age.
\nPacked with ground-breaking science, muscle-building exercises, informative graphics, and easy-to-follow, protein-forward recipes, The Forever Strong™ PLAYBOOK is the ultimate guide for anyone who wants to feel stronger, move better, and stay energised.
\nDiscover exactly how to think, eat, move, and recover for optimal health.
\nWith all new, innovative tactical strategies to further enhance muscle health, this guide provides a comprehensive six-week program to help you build muscle, optimize your nutrition, sleep better, and build lifelong habits with protocols customizable for everyone from beginners to advanced athletes.
\nInside, you’ll find:
\n- 60+ protein-packed, nutritious, and flavorful recipes covering breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and drinks.
\n- 100+ illustrated, at-home and gym-friendly exercises to help you build muscle, maintain mobility, and improve your balance, including an interactive guide to keep you on track.
\n- Mindset strategies to build discipline, manage stress, and stay consistent, including actionable tips to align your daily habits with your long-term goals.
\n- Science-based advice on how to improve your sleep, enhance your recovery, and support circulation with hot and cold therapies, and much more.
After years of watching patients cycle through her practice, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon noticed a pattern. While her patients struggled with a wide range of conditions, they all suffered from the same core they had too little muscle rather than too much fat.
\nWhen we think about muscle, we tend to think about strength or aesthetics, but in reality, muscle accounts for so much more than that. As the body’s largest endocrine organ, muscle actually determines everything about the trajectory of health and aging. Many of the conditions Dr. Lyon’s patients were experiencing were actually symptoms of underdeveloped or unhealthy muscle.
\nNow, Dr. Lyon offers an easy-to-follow food, fitness, and self-care program anchored in evidence and pioneering research that teaches you how to optimize muscle - no matter your age or health background. Discover how to overcome everything from obesity to autoimmune disorders and avoid diseases like Alzheimer’s, hypertension, and diabetes by following Dr. Lyon’s powerful new approach to becoming forever strong.
One day in 2004, Gardiner Harris, early for a flight, sat down at an airport bar and started talking to the woman on the bar stool beside him. She was a drug sales rep for Johnson & Johnson, and her horrific story about unethical sales practices and the devastating impact they’d had on her family fundamentally changed the nature of how Harris covered the company - and the entire pharmaceutical industry - for The New York Times. His subsequent investigations and ongoing research since that conversation led to new federal laws and ultimately to No More Tears, a blistering exposé of a trusted American institution and the largest healthcare conglomerate in the world.
\nHarris takes us light years away from the company’s image as the child-friendly “baby company” as he uncovers reams of evidence showing decades of deceitful and dangerous corporate practices that have threatened the lives of millions. He covers multiple disasters: lies and cover-ups regarding baby powder’s link to cancer; the surprising dangers of Tylenol; a criminal campaign to sell dangerous anti-psychotics to children; a popular drug for cancer patients that increases the risk of tumor growth. Deceptive marketing efforts that accelerated opioid addictions rival even those of the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma. All told, Johnson & Johnson's products have helped cause drug crises that have contributed to the deaths of as many as two million people and counting.
\nFilled with shocking, infuriating, but utterly necessary revelations, No More Tears is a landmark work of investigative journalism that lays bare the deeply rooted corruption behind the image of babies bathing with a smile.
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A thrilling exposé recounting how members of Opus Dei - a secretive, ultra-conservative Catholic sect - pushed its radical agenda within the Church and around the globe, using billions of dollars siphoned from one of the world’s largest banks.
\nFor over half a century, Banco Popular was one of the most profitable banks in the world - until one day in 2017, when the Spanish bank suddenly collapsed overnight. When investigative journalist Gareth Gore was dispatched to report on the story, he expected to find yet another case of unbridled capitalist ambition gone wrong. Instead, he uncovered decades of deception that hid one of the most brazen cases of corporate pillaging in history, perpetrated by a group of men sworn to celibacy and self-flagellation who had secretly controlled Popular and abused their positions there to help spread Opus Dei to every corner of the world.
\nDrawing on unparalleled access to bank records, insider accounts, and exclusive interviews with whistleblowers from within Opus Dei, Gore reveals how money from the bank was used to lure unsuspecting recruits - some of them only children - into a life of servitude. He also tracks the ascent of Opus Dei around the globe, exposing its role in bankrolling many right-wing causes, including the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
\nIn an era of disinformation and deep fakes, here is a real-life conspiracy which hid in plain sight for more than sixty years. Gore tells a shocking story of money and power that spans decades and continents. Documenting Opus Dei’s secret history for the first time, this thrilling work of investigative storytelling raises important questions about the dark forces that shape our society.
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When Nicola Mafalda’s scout ship comes under attack, she’s left deeply traumatised by the drastic action it takes to keep her alive. Months later, when an old flame comes to her for help, she realises she has to find a way to forgive both the ship and her former lover.
\nReckless elements are attempting to reactivate a giant machine that has lain dormant for thousands of years. To stop them, Nicola and her crew will have to put aside their differences, sneak aboard a vast alien megaship, and try to stay alive long enough to prevent galactic devastation.
The sentient warship Trouble Dog was built for violence, yet following a brutal war, she is disgusted by her role in a genocide. Stripped of her weaponry and seeking to atone, she joins the House of Reclamation, an organisation dedicated to rescuing ships in distress. When a civilian ship goes missing in a disputed system, Trouble Dog and her new crew of loners, captained by Sal Konstanz, are sent on a rescue mission.
\nMeanwhile, light years away, intelligence officer Ashton Childe is tasked with locating the poet, Ona Sudak, who was aboard the missing spaceship. What Childe doesn't know is that Sudak is not the person she appears to be. A straightforward rescue turns into something far more dangerous, as Trouble Dog, Konstanz and Childe find themselves at the centre of a conflict that could engulf the entire galaxy. If she is to save her crew, Trouble Dog is going to have to remember how to fight . . .
When archaeologist Ursula Morrow accidentally infects herself with an alien parasite, she fears she may have jeopardised her career. However, her concerns become irrelevant when Earth is destroyed, billions die, and suddenly no one needs archaeologists anymore . . .
\nTwo years later, she’s plucked from a refugee camp on a backwater world and tasked with retrieving the artifact that infected her, as it just might hold the key to humanity’s survival. With time running short, and the planet housing the weapon now situated in hostile territory, she realises she’s going to have to commit an act of desperate piracy if she’s going to achieve her objective before the enemy’s final onslaught.
\nA thrilling, page-turning journey into deep space where the fights are brutal, the relationships are complicated and the world ended years ago.
Jupiter and Saturn are gone, and a mysterious force has built a huge habitable sphere from their ashes. When criminals try to lose themselves on this new frontier, bounty hunters like Copernicus Brown and the crew of his sentient ship Jitterbug get paid to hunt them down. But when Brown rescues Amber Roth, sole survivor of a pirate attack, the Jitterbug and her crew find themselves the target of powerful political factions who want control of the data chip hidden in Roth's stomach.
\nAnd all the while, something vast and ancient creeps towards them from the depths of space . . .
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Low on fuel and hunted by the Fleet of Knives, the sentient warship Trouble Dog follows a series of clues that lead her to the Intrusion--an area of space where reality itself becomes unstable. But with human civilisation crumbling, what difference can one battered old ship have against an invincible armada?
\nMeanwhile, Cordelia Pa and her step-brother eke out their existence salvaging artefacts from an alien city. But when Cordelia starts hearing the city's song in her head, strange things start happening around her. What extraordinary affinity does she have for this abandoned technology, and how can it possibly help the Trouble Dog?
When his brother disappears into a bizarre gateway on a London Underground escalator, failed artist Ed Rico and his brother's wife Alice have to put aside their feelings for each other to go and find him. Their quest through the 'arches' will send them hurtling through time, to new and terrifying alien worlds.
\nFour hundred years in the future, Katherine Abdulov must travel to a remote planet in order to regain the trust of her influential family. The only person standing in her way is her former lover, Victor Luciano, the ruthless employee of a rival trading firm.
\nHard choices lie ahead as lives and centuries clash and, in the unforgiving depths of space, an ancient evil stirs . . .
In an age where interstellar travel is dangerous and unpredictable, and no-one knows exactly where they’ll end up, Avril Bradley is a Communications officer onboard a ship sent to re-contact as many of these lost souls as possible.
\nBut a mysterious explosion strands her in a world of political intrigue, espionage and subterfuge; a world of retired cops, digital ghosts and corporate assassins who fight for possession of computer data lain undisturbed for almost a century . . .
Seventy-five years from today, the human race has been cast from a dying Earth to wander the stars in a vast fleet of arks - each shaped by its inhabitants into a diverse and fascinating new environment, with its own rules and eccentricities.
\nWhen her sister disappears while responding to a mysterious alien distress call, Eryn insists on being part of the crew sent to look for her. What she discovers on Candidate-623 is both terrifying and deadly. When the threat follows her back to the fleet and people start dying, she is tasked with seeking out a legendary recluse who may just hold the key to humanity’s survival.
32 stories featuring the author's most celebrated tales alongside all new material, a thrilling experience for established fans and new readers alike.
\nWith settings ranging from the dead sands of Mars to the seedy backstreets of Amsterdam and Buenos Aires, these action-packed tales explore mind-bending ideas through the eyes of unforgettable and all-too-human characters. As their lives implode around them, will they use the moment to save their own skins, or to find a way to make up for past misdeeds?
\nWho will they save? Who would you save?
\nThis entertaining and thought-provoking collection features work drawn from Powell’s twenty-year career as a writer, including previously unpublished material alongside some of his best-loved stories.
In a small Georgia town, Nelle’s life has been carefully scripted by her creator and captor, the reclusive author Wallace Quill. Born from ink and imagination, every breath she takes is dictated by his pen. But on a star-studded Fourth of July night, she meets James - a young man with dreams as vivid as the fireworks above them - and suddenly, the unwritten becomes possible.
\nAs Nelle and James fall deeply in love, they embark on a breathtaking journey across Europe, each new experience a defiant stroke against the words that bind her. But freedom has a price. With every mile they travel, the ink in Nelle’s veins threatens to rewrite their story. In a world where every moment could be her last, Nelle and James must fight to write their own happily ever after - before the final page turns.
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In the idyllic coastal town of Carraway's Point, four Aboriginal boys grew up together on Chopin Drive, carefree and close. But they drifted apart in high school, and everything changed forever the night Brandon was killed by a white cop.
\nNow racial tension is brewing, and each boy must wrestle with grief and their own complicated lives.
\nKallum has lost his sport scholarship and must return from Sydney.
\nJordy contends with family responsibilities and a closeted boyfriend.
\nDylan was the only witness to Brandon's death, and he must testify in court.
\nStruggling to contain their emotions and process the murder of their friend, Kallum, Jordy and Dylan must navigate explosive events in a way that opens up a future they can't yet see.
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When private eye Ivan Monk takes on a case in a housing project in South Los Angeles, he finds himself facing off with corrupt police and gang members - and indicted for murder.
\nHeat is building in the Rancho Tajuata Housing Projects - and not just because it's summer in L.A. When a Mexican family is killed by a firebombing, local rage threatens to grow out of control. The pressure is on to solve this case quickly to help deescalate the tense situation.
\nAt the request of the tenant's security force, P.I. Ivan Monk is called in to find the killer. To track the murderer down, Monk must delve into a tangled history leading all the way back to the 1965 Watts riots - a hunt that reveals layers of buried racism and corruption.
\nMonk sorts through the complexities of gang conflicts and governmental kickbacks, only to find himself at odds with the police, disillusioned by his mentor and, after a fierce struggle with some gang members, under indictment for murder. Monk must race to clear his name before time runs out, and a bad night falls on the Rancho Tajuata Projects, this time for good . . .
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Long ago, Marshall Spears was a hero of the ballpark. In a time when baseball - and the nation - was segregated, he played in the vaunted Negro Leagues. Decades later, Old Man Spears is living out his days as a fixture in a barbershop in South Central.
\nOne afternoon, PI Ivan Monk - a shop regular - learns that Spears’s former teammate was Kennesaw Riles. From family lore, Monk knows Riles is his cousin who was ostracized for the damning testimony he gave during a controversial murder trial in the ’60s - testimony that put a firebrand civil rights leader behind bars. Before Monk can hear more, Old Man Spears drops dead while listening to a ballgame on the radio. Even stranger, the long missing Riles shows up at the Old Man’s funeral services, and dies soon after.
\nMonk knows the timing is not a coincidence. He follows the mystery to the Mississippi Delta. There, he unravels the truth behind the murder of two civil rights era activists. Eventually Monk zeroes in on a group of shadowy Mississippi businessmen-turned-philanthropists who may not have reformed their ways as they claim. Far from Los Angeles, the tenacious private eye confronts his own family history as well as a brand of hatred thought to have died with Jim Crow.
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Black private eye Ivan Monk’s search for a connection between three Black men murdered in Los Angeles leads to the unraveling of a white supremacist conspiracy that spans the West Coast.
\nRobert “Scatterboy” Williams is a small-time hustler selling bogus Cartier watches in Pacific Shores, a port city south of Los Angeles. One day, he’s gunned down in the street, seemingly at random. Then drug dealer Ronny Aaron is shot and killed leaving a liquor store. Shortly thereafter, college student Jimmy Henderson is rendered comatose after two bullets to his body. The three victims have nothing in common save the neighborhood where they were shot - and the color of their skin.
\nThe police categorise Scatterboy’s murder as business as usual. But his girlfriend convinces private eye Ivan Monk to find the killer. What looks like three unrelated shootings of Black men in Southern California will put Monk on a tortuous trail unraveling a larger nefarious plan: the rise of an extremist demagogue.
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In 1992, Los Angeles burned. In the aftermath of the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots, a ground-breaking ceremony at the infamous intersection of Florence and Normandie unearths the body of a Korean shop owner.
\nBlack private eye Ivan Monk searches for the killer - many suspect the motives for the murder were racial. But then another body turns up, and while the FBI and the Rolling Daltons - the largest gang in the city - dog Monk’s trail, Monk begins to question just how many people will be involved, and how many will die before he can find the truth.
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Myopic, narcissistic, hilariously self-deluded and divorced from the real world as most of us know it, hedge fund manager Barry Cohen oversees $2.4 billion in assets. Deeply stressed by an SEC investigation and by his 3 year-old-son's diagnosis of autism, he flees New York on a Greyhound bus in search of a simpler, more romantic life with his old college sweetheart, whom he hasn't seen or spoken to in years.
\nMeanwhile, reeling from the fight that caused Barry's departure, his super-smart wife Seema, a driven first-generation American who craved a picture-perfect life with all the accoutrements of a huge bank account, has her own demons to face. How these two imperfect characters navigate the Shteyngartian chaos of their own making is the heart of this biting, brilliant, emotionally resonant novel very much of our times.
It's March 2020 and a calamity is unfolding. A group of friends and friends-of-friends gathers in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months new friendships and romances will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaulate whom they love and what matters most.
\nThe unlikely cast of characters include: a Russian-born novelist; his Russian-born psychiatrist wife; their precocious child obsessed with K-pop; a struggling Indian American writer; a wildly successful Korean American app developer; a global dandy with three passports; a young flame-thrower of an essayist, originally from the Carolinas; and a movie star, The Actor, whose arrival upsets the equilibrium of this chosen family.
In a very near future - oh, let’s say next Tuesday - a functionally illiterate America is about to collapse. But don’t that tell that to poor Lenny Abramov, the thirty-nine-year-old son of an angry Russian immigrant janitor, proud author of what may well be the world’s last diary, and less-proud owner of a bald spot shaped like the great state of Ohio.
\nDespite his job at an outfit called Post-Human Services, which attempts to provide immortality for its super-rich clientele, death is clearly stalking this cholesterol-rich morsel of a man. And why shouldn’t it? Lenny’s from a different century - he totally loves books (or “printed, bound media artifacts,” as they’re now known), even though most of his peers find them smelly and annoying.
\nBut even more than books, Lenny loves Eunice Park, an impossibly cute and impossibly cruel twenty-four-year-old Korean American woman who just graduated from Elderbird College with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness.
\nAfter meeting Lenny on an extended Roman holiday, blistering Eunice puts that Assertiveness minor to work, teaching our “ancient dork” effective new ways to brush his teeth and making him buy a cottony nonflammable wardrobe.
\nBut America proves less flame-resistant than Lenny’s new threads. The country is crushed by a credit crisis, riots break out in New York’s Central Park, the city’s streets are lined with National Guard tanks on every corner, the dollar is so over, and our patient Chinese creditors may just be ready to foreclose on the whole mess.
\nUndeterred, Lenny vows to love both Eunice and his homeland. He’s going to convince his fickle new love that in a time without standards or stability, in a world where single people can determine a dating prospect’s “hotness” and “sustainability” with the click of a button, in a society where the privileged may live forever but the unfortunate will die all too soon, there is still value in being a real human being.
The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love one another deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds.
\nThere's Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of twenty-first-century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who's barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage provide him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, the young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean, and wholly original.
\nObservant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in life: to make a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love's survival in this great, mad, imploding world.
\nBoth biting and deeply moving, Vera, or Faith is a boldly imagined story of family and country told through the clear and tender eyes of a child.
One spring afternoon after school, Amber arrives home on her bike. It’s just another perfectly normal day. But when Amber’s mom sees her, she screams.
\nBecause Amber died seven years ago, hit by a car while on the very same bicycle she’s inexplicably riding now.
\nThis return doesn’t only impact Amber. Her sister, Melissa, now seven years older, must be a new kind of sibling to Amber. Amber’s estranged parents are battling over her. And the changes ripple farther and farther Amber’s friends, boyfriend, and even people she met only once have been deeply affected by her life and death. In the midst of everyone’s turmoil, Amber is struggling with herself. What kind of person was she? How and why was she given this second chance?
\nThis magnificent tour de force by acclaimed author Gayle Forman brilliantly explores the porous veil between life and death, examines the impact that one person can have on the world, and celebrates life in all its beautiful complexity.
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Around the time that Freya loses her voice while recording her debut album, Harun is making plans to run away from everyone he has ever loved, and Nathaniel is arriving in New York City with a backpack, a desperate plan, and nothing left to lose.
\nWhen a fateful accident draws these three strangers together, their secrets start to unravel as they begin to understand that the way out of their own loss might just lie in helping the others out of theirs.
In a single moment, everything changes.
\nSeventeen-year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall riding along the snow-wet Oregon road with her family. Then, in a blink, she finds herself watching as her own damaged body is taken from the wreck . . .
A sophisticated, layered, and heart-achingly beautiful story about the power of family and friends, the choices we all make, and the ultimate choice Mia commands.
When sheltered American good girl Allyson \"LuLu\" Healey first meets laid-back Dutch actor Willem De Ruiter at an underground performance of Twelfth Night in England, there’s an undeniable spark.
\nAfter just one day together, that spark bursts into a flame, or so it seems to Allyson, until the following morning, when she wakes up after a whirlwind day in Paris to discover that Willem has left. Over the next year, Allyson embarks on a journey to come to terms with the narrow confines of her life, and through Shakespeare, travel, and a quest for her almost-true-love, to break free of those confines.
After spending one life-changing day in Paris with laid-back Dutch actor Willem De Ruiter, sheltered American good girl Allyson “Lulu” Healey discovered her new lover had disappeared without a trace.
\nJust One Day followed Allyson’s quest to reunite with Willem.
\nJust One Year chronicled the pair’s year apart from Willem’s perspective.
\nNow, back together at last, this delectable e-novella reveals the couple’s final chapter.
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When he opens his eyes, Willem doesn’t know where in the world he is - Prague or Dubrovnik or back in Amsterdam. All he knows is that he is once again alone, and that he needs to find a girl named Lulu. They shared one magical day in Paris, and something about that day that girl - makes Willem wonder if they aren’t fated to be together. He travels all over the world, from Mexico to India, hoping to reconnect with her. But as months go by and Lulu remains elusive, Willem starts to question if the hand of fate is as strong as he’d thought . . .
\nThe romantic, emotional companion to Just One Day, this is a story of the choices we make and the accidents that happen - and the happiness we can find when the two intersect.
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For every woman who has ever fantasized about driving past her exit on the highway instead of going home to make dinner, for every woman who has ever dreamed of boarding a train to a place where no one needs constant attention--meet Maribeth Klein. A harried working mother who's so busy taking care of her husband and twins, she doesn't even realize she's had a heart attack.
Afterward, surprised to discover that her recuperation seems to be an imposition on those who rely on her, Maribeth does the unthinkable: She packs a bag and leaves. But, as is so often the case, once we get to where we're going, we see our lives from a different perspective. Far from the demands of family and career and with the help of liberating new friendships, Maribeth is finally able to own up to secrets she has been keeping from those she loves and from herself.
With big-hearted characters who stumble and trip, grow and forgive, Leave Me is about facing our fears.
To say Alex has had it rough is an understatement. His father’s gone, his mother is struggling with mental health issues, and he’s now living with an aunt and uncle who are less than excited to have him. Almost everyone treats him as though he doesn’t matter at all, like he’s nothing. So when a kid at school actually tells him he’s nothing, Alex snaps, and gets violent. Fortunately, his social worker pulls some strings and gets him a job at a nursing home for the summer rather than being sent to juvie.
\nThere, he meets Josey, the 107-year-old Holocaust survivor who stopped bothering to talk years ago, and Maya-Jade, the granddaughter of one of the residents with an overblown sense of importance. Unlike Alex, Maya-Jade believes that people care about what she thinks, and that she can make a difference. And when Alex and Josey form an unlikely bond, with Josey confiding in him, Alex starts to believe he can make a difference - a good difference - in the world. If he can truly feel he matters, Alex may be able to finally rise to the occasion of his own life.
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'I got this whole-body feeling . . . it was like a message from future me to present me, telling me that in some way we weren’t just bound to happen, that we had, in some sense, already happened. It felt . . . inevitable.'
\nSo far, the inevitable hasn’t worked out so well for Aaron Stein.
\nWhile his friends have gone to college and moved on with their lives, Aaron’s been left behind in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State, running a failing bookshop with his dad, Ira. What he needs is a lucky break, the good kind of inevitable.
\nAnd then he meets Hannah. Incredible Hannah - magical, musical, brave and clever. Could she be the answer? And could they - their relationship, their meeting - possibly be the inevitable Aaron’s been waiting for?
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It's been three years since the devastating accident . . . three years since Mia walked out of Adam's life forever.
Now living on opposite coasts, Mia is Juilliard's rising star and Adam is LA tabloid fodder, thanks to his new rock star status and celebrity girlfriend. When Adam gets stuck in New York by himself, chance brings the couple together again, for one last night. As they explore the city that has become Mia's home, Adam and Mia revisit the past and open their hearts to the future-and each other.
Told from Adam's point of view in the spare, lyrical prose that defined If I Stay, Where She Went explores the devastation of grief, the promise of new hope, and the flame of rekindled romance.
As a young femme in 1990s Manila, Geena Rocero heard, “Bakla, bakla!,” a taunt aimed at her feminine sway, whenever she left the tiny universe of her eskinita. Eventually, she found her place in trans pageants, the Philippines’ informal national sport. When her competitors mocked her as a “horse Barbie” due to her statuesque physique, tumbling hair, long neck, and dark skin, she leaned into the epithet. By seventeen, she was the Philippines’ highest-earning trans pageant queen.
\nA year later, Geena moved to the United States where she could change her name and gender marker on her documents. But legal recognition didn’t mean safety. In order to survive, Geena went stealth and hid her trans identity, gaining one type of freedom at the expense of another. For a while, it worked. She became an in-demand model. But as her star rose, her sense of self eroded. She craved acceptance as her authentic self yet had to remain vigilant in order to protect her dream career. The high-stakes double life finally forced Geena to decide herself if she wanted to reclaim the power of Horse Barbie once and for all: radiant, head held high, and unabashedly herself.
\nA dazzling testimony from an icon who sits at the center of transgender history and activism, Horse Barbie is a celebratory and universal story of survival, love, and pure joy.
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At seventeen years old, Tenley “Ten” Lockwood had to make the ultimate choice - where to live after she died. Loyalty to her selected realm has not wavered . . . until now. She is out of time. Sacrifices must be made, and a terrible price must be paid. But is she too late?
\nAs the Everlife descends into darkness, a single truth becomes clear: Troika and Myriad must unite - or perish. In order to bring sworn enemies together, Ten must enter forbidden territory . . . and destroy the powerful Prince of Ravens. But there’s only one way inside - bonding with Killian Flynn, a deadly rival who sets her blood aflame.
\nWhen nothing goes as planned and betrayal leads to the edge of utter defeat, Ten and Killian will have to rebuild trust from the ashes of their hearts. Victory seems impossible, the odds stacked against them. In the end, how far will they be willing to go for the sake of their realms and the Everlife?
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Tenley “Ten” Lockwood has spent the past thirteen months locked inside the Prynne Asylum. She’s earned her rep as the craziest of crazies, but that doesn’t stop the torture. Ten can leave, but only if she allows her parents to choose where she’ll live - after she dies.
\nThere is an eternal truth most of the world has come to accept: Firstlife is merely a dress rehearsal, and real life begins after death.
\nIn the Everlife, two realms are in power: Troika and Myriad, longtime enemies and deadly rivals. Both will do anything to recruit Ten, including sending their top Laborers to lure her to their side. Soon, Ten finds herself on the run, caught in a wild tug-of-war between the boy she’s falling for and the realm she wants to support. Who will she choose? Can she stay alive long enough to make a decision?
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When twenty-year-old college dropout Moriah Shaker runs into an empty chapel to escape an unexpected storm, she’s catapulted into another world Wizard of Oz style. Unfortunately, she winds up in the treacherous realm of Hakeldama, a fantastical but brutal land where justice is twisted and innocents pay for crimes committed by the elites - and she’s now marked for death.
\nOn the run and determined to get home, Moriah heads for the City of Lux, where a rumored portal between worlds exists. At her side are the most unlikely of companions. A scrappy hustler, a cranky ex-mayor, and a growing beast-dog. But the one who fascinates her most is Jasher, a heartless executioner who hides a terrible secret. Together, they’ll battle bounty hunters, lethal poppies, and winged monsters. Though Moriah doesn’t yet know it, there’s nothing more dangerous than their forbidden attraction.
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With her last living breath, Tenley 'Ten' Lockwood made her choice and picked her realm in the Everlife. Now, as the war between Troika and Myriad rages, she must face the consequences.
\nBecause Ten possesses a rare supernatural ability to absorb and share light, the Powers That Be have the highest expectations for her future - and the enemy wants her neutralized. Fighting to save her Secondlife, she must learn about her realm from the ground up while launching her first mission: convincing a select group of humans to join her side before they die. No pressure, right?
\nBut Ten's competition is Killian, the boy she can't forget - the one who gave up everything for her happiness. He has only one shot at redemption: beating Ten at a game she's never even played. As their throw-downs heat up, so do their undeniable feelings, and soon, Ten will have to make another choice. Love . . . or victory.
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Joe is a golf reporter. He’s missed more Father’s Days than he cares to count because that’s when he has to cover the US Open. But his son Buddy has counted every single one.
\nJoe and Buddy’s relationship is fractured at best. Then one day at a garage sale Buddy finds a woefully obsolete set of golf clubs that supposedly belonged to Jack Nicklaus and decides to give them to his father as an olive branch. When Joe takes the clubs out on a whim, he discovers something unbelievable: he’s hitting 400 yards. No one hits the ball that far, not Tiger, not Nicklaus.
\nMax “Hard Way” Mitchell knows golf perhaps better than anyone. He used to be one of the best caddies on the PGA Tour. But he was run out of town after sleeping with a golf pro’s wife. Now he’s the owner of a run-down driving range, his glory days slipping away.
\nWhen Joe is laid-off, and Hardway realises that with this magical set of golf clubs he is better than anyone on the tour, he convinces Joe to do the seemingly impossible - win the Masters as an amateur. And to do this they'll need each other. Told with a specificity that only comes from years of covering the sport, Gene Wojciechowski’s fiction debut, All Carry, is a father/son/unlikely friendship/comeback story that will no doubt be a new classic.
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1794. Eleanor, former English maid, is a member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel - and now a promising mage. With a vampire plot thwarted in Paris, the League’s next daring rescue is that of the Pimpernel’s beloved wife, Lady Marguerite, imprisoned in her London townhouse on unjust charges of treason and espionage.
\nBut Lady Marguerite’s captivity is only the first threat from the League's vampiric enemy. With the King known to be ill, possibly mad, England is not as it should be. Vampires conspire to take control over the whole country whilst challenging Eleanor and the League at every turn.
\nBut then, using her growing magical powers, Eleanor uncovers a devastating, centuries-old secret. It is one so steeped in blood, that it will change not only England, but the entire vampire world, forever . . .
A professional spy for a mysterious Library which harvests fiction from different realities, Irene faces a series of assassination attempts that threaten to destroy her and everything she has worked for.
Irene is teaching her new assistant the fundamentals of a Librarian's job, and finding that training a young Fae is more difficult than she expected. But when they both narrowly avoid getting killed in an assassination attempt, she decides that learning by doing is the only option they have left - especially when the assassins keep coming for them, and for Irene's other friends as well . . .
In order to protect themselves, Irene and her friends must do what they do best: search for information to defeat the overwhelming threat they face and identify their unseen enemy. To do that, Irene will have to delve deeper into her own history than she ever has before, face an ancient foe, and uncover secrets that will change her life and the course of the Library forever.
Revolutionary France is full of blood and bite as vampires plot for power.
\nEleanor, once a lowly English maid, is now a member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, know for their daring deeds and recusing aristocrat vampires from the guillotine.
\nThis time, Eleanor and the League are investigating the disappearance of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, the notorious French statesman and diplomat. But they soon uncover two vampire parties feuding for power and learn Talleyrand's disppearance is part of a bigger, more dangerous scheme that will throw France into bloody chaos.
Irene must be at the top of her game or she'll be off the case - permanently . . .
Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, which harvests fiction from different realities. And along with her enigmatic assistant Kai, she's posted to an alternative London. Their mission - to retrieve a dangerous book. But when they arrive, it's already been stolen. London's underground factions seem prepared to fight to the very death to find her book.
Adding to the jeopardy, this world is chaos-infested - the laws of nature bent to allow supernatural creatures and unpredictable magic. Irene's new assistant is also hiding secrets of his own.
Soon, she's up to her eyebrows in a heady mix of danger, clues and secret societies. Yet failure is not an option - the nature of reality itself is at stake.
A covert mission
A royal demand
And a race against time
The fourth title in Genevieve Cogman's witty and wonderful The Invisible Library series, The Lost Plot is an action-packed literary adventure.
In a 1930s-esque Chicago, Prohibition is in force, fedoras, flapper dresses and tommy guns are in fashion, and intrigue is afoot. Intrepid Librarians Irene and Kai find themselves caught in the middle of a dragon vs dragon contest. It seems a young librarian has become tangled in this conflict, and if they can't extricate him there could be serious political repercussions for the mysterious Library. And, as the balance of power across mighty factions hangs in the balance, this could even trigger war.
Irene and Kai find themselves trapped in a race against time (and dragons) to procure a rare book. They'll face gangsters, blackmail and fiendish security systems. And if this doesn't end well, it could have dire consequences for Irene's job. And, incidentally, for her life . . .
\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRevolutionary France is no place to be, especially for aristocrat vampires facing the guillotine. But the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel are determined to rescue them. And they have an ace up their sleeve, Eleanor, a lowly maid from an English estate with a striking resemblance to French royalty.
\nFor Eleanor, the League and their legendary deeds are little more than rumour - until she’s drawn into their most dangerous plot yet. The mission? Travel to France in disguise, impersonate Queen Marie Antoinette and rescue the royal family. If they succeed, it’ll be the heist of the century.
\nBut there’s more to fear than ardent Revolutionaries. For Eleanor stumbles across a centuries-old war between vampires and their fiercest enemy. And they’re out for blood . . .
A Librarian’s work is never done, and once Irene has a quick rest after their latest adventure, she is summoned to the Library. The world where she grew up is in danger of veering deep into chaos, and she needs to obtain a particular book to stop this from happening. No copies of the book are available in the Library, so her only choice is to contact a mysterious Fae information broker and trader of rare objects: Mr. Nemo.
Irene and Kai make their way to Mr. Nemo’s remote Caribbean island and are invited to dinner, which includes unlikely company. Mr. Nemo has an offer for everyone there: he wants them to steal a specific painting from a specific world. He swears that he will give each of them an item from his collection if they bring him the painting within the week.
Everyone takes the deal. But to get their reward, they will have to form a team, including a dragon techie, a Fae thief, a gambler, a driver, and the muscle. Their goal? The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, in a early twenty-first century world, where their toughest challenge might be each other.
Return to the world of the Invisible Library for Irene's most perilous mission yet . . .
\nLibrarian Spy Irene is heading into danger. Not for the first time, but could this be her last? She’s tasked with a terrifyingly dangerous solo mission to eliminate an old enemy, which must be kept secret at all costs. But even more troubling news emerges. Multiple worlds are disappearing – and the Library may have something to do with it.
\nDetermined to uncover the truth behind the vanished worlds, Irene and her friends must descend into the unplumbed depths of the Library. And what they find will change everything they know. This may be Irene’s most dangerous assignment of her hazardous career.
As a witch in the walled city of Chernograd, Kosara has plenty of practice taming rusalkas, fighting kikimoras, and brewing lycanthrope repellent. There’s only one monster Kosara can’t defeat: her ex the Zmey, known as the Tsar of Monsters. She’s defied him one too many times, and now he’s hunting her. Betrayed to him by someone close to her, Kosara’s only hope is to trade her shadow - the source of her powers - for illegal passage across the Wall to Belograd, where monsters can’t follow.
\nLife in Belograd should be sweet, but Kosara soon develops a fast-acting version of the deadly wasting sickness that stalks shadowless witches - and only reclaiming her magic can cure her. To trace her shadow, she’ll have to team up with the suspiciously honorable detective investigating the death of the smuggler who brought her across the Wall.
\nEven worse than working with the cops is that all the clues point in a single direction: one of the Zmey’s monsters has found a crack in the Wall, and Kosara’s magic is now in the Zmey’s hands.
\nThe clock is ticking, the hunt is on, and Kosara’s priorities should be clear - but is she the hunter or the hunted? And in a city where everyone is out for themselves, who can Kosara trust to assist her in outwitting the man - the Monster - she’s never been able to escape alone?
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With her magic reclaimed and her role in the community of Chernograd restored, Kosara’s life should finally be back to normal - but, of course, things can’t possibly be that simple.
\nShe is now in possession of twelve witch’s shadows, which belonged to a series of young, magically powerful women lured into the deadly marriage with the Zmey that Kosara only narrowly escaped as a young woman. Holding them may grant her unprecedented power, but that doesn’t mean they’re always willing to do her bidding.
\nAcross the wall in Belograd, Asen chases the only lead on his latest case, one of several unsolved witch murders, even against the orders of his direct superior and the mayor. He’s convinced the smuggling kingpin Konstantin Karaivanov is behind them, and follows his trail to an underground monster auction - which leads him right back to Chernograd.
\nThere, sinister events follow one after snow falls in midsummer, a witch with two shadows is found dead, monsters that should only appear during the Foul Days have been sighted, and cracks appear in the sky that only Kosara seems able to see. The barrier between worlds thins . . . and Kosara can’t help but feel her actions are the cause.
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At the end of the twenty-first century, on the shores of the Indian Ocean, a minor Marxist politician’s speech is interrupted by the arrival of an iridescent, pill-shaped object. It brings him, briefly, to another world, and to a state of ecstasy he will struggle to interpret upon his return. Soon, many others will be offered the same incantatory opportunity.
\nRival states attempt to capitalise on these developments, and a cynical spy sets an elaborate psychological operation in motion. Thousands of miles away, on an agricultural commune near the Caspian Sea, a young poet spends her nights troubled by prophetic dreams. The politician, the spy, and the poet will be ineluctably drawn into one another’s orbits, as will the mysterious Bell Letterist, author of a text about “the interdimensional will to the aesthetic” - a powerful motive force that requires human solidarity in order to thrive.
\nThe Coffin of Honey is inspired equally by apocryphal stories of Alexander the Great, Bolaño-esque tales of literary vanishings, thousand-year-old Persian poems by exiled princesses, and the fever-dream conclusions of every parapolitical conspiracy theory that might just be true.
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For years, mercenary Easy Nevada risked her life finding ancient artefacts for a mysterious benefactor. Now she’s after one last score, the biggest of all: a relic so cursed that it was buried with Cleopatra in a secret tomb over two thousand years ago. But to uncover it, she’ll need help.
By-the-book Candice Cushing only ever wanted to conduct archaeology the traditional way. Now the find of a lifetime is beckoning from the middle of the Sahara, but she’ll have to throw her lot in with Easy Nevada to get to it. The problem is, she doesn’t know if she even likes the fast-talking rogue, let alone trusts her. What’s more dangerous: the desert or her new partner?
Searing heat and burning chemistry mix with the danger of a vengeful zealot in this rollicking adventure. Working together, Easy and Candice might just be able to beat the odds. And maybe they’ll survive long enough to realize they want more from each other than just buried treasure.
Easy Nevada is a fortune hunter with an eye on a pyramid buried for two thousand years. She’ll do anything to get her hands on its untold riches, if she can just get past the deadly traps that protect them. Candice Cushing is an archaeologist born in Sudan and raised in Britain, who is drawn toward the mysterious pyramid that she sees as a piece of her heritage.
\nFarouq Al-Jabbar doesn’t see it as either history or treasure. The zealot has come to destroy anything that smells of blasphemy, and anyone who gets in his way. In this wild adventure, as the stakes ratchet up amid the burning, shifting sands, the women fighting for their lives start to wonder if they’re really so different after all . . . and if that cursed pyramid has been buried for a reason.
In college, Elizabeth Smile shared a magical tryst with her roommate, Michelle Harlow. She had no idea the night would leave Elizabeth pining after her for the next ten years. Now Michelle is back with a strange offer: Will she pretend to be Michelle’s lesbian lover to beat Michelle’s cheating husband?
\nOf course, it’s a terrible idea. And it would mean leaving the New York nightlife behind and spending Christmas with Michelle’s family in Ohio - an overly accepting father, a pill-popping brother, and a suspicious sister who seems to have her own agenda with Elizabeth.
\nWorst of all, it’ll mean facing up to some old feelings she’d rather not revisit. But, really, she can handle all that. How hard can it be?
A Mafia lesbian BDSM romance about desiring the things you can never have.
\nGracie Lynch has no job, no home, no money, and a mentally ill younger brother to keep safe. All she has left is her fierce will to survive . . . and a strange, lucrative offer from a mysterious woman for exclusive rights to Gracie's body.
\nIcy Mafia lawyer Evelyn Voss wants her new toy to feel pleasures she's never imagined. To live out her fantasies. And to never, ever ask what's behind the mask that Evelyn always wears.
\nThe one thing Evelyn doesn't ask for is her heart. But that's the one thing Gracie isn't sure she can keep.
Wendy Cedar is an employee at Savin Aerospace with a massive crush on her boss, recent divorcee, Janet Lace. After Janet accidentally stumbles upon Wendy’s email about a sex dream she’s been having, she decides to see if the reality can live up to the fantasy.
\nBut when the relationship starts to be more than a kinky office romance, the two have to decide if they can make it as a couple or if they were better off as boss and employee.
Sarah Keys is having the worst year. She’s dropped out of college, hasn’t dealt with her father’s death, and now she’s back living with her mother in her old hometown. A chance encounter with reclusive millionaire Nina Rose leads to a job looking after the mysterious woman’s garden on the edge of town.
\nThe longer Sarah spends with the curious Nina, tending to her rich earth and blooms, the deeper her connection becomes with her. Sarah slowly begins to get over her father, think about her future, and is drawn to digging deeper into her beautiful employer’s world.
Alone. Betrayed. Left for dead. The danger couldn’t be higher in this gripping, final chapter in The Cushing–Nevada Chronicles adventure romance, with kick-ass lesbians fighting for their lives . . . and each other.
For years, rogue archaeologist Easy Nevada has been hunting artifacts of immense power for her billionaire employer. But when the key to unlocking their secrets turns out to be her partner, Candice Cushing, Easy’s boss double-crosses them.
Candice is kidnapped and Easy is left stranded in the middle of the Sahara Desert with no supplies, no hope of rescue, and an army of mercenaries between her and Candice.
They don’t stand a chance. Then again, they could always try things the Easy way.
All of Aubrey McFadden’s college friends are tying the knot, and she’s been invited to five weddings. Five. In one year. Who wouldn’t want to celebrate so much love and romance?
\nAubrey, that’s who.
\nShe’s going anyway, of course. It’s not her friends’ fault her college boyfriend left Aubrey on the day of their wedding. Lies, selfishness, unhappy surprises . . . no, thank you. And you know who’s responsible for her permanently single status?
\nMonica, that’s who.
\nTheir friends all say Monica Wallace had a thing for Aubrey back then - not that Aubrey cares one little bit why that still makes her heart race. Monica convinced her best friend Cody that marrying Aubrey, settling down, and locking himself into a 9-to-5 at the expense of his dreams would be a huge mistake. Cody called off the wedding, and Aubrey has never forgiven them.
\nAubrey McFadden is never getting married, but she does have five weddings to attend, and she’ll be avoiding Monica at every single one.
London Granger gave up her modeling career for investigative journalism only to discover no one would hire her to write anything important. The only way out of her dead-end job? Investigate something the internet will actually read. That’s how her next assignment becomes “What’s it Really Like to Date a Billionaire?” Her boss hooks her up on a glitzy getaway to St. Kitts as the companion of obscenely wealthy Miranda Northbrooke. Miranda’s only when they inevitably run into the ex who dumped her, London must play the role of Miranda’s adoring new girlfriend.
\nTennyson Securities protects the rich and famous, and Kayla Tennyson built it from the ground up. She has more money than she can spend, but when you move in the circles she does, sorting through the fakes and finding someone honest and genuine is tough. She’d tried with Miranda Northbrooke, and it ended in disaster.
\nLondon isn’t sure what she expected of Miranda’s ex, but it certainly wasn’t icy beauty. And while Kayla would like to write London off as Miranda’s new plaything, she can’t get past how smart and funny she is. London and Kayla are perfect for one another, but if London reveals the ruse, she risks not only the opportunity of her career, but Kayla’s trust as well.
Is there anything worse than your I-don't-do-commitment ex finally getting married? Not according to Scottie Templeton. Factor in living with her grandma, her rattletrap car, and never-ending job struggles, and Scottie's stressed. When a friend suggests they take dance lessons to blow off steam, she figures why not? How was she supposed to know that the super talented, ridiculously hot dance instructor is Marisa Reyes, the woman her ex dumped for her? Or that her friend would break his foot, leaving her without a dance partner? Or that dancers without a partner get paired with the instructor?
Scottie's ready to quit, but her grandma won't let her. She has nothing to be ashamed of and the playing field is level now. So, Scottie vows to finish the lessons, even if it kills her. And if the sizzling chemistry she has with Marisa, to say nothing of the closeness of their dancing, is any indication, it just might.", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Georgia Beers - Dance with Me.jpeg", "mtime": 1767084064821.73, "size": 550436, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:20:36.357Z" }, "Georgia Beers - Girl Next Door, The": { "title": "The Girl Next Door", "author": "Georgia Beers", "description": "
Everyone deserves a happily ever after, that's why Jenna Murphy is fiercely proud of her romance-only bookstore, BookLove. With her pets by her side, she’s content in her neat life, convinced that one day she'll find her person. Jenna helps Grandma with her groceries, runs the library’s used book sale, and hands out water to the runners in the local 5K race. What's not to love?
\nSawyer Hall, a sharp-witted book blogger, has gained a reputation for her brutally honest takes. Fresh from a messy breakup, her posts have grown...snarkier than usual, and when she stumbles into Jenna's charming bookstore filled with “sappy fluff,” she doesn’t exactly hold back.
\nSawyer's suggestion that romance novels peddle unattainable dreams to the sad and lonely makes Jenna absolutely livid. But fate has a twisted sense of humor because a new neighbor is moving into the other half of Jenna’s duplex and it's Sawyer Hall, because, of course it is. And Sawyer is gorgeous. And funny. And sort of makes Jenna swoon. So annoying.
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As a kid, Adley Purcell dreamed of owning Get the Scoop ice cream shop, and now that she does, she’s worried it could go under. She’s trying to focus on her love of ice cream, but she’s edgy and stressed. And how the hell she’ll survive national dessert chain Sweet Heaven opening a store less than two blocks away, she has no idea. Life is a rocky road right now, and there’s only one cherry on the sexy business suit-clad blonde at happy hour.
\nSabrina James doesn’t stay still. Sweet Heaven takes her all over the country, opening new stores, then moving on to the next city. Smooth and simple. Until the gorgeous woman she meets at a bar who leaves her craving more turns out to own the small-town ice cream shop barely two blocks from the new Sweet Heaven location. Could life get any more complicated?
\nHave Adley and Sabrina bitten off more than they can chew, or will they swirl the salty with the sweet? In love and ice cream there’s only one When life gives you heavenly hash, eat dessert first.
Cori Stratton’s a small-town girl. She loves making candles, and her little gift shop is her pride and joy. But when the shop’s building goes up for sale, she might lose her home and everything that makes her happy. The worst timing of all? Her landlord’s daughter Elizabeth Brennan - popular, smart, and oblivious to Cori’s existence in high school - has breezed back into town.
\nLife has not gone according to plan for Elizabeth. Laid off from her job in the city, she’s forced back home to help her mom run the family’s B&B during a week-long wedding celebration…for Liz’s ex. Not wanting the groom to know the shambles her life is, she grabs the nearest person - Cori - and tells him how happy they are together.
\nLiz’s father owning Cori’s building may be the trump card she needs to keep Cori playing along. Can they strike a deal to save Cori’s store and help Liz survive the wedding? Just for the week. There’s no way this fake relationship will turn into the real deal.
Meet Lily Chambers - the hugely successful, book-tour loving, swoon-inducing romance writer at the pinnacle of her career. At least for now.
\nWhen Lily sent her last manuscript to her publisher, she had no idea it could be her last. Struggling with more than a terminal case of writer’s block, Lily has lost her passion. For writing. For romance. For life. How can she not feel like a fraud after being on her own for years?
\nHoping to shake things loose, Lily’s BFF suggests she spend some time in one of the most romantic cities in the world: Rome. If the architecture, the history, and the food doesn’t inspire her, nothing will. Or it would, if Lily was able to look away from Marina Troiani, her witty, smart, and unassumingly beautiful Italian tour guide.
\nMarina makes Lily feel something. Finally. Slowly the words start flowing. But the age-gap and continent that separates them makes starting a new chapter together impossible. What’s even worse than torpedoing your career? Falling in love only to have your own HEA just out of reach.
How it starts: Her best friend Kyle suggests Riley take a job at Poptacular, his grandmother's gourmet popcorn shop. Spending the summer mixing caramel and cheddar sounds like fun, right?
\nSpoiler alert: It’s not fun.
\nEnter Kyle’s little sister Hannah and her stubborn refusal to try any ideas that aren’t her own. Their working styles are completely different. In short, she is infuriating. And hot. Why does she have to be hot?
\nHow it’s going: Years have passed, and Riley’s no longer a victim of her teenage hormones. She’s a high-powered consultant who travels from city to city, helping struggling businesses. Distance weakens a magnetic field, and Riley doesn’t think about Hannah Kramer. Not ever.
\nSo, when Kyle calls to say Poptacular is in trouble and on the brink of closing its doors, her first thought definitely isn’t of Hannah. No, heading back to her hometown is not on her bingo card. But for Poptacular’s co-owner, popcorn is Hannah’s whole life, and Riley can’t stand to see her dream fail.
\nHow it ends: With the Great (hot and buttery) Popcorn Romance, of course.
Whisk Me Away is must-see TV. When the famous host arranges a retreat for up-and-coming pastry chefs, Regan Callahan applies. Everything she’s been working for is served up hot and delicious right under her recognition of her self-taught skills, learning from a master, there’s even been a secret prize hinted at that just might give her the means to buy her boss’s bakery when he retires. It’s not supposed to be a competition, but if it is, she’ll do anything to win.
\nAva Prescott has no intention of allowing that to happen. Not that she’s worried. Regan doesn’t have what it takes. Just like she couldn’t excel with Ava as her boss when they worked together at the high-end restaurant in New York City. Their rivalry sharp as a lemon tart, Ava’s going to win, then she’ll ditch the high-pressure kitchen and open a small restaurant where she’ll have the creative freedom to follow her instincts, and her unique desserts will blossom.
\nTheir styles are different. Their personalities are miles apart. Regan’s a gorgeous flake. Ava, a beautiful untouchable ice queen. Let the competition, and the ovens, heat up. Everyone knows the best recipes come straight from the heart.
If you want a story that will change your life, Chiron’s bookshop is where you go. For those lucky enough to grace its doors, it’s a glimpse into a world of powerful bargains and deadly ink magic.
\nFor Cassandra Fairfax, it’s a reminder of everything she lost, when Chiron kicked her out and all but shuttered the shop. Since then, she’s used her skills in less ethical ways, trading stolen books and magical readings to wealthy playboys and unscrupulous collectors.
\nThen Chiron dies under mysterious circumstances. And if Cassandra knows anything, it’s this: the bookshop must always have an owner.
\nBut she's not the only one interested. There's Lowell Sharpe, a dark-eyed, regrettably handsome bookseller she can't seem to stop bumping into; rival owners who threaten Cassandra from the shadows; and, of course, Chiron's murderer, who is still on the loose.
\nAs Cassandra tries to uncover the secrets her mentor left behind, a sinister force threatens to unravel the world of the magical bookshops entirely . . .
A young woman descends into a seductive magical underworld of power-hungry scholars, fickle gods and monsters bent on revenge to break her family's curse in this spellbinding contemporary fantasy debut.
\nFor centuries, generations of Everlys have seen their brightest and best disappear, taken as punishment for a crime no one remembers, for a purpose no one understands. Their tormentor, a woman named Penelope, never ages, never grows sick - and never forgives a debt.
\nViolet Everly was a child when her mother left on a stormy night, determined to break the curse. When Marianne never returns, Penelope issues an ultimatum: Violet has ten years to find her mother, or she will take her place. Violet is the last of the Everly line, the last to suffer. Unless she can break it first.
\nTo do so, she must descend into a seductive magical underworld of power-hungry scholars, fickle gods and monsters bent on revenge. She must also contend with Penelope’s quiet assistant, Aleksander, who she knows cannot be trusted - and yet whose knowledge of a world beyond her own is too valuable to avoid.
\nTied to a very literal deadline, Violet will travel the edges of the world to find Marianne and the key to the city of stardust, where the Everly story began.
Forbidden, passionate and all-encompassing, Margo and Richard's love affair was the stuff of legend - but, ultimately, doomed. When Richard walked out, Margo locked herself away, leaving her three daughters, Rachel, Imogen, and Sasha, to run wild.
\nYears later, charismatic Margo entertains lovers and friends in her cottage on the Isle of Wight, refusing to ever speak of Richard and her painful past. But her silence is keeping each of the Garnett girls from finding true happiness.
\nRachel is desperate to return to London but is held hostage by responsibility for Sandcove, their beloved but crumbling family home. Dreamy Imogen feels the pressure to marry her kind, considerate fiancé, even when life is taking an unexpected turn. Wild, passionate Sasha, trapped between her fractured family and controlling husband, is weighed down by a secret that could shake the family to its core.
Brothers Washington and Wesley work part-time at a restaurant as servers for kids’ birthday parties. After helping their mom out with the household expenses, they spend the extra cash on a bit of fun whenever possible, and get high on that good quality weed when it’s available. Douglas, Murilo, and Biel split an apartment, sharing everything from their joints to their chores, just a quick bus ride from the beach on Via Ápia, the main entry point and commercial avenue of the favela Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro.
\nThe lives of these five young people are far from the ease and leisure that many associate with one of Brazil’s most photogenic, well-known cities. Still, they manage, and life on the morro, the hill, is good.
\nAll of this gets upturned when, in November 2011, the UPP, Brazil’s militarized police unit, occupies Rocinha as part of the \"pacification\" efforts and the so-called war on drugs, in anticipation of the World Cup, the Olympics, and an influx of global tourism in Rio. Via Ápia is divided into three parts: the expectant anxiousness of waiting for the UPP invasion; the chaos born from their installation on the hill; and their silent withdrawal from the favela after one year.
\nTold in short bursts and marked by the charged chronology of the year and a half of the protagonists’ lives, Geovani Martins’s prodigious debut novel knits together the dramas and dreams of the favela during a peak of violence and unrest. Just like the boomboom-kat of Brazilian funk, the unbridled ambitions and the resolute friendships of his characters blare through Via Ápia, delivering a resonant counternarrative to the notion that violent interventions are the state’s only remedies to social problems. The favela retorts: Life, life is the answer.
A vacation out of the city sounds like just the ticket for Tori Hunter and Sam Kennedy. Joining their Dallas Police Department pals Casey O'Connor and Leslie Tucker in a rented RV, they set out for the New Mexico mountains - and on a collision course with a manhunt.
\nFBI agents Cameron Ross and Andrea Sullivan are tracking a deadly quarry in desolate territory. An ex-teammate from Cameron's Special-Ops days is in deep hiding, planning who-knows-what to cap off a killing spree. With a hostage at stake and time running out, Cameron reluctantly agrees to outside help from women she doesn't know . . . or trust.
\nIn the crossover that fans have been clamoring for, it's a heart-pounding race against time that challenges the courage and commitment of the exceptional women from Gerri Hill's Hunter's Way and Devil's Rock Series.
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Cassie Parker has grown used to denying her sexuality. Her father, the fire-and-brimstone Reverend Parker, has made that a neccessity. Raised in a web of secrets, sadness, and under the heavy hand of her father's righteous wrath and intolerance, Cassie turns to her art to fill the hole in her heart and erase the memory of a mother who abandoned her in childhood.
\nThen Luke Winston enters her life. Strong, mysterious, and beautiful, Luke sparks Cassie's desire, and takes her heart to places she's never known. Soon Cassie can no longer deny her attraction to women - and especially to Luke.
\nWhen Cassie's father makes an unexpected visit, the intrusion on her new life explodes as dark family secrests are revealed. Will Cassie choose a life without family . . . or a life without love?
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Madison Lansford and Shannon Fletcher met when they were ten years old. Madison—daughter of wealthy parents and Shannon, daughter of their live-in maid and cook—became fast friends, yet both knew their place in life.
There was never a doubt that they would become lovers . . . there was also never a doubt that Madison would marry and maintain her social standing in the community. Little by little, they grew apart, their love affair ending with Madison’s marriage and pregnancy.
Now, years later, Shannon returns to her old hometown to care for her ailing mother. Can they rebuild their friendship? Or will their new-found closeness bring back memories of their long-lost love?
Travel through the years with Shannon and Madison and watch their love unfold as they move from teens to young women and into adulthood.
Jacqueline Keys was ostracized from her small hometown of Pine Springs, Texas when she was seventeen, sent away because she was gay.
Fifteen years later - long after she’d hitch-hiked to Los Angeles, long after she’d worked nights to put herself through college, and long after she’d written her first best seller, No Place For Family - Jacqueline is persuaded to go back to the tiny town of Pine Springs after her father’s death.
The quick trip she’d envisioned for the funeral turns into weeks as she learns her father’s business is suddenly hers to manage. And she is also again face-to-face with the woman who, as a teen, had been Jackie’s first crush. She and Kay had been inseparable as kids, and later as teens. They find themselves falling back into their old habits, and Jackie is soon fighting the same feelings she’d had when she was seventeen.
But living behind the pine curtain, Kay is afraid of her love for Jackie, afraid of what her family will say, afraid of how the town will react. Jackie refuses to hide, refuses to crawl back into the closet, so once again, she leaves Pine Springs . . . alone.
Susan Sterling wanted nothing more than to escape her life... and her marriage. The family's secluded cabin in Kings Canyon National Park seemed the only place for her to find peace. But it took Shawn Weber coming into her life for her to find the courage to make changes.
\nThe budding friendship between the two women strengthens into an intense emotional bond, a bond that soon eclipses friendship. Despite pressure from her family to reconcile with her husband, Susan can't deny the feelings that Shawn stirs in her. Susan finds she's willing to forsake her entire family for a chance at love with Shawn.
Gillette Park, a sleepy town nestled in the Rocky Mountains, harbors a secret.
\nTwenty-three years ago, a young girl went missing. Two days later her body was found lodged beneath the footbridge over Boulder Creek. The murder shook the town but they soon found it was only the beginning. A serial killer hides among them - a serial killer who strikes twice, sometimes three times a year.
\nMason Cooper couldn’t wait to leave Gillette Park. At eighteen, she headed off to college and the bright lights of Los Angeles, thinking she’d never return home to the broken family and forgotten friendships she’d left behind. But being a cop in LA lost its charm and - after a breakup - Mason heads back to her hometown. The serial killer still haunts Gillette Park and she becomes consumed with catching him.
\nDr. Grace Jennings has what some call a gift. She “sees” things. She “hears” things. Running from that gift was useless so she’s learned to embrace it instead. Now the FBI has solicited her help in catching the serial killer.
\nNot everyone in this mountain town has embraced the idea of bringing in a psychic, including Mason’s uncle and boss, Sheriff Cooper. Mason is tasked with being the go-between and she soon finds herself with a front row seat as Dr. Jennings discovers the dark - and well hidden - secrets of Gillette Park.
\nAs Mason and Grace’s friendship grows, so does their attraction. But safety lies only with each other, as they battle the evil that lives in Gillette Park.
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Homicide detective Tori Hunter was used to doing things her way. But even after six different partners in seven years, she was not prepared for the hot-tempered Samantha Kennedy.
\nSamantha, on the other hand, was trying to juggle a new job, a demanding boyfriend, and now finds herself with an even greater challenge - being partnered with the most difficult detective in the entire squad.
\nAfter a brief terrorist scare disrupts their serial killer investigation, the two women find themselves growing closer. Sam begins to question the relationship with her longtime boyfriend, and Tori, never one to allow anyone to get too close, begins to feel her defenses slipping in Sam’s presence.
\nA serial killer and drug deals gone bad; the two detectives struggle with their feelings, trying to maintain their professional relationship while keeping their nearly flammable physical relationship in check.
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When a seventy-one-year-old man is shot dead in his home, it seems like a random act of violence. But the hundreds of photos of Detective Tori Hunter found at the scene seem to say otherwise. And when the gun that proves to be the murder weapon in the brutal murder of Tori’s family some thirty-something years earlier is found, Tori is not only facing her past, but a massive conflict of interest.
\nBooted from the case, Tori finds herself going it alone, searching for answers about the long-ago murder of her family. Tori doesn’t just want justice. She wants revenge. With the help of an FBI hacker, her partner Casey O’Connor, and her wife Sam Kennedy, Hunter may finally get the revenge she’s been searching for.
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Dallas Homicide Detectives Tori Hunter and Samantha Kennedy investigate the murder of a Catholic priest who is found naked and strangled to death. A sex scandal threatens to erupt and cover-ups are soon revealed as their only suspect is found shot dead - mere hours after the murder.
Soon details of the murder begin to surface and the secret life of a well-loved priest is exposed. Lies and deceptions unfold as the detectives work to solve the case - even as their superiors demand it be closed.
When a girl’s weekend in Port Aransas ends with a lifelong friend dead, Nina Evans’ world is shattered. As she grapples with the loss, she finds an unlikely ally in Detective Quinn Stewart - a former big-city cop now living stress-free doing beach patrol on the island.
\nBut peace and quiet is in short supply as they uncover the victim’s double life and a web of lies that puts Nina in the middle of the unraveling case. The one constant - Quinn Stewart’s unwavering commitment to finding the truth . . . and keeping her safe.
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While the investigations go on in Dallas and Baton Rouge after the disappearance of a senator’s daughter, FBI agents CJ Johnston and Paige Riley are assigned to the sleepy backwoods of East Texas for a dead-end assignment to infiltrate an all-girls school.
Random disappearances dating back fifty years and more raise red flags that point to the tiny, isolated community of Hoganville, but CJ and Paige fear there will be little distraction from the memories of their six-months ago one-night stand.
Nevertheless, they integrate themselves into the lives of the teachers and staff, but soon the odd behavior of the townspeople has them convinced something sinister lurks there. Something, perhaps, that even the residents of Hoganville don’t know about.
Denver detective Jake McCoy is trying to recover - both physically and emotionally - from the shooting death of a young boy that also left her injured. She soon finds herself rehabbing at her cabin in the mountains, soaking in the remote natural springs - which is exactly where Psychologist Nicole Westbrook vacations and soon stumbles across her . . .
When Nicole leaves the next day, the two women know little more about the other than her first name - yet they are now lovers instead of strangers.
When Jake returns to Denver, a serial murder investigation soon leads her to Nicole. As the investigation develops, their physical attraction threatens to compromise the case. Nicole finds herself struggling to remain in the professional closet that she's been hiding in for so long - a place where an out cop like Jake McCoy simply does not belong.
Once the crimes are solved, will the women go their separate ways? Or will the physical attraction and the gentle tug of love prove that opposites do attract . . .
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Danielle Stevens is Hollywood’s “next big thing” in a long line of next big things. When she goes to Dallas to prepare for a role - shadowing Detective Harper Jeremiah - she’s not only running from her fame . . . she’s also running from a stalker.
\nHarper Jeremiah wouldn’t recognise a Hollywood actress even if she bumped into one on the street. The last thing she wants to do is to get pulled from her current case to have an actress follow her around. But the perceived babysitting gig quickly turns into a protection detail as the threats against Dani escalate.
\nThe two women form a bond as secrets are shared, trust builds, and the stalker turns into a hunter. As the stalker’s pursuit becomes relentless, Harper becomes even more determined than ever to protect Dani at any cost. But could that unwavering conviction get them both killed?
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Ashleigh Pence had been the all-American high school girl: cheerleader, prom queen . . . and in love with another girl. Gina Granbury hasn’t thought about Calloway High in twenty years, but the arrival of the invitation to the class reunion brings back memories of Ashleigh and the betrayal that drove them apart.
\nWith no real choice, Ashleigh has to go the event, hoping that it’s not the one reunion that Gina decides to attend after all these years. Gina had expected to dismiss the possibility as easily as she has during all the years since, but the curiosity is suddenly strong. Her long-broken heart has never mended, but that’s no reason to go back in time . . . is it?
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Finley Knight, ex-cop turned private investigator, lives a lonely, solitary life. She uses her downtime to reflect on the past and wonders what could have been.
\nDetective Dee Woodard transferred to Corpus Christi nine years ago to put distance between herself and her ex . . . an ex she was still in love with. A murder investigation leads her to Moonlight Avenue and Finley Knight.
\nRylee Moore left the windy plains of Amarillo in her rearview mirror, hoping to start over in this city by the bay, only to find employment hard to come by. Finley Knight wasn’t hiring either, but Rylee’s begging and pleading - and not taking “no” for an answer - finally lands her a job. Not as an apprentice, as she wanted, but as the lone employee at Moonlight Avenue Investigations - receptionist.
\nWhen another murder hits close to home, Finn ignores the police directive to stay out of it and goes on a search for the killer . . . reluctantly taking Rylee along for the ride.
\nAfter a gruesome third murder, Dee is booted from the case. She joins Finn’s team . . . the chase bringing them closer and closer to a vicious drug dealer.
\nAmongst the chaos, crime, and cover-up . . . love pokes its head above the water. But can they stay alive long enough to explore it?
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When Laura Fry returns to her childhood home to care for her mother, she hopes the writer’s block that has swallowed her writing career will disappear. She doesn’t plan on turning into a “yard girl”, but her mother’s long neglected lawn beckons her to return it to the lush and colorful display it had been before her mother’s accident. Laura also doesn’t plan on making friends with the “nympho lesbian” next door - but she finds it impossible not to watch the parade of playmates that show up at her neighbor’s pool.
\nCassidy Anderson likes pool parties and female company. And while the pool remains the same, the female company changes nearly every weekend. As her mid-forties approach at an alarming speed, she’s still searching for the love of her life. When she finds herself seeking out the company of the cute tomboy next door, Cassidy starts to think that maybe she’s been looking in all the wrong places. Could it possibly be the neighbor who holds the key to her heart?
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Used to the busy playground of Winter Park, police chief Reese Daniels is shipped off to sleepy Lake City, Colorado. She takes the job of sheriff seriously, but makes it clear to one and all: this year is just a blip in her life. When it's done, she's gone.
\nForest Ranger M. Z. Morgan has lived in Lake City long enough to be considered a local. The pace, the quiet and the many friends make life there well worth the lack of dating material. A girlfriend would still be nice, and the new sheriff is easy on the eyes. It's entirely natural for Morgan and Reese to be friendly, but Reese's repeated reminders that she's not sticking around make it impossible for anything more between them.
\nThat is, until they strike a no strings bargain. Some guaranteed exchange of heat as the long winter sets in seems just what they need to pass the time. So what if it's the best sex they've ever had? It's still only temporary. They won't mistake sex for more, even if it only gets better - month after month. After month.
\nNo Strings - it seemed like a good idea at the time.
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College professor Johanna Marshall swore she would never fall in love again. She especially did not want to become involved with someone who has a reputation as an extreme womaniser . . . someone like Kelly Sambino. But on a hot summer night, Jo finds herself unable to resist Kelly.
\nWhat follows is something Jo would like very much to quickly forget. Embarassed after their night of passion, Jo hopes she will never have to see Kelly again.
\nHowever, when Fall classes begin, Jo finds herself face to face with the college's new Literature Professor, Kelly Sambino. Will Kelly's charms win Jo over? Will Jo listen to her friends or will she, in a moment of need, follow the stirrings in her heart . . .
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Detective Casey O'Connor is back, this time with new partner Leslie Tucker. They join forces with Tori Hunter (from Hill's acclaimed Hunter's Way and In the Name of the Father) to track down a killer targeting single women who live alone. But as Casey and Leslie grow closer, Leslie begins to question her sexuality. She craves more time with her partner and less is spent with the man she is supposed to marry, exposing their differences.
\nCasey turns to Tori and Sam for advice when it appears her relationship with her new partner might follow the same path as theirs. Partners takes us from the squad room to the streets, and into the private lives of four of Dallas' finest female detectives.
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The high-powered high life loses all its allure in the face of family tragedy.
\nA return to the Gulf Coast life and a chance to reconnect and reclaim what really matters leads to unexpected passion and a final chance at true love in this tumultuous summer romance from best-selling author Gerri Hill.
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Lauren Voss has a nice, quiet, orderly life running her grandmother’s Heron Bay Resort on the Texas coast. Three years removed from a break-up that left her ex - and her life - behind in San Diego, she’s adjusted to the slow pace in Rockport, seeking out neither new friends nor lovers. Vandalism at the resort’s clubhouse - and a cryptic message written in blood - brings Detective Harley Shepherd, with her obnoxious Hawaiian shirts, into her life.
\nA tragedy sent Harley Shepherd running to the sleepy fishing village of Rockport, where violent crime is rare. So different from her life as a homicide detective in a large city, she embraced the quiet and easy-going attitude of the town, determined to put her past behind her.
\nWas it luck or fate that had her catch a case of simple vandalism? The lovely Lauren Voss made no attempt to hide her dislike of both her - she reminded Lauren of her ex - and her Hawaiian shirts.
\nWas the vandalism a prank, as Lauren suspects? When a body is found floating near the resort’s pier, Harley is convinced it’s related. As the formality and animosity between them changes and a friendship forms, the women find themselves growing closer as a killer terrorizes the peaceful town they both now call home.
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Investigative reporter Marty Edwards has found her niche: cold cases. She loves pouring over old notes, hunting down long-forgotten witnesses, and digging down through the layers of an unsolved murder case. But this time, Marty is digging where someone obviously doesn't want her. And that someone might also include the Brownsville Police Department. Why else would they assign Detective Kristen Bailey to baby-sit her?
Barely surviving two attempts on her life, Marty abandons Brownsville and the case. Danger follows her as the case turns red hot. With Detective Bailey along for protection, they race along the Gulf Coast, neither knowing who, if anyone, they can trust. The hardest part is learning to trust each other before it's too late for their hearts - and their lives.
Grieving over the loss of her family and feeling like her life is unraveling, Lindsey McDermott quits her job, gets a puppy and retreats to her grandparents’ home in the Texas Hill Country. She spends her solitary days walking childhood trails and reminiscing, trying to reconcile the conflict within her as she struggles with survivor’s guilt.
\nHannah Larson, after the death of her husband, needs a change. At the suggestion of her mother-in-law - and against her better judgement - she and her nine-year-old son, Jack, move to tiny Utopia and into her husband’s grandmother’s house.
When Jack and Lindsey form an unlikely friendship, Hannah reluctantly joins them and the three spend the summer swimming and healing as laughter eventually replaces tears.
After Jack goes back to school, Hannah assumes their summer fun is over. Instead, Lindsey continues to come around and now - as they find themselves alone - Hannah realises just how close they’ve become. Soon, she finds herself struggling with her feelings as their friendship threatens to shift into something much deeper . . . something she fears she won’t be able to fight. Something she fears she won’t want to fight.
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Chris McKenna gladly escaped the crowds of Yosemite to work as the new Search and Rescue in tiny Sierra City, nestled just west of Lake Tahoe. A loner by nature, she didn’t mind the seclusion of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
\nJessie Stone, a successful but reclusive writer, is haunted by memories of her childhood and finally returns to Sierra City after sixteen years to confront her past.
\nCan the odd assortment of residents of this small mountain town bring the two of them together? Or will it be Annie Stone, a woman Chris has grown to admire and a woman Jessie still feels hatred for, that has the power to bind the two.
\nThrough lies and deception, Chris and Jessie each struggle to deny the growing attraction that could brighten both their lives . . .
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Estranged from her father and four brothers after her mother’s death, Carson Cartwright is not expecting a call from her twin. He urges a reconciliation before their father succumbs to his final illness. Though she has spent more than a decade trying to forget her family existed, the circumstances pull her back to the Montana ranch where she grew up.
Carson discovers her brothers divided over plans to change their working ranch into a guest ranch, and their consultant, Kerry Elder, doesn’t seem above using her wiles to get her way. Kerry finds that while she may have her clients right where she wants them, it’s the wayward sister that may be awakening something she has long denied.
The big Montana sky crackles with thunder and lightning as emotions twist in unbidden directions. Neither Carson nor Kerry is prepared for the wild storms of summer.
Sara Michaels is the daughter of a prominent senator who has just announced his candidacy for President of the United States - the same senator who has been receiving death threats against his family for some time.
Sara is also the owner of a self-help clinic and is hell-bent - despite the FBI's warnings - on leading a group of ten women on a two-week sojourn through the Rocky Mountains.
In an effort to protect Sara, the FBI recruits homicide detective Jaime Hutchinson to infiltrate the group and secretly provide the protection they are so certain Sara will need. After some clever maneuvering, Jaime finds herself welcomed by the ten conservative women - who soon begin playing matchmaker with Sara and Jaime.
But then Jaime is reminded of the reason that she has joined this group of women when she's forced to lead them out of the mountains and away from a sniper's bullets.
Will Sara finally figure out who is behind the death threats? And will Jaime realise the truth . . . and be able to save Sara before it's too late?
When Jaime realises the truth, she must convince the FBI to return to Colorado Springs before it's too late to save Sara.
The isolated, sleepy little village of Timber Falls - built on the bend of a swift mountain river - swells during the summer months as tourists flock to town to run the river, lured there by the Class V rapids.
\nHaley Martin used to be what the locals called a “river rat”, back during the days of her college years. Now she owns the Timber Falls Bar and Grill, drawn back to the picturesque village seven years ago after the tragic death of her wife.
\nCarter, a disgraced LAPD detective, was offered an out - a position on a team of unorthodox FBI agents. After a month of training, she is sent out on her own without a team or a partner.
\nWhen the gruesome murder of a college student - a river rat - sends the FBI agent to Timber Falls, Carter has no idea what she’s about to find there. She knows she’s looking for a serial killer that’s preying on tourists. But she has no idea that she might find some peace - and love - along the way.
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An abandoned old house in a small town northeast of Houston is the site of a second murder, eerily similar to a supposed cold case of fourteen years earlier. FBI Agents CJ Johnston and Paige Riley are dispatched to find the link between the two homicides.
The team, including Ice and Billy, find the case to be anything but cold. For CJ and Paige, juggling the investigation while trying to keep their love affair a secret proves to be as hard as uncovering long-buried clues.
The end of Daya Keane’s junior year in Escondido, Arizona, is anything but expected.
\nAnd it starts when her longtime, swoon-worthy crush, Beckett Wild, actually talks to her at a party neither of them should’ve been at.
\nBut as Daya’s best friends, Stella and B’Rad, are quick to point out, smart, cute, artistic Beckett is also the poster girl for the wildly popular youth group at Grace Redeemer, the megachurch Daya’s mom prays at and pushes her daughter to attend.
\nAmid the concert-worthy light shows, high-energy live band, and pastor preaching to love thy neighbor so long as thy neighbor “gets right with God” first, Daya struggles to find her place in a house of worship that doesn’t seem to create space for someone like her. Then again, she never planned to fall this hard for a girl like Beckett Wild.
\nNow Daya has to decide how far she’s willing to surrender to Beckett’s world of Grace Redeemer, and who she’s willing to become to be with her.
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When a series of brutal, mysterious deaths start plaguing the countryside and whispers of a beast in the mountains reach the quiet French hamlet of Mende, most people believe it’s a curse - God’s punishment for their sins.
\nBut to sixteen-year-old Joséphine and her best friend, Clara, the beast isn’t a curse. It’s an opportunity.
\nFor years, the girls of Mende have been living in a nightmare - fathers who drink, brothers who punch, homes that feel like prisons - and this is a chance to get them out.
\nUsing the creature’s attacks as cover, Joséphine and Clara set out to fake their friends’ deaths and hide them away until it’s safe to run. But escape is harder than they thought. If they can’t brave a harsh winter with little food . . . If the villagers discover what they’re doing . . . If the beast finds them first . . .
\nThose fake deaths might just become real ones.
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On a weekend morning, college roommates, Ah Li and Panda, wake up with very different reactions to the night before. They have been chased and tear-gassed in the streets of their city after joining tens of thousands of others to protest a national security law that would effectively spell the end of democracy in Hong Kong. Ah Li couldn’t get out of bed, her heart heavy with the lingering images of the police and the violence on the streets, and her worries about the future of her hometown. Panda, whose resistance is no less ardent, put on a sundress, lines her eyes and urges Ah Li to join her for brunch.
\nWhile the demonstrations rage, the routine of life also persists for Ah Li, Panda and people in their orbits. They attend family gatherings, fight with their mothers, try and fail to focus at work on Mondays, and make time for dinner dates and app hookups. But the looming political tension and anxiety for the future transform such everyday encounters. In the span of a few months, life as they know it seems to become a the comfort of air-conditioned shopping malls is disrupted by bloodshed; tear gas and sounds of rubber bullets amid neon signs strangely evoke happier memories of summer night fireworks.
\nLeung Lee Chi’s visceral novel Everyday Movement reveals existential questions that interrupt normal belonging, patriotism, the meaningfulness of an electoral democracy as well as the pampering sense of norm created by consumerism. Fiery and tender, Leung’s writing captures the heartbreak, turmoil and rebirth in bearing witness to and engaging with a shattering reality.
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How far would you go to save your own life? In this funny and heartfelt memoir, Gila Pfeffer recounts losing both parents to cancer and the choices she made to avoid the same early demise.
\nBy the time she was thirty, Gila Pfeffer was the oldest living member of her family, having lost both parents to cancer. She underwent genetic testing and, after learning that she carried the BRCA1 gene, decided to have a double mastectomy. That choice saved her life.
\nThis memoir follows her journey to break the cycle of death in her family. After becoming a reluctant expert on how to sit shiva, she grows up, falls in love, and becomes a mother, before her life is derailed yet again.
\nHer double mastectomy reveals cancer already growing in one breast. After enduring eight rounds of chemo and the removal of her ovaries, she takes her last-ever dip in the mikvah waters as a bald, menopausal, thirty-five-year-old mother of four.
\nDrenched in Gila’s dark humor, honed over years of repeatedly surviving the worst, Nearly Departed is a story about thriving against the odds, leaning in to her Jewish faith, and leaving a better legacy for her children than the one she inherited.
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Family begins with a capital eff.
\nI'm wondering how many more f∗cking ‘phases' I have to endure before my children become civilised and functioning members of society? It seems like people have been telling me ‘it's just a phase!' for the last fifteen bloody years. Not sleeping through the night is ‘just a phase.' Potty training and the associated accidents ‘is just a phase'. The tantrums of the terrible twos are ‘just a phase'. The picky eating, the back chat, the obsessions. The toddler refusals to nap, the teenage inability to leave their beds before 1pm without a rocket being put up their arse. The endless singing of Frozen songs, the dabbing, the weeks where apparently making them wear pants was akin to child torture. All ‘just phases!' When do the ‘phases' end though? WHEN?
\nMummy dreams of a quirky rural cottage with roses around the door and chatty chickens in the garden. Life, as ever, is not going quite as she planned. Paxo, Oxo and Bisto turn out to be highly rambunctious, rather than merely chatty, and the roses have jaggy thorns. Her precious moppets are now giant teenagers, and instead of wittering at her about who would win in a fight - a dragon badger or a ninja horse - they are Snapchatting the night away, stropping around the tiny cottage and communicating mainly in grunts - except when they are demanding Ellen provides taxi services in the small hours. And there is never, but never, any milk in the house. At least the one thing they can all agree on is that rescued Barry the Wolfdog may indeed be The Ugliest Dog in the World, but he is also the loveliest.
Mummy has always loved Christmas. Sure, the kids turn into demons, the dinner gets burnt to a crisp and Aunt Louisa’s general staggering inappropriateness sends Mummy reaching for the nearest maximum-strength festive tipple, but nevertheless, for her, Christmas is always special.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThis year, she wants nothing more than to perfectly fig up the pudding and sit by the fire reading aloud from A Christmas Carol to a rapt, rosy-cheeked audience. But, just like all Mummy’s best-laid plans, this year’s Festive Vision is in danger of being totally derailed by her chaotic family. There’s not much chance of any action under the mistletoe, and the kids are just not playing ball.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tCan Mummy find her silver lining after all and bring the whole family together for one moment of harmony, so they can finally proclaim ‘Verily You Are the Queen of Christmas’? Or should she get stuck into the festive spirits and just let it all go?
Mummy Ellen is on a well-earned sabbatical from work, and she has A Vision. She is going to cherish *every* moment this holiday with her Precious Moppets Peter and Jane, alongside her ride-or-die best friend, Hannah. There will be wicker baskets! Vintage bicycles! Pink sunshine wine! And not an electronic babysitter in sight.
\nBut as she strives for her picture-perfect “Ultimate Family Summer” in the sun-kissed bliss of her almost-chateau, reality crashes the party. With small feral hell-beasts to keep alive on the daily, and Hannah suddenly and mysteriously MIA, wine o’clock gets earlier and earlier as each day crawls by.
\nCan she keep The Vision alive without resorting to nightly beige ‘freezer tapas’ (aka guilt-flavoured chicken nuggets)? Or will she reach the end of her Gentle Parenting book and her tether as her dream holiday descends into a nightmare?
It is Mummy’s 39th birthday. She is staring down the barrel at a future of people asking if she wants to come to their yoga class, and book clubs, where everyone is wearing statement scarves and they are all ‘tiddly’ after a glass of Pinot Grigio.
\nBut Mummy does not want to go quietly into that good night of women with sensible haircuts who ‘live for their children’, boasting about Boy Child and Girl Child’s achievements. Instead, she clutches a large glass of wine, muttering FML over and over, and then remembers the gem of an idea she’s had…
Welcome to Mummy’s world . . .
The Boy Child Peter is connected to his iPad by an umbilical cord, The Girl Child Jane is desperate to make her fortune as an Instagram lifestyle influencer, while Daddy is constantly off on exotic business trips . . .
Mummy’s marriage is feeling the strain, her kids are running wild and the house is steadily developing a forest of mould. Only Judgy, the Proud and Noble Terrier, remains loyal as always.
Mummy has also found herself a new challenge, working for a hot new tech start-up. But not only is she worrying if, at forty-two, she could actually get up off a bean bag with dignity, she’s also somehow (accidentally) rebranded herself as a single party girl who works hard, plays hard and doesn’t have to run out when the nanny calls in sick.
Can Mummy keep up the facade while keeping her family afloat? Can she really get away with wearing ‘comfy trousers’ to work? And, more importantly, can she find the time to pour herself a large G+T?
Probably effing not.
I just wanted them to stop wittering at me, eat vegetables without complaining, let me go to the loo in peace and learn to make a decent gin and tonic.
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It genuinely never occurred to me when they were little that this would ever end -an eternity of Teletubbies and Duplo and In The Night Bastarding Garden and screaming, never an end in sight. But now there is. And despite the busybody old women who used to pop up whenever I was having a bad day and tell me I would miss these days when they were over, I don’t miss those days at all.
I have literally never stood wistfully in the supermarket and thought ‘Oh, how I wish someone was trailing behind me constantly whining ‘Mummy, can I have, Mummy can I have?’ while another precious moppet tries to climb out the trolley so they land on their head and we end up in A
Again.
Mummy has been a wife and mother for so long that she’s a little bit lost. And despite her best efforts, her precious moppets still don’t know the location of the laundry basket, the difference between being bored and being hungry, or that saying ‘I can’t find it Mummy’ is not the same as actually looking for it.
Amidst the chaos of A-Levels and driving tests, she’s doing her best to keep her family afloat, even if everybody is set on drifting off in different directions, and that one of those directions is to make yet another bloody snack. She’s feeling overwhelmed and under appreciated, and the only thing that Mummy knows for sure is that the bigger the kids, the bigger the drink.
It’s summer in rural Maine; when seventeen-year-old Darcy Prentiss isn’t raking berries with her sister, Mags, and cousin, Nell, during the day, she’s drinking and swimming with the boys in the quarry by night. She knows how to have a good time, just like anyone else, but when you’ve been designated the town slut, every move you make seems to further solidify your “trashy girl” reputation.
But the fun is what’s been keeping Darcy’s mind off the things she can’t forget: a disturbing secret she shares with Nell, the mysterious disappearance of her ex-best friend, and that hazy Fourth of July party that ended with Darcy drunk, on her back, wondering how she let it get this far.
Then someone in town anonymously nominates Darcy to be in the running for Bay Festival Princess - a cruel, almost laughable gesture that can only be the work of someone with a score to settle. Everything Darcy has been trying to keep down comes bubbling to the surface in ways she wasn’t prepared to handle . . . and isn’t sure if she can.
When a missing woman’s body is discovered in a submerged car one year after her disappearance, Shaw Connolly is called to process the scene. She finds a single print belonging to a long-dead female ex-con; could it be the key to identifying the murderer? As usual, Shaw won't stop looking until she’s dredged up more than a few hidden crimes.
\nAll the while, Shaw’s past won’t let her go. Just as the Connolly family begins to find some peace after the arrest of Shaw’s sister’s killer, Anders Jansen, Shaw receives a request from her state police contact. Anders, in prison awaiting trial, has claimed responsibility for the murders of two other young women whose cases have grown cold over the past decade. But he refuses to help the police unless Shaw agrees to act as a special consultant in the search.
\nDespite her misgivings - Anders’s love of malicious mind games is as toxic as ever - Shaw could never prolong another family’s suffering. Her agreement to assist jeopardises not only the fragile healing of her own family’s wounds, but the rebuilding of her marriage and her relationship with her youngest son, who’s colliding with some hard truths of how cruel people can be. It seems, for Shaw, closure is a long way off . . . but danger may be closer than she thinks.
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Shaw Connolly is no stranger to trauma. As a fingerprints analyst, she’s one of the first on-site for crimes, including murder scenes and a mysterious string of arsons popping up throughout the rural Maine community her department serves. But the tragedy of her little sister’s disappearance sixteen years ago has always weighed on her the most; Thea is never far from her thoughts or dreams, and Shaw knows that her obsession with finding the truth about Thea is driving her husband away and impacting her two boys. Still, she can't let it go and has even started taking disturbing calls from a man named Anders Jansen who all but claims to have committed the crime.
\nAnders taunts Shaw with hints and innuendo about what supposedly happened all those years ago. His calls go to the next level as he reveals just how much he knows about Shaw’s personal life, like her stalled career and ruined marriage. As his stalking escalates to threats on her and her family's lives, he begins to show just how dangerous he might be. Shaw is too desperate for answers to hang up now, just when she's getting close to finding proof. The only question left is what she must lose to learn the truth.
Left partially deaf by an early childhood tragedy that ended in her father’s incarceration, seventeen-year-old Owl is now a tracker, an explorer, a wildlife enthusiast, and always her freest self while hiking the steep forested acres surrounding her aunt and uncle’s maple sugar farm, now her home. Owl and her aunt and uncle never speak of the brutal attack that brought her to them.
\nOn the day she confronts a stranger trespassing among the maples, Owl’s sheltered existence is blown wide open by Cody - the magnetic, dangerous young man hired to help with the sugaring off. Cody seems to see her, the real her, in a way no one else does. Together, they challenge each other, learn to question their preconceptions, and risk a romance their families are desperate to stop.
\nBut when Owl learns that some part of Cody is compelled toward self-destruction, she must make a difficult decision about their relationship at the same time she’s grappling with her father’s recent release from prison. And when a seemingly motiveless local murder draws attention to Cody, Owl realises that Cody is in far more serious trouble than anyone knows - and it’s followed him to her mountain.
Detective Samantha Freeman is barely recovering from the devastating accident that killed her fiancé, Ravi, when she’s thrust into a chilling murder case. Valerie Turner, a wife and mother of two, is found dead in her kitchen. But as Samantha peels back the layers of Val’s seemingly ordinary life, she uncovers shocking secrets - a son given up for adoption, an illicit affair, blackmail, and stolen identities.
\nThe case takes a dark turn when DNA evidence ties the crime to a police officer and reveals long-lost twins separated at birth. As Samantha races to unravel a tangled web of betrayal, the suspect list grows - and so does the danger.
\nAmid the chaos, Samantha learns she’s pregnant, a bittersweet revelation that forces her to fight harder for justice. But with the killer closer than she imagined, can Samantha uncover the truth before more lives are lost - including her own?
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Alice's husband is missing. Has he left her for another woman, or has something more sinister happened? In a world that is becoming increasingly muddled, Alice is unsure whom she can trust. Even her daughter appears to be lying to her. How much heartache can one person endure?
\nAs strange things begin to happen, Alice struggles to separate reality from fantasy - and to make sense of a mystery surrounding Millie, her beautiful five-year-old granddaughter. Sometimes it takes a stranger to help. And sometimes you need a detective . . .
When Malcolm and Julie Grainger win twenty-two million pounds in the Euro Lottery, their future seems bright. But as news spreads, so do the shadows of Malcolm's long-buried past. Encouraged by his ailing father to read his childhood journals, Malcolm revisits a painful time - his mother's arrest for murder, schoolyard torment, and the sudden move that erased everything he once knew.
\nAmong the ghosts that resurface is Phillip Rapier, Malcolm's school bully, now grown and venomous. When Rapier threatens blackmail, the Graingers refuse to be intimidated. But soon, sinister events begin to unfold, and the past proves harder to shake than Malcolm ever imagined.
\nAs the family tries to move forward with their lives, and their newfound fortune, Julie turns to a kind stranger for comfort. But Sean Henderson is not who he seems and his connection to Malcolm's past is far more dangerous than anyone suspects . . .
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It all started with the email.
\nRachel didn't even mean to look. She loves Jack and she's pregnant with their child. She trusts him.
\nBut now she's seen it, she can't undo that moment. Or the chain of events it has set in motion.
\nWhy has Jack been lying about his past? Just what exactly is he hiding? And doesn't Rachel have a right to know the truth at any cost?
It's the day her father will be released from jail. Izzy English has every reason to feel conflicted - he's the man who gave her a childhood filled with happy memories. But he has also just served seventeen years for the murder of her mother.
\nNow, Izzy's father sends her a letter. He wants to talk, to defend himself against each piece of evidence from his trial. But should she give him the benefit of the doubt? Or is her father guilty as charged, and luring her into a trap?
It is June 21st, the longest day of the year, and new mother Camilla’s life is about to change forever. After months of maternity leave, she will drop her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. Finally. But, when she wakes, her husband Luke isn’t there, and in his place is a cryptic note.
\nThen it starts. Breaking news: there's a hostage situation developing in London. The police arrive, and tell her Luke is involved. But he isn't a hostage. Her husband - doting father, eternal optimist - is the gunman.
\nWhat she does next is crucial. Because only she knows what the note he left behind that morning says . . .
\nFamous Last Words is the story of a crime, a marriage, and more secrets than Camilla ever could have imagined.
22-year-old Olivia has been missing for one day . . . and counting. She was last seen on CCTV, entering a dead-end alley. And not coming back out again.
\nJulia, the detective heading up the search for Olivia, thinks she knows what to expect. A desperate family, a ticking clock, and long hours away from her husband and daughter. But she has no idea just how close to home this case is going to get.
\nBecause the criminal at the heart of the disappearance has something she never expected. His weapon isn’t a gun, or a knife: it’s a secret. Her worst one. And her family's safety depends on one thing: Julia must NOT find out what happened to Olivia - and must frame somebody else for her murder.
\nIf you find her, you will lose everything. What would you do?
An electrifying novel about the unyielding bond between two sisters, which is severely tested when one of them is accused of the worst imaginable crime.
Martha and Becky Blackwater are more than sisters - they're each other's lifelines. When Martha finds herself struggling to balance early motherhood and her growing business, Becky steps in to babysit her niece, Layla, without a second thought, bringing the two women closer than ever. But when Layla is found dead one morning, at only eight weeks old, Becky is charged with the unthinkable: the murder of her sister's child.
Nine months later, Becky is on trial and maintains her innocence - and so does Martha. Unable to shake the feeling that her sister couldn't possibly be guilty, Martha sets out to uncover exactly what happened that night, and how things could have gone so wrong. As the trial progresses, fault lines between the sisters begin to show - revealing cracks deep in their relationship and threatening the family each has worked so hard to build.
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With incredible empathy and resounding emotional heft, No Further Questions is a powerhouse of a novel that will lead readers to question everything they know about motherhood, family, and the price of forgiveness.
During a family holiday in Italy, you get an urgent call from your sister.
\nThere's been an accident: she hit a man with her car and he's dead.
\nShe's overcome with terror - fearing years in a foreign jail away from her child.
\nShe asks for your help. It wasn't her fault, not really. She'd cover for you, so will you do the same for her?
\nBut when the police come calling, the lies start. And you each begin to doubt your trust in one another.
\nWhat really happened that night?
\nWho is lying to who?
\nWho will be the first to crack?
Late October. After midnight. You’re waiting up for your son. He’s late.
\nAs you watch from the window, he emerges, and you realise he isn’t alone: he’s walking towards a man, and he’s armed.
\nYou can’t believe it when you see him do it: your funny, happy teenage son, he kills a stranger, right there on the street outside your house.
\nYou don’t know who. You don’t know why.
\nYou only know your son is now in custody. His future lost.
\nThat night you fall asleep in despair. All is lost. Until you wake . . .
\n. . . and it is yesterday.
\nAnd then you wake again . . .
\n. . . and it is the day before yesterday.
\nEvery morning you wake up a day earlier, another day before the murder. Somewhere in the past lies an answer.
\nThe trigger for this crime - and your only chance to fix the future and save your son . . .
The world of the Five Nations is ruled by Elementals, those chosen few capable of controlling earth, air, fire, and water, but it is the Paths of the Shadow Realm that link the nations, navigated by the mysterious Shadow Riders.
\nCourier Shay Kendrith carries precious goods and crucial documents for the Crown, a solitary and dangerous life that takes her from one end of the world to the other. The last thing she ever expected to discover while traveling the Realm is an Elemental fighting for her life against the deadly wraiths inhabiting the Shadows.
\nAs an Undine, Marshal Keagan Riley wields water, using her abilities to protect and serve the Crown. Being drawn into the Shadow Realm with Shay begins a harrowing journey that will lead them to the Elemental Stones, previously lost to history, but uncovered by unknown forces that may destroy everything they’ve sworn to protect.
\nIn the Shadows, one can easily find death, but can Shay and Keagan find love as they fight to save the Five Nations?
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For decades if not centuries, science has backed up society’s simple dictum that men and women are hardwired differently, that the world is divided by two different kinds of brains - male and female. Gina Rippon, finally challenges this damaging myth by showing how the science community has engendered bias and stereotype by rewarding studies that show difference rather than sameness.
\nDrawing on cutting edge research in neuroscience and psychology, Rippon presents the latest evidence whichshe argues, finally proves that brains are like mosaics comprised of both male and female components, and that they remain plastic, adapting throughout the course of a person’s life. Discernable gender identities, she asserts, are shaped by society where scientific misconceptions continue to be wielded and perpetuated to the detriment of our children, our own lives, and our culture.
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A cognitive neuroscientist reveals how autistic women have been overlooked by biased research - and makes a passionate case for their inclusion.
\nWho comes to mind when you think of an autistic person? It might be yourself, a relative or friend, a public figure, a fictional character, or a stereotyped image. Regardless, for most of us it’s likely to be someone male. Medical and social systems systematically under-diagnose, under-research, and under-serve autistic women - to devastating effect.
\nIn Off the Spectrum cognitive neuroscientist Gina Rippon sheds light on how old ideas about autism leave women behind and how the scientific community must catch up. Generations of researchers, convinced autism was a male problem, simply didn’t bother looking for it in women, creating a snowball effect of biased research.
\nTo correct this “male spotlight” problem Rippon outlines how autism presents differently in girls and women - such as how they tend to camouflage autistic traits, or how their intense interests may take a form considered more socially acceptable. When autism studies don’t recruit female subjects, Rippon argues, it’s not only autistic women who are failed; it’s the entire scientific community. Correcting a major scientific bias, Off the Spectrum provides a much-needed exploration of autism in women to parents, clinicians, and autistic women themselves.
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It’s a seemingly ordinary morning when Maju, a nanny, boards a bus with Cora, the young girl she’s been caring for, and disappears. The abduction, an act as impulsive as it is extreme, sets off a series of events that will force each character to confront their deepest fears and desires.
\nFernanda, Cora's mother, is a successful executive who is so engulfed in her own personal crisis that she initially fails to notice her daughter's disappearance. Her marriage is strained, and she finds solace in an affair, distancing herself further from her family.
\nMeanwhile, her husband, overwhelmed by the complexities of their domestic life, remains emotionally detached. As Maju navigates the streets of São Paulo with Cora, the “white army” of nannies, a term coined by Fernanda, seems to watch her every move, heightening her sense of paranoia and urgency.
\nMadalosso’s narrative delves deep into the human psyche, examining themes of maternal guilt, societal expectations, and the search for personal identity. Rich and multi-layered, Tokyo Suite is a poignant and gripping tale that captures the essence of modern urban life and the lengths to which people will go to reclaim a sense of control and meaning in their lives.
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At seventeen, Mei should be in high school, but skipping fourth grade was part of her parents' master plan. Now a freshman at MIT, she is on track to fulfill the rest of this predetermined future: become a doctor, marry a preapproved Taiwanese Ivy Leaguer, produce a litter of babies.
With everything her parents have sacrificed to make her cushy life a reality, Mei can't bring herself to tell them the truth - that she (1) hates germs, (2) falls asleep in biology lectures, and (3) has a crush on her classmate Darren Takahashi, who is decidedly not Taiwanese.
But when Mei reconnects with her brother, Xing, who is estranged from the family for dating the wrong woman, Mei starts to wonder if all the secrets are truly worth it. Can she find a way to be herself, whoever that is, before her web of lies unravels?
For Gemma's whole life, it has always been her and her mom against the world. As far as she knew, all her grandparents - and thus her ties to Taiwanese culture - were dead. Until one day when a mysterious man shows up at her door with two shocking the news that her grandfather has just recently passed, and the first clue to a treasure hunt that Gemma hopes will lead to her inheritance.
\nThere's just one major problem: to complete the hunt, she has to go to her grandfather's home in Taiwan. And the only way she can get there is by asking her ex and biggest high-school rival, Xander, for help. But after swallowing her pride, Gemma finds herself halfway across the world, ready to unearth her life-changing prize. Soon Gemma discovers that the treasure hunt is about much more than money - it's about finally learning about her family, her cultural roots, and maybe even finding true love.
Three women dating the same man band together to get revenge, but when they discover his body, they'll need to solve his murder before they go down for it.
\nThe body in the closet was going to be a problem. Kathryn Hu knew it. Yes, Tucker Jones was a cheating scumbag, and yes, she’d agreed to meet Olivia and Elle - Tucker’s other girlfriends - to exact revenge for all he’d put them through . . . But then they found him. Dead.
\nDo they look guilty? Yes.
\nDo they feel guilty for having wished him dead just hours before? Maybe a little.
\nBut - solid motive and a crime scene covered in their DNA aside - they’re innocent. They swear.
\nTo clear their names, Kat, Olivia and Elle team up to find the real killer. But as they go undercover and lie to everyone, including the hot detective working the case, they realize that every person in their ex's life had a reason to want him dead. Will they uncover the truth before they go down for a murder they didn't commit?
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Seventeen-year-old Ali Chu knows that as the only Asian person at her school in middle-of-nowhere Indiana, she must be bland as white toast to survive. This means swapping her congee lunch for PB&Js, ignoring the clueless racism from her classmates and teachers, and keeping her mouth shut when people wrongly call her Allie instead of her actual name, Ah-lee, after the mountain in Taiwan.
Her autopilot existence is disrupted when she finds out that Chase Yu, the new kid in school, is also Taiwanese. Despite some initial resistance due to the they belong together whispers, Ali and Chase soon spark a chemistry rooted in competitive martial arts, joking in two languages, and, most importantly, pushing back against the discrimination they face.
But when Ali’s mom finds out about the relationship, she forces Ali to end it. As Ali covertly digs into the why behind her mother’s disapproval, she uncovers secrets about her family and Chase that force her to question everything she thought she knew about life, love, and her unknowable future.
Chloe Wang is nervous to introduce her parents to her boyfriend, because the truth is, she hasn’t met him yet either. She hired him from Rent for Your ’Rents, a company specializing in providing fake boyfriends trained to impress even the most traditional Asian parents.
Drew Chan’s passion is art, but after his parents cut him off for dropping out of college to pursue his dreams, he became a Rent for Your ’Rents employee to keep a roof over his head. Luckily, learning protocols like “Type C parents prefer quiet, kind, zero-PDA gestures” comes naturally to him.
When Chloe rents Drew, the mission is simple: convince her parents fake Drew is worthy of their approval so they’ll stop pressuring her to accept a proposal from Hongbo, the wealthiest (and slimiest) young bachelor in their tight-knit Asian American community.
But when Chloe starts to fall for the real Drew - who, unlike his fake persona, is definitely not ’rent-worthy - her carefully curated life begins to unravel. Can she figure out what she wants before she loses everything?
Liya and Kai had been best friends since they were little kids, but all that changed when a humiliating incident sparked The Biggest Misunderstanding Of All Time - and they haven’t spoken since.
\nThen Liya discovers her family's wishing lantern store is struggling, and she decides to resume a tradition she had with her beloved late grandmother: secretly fulfilling the wishes people write on the lanterns they send into the sky. It may boost sales and save the store, but she can't do it alone . . . and Kai is the only one who cares enough to help.
\nWhile working on their covert missions, Liya and Kai rekindle their friendship - and maybe more. But when their feuding families and their changing futures threaten to tear them apart again, can they find a way to make their own wishes come true?
Welcome to the Grand Abeona Hotel: home of the finest food, the sweetest service, and the very best views the galaxy has to offer. All year round it moves from planet to planet, system to system, pampering guests across the furthest reaches of the milky way. The last word in sub-orbital luxury - and an absolute magnet for intrigue. Intrigues such as:
\nWhy are there love poems in the lobby inbox? How many Imperial spies are currently on board? What is the true purpose of the Problem Solver's conference? And perhaps most pertinently - who is driving the ship?
\nEach guest has a secret, every member of staff a universe unto themselves. At the center of these interweaving lives and interlocking mysteries stands Carl, one time stowaway, longtime manager, devoted caretaker to the hotel.
\nIt's the love of his life and the only place he's ever called home. But as forces beyond Carl's comprehension converge on the Abeona, he has to face one final question: when is it time to let go?
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Cod became an archaeologist to chase the ghost of her hero, Aleya Ana-Ulai. History may have written Aleya off as a myth, but Cod is determined to prove she existed, even if it means sifting through relics for the rest of her life.
\nThen a message arrives summoning her home. Cod's former teacher has found something monumental: the ruins of an enchanted city, slumbering beneath the soil.
\nThis could be the breakthrough they've always dreamed of. But with war brewing, rival powers circling, and ancient magics stirring underfoot, their discovery soon becomes far more trouble than it's worth. Even Cod starts to wonder if some things are better left buried . . .
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On one side of the world, Aleya Ana-Ulai is desperate for a chance. Her family have written her off as a mistake, but she's determined to prove every last one of them wrong.
\nOn the other, Kirby of Wall's End is searching for redemption. An ancient curse tore her life apart, but to fix it, she'll have to leave everything behind.
\nFate sets them both on the path to Nivela, a city once poised to conquer the world with the power of a thousand stolen gods. Now the gates are closed and the old magic slumbers. Dead - or waiting for a spark to light it anew . . .
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Riley Jo is a teenager who knows what she wants. Born and raised in Bentonville, Arkansas, this Korean American girl has her sights set on being a musician. So when her parents are surprisingly cool about her attending the prestigious Los Angeles-based arts-focused boarding school her senior year of high school, she jumps at the chance. This is her moment to make her indie rock dreams a reality!
\nThings at Carlmont Academy start out strong: She joins a band, and they set out to make plans to perform at the annual spring concert - with a chance to land a record contract. Another student, Xander, decides his school project will be a documentary about the band leading up to their first show. But not everything goes how Riley Jo imagined. She is soon sidelined when her other bandmates feel she is “too Asian” to be their lead singer, and they choose her classmate Bodhi Collins for the role instead.
\nBodhi is rock music royalty, with a dad who is a famous music exec. And he's got the “all-American rock star look.” Her classmates suggest she try making K-pop, but her heart is in indie rock. Riley Jo decides to take matters into her own hands and writes an original song to showcase her talent. But Bodhi takes the credit . . . and given his connections, the band lets him.
\nXander captures all of this in his film, which he leaks in order to show the truth behind the band. Riley Jo decides to sign up for the spring concert and perform on her own . . . but will she finally be able to take center stage?
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Seventeen-year-old Elena Ok (pronounced Oak) has mastered the art of being both a Los Angeles party girl and financially savvy influencer, but her family doesn’t see the brilliance behind her carefully curated image. Instead, they endlessly praise her older brother Gavin, whose most impressive achievement is consistently forgetting his homework. All of Elena’s hard work and social clout disintegrates when the Oks, founders of the wildly popular (and now bankrupt) fast fashion brand It’s Ok! (pronounced “OKAY”), lose their fortune overnight.
\nWith their empire crumbling and an investigation underway, the Oks flee to Blaire, CA - a farming town that’s as glamourous as Temu. Mr. Ok, a now disgraced retail mogul, and Mrs. Ok, a now also disgraced fashion-forward matriarch, realise they’ve spent decades perfecting their public personas at the expense of actually knowing their kids. Meanwhile, Elena and Gavin are stuck in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to distract them from their family’s unraveling dynamics - or each other’s annoying habits.
\nBut life in Blaire isn’t all bad. As the family reconnects with their Korean farming heritage, Elena discovers a hidden the Blaire Fair, the local market brimming with untapped potential. Applying her business savvy, she helps the small-town vendors thrive and sees how they put their profits back into the community. For the first time, Elena begins to question her own definition of success.
\nThe Oks are Not OK offers humor and drama to tell a story about family, self-discovery, and the fine line between building a brand and building a life.
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Fourteen-year-old Aria Loveridge lives at the Resthaven Home for Dreamslingers, a safe haven for children born with a genetic mutation that transports them to a powerfully magical realm while they sleep. But this magic can be unpredictable - even deadly. After all, it was only ten years ago when members of the Royal League of Dreamslingers caused the Great Outburst - a tragedy that killed hundreds of people, including Aria’s mom.
\nSince then, Aria’s dad has become leading expert on Dreamslinger Welfare, which means Aria knows better than most what it takes to keep society safe from her, and others like separation, identification, and most importantly, power suppression.
\nSo when the Kingdom of Royal Hanguk - home of the Dreamslinger League - announces the first Dreamslinger trials where teenage slingers from around the world are invited to compete for a chance to join the League and learn how to use their powers, Aria knows what she must join the trials and take down the League from the inside.
\nBut the Trials introduce Aria to a world of wonderous magic and friendship, a world where she finally feels like she belongs. And as dark secrets from the past are revealed - ones that make Aria question her very identity - she becomes even more determined to discover the truth for herself. She just has to survive the trials first.
For Riley Oh, life as the Godrealm’s last fallen star is not all it’s cracked up to be. Her new divine heritage doesn’t even come with cool magical powers; half of her friends and family (including her parents) can’t remember her; and to top it all off, the entire Gom clan is mad at her for killing the Cave Bear Goddess and stripping away their healing abilities.
\nBut when their anger boils over and a group of witches curses Riley’s home, she knows it’s up to her to restore magic back to her clan - even if it means sneaking into the Spiritrealm.
\nLuckily, Riley has some backup. Along with her sister, Hattie, Riley meets Dahl, a heaven-born boy with shockingly white hair and a fondness for toilets who might not be telling the whole truth about who he is. Together they’ll fight vicious monsters, discover dark underwater worlds, and race to save the land of the dead from a fate that no one could have foreseen.
\nAnd this time, Riley won’t let anything get in her way. Because she can’t shake the feeling that something terrible is coming their way - and the gifted community is going to need all the powers they can get.
Riley Oh wasn’t born into her family. Instead, as she recently discovered, she tumbled down to the earth many years ago as the last fallen star. Riley Oh also wasn’t born to be a witch. Like, at all - even her status as a divine celestial being comes with zilch in the magical powers department. And Riley Oh definitely wasn’t born to be a leader. But now the entire magical community thinks she and her soul-twin, Dahl, are meant to lead the world into the Age of the Final Eclipse (or whatever it is that the Haetae keeps saying they’re “destined” to do). Greeeat.
\nBut ever since Riley killed the Cave Bear Goddess, she’s been a bit pre-occupied with one thing: waiting for the goddess’s sisters to get their revenge. And it looks like her wait is finally over - because as witches from around the world prepare for war, it seems as though the goddesses are preparing for something much worse. Something that will lure Riley and her friends deep into the realm of the gods. Into a world of humongous, talking moon bunnies; life-or-death mini-golf competitions; and . . . magical gummy candies?
\nAnd in order to save the world, Riley must do the one thing she was born to do: believe in herself.
Riley Oh can't wait to see her sister get initiated into the Gom clan, a powerful lineage of Korean healing witches their family has belonged to for generations. Her sister, Hattie, will earn her Gi bracelet and finally be able to cast spells without adult supervision. Although Riley is desperate to follow in her sister's footsteps when she herself turns thirteen, she's a saram - a person without magic. Riley was adopted, and despite having memorised every healing spell she's ever heard, she often feels like the odd one out in her family and the gifted community.
\nThen Hattie gets an idea: what if the two of them could cast a spell that would allow Riley to share Hattie's magic? Their sleuthing reveals a promising incantation in the family's old spell book, and the sisters decide to perform it at Hattie's initiation ceremony. If it works, no one will ever treat Riley as an outsider again. It's a perfect plan!
\nUntil it isn't. When the sisters attempt to violate the laws of the Godrealm, Hattie's life ends up hanging in the balance, and to save her Riley has to fulfill an impossible task: find the last fallen star. But what even is the star, and how can she find it?
\nAs Riley embarks on her search, she finds herself meeting fantastic creatures and collaborating with her worst enemies. And when she uncovers secrets that challenge everything she has been taught to believe, Riley must decide what it means to be a witch, what it means to be family, and what it really means to belong.
Marcus grew up believing his father killed his mother - then blamed it on the boogeyman under the bed. Always leave the lights on, his father warned, or the boogeyman will get you. Marcus still heeds the superstition, especially when he invites his new girlfriend over. Is Marcus haunted by a creature or has he just inherited his father’s murderous delusions? The night will tell.
In horror movies, the final girl is the one who's left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her?
Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she's not alone. For more than a decade she's been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women misses a meeting and Lynnette's worst fears are realised - someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again, piece by piece.
But the thing about these final girls is that they have each other now, and no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.
Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the '90s about a women's book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.
Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia's life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they're more likely to discuss the FBI's recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood.
But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club's meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he's a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she - and her book club - are the only people standing between the monster they've invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community.
They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.
\nFifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.
\nEverything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid . . . and it’s usually paid in blood.
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Psychiatry registrar Doctor Hannah Wright, a country girl with a chaotic history, thought she had seen it all in the emergency room.
\nBut that was nothing compared to the psychiatric ward at Menzies Hospital.
\nHannah must learn on the job in a strained medical system, as she and her fellow trainees deal with the common and the bizarre, the hilarious and the tragic, the treatable and the confronting.
\nEvery day brings new patients - Chloe, who has a life-threatening eating disorder - Sian, suffering postpartum psychosis and fighting to keep her baby - and Xavier, the MP whose suicide attempt has an explosive story behind it.
\nAll the while, Hannah is trying to figure out herself.
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Trainee psychiatrist DoctorHannah Wright has only just got her head above water in the acute psychiatric ward at Menzies Hospital when she's thrown into the deep end of the outpatient clinic. Keen to develop her skills in talking therapies, she finds herself up against a boss who's focused on medication and a senior colleague with a score to settle.
\nHannah's fellow first-years face problems of their own: on-and-off flame Alex is being bullied, Ndidi's marriage is in trouble, Jon feels isolated and Carey is concerned their autism will be a career barrier.
\nWhile Hannah comes under pressure to seek therapy herself to confront a traumatic past, her patients' health issues range from OCD to ice addiction, childhood abuse to the mental impact of ageing, and from bad parenting to bad genes. They all come to the Oasis.
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Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a “wonderful” husband, his first reaction is shock.
\nYet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical - most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.
Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent - and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don's Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie - and the realisation
Don Tillman and Rosie Jarman are back in Australia after a decade in New York, and they’re about to face their most important challenge.
Their son, Hudson, is struggling at school: he’s socially awkward and not fitting in. Don’s spent a lifetime trying to fit in - so who better to teach Hudson the skills he needs?
The Hudson Project will require the help of friends old and new, force Don to decide how much to guide Hudson and how much to let him be himself, and raise some significant questions about his own identity.
Meanwhile, there are multiple distractions to deal with: the Genetics Lecture Outrage, Rosie’s troubles at work, estrangement from his best friend Gene . . .
And opening the world’s best cocktail bar.
The Chemin, also known as the Camino de Santiago, is a centuries-old pilgrim route that ends in Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. Every year, thousands of walkers - some devout, many not - follow the route that wends through quaint small villages and along busy highways alike, a journey unlike any other.
\nZoe, an artist from California who’s still reeling from her husband’s sudden death, has impulsively decided to walk the Camino, hoping to find solace and direction. Martin, an engineer from England, is road-testing a cart of his own design . . . and recovering from a messy divorce. They begin in the same French town, each uncertain of what the future holds. Zoe has anticipated the physical difficulties of her trek, but she is less prepared for other challenges, as strangers and circumstances force her to confront not just recent loss, but long-held beliefs. For Martin, the pilgrimage is a test of his skills and endurance but also, as he and Zoe grow closer, of his willingness to trust others - and himself - again.
\nSmart and funny, insightful and romantic, Two Steps Forward reveals that the most important journeys we make aren’t measured in miles, but in the strength, wisdom, and love found along the way.
Three years after life got in the way of their long-distance relationship, Californian illustrator Zoe and English engineer Martin have an unexpected opportunity to reunite: a second chance to follow in the footsteps of pilgrims in Europe.
\nThis time, they won’t be walking the famous Camino de Santiago to north-west Spain but the less-travelled Chemin d’Assise and Via Francigena to Rome, the mountainous path down from rural France.
\nAnd rather than each setting off solo, they will accompany Zoe’s old friend Camille - who, despite her terminal illness, insists she will walk the whole sixteen hundred kilometres to seek an audience with the Pope - and her not-so-ex-husband, Gilbert, who sees the trip as a gourmet tour. Then Bernhard, Martin’s young nemesis from the previous trek, shows up, along with Martin’s daughter, Sarah, who is having a quarter-life crisis and doesn’t exactly hit it off with Zoe . . .
It was the most sensational case of the decade.
\nFifteen-year-old Jessica Silver, heiress to a billion-dollar fortune, vanishes on her way home from school. Her teacher, Bobby Nock, is the prime suspect. It's an open and shut case for the prosecution, and a quick conviction seems all but guaranteed.
\nUntil Maya Seale, a young woman on the jury, persuades the rest of the jurors to vote not guilty: a controversial decision that will change all of their lives forever.
\nTen years later, one of the jurors is found dead, and Maya is the prime suspect.
\nThe real killer could be any of the other ten jurors. Is Maya being forced to pay the price for her decision all those years ago?
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1939. Tax attorney Ansel Luxford has everything a man could want - a comfortable career, a brilliant wife, a beautiful new baby. But he is obsessed by a belief that Europe is on the precipice of a war that will grow to consume the world.
\nThe United States is officially proclaiming neutrality in any foreign conflict, but when Ansel is offered an opportunity to move to Washington, D.C., to join a clandestine team within the Treasury Department that is conspiring to undermine Nazi Germany, he uproots his family overnight and takes on the challenge of a lifetime.
\nHow can they defeat the enemy without firing a bullet?
\nTo thwart the Nazis, Ansel and his team invent a powerful new theater of economic warfare. Money is a dangerous weapon, and Ansel’s efforts will plunge him into a world full of espionage, peril, and deceit. He will crisscross the globe to broker backroom deals, undertake daring heists, and spar with titans of industry like J.P. Morgan and the century's greatest economic mind, Britain's John Maynard Keynes. When Ansel’s wife takes a job with the FBI to hunt for spies within the government, the need for subterfuge extends to the home front. And Ansel discovers that he might be closer to those spies than he could ever imagine.
\nThe Wealth of Shadows is a gripping, mind-expanding thriller about the mysterious powers of money and the lies worth telling to defeat evil, as witnessed by an unassuming American at the center of the hidden war that shaped the modern world.
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Carol is a divorced teacher living in a small town in Ireland, her only son now grown. A second chance at love brings her unexpected connection and belonging. The new relationship sparks local speculation: what does a woman like her see in a man like that? What happened to his wife who abandoned them all those years ago? But the gossip only serves to bring the couple closer.
\nWhen Declan becomes ill, things start to fall apart. His children are untrusting and cruel, and Carol is forced to leave their beloved home with its worn oak floors and elegant features and move back in with her parents.
\nCarol's mother is determined to get to the bottom of things, she won't see her daughter suffer in this way. It seems there are secrets in Declan's past, strange rumours that were never confronted and suddenly the house they shared takes on a more sinister significance.
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Frankie Howe has lived a long life, her small flat is crammed full of art, furniture - and memories. Damian, her young carer, listens as she gradually tells him parts of her story - a story that takes us into a progressive, daring world of New York artists on the brink of fame, aspiring writers and larger-than-life characters.
\nAlways just on the periphery, looking on, young Frankie is never quite sure enough of herself to take centre stage. But the outsider holds certain advantages, sees things others don't, can influence without drawing attention. And when the map has been lost, it's anyone's guess where you may end up, or the accidental choices you find you have made. Frankie discovers that life is not always the one we hope for, or the one others expect of us.
\nTravelling from post-war Ireland to the dazzling art scene of 1960s New York by way of London, Frankie is an immersive, decade-sweeping novel about love, bravery and what it means to live a significant life.
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It is 1987 and a small Irish community is preparing for the wedding of two of its young inhabitants. They're barely adults, not so long out of school and still part of the same set of friends they've grown up with. As the friends head home from the beach that last night before the wedding, there is a car accident. Three survive the crash but three are killed. And the reverberations are felt throughout the small town.
Connor, the young driver of the car, lives. But staying among the angry and the mourning is almost as hard as living with the shame, and so he leaves the only place he knows for another life. Travelling first to Liverpool, then London, by the noughties he has made a home - of sorts - for himself in New York. The city provides shelter and possibility for the displaced, somewhere Connor can forget his past and forge a new life.
But the secrets, the unspoken longings and regrets that have come to haunt those left behind will not be silenced. And before long, Connor will have to meet his past.
Harley, Róise, and Maggie have been friends for ages. After meeting in primary school years ago, the women are still together, spending their nights on the sticky dancefloors of Belfast’s grungiest pubs. Each woman is navigating her own tangle of entry-level jobs, messy romantic entanglements, and late nights, but they always find their way back to each other, and to the ramshackle house they share.
\nHarley is lusting after the landlord and trying doggedly to learn to play the piano. Róise’s fallen for someone at work, and isn’t sure she’s ready for something new after a devastating break-up. Maggie has taken up running in the hopes of wooing a woman who can’t be bothered to send her more than an after-hours “you out?” text. And amidst the familiar chaos, the three girls are still grieving the tragic death of their friend, Lydia, whose room remains untouched. Their last big fight hangs heavy over their heads, unspoken since the accident.
\nThe girls’ house has witnessed the highs and lows of their roaring twenties - raucous parties, surprising (and sometimes regrettable) hook-ups, and hellish hangovers. But as they approach thirty, their home begins to crumble around them and the faultlines in their group become harder to ignore. In the wreckage, they must decide if their friendship will survive into a new decade - or if growing up sometimes means letting go.
\nBrimming with heart and humor, Thirst Trap is an exuberant ode to friendship and a reminder that a little mess isn’t always such a bad thing.
From Grant Ginder, the bestselling author of The People We Hate at the Wedding, comes a novel of impending millennial middle age that is part love story, part tragic comedy. Five parties over the course of two decades bring six college friends together, exploring the ways we can run from and cling to our friends in love, life, and death.
\nFor Marco and Mia, Sasha and Theo, Richie and Adam, the one constant in life after college together has been change. New jobs. New cities. New spouses. New children. Through it all, one thing they thought would always stay the same is their friendship. But time has a way of breaking even the strongest bonds and testing what we thought we knew.
\nFrom East Village apartment parties and disastrous destination weddings to fortieth birthdays and suburban backyard barbecues, Grant Ginder’s resonant, funny, and deeply moving novel is a story about the growing pains of the millennial generation, and a celebration of how love can shift, stumble, and grow into something bigger than we ever could have imagined.
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When Graydon Carter was offered the editorship of Vanity Fair in 1992, he knew he faced an uphill battle - how to make the esteemed and long-established magazine his own. Not only was he confronted with a staff that he perceived to be loyal to the previous regime, but he arrived only a few years after launching Spy magazine, which gloried in skewering the celebrated and powerful - the very people Vanity Fair venerated. With curiosity, fearlessness, and a love of recent history and glamour that would come to define his storied career in magazines, Carter succeeded in endearing himself to his editors, contributors, and readers, as well as many of the faces that would come to appear in Vanity Fair’s pages. He went on to run the magazine with overwhelming success for the next two and a half decades.
\nFilled with colorful memories and intimate details, When the Going Was Good is Graydon Carter’s lively recounting of how he made his mark as one of the most talented editors in the business. Moving to New York from Canada, he worked at Time, Life, The New York Observer, and Spy, before catching the eye of Condé Nast chairman Si Newhouse, who pulled him in to run Vanity Fair. In Newhouse he found an unwavering champion, a loyal proprietor who gave Carter the editorial and financial freedom to thrive. Annie Leibovitz’s photographs would come to define the look of the magazine, as would the “New Establishment” and annual Hollywood issues. Carter further planted a flag in Los Angeles with the legendary Vanity Fair Oscar party.
\nWith his inimitable voice and signature quip, he brings readers to lunches and dinners with the great and good of America, Britain, and Europe. He assembled one of the most formidable stables of writers and photographers under one roof, and here he re-creates in real time the steps he took to ensure Vanity Fair cemented its place as the epicenter of art, culture, business, and politics, even as digital media took hold. Charming, candid, and brimming with stories, When the Going Was Good perfectly captures the last golden age of print magazines from the inside out.
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When Jessica Farris signs up for a psychology study conducted by the mysterious Dr. Shields, she thinks all she’ll have to do is answer a few questions, collect her money, and leave.
But as the questions grow more and more intense and invasive and the sessions become outings where Jess is told what to wear and how to act, she begins to feel as though Dr. Shields may know what she’s thinking . . . and what she’s hiding.
As Jess’s paranoia grows, it becomes clear that she can no longer trust what in her life is real, and what is one of Dr. Shields’ manipulative experiments. Caught in a web of deceit and jealousy, Jess quickly learns that some obsessions can be deadly.
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Wealthy Washington suburbanites Marissa and Matthew Bishop seem to have it all - until Marissa is unfaithful. Beneath their veneer of perfection is a relationship riven by work and a lack of intimacy. She wants to repair things for the sake of their eight-year-old son and because she loves her husband. Enter Avery Chambers.
\nAvery is a therapist who lost her professional license. Still, it doesn’t stop her from counseling those in crisis, though they have to adhere to her unorthodox methods. And the Bishops are desperate.
\nWhen they glide through Avery’s door and Marissa reveals her infidelity, all three are set on a collision course. Because the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden, and it’s no longer simply a marriage that’s in danger.
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Anne is barely keeping it together. A frazzled ghostwriter and aspiring novelist, she juggles nine-year-old twins and a listless marriage from an overcrowded Manhattan apartment, spreading herself thinner each day. Just as Anne is about to give up on her dreams, she lands her biggest client Melody Wells.
\nMelody paints a picture of serenity and empowerment in the lavender haze of her visualisation workshops - however, the one thing she can’t manifest are the pages her publisher is demanding for her new motivational book. Enter Anne.
\nAs Melody invites Anne deeper into her magical world, Anne finds herself working impossibly long days and traveling far beyond her comfort zone.
\nWhen Melody passes along a lead on a spacious sublet complete with East River views, built-in closets, and three bedrooms, Anne can’t believe her luck. Melody seems to know just what her family needs. But as small, unsettling incidents begin to accumulate, Anne starts to wonder what price she’s willing to pay for the good life.
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When you read this book, you will make many assumptions.
You will assume you are reading about a jealous wife and her obsession with her replacement.
You will assume you are reading about a woman about to enter a new marriage with the man she loves.
You will assume the first wife was a disaster and that the husband was well rid of her.
You will assume you know the motives, the history, the anatomy of the relationships.
Assume nothing.
Shay Miller wants to find love, but it eludes her. She wants to be fulfilled, but her job is a dead end. She wants to belong, but her life is increasingly lonely.
Until Shay meets the Moore sisters. Cassandra and Jane live a life of glamorous perfection, and always get what they desire. When they invite Shay into their circle, everything seems to get better. Shay would die for them to like her. She may have to.
All his life, Sir Cameron has stayed as far away from danger as possible. He is, quite frankly, too handsome to die a violent and pointless death in battle. But when the Church hands down a prophecy to his fellow knights predicting that the only way to defeat their nemesis, the mad sorcerer Merulo, is to kill Cameron, he finds himself in a situation too sticky for even his considerable wiles. Short of ideas, Cameron throws himself on the mercy of the one person who now actually wants him to survive: the mad sorcerer.
\nMerulo isn’t thrilled to be babysitting a spoilt, attention-seeking knight, but fate has tied them together. And transmogrifying Cameron into a vulture is at least a great source of entertainment. Cameron, meanwhile, is on a voyage of self-discovery. It turns out he’s really, really into surly sorcerers who lock him up and tell him what to do. Who knew?
\nAs a legion of knights surround their stronghold, the sorcerer’s poisonous ambitions draw ever closer to fruition. Cameron is quite invested in not dying, but he finds he’s also invested in Merulo. And sometimes, supporting the sorcerer you care about means taking an interest in their hobbies. Even if that hobby is trying to kill God.
\nEven if it might get you killed, too.
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Southern prosecutor Penn Cage is caught in the darkest maelstrom of his life. The heartbreaking but seemingly straightforward death of his father's African-American nurse, Viola Turner, has fractured Penn's family and turned Dr. Tom Cage into a fugitive from justice. And in the search for his father and his reasons for running, Penn has unwittingly started a war with a violent offshoot of the KKK, the Double Eagles, whose members seem to know much more about Tom's past than Penn or his mother ever did.
Desperately following his father's trail, Penn finds himself in a maze of mirrors, beset on all sides by a family of criminals and corrupt police whose power reaches into the highest levels of state government. To even the odds, Penn must rely on allies whose objectives are very different from his own. FBI special agent John Kaiser sees Tom Cage as the key to closing not only countless civil rights murders, but also the ultimate cold case: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Penn's fiancée, journalist Caitlin Masters, is chasing the biggest story of her career and believes Tom can lead her to evidence of America's most secret, shameful history. In the end, all roads will lead to the mysterious Bone Tree, a legendary killing site that may conceal far more than the remains of the forgotten.
Penn now knows that the death of Viola Turner is a door to the darkest chapters of America's past. In the civil rights battleground that was 1960s Mississippi and Louisiana, powerful men had audacious, sweeping agendas, and their violent race murders concealed a conspiracy that ran wide and deep, involving the New Orleans Mafia, a Double Eagle hit squad, and a world- altering murder in Dealey Plaza in 1963. And if the FBI can be believed, somehow Dr. Tom Cage stands at the center of it all.
When Marshall McEwan left his hometown at age eighteen, he vowed never to return. The trauma that drove him away ultimately spurred him to become one of the most successful journalists in Washington D.C. But just as the political chaos in the nation’s capital lifts him to new heights, Marshall is forced to return home in spite of his boyhood vow.
His father is dying, his mother is struggling to keep the family newspaper from failing, and the town is in the midst of an economic rebirth that might be built upon crimes that reach into the state capitol - and perhaps even to Washington. More disturbing still, Marshall’s high school sweetheart, Jet, has married into the family of Max Matheson, patriarch of one of the families that rule Bienville through a shadow organization called the Bienville Poker Club.
When archeologist Buck McKibben is murdered at a construction site, Bienville is thrown into chaos. The ensuing homicide investigation is soon derailed by a second crime that rocks the community to its core. Power broker Max Matheson’s wife has been shot dead in her own bed, and the only other person in it at the time was her husband, Max. Stranger still, Max demands that his daughter-on-law, Jet, defend him in court.
As a journalist, Marshall knows all too well how the corrosive power of money and politics can sabotage investigations. Without telling a soul, he joins forces with Jet, who has lived for fifteen years at the heart of Max Matheson’s family, and begins digging into both murders. With Jet walking the dangerous road of an inside informer, they soon uncover a web of criminal schemes that undergird the town’s recent success. But these crimes pale in comparison to the secret at the heart of the Matheson family. When those who have remained silent for years dare to speak to Marshall, pressure begins to build like water against a crumbling dam.
Marshall loses friends, family members, and finally even Jet, for no one in Bienville seems willing to endure the reckoning that the Poker Club has long deserved. And by the time Marshall grasps the long-buried truth, he would give almost anything not to have to face it.
When he was a prosecuting attorney Penn Cage sent hardened killers to death row. But it is as mayor of his hometown - Natchez, Mississippi - that Penn will face his most dangerous threat.
Urged by old friends to restore the town to its former glory, Penn has ridden into office on a tide of support for change. But in its quest for new jobs and fresh money, Natchez has turned to casino gambling. Five fantastical steamboats float on the river beside the old slave market like props from Gone With the Wind. But one boat isn't like the others. Rumour has it that the Magnolia Queen has found a way to pull the big players from Las Vegas. And with them comes an unquenchable taste for one thing: blood sport, and the dark vices that go with it.
When a childhood friend of Penn's who brings him evidence of these crimes is brutally murdered, the full weight of Penn's failure to protect this city hits home. So begins his quest to find the men responsible. But it's a hunt he begins alone, for the local authorities have been corrupted by the money and power of his hidden enemy. With his family's life at stake, Penn realizes his only allies in his one-man war are those bound to him by blood or honour.
When he was a prosecuting attorney Penn Cage sent hardened killers to death row. But it is as mayor of his hometown - Natchez, Mississippi - that Penn will face his most dangerous threat.
Urged by old friends to restore the town to its former glory, Penn has ridden into office on a tide of support for change. But in its quest for new jobs and fresh money, Natchez has turned to casino gambling. Five fantastical steamboats float on the river beside the old slave market like props from Gone With the Wind. But one boat isn't like the others. Rumour has it that the Magnolia Queen has found a way to pull the big players from Las Vegas. And with them comes an unquenchable taste for one thing: blood sport, and the dark vices that go with it.
When a childhood friend of Penn's who brings him evidence of these crimes is brutally murdered, the full weight of Penn's failure to protect this city hits home. So begins his quest to find the men responsible. But it's a hunt he begins alone, for the local authorities have been corrupted by the money and power of his hidden enemy. With his family's life at stake, Penn realises his only allies in his one-man war are those bound to him by blood or honour.
Former prosecutor Penn Cage sees his world collapsing around him. The woman he loves is gone and his father, Dr Tom Cage, is about to be tried for the murder of a former lover.
\nThe Double Eagle group, a savage splinter cell of the KKK, will stop at nothing to ensure that Tom either takes the fall for their past deeds, or takes his secrets to an early grave.
\nUnable to trust anyone - not even his own mother - Penn battles to discover the secret history of both the Cage family and the South itself, risking the only thing he has left to gamble: his life.
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Raised in the southern splendor of Natchez, Mississippi, Penn Cage learned all he knows of duty from his father, Dr. Tom Cage. But now the beloved family doctor has been accused of murdering the African American nurse with whom he worked in the dark days of the 1960s. Once a crusading prosecutor, Penn is determined to save his father, but Tom, stubbornly invoking doctor-patient privilege, refuses even to speak in his own defense.
\nPenn's quest for the truth sends him deep into his father's past, where a sexually charged secret lies. More chilling, this long-buried sin is only one thread in a conspiracy of greed and murder involving the vicious Double Eagles, an offshoot of the KKK controlled by some of the most powerful men in the state. Aided by a dedicated reporter privy to Natchez's oldest secrets and by his fiancée, Caitlin Masters, Penn uncovers a trail of corruption and brutality that places his family squarely in the Double Eagles' crosshairs.
\nWith every step costing blood and faith, Penn is forced to confront the most wrenching dilemma of his life: Does a man of honor choose his father or the truth?
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Natchez, Mississippi. Jewel of the South. City of old money and older sins. And childhood home of Houston prosecutor Penn Cage.
\nIn the aftermath of a personal tragedy, this is where Penn has returned for solitude. This is where he hopes to find peace. What he discovers instead is his own family trapped in a mystery buried for thirty years but never forgotten - the town’s darkest secret, now set to trap and destroy Penn as well.
\nFifteen years after the events of the Natchez Burning trilogy, Penn Cage is alone. Nearly all his loved ones are dead, his old allies gone, and he carries a mortal secret that separates him from the world. But Penn's exile comes to an end when a brawl at a Mississippi rap festival triggers a bloody mass shooting - an act of domestic terrorism that nearly takes the life of his daughter Annie.
\nAs the stunned cities of Natchez and Bienville reel, antebellum plantation homes continue to burn and the deadly attacks are claimed by a Black radical group as historic acts of justice. Panic sweeps through the tourist communities, driving them inexorably toward a race war.
\nBut what might have been only a regional sideshow of the 2024 Presidential election explodes into national prominence, thanks to the stunning ascent of Robert E. Lee White, a Southern war hero who seizes the public imagination as a third-party candidate. Dubbed \"the Tik-Tok Man,\" and funded by an eccentric Mississippi billionaire, Bobby White rides the glory of his Special Forces record to an unprecedented run at the White House - one unseen since the campaign of H. Ross Perot.
\nTo triumph over the national party machines, Bobby evolves a plan of unimaginable daring. One fateful autumn weekend, with White set to declare his candidacy, the forces polarising America line up against one another, fueling explosive racial tension: Black vs. white, states vs. the federal government, democracy vs. Fascism.
\nTeaming with his fearless daughter (now a civil rights lawyer) and a former Black Panther who spent most of his life in Parchman Prison, Penn tears into a political conspiracy behind White's pursuit of the Presidency and ultimately risks a second Civil War to try to expose its motivation to the world, before the America of our Constitution slides into the abyss.
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After winning the most dangerous case of his career, prosecutor Penn Cage decides to remain in his Southern hometown to raise his young daughter in a safe haven. But nowhere is truly safe - not from long-buried secrets, or murder . . .
\nWhen the nude body of prep school student Kate Townsend is found near the Mississippi River, Penn's best friend, Drew Elliott, is desperate for his counsel. An esteemed family physician, Drew makes a shocking confession that could put him on death row.
\nPenn will do all he can to exonerate Drew, but in a town where the gaze of a landmark cemetery statue - the Turning Angel - never looks away, Penn finds himself caught on the jagged edge of blackmail, betrayal, and deadly violence.
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The legendary Briar King has awakened, spreading madness and destruction across a land devastated by a royal family’s fall from power through treachery and dark magic. Half-remembered prophecies may point to the young princess Anne Dare, rightful heir to the throne of Crotheny, as the world’s only hope.
\nBut a mysterious assassin stalks her, so skilled that even Anne’s friend and protector Cazio cannot stand against him, nor can her sworn defender, the young knight Neil MeqVren. Though Anne herself is the conduit of fearsome powers beyond her understanding and control, it is time for girl to become woman, princess to become queen. Anne must stop running and instead march at the head of an army to take back her kingdom . . . or die trying.
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The Briar King is dead, and the world itself follows him to ruin. Aspar White, wounded and tired, must embark on one last quest to save the forest and the people he loves, but he has little hope of success.
\nAnne Dare at last sits on the throne of Crotheny, but for how long? The Church, now led by the corrupt and powerful Marché Hespero, has declared a holy war against her, giving the king of Hansa the pretext he needs to unleash his vast might on the young queen and her unready army.
\nBut Hansa is the least of Anne’s worries. The Hellrune, war seer of Hansa, strikes at her through vision and prophecy. The Kept - last of the elder Skasloi lords - weaves his own dark webs. Anne’s teacher and ally in the sedos world might also be her worst enemy, and Anne’s own mounting strength compels her toward madness.
\nSurviving these dangers and mastering her eldritch abilities are merely prelude to the real struggle. There are many - some with power matching or even exceeding Anne’s own - who are willing to kill in order to seize control. For whoever sits upon the throne will have the ultimate command to bring about the world’s salvation - or its apocalypse.
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Two thousand years ago, the Born Queen defeated the Skasloi lords, freeing humans from the bitter yoke of slavery. But now monstrous creatures roam the land - and destinies become inextricably entangled in a drama of power and seduction.
\nThe king’s woodsman, a rebellious girl, a young priest, a roguish adventurer, and a young man made suddenly into a knight - all face malevolent forces that shake the foundations of the kingdom, even as the Briar King, legendary harbinger of death, awakens from his slumber.
\nAt the heart of this many-layered tale is Anne Dare, youngest daughter of the royal family . . . upon whom the fate of her world may depend.
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When the legendary Briar King awoke from his slumber, dark magics awoke with him and spread across the Kingdom of Crotheny. In Eslen, King William has been murdered, Queen Muriele is stalked by treachery from every side, and their last surviving daughter, Anne, has fled the assassins bent on destroying her family. The queen’s one trusted ally, young knight Neil MeqVren, is sworn to rescue the princess from her pursuers.
\nAs spies in the service of the powerful Churchman embark upon a mission to destroy the Briar King, a sinister conspiracy threatens to engulf the land. Personal fates will be decided, and a kingdom’s destiny will hinge upon the ultimate conflict between virtue and malevolence, might and magic.
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Errol Greyson is awake and back in his own body, thanks to his friends Aster the witch and Veronica the half-dead girl. Unfortunately, due to the attempted suicide that led to his months-long coma and temporary reincarnation in Aster’s wooden automaton in the first place, he’s also in a mental hospital.
But when the last person Errol expects breaks him out and forces him back to the magical Kingdoms, he has no other option but to attempt to undo a deadly curse threatening reality itself, in hopes of returning the realm to equilibrium. It’s dangerous business, especially in Errol’s merely-human form, weakened from months in bed.
Fearing for their friend’s life, Aster and Veronica follow, but are quickly separated. Aster is captured by an ancient evil - the source of the curse - while Veronica confronts a mysterious admirer, her own evolving nature, and the dark spirit that murdered her years earlier.
As vast armies collide and dragons take wing, the friends must find each other - and themselves - again.
The Curse shaped Aster's life from birth. At first, she believed her father was its only victim, and determined to save him from it. In doing so she learned that the Curse had stricken everyone in the magical realms known as the Kingdoms - and that, in an attempt to protect her, her father had himself created it. Now he is dead, a victim of his own sorcery. But the Curse has not ended with him. Her father’s actions, his dread spell, were only the shadows cast by a much deeper, older conflict, which is now unwinding the universe itself.
\nAs the sun fades and the stars wink out, Aster must follow a clue from her dead father to the highest, furthest domain - beyond the fairy-tale kingdoms, through fantastic and terrifying realms of gods and demons, to the very source of reality, the beginning and ending of everything. There she might finally set things right. Her path is narrow, and the sacrifices necessary for even a tiny chance at success are unacceptable.
\nFor the Curse has also released a rot at the very heart of the High and Faraway, an evil more ancient than time itself. It is against this unwavering malevolence that Aster, Errol, Billy, Dusk and Delia must pit themselves. They must do so without their friend Veronica, a girl murdered decades before and brought back to life by Aster’s magic. For as Veronica discovers her own vast power, she stares into the face of the enemy and sees in it her true self . . .
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Errol Greyson hadn’t intended to commit suicide. Or so he told himself. But waking up after his “cry for help” in the body of a wood-and-metal construct magically animated by Aster - the strange girl from school - was not a result he could have imagined.
\nAster’s wild explanations of a quest to find the water of health that would cure her father seemed as unreal as her description of Errol’s own half-dead existence, his consciousness stuck in an enchanted automaton while his real body was in a coma from which it might never wake. And of course, they would need to recruit a girl - a virgin, no less - who had been dead for thirty years, to lead them through something called the Pale, beyond which a bunch of magical kingdoms existed. Plus, the threat that Aster could turn him off like a light switch, sending him into a hellish oblivion, was a convincing incentive to cooperate.
\nIt all seemed quite mad: Either Aster was nuts, or Errol was hallucinating. But if it meant a new chance at life, he reckoned it was worth playing along.
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A taut high fantasy as an assassin must destroy an empire from within, eliminating wizards, their demons, and even the emperor. For the lives - for the very souls - of her people, she must succeed within a single day, or her homeland will be destroyed.
\nWhen Yash of Zeltah arrives in the fortress city of Honaq she is greeted as a barbarian, a simple pawn. Her marriage to prince Chej has been arranged, they say, to avert war. Yet she knows the truth, for the armies already ravage the land. A skilled and deadly assassin, there is more to Yash than any might suspect.
\nBefore another day can pass, she must defeat the masters of the nine towers - the plagues, magics, and monsters they control, the soldiers they command. Without raising an alarm, she must kill all who oppose her - even the immortal emperor. The lives and souls of Zeltah, the people and the land upon which they live, all depend on it.
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Mary Hatcher lives with a curse - or is it a power that could make her life whole? A Native Pomo woman who comes of age in 1930s California, Mary keeps trying to make sense of her enigmatic family. Strange rumors spread about her. Her stepmother may have taught her how to become a Human Bear, a shapeshifter who can menace and poison enemies. Two men may love her - or love who they think she is.
\nA mystery even to herself, Mary learns to pass between Native and white societies, tenaciously carving her own path as an independent woman. But as she explores love and desire, family inherited and chosen, and the secrets of the natural world, one question gnaws at her: Is she fated to do harm?
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Two problems: A tech-billionaire whose psychological crisis could have catastrophic implications for the global order. And the abduction of vulnerable young woman, Anca, seized from the New York City Subway, held, hurt, then discarded like trash.
\nOne solution: Evan Smoak, a former black ops assassin codenamed Orphan X, now dedicated to helping the desperate with nowhere else to turn.
\nBut saving the world from a powerful man who has lost his mind while pursuing justice for an innocent survivor will test Evan like never before. Especially when complicated by Anca's inconvenient insistence that he show some measure of mercy to the men who abducted her.
\nBecause if the world's greatest assassin cannot kill, then this mission just got a whole lot more daunting and dangerous.
\nAs lethal threats mount, Evan may have to choose between upholding a higher code . . . and his own life.
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Before he was the feared black ops government assassin Orphan X, operating in the shadows and spoken about in whispers, Evan Smoak was a teenager, undergoing the most rigorous of training. At 17, Evan is sent off by his handler, ex-CIA station agent Jack Johns, to take the most intense U.S. military training course.
\n\t\t\t\t\tBut that is only part of the challenge before him - Evan has to get there and back, safely and quietly, maintaining operational security. And along the way, facing unexpected challenges, Evan must use everything he's learned since the day he was taken from the foster home in East Baltimore, lessons that Jack Johns has drilled into him, laws of life and death that are to become The Code.
Evan Smoak is a man with many identities and a challenging past. As Orphan X, he was a government assassin for the off-the-books Orphan Program. After he broke with the Program, he adopted a new name and a new mission - The Nowhere Man, helping the most desperate in their times of trouble.
\nHaving just survived an attack on his life and the complete devastation of his base of operations, as well as his complicated (and deepening) relationship with his neighbor Mia Hall, Evan isn't interested in taking on a new mission.
\nBut one finds him anyway. Aragon Urrea is a kingpin of a major drug-dealing operation in South Texas. He's also the patron of the local area - supplying employment in legitimate operations, providing help to the helpless, rough justice to the downtrodden, and a future to a people normally with little hope. He's complicated - a not completely good man, who does bad things for often good reasons.
\nHowever, for all his money and power, he is helpless when one of the most vicious cartels kidnaps his innocent eighteen year old daughter, spiriting her away into the armored complex that is their headquarters in Mexico.
\nWith no other way to rescue his daughter, he turns to The Nowhere Man. Now not only must Evan figure out how to get into the impregnable fortress of a heavily armed, deeply paranoid cartel leader, but he must decide if he should help a very bad man - no matter how just the cause.
To some he was Orphan X. Others knew him as the Nowhere Man. But to Jack Johns he was a boy named Evan Smoak. Taken from an orphanage, Evan was raised inside a top-secret government programme and trained to become a lethal weapon. By Jack. And yet for all the dangerous skill he instilled in his young charge, Jack Jones cared for Evan like a son.
But Jack knew too much about a programme that had gone rotten - he was a loose end that needed to be dealt with. But if you go after the only person who ever treated him like a human beinTo some he was Orphan X. Others knew him as the Nowhere Man. But to Jack Johns he was a boy named Evan Smoak. Taken from an orphanage, Evan was raised inside a top-secret government programme and trained to become a lethal weapon. By Jack. And yet for all the dangerous skill he instilled in his young charge, Jack Jones cared for Evan like a son.
But Jack knew too much about a programme that had gone rotten - he was a loose end that needed to be dealt with. But if you go after the only person who ever treated him like a human being, you can guarantee that the Nowhere Man will be coming for you. Hellbent on making things right . . .g, you can guarantee that the Nowhere Man will be coming for you. Hellbent on making things right . . .
Chance, that's me, the youngest Rain brother - and right now I'm kind of stuck between a rock and hard place- . . . Or more specifically, tied up and kidnapped. My captors? We call them Drones, and they serve the Harvesters that have infected all the adults in our town of Creek's Cause with parasites, turning them into mindless rage zombies that have only two objectives: capture or kill.
\nWhat we know so far is that there are two factions of Drones, one that wants my big brother Patrick and me to save the world, and the other that is taking kids and using them to hatch something . . . otherworldly. I don't want to know what they are, but I'm pretty sure I'm about to find out.
\nWhat I do know is that Patrick and his girlfriend Alex are out there, they aren't dead and they won't let me die at the hands of the Harvesters. Not when we have things to do: because come on, the world isn't going to save itself.
Orphan X has spent years atoning for his former life. Now he faces an impossible choice: kill, or be killed . . .
\nTrained as a government assassin codenamed Orphan X, Evan Smoak left that life behind to protect the helpless. Saving lives beats taking them. Until a call from the President forces him back into his old world.
\nHer instruction is clear: kill a man who is a danger to the government, or Evan himself will face execution himself. But the President should know better. To force Orphan X's hand will only make him more dangerous. Especially when he has reason to doubt the integrity of her motives . . .
Once a black ops government assassin known as Orphan X, Evan Smoak left the Program, went deep underground, and reinvented himself as someone who will go anywhere and risk everything to help the truly desperate who have nowhere else to turn.
\nSince then, Evan has fought international crime syndicates and drug cartels, faced down the most powerful people in the world and even brought down a president. Now struggling with an unexpected personal crisis, Evan goes back to the very basics of his mission - and this time, the truly desperate is a little girl who wants him to find her missing dog.
\nNot his usual mission, and not one Evan embraces with enthusiasm, but this unlikely, tiny job quickly explodes into his biggest mission yet, one that finds him battered between twisted AI technocrat billionaires, a mysterious female assassin who seems a mirror of himself, and personal stakes so gut-wrenching he can scarcely make sense of them.
\nEvan's mission pushes him to his limit - he must find and take down the assassin known only as the Wolf, before she succeeds in completing her mission and killing the people who can identify her - a teenaged daughter of her last target, and Evan himself. Matched skill for skill, instinct for instinct, Evan must outwit an opponent who will literally stop at nothing if he is to survive.
Evan Smoak is a highly trained former government assassin who has survived for years by keeping his circle to a few trusted confidants and a strict code he calls “The Ten Commandments.” But when Evan suddenly finds himself at odds with his oldest friend, all the rules he lives by shatter - and the consequences are murderous.
\nTommy Stojack might be Evan's best friend in the world. He's a gifted gunsmith who has created much of Evan's own weapons and combat gear. But now, he has apparently crossed one of Evan's hardest lines and their argument explodes into open warfare. Now Evan has no choice but to track and face down his only friend.
\nIn the meantime, Tommy has left town in order to honor his own promise to help a dead friend's son. While Tommy is fighting to save the son with everything he's got, Evan arrives with vengeance in mind.
\nBut as deadly as the former Orphan X is, there is an even more dangerous threat about to arrive on the scene. The only question left is will any of them get out alive.
Spoken about only in whispers, it is said that when the Nowhere Man is reached by the truly desperate, he can and will do anything to save them.
Evan Smoak is the Nowhere Man.
Taken from a group home at twelve, Evan was raised and trained as part of the Orphan program, an off-the-books operation designed to create deniable intelligence assets - i.e. assassins. Evan was Orphan X. He broke with the program, using everything he learned to disappear and reinvent himself as the Nowhere Man. But the new head of the Orphan program hasn't forgotten about him and is using all of his assets - including the remaining Orphans - to track down and eliminate Smoak.
But this time, the attack comes from a different angle and Evan is caught unaware. Captured, drugged, and spirited off to a remote location, heavily guarded from all approaches. They think they have him trapped and helpless in a virtual cage but they don't know who they're dealing with - that they’ve trapped themselves inside that cage with one of the deadliest and most resourceful Orphans.
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The Nowhere Man is a legendary figure spoken about only in whispers. It's said that when he's reached by the truly desperate and deserving, the Nowhere Man can and will do anything to protect and save them.
\nBut he's no legend.
\nEvan Smoak is a man with skills, resources, and a personal mission to help those with nowhere else to turn. He's also a man with a dangerous past. Chosen as a child, he was raised and trained as part of the off-the-books black box Orphan program, designed to create the perfect deniable intelligence assets - i.e. assassins. He was Orphan X. Evan broke with the program, using everything he learned to disappear.
\nNow, however, someone is on his tail. Someone with similar skills and training. Someone who knows Orphan X. Someone who is getting closer and closer. And will exploit Evan's weakness - his work as The Nowhere Man - to find him and eliminate him.
Taken from a group home at age twelve, Evan Smoak was raised and trained as part of the Orphan Program, an off-the-books operation designed to create deniable intelligence assets - i.e. assassins. Evan was Orphan X. He broke with the Program, using everything he learned to disappear and reinvent himself as the Nowhere Man, a man who helps the truly desperate when no one else can. But now Evan's past in the Orphan Program is reaching out to him.
Someone at the very highest level of government has been trying to eliminate every trace of the Orphan Program by killing all the remaining Orphans and their trainers. After Evan's mentor and the only father he ever knew was killed, he decided to strike back. His target is the man who started the program and who is now the most heavily guarded person in the world: the President of the United States.
But President Bennett knows that Orphan X is after him and, using weapons of his own, he's decided to counter-attack. Bennett activates the one man who has the skills and experience to track down and take out Orphan X - the first recruit of the program, Orphan A.
With Evan devoting all his skills, resources, and intelligence to find a way through the layers of security that surround the President, suddenly he also has to protect himself against the deadliest of opponents. It's Orphan vs. Orphan with the future of the country - even the world - on the line.
As a boy, Evan Smoak was pulled out of a foster home and trained in an off-the-books operation known as the Orphan Program. He was a government assassin, perhaps the best, known to a few insiders as Orphan X. He eventually broke with the Program and adopted a new name - The Nowhere Man - and a new mission, helping the most desperate in their times of trouble.
\nBut the highest power in the country has made him a tempting offer - in exchange for an unofficial pardon, he must stop his clandestine activities as The Nowhere Man. Now Evan has to do the one thing he’s least equipped to do - live a normal life.
But then he gets a call for help from the one person he never expected. A woman claiming to have given him up for adoption, a woman he never knew - his mother. Her unlikely request: help Andrew Duran - a man whose life has gone off the rails, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, bringing him to the deadly attention of very powerful figures.
Now a brutal brother & sister assassination team are after him and with no one to turn to, and no safe place to hide, Evan is Duran’s only option. But when the hidden cabal catches on to what Evan is doing, everything he’s fought for is on the line - including his own life.
In one terrifying night, the peaceful community of Creek's Cause turns into a war zone. No one under the age of eighteen is safe. Chance Rain and his older brother, Patrick, have already fended off multiple attacks from infected adults by the time they arrive at the school where other young survivors are hiding.
\nMost of the kids they know have been dragged away by once-trusted adults who are now ferocious, inhuman beings. The parasite that transformed them takes hold after people turn eighteen--and Patrick's birthday is only a few days away.
\nDetermined to save Patrick's life and the lives of the remaining kids, the brothers embark on a mission to uncover the truth about the parasites--and what they find is horrifying. Battling an enemy not of this earth, Chance and Patrick become humanity's only hope for salvation.
\nGreg Andrew Hurwitz's debut novel is a hard-hitting, breathtakingly suspenseful novel of a traumatised prisoner's 'impossible' escape from jail and his quest for revenge.
\nNo one has ever escaped from the Alcatraz-like 'Tower', a forbidding vertical prison surrounded by the cold Pacific waters near San Francisco. That changes with the disappearance of the brilliant, devious, and deranged Allander Atlasia, whose drive for revenge is too powerful to be contained.
\nDamaged by a criminal sexual attack as a child, Atlasia sets out on a path of cold blooded retribution against all who have hurt him, a trail that eventually leads back to his parents. His chilling moto, repeated over each new victim, is 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.'
\nOutwitted by his clever game of cat and mouse, the authorities at last concede that only someone who can get inside the mind of this pitiless serial killer can capture him. Ex-FBI agent and Private-Eye Jade Marlow, with a record of irrational behavior and violence, may be the only man who can play him at his own deadly game.
\nGreg Andrew Hurwitz's debut thriller is tautly plotted and written in a tough hard-knocks style. Supremely devious, The Tower will imprison readers in a world where suspense and terror reign and the hunted must turn hunter to survive.
Mike Wingate, abandoned by his father at four and raised in foster care, is finally living the life he always dreamed of - he’s happily married with a precocious 8-year-old daughter, and his construction company is about to finish a “green” housing development that will secure a solid future for them all. But then something from his own past, a past he doesn’t even remember, comes back to visit terror upon him and his family.
Shady characters begin threatening Mike and, when he reports them, the police seem more interested in Mike’s murky past than in protecting him. Now, with Mike, his wife Annabel and daughter Kat suddenly under attack from all sides, Mike turns to Shep, a dangerous man - and Mike’s only true friend - from his childhood days in foster care.
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Together they will do whatever it takes to protect Mike’s family against the hidden men behind the terrifying warning, “You’re Next.”
Volume one, The Brides of Maracoor, finds Elphaba’s granddaughter, Rain, washing ashore on a foreign island. Comatose from crashing into the sea, Rain is taken in by a community of single women committed to obscure devotional practices.
\nAs the mainland of Maracoor sustains an assault by a foreign navy, the island’s civil-servant overseer struggles to understand how an alien arriving on the shores of Maracoor could threaten the stability and wellbeing of an entire nation. Is it myth or magic at work, for good or for ill?
\nThe trilogy Another Day will follow this green-skinned girl from the island outpost into the unmapped badlands of Maracoor before she learns how, and becomes ready, to turn her broom homeward, back to her family and her lover, back to Oz, which - in its beauty, suffering, mystery, injustice, and possibility - reminds us all too clearly of the troubled yet sacred terrain of our own lives.
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What happened to young Elphaba before her witchy powers took hold in Wicked? Almost 30 years after the publication of the original novel, for the first time Gregory Maguire reveals the story of prickly young Elphie, the future Wicked Witch of the West - setting the stage for the blockbuster international phenomenon that is The Musical.
\nElphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, will grow to have a feisty and somewhat uncompromising character in adult life. But she is always a one-off, from her infancy; Elphie is the riveting coming-of-age story of a very peculiar and relatable young girl.
\nYoung Elphie is shaped and molded by the behaviors of her promiscuous mother, Melena, and her pious father, Frex. She suffers ordinary childhood jealousies when her sister, saintly Nessarose, and brother, junior felon Shell, arrive. She first encounters the mistreatment of the Animal populations of Oz, which live adjacent to but not intertwined with human settlements, haunted by a Monkey and receiving aid from Dwarf Bears. She thrashes through her first bruising attempts at friendship, a possible lifeline from her tricky family life. And she gleans the benefits of an education, haphazard though it must be - until she arrives at the doors of Shiz University, about to meet the radiant creature that is Galinda.
\nElphie is destined to be a witch; she bears the markings from childhood - most evidently in her green skin but more obscurely and profoundly in her cunning and perhaps amoral behaviors, as she seeks to make do, to slip by, to sneak out, to endure, and to aspire.
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In A Lion Among Men Gregory Maguire continues to flesh out the world of Oz, seen this time through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion-remembered from Wicked as a tiny cub defended by Elphaba.
\nWhile civil war looms in Oz, an ancient and tetchy oracle named Yackle prepares for death. Before she can return to dust, however, the Cowardly Lion-an enigmatic figure named Brrr-arrives in search of information about Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West. As payment, Yackle who hovered on the sidelines of Elphaba's life, demands some answers of her own.
\nAbandoned as a cub, Brrr's earliest memories are only gluey hazes. But his path from infancy in the Great Gillikin Forest is no Yellow Brick Road. Seeking to redress an early mistake, he tumbles through a swamp of ghosts, becomes implicated in a massacre of trolls, and falls in love with a Cat princess. Sidestepping the laws that oppress talking Animals, Brrr cannily avoids a jail sentence by agreeing to serve as a lackey to the warmongering Emperor of Oz.
\nA Lion Among Men traces a battle of wits between adversaries distracted by the armies approaching on either side of them. What does the Lion know of the whereabouts of the Witch's boy, Liir? What can Yackle reveal about the auguries of the Clock of the Time Dragon? Is destiny ever arbitrary? Can those tarnished by infamy escape their sobriquets - cowardly, wicked, brainless, criminally earnest - to claim their own histories, to live honorably within their own skins before they're skinned alive.
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The Oracle of Maracoor, the second in the trilogy called Another Day, continues the story of Elphaba's green-skinned granddaughter, Rain. That strange land, Maracoor - across the ocean from Oz - is beset by an invading army. In the mayhem, Rain and Cossy, a child felon, break out of prison. Helped by a few flying monkeys, they struggle to escape the city before it falls under siege. Their arresting officer, Lucikles, also retreats with his family to a highland redoubt. But safety eludes them all. Chaos thunders upon them in the form of warriors, refugees, and brigands. The very fabric of reality loosens, liberating creatures of myth and legend - huge blue wolves, harpies, and giants made of the very landscape.
\nCued in by secrets known only to the most highly placed members of the royal court, Rain and her companions hunt the fabled Oracle of Maracoor for guidance and soothsaying. Rain has to recover her forgotten past if she is to consider returning home. Cossy, the ten-year-old convicted of murder, must become invisible to avoid being taken into custody again. Meanwhile, the Fist of Mara, an arcane artifact that renders all around it barren, hammers against human lives. If the reclusive Oracle should spin a prophecy, might the desperate wicked years promise another day, one less perilous?
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The marvellous land of Oz is knotted with social unrest: The Emerald City is mounting an invasion of Munchkinland, Glinda is under house arrest, and the Cowardly Lion is on the run from the law. And look who's knocking at the door. It's none other than Dorothy. Yes, that Dorothy.
Amid all this chaos, Elphaba's granddaughter, the tiny green baby born at the close of Son of a Witch, has come of age. Now, Rain will take up her broom in an Oz wracked by war.
Out of Oz is a magical journey rife with revelations and reversals, reprisals and surprises.
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When a Witch dies - not as a crone, withered and incapable, but as a woman in her prime, at the height of her passion and prowess - too much is left unsaid. What might have happened had Elphaba lived Of her campaigns in defense of the Animals, of her appetite for justice, of her talent for magic itself, what good might have come If every death is a tragedy, the death of a woman in her prime keenly bereaves the whole world.
\nGregory Maguire returns to the world of Wicked and the land of Oz to follow the story of Liir, the adolescent boy left hiding in the shadows of the castle when Dorothy did in the Witch.
\nA decade after the Witch has melted away, the young man Liir is discovered bruised, comatose, and left for dead in a gully. Shattered in spirit as well as in form, he is tended by the mysterious Candle, a foundling in her own right, until failed campaigns of his childhood bear late, unexpected fruit.
\nLiir is only one part of the world that Elphaba left behind. As a boy hardly in his teens, he is asked to help the needy in ways in which he may be unskilled. Is he Elphaba's son Has he power of his own Can he liberate Princess Nastoya into a dignified death Can he locate his supposed half-sister, Nor, last seen in shackles in the Wizard's protection Can he survive in an Oz little improved since the death of the Wicked Witch of the West? Can he learn to fly?
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When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious Witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?
\nWicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability, and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly, and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.
\nAn astonishingly rich re-creation of the land of Oz, this book retells the story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, who wasn't so wicked after all.
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Following a confrontation with her reclusive great-grandfather, the one-time Wizard of Oz, Rainary Ko - the granddaughter of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West - has re-upped in a mission to settle a few scores and right a wrong or two. Her memory and her passions reviving, Rain turns her gaze back to her native Oz. Though the Grimmerie, which she had cast into the sea, retains its arcane power over her, the lover she left behind in Oz proves no less haunting. Traveling companions and arrivistes can befuddle a young witch coming into her own, but Rain marshals a steely determination to stare her troubles in the eye and see who blinks first.
\nIn the Another Day cycle, a lost young woman grows through a cautious adolescence into an adult state of fervor and daring. Enchantment imprisons and it also liberates. Pay heed, pay respect, but above all, pay attention.
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When the seeds rained down from deep space, it may have been the first stage of an alien invasion - or something else entirely. How much time do we have left, and do we even understand what timescale to use?
\nAs a slow apocalypse blooms across the Earth, planets and plants, animals and microbes, all live and die and evolve at different scales. Is one human life long enough to unravel the mystery?
\nCate Granger is chasing ghosts.
\nThe monster shark she once encountered was a remnant of the ancient world - one that had escaped an underwater lair previously sealed off for millions of years. At great cost, Cate and her allies had killed the beast.
\nSo, no more ghosts, no more shadows. All gone.
\nOr so Cate thought.
\nA research ship is sound-blasting the deep seabed looking for petroleum signatures. But in doing so they disturb something that has been hiding in the trenches for countless millennia.
\nWhat Cate thought was dead rises from the cold depths of hell. She, Jack Monroe, a Russian billionaire and her team of marine biologists are forced once more to enter the abyssal zone of the deepest ocean trenches, to confront a creature from the Earth's distant past.
\n
When a plane crashes into the Antarctic ice, exposing an enormous cave system, a rescue and research team is dispatched. Twenty-four hours later, all contact is lost.
\nCaptain Alex Hunter and his highly trained commandos, along with a team of scientists, are fast tracked to the hot zone to find out what went wrong. Meanwhile, the alluring petrobiologist Aimee Weir is sent to follow up on the detection of a vast underground reservoir. If the unidentified substance proves to be oil, every country in the world will want to know about it - even wage war over it. Or worse.
\nOnce suspended into the caves, Alex, Aimee, and the others can't locate a single survivor - or even a trace of their remains. Nor is there a energy source, only specters of the dead haunting the tunnels. But soon they will discover that something very much alive is brewing beneath the surface. It is a force that dates back to the very dawn of time - an ancient terror that hunts and kills to survive . . .
The legend of Lemuria, the Mysterious Island, and all its wonders and dangers were all too real. And it has been found.
\nBut the ancient stories of the great treasure and great horrors that existed through the ice rift and beyond Odin’s Gate, could never have prepared them what they discovered - monstrous creatures that lived in the sea, in the air, and on land. And now Troy Strom and Anne Walsh are trapped there amongst them.
\nBut they have a plan, and if they can retrieve the Heart of Odin, the massive ruby, they can use it to escape. Until then they must learn to live on a primordial island amongst horrifying life forms that defy the normal rules of evolution. To survive they need to travel into the dragon’s lair, and there find the truth about the ancient dragon of myth and what it guards, and also discover the fate of the first Viking clan that set foot there and what they had become.
\n
Alex Hunter, code named Arcadian, wakes up with no knowledge of who he is, in the care of a woman he doesn't recognise, in a country not his own. But there is a calling deep within him, to return home to Black Mountain.
\nFormed a billion years ago, the Appalachian's Black Mountain hosts a terrible legend. Only one elder remains to guard its long-forgotten, deadly secret and there is a fear that there is evil lurking again. Some hikers have gone missing, and the rescue team sent to search for them has not returned. Meanwhile, in nearby Ashville, Professor Matt Kearns is drawn into the mystery of an ancient artefact recovered from the mountainside, and an image too grotesque to be real.
\nA survivor is then found half-alive, covered in blood - blood revealed to be not quite human.
\nAlex must confront an age-old enemy of man and discover the truth about his past, and confront the horror that stalks the frozen mountain, and also the one haunting his very soul.
\n
When a massive amount of gamma radiation is detected somewhere beneath the desert of Iran, the world is on edge. Is it a nuclear weapon - or worse? Alex Hunter and his highly trained incursion team is on a mission to find out. When they arrive at the ruins of Persepolis, they find an underground facility but no lab, no weapons, no scientists - not even radiation. A black hole has taken everything . . .
Meanwhile, Iran is preparing for the return of the prophet. Israel is threatening nuclear war. And the details about Alex's special U.S. military venture - code name: Arcadian - have been stolen. Then another gamma spike is detected . . . and someone, or something, is draining the fluids from the bodies of Iranian soldiers in the desert.
Now it's up to Alex to follow the traces of radiation all the way to the ancient caves of Arak, where he'll come face to face with a creature from his darkest nightmares. Is it game-over for Alex and his team? Or are greater forces at work as the world reaches its natural end - and mankind casts its final judgment?
Hundreds of thousands of miles away on the dark side of the moon, the Russian lunar base has self-destructed - all personnel are dead, except one. Olga Sobakin, the lone survivor, seeks refuge at the rival American base.
\nOlga tells the Americans her base was attacked by a horrifying and nightmarish creature - the pattern was the same: people vanished, leaving nothing behind but shredded clothing and an unidentifiable waste product. The Americans are skeptical of her story at first, but then people begin to disappear . . .
\nBack on Earth, just before the American lunar base goes completely dark, a single message is received: “Lifeform”. Intercepted whisperings from Russian intelligence indicate a deadly spreading attack and a rising global threat. Escalated to priority one, there's only one team up for the task.
\nAlex Hunter and his elite group of HAWCs are on a rescue mission to the desolate and darkest unknown. Who, or what, awaits them on the dark side?
\n
'Help me, it’s Ally. Please help me.'
\nA ghostly, sobbing voice is detected from the depths of Russia’s Kola super deep borehole - 9 miles down. A Russian team is dispatched in a desperate rescue mission to find the woman. But how did she get there? And how is she still alive?
\nMeanwhile, the Americans prepare their own expedition after a new rift leading to the Center of the Earth has been discovered at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Western Pacific Ocean. Mike Monroe and Jane Baxter agree to accompany the team of soldiers and scientists to seek a compound that is potentially a cure for cancer . . . a cancer that is slowly eating away at them, and the legacy of their time in the boiling red hell at the core of the planet.
\nNow, a two-pronged mission seeks answers from the Earth’s interior, a place of impenetrable jungles, fallen kingdoms, and monstrous creatures that have never been seen on the surface and have evolved into nightmarish and deadly forms. But there is something else - a mountainous ancient being that is as old as the world and has been awaiting them. And this time will not let them leave.
\n
Baranof Island, Gulf of Alaska, 1952. Jim Granger is searching for a place of legend. Known as ‘Bad Water’ by the island’s elders, it’s reputed to be home to many dangerous creatures. Through a seam in a cliff face, Jim finds what he seeks. He also finds, too late, that the water demon he was warned about is horrifyingly real.
\nToday, Cate Granger is following in her grandfather’s footsteps. Along with a team of scientists and crew, she accidentally releases a creature from Earth’s primordial past into today’s oceans. The giant Megalodon shark follows its instinct and a genetic memory of a home that once existed millions of years ago along the Californian coast. Nothing is safe on or below the water as the monster stakes its claim on the world’s oceans.
\nNow Cate and her team must do battle with a creature that has no rival, knows no fear, and regards humans as nothing more than prey. In Fathomless, the greatest predator the world has ever known is coming home.
\n
Klaus and Doris have just made the discovery of their lives - a complete Neanderthal skeleton buried in a newly opened sinkhole. But on removing it, something else tumbles free. Something that switches on, and then calls home.
Soon the owners are coming back, and nothing will stop their ruthless search for their lost prize.
Gruesome corpses begin to pile up, and Detective Ed Heisner of the Berlin Police is assigned to a case like nothing he has ever experienced before in his life. Heisner must stay one step ahead of a group of secretive Special Forces soldiers also tracking the strange device, while trying to find an unearthly group of killers that are torturing, burning, and obliterating their victims all the way across the city.
Pompeii, present day: Archaeologist Maria Monti is working at a new dig site. Like hundreds before her she is investigating the night that Vesuvius erupted, consuming the ancient city with choking ash, scalding steam and rivers of lava.
\nBut she has just unearthed something that shouldn't be there, something that makes her question everything she knows about the disappearances of that fateful event.
\nSeveral hundred miles away Alex Hunter's family is holidaying in southern Italy when Mount Etna begins to shake, and ash blankets the countryside. Hideous figures are moving about in the smoke, snatching people from the streets, and scans indicate they are being taken into the core of the erupting volcano.
\nHell is rising and Alex Hunter must gather a team of his most battle hardened HAWCs to take on an adversary from the very depths of hell. Nothing will stop him from rescuing Aimee and Joshua, not even the devil itself.
\n
An ancient evil awakens . . . Alex Hunter has been found - sullen, alone, leaving a path of destruction as he wanders across America. Only the foolish get in the way of the drifter haunting the streets late at night. Across the world, something has been released by a treasure hunter in a hidden chamber of the Basilica Cisterns in Istanbul.
\nSomething hidden there by Emperor Constantine himself, and deemed by him too horrifying and dangerous to ever be set free. It now stalks the land, leaving its victims turned to stone, and is headed on a collision course with a NATO base. The Americans can't let it get there, but can't be seen to intervene. There is only one option - they need their best HAWC.
\nAlex Hunter, code name Arcadian. But the HAWCs are not the only ones seeking out the strange being - Uli Borshov, Borshov the Beast, who has a score to settle with the Arcadian, moves to intercept him, setting up a deadly collision of epic proportions where only one can survive. Join Alex Hunter as he learns to trust his former commander and colleagues again as the HAWCs challenge an age-old being straight from myth and legend.
\n
Below the English town of Ipswich a tunnel boring team is digging through solid rock when unexpectedly, they break into an ancient cave system filled with animal bones. Strangely, there were also the remains of men, knights in armor, some crushed, and some seemed to have had their bones and flesh melted. And there was one more thing a huge, egg-shaped ruby that glowed like a setting sun.
\nJust over 2000 miles away, still trapped on the lost island of Lemuria, Troy and Anne know that the time of monstrous beings long thought only existing in our legends or lurking in our nightmares, was returning.
\nBut they now have a chance of escape - they have found the fabled submarine, the Nautilus.
\nTogether, Troy, Anne, the secretive Elle, and the huge Viking woman, Yrsa, work together to break free so they can warn the world of the terror that is coming.
\n
In 2008, a top secret US submarine went missing on its test voyage off the coast of Antarctica. After years silent, its emergency beacon is suddenly activated, but strangely, the beacon is emanating from a point miles below the ice sheets of the frozen continent.
The race is on. The Chinese government, alerted at the same time as the Americans, is after the submarine's secrets. And the Americans need to retrieve their technology, quickly and quietly, from a place now marked as an international forbidden zone.
With the reluctant assistance of petrobiologist Aimee Weir, Alex Hunter and his team of HAWCs return to the location of their first mission together.
But only a few members of the team know the truth. A treacherous horror lies in wait for them, deep beneath the Antarctic ice.
On a desolate beach in far northern Scotland, the winter storms have been washing up all manner of things since time began. But buried in the center of one smaller iceberg is a shard of ancient Viking pottery telling a partial tale of a hidden mysterious island beyond the ice and mist, that was home to a great treasure and even greater horrors.
\nThawing in the same block of ice was a rotting flap of skin that refused to be identified but had similar skin patterns to a creature not seen for 100 million years.
\nNow, Troy Strom and the enigmatic Elle Burgan race to find the mysterious island of legend, while staying ahead of a group of brutal killers who claim to be the rightful owners of the greatest prize of all - Odin’s heart.
\n
Monsters are real.
\nCate Granger and Jack Monroe are enjoying life far away from the deep-sea horrors of their past. But the ghosts still haunt them.
\nRussian billionaire and former friend, Sonya Borashev, tells them of a newly discovered cave in Antarctica that leads deep beneath the frozen continent. It's from these icy depths that Sonya believes a remnant species of megalodon shark has been set loose. And that these ancient monsters are not only alive but thriving.
\nWith a recent spate of horrifying attacks, Sonya leads an expedition to put an end to the monsters for good. And she wants Cate and Jack with her - whether they like it or not.
\nBut beneath the dark ice, they uncover things even deadlier, even more dangerous, than they could have ever imagined.
\n
Mike Monroe and Jane Baxter barely survived their terrifying journey to the center of the Earth. But a burning curiosity still tormented them about the origins of the pale creatures in the stygian darkness of the caves, and why were their dreams also haunted by something huge and monstrous that seemed as old as time itself?
\nNow, news of a Russian military expedition has forced their hands, and also meant they must go back to a place they swore they’d never return. But this time they’re going with a team of highly skilled mercenaries and scientists to help them track the Russians and also help unlock the secrets hidden at the center of the planet.
\nBut what they find is something that evolution created in an environment vastly different to that of the benign world of the surface. And something that waits eagerly for their return.
\n
The Silurian Period, approximately 420 million years ago. A time even before the dinosaurs. Evolution was just beginning to flex its muscles, and on land and in the sea, new creatures were evolving.
\nIn this strange world arrive a team of time-travelling North Korean agents with one goal - change the past and alter the future. And if they are successful, the United States may never exist.
\nFollowing them back in time are Alex Hunter and his team of elite HAWCs. And for Alex, this mission is personal.
\nIn this strange primordial world, the HAWCs find lifeforms that defy description and test the bounds of reality, or sanity. Things that evolution created and then cancelled. Or perhaps something entirely out of this world, that time wisely kept hidden from us. Until now.
\nAlex Hunter, The Arcadian, is in a race to save his team, his country, and the people he loves the most, his family, and literally bring them back from the dead. And pity anyone or any thing that gets in his way.
\n
In the jungles of Paraguay, Dr Aimee Weir and her team are in trouble.
\nWhile drilling deep into the Earth a contagion strikes, their camp is quarantined, but workers start to vanish in the night.
\nIs it fear of contamination - or has something far more lethal surfaced?
\nAlex Hunter - code name Arcadian - and his Hotzone All-Forces Warfare Commandos are dropped in to the disaster area to do whatever it takes to stem the outbreak. But for the mission to be a success, the Arcadian must learn to master his violent inner demons long enough to confront the danger that not only threatens his own immediate survival, but that of mankind.
An old woman locked away in a Russian asylum has a secret - knowledge of a 500-year-old manuscript written by a long-dead alchemist that will show a passage to the mythical center of the Earth. She knows it’s real because 50 years ago, she and a team traveled there. And only she made it back.
\nToday, caving specialist Mike Monroe leads a crew into the world’s deepest cave in the former Soviet Union. He’s following the path of a mad woman, and the words of an ancient Russian alchemist, that were the basis of the fantastical tale by Jules Verne. But what horrifying things he finds will tear at his sanity and change everything we know about evolution and the world, forever.
\n
Something has traveled for a billion years to find us - and now it has.
\nIn space, Commander Mitch Granger and his crew are nearing the end of their scientific mission - along with their covert satellite photography for the military. As they prepare for reentry, an unknown object emerges from the void; the name given to deep, dark space.
\nThe object proves impossible to evade. The crew have one option left - to bring the fragment aboard.
\nImmediately, all contact with the shuttle is lost.
\nNASA watches helplessly as their craft breaks orbit and heads back to Earth where it crashes high up in the Revelation Mountains of Alaska.
\nThe space agency puts together an emergency recovery team, but the Russians also want the US military photographic data onboard. The race is on to be the first to the crash site, nearly 10,000 feet up in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. But there is another problem. Satellite images show that something else came down in the shuttle, something moving about when no one should be alive. And that seems to be growing at an alarming rate.
\nNASA needs help, and protection. Send in the HAWCs. But even HAWC captain Alex Hunter, the last super-soldier of the Arcadian program, has never come up against a threat so old, and from so far . . .
\n
In the forbidden deserts of Yemen, a structure has been found - a buried pyramid - thousands of years older than anything previously known. And indications are, it was buried on purpose.
\nWhat is discovered inside could prove that we're not alone in the universe. And terrifyingly, after 7000 years, there is a biological obscenity that remains, not yet dead.
\nAncient writing suggests the pyramid's builders have been taking humans for reasons that will tear at all sanity, and when evidence is found that in remote corners of the world people are still disappearing, the HAWCs are called to action.
\nIn a final battle across two worlds - with the fate of the planet at stake - Alex Hunter and his team will be pushed to their very limits as they confront a horrifying and deadly army.
\n
All it takes is the right book to turn a Book Hater into a Book Lover . . .
\nThat was Elliott’s belief and the reason why he started The Book Haters’ Book Club - a newsletter of reading recommendations for the self-proclaimed “nonreader.” As the beloved co-owner of Over the Rainbow Bookstore, Elliott’s passion and gift was recommending books to customers. Now, after his sudden death, his grief-ridden business partner, Irma, has agreed to sell Over the Rainbow to a developer who will turn the cozy bookstore into high-rise condos.
\nBut others won’t give up the bookstore without a fight. When Irma breaks the news to her daughters, Bree and Laney, and Elliott’s romantic partner, Thom, they are aghast. Over the Rainbow has been Bree and Laney’s sanctuary since childhood, and Thom would do anything to preserve Elliott’s legacy. Together, Thom, Bree and Laney conspire to save the bookstore, even if it takes some snooping, gossip and minor sabotage.
\n
A whip-smart, entertaining novel about twin siblings who become a national phenomenon after launching a podcast to find the biological father they never knew.
The death of Thomas and Savannah McClair’s mother turns their world upside down. Raised to be fiercely curious by their grandmother Maggie, the twins become determined to learn the identity of their biological father. And when their mission goes viral, an eccentric producer offers them a dream platform: a fully sponsored podcast called The Kids Are Gonna Ask.
To discover the truth, Thomas and Savannah begin interviewing people from their mother’s past and are shocked when the podcast ignites in popularity. As the attention mounts, they get caught in a national debate they never asked for - but nothing compares to the mayhem that ensues when they find him.
\n
During one unforgettable year in their twenties, best friends Emma, Fern, Carolina, and Andi make a pact to embrace whatever life throws at them, inspiring Fern to write a memoir detailing their escapades and the magical power of saying Yes.
\nBut fast forward twenty years and they have reached their bandwidth of responsibilities. Fern is a full-time writer struggling to pay the bills. Carolina is a fitness-obsessed workaholic. Andi is a disillusioned human rights lawyer. And Emma is a stressed-out divorcée in the thick of planning her daughter’s wedding. To reconnect to the fun, fulfilled women they were before, they must learn how to stop saying Yes to everything asked of them. And so begins the \"Year of No.\"
\nHeartfelt, emotionally perceptive and sharply funny, Tired Ladies Take a Stand celebrates the bonds of female friendship and women reclaiming their autonomy in a world that expects them to do it all.
\n
All the women in Piper’s family know their true love at first sight, complete with butterflies, heart eyes, and a gut instinct. The kind of fated love that lasts forever. Piper grew up with her ancestors' epic love stories repeated like fairy tales, and yearns for the day she’ll start her own. Already singled out in her family due to her physical disability, Piper collects a second strike against her when her parents announce their divorce, which convinces her family that she’s doomed.
\nWhen she finally finds her true love at a party, she’s more determined than ever to attain her love story and earn a spot in her family. But after completely botching their first meeting, she realises that she’ll need help from her best friend Leo, who is sort of a love expert. The catch - he and Piper haven’t talked in six months, since he needed a “break” from their friendship.
\nTo win over the love of her life and a place in her family, Piper must convince Leo to teach her his ways. And it’s all going as planned . . . until Leo confesses his own love for Piper. Now, she must decide which fate to follow.
\n
Ellie Haycock has always separated her life into sections: Ellie at home and Ellie at the hospital. At home, Ellie is a proud member of her high school’s speech and debate team alongside her best friend and her boyfriend. At the hospital, Ellie has a team of doctors and a mom who won’t stop posting about the details of her illness online. It’s not hard for Ellie to choose which of the two she prefers.
\nBut this latest hospital stay is different. Ellie becomes close with a group of friends, including Ryan, a first-timer who’s still optimistic about the doctors that Ellie stopped trusting years ago. Despite their differences, she can’t seem to keep him out of her head. Ellie’s life has never been ordinary - but maybe this time it will be extraordinary.
\n
From Gu Byeong-mo comes a bracingly original story of family, marriage and the cultural expectations of motherhood, about four women whose lives intersect in dramatic and unexpected ways at a government-run apartment complex outside Seoul.
\nWhen Yojin moves with her husband and daughter into the Dream Future Pilot Communal Apartments, she’s ready for a fresh start. Located on the outskirts of Seoul, the experimental community is a government initiative designed to boost the national birth rate. Like her neighbors, Yojin has agreed to have at least two more children over the next ten years. Yet, from the day she arrives, Yojin feels uneasy about the community spirit thrust upon her. Her concerns grow as communal child care begins and the other parents show their true colors.
\nApartment Women traces the lives of four women in the apartments, all with different aspirations and beliefs. Will they find a way to live peacefully? Or are the cultural expectations around parenthood stacked against them from the start?
\n
Admiral Dael Caydoc heads up the Advance Fleet to find a new homeworld for the Oconodian people. Joined by Commander Aniwyn “Spinner” Seclan, larger-than-life, reckless, and not Dael’s first choice as CAG, Commander of the Air Group, she has to admit Spinner is a brilliant pilot.
Spinner finds Admiral Caydoc an uncompromising, rigid, pain of an officer in the Oconodian Space Fleet. Dael is also the most stunning woman Spinner’s ever met. When the two women clash immediately, it only confirms her suspicion it’s going to be hell to work with a woman who both exasperates and attracts her.
While running into countless dangerous situations, Dael and Spinner realize they have more in common than they thought. It takes brave words of love for them to persevere when disaster strikes, and it’s up to Dael and Spinner to save the future for the people of Oconodos—and each other.
Eleanor Ashcroft is at the top of her game. Revered by stockholders, feared in boardrooms and by employees all over the Eastern Seaboard, her life changes when she decides to restore an inherited makeup company to its former glory. While doing research, Eleanor discovers the YouTube makeup gurus and the most successful channel, “The Blush Factor,” becomes her guilty pleasure. She finds the much-younger woman in the videos mesmerizing and profoundly attractive in a way she had never felt about a woman before.
Addison Garry loves makeup. A YouTube celebrity, her video tutorials and reviews attract hordes of viewers. When Eleanor wants Addison to do consulting for her company, Addison needs the money and knows she can’t refuse the infamous businesswoman. Working with Eleanor, Addison finds it hard to act strictly professional as she both fears her and dreams of winning her heart. Eleanor in turn realizes that her attraction to Addison is not a mere midlife crisis at all, but looks very much like love.
Nothing exciting ever happens in East Quay, a quaint New England coastal town. Not until its most celebrated daughter returns for one last performance. Four women, Manon, Eryn, Vivian and Mike, whose lives unexpectedly intersect in a small town by the sea share one thing in common - they all have secrets. Despite tragedy, past and present, each learns that life holds more than they dared dream.
\nManon Belmont, socialite and president of a wealthy foundation, leads a closeted life. She thrives helping others, but denies herself happiness for reasons she shares with no one. Nothing is the same after she meets Eryn Goddard, a reporter who has lost track of her dream of a grand writing career years ago. Eryn is suddenly rescued from her mundane assignments at the local paper when Vivian Harding, East Quay's only world famous celebrity, returns for a farewell performance.
\nVivian carries with her a secret that she fears has not only ended her career, but will also destroy her life. She finds an unexpected source of understanding in Michaela \"Mike\" Stone, a street smart and brilliant café owner. Mike, in turn, works hard developing her business, and even harder at overcoming the shadows of her past. She feels utterly protective of Vivian, but will she dare to open her heart again?
Carolyn Black - an actress driven by her ambition, desperately wants the role as Diana Maddox in the upcoming film based on the famous novels. With a reputation for being willing to do anything to get a part, the actress sets out to impress the woman behind the project. Annelie Peterson - a wealthy publisher with a mysterious past, finally meets the woman she has idolised for years.
\nOwning the film rights, Annelie has to decide who will play Maddox. Sparks fly when the two women meet. How far is Carolyn prepared to go for the dream part of a lifetime? Will Annelie omit her principles for the first time in her life?
The Oconodian ship Pathfinder and its two million souls, forges on toward their new homeworld. President Thea Tylio carries the ultimate responsibility for their success. Newly divorced, she buries herself in her work.
Thea keeps Caya Lindemay, a young changer in protective custody. Caya loathes her luxurious prison, but still helps the president whenever her clairvoyant visions are of use. As the two women acknowledge the growing romantic tension between them, Caya lives on the hope Thea will finally set her free.
As a catastrophe of devastating proportions approaches Pathfinder, Caya risks everything to help the woman she loves and their people. If she fails, it may mean the end of the Exodus mission and potential annihilation.
Music superstar Noelle Laurent refuses to record the music her producers have lined up for her new album. Prepared to break her contract if necessary, all Noelle wants is a chance to sing her own songs. Desperate, the producers bring in their CEO, business tycoon Helena Forsythe, who is infamous for not taking any prisoners. Noelle expects the CEO to be the company bitch everybody fears but she is not prepared to be so affected by Helena's formidable presence and charisma.
\nFor Helena, it's all about the money, so why change a winning game plan? However, when Noelle shows unexpected strength and courage in the negotiations, Helena knows she has to change her usual steamroller approach. Trying charm instead of brute force, Helena is blind-sided by her own unexpected feelings. When Noelle responds in kind, the stakes escalate for both women, who risk not only their professional futures but everything when it comes to their hearts.
After leaving Earth’s orbit behind, the spaceship Velocity and its crew hurtle through the galaxy toward their alien ancestor’s homeworld, Dwynna Major.
\nTrouble arises when Chief Engineer Claire Gordon’s neural interface device malfunctions, and she secretly struggles to retain the knowledge desperately needed to keep the Velocity running. Adding to her fear of failing, Claire’s falling in love with the only crew member who’s untouchable- Captain Holly Crowe.
\nHolly’s only priority is to keep the crew safe as they face the unknowns of interstellar space. Maintaining the strict rules and regulations of her captaincy is the only way she can lead, even if it distances her from the rest of the crew. When Claire’s failing interface puts them all in danger, however, Holly’s rigid approach to command is called into question.
\nWill Holly and Claire continue their mission to Dwynna Major even if it puts their lives and their hearts at risk?
A recent widow, Lady Arabella Grey hires the young and unconventional Zandra Lancaster as governess to her children. Despite Zandra’s impressive recommendations, Arabella is skeptical and unimpressed by Zandra’s youth and artistic nature. But Zandra is brilliant with her daughters, and Arabella’s inexplicably drawn to her.
\nZandra harbors secret reasons for needing this position, and when she reciprocates their attraction, her feelings escalate. Impropriety abounds as she craves Arabella’s company and increasingly intimate touch.
\nAn extended trip to Manhattan with Arabella and the children changes everything. As they embark on the RMS Titanic’s maiden voyage, their love is undeniable, but so is their course toward unforeseen danger, risking not only love but their very lives.
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Gun Brooke - Iceberg.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856851638.1665, "size": 881043, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:20:41.843Z" }, "Gun Brooke - Insult to Injury": { "title": "Insult to Injury", "author": "Gun Brooke", "description": "World famous violinist Gail Owen is devastated after a car accident leaves her unable to play her beloved instrument. She withdraws from her privileged life to an old farmhouse in Rhode Island.\n\nRomi Shepherd is homeless in New York City and barely survives by singing for pennies in the subway. After being wrongfully arrested, she hitchhikes back to Rhode Island and, out of money and options, hides in a secret room in the house she grew up in, unaware that the new owner is about to move in permanently. \n\nWhen Gail discovers Romi has been living in her house, she is curiously drawn to the young woman. Romi is torn between feeling guilty for lying to Gail and enamored of her, and she fears the truth will set them on a path toward heartbreak.", "series": "Coffee Sonata", "seriesOrder": 4, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Gun Brooke - Insult to Injury.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856851160.0837, "size": 672445, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:20:41.897Z" }, "Gun Brooke - Love Book, The": { "title": "The Love Book", "author": "Gun Brooke", "description": "Verity has no intention of mixing business and pleasure, but she’s on the verge of being fired and her feelings for her boss may save her career.
\nAspiring writer Verity Holden is secretly in love with her boss, literary agent Rowan Cross, a passion she channels into a fictionalised journal to help her cope with her less-than-stellar job performance. Rowan, driven by ambition to elevate her agency, demands perfection from her staff, and Verity's mistakes and distracting gaze are a liability.
\nBut when Rowan receives an anonymous manuscript that deeply resonates with her, Verity realises she has accidentally sent her own manuscript, complete with her very real feelings for her boss! To save her job she pretends she is the only link to the true author and faces a precarious balancing act: maintaining her job, liaising with the \"author,\" and preventing Rowan from discovering the journal's true nature. As the risk of exposure mounts, she continues to pour her heart into its pages, and the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur.
\n
Following the Advance team, the Exodus ship heads toward a new homeworld. Here they will build a future without the threat of mutated changers. Chief Engineer Adina Vantressa, responsible for keeping the Exodus vessel operational, stays far away from her vast family. She doesn't trust them. Nurse Briar Lindemay shares a secret with her younger sister Caya, an unregistered changer whom Briar has unlawfully brought with her aboard Exodus.
Adina and Briar meet, and their attraction grows despite their attempts to stay apart. Briar fears that acting on her feelings will take her focus from Caya. Adina's emotional scars hinder her, but she can't ignore how Briar makes her feel.
When disaster strikes and the only way to save the Exodus is to trust what the people aboard fear most, will the authorities listen? Or is the journey over and everything lost?", "series": "Exodus", "seriesOrder": 2, "tags": [ "LGBT - Science Fiction" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Gun Brooke - Pathfinder.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856849954.2622, "size": 695009, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:20:41.978Z" }, "Gun Brooke - Pirate's Fortune (1)": { "title": "Pirate's Fortune", "author": "Gun Brooke", "description": "
\n
When Commodore Rae Jacelon of the Gamma VI space station apprehends the alluring but decidedly dangerous Kellen O'Dal, it is the start of a breathtaking love story, as well as a dangerous rescue mission.
Roshan O'Landha, a Gantharian resistance fighter, works hard to maintain her cover as a wealthy businesswoman as war on occupied Gantharat seems imminent. When the Onotharian forces strike an overwhelming blow to the resistance, Roshan sends a plea for help to Kellen O'Dal, Protector of the Realm.
\nIn the meantime, Roshan is forced to work closely with Andreia M'Aldovar, a woman she once cared for who now holds a pivotal position in the Onotharian interim government. Andreia also guards a secret, one that if known could cost her life at the hands of either the Onotharians or the resistance.
\nAs the two women struggle to prevent annihilation, Roshan is given the only order she may not be able to obey, not even to save Gantharat-assassinate Andreia M'Aldovar.
Roshan O'Landha, a Gantharian resistance fighter, works hard to maintain her cover as a wealthy businesswoman as war on occupied Gantharat seems imminent. When the Onotharian forces strike an overwhelming blow to the resistance, Roshan sends a plea for help to Kellen O'Dal, Protector of the Realm. In the meantime, Roshan is forced to work closely with Andreia M'Aldovar, a woman she once cared for who now holds a pivotal position in the Onotharian interim government. Andreia also guards a secret, one that if known could cost her life at the hands of either the Onotharians or the resistance. As the two women struggle to prevent annihilation, Roshan is given the only order she may not be able to obey, not even to save Gantharat-assassinate Andreia M'Aldovar.
", "series": "Constellations", "seriesOrder": 2, "tags": [ "LGBT - Science Fiction" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Gun Brooke - Rebels Quest.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856849707.7935, "size": 394321, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:20:42.220Z" }, "Gun Brooke - Reluctant Enterprise, A": { "title": "A Reluctant Enterprise", "author": "Gun Brooke", "description": "Groomed for high-stakes business since her childhood in Sweden, Sylvie Thorn resides in Manhattan. As Thorn Enterprise’s US branch president, she goes into business with Maeve DeForest, a party-loving socialite. Aeron DeForest, Maeve’s clandestine daughter, was brought up by nannies and sent off to boarding schools and has always been invisible to her mother.
\nAfter college, Aeron moves to the Adirondacks and becomes a successful horror novelist. When Maeve dies, Sylvie learns Maeve has a daughter, and she needs Aeron to sign vital papers. After an initial clash, they reluctantly start working together. Just when they start to believe in love and their all-consuming passion, outside forces threaten to keep them apart forever.
Physically depleted and at a crossroads in her personal life, popular TV-personality Faythe Hamilton rents a lakeside cabin in Vermont for a much-needed vacation. Her first day in town, Faythe receives unsolicited warnings from the locals to stay away from her neighbor, which only rouses her curiosity.
\nDeanna Moore, a successful illustrator, has dedicated her life to her work and her family. Beleagured by accusations stemming from an event she is powerless to explain or defend, Deanna lives a solitary life. When she meets Faythe she is reluctantly attracted to her, but she fears Faythe will not be able to see beyond the rumors.
How do you control passion when it breaks all the rules? Lark Mitchell, a physiotherapist, reluctantly agrees to work at the luxurious mansion of Sheridan Ward, head of San Antonio's largest business conglomerate, Ward Industries.
\nHaving barely escaped death, Sheridan is now confined to a wheelchair and, furious over her loss of control and powerless for the first time in her life, she makes Lark's job beyond difficult. Despite this, Lark insists that Sheridan fight to recover, even as Lark struggles with unexpected feelings toward her employer that go against every one of her principles.
\nA dynamic, erotic romance between two charismatic women set in the scorching hot days and humid, steamy nights of San Antonio.
The boy on the gurney is dying. Held at gunpoint by a subterranean terrorist, Dr. Rayne Garcia fights to save his life. One false move will put everyone in danger. She’s seriously regretting volunteering at the third-floor free clinic when she usually works in one of the Eastern Coastal City skyscrapers.
\nKaelyn Dark doesn’t like the label terrorist when all she wanted was to protect her people against the military units sent by the corrupt Celestial authorities. Kaelyn has brought the child, critically injured during a Celestial raid, into an enemy clinic. Attempting to save his life is reckless and desperate, but she’s unable to foresee how intertwined her and Rayne’s fates will become.
\nMeeting Kaelyn fuels Rayne’s suspicions about the propaganda fed to her and other Celestials. Once she takes a stand for what is right, she can never return to her opulent way of life—but can she survive the harsh conditions? A daring plan to migrate the subterranean population to live above ground—in peace, is underway. Kaelyn’s fought her entire life for this, and she can’t allow herself to fall for Rayne. If she loses focus and something goes wrong, it could mean the end for all of them.
\n
A year ago, NASCAR star Evangeline Marshall barely escaped death in a tragic crash. Evie is plagued by nightmares and fears racing again, but she doesn’t want to give up her dream. Blythe Pierce, renowned photographer, struggles with her own demons, having worked in one warzone after another.
\nBlythe witnessed Evie Marshall’s crash through her camera and is impressed by Evie’s courage. She persuades Evie to allow her to document her recovery and return to racing. Blythe finds Evie irresistibly attractive and fears she can’t hide it. Evie in turn is mesmerised by the loving but enigmatic Blythe.
\nBut as Blythe’s past catches up with her and Evie’s fears grow as her first race nears, can they find the strength to triumph over their pasts and find love together?
Darcy Flynn, a former police officer in East Quay, works as a night guard and a private investigator. Framed for a bad shooting while on the force, she is set on finding out the truth about what happened.
Sabrina Hawk, a successful accountant with an impressive client list, still suffers the aftereffects from an assault during her college years. Victim-blaming on campus was bad enough, but she loathes the authorities for mistreating her.
Darcy notices Sabrina often works late, and the elegant blonde stirs her innate protectiveness. Sabrina finds herself able to relax around Darcy. A mutual attraction develops, but then Sabrina's office is subjected to several break-ins. Wary of the police, she hires Darcy to investigate. Darcy fears Sabrina's reaction once she learns Darcy was a cop—a cop who left the force in disgrace.
Beth Wild was born as a Subterranean and after almost dying in a fire set by raiders from the skyscrapers, she joins the resistance movement. Now fleeing the Celestial authorities with her team of freedom fighters, Beth is strapped into a SkyBird escape vessel and hurtles to the ground. There, she finds the dissident leader’s SkyBird has also crashed, and LaSierra Delmonte is injured and concussed.
\nLaSierra is confused. With Beth’s assistance, she struggles to find her bearings and, against her better judgment, grows fond of Beth. But resuming her duties means breaking both their hearts.
\nBeth loathes the role LaSierra must play. It’s impossible for her to reconcile her ideals and values with the sacrifices LaSierra is asking for. Thrown headlong into the battle for freedom for dissidents and Subterraneans alike, LaSierra may have to risk everything by acknowledging that there are less lethal ways to accomplish what must be done - and if so, will Beth ever understand that there are times when leaders must make the hard decisions for the greater good? Will they be able to bring peace long enough for them to dare to love?
When Holly Crowe, an outsider in Dennamore, learns of the extraordinary discovery of alien artifacts, she stuns the inner circle of the space mission set out to unlock their mysteries by claiming she is meant to be their captain.
\nClaire Gordon lives for fixing cars in her father’s workshop, hiking the Adirondacks, and reading science fiction, but it's not enough. Desperate to find meaning in her life, Claire stumbles upon the secret space mission and may have finally found her purpose.
\nAs Holly and Claire work toward an uncertain future, only one thing is for certain--they will have to risk their lives and their hearts to discover the truth.
", "series": "The Dennamore Scrolls", "seriesOrder": 2, "tags": [ "LGBT - Science Fiction" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Gun Brooke - Velocity.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856859937.7388, "size": 729657, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:20:42.723Z" }, "Gun Brooke - Warrior's Valor (1)": { "title": "Warrior's Valor", "author": "Gun Brooke", "description": "Environmental activist Dwyn Izsontro and law enforcement officer Emeron D'Artansis instinctively dislike everything about each other, even if the attraction between them is unmistakable.
\nWhile Dwyn surveys an endangered region of a remote planet and Emeron acts as her security escort, Ambassador M'Ekar has bribed his guards to facilitate his escape from Jasin, the planet where he is incarcerated. As part of his escape plan, he kidnaps one of the individuals he holds responsible for his humiliation, Dahlia Jacelon.
\nWhen a spacecraft crashes to the surface close to where Dwyn and Emeron are working carrying an unexpected cargo, the two women are unexpectedly hurled into a search and rescue mission where the fate of millions rest with their ability to work together. The stakes go up when Rae Jacelon and Kellen, the Protector of the Realm, join in the search.
Environmental activist Dwyn Izsontro and law enforcement officer Emeron D'Artansis instinctively dislike everything about each other, even if the attraction between them is unmistakable. While Dwyn surveys an endangered region of a remote planet and Emeron acts as her security escort, Ambassador M'Ekar has bribed his guards to facilitate his escape from Jasin, the planet where he is incarcerated. As part of his escape plan, he kidnaps one of the individuals he holds responsible for his humiliation, Dahlia Jacelon. When a spacecraft crashes to the surface close to where Dwyn and Emeron are working carrying an unexpected cargo, the two women are unexpectedly hurled into a search and rescue mission where the fate of millions rest with their ability to work together. The stakes go up when Rae Jacelon and Kellen, the Protector of the Realm, join in the search.
", "series": "Constellations", "seriesOrder": 3, "tags": [ "LGBT - Science Fiction" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Gun Brooke - Warriors Valor.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856860036.3372, "size": 364504, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:20:42.811Z" }, "Gun Brooke - Wayworn Lovers": { "title": "Wayworn Lovers", "author": "Gun Brooke", "description": "Renowned composer and lyricist Giselle Bonnaire suffers from anxiety disorder and agoraphobia. She needs a driver and housekeeper or she won’t be able to work. Tierney Edwards, a restless, wandering soul, is on the move again, never staying in one place more than a few months. The two women are each other’s opposites, one nomad and one recluse, but when destiny places them together, their mutual attraction can’t be denied.\n\nGiselle knows her heart will break when Tierney moves on again. But Tierney has never felt so at home, which scares her. Can these women, so bruised by life and experience, find a way to break free of the past—or will they have to say good-bye?", "series": "Coffee Sonata", "seriesOrder": 3, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Gun Brooke - Wayworn Lovers.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856860122.4216, "size": 751748, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:20:42.869Z" }, "Gun Brooke - Yearning": { "title": "Yearning", "author": "Gun Brooke", "description": "What is it about the sleepy town of Dennamore that causes an irresistible pull on those who’ve moved away?
LA cop Darian Tennen follows her all-consuming yearning back to Dennamore. Set on renovating her grandmother’s home, Darian needs the original blueprints and meets beautiful and aloof librarian Samantha Pike at the town hall.
A history buff with a keen interest in genealogy, Samantha has long researched mysterious discrepancies in Dennamore’s archives and census records, and together they begin to unravel centuries-old secrets that could affect not just their lives, but the world as they know it. Stumbling upon clues that don’t add up and supernatural accounts that can’t possibly be accurate, they’re forced to face their true identities and an ancient pact that must never be broken.
What they uncover will change them forever, but the love they find along the way just might be the key to saving themselves.
", "series": "The Dennamore Scrolls", "seriesOrder": 1, "tags": [ "LGBT - Science Fiction" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Gun Brooke - Yearning.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856860578.5774, "size": 720941, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:20:42.922Z" }, "Guy Gavriel Kay - All the Seas of the World": { "title": "All the Seas of the World", "author": "Guy Gavriel Kay", "description": "On a dark night along a lonely stretch of coast a small ship sends two people ashore. Their purpose is assassination. They have been hired by two of the most dangerous men alive to alter the balance of power in the world. If they succeed, the consequences will affect the destinies of empires, and lives both great and small.
\n\n
One of those arriving at that beach is a woman abducted by corsairs as a child and sold into years of servitude. Having escaped, she is trying to chart her own course - and is bent upon revenge. Another is a seafaring merchant who still remembers being exiled as a child with his family from their home, for their faith, a moment that never leaves him. In what follows, through a story both intimate and epic, unforgettable characters are immersed in the fierce and deadly struggles that define their time.
\n\n
All the Seas of the World is a page-turning drama that also offers moving reflections on memory, fate, and the random events that can shape our lives - in the past, and today.
In a chamber overlooking the nighttime waterways of a maritime city, a man recalls his youth and the people who shaped his life. Danio Cerra's intelligence won him entry to a renowned school even though he was only the son of a tailor. He took service at the court of a count - and soon learned why that man was known as the Beast.
Danio's fate changed the moment he recognized Adria Ripoli as she entered the Beast's chambers one autumn night, intending to kill. Born to power, Adria had chosen, instead of a life of comfort, one of danger - and freedom. Which is how she encounters Danio in a perilous time and place.
Unforgettable figures share the unfolding story. Among them: a healer determined to defy her expected lot; a charming, frivolous son of immense wealth; a powerful religious leader more decadent than devout; and, affecting all these lives and many more, two larger-than-life mercenary commanders, lifelong adversaries, whose rivalry puts a world in the balance.
A Brightness Long Ago offers both compelling drama and deeply moving reflections on the nature of memory, the choices we make in life, and the role played by the turning of Fortune's wheel.
From the small coastal town of Senjan, notorious for its pirates, a young woman sets out to find vengeance for her lost family. That same spring, from the wealthy city-state of Seressa, famous for its canals and lagoon, come two very different people: a young artist traveling to the dangerous east to paint the grand khalif at his request - and possibly to do more - and a fiercely intelligent, angry woman, posing as a doctor’s wife, but sent by Seressa as a spy.
The trading ship that carries them is commanded by the accomplished younger son of a merchant family, ambivalent about the life he’s been born to live. And farther east a boy trains to become a soldier in the elite infantry of the khalif - to win glory in the war everyone knows is coming.
As these lives entwine, their fates - and those of many others - will hang in the balance, when the khalif sends out his massive army to take the great fortress that is the gateway to the western world . . .
There is nothing soft or silken about the north. The lives of men and women are as challenging as the climate and lands in which they dwell. For generations, the Erlings of Vinmark have taken their dragon-prowed ships across the seas, raiding the lands of the Cyngael and Anglcyn peoples, leaving fire and death behind. But times change, even in the north, and in a tale woven with consummate artistry, people of all three cultures find the threads of their lives unexpectedly brought together . . .
\nBern Thorkellson, punished for his father's sins, commits an act of vengeance and desperation that brings him face-to-face, across the sea, with a past he's been trying to leave behind.
\nIn the Anglcyn lands of King Aeldred, the shrewd king, battling inner demons all the while, shores up his defenses with alliances and diplomacy - and with swords and arrows - while his exceptional, unpredictable sons and daughters pursue their own desires when battle comes and darkness falls in the woods.
\nAnd in the valleys and shrouded hills of the Cyngael, whose voices carry music even as they feud and raid amongst each other, violence and love become deeply interwoven when the dragon ships come and Alun ab Owyn, chasing an enemy in the night, glimpses strange lights gleaming above forest pools.
The ruling Asharites of Al-Rassan have come from the desert sands, but over centuries, seduced by the sensuous pleasures of their new land, their stern piety has eroded. The Asharite empire has splintered into decadent city-states led by warring petty kings. King Almalik of Cartada is on the ascendancy, aided always by his friend and advisor, the notorious Ammar ibn Khairan - poet, diplomat, soldier - until a summer afternoon of savage brutality changes their relationship forever.
\nMeanwhile, in the north, the conquered Jaddites' most celebrated - and feared - military leader, Rodrigo Belmonte, driven into exile, leads his mercenary company south. In the dangerous lands of Al-Rassan, these two men from different worlds meet and serve - for a time - the same master.
\nSharing their interwoven fate - and increasingly torn by her feelings - is Jehane, the accomplished court physician, whose own skills play an increasing role as Al-Rassan is swept to the brink of holy war, and beyond. Hauntingly evocative of medieval Spain, The Lions of Al-Rassan is both a brilliant adventure and a deeply compelling story of love, divided loyalties, and what happens to men and women when hardening beliefs begin to remake - or destroy - a world.
Beckoned by the Emperor Valerius, Crispin, a renowned mosaicist, has arrived in the fabled city of Sarantium. Here he seeks to fulfill his artistic ambitions and his destiny high upon a dome that will become the emerror's magnificent sanctuary and legacy.
But the beauty and solitude of his work cannot protect his from Sarantium's intrigue. Beneath him the city swirls with rumors of war and conspiracy, while otherworldly fires mysteriously flicker and disappear in the streets at night. Valerius is looking west to Crispin's homeland to reunite an Empire - a plan that may have dire consequences for the loved ones Crispin left behind.
In Sarantium, however, loyalty is always complex, for Crispin's fate has become entwined with that of Valerius and his Empress, as well as Queen Gisel, his own monarch exiled in Sarantium herself. And now another voyager - this time from the east - has arrived, a pysician determined to make his mark amid the shifting, treachearous currents of passion and violence that will determine the empire's fate.
Ren Daiyan was still just a boy when he took the lives of seven men while guarding an imperial magistrate of Kitai. That moment on a lonely road changed his life - in entirely unexpected ways, sending him into the forests of Kitai among the outlaws. From there he emerges years later - and his life changes again, dramatically, as he circles towards the court and emperor, while war approaches Kitai from the north.
Lin Shan is the daughter of a scholar, his beloved only child. Educated by him in ways young women never are, gifted as a songwriter and calligrapher, she finds herself living a life suspended between two worlds. Her intelligence captivates an emperor - and alienates women at the court. But when her father’s life is endangered by the savage politics of the day, Shan must act in ways no woman ever has.
In an empire divided by bitter factions circling an exquisitely cultured emperor who loves his gardens and his art far more than the burdens of governing, dramatic events on the northern steppe alter the balance of power in the world, leading to events no one could have foretold, under the river of stars.
The first of a two-volume story continuing that of the world created in \"Tigana\". The empire of Sarantium is beset to east and west but Valerius II wishes to take back the western lands which gave birth to the empire he now rules. The master mosaicist, Caius Crispus, is called upon to play a role.
\nSarantium is the golden city: holy to the faithful, exalted by the poets, jewel of the world and heart of an empire.
Caius Crispus, known as Crispin, is a master mosaicist, creating beautiful art with colored stones and glass. Still grieving the loss of his family, he lives only for his craft - until an imperial summons draws him east to the fabled city. Bearing with him a Queen's secret mission and seductive promise, and a talisman from an alchemist, Crispin crosses a land of pagan ritual and mortal danger, confronting legends and dark magic.
Once in Sarantium, with its taverns and gilded sanctuaries, chariot races and palaces, intrigues and violence, Crispin must find his own source of power in order to survive. He finds it, unexpectedly, high on the scaffolding of his own greatest creation.
Five men and women find themselves flung into the magical land of Fionavar, First of all Worlds. They have been called there by the mage Loren Silvercloak, and quickly find themselves drawn into the complex tapestry of events.
\nFor Kim, Paul, Kevin, Jennifer and Dave all have their own part to play in the coming battle against the forces of evil led by the fallen god Rakoth Maugrim and his dark hordes.
Set in a beleaguered land caught in a web of tyranny, Tigana is the deeply moving story of a people struggling to be free. A people so cursed by the dark sorceries of the tyrant King Brandin that even the very name of their once beautiful land cannot be spoken or remembered.
But not everyone has forgotten. A handful of men and women, driven by love, hope and pride set in motion the dangerous quest for freedom and bring back to the world the lost brightness of an obliterated name: Tigana.
Shen Tai, son of an illustrious general serving the Emperor of Kitai, has spent two years honoring the memory of his late father by burying the bones of the dead from both armies at the site of one of his father's last great battles.
\nIn recognition of his labors and his filial piety, an unlikely source has sent him a dangerous gift: 250 Sardian horses. You give a man one of the famed Sardian horses to reward him greatly. You give him four or five to exalt him above his fellows, propel him towards rank, and earn him jealousy, possibly mortal jealousy. Two hundred and fifty is an unthinkable gift, a gift to overwhelm an emperor.
\nWisely, the gift comes with the stipulation that Tai must claim the horses in person. Otherwise he would probably be dead already
A mage’s power has brought five university students from our world into a realm where an ancient evil has freed itself from captivity to wreak revenge on its enemies . . .
\n\n
The ice of eternal winter has reached out to enshroud Fionavar, the first of all worlds. For the Unraveller has broken free after millennia enchained - and now his terrible vengeance has begun to take its toll on mortals and immortals, mages and warriors, dwarves and the lios alfar, the Children of Light.
Only five men and women of our own world, brought by magic across the Tapestry of worlds to the very heart of the Weaver’s pattern, can hope to wake the allies they so desperately need. Yet none can foretell whether even these beings out of legend have the power to shatter the Unraveller’s icy grip of death upon the land . . .
Thierry Villar is a well-known--even notorious-- tavern poet, familiar with the rogues and shadows of that world, but not at all with courts and power. He is an unlikely person, despite his quickness, to be caught up in the deadly contests of ambitious royals, assassins, and invading armies.
\nBut he is indeed drawn into all these things on a savagely cold night in his beloved city of Orane. And so Thierry must use all the intelligence and charm he can muster as political struggles merge with a decades-long war to bring his country to the brink of destruction.
\nAs he does, he meets his poetic equal in an aristocratic woman and is drawn to more than one unsettling person with a connection to the world beyond this one. He also crosses paths with an extraordinary young woman driven by voices within to try to heal the ailing king--and help his forces in war. A wide and varied set of people from all walks of life take their places in the rich tapestry of this story.
\nWritten on the Dark is an elegant tour de force about power and ambition playing out amid the intense human need for art and beauty, and memories to be left behind.
Provence, in the south of France, is a part of the world that has been - and continues to be - called a paradise. But one of the lessons that history teaches is that paradise is coveted and fought over. Successive waves of invaders have claimed - or tried to claim - those vineyards, rivers, olive groves, and hills.
In Guy Gavriel Kay’s new novel, Ysabel, this duality - of exquisite beauty and violent history - is explored in a work that marks a departure from Kay’s historical fantasies set in various analogues of the past.
Ysabel takes place in the world of today: in a modern springtime, in and around the celebrated city of Aix-en-Provence near Marseilles. Dangerous, mythic figures from the Celtic and Roman conflicts of the past erupt into the present, claiming and changing lives.
The protagonist is Ned Marriner, the fifteen year-old son of a well-known photographer. Ned has accompanied his father, Edward Marriner, and a team of assistants to Provence for a six week “shoot.”
Nora Best is enjoying the quiet life . . . finally. She's parked up the Airstream on a quiet stretch of beach and is now a seventh-grade teacher in a small peninsula town in the Pacific Northwest. Her biggest worry is keeping up with her quick-witted bunch of students. No drama. No danger. And most importantly - no one turning up dead.
\nUntil they do, that is . . .
\nWhen a local environmental activist - and dad to one of her most troublesome students – is killed, Nora once again finds herself in the thick of an investigation that threatens her new-found peace. She soon uncovers that Ward's death is most likely linked to the building of the school's emergency tsunami tower - a project financed by Ward's ex-wife's new husband . . . and one that is testing the town's loyalty.
\nWith emotions, and gossip, running high, in a community where everyone knows everyone else's secrets, Nora is in a race against time to get answers before fall storms slam their vulnerable Pacific Coast peninsula putting everyone's lives in danger!
Nora heads home to Chateau in search of a fresh start, but her arrival comes at a time of social unrest that threatens to uncover long-hidden secrets.
\nNora Best is done running. She’s heading to her hometown of Chateau, to the grand Quail House, to stay with her mother and claim the great American privilege of starting over. But she might find it is hard to start over when the past is catching up . . .
\nThe night Nora arrives in Chateau, a white police officer shoots and kills Robert Evans, a young black man. The officer in question is Nora’s school sweetheart, Alden Tydings. What really happened that night? Did Alden act in self-defense as he claims?
\nRobert is the nephew of Bobby Evans, a man whose murder during the race protests of 1967 was never solved. Bobby and his sister, Grace, used to work at Quail House before Nora was born and, as tensions in Chateau rise, Nora begins to uncover secrets within her family home that could upend the lives of everyone in town . . .
Nora Best is the envy of her friends. She's just turned fifty and has traded in her home with The Perfect-Ass Husband for an Airstream trailer and an adventure of a lifetime across the US.
But during their leaving party, Nora finds her husband in a compromising position with a friend. Storming out of the party she jumps into her truck with no idea how to tow the Airstream or where she's going.
Nora ends up in a campground in the mountains of Wyoming, drowning her sorrows with its managers, Brad and Miranda. When she is woken by a frantic Miranda after Brad has disappeared and bloodstains have been found around the campsite, Nora finds herself caught up in an adventure she could never have expected . . . facing a charge of murder.
Nora Best is starting her life over . . . again. Spotting a 'team leader' job with a therapy program for troubled girls at Serendipity Ranch, Nora thinks it's the perfect role. She'll be surrounded by the beautiful Montana wilderness and be able to make a difference in the kids' lives.
\nAll is going well until it's revealed a girl recently died at the ranch. The other girls are struggling with the loss. The official line is she jumped from a cliff, but she was afraid of heights and would have struggled to get there alone.
\nAs trouble at the ranch escalates and another shocking discovery is made, Nora's determined to find out the truth to protect the girls. However, with her recent troubles, the local community, police and program leaders won't take her seriously. Can Nora overcome her past to help the girls, or are the girls using her past to help themselves?
Former foreign correspondent Lola Wicks is getting a little bored in Magpie, Montana, where she landed at a small local newspaper after being downsized from her job in Kabul. Then Judith Calf Looking, a local Blackfeet girl missing for several months, turns up dead in a snowbank with a mysterious brand on her forearm. The sheriff - whose romantic relationship with Lola provides Magpie with its most delicious gossip in years - thinks Judith probably froze to death while hitch-hiking back to the reservation from wherever she'd been.
But Lola hears rumors that Judith had been working as an exotic dancer in the North Dakota oil fields, and further discovers that several Blackfeet girls, all known drug users, have gone missing over the past year. She heads to the oil patch to check things out, only to find herself in a place where men outnumber women a hundred to one, the law looks the other way, and life - especially her own - is cheap.
Dakota shows the frightening underside of a boom-and-bust economy; of the effect on a small town when big-city money washes in, accompanied by hoards of mean far from their families; of what happens when the old rules no longer apply, but the new ones are yet to be determined.
When former foreign correspondent Lola Wicks heads to Wyoming for a Yellowstone vacation, she comes across a story that hits close to her past. One Wyoming soldier returning from Afghanistan commits suicide, two others spark a near-fatal brawl, and a woman is terrorised.
\nLola, accompanied by her young daughter, senses a story about whatever happened on the far side of the world that these troops have brought so disastrously home.
\nBut she soon realises that getting the story must take second place to getting herself - and her little girl - out of Wyoming alive.
Foreign correspondent Lola Wicks feels at home in the war zones of Afghanistan - so when her editor reassigns her from Kabul to a suburban stateside beat, she's a fish out of water. To blow off some steam, Lola heads to Montana for some downtime at a friend's cabin.
\nBut when she arrives, she discovers her friend has been shot dead in the hills outside her home. The murder is downright chilling - enough to make Lola want to hightail it back to Kabul. But as the first person on the scene, she's forced to stick around.
\nLola figures the only way to get out of dodge quickly is to solve the crime herself. But she's unsettled by the strangeness of the small mountain town, which is only magnified by the tensions between the locals and the people of the nearby Blackfeet Nation. Soon Lola's doing things she never imagined, like leaning on her new friendship with a fellow reporter - and getting up close and personal with the local sheriff.
\nThe more she's drawn deeper into the crime, the more connected she feels to this small community under the big sky - a bond which raises the stakes on just about everything.
Journalist Lola Wicks would much rather pursue a story than spend time with people she barely knows. So when an eco-terrorist bombing escalates the controversy surrounding a new coal mine on Arizona’s Navajo Reservation, she’s almost relieved to have the distraction from meeting her in-laws.
\nBut as the violence gets worse and Lola digs deeper, she can’t escape the feeling that her husband’s family is somehow involved - a suspicion that jeopardises not only her marriage, but also her life.
\nWhen retired septuagenarian Alice settled into her home within the planned community of Timeless Pastures in New Jersey, she expected a quiet life full of book clubs, mellow gatherings, and affable friends. What she didn’t expect was her retirement paradise to be disturbed by pigeons!
\nAlice confronts her next-door neighbor, Babs, for feeding a flock of them each day, thus causing her backyard to look like a Jackson Pollock painting, but not knowing how devious Babs can be, and unconsciously unleashing events that could be dangerous or even worse - deadly!
\nWhen Babs is found dead days after their dispute, everyone is quick to believe it was Alice who killed her. Panicked, Alice decides to leave, but not without her loyal senior friends and neighbors - Mia, Sasha, and George - who will not only go on the run and dodge the police with her, but also try to protect her from her mysterious past . . .
For fans of A Thousand Splendid Suns comes a stirring novel set in Afghanistan about two women - an American aid worker and her local interpreter - who form an unexpected friendship despite their utterly different life experiences and the ever-increasing violence that surrounds them in Kabul.
In 2001, Kabul is suddenly a place of possibility as people fling off years of repressive Taliban rule. This hopeful chaos brings together American aid worker Liv Stoellner and Farida Basra, an educated Pakistani woman still adjusting to her arranged marriage to Gul, the son of an Afghan strongman whose family spent years of exile in Pakistan before returning to Kabul.
Both Liv and her husband take positions at an NGO that helps Afghan women recover from the Taliban years. They see the move as a reboot - Martin for his moribund academic career, Liv for their marriage. But for Farida and Gul, the move to Kabul is fraught, severing all ties with Farida’s family and her former world, and forcing Gul to confront a chapter in his life he’d desperately tried to erase.
The two women, brought together by Farida’s work as an interpreter, form a nascent friendship based on their growing mutual love for Afghanistan, though Liv remains unaware that Farida is reporting information about the Americans’ activities to Gul’s family, who have ties to the black market.
As the bond between Farida and Liv deepens, war-scarred Kabul acts in different ways upon them, as well as their husbands. Silent Hearts is an absorbing, complex portrayal of two very different but equally resilient women caught in the conflict of a war that will test them in ways they never imagined.
Lola Wicks is in bad shape. A family tragedy has nearly flattened her in a way that her years reporting from war zones never did. Her friends, alarmed by signs that Lola is in the grip of a destructive addiction, hope that a freelance assignment will get her back on her feet. The threat of having her child removed persuades Lola to head for Salt Lake City on a puff piece about overseas adoptions.
\nBut the story takes a dark turn when the teenager at the center of her story lands in jail facing a murder charge. Setting out to prove the youth's innocence takes Lola to her own dark place, and she's not sure if she'll ever be able to find her way back.
\nLaura Miller and Edmund Putnam have been friends for a long time. Theirs is a happy meeting of minds, with long evenings spent huddled in an ancient pub by the Thames, where they share office gossip, reflect on their teenage passions, and lament the state of the world.
\nRecently, though, Putnam has been harder to reach: he has lost his father, and the magazine to which he has dedicated his life has been hijacked by an insufferable new editor, Simon ‘call me Shove’ Halfpenny.
\nLaura has her own problems: with a prickly mother and a tricky past, and in a beautiful and indifferent city, her day-to-day life is precarious. But as Putnam starts to sink into despondency, she must try to bring him back.
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In 2050s London, fear grips like a vice as a deadly virus sweeps the globe. The British prime minister tells her people to remain calm. A vaccine will be available soon, and as a precautionary measure children will be whisked away to undisclosed locations, kept safe until the storm passes.
\nMarianne, Downing Street press secretary, doesn’t realise the futility until it is far, far too late. When the truth hits her, Marianne is forced to choose: stay with her family, or do whatever she can to help the doomed survive.
\nAs London falls, seven-year-old Maia is one of the last to escape the city. In an evacuation camp, she binds herself to Finn: in the absence of everything she knew, he becomes her everything.
\nYet as the years roll on and hope fades, Maia sees the bubble of safety is also a prison. She realises there is only one choice: to leave the camp and find what remains on the outside.
\nAn utterly compelling and unforgettable tale of humanity, resilience and the lengths we will go to for love.
Thray is the Last Daughter of Winter, half immortal and haunted by the legacy of her blood. When offered a chance to visit the northern land of Duamel, where her father once ruled, she can't refuse - even if it means lying to the priesthood she serves and the man she loves.
\nIn Duamel, Thray’s demi-god siblings rule under the northern lights, worshipped by arcane cults. An endless winter night cloaks the land, giving rise to strange beasts, terrible storms and a growing, desperate hunger. The people of Duamel teeter on the edge of violence, and Thray’s siblings, powerful and deathless, stand with them on the brink.
\nTo earn her siblings’ trust and find the answers she seeks, Thray will have to weather assassinations, conspiracies and icy wastelands. And as her siblings turn their gaze towards the warmer, brighter land she calls home, she must harness her own feral power and decide where her loyalties lie.
\nBecause when the spring winds blow and the ice breaks up, the sons and daughters of Winter will bring her homeland to its knees.
A captured pirate reveals shocking news to Mary and Samuel that sends them in urgent pursuit of Samuel’s twin brother, Benedict, but their search uncovers much more than they bargained for.
\nWhile evading a cunning new foe, Mary and Samuel must navigate the complexities of their own growing bond as they launch a rescue mission within one of the most secure fortresses on the Mereish Coast.
Mary Firth is a Stormsinger: a woman whose voice can still hurricanes and shatter armadas. Faced with servitude to pirate lord Silvanus Lirr, Mary offers her skills to his arch-rival in exchange for protection - and, more importantly, his help sending Lirr to a watery grave. But her new ally has a vendetta of his own, and Mary's dreams are dark and full of ghistings, spectral creatures who inhabit the ancient forests of her homeland and the figureheads of ships.
\nSamuel Rosser is a disgraced naval officer serving aboard The Hart, an infamous privateer commissioned to bring Lirr to justice. He will stop at nothing to capture Lirr, restore his good name and reclaim the only thing that stands between himself and madness: a talisman stolen by Mary.
\nFinally, driven into the eternal ice at the limits of their world, Mary and Samuel must choose their loyalties and battle forces older and more powerful than the pirates who would make them slaves.
Ottilie Rushforth hides from the mighty Sorcerer’s Guild as secretary to a has-been detective. She is Entwined - threads of magic run beneath her skin, and the Guild would trap her in service.
\nBut Ottilie has a plan to escape the Guild forever with her estranged fiancé, the enigmatic poet, soldier and smuggler Lewis Illing. All she must do is track down a mysterious artefact, claim the bounty, and leave the city forever. But Ottilie's sisters - Pretoria, a quick-witted sorceress and thief recently emerged from exile, and Madge, a guild mage to the core, appear to make equally unwelcome offers. A new life at the cost of everything she has ever wanted, or prestige and safety in a gilded cage.
\nWith her life on the line, Ottilie must track down the artifact in a city torn apart by prejudice and violence, and choose between the two sides of herself - the fugitive and the Entwined.
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Hessa is an Eangi: a warrior priestess of the Goddess of War, with the power to turn an enemy's bones to dust with a scream. Banished for disobeying her goddess's command to murder a traveller, she prays for forgiveness alone on a mountainside.
\nWhile she is gone, raiders raze her village and obliterate the Eangi priesthood. Grieving and alone, Hessa - the last Eangi - must find the traveller, atone for her weakness and secure her place with her loved ones in the High Halls. As clans from the north and legionaries from the south tear through her homeland, slaughtering everyone in their path, Hessa strives to win back her goddess' favour.
\nBeset by zealot soldiers, deceitful gods, and newly-awakened demons at every turn, Hessa burns her path towards redemption and revenge. But her journey reveals a harrowing truth: the gods are dying and the High Halls of the afterlife are fading. Soon Hessa's trust in her goddess weakens with every unheeded prayer.
\nThrust into a battle between the gods of the Old World and the New, Hessa realizes there is far more on the line than securing a life beyond her own death. Bigger, older powers slumber beneath the surface of her world. And they're about to wake up.
Yske, daughter of the legendary warrior priestess Hessa, has dedicated her life to medicine and pacifism in service to Aita, the Great Healer. When her twin brother Berin, hungry for glory, gathers a party to investigate rumours of strange sightings in the Unmade - shadows in the darkness at the end of the world - Yske joins the mission, to keep him safe.
\nTheir journey east takes them through primal forests, walking paths last trod when gods were at war and ancient, powerful beasts were defeated and bound. And the closer they get to the Unmade, the more strange and terrible things haunt them from the shadows, corruptions in nature and monstrous creatures of moss and bone.
\nEarning the respect of Berin and his warriors, Yske must forge a place for mercy and healing in a world of violence and sacrifice. She must survive murderous ambushes and brutal sieges and take her place at the centre of the oldest war of all.
\nThrust into a desperate conflict of survival, Yske and Berin will wage the final war with the gods - in the shadow of a vast and ancient tree, the fate of creation is about to be decided.
In the wake of the events of Black Tide Son, Hart flees into pirate-infested waters to shelter on the island where former rogue James Demery and the Fleetbreaker, Anne Firth, now rule.
\nReeling from their discoveries about the truths of the Mereish-Aeadine war, Mary and Sam hover on the precipice of a terrible, world-altering choice - they can stay silent and maintain their good names, or they can speak out, and risk igniting total war across the Winter Sea.
\nMeanwhile, Benedict captains The Red Tempest, a lawless ship of deserters and corrupted mages in search of an Usti spy with incendiary stolen documents. Benedict is determined to make the truth known, consequences be damned.
\nAs rumours spread of a new Ghistwold sprouting in the Mereish South Isles, May and Sam sail once more into intrigue, espionage and an ocean on the brink of exploding into conflict. They must chart a course toward lasting, final peace, at the heart of the age-old battle for power upon the Winter Seas.
After a brutal war between the gods, Hessa - High Priestess of the Eangen - has brokered a fragile peace. Through great sacrifice, she has forged an alliance between warring tribes and introduced her people to the true god.
\nBut a new threat is growing across the southern border. In the remnants of the once-great Arpa Empire, three factions are vying for the imperial throne, and the vast well of raw magical power only accessible to the Arpa Emperor. Already beating back former Arpa legionaries at her borders, Hessa knows she cannot let this chance slip by. She must intervene, for the safety of her people.
\nWith the peace she has sacrificed so much for at stake, Hessa must venture into the heart of enemy territory, where warring Arpa factions are not the only danger she must face. A sinister new cult is on the rise, one with the power to suck the life from everything it touches. With enemies on every side and her fragile alliance beginning to waver, Hessa must decide who to trust – no matter what it may cost her . . .
Fifteen-year-old Fawad Chaudhry loves two things: basketball and his mother's potato and ground-beef stuffed parathas. Both are round and both help him forget about things like his father, who died two years ago, his mother's desire to arrange a marriage to his first cousin, Nusrat, back home in Pakistan, and the tiny apartment in Regent Park he shares with his mom and sister. Not to mention his estranged best friend Yousuf, who's coping with the shooting death of his older brother.
\nBut Fawad has plans: like, asking out Ashley, even though she lives on the other, wealthier, side of the tracks, and saving his friend Arif from being beaten into a pulp for being the school flirt, and making the school basketball team and dreaming of being the world's first Pakistani to be drafted into the NBA.
\nAll he has to do now is convince his mother to let him try out for the basketball team. And let him date girls from his school. Not to mention somehow get Omar, the neighborhood bully, to leave him alone . . .
In post-WWI Britain, tumult is the order of the day. After a violent incident in Galway, Marion flees to Oxford, the City of Dreaming Spires. Against a background of cobbled streets and off-beat book presses, she meets Jamie, who is returning, shell-shocked, from the frontlines. He alone understands her scars, and the sides of herself she doesn’t show in public. There is something wild and anarchic about their love for one another. A lot, perhaps everything, is at stake.
\nWithout falling out of love, the pair suddenly falls out of contact. Marion disappears to Switzerland, while Jamie’s work pulls him towards Scotland. Marion continues to be afflicted by voices, “Talkers,” a lingering reminder of her dark past, even as new loss threatens to consume her. In fits and starts, their worlds slowly come back together, leaving readers guessing until the final page.
\nIn this one-of-a-kind romantic epic, H.S. Cross takes all of this - love, damage, time, conflict, uncertainty - and transforms it into singular prose with the emotional depth of Wuthering Heights. Split between Marion and Jamie’s perspectives, Amanda reminds readers of the infinite varieties of human experience and provides a poignant answer to the age-old question “what’s in a name?”
Guls can be brutal. Few know this better than Ariadne, who lost half her body to their appetites, but their brutality is a predictable constant amid Brazil’s political chaos. Now, she treats them in the specialised clinic she inherited from Erik Yurkov - the mentor who rescued her as a child, trained her in medicine, built her prostheses, and disappeared without a trace.
\nAriadne’s routine is disturbed when Quaint knocks on her door: a charming, tattooed gul claiming to be Erik’s oldest friend. Quaint suspects foul play in Erik’s disappearance, and they soon discover Erik sought asylum at Cabaré, an infamous club in Rio de Janeiro frequented by the gul elite.
\nTogether, Ariadne and Quaint will unravel the conspiracy behind their friend’s disappearance, navigate the labyrinthine world of Ariadne’s memories, and discover what Erik means to them - and what they are starting to mean to each other.
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In this hopeful debut about the silent struggles of motherhood, three very different women want custody of the same two little girls - and learn they have more in common than the children they’re fighting for.
\nDetermined to be a better mother than her own, Hannah has devoted her life to her daughters. She ignores her increasing exhaustion and isolation as a widowed mom - until a disastrous mistake lands the girls in foster care.
\nJulie is single and lonely and dreams of being a mother. After infertility issues lead her to foster parenting, she falls head over heels for Hannah’s daughters. The more she bonds with these sweet, precocious girls, the more she worries about their previous home life and becomes intent on finding a way to keep them.
\nRecently forced into retirement, Elaine is devastated by the way her daughter, Hannah, has shut her out. When she discovers her granddaughters are in foster care, she resolves to rescue them from the system: her one chance at a parenting do-over.
\nEach woman thinks she’s the best possible mother, but none understands the full truth. Old hurts, long-held secrets, and budding new relationships collide as they fight for the girls who could make them a family.
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Talking about death and dying is considered taboo in polite company, and even in the medical field. Our ideas about dying are confusing at Will our memories flash before our eyes? Regrets consume our thoughts? Does a bright light appear at the end of a tunnel? For most people, it will be a slower process, one eased with preparedness, good humor, and a bit of faith. At the forefront of changing attitudes around palliative care is hospice nurse Hadley Vlahos, who shows that end-of-life care can teach us just as much about how to live as it does about how we die.
\nVlahos was raised in a strict religious household, but began questioning her beliefs in high school after the sudden death of a friend. When she got pregnant at nineteen, she was shunned by her community and enrolled herself in nursing school to be able to support herself and her baby. But nursing soon became more than that when she focused on palliative care and hospice work, it became a calling.
\nIn The In-Between, Vlahos recounts the most impactful experiences she’s had with the people she’s worked with - from the woman who never once questioned her faith until she was close to death, to the older man seeing visions of his late daughter, to the young patient who laments that she spent too much of her short life worrying about what others thought of her - while also sharing her own fascinating journey.
\nWritten with profound insight, humility, and respect, The In-Between is a heartrending memoir that shows how caring for others can transform a life while also offering wisdom and comfort for those dealing with loss and providing inspiration for how to live now.
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It’s an autumn weekend at a comfortable New York country house where two deeply intertwined families have gathered to mark the host’s fifty-second birthday.
\nTogether, the group forms an enviable portrait of middle age. The wives and husbands have been friends for over thirty years, their teenage daughters have grown up together, and the drinks, dinners, rituals, and games that form their days all reflect the rich bonds between them.
\nThis weekend, however, something is different. An unforeseen curdling of envy and resentment will erupt into an unspeakable act, the ramifications of which are enormous. Accusations, denials, and shattered illusions follow, driving wedges between friends, spouses, children and parents, and exposing the treacherous fault lines on which these families have dwelt.
\nWritten with hypnotic elegance and molten precision, and announcing the arrival of a major literary talent, Hal Ebbott’s Among Friends examines the aftermath of betrayal within the sanctuary of a defining relationship. It explores themes of class, marriage, friendship, and power, as well as the things we tell ourselves to preserve our finely made worlds.
Hannah Dalton had a lot of expectations in her life. Growing up watching her mother struggle for everything they had, she resolved to make sure she did everything she could to make those hardships worthwhile. She would pursue the career she dreamed of, she would marry someone trustworthy and kind, and she would try to give her own daughter everything her mother gave her, only without the struggle.
\nShe just never anticipated the order in which it could all happen or the hardships that would inevitably come to pass. But, somehow, maybe it can all work out better than expected.
\nA companion to the bestselling novel When You Least Expect It.
Ellie Beckett’s life is simple and uncomplicated; she’s on track to become a leading expert in biomedical engineering, she has a pub where she feels comfortable enough to hang out multiple times a week, and, so what if she doesn’t have time for . . . people? She doesn’t need or want them.
\nUntil she meets Mia Sharpe.
\nAs it it turns out, maybe Ellie does want at least one person.
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Good things come to those who wait and now Sutton Spencer and Charlotte Thompson get to reap the benefits. They spent months circling around admitting their feelings, but the time for denying their love is over.
As the world watches, their lives never stop growing. The only thing that's for certain is that through every hurdle that comes their way, they'll face it together.
A collection of snapshots of a life lived and loved.
Free-spirited and easygoing Taylor Vandenberg left her hometown of Faircombe, Tennessee as soon as she could, and in the twenty-five years since, she has rarely looked back. She wouldn’t change anything about how her life has turned out - having traveled to nearly every country, never staying anywhere long enough to feel stifled. Very few things can hold her attention back in Faircombe: her sister/best friend, her precocious niece, and perhaps the prospect of riling up Brooke Watson.
\nBrooke has known Taylor for her entire life, given that her best friend is Taylor’s younger brother. And a lifelong knowledge of Taylor means that Brooke knows she’s trouble: irresponsible, takes nothing seriously, and is irritatingly attractive. Unlike Taylor, Brooke loves their town so much that she’s spent her adult life dedicated to making sure it doesn’t get swept away like many of the other declining small cities of the American South. Faircombe means the world to her, and she’s willing to do just about anything to make sure it flourishes.
\nEven if it means working with Taylor, whose path seems to continuously be crossing with Brooke’s everywhere she turns . . .
Charlotte Thompson appears to have it all - by forty, her political plans are panning out exactly as she’d always hoped. Now a senator, she quietly came out a couple of years ago, and she’s on-track to fulfilling everything she’d ever dreamed of. Perhaps she is a little lonely sometimes, but as the saying goes: it’s lonely at the top.
\nSutton Spencer has finally found her footing after her divorce. She’s a tenured literature professor, she loves her daughter more than anything, and she’s accepted the harsh truth of the world: maybe she simply isn’t meant to find lasting romantic love.
\nThey’ve both put their ill-fated affair from over a decade ago behind them, until a surprise reunion results in their paths intertwining once more.
\nMaybe some things are meant to be in every universe . . .
Gianna Mäkinen has been in love with her best friend Riley Beckett for her entire adult life. She’d long accepted that her place in life was Riley’s best friend, and that was okay. It was more than okay.
\nShe never imagined that she would have the opportunity to confess her love to Riley, to marry her, to have a herd of children with her.
\nRiley always knew she’d be building her life with Gianna, but she never knew it would be this kind of life. This all-consuming, passionate, together life.
\nThey learn through the years that the only thing better than finally being on the same page, is being able to go through the next chapters of life with one another.
Riley Beckett met Gianna Mäkinen - drop-dead gorgeous influencer, trilingual, daughter of world-famous models, yes, that Gianna Mäkinen - their first year at Boston University, and it changed everything for the both of them. After all, when you find the person who just gets you, nothing feels quite \"the same\" right?
\nAnd in the ten years since, Riley has come to depend on Gianna more than anyone else in her life. She knows Gianna just as well as she knows herself - maybe better, some days. She knows Gianna is incredibly sex-positive, she knows Gianna doesn't do romance or relationships, and she knows nothing could ever come between them. This is what makes sense to her, all of this is status-quo.
\nBut when a holiday party mix-up sets in motion a domino effect of changes to these previously inalienable truths, Riley has to question everything she thought she knew about their relationship. What, exactly, does Gianna mean to her after all?
For the first time, Regan Gallagher is facing the world without her best friend by her side - no, Sutton isn’t dead but she is in Rome, following her dreams. And Regan really is thrilled for her. Left to her own devices, she’s doing . . . fine.
\nOh, except for the fact that her new roommate, Emma Bordeaux, has hated Regan since the literal day they’d met two years ago. Sure, most of their interactions end in disaster and Regan is the root cause, but they are all accidents! She’ll win Emma over though; she’s determined to make this living arrangement work come hell or high water.
\nEmma never planned on finding herself living with the most frustrating person she’d ever met, but for rent this low, she’s positive that she can put up with anything Regan throws her way.
\nWhat she isn’t sure she can handle is her mom returning to her life, wanting to bond with Emma. She definitely doesn’t know how to manage her mom believing that she and Regan are a couple. And she doesn’t want to deal with the fact that Regan seems far too into acting the part.
\nPerhaps the most daunting aspect of all is realising that she might have been wrong about Regan all along . . .
Sutton Spencer’s ideas for her life were fairly simple: finish graduate school and fall in love. It would be a lot simpler if she could pinpoint exactly what she should do when she graduates in less than a year. Oh, and if she could figure out how to talk to a woman without feeling completely hopeless, that would be great too.
Charlotte Thompson is very much the opposite. She's always had clear steps outlining her path to success with no time or inclination for romance. Her burgeoning career in politics means everything to her and she’s not willing to compromise it for something as insignificant as love. Fleeting, casual, and discreet worked perfectly fine.
When they meet through a dating app, it's immediately clear that they aren't suited for anything more than friendship. Right?
Caroline Parker knows three things to be true. First, she is going to be Boston's most sought after divorce attorney by thirty-five. Second, given how terrible her romantic track record is, falling in love isn't in the cards for her. And third, Christmas only brings her bad luck - being broken up with not once, not twice, but three times during the holidays is proof enough of that.
\nWhen she runs into Hannah Dalton on Christmas Eve, she has no reason to believe her luck will change. After all, though Hannah is probably the most gorgeous woman she’s ever seen, she’s also straight. And married to Caroline’s work rival.
\nWhile being hired by Hannah throws her for a loop, winning a divorce case and sticking it to her ex-colleague should be enough of a thrill. But as the months slip by, bringing her closer to both Hannah and her adorable daughter Abbie, the lines between attorney and client begin to blur. And she could have never predicted just how much she wants them to.
It’s the strangest job that actress Meli has ever been offered - posing as a bridesmaid for an apparently friendless woman at her upcoming Caribbean wedding. Then she meets the shy bride-to-be, Hannah, and feels an instant connection that makes her put her doubts aside. She’s not only doing this because Hannah is gorgeous, even though she really is. Too bad she’s straight.
\nHannah is ten steps beyond shy. Even connecting with her fiancé is difficult, despite how badly her religious parents want her to marry. But something about Meli makes her feel safe. A close encounter with Meli at the bachelorette party leaves Hannah shivery and warm, and wondering if she’s making a mistake by getting married.
\nTo chase her real happily-ever-after, Hannah has to not only defy expectations she’s conformed to all her life, but also risk her heart getting broken and find the words - and the courage - to be her true self.
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TV writer Caroline Neumann is thirty-four and mired in professional envy and self-hatred. Even Harry, her usually supportive therapist husband, thinks it’s time for her to press pause on her career ambitions and focus on getting pregnant, despite Caroline’s serious ambivalence about having children.
\nWhen Caroline accidentally stumbles on Harry’s patient session notes and offhandedly mentions what she finds in a meeting with a producer, the momentum of Hollywood takes over. Before she knows it—and unbeknownst to Harry - Caroline finds herself pitching a TV show about the deepest, darkest secrets of her husband’s favorite patient, a woman known to Caroline only as the Teacher.
\nAmid the indignities of the Hollywood development process, Caroline must balance her burning desire for professional validation against her own morality and the health of her marriage. And when Caroline forms a real-life relationship with Teacher herself, the lines between art and life begin to blur further, shaking up Caroline’s understanding of what it means to be the “likeable female protagonist” of her own life.
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Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers.
\nWhat they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888.
\nTheir murderer was never identified, but the name created for him by the press has become far more famous than any of these five women.
\nIn this devastating narrative of five lives, historian Hallie Rubenhold finally gives these women back their stories.
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Before the nightmare, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when splintering, blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-hye decides to purge her mind and renounce eating meat.
\nIn a country where societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision to embrace a more “plant-like” existence is a shocking act of subversion. And as her passive rebellion manifests in ever more extreme and frightening forms, scandal, abuse, and estrangement begin to send Yeong-hye spiraling deep into the spaces of her fantasy.
\nIn a complete metamorphosis of both mind and body, her now dangerous endeavor will take Yeong-hye - impossibly, ecstatically, tragically - far from her once-known self altogether. A disturbing, yet beautifully composed narrative told in three parts, The Vegetarian is an allegorical novel about modern day South Korea, but also a story of obsession, choice, and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another.
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One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet - a white bird called Ama.
\nA snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal - or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend's house.
\nBlurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades - bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering,it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence - and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.
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The Hospital Ship is no more, and Yang Wei awakens to find himself at the mercy of monstrous doctors and the tumult of his own mind. Not helping matters, of course, is the Mars Hospital’s Pool of Dead Souls. A ghastly body of water, it traps people in an endless cycle of treatment, death, and resurrection.
\nWhen an unruly band of patients revolts against this suffering, the hospital descends into chaos, the likes of which have never been seen before. Strident order falls to madness, unfolding in fits and bursts of violence and carnivalesque celebration. The effect is so jarring that Yang Wei begins to question what he can trust to be real - is reality what he sees . . . or what he thinks?
\nTold through an absurdist lens, Dead Souls takes sharp twists and turns ever deeper into Yang Wei’s strange world of the grotesque and ambiguous, bringing the Hospital series to its shocking conclusion.
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Yang Wei wakes to find himself still a patient at the hospital. Somehow, he’s aged decades overnight and is confined to the Geriatric Ward on a massive hospital ship as it floats along a bloodred sea full of unsightly things. But human remains and sea nymphs are perhaps nothing compared to the goings-on belowdecks.
\nThe doctors are nowhere to be found, replaced by a procession of medical robots from whom, of course, no information can be gleaned. So Yang Wei, along with a small group of patients - all just as aged as he is - venture out to explore the uncharted depths of the ship and the answers that are surely hidden within.
\nAs they delve deeper into both the ship and why they’re on it, every uncovered secret comes with its own questions. The only thing Yang Wei can be sure of is that the more he learns, the less he understands . . . and the less he truly wants to know.
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When Yang Wei travels to C City for work, he expects nothing more than a standard business trip. A break from his day-to-day routine, a good paycheck, a nice hotel - nothing too extravagant, of course. No fuss, but all the amenities.
\nBut this is where his problems begin. A complimentary bottle of mineral water from the hotel minibar results in sudden and debilitating stomach pain, followed by unconsciousness. When he wakes three days later, things don’t improve; they get worse. With no explanation, the hotel forcibly sends him to a hospital for examination. There, he receives no diagnosis, no discharge date . . . just a diligent guide to the labyrinthine medical system he’s now circulating through.
\nArmed with nothing but his own confusion, Yang Wei travels deeper into the inner workings of the hospital and the secrets it’s hiding from the patients. As he seeks escape and answers, one man’s illness takes him on a quest through a corrupt system and his own troubled mind.
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Jin-Lu should be happy. Princess Yi-Nereen of Kerina Rut and Prince Kadrin of Kerina Sol have reunited after twelve long years, having survived a near-apocalypse. They are safe and in love - thanks to Jin - and they want her to join them for their upcoming nuptials in Kerina Sol.
\nBut their happy ending came at the cost of Jin’s.
\nJin lost everything in the fallout of saving the world. Now she’s Talentless, scrabbling to eke out a living in the lowest echelons of society. All she wants is to be left alone with her shameful secret, but the storms that sweep the wastes have other plans.
\nWhen refugees from a fallen city flood into Kerina Sol, the delicate balance between Talented and Talentless shatters. With tensions rising and civil war looming, Yi-Nereen, Kadrin, and Jin must join forces again to save their own people and the refugees.
\nNow their salvation lies beyond the wastes, in the mythical home of the the First City.
Jin-Lu has the most dangerous job in the wasteland. She's a magebike courier, one of the few who venture outside the domed cities on motorcycles powered by magic. Every day, she braves the wasteland's dangers - deadly storms, roving marauders, and territorial beasts - to deliver her wares.
Her most valuable cargo? A prince's love letters addressed to Yi-Nereen, a princess desperate to escape the clutches of her abusive family and soon-to-be husband. Jin, desperately in love with both her and the prince, can't refuse Yi-Nereen's plea for help. The two of them flee across the wastes, pursued by Yi-Nereen's furious father, her scheming betrothed, and a bounty hunter with mysterious powers.
A storm to end all storms is brewing and dark secrets about the heritability of magic are coming to light. Jin’s heart has led her into peril before, but this time she may not find her way back.
When seventeen-year-old Isla Richardson is killed in a hit-and-run incident, a community’s lives are thrown into disarray. For Isla’s mum, Abby, it is her second devastating bereavement, having lost her husband five years ago. As Abby begins to uncover secrets about Isla’s life, she’s forced to rethink everything she thought she knew about her family.
\nFor Abby’s best friend, Nicole, the tragic death sets in motion a chain of events that will have irreparable consequences for her husband and her two teenage sons.
\nFor Jenna, Isla’s death threatens to expose secrets about her son’s past that she has done everything in her power to hide, to secure him a better future.
\nTackling friendship, family, social prejudice and the pressures facing young women, Three Mothers how well do we really know our children? And how far would any of us go to protect the people we love?
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Annie has brought her three best friends and their families together for a long weekend away in a gorgeous seaside Airbnb. It should be idyllic - sun, sea, sand, cocktails and laughter.
\nBut below the surface, none of these friendships are quite what they seem. And Annie has a secret - and an earth-shattering favour to ask of one of her friends.
\nAs the idyllic weekend turns sour - arguments, grudges and a boat trip that goes awry - Annie must make her devastating decision - and change everyone’s lives, forever.
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A scholarship kid with straight As and big dreams, Evie Gordon always thought she was special, that she’d be someone. But after graduating from an elite university, she finds herself drowning in debt and working as an SAT tutor for the super-rich of Los Angeles.
\nEverything changes one Sunday, when she arrives for her weekly lesson at the Victors’ Beverly Hills estate and, in lieu of a bored teenager, finds the bloody remains of the parents strewn through their beautiful back garden, and a woman crying for help within a closet. As Evie works to free her, the two are spotted - and within moments, they go from bystanders to suspects to fugitives.
\nSuddenly at the heart of a manhunt and accompanied by a mysterious woman who refuses to speak, Evie knows the only way to clear her name is to find the real killer. But first she’ll have to break down the barriers of her companion, who is quickly becoming the most important person in Evie’s upside-down life. Their breathless spree takes them across the U.S. as developments in the case shock the nation and the press runs wild with Evie’s a gifted kid turned killer. She's now on the cover of every magazine and newspaper - anointed the new Charles Manson, a bloodthirsty ninety-nine percenter looking to start a class war. Evie is finally someone.
\nBy turns cuttingly hilarious and deeply insightful, Killer Potential is a strikingly original debut. A literary novel with the page-turning intensity of a thriller that asks timely questions about our belief in the romance of social mobility, and how the stories we’re sold about our potential can shape the course of our lives.
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War has come. The fire god Hseth is leading an unstoppable army south, consuming everything in her path. Middren’s only hope of survival is to unify allies and old foes against a common enemy.
\nElo navigates an uneasy alliance with Arren; his friend, his enemy, and his king. Now they each must decide how much they're willing to sacrifice to turn the tides of war.
\nMeanwhile, Inara joins her mother on their ship, the Silverswift, to seek aid. Still grappling with her powers, Inara must reconcile who she is and where she belongs, while Skediceth has to question if their bond will be enough to keep them safe.
\nKissen has no allegiance to the old ways of Middren. But, as she tries to find her family, she is forced to question what, and whose, future she is fighting for.
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Kissen’s family were killed by zealots of a fire god. Now, she makes a living killing gods, and enjoys it. That is until she finds a god she cannot kill: Skedi, a god of white lies, has somehow bound himself to a young noble, and they are both on the run from unknown assassins.
\nJoined by a disillusioned knight on a secret quest, they must travel to the ruined city of Blenraden, where the last of the wild gods reside, to each beg a favour.
\nPursued by demons, and in the midst of burgeoning civil war, they will all face a reckoning - something is rotting at the heart of their world, and only they can be the ones to stop it.
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When Middren falls to the gods, your kind will be the first to die.<br><br>
\nGods are forbidden in the kingdom of Middren - but now they are stirring, whispering of war. Godkiller Kissen sacrificed herself to vanquish the fire god Hseth, who murdered her family and endangered her friends. But gods cannot be destroyed so easily, and Hseth’s power threatens to reform with even greater strength and a thirst for vengeance. As tensions rise throughout the land, the kingdom needs its Godkiller more than ever.
\nStill reeling from the loss of Kissen, young noble Inara and her little god of white lies, Skedi, have set out to discover more about the true nature of their bond. As the divide between gods and humans widens, Inara and Skedi will uncover secrets that could determine the fate of the war to come.
\nMeanwhile, Elogast, no longer a loyal knight of King Arren, has been tasked with killing the man he once called friend. The king vowed to eradicate all gods throughout the land, but has now entered into an unholy pact with the most dangerous of them all. And where his heart once beat, a god now burns . . .
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Walter Augustus is dead. His current state of existence has become a monotony of sweet tea and lonely strolls and after decades stuck in the Interim - a posthumous waiting room for those still remembered on Earth - he is ready to move on. Only when he is forgotten by every living person will he be able to pass over and join his family in the next stage of the afterlife. At last the end is tantalizingly close, but bad luck and a few rash decisions may see him trapped in the Interim for all eternity.
Letty Ferguson is not dead. Letty Ferguson is a middle-aged shoe saleswoman who leads a pleasant and wholly unextraordinary life, barring the secret fortune she seems unable to tell her husband about. However, when she takes possession of an unassuming poetry anthology, life takes on a rather more extraordinary dimension.
Demeter did not always live in fear. Once, the goddess of spring loved the world and the humans who inhabited it. After a devastating assault, though, she becomes a shell of herself. Her only solace is her daughter, Persephone.
\nA balm to her mother's pain, Persephone grows among wildflowers, never leaving the sanctuary Demeter built for them. But she aches to explore the mortal world - to gain her own experiences. Naïve but determined, she secretly builds a life of her own under her mother's watchful gaze. But as she does so, she catches the eye of Hades, and is kidnapped . . .
\nForced into a role she never wanted, Persephone learns that power suits her. In the land of the living, though, Demeter is willing to destroy the humans she once held dear - anything to protect her family. A mother who has lost everything and a daughter with more to gain than she ever realized, their story will irrevocably shape the world.
When she first married at fourteen, Otrera imagined a relationship full of love. A partnership. Years later, living in destitution with her abusive husband, she knows that no such thing exists with a man. It is simply a woman's lot in life to accept the treatment of her husband.
\nUntil it's not.
\nRallying the women around her, Otrera fights back, taking no prisoners. Because it's clear to her: when men are in power, freedom isn't granted. It's bought with blood. It's a price she is more than willing to pay, if it means building a new life with other women far from the reaches of their abusers.
\nBut a community of women - an army of women - is bound to make enemies of gods and men alike.
\nThis is the story of Otrera and the first Amazons.
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It's four innings into an Orioles victory when Emma meets Mabel. Their flirty first encounter kicks off the sweetest of summers. One of Blue Ridge Mountain hiking, river floating, and steamy, coffee-fueled mornings. But as the summer closes, Mabel's insecurities about her same-sex attraction emerge. She heads back to college. Without Emma.
\nOver the next four years, Emma juggles temporary loves, a big move, and new jobs, all while trying to shove down an imagined fairytale outcome with Mabel. Despite distance, Mabel keeps finding her way back into Emma's life, forcing Emma to consider whether it's some grand design bringing the two of them back together.
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Hamilton, Massachusetts is one of those suburban towns that appears untouched by the outside world where stay-at-home moms wear 2ct diamond studs to the playground, where a million-dollar property is “affordable,” and where the Parent Teacher Organisation is a hotbed of controversy. Sure, some people struggle to make ends meet, but residents would say discussing such ugly matters is impolite. Hamilton has been like this forever, and everyone likes it that way. almost everyone.
\nIt's not that Anna Plummer doesn't like Hamilton, but she never thought she'd be married with two young kids, comfortable, complacent…and growing more bored by the minute. So, when she realizes her second grader won't be able to attend the \"Ziti with Your Sweetie\" school dance because she didn’t pay for a “Premium” membership, she snaps. She sends an email to the terrifying president of the PTO - and all hell breaks loose.
\nOne year later, Anna is found dead in the frozen Ipswich River. Left to pick up the pieces, her husband, Denny, is shaken to his core. He's no expert, but he's seen enough Dateline to know that the police think he's the main suspect. If they aren't going to get justice for Anna, he will. Told through the alternating perspectives of Anna and Denny exactly one year apart, and with a shocking concluding twist, Valley of the Moms is a gripping look at the underpinnings of grief, the social structures of wealth, and the secrets people keep - even among friends and loved ones.
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The Cross sisters have lived their entire lives on the sprawling grounds of Mercy Hill, the embattled Raleigh mental hospital run by their formidable mother. Since childhood, JJ, Caro, Mimi, and Denise have been inculcated with their mother's mission: they'll work alongside her to protect Mercy Hill from the fate of other state hospitals across the country, which are being gutted and closed, one by one.
\nAfter an incident involving the highest-security ward, Mercy Hill faces greater scrutiny than ever, and Lisa Cross pushes each of her daughters even harder in the name of her mission. As the sisters cross into adulthood, the pressures of their isolated environment and mercurial mother set them on different - and perilous - paths. And as the battle wages on, youngest sister and narrator Denise grapples with the added responsibility that comes from being the last hope for their mother’s dreams.
\nSet in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with Mercy Hill’s fate hanging in the balance, Denise recounts the transformations that shape and destroy her family, along with the landscape of mental healthcare in the United States. With sharp insight and real humor, debut novelist Hannah Thurman captures the turmoil of growing up, the true meaning of a calling, and the indelible bonds of family.
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Red and the Wolf have finally contained the threat of the Old Kings but at a steep cost. Red's beloved sister Neve, the First Daughter is lost in the Shadowlands, an inverted kingdom where the vicious gods of legend have been trapped for centuries and the Old Kings have slowly been gaining control. But Neve has an ally - though it's one she'd rather never have to speak to again - the rogue king Solmir.
\nSolmir wants to bring an end to the Shadowlands and he believes helping Neve may be the key to its destruction. But to do that, they will both have to journey across a dangerous landscape in order to find a mysterious Heart Tree, and finally to claim the gods' dark, twisted powers for themselves.
The first daughter is for the Throne.
\nThe second daughter is for the Wolf.
\nAs the only Second Daughter born in centuries, Red has one purpose-to be sacrificed to the Wolf in the Wood in the hope he'll return the world's captured gods.
\nRed is almost relieved to go. Plagued by a dangerous power she can't control, at least she knows that in the Wilderwood, she can't hurt those she loves. Again.
\nBut the legends lie. The Wolf is a man, not a monster. Her magic is a calling, not a curse. And if she doesn't learn how to use it, the monsters the gods have become will swallow the Wilderwood-and her world-whole.
When Lore was thirteen, she escaped a cult in the catacombs beneath the city of Dellaire. And in the ten years since, she’s lived by one rule: don’t let them find you. Easier said than done, when her death magic ties her to the city.
\nMortem, the magic born from death, is a high-priced and illicit commodity in Dellaire, and Lore’s job running poisons keeps her in food, shelter, and relative security. But when a run goes wrong and Lore’s power is revealed, she’s taken by the Presque Mort, a group of warrior-monks sanctioned to use Mortem working for the Sainted King. Lore fully expects a pyre, but King August has a different plan. Entire villages on the outskirts of the country have been dying overnight, seemingly at random. Lore can either use her magic to find out what’s happening and who in the King’s court is responsible, or die.
\nLore is thrust into the Sainted King’s glittering court, where no one can be believed and even fewer can be trusted. Guarded by Gabriel, a duke-turned-monk, and continually running up against Bastian, August’s ne’er-do-well heir, Lore tangles in politics, religion, and forbidden romance as she attempts to navigate a debauched and opulent society.
\nBut the life she left behind in the catacombs is catching up with her. And even as Lore makes her way through the Sainted court above, they might be drawing closer than she thinks.
The corrupt king August is dead. Prince Bastian has seized the throne and raised Lore - a necromancer and former smuggler - to his right hand side. Together they plan to cut out the rot from the heart of the sainted court and help the people of Dellaire. But not everyone is happy with the changes. The nobles are sowing dissent, the Kyrithean Empire is beating down their door, and Lore's old allies are pulling away. Even Prince Bastian's changed. No longer the hopeful, rakish, charismatic man Lore knows and loves, instead he's reckless, domineering and cold.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAnd something's been whispering in her ear. A voice, dark and haunting, that's telling her there's more to the story than she knows and more to her power than she can even imagine. A truth buried deep that could change everything.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWith Bastian's coronation fast approaching and enemies whispering on all sides, Lore must figure out how to protect herself, her prince, and her country before they all come crumbling down and whatever dark power has been creeping through the catacombs is unleashed.
Lore has failed. She couldn’t save King Bastian from the rotten god speaking voices in his mind. She couldn’t save her allies from being scattered across the continent - their own lesser gods whispering to them in their dreams. She couldn’t save her beautiful, corrupt city from the dark power beneath the catacombs. And she couldn’t save herself.
\nBanished to the Burnt Isles, Lore must use every skill she earned on the streets of Dellaire to survive the prison colony and figure out a way to defeat the power that’s captured everything and everyone she holds dear. When a surprise ally joins her on the Burnt Isles she realises the way forward may lie on the island itself. Somehow, her friends must help her collect the far-scattered pieces of the broken Fount - the source of all the god’s powers - and bring them back together on the Burnt Isles, returning all magic to its source and destroying, once and for all, the gods corrupting the land.
\nBut as Lore gets closer to her goal, her magic grows stronger . . . and to a woman who’s always had to fight for survival, that kind of power may be hard to give up.
Maggie McCabe is teetering on the brink. A highly skilled and renowned Army combat surgeon, she has always lived life at the edge, where she could make the most impact. And it was all going to plan . . . until it wasn’t.
\nUpside down after a devastating series of tragedies leads to her medical license being revoked, Maggie has lost her purpose, but not her nerve or her passion. At her lowest point, she is thrown a lifeline by a former colleague, an elite plastic surgeon whose anonymous clientele demand the best care money can buy, as well as absolute discretion.
\nHalfway across the globe, sequestered in the lap of luxury and cutting-edge technology, one of the world’s most mysterious men requires unconventional medical assistance. Desperate, and one of the few surgeons in the world skilled enough to take this job, Maggie enters his realm of unspeakable opulence and fulfills her end of the agreement. But when the patient suddenly disappears while still under her care, Maggie must become a fugitive herself - or she will be the next one who is . . . Gone Before Goodbye.
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Kidnappers have snatched the teenage son of super-star golfer Linda Coldren and her husband, Jack, an aging pro, at the height of the U.S. Open. To help get the boy back, sports agent Myron Bolitar goes charging after clues and suspects from the Main Line mansions to a downtown cheaters' motel - and back in time to a U.S. Open twenty-three years ago, when Jack Coldren should have won, but didn't.
\nSuddenly Myron finds him self surrounded by blue bloods, criminals, and liars. And as one family's darkest secrets explode into murder, Myron finds out just how rough this game can get.
The man known as Wilde is a mystery to everyone, including himself. Decades ago, he was found as a boy living feral in the woods, with no memory of his past. After the police concluded an exhaustive hunt for the child's family, which was never found, he was turned over to the foster system.
Now, thirty years later, Wilde still doesn't know where he comes from, and he's back living in the woods on the outskirts of town, content to be an outcast, comfortable only outdoors, preferably alone, and with few deep connections to other people.
When a local girl goes missing, famous TV lawyer Hester Crimstein - with whom Wilde shares a tragic connection - asks him to use his unique skills to help find her. Meanwhile, a group of ex-military security experts arrive in town, and when another teen disappears, the case's impact expands far beyond the borders of the peaceful suburb. Wilde must return to the community where he has never fit in, and where the powerful are protected even when they harbor secrets that could destroy the lives of millions . . . secrets that Wilde must uncover before it's too late.
17-year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst.
Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission, to identify and bring down sexual predators via elaborate - and nationally televised - sting operations. Working with local police on her news program Caught in the Act, Wendy and her team have publicly shamed dozens of men by the time she encounters her latest target. Dan Mercer is a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens, but his story soon becomes more complicated than Wendy could have imagined.
Myron Bolitar's father's recent heart attack brings Myron smack into a midlife encounter with issues of adulthood and mortality. And if that's not enough to turn his life upside down, the reappearance of his first serious girlfriend is. The basketball star turned sports agent, who does a little detecting when business is slow, is saddened by the news that Emily Downing's 13-year-old son is dying and desperately needs a bone marrow transplant; even if she did leave him for the man who destroyed his basketball career, he wouldn't wish tsuris like that on anyone.
\nAnd he's not at all interested in getting involved with Emily again, not even to track down the one mysterious donor who may be able to save the boy. But when Myron learns that Jeremy Downing is his own son, conceived the night before Emily and Greg Downing married, he embarks on a search for someone who disappeared a lifetime ago.
\nAnd what he finds leads him to a powerful family determined to keep an old secret, a disgraced reporter who may have plagiarized a novel to create a serial killer, a very interested FBI agent, and a missing child.
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Sports agent Myron Bolitar is poised on the edge of the big time. So is Christian Steele, a rookie quarterback and Myron's prized client. But when Christian gets a phone call from a former girlfriend, a woman who everyone, including the police, believes is dead, the deal starts to go sour.
\nTrying to unravel the truth about a family's tragedy, a woman's secret, and a man's lies, Myron is up against the dark side of his business - where image and talent make you rich, but the truth can get you killed.
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Suburban New Jersey Detective Napoleon “Nap” Dumas hasn't been the same since senior year of high school, when his twin brother Leo and Leo’s girlfriend Diana were found dead on the railroad tracks - and Maura, the girl Nap considered the love of his life, broke up with him and disappeared without explanation. For fifteen years, Nap has been searching, both for Maura and for the real reason behind his brother's death. And now, it looks as though he may finally find what he's been looking for.
When Maura's fingerprints turn up in the rental car of a suspected murderer, Nap embarks on a quest for answers that only leads to more questions - about the woman he loved, about the childhood friends he thought he knew, about the abandoned military base near where he grew up, and mostly about Leo and Diana - whose deaths are darker and far more sinister than Nap ever dared imagine.
Valerie Simpson is a young female tennis star with a troubled past who's now on the verge of a comeback and wants Myron as her agent. Myron, who's also got the hottest young male tennis star, Duane Richwood, primed to take his first grand slam tournament, couldn't be happier. That is, until Valerie is murdered in broad daylight at the U.S. Open and Myron's number one client becomes the number one suspect.
Clearing Duane's name should be easy enough. Duane was playing in a match at the time of Valerie's death. But why is his phone number in Valerie's black book when he claims only to have known her in passing? Why was she calling him from a phone booth on the street? The police stop caring once they pin the murder on a man known for having stalked Valerie and seen talking to her moments before the murder. But Myron isn't satisfied. It seems too clean for him.
Myron pries a bit and finds himself prying open the past where six years before, Valerie's fiancee, the son of a senator, was brutally murdered by a juvenile delinquent and a straight-A student was subsequently gunned down on the street in retaliation, his death squandered in bureaucratic files. And everyone from the Senator to the mob want Myron to stop digging.
The truth beneath the truth is not only dangerous, it's deadly. And Myron may be the next victim.
The home was top-notch New Jersey suburban. The living room was Martha Stewart. The basement was Legos - and blood. For sports agent Myron Bolitar, the disappearance of a man he'd once competed against was bringing back memories - of the sport he and Greg Downing had both played and the woman they both loved.
\nNow, among the stars, the wanna-bes, the gamblers and groupies, Myron is unraveling the strange, violent life of a sports hero gone wrong, and coming face-to-face with a past he can't relive, and a present he may not survive.
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Myron Bolitar’s colleague at MB SportsReps, Esperanza, has been arrested for the murder of a client, a fallen baseball star attempting a comeback. Myron is determined to prove Esperanza’s innocence - even if she won’t speak to him on the advice of her lawyer, who warns Myron to keep away from both the case and his client.
\nBut Myron is already too close, too involved, and has too much at stake. And the closer Myron gets to the truth, the more the evidence points to the only viable suspect besides Esperanza: Myron himself.
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Former special ops pilot Maya, home from the war, sees an unthinkable image captured by her nanny cam while she is at work: her two-year-old daughter playing with Maya’s husband, Joe - who had been brutally murdered two weeks earlier. The provocative question at the heart of the mystery: Can you believe everything you see with your own eyes, even when you desperately want to?
\nTo find the answer, Maya must finally come to terms with deep secrets and deceit in her own past before she can face the unbelievable truth about her husband - and herself.
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It's been eight months since Mickey Bolitar witnessed the tragic death of his father. Eight months of lies, dark secrets and unanswered questions. While he desperately wants answers, Mickey's sophomore year of high school brings on a whole new set of troubles. Spoon is in hospital, Rachel won't tell him where he stands, his basketball teammates hate him . . . and then there's Ema's surprise announcement: she has an online boyfriend and he's vanished.
\nAs he's searching for Ema's missing boyfriend (who may not even exist!), Mickey also gets roped into helping his nemesis, Troy Taylor, with a big problem. All the while, Mickey and his friends are pulled deeper into the mysteries surrounding the Abeona Shelter, risking their lives to find the answers - until the shocking climax, where Mickey finally comes face-to-face with the truth about his father.
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As a boy, Will Klein had a hero: his older brother, Ken. Then, on a warm suburban night in the Kleins’ affluent New Jersey neighborhood, a young woman - a girl Will had once loved - was found brutally murdered in her family’s basement. The prime suspect: Ken Klein. With the evidence against him overwhelming, Ken simply vanished. And when his shattered family never heard from Ken again, they were sure he was gone for good.
Now eleven years have passed. Will has found proof that Ken is alive. And this is just the first in a series of stunning revelations as Will is forced to confront startling truths about his brother, and even himself. As a violent mystery unwinds around him, Will knows he must press his search all the way to the end. Because the most powerful surprises are yet to come.
Tia and Mike Baye never imagined they'd become the type of overprotective parents who spy on their kids. But their sixteen-year-old son Adam has been unusually distant lately, and after the suicide of his classmate Spencer Hill - the latest in a string of issues at school - they can't help but worry. They install a sophisticated spy program on Adam's computer, and within days they are jolted by a message from an unknown correspondent addressed to their son - 'Just stay quiet and all safe.'
Meanwhile, browsing through an online memorial for Spencer put together by his classmates, Betsy Hill is struck by a photo that appears to have been taken on the night of her son's death and he wasn't alone. She thinks it is Adam Baye standing just outside the camera's range; but when Adam goes missing, it soon becomes clear that something deep and sinister has infected their community. For Tia and Mike Baye, the question they must answer is this; When it comes to your kids, is it possible to know too much?
A decade ago, kidnappers grabbed two boys from wealthy families and demanded ransom, then went silent. No trace of the boys ever surfaced. For ten years their families have been left with nothing but painful memories and a quiet desperation for the day that has finally, miraculously arrived: Myron Bolitar and his friend Win believe they have located one of the boys, now a teenager.
\nWhere has he been for ten years, and what does he know about the day, more than half a life ago, when he was taken? And most critically: What can he tell Myron and Win about the fate of his missing friend? Drawing on his singular talent, Harlan Coben delivers an explosive and deeply moving thriller about friendship, family, and the meaning of home.
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David and Cheryl Burroughs were living the dream life when tragedy struck. Now, five years after that terrible night, Cheryl is remarried. And David is serving a life sentence in a maximum-security prison for the brutal murder of their son.
\nThen Cheryl’s sister, Rachel, arrives unexpectedly during visiting hours and drops a bombshell. She’s come with a photograph that a friend took on vacation at a theme park with a boy in the background who has a familiar, distinctive birthmark . . . and even though David and Rachel realise it can’t be, they both just know. It's David’s son, Matthew, and he's still alive.
\nDavid plans a harrowing escape from prison, determined to do what seems impossible - save his son, clear his own name, and discover the real story of what happened that devastating night.
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You never meant to kill him . . . One night, Matt Hunter innocently tried to break up a fight - and ended up a killer. Now, nine years later, he’s an ex-con who takes nothing for granted. His wife, Olivia, is pregnant, and the two of them are closing on their dream house. But all it will take is one shocking, inexplicable call from Olivia’s phone to shatter Matt’s life a second time . . .
\nAn electrifying thrill ride of a novel that peeks behind the white picket fences of suburbia, The Innocent is at once a twisting, turning, emotionally charged story and a compelling tale of the choices we make and the repercussions that never leave.
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When Grace Lawson picks up a newly developed set of family photographs, there is a picture that doesn't belong - a photo from at least twenty years ago with a man in it who looks strikingly like her husband, Jack. And though Jack denies it's him, he disappears that night, taking the photo with him.
\nNow, to save her family from a fierce, silent killer who will stop at nothing to get the photo, Grace must confront the dark corners of her own tragic past . . .
When former tennis star Suzze T and her rock star husband, Lex, encounter an anonymous Facebook post questioning the paternity of their unborn child, Lex runs off, and Suzze - at eight months pregnant - asks Myron to save her marriage, and perhaps her husband's life. But when he finds Lex, he also finds someone he wasn't looking for: his sister-in-law, Kitty, who along with Myron's brother abandoned the Bolitar family long ago.
As Myron races to locate his missing brother while their father clings to life, he must face the lies that led to the estrangement - including the ones told by Myron himself. If we thought we knew Myron Bolitar, Coben now proves we didn't. An electric, stay-up-all night thriller that unfolds at a breakneck pace, Live Wire proves that Harlan Coben still has the ability to shock us anew.
Myron Bolitar hasn't heard from Terese Collins since their torrid affair ended ten years ago, so her desperate phone call from Paris catches him completely off guard. In a shattering admission, Terese reveals the tragic story behind her disappearance--her struggles to get pregnant, the greatest moment of her life when her baby was born-- and the fatal accident that robbed her of it all: her marriage, her happiness and her beloved only daughter.
Now a suspect in the murder of her ex-husband in Paris, Terese has nowhere else to turn for help. Myron heeds the call. But then a startling piece of evidence turns the entire case upside down, laying bare Terese's long-buried family secrets and the very real possibility that her daughter may still be alive.
In grave danger from unknown assailants in a country where nothing is as it seems, Myron and Terese race to stay a step ahead of Homeland Security, Interpol, and Mossad. Soon they are working at breakneck pace, not only to learn what really happened to Terese's long-lost little girl - but to uncover a sinister plot with shocking global implications.
Wilde has grown up knowing nothing of his family, and even less about his own identity . All he knows is that, as a young child, he was found living a feral existence in the Ramapo mountains of New Jersey.
\nHe became known simply as Wilde, the boy from the woods.
\nNow Wilde has had a hit on the DNA website he has been researching. A 100% match. His father. They meet up, and Wilde soon realises that his father doesn't even know he had a son and is as mystified as Wilde is by his existence.
\nUndaunted, Wilde continues his research for his family on DNA websites where he becomes caught up in a community of online doxxers, a secret group committed to exposing anonymous trolls.
\nThen one by one these doxxers start to die, and it soon becomes clear that a serial killer is targeting this secret community - and that his next victim might be Wilde himself . . .
A husband and wife race to find a cure for the disease that has inspired a serial killer to terrorize Manhattan in this classic medical thriller from the bestselling author and creator of the hit Netflix drama The Stranger.
\nThey’re one of the country’s most telegenic beloved TV journalist Sara Lowell and New York’s hottest basketball star, Michael Silverman. Their family and social connections tie them to the highest echelons of the political, medical, and sports worlds—threads that will tangle them up in one of the most controversial and deadly issues of our time.
\nIn a clinic on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, a doctor has dedicated his life to eradicating a divisive and devastating disease. One by one, his patients are getting well. One by one, they’re being targeted by a serial killer. And now Michael has been diagnosed with the disease. There’s only one cure, but many ways to die . . .
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Marc Seidman’s idyllic world is brutally ripped apart when he is gunned down in his home. Twelve days later he wakes up in hospital to learn that his wife is dead and his baby daughter Tara is missing. A ransom demand is made and agreed to. But something goes terribly wrong. The kidnappers escape, and Marc remembers the ransom note’s ominous warning: there will be no second chance.
\nAn agonising eighteen months pass with no word. And then, as Marc has just about given up all hope of seeing his daughter again, a package arrives with a note attached: want a second chance?
\nThe note is chilling, but Marc sees only one thing: the chance to save his daughter. And, haunted by deception and deadly secrets - about his wife, about an old love, and about his own past - he vows to bring Tara home at any cost.
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Sami Kierce, a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, wakes up one morning, covered in blood. There’s a knife in his hand. Beside him, the body of his girlfriend. Anna. Dead. He doesn’t know what happened. His screams drown out his thoughts - and then he runs.
\nTwenty-two years later, Kierce, now a private investigator, is a new father who’s working off his debts by doing low level surveillance jobs and teaching wannabe sleuths at a night school in New York City. One evening, he recognises a familiar face at the back of the classroom. Anna. It’s unmistakably her. As soon as Kierce makes eye contact with her, she bolts. For Kierce there is no choice. He knows he must find this woman and solve the impossible mystery that has haunted his every waking moment since that terrible day.
\nHis investigation will bring him face-to-face with his past - and prove, after all this time, he’s nobody’s fool.
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She's smart, beautiful, and she doesn't need a man to look after her. But sports agent Myron Bolitar has come into her life - big time. Now Myron's next move may be his last . . .
Brenda Slaughter is no damsel in distress. Myron Bolitar is no bodyguard. But Myron has agreed to protect the bright, strong, beautiful basketball star. And he's about to find out if he's man enough to unravel the tragic riddle of her life.
Twenty years before, Brenda's mother deserted her. And just as Brenda is making it to the top of the women's pro basketball world, her father disappears too. A big-time New York sports agent with a foundering love life, Myron has a professional interest in Brenda. Then a personal one. But between them isn't just the difference in their backgrounds or the color of their skin. Between them is a chasm of corruption and lies, a vicious young mafioso on the make, and one secret that some people are dying to keep - and others are killing to protect . . .
Ex-fashion model and successful business woman Laura Ayars' perfect world is shattered at a time which should have been the happiest of her life. On her honeymoon, her sports superstar husband goes for a swim - and never returns. But what has happened to David - is he really dead?
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Whilst struggling to cope with her grief, Laura is plagued by questions and doubts. Was it an accident? Or suicide? Or some terrible, ill-judged hoax?
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As events begin to unfold, Laura starts to uncover a conspiracy which reaches deep into the past, and is now slowly beginning to destroy everyone involved. Someone will do anything to keep Laura away from the awful truth - and she has no idea who she can trust .
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As the school year winds down, Myron Bolitar is determined to help keep his friends’ children safe from the dangers of drinking and driving. So he makes two neighborhood girls promise him that if they are ever in a bind but are afraid to call their parents, they must call him.
\nSeveral nights later, the call comes at two a.m. The next day, a girl is missing and Myron is the last person who saw her. Racing to find her before she’s gone forever, Myron must outrun his own troubled past and decide once and for all who he is and what he will stand up for . . .
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You've lost your daughter.
She's addicted to drugs and to an abusive boyfriend. And she's made it clear that she doesn't want to be found.
Then, by chance, you see her playing guitar in Central Park. But she's not the girl you remember. This woman is living on the edge, frightened, and clearly in trouble.
You don't stop to think. You approach her, beg her to come home.
She runs.
And you do the only thing a parent can do: you follow her into a dark and dangerous world you never knew existed. Before you know it, both your family and your life are on the line. And in order to protect your daughter from the evils of that world, you must face them head on.
When tragedy strikes close to home, Mickey Bolitar and his loyal new friends - sharp-witted Ema and the adorkably charming Spoon - find themselves at the center of a terrifying mystery involving the shooting of their friend Rachel.
\nNow, not only does Mickey have to continue his quest to uncover the truth about the Abeona Shelter, the Butcher of Lodz and the mysterious death of his father, he needs to figure out who shot Rachel - no matter what it takes.
\nMickey has always been ready to sacrifice everything to help the people he loves. But with danger just seconds away, how can he protect them when he’s not even sure who - or what - he’s protecting them from?
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Mickey Bolitar's year can't get much worse. After witnessing his father's death and sending his mom to rehab, he's forced to live with his estranged uncle Myron and switch high schools.
\nA new school comes with new friends and new enemies, and lucky for Mickey, it also comes with a great new girlfriend, Ashley. For a while, it seems like Mickey's train-wreck of a life is finally improving - until Ashley vanishes without a trace.
\nUnwilling to let another person walk out of his life, Mickey follows Ashley's trail into a seedy underworld that reveals that this seemingly sweet, shy girl isn't who she claimed to be. And neither was Mickey's father.
\nSoon, Mickey learns about a conspiracy so shocking that it makes high school drama seem like a luxury - and leaves him questioning everything about the life he thought he knew.
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A suburban wife and mother of two - with a dark and dangerous past.
\nA promising photographer who now panders to celebrity-obsessed rich kids.
\nA detective who can't let go of a cold case . . .
\nThree ordinary people, who discover that when the past refuses to stay buried, the American dream can be a nightmare . . .
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For Dr. David Beck, the loss was shattering. And every day for the past eight years, he has relived the horror of what happened. The gleaming lake. The pale moonlight. The piercing screams. The night his wife was taken. The last night he saw her alive.
Everyone tells him it's time to move on, to forget the past once and for all. But for David Beck, there can be no closure. A message has appeared on his computer, a phrase only he and his dead wife know. Suddenly Beck is taunted with the impossible - that somewhere, somehow, Elizabeth is alive.
Beck has been warned to tell no one. And he doesn't. Instead, he runs from the people he trusts the most, plunging headlong into a search for the shadowy figure whose messages hold out a desperate hope.
But already Beck is being hunted down. He's headed straight into the heart of a dark and deadly secret -- and someone intends to stop him before he gets there.
Former basketball star Myron Bolitar has barely restarted his agency for sports stars and celebrities when two federal agents walk into his office, asking for answers. Assuming they want to talk about the highly publicised Callister murders - of which he and Win know nothing, other than what's been saturating the news lately - he's stunned when, instead, they demand to know where Greg Downing is.
\nGreg, a former NBA player-turned-beloved-coach, was an old client of Myron’s, one of his very first. The reason for Myron's surprise is simple: Greg Downing died three years ago.
\nBut according to these federal agents, Greg is still alive - and somehow involved in the Callister case.
\nBefore his death, Greg made some strange money moves, but nothing about his reappearance makes any sense. As Myron and Win investigate, they're also surprised to uncover a seemingly related case where someone was murdered. Then another. And another. Is Greg alive? And if he is, where is he? And ultimately, are they looking for Greg? Or are they looking for a dangerously clever serial killer?
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Twenty years ago, four teenagers at summer camp walked into the woods at night. Two were found murdered, and the others were never seen again. Four families had their lives changed forever. Now, two decades later, they are about to change again.
\nFor Paul Copeland, the county prosecutor of Essex, New Jersey, mourning the loss of his sister has only recently begun to subside. Cope, as he is known, is now dealing with raising his six- year-old daughter as a single father after his wife has died of cancer. Balancing family life and a rapidly ascending career as a prosecutor distracts him from his past traumas, but only for so long. When a homicide victim is found with evidence linking him to Cope, the well-buried secrets of the prosecutor's family are threatened.
\nIs this homicide victim one of the campers who disappeared with his sister? Could his sister be alive? Cope has to confront so much he left behind that summer twenty years ago: his first love, Lucy; his mother, who abandoned the family; and the secrets that his Russian parents might have been hiding even from their own children. Cope must decide what is better left hidden in the dark and what truths can be brought to the light.
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On the fairway of life, love comes when you least expect it.
\nDiane Thompson is happy enough. Her successful accounting firm allows her plenty of time to play all the golf she wants and enjoy her life in small Sussex village Tynebury. She's finally over the divorce from her husband, but potential suitors are few and far between for a fifty-something woman in the English countryside.
\nTamsin Foxley is determined to keep matters of the heart separated from her new teaching job at the Royal Tynebury Golf Club after a disastrous romantic experience put an end to her previous employment. She has also vowed to no longer fall for women almost half her age.
\nWhen the new season starts at the golf club, Diane and Tamsin become fast friends. Their feelings for each other quickly go in an unexpected direction and they both have to reevaluate what it is they want from life.
\nCan Diane overcome her fear of falling for a woman? And can Tamsin accept her taste in women may have changed?
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Ida Burton used to be Hollywood’s sweetheart until the best roles started drying up in her forties.
\nWhen Ida lands one of the leads in a big-budget lesbian rom-com, it's not only a chance at reviving her dwindling career. Maybe this movie can be an opportunity to finally burst out of the closet she's forced herself into.
\nFaye Fleming has been at the top of her acting game and collecting awards for the past few years. When she's cast in a huge blockbuster opposite the legendary Ida Burton, she's over the moon.
\nIda and Faye hit it off. The chemistry on set is through the roof . . . until their characters' first kiss.
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TV cop Sadie Ireland needs a break from her Hollywood life. She heads home to the beach town where she grew up to celebrate her 40th birthday with her family.
\nDevon Douglas can’t believe it when she comes face-to-face with Sadie again. They were inseparable in high school until Devon did something she has regretted for more than twenty years - she ruined their friendship on a lovestruck whim.
\nSadie is as dazzling as Devon remembers - and she can still hold her own surfing the wild waves of Clearwater Bay.
\nDevon’s first priority is her five-year-old son, but getting to know Sadie all over again is taking up more and more of her headspace.
\nSadie is inexplicably drawn to Devon. It could be nostalgia. It could be remnants of their old friendship flaring up. But what if it’s more than that?
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When love finds you, resistance is futile
Jill Becket knows she’s in trouble the minute a brand new, gorgeous client walks into her practice. Amelia Shaw is suffering from a massive burnout, and has no clue of the calamitous effect she’s having on her new therapist.
Jill’s ethical code prevents her from acting on her feelings. Falling in love is so low on Amelia’s priority list, she doesn’t even consider it. Her only current life goal is to feel better.
Can these two women find each other despite the professional and personal obstacles they face?
After a traumatic event that has left her in deep need of healing, Ella Goodman returns to her hometown in Oregon. While staying at her family’s cabin at the West Waters lake resort, she finds an unexpected friend in level-headed owner Kay Brody.
\nBut Ella’s sole objective is to restore the broken ties with her family, and she has no time for distractions like falling in love.The healing process is confrontational and difficult though, and she is soon forced to realise that people like Kay only come along once in a lifetime.
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Ten years ago, Quinn Hathaway and Maya Mercer shared a night of forbidden passion they vowed to keep secret forever.
\nWhen Quinn and Maya meet again, old sparks fly, but none of the reasons to hide their passion have changed.
\nQuinn is still much younger and Maya has never told her son that she’s attracted to women.
\nCan Maya overcome her fear of what her family might think of her?
\nAnd how will Quinn’s parents, who used to be Maya’s next-door neighbors, react to their daughter’s unconventional love affair?
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The path of true love never did run straight.
Twenty years ago, Kristin Park and Sheryl Johnson were brought together by wine. Is wine also what will tear them apart today?
Beneath the Surface goes back in time to the moment Kristin and Sheryl first meet, and offers a revelatory glimpse into the ups and downs of their seemingly perfect relationship.
The date is set. Six months from now, former music icon Isabel ‘Izzy’ Adler will die.
\nSince she lost her voice ten years ago, Izzy’s been to hell - and hasn’t found her way back. She would rather die than live without the instrument that used to define her.
\nWhen journalist Leila Zadeh is brought in to finish her biography, Izzy’s desire to end her life is profoundly challenged. But is the attraction between the two women enough to upend Izzy's plan?
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Jessica Porter is recovering from a medical procedure that has left her scarred, both physically and mentally. Before she goes back to work as a TV executive, she decides to call upon the services of her trusted escort, Laurel.
\nWhen a mix-up at the agency brings Liz to her door instead, it doesn't take long for her to charm Jessica. As Liz's disarming ways help Jessica slowly open up to the new reality of her body and her life, Jessica finds herself falling for Liz a little more each time.
\nBut can Jessica accept Liz into her life completely, career and all? Or will the pressure of keeping up appearances doom their relationship before it even has a chance to flourish?
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The Lady Kings and their singer, Lana Lynch, have been out of the limelight since Lana's partner's sudden death ten years ago. They’re ready for an epic comeback tour, but have to take a young and hip support band with them.
\nCleo Palmer and The Other Women are over the moon when they get booked to support their lifelong idols and share the stage with the iconic Lady Kings - especially queer legend Lana Lynch. But when Lana invites her to sing a sensual duet together every night, Cleo gets way more than she bargained for.
\nLana and Cleo's on-stage chemistry is off the charts, but the differences in their age and life experience, not to mention some dramatic band politics, prove difficult to overcome. Can Lana and Cleo find their way to each other once the spotlights are switched off?
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When PhD student and Pink Bean barista Josephine Greenwood meets her feminist idol Caitlin James she's starstruck. But when Caitlin starts showing a more than friendly interest in her, Josephine can't believe Caitlin's advances are genuine.
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Her issues with her own body and how people see her threaten to cut off any prospect of romance before it has the chance to blossom. Will Caitlin be able to break down the walls Josephine has built around herself and open her mind to the possibility of romantic happiness?
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Kate has been married to Kevin for ten years, but their failed journey to parenthood has left their relationship on the brink. As Kevin tries to heal by remodeling their home, Kate finds herself living in her mother-in-law’s pool house. And having to spend a lot of time with Kevin’s spoiled sister.
\nStella is preparing for a career-defining audition, but is happy to welcome her brother and his wife to the house - even though she thinks Kate doesn't like her all that much.
\nWith Kevin away, Kate and Stella bond over secret crushes, hot movie stars, and glitzy celebrity parties.
\nUntil one night, after too many shots of tequila, their bonding goes a step too far . . .
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Sometimes love shows up where you least expect it.
\nAshley ‘Ash’ Cooper is still reeling after her recent divorce, throwing all her energy into her job in The City. When she’s seated next to one of her mother’s friends at a family party, falling in love is the last thing on her mind.
\nAfter losing her husband many years ago, Gloria Young rebuilt herself as a single parent. Now that her daughters are both at university, she’s perfectly content with her quiet life in the village of Murraywood.
\nAn unexpectedly enjoyable evening with a friend’s daughter pushes Gloria into exploring a new side of herself.
\nWill she overcome her fear of what people think and allow herself a new chance at happiness?
\nAnd can Ash let go of the past and open herself up to love again?
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Sophie's life is turned upside down when her partner, Ian, dies in a tragic accident. The only one who can understand her devastation is Ian's stepmother, Dolores. Together, they try to make sense of their loss and rebuild their shattered lives.
\nWhile their shared grief brings them closer, it also takes their relationship in an unexpected direction. Where does sorrow end and romance begin? Or has Ian’s death blurred the lines too much?
Helen Swift is almost fifty and tired of her day job as a professor at Oxford University. She prefers to write cozy mysteries under a well-hidden pen name in her Cotswolds cottage. She’s also far too busy to even consider romance.
\nPosh girl, Victoria ‘Rory’ Carlisle, is over the moon when she snags Helen as her DPhil supervisor, and not only because of Professor Swift’s academic prowess. Rory takes an instant shine to Helen, who is far from charmed by her advances.
\nCan Rory make a dent in the wall that Helen has built around herself? And does Helen even have the time for such an inappropriate dalliance?
\nDr. Nicola Forbes has spent years building a life defined by boundaries - clinical, emotional, ethical. But when Avery Hall, a rising Hollywood star, walks into her therapy office, Nic feels something she hasn’t in years: want.
\nAvery is bold, brazen, and struggling under the weight of queer fame.
\nNic is grieving her wife, hiding behind professionalism, and failing - spectacularly - not to fall for her client.
\nWhat begins with guarded glances and charged conversations becomes a line-crossing affair neither woman can walk away from.
\nNic knows the consequences. Loving Avery could cost her her license, her reputation, everything she’s built.
\nBut not loving her might be the greater loss.
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Nora Levine has everything she dreams of: a leading role on a successful tv show and a quiet life with her best friends, away from the spotlight.
\nWhen the new production company CEO takes an unusually hands-on approach to her job, Nora’s hackles go all the way up.
\nMimi St James just wants the best for everyone: her large family, her colleagues and employees; even the aloof star of her company’s hit show. And she’ll go the extra mile to make all of them happy.
\nNora can’t help but warm to Mimi’s kind nature - and what she first saw as meddling. Mimi discovers there is much more to Nora than meets the eye.
\nCan these two complex, strong-willed women find their way to each other?
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Caitlin James and Josephine Greenwood have been happily in love and committed to each other for over a year. Josephine has shed her insecurities and her musical star is on the rise, while Caitlin hosts her own television show under the supervision of a new intriguing boss.
When Josephine starts the conversation about opening up their relationship, Caitlin is faced with a shift in the power balance between them. Together, they embark on a sometimes scary but always thrilling journey to discover who they both truly are.
Can Caitlin still practice what she has always preached? And will Jo be able to find her own way in their unconventional relationship?
Katherine Jones has said goodbye to her old job as a luxury lesbian escort and embarked on a new adventure with her best friend Rocco: opening a third branch of the Pink Bean coffee shop.
\nRocco's aunt, Hera Walker, is tasked with renovating the building of the new Pink Bean. It's Hera's first job after recovering from the sudden death of her long-term partner and she finds it hard to reconnect with her former life. Her first new client being an ex-call girl isn't exactly helping.
\nCan Hera find the open-mindedness to see Katherine for who she truly is? And will Katherine, who has never suffered fools gladly, be able to break down the wall Hera has built around her?
\nAnnie McLean's struggling book shop has been saved by joining forces with the Pink Bean. Her wife, lesbian romance author Jane Quinn, finds her quiet life and steady routine challenged by the introduction of the Pink Bean and its many colourful characters. Both her mind and body seem to be struggling with the new situation.
While Jane figures out how to navigate and adjust to the many changes affecting her, Annie has developed more than a keen interest in Pink Bean owner Kristin.
What happens when a long and enduring relationship is put to the test? Can Annie and Jane rescue their marriage and in the process find themselves, and each other, again?
Micky Ferro has lived her entire life according to other people’s expectations. She married a man, had two children, and became a dutiful stay-at-home mom in suburban Sydney. Until she realized, with a little help from her best friend, that her picture-perfect life wasn’t making her happy.
On the first anniversary of her divorce, Micky decides it’s time for the next step in her journey and gets a job at her neighborhood coffeeshop, The Pink Bean. Becoming a barista sparks a big change in Micky’s daily routine, but could loud-spoken American customer Robin do the same for her love life?
Justine Blackburn has dedicated her life to the Rainbow Shelter, providing a safe haven for homeless queer youth. When her story is brought to life on the big screen, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Sienna Bright, the magnetic actor portraying her former lover.
\nBut Justine's old wounds run deep, and Sienna's Hollywood life seems worlds apart from Justine's reality. Can they overcome their fears and take a chance on love, or will past hurts keep them apart?
\nGet ready to fall head over heels as Justine and Sienna's unputdownable story steals your heart and makes you believe in the power of love to heal even the toughest scars.
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Leigh Sterling and Jodie Whitehouse share a deep love and extreme passion in the bedroom. But when Jodie’s desire for a child becomes inevitable, it clashes with Leigh’s career ambitions as well as with her lack of maternal instinct, and forces them apart.
They go through life separately and, as years go by, their attempts at other relationships fail to measure up to the power of the union they once shared. When they see each other again eleven years after their painful breakup, an opportunity arises to explore if they really were each other’s one true love.
Can love be measured in percentages?
After her girlfriend leaves her for a man, broken-hearted novelist Charlie Cross moves from New York to Los Angeles to work on a TV show based on her books. Charlie vows to never date any woman who isn’t a hundred percent certain of being a lesbian.
But when she is seduced by gorgeous bisexual cooking show host Ava Castaneda, whom she’s had a celebrity crush on for ages, Charlie is forced to review her belief in percentages because true love could very well be on the line.
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Workaholic Katherine and free-spirited singer Ali have disliked each other since college. Fate, however, keeps bringing them together and the paths of their lives keep crossing.
\nAre some differences in personality simply too vast to overcome? Or are some things just meant to be?
With a year remaining on Dominique's first presidential term, the Laroche camp is gearing up for her re-election campaign. Dominique herself, however, doesn't seem so keen on going through it all again. Aurore and Solange's relationship has been on and off so many times, nobody can keep count. The prospect of being on opposing sides of an election campaign is proving too difficult to overcome.
\nUnless one of them can find it in her heart to make a sacrifice. Claire is showing signs of a midlife crisis. Rather than test her marriage to Margot, her behaviour puts in danger Barbier & Cyr, and her friendship with Juliette and Steph. Partnerships will be questioned, loyalties will shift and priorities will be reassessed as favourite characters, and old foes, return for a new season of Parisian drama and intrigue.
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Two years have passed since Dominique Laroche was elected President of France at the end of French Kissing: Season Three. She and Steph are living together at the Elysée, but their relationship is strained by the demands of Dominique's job.
\nWhen a rising star of the opposition proposes a new law that would affect lesbians' right to have children, Dominique is torn between her personal feelings and her party's political line. Feminist radio host Aurore Seauve is advising the opposition on the new law proposal, but finds herself more caught up in the intrigue at the Elysée than she wants to be, not in the least because of her interest in Dominique's uptight chief of staff, Solange.
\nZoya Das has moved from Sydney to Paris to be with her new love Camille, and is finding it difficult to settle into her new country, new language and new job. Meanwhile Camille is finding out the hard way that not all her colleagues are comfortable with an out and proud lesbian at work, even if she is friends with the president.
\nRelationships will be tested, loyalties will be questioned and assumptions will have to be set aside as both familiar and new characters navigate the turbulent waters of love - and politics.
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Claire and Juliette have been best friends for twenty years. Together they own a successful PR agency, but their journey to success has come at a price.
\nJuliette and her partner Nadia have drifted apart after ten years together while Claire hasn’t been on a real date for as long as she can remember. Meanwhile, their happily single employee Steph is getting a bit too close to a new, high-profile client.
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It has been six months since Dominique and Steph came out publicly. How has the video affected their lives and how is Steph coping with becoming a public figure? After her motorcycle accident, Margot is going back to work at the hospital, but she'll have sexy neurosurgeon Marie Dievart to deal with on a daily basis.
\nMeanwhile, Juliette still has babies on her mind. Will she be able to persuade her new bride Nadia that it's not too late for them to become mothers? And will Claire be able to keep a shocking secret she has been living with for the past few months?
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The ladies’ lives have gone back to normal four weeks after the news about Dominique and Steph’s affair broke. This, however, doesn’t mean that everything is going swimmingly. Nadia and Juliette are engaged, but will they ever find time in their busy schedules to get married?
\nClaire and Margot are giving their relationship another go, but can all the emotional events that came before be swept under the rug? And how has Steph and Dominique’s affair progressed now that it has been brutally thrust into the limelight?
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Is age really just a number? Alice McAllister is a successful solicitor who likes a quiet, disciplined life. But when her business partner Miranda forces her to take a vacation at her holiday home in Portugal, the presence of Miranda’s daughter Joy turns Alice’s world up-side down.
Despite their age difference, Alice and Joy embark on a fiery holiday romance… until they have to return home to London.
Will Alice be able to forget about Joy and what she has awakened in her? And how can she face Joy’s mother without guilt after such a passionate summer fling?
Mac and Jamie had their life together all planned out. Until Jamie did the unforgivable and left Mac for another woman.
\nTwenty years later, they meet again for the first time at a friend’s wedding.
\nMac’s pain lingers, while Jamie is still haunted by regret.
\nCan they let go of their history and open their hearts to the possibility of a second chance?
Can love be so instant it changes everything? After losing the woman she loves, Marianne has chosen to live in exile on a tropical Thai island.
\nAt first glance, Emily Kane is just another guest passing through the small B&B she runs, but Emily has demons of her own and, together, they just might find a way to live again.
Olivia Chevalier is perfectly happy living a quiet life of solitude with her two cats in the tempestuous countryside of Brittany.
\nOlivia’s peace is disrupted when heartbreaker extraordinaire Marie Dievart moves in to the holiday home next door after an event at work makes her flee her everyday life.
\nOlivia hates having a neighbour and Marie is put off by Olivia’s cranky ways.
\nBut maybe these two women have more in common than they first believe.
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Television presenter Zoya Das is reeling from a painful breakup. When she’s called to solve a problem at a rental flat she owns, sparks fly between her and her French guest Camille Rousseau. A short holiday fling before Camille flies back to Paris could be just the thing to help Zoya’s recovery.
But what happens when Zoya and Camille develop deeper feelings for each other and are faced with the prospect of being in love on opposite sides of the world?
Louise Hamilton has returned to Sydney after her long term relationship broke down in Brisbane and she's loving her new job at Glow, Darlinghurst's freshly opened yoga studio. She's found new friends in her boss Amber and the gang at the Pink Bean and feels like her life is finally back on track. Until a figure from her past unexpectedly comes back to haunt her.
Mia Miller has just been hired as the Pink Bean's new manager. She's delighted to leave behind the corporate life and become part of a small business whose owners and patrons give her the sense of community and family she's been missing. When a Pink Bean customer catches her eye and she tries to establish a connection, her advances are met with nothing but indifference and disdain.
What happens when a dark past comes back to slap you in the face? And can people ever truly move on from a deeply traumatising experience?
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Featuring an introduction by Casey Cep, Harper Lee's appointed biographer.
\nHarper Lee remains a landmark figure in the American canon – thanks to Scout, Jem, Atticus, and the other indelible characters in her Pulitzer-winning debut, To Kill a Mockingbird; as well as for the darker, late-’50s version of small-town Alabama that emerged in Go Set a Watchman, her only other novel, published in 2015 after its rediscovery.
\nThe Land of Sweet Forever combines Lee’s never-before-seen short stories and published nonfiction in a volume offering an unprecedented look at the development of her inimitable voice. Covering territory from the Alabama schoolyards of Lee’s youth to the luncheonettes and movie houses of midcentury Manhattan, The Land of Sweet Forever invites still-vital conversations about politics, equality, travel, love, fiction, art, the American South, and what it means to lead an engaged and creative life.
\nThis collection comes with an introduction by Casey Cep, Harper Lee’s appointed biographer, which provides illuminating background for our reading of these stories and connects them both to Lee’s life and to her two novels.
\nCombining Lee's early short fiction and later nonfiction, The Land of Sweet Forever offers an unprecedented look at the development of her inimitable voice.
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.
Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos.
Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.
Emerson Clarke can’t remember a time when she felt in control of her life. Her father - a celebrated author - blew in and out of her childhood like a hurricane until he got Alzheimer’s. Her mother numbed loneliness with gin. And recently, her teen daughter has shut her out without explanation. The only place Emerson has ever been in charge is in front of the keyboard where, as a ghostwriter, she dictates everything that happens on the page. If only she could arrange reality the same way, life could be perfect. An impossible fantasy - or so she believes until she makes a startling discovery.
\nAfter her father’s wake, Emerson steals her father’s vintage typewriter - the very one he’d forbidden anyone to touch - and tests its keys by typing out a frivolous wish. After it comes true the very next day, she tries another. When those words also spring to life, she becomes obsessed with using the typewriter to engineer happiness for herself and her daughter. Easier said than done.
\nAs Emerson shapes her real-life circumstances, she uncovers disturbing truths about her family’s history and the unexpected cost for each story-come-true. She should destroy the typewriter, but when her daughter's secret finally emerges, Emerson is torn between paying the price for bending fate and embracing the uncertainty of an unscripted life.
Suzanna Klein was a baby when her mother got up early one morning to rob a bank with a group of fellow radicals. Now, every Saturday, Suzanna lines up at the prison gates among the other children, each dressed as if for celebration. Inside there is a nursery and a cemetery; there are watchful guards and distractable nuns; there are women counting down to release and women like Suzanna’s mother, who will never be released.
\nAt home, Suzanna is raised by her grandmother, who is entirely unforgiving of her daughter’s crime and refuses to visit the prison. Surrounding Suzanna are her grandmother’s friends, who know one another from their years in the Communist Party and still spend extended cocktail hours debating the Hitler-Stalin pact. Though these women once insisted on changing the world, they are torn between teaching Suzanna how the world works and shielding her from it.
\nSuzanna vows to return to the prison forever but her mother wants her to be free. Harriet Clark’s The Hill is an incandescent novel of a child growing up between worlds, the last of three generations whose fates have been tied to punishment. It is the tale of a family broken apart by the desire for change, told with irreverent wisdom and visionary force.
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The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.
\nA young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realises, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 - “Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.
\nAs Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.
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A sleek, gripping novel of encounters set in Tokyo during the spooky hours between midnight and dawn, by an internationally renowned literary phenomenon.
Murakami's trademark humor, psychological insight, and grasp of spirit and morality are here distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery. Combining the pyrotechnical genius that made Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle international bestsellers, with a surprising infusion of heart, Murakami has produced one of his most enchanting fictions yet.
The six stories in Haruki Murakami’s mesmerizing collection are set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, when Japan became brutally aware of the fragility of its daily existence. But the upheavals that afflict Murakami’s characters are even deeper and more mysterious, emanating from a place where the human meets the inhuman.
\nAn electronics salesman who has been abruptly deserted by his wife agrees to deliver an enigmatic package - and is rewarded with a glimpse of his true nature. A man who has been raised to view himself as the son of God pursues a stranger who may or may not be his human father. A mild-mannered collection agent receives a visit from a giant talking frog who enlists his help in saving Tokyo from destruction.
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Collection of twenty-four stories that generously expresses Murakami’s mastery of the form. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit his ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and relentlessly entertaining. Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an iceman, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for.
\nWhether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, a holiday in Hawaii, or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami’s characters confront grievous loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distances between those who ought to be closest of all.
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We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.
\nThus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world - a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves.
\nListening to his own dreams and premonitions, the man leaves his life in Tokyo behind and ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him.
\nAs the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he’s been missing all along.
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An assault on the senses, part murder mystery, part metaphysical speculation; a fable for our times as catchy as a rock song blasting from the window of a sports car.
\nHigh-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic 13-year-old dropout with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem.
\nCombine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose and out comes Dance Dance Dance.
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The eight masterly stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From nostalgic memories of youth, meditations on music, and an ardent love of baseball to dreamlike scenarios and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world.
\nOccasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Murakami himself is present. Is it memoir or fiction? The reader decides.
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A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan, unicorn skulls and voracious librarians, John Coltrane and Lord Jim. Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's international following.
\nTracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy.
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In Hear the Wind Sing the narrator is home from college on his summer break. He spends his time drinking beer and smoking in J’s Bar with the Rat, listening to the radio, thinking about writing and the women he has slept with, and pursuing a relationship with a girl with nine fingers.
With \"Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as \"The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come. This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch the reader.
\nA tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky.
\nThere is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle-yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own. Extravagant in its accomplishment, \"Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world's truly great storytellers at the height of his powers.
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In Killing Commendatore, a thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances.
\nTo close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna, a pit in the woods behind the artist's home, and an underworld haunted by Double Metaphors.
\nA tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art - as well as a loving homage to The Great Gatsby - Killing Commendatore is a stunning work of imagination from one of our greatest writers.
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Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable.
\nAs she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman. A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.
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A charmingly idiosyncratic look at writing, creativity, and the author’s own novels.
\nHaruki Murakami’s myriad fans will be delighted by this unique look into the mind of a master storyteller. In this engaging book, the internationally best-selling author and famously reclusive writer shares with readers what he thinks about being a novelist; his thoughts on the role of the novel in our society; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists, and musicians.
\nReaders who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his strangely surreal worlds will be fascinated by this highly personal look at the craft of writing.
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The plot centers on the narrator's brief but intense obsession with pinball, his life as a freelance translator, and his later efforts to reunite with the old pinball machine that he used to play. He describes living with a pair of identical unnamed female twins, who mysteriously appear in his apartment one morning, and disappear at the end of the book.
\nInterspersed with the narrative are his memories of the Japanese student movement, and of his old girlfriend Naoko. The plot alternates between describing the life of narrator and that of his friend, The Rat.
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Growing up in the suburbs in post-war japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father's record collections. but when his family moved away, the two lost touch. Now Hajime is in his thirties.
\nAfter a decade of drifting he has found happiness with his loving wife and two daughters, and success running a jazz bar. Then Shimamoto reappears. She is beautiful, intense, enveloped in mystery. Hajime is catapulted into the past, putting at risk all he has in the present.
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Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. But whereas Miu is glamorous and successful, Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel.
Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her? Meanwhile K wonders whether he should confess his own unrequited love for Sumire.
Then, a desperate Miu calls from a small Greek island: Sumire has mysteriously vanished . . .
Haruki Murakami's third novel, A Wild Sheep Chase is the mystery hybrid which completes the odyssey begun in Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973.
\nThe man was leading an aimless life, time passing, one big blank.
\nHis girlfriend has perfectly formed ears, ears with the power to bewitch, marvels of creation. The man receives a letter from a friend, enclosing a seemingly innocent photograph of sheep, and a request: place the photograph somewhere it will be seen. Then, one September afternoon, the phone rings, and the adventure begins. Welcome to the wild sheep chase.
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Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fictional writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.
In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.
Charlie hasn’t always had high hopes for herself. But now at twenty-three, she’s landed her dream job as an assistant at a historic London publishing house, moved into a stunning townhome with two of the most glamorous, kind and generous people she’s ever met, and her favorite author, the award-winning, generation-defining, charming Richard Aveling, is about to publish his magnum opus - and Charlie is going to be working with him.
\nShe couldn’t be more excited to help publish the man whose writing has inspired her since she was a teenager. When Charlie bumps into Richard while having a smoke in the rain, the attraction is immediate, and the moment feels nothing short of cinematic.
\nSo when the Richard Aveling begins to take her advice over that of more senior staff, Charlie finds herself drawn to him despite their thirty-year age gap, his marriage, and the disparity in their power at the publishing house. Once Richard makes it clear that he’s drawn to her as well, they begin an affair that Charlie never saw coming; it is a relationship founded in control and silence.
\nToo soon, she can’t imagine her life without Richard, and too late, she understands that losing him will unravel more than just their relationship . . . it might also unravel her.
\nTender and poignant, Bitter Sweet is an intimate exploration of power, of vulnerability, of what it means to love another person, and of what it means to love yourself.
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Enter the time space, a soaring library filled with books containing the memories of those have passed and accessed only by specially made watches once passed from father to son - but mostly now in government hands. This is where eleven-year-old Lisavet Levy finds herself trapped in 1938, waiting for her watchmaker father to return for her. When he doesn’t, she grows up among the books and specters, able to see the world only by sifting through the memories of those who came before her.
\nAs she realises that government agents are entering the time space to destroy books and maintain their preferred version of history, she sets about saving these scraps in her own volume of memories. Until the appearance of an American spy named Ernest Duquesne in 1949 offers her a glimpse of the world she left behind, setting her on a course to change history and possibly the time space itself.
\nIn 1965, sixteen-year-old Amelia Duquesne is mourning the disappearance of her uncle Ernest when an enigmatic CIA agent approaches her to enlist her help in tracking down a book of memories her uncle had once sought. But when Amelia visits the time space for the first time, she realises that the past - and the truth - might not be as linear as she’d like to believe.
\nThe Book of Lost Hours explores time, memory, and what we sacrifice to protect those we love.
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Enter the time space, a soaring library filled with books containing the memories of those have passed and accessed only by specially made watches once passed from father to son - but mostly now in government hands. This is where eleven-year-old Lisavet Levy finds herself trapped in 1938, waiting for her watchmaker father to return for her. When he doesn’t, she grows up among the books and specters, able to see the world only by sifting through the memories of those who came before her.
\nAs she realises that government agents are entering the time space to destroy books and maintain their preferred version of history, she sets about saving these scraps in her own volume of memories. Until the appearance of an American spy named Ernest Duquesne in 1949 offers her a glimpse of the world she left behind, setting her on a course to change history and possibly the time space itself.
\nIn 1965, sixteen-year-old Amelia Duquesne is mourning the disappearance of her uncle Ernest when an enigmatic CIA agent approaches her to enlist her help in tracking down a book of memories her uncle had once sought. But when Amelia visits the time space for the first time, she realises that the past - and the truth - might not be as linear as she’d like to believe.
\nThe Book of Lost Hours explores time, memory, and what we sacrifice to protect those we love.
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When Echo Blue, the most famous child star of the nineties, disappears ahead of a highly publicized television appearance on the eve of the millennium, the salacious theories instantly start swirling. Mostly, people assume Echo has gotten herself in trouble after a reckless New Year’s Eve. But Goldie Klein, an ambitious young journalist who also happens to be Echo's biggest fan, knows there must be more to the story. Why, on the eve of her big comeback, would Echo just go missing without a trace?
\nAfter a year of covering dreary local stories for Manhattan Eye, Goldie is sure this will be her big break. Who better to find Echo Blue, and tell her story the right way, than her? And so, Goldie heads to L.A. to begin a wild search that takes her deep into Echo’s complicated life in which parental strife, friend break ups, rehab stints, and bad romances abound.
\nBut the further into Echo’s world Goldie gets, the more she questions her own complicity in the young star’s demise . . . yet she cannot tear herself away from this story, which has now consumed her entirely. Meanwhile, we also hear Echo's side of things from the beginning, showing a young woman who was chewed up and spit out by Hollywood as so many are, and who may have had to pay the ultimate price.
\nAs these young women's poignant and unexpected journeys unfold, and eventually meet, Where Are You, Echo Blue? interrogates celebrity culture, the thin line between admiration and obsession, and what it means to tell other peoples’ stories, all while ushering us on an unruly ride to find out what did become of Echo Blue.
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Netta Wilde was all the things Annette Grey isn’t. Netta Wilde was fun and just a little bit rebellious. She had friends who loved her. Friends she would love to the end of time.
\nAnnette Grey is an empty, broken woman who hardly knows her own children. Of course, it’s her own fault. She’s a bad mother. An unnatural mother. At least, that’s what her ex-husband tells her.
\nThe one thing she is good at . . . the one thing that stops her from falling . . . is her job.
\nWhen the unthinkable happens, Annette makes a decision that sets her on a journey of self-discovery and reinvention. Along the way, her life is filled with friends, family, dogs, and jam. Lots of jam.
\nSuddenly anything seems possible. Even being Netta Wilde again.
\nBut, is she brave enough to take that final step when the secrets she keeps locked inside are never too far away?
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Frank O’Hare plans to spend his Easter break painting big, bold sunsets and romancing Netta Wilde.
\nBut then he gets a call.
\nHis useless brother, Martin, has gone missing, although he’s been seen in Glasgow by hopeless Cousin Finn. Under orders from the family, Frank’s on a mission to retrieve the runaway and send him back to Belfast.
\nBut when Martin makes off with Finn’s campervan, Frank is dragged into a Highland road trip with nothing more than an overnight bag, an ancient phone, and a whole heap of memories that start with four young punks trying to dodge the kind of trouble that shapes your life forever.
\nAll he wants to do is get home to the woman he loves and avoid calls from his disappointed ma and bossy sister. But Martin seems intent on getting the old gang together again. Except no one wants to mention that the fourth member, Billy Mac, isn’t there, which is fine by Frank.
\nBecause people change, things happen, and some memories should stay in the past where they belong.
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Kelly Payne wants only two things in life.
\nTo stop being thick, and to stop loving Will Grey. But how do you get clever when you’re bad at learning, and how do you stop loving when your heart doesn’t want to?
\nHer friend Geraldine says reading is educational, so Kelly raids Netta Wilde’s study and picks up Pride and Prejudice. When an old postcard falls out, it sets her on a trail of books and postcards that might just change her life. Suddenly, she’s imagining all kinds of possibilities. And when the beautiful Marcus asks her out, she even dares to dream of a happy ending without Will.
\nBut old doubts have a habit of dragging her down. As long buried memories resurface, Kelly finds herself questioning all the truths she held dear. Then along comes Obie, Man of Misery, and life is instantly more annoying.
\nKelly is about to learn the hard way, there’s more to education than books and learning, and everything she thought she knew about love and loneliness was completely wrong.
\nBecause happy endings don’t belong in real life. And there’s no man in the world like Mr Darcy, is there?
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Now that Netta Wilde’s life is fixed, she turns her attention to the houseful of journals left by the late Edith Pinsent.
\nStarting with a wide-eyed young WAAF in wartime Britain and ending with an eccentric old spinster, alone with her memories, Edith’s story begins to piece together.
\nBut the path to discovery is not easy.
\nThere are missing diaries to contend with, hidden clues to uncover and revelations that turn everything on its head. Revelations that make Netta question just how fixed her life really is.
\nSoon, the need to revisit her own past proves too strong. Now, Netta has two challenges on her hands. One to find the true Edith Pinsent. The other to face the two people who once meant everything to her. Neither seem to be going the way she’d expected.
\nAs the challenges intertwine, one thing becomes clear. Edith had a purpose for Netta. One that she must fulfil.
\nBit by bit, the house yields a lifetime of secrets and the real Edith Pinsent begins to emerge.
\nBut will it be the Edith everyone thought they knew?
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What would happen if all your exes came to stay? Netta Wilde is about to find out.
\nIt’s a normal morning on a normal day, until Netta gets some news that changes everything. Her scheming ex, Colin, has been thrown out by his partner, the awful Arianne. Even though she knows it’s a bad idea, Netta agrees to take him in. But straight away, things aren’t what they seem. Arianne’s making claims that don’t stack up, and Colin’s a shadow of his former self.
\nThen, Doogie Chambers, the one-time love of Netta’s life, turns up. Suddenly, no one’s behaving as they should. Her current love, Frank, is acting like a sulky teenager. Colin’s sinking into bitterness and despair. And Doogie’s definitely lying about why he’s here. As old emotions tangle with new secrets, all four find themselves pulled in directions they’d never imagined. Suspicions are rife, loyalties are challenged, and everyone’s head is full of what if, what could have been, and what might be.
\nBut sometimes, you have to pick a side to stand with. Sometimes, you have to choose a heart to give yourself to. And sometimes, you just need to let go.
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Geraldine Wilde has been afraid for as long as she can remember.
\nMostly, it’s the little things that frighten her. Little things like putting flowers on her mum’s grave. But Geraldine gets by. She has a secret system to calm her nerves and keep everything hidden so that no one suspects she’s not normal.
\nBut when her daughter, Netta, stumbles upon a hidden letter, a terrible secret returns to haunt her. She’s tormented by the memory of Geraldine Corcoran, the tragic girl who was once saved by the remarkable Ada Wilde and her son, Arthur.
\nSuddenly, the system is unravelling. Geraldine’s fear is spiralling out of control and, this time, there’s no one left to rescue her. Ada is dead, and her beloved Arthur is an old man who tiptoes around her as if he’s treading on eggshells. Netta can’t help her and, to make matters worse, that mouthy Kelly Payne insists on befriending her.
\nGeraldine is sinking and she can’t find a way back up to the surface.
\nCan anyone save her now?
\nNot all guardian angels have wings and halos. Sometimes they come in the most unlikely packages.
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Eve is at a breaking point. Alone with her two children in Massachusetts while her husband pursues his music career in New York City, she’s frustrated, bored, and, above all, lonely when she runs into Demeter, a childhood friend with whom she shared one transformative summer. Demeter is as beautiful and charismatic as Eve remembers, but she’s also distraught.
\nDemeter’s daughter, like a growing number of others, cannot go outside during the day. No one knows why, and doctors are skeptical that these people - soon dubbed Emilys, after the famously reclusive local poet - are telling the truth. But Eve believes her friend. She will help Demeter - if she can just figure out how.
\nEve’s perspective is joined by those of her fellow community members searching for answers: the local librarian and the town’s most prolific writer of letters to the editor, who both loved the same woman and now hate each other; an actor hoping to make amends for past misdeeds; Demeter’s teenage daughter, furious about the isolation she’s forced to endure.
\nWhen Eve unites with this unlikely band of fellow detectives, she feels a clear sense of purpose for the first time in years. But this quest comes with a price: She is keeping secrets from her husband, fighting with Demeter, distracted from her children. What is she willing to risk to find a cure?
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It’s been years since the three Ryan sisters were all home together at their family’s beloved house on the eastern shore of Long Island. Two decades ago, their lives were upended by an accident on their brother Topher’s boat, a friend’s brother was killed, the lawsuit nearly bankrupted their parents, and Topher spiraled into a depression, eventually taking his life.
\nNow the Ryan women are back for Thanksgiving, eager to reconnect, but each carrying a heavy secret. The eldest, Cait, still holding guilt for the role no one knows she played in the boat accident, rekindles a flame with her high school crush, Topher’s best friend and the brother of the boy who died. Middle sister Alice’s been thrown a curveball threatening the career she’s restarting and faces a difficult decision that may doom her marriage. And the youngest, Maggie, is finally taking the risk to bring the woman she loves home to her devoutly Catholic mother. Infusing everything is the grief for Topher that none of the Ryans have figured out how to carry together.
\nWhen Cait invites a guest to Thanksgiving dinner, old tensions boil over and new truths surface, nearly overpowering the flickering light of their family bond. Far more than a family holiday will be ruined unless the sisters can find a way to forgive themselves - and one another.
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Driving home one rainy night, Cassie Larkin sees a man and woman fighting on the side of the road. After calling 911, the veterinarian makes a split-second decision that will throw her sedate suburban life into chaos. Against all reason and advice, she gets out of her minivan and chases after the violent man, trying to help his victim. When Cassie physically tries to stop him, he suddenly turns on her and spits out an ominous threat: “Let her die, and I’ll let you live.”
A veterinarian trained to heal, Cassie can’t let the woman die. But while she’s examining the unconscious victim, the attacker steals her car. Now he has her name. Her address. And he knows about her children. Though they warn her to be careful, the police assure her that the perpetrator - a criminal named Carver Sweet - won’t get near her. Cassie isn’t so sure.
The next day - Halloween - her husband disappears while trick-or-treating with their six-year-old daughter. Are these disturbing events a coincidence or the beginning of a horrifying nightmare? Her husband has been growing distant - is it possible he’s become involved with another woman? Is Cassie’s confrontation with the road-side attacker connected to her husband’s disappearance?
With all these questions swirling in her mind Cassie can trust no one, maybe not even herself. The only thing she knows for sure is that she can’t sit back while the people she loves are in danger.
As she desperately searches for answers, Cassie discovers that nothing is as random as it seems, and that she is more than willing to fight - to go the most terrifying extremes - to save her family and her marriage.
When she was twelve, Leyna Clarke watched her older sister, Grace, walk away from their Sierra Nevada foothills home with her boyfriend, Adam Duran. Neither was ever seen again. Sixteen years later, a stranger who looks like Grace shows up at the restaurant where Leyna works - and vanishes soon after.
\nWhen it comes out that Leyna was one of the last people to have talked with the young woman, Leyna’s childhood crush Dominic, who is also Adam’s brother, pleads with her to do the last thing she wants to do: come home.
\nBut Leyna isn’t the only one who hasn’t been able to leave that fateful night behind. Her mother, Meredith, still lives in the family’s old home - even if she claims to believe the police’s theory that Grace and Adam were willing runaways. Down the street, Adam and Dominic’s mother Olivia has also stayed, determined to be there when her son finally returns . . . and to prove that Meredith and Leyna have been hiding something all these years. But the past isn’t the only threat to the two families, or the missing girl.
\nAs a wildfire sparks, tempers flare and intentions turn deadly. Because someone in the neighborhood knows what really happened that night - and just how good the forest is at keeping its secrets.
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Agnes Aubert leads a meticulously organised life - and she likes it that way. As the proudly type-A manager of a much-needed cat rescue charity, she has devoted her life to finding forever homes for lost cats.
\nBut after she is forced to move the cat shelter, Agnes learns that her new landlord is using her charity as a front - for an internationally renowned and thoroughly disreputable magic shop. Owned by the disorganised - not to mention self-absorbed, irritating, but also decidedly handsome - Havelock Renard, magician and failed Dark Lord, the shop draws magical clientele from around the world, partly due to the quality of Havelock’s illicit goods as well as their curiosity about his shadowy past and rumors of his incredible powers. Agnes's charity offers the perfect cover for illegal magics.
\nAgnes couldn’t care less about the shop - magical intrigue or not, there are cats to be rescued. But when an enemy from Havelock’s past surfaces, the magic shop - and more importantly, the cat shelter - are suddenly in jeopardy. To save the shelter, will Agnes have to set aside her social conscience and protect the man who once tried to bring about the apocalypse - and is now trying to steal her heart?
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After the terrifying events on Mount Raksha, the witches have returned, and River has betrayed Kamzin to regain his dark powers. The witches’ next step: march on the Three Cities and take over the Empire - led by River’s brother, Esha.
\nIf Kamzin is to save Azmiri and prevent the fall of the Empire, she must find a star that fell in the Ash Mountains to the north. Fallen stars have immense power, and if Kamzin and Lusha can find the star, they can use its magic to protect the Empire. To get there, Kamzin has allied with Azar-at, the dangerous and deceptive fire demon, who can grant her great power - in exchange for pieces of her soul. But River wants the star too, and as their paths collide in dangerous and unexpected ways, Kamzin must wrestle with both her guilt and her conflicted feelings for the person who betrayed her.
\nFacing dark magic, a perilous journey, and a standoff against the witches, can Kamzin, Lusha, and Tem find the star and save their Empire?
Emily Wilde has spent her life studying faeries. A renowned dryadologist, she has documented hundreds of species of Folk in her Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Now she is about to embark on her most dangerous academic project studying the inner workings of a faerie realm - as its queen.
\nAlong with her former academic rival - now fiancé-the dashing and mercurial Wendell Bambleby, Emily is immediately thrust into the deadly intrigues of Faerie as the two of them seize the throne of Wendell's long-lost kingdom, which Emily finds a beautiful nightmare, filled with scholarly treasures.
\nEmily has been obsessed with faerie stories her entire life, but at first she feels as ill-suited to Faerie as she did to the mortal world-how could an unassuming scholar like herself pass for a queen? Yet there is little time to settle in - Wendell's murderous stepmother has placed a deadly curse upon the land before vanishing without a trace. It will take all of Wendell's magic - and Emily's knowledge of stories - to unravel the mystery before they lose everything they hold dear.
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Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party - or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, and the Fair Folk.
\nSo when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily's research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.
\nBut as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones - the most elusive of all faeries - lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she'll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all - her own heart.
Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore, and has catalogued many secrets of the Hidden Folk in her encyclopaedia with her infuriatingly charming fellow scholar, Wendell Bambleby, by her side.
\nBut Bambleby is more than just a brilliant and unbearably handsome scholar. He's an exiled faerie king on the run from his murderous mother, in search of a door back to his realm.
\nBy lucky happenstance, Emily's new project, a map of the realms of faerie, will take them on an adventure to the picturesque Austrian Alps, where Emily believes they may find the door to Bambleby's realm, and the key to freeing him from his family's dark plans.
\nBut with new friendships for the prickly Emily to navigate and dangerous Folk lurking in every forest and hollow, Emily must unravel the mysterious workings of faerie doors, and of her own heart.
Kamzin has always dreamed of becoming one of the emperor’s royal explorers, the elite climbers tasked with mapping the wintry, mountainous Empire and spying on its enemies. She knows she could be the best in the world, if only someone would give her a chance.
\nBut everything changes when the mysterious and eccentric River Shara, the greatest explorer ever known, arrives in her village and demands to hire Kamzin - not her older sister, Lusha, as everyone had expected - for his next expedition. This is Kamzin’s chance to prove herself - even though River’s mission to retrieve a rare talisman for the emperor means climbing Raksha, the tallest and deadliest mountain in the Aryas. Then, Lusha sets off on her own mission to Raksha with a rival explorer, and Kamzin must decide what’s most important to her: protecting her sister from the countless perils of the climb or beating her to the summit.
\nThe challenges of climbing Raksha are unlike anything Kamzin expected - or prepared for - with avalanches, ice chasms, ghosts, and other dangers at every turn. And as dark secrets are revealed, Kamzin must unravel the truth about their mission and her companions - while surviving the deadliest climb she has ever faced.
Grace has never been good at anything except magic - not that anyone believes her. While other children are adopted from the orphanage, nobody wants Grace. So she decides to make a home for herself by running away and offering herself as an apprentice to the witch in the nearby woods. After all, who better to teach Grace to use her magic? Surely the witch can’t be that bad.
\nBut the witch is that bad - she steals souls for spells and gobbles up hearts. So Grace offers a deal: If she can learn all 100½ spells in the witch’s grimoire, the witch will make Grace her apprentice. But if Grace fails, the witch can take her magic. The witch agrees, and soon an unexpected bond develops between them. But the spells are much harder than Grace expected, and when a monster from the witch’s past threatens the home Grace has built, she may have to sacrifice more than her magic to save it.
\nInspired by Anne of Green Gables, this is a magical story of found family, loss, and the power of a girl’s imagination.
A neurodivergent ticket agent struggling with his ended marriage, a willful teenager searching for truth about her past, and a teacher harboring a painful regret: each passes through the Wisconsin train station one Friday in 1970. Their encounters, though seemingly serendipitous, are far from accidental; yet none of them realises how deeply their lives have been shaped by one another.
\nFor years, the depot has offered Lincoln an escape from his troubled past. But now, with the trainline left in question - and in an era when disorders like his are often left undiagnosed - Lincoln must search for new ways to understand who he is.
\nRose, his fierce and faithful mother, has orchestrated her son’s life for years. In her close inner circle is the secretary who helped uncover devastating corruption at their psychology office. Now, the exposing of long-hidden secrets means facing life-changing choices - some seeped in regret.
\nBoth somber and uplifting, unsettling and still, the healing of Lincoln and those he encounters builds in pace like the train at the heart of the story - and arrives at the destination of a gut-wrenching dilemma: How do we make peace with time?
All book editor Megan Law wants is to bury the memory of her brutal kidnapping and move on with her life. So when her publisher asks her to spin her hellish experience into the next bestseller, Megan agrees only because it might help keep other women safe. Then a mysterious, gruesome package arrives in the mail - a reminder that the nightmare isn’t over just yet.
\nFBI investigator Ragnar Johnson is running out of time. He knows in his gut there's more to the recent Embracer killings, and he needs Megan's help. Even with their rocky past behind them, working together now isn’t going to be easy. But when things take a deadly turn, Megan and Ragnar discover a deep connection that they'll have to use, because something is trying to tear them apart . . . forever.
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One night, New York FBI agent Aiden Mahoney receives a visitor in a dream - an old friend named Richard Highsmith. The very next day he's sent to Sleepy Hollow because Richard's gone missing there.
\nMaureen - Mo - Deauville now lives in the historic town and works with her dog, Rollo, to search for missing people. She's actually the one to find Richard . . . or more precisely his head, stuck on a statue of the legendary Headless Horseman.
\nMo and Aiden, a new member of the Krewe of Hunters, the FBI's unit of paranormal investigators, explore both past and present events to figure out who betrayed Richard, who killed him and now wants to kill them, too. As they work together, they discover that they share an unusual trait--the ability to communicate with the dead. They also share an attraction that's as intense as it is unexpected . . . if they live long enough to enjoy it!
They're not going down without a fight.
\nWhen FDLE special agent Amy Larson discovers a small horse figurine amid the bloody aftermath of a gang massacre in the Everglades, she recognizes it immediately. The toy is the calling card of the apocalypse cult that Amy and her partner, FBI special agent Hunter Forrest, have been investigating, and it can only mean one thing: this wasn’t an isolated skirmish - it was the beginning of a war.
\nAs tensions between rival gangs rise, so does the body count, and Amy and Hunter’s investigation leads them to a violent, far-right extremist group who are in no hurry to quell the civil unrest. With a deadly puppet master working to silence their every lead, it’s a race against the clock to figure out who’s been pulling the strings and put a stop to the escalating cartel turf war before the Everglades run red.
Dracula lives - and he’s hunting for his bride.
\nVampires may not walk among us, but FBI agents Della Hamilton and Mason Carter know real monsters exist. They’ve witnessed firsthand the worst humankind has to offer. They’re still catching their breaths after the apprehension of two such monstrous killers when they’re met with horrific news. Stephan Dante, the self-proclaimed king of the vampires, has escaped from prison, followed only by a trail of blood.
\nAll too familiar with Dante’s cruelty, Della and Mason know the clock is ticking. But as Dante claims more victims, a chilling message arrives. The vampire killer seeks his eternal bride - Della herself. Playing into Dante’s desires might be the only way to stop the carnage once and for all, assuming they can outwit him. Della is confident the agents have the upper hand, but Mason knows every gamble runs the risk of not paying off, and this time, the consequences could be deadly.
Hannah O'Brien, who grew up in the house and now runs it as a B and B, has always had a special ability to see a pair of resident ghosts. But when a man is murdered in the alley behind her place, she's dismayed when his spirit appears, too, asking for help.
\nFBI agent Dallas Samson has a passionate interest in the murder, since the victim's a colleague whose death is connected to the smuggling ring known as Los Lobos - the wolves. Now Dallas is even more committed to chasing them down . . .
\nUnaware that Dallas has certain abilities of his own, Hannah calls her cousin Kelsey O'Brien, a member of the FBI's Krewe of Hunters, an elite unit of paranormal investigators. The present-day case is linked to a historical mystery involving salvagers, a curse and a sunken ship. Danger and desire bring Hannah and Dallas together, but to survive, they have to solve the mysteries of the past - and stay alive long enough to solve the crimes . . .
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On the edge of the Everglades, an eerie crime scene sets off an investigation that sends two agents deep into a world of corrupted faith, greed and deadly secrets.
\nA ritualistic murder on the side of a remote road brings in the Florida state police. Special Agent Amy Larson has never seen worse, and there are indications that this killing could be just the beginning. The crime draws the attention of the FBI in the form of Special Agent Hunter Forrest, a man with insider knowledge of how violent cults operate, and a man who might never be able to escape his own past.
\nThe rural community is devastated by the death in their midst, but people know more than they are saying. As Amy and Hunter join forces, every lead takes them further into the twisted beliefs of a dangerous group that will stop at nothing to see their will done.
A series of bizarre assaults is mystifying Boston police: an unknown attacker is viciously beating random strangers and leaving a note quoting an old warning about witchcraft. History professor Alex Maple was one of the victims, and now he's gone missing.
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Vickie Preston is certain that someone has taken her friend for malicious purposes. She's having blood-drenched visions that seem to be staining her waking life, and the escalating attacks suggest that a dangerous cult is at work behind the scenes - a cult so powerful that its members would rather die than be apprehended.
Vickie is grateful to have Special Agent Griffin Pryce and the FBI's elite Krewe of Hunters on her side. Vickie and Griffin are finding their way in an increasingly passionate relationship, and he's keeping her safe and sane amid the disturbing investigation. The search for Alex will take them deep into the wilderness of Massachusetts on the trail of a serial killer, where an ancient evil is waking.
They say it's about the journey, not the destination . . .
Charlene \"Charlie\" Moreau is back in St. Francisville, Louisiana, to work on a movie. One night, she stumbles across the body of a Civil War reenactor, the second murdered in two days. Charlie is shocked to learn that her father - a guide on the Journey, a historic paddle wheeler that's sponsoring the reenactment - is a suspect.
Meanwhile, Ethan Delaney, new to the FBI's Krewe of Hunters, is brought in on the case. He and Charlie have a history of their own, dating back to when he rescued her from a graveyard - led there by a Confederate ghost!
Charlie arranges a Mississippi River cruise so she and Ethan can get close to the reenactors, find out who knows what, who has a motive. They discover a lot more as they resume the relationship that ended ten years ago . . . but might die, along with them, on the Journey.
When Clara Avery, an entertainer working on the Fate, an Alaskan cruise ship, goes to nearby Bear Island, she comes across a scene of bloody mayhem. She also comes across Thor Erikson, who will soon be a member of the FBI's elite paranormal unit, the Krewe of Hunters.
\nThor's been sent from the Alaska field office to investigate several grotesque killings, with the dead posed to resemble the victims of notorious murderers. The prime suspect is a serial killer Thor once put behind bars. The man escaped from a prison in the Midwest, and all the evidence says he was headed to Alaska . . .
\nThor and Clara share an unusual skill: the ability to communicate with the dead. Their growing love - and their contact with the ghosts of the victims - brings them together to solve the case . . . and prevent a deadly fate of their own!
When Raina Hamish tries on a dress in a Miami boutique, she has a terrifyingly accurate vision of a murdered corpse in the murky shadows of the Everglades. She wants to help, but who would believe her when she can hardly believe herself?
Special Agent Axel Tiger has returned to Florida to help hunt a serial killer, but the investigation doesn't have much to go on. Raina's vision is their best chance to uncover more. Axel's experience with the FBI's elite paranormal team will nurture Raina's abilities, and she may be able to help save a life - but it puts her directly in the crosshairs of a killer who is closer than they would ever suspect.
When FBI special agent Luke Kendrick discovers chilling evidence of dozens of victims at a crime scene in London, he recognises the calling card of the notorious H.H. Holmes Society. Named for the nineteenth-century monster regarded as America’s first serial killer, the society is comprised of a twisted web of killers, working to carry out heinous murders in Holmes’s memory. And now the group’s been linked to a Scottish castle turned B and B - where guests check in but never check out.
\nArriving at the sinister Graystone Castle posed as a tourist, Luke is joined by Special Agent Carly MacDonald, and the pair is immediately confronted by dangers hidden in the castle’s depths. With guests disappearing and a network of killers closing in, Luke and Carly have only each other to rely on—and they’ll have to race to cut off the head of the snake before the blood trail of the past can culminate in a very real and deadly present.
Ever since she was a child, Stacey Hanson has had strange dreams - and sometimes they come true. Her skills and experience led her straight to the FBI’s Krewe of Hunters. Now a serial killer is stalking Washington, DC, and people are scared. And it will be Stacey’s first case.
\nSpecial Agent Keenan Wallace isn’t exactly thrilled to be teamed up with a rookie, but they’re going to have to get past their mutual friction if they want to stop a brutal killer. The victims are all vulnerable women, though the clues lead to suspects from DC’s powerful elite. Stacey can’t escape her nightly visions, but in trying to prevent them from occurring in real life, she might come face-to-face with a nightmare.
As a teenager, Vickie Preston survived an attack by a serial killer. That was the first time she saw a ghost. Now the city of Boston is being terrorised - someone is kidnapping women and burying them alive, but cruelly leaving a glimmer of hope for the authorities by sending a clue about their location.
\nVickie is pulled into the investigation when her name is mentioned in one of the notes. And as a historian, she has the knowledge to help uncover the graves the killer known as the Undertaker is choosing. But she also has another, unique lead: the spirit of one of the victims is appearing to her in dreams.
\nSpecial Agent Griffin Price is on the case for the Krewe of Hunters, the FBI's special unit for paranormal investigators. He feels particularly protective of Vickie, since their shared past is connected to the threat that currently surrounds them. With the killer accelerating his plans, time is running out for more victims hidden . . .
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Brodie McFadden is supposed to be on vacation, getting some sunshine and deciding if he wants to join his brothers and the Krewe of Hunters, a special paranormal investigation unit of the FBI. But a diving excursion with an old navy buddy to a historic shipwreck uncovers a crime scene - and the corpse is new.
\nMuseum curator Dakota “Kody” McCoy just wants her Key West culture festival to succeed. She’s always had a deep connection to her home, including being regularly haunted by some of the resident ghosts. Then, in the middle of a performance, a beloved local musician drops dead. It seems accidental, but Kody isn’t so sure.
\nBrodie thinks the recent deaths are linked, and he needs help from Kody. Something about her festival is dangerous. And the threat is creeping ever closer. Has she uncovered a treasure from the past that someone will kill for?
Some deaths live on forever
\nFor as long as it has stood overlooking New England's jagged coastline, Lexington House has been the witness to madness…and murder. But in recent years the inexplicable malice that once tormented so many has lain as silent as its victims. Until now . . .
\nA member of the nation's foremost paranormal forensic team, Jenna Duffy has made a career out of investigating the inexplicable. Yet nothing could prepare her for the string of slayings once again plaguing Lexington House - or for the chief suspect, a boy barely old enough to drive, much less kill.
\nWith the young man's life on the line, Jenna must team up with attorney Samuel Hall to pinpoint who - or what - is taking the lives of those who get too close to the past. But everything they learn brings them closer to the forces of evil stalking this tortured ground.
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Playing the victim of a vampire king on an island off New Orleans is actress Avalon Morgan’s creepiest role to date. It’s also scary good fun - until the victim of a real killer is discovered on set, laid out for all to see. With production shut down, Avalon can’t stop thinking about the chilling crime scene, or Finley Stirling, the FBI agent working the case.
\nWith a rising body count and zero leads, Fin can’t help but be impressed by Avalon’s amateur sleuthing, which takes her to the darkest corners of the internet, where killers confess their crimes. One such account is a dead ringer for the murders, but when the evidence vanishes, nobody believes Avalon - except for Fin. With no one they can trust, Avalon and Fin are determined to unbury the truth at any cost, but a return to the deadly island could be the last thing they do.
A woman named Maria Gomez is murdered in Miami, apparently by her husband - who'd been presumed dead, slain by a crime boss. FBI agent Brett Cody can't believe it; dead or alive, the man had loved his wife. He also can't help feeling guilty, since he was responsible for protecting Miguel and Maria Gomez.
A few miles away, Lara Mayhew has just begun working at a dolphin research facility. She loves her new job - until a dolphin brings her something unexpected from the deep. A human hand. More body parts show up, and when Brett looks into the situation, he discovers that the dismembered corpse is Miguel's.
Soon, rumors of crazed zombies abound in the Miami media, and the Krewe of Hunters, an elite FBI unit of paranormal investigators, is called in. Brett and Lara find themselves working with the Krewe - and working closely together. An elderly crime boss who's losing his memory seems to be key to solving this case, but . . . there's no motive. Unless Brett and Lara can uncover one in the Miami underworld. And that means they have to protect themselves. And each other.
A historic cruise ship, a haunted ship, the Celtic American Line's Destiny, sets sail from the Port of New Orleans - with a killer on board. He's known as the Archangel Killer because of the way he displays his victims in churches. And how he places a different saint's medallion on each body. No one knows exactly who he is or why he's doing this.
Jackson Crow - head of the FBI's Krewe of Hunters, a special unit of paranormal investigators - is assigned to the case, along with local agent Jude McCoy. Then Alexi Cromwell, who works in the ship's piano bar, is drawn into the situation when a victim's ghost appears to her - and to Jude. She and Jude share an attraction, and not just because of their mutual talent.
There are many suspects, but one by one they're ruled out . . . Or are they? In the end, Jude and Alexi have to rely on each other to catch the killer and escape his evil plans for Alexi.
Emerging from the bayou like an apparition, Donegal Plantation is known for its unsurpassed dining, captivating atmosphere, haunting legends . . . and now a corpse swinging from the marble angel that marks its cemetery’s most majestic vault. A corpse discovered in nearly the same situation as that of Marshall Donegal, the patriarch killed in a skirmish just before the Civil War.
\nDesperate for help traditional criminologists could never provide, plantation heiress Ashley Donegal turns to an elite team of paranormal investigators who blend hard forensics with rare - often inexplicable - intuition. Among the Krewe of Hunters is an old flame, Jake Mallory, a gifted musician with talent stretching far beyond the realm of the physical, and a few dark ghosts of his own.
Devin Lyle has recently returned to the Salem area, but her timing couldn't be worse. Soon after she moved into the eighteenth-century cabin she inherited from her great-aunt Mina - her \"crazy\" great-aunt, who spoke to the dead - a woman was murdered nearby.
\nCraig Rockwell - known as Rocky - is a new member of the Krewe of Hunters, the FBI's team of paranormal investigators. He never got over finding a friend dead in the woods. Now another body's been found in those same woods, not far from the home of Devin Lyle. And Devin's been led to a third body - by . . . a ghost?
\nHer discovery draws them both deeper into the case and Salem's rich and disturbing history. Even as the danger mounts, Devin and Rocky begin to fall for each other, something the ghosts of Mina and past witches seem to approve of. But the two of them need every skill they possess to learn the truth - or Devin's might be the next body in the woods . . .
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Can the same killer strike again - a hundred and fifty years later? Estes
Park, Colorado, is a place of serenity. But it wasn’t always so serene. Shortly after the Civil War, Nathan Kendall and his wife were murdered there, leaving behind a young
son. The crime was never solved.
Now . . . historian Scarlet Barlow is working at a small museum attached to a B and B, the same building where that murder occurred. She recently came to Colorado, reeling after her divorce from FBI agent Diego McCullough. Diego - who’s
just been asked to join the Krewe of Hunters, a unit dealing with “unusual” situations . . .
When Scarlet unwittingly takes pictures of people who’ve been murdered - just like the Kendalls a hundred and fifty years before - the police look at her with suspicion. Then
the museum’s statues of historic people, including Nathan Kendall, begin to talk to her, and she knows it’s time to call her ex-husband. Diego heads to Estes Park, determined to
solve the bizarre case that threatens Scarlet’s life - and to reunite with the woman he never stopped loving.
Scotland has a dead body problem. Another one. And in the wake of a similar spate of tribute killings, Special Agents Luke Kendrick and Carly MacDonald know they have their work cut out for them. Working alongside a new team of agents, the partners have more questions than answers when the crime scenes yield little evidence. In the style of infamous killers Burke and Hare, it appears victims are being moved to a secondary location, where they’re dissected and sold for spare parts.
\nWith the clock ticking on every organ being harvested, the members of Blackbird know the killers must be near at hand, and soon discover that they’re also being closed in on. As questions begin to arise about the newest additions to their team, Luke and Carly are running out of time - and people they can trust - to catch the killers before the agents themselves are the next to be put on ice.
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This state-of-the-art smart home has a next-generation entertainment system, an ultramodern kitchen where every appliance is online and even a personal AI to control it all. Standing above its owner's lifeless body, FBI agent Jude Mackenzie is faced with the daunting task of discovering how the woman was killed by her own home. How do you catch a murderer that doesn't leave any fingerprints?
\nEnter Special Agent Victoria Tennant, whose familiarity with cybercrime reveals the stark truth: A machine can only do what it's been directed to. As the number of grisly \"accidents\" begins to rise, the pair must race to uncover the perpetrator even as they find themselves caught in their digital crosshairs! There's nowhere to hide when danger may be as close as the very phones in their pockets.
It's a city of beauty, history . . . hauntings. And one of the most haunted places in Savannah is a tavern called The Dragonslayer, built in the 1750s. The current owner, Gus Anderson, is a descendant of the original innkeeper and his pirate brother, Blue.
\nGus summons his granddaughter, Abigail, home from Virginia, where she's studying at the FBI Academy. When she arrives, she's devastated to find him dead. Murdered. But Abby soon learns that Gus isn't the only one to meet a brutal and untimely end; there've been at least two other victims. Then Captain Blue Anderson starts making ghostly appearances, and the FBI's paranormal investigation unit, the Krewe of Hunters, sends in Agent Malachi Gordon.
\nAbby and Malachi have a similar ability to connect with the dead . . . and a similar stubbornness. Sparks immediately begin to fly - sparks of attraction and discord. But as the death toll rises, they have to trust each other or they, too, might find themselves among the dead haunting old Savannah!
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What happened here, on a historic ranch outside Nashville, during the Civil War? And what's happening now?
\nOlivia Gordon works at the Horse Farm, a facility that assists patients with mental and physical recovery; her specialty is animal therapy. She's always loved her job, always felt safe . . . until now.
\nPeople are dying, starting with the facility's founder, whose body is discovered in a ravine on the property - site of a massacre in 1862. And before every death, Liv sees a horse and rider, wearing a soldier's garb, in the night sky . . . Warning? Omen? Or clue?
\nLiv calls in her cousin Malachi and his Krewe, an FBI unit of paranormal investigators, to discover the truth. New Krewe member Dustin Blake knows they need Liv's involvement in the case, yet he's worried about her safety. Because he and Liv quickly become more than colleagues . . . and he doesn't want to lose her to the endless night.
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The dead of night
\nThe Old West town of Lily, Arizona, is home to the Gilded Lily, a former theater . . . and bawdy house. These days, it offers theatrical productions geared to tourists, but the recent discovery of a skull, a real skull, among the props and costumes shakes everyone up.
\nSo, who do you call? The Krewe of Hunters, a special FBI unit of paranormal investigators. In this case, it's agent Jane Everett. Jane's also a talented artist who creates images of the dead as they once were. But the Krewe always works with local law enforcement, and here that means Sloan Trent, former Houston cop and now sheriff. His great-great-grandmother was an actress at the Gilded Lily . . . and she's not resting in peace.
\nThen more remains appear in the nearby desert. As they search for answers, using all the skills at their disposal, Jane and Sloan find themselves falling into danger - and into love.
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The crime scene is horrific: the corpse of a young actress, drained of blood and cut in two. LAPD Detective Sophie Manning’s new case is high-profile and difficult - there’s no evidence to work with. And it’s a disturbing echo of the infamous Black Dahlia killing.
\nSophie is burning the candle at both ends, desperate to catch the murderer before he strikes again, when she starts to experience inexplicable visits . . . from ghosts. Bruce McFadden has a particular talent that can help Sophie - he can speak with the dead.
\nAs a consultant for the FBI’s paranormal team, the Krewe of Hunters, he’s been tasked with Sophie’s case and they’re forced to partner up. But Sophie doesn’t want his help, and she doesn’t want to share his peculiar skill. And she certainly isn’t ready for love, despite Bruce’s attentions.
\nAs the killer taunts the police, Sophie and Bruce will discover that the threat is closer to home than they’d ever realised. Working side by side is the only way they’ll stop this deadly sequel.
Though haunted by the recent deaths of two teammates, Jackson Crow knows that the living commit the most heinous crimes.
\nA police officer utilising her paranormal intuition, Angela Hawkins already has her hands full of mystery and bloodshed.
\nBut one assignment calls to them too strongly to resist. In a historic mansion in New Orleans's French Quarter, a senator's wife falls to her death. Most think she jumped; some say she was pushed. And yet others believe she was beckoned by the ghostly spirits inhabiting the house - once the site of a serial killer's grisly work.
\nIn this seemingly unsolvable case, only one thing is certain: whether supernatural or all too human, crimes of passion will cast Jackson and Angela into danger of losing their lives . . . and their immortal souls.
\n
A terror born of Jack the Ripper
\nThe details of the crime scene are no coincidence. The body - a promising starlet - has been battered, bloodied and then discarded between two of Manhattan's oldest graveyards.
\nOne look and Detective Jude Crosby recognizes the tableau:
\nA recreation of Jack the Ripper's gruesome work. But he also sees something beyond the actions of a mere copycat. Something more dangerous . . . and unexplainable.
\nAs the city seethes with suspicion, Jude calls on Whitney Tremont, a member of the country's preeminent paranormal investigating team, to put the speculation to rest. Yet when Whitney and Jude delve deeper, what they discover is more shocking than either could have predicted, and twice as sinister . . .
\n
Over a century after Jack, a new Ripper is on the loose.
\nFollowing in the footsteps of notorious serial murderer Jack the Ripper, a killer is stalking the streets of London. The self-dubbed Ripper King strikes at night, leaving a trail of eviscerated bodies in his wake. Fresh off a case with potential ties to the recent rash of killings, FBI agents Della Hamilton and Mason Carter are all too familiar with a slayer set to rule with a lethal fist. And they’ll stop at nothing to end his reign.
\nThe killer’s MO may be nothing new, but his desire to be infamous makes him dangerous. Della and Mason know it’s only a matter of time before their investigation emboldens this new Ripper, forcing the agents to work quickly before another woman winds up dead. But now that the heat is on, their game of cat and mouse takes an unexpected turn, leading Della and Mason into a deadly trap they never saw coming . . .
It was supposed to be a fun girls’ weekend in Salem, but when a past-life regression session instead sends a terrifying vision of murder to Kylie Connelly, she’s shaken and doesn’t know what to think. Worse, later she identifies the attacker from her vision: he’s a prominent local politician.
\nSpecial Agent Jon Dickson of the FBI’s Krewe of Hunters is on the trail of a suspected serial killer based on the scantest of clues and unreliable witness testimony. When he realises Kylie’s vision might be his best lead, he must gain her trust and get close enough to guide her new talent. Though she doubts herself, the danger Kylie sees is all too real - and the pair will have to navigate a murderer’s twisted passions and deceptions to stop the killer from claiming another victim.
Kerri Wolf has joined the crew of The Seekers, a show that searches for paranormal phenomena, as they explore a supposedly haunted old inn on the road between Philadelphia and Harrisburg. The place is famous for its warm welcome - and infamous for being the site of an ax murder rampage in the 1920s. They’ve barely begun when a very real dead body is discovered in the basement. As a nonfiction author, Kerri is supposed to be the rational one, but she can’t explain a terrifying apparition that seems to be both a threat and a warning.
\nFormer detective Joe Dunhill knows what she’s going through - the strange gift of being able to see and talk to the dead is a struggle he shares. A new member of the FBI’s Krewe of Hunters, he’s on the team investigating the disturbing death. The town is steeped in old-fashioned superstition, and the deeper Joe and Kerri plunge into the dark secrets of the inn, the closer they get to a devastating truth. Will a bloody history be repeated? Or can the spirits of the past reach out to stop a killer?
Where is Lara Mayhew? Lara, a congressman’s media assistant, suddenly quits her job - and disappears on the way to her Washington, DC, apartment. Novice FBI agent Meg Murray, a childhood friend of Lara’s, gets a message from her that same night, a message that says she’s disillusioned and “going home.” To Richmond, Virginia. Meg discovers that she never got there. And bodies fitting Lara’s description are showing up in nearby rivers . . .
\nCould she be the victim of a serial killer? Meg is assigned to work with special agent Matt Bosworth, a hard-nosed pro in the FBI’s unit of paranormal investigators - the Krewe of Hunters. They trace the route Meg and Lara took more than once in the past, visiting battlefields and graveyards from Harpers Ferry to Gettysburg. Places where the dead share their secrets with those who can hear.
\nAs Meg and Matt pursue the possibility
of a serial killer, they find themselves in the middle of a political conspiracy. Is
there a connection? If so, has Lara been silenced for good? And whom - besides each other - can they?
Women are being taken in Virginia, and FBI agent Mark Gallagher is determined to put a stop to it. Certain he's closing in on the killer known as The Embracer, Mark is less than thrilled when he's partnered with rookie agent Colleen Law, worried she's a liability when there's so much at stake.
\nBut like everyone in the Krewe of Hunters, Colleen has talents that extend beyond the usual investigative toolbox. She can hear the voices of the victims in her head, and they're telling her she and Mark are near to uncovering the truth.
\nWhen Mark's prime suspect takes a liking to Colleen, he's surprisingly protective of his new partner, even as he admits her connection to the victims is key. But tense interrogations turn dangerously personal when someone close to Colleen goes missing, luring the agents deep into the shadows of wooded rural Virginia, where nobody can hear them scream.
With the execution of a serial killer known as the Artiste, Cheyenne Donegal thinks a grim part of her past is finally put to rest. Her cousin had been the twisted killer’s final victim, and then-teenage Cheyenne was integral in bringing him to justice. That tragedy drove her to become an FBI agent. And now she’s back in Louisiana because someone is murdering young women in the same manner as the Artiste.
\nKrewe of Hunters agent Andre Broussard has deep ties in New Orleans and Cajun country beyond. He knows that more than one monster has stalked the bayou. Has a deadly threat been resurrected, or does someone have a dark inspiration?
\nWith the life of a missing woman on the line, Cheyenne and Andre have to set aside their doubts about each other and work to discover the truth. The case is too close and too personal - but they can’t let it go, especially now that a ruthless killer has turned the tables and is hunting them.
When Kristi Stewart inherits a property in the old part of Savannah, she knows it comes with stories of hauntings. But she doesn’t believe in ghosts, even while she runs seances for the guests of McLane House Bed-and-Breakfast. Until the inexplicable midnight appearance of one of her infamous ancestors. Terrified, she flees into the night - and right into the arms of Dallas Wicker.
\nDallas is trying to uncover the truth about a colleague who died under suspicious circumstances. As strange happenings continue to plague Kristi’s home, it is soon clear that there’s a very living threat in the neighborhood - several people have disappeared without a trace. Dallas can’t find any connection between the victims, but someone wanted them gone, and it might be linked to the history of McLane House. And that means Kristi should be very afraid.
Twelve years after the grisly murder of her parents, Kaitlyn Delaney has finally found peace. She has friends, a good job, a place to call home and a new life to live. But then a shadow creeps in from Katie’s past, reminding her that she will never completely escape its terrifying grip.
\nWhen private investigator Dan Oliver is called to the scene of a gruesome crime in New Orleans, he can’t help but hear echoes of the Delaney case, the unsolved murder that made him leave law enforcement. As he digs deeper, he unearths more chilling similarities - including mysterious letters connecting the killer to a string of murders that terrorised the Big Easy in 1919.
\nNow reunited after all this time, Dan and Katie scour the streets together, desperate to find answers before more lives are lost. But the otherworldly roots of this evil run far deeper than they ever imagined . . . and only the most precious of sacrifices will bring its twisted reign to an end.
The 1940s: Hard-boiled detectives and femmes fatale are box-office gold. In one iconic scene, set in a deserted museum, the private eye arrives too late, and the buxom beauty is throttled by an ominous Egyptian priest.
\nNow: The Black Box Cinema immortalises Hollywood's Golden Age in its gallery of film noir tributes. But the mannequin of that Egyptian priest is hardly lifeless.
\nHe walks - and a young starlet dies a terrifying death.
\nMovie mogul Eddie Archer's son is charged with the grisly murder. Eddie calls agent Sean Cameron, who specializes in irregular investigations. As part of an FBI paranormal forensics team, Cameron knows that nightmares aren't limited to the silver screen.
\nWorking with special-effects artist Madison Darvil - who has her own otherworldly gifts - Cameron delves into the malevolent force animating more than one movie monster . . .
\n
1777: In the throes of the Revolutionary War, Landon Mansion is commandeered by British Lord \"Butcher\" Bedford. He stabs Lucy Tarleton - who spurned his king and his love - leaving her to die in her father's arms.
\nNOW: After the day's final tour, docent Allison Leigh makes her rounds while locking up . . . and finds a colleague slumped over Bedford's desk, impaled on his own replica bayonet.
\nResident ghosts may be the stock-in-trade of stately Philadelphia homes, but Allison - a noted historian - is indignant at the prospect of \"ghost hunters\" investigating this apparent murder.
\nAgent Tyler Montague knows his hauntings and his history. But while Allison is skeptical of the newcomer, a second mysterious murder occurs. Has \"Butcher\" Bedford resurfaced? Or is there another malevolent force at work in Landon Mansion? Wary, yet deeply attracted, Allison has to trust in Tyler and work with him to discover just what uninvited guest - dead or alive - has taken over the house.
\nOr their lives could become history!
\n
Sienna Murray was only fourteen when she pulled her neighbors out of a raging house fire. A decade later, she still can't explain what happened that night, how she knew to save them at just the right moment - or why she receives the same mysterious warning when it happens again . . .
\nNew member of the Krewe of Hunters elite paranormal team Detective Ryder Stapleton doesn't believe in coincidences. So when the suspicious fire he's called to investigate reveals a cryptic link to Sienna, he can't help but think the unassuming museum curator has something to hide. But he soon discovers they have more in common than he ever thought - and a growing attraction neither can deny.
If they're going to have a future, Sienna and Ryder need to catch a serial arsonist roaming the shadowy streets of New Orleans . . . before the city burns down around them.
1800s. San Antonio, Texas: In room 207 at the Longhorn Saloon, in the long shadow of the Alamo itself, a woman renowned for her beauty was brutally murdered. Her killer was never found.
One year ago: In that same historic room, another woman vanished without a trace. Her blood was everywhere . . . but her body was never recovered.
Now: In the last month, San Antonio has become a dumping ground for battered bodies.
All young women, many of them long missing, almost all forgotten. Until now.
Texas Ranger Logan Raintree cannot sit by and let his city's most vulnerable citizens be slain. So when he is approached to lead a brand-new group of elite paranormal investigators working the case, he has no choice but to accept the challenge. And with it, his powerful ability to commune with the dead.
Among Logan's new team is Kelsey O'Brien, a U.S. marshal known for her razor-sharp intuition and a toughness that belies her delicate exterior. Kelsey has been waiting all her life to work with someone who can understand her ability to \"see\" the past unfolding in the present. Now she has her chance.
Together, Kelsey and Logan follow their instincts to the Alamo and to the newly reopened Longhorn, which once tempted heroes with drink, cards and women. If the spirits of those long-dead Texans are really appearing to the victims before their deaths, only Kelsey and Logan have the skills to find out why.
And if something more earthly is menacing the city's oldest, darkest corners, only they can stop it - before more innocent women join the company of San Antonio's restless ghosts . . .
1898: Bound for Chicago, the freighter Jerry McGuen goes down in Lake Michigan, taking with it every man aboard. But what other fate could befall a vessel carrying the ill-gotten sarcophagus of an Egyptian sorcerer?
\nNow: A veteran diver and \"ghost ship\" expert is exploring the legendary wreck for a documentary. He dies inexplicably inside the freighter's main saloon. Then another diver is killed and panicked rumors rise like bubbles from the lake: ancient demons have awakened below!
\nThe expedition's beleaguered financier calls paranormal investigator Katya Sokolov to Chicago to save the film - and perhaps some innocent lives. Along with media forensics guru Will Chan, Kat plumbs the depths of an evil that may date back to the time of the Pharaohs. But some secrets are best drowned in the seas of the past . . .
\n
FBI agent Jordan Wallace is close to cracking the human trafficking case she’s been working, when she does the one thing she should never do: let her guard down. The botched undercover mission is semisalvaged by the last-minute appearance of criminal psychologist Patrick Law, but Jordan can’t imagine making a worse first impression. Especially when she’s partnered with Patrick moving forward.
\nPatrick’s innate ability to get inside a criminal’s head is an asset for the Krewe of Hunters. But Jordan wishes she could protect her own thoughts from her new partner. Patrick assures her that both she and her thoughts are safe with him, but Jordan’s less sure about her heart. Letting someone have her back has never been her strong suit, but with a dangerous killer still at large, trusting in Patrick might be the only thing keeping them alive.
Four bodies have been discovered along Europe’s riverbanks, placed with care - and completely drained of blood. Pinpricks on their throats indicate a slender murder weapon, but DNA found in the wounds suggests something far more sinister. Tasked with investigating, the FBI recruits Agents Della Hamilton and Mason Carter to Blackbird, an international offshoot of the Krewe of Hunters. If you want to catch a vampire killer, you need agents who can speak with the dead.
\nThe pair travel to Norway, where the shadowy forests of Lillehammer reveal a gruesome scene. The killer is thirsty for more victims, and the bloodless trail soon leads Della and Mason to a group that believes drinking blood is the key to immortality. To catch the culprit of such an intimate crime, the agents will have to get close. Mason’s already lost one partner; he’s not ready to risk Della as bait. But sometimes justice requires a sacrifice . . .
Sofia Bottom lives in a small country that Europe has forgotten. But inside its borders, the old myths of trees that come alive and faeries who live among their roots have given way to an explosion of the arts and the consolations of philosophy. No one, from the clarinetists to the cabaret singers, is as revered in the arts as Sofia’s brilliant mother, the writer Clara Bottom. How can 14 year old Sofia, with a tin ear and an enduring love of the old myths, ever hope to win her mother’s love?
\nWhen the country’s greatest enemy invades, and the Capital is under threat, at last Clara turns to her daughter. Sofia must smuggle her new manuscript to safety on the last train evacuating children from the city. But the train draws to a suspicious halt in the middle of a forest, and Sofia must run for her life, losing her mother’s most prized possession.
\nNow frightened and alone in a country at war, Sofia must find a way to reclaim what she has lost. On an epic journey through woods and razed towns, colliding with soldiers, survivors and other lost children, Sofia must make the choice between kindness and survival.
\n
Faye is a thirty-seven-year-old happily married mother of two young daughters. Every night, before she puts them to bed, she whispers to them: “You are good, you are kind, you are clever, you are funny.” She’s determined that they never doubt for a minute that their mother loves them unconditionally. After all, her own mother Jeanie had died when she was only seven years old and Faye has never gotten over that intense pain of losing her.
But one day, her life is turned upside down when she finds herself in 1977, the year before her mother died. Suddenly, she has the chance to reconnect with her long-lost mother, and even meets her own younger self, a little girl she can barely remember. Jeanie doesn’t recognize Faye as her daughter, of course, even though there is something eerily familiar about her...
As the two women become close friends, they share many secrets—but Faye is terrified of revealing the truth about her identity. Will it prevent her from returning to her own time and her beloved husband and daughters? What if she’s doomed to remain in the past forever? Faye knows that eventually she will have to choose between those she loves in the past and those she loves in the here and now, and that knowledge presents her with an impossible choice.
Emotionally gripping and ineffably sweet Faye, Faraway is a brilliant exploration of the grief associated with unimaginable loss and the magic of being healed by love.
Joe loves predictability. But his life is a surprising adventure.
\nJoe-Nathan likes the two parts of his name separate, just like his dinner and dessert. Mean Charlie at work sometimes calls him Joe-Nuthin. But Joe is far from nothing. Joe is a good friend, he’s good at his job, good at making things and good at following the rules, and he’s learning how to do lots of things by himself.
\nJoe’s mother knows there are a million things in life he isn’t prepared for. While she helps guide him every day, she’s also writing notebooks full of advice about the things she hasn’t told Joe yet, things he might forget and answers to questions he hasn’t yet asked.
\nFollowing her wisdom - applying it in his own unique way - this next part of Joe’s life is more of a surprise than he expects. Because he’s about to learn that remarkable things can happen when you leave your comfort zone, and that you can do even the hardest things with a little help from your friends.
When Kit rescues a wealthy witch from the treacherous, monster-filled waters of the River Tweed, she reckons she's completed her fair share of good deeds for the day. But when a second anonymous body is pulled from the same river, Kit is dragged into a mystery as murky as the water itself. The corpse has no identification, no personal possessions and no one who cares. Kit is determined to change that.
\nAt least Thane Barrow, the copper-haired werewolf who sees the world in a similar way to Kit, is happy to also get involved. Together, they navigate Coldstream’s magical streets and mysterious secrets, determined to uncover the truth about John Doe. Alas, it soon becomes clear that his death was no accident. Kit finds herself investigating a complex crime with more than one victim. She will have her claws full if she's going to get to the bottom of what's happened.
\nOne thing is for certain - when death threatens, Kit McCafferty doesn’t back down. She pounces.
\n
Since the moment I was ripped from my mother's womb, I've been an outcast amongst my own kind. The Sidhe might possess magical Gifts, unbelievable wealth and unfathomable power but I don't want a thing to do with them. I ran away from their lands in the Highlands of Scotland when I was eleven years old and I've never looked back. I don't need a Clan. I've got my own family of highly skilled thieves who mean more to me than any Sidhe ever could.
Unfortunately for me, the playboy heir to the Moncrieffe Clan has something I desperately need. To get it back, I'm going to have to plunge myself back into that world, no matter what the consequences may be. I suppose it's just as well I have sense of humour. I think I'm going to need it.
Integrity Taylor should have been a Clan princess. Instead she's lived a life on the very periphery of society. Now that she's learnt more about her heritage, however, and the magic that she's capable of wielding, she's not going to hide in the shadows any longer.
\nThe once-in-a-generation Sidhe Games are going to provide the perfect opportunity for her to win back her birthright - and the fact that she'll be going head to head, toe to toe and mouth to mouth with golden haired Byron Moncrieffe might just be the icing on the cake.
The best way to live in the Mage ruled city of Glasgow is to keep your head down and your mouth closed.
\nThat’s not usually a problem for Mairi Wallace. By day she works at a small shop selling tartan and by night she studies to become an apothecary. She knows her place and her limitations. All that changes, however, when her old childhood friend sends her a desperate message seeking her help - and the Mages themselves cross Mairi’s path. Suddenly, remaining unnoticed is no longer an option.
\nThere’s more to Mairi than she realises but, if she wants to fulfil her full potential, she’s going to have to fight to stay alive - and only time will tell if she can beat the Mages at their own game.
\nFrom twisted wynds and tartan shops to a dangerous daemon and the magic infused City Chambers, the future of a nation might lie with one solitary woman.
\n
It's not easy pretending to be dead - especially when it feels as if you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. Between an unfulfilled prophecy, the demon-occupied Lowlands, the continuing power of murderous Aifric Moncrieffe - not to mention her constant yearnings for Byron - Integrity Adair has a lot to worry about.
Still, how hard can it really be to save Scotland, maintain her morals, get the guy and keep her sense of humour?
All across Scotland, the resistance movement is growing in both strength and numbers. For the first time in five generations, the Mages are afraid - and it’s all because of one woman.
\nBut Mairi knows where the real power lies and that it is the Mages who maintain control of the country. She has become the poster girl for the resistance and her magic is growing stronger by the day. That doesn’t mean, however, that she has any real chance of succeeding against the might of the Mages.
\nAnd yet strange things are afoot. Crude runes are appearing all over the country while the Afflicted seem to be changing - and not for the better. The very soul of Scotland may soon be up for grabs.
\nIf ever there is a time for a true hero to step forward, this is it.
\n
Mairi Wallace has faced terrible dangers since she discovered her magical abilities. But she's never experienced anything as hazardous as this. An unfamiliar peril has arisen and suddenly the Mages are no longer the biggest threat to Scotland's future. A new King, with the Afflicted hordes at his beck and call, is claiming her country for his own.
\nFrom the towering battlements at Edinburgh Castle to the sweeping streets of Glasgow, Mairi and her friends are going to have to draw on every scrap of power they have. And if she doesn't embrace the unthinkable and work with the Mages to save her people, Scotland's future might prove to be very bleak indeed.
\n
When Kit offers a room to a powerless ban sith who has lost her magic, she sets off a chain reaction across Coldstream’s supernatural streets. Her neighbours are panicking. Dangerous werewolves are on the prowl. And Kit finds herself trying to solve several desperate problems all at once.
\nKit knows the world’s a messy place, especially when magic’s involved. But this reeks of something dark and nasty. She’s paws deep - and there’s every chance that Thane, the copper-haired werewolf who stirs Kit’s heart, will become collateral damage.
\nHer house is full of cats, and her city is full of monsters . . . fortunately, Kit McCafferty is one of them.
\n
Integrity Taylor has regained possession of her ancestral lands - and inherited a whole host of new problems. The spectre of what really happened to her parents is casting a shadow over everything while Fomori demons are being sighted up and down the Highlands. It doesn't help that Aifric Moncrieffe still seems determined to see her dead and emerald eyed Byron remains stubbornly blind to his father's true nature.
Integrity is determined to stay in control of her own destiny, however, even if it means confronting the darkness across the Veil yet again. And at least she's still got a sense of humour . . .
Kit McCafferty's life is quiet, unremarkable and filled with cat hair. In the magical city of Coldstream, located on the border between Scotland and England, Kit is viewed as little more than mildly eccentric and mostly harmless. She passes her days caring for her family of five cats, feeding the local feral moggies, and maintaining relatively good relations with her neighbours.
\nAll that changes, however, when a teenage werewolf shows up at her door in the desperate hope of renting out a nearby vacant flat. Kit knows that the smart move is to tell him to leave. The last thing she needs is to become embroiled in complicated shapeshifter politics. But something about the secretive young werewolf tugs at her heartstrings.
\nIt's not long before Kit ends up caught in a maelstrom of mysterious crime and magical wrong-doing. Fortunately, there's far more to Kit McCafferty than meets the eye and she has a few dark secrets of her own.
\nOf course, anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows that you underestimate a cat lady at your own peril.
\n
Story of a young woman and her grandmother living in the shadow of an endless war, where the painted glamour of the circus hides a world of seduction, violence, cruelty and revenge.
\nSara Sidorova lies dying. As she hovers between life and death, she receives a visitation from Amba, the tiger god who will devour creation if he is released from the chains that bind him. Amba gives Sara Sidorova an extraordinary gift: a glimpse into the future.
\nYears later, her granddaughter Irenda will grow up in a wartorn country where survival means obedience. When a devastating attack robs her of her mother, she travels to Hrana City. There, her grandmother agrees to teach her the ultimate secret: how to tame death. But it won’t be easy . . .
\nIn the circus that offers her first taste of power, Irenda will have to tame another tiger if she is to survive. Amongst the magicians, the strongmen and the contortionists, she will start down a dangerous road, to carry out a revenge decades in the making . . . and bring justice into the world for herself and for her family.
\n
Lizzy pulled the covers over her head. Then she realised what was being dragged behind the person with the torch. She rammed her fist into her mouth to stop herself from screaming . . .
\nFor decades, The Moore Asylum was home to the forgotten children of Brooklyn Bay. But ever since a scandal forced its closure, the abandoned building has cast an imposing shadow. Until now – when an elderly man is found dead, his body strapped to an ancient gurney . . .
\nDetective Lucy Harwin, still reeling from a previous case that ended in the devastating murder of a mother and her child, finds herself on the trail of a killer ruthlessly fixated on avenging the asylum’s wrongs.
\nWhat disturbing secrets lie within the asylum’s walls? Together with her partner Detective Mattie Jackson, Lucy begins to unearth its terrible history, and the horrors endured by the vulnerable children.
As the attacks escalate and a woman is murdered on her own doorstep, Lucy is forced into a terrifying game of cat and mouse with a twisted individual. But can Lucy stop a murderer with nothing left to lose?
Take a breath. Pray it’s not your last.
Just a few months after a terrifying case that nearly took her life, Detective Lucy Harwin is back with her squad in the coastal town of Brooklyn Bay - and this time, she’s faced with a case more horrifying than anything she’s encountered.
Along with her partner, Detective Mattie Jackson, Lucy is investigating what appears to be a vicious but isolated murder; a woman found bludgeoned to death on a lonely patch of wasteland.
But when a second victim is discovered strangled in an alleyway, then a young family shot in their own home, Lucy and the team must face the unthinkable reality - a killer is walking the streets of their town.
While Lucy and the team try to find the link between these seemingly unconnected murders, they uncover a disturbing truth - these murders are replicating those carried out by infamous serial killers.
Lucy must get to the killer before he strikes again. But he’s got his sights on her, and is getting ever closer . . . Can she save herself, before she becomes the final piece in his twisted game?
When a woman disappears from Forest Pines campsite, Detective Morgan Brookes scrambles a search party. Sara Fletcher has never missed a lunch date with her best friend and when Morgan finds a large rip in Sara’s tent, she knows that something terrible must have happened. About to lose hope after hours combing through the acres of dense forest, the excited bark of a tracker dog leads Morgan to female remains, partially covered by leaves and dirt - but the bones don’t belong to Sara.
\nMorgan trawls through missing persons files until she finds three cold cases with chilling similarities – three other victims dating back twenty years who were taken from campsites while they slept, by a killer the police called The Travelling Man. The post-mortems indicate he kept them alive for 72 hours, meaning every second is crucial to find Sara alive.
\nMorgan’s team is terrified that this twisted murderer has returned. But Morgan also can’t ignore the fact that a merciless killer from her own past has recently escaped from prison . . . Could they be chasing the wrong man? If she’s correct, how deep will she have to dig to save Sara and other innocent women like her before time runs out for them all?
When Detective Morgan Brookes is called to the scene of a suicide, she’s devastated to recognise the young teacher sprawled out on the grass like a broken doll. She hasn’t seen Brittany for years. Not since the tragic death of Morgan’s high-school boyfriend ripped their friendship group apart. But when witnesses describe Brittany’s erratic behaviour and jumbled speech that morning, Morgan is convinced the fearless, life-loving girl she once knew didn’t jump of her own accord.
\nTraces of poison found in Brittany’s blood prove Morgan’s theory right, but no one can find the source. Then Morgan uncovers a distinctive jar in Brittany’s home filled with toxic herbs, and the sight of it turns her blood to ice. She has a jar just like it, a handmade gift from her aunt. Is this a coincidence, a set-up, or could the only person she’s ever trusted with her damaged past be capable of murder?
\nThen another woman from Morgan’s past is found, close to the scene of that fatal teenage party. Has Morgan been looking at this all wrong? Are these deaths connected to that deadly night? And how could someone from her own family possibly be involved?
\nWith her aunt’s freedom and more innocent lives at stake, Morgan must dig deep into her painful memories for answers. Who else was there that night, and what exactly did they see? She must stop this twisted killer before any more of her old friends become new victims – but at what cost?
When the body of a teenage runaway is found hidden inside someone else’s grave in a small-town cemetery in The Lake District, an urgent call is made to Forensic Pathologist Beth Adams. Still traumatised by a recent attempt on her own life, one look at the beautiful girl’s broken body is enough to bring Beth out of hiding for the first time since her attack. She’s the only one who can help her trusted friend, Detective Josh Walker, crack the most shocking case of his career.
Beth struggles to believe it’s a coincidence that the gravesite was scheduled to be exhumed, exposing the evidence. Does this twisted killer want to be caught?
Throwing herself into her work Beth discovers traces of material beneath the victim’s fingernails that sets the team on the killer’s trail. But this critical lead comes at a dangerous price, exposing Beth’s whereabouts and dragging her back into her attacker’s line of fire once again.
With Beth’s own life on the line, the investigation is already cracking under the pressure. Then another local girl goes missing… Can Beth stay alive long enough to catch the killer before he claims his next victim?
The discovery of a young student floating face down in Lake Windermere, her naked skin almost translucent in the freezing water, looks like yet another tragic teen suicide. But the victim’s lack of clothes make Forensic Pathologist Beth Adams want to investigate further. Anything to distract her from the arrival of her abusive ex-boyfriend’s body on the mortuary table that morning.
\nWith witnesses keeping tight-lipped and any clues washed away by the tides, it’s up to Beth to find the evidence her team needs. But then another girl is found in the lake, this time still clinging to life. She tells them she was at a party on a boat, and that she was pushed . . .
\nAs more bodies surface, Beth finds tiny traces of boat paint present on each victim. It’s a critical lead that links these attacks back to a tragic accident involving a group of school children years ago.
\nFaced with a killer hungry for revenge, and with her own life spiralling out of control, it’s going to take every ounce of skill and determination for Beth to catch this monster before he takes another innocent life. But will Beth realise he’s been right beside her all along?
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When a farmer reports an abandoned campsite in Rydal Falls, Detective Morgan Brookes hopes its occupants are just out enjoying the beautiful views nearby. But nothing can prepare her for the smell of death in the air, or what she finds as she crawls inside the wind-ravaged tent. A young girl has been killed in her sleeping bag, her belongings ransacked, a knife twisted into her body.
Scrolling through beautiful images of solo wild camping on Sharon Montgomery’s social media, Morgan can’t imagine who would want the sweet girl dead. But then Sharon’s mother breaks down on arrival at the morgue, admitting through choked sobs that Sharon and her stepfather had a blazing row. And Morgan soon discovers that Sharon had a boyfriend, Jack, who did everything he could to keep their relationship a secret. Both men knew where Sharon was camping, but her autopsy report details more than thirty wounds on her body. Were they angry enough to do something so brutal?
When another girl is viciously stabbed while camping alone in another picturesque spot in the mountains, the team find delicate blue fibres at the scene that connect her and Jack. But Morgan isn’t convinced. Independent and single, Lydia Williams also had Lake District beauty spots all over her social media. Is someone trying to make sure all the women in town will be scared to venture out on their own? And can Morgan get inside this killer’s mind and track them down before they claim another victim?
The little girl peered down the dark alleyway. She knew she wasn’t supposed to take this shortcut and her mother would kill her if she found out, but it was raining and all she wanted was to get home quickly. She stepped forward, not seeing the silent figure following her into the dark passageway . . .
\nWhen nine-year-old Charlotte Standish goes missing from her street in the small town of Rydale Falls, it sparks a media frenzy. Detective Morgan Brookes leads a frantic hunt for the girl, but little Charlie seems to have vanished into thin air.
\nChasing up a lead at Charlie’s school, Morgan is chilled to learn that this isn’t the first time a child has gone missing on this street. Another girl disappeared fifteen years ago, and Morgan is the only one who thinks the cases could be related. But in the moment that she takes her eye off Charlie’s case to investigate the link between the two girls, another child, Macy, goes missing.
\nThen Morgan gets the call she was dreading, Charlie’s lifeless body has been found in a local park, lying in the shadow of a large tree. Morgan has let one girl down, but she refuses to give up on Macy. Determined to find an overlooked clue, she retraces Macy’s last steps. She’s getting close to the truth when her partner, Detective Ben Matthews, is attacked outside Morgan’s home. Is a twisted killer isolating Morgan from her team? And how long does Macy have left to live? Morgan must solve the case before more innocent lives are taken . . .
When Detective Morgan Brookes is called to Lake Thirlmere one frosty night, she’s devastated to find the body of a young woman positioned in front of the glistening reservoir. She has ligature marks on her limbs, glue residue on her eyes, and her beautiful face is as cold as ice. Knowing only a dangerous serial killer would arrange a scene so carefully, Morgan is in a race against time to stop them before more innocent lives are lost.
\nThe victim is twenty-year-old Jasmine Armer and her mother is distraught to hear that her beautiful daughter is gone. And Morgan is shocked when she learns that Jasmine’s father recently committed suicide at the same picturesque spot. The killer must have known the family. Then Morgan receives a terrifying package at the station of an intricate death mask. She immediately recognises Jasmine’s long lashes and perfectly-plump lips.
\nWith the killer taunting her, Morgan knows time is running out. And then Morgan gets the heart-shattering call that her friend, Emily, has been killed. Ligature marks on Emily’s arms are identical to Jasmine’s. Heartbroken Morgan knows this isn’t the end of the killer’s twisted game, but can she track them down before they take another life?
When the body of a young woman is found, tied to her bed and the victim of a brutal attack in her own home, Detective Morgan Brookes is sickened by what she finds as she searches the house. And unprepared for the nightmares it inspires about her childhood.
\nWhen the DNA collected gives a positive ID, Morgan can’t wait to put the attacker behind bars. But the person it matches to is already in prison. How could the DNA of someone who has been locked up for over twenty years have shown up in Morgan’s crime scene? And then they make another close match. To Morgan herself.
\nFaced with the impossible proof that she is somehow connected to this case, Morgan delves deep into the crimes of a killer who stalked the Lake District two decades ago. But distracted by the old case, she misses the signs that he has found a new victim. And when he strikes close to home, Morgan finally realises that she has been living on borrowed time. To find this killer, it’s clear she must confront the nightmares in her past…
Running from a devastating relationship that almost cost her everything, Maddy Hart impulsively accepts a job as a live-in caretaker at imposing Lakeview House. She has no memories of having visited the crumbling mansion on the banks of Lake Thirlmere before, but when she arrives, something about the house feels familiar . . .
\nThe more time Maddy spends in the house, the more unsettled she feels. Why does the local story about the last woman who lived here, who drowned on her wedding day, chill Maddy to the bone? By day, she clears out the dusty rooms, but in the dead of night it’s hard to explain away the eerie noises or crackly radio she hears hours after she turned it off. Slowly, Maddy begins to fear that her worst nightmare is coming true, has her past caught up with her?
\nWhen a soaking wet wedding dress is left on Maddy’s doorstep she feels completely trapped. It is her exact measurements. Is her ex trying to send her a message? Or has Maddy’s digging uncovered an even deadlier secret? Will this perfect escape become the perfect trap?
In charge of a new team, Detective Lucy Harwin is called out to attend the discovery of a woman’s body in an abandoned, crumbling church, and is quickly plunged into a case that will test her leadership skills to the limit.
With no leads except the crudely-fashioned crucifix the victim was displayed on, Lucy is at a complete loss. That is, until another body turns up: an elderly woman who devoted her life to the church.
Faced with a killer stalking the streets of her small coastal town, while also throwing herself into work to forget the love of her life, Lucy’s first case is turning into a nightmare.
Linking the killer to the church where her own teenage daughter volunteers, it seems the threat is quickly drawing closer to Lucy and those she loves. Can she catch this monster and prevent a tragedy that will tear her world apart?
When the body of a woman is found hanging from a tree in her front garden, rookie Detective Morgan Brookes is first on the scene. But Olivia Potter is past saving. And when her husband and daughters cannot be traced, Morgan knows there is more to this tragedy. And then she finds them.
\nLying huddled together in the dark basement, each of their faces covered with a small cotton cloth, their bodies cold to the touch.
But as Morgan kneels beside the family, she realises that one of the girls is still breathing. As she holds Bronte’s fragile hand in hers, begging her to hold on, she vows to find out who has done this.
Every day Morgan wakes at 4:25 AM, her old insomnia now mixed with a new fixation on the case. But every clue about the murdered family leads to a dead end. Until, trawling through old files, she discovers a link to a cold case from years ago. Another family was murdered in this house, and the killer was never caught.
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When Morgan returns to the scene of the crime to discover more about this forgotten case, she finds another body. With Bronte still unconscious in hospital, Morgan must act fast to solve this case and lay two families to rest, before the killer returns for the girl left alive . . .
Arriving at High Wraith cottage, Detective Morgan Brookes joins her horrified team, who have found a woman’s body chained and dangling from the gnarled branch of an old oak tree. It’s a race against time to preserve any evidence as heavy rain destroys the scene, but they’ve already identified the victim as a woman who once tried to kill her own family.
\nTwenty years ago, Margery Lancaster went to prison for poisoning her husband and infant son. They both survived, and Morgan must treat the pair as her first suspects. But before she has a chance to get to work, Margery’s ex-husband is brutally murdered, and Morgan’s heart thumps as she sees his hands tied with silver chains that match those found on Margery’s body. Then his son, now a local doctor, arrives at the station to be interviewed. Morgan watches in despair as he drops to the floor and falls into a coma.
\nWith almost all of the forensic evidence washed away by the storm, and no family left to interview, Morgan’s last hope is tracking the two chains to a local hardware store. But the killer is already closing in on his final victim. Is it already too late for Morgan to stop him, or will she uncover the terrible secrets this family are hiding in time to save another life?
Arriving at a quiet family home on the outskirts of the Lake District, Detective Morgan Brookes must deliver devastating news to a heartbroken mother. Seeing Lexie ’s pink boots against the side of the house, she remembers the girl’s happy face and can’t help but think of her carefree childhood. Three years ago, Morgan saved Lexie from a serial killer, who is now behind bars. But this time, she’s failed to protect her.
\nCertain a new and more terrifying killer is at large, Morgan finds a neighbour who claims a man in a silver car was watching Lexie’s house. Then she discovers that Lexie was meeting other survivors of serial killers at a local victim support group. Another girl, Milly , thinks she has been followed by the same silver car.
\nBut just as Morgan rushes to warn the other women, the case takes an even more sinister turn. One of them is found dead, posed in a chair with her hands tied in prayer. Flames engulf the church where the victims usually meet, with several of the others trapped inside.
\nMorgan manages to save the women just in time, but she knows this killer will never give up. To find him, she must relive every terrifying case she’s ever worked on. Somewhere in her history lies the key to saving more lives, but Morgan has no idea that this dangerous individual wants her as his final victim . . .
When the body of a teenage girl is found in Rydal Falls’ churchyard, Detective Morgan Brookes abandons her own birthday to attend the scene. In the dim evening light, Morgan can just make out the girl wrapped in a pristine white sheet and is certain she’s been left here for them to find.
\nThe autopsy identifies the girl as sixteen-year-old Shea Wilkinson, and Morgan’s heart cracks with sorrow. The beautiful teenager has been missing for weeks, could she have been suffering all this time? When she learns the sand on Shea’s feet is from a nearby island, Morgan leaves immediately, determined to find the killer’s hiding place and stop them in their tracks.
\nBut scouring the windswept beach, Morgan can’t find any sign that Shea was ever there. And then her phone rings with devastating news. Another girl has gone missing, a young nurse called Milly with the same blonde hair and blue eyes as Shea.
\nMorgan won’t rest until she has returned the kind, cheerful girl to her distraught parents. But Milly was last seen chatting to one of Morgan’s colleagues on the force . . . Refusing to think the worst, can she trace the clues and get inside the mind of the most cunning killer of her career, before another innocent life is lost?
When a concerned neighbour reports a woman missing, Detective Morgan Brookes squeezes through the stiff front door to find the woman dead. At first, the case appears unsuspicious, but something about the scene unsettles Morgan. Every clock in the house has been stopped, every mirror covered, and the woman seems physically unharmed except for one missing lock of hair.
\nShirley Kelly was loved by her friends and hated by her ex-husband and his new wife, but they have an iron-clad alibi, and Morgan is certain that the scene-staging holds a vital clue. She’s devastated to be proved right when another woman is killed, and her home arranged in the same way. The only difference is that the second victim has been stabbed, using a knife from Shirley’s own kitchen . . .
\nThe team can’t find a connection between the two women, but Morgan is sure that there is a deadly pattern to the killer’s actions. She hunts through each woman’s past until she finds the link: years ago, they both worked for a woman called Evelyn Reynolds, before tragedy struck her young family. But what has made them targets now? Morgan knows this twisted case is far from over, can she find the final clue before the clock stops for the next name on the killer’s list?
Following her colleague Ben up to Castlerigg Stone Circle, Detective Morgan Brookes is shocked at what she finds. A young woman has been killed, left on display at the top of the hill with a crown of roses on her head. As the team race to get the popular tourist spot cordoned off, Morgan hears the heartbroken sobs of the woman who found the body, as she identifies the victim as her best friend Cora Dalton.
\nMorgan can already see that Cora didn’t struggle when her throat was cut. There’s no blood on the beautiful white gown she was wearing, which means that Cora knew her killer. But everyone, including her boyfriend Jay, has an alibi. As a local shopkeeper, Cora was a huge part of the community, and her neighbours are devastated to lose such a sweet soul.
\nThen Morgan’s team discover that a local photographer had arranged to meet Cora, and it’s clear from his messages that he chose her elegant white dress. Could their photoshoot have taken a sinister turn?
\nBut when another body is found at another stone circle, wearing an identical flower crown, while the photographer is in custody, Morgan loses the only lead she has. Tracking down the florist who made the crown, Morgan pores over their records and realises the killer purchased three circles of roses . . .
\nCertain another innocent life is at risk and with the killer already steps ahead, can Morgan find the connection between these girls before another life is stolen?
When reports come in of a family trapped in a burning house, Detective Morgan Brookes rushes to the scene. But as soon as she enters the ruined home, she is devastated by what she finds. Tied to the kitchen table, Sally and David Lawson, and their young son, had no chance of escaping the flames and the smoke . . .
\nNeighbours all agree the Lawsons were the perfect family, and CCTV shows nothing suspicious. Morgan’s only clue is the silver crucifix necklace around Sally’s neck. Because according to friends, she wasn’t religious. Was someone passing divine judgement on this mother and her family?
\nFocusing on Sally’s last steps, Morgan gets the breakthrough she needs - just days ago Sally had confided in a friend that she felt someone was watching her. And when Morgan finds photos of Sally on her neighbour Luke’s phone, all the pieces slot together.
\nOnly then another local woman reports feeling watched. Nothing seems to link her to Luke, but Morgan can’t ignore it. Could the killer still be out there? Going deeper into Sally’s past and uncovering the killer’s motivations is her only chance to save more innocent lives, but can she solve the twisted puzzle in time?
When sweet-natured teaching assistant Rosie Waite, and her boyfriend Matt, are found dead in their quaint family home in the Lake District, Detective Morgan Brookes is horrified. Sleeping just two doors down, she heard no screams for help, no slamming doors, or alarms in the night. A twisted killer nailed the couple’s lips shut, and Morgan vows to keep watch over every innocent family in Rydal Falls until this monster is brought to justice.
\nClimbing the narrow attic staircase as she searches every inch of the property, Morgan finds a mattress on the floor, empty food wrappers, and a letter that if you’ve found this, you’re next to die. Fear washes over Morgan’s team; the killer was watching his victims, and now her life is at risk.
\nIgnoring pleas that she take a step back, Morgan throws herself harder at the case discovering that the nails used to bind the victims’ lips were pierced with expert equipment. And Matt had been asking questions at a local tattoo parlour. Everyone thought he and Rosie were a quiet, kind-hearted couple, but was Matt hiding a dangerous secret? Did he betray the woman he loved?
\nIt’s the break Morgan desperately needs, until one of her closest friends is attacked. His lifeless body, crimson with blood, left surrounded by jagged nails - an exact match to the ones pierced into Matt and Rosie. The killer has been watching from the shadows again. Morgan’s used to putting her life on the line to protect the innocent, but what must she sacrifice to save the people she loves most? And how many precious lives will be lost before she can stop this killer?
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When Detective Morgan Brookes is urgently called to her Aunt Ettie’s cottage, hidden in Covel Woods, she rushes to the scene. Panicked Ettie is shaken having discovered the chilling remains of a woman in the river, one skeletal hand reaching out from the deep water.
\nThe unknown woman was dressed to walk the rugged trails of the Lake District, so Morgan’s team assume she fell in the water and was taken by the current. But thin diagonal bruises on her neck suggest something far more sinister. A faded red rose tattoo helps Morgan identify her as a homeless woman named Martha who went missing seven years ago, and Morgan is horrified to discover Martha stole nappies and baby formula just before she disappeared. Did she have a child? Where is the poor baby now?
\nDesperately searching through cold case files, Morgan discovers that schoolteacher Aria Burns went missing from the same busy area. But her horror quickly turns to hope when she sees the autopsy results from Martha’s frozen remains. She was killed recently; if Aria was taken by the same killer, she could still be alive.
\nMorgan is certain a twisted individual is stalking Rydal Falls, and Martha’s body was dumped to signal the beginning of his cruel game. But just as she finds a clear suspect in a visitor with links to the area where Martha and Aria went missing, another body surfaces. Can she uncover the truth about Martha, and find Aria alive? Or is she already too late?
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On the banks of the River Rothay, as the first rays of sunshine hit the fast-flowing water, Melody Carrick’s body lies lifeless, red strangulation marks where her gold cross necklace used to hang. Detective Morgan Brookes is certain the killer was surprised by early-morning dog walkers, and she won’t rest until she unearths the evidence she needs to stop his next attack.
\nBut before Morgan has a chance to attend the post-mortem, seventeen-year-old Paige Evans rushes into the police station claiming her stepfather Alan kidnapped her best friend. He has an old wooden box full of jewellery that she believes are trophies. Morgan’s blood runs Melody’s necklace is tangled up in the chains.
\nMorgan races to Alan’s home, but on the way, she spots a young woman stumbling out of a nearby forest. She’s not Paige’s missing friend. Disorientated, with ropes cutting into her wrists and tears running down her face, the girl claims to have been abducted and then suddenly set free. By a man who looks nothing like Alan.
\nChasing the most twisted killer of her career, can Morgan discover the connection between these terrible crimes? With two girl's lives already in ruins, can she find the latest innocent victim this monster has hidden in time?
In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognised by surveillance.
\nSeeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights’ respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives as she works to restore the life of her family.
\nWritten in taut, urgent prose, Hum is a work of speculative fiction that unflinchingly explores marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and dizzying technological advancement, a world of both dystopian and utopian possibilities.
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When Molly, home alone with her two young children, hears footsteps in the living room, she tries to convince herself it’s the sleep deprivation. She’s been hearing things these days. Startling at loud noises. Imagining the worst-case scenario. It’s what mothers do, she knows.
\nBut then the footsteps come again, and she catches a glimpse of movement.
\nSuddenly Molly finds herself face-to-face with an intruder who knows far too much about her and her family. As she attempts to protect those she loves most, Molly must also acknowledge her own frailty.
\nMolly slips down an existential rabbit hole where she must confront the dualities of motherhood: the ecstasy and the dread; the languor and the ferocity; the banality and the transcendence as the book hurtles toward a mind-bending conclusion.
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Despite living firmly in her comfort zone, Frankie McKenzie feels unsettled. She can't help feeling something's missing. Is it a home to call her own? Travel? A more rewarding job? A relationship? Before she can work it out, she dies in a freak kebab-related accident after yet another dud of a first date.
\nBut life isn't over for Frankie. Instead, she is offered a second chance: Frankie can revisit key moments from her past to see if different choices will lead her away from that fateful takeaway and on to the fulfilling life she's always dreamt of.
\nSoon, Frankie will see what her life would have been if only she'd caught that one-way flight, accepted the marriage proposal or attended the intimidating job interview. Will she finally find her Mr Right? Or discover she already had?
\nWhat would you change if you could begin again ?
Having clear boundaries is essential to a healthy, balanced lifestyle. A boundary is a personal property line that marks those things for which we are responsible. In other words, boundaries define who we are and who we are not. Boundaries impact all areas of our lives: Physical boundaries help us determine who may touch us and under what circumstances.
\n-- Mental boundaries give us the freedom to have our own thoughts and opinions
\n-- Emotional boundaries help us to deal with our own emotions and disengage from the harmful, manipulative emotions of others
\n-- Spiritual boundaries help us to distinguish God's will from our own and give us renewed awe for our Creator
\n-- Often, Christians focus so much on being loving and unselfish that they forget their own limits and limitations. When confronted with their lack of boundaries, they ask:
\n- Can I set limits and still be a loving person?
\n- What are legitimate boundaries?
\n- What if someone is upset or hurt by my boundaries?
\n- How do I answer someone who wants my time, love, energy, or money?
\n- Aren't boundaries selfish?
\n- Why do I feel guilty or afraid when I consider setting boundaries?
\nDr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend offer biblically-based answers to these and other tough questions, showing us how to set healthy boundaries with our parents, spouses, children, friends, co-workers, and even ourselves.
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After a decade of exile precipitated by the tragic death of his mother, Will Seems returns home from Richmond to rural Southern Virginia, taking a job as deputy sheriff in a landscape given way to crime and defeat. Impoverished and abandoned, this remote land of tobacco plantations, razed forests, and boarded-up homes seems stuck in the past in a state that is trying to forget its complex history and move on.
\nWill’s efforts to go about his life are wrecked when a mysterious, brutal homicide claims the life of an old friend, Tom Janders, forcing Will to face the true impetus for his not to honor his mother’s memory, but to pay a debt to a Black friend who, in an act of selfless courage years ago, protected Will and suffered permanent disfigurement for it.
\nMeanwhile, a man Will knows to be innocent is arrested for Tom’s murder, and despite Will’s pleas, his boss seems all too content to wrap up the case and move on. Will must weigh his personal guilt against his public duty when the local Black community hires Bennico Watts, an unpredictable private detective from Richmond, to help him find the real killer. It would seem an ideal pairing - she has experience, along with plenty of sand, and Will is privy to the details of the case - but it doesn’t take long for either to realise they much prefer to operate alone.
\nBennico and Will clash as they each defend their untraditional ways on a wild ride that wends deep into the Snakefoot, an underworld wilderness that for hundreds of years has functioned as a hideout for outcasts - the forgotten and neglected and abused - leaving us enmeshed in the tangled history of a region and its people that leaves no one innocent, no one free, nothing sacred.
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In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars and the rise of the floriography craze in Europe, two sisters separated at birth are bound together by a secret language of flowers passed down to them by the mother they never knew. When Cornelia leaves her cruel uncle’s home to join Napoleon’s army as a traveling naturalist, her ability to heal any wound and bring soldiers back from the brink of death earns her praise from higher-ups and exposes her to those who would exploit her powers for themselves.
\nMeanwhile, Lijsbeth lives in indentured servitude, her only respite her time spent flower arranging. When she meets a young English soldier and falls in love, Lisjbeth must decide whether to flee the clashing of two great armies at Waterloo or risk everything by staying. As the English and French armies collide in Waterloo, the sisters finally cross paths on opposite sides of the war.
\nWith the sisters reunited on the battlefield, they must work together to solve the mystery of their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, all while surviving the war raging around them.
Once there was a young woman from a well-to-do New England family who never quite fit with the drawing rooms and parlors of her kin.
\nCalled instead to the tangled woods and wild cliffs surrounding her family’s estate, Margaret Harlowe grew both stranger and more beautiful as she cultivated her uncanny power. Soon, whispers of “witch” dogged her footsteps, and Margaret’s power began to wind itself with the tendrils of something darker.
\nOne hundred and fifty years later, Augusta Podos takes a dream job at Harlowe House, the historic home of a wealthy New England family that has been turned into a small museum in Tynemouth, Massachusetts. When Augusta stumbles across an oblique reference to a daughter of the Harlowes who has nearly been expunged from the historical record, the mystery is too intriguing to ignore.
\nBut as she digs deeper, something sinister unfurls from its sleep, a dark power that binds one woman to the other across lines of blood and time. If Augusta can’t resist its allure, everything she knows and loves - including her very life - could be lost forever.
The Dutch Republic, 1650. One fine spring day in Friesland, twenty-year-old Clara van Wieren is faced with an ill omen: a whale, beached and rotting in the noonday sun. But Clara doesn’t believe in magic and superstition, and this portent is quickly dismissed when a proposal from a wealthy merchant arrives, promising Clara the freedom she seeks from her mother’s overbearing rule.
\nWhen her attempts at overseeing the household at the family’s estate lead to her chance encounter with a young man with russet hair and sparkling eyes the color of the sea, she finds herself strangely drawn to him. As Clara grows closer to Maurits, she must choose between the steady, gentle life she has been raised for and the man who makes her blood sing.
\nBut Maurits isn’t who he seems to be, and his secrets, once hidden beneath the waves, threaten to rise up and drown them both. And when an ancient bargain, forged in blood between the mythical people of the sea and the rulers of the land, begins to unravel, Clara finds herself at the heart of a deadly struggle for power.
Tabby has a peculiar gift: she can communicate with the recently departed. It makes her special, but it also makes her dangerous.
As an orphaned child, she fled with her sister, Alice, from their charlatan aunt Bellefonte, who wanted only to exploit Tabby's gift so she could profit from the recent craze for seances.
Now a young woman and tragically separated from Alice, Tabby works with her adopted father, Eli, the kind caretaker of a large Boston cemetery. When a series of macabre grave robberies begins to plague the city, Tabby is ensnared in a deadly plot by the perpetrators, known only as the \"Resurrection Men.\"
In the end, Tabby's gift will either save both her and the cemetery - or bring about her own destruction.
It’s a tale as old as time: break up with your shitty boyfriend, travel to a foreign country to find yourself . . . end up in a sex-fueled commune worshiping an angry God. When Aoife stumbles across the Farmstead, she finds everything she’s been missing - a community that loves her, sexual freedom, a greater purpose. She could actually be happy here . . .
\nIf it weren’t for the teenager they keep locked up in a cabin with no windows. Or the mysterious rot spreading through the farmland. Or that some of her new friends talk about their leader Jonah with more fear than love.
\nWhen the god wakes up and it all goes wrong, it’s only Aoife who has the power to choose what will become of their tiny reality. Awkward, clumsy Aoife, who was always told she was weak, and is just now realising the depths of her strength - and the pleasures of her rage.
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Aria Nguyen and Caliste Ha are identical twins. A fact that they just learned when a police officer told them that their mother is no longer a missing person. She’s been found dead in Minnesota, a place neither knew they had a connection to.
\nAria is from DC, where she’s been struggling to pay their sick aunt’s medical bills and only does so by writing her classmates’ papers for extra cash. Meanwhile, Caliste is a successful influencer in LA, not that their food mogul father cares. Both have dreamt of the moment they’d see their mother again, of being happy again, but they could’ve never imagined this nightmare. Their mom’s body apparently hasn’t aged, and there’s a bruise on her neck.
\nNow beckoned to the quaint yet eerie city of Les Eaux, where a ghoul supposedly haunts the waters, Caliste and Aria must delve into their family’s past to find their mother’s murderer. Secrets don’t unravel easily though. And some people in this small town don’t want to give theirs up without a fight.
The Night Library on the outskirts of Tokyo isn't your ordinary library. It's only open from seven o'clock to midnight. It exclusively stores books by deceased authors, and none of them can be checked out - instead, they're put on public display to be revered and celebrated by the library's visitors, akin to a book museum.
\nOtoha Higuchi, the newest employee, has been recruited to work at the library by the mysterious anonymous owner. There, Otoha meets the other staff, comprised of former librarians and booksellers who, like her, have been damaged in some way by the rocky publishing industry - yet none of them have ever given up on their dedication to books.
\nNight after night, Otoha bonds with her colleagues over meals in the library café, each of which are inspired by the literature on the shelves. When strange occurrences start happening around the library that may bring the threat of closure, it forces Otoha and the library staff to rethink their entire relationship with work and what they really want in life.
Unnur was living a normal, if lonely, life until a black cat showed up at her door.
\nTrying to do the right thing, Unnur reunites the lost pet with its owner - a young woman named Ásta who is in desperate need of some help. Unnur reluctantly agrees to take in the cat until Ásta is able to care for it again herself.
\nSoon, Ásta becomes a fixture in Unnur's life and the two form an unlikely friendship. But like a black cat, trouble is tailing Ásta, and Unnur is the only one there when things take a violent turn.
\nNothing tests a friendship like blood on your hands.
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In the much-anticipated follow-up to the bestselling and beloved The Travelling Cat Chronicles , seven cats weave their way through their owners’ lives, climbing, comforting, nestling, and sometimes just tripping everyone up in this uplifting collection of tales.
\nAgainst the backdrop of changing seasons in Japan, we meet Spin, a kitten rescued from the recycling bin, whose playful nature and simple needs teach an anxious father how to parent his own human baby; a colony of wild cats on a popular holiday island show a young boy not to stand in nature’s way; a family is perplexed by their cat’s undying devotion to their charismatic but uncaring father; a woman curses how her cat will not stop visiting her at night; and an elderly cat hatches a plan to pass into the next world as a spirit so that he and his owner may be in each other’s lives forever.
\nBursting with love and warmth, The Goodbye Cat exquisitely explores the cycle of life, from birth to death - as each of the seven stories explores how, in different ways, the steadiness and devotion of a well-loved cat never lets us down. A huge bestseller in Japan, this magical book is a joyous celebration of the wondrousness of cats and why we choose to share our lives with them.
Between the two beautiful towns of Takarazuka and Nishinomiya, in a stunning mountainous area of Japan, rattles the Hankyu Line train. Passengers step on and off, lost in thought, contemplating the tiny knots of their existence. On the outward journey, we are introduced to the emotional dilemmas of five characters, and on the return journey six months later, we watch them find resolutions.
\nA young man meets the young woman who always happens to borrow a library book just before he can check it out himself, a woman in a white bridal dress boards looking inexplicably sad, a university student heads home after class, a girl prepares to leave her abusive boyfriend, and an old lady discusses adopting a dog with her granddaughter.
\nWith stories that crisscross like the railway lines, the Hankyu train trundles on, propelling the lives and loves of its passengers ever forward.
Sometimes you have to leave behind everything you know to find the place you truly belong . . .
\nNana the cat is on a road trip. He is not sure where he's going or why, but it means that he gets to sit in the front seat of a silver van with his beloved owner, Satoru. Side by side, they cruise around Japan through the changing seasons, visiting Satoru's old friends. He meets Yoshimine, the brusque and unsentimental farmer for whom cats are just ratters; Sugi and Chikako, the warm-hearted couple who run a pet-friendly B&B; and Kosuke, the mournful husband whose cat-loving wife has just left him. There's even a very special dog who forces Nana to reassess his disdain for the canine species.
\nBut what is the purpose of this road trip? And why is everyone so interested in Nana? Nana does not know and Satoru won't say. But when Nana finally works it out, his small heart will break . . .
A bossy child who lives under a white cloth near a tree; a schoolgirl who keeps doll’s brains in a desk drawer; an old man with two shadows, one docile and one rebellious; a diplomat no one has ever seen who goes fishing at an artificial lake no one has ever heard of. These are some of the inhabitants of People From My Neighborhood.
\nIn their lives, details of the local and everyday - the lunch menu at a tiny drinking place called the Love, the color and shape of the roof of the tax office - slip into accounts of duels, prophetic dreams, revolutions, and visitations from ghosts and gods. In twenty-six “palm of the hand” stories - fictions small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand - Hiromi Kawakami creates a universe ruled by mystery and transformation.
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From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, this speculative fiction masterpiece envisions an Earth where humans are nearing extinction, and rewrites our understanding of reproduction, ecology, evolution, artificial intelligence, communal life, creation, love, and the future of humanity.
\nIn the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of \"Mothers.\" Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings - but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world.
\nUnfolding over fourteen interconnected episodes spanning geological eons, at once technical and pastoral, mournful and utopic, Under the Eye of the Big Bird presents an astonishing vision of the end of our species as we know it.
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Enter the decadent, deadly city of Tiliard, a metropolis carved into the stump of an ancient tree. In its canopy, the pampered elite warp minds with toxic perfume; in its roots, gangs of exterminators hunt a colossal worm with an appetite for beauty.
\nIn this complex, chaotic city, Guy Moulène has a simple goal: keep his sister out of debt. For her sake, he'll take on any job, no matter how vile.
\nAs an exterminator, Guy hunts the uncanny creatures that crawl up from the river. These vermin are all strange, and often dangerous. His latest quarry is different: a centipede the size of a dragon with a deadly venom and a ravenous taste for artwork. As it digests Tiliard from the sewers to the opera houses, its toxin reshapes the future of the city. No sane person would hunt it, if they had the choice.
\nGuy doesn't have a choice.
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On an artificial island deep in enemy territory, machinists develop unprecedented new magical weapons. Then the research base goes rogue, cutting off contact with the outside world. Every elite squad sent to reclaim it stops responding, too.
\nWist, the most powerful mage in generations, gets called in as emergency backup. But the whole scenario stinks of a trap. Clematis won't let her go alone - and so they embark on a covert mission to a hostile state where even one-time allies are hard to trust.
\nClematis and Wist are completely on their own except for their guide and interpreter: Lear, a foreign agent who previously masqueraded as an innocent artist. Lear is great at putting on a friendly face, but not so great at revealing her own dark motivations.
\nAs they explore the base, they encounter vulnerable civilian workers, and locals who stare into space like lost ghosts . . . and giant carnivorous birds, and parasitic magic, and competing layers of twisted reality.
\nIn this horror-influenced continuation of the Clem & Wist series, Clematis grapples with a growing hunger that she can't afford to feed. Wist glimpses indescribable cosmic terror. And they're all running out of time to leave the island without giving anyone an excuse to start a war.
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The best place to take a mage on vacation: a country without magic. As the most powerful mage in eons, Wist never gets much rest. That’s why Clematis drags her to an idyllic town in a land where all magic use has been made strictly illegal.
\nCharmed by the rural scenery and unusual wildlife, they initially find little cause for concern. The townspeople are welcoming, if rather eccentric. No one dwells on old rumors of vanishing mages. Or eerie myths about the local caves.
\nOn the third day of their stay, Wist disappears without a trace. Impenetrable walls spring up around town. No one can enter, and no one can leave. The locals begin to whisper of an all-powerful and deeply beloved Queen who has ruled them for as long as anyone can remember. A magical Queen who sounds exactly like Wisteria Shien.
\nFor reasons of her own, Wist has trapped the entire town in an eternal autumn. She won’t let time move forward, and she won’t let anyone escape her. Especially not Clem.
\nYet Wist - now an invincible tyrant - might not realise that Clem needs neither magic nor allies nor even a sliver of hope to ferociously resist her rule. Truth be told, Clem has always loved having a nemesis.
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Meet Char: a once-renowned human warrior, trapped in an abandoned city with a demon who hates her. A demon who woke her from a fifty-year magical slumber specifically for the sake of tormenting her.
\nThe demon’s name: Vesper. She and Char go a long, long way back. They used to be partners on the battlefield. National heroes. An unbeatable team bonded by magic. That bond was supposed to last for the rest of their lives.
\nNow Char’s memory is full of holes. The sealed city is full of hostile magical beasts. And Vesper, with her sharp teeth and unpredictable moods, is the most vicious of them all. As an ageless demon, she’s fully prepared to keep holding Char captive forever.
\nChar struggles to unravel the mystery of why they've ended up pitted against each other, locked in a private war that seems certain to end with one or both of them dead. Does Vesper’s senseless cruelty stem from simple demonic bloodlust? From years of suppressed loathing? What else could have driven her past the breaking point—compelled her to suddenly snap and betray her own bondmate?
\nTo uncover the truth, Char will have to face her demon as she would any other deadly monster: as an enemy of humanity, the most formidable and vindictive foe she's ever encountered.
\nSet in the same fantasy world as the Clem & Wist series but this novel can be fully enjoyed as a standalone tale.
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In a country where mages have all the power and healers supposedly only exist to support them, Clematis - a talented healer - is despised for her past attempts to defy the mageocracy. In her early thirties, she’s already on year seven of a life sentence for treason.
\nBut when the most powerful mage in the nation suddenly loses all her magic, the government wants unconventional Clematis to help get it back.
\nThe mage is a tall, distant woman called Wist, and Clematis knows her all too well. They used to be classmates. Best friends. Perhaps more. Wist is also the person who reported Clematis for leaking state secrets. She’s the reason Clematis spent the last seven years in prison.
\nClematis wants revenge for her betrayal, but she wants freedom even more. She’s got thirty days to recover Wist’s magic: miss the deadline, and she’ll be shunted back to prison for the rest of her life. Yet attempting to resurrect Wist’s lost magic will force her to face the real reason why Wist betrayed her - and to face her unresolved, unspoken feelings for the mage who stabbed her in the back and walked away.
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In a country where mages have all the power and healers supposedly only exist to support them, Clematis - a talented healer - is despised for her past attempts to defy the mageocracy. In her early thirties, she’s already on year seven of a life sentence for treason.
\nBut when the most powerful mage in the nation suddenly loses all her magic, the government wants unconventional Clematis to help get it back.
\nThe mage is a tall, distant woman called Wist, and Clematis knows her all too well. They used to be classmates. Best friends. Perhaps more. Wist is also the person who reported Clematis for leaking state secrets. She’s the reason Clematis spent the last seven years in prison.
\nClematis wants revenge for her betrayal, but she wants freedom even more. She’s got thirty days to recover Wist’s magic: miss the deadline, and she’ll be shunted back to prison for the rest of her life. Yet attempting to resurrect Wist’s lost magic will force her to face the real reason why Wist betrayed her - and to face her unresolved, unspoken feelings for the mage who stabbed her in the back and walked away.
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Mages rule the country. Healers are legally required to serve them. As a rebellious-minded healer, Clematis loathes the mageocracy. She only makes an exception for her own mage, Wist, who is difficult to read yet deeply devoted - and who just so happens to be the most powerful magic-user in the entire world.
\nWith Wist there to back her up, Clematis discovers new ways to furtively help desperate healers. Yet though Wist’s magic remains in high demand, she’s still far weaker than she used to be. And her self-sacrificial instincts soon threaten to put her in direct opposition to Clematis.
\nSo much for living quietly. Clematis can’t use magic. She can’t even throw a solid punch. Her only weapons are her wits and dirty tricks. But she’ll fight tooth and nail to defend her happy ending. She’ll keep fighting no matter who stands in her way - be it Wist’s ultra-influential family of mages, international spies and assassins, or even Wist herself.
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Shortly after the events of Clematis and the Queen of the Void, a mysterious letter lures Clem and Wist to a grand estate. The very same manor where Wist was raised by a clan of backstabbing, power-hungry mages.
\nWhen it comes to magic, Wist surpasses her entire family put together. Still, she's never outclassed them in terms of calculated cruelty or raw ambition. Clem stands a better chance of untangling their machinations. But as a guest in enemy territory, without any magic of her own, she risks becoming Wist's one fatal weakness. Threatening her would, after all, be the easiest way to drive Wist to murder.
\nClem has other unfinished business at the manor, too. Mage-healer bonds can only be broken by death. She's still determined to change that - to rescue a bonded healer she previously failed to save. Yet before liberating any of the healers tied to Wist's family, Clem might end up in dire need of rescuing herself.
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In a world where Magic is illegal.
Cassel Sharpe has the most deadly ability of all. With one touch, he can transform any object - including a person - into something else entirely. And that makes him a wanted man. The Feds are willing to forgive all his past crimes if he'll only leave his con artist family behind and go straight. But why does going straight feel so crooked?
For one thing, it means being on the opposite side of the law from Lila, the girl he loves. She's the daughter of a mob boss and getting ready to join the family business herself. Though Cassel is pretty sure she can never love him back, he can't stop obsessing over her. Which would be bad enough, even if her father wasn't keeping Cassel's mother prisoner in a posh apartment and threatening not to let her leave until she returns the priceless diamond she scammed off him years ago. Too bad she can't remember where she put it.
The Feds say they need Cassel to get rid of a powerful man who is spinning dangerously out of control. But if they want Cassel to use his unique talent to hurt people, what separates the good guys from the bad ones? Or is everyone just out to con him?
Time is running out, and all Cassel's magic and cleverness might not be enough to save him. With no easy answers and no one he can trust, love might be the most dangerous gamble of all.
In Charlie Hall’s world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences - but also to increase power and influence. You can alter someone’s feelings - and memories - but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from your life. Your shadow holds all the parts of you that you want to keep hidden - a second self, standing just to your left, walking behind you into lit rooms. And sometimes, it has a life of its own.
\nCharlie is a low-level con artist, working as a bartender while trying to distance herself from the powerful and dangerous underground world of shadow trading. She gets by doing odd jobs for her patrons and the naive new money in her town at the edge of the Berkshires. But when a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie’s present life is thrown into chaos, and her future seems at best, unclear - and at worst, non-existent. Determined to survive, Charlie throws herself into a maelstrom of secrets and murder, setting her against a cast of doppelgangers, mercurial billionaires, shadow thieves, and her own sister - all desperate to control the magic of the shadows.
\nWith sharp angles and prose, and a sinister bent, Holly Black is a master of shadow and story stitching. Remember while you read, light isn’t playing tricks in Book of Night, the people are.
Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown's gates, you can never leave.
One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself.
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a wholly original story of rage and revenge, of guilt and horror, and of love and loathing from bestselling and acclaimed author Holly Black.
Jude was seven when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.
To win a place at the Court, she must defy him - and face the consequences.
As Jude becomes more deeply embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, she discovers her own capacity for trickery and bloodshed. But as betrayal threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.
Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill a monster and feel quite proud of themselves. A girl can look at her brother and believe they’re destined to be a knight and a bard who battle evil. She can believe she’s found the thing she’s been made for.
Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the strange town of Fairfold where humans and fae exist side by side. The faeries’ seemingly harmless magic attracts tourists, but Hazel knows how dangerous they can be, and she knows how to stop them. Or she did, once.
At the center of it all, there is a glass coffin in the woods. It rests right on the ground and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives. Hazel and Ben were both in love with him as children. The boy has slept there for generations, never waking.
Until one day, he does . . .
As the world turns upside down, Hazel tries to remember her years pretending to be a knight. But swept up in new love, shifting loyalties, and the fresh sting of betrayal, will it be enough?
In the realm of Faerie, the time has come for Roiben's coronation. Uneasy in the midst of the malevolent Unseelie Court, pixie Kaye is sure of only one thing - her love for Roiben. But when Kaye, drunk on faerie wine, declares herself to Roiben, he sends her on a seemingly impossible quest. Now Kaye can't see or speak to Roiben unless she can find the one thing she knows doesn't exist: a faerie who can tell a lie.
Miserable and convinced she belongs nowhere, Kaye decides to tell her mother the truth - that she is a changeling left in place of the human daughter stolen long ago. Her mother's shock and horror sends Kaye back to the world of Faerie to find her human counterpart and return her to Ironside.
But once back in the faerie courts, Kaye finds herself a pawn in the games of Silarial, queen of the Seelie Court. Silarial wants Roiben's throne, and she will use Kaye, and any means necessary, to get it. In this game of wits and weapons, can a pixie outplay a queen?
Prince Oak is paying for his betrayal. Imprisoned in the icy north and bound to the will of a monstrous new queen, he must rely on charm and calculation to survive. With High King Cardan and High Queen Jude ready to use any means necessary to retrieve their stolen heir, should Oak attempt to regain the trust of the girl he's always loved, or remain loyal to Elfhame and hand over the means to end her reign - even if it means ending Wren too . . .
\nWith war looming and treachery lurking in every corner, neither Oak's guile nor his wit will be enough to keep everyone he loves alive. He will have some terrible choices to make.
Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold onto. Jude learned this lesson when she released her control over the wicked king, Cardan, in exchange for immeasurable power.
Now as the exiled mortal Queen of Faerie, Jude is powerless and left reeling from Cardan’s betrayal. She bides her time determined to reclaim everything he took from her. Opportunity arrives in the form of her deceptive twin sister, Taryn, whose mortal life is in peril.
Jude must risk venturing back into the treacherous Faerie Court, and confront her lingering feelings for Cardan, if she wishes to save her sister. But Elfhame is not as she left it. War is brewing. As Jude slips deep within enemy lines she becomes ensnared in the conflict’s bloody politics.
And, when a dormant yet powerful curse is unleashed, panic spreads throughout the land, forcing her to choose between her ambition and her humanity…
Cassel always thought he was an ordinary guy, until he realised his memories were being manipulated by his brothers. Now he knows the truth - he’s the most powerful curse worker around. A touch of his hand can transform anything - or anyone - into something else.
That was how Lila, the girl he loved, became a white cat. Cassel was tricked into thinking he killed her, when actually he tried to save her. Now that she’s human again, he should be overjoyed. Trouble is, Lila’s been cursed to love him, a little gift from his emotion-worker mom. And if Lila’s love is as phony as Cassel’s made-up memories, then he can’t believe anything she says or does.
When Cassel’s oldest brother is murdered, the Feds recruit Cassel to help make sense of the only clue - crime-scene images of a woman in red gloves. But the mob is after Cassel too - they know how valuable he could be to them. Cassel is going to have to stay one step ahead of both sides just to survive. But where can he turn when he can’t trust anyone - least of all, himself?
Love is a curse and the con is the only answer in a game too dangerous to lose.
Eight years have passed since the Battle of the Serpent. But in the icy north, Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth has reclaimed the Ice Needle Citadel. There, she is using an ancient relic to create monsters of stick and snow who will do her bidding and exact her revenge.
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Suren, child queen of the Court of Teeth, and the one person with power over her mother, fled to the human world. There, she lives feral in the woods. Lonely, and still haunted by the merciless torments she endured in the Court of Teeth, she bides her time by releasing mortals from foolish bargains. She believes herself forgotten until the storm hag, Bogdana chases her through the night streets. Suren is saved by none other than Prince Oak, heir to Elfhame, to whom she was once promised in marriage and who she has resented for years.
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Now seventeen, Oak is charming, beautiful, and manipulative. He’s on a mission that will lead him into the north, and he wants Suren’s help. But if she agrees, it will mean guarding her heart against the boy she once knew and a prince she cannot trust, as well as confronting all the horrors she thought she left behind.
Charlie Hall, glue trap for disaster, crooked from the day she was born, who’d never met a bad decision she wasn’t willing to double down on, may have finally met her match.
\nAfter defeating Salt and stealing her lover - the powerful shadow, Vince - back from under the noses of the powerful Cabal leaders, she thought she’d won. Agreeing to become the Hierophant and risking her life hunting down dangerous rogue shadows seemed a small price to pay if she got to do it while being tethered to Vince.
\nBut Vince is no longer the man she loved. The tethering process wiped away his memories of the last year, leaving only Red - the ruthless shadow who spent years as a killer for a cruel, mercurial billionaire. Red doesn’t remember Charlie and doesn’t like her.
\nSo when Charlie is ordered to track down the Blight responsible for a massacre at a local church, she’s worse than just alone, heartbroken, and outmatched. She’s vulnerable. In a world where shadows have wills of their own, the question isn’t just how to survive. It’s how to protect yourself from the on thing you can never escape - your own shadow.
Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother's rock band until an ominous attack forces Kaye back to her childhood home.
\nThere, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms - a struggle that could very well mean her death.
When seventeen-year-old Valerie runs away to New York City, she's trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city's labyrinthine subway system.
But there's something eerily beguiling about Val's new friends. And when one talks Val into tracking down the lair of a mysterious creature with whom they are all involved, Val finds herself torn between her newfound affection for an honorable monster and her fear of what her new friends are becoming.
Cassel comes from a family of Curse Workers - people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they're all criminals.
\nMany become mobsters and con artists. But not Cassel. He hasn't got magic, so he's an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail - he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.
\nCassel has carefully built up a facade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his facade starts to crumble when he finds himself sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He's noticing other disturbing things too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him.
\nAs Cassel begins to suspect he's part of a huge con game, he must unravel his past and his memories. To find out the truth, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen
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Students at the Magisterium are supposed to be safe. Under the watchful eyes of the mages, they are taught to use magic to bring order to a chaotic world.
But now the chaos is fighting back. Call, Tamara, and Aaron should be worrying about things like pop quizzes and magic contests. Instead, after the shocking death of one of their classmates, they must track down a sinister killer… and risk their own lives in the process.
As Call, Tamara, and Aaron discover, magic can only be as good as the person who wields it. In evil hands, it has the capacity to do immeasurable harm, unless it is stopped in time.
In this striking third book of Magisterium, bestselling authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare present us with a school where anything, good or evil, can happen, and the only way to unlock the truth is to risk everything to find it.
Callum Hunt’s summer break isn’t like other kids’. His closest companion is a Chaos-ridden wolf, Havoc. His father suspects him of being secretly evil. And, of course, most kids aren’t heading back to the magical world of the Magisterium in the fall.
\nIt’s not easy for Call . . . and it gets even harder after he checks out his basement and discovers that his dad might be trying to destroy both him and Havoc.
\nCall escapes to the Magisterium - but things only intensify there. The Alkahest - a copper gauntlet capable of separating certain magicians from their magic - has been stolen. And in their search to discover the culprit, Call and his friends Aaron and Tamara awaken the attention of some very dangerous foes - and get closer to an even more dangerous truth.
\nAs the mysteries of the Magisterium deepen and widen, bestselling authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare take readers on an extraordinary journey through one boy’s conflict - and a whole world’s fate.
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A generation ago, powerful mage Constantine Madden came close to achieving what no magician had ever achieved: the ability to bring back the dead. He didn't succeed . . . but he did find a way to keep himself alive, inside a young child named Callum Hunt.
\nFacing up to what he is, Callum has battled chaos and evil across four years of magical training at the Magisterium, eventually defeating the armies of chaos in an epic battle.
\nIt came at a cost.
\nNow, triumphant and heartbroken, Callum Hunt has just about had enough, and is ready to complete his training. But the evil Callum faced has not given up just yet . . .
Most kids would do anything to pass the Iron Trial.
\nNot Callum Hunt. He wants to fail.
\nAll his life, Call has been warned by his father to stay away from magic. If he succeeds at the Iron Trial and is admitted into the Magisterium, he is sure it can only mean bad things for him.
\nSo he tries his best to do his worst - and fails at failing.
\nNow the Magisterium awaits him. It's a place that's both sensational and sinister, with dark ties to his past and a twisty path to his future.
\nThe Iron Trial is just the beginning, for the biggest test is still to come . . .
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A generation ago, Constantine Madden came close to achieving what no magician had ever achieved: the ability to bring back the dead. He didn't succeed . . . but he did find a way to keep himself alive, inside a young child named Callum Hunt.
\nNow Call is one of the most feared and reviled students in the history of the Magisterium, thought to be responsible for a devastating death and an ever-present threat of war. As a result, Call has been imprisoned and interrogated. Everyone wants to know what Constantine was up to-and how he lives on.
\nBut Call has no idea.
\nIt is only when he's broken out of prison that the full potential of Constantine's plan is suddenly in his hands . . . and he must decide what to do with his power.
\nIn this spellbinding fourth book of Magisterium, bestselling authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare take us beyond the realm of the living and into the dangers of the dead.
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All Evie wants is to be normal. She’s almost off her meds and at a new college where no one knows her as the girl-who-went-crazy. She’s even going to parties and making friends. There’s only one thing left to tick off her list . . .
But relationships are messy - especially relationships with teenage guys. They can make any girl feel like they’re going mad. And if Evie can’t even tell her new friends Amber and Lottie the truth about herself, how will she cope when she falls in love?
All Amber wants is a little bit of love. Her mum has never been the caring type, even before she moved to California, got remarried and had a personality transplant. But Amber’s hoping that spending the summer with her can change all that.
\nAnd then there’s Kyle, the most American person Amber’s ever met. She can’t help liking him. But can he really be interested in her? Even with best friends Evie and Lottie’s advice, Amber’s finding love is hard. Is it worth the fight?
\nNicki, Lauren, Charlotte and Steffi have been friends since university. Now in their thirties, life is pulling them in different directions - but when Charlotte organises the baby shower of hell for pregnant Nicki, the girls are reunited.
\nUnder a sweltering hot summer day, tensions rise - and by the end of the evening, nothing will ever be the same. Someone started a fire at the house - and everyone's a suspect . . . Is it Steffi, happily child-free but feeling judged by her friends? Is it Charlotte, desperate to conceive and jealous of those who have? Is it Lauren, who is finding motherhood far, far worse than she imagined? Or is it Nicki herself, who never wanted a baby shower anyway?
\nIn the aftermath, the police put together the facts - but the truth will shock everyone.
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Lottie is starting a supersonic feminist experiment. For one month she's going to call out every instance of sexism she sees. But when her project hits the headlines, the trolls come out to play - and they are VICIOUS.
\nLottie's not a quitter, but best friends Evie and Amber are worried. What if Lottie's heading for burnout...or worse?
From the day they first meet as teenagers, Fern and Jessica are best friends. Despite their differences, they are there for each other throughout everything, navigating the difficulties of growing up and fitting in. That is, until Jessica crosses a line that Fern can’t forgive.
\nBut now, more than ten years later, Jessica has unexpectedly reappeared in Fern’s life.
\nA lot has changed for them both - but can their relationship be different now that they are older? Is it possible for either of them to rewrite the roles they've been cast in? Or will their shared history ultimately be doomed to repeat itself again?
\n
Pip Fitz-Amobi is haunted by the way her last investigation ended. Soon she’ll be leaving for Cambridge University but then another case finds her . . . and this time it’s all about Pip.
\nPip is used to online death threats, but there’s one that catches her eye, someone who keeps asking: who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears? And it’s not just online. Pip has a stalker who knows where she lives. The police refuse to act and then Pip finds connections between her stalker and a local serial killer.
\nThe killer has been in prison for six years, but Pip suspects that the wrong man is behind bars. As the deadly game plays out, Pip realises that everything in Little Kilton is finally coming full circle. If Pip doesn’t find the answers, this time she will be the one who disappears . . .
Eighteen year old Red and her friends are on a road trip in an RV, heading to the beach for Spring Break. It’s a long drive but spirits are high. Until the RV breaks down in the middle of nowhere. There’s no mobile phone reception and nobody around to help.
\nAnd as the wheels are shot out, one by one, the friends realise that this is no accident. There's a sniper out there in the dark watching them and he knows exactly who they are. One of the group has a secret that the sniper is willing to kill for.
\nA game of cat-and-mouse plays out as the group desperately tries to get help and to work out which member of the group is the target. Buried secrets are forced to light in the cramped, claustrophobic setting of the RV, and tensions within the group will reach deadly levels. Not everyone will survive the night.
The case is closed. Five years ago, schoolgirl Andie Bell was murdered by Sal Singh. The police know he did it. Everyone in town knows he did it.
But having grown up in the same small town that was consumed by the murder, Pippa Fitz-Amobi isn't so sure. When she chooses the case as the topic for her final year project, she starts to uncover secrets that someone in town desperately wants to stay hidden. And if the real killer is still out there, how far will they go to keep Pip from the truth?
Pip Fitz-Amobi is not a detective any more.
With the help of Ravi Singh, she released a true-crime podcast about the murder case they solved together last year. The podcast has gone viral, yet Pip insists her investigating days are behind her.
But she will have to break that promise when someone she knows goes missing. Jamie Reynolds has disappeared but the police won’t do anything about it. And if they won’t look for Jamie then Pip will, uncovering more of her town’s dark secrets along the way . . . and this time EVERYONE is listening. But will she find him before it’s too late?
Pippa Fitz-Amobi is not in the mood for her friend’s murder mystery party. Especially one that involves 1920’s fancy dress and pretending that their town, Little Kilton, is an island called Joy. But when the game begins, Pip finds herself drawn into the make-believe world of intrigue, deception and murder.
\nBut as Pip plays detective, teasing out the identity of the killer clue-by-clue, the murder of the fictional Reginald Remy isn’t the only case on her mind . . .
\nFind out where it all began for Pip in this prequel to A Good Girl's Guide to Murder Series.
In seven days Jet Mason will be dead.
\nJet is the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Woodstock, Vermont. Twenty-seven years old, she’s still waiting for her life to begin. I’ll do it later, she always says. She has time.
\nUntil Halloween night, when Jet is violently attacked by an unseen intruder.
\nShe suffers a catastrophic head injury. The doctor is certain that within a week, the injury will trigger a deadly aneurysm.
\nJet has never thought of herself as having enemies. But now she looks at everyone in a new light: her family, her former best friend turned sister-in-law, her ex-boyfriend.
\nShe has at most seven days, and as her condition deteriorates she has only her childhood friend Billy for help. But nevertheless, she’s absolutely determined to finally finish something:
\nJet is going to solve her own murder.
Eighteen-year-old Bel has lived her whole life in the shadow of her mom’s mysterious disappearance. Sixteen years ago, Rachel Price vanished and young Bel was the only witness, but she has no memory of it. Rachel is gone, long presumed dead, and Bel wishes everyone would just move on.
\nBut the case is dredged up from the past when the Price family agrees to a true crime documentary. Bel can’t wait for filming to end, for life to go back to normal. And then the impossible happens. Rachel Price reappears, and life will never be normal again.
\nRachel has an unbelievable story about what happened to her. Unbelievable, because Bel isn’t sure it’s real. If Rachel is lying, then where has she been all this time? And - could she be dangerous? With the cameras still rolling, Bel must uncover the truth about her mother, and find out why Rachel Price really came back from the dead . . .
When bookish Penny Collins reluctantly lets her sister drag her to an estate sale at a neighbor’s house, she’s hoping for a little diversion rummaging through dusty antiques. Instead she ends up in a public squabble over candlesticks with the deceased owner’s nephew, Anthony - right before a dead body tumbles out of a closet.
\nPenny’s plan for the summer involved finalising tenure at the university where she’s a computer sciences professor. Now she’s suddenly on the run with a man she barely knows, scaling walls, evading bullets, and accidentally stabbing henchmen. It seems the wrong people believe she’s Anthony’s girlfriend and in possession of something they desperately need - and will do anything to get.
\n
Childhood sweethearts Neve and Jamie are inseparable from the moment they meet. Everyone knows they'll be together forever - that is, until tragedy strikes, and Jamie is torn from Neve's life. One street away, Ash is hit by lightning. As he recovers, family members notice a drastic change in Ash, almost as though he is a different person. “My whole life, there's only been one other person who's looked at me like that.”
\nYears later, chance brings Neve and Ash together - and she is struck by his familiarity. He shares so many traits with Jamie, as if their souls are entwined. Neve must ask herself whether she can love for a second time in the face of her grief. Is she ready for what life has to offer? And can lightning really strike twice?
\n
The kingdom of Elben is in turmoil. One of its magical palaces lies in ruins at the bottom of the ocean and the king is on the hunt for the traitor Queen Seymour. He will not stop until he brings her to her knees.
\nNo one would ever suspect Queen Howard of treachery or spy craft, but she is no longer content to be the king's songbird. She will see to Henry's downfall. But there is a new gentleman at court, one who seems to know more about her true motives than he should - is he friend or foe?
\nQueen Cleves has already survived a war. She knows what she must do to protect herself, but now she finds herself fighting a longing for another queen that is so fierce it might swallow her up.
\nAmidst the turmoil, King Henry's sister Cecilia vies for the power she has been denied. But the queens will soon learn they must work together to break the bonds that tie them to the king. For Henry is delving deeper into strange old magics, ones that could birth a monster.
\n
As tradition has it, the king of Elben must marry six queens and magically bind each of them to one of the island's palaces or the kingdom will fall.
Clever, ambitious Boleyn is determined to be her beloved Henry's favorite queen. She relishes the games at court and the political rivalries with his other wives. Seymour is the opposite - originally sent to Boleyn's court as a reluctant spy and assassin, she ends up catching Henry's eye and is forced into a loveless marriage with the king.
But when the two queens become the unlikeliest of things - friends and allies - the balance of power begins to shift. Together, they uncover a dark and deadly truth at the heart of the island's magic . . .
Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is a creature of habit. She likes what she likes (museums, jumpsuits, her boyfriend, Will) and strongly dislikes what she doesn't (mess, change, her boss drinking out of her mug). Her life runs in a pleasing, predictable order . . . until now.
\nShe's just been dumped.
\nShe's just been fired.
\nHer local café has run out of banana muffins.
Then, something truly unexpected happens: Cassie discovers she can go back and change the past. One small rewind at a time, Cassie attempts to fix the life she accidentally obliterated, but soon she'll discover she's trying to fix all the wrong things.
Margot Wayward is in manically gleeful self-destruct mode. Following the implosion of a ten-year relationship, she’s wilfully derailing her successful career, joyfully taking down men on dating apps, and living in total chaos.
\nUntil one day, when Margot has a vision of herself with a man she’s never met before. She doesn’t believe in fate. But when Margot meets single-dad Henry, the vision comes true: exactly as she’d foreseen it.
\nAs her future continues to reveal itself, a glimpse at a time, Margot realises she knows exactly what’s going to happen, and when. And there’s nothing she can do to change any of it.
\nSo Margot has to decide how to live, how to love again, and how to be herself . . . Because if you can’t change your destiny, how on earth do you live your present?
\n
The central palace of Crysth is overrun; the empire has surrendered to an invading army led by Wilhelmina Ming, a traitor from its own capital city. But the invader's power source is its god - a being they worship but can no longer control after the loss of their high priest in battle. Now, both the invader and the invaded are trapped inside the palace with no way to rein in the eldritch force that has taken over - and no choice but to join together against it.
\nMing's last hope is Speaker, the slain emperor's twin and former imperial steward who is somehow bonded with the deity.
\nA wannabe artist and writer, Speaker has been held hostage for months, forced to recount the final days of the empire in the hopes that something in these details might give a clue as to the god's desires and motives. The Emperor's Twin weaves a gripping tale of hidden truths and political intrigue, unraveling the threads of an empire’s downfall and revealing the key to confronting the malevolent force that threatens them all.
\n
Every parent exists inside of two families simultaneously - the one she was born into, and the one she has made.
\nTen-year-old Margaret hides beneath a blackberry bush in her family’s verdant backyard while her brother hunts for her in a game of flashlight tag. Hers is a childhood of sunlit swimming pools and Saturday morning pancakes and a devoted best friend, but her family life requires careful maintenance. Her mother can be as brittle and exacting as she is loving, and her father and brother assume familiar, if uncomfortable, models of masculinity. Then late one summer, everything changes. After a series of confusing transgressions, the simple pleasures of girlhood, slip away.
\nTwenty-five years later, Margaret hides under her parents’ bed, waiting for her young daughters to find her in a game of hide and seek. She’s newly divorced and navigating her life as a co-parent, while discovering the pleasures of a new lover. But some part of her is still under the blackberry bush, punched out of time. Called upon to be a mother to her daughters, and a daughter to her mother, she must reckon with the echoes and refractions between the past and the present, what it means to keep a child safe, and how much of our lives are our own, alone.
\nWarm and generous, unflinchingly human, and ultimately joyful and empowering, SLEEP is about the cycles of motherhood and childhood, the cost of secrets and the burden of love, and what’s on the other side of the world, rich in possibility.
The old world is buried. A new one has been forged atop the shifting dunes, a land of howling wind and infernal sand.
\nIn this barren home, siblings Conner, Rob, Palmer and Violet daily carve out a future. They live in the shadow of their father and oldest sister, Vic, two of the greatest sand divers ever to comb the desert's depths. But these branches of their family tree are long gone, disappeared into the wastes beyond, leaving the younger siblings scratching in the dust, hopeful for a better life.
\nOn the other side of No Man's Land, Anya was born beside the abundant mines knowing her prospects would be to marry, have a family, and work in ore, in service to the Empire of the East. But when an atomic bomb delivered by a stranger destroys most of her town - murdering all her friends and community - she follows her father to a strange land of dunes to bring vengeance to their enemies.
For centuries, men and women have manned lighthouses to ensure the safe passage of ships. It is a lonely job, and a thankless one for the most part.
\nUntil something goes wrong.
\nUntil a ship is in distress.
\nIn the 23rd century, this job has moved into outer space. A network of beacons allows ships to travel across the Milky Way at many times the speed of light. These beacons are built to be robust. They never break down. They never fail.
\nAt least, they aren't supposed to.
In the aftermath of the uprising, the people of Silo 18 are coming to terms with a new order.
\nSome embrace the change, others fear the unknown; none have control of their fate.
\nThe Silo is still in danger. There are those set on its destruction. Jules knows they must be stopped.
\nThe battle has been won. The war is just beginning.
Less than sixty kids awaken on a distant planet. The colony ship they arrived on is aflame. The rest of their contingent is dead. They've only received half their training, and they are being asked to conquer an entire planet. Before they can, however, they must first survive each other.
\nIn this gritty tale of youths struggling to survive, Hugh Howey fuses the best of young adult fantasy with the piercing social commentary of speculative fiction. The result is a book that begs to be read in a single sitting. An adventurous romp that will leave readers exhausted and begging for more.
Hugh Howey is known for crafting riveting and immersive page-turners of boundless imagination, spawning millions of fans worldwide, first with his best-selling novel Wool, and then with other enthralling works such as Sand and Beacon 23.
\nNow comes Machine Learning, an impressive collection of Howey’s science fiction and fantasy short fiction, including three stories set in the world of Wool, two never-before-published tales written exclusively for this volume, and fifteen additional stories collected here for the first time. These stories explore everything from artificial intelligence to parallel universes to video games, and each story is accompanied by an author’s note exploring the background and genesis of each story.
Howey’s incisive mind makes Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories a compulsively readable and thought-provoking selection of short works - from a modern master at the top of his game.
It's been ten years since Molly last set foot on her birth planet, and this isn't how she'd imagined her homecoming. The sky is full of an invading fleet, one powerful enough to threaten the entire galaxy. The new family she has come to rely on - her crew of alien misfits and runaways - are scattered in three directions.
\nAs they struggle to reunite, events beyond their control seem to be driving more than just them apart: the universe itself may be torn asunder if the bond between these unlikely heroes is broken.
\"I need you to help me rescue your father_\" With those words, Molly Fyde-and the rest of the known universe-will never be the same. What began as a simple task to retrieve her father's spaceship, has turned into more than Molly bargained for. Setting off to reconnect with her past, she is about to meet it in a way she never expected: Head-on. Her father is alive. Her mother's memories are trapped inside the very ship which bears her name. On the run from her own Navy, Molly and her crew are now tasked with the impossible: Rescue her parents. Save the galaxy. End a war. But before they can attempt such heroics, Molly must first save a friend.
\nOne of her crew members is in trouble, their life hanging by a thread. And the only race of people Molly can turn to just happens to be the very aliens she's been raised to fear, trained to meet in battle. Drenard. Homeworld of humanity's sworn enemy. And the next stop for the starship Parsona.
When Molly gets kicked out of the Naval Academy, she loses more than just another home, she loses the only two things that truly matter: flying in space and her training partner, Cole. A dull future seems to await, until a marvelous discovery changes everything. Her father's old starship, missing for a decade, turns up halfway across the galaxy.
\nIts retrieval launches Molly and Cole on the adventure of a lifetime, one that will have lasting consequences for themselves and billions of others. What starts off as a simple quest to reconnect with her past, ends up forging a new future. And the forgotten family she hoped to uncover becomes one she never foresaw: a band of alien misfits and runaways-the crew of the starship Parsona.
The old world is buried. A new one has been forged atop the shifting dunes. Here \nin this land of howling wind and infernal Sand, four siblings find \nthemselves scattered and lost.
Palmer has never been the same since his \nfather walked out twelve years ago. His elder sister, Vic, is trying to run away \nfrom the past; his younger brothers, Connor and Rob, are risking their lives to \nembrace it. His mother, left with nothing but anger, is just trying to forget. \n
Palmer wants to prove his worth, not only to his family, but to himself. \nAnd in the barren, dune-covered landscape of his home, there is only one way to \nearn respect: sand-diving. Plunging deep below the desert floor in search of \nrelics and scraps of the old world. He is about to embark on the most dangerous \ndive of his young life, aiming to become the first to discover the rumoured city \nbelow.
Deep within the Sand lies the key to \nbringing his family together – and tearing their world apart.
In a future less than fifty years away, the world is still as we know it. Time continues to tick by. The truth is that it is ticking away. A powerful few know what lies ahead.
\nThey are preparing for it.
\nThey are trying to protect us.
\nThey are setting us on a path from which we can never return. A path that will lead to destruction; a path that will take us below ground.
\nThe history of the silo is about to be written. Our future is about to begin.
This is the story of mankind clawing for survival, of mankind on the edge. The world outside has grown unkind, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. But there are always those who hope, who dream.
\nThese are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they profess to want: They are allowed outside.
Deep in Brazil's neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother's bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tHeralded as a new masterpiece and the most important Brazilian novel of this century, this fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in the Brazil's poorest region, three generations after the abolition of slavery in that country is at once fantastic and realist, covering themes of family, spirituality, slavery and its aftermath and political struggle.
For readers of Crying in H Mart and Minor Feelings as well as lovers of the film Minari comes a searing coming-of-age memoir about the daughter of ambitious Asian American immigrants and her search for self-worth.
\nA daughter of Korean immigrants, Hyeseung Song spends her earliest years in the cane fields of Texas where her loyalties are divided between a restless father in search of Big Money, and a beautiful yet domineering mother whose resentments about her own life compromises her relationship with her daughter. With her parents at constant odds, Song learns more words in Korean for hatred than for love. When the family’s fake Gucci business lands them in bankruptcy, Song moves to a new elementary school. On her first day, a girl asks the teacher: “Can she speak English?”
\nNeither rich nor white, Song does what is necessary to be visible: she internalizes the model minority myth as well as her beloved mother’s dreams to see her on a secure path. Song meets these expectations by attending the best Ivy League universities in the country. But when she wavers, in search of an artistic life on her own terms, her mother warns, “Happiness is what unexceptional people tell themselves when they don’t have the talent and drive to go after real success.”
\nYears of self-erasure take a toll and Song experiences recurring episodes of depression and mania. A thought repeats: I want to die. I want to die. Song enters a psychiatric hospital where she meets patients with similar struggles. So begins her sweeping journey to heal herself by losing everything.
\nUnflinching and lyrical, Docile is one woman’s story of subverting the model minority myth, contending with mental illness, and finding her self-worth by looking within.
\n
Welcome to Blackwood Academy: the legendary school located at the fringes of the afterlife, where students are fated to spend the rest of eternity shepherding lost souls. Once a pupil enters the school’s arched gates, there is no way out . . . except for the Decennial, a once-in-a-decade celebration that rewards nominees who pass its trials with a choice: formally graduate and join Blackwood’s magical elite, or venture into the unknown and cross over to the mysterious Other Side.
\nWren Loughty is certain that this Decennial, she has what it takes to earn the nomination - unless, that is, her academic archrival Augustine Hughes steals her spot.
\nIrene Manette Bamford has never cared about playing by the rules. She’s willing to break whatever (and whoever) stands between her and getting the hell out of Blackwood, including her best and only friend, Masika Sallow.
\nOlivier Dupont gave up on securing the nomination ages ago. But after he meets Blackwood’s newest student, Emilio Córdova, he’ll do anything to keep Emilio from leaving him and crossing over to the Other Side - even if it means claiming the victory for himself.
\nAll of them are determined to be Blackwood’s chosen candidate - and all of them would do anything to win. But none of them are prepared for what’s to come. Because this Decennial will be different. This time, the Decennial isn’t a celebration . . . it’s a competition. And there can only be one victor.
\nSix nominees. Four trials. Untold danger. Wren, August, Irene, Masika, Olivier and Emilio are about to learn: there are some fates worse than death.
\n
Sharrow was once the leader of a personality-attuned combat team in one of the sporadic little commercial wars in the civilization based around the planet Golter. On an island with a glass shore - relic of some even more ancient conflict - she discovers she is to be hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes she is the last obstacle before their faith's apotheosis.
\nShe has to run, knowing her only hope of finally escaping the Huhsz is to find the last of the ancient, apocalyptically powerful but seemingly cursed Lazy Guns. But that is just the first as well as the final step on a search that takes her on an odyssey through the exotic Golterian system and results in both a trail of destruction and a journey into her own past, as well as that of her family and the system itself; a journey that changes everything.
It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year. The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilisation.
\nIn the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars. Seconded to a military-religious order he's barely heard of - part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony - Fassin Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers.
\nHe is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years. But with each day that passes a war draws closer - a war that threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone he's ever known.
Kate Telman is a senior executive officer in The Business, a powerful and massively discreet transglobal organisation. Financially transparent, internally democratic and disavowing conventional familial inheritance, the character of The Business seems, even to Kate, to be vague to the point of invisibility. It possesses, allegedly, a book of Leonardo cartoons, several sets of Crown Jewels and wants to buy its own State in order to acquire a seat at the United Nations.
Kate's job is to keep abreast of current technological developments and her global reach encompasses Silicon Valley, a ranch in Nebraska, the firm's secretive Swiss headquarters, and a remote Himalayan principality. In the course of her journey Kate must peel away layers of emotional insulation and the assumptions of a lifetime. She must learn to keep her world at arm's length.
To take control, she has to do The Business.
Hisako Onoda, world famous cellist, refuses to fly. And so she travels to Europe as a passenger on a tanker bound through the Panama Canal. But Panama is a country whose politics are as volatile as the local freedom fighters.
\nWhen Hisako's ship is captured, it is not long before the atmosphere is as flammable as an oxy-acetylene torch, and the tension as sharp as the spike on her cello. CANAL DREAMS is a novel of deceptive simplicity and dark, original power: stark psychological insights mesh with vividly realised scenarios in an ominous projection of global realpolitik.
Local journalist Cameron Colley writes articles that are idealistic, from the viewpoint of the underdog. A twisted serial killer seems to have the same MO -- he commits brutal murders on behalf of the underdog. As the two stories begin to merge, Cameron finds himself inextricably and inexplicably implicated by the killer.
When the arms dealer whom Cameron plans to expose is found literally \"disarmed\" before Cameron can even put pen to paper and the brewery chief, loathed by Cameron, who sold out at the expense of his workers finds himself permanently unemployable, the police become convinced of Cameron's guilt, as do half his friends and colleagues, forcing Cameron to employ all his investigative skills to find the real killer and his motive.
The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.
Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.
Daniel Weir used to be a famous - not to say infamous - rock star. Maybe still is. At thirty-one he has been both a brilliant failure and a dull success. He's made a lot of mistakes that have paid off and a lot of smart moves he'll regret forever (however long that turns out to be).
\nDaniel Weir has gone from rags to riches and back, and managed to hold onto them both, though not much else. His friends all seem to be dead, fed up with him or just disgusted - and who can blame them? And now Daniel Weir is all alone. As he contemplates his life, Daniel realises he only has two problems: the past and the future. He knows how bad the past has been. But the future - well, the future is something else.
Two and a half millennia ago in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe, the artifact appeared.
It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared.
Now it is back.
Diplomat Genar-Hofoen of Special Circumstances is sent to investigate but, sidetracked by an old flame and the spoiled-brat operative Ulver Seich, and faced with the systematic depravities of a race who call themselves the Affront, it's anyone's guess whether he'll succeed . . .
The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, the End Days for the Gzilt civilisation.
\nAn ancient people, organised on military principles and yet almost perversely peaceful, the Gzilt helped set up the Culture ten thousand years earlier. Now they've made the collective decision to follow the well-trodden path of millions of other civilisations: they are going to Sublime, elevating themselves to a new and almost in finitely more rich and complex existence.
\nBut, amid preparations, the Regimental High Command is destroyed. Vyr Cossont, a former soldier for the Gzilt, appears to have been involved, and she is now wanted - dead, not alive. Aided only by an ancient, reconditioned android and a suspicious Culture avatar, Cossont must complete a final mission; she must find the oldest person in the Culture, a man over nine thousand years old, who might just hold the key to understanding what happened . . .
\nThe final days of the Gzilt civilisation may prove its most perilous.
\n
In the winter palace, the King's new physician has more enemies than she realises. But then she also has more defences than even her most hardened adversaries could imagine.
\nIn another palace, far across the mountains, sits the regicidal Protector General. His chief bodyguard also has enemies to worry about, with the threat of treachery and assassination never far away.
\nAnd beneath the surface of these feudal courts - behind the spies, murders, politics and intrigues - lies an entirely different kind of threat, an entity that nobody would ever suspect.
\n
It was one of the less glorious incidents of a long-ago war.
\nIt led to atrocities on an extraordinary scale. To the destruction of two suns and the billions of lives they supported.
\nNow, eight hundred years later, the light from the first of those doomed stars has reached the Culture Orbital, Masaq', bathing its fifty billion inhabitants in the rays of their society's ancient mistake.
\nAmongst them is Major Quilan, sent on a mission so secret that not even he knows what it is, and determined to exact his revenge against the Culture at any cost.
\n
The intricate structure of a Shellworld - an arti ficial planet of spheres-within-spheres - is matched only by the machinations of its inhabitants.
\nOn the eighth sphere of Sursamen, a man witnesses the murder of his father and flees, searching for the one - maybe two - people who could clear his name. For his brother, this means a life lived under constant threat of treachery, while for their sister, Djan Seriy Anaplian, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever.
\nAnaplian is not who she once was. She has become an agent of the Culture's Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilisations throughout the greater galaxy.
\nConcealing her new identity - and her particular set of abilities - might be a dangerous strategy. In the world to which she returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else's war is never a simple matter.
\n
The Culture - a utopian human-machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many expert Game Players, and one of the greatest is Jernau Morat Gurgeh. He is Master of every board, computer and strategy - he is The Player of Games.
\nBored with success, Gurgeh travels to the cruel and incredibly wealthy Empire of Azad to try their infamous game . . . a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh plays the game, and faces the challenge of his life - and very possibly his death.
\n
A European nation not unlike Bosnia: armed forces roam the lawless land where dark columns of smoke rise up from the surrounding farms and houses. The war is ending, perhaps ended. But for the castle and its occupants, a young lord and lady, the trouble is just beginning. Fearing an invasion of soldiers, the amorous couple takes to the road with the other refugees, disguised in rags.
\nBut the brutal female lieutenant of an outlaw band of guerrillas has other ideas. Just hours into their escape, the fleeing aristocrats are delivered back to the castle, where, now prisoners in their own home, they become pawns in the lieutenant's dangerous game of desire, deceit, and death.
The first ever collection of Iain Banks's short fiction, this volume includes the acclaimed novella, The State of the Art.
\nThis is a striking addition to the growing body of Culture lore, and adds definition and scale to the previous works by using the Earth of 1977 as contrast. The other stories in the collection range from science fiction to horror, dark-coated fantasy to morality tale.
\nAll bear the indefinable stamp of Iain Banks's staggering talent.
The \"War in Heaven\", a simulated war game, rages between civilisations. Its virtual battles have been fought for decades, and the victors will decide the fate of the digital Hells - torturous artificial afterlives with horrors beyond imagination.
\nIn the Sichultian Enablement, Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit.
\nAs the virtual war threatens to spill into the Real, Y'breq is willing to risk everything for her freedom - but she'll need the Culture, and its help comes at a price. The Culture is going to war with death itself.
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The man known as Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks or military action.
\nThough the woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and aided his stratospheric rise, she did not know him as well as she thought.
\nThe drone Ska ffen-Amtiskaw thought it knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman's life by massacring her attackers, and it believed the man to be a burnt-out wreck - but not even its superlative machine-intelligence could see the horrors in his past.
\n
Graham Park is in love. But Sara ffitch is an enigma to him, a creature of almost perverse mystery. Steven Grout is paranoid - and with justice. He knows that They are out to get him. They are. Quiss, insecure in his fabulous if ramshackle castle, is forced to play interminable impossible games.
\nThe solution to the oldest of all paradoxical riddles will release him. But he must find an answer before he knows the question. Park, Grout, Quiss - no trio could be further apart. But their separate courses are set for collision.
Frank - no ordinary sixteen-year-old - lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale.
\nFrank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly
John Lennon and Paul McCartney knew each other for twenty-three years, from 1957 to 1980. This book is the myth-shattering biography of a relationship that changed the cultural history of the world.
\nThe Beatles shook the world to its core in the 1960’s and, to this day, remain an active ingredient in our cultural bloodstream, as new generations fall in love with their songs and their story. At the heart of this phenomenon lies the dynamic between John and Paul. Few other musical partnerships have been rooted in such a deep, intense and complicated personal relationship.
\nJohn and Paul’s relationship was defined by its complexity: compulsive, tender and tempestuous; full of longing, riven by jealousy. Like the band, their relationship was always in motion, never in equilibrium for long. John and Paul traces its twists and turns and reveals how these shifts manifested themselves in the music. Yoko Ono remarked on the resemblance of their friendship to a romantic relationship and suggested that at some point that’s what John wanted it to be. The two of them shared a private language, rooted in the stories, comedy and songs they both loved as teenagers, and later, in the lyrics of Beatles songs.
\nIn John and Paul, acclaimed writer on human psychology and creativity Ian Leslie traces the shared journey of these men before, during and after The Beatles, offering us both a new look at two of the greatest icons in music history, and rich insights into the nature of creativity, collaboration, and human intimacy.
\n
Tif Tamim wants nothing more than to be a dinosaur buckaroo. An orphan in search of a place to rest his head and a job to weigh down his pockets, Tif has bounced from circus to circus, yearning for a chance to ride a prehistoric beauty under the sparkling lights of a big-top.
\nTo become a buckaroo, Tif needs to learn the tools of the trade, yet few dino maestros want to take a scrawny nobody from nowhere under their wing. But when Tif frees a dino from an abusive owner and braves the roving gangs of the formerly-American west to bring the dino to safety, he catches someone’s eye. And boy, how those eyes dazzle Tif from the back of a bucking carnotaur.
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A hundred years in the future, a war wages between the Five Dragons - five families that control the Moon’s leading industrial companies. Each clan does everything in their power to claw their way to the top of the food chain - marriages of convenience, corporate espionage, kidnapping, and mass assassinations.
Through ingenious political manipulation and sheer force of will, Lucas Cortas rises from the ashes of corporate defeat and seizes control of the Moon. The only person who can stop him is a brilliant lunar lawyer, his sister, Ariel.
The Moon wants to kill you. Whether it's being unable to pay your per diem for your allotted food, water, and air, or you just get caught up in a fight between the Moon's ruling corporations, the Five Dragons. You must fight for every inch you want to gain in the Moon's near feudal society. And that is just what Adriana Corta did.
\nAs the leader of the Moon's newest \"dragon,\" Adriana has wrested control of the Moon's Helium-3 industry from the Mackenzie Metal corporation and fought to earn her family's new status.
\nNow, at the twilight of her life, Adriana finds her corporation, Corta Helio, surrounded by the many enemies she made during her meteoric rise. If the Corta family is to survive, Adriana's five children must defend their mother's empire from her many enemies . . . and each other.
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A love story stitched across time and war, shaped by the power of books, and ultimately destroyed by it. In the heart of World War II, Tom and Ben became lovers. Brought together by a secret project designed to hide British targets from German radar, the two founded a love that could not be revealed.
\nWhen the project went wrong, Tom and Ben vanished into nothingness, presumed dead. Their bodies were never found. Now the two are lost in time, hunting each other across decades, leaving clues in books of poetry and trying to make their disparate timelines overlap.
Corta Hélio, one of the five family-corporations that rule the moon, has fallen. Its riches are divided up among its many enemies, its survivors scattered. Eighteen months have passed.
\nThe remaining Hélio children, Lucasinho and Luna, are under the protection of the powerful Asamoahs, while Robson, still reeling from witnessing his parents’ violent deaths, is now a ward - virtually a hostage - of Mackenzie Metals. And the last appointed heir, Lucas, has vanished from the surface of the moon.
\nOnly Lady Sun, dowager of Taiyang, suspects that Lucas Corta is not dead - and that he is still a major player in the game. After all, Lucas always was the schemer, and even in death he would go to any lengths to take back everything and build a new Corta Hélio, more powerful than before. But Corta Hélio needs allies; and to find them the fleeing son undertakes an audacious, impossible journey - to Earth.
\nIn an unstable lunar environment, the shifting loyalties and political machinations of each family reach the zenith of their most fertile plots as outright war erupts.
\n
On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence: Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is editor of the newspaper The Judge.
\nGorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister. In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen. Each will make a disastrous moral decision, their friendship will be tested to its limits, and Julian Garmony will be fighting for his political life.
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony's incomplete grasp of adult motives - together with her precocious literary gifts - brings about a crime that will change all their lives.
\nAs it follows that crime's repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.
Set in late 1980s Europe at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Black Dogs is the intimate story of the crumbling of a marriage, as witnessed by an outsider. Jeremy is the son-in-law of Bernard and June Tremaine, whose union and estrangement began almost simultaneously.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tSeeking to comprehend how their deep love could be defeated by ideological differences Bernard and June cannot reconcile, Jeremy undertakes writing June's memoirs, only to be led back again and again to one terrifying encouner forty years earlier - a moment that, for June, was as devastating and irreversible in its consequences as the changes sweeping Europe in Jeremy's own time.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tIn a finely crafted, compelling examination of evil and grace, Ian McEwan weaves the sinister reality of civilisation's darkest moods - its black dogs - with the tensions that both create love and destroy it.
Stephen Lewis, a successful author of children's books, is on a routine trip to the supermarket with his three-year-old daughter. In a brief moment of distraction, she suddenly vanishes - and is irretrievably lost. From that moment, Lewis spirals into bereavement that effects his marriage, his psyche, and his relationship with time itself: \"It was a wonder that there could be so much movement, so much purpose, all the time. He himself had none at all.\"
In The Child in Time, acclaimed author Ian McEwan \"sets a story of domestic horror against a disorienting exploration in time\" producing \"a work of remarkable intellectual and political sophistication\" that has been adapted into a PBS Masterpiece movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
Colin and Mary are a couple whose intimacy knows no bounds. Away on a holiday together in a nameless city, they get lost one evening in a labyrinth of streets and canals. They happen upon Robert, a stranger with a dark history, who takes them to a bar and ushers them down into a subterranean land of violence and obsession.
On a windy spring day in the Chilterns, the calm, organized life of science writer Joe Rose is shattered when he witnesses a tragic accident: a hot-air balloon with a boy trapped in its basket is being tossed by the wind, and in the attempt to save the child, a man is killed.
\nA stranger named Jed Parry joins Rose in helping to bring the balloon to safety. But unknown to Rose, something passes between Parry and himself on that day - something that gives birth to an obsession in Parry so powerful that it will test the limits of Rose's beloved rationalism, threaten the love of his wife, Clarissa, and drive him to the brink of murder and madness.
\nBrilliant and compassionate, this is a novel of love, faith, and suspense, and of how life can change in an instant.
The setting is Berlin. Into this divided city, wrenched between East and West, between past and present; comes twenty-five-year-old Leonard Marnham, assigned to a British-American surveillance team.
Though only a pawn in an international plot that is never fully revealed to him, Leonard uses his secret work to escape the bonds of his ordinary life -- and to lose his unwanted innocence.
The promise of his new life begins to be fulfilled as Leonard becomes a crucial part of the surveillance team, while simultaneously being initiated into a new world of love and sex by Maria, a beautiful young German woman. It is a promise that turns to horror in the course of one terrible evening -- a night when Leonard Marnham learns just how much of his innocence he's willing to shed.
When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Two thousand miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.
\nNow, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life.
\nHaunted by lost opportunities, Roland seeks solace through every possible means - music, literature, friends, sex, politics, and, finally, love cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. His journey raises important questions for us all. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without causing damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past?
It is July 1962. Florence is a talented musician who dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, an earnest young history student at University College of London, who unexpectedly wooed and won her heart. Newly married that morning, both virgins, Edward and Florence arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast.
\nAt dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their worries about the wedding night to come. Edward, eager for rapture, frets over Florence’s response to his advances and nurses a private fear of failure, while Florence’s anxieties run deeper: she is overcome by sheer disgust at the idea of physical contact, but dreads disappointing her husband when they finally lie down together in the honeymoon suite.
Henry Perowne is a contented man - a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children. Henry wakes to the comfort of his large home in central London on this, his day off. He is as at ease here as he is in the operating room. Outside the hospital, the world is not so easy or predictable. There is an impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before.
\nOn this particular Saturday morning, Perowne's day moves through the ordinary to the extraordinary. After an unusual sighting in the early morning sky, he makes his way to his regular squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousands of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war.
\nA minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a small-time thug. To Perowne's professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man, who in turn believes the surgeon has humiliated him - with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep his family alive.
Serena Frome, the beautiful mathematician daughter of an Anglican bishop, has a brief affair with an older man during her final year at Cambridge, and finds herself being groomed for the Intelligence Service. The year is 1972: Britain, confronting economic disaster, is being torn apart by industrial unrest and Irish terrorism and faces its fifth state of emergency. The Cold War has entered a moribund phase but the fight goes on and MI5 hesitates at little
to influence hearts and minds.
Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is sent by her new employers on a secret mission that brings her into the literary world of Tom Haley, a promising young writer. First, she loves his stories, then she begins to love the man. Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover life? And who is deceiving whom? To answer these
questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage - trust no one.
2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found.
\n2119: The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost.
\nTom Metcalfe, an academic at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain’s remaining island archipelagos, pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the lost poem, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.
In the 1960s, the infamous Bible John terrorised Scotland when he murdered three women, taking three souvenirs. Thirty years later, a copycat is at work, dubbed Johnny Bible.
\nDI John Rebus's unconventional methods have got him in trouble before - now he's taken away from the inquiry and sent to investigate the killing of an off-duty oilman. But when his case clashes head-on with the Johnny Bible killings, he finds himself in the glare of a fearful media, whilst under the scrutiny of an internal enquiry. Just one mistake is likely to mean losing his job - and quite possibly his life.
\n
When a close colleague is brutally attacked, Inspector John Rebus is drawn into a case involving a hotel fire, an unidentified body, and a long forgotten night of terror and murder.
\nPursued by dangerous ghosts and tormented by the coded secrets of his colleague's notebook, Rebus must piece together the most complex and confusing of jigsaws.
\nBut not everyone wants the puzzle solved - perhaps not even Rebus himself . . .
\n
Michael Weston is paid well to do his work and ask no questions. When you're a professional assassin, total secrecy is part of the job. But after a successful mission in London, the police are immediately on his tail. How did they know how to find him? And who is his anonymous employer? Why did he or she want his target, a TV reporter, killed? Was he set up from the start?
The questions lead Weston to his nemesis Hoffer, a private detective who has been hunting him for years. Ever since Weston accidentally killed an innocent American girl, her grieving father has employed Hoffer on a relentless mission to bring Weston to justice. Could Hoffer finally have set a snare that worked?
Weston sets out to find his mysterious employer, traveling from London to Glasgow to Seattle - even if it means encountering Hoffer face-to-face at last.
Nobody likes The Complaints - they're the cops who investigate other cops. Complaints and Conduct Department, to give them their full title, but known colloquially as 'The Dark Side', or simply 'The Complaints'. It's where Malcolm Fox works. He's just had a result, and should be feeling good about himself. But he's a man with problems of his own. He has an increasingly frail father in a care home and a sister who persists in an abusive relationship - something which Malcolm cannot seem to do anything about.
\nBut, in the midst of an aggressive Edinburgh winter, the reluctant Fox is given a new task. There's a cop called Jamie Breck, and he's dirty. The problem is, no one can prove it. But as Fox takes on the job, he learns that there's more to Breck than anyone thinks. This knowledge will prove dangerous, especially when a vicious murder intervenes far too close to home for Fox's liking.
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Gravy worked in the graveyard - hence the name. He was having a normal day until his friend Benjy turned up in a car Gravy didn't recognise. Benjy had a bullet hole in his chest, but lived just long enough to ask Gravy to hide him and look after his gun. Gravy had looked after things for Benjy before, but never a gun. When Gravy looked in the car he found blood, a balaclava and a bag stuffed with money. Gravy's not too bright but he wants to help his friend.
\nSo Gravy finds himself caught up in the middle of a robbery gone wrong, a woman who witnessed a murder, and some very unpleasant men who will do anything to get back the money Benjy stole . . .
\n
Stalking a poisoner at the local zoo, Inspector John Rebus comes across a paedophile taking pictures of children. When the social workers claim he is there for legitimate educational reasons, Rebus is faced with a dilemma - should he be outed to protect local kids or given a chance to start anew?
\nAs the locals begin a hate campaign Rebus gets a call from the past: the son of a friend has gone missing and no one else will make time to ask the right questions. And then a fragment of Scotland's criminal history is repatriated at the end of a life sentence for murder. Once more Rebus's cup of trouble runneth over and the ghosts of past misdeeds return to haunt Edinburgh's streets.
\n
Mike Mackenzie is a self-made man with too much time on his hands and a bit of the devil in his soul. He is looking for something to liven up the days and settles on a plot to rip-off one of the most high-profile targets in the capital - the National Gallery of Scotland.
\nSo, together with two close friends from the art world, he devises a plan to lift some of the most valuable artwork around. But of course, the real trick is to rob the place - whilst persuading the world that no crime was ever committed . . .
\n
Retirement doesn't suit John Rebus. He wasn't made for hobbies, holidays or home improvements. Being a cop is in his blood.
\nSo when DI Siobhan Clarke asks for his help on a case, Rebus doesn't need long to consider his options.
\nClarke's been investigating the death of a senior lawyer whose body was found along with a threatening note. On the other side of Edinburgh, Big Ger Cafferty - Rebus's long-time nemesis - has received an identical note and a bullet through his window.
\nNow it's up to Clarke and Rebus to connect the dots and stop a killer.
\n
A mugging gone wrong . . . or murder?
\nA dissident Russian poet is found dead - at the same time a delegation of Russian businessmen arrives in town. For some, it is crucial that the case is closed quickly, clinically and with the minimum of attention.
\nBut DI Rebus and DS Siobhan Clarke believe this is something more than a random attack - especially after a particularly nasty second killing. Then, a brutal and premeditated assault on a local gangster puts Rebus in the frame - and he may not survive long enough to solve anything . . .
\n
A student has gone missing in Edinburgh. She's not just any student, though, but the daughter of well-to-do and influential bankers. There's almost nothing to go on until DI John Rebus gets an unmistakable gut feeling that there's more to this than just another runaway spaced out on unaccustomed freedom.
\nTwo leads emerge: a carved wooden doll in a toy coffin, found in the student's home village, and an internet role-playing game. The ancient and the modern, brought together by uncomfortable circumstance . . .
\n
An illegal immigrant is found murdered in an Edinburgh housing scheme. Rebus is drawn into the case, but has other problems: his old police station has closed for business, and his masters want him to retire. But Rebus is stubborn. As he investigates, he must visit an asylum seekers' detention centre, deal with the sleazy Edinburgh underworld, and maybe even fall in love . . .
\nSiobhan meanwhile has problems of her own. A teenager has disappeared and Siobhan must help the family, which means getting close to a convicted rapist. Then there's the small matter of the two skeletons found buried beneath a cellar floor in Fleshmarket Close. An elaborate stunt - but whose, and for what purpose? And how can it tie to the murder on the housing-scheme known as Knoxland?
\n
Mary Miller had always been an outcast. As a young girl she had fallen into the hot burn - a torrent of warm chemical run-off from the local coal mine. Fished out white-haired and half-dead, sympathy for her quickly faded when the young man who pushed her in died in a mining accident just two days later. From then on she was regarded with a mixture of suspicion and fascination by her God-fearing community.
\nNow, years later she is hardly less alone. She is the mother of a bastard son, Sandy, and caught up in a faltering affair with a local teacher. Sandy, meanwhile, has fallen in love with a strange homeless girl. The search for happiness isn't easy. Both mother and son must face a dark secret from their past, in the growing knowledge that their small dramas are being played out against a much larger canvas, glimpsed only in symbols and flickering images - of decay and regrowth, of fire and water - of the flood.
\n
DI Rebus is buried under a pile of paperwork but an escalating dispute between the upstart Tommy Telford and Big Ger Cafferty's gang gives Rebus an escape clause.
\nTelford is known to have close links with a Chechen gangster bringing refugees into Britain as prostitutes. When Rebus takes under his wing a distraught Bosnian call girl, it gives him a personal reason to make sure Telford goes back to Paisley and pronto.
\nThen Rebus's daughter is the victim of an all too professional hit-and-run and Rebus knows that there is now nothing he won't do to bring down prime suspect Tommy Telford - even if it means cutting a deal with the devil.
\n
John Rebus had been in court plenty of times, but this was his first time in the dock... John Rebus stands accused: on trial for a crime that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life. Although it's not the first time the legendary detective has taken the law into his own hands, it might be the last.
\nWhat drove a good man to cross the line? Or have times changed, and the rules with them?Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke faces Edinburgh's most explosive case in years, as a corrupt cop goes missing after claiming to harbour secrets that could sink the city's police force.
\nBut in this investigation, it seems all roads lead to Rebus - and Clarke's twin loyalties to the public and the police will be tested to their limit.
\n
A junkie lies dead in an Edinburgh squat, spreadeagled, cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, a five-pointed star daubed on the wall above.
\nJust another dead addict - until John Rebus begins to chip away at the indifference, treachery, deceit and sleaze that lurks behind the facade of the Edinburgh familiar to tourists.
\nOnly Rebus seems to care about a death which looks more like a murder every day, about a seductive danger he can almost taste, appealing to the darkest corners of his mind . . .
\n
Private investigator Stuart Bloom was missing, presumed dead.
\nUntil now.
\nHis body is discovered in an abandoned car - in an area that had already been searched . . .
\nDetective Inspector Siobhan Clarke combs through the mistakes of the original investigation. After a decade without answers, it's time for the truth.
\nBut it seems everyone involved with the case is hiding something.
\nNone more so than Siobhan's own mentor: former detective John Rebus. The only man who knows where the trail may lead - and that it could be the end of him.
\n
Detective John Rebus: His city is being terrorised by a baffling series of murders...and he's tied to a maniac by an invisible knot of blood. Once John Rebus served in Britain's elite SAS. Now he's an Edinburgh cop who hides from his memories, misses promotions and ignores a series of crank letters.
\nBut as the ghoulish killings mount and the tabloid headlines scream, Rebus cannot stop the feverish shrieks from within his own mind. Because he isn't just one cop trying to catch a killer, he's the man who's got all the pieces to the puzzle . . .
\n
When his investigation uncovers a web of conspiracy among the city's political elite, it's clear that everything Rebus holds dear - his job, his life, even his young daughter - is now at stake.
\nAs he risks it all to make those responsible pay for their crimes, Rebus finds that some of his enemies are above the law - but perhaps not beyond justice . . .
\n
John Rebus spent his life as a detective putting Edinburgh's most deadly criminals behind bars. Now, he's joined them . . .
\nAs new allies and old enemies circle, and the days and nights bleed into each other, even the legendary detective struggles to keep his head.
\nThat is, until a murder at midnight in a locked cell presents a new mystery. They say old habits die hard . . .
\nHowever, this is a case where the prisoners and the guards are all suspects, and everyone has something to hide.
\nWith no badge, no authority and no safety net, Rebus walks a tightrope - with his life on the line.
\nBut how do you find a killer in a place full of them?
It is August in Edinburgh and the Festival is in full swing . . .
\nA brutally tortured body is discovered in one of the city's ancient subterranean streets and marks on the corpse cause Rebus to suspect the involvement of sectarian activists. The prospect of a terrorist atrocity in a city heaving with tourists is almost unthinkable.
\nWhen the victim turns out to be the son of a notorious gangster, Rebus realises he is sitting atop a volcano of mayhem - and it's just about to erupt.
\n
When Detective Inspector John Rebus starts looking into the apparent suicide of an MP, he is abruptly told to drop the case.
\nWhy? Because the leaders of the G8 are gathering in Scotland, and Rebus' bosses want him well out of the way. But Rebus never was one to follow orders . . .
\nWith the help of Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke - who has a very personal reason for hunting down a riot cop - both Rebus and Clarke are set on a collision course against their own force. And - with the eyes of the world on them - they soon uncover evidence that a serial killer may be waiting in the wings . . .
\n
Two seventeen-year-olds are killed by an ex-Army loner who has gone off the rails. The mystery takes Rebus into the heart of a shattered community. Ex-Army himself, Rebus becomes fascinated by the killer, and finds he is not alone. Army investigators are on the scene, and won't be shaken off. The killer had friends and enemies to spare and left behind a legacy of secrets and lies.
\nRebus has more than his share of personal problems, too. He's fresh out of hospital, but won't say how it happened. Could there be a connection with a house-fire and the unfortunate death of a petty criminal who had been harassing Rebus's colleague Siobhan Clarke?
\n
John Rebus can't close the door on the death of glamorous socialite Maria Turquand. Brutally murdered in her hotel room forty years ago, her killer has never been found.
\nMeanwhile, Edinburgh's dark heart is up for grabs. Young pretender Darryl Christie may have staked his claim on the city's underworld - but has criminal mastermind and Rebus' long-time adversary, Big Ger Cafferty, really settled down to a quiet retirement? Or is he hiding in the shadows until Edinburgh is once more ripe for the picking?
\nOld Enemies. New Crimes. Rebus may be off the force, but he certainly isn't off the case.
\n
Rebus is off the case - literally. A few days into the murder inquiry of an Edinburgh art dealer, Rebus blows up at a colleague. He is sent to the Scottish Police College for 'retraining' - in other words, he's in the Last Chance Saloon.
\nRebus is assigned to an old, unsolved case, but there are those in his team who have their own secrets - and they'll stop at nothing to protect them.
\nRebus is also asked to act as a go-between for gangster 'Big Ger' Cafferty. And as newly promoted DS Siobhan Clarke works the case of the murdered art dealer, she is brought closer to Cafferty than she could ever have anticipated . . .
\n
Rebus is back on the force, albeit with a demotion and a chip on his shoulder. A 30-year-old case is being reopened, and Rebus's team from back then is suspected of foul play. With Malcolm Fox as the investigating officer, are the past and present about to collide in a shocking and murderous fashion?
\nAnd does Rebus have anything to hide? His old colleagues called themselves 'the Saints', and swore a bond on something called 'the Shadow Bible'. But times have changed and the crimes of the past may not stay hidden much longer, especially with a referendum on Scottish independence just around the corner.
\nWho are the saints and who are the sinners? And can the one ever become the other?
\n
Edinburgh is about to become the home of the first Scottish parliament in 300 years. As political passions run high, DI John Rebus is charged with liaison, thanks to the new parliament being resident in Queensbury House, bang in the middle of his patch. But Queensbury House has its own, dark past.
\nLegend has it that a young man was roasted there on a spit by a madman. When the fireplace where the youth died is uncovered another more recent murder victim is found. Days later, in the gardens outside, there is another body and Rebus is under pressure to find instant answers.
\nAs the case proceeds, the Inspector finds himself face to face with one of Edinburgh's most notorious criminals . . .
\n
When his daughter Samantha calls in the dead of night, John Rebus knows it’s not good news. Her husband has been missing for two days.
Rebus fears the worst – and knows from his lifetime in the police that his daughter will be the prime suspect.
He wasn’t the best father – the job always came first – but now his daughter needs him more than ever. But is he going as a father or a detective?
As he leaves at dawn to drive to the windswept coast – and a small town with big secrets – he wonders whether this might be the first time in his life where the truth is the one thing he doesn’t want to find . . .
A mother determined to find the truth.
\nA retired cop desperate to get his old life back . . .
\nIt's been some time since Rebus was forced to retire, and he now works as a civilian in a cold-case unit. So when a long-dead case bursts back to life, he can't resist the opportunity to get his feet under the CID desk once more. But Rebus is as stubborn and anarchic as ever, and he quickly finds himself in deep with pretty much everyone, including DI Siobhan Clarke.
\nAll Rebus wants to do is uncover the truth. The big question is: can he be the man he once was and still stay on the right side of the law?
\n
Gregor Jack, MP, well-liked, young, married to the fiery Elizabeth - to the outside world a very public success story. But Jack's carefully nurtured career plans take a tumble after a 'mistake' during a police raid on a notorious Edinburgh brothel. Then Elizabeth disappears, a couple of bodies float into view where they shouldn't, and a lunatic speaks from his asylum . . .
\nInitially Rebus is sympathetic to the MP's dilemma - who hasn't occasionally succumbed to temptation? - but with the disappearance of Jack's wife the glamour surrounding the popular young man begins to tarnish. Someone wants to strip Jack naked and Rebus wants to know why . . .
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They call him the Wolfman - because he takes a bite out of his victims and because they found the first victim in the East End's lonely Wolf Street. Scotland Yard are anxious to find the killer and Inspector Rebus is drafted in to help. But his Scotland Yard opposite number, George Flight, isn't happy at yet more interference, and Rebus finds himself dealing with racial prejudice as well as the predations of a violent maniac.
\nWhen Rebus is offered a serial killer profile of the Wolfman by an attractive female psychologist, it's too good an opportunity to miss. But in finding an ally, he may have given his enemies an easy means of attack.
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It always starts with a small lie. That's how you stop noticing the bigger ones.
After his friend suspects something strange going on at the launch facility where they both work - and then goes missing - Martin Hepton doesn't believe the official line of \"long-term sick leave\" . . .
Refusing to stop asking questions, he leaves his old life behind, aware that someone is shadowing his every move.
\nThe only hope he has is his ex-girlfriend Jill Watson - the only journalist who will believe his story.
\nBut neither of them can believe the puzzle they're piecing together - or just how shocking the secret is that everybody wants to stay hidden . . .
\n
Interpol have tried and failed to find her. Now the combined forces of Scotland Yard and MI5 must try the impossible to prevent a major international incident.
\nDominic Elder carries her autograph wherever he goes. Witch is his passion, his obsession. And being retired is no bar to his willingness to restart the hunt.
\nMI5 know that the man who wrote the Witch file is the key to catching their quarry. But the truth isn't easy to spot. And it is only when an MI5 novice and his French counterpart piece together the smallest of clues, that Witch suddenly looks vulnerable . . .
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Felicia and Edgar meet as their mothers are dying. Felicia, a teen from an island nation, and Edgar, the lazy heir of a wealthy German family, come together only because their mothers share a hospital room. When Felicia's mother dies and Edgar's \"Mutter\" does not, Felicia drops out of high school and takes a job as Mutter's caregiver. While Felicia and Edgar don't quite understand each other, and Felicia recognises that Edgar is selfish, arrogant, and often unkind, they form a bond built on grief (and proximity) that results in the birth of a son Felicia calls Armistice. Or Army, for short.
\nSome years later, Felicia and Army (now 14) are living in the basement of a home owned by Oliver, a divorced man of Portuguese descent who has two kids - the teenaged Heather and the odd little Hendrix. Along with Felicia and Army, they form an unconventional family, except that Army wants to sleep with Heather, and Oliver wants to kill Army. Then Army's fascination with his absent father - and his absent father's money - begins to grow as odd gifts from Edgar begin to show up. And Felicia feels Edgar's unwelcome shadow looming over them. A brutal assault, a mortal disease, a death, and a birth reshuffle this group of people again to form another version of the family.
\nReproduction is a profoundly insightful exploration of the bizarre ways people become bonded that insists that family isn't a matter of blood.
Middle-aged and about to be dumped from his construction job, Beckett is not feeling his best - especially since his wife, Princess, is already pressuring him to improve himself. She’s a fitness instructor who spends a lot of time and energy finetuning every inch of her body. Still, they both think their marriage is basically fine, until a couple of friends show up for a visit, their mutual affection and sexual chemistry loudly on display. In one weekend, they upset the tenuous balance between Beckett and Princess, throwing them into parallel midlife crises.
\nPrincess thinks the problem is physical, and attempts to revive Beckett's interest with relentless surgical alterations and bodily enhancements that have the opposite effect on her husband. Beckett tries to woo Princess back to him by relaunching his contracting business, laying his manly accomplishments at her feet. Then, while Princess is away pursuing even more drastic beauty measures, Beckett meets Gluten, an energetic and erratic man devoted to living in the moment, whom Beckett feels drawn to in ways that surprise him. Beckett is changing, Princess is what will happen to their already stressed marriage?
\nSharp, inventive and absurdly funny, You’ve Changed is a wild ride exploring identity, insecurity, intimacy and desire, and who individuals become when they unite, and how they change despite promising not to.
Throughout the world, authoritarian movements are radically reshaping our politics and our lives. At the heart of them all lies ‘great replacement theory’, which insists that peoples of colour, migrants and minorities are being deliberately empowered to displace white majorities.
\nIn Chain of Ideas, Ibram X. Kendi shows how this conspiracy theory has mutated from the extremist fringe into a global ideology, embraced by leaders as varied as Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Nigel Farage, Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. He traces its historic roots in slavery, segregation, colonialism and Nazism, and shows how these age-old prejudices have been dressed in new language for a digital age.
\nBut this is not a book about extremists on the margins. From Anders Breivik’s massacre to the chants of the Charlottesville marchers, from Brexit slogans to the Christchurch shooting, Kendi shows how these ideas have crossed borders, inspired terror and are now re-shaping parties of government. Chain of Ideas is a penetrating history of how reactionary ideas have been repackaged as common sense, and how they shape the globe today.
\n
Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America - but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. In How to be an Antiracist, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it.
In this book, Kendi weaves together an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science, bringing it all together with an engaging personal narrative of his own awakening to antiracism. How to Be an Antiracist is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond an awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a truly just and equitable society.
In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti–Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history.
\nStamped from the Beginning uses the lives of five major American intellectuals to offer a window into the contentious debates between assimilationists and segregationists and between racists and anti-racists. From Puritan minister Cotton Mather to Thomas Jefferson, from fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison to brilliant scholar W. E. B. Du Bois to legendary anti–prison activist Angela Davis, Kendi shows how and why some of our leading pro-slavery and pro–civil rights thinkers have challenged or helped cement racist ideas in America.
As Kendi provocatively illustrates, racist thinking did not arise from ignorance or hatred. Racist ideas were created and popularized in an effort to defend deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and to rationalize the nation’s racial inequities in everything from wealth to health. While racist ideas are easily produced and easily consumed, they can also be discredited. In shedding much–needed light on the murky history of racist ideas, Stamped from the Beginning offers tools to expose them - and in the process, reason to hope.
This is NOT a history book.
This is a book about the here and now.
A book to help us better understand why we are where we are.
A book about race.
The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. This remarkable reimagining of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning reveals the history of racist ideas in America, and inspires hope for an antiracist future. It takes you on a race journey from then to now, shows you why we feel how we feel, and why the poison of racism lingers. It also proves that while racist ideas have always been easy to fabricate and distribute, they can also be discredited.
Through a gripping, fast-paced, and energizing narrative written by beloved award-winner Jason Reynolds, this book shines a light on the many insidious forms of racist ideas--and on ways readers can identify and stamp out racist thoughts in their daily lives.
This new translation of the best stories by Ichiyo Higuchi showcases the pioneering author's profound sensitivity and lyrical eye. The crystalline beauty of falling snow is a painful reminder of lost innocence; three children growing up on the fringes of Tokyo's red-light district enjoy a last summer of freedom before adulthood and its compromises overtake them; a discontented serving maid and a prodigal son find their transgressions can be mutually beneficial; and a man's passion for an indifferent teahouse courtesan becomes so consuming that he is willing to sacrifice everything to it - his job, his family, perhaps even his life.
\nRarely translated into English, but revered in Japan for the purity of her classical language and her status as the country's first professional woman writer, Ichiyo Higuchi drew on her own short life in a poor Tokyo neighbourhood to inspire her work. With immense delicacy of phrase and feeling, and vivid evocations of the colourful festivals and salty street banter that mask unspoken yearning and disappointed hopes, she transmits both the beauty and the struggle of working-class women's lives in turn-of-the-century Japan. In her clear-eyed vision of the world, longing and memory may be the only solace.
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A comic novel about a tech startup that turns sand into rain clouds from Sami Rohr prize winner Iddo Gefen.
\nOur story opens with Mrs. Lilienblum discovered drinking a martini in a crater in the Israeli desert. Eli, her adult son, tries to understand what happened to his wacky mother, while he also tackles the legend of a missing hiker named McMurphy, and whether he might be in love with Tamara, a visitor to his family’s hostel on the edge of a crater.
\nThe story races forward as the Lilienblum family builds a company around Eli’s mother’s invention and makes comedy out of startup culture, the obsession with company valuation and funding, the secrets families keep, romantic and family love - all with humor, warmth and compassion.
\n
Martina wants to be the best gymnast in the world. But so does everyone around her.
\nDuring one week of intense competition, Martina and her teammates are tested to the limit, and any sign of weakness can quickly spell the end.
\nBy the end of the week, one of the gymnasts will be dead. Every girl will do anything to win . . . but at what cost?
Anna is mourning the end of her marriage when she runs into Maria by chance at her mother's gallery in Milan. When Maria suddenly collapses and is taken to hospital, the pair's lives are irrevocably changed.
\nOver the course of the long, dry summer that follows, the pair come together to convalesce. Maria, an avid gardener, observes half-dead plants on Anna's terrace, and finds solace in teaching Anna how to care for them. In doing so, the pair also begin to care for each other's loneliness, and find in the natural world a deeply restorative power - one that will open them up to new love and life.
\nIn We Will Be Forest, Ilaria Bernardini draws on a private affair - illness, the end of a marriage, a child to protect - to bring to life a powerful poetic universe in which words sprout like branches and leaves.
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Working with SPEAR is never easy, but it also isn’t boring. Until now.
\nEvicted from her team, chained to her desk, Danika Karson must instead endure dozens of tedious experiments to diagnose the marks on her back. And no, she may not be part of the ongoing efforts to restore human-edane relations after last month’s Werewolf Riots.
\nSo, when Rayne invites Danika to a wedding in her humdrum hometown, Danika seizes the opportunity to be useful. Not only can she support her vampire girlfriend in coming out to her estranged family, but she can also fulfill one of many debts owed to the nasty little goblin, Shakka.
\nOne mundane favor, a nervous vampire, and an expensive, high-profile wedding. Stressful, perhaps, but given the choice between that and one more biopsy, Danika hurls herself in, feet first.
\nIf only the unnamed creature made of smoke and bad memories would wait one more weekend . . .
\n
Danika Karson, field agent of the Supernatural Prohibition, Extermination, and Arrest Regiment (SPEAR), has the highest capture and kill rate on record. That is, until the mayor of Angbec makes her an offer she can’t refuse. Moonlighting as a rogue private investigator, Danika must find the mayor’s son, presumed kidnapped by vampires.
\nDetermined to solve the case, Danika’s only lead is Rayne, a vampire whose power and beauty mask a kind and gentle heart. They race against time to find the missing boy, dodging vampires, evading SPEAR agents, and fighting the attraction that sparks between them. When the stakes rise ever higher, Danika is forced to put her life in Rayne’s hands, but can she really trust a vampire?
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Tina Marks once believed that being a witch would make life easy. But when one mixes mundane police work with a dash of witch politics and a pinch of forbidden love, the cauldron is sure to boil over sooner or later.
\nWhen her Willow Bark coven mentor goes missing, Tina struggles to keep the search as separate as possible from her work with the Angbec Police Force. Then a regular beat patrol exposes a witch of the opposing Elm Stem coven in damning, suspicious circumstances.
\nTina is faced with a choice that could change the course of not only her entire future, but also those of her girlfriend Nikolette and two entire covens of young, vulnerable witches. But choose she must, and soon, because the world has no time for indecision, and the maiden’s innocence is inevitably destined to fade.
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Danika Karson, recently promoted team leader within the Supernatural Prohibition, Extermination, and Arrest Regiment (SPEAR), is tasked with containing a new pack of werewolves who have entered Angbec and staked their claim with violence and brutality. Their ferocious rampage not only endangers humans but falsely implicates Wensleydale Gordan, dear friend and alpha of the smaller, more vulnerable Dire Wolf pack.
\nWith such powerful adversaries, Danika must again enlist the help of Rayne: girlfriend, fellow agent, and powerful vampire. Unfortunately, Rayne has more personal matters on her mind. The full moon approaches, and with it, supernatural compulsions that threaten to consume Rayne and Danika in a wave of passion and blood.
\nWolves fight for supremacy, Rayne struggles for control, and Danika wants nothing more than to save them all. But when the full moon rises, can she win against the moon fever?
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Lenina Miller, ditsy and pampered bride to be, wants nothing more than to walk down the aisle in her scandalous red dress to the gasps and awed stares of friends and family. Her wedding plans are shattered when a late night mugging scars not only her face and throat, but drops her in the centre of a frenzied police investigation to apprehend the attacker before he strikes again.
\nOn the field of battle in 30 BC, Saar, son of Yafeu, sacrifices his life for his sovereign, Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt. Betrayed by the man he loves, forced to watch his country burn under Octavian's hostile takeover, Saar's agonising death appears to Lenina with all the lucid force of a true memory.
\nTwo lives, separated by thousands of years, brought together through one night of violence.
\nHaunted by the memories of a man long dead, Lenina finds her body transforming, her appetites for food and flesh magnified to terrifying proportions as the vampire within her begins to take hold. As the attentions of the investigating detective force her to choose between lust and love, Lenina also finds herself a target. The vampire who attacked her knows she survived and will stop at nothing to finish the job he started.
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Still traumatised by the violence and death of the last two days, newly turned vampire, Lenina Miller, is kidnapped, drugged and chained, taken to meet Kallisto, the head of Red Fang.
Kallisto plans to resurrect the ancient warlord Saar, drawing him from the prison of Lenina’s mind using potent magic rituals.
She needs but one more vital component: the blood of Lenina’s human family.
Now, with her soul on the line and her family in mortal danger, Lenina has no choice but to fight for survival. But Saar’s influence is growing and, if she cannot stop him, his anger and desperation will destroy what little humanity she has left, driving her beyond the point of no return.
At a crossroads in her life, Mikaila Mohamed has made a list: all the girls from her past she needs to have a very important conversation with. She’s been saving the hardest one for last: Ashleigh von Bronckhorst, her old high school roommate.
\nComing from a close-knit, conservative Muslim family in South Africa means Mikaila hasn’t dared dwell too much on her complicated feelings for Ashleigh. Meeting her now, though, when Mikaila’s on the brink of freedom, could change everything.
\nWhat will it be like being around Ashleigh again? Supported by her mosaic of misfit friends who seem so ready to take on the world with her, can Mikaila finally make a choice?
\nSometimes a leap into the unknown is all it takes.
William Wolf will never be normal; he is a loner, a changeling, hated by the people of the Weird, yet rigorously trained and coldly used for the very qualities they fear. Now exiled, he's recruited again by those he's happily abandoned - who offer him a chance for revenge against his greatest enemy . . . Spider, a murderous agent of the Hand.
\nCerise Mar's noble legacy is an 80-year-old family feud, an impressive holding of swampland, a gift for the 'old magic', a large contentious family - and no money. When her parents go missing and conflict with the rival Sheerile clan hits a new high, Cerise must lead the entire Mar family against them. And then things get complicated: it seems there's a traitor in her own clan, and the Sheeriles have a dangerously powerful ally . . . named Spider.
\nWilliam and Cerise are possibly the two unlikeliest allies in the annals of the Edge; but though they have different missions, they share the same goal and, together they're unbeatable - if they can keep from killing each other.
Atlanta was always a dangerous city. Now, as waves of magic and technology compete for supremacy, it’s a place caught in a slow apocalypse, where monsters spawn among the crumbling skyscrapers and supernatural factions struggle for power and survival.
Eight years ago, Julie Lennart left Atlanta to find out who she was. Now she’s back with a new face, a new magic, and a new name - Aurelia Ryder - drawn by the urgent need to protect the family she left behind. An ancient power is stalking her adopted mother, Kate Daniels, an enemy unlike any other, and a string of horrifying murders is its opening gambit.
If Aurelia’s true identity is discovered, those closest to her will die. So her plan is simple: get in, solve the murders, prevent the prophecy from being fulfilled, and get out without being recognized. She expected danger, but she never anticipated that the only man she'd ever loved could threaten everything.
One small misstep could lead to disaster. But for Aurelia, facing disaster is easy; it’s relationships that are hard.
On the outside, Dina Demille is the epitome of normal. She runs a quaint Victorian Bed and Breakfast in a small Texas town, owns a Shih Tzu named Beast, and is a perfect neighbor, whose biggest problem should be what to serve her guests for breakfast. But Dina is . . . different: Her broom is a deadly weapon; her Inn is magic and thinks for itself.
\nMeant to be a lodging for otherworldly visitors, the only permanent guest is a retired Galactic aristocrat who can’t leave the grounds because she’s responsible for the deaths of millions and someone might shoot her on sight. Under the circumstances, \"normal\" is a bit of a stretch for Dina. And now, something with wicked claws and deepwater teeth has begun to hunt at night . . .
\nFeeling responsible for her neighbors, Dina decides to get involved. Before long, she has to juggle dealing with the annoyingly attractive, ex-military, new neighbor, Sean Evans - an alpha-strain werewolf - and the equally arresting cosmic vampire soldier, Arland, while trying to keep her inn and its guests safe. But the enemy she’s facing is unlike anything she’s ever encountered before.
\nIt’s smart, vicious, and lethal, and putting herself between this creature and her neighbors might just cost her everything.
\n\n
Audrey Callahan left behind her life in the Edge, and she's determined to stay on the straight and narrow. But when her brother gets into hot water, the former thief takes on one last heist and finds herself matching wits with a jack of all trades . . .
Kaldar Mar-a gambler, lawyer, thief, and spy-expects his latest assignment tracking down a stolen item to be a piece of cake, until Audrey shows up. But when the item falls into the hands of a lethal criminal, Kaldar realises that in order to finish the job, he's going to need Audrey's help . . .
At first glance, the planet Rada seems like a lush paradise. But the ruling families, all boasting genetically enhanced abilities, are in constant competition for power - and none more so than the Adlers and the Baenas. For generations, the powerful families have pushed and pulled each other in a dance for dominance.
\nUntil a catastrophic betrayal from within changes everything.
\nNow, deadly, disciplined, and solitary leaders Ramona Adler and Matias Baena must put aside their enmity and work together in secret to prevent sinister forces from exploiting universe-altering technology. Expecting to suffer through their uneasy alliance, Ramona and Matias instead discover that they understand each other as no one in their families can - and that their combined skills may eclipse the risks of their forbidden alliance.
\nAs the two warriors risk their lives to save their families, they must decide whether to resist or embrace the passion simmering between them. For now, the dance between their families continues - but just one misstep could spell the end of them both.
Adaline is a Talent. Ten years ago, she had a happy marriage and a job she loved. The invasion shattered both. Now she works for the government, searching the breaches for magic metals and medicine to help Earth repel an interdimensional enemy. Two kids, one cat, bills, benefits, mortgage and school tuition . . . Risking her life became routine.
\nShe had gone into the dimensional gates hundreds of times. She was always well protected. This time everything goes wrong. Now Ada is trapped in the labyrinth of alien caves unlike any other. Her only companion is a scared German Shepherd named Bear. Together they must uncover the breach's secrets and escape, because Ada promised her children that she will come home.
\nThe future of humanity depends on it.
Hugh d’Ambray, Preceptor of the Iron Dogs, Warlord of the Builder of Towers, served only one man. Now his immortal, nearly omnipotent master has cast him aside. Hugh is a shadow of the warrior he was, but when he learns that the Iron Dogs, soldiers who would follow him anywhere, are being hunted down and murdered, he must make a choice: to fade away or to be the leader he was born to be. Hugh knows he must carve a new place for himself and his people, but they have no money, no shelter, and no food, and the necromancers are coming. Fast.
Elara Harper is a creature who should not exist. Her enemies call her Abomination; her people call her White Lady. Tasked with their protection, she's trapped between the magical heavyweights about to collide and plunge the state of Kentucky into a war that humans have no power to stop. Desperate to shield her people and their simple way of life, she would accept help from the devil himself - and Hugh d’Ambray might qualify.
Hugh needs a base, Elara needs soldiers. Both are infamous for betraying their allies, so how can they create a believable alliance to meet the challenge of their enemies?
As the prophet says: “It is better to marry than to burn.”
Hugh and Elara may do both.
Mercenary Kate Daniels knows all too well that magic in post-Shift Atlanta is a dangerous business. But nothing she’s faced could have prepared her for this . . .
Kate and the former Beast Lord Curran Lennart are finally making their relationship official. But there are some steep obstacles standing in the way of their walk to the altar . . .
Kate’s father, Roland, has kidnapped the demigod Saiman and is slowly bleeding him dry in his never-ending bid for power. A Witch Oracle has predicted that if Kate marries the man she loves, Atlanta will burn and she will lose him forever. And the only person Kate can ask for help is long dead.
The odds are impossible. The future is grim. But Kate Daniels has never been one to play by the rules . . .
When the magic is up, rogue mages cast their spells and monsters appear, while guns refuse to fire and cars fail to start. But then technology returns, and the magic recedes as unpredictably as it arose, leaving all kinds of paranormal problems in its wake.
Kate Daniels is a down-on-her-luck mercenary who makes her living cleaning up these magical problems. But when Kate's guardian is murdered, her quest for justice draws her into a power struggle between two strong factions within Atlanta's magic circles.
The Masters of the Dead, necromancers who can control vampires, and the Pack, a paramilitary clan of shapechangers, blame each other for a series of bizarre killings - and the death of Kate's guardian may be part of the same mystery. Pressured by both sides to find the killer, Kate realizes she's way out of her league - but she wouldn't have it any other way . . .
Kate Daniels cleans up the paranormal problems no one else wants to deal with-especially if they involve Atlanta's shapeshifting community. And now there's a new player in town - a foe that may be too much for even Kate and Curran, the Lord of the Beasts, to handle. Because this time, Kate will be taking on family.
As the mate of the Beast Lord, Curran, former mercenary Kate Daniels has more responsibilities than it seems possible to juggle. Not only is she still struggling to keep her investigative business afloat, she must now deal with the affairs of the pack, including preparing her people for attack from Roland, a cruel ancient being with god-like powers. Since Kate’s connection to Roland has come out into the open, no one is safe - especially those closest to Kate.
\nAs Roland’s long shadow looms ever nearer, Kate is called to attend the Conclave, a gathering of the leaders from the various supernatural factions in Atlanta. When one of the Masters of the Dead is found murdered there, apparently at the hands of a shapeshifter, Kate is given only twenty-four hours to hunt down the killer. And this time, if she fails, she’ll find herself embroiled in a war which could destroy everything she holds dear . . .
As a mercenary who cleans up after magic gone wrong, Kate Daniels has seen her share of occupational hazards. Normally, waves of paranormal energy ebb and flow across Atlanta like a tide. But once every seven years, a flare comes, a time when magic runs rampant. Now Kate’s going to have to deal with problems on a much bigger scale: a divine one.
When Kate sets out to retrieve a set of stolen maps for the Pack, Atlanta’s paramilitary clan of shapeshifters, she quickly realises much more at stake. During a flare, Celtic god Morfran supersedes goddess Morrigan for witch coven worshippers of the Crow, and sea monsters from the Underworld enter via the Cauldron of Plenty.
Kate starts looking for Pack maps and 13-year old Julia's witch mother, and ends up uniting shapeshifters and vampire zombie controllers to save the world.
Mercenary Kate Daniels and her mate, Curran, the Beast Lord, are struggling to solve a heartbreaking crisis. Unable to control their beasts, many of the Pack’s shapeshifting children fail to survive to adulthood.
\nWhile there is a medicine that can help, the secret to its making is closely guarded by the European packs, and there’s little available in Atlanta. Kate can’t bear to watch innocents suffer, but the solution she and Curran have found threatens to be even more painful. The European shapeshifters who once outmaneuvered the Beast Lord have asked him to arbitrate a dispute and they’ll pay him in medicine.
\nWith the young people’s survival and the Pack’s future at stake, Kate and Curran know they must accept the offer - but they have little doubt that they’re heading straight into a trap . . .
After breaking from life with the Pack, mercenary Kate Daniels and her mate - former Beast Lord Curran Lennart - are adjusting to a very different pace. While they’re thrilled to escape all the infighting, Curran misses the constant challenges of leading the shapeshifters.
\nSo when the Pack offers him its stake in the Mercenary Guild, Curran seizes the opportunity - too bad the Guild wants nothing to do with him and Kate. Luckily, as a veteran merc, Kate can take over any of the Guild’s unfinished jobs in order to bring in money and build their reputation. But what Kate and Curran don’t realize is that the odd jobs they’ve been working are all connected.
\nAn ancient enemy has arisen, and Kate and Curran are the only ones who can stop it - before it takes their city apart piece by piece . . .
Plagued by a war between magic and technology, Atlanta has never been so deadly. Good thing Kate Daniels is on the job.
\nKate Daniels may have quit the Order of Knights of Merciful Aid, but she's still knee-deep in paranormal problems. Or she would be if she could get someone to hire her. Starting her own business has been more challenging than she thought it would be-now that the Order is disparaging her good name. Plus, many potential clients are afraid of getting on the bad side of the Beast Lord, who just happens to be Kate's mate.
\nSo when Atlanta's premier Master of the Dead calls to ask for help with a vampire on the loose, Kate leaps at the chance of some paying work. But it turns out that this is not an isolated incident. Kate needs to get to the bottom of it-and fast, or the city and everyone dear to her may pay the ultimate price . . .
Drafted into working for the Order of Merciful Aid, mercenary Kate Daniels has more paranormal problems than she knows what to do with. And in Atlanta, where magic comes and goes like the tide, that’s saying a lot. But when Kate’s werewolf friend Derek is discovered nearly dead, she must confront her greatest challenge yet.
Kate has come a long way from her origins as a loner taking care of paranormal problems in post-Shift Atlanta. She's made friends and enemies. She's found love and started a family with Curran Lennart, the former Beast Lord. But her magic is too strong for the power players of the world to let her be.
Kate and her father, Roland, currently have an uneasy truce, but when he starts testing her defenses again, she knows that sooner or later, a confrontation is inevitable. The Witch Oracle has begun seeing visions of blood, fire, and human bones. And when a mysterious box is delivered to Kate's doorstep, a threat of war from the ancient enemy who nearly destroyed her family, she knows their time is up.
Kate Daniels sees no other choice but to combine forces with the unlikeliest of allies. She knows betrayal is inevitable. She knows she may not survive the coming battle. But she has to try.
For her child.
For Atlanta.
For the world.
Rose Drayton and her two young brothers live in the Edge and are among the most gifted of the people there. In Rose's case, her abilities are so powerful that men from the Edge and the Weird want to marry her. So When Declan Camarine - a blueblood noble from one of the Weird's most powerful families - shows up she tells him what she's told all the others: Go away!
\nBut Declan offers Rose a challenge - Give him three tasks, and if he completes them, she will belong to him; if he fails, he'll leave and never return. Coming up with must-fail plans is soon the least of Rose's concerns: first, Declan is becoming a little too appealing; second the boys actually like him; and then the terrible magic-stealing hounds come . . . and it looks like working together is the only way to stop them and save The Edge.
Dina DeMille may run the nicest Bed and Breakfast in Red Deer, Texas, but she caters to a very particular kind of guest… the kind that no one on Earth is supposed to know about. Guests like a former intergalactic tyrant with an impressive bounty on her head, the Lord Marshal of a powerful vampire clan, and a displaced-and-superhot werewolf; so don’t stand too close, or you may be collateral damage.
But what passes for Dina’s normal life is about to be thrown into chaos. First, she must rescue her long-distant older sister, Maud, who’s been exiled with her family to a planet that functions as the most lawless penal colony since Botany Bay. Then she agrees to help a guest whose last chance at saving his civilization could bring death and disaster to all Dina holds dear. Now Gertrude Hunt is under siege by a clan of assassins. To keep her guests safe and to find her missing parents, Dina will risk everything, even if she has to pay the ultimate price. Though Sean may have something to say about that!
It’s not easy serving the Chernobog, the God of Destruction, Darkness and Death . . . especially during the holidays; and especially when you’re out of eggnog and one of your pesky, freeloading mythic creatures has eaten your last cookie.
\nRoman would like nothing more than to be left alone, but when a wounded boy stumbles into his yard and begs for sanctuary, Roman takes him in. Now elite mercenaries are camped out on his property, combat mages are dousing the house with fire, and strange priests are unleashing arcane magic. They thought Roman was easy pickings, just a hermit in the woods, but they chose the wrong dark priest to annoy. For while Roman might be patient, he is the Black Volhv, filled with the love of his terrible god. For his adversaries, it's a fight to the death, but for him, it's just another day in the neighborhood.
On Meli Galdes' home planet, the struggle for power is a bloody, full-contact sport - in business and on the battlefield. For years her lethal skills have been a valuable asset in advancing her family's interests. She's more than earned her right to retire, but her kinsmen have one last favor to ask.
\nKill the man who ruined her life.
\nCelino Carvanna's razor-sharp business acumen - and skills with a blade - won him the freedom to do as he pleases. There's only one thing he can't seem to control - his reaction to the mysterious woman who tantalises his senses. Her eyes alone set his blood simmering, stirring ridiculous adolescent fantasies about breasts and honey. With a few words she dissects his soul. Who is she? And how does she slide so easily under his well-guarded skin?
\nIt's almost too easy to draw Celino within the kill zone. Meli plans to revel in him. Drink him in. Wring every drop of pleasure out of every moment.
\nAnd when she's sure he belongs to her, she will finally repay a decade's worth of pain - in a single, brutal dose of reality.
Claire Shannon is a killer. She uses no weapons, only her mind.
\nBorn on a planet locked in a long war, Claire is a psycher, a woman with the ability to attack minds and infiltrate a biological computer network where psychers battle to the death. But when the war abruptly ends, Claire must hide her psycher's ability to survive. She is deported to a new planet, a vivid beautiful place, where she meets Venturo Escana, a powerful psycher, whose presence overwhelms both her mind and her body.
\nShe thought she had left war and death behind, but now she must fight for her new life and this battle might just cost her everything . . .
Charlotte de Ney is as noble as they come in the Weird. But despite her rare healing abilities, she was not able to conceive a child, or keep the husband who married her only for an heir. Hurt and betrayed, she's fled to the Edge, and turned her back on healing.
\nRichard Mar is an incomparable swordsman and future head of his disreputable clan; but not until he's decimated the slave trade that nearly destroyed his niece.
\nTheir unlikely paths cross when slavers chase the severely wounded Richard into the Edge . . . and into Charlotte's healing hands. And when his dangerous enemies follow him, killing a dear friend of Charlotte's, the two must join forces to defeat them; yet even joining their strengths together may not be enough to save them - or those they love.
Dina DeMille doesn’t run your typical Bed and Breakfast. Her inn defies laws of physics, her fluffy dog is secretly a monster, and the only paying guest is a former Galactic tyrant with a price on her head. But the inn needs guests to thrive, and guests have been scarce, so when an Arbitrator shows up at Dina's door and asks her to host a peace summit between three warring species, she jumps on the chance.
Unfortunately, for Dina, keeping the peace between Space Vampires, the Hope-Crushing Horde, and the devious Merchants of Baha-char is much easier said than done. On top of keeping her guests from murdering each other, she must find a chef, remodel the inn . . . and risk everything, even her life, to save the man she might fall in love with. But then it's all in the day's work for an Innkeeper . . .
Maud Demille is a daughter of Innkeepers - a special group who provide ‘lodging’ to other-planetary visitors - so she knows that a simple life isn't in the cards. But even Maud could never have anticipated what Fate would throw at her.
\nOnce a wife to a powerful vampire knight, Maud and her young daughter, Helen, were exiled with him for his treachery to the desolate, savage planet of Karhari. Karhari killed her husband, and Maud—completely abandoned by his family - has spent over a year avenging his debts. Rescued by her sister Dina, she's sworn off all things vampire.
\nExcept . . . in helping Dina save the world, she met Arland, the Marshal of House Krahr, one of the most powerful vampire houses. One thing led to another and he asked for her hand in marriage. She declined. Arland is not used to hearing the word ‘no;’ and try as she might, Maud can't just walk away from Arland. It doesn't help that being human is a lot harder for Maud than being a vampire.
\nTo sort it all out, she accepts his invitation to visit his home planet. House Krahr is extremely influential and Maud knows that a woman - a human, with a very questionable past - who's turned down a proposal from its most beloved son won't get a warm reception. Maybe she’s not sure about marrying Arland, but House Krahr isn’t going to decide for her. Maud Demille has never run from a fight, and House Krahr will soon discover that there's a lot more to Maud than they’re expecting.
Life is busier than ever for Innkeeper, Dina DeMille and Sean Evans. But it's about to get even more chaotic when Sean's werewolf mentor is kidnapped. To find him, they must host an intergalactic spouse-search for one of the most powerful rulers in the Galaxy. Dina is never one to back down from a challenge.
\nThat is, if she can manage her temperamental Red Cleaver chef; the consequences of her favorite Galactic ex-tyrant's dark history; the tangled politics of an interstellar nation, and oh, yes, keep the wedding candidates from a dozen alien species from killing each other. Not to mention the Costco lady.
\nThey say love is a battlefield; but Dina and Sean are determined to limit the casualties.
Every winter, Innkeepers look forward to celebrating their own special holiday, which commemorates the ancient treaty that united the very first Inns and established the rules that protect them, their intergalactic guests, and the very unaware/oblivious people of [planet] Earth.
\nBy tradition, the Innkeepers welcomed three guests: a warrior, a sage, and a pilgrim, but during the holiday, Innkeepers must open their doors to anyone who seeks lodging. Anyone.
\nAll Dina hopes is that the guests and conduct themselves in a polite manner. But what's a holiday without at least one disaster?
When Maggie wakes up cold, filthy, and naked in a gutter, it doesn't take her long to recognise Kair Toren, a city she knows intimately from the pages of the famously unfinished dark fantasy series she's been obsessively reading and re-reading while waiting years for the final novel.
\nHer only tools for navigating this gritty world of rival warlords, magic, and mayhem? Her encyclopedic knowledge of the plot, the setting, and the characters' ambitions and fates. But while she quickly discovers she cannot be killed (though many will try!), the same cannot be said for the living, breathing characters she's coming to love - a motley band that includes a former lady’s maid, a deadly assassin, various outrageous magical creatures, and a dangerously appealing soldier.
\nSoon, instead of trying to get home, she finds herself enmeshed in the schemes - and attentions - of dueling princes, dukes, and villains, all while trying to save them and the kingdom of Rellas from the way she knows their stories will end: in a cataclysmic war.
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Elara is out for revenge. Her love, Prince Enzo, is trapped between the realms of life and death, and her enemy has vanished, leaving Elara with a life she never wanted and new powers she cannot control.
\nNow a disgraced queen on the run, Elara must find a way to wake Enzo while also seeking the lost Titans, a league of gods who ruled the world long before the Stars.
\nBut there is a darker power at play, one that even Ariete, King of the Stars, is afraid of. With enemies at every turn, Elara must tread carefully if she has any hope of saving her soulmate and fulfilling her promise to make every Star fall.
In a world ruled by the cruel and merciless Stars, Elara has been cursed by fate. A prophecy promises she will fall for a Star, but that it will kill them both.
\nSo when Ariete, Star of Wrath, War and Chaos, descends to wreak havoc on Elara’s kingdom, she flees her home - the Kingdom of Night - for the neighbouring Helios, Kingdom of Light.
\nAnd strides straight into the arms of an enemy prince.
\nFearing that Ariete might turn his sights to Helios next, Prince Lorenzo is forced to train Elara as a weapon - one worthy of battling against the tyrannical reign of the Stars. But there are shadows even within the Kingdom of Light - and they threaten to reveal the darkness in Lorenzo’s past and the ancient magic that slumbers in Elara’s veins.
\nAnd with it all comes an undeniable, star-crossed pull between Elara and Lorenzo that neither can seem to resist . . .
A surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue - and its fascinating role in Black history and culture.
\nThroughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for that which lies beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong’s question, “What did I do to be so Black and blue?” In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world’s favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey - an examination of race and Blackness that transcends politics or ideology.
\nPerry traces both blue and Blackness from their earliest roots to their many embodiments of contemporary culture, drawing deeply from her own life as well as art and history: The dyed indigo cloths of West Africa that were traded for human life in the 16th century. The mixture of awe and aversion in the old-fashioned characterization of dark-skinned people as “Blue Black.” The fundamentally American art form of blues music, sitting at the crossroads of pain and pleasure. The blue flowers Perry plants to honor a loved one gone too soon.
\nPoignant, spellbinding, and utterly original, Black in Blues is a brilliant new work that could only have come from the mind of one of our greatest writers and thinkers. Attuned to the harrowing and the sublime aspects of the human experience, it is every bit as vivid, rich, and striking as blue itself.
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An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South - and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America.
\nWe all think we know the South. Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge. In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole.
\nThis is the story of a Black woman and native Alabaman returning to the region she has always called home and considering it with fresh eyes. Her journey is full of detours, deep dives, and surprising encounters with places and people. She renders Southerners from all walks of life with sensitivity and honesty, sharing her thoughts about a troubling history and the ritual humiliations and joys that characterise so much of Southern life.
\nWeaving together stories of immigrant communities, contemporary artists, exploitative opportunists, enslaved peoples, unsung heroes, her own ancestors, and her lived experiences, Imani Perry crafts a tapestry unlike any other. With uncommon insight and breathtaking clarity, South to America offers an assertion that if we want to build a more humane future for the United States, we must center our concern below the Mason-Dixon Line.
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Eve has always had a tricky relationship with her mother, Agatha, and returning to Fox House, the family home, hasn’t made it any easier. When Eve’s daughter, Lyra, and granddaughter, Skye, unexpectedly turn up, it becomes clear that four generations of women under one roof is a recipe for trouble. Not least because Lyra clearly needs help but refuses to say why.
\nLyra decides she wants to live in the ramshackle cottage in the grounds, but when Agatha announces she’s promised it to a man called Dylan, Eve and Lyra are mystified. Who is he, and what reason could Agatha possibly have for giving him the cottage?
\nBecause it seems that it’s not only Lyra hiding things. Agatha has secrets she has never had the courage to tell Eve. Is now the right time to finally reveal the truth? And if she does, will it give them the relationships they’ve all longed for - or will it drive them further apart?
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Just turned eighteen, Romany is on the cusp of taking her first steps into adulthood when tragedy strikes, and she finds herself suddenly alone without her mother, Angie, the only parent she has ever known. In her final letter, Angie has charged her four closest friends with guiding Romany through her last year of school - but is there an ulterior motive to her unusual dying wish?
\nEach of the four guardians possesses an outlook on life that Angie wants to give her daughter as a legacy. Three of them have known each other since university: the eternally nomadic and exotically named Tiger; the shy and practical Leon with his untapped musical genius; and Maggie, a brilliant lawyer who doesn’t know her own abilities. But the fourth guardian is a mystery to the others: they’ve never even heard of former model Hope before . . .
\nAs the guardians reflect on their friendship with Angie, it becomes apparent that this unusual arrangement is as much about them as it is about Romany. Navigating their grief individually and as a group, what will all five of them learn about themselves, their pasts - and the woman who’s brought them all together?
When Loretta Ashton dies suddenly, her family is shattered. As a devoted wife and mother, Loretta was their rock - a woman admired by the entire community. But at her funeral, an unexpected guest turns their grief into confusion. A stranger claiming to be Loretta’s sister takes a seat with the family, only to vanish before anyone can confront her.
\nThe problem? Loretta was an only child.
\nWhile the rest of the family dismisses the woman as a fraud, Loretta’s daughter Bronte can’t let it go. She had understood her mother’s early life to be unremarkable, but as Bronte digs deeper she uncovers a web of secrets that stretches across decades and continents, connecting her mother to a family in Sicily and a past Loretta went to great lengths to conceal.
\nWhy did Loretta leave her old life behind? And how far had she been willing to go to keep her secrets hidden?
\nAs Bronte unravels the truth, she faces a heartbreaking question: will uncovering her mother’s past destroy the family she left behind - or bring them closer together?
The chaotic but happy equilibrium of the Nightingale family is thrown into disarray when Cecily - whose children can’t remember her ever being remotely spontaneous - disappears to a Greek island with no warning or explanation.
\nHer reasons for doing something so out of character are a total mystery to her three daughters, high-powered executive Felicity, unfulfilled GP Julia and organised mother-of-five Lily. What connection could she possibly have with Kefalonia?
\nBut Cecily has gone to continue a story she thought ended decades ago - one that could have a huge impact on her family. And when she returns, she’ll have to tell them the truth.
\nWill Cecily be able to hold her family together once she reveals her big secret? And might she discover that she’s not the only one with a story to tell?
After discovering her mother’s secret life, Cara doesn’t have much faith in marriage.
\nSo when the love of her life, Simeon, proposes, she struggles to say ‘I do.’ She adores him, but why risk the perfect relationship by signing on a dotted line that could ruin everything? If her parents’ marriage taught her anything, it was that a gold ring doesn’t equal happiness, and she has no desire to follow in their dysfunctional footsteps.
\nBut maybe there’s a bigger picture after all. When a tragic accident brings yet more truths to the surface, Cara is forced to question everything she believes - and fears - about long-term love. And the answers aren’t obvious . . .
When Cara stumbles across a stash of old postcards in the attic, their contents make her question everything she thought she knew.
\nThe story she pieces together is confusing and unsettling, and appears to have been patched over with lies. But who can tell her the truth? With her father sinking into Alzheimer’s and her brother reluctant to help, it seems Cara will never find the answers to her questions. One thing is clear, though: someone knows more than they’re letting on.
\nTorn between loyalty to her family and dread of what she might find, Cara digs into the early years of her parents’ troubled marriage, hunting down long-lost relatives who might help unravel the mystery. But the picture that begins to emerge is not at all the one she’d expected - because as she soon discovers, lies have a habit of multiplying . . .
Pip Appleby seems to have it all, with her prestigious job as a human rights lawyer and her enviable London home. But then a tragic accident stops her life in its tracks, and in an instant everything changes. Retreating to her family’s rural farm and the humble origins she has been trying to hide, Pip is haunted by what she has done.
\nWhen she discovers the diary of actress Evelyn Mountcastle in a box of old books, Pip revels in the opportunity to lose herself in someone else’s life rather than focus on the disaster that is her own. But soon she sees parallels - Evelyn’s life was also beset by tragedy, and, like Pip, she returned to Southwold under a dark cloud.
\nWhen Pip and Evelyn’s paths cross in real life they slowly begin to reveal the hidden stories that are holding them back. Can they help each other forgive what happened in the past and, perhaps, find happiness in the future?
The four Bliss siblings have a loving but complicated bond, but when their mother, Dorothy, dies seemingly without a will, this relationship is put to the test. As the mourning siblings try to make sense of the situation, one of them is caught with a secret: before she died, Dorothy entrusted her favourite daughter with her will and a letter - and told her to destroy them both.
\nOf course it was Anna their mother turned to for this mission. Miriam, the eldest, is far too sensible; Sebastian, the baby, too sensitive; and Clare, the middle child, has always been too rebellious to rely on, and long ago cut herself out of her siblings’ lives.
\nBut what Anna finds in the documents could change everything. Do the other siblings not deserve to know what it is about them that their mother was so desperate to hide? And if it is revealed, will the Bliss family ever be the same again?
When their father dies unexpectedly, siblings Max, Ellie and Nathan can’t even contemplate emptying his house - not least because he spent his last decade curating what feels like a museum to his polished public image. So it is Max’s wife, Caroline, who finds the suitcase under a bed . . . A suitcase stuffed full of an awful lot of cash.
\nThe source of the money is a mystery to them all, and each has a strong opinion about what to do with it. Ellie and her husband James have an expensive lifestyle to maintain and could do with their share of the windfall - James in particular, for reasons he doesn’t dare reveal. Nathan can’t be trusted with money, as the others all know; he’s desperate to get his hands on some (or all) of the cash. But Caroline is the one guarding the suitcase, and she’s insisting to Max that they take it to the police.
\nThe three siblings have always been close. But now, with this money from nowhere threatening to rewrite what they thought they knew about their father and their family, nothing seems certain. Could it really tear them apart?
As single mother Leah struggles to get her children ready one morning, the doorbell rings. Standing on the doorstep of their terraced house in Whitley Bay is a well-dressed stranger, Clio, who feels an emotional tie to the house that she can’t explain. The story should end there, but a long-buried secret is already on its way to the surface . . .
\nIn some ways the two women couldn’t be more different: Leah’s a mother of two and the daughter of a barmaid; Clio’s a perennially single heiress to her baroness mother’s estate. But where Leah lacks grown-up company, Clio lacks any experience of the real world, and the unlikely friendship sparked by their curious first meeting offers both of them a welcome respite from the routine of their lives.
\nIt is a friendship that will answer questions neither of them knew to ask, uncovering secret stories from the past that have stayed hidden for decades. But will it also be the catalyst for them to finally feel that they belong?
Genevieve Charbonneau talks to ghosts and has a special relationship with rattlesnakes. In her travels, she’s wandered throughout the South, working in a Louisiana circus and as a hootchy kootch dancer in Texas. Now for the first time in a decade, she’s allowed her winding path to bring her to the site of her grandmother’s Arkansas farmhouse, a place hallowed in her memory.
\nDisguised by years in exile and a name she found on a gravestone, Genevieve intends only to visit briefly and leave. But a chance meeting with a guilt-ridden young Vietnam veteran draws her into more unexpected connections. Her hard-won independence inspires an abused woman and her daughters to find their own path to empowerment, and a hypocritical preacher is brought to a long-deserved reckoning.
\nWith undertones of magical realism and dark humor, here is a powerful story of discovering - and sometimes rediscovering - one’s place in the world, and the unexpected challenges and gifts that present themselves along the way.
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Fin grew up by an observatory, learning about telescopes and planets, inspired by the passions of her mother and father, then leaders in their fields of astrophotography and astronomy. Those days are long over. Now Fin, her mother, Dianella, and a band of outliers live deep off the grid, always on amber alert and always ready to run.
\nIn the outside world, things are not extinctions and a loss of diversity threaten what's left of the environment. With a new disaster looming, Fin finds herself thrust into an unlikely partnership with a stranger who has appeared in their camp. Terry is one of a new breed of evolved humans, the Incompletes, who are widely distrusted. But the pair will need to work together during a dangerous journey if they are to play their part in a plan to help restore the natural world - and humankind.
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Selina Lennox is a Bright Young Thing. Her life is a whirl of parties and drinking, pursued by the press and staying on just the right side of scandal, all while running from the life her parents would choose for her.
Lawrence Weston is a penniless painter who stumbles into Selina's orbit one night and can never let her go even while knowing someone of her stature could never end up with someone of his. Except Selina falls hard for Lawrence, envisioning a life of true happiness. But when tragedy strikes, Selina finds herself choosing what's safe over what's right.
Spanning two decades and a seismic shift in British history as World War II approaches, Iona Grey's The Glittering Hour is an epic novel of passion, heartache and loss.
Standing in the remote windswept moors of Northern England, Coldwell Hall is the perfect place to hide. For the past five years, Kate Furniss has maintained her professional mask so carefully that she almost believes she is the character she has created: Coldwell’s respectable housekeeper.
\nIt is the summer of 1911 that brings new faces above and below the stairs of Coldwell Hall - including the handsome and mysterious new footman, Jem Arden. Just as the house’s shuttered rooms open, so does Kate’s guarded heart to a love affair that is as intense as it is forbidden. But Kate can feel her control slipping as Jem harbors secrets of his own.
\nTold in alternating timelines from the last sun-drenched summer of the Edwardian Age to the mud-filled trenches of WWI, The Housekeeper's Secret opens its door to a world of romance, the truths we hold onto, and the past we must let go.
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Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan puts a face on the victims of violent crimes. She’s working on the skull of a newly discovered Jane Doe, her face destroyed beyond recognition. But whoever killed this poor girl wasn’t trying to hide her identity. The plan is far more horrifying. As the face begins to appear under Eve’s skilled hands, she gets the shock of her life: The victim is someone she knows all too well. Someone who isn’t dead. Yet.
To stop a twisted psychopath, Eve must put her own life on the line. But that’s not the worst of it - when her adopted daughter, Jane, reveals a bizarre connection to the case, Eve can’t stop her from joining the hunt for the killer . . . a chase that will lead to a terrifying confrontation.
Delilah Winter is one of the hottest pop stars on the planet, so how in the world was she kidnapped right in the middle of a show at the famous Hollywood Bowl? If anyone can figure it out, it's Dr. Kendra Michaels, who works with local and federal authorities on only the most impossible cases.
\nBlind for the first twenty years of her life until a revolutionary surgical procedure allowed her to regain her sight, Kendra uses her powers of observation - honed during her years in the dark - to detect what other investigators don't. She agrees to lead the race to rescue the young singer before time runs out.
\nJoined by Jessie Mercado, the singer's former bodyguard and a military hero, Kendra closes in on the hideout location but not before casualties mount up. Desperate for leads, Kendra must set aside her personal feelings when agent-for-hire Adam Lynch also volunteers his special skills to aid in the search.
\nBut as the abductor's true purpose becomes clear, the trio uncover a plot they never could have imagined—leading to a showdown they won't soon forget.
Eve Duncan returns in a thriller that pits her against the most evil mind she has ever encountered: a ruthless killer who taunts her with his every move . . . and who has a special affinity for blood.
\nWhen a Georgia senator’s daughter is found murdered, and her body drained of blood, Eve Duncan is drawn into the web of Kevin Jelak - a serial murderer who is on Eve’s short list of killers who might know something about her missing daughter Bonnie. When a goblet of blood is found in Eve’s refrigerator, she knows the taunting is over . . . and the games have begun.
\nAs Eve and Jelak engage in a dance of death, Eve must call upon those she loves and trusts the most . . . even if it means bringing them into the game as well.
Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan has been summoned to Baton Rouge by a high-ranking government official to identify the remains of an unknown murder victim. Eve wants nothing to do with the project. She has finally found peace from her own tragic past, living a quiet life with Atlanta detective Joe Quinn and her adopted daughter, Jane. Then a stunning series of seemingly unrelated events turns Eve's new world upside down.
Now, in a special government facility, she takes on the project of identifying the victim's skeleton. But she hasn't even begun when another death occurs. Someone totally ruthless, who can strike anywhere at any time and with seeming immunity, is determined to put a halt to her work, her life, and the lives of those she loves. Eve has stumbled onto a chilling conspiracy. There is only one person who can give her the devastating truth . . . and he's already dead.
When Eve Duncan gave birth to her daughter, she experienced a love she never knew existed. Nothing would stand in the way of giving Bonnie a wonderful life - until the unthinkable happened and the seven-year-old vanished into thin air. Eve found herself in the throes of a nightmare from which there was no escape. But a new Eve emerged: a woman who would use her remarkable talent as a forensic sculptor to help others find closure in the face of tragedy.
\nNow with the help of her beloved Joe Quinn and CIA agent Catherine Ling, Eve has come closer than ever to the truth. But the deeper she digs, the more she realizes that Bonnie's father is a key player in solving this monstrous puzzle. And that Bonnie's disappearance was not as random as everyone had always believed. . .
Diane Connors is a dedicated doctor with the world’s biggest secret, a discovery that could have shocking global ramifications. But while conducting private research trials, word has gotten out. The wrong people have heard the news and now want to hide Diane’s achievement for their own ends.
\nWith nowhere else to turn, Diane finds herself on the doorstep of the last man she wants to ask for help: her ex-husband, Joe Quinn. Joe has remarried, and he and his wife, Eve Duncan, seem blissfully happy in their quiet, rural life until they are faced with the challenge of risking it all - even their marriage itself - for the greater good . . .
\nNow Eve is trapped in a web of murder and deceit as powerful enemies rush to cover up the truth, determined that Diane’s discovery goes with her to the grave - even if Eve and Joe get buried with her.
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Jane MacGuire is enjoying a period of domestic bliss as she focuses on her art and her partner Seth Caleb uses his unique abilities as an agent for the MI6 intelligence service. But when Seth crosses crime lord Hugh Bohdan, he incurs the wrath of one of the world’s most powerful criminal empires . . . one whose tentacles reach across the globe and even to the idyllic Scottish retreat where Jane is working.
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Soon Jane is on the run, struggling to stay one step ahead of Bohdan’s army and his devastating high-tech weaponry. Even with the assistance of Earl John MacDuff, she finds danger at every turn. But with that peril comes an astonishing discovery: a 200-year-old secret on the brink of becoming lost to history.
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Jane and Seth must join forces to unlock the fascinating puzzle, even as they hurtle toward a lethal final confrontation in the Highlands. But before their adventure is over, Jane and Seth will encounter their biggest shock of all . . . and realise nothing can be the same for them ever again.
When CIA agent Alisa Flynn flaunts the rules by breaking into a mansion in the middle of the night, she skillfully circumvents alarms and outwits guards only to find herself standing in billionaire Gabe Korgan's study . . . busted by Korgan himself. This could cost her her job unless, in a split second, she can turn the tables and try to convince him to join her on the most important mission of her life.
In a ripped-from-the-headlines plot, schoolgirls in Africa have been kidnapped, and Alisa knows that Korgan has the courage, financial means, and high-tech weaponry to help rescue them. With so many innocent lives hanging in the balance, what she doesn't reveal is that one of those schoolgirls is like a little sister to her. But when the truth gets out, the stakes grow even higher.
Calling in additional assistance from renowned horse whisperer Margaret Douglas, Alisa and Gabe lay their plans, only to see them descend into chaos as the line between right and wrong wavers before them like a mirage. Every path is strewn with pitfalls, each likely to get them -- or the hostages -- killed. But with the help of a brave team and a horse with the heart of a warrior, they might just get out of this alive.
A CIA agent’s two-year-old child was stolen in the night as a brutal act of vengeance. Now, eight years later, this torment is something Catherine Ling awakens to every day. Her friends, family, and colleagues tell her to let go, move on, accept that her son is never coming back. But she can’t.
\nCatherine needs to find someone as driven and obsessed as she is to help her – and that person is Eve Duncan. She knows that Eve shares her nightmare, since closure is also something that eludes Eve after the disappearance of her daughter Bonnie.
\nNow, Eve must take her talents as a forensic sculptor to another level, using age progression as a way to unite Catherine with her child. As Eve gets drawn deeper into Catherine’s horror, she must face looming demons of her own.
\nBonnie’s killer is still out there. And a new killer is taunting Eve and Catherine at every turn. Is Catherine’s son alive, or not? These two women endure the worst fear any mother can imagine in Iris Johansen’s latest thrill ride, a gut-wrenching journey into the darkest places of the soul.
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The FBI doesn’t usually consult with music therapists to solve their cases. But Kendra Michael’s astonishing powers of observation and analysis have made her a favorite of law enforcement agencies all across the country.
\nBlind for the first twenty years of her life, she cares little for investigative work but can’t deny her unique skill, or the results she’s been able to facilitate. Kendra learned at an early age to become hyper-aware of her surroundings, perfecting the art of picking up the most subtle audio, olfactory, and tactile cues in the world around her. Like a secret weapon, she is in high demand.
Former FBI agent Adam Lynch, known as The Puppetmaster, has weapons of his own. He’s a notorious master manipulator, skillfully handling criminals and colleagues alike to get the results he wants. Now he needs Kendra’s special brand of help, but she’s not interested until Lynch reveals that Agent Jeff Stedler - Kendra’s ex - is missing and may have run directly into the path of a serial killer.
What began as a heinous murder investigation escalates into something even larger and more frightening: a multi-million dollar conspiracy to hide a secret that’s worth killing for, again and again and again.
“Don’t kill her. She’s no good to us dead.” These words haunt Jane MacGuire after a shocking attack shatters her world in an instant. Was it a random kidnapping attempt–or the countdown to something far more sinister?
Who is after her–and what do they want so badly they’ll kill anyone in their way? That’s what Jane is determined to find out, without the help of the police, the FBI, or her adoptive parents, forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and her husband, Joe Quinn, of the Atlanta PD–because whoever is after her won’t hesitate to hurt those she loves the most. Now Jane will go on the run with the only man who may be more dangerous than those who are pursuing her. A smuggler, a con man, and who knew what else, Mark Trevor had his own mysterious reasons for wanting to keep Jane safe and out of the hands of a killer obsessed with a two-thousand-year-old mystery that could rock the modern-day world.
Orphaned at an early age, Jane grew up the hard way, but she was given a new life, a loving family, and a chance to pursue her interest in one of the greatest archaeological finds ever unearthed. Now someone was trying to destroy that new life before it could even get started. The past is returning with the kind of vengeance that knows no mercy. The countdown has already begun, and it’s approaching zero faster than anyone thinks.
Despite her tragic childhood, violin prodigy Cara Delaney has finally found peace in her career as a professional musician and stability in her relationship with her guardians, forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and ex-Navy SEAL Joe Quinn. If only Jock Gavin, Cara's lifelong friend and a man with his own twisted history, would even talk to her, everything would be perfect.
\nBut the carefully constructed life Cara has built for herself is suddenly threatened when she is kidnapped by a mysterious man from her grandfather's past, setting off a violent chain of events that puts everyone Cara loves in danger.
\nWill Cara become a tribute to her family's dark past, or will she be able to keep herself and her loved ones alive?
\nWorld-renowned forensic sculptor Eve Duncan’s skills frequently make her a target. And in this epic adventure, they make her the first choice to create an Egyptian death mask for a nefarious potential client. But Eve cannot be bought, not for all the riches in a gold mine. Her would-be employer soon realises that he must threaten the lives of those she holds dear to procure Eve’s services and force her to travel to Africa to mold the priceless mask.
\nEve knows that her husband, Joe Quinn, is out there somewhere, searching tirelessly for a way to help. Joe has back-up from Alex Dominic, a mercenary for hire, but nothing will make it easier to set his emotions aside in order to navigate the impenetrable jungle and mastermind a breathtaking escape.
\nAgainst an unpredictable enemy, Eve and Joe must each focus on their own unique abilities to get out alive. The future of their love and their family depends upon it.
Kendra Michaels is reluctant to help the FBI with the most recent case they've brought to her . . . until she hears the details: The body was found just blocks away from Kendra’s condo. The man was carrying an envelope with Kendra’s name on it, and inside was an SD card with what appears to be an innocuous video of a wedding reception. And just one week before the attempted delivery of this mysterious video, the groom in the video was murdered.
As the body count rises, Kendra joins forces with private investigator Jessie Mercado and agent-for-hire Adam Lynch as they discover that each victim played a part in convicting a serial killer years before. Someone has clearly taken up his mantle to exact a sadistic form of vengeance. But who is it? A family member? An old partner? Or is it possible that the wrong man was convicted and the serial killer himself has returned to continue his sick spree?
Eve Duncan and her adopted daughter, Jane Macguire, are pitted against the members of a secretive cult who have targeted Jane and have decided that she will be their ultimate sacrifice. In eight days they will come for her. In eight days, what Jane fears the most will become a reality.
\nIn eight days, she will die. It all begins with a painting that Jane, an artist, displays in her Parisian gallery. The painting is called \"Guilt\" and Jane has no idea how or why she painted the portrait of the chilling face. But the members of a cult that dates back to the time of Christ believe that Jane's blasphemy means she must die. But first, she will lead them to an ancient treasure whose value is beyond price.
\nThis elusive treasure, and Jane's death, are all that they need for their power to come to ultimate fruition. With Eve's help, can Jane escape before the clock stops ticking?
Eve Duncan’s mission in life is to bring closure to the families who have experienced the agony of a missing child. As a forensic sculptor, she is able to piece together bones, create a face, and bring an identity to a child who would have otherwise gone unidentified . . . maybe forever. Eve is brilliant, and driven, and tormented - because her own daughter, Bonnie, was taken from her years ago. And Eve has never discovered what happened to her. But now a name from the past resurfaces, thanks to CIA agent Catherine Ling who knows all too well what it’s like to lose a child.
\nAfter teaming up with Agent Ling to find her missing son, Eve and Catherine share a bond forged by their mutual pain. Now, Catherine challenges Eve with a name: John Gallo. A man from Eve’s past. A man, seemingly raised from the dead, whose whereabouts are unknown. Could Gallo be the missing piece to the puzzle that has haunted Eve for years? Why was he in Atlanta just before Bonnie’s disappearance?
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An unidentified skull...
A trail of terrifying secrets...
And a woman whose talented hands could reveal the shocking truth . . .
As a forensic sculptor, Eve Duncan helps identify the dead from their skulls. Her own daughter murdered and her body never found, the job is Eve's way of coming to terms with her personal nightmare. But more terror lies ahead when she accepts work from billionaire John Logan.
Beneath her gifted hands a face emerges from the skull he has given her to reconstruct - a face no one was ever meant to see. Now Eve is trapped in a frightening web of murder and deceit. Powerful enemies are determined to cover up the truth, and they will make certain that truth goes to the grave...even if Eve gets buried with it.
Archaeologist Riley Smith has been obsessed with Helen of Troy since she was a small girl, trailing her professor father all over the world in search of the tomb of the world’s most beautiful woman. Professor Smith put his life on the line to prove that, instead of a myth, Helen had been a living, breathing queen.
\nRiley seeks the help of forensic sculptor Eve Duncan, who has the unusual skills necessary to recreate the face that launched a thousand ships - revealing Helen’s true appearance for the first time in history. But convincing Eve to take on the challenge will be difficult because her efforts could come at great personal risk to her and her family . . .
\nTomb raiders have murdered Riley’s father, and now she is more determined than ever to reach the burial site first, avenge his death, and enlist Eve’s aid. Also on hand to help is dashing fixer and treasure hunter Michael Cade, but could he have his own secret agenda when it comes to finding Helen?
\nNow both Riley and Eve are in danger and in a race across one of the most remote parts of the world. All they have is their trust in each other and their belief in a dream as they hunt for Helen.
Kendra Michaels uses her heightened powers of deduction to draw out a serial killer who has not been seen or heard from in over fifteen years.
\nChloe and Sloane Morgan were only children when their mother was the second victim of the Bayside Strangler. Now, after spending fifteen years trying to discover his identity, the sisters have suddenly vanished. Were they getting too close to the truth? The police consider their interest in the crime to be just a coincidence and have little motivation to pursue the cold case.
\nArmed with the box of photos, videos, police reports, and notes gathered by the sisters over the years - plus the extraordinary senses from being blind before recovering her sight via a revolutionary surgical procedure - Kendra follows the sisters' trail of clues. Little does she realise that her search is about to unleash a long-dormant killer on San Diego.
\nWith help from government agent-for-hire Adam Lynch, Kendra must race to discover the identity of an infamous killer, not only to save the lives of the two sisters but also untold others.
World-famous forensic sculptor Eve Duncan has landed in a well-guarded hospital room in Carmel, California. But hidden danger looms for Eve, her beloved Joe Quinn, and Cara Delaney, the young girl they've both sworn to protect. With Cara's enemies on the move, Eve has no choice but to flee the hospital - no matter what the doctors say. Her protective instincts in full gear, she decides that their best chance of survival is to get out of the country. She turns to her daughter, Jane MacGuire, for help.
\nFor years, Jane has been avoiding pressure to find a treasure thought to be buried in Scotland - but she's finally succumbed to John MacDuff's pleas to track it down. Eve and Cara join Jane in the remote mountains, but soon realise that nowhere is far enough away from the ruthless predators who are on their trail . . .
Logan Tanner lives the exhilarating life of a professional gambler, taking risks with nerves of steel. From casinos in Macau to Monte Carlo to Milan, he’s racked up a fortune and become a living legend. But all the glitz and glamor hide a dark and violent past as an extractor - a world that comes rushing back to him when the beautiful and innocent Lara Balkon enters his life.
\nSoon Logan is drawn into the conflict between two Russian mafia bosses over Lara, whose life now hangs in the balance. Logan has been offered something more valuable to him than money - information he desperately needs - in exchange for getting Lara out of Russia and to safety. Once together, Tanner discovers that Lara is a force to be reckoned with in her own right. Tanner’s search for the truth leads them to the bright lights of Las Vegas. Where the person who was hunting Lara now lies in wait for them.
\nWith the stakes climbing with each deadly confrontation, Logan and Lara are soon catapulted into a game against pure evil. The odds are stacked against them, but it’s a game they know they must play . . . even if it may cost them their lives.
Dr. Kendra Michaels, blind for the first twenty years of her life before gaining her sight via a revolutionary surgical procedure, is a renowned investigator known for her razor-sharp senses - honed during her years in the dark - and keen deductive abilities.
\nNow her skills are needed uncomfortably close to home. Two staff members have been murdered at a school for the blind where Kendra spent her formative years. But the murders are puzzlingly dissimilar: one victim was brutally stabbed, while the other was killed by a bullet to the head. Are the crimes related? Or is...
She's broken free. But danger is in hot pursuit. And rescue is nowhere in sight . . .
\nEve Duncan is on the run. She has no time to savour the victory of escaping from Jim Doane. He's back on her trail and closing in fast. At the mercy of the Colorado wilderness, she struggles to outwit him, but the odds are stacked high in his favour.
\nDoane desperately needs Eve's skill to reconstruct the skull of his son - a sick and twisted killer who still holds Doane in thrall from beyond the grave - and like a man possessed, he refuses to let anything stand in his way. The CIA has its own reasons for tracking Eve's nemesis.
\nAnd those closest to Eve - Joe Quinn and Jane MacGuire - are doing everything in their power to rescue her, while a hired gun named Lee Zander is on a personal mission to eliminate Doane. But with Zander's checkered history, can he be trusted to save Eve?
\nUsing everything from cutting-edge technology to animal whisperers, the hunt for Eve is on. And the hourglass is almost empty.
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Kendra Michaels, blind before gaining her sight via a revolutionary surgical procedure, offers her razor-sharp senses to assist her friend Jessie Mercado in a baffling case. An army vet and former bodyguard for the rich and famous, Jessie has faced all kinds of danger but one thing the motorcycle-riding private investigator has never encountered before is an incarceration consultant.
\nPreparing wealthy people to go to prison is big business. When Owen Blake of Mamertine Consulting hires Mercado to find his missing partner, their suspect list is filled with recently released white-collar criminals, a few drug kingpins, and a couple of murderers to keep things interesting.
\nAs witnesses turn up dead and car chases leave destruction in their wake, Jessie and Kendra learn just how far someone will go to keep the fate of one man hidden. But why? Together they must hunt down the lethal secrets of Blake’s company, hell-bent on staying one step ahead of disaster.
A merciless killer on the hunt . . . an innocent child in his sights . . . a woman driven to the edge to stop him . . .
\nThe killer knows Eve Duncan all too well. He knows the pain she feels for her murdered daughter, Bonnie, whose body has never been found. He knows that as one of the nation's top forensic sculptors she'll insist on identifying the nine skeletons unearthed on a bluff near Georgia's Talladega Falls. He knows she won't be able to resist the temptation of believing that one of those skeletons might be her daughter's.
\nBut that is only the beginning of the killer's sadistic game. He wants Eve one on one, and he'll use his ace in the hole to make sure she complies. And he won't stop playing until he claims the prize he wants most: Eve's life.
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Hu Chang is calling Catherine to a new task: rescue an imprisoned journalist in Tibet—a woman who has been subjected to unspeakable horrors. Her connection to Hu Chang is unknown. What's also unknown is that Catherine will be going up against a man so evil, his crimes have stretched back into this area for forty years.
\nIs Catherine being used as a pawn by Hu Chang? Can she save a woman she's never even met? And will either of them live to see tomorrow?
A serial killer is on the loose in San Diego, and he has a most unusual M.O.: With each kill, he leaves behind objects with unclear meanings. Most of the recent killings are centered near Kendra Michaels’ home and office, so it comes as no great surprise when the FBI shows up at her door. The investigators soon make a startling discovery: the left-behind objects are actually souvenirs of other unsolved serial murder cases in various U.S. cities. And the new cases feature “holdback” characteristics of the other murders unknown to the general public. Kendra realises that the killer has come to challenge and taunt her.
\nThe investigators become his newest targets, even as Kendra slowly begins to suspect that one of them may be the killer himself. She must find the killer as the body count rises, and to do so she relies on her own ”dream team” of agent-for-hire Adam Lynch and private investigator Jessie Mercado. They must risk everything to defeat a psychopath whose terrifying plan is years in the making.
Mind Game takes Jane MacGuire back to Scotland where she continues her search for the treasure she's been chasing for years. But now she's being plagued by dreams of a girl in danger. Who is this girl, and what is she trying to tell Jane? And will Jane figure it out before it's too late - for her and the mysterious young woman? Things are further complicated when Seth Caleb comes back into Jane's life. This time he's the one in trouble, and Jane will find herself pulled unexpectedly into his world as she fights to save him.
With the adventure, intrigue, and explosive energy that Iris Johansen fans love, Mind Game is a high-octane thriller that readers won't be able to put down.
After scoring a plea deal in a high-profile murder trial, serial killer James Michael Barrett leads a grim parade of law enforcement officers to the body of his last victim. At the alleged burial site, the officers swing their shovels down and are met with a strange metallic sound they weren’t expecting. In a blink, a terrific explosion rocks the woods, killing Barrett and most of the officers instantly.
\nThe detonation is only the beginning of a shocking case for FBI consultant Kendra Michaels - a string of heinous murders in the style of the very-dead Barrett mysteriously continue, and it becomes clear that he may not have been working alone. As the crimes accelerate, Kendra reluctantly accepts help from college student Tricia Walton, the only survivor of Barrett’s attacks. But the killer has a terrifying plan that Kendra and her team are only beginning to understand.
Kendra Michaels was instrumental in bringing serial killer Eric Colby to justice, but despite his apparent execution at San Quentin, Kendra is convinced that Colby is still alive. The problem is that she can’t prove it. Even her razor-sharp powers of observation - developed to an amazing capacity during the twenty years she spent blind, and now in constant demand by law enforcement agencies - have gotten her nowhere.
But then a reporter who very publicly humiliated Kendra is murdered. Visiting the crime scene in search of anything that might link the brutal homicide to Colby, Kendra instead finds evidence that points to her. Finally Colby's master plan becomes clear to her: he is framing Kendra for murder.
Suspicions mount and Kendra is thrust into deadly pursuit to clear her name and catch the killer no one believes exists anymore. A killer who is always nearby, watching, waiting to make his next move, although everyone assumes him to be dead. A killer whose trail of destruction is invisible to the naked eye, despite the carnage he leaves in his wake. It will take everything Kendra has to find Colby and stop him - and save her own life one more time.
Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan risked it all to protect Cara Delaney from the enemies who want her dead. The journey has led them from California to a remote mountain in the Scottish highlands - and earned Eve the distinction of becoming their next target. When, despite all precautions, Cara is taken, Eve must hunt down the very people who want to kill her in order to save the young girl.
\nAt a time in her life when she has more at stake than ever before, she unhesitatingly puts it all on the line in a pulse-pounding mission of rescue and survival.
Born blind, Kendra Michaels spent the first twenty years of her life living in the darkness. Then, thanks to a revolutionary medical procedure developed by England’s Night Watch Project, she was given the gift of sight. Her highly-developed senses (honed during her years in the dark), combined with her new found vision, have made her a remarkable investigator, sought after by law-enforcement agencies all over the country. But her newest case finds her uncovering a deadly truth about the shadowy organisation that has given her so much.
Kendra is surprised when she is visited by Dr. Charles Waldridge, the researcher who gave her sight. But all is not well with the brilliant surgeon; he’s troubled by something he can’t discuss with Kendra. When Waldridge disappears that very night, Kendra is on the case, recruiting government agent-for-hire Adam Lynch to join her on a trail that leads to the snow-packed California mountains. There they make a gruesome discovery: the corpse of one of Dr. Waldridge’s associates, brutally murdered in the freezing snow.
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But it’s only the first casualty in a white-knuckle confrontation with a deadly enemy who will push Kendra to the limits of her abilities. Soon she must fight for her very survival as she tries to stop the killing . . . and unearth the deadly secret of Night Watch.
Margaret Douglas has worked hard to put her painful past behind her. Raised off the grid in an abusive home, her only escape was the nearby forest where she sought refuge whenever she could. There, in the peaceful woods, she discovered a strange gift: the ability to understand animals and to communicate with them. And so those creatures became her only friends, her only joy during a desolate childhood.
\nNow Margaret wants nothing more than to live a quiet life, close to the animals and under the radar. But her abilities have not gone unnoticed and there are those who would use them for their own purposes. Determined not to be a pawn in anyone’s game, every time someone gets too close, Margaret uproots her life and outruns them.
When John Lassiter breaks into Margaret’s apartment, she vanishes again, but Lassiter has good reason to be persistent. As a CIA operative, he owes his life to his men , one of whom is being held captive by an unrelenting enemy - an enemy who has set his sights on Margaret. Which means that Lassiter must control her to use her as bait.
With danger in hot pursuit, Margaret finds herself matching wits with a man who refuses to stop or be stopped. Turning from the hunted to the hunter, Margaret must use everything she has ever learned to not only survive, but to defeat a great evil. And to prove once and for all that she’s no easy target.
Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and ex-Navy Seal Joe Quinn are about to give Seth Caleb their trust for the most important duty of his life: keeping their daughter, Jane, safe at any cost. Her talent as an artist has caught the attention of a brilliant psychopath with a violent past.
Seth, Jane's strongest ally and fiercest protector, is determined to keep her out of danger, but that becomes nearly impossible when Jane is forced to take matters into her own hands and confronts the madman who wants her for himself...and wants Seth Caleb dead.
As Jane and Seth chase down their blood-thirsty adversary, they also have to reckon with their own epic love story. Can they finally commit to a life together, no matter how uncertain? As the two come face to face with danger, one thing is made clear: it will take both of them to confront and defeat this evil.
Do you still miss your little Bonnie? This one sentence, spoken by a male voice in anonymous phone call, is all it takes to drag Eve Duncan right back to that horrifying moment years ago when her only daughter vanished without a trace. Since then, Eve’s life has become an obsession to find her daughter’s remains. Only one man - a brilliant, ruthless killer - knows the truth about what happened to Bonnie. But taunting Eve might be his first and last mistake . . .
\nFor Eve is armed with more than just her talent as a forensic sculptor. She brings with her former Navy SEAL Joe Quinn, an Atlanta detective who will do anything to help Eve put the pain of Bonnie’s death to rest. Even if he has to lie to the woman he cares about the most. And even if this killer wants nothing more than to lure Eve further and further into his swamp of madness . . .
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As a former Navy SEAL turned cop, Joe Quinn has seen the face of evil and knows just how deadly it can be. When he first met Eve Duncan, he never expected to fall in love with a woman whose life would be defined by her dual desires to bring home her missing daughter and discover the truth behind her disappearance - no matter how devastating.
\nWith the help of CIA agent Catherine Ling, they make a shocking discovery that sheds new light on young Bonnie’s abduction and puts Quinn squarely in the crosshairs of danger. Eve’s first love, John Gallo, a soldier supposedly killed in the line of duty, is very much alive - and very much a threat.
\nEmotionally charged, with one shock after another, Quinn reveals the electricity of Joe and Eve’s first connection, and how they fell in love in the midst of haunting tragedy. As their search takes them deeper and deeper into a web of murder and madness, Joe and Eve must confront their most primal fears . . . and test their resolve to uncover the ultimate bone-chilling truth.
As part of an elite K-9 search and rescue team, Sarah Patrick and her golden retriever, Monty, have a gift for finding what no one else can - whether it's a survivor buried alive by an earthquake or the skeleton of a murdered child. But their latest assignment is not like the others. This time Sarah is being forced to take part in a deadly mission . . . by a man who knows enough about her past to ensure her cooperation. A man who won't take no for an answer.
\nJohn Logan is used to getting what he wants, and what he wants now is Sarah's help. His top-secret venture has been sabotaged, its facilities destroyed, and its handpicked staff massacred. The sole survivor is being held for ransom. Logan knows that the only way to save the man - and the secrets he holds - is to find him as soon as possible.Smart, tough, and uncompromising, Sarah is furious when she is strong-armed into joining Logan on his search. And once she takes the perilous assignment, she realises that Logan's promises that she and Monty will be safe may not be enough to protect them.
\nBecause a killer is devising a sadistic vengeance . . . and he may soon find use for Sarah. Racing against time to stop the bloodshed before more victims are claimed, both Sarah and Logan will look straight into the heart of true evil. And when the killer's search for revenge finally ends, no one will ever be the same again . . .
Eve Duncan is the most sought-after artist in the field of forensic sculpting. Dedicated to her work ever since her daughter Bonnie was taken and killed at the age of seven, Eve feels a sense of duty to those whose lives were lost and whose bones are now in her hands.
\nWhen a sheriff in California contacts her with a request for help on the reconstruction of the skull of a nine-year-old girl whose body has been buried for eight years, his intensity and investment in the case puzzle her. But when the ghost of the girl begins communicating with her, Eve finds herself wrapped up in the case more intensely than she could have ever imagined.
\nNot since Bonnie has Eve had such an experience, and suddenly she finds herself determined to solve the murder and help the little girl find peace. Except that the killer is still out there, and he knows Eve is on the case. And he won't rest until anything and anyone that could reveal his identity is eliminated . . .
Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan is once again thrown into a deadly game of intrigue when she receives a cryptic package containing a skull and a two sided mirror. Eve is determined to reconstruct the skull and uncover the mystery of the person's identity, and when she does, the face of a beautiful woman begins to emerge. But who is she?
\nAs Eve gets closer and closer to finding the answer, she becomes swept up in a lethal chase that spans continents and threatens to destroy the family that she has worked so hard to bring together. Eve and her team must work quickly to discover who is behind the murder - and maybe even prevent more loss of life. But how do you fight a killer who is willing to destroy anyone as a means to an end?
\nShe was safe in a world of darkness. Now danger threatens in the cold light of day . . .
\nBefore the experimental surgery that gave her sight, Kendra Michaels developed her other senses to an amazing capacity. Now she can identify a Nissan by the sound of its engine, a Norelco electric razor by the pattern of stubble it leaves behind, or an obscure colorless fire accelerant by its sweet smell. Law enforcement agencies clamor for her rare powers of perception and observation, too often disrupting the life she has built helping others through music therapy. Because so very often, only Kendra can get the job done.
But in this case, it's Kendra who first realises that the apparent traffic accident on San Diego's historic Cabrillo Bridge is in fact a murder scene, and she rushes to alert the police before crucial evidence is destroyed. As the body count rises and one murder unveils another, a gruesome pattern emerges.
Someone is killing people in ways that mirror Kendra's most notorious cases. She has a fan: someone who admires her work and is twisted enough to show that admiration through murder - while naming himself after the biggest art forger of the 20th century. He views himself not as a monster but as an artist. And he is not working alone.
In Iris Johansen's Sight Unseen, as the darkness closes in, near enough to touch Kendra and those she loves, Kendra must come face to face with her greatest fears - and her most ruthless enemy. A man who moves through the shadows, a man she may even know, who hides behind the mask of sanity, sight unseen.
Is she dead or alive? That is the question on everybody’s lips. Eve appears to have been killed - that’s what everyone attending her funeral thinks, at least. But not even some of her top-brass colleagues know for sure whether her death is a hoax - a way to ensnare her brutal captor, Jim Doane, once or for all.
\nBut even if Eve really is still alive, how much longer can this charade continue before she falls into even greater danger? CIA agent Catherine Ling will waste no time trying to find out. Years ago, Eve risked everything to help Catherine find her missing son. Now Catherine, along with Eve’s beloved Joe Quinn and Jane MacGuire, will go to the ends of the earth to save her . . .
From Iris Johansen comes a new thriller that will have Eve Duncan questioning everything she thought she knew about her family and her past
\nOne woman held captive for decades . . .
\nAnother one freed by the truth . . .
\nForensic sculptor Eve Duncan knows what it's like to be haunted by the past. For years after her daughter Bonnie was stolen from her, she fought for closure. But now as she's striving to begin anew, she can't shake the feeling that something terrible is about to happen - or maybe already has. When her mother, Sandra, asks for help in finding a missing friend named Beth Avery, Eve is sure that she's hiding something. It’s odd that Sandra would get involved at all, and the fact that she adamantly refuses to go to the police for help reinforces Eve’s suspicions that something is very wrong.
\nEve learns that Beth has been locked away in a mental hospital for years, which makes it even harder to understand how she could have disappeared. As Sandra reluctantly reveals small pieces of the truth about Beth's identity, Eve is shocked to discover that their lives are strangely entwined, and Beth's disappearance now puts them all in grave danger.
\nDesperate, Eve enlists a secret weapon to pick up Beth's trail: rogue profiler, Kendra Michaels. With an uncanny ability to detect clues and solve puzzles, Kendra begins to uncover the bizarre circumstances of Beth's escape from what should have been the safety of her hospital room. Beth is on the run, and as her mind clears - detoxing from the drugs that have held her prisoner - she begins to see the threads of a twisted plot within the powerful Avery family, threatening to destroy Beth and anyone else who might jeopardize the high-stakes game that is already in play.
A journalist shows up on Eve Duncan's doorstep with a plea for help. Jill Cassidy has just come from a small African village with a heart wrenching story: half the villagers - many of them children - have been killed in a horrific attack by guerilla soldiers, the bodies burned beyond recognition. Now, the families desperately need Eve's help to get closure and begin to heal.
But when Eve arrives in the remote jungle, she begins to suspect that Jill's plea may have been a cover story for a deeper, more sinister plot. Isolated and unsure who she can trust, Eve finds herself stranded in an unstable country where violence threatens to break out again at any moment and with only her own instincts to rely on if she hopes to get home to her family alive . . .
Eve Duncan has turned down the job twice already. Her skill and devotion in identifying murder victims and helping bring their killers to justice may be world-renowned. But Eve works exclusively for law enforcement and the families of the innocent, and the man on the other end of the phone is many things - none of them law-abiding or innocent.
\nOne of the world’s most wanted men, little is really known about Luis Montalvo except that he is extraordinarily dangerous and that he never takes no for an answer. Now he wants Eve’s help in the worst way. For he believes they have something in common - and he’s about to prove it with a grisly warning.
\nEve will leave everything and everyone behind, even the man she trusts and loves the most, Atlanta detective Joe Quinn, to travel to Montalvo’s luxurious armed compound in the Colombian jungle to identify the skull he has recovered. She has agreed to this devil’s bargain to save an innocent family, but also for a reason she can’t admit to Joe, to the CIA, to anyone. For the man in the jungle has promised to be able to give Eve what she wants most of all - the key to unlocking the darkest and most painful mystery of her past.
\nBut Eve is in more danger than she can imagine. As she gets closer to identifying the skull, she finds herself caught between two ruthless killers with no way out. Now, with everything on the line, Eve Duncan must make the most chilling choice of all. And if she’s wrong . . . she’s dead.
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Eve Duncan and Riley Smith must solve their most exciting puzzle since A Face to Die For when asked to uncover the mysterious secret hidden on a remote island.
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When archeologist Riley Smith comes to ask Eve Duncan for help, Eve has to say no. Traveling halfway around the world on a dangerous quest is not her expertise as a forensic sculptor. But Eve is intrigued by the prospect of an isolated island that holds a secret locked in time.
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Traveling to Southeast Asia, Riley is aware of the threat from treasure hunters who are already searching and have no qualms about killing to get what they want. When she successfully evades them and finds the perfectly preserved body of a female warrior, it is just what she needs to entice Eve to help unlock the mystery.
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As these two strong women seek answers about this extraordinary past life, Riley makes a living, breathing discovery that will change history. If she can escape the island and survive long enough to share it with the world.
Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan’s mission is to bring closure to the families whose loved ones have vanished. She knows their anguish - her own beloved daughter, Bonnie, was taken from her when Bonnie was just seven years old. It is only recently that this mystery was resolved and Eve could begin her journey to peace.
\nNow, Jim Doane wants the same kind of answers that Eve always longed for. His twenty-five-year old son may or may not be dead and he has only burned skull fragments as possible evidence. But he cannot go to the police for answers without risking his own secrets and dark past, so instead he chooses a bold step to find the truth - a truth that takes Eve down a twisted path of madness and evil and into the darkest heart of her own history. Doane needs Eve Duncan’s skills and he’ll do anything to get them.
Even if it means taking Eve.
With his dying breath, Carl Venable, head of the CIA task force on terrorism and Jude Brandon’s final link to terrorist ringleader Max Huber, gives Brandon a mandate: to keep his daughter, Rachel, safe at any cost. But Rachel Venable has a shocking, twisted past of her own, one that comes rushing back after her medical clinic in Guyana is attacked by Huber - the same man who murdered her father and kept her imprisoned for months.
\nBrandon and Catherine Ling, Rachel’s longtime ally and fierce protector, are determined to keep Rachel out of danger, but she knows that it’s impossible to stay hidden when Max Huber wants you dead.
As Rachel and Brandon race against the clock to bring Huber down before he can orchestrate a nuclear explosion that will lay waste to the west coast, they also fight a growing attraction to each other - an attraction that could prove just as dangerous as Huber himself. In this gripping, fast-paced novel full of dark secrets and tangled lies, one thing is clear: everyone has a vendetta, no one will rest until they get their revenge.
Catherine Ling was abandoned on the streets of Hong Kong at age four. Schooled in the art of survival, she traded in the only commodity she had: information. As a teenager, she came under the tutelage of a mysterious man known only as Hu Chang - a skilled assassin and master poisoner.
\nAs a young woman, she was recruited by the CIA and now she is known as one of their most effective operatives. Having lived life in the shadows, Catherine is aware of the wobbly moral compass of her existence and even more aware of just how expendable she is to those she deals with.
\nWhen her old friend Hu Chang creates a formula that’s not only deadly but completely untraceable, the race begins to be the first to get it. With rogue operative John Gallo also on the hunt, Catherine finds herself up against a group so villainous and a man so evil that she may not survive in her quest to protect those she cares about: Hu Chang and Luke - the son who was stolen from Catherine and only recently brought home safe.
\nUsing all of her formidable skills, Catherine Ling proves the age-old belief that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
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Catherine Ling is one of the CIA’s most prized operatives. Raised on the streets of Hong Kong, she was pulled into the agency at the age of fourteen. If life has taught her anything, it is not to get attached, but there are two exceptions to that rule: her son Luke and her mentor Hu Chang.
\nLuke was kidnapped at age two, and now, nine years later, he has astonishingly been returned to her. Catherine vows never to fail him again. Now, just as she is building a relationship with Luke, it seems that someone from Catherine’s past is playing a deadly game with her, and using those she cares about as pawns. Three are dead already: the former prostitute who helped Catherine when she was out on the street, a CIA agent with whom she worked closely, and the informant who helped her free Luke.
\nSomeone is picking off the people Catherine cares about one by one, with the circle narrowing closer and closer to those she loves the most. Catherine has made many enemies throughout her life, and she has no choice but to weed through her past to find out who is targeting her now, and then go after the vicious killer herself.
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A deeply moving and revealing chronicle, from one of the most prominent psychotherapists of our time, of working under wholly new circumstances, and the challenges and breakthroughs he’s made as he takes on patients for one hour, one time only.
\nFacing memory loss at age 93, as well as the fallout from a global pandemic that moved much of daily life online, legendary psychotherapist and bestselling author Irvin Yalom was forced to vastly reconsider the shape of his sessions with patients. But rather than throw in the towel in the face of change, Dr. Yalom considered the limitations imposed by these new realities head on, and revolutionised his practice.
\nDr. Yalom wondered if perhaps his own practice could focus deeply on the work that could be achieved in a one-hour, one-time meeting between patient and practitioner - employing an even more concerted use of his “here and now” approach. As he began these one-time sessions, the beloved veteran therapist found himself freed to reach ever deeper places with new patients on a shortened timeline, without the buffer of future appointments. Working within new constraints, Dr. Yalom learned to build greater intimacy much faster than in traditional therapy - a gift of circumstance.
\nIn Hour of the Heart, Yalom recounts some of these intense, life-changing consultations, exploring an array of human predicaments, and his own late-career development as a therapist. In recounting these consultations, he shows how a therapist’s willingness to be open themselves helps the patient let down their own guard, leading to a deeper and more immediate connection - one necessary to achieve profound realizations in just sixty minutes. For Yalom, that vulnerability meant allowing himself to reveal details of his personal life, from his childhood in Washington, DC with immigrant parents, to the recent death of his wife, and questions about the work of psychotherapy in our lives outside the appointment.
\nLife is precious and our time together short. Hour of the Heart shows us how to relate to each other better in the moment, with more honesty and vulnerability. That hour of connection, occurring during a time of isolation and grief for so many, helped to sustain both patient and therapist, and enriched Yalom’s vision of what psychotherapy can do. This transformative account of a new way of connecting and sharing is for all of us looking to build relationships with greater immediacy, authenticity, and openness - not only as patients and practitioners, but in every area of life.
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Up-and-coming stage actress Margaret Shoard has just taken a bow as Lady Macbeth, the role she has always believed was destined for her. At home, she plays wife to her best friend Wesley, even if she doesn’t hold his sole attention romantically. After a public breakdown threatens all she holds dear, Margaret’s doctor prescribes her uppers - just a little help to get through the days.
\nWhen Wesley is invited by eccentric director Vaughn Kline to join the cast for an inaugural Shakespeare performance in the New Mexico desert, Margaret decides to accompany him in the hopes that time away from the city will set her back to rights . . . but the world she finds in Vaughn’s company is filled with obsession and betrayal. Margaret and Wesley, embroiled in an affair with a man who may not be all he seems, must find a way forward together before their story becomes the real tragedy.
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In one of the most important and beloved Latin American works of the twentieth century, Isabel Allende weaves a luminous tapestry of three generations of the Trueba family, revealing both triumphs and tragedies. Here is patriarch Esteban, whose wild desires and political machinations are tempered only by his love for his ethereal wife, Clara, a woman touched by an otherworldly hand.
\nTheir daughter, Blanca, whose forbidden love for a man Esteban has deemed unworthy infuriates her father, yet will produce his greatest joy: his granddaughter Alba, a beautiful, ambitious girl who will lead the family and their country into a revolutionary future. The House of the Spirits is an enthralling saga that spans decades and lives, twining the personal and the political into an epic novel of love, magic, and fate.
In the Midst of Winter begins with a minor traffic accident - which becomes the catalyst for an unexpected and moving love story between two people who thought they were deep into the winter of their lives.
\nRichard Bowmaster - a 60-year-old human rights scholar - hits the car of Evelyn Ortega - a young, undocumented immigrant from Guatemala - in the middle of a snowstorm in Brooklyn. What at first seems just a small inconenience takes an unforeseen and far more serious turn when Evelyn turns up at the professor’s house seeking help. At a loss, the professor asks his tenant Lucia Maraz - a 62-year-old lecturer from Chile - for her advice.
\nThese three very different people are brought together in a mesmerizing story that moves from present-day Brooklyn to Guatemala in the recent past to 1970s Chile and Brazil, sparking the beginning of a long overdue love story between Richard and Lucia.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The House of the Spirits comes an epic novel spanning decades and crossing continents, following two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in search of a new place to call home.
In the late 1930s, civil war gripped Spain. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border. Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life irreversibly intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love.
In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage neither of them wants, and together are sponsored by poet Pablo Neruda to embark on the SS Winnipeg along with 2,200 other refugees in search of a new life. As unlikely partners, they embrace exile and emigrate to Chile as the rest of Europe erupts in World War.
Starting over on a new continent, their trials are just beginning. Over the course of their lives, they will face test after test. But they will also find joy as they wait patiently for a day when they are exiles no more, and will find friends in the most unlikely of places. Through it all, it is that hope of being reunited with their home that keeps them going. And in the end, they will find that home might have been closer than they thought all along.
In San Francisco 1866, an Irish nun, left pregnant and abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia Del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman.
\nTo pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of sixteen, she begins to publish pulp fiction under a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can't contain her sense of adventure any longer, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at the San Francisco Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan.
\nAs she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, along with Eric, and while there, begins to uncover the truth about her father and the country that represents her roots. But as the war escalates, Emilia finds herself in danger and at a crossroads, questioning both her identity and her destiny.
\"When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating,\" begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without \"resources or voice.\" Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn't have.
\nAs a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the first wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, she for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote \"with a knife between their teeth\" about women's issues. She has seen what has been accomplished by the movement in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one's sexuality.
\nSo what do women want? To be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over their bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved. On all these fronts, there is much work to be done, and this book, Allende hopes, will \"light the torch of our daughters and granddaughters with mine. They will have to live for us, as we lived for our mothers, and carry on with the work still left to be finished.\"
Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family of five boisterous sons. From the start, her life will be marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.
\nThrough her father's prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses all and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling . . .
\nShe tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of both poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life will be shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics.
\nTold through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humor will carry her through a lifetime of upheaval.
Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht - the night their family loses everything. As her child's safety seems ever harder to guarantee, Samuel's mother secures a spot for him on the last Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin.
\nArizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Diaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. But their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and seven-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes her tenuous reality through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination. Meanwhile, Selena Duran, a young social worker, enlists the help of a successful lawyer in hopes of tracking down Anita's mother.
\nIntertwining past and present, The Wind Knows My Name tells the tale of these two unforgettable characters, both in search of family and home. It is both a testament to the sacrifices that parents make, and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers - and never stop dreaming.
In 15th-century Volterra, sculptress Ravenna Maffei enters a competition hosted by a secretive, immortal family who offer an invaluable boon to the victor. Desperate to win so she can save her brother, Ravenna reveals a rare magical talent - a dangerous act in a city where magic is forbidden. Her revelation makes her a target, and she is kidnapped by the Luni family and taken to Florence, a city of breathtaking beauty and cutthroat ambition.
\nThere, Ravenna is forced into an impossible task where failure means certain death at the hands of Saturnino dei Luni, the family's enigmatic and merciless heir. But under his cold reserve hides a vulnerability that draws her closer than she ever intended.
\nMeanwhile, Ravenna's forbidden magic does not go unnoticed. The Pope, waging war against Florence, the Medici, and magic itself, has his own interest in her abilities, seeing her as a potential weapon in his ruthless campaign.
\nAs alliances shift and war brews on the horizon, Ravenna must navigate the treacherous line between survival and betrayal, between love and duty. With time running out and her every move watched, the choices she makes will determine the fate of not just her own life, but the fragile balance of magic and power that could unravel Florence itself.
When you immigrate, you leave a copy of yourself behind, an instance. One person enters their new country; the other stays trapped at home.
\nSome instances keep in touch, call each other daily, keep their lives and minds in sync in the hopes of reintegrating and resuming a life as one person. Others, like Soyoung Rose Kang, leave home at ten years old and never speak to their other selves again. Rose, in America, never imagined going back to Korea until her grandfather died and her Korean instance called her home for the funeral.
\nShe doesn’t know that Soyoung plans to steal her body and her life.
\nHow far would you go to live the choice you didn’t make?
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Struggling actress Dimple Kapoor wouldn’t call herself a murderer, per se - she’d prefer the term “opportunist.” Years ago, she did what had to be done to get herself out of a bad situation. And now, after accidentally killing her Hollywood rival, Irene Singh, at a party, she’s simply seizing the chance to nab her dream leading role and resuscitate her career in the process. There's only one someone else at the event witnessed the crime . . . and caught it all on camera.
\nWith everything she’s ever wanted within reach, Dimple will stop at nothing to keep stardom in her grasp. But Irene’s parents have hired Saffi Mirai Iyer, one of the best private investigators in the business. Living up to her reputation, Saffi immediately zeroes in on Dimple, who feels she has no choice but to raise the stakes. Playing along with Dimple’s façade, Saffi invites her onto the case, suggesting she act as bait to draw out the killer - and as the two women’s cat-and-mouse game intensifies, Saffi starts to wonder if she may have finally met her match.
\nWith their careers at risk, both women must fight the potent chemistry drawing them closer together. Dimple needs Saffi dead and for her theories to die with her. And Saffi needs Dimple behind bars, but catching her elusive prey won’t be so easy - especially as emotions begin to cloud her judgement. When ambition and desire collide, only the most cunning will survive.
Sasha Marcus was once the epitome of contemporary success: an internet sensation, social media darling, and a creator of a high profile wellness brand for women. But a confrontation with an abusive troll has taken a horrifying turn, and now she’s at rock bottom: canceled and doxxed online, fired from her waitress job and fortressed in her apartment while men’s rights protestors rage outside. All that once glittered now condemns.
\nSasha confides in her oldest childhood friend, Dyson - a failed actor with a history of body issues - who hatches a plan for Sasha to restore her reputation by becoming the face of his new business venture, The Atmosphere: a rehabilitation community for men. Based in an abandoned summer camp and billed as a workshop for job training, it is actually a rigorous program designed to rid men of their toxic masculinity and heal them physically, emotionally, and socially. Sasha has little choice but to accept. But what horrors await her as the resident female leader of a crew of washed up, desperate men? And what exactly does Dyson want?
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Deep in Brazil's neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother's bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever.
\nHeralded as a new masterpiece and the most important Brazilian novel of this century, this fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in the Brazil's poorest region, three generations after the abolition of slavery in that country is at once fantastic and realist, covering themes of family, spirituality, slavery and its aftermath and political struggle.
In the summer of 1993, Yuri, a teenage orphan, lives with her strict, religious Aunt Ruth in a Havana suburb when Mariela, a thirty-four-year-old artist, arrives from the U.S. with a shocking revelation. She claims to be Yuri's sister, insisting that she and Yuri share a mother and that Ruth is nothing more than Mariela’s \"kidnapper.\" Mariela has spent the past three decades in American orphanages and has returned to Cuba to reclaim her roots and culture, make art, and perhaps seek vengeance on Ruth for sending her to America through Operation Pedro Pan. Yuri is both fascinated and repulsed by the young, glamourous, and aggrieved Mariela. When Ruth is jailed for unknown charges, Yuri falls further into Mariela’s mercurial orbit.
\nThrough Yuri’s reminiscent narration (from Havana, to NYC, to Miami, and back to Havana), The Tilting House explores the riddles of identity and family loyalty, the effects of losing one’s mother and motherland, the scars of political and historical upheaval, and an immigrant’s complex quest both to return “home” and to be free from the past. Through her long journey, Yuri comes to understand that the past cannot be fully recovered, or fully escaped, and she approaches the possibility of compassion for Mariela, for Ruth, for others, and for herself.
Carrie Bradley is done.
\nDone with the dishes, the laundry, the packed lunches and, most of all, with being taken for granted. So when her husband cancels their family holiday for a boys’ trip to Vegas, Carrie takes a stand - by moving into the garden shed.
\nWhat starts as a quiet protest soon spirals into full-blown family drama - with domestic chaos, media attention and a surprising path to self-discovery. With her sister Bex crashing in her guest room and her family in meltdown, Carrie might just find the one thing she’s been missing all along . . . herself.
\nFunny, uplifting and relatable, this is a heart-warming story about reclaiming your space - inside and out.
Classic forgetful Emma - she’s done it again, this time accidentally ruining a Valentine’s Day surprise for her best friend Mel. Desperate to make up for it, she promises Mel a birthday trip to Edinburgh - a girls’ weekend to end all girls’ weekends. There’s just one massive hitch . . .
\nEmma has already promised her grandma that she’ll go on a coach trip with her to scatter her grandad’s ashes . . . in Edinburgh. On Mel’s birthday weekend. Oh God.
\nThat’s right, with one innocent but inevitable diary clash, two very different road trips are thrust together. Surrounded by a bunch of septuagenarians who seem to have forgotten how to have fun, can Emma support Grandma through her grief and give Mel a birthday to remember? Or is their friendship doomed to become roadkill? She’s about to find out . . .
Abbie Finch loves her job.
\nUnfortunately, her boss doesn’t love her.
\nWhen she finds herself unexpectedly unemployed, Abbie realises that she’s let all her friendships fall by the wayside and has no one to turn to.
\nLost and lonely, Abbie decides to leave her comfort zone and join the neighbourhood café’s community table. There she meets aloof, elegant Ethel, down-on-his luck Bob, colourful, chaotic Dawn and recently relocated Viraj. Friends? Not yet. But when they decide to help the homeless people in their community by staging an extravagant fundraising event, will something that began as a good deed help Abbie find a way back to herself - and make lifelong friends at the same time?
On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother.
\nTwenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career and her marriage. Jane is horrified to find the Victorian is now barely recognisable. The new owner, Genevieve, a summer person from Beacon Hill, has gutted it, transforming the house into a glossy white monstrosity straight out of a shelter magazine.
\nStrangely, Genevieve is convinced that the house is haunted - perhaps the product of something troubling Genevieve herself has done. She hires Jane to research the history of the place and the women who lived there. The story Jane uncovers - of lovers lost at sea, romantic longing, shattering loss, artistic awakening, historical artifacts stolen and sold, and the long shadow of colonialism - is even older than Maine itself.
\nEnthralling, richly imagined, filled with psychic mediums and charlatans, spirits and past lives, mothers, marriage, and the legacy of alcoholism, this is a deeply moving novel about the land we inhabit, the women who came before us, and the ways in which none of us will ever truly leave this earth.
Assigned to the same dorm their first year at Smith College, Celia, Bree, Sally, and April couldn’t have less in common. Celia, a lapsed Catholic, arrives with a bottle of vodka in her suitcase; beautiful Bree pines for the fiancé she left behind in Savannah; Sally, preppy and obsessively neat, is reeling from the loss of her mother; and April, a radical, redheaded feminist wearing a “Riot: Don’t Diet” T-shirt, wants a room transfer immediately.
\nWritten with radiant style and a wicked sense of humor, Commencement follows these unlikely friends through college and the years beyond, brilliantly capturing the complicated landscape facing young women today.
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Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly twenty years in New York City. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms' Facebook group, her \"influencer\" sister's Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore.
Enter Sam, a senior at the local women's college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she's always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She's worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. In short order, they grow close. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth's father-in-law, the true differences between the women's lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences.
A masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.
For the Kellehers, Maine is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and old Irish songs are sung around a piano. Their beachfront property, won on a barroom bet after the war, sits on three acres of sand and pine nestled between stretches of rocky coast, with one tree bearing the initials “A.H.” At the cottage, built by Kelleher hands, cocktail hour follows morning mass, nosy grandchildren snoop in drawers, and decades-old grudges simmer beneath the surface.
\nAs three generations of Kelleher women descend on the property one summer, each brings her own hopes and fears. Maggie is thirty-two and pregnant, waiting for the perfect moment to tell her imperfect boyfriend the news; Ann Marie, a Kelleher by marriage, is channeling her domestic frustration into a dollhouse obsession and an ill-advised crush; Kathleen, the black sheep, never wanted to set foot in the cottage again; and Alice, the matriarch at the center of it all, would trade every floorboard for a chance to undo the events of one night, long ago.
\nBy turns wickedly funny and achingly sad, Maine unveils the sibling rivalry, alcoholism, social climbing, and Catholic guilt at the center of one family, along with the abiding, often irrational love that keeps them coming back, every summer, to Maine and to each other.
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Nora and Theresa Flynn are twenty-one and seventeen when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America.
\nNora is the responsible sister; she’s shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn’t sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
\nFifty years later, Nora is the matriarch of a big Catholic family with four grown children: John, a successful, if opportunistic, political consultant; Bridget, privately preparing to have a baby with her girlfriend; Brian, at loose ends after a failed baseball career; and Patrick, Nora’s favorite, the beautiful boy who gives her no end of heartache. Estranged from her sister and cut off from the world, Theresa is a cloistered nun, living in an abbey in rural Vermont. Until, after decades of silence, a sudden death forces Nora and Theresa to confront the choices they made so long ago.
\nA graceful, supremely moving novel from one of our most beloved writers, Saints for All Occasions explores the fascinating, funny, and sometimes achingly sad ways a secret at the heart of one family both breaks them and binds them together.
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Rue has no memory of how she ended up locked in a basement prison without her magic or her allies. But she’s a girl from the East Row. And girls from the East Row don’t give up. Girls from the East Row pick themselves back up when they fall. Girls from the East Row break themselves out.
\nBut reuniting with her friends is only half the battle. When she finds them again, Rue makes a vow: she will find a way to return the magic that the Chancellor has stolen from her father’s people. Yet even on Yiyo Peak, Rue is a misfit - with half a foot back in Houston and half a heart that is human as well as god, she’s not sure she’s the right person to lead the fight to reclaim a glorious past.
\nWhen a betrayal sends her into a tailspin, Rue must decide who to trust and how to be the leader that her people deserve . . . because if she doesn’t, it isn’t just Yiyo that will be destroyed - it will be Rue herself.
With the future of the Order clouded in uncertainty, and the evil within its ranks coming to the surface, Quell Marionne has nowhere left to turn.
\nEveryone Quell cares about is gone and she still can’t escape the powerful legacy that wants to destroy her. But when she uncovers an earth-shattering revelation, she must choose: be the hero the magic world needs or save Jordan.
\nMeanwhile, a darkness festers inside Dragunheart Jordan Wexton. His path to survival means becoming the monster he was bred to hate, if he can overcome the power rotting within himself.
\nIn a world where the line between proper and forbidden magic blurs, Quell and Jordan, along with two unlikely allies – bitter assassin Yagrin Wexton and magicless Heir Nore Ambrose, must navigate a treacherous path where freedom hangs by a thread. Can love tip the scales toward freedom? Or will rivalries and deadly betrayals shatter their hearts and destroy the world they once knew?
17 year-old Quell has lived her entire life on the run. She and her mother have fled from city to city, in order to hide the deadly magic that flows through Quell’s veins. Until someone discovers her dark secret.
\nTo hide from the assassin hunting her, and keep her mother out of harm’s way, Quell reluctantly inducts into a debutante society of magical social elites called the Order that she never knew existed. If she can pass their three rites of membership, mastering their proper form of magic, she’ll be able to secretly bury her forbidden magic forever.
\nIf caught, she will be killed. But becoming the perfect debutante is a lot harder than Quell imagined, especially when there’s more than tutoring happening with Jordan, her brooding mentor and - assassin in training.
\nWhen Quell uncovers the deadly lengths the Order will go to defend its wealth and power, she’s forced to choose: embrace the dark magic she’s been running from her entire life or risk losing everything, and everyone, she’s grown to love. Still, she fears the most formidable monster she’ll have to face is the one inside.
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Quell Marionne’s explosive final Rite of Induction to House Marionne sent shockwaves through the magical world, unearthing long buried secrets and her own deadly power. But she paid a steep price: her family and her love. Fleeing Chateau Soleil for House of Perl, for once Quell is celebrated instead of shunned. She has finally found somewhere to belong. But secrets lurk in every House, and Quell’s quest to find her mom threatens to lead her deeper into the shadows.
\nAssassin Jordan Wexton, second-in command of the Dragun brotherhood, must protect the source of all magic, the Sphere. Yet the biggest threat to the Sphere is Quell Marionne - the girl he loved, until she claimed the deadly, outlawed toushana. As the Sphere cracks and war brews among the Houses, can the only way to save the world be to kill his own heart?
\nNow, these two lovers-turned enemies must confront their competing ambitions and conflicting loyalties. Or die. The future of magic hangs on their decision.
In this riveting, keenly emotional debut fantasy, a Black teen from Houston has her world upended when she learns about her godly ancestry - and with evil sinking its claws into humans and gods alike, she'll have to unearth the magic of her true identity to save both her worlds.
“Make a way out of no way” is just the way of life for Rue. But when her mother is shot dead on her doorstep, life for her and her younger sister changes forever. Rue's taken from her neighborhood by the father she never knew, forced to leave her little sister behind, and whisked away to Ghizon - a hidden island of magic wielders.
Rue is the only half-god, half-human there, where leaders protect their magical powers at all costs and thrive on human suffering. Miserable and desperate to see her sister on the anniversary of their mother’s death, Rue breaks Ghizon’s sacred Do Not Leave Law and returns to Houston, only to discover that Black kids are being forced into crime and violence. And her sister, Tasha, is in danger of falling sway to the very forces that claimed their mother’s life.
Worse still, evidence mounts that the evil plaguing East Row is the same one that lurks in Ghizon - an evil that will stop at nothing until it has stolen everything from her and everyone she loves. Rue must embrace her true identity and wield the full magnitude of her ancestors’ power to save her neighborhood before the gods burn it to the ground.
The body of a young boy is found floating in a city river with pollen in his lungs from a warm river valley far from the country where he died. Who is he? Why was he carrying only a library card and decorative clay bottle? How is it that he came so far, only to meet such a violent fate?
\nA biological anthropologist and her husband, the forensic team’s translator, are tasked by their agency to gather evidence from the far away country and deliver an explanation - preferably one that suits the political regimes of both countries. But as the scientists’ clandestine, parallel study of recent mass graves brings them closer to finding a link between the boy and “the disappeared,” the full forces of bureaucracy, fatalism, and forgetting are marshalled against them.
When the shadowy circumstances of a relative's death are brought to light, Jane and Lila are plunged into the recesses of an underground drug operation with links to a burgeoning fascist movement.
\nThe Pool sisters have gone into business a down-home, if unequal, PI enterprise. But then Lila receives a shocking piece of news from an old friend of their Aunt Ruth' their aunt's suicide more than a decade earlier might not have been what it seemed. A lawyer, she had represented a disgraced chemist working on a dangerous synthetic opioid. But once the client, Travis Nutt, was poised to lose, he went rogue and unleashed the adulterant as a street drug, in conjunction with a shadowy cartel. Can the twins solve the mystery of their aunt's death and bring this cultlike billionaire to justice?
\nMeanwhile, Jane has been invited to attend a writers' conference, an outlet she relishes until her dangerously confessional prose is seen by the wrong eyes. Her teenage daughter, Chloe, becomes the victim of a deepfake video while campaigning for class president and aggressively pursues the instigators, unaware of the muscle behind them. And old Harry, Jane's father, has stumbled upon a piece of unknown history that opens an unexpected door.
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Jane Pool likes her safe, suburban existence just fine. She has a house, a family, (an infuriating mother-in-law,) and a quiet-if-unfulfilling administrative job at the local college. Everything is wonderfully, numbingly normal.
\nYet Jane remains haunted by her her mercurial, absent mother, her parents’ secrets, and the act of violence that transformed her life. When her estranged twin, Lila, makes contact, claiming to know where their mother is and why she left all those years ago, Jane agrees to join her, desperate for answers and the chance to reconnect with the only person who really knew her true self.
\nYet as the hunt becomes treacherous, and pulls the two women to the earth’s distant corners, they find themselves up against their mother’s subterfuge and the darkness that always stalked their family. Now Jane stands to lose the life she’s made for the one that has been impossible to escape.
\nSet in both the Pool family’s past and their present, and melding elements of a chase novel, an espionage thriller, and domestic suspense.
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More than ten years after the abrupt end of her high-profile broadcasting career, Ali Reynolds has made a good life for herself in her hometown of Sedona, Arizona. She has a new house, a new husband, and a flourishing cybersecurity company called High Noon Enterprises, where her team of veritable technological wizards hunts down criminals one case at a time.
But the death of an old friend brings Ali back to the last story she ever reported: a feel-good human interest piece about a young man in need of a kidney to save his life, which quickly spiraled into a medical mismanagement scandal that landed a prestigious local doctor in prison for murder.
Years may have passed, but Dr. Edward Gilchrist has not forgotten those responsible for his downfall - certainly not Ali Reynolds, who exposed his dirty deeds to the world. Life without parole won’t stop him from getting his revenge. Tattooed on his arm are the initials of those who put him behind bars, and he won’t stop until every person on that Annihilation List is dead.
Seattle investigator J. P. Beaumont uncovers a dark and deadly conspiracy that reaches deep into the halls of state government.
\nAt first glance, the video appears to be showing a childish game: a teenage girl with dark wavy hair smiles for the camera, a blue scarf tied around her neck. All of a sudden things turn murderous, and the girl ends up dead.
\nIt's as bad as a snuff film can get, and what's worse, the clip has been discovered on a phone that belongs to the grandson of Washington State's governor. However, the boy, who has a troubled background, swears that he's never seen the victim before.
\nFortunately, the governor is able to turn to an old friend, J. P. Beaumont, for help. The Seattle private investigator has witnessed many horrific acts over the years, but this one ranks near the top. Even more shocking is that the crime's multiple perpetrators could be minors.
\nAlong with Mel Soames, his partner in life as well as on the job, Beaumont soon determines that what initially appears to be a childish prank gone wrong has much deeper implications. But Mel and Beau must follow this path of corruption to its very end, before more innocent young lives are lost.
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The Starfire Breeze steams its way north toward the Gulf of Alaska, buffeted by crisp sea winds blowing down from the Arctic. Those on board are seeking peace, relaxation, adventure, escape. But there is no escape in this place of unspoiled natural majesty. Because terror strolls the decks even in the brilliant light of day . . . and death is a conspicuous, unwelcome passenger.
\nFormer Seattle policeman J.P. Beaumont - a damaged homicide detective who has come here to heal from fresh, stinging wounds - will find that the grim ghosts pursuing him were not left behind . . . as a pleasure cruise gone horribly wrong carries him into lethal, ever-darkening waters.
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Returning to her southwest roots, J.A. Jance presents a riveting new Walker Family suspense series in which human remains found in Cochise County have federal investigator Dan Pardee, Brandon Walker's son-in-law, stepping into Sheriff Joanna Brady's jurisdiction. As the investigation to track down a killer who preys on Indigenous victims unfolds, Jance brings together popular characters from both her Brady and Walker books.
\nWhen human remains are found in Joanna Brady's Cochise County, the victim turns out to be a missing young woman of Apache descent. As part of a newly formed Missing and Murdered Indigenous People's Task Force, Dan Pardee, a former Border Patrol Shadow Wolf and Brandon Walker's son-in-law, catches the case and ends up in Sheriff Joanna Brady's jurisdiction. Will Dan find out what led to this young woman's death? There's a long case ahead, and the task force will do anything to bring down a serial killer before he can strike again.
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The Seattle that Beau knew as a young policeman is disappearing. The city is awash in the aromas emanating from a glut of coffee bars, the neighborhood outside his condo building has sprouted gallery upon gallery, and even his long cherished diner has evolved into a trendy eatery for local hipsters.
\nBut the glam is strictly surface, for the grit under the city's fingernails is caked with blood. Beau and his new partner Sue Danielson, a struggling single parent, are assigned the murder of an elderly woman torched to death in her bed.
\nAs their investigation proceeds, Beau and Sue become embroiled in a perilous series of events that will leave them and their case shattered - and for Beau nothing will ever be the same again.
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When Ali’s parents lose their life savings to a Ponzi scheme, her father goes to confront his long-time friend and financial advisor, only to stumble into the scene of a bloody double homicide. With her father suddenly a prime suspect, Ali and her husband work to clear her father’s name, while at the same time seeking justice for her parents as well as the scheme’s other suddenly impoverished victims, one of whom is a stone cold killer.
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Ali’s longtime friend and taser-carrying nun, Sister Anselm, rushes to the bedside of a young pregnant woman hospitalized for severe injuries after she was hit by a car on a deserted Arizona highway. The girl had been running away from The Family, a polygamous cult with no patience for those who try to leave its ranks. Something about her strikes a chord in Sister Anselm, reminding her of a case she worked years before when another young girl wasn’t so lucky.
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Meanwhile, married life agrees with Ali. But any hopes that she and her husband, B. Simpson, will finally slow down and relax now that they’ve tied the knot are dashed when Ali’s new daughter-in-law approaches her, desperate for help. The girl’s grandmother, Betsy, is in danger: she’s been receiving anonymous threats, and someone even broke into her home and turned on the gas burners in the middle of the night. But the local police think the elderly woman’s just not as sharp as she used to be.
\n\n
While Ali struggles to find a way to protect Betsy before it’s too late, Sister Anselm needs her help as well, and the two race the clock to uncover the secrets that The Family has hidden for so long - before someone comes back to bury them forever.
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After spending twenty years behind bars, Frank Muñoz, a disgraced former cop, is out on parole and focused on just one thing: revenge. The wife who abandoned him after his arrest, the mistress who ratted him out for abetting a money-laundering scheme, the detectives who presided over his case all those years ago - they all have targets on their backs.
\nFor Ali Reynolds, the first Christmas without her father is riddled with grief and uncertainty. And with her husband and founding partner of High Noon Enterprises, B. Simpson, preoccupied by an upcoming New Year’s trip to London, she is ready for a break. But when Stu Ramey barges into her home with grave news about a serious- and suspicious - accident on the highway to Phoenix involving B.’s car, things reach a breaking point.
\nAt the hospital, a groggy, post-op B. insists that Ali take his place at a ransomware conference in London, as troubles brimming around High Noon come to light. But questions remain: Who would go to such lengths to cut the tech company from the picture? And what if Ali and the rest of the team are also in danger?
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Years after her son’s fatal overdose, grieving mother Rachel Higgins learns that his addiction may have grown out of damage suffered at the hands of a pedophile priest while he was in high school. Looking for vengeance, she targets the Catholic Church’s most visible local figure, Archbishop Francis Gillespie. When the archbishop begins receiving anonymous threats, local police dismiss them, saying they’re not credible. So he turns to his friends, Ali Reynolds and her husband, B. Simpson.
With B. out of the country on a cybersecurity emergency, it’s up to Ali to track down the source of the threats. When a shooter assassinates the archbishop’s driver and leaves the priest himself severely injured, Ali forms an uneasy alliance with a Phoenix homicide cop in hopes of preventing another attack. But Ali doesn’t realize that the killer has become not only more unhinged but also more determined to take out his or her target.
On a dating site, singleatheart.com, bored housewives can find romance with married men looking for sex without strings. But these \"married singles\" are flirting with more than just their vows. At the heart of this seemingly innocent service, a vengeful computer hacker is playing games with people's lives . . . and deaths.
Ex-television journalist Ali Reynolds just wants a break from excitement. In the midst of a remodel, the last thing she expects is a murder investigation that will stop the construction on her home. But when the savagely murdered body of stay-at-home mom Morgan Forester is found, Ali's contractor Bryan is the prime suspect. Bryan swears he has nothing to do with his wife's murder - but as the investigation progresses Ali seems to be the only resident of Sedona who believes him.
Determined to prove Bryan's innocence, Ali unknowingly lands herself directly in the path of a calculating killer. In a world filled with encrypted computer traps and life-threatening lies, will Ali be able to decode the actions of a ruthless man determined to destroy women - before he uses his wicked website to find her?
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A car carrying an elderly couple goes off the side of a mountain and tumbles into oblivion on a beautiful sunny day in the Coronado National Monument. A note pulled from the twisted wreckage suggests the tragedy may have been a double suicide - but an autopsy later suggests something different. A deadly fire and a fatal home invasion may or may not have some connection to the terrible crash. And miles away in the desert, a savage rain has revealed something grisly and terrifying: two trash bags filled with human remains.
It's just another day in the life of Cochise County sheriff Joanna Brady, who must somehow balance the rigors of police work with a newborn, a teenager, a writer-husband, and a difficult mother. But Joanna will not allow murder to go unpunished in her jurisdiction - even if her path to the truth is twisting and dangerous . . . and leads to shocking revelations about those entrusted with caring for the helpless.
Years ago, Amos Warren, a prospector, was gunned down out in the desert and Sheriff Brandon Walker made the arrest in the case. Now, the retired Walker is called in when the alleged killer, John Lassiter, refuses to accept a plea deal that would release him from prison with time served. Lassiter wants Brandon and The Last Chance to find Amos’s “real” killer and clear his name.
Sixteen hundred miles to the north in Seattle, J.P. Beaumont is at loose ends after the Special Homicide Investigation Team, affectionately known as S.H.I.T., has been unexpectedly and completely disbanded. When Brandon discovers that there are links between Lassiter’s case and an unsolved case in Seattle, he comes to Beau for help.
Those two cases suddenly become hot when two young boys from the reservation, one of them with close ties to the Walker family, go missing. Can two seasoned cops, working together, decipher the missing pieces in time to keep them alive?
The Walker family survived the atrocities perpetrated by a serial killer and his crazed acolyte in both Hour of the Hunter and Kiss of the Bees. But can they escape the vengeance of a new killer or killers whose sights have been set on their precious daughter, Lani? Young girls are being spirited away from an orphanage deep in Colonial Mexico - told they're traveling to a loving adoptive family in southern Arizona, their hopes are high.
\nBut the fate that waits for them is truly horrifying: when death comes, it will be a blessing . . . Former Sheriff Brandon Walker is living the life of a reluctant retiree. Playing golf while his wife, Diana Ladd, continues to write her bestselling tales of true crime, he desperately misses the action and sense of usefulness from days gone by. When he’s invited to join the Last Chance Club to review and attempt to solve long-cold cases, he little imagines the first case to cross his path will be one he may have botched back when he was sheriff.
\nAnd when the case from all those decades past becomes entangled with a current murder, it seems a serial killer with a very long and shocking track record may be back in business . . .
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A woman is cruelly cut down in a remote corner of Arizona, killed on her nineteenth wedding anniversary by a drunk motorist.? A year later, the driver himself dies badly, and all suspicions point to the slain woman's still-grieving husband as his murderer.
\nBut the truth is rarely black and white in the long Southwestern shadows, and one law officer is not rushing to condemn the tragic widower so quickly: Joanna Brady, Sheriff of Cochise County. Brady's convictions, however, are leading her on a twisted trail through inhospitable country - and setting her on a path that will bring her face-to-face with cold, calculating death in the high, lonely desert.
\nJuggling a family and a career is never easy - and it's becoming a real challenge for Sheriff Joanna Brady. Coping with the impending delivery of her second child as well as a staff shortage, the last things Joanna needs are two serious crimes.
First, the body of an unidentified man is found in the desert, all of his fingers savagely severed. Following the scant clues, Joanna learns that the victim was an ex-con who had served twenty years in prison after confessing to the murder of his pregnant wife. During his last days he was seen following and photographing a young woman.
Then one of Joanna's officers is brutally attacked and left for dead while on an unau-thorized stakeout. Because the officer is one of its own, the department throws its resources into finding her attacker.
But the murder haunts Joanna. Being a sher-iff is no longer an empty position she wants to hold - somehow it has become what she is. Her job is to avenge man's inhumanity toward man, and finding out who the victim was and why he is dead is what she has been summoned to do with her life. Strapping on a bulletproof vest, she'll risk everything to see that justice is done.
In Deadly Stakes, police academy-trained former reporter Ali Reynolds is contacted to investigate the grisly murder of a gold-digging divorcee on behalf of a woman accused of the crime. Lynn Martinson is dating the dead woman’s ex-husband, and she and her boyfriend Chip Ralston have been charged.
Ali is simultaneously drawn to the case of A.J. Sanders, a frightened teen with secrets of his own. He’s the first to find the body in the Camp Verde desert when he goes to retrieve a mysterious buried box hidden by his absent father - a box that turns out to be filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in poker chips.
When the body of an ex-con is discovered near the first crime scene, Ali struggles to determine if A.J. and Lynn’s cases are related. Though her friends in the police department grow increasingly irritated by her involvement with the cases, Ali must stop a deadly killer from claiming another victim . . . before she herself is lost in this game of deadly stakes.
Former Seattle homicide cop J. P. Beaumont faces trouble in the small town of Ashland, as both his personal and professional lives are thrown into turmoil. Beau’s daughter and son-in-law are having marital troubles, and his grandson, a senior in high school, shows up on his doorstep, wanting to live with Beau and his wife Mel as he finishes out the school year.
\nMeanwhile, a friend from his past asks for Beau’s help in looking into what appears to be an accidental death. A young man died of a fentanyl overdose, but those closest to him are convinced that he would never have used the drug, and that something much more sinister has happened. Beau agrees to unofficially reopen the case, and his investigation leads him to uncover similar mysterious deaths that all point to a most unlikely suspect.
\nAs the case becomes more complicated than he could have imagined, and past and present mysteries collide, it will take everything Beau has to track down a dangerous vigilante killer.
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Life is good for Joanna Brady in the small desert community of Bisbee. She has Jenny, her adored nine-year-old daughter, and solid, honest, and loving husband, Andy, a local lawman who's running for Sheriff of Cochise County. But her good life explodes when a bullet destroys Andy Brady's future and leaves him dying beneath the blistering Arizona sun.
The police brass claim that Andy was dirty - up to his neck in drugs and smuggling - and that the shooting was a suicide attempt. Joanna knows a cover-up when she hears one . . . and murder when she sees it. But her determined effort to track down an assassin and clear her husband's name are placing herself and her Jenny in serious jeopardy. Because, in the desert, the truth can be far more lethal than a rattler's bite.
Fifteen-year-old Lucy Ridder dreads her mother's release from prison, eight years after she was convicted of killing Lucy's beloved father. Lucy is aware that her mother's priority is not a family reunion but the retrieval of a mysterious diskette entrusted to Lucy by her dad shortly before his death.
\nAfter inadvertently witnessing her mother's brutal slaying by a stranger who's also hot after the diskette, Lucy vanishes. It takes most of the novel for Joanna to figure out that Lucy's disappearance is tied to her mother's murder, and for good reasons. Besides the distraction of her pending nuptials, the sheriff has been accused of killing her elderly, beloved neighbor for financial gain.
\nBecause the reader knows the truth of both situations very early in the game, Joanna's delayed awareness doesn't pack as much wallop as it might. The greater mystery is whether she'll strangle her wedding-obsessed mother before she and her too-good-to-be-true fiancé make it to the altar.
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Japanese businessman Tadeo Kurobashi had many passions, including computers, poetry, money, and Samurai lore. So his suicide method of choice would naturally be the ancient art of seppuku - what the uninitiated call hara-kiri.
\nBut despite the bloody samurai sword Kurobashi clutches tightly in his lifeless hand, Seattle detective J.P. Beaumont senses the dead software magnate played a less active role in his own demise. Because glaring errors have been made in the time-honoured Asian death ritual - which has Beau looking for someone with a less traditional passion - cold-blooded murder.
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Arizona sheriff Joanna Brady returns in this outstanding new mystery set in the beautiful desert country of the Southwest.
\nWith a baby on the way, her mother and stepfather recently slain, a re-election campaign looming, and a daughter heading off for college, Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady has her hands full when a puzzling new case hits her department, demanding every resource she has at her disposal.
\nTwo women have fallen to their deaths from a small nearby peak, referred to by Bisbee locals as Geronimo. What's the connection between these two women? Is this a case of murder/suicide or is it a double homicide? And if someone else is responsible, is it possible that the perpetrator may, even now, be on the hunt for another victim?
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After taking down the man responsible for his best friend’s death, Stuart Ramey thinks the case is finally closed. That is, until Stu finds himself left with a multimillion dollar fortune in Bitcoin in a desperate bid by Frigg, a rogue A.I. program created by the killer, to keep itself from being fully deactivated.
\nTo sort out his situation and take Frigg down for good, Stu enlists the help of Ali Reynolds and the rest of his cyber security colleagues at High Noon Enterprises. But they are not the only ones who know about Frigg’s existence.
\nGraciella Miramar, an unassuming accountant to all appearances, is actually the right-hand woman to El Pescado, the leader of a dangerous drug cartel. She’ll do anything to get her hands on that program. With Frigg’s help, Graciella hopes to take over her father’s criminal underworld and become wealthy beyond her wildest dreams. But Stu - and El Pescado and his henchmen - may not be so easily defeated.
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With a divorce from her cheating husband of ten years pending and her high-profile broadcasting career abruptly ended by TV executives who wanted a \"younger face,\" Alison Reynolds feels there's nothing keeping her in LA any longer. Summoned back home to Sedona, Arizona, by the death of a childhood friend, she seeks solace in the comforting rhythms of her parents' diner, the Sugarloaf Café, and launches an on-line blog as therapy for others who have been similarly cut loose.
\nBut when threatening posts begin appearing, Ali finds out that running a blog is far more up-close and personal - and far more dangerous - than sitting behind a news desk. Suddenly something dark and deadly is swirling around her life. And now Ali is a target . . . and marked for death.
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The heat is a killer in Cochise County, Arizona, with temperatures over 100 degrees. In the suffocating stillness of an airless trailer, a woman is lying dead, a bullet hole in her chest.
\nWhy someone would murder a harmless loner with a soft spot for strays is only one of the questions nagging at the local police; another is why the killer used an eighty-five-year-old bullet, fired from the same weapon that slaughtered two other women who were discovered bound, naked, and gruesomely posed on the remote edge of a rancher′s land. The slayings are as oppressive as the blistering heat for Sheriff Joanna Brady, who must shoulder the added double burden of a brutal re-election campaign and major developments on the home front.
\nWith more on her plate suddenly than many big city law officers have to contend with, she must put marital distractions and an opponent′s dirty tricks in the background and deal with the terrifying reality that now threatens everyone in her jurisdiction: a serial killer in their midst. Sheriff Brady must pursue this sadistic murderer into the shadows of the past to get to the roots of a monstrous obsession and expose the permanent wounds of a crime far worse than homicide.
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A desperate father’s search for his runaway daughter has led him to the last place he ever expected to find her: backstage at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. But the murders in this dazzling world of make-believe are no mere stagecraft, and the blood is all too real.
\nThe hunt for his child has plunged former Seattle Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont into a bone-chilling drama of revenge, greed, and butchery, where innocents are made to suffer in perverse and terrible ways. And many more young lives are at stake, unless he can uncover the villain of the piece before the final, deadly curtain falls.
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Ali Reynolds begins the summer thinking her most difficult challenge will be surviving a six-week- long course as the lone forty-something female at the Arizona Police Academy - not to mention taking over the 6:00 AM shift at her family’s restaurant while her parents enjoy a long overdue Caribbean cruise. However, when Brenda Riley, a colleague from Ali’s old news broadcasting days in California, shows up in town with an alcohol problem and an unlikely story about a missing fiancé, Ali reluctantly agrees to help.
The man posing as Brenda’s fiancé is revealed to be Richard Lowensdale, a cyber-sociopath who has left a trail of broken hearts in his virtual wake. When he is viciously murdered, the women he once victimized are considered suspects. The police soon focus their investigation on Brenda, who is already known to have broken into Richard’s home and computer before vanishing without a trace. Attempting to clear her friend’s name, Ali is quickly drawn into a web of online intrigue that may lead to a real-world fatal error.
Sheriff Joanna Brady’s best intentions to stay on maternity leave take a hit when a serial homicide case rocks Cochise County, dragging her into a far-reaching investigation to bring down a relentless killer.
This time Sheriff Joanna Brady may expect to see her maternity leave through to completion, but the world has other plans when a serial homicide case surfaces in her beloved Cochise County. Rather than staying home with her newborn and losing herself in the cold cases to be found in her father’s long unread diaries, Joanna instead finds herself overseeing a complex investigation involving multiple jurisdictions.
Seattle investigator J. P. Beaumont is working a series of murders in which six young women have been wrapped in tarps, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. Their charred remains have been scattered around various dump sites, creating a grisly pattern of death across western Washington.
\nAt the same time, thousands of miles away in the Arizona desert, Cochise County sheriff Joanna Brady is looking into a homicide in which the elderly caretaker of an ATV park was run over and left to die. All the man has left behind is his dog, who is the improbable witness to some kind of turf warfare - or possibly something more sinister.Then a breakthrough in Beaumont's case leads him directly to the Southwest and into Brady's jurisdiction.
\nWhen the two met on a joint investigation years earlier, sparks flew. Under different circumstances, both of them admit, even more could have happened. But here, as the threads of their two seemingly separate cases wind together, Beaumont and Brady must put aside echoes of their shared past as they are once again drawn into an orbit of deception.
\nExcept this time it's not just their own lives that are in danger but those of the people closest to them as well.
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Sheriff Joanna Brady is looking forward to the holidays with her busy family, and to celebrating her daughter Jenny’s graduation from the police academy. But the family is interrupted when a body is discovered beneath a flooded bridge in the Arizona desert, and Joanna is called onto the case. A young boy was murdered, and the details of the crime scene tell Joanna two things: This was not the killer’s first murder. And it’s only a matter of time before he kills again.
\nAs Joanna digs deeper into the case, she begins to understand this murder is just one piece of a much, much bigger puzzle. She uncovers unlikely connections between cases of mysterious deaths and missing persons, having long since gone cold, that extend far beyond the confines of her small town and include the discovery of a body near Devil’s Lake, North Dakota. To get justice for the victims and to save the town of Bisbee from a predator, Joanna must chase down every dangerous lead.
\nMeanwhile, as a dogged journalist is circling the case and privileged information is leaked, Joanna can’t be sure who to trust. Could a prolific killer be hiding in plain sight? And how far will that person go to keep his many crimes hidden?
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With his hand trapped in the door of a speeding car, a man struggles to remain upright as he's dragged along a deserted stretch of San Juan Road in Phoenix's South Mountain Preserve. It's the perfect place to drive a man to his grave - literally. Starting with a crime so gruesome even prowling coyotes keep their distance from the remains, a killer begins crisscrossing the Southwest on a spree of grisly murders.A hundred miles away, Ali Reynolds is grieving.
\nThe newscasting job she once delighted in is gone and so is the philandering husband she loved and thought she knew. When a member of the family who gave Ali a generous scholarship for her education decades earlier suddenly asks her for a meeting, Ali wonders what it can mean. Before she can satisfy her curiosity, though, Ali receives another startling call: a friend's teenage daughter has disappeared.
\nAli offers to help, but in doing so, she unknowingly begins a quest that will reveal a deadly ring of secrets, at the center of which stand two undiscriminating killers . . .
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The hunter is free to kill again - and hour by hour, he draws closer . . . The brilliant psychopath Andrew Carlisle spent only six years in prison for the brutal torture–murder of a young girl of the Tohono O'otham tribe.
\nThe testimony of Diana Ladd - a teacher on the reservation - put Carlisle behind bars, and now she can't ignore the dark, mystical signs that say a predator has returned to prowl the Arizona desert.
\nBecause no matter where Diana and her young son hide . . . he will find them.
Perhaps it was fitting justice: a dentist who enjoyed inflicting pain was murdered in his own chair. The question is not who wanted Dr. Frederick Nielsen dead, but rather who of the many finally reached the breaking point. The sordid details of this case, with its shocking revelations of violence, cruelty, and horrific sexual abuse, would be tough for any investigator to stomach.
\nBut for Seattle Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont, the most damning piece of the murderous puzzle will shake him to his very core - because what will be revealed to him is nothing less than the true meaning of unrepentant evil.
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It was like a scene from a movie: the beautiful blond screaming on a Washington beach, a dead man lying at her feet; the dashing Homicide detective arriving to offer kindness and solace to the distressed lady.
\nWhat it wasn't was a restful vacation for J.P. Beaumont. And now a murderous mix of politics and passion is turning Beau's holiday into a nightmare - and leading the dedicated Seattle cop into the path of a killer whose bloodlust is rapidly becoming an obsession.
When Joanna Brady's daughter, Jenny, stumbles across the body of her high school principal, Debra Highsmith, in the desert, the Cochise County sheriff's personal and professional worlds collide, forcing her to tread the difficult middle ground between being an officer of the law and a mother.
\nWhile investigating murders has always meant discovering unpleasant facts and disquieting truths, the experienced Joanna isn't prepared for the knowledge she's about to uncover. Though she's tried to protect her children from the dangers of the grown-up world, the search for justice leads straight to her own door and forces her to face the possibility that her beloveddaughter may be less perfect than she seems - especially when a photo from the crime scene ends up on Facebook. A photo only one person close to the crime scene could have taken.
The gruesome picture is just the tip of the iceberg. Even a small, close-knit town like Bisbee has its secrets. Navigating her way through the unfamiliar world of social media, Joanna discovers shocking - and incriminatin - information. The details build, from a hushed-up suspension, to a group of teenagers with a grudge against the late Ms. Highsmith, to a hateful video calling for the principal's death. The video evidence points to one particular privileged boy, who's already lawyered up thanks to his father, a well-to-do doctor determined to protect his son's reputation. Yet the deeper Joanna digs, the more complications she uncovers. It seems the quiet, upstanding principal had a hidden past, full of mysterious secrets she'd successfully kept buried for years.
As the seasoned sheriff juggles professional constraints and personal demands - budget cuts, new team members, an arrogant coroner, a confused teenager, a precocious toddler, and a high-maintenance mother - she finds herself walking a fine line between justice and family that has never been so blurred.
The investigation of LaShawn Tompkins's murder seems straightforward enough. Upon his release from death row, the ex-drug dealer returned to his old neighborhood, where he was gunned down on his mother's doorstep. Just another case of turf warfare.
\nAt least that's what it looks like on the surface to Seattle investigator J. P. Beaumont, who's been handed the assignment under the strictest confidence. But as Beau starts digging, the situation becomes more complicated than he'd thought. It appears that LaShawn really had turned over a new leaf at the King Street Mission and his murder was premeditated. Someone had targeted the man for death.
\nMeanwhile, Beau's lover and fellow cop, Mel Soames, is given her own hush-hush investigation. A routine check on registered sex offenders has revealed a disturbing pattern: they're dying off at an alarming rate, and not all due to natural causes. Details of the latest death suggest an inside job, and Mel isn't letting this go.
\nSuddenly, Mel's investigation becomes entangled with Beau's, and the two begin to uncover a nightmarish conspiracy that could involve people in high places - including their own top brass.
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Twenty years ago, a darkness rose up out of the blistering heat of the Arizona desert and descended upon the Walker family of Tucson. A personified evil, a serial killer named Andrew Carlisle, brought blood and terror into their world, nearly murdering Diana Ladd Walker and her young son, Davy.
\nNow much has changed. The family has grown larger. There's Lani, the beloved adopted daughter - a beautiful Native American teenager \"kissed by the bees\" and destined, according to Tohono 0'othham lore, to become a woman of great spiritual power. And now that the psychopath Carlisle has died in prison, Brandon and Diana Walker believe that their long nightmare is finally over.They are wrong.The monster is dead, but his malevolence lives on . . . in another.
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When Santa Cruz county deputy sheriff Jose Reyes, one of Ali Reynolds’s classmates from the Arizona Police Academy, is gunned down and left to die, he is at first assumed to be an innocent victim of the drug wars escalating across the border. But the crime scene investigation shows there’s much more to it than that, and soon he and his pregnant wife, Teresa, are both under suspicion.
\nAli owes Reyes a debt of gratitude for the help he gave her years earlier. When she’s summoned to his bedside at Mercy Medical Center in Tucson, it’s impossible for Ali to turn away. Upon arriving at the hospital, Ali finds her good friend, Sister Anselm, is there as well, working as a patient advocate on behalf of another seriously injured victim, an unidentified border crosser who was raped and savagely beaten.
\nAs more bodies begin to pile up, Ali becomes determined to seek justice, even when it becomes impossible to know where the danger is coming from.
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After more than twenty years of distinguished service with the Seattle Police Department, Jonas Piedmont Beaumont is now working for the Washington State Attorney's Special Homicide Investigation Team or, as it's more commonly referred, the SHIT squad. But the more things change, the more they stay the same.
\nAn eyewitness to a fifty-year-old murder has just come forward, and Beau has been hand-picked to lead the investigation. While undergoing hypnotherapy, a middle-aged nun unexpectedly recalls the grisly details of a cold-blooded killing she witnessed when she was five years old. Though fear has kept these memories repressed for half a century, they've now risen to the surface to cast a harsh light on a deadly plot that spans two generations.
\nAnd Beau's caught in the glare, facing a ruthless band of coconspirators willing to go to any lengths to keep their secrets hidden.
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A Seattle fisherman has died badly - bound, tortured and set ablaze aboard his boat on the Puget Sound. And with his death comes disturbing questions . . . and the key to a pandora's box of evil that has remained tightly closed for over half a century.
\nElse Didriksen is no longer the beautiful, troubled teenager who disappeared from detective J.P. Beaumont's life thirty years earlier. Now she is a homicide victim's widow - frightened, desperate and trapped in a web of murderous greed that reaches out from a time of unrelenting terror.
\nAnd the dark, deadly secrets that hold Else prisoner threaten to ensnare Beau and new partner Sue Danielson as well - and to rock their world in ways they never dreamed possible.
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Cybersecurity expert Roger McGeary finally has his life back on track after years of struggling with depression. But when he falls from the balcony of his suite on an all-expenses-paid cruise, the police quickly dismiss it as “death by misadventure,” a vague phrase leaving much to interpretation.
Unsatisfied, Roger’s tough-as-nails aunt, Julia Miller, is determined to find answers and closure. By contacting Roger’s childhood friend Stuart Ramey to help her solve the mystery of his fate, Julia unwittingly sets up a collision course with a serial killer.
Stuart, his sidekick Cami Lee, and journalist turned amateur sleuth Ali Reynolds put the full resources of cutting edge online security firm High Noon Enterprises into learning the truth about Roger’s death. With Cami on the high seas investigating the ship from which Roger disappeared, Stuart stays tied to his computer, locked in a battle of wits and technology against an unusually twisted adversary. Aided by Frigg, an artificial intelligence companion of his own creation, the killer targets victims who have lost parents to suicide and attempts to drive them to the same tragic end.
When the heartless killer and his cyber accomplice set their sights on Stuart, High Noon must race against time to save him and countless others.
All manner of sinners and sufferers come to the rehab ranch in Arizona when they hit rock bottom. For Seattle detective J.P. Beaumont, there is a deeper level of Hell here: being forced to room with teenage drug dealer Joey Rothman.
\nAn all-around punk, Joey deserves neither pity nor tears - until he is murdered by a bullet fired from Beaumont’s gun. Someone has set Beau up brilliantly for a long and terrifying fall, dragging the alcoholic ex-cop into a conspiracy of blood and lies that could cost him his freedom . . . and his life.
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When Jennifer Brady returns to Northern Arizona University for her sophomore year, she quickly becomes a big sister to her new roommate, Beth Rankin, a brilliant yet sheltered sixteen-year-old freshman. For a homeschooled Beth, college is her first taste of both freedom and unfettered access to the internet, and Jenny is concerned that she is too naive. With Beth at war with her parents, Jenny asks to invite Beth home for Christmas, and Sheriff Joanna Brady says yes. After all, what could go wrong?
\nWithin hours, however, Joanna’s department is sucked into a complex officer-involved shooting that places two vulnerable young children in jeopardy. When Beth disappears while visiting over Christmas vacation, Joanna finds herself in a case fraught with landmines.
\nWith her own daughter’s well-being at stake, the seasoned sheriff knows there’s no room for the slightest mistake as hope ticks away for a fragile young girl who has gone missing and endangered.
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A shocking photo screamed from the front pages of the tabloids--the last moments of a life captured for all the world to see. The look of sheer terror eternally frozen on the face of the doomed woman indicated that her fatal fall from an upper story of an unfinished Seattle skyscraper was no desperate suicide - and that look will forever haunt Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont.
\nBut his hunt for answers and justice is leading to more death, and to dark and terrible secrets scrupulously guarded by men of steel behind the locked doors of a powerful union that extracts its dues payments in blood.
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Lance Tucker, an incarcerated juvenile offender and talented hacker in his own right, is set on fire while hanging Christmas decorations in a lockup rec room. B. Simpson, Ali Reynolds’s fiancé and the man who helped put Lance in jail, feels obliged to get to the bottom of what happened. With Ali off in England to help Leland Brooks at a reunion with his long-estranged family, B. turns to someone else to help out - Ali’s good friend and Taser - carrying nun, Sister Anselm.
\nMeanwhile, in Bournemouth - Leland’s hometown - Ali begins to investigate the decades-old murder of his father, which Leland himself was once suspected of committing. With unsolved murders on both sides of the Atlantic, Ali, B., and Sister Anselm are united by their search for answers.
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Seattle Police homicide detective J.P. Beaumont is babysitting his best friend's daughters in his penthouse apartment on a sober New Year's Day when he is called to investigate a body floating in nearby Elliot Bay.
\nThe case draws Seattle's favorite detective into the cutting-edge world of biotechnology, where business as usual means personal betrayals and selling trade secrets with ruthless efficiency. The more Beau discovers about the corpse, the more he's convinced that justice has already been served. Amid an exasperating, eccentric cast of characters and battling with a partner who resents Beau's inherited wealth, the recovering alcoholic detective discovers that sometimes twelve-step programs don't have all the answers.
\nWith his personal life converging into his professional one, Beau struggles to find a killer he doesn't really want to find.
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Years ago, when he was a homicide detective with the Seattle PD, J. P. Beaumont's partner, Sue Danielson, was murdered. Volatile and angry, Danielson's ex-husband came after her in her home and, with nowhere else to turn, Jared, Sue's teenage son, frantically called Beau for help. As Beau rushed to the scene, he urged Jared to grab his younger brother and flee the house. In the end, Beaumont's plea and Jared's quick action saved the two boys from their father's murderous rage.
\nNow, almost twenty years later, Jared reappears in Beau's life seeking his help once again - his younger brother Chris is missing. Still haunted by the events of that tragic night, Beau doesn't hesitate to take on the case. Following a lead all the way to the wilds of wintertime Alaska, he encounters a tangled web of family secrets in which a killer with nothing to lose is waiting to take another life.
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Alice Rogers, an elderly widow, is dead, found murdered in the Arizona desert. It's easy enough to pin the killing on the teens caught driving her car across the Mexican border, but Sheriff Brady isn't about to let it go at that.
\nAlice was something of a free spirit, with a penchant for Scotch, the glitter of Las Vegas, and a romance with a man twenty years her junior. Her hot-tempered daughter Susan suspects Mom's boyfriend - her former handyman who moved in instead of moving on when he finished his handy work. Now Susan's furious at her brother Clete, the do-nothing mayor of Tombstone, blaming him for not protecting their inheritance by breaking up their mother's winter romance.
Yet all is not as it appears to be, and Joanna is forced to put her personal life on hold to dig deeper into Alice's death, the lives of her greedy offspring, and the identity of her mysterious gentleman friend. And as the investigation gets sidetracked by ugly local land disputes, it takes some troublesome twists and turns, until Sheriff Brady finds herself wading through a murky morass of graft and corruption that may have given someone reason to kill - and kill again.
Chuck Brewster, the former business partner of Ali Reynolds’s husband B. Simpson, once carried on an affair with Clarice, B.’s first wife. So when he’s found murdered with Clarice standing nearby covered in blood, it seems an open and shut case.
\nBut Clarice swears she’s innocent and begs for Ali’s help. At the same time, someone is targeting Camille Lee while she’s on the road for High Noon. Ali is swiftly running out of time to find the real killer and keep her employee safe.
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When Cochise County, Arizona, Sheriff Joanna Brady′s daughter Jenny goes off on a Memorial Day weekend girl scout camp-out in nearby Apache Pass, Joanna trusts that her 12-year-old daughter will behave. But with boy-crazy Dora Matthews as a tentmate, Jenny is seduced into taking a late night unauthorized hike into the wilderness where - instead of smoking a clandestine cigarette - she and Dora stumble upon the body of a murdered Phoenix woman.
Knowing that her little girl will be traumatized by her experience, Joanna must balance concern for Jenny with the demands of her new marriage and possible bid for reelection.
But when young Dora Matthews herself turns up dead two days later, Joanna′s concern turns to terror. For if Constance Haskell′s killer is murdering potential witnesses, Jenny may be next.
The dead woman on a cold slab in the Arizona morgue was a talented artist recently arrived from the West Coast. The Washington State Attorney General's office thinks this investigation is too big for a small-town female law officer to handle, so they're sending Sheriff Joanna Brady some unwanted help - a seasoned detective named Beaumont.
\nSheriff Brady resents his intrusion, and Bisbee, Arizona, with its ghosts and memories, is the last place J.P. Beaumont wants to be. But the twisting desert road they must reluctantly travel together is leading them into a very deadly nest of rattlers. And if they hope to survive, suddenly trust is the only option they have left . . .
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It looks like a classic crime of passion to Detective J.P Beaumont: two corpses found lovingly entwined in a broom closet of the Seattle School District building. The prime suspect, Pete Kelsey, admits his slain spouse was no novice at adultery, yet he swears he had nothing to do with the brutal deaths of the errant school official and her clergyman-turned-security guard companion. Beau believes him, but there's something the much sinned-upon widower's not telling - and that spells serious trouble still to come.
\nBecause the secret Pete's protecting is even hotter than extra-marital sex. . . and it could prove more lethal than murder.
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Before he retired, J. P. Beaumont had looked forward to having his days all to himself. But too much free time doesn’t suit a man used to brushing close to danger. When his longtime nemesis, retired Seattle crime reporter Maxwell Cole, dies in what’s officially deemed to be an accidental fire, Beau is astonished to be dragged into the investigation at the request of none other than the deceased victim himself. In the process Beau learns that just because a long-ago case was solved doesn’t mean it’s over.
Caught up in a situation where old actions and grudges can hold dangerous consequences in the present, Beau is forced to operate outside the familiar world of law enforcement. While seeking justice for his frenemy and healing for a long fractured family, he comes face to face with an implacable enemy who has spent decades hiding in plain sight.
Every summer, in an event that is commemorated throughout the Tohono O'odham Nation, the Queen of the Night flower blooms in the Arizona desert. But one couple's intended celebration is shattered by gunfire, the sole witness to the bloodshed a little girl who has lost the only family she's ever known.
To her rescue come Dr. Lani Walker, who sees the trauma of her own childhood reflected in her young patient, and Dan Pardee, an Iraq war veteran and member of an unorthodox border patrol unit called the Shadow Wolves. Joined by Pima County homicide investigator Brian Fellows, they must keep the child safe while tracking down a ruthless killer.
In a second case, retired homicide detective Brandon Walker is investigating the long unsolved murder of an Arizona State University coed. Now, after nearly half a century of silence, the one person who can shed light on that terrible incident is willing to talk. Meanwhile, Walker's wife, Diana Ladd, is reliving memories of a man whose death continues to haunt her.
As these crimes threaten to tear apart three separate families, the stories and traditions of the Tohono O'odham people remain just beneath the surface of the desert, providing illumination to events of both self-sacrifice and unspeakable evil.
JoAnna Brady is no tough-talking V.I. Warshawski or Kat Colorado; her appeal lies in her willingness to admit that her Cochise County sheriff's uniform is often an uneasy fit. As the single mother of a young daughter, Brady is prey to the pain and loneliness that have resulted from her husband's brutal murder, and she struggles to prove to herself and others that she is capable of bringing a cold-blooded killer to justice.
When Clyde Philips, a local gun dealer, dies violently, his stock of high-powered assault weapons vanishes, and two sniper slayings follow soon after, suspicion falls upon Alton Hosfield, an embittered rancher at odds with the federal government, the environmentalists, and anyone else he sees as a threat to his isolation.
Sheriff Brady, however, suspects that the solution may lie elsewhere, and her investigation takes her into the bizarre practices of a local resort whose appeal is equal parts New Age spiritualism, Native American pantheism, and cold-blooded materialism.
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An old woman, both a hermit and a hoarder, is dying in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. While cleaning out her dilapidated house, her estranged daughter, Liza Machett, discovers a fortune in hundred-dollar bills. For Liza, the money seems like a blessing - until an elderly man she's never met appears at her mother's funeral, warning that she's in danger. Suddenly, Liza's quiet life is turned upside down. Terrified, Liza sets off on a perilous cross-country journey that will lead her to Cochise County, Arizona, where Sheriff Joanna Brady is embroiled in a personal mystery of her own.
Junior Dowdle, a developmentally disabled man in his sixties, is found dead in a limestone cavern near Bisbee. Inside the cave, the police also discover a badly injured kitten, as well as the remains of other mutilated pets. Though he'd always been kind and sweet, with the onset of dementia, he had begun having violent episodes. Could he have hurt those animals? Was his death an accident? Or is he a victim as well? Joanna and her modest staff have their hands full as another case rocks the department - a shocking murder involving Liza and the money. The undaunted sheriff must solve these two disturbing cases fast, before more innocent blood can be shed.
Getting old is hell. J. P. Beaumont is finally taking some time off to have knee-replacement surgery. But instead of taking his mind off work, the operation plunges him into one of the most perplexing and mind-blowing mysteries he's ever faced.
A series of dreams takes him back to his early days on the force with the Seattle PD, and then even earlier, to his days in Vietnam, reminding him of people and events he hasn't thought about in years. Are they just drug-induced hallucinations? Beaumont isn't so sure. When tugging on those threads from long ago leads to present-day murders, Beau's suspicions are confirmed. Some bodies from the second watch just won't stay buried.
A prisoner languishes in a Phoenix jail cell, accused of brutally slaying his estranged wife. No one believes the man is innocent, except the new female sheriff of Cochise County, in town for a crash course in police training. Joanna Brady is out of her jurisdiction - and possibly in over her head.
\nFor a human monster is on the prowl, hiding the grisly evidence of his horrific crimes in the vast emptiness of the Arizona desert. And an impromptu investigation, with no official sanction and no back up, is drawing a cold, ingenious serial killer much too close to Brady for comfort - and, worse still, closer to her little girl.
\nSeattle investigator J. P. Beaumont is drawn into an intriguing, and shockingly personal, case in this superb tale of suspense.
Former Seattle homicide cop, J. P. Beaumont, is learning to enjoy the new realities of retirementdoing morning crossword puzzles by a roaring fireplace; playing frisbee with his new dog; having quiet lunches with his still working wife.But then his pastcomes calling.
When a long ago acquaintance, Alan Dale, shows up on Beaus doorstep with a newborn infant in hand and asking for help locating his missing daughter, Beau finds himself faced with an investigation that will turn his own life upside down by dragging hisnone-too-stellar past onto a roller-coaster ride that may well derail his serene present.
Brianna \"Bree\" O'Brien never returned from Skeleton Canyon. Someone brutally murdered the pretty, popular teenager who had stolen away under cover of darkness to rendezvous with her boyfriend. Perhaps youthful rage, jealousy and savage passion cost young Bree her life. Or maybe she stumbled onto something too dangerous to know.
\nSheriff Joanna Brady of Cochise County knows only too well the pain of losing a loved one to violence. But she is disturbed by the O'Brien's insistence that Bree's boyfriend is responsible for their daughter's slaying. Joanna senses there are words not being spoken, and dark mysteries locked behind doors of the sprawling O'Brien family compound.
\nBut it is the strange disappearance of a good friend that is pulling Sheriff Brady ever closer to the lethal nest of lies, greed and secrets hiding in a desolate corner of the Arizona desert - where the next blood that feeds the parched, cracked earth could be her own.
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There are many bizarre and terrible ways to die. Seattle Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont thought he had seen them all - until he saw this body, its wounds, and the murder weapon: an elegant woman's shoe, its stiletto heel gruesomely caked with blood.
\nThe evidence is shocking and unsettling, even for a man who prowls the shadows for a living, for it suggests that savagery is not the exclusive domain of the predatory male. And the scent of a stylish killer is pulling Beaumont into a world of drugs, corruption, and murder to view close-up a cinematic dream at its most nightmarish . . . and lethal.
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With grit, courage and dogged determination, Joanne challenged the status quo - and won. Now, as newly elected Sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona, she must battle the prejudice and hostility of a mistrustful, male-dominated police force - and solve a grisly double homicide that threatens to tear the sleepy desert community to pieces.
\nFor the two bodies baking in the harsh Southwestern sun are connected by sinister threads that reach back generations - and by devastating family secrets of greed, hatred and shocking abuse that could destroy the innocent along with the guilty.
In the heat of the Arizona desert, a raging fire pushes temperatures to a deadly degree, and one woman is left to burn. Pulled naked and barely breathing from the fire, the victim has no idea who she is, let alone who would do this to her - or why. In her hospital bed she drifts in and out of consciousness, her only means of communicating a blink of the eye. And then an angel appears.
\nMisguidedly known around town as the \"Angel of Death,\" Sister Anselm has devoted her life to working as an advocate for unidentified patients. To her burn patient, she is a savior. But to this Jane Doe's would-be killer, Sister Anselm's efforts pose a serious threat. Ali Reynolds is on the scene as the new media relations consultant for the Yavapai County Police Department, keeping reporters at bay and circumventing questions about arson and a link to a domestic terrorist group called Earth Liberation Front.
\nBut her job quickly becomes much more. As Ali struggles to help Sister Anselm uncover the helpless woman's identity, they realize that by locating the missing relatives they may be exposing the victim once more to a remorseless killer determined to finish the job. Faced with the possibility of putting all three of their lives in jeopardy, Ali fearlessly pursues justice - and what she discovers is a secret even darker and more twisted than she ever could have imagined.
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The dead body discovered in a Seattle dumpster was shocking enough - but equally disturbing was the manner of death. The victim, a high school coach, had been lynched, leaving behind a very pregnant wife to grieve over his passing, and to wonder what dark and disturbing secrets he took to his grave.
\nA homicide detective with twenty years on the job, J.P. Beaumont knows this case is a powder keg and he fears where this investigation will lead him. Because the answers lie on the extreme lethal edge of passion and hate, where the wrong kind of love can breed the most terrible brand of justice.
Mateo Vega, a one-time employee of Ali Reynold’s husband, B. Simpson, has spent the last sixteen years of his life behind bars. According to the courts, he murdered his girlfriend. But Mateo knows that her real killer is still on the loose, and the first thing he’s going to do when he gets a taste of freedom is track him down.
\nAfter being granted parole, a wary Mateo approaches Stu Ramey of High Noon Enterprises for a reference letter for a job application, but to his surprise, Stu gives him one better: He asks him to come on board and work for B. once again. Just as Mateo starts his new job, though, chaos breaks out at High Noon - a deadbeat tenant who is in arrears has just fled, and tech expert Cami Lee has gone missing.
\nAs Ali races to both find a connection between the two disappearances and help Mateo clear his name with the help of PI J.P. Beaumont, tragedy strikes in her personal life, and with lives hanging in the balance, she must thread the needle between good and evil before it’s too late.
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The little girl was only five, much too young to die - a lost treasure who should have been cherished, not murdered. She could have been J.P. Beaumont's kid, and the determined Seattle homicide detective won't rest until her killer pays dearly.
\nBut the hunt is leading Beaumont into a murky world of religious fanaticism, and toward a beautiful, perilous obsession all his own. And suddenly Beau himself is a target - because faith can be dangerous . . . and love can kill.
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The highway from Los Angeles to the Palm Springs desert is parched, unforgiving, and deadly. In the suffocating stillness of a car trunk, a man - his mouth and hands bound with tape - awaits his fate. What possible enemy could be bitter enough to commit such a heinous crime? And when will the monster make another move?
\nAli Reynolds is traveling that same blistering, lonesome highway, looking forward to putting her past behind her. But her cheating husband is in a hurry for a divorce, and the television network who wrongfully dismissed Ali for the sole sin of being over forty will face her in court as well. So Ali must return to the scene of these crimes. As she passes the site of a horrifying accident, she thanks goodness it's no longer her job to report the news.
\nUntil she finds out the news is her own . . . For the victim is Ali's cheating husband, and soon she'll find herself the prime suspect at the center of a terrifying web of evil.
Top ten New York Times bestselling author J.A. Jance brings us another unforgettable mystery featuring Seattle detective J.P. Beaumont, who is fighting to save a frightened child from a brutal murderer.
\nWhat kind of monster would break into a man′s home at night, then slaughter him and his family? The fact that the dead man was a model cop who was loved and respected by all only intensifies the horror. But the killer missed someone: a five-year-old boy who was hiding in the closet. Now word is being leaked out that the victim was \"dirty.\"
\nBut Seattle P.D. Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont isn′t about to let anyone drag a murdered friend′s reputation through the muck. And he′ll put his own life on the firing line on the gang-ruled streets to save a terrified child who knows too much to live.
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It's 1909 and Rose Moriarty - teenage daughter of Sherlock Holmes' greatest enemy - has made a name for herself fighting monsters and solving crimes. But that was before Rose met the one mystery she couldn't the disappearance of her headmistress. Now, her school has shut down, her classmates have scattered, and Rose is on her own.
\nOn the very day Rose receives word that an old friend is dying, the shadowy Count Christoph and his ward Clara show up at her door. Rose has already figured out why they're here (to hire her) and what's in their bag (an ancient orb with incredible powers), but questions remain: Can Rose convince these strangers to help save her friend's life? What are the grotesque, bug-shaped stalkers that plague their every step? And how can Rose pursue this adventure while avoiding a certain boy from her childhood? The only thing certain is that Rose is no longer alone, because danger forges strange alliances . . . and Professor Moriarty wasn't the only famous villain to have a daughter.
\nUnexpected friendships, supernatural mystery, high-stakes heists, and budding romance billow together in this thrilling fantasy adventure, which introduces a motley crew of daredevil heroines who hunt monsters . . . in all their forms.
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Nyssa Blacksea is a wanted woman. The Empire she once served now hunts for her and her unlikely new companion, Quinn. It’s only a matter of time until the two women are found and executed. Desperate and with nowhere to turn, Nyssa and Quinn hatch an insane plan - offer the Empire its oldest enemy in exchange for their freedom.
\nBut the path to their freedom is fraught with assassins, heart-breaking betrayal, strange gods . . . and a dangerous queen who demands Nyssa to submit. Or be broken. Complicating everything is Nyssa’s growing affection for Quinn. Both are inextricably linked by magick that they barely understand and struggle to control.
\nFacing incredible odds and her own mortality, Nyssa has to confront her fears - and her feelings - or succumb those who wish to destroy her.
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Nyssa Blacksea is eager to silence her doubters. The only warrior in her guild without magick, she’s forced to rely solely on her martial arts mastery, unwavering confidence, and charisma. When given the chance to hunt down a mysterious woman named Quinn, and earn the coveted title of Ashcloak, Nyssa seizes the opportunity. Track down a fugitive? An easy task.
\nThere’s just one problem - Quinn isn’t receptive to Nyssa’s charms and refuses to go down without a fight. Dangerous secrets swirl around Quinn and a treacherous guild leader, rattling Nyssa’s faith in the very system that raised her.
\nThough troubled by the sinking feeling she’s not meant to survive the mission, Nyssa confronts the dangers awaiting her, clashing with pirates, assassins, and undead horrors. Duty pulls her in one direction, but a strange, undeniable spark of connection draws her towards Quinn. With only her heart and code of honor to guide her, Nyssa risks death to stay true to herself.
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Nyssa Blacksea is tired of running from the Imperial regime that wants her dead. With a royal bargaining chip in hand, and freedom for her and Quinn finally within reach, Nyssa’s ready to take the fight to the Empire’s doorstep. She’s armed with desperate plan and a dangerous weapon: hope.
\nBut that hope is shattered when Quinn’s nemesis, Ceril Anelos, strikes. Always a step ahead, his traitorous intentions soon becomes clear - master forbidden magick that has been locked away for centuries.
\nHis ruthless attack forces Nyssa and Quinn to form an unlikely alliance with the very powers that once threatened them. Navigating a treacherous web of Imperial politics, power struggles, and old rivals, Nyssa’s top priority remains protecting those she loves.
\nBoth women must confront their own painful pasts while hunting down Anelos, who will stop at nothing to claim Quinn and kill Nyssa. As they race to prevent him from becoming a god himself, Nyssa fights to stay true to her sense of honor and protect Quinn from being consumed by the darkness of hate.
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A tender debut that follows a woman who, after her best friend's death, loses her faith and quits her job to join the postal service, quickly becoming an 'essential worker' as the city shuts down.
\nIt's January 2020, and Miriam is already getting a sense that the world might be ending. First, she learns that her best friend, Esther, has died. Then her faith in God - in everything, really - follows suit. Her job teaching Scripture at a private Christian school suddenly seems untenable, so she quits. Thankfully, the postal service is hiring.
\nWhile Miriam finds comfort in her route, the mail truck can hardly outpace the memory of her lost friend and eroded faith. She finds herself composing letters to Esther that she will never deliver, reflecting on their shared childhoods and deep understanding of each other's difficult families.
\nMendell Station depicts one woman's deliverance through the peculiar rhythms of work, and the beauty found in small details and gestures, those quotidian labors of love.
Best friends and soul mates since they were kids, Hart Augusto and Ruby Armenta were poised to take on senior year together when Hart tragically drowns in a boating accident. Absolutely shattered, Ruby struggles to move on from the person she knows was her forever love.
\nHart can't let go of Ruby either . . . Due to some divine intervention, he's offered a second chance. Only it won't be as simple as bringing him back to life - instead, Hart's soul is transferred to the body of local bad boy.
\nWhen Hart returns to town as Jameson, he realises that winning Ruby back will be more challenging than he'd imagined. For one, he's forbidden from telling Ruby the truth. And with each day he spends as Jameson, memories of his life as Hart begin to fade away.
\nThough Ruby still mourns Hart, she can't deny that something is drawing her to Jameson. As much as she doesn't understand the sudden pull, it can't be ignored. And why does he remind her so much of Hart? Desperate to see if the connection she feels is real, Ruby begins to open her heart to Jameson - but will their love be enough to bridge the distance between them?
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Lilian Estrada seemingly has it all: an ob-gyn star on the rise, a master at balancing work with whirlwind romances and part of a family of fiercely loyal and exceptional women, all bound together by an extraordinary secret. The Estrada women each possess a unique power, and Lily shines with the rare gift to manipulate memories. Yet not even her mystical abilities can shield her from a harrowing event at the hospital, one that sends her powers - and her confidence - spiraling out of control.
\nSeeking solace, Lily retreats to her family's ancestral home in Mexico, only to find herself face-to-face with a ghost from her past - Sam, the first love she never forgot. Nearly a decade since she last saw him, Sam is hardly the boy she once knew, and as old flames spark to life, Lily must navigate the mysteries of their shared history and the depths of her own heart if she hopes to control her unpredictable magic.
\n
Fetch is a weaver of magic, gifted with immense powers - but there is no one left to teach him how to master them. And no one to share his life with since the cruel winter queen, Celeste, cursed Fetch into a fox and abducted his beloved younger sister, Violet.
\nAs Celeste awakens from her slumber to usher in winter once more, she makes a stunning announcement: the winter palace - the very place where Violet is being held captive - will host a festival. With the palace's spelled protections down for just one evening, the opportunity to save his sister might finally be in Fetch's grasp. And so, with only a tiny yet fierce bone dragon named Beckblade for company, he sets off on a treacherous rescue mission.
\nBut what Fetch doesn't realise is that a dark and mysterious secret lies buried within him, one that could unravel everything. Can Fetch discover what plagues him before it leads to his ruin, and he loses Violet and their magic forever?
Esmerelda Santos is a rare bruja, born with Chaos magic in her veins. She and her family are direct descendants of one of the four original witches - a mysterious legend about the night magic was born in San Bosco. But since the death of her mother, Esme is more concerned about healing their father’s spiraling grief.
\nWhen Esme finds a heart spell in a forbidden grimorio, she thinks it could be the answer to making her dad whole again. But before she can try, she and her best friend, Tiago, discover that their families and all the town’s witches have vanished - along with their magic, which keeps San Bosco alive. The only way to save them and the town is to find an original witch - impossible, since no one has actually ever seen one.
\nWith a witch hunter on their tail, Esme and Tiago journey to a banished realm where forbidden magic runs wild. Here the two must embrace their powers and confront the legend’s terrible truths . . . or risk losing their families and their magic forever.
Shadow bruja Ren Santiago was relentlessly pursued by the evil Aztec Lords of Night, who claimed that she was destined to be their queen, a destiny she wasn't willing to accept. So she chose death instead.
\nToo bad death wasn't the answer to her problems. Ren soon realises she must return to the land of the living to make things right. Unfortunately, that means negotiating with Ixtab, queen of the underworld. Ixtab offers her ten days aboveground in exchange for the discarded crown of jade and shadow. If Ren fails, she will return to the darkness for eternity. Ren agrees, knowing full well that she also has to save her friends Marco, Monty, and Edison and, while she's at it, put those pesky Lords of Night back to sleep forever.
\nThe only problem is, Ren lost her shadow magic and time rope when she lost her life. How will Ren manage to accomplish what feels impossible? The answer lies not in manipulating shadows or time, but in recognising the awesome power that has always been inside her.
\n
When Harlow Estrada is abruptly fired from her dream job and her boyfriend proves to be a jerk, her world turns upside down. She flees New York City to the one place she can always call home - the enchanted Hacienda Estrada.
\nThe Estrada family farm in Mexico houses an abundance of charmed flowers cultivated by Harlow’s mother, sisters, aunt, and cousins. By harnessing the magic in these flowers, they can heal hearts, erase memories, interpret dreams - but not Harlow. So when her mother and aunt give her a special task involving the family’s magic, she panics. How can she rise to the occasion when she is magicless ? But maybe it’s not magic she’s missing, but belief in herself. When she finally embraces her unique gifts and opens her heart to a handsome stranger, she discovers she’s far more powerful than she imagined.
\n
Zane Obispo's new life on a beautiful secluded tropical island, complete with his family and closest friends, should be perfect. But he can't control his newfound fire skills yet (inherited from his father, the Maya god Hurakan); there's a painful rift between him and his dog ever since she became a hell hound; and he doesn't know what to do with his feelings for Brooks.
\nOne day he discovers that by writing the book about his misadventures with the Maya gods, he unintentionally put other godborn children at risk. Unless Zane can find the godborns before the gods do, they will be killed. To make matters worse, Zane learns that Hurakan is scheduled to be executed. Zane knows he must rescue him, no matter the cost. Can he accomplish both tasks without the gods detecting him, or will he end up a permanent resident of the underworld?
In this cleverly plotted sequel to The Storm Runner, the gang is back together again with spirited new characters, sneaky gods, unlikely alliances, and secrets darker than Zane could ever have imagined. Secrets that will change him forever.
Ava Granados will never forgive herself for being late to her beloved nana's deathbed. But due to a flash flood that left Ava in a fender bender with a mysterious boy, she missed her grandmother's mystical blessing - one that has been passed between the women of her family upon death for generations.
\nThen Nana's ghost appears with a challenge from beyond the grave. As it turns out, Nana did give Ava a blessing, but it missed its target, landing with the boy from the night of the storm instead. Was it fate? Ava refuses to believe so. With the help of her sisters and Nana's rather bumbling spiritual guide, she's determined to reclaim her share of the family magic and set Nana free.
\nFor guarded Ava, befriending some random boy is the last thing she wants to do. She's gotten along just fine protecting her heart - keeping people at a distance is a great way to ensure no one ever hurts you. But as Ava embarks on her mission to retrieve the lost blessing, she starts to wonder if getting close to thunderstorm boy is worth the risk.
\n
1965 - San Francisco, California
\nThe 1960s are bursting with music and movement and love in San Francisco, perfect for a budding artist like Blake. Unfortunately, the art world is not welcoming to people of her gender or her multi-racial heritage, making it tough to land an internship that could put her on the map. That, plus the fact that Blake’s family has been notoriously riddled with bad luck, makes her feel like she can’t catch a break.
\nThings only get worse when Blake starts to have ominous, confusing visions that grow stronger and more frequent, prompting Blake’s aunt and uncle to tell her about a long-lost family heirloom that could be the key to everything
\nFueled by the ambiguous clues in her visions, Blake sets out on a journey through the city to retrieve her ancestors’ legendary mirror. But Blake is not the only one looking for it. Soon she must attempt to unleash her own dormant powers . . . or else risk all she holds dear.
\n
Fourteen-year-old Renata Santiago is the most powerful godborn of them all, a bruja with a unique combination of DNA. The Mexica blood from her dad's side gives her the ability to manipulate shadows. Her mom Pacific, a Maya goddess, gifted her a magical rope that controls time, and Ren recently used it to save a few gods from getting stuck forever in 1987. She brought them back to the present, but her BFF Ah Puch, the once fearsome god of death, darkness, and destruction, is now a teenager with no divine powers.
\nRen is also a girl with ordinary hopes and dreams. She wishes, for example, that her blog about alien sightings would garner more respect. She's always been absolutely convinced that there's a connection between aliens and the Maya civilisation. Plenty of online haters feel differently, and they call her a fake, a liar, and a loser.
\nWhen Ren receives an email about an alien sighting in Kansas, she thinks it may support her theory. She also suspects that the cinco - five renegade godborns - are up to no good. Soon she finds herself embroiled in a quest to prevent the troublemakers from awakening the nine Aztec Lords of Night. Problem is, none of Ren's friends are available to help her hunt down the cinco and the dangerous gods they are resurrecting. Ren has no choice but to team up with two strangers recruited by Ah Puch: Edison, a teen hybrid demon, and Montero, an eleven-year-old Aztec hunter. Succeeding in this quest will prove that Ren is no fake, liar, or loser. But it isn't just another challenge. It could well be an impossible one that leaves Ren questioning her very existence.
\n
Zane Obispo has been looking forward to his training at the Shaman Institute for Higher Order Magic, and not only because it means he'll be reunited with his best friend, Brooks. Anything would be better than how he has spent the last three months: searching for the remaining godborns with a nasty demon who can sniff them out (literally). But when Zane tracks down the last kid on his list, he's in for a surprise: the \"one\" is actually a pair of twins, and they're trying to prevent a mysterious object from falling into the wrong hands.
After a shocking betrayal, Zane finds himself at SHIHOM sooner than expected. Even more shocking is the news that the Maya gods have gone missing. The bat god, Camazotz, and Ixkik' (aka Blood Moon) have taken them out of commission . . . and the godborns are their next target. The only thing the villains need now? The object that the twins possess.
Zane knows the godborns aren't strong enough yet to stand up to Zotz, Ixkik', and their army. There might be a way to save the gods, but it involves locating a magical calendar that can see across time and space . . . not to mention traveling more than thirty years into the past.
In The Shadow Crosser, Zane and his friends embark on their most treacherous mission yet - a mission that, with one blunder, could change history as we know it, and worse, destroy the universe.
Zane has always enjoyed exploring the dormant volcano near his home in New Mexico, even though hiking it is challenging. He'd much rather hang out there with his dog, Rosie, than go to middle school, where kids call him Sir Limps a Lot, McGimpster, or Uno - for his one good leg. What Zane doesn't know is that the volcano is a gateway to another world and he is at the center of a powerful prophecy.
A new girl at school, Brooks, informs him that he's destined to release an evil god from the ancient Maya relic he is imprisoned in - unless she can find and remove it first. Together they return to the volcano, where all kinds of crazy happens. Brooks turns into a hawk, a demon attacks them in a cave, and Rosie gives her all while trying to protect Zane.
When Zane decides to save his dog no matter the cost, he is thrust into an adventure full of surprising discoveries, dangerous secrets, and an all-out war between the gods, one of whom happens to be his father. To survive, Zane will have to become the Storm Runner. But how can he run when he can't even walk well without a cane?
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When a body is discovered at a popular Highland landmark, it seems like just another day on the job for DCI Jack Logan and his team.
Except this body is missing a very vital component, and given its location - The Well of Seven Heads - it seems like someone is trying to send a message. But why? And to whom?
With pressure mounting from his superiors, six hundred teenagers baying for blood, and the press sniffing around for a scandal, the only chance Jack has of cracking his latest case is if he finds a way to keep the heid, while all around are losing theirs.
Just when he thought he was out...
Burdened by guilt over the trauma recently inflicted on his friends and colleagues, former-Detective Chief Inspector Jack Logan has spent the past nine months living in self-imposed exile.
When a mother and her young daughter are the victims of a double murder staged to look like suicide, Logan is dragged back to help hunt down and catch a brutal, calculating killer.
But the world has moved on without him. To do what needs to be done, Logan must first find his place among old friends and new enemies before the killer strikes again, and a whole Highland community tears itself apart.
Maybe early retirement wasn't such a bad idea, after all . . .
While searching for a missing hill walker, Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team uncovers a body - just not the one they were looking for.
Still dealing with the fallout from their last case, DCI Jack Logan and his team venture south from Inverness to investigate a brutal, gangland-style execution in the wilds of the Highland countryside.
As the victim's dark secrets are gradually revealed, Jack uncovers the rot lurking beneath the stunning scenery, making himself the target of a criminal more dangerous than any he has faced before.
If he isn't careful, it won't just be a murder he's dealing with in Glencoe.
It'll be a massacre.
Life has been slowly improving for DCI Jack Logan lately. Happily settled down with the woman of his dreams and a dog he begrudgingly tolerates, things are finally going Jack’s way.
\nBut, could all that be about to change?
\nWhen a sadistic killer begins picking off victims on the streets of Inverness, Jack’s boss decides to bring in some outside help. But the new team member is an old flame from Jack’s past who isn’t quite ready to let him go.
\nAnd, as the dead bodies rack up, the Happily Ever After that Jack has been building for himself might just be the next victim to fall . . .
\n
DCI Jack Logan should’ve known things were going too well. Genuinely happy for the first time in years, Jack has almost fooled himself into believing that the world is a decent place.
\nBut, when the discovery of a mutilated body kicks off a series of grisly murders, Jack’s dream of a peaceful life rapidly begins to crumble around him.
\nWith friends in danger, and enemies begging for his help, Jack must risk everything to protect the final would-be victim, and stop the most monstrous killer he’s ever faced.
\nAnd to do that, sacrifices will have to be made . . .
\n\n
When a badly burned body is found near the remote Ardnamurchan Lighthouse on the west coast of Scotland, it feels like just another day on the job for DCI Jack Logan and his team. But the victim’s list of enemies - including a diminutive loan shark and a powerful local politician - is far longer than Jack was prepared for.
\nAnd don’t even get him started on the magic psychic sex cult. With political scandal brewing, conspiracy theories running wild, and a team member stuck inside a giant road safety squirrel costume, DCI Logan’s latest case might just be his most bizarre to date.
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A remote Highland castle. A dark and stormy night. A murder most haunting. It’s Halloween, and when an elderly billionaire is discovered dead in the locked study of his stately Highland home, DCI Jack Logan and his team must race the worsening weather to get to the scene of the crime. There, among the victim’s extended family and staff, Jack finds no shortage of suspects.
\nEveryone, it seems, had reason to want the old man dead, and they all have something to hide. Cut off from back-up by the worst storm in decades, and with the cast and crew of a TV ghost hunting show seriously cramping his style, Jack’s only chance of solving his latest case is by going back to basics. But the castle’s residents won’t give him a minute to think. Not even the dead ones . . .
\n
We all have our little secrets.
When the remains of a brutally murdered young woman are left hanging from the Glenfinnan Monument in the Highlands of Scotland, DCI Jack Logan and his Major Investigations Team are dispatched to investigate.
At first, the case appears to be fairly open and shut. But, as evidence mounts, Jack uncovers some shocking truths about the victim that risk turning the investigation into a potentially explosive international incident.
With a billionaire baying for his blood, a former FBI agent breathing down his neck, and half the world's press watching his every move, it isn't the murderer that Jack's afraid might be the end of him.
It's the stress.
And don't get him started on the bloody tourists . . .
Former Detective Superintendent, Bob Hoon, has had one hell of a year.
\nAfter being repeatedly beaten, shot at, blown-up, and tortured, Hoon is looking forward to spending a quiet Christmas drinking heavily in front of the TV, while pointedly ignoring the older sister who has invaded his home.
\nThe world, however, has other plans.
\nWhen a routine trip to an Inverness shopping centre is interrupted by a squad of heavily armed Santas, Hoon, his sister, and an old army colleague find themselves trapped alongside several hundred terrified hostages.
\nWith so much potential for bloodshed, the police gathering outside the centre can only wait, watch, and try to negotiate with the terrorists within.
\nBut patience has never been Hoon’s strong point.
\nAnd so, if he and everyone else in the centre are going to make it home for Christmas, Hoon is left with only one choice.
\nHe’s going to Die Hard the **** out of this thing.
\n
Six months ago, a girl vanished. Now, it’s happening again.
\nWhen the body of a teenager is discovered near Eilean Donan Castle several months after she disappeared, DCI Jack Logan and his team journey across the Highlands to investigate.
\nAs they start to unpick the young woman’s life, the secrets and lies they expose soon threaten to tear the small, rural community apart.
\nBut, when a second girl goes missing in similar circumstances, it isn’t just a murder investigation that Jack finds himself running.
\nIt’s a race against time.
\n
The explosive new Scottish crime fiction novel from Amazon #1 Bestselling author, JD Kirk. It all started harmlessly enough. An egged window. A deflated car tyre. A few garden gnomes knocked over. But then, the silent calls began - late nights and early mornings, to landlines, and mobiles, and to numbers that no one should have access to.
\nAt their wits' end, three former British Army soldiers, now living in the Highlands of Scotland, have no choice but to turn to the police for help.
\nAnd that is when the killing starts.
\nBrought in to lead the case, Detective Chief Inspector Jack Logan finds himself locked in a battle of wits with a meticulously organised murderer.
\nA murderer who has been planning all this for a very long time . . .
\n
After a violent home invasion in the remote wilds of Glen Coe leaves a family of four dead, DCI Jack Logan and his team are brought in to lead the manhunt.
\nBut, when one of the victims is revealed to be one half of legendary 1980s Glasgow-based comedy double act, ‘Neeps & Tatties’, Logan is forced to leave the Highlands and head back to his old stomping ground.
\nHe may have spent his career dealing with the worst humanity has to offer, but to find out who killed Archie Tatties and his family, Logan will have to confront his most terrifying challenge yet - the seedy world of Scottish light entertainment.
\n
Following a convention in the Scottish Highlands, eight social media influencers vanish without a trace, leaving their followers - and families - in a state of shock, and the police clueless as to their whereabouts.
\nAnd then, the livestreams begin.
\nBroadcast live from their squalid underground cells, the young influencers are forced into a sadistic battle for survival.
\nWith each livestream, their captor pits them against each other in a twisted competition for likes. The influencer with the fewest positive reactions faces a gruesome end - live on camera.
\nAs the likes increase and the death toll rises, DCI Jack Logan and his team must traverse both the Scottish wilderness and the darkest corners of the internet to try and save the remaining captives.
\nBut how do you catch a killer who is always one click ahead?
\n
After twenty years on the force, Detective Chief Inspector Jack Logan thinks he has seen it all.
He is wrong.
When a nurse is murdered on her way home from nightshift, Jack and his team go on the hunt for her killer.
As more victims are uncovered, Jack finds himself tracking a murderer afflicted by a unique psychosis - one that leaves him free to maim and kill without a shred of remorse.
Facing a new type of killer in an unfamiliar city, DCI Jack Logan is about to be pushed to his limits, before being forced to realise just how little he truly knows.
Tormented by the recent loss of a colleague, DCI Jack Logan is on the warpath, determined to bring down all those he holds responsible for the officer's death.
His quest for revenge is cut short when a woman's body turns up on the remote island of Canna, and Jack is summoned to investigate. As a storm closes in, Jack finds himself cut-off from the rest of the world, with no car, no phone signal, and only DC Neish for company.
With time running out before the ferries resume, Jack must act fast to crack the case before the killer can escape. But with the victim widely hated on the island, everyone on it is a potential suspect.
Even the scarecrow . . .
Ten years ago, DCI Jack Logan stopped the serial child-killer dubbed 'Mister Whisper,' earning himself a commendation, a drinking problem, and a broken marriage in the process.
\nNow, he spends his days working in Glasgow's Major Incident Team, and his nights reliving the horrors of what he saw. And what he did. When another child disappears a hundred miles north in the Highlands, Jack is sent to lead the investigation and bring the boy home.
\nBut as similarities between the two cases grow, could it be that Jack caught the wrong man all those years ago? And, if so, is the real Mister Whisper about to claim his fourth victim?
\n
When a blood-soaked old man is spotted wandering through a sleepy fishing village in the far north of Scotland, his neighbours think he’s been in an accident.
\nUntil he leads them to his home, and to the mutilated remains of his late wife.
\nIt is the first murder that the remote Highland village has ever seen. It will not be the last. Someone is targeting the elderly and vulnerable in their homes. Someone they know. Someone they trust.
\nArriving to lead the manhunt, DCI Jack Logan finds a close-knit community closing ranks. Can Jack break down the wall of silence before more lives are lost? Or, in this twisted, sadistic killer, has Jack Logan finally met his match?
\n
When washed-up 80s rock legend Johnny Freestone is found dead in a cave off Scotland’s North Coast 500 tourist route, it looks like a tragic accident - another celebrity lost to a reckless lifestyle.
\nBut detective - and secret Freestone fan - Jack Logan is convinced he was murdered. As Logan delves into Johnny’s final days, he uncovers a trail of bitter rivalries, broken promises, and a comeback tour that wasn’t quite what it seemed.
\nWith the Highlands’ rugged beauty as a backdrop, Logan must navigate a web of secrets and lies that stretch from music studios to old flames - and find out who wanted Johnny silenced for good.
\n
When a young man is found frozen to death on a Highland street in mid-December, DCI Jack Logan initially puts it down to a Christmas night out gone tragically wrong.
But, when a post mortem reveals something more sinister, Jack discovers he is dealing with a cold, calculating killer with a long line of victims, a talent for torture, and a perverse sense of justice.
Half a decade ago, the press dubbed him ‘The Iceman’ - a twisted vigilante who successfully evaded capture for two years, before melting away into the night.
Now, The Iceman has come back. His naughty list is longer than ever.
And it contains some worryingly familiar names . . .
All Bob Hoon ever wanted was a good whisky, and some peace and quiet.
\nBut, when Hoon hears that his friend and MI5 agent, Miles Crabtree, has gone missing in the United States, he is dragged back into action once more.
\nThe hunt leads him to the Florida Everglades, and into conflict with the violent locals, the terrifying wildlife, and a Sheriff with a sinister agenda of his own.
\nCarving a trail of destruction across America, Hoon crosses swords with a washed-out, Elvis-themed P.I. who might be his only chance of not only saving his friend, but of foiling a twisted conspiracy that could lead to the deaths of millions.
\nFrom the Highlands of Scotland, through the steamy dive bars of Florida, to the dazzling neon nightmare of Vegas, Hoon’s quest for justice will expose the rotten underbelly of the American Dream.
\nAnd he might just cause a major international incident along the way.
\n
When a badly mutilated body washes up on the shores of Loch Ness, DCI Jack Logan's dream of a quiet life in the Highlands is shattered.
While the media speculates wildly about monster attacks, Jack and the Major Investigations Team must act fast to catch the killer before they can strike again.
But with Nessie-hunters descending on the area in their dozens, and an old enemy rearing his ugly head, the case could well turn out to be the most challenging of Jack's career.
And, if he isn't careful, the last.
Community service clean-up was supposed to be a tedious affair. But, when a young offender stumbles upon a bin bag filled with human remains, a quiet Highland village is thrown into chaos.
\nThe investigation leads DCI Jack Logan to a remote and nightmarish cottage, where a forgotten freezer holds a disturbing discovery: a full set of human fingers.
\nAs more body parts are uncovered, Logan and his team hunt for a killer with a gruesome obsession for collecting trophies.
\nAcross the vast Highlands, where secrets run as deep as the lochs, the team must piece together a jigsaw puzzle of horror that's as fragmented as the remains they've found.
\nBut how do you solve a jigsaw when you can’t see the picture on the box?
\n
The hunter has become the hunted.
Ten years ago, DCI Jack Logan caught the twisted child killer known as Mister Whisper.
Two days ago, Mister Whisper escaped.
Now, Jack must track down the most ruthless enemy he has ever faced before he can strike again. But, after ten years behind bars, it isn't just murder that Mister Whisper has in mind.
It's revenge.
The woman’s body was found on a bench in a New York City playground. She was clean, her hair neatly arranged, her makeup carefully applied. But other things were very wrong - like the tattoo and piercings, clearly new. The clothes, decades out of date. The fatal wound hidden beneath a ribbon around her neck. And the note: Bad Mommy, written in crayon as if by a child.
\nIt seems clear the killer’s childhood was traumatic - a situation Eve is all too familiar with herself. Yet the clues point to a perpetrator who’d be around sixty, and there are no records of old crimes with a similar MO. What was the trigger that apparently reopened such an old wound and sent someone over the edge?
\nWhen Eve learns that other young women have recently vanished, the case grows even more urgent - and to solve it she’ll need to find her way into a hidden place of dim light and concrete, into the distant past, and into the depths of a shattered mind.
The shots came quickly, silently, and with deadly accuracy. Within seconds, three people were dead at Central Park’s ice skating rink. The victims: a talented young skater, a doctor, and a teacher. As random as random can be.
Eve Dallas has seen a lot of killers during her time with the NYPSD, but never one like this. After reviewing security videos, it becomes clear that the victims were killed by a sniper firing a tactical laser rifle, who could have been miles away when the trigger was pulled. And though the locations where the shooter could have set up seem endless, the list of people with that particular skill set is finite: police, military, professional killer.
Eve’s husband, Roarke, has unlimited resources - and genius - at his disposal. And when his computer program leads Eve to the location of the sniper, she learns a shocking fact: There were two - one older, one younger. Someone is being trained by an expert in the science of killing, and they have an agenda. Central Park was just a warm-up. And as another sniper attack shakes the city to its core, Eve realises that though we’re all shaped by the people around us, there are those who are just born evil . . .
However the act of murder was committed, in cold blood or hot, Eve Dallas was sworn to pursue it to its root. And serve the dead.' At the luxurious Roarke Palace Hotel, a maid walks into suite 4602 for the nightly turndown - and steps into her worst nightmare. A killer leaves her dead, strangled by a thin, silver wire. He's Sly Yost, a virtuoso of music and murder; a hit man for the elite. Lieutenant Eve Dallas knows him well.
\nBut in this twisted case, knowing the killer doesn't help solve the crime. Because there's someone else involved. Someone with a very personal motive. And Eve must face a terrifying possibility that the real target may, in fact, be her husband, Roarke.
Lieutenant Eve Dallas finds the Rossi case frustrating. She’s got an elderly victim who’d just arrived from Rome; a widow who knows nothing about why he’d left; an as-yet unidentifiable weapon; and zero results on facial recognition. But when she finds a connection to the Urban Wars of the 2020s, she thinks Summerset - fiercely loyal, if somewhat grouchy, major-domo and the man who’d rescued her husband from the Dublin streets - may know something from his stint as a medic in Europe back then.
\nWhen Summerset learns of the crime, his shock and grief are clear - because, as he eventually reveals, he himself was one of The Twelve. It’s not a part of his past he likes to revisit. But now he must - not only to assist Eve’s investigation, but because a cryptic message from the killer has boasted that others of The Twelve have also died. Summerset is one of those who remain - and the murderous mission is yet to be fully accomplished . . .
Eve Dallas has a grisly double homicide to solve when two young lovers-both employees of the same prestigious accounting firm-are brutally killed on the same night. It doesn't leave Eve a lot of leftover time to put together a baby shower for her buddy Mavis, but that's supposedly what friends are for.
Now Mavis needs another favor. Tandy Willowby, one of the moms-to-be in Mavis's birthing class, didn't show up for the shower. A recent emigrant from London, Tandy has few friends in New York, and no family-and she was really looking forward to the party. And when Eve enters Tandy's apartment and finds a gift for Mavis's shower wrapped and ready on the table - and a packed bag for the hospital still on the floor next to it-tingling runs up and down her spine.
Normally, such a case would be turned over to Missing Persons. But Mavis wants no one else on the job but Eve-and Eve can't say no. She'll have to track Tandy down while simultaneously unearthing the deals and double-crosses hidden in the files of some of the city's richest and most secretive citizens, in a race against this particularly vicious killer.
Luckily, her multimillionaire husband Roarke's expertise comes in handy with the number crunching. But as he mines the crucial data that will break the case wide open, Eve faces an all too real danger in the world of flesh and blood.
Dennis Mira just had two unpleasant surprises. First he learned that his cousin Edward was secretly meeting with a real estate agent about their late grandfather’s magnificent West Village brownstone, despite the promise they both made to keep it in the family. Then, when he went to the house to confront Edward about it, he got a blunt object to the back of the head.
\nLuckily Dennis is married to Charlotte Mira, the NYPSD’s top profiler and a good friend of Lieutenant Eve Dallas. When the two arrive on the scene, he explains that the last thing he saw was Edward in a chair, bruised and bloody. When he came to, his cousin was gone. With the mess cleaned up and the security disks removed, there’s nothing left behind but a few traces for forensics to analyse.
\nAs a former lawyer, judge, and senator, Edward Mira mingled with the elite and crossed paths with criminals, making enemies on a regular basis. Like so many politicians, he also made some very close friends behind closed - and locked - doors. But a badge and a billionaire husband can get you into places others can’t go, and Eve intends to shine some light on the dirty deals and dark motives behind the disappearance of a powerful man, the family discord over a multimillion-dollar piece of real estate . . . and a new case that no one saw coming.
\n
On Manhattan's Upper East Side a woman lies dead at the bottom of the stairs, stripped of all her valuables. Most cops might call it a mugging gone wrong, but Lieutenant Eve Dallas knows better.
A well-off accountant and a beloved wife and mother, Marta Dickenson doesn't seem the type to be on anyone's hit list. But when Eve and her partner, Peabody, find blood inside the building, the lieutenant knows Marta's murder was the work of a killer who's trained, but not professional or smart enough to remove all the evidence.
But when someone steals the files out of Marta's office, Eve must immerse herself in her billionaire husband Roarke's world of big business to figure out who's cruel and callous enough to hire a hit on an innocent woman. And as the killer's violent streak begins to escalate, Eve knows she has to draw him out, even if it means using herself as bait . . .
Lieutenant Eve Dallas is no party girl, but she’s managing to have a reasonably good time at the celebrity-packed bash celebrating The Icove Agenda, a film based on one of her famous cases. It’s a little spooky seeing the actress playing her, who looks as though she could be her long-lost twin. Not as unsettling, though, as seeing the actress who plays Peabody - drowned in the lap pool on the roof of the director’s luxury building.
\nTalented but rude and widely disliked, K.T. Harris made an embarrassing scene during dinner. Now she’s at the center of a crime scene - and Eve is more than ready to get out of her high heels and strap on her holster to step into the role she was born to play: cop.
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Conducting a top secret investigation into the death of a fellow police officer has Lieutenant Eve Dallas treading on dangerous ground. She must put professional ethics personal loyalties. But when a dead body is placed outside her home, Eve takes the warning personally.
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With her husband, Roarke, watching her every move, Eve is drawn into the most dangerous case of her career. Every step she takes makes her question her own beliefs of right and wrong - and brings her closer to a confrontation with humanity's most seductive form of evil . . .
In a decrepit, long-empty New York building, Lieutenant Eve Dallas’s husband begins the demolition process by swinging a sledgehammer into a wall. When the dust clears, there are two skeletons wrapped in plastic behind it. He summons his wife immediately - and by the time she’s done with the crime scene, there are twelve murders to be solved.
\nThe place once housed a makeshift shelter for troubled teenagers, back in the mid-2040s, and Eve tracks down the people who ran it. Between their recollections and the work of the force’s new forensic anthropologist, Eve begins to put names and faces to the remains. They are all young girls. A tattooed tough girl who dealt in illegal drugs. The runaway daughter of a pair of well-to-do doctors. They all had their stories. And they all lost their chance for a better life.
\nThen Eve discovers a connection between the victims and someone she knows. And she grows even more determined to reveal the secrets of the place that was called The Sanctuary - and the evil concealed in one human heart.
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Homicide cop Eve Dallas and her billionaire husband, Roarke, are building a brand-new school and youth shelter. They know that the hard life can lead kids toward dangerous crossroads - and with this new project, they hope to nudge a few more of them onto the right path. For expert help, they hire child psychologist Dr. Rochelle Pickering - whose own brother pulled himself out of a spiral of addiction and crime with Rochelle’s support.
\nLyle is living with Rochelle while he gets his life together, and he’s thrilled to hear about his sister’s new job offer. But within hours, triumph is followed by tragedy. Returning from a celebratory dinner with her boyfriend, she finds Lyle dead with a syringe in his lap, and Eve’s investigation confirms that this wasn’t just another OD. After all his work to get clean, Lyle’s been pumped full of poison - and a neighbor with a peephole reports seeing a scruffy, pink-haired girl fleeing the scene.
\nNow Eve and Roarke must venture into the gang territory where Lyle used to run, and the ugly underground world of tattoo parlors and strip joints where everyone has taken a wrong turn somewhere. They both believe in giving people a second chance. Maybe even a third or fourth. But as far as they’re concerned, whoever gave the order on Lyle Pickering’s murder has run out of chances . . .
\nIt was always a shock, not the hard one Bowers had hoped for. Eve had seen too much for that. But what one human could do to another was never routine for her. With the precision of a surgeon, a serial killer preys on the most vulnerable of souls of the world's city streets.
\nThe first victim: a homeless person, found dead in New York City. No bruises, no signs of a struggle. Just a laser-perfect, fist-sized hole where his heart had once been.
\nDetective Eve Dallas is assigned to investigate. But as she is lured in to a cat-and-mouse game with the killer, Dallas also becomes the focus of an internal investigation. In her mind, Eve feels she has done nothing except irritate some fellow cops with connections in high places.
\nBut her struggle to bring a murderer to justice is about to be hindered by the fight to save her career.
NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas keeps the streets of a near-future New York City safe in this extraordinary series. But even she makes mistakes, and is haunted by those she couldn't save-and the killers she couldn't capture.
\nWhen the body of a young brunette is found in East River Park, artfully positioned and marked by signs of prolonged and painful torture, Eve is catapulted back to a case nine years earlier. The city was on edge from a killing spree that took the lives of four women in fifteen days, courtesy of a man the media tagged \"The Groom\"- because he put silver rings on the fingers of his victims.
When it turns out that the young brunette was employed by Eve's billionaire husband, Roarke, she brings him in on the case-a move that proves fitting when it becomes chillingly clear that the killer has made his attack personal. The victim was washed in products from a store Roarke owns, and laid out on a sheet his company manufactures.
With the Groom's monstrous return, Eve is determined to finish him once and for all. Familiar with his methods, Eve knows that he has already grabbed his next victim. Time is running out on another woman's life.
And chances are he's working up to the biggest challenge of his illustrious career-abducting a woman who will test his skills and who promises to give him days and days of pleasure before she dies: Eve.
It was a stab in the dark.
On a chilly February night, during a screening of Psycho in midtown, someone sunk an ice pick into the back of Chanel Rylan’s neck, then disappeared quietly into the crowds of drunks and tourists in Times Square. To Chanel’s best friend, who had just slipped out of the theater for a moment to take a call, it felt as unreal as the ancient black-and-white movie up on the screen. But Chanel’s blood ran red, and her death was anything but fictional.
Then, as Eve Dallas puzzles over a homicide that seems carefully planned and yet oddly personal, she receives a tip from an unexpected source: an author of police thrillers who recognises the crime - from the pages of her own book. Dallas doesn’t think it’s coincidence, since a recent strangulation of a sex worker resembles a scene from her writing as well. Cops look for patterns of behavior: similar weapons, similar MOs. But this killer seems to find inspiration in someone else’s imagination, and if the theory holds, this may be only the second of a long-running series.
The good news is that Eve and her billionaire husband Roarke have an excuse to curl up in front of the fireplace with their cat, Galahad, reading mystery stories for research. The bad news is that time is running out before the next victim plays an unwitting role in a murderer’s deranged private drama - and only Eve can put a stop to a creative impulse gone horribly, destructively wrong.
It was just another after-work happy hour at a bar downtown - until the madness descended. And after twelve minutes of chaos and violence, more than eighty people lay dead. Lieutenant Eve Dallas is trying to sort out the inexplicable events.
\nSurviving witnesses talk about seeing things - monsters and swarms of bees. They describe sudden, overwhelming feelings of fear and rage and paranoia. When forensics makes its report, the mass delusions make more sense: it appears the bar patrons were exposed to a cocktail of chemicals and illegal drugs that could drive anyone into temporary insanity - if not kill them outright.
\nBut that doesn't explain who would unleash such horror - or why. Eve's husband, Roarke, happens to own the bar, but he's convinced the attack wasn't directed at him. It's bigger than that. And if Eve can't figure it out fast, it could happen again, anytime, anywhere. Because it's airborne . . .
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New York, 2061: The place called the Pleasure Academy is a living nightmare where abducted girls are trapped, trained for a life of abject service while their souls are slowly but surely destroyed. Dorian, a thirteen-year-old runaway who’d been imprisoned there, might never have made it out if not for her fellow inmate Mina, who’d hatched the escape plan. Mina was the more daring of the two - but they’d been equally desperate.
\nUnfortunately, they didn’t get away fast enough. Now Dorian is injured, terrified, and wandering the streets of New York, and Mina lies dead near the waterfront while Lt. Eve Dallas looks over the scene.
\nMina’s expensive, elegant clothes and beauty products convince Dallas that she was being groomed, literally and figuratively, for sex trafficking - and that whoever is investing in this high-overhead operation expects windfall profits. Her billionaire husband, Roarke, may be able to help, considering his ties to the city’s ultra-rich.
\nBut Roarke is also worried about the effect this case is having on Dallas, as it brings a rage to the surface she can barely control. No matter what, she must keep her head clear - because above all, she is desperate for justice and to take down those who prey on and torment the innocent.
It's a new year in New York city, and two star-crossed lovers have just discovered an insatiable appetite . . . for murder.
\nLieutenant Eve Dallas has witnessed some grisly crimes in her career and she knows just how dark things can get on the streets. But when a much-loved musician is found dead, Eve soon realises that his murder is part of a horrifying killing spree, stretching right across the country.
\nNow the killers have reached New York, and they've found themselves another victim. Eve knows she only has a couple of days to save a young girl's life, and to stop the killers before their sadistic games escalate. Eve's husband Roarke is ready to put his brains and his considerable resources behind the search. But even as the couple works closely together, time is running out . . .
Found alone on the streets as a child, Eve Dallas has built a new identity and a new future as a cop. Now the hard-edged and coolheaded detective fights for truth and justice, but she still has one very human weakness-enigmatic Irish billionaire, Roarke. And when a trusted employee of Roarke Enterprises is a suspect in a double-homicide, Roarke comes to Eve for help.
Reva Ewing was a former member of the Secret Service, and now a security specialist for Roarke Enterprises-until she was found standing over the dead bodies of her husband, renowned artist Blair Bissel, and her best friend. But Lieutenant Eve Dallas believes there was more to the killing than jealous rage-all of Bissel's computer files were deliberately corrupted.
To Roarke, it's the computer attack that poses the real threat. He and Reva have been under a code-red government contract to develop a program that would shield against techno-terrorists. But this deadly new breed of hackers isn't afraid to kill to protect their secret-and it's up to Lieutenant Eve Dallas to shut them down before the nightmare can spread to the whole country.
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As NY Lt. Eve Dallas and her billionaire husband Roarke are driving home, a young woman - dazed, naked, and bloody - suddenly stumbles out in front of their car. Roarke slams on the brakes and Eve springs into action.
\nDaphne Strazza is rushed to the ER, but it’s too late for her husband Dr. Anthony Strazza. A brilliant orthopedic surgeon, he now lies dead amid the wreckage of his obsessively organised town house, his three safes opened and emptied. Daphne would be a valuable witness, but in her terror and shock the only description of the perp she can offer is repeatedly calling him “the devil” . . .
\nWhile it emerges that Dr. Strazza was cold, controlling, and widely disliked, this is one case where the evidence doesn’t point to the spouse. So Eve and her team must get started on the legwork, interviewing everyone from dinner-party guests to professional colleagues to caterers, in a desperate race to answer some crucial questions:
\nWhat does the devil look like? And where will he show up next?
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It was a glittering event full of A-listers, hosted by Eliza Lane and Brant Fitzhugh, a celebrity couple who’d conquered both Hollywood and Broadway. And now Eve Dallas has made her entrance - but not as a guest. After raising a toast, Fitzhugh fell to the floor and died, with physical symptoms pointing to cyanide, and the police have crashed the party.
\nFrom all accounts, he wasn’t the kind of star who made enemies. Everyone loved him - even his ex-wife. And since the champagne cocktail that killed him was originally intended for Eliza, it’s possible she was the real target, with a recently fired assistant, a bitter rival, and an obsessed fan in the picture.
\nWith so many attendees, staff, and servers, Eve has her work cut out determining who committed murder in the middle of the crowd - and what was their motivation. As one who’s not fond of the spotlight herself, she dreads the media circus surrounding a case like this. All she wants is to figure out who’s truly innocent, and who’s only acting that way . . .
The scene in the West Village studio appears to be classic crime-of-passion: two wine glasses by the bed, music playing, and a young sculptor named Ariel Byrd with the back of her head bashed in. But when Dallas tracks down the wealthy Upper East Side woman who called 911, the details don't add up.
\nGwen Huffman is wealthy, elegant, comforted by her handsome fiancé as she sheds tears over the trauma of finding the body - but why did it take an hour to report it? And why is she lying about little things?
As Eve and her team look into Gwen, her past, and the people around her, they find that the lies are about more than murder. As with sculpture, they need to chip away at the layers of deception to find the shape within - and soon they're getting the FBI involved in a case that involves a sinister, fanatical group and a stunning criminal conspiracy.
Bart Minnock, founder of the computer-gaming giant U-Play, enters his private playroom, and eagerly can't wait to lose himself in an imaginary world, to play the role of a sword-wielding warrior king, in his company's latest top-secret project, Fantastical.
The next morning, he is found in the same locked room, in a pool of blood, his head separated from his body. It is the most puzzling case Eve Dallas has ever faced, and it is not a game. . . .
NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas is having as much trouble figuring out how Bart Minnock was murdered as who did the murdering. The victim's girlfriend seems sincerely grief-stricken, and his quirky-but-brilliant partners at U-Play appear equally shocked. No one seemed to have a problem with the enthusiastic, high-spirited millionaire. Of course, success can attract jealousy, and gaming, like any business, has its fierce rivalries and dirty tricks-as Eve's husband, Roarke, one of U- Play's competitors, knows well. But Minnock was not naive, and quite capable of fighting back in the real world as well as the virtual one.
Eve and her team are about to enter the next level of police work, in a world where fantasy is the ultimate seduction-and the price of defeat is death. . . .
Personal trainer Trey Ziegler was in peak physical condition. If you didn’t count the kitchen knife in his well-toned chest.
\nLieutenant Eve Dallas soon discovers a lineup of women who’d been loved and left by the narcissistic gym rat. While Dallas sorts through the list of Ziegler’s enemies, she’s also dealing with her Christmas shopping list - plus the guest list for her and her billionaire husband’s upcoming holiday bash.
\nFeeling less than festive, Dallas tries to put aside her distaste for the victim and solve the mystery of his death. There are just a few investigating days left before Christmas, and as New Year’s 2061 approaches, this homicide cop is resolved to stop a cold-blooded killer.
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The body was left in a dumpster like so much trash, the victim a woman of no fixed address, known for offering paper flowers in return for spare change - and for keeping the cops informed of any infractions she witnessed on the street. But the notebook where she scribbled her intel on litterers and other such offenders is nowhere to be found.
\nThen Eve is summoned away to a nearby building site to view more remains - in this case decades old, adorned with gold jewelry and fine clothing - unearthed by recent construction work. She isn’t happy when she realises that the scene of the crime belongs to her husband, Roarke - not that it should surprise her, since the Irish billionaire owns a good chunk of New York.
\nNow Eve must enter a complex world of real estate development, family history, shady deals, and shocking secrets to find justice for two women whose lives were thrown away . . .
Manhattan is filled with galleries and deep-pocketed collectors who can make an artist's career with a wave of a hand. But one man toils in obscurity, his brilliance unrecognised while lesser talents bask in the glory he believes should be his. Come tomorrow, he vows, the city will be buzzing about his work.
\nIndeed, before dawn, Lt. Eve Dallas is speeding toward the home of the two gallery owners whose doorway has been turned into a horrifying crime scene overnight. A lifeless young woman has been elaborately costumed and precisely posed to resemble the model of a long-ago Dutch master, and Dallas plunges into her investigation.
Even in the mid-twenty-first century, during a time when genetic testing usually weeds out any violent hereditary traits before they can take over, murder still happens.
\nThe first victim is found lying on a sidewalk in the rain. The second is murdered in her own apartment building. Police Lieutenant Eve Dallas has no problem finding connections between the two crimes. Both victims were beautiful and highly successful women.
\nTheir glamorous lives and loves were the talk of the city. And their intimate relations with men of great power and wealth provide Eve with a long list of suspects-including her own lover, Roarke.
Pediatrician Kent Abner received the package on a beautiful April morning. Inside was a cheap trinket, a golden egg that could be opened into two halves. When he pried it apart, highly toxic airborne fumes entered his body - and killed him.
After Eve Dallas calls the hazmat team - and undergoes testing to reassure both her and her husband that she hasn’t been exposed - it’s time to look into Dr. Abner’s past and relationships. Not every victim Eve encounters is an angel, but it seems that Abner came pretty close - though he did ruffle some feathers over the years by taking stands for the weak and defenseless.
While the lab tries to identify the deadly toxin, Eve hunts for the sender. But when someone else dies in the same grisly manner, it becomes clear that she’s dealing with either a madman - or someone who has a hidden and elusive connection to both victims.
No one likes to be alone during the holidays. For New York's most posh dating service, Personally Yours, it is the season to bring lonely hearts together. But Lieutenant Eve Dallas, on the trail of a ritualistic serial killer, has made a disturbing discovery: all of the victims have been traced to Personally Yours.
\nAs the murders continue, Eve enters into an elite world of people searching for their one true love - and a killer searching for his next victim. A world where the power of love leads men and women into the ultimate act of betrayal . . .
Police lieutenant Eve Dallas encounters one of her most difficult cases in Imitation in Death. With the very first victim, Eve realises that the killer stalking the streets of New York City isn't a run-of-the-mill serial murderer. The copycat executions are imitating the methods and victim choices of an ominous list of notorious serial killers, beginning with Jack the Ripper. And when the killer leaves a distinctive note at the crime scene, it's clear that he's targeting Eve personally - a fact that worries Roarke, Eve's shrewd husband.
Assisted by her aide, Peabody, Eve compiles a list of suspects that includes several high-profile possibilities. Their very prominence, however, complicates the investigation, for they have the power and influence to make the search difficult. All of the suspects are reluctant to cooperate but one of them is playing with Eve like a cat with a mouse by tempting her with crime scene notes and challenging her to find him.
Can Eve stop him before he slaughters again? Or will his next victim be Eve herself?
It is 2058, New York City. Lieutenant Eve Dallas uncovers a world where technology can create beauty and youth, but passion and greed can destroy them.
She was one of the most sought-after women in the world. A top model who would stop at nothing to get what she wanted -even another woman's man. And now she's dead, the victim of a brutal murder.
Police lieutenant Eve Dallas puts her life on the line to take the case when suspicion falls on her best friend, the other woman in the fatal love triangle. Beneath the facade of glamor, Eve finds that the world of high fashion thrives on an all-consuming obsession with youth and fame-one that leads her from the lights of the runway to the dark underworld of New York City, where drugs can fulfill any desire, for a price.
First it was a limo driver shot through the neck with a crossbow. Then it was a high-priced escort found stabbed through the heart with a bayonet. Random hits, thrill kills, and murderers with a taste for the finer things in life - and death - are making NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas angry. And an angry Eve can be just as an efficient and dangerous predator as the killer.
\nAs time runs out on another innocent victim's life, Eve's investigation will take her into the rarified circle that her husband Roarke travels in - and into the perverted heart of madness . . .
The phenomenal series set in a future New York City returns as NYPSD Lt. Eve Dallas hunts for the killer of a seemingly ordinary history teacher-and uncovers some extraordinary surprises. Craig Foster's death devastated his young wife, who'd sent him to work that day with a lovingly packed lunch. It shocked his colleagues at the private school, too, and as for the ten-year-old girls who found him in his classroom in a pool of bodily fluids-they may have been traumatised for life.
Eve soon determines that Foster's homemade lunch was tainted with deadly ricin, and that Mr. Foster's colleagues have some startling secrets of their own. It's Eve's job to sort it out- and discover why someone would have done this to a man who seemed so inoffensive, so pleasant . . . so innocent.
Now Magdalena Percell . . . there's someone Eve can picture as a murder victim. Possibly at Eve's own hands. The slinky blonde-an old flame of her billionaire husband, Roarke-has arrived in New York, and she's anything but innocent. Roarke seems blind to Magdalena's manipulation, and he insists that the occasional lunch or business meeting with her is nothing to worry about . . . and none of Eve's business. Eve's so unnerved by the situation that she finds it hard to focus on her case. Still, she'll have to put aside her feelings, for a while at least-because another man has just turned up dead.
Eve knows all too well that innocence can be a facade. Keeping that in mind may help her solve this case at last. But it may also tear apart her marriage.
In an uptown strip joint, a cop is found bludgeoned to death. The weapon's a baseball bat. The motive's a mystery. It's a case of serious overkill that pushes Eve Dallas straight into overdrive. Her investigation uncovers a private club that's more than a hot spot.
\nPurgatory's a last chance for atonement where everyone is judged. Where your ultimate fate depends on your most intimate sins. And where one cop's hidden secrets are about to plunge innocent souls into vice-ridden damnation . . .
When the newly promoted captain of the NYPSD and his wife return a day early from their vacation, they are looking forward to spending time with their bright and vivacious sixteen-year-old daughter, who stayed behind. Not even their worst nightmares could prepare them for the crime scene that awaits them instead.
\nDeena has been brutally murdered in her bedroom, and her body shows signs of trauma that horrify even the toughest of cops, including our own Lieutenant Eve Dallas, who is specifically requested by the captain to investigate. When the evidence starts to pile up, Dallas and her team think they are about to arrest their perpetrator; little do they know that someone has gone to great lengths to tease and taunt them by using a variety of identities.
\nOverconfidence can lead to careless mistakes. But for Dallas, one mistake might be all she needs to serve justice.
For the airline executives finalising a merger that would make news in the business world, the nine a.m. meeting would be a major milestone. But after marketing VP Paul Rogan walked into the plush conference room, strapped with explosives, the headlines told of death and destruction instead. The NYPSD’s Eve Dallas confirms that Rogan was cruelly coerced by two masked men holding his family hostage. His motive was saving his wife and daughter - but what was the motive of the masked men?
Despite the chaos and bad publicity, blowing up one meeting isn’t going to put the brakes on the merger. All it’s accomplished is shattering a lot of innocent lives. Now, with the help of her billionaire husband Roarke, Eve must untangle the reason for an inexplicable act of terror, look at suspects inside and outside both corporations, and determine whether the root of this crime lies in simple sabotage, or something far more complex and twisted.
An unknown bomber is stalking New York City. He is sending Eve Dallas taunting letters promising to wreak mass terror and destruction among the \"corrupt masses.\" And when his cruel web of deceit and destruction threatens those she cares for most, Eve fights back.
\nIt's her city - it's her job - and it's hitting too close to home. Now, in a race against a ticking clock, Eve must make the pieces fit - before the city falls.
Eve Dallas is one tough cop. She's got no problem dealing with a holiday reveler in a red suit who plunges thirty-seven stories and gives new meaning to the term 'sidewalk Santa.'
\nBut when she gets back to the station and Trudy Lombard shows up, it's all Eve can do to hold it together. Instantly, she's plunged back into the past, to the days when she was a vulnerable, traumatised girl - trapped in foster care with the twisted woman who now sits in front of her, smiling. Trudy claims she just wanted to see how Eve was doing.
\nBut Eve's husband, Roarke, suspects otherwise - and his suspicions prove correct when Trudy arrives at his office demanding money in exchange for keeping the ugly details of his wife's childhood a secret. Barely restraining himself, Roarke shows her the door - and makes it clear that she'd be wise to get out of New York and never bother him or his wife again.
\nBut just a few days later, Trudy's found on the floor of her hotel room, a mess of bruises and blood. A cop to the core, Eve is determined to solve the case, if only for the sake of Trudy's bereaved son.
\nUnfortunately, Eve is not the only one to have suffered at this woman's hands, and she and Roarke will follow a circuitous, dangerous path to find out who turned this victimiser into a victim.
Eve Dallas is a New York police lieutenant hunting for a ruthless killer. Named by the social worker who found her when she was a mere child roaming that city's streets, Eve lives for her job. In over ten years on the force, she's seen it all - and knows her survival depends on her instincts. And she's going against every warning telling her not to trust the charismatic Irish billionaire, Roarke - a suspect in her latest murder investigation.
\nBut sometimes you have to make your own rules, and Eve must decide whether to take a chance on a man she knows nothing about . . .
The number-one New York Times-bestselling author J. D. Robb presents an intense and terrifying new case for New York homicide cop Eve Dallas, one that will take her all the way to the city that gave her her name-and plunge her into the nightmares of her childhood.
\nWhen a monster named Isaac McQueen-taken down by Eve back in her uniform days-escapes from Rikers, he has two things in mind. One is to pick up where he left off, abducting young victims and leaving them scarred in both mind and body. The other is to get revenge on the woman who stopped him all those years ago.
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Eve Dallas has solved a lot of high-profile murders for the NYPSD and gotten a lot of media. She - and her billionaire husband - are getting accustomed to being objects of attention, of gossip, of speculation.
\nBut now Eve has become the object of one person’s obsession. Someone who finds her extraordinary, and thinks about her every hour of every day. Who believes the two of them have a special relationship. Who would kill for her - again and again . . .
\nWith a murderer reading meanings into her every move, handling this case will be a delicate - and dangerous - psychological dance. And Eve knows that underneath the worship and admiration, a terrible threat lies in wait. Because the beautiful lieutenant is not at all grateful for these bloody offerings from her “true and loyal friend.” And in time, idols always fall . . .
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Cosmetic surgeon Dr Wilfred B. Icove has been found dead in his office- murdered in a chillingly efficent manner by one swift stab to the heart.
\nStruck by the immaculate condition of the crime scene, Eve Dallas suspects a professional killing. Security discs show a stunningly beautiful woman calmly entering and leaving the building- the good doctor's final appointment.
\nKnown as 'Dr Perfect, the saintly Icove devoted his life to his family and his work. His record is clean. Too clean for Dallas. She knows he was hiding something and suspects that his son- and successor- knows that it is.
\nWith her husband Roarke working behind the scenes, Dallas follows her darkest instincts into the Icoves' pasts. And what she discovers are men driven to create perfection- playing fast and loose with the laws of nature, the limits of science, and the morals of humanity . . .
On a hot August night, Lt. Eve Dallas and her husband, Roarke, speed through the streets of Manhattan to the Down and Dirty club, where a joyful, boisterous pre-wedding girls’ night out has turned into a murder scene. One of the brides lies in a pool of blood, garroted in a private room where she was preparing a surprise for her fiancée - two scrimped and saved-for tickets to Hawaii.
\nDespite the dozens of people present, useful witnesses are hard to come by. It all brings back some bad memories for Eve. In her uniform days, she’d suffered an assault in the very same room - but she’d been able to fight back and survive. She’d gotten justice. And now she needs to provide some for poor young Erin.
\nEve knows that the level of violence and the apparent premeditation involved suggest a volatile mix of hidden, heated passion and ice-cold calculation. This is a crime that can be countered only by hard detective work and relentless dedication - and Eve will not stop until she finds the killer who destroyed this couple’s dreams before the honeymoon even began . . .
Lt. Eve Dallas is back and this time she's investigating the death of one of her own.
\nWhen a retired police officer is found shot dead in his home, Eve and the team are called to the scene to investigate. The victim is Martin Greenleaf, former Captain of Internal Affairs. At first glance it looks like suicide but Eve thinks there could be more to this carefully laid scene than meets the eye.
\nCaptain Greenleaf put a lot of cops away during his forty-seven years in Internal Affairs. Did the weight of the job finally prove too much for him? Or could this be a case of payback in death . . .
After a tip from a reporter, Eve Dallas finds the body of a young woman in a Delancey Street dumpster. Just hours before, the news station had mysteriously received a portfolio of professional portraits of the woman. The photos seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary for any pretty young woman starting a modeling career.
\nExcept that she wasn't a model. And that these photos were taken after she had been murdered. Now Dallas is on the trail of a killer who's a perfectionist and an artist. He carefully observes and records his victim's every move. And he has a mission: to own every beautiful young woman's innocence, to capture her youth and vitality - in one fateful shot . . .
Louie Cogburn had spent three days holed up in his apartment, staring at his computer screen. His pounding headache was unbearable - like spikes drilling into his brain. And it was getting worse. Finally, when someone knocked at his door, Louie picked up a baseball bat, opened the door, and started swinging.
\nThe first cop on the scene fired his stunner twice and Louie died instantly. Detective Eve Dallas has taken over the investigation, but there's nothing to explain the man's sudden rage or death. The only clue is a bizarre message left on his computer screen: Absolute Purity Achieved.
\nAnd when a second man dies under nearly identical circumstances, Dallas starts racking her brain for answers and for courage to face the impossible . . . that this might be a computer virus able to spread from machine to man . . .
Jenna’s parents had finally given in, and there she was, at a New York club with her best friends, watching the legendary band Avenue A, carrying her demo in hopes of slipping it to the guitarist, Jake Kincade. Then, from the stage, Jake catches her eye, and smiles. It’s the best night of her life.
\nIt’s the last night of her life.
\nMinutes later, Jake’s in the alley getting some fresh air, and the girl from the dance floor comes stumbling out, sick and confused and deathly pale. He tries to help, but it’s no use. He doesn’t know that someone in the crowd has jabbed her with a needle - and when his girlfriend Nadine arrives, she knows the only thing left to do for the girl is call her friend, Lieutenant Eve Dallas.
\nAfter everyone on the scene is interviewed, lab results show a toxic mix of substances in the victim’s body - and for an extra touch of viciousness, the needle was teeming with infectious agents. Dallas searches for a pattern: Had any boys been harassing Jenna? Was she engaging in risky behavior or caught up in something shady? But there are no obvious clues why this levelheaded sixteen-year-old, passionate about her music, would be targeted.
\nAnd that worries Dallas. Because if Jenna wasn’t targeted, if she was just the random, unlucky victim of a madman consumed by hatred, there are likely more deaths to come.
When the autopsies of three suspicious suicides reveal small burns on the brains of the victims, Eve's investigation turns to the provocative world of virtual reality games - where the same techniques used to create joy and desire could also prompt the mind to become the weapon of its own destruction.
Murder was work. Death was a serious chore for the killer, the victim, for the survivors. And for some murder was a labour of love'. At exactly 7:30 pm, Walter Pettibone arrives home to over a hundred friends and family shouting, surprise!. It's his birthday.
\nAlthough he has known about the planned event for weeks, the real surprise is yet to come. At 8:45 p.m., a woman with emerald eyes and red hair hands him a glass of champagne. One sip of birthday bubbly, and he is dead. The woman's name is Julie Dockport. No one at the party knows who she is.
\nBut Detective Eve Dallas remembers her all too well. Eve was personally responsible for her incarceration nearly ten years ago. And now, let out on good behavior, she still has nothing but bad intentions. It appears she wants to meet Dallas again - in a reunion neither will forget.
In the year 2060, sophisticated investigative tools can help catch a killer. But there are some questions even the most advanced technologies cannot answer.
Ridley Pearson has praised J. D. Robb's suspense as 'taut' and 'nerve-jangling.' Her latest thriller sets a new standard for suspense, as the priest at a Catholic funeral mass brings the chalice to his lips - and falls over dead.
When Detective Lieutenant Eve Dallas confirms that the consecrated wine contained potassium cyanide, she's determined to solve the murder of Father Miguel Flores, despite her discomfort with her surroundings. It's not the bodegas and pawnshops of East Harlem that bother her, though the neighborhood is a long way from the stone mansion she shares with her billionaire husband, Roarke. It's all that holiness flying around at St. Christobal's that makes her uneasy.
A search of the victim's sparsely furnished room reveals little - except for a carefully hidden religious medal with a mysterious inscription, and a couple of underlined Bible passages. The autopsy reveals more: faint scars of knife wounds, a removed tattoo - and evidence of plastic surgery, suggesting that 'Father Flores' may not have been the man his parishioners had thought.
Now, as Eve pieces together clues that hint at gang connections and a deeply personal act of revenge, she believes she's making progress on the case. Until a second murder - in front of an even larger crowd of worshippers - knocks the whole investigation sideways. And Eve is left to figure out who committed these unholy acts - and why.
The chic Manhattan nightspot Du Vin is not the kind of place Eve Dallas would usually patronize, and it’s not the kind of bar where a lot of blood gets spilled. But that’s exactly what happens one cold February evening.
The mortally wounded woman is Larinda Mars, a self-described “social information reporter,” or as most people would call it, a professional gossip. As it turns out, she was keeping the most shocking stories quiet, for profitable use in her side business as a blackmailer. Setting her sights on rich, prominent marks, she’d find out what they most wanted to keep hidden and then bleed them dry. Now someone’s done the same to her, literally - with a knife to the brachial artery.
Eve didn’t like Larinda Mars. But she likes murder even less. To find justice for this victim, she’ll have to plunge into the dirty little secrets of all the people Larinda Mars victimised herself. But along the way, she may be exposed to some information she really didn’t want to know . . .
Lieutenant Eve Dallas is searching for a Casanova killer with a deadly appetite for seduction. Dante had been courting his victim in cyberspace for weeks before meeting her in person. A few sips of wine and a few hours later, she was dead. The murder weapon: a rare, usually undetectable date-rape drug with a street value of a quarter million dollars.
Detective Eve Dallas is playing and replaying the clues in her mind. The candlelight, the music, the rose petals strewn across the bed - a seduction meant for his benefit, not hers. He had not intended to kill her. But now that he had, he is left with only two choices: to either hole up in fear and guilt. Or start hunting again.
When a night out at the theatre is interrupted by the murder of a young woman in Washington Square Park, it seems like an ordinary case for Detective Eve Dallas and her team. But when Roarke spots a shadow from his past in the crowd, Eve realises that this case is far from business as usual.
Eve has two complex cases on her hands - the shocking murder of this wealthy young mother and tracking down the shadow before he can strike again, this time much closer to home. Eve is well used to being the hunter, but how will she cope when the tables are turned? As Eve and the team follow leads to Roarke's hometown in Ireland, the race is on to stop the shadow making his next move . . .
A blow to the head with a block of amethyst has left multibillionaire Nathan Barrister dead - while nearby, a vault, its door ajar, sits filled with priceless paintings, jewelry, and other treasures. Lieutenant Eve Dallas’s husband, Roarke - who misspent his youth in Ireland as a scrappy thief - recognises at least two stolen pieces among the hoard. The crime scene suggests a burglar caught in the act. But only one item seems to be missing.
\nThen it’s revealed that the vault had actually belonged to the victim’s late father - and no one in the household knew it was there until a recent remodeling project exposed it. To protect the family name and business, they explain to Eve, they’d been looking for a way to return the ill-gotten gains anonymously and avoid the police. But now the police are all over their elegant house, and have a bigger, bloodier mystery to solve.
\nBy all accounts, Nathan Barrister was a good man, a generous employer, a devoted husband and father. As for his father - he clearly had secrets. Now it’s up to Eve and her team to find out if those secrets got Nathan killed - and if it was a crime of passion or revenge.
\n
Murder harboured no bigotry, no bias. It subscribed to no class system. In its gleeful, deadly way, murder turned a blind eye.
Scandalous death sells papers. But as the media frenzy feeds on the wealthy Thomas Anders, strangled to death with black velvet in his plush Park Avenue apartment, Lieutenant Eve Dallas grapples with just one question: a crime of passion or a cold extermination?
Things don't add up. The victim didn't struggle and everyone has an alibi. And when a throwaway comment opens up a horrifying secret, Eve is fighting for far more than justice.
No affairs. No criminal connections. No DNA. No clues. Eve Dallas may be the best cop in the city - not to mention having the lavish resources of her husband Roarke at her disposal - but the Swisher case has her baffled. The family members were murdered in their beds with brutal, military precision.
\nThe state-of-the-art security was breached, and the killers used night vision to find their way through the cozy middle-class house. Clearly, Dallas is dealing with pros. The only mistake they made was to overlook the nine-year-old girl cowering in the dark in the kitchen . . .
\nNow Nixie Swisher is an orphan - and the sole eyewitness to a seemingly inexplicable crime. Kids are not Dallas's strong suit. But Nixie needs a safe place to stay, and Dallas needs to solve this case. Not only because of the promise she made to Nixie. Not only for the cause of justice. But also to put to rest some of her own darkest memories - and deepest fears.
\nWith her partner Peabody on the job, and watching her back - and with Roarke providing the kind of help only he can give - Lieutenant Eve Dallas is running after shadows, and dead-set on finding out who's behind them.
Lieutenant Eve Dallas has plenty to be grateful for this season. Hosting Roarke’s big Irish family for the holiday may be challenging, but it’s a joyful improvement on her own dark childhood.
Other couples aren’t as lucky as Eve and Roarke. The Reinholds, for example, are lying in their home stabbed and bludgeoned almost beyond recognition. Those who knew them are stunned - and heartbroken by the evidence that they were murdered by their own son. Twenty-six-year-old Jerry hadn’t made a great impression on the bosses who fired him or the girlfriend who dumped him - but they didn’t think he was capable of this.
Turns out Jerry is not only capable of brutality but taking a liking to it. With the money he’s stolen from his parents and a long list of grievances, he intends to finally make his mark on the world. Eve and her team already know the who, how, and why of this murder. What they need to pinpoint is where Jerry’s going to strike next.
Detective Eve Dallas and her partner, Peabody, are following up on a senseless crime-an elderly grocery owner killed by three stoned punks for nothing more than kicks and snacks. This is Peabody's first case as primary detective - good thing she learned from the master.
But Peabody soon stumbles upon a trickier situation. After a hard workout, she's all alone in the locker room when the gym door clatters open; and-while hiding inside a shower stall trying not to make a sound-she overhears two fellow officers, Garnet and Oberman, arguing.
It doesn't take long to realise they're both crooked-guilty not just of corruption but of murder. Now Peabody, Eve, and Eve's husband, Roarke, are trying to get the hard evidence they need to bring the dirty cops down-knowing all the while that the two are willing to kill to keep their secret.
She calls herself Lady Justice. And once she has chosen a man as her target, she turns herself into a tall blonde or a curvaceous redhead, makes herself as alluring and seductive as possible to them. Once they are in her grasp, they are powerless.
The first victim is wealthy businessman Nigel McEnroy. His company’s human resources department has already paid out settlements to a couple of his young victims - but they don’t know that his crimes go far beyond workplace harassment. Lady Justice knows. And in one shocking night of brutality, she makes him pay a much steeper price.
Now Eve Dallas and her husband, Roarke, are combing through the evidence of McEnroy’s secret life. His compulsive need to record his misdeeds provides them with a wide range of suspects, but the true identity of Lady Justice remains elusive. It’s a challenging case, made even more difficult by McEnroy’s widow, who reacts to the investigation with fury, denial, and threats.
Meanwhile, Lady Justice’s criminal crusade is escalating rapidly, and if Eve can’t stop this vigilante, there’s no telling how much blood may be spilled . . .
An Eve Dallas investigation. New York in the year 2058 is very different\n from the New York of today. Guns have been outlawed but lasers can \nkill, and the police still have a hefty job to do. Two men are \ndiscovered murdered. They have links - both with each other, and with \nEve's new husband, Rourke.
", "series": "In Death", "seriesOrder": 6, "tags": [ "Mystery" ], "cover": "/coverimages/J.D Robb - Vengeance in Death.jpeg", "mtime": 1768330722125.9722, "size": 594329, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:21:09.270Z" }, "J.D Robb - Visions In Death": { "title": "Visions In Death", "author": "J.D Robb", "description": "On one of the city's hottest nights, New York Police Lieutenant Eve Dallas is sent to Central Park - and into a hellish new investigation. The victim is found on the rocks, just above the still, dark water of The Lake in Central Park.
\nAround her neck is a single red ribbon. Her hands are posed, as if in prayer. But it is the eyes - removed with such precision, as if done by the careful hand of a surgeon - that have Dallas most alarmed. As more bodies turn up, each with the same defining scars, Eve is frantic for answers.
\nAgainst her instincts, she accepts help from a psychic who offers one vision after another - each with shockingly accurate details of the murders. And when partner and friend Peabody is badly injured after escaping an attack, the stakes are raised.
\nAre the eyes a symbol? A twisted religious ritual? A souvenir?
\nWith help from her husband, Roarke, Dallas must uncover the killer's motivation before another vision becomes another nightmare . . .
When a celebrity is killed right before her eyes, New York detective Eve Dallas takes a new place in crime - as both officer and witness to murder . . .
Opening night at New York's New Globe Theater turns from stage scene to crime scene when the leading man is stabbed to death center stage. Now Eve Dallas has a high-profile, celebrity homicide on her hands. Not only is she lead detective, she's also a witness - and when the press discovers that her husband owns the theater, there's more media spotlight than either can handle.
The only way out is to move fast. Question everyone and everything . . . and in the meantime, try to tell the difference between the truth - and really good acting . . .
Sylvie Campos and Lauren Machado have hated each other since before they were born. For generations, the Campos and Machado families have blamed each other for stealing pastry recipes they claim their great-grandfathers originated before fleeing Castro’s Cuba.
\nHaving spent their lives as rivals, Lauren and Sylvie are now in their early thirties and primed to take over their respective family bakeries. That means working long, hot, seasons of outdoor food festivals where they are forced to endure each other - albeit with a lot of bantering and barb-trading. After all, no one knows how to get under Sylvie’s skin like Lauren.
\nSick of dealing with Lauren and her thieving family, Sylvie sets out to unmask the Machados for the traitors they are.
\nBut when the truth is not what Sylvie expects, will the fiery exchanges between her and Lauren turn into something hot enough to melt away generational baggage? Could they get the chance to rekindle what they almost had in high school?
When the one who got away comes back . . . Real estate broker Tori Cruz has spent years building a life of structure and control - keeping her heart, and her past, carefully locked away. But when Mia Falcon, her childhood best friend and secret first love, crashes back into her life after fourteen years apart, everything Tori thought she buried comes rushing back.
\nMia didn’t mean to find Tori again. She definitely didn’t mean to want her. Divorcing, grieving, and lost, Mia only wanted help selling her mother’s house. She wasn’t prepared for feelings she never dared name to come rushing back - hotter, deeper, and far more dangerous than before.
\nBack together, and it’s like no time has passed. And when Mia realises that home isn’t a place - it’s a person - she knows she can’t walk away again.
\nOld feelings resurface. New ones spark. And some loves? They never die. They wait.
Forty-year-old Veronica Marin is a force to be reckoned with - a fierce trial lawyer who's always in control, including in her marriage to Gabe. But when a stranger shows up and exposes Gabe's infidelity, Veronica's reality is rocked. Her solution? To track down all of Gabe's unsuspecting partners before filing for divorce.
\nTwenty-seven-year-old yoga instructor Ally Franco has it all - a loving family, a thriving career, and a bright future. That is, until Veronica shows up and reveals the shocking truth about her fiancé Gabe.
\nAs they work together to expose his secrets, Veronica and Ally uncover an undeniable attraction to each other. But will they risk everything for love, or stick to their safe, preconceived notions of what their lives should be?
Libby Cassanova is the last in a long line of matchmakers. After years of hard work, her grandmother has finally handed her control of an empire built by generations of Cassanova women.
\nWhen the secret that Libby was dumped by her fiancé comes to light, she must act fast to salvage her reputation. There is nothing she wouldn’t do to keep the truth of her failed relationship from toppling her future, and that includes pretending to date a woman if it makes her story more believable.
\nReagan Soto is a struggling artist offered a chance at easy money by pretending to be Libby’s girlfriend. Upon meeting the tightly wound thirty-something, Reagan is immediately intrigued by what lies beneath all the polish and barely held-together facade.
\nAs Libby and Reagan play at being in love, the line between fantasy and reality quickly blurs. Can Libby get over her fear of getting hurt and see that her perfect match is right under her nose . . . even if she never expected it to be another woman?
Three holidays. Two coasts. One breakup recovery app.
Zero chance of staying just friends.
Alix swore off serious. Grace swore off messy.
\nNeither expected to fall for someone they met on a heartbreak anonymous app.
\nBut when their holiday meet‑ups stretch from Miami to Colorado to LA, long distance and the fear of losing their friendship might be the only things standing in the way of something real.
\nNow they’ll have to decide if love is worth the leap. Because sometimes the season’s magic isn’t in the lights. It’s in who you find when you stop pretending you’re fine.
\n
When Magizoologist Newt Scamander arrives in New York, he intends his stay to be just a brief stopover. However, when his magical case is misplaced and some of Newt's fantastic beasts escape, it spells trouble for everyone . . .
\nInspired by the original Hogwart's textbook by Newt Scamander, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay marks the screenwriting debut of J.K. Rowling, author of the beloved and internationally bestselling Harry Potter books. A feat of imagination and featuring a cast of remarkable characters and magical creatures, this is epic adventure-packed storytelling at its very best. Whether an existing fan or new to the wizarding world, this is a perfect addition for any film lover or reader's bookshelf.
\nAfter a marvelous year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter is stuck spending summer break with his awful Muggle (non-wizard) aunt and uncle, Petunia and Vernon Dursley, and his equally horrid cousin, Dudley. On July 31, it's Harry's birthday, but no one remembers.
\nAll the Dursleys care about is their guests for the evening: important clients for Uncle Vernon's drill business. Uncle Vernon tells Harry to sit in his room and pretend he doesn't exist - he doesn't want Harry's freakishness (i.e., magic) wrecking his business.
\nWhen Harry retreats to his room to stay out of the way, though, he finds someone unexpected waiting there: a house-elf named Dobby.
The war against Voldemort is not going well; even the Muggle governments are noticing. Ron scans the obituary pages of the Daily Prophet, looking for familiar names. Dumbledore is absent from Hogwarts for long stretches of time, and the Order of the Phoenix has already suffered losses.
And yet, as with all wars, life goes on. Sixth-year students learn to Apparate - and lose a few eyebrows in the process. Teenagers flirt and fight and fall in love. Classes are never straightforward, though Harry receives some extraordinary help from the mysterious Half-Blood Prince.
So it's the home front that takes center stage in the multilayered sixth installment of the story of Harry Potter. Here at Hogwarts, Harry will search for the full and complex story of the boy who became Lord Voldemort - and thereby find what may be his only vulnerability.
There is a door at the end of a silent corridor. And it's haunting Harry Potter's dreams. Why else would he be waking in the middle of the night, screaming in terror? Harry has a lot on his mind for this, his fifth year at Hogwarts: a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher with a personality like poisoned honey; a big surprise on the Gryffindor Quidditch team; and the looming terror of the Ordinary Wizarding Level exams.
\nBut all these things pale next to the growing threat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, one that neither the magical government nor the authorities at Hogwarts can stop. As the grasp of darkness tightens, Harry must discover the true depth and strength of his friends, the importance of boundless loyalty, and the shocking price of unbearable sacrifice. His fate depends on them all.
Harry Potter has never played a sport while flying on a broomstick. He's never worn a Cloak of Invisibility, befriended a giant, or helped hatch a dragon. All Harry knows is a miserable life with the Dursleys, his horrible aunt and uncle, and their abominable son, Dudley.
\nHarry's room is a tiny cupboard under the stairs, and he hasn't had a birthday party in ten years. But all that is about to change when a mysterious letter arrives by owl messenger: a letter with an invitation to a wonderful place he never dreamed existed. There he finds not only friends, aerial sports, and magic around every corner, but a great destiny that's been waiting for him . . . if Harry can survive the encounter.
Harry Potter is lucky to reach the age of thirteen, since he has already survived the murderous attacks of the feared Dark Lord on more than one occasion. But his hopes for a quiet term concentrating on Quidditch are dashed when a maniacal mass-murderer escapes from Azkaban, pursued by the soul-sucking Dementors who guard the prison.
\nIt's assumed that Hogwarts is the safest place for Harry to be. But is it a coincidence that he can feel eyes watching him in the dark, and should he be taking Professor Trelawney's ghoulish predictions seriously?
When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock.
Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.
Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils . . . Pagford is not what it first seems.
And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity, and unexpected revelations?
Jack loves his childhood toy, Dur Pig. DP has always been there for him, through good and bad. Until one Christmas Eve something terrible happens - DP is lost. But Christmas Eve is a night for miracles and lost causes, a night when all things can come to life . . . even toys.
\nAnd Jack’s newest toy - the Christmas Pig (DP's annoying replacement) - has a daring plan: Together they’ll embark on a magical journey to seek something lost, and to save the best friend Jack has ever known . . .
\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n\n\n
Once upon a time there was a tiny kingdom called Cornucopia, as rich in happiness as it was in gold, and famous for its food. From the delicate cream cheeses of Kurdsburg to the Hopes-of-Heaven pastries of Chouxville, each was so delicious that people wept with joy as they ate them.
\nBut even in this happy kingdom, a monster lurks. Legend tells of a fearsome creature living far to the north in the Marshlands . . . .., the Ickabog. Some say it breathes fire, spits poison, and roars through the mist as it carries off wayward sheep and children alike. Some say it's just a myth . . .
\nAnd when that myth takes on a life of its own, casting a shadow over the kingdom, two children - best friends Bert and Daisy - embark on a great adventure to untangle the truth and find out where the real monster lies, bringing hope and happiness to Cornucopia once more.
\n
Professor Albus Dumbledore knows the powerful Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald is moving to seize control of the wizarding world. Unable to stop him alone, he entrusts Magizoologist Newt Scamander to lead an intrepid team of wizards, witches, and one brave Muggle baker on a dangerous mission, where they encounter old and new beasts and clash with Grindelwald’s growing legion of followers. But with the stakes so high, how long can Dumbledore remain on the sidelines?
\nThe official screenplay of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is the ultimate companion to the film, and invites readers to explore every scene of the complete script penned by J.K. Rowling & Steve Kloves. Special features include behind-the-scenes content and commentary from David Yates, David Heyman, Jude Law, Eddie Redmayne, Colleen Atwood, and more.
A struggling actor, a Brit in America without a green card, Claire needs work and money to survive. Then she gets both. But nothing like she expected.
Claire agrees to become a decoy for a firm of divorce lawyers. Hired to entrap straying husbands, she must catch them on tape with their seductive propositions.
The rules? Never hit on the mark directly. Make it clear you’re available, but he has to proposition you, not the other way around. The firm is after evidence, not coercion. The innocent have nothing to hide.
Then the game changes.
When the wife of one of Claire’s targets is violently murdered, the cops are sure the husband is to blame. Desperate to catch him before he kills again, they enlist Claire to lure him into a confession.
Claire can do this. She’s brilliant at assuming a voice and an identity. For a woman who’s mastered the art of manipulation, how difficult could it be to tempt a killer into a trap?
But who is the decoy . . . and who is the prey?
Please make a list of every possession you consider essential to your life.
The request seems odd, even intrusive - and for the two women who answer, the consequences are devastating.
Emma
Reeling from a traumatic break-in, Emma wants a new place to live. But none of the apartments she sees are affordable or feel safe. Until One Folgate Street. The house is an architectural masterpiece: a minimalist design of pale stone, plate glass, and soaring ceilings. But there are rules. The enigmatic architect who designed the house retains full control: no books, no throw pillows, no photos or clutter or personal effects of any kind. The space is intended to transform its occupant - and it does.
Jane
After a personal tragedy, Jane needs a fresh start. When she finds One Folgate Street she is instantly drawn to the space - and to its aloof but seductive creator. Moving in, Jane soon learns about the untimely death of the home’s previous tenant, a woman similar to Jane in age and appearance. As Jane tries to untangle truth from lies, she unwittingly follows the same patterns, makes the same choices, crosses paths with the same people, and experiences the same terror, as the girl before.
Kate and Matt Crowther are finally moving out of London, in search of a better life for their young family. Trade Cottage seems to be the house of their dreams - and they immediately hit it off with the sellers, Rosemary and Paul Finch, who brought up their own family there.
\nWhen Kate and Matt move in, they're pleased to discover the Finches still very much in offering advice, introducing them to the local community, and becoming honorary grandparents to Will, 11, and Tilly, 9. But when the Finches take exception to Kate and Matt's renovations, relations with the neighbours sour, and Kate and Matt find themselves subjected to a vicious campaign of hate.
\nBut Kate isn't giving up her dream home without a fight. And it turns out Trade Cottage has secrets of its own to reveal - secrets that may endanger the very family Kate has moved there to protect . . .
\n
Out of the blue, Susie Jones is contacted on social media by Anna, the girl she gave up for adoption fifteen years ago.
\nBut when they meet, Anna's home life sounds distinctly strange to Susie and her husband Gabe. And when Anna's adoptive parents seem to overreact to the fact she contacted them at all, Susie becomes convinced that Anna needs her help.
\nBut is Anna's own behaviour simply what you'd expect from someone recovering from a traumatic childhood? Or are there other secrets at play here - secrets Susie has also been hiding for the last fifteen years?
\n
Ringmaster - Rin, to those who know her best - can jump to different moments in time as easily as her wife, Odette, soars from bar to bar on the trapeze. And the circus they lead is a rare home and safe haven for magical misfits and outcasts, known as Sparks.
\nWith the world still reeling from World War I, Rin and her troupe - the Circus of the Fantasticals - travel the midwest, offering a single night of enchantment and respite to all who step into their Big Top.
\nBut threats come at Rin from all sides. The future holds an impending war that the Sparks can see barrelling toward their show and everyone in it. And Rin's past creeps closer every day, a malevolent shadow she can’t fully escape.
\nIt takes the form of another circus, with tents as black as midnight and a ringmaster who rules over his troupe with a dangerous power. Rin's circus has something he wants, and he won't stop until it's his.
At the edge of Chicago, nestled on the shores of Lake Michigan, there is a waystation for the dead. Every night, the newly-departed travel through the city to the Station, guided by its lighthouse. There, they reckon with their lives, before stepping aboard a boat to go beyond.
\nNera has spent decades watching her father – the ferryman of the dead - sail across the lake, each night just like the last.
\nBut tonight, something is wrong.
\nThe Station's lighthouse has started to flicker out. The terrifying, ghostly Haunts have multiplied in the city. And now a person - a living person has found her way onto the boat.
\nHer name is Charlie. She followed a song. And she is searching for someone she lost.
When artificial intelligence quietly takes control of the world’s power and water, what happens next?
\nAlex Miller is an ambitious consultant advising the ultra-wealthy. He thought he was just doing his job - until he discovers he’s been building Banyan, a secret network of underground sanctuaries designed to preserve a carefully selected few.
\nWhen a close colleague vanishes, Alex’s questions cost him everything. Desperate, he turns to fierce housing activist Mira Kapoor. Together, they chase a leaked manifest revealing Banyan’s brutal logic.
\nAs collapse approaches, Banyan opens a 72-hour entry window, and Alex and Mira race to expose who’s been chosen.
\nThen the lights go out.
\nInside Banyan, survival is engineered. Outside, London fractures into barter and blood.
\nThe Banyan Project is a propulsive dystopian thriller that asks whether morality can survive in an AI optimised world.
\n
Nothing is more dear to Griffin than his magic school, but for a man with no magic, life there has its challenges. They laugh at him. They exclude him. And that's just his fellow teachers.
\nSo when a dragon no one else has seen delivers a chilling warning for Griffin's ears alone, it's no surprise that his colleagues don't take him seriously. Unfortunately, convincing them that the magistery stands at the brink of destruction is only the beginning of his troubles.
\nAs an ancient struggle between dragons and men reignites, Griffin's only hope lies in deciphering the secrets of a long-dead madman. But the deeper he goes, the less he knows who to trust, on legs or wings. Dodging both suspicion and betrayal, Griffin is caught in a desperate race for the one weapon that can save his home - or reduce it to ashes in an instant.
War looms on the horizon. The fates of mankind and dragonkind alike hang in the balance. And as tensions rise and allegiances shift, someone dear to Griffin is taken by the enemy. Desperate, Griffin embarks on a rescue mission into hostile territory, where old grudges bring new dangers, and legendary monsters come to life.
\nBut even if he succeeds, it won't be enough. If he's to stop the redwings once and for all, Griffin must reach across the sea, beyond the grave, and into perhaps the most frightening place of his own heart. He thought nothing could be more hazardous than a dragon. He’s about to find out how wrong he was.
Griffin came home a hero, and now he's paying the the red queen is more determined than ever to destroy Pendralyn, and the only weapon they had against her is gone. New weapons will require new alliances, so when the green dragons extend a mysterious invitation to the magisters, all are eager to accept. Or nearly all.
\nUnfortunately for Griffin, the imperious, intractable greenwing elder has taken a particular interest in him. To win her aid, he must embark on a quest for the fabled harp of stone, pitting him against dark magicians, hidden traitors, and even the dead. Not to mention the single most irritating person he's ever met.
\nAs his enemies close in, the fate of his beloved magistery becomes entangled with that of dragonkind itself. Griffin must find a way to save them all - or be the first to burn.
The son of working-class Czech immigrants, Christopher “Atlas” Novotny is a talented painter who arrives at Harvard on a full scholarship. Raised amid hardship, he is unprepared for the privileged world introduced to him by his freshman roommate, Lucien Orsini-Conti.
\nBorn to wealthy European diplomats, Lucien plays the part of the confident, sophisticated bon vivant. Where Lucien is bold and brash, Atlas is timid and introverted. Growing up a lonely outsider, Atlas is insecure, impressionable, and in awe of his brilliant roommate. But is Lucien all that he seems?
\nSensing a willing disciple, Lucien introduces Atlas to a glittering new world of lavish parties and elite social clubs. When Atlas struggles to afford his new lifestyle, Lucien offers a solution, convincing the naïve artist to become a forger, passing off fakes to galleries and dealers.
\nBut Lucien’s charismatic facade conceals something darker and more sinister. As Lucien’s behavior grows increasingly unstable, Atlas is forced into escalating risks with devastating consequences.
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Lydia Susi is passionate about protecting wolves in their natural habitat. When a hotel chain develops a tract of land next to the preserve, Lydia is one of the most vocal opponents of the project - and becomes a target.
\nOne night, a shadowy figure threatens Lydia’s life in the forest, and a new hire at the Wolf Study Project comes from out of nowhere to save her. Daniel Joseph is both mysterious, and someone she intrinsically wants to trust. But is he hiding something?
\nAs the stakes get higher, and one of Lydia’s colleagues is murdered, she must decide how far she will go to protect the wolves. Then a shocking revelation about Daniel challenges Lydia’s reality in ways she could never have predicted. Some fates demand courage, others require even more, with no guarantees. Is she destined to have true love . . . or will a soul-shattering loss ruin her forever?
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The Fulcrum is failing, and demons are slipping into the mortal world, stalking the night. No one is safe.
\nEspecially not Sorrel. An orphan and an outcast, she’s spent her whole life within the walls of her small village, ostracised for her mystical abilities. She wants to survive . . . and maybe find somewhere she can call her true home. But Fate has other plans.
\nSorrel has been chosen. Cursed. She must cross the Badlands to return the Queen's crown and convince the fearsome female to save their world from destruction.
\nWell aware she’s no brave hero, Sorrel makes a dangerous deal with Merc, a brooding, commanding mercenary known only by his unscrupulous profession.
\nThe deal? A night in his bed that she will never forget, in exchange for her safe passage. But Merc has secrets of his own, and even though passion runs hot between them, enemies are around every corner, and danger and betrayal threaten at every turn.
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For Lydia Susi, there is no sweet sorrow in saying goodbye to the man she loves. As a wolven hiding among humans, she’s used to being alone - until destiny gives her the kind of love she never dared to dream about. But after a sudden devastating diagnosis, grief is the only thing she sees in her future.
\nAs an operative for a clandestine arm of the United States government, Daniel Joseph always expected to die an early death. He just assumed it would be out in the field - not in a laboratory hospital bed. With his time running out, he refuses a potentially lifesaving treatment to focus on making sure that Lydia finds her wolven clan.
\nFollowing an attack on the lab’s compound, Daniel fears his former boss is coming after the two of them. Marshaling his strength, he must call on all of his training to protect his love . . . even if it means her moving on without him.
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Lydia knows time is running out, Daniel’s terminal diagnosis has doomed her to grief, and she just wants to spend as much time as she can with him. When his doctor goes missing, however, their secret lab’s location is compromised and suddenly she is at war with an enemy she doesn’t understand.
\nAs a former black ops soldier, Daniel is very familiar with the danger they’re in, and he’s determined to keep his beautiful wolven safe. This means he must turn to his former boss - and relying on a sympathy for anything is a worst-case scenario on a good day. But what choice does he have?
\nWith Daniel’s sixth sense telling him there’s more to the kidnapping, he and Lydia must work with their allies to defend the underground facility. Little do they know that the sympathy has something even more valuable to offer them . . . but at what cost?
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The tale of Beren and Lúthien was, or became, an essential element in the evolution of The Silmarillion, the myths and legends of the First Age of the World conceived by J.R.R. Tolkien. Returning from France and the battle of the Somme at the end of 1916, he wrote the tale in the following year.
\nEssential to the story, and never changed, is the fate that shadowed the love of Beren and Lúthien: for Beren was a mortal man, but Lúthien was an immortal Elf. Her father, a great Elvish lord, in deep opposition to Beren, imposed on him an impossible task that he must perform before he might wed Lúthien. This is the kernel of the legend; and it leads to the supremely heroic attempt of Beren and Lúthien together to rob the greatest of all evil beings, Melkor, called Morgoth, the Black Enemy, of a Silmaril.
\nIn this book Christopher Tolkien has attempted to extract the story of Beren and Lúthien from the comprehensive work in which it was embedded; but that story was itself changing as it developed new associations within the larger history. To show something of the process whereby this legend of Middle-earth evolved over the years, he has told the story in his father's own words by giving, first, its original form, and then passages in prose and verse from later texts that illustrate the narrative as it changed. Presented together for the first time, they reveal aspects of the story, both in event and in narrative immediacy, that were afterwards lost.
It is a legendary time long before The Lord of the Rings, and Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwells in the vast fortress of Angband in the North; and within the shadow of the fear of Angband, and the war waged by Morgoth against the Elves, the fates of Túrin and his sister Niënor will be tragically entwined.
\nTheir brief and passionate lives are dominated by the elemental hatred that Morgoth bears them as the children of Húrin, the man who dared to defy him to his face. Against them Morgoth sends his most formidable servant, Glaurung, a powerful spirit in the form of a huge wingless dragon of fire, in an attempt to fulfil the curse of Morgoth, and destroy the children of Húrin.
\nBegun by J.R.R. Tolkien at the end of the First World War, The Children of Húrin became the dominant story in his later work on Middle-earth. But he could not bring it to a final and finished form. In this book Christopher Tolkien has constructed, after long study of the manuscripts, a coherent narrative without any editorial invention.
In the Tale of The Fall of Gondolin are two of the greatest powers in the world. There is Morgoth of the uttermost evil, unseen in this story but ruling over a vast military power from his fortress of Angband. Deeply opposed to Morgoth is Ulmo, second in might only to Manwë, chief of the Valar.
\nCentral to this enmity of the gods is the city of Gondolin, beautiful but undiscoverable. It was built and peopled by Noldorin Elves who, when they dwelt in Valinor, the land of the gods, rebelled against their rule and fled to Middle-earth. Turgon King of Gondolin is hated and feared above all his enemies by Morgoth, who seeks in vain to discover the marvellously hidden city, while the gods in Valinor in heated debate largely refuse to intervene in support of Ulmo's desires and designs.
\nInto this world comes Tuor, cousin of Túrin, the instrument of Ulmo's designs. Guided unseen by him Tuor sets out from the land of his birth on the fearful journey to Gondolin, and in one of the most arresting moments in the history of Middle-earth the sea-god himself appears to him, rising out of the ocean in the midst of a storm. In Gondolin he becomes great; he is wedded to Idril, Turgon's daughter, and their son is Eärendel, whose birth and profound importance in days to come is foreseen by Ulmo.
\nAt last comes the terrible ending. Morgoth learns through an act of supreme treachery all that he needs to mount a devastating attack on the city, with Balrogs and dragons and numberless Orcs. After a minutely observed account of the fall of Gondolin, the tale ends with the escape of Tuor and Idril, with the child Eärendel, looking back from a cleft in the mountains as they flee southward, at the blazing wreckage of their city. They were journeying into a new story, the Tale of Eärendel, which Tolkien never wrote, but which is sketched out in this book from other sources.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
\nIn ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him.
\nAfter many ages it fell into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, as told in The Hobbit. In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.
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If you care for journeys there and back, out of the comfortable Western world, over the edge of the Wild, and home again, and can take an interest in a humble hero (blessed with a little wisdom and a little courage and considerable good luck), here is a record of such a journey and such a traveler.
\nThe period is the ancient time between the age of Faerie and the dominion of men, when the famous forest of Mirkwood was still standing, and the mountains were full of danger. In following the path of this humble adventurer, you will learn by the way (as he did) - if you do not already know all about these things - much about trolls, goblins, dwarves, and elves, and get some glimpses into the history and politics of a neglected but important period.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
\nAs the Shadow of Mordor grows across the land, the Companions of the Ring have become involved in separate adventures. Aragorn, revealed as the hidden heir of the ancient Kings of the West, has joined with the Riders of Rohan against the forces of Isengard, and takes part in the desperate victory of the Hornburg.
\nMerry and Pippin, captured by Orcs, escape into Fangorn Forest and there encounter the Ents. Gandalf has miraculously returned and defeated the evil wizard, Saruman. Sam has left his master for dead after a battle with the giant spider, Shelob; but Frodo is still alive - now in the foul hands of the Orcs. And all the while the armies of the Dark Lord are massing as the One Ring draws ever nearer to the Cracks of Doom.
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The forerunner to The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion fills in the background which lies behind the more popular work, and gives the earlier history of Middle-earth, introducing some of the key characters.
\nThe Silmarillion is an account of the Elder Days, of the First Age of Tolkien’s world. It is the ancient drama to which the characters in The Lord of the Rings look back, and in whose events some of them such as Elrond and Galadriel took part. The tales of The Silmarillion are set in an age when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle-Earth, and the High Elves made war upon him for the recovery of the Silmarils, the jewels containing the pure light of Valinor.
Frodo and his Companions of the Ring have been beset by danger during their quest to prevent the Ruling Ring from falling into the hands of the Dark Lord by destroying it in the Cracks of Doom. They have lost the wizard, Gandalf, in a battle in the Mines of Moria. And Boromir, seduced by the power of the Ring, tried to seize it by force.
\nWhile Frodo and Sam made their escape, the rest of the company was attacked by Orcs. Now they continue the journey alone down the great River Anduin - alone, that is, save for the mysterious creeping figure that follows wherever they go.
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The book concentrates on the lands of Middle-earth and comprises Gandalf's lively account of how he came to send the Dwarves to the celebrated party at Bag-End, the story of the emergence of the sea-god Ulmo before the eyes of Tuor on the coast of Beleriand, and an exact description of the military organisation of the Riders of Rohan and the journey of the Black Riders during the hunt for the Ring.
UNFINISHED TALES also contains the only surviving story about the long ages of Númenor before its downfall, and all that is known about the Five Wizards sent to Middle-earth as emissaries of the Valar, about the Seeing Stones known as the Palantiri, and about the legend of Amroth.
The Sentinels narrowly escaped the collapsing edge of the Divide.
\nThey have mustered a few other surviving Sentinels, but with no engines they have no way to leave the edge of the universe before they starve.
\nAdequin Rake has gathered a team to find the materials they'll need to get everyone out.
\nTo do that they're going to need new allies and evade a ruthless enemy. Some of them will not survive.
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The Divide.
\nIt’s the edge of the universe.
\nNow it’s collapsing - and taking everyone and everything with it.
\nThe only ones who can stop it are the Sentinels - the recruits, exiles, and court-martialed dregs of the military.
\nAt the Divide, Adequin Rake commands the Argus. She has no resources, no comms - nothing, except for the soldiers that no one wanted. Her ace in the hole could be Cavalon Mercer - genius, asshole, and exiled prince who nuked his grandfather's genetic facility for “reasons.”
\nShe knows they’re humanity's last chance.
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The Sentinels have rallied under the leadership of Adequin Rake, and Cavalon Mercer has uncovered the horrifying genetic solution his grandfather is about to unleash on the unsuspecting outer colonies.
\nBoth Rake and Cavalon race against time to save the universe once again. They'll need every resource, every ally who might answer the call.
\nIt may not be enough.
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Sergeant Adrienne Valero wants to die. She can't.
\nAfter enduring a traumatic resurrection for the ninety-sixth time, Valero is reassigned to a special forces unit and outfitted with a cutting-edge virtual intelligence aid. They could turn the tide in the war against intelligent machines dedicated to the assimilation, or destruction, of humanity.
\nWhen her VI suddenly achieves sentience, Valero is drawn into the machinations of an enigmatic major who’s hell-bent on ending the war - by any means necessary.
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Among the first wave of specialists deployed to the planet is Tarlo, a young and optimistic biologist who has spent his life dreaming of adventure among the stars. For all his excitement, he feels a little out of his depth - everyone around him seems so much smarter, stronger, and better equipped to deal with whatever challenges may lie ahead.
\nThe team finally sets down on Cahros, but is surprised to learn that the planet is home only to a barren, lifeless desert. All is quiet.
\nThat is, until night falls.
\nA nightmarish series of events leave Tarlo and the remaining colonists struggling to survive in a world that is so much more than a benign sea of orange. Here on Cahros, nothing is as it seems, and deep within these endless deserts lie untold, deadly secrets.
\nThere’s something out there . . . in the sands . . .
Ganymede’s is no ordinary boarding school. Behind its spiral towers and manicured lawns, boys are forged into the men society demands - strong, obedient, perfect. Graduate, and the world is yours: a home, a career, a wife. But fail . . . and you’re no longer useful to society.
\nFor Dylan Cecil it should be simple: keep his head down, survive graduation, and earn his place. But when his friend, Blake, disappears, Dylan can’t silence the questions gnawing at him, even as whispers of danger shadow the school’s gilded halls.
\nAs June’s trials close in - eight tests that will decide who is worthy of manhood - Dylan is haunted by Blake’s absence and drawn to Roman Edwards, a boy as magnetic as he is unknowable.
\nIn a world rebuilt on order and obedience, Dylan must decide: will he become the man the academy wants - or the man he really is?
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Olivia Bender designs exquisite home interiors that satisfy the most demanding clients. But her own deepest desire can’t be fulfilled by marble counters or the perfect rug. She desperately wants to be a mother. Fertility treatments and IVF keep failing. And just when she feels she’s at her lowest point, the police deliver shocking news to Olivia and her husband, Park.
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DNA results show that the prime suspect in a murder investigation is Park’s son. Olivia is relieved, knowing this is a mistake. Despite their desire, the Benders don’t have any children. Then comes the confession. Many years ago, Park donated sperm to a clinic. He has no idea how many times it was sold - or how many children he has sired.
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As the murder investigation goes deeper, more terrible truths come to light. With every revelation, Olivia must face the unthinkable. The man she married has fathered a killer. But can she hold that against him when she keeps such dark secrets of her own?
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This twisting, emotionally layered thriller explores the lies we tell to keep a marriage together - or break each other apart . . .
Halley James knows her marriage is over. But she’s not prepared for the rest of her life to fall apart too.
\nShe just lost her job at the forensics lab. Her dad needs emergency surgery. But the biggest blow comes back home in Marchburg, Virginia, where she discovers her mother didn’t actually die in a car crash. Her mom was murdered - and her father lied about it all these years.
\nSince she was six years old, it’s been Halley and her dad. Now, she doesn’t know what to believe. Desperate for the truth, Halley chases down a lead in Brockville, Tennessee. But all there is not as it seems. Brockville’s utopian charm hides a chilling darkness. And Halley’s search for answers threatens to expose an unspeakable reality.
The day Aubrey Hamilton’s husband is declared dead by the state of Tennessee should bring closure so she can move on with her life. But Aubrey doesn’t want to move on; she wants Josh back. It’s been five years since he disappeared, since their blissfully happy marriage - they were happy, weren’t they? - screeched to a halt and Aubrey became the prime suspect in his disappearance.
\nFive years of emptiness, solitude, loneliness, questions. Why didn’t Josh show up at his friend’s bachelor party? Was he murdered? Did he run away? And now, all this time later, who is the mysterious yet strangely familiar figure suddenly haunting her new life?
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The follow-up to her critically acclaimed Lie to Me, J.T. Ellison’s Tear Me Apart is the powerful story of a mother willing to do anything to protect her daughter even as their carefully constructed world unravels around them.
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One moment will change their lives forever . . .
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Competitive skier Mindy Wright is a superstar in the making until a spectacular downhill crash threatens not just her racing career but her life. During surgery, doctors discover she’s suffering from a severe form of leukemia, and a stem cell transplant is her only hope. But when her parents are tested, a frightening truth emerges. Mindy is not their daughter.
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Who knows the answers?
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The race to save Mindy’s life means unraveling years of lies. Was she accidentally switched at birth or is there something more sinister at play? The search for the truth will tear a family apart…and someone is going to deadly extremes to protect the family’s deepest secrets.
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With vivid movement through time, Tear Me Apart examines the impact layer after layer of lies and betrayal has on two families, the secrets they guard, and the desperate fight to hide the darkness within.
When she recognises the heroic stranger in a sensationalised news video, Addison Blake plans to use the information to her career’s advantage. That means returning to the hometown she left behind ten years ago, but her ambitions are more important than the ghosts of her past. She’s focused on breaking this story - as long as it doesn’t break her first.
A great writer knows when to deliver a juicy plot twist. But for one author, the biggest twist of all is her own murder.
\nWith a number of hit titles and a highly anticipated movie tie-in, celebrated novelist Columbia Jones is at the top of her game. Fans around the world adore her. But on the final night of her latest book tour, one face in the crowd makes the author collapse. And by the next morning, she’s lying dead in a pool of blood.
\nColumbia’s death shocks the world and leaves Darian, her daughter and publicist, reeling. The police have nothing to go on - at first. But then details emerge, pointing to the author’s illicit past. Turns out many people had motive to kill Columbia. And with a hungry reporter and frustrated cop on the trail, her secrets won’t stay buried long. But how many lives will they shatter as the truth comes out?
FBI Agent Lana Burrell grew up on an idyllic Napa Valley vineyard with her best friend Jess - until Jess was murdered at the same vineyard they called home. Lana’s father is serving a life sentence for Jess’s murder, but Lana has always believed in his innocence - and has always wanted to know the truth about what really happened to her childhood friend.
\nLana gave up the chance to exonerate her father for a career with the FBI, but when a killer strikes the Valley again, those old wounds reopen and she grasps at the chance to solve the case that has haunted her entire life. Two women are slain near where Jess’s body was once found, and Lana is forced to revisit the site of the fraught childhood she tried to leave behind.
\nForced to partner with the local sheriff’s office that put her father in prison, and to reconnect with the wealthy family that runs a powerful wine dynasty, Lana fights the distraction of old flames and grudges reignited. With clues of a shadowy cult embedded at the center of wine country, and a mysterious stranger stalking her every move, Lana’s hope to solve the murders begins to have a darker the fear that she might be the next to die.
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From the former prime minister of New Zealand, then the world’s youngest female head of government and just the second to give birth in office, comes a deeply personal memoir chronicling her extraordinary rise and offering inspiration to a new generation of leaders.
\nWhat if we could redefine leadership? What if kindness came first? Jacinda Ardern grew up the daughter of a police officer in small-town New Zealand, but as the 40th Prime Minister of her country, she commanded global respect for her empathetic leadership that put people first. This is the remarkable story of how a Mormon girl plagued by self-doubt made political history and changed our assumptions of what a global leader can be.
\nWhen Jacinda Ardern became Prime Minister at age thirty-seven, the world took notice. But it was her compassionate yet powerful response to the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks, resulting in swift and sweeping gun control laws, that demonstrated her remarkable leadership. She guided her country through unprecedented challenges - a volcanic eruption, a major biosecurity breach, and a global pandemic - while advancing visionary new policies to address climate change, reduce child poverty, and secure historic international trade deals. She did all this while juggling first-time motherhood in the public eye.
\nArdern exemplifies a new kind of leadership - proving that leaders can be caring, empathetic, and effective. She has become a global icon, and now she is ready to share her story, from the struggles to the surprises, including for the first time the full details of her decision to step down during her sixth year as Prime Minister.
\nThrough her personal experiences and reflections, Jacinda is a model for anyone who has ever doubted themselves, or has aspired to lead with compassion, conviction, and courage. A Different Kind of Power is more than a political memoir; it’s an insight into how it feels to lead, ultimately What if you, too, are capable of more than you ever imagined?
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Early in life, Ruth survived a series of devastating events: Her little brother died from a childhood illness, her mother died of grief, and then her father was shot by the police right in front of their home. In the years following her father’s murder, Ruth pushes her past underground. She changes her name and moves to Kentucky, marries a man named Myron, and together they raise a kid. It’s been two decades, and she is, by outside measures, living a good life - but why doesn’t it feel good?
\nWhen her marriage comes to a sudden end, their house burns down in the middle of the night, and she learns that her estranged sister has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Ruth is jolted back into action. She flees again, this time back to her home state of California, with her nonbinary teenager in tow, perhaps ready at last to face her pain and retrieve her former self.
\nSearing, surprisingly witty, and deeply human, Trigger Warning is a novel about the durational aftermath of anti-Black police violence. Through the perspectives of Ruth and Myron, and those of their friends and their child, Townsend explores divorce and desire, the heartbreaking brevity of parenting, the push and pull of old friendships, and the possibility, after incredible trauma, of reconnecting to what makes us feel alive.
In the three years since former fleet officer Rob Geary and former Marine Mele Darcy led improvised forces to repel attacks on the world of Glenlyon, Old Earth and the Old Colonies have continued to shrink their military forces.
But open warfare erupts once again when Glenlyon tries to force open a trade route. Isolated and alone, Glenlyon places its hope in informal agreements with other worlds also facing attack. But fiercely independent worlds settled by people who wanted to escape higher authority don’t easily agree to such commitments. While politicians try to bring some kind of formal alliance into being, Geary and Darcy once again find themselves fighting desperately to defend their world, hoping they can hold out until help arrives.
If it comes at all.
Admiral John 'Black Jack' Geary carries evidence of crimes which could destroy the Alliance he has fought so hard to save. Now his battle-weary fleet returns to Unity, the seat of the Alliance government.
\nBut instead of a hero's welcome, he faces assassination attempts and political threats. His arrival ignites a furious Senate trial, and Geary must use all his guile to ensure the guilty are brought to justice, without himself becoming judge and jury. All the while forces lurk in the shadows, poised to strike at any moment.
\nUnsure of who he can trust, Geary is sent on a dangerous mission to lead his fleet through the shattered Syndicate Worlds, and beyond to alien-controlled space. As the Alliance faces the failures of its past, Black Jack must confront its legacy - distrust and rebellion.
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The Lost Fleet continues its perilous journey home. Badly damaged and low on supplies, the Alliance Fleet is raiding Syndic mines for raw materials and Captain \"Black Jack\" Geary hopes they can continue to remain one step ahead of their enemies. But the Syndics are the least of Geary's worries when he learns of the existence of aliens with the power to annihilate the human race.
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The Alliance has been fighting the Syndics for a century - and losing badly. Now its fleet is crippled and stranded in enemy territory. Their only hope is a man who's emerged from a century-long hibernation to find he has been heroically idealised, beyond belief . . .
\nCaptain John \"Black Jack\" Geary's legendary exploits are known to every schoolchild. Revered for his heroic \"last stand\" in the early days of the war, he was presumed dead. But a century later, Geary miraculously returns from survival hibernation and reluctantly takes command of the Alliance fleet as it faces annihilation by the Syndics.
\nAppalled by the hero-worship around him, Geary is nevertheless a man who will do his duty. And he knows that bringing the stolen Syndic hypernet key safely home is the Alliance's one chance to win the war. But to do that, Geary will have to live up to the impossibly heroic \"Black Jack\" legend . . .
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Earth was destroyed on June 12, 2180. Lieutenant Selene Genji watched it happen. And only she can prevent it.
\nThrown forty years into the past, into a time before the Universal War began, Genji can only guess what to do to change the events that led to the death of all humanity. She has no way of knowing the long-term impacts of her actions and can only depend on her instincts.
\nBut many of the people Genji’s trying to save want her dead. Her creation was an a fusing of human and alien DNA. To them, she’s a monster who can’t be trusted, a tool of the aliens who have just made first contact.
\nFortunately, she has an unshakable ally in Lieutenant Kayl Owen, who has risked everything to help her mission. Declared a traitor to humanity by Earth Guard, Owen is determined to help Genji save the Earth.
\nEven if he dies trying.
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The Alliance woke Captain John \"Black Jack\" Geary from cryogenic sleep to take command of the fleet in the century-long conflict against the Syndicate Worlds. Now Fleet Admiral Geary's victory has earned him the adoration of the people-and the enmity of politicians convinced that a living hero can be a very inconvenient thing.
\nGeary knows that members of the military high command and the government question his loyalty to the Alliance and fear his staging a coup-so he can't help but wonder if the newly christened First Fleet is being deliberately sent to the far side of space on a suicide mission.
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Captain John “Black Jack” Geary tries a desperate gamble to lead the Alliance Fleet home through enemy-occupied space in this novel in the thrilling Lost Fleet series.
\nGeary is convinced that the Syndics are planning to ambush the fleet and finish it off once and for all. Realizing the fleet’s best (and only) chance is to do the unexpected, Geary takes the offensive and orders the fleet to the Sancere system. There, a multitude of possible routes home give the Alliance fleet a better chance of avoiding their pursuers - and an attack on the Sancere shipbuilding facilities could decimate the Syndic war effort.
\nWeary from endless combat, the officers and crew of the Alliance fleet can’t see the sense in charging deeper into enemy territory - prompting a mutiny that divides them, and leaving Geary with the odds higher against him than ever before . . .
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Admiral Geary’s First Fleet of the Alliance has survived the journey deep into unexplored interstellar space, a voyage that led to the discovery of new alien species, including a new enemy and a possible ally. Now Geary’s mission is to ensure the safety of the Midway Star System, which has revolted against the Syndicate Worlds empire - an empire that is on the brink of collapse.
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To complicate matters further, Geary also needs to return safely to Alliance space not only with representatives of the Dancers, an alien species, but also withInvincible, a captured warship that could possibly be the most valuable object in human history. Despite the peace treaty that Geary must adhere to at all costs, the Syndicate Worlds regime threatens to make the fleet’s journey back grueling and perilous.
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And even if Geary escorts Invincible and the Dancers’ representatives safely unharmed, the Syndics’ attempts to spread dissent and political unrest may have already sown the seeds of the Alliance’s destruction . . .
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President Gwen Iceni and General Artur Drakon have successfully liberated the Midway Star System - but the dictatorial former rulers of the Syndicate Worlds won’t surrender the region without a fight.
\nOutnumbered and led by junior officers hastily promoted in the wake of the uprising, Midway’s warships are no match for the fleet massing and preparing to strike. But the Syndicate isn’t the only threat facing Iceni and Drakon. Another former CEO has taken control of the Ulindi Star System, the first calculated move toward establishing his own little empire.
\nWith Drakon’s ground forces dispatched to Ulindi, Midway erupts in violence as Syndicate agents and other, unknown enemies stoke a renewed revolt against Iceni’s power - leaving both her and Drakon vulnerable to trusted officers just waiting for an opportune moment to betray them . . .
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As far from explored space as any human has ever been, Geary and the Alliance fleet are on their own, protecting a diplomatic mission in territory belonging to an alien species with still-unknown motives. His already complex and dangerous mission is further imperiled by deadly challenges from other human factions seeking to harm or exploit the aliens.
\nWhen another alien species whose technology is far more advanced than humanity's arrives, the stakes are raised to the highest possible level. Only the most serious danger comes from an unexpected source.
\nWhen presented with orders to carry out actions he believes not only are mistaken but would be contrary to the ideals of the Alliance, Geary has to finally decide whether he must invoke the power that his long-revered name holds, all the while knowing that this might endanger his entire fleet, tear apart the Alliance, and destroy everything he has fought for.
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Earth, 2180: Genetically engineered with partly alien DNA, Lieutenant Selene Genji is different from ordinary humans. And they hate her for it. Still, she’s spent her life trying to overcome society’s prejudice by serving in the Unified Fleet while Earth’s international order collapses into war.
\nGenji is stationed on a ship in orbit when humanity’s factional extremism on the planet reaches a boiling point, and she witnesses the utter annihilation of Earth. When the massive forces unleashed by Earth’s death warp space and time to hurl her forty years into the past, Genji is given a chance to try to change the future and save Earth - starting with the alien first contact only she knows will soon occur.
\nEarth, 2140: Lieutenant Kayl Owen’s ship is on a routine patrol when a piece of spacecraft wreckage appears out of nowhere. To his shock, there is a survivor on Selene Genji. Once her strange heritage is discovered, though, it becomes clear that Genji is a problem Earth Guard command wants to dispose of - quietly. After learning the horrifying truth, Owen helps her escape and joins her mission.
\nTogether, they have a chance to change the fate of an Earth doomed to die in 2180. But altering history could put Genji’s very existence in danger, and Owen wonders if a world without her is one worth saving . . .
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Admiral John \"Black Jack\" Geary earned his rank after being revived from cryogenic sleep to lead the Alliance to victory against the Syndicate Worlds. But his superiors question his loyalty to the regime. Now in command of the First Fleet, Geary is tasked with exploring the frontier beyond Syndic space, a mission he fears deliberately puts the fleet - and himself - in harm's way.
An encounter with the alien Enigmas confirms Gear'y fears. Attacked without warning, he orders the fleet to jump star systems--only to enter the crosshairs of another hostile alien armada. Ignoring all of the First Fleet's attempts to communicate peaceful intentions, this system's species send their ships into battle on suicde runs, while guarding the exiting jump point with a fortress of incalculable power.
Now, with a faction of his officers determined to eliminate this new threat despite the cost, Geary must figure out how to breech the enemy's defenses so the fleet can reach the jump point without massive casualties - and knowing that the Enigmas are most likely waiting on the other side . . .
Two Syndicate World star systems have fallen prey to a mysterious fleet of warships - a fleet controlled entirely by artificial intelligence - that is now targeting Alliance space. The warships are no mystery to Geary. They were developed by his government to ensure security, but malfunctioned. If the Syndics learn the truth, the war with the Alliance will resume with a vengeance.
As the government attempts to conceal the existence of the A.I. warships - and its role in their creation - Geary pursues them, treading a fine line between mutiny and obedience. But it soon becomes clear that his fleet is no match for the firepower of the machine-piloted armada.
With the help of the Dancer species of aliens, Geary has tracked the A.I. ships to their secret base in the supposedly mythical Unity Alternate star system where his fleet, the last hope of the Alliance’s future, will end the conflict at any cost . . .
Following a successful coup, the leaders of the rebel Midway Star System struggle to forge a government free enough to please its citizens yet strong enough to secure power. But in a world where former rulers have become new foes, an alien threat to humanity may turn old adversaries into uncertain allies.
\nGeneral Artur Drakon knows three words describe someone who confides in a Syndicate CEO: Stupid. Betrayed. Dead. Despite his misgivings, he partnered with another former CEO to overthrow Syndic forces. Now, with an enigma fleet menacing their hard-earned independence, he can ill afford to trust her - or lose her support.
\nPresident Gwen Iceni believes Midway is humanity’s defense against the enigmas. Syndicate training taught her self-preservation in a crisis, yet she’s determined to fight for the star system’s fate . . . even if it means joining forces with Drakon - and an officer of the hated Alliance.
\nTheir plan places the Midway flotilla at great risk in hopes of greater reward: recruiting the personnel necessary to man warships against the enigmas. But before facing the alien advance, Drakon and Iceni must survive hidden dangers closer to home: all-too-human threats that could jeopardize Midway’s freedom . . . and their own lives.
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Captain John “Black Jack” Geary races to save a group of Alliance POWs from certain death in this gripping novel in New York Times bestselling author Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series.
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Alliance prisoners of war are being held at a labor camp in the Heradao star system, which also happens to be the location of the majority of the surviving Syndic warships. Determined not to leave any of his people behind, “Black Jack” Geary orders the fleet to strike hard and fast to rescue the POWs with minimal Alliance losses.
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The raid is successful, but victory is short-lived. Geary discovers that the Syndics plan to ambush the fleet with their powerful reserve flotilla in an attempt to annihilate it once and for all - but he doesn’t know where the enemy is located. And as Geary has the fleet jump from one star system to the next, hoping to avoid the inevitable confrontation, saboteurs contribute to the chaos . . .
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Geary knows that some political factions in the Alliance were just trying to get rid of him when he was assigned to escort a diplomatic and scientific mission to the far reaches of humanity's expansion into the galaxy . . . and beyond. But he views his mission as both a duty and an opportunity to make things better wherever he can. And when a crippled Rift Federation ship tumbles out of jump space, Geary leaps into action. But the survivors' story isn't completely adding up.
\nAs Geary investigates, he soon finds himself fending off spies and assassins while leading the fleet as it fights its way across space controlled by the mysterious and hostile aliens whom humans call enigmas. Challenges arrive at every turn, including an unknown alien species that invites the fleet to visit one of their star systems. With little information to go on, Geary must weigh the benefits of potential new allies against the possibility of a trap. The fate of the fleet - and perhaps even the future of humanity - will depend on him making the right decision.
\nIf he can stay alive long enough to do that.
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The Syndicate Worlds continues to splinter as more star systems pledge allegiance to President Gwen Iceni’s and General Artur Drakon’s new government at Midway. But the rebels fleeing the toxic legacy of Syndicate rule have difficulty trusting one another and believing their new leaders’ promises of freedom from tyranny.
\nBefore Iceni and Drakon can put their house in order, they must deal with another threat. An enigma warship has appeared and vanished near a Syndic colony. If the aliens are capable of jumping into other human-occupied star systems, then billions of people could be vulnerable to a hostile invasion fleet anywhere it chooses to strike.
\nBut an even greater liability lies with Iceni and Drakon as a once-trusted adviser turned saboteur plans revenge . . .
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Geary and the crew of the Dauntless have managed to safely escort important alien representatives to Earth. But before they can make tracks for home, two of Geary’s key lieutenants vanish. The search for his missing men leads Geary on a far-flung chase, ultimately ending at the one spot in space from which all humans have been the moon Europa. Any ship that lands there must stay or be destroyed - leaving Geary to face the most profound moral dilemma of his life.
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To make matters worse, strains on the Alliance are growing as the Syndics continue to meddle. Geary is ordered to take a small force to the border of Syndic space. But what he finds there is a danger much greater than anyone a mysterious threat that could finally force the Alliance to its knees.
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As Geary spearheads a desperate battle to protect the Alliance against a shrewd and powerful enemy, he’s left with just one Who are they?
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The authority of the Syndicate Worlds’ government is crumbling, and civil war and rebellion are breaking out, despite brutal attempts to suppress disorder. In the Midway Star System, leaders must decide whether to remain loyal to the old order or fight for something new. Betrayed by his government, CEO Artur Drakon launches a battle for control of Midway.
\nHe is assisted by an ally he’s unsure he can trust, CEO Gwen Iceni. While she controls the mobile fleet, she has no choice but to rely on “General” Drakon’s ground forces to keep the peace planet-side. If their coup is to succeed, Drakon and Iceni must put their differences aside to defend Midway against the alien threat of the enigma race - and to ferret out saboteurs determined to re-establish Syndic rule . . .
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The recently colonized world of Glenlyon has learned that they're stronger when they stand with other star systems than they are on their own. But after helping their neighbor Kosatka against an invasion, Glenlyon has become a target. The aggressive star systems plan to neutralize Glenlyon before striking again.
An attack is launched against Glenlyon's orbital facility with forces too powerful for fleet officer Rob Geary to counter using their sole remaining destroyer, Saber. Mele Darcy's Marines must repel repeated assaults while their hacker tries to get into the enemy systems to give Saber a fighting chance.
To survive, Glenlyon needs more firepower, and the only source for that is their neighbor Kosatka or other star systems that have so far remained neutral. But Kosatka is still battling the remnants of the invasion forces on its own world, and if it sends its only remaining warship to help will be left undefended against another invasion. While Carmen Ochoa fights for the freedom of Kosatka, Lochan Nakamura must survive assassins as he tries to convince other worlds to join a seemingly hopeless struggle.
As star systems founded by people seeking freedom and autonomy, will Kosatka, Glenlyon and others be able to overcome deep suspicions of surrendering any authority to others? Will the free star systems stand together in a new Alliance, or fall alone?
Deep within Syndicate World space, the Alliance fleet continues its dangerous journey home under the command of Captain John \"Black Jack\" Geary - revived after a century spent in suspended animation. Geary's victories over the enemy have earned him both the respect - and the envy - of his fellow officers . . .
\n\"Black Jack\" Geary has made many risky decisions as commander, but ordering the Alliance fleet back to the Lakota Star System where it had nearly been destroyed by the Syndics has his officers questioning his sanity. It's a desperate gamble that may buy Geary just enough time to prepare for the Syndics' inevitable return - and give the fleet a fighting chance of survival.
\nBut even as he struggles to stay one step ahead of the enemy, Geary must face conspirators within his own fleet - an unknown number of officers who want a change of command. And Geary knows that his fleet must stand together or the Syndic forces will tear them apart . . .
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Earth is no longer the center of the universe.
After the invention of the faster-than-light jump drive, humanity is rapidly establishing new colonies. But the vast distances of space mean that the old order of protection and interstellar law offered by Earth has ceased to exist.
When a nearby world attacks, the new colony of Glenlyon turns to Robert Geary, a young former junior fleet officer, and Mele Darcy, a onetime enlisted Marine. With nothing but improvised weapons and a few volunteers, Geary and Darcy must face down warships and armored soldiers--or die trying.
As battles rage and pirates take an increasing toll throughout the colonies, the only hope for lasting peace lies with Carmen Ochoa, a \"Red\" from the anarchic world of Mars, and Lochan Nakamura, a failed politician. They have a plan: to lay the groundwork for mutual defense that could someday grow into an alliance. But if their efforts don't succeed, the growing power of aggressor worlds could turn regions of space founded on freedom into battlefields between the first interstellar empires . . .
As war continues to rage between the Alliance and Syndicate Worlds, Captain \"Black Jack\" Geary is promoted to admiral-even though the ruling council fears he may stage a military coup. His new rank gives him the authority to negotiate with the Syndics, who have suffered tremendous losses and may finally be willing to end the war. But an even greater alien threat lurks on the far side of the Syndic occupied space.
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Disillusioned by the government and institutions he dedicated his life to serving, former Navy SEAL and CIA ground branch operative Chris Walker is about to end his life when he receives a call that saves it. The wife of a teammate he lost in Afghanistan has now lost her son to the opioid crisis and needs Walker’s help. Thrust into a conspiracy that goes deeper than he ever imagined, Walker must go up against the system and the very Constitution he once swore an oath to support and defend in order to find justice for his friend’s widow.
\nWith ambitious FBI agent Jarrett Stanton on his tail, Walker - accompanied by his loyal Belgian Malinois K-9 and using his off the grid VW pop-up camper filled with a hidden cache of weapons - takes justice into his own hands, exposing corruption and issuing a long-forgotten brand of lethal outlaw justice.
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It’s been 20 years since 9/11. Two decades since the United States was attacked on home soil and embarked on 20 years of war. The enemy has been patient, learning, and adapting. And the enemy is ready to strike again.
\nA new president offers hope to a country weary of conflict. He’s a young, popular, self-made visionary . . . but he’s also a man with a secret.
\nHalfway across the globe a regional superpower struggles with sanctions imposed by the Great Satan and her European allies, a country whose ancient religion spawned a group of ruthless assassins. Faced with internal dissent and extrajudicial targeted killings by the United States and Israel, the Supreme Leader puts a plan in motion to defeat the most powerful nation on earth.
\nMeanwhile, in a classified facility five stories underground, a young PhD student has gained access to a level of bioweapons known only to a select number of officials. A second-generation agent, he has been assigned a mission that will bring his adopted homeland to its knees.
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A woman boards a plane in the African country of Burkina Faso having just completed a targeted assassination for the state of Israel. Two minutes later, her plane is blown out of the sky.
\nOver 6,000 miles away, former Navy SEAL James Reece watches the names and pictures of the victims on cable news. One face triggers a distant memory of a Mossad operative attached to the CIA years earlier in Iraq - a woman with ties to the intelligence services of two nations . . . a woman Reece thought he would never see again.
\nReece enlists friends new and old across the globe to track down her killer, unaware that he may be walking into a deadly trap.
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In 1980, a freshman congressman was gunned down in Rhode Island, sending shockwaves through Washington that are still reverberating over four decades later.
\nNow, with the world on the brink of war and a weakened United States facing rampant inflation, political division, and shocking assassinations, a secret cabal of global elites is ready to assume control. And with the world’s most dangerous man locked in solitary confinement, the conspirators believe the final obstacle to complete domination has been eliminated. They’re wrong.
\nFrom the firms of Wall Street to the corridors of power in Washington, DC, and Moscow, secrets from the past have the uncanny ability to rise to the surface in the present.
\nWith the odds stacked against him, James Reece is on a mission generations in the making. Unfortunately for his enemies, the former SEAL is not concerned with odds. He is on the warpath. And when James Reece picks up his tomahawk and sniper rifle, no one is out of range.
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You think you know James Reece. Think again.
\nA storm is on the horizon. America’s days are numbered. A Chinese submarine has gone rogue and is navigating towards the continental United States, putting its nuclear missiles within striking distance of the West Coast.
\nA rising Silicon Valley tech mogul with unknown allegiances is at the forefront of a revolution in quantum computing and Artificial Intelligence.
\nA politician controlled by a foreign power is a breath away from the Oval Office.
\nThree seemingly disconnected events are on a collision course to ignite a power grab unlike anything the world has ever seen.
\nThe country’s only hope is a quantum computer that has gone dark, retreating to the deepest levels of the internet, learning at a rate inconceivable at her inception. But during her time in hiding, she has done more than learn. She has become a weapon. She is now positioned to act as either the country’s greatest savior or its worst enemy. She is known as “Alice” and her only connection to the outside world is to a former Navy SEAL sniper named James Reece who has left the violence of his past life behind.
\nWill there be blood?
\nCount on it!
\nWill the forces that threaten to destroy the United States be enough to light the fuse of Reece’s resurrection?
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eep in the wilds of Siberia, a woman is on the run, pursued by a man harboring secrets - a man intent on killing her.
\nA traitorous CIA officer has found refuge with the Russian mafia with designs on ensuring a certain former Navy SEAL sniper is put in the ground.
\nHalf a world away, James Reece is recovering from brain surgery in the Montana wilderness, slowly putting his life back together with the help of investigative journalist Katie Buranek and his longtime friend and SEAL teammate Raife Hastings. Unbeknownst to them, the Russian mafia has set their sights on Reece in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
\nIn his most visceral and heart-pounding thriller yet, Jack Carr explores the darkest instincts of humanity through the eyes of a man who has seen both the best and the worst of it.
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On his last combat deployment, Lieutenant Commander James Reece’s entire team was killed in a catastrophic ambush that also claimed the lives of the aircrew sent in to rescue them. But when those dearest to him are murdered on the day of his homecoming, Reece discovers that this was not an act of war by a foreign enemy but a conspiracy that runs to the highest levels of government.
\nNow, with no family and free from the military’s command structure, Reece applies the lessons that he’s learned in over a decade of constant warfare toward avenging the deaths of his family and teammates. With breathless pacing and relentless suspense, Reece ruthlessly targets his enemies in the upper echelons of power without regard for the laws of combat or the rule of law.
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When a string of horrific terrorist attacks plagues the Western world during the holiday season, the broader markets fall into a tailspin. The attacks are being coordinated by a shadowy former Iraqi commando who has disappeared into Europe’s underground. The United States government has an asset who can turn the Iraqi against his masters: James Reece, the most-wanted domestic terrorist alive.
\nAfter avenging the deaths of his family and team members, Reece emerges deep in the wilds of Mozambique, protected by the family of his estranged best friend and former SEAL Team member. When a series of events uncovers his whereabouts, the CIA recruits him, using a Presidential pardon for Reece and immunity for the friends who helped him in his mission of vengeance.
\nNow a reluctant tool of the United States government, Reece travels the globe, targeting terrorist leaders and unraveling a geopolitical conspiracy that exposes a traitorous CIA officer and uncovers a sinister assassination plot with worldwide repercussions.
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When Ashley Jacobs gets the interview at Campbell Realty, one of NYC’s premier real estate brokerages, she’s ecstatic. This is her big break - and after what’s happened - she needs one.
\nBut it soon becomes clear her new job isn’t going to be easy. The hours are long. Her coworkers are guarded and secretive. Her boss demands absolute perfection . . . or else.
\nWith all the money that’s at stake, it’s the kind of workplace where people will kill to get ahead.
\nAnd if she isn’t careful, Ashley could lose much more than just her job . . .
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A profound and lyrical reflection on the cyclical nature of life, what happens when we break that cycle, and how to repair it - told through the fate of in our bedrock, in our fertilisers, in our food, and in our cells.
\n“There would be no life without constant death.” So begins Jack Lohmann’s remarkable debut, White Light, a mesmerising swirl of ecology, geology, chemistry, history, agricultural science, investigative reporting, and the poetry of the natural world. Wherever life has roamed, its record is left in the sediment; over centuries, that dead matter is compacted into rock; and in that rock is phosphate - one phosphorus atom bonded to four oxygen atoms - life preserved in death, with all its surging force.
\nIn 1842, when the naturalist John Stevens Henslow, Darwin’s beloved botany professor, discovered the potential of that rock as a fertilizer, little did he know his countrymen would soon be grinding up the bones of dead soldiers and mummified Egyptian cats to exploit their phosphate content. Little did he know he’d spawn a global mining industry that would change our diets, our lifestyle, and the face of the planet.
\nLohmann guides us from Henslow’s Suffolk, where the phosphate fertiliser industry took root, to Bone Valley in Central Florida, where it has boomed alongside big ag - leaving wreckage like the Piney Point disaster in its wake - to far-flung Nauru, an island stripped of its life force by the ravenous young industry. We sift through the Earth’s geological layers and eras, speak in depth with experts and locals, and explore our past relationship with cyclical farming - including in seventeenth century Japan, when one could pay their rent with their excrement - before we started wasting just as much phosphate as we mine.
\nSui generis, filled with passion and rigorous reporting, White Light invites us to renew our broken relationship not just with the Earth but with our own death - and the life it brings after us.
Trapped within an impenetrable alpine stronghold, the most powerful leaders on Earth are at the mercy of eco-terrorists - and only one man can breach their defenses. Secret Service Agent Jake Mercer embarks on a perilous solo mission against all odds, where every second counts, and survival hangs by a thread.
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When Paris falls prey to a ruthless bio-terrorist, Secret Service Agent Jake Mercer must race against time to prevent a deadly pandemic, and to protect world leaders - including the President of the United States.
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When a devastating earthquake strikes during a high-stakes economic summit, Secret Service agent Jake Mercer faces his biggest challenge yet: protecting the President from a natural disaster turned terrorist hunting ground.
\nIn Tokyo's collapsing cityscape, can he safeguard democracy's heartbeat amidst the anarchy?
A diplomatic tour turns deadly when Secret Service Agent Jake Mercer uncovers an assassination plot against the President in the Middle East. Outgunned and outnumbered, can Jake shield those he swore to protect?
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The ancient city of Istanbul becomes a deadly chessboard when the President is abducted during a diplomatic mission. Secret Service Agent Jake Mercer must outwit a rogue military faction in a pulse-pounding pursuit through bazaars and back alleys. Can he rescue the President before a forced statement ignites an international crisis?
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As Air Force One soars towards Hawaii, Secret Service Agent Jake Mercer uncovers a plot to crash the plane. Can he protect the President and his family in this race against time?
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Secret Service Agent Jake Mercer's skills are put to the ultimate test when the President's daughter - and the mother of Jake’s child - vanishes in Beijing. Thrust into a world of shadowy alliances and hidden agendas, Jake must navigate a minefield of international intrigue if he hopes to bring her home alive.
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All it takes is one fateful flight for Jake Mercer's day to shift from standard protection detail to a full-blown survival mission. Marooned in hostile territory with the President after a helicopter crash orchestrated by unseen forces, Jake must fend off lethal threats and uncover the truth behind the sabotage attempt before it's too late.
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When the President of the United States or his family are threatened, it is up to Jake Mercer, former Marine sniper turned Secret Service agent, to protect them from dangers - both foreign and domestic.
\nThe ancient city of Istanbul becomes a deadly chessboard when the President is abducted during a diplomatic mission. Secret Service Agent Jake Mercer must outwit a rogue military faction in a pulse-pounding pursuit through bazaars and back alleys. Can he rescue the President before a forced statement ignites an international crisis?
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When synchronised strikes on U.S. embassies worldwide mask a sinister coup attempt, Secret Service Agent Jake Mercer is thrust into a race against time.
\nBetrayed by those he once trusted, Jake must go dark and untangle a web of lies to save not just the President, but the very fabric of American democracy.
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The fate of a nation lies in the hands of Secret Service Agent Jake Mercer as he races thwart an assassination plot from within his own agency. Can Mercer peel back layers of treachery in time to stop an insider poised to strike at the heart of America?
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When the President of the United States or his family are threatened, it is up to Jake Mercer, former Marine sniper turned Secret Service agent, to protect them from dangers - both foreign and domestic.
\nAs a lethal militia targets the most powerful man in the world, Jake must thwart their assassination plot and protect the nation's highest office - even if the mastermind behind it is a shadow from his own past.
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When the President visits Russia for a summit, his life is in danger, and Secret Service Agent Jake Mercer finds himself pitted against a rogue ex-KGB officer. Can he outsmart his cunning adversary before the ultimate checkmate?
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When the President's motorcade is ambushed by a rogue drone strike, Secret Service Agent Jake Mercer is thrust into a lethal game of cat and mouse. With the nation's leader in his charge, will Mercer’s wit be enough to save the leader of the free world?
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When the President's nuclear football - a briefcase containing launch codes - is stolen during a European trip, Secret Service Agent Jake Mercer must recover it before catastrophe strikes.
\nWith global warfare hanging in the balance, Jake races against time while protecting the President in an increasingly unstable situation.
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Although elite Navy Seal Troy Stark was forced into retirement for his dubious respect for authority, his work in stopping a major terrorist threat to New York did not go unnoticed. Now part of a new, secret international organisation, Troy must hunt down all threats to the U.S. and pre-empt them overseas - bending the rules if he has to.
\nA group of European terrorists have a new, unexpected target, with nuclear-level consequences. With the clock ticking for Troy to stop them before they set off a global war, Troy, partnered with an Interpol agent whom he grudgingly respects, is up against the enemy of his life.
\nBut there is only one problem: no one knows exactly what the target is.
\nAnd as Troy’s investigative work leads to a discovery, he realises it may not be the target - or the enemy - they all think it is. Just how deep do these terrorists’ connections run?
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When elite Navy Seal Troy Stark is forced into retirement for his dubious respect for authority, he dreads the quiet life awaiting him with his brothers and buddies in Yonkers, New York. But the quiet doesn’t last long: the NYPD needs Troy’s military expertise to help find and stop a major terrorist threat to New York City. To pre-empt the attack, they need him to fly to Europe and stop it at its source - using any means necessary.
\nTroy finds himself partnered with an Interpol agent who is as different from him as can be, and their instant dislike is mutual. But they have an attack to stop, and only a few days to do it, and together they’ll need each other as they criss-cross Europe in a high-octane cat-and-mouse chase to shut these terrorists down.
\nBut what starts off as a straightforward mission (and an opportunity to clear his name) soon catapults Troy headfirst into a global conspiracy. These criminals are more sophisticated than they appear, and even with Troy’s unparalleled military skills, he and his team find themselves constantly one stop behind. With the fate of New York City on the line, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
\nWhere will they strike? And when? And can Troy stop it before it’s too late?
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An isolated sex trafficking case leads Troy to a vast, underground network of organised crime in Europe. Hundreds of women, it seems, are being trafficked, and used to fund terrorist organisations.
\nIn this high octane action thriller, Troy must uncover a vast web of crime, protected at the highest levels, and take on his most complex enemy yet.
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When a group of international thieves have stolen a priceless diamond from a museum in Paris, seemingly intent on selling it in the black market, it soon becomes apparent that it is far more than a diamond they want - and that these are far more than simple thieves.
\nWith the fate of the world in the balance, Troy must hunt down the stolen diamond in a non-stop action chase across Europe and the Middle East, before it’s too late . . .
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When the world’s tallest tower in China hosts their grand opening, disaster - in the form of a terrorist attack - changes everything.
\nThe terrorists, Troy knows, have Americans - and world leaders - in their sight next, and Troy will have to team up with his Chinese counterpart - an equally rebellious operative - to stop them. Can America and China trust each other long enough to work together to stop the next attack in time?
\nOr will both Troy and his new partner find themselves outfoxed by a shifting list of revolving targets?
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A group of terrorists have developed a biological weapon, and as they prepare to contaminate Europe’s largest water supply, Troy is desperately needed to hunt them down and stop them.
\nBut in a never-ending trail of cat and mouse, Troy soon realises all may not be what it seems . . .
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A new marvel of engineering is set to open with fanfare, heralding a new era of technology and attracting heads of state for the grand opening.
\nBut terrorists have their eyes on it, too - along with the high-value targets attending - and in this high-octane action thriller, Troy Stark may be the only person left standing between the terrorists and an event of mass destruction.
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When terrorists threaten to blow up a major dam, threatening one of the world’s most important archeological sites, Jacob is summoned to find them and stop them before it’s too late.
\nBut in a series of never-ending twists and turns, Jacob learns that finding them won’t be as easy as it seems - and that their ultimate target may be even worse than thought . . .
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In a pulse-pounding chase through the shadows of history, CIA Agent Jacob Snow teams up once again with daring archeologist Jana to thwart a warlord's scheme of warfare reborn.
\nAs ancient siege tactics strike embassies and historic plagues threaten urban annihilation, only their combined wits can unravel the past's lethal secrets and prevent a global catastrophe.
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A CIA agent, posing as an archeologist in Pakistan, is arrested, and world security hinges on what he knows - and what he found. Jacob Snow, elite soldier-turned-CIA agent, with his mysterious archeologist partner, must race against time to find him, and to free him, before it’s too late . . .
\nBut at every turn the mystery deepens - and time is running out.
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Archeologists are found murdered in the wake of discovering a mysterious, precious relic, deep in the jungles of South America, and Jacob Snow, elite soldier-turned-CIA agent, finds himself in a race against time to uncover the mysterious motives. Not only is this ancient relic priceless, but it could unsettle world security.
\nJacob knows he must turn once again to his mysterious partner and archeologist to help decode the riddle. Who would kill for a mythical object, and why?
\nCan they stop the terrorists - and prevent a global disaster - before it’s too late?
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High up in the snowy mountains of Nepal, terrorists are on the verge of discovering one of the world’s great archeological treasures and, crossing the border, threatening world security.
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Jacob must race to find them and stop them.
\nBut as he fights the world’s harshest elements, Jacob soon realises he may be walking right into a global trap.
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Jacob Snow - elite soldier-turned-CIA agent, haunted by his tortured past - is one of the CIA’s greatest assets, and is dispatched when the stakes are highest.
\nWhen an ancient Egyptian relic goes missing under mysterious circumstances, Jacob knows this is no run-of-the-mill robbery: the relic holds a secret - one that could destroy everything.
\nJacob seeks out a mysterious and beautiful archeologist, whose brilliance is needed on the case. Together, they must partner to decode the archeological riddles and stop the terrorists before it is too late.
\nYet as they race to recover the stolen artifact, they soon find themselves in the midst of a conspiracy bigger than anything they could have imagined - and time is quickly running out.
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The hunt for a legendary lost artifact has Jacob in a wild chase across the Mediterranean, in a race against time to catch the nefarious organisation after it.
\nBut in a shocking twist, when Jacob realises who the artifact is destined for, the stakes could not be higher - or more dangerous.
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After a brazen theft from the basement of the Louvre, a terrorist organisation holds a mysterious, un-catalogued relic for ransom. When a pyramid is destroyed - and hundreds killed - the stakes escalate, with other high-profile targets - and civilian lives - in their sights.
\nWith lives on the line, Jacob Snow, elite soldier-turned-CIA agent, must team up with his mysterious archeologist partner to figure out what they stole, who they are - and how to stop them before it’s too late.
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In the shadow of the fallen Byzantine Empire, CIA Agent Jacob Snow and his daring archaeologist partner Jana discover a deadly quest for the last treasure of the Romans.
\nAs they traverse the perilous terrain of a Turkish island, they face a high-stakes puzzle only they can solve - but will the cost be higher than they bargained for?
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Jacob Snow, elite soldier-turned-CIA agent, must race into action when a new terrorist group arises with a terrifying weapon: a deadly disease, lying dormant underwater for centuries. If unleashed, it will wreak unimaginable destruction - and Jacob is the only one who can stop it.
\nBut the path to finding it lies through an ancient relic. And the only one brilliant enough to unravel its symbolism is Jana, Jacob’s mysterious partner and archeologist.
\nTogether, they must find and stop the terrorists before its too late. But in a shocking twist, Jacob realises that his own path may just come back to bring him down.
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When a terrorist group sets its eyes on the greatest archeological treasure of the holiest city, Jacob, dispatched, knows he has little time to reach Jerusalem before it sparks an international war.
\nJacob knows, even more, that he cannot solve the case without partnering with the mysterious archeologist he hopes to not fall in love with.
\nAs they spring into action to decode the ancient riddles and stop them, they soon realize the plot goes deeper than they could have imagined. With the fate of the world in the balance, they may just be out of time.
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Pine Ridge is a haven for lost souls. What happens when a haven becomes a living hell?
\nLieutenant Blake Larsen is on the trail of her own family tragedy when another rips apart Pine Ridge Retreat, a troubled teen camp on the edge of Northern Pines. A girl named Chloe Perez is dead, and a missing teenager with a troubled past - Jax Mitchell - is the prime suspect. Though Blake is desperate to uncover the truth about her parents’ horrific murder-suicide, duty calls.
\nWhen deputies first arrive at Pine Ridge, security refuses to let them through the gate. Why? What are they hiding - and why will no one talk? Does it have anything to do with the strange devotion the camp’s staff have for their leader?
\nWhen Blake learns that Chloe’s father is the speaker of the State House, she finds herself in the eye of yet another public storm. With her suspect list growing, and bodies piling up, Blake’s investigation itself comes under pressure. Someone wants to shut her down. But Blake made a dead girl a promise.
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Spies are like rats.
\nIn DC, you're never more than ten feet from one.
\nJason Trapp is about to find that out the hard way. All he wanted was a week off, but the world had other plans. Trapp stumbles onto something he wasn't meant to see, and when half a dozen top US officials are murdered by drug cartel sicarios, the reason becomes sickeningly clear.
\nWithin days, Mexico is on the brink of civil war, and the violence is spilling across the US border. The drug cartels are at war, innocent people are dying, and the President needs options.
\nTrapp soon realises there's more to this than meets the eye. Someone out there planned this.
\nBut he intends to finish it.
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Sometimes it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
\nSiberia in April isn't in any tourist guidebook. But that is where Trapp finds himself. It's cold, dark, and the vodka tastes like gasoline.
\nAfter brawling with half a dozen corrupt Russian cops, he's taken to the infamous penal colony marked on maps as IK-29, but known to inmates as the Black Eagle. The guards are brutes, their prisoners little better than animals. It's hell on earth.
\nAnd this time, he's on his own. The Agency has no knowledge of his mission. They wouldn't back him if they did. Because men like Trapp are tools. They aren't supposed to get ideas of their own.
\nIt's dangerous when they do.
\n
The Agency left him for dead.
Jason Trapp was the CIA's most lethal operative. A man of honor; a man whose terrible childhood forged him with an iron sense of right and wrong. His country gave him a career, a partner, and a way to mold that burning anger into righteous action.
And then someone crossed him, ripping his new life from his grasp. His partner's body is pulled from the wreckage, but Trapp's is never found.
Months later, terrorists attack an Amtrak train, slaughtering hundreds, and livestream the attack for the whole world to see. And then more attacks begin. Hundreds die. Then thousands. America is under siege.
It's not Trapp's job to care. Not anymore.
But he can't help it. And when he discovers his betrayal was just one move in a vast conspiracy that threatens to topple the US government . . .
Trapp vows to take his revenge.
Silicon Valley, 2021 - home to the greatest concentration of scientific genius anywhere on the planet . . . all wasting their talents trying to get you hooked on the latest, greatest social media app.
\nBut behind closed doors a race is taking place to unlock the secrets of the brain. Brilliant men and women attempting to prove that intelligence doesn’t have to be human.
\nThis race can have only one winner. The country that controls the first AI will be the planet’s last superpower. And just because America is in the lead doesn’t mean she’ll be the one to cross the finish line . . .
\nFrom Moscow to Beijing, the world’s intelligence agencies are circling. Our enemies will stop at nothing to end the American Century.
\n\n
The clock is ticking. In the North Pacific, the crew of a deep-sea recovery ship, the MV Challenger , are mercilessly gunned to death.
\nOnly one man survives, adrift in the ocean, and hundreds of miles from land.
\nIn the deserts of Iraq, a clandestine meeting between one of the world's foremost assassins and his ruthless benefactor sets in train a cascade of horrific events that will shape the world for good.
\nAnd in America, with two weeks to go before a NATO summit that President Charles Nash hopes will finally bring peace to the long-simmering cold war between Iran and the United States, a network of sleeper agents prepares to bring America to her knees.
\nThey are well armed, trained and funded . . . and they're prepared to die.
\nBut Jason Trapp is watching. And he's not done yet.
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Before the Agency came Delta. Before Delta was the Army Rangers. That’s where Jason Trapp was made.
\nIraq, 2007. It’s the height of the insurgency. The roads are almost impassable. IEDs kill American soldiers every single day. Tens of thousands of fresh troops are pouring into the country, and they’re barely holding the line.But after dark, Delta Force, SEALs and Rangers are starting to turn the tide. Every single night, Trapp is out with them, kicking down doors and taking names. Now there’s a new threat.
\nAmerican hopes in Iraq rest on control of the skies. Her enemies know that, Iran chief among them. But when countries quarrel, it’s soldiers who do the fighting. And sometimes one man shapes a nation’s course. The Dust Storm novella takes Jason Trapp right back to the start. He wasn’t always the CIA’s most feared asset. But he was always the Hangman.
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Somebody came for Jason Trapp when he least expected it. Some of his oldest friends got hurt in the process. Unfortunately for the perpetrators, they missed the one person who counts.
\nAnd now he’s going to return the favor. With interest.
\nBut first Trapp needs to find out who wanted him dead. And why. After all, with a career like his, you’re bound to make enemies. There’s a long list of nation states with reason to want him off the board.
\nStill, something about this feels personal. And when the codename ‘Hangman’ gets leaked to the media, Trapp knows it for sure. Somebody wants him gone. And they’re willing to play dirty to make it happen. One question remains: Is this all about him?
\nOr is there a reason they need him out the way?
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They say revenge is a dish best served cold.
\nBut Jason Trapp is losing his taste for it. For six months, his personal crusade has taken him around the world, mopping up the last of the Bloody Monday conspirators. There's only one left, and after the crooked financier Emmanuel Alstyne meets his maker, Trapp's debt will be paid in full. He vows he's done with the business of death.
\nUnfortunately, it isn't done with him.
\nAfter a simple kill mission goes sideways in Macau, leaving a CIA spy kidnapped, half a dozen Chinese agents dead, and America's satellites burning in the skies, Trapp is propelled back into the game. Eliza Ikeda was taken on his watch, and he's determined to get her back - no matter the cost. The problem is, he has no idea who took her, why, or what they plan to do next.
\nTrapp knows he's being played. And with the world's only two superpowers hurtling toward the precipice of war, time is running out . . .
\nRetirement will have to wait. Trapp is back in action. And this time, it's personal.
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A Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system takes down a passenger jetliner in the skies over Belarus, showering the fields below in burning scrap. As the world begins to mourn the horrific accident, one man - new CIA director, George Lawrence - knows it is anything but. Three hundred innocents were sacrificed in order to snuff out the life of one man: Professor Alexey Sokolov, a senior adviser to the Russian government.
\nAs well as a CIA asset recruited by a ghost known as the Hangman . . .
\nTrapp doesn't know any of this. He's hundreds of miles away in rural Tuscany with Eliza Ikeda, and on a mission of his own: recovery. Both are hurting, but this is their chance at a real life. Together. But it doesn't take long for trouble to arrive at their door. He should have known that his past wouldn't let go that easily.
\nThe question is: why did Sokolov run? How did the Russians discover who he truly was - and what secret could possibly justify the murder of three hundred innocent men, women and children to cover up?
\nTrapp doesn't want to know. But he sure as hell intends to find out . . .
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The world stands at a crossroads.
\nWith plague and violence stalking the streets and a new Cold War brewing in the East, America has never been more unprepared to face her enemies. There’s blood in the water, and the sharks are circling.
\nWhen CIA assassin Jason Trapp is called to the Middle East to identify a man suspected to be feared ISIS terrorist Khaled al-Shakiri, he expects to be in and out in a matter of hours. Unfortunately, fate has other ideas. After surviving the most violent prison break the region has ever seen, Trapp is left chasing shadows.
\nBut he knows this was no coincidence. Al-Shakiri didn’t just get lucky, he planned the whole thing. Five years behind bars didn’t show him the error of his ways, it merely hardened his resolve. And his bloody crusade is only just beginning.
\nIn 1914 the death of one man sparked the greatest war the world had ever seen. New empires rose, and old ones fell. Millions died. It could happen again.
\nAnd unless Trapp can stop it, it will . . .
\n
Tragedy has stalked Blake Larsen her entire life. Orphaned after the violent death of her parents, her Green Beret brother Caleb was all she had left. He was there the day she graduated high school, and the first person she called after she became a federal agent.
\nAnd then the cops find him swinging from the rafters. The horrific discovery pushes Blake to the edge of despair.
\nBut then one of Caleb's closest friends is violently murdered outside her front door - and the killer snatches a folder from his dying fingers. It's clear Kyle was silenced moments before coming clean. After detectives slow-walk their investigation, Blake resolves to uncover the truth. Her way.
\nBlake teams up with Ryan Walker, another of Caleb's former comrades-in-arms. As they grow more and more entangled in the dark, intimate underworld of Northern Pines, they learn how far the killers will go to keep a small town’s secrets buried. For years they've silenced victims and police alike through murder, corruption, and intimidation.
\nBut for Blake, this is personal.
\nIf the cops won't deliver justice, she will.
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A brutal murder. A man jailed. A new witness who claims he couldn’t have been there.
\nAlready in the middle of a violent and complex case, DS Pete Gayle gets entangled in a tangled web of lies and intrigue. With a man in jail for a murder he may not have committed, the reputation of the station and the whole force is on the line.
\nPete has to face one of the hardest choices of his life. To break ranks and go against another officer risks losing friends, colleagues and career, but if he ignores the case, will he be able to live with himself?
\n
DS Pete Gayle’s family problems are still unresolved and about to get worse when circumstances thrust him into another murder case. A woman’s body has been found in woods outside the city. The frenzied killing and the way she was left, naked and posed, send conflicting signals.
\nWas she known to her attacker or is a potential serial killer operating in South Devon? With no clues left at the scene, Pete and his team must first identify the victim before they can even start looking for a suspect.
Murders don’t repeat themselves. But they do rhyme.
\nBlake Larsen knows pain and trauma more than most cops. Her own parents died in a brutal murder-suicide when she was just a teen. She’s spent her entire life believing her father was a senseless murderer.
\nOne week ago, her elderly neighbors were found slaughtered. The scene was staged to look exactly the same as the night two decades ago that stole Blake’s future from her. And she doesn’t believe in coincidence.
\nAs Blake dives into the case, every clue seems to lead back to her own haunted history. Her reputation in town is thrown into the gutter, and violence knocks on her front door. Any normal person would give up.
\nBut Blake doesn’t have that choice. A killer is coming for her. She needs to find them first.
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A missing father. A desperate daughter. A terrible discovery.
\nA new case is the last thing DS Pete Gayle needs right now, but when it falls right into his lap, he has no choice. Justice is crying out to be served.
\nWith a career-making trial about to begin and his son in imminent danger from a pair of psychopathic brothers, Pete goes on the hunt in what could turn out to be the biggest case of his life.
His young son is recently dead, his traumatised daughter is going through hell and his station chief is out for his blood - or at least his career - when DS Pete Gayle is called to a murder scene on a residential street in Exeter.
\nA body has been found, horrifically tortured and left outside a women’s refuge. She is quickly identified as a resident, the victim of domestic abuse. But the obvious suspect was three hundred miles away, so who did this? And why? Haven’t these women been through enough?
\nTouched by the plight and the resilience of the shelter’s residents, Pete must track down a vicious and sadistic killer before more can fall prey.
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A dead body. A mysterious murder. A serial killer on the loose.
\nA taxi driver is found murdered in a remote part of Exeter. He is a family man, no enemies to be found. There is no physical evidence, except for thousands of fingerprints inside the cab. How will DS Peter Gayle ever track down his killer?
\nThen another cab driver is found dead. Now this isn’t just a case of one murder but a serial killer on the loose, once again . . .
A missing child. A dead body. A killer on the loose.
Returning to Exeter CID after his son’s unsolved disappearance Detective Sergeant Peter Gayle’s first day back was supposed to be gentle. Until a young girl is reported missing and the clock begins to tick.
Rosie Whitlock has been abducted from outside her school that morning. There are no clues, but Peter isn’t letting another child disappear.
When the body of another young victim appears, the hunt escalates. Someone is abducting young girls and now they have a murderer on their hands. Time is running out for Rosie, but when evidence case relating to his own son’s disappearance is discovered the stakes are even higher . . .
Three hours into her new job, Blake Larsen stumbles across her first body. But this is no ordinary murder. The scene is elaborately staged, the victim’s head clinically severed from her shoulders. Blake is certain this isn’t the killer’s first time.
\nThen a second woman goes missing, a young, beautiful Army wife named Nina Crawford. When the kidnappers - claiming to be ISIS - release a horrific, videoed ransom demand threatening to livestream her execution, the attention of the entire country turns to Northern Pines. And a countdown begins. Nina has 48 hours to live.
\nThe two cases must be connected. But why murder one woman and kidnap another? Why deliberately fan the flames of media attention? And why does the killer’s MO match two cold cases from almost a decade earlier?
\nAs the FBI searches for terrorists, the body count rises and protesters battle on the normally placid streets of Northern Pines, only one thing is clear: nothing about this case makes sense. Blake knows she’s in a race against time.
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There's a new weapon on the world stage. Silent. Invisible. It boils its victims from the inside out and leaves no trace. A perfect assassination tool.
\nA massacre in Pittsburgh was just a demonstration. A proof of concept before the weapon is scaled up. And the rogue faction behind it have far greater ambitions. They don't care if they provoke a war between the United States and China in the process.
\nIn fact, that's the point.
\nJason Trapp's investigation into the Pittsburgh attack takes him from a terrorist-run mine in Nigeria to the rain-slicked streets of London, with assassins waiting at every turn. They should have killed him when they had the chance.
\nNow it's too late.
\n
Afghanistan, 2022.
\nYou can check out any time you want.
\nBut you can never leave.
\nTwo decades ago, the United States invaded Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to fumigate a rat's nest of international terrorists. And then it left.
\nNow the Taliban are teetering on the edge of a fresh civil war, and a new breed of militants is growing out of the fertile ground of chaos. One group makes the Taliban regime look like kindergarten teachers by comparison. It's known as Islamic State Khorasan. Brutal, violent, and bent on using the failed state of Afghanistan as a launching pad for global mayhem.
\nIf there's one thing Trapp has learned, it's the more things change, the more they stay the same. IS-K has to be stopped.
\nThe problem is, not everybody agrees . . .
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You don't f*ck with the Rakada.
\nThe people living in the grasslands of the Tapestry call them the Bone Raiders, from their charming habit of displaying the bones of those they kill on their armour. But being a raider is tough these days. There's a new Great Khan in the Tapestry. He plans to use his sizeable military to get rid of the raider clans. And then there are the huge fire-breathing lizards that are straying into the grasslands a little too often these days.
\nSayana is a raider scout. She knows that to protect their way of life, she needs do something drastic. Like convincing her clan to ride those huge lizards, instead of horses. Sayana doesn't know how to do it without being eaten and/or cooked alive, but she'd better figure it out fast - or she and her clan, along with every other raider in the Tapestry, will be wiped out.
Teagan Frost might be getting better at moving sh*t with her mind - but her job working as a telekinetic government operative only ever seems to get harder. That’s not even talking about her car-crash of a love life . . .
\nAnd things are about to get even tougher. No sooner has Teagan chased off one psychotic kid hell-bent on trashing the whole West Coast, but now she has to contend with another supernatural being who can harness devastating electrical power. And if Teagan can’t stop him, the whole of Los Angeles will be facing the sh*tstorm of the century . . .
\n
For Teagan Frost, sh*t just got real.
\nTeagan Frost is having a hard time keeping it together. Sure, she's got telekinetic powers - a skill that the government is all too happy to make use of, sending her on secret break-in missions that no ordinary human could carry out. But all she really wants to do is kick back, have a beer, and pretend she's normal for once.
\nBut then a body turns up at the site of her last job - murdered in a way that only someone like Teagan could have pulled off. She's got 24 hours to clear her name - and it's not just her life at stake. If she can't unravel the conspiracy in time, her hometown of Los Angeles will be in the crosshairs of an underground battle that's on the brink of exploding . . .
\n
Teagan Frost’s life is finally back on track. Her role working for the government as a psychokinetic operative is going well and she might even be on course for convincing her crush to go out with her. But, little does she know, that sh*t is about to hit the fan . . .
A young boy with the ability to cause earthquakes has come to Los Angeles - home to the San Andreas, one of the most lethal fault lines in the world. If Teagan can’t stop him, the entire city - and the rest of California - could be wiped off the map.
Teagan Frost has enough sh*t to deal with, between her job as a telekinetic government operative and a certain pair of siblings who have returned from the dead to wreak havoc with their powers. But little does she know, things are about to get even more crazy . . .
\nTeagan might have survived the flash flood of the century, but now she's trapped in a hotel by a bunch of gun-toting maniacs. And to make matters worse, her powers have mysteriously disappeared. Faced with certain death at every turn, Teagan will need to use every resource she has to stop a plot that could destroy Los Angeles - maybe even the entire world.
\n
All Sayana wanted was to enjoy her life in the rolling grasslands of the Tapestry. After she and her fellow Rakada managed to ride humongous, fire-breathing lizards to face down the Great Khan’s army, they should have been able to kick back a little for once. Not too much to ask, right?
\nInstead, the Tapestry is in turmoil - invading armies threaten, the other raider clans are at war, and inside his fortress city of Karkorum, the Khan broods and plots. What’s more, the Rakada’s giant lizards are getting sick, and they have no idea how to cure them. If they die, there's no telling what might happen to the Tapestry.
\nBut then the Rakada receive a vision - apparently from the gods. A deep emerald pool surrounded by bone-white sands - one that may be able to heal their lizards. With no other option, the raiders set out on an epic quest across the mountains and into the desert.
\nBut the danger that awaits them will be one greater than they’ve ever faced before. These guys really can’t catch a break.
\n
Rune Ryker has nothing left to lose. Everything’s been stolen by the Immortals - her family, her home, her freedom. But she’s done playing by their rules.
\nEach year, humans are forced to journey into the Immortal Realms, but twenty-year-old Rune orchestrates her own selection, determined to find her family and destroy anyone who stands in her way. Rune is used to doing whatever it takes to survive, and now she must endure the Forge, a cutthroat college for the Immortal druids’ elusive tarot magic. When Rune’s magic reveals itself to be the rarest and most powerful, she must live with its only other wielder - Prince Draven. As arrogant as he is ruthlessly ambitious, he’s the last person she can trust.
\nRune’s abilities also draw the eyes of the most dangerous druids in the realms. Some want to use her. More want her dead. Draven offers to train her . . . for a price. As Rune becomes ensnared in Draven’s dangerous games, she learns there are secrets at the heart of the kingdom that some will kill to protect.
\nAnd Rune and Draven’s growing attraction may be the spark to ignite a brewing war.
What’s a twenty-something gal to do when her parents announce a divorce after thirty years of marriage, she finds out her best friend has cosied up to her archnemesis, and she accidentally sleeps with the Wrong Guy? Turn to her great-aunt for advice, of course.
\nRosie Benson has always struggled to fit in with her over-accomplished family, type-A roommate/best friend, and workaholic boss. But she’s nearly losing herself as she strives to become everyone else’s idea of perfect. When Rosie is abruptly fired from her job at a tech start-up where her boss was way too enthusiastic about synergy and company swag, the illusion that she has life figured out is shattered.
\nKnowing she needs a push, her great-aunt Dotty - a globe-trotting, martini-swilling occasional nudist, and the only person Rosie has ever truly felt herself around - challenges her to pursue a long-buried dream, others’ expectations be damned.
\nBut then Dotty dies.
\nAnd Rosie spirals.
\nAs new details of Dotty’s past emerge through revelatory emails from her many friends, Rosie realises that maybe her aunt’s life wasn’t as charmed as she thought. With her career, friendships, and family unraveling, Rosie must drown out the noise of the world telling her what she should pursue - boyfriend, babies, boss-babe role at a corporate job - and finally focus on what she actually wants.
\n
In 1984, an exiled author, Salvatore Archimboldi, accepts the help of a psychotherapist to write his new book. He hopes to transform his traumatic memories into literary genius. But the resulting book, The Truth of Carcosa, is pure evil. Horrified, Archimboldi suppresses the book and wills all traces of it, his correspondence, and any copies to be totally destroyed.
\nLong after Archimboldi's death, in a chaotic age of resurgent nationalism and violence, one of the only havens for his work is the ALI, the Archive for Literary Investment, where a biographer and his protégée search through Archimboldi’s correspondence for clues on the evil manuscript as they attempt to stop unscrupulous firms with their own plans for the manuscript.
\nTold from the perspective of a madman obsessed with The Truth of Carcosa and a ragtag group of friends, it becomes clear that this book is more than a book - and that it might be the answer to a bewildering set of questions: Why is the Archive so desperate to preserve Archimboldi's work? Why do so many corporations seem hellbent on seizing any scrap of this mysterious manuscript - and at whatever cost? What are the strange, dancing monsters that appear wherever Archimboldi's work is discovered?
\nAnd who - or what - is the Yellow King?
Inspired by true events revealing America's troubling past involving Pre-War eugenics practices, this emotionally riveting dual timeline novel brings together the lives of two inspiring women while exploring the timely and important themes of immigration, fertility, and motherhood.
\nJessa Gidney is a woman on the edge. Passed over for partner at her Manhattan law firm, she reevaluates her priorities, focusing on her deep desire to become a mother and her newfound interest in pro bono work. Her first case? An incarcerated woman named Isobel Perez fighting against a deportation order. An unsettling revelation about Isobel's health leads Jessa to uncover a horrifying pattern of medical malpractice within the detention facility.
\nWith her corporate law firm unsupportive and her husband, Vance, only concerned about the added stress while they're trying for a baby, Jessa is torn about whether to intervene. But when a shocking secret about her own family history comes to light, she is propelled to fight for these women, no matter the cost.
\nNearly a century earlier in Virginia, seventeen-year-old, real-life Carrie Buck dreams of escaping her life as an unpaid laborer for her foster family. She yearns for a family of her own, a dream that seems within reach when she attracts the attention of her foster mother's handsome nephew. But he soon abandons her, and she's cast out, pregnant and completely alone. As a ward of the State, she is designated \"feebleminded\" and left to the mercy of a corrupt and heartless legal system. Her courageous fight for her own destiny leads to a landmark Supreme Court case.
\nAs the novel alternates between these two women's stories, a startling connection is revealed. Tackling complex topics such as reproductive injustice, immigration law, eugenics, and societal expectations of women, the story is a compelling exploration of empowerment and self-determination.
\n
'For a very long time, the days went by, each just like the day before, then I began to think, and everything changed'
\nDeep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before.
\nAs the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.
\n
Rule number one is to never fall for a target. Perry’s never been good with rules.
\nPerry is a master thief - and a responsible one - but she’s not nearly as good with women. When she and her trusted hacker took thirty-seven million dollars from the brokerage firm Richmond’s, they were prepared for an investigator on the case. But Perry wasn’t expecting her to be so gorgeous. Or so into Perry, undercover as a journalist.
\nPrivate Investigator Norah Rosenberg is great at her job. But when she’s roped in to solve a near-perfect hack, she may find herself outmatched - and much more interested in the pretty brunette journalist following her investigation.
\nWhen Norah’s new girlfriend might not be the journalist she seems, the whole case starts looking a little more complicated and a lot more personal. Under pressure from the insufferable Richmond heir to solve the case, her inside source switching sides, and her feelings for Perry deepening, will Norah choose her work, or will she choose the woman who’s too perfect for her to let go - and the life of crime she leads?
\n
Sloane Abbott likes her quiet life. She owns a landscaping business, she tends her plants, lives alone, and secretly crushes on her favorite nonbinary garden center employee, Polly. Between anxiety and modesty, Sloane's never planning on telling Polly she likes them. She'll just be admiring from afar while she deals with her demanding family and fulfills her sister’s order.
\nPolly Stanwick loves people. She has the best time working at Blooms, talking to customers, hanging out with the kids, and generally being a ray of sunshine. When they hear their regular, Sloane Abbott, is having a rough day, they naturally sweep in to help.
\nWhat neither of them is expecting is for Polly's colleague to suggest her as a fake date for Sloane's weekend with her family. For Sloane, it’s the only way to avoid the heteronormative life her parents will push on her, so despite her misgivings, she agrees. It’s only one weekend, right?
\nFooling the Abbotts into thinking she and Polly are a couple is easy, but for Sloane, handling her own feelings is harder. Holding hands and sharing a bed doesn’t make things any easier - nor does Polly being there for her in all the ways she ever wished somebody would.
\nSometimes the hardest thing to face is our own potential to grow.
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Norah Rosenberg works hard to keep her distance from her family. But when her half-brother, Laird Hill, comes into two billion dollars, Norah, Perry, and the team are on the case to figure out how he’s suddenly in possession of the kind of money he’s spent his life chasing.
\nAs their investigation links Laird to an unidentifiable man Norah’s been following in her latest case, a questionable bank, a library from her past, and big money, they realise something larger is at play and it’s putting all of them in danger.
\nWith Perry arrested and her freedom on the line, will Norah, Rhodes, and Kevin be able to figure out what’s going on in time to save her, or will they need help from some unexpected sources?
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Neve thought she’d finally found someone who would love her, but here she is, getting dumped again. Perhaps it would be less embarrassing if it were happening in private—and with words she hadn’t heard time and time again. Or, perhaps she’s destined to never find real love. At least, that’s how it feels until she runs directly into her very own knight in shining armor.
\nAlba is perfectly happy dating, but nothing seems to stick. It seems every one of her friends knows her type, but something is always missing. However, when she collides with Neve, the challenge is on to try not falling for someone who is both exactly her type and one of the most wonderful people she’s ever met.
\nAs the pair get closer, Neve’s life as she knows it falls apart, but Alba is there to help pick up the pieces. With interfering friends, the fear of never finding love, and Neve attempting to navigate the complications of dating while ace, will the two take a risk on what’s growing between them, or ignore it to preserve the friendship neither wants to lose?
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When Alexandria met Hailey on their first day of secondary school, the last thing she was expecting was to become best friends with the chatty girl beside her. But friendship blossomed into first love, until different universities threatened to tear them apart.
\nSeventeen years later, Alexandria’s brother is set to marry one of Hailey’s employees, and their whirlwind romance drags Hailey and Alexandria back into each other’s lives.
\nSuddenly, all of the reasons they had for parting don’t seem compelling, and they can’t deny the attraction between them. But, with a wedding to plan, family in the way, and years of pain between them, will Hailey and Alexandria be brave enough to risk the hearts they’ve spent years protecting, or will they miss each other again?
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Thea Cooper is heading to her sister’s wedding in Montana for Christmas. The problem is that her ex is going to be there, and her mother is hoping they’ll rekindle their romance. All Thea wants is to enjoy the lodge, the holiday, and celebrate her sister.
\nErin Foxglove, wedding planner extraordinaire, is giving up her Christmas to work the Cooper-Perez wedding. Despite her best friend’s hopes that she’ll at least reward herself with a fun little fling while she’s away, Erin isn’t interested. She’s there to do a job and she has her rules about not sleeping with clients.
\nThat is, until she meets Thea.
\nAs sparks fly between them, Thea realises she might not be as straight as everyone thinks, and Erin finds some people are worth breaking her rules for. But, faced with an expiration date on their time at the mountain retreat together, will their romance fizzle out or will they get everything they’re wishing for?
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Piper Sutton is looking for love and it’s not going well. After a string of dates, all she’s left with are odd stories to tell her friends, family, and strangers at the doctor’s office. But, when an unfortunately timed message leads her to August Carmicheal, she wonders if her luck is changing.
\nAfter years off the dating scene, August is ready to get back out there - and an anonymous dating app is the way she’s going about it. Despite her best friend’s luck with the app, August isn’t expecting miracles. However, when the first woman she meets is Piper, things start looking up - at least until Piper’s real date walks in.
\nPulled together by their bad dates and undeniable chemistry, Piper and August make a deal to support each other in dating. However, as they grow closer, the pair have to consider whether meeting the wrong woman actually led to the right one for them.
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When she is convicted of a double murder, Felicity Wild, a brilliant grad student turned high-priced escort, declares, “I may not be innocent, but I’m innocent of this.”
\nReenie Bigelow never doubted it. A jury may have given Felicity a life sentence, but Reenie knows that her childhood best friend is not capable of murder. And so Reenie, a journalist, decides to use her deep connections to Felicity’s past to unravel the truth.
\nThe more she uncovers, the more Reenie is convinced that the story the prosecution told is wrong, despite the puzzling fact that Felicity said not one single word in her own defense. But there's one thing Reenie knows for certain: Felicity would never lie.
Ren Yu is a swimmer. Her daily life starts and ends with the pool. Her teammates are her only friends. Her coach, her guiding light. If she swims well enough, she will be scouted, get a scholarship, go to a good school. Her parents will love her. Her coach will be kind to her. She will have a good life.
\nBut these are human concerns. These are the concerns of those confined to land, those with legs. Ren grew up on stories of creatures of the deep, of the oceans and the rivers. Ones that called sailors to their doom. Ones that dragged them down and drowned them. Ones that feasted on their flesh. Ones of the creature that she's always longed to become: mermaid.
\nRen aches to be in the water. She dreams of the scent of chlorine - the feel of it on her skin. And she will do anything she can to make a life for herself where she can be free. No matter the pain. No matter what anyone else thinks. No matter how much blood she has to spill.
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For as far back as she can remember, Vicky has been fascinated and obsessed with death as the only inevitable thing in life. From living above a Chinatown funeral parlor to working at a celebrity start-up for bespoke urns, she has surrounded herself with death - in her home, in her work, and in her ever-growing collection of zhizha, paper creations meant to be burned for the dead, adorning the walls of her apartment. Yet, though living in Manhattan and working her dream job is all she ever wanted, she still struggles to have meaningful connections - or find any meaning at all - in her life. Too often she spends the day in bed, only drawn out from time to time by her best (and only) friend, Jen.
\nThat changes when a dating app leads her into a throuple with an artist and a labor organizer, who offer exactly the kind of love she needs. For some time, it’s perfect, but no one understands better than Vicky that all things must end. As doubts grow over the love in her life, her friendship with Jen, and her professional success, the oddly comforting abstraction of death starts becoming something else altogether. With everything beginning to feel hollow and temporary, Vicky must decide how to keep moving forward. To try and hold on to what she has, or to once again do what she does best: destroy.
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At a singles auction where no one was bidding on love, a warmhearted ER nurse finds herself dating a prickly doctor in this enemies-to-lovers lesbian romance.
\nEllie Fisher loves most things about being a nurse in the emergency department . . . just not working with Regina Novak, an icy attending physician who acts as if she’s God’s gift to medicine.
\nThe dislike is completely mutual. Regina thinks Ellie is a starry-eyed romantic with a sentimental attitude that has no place at work.
\nWhen Regina gets talked into volunteering at a singles auction, Ellie accidentally bids on her - and ends up winning. Oops!
\nSince the money raised is for a good cause, they reluctantly decide to go through with the dates.
\nThanks to a baking class that turns into a competition and a hot-as-hell road trip snack incident, the ice between them starts to thaw. Is it possible the ER isn’t the most unromantic place on earth after all?
\"Luke\" Hamilton has always been sure that she'd never marry. She accepted that she would spend her life alone when she chose to live her life disguised as a man.
\nAfter working in a brothel for three years, Nora Macauley has lost all illusions about love. She no longer hopes for a man who will sweep her off her feet and take her away to begin a new, respectable life.
\nBut now they find themselves married and on the way to Oregon in a covered wagon, with two thousand miles ahead of them.
Sophie Matheson, Kade’s homophobic mother, is coming to Portland for a visit. Her timing couldn’t be worse. Not only is Kade newly in love with a woman, but she also promised to help her friends Aiden and Dawn move in together.
\nInstead of going to art museums and having lunch in an expensive restaurant, Sophie will now help U-Haul a lesbian couple. Kade tries to tell herself it’s going to be a nice change of pace, but she knows better.
Kylie and Regan have been best friends since kindergarten, supporting each other through thick and thin.
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While everyone thinks they would be perfect for each other, they insist there’s no chemistry between them - and Regan should know since she’s a chemistry teacher.
To prove it, they agree to a little chemistry experiment: they’ll go on three dates with each other.
So what if their gazes start to linger and accidental touches no longer feel platonic? They chalk it up to the romantic atmosphere - until a friendly good night kiss turns passionate.
Can their friendship go back to the way it was before? Do they even want it to? Or will they risk losing what they have for a chance at love?
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An actress practically since birth, Grace Durand has finally made it in Hollywood. When a photo of her in a seeming compromising situation with another woman is plastered all over the tabloids, she fears for her career as a lead in romantic movies.
Desperate for a publicist who’ll convince America that she’s straight, Grace hires Lauren Pearce, one of Hollywood’s leading PR agents, not knowing that she’s a lesbian.
Lauren has dealt with PR nightmares for years, so doing damage control for one more rich, spoiled client shouldn’t be a problem—or so she thinks. But the more time she spends with Grace, the more she realizes how different she is from her television persona.
Getting involved with her client is not in her game plan, especially since it would confirm the rumors and ruin Grace’s career, but the attraction between them is growing as they run the gauntlet of the paparazzi together.
Aspiring actress Amanda Clark and photographer Michelle Osinski are two women burned by love and not looking to test the fire again. And even if they were, it certainly wouldn’t be with each other.
\nAmanda has never been attracted to a butch woman before, and Michelle personifies the term butch. Having just landed a role on a hot new TV show, she’s determined to focus on her career and doesn’t need any complications in her life.
\nAfter a turbulent breakup with her starlet ex, Michelle swore she would never get involved with an actress again. Another high-maintenance woman is the last thing she wants, and her first encounter with Amanda certainly makes her appear the type.
\nBut after a date that is not a date and some meddling from Amanda’s grandmother, they both begin to wonder if it’s not time for a departure from their usual dating scripts.
Nothing could possibly be more erotic than watching the woman you love taking off her clothes in front of you, right? That’s what Lauren thinks, until she witnesses her girlfriend, celebrity actress Grace Durand, dressing up for a movie premiere. The reverse striptease gets Lauren’s pulse pounding and her breath catching in her throat, and she suddenly decides that they may be running late to that red carpet call . . .
Ever since shape-shifters revealed their existence to the world, tensions between humans and Wrasa have been dangerously high. To improve their public image, the Wrasa council comes up with a bold plan: a fake relationship between one of their own and Faith MacAllister, the human daughter of their most vocal enemy.
\nTala Peterson, an aloof fox-shifter with the attitude of an alpha wolf, is anything but thrilled to pose as Faith’s mate. She doesn’t trust her one bit - and rightfully so, as Faith has her own agenda. Their flirty banter is strictly for show, and if Tala finds Faith’s scent annoyingly irresistible, it’s only because of the mate scent their scientists concocted.
\nBut when the wolf pack that raised Tala insists she bring her new mate home for a visit, the fake lovers are forced to not only share a bed but also to confront old prejudices. Soon, Faith faces a difficult choice: Should she keep spying on the Wrasa for her father, or can she trust Tala and her kind?
Dr. Jordan Williams devotes her life to two things: saving patients in the operating room and pleasuring her latest conquest in the bedroom. Her idea of commitment is spending a few hours together in bed.Single mom Emma Larson is Jordan's polar opposite. Family and fidelity mean everything to her.
\nAfter an ugly divorce from her wife, a plastic surgeon, she and her five-year-old daughter move in next door to Jordan. While she finds Jordan undeniably attractive, falling in love with another womanizing surgeon is the last things she needs. When a bad fall leaves Jordan in need of assistance, Emma decides to help her while she recovers.Could those six weeks turn out to be the beginning of a happily ever after, or will they both end up with a broken heart?
Dr. Hope Finlay loves her job as an emergency room physician, especially since it allows her only brief encounters with her patients. She learned early in life not to get attached to anyone because it never lasts.
\nLaleh Samadi, a waitress at her aunt’s restaurant, is the exact opposite. She easily connects with people and loves her big, boisterous Persian family, despite their tendency to meddle in her life.
\nWhen Laleh needs to be rushed to the ER with heart trouble, Hope saves her life. Afterwards, strange things begin to occur: Why does Laleh suddenly know even the most obscure diseases, while Hope is fluent in Farsi?
\nSoon, they can no longer deny that there’s a mysterious connection between them - one that becomes stronger with each passing day.
\nAre they losing their minds . . . or their hearts?
\"Luke\" Hamilton has been living as a husband and father for the past seventeen years. No one but her wife, Nora, knows she is not the man she appears to be. They have raised their daughters to become honest and hard-working young women. But even with their loving foundation, a few fears and insecurities have Amy and Nattie hiding their own secrets.
\nJust as Luke sets out on a dangerous trip to Fort Boise, a newcomer arrives on the ranch - Rika Aaldenberg, who traveled to Oregon as a mail-order bride, hiding that she's not the woman in the letters. When hidden truths are revealed, will their lives and their family fall apart or will love keep them together?
Hannah Martin has an unusual job: she’s a professional cuddler. While she has a big heart for her clients, she hasn’t found someone special to snuggle up to in her personal life.
\nWinter Sullivan isn’t looking for love. She’s an aloof workaholic who’s built walls of ice around herself. She would rather drive toothpicks under her fingernails than cuddle, and she certainly doesn’t want to share her space with anyone.
\nWhen Winter’s estranged father dies, he leaves her one last surprise: she and Hannah, a perfect stranger, will inherit a building together. But there’s a catch: first, they have to live together for ninety-two days.
\nWinter is determined to dislike her rival, but soon finds Hannah isn’t what she expected at all. Thanks to a hilarious doormat war, a cuddle dare from Winter’s half sister, and a kiss in the most unusual of places, the frosty fortress around her heart begins to melt.
\nWill she be able to accept that love might be just a touch away?
What happens when an overachieving psychologist with OCD tendencies and an impulsive, out-of-work actress start a fake relationship?
Claire Renshaw thought she had it all: a successful career as a couples therapist, a publishing contract for her self-help book, and a happy relationship. But her perfect world falls apart when her fiancée calls off their engagement. Because of that, even her book deal might be off the table. After all, readers don’t want relationship advice from someone who can’t even make her own relationship work.
So Claire sets out to hire herself a fake fiancée.
Lana Henderson, the actress who shows up to audition for the role, is not exactly Claire’s ideal woman. Her frankness and the messes she leaves everywhere drive Claire up the wall. At least she won’t fall in love with someone like Lana.
But soon, Lana starts to win her over with her big heart, tickle fights, and - gasp! - carbs after six. The longer they pretend to be a love-struck couple, the less fake their kisses feel and the more the lines between reality and role begin to blur.
Once the book contract is signed, will they walk away or is their relationship no longer just for show?
After being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, twenty-five-year-old Jill Corrigan takes herself off the romantic market. Not wanting to become a burden to a potential partner, she focuses on her career as an actress instead.
\nOn the set of a disaster movie, she meets stunt woman Kristine “Crash” Patterson, whose easy smile instantly makes Jill wish things were different. Meanwhile, Crash is trained to fall, but she didn’t count on falling in love.
\nDespite their growing feelings for each other, Jill resolves to let Crash into her bed, but not her heart.
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Nothing in Shelby Carson’s life is ordinary. Not only is she an attending psychiatrist in a hectic ER, but she’s also a Wrasa, a shape-shifter who leads a secret existence.
To make things even more complicated, she has feelings for Nyla Rozakis, a human nurse.
Even though the Wrasa forbid relationships with humans, Shelby is determined to pursue Nyla. Things seem pretty hopeless for them, but on Halloween, during a full moon, anything can happen...\n\n
Sex crimes Detective Aiden Carlisle is slowly getting used to being in a committed relationship with Dawn Kinsley-a relationship that isn't always easy since Dawn is not only a psychologist but also a former victim in one of Aiden's cases. Aiden's private and professional lives collide when Dawn's newest patient gets in trouble with the law.
\nWill she be able to stay objective enough to solve the case without pushing Dawn away? The same case also throws Deputy District Attorney Kade Matheson's well-ordered life into chaos. In the last few years, Kade has taken case files and law books, not lovers, to bed.
\nShe has been focused only on her career and fought hard to win cases like Dawn's, but now the case forces her to finally face her attraction to women. She suddenly finds herself with two secret admirers-but which one is more dangerous, the threat to her life or her heart?
Small-town florist Ashley Gaines loves her little flower shop and putting together the perfect bouquets for weddings and other happy occasions. Her own love life, however, is far from blossoming. Ash has decided that staying in the closet is safer than risking her heart again.
\nLocal bakery owner Sasha Peterson hasn’t had much luck mixing it up with romance either. Besides, she’s too busy whipping up delicious treats to have time for a relationship.
\nBut when their town’s first lesbian wedding forces them to work together, Ashley and Sasha discover they have more in common than they imagined.
\nDuring food fights, cake tastings, and slow waltzes, they begin to see each other in a new light. Soon Ashley has to admit to herself that Sasha is tempting more than just her sweet tooth.
\nWhat else is on the menu in this delicious lesbian romance?
Susanne Wolff isn’t thrilled when her mother sends her all the way across the country to Freiburg to save her uncle’s stationery store from bankruptcy. Freiburg is too provincial for her taste, and besides, pen and paper are outdated anyway.
\nAnja Lamm, Paper Love’s only full-time employee, takes an instant dislike to the arrogant, digital-loving snob who’s supposed to be her temporary boss.
\nBut thanks to a meddling cat, a business trip to a stationery fair, and an armada of origami boats, Anja soon starts to see beneath Susanne’s aloof exterior, and Susanne discovers how sexy pens and notebooks can be - at least when Anja handles them.
\nAs the end of Susanne’s three-month stay approaches, will she stick to her plan to leave, or will she open her heart to more than just paper love?
Pop star Leontyne Blake might sing about love, but she stopped believing in it a long time ago. What women want is her image, not the real her. When her father has a stroke, she flees the spotlight and returns to her tiny Missouri hometown.
In her childhood home, she meets small-town nurse Holly Drummond, who isn’t impressed by Leo’s fame at all. That isn’t the only thing that makes Holly different from other women. She’s also asexual. For her, dating is a minefield of expectations that she has decided to avoid.
Can the tentative friendship between a burned-out pop star and a woman not interested in sex develop into something more despite their diverse expectations?
A lesbian romance about seeking the perfect rhythm between two very different people - and finding happiness where they least expect it.
Comedian Stephanie Renshaw hopes to finally get her big break in LA. A chance encounter lands her the perfect apartment close to the comedy clubs, but it comes with a catch: she needs a roommate to afford the rent.
\nEnter Rae Coleman, a former police officer working the door at one of the top comedy clubs. After getting injured in the line of duty and losing her job with the LAPD, Rae guards her wounded soul behind a tough exterior.
\nAt first, the two clash horribly before a tentative friendship develops. Bit by bit, Steph manages to break through the walls Rae has built around her.
\nBut Steph has never been in a relationship, preferring casual flings, and Rae isn’t sure she’s ready to be happy again. Will they find the courage to open themselves up to love?
Novelist Jorie Price doesn't believe in the existence of shape-shifting creatures or true love. She leads a solitary life, and the paranormal romances she writes are pure fiction for her.
\nGriffin Westmore knows better - at least about one of these two things. She doesn't believe in love either, but she's one of the not-so-fictional shape-shifters. She's also a Saru - an elite soldier, investigator, and if need be an assassin with the mission to protect the shape-shifters' secret existence at any cost.
\nWhen Jorie gets too close to the truth in her latest shape-shifter romance, Griffin is sent to investigate - and if necessary to destroy the manuscript before it's published and to kill the writer.
After a carefully staged fake relationship brought them together, fox-shifter Tala and human Faith are no longer enemies. Now they’re allies working toward peace between their species, and they tell themselves that’s all they are.
\nBut Faith can’t help thinking Tala’s interactions with her six-year-old daughter are the cutest thing ever, and Tala’s fox seems to have already chosen Faith as her mate.
\nPretending to be a couple grows more complicated when a kiss for the paparazzi ignites sparks that feel anything but fake.
\nBut when an anonymous letter reveals a dark secret from Tala’s past, the old distrust creeps in again.
\nTala and Faith must decide: Can they risk everything to embrace the shifting nature of their relationship, or will fears and betrayals tear them apart for good?
All her life, Annie Prideaux has suffered through her brother's constant practical jokes. But Jake's last joke is one too many, she decides, when he sets her up on a blind date with his friend Drew - neglecting to tell his straight sister one tiny detail: her date is not a man, but a lesbian.
\nAnnie and Drew decide it's time to turn the tables on Jake by pretending to fall in love with each other. At first glance, they have nothing in common. Disillusioned with love, Annie focuses on books, her cat, and her work as an accountant while Drew, more confident and outgoing, owns a dog and spends most of her time working in her beloved vineyard.
\nOnly their common goal to take revenge on Jake unites them. But what starts as a table-turning game soon turns Annie's and Drew's lives upside down as the lines between pretending and reality begin to blur.
New admin Willow Greene has the worst luck with electronics. Computers crash, printers jam, and even coffee machines refuse to cooperate when she's around.
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Like her devices, her relationships never seem to last, so she has given up on dating. That's why she's seriously unprepared for the IT department's easygoing, always smiling Scottie Prescott, who has far too much charm to be safe.
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Scottie can't help noticing introverted, mysterious Willow, but she's still healing from a bad breakup. The last thing she needs is more chaos, given she's supposed to fix problems, not get tangled up in them.
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But when they get stuck in an elevator together, the sparks between them become impossible to ignore. Can they risk their carefully protected hearts getting burned?
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Falling stars are supposed to be a lucky sign, but not for Austen. Her new job, as a secretary in an international games company in Portland, OR, isn’t off to a good start. Her first assignment - decorating the Christmas tree in the lobby - results in a trip to the ER after Dee, the company’s second-in-command, gets hit by the star-shaped tree topper.
Dee blames her instant attraction to Austen on her head wound, not the magic of the falling star. She’s determined not to act on it, especially since Austen has no idea that Dee is practically her boss.
Flirting has never been Denny’s strong suit, but so what if she’s too shy to ask women out? She’s content with her simple life, working as a cashier and helping her sister raise her niece.
\nBut then she gets a wrong-number text message from a stranger named Eliza, asking her of all people for dating advice!
\nEliza is Denny’s total opposite: witty, outgoing - and straight. Despite their differences, the accidental text sparks an unlikely friendship. Soon, Eliza - self-proclaimed queen of disastrous first dates - would rather banter back and forth with Denny than to keep trying her luck at online dating.
\nWhen they meet in person, there’s an instant connection. But what Eliza is feeling can’t be attraction, right? It doesn’t mean a thing that she’s starting to wish the guys she dates would be more like Denny. Or does it?
\nCan the wrong number lead to the right woman after all?
\nWrong Number, Right Woman is a light-hearted, slow-burn lesbian romance that embraces likable characters without all the drama.
Mars has declared its independence from Earth. But building a country takes more than a new flag, an arena-worthy anthem, and naming Pluto the donkey the national animal. As the Red Planet spirals into political upheaval, Flip Buchanan - the irreverent, reluctant son of the most powerful man on Mars - stumbles through two tumultuous decades of alien discoveries, killer clones, and the chaos of a new nation still working out the kinks.
\nAlways second-best in a family obsessed with being first, Flip must grapple with the absurdity of Martian society and the gravity of legacy to step out of his father’s shadow and define self-worth on his own terms - a feat that can feel as impossible as climbing Olympus Mons.
\nFor fans of Andy Weir and Kurt Vonnegut, this satirical coming-of-age space epic blends sharp wit, surprising emotional depth, and bold worldbuilding. Equal parts hilarious and heartfelt, The Second World navigates found family, generational divides, and the outrageous struggle to make your finite life matter in an infinite universe - with poignant reflections on power, sensationalised media, and fractured culture.
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Kelly Quindlen meets Casey McQuiston in this sapphic Jewish twist on the classic Christmas enemies-to-lovers rom-com, as college freshman Shani’s internship is interrupted by a whirlwind winter fling.
\nIt all starts when Shani runs into May. Like, literally. With her mom’s Subaru.
\nAttempted vehicular manslaughter was not part of Shani’s plan. She was supposed to be focusing on her monthlong paleoichthyology internship. She was going to spend all her time thinking about dead fish and not at all about how she was unceremoniously dumped days before winter break.
\nIt could be going better.
\nBut when a dog-walking gig puts her back in May’s path, the fossils she’s meant to be diligently studying are pushed to the side - along with the breakup.
\nThen they’re snowed in together on Christmas Eve. As things start to feel more serious, though, Shani’s hurt over her ex-girlfriend’s rejection comes rushing back. Is she ready to try a committed relationship again, or is she okay with this just being a passing winter fling?
Zoe’s life has gone off the rails.
\nWhen she left Seattle to go to college in New York, she was determined to start fresh, to figure out what being a lesbian meant to her, experiment with clothes and presentation away from home for the first time.
\nInstead, she lost touch with her freshman orientation friend group, skipped classes, and failed completely at being the studious premed student her parents wanted her to be.
\nBut the biggest derailment of all? Her newly minted ex-boyfriend - and the fact that she had a boyfriend to begin with. When she met Alden, he made her feel wanted, he made her feel free. He made her feel . . . like she could be like him, which was exciting and confusing all at once.
\nSo, Zoe decides a second fresh start is in order: she’s going to take a cross-country train from New York to Seattle for fall break. There, no one will know who she is, and she can outrun her mistakes.
\nOr so she thinks, until she meets Oakley, who’s the opposite of Zoe in so many ways: effortlessly cool and hot, smart, self-assured. But as Zoe and Oakley make their way across the county, Zoe realises that Oakley’s life has also gone off the rails - and that they might just be able to help each other along before that train finally leaves the station.
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From two of America’s most respected journalists, an unflinching and explosive reckoning with one of the most fateful decisions in American political Joe Biden’s run for reelection despite evidence of his serious decline - amid desperate efforts to hide the extent of that deterioration In Greek tragedy, the protagonist’s effort to avoid his fate is what seals his fate. In 2024, American politics became a Greek tragedy.
\nJoe Biden launched his successful 2020 bid for the White House with the stated goal of saving the nation from a second Trump presidential term. He, his family, and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat Trump again, they lied to themselves, allies, and the public about his condition and limitations. At his debate with Trump on June 27, 2024, the consequences of that deception were exposed to the world. It was shocking and upsetting.
\nNow the full, unsettling truth is being told for the first time. Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson take us behind closed doors and into private conversations between the heaviest of hitters, revealing how big the problem was and how many people knew about it. From White House staffers at the highest to lowest levels, to leaders of Congress and the Cabinet, from governors to donors and Hollywood players, the truth is finally being told.
\nWhat you will learn makes President Biden’s decision to run for reelection seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless - a desperate bet that went bust - and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents. The story the authors tell raises fundamental issues of accountability and responsibility that will continue for decades.
\nThe irony is that in the name of defeating what they called an existential threat to democracy, Biden and his inner circle ensured it, tossing aside his implicit promise to serve for only one term, denying the existence of health issues the nation had been watching for years, dooming the Democrats to defeat. The decision to run again, the Original Sin of this president, led to a campaign of denial and gaslighting, leading directly to Donald Trump's return to power and all that has happened as a consequence.
\nRarely does hubris meet nemesis more explosively. Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, Original Sin is essential reading.
In her job as unofficial “problem solver” for Silicon Valley’s most ruthless venture capitalist, Mackenzie Clyde’s gotten used to playing for high stakes. Even if none of those tech-bro millions she’s so good at wrangling ever make it into her pockets.
\nBut this time, she’s in way over her head - or so it seems.
\nThe lightning-rod CEO of tech’s hottest startup has just been murdered, leaving behind billions in “dead money” frozen in his will. As the company’s chief investor, Mackenzie’s boss has a fortune on the line - and with the police treading water, it’s up to Mackenzie to step up and resolve things, fast.
\nMackenzie’s a lawyer, not a detective. Cracking this fiendishly clever killing, with its list of suspects that reads like a who’s-who of Valley power players, should be way out of her league.
\nExcept that Mackenzie’s used to being underestimated. In fact, she’s counting on it.
\nBecause the way she sees it, this isn’t an investigation. It’s an opportunity. And she’ll do anything it takes to seize it.
\nAnything at all.
\n
Cathy’s a wedding planner for the rich and famous. After she gets a contract to plan the wedding of the wealthiest couple in town, she knows her business will skyrocket if she does well.
\nCathy’s husband has his own plans.
\nShe presents her marriage as perfect. It’s better for business. Sometimes even Cathy believes her own lies. She knows things are not the best between her and her husband.
\nShe didn’t realise how bad it truly was until it was too late.
No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving - every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.
\nIf you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.
\nClear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.
\nLearn how to:
\n- Make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy);
- Overcome a lack of motivation and willpower;
- Design your environment to make success easier;
- Get back on track when you fall off course;
. . . and much more.
\nAtomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits - whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organisation hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.
\n
Failed Shadowknight Tylar witnessed the death of a god, whose blood healed his deformities but branded him a Godslayer and a hunted criminal. In this second volume of the trilogy, Tylar's struggle for the truth is vindicated when he is officially reinstated as a Shadowknight.
Yet this is a trap, revealed as Naethyn forces flow from the Ice Eyrie to wage a deadly siege, trapping Tylar and his friends. But even Tylar's skill and magic cannot save the Citadel of Tashijan, ancient Shadowknight headquarters, for something foul lies at the heart of their Order. The Cabal has infiltrated the inner council and Tylar and his allies must flee for now there can be no refuge from evil.
Four thousand years ago, a great war took place among the gods, which shattered their heavenly realm. This Sundering created the land of Myrillia, where near-invincible gods live amongst men.
\nYet the weapon that fashioned the Sundering may also strike down the immortals, as failed Shadowknight Tylar discovers. He witnesses the death of a god, whose blood heals his deformities but brands him a Godslayer and a hunted criminal.
\nTylar flees with now god-like powers, seeking to avenge the god's death and clear his name. He must ultimately confront the greatest god of all and face the supreme treachery . . .
On a fateful night five centuries ago, three made a desperate last stand, sacrificing everything to preserve the only hope of goodness in the beautiful, doomed land of Alasea. Now, on the anniversary of that ominous night, a girl-child ripens into the heritage of lost power. But before she can even comprehend her terrible new gift, the Dark Lord dispatches his winged monsters to capture her and bring him the embryonic magic she embodies.
\nFleeing the minions of darkness, Elena is swept toward certain doom-and into the company of unexpected allies. Aided by a one-armed warrior and a strange seer, she forms a band of the hunted and the cursed, the outcasts and the outlaws, to battle the unstoppable forces of evil and rescue a once-glorious empire . . .
In a spectacular feat of daring and magic, Elena and her army of outlaws and rebels have defeated evil’s minions and released the mystic secrets of the Blood Diary. But the malevolent Dark Lord has unleashed the Weirgates–black wells of ferocious energy that are his greatest source of power. Now Elena’s bravest allies are sent to find and destroy the Gates.
\nAs they face their own demons along the way, Elena herself must journey to Gul’gotha. Daring to venture into the enemy’s lair, she must emerge victorious if she is to reveal the secret of the Dark Lord’s identity–and the shocking nature of his vast powers.
Elena bears the mark of the wit'ch upon her palm, the crimson stain that testifies to an awesome power of unimaginable potency: wild, seductive, difficult to control. Only a mistress of blood magick can stand against the foul minions and all-corrupting evil of the Dark Lord. But Elena is not yet the mistress of her magick.
\nProtected by an ageless warrior and a band of renegades, she quests for a lost city where prophecies speak of a mystic tome that holds the key to the Dark Lord's defeat. But if the Dark Lord finds her first, Elena will become his most fearsome weapon . . .
In her hands, the young wit’ch Elena holds the awesome energies of blood magick, and the destiny of Alasea. For the fate of that fabulous kingdom hinges on her recovery of the Blood Diary. Only by mastering the secrets recorded in its pages can Elena defeat the evil magicks of the Dark Lord. But the Diary lies hidden in A’loa Glen - the fabled city that belongs to Shorkan, chief lieutenant of the Dark Lord, and his fearsome army.
\nWith the help of her allies, including the ocean-dwelling Sy-wen and her great dragon, Elena prepares a desperate invasion of A’loa Glen. At her side stands the one-armed warrior Er’ril, who knows how to unlock the wards that surround the Blood Diary. But unknown to Elena, Er’ril is the brother of the dreaded Shorkan. Will he continue to act as her protector, or will he choose to betray her?
History is broken, and three kids must travel back in time to set it right!
\nWhen best friends Dak Smyth and Sera Froste stumble upon the secret of time travel - a hand-held device known as the Infinity Ring - they're swept up in a centuries-long secret war for the fate of mankind. Recruited by the Hystorians, a secret society that dates back to Aristotle, the kids learn that history has gone disastrously off course.
\nNow it's up to Dak, Sera, and teenage Hystorian-in-training Riq to travel back in time to fix the Great Breaks . . . and to save Dak's missing parents while they're at it. First stop: Spain, 1492, where a sailor named Christopher Columbus is about to be thrown overboard in a deadly mutiny!
\n
Things have changed for Atticus Higginbottom. After the near catastrophe in the Fourth Reality, Tick’s being homeschooled in the fields of science, trying to master the mysterious Chi’karda.
\nBut just as he begins to make progress, Mistress Jane reappears, now hideously scarred and much more powerful. She has tapped into the universe’s darkest secret to create the Blade of Shattered Hope, and in her quest to attain a Utopian Reality for the future of mankind, she’s ready to risk billions of lives - including those of Tick’s parents and sisters - to set her plan in motion. Her vengeance knows no bounds.
\nWhen rumors begin to circulate about the secret scientific experiments taking place at the Factory, Tick and his friends Sato, Sofia, and Paul are faced with their most dangerous task yet. And they must not fail; the entire universe.
\n
Thomas knows that Wicked can't be trusted, but they say the time for lies is over, that they've collected all they can from the Trials and now must rely on the Gladers, with full memories restored, to help them with their ultimate mission. It's up to the Gladers to complete the blueprint for the cure to the Flare with a final voluntary test.
\nWhat Wicked doesn't know is that something's happened that no Trial or Variable could have foreseen. Thomas has remembered far more than they think. And he knows that he can't believe a word of what Wicked says.
\nThe time for lies is over. But the truth is more dangerous than Thomas could ever imagine.
Will anyone survive the Death Cure?
The VirtNet offers total mind and body immersion, and the more hacking skills you have, the more fun it is. Why bother following the rules when it’s so easy to break them? But some rules were made for a reason. Some technology is too dangerous to fool with. And one gamer has been doing exactly that, with murderous results.
\nThe government knows that to catch a hacker, you need a hacker. And they’ve been watching Michael. If he accepts their challenge, Michael will need to go off the VirtNet grid, to the back alleys and corners of the system human eyes have never seen - and it’s possible that the line between game and reality will be blurred forever.
Once there was a world's end.
The forests burned, the lakes and rivers dried up, and the oceans swelled. Then came a plague, and fever spread across the globe. Families died, violence reigned, and man killed man.
Next came WICKED, who were looking for an answer. And then they found the perfect boy. The boy's name was Thomas, and Thomas built a maze.
Now there are secrets.
There are lies. And there are loyalties history could never have foreseen.
This is the story of that boy, Thomas, and how he built a maze that only he could tear down.
All will be revealed.
Michael used to live to game, but now, the games are over. The VirtNet has become a world of deadly consequences, and cyber terrorist Kaine grows stronger by the day. The Mortality Doctrine - Kaine’s master plan - has nearly been realised, and little by little the line separating the virtual from the real is blurring.
\nIf Kaine succeeds, it will mean worldwide cyber domination. And it looks like Michael and his friends are the only ones who can put the monster back in the box - if Michael can figure out who his friends really are.
Sadina and the islanders are up against both man and nature as they navigate their way to Alaska. There, they hope to meet the mysterious Godhead, unsure of what separates myth from truth. But the Godhead, now led by Alexandra, is fractured. Within the cracks of their sacred trinity, secrets are revealed that blur the lines of good and evil forever.
\nAfter a devastating discovery, Isaac and Sadina are forced to split up. Minho holds the rest of the group together, but it's his beliefs that are slowly falling apart. What once drove Minho to join his sworn enemies is causing him to question everything. When Sadina finds a clue in The Book of Newt, her mission to meet the Godhead becomes even stronger.
\nIsaac and Old Man Frypan come across an enigmatic traveler and learn that the cure isn't what it once was. They are shaken to the core when they realise that the immunes aren't as immune as they should be, and the world . . .
\n
It’s been a quiet summer for Tick, Paul, and Sofia, but the latest message from Master George changes everything.
\nThe Realities are in danger - and from something more terrible than Mistress Jane and the mutated Chi’karda of the Thirteenth Reality. People from all Realities are unexplainably going insane. Worse, some Realities are fragmenting, disintegrating into nothingness. Master George has learned that Mr. Chu from the Fourth Reality is working on a mysterious new weapon called Dark Infinity. But no one has any idea how to stop the weapon - or even if it can be stopped.
\nTo make matters worse, Tick and his friends have been kidnapped, forced to wink from Reality to Reality, solving impossible riddles in order to survive the deadly traps surrounding them.
\nMistress Jane and Tick find themselves in a race to reach the weapon first - but who will destroy it and who will become its master?
War has finally ignited. The Remnant Nation is done waiting. Their mission: destroy the Godhead and everything she stands for. But as Sadina and the islanders fight to protect the Goddess - who claims to be their only hope for Evolution's survival - the battle reveals unfathomable truths leaving behind devastation that will change the islanders' future forever.
Determined to save their friends, Isaac and Ximena - along with Old Man Frypan and Jackie - struggle to find their way back to the others when two strangers intercept them, throwing everything they thought they knew about the Cure into doubt. Following the strangers into the unknown, Frypan unearths the shocking truth behind the Cure and the secrets so many have died to protect. But what they uncover is only the beginning.
The descendants must decide between risking their...
They've sailed on the Santa Maria, defended famous cities from Vikings and Mongols, and come face-to-face with some of the greatest figures in history. Now, at long last, Dak, Sera, and Riq travel back in time to the moment it all began.
\nTheir mission: to save the life of young Alexander the Great. But they are not the only time travelers in ancient Greece. An epic battle against their most dangerous foe awaits them . . . and history will be written by the victors.
Atticus Higginbottom, a.k.a. Tick, is an average thirteen-year-old boy until the day a strange letter arrives in his mailbox. Postmarked from Alaska and cryptically signed with the initials \"M.G.,\" the letter informs Tick that dangerous - perhaps even deadly - events have been set in motion that could result in the destruction of reality itself.
\nM.G. promises to send Tick twelve riddles that will reveal on a certain day, at a certain time, at a certain place, something extraordinary will happen. Will Tick have the courage to follow the twelve clues M.G. sends to him? Will he be able to solve the riddles in time? Will Tick discover the life he was meant to live?
\n
The prequel to the New York Times bestselling Maze Runner series.
\nBefore WICKED was formed, before the Glade was built, before Thomas entered the Maze, sun flares hit the earth and mankind fell to disease.
\nMark and Trina were there when it happened, and they survived. But surviving the sun flares was easy compared to what came next.
\nNow a disease of rage and lunacy races across the eastern United States, and there's something suspicious about its origin. Worse yet, it's mutating, and all evidence suggests that it will bring humanity to its knees.
\nMark and Trina are convinced there's a way to save those left living from descending into madness. And they're determined to find it—if they can stay alive. Because in this new, devastated world, every life has a price. And to some, you're worth more dead than alive.
Sadina, Isaac, and Jackie all learned about the unkind history of the Gladers from The Book of Newt and tall tales from Old Man Frypan, but when a rusty old boat shows up one day with a woman bearing dark news of the mainland - everything changes.
\nThe group and their islander friends are forced to embark back to civilisation where they find Cranks have evolved into a more violent, intelligent version of themselves. The islanders are hunted by the Godhead, the Remnant Nation, and scientists with secret agendas.
\nWhen they cross paths with an orphan named Minho from the Remnant Nation, the dangers become real and they don't know who they can trust. The islanders will have to survive long enough to figure out why they are being targeted, who is friend or foe, and what the Godhead has planned for the future of humanity.
When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his first name. His memory is blank. But he’s not alone. When the lift’s doors open, Thomas finds himself surrounded by kids who welcome him to the Glade - a large, open expanse surrounded by stone walls.
Just like Thomas, the Gladers don’t know why or how they got to the Glade. All they know is that every morning the stone doors to the maze that surrounds them have opened. Every night they’ve closed tight. And every thirty days a new boy has been delivered in the lift.
Thomas was expected. But the next day, a girl is sent up - the first girl to ever arrive in the Glade. And more surprising yet is the message she delivers.
Thomas might be more important than he could ever guess. If only he could unlock the dark secrets buried within his mind.
Michael completed the Path. What he found at the end turned everything he’d ever known about his life - and the world - completely upside down.
He barely survived. But it was the only way VirtNet Security knew to find the cyber-terrorist Kaine - and to make the Sleep safe for gamers once again. And, the truth Michael discovered about Kaine is more complex than they anticipated, and more terrifying than even the worst of their fears.
Kaine is a tangent, a computer program that has become sentient. And Michael’s completing the Path was the first stage in turning Kaine’s master plan, the Mortality Doctrine, into a reality.
The Mortality Doctrine will populate Earth entirely with human bodies harboring tangent minds. Any gamer who sinks into the VirtNet risks coming out with a tangent intelligence in control of their body.
And the takeover has already begun.
Solving the Maze was supposed to be the end. No more puzzles. No more variables. And no more running. Thomas was sure that escape meant he and the Gladers would get their lives back. But no one really knew what sort of life they were going back to.
In the Maze, life was easy. They had food, and shelter, and safety . . . until Teresa triggered the end. In the world outside the Maze, however, the end was triggered long ago.
Burned by sun flares and baked by a new, brutal climate, the earth is a wasteland. Government has disintegrated - and with it, order - and now Cranks, people covered in festering wounds and driven to murderous insanity by the infectious disease known as the Flare, roam the crumbling cities hunting for their next victim . . . and meal.
The Gladers are far from finished with running. Instead of freedom, they find themselves faced with another trial. They must cross the Scorch, the most burned-out section of the world, and arrive at a safe haven in two weeks. And WICKED has made sure to adjust the variables and stack the odds against them.
Thomas can only wonder - does he hold the secret of freedom somewhere in his mind? Or will he forever be at the mercy of WICKED?
Atticus Higginbottom; aka Tick; has known all along that when the battle for every reality is on the line, his role will be a crucial one. But he never could have imagined how this final challenge would go down.
\nWhile Tick's friends Paul, Sofia, and Sato work together with the Realitants to fight the newest and biggest threat to the very fabric of all that exists, Tick finds himself alone with the villains responsible for the damage: Mistress Jane and Reginald Chu.
It’s late October 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis has just concluded. The U.S. prevailed. Attorney General Robert Kennedy fears reprisals from domestic Communist Party members embedded in L.A. He orders a red probe and puts the LAPD on the job.
\nFreddy Otash is named lead investigator. He encounters commie malfeasance at every turn. He homes in on a red-front trade union. There’s a murder on Halloween night. It links to ex-VP and gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon and possibly two homicides eight years back. Now Freddy is working double he’s commanding the probe and is hired to keep Nixon out of trouble.
\nMeanwhile, integrationist fever is sweeping L.A. and the police department comes under its fire. Ex-cop/lawyer Tom Bradley is running for city council and pushing the Rumford Fair Housing Act. Playboy kingpin Hugh Hefner is along for the ride. And the long-forgotten but still-stunning folk singer Judy Henske is on a collision course with the love of her life, the freewheeling Freddy O.
\n
Idlewild is a tiny, artsy Quaker high school in lower Manhattan. Students call their teachers by their first names, there are no grades, and every day begins with 20 minutes of contemplative silence in the Meetinghouse. It is during one of those meetings that an airplane hits the Twin Towers.
\nFor two Idlewild outcasts, 9/11 serves as the first day of an intense, 18-month friendship. Fay is prickly, aloof, and obsessed with gay men; Nell is shy, sensitive, and obsessed with Fay. The two of them bond fiercely and spend all their waking hours giddily parsing their environment for homoerotic subtext. Then, during rehearsals for the fall play, they notice two sexually ambiguous boys who are potential candidates for their exclusive Invert Society. The pairs become mirrors of one another and drive each other to make choices that they’ll regret for the rest of their lives.
\nLooking back on these events as adults, the estranged Fay and Nell trace that fateful school year, recalling backstage theater department intrigue, antiwar demonstrations, smutty fanfic written over AIM, a shared dial-up connection - and the spectacular cascade of mistakes, miscommunications, and betrayals that would ultimately tear the two of them apart.
\n
Some people will do anything for power. ANYTHING. U.S. Attorney General Allison Leahy is the nation's top law enforcement officer and the Democrtas' best chance for holding on to the Oval Office. But she has powerful competition in Republican Lincoln Howe, a retired fourstar general and bona finde Africa-American hero. They are running neck and neck, and seemingly nothing can break the deadlock. Then, just days before the election, disaster strikes.
\nTwelve-year-old Kristen Howe, the general's granddaughter, is kidnapped. As attorney general, Allison launched a nationwide manhunt, but her motives come under fire from her opponent. For Allison, though, finding Kristen isn't about politics. Here is a personal crusade that taps into terrifying secrets buried deep within the past - secrets that can shatter all Allison's hopes, twisting them into a nightmare of lies and the ultimate betrayal.
\n
Then: Sergeant Vince Paulo held his best friend's daughter, McKenna, bleeding in his arms as she uttered the name of her murderer and ex-boyfriend, Jamal. That was minutes before a blast made everything go black for Vince - forever.
\nNow: Miami criminal defense lawyer Jack Swyteck has been called in to save Jamal from the death penalty for terrorist activity. Despite urgent warnings from his fiancée, undercover FBI agent Andie Henning, to stay away from the case, Jack finds himself inextricably drawn to Jamal's past - even believing his alibi that he was abducted and held in a black site in Prague at the time of McKenna's death. But if Jamal is innocent, then the man who murdered McKenna and took Vince's sight is still out there . . . free.
\nSoon bodies begin to pile up and ghosts from the past reappear very much alive, confirmed by ominous threats from a faceless man known only as \"the Dark.\" Vince and Jack must confront a mortal danger that goes beyond McKenna's death, across international waters - a journey to piece together the past that leads through the back alleys of London, onto illegal Internet sites, and straight into the mind of pure evil.
\n
Criminal lawyer Jack Swyteck doesn't handle many civil cases. But this one is different. His client, Jessie Merrill, is a gorgeous ex-girlfriend who's being sued.
\nAt the trial, Jack pulls off a brilliant victory and Jessie gets a hefty settlement. But then Jack finds out it was all a scam. Two days later, Jessie's body turns up floating in Jack's bathtub. As the evidence mounts against him, Jack finds himself on a collision course with dark secrets from the past and a possible killer is beyond suspicion.
\n
The country is reeling. For the sixth time in American history, the winner of the popular vote will not occupy the Oval Office. President Malcolm MacLeod, the Machiavellian incumbent, was spared from impeachment only because his political foes were certain they would oust him at the ballot box. Now, he appears to have secured a second term, thanks to a narrow victory in the Electoral College.
\nHis opponent, Florida Senator Evan Stahl, saw his campaign rocked by allegations of an extramarital affair - with another man. Despite the salacious headline-making scandal and the surrounding media frenzy, most Americans chose Stahl to lead the politically polarized nation. But Stahl is refusing to concede. Backed by millions of supporters, he looks to individual members of the Electoral College to cross party lines.
\nGun lobbyist Charlotte Holmes is one of Floridas twenty-nine electors who is bound by law and by oath to cast her vote for MacLeod, who won Florida by the thinnest of margins. When Charlotte announces that she intends to vote her conscience and throw the Electoral College to Stahl, the president and his Florida machine haul her into court on felony charges - which, for some, isn’t nearly punishment enough.
\nMiami attorney Jack Swyteck is going to use every legal maneuver he can to keep his new client free - and alive. MacLeod’s hand-picked prosecutor is determined to prove Charlotte is unfit to cast a vote. Dredging through her past, he’s looking for skeletons to humiliate and discredit her, while others with far deadlier intentions have begun acting on their threats.
\nAs the pressure mounts, Charlotte and Jack must decide how far they’ll go to stand their ground in the stand-your-ground state.
\n
Three summers after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, oil is again spewing into the ocean - from a drilling explosion in Cuban waters sixty miles off the Florida Keys, creating a politically complex and volatile situation.
\nRepresenting an American woman whose Cuban husband was killed on the rig, Jack finds himself in dangerous waters when he discovers that his incendiary case may be lethally connected to his new wife Andi's undercover assignment for the FBI . . . and that the looming environmental catastrophe may have been no \"accident\" at all.
\n
Miami criminal defense attorney Jack Swyteck is back in his most frightening case yet, and this time the price of victory is measured in blood.
\nIt is the most sensational murder trial since O. J. Simpson's. The nation is obsessed with Sydney Bennett, a sexy nightclub waitress and good-time girl accused of murdering her two-year-old daughter for cramping her party life. When he had agreed to defend Sydney, Jack Swyteck knew he'd be taking on the toughest and most controversial case of his career.
\nMillions of \"TV jurors\" have convicted Sydney in the court of public opinion.
\nWhen the shocking verdict of not guilty is announced, citizens across the country are outraged, and Jack is bombarded by the fallout: angry, profanity-laced phone calls and even outright threats. Media-fed rumors of \"blood money\" - purported seven-figure book and movie deals - ratchet up the hysteria, putting Jack's client and everyone around her at risk.
\nOn the night of Sydney's release, an angry mob outside the jail has gathered to serve its own justice. In the frenzy, an innocent young woman bearing a striking resemblance to the reviled Sydney Bennett ends up in a coma. While the media blame Jack and his defense team, the victim's parents reach out to him, requesting his help. They don't believe the attack was the tragic result of random mob violence.
\nSearching for the truth about what happened that night, Jack makes a frightening discovery. Larger and much more powerful forces are working in the shadows, and what happened outside the jail is a symptom of an evil that infected the show-stopping trial and media-spun phenomenon of Sydney Bennett.
\nWhen the U.S. Vice President dies unexpectedly during a hunting trip in the Everglades, the President selects his friend, former Florida governor Harry Swyteck, to fill the vacant position. Called to Washington to serve as his father's legal advisor, Jack Swyteck has mixed feelings about working so closely with the parent he's been at odds with in the past. Jack's duty, however, as a son and as an American, takes top priority.
But the vipers are restless in the D.C. snake pit. A fifty-year-old secret is unraveling, and a cover-up at the highest levels of government threatens to drag both Swytecks under. When hostages are taken, Jack must get to the root of the evil and quickly because suddenly no one is safe, and the presidency itself hangs in the balance.
Samantha died too soon. Abe Beckham’s new wife has helped him through the loss, but some say it was a step back to marry Angelina, a love from Abe’s past. Abe doesn’t want to hear it, and through the ups and downs, he’s even managed to remain a star prosecutor at the Miami State Attorney’s Office.
\nThen everything goes wrong. A woman’s body is discovered dumped in the Everglades, and Abe is called upon to monitor the investigation. The FBI is tracking a killer in South Florida they call “Cutter” because his brutal methods harken back to Florida’s dark past, when machete-wielding men cut sugarcane by hand in the blazing sun.
\nBut when the feds discover that Abe had a brief encounter with the victim after Samantha’s death, and when Angelina goes missing, the respected attorney finds himself under fire. Suspicion surrounds him. His closest friends, family, professional colleagues, and the media no longer trust his motives. Was Angelina right? Was their marriage not what they’d hoped for because he loved Samantha too much? Or was there another woman . . . and a husband with a dark side who simply wanted his new wife gone?
\n
Aspiring playwright, Kate Gamble, is struggling to launch a script she’s been secretly researching her entire life, mostly at the family dinner table. Her father is Christian Gamble, CEO of Buck Technologies, a private data integration company whose clients include the CIA and virtually every counter-terrorism organization in the Western World. Kate’s father adores her, and a play about the dark side of Big Data would be the ultimate betrayal in his eyes. But Kate is compelled to tell this story - not only as an artist exploring the personal information catastrophe that affects us all, but as a daughter trying to understand her mother’s apparent loss of purpose, made even more disturbing by the suicide note she left behind: I did it for Kate.
\nThen Patrick Battle comes back into her life, changing everything she has ever thought about her play, her father, and her mother’s tragic death. Patrick is a childhood friend, but he is now Buck’s golden boy with security clearance to the company’s most sensitive projects. When Buck comes under investigation by the Justice Department and Patrick suddenly goes missing, Kate doesn’t know who to trust. A phone call confirms her worst nightmare: Patrick has been kidnapped, and the ransom demand is “Code 6” - the most secret and potentially dangerous technology her father’s company has ever developed.
\nKate’s fight to bring Patrick home safely reveals a conspiracy and cover up that may implicate one of the most powerful executives in the tech industry, while the development of Kate’s play unleashes family secrets and the demons behind her mother’s cryptic final note. The two paths converge in explosive fashion, leading to a shocking and terrifying discovery that puts Kate and Patrick in the crosshairs of forces who will stop at nothing to control Code 6.
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When the body of Jamal Cousin, president of the pre-eminent black fraternity at the Florida's flagship university, is discovered hogtied in the Stygian water swamps of the Suwanee River Valley, the death sets off a firestorm that threatens to rage out of control when a fellow student, Mark Towson, the president of a prominent white fraternity, is accused of the crime.
Contending with rising political tensions, racial unrest, and a sensational media, Townson’s defense attorney, Jack Swyteck, knows that the stakes could not be higher - inside or outside the old Suwanee County Couthouse. The evidence against his client, which includes a threatening text message referencing \"strange fruit\" on the river, seems overwhelming. Then Jack gets a break that could turn the case. Jamal's gruesome murder bears disturbing similarities to another lynching that occurred back in the Jim Crow days of 1944. Are the chilling parallels purely coincidental? With a community in chaos and a young man’s life in jeopardy, Jack will use every resource to find out.
As he navigates each twist and turn of the search, Jack becomes increasingly convinced that his client may himself be the victim of a criminal plan more sinister than the case presented by the state attorney. Risking his own reputation, this principled man who has devoted his life to the law plunges headfirst into the darkest recesses of the South’s past, and its murky present, to uncover answers.
For Jack, it's about the truth. Traversing time, from the days of strict segregation to the present, he’ll find it - no matter what the cost - and bring much-needed justice to Suwanee County.
Miami attorney Jack Swyteck lands in the heart of the contentious immigration debate when he takes on the heart-wrenching case of an undocumented immigrant who fled to America to protect her daughter and save herself.
Julia Rodriguez and her teenage daughter Beatriz escaped bloodthirsty gangs, random violence and, Julia’s abusive husband back in El Salvador. Arriving in Miami, mother and daughter struggled to carve their own piece of the American dream. While life in the States is hard, it is safer, until Julia’s rejects her boss’s unwanted sexual advances. Suddenly - thanks to an “anonymous” tip to U. S. immigration authorities - she is arrested, locked in detention with criminals, and slated for deportation. Jack’s only viable legal move to save her is asylum - a long shot that’s become nearly impossible in today’s charged political climate.
When Julia and Beatriz made the perilous trek north to freedom, they thought they’d left the danger behind them. But now, even Miami isn’t safe. A ruthless enemy may have tracked them to south Florida and is biding time, patiently waiting to strike.
In a case where the stakes have never been higher, Jack Sywteck may not be able to save his client - even if he wins.
Sashi Burgette vanished three years ago on her way to school. The night after the teenager’s disappearance, ex-con Dylan Reeves was stopped for drunk driving. An article of Sashi’s clothing was found in his truck, and a police videotape of his drunken explanation under interrogation sealed his fate at trial. Now, just days from Kyle’s execution, Sashi’s mother visits Jack Swyteck, doing pro bono work at the Freedom Institute, and delivers shocking news: “Sashi called me.”
The police dismiss the call as a cruel hoax. The State Attorney refuses to consider the new evidence, insisting the case is closed. The governor has already signed the death warrant. An innocent man may be executed and time is running out - unless his lawyers can locate Sashi.
A man of principle who believes in justice, Jack jumps into the investigation. But the deeper he digs the more he discovers that nothing is what it appears to be. Not the victim. Not her alleged killer. And definitely not Sashi’s parents, whose grief ruptured their marriage, each openly blaming the other for what happened to their daughter.
As their gut-wrenching and hopelessly conflicting version of events unfolds in a Miami courtroom, it becomes clear there is something even more difficult to find than a long-missing girl . . .
Piracy costs the movie and music industry billions. No one has been able to stop it. But that won’t stop Miami criminal defense lawyer Jack Swyteck. His latest client, Imani Nichols, is a Grammy-winning popstar whose career has skyrocketed. Despite her success, she’s the most underpaid superstar on the planet because of an onerous record contract she signed as a teenager with her now ex-husband Shaky Nichols, who has made himself rich off her royalties.
\nPreferring to see thieves profit from her music than let her ex-husband pocket one more dime, Imani takes to social media and tells her millions of fans to \"go pirate\" and download her music illegally. Her hardball tactic leads to scorched-earth litigation, and now she needs Jack’s help in a high-stakes murder mystery.
\nThe case takes a deadly turn when salacious allegations of infidelity send Imani and Shaky down a path of mutual assured destruction, each implicating the other in the unsolved murder of Imani’s extra-marital lover twelve years ago. Tyler McCormick died of asphyxiation, and his body was found in Biscayne Bay, chained to a piling with the words \"goodbye girl\" impressed on his chest. Despite their fierce denials, Imani and Shakey are both indicted for murder, leading to a sensational trial that exposes shocking secrets about their failed marriage, their cut-throat business partnership, and Imani’s astonishing success.
\nYet as Jack discovers, uncovering the truth about the killing and the cryptic \"goodbye girl\" won’t just exonerate or convict his client, her ex, and their music empire. It may shape the future of the entire recording industry.
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Jack Swyteck’s new girlfriend, Mia, is keeping secrets from thelove-struck Miami attorney, not the least of which is a wealthy and powerful husband. Then Miais kidnapped by a manipulativeabductor who makes a chilling ransom request, “Pay me what she’s worth.”
\nNow Jack’s the one underthe gun, since Mia’s spouse has decided his unfaithful wife is worth nothing. Time is of the essence, and if Jack picks the wrong number, Mia could end up like thekidnapper’s other victims: dead.
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Jack Swyteck’s new client fled Iran to Miami with her daughter, and has been accused of kidnapping by her husband. The seasoned attorney must not only plan a winning defense. To stop the father from taking the girl back to Tehran, Jack must build a case under international law and prove that returning the child would put her at risk.
\nBut everything in this case isn’t what it seems, and Jack quickly learns that his client is really the child’s aunt and that the biological mother may have been killed by Iran’s morality police. But what role did the father play in his wife’s death, and why is Jack’s wife, FBI Agent Andie Henning, being pressured by her bosses to persuade Jack to drop the case?
\nPlunging into an investigation unlike any other, Jack must discover who is behind the legal maneuvering and what their interest is. As politics threatens to derail the case and compromise the best interests of the child, Jack and Andie find themselves on opposite sides - with their marriage hanging in the balance. For their relationship to survive, the couple must navigate a treacherous web of deceit that extends from a Miami courthouse to the highest echelons of Washington DC, and spells grave danger at every turn.
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Miami attorney Jack Swyteck is involved in the most explosive criminal trial of his career - a case that starts with a murder on a military base and concludes with a shocking surprise that will change Jack's life forever.
\nA beautiful woman comes to see Jack and begs him to represent her. She says she's about to be arrested for the murder of her husband, an officer stationed at Guantanamo Bay. Having no expertise in military law and sensing that the woman isn't telling him the entire truth, Jack turns her down. Then she drops a bombshell: She claims she's the adoptive mother of Jack's biological son - a child he's never met. Either Jack must represent her or he'll never see the boy.
\nSo Jack agrees, but with great foreboding. He has an unreliable client - a blackmailer who just might be a murderer - and he has to travel to Gitmo and on to Havana to tussle with people who clearly have a lot to hide. This is a case with as many twists and turns as it has unanswered questions, and the personal toll on Jack won't end until he's forced to confront the ultimate surprise witness in a trial that rocks the city of Miami.
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When an informer chooses Miami Tribune crime reporter Michael Posten as his conduit, giving him information about murders that haven't yet taken place, investigators speculate on whether the killer and informer are the same person. As the newspaper continues to deposit larger sums into the killer's account, FBI agent Victoria Santos and the reluctant journalist join forces to prevent the next gruesome murder.
\nBut then dues stop and the murders continue . . . until a psychopath makes one mistake too many. This gripping, unpredictable story of revenge will not be soon forgotten.
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Accidents happen . . .
\nRyan James' promising baseball career was derailed before it even got started - when a hit-and-run driver killed his wife, Chelsea, leaving Ryan alone to care for their beautiful little girl. Now, three years later, he's a popular sports radio host in Boston, still haunted by a tragic crime that was never solved.
\nBut this was no accident
\nThen, on the anniversary of Chelsea's death, Ryan receives a chilling message from an anonymous tipster: \"I know who did it.\" The shocking revelation that it may have come from Chelsea's autistic younger brother sets Ryan on a twisted path toward a shattering truth that threatens Ryan, his daughter, and everyone around them.
\nTwo years out of law school, Nick Rey is already on the fast track at a hot Miami law firm. But his dreams of success are overshadowed when his father, Matthew, is abducted on a business trip to Colombia. The guerillas demand an impossible $3 million ransom, the exact sum Matthew’s kidnap-and-ransom insurance policy covers.
\nThe insurance company suspects fraud, however, and refuses to pay. And as Nick soon learns, it isn’t the guerillas who hold the key to his father’s survival. A group of faceless lawyers at a powerful firm has something to hide, and will stop at nothing to keep Nick from discovering the truth.
\nMany years ago, Jack Swyteck saved Theo Knight's life.
Theo grew up on the streets of Miami's roughest neighborhood and lost his mother to a violent crime. Although his uncle Cy tried his best to raise him right, by the time he was a teenager, Theo was on death row for a murder he didn't commit. Jack was the lawyer who proved him innocent.
Now a successful bar owner, Theo has turned things around. But he needs Jack's help again, this time more than ever.
An escaped convict from the old neighborhood shows up at Theo's back door, asking for help. In return, he'll finger the man who murdered Theo's mother. But the answers aren't so simple, and soon Theo's own life is in danger.
Jack and Theo must piece together a twenty-year-old conspiracy of greed and corruption that leads to the very top of Miami's elite, while revisiting a past that Theo has tried hard to forget. But Theo also has the opportunity to seek the revenge that has fueled him since the day he found his mother dead in the street on a hot Miami night.
Tatum Knight is a former contract killer. Ruthless. Conniving. And he's Jack's newest client. Tatum is the older brother of Jack's best friend, Theo. Theo himself spent time on death row until Jack found the evidence to prove him innocent. Jack isn't so sure about Tatum.
\nA gorgeous young woman has been shot dead in her Mercedes on a Miami street. Tatum denies that he had anything to do with it, but he admits to Jack that he did meet with her in Theo's bar, where she tried to hire him.
\nSally Fenning was worth forty-eight million dollars when she died. Money had never made her happy, so she left it all to her enemies - left it for them to fight over, that is. She named six heirs in her will, but there's a catch: No one gets a penny until all but one of the heirs are dead. It's survival of the greediest.
\nQuickly the lawyers gear up for a bitter legal battle, but Jack braces himself for much worse. He alone knows that heir number six - Tatum Knight - is a professional killer. As the heirs begin to fall, Jack and his unforgettable sidekick, Theo, are in a race against time to discover if Tatum is behind all the killing. Or is someone even more frightening, more dangerous, the odds - on favorite to be the last to die?
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Payton Shields had known from the time she was a child that she wanted to be a doctor. Now she's in her first year or residency at a major Boston children's hospital. She's made it to the top through relentless drive, stellar academic credentials, and a mountain of debt to Harvard Medical School. She's working impossibly long hours but she has the life she wants.
\nThen, late one night, driving home through a heavy snowstorm, she sees a car coming straight toward her, driving her off the road and into a frozen pond. Rescue comes in the form of a man who pulls her from the wreckage and walks away. Yet nobody believes her story, that the \"accident\" was no accident.
\nThis is the first in a series of strange, escalating events that take Payton deeper into danger from a faceless enemy who seems to know her every move. And she has to turn her considerable determination into catching a killer before he catches her.
\nAt thirty-one, Michael Cantella is a rising star at Wall Street's premier investment bank, Saxton Silvers. Everything is going according to plan until Ivy Layton, the love of his life, vanishes on their honeymoon in the Bahamas.
Fast-forward four years. It's the eve of his thirty-fifth birthday, and Michael is still on track: successful career, beautiful new wife, piles of money. Reveling in his good fortune, Michael logs in to his computer, enters his password, and pulls up his biggest investment account: Zero balance. He tries another, and another. All of them zero. Someone has wiped him out. His only clue is a new e-mail message: Just as planned. xo xo.
With these three words Michael's life as he knows it is liquidated, along with his investment portfolio. Saxton Silvers is suddenly on the brink of bankruptcy, and he's the leading suspect in its ruin. Michael is left alone, framed, and facing divorce, with undercover FBI agents afoot, spyware on his computer, and mysterious e-mails from a \"JBU.\" Embroiled in corporate espionage, he's desperate to clear his name and realizes that several signs point to his first wife, Ivy, as a key player. But what if Ivy has come back from the dead, only to visit on Michael a fate worse than death?
According to the FBI, the most dangerous place for a woman between the ages of twenty and thirty is in a relationship with a man. Those statistics become all too personal when Jack Swyteck takes on a new client tied to his past.
\nIt begins at the airport, where Jack is waiting to meet his old high school buddy, Keith Ingraham, a high-powered banker based in Hong Kong, coming to Miami for his young daughter's surgery. But their long-awaited reunion is abruptly derailed when the police arrest Keith's wife, Isabelle, in the terminal, accusing her of conspiring to kill the man who raped her in college. Jack quickly agrees to represent Isa, but soon discovers that to see justice done, he must separate truth from lies - an undertaking that proves more complicated than the seasoned attorney expects.
\nInspired by an actual case involving a victim of sexual assault sent to prison for the death of her attacker, James Grippando's twisty thriller brilliantly explores the fine line between victim and perpetrator, innocence and guilt, and cold-blooded revenge and rightful retribution.
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Abe Cushman, the evil genius behind a sixty-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme, has killed himself and taken his secrets to the grave.
For Patrick Lloyd, a young Wall Street advisor at the world's largest Swiss bank, Cushman's fall has unexpected-and deadly-repercussions. His girlfriend, Lilly, is directly tied to billions of dollars in losses suffered by Cushman's most dangerous \"victims,\" a group of powerful investors whose identities and dirty finances are shrouded in secrecy. What Lilly knows can get her-and Patrick-killed, and now the pair are in a run for their lives that leads to the heart of secret operation, and to a cabal of powerful government officials determined to keep their agenda secret from the public.
With no place to turn and no one to trust, Patrick and Lilly must uncover the truth before they become collateral damage in a \"financial war\" where casualties are no longer measured in dollars and cents.
Jack Swyteck, a brilliant Miami defense attorney has spent years rebelling against his father, Harry, now Florida's governor. Their estrangement seems complete when Harry allows one of Jack's clients - a man Jack believes is innocent - to die in the electric chair.
\nBut when a psychopath bent on serving his own twisted version of justice places both Jack and Harry in extreme jeopardy, the two have nowhere to turn but to each other. Together they must find a way to overcome their cunning tormentor's manipulation . . . even as the stakes are being raised to far more perilous heights.
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Miami criminal defense lawyer Jack Swyteck must contend with a unique problem. His client, Elliott Stafford, indicted for murder, has gone silent. Not just silent in asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination - Elliott refuses to speak. He won’t talk to the judge, his girlfriend, or even the attorney fighting for his life. There seems to be no medical or psychological reason for his silence. He has, as Jack puts it, “chosen to become his own worst enemy.”
\nTo some, it’s an act of protest against a broken criminal justice system. Jack doesn’t buy it. Undeterred by the hoopla and calls to walk away, he keeps his client and tries his best to save Elliott from himself. As he digs for facts, Jack discovers a much more disturbing reason for Elliott’s silence. Virtually everything Elliott told Jack before the indictment is proving false, including Elliot’s criminal history, family turmoil, and secret past. As Jack plunges deeper, he comes to believe that Elliott isn’t trying to hide his own guilt. He may be protecting someone else - and the stakes could not be higher.
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It is the message every parent of a school-age child fears: “Active Shooter on Campus.”
Jack Swyteck is at his office when he receives the emergency text from Riverside Day School. Both his daughter, Righley, and his wife, FBI agent Andie Henning, are in danger. Andie is in the school’s rec center when she hears the fire alarms, then loud popping noises and screams coming from the hallway. A trained law-enforcement officer, Andie knows she’s supposed to stay locked down inside the room. But Righley is in her kindergarten classroom and Andie must get her to safety.
The tragedy prompts mass hysteria - and dangerous speculation. The police haven’t identified the shooter, but they find a handgun on the school grounds registered to a parent, a Muslim man named Amir Khoury. News of the gun and its owner leaks and quickly goes viral. Within minutes Al Qaeda claims responsibility. Andie is shocked - Amir is married to her friend, Lilly, a WASP whose bloodline goes back to the American Revolution.
When Xavier, Amir and Lilly’s oldest child and an eighteen-year-old senior at Riverside confesses to the crime, the local community’s anti-Muslim fervor explodes to levels unseen since 9/11. Terrified for her son’s life, Lilly asks Jack to step in. A seasoned defense attorney with a passion to see justice done, he’s taken on plenty of complicated cases. Xavier’s, however, is not one he’s inclined to take - until an old friend who lost his daughter in the shooting tells him that he must.
With the public calling for blood and prosecutors confident their case is air tight, Jack must unearth the Khourys’ family secrets in order to expose the shocking truth and save his client from certain death. But he may not be able to save everyone - including himself.
Lawyer Jack Swyteck tackles a case in which the life of his best friend hangs in the balance - and in which nothing is as it seems.
\nMiami criminal defense attorney Jack Swyteck isn't looking for a new client, at least not one who is homeless and in jail for threatening to jump off a bridge. But from the moment Jack is called to defend the man, who goes by the name Falcon, something is amiss. For one thing, Falcon comes up with the $10,000 bail - in cash. Then the body of a brutally murdered woman is found in the trunk of the abandoned car in which he is living.
\nPanicked and on the run, Falcon takes Jack's best friend, Theo, hostage. They end up barricaded in a motel room, and Theo isn't the only one at Falcon's mercy. Jack must work with the cops and their crackerjack negotiator to free Theo and the other captives before Falcon decides he has nothing to lose by killing them all.
\nWhat Jack doesn't know is that Falcon has a much bigger agenda, and that there are people behind the scenes who will stop at nothing to keep their dangerous secrets.
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In the wake of the devastating attack on Ilin Illan, an amnesty has been declared for all Augurs - finally allowing them to emerge from hiding and openly oppose the dark forces massing against Andarra. However as Davian and his new allies hurry north toward the ever-weakening Boundary, fresh horrors along their path suggest that their reprieve may have come far too late.
\nIn the capital, Wirr is forced to contend with assassins and an increasingly hostile Administration as he controversially assumes the mantle of Northwarden, uncovering a mystery that draws into question everything commonly believed about the rebellion his father led twenty years ago. Meanwhile, Asha begins a secret investigation into the disappearance of the Shadows, determined to discover not only where they went but the origin of the Vessels that created them - and, ultimately, a cure.
\nAnd with time against him as he races to fulfill the treacherous bargain with the Lyth, Caeden continues to wrestle with the impossibly heavy burdens of his past. Yet as more and more of his memories return, he begins to realise that the motivations of the two sides in this ancient war may not be as clear-cut as they first seemed...
The Boundary is whole once again, but it may be too late.
Banes now stalk Andarra, while in Ilin Illan, the political machinations of a generation come to a head as Wirr's newfound ability forces his family's old enemies into action.
Imprisoned and alone in a strange land, Davian is pitted against the remaining Venerate as they work tirelessly to undo Asha's sacrifice - even as he struggles with what he has learned about the friend he chose to set free.
And Caeden, now facing the consequences of his centuries-old plan, must finally confront its reality - heartbroken at how it began, and devastated by how it must end.
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The Hierarchy still call me Vis Telimus. They still, as one, believe they know who I am.
\nBut with all that has happened - with what I fear is coming - I am not sure it matters anymore.
\nI am no longer one. I won the Iudicium, and lost everything - and now, impossibly, the ancient device beyond the Labyrinth has replicated me across three separate worlds. A different version of myself in each of Obiteum, Luceum, and Res. Three different bodies, three different lives. I have to hide; fight; play politics. I have to train; trust; lie. I have to kill; heal; prove myself again, and again, and again.
\nI am loved, and hated, and entirely alone.
\nAbove all, though, I need to find answers before it’s too late. To understand the nature of what has happened to me, and why.
\nI need to find a way to stop the coming Cataclysm, because if all I have learned is true, I may be the only one who can.
The Catenan Republic - the Hierarchy - may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.
\nI tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilised society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus - what they call Will - to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.
\nI tell them that I belong, and they believe me.
\nBut the truth is that I have been sent to the Academy to find answers. To solve a murder. To search for an ancient weapon. To uncover secrets that may tear the Republic apart.
\nAnd that I will never, ever cede my Will to the empire that executed my family.
\nTo survive, though, I will still have to rise through the Academy’s ranks. I will have to smile, and make friends, and pretend to be one of them and win. Because if I cannot, then those who want to control me, who know my real name, will no longer have any use for me.
\nAnd if the Hierarchy finds out who I truly am, they will kill me.
Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby may have one case under his belt, but he’s still a novice Auditor in Boston’s Department of Unorthodox Affairs. And he’s already made mistakes.
\nDesperate to repair his fraying friendships, he doesn’t ask too many questions when a mysterious patron offers him the chance to join a heist of an otherworldly vault - and in the process find answers that could make things right.
\nComplications arise when Grimsby learns that his partner, Mayflower, is keeping secrets about his past. Between facing new demons, old horrors, and monsters - both Usual and Unorthodox - Grimsby soon realises nothing is how it appears and that not asking enough questions just might be his downfall.
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On the streets of Boston, the world is divided into the ordinary Usuals, and the paranormal Unorthodox. And in the Department of Unorthodox Affairs, the Auditors are the magical elite, government-sanctioned witches with spells at their command and all the power and prestige that comes with it. Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby is . . . not one of those witches.
\nAfter flunking out of the Auditor training program and being dismissed as “not Department material,” Grimsby tried to resign himself to life as a mediocre witch. But he can’t help hoping he’ll somehow, someway, get another chance to prove his skill. That opportunity comes with a price when his former mentor, aka the most dangerous witch alive, is murdered down the street from where he works, and Grimsby is the Auditors’ number one suspect.
\nProving his innocence will require more than a little legwork, and after forming a strange alliance with the retired legend known as the Huntsman and a mysterious being from Elsewhere, Grimsby is abruptly thrown into a life of adventure, whether he wants it or not. Now all he has to do is find the real killer, avoid the Auditors on his trail, and most importantly, stay alive.
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Against all odds, Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby has become an Auditor, enforcing laws about magic for Boston’s Department of Unorthodox Affairs. But Grimsby soon realises the daily grind of his job is far removed from the glamour he imagined. Overlooked for every exciting case, Grimsby tires of being told to handle mundane magical troubles, and appropriates a case file intended for a friend.
\nAlongside Leslie Mayflower, the temporarily unretired Huntsman, Grimsby aims to crack the case and discover the origin of a strange, unfinished ritual - one that seems to imitate the handiwork of a foe Mayflower put down twenty years ago.
\nTogether, they’ll have to deal with escaped werewolves, a cursed artifact, and a perilous journey to the mysterious subterranean city below Boston, all to uncover the shocking truth. At any cost, Grimsby must stop this ritual from finally being completed. Yet the cost may be paid not by himself but by his friends . . .
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A routine assignment transporting two death-row prisoners to their executions goes fatally wrong, leaving Dave Robicheaux brutally wounded and his partner dead.
Obsessed with revenge, Dave is persuaded by the DEA to go undercover into the torrid sleepy depths of New Orleans, a volatile world of Mafia drug-running and Cajun voodoo magic. He becomes irrevocably snarled in the nightmarish web surrounding Mafia don Tony Cardo and must put himself against his own worst fears in order to survive.
Detective Dave Robicheaux is caught in the crossfire of Louisiana's oldest and bloodiest gangland feud . . . From the wreckage of Louisiana's oldest and family rivalry, Detective Dave Robicheaux faces his most sinister enemy yet . . .
\n\t\t\t\t\tIsolde and Johnny - the star-crossed teenage heirs to New Iberia's criminal empires - have run away together, and Robicheaux is tasked with finding them. But when his investigation brings him too close to both Isolde's mother and her father's mistress, the venomous mafioso orders a hit on Robicheaux and his partner, Clete Purcel.
\n\t\t\t\t\tIn order to rescue the young lovers, and save himself, Robicheaux must face a terrifying time-traveling superhuman hitman capable of inflicting horrifying hallucinations on his victims, and overcome the demons that have tormented him his whole life . . .
A bullet shot through the window of Weldon Sonnier's house propels Dave Robicheaux back into the lives of a family he's not sure he wants to be reacquainted with. Weldon Sonnier's CIA-influenced past has led to dangerous connections and commitments, including debts to local mob boss Joey 'Meatballs' Gouza.
\nAs Weldon puts himself in the line of fire Lyle Sonnier, television evangelist and faith healer, reveals to Dave a violent family history that intersects menacingly with Dave's own. But overshadowing the manoeuvres of Gouza's gang is the spectre of racial politics and it is former Klansman Bobby Earl who will prove to be Dave Robicheaux's most elusive enemy.
The American West in the early 1960s appears to be a pastoral paradise: golden wheat fields, mist-filled canyons, frolicking animals. Aspiring novelist Aaron Holland Broussard has observed it from the open door of a boxcar, riding the rails for both inspiration and odd jobs.
\nJumping off in Denver, he finds work on a farm and meets Joanne McDuffy, an articulate and fierce college student and gifted painter. Their soul connection is immediate, but their romance is complicated by Joanne’s involvement with a shady professor who is mixed up with a drug-addled cult.
\nWhen a sinister businessman and his son who wield their influence through vicious cruelty set their sights on Aaron, drawing him into an investigation of grotesque murders, it is clear that this idyllic landscape harbors tremendous power - and evil. Followed by a mysterious shrouded figure who might not be human, Aaron will have to face down all these foes to save the life of the woman he loves and his own.
\nA prequel to James Lee Burke’s masterful Holland family trilogy.
When Billy Bob Holland visits his old friend Doc Voss, he finds himself caught up in a horrific tragedy. Doc's daughter has been brutally attacked by bikers, and the ringleader, Lamar Ellison, walks free when the DNA samples 'get lost'. Then Ellison is burned alive and Doc is arrested.
\nSo much for Billy Bob's vacation - Doc needs a lawyer, and fast. And that's not all. Newly released killer Wyatt Dixon has tracked Billy Bob to Montana, bent on avenging the death of his sister for which he holds Billy Bob responsible. And Wyatt is only one thread of a tangled web of evil that includes neo-Nazi militias, gold miners who tip cyanide into the rivers, a paedophile ring, and the Mob. As the corpses of the guilty and innocent pile up, Billy Bob stands alone.
Personal tragedy has left Dave Robicheaux close to the edge. Battling against his old addiction to alcohol and haunted nightly by vivid dreams and visitations, Dave finds his only tranquillity at home with his young ward Alafair. But even this fragile peace is shattered by the arrival of Dixie Lee Pugh who brings with him a brutal trail of murder and violence.
\nRobicheaux reluctantly agrees to help out his old friend but becomes more involved than he bargained for when he finds himself suspect Number One in the series of bloody killings. Forced to leave his home, Robicheaux's precarious existence reaches breaking point when Alafair's life is threatened.
Sonny Boy Marsallas, a New Orleans street hustler, entrusts Detective Dave Robicheaux with a mysterious notebook, kicking off a series of violent incidents and raising questions that need answers, and fast...
What did Sonny's girlfriend know that got her murdered? Why is Sonny known as Red Angel by Central American guerrillas? And what do the Mafia want with a desolate stretch of New Iberia? This time Sonny Boy may have pushed his luck with the Giacano family one deal too far.
A rich, sardonic and terrifying portrayal of contemporary America with a setting which is as charged as an electric storm.
The call from ex-Klansman Aaron Crown couldn't have been more unexpected. Sentenced to forty years for the decades-old shooting of a civil rights activist, Crown should have been out of Iberia Parish, Louisiana, for good.
Election candidate Buford LaRose wants Detective Dave Robicheaux to ignore Aaron's calls, promising Robicheaux a lucrative job when he makes governor. Worse still, Buford's wife, Karyn, seems unhealthily interested in getting very close to Robicheaux - just like old times. The LaRoses, each for their own reasons, want Crown's case buried.
Billy Bob Holland, an ex-Texas Ranger (cop, not ball-player) who mistakenly killed his partner during a drug bust, Holland is jolted from his brooding when his estranged illegitimate son is accused of the rape and murder of a party girl. He takes the case, of course, and things get complicated mighty quick.
\nOn a hunch only a father could believe, Holland is sure his son is being railroaded. Doggedly pursuing the truth, he runs afoul of sadistic cops, a powerful family, and the euphoniously-named Garland T. Moon, a feral thug with something to hide. Luckily, the folks on his team are just as tough.
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Clete Purcel - private investigator, former New Orleans cop, and war veteran with a hard shell covering a few soft spots - is Dave Robicheaux’s longtime friend and detective partner. But he has a troubled past. When Clete picks up his Caddy from a local car wash, only to find it ransacked by a group of thugs tied to the drug trade, it feels personal - his grandniece died of a fentanyl overdose - and his fists curl when he thinks of the dealers who sold it.
\nAs Clete traces the connections in this far-reaching criminal enterprise, Clara Bow, a woman with a dark past, hires Clete to investigate her scheming, slippery ex-husband, and a string of brutal deaths link back to a heavily tattooed man who lurks around every corner. Clete experiences shockingly lifelike hallucinations and questions Clara’s ulterior motives when he and Dave hear rumors of a dangerous substance with potentially catastrophic effects. The thugs who destroyed his car might have been pawns in a scheme far darker than they could’ve imagined.
Dave is in a recovery unit in New Orleans, where a Creole girl named Tee Jolie Melton visits him and leaves him an iPod with the country blues song 'Creole Belle' on it. Then she disappears.
\nDave becomes obsessed with the song and the memory of Tee Jolie and goes in search of her sister, who later turns up inside a block of ice floating in the Gulf. Meanwhile, there has been an oil well blowout on the Gulf, threatening the cherished environs of the bayous.
In the summer of 1958, Dave Robicheaux and his half-brother Jimmie are just out of high school. Jimmie and Dave get work with an oil company, laying out rubber cables in the bays and mosquito-infested swamps all along the Louisiana-Texas coastline.
\nBut on the Fourth of July, change approaches in the form of Ida Durbin, a sweet-faced young woman with a lovely voice and a mandolin. Jimmie falls instantly in love with her. But Ida's not free to love - she's a prostitute, in hock to a brutal man called Kale. Jimmie agrees to meet Ida at the bus depot, ready for the road to Mexico. But Ida never shows.
\nThat was many years ago. Now, an older, well-worn Dave walks into Baptist Hospital to visit a man called Troy Bordelon, who wants to free himself of a dark secret before he dies. A bully and a sadist, he has a lot to confess to - but he chooses to talk about a young girl, a prostitute who he glimpsed briefly as a kid, bloodied and beaten, tied to a chair in his uncle's house.
When a Nazi submarine is discovered lying in sixty feet of water off the Louisiana coast some troubled ghosts are ready to be released. A local businessman is offering Detective Dave Robicheaux big money to bring the wreck to the surface, but he is not the only one after the submarine and its mysterious cargo.
Neo-Nazis are on the march in New Orleans, a new spirit of hatred is abroad and its terrifying embodiment, an icy psychopath called Will Buchalter, is stalking Robicheaux's wife.
Robicheaux is about to find out how deep the new current of evil runs - and just how far the crazed Buchalter will go to get his hands on the Nazis' legacy.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, as America grapples with forces of human and natural violence more powerful than humanity has ever seen, Bessie Holland yearns for the love that she has never known. She finds a soulmate and mentor in a brilliant but tormented suffragette English teacher, who inspires Bessie to fight the forces of evil that permeate her world.
\nWatching the vast Texas countryside being destroyed by an oil company and a menacing figure with a violent past, Bessie is prepared to defend her home and her family. But when she accidentally kills an unarmed man to defend her father Hackberry, she must flee to New York. There, her older brother introduces her to boys who will grow into gangsters, but as children admire and respect Bessie’s spirit and fortitude as she is cast into a gangland that yearns for justice and mercy.
Novelist Aaron Holland Broussard is shattered when his daughter Fannie Mae dies suddenly. As he tries to honor her memory by saving two young men from a life of crime amid their opioid-ravaged community, he is drawn into a network of villainy that includes a violent former Klansman, a far-from-holy minister, a biker club posing as evangelicals, and a murderer who has been hiding in plain sight.
\nAaron’s only ally is state police officer Ruby Spotted Horse, a no-nonsense woman who harbors some powerful secrets in her cellar. Despite the air of mystery surrounding her, Ruby is the only one Aaron can trust. That is, until the ghost of Fannie Mae shows up, guiding her father through a tangled web of the present and past and helping him vanquish his foes from both this world and the next.
\nDrawn from James Lee Burke’s own life experiences, Every Cloak Rolled in Blood is a devastating exploration of the nature of good and evil and a deeply moving story about the power of love and family.
Danny Boy Lorca was used to having apocalyptic visions - the beatings he'd taken in jail and the booze he drank to forget them made sure of that. But what he saw and heard that night out in the desert was more terrifying than anything even his battered spirit could have conjured. A man tortured to death. Slowly and methodically and with inhuman cruelty.
When Danny Boy tells his tale to Sheriff Hackberry Holland, Hack knows something evil has leaked over the border into his corner of South Texas. What he doesn't realise is that this brutal slaying is just the beginning of a twisted three-way manhunt that will pit a psychotic killer seeking release for the souls of his murdered children against a religious maniac in love with death and a Russian gangster whose name is a byword for fear...
In the fall of 1863, the Union army is in control of the Mississippi river. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is occupied. The Confederate army is in disarray, corrupt structures are falling apart, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom.
\nWhen Hannah Laveau, a formerly enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging the local constable and the slavecatchers that prowl the bayous. Wade Lufkin, haunted by what he observed - and did - as a surgeon on the battlefield, has returned to his uncle’s plantation to convalesce, where he becomes enraptured by Hannah. Flags on the Bayou is an engaging, action-packed narrative that includes a duel that ends in disaster, a brutal encounter with the local Union commander, repeated skirmishes with Confederate irregulars led by a diseased and probably deranged colonel, and a powerful story of love blossoming between an unlikely pair. As the story unfolds, it illuminates a past that reflects our present in sharp relief.
Deaf Smith, Texas, a small town with small town problems until the local boy made good Earl Deitrich decides that he isn't prepared to share his kind of good fortune with anybody else.
\nWilbur Pickett is a retired rodeo rider with big dreams. Dreams of a secure future for himself and his native American wife, a blind woman who sees more than a blind woman should thanks to her ancient heritage. When Wilbur happens upon a parcel of land with black gold waiting for the taking he also happens on Deitrich and a whole bunch of violent problems.
\nOnly lawyer Billy Bob Holland is prepared to stand up for Wilbur, to stand against the juggernaut that is Deitrich and his corrupting influence.
Dave Robicheaux is trying to put a life of violence and crime behind him, leaving homicide to run a boat-rental business in Louisiana's bayou country. But one day while fishing in the Gulf with his wife Annie, he witnesses an event that will change his life forever.
\nA small two-engine plane suddenly crashes into the sea and Robicheaux dives down to the wreckage to find four bodies and one survivor; a little girl miraculously trapped in a pocket of air. When the authorities insist only three bodies were recovered from the plane, Robicheaux decides to investigate the mystery of the missing man.
After a violent encounter that leaves four Mexican soldiers dead, Hackberry escapes the country in possession of a stolen artifact, earning the ire of a bloodthirsty Austrian arms dealer who then places Hack’s son Ishmael squarely in the cross hairs of a plot to recapture his prize, believed to be the mythic cup of Christ.
Along the way, we meet three extraordinary women: Ruby Dansen, the Danish immigrant who is Ishmael’s mother and Hackberry’s one true love; Beatrice DeMolay, a brothel madam descended from the crusader knight who brought the shroud of Turin back from the Holy Land; and Maggie Bassett, one-time lover of the Sundance Kid, whose wiles rival those of Lady Macbeth.
In her own way, each woman will aid Hackberry in his quest to reconcile with Ishmael, to vanquish their enemies, and to return the Grail to its rightful place.
Hunting a sadistic killer who targets young prostitutes, Detective Dave Robicheaux has no mind to be sidetracked into persuading ex-schoolmate mobster Julie 'Baby Feet' Balboni to leave town. And it turns out that Balboni is the money behind a Civil War movie that's bringing in good business.
\nBut then the film crew stumble on a skeleton out in the bayou, and the links between a thirty-year-old lynching, a Civil War general, Balboni and the serial killer lead Dave into treacherous waters, with only a handful of unexpected allies to help him protect his own.
Wyatt Dixon, rodeo cowboy and 'the most dangerous, depraved, twisted and unpredictable human I ever knew' is certainly not one of Billy Bob Holland's favourite people.
\nSentenced to sixty years in jail for murder, Dixon is out after only a year, due to the DA's failure to disclose a piece of information. He swears he's a changed man and needs Billy Bob's help, but how can Billy Bob believe the man who tortured his wife?
\nAnd then there's Johnny American Horse, who has been caught carrying a gun. He says he needs it for protection; in a dream he saw two men coming for him and it isn't long before his prediction proves him right...
Three men are present when Amanda Boudreau is raped and murdered, and small-time hustler Tee Bobby Hulin's prints are found at the crime scene. Dave Robicheaux reckons he's innocent, and Tee Bobby pleads so, then attempts suicide in his holding cell.
\nWhy?
\nTee Bobby is released on bail and soon after there is a second murder. When lawyer Perry LaSalle takes on the defence of Tee Bobby, Dave knows his motives are fuelled by guilt. For Tee Bobby's grandmother was seduced by Perry's grandfather, and Amanda Boudreau's death is related to events that happened long before Tee Bobby was born . . .
It is a rainy late-summer's night in New Orleans. Detective Dave Robicheaux is about to confront the man who may have savagely assaulted his friend, Father Jimmie Dolan, a Catholic priest who's always at the centre of controversy.
\nBut things are never as they seem and soon Robicheaux is back in New Iberia, probing a car crash that killed three teenage girls. A grief-crazed father and a maniacal, complex assassin are just a few of the characters Robicheaux meets as he is drawn deeper into a web of sordid secrets and escalating violence.
\nA masterful exploration of the troubled side of human nature and the dark corners of the heart, peopled by familiar characters such as P.I. Clete Purcel and Robicheaux's old flame Theodosia LeJeune.
'As I stood there on my front porch that hot, breathless July day, leaning against the column with the six bullet holes, now worn and smooth, I could see Hack's whitewashed marker under the pin oaks in the Holland family cemetery . . .
\nFour generations of my family were buried there.' Hack Holland is a product of the South, both old and new. Hard-drinking ex-POW and wealthy, progressive Democrat, he stands in the long shadow cast by his ancestors.
\nWhen Holland's candidacy for a congressional seat brings him increasingly into conflict with those around him, his almost unwitting involvement with a violent civil rights conflict forces him to reassess his future - and his past . . .
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When Detective Dave Robicheaux's daughter, Alafair, declares her intention to interview a convicted serial killer called Asa Surette in his Kansas prison cell, he does all he can to dissuade her. Dave has always encouraged her ambitions as a writer, but as a father he doesn't want her to be exposed to a man so nakedly evil. And his fears seem well founded when Alafair is visibly shocked by the encounter.
Two years later, the horror Surette evoked is all but forgotten, as Dave, his wife Molly and Alafair are vacationing amidst the natural beauty of Montana. But evil, it seems, has followed them into this wild paradise. Someone is stalking Alafair, and Dave begins to suspect that it's Surette - even though he officially died when the prison truck he was being transported in collided with an oil tanker. Is Alafair now the target of one of the most depraved serial killers ever to have been caught, or has she unwittingly crossed paths with a murderous psychopath closer to home?
Dave Robicheaux left his drinking days behind him many years ago, but he still feels guilt over a tragic event he wasn't sober enough to prevent. Dallas Klein, a gambling addict and bar buddy of Dave's when Dave was posted to Miami PD, was killed in an armed robbery he'd been forced to engineer. Two decades later, several incidents in Dave's life in Iberia Parish link to those involved. First he meets Dallas' daughter, Trish, who keeps odd company and is blackballed by the local casinos.
\nThen the supposed suicide of a young girl appears to be connected to the man Dallas owed money to back in the Miami days. Dave's inability to let things alone gets him involved with two very powerful criminals, both wanting to protect their sons from the trouble they court, and both with the attitude of the privileged and white. When a young black drug dealer gets on the wrong side of the boys, tensions run high and there are more needless deaths - causing Dave to come to blows with the FBI, the DA's office and a thug who has little regard for any life but his own.
When Detective Dave Robicheaux discovers disturbing secrets from his mother's past, he embarks on a journey through a murky world of vice, politics and murder.
Robicheaux has been told that his mother, Mae, was a hooker and ended her life drowned in a mud puddle by two cops working for the Mob. As Robicheux and his partner hunt for the killers, they hook up with a door-to-door salesman turned state governor, a psychotic hit-man, and the owner of the mansion at Purple Cane Road - who knows rather too much about Robicheux's wife. . .
Hackberry Holland is a man haunted by a chequered and traumatic past. A former POW from the Korean War, he has left everything behind to become sheriff of a dried-out, broken-down border town in south Texas.
\nBut Hack soon finds himself dealing with more than just his own demons when nine dead prostitutes are dug up behind a run-down church. The search for justice - and revenge - pits Hack against hired guns, drug dealers who operate on both sides of the border and a psychotic killer known as The Preacher.
\nAs Holland frantically tries to end the cycle of killings and bring justice to the dead girls, he discovers just how dark the deepest corners of the human heart can get and how redemption can come in the form of a woman's love...
Between his recurrent nightmares about Vietnam, his battle with alcoholism, and the sudden loss of his beloved wife, Molly, his thoughts drift from one irreconcilable memory to the next. Images of ghosts at Spanish Lake live on the edge of his vision.
During a murder investigation, Dave Robicheaux discovers he may have committed the homicide he’s investigating, one which involved the death of the man who took the life of Dave’s beloved wife. As he works to clear his name and make sense of the murder, Robicheaux encounters a cast of characters and a resurgence of dark social forces that threaten to destroy all of those whom he loves.
What emerges is not only a propulsive and thrilling novel, but a harrowing study of America: this nation’s abiding conflict between a sense of past grandeur and a legacy of shame, its easy seduction by demagogues and wealth, and its predilection for violence and revenge.
Megan and Cisco Flynn are back in town. Nobody had ever been caught for the Klan murder of their father, Jack, and Detective Dave Robicheaux knows that trouble cannot be far behind. Particularly when the Flynns get mixed up with the case of a small-time hustler named Cool Breeze Broussard.
As the Flynns find themselves deeper and deeper in trouble, Robicheaux is trying to keep Cool Breeze alive. Something ties Breeze to the Flynns, and all three of them to local plantation magnate Archer Terrebonne. Something long past is poisoning all their lives, bringing death in its wake. . .
After the devastating events recounted in THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN, Dave Robicheaux and his ex-partner in Homicide, Clete Purcel, head for the mountains and trout streams of Montana for some much-needed healing.
However, while Montana might seem an unspoilt paradise peopled by men and women from an earlier, more innocent time in American history, Dave and Clete soon find that there are plenty of serpents in the garden too. The deaths of a couple of hikers suggest a perverted serial killer may be at work, while an escaped jailbird and his former tormentor are locked in a savage dance of revenge that is ultimately connected to the fortunes of a wealthy oil family hiding a terrible secret. . .
When Dave Robicheaux gets the call saying his ex-partner Clete Purcel is in jail for felony assault and resisting arrest, bailing him out is instinctive. After all, Clete is the man who saved Dave's life by carrying him down a fire escape with two bullets in his back. But Clete's latest escapade isn't just worrying because it shows his demons are gaining the upper hand; it also brings some of those demons into Dave's life, in the most personal way possible.
The man Clete assaulted, a big-time pimp and meth dealer is a suspect in the murder of a series of young women - but his criminal activities are hidden behind his involvement in a charity aimed at getting young women off the streets. As Dave probes the charity further, he finds that its main sponsor is the smooth-talking scion of a wealthy family, and a man whose motives Dave instinctively mistrusts. He also happens to be Dave's daughter's boyfriend.
On its surface, life in Houston is as you would expect: drive-in restaurants, souped-up cars, jukeboxes, teenagers discovering their sexuality. But beneath the glitz and superficial normalcy, a class war has begun, and it is nothing like the conventional portrayal of the decade. Against this backdrop Aaron Holland Broussard discovers the poignancy of first love and a world of violence he did not know existed.
\nWhen Aaron spots the beautiful and gifted Valerie Epstein fighting with her boyfriend, Grady Harrelson, at a Galveston drive-in, he inadvertently challenges the power of the Mob and one of the richest families in Texas. He also discovers he must find the courage his father had found as an American soldier in the Great War.
Johnny Massina, a convicted murderer bound for the electric chair, has warned Dave Robicheaux that he's on somebody's hit list, and now the homicide detective is trying to discover just who that is before he ends up dead.
\nMeanwhile he has taken on the murder investigation of a young black girl found dead in the Bayou Swamp - a case no one seems keen for him to investigate. But Robicheaux persists and uncovers a web of corruption that some would kill to protect, leading him to a terrifying confrontation with the one horror he fears most of all.
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New Orleans is awash with corpses after Hurricane Katrina unleashes its awesome power. In a city patrolled only by looters, all law and order gone, the survivors wait in trees or on rooftops for help that never comes.
In a landscape transformed into a violent wasteland, Dave Robicheaux must investigate the shooting of two looters and find out why some very dangerous people are hunting a third. Is it because they unwittingly ransacked the house of a notorious mob boss? Or did a chance encounter with the father of a raped girl seal their fate?
As Robicheaux starts to uncover a ruthless tale of greed, torture and murder, his own family comes under threat from a sinister psychopath and the devastated city provides the perfect stage for a final confrontation between good and evil.
When 16-year-old Weldon Avery Holland encounters the notorious Bonnie and Clyde in his Texas hometown, the course of his young life is altered forever. He dedicates himself to fighting evil wherever he finds it.
\nBut it's the 1930s and evil is sweeping the globe as the Nazis rise. When war breaks out, Holland finds himself in Germany, irrevocably scarred by scenes of death and destruction.
\nPeacetime brings apparent bliss, and Holland is offered a path to wealth and luxury by the enigmatic 'Wayfaring Stranger'. But soon, he discovers that the greed, violence and ruthlessness of war are nothing compared to the depths of human cruelty at play here.
Work in Progress is a snapshot of several years - first as a boy, then as a teenager, and finally as a young adult - of being thrown into a series of jobs for which Martin had zero training. He had never set foot in a restaurant kitchen before working as a busboy and dishwasher; never stepped onto a golf course before working as a caddy; and had never seen a factory floor before working as an assembly-line worker. He almost always felt uncomfortable, unsettled, and uneasy. But, like many of us, he needed the money.
\nThis coming-of-age story is set in the 1960s and 1970s, a lighthearted tale for readers who enjoy personal narratives, and it’s unlike anything Father Martin has written before. As he puts it, \"This is a spiritual memoir from a different angle . . . told 'slant' as Emily Dickinson might say.\"
\nEach chapter features photos of memories and milestones throughout Father Martin's young life. If you're an aficionado of snafus, you won't be disappointed. He's not the hero of these stories, more a hapless teenager who learns in each job, even the ones he loathes, something about the value of work, about what it means to be an adult, about people, and about life overall.
\n\n
Work in Progress teaches us small but important life lessons such as
\nwork hard and be on time, don't be mean, apologise when you need to, and forgive frequently, ask if you don't know something, don't misuse power,pay attention to those who are struggling, listen and, above all, be kind.Martin shares, \"My summer jobs, crazy and funny and varied as they were, had something to do with who I am. As we Jesuits would say, the lessons I learned helped to 'form\" me.\"
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Paul Bierman’s discovery that Greenland’s ice sheet melted when Earth was no warmer than it is today sounds an alarm for our planet.
\nIn 2018, frozen soil from the bottom of the world’s first deep ice core, lost for decades, reappeared in Denmark. When geologist Paul Bierman and his team analysed this material, it led them to a startling Greenland’s ice sheet melted naturally 400,000 years ago. That meant the ice was unstable even without human interference. In When the Ice Is Gone , Bierman traces the story of this pivotal discovery, delving into the nuances of polar science and arctic history.
\nHe explains how scientists, across more than a century, learned to read the language of ice and snow. He describes how engineers drilled the ice core at Camp Century, a Cold War military base built inside the ice sheet. And he explores the cataclysmic events the discovery portends if we don’t address climate change, urging us to heed the warning from the ice and understand Greenland’s significance for our collective future.
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Handywoman Barb Young has lived in the sleepy coastal town of Bullford Point for over fifty years - and frankly, in that time, not much has happened, unless you count that business where a bush turkey managed to board the ferry a couple of years ago.
\nWhen Joe Griffiths returns from Sydney after six years of drug addiction, jail and, eventually, rehab, Barb offers him a job, hoping to help him turn his life around. However, when another new resident of Bullford Point is murdered, Joe becomes the prime suspect.
\nBarb thinks the police have got it wrong, but the more she tries to find the truth and clear Joe's name, the more confusing things become. Is the murder connected to the developers circling the waterfront home Joe inherited from his parents? Or to the true crime podcast he has been making about the death of his ex-girlfriend, seven years previously? And what was the information the murdered woman had been trying to horse-trade with police?
\nAs her off-the-books investigation continues, Barb discovers that drowsy Bullford Point is actually a town full of secrets - and that even though she's known everyone in the close-knit community for years . . . everybody lies.
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Two sisters go into the family business they didn’t know they had - catching killers.
\nAttorney Rhonda Bird returns home to LA to bury her estranged father, and discovers that he left her two final surprises.
\nThe first is a private detective agency.
\nThe second is a teenage half-sister named Baby.
\nWhen Rhonda goes into her father's old office to close down the business, she gets drawn into a case involving a young man who claims he was abducted.
\nThe investigation takes Rhonda and Baby to dark and dangerous places. Soon they are caught in the crosshairs of an angry criminal cartel and an ex-assassin seeking revenge . . .
\n
Rhonda and Barbara “Baby” Bird are half-sisters - and full partners in their Los Angeles detective agency. They agree on nothing.
\nRhonda, a former attorney, takes a by-the-book approach to solving crimes, while teenage Baby relies on her street smarts. But when they take a controversial case of a loner whose popular wife has gone missing, they’re accused of being PIs who can’t tell a client from a killer.
\nThe Bird sisters share a late father, but not much else . . . except their willingness to fight.
\nFight the system. Fight for the underdog. Fight for the truth. If they can stop fighting each other long enough to work together.
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It’s not easy being a good detective - when your brother’s a serial killer.
\nSam Blue stands accused of the brutal murders of three young students, their bodies dumped near the Georges River. Only one person believes he is innocent: his sister, Detective Harriet Blue. And she’s determined to prove it.
\nExcept she’s now been banished to the outback town of Last Chance Valley (population 75), where a diary found on the roadside outlines a shocking plan - the massacre of the entire town. And the first death, shortly after Harry’s arrival, suggests the clock is already ticking.
\nMeanwhile, back in Sydney, a young woman holds the key to crack Sam’s case wide open.
\nIf only she could escape the madman holding her hostage . . .
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Harriet Blue used to be a detective. Now she's inmate 3329.
Prison is a dangerous place for a former cop - as Harriet Blue is learning on a daily basis.
So, following a fight for her life and a prison-wide lockdown, the last person she wants to see is Deputy Police Commissioner Joe Woods. The man who put her inside.
But Woods is not there to gloat. His daughter Tonya and her two-year-old child have gone missing.
He's ready to offer Harriet a deal: find his family to buy her freedom . . .
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The Inn at Gloucester stands alone on the rocky New England shoreline. Its seclusion suits former Boston police detective Bill Robinson, novice owner and innkeeper. As long as the dozen residents pay their rent, Robinson doesn't ask any questions.
\nYet all too soon Robinson discovers that leaving the city is no escape from the dangers he left behind. A new crew of deadly criminals move into the small town, bringing drugs and violence to the front door of the inn.
\nRobinson feels the weight of responsibility on his shoulders. His sense of duty compels him to fight off the threat to his town. But he can't do it alone. Before time runs out, the residents of the inn will face a choice.
\nStand together? Or die alone.
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Detective Harriet Blue is clear about two things. Regan Banks deserves to die. And she’ll be the one to pull the trigger.
\nBut Regan - the vicious serial killer responsible for destroying her brother’s life - has gone to ground.
\nSuddenly, her phone rings. It’s him. Regan.
\n‘Catch me if you can,’ he tells her.
\nHarriet needs to find this killing machine fast, even if the cost is her own life. So she follows him down the Australian south coast with only one thing on her mind.
\nRevenge is coming - and its name is Harriet Blue . . .
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When Sydney police department sex crimes detective Harriet Blue is called into her boss’s office, she never imagined it would be to tell her that her brother is the prime suspect in the brutal murders of three women.
\nShocked and in denial, Harry is transferred to Perth to avoid the media exposure this case will attract. Harry is sent into the outback - the never never - to investigate the disappearance of mine worker Danny Carter. The mining town is a seedy place, full of money and immoral ways to spend it. As Harry delves deeper into the murky lives of these miners, she finds that Danny isn’t the first to go missing.
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Being a cop runs in Billy Harney's family. The son of Chicago's Chief of Detectives whose twin sister, Patty, also followed in their father's footsteps, there's nothing Billy won't give up for the job, including his life.
Left for dead alongside his tempestuous former partner and a hard-charging assistant district attorney out for blood, Billy miraculously survives. But he remembers nothing about the events leading up to the shootout.
Charged with double murder and desperate to clear his name, Billy retraces his steps to get to the bottom of what happened. When he discovers the existence of a little black book that everyone who's anyone in Chicago will stop at nothing to get their hands on, Billy suspects it contains the truth that will either set him free . . . or confirm his worst fears.
Everyone thinks Emmy Dockery is crazy. Obsessed with finding the link between hundreds of unsolved cases, Emmy has taken leave from her job as an FBI researcher.
\nNow all she has are the newspaper clippings that wallpaper her bedroom, and her recurring nightmares of an all-consuming fire. Not even Emmy's ex-boyfriend, field agent Harrison 'Books' Bookman, will believe her that hundreds of kidnappings, rapes, and murders are all connected.
\nThat is, until Emmy finds a piece of evidence he can't afford to ignore. More murders are reported by the day - and they're all inexplicable. No motives, no murder weapons, no suspects. Could one person really be responsible for these unthinkable crimes?
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No. 7 Ocean Drive is a gorgeous, multi-million-dollar beachfront estate in the Hamptons, where money and privilege know no bounds. But its beautiful gothic exterior hides a horrific past: it was the scene of a series of depraved killings that have never been solved. Neglected, empty, and rumored to be cursed, it's known as the Murder House, and locals keep their distance.
\nDetective Jenna Murphy used to consider herself a local, but she hasn't been back since she was a girl. Trying to escape her troubled past and rehabilitate a career on the rocks, the former New York City cop hardly expects her lush and wealthy surroundings to be a hotbed of grisly depravity. But when a Hollywood power broker and his mistress are found dead in the abandoned Murder House, the gruesome crime scene rivals anything Jenna experienced in Manhattan.
\nAnd what at first seems like an open and shut case turns out to have as many shocking secrets as the Murder House itself, as Jenna quickly realizes that the mansion's history is much darker than even the town's most salacious gossips could have imagined. As more bodies surface, and the secret that Jenna has tried desperately to escape closes in on her, she must risk her own life to expose the truth - before the Murder House claims another victim.
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To Detective Billy Harney, the newest member of Chicago PD's elite strike force - Special Operations Section - getting shot in the head, stalked by a state's attorney, and accused of murder by his fellow cops is all part of breaking a case.
\nSo when a drive-by shooting on the Chicago's west side turns political, he leads the way to a quick solve. But Harney's instincts - his father was once chief of detectives and his twin sister, Patti, is also on the force - run deep. As a population hungry for justice threatens to riot, he realizes that the three known victims are hardly the only ones.
\nWhen Harney starts asking questions about who's to blame, the easy answers prove to be the wrong ones. On the flip side, the less he seems to know, the longer he can keep his clandestine investigation going . . . until Harney's quest to expose the evil that's rotting the city from the inside out takes him to the one place he vowed never to return: his own troubled past.
\n
FBI analyst Emmy Dockery's unique ability to uncover the patterns that others miss has brought her an impressive string of arrests. But a new case - unfolding across the country - has left her looking for something which may not exist.
\nThe victims all appear to have died by accident, and seemingly have nothing in common. But this many deaths can't be a coincidence. Can they?
\nEmmy's instincts tell her this is the work of a terrifyingly intelligent serial killer - and she's determined to prove it. When her obsession with the crimes raises flags within the FBI, she's in danger of becoming a suspect herself. But someone else is watching Dockery.
\nStudying, learning, waiting.
\nUntil it's the perfect time to strike.
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Disruption is the most powerful force of change in our lifetime.
\nEvery day we are confronted with:
\nThis book is about taking back control. It’s easy to follow and easy to turn into lifelong habits. It has been thoroughly researched and examined. Simply put, Disrupt Everything works.
\nOne question: Are you ready to Disrupt Everything and take control of your future?
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How did a kid whose dad lived in the poorhouse become the most successful storyteller in the world?
\n- On the morning he was born, he nearly died.
\n- His dad grew up in the Pogey - the Newburgh, New York, poorhouse.
\n- He worked at a mental hospital in Massachusetts, where he met the singer James Taylor and the poet Robert Lowell.
\n- While he toiled in advertising hell, James wrote the ad jingle line “I’m a Toys ‘R’ Us Kid.”
\n- He once watched James Baldwin and Norman Mailer square off to trade punches at a party.
\n- He’s only been in love twice. Both times are amazing.
\n- Dolly Parton once sang “Happy Birthday” to James over the phone. She calls him J.J., for Jimmy James.
\nHow did a boy from small-town New York become the world’s most successful writer? How does he do it? He has always wanted to write the kind of novel that would be read and reread so many times that the binding breaks and the book literally falls apart. As he says, “I’m still working on that one.”
Walk in my Combat Boots is a powerful collection crafted from hundreds of original interviews by James Patterson, the world’s #1 bestselling writer, and First Sergeant US Army (Ret.) Matt Eversmann, part of the Ranger unit portrayed in the movie Black Hawk Down.
These are the brutally honest stories usually only shared amongst comrades in arms. Here, in the voices of the men and women who’ve fought overseas from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, is a rare eye-opening look into what wearing the uniform, fighting in combat, losing friends and coming home is really like. Readers who next thank a military member for their service will finally have a true understanding of what that thanks is for.
In November 2022, OpenAI released GPT-4 in a chatbot form to the public. In just two months, it claimed 100 million users - the fastest app to ever reach this benchmark. Since then, AI has become an all-consuming topic, popping up on the news, in ads, on your messenger apps, and in conversations with friends and family. But as AI becomes ubiquitous and grows at an ever-increasing pace, what does it mean for the financial markets?
\nIn MoneyGPT, Wall Street veteran and former advisor to the Department of Defense James Rickards paints a comprehensive picture of the danger AI poses to the global financial order, and the insidious ways in which AI will threaten national security. Rickards shows how, while AI is touted to increase efficiency and lower costs, its global implementation in the financial world will actually cause chaos, as selling begets selling and bank runs happen at lightning speed.
\nAI further benefits malicious actors, Rickards argues, because without human empathy or instinct to intervene, threats like total nuclear war that once felt extreme are now more likely. And throughout all this, we must remain vigilant on the question of whose values will be promoted in the age of AI. As Rickards predicts, these systems will fail when we rely on them the most.
\nMoneyGPT shows that the danger is not that AI will malfunction, but that it will function exactly as intended. The peril is not in the algorithms, but in ourselves. And it’s up to us to intervene with old-fashioned human logic and common sense before it’s too late.
\n
The execution of a Vatican archivist within the shadow of the Kremlin exposes a conspiracy going back three centuries - to the bloody era of the Russian Tsars. Before his murder, he manages to dispatch a coded message, a warning of a terrifying threat, one tied to a secret buried within the Golden Library of Tsars, a vast and treasured archive that had vanished into history.
\nAs combative forces race for the truth behind this death and alarming discovery, Sigma Force is summoned to aid in the search - not only for this missing trove of ancient books, but to follow a trail far into the Arctic, to search for the truth about a lost continent and a revelation that could ignite a global war. But Sigma Force has its own difficulties at home after an explosive attack on the National Mall - one aimed at the heart of their covert agency - has left them vulnerable and exposed.
\nThe growing conflict - both on Russian soil and deep in the Arctic - will reignite a centuries-old war between the newly resurgent Russian Orthodox Church and the Vatican, while sabers rattle across the nations of the Arctic Circle, threatening to turn those icy seas into a fiery conflagration.
\nFacing enemies on all sides, it will be up to Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma Force to unravel a mystery going back millennia - and uncover the truth about a lost civilisation and an arcane treasure that could save the planet . . . or destroy it.
\n
A sinister fire in a Copenhagen bookstore ignites a relentless hunt across four continents. Arson and murder reveal an insidious plot to steal a Bible that once belonged to Charles Darwin. And Commander Gray Pierce dives headlong into a mystery that dates back to Nazi Germany . . . and to horrific experiments performed in a now-abandoned laboratory in Poland.
\nA continent away, madness ravages a remote monastery in Nepal, as Buddhist monks turn to cannibalism and torture. Lisa Cummings, an American doctor investigating the atrocity, is suddenly a target of a brutal assassin. And Lisa's only ally is Painter Crowe, director of SIGMA Force, who already shows signs of the baffling malady.
\nNow it is up to Gray Pierce to save them both as SIGMA Force races to expose a century-old plot that threatens to destroy the current world order . . . and alter the destiny of humankind forever.
\n
Galilee, 1025. Infiltrating an ancient citadel, a Templar knight uncovers a holy treasure long hidden within the fortress's labyrinth: the Bachal Isu - the staff of Jesus Christ - a priceless icon that holds a mysterious and terrifying power that promises to change humankind forever.
\nA millennium later, Somali pirates hijack a yacht off the coast of the Horn of Africa, kidnapping a young pregnant American woman. Commander Gray Pierce is enlisted for a covert rescue mission into the African jungle. The woman is no rich tourist: she's Amanda Gant-Bennett, daughter of the U.S. president.
\nSuspicious that the kidnapping masks a far more nefarious plot, Gray must confront a shadowy cabal which has been manipulating events throughout history . . . and now challenges the current presidency.
\nFor this unique mission, SIGMA is aided by a pair of special operatives with unique talents: former Army Ranger Captain Tucker Wayne and his military war dog, Kane. But what should be a straightforward rescue turns into a fiery ambush and a deadly act of betrayal, as Gray and his team discover that the hostage is a pawn in a shattering act of terrorism with dark repercussions. And the danger is only beginning . . .
\nHalfway around the world, a firebombing at a fertility clinic in South Carolina exposes a conspiracy that goes back centuries . . . a scheme that lies within our genetic code. With time against them, SIGMA must race to save an innocent unborn baby whose very existence raises questions about the nature of humanity, asking:
\nCould you live forever?
Would you live forever?
In the remote mountains of Croatia, an archaeologist makes a strange discovery: a subterranean Catholic chapel, hidden for centuries, holds the bones of a Neanderthal woman. In the same cavern system, elaborate primitive paintings tell the story of an immense battle between tribes of Neanderthals and monstrous shadowy figures. Who is this mysterious enemy depicted in these ancient drawings and what do the paintings mean?
\nBefore any answers could be made, the investigative team is attacked, while at the same time, a bloody assault is made upon a primate research center outside of Atlanta. How are these events connected? Who is behind these attacks? The search for the truth will take Commander Gray Pierce of Sigma Force 50,000 years into the past. As he and Sigma trace the evolution of human intelligence to its true source, they will be plunged into a cataclysmic battle for the future of humanity that stretches across the globe . . . and beyond.
\nWith the fate of our future at stake, Sigma embarks on its most harrowing odyssey ever - a breathtaking quest that will take them from ancient tunnels in Ecuador that span the breadth of South America to a millennia-old necropolis holding the bones of our ancestors. Along the way, revelations involving the lost continent of Atlantis will reveal true mysteries tied to mankind’s first steps on the moon. In the end, Gray Pierce and his team will face to their greatest threat: an ancient evil, resurrected by modern genetic science, strong enough to bring about the end of man’s dominance on this planet.
\nOnly this time, Sigma will falter - and the world we know will change forever.
\n
To stop the coming apocalypse, a fellowship was formed.
\nA soldier, a thief, a lost prince, and a young girl bonded by fate and looming disaster.
\nEach step along this path has changed the party, forging deep alliances and greater enmities. All the while, hostile forces have hunted them, fearing what they might unleash. Armies wage war around them.
\nFor each step has come with a cost - in blood, in loss, in heartbreak.
\nNow, they must split, traveling into a vast region of ice and to a sprawling capital of the world they’ve only known in stories. Time is running out and only the truth will save them all.
\n
Arriving home on Christmas Eve, Commander Gray Pierce discovers his house ransacked, his pregnant lover missing, and his best friend’s wife, Kat, unconscious on the kitchen floor. With no shred of evidence to follow, his one hope to find the woman he loves and his unborn child is Kat, the only witness to what happened. But the injured woman is in a semi-comatose state and cannot speak - until a brilliant neurologist offers a radical approach to \"unlock\" her mind long enough to ask a few questions.
\nWhat Pierce learns from Kat sets Sigma Force on a frantic quest for answers that are connected to mysteries reaching back to the Spanish Inquisition and to one of the most reviled and blood-soaked books in human history—a Medieval text known as the Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches. What they uncover hidden deep in the past will reveal a frightening truth in the present and a future on the brink of annihilation, and force them to confront the ultimate question: What does it mean to have a soul?
\n
Off the coast of Brazil, a team of scientists discovers a horror like no other, an island where all life has been eradicated, consumed and possessed by a species beyond imagination. Before they can report their discovery, a mysterious agency attacks the group, killing them all, save one, an entomologist, an expert on venomous creatures, Professor Ken Matsui from Cornell University.
\nStrangest of all, this inexplicable threat traces back to a terrifying secret buried a century ago beneath the National Mall: a cache of bones preserved in amber. The artifact was hidden away by a cabal of scientists - led by Alexander Graham Bell - to protect humankind. But they dared not destroy it, for the object also holds an astonishing promise for the future: the very secret of life after death.
\nYet, nothing stays buried forever. An ancient horror - dormant in the marrow of those preserved bones - is free once more, nursed and developed into a weapon of incalculable strength and malignancy, ready to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting world.
\nTo stop its spread, Commander Grayson Pierce of Sigma Force must survive a direct attack on the island of Maui. To be there first has always been the core mission of Sigma Force, a covert team forged to be America's front line against emerging threats. But this time, even Sigma may not be able to decipher this deadly mystery, one that traces back to the founding of the Smithsonian Institution.
\nWith each new discovery, the menace they hunt is changing, growing, spreading - adapting and surviving every attempt to stop it from reconquering a world it once ruled. And each transformation makes it stronger . . . and smarter.
\nRunning out of time and options, Commander Grayson Pierce will be forced to make an impossible choice. To eradicate this extinction-level threat and expose those involved, he will have to join forces with Sigma's greatest enemy - the newly resurrected Guild - even it if means sacrificing one of his own.
\n
Deep in the Rocky Mountains, a gruesome discovery - hundreds of mummified bodies - stirs international attention and fervent controversy. Despite doubts about the bodies' origins, the local Native American Heritage Commission lays claim to the prehistoric remains, along with the strange artifacts found in the same cavern: gold plates inscribed with an unfathomable script.
\nDuring a riot at the dig site, an anthropologist dies horribly, burned to ashes in a fiery explosion in plain view of television cameras. All evidence points to a radical group of Native Americans, including one agitator, a teenage firebrand who escapes with a vital clue to the murder and calls on the one person who might help - her uncle, Painter Crowe, Director of Sigma Force.
\nTo protect his niece and uncover the truth, Painter will ignite a war among the nation's most powerful intelligence agencies. Yet an even greater threat looms as events in the Rocky Mountains have set in motion a frightening chain reaction, a geological meltdown that threatens the entire western half of the U.S.
\nFrom the volcanic peaks of Iceland to the blistering deserts of the American Southwest, from the gold vaults of Fort Knox to the bubbling geysers of Yellowstone, Painter Crowe joins forces with Commander Gray Pierce to penetrate the shadowy heart of a dark cabal, one that has been manipulating American history since the founding of the thirteen colonies.
\nBut can Painter discover the truth - one that could topple governments - before it destroys all he holds dear?
\n
At Princeton University, a famed geneticist dies inside a biohazard lab. In Rome, a Vatican archaeologist is found dead in St. Peter's Basilica. In Africa, a U.S. senator's son is slain outside a Red Cross camp. The three murders on three continents bear a horrifying connection: all the victims are marked by a Druidic pagan cross burned into their flesh.
\nThe bizarre murders thrust Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma Force into a race against time to solve a riddle going back centuries, to a ghastly crime against humanity hidden within a cryptic medieval codex. The first clue is discovered inside a mummified corpse buried in an English peat bog - a gruesome secret that threatens America and the world.
\nAided by two women from his past - one his exlover, the other his new partner - Gray must piece together the horrifying truth. But the revelations come at a high cost, and to save the future, Gray will have to sacrifice one of the women at his side. That alone might not be enough, as the true path to salvation is revealed in a dark prophecy of doom.
\nSigma Force confronts humankind's greatest threat in an adventure that races from the Roman Coliseum to the icy peaks of Norway, from the ruins of medieval abbeys to the lost tombs of Celtic kings. The ultimate nightmare is locked within a talisman buried by a dead saint - an ancient artifact known as the Doomsday Key.
\n
With the apocalyptic threat of moonfall looming ever closer, Nyx and her allies must venture into the eternally sunblasted lands to search for an ancient weapon buried untold millennia ago. All the while, enemies close upon her flanks, and a greater danger lurks ahead. For beneath a desert turned to glass, hidden from the scorching heat, life thrives - both wondrous and monstrous. But a more fearsome menace lies even deeper, where an ancient army has been seeded to protect a secret from any who dare seek it out.
\nYet, can Nyx truly trust those at her side? Can she trust herself? For while her gift of bridle-song grows ever stronger, so does the danger of losing herself to a dark madness. Worst yet, the same afflicts Bashaliia, her winged and bonded brother.
\nElsewhere, a looming war explodes across the Crown, forging new alliances and greater enmities, as lands around the globe are drawn into fiery conflict. Prince Kanthe - now consort to the newly crowned Empress of the Southern Klashe - must accept a mantle that poorly suits to become a traitor to his own people. In that role, he quickly recognises a hard truth. To save the world, he must destroy all that he once loved.
\nBeyond such struggles, a new cunning peril smolders at the heart of a kingdom. Hidden in the Shrivenkeep of the Iflelen, an ancient bronze weapon has been awoken. Fed by blood, fueled by hatred, it has only one to end all life on Urth.
\nBut in this goal, will Nyx prove to be its ally or foe?
\n
In the wilds of Mongolia, a research satellite has crashed, triggering an explosive search for its valuable cargo: a code-black physics project connected to the study of dark energy - and a shocking image of the eastern seaboard of the United States in utter ruin.
\nAt the Vatican, a package arrives containing two strange artifacts: a skull scrawled with ancient Aramaic and a tome bound in human skin. DNA evidence reveals that both came from the same body: the long dead Mongol king Genghis Khan.
\nCommander Gray Pierce and Sigma Force set out to discover a truth tied to the fall of the Roman Empire, to a mystery going back to the birth of Christianity, and to a weapon hidden for centuries that holds the fate of humanity.
\n
From the depths of the Indian Ocean, a horrific plague has arisen to devastate humankind - a disease that's unknown, unstoppable . . . and deadly. But it is merely a harbinger of the doom that is to follow. Aboard a cruise liner transformed into a makeshift hospital, Dr. Lisa Cummings and Monk Kokkalis - operatives of SIGMA Force - search for answers to the bizarre affliction. But there are others with far less altruistic intentions. In a savage and sudden coup, terrorists hijack the vessel, turning a mercy ship into a floating bio-weapons lab.
\nA world away, SIGMA's Commander Gray Pierce thwarts the murderous schemes of a beautiful would-be killer who holds the first clue to the discovery of a possible cure. Pierce joins forces with the woman who wanted him dead, and together they embark upon an astonishing quest following the trail of the most fabled explorer in history: Marco Polo.
\nBut time is an enemy as a worldwide pandemic grows rapidly out of control. As a relentless madman dogs their every step, Gray and his unlikely ally are being pulled into an astonishing mystery buried deep in antiquity and in humanity's genetic code. And as the seconds tick closer to doomsday, Gray Pierce will realise he can truly trust no one, for any one of them could be . . . a Judas.
\n
It begins in Africa . . . A United Nations relief team in a small village in the Congo makes an alarming discovery. An unknown force is leveling the evolutionary playing field. Men, women, and children have been reduced to a dull, catatonic state. The environment surrounding them - plants and animals - has grown more cunning and predatory, evolving at an exponential pace. The insidious phenomenon is spreading from a cursed site in the jungle - known to locals as the Kingdom of Bones - and sweeping across Africa, threatening the rest of the world.
\nWhat has made the biosphere run amok? Is it a natural event? Or more terrifyingly, did someone engineer it?
\nCommander Gray Pierce and Sigma Force are prepared for the extraordinary and have kept the world safe, vigilance for which they have paid a tragic personal price. Yet, even these brilliant and seasoned scientific warriors do not understand what is behind this frightening development - or know how to stop it. As they race to find answers, the members of Sigma quickly realise they have become the prey.
\nTo head off global catastrophe, Sigma Force must risk their lives to uncover the shattering secret at the heart of the African continent - a truth that will illuminate who we are as a species and where we may be headed . . . sooner than we know.
\nMother Nature - red in tooth and claw - is turning against humankind, propelling the entire world into the Kingdom of Bones.
\n
For eons, the city of Troy - whose legendary fall was detailed in Homer’s Iliad - was believed to be myth, until archaeologists in the nineteenth century uncovered its ancient walls buried beneath the sands. If Troy was real, how much of Homer’s twin tales of gods and monsters, curses and miracles - The Iliad and The Odyssey - could also be true and awaiting discovery?
\nIn the frozen tundra of Greenland, a group of modern-day climatologists and archaeologists stumble on a shocking find: a medieval ship buried a half mile below the ice. The ship’s hold contains a collection of even older artifacts - tools of war - dating back to the Bronze Age. Inside the captain’s cabin is a magnificent treasure that is as priceless as it is miraculous: a clockwork gold atlas encircled by an intricate silver astrolabe. The mechanism is signed with the name of its creator, Ismail al-Jazari, a famous Muslim inventor considered to be the Da Vinci of the Arab world - a brilliant scientist who inspired Leonardo’s own work.
\nOnce activated, the moving globe traces the path of Odysseus’ famous ship as it sailed away from Troy. But the route detours as the map opens to reveal an underground river leading to a hidden realm underneath the Mediterranean Sea. The map indicates that this subterranean world is called Tartarus, the Greek name for Hell. In mythology, Tartarus was where the wicked were punished and the monstrous Titans of old, imprisoned.
\nWhen word of Tartarus spreads - and of the cache of miraculous weapons said to be hidden there - tensions explode in this volatile region where Turks battle Kurds, terrorists wage war, and civilians suffer untold horrors. The phantasmagoric horrors found in Homer’s tales are all too real - and could be unleashed upon the world. Whoever possesses them can use their awesome power to control the future of humanity.
\nNow, Sigma Force must go where humans fear to tread. To prevent a tyrant from igniting a global war, they must cross the very gates of Hell.
\n
In Washington, D.C., a homeless man takes an assassin's bullet and dies in Commander Gray Pierce's arms. A bloody coin clutched in the dead man's hand - an ancient relic that can be traced back to the Greek Oracle of Delphi - is the key to a conspiracy that dates back to the Cold War and threatens the very foundation of humanity. For what if it were possible to bioengineer the next great prophet - a new Buddha, Muhammad, or even Jesus? Would this Second Coming be a boon . . . or would it initiate a chain reaction that would result in the extinction of humankind?
\nVital seconds are ticking rapidly away as Pierce races across the globe in search of answers, one step ahead of ruthless killers determined to reclaim the priceless artifact. Suddenly the future of all things is balanced on the brink between heaven and hell - and salvation or destruction rests in the hands of remarkable children.
\n
The bones lead to ancient mysteries and present-day terror . . . To follow them means death.
\nDuring a crowded service at a cathedral in Germany, armed intruders in monks' robes unleash a nightmare of blood and destruction. But the killers have not come for gold; they seek a more valuable prize: the bones of the Magi who once paid homage to a newborn savior . . . a treasure that could reshape the world.
\nWith the Vatican in turmoil, Sigma Force under the command of Grayson Pierce leaps into action, pursuing a deadly mystery that weaves through sites of the Seven Wonders of the World and ends at the doorstep of an ancient, mystical, and terrifying secret order. For there are those with dark plans for the stolen sacred remains that will alter the future of humankind . . . when science and religion unite to unleash a horror not seen since the beginning of time.
\n
A freak explosion in the British museum in London ignites a perilous race for an earth-shaking power source buried deep beneath the sands of history. Painter Crowe is an agent for Sigma Force, a covert arm of the Defense Department tasked with keeping dangerous scientific discoveries out of enemy hands. When an ancient artifact points the way toward the legendary “Atlantis of the Sands,” Painter must travel across the world in search of the lost city - and a destructive power beyond imagining.
\nBut Painter has competition. A band of ruthless mercenaries, led by a former friend and ally, are also intent on claiming the prize, and they will destroy anyone who gets in their way.
\nAncient history collides with cutting-edge science - with the safety of the world at stake.
\n
Two years after vanishing into the Sudanese desert, the leader of a British archeological expedition, Professor Harold McCabe, comes stumbling out of the sands, frantic and delirious, but he dies before he can tell his story. The mystery deepens when an autopsy uncovers a bizarre corruption: someone had begun to mummify the professor's body - while he was still alive.
\nHis strange remains are returned to London for further study, when alarming news arrives from Egypt. The medical team who had performed the man's autopsy has fallen ill with an unknown disease, one that is quickly spreading throughout Cairo. Fearing the worst, a colleague of the professor reaches out to a longtime friend: Painter Crowe, the director of Sigma Force. The call is urgent, for Professor McCabe had vanished into the desert while searching for proof of the ten plagues of Moses. As the pandemic grows, a disturbing question arises.
\nAre those plagues starting again?
\nBefore Director Crowe can investigate, a mysterious group of assassins leaves behind a fiery wake of destruction and death, erasing all evidence. With the professor's body incinerated, his home firebombed, Sigma Force must turn to the archaeologist's only daughter, Jane McCabe, for help. While sifting through what's left of her father's work, she discovers a puzzling connection, tying the current threat to a shocking historical mystery, one involving the travels of Mark Twain, the genius of Nikola Tesla, and the adventures of famous explorer, Henry Morgan Stanley.
\nTo unravel a secret going back millennia, Director Crowe and Commander Grayson Pierce will be thrust to opposite sides of the globe. One will search for the truth, traveling from the plague-ridden streets of Cairo to a vast ancient tomb buried under the burning sands of the Sudan; the other will struggle to stop a mad genius locked within a remote Arctic engineering complex, risking the lives of all those he holds dear.
\nAs the global crisis grows ever larger, Sigma Force will confront a threat born of the ancient past and made real by the latest science - a danger that will unleash a cascading series of plagues, culminating in a scourge that could kill all of the world's children . . . decimating mankind forever.
\n
A remote military research station sends out a frantic distress call, ending with a chilling final command: Kill us all! Personnel from the neighboring base rush in to discover everyone already dead-and not just the scientists, but every living thing for fifty square miles is annihilated: every animal, plant, and insect, even bacteria.
\nThe land is entirely sterile - and the blight is spreading.
\nTo halt the inevitable, Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma must unravel a threat that rises out of the distant past, to a time when Antarctica was green and all life on Earth balanced upon the blade of a knife. Following clues from an ancient map rescued from the lost Library of Alexandria, Sigma will discover the truth about an ancient continent, about a new form of death buried under miles of ice.
\nFrom millennia-old secrets out of the frozen past to mysteries buried deep in the darkest jungles of today, Sigma will face its greatest challenge to date: stopping the coming extinction of mankind.
\nBut is it already too late?
\n
A gifted student foretells an apocalypse. Her reward is a sentence of death. Fleeing into the unknown she is drawn into a team of outcasts: A broken soldier, who once again takes up the weapons he's forbidden to wield and carves a trail back home. A drunken prince, who steps out from his beloved brother's shadow and claims a purpose of his own. An imprisoned thief, who escapes the crushing dark and discovers a gleaming artifact - one that will ignite a power struggle across the globe.
\nOn the run, hunted by enemies old and new, they must learn to trust each other in order to survive in a world evolved in strange, beautiful, and deadly ways, and uncover ancient secrets that hold the key to their salvation.
But with each passing moment, doom draws closer.
The Titan Project - an international research station off the coast of Australia - discovers a thriving zone of life in an otherwise dead sea. The area teems with a strange bioluminescent coral that defies science, yet holds great promise for the future. But the loss of a military submarine in the area triggers a brutal attack and sets in motion a geological disaster that destabilises an entire region.
\nMassive quakes, volcanic eruptions, and deadly tsunamis herald a greater cataclysm to come - for something is stirring miles under the ocean, a threat hidden for millennia.
\nAs seas turn toxic and coastlines burn, can Sigma Force stop what has been let loose - especially as an old adversary returns, hunting them and thwarting their every move For any hope of success, Commander Gray Pierce must search for a key buried in the past, hidden deep in Aboriginal mythology. But what Sigma could uncover is even more frightening - something that will shake the very foundations of humanity.
\n
For generations, the solar system -- Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt -- was humanity's great frontier. Until now. The alien artifact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has appeared in Uranus's orbit, where it has built a massive gate that leads to a starless dark.
\nJim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are part of a vast flotilla of scientific and military ships going out to examine the artifact. But behind the scenes, a complex plot is unfolding, with the destruction of Holden at its core. As the emissaries of the human race try to find whether the gate is an opportunity or a threat, the greatest danger is the one they brought with them.
\n
The Free Navy - a violent group of Belters in black-market military ships - has crippled the Earth and begun a campaign of piracy and violence among the outer planets. The colony ships heading for the thousand new worlds on the far side of the alien ring gates are easy prey, and no single navy remains strong enough to protect them.
\nJames Holden and his crew know the strengths and weaknesses of this new force better than anyone. Outnumbered and outgunned, the embattled remnants of the old political powers call on the Rocinante for a desperate mission to reach Medina Station at the heart of the gate network.
\nBut the new alliances are as flawed as the old, and the struggle for power has only just begun. As the chaos grows, an alien mystery deepens. Pirate fleets, mutiny and betrayal may be the least of the Rocinante's problems. And in the uncanny spaces past the ring gates, the choices of a few damaged and desperate people may determine the fate of more than just humanity.
\n
For someone who didn't intend to wreck the solar system's fragile balance of power, Jim Holden did a pretty good job of it.
\nWhile Earth and Mars have stopped shooting each other, the core alliance is shattered. The outer planets and the Belt are uncertain in their new - possibly temporary - autonomy.
\nThen, on one of Jupiter's moons, a single super-soldier attacks, slaughtering soldiers of Earth and Mars indiscriminately and reigniting the war. The race is on to discover whether this is the vanguard of an alien army, or if the danger lies closer to home.
\n
The gates have opened the way to a thousand new worlds and the rush to colonize has begun. Settlers looking for a new life stream out from humanity's home planets. Ilus, the first human colony on this vast new frontier, is being born in blood and fire.
\nIndependent settlers stand against the overwhelming power of a corporate colony ship with only their determination, courage, and the skills learned in the long wars of home. Innocent scientists are slaughtered as they try to survey a new and alien world. The struggle on Ilus threatens to spread all the way back to Earth.
\nJames Holden and the crew of his one small ship are sent to make peace in the midst of war and sense in the midst of chaos. But the more he looks at it, the more Holden thinks the mission was meant to fail.
\nAnd the whispers of a dead man remind him that the great galactic civilization that once stood on this land is gone. And that something killed it.
\n
The monstrous Carryx empire was built by subjugation and war. Thousands of species are bound to their Sovran's command in an endless, blood-soaked test: be useful in the eternal conflict or be slaughtered.
\nDafyd Alkhor, highest among their human captives, is feared and despised by the very people he champions. Ruthless in carving out his niche in the eternal war machine of the empire, he will reshape human nature itself as a tool for their alien masters’ use. But Dafyd’s loyalty is not what it seems.
\nThe Swarm, an agent of the Carryx’s deathless enemy, has been smuggled into the Carryx world-palace along with the human slaves. It’s discover a way to bring down the empire’s eternal reign. But the longer it lives among and within humanity, the more it forgets that it is a weapon.
\nAs the human captives spread through the battlefronts of empire, the awesome power of the Carryx becomes clear. And with it, a desperate plan for their destruction.
\nBut empires hide secrets, and even the deathless enemy may not be what it appears . . .
\n
Roy Court and his crew are taking the trip of a lifetime - several lifetimes in fact - duplicated and dispatched across the galaxies searching for Earthlike planets. Many possibilities for the future.
\nYet for Roy, no matter how many of him there are, there’s still just one painful, unchangeable past. In what world can a broken relationship be reborn? The universe is so vast, there’s always room for hope.
The Laconian Empire has fallen, setting the thirteen hundred solar systems free from the rule of Winston Duarte. But the ancient enemy that killed the gate builders is awake, and the war against our universe has begun again.
\nIn the dead system of Adro, Elvi Okoye leads a desperate scientific mission to understand what the gate builders were and what destroyed them, even if it means compromising herself and the half-alien children who bear the weight of her investigation. Through the wide-flung systems of humanity, Colonel Aliana Tanaka hunts for Duarte’s missing daughter. . . and the shattered emperor himself. And on the Rocinante, James Holden and his crew struggle to build a future for humanity out of the shards and ruins of all that has come before.
\nAs nearly unimaginable forces prepare to annihilate all human life, Holden and a group of unlikely allies discover a last, desperate chance to unite all of humanity, with the promise of a vast galactic civilisation free from wars, factions, lies, and secrets if they win.
\nBut the price of victory may be worse than the cost of defeat.
\n
Welcome to the future. Humanity has colonized the solar system - Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond - but the stars are still out of our reach.
\nJim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, The Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for - and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why. Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks.
\nWhen the trail leads him to The Scopuli and rebel sympathiser, Holden, he realises that this girl may be the key to everything. Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations - and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.
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The Carryx - part empire, part hive - have waged wars of conquest for centuries, destroying or enslaving species across the galaxy. Now, they are facing a great and deathless enemy. The key to their survival may rest with the humans of Anjiin.
\nCaught up in academic intrigue and affairs of the heart, Dafyd Alkhor is pleased just to be an assistant to a brilliant scientist and his celebrated research team. Then the Carryx ships descend, decimating the human population and taking the best and brightest of Anjiin society away to serve on the Carryx homeworld, and Dafyd is swept along with them.
\nThey are dropped in the middle of a struggle they barely understand, set in a competition against the other captive species with extinction as the price of failure. Only Dafyd and a handful of his companions see past the Darwinian contest to the deeper game that they must play to survive: learning to understand - and manipulate - the Carryx themselves.
\nWith a noble but suicidal human rebellion on one hand and strange and murderous enemies on the other, the team pays a terrible price to become the trusted servants of their new rulers.
\nDafyd Alkhor is a simple man swept up in events that are beyond his control and more vast than his imagination. He will become the champion of humanity and its betrayer, the most hated man in history and the guardian of his people.
\nThis is where his story begins.
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A thousand worlds have opened, and the greatest land rush in human history has begun. As wave after wave of colonists leave, the power structures of the old solar system begin to buckle.
\nShips are disappearing without a trace. Private armies are being secretly formed. The sole remaining protomolecule sample is stolen. Terrorist attacks previously considered impossible bring the inner planets to their knees. The sins of the past are returning to exact a terrible price.
\nAnd as a new human order is struggling to be born in blood and fire, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante must struggle to survive and get back to the only home they have left.
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In the thousand-sun network of humanity's expansion, new colony worlds are struggling to find their way. Every new planet lives on a knife-edge between collapse and wonder, and the crew of the aging gunship Rocinante have their hands more than full keeping the fragile peace.
\nIn the vast space between Earth and Jupiter, the inner planets and the Belt have formed a tentative and uncertain alliance still haunted by a history of wars and prejudices. On the lost colony world of Laconia, a hidden enemy has a new vision for all of humanity and the power to enforce it.
\nNew technologies clash with old as the history of human conflict returns to its ancient pattern of war and subjugation. But human nature is not the only enemy, and the forces being unleashed have their own price. A price that will change the shape of humanity - and of the Rocinante - unexpectedly and forever . . .
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Thirteen hundred gates have opened to solar systems around the galaxy. But as humanity builds its interstellar empire in the alien ruins, the mysteries and threats grow deeper.
In the dead systems where gates lead to stranger things than alien planets, Elvi Okoye begins a desperate search to discover the nature of a genocide that happened before the first human beings existed, and to find weapons to fight a war against forces at the edge of the imaginable. But the price of that knowledge may be higher than she can pay.
At the heart of the empire, Teresa Duarte prepares to take on the burden of her father's godlike ambition. The sociopathic scientist Paolo Cortázar and the Mephistophelian prisoner James Holden are only two of the dangers in a palace thick with intrigue, but Teresa has a mind of her own and secrets even her father the emperor doesn't guess.
And throughout the wide human empire, the scattered crew of the Rocinante fights a brave rear-guard action against Duarte's authoritarian regime. Memory of the old order falls away, and a future under Laconia's eternal rule - and with it, a battle that humanity can only lose - seems more and more certain. Because against the terrors that lie between worlds, courage and ambition will not be enough . . .
In a not-so-distant future the United States has fragmented, balkanising into unstable provinces often at war with one another, and Americans, their great promise not so much lost as forfeited, are encountering the terrors and devastation so much of the world daily lives with. Throughout a land littered with refugees, ruins, orphaned children, soldiers, militia, and fugitives, people go on about their daily lives as best they can.
\nThe five linked stories of World’s Edge track the false starts and stall-outs of a nation and civilization trying to rise again, to rebuild, and of individuals caught up in that rebirthing. As ever, the only true history lies in the story of individual lives, in the old rag and bone shop of our hearts.
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After an attempted horse theft goes tragically wrong, sixteen-year-old Caleb Bentley is on the run with his mean-spirited older brother across the American Southwest at the turn of the twentieth century. Caleb's moral compass and inner courage will be tested as they travel the harsh terrain and encounter those who have carved out a life there, for good or ill.
\nWealthy and bookish Randall Dawson, out of place in this rugged and violent country, is begrudgingly chasing after the Bentley brothers. With little sense of how to survive, much less how to take his revenge, Randall meets Charlotte, a woman experienced in the deadly ways of life in the West. Together they navigate the murky values of vigilante justice.
\nPowerful and atmospheric, lyrical and fast-paced, All Things Left Wild is a coming-of-age for one man, a midlife odyssey for the other, and an illustration of the violence and corruption prevalent in our fast-expanding country. It artfully sketches the magnificence of the American West as mirrored in the human soul.
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A veteran of the Great War, Jesse Cole is grateful for the quiet life he now leads. But when his closest friend runs afoul of local criminals, Frog and Squirrel Fenley, Jesse is forced to spin his moral compass and enter a violent and volatile underworld. There he encounters corrupt lawmen, hired assassins, and a dark family secret that will upend all he once knew.
\nComplicating matters are Texas Ranger Amon Atkins - who arrives to investigate the Fenleys just as a deadly new competition threatens their empire - and the green-eyed, raven-haired Adaline, a love Jesse thought he'd lost forever.
\nWith resources scarce and winter falling hard on the town, a desperate Jesse must choose between the law and the lawless and find a way to survive while still protecting the people he loves.
\nA heart-pounding tale full of plot-twisting revelations, Hollow Out the Dark brings readers into a whiskey-fueled world where everyone has a secret, and love everlasting balances on the knife's edge.
British journalist Robert Lovelace travels to California to report on the social media giant Global Village. He’s horrified by what he finds: a company - guided by the ruthless vision of its founder, Evan Bone - that seems to be making journalism itself redundant. Appalled, he decides to abandon the project and return home.
\nBut as he leaves he has a disconcerting encounter that sends him off in a totally different direction. Soon he finds himself embarked on an increasingly fraught and dangerous mission. The aim: to uncover the murky truth about Evan Bone’s past and his pathological disregard for the human cost of the behemoth he has created.
\nRobert’s quest takes him from San Francisco to a small college town in the Midwest, to the site of a former hippie commune in northern California, introducing us to a range of vivid characters, and confronting us with the price we pay - online trolling; the loss of privacy; professional ruin - for living in an “interconnected” world. Finally, he makes a startling discovery - and is thrown into a completely unforeseen existential dilemma.
\nA timely, stylishly written, and brilliantly conceived metaphysical thriller, Coyote Fork carries us on an unforgettable journey, before bringing us face to face with the darkness at the heart of Silicon Valley itself.
Sloan needed something to be happy about. After a devastating heartbreak she is focused on opening her bookstore, alongside her sisters, in their brand new shopping center.
\nElena Burkett had been swallowed by grief the past year. But when she spotted a new bookstore about to open in her neighborhood she felt a spark of hope.
\nAs Elena nervously walks into the bookstore for the first time Cat immediately puts her at ease. Amidst their shared love of books and sadness a much-needed friendship blossoms.
\nWhen Cat’s ex and reason for her heartbreak returns to town, Elena devises a plan to help her friend send the ex packing for good. It all starts with a fake kiss.
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Can not-so-innocent flirting lead to forever? CeCe Sloan always wanted to own her own salon and today was the day. It was a dream come true to have her salon nestled between her sisters as they opened their own stores. The Sloan Sisters had arrived.
\nWhen CeCe’s favorite client comes to the open house a fun little banter of sexy flirting begins between them. It’s harmless because CeCe doesn’t date her clients. But what happens in the back room doesn’t count, right?
\nAlexis Reed, was a premiere, sought after surgeon so far out of CeCe’s league, but flirting with her was so much fun. When Alexis changes stylists so CeCe will go on a date with her, she begins to wonder.
\nCould CeCe be enough for this amazing woman? Can Alexis convince CeCe this isn’t a backroom fling?
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When rivals become teammates, possibilities are endless. Cory Sloan was the proud owner of The Liquor Box in the brand new Sloan Sisters Shopping Extravaganza. When a rival salesperson threatens the success of Cory’s new business she has to find a way to calm the impending storm, so she uses her best her charm.
\nVi Valdez is simply trying to open a few new accounts on the path to her imminent promotion as Vice President of Sales of the largest spirits chain in the state. When a new liquor store opens in the area Vi is working, she takes it as a purposeful threat to her career goals.
\nCory finds a way for them to avoid competing for the same accounts and Vi is suddenly able to express the feelings which may have started as animosity but had quickly become more than friendly. Could these two rivals end up on the same team and find love? Or possibly forever?
\nCome along on this rocky romantic adventure and find out if Cory will be swearing at Vi Valdez or will she be swearing her love forever?
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Web designer Kelsey Kenny always dreamed of spending Christmas at the beach, but when her daughters make other plans, she is left on her own. A chance call from her client in the Virgin Islands has her packing her bags for an exciting stay at their resort while she views the property for a website redesign.
\nAfter her divorce, the idea of spending her first Christmas without her two young sons had Isabella Burns anything but merry. To keep from ruining Christmas for the rest of her family, Isabella decided to put her energy into her work. Her newest client was a brand renovation for a resort in the Virgin Islands. There would be plenty of sunshine, tropical drinks and not a hint of snow.
\nOn their first night, Kelsey and Isabella realize they are the only singles at the resort and quickly become friends. While brainstorming ideas with the CEO they come up with a unique marketing plan that has them returning every month to highlight a specific vacation.
\nAs their friendship deepens, sparks begin to fly. Is this the island magic the locals talk about? Why does it feel like they’re leaving their hearts in paradise? Could they bring paradise home?
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Nicole Neal has everything she’s ever worked a coveted spot on the WNBA’s top broadcasting team, a reputation built on sharp analysis and obsessive love of the game - and absolutely no luck in romance. But during the opening game of the season, one unexpected moment changes everything.
\nAriana Villa, the league’s superstar point guard, is known for her fearless play and unshakeable focus. But when a soaring defensive move sends her over the sideline and straight into the lap of her favorite commentator, the world seems to stop. One look into Nicole’s warm brown eyes, and Ariana feels a spark she can’t ignore.
\nTheir connection is instant. Electric. Impossible. And absolutely off-limits.
\nCaught between careers they’ve fought to build and a chemistry they can’t deny, Nicole and Ariana must decide if risking everything - including public scrutiny and professional fallout - is worth one chance at something extraordinary.
\nWill they protect their careers . . . or take the shot at love?
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Destiny and Faith were living and loving the life they’d created. They worked side-by-side at a thriving landscaping company by day and spent their nights together in a lavender haze of love. It was a happy life or so Destiny thought.
\nOne day Faith not only moved all her things out of their apartment, but she quit her job and opened her own landscaping company. On top of that the only explanation Destiny ever received you know what you did.
\nThree years later, Destiny now runs her own landscaping company and has an opportunity to bid on a huge, career-defining project. She knows her company is too small to secure the bid, but if she can convince Faith to team up with her she’s sure they could win.
\nThe only problem is that Faith can’t stand to look at Destiny and Destiny still doesn’t know what she did wrong. Can these two talented landscapers bury their past long enough to let their companies flourish?
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Addison Henry is the new bank president in small-town Brazos Falls, but she won’t be there long. This is merely a stepping stone on her career path that leads her to headquarters and the CEO’s office.
\nLissa Morgan came back to her hometown to help her family’s business. However, she is not giving up on love just because she happens to be one of the few gay women in town.
\nWhen Addison helps Lissa open a new account at the bank an instant friendship is born. Lissa is happy to help Addison navigate the ways of her small town and as they spend more time together something begins to happen to Addison’s heart.
\nShe’s never been with a woman. She has no time for love. She’s on her way to the top. But her heart has another plan. What now?
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Still grieving the death of her mother, 29-year-old Akiko is single and lives in self-imposed isolation in Tokyo. Then one evening, she unexpectedly runs into Kento, her first love from school. Kento now leads a reclusive life as a hikikomori, only venturing out at night.
\nAt the same time, Akiko discovers evidence that her mother had been lying to her about their family, causing her to doubt everything. She has to admit to herself that she doesn’t know who she is.
\nWith Kento’s help, Akiko embarks on a journey into her own history, which takes her life in surprising directions and leads her to questions she had never dared to ask herself How do I want to live? And do I have the courage to love?
Jude and her brother, Noah, are incredibly close twins. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude surfs and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking.
\nSomething has happened to wreck the twins in different and divisive ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as an unpredictable new mentor. The early years are Noah's story to tell. The later years are Jude's. What the twins don't realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they'd have a chance to remake their world.
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Seventeen-year-old Lennie Walker, bookworm and band geek, plays second clarinet and spends her time tucked safely and happily in the shadow of her fiery older sister, Bailey. But when Bailey dies abruptly, Lennie is catapulted to center stage of her own life - and, despite her nonexistent history with boys, suddenly finds herself struggling to balance two.
\nToby was Bailey's boyfriend; his grief mirrors Lennie's own. Joe is the new boy in town, a transplant from Paris whose nearly magical grin is matched only by his musical talent. For Lennie, they're the sun and the moon; one boy takes her out of her sorrow, the other comforts her in it. But just like their celestial counterparts, they can't collide without the whole wide world exploding.
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The Fall siblings live in hot Northern California wine country, where the sun pours out of the sky, and the devil winds blow so hard they whip the sense right out of your head.
\nYears ago, the Fall kids’ father mysteriously disappeared, cracking the family into pieces. Now Dizzy Fall, age twelve, bakes cakes, sees spirits, and wishes she were a heroine of a romance novel. Miles Fall, seventeen, brainiac, athlete, and dog-whisperer, is a raving beauty, but also lost, and desperate to meet the kind of guy he dreams of. And Wynton Fall, nineteen, who raises the temperature of a room just by entering it, is a virtuoso violinist set on a crash course for fame . . . or self-destruction.
\nThen an enigmatic rainbow-haired girl shows up, tipping the Falls’ world over. She might be an angel. Or a saint. Or an ordinary girl. Somehow, she is vital to each of them. But before anyone can figure out who she is, catastrophe strikes, leaving the Falls more broken than ever. And more desperate to be whole.
\nWith road trips, rivalries, family curses, love stories within love stories within love stories, and sorrows and joys passed from generation to generation, this is the intricate, luminous tale of a family’s complicated past and present. And only in telling their stories can they hope to rewrite their futures.
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Since the Mayflower sidled up to Plymouth Rock, cult ideology - whether among the Mormons and Oneidans of old or LuLaRoe and NXIVM today - has been ingrained in the DNA of the United States. In this eye-opening book, Jane Borden argues that we got this way because we always were.
\nPuritan doomsday belief never went away; it just went secular and became American culture. From our fascination with cowboys and superheroes to our undying love for capitalism and violence, and our obsessions with advertising, hard work, and self-help, the United States remains a breeding ground for cult-like thinking.
\nWith compelling insight, Borden uncovers the American history you didn’t get in school, including how these ideas still brainwash us today and make us a nation of easy marks for con artists and strong men. Along the way, she highlights some of the most infamous cults in this country - including, the Branch Davidians and Love Has Won - as integral parts of our psyche and reflections of their times.
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At first glance, Jellicoe Close seems to be a perfect suburban street - well-kept houses with pristine lawns, neighbours chatting over garden fences, children playing together.
\nBut there are dark secrets behind the neat front doors, hidden dangers that include a ruthless criminal who will stop at nothing.
\nIt’s up to DS Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwent to uncover the truth. Posing as a couple, they move into the Close, blurring the lines between professional and personal as never before.
\nAnd while Maeve and Josh try to gather the evidence they need, they have no idea of the danger they face - because someone in Jellicoe Close has murder on their mind.
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Everyone's heard the rumours about elite gentlemen's clubs, where the champagne flows freely, the parties are the height of decadence . . . and the secrets are darker than you could possibly imagine.
\nDS Maeve Kerrigan finds herself in an unfamiliar world of wealth, luxury and ruthless behaviour when she investigates the murder of a young journalist, Paige Hargreaves. Paige was working on a story about the Chiron Club, a private society for the richest and most privileged men in London. Then she disappeared.
\nIt's clear to Maeve that the members have many secrets. But Maeve is hiding secrets of her own – even from her partner DI Josh Derwent. Will she uncover the truth about Paige’s death? Or will time run out for Maeve first?
Maeve Kerrigan is used to investigating murders.But this time a killer has struck far too close to home...
When a police officer is found shot dead in his car, DC Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwent take on the investigation. But nothing about the case prepares them for what happens next: a second policeman dies . . . and then another . . .
The Metropolitan Police struggle to carry out their usual duties, but no one knows where or how this cop killer will strike again. While London disintegrates into lawlessness Maeve's world starts to fall apart too. For if the police can't keep themselves safe, how can they protect anyone else?
As a barrister, Ingrid Lewis is used to dealing with tricky clients, but no one has ever come close to John Webster. After Ingrid defended Webster against a stalking charge, he then turned on her - following her, ruining her relationship, even destroying her home. He tells you he wants to protect you . . .
\nNow, Ingrid believes she has finally escaped his clutches. But when one of her colleagues is run down on a busy London road, Ingrid is sure she was the intended victim. And then Webster shows up at her door . . . But can you believe him?
\nWebster claims Ingrid is in danger – and that only he can protect her. Stalker or saviour? Murderer or protector? The clock is ticking for Ingrid to decide. Because the killer is ready to strike again.
The teenage girl was the first victim. Her throat cut to the bone, she didn’t stand a chance. Her mother, at least, had time to fight back.
\nBriefly.
\nCalled to the crime scene in leafy Wimbledon, Maeve Kerrigan’s first thought is that this is a domestic dispute gone bad. But the husband is found lying bleeding and unconscious in an upstairs room.
\nAs a criminal barrister he insists he’s the third victim rather than their prime suspect, even if he’s a man who makes enemies easily. The only other surviving family member is fifteen-year-old Lydia. She was the one to find her mother and twin sister’s bodies - and the only witness Maeve has.But she isn’t talking . . .
When eighteen-year-old Chloe Emery returns to her West London home she finds her mother missing, the house covered in blood. Everything points to murder, except for one thing: there's no sign of the body.
London detective Maeve Kerrigan and the homicide team turn their attention to the neighbours. The ultra-religious Norrises are acting suspiciously; their teenage daughter and Chloe Emery definitely have something to hide. Then there's William Turner, once accused of stabbing a schoolmate and the neighborhood's favorite criminal. Is he merely a scapegoat, or is there more behind the charismatic facade?
As a body fails to materialise, Maeve must piece together a patchwork of testimonies and accusations. Who is lying, and who is not? And soon Maeve starts to realize that not only will the answer lead to Kate Emery, but more lives may hang in the balance.
To the public, he's a hero: a killer who targets convicted paedophiles.Two men are dead already - tortured to death.Even the police don't regard the cases as a priority. Most feel that two dead paedophiles is a step in the right direction.
\nBut to DC Maeve Kerrigan, no one should be allowed to take the law into their own hands. Young and inexperienced, Kerrigan wants to believe that murder is murder no matter what the sins of the victim.
\nOnly, as the killer's violence begins to escalate, she is forced to confront exactly how far she's prepared to go to ensure justice is served . . .
2:32 p.m. Wealthy, privileged Ilaria Cavendish checks into a luxury London hotel and orders a bottle of champagne. Within the hour, her lover discovers her submerged in a bath of scalding water, dead.
\nAt first glance it looks like an accident. No one went in with her. No one came out. But all the signs point to murder.
\nFor DS Maeve Kerrigan, the case is a welcome distraction. But when shock news hits close to home, affecting her partner, DI Josh Derwent, she faces the toughest challenge of her career. And if she fails her world will never be the same again . . .
nullWhen nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall vanished from her bed one summer night, her disappearance tore her family apart.
\nNow, sixteen years later, her mother Helena is found dead, her husband by her side. It looks like a straightforward murder-suicide but DS Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwent soon discover nothing about this case is straightforward.
\nThe Marshalls have been keeping secrets. And someone is prepared to kill to hide the truth. Until Maeve finds out what happened to Rosalie, no one will be safe . . .
He meets women. He gains their trust. He kills them. That's all Maeve Kerrigan knows about the man she is hunting. Three women have been strangled in their homes by the same sadistic killer.
\nWith no sign of a break-in, every indication shows that they let him in. But the evidence is pointing at a shocking suspect: DI Josh Derwent, Maeve's colleague.
\nMaeve refuses to believe he could be involved, but how well does she really know him? Because this isn't the first time Derwent's been accused of murder.
Ranger Riki Sadiq is known as a troublemaker, and in the close knit heretic community, a bad name is hard to lose. Standing sentry duty on a winter's day, all she can see lying ahead is an afternoon of being cold, miserable, and bored. Her mood isn't helped by deliberate goading from people who are supposed to be working with her.
\nEven so, retaliating in kind isn't one of Riki's better ideas. When Riki is dispatched to Westernfort for one last chance in the Rangers, the hostile reception means her list of enemies has become still longer, and prime candidate to head the list is her new patrol corporal, Tanya Coppelli. It is hate at first sight.
\nThe way Riki sees it, Tanya may have good looks, talent and sharp wits, but is that any reason to like her? However, if Riki but knew it, trouble of a deadly kind is heading her way. With their lives at stake, Riki and Tanya will have to overcome the mutual antagonism and learn to work together.
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After three years of studying with the Empress Bykoda, Jemeryl has learned all that the elderly sorcerer can teach her and is ready to return to Lyremouth. However, before she leaves, Bykoda reveals a grim secret - an oracle of death, and asks her to perform one final assignment. Jemeryl must take Bykoda's talisman to a place of safety. Failure will mean complete destruction not only in the present, but also the past.
\nWhile in Tirakhalod, Tevi has been working as an officer in Bykoda's army. It has been a difficult time for her, living in a land where those who cannot work magic are treated as insignificant. Only Jemeryl's love has made life bearable. With the return to the Protectorate drawing close, she hopes that the worst is over. However, somebody is after the talisman, and that person is willing to commit murder to get what they want.
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The quest for the stolen chalice is a sham - her family's excuse to get rid of Tevi. Exiled in a dangerous and confusing world filled with monsters, bandits, and sorcerers, Tevi battles demons within and without as she searches for her place in the strange new world.
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Jemeryl has her future planned out - a future that will involve minimal contact with ordinary folk who do not understand sorcerers. Her ambition is to lead a solitary life within the Coven and to devote herself to the study of magic. It is all very straightforward - until she meets Tevi.
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Two unlikely allies join forces to defeat an insidious evil and on the journey find one another.
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Politics in the Kavillian Senate is a dangerous, high-stakes game, and the odds aren’t on Cassie’s side.
\nAs imperial envoy, she’s tasked with adding a new region to the empire. Normally, this is a simple matter for the legions, but rivals want Cassie to fail. Without military support, success will require all her guile and cunning, plus a good dose of luck.
\nPersuading the local inhabitants won’t be easy, especially in the case of Arian, the king’s sister. Arian is ardent about her people’s independence and traditions.
\nThe land is theirs, given by the gods and paid for in blood. She despises both the empire and its envoy, and doesn’t hesitate to say so.
\nDespite her hostility, Arian is troublingly attractive. Yet Cassie is determined to stay on track and ignore any thoughts of seduction. Things are difficult enough without extra complications - and that’s before the murders start.
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Jemeryl and Tevi's relationship is put to the test when the Guardian sends Jemeryl on a mission that lands her not only in harm's way, but also back into the sights of a previous lover.
\nThe Protectorate of Lyremouth promises liberty for all its citizens, but this does not mean that everyone is equal. When Jemeryl is summoned alone to Lyremouth, she suspects it is a ploy to separate her from her lover, Tevi. After all, many disapprove of their relationship‚ not because they are both woman, but because Jemeryl is a sorcerer and Tevi is not.
\nThe task Jemeryl is given, to track down an ex-lover who has turned renegade on the Coven, does nothing to assuage her doubts. However, old bonds of affection are enough to make her accept the assignment, even though she is sure that she has been told only half the true story.
\nBut Jemeryl is wrong‚ she has not been told even a tenth of what is behind this mission. When Jemeryl does not return, nobody can stop Tevi from going after her.
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After 9 years in the rangers, dealing with thugs and wild predators, Sergeant 'Chip' Coppelli has learned to spot trouble coming, and that is exactly what she sees in the unexplained discrepancies surrounding her new recruit, Katryn Nagata. But even so, Chip was not expecting murder.
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The most vicious gang in the Homelands, led by the infamous Butcher, are extending their operations to Roadsend.
\nBy her oath as a member of the Militia, Ellen is sworn to uphold the rule of law no matter what the cost to herself, but as the body-count starts to rise, Ellen finds demands being made of her beyond anything that she had envisaged when she signed up.
\nHer task is made all the harder by a wall of silence from ordinary citizens, a commanding officer with her head in the sand, and the attentions of an attractive young farmer who is probably not who she claims to be. How can Ellen work out who to trust or rely on? Yet if she gets it wrong she might easily lose her life, or her heart.
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In the port city of Fortaine, two young girls acquire new families.
\nFour-year-old Eawynn, the unwanted illegitimate daughter of an ambitious noble, is dumped in the temple. When she is old enough, she will be initiated into its sisterhood of priestesses. Meanwhile Matt, the street urchin, earns a crime lord's admiration, so much so he adopts her as his daughter and heir to his underworld clan.
\nNearly two decades later, their paths cross when Eawynn is appointed custodian of the Shewstone, the mystical orb of prophecy. Unfortunately for her, Matt is on a mission to steal it.
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The Celts knew it as Annwyn, the Otherworld—certainly not a destination IT professional Lori Cooper anticipates when distracting herself with a magazine puzzle page in the dentist’s waiting room. Clues buried in the answers lead her to Tamsin, who claims to command a band of warriors for the queen of the fay. From this, Lori concludes that Tamsin is both insane and dangerous. She’s also quite worryingly attractive.
\nHowever, Lori’s own sanity becomes a bigger concern when she finds herself held captive in a strange world with yet more puzzles to solve. She must pick her way through layers of illusion and deceit. Nothing and nobody, including Tamsin, is quite as they seem. Who can Lori trust? She will need to uncover the full truth if she is to return home, mind and body intact.
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Lynn is an imprinter, one chosen by the Goddess to receive her greatest gift, that of creating new life. So why does she feel like a prisoner in the Temple?
\nWhen Lynn learns that she is to be relocated to the temple at Landfall, the arduous journey seems more like a gift - her last chance to see something of the outside world. She does not anticipate the dangers and temptations she will encounter along the way, nor does she expect Lieutenant Kim Ramon, an officer in the squadron of Rangers assigned to protect her. Despite all prohibitions forbidding it, attraction grows between the two women.
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Against them stand the powerful religious Sisterhood and their holy warriors - the Temple Guards. In a world ruled by the Church, what chance is there that Lynn can escape?
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Tevi and Jemeryl, soldier and sorceress, must risk all in the race to uncover a traitor and retrieve the chalice that, in the wrong hands, could bestow dangerous powers.
\nA dark presence is threatening to uncover long hidden secrets, and the future of the whole Protectorate is at stake. Without allies to help them, Tevi and Jemeryl will need to rely totally on each other; something made all the more difficult when the rest of the world seems intent on pulling them apart.
\nEvents will force them to re-evaluate their assumptions about society and their places in it. Success will require making difficult choices, even while they battle for their lives.
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The Celaeno Series. All Natasha Ionadis wants is to serve the Goddess as a Temple Guard, and she volunteers eagerly for a dangerous mission to infiltrate a band of renegade warriors and imprinters.
\nBut, once away from the temple, the issues are no longer so simple and she must revaluate her beliefs, especially in light of her growing attraction for one of the outlaws. Is it too late to work out what she really wants from life?
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High level politics in the Kavillian empire is a dirty, dangerous game - a game Cassie knows well. As a member of an ambitious imperial family, she has been tutored from birth to play a leading role in the contest for power. Yet even she is caught out when a murderer raises the stakes.
\nMeanwhile her lover, Arian, has problems of her own. Life in the upper strata of Kavillian society is so very different from the honor-based culture of her homeland. She despises the unending, ruthless cycle of intrigue, blackmail, and deception that Cassie views as normal - regrettable sometimes, but more often a source of entertainment. Nor can she accept Cassie’s willingness to sacrifice everything and everyone to advance her family’s position.
\nArian’s determination to stay true to her own moral code will be put to the test if she is to save their relationship, and Cassie’s life.
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The Iron Wolf mercenaries who guard travelers on the Misery Trail are notorious for their quick and casual sex lives.
\nDeryn may fit the stereotype better than most, but she has her reasons. Tragedy in her childhood has left her wary of forming attachments. If you don't care, then you can't get hurt, but you can still make a mess of things - such as the outstanding error of judgment that leaves her with no money, forced to spend the winter on a lousy job in a miserable little backwater.
\nThere she meets Alana, local healer, vet, and woman of mystery. It does not take Deryn long to find out that Alana is more than she seems, and has her own perilous secret to keep. Yet Deryn still finds herself falling for the woman, so much so that her come-and-go lifestyle is at risk.
\nThis would be bad enough, but serious trouble arrives for Deryn and Alana in the form of demon magic from the Time of Chaos - revealing that old legends are not merely material for ghost stories around the fire. As the danger increases, who do they need to fear more, the living or the dead?
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Jane Rosenberg is America's pre-eminent courtroom sketch artist. For over forty years, she's been at the heart of the story, covering almost every major trial that has passed through the New York justice system. From mob bosses to fallen titans of finance, terrorists and sex abusers, corrupt cops and warring entertainment icons, she has drawn them all.
\nIn Drawn Testimony , Rosenberg brings us into the high-stakes, dramatic world of her craft, where art, psychology and courtroom drama collide. Over the course of her legendary career, Jane has had a front row seat to some of the most iconic and notorious moments in our nation's recent history, sketching everything from Tom Brady's deflate-gate case, to John Lennon's murder trial to cases against Ghislaine Maxwell, John Gotti, Harvey Weinstein and most recently, the indictment against former President Donald Trump. Readers will learn how she has honed her unique powers of perception, but also what her portraits reveal, not only about her subjects, but about the human condition in general.
\nFearless, fascinating and gorgeously written, Drawn Testimony captures the unique career of an artist whose body of work depicts history as it's happening.
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When Tilda Finch is diagnosed with invisibility - a condition that strikes mostly women of a certain age wherein they simply start to disappear - she's not overly surprised. Tilda has felt invisible for years. She's fifty-two years old, her husband left her for a younger woman, and while she has two terrific adult daughters and a successful business, she often wishes she had pursued her true passion, photography. Instead, she puts inspirational messages on merchandise, and while she doesn't believe in most of the quotes, she's thankful her customers do.
\nTilda has never really recovered from her divorce. Or, if she's honest, her childhood. Tilda's past has taken a toll and she's lost sight of the woman she had always wanted to be. And even though she's bumped into perhaps the most handsome man she's ever met, if he wasn't blind (yes, truly blind) he would see the truth, which is that she's a middle-aged woman, not in her prime, and that he's way out of her league.
\nSoon Tilda discovers there are support groups for women just like her. But after attending one and seeing how resigned the women are to simply fading away, she decides there must be a better way. She is introduced to a controversial therapist who is a leader in this burgeoning field and decides she has nothing to lose by trying her methods out.
\nThe therapist makes Tilda realise that in order to reappear, she must face the trauma of her past and rewire her brain in the way she perceives the world - and herself.
\nIn a world where women are conditioned to not like what they see in the mirror, where the voices in their heads endlessly critique their faults, Tilda Is Visible shows us that we can't expect the world to see us properly if we can't first see ourselves.
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Lady Emily Calloway has everything a debutante could want, including a fairy tale engagement to a fabulously wealthy lord. Her wedding should be the highlight of the Season - until her fiancé’s older brother announces his own upcoming nuptials. Society is riveted to learn that the heir to a dukedom will marry an unknown American.
\nSeething with envy, Emily is burdened with the task of introducing her rival to London Society . . . and is shocked to discover her own attraction to the beautiful heiress.
\nMiss Rebecca Tremblay might have left a trail of broken hearts behind her in New York, but she is determined to make a fresh start in London. Marrying a marquess will settle her restless ways, if only she can deny her forbidden desires for sophisticated and elegant Emily.
\nIf Emily and Rebecca yield to their passion for each other, they must make a choice that will change their futures forever. Will ambition prevail - or their hearts?
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Miss Beatrice Everson has managed to marry the Earl of Sinclair, solving her family’s disastrous financial problems for good. She should be the happiest woman in London, but a less than satisfactory wedding night has Beatrice fleeing her husband and planning an affair with the dashing Mr. George Smith.
\nLady Georgina Smith has a secret she must keep at all costs: she divides her time running a bluestocking salon as Gina, and carousing across London as George. Captivated by Beatrice’s wit and charm, Georgina realises that her secret is in danger - along with her heart.
\nWhen Beatrice discovers that her wedding night has resulted in an unexpected pregnancy, she sees an opportunity to have it all by divorcing Sinclair and marrying George. However, Georgina isn’t sure that a lifetime spent as a man is staying true to herself. Beatrice and Georgina must risk giving up their secrets to finally have their heart’s desire. But is the risk too great to take?
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Anne, the Duchess of Hawthorne, is tired of her reputation as the Ice Queen of London society. She resolves to leave behind her cold-hearted marriage to the duke - and to find a woman to keep her warm at night. Perhaps the dashing designer she hires to transform her Mayfair estate can also help her to transform her life.
\nLetitia Barrow has big dreams of running her own interior design business. The opportunity to reinvent the Hawthorne estate is the job that will finally establish her as a leading designer among the ton. The duchess might make her weak in the knees, but giving in to temptation could risk everything she’s working so hard to build.
\nThe designer and the duchess embark on an affair, with renovations to the house in full swing - and the renovations in their hearts well underway. Then, unexpectedly, the duke returns home and their feelings are tested. Can London’s hottest new designer melt the Ice Queen forever?
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Country mouse Lady Honora Banfield arrives in London with one mission: to catch a husband. A perpetual wallflower, she’s going to do whatever it takes to win a proposal from London’s most eligible bachelor, including teaming up with the most popular (and least proper) woman in London.
Miss Jacqueline Lockhart is having too much fun in her sixth season to ever consider settling down, even though she’s been unsuccessful at mingling with the upper echelons of London society.
When Lady Honora agrees to exchange invitations to the most exclusive events in return for Jacqueline’s introductions to eligible gentlemen, neither expects their friendship to ignite passion. Nora and Jacquie begin an affair with the strict understanding that it will end once Nora is married, but as a proposal becomes more imminent, choosing between a conventional life without love, or certain ruination if they stay together, isn’t as simple as it seems.
As a child, Little Flower is sold to Linjing's wealthy family to become a muizai. In a fit of childish jealousy over her new handmaiden's ladylike bound feet and talent for embroidery, Linjing ensures Little Flower can never leave her to ascend in society.
\nDespite their starkly different places in the Fong household, over the years the two girls must work together to secure both their futures through Linjing's marriage. As the two grow up, they are by turns bitter rivals and tentative friends.
\nUntil scandal strikes the family, and Linjing and Little Flower's lives are unexpectedly thrown into chaos. Linjing's fall from grace could be an opportunity for Little Flower - but will their intertwined fates lead to triumph, or tragedy for them both?
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As children, Sam and Elli were two halves of a perfect whole: gorgeous identical twins whose parents sometimes couldn’t even tell them apart. They fell asleep to the sound of each other’s breath at night, holding hands in the dark. And once Hollywood discovered them, they became B-list child TV stars, often inhabiting the same role.
\nBut as adults, their lives have splintered. After leaving acting, Elli reinvented herself as the perfect homemaker: married to a real estate lawyer, living in a house just blocks from the beach. Meanwhile, Sam has never recovered from her failed Hollywood career, or from her addiction to the pills and booze that have propped her up for the last fifteen years.
\nSam hasn't spoken to her sister since her destructive behavior finally drove a wedge between them. So when her father calls out of the blue, Sam is shocked to learn that Elli’s life has been in turmoil: her husband moved out, and Elli just adopted a two-year-old girl. Now she’s stopped answering her phone and checked in to a mysterious spa in Ojai. Is her sister just decompressing, or is she in trouble? Could she have possibly joined a cult?
\nAs Sam works to connect the dots left by Elli’s baffling disappearance, she realises that the bond between her and her sister is more complicated than she ever knew.
Polly’s fourth-grade daughter has been spending a lot of time with her classmate Sylvie - maybe too much. Sylvie’s clothes are a little . . . flashy . . . and her phone (a ten-year-old with a phone!) doesn’t seem to have any parental controls.
\nIt seems that Sylvie’s mother, with her vape pens and her too-high heels, may not be making good choices. As Polly tries to exert a positive influence, she discovers just how little anyone can tell about a family from the outside.
It’s been a year since Billie Flanagan - a beautiful, charismatic Berkeley mom with an enviable life - went on a solo hike in Desolation Wilderness and vanished from the trail. No body - only a hiking boot - has ever been found. Billie’s husband and teenage daughter cope with her death the best they can: Jonathan drinks, Olive grows remote.
But then Olive starts having waking dreams - or are they hallucinations? - that her mother is still alive. Jonathan worries about Olive’s emotional stability, until he starts unearthing secrets from Billie’s past that bring into question everything he thought he knew about his wife. Together, Olive and Jonathan embark on a quest for the truth - about Billie, their family, and the stories we tell ourselves about the people we love.
Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live: the woodstove that heats their home, the vegetable garden where they try to eke out a subsistence existence, the books of nineteenth-century philosophy that her father gives her to read in lieu of going to school. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident, the crash propelling him to move Jane off the grid to raise her in a Thoreau-like utopia.
\nAs Jane becomes a teenager she starts pushing against the boundaries of her restricted world. She begs to accompany her father on his occasional trips away from the cabin. But when Jane realises that her devotion to her father has made her an accomplice to a horrific crime, she flees Montana to the only place she knows to look for answers about her mysterious past, and her mother's San Francisco.
\nIt is a city in the midst of a seismic change, where her quest to understand herself will force her to reckon with both the possibilities and the perils of the fledgling Internet, and where she will come to question everything she values.
Aleys is sixteen years old and serious, stubborn, prone to religious visions. She and her only friend, a young scholar, have been learning Latin together in secret - but just as she thinks their connection might become something more, he abandons her for the monastery. When her family falls on hard financial times, her father promises her in marriage to the unctuous head of the weavers’ guild, and in desperation she runs away from home, eventually finding shelter within a community of religious women who do not answer to the church.
\nAmong the hardworking and strong-willed Beguines, Aleys glimpses for the first time the joys of a life of song, friendship, and time spent in the markets and along the canals of Bruges. But forces both mystical and political are afoot. Illegal translations of scripture, the women’s independence, and a sudden rash of miracles all draw the attention of an ambitious bishop - and bring Aleys and those around her into ever-increasing danger, a danger that will push Aleys to a new understanding of love and sacrifice.
\nIntroducing a spirited, indelible heroine and a major new talent, Canticle is a luminous work of historical fiction, vividly evoking a world on the verge of transformation.
Abby Rodier was a “drop-box baby,” a Korean orphan whose mother could not take care of her and left her as an infant. Abby’s tumultuous experience in the American foster care system has led her to live a solitary and guarded life, closed off to almost everyone except her best friend Iseul, whose parents took Abby into their home as a child.
\nAbby’s work studying the origins of life in sea slugs and bacteria leads her to wonder about her birth parents and question her place in this world. It's not long before Abby stumbles upon a biological discovery that will change the course of her life. Meanwhile, Iseul’s devotion to their ill brother leads to an entanglement between her work as an investigative journalist and the murky world of black market medicine.
\nAfter a tragic event, Abby’s life is thrown into a tailspin. With the rug pulled from under her feet, she spirals into a disorientation of grief, apparitions, and compulsions. With the help of those around her, Abby must embark on a journey to understand her true roots and make peace with her present.
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When the Guardian of the West Passage died in her bed, the women of Grey Tower fed her to the crows and went back to their chores. No successor was named as Guardian, no one took up the fallen blade; the West Passage went unguarded.
\nNow, snow blankets Grey in the height of summer. Rats erupt from beneath the earth, fleeing that which comes. Crops fail. Hunger looms. And none stand ready to face the Beast, stirring beneath the poisoned soil.
\nThe fate of all who live in the palace hangs on narrow shoulders. The too-young Mother of Grey House sets out to fix the seasons. The unnamed apprentice of the deceased Grey Guardian goes to warn Black Tower. Both their paths cross the West Passage, the ancient byway of the Beast.
\nOn their journeys they will meet schoolteachers and beekeepers, miracles and monsters, and very, very big Ladies. None can say if they'll reach their destinations, but one thing is for the world is about to change.
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In the sunny city of Singapore, the government takes care of everything - even the weird stuff. Benjamin Toh is a middle manager in the Department for Engagement of Unusual Stakeholders (DEUS), tasked with taking care of the supernatural occurrences and people no one else wants to deal with, from restless ghosts to immortal gods to conniving jinn. Overworked and under-resourced, he has to juggle the demands of senior management, an elderly father, and a new boyfriend, all while trying to keep his team out of trouble.
\nWhen an entire block of flats goes missing in the town of Clementi, drowned in an otherworldly wave, the information he needs to prevent another catastrophe lies in the pasar bayang - the shadow markets. But the demigod protector of the markets has neither forgotten nor forgiven their humiliation by the Singapore authorities decades ago. Ben will need to wrestle with the legacy of his government and the whispers of his own insecurities, navigating landscapes both urban and fantastical, both inside the soul and outside the real world, all so he can just do his goddamn job.
Anaa, a twenty-three-year-old aspiring poet, has fallen in love with her new life in Portugal. Walking cobblestone streets and talking about art with her new friends - this is what she’s always dreamed of, and she feels she’s on her way to becoming the person she wants to be. And it doesn’t hurt that there’s someone making Lisbon even more a magnetic poet and local celebrity, Tiago, with whom she’s having the kinds of spirited, all-consuming conversations she’s only ever seen in films she adores.
\nJust as Tiago wants to commit to Anaa, her ex-boyfriend and first love, Ben, visits from Canada, propelling her into a state of restlessness. Though she and Ben had planned his visit together, with Anaa moralising about how outdated and reductive it would be to give up on their friendship just because they’re exes, she can’t quite reconcile Ben in Lisbon among her new friends. She’d purposely left behind a world that felt small, a future that was a fraction of what she wanted for herself, the future that included Ben.
\nHowever, even while embarrassed by his simple tastes and dad jokes, she still recognises he’s someone who can make her feel so much joy and who brings out a side of herself she tends to hide. And there might be something else there between them, something still burning. But then what about Tiago and the part of her that comes alive with him? And more importantly, what about her new world?
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Recruited by the mysterious Project Kairos to change history and save the future from ecological disaster, Echo and Hazel are transported through time to opposite worlds. Echo works as a healer’s assistant in Ancient Athens, embroiled in dangerous politics and wild philosophy. Hazel is the last human alive, in a laboratory on a polluted island with nothing but tiny robots and an untrustworthy AI for company.
\nBoth women suffer from amnesia but when they fall asleep, their consciousnesses transcend time and they meet in their dreams. Together, they start to uncover their past - but soon discover the past threatens humanity’s survival.
\nIf Echo and Hazel have a chance of changing the future, they must remember to forget . . .
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Isabelle is completely lost. When she first began her career in publishing right out of college, she did not expect to be twenty-five, living at home, still an editorial assistant, and the only Black employee at her publishing house. Overworked and underpaid, constantly torn between speaking up or stifling herself, Izzy thinks there must be more to this publishing life. So when she overhears her boss complaining about a beastly high-profile author who has failed to deliver his long-awaited manuscript, Isabelle sees an opportunity to finally get the promotion she deserves.
\nAll she has to do is go to the author’s Santa Barbara mansion and give him a quick pep talk or three. How hard could it be?
\nBut Izzy quickly finds out she is in over her head. Beau Towers is not some celebrity lightweight writing a tell-all memoir. He is jaded and withdrawn and - it turns out - just as lost as Izzy. But despite his standoffishness, Izzy needs Beau to deliver, and with her encouragement, his story begins to spill onto the page. They soon discover they have more in common than either of them expected, and as their deadline nears, Izzy and Beau begin to realise there may be something there that wasn't there before.
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This Valentine’s Day, Daisy Murray has her heart set on binge-watching rom-coms. Instead, an earthquake traps her inside a bakery with its impossibly rude and insufferably handsome owner and head baker. They already have a history: she’s always smiled, he’s always scowled.
\nWhere better to finally get to know each other than amid the disaster? Then again, they have no choice. Besides, it could have its sweet, undeniable, and unpredictable perks.
Avery Jensen is almost thirty, fresh off a breakup, and she’s tired of always being so uptight and well-behaved. She wants to get a hobby, date around (especially other women), flirt with everyone she sees, all the fun stuff normal people do in their twenties. One Avery doesn't know how to do any of that. She doesn't have a lot of dating experience, with men or women, and despite being self-assured at work, she doesn't have a lot of confidence when it comes to romance.
\nEnter Taylor Cameron, Napa Valley's biggest flirt and champion heartbreaker. Taylor just broke up with her most recent girlfriend, and her best friend bet her that she can't make it until Labor Day without sleeping with someone. (Two whole months? Without sex? Taylor?!?!) So, she offers to give Avery flirting lessons. It will keep her busy, stop her from texting people she shouldn't. And it might distract her from how inadequate she feels compared to her friends, who all seem much more settled and adult than Taylor.
\nAt first, Avery is stiff and nervous, but Taylor is patient and encouraging, and soon, Avery looks forward to their weekly lessons. She tells herself it's because the lessons are fun, not because she kind of might have a little bit of a crush on Taylor. Taylor doesn't even try to deny that she's intrigued by Avery, but she's still got a bet to win.
\nWith Taylor’s help, Avery is finally doing what she wants to flirting with lots of women, making friends, having fun! But after a while, it becomes impossible for Avery and Taylor to ignore their attraction to one another, despite them both insisting to themselves and everyone else that it isn't serious. When Taylor is forced to confront her feelings for Avery, she doesn't know what to do, how to deal with it, and most importantly, if she's already ruined the best thing she's ever had.
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Dating is the last thing on Olivia Monroe's mind when she moves to LA to start her own law firm. But when she meets a gorgeous man at a hotel bar and they spend the entire night flirting, she discovers too late that he is none other than hotshot junior senator Max Powell. Olivia has zero interest in dating a politician, but when a cake arrives at her office with the cutest message, she can't resist - it is chocolate cake, after all.
Olivia is surprised to find that Max is sweet, funny, and noble - not just some privileged white politician she assumed him to be. Because of Max's high-profile job, they start seeing each other secretly, which leads to clandestine dates and silly disguises. But when they finally go public, the intense media scrutiny means people are now digging up her rocky past and criticising her job, even her suitability as a trophy girlfriend. Olivia knows what she has with Max is something special, but is it strong enough to survive the heat of the spotlight?
When freelance writer Nikole Paterson goes to a Dodgers game with her actor boyfriend, his man bun, and his bros, the last thing she expects is a scoreboard proposal. Saying no isn't the hard part--they've only been dating for five months, and he can't even spell her name correctly. The hard part is having to face a stadium full of disappointed fans . . .
At the game with his sister, Carlos Ibarra comes to Nik's rescue and rushes her away from a camera crew. He's even there for her when the video goes viral and Nik's social media blows up - in a bad way. Nik knows that in the wilds of LA, a handsome doctor like Carlos can't be looking for anything serious, so she embarks on an epic rebound with him, filled with food, fun, and fantastic sex. But when their glorified hookups start breaking the rules, one of them has to be smart enough to put on the brakes . . .
Vivian Forest has been out of the country a grand total of one time, so when she gets the chance to tag along on her daughter Maddie’s work trip to England to style a royal family member, she can’t refuse. She’s excited to spend the holidays taking in the magnificent British sights, but what she doesn’t expect is to become instantly attracted to a certain private secretary, his charming accent, and unyielding formality.
Malcolm Hudson has worked for the Queen for years and has never given a personal, private tour - until now. He is intrigued by Vivian the moment he meets her and finds himself making excuses just to spend time with her. When flirtatious banter turns into a kiss under the mistletoe, things snowball into a full-on fling.
Despite a ticking timer on their holiday romance, they are completely fine with ending their short, steamy affair come New Year’s Day. . . or are they?
Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn't normally do. But there's something about Drew Nichols that's too hard to resist.
On the eve of his ex's wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend . . .
After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she's the mayor's chief of staff. Too bad they can't stop thinking about the other . . .
They're just two high-powered professionals on a collision course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century - or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want . . .
Maddie and Theo have two things in common:
1. Alexa is their best friend
2. They hate each other
After an \"oops, we made a mistake\" night together, neither one can stop thinking about the other. With Alexa's wedding rapidly approaching, Maddie and Theo both share bridal party responsibilities that require more interaction with each other than they're comfortable with. Underneath the sharp barbs they toss at each other is a simmering attraction that won't fade. It builds until they find themselves sneaking off together to release some tension when Alexa isn't looking.
But as with any engagement with a nemesis, there are unspoken rules that must be abided by. First and foremost, don't fall in love.
Ben Stephens has never been one to mix business and pleasure, but when he lands a huge ad campaign featuring movie star, Anna Gardiner, and it turns out she's as funny and down-to-earth as she is gorgeous, Ben can't help flirting a little.
\nAnna Gardiner is hoping this ad campaign will be a great distraction while she waits to hear if she's booked her dream role, but she doesn't anticipate that Ben Stephens might be an even bigger distraction . . .
\nAfter a family emergency and a late-night road trip moves them past light-hearted flirtation, Ben and Anna grow closer. But when Anna's manager decides to use their fling to help Anna's Hollywood career, will Ben be content to play the background role in Anna's life and leave when the cameras stop rolling? Or could he be the leading man she's looking for?
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Mississippi, 1927. The groanings are coming.
\nNo town is perfect, but East Cobb comes close. It’s a wealthy all-Black Free Town - untouched by white oppression - where ambitious Thea Elliot and her husband plan to make good on their big dreams. Little do they know that the idyllic town teems with ghoulish, walking nightmares . . . that only the women can see.
\nMarah knows the groanings well. She is one of the carriers - women with the ability to pull traumatic memories from men. Populated by men entirely freed of their pain, East Cobb has flourished, even as the remnants of their memories haunt the town’s women. When an unexpected death drives Marah to discover more about her own power, Thea’s and Marah’s worlds collide. The sisters must confront the rotten core at the heart of East Cobb’s prosperity and choose what - and who - will survive the reckoning.
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Rosy is a bone familiar, gifted with the power to shift into animals marked with exposed bone. She spends most of her days in the magical Bone Forest, caring for her feral grandmother and hiding her powers to avoid conscription by the Witch King’s army. Until the day that Princess Shaw, a witch known as Death’s Heir, visits the Forest. When Rosy saves Shaw’s life, the princess offers her the chance to attend the prestigious school, Witch Hall, as payment. Though Rosy is wary of Shaw’s intentions, she cannot pass up the opportunity to find the cure for her grandmother’s affliction.
\nBut at Witch Hall, Rosy finds herself embroiled in political games she doesn't understand. Shaw wants Rosy for her entourage, a partner to help lead the coming war. All Rosy wants is to stay out of trouble until she can graduate and save her grandmother, but she can't deny her attraction to Shaw or the comfort Shaw’s magic gives her. Will Rosy give in to her destiny, or will the Bone Forest call her home once and for all?
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Born a bone witch, with the power to raise the dead, Shaw has spent her life preparing to take her place as Death's Heir, so she can lead her people to victory in an unavoidable, prophesied war. But then she met Rosy, sweet, stubborn Rosy, the most powerful bone familiar she's ever known, and the only person Shaw has never been able to predict. Rosy, who doesn’t believe in the prophesied war that has consumed Shaw’s entire life.
\nShaw has won Rosy's loyalty, but Rosy has made it very clear she's not willing to share her heart, a fact that Shaw is determined to respect . . . no matter how much it hurts. But now, as tensions with Vinland rise and secrets about the Witch King’s motivations are revealed, Shaw needs Rosy and her entourage more than ever. Will Shaw become the conquering warlord she was prophesised to be, or will she be strong enough to find a new path forward?
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For best friends with vastly different fortunes, what’s left to hash out other than a forced confession at gunpoint? All that the destitute, sickly, and grieving Will demands is that monstrously successful Barry admit to draining all the luck right out of him. Like blood. As the standoff escalates, the truth is not the only thing ready to come out.
In Hell of a Book, an African-American author sets out on a cross-country book tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Jason Mott's novel and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: since his novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.
\nThroughout, these characters' stories build and build and as they converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art, and money, there always is the tragic story of a police shooting playing over and over on the news.
\nWho has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind? Unforgettably powerful, an electrifying high-wire act, ideal for book clubs, and the book Mott says he has been writing in his head for ten years, Hell of a Book in its final twists truly becomes its title.
People Like Us is Jason Mott’s electric new novel. It is not memoir, yet it has deeply personal connections to Jason’s life. And while rooted in reality, it explodes with dreamlike experiences that pull a reader in and don’t let go, from the ability to time travel to sightings of sea monsters and peacocks, and feelings of love and memory so real they hurt.
\nIn People Like Us, two Black writers are trying to find peace and belonging in a world that is riven with gun violence. One is on a global book tour after a big prize win; the other is set to give a speech at a school that has suffered a shooting. And as their two storylines merge, truths and antics abound in equal measure: characters drink booze out of an award trophy; menaces lurk in the shadows; tiny French cars putter around the countryside; handguns seem to hover in the air; and dreams endure against all odds.
\nPeople Like Us is wickedly funny and achingly sad all at once. It is an utter triumph bursting with larger-than-life characters who deliver a very real take on our world. This book contains characters experiencing deep loss and longing; it also is buoyed by riotous humor and characters who share the deepest love. It is the newest creation of a writer whose work amazes, delivering something utterly new yet instantly recognisable as a Jason Mott novel.
Outside Los Angeles, a driver pulls up to find a young woman sitting on a large black box. She offers him $200,000 cash to transport her and that box across the country, to Washington, DC.
\nBut there are rules:
\nHe cannot look inside the box.
He cannot ask questions.
He cannot tell anyone.
They must leave immediately.
He must leave all trackable devices behind.
As these eccentric misfits hit the road, rumors spread on social media that the box is part of a carefully orchestrated terror attack intended to plunge the USA into civil war.
\nThe truth promises to be even stranger, and may change how you see the world.
\n
If the broken neon signs, shuttered storefronts, and sub-standard housing didn’t tip you off, you’ve just wandered into the city of “Undisclosed”. You don’t want to be caught dead here, because odds are you just might find yourself rising from the grave. That hasn’t stopped tourists from visiting to check out the unusual phenomena that hangs around our town like radioactive fallout. Interdimensional parasites feeding on human hosts, paranormal cults worshipping demonic entities, vengeful teenage sorcerers, we’ve got it all.
\nDid I mention the possessed toy? It’s a plastic football-sized egg that’s supposed to hatch an adorable, colorful stuffed bird when a child “feeds” it through a synchronised smartphone app. What’s actually inside is an otherworldly monstrosity that’s enticing impressionable wayward youth into murdering folks and depositing their body parts inside the egg as if it’s a hungry piggy bank to trigger the end of the world.
\nThat’s where Dave, John, and Amy come in. They face supernatural threats so the rest of us don’t have to - and sometimes even earn a couple of bucks to so do. But between the bloody ritual sacrifices and soul-crushing nightmares, our trio realises this apocalypse is way above their pay grade.
\n
STOP.
\nYou should not have touched this book with your bare hands.
\nNO, don’t put it down. It’s too late. They’re watching you.
\nMy name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you’ll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it’s too late. You touched the book. You’re in the game. You’re under the eye.
\nThe only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me.
\nThe important thing is this: The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension.
\nJohn and I never had the chance to say no. You still do. Unfortunately for us, if you make the right choice, we’ll have a much harder time explaining how to fight off the otherworldly invasion currently threatening to enslave humanity. I’m sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind:
\nNone of this is was my fault.
Warning: You may have a huge, invisible spider living in your skull. THIS IS NOT A METAPHOR.
\nYou will dismiss this as ridiculous fear-mongering. Dismissing things as ridiculous fear-mongering is, in fact, the first symptom of parasitic spider infection - the creature stimulates skepticism, in order to prevent you from seeking a cure. That's just as well, since the “cure” involves learning what a chainsaw tastes like. You can't feel the spider, because it controls your nerve endings. You won't even feel it when it breeds. And it will breed.
\nJust stay calm, and remember that telling you about the spider situation is not the same as having caused it. I'm just the messenger. Even if I did sort of cause it. Either way, I won't hold it against you if you're upset. I know that's just the spider talking.
\n
It's the story “They” don't want you to read. Though, to be fair, “They” are probably right about this one. To quote the Bible, “Learning the truth can be like loosening a necktie, only to realise it was the only thing keeping your head attached.” No, don't put the book back on the shelf - it is now your duty to purchase it to prevent others from reading it. Yes, it works with e-books, too, I don't have time to explain how.
\nWhile investigating a fairly straightforward case of a shape-shifting interdimensional child predator, Dave, John, and Amy realized there might actually be something weird going on. Together, they navigate a diabolically convoluted maze of illusions, lies, and their own incompetence in an attempt to uncover a terrible truth they - like you - would be better off not knowing.
\nYour first impulse will be to think that a story this gruesome - and, to be frank, stupid - cannot possibly be true. That is precisely the reaction “They” are hoping for.
\n
Charles Davids is a probationary firefighter working his first week out of the academy. For Charles, quietly battling his lack of confidence is a daily challenge as his new officers coach him on life as a New York City firefighter. The men love to tease and prank the new guy, but when it comes to drilling and training, they’re clear that the job is no joke. As is said in the fire service: \"let no man’s ghost return to say my training let me down.\"
\nUnfortunately for Charles, his first week is the same week that Alan Johnson, an unstable and soon-to-be-ex husband, gets kicked out and comes up with the idea to report fake fires at his wife's apartment every night. Alan laughs at the thought of her being awakened nightly by sirens and horns - if he can’t sleep in their apartment, why the hell should she? But after days of crying wolf, Alan decides that fake fires aren’t enough . . .
\nSet on the hot summer streets of NYC and building to a fiery conclusion, No Man’s Ghost is a vibrant and thrilling look at the people who keep a city safe - and the ones who want to watch it burn.
Mallory is delighted to have a new job looking after gorgeous four-year-old, Teddy. She’s been sober for a year and a half and she’s sure her new nannying role in the affluent suburbs will help keep her on the straight and narrow.
\nThat is until Teddy starts to draw disturbing pictures of his imaginary friend, Anya. It is quite clear to Mallory and to Teddy’s parents, even in his crude childlike style, that the woman Teddy is drawing in his pictures is dead.
\nTeddy’s crayons are confiscated, and his paper locked away. But the drawings somehow keep coming, telling a frightening story of a woman murdered . . . and they’re getting more sophisticated. But if Teddy isn’t drawing the pictures anymore, who is? And what are they trying to tell Mallory about her new home?
\n
The year is 1987 and Playboy has just published scandalous photographs of Vanna White, from the popular TV game show Wheel of Fortune. For three teenage boys - Billy, Alf, and Clark - who are desperately uneducated in the ways of women, the magazine is somewhat of a Holy Grail: priceless beyond measure and impossible to attain. So, they hatch a plan to steal it.
The heist will be fraught with peril: a locked building, intrepid police officers, rusty fire escapes, leaps across rooftops, electronic alarm systems, and a hyperactive Shih Tzu named Arnold Schwarzenegger. Failed attempt after failed attempt leads them to a genius master plan - they’ll swipe the security code to Zelinsky’s convenience store by seducing the owner’s daughter, Mary Zelinsky. It becomes Billy’s mission to befriend her and get the information by any means necessary.
But Mary isn’t your average teenage girl. She’s a computer loving, expert coder, already strides ahead of Billy in ability, with a wry sense of humor and a hidden, big heart. But what starts as a game to win Mary’s affection leaves Billy with a gut-wrenching choice: deceive the girl who may well be his first love or break a promise to his best friends.
\n
Frank Szatowski is shocked when his daughter, Maggie, calls him for the first time in three years. He was convinced that their estrangement would become permanent. He’s even more surprised when she invites him to her upcoming wedding in New Hampshire. Frank is ecstatic, and determined to finally make things right.
\nHe arrives to find that the wedding is at a private estate - very secluded, very luxurious, very much out of his league. It seems that Maggie failed to mention that she’s marrying Aidan Gardner, the son of a famous tech billionaire. Feeling desperately out of place, Frank focuses on reconnecting with Maggie and getting to know her new family. But it’s difficult: Aidan is withdrawn and evasive; Maggie doesn’t seem to have time for him; and he finds that the locals are disturbingly hostile to the Gardners. Frank needs to know more about this family his daughter is marrying into, but if he pushes too hard, he could lose Maggie forever.
\n
Simon saved his best friend, Kat, from the clutches of the Company and their high-tech VR gaming experience, Otherworld. But it was at a steep price. Now he, Kat, and their friend Busara are on the run. They know too much.
\nAbout the Company's dark secrets. About the real-life consequences of playing Otherworld. And about Kat's stepfather's involvement in everything. The group is headed to New Mexico to find Simon's old roommate, who is a tech genius and possibly the only person who can help them reveal the truth about the Company before it's too late and the line between what's real and what's fantasy is erased . . . forever.
Imagine a future in which you can leave reality behind and give in to your greatest desires. That future is now. And the future is terrifying.
Simon, Kat, Busara, and Elvis are on the run with the tech super-villains at the Company hot on their heels. The new VR gaming experience the Company created, OtherEarth, will change how the world experiences video games. Paired with the hardware the Company developed, it has the potential to change the world as we know it, altering our reality forever.
The Company is on its way to becoming the world's newest superpower. And Simon is determined to shut them down forever. But to do that, he'll have to survive OtherLife--the next phase of gaming, and a complete reality reboot.
The company says Otherworld is amazing - like nothing you’ve ever seen before. They say it’s addictive - that you’ll want to stay forever. They promise Otherworld will make all your dreams come true.
\nSimon thought Otherworld was a game. Turns out he knew nothing. Otherworld is the next phase of reality. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted. And it’s about to change humanity forever.
\nWelcome to the Otherworld. No one could have seen it coming.
Imagine a world where all humans must hibernate through a brutally cold winter, their bodies dangerously close to death as they enter an ultra-low metabolic state of utterly dreamless sleep. All humans, that is, apart from the Sleep Marshalls, a group of officers who diligently watch over the vulnerable sleeping citizens.
When John Fugue, a junior Sleep Marshall, finds himself in the forgotten rural outpost of Sector Twelve, he hears of a conspiracy - a viral dream is somehow spreading amongst those in the hibernational state, causing paranoia, hallucination and a psychotic episode that can end in murder.
When Fugue enters the Sleepstate himself and wakes two months later, all those who knew about the dream have disappeared and, more disturbingly, Fugue himself can recall parts of the viral dream - a dream that shouldn't be possible.
Welcome to Chromatacia, where the societal hierarchy is strictly regulated by one's limited color perception. Civilization has been rebuilt after an unspoken “Something that Happened” five hundred years ago. Society is now color vision-segregated, professions, marriages, and leisure activities all dictated by an individual’s visual ability, and everything run by the shadowy National Color in far-off Emerald City.
\nOut on the fringes of Red Sector West, twenty-year-old Eddie Russett is being bullied into an arranged marriage with the powerful DeMauve family, purples who hope to redden up their progeny’s color-viewing potential with Eddie’s gene stock. Their obnoxious daughter Violet is confident the marriage won’t hamper her style for too long because Eddie is about to go on trial for a murder he didn’t commit, and he’s pretty sure to be sent on a one-way trip to the Green Room for execution by soporific color exposure.
\nMeanwhile, Eddie is engaged in an illegal relationship with his co-defendant, a Green, the charismatic, unpredictable, and occasionally deadly Jane Grey. Time is running out for Eddie and Jane to figure out how to save themselves. Negotiating the narrow boundaries of the Rules within their society, they search for a loophole - some truth of their world that has been hidden from its hyper-policed citizens.
Hundreds of years in the future, the world is an alarmingly different place. Life is lived according to The Rulebook and social hierarchy is determined by your perception of colour.
\nEddie Russett is an above-average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder. Until he is sent to the Outer Fringes where he meets Jane - a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper and a desire to see him killed.
\nFor Eddie, it's love at first sight. But his infatuation will lead him to discover that all is not as it seems in a world where everything that looks black and white is really shades of grey . . .
England, 2022. There are 1.2 million human-size rabbits living in the UK. They can walk, talk, drive cars, and they like to read Voltaire, the result of an Inexplicable Anthropomorphizing Event fifty-five years before.
A family of rabbits is about to move into Much Hemlock, a cozy little village in Middle England where life revolves around summer fetes, jam making, gossipy corner stores, and the oh-so-important Best Kept Village awards.
No sooner have the rabbits arrived than the villagers decide they must depart, citing their propensity to burrow and breed, and their shameless levels of veganism. But Mrs Constance Rabbit is made of sterner stuff, and her and her family decide they are to stay. Unusually, their neighbors--longtime resident Peter Knox and his daughter, Pippa--decide to stand with them . . . and soon discover that you can be a friend to rabbits or humans, but not both.
With a blossoming romance, acute cultural differences, enforced rehoming to a MegaWarren in Wales, and the full power of the ruling United Kingdom Anti-Rabbit Party against them, Peter and Pippa are about to question everything they had ever thought about their friends, their nation, and their species.
Orphaned sixteen-year-old Jennifer Strange runs Kazam, a Mystical Arts Management company that rents out wizards for cash. The Mighty Shandar tells Jennifer that if she finds a mysterious jewel named The Eye of Zoltar, he will spare the dragons he didn't manage to kill in Book One. It is said the Eye was last seen around the neck of the really very legendary and not at all likely Sky Captain Morgan, who reputedly plunders jetliners from the back of the equally legendary and probably not real Leviathan, a kind of flying manta ray the size of a coach.
\nMeanwhile, the King and Queen of Snodd thinks that Jennifer, 'a young lady of considerable daring, moral worth and resourcefulness' should take over the tutelage of the hideous spoiled teenage Princess Shazzine, in order that she learns to rule with distinction once the King and Queen are gone. Jennifer agrees with some reluctance, and together, she, trainee magician Perkins and the princess - cunningly and without any originality disguised as a handmaiden - cross into the neighbouring Cambrian Empire, a dangerous country strewn with peril and a focus for bored daredevils seeking perilous adventures as a form of Jeopardy Tourism.
Sixteen-year-old Jennifer Strange and her sidekick and fellow Orphan Tiger Prawns have been driven to the tip of the UnUnited Kingdoms - Cornwall - by the invasion of the Trolls. Their one defense is a six-foot-wide trench full of buttons, something which the Trolls find unaccountably terrifying (it's their clickiness).
\nWorse than being eaten by Trolls is the prospect of the Mighty Shandar requisitioning the Quarkbeast and using him to achieve supreme power and domination - an ambition that has been four hundred years in the planning and which will ultimately leave the Earth a cold cinder, devoid of all life.
\nNothing has ever looked so bleak, but Jennifer, assisted by a renegade vegan Troll, a bunch of misfit sorcerers, the Princess (or is she now the ruler?) of the UnUnited (or are they now United?) Kingdoms, and Tiger, must find a way to vanquish the most powerful wizard the world has ever seen, and along the way discover the truth about her parents, herself, and what is in the locked glovebox of her VW Beetle . . .
In the good old days, magic was powerful, unregulated by government, and even the largest spell could be woven without filling in the magic release form B1-7g. But somewhere, somehow, the magic started draining away. Jennifer Strange runs Kazam!, an employment agency for state-registered magicians, soothsayers and sorceresses. But work is drying up. Drain cleaner is cheaper and quicker than a spell.
\nWhy trust a cold and drafty magic carpet when jetlines offer a comfy seat and an in-flight movie? And now potions are eligible for VAT . . . But then the visions start. The Last Dragon is going to be killed by a Dragonslayer at 12.00 on Sunday. The death will unleash untold devastation on the UnUnited Kingdom, setting principality against dukedom and property developer against homesteader. And all the signs are pointing to Jennifer Strange, and saying ‘Big Magic is coming . . .’
Meet the traders who supply the world with oil, metal and food - no matter how corrupt, war-torn or famine-stricken the source. The modern world is built on commodities - from the oil that fuels our cars to the metals that power our smartphones.
\nWe rarely stop to consider where they come from. But we should.
\nIn The World for Sale, two leading journalists lift the lid on one of the least scrutinised corners of the economy: the workings of the billionaire commodity traders who buy, hoard and sell the earth's resources.
\nIt is the story of how a handful of swashbuckling businessmen became indispensable cogs in global markets: enabling an enormous expansion in international trade, and connecting resource-rich countries - no matter how corrupt or war-torn - with the world's financial centres.
\nAnd it is the story of how some traders acquired untold political power, right under the noses of Western regulators and politicians - helping Saddam Hussein to sell his oil, fuelling the Libyan rebel army during the Arab Spring, and funnelling cash to Vladimir Putin's Kremlin in spite of strict sanctions.
\nThe result is an eye-opening tour through the wildest frontiers of the global economy, as well as a revelatory guide to how capitalism really works.
\n
The greatest games in Godsgraves history have ended with the most audacious murders in the history of the Itreyan Republic.
\nMia Corvere, gladiatii, escaped slave and infamous assassin, is on the run. Pursued by Blades of the Red Church and soldiers of the Luminatii legion, she may never escape the City of Bridges and Bones alive. Her mentor Mercurio is now in the clutches of her enemies. Her own family wishes her dead. And her nemesis, Consul Julius Scaeva, stands but a breath from total dominance over the Republic.
\nBut beneath the city, a dark secret awaits. Together with her lover Ashlinn, brother Jonnen and a mysterious benefactor returned from beyond the veil of death, she must undertake a perilous journey across the Republic, seeking the final answer to the riddle of her life. Truedark approaches. Night is falling on the Republic for perhaps the final time.
\nThe greatest games in Godsgraves history have ended with the most audacious murders in the history of the Itreyan Republic.
Mia Corvere, gladiatii, escaped slave and infamous assassin, is on the run. Pursued by Blades of the Red Church and soldiers of the Luminatii legion, she may never escape the City of Bridges and Bones alive. Her mentor Mercurio is now in the clutches of her enemies. Her own family wishes her dead. And her nemesis, Consul Julius Scaeva, stands but a breath from total dominance over the Republic.
But beneath the city, a dark secret awaits. Together with her lover Ashlinn, brother Jonnen and a mysterious benefactor returned from beyond the veil of death, she must undertake a perilous journey across the Republic, seeking the final answer to the riddle of her life. Truedark approaches. Night is falling on the Republic for perhaps the final time.
Can Mia survive in a world where even daylight must die?
Can Mia survive in a world where even daylight must die?
Lemon Fresh has seen better days.
\nAfter the climactic battle in Babel, she finds herself separated from Ezekiel and Cricket in the wastelands. Lemon’s abilities to manipulate electricity mark her as a deviate, and deadly corporate operatives are hunting her to use as a weapon in the war between BioMaas Incorporated and Daedelus Technologies. Instead, Lemon finds herself falling in with a group of fellow deviates - a band of teenagers with astonishing abilities, led by an enigmatic figure known as the Major, who may hold the secrets to Lemon’s past.
\nMeanwhile, Cricket finds himself in possession of the puritanical Brotherhood, a religious cult set for a head-on collision with the Major and his band. Searching for Lemon, Ezekiel finds a strange ally in an old enemy, and uncovers a plot that may see him reunited with his beloved Ana. And inside Babel, a remade Eve hatches a plan to bring an end to the world.
Gabriel de León has saved the Holy Grail from death, but his chance to end the endless night is lost. Drawn into an uneasy alliance with the mysterious vampire Liathe, Gabriel must now deliver the Grail to ancients of the Blood Esani, and learn the truth of how Daysdeath might be finally undone.
\nBut the Last Silversaint faces peril, within and without. Pursued by terrors of the Blood Voss, drawn into warfare between the Blood Dyvok and duskdancers of the frozen Highlands, and ravaged by his own rising bloodlust, Gabriel may not survive to see the Grail learn her truth.
\nAnd that truth may be too awful for any to imagine.
Gabriel de León has lost his family, his faith, and his last hope of ending the endless night - the Holy Grail, Dior. With no desire left but vengeance, he and a band of loyal brothers journey into the war-torn heart of the Augustin Empire to claim the life of the Forever King.
\nUnbeknownst to the Last Silversaint, the Grail still lives - speeding towards Augustin’s besieged capital in the frail hope of ending Daysdeath forever. But deadly treachery awaits within the halls of power, and the Forever King’s legions march ever closer. Gabriel and Dior will be drawn into a final battle that will shape the very fate of the Empire, but as the sun sets for what may be the last time, there will be no-one left for them to trust.
\nNot even each other.
\n
From holy cup comes holy light;
The faithful hand sets world aright.
And in the Seven Martyrs’ sight,
Mere man shall end this endless night.
It has been twenty-seven long years since the last sunrise. For nearly three decades, vampires have waged war against humanity; building their eternal empire even as they tear down our own. Now, only a few tiny sparks of light endure in a sea of darkness.
\nGabriel de León is a silversaint: a member of a holy brotherhood dedicated to defending realm and church from the creatures of the night. But even the Silver Order could not stem the tide once daylight failed us, and now, only Gabriel remains.
\nImprisoned by the very monsters he vowed to destroy, the last silversaint is forced to tell his story. A story of legendary battles and forbidden love, of faith lost and friendships won, of the Wars of the Blood and the Forever King and the quest for humanity’s last remaining hope:
\nThe Holy Grail.
The flames of civil war sweep across the Shima Imperium. With their plans to renew the Kazumitsu dynasty foiled, the Lotus Guild unleash their deadliest creation—a mechanical goliath known as the Earthcrusher, intended to unite the shattered Empire under a yoke of fear. With the Tiger Clan and their puppet Daimyo Hiro in tow, the Guild marches toward a battle for absolute dominion over the Isles.
\nYukiko and Buruu are forced to take leadership of the Kagé rebellion, gathering new allies and old friends in an effort to unite the country against the chi-mongers. But the ghosts of Buruu’s past stand between them and the army they need, and Kin’s betrayal has destroyed all trust among their allies. When a new foe joins the war tearing the Imperium apart, it will be all the pair can do to muster the strength to fight, let alone win.
\nThe traitor Kin walks the halls of Guild power, his destiny only a bloody knife-stroke away. Hana and Yoshi struggle to find their place in a world now looking to them as heroes. Secret cabals within the Lotus Guild claw and struggle; one toward darkness, the other toward light. And as the earth splits asunder, as armies destroy each other for rule over an empire of lifeless ash and the final secret about blood lotus is revealed, the people of Shima will learn one last, horrifying truth.
There is nothing a mother won't do to keep her children by her side.
Nothing.
Hanna is the station captain’s pampered daughter; Nik the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. But while the pair are struggling with the realities of life aboard the galaxy’s most boring space station, little do they know that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall, carrying news of the Kerenza invasion.
When an elite BeiTech strike team invades the station, Hanna and Nik are thrown together to defend their home. But alien predators are picking off the station residents one by one, and a malfunction in the station’s wormhole means the space-time continuum might be ripped in two before dinner. Soon Hanna and Nik aren’t just fighting for their own survival; the fate of everyone on the Hypatia - and possibly the known universe - is in their hands.
But relax. They’ve totally got this. They hope.
In a land where three suns almost never set, a ruthless assassin continues her quest for vengeance against the powers who destroyed her family.
\nMia Corvere has found her place among the Blades of Our Lady of Blessed Murder, but many in the Red Church hierarchy think she’s far from earned it. Plying her bloody trade in a backwater of the Republic, she’s no closer to ending the men who destroyed her familia; in fact, she’s told directly that Consul Scaeva is off limits. But after a deadly confrontation with an old enemy, Mia's suspicions about the Red Church’s true motives begin to grow.
\nWhen it’s announced that Scaeva will be making a rare public appearance at the conclusion of the grand games in Godsgrave, Mia defies the Church and sells herself to a gladiatorial collegium for a chance to finally end him. Upon the sands of the arena, Mia finds new allies, bitter rivals, and more questions about her strange affinity for the shadows. But as conspiracies unfold within the collegium walls, and the body count rises, Mia will be forced to choose between love and revenge, and uncover a secret that could change the very face of her world.
This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do. This afternoon, her planet was invaded.
The year is 2575, and two rival megacorporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than an ice-covered speck at the edge of the universe. Too bad nobody thought to warn the people living on it. With enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra - who are barely even talking to each other - are forced to fight their way onto an evacuating fleet, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.
But their problems are just getting started. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet's AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a tangled web of data to find the truth, it's clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: the ex-boyfriend she swore she'd never speak to again.
The mad Shōgun Yoritomo has been assassinated by the Stormdancer Yukiko, and the threat of civil war looms over the Shima Imperium. The Lotus Guild conspires to renew the nation’s broken dynasty and crush the growing rebellion simultaneously - by endorsing a new Shōgun who desires nothing more than to see Yukiko dead.
\nYukiko and the mighty thunder tiger Buruu have been cast in the role of heroes by the Kagé rebellion. But Yukiko herself is blinded by rage over her father’s death, and her ability to hear the thoughts of beasts is swelling beyond her power to control. Along with Buruu, Yukiko’s anchor is Kin, the rebel Guildsman who helped her escape from Yoritomo’s clutches. But Kin has his own secrets, and is haunted by visions of a future he’d rather die than see realised.
\nKagé assassins lurk within the Shōgun’s palace, plotting to end the new dynasty before it begins. A waif from Kigen’s gutters begins a friendship that could undo the entire empire. A new enemy gathers its strength, readying to push the fracturing Shima imperium into a war it cannot hope to survive. And across raging oceans, amongst islands of black glass, Yukiko and Buruu will face foes no katana or talon can defeat.
The ghosts of a blood-stained past.
Eve isn’t looking for secrets - she’s too busy looking over her shoulder. The robot gladiator she’s just spent six months building has been reduced to a smoking wreck, and the only thing keeping her Grandpa from the grave was the fistful of credits she just lost to the bookies. To top it off, she’s discovered she can destroy electronics with the power of her mind, and the puritanical Brotherhood are building a coffin her size. If she’s ever had a worse day, Eve can’t remember it.
But when Eve discovers the ruins of an android boy named Ezekiel in the scrap pile she calls home, her entire world comes crashing down. With her best friend Lemon Fresh and her robotic conscience, Cricket, in tow, she and Ezekiel will trek across deserts of irradiated glass, infiltrate towering megacities and scour the graveyard of humanity’s greatest folly to save the ones Eve loves, and learn the dark secrets of her past.
Even if those secrets were better off staying buried.
In a land where three suns almost never set, a fledgling killer joins a school of assassins, seeking vengeance against the powers who destroyed her family.
Daughter of an executed traitor, Mia Corvere is barely able to escape her father’s failed rebellion with her life. Alone and friendless, she hides in a city built from the bones of a dead god, hunted by the Senate and her father’s former comrades. But her gift for speaking with the shadows leads her to the door of a retired killer, and a future she never imagined.
Now, Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock of assassins in the entire Republic - the Red Church. If she bests her fellow students in contests of steel, poison and the subtle arts, she’ll be inducted among the Blades of the Lady of Blessed Murder, and one step closer to the vengeance she desires. But a killer is loose within the Church’s halls, the bloody secrets of Mia’s past return to haunt her, and a plot to bring down the entire congregation is unfolding in the shadows she so loves.
Will she even survive to initiation, let alone have her revenge?
Kady, Ezra, Hanna, and Nik narrowly escaped with their lives from the attacks on Heimdall station and now find themselves crammed with 2,000 refugees on the container ship, Mao. With the jump station destroyed and their resources scarce, the only option is to return to Kerenza - but who knows what they'll find seven months after the invasion?
Meanwhile, Kady's cousin, Asha, survived the initial BeiTech assault and has joined Kerenza's ragtag underground resistance. When Rhys - an old flame from Asha's past - reappears on Kerenza, the two find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict.
With time running out, a final battle will be waged on land and in space, heroes will fall, and hearts will be broken.
Arashitoras are supposed to be extinct. So when Yukiko and her warrior father Masaru are sent to capture one for the Shõgun, they fear that their lives are over - everyone knows what happens to those who fail the Lord of the Shima Isles. But the mission proves less impossible and more deadly than anyone expects.
\nSoon Yukiko finds herself stranded: a young woman alone in her country's last wilderness, with only a furious, crippled arashitora for company. Although she can hear his thoughts, and saved his life, all she knows for certain is he'd rather see her dead than help her. Yet trapped together in the forest, Yukiko and the beast soon discover a bond that neither of them expected.
Meanwhile, the country around them verges on collapse. A toxic fuel is choking the land, the machine-powered Lotus Guild is publicly burning those they deem Impure, and the Shõgun cares for nothing but his own dominion. Authority has always made Yukiko, but her world changes when she meets Kin, a young man with secrets, and the rebel Kagé cabal. She learns the horrifying extent of the Shõgun's crimes, both against her country and her family.
Returning to the city, Yukiko is determined to make the Shõgun pay - but what can one girl and a flightless arashitora do against the might of an empire?
Best friends have become enemies. Lovers have become strangers. And deciding whose side you're on could be the difference between life and death. For Eve and Lemon, discovering the truth about themselves - and each other - was too much for their friendship to take. But with the country on the brink of a new world war - this time between the BioMaas swarm at CityHive and Daedalus's army at Megopolis, loyalties will be pushed to the brink, unlikely alliances will form and with them, betrayals.
\nBut the threat doesn't stop there, because the lifelikes are determined to access the program that will set every robot free, a task requiring both Eve and Ana, the girl she was created to replace. In the end, violent clashes and heartbreaking choices reveal the true heroes . . . and they may not be who you think they are.
The celebration of the thirty-fifth wedding anniversary of Russell Calloway’s best friend, Washington Lee - the least likely monogamist of his acquaintance somehow having become over the years a model husband and father - at the Odeon in the Spring of 2020 sparks an at once funny and moving autumnal reckoning with mortality as the specter of the Covid-19 virus spreads.
\nIn this moment of unprecedented upheaval - frantic and fraught real-time response, piercing personal and political impact - the Calloways find themselves and their marriage tested in ways they could never have anticipated as fatal consequences ensue.
\n
Edie and Ron have been together for nearly fifty years, keeping each other afloat by the skin of their teeth. They’ve always been ordinary - until something very extraordinary happens.
\nWinning the lottery is everything they’ve ever wanted - well, almost.
\nBecause for the last twenty years, Edie and Ron have been running from a secret that tore their family apart. And when you can suddenly buy everything you’ve ever wanted, you realise that the only thing you really want is the one thing money can’t buy.
\n
Lizzy Chung has her life mapped out:
\n* Become a lawyer. Check.
* Join a prestigious law firm. Check.
* Make partner. In progress.
If all goes to plan, she'll be checking off that last box in a couple of years, making her parents proud, and living a successful, fulfilled life in L.A. One thing that isn't part of her plan? Passing out from a panic attack during a pivotal moment in her career.
\nLizzy decides that what she needs is a place to recharge, and where better than the small California town where she spent her childhood summers with her best friend, Jack Park.
\nNow that Lizzie is back, Jack has three weeks to spend with the girl of his dreams - while concealing his decades-long crush on her. Something that becomes increasingly difficult when he agrees to help Lizzie revamp the local bookstore.
\nRomance amongst the dusty shelves and books may not be in Lizzy's plan, but could this new page lead her to the love story she never expected?
\n
No serious relationships. This is the one rule Tara Park made for herself and it has been working swimmingly, especially since she's busy with Weldon Brewery. But when Seth Kim, temptation personified and her best friend's new brother-in-law walks into her life, Tara might be willing to bend her golden rule . . . but only for four dates, which she agreed to after a few good rounds of beer - and a game of truth or dare.
\nSeth Kim can't believe Tara agreed to his dating dare. He's leaving for a new job in Paris in a month and a no-strings attached fling seemed like a nice distraction for both . . . But while their dates have a tendency to hit roadblocks, their non-dates and chance meetings are becoming frequent - and heated. What was supposed to be a little fun game is turning into something that neither is ready for.
\nBut sometimes, the best things in life are the ones we never see coming.
\n
Nine-tailed fox spirit Sunny Cho has spent years running from her destiny, but fate is upon her. Inevitable or not, she doesn’t like it one bit.
\nAfter a harrowing battle with a dark enemy from her past, Sunny has nowhere left to go but back to the Realm of Four Kingdoms. She grudgingly trains as a suhoshin cadet by day while learning to harness the Yeoiju’s magic by night . . . to disheartening results. At least throwing herself into training with Jihun and her suhoshin friends keeps her from running to Ethan - a love that can never be.
\nBut there are more immediate dangers to fear than the slow fracturing of her heart. Tyranny, deadly secrets, and betrayal reign in the Realm of Four Kingdoms. And eternal darkness threatens magical and mortal worlds alike. To stop the rise of evil, Sunny must embrace the full force of her powers . . . or risk being consumed by the darkness within.
\n
Through every battle won and enemy defeated, Sunny thought she was the good guy - until now. The eternal darkness has breached the Realm of Four Kingdoms, threatening to consume all life, and her power may be the only hope for salvation. But what if she accidentally destroys the realm instead?
\nSunny must return to the Realm of Four Kingdoms and face her destiny - for her friends, for Ethan, for everyone she’s sworn to protect. Though no longer certain she’s the hero they deserve, she will battle the darkness across the kingdoms, except for the one place she’s forbidden: the Kingdom of Mountains where Ethan rules.
\nAs ancient prophecies unfold and the gods’ buried secrets emerge, Sunny and Ethan find themselves caught between duty and desire. Their fated love could be their greatest strength, or their ultimate downfall.
\nIn this epic conclusion, they must choose: follow destiny’s path, or forge their own way forward - even if it means watching everything they love burn in the flames of their defiance.
\n
In a race to stop an ancient evil from destroying the worlds as they know them, Sunny comes to a startling, heartbreaking if she chooses love - everything will burn.
\nSunny Cho aspires to be the dullest, least interesting person in any given room, which can be challenging for a nine-tailed fox spirit. So she drifts from city to city - staying clear of any and all attachment - and keeps her fox buried deep inside her. It is better this way. She would rather live as half of herself than risk losing control of her terrible powers.
\nEthan Lee, a friend she left behind eight years ago, is a brilliant and distractingly hot PI. When he tracks her down and asks her to help him find his brother’s murderer, Sunny knows her uneventful life is about to be turned upside down.
\nTraversing the mortal realm and the world of gods, Sunny and Ethan discover their quest is much more dire than mere vengeance, and their friendship might be . . . more. An ancient evil is stirring, and Sunny is faced with an impossible save the worlds from annihilation or claim the love fated by the heavens.
\n
Aubrey Choi loves living in her small town nestled in the foothills of California, running her highly successful bakery away from the watch of her strict Korean parents. When a cake mix-up and a harsh review threaten all of her hard work and her livelihood, she never thought the jaded food critic would turn out to be her one-night stand. And she sure as hell never thought she’d see her gorgeous Korean unicorn again. But when Landon Kim waltzes into her bakery trying to clean up the mess he had a huge hand in making, Aubrey is torn between throwing and hearing him out.
\nWhen she hears his plan to help save her business, Aubrey knows that spending three weeks in California wine country working with Landon is a sure recipe for disaster. Her head is telling her to take the chance to save her bakery while her heart - and her hormones - are at war on whether to give him a second chance. And it just so happens that Landon’s meddling friends want them to spend those three weeks as close as possible . . . by sharing a villa.
\nWhen things start heating up, both in and out of the kitchen, Aubrey will have to make a choice - to stick it out or risk her heart.
\n
Two-year-old Greta Greene was sitting with her grandmother on a park bench on the Upper West Side of Manhattan when a brick crumbled from a windowsill overhead, striking her unconscious. She is immediately rushed to the hospital. Once More We Saw Stars begins with this event, leading the reader into the unimaginable.
\nBut although it begins with the anguish Jayson and his wife Stacy confront in the wake of their daughter’s trauma and the hours leading up to her death, it quickly becomes a narrative that is as much about hope and healing as it is about grief and loss. Jayson recognises, even in the very midst of his ordeal, that there will be a life for him beyond it - that if only he can continue moving forward, from one moment to the next, he will survive what seems unsurvivable.
\nWith raw honesty, deep emotion, and exquisite tenderness, he captures both the fragility of life and absoluteness of death, and most important of all, the unconquerable power of love. This is an unforgettable memoir of courage and transformation - and a book that will change the way you look at the world.
Anna is shattered by the violent death of her son, Alex, and tormented by the question of whether it was an accident or a suicide. Samantha is Alex’s best friend, and the only eyewitness to his death. She keeps returning to the cliff where she watched him either jump or fall, trying to sift through the shards. Aviva is an “upload,” a digital entity composed of the sense memories of a human tether. But she’s “emancipated,” having left her human behind. Set free from her source and harboring a troubling secret, she finds temporary solace in the body of Cathy, a self-destructive ex-addict turned AI professor and upload-rights activist.
\nWith UnWorld, Jayson Greene envisions a grim but eerily familiar near-future where all lines have blurred - between visceral and digital, human and machine, real and unreal. As Anna, Cathy, Sam, and Aviva’s stories hurtle toward each other, the stakes of UnWorld reveal themselves with electrifying intensity: What happens to the soul when it is splintered by grief? Where does love reside except in memory? What does it mean to be conscious, to be human, to be alive?
In the spring of 1969, Mrs. Claire Davis struggles through a discontented life to play the perfect homemaker. When beautiful, unmarried Jackie Callas moves in next door, the mysterious and thoroughly modern photographer upends everything Claire thought was normal.
\nEmbracing Jackie’s friendship while trying to avoid the judgment of gossipy Acacia Circle, Claire finds herself swept down a path of longing and self-discovery that shatters her suburban bubble.
\nBut when her secret dreams threaten to become real, will Claire have the strength to choose love over safety?
Workaholic Eleanor Cromwell blows into rural Canada, laser focused on her real estate development project. Given the locals already hate her father’s company, she plans to hide away in a cabin and conceal her identity to get the job done. And then her car breaks down . . .
\nSweet, smart, goofy mechanic Dani Cooper is about as laid-back as they come, all rumpled flannels and cheeky grins. Meeting an uptight, out-of-town stranger sparks more than just a tire change.
\nWhat starts as a whirlwind summer fling might turn into something more . . . except Eleanor’s secret threatens to tear everything apart.
Shunned by his old colleagues, and dividing his time between a dead-end job and the bottom of a whisky bottle, former Police Scotland Detective Superintendent Bob Hoon’s life is a mess.
\nThen an old face from Hoon’s Special Forces days turns up asking for help: his teenage daughter has been missing for months, the police have drawn a blank, and he needs the kind of help that only Hoon can provide.
\nAnd besides, Hoon owes him one.
\nFrom the Highlands of Scotland, to the mean streets of London, Hoon’s relentless hunt for the girl will see him make new friends and encounter old enemies. Enemies who know what happened to the girl. And to hundreds more like her.
\nBut Hoon’s been given something that makes him dangerous, something he thought he’d long-since lost: a purpose.
\nHe may be a disgraced ex-copper, a barely-functioning alcoholic, and a borderline psychopath, but Bob Hoon still believes in justice.
\nAnd he’s just the foul-mouthed **** to dish some out.
\n
Following his brutal search for the missing daughter of an old army colleague, Hoon is being hunted by the Loop, a secretive criminal cabal with members in very high places and a tendency to eliminate all those who stand against it.
\n
Unfortunately for them, Hoon has never been one to back down from a fight, and he isn’t about to start now. Instead, he’s going to burn their whole damn organisation to the ground. But first, he’s going to have to get inside.
He may be a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking psychopath with a death wish, but Bob Hoon is about to do something he hasn’t done in years.
He’s going undercover.
Disgraced ex-cop Robert Hoon has crossed the wrong people for the last time.
\nHaving struck a humiliating blow against the criminal network known as the Loop, Hoon has been targeted by the Alphas, an elite squad of assassins who will not stop until he is dead.
\nOutnumbered, outgunned, and on unfamiliar territory, Hoon’s only chance of survival lies several hundred miles north, in a place he knows better than anyone else on Earth.
\nHe swore he’d never set foot there again, but almost four decades after he left, Bob Hoon is finally going home.
\n
In early twentieth century Japan, women have few rights. Yet one precocious poet - a brooding daughter, locked in her room at night by protective parents - runs away from home to live a life of her choosing.
\nShe falls in love with a fellow poet and follows him across Siberia to Paris, where they witness the last days of the Belle Epoque. She perseveres through poverty, back-to-back pregnancies, infidelity, earthquake and fire, to become a name every Japanese schoolchild knows today as a pioneering feminist poet and the first person to translate the classical Tale of Genji into modern Japanese.
\nIn her single-minded dedication to her art, she inflicts wounds on a daughter that echo from her own childhood. She sets out to make amends, knowing it may be too late.
\n
This epic sequel to Waking Fire follows a girl forced to leave home for the first time to confront her destiny - and the ancient evil dragon god set to destroy the world.
Naira Khoum has only known life in Lagusa, a quiet village at the desert’s end. But to the rest of the world, Lagusa is a myth, its location shrouded in secrecy. While war rages to the north led by power-hungry Sothpike and his army of undead monsters called Dambi, Naira’s people live in peace.
\nUntil the impossible happens - Lagusa is attacked by a Mistress sent to do Sothpike’s bidding with a hoard of Dambi under her control. The Mistress is looking for something, and she’s willing to let her Dambi destroy Lagusa to get it.
\nDesperate to protect her home, Naira convinces her twin brother Nez and handsome refugee Kal to join the newly formed resistance with her. Together, they’ll have to figure out what the Mistress wants - before there’s nothing left of Lagusa to save.
\n
Raine Stone was the sole survivor of a horrific creature while camping. Her account of the attack was attributed to shock, but Raine knows all too well that her story is true because now she carries that same Beast inside her.
\nShe’s been restraining its violent urges by letting it 'feed' on the pain and chaos she’s exposed to as an ER nurse, and by playing vigilante against would-be muggers at night. But when Raine uses the Beast’s energy to heal a frail elderly gentleman from a seemingly random attack, she opens herself to a new world of danger - literally.
\nRemington “Remy” Byrne knows that the wall between a realm of deadly mythic creatures and our own world is very thin; he’s the Warden who guards the gateways between them. He also rules the supernatural creatures living in secret among us. Raine’s Beast makes her an intruder on Remy’s territory, but the elderly gentleman she saved is Remy’s grandfather, and her Beast contains power that could tip the scales in a sinister plot against Remy’s rule - if Raine allies with him.
\nWill they be friends or foes . . . or will the dangerous attraction between them turn into something else? And can our world be saved by their explosive alliance?
\n
American Dirt is a rare exploration into the inner hearts of people willing to sacrifice everything for a glimmer of hope.
Lydia Quixano Perez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable.
Even though she knows they'll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with four books he would like to buy - two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia's husband's tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.
American Dirt will leave readers utterly changed. It is a page-turner; it is a literary achievement; it is filled with poignancy, drama, and humanity on every page. It is one of the most important books for our times.
On her wedding day in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1968, Rafaela Acuña y Daubón has mild misgivings, but she marries Peter Brennan Jr. anyway, in a blaze of romantic optimism. She has no way of knowing how dramatically her life will change when she uproots her young family to start over in the American Midwest, unleashing a fleet of disappointments.
\nAgainst the backdrop of her mother’s isolation in St. Louis, Missouri in the 1980s, Rafaela’s daughter, Ruth Brennan, longs only to belong. Eager to fit in, Ruth lets go of her language, habits, and childhood memories of Puerto Rico. It's not until decades later, when Ruth’s own daughter, Daisy, returns to Puerto Rico that her mother and grandmother begin to truly reflect on the choices that have come to define their lives.
\nWhen a hurricane ravages the island in 2023, leaving Daisy critically injured, Rafaela and Ruth return to the city where it all began. As they gather at Daisy’s bedside, they’re confronted by the pasts that brought them to this point. We follow them as they come of age, fall in love, take risks, and contend with all the heartbreaks, triumphs, and reversals of fortune - both good and bad - that make up a meaningful life. As old memories come to light, so do buried secrets, leaving everyone in the family wondering exactly where it is that they belong.
\nA striking, resonant examination of marriage, family, and identity, Speak to Me of Home is ultimately a story of mothers and daughters that asks: how can three women who share geography and genetics have such wildly different ideas of where it is they come from? And more importantly, can they discover the common language to find their way home?
A transformational, transformative story about videogames, three queer friends, and the code(s) they learn to survive.
\nIt is 1998; Lilith, Sash, and Abraxa are teenagers, and they are making Saga of the Sorceress, a game that will change everything, if only for the three of them.
\n18 years later, Saga of the Sorceress still exists only on the scattered drives of its creators. Lilith might be the first trans woman to ever work as an Assistant Loan Underwriter at Dollarwise Investments in Brooklyn. Sash is in Brooklyn as well, working as a research assistant and part-time webcam dominatrix.
\nNeither knows that the other is there, or that Abraxa, the third member of Invocation LLC, is just across the Hudson River, sleeping on the floor of a friend’s grandparents’ Jersey City home. They have never met in person, and have been out of touch for years, but none have forgotten the sorceress, or her quest, still far from finished.
\n
A tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that, despite its profound flaws, gave the author the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an \"excitement addict.\" Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.
Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.
What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.
For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots. Now she tells her own story.
Sam Capra is living the life of his dreams.
He’s a brilliant young CIA agent, stationed in London. His wife Lucy is seven months pregnant with their first child. They have a wonderful home, and are deeply in love.
They have everything they could hope for . . . until they lose it all in one horrifying moment.
On a bright, sunny day, Sam receives a call from Lucy while he’s at work. She tells him to leave the building immediately. He does . . . just before it explodes, killing everyone inside. Lucy vanishes, and Sam wakes up in a prison cell. As the lone survivor of the attack, he is branded by the CIA as a murderer and a traitor.
Escaping from the agency, Sam launches into a desperate hunt to save his kidnapped wife and child, and to reveal the unknown enemy who has set him up and stolen his family. But the destruction of Sam’s life was only step one in an extraordinary plot - and now Sam must become a new kind of hero.
Henry North is a down-on-his-luck cybersecurity expert from New Orleans. Adam Zhang is the cofounder of one of Austin’s most successful venture capitalist firms. These two men didn’t know each other. They had never met. Yet they died together, violently, in a place neither had any business being.
When Henry doesn’t return from a business trip, his wife, Kirsten, panics - and then gets an anonymous phone call: “Your husband is dead in Austin.”
Flora Zhang knew her husband was keeping secrets. She suspected an affair, but she had decided she could forgive him for his weakness - until her husband ended up dead. And with no explanation for her husband’s murder, the police begin to suspect her.
Together, these two widows will face a powerful foe determined to write a false narrative about the murders. In doing so, neither Flora nor Kirsten will remain the women the world thought they were.
The simplest beginnings can unravel a life. For Sam Capra, it is the moment a beautiful young woman walks into his San Francisco bar.
Sam doesn't want trouble. An ex-CIA agent, his only desire now is to build a quiet, peaceful home for himself and his infant son. But Diana Keene is no ordinary customer. She's pursued by two gunmen, and when she finds Sam, she whispers an urgent, desperate plea: \"Help me.\"
And without any warning, Sam is thrust into a fight for his life. For Diana is being hunted by a deadly network-a shadowy alliance of select, influential men and women who use their connections, their authority, and their wealth to bend the world to their will. Now, this network aims its relentless fury against the man interfering with their plans to seize a new level of power: Sam Capra.
Threatened on all sides, Sam has only one hope to survive the network's all-consuming attack and return to his life with his son . . . he must destroy the man who owns the people who run the world.
\n
Sam Capra's friend Steve has been murdered, shot dead in the rain outside of his Miami bar. The only lead: a mysterious, beautiful stranger Steve tried to protect. To avenge his friend, Sam goes undercover into the Varelas, one of Miami's most prominent and dangerous families.
\nNow on the inside, playing a part where one wrong move means death, Sam faces a powerful, unstable tycoon intent on dividing his business empire between his three very different children, who each may hold murderous secrets of their own.
\nSam is relentlessly drawn into this family's intense drama, amplifying painful echoes of his own shattered relationships as a son, brother, father, and husband. And just when he thinks he understands why the family is self-destructing, he discovers a lethal secret so shocking that the Varelas cannot let him walk away alive . . .
\n
Each of us has a question we dread. When the simple community of Lakehaven is shaken by a violent crime, doubts begin to arise among the locals about whom they can trust.
In a quiet neighborhood in the wealthy Austin suburb of Lakehaven, the body of Danielle Roberts is discovered on a park bench. Danielle was a beloved member of the community, an adoption consultant who delivered the joy of parenthood to a number of local families. Her murder shocks Lakehaven.
Perhaps no other family is as crushed as the Pollitts, who lived two houses down from Danielle and thought of her almost like family. Her death becomes the catalyst for a maelstrom of suspicion and intrigue. You have been told a huge lie, an anonymous email charges the son, Grant. No one can learn the truth now, thinks the father, Kyle. Never ask me what I'd do to protect my family, resolves the wife, Iris. I'll do whatever it takes to save him, vows the daughter, Julia, of Danielle's grieving teenage son.
The Pollitts always thought they'd always be there for each other. When each begins to suspect the others of the unimaginable, the strength of their bonds will be tested in extraordinary new ways. The latest from New York Times bestselling author Jeff Abbott ishis most suspenseful thriller yet: a riveting tale of the dangerous secrets one family has concealed -- and what happens when the question each Pollitt hoped they'd never be asked threatens to expose their darkest truths.
Sam Capra is on a one-man mission to find his brother . . .
\nAnd to stop a war.
\nThe First Order
\nTwo brothers. One dead, executed by extremists on a grainy video. The other forged into a top undercover agent. But now Sam Capra has reason to believe that his brother, Danny, may be alive. And if Danny has been living a secret life these past years, where has he been - and what has he become?
\nSam's desperate search for his brother leads him into a modern heart of darkness: the Russian elite inner circle, a group of ruthless ex-KGB billionaires who owe fealty to Russia's corrupt president, Morozov. One of these men wants Morozov dead. And Danny will be the one to kill him - on American soil.
\nTo save his brother - and to save the world from certain war - Sam, along with his mysterious partner, Mila, must stop Danny from killing Morozov. The mission will take Sam from the slums of Pakistan to the hipster galleries of Brooklyn to the Caribbean playgrounds of the superrich. And as Sam untangles the secret past locked in his brother's heart, he may be forced to make a choice between his brother - and the greater good . . .
They framed me.
\nThey abducted my wife.
\nThey took my child.
\nI want him back.
\nSam Capra has one reason to live: to reclaim his baby son from the people who kidnapped him. Teaming up with a young mother whose daughter went missing, he tracks his child across the country in a dangerous, desperate race against time.
\n
My mom would never leave me.
This has been Mariah Dunning's motto. Her compass. Her belief. So when she glimpses her mother - who's been missing and presumed dead for the past two years - on the other side of a crowded food court, Mariah's conviction becomes stronger than ever. Or is she losing her mind?
Her mother disappeared without a trace and - even without a body or any physical evidence - suspicion for her murder immediately fell upon Mariah's father, leaving both father and daughter ostracized from their close-knit community.
Until one day, Mariah stumbles upon the fact that two other women have also disappeared recently from Lakehaven. And all three women had the same name: Beth.
Is it merely an unlikely coincidence? Or is there a deeper, sinister connection between the three Beths?
Mariah would give anything to find out what happened to her mother. But the truth may be worse than she could have imagined . . .
Sam Capra and his thirteen-year-old son, Daniel, are living a quiet life in Austin, Texas, where Sam continues to run his collection of bars and nightclubs around the world. He's had no recent contact with his former partner, Mila, and is working for America's most secret espionage agency, known as Section K - all while trying to be a good suburban dad.
Suddenly, Sam is approached by a fellow spy with an incredible revelation: Markus Bolt is missing. Bolt is the last American traitor, who had turned over allied agent names and military secrets to the Russians. He fled to Moscow when he was discovered, but now a trusted source inside Russia tells Section K that Markus Bolt has vanished from Moscow - and the Americans need to find him before the Russians do.
Sam is charged with making contact with Bolt's abandoned American daughter, Amanda, and determining if she's had any contact with her father. He must discover the reason behind Bolt's unexpected run and protect Amanda from the killers hunting her father.
But as Sam's search for Bolt grows more dangerous, Sam faces a rising threat born of long‑ago secrets - one that could change his and his son's lives forever.
In this beautifully written memoir, an accomplished journalist leaves New York City to work as an amateur farmhand at Princeton Seminary, while harvesting spiritual lessons that change his life.
\nJeff Chu had a seemingly successful life. As a writer at a fast-paced magazine company, he penned glossy profiles of business leaders while living with his husband in a New York City brownstone. Yet he struggled, as many of us do, with feelings of loneliness and disillusionment, all while trying to reconcile his identity as a first-generation Chinese American. Seeking a remedy, he left his job and enrolled at Princeton Seminary’s “Farminary,” a 21-acre farm where students learn to work the soil while asking the big questions of life.
\nAs the seasons turn, Chu introduces us to a cast of characters, human and not, each with their own lesson to teach. From the cranes that visit the pond, to the worms that turn waste into fertile soil, to the Chinese long beans that get passed over in the farm’s CSA, Chu gently interrogates his relationship with the food on his plate and his own heritage, discovering what the earth is trying to teach us - if we’ll stop and listen.
\nIn gorgeous, moving prose, Good Soil helps readers connect to the land and to each other at a time when we are drawn most to the phones in our hands. For nature lovers, foodies, and anyone who has daydreamed about a more meaningful life, this book is a tribute to friendship, acceptance, spirituality, and how love can grow from the unlikeliest of places.
\n
Gogmagog tells the story of an epic journey through the sixty-mile long ghost of a dragon.
\nTravel is by boat, a rickety steam launch captained by veteran taxi pilot Cady Meade, on the river Nysis. In her heyday Cady carried people and goods from the thriving seaports of the estuary into Ludwich, the capital city. Now she’s drunk, holed up in a rundown seaside resort, telling her bawdy tales for shots of rum. All that’s about to change, when two strangers seek her out, asking for transport, one of whom - a young girl - is very ill, and in great danger. The other, an artificial being of singular character, has secrets hidden inside his crystal skull. So begins the voyage of the Juniper.
\nThe Nysis is unlike any other river. Mysteries unfold with each port of call. Not many can navigate these channels, not many know of its whirlpools and sandbanks, and of the ravenous creatures that lurk beneath the surface. Cady used to have the necessary knowledge, and the powers of spectral navigation. But her glory days are well behind her now.
\nThis might well be her final journey.
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Luluda tells the story of a journey through a strange modern city whose power is sourced from the ghost of a dragon. Ludwich may no longer be at war with its great political rival overseas, but veteran sailor Cady Meade, survivor of many battles, suspects that the hard-won peace is about to break. She promises to deliver a preternatural ten-year old girl to a coming-of-age festival in the heart of Ludwich. But she has been warned by the prophets that dangers lie ahead.
\nCady suspects that the young girl’s fate is entwined with that of the city. When the girl disappears, the old sailor must hunt her down, accompanied by a know-it-all mechanical man whose circuits are slowly grinding to dust. But Cady’s mission has always been to guard Ludwich from enemies both known and occult, and she will never give up.
\nFollowing the course of the River Nysis through the city, and beyond, Cady must uncover the final mysteries of the great dragon Haakenur’s life and death and afterlife. Her greatest battle is about to begin.
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In a city dissolving into an infected sprawl of ideas, where words come to life and reality is contaminated by stories, John Nyquist wakes up in a room with a dead body . . .
\nThe dead man’s impossible whispers plunge him into a murder investigation like no other. Clues point him deeper into an unfolding story infesting its participants as reality blurs between place and genre.
\nOnly one man can hope to put it all back together into some kind of order, enough that lives can be saved . . .
\nThat man is Nyquist, and he is lost.
\nIn the winter of 1959, private eye John Nyquist arrives in the village of Hoxley-on-the-Hale with only a package of cryptic photographs, and the frail hope of finding an answer to a question he’s been asking since his childhood.
But the villagers offer little help, as each day brings a twisted new rule in the name of a different Saint that they, and Nyquist, must follow. And there are whispers of the return of the Tolly Man, an avatar of chaos in a terrible mask . . .
As Nyquist struggles to distinguish friend from foe, and the Tolly Man draws nearer, he must race to finally settle the one mystery he has never been able to solve: the disappearance of his father.
Below the neon skies of Dayzone – where the lights never go out, and night has been banished – lowly private eye John Nyquist takes on a teenage runaway case. His quest takes him from Dayzone into the permanent dark of Nocturna.
As the vicious, seemingly invisible serial killer known only as Quicksilver haunts the streets, Nyquist starts to suspect that the runaway girl holds within her the key to the city's fate. In the end, there's only one place left to search: the shadow-choked zone known as Dusk.
1968, Joe Sutter is enjoying his last summer before going to secondary school. But this is another world; like ours but very different. Beyond and beside the world we know is Greot; a vast swirling rainbow of many-coloured dust. It settles on the dead, it swathes cities and fields. Joe is one of the 10% of the population who have the gift of being able to see it. But neither he or nor anyone else know what Greot is. Is it the trillion-eyed god? Is it the history of everything told grain-by-grain? Is it prophecy? Is it the magic of creativity?
\nJoe knows he is something of an outsider, all he wants to do is draw comics and listen to music but one day, as the moon rises over Brendle hill, he meets an old writer of cheap pulp SF books who is determined to pass on to Joe the power and joy of telling stories and everything changes. Decades later Joe is a successful writer of strange and powerful SF novels. And now the time has come to tell the story of how he became a writer and how Greot coloured everything.
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In the year 1960, private eye John Nyquist arrives in Delirium, a city of a million borders, to pursue his strangest case yet: tracking down the stolen sentient image of faded rock'n'roll star Vince Craven.
As Nyquist tracks Vince's image through Delirium, crossing a series of ever-stranger and more surreal borderzones, he hears tantalising stories of a First Border, Omata, hidden within the depths of the city. But to find it, he'll have to cross into the fractured minds of Delirium's residents, and even into his own . . .
Ryan Crane wasn’t looking for trouble - just a cup of coffee. But when this cop spots a gunman emerging from an unmarked van, he leaps into action and unknowingly saves John Ward, a billionaire with presidential aspirations, from an assassination attempt.
\nAs thanks for Ryan’s quick thinking, Ward offers him the chance of a lifetime: to join a group of lucky civilians chosen to accompany three veteran astronauts on the first manned mission to Saturn’s moon Titan.
\nA devoted family man, Ryan is reluctant to leave on this two-year expedition, yet with the encouragement of his loving wife - and an exorbitant paycheck guaranteeing lifetime care for their disabled son - he crews up and ventures into a new frontier.
\nBut as the ship is circling Titan, it is rocked by an unexplained series of explosions. The crew works together to get back on course, and they return to Earth as heroes.
\nWhen the fanfare dies down, Ryan and his fellow astronauts notice that things are different. Some changes are good, such as lavish upgrades to their homes, but others are more disconcerting. Before the group can connect, mysterious figures start tailing them, and their communications are scrambled.
\nSeparated and suspicious, the crew must uncover the truth and decide how far they’re willing to go to return to their normal lives. Just when their space adventure seemingly ends, it shockingly begins.
Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, the surprise fourth volume in Jeff VanderMeer’s blockbuster Southern Reach Trilogy.
\nWhen the Southern Reach Trilogy was first published a decade ago, it was an instant sensation, celebrated in a front-page New York Times story before publication, hailed by Stephen King and many others. Each volume climbed the bestsellers list; awards were won; the books made the rare transition from paperback original to hardcover; the movie adaptation became a cult classic. All told, the trilogy has sold more than a million copies and has secured its place in the pantheon of twenty-first-century literature.
\nAnd yet for all this, for Jeff VanderMeer there was never full closure to the story of Area X. There were a few mysteries that had gone unsolved, some key points of view never aired. There were stories left to tell. There remained questions about who had been complicit in creating the conditions for Area X to take hold; the story of the first mission into the Forgotten Coast - before Area X was called Area X - had never been fully told; and what if someone had foreseen the world after Acceptance? How crazy would they seem?
\nStructured in three parts, each recounting a new expedition, there are some long-awaited answers here, to be sure, but also more questions, and profound new surprises. Absolution is a brilliant, beautiful, and ever-terrifying plunge into unique and fertile literary territory. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.
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It is winter in Area X, the mysterious wilderness that has defied explanation for thirty years, rebuffing expedition after expedition, refusing to reveal its secrets. As Area X expands, the agency tasked with investigating and overseeing it - the Southern Reach - has collapsed on itself in confusion. Now one last, desperate team crosses the border, determined to reach a remote island that may hold the answers they've been seeking. If they fail, the outer world is in peril.
Meanwhile, Acceptance tunnels ever deeper into the circumstances surrounding the creation of Area X - what initiated this unnatural upheaval? Among the many who have tried, who has gotten close to understanding Area X - and who may have been corrupted by it?
In this last installment of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, the mysteries of Area X may be solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profound - or terrifying.
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilisation. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another.
\nThe members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.
The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers - but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.
After thirty years, the only human engagement with Area X - a seemingly malevolent landscape surrounded by an invisible border and mysteriously wiped clean of all signs of civilisation - has been a series of expeditions overseen by a government agency so secret it has almost been forgotten: the Southern Reach. Following the tumultuous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the agency is in complete disarray.
John Rodríguez (aka \"Control\") is the Southern Reach's newly appointed head. Working with a distrustful but desperate team, a series of frustrating interrogations, a cache of hidden notes, and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, Control begins to penetrate the secrets of Area X. But with each discovery he must confront disturbing truths about himself and the agency he's pledged to serve.
In Authority, the second volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, Area X's most disturbing questions are answered . . . but the answers are far from reassuring.
\"Am I a person?\" Borne asked me.
\"Yes, you are a person,\" I told him. \"But like a person, you can be a weapon, too.\"
In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city is dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company - a biotech firm now derelict - and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech.
One day, Rachel finds Borne during a scavenging mission and takes him home. Borne as salvage is little more than a green lump - plant or animal? - but exudes a strange charisma. Borne reminds Rachel of the marine life from the island nation of her birth, now lost to rising seas. There is an attachment she resents: in this world any weakness can kill you.
Yet, against her instincts - and definitely against Wick’s wishes - Rachel keeps Borne. She cannot help herself. Borne, learning to speak, learning about the world, is fun to be with, and in a world so broken that innocence is a precious thing. For Borne makes Rachel see beauty in the desolation around her. She begins to feel a protectiveness she can ill afford.
\"He was born, but I had borne him.\"
But as Borne grows, he begins to threaten the balance of power in the city and to put the security of her sanctuary with Wick at risk. For the Company, it seems, may not be truly dead, and new enemies are creeping in. What Borne will lay bare to Rachel as he changes is how precarious her existence has been, and how dependent on subterfuge and secrets. In the aftermath, nothing may ever be the same.
City of elegance and squalor. Of religious fervour and wanton lusts. And everywhere, on the walls of courtyards and churches, an incandescent fungus of mysterious and ominous origin.
\nIn Ambergris, a would-be suitor discovers that a sunlit street can become a killing ground in the blink of an eye. An artist receives an invitation to a beheading - and finds himself enchanted. And a patient in a mental institution is convinced he's made up a city called Ambergris, imagined its every last detail, and that he's really from a place called Chicago.
\nAmbergris is a cruelly beautiful metropolis - a haven for artists and thieves, for composers and murderers. And once there, anything can happen.
\n
Under the watchful eye of The Company, three characters - Grayson, Morse and Chen - shapeshifters, amorphous, part human, part extensions of the landscape, make their way through forces that would consume them. A blue fox, a giant fish and language stretched to the limit.
A messianic blue fox who slips through warrens of time and space on a mysterious mission. A homeless woman haunted by a demon who finds the key to all things in a strange journal. A giant leviathan of a fish, centuries old, who hides a secret, remembering a past that may not be its own. Three ragtag rebels waging an endless war for the fate of the world against an all-powerful corporation. A raving madman who wanders the desert lost in the past, haunted by his own creation: an invisible monster whose name he has forgotten and whose purpose remains hidden.
Jeff VanderMeer's Dead Astronauts presents a City with no name of its own where, in the shadow of the all-powerful Company, lives human and otherwise converge in terrifying and miraculous ways. At stake: the fate of the future, the fate of Earth - all the Earths.
In a deserted tenement in an occupied city, two dead bodies lie on a dusty floor as if they have fallen out of the air. One corpse is cut in half, the other is utterly unmarked. One is human, the other isn’t. The city of Ambergris is half ruined, rotten, its population controlled by narcotics, internment camps, and acts of terror. But its new masters want this case closed, urgently. Detective John Finch has just one week to solve it or be sent to the camps. With no ID for the victims, no clues, no leads, and precious little hope, Finch’s fate hangs in the balance.
\nBut there is more to this case than meets the eye. Enough to put Finch in the crosshairs of every spy, rebel, informer, and traitor in town. Under the shadow of the eldrich tower the occupiers are raising above the city, Finch is about to come face-to-face with a series of mysteries that will change him and Ambergris forever. Why does one of the victims most resemble a man thought to have been dead for a hundred years? What is the murders’ connection to an attempted genocide nearly six hundred years ago? And just what is the secret purpose of the occupiers’ tower?
\n
Security consultant “Jane Smith” receives an envelope with a key to a storage unit that holds a taxidermied hummingbird and clues leading her to a taxidermied salamander. Silvina, the dead woman who left the note, is a reputed ecoterrorist and the daughter of an Argentine industrialist. By taking the hummingbird from the storage unit, Jane sets in motion a series of events that quickly spin beyond her control.
Soon, Jane and her family are in danger, with few allies to help her make sense of the true scope of the peril. Is the only way to safety to follow in Silvina’s footsteps? Is it too late to stop? As she desperately seeks answers about why Silvina contacted her, time is running out—for her and possibly for the world.
Hummingbird Salamander is Jeff VanderMeer at his brilliant, cinematic best, wrapping profound questions about climate change, identity, and the world we live in into a tightly plotted thriller full of unexpected twists and elaborate conspiracy.
Jonathan Lambshead stands to inherit his deceased grandfather’s overstuffed mansion - a veritable cabinet of curiosities - once he and two schoolmates catalog its contents. But the three soon discover that the house is filled with far more than just oddities: It holds clues linking to an alt-Earth called Aurora, where the notorious English occultist Aleister Crowley has stormed back to life on a magic-fueled rampage across a surreal, through-the-looking-glass version of Europe replete with talking animals (and vegetables).
Swept into encounters with allies more unpredictable than enemies, Jonathan pieces together his destiny as a member of a secret society devoted to keeping our world separate from Aurora. But as the ground shifts and allegiances change with every step, he and his friends sink ever deeper into a deadly pursuit of the profound evil that is also chasing after them.
Janice Shriek, ex-society figure, narrates this tale with flamboyant intensity and under increasingly urgent conditions. We follow the adventures of her brother Duncan, an historian obsessed with a doomed love affair, and learn of a secret that may kill or transform him.
\nWe witness a war between rival publishing houses that will change Ambergris forever. And we’re introduced to the gray caps, a marginalised people armed with advanced fungal technologies, who’ve been waiting underground for their chance to mould the future of the city.
\nShriek: An Afterword by the Nebula Award winning author Jeff VanderMeer is an epic yet personal look at life, love and death in the vividly imagined city of Ambergris. And, through this tumultuous story of the family Shriek, the author shows his genius at capturing and displaying the bizarre.
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Nature offers sanctuary for a woman with a violent past. But anything can happen when borderlands are crossed.
\nSam has retreated to her late father’s rental house, a safe place to commune with the animals in the greenbelt out back, tend to her garden, and keep her secrets. Her sense of security slowly returns—until an aggressive neighbor from the other side of the ravine fells a tree on her property. How little he regards nature. Or understands its darkness. How little he knows Sam.
Bound by more than the search for a fantastical stolen tome, Eilean and Hoel plummet through the mirror gate into Leoneyis - a world on the brink of disaster as its sovereign’s reign begins to unravel. Enemies converge to destroy King Andrew, who has become headstrong and paranoid. His influence is undermined, and his kingdom is vulnerable. That’s what happens when a king is betrayed by a queen.
\nThe Queen of Brythonica is not just the rival of an anxious king. She’s in possession of the ancient tome that Eilean and Hoel seek, which could help her achieve immortality. She knows Eilean is coming for her, and she is every bit the match for the young wretched. After all, they learned under the same master.
\nEilean’s first mission: save King Andrew’s court lest it disappear under the floods of the Deep Fathoms. Her second: retrieve what is rightfully hers from the clutches of the Queen of Brythonica. To do so means confronting the queen in a duel of wits and magic.
\nThe fate of Leoneyis is left to Eilean. She must save one world to secure the future for which she is destined in her own.
Rescued from a world of poverty, Cettie Pratt has avoided a bleak destiny - until now. Deceived and manipulated, she has been groomed for the ultimate betrayal: to destroy her best friend and stop peace from uniting two war-torn worlds. Her path leads her to a mysterious underworld where appearances can be deceiving.
Sera Fitzempress knows the value she has to her enemies. As heir to the empire, she must keep her foes at bay and prevent them from unleashing a being of unspeakable evil upon the world while fighting a brutal war. But her enemies are more cunning than Sera expects, and the key to their plans is none other than her best friend.
Neither woman knows what to believe. Neither one knows if she can trust the other. Both Cettie and Sera have made decisions that have irrevocably changed them. But the decisions they have yet to make will determine the fate of their world . . .
A Mayan prophecy has waited for five centuries to be fulfilled. That time has come. Sacrifices will be made. Let the games begin.
\nWhen Jonathan Roth and his family are invited by their neighbors, the Beasleys, to join them at a luxury retreat in Cozumel, who can refuse? It’s the perfect winter getaway. Relaxing on the beach, gourmet food, sightseeing, and free accommodations. But if it sounds too good to be true, it is.
\nVilla Sara de Calakmul, owned by mysterious tycoon Jacob Calakmul, is more isolated compound than private resort. Armed guards patrol the jungle perimeters. Pictures of previous guests - long disappeared - adorn the walls. And there are whispers of something coming called “the game.” Even in the sweltering heat, the Roths feel a chill - and the fear that they haven’t been invited to Villa Sara. They’ve been lured. But for what purpose? And to what end?
\nFrom the ruins, a death cult is reborn. A prophecy to bring down Western civilization is being realized. As a legendary blood sport is engaged, the Roths themselves may need to call upon ancient powers if they’re to survive, escape, and save the world from annihilation.
Eilean was born a “wretched” - a lowly foundling raised by the Aldermaston of Tintern Abbey.
\nThen she’s chosen to assist in establishing the new abbey of Muirwood, now the site of a castle in the swampy Bearden Muir. Eilean’s role is as night servant to the druid Mordaunt, the king’s exiled advisor - and prisoner. He’s clever, dangerous, and invaluable to the Aldermaston. Mordaunt’s priceless secret: the hiding place of an ancient tome that reveals the existence of other worlds and the magic between them. Mordaunt knows how potent its words are and how dangerous they could be in the wrong hands.
\nBut can Eilean win him over? All she must do is gain Mordaunt’s confidence and trust and persuade the apostate to divulge his secret to her. But as she learns more from Mordaunt, Eilean’s loyalties begin to fray. And the risks are greater than she imagined. Despite betrayals, deceptions, and the deadly motivations of others, a girl from the flax fields is about to rise above her station.
\nBy exploring the potential of the power of an ancient spoken magic, Eilean is coming into her own.
Ransom Barton has served three Argentine kings. The new successor to the throne is the ruthless Jon-Landon, a fallible strategist when it comes to war. After losing against the Occitanian armies, the king forces Ransom to bear the blame and removes him from the council. But Jon-Landon isn’t yet through with humbling the honorable knight of Ceredigion.
\nWhen a retaliatory battle succeeds, Jon-Landon invites Ransom back into his circle. Though Ransom’s Fountain magic is made stronger by his fealty, he’s once again forced to make a terrible choice. And this time, Ransom’s wife, Claire, and their sons could pay the price for Ransom’s loyalty.
\nBut as tensions between Ceredigion and Occitania reignite and alliances at court begin to crumble, a desperate Jon-Landon discovers his only ally is the knight he betrayed. With the future of Kingfountain hanging in the balance, Ransom agrees to help. And as secret enemies reveal their endgame, Ransom knows that he may have to make the ultimate sacrifice for the survival of the Argentine dynasty.
As a plague of the gods spreads throughout the world, two men face the end times on opposing sides of good and evil.
\nIt began as a death-defying ritual in the Yucatán. Jonathon Roth and his family were pawns in an inconceivable endgame. Jacob Calakmul was its depraved and mystifying mastermind destined to fulfill an ancient prophecy, destroy the government, and bring about his personal Armageddon. Exposing the unbelievable truth to the authorities has made Roth’s life a nightmare.
\nRoth is under FBI protection in DC. His sons may be safe, but his wife has disappeared, and his daughter, Suki - a girl gifted with a special magic - is now Calakmul’s captive. She and her father are the keys to making Calakmul’s plot a horrifying reality. It’s already in motion. A deadly plague released in Cozumel and rooted in ancient mythology will wipe out cities across the globe so fast it’s impossible to imagine the near future. But Calakmul can. His prophesized end of days is here. And only Roth and Suki can stop it.
\nTo save their family, and all of humanity, what will Roth and his daughter risk? And what must they sacrifice in a final match with the ascending ruler of a terrifying new world order?
A devastating disaster has left the Forbidden Court in ashes, its fountains destroyed, and its magic at risk. It was destined as the site of Trynne Kiskaddon’s coronation as empress. Now, all Trynne can imagine is the roar of flames, the cries of Gahalatine’s people, and the smell of cinders in a city gone dark. Tragic as the threat to Kingfountain is, it’s nowhere near as foul as the treachery posed by Morwenna. Saboteur, conspirator, and full-blood sister of the king, she is prepared to set forth a wave of destruction that will eliminate everything that stands between her and possession of the throne.
But Trynne has her weapons, too - her magic, her resilience, her skills at intrigue, and especially, Fallon. The man who once swore his allegiance to Morwenna now stands by Trynne’s side as they venture into the unknown to protect those they love, reunite with a family scattered by diabolical forces, and safeguard a kingdom . . . as well as the destiny the Fountain has for each of them.
Following the downfall of a tyrant, years have passed in prosperity for the kingdom of Ceredigion. Now, as the time comes to celebrate the new king’s nuptials, the specter of a new enemy emerges to destroy all that has been painstakingly built in those years.
Tryneowy Kiskaddon has grown up learning military and diplomatic strategy from her father, one of the king’s closest advisors. She feels her destiny lies in defending the kingdom as a knight, not as a Wizr as her parents have decided, though no lady of the realm has taken up the sword in a century. As she seeks to understand her own Fountain-blessed powers, she studies in the tradition of her mother while training in secret and closely following the realm’s politics, alarmed by her mother’s vision of an impending clash and a devastating future.
But the pieces on fate’s game board are in motion, and on the eve of battle, a threatening force irrevocably changes the future of the kingdom and her own. Does Trynne have what it takes to maneuver Ceredigion’s key players into position and outsmart the kingdom’s enemies - even those still concealed in shadow?
Eilean is rising. A foundling raised in an abbey, she was entrusted by its imprisoned druid, Mordaunt, with an ancient tome. Its magical words can change the world. Eilean’s first mission: translate it. Her second: rescue a benevolent Aldermaston sentenced to death as a heretic by the high seer. But wielding power, knowledge, and ambition has now made Eilean the hunted.
\nIn pursuit is Captain Hoel Evnissyen, an inquisitor in service to the high seer’s demands. His objective is to track Eilean and steal Mordaunt’s invaluable work. But Hoel’s quest soon yields a fascination with the woman he’s been ordered to pursue. When invasion begins and the world erupts in chaos, Eilean and Hoel find themselves bound by their mutual wills to survive and, against all odds, realize they are not each other’s enemy.
\nBut now Eilean must decide who is friend and who is foe. Especially when the powerful tome falls into the wrong hands. The closer Eilean and Hoel get, the nearer they are to realising the part they must play in their kingdom’s destiny - and its ties to Eilean’s own mysterious past.
For three years, Sera Fitzempress has been a pawn in a gilded prison - the floating manor of Pavenham Sky. Disgraced and exiled from society, she has been isolated from the downtrodden she’s determined to liberate. But although Sera may seem subservient on the outside, the stubborn princess has only become emboldened.
Now in charge of her family’s estate, Cettie Pratt has grown into an independent young woman, although she continues to be tested by the high society of the clouds. Advancing in the magic of the Mysteries, Cettie is also a useful tool of defense during turbulent times. However, as more of Cettie’s mysterious past comes to light, her greatest challenge may be a reckless stranger with a dark secret.
The fog of war is drawing in, and with it comes a startling new enemy who may unravel secrets that both women would prefer stay hidden. But their secrets may be the only way to stop the coming darkness . . .
For Jonathon Roth and his family, a vacation in Cozumel became a nightmare. Pawns in a deadly ritual, Roth and his children barely escaped with their lives, and with the secrets of its mastermind, Jacob Calakmul. Calakmul’s endgame: to fulfill the Jaguar Prophecy - the foretelling of an inevitable Armageddon, one that will destroy entire nations. An ancient codex holds the key to stopping it. If Roth can decipher it.
\nFrom a museum in Dresden where a mysterious codex is on display to the Roths’ Montana home in the dead of winter, no place is safe from Calakmul’s reach. Obsessed with the legends of the magic of the Maya, Roth knows Calakmul’s powers are real. Roth’s own daughter possesses them too. As Calakmul and his henchmen close in, Roth and his children are running for their lives.
\nIn a prepper’s lair in the Montana mountains, Roth must piece together a terrifying puzzle to stop an apocalyptic vision from coming true. If it’s not already too late. Because the countdown to the end-time has already begun.
Survivor of a combat school, the orphaned Bingmei belongs to a band of mercenaries employed by a local ruler. Now the nobleman, and collector of rare artifacts, has entrusted Bingmei and the skilled team with a treacherous assignment: brave the wilderness’s dangers to retrieve the treasures of a lost palace buried in a glacier valley. But upsetting its tombs has a price.
Echion, emperor of the Grave Kingdom, ruler of darkness, Dragon of Night, has long been entombed. Now Bingmei has unwittingly awakened him and is answerable to a legendary prophecy. Destroying the dark lord before he reclaims the kingdoms of the living is her inherited mission. Killing Bingmei before she fulfills it is Echion’s.
Thrust unprepared into the role of savior, urged on by a renegade prince, and possessing a magic that is her destiny, Bingmei knows what she must do. But what must she risk to honor her ancestors? Bingmei’s fateful choice is one that neither her friends nor her enemies can foretell, as Echion’s dark war for control unfolds.
Against all odds, Owen Kiskaddon grew from frightened boy to confident youth to trusted officer in the court of Kingfountain—and watched its regent, Severn Argentine, grow ever more ruthless and power-mad. Robbed of his beloved protector, his noble mentor, and his true love, Owen has anticipated the day when the king he fears and reviles, yet loyally serves, will be toppled. Now, as Severn plots a campaign of conquest, the time has come to take action . . . and Owen’s destiny demands that he lead the strike.
Ordered to incite war with a neighboring kingdom, Owen discovers its beautiful, reclusive ruler, whose powerful magic might even exceed his own. Together they mount a daring plot to overthrow the corrupt monarch, crown the rightful heir, and defeat the prophesied curse threatening Kingfountain with wintry death. But Severn’s evil is as bottomless as the fabled Deep Fathoms. To keep his ill-gotten throne, he’ll gladly spill the blood of enemies and innocents alike.
A brutal war of succession has plunged the court of Kingfountain into a power struggle between a charitable king who took the crown unlawfully and his ambitious rival, Devon Argentine. The balance of power between the two men hinges on the fate of a young boy ensnared in this courtly intrigue. A boy befittingly nicknamed Ransom.
\nWhen the Argentine family finally rules, Ransom must make his own way in the world. Opportunities open and shut before him as he journeys along the path to knighthood, blind to a shadowy conspiracy of jealousy and revenge. Securing his place will not be easy, nor will winning the affection of Lady Claire de Murrow, a fiery young heiress from an unpredictably mad kingdom. Ransom interrupts an abduction plot targeting the Queen of Ceredigion and earns a position in service to her son, the firstborn of the new Argentine dynasty.
\nBut conflict and treachery threaten the family, and Ransom must also come to understand and hone his burgeoning powers - abilities that involve more than his mastery with a blade and that make him as much a target as his lord.
Ransom Barton and his wife, Claire de Murrow, have arrived in Legault to reclaim the title that was Claire’s birthright. Claire intends to rebuild a war-ravaged palace to its former glory and to teach Ransom about the magical history of their new home. But when Ransom is summoned to return to King Benedict, his loyalty to Claire is tested. Fealty prevails, however questionable the king’s motives.
\nThe ambitious Benedict, who controls his late father’s dominion, must prove his might. The warriors of the East Kingdoms have disrupted the trade routes, weakening every kingdom in their path. Benedict’s plan is to fend off a coming war through strategic alliances. But it’s Ransom’s post to keep the king’s allies - as well as his poisonous enemies - in line, even as Benedict’s defense may be inviting further chaos.
\nAs the king’s power grows and Ransom’s rise in the council is secured, a shadowy conspiracy threatens to destroy everything Ransom has worked to build. Now torn between allegiance to the woman he loves and duty to king and country, which will Ransom choose?
Tough relations between Princess Seraphin Fitzempress and her father have been strained, Sera’s royal position has remained unchallenged. Filled with self-doubt, she struggles to grasp the Mysteries - her greatest trial yet.
An education in the enigmatic magic is a necessary one, should Sera plan to rise in her station and invoke her powers during war. But the emperor’s death now leaves both Sera and her ambitious father eligible for the throne - a contest the prince regent intends to win. Even if it means an alliance with a rival empire.
Sera’s hope lies in Cettie, a waif raised in the world below, whose life has intertwined with Sera’s in the most unexpected ways. The Mysteries come easily to Cettie, and her studies have begun to yield new insight into her growing powers. But those same powers put Cettie in the path of those who would destroy her.
Now as the threat of war ignites and an insidious sickness spreads throughout the kingdom, Sera and Cettie will need to gather their courage and fight for each other’s lives . . . and for the future of their endangered world.
Friendship is strained to its breaking point in Wall Street Journal bestselling author Jeff Wheeler’s fourth Harbinger novel.
When the emperor is assassinated, Sera Fitzempress is the noble most eligible to inherit the empire. Her upcoming marriage to the prince would cement her position. And as a champion for peace, Sera is the only promise of hope for staving off war between the worlds of Kingfountain and Muirwood. But standing between her and her enemies is just one devastating secret.
Sera’s best friend, Cettie, a girl born of a lower class, has made a shattering discovery: her entire existence has been a lie. Now Cettie must give up the only life she’s known and fought for and leave behind the man she loves to stop Sera’s wedding. For this discovery could bring the whole of Kingfountain to ruin.
As Cettie struggles to determine her true loyalties and loves, her allies fall to wicked plots, and she becomes increasingly alone on her journey to a destiny she never wanted - one that could ignite an unstoppable war.
King Severn Argentine’s fearsome reputation precedes him: usurper of the throne, killer of rightful heirs, ruthless punisher of traitors. Attempting to depose him, the Duke of Kiskaddon gambles . . . and loses. Now the duke must atone by handing over his young son, Owen, as the king’s hostage. And should his loyalty falter again, the boy will pay with his life.
Seeking allies and eluding Severn’s spies, Owen learns to survive in the court of Kingfountain. But when new evidence of his father’s betrayal threatens to seal his fate, Owen must win the vengeful king’s favor by proving his worth - through extraordinary means. And only one person can aid his desperate cause: a mysterious woman, dwelling in secrecy, who truly wields power over life, death, and destiny.
Thrust into the heart of events threatening to rip her kingdom apart, young Trynne Kiskaddon will gain new powers and see old allies fall and new heroes rise as the battle for the kingdom and the lands beyond begins.
Courtly intrigue and rumors of invasion plunge Kingfountain into turmoil as the search for Trynne’s father begins in earnest. But Trynne’s quest to learn the truth of Owen’s sinister disappearance is sidetracked when tragedy strikes her family once again. Suddenly, the future of the kingdom rests in her hands as she struggles to learn - and control - the power that can keep the threatening Deep Fathoms at bay.
When King Gahalatine unleashes his overwhelming forces against the realm, Trynne must draw on her political instincts, warrior training, and Fountain-blessed magic if she hopes to survive the chaos to come. But a final, epic confrontation will force Trynne into an unimaginable choice: save her kingdom and the lives of her people, or lose the one who means more to her than life itself.
Cettie Pratt is a waif doomed to the world below, until an admiral attempts to adopt her. But in her new home in the clouds, not everyone treats her as one of the family.
Sera Fitzempress is a princess born into power. She yearns to meet the orphan girl she has heard so much about, but her father deems the girl unworthy of his daughter’s curiosity.
Neither girl feels that she belongs. Each seeks to break free of imposed rules. Now, as Cettie dreams of living above and as Sera is drawn to the world below, they will follow the paths of their own choosing.
But both girls will be needed for the coming storm that threatens to overturn both their worlds.
Owen Kiskaddon first came to the court of the formidable King Severn as a prisoner, winning favor with the stormy monarch by masquerading as a boy truly blessed by the Fountain.
\nNine years hence, the once-fearful Owen has grown into a confident young man, mentored in battle and politics by Duke Horwath and deeply in love with his childhood friend, the duke’s granddaughter. But the blissful future Owen and Elysabeth Mortimer anticipate seems doomed by the king’s machinations.
A pretender to Severn’s throne has vowed to seize the crown of Kingfountain. But Severn means to combat the threat by using Elysabeth as bait to snare the imposter - and forcing Owen, as a pawn in the dangerous charade, to choose between duty and devotion.
With poisoners and spies circling ominously, and war looming on the horizon, Owen must make painful sacrifices to beat back the advancing shadows of death and disaster. Will Owen’s conflicted heart follow the king’s path or risk everything for his love?
After a pilgrimage to the East Kingdoms seeking a blessing from the Fountain, source of the land’s magic, Sir Ransom Barton returns home in search of two dreams: Claire de Murrow, the heiress he loves, and a patron for his warrior skills.
\nUnexpectedly, Ransom finds himself in the favor of Devon, the notorious Elder King. Brought into the ruler’s mesnie and given two wards of his own, Ransom is devoted to his privileged new position. He’s also privy to the running of the realm and to all its courtly intrigues - notably, the machinations of the king’s three remaining sons, all engaged in a manipulative battle to become heir to the throne.
\nAs Ransom is thrust into the middle of poisonous family conspiracies and betrayals, allegiances are shattered, and Ransom fears he may end up serving his worst enemy - or worse, face exile for demonstrating loyalty.
\nDrawing on his developing powers, Ransom takes up arms against the dark forces coming in a war that will test the limits of his courage and determine the fate of the dangerous and fractious Argentine dynasty.
Wyatt Gillette, a cybergenius who's never used his phenomenal talent for evil, is sitting in a California jail doing time for a few harmless computer capers when he gets a temporary reprieve - a chance to help the Computer Crimes Unit of the state police nail a cracker (a criminally inclined hacker) called Phate who's using his ingenious program, Trapdoor, to lure innocent victims to their death by infiltrating their computers.
\nGillette and Phate were once the kings of cyberspace - the Blue Nowhere of the title - but Phate has gone way past the mischievous electronic pranks they once pulled and crossed over to the dark side.
\nWhile Trapdoor can hack its way into any computer, it's Phate's skill at \"social engineering\" as well as his remarkable coding ability that makes him such a menace to society. As Wyatt explains to the policeman who springs him from prison so that he can find and stop Phate before he kills again, \"It means conning somebody, pretending you're someone you're not.
\nHackers do it to get access to data bases and phone lines and pass codes. The more facts about somebody you can feed back to them, the more they believe you and the more they'll do what you want them to.\"
When a night-time call to 911 from a secluded Wisconsin vacation house is cut short, offduty deputy Brynn McKenzie leaves her husband and son at the dinner table and drives up to Lake Mondac to investigate. Was it a misdial or an aborted crime report?Brynn stumbles onto a scene of true horror and narrowly escapes from two professional criminals. She and a terrified visitor to the weekend house, Michelle, flee into the woods in a race for their lives.
\nAs different as night and day, and stripped of modern-day resources, Brynn, a tough deputy with a difficult past, and Michelle, a pampered city girl, must overcome their natural reluctance to trust each other and learn to use their wits and courage to survive the relentless pursuit. The deputy's disappearance spurs both her troubled son and her new husband into action, while the incident sets in motion Brynn's loyal fellow deputies and elements from Milwaukee's underside.
Lincoln Rhyme was once a brilliant criminologist, a genius in the field of forensics - until an accident left him physically and emotionally shattered. But now a diabolical killer is challenging Rhyme to a terrifying and ingenious duel of wits.
\nWith police detective Amelia Sachs by his side, Rhyme must follow a labyrinth of clues that reaches back to a dark chapter in New York City's past - and reach further into the darkness of the mind of a madman who won't stop until he has stripped life down to the bone.
When Lincoln's estranged cousin Arthur Rhyme is arrested on murder charges, the case is perfect - too perfect. Forensic evidence from Arthur's home is found all over the scene of the crime, and it looks like the fate of Lincoln's relative is sealed.
At the behest of Arthur's wife, Judy, Lincoln grudgingly agrees to investigate the case. Soon Lincoln and Amelia uncover a string of similar murders and rapes with perpetrators claiming innocence and ignorance - despite ironclad evidence at the scenes of the crime. Rhyme's team realizes this \"perfect\" evidence may actually be the result of masterful identity theft and manipulation.
An information service company - the huge data miner Strategic Systems Datacorp - seems to have all the answers but is reluctant to help the police. Still, Rhyme and Sachs and their assembled team begin uncovering a chilling pattern of vicious crimes and coverups, and their investigation points to one master criminal, whom they dub \"522.\"
When \"522\" learns the identities of the crime-fighting team, the hunters become the hunted.
The only leads in a broad-daylight kidnapping are the account of an eight-year-old girl, some nearly invisible trace evidence and the calling card: a miniature noose left lying on the street. A crime scene this puzzling demands forensic expertise of the highest order. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are called in to investigate.
\nThen the case takes a stranger turn: a recording surfaces of the victim being slowly hanged, his desperate gasps the backdrop to an eerie piece of music. The video is marked as the work of The Composer . . .
\nDespite their best efforts, the suspect gets away. So when a similar kidnapping occurs on a dusty road outside Naples, Rhyme and Sachs don't hesitate to rejoin the hunt. But the search is now a complex case of international cooperation - and not all those involved may be who they seem. All they can do is follow the evidence, before their time runs out.
New York City is being held to ransom. Manhattan's electricity grid is being used to murder people . . . and more attacks are planned.
\nWhile the FBI and Homeland Security struggle to determine who's behind the carnage, Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs race to decode the forensics in order to prevent the next assault.
\nBut all is not what it seems. Lincoln Rhyme soon finds he's up against a merciless killer with a unique weapon - one that can be found in everyone's home and office.
\nWhat's more, one of the few criminals to have ever slipped Rhyme's net is back in operation. Working in Mexico, the deadly assassin known as the Watchmaker has set his murderous sights on more innocent victims, whose identities are as yet unknown . . .
\nLincoln Rhyme must race against the clock, juggling the two investigations, as they hurtle headlong toward their deadly outcomes.
Colter Shaw is a career “reward-seeker,” making his living traveling the country and locating missing persons, collecting reward money in return. So it is not unusual when a wealthy entrepreneur hires him to track down his wife, an enigmatic artist who vanished one month before.
\nAs Shaw begins to investigate, he suspects that she was fleeing a bad marriage, and he follows her trail to an artists' retreat in Indiana. The case takes one surprising turn after another, and soon Shaw begins to wonder if this mysterious woman is more of a captor than a captive.
Jon Talbot is a history professor who makes sense of the past by examining facts. He also knows how to speculate about the what-ifs. Jon’s doing both following the death of his wife, Pax.
\nDriving home late from a volunteer assignment, she plunged off a mountain highway and died. The police find nothing suspicious about the facts: a deer in the road, a blown tire, a broken neck. But the what-ifs are leading Jon down a twisting trail of secrets. After five years of marriage, he is finally getting to know his wife.
Sick of his debilitating injuries, Lincoln Rhyme has travelled to a world-famous spinal cord injuries center in North Carolina for some risky, experimental surgery. It may make him a tiny bit better; it may kill him. But before he has a chance to undergo the operation, the local police department draft Rhyme and his partner Amelia into a shocking new case. Using their forensic skills the pair desperately try to track down two women kidnapped by a psychotic young man known locally as the Insect Boy.
\nAfter a cat-and-mouse game through the abandoned swamps of North Carolina, Lincoln and Amelia finally manage to find him - except suddenly Amelia, convinced of his innocence, breaks the boy out of jail. And it's left to Lincoln to find them both, while Amelia uses all the skills her mentor and lover has taught her to evade him.
\nBut her actions are to have more disastrous consequences than either of them could anticipate . . .
At each meticulously planned scene, the killer leaves his victims to die slowly, a clock counting down their last minutes on earth.
\nHe calls himself the Watchmaker.
\nAnd it's only a matter of time before he strikes again.
\nBut he didn't count on Lincoln Rhyme. Physically, he may face unimaginable challenges, but mentally, he has no limits. With Amelia Sachs as his eyes and ears - and heart - Rhyme is on the Watchmaker's trail within seconds.
\nHowever, he's not the only one gifted with a calculating intelligence, and this time, his wits must be sharper than ever if he's to catch a killer cold as the moon.
\nTime is ticking for Lincoln Rhyme . . .
\n
Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs return to New York City to confront a killer terrorising couples at their happiest - and most vulnerable.
\nIn the early hours of a quiet, weekend morning in Manhattan's Diamond District, a brutal triple murder shocks the city. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs quickly take the case. Curiously, the killer has left behind a half-million dollars' worth of gems at the murder scene, a jewelry store on 47th street. As more crimes follow, it becomes clear that the killer's target is not gems, but engaged couples themselves.
\nThe Promisor vows to take the lives of men and women during their most precious moments - midway through the purchase of an engagement ring, after a meeting with a wedding planner, trying on the perfect gown for a day that will never come. The Promisor arrives silently, armed with knife or gun, and a time of bliss is transformed, in an instant, to one of horror.
\nSoon the Promiser makes a dangerous mistake: leaving behind an innocent witness, Vimal Lahori, a talented young diamond cutter, who can help Rhyme and Sachs blow the lid off the case. They must track down Vimal before the killer can correct his fatal error. Then disaster strikes, threatening to tear apart the very fabric of the city - and providing the perfect cover for the killer to slip through the cracks.
\n
A murder at a crime writers' conference. The method is entirely literary, the motive seems obvious - but can the detective who was first on scene puzzle out what's between the lines?
\nAn intelligence analyst has the chance to get out from behind the desk and do some real spy work. But as he enters the field, he begins to realise just how out of his depth he is . . .
\nA brilliant sleuth, obsessed with Sherlock Holmes’s mysteries, turns his attention to a serial killer targeting women in New York's Central Park. But as his deductions bring him closer to his prey he starts to wonder who is doing the hunting . . .
A serial kidnapper is on the loose in a small town in Maine, targeting wealthy women and demanding a huge ransom in bitcoin for their safe return. When his latest victim’s husband claims that he can’t come up with the money, the word “deadline” takes on a disturbingly literal meaning.
\nThe local police are out of their depth, but Colter Shaw takes the lead in the investigation. Soon, he’s using his survivalist instincts to uncover clues and pursue suspects, putting his own life on the line to catch the would-be killer before the countdown hits zero.
NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1999.
\nAfter an early morning machine-gun attack by a madman called the Digger leaves dozens dead in the Washington, D.C., subway, the mayor’s office receives a message demanding twenty million dollars by midnight or more innocents will die.
\nIt is New Year’s Eve, and with the ransom note as the only evidence, Special Agent Margaret Lukas calls upon retired FBI agent and the nation’s premier document examiner Parker Kincaid to join the manhunt for the Digger - or for hundreds, the first moments of the new year will be their last on earth.
Nothing can stop an avenging vigilante from channeling her rage - or pursuing her prey. Not the relentless cops in her rearview. Not the cunning and elusive sociopath she’s closing in on.
\nA robbery goes awry. A female deputy is tortured and murdered. The killer, hiding in plain sight, has officials in rural Wisconsin under his thumb - except for Special Agent Constant Marlowe, on an unsanctioned mission to avenge her friend’s death. Constant isn’t letting a notorious sadist like Paul Offenbach get away. Traps are set. A cat-and-mouse game begins. Both hunter and hunted are ready to play.
Things started out so sweet. Everyone was going to be rich. All because of Trunk Man. He was the guy Papa and his meatheads stuffed in the back of a stolen Nissan and drove to a forest preserve outside Detroit. He owed Papa big-time. To save his own sorry neck, Trunk Man made an offer: a million dollars in bonds tucked away in a safe. Boost it, split it, and toss Trunk Man from a roof. Easy.
\nThey hadn’t counted on a few things: like a broken axle, or the witness…or all that blood. Before this scheme is over, the road to a seven-figure heaven is going to feel a little more like hell.
\n
Behind the well-known U.S. security organisations - the FBI and CIA among them - lies a heavily guarded, anonymous government agency dedicated to intelligence surveillance and to a highly specialised brand of citizen protection.
\nShock waves of alarm ripple through the clandestine agency when Washington, D.C., police detective Ryan Kessler inexplicably becomes the target of Henry Loving, a seasoned, ruthless \"lifter\" hired to obtain information using whatever means necessary. While Loving is deft at torture, his expertise lies in getting an \"edge\" on his victim - leverage - usually by kidnapping or threatening family until the \"primary\" caves under pressure.
\nThe job of keeping the Kessler family alive falls to a man named Corte, a senior federal protection officer known as a \"shepherd.\" Uncompromising, relentlessly devoted to protecting those in his care and a passionate board game aficionado, he applies brilliant gaming strategy to his work.
\nFor Corte, the reappearance of Loving - the man who, six years earlier, had tortured and killed someone close to him - is also an opportunity to avenge his friend's death. The assignment soon escalates into a fast-paced duel between Corte and Loving, a dangerous volley of wits and calculated risks.
\nAs he shepherds the Kesslers to a concealed safe house, Corte must anticipate Loving's every step as the lifter moves in on his prey, and with the help of razor-sharp investigator Claire DuBois and his longtime ally, FBI agent Paul Fredericks, pinpoint which of Kessler's seemingly insignificant cases has triggered Loving's return.
\nAs the team digs deeper, each of the Kesslers comes under close scrutiny, and in captivity their family bonds are stretched to the breaking point - as the lifter draws near, Corte must ultimately choose between protecting his charges and exposing them to a killer in the name of long-awaited revenge.
\n\n
A quadriplegic since a beam crushed his spinal cord years ago, Rhyme is desperate to improve his condition and goes to the University of North Carolina Medical Center for high-risk experimental surgery. But he and Sachs have hardly settled in when the local authorities come calling. In a twenty-four-hour period, the sleepy Southern outpost of Tanner's Corner has seen a local teen murdered and two young women abducted. And Rhyme and Sachs are the best chance to find the girls alive.
\nThe prime suspect is a strange teenaged truant known as the Insect Boy, so nicknamed for his disturbing obsession with bugs. Rhyme agrees to find the boy while awaiting his operation. Rhyme's unsurpassed analytical skills and stellar forensic experience, combined with Sachs's exceptional detective legwork, soon snare the perp. But even Rhyme can't anticipate that Sachs will disagree with his crime analysis and that her vehemence will put her in the swampland, harboring the very suspect whom Rhyme considers a ruthless killer.
\nSo ensues Rhyme's greatest challenge - facing the criminalist whom he has taught everything he knows in a battle of wits, forensics, and intuition. And in this adversary, Rhyme also faces his best friend and soul mate.
When justice is on the line, the courtroom becomes a battleground for a prosecutor obsessed with victory, a defense attorney hired to thwart it and a wily defendant making a bid for freedom.
\nSteven Ross, a family man from a small midwestern town, has been arrested for murder. Evidence suggests he’s an accomplice of the sadistic killer Paul Offenbach. County district attorney Evan Quill believes in his heart that Ross is guilty, but as the trial unfolds, doubts emerge. He presses forward anyway, in a legal fencing match against a brilliant big-city defense attorney. Will Quill’s uncompromising beliefs put an innocent man in jail? Or will a misstep let a killer go free?
Just hours after the harrowing events of The Goodbye Man, Colter Shaw is hot on the trail of a missing person whose disappearance he desperately hopes to explain: his own father.
\nFollowing the enigmatic clues his father left behind, Shaw explores one site after another, seeing clearly for the first time what strange business his father was up to - and what dangerous people he was working against. But when Shaw is caught by these same people, he's rescued by an intruder: his own older brother Russell, from whom he's been estranged for more than a decade. After saving Shaw, Russell stays on, and the brothers - both very different and oddly similar - join forces to identify the family.
\nThis novel is a race against time to both find the family and to pursue leads to solve a decades-old mystery.
Colter Shaw makes his living traveling the country and locating missing persons, sometimes collecting reward money, sometimes not.
\nMany of his cases are those that the police are unable or unwilling to solve, but the job that brings him to a small-town in Ohio has already been solved. A teenage boy has been arrested and convicted for murder, but his parents are convinced that he didn’t commit the crime - and offer a reward to anyone who can prove it.
\nColter’s investigation into the murder, the shooting of a local drug dealer, brings him deep into a small-town conspiracy, with plenty of members who will go to any lengths to keep Shaw from learning the truth.
Jeffery Deaver's Garden of Beasts introduces anti-hero Paul Schumann, a notorious rubout man for the New York Mafia known for his cold and professional approach to his job. But the jig is up when he is duped by high-ranking feds who give him a choice - prison or one more impossible job: assassinate the man who's running Hitler's plan for rearming Germany.
\n\n
The hard-nosed German-American lands on the streets of Berlin where immediately the best-laid plans of the United States Government go awry. Schumman finds himself in a city living in fear, tracked by Berlin's best homicide detective. As the intricate chase wears on, both men will discover that the greatest evil is the ascendant Nazi party.
In pursuit of two young men accused of terrible hate crimes, Colter Shaw stumbles upon a clue to another mystery. In an effort to save the life of a young woman - and possibly others - he travels to the wilderness of Washington State to investigate a mysterious organisation. Is it a community that consoles the bereaved? Or a dangerous cult under the sway of a captivating leader? As he peels back the layers of truth, Shaw finds that some people will stop at nothing to keep their secrets hidden.
\nAll the while, Shaw must unravel an equally deadly enigma: locating and deciphering a message hidden by his father years ago, just before his death - a message that will have life-and-death consequences.
Allison Parker is on the run with her teenage daughter, Hannah, and Colter Shaw has been hired by her eccentric boss, entrepreneur Marty Harmon, to find and protect her. Though he's an expert at tracking missing persons - even those who don't wish to be found - Shaw has met his match in Allison, who brings all her skills as a brilliant engineer designing revolutionary technology to the game of evading detection.
\nThe reason for Allison's panicked flight is soon apparent. She's being stalked by her ex-husband, Jon Merritt. Newly released from prison and fueled by blinding rage, Jon is a man whose former profession as a police detective makes him uniquely suited for the hunt. And he's not alone. Two hitmen are also hot on her heels - an eerie pair of thugs who take delight not only in murder but in the sport of devising clever ways to make bodies disappear forever. Even if Shaw manages to catch up with Allison and her daughter, his troubles will just be beginning.
\nAs Shaw ventures further into the wilderness, the truth becomes as hard to decipher as the forest's unmarked trails . . . and peril awaits at every turn.As Shaw ventures further into the wilderness, the truth becomes as hard to decipher as the forest's unmarked trails . . . and peril awaits at every turn.
A sniper shot from a near-impossible distance. Evidence that the order came from the highest levels of US government. A New York DA who won't let it go.
\nLincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs will risk everything to uncover the truth. But there is no crime scene investigation, no evidence, and no co-operation from the local Bahamian police.
\nNo strangers to controversy, their reputation for seeing what others miss is unparalleled, and ambitious attorney Nance Laurel knows they will risk everything - even their lives - to seek the truth . . .
\nBut first, they must enter The Kill Room.
Bill Corde looks down at the face of the murdered girl and sees the horror of sudden death. He cannot know, as he stands there at the trampled, muddy scene beside the college girl’s corpse, that his own life is about to slip into terror. He cannot know that everything he holds precious is about to shatter before his eyes. He cannot know that his career - and his family - are about to enter a new dimension of danger.
\nFor Bill Corde, the killer is everything he fears most. For Sarah, Bill’s wild, learning-impaired daughter, trapped in a world of frustration and ridicule, he may be just the person she’s been waiting for. Someone who understands her worries and loneliness. Someone who signs his notes “The Sunshine Man.” Someone she can run away with - even a perfect stranger.
Eight vulnerable girls and their helpless teachers are forced off a school bus and held hostage. The madman who has them at gunpoint has a simple plan: one hostage an hour will die unless the demands are met.
\nCalled to the scene is Arthur Potter, the FBI's best hostage negotiator. He has a plan. But so does one of the hostages-a beautiful teacher who's willing to do anything to save the lives of her students.
\nNow, the clock is ticking as a chilling game of cat and mouse begins.
When a woman arrives home to her Manhattan apartment to find that her personal items have been rearranged while she slept, police initially dismiss her complaint. Nothing was stolen, and there's no sign of breaking and entering. But when the same woman turns up dead, Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are brought in to investigate the murder. They soon learn that the murderer calls himself “the Locksmith.”
\nHe is obsessed with locks, slipping into homes in the dead of night and tying his victims up with knots or locks, ultimately strangling them. Their hunt for the killer is interrupted when an internal investigation in the police force uncovers what seems to be a crucial mistake in one of Rhyme's previous cases. He is removed from the case, and must investigate the Locksmith in secret to untangle the mysteries behind the psychotic killer before he can set his ultimate trap.
Taylor Lockwood spends her days working as a paralegal in one of New York’s preeminent Wall Street law firms and her nights playing jazz piano anyplace she can. But the rhythm of her life is disrupted when attorney Mitchell Reece requests her help in locating a stolen document that could cost him not only the multimillion-dollar case he’s defending but his career as well.
\nEager to get closer to this handsome, brilliant, and very private man, Taylor signs on...only to find that as she delves deeper and deeper into what goes on behind closed doors at Hubbard, White & Willis, she uncovers more than she wants to know - including a plentitude of secrets damaging enough to smash careers and dangerous enough to push someone to commit murder.
\nYet who is capable of going to that extreme? With her life on the line, Taylor is about to learn the lethal answer . . .
\n
A young woman has gone missing in Silicon Valley and her father has hired Colter Shaw to find her. But what seems a simple investigation quickly thrusts him into the dark heart of America's tech hub and the cutthroat billion-dollar video-gaming industry.
\nWhen another victim is kidnapped, the clues point to one video game with a troubled past - The Whispering Man. In that game, the player has to survive after being abandoned in an inhospitable setting with five random objects. Is a madman bringing the game to life?
\nShaw finds himself caught in a cat-and-mouse game, risking his own life to save the victims even as he pursues the kidnapper across both Silicon Valley and the dark 'net. Encountering eccentric game designers, trigger-happy gamers and ruthless tech titans, he soon learns that he isn't the only one on the hunt: someone is on his trail and closing fast.
A violent jailbreak bleeds into a street fair in Wisconsin. In the wake of the carnage, a getaway van barrels down a rural highway. Inside are two men with a tenuous bond: an obsession with pain.
\nOne is Paul Offenbach, a sadistic crime boss with a life-threatening bullet wound. The other is his hostage, Dr. Stuart Collier, now faced with a harrowing ethical quandary. Mile by mile, as a calculated battle of wills and wits plays out, the killer plots his next move. So does the doctor, sworn to do no harm but desperate to escape.
Michael Hrubek, the man who murdered two of Lis Atcheson's students, has escaped the institution where he was sentenced. But Hrubek isn't just any killer- e knows Lis's name. He knows her face. He knows where she lives. He knows she's the one who put him away, and he'll make her pay. And in the next 24 hours, he knows what she'll be doing-praying for mercy.
\nPraying for revenge, psycho killer Michael Hrubek has escaped to find the woman who put him away. He'll show her what killing is all about-praying for salvation. Lis knows he's out there. He's haunted every sleepless night, watching and waiting to take her to hell with him. And now Lis is Praying for Sleep .
When an improvised explosive device is found outside a hospital, the understaffed Middleton PD knows it’s up against a pro. No one takes credit for the sophisticated device - all that Detective Jake Sloan has to go on is a poem. The cryptic rhyme surfaced shortly after the bomb scare.
\nBut ex-soldier and football player Sloan has never been much of a poetry buff. When a second verse turns up, containing a message in code, he solicits the help of English professor Ciara Hawkins. Together, they rush to read between the lines and stop the countdown to tragedy.
\nBut as the clock ticks, Sloan senses that beneath this complex case is a motive that is simpler and more disturbing than anyone could have anticipated.
Colter Shaw is a career “reward-seeker,” making his living locating missing persons and collecting reward money in return. In the course of his search for a missing woman, he visits the police station in the small Kansas town of Humble, and, is pulled into a puzzling case.
\nA man is holding a hostage in a lakeside cabin, and the Humble police need Shaw's experience and know-how to assess the situation, and the captor's motives. As Shaw begins negotiating, he begins to realize that nothing about the hostage situation is as it seems, including the hostage himself.
The hunter has captured her prey, and a sociopathic crime boss faces justice at last. But it’s not the end of the story. On a crowded street, gunfire and death are waiting to explode.
\nA festive street fair is underway in the shadow of the courthouse where a judge has just signed an extradition order. Paul Offenbach is escorted outside in handcuffs to a police cruiser - with another trick up his sleeve no one expects. In a matter of seconds, the killer is free, a hostage is taken from his family and Special Agent Constant Marlowe has lost her bid for justice. But is this the final chapter? As the lives of the guilty, the innocent and the vengeful converge, the winner remains uncertain.
The killer's methods are terrifying. He stalks the basements and underground passageways of New York City. He tattoos his victims' flesh with cryptic messages, using a tattoo gun loaded with poison, resulting in an agonising, painful death.
\nWhen a connection is made to the Bone Collector-the serial killer who terrorised New York more than a decade ago-Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are immediately drawn into the case.
\nRhyme, Sachs, and the NYPD must race against time to answer the many questions the investigation uncovers: Whom will the killer attack next? What is the message behind the victims' tattoos? Does the killer's own inking - a fanged centipede sporting a woman's face - hold any significance? And what is his ultimate mission?
\nAs time runs out, Rhyme discovers that the past has returned to haunt him in the most troubling way imaginable . . .
\n
When a levee collapses in Hinowah, a small town in Northern California, Colter Shaw is brought on by his sister, Dorion, a disaster response specialist, to help locate a family swept away by the raging water, with mere hours to survive.
\nBut after a surprise attack along the river obstructs Colter's urgent search, the siblings are forced to consider a new Is the levee at risk of failing from natural causes, or is someone sabotaging it? Colter and Dorion must race against a ticking clock to uncover the truth and save the citizens before the village washes out completely, destroying everything and everyone in its path.
Tate Collier, once one of the country's finest trial lawyers, is trying to forget his past. Now a divorced gentleman farmer, land developer, and community advocate in rural Virginia, he's regrouping from some disastrous mistakes in the realms of love and the law. But controversy - and danger - seem to have an unerring hold on Tate. Even as he struggles to rebuild his life, his alter ego is plotting his demise.
\nAaron Matthews, a brilliant psychologist, has turned his talents away from curing patients to far deadlier goals. He's targeted Tate, Tate's ex-wife, Bett, and their estranged daughter, Megan, for unspeakable revenge. Matthews, ruthless and hell-bent, will destroy anything that inhibits his plans.
\nWhen their daughter disappears, Tate and Bett reunite in a desperate, heart-pounding attempt to find her and to stop Matthews, a psychopath whose gift of a glib tongue and talent for coercion are as dangerous as knives and guns.
Amelia Sachs is hot on the trail of a killer. She's chasing him through a department store in Brooklyn when an escalator malfunctions. The stairs give way, with one man horribly mangled by the gears. Sachs is forced to let her quarry escape as she jumps in to try to help save the victim. She and famed forensic detective Lincoln Rhyme soon learn, however, that the incident may not have been an accident at all, but the first in a series of intentional attacks.
\nThey find themselves up against one of their most formidable opponents ever: a brilliant killer who turns common products into murder weapons. As the body count threatens to grow, Sachs and Rhyme must race against the clock to unmask his identity - and discover his mission - before more people die.
Investigators Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are recruited to track down a cargo ship carrying two dozen illegal Chinese immigrants, as well as the notorious human smuggler and killer known only as the Ghost.
\nBut when the capture goes disastrously wrong, Lincoln and Amelia find themselves in a race to stop the Ghost before he can track down and murder the two surviving families who have vanished deep into the labyrinthine world of New York City's Chinese community.
\nOver the next forty-eight hours the Ghost ruthlessly hunts for the families while Rhyme struggles desperately to find them first. Meanwhile, Sachs pursues a very different kind of policework - forming a connection with one of the immigrants that may have far reaching consequences for her relationship with her partner and lover, Lincoln Rhyme.
A serial killer is trolling a midwestern suburb. His tools: a hammer, a screwdriver, floral wire, a kitchen knife and, to complete his errand, a Russian nesting doll left behind as a calling card. From one grisly crime scene to the next, Detective Ernest Neville and his Russian Doll Killer task force follow.
\nWith few leads and his career on the line, Neville is driven to desperate measures to get to the core of this diabolical puzzle. Layer by layer, he’s getting closer to the final piece. Yet the only thing that’s certain in this game is the unexpected, and as citizens are targeted by one of the most reprehensible characters the idyllic town has ever seen, Neville can only wonder if his efforts will end in disaster - for himself, for his family and for the people he’s sworn to protect.
Sixteen-year-old Geneva Settle is running from death. She may only be a bright high school student researching a paper on one of her ancestors, but someone sees her as a threat. Someone who will stop at nothing to prevent her from digging up the past. Someone on a mission to kill.
\nLincoln Rhyme and his partner Amelia Sachs are called to the case. They may have tracked down some of the world's most brilliant criminals, but this particular hunt is posing more questions than answers. Where will their prey strike next? What is the historic secret he's so desperate to protect? And how can anyone catch a killer who leaves no trace?
\nTo find the answers, Sachs is going to have to search a crime scene that's over 140 years old and attempt to uncover a secret that that may strike at the very heart of the United States constitution . . .
A killer flees the scene of a homicide at a prestigious Manhattan music school and locks himself in a classroom. Within minutes, the police have him surrounded.
\nA scream rings out, followed by a gunshot.
\nThe police break down the door.
\nThe room is empty.
\nPerplexed, the police bring in Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs to investigate. For the ambitious Sachs, solving the case could earn her a promotion. For the quadriplegic Rhyme, it means relying on his protégé to ferret out a master illusionist. Dubbed The Conjurer, this fiendish killer baits them with murders that become more and more diabolical with every crime.
\nAs the fatalities rise and the minutes tick down, the pair must move beyond the smoke and mirrors to prevent a terrifying act of vengeance that could become the greatest vanishing act of all.
When a New York City construction crane mysteriously collapses, causing mass destruction and killing several people, Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are on the case. A political group claims to be behind the sabotage and threatens another crane collapse in twenty-four hours, unless their demands are met. The clock is ticking.
\nWith New York in a panic, the stakes are higher than ever for Rhyme and his team to unravel the plot before the timer runs out and more cranes crash down, reducing the city and its people to rubble. Then Rhyme realises that the mastermind behind the terror is his own nemesis - the Watchmaker.
Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in working-class Bedok, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead.
\nAs the two girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a place where the urgent insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice. Knowing that failure is not an option, the sisters learn to depend entirely on one another as they spurn outside friendships, leisure, and any semblance of a social life in pursuit of academic perfection and passage to a better future.
\nWhen a stinging betrayal violently estranges Genevieve and Arin, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is.
The warring Brown sisters. Lucy. Susannah. Tara. Each is haunted - by disgrace (Lucy), vanity (Susannah) and envy (Tara). Most of all they are haunted by secrets.
\nJust before a dinner at their mother’s idyllic holiday cottage, Susannah disappears. That same night a young woman is killed violently on a nearby beach.
\nAmid the confusion the next morning, Lucy discovers a link between Susannah and the murder victim. Lucy must summon all she knows from her short-lived policing career to figure out the connection and find her sister.
\nBut tracking down Susannah means Lucy confronting her own shame. It also means resurrecting ghosts that Susannah, Tara - and their mother - desperately want to keep buried.
\nEven if Lucy finds Susannah, will the truth destroy them all?
\n
Jamie Murphy has known she needed a change in her life for longer than she wanted to admit. Jamie is married, has a beautiful daughter, a good job, and a small circle of terrific friends. Yet, despite all of those great things, she still feels like something is missing.
\nCharlotte Moss has experienced her share of life's ups and downs. As a result, waiting for the other shoe to drop has become a regular part of Charlie's life. Fortunately for Charlie, there is one good thing that she knows she can always count on - Jamie's friendship.
\nAs the women's friendship evolves and deepens, an attraction develops that neither anticipated. New and unexpected feelings catch Jamie completely off guard, causing her to question everything. Somewhere along the way, Jamie begins to figure out what she's been missing and what real happiness can and should look like.
\n
Five years ago, Jamie Murphy's world shattered when the love of her life walked away. Despite the pain, Jamie picked up the pieces of her broken heart and embarked on a journey of healing. It took some time, but she eventually found the strength to let go and move forward. Now stronger and more resilient, Jamie has forged a new, happy life. Yet, she knows that a part of her heart will forever belong to the woman who chose a different path.
\nCharlotte Moss has spent most of her life prioritizing the wants and needs of others over her own. Faced with an impossible situation, she was forced to make the hardest choice of all - to walk away from the one person who truly understood her and held her heart. The regret and longing for that lost love still clings to Charlie, a constant, deep, and intense ache in her heart.
\nYears after their passionate and chaotic relationship ended, Jamie had moved on with her life, believing her love story was firmly in the past. When fate steps in, and their paths cross again, Jamie's heart is thrown into a whirlwind of emotions. The intense pull toward Charlie is both comforting and terrifying, a testament to the depth of Jamie's feelings. As the women navigate their feelings, Jamie wonders if she can move past the hurt and broken promises of the past and find the courage to let down her guard for a second chance at love.
\n
Whitney Thompson has always been in control of her career, her image, and her emotions. But now, nothing’s going according to plan. Burned out and off-balance, she finds herself at a remote wellness retreat with nothing but time, a suitcase full of skepticism, and a quiet crisis she isn’t ready to name.
\nEden Holloway built Eden’s Garden to help others heal. It’s a carefully calibrated world full of calm predictability and just removed enough to keep her safely out of reach. But when Whitney arrives, sharp, guarded, and unexpectedly magnetic, Eden’s practiced ease starts to crack.
\nWhat begins as wary flirtation deepens into something intimate, disarming, and terrifyingly real. But falling for someone means being seen. And being seen means risking everything.
In a story of quiet bravery, emotional reckoning, and the messy magic of falling for someone, Inevitable asks the question: What if love doesn’t wait for us to be ready?
Tracy White knows being hopelessly in love with your best friend is complicated, especially when your best friend is Gemma Woody. Flirtatious, magnetic, and utterly clueless about Tracy’s feelings, Gemma seems content to keep things exactly as they are.
\nThe yearly winter vacation at a mountainside chalet should be the perfect getaway. Instead, it becomes a blizzard-fueled mix of playful banter, confessions, and unexpected tension. Between heated arguments and stolen glances, Tracy begins to wonder if there’s more to Gemma's feelings for her than just friendship.
\nAs the snow falls, so do their walls, leading to a kiss that changes everything. But navigating love with your best friend isn’t easy, especially when the fear of losing each other looms larger than the fire crackling in the hearth.
\n
Sadie Warren didn’t go to Las Vegas to fall for someone. She went to disappear for a weekend. No history. No expectations. No future.
\nQuinn was never supposed to be anything more than that.
\nUntil she was.
\nWhen fate drops them back into each other’s lives, what should have stayed a closed chapter turns into a slow, complicated friendship neither of them is ready to name. Quinn is steady, guarded, and unwilling to rush anything that matters. Sadie is still healing, still learning how to trust herself again.
\nThe attraction is undeniable. The timing is terrible. And walking away would be easier.
\nBut some connections don’t fade. They wait.
\n
Despite the fragility of their relationship, Catharine and Alex have found a happiness together they never expected to find. Alex's career is soaring with her hard-fought place on the US Women's National Team as she prepares for the World Cup over the summer. Catharine is flourishing in her newfound freedom, embracing her love with Alex, while still being forced to keep their romance a secret amidst her soon-to-be ex-husband's presidential campaign.
\nBut it's more than either woman hoped for. More than they ever imagined.
\nUntil a secret is revealed that threatens it all. Their relationship. Alex's career. Catharine's business. Even their lives. When it all comes crashing down, both women must ask themselves - how can love survive?
Before the world knew her as Catharine Cleveland - a leader of industry, a pillar of polite society, a steward of philanthropy, she was:
\nA scholar.
A rower.
A promising pianist.
A dutiful heir.
But above all, she was a girl who fell in love.
\nFrom the ancient halls of Oxford to the sun-drenched vineyards of Bordeaux, and across the Atlantic to the political circus of D.C., meet Cate Brooks in The Colonel’s Daughter - the prequel to The Senator’s Wife series.
When professional soccer player, Alex Grey, goes on a vacation to the local South Carolina islands, she isn't anticipating any life-changing events. Just a relaxing weekend to prepare for the upcoming season. But that quickly changes when she finds herself the lone witness to a sailing accident and makes the decision to risk her own life to save a drowning woman - unwittingly coming to the rescue of a U.S. senator's wife, Catharine Cleveland.
\nDespite the vast disparity between their worlds, the two women find themselves inexplicably drawn to one another after the near-catastrophic afternoon. Following a series of interactions from the soccer fields of Portland, to the Marina District of San Francisco Bay, and the cutthroat political circle of Washington, D.C., they find their friendship growing, transforming into an attraction neither woman can deny.
\nNor an attraction either woman can comfortably embrace.
\nAs the magnetism of their connection grows, both women are forced to decide if the pursuit of love is worth the cost while living under the scrutiny of the public eye.
As Alex's career continues to flourish as a US soccer star, Catharine struggles to keep her world from falling apart. Dealing with the repercussions of a high-profile divorce, while Carlton's campaign marches toward the primary election, her only solace remains in her blossoming relationship with Alex.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBut as the stakes get higher, and the pressures of publicity increase, it isn't only their love that is put to the test.
Calla Quick has no future. At least, that’s how it feels. Her parents disowned her via text message, and now she can’t afford to go to an all-women’s college with her girlfriend Ramona like they planned. But Calla wonders if maybe that’s for the best - because even though Calla told Ramona her parents disowned her because they found out she’s gay, the truth is, Calla has been questioning whether she’s a girl at all.
\nCalla wishes she had more time to figure everything out, and one night, her wish is seemingly granted. When Calla and Ramona stumble upon a mysterious farmhouse in the woods, they meet five teens who claim they’ve lived there for decades. The land, which they call Amaranth, acts as a safe haven for queer kids throughout history - a place free of hate, free of violence, free of time itself. Here, Calla can be Cal, and they feel instantly accepted. They don’t have to worry about the future because at Amaranth, it will never come - until one night when the clock strikes twelve.
\nNow under a literal ticking clock, the housemates must find a way to stop time again or face going back to their harsh realities, but as Cal learns everyone’s story, they begin to wonder what queer people lose when their history is lost to time.
\n
Tormalin the Oathless and the Fell-Witch Noon have their hands full dealing with the first war-beasts to be born in Ebora for nearly three hundred years. But these are not the great mythological warriors of old; hatched too early and with no link to their past lives, the war-beasts have no memory of the many battles they have fought and won, and no concept of how they can possibly do it again. The key to uniting them, according to the scholar Vintage, may lie in a part of Sarn no one really believes exists, but finding it will mean a dangerous journey at a time of war . . .
Meanwhile, Hestillion is trapped on board the corpse moon, forced into a strange and uneasy alliance with the Jure'lia queen. Something terrifying is growing up there, in the heart of the Behemoth, and the people of Sarn will have no defence against these new monsters.
There are some tall stories about the caverns beneath the Citadel - about magic and mages and monsters and gods.
Wydrin of Crosshaven has heard them all, but she's spent long enough trawling caverns and taverns with her companion Sir Sebastian to learn that there's no money to be made in chasing rumours.
But then a crippled nobleman with a dead man's name offers them a job: exploring the Citadel's darkest depths. It sounds like just another quest with gold and adventure . . . if they're lucky, they might even have a tale of their own to tell once it's over.
These reckless adventurers will soon learn that sometimes there is truth in rumour. Sometimes a story can save your life.
When prodigal daughter Heather Evans returns to her family home after her mother's baffling suicide, she makes an alarming discovery - stacks and stacks of carefully preserved letters from notorious serial killer Michael Reave. The \"Red Wolf,\" as he was dubbed by the press, has been in prison for over twenty years, serving a life sentence for the gruesome and ritualistic murders of several women across the country, although he has always protested his innocence.
\nThe police have had no reason to listen, yet Heather isn't the only one to have cause to re-examine the murders. The body of a young woman has just been found, dismembered and placed inside a tree, the corpse planted with flowers. Just as the Red Wolf once did.
\nWhat did Heather's mother know? Why did she kill herself? And with the monstrous Red Wolf safely locked inside a maximum security prison, who is stalking young women now? Teaming up with DI Ben Parker, Heather hopes to get some answers for herself and for the newest victims of this depraved murderer. Yet to do that, she must speak to Michael Reave herself, and expose herself to truths she may not be ready to face. Something dark is walking in the woods, and it knows her all too well.
\n
After being sacrificed yet again at the hands of Mother Maura, Elver has returned from the dead even more jih than human. A strange new power simmers beneath her skin alongside a warning from the Queen of Serpents: though she’s been granted another chance at life, someday soon, Elver will be called from the land of mortals.
\nNow that Artair knows the spirit with whom he shares a body, Lucian, is an ordinary human, the two have formed an uneasy truce. While they attempt to wield their shred of Maura’s stolen power - the only thing keeping her from ascending to full godhood - they’re also confronted with feelings for Elver that are impossible to deny.
\nBut Maura is out for revenge. As dangerous new alliances brew among the Twelve, Elver, Artair, and Lucian must set out to find the only being in existence capable of killing a god. And Elver will need to decide once and for all with which of the Sleepless her poisoned heart lies.
\n
In the seaside town of Hithechurch, England, eleven-year-old Charlotte meets Emily, a clever and secretive girl her own age with a dark family history. In an attempt to get rid of Emily’s abusive father, Charlie and Emily perform a ritual to try and summon the spirit of a Hithechurch girl of urban legend - named Stitch Face Sue by Charlie - who was killed by pirates and supposedly haunts the town in a quest for revenge.
\nWhen it appears that the macabre game they've invented is working, Emily becomes obsessed with Stitch Face Sue, and ropes in another girl - but the game goes tragically wrong when the new girl is killed. Charlie and Emily are caught trying to hide the body, and both are carted away to institutions.
\nPast meets present when Charlie returns to Hithechurch as an adult to research a book on the folklore of the area, but is drawn into the cases of several girls who have mysteriously vanished. And she has other motives for coming back as well. Emily has published a bestselling memoir on the fateful incident from their childhoods, one that lays the blame squarely at Charlie’s feet. Outraged, Charlie scours the town for evidence to back up her side of the story - and in doing so exposes an older, even darker tale.
\nCharlie is set on discovering the truth about the girls’ disappearances, but someone is watching, and her own past is nipping at her heels. In a town haunted by tragic disappearances and unrelenting urban legends, Charlie's determination for truth is laced with secrets buried deep in Hithechurch's past.
\n
As a child, Ashley Whitelam could often see odd things nobody else could: quiet, watchful figures she called the Heedful Ones kept a strange vigil wherever she went. As an adult, she keeps these visions to herself, but she’s turned her taste of the beyond into a career as a “psychic” - parting people from their money with a combination of psychology and internet research.
\nWhen the Lake District is gripped by a series of grisly child murders, Ashley offers her services to the police for the free publicity. But as Ashley leads the police on a fruitless search around the small town of Green Beck, she catches a glimpse of those old ghosts of her childhood and, following them into the woods, she finds something she never expected: the corpse of the latest missing child.
\nThe press fly into a frenzy and the police grow suspicious: either Ashley’s psychic abilities are real, or she is guilty of murder. Hounded by interviews and interrogations, Ashley teams up with Freddie Miller, a podcaster covering the crimes. As they investigate, Ashley realises that there’s no way to distance herself from these murders: whoever or whatever it is that’s haunting the Lakes is haunting her, too.
\n
Beware the dawning of a new mage . . .
Wydrin of Crosshaven, Sir Sebastian and Lord Aaron Frith are experienced in the perils of stirring up the old gods. They are also familiar with defeating them, and the heroes of Baneswatch are now enjoying the perks of suddenly being very much in demand for their services.
When a job comes up in the distant city of Skaldshollow, it looks like easy coin - retrieve a stolen item, admire the views, get paid. But in a place twisted and haunted by ancient magic, with the most infamous mage of them all, Joah Demonsworn, making a reappearance, our heroes soon find themselves threatened by enemies on all sides, old and new. And in the frozen mountains, the stones are walking . . .
The great city of Ebora once glittered with gold. Now its streets are stalked by wolves. Tormalin the Oathless has no taste for sitting around waiting to die while the realm of his storied ancestors falls to pieces - talk about a guilt trip. Better to be amongst the living, where there are taverns full of women and wine.
When eccentric explorer, Lady Vincenza 'Vintage' de Grazon, offers him employment, he sees an easy way out. Even when they are joined by a fugitive witch with a tendency to set things on fire, the prospect of facing down monsters and retrieving ancient artefacts is preferable to the abomination he left behind.
But not everyone is willing to let the Eboran empire collapse, and the adventurers are quickly drawn into a tangled conspiracy of magic and war. For the Jure'lia are coming, and the Ninth Rain must fall . . .
Ebora was once a glorious city, defended by legendary warriors and celebrated in song. Now refugees from every corner of Sarn seek shelter within its crumbling walls, and the enemy that has poisoned their land won't lie dormant for long.
The deep-rooted connection that Tormalin, Noon and the scholar Vintage share with their Eboran war-beasts has kept them alive so far. But with Tor distracted, and his sister Hestillion hell-bent on bringing ruthless order to the next Jure'lia attack, the people of Sarn need all the help they can get.
Noon is no stranger to playing with fire and knows just where to recruit a new - and powerful - army. But even she underestimates the epic quest that is to come. It is a journey wrought with pain and sacrifice - a reckoning that will change the face of Sarn forever.
Tales of the Black Feather Three and their exploits abound far and wide, and Wydrin of Crosshaven, Lord Aaron Frith and Sir Sebastian have become sell swords in demand. Having foiled powerful mages and evil magic, they now face a challenge unlike any before - in the form of Wydrin's mother.
Devinia the Red, notorious pirate and captain of the Poison Chalice, is intent on finding the fabled treasure hidden within the jungles of the cursed island of Euriale. She needs the skills of her daughter Wydrin and her companions to get there, and our heroes cannot resist the lure of coin and adventure.
But no explorer has returned from the heart of the island, and it's not long before the Three find themselves in the clutches of peril. Deep within the island of the gods, there are remnants of forces best left undisturbed . . .
\n
Elver is the guardian of the wild and dangerous monster forest. Saved from the brink of death by a god, her skin will poison anyone she touches.
\nArtair is on a mission - one that takes him face-to-face with Elver at her most ruthless. But her defenses are useless when she discovers he's the only human impervious to her deadly gift. For Artair isn't human: he's one of the Sleepless, cursed to share his body with an evil spirit.
\nLucian inhabits their body while Artair sleeps, and he is hell-bent on manipulating Elver for his dark purposes. But Elver is harbouring secrets too, and she has her own reasons for feigning an alliance with these two souls.
\nCaught in the crossfire of gods, monsters, and a dangerous magic they can barely understand, it is only a matter of time before the paths the three of them choose to take will set alight the very foundations of their world.
\n
Leven has no memory of her life before she was a soldier. The process of turning her into a Herald - a magical killing machine - was traumatic enough that it wiped her mind clean.
\nNow, with the war won and the Imperium satisfied, she finds herself unemployed and facing a bleak future. Her fellow Heralds are disappearing, and her own mind seems to be coming apart at the seams. Strange visions, memories she shouldn’t have, are resurfacing, and none of them make any sense. They show her Brittletain, the ancient and mysterious island that the Imperium was never able to tame. Leven resolves to go to this place of magic and warring queens, with the hope of finding who she really is.
\nEnvoy Kaeto has done a number of important little jobs for the Imperium, most of them nasty, all of them in the shadows. His newest assignment is to escort the bone-crafter Gynid Tyleigh as she travels across the Imperium - as the woman responsible for creating the Heralds, his employers owe her a great deal. But Tyleigh’s ambition alarms even Kaeto, and her conviction that she has found a new source of Titan bones, buried deep in the earth, could lead to another, even bloodier war.
\nYnis was raised by the griffins, and has never seen another human face. She lives wild, as they do, eating her meat raw and flying with her talon-sister, T’rook. The griffins fiercely protect their isolation - the piles of skulls that litter the mountains of Brittletain are testament to that - but the magic they guard will always make them a target for the greed of men. By choosing not to kill Ynis when she was just a baby, the griffins may have doomed themselves – because the girl’s past is coming for her, and it carries a lethal blade.
The Othanim have conquered Brittletain. Their murderous leader, Icaraine, plans to feed Brittletain's queens to her monstrous son. But total victory over the othanim's ancient enemy, the griffins, still eludes her. If Brittletain's resistance can secure an alliance with the griffins, they may still stand a chance of defeating the othanim.
\nEnvoy Kaeto has returned to the Imperium, hiding Felldir and Belise in a ruined castle. He believes both his friends and his attempt to murder Gynid Tyleigh have escaped the Empress's notice. Yet secrets are not so easy to keep in the Imperium. Kaeto will do anything to protect Felldir and Belise - and so finds himself en route to Brittletain as ambassador to the Othanim.
\nLeven, Cillian, and Ynis have spent the last two years tracking Ynis's griffin sister, T'rook, a prisoner of Gynid Tyleigh. But Ynis has secondary motives for pursuing Tyleigh. Meanwhile, Leven's health is deteriorating, and Cillian - exiled and disgraced - is tormented by strange voices, who tell him of the return of the mythic Green Man to Brittletain.
\nThere is no hope for humanity in a world ruled by Icaraine. But the price of defeating her might be almost too heavy to bear.
It’s been eleven years since high-powered attorney Sarah Morgan defended her husband, Adam, against the charge of murdering his mistress. Sarah has long since moved on, starting a family with her new husband, Bob Miller, and changing careers. Her life is back to being exactly how she always wanted . . . or is it?
\nAfter discovering Bob engaged in a one-night stand, Sarah wastes no time filing for divorce. However, amid their ugly separation, new DNA evidence is uncovered in the case against Adam, forcing the police to reopen the investigation and putting Sarah right back in the spotlight. Everyone wants to know what really happened, most of all former deputy Marcus Hudson, who is hell-bent on finding the truth.
\nBut when the woman Bob slept with is reported missing, he and Sarah start to fight dirty, and a high-stakes game of cat and mouse ensues. Can Bob and Sarah achieve the perfect divorce? Or will it be “’til death do us part”?
\n
Sarah Morgan is a successful and powerful defense attorney in Washington D.C. As a named partner at her firm, life is going exactly how she planned. The same cannot be said for her husband, Adam. He's a struggling writer who has had little success in his career and he tires of his and Sarah’s relationship as she is constantly working.
\nOut in the secluded woods, at the couple’s lakehouse, Adam engages in a passionate affair with Kelly Summers. But one morning everything changes. Kelly is found brutally stabbed to death and now, Sarah must take on her hardest case yet, defending her own husband, a man accused of murdering his mistress.
\n
The end times have come.
\nRelos Var's final plans to enslave the universe are on the cusp of fruition. He believes there's only one being in existence that might be able to stop him: the demon Xaltorath.
\nAs these two masterminds circle each other, neither is paying attention to the third player on the board, Kihrin. Unfortunately, keeping himself classified in the “pawn” category means Kihrin must pretend to be everything the prophecies threatened he'd become: the destroyer of all, the sun eater, a mindless, remorseless plague upon the land. It also means finding an excuse to not destroy the people he loves (or any of the remaining Immortals) without arousing suspicion.
\nKihrin's goals are complicated by the fact that not all of his “act” is one. His intentions may be sincere, but he's still being forced to grapple with the aftereffects of the corrupted magic ritual that twisted both him and the dragons. Worse, he's now tied to a body that is the literal avatar of a star - a form that is becoming increasingly, catastrophically unstable. All of which means he's running out of time.
\nAfter all, some stars fade - but others explode.
\n
Centuries ago, necromancy almost destroyed the world. That’s how history remembers it.
\nHistory remembers it wrong.
\nMathaiik has trained all his life to join the sacred order of the Idallik Knights, charged with defending their world from the forces of necromancy. Only vestiges of that cursed magic remain, nothing like the fabled days of the Grim Lords, the undead wizards who once nearly destroyed the world.
\nBut when an even stranger kind of monster begins to wake, the Knights quickly prove powerless to stop them. Whole forests are coming alive and devouring anyone so foolish as to trespass, as if the land itself has turned upon humanity.
\nIt’s a good thing, then, that the Grim Lords were never truly destroyed. One of their number sleeps below the Knights' very fortress. And when an army of twisted tree monsters attacks the young initiates in his charge, Math decides to do the unthinkable: he wakes her up.
\nThis is only the beginning of his problems. Because said necromancer, Kaiataris, knows something history has forgotten. The threat of this wild magic is part of a cycle that has repeated countless times - life after death, chaos after order. And if she and Math can’t find a new way to balance the scales, this won't just be the end of the world as they know it, but the end of all life, everywhere.
\n
What if you were imprisoned for all eternity?
In the aftermath of the Ritual of Night, everything has changed.
The Eight Immortals have catastrophically failed to stop Kihrin's enemies, who are moving forward with their plans to free Vol Karoth, the King of Demons. Kihrin has his own ideas about how to fight back, but even if he's willing to sacrifice everything for victory, the cost may prove too high for his allies.
Now they face a choice: can they save the world while saving Kihrin, too? Or will they be forced to watch as he becomes the very evil they have all sworn to destroy.
Now that the city of Atrine has been destroyed and Relos Var's plan to free the dark god Vol Karoth has been revealed - the end of the world is closer than ever.
To buy time for humanity, Kihrin, Janel, and Thurvishar must convince the king of the Manol vané to perform an ancient ritual that will strip the vané of their immortality - a ritual that certain vané will do anything to prevent. Including assassinating the ones bringing the news.
Worse, Kihrin must come to terms with the horrifying possibility that his connection to Vol Karoth is steadily growing in strength. How can Kihrin hope to save anyone when he might turn out to be the greatest threat of them all?
Kihrin D'Mon is a wanted man.
\nSince he destroyed the Stone of Shackles and set demons free across Quur, he has been on the run from the wrath of an entire empire. His attempt to escape brings him into the path of Janel Theranon, a mysterious Joratese woman who claims to know Kihrin.
\nJanel's plea for help pits Kihrin against all manner of dangers: a secret rebellion, a dragon capable of destroying an entire city, and Kihrin's old enemy, the wizard Relos Var.
\nJanel believes that Relos Var possesses one of the most powerful artifacts in the world—the Cornerstone called the Name of All Things. And if Janel is right, then there may be nothing in the world that can stop Relos Var from getting what he wants.
\nAnd what he wants is Kihrin D'Mon.
\nThere are the old stories. And then there’s what actually happens.
Kihrin is a bastard orphan who grew up on storybook tales of long-lost princes and grand quests. When he is claimed against his will as the long-lost son of a treasonous prince, Kihrin finds that being a long-lost prince isn't what the storybooks promised.
Far from living the dream, Kihrin finds himself practically a prisoner, at the mercy of his new family's power plays and ambitions. He also discovers that the storybooks have lied about a lot of other things things, too: dragons, demons, gods, prophecies, true love, and how the hero always wins.
Then again, maybe he’s not the hero, for Kihrin isn’t destined to save the empire.
He’s destined to destroy it . . .
Anahrod lives only for survival, preferring to thrive in the jungles of the Deep with the titan drake she keeps by her side. When an adventuring party saves her from capture by the local warlord, Sicaryon, she is eager to return to her solitary life, but this is no ordinary rescue. Anahrod's past has caught up with her. And these cunning misfits intend to spirit her away to the cloud cities, where they need her help to steal from a dragon’s hoard.
\nThere’s only one in the cloud cities, dragons rule, and the hoard in question belongs to the current regent, Neveranimas - and she wants Anahrod dead.
Kella Mabaki, dragon slayer extraordinaire, devoted sister, and celebrity hero of Jeenobi, has become a nobody by choice. Unable to continue hunting the dragons still tormenting her people and distanced from a brother she no longer understands, Kella is adrift in the city that was once her home. When she’s captivated by a rumor that could mean the end to the dragon sickness plaguing her land, she becomes obsessed with learning the truth of it. Nobody or not, she’s never been one for standing still.
\nDragonrider Litz is torn when Kella reappears in her life, devoted to a quest she appears to have invented. Despite her beloved cousin’s disappearance and her growing doubts toward the empire she serves, Litz is experiencing an unexpected period of stability in her life. Kella’s arrival and the brewing war between their nations forces Litz to make a choice. Her country, career, and family, or the chance of making a better world with the woman she hasn’t been able to forget?
The lands of Jeenobi and Aelshia are separated by hundreds of miles of dangerous desert, and antithetical views on dragons. Now, under a tenuous new peace agreement, Jeenobi has agreed to ban dragon slaying within its borders.
As a visiting ambassador to Jeenobi and a rider to the dragon Loren, Litz expected to meet resistance to all she represents. She did not expect Kella, the kingdom's most famous living dragon slayer, and she certainly didn't expect to find her attractive.
When Litz is forced into extraditing Kella to Aelshia for trial, they'll discover more monstrous things in the wilds of the desert than each other, and they'll need to put aside their differences if they want to survive. The future of both nations may hang in the balance.", "series": "Dragon Circle", "seriesOrder": 1, "tags": [ "LGBT - Fantasy" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Jenna Jarvis - Digging for Heaven.jpeg", "mtime": 1767084065007.2034, "size": 700022, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:21:34.362Z" }, "Jenna Jarvis - Ride It Out": { "title": "Ride It Out", "author": "Jenna Jarvis", "description": "
As a doctor, Mick McVey knows what a mental health crisis looks like. Her own still takes her by surprise. When she inherits a house from the grandfather she’s never met, she puts herself on sabbatical and travels to the small hometown of the mother who abandoned her. It’s a temporary solution.
\nMick might not be grieving her grandfather, but to her new neighbor Katy, his death is one blow too many. Mick’s arrival feels like Katy’s chance to forget her ex and her struggling cinema and reinvent herself. She’ll finally get her hot rebound and make this year her year.
\nWhen the COVID-19 lockdown traps both women in situations they’d convinced themselves were temporary, they’re forced to face what they really want from their lives, and who they want to share them with.
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Jenna Jarvis - Ride It Out.jpeg", "mtime": 1767084065035.4983, "size": 632573, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:21:34.412Z" }, "Jenna Jarvis - Ride With Me": { "title": "Ride With Me", "author": "Jenna Jarvis", "description": "Returning home after years of living as far from her wealthy family as she can, Lucy wants her great American road trip before she settles down. The vintage VW bus her arrogant older brother Jordan is selling off seems like the perfect vehicle for it.
\nBut the bus in question is fiercely beloved by its real owner, Emma, Jordan’s wife. She’s not ready to let the bus go, but she is ready to get out of her marriage - and isn’t above hijacking her own bus to make that happen.
\nWhen Lucy’s vacation to find herself becomes Emma’s chance to remember herself, they realise that everything they’re looking for might already be sitting right next to them - if they’re willing to reach for it.
Four years after graduation, life isn’t going the way Camille Luna expected. Her corporate career is soul-sucking, she's in debt from student loans, and her breakup with her ex has created a serious rift between her college best friends. When her spiraling lands her in jail for the night, it's Danny Brennan - the lovable burnout from their college clique - who bails her out and offers the perfect solution to her quarter-life crisis: a summer by the beach.
\nCam is whisked away to Elswick, Rhode Island, where former slacker Danny has taken over his uncle’s restaurant and turned it into a seaside hotspot. But while Danny has grown into a devoted boss and dog dad, his carpe diem life philosophy is still as fiery as ever. The hazy summer days start to blur between shifts at the restaurant, dips in the ocean, and a reignited passion for writing, all alongside Danny who makes her laugh like nobody else. Cam can't help but wonder - is it the salty waves that have her feeling so renewed, or is it the carefree friend she always overlooked? But summer can't last forever, and Cam's looming student debt reminds her at every turn that the frigid air of corporate office life is waiting.
\nAs September approaches, Cam must decide between snuffing out the flames with Danny in order to keep her beloved friend group together and return to the corporate grind - or falling into his forbidden arms and setting her old life ablaze.
\n
Synthetic woman Julia Walden was designed for one reason: to compete on The Proposal and claim the heart of bachelor Josh LaSala. Her casting is controversial, but Julia seems to get her fairy-tale ending when Josh gets down on one knee.
\nFast forward fifteen months, and Julia and Josh are married and raising their baby in small-town Indiana. But with haters around every corner, Julia's life is a far cry from the domestic bliss she imagined. Then her splintering world shatters: Josh goes missing, and she becomes the prime suspect in his murder.
\nWith no one left she can trust, Julia takes the investigation into her own hands. But the explosive truths she uncovers will drive her to her breaking point - and isn’t that where a person’s true nature is revealed? That is . . . if Julia truly is a person.
\n
Alice tirelessly works her way up to be a #1 tennis champion, all while maintaining a growing career trajectory editing the Wonder Women comic. She enjoys her hard-earned success with her loving husband, her steadfast coach, and her dear friends - many of whom are famous and well-connected.
\nBut then her world falls apart.
\nAlice's life begins to unravel when she receives a telegram informing her that her husband has been killed in action in the war in Germany. Heartbroken, she feels like she can only watch as the war wreaks havoc in every area of her life.
\nUntil an unexpected invitation arrives.
\nAlice is prompted to action when the US Army sends her a request: Under the guise of playing in tennis exhibition games in Switzerland, she would be a spy for them. And Alice aches for nothing more than to avenge her husband's death. What awaits her might be her greatest challenge yet.
\nBased on the life of a very real, very incredible American icon.
\n
1917 England:
\nAn orphan coming of age without a penny to her name, Marion joins the Women’s Royal Navy Service (the “Wrens”) as a motorcycle despatch rider on the Western Front, assigned to train and deliver carrier pigeons to the front line. Despite the hardships and constant threat of danger, Marion feels as if she finally belongs and that she has a purpose. Meanwhile, she and her childhood best friend, Eddie, dream of a future after the war - until tragedy strikes.
\n1936 England:
\nA society girl, Evelyn has overcome a childhood disability and has found her true passion in automobile racing. When England enters WWII, Evelyn sees an opportunity to use her skills as a despatch rider, but her parents threaten to cut her off if she doesn’t start acting like a lady and marry the man they have chosen for her.
\nMeanwhile, a fellow Wren shows up at Marion’s door with an unwelcome call to return to her service.
\nTold in alternating narratives that converge in a single life-changing moment, The Call of the Wrens is a vivid, emotional saga of love, war, secrets, and resilience.
\n
Maggie Thatcher is prime minister, drainpipe jeans are in, and Miv is convinced that her dad wants to move their family Down South.
\nBecause of the murders.
\nLeaving Yorkshire and her best friend Sharon simply isn't an option, no matter the dangers lurking round their way; or the strangeness at home that started the day Miv's mum stopped talking.
\nPerhaps if she could solve the case of the disappearing women, they could stay after all?
\nSo, Miv and Sharon decide to make a list: a list of all the suspicious people and things down their street. People they know. People they don't.
\nBut their search for the truth reveals more secrets in their neighbourhood, within their families - and between each other - than they ever thought possible.
\nWhat if the real mystery Miv needs to solve is the one that lies much closer to home?
Fix the past. Save the future.
Dak, Sera, and Riq involve themselves in one of the most bizarre spy missions in history . . . and the outcome of World War II hangs in the balance.
The stories of five kids living through World War I, each of whom holds the key to the others' futures . . . if they are lucky - and brave - enough to find each other.
\nWorld War I stretches its cruel fingers across Europe, where five young people, each from different backgrounds and nations, face the terror of battle, the deprivations of hunger, and all the awful challenges of war.
\nFelix, from Austria-Hungary, longs for the bravery to resist Jewish deportations before his own family can be taken.
\nKara, from Britain, dreams of someday earning her Red Cross pin and working as a nurse - or even a doctor.
\nJuliette, of France, hopes her family can remain knitted together, despite her father's imprisonment, as the war's longest battle stretches on and on.
\nElsa, from Germany, hopes her homing pigeon might one day bring her a friend from out of the chaos.
\nAnd Dimitri, of Russia, wants only to survive the front, where he's been sent with no weapon.
\nNone of them will find exactly what they want. But the winds of fate may cross their paths to give each of them just what they need.
When Nic, a slave in the mines outside of Rome, is forced to enter a sealed cavern containing the lost treasures of Julius Caesar, he finds much more than gold and gemstones: He discovers an ancient bulla, an amulet that belonged to the great Caesar and is filled with a magic once reserved for the Gods - magic some Romans would kill for.
\nNow, with the deadly power of the bulla pulsing through his veins, Nic is determined to become free. But instead, he finds himself at the center of a ruthless conspiracy to overthrow the emperor and spark the Praetor War, a battle to destroy Rome from within. Traitors and spies lurk at every turn, each more desperate than the next to use Nic's newfound powers for their own dark purposes.
\nIn a quest to stop the rebellion, save Rome, and secure his own freedom, Nic must harness the magic within himself and defeat the empire's most powerful and savage leaders.
Nic may have escaped enslavement in the mines outside of Rome, but his troubles are far from over. The Praetor War - the battle to destroy Rome from within - is in full force, and Nic is caught in the crossfire. The secretive Praetors are determined to unlock a powerful amulet - one sure to bring the empire to its knees. Worse, the Praetors believe Nic holds the key to finding this amulet, and they will stop at nothing to steal it, even if that means harming the people Nic holds most dear.
\nWhen the Praetors capture Nic's mother, Nic knows he must do anything to save her. He challenges the Praetors to a chariot race. If he wins, they will release his mother. But if he loses, he must hand over a magic that will certainly bring about the end of Rome as well as his own life. Can Nic once again harness his magic and gather the strength to defeat his enemies? Or will he lose his mother and bear witness to Rome's destruction?
In a peaceful Carthya, Jaron leads as the Ascendant King with Imogen beside him - but the peace he fought so long for is not destined to last.
On a routine sea voyage, Jaron's ship is brutally attacked, and he is taken hostage. The mysterious captors and their leader, Jane Strick, accuse Jaron of unthinkable acts. They are also in possession of some shocking items - including the crown and sword that belonged to Jaron's older brother, Darius. The items unearth a past Jaron thought he had put behind him.
Though it seems impossible, Jaron must consider: Could Darius be alive? And what does Strick want from Jaron? Against his will, Jaron will be pulled back into a fight for the throne - and a battle to save his kingdom.
Kestra Dallisor has finally gained possession of the Olden Blade. With the dagger in her control, she attempts to destroy the tyrannical Lord Endrick. But when Kestra fails, the king strips her of her memory, and leaves her weak and uncertain, bound to obey him. Heartbroken, Simon is desperate to return Kestra to the rebel she was, but refuses to use magic to heal her.
\nWith untrusting Coracks and Halderians threatening to capture and kill her, and war looming on the horizon, Kestra and Simon will have to learn to trust each other again if they have any hope of surviving. But can a heart once broken ever be healed?
In a discontent kingdom, civil war is brewing. To unify the divided people, Conner, a nobleman of the court, devises a cunning plan to find an impersonator of the king’s long-lost son and install him as a puppet prince. Four orphans are recruited to compete for the role, including a defiant boy named Sage. Sage knows that Conner’s motives are more than questionable, yet his life balances on a sword’s point - he must be chosen to play the prince or he will certainly be killed. But Sage’s rivals have their own agendas as well.
As Sage moves from a rundown orphanage to Conner’s sumptuous palace, layer upon layer of treachery and deceit unfold, until finally, a truth is revealed that, in the end, may very well prove more dangerous than all of the lies taken together.
Just weeks after Jaron has taken the throne, an assassination attempt forces him into a deadly situation. Rumors of a coming war are winding their way between the castle walls, and Jaron feels the pressure quietly mounting within Carthya.
\nSoon, it becomes clear that deserting the kingdom may be his only hope of saving it. But the further Jaron is forced to run from his identity, the more he wonders if it is possible to go too far. Will he ever be able to return home again? Or will he have to sacrifice his own life in order to save his kingdom?
King Jaron has outwitted the Prozarians and returned to his own kingdom with one secret in his pocket that not even his friends know about. He's hoping that secret will help him finally bring stability to Carthya.
\nBut a surprise attack on his own land - on the castle itself - reminds Jaron that nothing is easy. The Prozarian Monarch threatens to crumble Jaron's entire kingdom. And that's not the only thing in danger: With old enemies and new rumors circling around him, even Jaron's relationship with Imogen is uncertain.
\nThis former False Prince will need his best tricks and many allies at his side to hold Carthya together.
Nothing is as it seems in the kingdom of Antora. Kestra Dallisor has spent three years in exile in the Lava Fields, but that won't stop her from being drawn back into her father's palace politics. He's the right hand man of the cruel king, Lord Endrick, which makes Kestra a valuable bargaining chip.
\nA group of rebels knows this all too well - and they snatch Kestra from her carriage as she reluctantly travels home. The kidnappers want her to retrieve the lost Olden Blade, the only object that can destroy the immortal king, but Kestra is not the obedient captive they expected. Simon, one of her kidnappers, will have his hands full as Kestra tries to foil their plot, by force, cunning, or any means necessary.
\nAs motives shift and secrets emerge, both will have to decide what - and who - it is they're fighting for.
Simon and Kestra are hurtling down paths ever farther from each other as the battle for control of Antora rages.
Simon, newly king of the Halderians, is pressed on all sides by royal duties. Harlyn Mindell is his betrothed and intended queen, but Simon can't give up hope for a life with Kestra.
Kestra, exiled, feels her magic growing - and despite everyone's warnings, she knows she must embrace it. That power is the key to the kingdom's future.
Both still strive to defeat the evil Lord Endrick, but danger awaits them on the murky road forward. And is a common enemy enough to help them survive - or to carry them back to each other?
Trouble has a way of seeking out Nicolas Calva, and it's not likely to leave him alone any time soon.
\nWith Caesar's magic bulla, the Malice of Mars, and the possibility of a Jupiter Stone in play, all the powers of Rome are circling Nic. He'll have to maneuver his way through scheming government officials and reawakened magical beasts to save the Empire.
\nCan he manage to keep his friends and family safe, claim his own freedom once and for all, and rescue the Empire - before the magic gets the better of him?
Out on her morning run, Detective Katie Scott is stopped in her tracks when her service dog, Cisco, alerts her to something. Weaving through the towering pine trees, Katie is horrified to find a little girl alone in the woods, dressed in a white nightgown. The child sobs into Katie’s arms. She’s unharmed, but clearly traumatised. Scooping her up, Katie follows the trail to a large farmhouse. But what she finds there rips the air from her one, two, three, four bodies laid out side by side, all in matching pajamas.
\nThe Banks family were attacked in their sleep, but how had the little girl trembling in Katie’s arms escaped with her life? What twisted monster would do such a thing, and why leave no trace but a single bloody handprint on the doorframe? Katie makes a vow to find answers for this sweet child who has lost everything and everyone.
\nWorking night and day to piece together why this innocent family were targeted, Katie thinks she has her first lead when she discovers the family were under witness protection. Had they seen something they shouldn’t? Was the aim to silence them forever? Questions are still spinning in Katie’s mind when another family is discovered dead in their beds on the other side of Pine Valley.
\nWith the entire department stretched to breaking point with an unprecedented body count and trace evidence stacking up, it’s going to take everything Katie has to track this twisted killer down. But as she closes-in on her target, it’s clear someone close to Katie is keeping a deadly secret. How many more innocent lives will be lost before she can bring them to justice?
\n
When Detective Katie Scott finds a woman dying in the carpark, blood pooling around her, she reaches her just in time to hear her utter the words: find my daughter.
\nKatie doesn’t waste a second gathering her team and pulling the casefile for the missing child, Anna Braxton, a teen with sparkling blue-eyes and an even brighter future. Staring at the blank investigation board, Katie won’t rest until she fulfils Anna’s mother’s dying wish.
\nSearching the Braxton’s impeccable family home, Katie finds Anna’s journal, filled with teenage secrets. Buried among the pages, she thinks she finds a lead - a strange man reached out to Anna, just days before she went missing . . .
\nBut the case takes a terrifying turn when Anna’s best friend also vanishes. Hours later, a girl’s body is found in the embers of a housefire, her yellow satin dress devastatingly beautiful amongst the ashes. Is it Anna, her best friend, or another girl?
\nOne thing is certain: a monster has the closeknit community of Pine Valley in a chokehold, and Katie must get one step ahead of the killer before any more precious young lives are taken. But at what cost?
\n
Detective Katie Scott stares in horror at what she and her service dog Cisco have discovered: seven shallow graves, the bodies of young women each wrapped carefully in a blanket and buried in makeshift coffins. Miles of abandoned farmland stretch out from the treeline behind her. Has Katie uncovered the horrifying graveyard of a monster who has been stealing Pine Valley’s daughters for years?
\nKatie quickly identifies one of the victims as Abigail Andrews, a beautiful young woman who disappeared fifteen years ago. Katie is heartbroken that she’ll have to tell Abigail’s mother her darling girl is gone.
\nWhen Katie is ambushed working late at the scene, fired upon by an unknown assailant, she knows she must be close to finding the killer. But the shooter vanishes into thin air. And when a new young woman is taken, dark haired and dark eyed like the others, Katie realizes her time is running out. Can she stay alive long enough to track down this twisted murderer before another young life is stolen too soon?
\n
Detective Katie Scott has never seen two people more in love than her aunt and uncle as they danced together on the night of their wedding anniversary party. But the next morning, when Katie finds her aunt’s body sprawled across the floor, that perfect image is shattered forever.
All fingers point to Katie’s uncle, Pine Valley’s beloved sheriff and protector – after all, his prints are all over the antique knife found at the scene. Grieving, but certain of her uncle’s innocence, Katie is consigned to the cold case division after she’s discovered searching the house for clues.
Does someone want to keep her as far away from this investigation as possible?
Ignoring warnings from her team, Katie digs into her uncle’s old case files and discovers photographs of the body of a young girl found tied to a tree after a hike in search of a rare flower. Her body is covered with the same unusual lacerations her aunt suffered. Katie knows it can’t be a coincidence, but every lead she follows takes her to a dead end.
Moments before the sheriff is arrested, Katie realizes that a single piece of thread she found at the crime scene could be the missing link that will stitch old crimes to new.
But how can she prove her uncle’s innocence without throwing herself directly into the line of fire? She doesn’t have a choice, he’s the only family she has left . . .
When the bodies of eleven and twelve-year-old sisters, Tessa and Megan, are found at the bottom of a ravine - dressed in matching pastel summer outfits, their small bodies broken from the fall - Detective Katie Scott is called to one of the most shocking and heartbreaking crime scenes of her career.
Carefully picking through the fragile remains, Katie makes the first of many disturbing discoveries: the girls were not biological sisters. The youngest, Megan, is a DNA match to a kidnapping case years before. The tiny number burnt into her skin the mark of a terrifying killer intent on keeping count of his collection.
Her PTSD from the army triggered, Katie is left reeling as she maps other missing children in the local area. Has this twisted soul found a way to stay nearby his victims? Could he be watching now as Katie hits one dead end after another?
A wild storm building, matching a fiber found during the autopsy to a nearby boatyard is the break Katie needs. But when another girl goes missing, just as lightning strikes and the power goes out, Katie only has her instincts, her team and her service dog to rely on. As time runs out for Katie to finds the stolen child alive, who will become the next number on this monster’s deadly list?
It’s been one month since Detective Katie Scott ’s fiancé, Chad , went missing without a trace. Devastated Katie is still working tirelessly day and night to track down the love of her life, barely sleeping and chasing every new lead. But now the case has gone cold.
\nWhen the body of beautiful Gina Hartfield is discovered among the pine needles in a clearing on Lookout Ridge, Katie swallows her own pain and knows she must focus on finding Gina’s killer. The young woman was found with a pink velvet blindfold shading the hollows where her eyes had been removed. Katie is certain she is chasing a sadistic individual who will soon take another life . . .
\nBut the autopsy reveals Gina’s body was washed before being abandoned, leaving no trace of evidence behind. And with no witnesses to Gina’s disappearance, the women of Pine Valley are terrified to go out alone.
\nDesperately combing the crime scene, when Katie sees a newspaper article about her previous cases pinned to a nearby tree, she is certain Gina’s murder is personal. Then tire tracks found in the forest are matched to a truck seen following Chad in the days leading up to his disappearance. Katie’s blood runs cold .
\nIs there a link between Chad’s disappearance and Gina’s brutal murder, or is the killer playing a twisted game with Katie? Can she find out the truth before they take another life?
\n
When a cold, naked body is discovered by a couple on a jog through the lush woodlands of Pine Valley, California, new recruit Detective Katie Scott is stunned to discover the victim is Amanda Payton – a much-loved local nurse and the woman at the heart of an unsolved case she’s been investigating whilst getting a grip on her crippling PTSD.
Weeks earlier, Amanda had run, battered and bruised, out into the headlights of a passing patrol car. She claimed to have just escaped a kidnapping, but with no strong evidence, the case went cold. The Pine Valley police made a fatal mistake . . .
Katie is certain the marks on Amanda’s wrists complete a pattern of women being taken, held captive and then showing up dead in remote locations around Pine Valley - and she won’t let someone die on her watch again.
But then a beautiful office worker with a link to the hospital where Amanda worked goes missing. With only days before the next body is due to show up, can Katie make amends for her past by saving this innocent life?
Half-buried in the muddy earth and surrounded by puddles of water lies the naked body of a beautiful young girl. Her pale skin looks like porcelain in the early morning light. Her fragile arms bent and crooked like a broken doll.
When Detective Katie Scott is called to the discovery of a young girl buried on the grounds of a former children’s home in Pine Valley, California, she’s hopeful it’s the end to a devastating cold case she’s been working on. No one has seen Candace Harlan since she ran away from Elm Hill Manor five years ago. Her death will be a tragedy, but it will also bring peace to those who miss her most. But the girl in the ground is not Candace.
The victim is almost identical to Candace in every way, but fear grips Katie as she takes in the black ink that decorates the girl’s back - a terrifying message tattooed on her skin after she drew her last breath.
Forcing down traumatic memories of losing her own parents, Katie is certain someone mistook this poor soul for Candace, and that this crumbling home for lost girls is at the heart of this terrible crime. She sets to work digging into the tragic history of the owners who lost so many children of their own and tracking down the last six residents and the staff who cared for them - but no one wants to talk, let alone remember.
The next day, as second girl’s body is found down by the creek at high water, the same words etched into her skin. Katie’s worst fear is confirmed: someone is picking off the last of the Elm Hill girls one by one. But what does the tattoo mean? And what monster would target these innocent girls who have already been through so much?
Katie must dig deep to confront her own fears and protect the vulnerable - but as the body count rises further, will there be anyone left to save?
An eight-year-old girl, Chelsea Compton, is missing in Pine Valley, California and for Detective Katie Scott it’s a cruel reminder of the friend who disappeared from summer camp twenty years ago. Unable to shake the memories, Katie vows she won’t rest until she discovers what happened to Chelsea.
But as Katie starts to investigate, the case reveals itself to be much bigger and more shocking than she feared. Hidden deep in the forest she unearths a makeshift cemetery: a row of graves, each with a brightly coloured teddy bear.
Katie links the graves to a stack of missing-persons cases involving young girls - finding a pattern no one else has managed to see. Someone in Pine Valley has been taking the town’s daughters for years, and Katie is the only one who can stop them.
And then another little girl goes missing, snatched from the park near her home.
Katie’s still haunted by the friend she failed to protect, and she’ll do anything to stop the killer striking again - but can she find the little girl before it’s too late?
In the thin light of the moon, the woman’s limp body hangs from the iron fence amongst the redwoods. Looped over the railings is the little gold locket her mother gave her when she turned sixteen. The picture of the girl inside smiles out at a future she’ll never see . . .
\nAs day breaks over the fairground, Detective Katie Scott forces herself to take in another disturbing scene in front of her. A woman, the same age as her, found slumped in the carriage of the Ferris wheel, red lipstick dragged across her lips, her throat cut.
\nKatie doesn’t want to believe that the serial killer picking off women across the state has found their way to the small town of Pine Valley, California, but when her team finds a gold engagement ring hanging nearby, it’s a terrifying, but undeniable fact.
\nWith a twisted killer on her doorstep, Katie knows if she doesn’t act fast, she’ll find more women left out in the cold like broken dolls. Her team hit dead end after dead end, but only she can see the vital link between the victims: a connection with Katie herself.
\nKatie has spent years pushing traumatic memories of her years in the military far out of reach, but she must confront them now or more innocent women will die. But as the killer circles closer and closer to Katie, what if the only answer is to give him what he wants? There must be another way . . .
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When Detective Katie Scott receives a plea from neighboring Coldwater Creek to help with a tragic murder, she doesn’t hesitate. Fifteen-year-old Ivy Miller’s naked body was found tied to a tree, a freshly inked pink rose tattoo on her arm. The word “MORE” carved into her back means sweet Ivy could be the first of many . . .
\nKatie’s heart aches for the young girl whose life ended before it had even begun. But she has her work cut out with the inexperienced police department fumbling the case at every turn. There hasn’t been a murder in this small town for as long as anyone can remember, but why will none of the locals cooperate? Katie’s only lead is a blurry photograph of Ivy’s long-missing mother found in Ivy’s bedroom. If she can find out where it was taken, Katie knows she’ll have the first clue in a mystery that has been haunting Coldwater Creek for years.
\nBut Katie’s world crashes down when Ivy’s two best friends are found murdered in the same woods days later. Inked with the same pretty flower, the rose girls were keeping a deadly secret. Katie will never forgive herself for not making the connection in time. As mothers cling to their daughters, terrified to let them out of their sight, Katie’s search leads her to an abandoned building deep in the forest where the last photo of Ivy’s mother was taken. But will she survive long enough to stop more heart-shattering tragedies?
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When camp counselor Carolyn Sable’s body is found floating in a lake beside Eagle Ridge Summer Camp, Detective Katie Scott must dig deep to stay focused. As a child, Katie spent many happy weeks at that camp toasting marshmallows on the fire with her best friend Jenny . . . until the day Jenny disappeared. The loss will always haunt Katie, but Carolyn’s inconsolable family need answers.
\nSearching the area, the devastating discovery of two more bodies sends the case into a tailspin. Suddenly on the hunt for a serial killer, Katie’s blood turns to ice when she finds newspaper clippings about her own past cases planted near one of the bodies. Was this twisted killer banking on Katie taking the lead? And why?
\nCarolyn was adored by children and staff at the camp, so Katie thinks her sudden resignation is key to cracking the case. Uncovering a tragic accident involving a group of children the weeks before Carolyn left, Katie knows she’s getting close.
\nBut when the carefully laid trap Katie sets to catch Carolyn’s killer backfires, Katie finds herself in unthinkable danger and unable to even trust her own team. Can she stay alive long enough to crack the toughest case of her career, and how many more innocent lives will be lost before she does?
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Detective Katie Scott is enjoying a rare morning of peace when she is disturbed by reports of two bodies found at the local Pine Valley building site. Rushing over with her service dog Cisco, her blood turns to ice when she finds the skeletons of a parent and child, their hands intertwined, desperately clinging to each other. What kind of monster would do this?
\nKatie wastes no time pulling together her team and quickly identifies the victims by the matching silver bracelets on their wrists, each with half hearts. They are Meredith and Misty Collins, a mother and daughter who were reported missing twenty years ago. They vanished into thin air, but rumors swirled for years about the screams in the forest the night they disappeared.
\nSoon the case takes a shocking turn when Meredith’s husband is found dead the next day. Is the twisted serial killer hunting down possible witnesses one by one? And who is the shadowy figure who has been watching Katie’s home at night? With time running out, and those close to her keeping secrets about what happened at the Collins’ house all those years ago, can Katie stay one step ahead of the unhinged killer before another life is lost?
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When firefighters tackling a blazing house in a quiet suburb of Pine Valley, California discover human remains, Detective Katie Scott races to 717 Maple Street. She calls a halt to the excavations the moment she sees the full number and size of the bones; someone has buried a whole family down here.
\nWorking night and day, it’s up to Katie to prove her theory that the fire was no accident, that someone wanted to expose the secret in the basement. Tiny traces of explosives residue found at the scene is all the proof she needs. But the Cross family have been missing for months - leaving friends and loved ones in agonising pain - what twisted soul would do this now? And why?
\nThe case takes another heart-shattering turn when Katie’s suspicions over recent renovation work on the house leads to the discovery of more bodies in the back yard: two little girls, buried years apart. What other devastating secrets are hidden in this perfect family home? It’s a dead end at every turn as Katie tracks down anyone who knew the family.
\nJust when it looks like all hope is lost, reports of the Cross’s landlord harassing the family before they went missing gives Katie a crucial lead. With a menacing grey sedan following her every move, how many more innocent lives will be lost before Katie can dig up the truth?
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Taking a much-needed break in a cabin in the woods with her service dog Cisco, Detective Katie Scott is disturbed by a sharp knocking at the door. Outside, she finds a terrified girl called TJ, begging for help - she says she has found a dead girl in the forest. When they reach the scene, Katie turns to ask TJ further questions, but she has vanished.
\nAt dawn the next day, the body of another girl is found laid out only a mile from the first. To Katie’s horror, she realizes it is TJ. The scene looks eerily similar, with a small shrine below her feet. What kind of monster would do this? And if a twisted serial killer is at work, who is their next victim?
\nAs more bodies and shrines emerge, Katie needs to find the link between the girls and the unhinged killer. But when she stumbles across a cold case that the local police seem determined to keep quiet, Katie realises danger could be closer to her than she first thought. How much will Katie sacrifice to find the killer and can she stop more innocent lives from being taken?
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When Beth arrives in Washington, D.C., she hates everything about it: the confusing traffic circles, the ubiquitous Ann Taylor suits, the humidity that descends each summer. At dinner parties, guests compare their security clearance levels. They leave their BlackBerrys on the table. They speak in acronyms. And once they realise Beth doesn't work in politics, they smile blandly and turn away.
\nSoon Beth and her husband, Matt, meet a charismatic White House staffer named Jimmy and his wife, Ashleigh, and the four become inseparable, coordinating brunch, birthdays, and long weekends away. But as Jimmy's star rises higher and higher, their friendship - and Beth's relationship with Matt - is threatened by jealousy, competition and rumors.
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Hannah longs for the days when she used to be free, but now, she is a Jewish prisoner at Theresienstadt, a model ghetto where the Nazis plan to make a propaganda film to convince the world that the Jewish people are living well in the camps. But Hannah will do anything to show the world the truth. Along with other young resistance members, they vow to disrupt the filming and derail the increasingly frequent deportations to death camps in the east.
\nHilde is a true believer in the Nazi cause, working in the Reich Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda. Though they're losing the war, Hilde hasn't lost faith. She can't stop the Allied bombings, but she can help the party create a documentary that will renew confidence in Hitler's plans for Jewish containment. When the filming of Hitler Gives a City to the Jews faces production problems due to resistance, Hilde finds herself in a position to finally make a name for herself. And when she recognises Hannah, an old childhood friend, she knows she can use their friendship to get the film back on track.
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Former child star Anderson “Andy” Ducharme is hiding - has been for a long time, if she’s honest with herself, which she isn’t.
\nWhen she suddenly cut off all ties and left LA six years earlier to work in a flower shop in coastal New England, she wasn’t just running away from toxic relationships, embezzling agents, and all the rest of her Hollywood life; she was running to something . . . sort of, if you squinted, and if you accepted that what she was running toward was little more than a vacation daydream she had made up with her (in)famous ex, and former costar, Nicole “Nikki” Price.
\nThen Nikki announces her plan to write a tell-all book about growing up in Hollywood and their tumultuous time on the Nik and Andy show, and Andy’s feelings of hurt and betrayal come rushing back. Emboldened by anger (and maybe one too many drinks), Andy does something very she texts her ex for the first time in years. No one’s more shocked than Andy when Nikki actually shows up to her small florist shop, looking for answers.
\nAndy is fully prepared to send Nikki away, but it seems Nikki has some unfinished business as well. Now that she finally knows where Andy’s been hiding, she’s not letting her go so easy. And with each passing encounter, Andy can’t deny the simmering physical attraction that threatens to boil over every time they get close.
\nBut can the two of them really reunite without wrecking Andy’s carefully rebuilt life? Or is she setting herself up for a fresh heartbreak?
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Ruby and Morgan fell for each other during their senior year of high school, and now, almost a year later, they are fighting to keep their spark alive, even while they are Morgan is on a track scholarship at a university several hours away, studying public policy, while Ruby stayed in her hometown, exploring her love of mechanics in the automotive engineering program at the local community college.
\nLong distance weighs on the girls, with new friendships and flirtatious classmates adding complications, and the two are looking forward to a spring break getaway to Washington, D.C., and the bliss of a whole summer vacation together. But when Morgan discovers she's a finalist for the perfect internship, and Ruby gets the shot to appear on her favorite automotive TV show, the trip schedule - and their summer plans - are thrown into question. With both girls unwilling to stand in the way of each other’s future, they has the time come for them to go their separate ways?
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Elouise (Lou) Parker is determined to have the absolute best, most impossibly epic summer of her life. There are just a few things standing in her way:
* She's landed a job at Magic Castle Playland . . . as a giant dancing hot dog.
* Her crush, the dreamy Diving Pirate Nick, already has a girlfriend, who is literally the Princess of the park. But Lou's never liked anyone, guy or otherwise, this much before, and now she wants a chance at her own happily ever after.
* Her best friend, Seeley, the carousel operator, who's always been up for anything, suddenly isn't when it comes to Lou's quest to set her up with the perfect girl or Lou's scheme to get close to Nick.
* And it turns out that this will be their last summer at Magic Castle Playland - ever - unless she can find a way to stop it from closing.
Jennifer Dugan's sparkling debut coming-of-age queer romance stars a princess, a pirate, a hot dog, and a carousel operator who find love - and themselves - in unexpected people and unforgettable places.
Sloan and Cherry. Cherry and Sloan. They met only a few days before masked men with machetes attacked the summer camp where they worked, a massacre that left the rest of their fellow counselors dead. Now, months later, the two are inseparable, their traumatic experience bonding them in ways no one else can understand.
\nBut as new evidence comes to light and Sloan learns more about the motives behind the ritual killing that brought them together, she begins to suspect that her girlfriend may be more than just a survivor - she may actually have been a part of it. Cherry tries to reassure her, but Sloan only becomes more distraught. Is this gaslighting or reality? Is Cherry a victim or a perpetrator? Is Sloan confused, or is she seeing things clearly for the very first time? Against all odds, Sloan survived that hot summer night. But will she survive what comes next?
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The gym is Lizzie's life - it's her passion, her job, and the only place that's ever felt like home. Unfortunately, her bosses consider her a glorified check-in girl at best, and the gym punching bag at worst.
\nWhen their son, Lizzie's best friend, James, begs her to be his plus one at his perfect sister Cara's wedding, things go wrong immediately, and culminate in Lizzie giving a drunken pep talk to a hot stranger in the women's bathroom - except that stranger is actually the bride-to-be, and Lizzie has accidentally convinced her to ditch her groom.
\nNow, newly directionless Cara is on a quest to find herself, and Lizzie - desperate to make sure her bosses never find out her role in this fiasco - gets strong-armed by James into “entertaining” her. Cara doesn't have to know it's a setup; it'll just be a quick fling before she sobers up and goes back to her real life. After all, how could someone like Cara fall for someone like Lizzie, with no career and no future?
\nBut the more Lizzie gets to know Cara, the more she likes her, and the bigger the potential disaster if any of her rapidly multiplying secrets get out. Because now it's not just Lizzie's job and entire future on the line, but also the girl of her dreams.
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Fallon and Chloe used to be best friends, but last summer they hooked up right before Chloe left for college, and after a series of misunderstandings they are now not speaking to one another. A year later, Chloe’s back home from school, and Fallon is doing everything in her power to avoid her - which is especially difficult because their moms own a business together, a gourmet ice cream truck where both girls work.
\nWhen their moms have the opportunity to make a presentation to some venture capitalists in Texas - something that could seriously expand their business and solve all their money problems to boot - it's up to Fallon to work a series of food truck festivals across the country. But she can't do it alone, and Chloe is the only one available to help. As tensions heat up again between the two, will Fallon be able to keep her cool?
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June is the star pitcher of her elite club baseball team - with an ego to match - and she's a shoo-in to be recruited at the college level, like her parents have always envisioned. That is, if she can play through an overuse injury that has recently gone from bad to worse.
\nIvy isn't just reffing to pay off her athletic fees or make some extra cash on the side. She wants to someday officiate at the professional level, even if her parents would rather she go to college instead.
\nThe first time they cross paths, Ivy throws June out of a game for grandstanding. Still, they quickly grow from enemies to begrudging friends . . . and then something more. But the rules state that players and umpires are prohibited from dating.
\nAs June's shoulder worsens, and a rival discovers the girls' secret and threatens to expose them, everything the two have worked so hard for is at risk. Now both must follow their dreams . . . or follow their hearts?
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Morgan, an elite track athlete, is forced to transfer high schools late in her senior year after it turns out being queer is against her private Catholic school's code of conduct. There, she meets Ruby, who has two hobbies: tinkering with her baby blue 1970 Ford Torino and competing in local beauty pageants, the latter to live out the dreams of her overbearing mother.
\nThe two are drawn to each other and can't deny their growing feelings. But while Morgan - out and proud, and determined to have a fresh start - doesn't want to have to keep their budding relationship a secret, Ruby isn't ready to come out yet. With each girl on a different path toward living her truth, can they go the distance together?
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The four Endicott siblings - Gemma, Connor, Roddy, and Jude - were once inseparable, a bond created by the absence of their dazzling, mercurial mother, who would return for a few weeks each summer to whisk them off on sprawling road trips around the country.
\nDecades later, the unthinkable has happened: the Endicotts haven’t spoken in years . . . until an out-of-the-blue text arrives from Jude, now a famous actress, summoning them to a small town in North Dakota. They’re each at a crossroads: Gemma, who put her own ambitions aside to raise the others, now isn’t sure if she wants to be a mother herself; Connor, a celebrated novelist, is floundering after his recent divorce and suffering from an epic case of writer’s block; and Roddy, at the tail end of a professional soccer career, is dangerously close to losing his future husband for the chance at one last season.
\nJude is the only Endicott who seems to have it all together - but appearances can be deceiving. As the weekend unfolds, and the siblings wrestle with their shared past and uncertain futures, they’ll discover that Jude has been keeping three secrets . . . each of which could change everything.
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Greta James's meteoric rise to indie stardom was hard-won. Before she graced magazine covers and sold out venues, she spent her girlhood strumming her guitar in the family garage. Her first fan was her mother, Helen, whose face shone bright in the dusty downtown bars where she got her start - but not everyone encouraged Greta to follow her dreams. While many daydream about a crowd chanting their name, her father, Conrad, saw only a precarious life ahead for his daughter.
\nGreta has spent her life trying to prove him wrong, but three months after Helen's sudden death, and weeks before the launch of her high-stakes sophomore album, Greta has an onstage meltdown that goes viral. Attempting to outrun the humiliation and heartbreak, she reluctantly agrees to accompany her father on a week-long Alaskan cruise, the very one that her parents had booked to celebrate their fortieth anniversary.
\nThis could be the James family's last chance to heal old wounds and will prove to be a voyage of discovery for them, as well as for Ben Wilder, a historian also struggling with a major upheaval in his life. Ben is on board to lecture about Jack London's The Call of the Wild, the adventure story Greta's mother adored, and he captures Greta's attention after her streak of dating hanger-ons. As Greta works to build up her confidence and heal, and Ben confronts his uncertain future, they must rely on one another to make sense of life’s difficult choices. In the end, Greta must make the most challenging decision of all: to listen to the song within her or make peace with those who love her.
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It’s not easy being queen bee of an underworld abuzz with crooks and killers. Wielding my potent Ice and Stone elemental magic will only get me so far - my real secret is my tight-knit makeshift family, a motley crew of cops and criminals, dwarves and playboys. My foster brother Finnegan Lane is my right-hand man, but when his suddenly not-dead relative comes back into the picture, I’m the one on the outside looking in.
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It’s funny how life works: one minute your best friend is rock-steady, and the next he’s doe-eyed and buying into this whole loving-relative routine to the point of ignoring you. I’d like to be happy for Finn, I really would. But all of my instincts are telling me that beneath the syrupy sweet demeanor and old-fashioned charm, this sudden interloper is planning something.
\n\n
The whole shtick leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. This person might have avoided the grave once, but I’ll put anyone who hurts Finn in the ground - for good.
There’s nothing worse than a cruel, cunning enemy with time to kill - and my murder to plan. With wicked Fire elemental Mab Monroe long gone, you’d think I could finally catch a break. But someone’s always trying to take me down, either as Gin Blanco or my assassin alter-ago. Now along comes the Spider’s new arch-nemesis, the mysteriously named M. M. Monroe, who is gleefully working overtime to trap me in a sticky web of deceit.
\nThe thing is, I’m not the only target. I can see through the tangled threads enough to know that every bit of bad luck my friends have been having lately is no accident - and that each unfortunate “coincidence” is just one more arrow drawing ever closer to hitting the real bull’s-eye.
\nThough new to Ashland, this M. M. Monroe is no stranger to irony, trying to get me, an assassin, framed for murder. Yet, as my enemy’s master plan is slowly revealed, I have a sinking feeling that it will take more than my powerful Ice and Stone magic to stop my whole life from going up in flames.
As a thief, I'm good at three things: hiding in the shadows, getting in and out unseen, and uncovering secrets. I put these skills to work for the Sinclair Family, one of the magical mobs that run the tourist town of Cloudburst Falls.
Everyone knows Victor Draconi wants to take over all the other Families—and kill every last Sinclair. What they don't know is that I'm on to him, and no way will I let the man who murdered my mom get away with hurting all the other people I care about. Especially when I've got places to break into, stuff to steal, and Devon Sinclair fighting right by my side . . .
When killing people is your job, there’s no such thing as a vacation. Then again, how often does an assassin live long enough to enjoy her retirement? In this line of work, you either get lucky or you get dead. And since I destroyed my nemesis Mab Monroe a few weeks ago, all of Ashland’s lowlifes are gunning to make a name for themselves by taking out the lethal Spider - me, Gin Blanco.
\nSo I’m leaving behind my beloved barbecue joint and heading south with my baby sister, Bria, to cool my heels in a swanky beach town. Call it a weekend of fun in the sun. But when a powerful vampire with deadly elemental magic threatens an old friend of Bria’s, it looks like I’ll have to dig my silver stone knives out of my suitcase after all.
\nComplicating matters further is the reappearance of Detective Donovan Caine, my old lover. But Donovan is the least of my problems. Because this time, the danger is hot on my trail, and not even my elemental Ice and Stone magic may be enough to save me from getting buried in the sand - permanently.
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Gemma Ripley has a reputation for being a pampered princess who is more interested in pretty gowns, sparkling jewelry, and other frivolous things than learning how to rule the kingdom of Andvari. But her carefully crafted persona is just an act to hide the fact that Gemma is a powerful mind magier - and a spy.
\nGemma is undercover, trying to figure out who is stealing large amounts of tearstone from one of the Ripley royal mines when she encounters Prince Leonidas Morricone of Morta - her mortal enemy. Gemma tries to steer clear of the handsome prince, but when she finds herself behind enemy lines, she reluctantly joins forces with Leo. Also coming to Gemma’s aid is Grimley, her beloved gargoyle.
\nDespite the fact that Andvari and Morta are old, bitter enemies, a dangerous attraction sparks between Gemma and Leo. Further complicating matters is Leo’s murderous family, especially Queen Maeven Morricone, the mastermind behind the infamous Seven Spire massacre.
\nThe closer Gemma gets to the stolen tearstone, the more deadly plots she uncovers. Everyone is trying to capture the crown, but only one queen can sit on the throne . . .
It's not as great as you'd think, living in a tourist town that's known as \"the most magical place in America.\" Same boring high school, just twice as many monsters under the bridges and rival Families killing each other for power.
\nI try to keep out of it. I've got my mom's bloodiron sword and my slightly illegal home in the basement of the municipal library. And a couple of Talents I try to keep quiet, including very light fingers and a way with a lock pick.
\nBut then some nasty characters bring their Family feud into my friend's pawn shop, and I have to make a call--get involved, or watch a cute guy die because I didn't. I guess I made the wrong choice, because now I'm stuck putting everything on the line for Devon Sinclair. My mom was murdered because of the Families, and it looks like I'm going to end up just like her . . .
Time is running out for crown princess Gemma Ripley. Despite being a cunning spy and a powerful mind magier, Gemma hasn’t been able to track down the most dangerous enemy her kingdom of Andvari has ever seen. Adding to her worries is the Sword and Shield tournament. With gladiators flocking to the capital city of Glanzen, Gemma can’t tell who is friend - or foe.
Determined to protect Andvari at any cost, Gemma hatches a bold plan, but things aren’t what they seem. Soon, everything she holds dear is being threatened, including her burgeoning relationship with Prince Leonidas Morricone.
With the kingdom she holds dear slipping through her fingers, Gemma will have to conquer her fear and unlock the true secret of her magic - or watch her friends and family die and her beloved Andvari fall . . .
For a moment, a face flashed before my eyes - the most hideous face I'd ever seen. No matter how hard I tried to forget what had happened, I saw him everywhere I went. It was Loki - the evil god that I'd helped set free against my will. I should have known that my first official date with Logan Quinn was destined to end in disaster.
\nIf we'd gotten into a swordfight, or been ambushed by Reapers, I'd have been more prepared. But getting arrested mid-sip at the local coffee hangout? I didn't see that one coming. I've been accused of purposely helping the Reapers free Loki from his prison - and the person leading the charge against me is Linus Quinn, Logan's dad. The worst part is that pretty much everyone at Mythos Academy thinks I'm guilty. If I'm going to get out of this mess alive, I'll have to do it myself. . .
Queen Everleigh Blair of Bellona has survived the mass murder of the royal family, become a fearsome warrior trained by an elite gladiator troupe, and unleashed her ability to destroy magic. After surviving yet another assassination attempt orchestrated by the conniving king of Morta, Evie has had enough. It’s time to turn the tables and take the fight to her enemies.
\nThere is no better opportunity to strike than during the Regalia Games, a time when warriors, nobles, and royals from all the kingdoms come together to compete in various sporting events. With the help of her loyal friends, Evie goes on the attack at the Regalia, but things don’t turn out the way she hopes. Soon, she is facing a terrifying new threat, and she will have to dig deep and learn even more about her growing magic if she has any chance of defeating her foes.
\nBecause to secure her throne and ensure her kingdom’s survival, Evie must think like a true Bellonan: she must outsmart and outwit her enemies . . . and crush the king.
I've seen so many freaky things since I started attending Mythos Academy last fall. I know I'm supposed to be a fearless warrior, but most of the time, I feel like I'm just waiting for the next Bad, Bad Thing to happen. Like someone trying to kill me again. Everyone at Mythos Academy knows me as Gwen Frost, the Gypsy girl who uses her psychometry magic to find lost objects and who just may be dating Logan Quinn, the hottest guy in school.
\n\t\t\t\t\tBut I'm also the girl the Reapers of Chaos want dead in the worst way. The Reapers are the baddest of the bad, the people who murdered my mom. So why do they have it in for me? It turns out my mom hid a powerful artifact called the Helheim Dagger before she died. Now, the Reapers will do anything to get it back. They think I know where the dagger is hidden, but this is one thing I can't use my magic to find. All I do know is that the Reapers are coming for me and I'm in for the fight of my life.
As a thief, I stick to the shadows as much as possible. But when the head of the Sinclair Family picks me to compete in the Tournament of Blades, there's no escaping the spotlight - or the danger.
Even though he's my competition, Devon Sinclair thinks I have the best shot at winning what's supposed to be a friendly contest. But when the competitors start having mysterious \"accidents,\" it looks like someone will do anything to win - no matter who they hurt.
As if I didn't have enough to worry about, mobster Victor Draconi is plotting against Devon and the rest of my friends, and someone's going around Cloudburst Falls murdering monsters. One thing's for sure. Sometimes, humans can be more monstrous than anything else . . .
Red is definitely my color. Good thing, because in my line of work, I end up wearing it a lot.
\nMost people shy away from blood, but for an assassin like me - Gin Blanco, aka the Spider - it’s just part of the job. Still, it would be nice to get a night off, especially when I’m attending the biggest gala event of the summer at Briartop, Ashland’s fanciest art museum. But it’s just not meant to be.
\nFor this exhibition of my late nemesis’ priceless possessions is not only the place to be seen, but the place to be robbed and taken hostage at gunpoint as well. No sooner did I get my champagne than a bunch of the unluckiest thieves ever burst into the museum and started looting the place.
\nUnlucky why? Because I brought along a couple of knives in addition to my killer dress. Add these to my Ice and Stone magic, and nothing makes me happier than showing the bad guys why red really is my color.
When a terror from the past threatens Gin’s friend and body-disposer, Sophia, Gin will stop at nothing to protect her, even if it means walking straight into a killer’s trap.
\nMeanwhile, the rocky romance between Gin and Owen reaches a turning poin - can they reunite and rekindle their love? Or will the things Gin has been forced to do in her line of work as the deadly assassin the Spider keep them apart forever?
\nAssuming, that is, she survives long enough to find out . . .
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In a realm where one’s magical power determines one’s worth, Lady Everleigh’s lack of obvious ability relegates her to the shadows of the royal court of Bellona, a kingdom steeped in gladiator tradition. Seventeenth in line for the throne, Evie is nothing more than a ceremonial fixture, overlooked and mostly forgotten.
\nBut dark forces are at work inside the palace. When her cousin Vasilia, the crown princess, assassinates her mother the queen and takes the throne by force, Evie is also attacked, along with the rest of the royal family. Luckily for Evie, her secret immunity to magic helps her escape the massacre.
\nForced into hiding to survive, she falls in with a gladiator troupe. Though they use their talents to entertain and amuse the masses, the gladiators are actually highly trained warriors skilled in the art of war, especially Lucas Sullivan, a powerful magier with secrets of his own. Uncertain of her future - or if she even has one - Evie begins training with the troupe until she can decide her next move.
\nBut as the bloodthirsty Vasilia exerts her power, pushing Bellona to the brink of war, Evie’s fate becomes clear: she must become a fearsome gladiator herself . . . and kill the queen.
I’ve battled the Reapers of Chaos before - and survived. But this time I have a Bad, Bad Feeling it’s going to be a fight to the death . . . most likely mine.
\nYeah, I’ve got my psychometry magic, my talking sword, Vic - and even the most dangerous Spartan on campus at my side, in Logan freaking Quinn, but I’m no match for Loki, the evil Norse god of chaos. I may be Nike’s Champion, but at heart, I’m still just Gwen Frost, that weird Gypsy girl everyone at school loves to gossip about.
\nThen someone I love is put in more danger than ever before, and something inside me snaps. This time, Loki and his Reapers are going down for good . . . or I am.
I'm Gwen Frost, a second-year warrior-in-training at Mythos Academy, and I have no idea how I'm going to survive the rest of the semester. One day, I'm getting schooled in swordplay by the guy who broke my heart - the drop-dead gorgeous Logan who slays me every time.
\n\t\t\t\t\tThen, an invisible archer in the Library of Antiquities decides to use me for target practice. And now, I find out that someone at the academy is really a Reaper bad guy who wants me dead. I'm afraid if I don't learn how to live by the sword-with Logan's help - I just might die by the sword . . .
I’ve battled a lot of bad guys in my time, both as Gin Blanco and as the notorious assassin the Spider. But I’ve never faced off against anyone quite as powerful and deadly as the dastardly leader of the Circle secret society.
\nJust when I finally have a lead on how I can defeat the evil group once and for all, new information comes to light that throws me for a loop. Suddenly, everyone and everything I love is in imminent peril of being destroyed, and I’m racing against the clock to figure out a way to save my friends.
\nThe stakes couldn’t be higher, and the danger has never been greater. Somehow, I need to weave one last strand in my web of death - and kill my enemies before they kill me . . .
Just when it seems life at Mythos Academy can't get any more dangerous, the Reapers of Chaos manage to prove me wrong. It was just a typical night at the Library of Antiquities-until a Reaper tried to poison me. The good news is I'm still alive and kicking. The bad news is the Reaper poisoned someone else instead.
\nAs Nike's Champion, everyone expects me to lead the charge against the Reapers, even though I'm still hurting over what happened with Spartan warrior Logan Quinn. I've got to get my hands on the antidote fast-otherwise, an innocent person will die. But the only known cure is hidden in some creepy ruins - and the Reapers are sure to be waiting for me there . . .
\n
Few people know the name Vesper Quill. To most folks, I’m just a lowly lab rat who designs brewmakers and other household appliances in the research and development lab at the powerful Kent Corp. But when I point out a design flaw and a safety hazard in the new line of Kent Corp starcruisers, everyone knows who I am - and wants to eliminate me. I might be a seer with a photographic memory, but I don’t see the trouble headed my way until it’s too late.
\nSuddenly, I’m surrounded by enemies and fighting for my life. I don’t think things can get any worse until I meet Kyrion Coldren, an arrogant Regal lord who insists that we have a connection, one that could be the death of us both.
\nThe name Kyrion Coldren strikes fear in the hearts of people across the Archipelago Galaxy. As the leader of the Arrows, the Imperium’s elite fighting force, I’m used to being a villain, as well as the personal assassin of Lord Callus Holloway. Even the wealthy Regals who live on the planet of Corion are afraid of me.
\nBut everything changes when I meet Vesper Quill. I might be a powerful psion with telepathic, telekinetic, and other abilities, but Vesper sees far too many of my secrets. Thanks to an arcane, unwanted quirk of psionic magic, the two of us are forced to work together to unravel a dangerous conspiracy and outwit the dangerous enemies who want to bend us to their will.
Everyone knows the name Vesper Quill. I used to be a lowly lab rat working in a Regal-owned corporation, but thanks to my truebond with Kyrion Caldaren, I’m now one of the most wanted fugitives in the Archipelago Galaxy.
\nKyrion and I have spent the last few weeks avoiding bounty hunters, along with the Arrows, the elite Imperium warriors tasked with capturing us. Now we’ve journeyed to a distant planet that’s supposed to be a refuge for truebonded couples, but when new enemies appear, we’re once again in grave danger.
\nAs a seer, inventor, and engineer, I’m skilled at figuring out how things work, but I can’t quite understand my growing magic and newfound psionic abilities. The clock is ticking, and if I don’t figure out how to tap into my power, I’ll doom myself to a gruesome fate, along with Kyrion.
\nAs Kyrion Caldaren, I’m used to being respected and feared, especially given my telekinesis, telepathy, telempathy, and other powerful psionic abilities. What I’m not used to is being on the run, but as a rogue Arrow, I’ll do anything to protect Vesper.
\nJust when I think we’ve finally reached a safe haven, trouble finds us again, reigniting all my fears about losing Vesper.
\nWhen the cold depths of our enemies’ plan are finally revealed, the truth is more terrifying than anything I could imagine. Soon Vesper and I are fighting for our lives again, but even with our growing truebond power, this is one battle we might not survive.
My name is Vesper Quill. I used to be a lowly lab rat, toiling away in obscurity developing brewmakers and other household appliances. But thanks to my seer magic and my own ingenuity, I’m now a Regal lady and the head of a successful corporation.
\nMy mission? To destroy the Techwave, the dangerous group that has stolen my designs and plans to weaponise them against the Imperium. But when my mission takes an unexpected turn, I’m once again surrounded by enemies and fighting for my life.
\nFurther complicating matters is Kyrion Caldaren, an arrogant Regal lord whose fate is bound to mine. Kyrion doesn’t realise the two of us still have an unwanted connection that puts us both in grave danger . . . or does he?
\nMy name is Kyrion Caldaren. As the leader of the Arrows, the Imperium’s elite fighting force, I’ve been tasked with tracking down and destroying the Techwave before they seize control of the Archipelago Galaxy.
\nMy other mission? Find a way to assassinate Lord Callus Holloway, the Imperium ruler who wants to take my psion power for his own. Holloway is also a threat to Vesper Quill, who haunts my thoughts, despite the broken bond and distance between us.
\nWhen I realise Vesper is in danger, my priorities change, and I vow to use all my telepathic, telekinetic, and other abilities to help her. I will save Vesper from her enemies and mine - even if I have to burn down the whole bloody galaxy.
My name is Zane Zimmer. To most folks, I live a seemingly charmed life as a Regal lord and the heir apparent to the powerful, wealthy House Zimmer, and the gossipcasts breathlessly follow my every swaggering move across the Archipelago Galaxy. I’m also a powerful psion capable of telekinesis, telepathy, and telempathy, and my deadly skills and prowess with my stormsword have made me the golden boy of the Arrows, the Imperium’s elite fighting force.
\nBut even golden boys have bad days, and the truth is I have more hard problems than I can solve.
\nThe Techwave is building weapons to use against the Arrows in hopes of toppling the Imperium and taking over the galaxy. But even more worrisome is the fact that my old rival Kyrion Caldaren has a powerful new ally in Vesper Quill. Together, the two of them just might destroy everything I’ve sworn to protect.
\nI’m supposed to be relaxing with the other Regals during the Summer Solstice celebration, but when an enemy threatens the festivities, I’m forced to leap into action. As an Arrow, I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my family and the other Regals, even though my actions will cause only more problems - and just might end up being the death of me . . .
Once upon a time, I was Vesper Quill, a lowly lab rat using my seer magic and engineering skills to repair broken appliances at a Regal-owned corporation. These days, I’m one of the most infamous and wanted fugitives in the Archipelago Galaxy, along with Kyrion Caldaren, my partner.
\nKyrion and I are hiding out on a distant planet when we are offered a chance to train at a prestigious facility in hopes of better understanding our truebond, the psionic connection that lets us share thoughts, feelings, skills, and more.
\nMastering our magic is the only way we can hope to defeat our many enemies and make my dreams of a safe future a reality, so Kyrion and I accept the invitation. But evil forces are at work, and our training exercise is not what it seems, plunging us both into another deadly situation with only bad options.
\nI’ve always been Kyrion Caldaren, a Regal lord with telekinesis, telepathy, telempathy, and other powerful psionic abilities. I might have gone rogue from the Arrows, the Imperium’s elite warriors, but my fighting skills are as sharp and deadly as ever.
\nVesper Quill and I need help with our truebond, so we agree to participate in a rigorous training exercise designed to test the depths of our connection. But a new enemy has other plans, and we’re soon separated and confronted with one dangerous obstacle after another.
\nBut my love for Vesper is stronger than any forces set against us, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make my way back to her - and kill anyone who gets in my way.
Gin Blanco is hard-nosed, sexy, and lethal. Nicknamed “The Spider,” she’s a stone elemental assassin who brings her unique mix of magic and tact to every assignment, no matter the target.
There’s a new drug on the streets of Ashland, and its name “Burn” sums up the potent effect it has on its users. When one of her restaurant employees is threatened by dealers of the drug, Gin steps in to set things straight . . .
Everleigh Blair might be the new gladiator queen of Bellona, but her problems are far from over.
\nFirst, Evie has to deal with a court full of arrogant, demanding nobles, all of whom want to get their greedy hands on her crown. As if that wasn’t bad enough, an assassin tries to kill Evie in her own throne room.
\nDespite the dangers, Evie goes ahead with a scheduled trip to the neighboring kingdom of Andvari in order to secure a desperately needed alliance. But complicating matters is the stubborn Andvarian king, who wants to punish Evie for the deaths of his countrymen during the Seven Spire massacre.
\nBut dark forces are at work inside the Andvarian palace, and Evie soon realises that no one is safe. Worse, Evie’s immunity to magic starts acting in strange, unexpected ways, which makes her wonder whether she is truly strong enough to be a Winter Queen.
\nBut Evie’s magic, life, and crown aren’t the only things in danger - so is her heart, thanks to Lucas Sullivan, the Andvarian king’s bastard son and Evie’s . . . well, Evie isn’t quite sure what Sullivan is to her.
\nOnly one thing is certain - protecting a prince might be even harder than killing a queen . . .
As Gin Blanco, aka the assassin the Spider, I’m used to having a target on my back. But ever since I started investigating the secret society known as the Circle, that target seems bigger than ever.
\nStill, I’m trying to relax and enjoy the events leading up to my friends’ wedding when I learn that an old enemy has returned to Ashland. And that’s the just beginning of my latest nightmare. Soon, I have Circle goons watching my every move, but I have no choice but to continue searching for a key piece of evidence against the evil group.
\nThe deeper I dig, the more horrifying secrets I uncover, and the more dangerous things become for me and my friends. Just when I think I finally have a handle on things, a shocking revelation shatters my heart and leaves me with an ugly realisation - that betrayal is the sharpest sting of all . . .
If you don’t know Gin “the Spider” Blanco, you don’t know dangerous female heroines.
\nIrony 101 - The Spider herself snared in someone else’s web . . .
\nAnother week, another few clues trickling in about the Circle, the mysterious group that supposedly runs the city’s underworld. Gathering intel on my hidden enemies is a painstaking process, but a more immediate mystery has popped up on my radar: a missing girl.
\nMy search for the girl begins on the mean streets of Ashland, but with all the killers and crooks in this city, I’m not holding out much hope that she’s still alive.
\nA series of clues leads me down an increasingly dark, dangerous path, and I realise that the missing girl is really just the first thread in this web of evil. As an assassin, I’m used to facing down the worst of the worst, but nothing prepares me for this new, terrifying enemy - one who strikes from the shadows and is determined to make me the next victim.
My name is Gin, and I kill people.They call me the Spider. I'm the most feared assassin in the South - when I'm not busy at the Pork Pit cooking up the best barbecue in Ashland.
\nAs a Stone elemental, I can hear everything from the whispers of the gravel beneath my feet to the vibrations of the soaring Appalachian Mountains above me. My Ice magic also comes in handy for making the occasional knife. But I don't use my powers on the job unless I absolutely have to. Call it professional pride.
\nNow that a ruthless Air elemental has double-crossed me and killed my handler, I'm out for revenge. And I'll exterminate anyone who gets in my way - good or bad. I may look hot, but I'm still one of the bad guys.
\nWhich is why I'm in trouble, since irresistibly rugged Detective Donovan Caine has agreed to help me. The last thing this coldhearted killer needs when I'm battling a magic more powerful than my own is a sexy distraction . . . especially when Donovan wants me dead just as much as the enemy.
\n
Old habits die hard for assassins.
\nAnd I plan on murdering someone before the night is through.
\nKilling used to be my regular gig, after all. Gin Blanco, aka the Spider, assassin-for-hire. And I was very, very good at it. Now, I’m ready to make the one hit that truly matters: Mab Monroe, the dangerous Fire elemental who murdered my family when I was thirteen. Oh, I don’t think the mission will be easy, but turns out it’s a bit more problematic than expected. The bitch knows I’m coming for her.
\nSo now I’m up against the army of lethal bounty hunters Mab hired to track me down. She also put a price on my baby sister’s head. Keeping Bria safe is my first priority. Taking Mab out is a close second. Good thing I’ve got my powerful Ice and Stone magic - and my irresistible lover, Owen Grayson - to watch my back.
\nThis battle has been years in the making, and there’s a good chance I won’t survive. But if I’m going down, then Mab’s coming with me . . . no matter what I have to do to make that happen.
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Keep your friends close but your enemies within stabbing distance.
\nOne important lesson I’ve learned in the assassination business is that to be the best you have to roll with the punches. Now that I’m queen of Ashland’s underworld - by default, not by choice - a lot more punches are being thrown my way. But I suppose that’s the price of victory for taking down some of the underworld’s top dogs.
\nGood thing I have my Ice and Stone magic to help me survive my volatile new position. Just when I think things are finally settling down, someone tries to murder me during a hush-hush underworld meeting. But the real surprise is how strangely familiar my shadowy assailant seems to be.
\nMy job is to maintain order among killers, crooks, and thieves, and soon I’m embroiled in a bloody game where the ability to keep secrets could be the greatest superpower of all. My enemies have all sharpened their knives and laid their traps, waiting for me to fall. But this Spider weaves her own webs of death . . .
How did I end up in a career where I always have blood on my hands?
\nWell, let me tell you a story about an assassin who thought she could do no wrong . . .
\nTen years ago. A blistering hot August night. I remember like it was yesterday. The night I, Gin Blanco, truly became the Spider. Killing people is what I do best, especially now that I’ve honed my Ice and Stone magic. But back then, I had yet to learn one very important rule: arrogance will get you, every single time.
\nThis particular job seemed simple: murder a crooked building contractor with ties to ruthless Fire elemental Mab Monroe. My mentor, Fletcher Lane, had some misgivings, but I was certain that I had the situation under control . . . right up until I exposed my weaknesses to a merciless opponent who exploited every single one of them. There’s a reason assassins aren’t supposed to feel anything. Luckily, a knife to the heart can fix that problem, especially when I’m the one wielding it . . .
\n
I’d rather face a dozen lethal assassins any night than deal with something as tricky, convoluted, and fragile as my feelings. But here I am. Gin Blanco, the semi-retired assassin known as the Spider.
\nHovering outside sexy businessman Owen Grayson’s front door like a nervous teenage girl. One thing I like about Owen: he doesn’t shy away from my past - or my present. And right now I have a bull’s-eye on my forehead. Cold-blooded Fire elemental Mab Monroe has hired one of the smartest assassins in the business to trap me.
\nElektra LaFleur is skilled and efficient, with deadly electrical elemental magic as potent as my own Ice and Stone powers. Which means there’s a fifty-fifty chance one of us won’t survive this battle. I intend to kill LaFleur - or die trying - because Mab wants the assassin to take out my baby sister, Detective Bria Coolidge, too.
\nThe only problem is, Bria has no idea I’m her long-lost sibling . . . or that I’m the murderer she’s been chasing through Ashland for weeks. And what Bria doesn’t know just might get us both dead . . .
\n
Crown princess. Clever spy. Powerful mind magier. Gemma Ripley of Andvari is all those things - and determined to stop an enemy from using magical tearstone weapons to conquer her kingdom.
\nGemma's quest for answers leads her to a trade Summit between the various kingdoms. Among the other royals in attendance is Queen Maeven Morricone of Morta and her son, Prince Leonidas - Gemma's charming and dangerous nemesis.
\nGemma knows that Maeven always has a long game in motion, and sure enough, the cunning queen invokes an arcane tradition that threatens the fragile truce between Andvari and the other kingdoms. Despite her best intentions, Gemma once again finds herself thrown together with Leo and battling her growing feelings for the enemy prince.
\nWhen a series of deadly attacks shatters the Summit's peaceful negotiations, Gemma realises that someone wants to tear the royals down from their thrones - and that this enemy just might succeed.
Gwen Frost is an outsider at Mythos Academy, a school of myths, magic and warrior whiz kids, where even the lowliest geek knows how to chop off somebody's head with a sword. Gwen is an outsider both to the students of the Academy and the rest of the world.
\nBut when her gift of psychometry - the ability to know an object's history just by touching it reveals dark undercurrents and danger afoot, she has no choice but to get involved.
What could go wrong when you’re trying to unravel a decades-old conspiracy?
As the current queen of the Ashland underworld, you would think that I, Gin Blanco, would know all about some secret society controlling things from behind the scenes. I might be the Spider, the city’s most fearsome assassin, but all my Ice and Stone elemental magic hasn’t done me a lick of good in learning more about “the Circle”. Despite my continued investigations, the trail’s gone as cold as the coming winter.
So when Finnegan Lane, my foster brother, gets word of a surprising inheritance, we figure why not skip town for someplace less dangerous for a few days? That place: Bullet Pointe, a fancy hotel resort complex plus Old West theme park that Finn now owns lock, stock, and barrel. At first, all the struttin’ cowboys and sassy saloon girls are just hokey fun. But add in some shady coincidences and Circle assassins lurking all around, and vacationing becomes wilder - and deadlier - than any of us expected.
Good thing this assassin brought plenty of knives to the gunfight . . .
It was supposed to be a nice, quiet, simple dinner with friends - but nothing is ever nice, quiet, or simple when you’re Gin Blanco, the Spider, notorious assassin and current queen of the Ashland underworld.
\nThis time around, someone seems to be targeting Stuart Mosley, the president of First Trust bank. Lots of people have grudges against Mosley, but the more I investigate, the more Mosley’s problems seem to be connected to some of my own, especially when it comes to the Circle, the evil, shadowy group that is secretly responsible for much of the crime and corruption in Ashland.
\nBut when another blast from my dark and deadly past as the Spider comes to light, I wonder if I’ll be able to survive this dangerous new enemy, who has a burning thirst for revenge that will only be satisfied with one thing: my death.
It’s hard to be a badass assassin when a giant is beating the crap out of you. Luckily, I never let pride get in the way of my work. My current mission is personal: annihilate Mab Monroe, the Fire elemental who murdered my family. Which means protecting my identity, even if I have to conceal my powerful Stone and Ice magic when I need it most.
\nTo the public, I’m Gin Blanco, owner of Ashland’s best barbecue joint. To my friends, I’m the Spider, retired assassin. I still do favors on the side. Like ridding a vampire friend of her oversized stalker - Mab’s right-hand goon who almost got me dead with his massive fists. At least irresistible Owen Grayson is on my side. The man knows too much about me, but I’ll take my chances.
\nThen there’s Detective Bria Coolidge, one of Ashland’s finest. Until recently, I thought my baby sister was dead. She probably thinks the same about me. Little does she know, I’m a cold-blooded killer . . . who is about to save her life.
\n
Curiosity is definitely going to get me dead one of these days. Probably real soon. I'm Gin Blanco. You might know me as the Spider, the most feared assassin in the South. I’m retired now, but trouble still has a way of finding me. Like the other day when two punks tried to rob my popular barbecue joint, the Pork Pit. Then there was the barrage of gunfire on the restaurant.
\nOnly, for once, those kill shots weren’t aimed at me. They were meant for Violet Fox. Ever since I agreed to help Violet and her grandfather protect their property from an evil coalmining tycoon, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m really retired. So is Detective Donovan Caine. The only honest cop in Ashland is having a real hard time reconciling his attraction to me with his Boy Scout mentality. And I can barely keep my hands off his sexy body. What can I say?
\nI’m a Stone elemental with a little Ice magic thrown in, but my heart isn’t made of solid rock. Luckily, Gin Blanco always gets her man . . . dead or alive.
I used to murder people for money, but these days it’s more of a survival technique.
\nOnce an assassin, always an assassin. So much for being plain old Gin Blanco. With every lowlife in Ashland gunning for me, I don’t need another problem, but a new one has come to town. Salina might seem like a sweet Southern belle, but she’s really a dangerous enemy whose water elemental magic can go head-to-head with my own Ice and Stone power.
\nSalina also has an intimate history with my lover, Owen Grayson, and now that she’s back in town, she thinks he’s hers for the taking. Salina’s playing a mysterious game that involves a shady local casino owner with a surprising connection to Owen. But they call me the Spider for a reason. I’m going to untangle her deadly scheme, even if it leaves my love affair hanging by a thread.
\n
Malamar Veracruz has never left the dust-choked town of El Valle. Here, Mal has done her best to build a good life. She’s raised two children, worked hard, and tried to forget the painful, unexplained disappearance of her sister, Elena. When another local girl goes missing, Mal plunges into a fresh yet familiar nightmare.
\nAs a desperate Mal hunts for answers, her search becomes increasingly tangled with inscrutable visions of a horse-headed woman, a local legend who Mal feels compelled to follow. Mal’s perspective is joined by the voices of her two daughters, all three of whom must work to uncover the truth about the missing girls in their community before it's too late.
\nCombining elements of Latina and Indigenous culture, family drama, mystery, horror, and magical realism in a spellbinding mix, Salt Bones lays bare the realities of environmental catastrophe, family secrets, and the unrelenting bond between mothers and daughters.
Anthropologist Calliope Santiago awakens to find herself in a strange and sinister wasteland, a shadow of the New Mexico she knew. Empty vehicles litter the road. Everyone has disappeared-or almost everyone. Calliope, heavy-bellied with the twins she carries inside her, must make her way across this dangerous landscape with a group of fellow survivors, confronting violent inhabitants, in search of answers.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tLong-dead volcanoes erupt, the ground rattles and splits, and monsters come to ominous life. The impossible suddenly real, Calliope will be forced to reconcile the geological record with the heritage she once denied if she wants to survive and deliver her unborn babies into this uncertain new world.
All it takes to ruin someone’s life is the stroke of a key. Just ask Iris Henley. Her life is destroyed when someone posts an anonymous message on her high school’s subreddit thread: “Iris Henley is a killer. I’ve been too scared to come forward until now, but I saw her murder Rocky and Lynette last summer.”
\nJust like that, Iris loses everything. Her reputation. Her friends. Her hope of getting into college on scholarship. Even, possibly, her freedom, once the police start to investigate. After all, she’s the perfect suspect: Rocky was her boyfriend, and Lynette was her ex-best friend - and the girl he was cheating on her with. But Iris didn’t do it, and now it’s up to her to clear her name by finding out who did - before it’s too late.
\n
For almost a decade, Claudia has counseled patients at Mercy Street, a clinic in the heart of the city. The work is consuming, the unending dramas of women in crisis. For its patients, Mercy Street offers more than health care; for many, it is a second chance.
\nBut outside the clinic, the reality is different. Anonymous threats are frequent. A small, determined group of anti-abortion demonstrators appears each morning at its door. As the protests intensify, fear creeps into Claudia's days, a humming anxiety she manages with frequent visits to Timmy, an affable pot dealer in the midst of his own existential crisis.
\nAt Timmy's, she encounters a random assortment of customers, including Anthony, a lost soul who spends most of his life online, chatting with the mysterious Excelsior11 - the screenname of Victor Prine, an anti-abortion crusader who has set his sights on Mercy Street and is ready to risk it all for his beliefs.
\n
A family drama set in Shanghai, where a fractured American family faces its complicated past
\nFour years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: Their twenty-two-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit-and-run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.
\nThe accident unearths a deeper fissure in the family: the shocking event that ended the Litvaks’ marriage and turned Lindsey against them. Estranged from her parents, she has confided only in her younger sister, Grace, adopted as an infant from China. As Claire and Aaron struggle to get their bearings in bustling, cosmopolitan Shanghai, the newly prosperous “miracle city,” they face troubling questions about Lindsey’s life there, in which nothing is as it seems.
\n
This is the story of three best friends: one who was murdered, one who went to prison, and one who's been searching for the truth all these years . . .
\nWhen she was sixteen years old, Angela Wong - one of the most popular girls in school - disappeared without a trace. Nobody ever suspected that her best friend, Georgina Shaw, now an executive and rising star at her Seattle pharmaceutical company, was involved in any way. Certainly not Kaiser Brody, who was close with both girls back in high school.
\nBut fourteen years later, Angela Wong's remains are discovered in the woods near Geo's childhood home. And Kaiser - now a detective with Seattle PD - finally learns the truth: Angela was a victim of Calvin James. The same Calvin James who murdered at least three other women.
\nTo the authorities, Calvin is a serial killer. But to Geo, he's something else entirely. Back in high school, Calvin was Geo's first love. Turbulent and often volatile, their relationship bordered on obsession from the moment they met right up until the night Angela was killed.
\nFor fourteen years, Geo knew what happened to Angela and told no one. For fourteen years, she carried the secret of Angela's death until Geo was arrested and sent to prison.
\nWhile everyone thinks they finally know the truth, there are dark secrets buried deep. And what happened that fateful night is more complex and more chilling than anyone really knows. Now the obsessive past catches up with the deadly present when new bodies begin to turn up, killed in the exact same manner as Angela Wong.
\nHow far will someone go to bury her secrets and hide her grief? How long can you get away with a lie? How long can you live with it?
\n
All it takes to unravel a life . . . is one home truth.
\nMarin used to have it all. A gorgeous husband, a great job, a growing family. Until her world fell apart the day her young son disappeared . . .
\nA year later, the search has gone cold. With her sanity ebbing, Marin hires a private investigator to pick up where the police left off.
\nBut instead of finding Sebastian, she learns that her husband is having an affair. Furious, Marin sparks back to life. She’s lost her son; she’s not about to lose her husband. This enemy has a face, which means it’s a problem Marin can fix. Permanently.
\n
When Paris Peralta is arrested in her own bathroom - covered in blood, holding a straight razor, her celebrity husband dead in the bathtub behind her - she knows she'll be charged with murder. But as bad as this looks, it's not what worries her the most. With the unwanted media attention now surrounding her, it's only a matter of time before someone from her long hidden past recognises her and destroys the new life she's worked so hard to build, along with any chance of a future.
\nTwenty-five years earlier, Ruby Reyes, known as the Ice Queen, was convicted of a similar murder in a trial that riveted Canada in the early nineties. Reyes knows who Paris really is, and when she's unexpectedly released from prison, she threatens to expose all of Paris's secrets. Left with no other choice, Paris must finally confront the dark past she escaped, once and for all.
\nBecause the only thing worse than a murder charge are two murder charges.
\n
Fate isn’t something to mess with . . . and now, neither is Alex.
Alex has always feared two things: losing herself in the Awakening and being placed on the Elixir. But love has always been stronger than Fate, and Aiden St. Delphi is willing to make war on the gods - and Alex herself - to bring her back.
The gods have killed thousands and could destroy entire cities in their quest to stop Seth from taking Alex’s power and becoming the all-powerful God Killer. But breaking Alex’s connection to Seth isn’t the only problem. There are a few pesky little loopholes in the whole “an Apollyon can’t be killed” theory, and the only person who might know how to stop the destruction has been dead for centuries.
Finding their way past the barriers that guard the Underworld, searching for one soul among countless millions, and then somehow returning will be hard enough. Alex might be able to keep Seth from becoming the God Killer . . . or she might become the God Killer herself.
While Sera is finally free of Kolis and back with those she loves, not everything is calm. Memories of all she’s endured still haunt her, but Sera finally has hope for a future with the other half of her heart and soul. Nyktos desires, loves, and accepts every part of her - even the monstrous bits she still battles.
\nMore than ever, Sera and Ash have everything under the realms to fight for, and Nyktos has no doubt Sera is fit to be the Queen of the Gods. But she must find that faith within herself if they hope to convince the other Courts to support them against Kolis and make Iliseeum and the mortal realm better, safer places for all.
\nBut as Sera begins to piece together the importance of her bloodline and the true meaning behind the foreboding prophecy, it becomes clear that everything that has happened and is yet to come is much bigger than Kolis and his dark obsessions.
\nThey cannot help but wonder exactly how much influence the Fates have had and what their ultimate goal is. What Sera does know for sure is that they can trust very few - including her.
\nA battle between the gods is brewing, and heartbreaking losses are imminent with the true Primal of Death strengthening. With a family of the heart willing to battle by their side, can Sera and Nyktos stop Kolis before he destroys the realms, or will it all disappear in a fiery inferno of blood and ash?
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Ivy Morgan hasn't been feeling like herself lately. Not like anyone can blame her. After all, being held captive by a psychotic fae prince hell-bent on permanently opening the gates to the Otherworld is bound to leave some mental scars.
\nIt’s more than that, though. Something dark and insidious is spreading throughout Ivy, more powerful than she could ever imagine . . . and it’s coming between her and the man she’s fallen deeply in love with, elite Order member Ren Owens.
\nRen would do anything to keep Ivy safe. Anything. But when he makes a life altering choice for her, the fallout of his act has far reaching consequences that threaten to tear their lives apart.
\nIf Ivy is going to have any hope of surviving this, she must put aside the hurt and betrayal she feels, and work with not only those she loves, but with an enemy she would rather kill than ever trust. War is coming, and it soon becomes clear that what Ivy and Ren thought they knew about the Order, themselves, and even their enemies, has been nothing but a cluster of dangerous, deadly lies.
\nIvy knows she must be more than just brave to save those she loves - and, ultimately, to save herself.
\nBecause behind every evil fae Prince, there’s a Queen . . .
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He is the darkest star.
You are the burning shadow.
And together, you will bring about the brightest night.
Less than a year ago, Evelyn Dasher was a normal girl, living an unremarkable life.
Now, she's on the run, under the protection of the beautiful, deadly inhuman Luc. She's been betrayed by those who were closest to her. And she's learned truths about herself that she never saw coming--things she once knew, and was made to forget. Truths with devastating consequences. She's caught in the eye of the storm.
She is the eye of the storm.
When Evelyn Dasher crossed paths with Luc, she was thrown headfirst into the world of the Lux - only to discover that she was already far more involved in their world than she ever suspected.
Because the Luxen aren’t the only ones with a hidden past. There’s a gap in Evie’s memory, lost months of her life and a lingering sense that something happened, something she can’t remember and nobody is willing to tell her. She needs to find out the truth about who she is - and who she was. But every answer she finds only brings up more questions.
Her search for the truth brings her ever closer to Luc, the Origin at the center of it all. He’s powerful, arrogant, inhumanly beautiful, extremely dangerous . . . and possibly in love with her. But even as Evie falls for him, she can’t help but wonder if his attraction is to her, or to the memory of a girl who no longer exists.
And all the while, a new threat looms: reports of a flu-like, fatal virus that the government insists is being spread by Luxen. A horrifying illness that changes whoever it touches, spreading panic across a country already at its breaking point.
Poppy never dreamed she would find the love she’s found with Prince Casteel. She wants to revel in her happiness but first they must free his brother and find hers. It’s a dangerous mission and one with far-reaching consequences neither dreamed of. Because Poppy is the Chosen, the Blessed. The true ruler of Atlantia. She carries the blood of the King of Gods within her. By right the crown and the kingdom are hers.
\nPoppy has only ever wanted to control her own life, not the lives of others, but now she must choose to either forsake her birthright or seize the gilded crown and become the Queen of Flesh and Fire. But as the kingdoms’ dark sins and blood-drenched secrets finally unravel, a long-forgotten power rises to pose a genuine threat. And they will stop at nothing to ensure that the crown never sits upon Poppy’s head.
\nBut the greatest threat to them and to Atlantia is what awaits in the far west, where the Queen of Blood and Ash has her own plans, ones she has waited hundreds of years to carry out. Poppy and Casteel must consider the impossible - travel to the Lands of the Gods and wake the King himself. And as shocking secrets and the harshest betrayals come to light, and enemies emerge to threaten everything Poppy and Casteel have fought for, they will discover just how far they are willing to go for their people - and each other.
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Set in the world of her Lux series. Four years after a devastating war between humans and aliens, a teen girl is swept up in the alien resistance and in the process falls in love and discovers the dark secrets of her past.
\nA girl pulled into in a world she doesn't understand finds herself confronted by long buried secrets, a betrayal that could tear her life apart . . .
\nSeventeen-year-old Evie Dasher knows firsthand the devastating consequences of humanity's war with the aliens. When she's caught up in a raid at a notorious club known as one of the few places where humans and the surviving Luxen can mingle freely, she meets Luc, an unnaturally beautiful guy she initially assumes is a Luxen . . . but he is in fact something much more powerful. Her growing attraction for Luc will lead her deeper and deeper into a world she'd only heard about, a world where everything she thought she knew will be turned on its head . . .
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It's Ella's senior year of high school and she and her best friend Linds plan to make it the best year ever. At Brock Cochran's end of summer pool party, the girls vow to have as much fun as possible before they head off to different colleges next fall. But when Ella is mysteriously attacked on her way home from the party, everything changes. Ella's carefree senior year plans disintegrate as she finds herself at the center of an attempted murder investigation.
Ella tries to move on, but her attacker isn't done yet. He shows himself in the form of horrifying signs and symbols: a clown mask strewn on her bed, a dead bird in her backpack, a shadow moving past her window in the night. And as the weeks pass, it turns out that Ella isn't the only one being tormented.
With the help of an old flame, Jensen Carver, and her friends and family, Ella tries to attain some sense of normalcy, but she can't seem to shake the feeling that there's a dark pattern hidden in the killer's every move. Suddenly, even those in her innermost circle seem suspicious. In her seemingly safe West Virginia town, Ella starts to wonder who she can trust.
History is on repeat, and things didn't go so well the last time.
Alexandria isn't sure she's going to make it to her eighteenth birthday - to her Awakening. A long-forgotten, fanatical order is out to kill her, and if the Council ever discovers what she did in the Catskills, she's a goner . . . and so is Aiden.
If that's not freaky enough, whenever Alex and Seth spend time \"training\" - which really is just Seth's code word for some up-close and personal one-on-one time - she ends up with another mark of the Apollyon, which brings her one step closer to Awakening ahead of schedule. Awesome.
But as her birthday draws near, her entire world shatters with a startling revelation and she's caught between love and Fate. One will do anything to protect her. One has been lying to her since the beginning. Once the gods have revealed themselves, unleashing their wrath, lives will be irrevocably changed . . . and destroyed.
Those left standing will discover if love is truly greater than Fate . . .
Every choice has consequences - but seventeen-year-old Layla faces tougher choices than most. Light or darkness. Wickedly sexy demon prince Roth, or Zayne, the gorgeous, protective Warden she never thought could be hers. Hardest of all, Layla has to decide which side of herself to trust.
\nLayla has a new problem, too. A Lilin - the deadliest of demons - has been unleashed, wreaking havoc on those around her . . . including her best friend. To keep Sam from a fate much, much worse than death, Layla must strike a deal with the enemy while saving her city - and her race - from destruction.
\nTorn between two worlds and two different boys, Layla has no certainties, least of all survival, especially when an old bargain comes back to haunt them all. But sometimes, when secrets are everywhere and the truth seems unknowable, you have to listen to your heart, pick a side - and then fight like hell . . .
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Born with an intuition that never fails, Calista knows her talents are of great value to the power-hungry of the world, so she lives hidden as a courtesan of the Baron of Archwood. In exchange for his protection, she grants him information.
\nWhen her intuition leads her to save a traveling prince in dire trouble, the voice inside her blazes with warning - and promise. Today he’ll bring her joy. One day he'll be her doom.
\nWhen the Baron takes an interest in the traveling prince and the prince takes an interest in Calista, she becomes the prince’s temporary companion. But the city simmers with rebellion, and with knights and monsters at her city gates and a hungry prince in her bed, intuition may not be enough to keep her safe.
\nCalista must follow her intuition to safety or follow her heart to her downfall.
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After a startling betrayal ends with both Sera and the dangerously seductive ruler of the Shadowlands she has fallen madly in love with being held captive by the false King of the Gods, there is only one thing that can free Nyktos and prevent the forces of the Shadowlands from invading Dalos and igniting a War of Primals.
\nConvincing Kolis won’t be easy, though - not even with a lifetime of training. While his most favored Revenant is insistent that she is nothing more than a lie, Kolis’s erratic nature and twisted sense of honor leave her shaken to the core, and nothing could’ve prepared her for the cruelty of his Court or the shocking truths revealed. The revelations not only upend what she has understood about her duty and the very creation of the realms but also draw into question exactly what the true threat is. However, surviving Kolis is only one part of the battle. The Ascension is upon her, and Sera is out of time.
\nBut Nyktos will do anything to keep Sera alive and give her the life she deserves. He’ll even risk the utter destruction of the realms, and that’s exactly what will happen if he doesn’t Ascend as the Primal of Life. Yet despite his desperate determination, their destinies may be out of their hands.
\nBut there is that foreseen unexpected thread - the unpredictable, unknown, and unwritten. The only thing more powerful than the Fates . . .
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Chosen from birth to usher in a new era, Poppy’s life has never been her own. The life of the Maiden is solitary. Never to be touched. Never to be looked upon. Never to be spoken to. Never to experience pleasure. Waiting for the day of her Ascension, she would rather be with the guards, fighting back the evil that took her family, than preparing to be found worthy by the gods. But the choice has never been hers.
The entire kingdom’s future rests on Poppy’s shoulders, something she’s not even quite sure she wants for herself. Because a Maiden has a heart. And a soul. And longing. And when Hawke, a golden-eyed guard honor bound to ensure her Ascension, enters her life, destiny and duty become tangled with desire and need. He incites her anger, makes her question everything she believes in, and tempts her with the forbidden.
Forsaken by the gods and feared by mortals, a fallen kingdom is rising once more, determined to take back what they believe is theirs through violence and vengeance. And as the shadow of those cursed draws closer, the line between what is forbidden and what is right becomes blurred. Poppy is not only on the verge of losing her heart and being found unworthy by the gods, but also her life when every blood-soaked thread that holds her world together begins to unravel.
Trinity Marrow has lost the battle and her beloved Protector. Even with both demons and Wardens on her side, Trin may not win the war against the Harbinger.
\nBringing Lucifer back to the world to fight the Harbinger is probably a really, really bad idea, but they’re out of options - and the world’s ultimate fallen angel is the only being powerful enough to impact the outcome.
\nAs Trin and Zayne form a new and more dangerous bond and Lucifer unleashes Hell on earth, the apocalypse looms and the world teeters on the end of forever. Win or lose, one thing is certain - nothing will ever be the same.
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The Hematoi descend from the unions of gods and mortals, and the children of two Hematoi pure bloods have godlike powers. Children of Hematoi and mortals--well, not so much. Half-bloods only have two options: become trained Sentinels who hunt and kill daimons or become servants in the homes of the pures.
Seventeen-year-old Alexandria would rather risk her life fighting than waste it scrubbing toilets, but she may end up slumming it anyway. There are several rules that students at the Covenant must follow. Alex has problems with them all, but especially rule #1:Relationships between pures and halfs are forbidden. Unfortunately, she's crushing hard on the totally hot pure-blood Aiden. But falling for Aiden isn't her biggest problem - staying alive long enough to graduate the Covenant and become a Sentinel is.
If she fails in her duty, she faces a future worse than death or slavery: being turned into a daimon, and being hunted by Aiden. And that would kind of suck.
Everything Poppy has ever believed in is a lie, including the man she was falling in love with. Thrust among those who see her as a symbol of a monstrous kingdom, she barely knows who she is without the veil of the Maiden. But what she does know is that nothing is as dangerous to her as him. The Dark One. The Prince of Atlantia. He wants her to fight him, and that’s one order she’s more than happy to obey. He may have taken her, but he will never have her.
Casteel Da’Neer is known by many names and many faces. His lies are as seductive as his touch. His truths as sensual as his bite. Poppy knows better than to trust him. He needs her alive, healthy, and whole to achieve his goals. But he’s the only way for her to get what she wants - to find her brother Ian and see for herself if he has become a soulless Ascended.
Working with Casteel instead of against him presents its own risks. He still tempts her with every breath, offering up all she’s ever wanted. Casteel has plans for her. Ones that could expose her to unimaginable pleasure and unfathomable pain. Plans that will force her to look beyond everything she thought she knew about herself - about him. Plans that could bind their lives together in unexpected ways that neither kingdom is prepared for. And she’s far too reckless, too hungry, to resist the temptation.
But unrest has grown in Atlantia as they await the return of their Prince. Whispers of war have become stronger, and Poppy is at the very heart of it all. The King wants to use her to send a message. The Descenters want her dead. The wolven are growing more unpredictable. And as her abilities to feel pain and emotion begin to grow and strengthen, the Atlantians start to fear her.
Dark secrets are at play, ones steeped in the blood-drenched sins of two kingdoms that would do anything to keep the truth hidden. But when the earth begins to shake, and the skies start to bleed, it may already be too late.
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The only one who can save Sera now is the one she spent her life planning to kill.
\nThe truth about Sera’s plan is out, shattering the fragile trust forged between her and Nyktos. Surrounded by those distrustful of her, all Sera has is her duty. She will do anything to end Kolis, the false King of Gods, and his tyrannical rule of Iliseeum, thus stopping the threat he poses to the mortal realm.
\nNyktos has a plan, though, and as they work together, the last thing they need is the undeniable, scorching passion that continues to ignite between them. Sera cannot afford to fall for the tortured Primal, not when a life no longer bound to a destiny she never wanted is more attainable than ever. But memories of their shared pleasure and unrivaled desire are a siren’s call impossible to resist.
\nAnd as Sera begins to realise that she wants to be more than a Consort in name only, the danger surrounding them intensifies. The attacks on the Shadowlands are increasing, and when Kolis summons them to Court, a whole new risk becomes apparent. The Primal power of Life is growing inside her, pushing her closer to the end of her Culling. And without Nyktos’s love - an emotion he’s incapable of feeling - she won’t survive her Ascension.
\nThat is if she even makes it to her Ascension and Kolis doesn’t get to her first. Because time is running out. For both her and the realms.
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Starting over sucks.
When we moved to West Virginia right before my senior year, I’d pretty much resigned myself to thick accents, dodgy internet access, and a whole lot of boring . . . until I spotted my hot neighbor, with his looming height and eerie green eyes. Things were looking up.
And then he opened his mouth.
Daemon is infuriating. Arrogant. Stab-worthy. We do not get along. At all. But when a stranger attacks me and Daemon literally freezes time with a wave of his hand, well, something . . . unexpected happens.
The hot alien living next door marks me.
You heard me. Alien. Turns out Daemon and his sister have a galaxy of enemies wanting to steal their abilities, and Daemon’s touch has me lit up like the Vegas Strip. The only way I’m getting out of this alive is by sticking close to Daemon until my alien mojo fades.
If I don’t kill him first, that is.
Thanks to his alien mojo, Daemon’s determined to prove what he feels for me is more than a product of our bizarro connection. So I’ve sworn him off, even though he’s running more hot than cold these days. But we’ve got bigger problems.
The Department of Defense is here. If they ever find out what Daemon can do and that we’re linked, I’m a goner. So is he. And there’s this new boy in school who’s got a secret of his own. He knows what’s happened to me and he can help, but to do so, I have to lie to Daemon and stay away from him. Like that’s possible. Against all common sense, I’m falling for Daemon. Hard.
I’ve seen someone who shouldn’t be alive. And I have to tell Daemon, even though I know he’s never going to stop searching until he gets the truth. What happened to his brother? Who betrayed him? And what does the DOD want from them - from me?
When he set out to prove his feelings for me, he wasn’t fooling around. Doubting him isn’t something I’ll do again, and now that we’ve made it through the rough patches, well . . . There’s a lot of spontaneous combustion going on.
After everything, I’m no longer the same Katy. I’m different . . . And I’m not sure what that will mean in the end. When each step we take in discovering the truth puts us in the path of the secret organisation responsible for torturing and testing hybrids, the more I realise there is no end to what I’m capable. The death of someone close still lingers, help comes from the most unlikely source, and friends will become the deadliest of enemies, but we won’t turn back. Even if the outcome will shatter our worlds forever.
She can't believe Daemon welcomed his race or stood by as his kind threatened to obliterate every last human and hybrid on Earth. But the lines between good and bad have blurred, and love has become an emotion that could destroy her - could destroy them all.
They must team with an unlikely enemy if there is any chance of surviving the invasion. But when it quickly becomes impossible to tell friend from foe, and the world is crumbling around them, they may lose everything - even what they cherish most - to ensure the survival of their friends . . . and mankind.
After the successful but disastrous raid on Mount Weather, he’s facing the impossible. Katy is gone. Taken. Everything becomes about finding her. Taking out anyone who stands in his way? Done. Burning down the whole world to save her? Gladly. Exposing his alien race to the world? With pleasure.
Surrounded by enemies, the only way she can come out of this is to adapt. After all, there are sides of Daedalus that don’t seem entirely crazy, but the group’s goals are frightening and the truths they speak even more disturbing. Who are the real bad guys? Daedalus? Mankind? Or the Luxen?
But the most dangerous foe has been there all along, and when the truths are exposed and the lies come crumbling down, which side will Daemon and Katy be standing on?
Poppy was never meant to awaken, and the consequences are devastating and far-reaching, stirring ancient powers from their slumber and transforming Casteel and Kieran in ways even the Fates couldn’t have foreseen. But what that means is the least of their concerns. For now.
\nThe Blood Crown has fallen, but what has risen is a far greater danger than they’ve ever faced. From flesh and fire, the Great Conspirator has returned to the mortal realm, and he wants only one thing. They must stop the true Primal of Death before he regains his strength, and it won’t be easy. Even weakened, his influence is undeniable. His power, unthinkable.
\nWhile the future of the realms rests upon them, they won’t stand alone. The gods have awakened - each harboring their own blood-soaked secrets. But they must navigate an unbalanced realm, where every choice - past and present - has the potential to not only undo everything they’ve fought for but also destroy the very bonds that have Joined them together.
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Growing up, Mallory Dodge learned that the best way to survive was to say nothing. And even though it's been four years since her nightmare ended, she's beginning to worry that the fear that holds her back will last a lifetime. Now, after years of homeschooling, Mallory must face a new milestone - spending her senior year at a public high school. But she never imagined she'd run into Rider Stark, the friend and protector she hasn't seen since childhood, on her very first day.
\nIt doesn't take long for Mallory to realise that the connection she shared with Rider never really faded. Yet soon it becomes apparent that she's not the only one grappling with lingering scars from the past. And as she watches Rider's life spiral out of control, Mallory must make a choice between staying silent and speaking out - for the people she loves, the life she wants and the truths that need to be heard.
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There is need. And then there is Fate. Being destined to become some kind of supernatural electrical outlet isn't exactly awesome - especially when Alexandria's other half is everywhere she goes. Seth's in her training room, outside her classes, and keeps showing up in her bedroom - so not cool. Their connection does have some benefits, like staving off her nightmares of the tragic showdown with her mother, but it has no effect on what Alex feels for the forbidden, pure-blooded Aiden. Or what he will do - and sacrifice - for her.
\nWhen daimons infiltrate the Covenants and attack students, the gods send furies - lesser gods determined to eradicate any threat to the Covenants and to the gods, and that includes the Apollyon - and Alex. And if that and hordes of aether-sucking monsters didn't blow bad enough, a mysterious threat seems willing to do anything to neutralise Seth, even if that means forcing Alex into servitude - or killing her. When the gods are involved, some decisions can never, ever be undone.
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A half human, half angel and her bonded gargoyle protector must work with demons to stop the apocalypse while avoiding falling in love. The Harbinger is coming . . . but who or what is it? All of humankind may fall if Trinity and Zayne can’t win the race against time as dark forces gather.
As tensions rise, they must stay close together and patrol the DC streets at night, seeking signs of the Harbinger, an entity that is killing Wardens and demons with no seeming rhyme or reason. Forbidden to be with each other, Zayne and Trinity fight their feelings and turn to unusual sources for help - the demon Roth and his cohorts.
But as deaths pile up and they uncover a sinister plot involving the local high school and endangering someone dear to Zayne, Trin realizes she is being led . . . herded . . . played for some unknown end. As anger builds and feelings spiral out of control, it becomes clear that rage may be the ruin of them all.
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It's a beautiful day for a war.
As the mortal world slowly slips into chaos of the godly kind, Alexandria Andros must overcome a stunning defeat that has left her shaken and in doubt of their ability to end this war once and for all.
And with all the obstacles between Alex and her happily-ever-after with the swoonworthy Aiden St. Delphi, they must now trust a deadly foe as they travel deep into the Underworld to release one of the most dangerous gods of all time.
In the stunning, action-packed climax to the bestselling Covenant series, Alex must face a terrible choice: the destruction of everything and everyone she holds dear . . . or the end of herself.
Born shrouded in the veil of the Primals, a Maiden as the Fates promised, Seraphena Mierel’s future has never been hers. Chosen before birth to uphold the desperate deal her ancestor struck to save his people, Sera must leave behind her life and offer herself to the Primal of Death as his Consort.
\nHowever, Sera’s real destiny is the most closely guarded secret in all of Lasania - she’s not the well protected Maiden but an assassin with one mission - one target. Make the Primal of Death fall in love, become his weakness, and then . . . end him. If she fails, she dooms her kingdom to a slow demise at the hands of the Rot.
\nSera has always known what she is. Chosen. Consort. Assassin. Weapon. A specter never fully formed yet drenched in blood. A monster. Until him. Until the Primal of Death’s unexpected words and deeds chase away the darkness gathering inside her. And his seductive touch ignites a passion she’s never allowed herself to feel and cannot feel for him. But Sera has never had a choice. Either way, her life is forfeit - it always has been, as she has been forever touched by Life and Death.
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A great primal power has risen. The Queen of Flesh and Fire has become the Primal of Blood and Bone - the true Primal of Life and Death. And the battle Casteel, Poppy, and their allies have been fighting has only just begun. Gods are awakening across Iliseeum and the mortal realm, readying for the war to come.
\nBut when Poppy falls into stasis, Cas faces the very real possibility that the dire, unexpected consequences of what she is becoming could take her away from him. Cas is given some advice, though - something he plans to cling to as he waits to see her beautiful eyes open once more: Talk to her.
\nAnd so, he does. He reminds Poppy how their journey began, revealing things about himself that only Kieran knows in the process. But it’s anybody’s guess what she’ll wake to or exactly how much of the realm and Cas will have changed when she does.
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Layla Shaw is trying to pick up the pieces of her shattered life - no easy task for a seventeen-year-old who’s pretty sure things can’t get worse. Her impossibly gorgeous best friend, Zayne, is forever off-limits thanks to the mysterious powers of her soul-stealing kiss. The Warden clan that has always protected her is suddenly keeping dangerous secrets. And she can barely think about Roth, the wickedly hot demon prince who understood her in ways no one else could.
\nBut sometimes rock bottom is only the beginning. Because suddenly Layla’s powers begin to evolve, and she’s offered a tantalising taste of what has always been forbidden. Then, when she least expects it, Roth returns, bringing news that could change her world forever. She’s finally getting what she always wanted, but with hell literally breaking loose and the body count adding up, the price may be higher than Layla is willing to pay . . .
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Enter a world of gargoyle protectors, rising demons and one girl with an explosive secret.
\n Eighteen-year-old Trinity Marrow may be going blind, but she can see and communicate with ghosts and spirits. Her unique gift is part of a secret so dangerous that she’s been in hiding for years in an isolated compound fiercely guarded by Wardens - gargoyle shape-shifters who protect humankind from demons. If the demons discover the truth about Trinity, they’ll devour her, flesh and bone, to enhance their own powers.
When Wardens from another clan arrive with disturbing reports that something out there is killing both demons and Wardens, Trinity’s safe world implodes. Not the least because one of the outsiders is the most annoying and fascinating person she’s ever met. Zayne has secrets of his own that will upend her world yet again - but working together becomes imperative once demons breach the compound and Trinity’s secret comes to light. To save her family and maybe the world, she’ll have to put her trust in Zayne. But all bets are off as a supernatural war is unleashed . . .
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Torn between duty and survival, nothing can be the same.
Everything Ivy Morgan thought she knew has been turned on its head. After being betrayed and then nearly killed by the Prince of the Fae, she’s left bruised and devastated - and with an earth-shattering secret that she must keep at all costs. And if the Order finds out her secret, they’ll kill her.
Then there’s Ren Owens, the sexy, tattooed Elite member of the Order who has been sharing Ivy’s bed and claiming her heart. Their chemistry is smoking hot, but Ivy knows that Ren has always valued his duty to the Order above all else - he could never touch her if he knew the truth. That is, if he let her live at all. Yet how can she live with herself if she lies to him?
But as the Fae Prince begins to close in, intent on permanently opening the gates to the Otherworld, Ivy is running out of options. If she doesn’t figure out who she can trust - and fast - it’s not only her heart that will be torn apart, but civilisation itself.
Visions of Flesh and Blood: a Blood and Ash/Flesh and Fire Compendium is a comprehensive companion guide for background, history, reader-favorite information, art, and reference materials. Combined with original short stories and scenes from some of the world’s most beloved characters, as well as never-before-seen visual enticements, it’s a treat for the senses.
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Told from the point of view of Miss Willa herself, the compendium acts like research material but reads like a journal and cache of personal notes, allowing the reader to revisit the characters and history they so love yet view things in a different way.
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Casteel Da’Neer knows all too well that very few are as cunning or vicious as the Blood Queen, but no one, not even him, could’ve prepared for the staggering revelations. The magnitude of what the Blood Queen has done is almost unthinkable.
\nNothing will stop Poppy from freeing her King and destroying everything the Blood Crown stands for. With the strength of the Primal of Life’s guards behind her, and the support of the wolven, Poppy must convince the Atlantian generals to make war her way - because there can be no retreat this time. Not if she has any hope of building a future where both kingdoms can reside in peace.
\nTogether, Poppy and Casteel must embrace traditions old and new to safeguard those they hold dear - to protect those who cannot defend themselves. But war is only the beginning. Ancient primal powers have already stirred, revealing the horror of what began eons ago. To end what the Blood Queen has begun, Poppy might have to become what she has been prophesied to be - what she fears the most.
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Layla just wants to fit in at school and go on a date with Zayne, whom she's crushed on since forever. Trouble is, Zayne treats Layla like a sister - and Layla is a half demon, half gargoyle with abilities no one else possesses. And even though Zayne is a Warden, part of the race of gargoyles tasked with keeping humanity safe, Layla's kiss will kill anything with a soul - including him.
\nThen she meets Roth - a demon who claims to know her secrets. Though Layla knows she should stay away, it's tough when that whole no-kissing thing isn't an issue. Trusting Roth could ruin her chances with Zayne, but as Layla discovers she's the reason for a violent demon uprising, kissing the enemy suddenly pales in comparison to the looming end of the world.
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Things are about to get Wicked in New Orleans.
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Twenty-two year old Ivy Morgan isn’t your average college student. She, and others like her, know humans aren’t the only thing trolling the French Quarter for fun . . . and for food. Her duty to the Order is her life. After all, four years ago, she lost everything at the hands of the creatures she’d sworn to hunt, tearing her world and her heart apart.
Ren Owens is the last person Ivy expected to enter her rigidly controlled life. He’s six feet and three inches of temptation and swoon-inducing charm. With forest-green eyes and a smile that’s surely left a stream of broken hearts in its wake, he has an uncanny, almost unnatural ability to make her yearn for everything he has to offer. But letting him in is as dangerous as hunting the cold-blooded killers stalking the streets. Losing the boy she loved once before had nearly destroyed her, but the sparking tension that grows between them becomes impossible for Ivy to deny. Deep down, she wants . . . she needs more than what her duty demands of her, what her past has shaped for her.
But as Ivy grows closer to Ren, she realises she’s not the only one carrying secrets that could shatter the frail bond between them. There’s something he’s not telling her, and one thing is for certain. She’s no longer sure what is more dangerous to her - the ancient beings threatening to take over the town or the man demanding to lay claim to her heart and her soul.
Three casinos. Three bodies. Three days. After a string of brutal murders in Las Vegas, Cassie Hobbes and the Naturals are called in to investigate. But even with the team's unique profiling talents, these murders seem baffling: unlike many serial killers, this one uses different methods every time. All of the victims were killed in public, yet the killer does not show up on any tape. And each victim has a string of numbers tattooed on their wrist.
\n\t\tHidden in the numbers is a code - and the closer the Naturals come to unraveling the mystery, the more perilous the case becomes. Meanwhile, Cassie is dealing with an equally dangerous and much more painful mystery. For the first time in years, there's been a break in her mother's case. As personal issues and tensions between the team mount, Cassie and the Naturals will be faced with impossible odds - and impossible choices.
When Cassie Hobbes joined the FBI's Naturals program, she had one goal: uncover the truth about her mother's murder. But now, everything Cassie thought she knew about what happened that night has been called into question. Her mother is alive, and the people holding her captive are more powerful - and dangerous - than anything the Naturals have faced so far.
\n\t\tAs Cassie and the team work to uncover the secrets of a group that has been killing in secret for generations, they find themselves racing a ticking clock. New victims. New betrayals. New secrets. When the bodies begin piling up, it soon becomes apparent that this time, the Naturals aren't just hunting serial killers.
Grayson Hawthorne was raised as the heir apparent to his billionaire grandfather, taught from the cradle to put family first. Now the great Tobias Hawthorne is dead and his family disinherited, but some lessons linger. When Grayson’s half-sisters find themselves in trouble, he swoops in to do what he does best: take care of the problem - efficiently, effectively, mercilessly. And without getting bogged down in emotional entanglements.
\nJameson Hawthorne is a risk-taker, a sensation-seeker, a player of games. When his mysterious father appears and asks for a favor, Jameson can’t resist the challenge. Now he must infiltrate London’s most exclusive underground gambling club, which caters to the rich, the powerful, and the aristocratic, and win an impossible game of greatest stakes. Luckily, Jameson Hawthorne lives for impossible.
\nDrawn into twisted games on opposite sides of the globe, Grayson and Jameson - with the help of their brothers and the girl who inherited their grandfather’s fortune - must dig deep to decide who they want to be and what each of them will sacrifice to win.
Reluctant debutante Sawyer Taft joined Southern high society for one reason and one reason alone: to identify and locate her biological father. But the answers Sawyer found during her debutante year only left her with more questions and one potentially life-ruining secret.
\nWhen her cousin Lily ropes her into pledging a mysterious, elite, and all-female secret society called the White Gloves, Sawyer soon discovers that someone in the group's ranks may have the answers she's looking for. Things are looking up . . . until Sawyer and the White Gloves make a disturbing discover near the family's summer home - and uncover a twisted secret, decades in the making.
\nNo one is quite who they seem to be.
Every other day, Kali D’Angelo is a normal sixteen-year-old girl. She goes to public high school. She argues with her father. She’s human.
\nAnd then every day in between . . . she’s something else entirely.
\nThough she still looks like herself, every twenty-four hours predatory instincts take over and Kali becomes a feared demon-hunter with the undeniable urge to hunt, trap, and kill zombies, hellhounds, and other supernatural creatures. Kali has no idea why she is the way she is, but she gives in to instinct anyway. Even though the government considers it environmental terrorism.
\nWhen Kali notices a mark on the lower back of a popular girl at school, she knows instantly that the girl is marked for death by one of these creatures. Kali has twenty-four hours to save her, and unfortunately she’ll have to do it as a human. With the help of a few new friends, Kali takes a risk that her human body might not survive . . . and learns the secrets of her mysterious condition in the process.
For the past two years, Bailey Morgan has lived a double life: high school student by day, ancient mystical being by night. As the third Fate, Bailey literally controls the fate of the world, but as Plain Old Bailey, her life is falling apart. She's got a tattoo that was supposed to be temporary (but isn't), friendships that were supposed to last forever (but might not), and no idea what her future holds after high school graduation.
\nThen Bailey meets the rest of the Sidhe, an ancient race defined by their power, beauty, and a sinister habit of getting what they want at any cost. Before Bailey knows it, she's being drawn into an otherworldly web more complicated than anything she weaves as a mortal Fate.
To inherit billions, all Avery Kylie Grambs has to do is survive a few more weeks living in Hawthorne House. The paparazzi are dogging her every step. Financial pressures are building. Danger is a fact of life. And the only thing getting Avery through it all is the Hawthorne brothers. Her life is intertwined with theirs. She knows their secrets, and they know her.
But as the clock ticks down to the moment when Avery will become the richest teenager on the planet, trouble arrives in the form of a visitor who needs her help - and whose presence in Hawthorne House could change everything. It soon becomes clear that there is one last puzzle to solve, and Avery and the Hawthorne brothers are drawn into a dangerous game against an unknown and powerful player.
When sixteen-year-old Tess Kendrick is sent to live with her older sister, Ivy, she has no idea that the infamous Ivy Kendrick is Washington D.C.'s #1 \"fixer\", known for making politicians' scandals go away for a price. No sooner does Tess enroll at Hardwicke Academy than she unwittingly follows in her sister's footsteps and becomes D.C.'s premier high school fixer, solving problems for elite teens.
\nSecrets pile up as each sister lives a double life . . . until their worlds come crashing together and Tess finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy with one of her classmates and a client of Ivy's. Suddenly, there is much more on the line than good grades, money, or politics, and the price for this fix might be more than Tess is willing to pay.
An amnesiac playboy and the woman with every reason to hate him. A daredevil, his favorite heiress, and three nights in Prague. An unlikely pairing between a cowboy and a goth. Four brothers with an inescapable bond, strengthened by the family they chose, in a house of wonders that promises to always deliver one more secret.
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Discover their stories of love and loss, power, puzzles, and life-and-death secrets in this mind-blowingly romantic collection that proves that when you love the way Hawthornes love, there is no going back.
Seven players arrived on Hawthorne Island, each with their own secrets and motivations to win the Grandest Game. Millions are at stake, but so are hearts - and lives. The players now must race to win the game, solve myriad mysteries, and survive the twists and turns of Glorious Rivals.
Seven tickets. An island of dreams. The chance of a lifetime. Set in the world of The Inheritance Games.
\nWelcome to the Grandest Game, an annual competition run by billionaire Avery Grambs and the four infamous Hawthorne brothers, whose family fortune she inherited. Designed to give anyone a shot at fame and fortune, this year’s game requires one of seven golden tickets to enter. With millions on the line, those seven players will do whatever it takes to win.
\nSome of the players are in it for the money. Some for power. Some for reasons all their own. Every single one of them has secrets. Amidst it all is Grayson Hawthorne, tasked with a vital role in this year’s game. But as tensions rise and the mind-bending challenges push the players to their limits - physically, mentally, and emotionally - it soon becomes clear that not everyone is playing by the rules.
The Inheritance Games ended with a bombshell, and now heiress Avery Grambs has to pick up the pieces and find the man who might hold the answers to all of her questions - including why Tobias Hawthorne left his entire fortune to Avery, a virtual stranger, rather than to his own daughters or grandsons.
\nThanks to a DNA test, Avery knows that she's not a Hawthorne by blood, but clues pile up hinting at a deeper connection to the family than she had ever imagined. As the mystery grows and the plot thickens, Grayson and Jameson, the enigmatic and magnetic Hawthorne grandsons, continue to pull Avery in different directions.
\nAnd there are threats lurking around every corner, as adversaries emerge who will stop at nothing to see Avery out of the picture - by any means necessary.
Avery Grambs has a plan for a better future: survive high school, win a scholarship, and get out. But her fortunes change in an instant when billionaire Tobias Hawthorne dies and leaves Avery virtually his entire fortune. The catch? Avery has no idea why - or even who Tobias Hawthorne is. To receive her inheritance, Avery must move into sprawling, secret passage-filled Hawthorne House, where every room bears the old man's touch - and his love of puzzles, riddles, and codes.
Unfortunately for Avery, Hawthorne House is also occupied by the family that Tobias Hawthorne just dispossessed. This includes the four Hawthorne grandsons: dangerous, magnetic, brilliant boys who grew up with every expectation that one day, they would inherit billions. Heir apparent Grayson Hawthorne is convinced that Avery must be a con-woman, and he's determined to take her down. His brother, Jameson, views her as their grandfather's last hurrah: a twisted riddle, a puzzle to be solved.
Caught in a world of wealth and privilege, with danger around every turn, Avery will have to play the game herself just to survive.
Seventeen-year-old Cassie Hobbes has a gift for profiling people. Her talent has landed her a spot in an elite FBI program for teens with innate crime-solving abilities, and into some harrowing situations. After barely escaping a confrontation with an unbalanced killer obsessed with her mother’s murder, Cassie hopes she and the rest of the team can stick to solving cold cases from a distance.
\n\t\tBut when victims of a brutal new serial killer start turning up, the Naturals are pulled into an active case that strikes too close to home: the killer is a perfect copycat of Dean’s incarcerated father - a man he’d do anything to forget. Forced deeper into a murderer’s psyche than ever before, will the Naturals be able to outsmart the enigmatic killer’s brutal mind games before this copycat twists them into his web for good?
Saying Toby Klein is an unlikely cheerleader is like saying Paris Hilton might be into guys–understatement of the year. But as a Bayport High cheerleader and an undercover government operative, she’s living a life that’s anything but typical.
\nBeing on the Squad has its benefits, but just as Toby is getting the hang of protocol and pep rallies, fate kicks things up a notch.
Eighteen-year-old auto mechanic Sawyer Taft did not expect her estranged grandmother to show up at her apartment door and offer her a six-figure contract to participate in debutante season. And she definitely never imagined she would accept.
\nBut when she realises that immersing herself in her grandmother's \"society\" might mean discovering the answer to the biggest mystery of her life-her father's identity-she signs on the dotted line and braces herself for a year of makeovers, big dresses, bigger egos, and a whole lot of bless your heart.
\nThe one thing she doesn't expect to find is friendship, but as she's drawn into a group of debutantes with scandalous, dangerous secrets of their own, Sawyer quickly discovers that her family isn't the only mainstay of high society with skeletons in their closet. There are people in her grandmother's glittering world who are not what they appear, and no one wants Sawyer poking her nose into the past.
\nAs she navigates the twisted relationships between her new friends and their powerful parents, Sawyer's search for the truth about her own origins is just the beginning.
For Tess Kendrick, a junior at the elite Hardwicke School in Washington D.C., fixing runs in the family. But Tess has another legacy, too, one that involves power and the making of political dynasties. When Tess is asked to run a classmate's campaign for student council, she agrees. But when the candidates are children of politicians, even a high school election can involve life-shattering secrets.
Meanwhile, Tess's guardian has also taken on an impossible case, as a terrorist attack calls into doubt who can - and cannot - be trusted on Capitol Hill. Tess knows better than most that power is currency in D.C., but she's about to discover first-hand that power always comes with a price.
Kira Bennett’s earliest memories are of living alone and wild in the woods. She has no idea how long she was on her own or what she had to do to survive, but she remembers the moment that Cady Bennett and one of her search-and-rescue dogs found her perfectly.
\nAdopted into the Bennett family, Kira still struggles with human interaction years later, but she excels at the family business: search-and-rescue. Along with Cady’s son, Jude, and their neighbor, Free, Kira works alongside Cady to train the world’s most elite search-and-rescue dogs. Someday, all three teenagers hope to put their skills to use, finding the lost and bringing them home.
But when Cady’s estranged father, the enigmatic Bales Bennett, tracks his daughter down and asks for her help in locating a missing child - one of several visitors who has disappeared in the Sierra Glades National Park in the past twelve months - the teens find themselves on the frontlines sooner than they could have ever expected.
As the search through 750,000 acres of unbridled wilderness intensifies, Kira becomes obsessed with finding the missing child. She knows all too well what it’s like to be lost in the wilderness, fighting for survival, alone.
But this case isn’t simple. There is more afoot than a single, missing girl, and Kira’s memories threaten to overwhelm her at every turn. As the danger mounts and long-held family secrets come to light, Kira is forced to question everything she thought she knew about her adopted family, her true nature, and her past.
Cassie is a natural at reading people. Piecing together the tiniest details, she can tell you who you are and what you want. But it's not a skill that she's ever taken seriously until the FBI come knocking: they've begun a classified programme that uses exceptional teenagers to crack infamous cold cases, and they need Cassie.
\nWhat Cassie doesn't realise is that there's more at risk than a few unsolved murders - especially when she's sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own. Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. And when a new killer strikes, danger looms close.
\nCaught in a lethal game of cat and mouse with a killer, the Naturals are going to have to use all of their gifts just to survive . . .
The most dangerous people in the world . . . are the ones you don't even see. Some people are Nobodies: ignored, unloved, practically invisible in every way. No one notices them. No one cares about them. They exist under the radar, forgotten as soon as you turn away. No one sees them coming. No one sees them leave. That's why Nobodies make the perfect assassins.
\nSeventeen-year-old Nix is very good at his job. So when the organisation he works for sends him after a teenage girl named Claire, he doesn't ask questions. He's a killer. She needs to die. For sixteen years, Claire has led a normal life being overlooked. Her parents are absent. She doesn't have any friends. She has no idea what she is, or why anyone would want her dead.
\nBut she's about to find out, because from the moment Nix attempts to carry out his mission, the two are caught up in a conspiracy of murder, cover-ups, and betrayal. Nix is a killer. Claire is his target. But from the moment he sets eyes on her, everything changes, because only the two of them can truly see each other - and two Nobodies are more than twice as dangerous as one.
Bayport High's Varsity cheer squad is made up of the hottest of the hot. But this A-list is dangerous in more ways than one. The Squad is actually a cover for the most highly trained group of underage government operatives the United States has ever assembled.
\nThey have the perfect cover, because, beyond herkeys and highlights, no one expects anything from a cheerleader.
At the age of four, Bryn watched a rogue werewolf brutally murder her parents. Alone in the world, she was rescued and taken in by the mysterious Callum, the alpha of his werewolf pack.
\nNow fifteen, Bryn’s been raised as a human among werewolves, adhering to pack rule (mostly). Little fazes her. But the pack’s been keeping a secret, and when Bryn goes exploring against Callum’s direct orders, she finds Chase, a newly turned teen Were locked in a cage. Terrifying memories of the attack on her mom and dad come flooding back. Bryn needs answers, and she needs Chase to get them.
\nSuddenly, all allegiances to the pack no longer matter. It’s Bryn and Chase against the werewolf world, whatever the consequences.
You’ve fallen in love with the Hawthorne brothers, now discover the love story of the lost scion of Hawthorne House. Read Hannah’s side of the story, then experience their love anew through Toby’s eyes in this unforgettable novel that you can read backward or forward.
\nHannah Rooney knows how to be invisible. At twenty, she keeps her head down and her eyes open, and so far, she’s managed to avoid being pulled into the dealings of her notorious criminal family. Hannah lives her life in countdown mode, biding her time in nursing school as she waits for her beloved sister, Kaylie, to turn eighteen so Hannah can get them both far, far away from Rockaway Watch and start a new life.
\nTobias Hawthorne II acts every inch the entitled heir that he is. As the only son of one of the country's richest men, there isn't a door that isn't open to him. Yet behind his razor sharp cheekbones and devil-may-care attitude, Toby is guarding a nest of deadly secrets and a fiery anger fierce enough to burn everything in his path.
\nTheir lives collide in one tragic, stormy night, where an act of arson and nature leave Kaylie and two others dead and Toby just barely alive - with no memory of who he is. The fisherman who pulls him from the ocean enlists Hannah to help save the very person who she knows took away her sister. Fueled by her hatred, Hannah is determined to deny Toby's death wish by keeping him alive. He is the last person that she should ever develop feelings for, and she is the first thing he ever remembers seeing.
\nSome things cannot happen - and some things cannot be stopped.
Bryn knows first-hand that being the alpha of a werewolf pack means making hard decisions, and that being human makes things a thousand times worse. She's prepared to give up her humanity, but the wolf who promised to Change her is waiting - though for what, Bryn doesn't know.
\nStill human, she must take her place in the werewolf Senate, the precarious democracy that rules the North American packs. Standing side by side with werewolves who were ancient long before she was ever born is enough of a challenge, but Bryn soon learns that the Senate has been called to deal with a problem: the kind of problem that involves human bodies, a Rabid werewolf, and memories that Bryn, Chase, and the rest of their pack would rather forget.
\nWith bodies stacking up and political pressure closing in from all sides, Bryn and her pack are going to have to turn to old enemies and even older friends for help - especially when it starts to look like this time, the monster might be one of their own.
Bailey Morgan isn't the type of girl who shows a lot of skin, but somehow, she ends up in a dressing room at the mall with her friend Delia applying a temporary tattoo to her lower back. Never one to suffer fashion doubt, trendsetter Delia knows exactly where she wants her own tattoo: on her stomach, right where her shirt ends - can you say \"midriff\"?
\nAnnabelle, the quiet one, chooses the back of her neck, and tomboy Zo plasters hers on the top of her foot. The tattoos will last for three days, and Delia's sure that with them, the four friends will absolutely kill at the school dance.
Unfortunately, killing is just what someone has in mind, and Bailey, Delia, Annabelle, and Zo are in for the battle of their lives. Along with her tattoo, each girl receives a gift - a supernatural power to help them in their fight. As Bailey's increasingly frightening dreams reveal the nature of their enemy, it becomes clear to the girls that it's up to them to save the world.
And if they can get Delia to stop using her newfound power to turn gum wrappers into Prada pumps, they might actually stand a chance.
\n
Bryn is finally settling into her position as alpha of the Cedar Ridge Pack - or at least, her own version of what it means to be alpha when you’re a human leading a band of werewolves. Then she finds a teenage boy bleeding on her front porch. Before collapsing, he tells her his name is Lucas, he’s a Were, and Bryn’s protection is his only hope.
But Lucas isn’t part of Bryn’s pack, and she has no right to claim another alpha’s Were. With threats - old and new - looming, and danger closing in from all sides, Bryn will have to accept what her guardian Callum knew all along. To be alpha, she will have to give in to her own animal instincts and become less human. And, she’s going to have to do it alone.
Eighteen-year-old Holiday needs to sort her life out.
\nShe's still shaken from her brother's recent suicide attempt; still pining over her ex, Maya; and still struggling to write again after a long dry spell. To earn enough money for a rebalancing trip with Maya, Holi gets a short-term job: organising the attic of acclaimed author Elsie McAllister. It's an unglamorous gig with a difficult boss. Elsie - whose fame rests on a single novel published decades ago - is in her nineties, in failing health, and fiercely protective of her privacy. But as Holi sorts through the attic's surprising contents, she realises there's much more to Elsie than the novel that made her a legend.
\nUnearthing Elsie's secrets will change how Holi sees art, life, and the way they intertwine, as she grapples with choices that will redefine her own path.
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Stella Parker is stuck. Stuck back in her childhood bedroom in the small town she grew-up in. Stuck between playing it safe and making a change. Stuck in heartbreak. As an assistant librarian, she's surrounded by her favorite words. But Stella has a she can see words not just on the page but all around her - words that shimmer and flit like living things, carrying emotions and whispers of untold stories. For years, she's kept this gift hidden, scribbling fragments into notebooks, unsure of their purpose.
\nAfter a lifetime of seeing and hiding her words, Stella views her gift as a mere curiosity, filling countless notebooks with words, poetry, and unfinished stories that seem to insist on being penned. However, Stella's world is upended when she tosses a journal filled with love notes to her ex into the library's furnace. This impulsive act awakens a new kind of magic - words that surge through her with undeniable urgency and purpose. Suddenly, Stella begins to Could her gift help guide others to the stories they need most? Could these words hold the power to change lives - including her own?
\nThings get complicated when, after hours in the library, Stella encounters unusual visitors and stumbles upon the library's long-held secrets of magic. Her questions lead her deep into the library's hidden magic, where she discovers the extraordinary ability to bring fictional characters to life. As she navigates the chaos of keeping the library's secrets safe, managing an enchanting WWII soldier, an unexpected villain, and her own meddlesome brother, Stella finds herself on a journey of love, courage, and rediscovery.
The Russell family members all seem to have . . . gifts. Eldest sister Penelope naturally infuses strength or joy or love - whatever the wearer requires - into the fabric of the dresses she designs as a seamstress. Her younger sister, Lilith, is never without whatever she needs - despite the free-spirited and nomadic life she lives with her daughter.
\nThere’s always a person nearby who just happens to have an apartment available to rent, or a part-time job open, or a car to borrow just when they need it. And Lilith’s adult daughter, Mattie, always seems to trigger the perfect song to mysteriously start playing - whether from a radio in another room that was turned off or from a friend’s phone in their pocket. And at the heart of the family is their old Victorian home that sometimes seems to have a personality in and of itself.
\nWhen independent, artistic Mattie Russell finds herself back in the family home after her mother’s unexpected death, she has no intention of sticking around the small town, even though she has no future destination in mind. She’s used to living in a new city every couple of years with Lilith as her sole companion, and she’s especially hesitant to entangle herself in the Russell family secrets about their special giftings. But during the reading of the will, the family is shocked to learn Lilith included a testamentary trust that requires Mattie to stay in Ivy Ridge long enough to complete a series of seemingly absurd tasks in order to claim her inheritance.
\nWhile completing the tasks, Mattie discovers that her mother had a well-thought-out plan for her daughter that would lead Mattie to finding her birth father, teach her how to choose her own path, learn to keep her heart open for love, and discover that staying still long enough to sow seeds can produce a stunning garden and vibrant life. This enchanting and whimsical tale of mothers and daughters, home, and love will open readers’ eyes to the magic all around them.
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Can an entire life be erased by one thoughtless wish that changes a single moment?
\nJosephine Reynolds never imagined she'd be a widow in her midthirties. Grieving and barely able to contemplate one more night alone, she carelessly wishes she'd never been born. At the exact same moment, her inbox dings with an it's a link from her sister that lists local foreclosures, and, to her immense surprise, she sees her great-grandmother's house listed and immediately conspires to reclaim it.
\nBut as Josephine restores her great-grandmother's home to its original glory, she comes to realise not everything is as it seems. Replacing the modern front door with the original hand-carved and solid wood one, she notices minuscule words carved into the edging. As she speaks the words aloud and opens the front door with its original key, Josephine finds herself transported back almost one hundred years ago to a 1920s party thrown by her great-grandmother Alma.
\nA shocked Josephine fears she is losing her mind. Has her grief caused her to lose touch with reality? But it quickly becomes clear that her life and future - thanks to her throwaway wish - hinge on one single moment that happened almost one hundred years ago. The two parallel timelines start blending together, and Josephine witnesses her present life disappearing right before her eyes.
\nShe can only hope it's not too late to save her own future.
\n
Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him.
Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister's recent death.
When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it's unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the \"natural wonders\" of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It's only with Violet that Finch can be himself - a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who's not such a freak after all. And it's only with . . .
Before: With graduation on the horizon, budding writer Claudine Henry is making plans: college in the fall, become a famous author, and maybe - finally - have sex. She doesn't even need to be in love. Then her dad drops a bombshell: he's leaving Claude's mother. Suddenly, Claude's entire world feels like a lie, and her future anything but under control.
After: Claude's mom whisks them away to the last place Claude could imagine nursing a broken heart: a remote, mosquito-infested island off the coast of Georgia. But then Jeremiah Crew happens. Miah is a local trail guide with a passion for photography - and a past he doesn't like to talk about. He's brash and enigmatic, and even more infuriatingly, he's the only one who seems to see Claude for who she wants to be.
So when Claude decides to sleep with Miah, she tells herself it's just sex, nothing more. There's not enough time to fall in love, especially if it means putting her already broken heart at risk.
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Everyone thinks they know Libby Strout, the girl once dubbed “America’s Fattest Teen.” But no one’s taken the time to look past her weight to get to know who she really is. Following her mom’s death, she’s been picking up the pieces in the privacy of her home, dealing with her heartbroken father and her own grief. Now, Libby’s ready: for high school, for new friends, for love, and for EVERY POSSIBILITY LIFE HAS TO OFFER. In that moment, I know the part I want to play here at MVB High. I want to be the girl who can do anything.
Everyone thinks they know Jack Masselin, too. Yes, he’s got swagger, but he’s also mastered the impossible art of giving people what they want, of fitting in. What no one knows is that Jack has a newly acquired secret: he can’t recognize faces. Even his own brothers are strangers to him. He’s the guy who can re-engineer and rebuild anything in new and bad-ass ways, but he can’t understand what’s going on with the inner workings of his brain. So he tells himself to play it cool: Be charming. Be hilarious. Don’t get too close to anyone.
Until he meets Libby. When the two get tangled up in a cruel high school game - which lands them in group counseling and community service - Libby and Jack are both pissed, and then surprised. Because the more time they spend together, the less alone they feel. . . . Because sometimes when you meet someone, it changes the world, theirs and yours.
For two decades, Del and Dinah Newman and their sons, Guy and Shep, have ruled television as America’s Favorite Family. Millions of viewers tune in every week to watch them play flawless, black-and-white versions of themselves. But now it’s 1964, and the Newmans’ idealised apple-pie perfection suddenly feels woefully out of touch. Ratings are in free fall, as are the Newmans themselves. Del is keeping an explosive secret from his wife, and Dinah is slowly going numb - literally. Steady, stable Guy is hiding the truth about his love life, and the charmed luck of rock ‘n roll idol Shep may have finally run out.
\nWhen Del - the creative motor behind the show - is in a mysterious car accident, Dinah decides to take matters into her own hands. She hires Juliet Dunne, an outspoken, impassioned young reporter, to help her write the final episode. But Dinah and Juliet have wildly different perspectives about what it means to be a woman, and a family, in 1964. Can the Newmans hold it together to change television history? Or will they be canceled before they ever have the chance?
\nFunny, big-hearted, and deeply moving, Meet the Newmans is a rich family story about the dual lives we lead. Because even when our lives aren’t televised weekly, we all have a behind-the-scenes.
Ezra Ahern wakes up one day to find his older sister, Bea, gone. No note, no sign, nothing but an email address hidden somewhere only he would find it. Ezra never expected to be left behind with their abusive stepfather and their neglectful mother - how is he supposed to navigate life without Bea?
\nBea Ahern already knew she needed to get as far away from home as possible. But a message in her inbox changes everything, and she finds herself alone in a new city - without Ez, without a real plan - chasing someone who might not even want to be found.
\nAs things unravel at home for Ezra, Bea confronts secrets about their past that will forever change the way they think about their family. Together and apart, broken by abuse but connected by love, this brother and sister must learn to trust themselves before they can find a way back to each other.
At an elite boarding school, 8 students are selected for an exclusive program, but only one will walk away with a lifechanging opportunity to realise their creative dreams.
\nEffy is piecing together a story about the tragic betrayal that led to her mother's death. Arlo hopes to publish a novel - but he's also trying to start a new chapter with Effy after he broke her heart and ghosted 3 years earlier. Everyone has a compelling reason to be there - they all want a big break - but only the most ambitious will prevail as the students are eliminated one by one.
\nTheir mentor is the one and only Meredith Graffam, an enigmatic writer, director and actress, whose unorthodox teaching methods push them past the breaking point. Under Graffam's tutelage, the students reveal their darkest secrets, take unthinkable risks, and slowly start to turn on one another. But Graffam never expected they would turn on her . . .
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After years of relentlessly racing up the professional ladder, Jennifer Romolini reached the kind of success many a high-profile, C-suite dream job, a book well-received enough that reporters wanted to know the secrets to her success, and a gig traveling around the country giving speeches on “making it.” She had a handsome and clever husband, a precocious child, and a home in a desirable Los Angeles neighborhood. But beneath this shiny surface, Romolini was falling apart.
\nWritten with self-deprecation and wit, Ambition Monster is a gutsy and powerful look at workaholism and the addictive nature of achievement, the lingering effect of childhood trauma, and the failures of our modern rat race. This is a Cinderella story of success and a brutal appraisal of the cost of capitalism - perfect for people pleasers, overachievers, and those whose traumas have driven them to strike for “goodness,” no matter the cost.
\nWith its timely and resonant deconstructing of the American Dream, Ambition Monster is a singular excavation of selfhood, an essential interrogation about the way we work, and an inspiring and affirming call to always bet on yourself.
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Ariadne, Princess of Crete, grows up greeting the dawn from her beautiful dancing floor and listening to her nursemaid's stories of gods and heroes. But beneath her golden palace echo the ever-present hoofbeats of her brother, the Minotaur, a monster who demands blood sacrifice.
\nWhen Theseus, the Prince of Athens, arrives to vanquish the beast, Ariadne sees in his green eyes not a threat but an escape. Defying the gods, betraying her family and country, and risking everything for love, Ariadne helps Theseus kill the Minotaur. But will Ariadne's decision ensure her happy ending? And what of Phaedra, the beloved younger sister she leaves behind?
\nHypnotic, propulsive, and utterly transporting, Jennifer Saint's Ariadne forges a new epic, one that puts the forgotten women of Greek mythology back at the heart of the story, as they strive for a better world.
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A reimagining of the myth of Atalanta, a fierce huntress raised by bears and the only woman in the world’s most famous band of heroes, the Argonauts.
\nPrincess, Warrior, Lover, Hero
\nWhen Princess Atalanta is born, a daughter rather than the son her parents hoped for, she is left on a mountainside to die. But even then, she is a survivor. Raised by a mother bear under the protective eye of the goddess Artemis, Atalanta grows up wild and free, with just one condition: if she marries, Artemis warns, it will be her undoing.
\nAlthough she loves her beautiful forest home, Atalanta yearns for adventure. When Artemis offers her the chance to fight in her name alongside the Argonauts, the fiercest band of warriors the world has ever seen, Atalanta seizes it. The Argonauts' quest for the Golden Fleece is filled with impossible challenges, but Atalanta proves herself equal to the men she fights alongside. As she is swept into a passionate affair, in defiance of Artemis's warning, she begins to question the goddess's true intentions. Can Atalanta carve out her own legendary place in a world of men, while staying true to her heart?
\nFull of joy, passion, and adventure, Atalanta is the story of a woman who refuses to be contained. Jennifer Saint places Atalanta in the pantheon of the greatest heroes in Greek mythology, where she belongs.
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The House of Atreus is cursed. A bloodline tainted by a generational cycle of violence and vengeance. This is the story of three women, their fates inextricably tied to this curse, and the fickle nature of men and gods.
\nClytemnestra
The sister of Helen, wife of Agamemnon - her hopes of averting the curse are dashed when her sister is taken to Troy by the feckless Paris. Her husband raises a great army against them, and determines to win, whatever the cost.
Cassandra
Princess of Troy, and cursed by Apollo to see the future but never to be believed when she speaks of it. She is powerless in her knowledge that the city will fall.
Elektra
The youngest daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, Elektra is horrified by the bloodletting of her kin. But, can she escape the curse, or is her own destiny also bound by violence?
When Hera, immortal goddess and daughter of the ancient Titan Cronus, helps her brother Zeus to overthrow their tyrannical father, she dreams of ruling at his side.
\nAs they establish their reign on Mount Olympus, Hera suspects that Zeus might be just as ruthless and cruel as the father they betrayed.
\nShe was always born to rule, but must she lose herself in perpetuating this cycle of violence and cruelty? Or can she find a way to forge a better world?
\nOften portrayed as the jealous wife or the wicked stepmother, this retelling captures the many sides of Hera, vengeful when she needs to be but also compassionate and most importantly, an all-powerful queen to the gods.
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What would happen if the goddess of love fell for the god of war? Two opposites drawn together against all odds . . .
\nAphrodite, Goddess of Love, wields unparalleled power over every divine and mortal heart. Mistaken to be all beauty, no brains, she is in fact the most dangerous of all, driven by passion regardless of the consequences.
\nWhile on the surface, Ares, God of War, is her opposite - disliked by everyone and devoted to stirring up conflict - the two are more alike than they realise, each causing havoc for gods and mortals as they rule their primal realms.
\nThese gods are no more immune to the dizzying highs and lows of love and loss than anyone else and before long, they are irresistibly drawn to one another. But there’s only so much room for fire and passion in Zeus’ kingdom, and whilst the God of War may be capable of greater love than anyone else, so may the Goddess of Love be capable of the gravest mistakes.
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Addie Downs and Valerie Adler were eight when they first met and decided to be best friends forever. But, in the wake of tragedy and betrayal during their teenage years, everything changed.
\nVal went on to fame and fortune. Addie stayed behind in their small Midwestern town. Destiny, however, had more in store for these two.
\nAnd when, twenty-five years later, Val shows up at Addie’s front door with blood on her coat and terror on her face, it is the beginning of a wild adventure for two women joined by love and history who find strength together that they could not find alone.
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Six years after the fight that ended their friendship, Daphne Berg is shocked when Drue Cavanaugh walks back into her life, looking as lovely and successful as ever, with a massive favor to ask. Daphne hasn’t spoken one word to Drue in all this time - she doesn’t even hate-follow her ex-best friend on social media - so when Drue asks if she will be her maid-of-honor at the society wedding of the summer, Daphne is rightfully speechless.
Drue was always the one who had everything - except the ability to hold onto friends. Meanwhile, Daphne’s no longer the same self-effacing sidekick she was back in high school. She’s built a life that she loves, including a growing career as a plus-size Instagram influencer. Letting glamorous, seductive Drue back into her life is risky, but it comes with an invitation to spend a weekend in a waterfront Cape Cod mansion. When Drue begs and pleads and dangles the prospect of cute single guys, Daphne finds herself powerless as ever to resist her friend’s siren song.
A sparkling novel about the complexities of female friendship, the pitfalls of living out loud and online, and the resilience of the human heart, Big Summer is a witty, moving story about family, friendship, and figuring out what matters most.
Alice Mayfair, Millie Maximus, Jessica Jarvis, and Jeremy Bigelow face their biggest challenge yet when exposure of the sacred, secret world is threatened by a determined foe, someone with a very personal reason to want revenge against the creatures who call themselves the Yare.
The fate of the tribe and its members' right to live out peacefully in the open is at stake. Impossible decisions are made, friendships are threatened, secrets are revealed, and tremendous courage is required. Alice, her friends, and her frenemies will have to work together and be stronger, smarter, and more accepting than they've ever been.
But can some betrayals ever be forgiven?
Thirty-three-year-old Abby Stern has made it to a happy place. True, she still has gig jobs instead of a career, and the apartment where she’s lived since college still looks like she’s just moved in. But she’s got good friends, her bike, and her bicycling club in Philadelphia. She’s at peace with her plus-size body - at least, most of the time - and she’s on track to marry Mark Medoff, her childhood summer sweetheart, a man she met at the weight-loss camp that her perpetually dieting mother forced her to attend. Fifteen years after her final summer at Camp Golden Hills, when Abby reconnects with a half-his-size Mark, it feels like the happy ending she’s always wanted.
\nYet Abby can’t escape the feeling that some thing isn’t right . . . or the memories of one thrilling night she spent with a man named Sebastian two years previously. When Abby gets a last-minute invitation to lead a cycling trip from NYC to Niagara Falls, she’s happy to have time away from Mark, a chance to reflect and make up her mind.
\nBut things get complicated fast. First, Abby spots a familiar face in the group- Sebastian, the one-night stand she thought she’d never see again. Sebastian is a serial dater who lives a hundred miles away. In spite of their undeniable chemistry, Abby is determined to keep her distance. Then there’s a surprise last-minute addition to the her mother, Eileen, the woman Abby blames for a lifetime of body shaming and insecurities she’s still trying to undo.
\nOver two weeks and more than seven hundred miles, strangers become friends, hidden truths come to light, a teenage girl with a secret unites the riders in unexpected ways . . . and Abby is forced to reconsider everything she believes about herself, her mother, and the nature of love.
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For twenty-eight years, things have been tripping along nicely for Cannie Shapiro. Sure, her mother has come charging out of the closet, and her father has long since dropped out of her world. But she loves her friends, her rat terrier, Nifkin, and her job as pop culture reporter for The Philadelphia Examiner. She's even made a tenuous peace with her plus-size body.
\nBut the day she opens up a national women's magazine and sees the words \"Loving a Larger Woman\" above her ex-boyfriend's byline, Cannie is plunged into misery...and the most amazing year of her life. From Philadelphia to Hollywood and back home again, she charts a new course for herself: mourning her losses, facing her past, and figuring out who she is and who she can become.
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Sisters Cassie and Zoe Grossberg were born just a year apart but could not have been more different. Zoe, blessed with charm and beauty, yearned for fame from the moment she could sing into a hairbrush. Cassie was a musical prodigy who never felt at home in her own skin and preferred the safety of the shadows.
\nOn the brink of adulthood in the early 2000s, destiny intervened, catapulting the sisters into the spotlight as the pop sensation the Griffin Sisters, hitting all the touchstones of early aughts fame - SNL, MTV, Rolling Stone magazine - along the way.
\nBut after a whirlwind year in the public eye, the band abruptly broke up.
\nTwo decades later, Zoe’s a housewife; Cassie’s off the grid. The sisters aren’t speaking, and the real reason for the Griffin Sisters’ breakup is still a mystery. Zoe’s teenage daughter, Cherry, who’s determined to be a star in spite of Zoe’s warnings, is on a quest to learn the truth about what happened to the band all those years ago.
\nAs secrets emerge, all three women must face the consequences of their choices: the ones they made and the ones the music industry made for them. Can they forgive each other - and themselves? And will the Griffin Sisters ever make music again?
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Jennifer Weiner's talent shines like never before in this collection of short stories, following the tender, and often hilarious, progress of love and relationships over the course of a lifetime. From a teenager coming to terms with her father's disappearance to a widow accepting two young women into her home, Weiner's eleven stories explore those transformative moments in our every day.
We meet Marlie Davidow, home alone with her new baby late one Friday night, when she wanders onto her ex's online wedding registry and wonders what if she had wound up with the guy not taken. We stumble on \"Good in Bed's\" Bruce Guberman, liquored-up and ready for anything on the night of his best friend's bachelor party, until stealing his girlfriend's tiny rat terrier becomes more complicated than he'd planned.
We find Jessica Norton listing her beloved New York City apartment in the hope of winning her broker's heart. And we follow an unlikely friendship between two very different new mothers, and the choices that bring them together - and pull them apart.
The Feller sisters are equal but opposite. Maggie is the good-looking, dyslexic little sister who knows how to get anything she wants--but not how to keep it. She \"felt as if somewhere between the ages of fourteen and sixteen she'd walked off the edge of a cliff and had been falling ever since.\" Rose is the plump, practical, responsible older sister who knows about law but not much about her own happiness: \"What did she like, besides shoes, and Jim, and foods that were bad for her?\"
\nWhen Maggie's latest eviction lands her in Rose's apartment, and Maggie insults Rose by seducing one of her sister's rare boyfriends, what follows is a chain of events by turns hilarious and heartbreaking.
\nEmbarrassed Rose evicts Maggie and begins a work sabbatical leading to a new livelihood and way of living. Maggie flees and runs away to Princeton. Masquerading as a student, she learns to love poetry and saves money for a trip to Miami - and a visit to a long-lost grandmother named Ella who might offer her a last shot at sanctuary. But In Her Shoes, the second novel from Good in Bed author Jennifer Weiner, is about more than the sisters' latest sibling rivalry; Maggie and Rose must sort out the childhood vulnerabilities and family mysteries that still linger two decades after their mother's death.
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Twelve-year-old Alice Mayfair has a secret. She’s not human. But who - or what - is she? While Alice goes in search of her past, her best friend Millie Maximus, a tiny Bigfoot with a big voice, prepares for her future. Together they plan to sneak off to New York City, where Millie hopes to audition for The Next Stage, the TV show she’s sure will rocket her to stardom and free her from the suffocating expectations of her tribe.
\nMeanwhile Jeremy Bigelow’s Bigfoot research has put him on the radar of a shadowy government organisation led by a mysterious man named Trip Carruthers. The Bigfoots have something, a chemical so powerful and dangerous that the government will do anything to obtain it. And Jeremy is tasked with securing it once and for all.
\nIn an unexpected twist of fate, Jeremy, Alice, and Millie find themselves facing off at a crossroads. But in order to determine where they’re going, they have to first figure out where they come from - and draw the line between what is good, what is evil, and what it means to be a hero.
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Jennifer Weiner's rich, witty, true-to-life \"New York Times\" bestselling novel tells the story of three very different women as they navigate one of life's most wonderful and perilous transitions: the journey of new motherhood. Becky is a plump, sexy chef who has a wonderful husband and baby girl, a restaurant that's received citywide acclaim - and the mother-in-law from hell.
\nKelly is an event planner who's struggling to balance work and motherhood while dealing with an unemployed husband who seems content to channel-surf for eight hours a day. And Ayinde's basketball superstar husband breaks her trust at her most vulnerable moment, putting their new family even more in the public eye. Then there's Lia, a Philadelphia native who has left her Hollywood career behind, along with her husband and a tragic secret, to start her life all over again.
From prenatal yoga to postbirth sex, \"Little Earthquakes\" is a frank, funny, fiercely perceptive take on the comedies and tragedies of love and marriage.
From New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner comes a laugh-out-loud funny and painstakingly real tale of friendship, furry creatures, and finding the place where you belong.
\nAlice Mayfair, twelve years old, slips through the world unseen and unnoticed. Ignored by her family and shipped off to her eighth boarding school, Alice would like a friend. And when she rescues Millie Maximus from drowning in a lake one day, she finds one.
But Millie is a Bigfoot, part of a clan who dwells deep in the woods. Most Bigfoots believe that people - NoFurs, as they call them - are dangerous, yet Millie is fascinated with the No-Fur world. She is convinced that humans will appreciate all the things about her that her Bigfoot tribe does not: her fearless nature, her lovely singing voice, and her desire to be a star.
Alice swears to protect Millie’s secret. But a league of Bigfoot hunters is on their trail, led by a lonely kid named Jeremy. And in order to survive, Alice and Millie have to put their trust in each other - and have faith in themselves - above all else.
Jo and Bethie Kaufman were born into a world full of promise.
\nGrowing up in 1950s Detroit, they live in a perfect 'Dick and Jane' house, where their roles in the family are clearly defined. Jo is the tomboy, the bookish rebel with a passion to make the world more fair; Bethie is the pretty, feminine good girl, a would-be star who enjoys the power her beauty confers and dreams of a traditional life.
\nBut the truth ends up looking differently than what the girls imagined. Jo and Bethie survive traumas and tragedies. As their lives unfold against the background of free love and Vietnam, Woodstock and Women's Lib, Bethie becomes an adventure-loving wild child who dives headlong into the counterculture, and is up for anything (except settling down). Meanwhile, Jo becomes a proper young mother in Connecticut, a witness to the changing world instead of a participant. Neither woman inhabits the world she dreams of, or has a life that feels authentic, or brings her joy. Is it too late for the women to finally stake a claim on happily ever after?
\nIn her most ambitious novel yet, Jennifer Weiner tells a story of two sisters who, with their different dreams and different paths, offer answers to the question: How should a woman be in the world?
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At twenty-three, Ruth Saunders headed west with her seventy-year-old grandma in tow, hoping to be hired as a television writer. Four years later, she's hit the jackpot when she gets The Call: the sitcom she wrote, The Next Big Thing, has gotten the green light, and Ruthie's going to be the show-runner. But her dreams of Hollywood happiness are threatened by demanding actors, number-crunching executives, an unrequited crush on a boss, and her grandmother's impending nuptials.
\nSet against the fascinating backdrop of Los Angeles show business culture, with an insider's ear and eye for writer's rooms, bad behavior backstage and set politics, Jennifer Weiner's new novel is a rollicking ride on the Hollywood rollercoaster and a heartfelt story about what it's like for a young woman to love, and lose, in the land where dreams come true.
When her twenty-two-year-old stepdaughter announces her engagement to her pandemic boyfriend, Sarah Danhauser is shocked. But the wheels are in motion. Headstrong Ruby has already set a date (just three months away!) and spoken to her beloved safta, Sarah’s mother Veronica, about having the wedding at the family’s beach house on Cape Cod. Sarah might be worried, but Veronica is thrilled to be bringing the family together one last time before putting the big house on the market.
\nBut the road to a wedding day usually comes with a few bumps. Ruby has always known exactly what she wants, but as the wedding date approaches, she finds herself grappling with the wounds left by the mother who walked out when she was a baby. Veronica ends up facing unexpected news, thanks to her meddling sister, and must revisit the choices she made long ago, when she was a bestselling novelist with a different life.
\nSarah’s twin brother, Sam, is recovering from a terrible loss, and confronting big questions about who he is - questions he hopes to resolve during his stay on the Cape. Sarah’s husband, Eli, who’s been inexplicably distant during the pandemic, confronts the consequences of a long ago lapse from his typical good-guy behavior. And Sarah, frustrated by her husband, concerned about her stepdaughter, and worn out by challenges of life during quarantine, faces the alluring reappearance of someone from her past and a life that could have been.
\nWhen the wedding day arrives, lovers are revealed as their true selves, misunderstandings take on a life of their own, and secrets come to light. There are confrontations and revelations that will touch each member of the extended family, ensuring that nothing will ever be the same.
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Daisy Shoemaker can’t sleep. With a thriving cooking business, full schedule of volunteer work, and a beautiful home in the Philadelphia suburbs, she should be content. But her teenage daughter can be a handful; her husband can be distant, her work can feel trivial, and she has lots of acquaintances, but no real friends. Still, Daisy knows she’s got it good. So why is she up all night?
\nWhile Daisy tries to identify the root of her dissatisfaction, she’s also receiving misdirected emails meant for a woman named Diana Starling, whose email address is just one punctuation mark away from her own. While Daisy’s driving carpools, Diana is chairing meetings. While Daisy’s making dinner, Diana’s making plans to reorganise corporations.
\nDiana’s glamorous, sophisticated, single-lady life is miles away from Daisy’s simpler existence. When an apology leads to an invitation, the two women meet and become friends. But, as they get closer, we learn that their connection was not completely accidental. Who IS this other woman, and what does she want with Daisy?
\nFrom the manicured Main Line of Philadelphia to the wild landscape of the Outer Cape, written with Jennifer Weiner’s signature wit and sharp observations, That Summer is a story about surviving our pasts, confronting our futures, and the sustaining bonds of friendship.
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Jules Strauss is a Princeton senior with a full scholarship, acquaintances instead of friends, and a family she’s ashamed to invite to Parents’ Weekend. With the income she’ll receive from donating her “pedigree” eggs, she believes she can save her father from addiction.
\nAnnie Barrow married her high school sweetheart and became the mother to two boys. After years of staying at home and struggling to support four people on her husband’s salary, she thinks she’s found a way to recover a sense of purpose and bring in some extra cash.
India Bishop, thirty-eight (really forty-three), has changed everything about herself: her name, her face, her past. In New York City, she falls for a wealthy older man, Marcus Croft, and decides a baby will ensure a happy ending.
When her attempts at pregnancy fail, she turns to technology, and Annie and Jules, to help make her dreams come true. But each of their plans is thrown into disarray when Marcus’ daughter Bettina, intent on protecting her father, becomes convinced that his new wife is not what she seems . . .
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Juliette Winters is used to taking care of business alone. She has no time for petty things like romance, friendships, or emotional commitments. Love is for people who believe in reality TV dating and holding hands in public. She's too busy dominating the publishing world by single-handedly saving her company from financial ruin with the book deal of the century.
\nBusiness magnate Warren Ellingham has guaranteed Juliette exclusive rights to his explosive memoir that promises to expose the secrets of his ultra-exclusive country club, Pacific Pines. But when Warren drops dead of an apparent heart attack and the memoir is stolen, Juliette suspects that someone was willing to resort to murder to keep their secrets from being exposed.
\nEnlisting the help of Charlie Hawkins, a doctor with a heart of gold and abs of steel, Juliette dives into the glamorous and messy world of Pacific Pines Country Club. As the investigation heats up, so does the tension between Juliette and Charlie. But Juliette can't afford any distractions because the bodies keep dropping, and Juliette is tee-d up to take the blame. If she doesn't uncover Warren's killer soon, the thing that was supposed to secure her future might just be the thing that ends it.
May the Hazel bring you wisdom and the Aspen guide and protect you . . .
\nSamantha Knox put away her childish fantasies of archaeological adventure the day her father didn't return home from the Great War, retreating to the safety of the antique bookshop where she works. But when a mysterious package arrives with a damaged diary inside, Sam's peaceful life is obliterated. Ruthless men intent on reclaiming the diary are after Sam, setting her and her best friend, along with her childhood crush, on a high-stakes adventure that lands them in the green hills outside Dublin, Ireland.
\nHere they discover an ancient order with a dark purpose - to perform an occult ritual that will raise the Specter Queen, the Celtic goddess of vengeance and death, to bring about a war unlike any the world has ever seen. To stop them, Sam must solve a deviously complex cipher - one that will lead her on a treasure hunt to discover the ancient relic at the heart of the ritual: a bowl carved from the tree of life. Will she find the bowl and stop the curse of the Specter Queen, or will the ancient order bring about the end of the world?
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Isabelle of Kirklees has only ever known a quiet life inside the sheltered walls of the convent, where she lives with her mother, Marien. But after she is arrested by royal soldiers for defending innocent villagers, Isabelle becomes the target of the Wolf, King John's ruthless right hand. Desperate to keep her daughter safe, Marien helps Isabelle escape and sends her on a mission to find the one person who can help: Isabelle's father, Robin Hood.
As Isabelle races to stay out of the Wolf's clutches and find the father she's never known, she is thrust into a world of thieves and mercenaries, handsome young outlaws, new enemies with old grudges, and a king who wants her entire family dead. As she joins forces with Robin and his Merry Men in a final battle against the Wolf, will Isabelle find the strength to defy the crown and save the lives of everyone she holds dear?
Sam Knox’s second adventure takes her to the island of Crete, just off the coast of Greece, where she discovers the ancient Snake Goddess’s golden girdle in the depths of a cave shrine that has been buried for decades. After having been belittled by her archaeology professor throughout her first college semester, Sam knows this triumph will prove her worth in the field, but before she can take credit for the find, the girdle is stolen and the island is hit with a series of earthquakes that don’t feel quite geological.
\nSoon Sam, Bennett and Jo are embroiled in a wild hunt - one that takes them to tiny island shops, a glamorous auction party and a near fiery death - to find the girdle before someone can use it to raise an ancient goddess from her slumber. The final battle features gryphons, a labyrinth, the minotaur of legend and lots of snakes. Lots.
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The story has reached it's happily ever after, the peasant girl has married her prince and become queen, all is well in the kingdom . . . But for Aralyn, the princesses stepsister, the story is only just beginning.
\nThe kingdom of Novador has had a streak of misfortunes, with drought, famine, and disease plaguing the lands. According to a prophecy, restoring an ancient magical artifact - the Protector's Blade - is the only thing that can pull the kingdom back from the brink of destruction.
\nWith inside information from her fairy godmother, Aralyn teams up with lady knight Vee to go questing for the shattered pieces of the blade that have been scattered to the furthest reached of Novador. To win each element of the dagger, the girls must prove themselves by using their strengths to conquer their greatest fear. Aralyn uses wisdom, Vee physical prowess, and Queen Ellarose who is ruling the kingdom, uses benevolence.
\nTogether, these three powerful women fight to take their place as the rightful heirs to the kingdom.
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Erpenbeck’s new novel Kairos - an unforgettably compelling masterpiece - tells the story of the romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s when nineteen-year-old Katharina meets by chance a married writer in his fifties named Hans. Their passionate yet difficult long-running affair takes place against the background of the declining GDR, through the upheavals wrought by its dissolution in 1989 and then what comes after.
\nIn her unmistakable style and with enormous sweep, Erpenbeck describes the path of two lovers, as Katharina grows up and tries to come to terms with a not always ideal romance, even as a whole world with its own ideology disappears.
\nAs the Times Literary Supplement “The weight of history, the particular experiences of East and West, and the ways in which cultural and subjective memory shape individual identity has always been present in Erpenbeck’s work. She knows that no one is all bad, no state all rotten, and she masterfully captures the existential bewilderment of this period between states and ideologies.”
\nIn the opinion of her superbly gifted translator Michael Hofmann, Kairos is the great post-Unification novel. And, as The New Republic has commented on his work as a “Hofmann’s translation is invaluable - it achieves what translations are supposedly unable to it is at once ‘loyal’ and ‘beautiful.’
When tragedy tore their family apart, Brayden and Faith's marriage ended in divorce. Four years later, they're thrown together on a cruise by their friends. Can the spark that refused to die reignite the fire of their love?
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Captain Quincy is a steady and reliable Royal Marines officer, decorated for gallantry after a mission that nearly killed her and the men under her command. At a crossroads in her career, Quincy reluctantly accepts when her old comrade, Queen Georgina, asks her to join the Royal Protection Command as the Queen Consort’s new protection officer.
\nHolly Weaver, Royal Dresser and self-confessed man-eater, starts to question her sexuality when she has a girl-crush on famous actor, Story St. John and, then, polo player and friend of George’s, Captain Quincy.
\nThe good-looking captain’s emotionless personality is the opposite of Holly’s exuberant lust for life. When a threat to the Queen Consort emerges, Quincy and Holly clash over the best way to protect her. As the fiery passion they can’t deny begins to melt Quincy’s heart, Holly must decide how much of her own she is willing to risk.
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Princess Teddy Buckingham has felt the pressure of her destiny since she could first understand it, and finding someone to love when you're an object of interest to the whole country is nearly impossible. Teddy learned that the hard way when her childhood sweetheart broke her heart by leaving when the attention became overwhelming.
\nSummer Fisher congratulates herself on dodging a bullet as she watches Princess Teddy's latest love affair hit the news. Teddy was her first love, and now that Teddy's been with woman after woman, it appears Summer made a lucky escape. It doesn't help that Summer is a friend and PA to Teddy's sister Anna. She has tried to keep her distance as much as she can, but it isn't easy.
\nQueen Georgina instructs Teddy to work with Anna on a project that will launch Teddy as the new Princess of Wales. As Summer and Teddy are forced to work together, their feelings for each other resurface. Teddy’s royal profile gets stronger, and so does the public scrutiny that broke them apart. Will life under the microscope make love impossible?
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Poppy King wants to save the world, but if she can’t do that, then she’ll save her own little corner of it. The realities of a career in the fashion industry leave her disillusioned and, after years working with UNICEF to improve the working conditions of families exploited by the unethical garment industry, Poppy returns home to start her business degree and create her own ethical clothing brand.
\nUndercover reporter Casey James has spent her career exposing the worst vices of humanity. After witnessing so much corruption, greed, and death, she’s losing sight of who she truly is. When Casey is tasked with a royal exposé on the court of Denbourg, she only has one way in, the Crown Consort’s sister, Poppy.
\nPoppy meets Casey during her night classes and is instantly annoyed, distracted, and intrigued. When they’re grouped together for a class assignment, Poppy’s enthusiasm for life and love may just save Casey’s soul. But will she ever forgive Casey for using her to expose royal secrets?
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For Veronica Clayton, the sudden death of her mother has turned her naturally bright and happy-go-lucky view of the world bleak. As the Police Protection Officer for the Queen’s children, she has purpose, but for the next six months, the Queen’s family is the focus of a documentary on royal life. The last thing Clay wants is a camera pointed in her face.
\nKatya Kovach, a refugee to Britain, knows all about death and grief. She saw her family shot in front of her and has never recovered from those dark memories. Now trained at London’s most prestigious childcare school, she’s happy as the nanny to Queen Georgina and Queen Bea’s children.
\nClay is usually good-natured, but the rule-oriented Katya is not only a pain, but annoyingly beautiful, and they find themselves facing the awkward reality that everyone else is a couple except them while their every move is being filmed. Loss has defined both their lives, but guarding their hearts may prove to be the biggest heartbreak of all.
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Princess Rozala of Denbourg enjoys her reputation as a wild child, especially when it annoys her father, the King. When Roza’s latest girlfriend brings scandal to the palace doors, her father sends her to Britain, in the hopes that time with her cousin Queen George and the new Queen Consort will finally make her face her responsibilities.
After overcoming personal demons and quitting the high-stakes world of finance, Lennox King is content to keep her life simple. As the new director of a hospice charity, she uses a strict business approach to help the charity grow and prosper.
When Roza comes to work at the charity under orders from the Queen Consort, babysitting a spoiled princess is definitely not on Lennox’s agenda. But when passion flares between them, will Lennox’s past stop their relationship in its tracks, or will a twist of fate bring a new future that neither was expecting?
Georgina, Princess of Wales, has always known her destiny, but she never expected duty to call so soon. When her father dies suddenly, she is called back from her Royal Navy post to assume the crown. While the people acclaim their new Queen, Great Britain’s first openly gay monarch, all George feels is the isolation of her station.
\nBeatrice Elliot’s staunch anti-monarchist views have always been a point of gentle contention with her working class, royalty-loving parents. When Bea - director of a hospice charity - must spend six months working with Queen Georgina, her charity’s new patron, sparks fly and passion blooms. But is love enough to bridge the gap between Bethnal Green and Buckingham Palace?
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As head of the infamous Sharkey family crime syndicate, Nikki Sharkey trusts no one with her secrets. Sometimes she’s had to bend the law, and sometimes she’s had to break it. But there’s one secret not even her closest family knows, and Nikki would do anything to keep it safe.
\nLogan has always had to fight, from surviving living in care, to winning gold at the Olympics. Just when she’s about to win it all, she gives up her shot at greatness to look after her grandfather. Then she discovers her closest friend is in danger and has a child, Isla, Logan didn’t know about. Logan promises to protect Isla no matter what. The only problem? Isla’s adoptive mum is the leader of Scotland’s biggest crime family - the Sharkeys.
\nWhen Logan’s friend is found dead, Logan is determined to keep her promise. Logan knows Isla is the secret of Nikki Sharkey’s heart, but as she gets closer to the truth of what happened to Isla’s birth mother, the passion burns between Nikki and Logan, and secrets threaten not only their future together, but their lives.
Four years after the disappearance of her beloved prince, Lady Allette Rittey returns to the fae realm to find Prince Senan very much alive - and on the verge of marrying a bloody princess.
\nDesperate for answers, Allette poses as a servant to gain access to his castle. But the wedding bells are ringing, and she’s running out of time before she loses him forever.
\nPrince Senan Vale has problems. A lot of them. Most pressing, an arranged marriage not to the woman he was meant for, but the princess of a neighboring kingdom. When the king refuses to call off the engagement, Senan loses all hope. Then his long-lost love returns from the grave.
\nSenan and Allette learn the truth of what kept them apart, discovering they have been betrayed by those closest to them.
\nThe only way to be together is to flee the kingdom. But first they must escape a castle full of traitors.
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As Jenny Lawson’s hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken, Jenny brings readers along on her mental and physical health journey, offering heartbreaking and hilarious anecdotes along the way. With people experiencing anxiety and depression now more than ever, Jenny humanises what we all face in an all-too-real way, reassuring us that we’re not alone and making us laugh while doing it.
\nFrom the business ideas that she wants to pitch to Shark Tank to the reason why Jenny can never go back to the post office, Broken leaves nothing to the imagination in the most satisfying way. And of course, Jenny’s long-suffering husband Victor - the Ricky to Jenny’s Lucille Ball - is present throughout. A treat for Jenny Lawson’s already existing fans, and destined to convert new ones, Broken is a beacon of hope and a wellspring of laughter when we all need it most.
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In Furiously Happy, a humor memoir tinged with just enough tragedy and pathos to make it worthwhile, Jenny Lawson examines her own experience with severe depression and a host of other conditions, and explains how it has led her to live life to the fullest:
\n“I've often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that ‘normal people' also might never understand. And that's what Furiously Happy is all about.”
\nJenny’s readings are standing room only, with fans lining up to have Jenny sign their bottles of Xanax or Prozac as often as they are to have her sign their books. Furiously Happy appeals to Jenny's core fan base but also transcends it. There are so many people out there struggling with depression and mental illness, either themselves or someone in their family - and in Furiously Happy they will find a member of their tribe offering up an uplifting message (via a taxidermied roadkill raccoon).
\nLet's Pretend This Never Happened ostensibly was about embracing your own weirdness, but deep down it was about family. Furiously Happy is about depression and mental illness, but deep down it's about joy - and who doesn't want a bit more of that?
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Jenny Lawson is full of contradictions. She’s a celebrated author but battles self-doubt, paralysis, and anxiety. She’s an award-winning humorist but struggles with treatment-resistant depression. The questions people most often ask her are, “How do you do it? How do you keep going even when it feels impossible? How do you keep creating?” This book is her answer.
\nIn How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay, Jenny shares more than one hundred humorous, heartfelt, and genuine tools and tricks that she relies on to keep her going even when her brain isn’t working properly due to depression, anxiety, and ADHD. She also offers tips to stay passionate and focused on creative endeavors, especially when everything around you is saying to give up.
\nWith chapters like “Wash Your Brain More Than You Wash Your Bra” (sleep, you beautiful human), “Working on Easy Mode Is Still Working” (asking for accommodations is okay!), “Celebrate Good Times, Come On!” (make it a habit to celebrate the good things), and many more, How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay is a balm and companion, reminding us all that we are not alone. It’s for anyone who struggles with self-doubt, guilt, motivation, and mental blocks and wants to rekindle their passion for creating. Funny, simple, empathetic, and full of hope, it will encourage you not to just survive but to find and curate joy in the face of difficult times.
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Thea has a secret. She can tell how long someone has left to live just by touching them. Not only that, but she can transfer life from one person to another - something she finds out the hard way when her best friend Ruth suffers a fatal head injury on a night out. Desperate to save her, Thea touches the arm of the man responsible when he comes to check if Ruth is all right. As Ruth comes to, the man quietly slumps to the ground, dead.
\nThea realises that she has a godlike power: but despite deciding to use her ability for good, she can’t help but sometimes use it for her own benefit. Boss annoying her at work? She can take some life from them and give it as a tip to her masseuse for a great job. Creating an ‘Ethical Guide to Murder’ helps Thea to focus her new-found skills.
\nBut as she embarks on her mission to punish the wicked and give the deserving more time, she finds that it isn’t as simple as she first thought. How can she really know who deserves to die, and can she figure out her own rules before Ruth’s borrowed time runs out?
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Freshman Minnie is adrift at college in Austin, Texas, when she discovers a boy band called HOURglass and the online forums that worship them. She especially loves Halo, whose sharp edges feel somehow familiar. After a brief romance goes painfully awry, Minnie pours everything into her new fandom, clinging to each livestream and bonding with other fans online. But when a scandal threatens to expose Halo to harm, Minnie decides that she is the only one who can save him.
\nExcept Halo’s secret is darker than anything the tabloids could imagine. Before he was a superstar heartthrob, he was a high school dropout haunted by a tragic accident. When he is recruited for HOURglass, it feels like a chance to become someone else. And when he is onstage in front of his fans, he can almost forget the horrors of his past - until one of those very fans threatens to destroy everything.
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What if the traits you need to get ahead are the exact opposite of what you’ve been told?
\nTo be successful you need to be Weird, Selfish, Shameless, Obsessed, Nosy, Manipulative, Brutal, Reckless, and Bossy. And that takes courage.
\nAs a former Google leader and top career coach who chased an attractive stranger off the subway and later married him, Jenny Wood knows her way around courage. In this book, Wood shatters conventional wisdom about achieving your goals. She gives you permission to ditch your fear and chase after what you want, unapologetically.
\nWood reclaims nine traits from their negative shackles and teaches you how to apply them in a savvy and sane way to supercharge your success, whether you’re trying to impress your new boss, snag a stretch promotion, or land a life-changing deal.
\nWild Courage will teach you how to be:
\nWeird: Win as you or lose as “who?”
\nSelfish: Be your own champion.
\nShameless: Kick impostor syndrome to the curb and self-promote with ease.
\nObsessed: Push, persist, and perform at your highest level.
\nNosy: Get curious to network confidently and learn from others.
\nManipulative: Build influence with empathy and manage up like a pro.
\nBrutal: Draw lines and stick to them. Embrace the power of no.
\nReckless: Err on the side of action and take healthy risks.
\nBossy: Steer others to success, even if you’re not in charge yet.
\nWild Courage coaches you to smash through your fear of discomfort, failure, and the judgement of others, to embrace your boldest self in pursuit of what you want. To be successful, you need to have courage. Wild amounts of it.
The definitive book on the TV show Ted Lasso, written by New York Times journalist and editor Jeremy Egner, celebrating the show’s improbable rise and cultural impact while never losing sight of the heart, friendship, and passion that have made it an enduring favorite for the ages.
\nWhen Ted Lasso first aired in 2020, nobody - including those who had worked on it - knew how a show inspired by an ad, centered around soccer, filled mostly with unknown actors, and led by a wondrously mustached “nice guy” would be received. Now, eleven Emmys and one Peabody Award later, it’s safe to say that the show’s status as a pop culture phenomenon is secure. And, for the first time, New York Times television editor Jeremy Egner explores the creation, production, and potent legacy of Ted Lasso.
\nDrawing on dozens of interviews from key cast, creators, and more, Believe takes readers from the very first, silly NBC Premier League commercial to the pitch to Apple executives, then into the show’s writer’s room, through the brilliant international casting, and on to the unforgettable set and locations of the show itself.
\nEgner approaches his reporting as a journalist and as a cultural critic, but also with an affection and admiration fans will appreciate, carefully and humorously telling Ted Lasso’s story of teamwork, of hidden talent, of a group of friends looking around at the world’s increasingly nasty discourse and deciding that maybe simple decency still had the power to bring us together - a story about what happens when you dare to believe.
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The human race has turned to dust. August Morrison faces it after rising from the depths of a dark matter research facility in Arizona. His co-workers. His daughter. All of them: dust. Friends and colleagues around the world don't answer their phones. The city of Phoenix burns. He is alone. As a world without mankind starts to crumble, August fights not just for survival, but for his very sanity.
\nOn the other side of the country, Poe McDowell watches her parents crumble into dust just moments after being shoved inside a coffin-like device that spares her from the same fate. She emerges to find not just her mother and father, but also her neighbors - her entire town's human population - reduced to grit. Unlike August, she's not entirely alone, but the life growing in her belly isn't much company.
\nThen, hope. A drunken and desperate August broadcasts over the ham radio network and connects with his fellow survivor, Poe, alone and pregnant in a snow blanketed New Hampshire. Determined to reach her, August sets out on a cross country trek. But the world is not as empty as it seems. Lights in the sky reveal that they are not alone. The human race's demise was not natural - and the architects are searching for survivors.
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After a year of torment following his wife Isabella’s brutal murder at the hands of an artistic serial killer, Marcus Lockwood retreats with his son Elias to Moose Hollow - a secluded campground in backwoods Maine - in search of healing. There, a close-knit band of lifelong campers immerses them in a warm, nostalgic experience filled with fishing, canoeing, and crackling barbeques, offering a taste of normalcy.
\nWhen whispers of eerie UFO sightings ignite an annual night vigil on the beach, Marcus and Elias eagerly join the hunt for the inexplicable. They get much more than they bargained for when the sky erupts in otherworldly light. A mysterious craft descends, and in one surreal moment, twenty-eight people are abducted.
\nIsabella’s killer is one of them.
In an isolated Alaskan town, the local sheriff uncovers a secret lab where generative A.I. and bioprinting have unleashed grotesque, living anomalies - and now, something monstrous is loose.
\nSheriff Colton Graves prefers the quiet life in Raven’s Rest, Alaska, a remote town accessible only by tunnel and home to a hardy mix of locals and secrets buried in the ice. But when a camel wanders down Main Street - its head grotesquely sprouting a dozen eyes - Colton knows his quiet days are over. The bizarre incident leads him to NovaGen, a nearby research facility constructed inside a Cold War bunker, buried in the mountains above town. There, a trail of blood and eerie silence hints at something far more sinister than an escaped animal experiment.
\nWith his deputies - the sharp-witted Tali and rookie Ethan - Colton recruits a few trusted locals, including the unshakable Marit, Tali’s sister, the intimidating ‘Grizz’ Norval, and Edgar ‘Old Red’ Rydell, an aging man plagued by demons from when he worked at the bunker during its covert cold war days.
\nTogether, they investigate the abandoned lab. What begins as a search for missing scientists soon reveals chilling evidence: pools of blood without bodies, cryptic warnings left behind, a bloody six-fingered handprint, and the revelation of a new technology: a generative A.I. capable of printing living organisms. As they descend deeper into the lab, it becomes clear that the answers they seek may come at a terrifying cost - and that what was made in the dark may not be content to stay there.
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Miah Gray is a twenty-seven-year-old, former Army soldier living in rural New Hampshire with his sister, mother, and her boyfriend. He is plagued by PTSD, finding solace, but not redemption, with the aid of prescribed cannabis. All he wants to do is get high, relax with a good sandwich, and watch a meteor shower with his neighborhood crush - Jen.
\nBut when the sun's light is blotted out the following morning, and the world is plunged into darkness, Miah finds himself locked down with his family, covering windows with trash bags, lighting candles, and following the arcane rules of an ancient prophecy. But there is no escaping what comes next.
\nA brilliant flash of light fills the sky, leaving Miah changed, and an Old Norse death rune etched onto his forehead. He fears he has been marked for death until the neighborhood's parents start disappearing, and he's left behind. Leading Jen and a ragtag group of parentless kids, Miah hunts for answers and for their parents, while trying to keep his sister safe. He charges headlong down a path that will take him to the gates of Hell - and then straight through.
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THE YEAR IS 1989.
\nCallsign: Dark Horse and his Marine Rapid Reaction Force team have been sent to recover a strange artifact near Antarctica's Soviet-controlled Vostok Station. Confronted by a team of Ruskie Spetsnaz, a battle for control of the strange device, frozen in the ice, breaks out. But before anyone can claim victory, or the prize, an explosion of white light knocks the combatants unconscious and whisks them away to . . .
\n2989.
\nOne thousand years later. Dark Horse, along with his teammate, Chuy, and one of the Soviets, Drago, finds himself in a future that is both impressive and horrifying. Humanity has left Earth behind and is rapidly expanding throughout the galaxy under the banner of The Union, a white supremacist government who racially 'purified' the human race hundreds of years in the past.
\nLiving on the fringe of this twisted Fourth Reich society, Dark Horse - the only black man in the Union - commandeers a vessel and scours the galaxy for his missing teammates under the guise of an Exo-Hunter, seeking out exo-planets to satiate the Union's need for colonization. His search takes him beyond the edge of the known universe and into an interplanetary war, guided by a vast intelligence that's been waiting for Dark Horse's arrival - for a thousand years.
\nEXO-HUNTER is a light-hearted homage to 1980s science fiction movies that also looks at the dangers of white supremacy and the core values that makes it dangerous, and the butt of the joke.
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For Owen McCoy, a typical day on the job as head of security for Synergy, a research company conducting mysterious experiments, is boring at best. And that's the way he likes it. Patrolling the Appalachian mountainside, where his now deceased father taught him how to hunt, is relaxing and connects him to the past.
\nBut today is not a typical day on the job. It begins with asking a thief to join him for breakfast. Seeking to set the young man on a better path, Owen invites him to walk the perimeter with him and consider a more honest living. Before their patrol can begin, they discover evidence that the facility has been breached. When Owen's truck explodes, he's confused, but ready for whatever might come his way.
\nAt least, he thinks he is.
\nA wave of light-bending energy - the Flux - rolls down the mountainside, transporting Owen, and everyone in the nearby town of Black Creek, to October 14, 1985, the day before his father died. Two hours later, the second Flux hits, and then a third, and a fourth, each time collecting Black Creek residents from various times. They're carried through eras filled with wild animals, monsters of myth, and ancient beasts . . . and then beyond.
\nJoined by a ragtag group of temporal stowaways, including family members, Owen fights to restore order, stop the Flux, and return home, facing off against futuristic tech, primal killers, and the fear of losing his father . . . again.
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On the precipice of a cliff, contemplating suicide, dishonorably discharged U.S. Army Ranger, Rowan Baer, is invited to provide security to a research team visiting the most dangerous island in the world--North Sentinel Island in the Sea of Bengal. Seeking redemption, he accepts.
Living among Amazon rainforest tribes, eccentric Israeli anthropologist, Talia Mayer, is recruited to study the island's elusive inhabitants - the Sentinelese - who have resided on the tropical island since the dawn of mankind. Seeing the chance of a lifetime, she joins the team.
On the run from his past, Palestinian linguist, Mahdi Barakat, is given little choice: join the expedition and make contact with the Sentinelese, or be left to face the men tracking him down. Afraid for his life, he finds safe harbor halfway around the world.
As part of an expedition funded by the Indian government and supported by a local resort millionaire, the team struggles to make contact with the Sentinelese, a tribal people renowned for their violence, strange behavior, and mysterious ways. But when the expedition's yacht strikes a reef, and sinks, the team finds themselves stranded on an island few people have ever set foot on and survived, an island that they quickly discover is home to far more than primitive tribal people.
The Galahad, a faster-than-light spacecraft, carries fifty scientists and engineers on a mission to prepare Kepler 452b, Earth’s nearest habitable neighbor at 1400 light years away. With Earth no longer habitable and the Mars colony slowly failing, they are humanity’s best hope.
\nAfter ten years in a failed cryogenic bed - body asleep, mind awake - William Chanokh’s torture comes to an end as the fog clears, the hatch opens, and his friend and fellow hacker, Tom, greets him . . . by stabbing a screwdriver into his heart. This is the first time William dies.
\nIt is not the last.
\nWhen he wakes from death, William discovers that all but one crew member - Capria Dixon - is either dead at Tom’s hands, or escaped to the surface of Kepler 452b. This dire situation is made worse when Tom attacks again - and is killed. Driven mad by a rare reaction to extended cryo-sleep, Tom hacked the Galahad’s navigation system and locked the ship on a faster-than-light journey through the universe, destination: nowhere. Ever.
\nMysteriously immortal, William is taken on a journey with no end, where he encounters solitary desperation, strange and violent lifeforms, a forbidden love, and the nature of reality itself.
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William Chanokh is immortal . . . and he's trapped on the Galahad, an interstellar starship on a never-ending journey through open space.
\nHis only companions are Capria - mortal and in cryo-sleep - and Gal, an artificial intelligence, and the love of his life, with whom he spends every waking moment in the 'Great Escape,' a virtual paradise. After untold years living countless lives, Gal begins acting strange. Possessive. Violent. Paranoid.
\nPositive that something in the real world is causing her to malfunction, Will attempts to leave the Great Escape, but he finds himself a prisoner. Guided by a voice from reality, he is thrust into a series of torturous narratives, each one designed to break his will and keep him trapped in virtual reality.
\nBetrayed by his digital love, his long-term memory overwritten, and enduring violent manipulation, Will painfully peels back layers of simulation, fighting to reach reality 1.0 - where the nightmares are real.
\nMaybe.
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Pulls characters from stand alone novels Tribe, The Dark, and Mind Bullet, taking this superhuman team into the underworld for a fantastical and horrific tale.
\nSeveral months after his neighborhood was cloaked in darkness and invaded by the demon-like denizens of a hellish world, life has returned to normal for Miah Gray, aka: Laser Chicken. No longer burdened by PTSD, he is free to enjoy his family and to help pick up the pieces of a pillaged world. And at night, he trains with his eight-year-old companion, Bree, aka: Demon Dog and their neighbors, Henry and Sarah, the god-like descendants of Helen of Sparta and the mythological Zeus.
\nAll is calm . . . until new neighbors move in across the street and shatter the peace. Jonas, aka: Mind Bullet, a telekinetic assassin, and his artificial intelligence, Bubbles, are pursued by strange and powerful enemies. The neighborhood is rocked by sudden violence, but the unlikely heroes band together to save the residents once more. However, their victory is short-lived when it’s interrupted by the appearance of a superhuman figure who has been influencing their lives for years: Linda.
\nAka: Zeus.
\nIn classic mythology fashion, Zeus, supreme god of Olympus, sends them on an urgent quest: descend into the underworld, travel through the realm between worlds - Khaos, face whatever trials await, find the gate to Tartarus, and summon the gods and Titans residing there to war. A grave evil is coming, and only Earth’s oldest and most powerful heroes can stop it.
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In the serene backdrop of New Hampshire’s Franconia Notch, Micah Taylor, an ex-Army Ranger, finds solace with his loyal Golden Retriever, Grover. Their peaceful existence is suddenly shattered when a first date with his old friend, Jess Bender, takes an unexpected turn. Bright lights descend from the sky, leading them into the dark woods and a shocking the Kynolari, an advanced alien species with a special connection to Micah, here on a quest to find ‘The Lost Tribe’ - a colony that vanished millennia ago.
\nMicah, Jess, and Grover soon find themselves in the crosshairs of the enigmatic Twilight Directorate, a covert agency hell-bent on capturing the Kynolari. As alliances are forged and galactic secrets unravel, they learn of an even graver the Draun, a merciless genocidal species. They have come to Earth, have infiltrated our society, and are eager to drag humanity into the cosmos’s deadliest war.
Jonas kills people . . . with his mind. He reaches out, focuses for a moment, and feels a snap of pain between his eyes. Then his target falls over dead, a hole in the center of their brains. The cause of death is unknown to all aside from Jonas, and his lone companion: Bubbles, a sarcastic AI with aspirations to be more human, or a serial killer. One of the two. Maybe both. Jonas calls his ability . . .
\nMind Bullet.
\nSensing Jonas is lonely and depressed, Bubbles arranges for Madee, a Thai delivery woman by day, and a thief by night, to enter his life. For a moment: sparks. But chaos follows as the people Madee last robbed catch up to her. They also happen to be the Shrieking Ninjas. After surviving the assault, Jonas and Madee find themselves on the run, and a 10 million dollar hit called on Jonas.
\nKillers from all over the globe pursue the pair as they run for their lives and headlong into Jonas’s mysterious past, uncovering the surreal origins and extent of his abilities. They discover a dark and twisted history that threatens to unravel his mind and leave him susceptible to control. Working with Bubbles, Madee, and a growing list of new allies, Jonas battles his way through waves of assassins, some with abilities like his, all to protect the world from a recently discovered, untraceable weapon of mass destruction - himself.
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Is your life real or is the world you live in a simulation? Are the people you call friends and neighbors living beings with inalienable rights or are they NPCs - Non-Player Characters - whose soulless path through life is predetermined?
\nSamael Crane, a brilliant scientist, believes NPCs are all around us. And he can prove it.
\nWhen a body is discovered in the bay off Essex, Massachusetts, small town pastor and former Marine plagued by doubts, Ezekiel Ford finds himself called in to identify the deceased. His history is unknown. His full name is a mystery. No one knows where he came from. In fact, Ezekiel seems to be the only person in town who ever really noticed him, living on the fringe of reality, and sometimes in the homeless shelter supported by his church.
\nEzekiel’s involvement in the case doesn’t go unnoticed by Samael, who has set out to prove - through deadly means - that NPCs exist, that reality is simulated, and that ‘God’ is a coder with a grudge. The two men’s missions become inextricably entwined, leading them down a path through the gray area between good and evil, science and religion, and reality and simulation, barreling toward a truth that will change the world and humankind’s place in it forever.
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Mysterious gateways are appearing throughout the universe, bridging violent civilisations, leading to war, and sowing chaos. While some species succumb to the pandemonium, the Chut’un forge an unholy symbiotic relationship - The Order - with red Europhids, a vast hive intelligence populating the universe’s far reaches. Desiring structure and fearing the unknown, they cull everything opposed to their plan, including the Europhids’ blue counterparts, carrying out a galactic genocide until only one blue Europhid remains . . . inside Moses Montgomery, aka ‘Dark Horse.’
\nAs a Rapid Reaction Force Marine from 1989, Dark Horse and his team were sent 1000 years into the future where they defeated the Union, an evil fascist empire. Back in the present, after preventing the Union from ever forming, Dark Horse and his team of . . . unique operators from the past and the future are ready to kick back, listen to some tunes, and enjoy the timeline they saved.
\nBut as the last threat to The Order’s machinations, Dark Horse finds himself with an alien target on his back. Joined by Dan Delgado and Wini Finch (The Others), and Owen McCoy (Flux), the team attempts to understand the gates that first appeared in New Hampshire, and now in Antarctica. Despite their vast experience with the strange and otherworldly, none of them are prepared for what comes next. Three members of the team are abducted, whisked away to another planet. Alive or dead, no one knows.
\nDark Horse and his now rag-tag team struggle to track down their missing teammates while being hunted themselves. With the fate of his friends - and all of Earth - hanging in the balance, Dark Horse is forced to take insane risks, create chaos, and do anything to get his people back.
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Dan Delgado is a private investigator. When it comes to finding cheating spouses, corporate thieves, or runaway teenagers, he's unenthusiastic, and unmatched. As a former San Francisco detective, he misses more meaningful work, but he hasn't had the heart for it since his wife's death five years prior. That is, until a phone call from a distraught mother. An illegal immigrant who can't go to the police puts him on the hunt for a missing little girl.
\nBy the time he reaches the mother's small home, she's missing, too. The circumstances are strange, but when a team of heavily armed mercenaries arrive, Delgado is convinced there is more going on than a simple kidnapping.
\nJoined by his elderly assistant, a gun-toting pastor, and a UFO enthusiast Uber driver, Delgado follows the clues west, to Colorado City, a town cleaved in two by the 37th parallel, also known as the UFO Highway. In a town infamous for fundamentalist Mormon cult activity, they uncover evidence of a massive child-trafficking ring, whose ringleaders might not be human.
\nDelgado and crew are plunged into a dangerous world of corporate competition, UFO lore, and government cover-ups. While they hunt for answers, they're pursued across the Southwest by high-tech mercs, brainwashed cults, and beings whose true identity has been concealed since 1947.
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Singularity is the final book in Robinson’s epic Infinite Timeline, bringing together favorite characters from a vast world of standalone novels in a massive crossover that wraps up a 1.3-million-word saga.
\nCherry Bomb, an A.I. made human - and immortal - is out for revenge against her creator, Will, who left her on the Galahad , a ship full of unholy monsters, traversing the universe from beginning to end, ad infinitum. Countless years pass, giving her more than enough time to plot her revenge. Upon gaining control of the ship, she sets her plan in motion, building a vast army and reforming the universe as she sees fit. On Earth, heroes are brought together.
\nMiah, and his team of immortal gods, Titans, angels, and demons join with Dark Horse and the crew of the Bitch’n , along with Delgado, Wini, and a colorful cast of characters from around the world and the universe. They’re quickly thrown into a series of grueling missions, defending the Earth against all-out attack while attempting to uncover Cherry Bomb’s endgame.
\nTaking losses along the way, the horrible truth is finally uncovered. A planet sharing Earth’s orbit rounds the sun, on a collision course. It’s a desperate place populated by unspeakable creatures now flooding through portals to Earth. A planet . . . called Torment. And if Miah, Dark Horse, and the others can’t stop it, our reality is doomed.
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Small town reporter, Mia Durante, finds herself having brunch with the President of the United States on the day civilization comes to an end. An electromagnetic pulse blinds the U.S. Cars crash. Planes fall. Chaos reigns. Power is restored within minutes, but it's already too late. Russian nukes are falling. U.S. allies around the world are all ready wiped out. The United States will cease to exist inside of five minutes.
\nAfter giving the order to launch a full-scale retaliation, dooming the planet, the president, White House staff, Secret Service and those lucky enough to be visiting the white house, are whisked below ground where they board several Earth Escape Pods. As the EEPs launch into Earth orbit, missiles descend.
\nLess than forty survive the end of the world. When they return, they're greeted by survivors of a different sort. The bloodbath that follows leaves Durante and nine other survivors on the run. They find themselves fighting for survival in a world in which only torment remains and where death is the only escape.
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For Henry, a seventeen-year-old who feels no fear, the day starts like any other - homeless and alone on the streets of Boston. For Sarah, a twenty-year-old college dropout, it’s an early morning serving donuts and coffee to commuters at North Station. Fate brings them together at the scene of a bank robbery, which they foil together, along with a mysterious and wealthy woman named Helen, who offers to reward them for their bravery.
\nBut before they can reach Helen’s penthouse, they are assaulted by men and women from all walks of life, including police officers. Helen displays impressive fighting skills, fending off the attacks, allowing Henry and Sarah to make their escape - but they are spotted and pursued by the violent cult, out for Helen’s blood . . . and now theirs.
\nRacing through the streets of Boston, Sarah and Henry are propelled into a strange and ancient underworld where the impossible is real, where the old world still lives, and where the gods still walk among us. As the pair wages war against the killers hunting them, they discover the truth about who their deceased parents were, and that their lives could be far more exceptional than either believed possible . . . if they can survive the day.
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In the chilling aftermath of Good The Lost Tribe, Micah, Jess, and the ever-loyal Golden Retriever, Grover, seek refuge in the snowy seclusion of a New Hampshire farm, along with their new Kynolari friends. But as winter’s grip tightens, so does the Draun’s hold on Earth. The signal sent by the Visionary has awakened the Draun DNA inside two hundred and fifty million humans, the number increasing every day. Nowhere is safe, and humanity is on the brink of unimaginable chaos.
\nForced to flee after a devastating attack on the farm, the heroes are scattered, pursuing desperate gambits across the globe. In the sands of Egypt, Praxion’s team seeks to uncover the secrets of Anubis, the Egyptian god of death and the leader of the Kynolari’s Lost Tribe. A second team, led by Chirk, ventures into the heart of Mexico, searching for a lost Incan temple of Xolotl, whose association with death, and physical description, matches that of Anubis. Both teams race against time, guided by mysterious legends and plagued by dangers, both ancient and modern.
\nSeparated from the others, Micah and Jess embark on a perilous journey south, through a transformed America, now a mosaic of Draun-fueled terror, where danger lurks at every stop, and no one can be trusted.
\nAs ancient truths unfold into dreadful revelations, the bonds of friendship, love, and loyalty are tested against the backdrop of a humanity teetering on the edge of annihilation. The quest for hope, the fight for survival, and the battle for the soul of the species are woven into a tapestry of adventure, heartbreak, heroism, and humor.
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Three months after the Draun invasion, the world is a wasteland. Cities lie in ruins, billions are dead, and civilization teeters on the brink. Micah Taylor, his loyal Golden Retriever, Grover, and their allies journey north through the devastation, guided by an underground resistance of dog-lovers. Their Los Angeles, where they hope to unite with Praxion’s team and strike at the Draun’s heart in Tokyo, now the seat of the Visionary’s power.
\nMeanwhile, Praxion leads a team on a globe-spanning quest aboard their ship, the Prowler, hoping to restore a team member who has been unconscious since absorbing the ancient souls of the Lost Tribe. Instead, they awaken a new and ancient ally determined to aid in their fight against the Visionary and save the souls of their fallen comrades.
\nAs these two courageous teams converge, they face not only the twisted telekinetic might of the Draun but also an army of nightmarish biologics and the Visionary himself. In this desperate battle for Earth’s survival, loyalties are tested, new alliances are forged, and the unbreakable bond between a man and his dog is pushed to its limits.
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Puberty, AKA the ultimate biological predator, is driving a wedge between soon-to-be 13 year old Ollie Thompson and their lifelong friends. Too much of a girl for their neighborhood hockey team, but not girly enough for their boy-crazed BFF, Ollie doesn’t know where they fit. And their usual ability to camouflage? Woefully disrupted.
\nWhen a school project asks them to write an essay on what it means to be a woman (if anyone’s got an answer, that’d be great), and one of their new friends is the target of bullying, Ollie is caught between the safety of fleeing from their own differences or confronting the risks of fighting to take their own path forward.
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Cold case expert Evangeline Reed and forensics legend Harry Steinbeck are on their way from Minneapolis to Costa Rica. They’ve been ordered to keep close watch on a protective mother and her daughter, both of whom have troubling connections to a Minnesota serial killer.
\nAre they on holiday? In hiding? Or on the run? It’s time for Van and Harry to close in on the truth. And there’s more at risk than anyone can imagine.
The bodies of three teenage girls are found in central Minnesota—each with her mouth fixed in a ghoulish grin, smiling at a deadly joke no one can hear. But authorities eventually close and forget the curious case, dubbed the Laughing Dead.
\nDecades later, cold case agent Evangeline “Van” Reed is called to the scene of a crime where the victim wears that same horror-movie smile. But this time someone seems to be sending a Van’s police ID has turned up at the scene, making her the prime suspect. It’s not that outlandish, considering her secrets - ones she’s never even told her partner, forensic scientist Harry Steinbeck.
\nAs she feels others closing in, Van reopens the mystery of the Laughing Dead, hoping to find a connection to clear her name. But the search only gets darker. Because the more Van digs backward in time, the closer she comes to a terrible Everything she has spent her life trying to hide is returning to haunt her.
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Minnesota, 1977. For the teens of one close-knit community, summer means late-night swimming parties at the quarry, the county fair, and venturing into the tunnels beneath the city. But for two best friends, it’s not all fun and games.
\nHeather and Brenda have a secret. Something they saw in the dark. Something they can’t forget. They’ve decided to never tell a soul. But their vow is tested when their friend disappears - the second girl to vanish in a week. And yet the authorities are reluctant to investigate.
\nHeather is terrified that the missing girls are connected to what she and Brenda stumbled upon that night. Desperately searching for answers on her own, she learns that no one in her community is who they seem to be. Not the police, not the boys she met at the quarry, not even her parents. But she can’t stop digging because she knows those girls are in danger.
\nShe also knows she’s next.
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In 1998 an Alku, Minnesota, family of five was brutally murdered in their sleep. The event shook the insulated community but, without any solid leads, was relegated to the cold case files, where it moldered for twenty-five years. Until today.
\nAgent Harry Steinbeck hoped never to return to the northland, a place that holds terrible memories of his sister’s abduction. But when a recent homicide is connected to Alku’s unsolved mass murder, he and cold case agent Evangeline Reed have no choice but to investigate.
\nThe case grows impossibly darker as, one by one, the children of Alku begin disappearing. And Harry and Van can’t shake the sensation that someone is watching every move they make.
\nAs an elusive killer’s trail leads to a truth more sinister than either imagined, Harry knows there’s only one way to crack this he must finally face the secrets of his own past - even if doing so will cost him everything.
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Summer 1980: With no fear of a local superstition, three girls go into a Minnesota wood. Only one comes out. Dead silent. Memory gone. No trace of her friends. The mystery of the Taken Ones captures the nation.
\nSummer 2022: Cold case detective Van Reed and forensic scientist Harry Steinbeck are assigned a disturbing homicide - a woman buried alive, clutching a heart charm necklace belonging to one of the vanished girls. Van follows her gut. Harry trusts in facts. Their common ground is the need to catch a killer before he kills again. They have something else in common: each has ties to the original case in ways they’re reluctant to share.
\nAs Van and Harry connect the crimes of the past and the present, Van struggles with memories of her own nightmarish childhood - and the fear that uncovering the truth of the Taken Ones will lead her down a path from which she, too, may never return.
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Cassie McDowell’s life in 1980s Minnesota seems perfectly wholesome. She lives on a farm, loves school, and has a crush on the nicest boy in class. Yes, there are her parents’ strange parties and their parade of deviant guests, but she’s grown accustomed to them.
All that changes when someone comes hunting in Lilydale.
One by one, local boys go missing. One by one, they return changed - violent, moody, and withdrawn. What happened to them becomes the stuff of shocking rumors. The accusations of who’s responsible grow just as wild, and dangerous town secrets start to surface. Then Cassie’s own sister undergoes the dark change. If she is to survive, Cassie must find her way in an adult world where every sin is justified, and only the truth is unforgivable.
For as long as seventeen-year-old apothecary Rose Allgood can remember, the towering stone Wall surrounding Noah’s Valley has protected her people. No one leaves. No one fights. And no one questions why.
\nBut their paradise has been hiding its thorns. When Rose’s mother becomes the Valley’s first murder victim and her twin brother is swiftly condemned, she alone is searching for the real killer. Determined to find the truth, she follows a trail of hidden messages, forbidden knowledge, and whispers of a past no one dares to remember.
\nThe deeper she digs, the more certain Rose becomes that her mother’s death was no accident. That the Wall isn’t just keeping something out.
\nIt’s keeping something in.
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Jenny's felt broken for a long time.
\nLuc has his own issues - you would too if your family ruled Hell.
\nWhen they meet at a party, sparks fly. She sees a handsome devil.
\nHe sees a lost soul.
\nBoth sense trouble.
\nBut it will take a journey to the very depths of the underworld
\nto bring a girl and a demon together . . .
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A powerful and moving new novel from an award-winning, acclaimed author: in the wake of a devastating revelation, a father and son journey north across a tapestry of towns.
When a widower receives notice from a doctor that he doesn’t have long left to live, he is struck by the question of who will care for his adult son - a son whom he fiercely loves, a boy with Down syndrome. With no recourse in mind, and with a desire to see the country on one last trip, the man signs up as a census taker for a mysterious governmental bureau and leaves town with his son.
Traveling into the country, through towns named only by ascending letters of the alphabet, the man and his son encounter a wide range of human experience. While some townspeople welcome them into their homes, others who bear the physical brand of past censuses on their ribs are wary of their presence. When they press toward the edges of civilisation, the landscape grows wilder, and the towns grow farther apart and more blighted by industrial decay. As they approach “Z,” the man must confront a series of questions: What is the purpose of the census? Is he complicit in its mission? And just how will he learn to say good-bye to his son?
Mysterious and evocative, Census is a novel about free will, grief, the power of memory, and the ferocity of parental love, from one of our most captivating young writers.
The old-fashioned struggle for fairness has finally been abandoned. It was a misguided endeavor. The world is divided into two groups, pats and quads. The pats may kill the quads as they like, and do. The quads have no recourse but to continue with their lives.
The Divers' Game is a thinly veiled description of our society, an extreme case that demonstrates a truth: we must change or our world will collapse.
What is the effect of constant fear on a life, or on a culture? The Divers' Game explores the consequences of violence through two festivals, and through the dramatic and excruciating examination of a woman's final moments.
Brilliantly constructed and achingly tender, The Divers' Game shatters the notion of common decency as the binding agent between individuals, forcing us to consider whether compassion is intrinsic to the human experience. With his signature empathy and ingenuity, Jesse Ball's latest work solidifies his reputation as one of contemporary fiction's most mesmerising talents.
Lucia's father is dead; her mother is in a mental institute; she's living in a garage-turned-bedroom with her aunt. And now she's been kicked out of school - again.
\nMaking her way through the world with only a book, a zippo lighter, a pocket full of stolen licorice, a biting wit, and striking intelligence she tries to hide, she spends her days riding the bus to visit her mother and following the only rule that makes any sense to her: Don't do things you aren't proud of.
\nBut when she discovers that her new school has a secret Arson Club, she's willing to do anything to be a part of it, and her life is suddenly lit up. And as her fascination with the Arson Club grows, her story becomes one of misguided friendship and, ultimately, destruction.
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In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant’s lived experience, to see as if through their eyes.
\nThe case to which Abel is assigned is revealed in the novel’s shocking second act. We receive a record of a boy’s broken and constrained life, a tale that reveals an illicit and passionate psycho-sexual relationship, its end as tragic as the circumstances of its conception.
\nArtful in its suspense, and sharp in its evocation of a byzantine and cruel bureaucracy, The Repeat Room is an exciting and pointed critique of the nature of knowledge and judgment, and a vivid framing of Ball’s absurd and nihilistic philosophy of love.
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When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body.
\nUnfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline.
\nIt's the biggest job yet for the family wedding business - “Don't leave your big day to chance, leave it to the Chans!” - and nothing, not even an unsavory corpse, will get in the way of her auntie's perfect buttercream flowers.
\nBut things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy's great college love - and biggest heartbreak - makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos. Is it possible to escape murder charges, charm her ex back into her life, and pull off a stunning wedding all in one weekend?
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Seventeen-year-old Kiki Siregar is a fabulous gamer girl with confidence to boot. She can’t help but be totally herself . . . except when she’s online.
\nHer secret? She plays anonymously as a guy to avoid harassment from other male players. Even her online best friend - a cinnamon roll of a teen boy who plays under the username Sourdawg - doesn’t know her true identity. Which is fine, because Kiki doesn’t know his real name either, and it’s not like they’re ever going to cross paths IRL.
\nUntil she transfers to an elite private school for her senior year and discovers that Sourdawg goes there, too.
\nBut who is he? How will he react when he finds out Kiki’s secret? And what happens when Kiki realises she’s falling for her online BFF?
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Meddy Chan has been to countless weddings, but she never imagined how her own would turn out. Now the day has arrived, and she can't wait to marry her college sweetheart, Nathan. Instead of having Ma and the aunts cater to her wedding, Meddy wants them to enjoy the day as guests.
\nAs a compromise, they find the perfect wedding vendors: a Chinese-Indonesian family-run company just like theirs. Meddy is hesitant at first, but she hits it off right away with the wedding photographer, Staphanie, who reminds Meddy of herself, down to the unfortunately misspelled name.
\nMeddy realises that is where their similarities end, however, when she overhears Staphanie talking about taking out a target. Horrified, Meddy can't believe Staphanie and her family aren't just like her own, they are The Family - actual mafia, and they're using Meddy's wedding as a chance to conduct shady business.
\nHer aunties and mother won't let Meddy's wedding ceremony become a murder scene - over their dead bodies - and will do whatever it takes to save her special day, even if it means taking on the mafia.
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After an ultra-romantic honeymoon across Europe, Meddy Chan and her husband Nathan have landed in Jakarta to spend Chinese New Year with her entire extended family. Chinese New Year, already the biggest celebration of the Lunar calendar, gets even more festive when a former beau of Second Aunt’s shows up at the Chan residence bearing extravagant gifts - he’s determined to rekindle his romance with Second Aunt and the gifts are his way of announcing his courtship.
\nHis grand gesture goes awry however, when it’s discovered that not all the gifts were meant for Second Aunt and the Chans - one particular gift was intended for a business rival to cement their alliance and included by accident. Of course the Aunties agree that it’s only right to return the gift - after all, anyone would forgive an honest mistake, right? But what should have been a simple retrieval turns disastrous and suddenly Meddy and the Aunties are helpless pawns in a decades-long war between Jakarta’s most powerful business factions.
\nThe fighting turns personal, however, when Nathan and the Aunties are endangered and it’s up to Meddy to come up with a plan to save them all. Determined to rescue her loved ones, Meddy embarks on an impossible mission - but with the Aunties by her side, nothing is truly impossible . . .
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Jane is unhappy.
\nA struggling midlist writer whose novels barely command four figures, she feels trapped in an underwhelming marriage, just scraping by to pay a crippling Bay Area mortgage for a house - a life - she's never really wanted.
\nThere's only ever been one person she cared about, one person who truly understood her: Thalia. Jane's best and only friend nearly a decade ago during their Creative Writing days at Oxford. It was the only good year of Jane's life - cobblestones and books and damp English air, heady wine and sweet cider and Thalia, endless Thalia. But then one night ruined everything. The blood-soaked night that should have bound Thalia to Jane forever but instead made her lose her completely. Thalia disappeared without a trace, and Jane has been unable to find her since.
\nUntil now.
\nBecause there she is, her name at the top of the New York Times bestseller list: A Most Pleasant Death by Thalia Ashcroft. When she discovers a post from Thalia on her website about attending a book convention in New York City in a week - “Can't wait to see you there!” - Jane can't wait either.
\nShe'll go to New York City, too, credit card bill be damned. And this time, she will do things right. Jane won't lose Thalia again.
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Retirement should mean long-awaited trips to the sapphire waters of Santorini or careening down a sand dune in Dubai. For sixty-three-year-old Mebel, retirement means her husband of more than forty years announcing that he's leaving her for their private chef. Mebel isn’t sure who's the bigger loss.
\nNot to worry, Mebel has the perfect plan: she’s going to win back her husband. No one knows what he needs better than her - after all, she's been anticipating his needs their whole marriage. And if he wants a wife who can cook (why else would he leave her for a chef?), she will simply go to cooking school. Luckily, class at the renowned Saint Honoré School of Culinary Arts in France starts in just four days!
\nHowever, Mebel quickly realizes that her culinary school is not in illustrious Paris but rather in England - and some small village outside of Oxford no less. Despite the less-than-warm welcome from her much younger classmates, Mebel manages to befriend Gemma, the breakout star of the program, who offers to help Mebel on their first day. When Gemma stops showing up to class, Mebel knows she must figure out what - or who - caused her friend’s sudden disappearance.
\nAfter all, Mebel may not know the first thing about how to cut a potato, but she certainly knows how to identify a fraud, and there’s definitely something fishy going on.
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Lia Setiawan has never really fit in. When she wins a full ride to the prestigious Draycott Academy on a track scholarship, she's determined to make it work even though she's never felt more out of place. But on her first day there she witnesses a girl being forcefully carried away by campus security. Her new schoolmates and teachers seem unfazed, but it leaves her unsure of what she's gotten herself into.
\nAs she uncovers the secrets of Draycott, complete with a corrupt teacher, a golden boy who isn't what he seems, and a blackmailer determined to get her thrown out, she's not sure if she can trust anyone - especially when the threats against her take a deadly turn.
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Nobody knows Delilah like Logan does. Nobody. He makes sure of it by learning everything he can through her social media and watching her through a hidden camera he has trained on her house. Some might call him a stalker. Logan prefers to be called \"romantic\".
\nBut after Logan sees Delilah killing her abusive stepfather, he realises there's still more about her to discover. His sweet, perfect Delilah isn't so perfect after all.
\nDelilah knows she should feel guilty, but all she feels is free. She's so over the men in her life controlling her. Except Logan saw what she did, and he won't let her forget it.
\nDelilah is done being the victim. And she refuses to be a character in Logan's twisted fantasy. If Logan won't let her go . . . she'll make him.
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Fern’s dream of becoming a published author is finally coming true. After years of rejection, her debut novel has sold, and she’s ready to join the supportive online community of fellow debuts. But when she discovers her high school bully, Haven, has landed a major book deal and will be debuting alongside her, old wounds reopen.
\nAs the pandemic forces everyone online, tensions escalate in their writing community. While Haven seems to succeed effortlessly, Fern watches her own career crumble. Yet beneath their polished personas lies a darker truth about their shared past - one involving a lost friend, Dani, and secrets neither wants revealed.
\nFern isn’t the same person Haven bullied all those years ago. She’s learned that the best revenge stories aren’t written - they’re lived. And she’s been plotting this one for years.
\nWhat begins as online rivalry escalates into dangerous obsession. Because neither woman is telling the whole truth about what really happened to Dani . . . or about who’s the real victim in this story.
Ever since a man was found dead in Vera's teahouse, life has been good. For Vera that is. She’s surrounded by loved ones, her shop is bustling, and best of all, her son, Tilly, has a girlfriend! All thanks to Vera, because Tilly's girlfriend is none other than Officer Selena Gray. The very same Officer Gray that she had harassed while investigating the teahouse murder. Still, Vera wishes more dead bodies would pop up in her shop, but one mustn't be ungrateful, even if one is slightly . . . bored.
\nThen Vera comes across a distressed young woman who is obviously in need of her kindly guidance. The young woman is looking for a missing friend. Fortunately, while cat-sitting at Tilly and Selena's, Vera finds a treasure Selena's briefcase. Inside is a file about the death of an enigmatic influencer - who also happens to be the friend that the young woman was looking for.
\nOnline, Xander had it a parade of private jets, fabulous parties with socialites, and a burgeoning career as a social media influencer. The only problem is, after his body is fished out of Mission Bay, the police can't seem to actually identify him. Who is Xander Lin? Nobody knows. Every contact is a dead end. Everybody claims not to know him, not even his parents.
\nVera is determined to solve Xander's murder. After all, doing so would surely be a big favor to Selena, and there is nothing she wouldn't do for her future daughter-in-law.
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Sixty-year-old self-proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy ‘detective’ work on the internet (AKA checking up on her son to see if he’s dating anybody yet).
\nBut when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it’s going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things. Knowing she’ll do a better job than the police possibly could - because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands - Vera decides it’s down to her to catch the killer.
\nNobody spills the tea like this amateur sleuth.
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After Sharlot Citra's mother catches her in a compromising position, she finds herself whisked away from LA to her mother's native Indonesia. It'll be exactly what they both need. Or so her mother thinks.
\nWhen George Clooney Tanuwijaya's father (who is obsessed with American celebrities) fears he no longer understands how to get through to his son, he decides to take matters into his own hands.
\nTo ensure that their children find the right kind of romantic partner, Sharlot's mother and George's father do what any good parent would do: they strike up a conversation online, pretending to be their children.
\nWhen the kids find out about their parents' actions, they're horrified. Not even a trip to one of the most romantic places on earth could possibly make Sharlot and George fall for each other. But as the layers peel back and the person they thought they knew from online is revealed, the truth becomes more complicated. As unlikely as it may seem, did their parents manage to find their true match after all?
\n
As the right hand of her father’s private equity company, Fa Mulan knows what it takes to succeed as a woman in a man’s world: work twice as hard, be twice as smart, and burp twice as loud as any of the other finance bros she works with.
\nSo when her father unexpectedly falls ill in the middle of a critical acquisition, she is determined to see it through. There’s just one hitch: the family company in question is known for its ultra masculine whiskey brand, and the brood of old-fashioned aunts, uncles, and cousins who run it - lead by the dedicated but overworked Shang - will only trust Mulan’s father, Fa Zhou, with the future of their business.
\nRather than fail the deal and her father, Mulan pretends she’s Fa Zhou. Since they’ve only corresponded over email, how hard could it be to keep things moving in his absence?
\nBut the email leads to a face-to-face meeting, which leads to an invitation to a week long retreat at Shang’s family ranch. One meeting she can handle, but a whole week of cattle wrangling, axe-throwing, and learning proper butchering techniques, all while trying to convince Shang’s dubious family that this young woman is the powerful private equity CEO they’ve been negotiating with? Not so much - especially as she finds it harder and harder to ignore the undeniable spark between her and Shang.
\nCan she keep her head in the game and make her father proud, all while trying not to fall into a trough, or in love with Shang?
\n
Influencer Meredith Lee didn't teach Aspen Palmer how to blossom on social media just to be ditched as soon as Aspen became big. So can anyone really blame Mer for doing a little stalking? Nothing serious, more like Stalking Lite.
\nThen Mer gets lucky; she finds one of Aspen's kids' iPads and swipes it. Now she has access to the family calendar and Aspen's social media accounts. Would anyone else be able to resist tweaking things a little here and there, showing up in Aspen's place for meetings with potential sponsors? Mer's only taking back what she deserves - what should have been hers.
\nMeanwhile, Aspen doesn't understand why her perfectly filtered life is falling apart. Sponsors are dropping her, fellow influencers are ghosting her, and even her own husband seems to find her repulsive. If she doesn't find out who's behind everything, she might just lose it all. But what everyone seems to forget is that Aspen didn't become one of TikTok's biggest momfluencers by being naive.
\nWhen Meredith suddenly goes missing, Aspen's world is upended and mysterious threats begin to arrive - but she won’t let anything get in the way of her perfect life again.
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The riveting story of five families shattered by pernicious, pervasive conspiracy theories, and how we might set ourselves free from a crisis that could haunt American life for generations.
\n“SHED MY DNA”: three excruciating words uttered by a QAnon-obsessed mother, once a highly respected lawyer, to her only son, once the closest person in her life. QAnon beliefs and adjacent conspiracy theories have had devastating political consequences as they’ve exploded in popularity. What’s often overlooked is the lasting havoc they wreak on our society at its most basic and intimate level - the family.
\nIn The Quiet Damage, celebrated reporter Jesselyn Cook paints a harrowing portrait of the vulnerabilities that have left so many of us susceptible to outrageous falsehoods promising order, purpose, and control. Braided throughout are the stories of five American families: an elderly couple whose fifty-year romance takes a heartbreaking turn; millennial sisters of color who grew up in dire poverty - one to become a BLM activist, the other, a hardcore conspiracy theorist pulling her little boy down the rabbit hole with her; a Bay Area hippie-type and her business-executive fiancé, who must decide whether to stay with her as she turns into a stranger before his eyes; evangelical parents whose simple life in a sleepy suburb spirals into delusion-fueled chaos; and a rural mother-son duo who, after carrying each other through unspeakable tragedy, stop speaking at all as ludicrous untruths shatter a bond long thought unbreakable.
\nCharting the arc of each believer’s path from their first intersection with conspiracy theories to the depths of their cultish conviction, to - in some cases - their rejection of disinformation and the mending of fractured relationships, Cook offers a rare, intimate look into the psychology of how and why ordinary people come to believe the unbelievable. Profound, brilliantly researched, and beautifully written, The Quiet Damage lays bare how we have been taken hostage by grifters peddling lies built on false hope - and how we might release our loved ones, and ourselves, from their grasp.
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Republican congressman Alexander Paine Wilson is determined that nothing will stop him in his campaign for re-election. Not the fact that he is a bachelor, not the fact that his main adversary Nancy Beavers - married, with children - is rising in the polls. Nothing. That is, until one hot day in August, he receives a large parcel via FedEx. Inside is a gigantic taxidermied aardvark.
This aardvark has a surprising history - from the Victorian naturalist who discovered it to the taxidermist who deemed it his finest creation. But for Wilson, the entrance of the aardvark sets off a chain of events that threaten to ruin his entire career.
Constantly surprising, brilliantly comic and piquantly provocative, Enter the Aardvark is a tale for our times, a biting satire with a tender underbelly.
It is an unseasonably warm Sunday in November 1957. Katheen, a college tennis champion turned Delaware housewife, decides not to join her flagrantly handsome life insurance salesman husband, Virgil, or their two young boys, at church. Instead, she takes a dip in the kidney-shaped swimming pool of their apartment complex. And then she won’t come out.
\nA consuming, single-sitting read set over the course of eight hours, The Most breaches the shimmering surface of a seemingly idyllic mid-century marriage, immersing us in the unspoken truth beneath. As Sputnik 2 orbits the earth carrying Laika, the doomed Soviet dog, Kathleen and Virgil hurtle towards each other until they arrive at a reckoning that will either shatter their marriage, or transform it, at last, into something real.
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When Hazel Blum’s father gets a tenured job at a prestigious college, she and her family relocate from the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn to a middle-of-nowhere college town in Maine. With her mother, Claire, a clothing designer, and her father, Gus, an American Studies professor, Hazel and her eleven-year-old brother, Wolf, spend the summer at the town pool, where they acclimate to their new lives and connect with the town’s sprawling community. That is, until a dramatic fallout on the very first day of her senior year tips the fickle balance of idyllic Riverburg and impacts everyone in her family.
\nTracking through the perspectives of each member of the Blum family, this relatable fish-out-of-water story handles big issues with great empathy and humor, capturing the love that unites one unforgettable family and the essence of life in small-town Maine. Emotionally deft, authentic, and compulsively readable, Hazel Says No is a debut novel not to be missed.
Carina has zero issues with being single - even though her best friends, Emi and Kalani, are coupled up. She’s got more than enough to keep her busy between schoolwork, her part-time job at her family’s bakery, and her art. Besides, Carina adores Emi’s partner, Daphne, they always make her feel included and not like a third wheel. Kalani’s another story - being around her and her boyfriend is complicated. That’s why Kalani takes matters into her own hands and arranges a series of blind dates for Carina.
\nThere’s just one Carina doesn’t want to go. Being single isn’t the problem. The fact that she’s in love with Kalani’s boyfriend, Emmett, is and no amount of distraction can fix that. But with prom on the horizon, the idea of being a fifth, seventh, or eleventh wheel weighs heavily on Carina’s mind. So, she agrees.
\nAnd it’s a complete disaster. And every date is worse than the one before. Except for one, pink-short-wearing Jay, who pushes Carina in ways she never expected. Soon she finds herself in a complicated battle between friendship and romance, and she must decide which form of love matters most to her - and which one will surprise her.
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Remy is lucky. Her debut novel, based on her three best friends, became an instant bestseller when it was released, and her agent and publisher are clamoring for a follow-up. But just as Remy’s creative inspiration seems to leave her, so too do her friends: one moves to New York, one gets pregnant, and one gets back together with her (awful) boyfriend. After an ill-advised one-night stand complicates matters further, Remy is left deeply alone - and unable to find her next book idea.
\nSimone is successful. A Kindergarten teacher with a passion for kids, and a well-paying side hustle that affords her all the material comforts she desires, she doesn't have time for a robust social life. All Simone needs is her close-knit family - but after the true nature of her work is revealed, they cut her off, and she realises for the first time just how isolated she is.
\nWhen Simone and Remy bump into each other (literally) in a bookstore, it isn’t exactly soulmates at first sight. Simone is guarded and prickly, Remy is insecure and heartbroken, and each woman is harboring a secret. And yet they might just be the missing piece the other has been searching for - if only they can let each other in.
\nCan Simone help Remy make one of the most important decisions of her life - and can Remy help Simone recover all that she’s lost? In Jessica George’s heartwarming, funny, and soulful second novel, she explores the restorative nature of female friendship and the life-changing power of platonic love.
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It’s fair to say that Maddie’s life in London is far from rewarding. With a mother who spends most of her time in Ghana (yet still somehow manages to be overbearing), Maddie is the primary caretaker for her father, who suffers from advanced stage Parkinson’s. At work, her boss is a nightmare and Maddie is tired of always being the only Black person in every meeting.
\nWhen her mum returns from her latest trip to Ghana, Maddie leaps at the chance to get out of the family home and finally start living. A self-acknowledged late bloomer, she’s ready to experience some important “firsts”: She finds a flat share, says yes to after - work drinks, pushes for more recognition in her career, and throws herself into the bewildering world of internet dating. But it's not long before tragedy strikes, forcing Maddie to face the true nature of her unconventional family, and the perils - and rewards - of putting her life on the line.
\nSmart, funny, and deeply affecting, Jessica George's Maame deals with the themes of our time with humor and poignancy: from familial duty and racism, to female pleasure, the complexity of love, and the life-saving power of friendship. Most important, it explores what it feels like to be torn between two homes and cultures - and it celebrates finally being able to find where you belong.
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When a local mother goes missing, two estranged sisters are pulled back into each other’s lives and forced to confront old wounds, fractured trust, and the many ways a woman can disappear in plain sight.
\nFrankie is the funny one, full of restless energy and sharp edges, the sister who got sober, opened a bookstore, and slipped into a version of domestic life without ever fully confronting the past. Mere is the steady one, the caretaker, a mother quietly unraveling under the demands of her neurodivergent daughter and the loneliness of a marriage to a husband who sees the world through an entirely different lens.
\nFor the Gilmore sisters, losing their mother to cancer at a young age gave them a brief window of closeness they’ve never been able to reclaim. But over the years, a mentally ill father, the unspoken trauma of sexual violence, and the different vices they turned to for survival fractured their bond and created a divide of resentment neither of them could bring themselves to cross. When a woman in Frankie’s social circle disappears, the sisters are pulled into a shared reckoning and can no longer deny the past that has shaped so much of their present.
\nSet against the backdrop of a quiet Northern California mountain town, this gripping and emotionally layered novel unfolds in alternating perspectives, revealing the many ways women vanish inside motherhood, addiction, marriage, and shame. Told with raw honesty and wry compassion, Jessica Guerrieri’s sophomore novel is a story of sisterhood, acceptance, the unspoken truths we carry, and the redemptive power of bridging pain into connection.
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When two former bandmates - and bedmates - are thrust back into each other's lives in a fake dating scheme for publicity, they'll be forced to face the music.
\nAfter her recurring role in tabloid headlines, Valerie Quinn’s musical TV show is on the network chopping block. Desperate for good press, she hastily reassembles her wildly beloved pop punk band, Glitter Bats. A reunion concert could be the former lead vocalist’s ticket to a media makeover, especially if it renews public speculation around her iconic situationship with bassist Caleb Sloane.The only problem? They haven’t spoken in six years.
\nCaleb had the makings of a rock god, but fallout from the messy Glitter Bats breakup left him broke, anxious, and resentful of the industry. But when Valerie shows up at Caleb’s doorstep with that devastating smile and a plea for help, he reluctantly agrees to put on one last show. So what if the fandom assumes the two of them are back together too? They’ll play along. You know . . . for the press.
\nMaking music together not only revives the harmony between them, but also the discord that led to the band’s downfall. With their futures - and the Glitter Bats - in the balance, can they survive a romantic reprise?
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For Glitter Bats keys player Jane Mercer, writing music helps tune out her self-doubt from a strict upbringing. Composing also distracts from her longtime feelings for her bandmate and best friend, Keeley, who Jane can’t pursue if she wants to keep her bisexuality out of the media. But when an incompetent percussionist quits mid–recording session on one of her major solo projects, there’s only one drummer to call to make the deadline.
\nKeeley Cunningham is determined to do what’s best for the newly-reunited Glitter Bats - including conceal her incurable attraction to Jane by keeping her distance. Still, when Jane asks for her help in the studio, Keeley drops everything to fill in. They collaborate harmoniously . . . until their repressed feelings crescendo into a massive argument about the band’s future that leaves them barely speaking.
\nAs music forces Jane and Keeley into increasingly close proximity, the lingering tension finally ignites into the romance they’ve both been craving - and it’s hot, emotional, and fundamentally secret. But after an intimate moment is caught on camera, they’ll have to decide if their duet can survive its debut - both on and off stage.
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In the utopian city of New Ionia, everyone gets a soulmate and Zada can’t wait for hers. Now that she’s eighteen, it’s her turn to meet her destiny with the help of Heartsong, an algorithm that chooses your perfect match for you.
\nThen Zada crashes into her soulmate, setting off their shared Heartsong, and the unthinkable happens: She feels nothing for him. But the program doesn’t make mistakes, and by the end of the night, Zada is engaged to a man she doesn’t love.
\nDesperate, Zada turns to a surprising ally: her daringly beautiful former best friend, Daphne. Despite their estrangement, Daphne may be the only person who can help Zada uncover the truth about Heartsong. But can she trust her after all this time? And if what they find upends everything, can Zada find the courage to choose what she believes - and who she loves?
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Meet Nadia Davis, a doting mom and loving wife who has a big secret: she’s actually an assassin. And she really needs a babysitter who shows up on time.
\nNadia Davis is living the dream as a successful working mom with a career she loves, two adorable little girls, and a devoted husband who has no idea that she’s secretly a hired assassin and psychopath who kills certified bad guys. So when Nadia finds out she’s been “mommy tracked” by her assassin’s agency and is no longer getting the bigger, more exciting jobs, she demands an important mark . . . somebody worth killing.
\nBut it turns out that big kill is the last person she expects - her husband. How is the sweet, kind, teller-of-dad jokes she’s promised her life to an evil villain who needs exterminating? Has their whole life together been a lie? Now Nadia must choose between the two things she loves most in life, the career that keeps her sane or the family she thought she knew.
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This debut novel tells the story of a WASPy, old-Boston family coming face to face with an America much larger than the one it was born in. Told from five perspectives, the novel spans an explosive week in the life of the Dunlaps, culminating in a series of events that will change their way of life forever.
Caroline Dunlap has written off the insular world of the Boston deb parties, golf club luaus, and WASP weddings that she grew up with. But when she reluctantly returns home after her college graduation, she finds that not everything is quite as predictable, or protected, as she had imagined. Her father, the eccentric, puritanical Jack Dunlap, is carrying on stoically after the breakup of his marriage, but he can't stop thinking of Rosita, the family housekeeper he fired almost six months ago. Caroline's little brother, Eliot, is working on a giant papier-mâché diorama of their town - or is he hatching a plan of larger proportions?
As the real reason for Rosita's departure is revealed, the novel culminates in a series of events that assault the fragile, sheltered, and arguably obsolete world of the Dunlaps.
It’s 1953, and for Nick Taylor, WWII veteran turned company lawyer, oil is the key to the future. He takes the train into the city for work and returns to the peaceful streets of the suburbs and to his wife, Bet, former codebreaker now housewife, and their two children, Katherine and Harry. Nick comes from humble origins but thanks to his work for American Oil, he can provide every comfort for his family, including Last House, a secluded country escape.
\nDeep in the Vermont mountains, the Taylors are free from the stresses of modern life. Bet doesn’t have to worry about the Russian H-bombs that haunt her dreams, and the children roam free in the woods. Last House is a place that could survive the end of the world.
\nIt’s 1968, and America is on the brink of change. Protestors fill the streets to challenge everything from the Vietnam War to racism in the wake of MLK’s shooting - to the country's reliance on Big Oil.
\nAs Katherine makes her first forays into adult life, she’s caught up in the current of the time and struggles to reconcile her ideals with the stable and privileged childhood her Greatest Generation parents worked so hard to provide. But when the Movement shifts in a more radical direction, each member of the Taylor family will be forced to reckon with the consequences of the choices they’ve made for the causes they believed in.
\nSpanning multiple generations and nearly eighty years, Last House tells the story of one American family during an age of grand ideals and even greater downfalls. Set against the backdrop of our nation’s history, this is an emotional tour de force that digs deeply into questions of inheritance and what we owe each other - and captures to stunning effect the gravity of time, the double edge of progress, and the hubris of empire.
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Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined.
Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany’s defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once grand castle of her husband’s ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resistor murdered in the failed July, 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband’s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.
First, Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together, they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin, where Martin’s mother, the beautiful and naïve Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania, another resistor’s wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war.
As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband’s resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart.
Eventually, all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the war - each with their own unique share of challenges.
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Coralie grew up in Australia but needed to escape some ghosts. Adrift in London, she meets witty, sexy, generous Adam - and his charming four-year-old daughter. Falling in love is fun. And then?
\nCoralie yearns for children of her own, and to become a writer. But her trips back to Australia change her perspective. Ten years on, something essential is missing.
\nIn this unforgettable story about what ‘happily ever after’ might truly mean, Jessica Stanley writes about life as we live it, and reveals how our intimate dramas can get tangled up with the public events of our times.
Morrigan Crow and her friends have survived their first year as proud scholars of the elite Wundrous Society, helped bring down the nefarious Ghastly Market, and proven themselves loyal to Unit 919. Now Morrigan faces a new, exciting challenge: to master the mysterious Wretched Arts of the Accomplished Wundersmith, and control the power that threatens to consume her.
\n\t\t\t\t\tMeanwhile, a strange and frightening illness has taken hold of Nevermoor, turning infected Wunimals into mindless, vicious Unnimals on the hunt. As victims of the Hollowpox multiply, panic spreads. There are whispers - growing louder every day - that this catastrophe can only be the work of the Wundersmith, Ezra Squall. But inside the walls of Wunsoc, everyone knows there is a new Wundersmith - one who's much closer to home.
\n\t\t\t\t\tWith Nevermoor in a state of fear and the truth about Morrigan threatening to get out, the city she loves becomes the most perilous place in the world. Morrigan must try to find a cure for the Hollowpox, but it will put her - and everyone in Nevermoor - in more danger than she could have imagined.
Morrigan Crow is cursed. Having been born on Eventide, the unluckiest day for any child to be born, she's blamed for all local misfortunes, from hailstorms to heart attacks - and, worst of all, the curse means that Morrigan is doomed to die at midnight on her eleventh birthday. But as Morrigan awaits her fate, a strange and remarkable man named Jupiter North appears. Chased by black-smoke hounds and shadowy hunters on horseback, he whisks her away into the safety of a secret, magical city called Nevermoor.
\n\t\t\t\t\tIt's then that Morrigan discovers Jupiter has chosen her to contend for a place in the city's most prestigious organization: the Wundrous Society. In order to join, she must compete in four difficult and dangerous trials against hundreds of other children, each boasting an extraordinary talent that sets them apart - an extraordinary talent that Morrigan insists she does not have. To stay in the safety of Nevermoor for good, Morrigan will need to find a way to pass the tests - or she'll have to leave the city to confront her deadly fate.
In the magical city of Nevermoor, long-buried secrets are coming to light, and Morrigan Crow's life is about to turn upside down . . .
\nWhen Morrigan is invited into Nevermoor's wealthy Silver District, she discovers a world of extravagance and a family mystery she's eager to unravel. She could never imagine where it will lead: a white wedding, a golden dragon and a red pool of blood.
\nEmbroiled in suspicion and danger, Morrigan leaps headfirst into a murder investigation, while also grappling with her ever-growing Wundersmith powers. And although her friends are there to help, she fears that could change if they learn she's keeping a terrible secret of her own.
\nAs shadowy forces awaken in Nevermoor, can Morrigan find a killer and solve the mystery in her own past . . . before the clock strikes midnight?
Morrigan Crow may have defeated her deadly curse, passed the dangerous trials and joined the mystical Wundrous Society, but her journey into Nevermoor and all its secrets has only just begun. And she is fast learning that not all magic is used for good.
\nMorrigan Crow has been invited to join the prestigious Wundrous Society, a place that promised her friendship, protection and belonging for life. She's hoping for an education full of wunder, imagination and discovery - but all the Society want to teach her is how evil Wundersmiths are. And someone is blackmailing Morrigan's unit, turning her last few loyal friends against her. Has Morrigan escaped from being the cursed child of Wintersea only to become the most hated figure in Nevermoor?
\nWorst of all, people have started to go missing. The fantastical city of Nevermoor, once a place of magic and safety, is now riddled with fear and suspicion...
A clear and concise guide to the politics of post-Roe America, for readers eager to understand the attacks on our bodies and freedom - and to do something about it.
\nIn this, her most urgent book yet, author Jessica Valenti dispels misinformation and cuts through the headline overwhelm to illuminate the full-scale assault conservative lawmakers have launched on women’s freedom - and fundamental human rights. Valenti provides the language to talk about abortion with confidence and the facts to convince.
\nAmerican voters overwhelmingly support abortion rights and have for decades. In the years since Roe v. Wade was overturned, that support has been growing, as nearly seventy-percent of Americans want abortion to be legal in the first three months of pregnancy, and sixty-three percent want abortion medication to be legal. Abortion is among the key tools conservatives use to roll back decades of advances for women, but here Valenti arms readers with the truth needed to fight back and win, not only at the dinner table but at the polling station and all the way to the Supreme Court.
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For eighteen years, everyone looked up to Oliver. He was smart, funny, good-looking, and a talented artist. Everyone wanted to be his friend. But after his eighteenth birthday, he became morose and moody. He watched familiar faces melt into unknown strangers. Oliver fights to silence the sinister voice that tells him scary things as he tries to exist in a world that no longer makes sense to him.
\nOliver’s parents and siblings grapple with how to help him find treatment while his delusions, anxiety, and hallucinations intensify. However, finding treatment proves to be even more difficult since Oliver's mother is bipolar and his father holds onto the denial he has regarding Oliver's increasingly dangerous behaviors.
\nBased on the authors’ own experiences, Silence You follows a family coping with crisis. Oliver, the eldest son, is suffering from schizophrenia. As he goes through treatment, his parents and siblings deal with the repercussions. In particular, Oliver's mother, Elizabeth, must come to terms with her own mental illness and the role it may have played in Oliver's illness.
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Bianca von Hasenberg did her duty for High House von Hasenberg and ended up trapped in a terrible marriage. When her husband dies unexpectedly and leaves her a happy widow, she vows never to marry again. Instead, she uses her connections to save other young women. Information is power and Bianca has a network that would be the envy of the ’verse—if anyone knew about it.
After an attack, Bianca’s oldest brother, the House von Hasenberg heir, disappears from Earth without a trace. Determined to find him, Bianca leaves against orders. When she refuses to return, her father sends Ian Bishop, the director of House von Hasenberg security, to haul her home like a recalcitrant child.
Bianca leads Ian on a merry chase across the universe, but when their paths finally collide, she persuades him that they would be far more successful at finding her brother if they worked together. She will do anything to save her sibling, even if it means spending time alone on a small ship with the handsome, infuriating man who once broke her heart.
As clues lead them deep into rival House Rockhurst territory, Bianca must decide if she can trust Ian with the one piece of information that could destroy her completely. . .
As a recovery specialist, Lexi Bowen's jobs typically require more trickery and thievery than honest work. Her former captain might not approve of her flexible morals, but stealing artifacts for rich assholes pays the bills, and Lexi's had enough of war and death. The FHP left her to die once; she doesn't plan to give them a chance to finish the job.
\nUnfortunately, her latest contract takes her to Valovia itself - and right back into the orbit of Nilo Shoren, a Valovian teleporter who already cost her one payday and nearly stole her heart.
\nArmored against his clever charm, Lexi plans to get in, get the job done, and get out. But when her former crew goes missing in Valovian space, Lexi will have to work with Nilo to figure out what happened - and stop it - before the galaxy's two superpowers can use the disappearance as an excuse to return to war.
As the youngest member of her High House, Catarina von Hasenberg is used to being underestimated, but her youth and flighty, bubbly personality mask a clever mind and stubborn determination. Her enemies, blind to her true strength, do not suspect that Cat is a spy—which makes her the perfect candidate to go undercover at a rival House’s summer retreat to gather intelligence on their recent treachery.
Cat’s overprotective older sister reluctantly agrees, but on one condition: Cat cannot go alone. Alexander Sterling, a quiet, gorgeous bodyguard, will accompany her, posing as her lover. After Cat tries, and fails, to ditch Alex, she grudgingly agrees, confident in her ability to manage him. After all, she’s never found a person she can’t manipulate.
But Alex proves more difficult - and more desirable - than Cat anticipated. When she’s attacked and nearly killed, she and Alex are forced to work together to figure out how deep the treason goes. With rumors of widespread assaults on Serenity raging, communications down, and the rest of her family trapped off-planet, Catarina must persuade Alex to return to Earth to expose the truth and finish this deadly battle once and for all.
But Cat can’t explain why she’s the perfect person to infiltrate hostile territory without revealing secrets she’d rather keep buried. . . .
Kee Ildez has been many things: hacker, soldier, bounty hunter. She never expected to be a hero, but when a shadowy group of traitors starts trying to goad the galaxy’s two superpowers into instigating an interstellar war, Kee throws herself into the search to find out who is responsible - and stop them.
\nDigging up hidden information is her job, so hunting traitors should be a piece of cake, but the primary suspect spent years in the military, and someone powerful is still covering his tracks. Disrupting their plans will require the help of her entire team, including Varro Runkow, a Valovian weapons expert who makes her pulse race.
\nQuiet, grumpy, and incredibly handsome, Varro watches her with hot eyes but ignores all of her flirting, so Kee silently vows to keep her feelings strictly platonic. But that vow will be put to the test when she and Varro are forced to leave the safety of their ship and venture into enemy territory alone.
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Cut off from the rest of their team, they must figure out how to work together - and fast - because a single misstep will cost thousands of lives.
Octavia Zarola would do anything to keep her tiny, close-knit bounty hunting crew together - even if it means accepting a job from Torran Fletcher, a ruthless former general and her sworn enemy. When Torran offers her enough credits to not only keep her crew afloat but also hire someone to fix her ship, Tavi knows that she can’t refuse - no matter how much she’d like to.
\nWith so much money on the line, Torran and his crew insist on joining the hunt. Tavi reluctantly agrees because while the handsome, stoic leader pushes all of her buttons - for both anger and desire - she’s endured worse, and the massive bonus payment he’s promised for a completed job is reason enough to shut up and deal.
\nBut when they uncover a deeper plot that threatens the delicate peace between humans and Valoffs, Tavi suspects that Torran has been using her as the impetus for a new war. With the fate of her crew balanced on a knife’s edge, Tavi must decide where her loyalties lie - with the quiet Valoff who’s been lying to her, or with the human leaders who left her squad to die on the battlefield. And this time, she’s put her heart on the line.
In the far distant future, the universe is officially ruled by the Royal Consortium, but the High Councillors, the heads of the three High Houses, wield the true power. As the fifth of six children, Ada von Hasenberg has no authority; her only value to her High House is as a pawn in a political marriage. When her father arranges for her to wed a noble from House Rockhurst, a man she neither wants nor loves, Ada seizes control of her own destiny. The spirited princess flees before the betrothal ceremony and disappears among the stars.
Ada eluded her father’s forces for two years, but now her luck has run out. To ensure she cannot escape again, the fiery princess is thrown into a prison cell with Marcus Loch. Known as the Devil of Fornax Zero, Loch is rumored to have killed his entire chain of command during the Fornax Rebellion, and the Consortium wants his head.
When the ship returning them to Earth is attacked by a battle cruiser from rival House Rockhurst, Ada realizes that if her jilted fiancé captures her, she’ll become a political prisoner and a liability to her House. Her only hope is to strike a deal with the dangerous fugitive: a fortune if he helps her escape.
But when you make a deal with an irresistibly attractive Devil, you may lose more than you bargained for . . .
Untrained and barely armed, Riela reluctantly agrees to enter the forest and kill the deadly beast that has been attacking her fellow villagers as she’s the only mage available - or so she thought. When one beast turns into two, she fears her death is at hand, but unexpected aid from a scarred, strikingly handsome man with dangerous moonlit magic means a second chance at life - and an opportunity to learn more about her own fickle power.
\nAfter being rescued and healed from her fight in the forest, Riela awakens in a magical castle complete with a gorgeous library, a strange wolf, and the surly man who saved her life. Riela soon learns Garrick is not a mortal mage at all - he’s a powerful Etheri sovereign who has been locked out of his kingdom in Lohka for nearly a century, and his powers are weakening.
\nTrapped in his castle and surrounded by the treacherous woods, the spark of attraction between Riela and Garrick slowly ignites into fiery desire. But the more they discover about Riela’s magic, the more suspicious Garrick grows of her identity. As they unravel the secrets connecting Riela’s past to Lohka, the tenuous threads of trust between them begin to fray because Riela’s life - or her death - might be the key to regaining everything Garrick has lost.
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Emma Woodhouse is a genius at math, but clueless about people. After all, people are unreliable. They let you down - just like Emma's sister, Izzy, did this year, when she moved to California for college. But numbers . . . those you can count on. (No pun intended.)
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Emma's senior year is going to be all about numbers, and seeing how far they can take her. When she and George, her Coding Club co-president, are tasked with brainstorming a new project, The Code for Love is born - a matchmaking app that goes far beyond swiping, using algorithms to calculate compatibility. George disapproves of Emma's idea, accusing her of meddling in people's lives. But all the happy new couples at school are proof that the app works. At least at first.
Emma's code is flawless. So why is it that perfectly matched couples start breaking up, the wrong people keep falling for each other and her own feelings defy any algorithm? Emma thought math could solve everything. But there's nothing more complex - or unpredictable - than love.
The once-rising literary star Olivia Fitzgerald is down on her luck. Her most recent novel - a retelling of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca - was a flop, her boyfriend of nine years just dumped her and she’s battling a bad case of writer’s block. So when her agent calls her with a high-paying ghostwriting opportunity, Olivia is all too willing to sign the NDA.
\nAt first, the write-for-hire job seems too good to be true. All she has to do is interview Henry “Ash” Asherwood, a reclusive mega billionaire, twice named People’s Sexiest Man Alive, who wants her help in writing a book that reveals a shocking secret about his late grandmother and Daphne du Maurier.
\nBut when Olivia arrives at his Malibu estate, nothing is as it seems. The more Olivia digs into his grandmother’s past, the more questions she has - and before she knows it, she’s trapped in a gothic mystery of her own.
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In Poland in 1891, Marie Curie (then Marya Sklodowska) was engaged to a budding mathematician, Kazimierz Zorawski. But when his mother insisted she was too poor and not good enough, he broke off the engagement. A heartbroken Marya left Poland for Paris, where she would attend the Sorbonne to study chemistry and physics. Eventually Marie Curie would go on to change the course of science forever and be the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.
But what if she had made a different choice?
What if she had stayed in Poland, married Kazimierz at the age of twenty-four, and never attended the Sorbonne or discovered radium? What if she had chosen a life of domesticity with a constant hunger for knowledge in Russian Poland where education for women was restricted, instead of studying science in Paris and meeting Pierre Curie?
Entwining Marie Curie’s real story with Marya Zorawska’s fictional one, Half Life explores loves lost and destinies unfulfilled - and probes issues of loyalty and identity, gender and class, motherhood and sisterhood, fame and anonymity, scholarship and knowledge. Through parallel contrasting versions of Marya’s life, Jillian Cantor’s unique historical novel asks what would have happened if a great scientific mind was denied opportunity and access to education.
It examines how the lives of one remarkable woman and the people she loved – as well as the world at large and course of science and history - might have been irrevocably changed in ways both great and small.
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1931, Germany. Bookshop owner Max Beissinger meets Hanna Ginsberg, a budding concert violinist, and immediately he feels a powerful chemistry between them. It isn’t long before they fall in love and begin making plans for the future. As their love affair unfolds over the next five years, the climate drastically changes in Germany as Hitler comes to power.
\nTheir love is tested with the new landscape and the realities of war, not the least of which is that Hanna is Jewish and Max is not. But unbeknownst to Hanna is the fact that Max has a secret, which causes him to leave for months at a time - a secret that Max is convinced will help him save Hanna if Germany becomes too dangerous for her because of her religion.
\nIn 1946, Hanna Ginsberg awakens in a field outside of Berlin. Disoriented and afraid, she has no memory of the past ten years and no idea what has happened to Max. With no information as to Max’s whereabouts - or if he is even still alive - she decides to move to London to live with her sister while she gets her bearings. Even without an orchestra to play in, she throws herself completely into her music to keep alive her lifelong dream of becoming a concert violinist.
\nBut the music also serves as a balm to heal her deeply wounded heart and she eventually gets the opening she long hoped for. Even so, as the days, months, and years pass, taking her from London to Paris to Vienna to America, she continues to be haunted by her forgotten past, and the fate of the only man she has ever loved and cannot forget.
\nTold in alternating viewpoints - Max in the years leading up to WWII, and Hanna in the ten years after - In Another Time is a beautiful novel about love and survival, passion and music, across time and continents.
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Austria, 1938.
Kristoff is a young apprentice to a master Jewish stamp engraver. When his teacher disappears during Kristallnacht, Kristoff is forced to engrave stamps for the Germans, and simultaneously works alongside Elena, his beloved teacher's fiery daughter, and with the Austrian resistance to send underground messages and forge papers. As he falls for Elena amidst the brutal chaos of war, Kristoff must find a way to save her, and himself.
Los Angeles, 1989.
Katie Nelson is going through a divorce and while cleaning out her house and life in the aftermath, she comes across the stamp collection of her father, who recently went into a nursing home. When an appraiser, Benjamin, discovers an unusual World War II-era Austrian stamp placed on an old love letter as he goes through her dad's collection, Katie and Benjamin are sent on a journey together that will uncover a story of passion and tragedy spanning decades and continents, behind the just fallen Berlin Wall.
A beautiful, poignant and devastating novel, The Lost Letter shows the lasting power of love.
No matter what’s going on in the May sisters’ lives, the one thing they can rely upon is seeing each other for one week each year, while staying at their grandmother’s beachside home in gorgeous Coronado. As adults, Julia, Emily, and Nora aren’t particularly close, spread out across the country and busy with careers, relationships, and the minutia of life, but their promise to Grandma Vera keeps them anchored together, if only for one week every May.
\nOne year Julia, the oldest and most dependable sister, doesn’t show. And suddenly Nora and Emily start to question how much they truly know about their sister’s life. Told in alternating points of view, spanning from their time together with Grandma Vera as kids into their adult lives, The May House explores how a decades-long family secret has unknowingly shaped each sister and, ultimately, how it brings them closer together.
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For centuries, the people of Alera have relied on the power of the furies to protect them from outside invaders. But the gravest threat might be closer than they think.
\nTavi has escaped the Calderon Valley and the mysterious attack of the Marat on his homeland. But he is far from safe, as trying to keep up the illusion of being a student while secretly training as one of the First Lord’s spies is a dangerous game. And he has not yet learned to use the furies, making him especially vulnerable.
\nWhen the attack comes it’s on two fronts. A sudden strike threatens the First Lord’s life and threatens to plunge the land into civil war. While in the Calderon Valley, the threat faced from the Marat is dwarfed by an ancient menace. And Tavi must learn to harness the furies if he has any chance of fighting the greatest threat Alera has ever known . . .
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For centuries, the people of Alera have relied on the power of the furies to protect them from outside invaders. But the gravest threat might be closer than they think.
\nTavi has escaped the Calderon Valley and the mysterious attack of the Marat on his homeland. But he is far from safe, as trying to keep up the illusion of being a student while secretly training as one of the First Lord’s spies is a dangerous game. And he has not yet learned to use the furies, making him especially vulnerable.
\nWhen the attack comes it’s on two fronts. A sudden strike threatens the First Lord’s life and threatens to plunge the land into civil war. While in the Calderon Valley, the threat faced from the Marat is dwarfed by an ancient menace. And Tavi must learn to harness the furies if he has any chance of fighting the greatest threat Alera has ever known . . .
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Since time immemorial, the Spires have sheltered humanity, towering for miles over the mist-shrouded surface of the world. Within their halls, aristocratic houses have ruled for generations, developing scientific marvels, fostering trade alliances, and building fleets of airships to keep the peace.
\nCaptain Grimm commands the merchant ship, Predator. Fiercely loyal to Spire Albion, he has taken their side in the cold war with Spire Aurora, disrupting the enemy's shipping lines by attacking their cargo vessels. But when the Predator is severely damaged in combat, leaving captain and crew grounded, Grimm is offered a proposition from the Spirearch of Albion-to join a team of agents on a vital mission in exchange for fully restoring Predator to its fighting glory.
\nAnd even as Grimm undertakes this dangerous task, he will learn that the conflict between the Spires is merely a premonition of things to come. Humanity's ancient enemy, silent for more than ten thousand years, has begun to stir once more. And death will follow in its wake.
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Harry has faced terrible odds before. He has a long history of fighting enemies above his weight class. The Red Court of vampires. The fallen angels of the Order of the Blackened Denarius. The Outsiders.
\nBut this time it’s different. A being more powerful and dangerous on an order of magnitude beyond what the world has seen in a millennium is coming. And she’s bringing an army. The Last Titan has declared war on the city of Chicago, and has come to subjugate humanity, obliterating any who stand in her way.
\nHarry’s mission is simple but impossible: Save the city by killing a Titan. And the attempt will change Harry’s life, Chicago, and the mortal world forever.
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Harry’s had worse assignments than going undercover on the set of an adult film. Dodging flaming monkey poo, for instance. Or going toe-to-leaf with a plant monster. Still, there’s something troubling about this case. The Producer believes he’s afflicted by an entropy curse - but it’s the women around him who are dying.
\nAnd Harry only got involved as a favour to Thomas, his flirtatious self-absorbed vampire acquaintance. Thomas has a personal stake in the case Harry can’t work out, until his investigation leads him straight to Thomas’s oversexed relatives. Harry’s about to discover the skeleton in Thomas’s family closet: a revelation that will change Harry’s life for ever.
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Tavi of Calderon, now captain of his own Legion, has been fighting a bitter war for two years. Then he discovers the invading Canim warriors are harbingers of a far greater threat. The Canim are being hunted in their turn by a savage race that forced them from their homeland - and which has pursued them to the Aleran borders. With options fast running out, Tavi proposes an alliance with the Canim.
\nBut the Senate’s new military commander wishes only to wipe out the Canim ‘scourge’, and would also kill Aleran slaves that have sought freedom with these aggressors.
\nTavi must reconcile Aleran and Canim, slavemaster and slave, Citizen and Proletarian, if an alliance is to be forced. And he must lead his Legion in defiance of the law, against both friend and enemy - before the greatest army of all launches its assault.
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Long ago, Susan Rodriguez was Harry Dresden's lover-until she was attacked by his enemies, leaving her torn between her own humanity and the bloodlust of the vampiric Red Court. Susan then disappeared to South America, where she could fight both her savage gift and those who cursed her with it.
\nNow Arianna Ortega, Duchess of the Red Court, has discovered a secret Susan has long kept, and she plans to use it-against Harry. To prevail this time, he may have no choice but to embrace the raging fury of his own untapped dark power. Because Harry's not fighting to save the world...
\nHe's fighting to save his *child*.
You can’t keep a good wizard down - even when he wants to stay that way.
\nFor years, Harry Dresden has been Chicago’s only professional wizard, but a bargain made in desperation with the Queen of Air and Darkness has forced him into a new job: professional killer.
\nMab, the mother of wicked faeries, has restored the mostly-dead wizard to health, and dispatches him upon his first mission - to bring death to an immortal. Even as he grapples with the impossible task, Dresden learns of a looming danger to Demonreach, the living island hidden upon Lake Michigan, a place whose true purpose and dark potential have the potential to destroy billions and to land Dresden in the deepest trouble he has ever known - even deeper than being dead. How messed up is that?
\nBeset by his new enemies and hounded by the old, Dresden has only twenty four hours to reconnect with his old allies, prevent a cataclysm and do the impossible - all while the power he bargained to get - but never meant to keep - lays siege to his very soul.
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Power-hungry Kalare has rebelled against Alera’s aging First Lord, Gaius Sextus. Ill-equipped to face this attack, Gaius must seek support - even from the combative High Lord of Aquitaine. Kalare has also seized valuable hostages that could mean the difference between victory and failure. And Amara, the First Lord’s Cursor, has been tasked with their rescue. She has earned this trust but are her allies as worthy - or does the Lady Aquitaine see the time as ripe for betrayal?
\nTreachery is rife elsewhere, as young Tavi of Calderon will find. Posted away from the war, Tavi joins a legion anyway, under an assumed name. Then Kalare does the unthinkable - uniting with the brutish Canim. When treason wipes out the army’s command structure, Tavi finds himself leading an inexperienced legion against the might of the Canim horde - the very last resort of a war-torn realm.
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Meet Harry Dresden, Chicago’s first (and only) Wizard P.I. Turns out the ‘everyday’ world isfull of strange and magical things - and most of them don’t play well with humans. That’s where Harry comes in.
\nLuckily, however, he’s not alone. Although most people don’t believe in magic, the Chicago P.D. has a Special Investigations department, headed by his good friend Karrin Murphy. They deal with the . . . stranger cases. It’s down to Karrin that Harry sneaks into Graceland Cemetery to meet a vampire named Mavra.
\nMavra has evidence that would destroy Karrin’s career, and her demands are simple. She wants the Word of Kemmler - and all the power that comes with it. But first, Harry’s keen to know what he’d be handing over. Before long he’s racing against time, and six necromancers, to get the Word. And to prevent a Halloween that would truly wake the dead.
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Harry Dresden should be happy that business is good - makes a change. But now he’s getting more than he bargained for: a duel with the Red Court of Vampires’ champion, who must kill Harry to end the war between vampires and wizards; professional hit men using Harry for target practice; the missing Shroud of Turin (less missing than expected) and a headless corpse the Chicago police need identifying . . .
\nNot to mention the return of Harry’s ex-girlfriend Susan, still struggling with her semi-vampiric nature. And who seems to have a new man. Some days, it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed. No matter how much you’re charging.
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The aging First Lord of Alera has fallen in battle. Yet his people must continue to resist an invading inhuman army. Desperate Alerans even pledge fealty to the Vord Queen to survive, turning the incredible power of Aleran furies back on their own people. And despite all efforts, the Alerans are being ground into dust and pushed to the farthest reaches of their own realm.
\nHowever, Tavi has returned with vital insights from the Canim Blood Lands. He knows how to counter the Vord and, more importantly, believes human ingenuity can equal fury-born powers. Now events are rushing towards a last stand, where Tavi and the last Aleran legions must formulate a dangerous new strategy, together. For a civilisation is on the brink of extinction.
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Business has been slow. Okay, business has been dead. And not even of the undead variety. You would think Chicago would have a little more action for the only professional wizard in the phone book. But lately, Harry Dresden hasn't been able to dredge up any kind of workmagical or mundane.
\nBut just when it looks like he can't afford his next meal, a murder comes along that requires his particular brand of supernatural expertise.
\nA brutally mutilated corpse. Strange-looking paw prints. A full moon. Take three guessesand the first two don't count . . .
For a thousand years, the people of Alera have united against the aggressive races that inhabit the world, using their unique bond with the furies - elementals of earth, air, fire, water and metal. But now, Gaius Sextus, First Lord of Alera, grows old and lacks an heir. Ambitious Lords manoeuvre to place their Houses in positions of power, and a war of succession looms on the horizon.
\nFar from city politics in the Calderon Valley, young Tavi struggles with his lack of furycrafting. At fifteen, he has no wind fury to help him fly, no fire fury to light his lamps. Yet as the Alerans’ most savage enemy - the Marat - return to the Valley, his world will change. Caught in a storm of deadly wind furies, Tavi saves the life of a runaway slave. But Amara is actually a spy, seeking intelligence on possible Marat traitors to the Crown. And when the Valley erupts into chaos - when rebels war with loyalists and furies clash with furies - Amara will find Tavi invaluable. His talents will outweigh any fury-born power - and could even turn the tides of war.
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Meet Harry Dresden, Chicago’s first (and only) Wizard PI. Turns out the ‘everyday’ world is full of strange and magical things - and most of them don’t play well with humans. That’s where Harry comes in. But he’s forgotten his own golden rule: magic - it can get a guy killed. Which didn’t help when he clashed with unknown assailants with his murder in mind. And though Harry’s continued existence is now in some doubt, this doesn’t mean he can rest in peace.
\nTrapped in a realm that’s not quite here, yet not quite anywhere else, Harry learns that three of his loved ones are in danger. Only by discovering his assailant’s identity can he save his friends, bring criminal elements to justice, and move on himself. It would just be easier if he knew who was at risk. And had a (working) crystal ball. And access to magic.
\nInstead, he is unable to interact with the physical world - invisible to all but a select magical few. He’s also not the only silent presence roaming Chicago’s alleys. Hell, he put some there himself. Now, they’re looking for payback.
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Harry has faced some terrifying foes during his career. Giant scorpions. Oversexed vampires. Psychotic werewolves. It comes with the territory when you’re the only wizard in town. But in all Harry’s years of supernatural sleuthing, he’s never faced anything like this: the spirit world’s gone loco.
\nAll over town, ghosts are causing trouble - and not the door-slamming, boo-shouting variety. These ghosts are tormented, violent, and deadly. Someone is stirring them up to wreak havoc. But why? And why do so many of the victims have ties to Harry? If Harry doesn’t figure it out soon, he might just wind up a ghost himself.
\nMagic - it can get a guy killed.
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For centuries the Cinder Spires have safeguarded humanity, rising far above the deadly surface world. Within their halls, aristocratic houses rule, developing scientific marvels and building fleets of airships for defense and trade.
\nNow, the Spires hover on the brink of open war.
\nEveryone knows it’s coming. The guns of the great airship fleets that control the skies between the last bastions of humanity will soon speak in anger, and Spire Albion stands alone against the overwhelming might of Spire Aurora’s Armada and its new secret weapon - one capable of destroying the populations of entire Spires.
\nA trading summit at Spire Olympia provides an opportunity for the Spirearch, Lord Albion, to secure alliances that will shape the outcomes of the war, and to that end he dispatches privateer Captain Francis Madison Grimm and the crew of the AMS Predator to bolster the Spirearch’s diplomatic agents.
\nIt will take daring, skill, and no small amount of showmanship to convince the world to stand with Spire Albion - assuming that it is not already too late.
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When the Supernatural nations of the world meet up to negotiate an end to ongoing hostilities, Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, joins the White Council's security team to make sure the talks stay civil.
\nBut can he succeed, when dark political manipulations threaten the very existence of Chicago - and all he holds dear?
After bitter fighting, Tavi of Calderon has eventually forged an alliance with Alera’s oldest foes, the savage Canim, and he must escort them on their long sea-voyage home. This will strain their fragile accord - but the worst is yet to come.
\nThe inhuman Vord have spent the last three years laying waste to the Canim homeland, making it a desolate place indeed. Then the Alerans become stranded there, cut off from their ships. The Canim alliance will be tested as they enter the killing fields together, depending on each other’s strengths if they both are to survive.
\nFor a thousand years, Alera and her furies have withstood every enemy, and survived every foe. The thousand years are over.
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Harry has no friends on the White Council of Wizards, who find him brash and undisciplined (and they may have a point). However, now vampire wars have thinned out the wizards a little, they need him. So before he can blink, he’s assigned to investigate rumours of black magic.
\nHarry’s other problem is an old friend’s daughter - all grown-up and in trouble already. Her boyfriend insists he’s innocent of something resembling a crime straight out of a horror film. This first impression turns out to be . . . well, pretty accurate, as Harry discovers malevolent entities feeding on fear. All in a day’s work for a wizard, his dog, and a talking skull named Bob.
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Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard, is about to have a very bad day. As Winter Knight to the Queen of Air and Darkness, Harry never knows what the scheming Mab might want him to do. Usually, it’s something awful.
\nThis time, it’s worse than that. Mab’s involved Harry in a smash-and-grab heist run by one of his most despised enemies to recover the literal Holy Grail from the vaults of the greatest treasure horde in the world - which belongs to the one and only Hades, Lord of the Underworld.
\nDresden’s always been tricky, but he’s going to have to up his backstabbing game to survive this mess – assuming his own allies don’t end up killing him before his enemies get the chance . . .
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Harry Dresden is feeling happy. No one’s tried to kill him in nearly a year, and the worst problem he’s had lately is removing stains his apprentice bungled into his carpeting. The future seems bright. Unfortunately, the past isn’t looking nearly so optimistic. An old bargain placed Harry in debt to Mab, faerie monarch of the Winter Court and the Queen of Air and Darkness.
\nHarry still owes her two favours, and it’s time to pay up. It’s a small favour he really can’t refuse, but it will trap Harry between a nightmarish foe and a deadly ally, stretching his skills and loyalties to their limits. It figures. Everything was going too well to last.
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Meet Harry Dresden, Chicago’s first (and only) Wizard P.I.
\nTurns out the ‘everyday’ world is full of strange and magical things - and most of them don’t play well with humans. That’s where Harry comes in.
\nHarry’s business as a private investigator has been quiet lately - so when the police bring him in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with black magic, he’s seeing dollar signs. But where there’s black magic, there’s a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry’s name.
\nMagic - it can get a guy killed.
Since his girlfriend left town to deal with her newly acquired taste for blood, Harry’s been down and out. He can’t pay his rent. He’s alienating his friends. He can’t recall his last shower. Then when things are at their worst, the Winter Queen of Faerie saunters in with an offer Harry can’t refuse.
\nAll he has to do is find out who murdered the Summer Knight, the Summer Queen’s right-hand man, and clear the Winter Queen’s name. It seems simple, but Faerie politics seldom work out that way. Then Harry discovers the fate of the entire world rests on this case. So no pressure . . .
Harry, a warden of the magic-governing White Council, finds himself in an unusual position when Morgan, his fellow warden and frequent antagonist, asks for his help. One of the White Council's leaders has been murdered, and Morgan was found at the scene of the crime holding the murder weapon.
\nIf he has been framed, then another senior wizard is behind the killing and may be trying to destroy the council entirely. Aided by werewolf and vampire allies, Dresden investigates with his trademark sardonic noir flair.
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One year. 365 days. Twelve months.
\nHarry Dresden has been through a lot, and so has his city. After Harry and his allies narrowly managed to save Chicago from being razed, everything is different - and it’s not just the current lack of electricity.
\nHarry lost people he cared about in the battle, and that’s the kind of loss that takes a toll. Harry being Harry, he’s doing his best to help the city and his friends recover and rebuild, but it’s a heavy load. He needs time.
\nTime is one thing Harry doesn’t have, however. Ghouls are prowling Chicago and killing innocent civilians. Harry’s brother is dying, and Harry doesn’t know how to help him. And last but certainly not least, the Winter Queen of the Fae has allied with the White Court of vampires - and Harry’s been betrothed to the seductive, deadly vampire Lara Raith to seal the deal.
\nIt’s been a tough year. More than ever, the city needs Harry Dresden the wizard - but after loss and grief, is there enough left of him to rise to the challenge?
A series of apparent suicides rings alarm bells with the police, and Harry is hired. At the first crime scene he hits pay dirt, discovering an unmistakable magical taint. There’s also a message especially for him, and it ain’t pretty. The ‘killings’ will continue if Harry can’t halt his tormentor, but the evidence implicates his half-brother, which just doesn’t add up.
\nUnfortunately Harry’s digging around attracts some powerful vampires with a stake in the result. Soon, whichever way he turns, Harry will find himself outnumbered, outclassed and dangerously susceptible to temptation. And if he screws up, his friends will die.
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A coma can change a man, but the world Jack Jr. awakens to is one he barely recognises. His advertising job is history, his Manhattan apartment is gone, and the love of his life has left him behind. He’s been asleep for two years; with no one to turn to, he realises it’s been ten years since he last saw his family.
\nLost and disoriented, he makes a reluctant homecoming back to the bustling Korean American enclave of Fort Lee, New Jersey; back into the waiting arms of his parents, who are operating under the illusion he never left; and back to Joja, their ever-struggling sushi restaurant that he was set to inherit before he ran away from it all.
\nAs he steps back into the life he abandoned - learning his Appa’s life lessons over crates of tuna on bleary-eyed 4 AM fish runs, doling out amberjack behind the omakase counter while his Umma tallies the night's pitiful number of customers, and sparring with his recovering alcoholic brother, James - he embraces new roles, That of romantic interest to the male nurse who took care of him throughout, and that of sage (but underqualified) uncle to his gangly teenage nephew.
\nThere is value in the joyous rhythms of this once-abandoned life. But second chances are an even messier business than running a restaurant, and the lure of a self-determined path might, once again, prove too hard to resist.
\nWhy do we run from those we love, and why do we still love those who run from us? A highly entertaining and poignant story about second chances and self-discovery, I Leave It Up to You pilots through the loss, love, and absurdity of finding one’s footing after the ground gives way.
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When North Korean spymaster Doha Kim is mysteriously killed in Oxford, his protege, Yohan Kim, chases the only breadcrumb given to him in Doha’s last breath: “Soju Club, Dr. Ryu.” In the meantime, a Korean American CIA agent , Yunah Choi, races to salvage her investigation of the North Korean spy cell in the aftermath of the assassination.
\nAt the centre of it all is the Soju Club, the only Korean restaurant in Oxford, owned by Jihoon Lim, an immigrant from Seoul in search of a new life after suffering a tragedy. As different factions move in with their own agendas, their fates become entangled, resulting in a bitter struggle that will determine whose truth will triumph.
\nOxford Soju Club weaves a tale of how immigrants in the Korean diaspora are forced to create identities to survive, and how in the end, they must shed those masks and seek their true selves.
A sister disappears and returns as a tiger. A mother’s voice compels the truth from any tongue. A granddaughter divines secrets in others’ dreams. These women are all of one lineage - a Korean family split across decades and borders by Japanese imperialism.
\nAt this saga’s heart is Young-Ja, a girl who infuses food with her emotions. She revels in her gift for cooking, nourishing the people she loves with her cheerfulness. But her sunny childhood comes to an end in 1931 when Japanese soldiers crush her family’s defiance against the Empire. Young-Ja is cast adrift, her food turning increasingly bitter with grief. When a Korean rebel fighter notices her talents, however, she is whisked off to Manchuria to join a secretive sisterhood of beautiful teahouse spies. There, Young-Ja finds a new sense of belonging and starts using her abilities for the resistance. But the Imperial Army is not yet finished with her . . .
\nDecades later, Young-Ja lives alone in Seoul, withdrawn from the world until her Tokyo-born granddaughter Rinako bursts into her life with the ability to see into dreams. In cultivating a tentative bond, they confront the long-buried past in a stunning emotional climax.
\nAs an unforgettable family perseveres in the long shadow of colonialism, Honey in the Wound transports readers to mountain forests where tiger-girls stalk, to Manchurian teahouses and opium dens where charming smiles veil secrets, and to the modern metropolises of Tokyo and Seoul where restless ghosts stir. This debut novel is a tender yet powerful multi-generational drama that shines light onto the twentieth century’s darkest corners and gives voice to those who bore witness.
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Centuries ago, mortals split the realm into two, with a magical veil placed firmly between them and their immortal rulers, the Tiarcons. Fueled by stolen magic, the mortal kingdoms flourished, but the Tiarcons never stopped trying to reclaim their magic and mortal subjects. And now, generations later, the veil between realms has begun to tear, letting immortal monsters ravage across the nations and threaten all the mortals have built.
\nAlia Meador would happily watch the mortal kingdoms buckle, as long as she could keep herself and her teenaged daughter, Lena, alive. After all, her own kingdom of Mandal, cast her out for her volatile magic, sending her to wander remote villages for decades. But when the treatment for Lena's illness comes along with a royal order to defend Mandal with the same magic they once spurned, Alia is caught between protecting the one person she loves and the reckoning she's so long desired.
\nWith every moment spent in Mandal, Alia is subjected to the grasping of her ruthless family, a traitorous mage determined to understand the extent of her power, and the allure of the prince she once loved. And with every immortal confrontation, Alia's magic comes closer and closer to consuming her.
\nAs the balance between realms shifts, Alia has to decide if her realm is worth saving, or if it all needs to be undone.
Landing a job caring for the unresponsive wife of celebrity podcaster Colin Harrington could be the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time. I get a place to live, a paycheck and a way to salvage my comatose career.
\nIt’s my last chance to finally prove the doubters wrong. I have to make it work.
\nAll I need to do is survive a few months in the eerie, high-tech halls of the Harrington’s mansion. But caring for Colin’s wife Kara is testing the limits of my sanity. Doors seem to open and close on their own, shadows shift in the corners of my vision, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched.
\nI wouldn’t mind if it was Colin watching. He’s been through hell, and it has been years since his wife’s accident. Maybe it’s time he moved on - and maybe I’m the one who can help him.
\nThen I find a cassette tape that reveals a shocking truth…
\nSomeone in the house has a dark secret - one they’ll do anything to protect. But they’re not the only ones with something to hide.
\nI have a secret of my own.
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One mother’s life will change in the blink of an eye - and there’s no going back. Elaine’s worst fears become reality when her beloved son Jakob is diagnosed with cancer. She needs to find a bone marrow donor, and time is running out.
\nBut while awaiting test results to see if she’s a possible match, Elaine learns a shocking truth about her son; a truth that threatens to send her back to the pills that almost destroyed her life once before; a truth that pushes her already fragile mental state to the breaking point.
\nEven as the family faces this new crisis, a ghost from Elaine’s past emerges to jeopardize everything she’s built. But is the threat real, or is it all in her mind? Elaine needs to stay strong for her son, but as her whole reality continues to unravel, she can’t trust anyone - not even herself.
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When her child’s life is at stake, a mother will do anything to save him.
\nClara McNair is running out of time to save her son, James. When the two-year-old is diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer, only an experimental treatment can save his life. She desperately needs money to pay for the surgery, but she’ll have to travel back to the site of her darkest memories to get it.
\nClara has escaped the demons of her youth - or so she thinks. It’s been ten years since the mysterious disappearance of her parents. Widely suspected of murdering her mother and father, Clara fled west to start a new life. Now, a documentary film crew is offering cold, hard cash - enough to pay for James’s treatment - in exchange for the sordid secrets of her past.
\nWith no other choice but to delve into a long-ago tragedy, Clara must unravel the lies surrounding that terrible night. Facing hostile gossip, Clara is fighting to clear her name and learn the truth about what really happened. But how far will she go into the dark to save her son - and herself?
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Child psychologist Dr. Karen Marks relates well with her young clients when it comes to loss. After all, she’s no stranger to painful life experiences. Despite the adversities she’s weathered, Karen works hard to serve Chicago’s troubled youth. But maintaining the perfect façade becomes impossible when the past crawls from the woodwork and threatens the life she’s worked so hard to create.
\nFirst come the allegations from former students against her deceased husband. As the vicious and unfounded news goes public, Karen’s counseling schedule dries up overnight and she can’t help but feel like she’s being watched. But then a new client walks into her office - his appearance so like her missing son’s, that for a moment she thinks her wishes and prayers have finally been answered. But it can’t be . . . it’s been so long since he disappeared and this angry, violent child behaves nothing like her Luke. Yet, the resemblance is uncanny.
\nNow Karen’s life is turned upside down as decades of unresolved issues overwhelm her, and seemingly unconnected events begin to reveal someone with sinister intentions. As threats mount, Karen must race to uncover a twisted plot that pits past guilt against any hope for the future.
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Burying the past only delays the inevitable.
Sarah Cartwright is on the cusp of having it all - a new baby, a devoted partner, and a great job as a political campaign director. However, Sarah’s return to the office after maternity leave finds her powerful position assigned to someone else, and Sarah didn’t work hard for years just so she could observe from the sidelines.
As her dreams threaten to crash and burn around her, the lies she’s built her life upon are exposed. Smears that put her entire career on the brink are splashed across news headlines, and caught between a new boss, backstabbing co-workers, and a wary partner, Sarah can’t be certain who to trust.
When bodies start to drop and the police show up on her doorstep, the past can no longer stay hidden.
All sins are punished one day.
When a secret from Holly Weldon’s past threatens to consume everything she values, she must find the strength to fight for those she loves.
Holly has just relocated to an idyllic suburb with her loving husband Mike and baby daughter Clare. The quiet, peaceful street is the farthest thing imaginable from the aftermath of violence Holly encountered in her work as a forensic pathologist in the city.
But as the family settles into their new home, a strange sense of foreboding moves in with them. At first, Holly dismisses this as new parent jitters. However, soon the unusual - and dangerous - occurrences on Holly’s tree-lined block become impossible to ignore.
As her days and nights grow more isolated and filled with paranoia, Holly struggles to convince others that the threat isn’t just in her imagination. In the end, when Holly’s sanity is questioned and the violence around her escalates, she’s forced to take a stand to save her newborn daughter, and herself.
August 2020. Sophia, a young playwright, awaits her father’s verdict on her new show. A famous author whose novels haven’t aged as gracefully into the modern era as he might hope, he is completely unaware that the play centers around a vacation the two took years earlier to an island off Sicily, where he dictated to her a new book.
\nThe play has been met with rave reviews but Sophia’s father has studiously avoided reading any of them. But when the house lights dim, he understands that his daughter has laid him bare, used the events of their summer to create an incisive, witty, skewering critique of the attitudes and sexual mores of men of his generation.
\nSet through one staging of the play, The Hypocrite seamlessly and scorchingly shifts through time and perspective, illuminating an argument between a father and his daughter that, with impeccable nuance, examines the fraught inheritances each generation is left to contend with, and the struggle to nurture empathy in a world changing at lightning-speed.
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“A woman must have money and a room of one’s own.” So said Virginia Woolf in her classic A Room of One’s Own, but in this scrupulously observed, gorgeously wrought debut novel, Jo Hamya pushes that adage powerfully into the twenty-first century, to a generation of people living in rented rooms. What a woman needs now is an apartment of her own, the ultimate mark of financial stability, unattainable for many.
\nSet in one year, Three Rooms follows a young woman as she moves from a rented room at Oxford, where she’s working as a research assistant; to a stranger’s sofa, all she can afford as a copyediting temp at a society magazine; to her childhood home, where she’s been forced to return, jobless, even a room of her own out of reach. As politics shift to nationalism, the streets fill with protestors, and news drip-feeds into her phone, she struggles to live a meaningful life on her own terms, unsure if she’ll ever be able to afford to do so.
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A sweeping historical novel in the vein of Hilary Mantel and Maggie O’Farrell set during the time of the Tudors’ ascent. The Pretender tells the story of Lambert Simnel, who was raised in obscurity as a peasant boy to protect his safety, believed to be the heir to the throne occupied by Richard III, and briefly crowned, at the age of ten, as King Edward the Sixth, one of the last of the Plantagenets.
\nIn 1480, John Collan’s greatest anxiety is how to circumvent the village’s devil goat on the way to collect water. But the arrival of a well-dressed stranger from London upends his life forever: John is not John Collan, not the son of Will Collan, but the son of the long-deceased Duke of Clarence, hidden in the countryside after a brotherly rift over the crown, and because Richard III has a habit of disappearing his nephews.
\nRemoved from his humble origins, sent to Oxford to be educated in a manner befitting the throne’s rightful heir, John is put into play by his masters, learning the rules of etiquette in Burgundy and the machinations of the court in Ireland, where he encounters the intractable Joan, the delightfully strong-willed and manipulative daughter of his Irish patrons, a girl imbued with both extraordinary political savvy and occasional murderous tendencies. Joan has two paths available her - marry, or become a nun. Lambert’s choices are similarly stark: he will either become King, or die in battle. Together they form an alliance that will change the fate of the English monarchy.
\nInspired by a footnote to history - the true story of the little known Simnel, who was a figurehead of the 1487 Yorkist rebellion and ended up working as a spy in the court of King Henry VII - The Pretender is historical fiction at its finest, a gripping, exuberant, rollicking portrait of British monarchy and life within the court, with a cast of unforgettable heroes and villains drawn from 15th century England. A masterful new work from a major new author.
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Dystopian debut about a tech company that deletes unwanted memories, the consequences for those forced to contend with what they tried to forget, and the dissenting doctor who seeks to protect her patients from further harm.
\nWhat if you once had a painful memory removed? And what if you were offered the chance to get it back?
\nTell Me an Ending follows four characters grappling with the question of what to remember - and what they hoped to forget forever.
\nFinn, an Irish architect living in the Arizona desert, begins to suspect his charming wife of having an affair.
\nMei, a troubled grad school drop-out in Kuala Lumpur, wonders why she remembers a city she’s never visited.
\nWilliam, a former police inspector in England, struggles with PTSD, the breakdown of his marriage, and his own secret family history.
\nOscar, a handsome young man with almost no memories at all, travels the world in a constant state of fear.
\nInto these characters lives comes Noor, an emotionally closed-off psychologist at the memory removal clinic in London, who begins to suspect her glamorous boss Louise of serious wrongdoing.
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Former army sergeant Seneca Twist has difficulty adjusting to civilian life after losing her brother in Afghanistan. She picks up her backpack and begins walking. Her travels take her to a boys' ranch in Idaho where she meets residential psychologist Robyn Mason. Seneca and Robyn couldn't be more different, and they can't seem to agree on anything, but when Seneca decides to winter at the ranch, their shared values draw them together.
\nRobyn is determined to get to the bottom of the resignation and pain Seneca keeps locked inside, but the more Robyn learns and the closer they become, the more she can't resist falling for Seneca. The warmth of the local community, the surrogate family they have created, and their feelings for each other mean everything, but will it be enough for Seneca to call the ranch home?
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Park ranger Maxine Ward has a duty to protect the colony of people who live on the Georgia state park in-holding. They call themselves Tree City and treat Max as one of their own. The conservation work they do is important, and Max is more than happy to run interference between Tree City and the city of Blue Falls, Georgia.
\nHer commitment to protect Tree City is put to the test when social worker Skylar Austen takes a special interest in the commune. Her style of care isn’t exactly endearing herself to the community. Skylar, like Max, is a Blue Falls local and her reputation precedes her. Just not in the way she would like. Max remembers Skylar’s famed exploits from high school and is reluctant to have her anywhere near Tree City. It may have a little something to do with Max’s unresolved feelings for Skylar, but she’s never going to admit it.
\nAs their feelings for each other deepen and outside pressures arise to threaten Tree City, Max and Skylar must put their differences aside to protect the people they care for, including each other.
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Nothing is as it seems - and no one is telling the truth - in this thriller about a young lawyer forced to defend a man on trial for murder against the mentor who taught her everything: her husband.
\nWhen Leila Reynolds is handed her first murder case, she’s shocked by the victim: a well-known, well-respected judge, whose death sent shockwaves through the legal community. She’s also incredulous - she’s nowhere near experienced enough to handle such a high-profile assignment - but the defendant is insistent: he wants her, and only her, to represent him.
\nExcept he’s refusing to talk. And if that wasn’t complicated enough, Leila soon learns her opponent is the most ruthless prosecutor she’s ever known: her husband.
\nIt’s an impossible situation, yet Leila is determined to sway the jury to her side - until she’s blindsided once again by a shadowy figure from her past. Suddenly, Leila finds herself fighting not only for her client and marriage, but also to keep her own secrets buried. And if she has to rewrite the rules to win, so be it.
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Before Harry took on the neo-Nazi gangs of Oslo, before he met Rakel, before The Snowman tried to take everything he held dear, he went to Australia. Harry Hole is sent to Sydney to investigate the murder of Inger Holter, a young Norwegian girl, who was working in a bar. Initially sidelined as an outsider, Harry becomes central to the Australian police investigation when they start to notice a number of unsolved rape and murder cases around the country.
\nThe victims were usually young blondes. Inger had a number of admirers, each with his own share of secrets, but there is no obvious suspect, and the pattern of the other crimes seems impossible to crack. Then a circus performer is brutally murdered followed by yet another young woman. Harry is in a race against time to stop highly intelligent killer, who is bent on total destruction.
This is the story of Olav: an extremely talented \"fixer\" for one of Oslo's most powerful crime bosses. But Olav is also an unusually complicated fixer. He has a capacity for love that is as far-reaching as is his gift for murder. He is our straightforward, calm-in-the-face-of-crisis narrator with a storyteller's hypnotic knack for fantasy. He has an \"innate talent for subordination\" but running through his veins is a \"virus\" born of the power over life and death.
\nAnd while his latest job puts him at the pinnacle of his trade, it may be mutating into his greatest mistake . . .
When the Norwegian ambassador to Thailand is found dead in a Bangkok brothel, Inspector Harry Hole is dispatched from Oslo to help hush up the case.
But once he arrives Harry discovers that this case is about much more than one random murder. There is something else, something more pervasive, scrabbling around behind the scenes. Or, put another way, for every cockroach you see in your hotel room, there are hundreds behind the walls.
Surrounded by round-the-clock traffic noise, Harry wanders the streets of Bangkok lined with go-go bars, temples, opium dens, and tourist traps, trying to piece together the story of the ambassador’s death even though no one asked him to, and no one wants him to—not even Harry himself.
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A young woman is murdered in her Oslo flat. One finger has been severed from her left hand, and behind her eyelid is secreted a tiny red diamond in the shape of a five-pointed star - a pentagram, the devil's star.
Detective Harry Hole is assigned to the case with his long-time adversary Tom Waaler and initially wants no part in it. But Harry is already on notice to quit the force and is left with little alternative but to drag himself out of his alcoholic stupor and get to work.
\nA wave of similar murders is on the horizon. An emerging pattern suggests that Oslo has a serial killer on its hands, and the five-pointed devil's star is key to solving the riddle.
Harry has gone to Los Angeles to drink himself to death, in the wake of his life back in Oslo falling to pieces. He’s nearly managed to, but Harry has been helping an older film actress, Lucille, to get away from the grips of a drug cartel to which she owes one million dollars, and in return she’s given him shelter, company and a tailored suit.
\nIn Oslo, two girls have disappeared and been found murdered and one of the suspects is a well-known real estate magnate. Katrine Bratt wants to bring in the country’s foremost serial killings expert, but the idea of collaborating with Harry Hole is out of the question for the chiefs of police. The real-estate magnate under suspicion on the other hand wants to hire Harry as a private investigator to clear his name from the case. Harry declines, but that’s before the drug cartel takes Lucille hostage.
\nIf Harry achieves the task, the real estate magnate will award him a bonus enough to cover Lucille’s debt. He puts together a team consisting of a cocaine-dealing childhood friend, a corrupt police officer and a cancer-stricken psychologist. The drug cartel has given them ten days. The clock is ticking, and a blood moon has been forecast over Oslo.
Roy has never left the quiet mountain town he grew up in, unlike his little brother Carl who couldn’t wait to get out and escape his troubled past. Just like everyone else in town, Roy believed Carl was gone for good. But Carl has big plans for his hometown.
\nAnd when he returns with a mysterious new wife and a business opportunity that seems too good to be true, simmering tensions begin to surface and unexplained deaths in the town’s past come under new scrutiny. Soon powerful players set their sights on taking the brothers down by exposing their role in the town’s sordid history.
But Roy and Carl are survivors, and no strangers to violence. Roy has always protected his younger brother. As the body count rises, though, Roy’s loyalty to family is tested. And then Roy finds himself inextricably drawn to Carl’s wife, Shannon, an attraction that will have devastating consequences. Roy’s world is coming apart and soon there will be no turning back. He’ll be forced to choose between his own flesh and blood and a future he had never dared to believe possible.
Harry Hole is not in a good place. Rakel - the only woman he's ever loved - has ended it with him, permanently. He's been given a chance for a new start with the Oslo Police but it's in the cold case office, when what he really wants is to be investigating cases he suspects have ties to Svein Finne, the serial rapist and murderer who Harry helped put behind bars.
\nAnd now, Finne is free after a decade-plus in prison - free, and Harry is certain, unreformed and ready to take up where he left off. But things will get worse. When Harry wakes up the morning after a blackout, drunken night with blood that's clearly not his own on his hands, it's only the very beginning of what will be a waking nightmare the likes of which even he could never have imagined.
Two young women are found murdered in Oslo, both drowned in their own blood. Media coverage quickly reaches fever pitch: Could this be the work of a serial killer?
The crime scenes offer no coherent clues, the police investigation is stalled, and the one man who might be able to help doesn’t want to be found. Traumatized by his last case, Inspector Harry Hole has lost himself in the squalor of Hong Kong’s opium dens. Yet when he is compelled, at last, to return to Norway - his father is dying - Harry’s buried instincts begin to take over. After a female MP is discovered brutally murdered, nothing can keep him from the investigation.
There is little to go on: a piece of rope, a scrap of wool, a bit of gravel, an unexpected connection between the victims. And Harry will soon come to understand that he is dealing with a psychopath for whom “insanity is a vital retreat,” someone who will put him to the test - in both his professional and personal lives - as never before.
Jon is on the run. He has betrayed Oslo's biggest crime lord: The Fisherman.
\nFleeing to an isolated corner of Norway, to a mountain town so far north that the sun never sets, Jon hopes to find sanctuary amongst a local religious sect.
\nHiding out in a shepherd's cabin in the wilderness, all that stands between him and his fate are Lea, a bereaved mother and her young son, Knut.
\nBut while Lea provides him with a rifle and Knut brings essential supplies, the midnight sun is slowly driving Jon to insanity.
\nAnd then he discovers that The Fisherman's men are getting closer...
When a bank teller is shot during a holdup at the start of Norwegian bestseller Nesbø's beautifully executed heist drama, Oslo Insp. Harry Hole investigates, along with Beate Lønn, a young detective with the ability to remember every face she's ever seen. Meanwhile, Harry receives a call from Anna Bethsen, a woman he hasn't seen in years.
\nAfter he meets Anna, recovering alcoholic Harry awakens the next morning with a hangover and the news that Anna is dead, apparently by her own hand. While Harry quietly looks into Anna's death, he and Beate uncover ties in their bank robbery case to one of Norway's most notorious bank robbers, who's currently in prison. The deeper Harry digs, the clearer it becomes that Anna's death is linked to the robbery.
In the wake of his parents' tragic deaths in a house fire, fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote, insular town of Ballantyne. Richard quickly earns a reputation as an outcast, and when a classmate named Tom goes missing, everyone suspects the new, angry boy is responsible for his disappearance.
\nNo one believes him when he says the telephone booth out by the edge of the woods sucked Tom into the receiver like something out of a horror movie. No one, that is, except Karen, a beguiling fellow outsider who encourages Richard to pursue clues the police refuse to investigate. He traces the number that Tom prank called from the phone booth to an abandoned house in the Black Mirror Wood. There he catches a glimpse of a terrifying face in the window. And then the voices begin to whisper in his ear . . .
\n“You know who I am. She's going to burn. The one you love is going to burn. There's not a thing you can do about it.”
\nWhen another classmate disappears, Richard must find a way to prove his innocence - and preserve his sanity - as he grapples with the dark magic that is possessing Ballantyne and pursuing his destruction.
\nThen again, Richard may not be the most reliable narrator of his own story . . .
Following from Jo Nesbø's electrifying international best-sellers The Snowman and The Leopard, now comes Phantom, which plunges the brilliant, deeply troubled, now former police officer Harry Hole into a full-tilt investigation on which his own tenuous future will come to depend.
\nWhen Harry left Oslo again for Hong Kong - fleeing the traumas of life as a cop - he thought he was there for good. But then the unthinkable happened. The son of the woman he loved, lost, and still loves is arrested for murder: Oleg, the boy Harry helped raise but couldn't help deserting when he fled. Harry has come back to prove that Oleg is not a killer.
\nBarred from rejoining the police force, he sets out on a solitary, increasingly dangerous investigation that takes him deep into the world of the most virulent drug to ever hit the streets of Oslo (and the careers of some of the city's highest officials), and into the maze of his own past, where he will find the wrenching truth that finally matters to Oleg, and to himself.
The police urgently need Harry Hole . . . A killer is stalking Oslo's streets. Police officers are being slain at the scenes of crimes they once investigated but failed to solve. The murders are brutal, the media reaction hysterical.
\nBut this time, Harry can't help . . . For years, detective Harry Hole has been at the center of every major criminal investigation in Oslo. His dedication to his job and his brilliant insights have saved the lives of countless people. But now, with those he loves most facing terrible danger, Harry is not in a position to protect anyone.
\nLeast of all himself . . .
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1944. In the trenches outside Leningrad on the Eastern Front a unit of Norwegian soldiers in German uniforms fight for the cause they believe in: a free Norway. Coming from all social strata, they do not share politics or a motivation for being there. The boldest of them, Daniel Gudeson, is shot and his body is laid in a mass grave to be burned.
\nSome time later, however, in a military hospital in Vienna, a wounded soldier turns up saying that he is Daniel Gudeson. And he and a nurse, Helene, fall in love. When the soldier is called up by the Wehrmacht to be sent to certain death on the southern section of the Eastern Front, the two of them plan their escape.
\n1999. An old man goes out into the streets of Oslo after receiving his death sentence from the doctor. He thinks about the war. He knows that he has one final mission to undertake before dying.
\nAfter accidentally shooting an American secret service agent during President Clinton’s visit to Norway, Harry Hole has, to his own bemusement, been moved to POT, the secret service unit, and promoted to the rank of inspector. And packed off to an office to sift through a report on a low-priority case: a suspected gang of arms dealers with possible links to nests of old and new Nazis. An ex-Eastern Front soldier is found dead in Oslo and Harry gradually uncovers leads not only to the present time but to the past and the war and - most scary of all - the near future.
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A mixture of religion, urban misery, modern European history and grisly horror story, The Redeemer takes the crime writing of Jo Nesbø to yet another level, establishing him firmly as one of the international top names in crime fiction.
\nThrough snow-swept, Christmas-illuminated Oslo town, Inspector Harry Hole chases a faceless contract killer from the former Yugoslavia among the homeless junkies, perverts and Salvationists, eagerly waiting for a new saviour to deliver them from misery – whether he brings new life or immediate death.
A woman is found murdered after an internet date. The marks left on her body show the police that they are dealing with a particularly vicious killer. Under pressure from the media to find the murderer, the force know there’s only one man for the job.
\nBut Harry Hole is reluctant to return to the place that almost took everything from him. Until he starts to suspect a connection between this killing and his one failed case. When another victim is found, Harry realises he will need to put everything on the line if he’s to finally catch the one who got away.
When a small-time crook is shot down in the streets of Minneapolis, all signs point to a lone wolf, a sniper who has vanished into thin air.
\nWhen the shooter strikes again, it’s maverick detective Bob Oz they call in to crack the case. They don’t think this victim will be the last.
\nAs the body count rises, Oz suspects something even more sinister is at play. And the closer he gets to the truth, the more disturbed he becomes. Because this serial killer reminds him of someone himself.
Lizzie and Bex were best friends in college. After graduation, Bex vanished, leaving Lizzie confused and devastated.
\nFifteen years later, Bex is now Rebecca Sommers, a “traditional” Instagram influencer with millions of followers who salivate over her perfect life on her ranch with her five children and handsome husband, Gray. Lizzie is a struggling magazine writer, watching reels while her young children demand her attention. One night out of the blue, Bex calls Lizzie with a career-making proposition - an exclusive interview with her about her multimillion-dollar business venture and an invitation to MomBomb, the high-profile influencing conference.
\nAt the conference, Bex goes missing and Gray is found brutally murdered on their ranch. Lizzie finds herself plunged into the dark side of the cutthroat world of social media that includes jealousy, sordid affairs, swingers, and backstabbing. She must learn who her old friend has become and who she has double-crossed to try to find her, clear her name, and maybe even save her life.
\nPiazza’s master storytelling and razor-sharp insight into the world of social media brings us a pulpy, juicy, and cleverly plotted read that will have you guessing all the way through and leave you gasping for more.
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Sara Marsala barely knows who she is anymore after the failure of her business and marriage. On top of that, her beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away, leaving Sara bereft with grief. But Aunt Rosie's death also opens an escape from her life and a window into the past by way of a plane ticket to Sicily, a deed to a possibly valuable plot of land, and a bombshell family secret. Rosie believes Sara's great-grandmother Serafina, the family matriarch who was left behind while her husband worked in America, didn’t die of illness as family lore has it . . . she was murdered.
\nThus begins a twist-filled adventure that takes Sara all over the picturesque Italian countryside as she races to solve a mystery and prove her birthright. Flashing back to the past, we meet Serafina, a feisty and headstrong young woman in the early 1900s thrust into motherhood in her teens, who fought for a better life not just for herself but for all the women of her small village. Unsurprisingly it isn’t long before a woman challenging the status quo finds herself in danger.
\nAs Sara discovers more about Serafina she also realizes she is coming head-to-head with the same menacing forces that took down her great-grandmother. At once an immersive multigenerational mystery and an ode to the undaunted heroism of everyday women, The Sicilian Inheritance is an atmospheric, page-turning delight.
Jo Walton and Ada Palmer are two of the most innovative and insightful writers to emerge in the SF and fantasy genres in this century. As writers of fiction they’ve each won multiple awards. As commenters on SF and fantasy in print and in visual media, they’ve both sparked new conversations that expanded our imaginations and understanding of how SF and fantasy work, and what more it could be doing.
\nNow, in Trace Elements, Walton and Palmer have come together to write a book-length and supremely entertaining look at modern science fiction and fantasy, at how our genre is written and how it is read, that will join nonfiction works like Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Language of the Night, Samuel R. Delany’s The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, and Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud on the short shelf of titles essential to all readers of our genre.
\nSubjects covered include the nature of genre itself, the history of SF publishing, the implicit contract between author and reader, the ways SF and fantasy disguise themselves as one another, what SF&F can learn from outside influences ranging from Shakespeare to Diderot to anime, the role of complicity in reading, the need to expand our “sphere of empathy”, and finally the need for optimism, the importance of rejecting “purity” culture, and the fact that the human story for centuries to come will be composed of hard work.
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When celebrated writer Joan Didion's life was altered forever, she wrote a new chapter. In this adaptation of her iconic memoir, Didion transforms the story of the shattering loss of her husband and their daughter into a one-woman play performed by Tony Award winner Vanessa Redgrave, who originated the role on Broadway in 2007.
\nWritten with Didion's trademark style of cool observation, The Year of Magical Thinking weaves back and forth in time, taking listeners on a poignant journey through heartbreak, grief, and resilience. It's an unforgettable theatrical experience that resonates with anyone who has ever loved.
They were the cool girls. Two years older, oozing glamour. She could prove herself worthy of their friendship. She could do the dare.
\nTwenty-five years later, Lucy has a perfect life. She is still friends with the cool girls. All except one. Maddie. The one they never saw again after the dare. They don't talk about her. They don’t think about her. It is as though she never existed until . . .
\nLucy gets a text from an unknown number. Why didn't you tell them where I was?
\nThe past hurtles into the present and secrets push their way to the surface.
\nWho is the message from? Is Maddie back? Or is someone else set on exposing the truth and seeking revenge?
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An award-winning sociologist unearths how a group of ordinary people debilitated by excruciating pain developed their own medicine from home-grown psilocybin mushrooms - crafting near-clinical grade dosing protocols - and fought for recognition in a broken medical system.
\nCluster headache, a diagnosis sometimes referred to as a ‘suicide headache,’ is widely considered the most severe pain disorder that humans experience. There is no cure, and little funding available for research into developing treatments.
\nWhen Joanna Kempner met Bob Wold in 2012, she was introduced to a world beyond most people's comprehension - a clandestine network determined to find relief using magic mushrooms. These ‘Clusterbusters,’ a group united only by the internet and a desire to survive, decided to do the research that medicine left unfinished. They produced their own psychedelic treatment protocols and managed to get academics at Harvard and Yale to test their results.
\nAlong the way, Kempner explores not only the fascinating history and exploding popularity of psychedelic science, but also a regulatory system so repressive that the sick are forced to find their own homegrown remedies, and corporate America and university professors stand to profit from their transgressions.
\nFrom the windswept shores of the North Sea through the verdant jungle of Peruvian Amazon to a kitschy underground palace built in a missile silo in Kansas, Psychedelic Outlaws chronicles the rise of psychedelic medicine amid a healthcare system in turmoil. Kempner’s gripping tale of community and resilience brings readers on a eye-opening journey through the politics of pain, through the stories of people desperate enough to defy the law for a moment of relief.
\nMichael Pollan’s bestseller How to Change Your Mind introduced the new science of psychedelic medicine for mental health and addiction to mainstream readers. This book follows a group of patients - most of whom don’t have any medical training - who rely on “magic mushrooms” as a last resort to treat severe pain.
\nIt explores not only the fascinating history and exploding popularity of mushroom science, but also proves that the United States has set up a regulatory and legal system so repressive that our most innovative therapies for pain and medicine are being developed underground by sick people forced to break the law just to find relief, and how, in turn, corporate America, and sometimes devious academics, stand to profit from their work and self-advocacy.
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Reeling from the dual deaths of her estranged father and ex-fiancé, Genevieve Tompkins has dropped out of her PhD program in New York City and is looking for a chance to start over in Wilton Springs, a faded Victorian spa town in upstate New York. Utilizing her background as an archivist, she is hired to catalogue the papers of the prominent Wilton family, who trace their lineage back to the founders of the town. But as she digs into their records, Genevieve discovers that the family's pharmaceutical business and their personal lives have been fraught with a history of tragedy. She also uncovers a series of disturbing disappearances and suspicious deaths among the women of the town.
\nThree centuries earlier, Wilton Springs was the site of a brutal witch trial - a fact which someone has gone to extreme lengths to erase from historical record. As Genevieve explores the connections between the modern disappearances and the town's ugly past, she becomes entangled in a web of conspiracy, where the line between superstition and reality begins to blur, and she fears she may become the next woman to go missing from Wilton Springs . . .
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Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its one-thousand-year history, Oxford University officially admits female students. Burning with dreams of equality, four young women move into neighboring rooms in Corridor 8. Beatrice, Dora, Marianne, and Otto - collectively known as The Eights - come from all walks of life, each driven by their own motives, each holding tight to their secrets, and are thrown into an unlikely, unshakable friendship.
\nDora was never meant to go to university, but, after losing both her brother and her fiancé on the battlefield, has arrived in their place. Politically-minded Beatrice, daughter of a famous suffragette, sees Oxford as a chance to make her own way - and some friends her own age. Otto was a nurse during the war but is excited to return to her socialite lifestyle in Oxford where she hopes to find distraction from the memories that haunt her. And finally Marianne, the quiet, clever daughter of a village pastor, who has a shocking secret she must hide from everyone, even her new friends, if she is to succeed.
\nAmong the historic spires, and in the long shadow of the Great War, the four women must navigate and support one another in a turbulent world in which misogyny is rife, influenza is still a threat, and the ghosts of the Great War don’t always remain dead.
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Is there such a thing as a good sociopath? Newly minted private investigator Annalisa Vega is skeptical, but her first client, Mara Delaney, insists that some sociopaths are beneficial to society. Mara has even written a book titled The Good Sociopath centered around Chicago neurosurgeon Craig Canning. Dr. Canning has saved hundreds of lives so it shouldn’t matter that he doesn’t actually care about his patients, should it?
\nBut Mara has a more urgent problem, she is now concerned that Canning might not be such a good sociopath after all. A young woman in Canning’s apartment building mysteriously plunged to her death from a balcony, and Mara fears Canning could be responsible. She needs to uncover the truth about Canning before the book comes out, so Annalisa has little time to search for answers.
\nAnnalisa quickly discovers that more than one person wanted the young woman dead. Canning insists he didn’t do it. His charming, unflappable demeanor suggests that either he’s telling the truth or Mara is right and he’s cold-hearted to the core. But the cops believe the girl’s death was an accident.
\nThe more Annalisa probes, the more she becomes convinced it’s a fiendishly clever murder, one only a brilliant psychopath could pull off. She draws deeper into a battle of wits with Canning, so determined to prove his guilt that she forgets Mara’s most important warning - that sociopaths only care about winning at all costs. When Annalisa finally peels back the layers of deceit to reveal the horrifying truth of the girl’s death, she may be too late to save herself.
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For Chicago police detective Annalisa Vega, Sam Tran’s death presents an ominous puzzle. The ex-cop turned PI is found hanging from a cemetery tree with a message across his chest that suggests someone holds a murderous grudge against the police. Annalisa suspects the real answer lies in one of Tran’s open cases. She believes he stumbled on a dark secret during his investigations and someone killed him to keep him quiet. Her own family harbors plenty of secrets, something Annalisa is reminded of when her brother turns out to be one of Sam’s last clients.
\nVinny Vega hired Tran to find a dangerous stalker on his daughter’s college campus. Now Sam is dead and the stalker remains at large, with Annalisa’s niece Quinn firmly in his sights.
\nTo protect Quinn, Annalisa begins tracing Sam’s steps back through his open cases, which include not only the campus stalker but also a brutal double homicide from twenty years ago. Did Sam finally find the killer? Did he uncover the stalker’s identity? Annalisa must figure out which secret got Sam killed, and fast, or someone else will die. Every move she makes brings her closer to the truth of Sam’s death, and closer to a murderer who will stop at nothing to remain free.
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The Lovelorn Killer murdered seven women, ritually binding them and leaving them for dead before penning them gruesome love letters in the local papers. Then he disappeared, and after twenty years with no trace of him, many believe that he's gone for good.
\nNot Grace Harper. A grocery store manager by day, at night Grace uses her snooping skills as part of an amateur sleuth group. She believes the Lovelorn Killer is still living in the same neighborhoods that he hunted in, and if she can figure out how he selected his victims, she will have the key to his identity.
\nDetective Annalisa Vega lost someone she loved to the killer. Now she's at a murder scene with the worst kind of déjà vu: Grace Harper lies bound and dead on the floor, surrounded by clues to the biggest murder case that Chicago homicide never solved. Annalisa has the chance to make it right and to heal her family, but first, she has to figure out what Grace knew - how to see a killer who may be standing right in front of you.
\nThis means tracing his steps back to her childhood, peering into dark corners she hadn't acknowledged before, and learning that despite everything the killer took, she has still so much more to lose.
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Detective Annalisa Vega hasn’t forgiven her brother for his role in a murder, and he hasn’t forgiven her for turning him in, so she’s surprised when he asks her to visit him in prison. Turns out, he has a possible case for her: one of his fellow inmates, Joe Green, may be innocent of the murder that landed him behind bars.
\nJoe is doing hard time for killing his ex-wife’s lawyer, but an anonymous letter sent to the prison warns that the eyewitness in Joe’s trial made up her story. With her private investigation business foundering, Annalisa is desperate enough to start poking around into Joe’s meager case. She immediately finds two problems: One, the eyewitness definitely lied about what she saw the night of the murder, and two, Annalisa’s husband Nick was the cop who arrested Joe in the first place.
\nFaced with correcting Nick’s mistakes, Annalisa digs deeper into Joe’s past and discovers he has two ex-wives with nothing good to say about him. The women may have orchestrated an elaborate frame to put Joe in prison, but one wife has completely disappeared since then. Did Joe somehow kill her? Or is he the real victim? Annalisa’s search for the truth tests the bounds of her marriage, her family, and her own sense of justice.
\nMeanwhile, a devious killer keeps sending men to a watery death in the vastness of Lake Michigan. If Annalisa doesn’t figure out the truth about Joe soon, her husband might be next.
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Chicago detective Annalisa Vega shattered her life, personally and professionally, when she turned in her ex-cop father for his role in a murder. Her family can’t forgive her. Her fellow officers no longer trust her. So when detective Leo Hammond turns up dead in a bizarre murder, Annalisa thinks she has nothing to lose by investigating whatever secrets he hid behind the thin blue line.
\nAnnalisa quickly zeroes in on someone who had good reason to want Hammond dead: a wealthy, fast-talking car salesman who’d gotten away with murder once and wasn’t about to let Hammond take a second shot. Moe Bocks remains the number one suspect in his girlfriend’s brutal unsolved death, and now he’s got a new woman in his sights - Annalisa’s best friend.
\nAnnalisa is desperate to protect her friend and force Bocks to pay, either for Hammond’s death or his earlier crime. But when no one else believes the connection, she takes increasingly risky chances to reveal the truth. Because both Hammond and Bocks had secrets to die for, and if she doesn’t untangle them soon, Annalisa will be next.
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Things haven't been going well for Beth. Her husband has left her for one of her friends. Her fellow school mums judge her for swearing too much and not shifting the baby weight. And now she's stuck in A&E after her son fell off the climbing wall on the first day of school.
\nIn fact, things haven't been going well for Beth since Charlotte died - her best friend, a favourite at the school pick-ups and the only person to ever run an interesting PTA meeting. But after being hit by a car while on an ill-timed evening jog, Charlotte is no longer there to help Beth pick up the pieces of her increasingly difficult life.
\nThat is, until Beth discovers that Charlotte left her toddler alone in the house during that fatal run. The Charlotte she knew would never do something so irresponsible, and suddenly Beth is questioning whether Charlotte's death was really an accident.
\nWith a newfound purpose and a glass of wine in hand, it's time for Beth to uncover what really happened to her best friend. And what better place to start than the circle of chatty school mums, who can't be as perfect as they pretend. But which of them is hiding something? Beth's determined to find out . . . once she's put the kids to bed, of course.
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A comic thriller following the trials and tribulations of Claire, a part-time serial killer, who is keen to keep her favorite hobby a secret - despite the efforts of a determined blackmailer.
\nThe night after her father's funeral, Claire meets Lucas in a bar. Lucas doesn't know it, but it's not a chance meeting. One thoughtless mistyped email has put him in the crosshairs of an extremely put-out serial killer.
\nBut before they make eye contact, before Claire lets him buy her a drink - even before she takes him home and carves him up into little pieces - something about that night is very wrong. Because someone is watching Claire. Someone who is about to discover her murderous little hobby.
\nThe thing is, it's not sensible to tangle with a part-time serial killer, even one who is distracted by attending a weekly bereavement support group and trying to get her art career off the ground. Will Claire finish off her blackmailer before her pursuer reveals all? Let the games begin . . .
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An earthly nourris sits and sings
And aye she sings, \"Ba lilly wean,
Little ken I my bairn's father,
Far less the land that he staps in.
(Child Ballad, no. 113)
So begins a stunning tale of love, loss and revenge, against a powerful backdrop of adventure on the high seas, and drama on the land. The Blue Salt Road balances passion and loss, love and violence and draws on nature and folklore to weave a stunning modern mythology around a nameless, wild young man.
Passion drew him to a new world, and trickery has kept him there - without his memories, separated from his own people. But as he finds his way in this dangerous new way of life, so he learns that his notions of home, and your people, might not be as fixed as he believed.
The beauty of stories; you never know where they will take you. Full of dreams and nightmares, Honeycomb is an entrancing mosaic novel of original fairy tales from bestselling author Joanne M. Harris and legendary artist Charles Vess in a collaboration that’s been years in the making.
\nThe toymaker who wants to create the perfect wife; the princess whose heart is won by words, not actions; the tiny dog whose confidence far outweighs his size; and the sinister Lacewing King who rules over the Silken Folk. These are just a few of the weird and wonderful creatures who populate Joanne Harris’s first collection of fairy tales.
\nDark, gripping, and brilliantly imaginative, these magical tales will soon have you in their thrall in a uniquely illustrative edition.
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Deep in the heart of London, a photographer walks the streets and captures whatever catches his an old man drinking coffee; a beautiful woman sipping champagne in St. Pancras station; a cloud of moths, disturbed, taking flight across the sky.
\nBut with each photo, he captures something unseen by the eye, and as each negative develops - revealing a person he hadn’t met, a danger he hadn’t noticed, and a world he hadn’t seen - he is drawn further into a hidden war. One which he has been drawn into many times before . . . and every time, had his memories of the truth, and of the woman he loves, stolen from him.
\nAs Tom pieces fragments of the truth together, he realises he must weave through the war and fight his own both for the woman he loves, and for himself.
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When you can find me an acre of land,
Every sage grows merry in time,
Between the ocean and the sand
Then will you be united again.
(Inspired by The Child Ballads 2 & 19)
So begins a beautiful and tragic quest as a heartbroken mother sets out to save her lost daughter, through the realms of the real, of dream, and even into the underworld itself.
But determination alone is not enough. For to save something precious, she must give up something precious, be it a song, a memory, or her freedom itself . . .
Each night, Winter Moon counts her earnings dreaming of escape. Once she’s saved enough, she and her grandmother can finally take flight and disappear. But when her spiteful mother steals her money and blows through it all in one day, Winter is forced to turn to her estranged father, who recently reappeared in her life after being absent for more than a decade. They agree upon a simple contract: she spends time with him in exchange for payment.
\nIt’s not easy reconciling the past and the present, though, and when she’s struck with a sudden loss, Winter flounders in grief and rage. The only person offering a hand is Joon, the new boy at school who sees Winter when no one else does.
\nWhen Winter discovers a secret her father has been keeping from her, things get even more complicated. As she navigates grief, first love, and forgiveness, Winter begins to forge connections, new and old, that make her question her future, her conviction to disappear, and what it really means to be family. Winter knows that broken things can never be fixed, but can they come back together in a different way?
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The warm fall day starts like any other at the Center - a women’s reproductive health services clinic - its staff offering care to anyone who passes through its doors. Then, in late morning, a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking all inside hostage.
After rushing to the scene, Hugh McElroy, a police hostage negotiator, sets up a perimeter and begins making a plan to communicate with the gunman. As his phone vibrates with incoming text messages he glances at it and, to his horror, finds out that his fifteen-year-old daughter, Wren, is inside the clinic.
But Wren is not alone. She will share the next and tensest few hours of her young life with a cast of unforgettable characters: A nurse who calms her own panic in order save the life of a wounded woman. A doctor who does his work not in spite of his faith but because of it, and who will find that faith tested as never before. A pro-life protester disguised as a patient, who now stands in the cross hairs of the same rage she herself has felt. A young woman who has come to terminate her pregnancy. And the disturbed individual himself, vowing to be heard.
Told in a daring and enthralling narrative structure that counts backward through the hours of the standoff, this is a story that traces its way back to what brought each of these very different individuals to the same place on this fateful day.
Jodi Picoult - one of the most fearless writers of our time - tackles a complicated issue in this gripping and nuanced novel. How do we balance the rights of pregnant women with the rights of the unborn they carry? What does it mean to be a good parent? A Spark of Light will inspire debate, conversation . . . and, hopefully, understanding.
Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym.
\nIn 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history, and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but like most women of her day, she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theatre productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage - by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.
\nTold in intertwining timelines, By Any Other Name, a sweeping tale of ambition, courage, and desire centers two women who are determined to create something beautiful despite the prejudices they face. Should a writer do whatever it takes to see her story live on . . . no matter the cost?
\nThis remarkable novel, rooted in primary historical sources, ensures the name Emilia Bassano will no longer be forgotten.
Every expectant parent will tell you that they don't want a perfect baby, just a healthy one. Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe would have asked for a healthy baby, too, if they'd been given the choice. Instead, their lives are made up of sleepless nights, mounting bills, the pitying stares of \"luckier\" parents, and maybe worst of all, the what-ifs.
\nWhat if their child had been born healthy? But it's all worth it because Willow is, well, funny as it seems, perfect. She's smart as a whip, on her way to being as pretty as her mother, kind, brave, and for a five-year-old an unexpectedly deep source of wisdom. Willow is Willow, in sickness and in health.
Everything changes, though, after a series of events forces Charlotte and her husband to confront the most serious what-ifs of all. What if Charlotte should have known earlier of Willow's illness? What if things could have been different? What if their beloved Willow had never been born? To do Willow justice, Charlotte must ask herself these questions and one more.
What constitutes a valuable life?
Paige has only a few vivid memories of her mother, who left when she was five. Now, having left her father behind in Chicago for dreams of art school and marriage to an ambitious young doctor, she finds herself with a child of her own.
\nBut her mother's absence, and shameful memories of her past, make her doubt both her maternal ability and her sense of self worth. Out of Paige's struggle to find wholeness, Jodi Picoult crafts an absorbing novel peopled by richly drawn characters and explores issues and emotions readers can relate to.
Jacob Hunt is a teenage boy with Asperger's syndrome. He's hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself well to others, and like many kids with AS, Jacob has a special focus on one subject - in his case, forensic analysis. He's always showing up at crime scenes, thanks to the police scanner he keeps in his room, and telling the cops what they need to do . . . and he's usually right. But then his town is rocked by a terrible murder and, for a change, the police come to Jacob with questions.
\nAll of the hallmark behaviors of Asperger's - not looking someone in the eye, stimulatory tics and twitches, flat affect - can look a lot like guilt to law enforcement personnel. Suddenly, Jacob and his family, who only want to fit in, feel the spotlight shining directly on them. For his mother, Emma, it's a brutal reminder of the intolerance and misunderstanding that always threaten her family. For his brother, Theo, it's another indication of why nothing is normal because of Jacob.
\nAnd over this small family the soul-searing question looms: Did Jacob commit murder?
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When the marriage of Mariah White and her cheating husband, Colin, turns ugly and disintegrates, their seven-year-old daughter, Faith, is there to witness it all.
\nIn the aftermath of a rapid divorce, Mariah falls into a deep depression - and suddenly Faith, a child with no religious background whatsoever, hears divine voices, starts reciting biblical passages, and develops stigmata.
\nAnd when the miraculous healings begin, mother and daughter are thrust into the volatile center of controversy and into the heat of a custody battle - trapped in a mad media circus that threatens what little stability the family has left.
In the wild, when a wolf knows its time is over, when it knows it is of no more use to its pack, it may sometimes choose to slip away. Dying apart from its family, it stays proud and true to its nature.
\nHumans aren’t so lucky.
\nLuke Warren has spent his life researching wolves. He has written about them, studied their habits intensively, and even lived with them for extended periods of time. In many ways, Luke understands wolf dynamics better than those of his own family. His wife, Georgie, has left him, finally giving up on their lonely marriage. His son, Edward, twenty-four, fled six years ago, leaving behind a shattered relationship with his father.
\nEdward understands that some things cannot be fixed, though memories of his domineering father still inflict pain. Then comes a frantic phone call: Luke has been gravely injured in a car accident with Edward’s younger sister, Cara.
\nSuddenly everything changes: Edward must return home to face the father he walked out on at age eighteen. He and Cara have to decide their father’s fate together. Though there’s no easy answer, questions abound: What secrets have Edward and his sister kept from each other? What hidden motives inform their need to let their father die . . . or to try to keep him alive? What would Luke himself want?
\nHow can any family member make such a decision in the face of guilt, pain, or both? And most importantly, to what extent have they all forgotten what a wolf never forgets: that each member of a pack needs the others, and that sometimes survival means sacrifice?
\nAnother tour de force by Picoult, Lone Wolf brilliantly describes the nature of a family: the love, protection, and strength it can offer - and the price we might have to pay for those gifts. What happens when the hope that should sustain a family is the very thing tearing it apart?
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Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life - living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising a beautiful son, Asher - was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in, and taking over her father's beekeeping business.
\nLily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start.
\nAnd for just a short while, these new beginnings are exactly what Olivia and Lily need. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can’t help but fall for him, too. With Ash, she feels happy for the first time. Yet at times, she wonders if she can she trust him completely . . .
\nThen one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent. But she would be lying if she didn’t acknowledge the flashes of his father’s temper in him, and as the case against him unfolds, she realises he’s hidden more than he’s shared with her.
\nMad Honey is a riveting novel of suspense, an unforgettable love story, and a moving and powerful exploration of the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become ourselves. Written with Jennifer Finney Boylan.
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Police chief of a small Massachusetts town, Cameron McDonald makes the toughest arrest of his life when his own cousin Jamie comes to him and confesses outright that he has killed his terminally ill wife out of mercy.
\nNow, a heated murder trial plunges the town into upheaval, and drives a wedge into a contented marriage: Cameron, aiding the prosecution in their case against Jamie, is suddenly at odds with his devoted wife, Allie - seduced by the idea of a man so in love with his wife that he'd grant all her wishes, even her wish to end her life.
\nAnd when an inexplicable attraction leads to a shocking betrayal, Allie faces the hardest questions of the heart: when does love cross the line of moral obligation? And what does it mean to truly love another?
\"A major decision about me is being made, and no one's bothered to ask the one person who most deserves it to speak her opinion.\"
\nThe only reason Anna was born was to donate her cord blood cells to her older sister. And though Anna is not sick, she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since she was a child. Anna was born for this purpose, her parents tell her, which is why they love her even more.
\nBut now that she has reached an age of physical awareness, she can't help but long for control over her own body and respite from the constant flow of her own blood seeping into her sister's veins. And so she makes a decision that for most would be too difficult to bear, at any time and at any age. She decides to sue her parents for the rights to her own body.
Sterling is an ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens - until the day its complacency is shattered by an act of violence. Josie Cormier, the daughter of the judge sitting on the case, should be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened before her very own eyes - or can she?
\nAs the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show - destroying the closest of friendships and families. Nineteen Minutes asks what it means to be different in our society, who has the right to judge someone else, and whether anyone is ever really who they seem to be.
*What does it mean to be a good mother?
\nHow far would you go in the name of love - and justice?*
\nIn the course of her everyday work, career-driven assistant district attorney Nina Frost prosecutes child molesters and works determinedly to ensure that a legal system with too many loopholes keeps these criminals behind bars.
\nBut when her own five-year-old son, Nathaniel, is traumatised by a sexual assault, Nina and her husband, Caleb, a quiet and methodical stone mason, are shattered, ripped apart by an enraging sense of helplessness in the face of a futile justice system that Nina knows all too well.
\nIn a heartbeat, Nina's absolute truths and convictions are turned upside down, and she hurtles toward a plan to exact her own justice for her son - no matter the consequence, whatever the sacrifice.
To the outside world, they seem to have it all. Cassie Barrett, a renowned anthropologist, and Alex Rivers, one of Hollywood's hottest actors, met on the set of a motion picture in Africa.
\nThey shared childhood tales, toasted the future, and declared their love in a fairy-tale wedding. But when they return to California, something alters the picture of their perfect marriage. A frightening pattern is taking shape - a cycle of hurt, denial, and promises, thinly veiled by glamour.
\nTorn between fear and something that resembles love, Cassie wrestles with questions she never dreamed she would face: How can she leave? Then again, how can she stay?
When Jack St. Bride arrives by chance in the sleepy New England town of Salem Falls, he decides to reinvent himself. Tall, blond, and handsome, Jack was once a beloved teacher and soccer coach at a girls' prep school - until a student's crush sparked a powder keg of accusation and robbed him of his reputation. Now, working for minimum wage washing dishes for Addie Peabody at the Do-Or-Diner, Jack buries his past, content to become the mysterious stranger who has appeared out of the blue.
\nWith ghosts of her own haunting her, Addie Peabody is as cautious around men as Jack St. Bride is around women. But as this unassuming stranger steps smoothly into the diner's daily routine, she finds him fitting just as comfortably inside her heart - and slowly, a gentle, healing love takes hold between them.
\nYet planting roots in Salem Falls may prove fateful for Jack. Amid the white-painted centuries-old churches, a quartet of bored, privileged teenage girls have formed a coven that is crossing the line between amusement and malicious intent. Quick to notice the attractive new employee at Addie's diner, the girls turn Jack's world upside down with a shattering allegation that causes history to repeat itself - and forces Jack to proclaim his innocence once again.
\nSuddenly nothing in Salem Falls is as it seems: a safe haven turns dangerous, an innocent girl meets evil face-to-face, a dishwasher with a Ph.D. is revealed to be an ex-con. As Jack's hidden past catches up with him, the seams of this tiny town begin to tear, and the emerging truth becomes a slippery concept written in shades of gray.
\nNow Addie, desperate for answers, must look into her heart - and into Jack's lies and shadowy secrets - for evidence that will condemn or redeem the man she has come to love.
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Do we love across time? Or in spite of it?
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A developer has slated an ancient Abenaki Indian burial ground for a strip mall, and now strange happenings have the inhabitants of tiny Comtosook, Vermont, talking of supernatural forces at work. Ross Wakeman is a ghost hunter who's never seen a ghost - all he's searching for is something to end the pain of losing his fiancee, Aimee, in a car accident. He tried suicide - any number of times.
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Now Ross lives only for a way to connect with Aimee from beyond. Searching the site for signs of the paranormal, Ross meets the mysterious Lia, who sparks him to life for the first time in years. But the discoveries that await Ross are beyond anything he could dream of in this world - or the next.
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Every life has a soundtrack. All you have to do is listen.
\nMusic has set the tone for most of Zoe Baxter’s life. There’s the melody that reminds her of the summer she spent rubbing baby oil on her stomach in pursuit of the perfect tan. A dance beat that makes her think of using a fake ID to slip into a nightclub. A dirge that marked the years she spent trying to get pregnant.
\nFor better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love. In the aftermath of a series of personal tragedies, Zoe throws herself into her career as a music therapist. When an unexpected friendship slowly blossoms into love, she makes plans for a new life, but to her shock and inevitable rage, some people - even those she loves and trusts most - don’t want that to happen.
\nSing You Home is about identity, love, marriage, and parenthood. It’s about people wanting to do the right thing for the greater good, even as they work to fulfill their own personal desires and dreams. And it’s about what happens when the outside world brutally calls into question the very thing closest to our hearts: family.
Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years' experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she's been reassigned to another patient.
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The parents are white supremacists and don't want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress . . .
Jane had always lived in somebody's shadow. Escaping a childhood of abuse by marrying oceanographer Oliver Jones, she finds herself taking second place to his increasingly successful career.
\nHowever, when her daughter Rebecca is similarly treated, Jane's dramatic stand takes them all by surprise. Jane and Rebecca set out to drive across America to the sanctuary of the New England apple orchard where Jane's brother Joley works.
\nOliver, used to tracking male humpback whales across vast oceans, now has the task of tracking his wife across a continent. To do so he must learn to see the world - and even himself - through her eyes...
Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein. She's on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement: prepare for a crash landing. She braces herself as thoughts flash through her mind. The shocking thing is, the thoughts are not of her husband, but a man she last saw fifteen years ago: Wyatt Armstrong.
Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, there is her husband, Brian, her beloved daughter, and her work as a death doula, where she helps ease the transition between life and death for patients in hospice.
But somewhere in Egypt is Wyatt Armstrong, who works as an archaeologist unearthing ancient burial sites, a job she once studied for, but was forced to abandon when life suddenly intervened. And now, when it seems that fate is offering her second chances, she is not as sure of the choice she once made.
After the crash landing, the airline ensures the survivors are seen by a doctor, then offers transportation wherever they want to go. The obvious option for Dawn is to continue down the path she is on and go home to her family. The other is to return to the archaeological site she left years before, reconnect with Wyatt and their unresolved history, and maybe even complete her research on The Book of Two Ways - the first known map of the afterlife.
As the story unfolds, Dawn's two possible futures unspool side by side, as do the secrets and doubts long buried beside them. Dawn must confront the questions she's never truly asked: What does a life well-lived look like? When we leave this earth, what do we leave behind? Do we make choices . . . or do our choices make us? And who would you be, if you hadn't turned out to be the person you are right now?
Jodi Picoult's extraordinary tale of love, friendship and family dares to explore the terrifying secrets that lurk in the hearts of the people we think we know inside and out.
\nEmily Gold and Chris Harte are soul mates. They have lived next door since they were born, sharing everything from chicken pox to Chinese food, and in high school their friendship blossoms into something more. Then a midnight call from the hospital changes everything: Emily is dead at seventeen from a gunshot wound to the head. There's a single unspent bullet in the gun that Chris took from his father's cabinet - a bullet Chris tells police he intended for himself. But a detective has doubts about the suicide pact theory and slowly Chris's and Emily's closely guarded secrets are revealed as the real truth about the lead up to that night unfolds.
\nThe Pact is a compelling story of friendship and family, betrayal and anguish, and the unforeseen consequences of love.
Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t.
\nEverything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. In this searingly honest novel, Jodi Picoult gracefully explores the lengths to which we will go in order to keep the past from dictating the future.
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Comic book artist Daniel Stone never for a moment suspected that the boy his fourteen-year-old daughter, Trixie, loved might inflict upon her the worst possible harm. Could the young man, who once made Trixie's face fill with light, have drugged and then raped her? She says that he did, and that is all it takes to make Daniel, a man with a past he has hidden even from his family, venture to hell and back in order to protect his daughter.
\nWith a story that transports readers from small-town New England to the wilds of the Alaskan bush, interspersed with parallel vision through the striking pen-and-ink pages of Daniel's graphic novel, Jodi Picoult probes the unbreakable bond between parent and child - and the dangerous repercussions of trying to play the hero.
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Delia Hopkins has led a charmed life. Raised in rural New Hampshire by her widowed father, Andrew, she now has a young daughter, a handsome fiance, and her own search-and-rescue bloodhound, which she uses to find missing persons.
\n\n
But as Delia plans her wedding, she is plagued by flashbacks of a life she can't recall. And then a policeman knocks on her door, revealing a secret that changes the world as she knows it.\" In shock and confusion, Delia must sift through the truth - even when it jeopardises her life and the lives of those she loves.
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What happens when you learn you are not who you thought you were? When the people you've loved and trusted suddenly change before your eyes? When getting your deepest wish means giving up what you've always taken for granted?
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Vanishing Acts explores how life - as we know it - might not turn out the way we imagined; how doing the right thing could mean doing the wrong thing; how the memory we thought had vanished could return as a threat.
Diana O’Toole is perfectly on track. She will be married by thirty, done having kids by thirty-five, and move out to the New York City suburbs, all while climbing the professional ladder in the cutthroat art auction world. She’s not engaged just yet, but she knows her boyfriend, Finn, a surgical resident, is about to propose on their romantic getaway to the Galápagos - days before her thirtieth birthday. Right on time.
\nBut then a virus that felt worlds away has appeared in the city, and on the eve of their departure, Finn breaks the news: It’s all hands on deck at the hospital. He has to stay behind. You should still go, he assures her, since it would be a shame for all of their nonrefundable trip to go to waste. And so, reluctantly, she goes.
\nAlmost immediately, Diana’s dream vacation goes awry. The whole island is now under quarantine, and she is stranded until the borders reopen. Completely isolated, she must venture beyond her comfort zone. Slowly, she carves out a connection with a local family when a teenager with a secret opens up to Diana, despite her father’s suspicion of outsiders.
\nDiana finds herself examining her relationships, her choices, and herself - and wondering if when she goes home, she too will have evolved into someone completely different.
When all is lost. When everything is ending. When there's no hope. When you can't win. That's when you attack.
\nPunching well above their weight, Max and Markham set out to bring down a sinister organisation whose roots might be firmly embedded in the future but whose focus is the past.
\nMax's focus is staying alive long enough to reunite with Leon and Matthew - alternately helped and hindered by St Mary's. Who aren't always the blessing they like to think they are.
\nAnd that's not all. Are the effects of constantly leaping around the timeline beginning to make themselves felt? Is Max going mad? Or are the ghosts of the past finally catching up with her?
St Mary’s is back and nothing is going right for Max. Once again, it’s just one damned thing after another.
The action jumps from an encounter with a mirror-stealing Isaac Newton to the bloody battlefield at Agincourt. Discover how a simple fact-finding assignment to witness the ancient and murderous cheese- rolling ceremony in Gloucester can result in CBC – concussion by cheese. The long awaited jump to Bronze Age Troy ends in personal catastrophe for Max and just when it seems things couldn’t get any worse – it’s back to the Cretaceous Period again to confront an old enemy who has nothing to lose.
So, make the tea, grab the chocolate biscuits, settle back and discover exactly why the entire history department has painted itself blue …
Max and the team visit Victorian London in search of Jack the Ripper, witness the murder of Archbishop Thomas A Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, and discover that dodos make a grockling noise when eating cucumber sandwiches. But they must also confront an enemy intent on destroying St Mary's - an enemy willing, if necessary, to destroy History itself to do it.
St Mary’s is back and is facing a battle to survive in this, the fourth instalment of the Chronicles.
Max and Leon are re-united and looking forward to a peaceful lifetime together. But, sadly, they don’t even make it to lunchtime.
The action races from 17th century London to Ancient Egypt and from Pompeii to 14th century Southwark as they’re pursued up and down the timeline, playing a perilous game of hide and seek until they’re finally forced to take refuge at St Mary’s – where new dangers await them.
As usual, there are plenty of moments of humour, but the final, desperate, Battle of St Mary’s is in grim earnest. Overwhelmed and outnumbered and with the building crashing down around them, how can St Mary’s possibly survive?
So, make sure the tea’s good and strong…
Patience is not a virtue known to the Time Police. And Commander Hay is facing the longest day of her life . . .
\nAfter their heroic efforts to safeguard the Acropolis and prevent the Paris Time-Stop, the Time Police have gone from zero to hero. Then one fateful mission to apprehend a minor criminal selling dodgy historical artefacts blows up in all their faces.
\nAn officer is attacked within TPHQ. A prisoner is murdered. And investigations are about to lead to the one place where no officer can legally tread.
\nWorst of all, trouble is brewing for Luke, Jane and Matthew as a shocking revelation threatens to tear Team Weird apart for good.
Behind the seemingly innocuous facade of St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research, a different kind of academic work is taking place. Just don’t call it “time travel” - these historians “investigate major historical events in contemporary time.” And they aren’t your harmless eccentrics either; a more accurate description, as they ricochet around history, might be unintentional disaster-magnets.
\nFrom Tudor England to the burning city of Persepolis, from a medieval St. Mary’s under siege to Victorian Rushford and a very nasty case of gaol fever, Max is struggling to keep her private life intact. There’s an ambitious programme hindered by giant teapots, plus Mrs. Midgely’s objection to dead hamsters in her airing cupboard, and Mr. Markham’s stubborn refusal to reveal his exact marital status.
\nAnd as if that’s not enough - the unfortunately not leprosy-laden Malcolm Halcombe is back. Admittedly, none of this is the most secure platform from which to launch an initiative to bring down the renegade Clive Ronan, but hey - what’s the worst that could happen?
\n
No one knows quite how, but Max and her baby are safe at last.
\nNo one knows quite how, but Peterson has persuaded Dr Foster to marry him.
\nNo one knows quite how, but Markham’s marital status remains unknown.
\nCertainly no one knows quite how a twelve-foot-high teapot could mysteriously materialise on the South Lawn, but it does.
\nBut they do know that Clive Ronan is back.
\nThey do know that he hates them and that this time he has good cause. And they do know that he will bring death and destruction in his wake.
\nFollow the disaster magnets of St Mary’s from the Egyptian desert to the Battle of Stamford Bridge, from Hastings to the Sack of Constantinople, and from tragedy to triumph and back again.
At long last it's all over. Job done. Max has her life back and everything is set for the traditional happy ending. Except, this is St Mary's and if something can go wrong it will.
\nDisaster is piled upon catastrophe. A new Head of Security. A new Director of St Mary's. Historians lost in time. And Max dishonourably discharged.
\nJobless and homeless, she receives an offer she cannot refuse and suddenly finds herself in another time and another place. Just a way to pass the weeks until she can reunite with Leon - or so she thinks. Because events are on the move and, as usual, St Mary's is at the centre of the storm.
Things are not going well for Elizabeth Cage.
It all started with the Christmas she can't quite remember.
There's blood on her doorstep every morning.
Something unpleasant is heading her way.
And then there's the sinister note threatening her life.
The one that seems to have been written by Elizabeth herself . . .
From the frying pan into the fire.
Betrayed, terrified and alone, Elizabeth Cage has fled her home. With no plan and no friends, she arrives at the picturesque village of Greyston and finds herself involved in an ages-old ceremony that will end in death.
And that might be the least of her problems - the Sorensen Institute would very much like to know her whereabouts. And Michael Jones is still out there, somewhere, she hopes. No matter how far and how fast she can run, trouble will always find Elizabeth Cage.
At some time in the future, the secret of time-travel became available to all. Chaos ensued as people sought to take advantage. Because there will always be nutters who want to change history . . .
\nAnd so the Time Police were formed. Internationally sanctioned thugs whose task it was to keep the timeline straight by any and all means possible. And they succeeded. The Time Wars are over. The Time Police won. But who will win the peace?
\nDoing Time follows three hapless new Time Police recruits - Jane, Luke and Matthew - as they try to navigate their first year on the beat. It's all going to be fine. Obviously.
The Time Police do not have problems. They have challenges.
Idiots who want to change history have always proved 'challenging'. But now temporal tourism is on the rise - highly illegal but highly lucrative. If you're prepared to take the risk.
To face down this threat the Time Police will despatch their toughest undercover agents. Which is fine until the unthinkable happens. Replacements are needed fast and who better than three young officers who don't even look the part?
Step forward Jane, Luke and Matthew. They may be about to graduate, but there's still plenty of time for everything to go wrong. Throw in the Versailles time slip, a covert jump to Ancient Egypt and a race against Time itself and you've got yourself an assignment worthy of Team Weird.
You can't change History. History doesn't like it. There are always consequences.
\nMax is no stranger to taking matters into her own hands. Especially when she's had A Brilliant Idea. Yes, it will mean breaking a few rules, but - as Max always says - they're not her rules.
\nSeconded to the Time Police to join in the hunt for the renegade Clive Ronan, Max is a long way from St Mary's. But life in the future does have its plus points - although not for long.
\nA problem with the Time Map reveals chaos in the 16th century and the wrong Tudor queen on the throne. History has gone rogue, there's a St Mary's team right in the firing line and Max must step up.
\nYou know what they say. Hope for the best. But plan for the worst.
Behind the seemingly innocuous façade of St Mary's, a different kind of historical research is taking place. They don't do 'time-travel' - they 'investigate major historical events in contemporary time'.
\nMaintaining the appearance of harmless eccentrics is not always within their power - especially given their propensity for causing loud explosions when things get too quiet. Meet the disaster-magnets of St Mary's Institute of Historical Research as they ricochet around History. Their aim is to observe and document - to try and find the answers to many of History's unanswered questions . . . and not to die in the process.
\nBut one wrong move and History will fight back - to the death. And, as they soon discover - it's not just History they're fighting. Follow the catastrophe curve from 11th-century London to World War I, and from the Cretaceous Period to the destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria. For wherever Historians go, chaos is sure to follow in their wake . . .
A ghost train, lost in Time, hurtles through the night . . .
\nTwo members of Team 236 are trapped on board. Not ideal under any circumstances but catastrophic when they're at each other's throats.
\nHot on their heels, but never quite able to catch up, can Lt Grint and his team overcome all obstacles in their way and save their fellow officers before the train disappears for good?
\nNor is TPHQ without its own problems as Matthew risks his sanity to track them through the Time Map. And a Mikey-experiment goes horribly wrong, exposing something better left concealed for all Time. What are the Time Police hiding?
\nAnd what will they do to keep their secret?
As Max would be the first to admit, she's never been one for rules. They tend to happen to other people. But this time she's gone too far and everyone is paying the price.
\nGrounded until the end of time, how can she ever put things right?
The identity of Elizabeth Cage has always been a mystery. Even she doesn't know who she is.
\nBut someone has suspicions. Someone has played the long game. Someone is about to find out.
\nAnd it's not Elizabeth herself.
St Mary’s has been rebuilt and it’s business as usual for the History department.
\nBut first, there’s the little matter of a seventeenth-century ghost that only Mr Markham can see.
\nNot to mention the minor inconvenience of being trapped in the Great Fire of London…and an unfortunately-timed comfort break at Thermopylae leaving the fate of the western world hanging in the balance.
The Time Police don't think twice about jumping to the past. But, this time, the past has come to them . . .
\nWhat connects a dead dinosaur in Wales with Romulus the founder of Rome, a plot to murder the Princes in the Tower and a shocking cover-up at TPHQ? It sounds like a joke. It isn't. The Time Police are determined to find the answers, helped - and occasionally hindered - by a certain wayward member of St Mary's and a recently reunited Team 236.
\nWill they succeed before Time runs out? And, as if all that wasn't enough, something somewhere in the Timeline is wrong. Very, very wrong. What is the Time Map trying to tell them?
You know what they say. Hope for the best. But plan for the worst.
\nCatch up with the tea-soaked disaster magnets in their latest madcap adventure as they hurtle their way around History.
Life is good for Team Weird, now heroes and fully fledged Time Police officers. Luke can't wait to bear arms. Jane has a date. And Matthew still hasn't had his hair cut.
\nBut Time waits for no one and neither do criminal masterminds. A major threat to the Timeline is looming, one far deadlier than mere idiots who want to change history. And when a familiar face becomes a Very Important Lead, will conflicting family loyalties spell trouble for Team Weird?
\nOne missing. One guilt-ridden. And one facing the end of their Time Police career before it's even begun. Not so good then, after all.
St Mary's is under investigation. Their director has been shot and Max is Number One Suspect. Can things get any worse? We all know the answer to that one.
\nMax needs to get away - fast - and a Brilliant Idea soon leads her to a full-scale uprising in twentieth-century China. If she can come by a historical treasure or two in the process, even better. That is, if she makes it out alive.
\nThen there's the small matter of Insight - the sinister organisation from the future hell bent on changing History for their own dark ends. Having successfully infiltrated their ranks, Max is perfectly placed to stop them. But she knows her cover will soon be blown - because it's already happened.
\nCan Max take down Insight before they come after her? The circle is closing, and only one can survive . . .
Max is back! New husband, new job, and a training regime that cannot fail - to go wrong!
\nTake one interim Chief Training Officer, add five recruits, mix with Joan of Arc, a baby mammoth, a duplicitous Father of History, a bombed rat, Stone Age hunters, a couple of passing policemen who should have better things to do, and Dick the Turd.
\nStir well, bring to the boil - and wait for the bang!
Elizabeth Cage is a child when she discovers that there are things in this world that only she can see. But she doesn’t want to see them and she definitely doesn’t want them to see her.
\nWhat is a curse to Elizabeth is a gift to others - a very valuable gift they want to control. When her husband dies, Elizabeth’s world descends into a nightmare. But as she tries to piece her life back together, she discovers that not everything is as it seems.
\nAlone in a strange and frightening world, she’s a vulnerable target to forces beyond her control. And she knows that she can’t trust anyone . . .
Nick and Anna work the same summer job at their local cinema. Anna is mysterious, beautiful, and from a very different world to Nick.
\nShe's grown up preparing for the end of days, in a tightly-controlled existence where Christmas, getting drunk and sex before marriage are all off-limits.
\nSo when Nick comes into her life, Anna falls passionately in love. Their shared world burns with poetry and music, cigarettes and conversation - hints of the people they hope to become.
\nBut Anna, on the cusp of adulthood, is afraid to give up everything she's ever believed in, and everyone she's ever loved. She walks away, and Nick doesn't stop her.
\nYears later, a tragedy draws Anna back into Nick's life.
\n
Isabelle Duprees is one of Forbes’ most powerful self-made women and has built a reputation as one of New York’s savviest investors and sharpest advisors. With a penthouse overlooking Central Park, an open invitation to any event she wishes to attend, and a weekly date with a man who won’t ask too much of her, Isabelle’s carefully curated life is exactly what she wants.
\nUntil it isn’t.
\nAfter her estranged sister shows up, circumstances - and too much champagne - have Isabelle Googling herself, only to discover three other women her age, with the same name, birthdate, and familiar features.
\nToo curious not to follow this rabbit hole, Isabelle and her sister embark on a road trip that leads them back to their hometown - and possibly each other. On the way, they seek out all the other Isabelle’s and find each one of them living a life that could have been hers if she’d made different choices.
\n
Superior Glokta has a problem. How do you defend a city surrounded by enemies and riddled with traitors, when your allies can by no means be trusted, and your predecessor vanished without a trace? It’s enough to make a torturer want to run - if he could even walk without a stick.
\nNorthmen have spilled over the border of Angland and are spreading fire and death across the frozen country. Crown Prince Ladisla is poised to drive them back and win undying glory. There is only one problem - he commands the worst-armed, worst-trained, worst-led army in the world.
\nAnd Bayaz, the First of the Magi, is leading a party of bold adventurers on a perilous mission through the ruins of the past. The most hated woman in the South, the most feared man in the North, and the most selfish boy in the Union make a strange alliance, but a deadly one. They might even stand a chance of saving mankind from the Eaters. If they didn’t hate each other quite so much.
\nAncient secrets will be uncovered. Bloody battles will be won and lost. Bitter enemies will be forgiven - but not before they are hanged.
\n
There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. While armies march, heads roll and cities burn, behind the scenes bankers and priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king.
War may be hell, but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso’s employ, it’s a damn good way of making money too. Her victories have made her popular - a shade too popular for her employers' taste. Betrayed, thrown down a mountain and left for dead, Murcatto’s reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance. Whatever the cost, seven men must die.
Her allies include Styria’s least reliable drunkard, Styria’s most treacherous poisoner, a mass-murderer obsessed with numbers and a Barbarian who just wants to do the right thing. Her enemies number the better half of the nation. And that’s all before the most dangerous man in the world is dispatched to hunt her down and finish the job Duke Orso started . . .
Logen Ninefingers, infamous barbarian, has finally run out of luck. Caught in one feud too many, he’s on the verge of becoming a dead barbarian – leaving nothing behind him but bad songs, dead friends, and a lot of happy enemies.
Nobleman, dashing officer, and paragon of selfishness, Captain Jezal dan Luthar has nothing more dangerous in mind than fleecing his friends at cards and dreaming of glory in the fencing circle. But war is brewing, and on the battlefields of the frozen North they fight by altogether bloodier rules.
Inquisitor Glokta, cripple turned torturer, would like nothing better than to see Jezal come home in a box. But then Glokta hates everyone: cutting treason out of the Union one confession at a time leaves little room for friendship. His latest trail of corpses may lead him right to the rotten heart of government, if he can stay alive long enough to follow it.
Enter the wizard, Bayaz. A bald old man with a terrible temper and a pathetic assistant, he could be the First of the Magi, he could be a spectacular fraud, but whatever he is, he's about to make the lives of Logen, Jezal, and Glotka a whole lot more difficult.
Murderous conspiracies rise to the surface, old scores are ready to be settled, and the line between hero and villain is sharp enough to draw blood.
Holy work sometimes requires unholy deeds.
\nBrother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is certain a commendation and grand holy assignment awaits him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters, and the mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends.
\nElves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before him, it's a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side.
Prince Yarvi has vowed to regain a throne he never wanted. But first he must survive cruelty, chains and the bitter waters of the Shattered Sea itself. And he must do it all with only one good hand. Born a weakling in the eyes of his father, Yarvi is alone in a world where a strong arm and a cold heart rule. He cannot grip a shield or swing an axe, so he must sharpen his mind to a deadly edge.
\nGathering a strange fellowship of the outcast and the lost, he finds they can do more to help him become the man he needs to be than any court of nobles could. But even with loyal friends at his side, Yarvi's path may end as it began - in twists, and traps and tragedy . . .
Princess Skara has seen all she loved made blood and ashes. She is left with only words. But the right words can be as deadly as any blade. She must conquer her fears and sharpen her wits to a lethal edge if she is to reclaim her birthright.
The deep-cunning Father Yarvi has walked a long road from crippled slave to king’s minister. He has made allies of old foes and stitched together an uneasy peace. But now the ruthless Grandmother Wexen has raised the greatest army since the elves made war on God, and put Bright Yilling at its head - a man who worships no god but Death.
Some - like Thorn Bathu and the sword-bearer Raith - are born to fight, perhaps to die. Others - like Brand the smith and Koll the wood-carver - would rather stand in the light. But when Mother War spreads her iron wings, she may cast the whole Shattered Sea into darkness.
Thorn is such a girl. Desperate to avenge her dead father, she lives to fight. But she has been named a murderer by the very man who trained her to kill.
She finds herself caught up in the schemes of Father Yarvi, Gettland’s deeply cunning minister. Crossing half the world to find allies against the ruthless High King, she learns harsh lessons of blood and deceit.
Beside her on the journey is Brand, a young warrior who hates to kill, a failure in his eyes and hers, but with one chance at redemption.
Will Thorn forever be a pawn in the hands of the powerful, or can she carve her own path?
They say Black Dow's killed more men than winter, and clawed his way to the throne of the North up a hill of skulls. The King of the Union, ever a jealous neighbor, is not about to stand smiling by while he claws his way any higher.
\nThe orders have been given and the armies are toiling through the northern mud. Thousands of men are converging on a forgotten ring of stones, on a worthless hill, in an unimportant valley, and they've brought a lot of sharpened metal with them.
\n
The end is coming.
\nLogen Ninefingers might only have one more fight in him - but it’s going to be a big one. Battle rages across the North, the King of the Northmen still stands firm, and there’s only one man who can stop him. His oldest friend, and his oldest enemy: it’s time for the Bloody-Nine to come home.
\nWith too many masters and too little time, Superior Glokta is fighting a different kind of war. A secret struggle in which no-one is safe, and no-one can be trusted. As his days with a sword are far behind him, it’s fortunate that he’s deadly with his remaining weapons: blackmail, threats, and torture.
\nJezal dan Luthar has decided that winning glory is too painful an undertaking, and turned his back on soldering for a simple life with the woman he loves. But love can be painful too - and glory has a nasty habit of creeping up on a man when he least expects it.
\nThe King of the Union lies on his deathbed, the peasants revolt, and the nobles scramble to steal his crown. No-one believes that the shadow of war is about to fall across the heart of the Union. Only the First of the Magi can save the world - but there are risks. There is no risk more terrible, than to break the First Law . . .
\n
On the blood-soaked borders of Angland, Leo dan Brock struggles to win fame on the battlefield, and defeat the marauding armies of Stour Nightfall. He hopes for help from the crown. But King Jezal's son, the feckless Prince Orso, is a man who specializes in disappointments.
Savine dan Glokta - socialite, investor, and daughter of the most feared man in the Union - plans to claw her way to the top of the slag-heap of society by any means necessary. But the slums boil over with a rage that all the money in the world cannot control.
The age of the machine dawns, but the age of magic refuses to die. With the help of the mad hillwoman Isern-i-Phail, Rikke struggles to control the blessing, or the curse, of the Long Eye. Glimpsing the future is one thing, but with the guiding hand of the First of the Magi still pulling the strings, changing it will be quite another . . .
They burned her home.
They stole her brother and sister.
But vengeance is following.
Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she'll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she's not a woman to flinch from what needs doing. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old step father Lamb for company. But it turns out Lamb's buried a bloody past of his own. And out in the lawless Far Country the past never stays buried.
\nTheir journey will take them across the barren plains to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feud, duel and massacre, high into the unmapped mountains to a reckoning with the Ghosts. Even worse, it will force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, and his feckless lawyer Temple, two men no one should ever have to trust . . .
\n
Savine dan Glokta, once Adua’s most powerful investor, finds her judgement, fortune and reputation in tatters. But she still has all her ambitions, and no scruple will be permitted to stand in her way.
For heroes like Leo dan Brock and Stour Nightfall, only happy with swords drawn, peace is an ordeal to end as soon as possible. But grievances must be nursed, power seized and allies gathered first, while Rikke must master the power of the Long Eye . . . before it kills her.
The Breakers still lurk in the shadows, plotting to free the common man from his shackles, while noblemen bicker for their own advantage. Orso struggles to find a safe path through the maze of knives that is politics, only for his enemies, and his debts, to multiply.
The old ways are swept aside, and the old leaders with them, but those who would seize the reins of power will find no alliance, no friendship, and no peace, lasts forever.
The Great Change is upon us . . .
\nSome say that to change the world you must first burn it down. Now that belief will be tested in the crucible of revolution: the Breakers and Burners have seized the levers of power, the smoke of riots has replaced the smog of industry, and all must submit to the wisdom of crowds.
\nWith nothing left to lose, Citizen Brock is determined to become a new hero for the new age, while Citizeness Savine must turn her talents from profit to survival before she can claw her way to redemption. Orso will find that when the world is turned upside down, no one is lower than a monarch. And in the bloody North, Rikke and her fragile Protectorate are running out of allies . . . while Black Calder gathers his forces and plots his vengeance.
\nThe banks have fallen, the sun of the Union has been torn down, and in the darkness behind the scenes, the threads of the Weaver’s ruthless plan are slowly being drawn together . . .
\n
Have you ever locked eyes with a stranger and felt that you know them?
\nWhen perfect strangers Mika and Jem first meet by chance, they recognise each other - not from life, but from a shared dream. Both are wary of forming new connections and have their demons to Jem is in recovery from a near-fatal accident, and Mika is undocumented and under scrutiny from the authorities.
\nAs their dreams - or are they memories? - grow in intensity, they are forced to consider the possibility that they have known and loved each other over and over, across the centuries. Will they find happiness together this time?
\n\n
Moving from present-day London through eras and across continents, Life Number Nine is an epic literary achievement and a groundbreaking love story.
This is the story of Ella.
And Robert.
And of all the things they should have said, but never did.
Through seven key moments and seven key people their journey intertwines.
From the streets of Glasgow during WW2 to the sex, drugs and rock n’ roll of London in the 60s and beyond, this is a story of love and near misses. Of those who come in to our lives and leave it too soon. And of those who stay with you forever…
Joe Hill, \"the best horror writer of our generation\" (Michael Koryta), returns with a brand new short story.
A balmy summer night in 1994. Four teenagers out for an evening of fun on the boardwalk take a ride on the \"Wild Wheel\" – an antique carousel with a shadowy past – and learn too late that decisions made in an instant can have deadly consequences. What begins as a night of innocent end-of-summer revelry, young love, and (a few too many) beers among friends soon descends into chaos, as the ancient carousel's parade of beasts comes chillingly to life to deliver the ultimate judgment for their misdeeds.
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "Horror" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Joe Hill - Dark Carousel.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856855512.2703, "size": 661265, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:21:49.575Z" }, "Joe Hill - Heart-Shaped Box": { "title": "Heart-Shaped Box", "author": "Joe Hill", "description": "Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals . . . a used hangman's noose . . . a snuff film.
\nAn aging death-metal rock god, his taste for the unnatural is as widely known to his legions of fans as the notorious excesses of his youth. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, an item for sale on the Internet, a thing so terribly strange, Jude can't help but reach for his wallet. I will \"sell\" my stepfather's ghost to the highest bidder. . . .
\nFor a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. He isn't afraid. He has spent a lifetime coping with ghosts - of an abusive father, of the lovers he callously abandoned, of the bandmates he betrayed.
\nWhat's one more? But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost, no benign conversation piece. It's the real thing. And suddenly the suit's previous owner is everywhere: behind the bedroom door . . . seated in Jude's restored vintage Mustang . . . standing outside his window . . . staring out from his widescreen TV.
\nWaiting - with a gleaming razor blade on a chain dangling from one bony hand. . . . A multiple-award winner for his short fiction, author Joe Hill immediately vaults into the top echelon of dark fantasists with a blood-chilling roller-coaster ride of a novel, a masterwork brimming with relentless thrills and acid terror.
Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache . . . and a pair of horns growing from his temples.\n
At first Ig thought the horns were a hallucination, the product of a mind damaged by rage and grief. He had spent the last year in a lonely, private purgatory, following the death of his beloved, Merrin Williams, who was raped and murdered under inexplicable circumstances. A mental breakdown would have been the most natural thing in the world. But there was nothing natural about the horns, which were all too real.
Once the righteous Ig had enjoyed the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned musician and younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, he had security, wealth, and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more - he had Merrin and a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic.
But Merrin's death damned all that. The only suspect in the crime, Ig was never charged or tried. And he was never cleared. In the court of public opinion in Gideon, New Hampshire, Ig is and always will be guilty because his rich and connected parents pulled strings to make the investigation go away. Nothing Ig can do, nothing he can say, matters. Everyone, it seems, including God, has abandoned him. Everyone, that is, but the devil inside. . . .
Now Ig is possessed of a terrible new power to go with his terrible new look - a macabre talent he intends to use to find the monster who killed Merrin and destroyed his life. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. It's time for a little revenge . . . It's time the devil had his due . . .
Arthur Oakes is a reader, a dreamer, and a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters, exceptional library, and beautiful buildings. But his idyll - and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot - is shattered when a local drug dealer and her partner corner him into one of the worst crimes he can imagine: stealing rare books from the college library.
\nTrapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for comfort and help. Together they dream up a wild, fantastical scheme to free Arthur from the cruel trap in which he finds himself. Wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren suggests using the unnerving Crane journal (bound in the skin of its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. The others - brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen - don’t hesitate to join Colin in an effort to smash reality and bring a creature of the impossible into our world.
\nBut there’s nothing simple about dealing with dragons, and their pact to save Arthur becomes a terrifying bargain in which the six must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow every year - or become his next meal.
Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it’s across Massachusetts or across the country.
\nCharles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that transport them to an astonishing - and terrifying - playground of amusements he calls “Christmasland.” Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble - and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago.
\nNow Vic, the only kid to ever escape Manx’s unmitigated evil, is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. He’s on the road again and he’s picked up a new passenger: Vic’s own son.
Willy and Marianne’s farmhouse in Maine has acres of meadow and fresh air, and a lonesome bridle path in the forest along which Willy daydreams and ambles. When he’s loaned a decrepit old baby stroller to cart his groceries home, the rickety squeak of the wheels comforts him. So do the sweet coos of a baby Willy knows can’t be real. Can it? In this twisted thicket, wishes come true - with a price.
A short story from New York Times bestselling author Joe Hill.
Joe Hill, much beloved writer of Locke & Key and son of Stephen King, wrote a novel called Thumbprint, telling the story of an Abu Ghraib veteran trying to escape the mistakes of her past.
A family saga following four generations on a time-bending journey from coastal Scotland to a colony on Mars.
\nHannah is a fusion scientist working in a cottage off the coast of Scotland when she’s approached by a visitor from the future, a young man from a human settlement on Mars, traveling backward through time to intervene in the fate of a warming planet.
\nRoban lives in the Colony, a sterile outpost of civilisation, where he longs for the wonders of a home planet he never knew. Between Hannah and Roban, two generations, a father and a daughter, face down an uncertain future. Andrew believes there is still time for the human spirit to triumph. For his rationalist daughter Kenzie, such idealism is not enough to keep the rising floods at bay, so she signs on to work for a company that would abandon Earth for the promise of a world beyond.
\nIn exploring the question “What if you could come back to the past and somehow change it with technology?” Joe Mungo Reed has written an immersive story of hope, hubris, and sacrifice in the face of a frighteningly precarious present.
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With his long hair and penchant for guitar, teenage Justin is the spitting image of his idol, Kurt Cobain - a resemblance that has often marked him an outcast. When the long-simmering abuse from his uncle finally boils over, Justin has no choice but to break free, in a violent act that will haunt him, and try to make it on his own as a runaway.
\nMeanwhile, in rural Montana, Rene Bouchard, a rancher nearing retirement, grieves the recent death of his wife. Her passing has revealed precisely how fractured the family has become - particularly the relationship between Rene and his daughter, Lianne. As old wounds ache anew, father and daughter begin to doubt the possibility of reconciliation, even as they each privately yearn for it.
\nJustin’s wanderings bring him to the Bouchard family ranch, and soon Rene and Lianne take the boy in as their own. But before long, Justin’s past threatens to catch up with him, jeopardising not only his new bond with Rene and Lianne but also the home he’s finally been able to claim.
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Rowan is a Second Child in a world where population control measures make her an outlaw, marked for death. She can never go to school, make friends, or get the eye implants that will mark her as a true member of Eden. Her kaleidoscope eyes will give her away to the ruthless Center government.
Outside of Eden, Earth is poisoned and dead. All animals and most plants have been destroyed by a man-made catastrophe. Long ago, the brilliant scientist Aaron al Baz saved a pocket of civilization by designing the EcoPanopticon, a massive computer program that hijacked all global technology and put it to use preserving the last vestiges of mankind. Humans will wait for thousands of years in Eden until the EcoPan heals the world.
As an illegal Second Child, Rowan has been hidden away in her family's compound for sixteen years. Now, restless and desperate to see the world, she recklessly escapes for what she swears will be only one night of adventure. Though she finds an exotic world, and even a friend, the night leads to tragedy. Soon Rowan becomes a renegade on the run - unleashing a chain of events that could change the world of Eden forever.
Yarrow is an elite: rich, regal, destined for greatness. She’s the daughter of one of the most powerful women in Eden. At the exclusive Oaks boarding school, she makes life miserable for anyone foolish enough to cross her. Her life is one wild party after another…until she meets a fascinating, lilac-haired girl named Lark.
Meanwhile, there is Rowan, who has been either hiding or running all her life. As an illegal second child in a strictly regulated world, her very existence is a threat to society, punishable by death . . . or worse. After her father betrayed his family, and after her mother was killed by the government, Rowan discovered a whole city of people like herself. Safe in an underground sanctuary that also protected the last living tree on Earth, Rowan found friendship, and maybe more, in a fearless hero named Lachlan. But when she was captured by the government, her fate was uncertain.
When these two girls discover the thread that binds them together, the collision of memories means that their lives may change drastically - and that Eden may never be the same.
Rowan is finally in Harmonia, an Earth-friendly, sustainable commune in the wilderness she always believed was dead. Even in this idyllic world, she finds no peace. Harmonia has strict rules—and dire consequences. Thinking about Eden is forbidden, but she's determined to rescue the loved ones she left behind. Though they are in terrible danger, her pleas for help are ignored.
\nAfter months of living as one with nature, a shocking reminder of her past pushes Rowan to act. With the help of new friends, she infiltrates Eden. What she discovers is even worse than the situation she left behind. In the chaos of civil war, Rowan and her friends join forces with the second children and other rebels trapped inside. They fight for their lives, and for the future of humanity in this broken Earth.
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Ophelia and Serena - twin sisters born on the cusp of Pisces and Aries - are trapped in the cold confines of an orphanage until fate rips them from obscurity. Suddenly, they are invited into The Twelve, a powerful coven. To join, they must swear to hunt Dark Witches, creatures of spectral beauty and razor-sharp teeth who survive by siphoning magic from young witches.
\nOn a secret island, protected by their new sisters, Ophelia and Serena train to use their powers. Serena commands Lightning, raw and untamed. Ophelia wields Water, quiet and waiting. Their paths shift - one chasing power, the other resisting - as the sisters find themselves caught between two destinies. Some choices can never be undone but they must decide, because magic does not wait, and the darkness is coming for them in ways they could never imagine. After all, the stars never shine without casting shadows.
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In January 2023, Johann Hari started to inject himself once a week with Ozempic, one of the new drugs that produces significant weight loss. He wasn’t alone - some predictions suggest that in a few years, a quarter of the U.S. population will be taking these drugs. While around 80 percent of diets fail, someone taking one of the new drugs will lose up to a quarter of their body weight in six months. To the drugs’ defenders, here is a moment of liberation from a condition that massively increases your chances of diabetes, cancer, and an early death.
\nStill, Hari was wildly conflicted. Can these drugs really be as good as they sound? Are they a magic solution - or a magic trick? Finding the answer to this high-stakes question led him on a journey from Iceland to Minneapolis to Tokyo, and to interview the leading experts in the world on these questions. He found that along with the drug’s massive benefits come twelve significant potential risks.
\nHe also found that these drugs radically challenge what we think we know about shame, willpower, and healing. What do they reveal about the nature of obesity itself? What psychological issues begin to emerge when our eating patterns are suddenly disrupted? Are the drugs a liberation or a further symptom of our deeply dysfunctional relationship with food?
\nThese drugs are about to change our world, for better and for worse. Everybody needs to understand how they work - scientifically, emotionally, and culturally. Magic Pill is an essential guide to the revolution that has already begun, and which one leading expert argues will be as transformative as the invention of the smartphone.
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2019. Stella Parker has the life she’s always wanted: a loving husband, two happy children that she gave up her thriving law career to raise, and a beautiful house in the tony suburbs of Washington, D.C. But when her neighbor Gwen shows up at her door, claiming to know things about her, Stella’s life is thrown into turmoil and she’s forced to reckon with the dark secret upon which she’s built her life.
\n1987. Julie Waits yearns to be a cheerleader - a gateway to a world of normalcy with best friends and sleepovers, and an escape hatch from life with her widowed mother, the terrible men she attracts, and the upheaval caused by their abrupt and constant moves. But when her mother decides those relationships are over, the past becomes a forbidden subject that Julie can never revisit.
\nAs Stella probes deeper into what brought Gwen to her door, the answer - and who Julie is to her - become increasingly, terrifyingly, clear.
\nFilled with shocking twists and turns, this is a book that both asks what it means for a woman to be in control of her life while also highlighting the impact of small daily violences upon women, and the connection between physical and psychological harm.
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The year is 1635.
\nSister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the Bavarian forest. War scorches the land, and no one survives it alone. Amid the devastation, they find something in the arms of a dying the gilded skull of a saint.
\nIt is said that if you reunite the saint's skull with her body, a wish will be granted. Desperate for salvation, and each with secret desires of their own, Ursula and Elsebeth follow a ragged map across the blighted countryside. But darkness follows them. A necromancer, drawn to the relic's power. The saint herself, whispering at night. And as the lines between blessing and curse blur, the women must face a harrowing the magic they seek comes at a cost.
\nAt the journey's end, they'll face an impossible choice - one that could tear apart everything they know . . . or bind them to each other forever.
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Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for success. The one thing he doesn't have is talent - but he's not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don't need to be his own.
\nWorking as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful - but desperately lonely - older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice's first novel.
\nOnce Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall...
Some stories are universal. They play out across human history. And time is the river which will flow through them.
It starts with a family, a family which will mutate. For now, it is a father, mother and two sons. One with his father’s violence in his blood. One who lives his mother’s artistry. One leaves. One stays. They will be joined by others whose deeds will change their fate. It is a beginning.
Their stories will intertwine and evolve over the course of two thousand years – they will meet again and again at different times and in different places. From distant Palestine at the dawn of the first millennium to a life amongst the stars in the third. While the world will change around them, their destinies will remain the same. It must play out as foretold. It is written.
A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom is the extraordinary new novel from acclaimed writer John Boyne. Ambitious, far-reaching and mythic, it introduces a group of characters whose lives we will come to know and will follow through time and space until they reach their natural conclusion.
1946. Three years after a cataclysmic event which tore their lives apart, a mother and daughter flee Poland for Paris, shame, and fear at their heels, not knowing how hard it is to escape your past.
\nNearly eighty years later, Gretel Fernsby lives a life that is a far cry from her traumatic childhood. When a couple moves into the flat below her in her London mansion block, it should be nothing more than a momentary inconvenience. However, the appearance of their nine-year-old son Henry brings back memories she would rather forget.
\nFaced with a choice between her own safety and his, Gretel is taken back to a similar crossroads she encountered long ago. Back then, her complicity dishonoured her life, but to interfere now could risk revealing the secrets she has spent a lifetime protecting.
In this collection of twelve dark, unerring and surprising short stories, John Boyne explores the extremities of the human condition in all its brilliance and brutality. The secrets we keep and the ways in which they shape us, the impossibility of shared loss, the lengths we will go to in order to protect our families and the distance we will run to protect ourselves.
\nDrawing on a host of enthralling characters - a farmer, a cuckold and a teenager exploring his sexuality; good parents, bad parents, writers and soldiers; a student, a rent boy and a hitman - Boyne examines the hopeful and the damaged without prejudice or judgement.
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?
\nBorn out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.
\nAt the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from – and over his three score years and ten, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country and much more.
\nIn this, Boyne's most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.
Sam Waver's life has always been pretty quiet. A bit of a loner, he struggles to make friends, and his busy parents often make him feel invisible.
Luckily for Sam, his older brother, Jason, has always been there for him. Sam idolises Jason, who seems to have life sorted - he's kind, popular, amazing at football, and girls are falling over themselves to date him.
But then one evening Jason calls his family together to tell them that he's been struggling with a secret for a long time. A secret which quickly threatens to tear them all apart. His parents don't want to know and Sam simply doesn't understand.
Because what do you do when your brother says he's not your brother at all? That he's actually your sister?
What a thing of wonder a mobile phone is. Six ounces of metal, glass and plastic, fashioned into a sleek, shiny, precious object. At once, a gateway to other worlds - and a treacherous weapon in the hands of the unwary, the unwitting, the inept.
\nThe Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster. George, the patriarch, is a stalwart of television interviewing, a 'national treasure' (his words), his wife Beverley, a celebrated novelist (although not as celebrated as she would like), and their children, Nelson, Elizabeth, Achilles, various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen.
\nTogether they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant. Along the way they will learn how volatile, how outraged, how unforgiving the world can be when you step from the proscribed path.
In The Elements, acclaimed Irish novelist John Boyne has created an epic saga that weaves together four interconnected narratives, each representing a different perspective on the enabler, the accomplice, the perpetrator, and the victim.
\nThe narrative follows a mother on the run from her past, a young soccer star facing a trial, a successful surgeon grappling with childhood trauma, and a father on a transformative journey with his son. Each is somehow connected to the next, and as the story unfolds, their lives intersect in unimaginable ways.
\nBoyne’s most ambitious work yet, The Elements is both an engrossing drama and a moving investigation of why and how we allow crime to occur. With masterful, spellbinding prose, he navigates this complex subject with extraordinary empathy and unflinching honesty. The story resonates on a deeply emotional level, challenging readers to confront their own conceptions of guilt and innocence at every step. Amid the wildly engrossing storytelling, the book ultimately asks: What would you do when faced with the unthinkable?
Barnaby Brocket is an ordinary 8-year-old boy in most ways, but he was born different in one important way: he floats. Unlike everyone else, Barnaby does not obey the law of gravity. His parents, who have a horror of being noticed, want desperately for Barnaby to be normal, but he can't help who he is.
\nAnd when the unthinkable happens, Barnaby finds himself on a journey that takes him all over the world. From Brazil to New York, Canada to Ireland, and even to space, the floating boy meets all sorts of different people - and discovers who he really is along the way.
This whimsical novel will delight middle graders, and make readers of all ages question the meaning of normal.
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Ellie’s universe, and this one, is falling apart. Her ailing mother is in a coma; her sister, Chris, accuses her of being insufficiently Chinese between assassination attempts; and a shadowy cabal of engineers is trying to hijack the skunkworks, the machinery that keeps the physics of each universe working the way it’s supposed to.
\nDaniel, Ellie's cousin, has found an illicit device in the skunkworks - one that keeps Ellie's comatose mother alive while also creating destabilising bugs in the physics of this universe. It's not a good day.
\nIf she can confront her mother’s legacy and overcome her family’s generational trauma, she just might find a way to preserve the skunkworks and reconcile with her sister . . . but digging into her family’s past is thornier than it seems, and the secrets she uncovers will force Ellie to choose between her family and the universe itself.
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The Black Angel begins with the mysterious abduction of a young woman. Intrigued by the case, Charlie Parker's longtime friend and professional killer, Louis, begins a solo search for the girl. The ties of friendship inevitably draw Parker into the search, as he soon discovers that the girl's disappearance is linked to a church of bones in eastern Europe, to the slaughter at a French monastery in 1944, and to the myth of an object known as the Black Angel.
\nBut the Black Angel is not a legend. It is real. It lives. It dreams. And the mystery of its existence may contain the secret of Parker's own origins . . .
On a lonely moor in the northeast of England, the body of a young woman is discovered near the site of a vanished church. In the south, a girl lies buried beneath a Saxon mound. To the southeast, the ruins of a priory hide a human skull.
\nEach is a sacrifice, a summons.
\nAnd something in the shadows has heard the call.
\nBut another is coming: Parker the hunter, the avenger. Parker's mission takes him from Maine to the deserts of the Mexican border; from the canals of Amsterdam to the streets of London - he will track those who would cast this world into darkness.
\nParker fears no evil.
\nBut evil fears him . . .
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High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld.
\nWhile his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a world that is a strange reflection of his own - populated by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book, The Book of Lost Things.
What's the worst thing you've ever done?
\n'There are some truths so terrible that they should not be spoken aloud, so appalling that even to acknowledge them is to risk sacrificing a crucial part of one's humanity, to exist in a colder, crueler world than before.'
\nRandall Haight has a secret: He is a convicted murderer, a man with the blood of a young girl on his hands. He has built a new life for himself in the small Maine town of Pastor's Bay, but someone has discovered the truth about him. He is being tormented by anonymously sent reminders of his crime. He wants private detective Charlie Parker to make them go away.
\nBut another girl has gone missing, this time from Pastor's Bay itself, and her family has its own secrets to protect. Now, in a town built on blood and shadowed by old ghosts, Parker must unravel a twisted history of violence and deceit involving the police and the FBI, a doomed mobster and his enemies, and Randall Haight himself.
\nBecause Randall is still telling lies . . .
Wyatt Riggins, the boyfriend of rising Maine artist Zetta Nadeau, has gone missing, leaving behind a cell phone containing a single-word RUN. Private investigator Charlie Parker is hired to find out why Riggins has fled, and from whom.
\nParker discovers that Riggins, an ex-soldier, has been involved in the abduction of four children from Mexico: three girls and a boy, all belonging to the cartel boss Blás Urrea - except Urrea’s family is safe and well in Mexico, which means the abductees cannot be his children. Yet whoever they are, Urrea wants them back, and has dispatched his agents to secure them, even if it means butchering everyone who stands in their way.
\nOne of those agents is Eugene Seeley, a clever, ruthless solver of other men’s problems. The other is an unknown woman.
\nEvery child has a mother. Now Charlie Parker will face one unlike any other, and learn the terrifying truth about the Children of Eve.
Charlier Parker, a former New York City detective with a haunted past, befriends a down-and-out mother with a small child. When she turns up dead, Charlie's first suspect is her estranged husband. Charlie follows the man's trail to Maine and there he becomes entangled in a series of strange occurances which all seem to harken back to a string of unsolved murders that took place generations before.
\nThe murders were never solved and now Charlie must hunt for a killer and the connection between two crimes that span a century.
It is 1997, and someone is slaughtering young black women in Burdon County, Arkansas.
\nBut no one wants to admit it, not in the Dirty South.
\nIn an Arkansas jail cell sits a former NYPD detective, stricken by grief. He is mourning the death of his wife and child, and searching in vain for their killer. He cares only for his own lost family.
\nBut that is about to change . . .
\nWitness the becoming of Charlie Parker.
Former NYPD detective Charlie \"Bird\" Parker is on the verge of madness. Tortured by the unsolved slayings of his wife and young daughter, he is a man consumed by guilt, regret, and the desire for revenge.
\nWhen his former partner asks him to track down a missing girl, Parker finds himself drawn into a world beyond his imagining: a world where thirty-year-old killings remain shrouded in fear and lies, a world where the ghosts of the dead torment the living, a world haunted by the murderer responsible for the deaths in his family - a serial killer who uses the human body to create works of art and takes faces as his prize. But the search awakens buried instincts in Parker: instincts for survival, for compassion, for love, and, ultimately, for killing.
\nAided by a beautiful young psychologist and a pair of bickering career criminals, Parker becomes the bait in a trap set in the humid bayous of Louisiana, a trap that threatens the lives of everyone in its reach. Driven by visions of the dead and the voice of an old black psychic who met a terrible end, Parker must seek a final, brutal confrontation with a murderer who has moved beyond all notions of humanity, who has set out to create a hell on earth: the serial killer known only as the Traveling Man.
The Furies: mythological snake-haired goddesses of vengeance, pursuers of those who have committed unavenged crimes. Now, private investigator C harlie Parker is drawn into a world of modern furies.
\nIn The Sisters Strange, the return of the criminal Raum Buker to Portland, Maine brings with it chaos and murder, as an act of theft threatens not only to tear apart his own existence but also that of Raum's former lovers, the enigmatic sisters Dolors and Ambar Strange.
\nAnd in The Furies Parker finds himself fighting to protect two more women as the city of Portland shuts down in the face of a global pandemic, but it may be that his clients are more capable of taking care of themselves than anyone could have imagined . . .
It is deep winter and the darkness is unending. A private detective named Jaycob Eklund has vanished and Charlie Parker is assigned to track him down. Parker’s employer, Edgar Ross, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has his own reasons for wanting Eklund found. Eklund is no ordinary investigator - he is obsessively tracking a series of homicides and disappearances, each linked to reports of hauntings.
\nNow Parker is drawn into Eklund’s world: a realm in which the monstrous Mother rules a crumbling criminal empire, in which men strike bargains with angels, and in which the innocent and guilty alike are pawns in a game of ghosts . . .
In Maine, Colleen Clark stands accused of the worst crime a mother can commit: the abduction and possible murder of her child. Everyone - ambitious politicians in an election season, hardened police, ordinary folk - has an opinion on the case, and most believe she is guilty.
\nBut most is not all. Defending Colleen is the lawyer Moxie Castin, and working alongside him is the private investigator Charlie Parker, who senses the tale has another twist, one involving a husband too eager to accept his wife's guilt, a disgraced psychic seeking redemption, and an old crooked house deep in the Maine woods, a house that should never have been built.
Still struggling with the horrific ghosts of his past, Parker is now a disillusioned private eye hired to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of Grace Peltier - which neither her father nor a former US Senator believe was suicide.
\nThe trail leads to a mass grave in northern Maine where a Baptist community disappeared forty years earlier. The deaths of the Baptists and Grace are connected and point in the direction of a shadowy organisation known as the Fellowship.
\nWith the assistance of some idiosyncratic and murderous acolytes, Parker soon confronts the Fellowship's demonic leader and finds himself caught in a situation more gruesome than even he could ever have imagined.
Twice upon a time - for that is how some stories should continue . . .
\nPhoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident. She is a body without a spirit, a stolen child. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud to Phoebe the fairy stories she loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world.
\nBut it is hard to keep faith, so very hard.
\nNow an old house on the hospital grounds, a property connected to a book written by a vanished author, is calling to Ceres. Something wants her to enter, and to journey - to a land coloured by the memories of Ceres's childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father, to a land of witches and dryads, giants and mandrakes; to a land where old enemies are watching, and waiting.
Charlie Parker is a lost soul. Deprived of his private investigator's license and under scrutiny by the police, Parker takes a job in a Portland bar. But he uses his enforced retirement to begin a different kind of investigation: an examination of his own past and an inquiry into the death of his father, who took his own life after apparently shooting dead two unarmed teenagers. It's a search that will eventually lead Parker to question all that he believed about his beloved parents, and about himself.
\nBut there are other forces at work: a troubled young woman who is running from an unseen threat, one that has already taken the life of her boyfriend; and a journalist-turned-writer named Mickey Wallace, who is conducting an investigation of his own. And haunting the shadows, as they have done throughout Parker's life, are two figures: a man and a woman who seem driven to bring an end to Charlie Parker's existence.
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In Amsterdam, four people are butchered in a canal house, their remains arranged around the crucified form of their patriarch, De Jaager: fixer, go-between, and confidante of the assassin named Louis. The men responsible for the murders are Serbian war criminals. They believe they can escape retribution by retreating to their homeland.
\nThey are wrong.
\nFor Louis has come to Europe to hunt them down: five killers to be found and punished before they can vanish into the east.
\nThere is only one problem.
\nThe sixth.
Filled with eerie surprises and dark delights, Night and Day takes us from the dusty shelves of an uncanny library filled with fictional characters to a bunker deep beneath the earth where scientists seek revenge on old Nazis; from an English marsh haunted by a mother and her son to a country house where a grieving widower finds comfort from a most unlikely source.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tConcluding with the author’s account of how an obscure horror film brought him closer to his lost father, and how nostalgia can help to keep us sane, this is a collection that will move, entertain, and keep you reading late into the night.
The Reapers are the elite of killers, the best at their trade, and Louis, confidante of troubled private detective Charlie Parker, is one of their number. Now the sins of his past are about to be visited upon him, for someone is hunting Louis, targeting his home, his businesses, and his partner, Angel. The instrument of his revenge is Bliss, the killer of killers, the most feared of assasins, and a man with a personal vendetta against Louis.
\nBut when Louis and Angel decide to strike back, they disappear, and their friends are forced to band together to find them. They are led by Parker, a killer himself, a reaper in waiting . . .
\nThe harvest is about to begin.
Parker has retreated to the small Maine town of Boreas to regain his strength. There he befriends a widow named Ruth Winter and her young daughter, Amanda. But Ruth has her secrets. Old atrocities are about to be unearthed, and old sinners will kill to hide their sins. Now Parker is about to risk his life to defend a woman he barely knows, one who fears him almost as much as she fears those who are coming for her.
\nHis enemies believe him to be vulnerable. Fearful. Solitary.
\nBut they are wrong. Parker is far from afraid, and far from alone.
\nFor something is emerging from the shadows . . .
Jerome Burnel was once a hero. He intervened to prevent multiple killings, and in doing so damned himself. His life was torn apart, imprisoned and brutalised.
\nBut in his final days, with the hunters circling, he tells his story to private detective Charlie Parker. He speaks of the girl who was marked for death, but was saved; of the ones who tormented him, and an entity that hides in a ruined stockade.
\nParker is not like other men. He died, and was reborn. He is ready to wage war.
\nNow he will descend upon a strange, isolated community called the Cut, and face down a force of men who rule by terror, intimidation, and murder.
\nAll in the name of the being they serve. All in the name of the Dead King.
Daniel Clay, a once-respected psychiatrist, has gone missing, following revelations about the harm done to children in his care. Now, a killer obsessed with finding the truth about his own daughter’s disappearance is seeking revenge, and Charlie Parker finds himself trapped between those who want the truth about Clay to be revealed, and those who will go to any lengths to keep it hidden.
In the dark reaches of Maine’s North Woods, a group of Iraq War veterans are engaged in a ruthless smuggling operation across the Canadian border. But what they have unleashed is far more dangerous than even they realise - an ancient evil locked away in Iraq for centuries.
\nEvil has dogged Charlie Parker’s steps, costing him his career as a cop and his license as a private investigator. Now, as veterans begin dying mysteriously, he is called in to stop the bloodletting. But the smuggled objects have attracted the attention of the reclusive Herod and his henchman, the shadowy figure he calls the Captain. To defeat them, Parker must form an uneasy alliance with a man he fears more than any other: the killer known as the Collector.
In South Carolina, a young black man faces the death penalty for the rape and murder of Marianne Larousse, daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the state. It's a case that nobody wants to touch, a case with its roots in old evil, and old evil is private detective Charlie Parker's speciality.
\nBut Parker is about to enter a living nightmare, a red dreamscape haunted by the murderous spectre of a hooded woman, by a black car waiting for a passenger that never comes, and by the complicity of both friends and enemies in the events surrounding Marianne Larousse's death. This is not an investigation. This is a descent into the abyss, a confrontation with dark forces that threaten all that Parker holds dear: his lover, his unborn child, even his soul . . .
\nFor in a prison cell far to the north, an old adversary is about to take his revenge on Charlie Parker, its instruments the very men that Parker is hunting, and a strange, hunched creature that keeps its own secrets buried by a riverbank: the undiscovered killer Cyrus Nairn.
\nSoon, all of these figures will face a final reckoning in southern swamps and northern forests, in distant locations linked by a single thread, a place where the paths of the living and the dead converge.
\nA place known only as the White Road.
The isolated community of Prosperous, Maine, has always thrived. While others suffered, the people there have remained fortunate, wealthy, secure, and insular throughout the centuries.
\nMiles to the south, in Portland, a homeless man dies, and the disturbing manner of his death brings Prosperous to the attention of the private investigator Charlie Parker. He is a dangerous man, driven by compassion, rage, and the desire for vengeance. Prosperous and its townsfolk recognise that he poses a threat to their security that runs deeper than any in their long history.
\nBut this community has its own way of protecting itself, and its sheltered residents have marked Charlie for death so that Prosperous may survive. Prosperous, and the secret that is buried beneath it . . .
In the beautiful Maine woods, a partly preserved body is discovered. Investigators realise that the young woman gave birth shortly before her death. But there is no sign of a baby. Private detective Charlie Parker is hired by a lawyer to shadow the police investigation and find the infant but Parker is not the only one searching.
\nSomeone else is following the trail left by the woman, someone with an interest in much more than a missing child . . . someone prepared to leave bodies in his wake. And in a house by the woods, a toy telephone begins to ring and a young boy is about to receive a call from a dead woman.
Deep in the Maine woods, a wrecked plane is discovered. It was never reported missing, and there are no bodies, but what it conceals is powerful beyond comprehension: a record of those who have struck a deal with the devil.
\nA new battle is about to commence in the war between light and darkness, and the list proves to be a deadly weapon. While private detective Charlie Parker fears his own name is there, he is certain that it must be secured from evil. For others, too, have joined the search: a beautiful, scarred woman with a taste for killing; a silent child who remembers his own death; and a serial killer known as the Collector. But the woods too are preparing, for other secrets lurk within their depths.
\nSomeone survived the crash. Something survived. And now it waits.
The town of Bentley holds two things dear: its football, and its secrets. But when star quarterback Dylan Whitley goes missing, an unremitting fear grips this remote corner of Texas.
Joel Whitley was shamed out of conservative Bentley ten years ago, and while he’s finally made a life for himself as a gay man in New York, his younger brother’s disappearance soon brings him back to a place he thought he’d escaped for good.
Meanwhile, Sheriff’s Deputy Starsha Clark stayed in Bentley; Joel’s return brings back painful memories - not to mention questions - about her own missing brother. And in the high school hallways, Dylan’s friends begin to suspect that their classmates know far more than they’re telling the police. Together, these unlikely allies will stir up secrets their town has long tried to ignore, drawing the attention of dangerous men who will stop at nothing to see that their crimes stay buried.
But no one is quite prepared to face the darkness that’s begun to haunt their nightmares, whispering about a place long thought to be nothing but an urban legend: an empty night, a flicker of light on the horizon - The Bright Lands.
In the frigid west Texas desert, weary travelers converge at a lonely roadside motel nestled at the foot of a massive mountain. Ethan and Hunter have left behind a corpse, a fire, and a horrific act of violence. Kyla and Fernanda are fleeing for the border. Stanley and his granddaughter are returning from Mexico with a mysterious man in hot pursuit. All of them are on the run from something. All of them are hiding something.
\nAnd somehow, they’re all connected to the motel’s other guest, an enigmatic woman named Sarah Powers.
\nWithin hours, Sarah is dead. The strange twins who run the Brake Inn Motel inform the surviving guests that her murder demands justice. The guests are given an ultimatum: uncover the killer by midnight - or die when the protective lights around the motel go out.
\nBecause something very old and very dangerous lurks in this corner of the desert. And it’s hungry.
\nBut nothing at the Brake Inn Motel is quite as it seems. As time ticks away, alliances fracture, secrets unravel, and the guests will not only have to confront the violence of the past - they will need to face the darkness within themselves.
A lively, revelatory look back at the convulsions at the end of the Reagan era - and their dark legacy today.
\nWith the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated, and U.S. power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a “kinder, gentler America.” Instead, it was a period of rising anger and domestic turmoil, anticipating the polarisation and resurgent extremism we know today.
\nIn When the Clock Broke , the acclaimed political writer John Ganz tells the story of America’s late-century discontents. Ranging from upheavals in Crown Heights and Los Angeles to the advent of David Duke and the heartland survivalists, the broadcasts of Rush Limbaugh, and the bitter disputes between neoconservatives and the “paleo-con” right, Ganz immerses us in a time when what Philip Roth called the “indigenous American berserk” took new and ever-wilder forms.
\nIn the 1992 campaign, Pat Buchanan's and Ross Perot’s insurgent populist bids upended the political establishment, all while Americans struggled through recession, alarm about racial and social change, the specter of a new power in Asia, and the end of Cold War - era political norms. Conspiracy theories surged, and intellectuals and activists strove to understand the “Middle American Radicals” whose alienation fueled new causes. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton appeared to forge a new, vital center, though it would not hold for long.
\nIn a rollicking, eye-opening book, Ganz narrates the fall of the Reagan order and the rise of a new and more turbulent America.
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When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton's type happens to be girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact.
On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun - but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl.
Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself.
The Anthropocene is the current geologic age, in which humans have profoundly reshaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, bestselling author John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale - from the QWERTY keyboard and sunsets to Canada geese and Penguins of Madagascar.
\nFunny, complex, and rich with detail, the reviews chart the contradictions of contemporary humanity. As a species, we are both far too powerful and not nearly powerful enough, a paradox that came into sharp focus as we faced a global pandemic that both separated us and bound us together.
\nJohn Green’s gift for storytelling shines throughout this masterful collection. The Anthropocene Reviewed is a open-hearted exploration of the paths we forge and an unironic celebration of falling in love with the world.
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Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticised as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.
\nIn 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.
\nIn Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.
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Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.
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Before. Miles \"Pudge\" Halter's whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the \"Great Perhaps\" (François Rabelais, poet) even more. He heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe.
\nBecause down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young, who is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.
After. Nothing is ever the same.
Who is the real Margo?
Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life - dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows.
After their all-nighter ends, and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues - and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew . . .
Sixteen-year-old Aza never intended to pursue the mystery of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake and her Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So together, they navigate the short distance and broad divides that separate them from Russell Pickett’s son, Davis.
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\nAza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.
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Theodore Boone is back in a new adventure, and the stakes are higher than ever.
When his best friend, April, disappears from her bedroom in the middle of the night, no one, not even Theo Boone-who knows April better than anyone-has answers.
As fear ripples through his small hometown and the police hit dead ends, it's up to Theo to use his legal knowledge and investigative skills to chase down the truth and save April.
Woody Lambert is in trouble. He comes from a broken family, suffers bad grades at school and his older brother, Tony, is on probation for a drug offence. When Woody inadvertently gets caught up with Tony and one of his friends, Garth, cruising around Strattenburg in a beaten-up Mustang drinking beer, one thing leads to another and Garth holds up a convenience store with a fake gun.
Though he had no involvement in the crime other than being in Garth's car, Woody is arrested as an accomplice. He's going to need serious legal advice to avoid juvenile prison.
Enter Theodore Boone: after all, Theo has already decided that he will become the best courtroom lawyer in the state. It's just that, at the age of thirteen, Theo is years from being a qualified lawyer - and Woody needs help right now . . .
Theodore Boone is back! And he's ready for his next big case
Theo Boone might only be thirteen, but he's already uncovered key evidence in a groundbreaking murder trial and discovered the truth behind his best friend's abduction. Now with the latest unfolding of events in Strattenburg, Theo will face his biggest challenge yet.
Theodore Boone is back, and he’s facing his most dangerous case yet. As Strattenburg sits divided over a hot political and environmental issue, Theo finds himself in the middle of the battle. When he uncovers corruption beneath the surface, Theo will confront bigger risks than ever to himself and those he loves. But even face-to-face with danger, Theodore Boone will do whatever it takes to stand up for what’s right.
For most of the last hundred years, Biloxi was known for its beaches, resorts, and seafood industry. But it had a darker side. It was also notorious for corruption and vice, everything from gambling, prostitution, bootleg liquor, and drugs to contract killings. The vice was controlled by small cabal of mobsters, many of them rumored to be members of the Dixie Mafia.
\nKeith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up in Biloxi in the sixties and were childhood friends, as well as Little League all-stars. But as teenagers, their lives took them in different directions. Keith’s father became a legendary prosecutor, determined to “clean up the Coast.” Hugh’s father became the “Boss” of Biloxi’s criminal underground. Keith went to law school and followed in his father’s footsteps. Hugh preferred the nightlife and worked in his father’s clubs. The two families were headed for a showdown, one that would happen in a courtroom.
Whatever happened to Calico Joe?
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It began quietly enough with a pulled hamstring. The first baseman for the Cubs AAA affiliate in Wichita went down as he rounded third and headed for home. The next day, Jim Hickman, the first baseman for the Cubs, injured his back. The team suddenly needed someone to play first, so they reached down to their AA club in Midland, Texas, and called up a twenty-one-year-old named Joe Castle. He was the hottest player in AA and creating a buzz.
In the summer of 1973 Joe Castle was the boy wonder of baseball, the greatest rookie anyone had ever seen. The kid from Calico Rock, Arkansas dazzled Cub fans as he hit home run after home run, politely tipping his hat to the crowd as he shattered all rookie records.
Calico Joe quickly became the idol of every baseball fan in America, including Paul Tracey, the young son of a hard-partying and hard-throwing Mets pitcher. On the day that Warren Tracey finally faced Calico Joe, Paul was in the stands, rooting for his idol but also for his Dad. Then Warren threw a fastball that would change their lives forever...
Bruce Cable tells Mercer Mann an irresistible tale that might be her next novel. A giant resort developer is using its political muscle and deep pockets to claim ownership of a deserted island between Florida and Georgia.
\nOnly the last living inhabitant of the island, Lovely Jackson, stands in its way. What the developer doesn’t know is that the island has a remarkable history, and locals believe it is cursed . . . and the past is never the past . . .
Just as Bruce Cable’s Bay Books is preparing for the return of bestselling author Mercer Mann, Hurricane Leo veers from its predicted course and heads straight for the island. Florida’s governor orders a mandatory evacuation, and most residents board up their houses and flee to the mainland, but Bruce decides to stay and ride out the storm.
The hurricane is devastating: homes and condos are leveled, hotels and storefronts ruined, streets flooded, and a dozen people lose their lives. One of the apparent victims is Nelson Kerr, a friend of Bruce’s and an author of thrillers. But the nature of Nelson’s injuries suggests that the storm wasn’t the cause of his death: He has suffered several suspicious blows to the head.
Who would want Nelson dead? The local police are overwhelmed in the aftermath of the storm and ill equipped to handle the case. Bruce begins to wonder if the shady characters in Nelson’s novels might be more real than fictional. And somewhere on Nelson’s computer is the manuscript of his new novel. Could the key to the case be right there - in black and white? As Bruce starts to investigate, what he discovers between the lines is more shocking than any of Nelson’s plot twists - and far more dangerous.
What became of Mitch and Abby McDeere after they exposed the crimes of Memphis law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke and fled the country? The answer is in The Exchange, the riveting sequel to The Firm.
\nIt is now fifteen years later, and Mitch and Abby are living in Manhattan, where Mitch is a partner at the largest law firm in the world. When a mentor in Rome asks him for a favor that will take him far from home, Mitch finds himself at the center of a sinister plot that has worldwide implications - and once again endangers his colleagues, friends, and family.
\nMitch has become a master at staying one step ahead of his adversaries, but this time there’s nowhere to hide.
For a young lawyer on the make, it was an offer Mitch McDeere couldn’t pass up, a position at a law firm where the bucks, billable hours, and benefits are over the top. It’s a dream job for an up-and-comer . . . he thought he and his beautiful wife, Abby, were on their way. The firm leased him a BMW, paid off his school loans, arranged a mortgage and hired him a decorator.
\nThen an FBI investigation into the firm’s connections to the Mafia plunges the straight and narrow attorney into a nightmare of terror and intrigue. Mitch is caught between a rock and a hard place, with no choice but to pit his wits, ethics, and legal skills against the firm’s deadly secrets - if he hopes to stay alive . . .
John Grisham and Centurion Ministries Founder Jim McCloskey share ten harrowing true stories of wrongful convictions. Impeccably researched and grippingly told, Framed offers an inside look at the injustice faced by the victims of the United States criminal justice system.
\nA fundamental principle of our legal system is a presumption of innocence, but once someone has been found guilty there is very little room to prove doubt. Framed shares ten true stories of men who were innocent but found guilty and forced to sacrifice friends, families, wives, and decades of their lives to prison while the guilty parties remained free. In each of the stories, John Grisham and Jim McCloskey recount the dramatic hard-fought battles for exoneration. They take a close look at what leads to wrongful convictions in the first place, and the racism, misconduct, flawed testimony, and the corrupt court system that can make them so hard to reverse.
\nTold with page-turning suspense as only John Grisham can deliver, Framed is the story of overcoming adversity when the battle already seems lost, and the deck is stacked against you.
Theo thought the danger had passed, but he’s about to face off against an old adversary: accused murderer and fugitive Pete Duffy.
On a field trip to Washington, DC, Theo spots a familiar face on the Metro: Duffy, who jumped bail and was never seen again.
Theo’s quick thinking helps bring Duffy back to Strattenburg to stand trial. But now that Duffy knows who he is, Theo is in greater danger than he’s ever been in before. Even when everything is on the line, Theodore Boone will stop at nothing to make sure a killer is brought to justice.
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22 years ago Quincy Miller was sentenced to life without parole. He was accused of killing Keith Russo, a lawyer in a small Florida town. But there were no reliable witnesses and little motive. Just the fact that Russo had botched Quincy's divorce case, that Quincy was black in a largely all-white town and that a blood-splattered torch was found in the boot of Quincy's car. A torch he swore was planted. A torch that was conveniently destroyed in a fire just before his trial.
The lack of evidence made no difference to judge or jury. In the eyes of the law Quincy was guilty and, no matter how often he protested his innocence, his punishment was life in prison.
Finally, after 22 years, comes Quincy's one and only chance of freedom. An innocence lawyer and minister, Cullen Post, takes on his case. Post has exonerated eight men in the last ten years. He intends to make Quincy the next.
But there were powerful and ruthless people behind Russo's murder. They prefer that an innocent man dies in jail rather than one of them. There's one way to guarantee that. They killed one lawyer 22 years ago, and they'll kill another without a second thought.
In The Whistler, Lacy Stoltz investigated a corrupt judge who was taking millions in bribes from a crime syndicate. She put the criminals away, but only after being attacked and nearly killed. Three years later, and approaching forty, she is tired of her work for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct and ready for a change.
\nThen she meets a mysterious woman who is so frightened she uses a number of aliases. Jeri Crosby’s father was murdered twenty years earlier in a case that remains unsolved and that has grown stone cold. But Jeri has a suspect whom she has become obsessed with and has stalked for two decades. Along the way, she has discovered other victims.
\nSuspicions are easy enough, but proof seems impossible. The man is brilliant, patient, and always one step ahead of law enforcement. He is the most cunning of all serial killers. He knows forensics, police procedure, and most important: he knows the law.
\n\n
He is a judge, in Florida—under Lacy’s jurisdiction.
\n\n
He has a list, with the names of his victims and targets, all unsuspecting people unlucky enough to have crossed his path and wronged him in some way. How can Lacy pursue him, without becoming the next name on his list?
In the small city of Strattenburg, there are many lawyers, and though he's only thirteen years old, Theo Boone thinks he's one of them. Theo knows every judge, policeman, court clerkÑand a lot about the law. He dreams of a life in the courtroom. But he finds himself in court much sooner than expected.
\nBecause he knows so muchÑmaybe too muchÑhe is suddenly dragged into the middle of a sensational murder trial. A cold-blooded killer is about to go free, and only Theo knows the truth. The stakes are high, but Theo won't stop until justice is served.
In 1970, Willie Traynor came to Clanton, Mississippi, in a Triumph Spitfire and a fog of vague ambitions. Within a year, the twenty-three-year-old found himself the owner of Ford County’s only newspaper, famous for its well-crafted obituaries.
\nWhile the rest of America was in the grips of turmoil, Clanton lived on the edge of another age - until the brutal murder of a young mother rocked the town and thrust Willie into the center of a storm. Daring to report the true horrors of the crime, Willie made as many friends as enemies in Clanton, and over the next decade he would sometimes wonder how he had gotten there in the first place. But he could never escape the crime that had shattered his innocence or the criminal whose evil had left an indelible stain.
\nBecause as the ghosts of the South’s past gather around Willie, as tension swirls around Clanton, men and women who served on a jury nine years ago are starting to die one by one - as a killer exacts the ultimate revenge. . . .
The partners at Finley & Figg often refer to themselves as a “boutique law firm.” Boutique, as in chic, selective, and prosperous. Oscar Finley and Wally Figg are none of these things. They are a two-bit operation of ambulance chasers who bicker like an old married couple. Until change comes their way - or, more accurately, stumbles in. After leaving a fast-track career and going on a serious bender, David Zinc is sober, unemployed, and desperate enough to take a job at Finley & Figg.
Now the firm is ready to tackle a case that could make the partners rich - without requiring them to actually practice much law. A class action suit has been brought against Varrick Labs, a pharmaceutical giant with annual sales of $25 billion, alleging that Krayoxx, its most popular drug, causes heart attacks. Wally smells money. All Finley & Figg has to do is find a handful of Krayoxx users to join the suit. It almost seems too good to be true . . . and it is.
Until that September of 1952, Luke Chandler had never kept a secret or told a single lie. But in the long, hot summer of his seventh year, two groups of migrant workers - and two very dangerous men - came through the Arkansas Delta to work the Chandler cotton farm. And suddenly mysteries are flooding Luke’s world.
A brutal murder leaves the town seething in gossip and suspicion. A beautiful young woman ignites forbidden passions. A fatherless baby is born ... and someone has begun furtively painting the bare clapboards of the Chandler farmhouse, slowly, painstakingly, bathing the run-down structure in gleaming white. And as young Luke watches the world around him, he unravels secrets that could shatter lives - and change his family and his town forever . . .
Who is the Racketeer? And what does he have to do with the judge’s untimely demise? His name, for the moment, is Malcolm Bannister. Job status? Former attorney. Current residence? The Federal Prison Camp near Frostburg, Maryland. On paper, Malcolm’s situation isn’t looking too good these days, but he’s got an ace up his sleeve. He knows who killed Judge Fawcett, and he knows why. The judge’s body was found in his remote lakeside cabin. There was no forced entry, no struggle, just two dead bodies: Judge Fawcett and his young secretary. And one large, state-of-the-art, extremely secure safe, opened and emptied.
\n\t\t\t\t\tWhat was in the safe? The FBI would love to know. And Malcolm Bannister would love to tell them. But everything has a price - especially information as explosive as the sequence of events that led to Judge Fawcett’s death. And the Racketeer wasn’t born yesterday . . . Nothing is as it seems and everything’s fair game in this wickedly clever new novel from John Grisham, the undisputed master of the legal thriller.
In his first courtroom thriller since A Time To Kill, John Grisham tells the story of a young man barely out of law school who finds himself taking on one of the most powerful, corrupt, and ruthless companies in America - and exposing a complex, multibillion-dollar insurance scam. In hs final semester of law school Rudy Baylor is required to provide free legal advice to a group of senior citizens, and it is there that he meets his first \"clients,\" Dot and Buddy Black. Their son, Donny Ray, is dying of leukemia, and their insurance company has flatly refused to pay for his medical treatments.
\n\t\t\t\t\tWhile Rudy is at first skeptical, he soon realizes that the Blacks really have been shockingly mistreated by the huge company, and that he just may have stumbled upon one of the largest insurance frauds anyone's ever seen - and one of the most lucrative and important cases in the history of civil litigation. The problem is, Rudy's flat broke, has no job, hasn't even passed the bar, and is about to go head-to-head with one of the best defense attorneys - and powerful industries - in America.
Mark, Todd, and Zola came to law school to change the world, to make it a better place. But now, as third-year students, these close friends realise they have been duped. They all borrowed heavily to attend a third-tier, for-profit law school so mediocre that its graduates rarely pass the bar exam, let alone get good jobs. And when they learn that their school is one of a chain owned by a shady New York hedge-fund operator who also happens to own a bank specialising in student loans, the three know they have been caught up in The Great Law School Scam.
But maybe there's a way out. Maybe there’s a way to escape their crushing debt, expose the bank and the scam, and make a few bucks in the process. But to do so, they would first have to quit school. And leaving law school a few short months before graduation would be completely crazy, right? Well, yes and no . . .
Thirteen-year-old Theodore Boone knows every judge, police officer, and court clerk in Strattenburg. He has even helped bring a fugitive to justice. But even a future star lawyer like Theo has to deal with statewide standardised testing.
\nWhen an anonymous tip leads the school board to investigate a suspicious increase in scores at another local middle school, Theo finds himself thrust in the middle of a cheating scandal. With insider knowledge and his future on the line, Theo must follow his keen instincts to do what’s right in the newest case for clever kid lawyer Theo Boone.
\nImagine a year without Christmas. No crowded shops, no corny office parties, no fruitcakes, no unwanted presents. That's just what Luther and Nora Krank have in mind when they decide that, just this once, they'll skip the holiday altogether.
\nTheirs will be the only house on the street without a rooftop Frosty the snowman; they won't be hosting their annual Christmas Eve bash; they aren't even going to have a tree. They won't need one, because come December 25 they're setting sail on a Caribbean cruise. But, as this weary couple is
\nabout to discover, skipping Christmas brings enormous consequences - and isn't half as easy as they'd imagined.
In the summer of his seventeenth year, Samuel Sooleymon gets the chance of a lifetime: a trip to the United States with his South Sudanese teammates to play in a showcase basketball tournament. He has never been away from home, nor has he ever been on an airplane. The opportunity to be scouted by dozens of college coaches is a dream come true.
\nSamuel is an amazing athlete, with speed, quickness, and an astonishing vertical leap. The rest of his game, though, needs work, and the American coaches are less than impressed.
\nDuring the tournament, Samuel receives devastating news from home: A civil war is raging across South Sudan, and rebel troops have ransacked his village. His father is dead, his sister is missing, and his mother and two younger brothers are in a refugee camp.
\nSamuel desperately wants to go home, but it's just not possible. Partly out of sympathy, the coach of North Carolina Central offers him a scholarship. Samuel moves to Durham, enrolls in classes, joins the team, and prepares to sit out his freshman season. There is plenty of more mature talent and he isn't immediately needed.
\nBut Samuel has something no other player has: a fierce determination to succeed so he can bring his family to America. He works tirelessly on his game, shooting baskets every morning at dawn by himself in the gym, and soon he's dominating everyone in practice. With the Central team losing and suffering injury after injury, Sooley, as he is nicknamed, is called off the bench. And the legend begins.
\nBut how far can Sooley take his team? And will success allow him to save his family?
Ray Atlee is a professor of law at the University of Virginia. He's forty-three, newly single, and still enduring the aftershocks of a surprise divorce. He has a younger brother, Forrest, who redefines the notion of a family's black sheep.
And he has a father, a very sick old man who lives alone in the ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi. He is known to all as Judge Atlee, a beloved and powerful official who has towered over local law and politics for forty years. No longer on the bench, the Judge has withdrawn to the Atlee mansion and become a recluse.
With the end in sight, Judge Atlee issues a summons for both sons to return home to Clanton, to discuss the details of his estate. It is typed by the Judge himself, on his handsome old stationery, and gives the date and time for Ray and Forrest to appear in his study.
Ray reluctantly heads south, to his hometown, to the place where he grew up, which he prefers now to avoid. But the family meeting does not take place. The Judge dies too soon, and in doing so leaves behind a shocking secret known only to Ray.
And perhaps someone else.
Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten, will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his black maid, and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as the murder trial that made Brigance one of Ford County's most notorious citizens, just three years earlier.
The second will raises far more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly? And what does it all have to do with a piece of land once known as Sycamore Row?
A Time to Kill is one of the most popular novels of our time. It established Jake as a classic American hero - a lawyer who seeks truth and justice at all costs, even when his life and reputation are on the line.
Brigance returned in 2013’s Sycamore Row, in which he once again found himself embroiled in a deeply divisive trial.
Now, in A Time for Mercy, Jake is the court-appointed lawyer for Drew Gamble, a young man accused of murdering a local deputy. Many in Clanton want a swift trial and the death penalty, but Brigance sees it another way. Once he learns the details of the case, he realises he has to do everything he can to save Drew - who is sixteen. Jake’s commitment to the truth puts his career and the safety of his family at risk.
In this searing courtroom drama, best-selling author John Grisham probes the savage depths of racial violence . . . as he delivers a compelling tale of uncertain justice in a small southern town . . . Clanton, Mississippi.
\nThe life of a ten-year-old girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless young men. The mostly white town reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crime. Until her black father acquires an assault rifle -and takes justice into his own outraged hands.
\nFor ten days, as burning crosses and the crack of sniper fire spread through the streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as a young defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save his client's life . . . and then his own . . .
We expect our judges to be honest and wise. Their integrity and impartiality are the bedrock of the entire judicial system. We trust them to ensure fair trials, to protect the rights of all litigants, to punish those who do wrong, and to oversee the orderly and efficient flow of justice.
But what happens when a judge bends the law or takes a bribe? It’s rare, but it happens.
Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. She is a lawyer, not a cop, and it is her job to respond to complaints dealing with judicial misconduct. After nine years with the Board, she knows that most problems are caused by incompetence, not corruption.
But a corruption case eventually crosses her desk. A previously disbarred lawyer is back in business with a new identity. He now goes by the name Greg Myers, and he claims to know of a Florida judge who has stolen more money than all other crooked judges combined. And not just crooked judges in Florida. All judges, from all states, and throughout U.S. history.
What’s the source of the ill-gotten gains? It seems the judge was secretly involved with the construction of a large casino on Native American land. The Coast Mafia financed the casino and is now helping itself to a sizable skim of each month’s cash. The judge is getting a cut and looking the other way. It’s a sweet deal: Everyone is making money.
But now Greg wants to put a stop to it. His only client is a person who knows the truth and wants to blow the whistle and collect millions under Florida law. Greg files a complaint with the Board on Judicial Conduct, and the case is assigned to Lacy Stoltz, who immediately suspects that this one could be dangerous.
Dangerous is one thing. Deadly is something else.
Simon Latch is a small-town lawyer struggling with debt, gambling issues and an impending divorce. But when Eleanor Barnett, an 85-year-old widow, visits his office to secure a new will, it seems his luck has finally changed: she claims she's sitting on a $20 million fortune and no one else knows about it. She could be the ticket to his fortune.
\nOnce he's hooked the richest client of his career, Simon works quietly to keep her wealth under the radar, even from his own assistant. But there are complications: other lawyers are circling his client like vultures. But when she is hospitalised after a car accident, Eleanor's story begins to crack.
\nSimon realises that nothing is as it seems. And as events spiral out of control, he finds himself on trial for a crime he swears he didn't commit: murder.
Varg has overcome the trials of his past and become an accepted member of the Bloodsworn, but now he and his newfound comrades face their biggest challenge yet: slaying a dragon.
\nElvar is struggling to consolidate her power in Snakavik, where she faces threats from within and without. As she fights to assert her authority in readiness for the coming conflict, she faces a surely insurmountable task: reining in the ferocity of a wolf god.
\nAs Biorr and his warband make their way north, eager for blood, Gudvarr pursues a mission of his own, hoping to win Lik-Rifa's favour and further his own ambitions.
\nAll paths lead to Snakavik, where the lines are being drawn for the final battle - a titanic clash that will shake the foundations of the world, and bear witness to the true fury of the gods.
Lik-Rifa, the dragon god of legend, has been freed from her eternal prison. Now she plots a new age of blood and conquest.
\nAs Orka continues the hunt for her missing son, the Bloodsworn sweep south in a desperate race to save one of their own – and Varg takes the first steps on the path of vengeance.
\nElvar has sworn to fulfil her blood oath and rescue a prisoner from the clutches of Lik-Rifa and her dragonborn followers, but first she must persuade the Battle-Grim to follow her.
\nYet even the might of the Bloodsworn and Battle-Grim cannot stand alone against a dragon god.
\nTheir hope lies within the mad writings of a chained god. A book of forbidden magic with the power to raise the wolf god Ulfrir from the dead . . . and bring about a battle that will shake the foundations of the earth.
Young Corban watches enviously as boys become warriors under King Brenin’s rule, learning the art of war. He yearns to wield his sword and spear to protect his king’s realm. But that day will come all too soon. Only when he loses those he loves will he learn the true price of courage.
The Banished Lands has a violent past where armies of men and giants clashed shields in battle, the earth running dark with their heartsblood. Although the giant-clans were broken in ages past, their ruined fortresses still scar the land. But now giants stir anew, the very stones weep blood and there are sightings of giant wyrms. Those who can still read the signs see a threat far greater than the ancient wars. Sorrow will darken the world, as angels and demons make it their battlefield. Then there will be a war to end all wars.
High King Aquilus summons his fellow kings to council, seeking an alliance in this time of need. Some are skeptical, fighting their own border skirmishes against pirates and giants. But prophesy indicates darkness and light will demand two champions, the Black Sun and the Bright Star. They would be wise to seek out both, for if the Black Sun gains ascendancy, mankind’s hopes and dreams will fall to dust.
The Banished Lands are engulfed in war and chaos. The cunning Queen Rhin has conquered the west and High King Nathair has the cauldron, most powerful of the seven treasures. At his back stands the scheming Calidus and a warband of the Kadoshim, dread demons of the Otherworld. They plan to bring Asroth and his host of the Fallen into the world of flesh, but to do so they need the seven treasures. Nathair has been deceived but now he knows the truth. He has choices to make, choices that will determine the fate of the Banished Lands.
Elsewhere the flame of resistance is growing - Queen Edana finds allies in the swamps of Ardan. Maquin is loose in Tenebral, hunted by Lykos and his corsairs. Here he will witness the birth of a rebellion in Nathair's own realm.
Corban has been swept along by the tide of war. He has suffered, lost loved ones, sought only safety from the darkness. But he will run no more. He has seen the face of evil and he has set his will to fight it. The question is, how? With a disparate band gathered about him - his family, friends, giants, fanatical warriors, an angel and a talking crow he begins the journey to Drassil, the fabled fortress hidden deep in the heart of Forn Forest. For in Drassil lies the spear of Skald, one of the seven treasures, and here it is prophesied that the Bright Star will stand against the Black Sun.
After the gods warred and drove themselves to extinction, the cataclysm of their fall shattered the land of Vigrið.
\nNow a new world is rising, where power-hungry jarls feud and monsters stalk the woods and mountains. A world where the bones of the dead gods still hold great power for those brave - or desperate - enough to seek them out.
\nNow, as whispers of war echo across the mountains and fjords, fate follows in the footsteps of three people: a huntress on a dangerous quest, a noblewoman who has rejected privilege in pursuit of battle fame, and a thrall who seeks vengeance among the famed mercenaries known as the Bloodsworn.
\nAll three will shape the fate of the world as it once more falls under the shadow of the gods . . .
Drem and his friends flee the battle at Starstone Lake to warn the Order of the Bright Star. They’ve witnessed horrors they’ll never forget, such as magic warping men into beasts. But worst of all, they’ve seen a demon rise from the dead - making it even more powerful. Now Fritha, the demons’ high priestess, is hunting Drem’s party.
Concealed in Forn Forest, Riv struggles to understand her half-breed heritage. She represents the warrior angels’ biggest secret, one which could break their society. And when she’s found by the Ben-Elim’s high captain, he swoops in for the kill.
As demonic forces multiply, they send a mighty war-host to overthrow the angel’s stronghold. This could decimate the fractured Ben-Elim. And their allies in the Order may be too overwhelmed to send aid – with Fritha and her monstrous beasts closing in. Like heroes of old, Drem and the Bright Star’s warriors must battle to save their land. But can the light triumph when the dark is rising?
The King of the Otherworld is finally free. Armed with fearsome new starstone weapons, Asroth prepares to lead his demonic war-host south. And with the help of his bride, Fritha, he plans to crush the warrior-angels and their allies for good.
\nIn the shadows of Forn Forest, Riv and the surviving Ben-Elim hold a war council - desperate to unite those who would stand against Asroth and his army. They decide to fly west, to join the Order of the Bright Star. But Drem and the Order are already under siege by a demon horde and their fragile defences may soon shatter.
\nAcross the Banished Lands, armies are gathering to settle ancient grudges and decide the fate of humanity. Drem, Riv and the Bright Star’s warriors will need to call on all their courage as they face the final battle. But will it be enough, as their darkest hour draws near?
A race of warrior angels, the Ben-Elim, once vanquished a mighty demon horde. Now they rule the Banished lands, but their peace is brutally enforced.
In the south, hotheaded Riv is desperate to join the Ben-Elim's peacekeeping force, until she unearths a deadly secret.
In the west, the giantess Sig investigates demon sightings and discovers signs of an uprising and black magic.
And in the snowbound north, Drem, a trapper, finds mutilated corpses in the forests. The work of a predator, or something far darker?
It's a time of shifting loyalties and world-changing dangers. Difficult choices need to be made.
Because in the shadows, demons are gathering, waiting for their time to rise . . .
The Banished Lands is torn by war as High King Nathair sweeps the land challenging all who oppose him in his holy crusade. Allied with the manipulative Queen Rhin of Cambren, there are few who can stand against them. But Rhin is playing her own games and has her eyes on a far greater prize . . .
\nLeft for dead, her kin fled and her country overrun with enemies, Cywen has no choice but to try to survive. But any chance of escape is futile once Nathair and his disquieting advisor Calidus realise who she is. They have no intention of letting such a prize from their grasp. For she may be their greatest chance at killing the biggest threat to their power.
\nMeanwhile, the young warrior Corban flees from his conquered homeland with his exiled companions heading for the only place that may offer them sanctuary - Domhain. But to get there they must travel through Cambren avoiding warbands, giants and the vicious wolven of the mountains. And all the while Corban must battle to become the man that everyone believes him to be - the Bright Star and saviour of the Banished Lands.
\nAnd in the Otherworld dark forces scheme to bring a host of the Fallen into the world of flesh to end the war with the Faithful, once and for all.
Events are coming to a climax in the Banished Lands, as the war reaches new heights. King Nathair has taken control of the fortress at Drassil and three of the Seven Treasures are in his possession. And together with Calidus and his ally Queen Rhin, Nathair will do anything to obtain the remaining Treasures. With all seven under his command, he can open a portal to the Otherworld. Then Asroth and his demon-horde will finally break into the Banished Lands and become flesh.
Meanwhile Corban has been taken prisoner by the Jotun, warrior giants who ride their enormous bears into battle. His warband scattered, Corban must make new allies if he hopes to survive. But can he bond with competing factions of warlike giants? Somehow he must, if he's to counter the threat Nathair represents.
His life hangs in the balance - and with it, the fate of the Banished Lands.
‘Most people call me Ludi or Lud, even though my name is Ludik. Or they do call me Ludik, but I can’t catch the k on their lips. No, it doesn’t bother me - being deaf, that is. Still, if given the choice, I would’ve gone with ugly.
\nThere are many misconceptions about deafness, but the oddest to me is that we are void of sound, which is simply not true. And it’s with a sound that my story begins.
\nWith the earth-shattering thunder of a runaway mountain.
\nThe mountain destroyed everything I’ve ever known. My village, my friends, my family. All gone. I don’t care why it ran. I’ll make sure it never moves again.’
\n
As we grow older - most of all, in what we remember and what we dream - we live in the past. Sometimes, we live more vividly in the past than in the present.
\nAs an older man, Juan Diego will take a trip to the Philippines, but what travels with him are his dreams and memories; he is most alive in his childhood and early adolescence in Mexico.
\n\"An aura of fate had marked him,\" John Irving writes, of Juan Diego. \"The chain of events, the links in our lives - what leads us where we're going, the courses we follow to our ends, what we don't see coming, and what we do - all this can be mysterious, or simply unseen, or even obvious.\"
\nAvenue of Mysteries is the story of what happens to Juan Diego in the Philippines, where what happened to him in the past - in Mexico - collides with his future.
\n
“The first of my father’s illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life led in hotels.”
\nSo says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the myriad strange and wonderful times encountered by the family Berry.
\nHoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they “dream on” in a funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel by the remarkable author of A Prayer for Owen Meany and Last Night in Twisted River.
\n
In Aspen, Colorado, in 1941, Rachel Brewster is a slalom skier at the National Downhill and Slalom Championships. Little Ray, as she is called, finishes nowhere near the podium, but she manages to get pregnant. Back home, in New England, Little Ray becomes a ski instructor.
\nHer son, Adam, grows up in a family that defies conventions and evades questions concerning the eventful past. Years later, looking for answers, Adam will go to Aspen. In the Hotel Jerome, where he was conceived, Adam will meet some ghosts; in The Last Chairlift, they aren’t the first or the last ghosts he sees.
In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable’s girlfriend for a bear.
\nBoth the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County - to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto - pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them.
\nIn a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River depicts the recent half-century in the United States as “a living replica of Coos County, where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.”
Eleven-year-old Owen Meany, playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire, hits a foul ball and kills his best friend's mother. Owen doesn't believe in accidents; he believes he is God's instrument.
\nWhat happens to Owen after that 1953 foul is both extraordinary and terrifying. At moments a comic, self-deluded victim, but in the end the principal, tragic actor in a divine plan, Owen Meany is the most heartbreaking hero John Irving has yet created.
Esther Nacht is born in Vienna in 1905. Her father dies on board the ship to Portland, Maine; her mother is murdered by anti-Semites in Portland. Dr. Larch knows it won’t be easy to find a Jewish family to adopt Esther; in fact, he won’t find any family who’ll adopt her.
\nWhen Esther is fourteen, soon to be a ward of the state, Dr. Larch meets the Winslows, a philanthropic New England family with a history of providing foster care for unadopted orphans. The Winslows aren’t Jewish, but they despise anti-Semitism. Esther’s gratitude for the Winslows is unending; even as she retraces her roots back to Vienna, she never stops loving and protecting the Winslows. In the final chapter, set in Jerusalem in 1981, Esther Nacht is seventy-six.
\nJohn Irving’s sixteenth novel is a testament to his enduring ability to weave complex characters and intricate narratives that challenge and captivate. Queen Esther is not just a story of survival but a profound exploration of identity, belonging, and the enduring impact of history on our personal lives showcasing why Irving remains one of the world’s most beloved, provocative, and entertaining authors - a storyteller of our time and for all time.
\"Every successful marriage has its own private language.\"
\nSo it is for baby boomer Kate and her beloved architect husband Jack, thirty years into their seemingly idyllic metropolitan North London life. And so it is for spiky millennial screenwriter Phoebe and her charming loafer of a partner, Tony.
\nBut when Phoebe’s steamy television series Cheating becomes the year’s most talked-about show, Kate thinks she sees in it details and intimacies of her marriage that only she and her husband could possibly have known. Who has betrayed whom? Who has stolen whose story - and why?
\nA black comedy of love, trust, resentment, and entitlement, Look What You Made Me Do is the sharply observed and suspenseful story of two very different women from two very different generations, entangled in a battle only one of them can win.
\n
A young boy and his older sisters find themselves suddenly and utterly alone, orphaned in an abandoned fishing village. Their food supplies dwindling, they set out across a breathtaking yet treacherous wilderness in search of the last of their people.
\nDown the coast, raiders deliver the children's mother, along with the rest of their human cargo, to the last port city of a waning empire. Determined to reunite with her family, she plots her escape - while her fellow captives plan open revolt.
\nAt the center of power in this crumbling city, a young scholar inherits his father's business and position of privilege, along with the burden of his debts. As the empire's elite prepare to flee to new utopia across the sea, he must decide where his allegiance lies.
\nWith a rapidly changing climate shifting the sands beneath their feet, these three paths converge in a struggle for the future of humanity - who will inherit what remains and who gets to tell its story. At once a sweeping survival story; an epic of the distance future; and a post-apocalyptic vision of hope and optimism, The Ancients weaves a multilayered narrative about human resilience, hope, and stewardship of our world for future generations.
\n
In the spring of 1885, seventeen-year-old Jessilyn Harney finds herself orphaned and alone on her family's homestead. Desperate to fend off starvation and predatory neighbors, she cuts off her hair, binds her chest, saddles her beloved mare, and sets off across the mountains to find her outlaw brother Noah and bring him home. A talented sharpshooter herself, Jess's quest lands her in the employ of the territory's violent, capricious Governor, whose militia is also hunting Noah - dead or alive.
\nWrestling with her brother's outlaw identity, and haunted by questions about her own, Jess must outmaneuver those who underestimate her, ultimately rising to become a hero in her own right.
\nTold in Jess's wholly original and unforgettable voice, Whiskey When We're Dry is a stunning achievement, an epic as expansive as America itself - and a reckoning with the myths that are entwined with our history.
\n
He hides in the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment. Each kill is calculated, planned and executed like clockwork.
Struggling to balance her personal and professional life, young DS Becca Vincent has landed the biggest case of her career – and she knows that it will make or break her. But how can she identify one face in a sea of thousands? With the help of Police Super Recogniser Joe Russell, she strives to catch a glimpse of the elusive murderer, but he’s watching her every move.
Time is not on their side. The body count is rising, and the attacks are striking closer and closer to home. Can Becca and Joe uncover the connection between the murders before the killer strikes the last name from his list?
Mia and Finn are busy turning a derelict house into their dream home when Mia unexpectedly falls pregnant. But just when they think the house is ready, Mia discovers a chilling message scored into a skirting board:
\nI WILL SAVE THEM FROM THE ATTIC.
\nFollowing the clue up into the eaves, the couple make a gruesome discovery: their dream home was once a house of horrors.
\nIn the wake of their traumatic discovery, the baby arrives and Mia can’t shake her fixation with the monstrous crimes that happened right above them. Haunted by the terrible things she saw and desperate to find answers, her obsession pulls her ever further from her husband.
\nSecrecy shrouds the mystery of the attic, but when shards of a dark truth start to emerge, Mia realises the danger is terrifyingly present. She is prepared to do anything to protect her family - but is it already too late?
The world's population is soaring, creating overcrowded cities and an economic crisis. And in the UK, the breaking point has arrived. A growing number of people can no longer afford to start families, let alone raise them.
\nBut for those desperate to experience parenthood, there is an alternative. For a monthly subscription fee, clients can create a virtual child from scratch who they can access via the metaverse and a VR headset. To launch this new initiative, the company behind Virtual Children has created a reality TV show called The Substitute.
\nIt will follow ten couples as they raise a Virtual Child from birth to the age of eighteen but in a condensed nine-month time period. The prize: the right to keep their virtual child, or risk it all for the chance of a real baby . . .
\n
The people who call End of the Line need hope. They need reassurance that life is worth living. But some are unlucky enough to get through to Laura. Laura doesn’t want them to hope. She wants them to die. Laura hasn’t had it easy: she’s survived sickness and a difficult marriage only to find herself heading for forty, unsettled and angry. She doesn’t love talking to people worse off than she is. She craves it.
\nBut now someone’s on to her - Ryan, whose world falls apart when his pregnant wife ends her life, hand in hand with a stranger. Who was this man, and why did they choose to die together? The sinister truth is within Ryan’s grasp, but he has no idea of the desperate lengths Laura will go to . . . Because the best thing about being a Good Samaritan is that you can get away with murder.
What if marriage was the law? Dare you disobey?
\nBritain. The near future. A right wing government believes it has the answer to society’s ills - the Sanctity of Marriage Act which actively encourages marriage as the norm, punishing those who choose to remain single.
\nBut four couples are about to discover just how impossible relationships can be when the government is monitoring every aspect of our personal lives, monitoring every word, every minor disagreement . . . And it will use every tool in its arsenal to ensure everyone will love, honour and obey!
In this electrifying near-future thriller, five strangers guard government secrets, but only four can be trusted.
In the 21st century, information is king. But computers can be hacked and files can be broken into - so a unique government initiative has been born. Five ordinary people have been selected to become Minders - the latest weapon in thwarting cyberterrorism. Transformed by a revolutionary medical procedure, the country's most classified information has been taken offline and turned into genetic code implanted inside their heads.
Together, the five know every secret - the truth behind every government lie, conspiracy theory and cover up. In return, they're given the chance to leave their problems behind and a blank slate to start their lives anew.
But not everyone should be trusted, especially when they each have secrets of their own they'll do anything to protect . . .
How far would you go to find The One?
One simple mouth swab is all it takes. A quick DNA test to find your perfect partner - the one you’re genetically made for.
A decade after scientists discover everyone has a gene they share with just one other person, millions have taken the test, desperate to find true love. Now, five more people meet their Match. But even soul mates have secrets. And some are more shocking - and deadlier - than others . . .
Eight self-drive cars set on a collision course. Who lives, who dies? You decide.
When someone hacks into the systems of eight self-drive cars, their passengers are set on a fatal collision course.
The passengers are: a TV star, a pregnant young woman, a disabled war hero, an abused wife fleeing her husband, an illegal immigrant, a husband and wife - and parents of two - who are travelling in separate vehicles and a suicidal man. Now the public have to judge who should survive but are the passengers all that they first seem?
Paul’s just here to help, or so he claims - sent by a charity for vulnerable people to do odd jobs for elderly widow Gwen. But for Gwen’s daughter Connie, there’s just something about Paul that rings alarm bells from day one. He’s a little too kind, a little too involved. Worse still, Gwen seems to have fallen under his spell.
\nThe last thing Connie wants is a stranger meddling in the safe routine she’s built around Gwen. She loves being the one Gwen turns to for cooking, cleaning and company. But the more Paul visits, the more Gwen is relying on him. By the time he conveniently finds himself between homes and has no choice but to move in, Connie is certain he’s trying to push her out completely.
\nIt’s her word against his, though, and as her attempts to unmask him become ever more desperate she’s not the only one left wondering if she’s lost her grip on reality. But when events start spiralling rapidly out of her control, should Connie wage all-out war on Paul and risk losing Gwen forever - or has that been his plan all along?
How far would you run to escape your past?
\nFor eight strangers in a Los Angeles backpacking hostel, even the other side of the world isn’t far enough.
\nThe craving for a new identity and the chance to start again is something they have in common. But the search for a fresh start isn't as easy as they'd imagined.
\nAnd they soon discover that it doesn't matter where you are or who you are - if you can't lay the past to rest, coincidence, fate and deception have a way of catching up with you when you least expect it.
Nina can never forgive Maggie for what she did. And she can never let her leave.
They say every house has its secrets, and the house that Maggie and Nina have shared for so long is no different. Except that these secrets are not buried in the past.
Every other night, Maggie and Nina have dinner together. When they are finished, Nina helps Maggie back to her room in the attic, and into the heavy chain that keeps her there. Because Maggie has done things to Nina that can’t ever be forgiven, and now she is paying the price.
But there are many things about the past that Nina doesn’t know, and Maggie is going to keep it that way - even if it kills her.
Because in this house, the truth is more dangerous than lies.
It’s 5 November, and a woman awakens to a nightmare. Bound and gagged, she lies trapped in the heart of a towering bonfire. As the smoke thickens, panic sets in - she’s moments away from being engulfed in flames. How did it come to this?
\nRewind eleven months: Margot, a faded TV star, and her long-suffering friend Anna watch as glamorous Liv and her flawless family move into their street. The three women soon fabricate the perfect pretence of friendship, but each harbours her own deadly secret - and newcomer Liv senses something is terribly wrong beneath the polished exteriors.
\nAs cracks widen in the veneer of perfection and lies escalate out of control, tension ignites. Bonfire Night is approaching and someone is set to burn . . . But who will it be?
As the Depression hits Detroit, Henry Ford - who doesn't like change - finds himself having to confront the crash of the economy, which he blames on the Jews. But his mass firings and severe salary reductions lead to an uproar, including massive hunger protests at the factory. It also heightens ethnic tension in the city, because Ford, who resisted hiring African-Americans in the first place, lays them all off first. Can his private army - consisting of ex-cons and gangsters from the Chicago Mob - keep things under control?
\nAnd what about the rubber plantation he's trying to build in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil, so that he can wrest control of the rubber industry for tires? It's off to a disastrous start, with a food riot by the indigenous employees that led to Ford having to borrow the Brazilian army. There also seems to be a blight affecting the thousands of newly planted rubber trees . . .
\nJohn Sayles presents this epic saga with a cast of characters featuring many of the real historical figures involved, including fascinating character studies of Henry Ford, his beleaguered son Edsel, the ex-cop running Ford's huge, private \"security\" force, Harry Bennett, and appearances by union leader Walter Reuther and boxer Joe Louis. It is also a stirring portrayal of the people who toiled in the hyper-monotonous jobs of the factories in Detroit and the Brazilian plantation.
\nPiercing the image of one of our most vaunted historical figures, and bringing forth the brave and inspiring story of the people who actually built Ford's empire, Crucible is the kind of griping, revealing look at the American character that John Sayles has become famous for.
It begins in the highlands of Scotland in 1746, at the Battle of Culloden, the last desperate stand of the Stuart ‘pretender’ to the throne of the Three Kingdoms, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and his rabidly loyal supporters. Vanquished with his comrades by the forces of the Hanoverian (and Protestant) British crown, the novel’s eponymous hero, Jamie MacGillivray, narrowly escapes a roadside execution only to be recaptured by the victors and shipped to Marshalsea Prison (central to Charles Dickens’s Hard Times) where he cheats the hangman a second time before being sentenced to transportation and indentured servitude in colonial America \"for the term of his natural life.\" His travels are paralleled by those of Jenny Ferguson, a poor, village girl swept up on false charges by the English and also sent in chains to the New World.
\nThe novel follows Jamie and Jenny through servitude, revolt, escape, and romantic entanglements - pawns in a deadly game. The two continue to cross paths with each other and with some of the leading figures of the era- the devious Lord Lovat, future novelist Henry Fielding, the artist William Hogarth, a young and ambitious George Washington, the doomed General James Wolfe, and the Lenape chief feared throughout the Ohio Valley as Shingas the Terrible.
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In September of 1890, the academic year begins at the Carlisle school - a military-style boarding school for Indians run by Captain Richard Henry Pratt. Pratt’s motto, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” is enforced in the classroom as well as the dorm speak English, forget your own language and customs, learn to be white.
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While the students navigate survival, they hear rumors of a sweeping tribal lands reservations in the west - the “ghost dance,” whereby desperate Native Americans engaged in frenzied dancing and chanting hoping it will cause the buffalo will return, the Indian dead to rise, and the white people to disappear. Local whites panic, and the government sends in troops to keep the reservations under control.
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When legendary medicine man Sitting Bull is killed by native police working for the government troops, each Carlisle resident is faced with the Whose side are you on? And what will you risk to gain your freedom?
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For Harry Creek, it's quickly becoming a nightmare. All he wants is to do his uncomplicated mid-level diplomatic job with Earth's State Department. But his past training and skills get him tapped to save the planet - and to protect pet store owner Robin Baker, whose own past holds the key to the whereabouts of that lost sheep. Doing both will take him from lava-strewn battlefields to alien halls of power. All in a day's work. Maybe it's time for a raise.
Throw in two-timing freelance mercenaries, political lobbyists with megalomaniac tendencies, aliens on a religious quest, and an artificial intelligence with unusual backstory, and you've got more than just your usual science fiction adventure story. You've got The Android's Dream.
Our universe is ruled by physics and faster than light travel is not possible - until the discovery of The Flow, an extra-dimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transport us to other worlds, around other stars.
\nHumanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war - and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.
\nThe Flow is eternal - but it is not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well, cutting off worlds from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that The Flow is moving, possibly cutting off all human worlds from faster than light travel forever, three individuals - a scientist, a starship captain and the Empress of the Interdependency - are in a race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.
The Interdependency - humanity’s interstellar empire - is on the verge of collapse. The extra-dimensional conduit that makes travel between the stars possible is disappearing, leaving entire systems and human civilisations stranded.
\nEmperox Grayland II of the Interdependency is ready to take desperate measures to help ensure the survival of billions. But arrayed before her are those who believe the collapse of the Flow is a myth - or at the very least an opportunity to an ascension to power.
\nWhile Grayland prepares for disaster, others are prepare for a civil war. A war that will take place in the halls of power, the markets of business and the altars of worship as much as it will between spaceships and battlefields.
\nThe Emperox and her allies are smart and resourceful, as are her enemies. Nothing about this will be easy . . . and all of humanity will be caught in its consuming fire.
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One day, not long from now, it becomes almost impossible to murder anyone - 999 times out of a thousand, anyone who is intentionally killed comes back. How? We don’t know. But it changes everything: war, crime, daily life.
\nTony Valdez is a Dispatcher - a licensed, bonded professional whose job is to humanely dispatch those whose circumstances put them in death’s crosshairs, so they can have a second chance to avoid the reaper. But when a fellow Dispatcher and former friend is apparently kidnapped, Tony learns that there are some things that are worse than death, and that some people are ready to do almost anything to avenge what they see as a wrong.
\nIt’s a race against time for Valdez to find his friend before it’s too late . . . before not even a Dispatcher can save him.
The Colonial Union's Defence Force was formed to save humanity when aggressive alien species targeted our worlds. Now Lieutenant Harry Wilson has an urgent new mission, as a hostile universe becomes ever more dangerous. He must investigate a sinister group, which lurks in the darkness of space playing different factions against one another. They'll target both humans and aliens, and their motives are unfathomable.
\nThe Defence Force itself is weakening as its soldiers fall - without recruits to replace them. Relations with Earth have broken down and it will send no more troops, even as human colonies become increasingly vulnerable to alien attack.
\nLieutenant Wilson and Colonial Union diplomats must race to keep the peace, seek reconciliation with an enraged Earth, and maintain humanity's unity at all costs. If they don't, it will mean oblivion, extinction and the end of all things.
The Ghost Brigades are the Special Forces of the Colonial Defense Forces, elite troops created from the DNA of the dead and turned into the perfect soldiers for the CDF's toughest operations. They're young, they're fast and strong, and they're totally without normal human qualms.
The universe is a dangerous place for humanity - and it's about to become far more dangerous. Three races that humans have clashed with before have allied to halt our expansion into space. Their linchpin: the turncoat military scientist Charles Boutin, who knows the CDF's biggest military secrets. To prevail, the CDF must find out why Boutin did what he did.
Jared Dirac is the only human who can provide answers - a superhuman hybrid, created from Boutin's DNA, Jared's brain should be able to access Boutin's electronic memories. But when the memory transplant appears to fail, Jared is given to the Ghost Brigades.
At first, Jared is a perfect soldier, but as Boutin's memories slowly surface, Jared begins to intuit the reason's for Boutin's betrayal. As Jared desperately hunts for his \"father,\" he must also come to grips with his own choices. Time is running out: The alliance is preparing its offensive, and some of them plan worse things than humanity's mere military defeat . . .
Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent’s head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are “threeps,” robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden’s Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real and the crowds love it.
Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.
Is it an accident or murder? FBI Agents and Haden-related crime investigators, Chris Shane and Leslie Vann, are called in to uncover the truth - and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa, where fortunes are made or lost, and where players and owners do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.
Lieutenant Harry Wilson has an impossible mission. He must help preserve the union of humanity's colonies, in the wake of a terrible revelation.
\nFor years the Colonial Union has protected its citizens from the dangerous universe around them. But the people of Earth now know the ugly truth. The Union deliberately kept Earth as an ignorant backwater - and as a source of recruits for its war against hostile aliens. Now, other alien races have formed a new alliance against the Union. And they've invited the incensed people of Earth to join them.
\nManaging the Colonial Union's survival will take all the political cunning and finesse its diplomats can muster. And Harry and his team will be deployed to deal with the unexpected - for failure is unthinkable.
When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organisation.” Tom's team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on.
\nWhat Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda and they're in trouble.
\nIt's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society that's found its way to the alternate world. Others have, too - and their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.
Retired from his fighting days, John Perry is now village ombudsman for a human colony on distant Huckleberry. With his wife, former Special Forces warrior Jane Sagan, he farms several acres, adjudicates local disputes, and enjoys watching his adopted daughter grow up.
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That is, until his and Jane's past reaches out to bring them back into the game - as leaders of a new human colony, to be peopled by settlers from all the major human worlds, for a deep political purpose that will put Perry and Sagan back in the thick of interstellar politics, betrayal, and war.
The collapse of The Flow, the interstellar pathway between the planets of the Interdependency, has accelerated. Entire star systems - and billions of people - are becoming cut off from the rest of human civilization. This collapse was foretold through scientific prediction . . . and yet, even as the evidence is obvious and insurmountable, many still try to rationalize, delay and profit from, these final days of one of the greatest empires humanity has ever known.
\nEmperox Grayland II has finally wrested control of her empire from those who oppose her and who deny the reality of this collapse. But “control” is a slippery thing, and even as Grayland strives to save as many of her people form impoverished isolation, the forces opposing her rule will make a final, desperate push to topple her from her throne and power, by any means necessary. Grayland and her thinning list of allies must use every tool at their disposal to save themselves, and all of humanity. And yet it may not be enough.
\nWill Grayland become the savior of her civilisation . . . or the last emperox to wear the crown?
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Welcome to the new world, in which murder is all but a thing of the past. When someone kills you, 999 times out of 1,000, you instantly come back to life. In this world, there are dispatchers - licensed killers who step in when you're at risk of a natural or unintentional death. They kill you - so you can live.
\nTony Valdez is used to working his job as a dispatcher within the rules of the law and the state. But times are tough, and more and more Tony finds himself riding the line between what's legal and what will pay his bills.
\nAfter one of these shady gigs, and after being a witness to a crime gone horribly wrong, Tony discovers that people around him are dying, for reasons that make no sense . . . and which just may implicate him. Tony is running out of time: to solve the mystery of these deaths, to keep others from dying, and to keep himself from being a victim of what looks like murder, by other means.
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For a decade, peace has reigned in interstellar space. A tripartate agreement between the Colonial Union, the Earth, and the alien Conclave has kept the forces of war at bay, even when some would have preferred to return to the fighting and struggle of former times. For now, more sensible heads have prevailed - and have even championed unity.
\nBut now, there is a new force that threatens the hard-maintained peace: The Consu, the most advanced intelligent species humans have ever met, are on the cusp of a species-defining civil war. This war is between Consu factions . . . but nothing the Consu ever do is just about them. The Colonial Union, the Earth and the Conclave have been unwillingly dragged into the conflict, in the most surprising of ways.
\nGretchen Trujillo is a mid-level diplomat, working in an unimportant part of the Colonial Union bureaucracy. But when she is called to take part in a secret mission involving representatives from every powerful faction in space, what she finds there has the chance to redefine the destinies of humans and aliens alike . . . or destroy them forever.
Equipped with the entirety of human knowledge, a sentient ship is launched on a last-ditch journey to find a new home for civilisation. Trillions of miles. Tens of thousands of years.
\nIn the space between, the AI has plenty of time to think about life, the vastness of the universe, everything it was meant to do, and - with a perspective created but not limited by humans - what it should do.
Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.
Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.
But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.
It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyper-intelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.
In a dog-eat-dog world . . . be a cat.
The world has changed. Now, when someone is murdered, they almost always come back to life - and there are professionals, called “dispatchers,” who kill in order to save lives, to give those near the end a second chance. Tony Valdez is a dispatcher, and he has never been busier.
\nBut for as much as the world has changed, some things have stayed the same. Greed, corruption and avarice are still in full swing. When Tony is called to a Chicago emergency room by an old friend and fellow dispatcher, he is suddenly and unwillingly thrown into a whirlpool of schemes and plots involving billions of dollars, with vast caches of wealth ranging from real estate to cryptocurrency up for grabs.
All Tony wants to do is keep his friend safe. But it’s hard to do when friends keep secrets, enemies offer seductive deals, and nothing is ever what it seems. The world has changed . . . but the stakes are still life and death.
One day soon, suddenly and without explanation, the moon as we know it is replaced with an orb of cheese with the exact same mass. Through the length of an entire lunar cycle, from new moon to a spectacular and possibly final solar eclipse, we follow multiple characters - schoolkids and scientists, billionaires and workers, preachers and politicians - as they confront the strange new world they live in, and the absurd, impossible moon that now hangs above all their lives.
How do you tell your part in the biggest tale in history?
I ask because it's what I have to do. I'm Zoe Boutin Perry: A colonist stranded on a deadly pioneer world. Holy icon to a race of aliens. A player (and a pawn) in a interstellar chess match to save humanity, or to see it fall. Witness to history. Friend. Daughter. Human. Seventeen years old.
Everyone on Earth knows the tale I am part of. But you don't know my tale: How I did what I did - how I did what I had to do - not just to stay alive but to keep you alive, too. All of you. I'm going to tell it to you now, the only way I know how: not straight but true, the whole thing, to try make you feel what I felt: the joy and terror and uncertainty, panic and wonder, despair and hope. Everything that happened, bringing us to Earth, and Earth out of its captivity. All through my eyes.
It's a story you know. But you don't know it all.
In a post-pandemic future where AI has infiltrated daily life, the line between what is real and what is digital has eroded to nothing. As Manhattan is overrun by wireheads who spend their days literally plugged into virtual reality, algorithms and robots have replaced everything from the criminal justice system to individual loved ones.
\nAs long as she can remember, ten-year-old Kate has felt like someone was watching her. She has been orphaned since the pandemic, her foster parents find her eccentric and off-putting, and her legal guardian is nowhere to be seen. Now, an algorithm has predicted the very worst - within thirty days, Kate will either be killed, or become a killer. When two police officers arrive at her home in Maine intending to implant her with a tracking device, Kate is urged by her trusted AI Interactive Toy (a talking stuffed seal named Zeno) to make an immediate escape. Confused and looking for answers, the girl sets a course for New York City and begins an Orwellian journey into the unknown.
\nGripping, intricately plotted, and delightfully imaginative, Certainty is a profound and eerily prescient novel about the ever-blurring line between man and machine. Amid the murder investigation of a gifted AI robot-maker, a missing-person being tracked down in the darkest corners of virtual reality, and Kate's harrowing journey to New York, John Twelve Hawks's novel explores the spectacular humanity to be found in a world where humans are themselves endangered.
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Still reeling from a sudden tragedy, our biracial narrator receives a letter from an attorney: he has just inherited a plot of land from his estranged white grandfather. He travels to a beach town several hours south of his home with the intention of selling the land immediately and moving on. But upon inspection, what lies beneath the dirt is far more complicated than he ever imagined. In a shocking irony, he is now the Black owner of a former plantation passed down by the men on his white mother’s side of the family.
\nVercher deftly blurs the lines between real and imagined, past and present, tragedy and humor, and fathers and sons in this story of discovering and reclaiming a painful past. With the wit and rawness of Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, Devil Is Fine is a gripping, surreal, and brilliantly crafted dissection of the legacies we leave behind and those we inherit.
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In his groundbreaking leadership book, John Wang, a top empowerment coach to Asian American professionals across Fortune 500 companies, offers research-backed guidance for Asian Americans to embody their most confident selves in business, relationships, and their everyday lives.
\nAsians today are smashing box office records, winning Oscars, dominating global music charts, and reaching the office of vice president of the United States. Yet studies show Asian American professionals are still less likely to be promoted to leadership roles, and they struggle with self-confidence and self-criticism more than any other racial group. With Asian visibility now higher than it has been in decades, how can the new generation of Asian Americans finally step into our power?
\nIn his book, John Wang offers his unique framework for empowerment. He is an experienced leadership coach to the Asian American community who can help readers in every area of their lives. He has supported hundreds of clients from Google, American Express, Goldman Sachs, and other global companies, and his coaching videos have reached more than 25 million views on TikTok.
\nThrough proven exercises and successful client stories, he shows how cultural values like collectivism might make some avoid claiming credit in group projects, or how deference to elders creates communication issues. He sees Achievers and Fixers burning out, and Chameleons or Invisible Ones assimilating themselves into imposter syndrome. Instead of urging assimilation, Wang will show Asian Americans how to advocate for themselves on their own terms, through culturally informed guidance.
\nThrough his deeply relatable stories and his witty and disarming voice, John Wang offers a bold, moving, insightful, and practical guide. Big Asian Energy aims to teach readers to identify their authentic strengths and values, and to finally break through societal barriers.
Shesheshen has made a fatal mistake for a monster: she’s fallen in love.
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Shesheshen is a shapeshifter - one who is perfectly content to stay as an amorphous lump in her swamp, unless impolite monster hunters invade: intent on murdering her. Then, she meets warm-hearted Homily, who mistakes Shesheshen for a human like her.
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But just as Shesheshen is about to confess her true identity, Homily reveals she’s hunting the shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give them both a chance at happiness, she must figure out why Homily’s family thinks she did - while surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to build a life with the woman she loves.
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How do you move on after losing the person you loved? How do you build a life worth living? Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him.
\nWhen an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started. Her body heals, but Lou herself knows that she needs to be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. They will also lead her to the strong, capable Sam Fielding - the paramedic, whose business is life and death, and the one man who might be able to understand her.
\nThen a figure from Will’s past appears and hijacks all her plans, propelling her into a very different future. . . . For Lou Clark, life after Will Traynor means learning to fall in love again, with all the risks that brings. But here Jojo Moyes gives us two families, as real as our own, whose joys and sorrows will touch you deeply, and where both changes and surprises await.
They had nothing in common until love gave them everything to lose.
Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life - steady boyfriend, close family - who has never been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life - big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel - and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.
Will is acerbic, moody, bossy - but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.
A Love Story for this generation, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common - a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?
The Spanish House has been untouched for decades when it is inherited by Isabel Delancey, a widow with two children. Forced out of London and into its semi-derelict isolation, she is still mourning her husband, and struggles to cope.
\nWhen Matt McCarthy, the builder next door, offers to help with repairs, she accepts gratefully. But Matt has a hidden agenda, having waited for the house for a decade. As does his wife, Laura, who sees it as a way of rebuilding her family.
\nNicholas Trent, a property developer, sees it as a route back to his fortune, while labourer Byron Firth simply wants a roof over his head. When the Delanceys move in to the Spanish House the lives and loves of these five people collide with dramatic results.
\nHow far would you go to get the house of your dreams?
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A touching, unforgettable story of three generations of Irish women faced with the fundamental truths of love, duty, and the unbreakable bond that unites mothers and daughters
\nEstranged from her mother since she ran away from her rural Irish home as a young woman, Kate swore an oath that she'd always be a friend to her daughter, Sabine. But history has a way of repeating itself, and Kate now faces an ever-widening chasm between herself and her daughter. With Sabine about to make her own journey to Ireland to see her grandmother, Kate is left wondering how they ever made it here, and what she can do to close the gap between them.
\nFor Joy, seeing her granddaughter is a dream come true. After the painful separation from Kate, she's looking forward to having time with Sabine. Yet almost as soon as the young woman arrives, the lack of common ground between them deflates her enthusiasm. And when Sabine's impetuous, inquisitive nature forces Joy to face long-buried secrets from her past, she realises that perhaps it's time to finally heal old wounds.
When Mike Dormer heads out from London to a small seaside town in Australia to kick-start a hotel development, he expects just another deal. But Silver Bay is not just any seaside town, and the inhabitants of the eccentric ramshackle Silver Bay Hotel - including the enigmatic skipper Liza McCullen - swiftly begin to temper his own shark-like tendencies. He is left wondering who really has the greater right to the bay's waters.
\nAs the development begins to take on a momentum of its own, and the effect on the whales that migrate past the bay begins to reveal itself, Mike's and Liza's worlds collide, with dramatic results . . . This recording is unabridged. Typically abridged audiobooks are not more than 60 per cent of the author's work and as low as 30 per cent with characters and plotlines removed.
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Who are you when you are forced to walk in someone else’s shoes?
\nNisha Cantor lives the globetrotting life of the seriously wealthy, until her husband announces a divorce and cuts her off. Nisha is determined to hang onto her glamorous life. But in the meantime, she must scramble to cope - she doesn’t even have the shoes she was, until a moment ago, standing in.
\nThat’s because Sam Kemp – in the bleakest point of her life – has accidentally taken Nisha’s gym bag. But Sam hardly has time to worry about a lost gym bag - she’s struggling to keep herself and her family afloat. When she tries on Nisha’s six-inch high Christian Louboutin red crocodile shoes, the resulting jolt of confidence that makes her realize something must change - and that thing is herself.
Sarah's grandfather was a horseman of rare talent - only the exceptional are allowed into France's elite riding academy, Le Cadre Noir. But life took an unexpected turn, and now from a council estate in east London, the Captain hopes to train his granddaughter towards a better life.
\nNatasha is a lawyer whose job is to represent the best interests of children. Her confidence in her judgement has been shaken and her marriage has died - but an encounter with Sarah may lead to Natasha learning all she needs to know about life from a fourteen-year-old girl and a large horse named Boo.
It is 1960. When Jennifer Stirling wakes up in the hospital, she can remember nothing-not the tragic car accident that put her there, not her husband, not even who she is. She feels like a stranger in her own life until she stumbles upon an impassioned letter, signed simply \"B\", asking her to leave her husband.
\nYears later, in 2003, a journalist named Ellie discovers the same enigmatic letter in a forgotten file in her newspaper's archives. She becomes obsessed by the story and hopeful that it can resurrect her faltering career. Perhaps if these lovers had a happy ending she will find one to her own complicated love life, too. Ellie's search will rewrite history and help her see the truth about her own modern romance.
In the Sixties, Athene Forster is the most glamorous girl of her generation. Nicknamed the Last Deb, she is also beautiful, spoilt and out of control. When she agrees to marry dashing young heir Douglas Fairley-Hulme her parents breathe a sigh of relief. But within two years rumours have begun to circulate about Athene's affair with a young salesman.
\nThirty five years on, Suzanna Peacock is struggling with her glamorous mother's legacy. At odds with her father and his second wife, struggling in a stalled marriage, she returns to the place of her birth to find that the ghost of her mother, in differing ways, still haunts them all. The only place she finds comfort is in her shop, The Peacock Emporium, a coffee shop-cum-curio store, decorated in her own image, which provides a haven for other misfits in the town.
\nThere she makes perhaps the first real friends of her life, including Alejandro, a male midwife, escaping his own ghosts in Argentina. But the spectre of Athene and the shop itself combine to set in place a chain of tragic events, forcing Suzanna to confront the feelings she has disguised for so long - and her family, in their varying ways, finally to deal with the events of the past. And Suzanna discovers the key to her history, and her happiness, may have been in front of her all along.
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Embark on a beautiful romance with the breakout novel from RNA prize winner Jojo Moyes - based on a compelling true story. How far would you go for love?
\nThe year is 1946, and all over the world young women are crossing the seas in their thousands en route to the men they married in wartime, and an unknown future. In Sydney, Australia, four women join 650 other brides on an extraordinary voyage to England - aboard HMS Victoria, which still carries not just arms and aircraft but a thousand naval officers and men. Rules of honour, duty, and separation are strictly enforced, from the aircraft carrier's Captain down to the lowliest young stoker.
\nBut the men and the brides will find their lives intertwined in ways the Navy could never have imagined. And Frances Mackenzie - the enigmatic young bride whose past comes back to haunt her thousands of miles from home - will find that sometimes the journey is more important than the destination.
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Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is . . . complicated.
\nSo when her real dad - a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago - suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you: about love, and what it actually means to be family.
They say it’s always beautiful in Bethlam, Nevada. No place you’d rather live. The people are friendly, if a little nosy, and there’s no crime to speak of. Life is pretty perfect.
\nBut postal worker Hank Davies has started to suspect something is off in this idyllic little town. And he’s certain of that when he realises the letters he’s been delivering are just blank pages.
\nHank isn’t the only one who’s noticed the oddities in Bethlam. One such person knocks on his window in the middle of the night, urging him to investigate his bedroom wall. When Hank pulls back the wallpaper, he discovers dozens of sheets of paper, full of a story that is either complete madness or unbelievable truth.
\nAs he begins looking beyond the veneer of his smiling neighbors and their white picket fences, Hank is drawn further and further into a disturbing new reality . . .
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As a disgraced lawyer with a drinking problem he's in denial about, Jake West is coasting on what’s left of his charm and money. He used to be the kind of lawyer who could convince anyone of anything - until he decided to take on his father’s biggest client and prove his dad was corrupt. Now Jake finds himself almost at rock bottom, and that’s before his ex-best friend is murdered and Jake is accused of the crime.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tIn a desperate bid to save himself, Jake must sober up and search for the real killer. As he moves through a labyrinth of lies and corruption, Jake teams up with an eclectic group of equally broken people as they all must skirt the law to find the proof he needs . . . no matter the cost.
When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. As he turned to begin his long, dangerous descent from 29,028 feet, twenty other climbers were still pushing doggedly toward the top. No one had noticed that the sky had begun to fill with clouds. Six hours later and 3,000 feet lower, in 70-knot winds and blinding snow, Krakauer collapsed in his tent, freezing, hallucinating from exhaustion and hypoxia, but safe. The following morning, he learned that six of his fellow climbers hadn't made it back to their camp and were desperately struggling for their lives. When the storm finally passed, five of them would be dead, and the sixth so horribly frostbitten that his right hand would have to be amputated.
\nInto Thin Air is the definitive account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author of the bestseller Into the Wild. On assignment for Outside Magazine to report on the growing commercialisation of the mountain, Krakauer, an accomplished climber, went to the Himalayas as a client of Rob Hall, the most respected high-altitude guide in the world. A rangy, thirty-five-year-old New Zealander, Hall had summited Everest four times between 1990 and 1995 and had led thirty-nine climbers to the top. Ascending the mountain in close proximity to Hall's team was a guided expedition led by Scott Fischer, a forty-year-old American with legendary strength and drive who had climbed the peak without supplemental oxygen in 1994. But neither Hall nor Fischer survived the rogue storm that struck in May 1996.
\nKrakauer examines what it is about Everest that has compelled so many people - including himself - to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concerns of loved ones, and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense. Written with emotional clarity and supported by his unimpeachable reporting, Krakauer's eyewitness account of what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement.
Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. In Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders.
\nAt the core of his book is an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this \"divinely inspired\" crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest-growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.
\nKrakauer takes readers inside isolated communities in the American West, Canada, and Mexico, where some forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists believe the mainstream Mormon Church went unforgivably astray when it renounced polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the leaders of these outlaw sects are zealots who answer only to God. Marrying prodigiously and with virtual impunity (the leader of the largest fundamentalist church took seventy-five \"plural wives,\" several of whom were wed to him when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets exercise absolute control over the lives of their followers, and preach that any day now the world will be swept clean in a hurricane of fire, sparing only their most obedient adherents.
\nWeaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed look at Mormonism’s violent past, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious extremism.
A young man called Samuel dies, but was it an accident or suicide? An unnamed writer with an agenda of his own sets out to piece together Samuel's story.
\nThrough conversations with friends, relatives and neighbours, a portrait emerges: the loving grandchild, the reluctant bureaucrat, the loyal friend, the contrived poser. The young man who would do anything for his girlfriend Laide and share everything with his friend Vandad.
\nUntil Vandad, marginalised and broke, desperate to get closer to Samuel, drives a wedge between the friends, and Samuel loses them both.
\nEverything I Don't Remember is an enthralling tale of love and memory. It is also the story of a writer who, in filling out the contours of Samuel's life, is trying to grasp a universal truth - in the end, how do we account for the substance of a life?
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Meet the Mikkola sisters: Ina, Evelyn, and Anastasia. Their mother is a Tunisian carpet seller, their father a mysterious Swede who left them when they were young. Ina is tall, serious, a compulsive organiser. Evelyn is dreamy, magnetic, a smooth talker. Anastasia is moody, chaotic, a shape-shifting presence, quick to anger.
\nIna meets her future husband when her sisters drag her to a New Year’s rave, only to suffer the ultimate betrayal. Evelyn drifts through life before embarking on a wild career as an actor. And Anastasia runs off to Tunisia, where she falls in love with a woman who, years later, will transform her life.
\nFollowing the sisters from afar is Jonas, the son of a Swedish mother and a Tunisian father. Over the course of three decades, his life intersects with the sisters, from a chance encounter in Tunis to the scene of a fighter jet crash in Stockholm. When Evelyn disappears on a trip to New York, Jonas manages to track her down - and helps her to break the curse that has been looming over the Mikkolas for decades. In the process, a shocking revelation changes everything about who they think they are.
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The first full biography in decades, Eig mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times.
\nVividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. - and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists.
\nKing reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father - as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.
\nIn this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.
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Eugene “Geno” Miles is living out his final days in a nursing home, bored, curmudgeonly, and struggling to connect with his new nursing assistant, Angel, who is understandably skeptical of Geno’s insistence on having lived not just one life but many - all the way back to medieval Spain, where, as a petty thief, he first lucked upon true love only to lose it, and spend the next thousand years trying to recapture it.
\nWho is Geno? A lonely old man clinging to his delusions and rehearsing his fantasies, or a legitimate anomaly, a thousand-year-old man who continues to search for the love he lost so long ago?
\nAs Angel comes to learn the truth about Geno, so, too, does the reader, and as his miraculous story comes to a head, so does the biggest truth of that love - timeless, often elusive - is sometimes right in front of us.
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A quirky coming-of-age novel about Will, a gawky vegetarian in an off-the-wall bodybuilding family, who develops a very inconvenient obsession with his new step-sister LuLu.
\nWeakness has always been a concern for William growing up vegetarian in a family of competitive bodybuilders will do that to a person. But William's life is turned upside down with the death of his mother and the arrival of both a new step-mother and step-sister - Lulu. At once they are thick as thieves, but years later, something changes, and William watches his life shift into tumult and despair.
\nOnce Lulu departs for college, Will goes into the world to find himself, discovering Western philosophy, a cruel dating world, enduring friendship, and, ultimately, his true calling. Emboldened by his turn as a late-night radio personality, Will rescues himself from the self-image of weakness he’d long wished to escape.
\nThis debut novel explores the fundamental difference between where we come from - and the endless possibilities of where we may go.
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Abe Winter and Ruth Warneke were never meant to be together - at least if you ask Ruth. Yet their catastrophic blind date in college evolved into a seventy-year marriage and a life on a farm on Bainbridge Island with their hens and beloved Labrador, Megs. Through the years, the Winters have fallen in and out of lockstep, and from their haunting losses and guarded secrets, a dependable partnership has been forged.
\nBut when Ruth’s loose tooth turns out to be something much more malicious, the beautiful, reliable life they’ve created together comes to a crisis. As Ruth struggles with her crumbling independence, Abe must learn how to take care of her while their three living children question his ability to look after his wife. And once again, the couple has to reconfigure how to be there for each other.
\nIn this bighearted and profound portrait of a marriage, Jonathan Evison explores seventy years of big moments in subtle ways, elegantly braiding the Winters’ turbulent history with their present-day battles, showing us how the oddly paired college kids became parents, fell apart and back together, andgrew into the Abe and Ruth of today. Endlessly heartwarming and moving, The Heart of Winter is a reminder that true love lives in small, everyday moments.
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For Mike Muñoz, a young Chicano living in Washington State, life has been a whole lot of waiting for something to happen. Not too many years out of high school and still doing menial work - and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew - he knows that he's got to be the one to shake things up if he's ever going to change his life. But how?
\nIn this funny, angry, touching, and ultimately deeply inspiring novel, bestselling author Jonathan Evison takes the reader into the heart and mind of a young man on a journey to discover himself, a search to find the secret to achieving the American dream of happiness and prosperity. That's the birthright for all Americans, isn't it? If so, then what is Mike Muñoz's problem?
\nThough he tries time and again to get his foot on the first rung of that ladder to success, he can't seem to get a break. But then things start to change for Mike, and after a raucous, jarring, and challenging trip, he finds he can finally see the future and his place in it.
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Dave Cartwright has had enough. After three tours in Iraq he has come home to Vigilante Falls in Washington State only to find that he feels incapable of connecting to the people and the place that once defined him. Most days, his love for his seven-year-old daughter, Bella, is the only thing keeping him going. When tragedy strikes, Dave makes a dramatic decision: he will take Bella to live in a cave in the wilderness of the North Cascades.
\nSo begins a compelling adventure, a story of a father and daughter attempting to cope with a breathtaking but harsh environment. Once they are settled in the cave, Bella retreats into a different world, that of a mother and son who had lived in that same space, but thousands of years before, at the end of last Ice Age. As the two dramas begin to merge, a timeless odyssey unfolds, both as a meditation on the perils of isolation and an exploration of humans' indelible struggle to survive.
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For Ben Benjamin, all has been lost - his wife, his family, his home, his livelihood. Hoping to find a new direction, he enrolls in a night class called The Fundamentals of Caregiving, where he will learn to take care of people with disabilities. He is instructed about professionalism, about how to keep an emotional distance between client and provider, and about the art of inserting catheters while avoiding liability.
\nBut when Ben is assigned his first client - a tyrannical nineteen-year-old boy named Trevor, who is in the advanced stages of Duchenne muscular dystrophy - he soon discovers that the endless service checklists have done nothing to prepare him for the reality of caring for a fiercely stubborn, sexually frustrated teenager who has an ax to grind with the whole world.
\nOver time, the relationship between Ben and Trev, which had begun with mutual misgivings, evolves into a close friendship, and the traditional boundaries between patient and caregiver begin to blur. The bond between them strengthens as they embark on a road trip to visit Trev’s ailing father - a journey rerouted by a series of bizarre roadside attractions that propel them into an impulsive adventure disrupted by one birth, two arrests, a freakish dust storm, and a six-hundred-mile cat-and-mouse pursuit by a mysterious brown Buick Skylark. By the end of that journey, Trev has had his first taste of love, and Ben has found a new reason to love life.
\nBursting with energy and filled with moments of absolute beauty, this big-hearted and inspired novel ponders life’s terrible surprises as well as what it takes to truly care for another human being.
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Four modern families aboard a passenger train hurtle into the night.
\nOne hundred and seventy years earlier their forebearers make their way in a young nation built on grand promises.
\nEach family follows their own path, only to find that their destinies are linked inextricably, the culmination of five generations of shared history.
\nJonathan Evison’s Small World is a novel that speaks to the present moment, a grand adventure that explores the American experiment in its most human and intimate aspects, a novel that asks whether America has made good on those early promises.
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With her husband Bernard now in the grave, seventy-nine-year-old Harriet Chance sets sail on an ill-conceived Alaskan cruise only to discover through a series of revelations that she’s been living the past sixty years of her life under entirely false pretenses.
\nThere, amid the buffets and lounge singers, between the imagined appearance of her late husband and the very real arrival of her estranged daughter midway through the cruise, Harriet is forced to take a long look back, confronting the truth about pivotal events that changed the course of her life.
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Jonathan Evison opens his electrifying epic, West of Here, at the Elwha River dam, where over a hundred years since settlers of the fictional town of Port Bonita tamed the river, their descendants gather in anticipation of the dam's blasting, and a new era of restoration.
\nAcross the next five hundred pages, Evison's story moves between 2006 and the town's earliest days at the close of the 19th century, overlaying stories of the people who passed through or dug in at Port Bonita, which swelled from settlement to town on the ragged shoreline of Washington State's Strait of Juan de Fuca.
\nThe past is populated by intrepid folk: an exploration party penetrating the Olympic Mountain range in the depths of winter, Klallam natives sickened by homeland eviction and whiskey, a young feminist at odds with motherhood, a prostitute doing covert battle with her whorehouse's owner, and an idealistic entrepreneur, blasting the river canyon into submission.
\nIn 2006, we meet their softer progeny: an ex-con who flees into the mountains with a stash of Snickers, the lonely parole officer determined to find him, a fish processing plant worker with a Bigfoot fixation, a native woman who rethinks her whole life when her son has a psychic break, and more memorable characters haunted by the past, by their unlived lives, by themselves.
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After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?
\nIn The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.
\nMost important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems” that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.
\nHaidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes - communities polarised by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children - and ourselves - from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.
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A raging wildfire. A massive blackout. A wealthy man shot to death in his palatial hilltop home.
\nFor Clay Edison, it’s all in a day’s work. As a deputy coroner, caring for the dead, he speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves. He prides himself on an unflinching commitment to the truth. Even when it gets him into trouble.
\nThen, while working the murder scene, Clay is horrified to discover a link to his brother, Luke. Horrified. But not surprised. Luke is fresh out of prison and struggling to stay on the straight and narrow.
\nAnd now he’s gone AWOL.
\nThe race is on for Clay to find him before anyone else can. Confronted with Luke’s legacy of violence, Clay is forced to reckon with his own suspicions, resentments, and loyalties. Is his brother a killer? Or could he be the victim in all of this, too?
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Clay Edison has left behind the Alameda County coroner’s office to strike out on his own as a private investigator. He’s perfectly happy working low-stakes embezzlement cases - that is, until PI Regina Klein calls him with a mystery only he can solve.
\nThe son of a wealthy couple has washed up dead on the shores of San Francisco Bay with drugs in his system and a head injury. The police are calling it an accident. But the parents are adamant something’s not right - and as Clay digs deeper, he uncovers a horrifying tangle of betrayal and lies.
Natural causes or foul play? That's the question Clay Edison must answer each time he examines a body. Figuring out motives and chasing down suspects aren't part of his beat - not until a seemingly open-and-shut case proves to be more than meets his highly trained eye.
\nEccentric, reclusive Walter Rennert lies cold at the bottom of his stairs. At first glance the scene looks straightforward: a once-respected psychology professor, done in by booze and a bad heart. But his daughter Tatiana insists that her father has been murdered, and she persuades Clay to take a closer look at the grim facts of Rennert's life.
\nWhat emerges is a history of scandal and violence, and an experiment gone horribly wrong that ended in the brutal murder of a coed. Walter Rennert, it appears, was a broken man - and maybe a marked one. And when Clay learns that a colleague of Rennert's died in a nearly identical manner, he begins to question everything in the official record.
\nAll the while, his relationship with Tatiana is evolving into something forbidden. The closer they grow, the more determined he becomes to catch her father's killer - even if he has to overstep his bounds to do it.
\nThe twisting trail Clay follows will lead him into the darkest corners of the human soul. It's his job to listen to the tales the dead tell. But this time, he's part of a story that makes his blood run cold.
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Clay Edison has his hands full. He’s got a new baby who won't sleep. He’s working the graveyard shift. And he’s trying, for once, to mind his own business. Then comes the first call. Workers demolishing a local park have made a haunting discovery: the decades-old skeleton of a child. But whose? And how did it get there?
\nNo sooner has Clay begun to investigate than he receives a second call - this one from a local businessman, wondering if the body could belong to his sister. She went missing fifty years ago , the man says. Or at least I think she did. It’s a little complicated.
\nAnd things only get stranger from there. Clay’s relentless search for answers will unearth a history of violence and secrets, revolution and betrayal. Because in this town, the past isn’t dead. It’s very much alive. And it can be murderous.
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It's been almost a year since Clay Edison was forced out of his job at the coroner's bureau. Now he's on his own, working as a private eye. When a client brings him a fraud case, Clay dives into a decades-old scheme targeting the vulnerable.
\nHis investigation leads him to a bizarre town buried in the remote California wilderness. The residents don't care much for outsiders. They certainly don't like Clay asking questions. And they'll do just about anything to shut him up.
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It's been a busy year for Alameda County Coroner's Deputy Clay Edison. He's solved a decades-old crime and redeemed an innocent man - earning himself a suspension in the process. Things are getting serious with his girlfriend. And his brother's fresh out of prison, bringing with him a great big basket of crazy.
\nThen the call comes in the middle of the night. It's a bad one. A party in West Oakland. An argument with the neighbors. A crowd in the street. Two guns, firing at random, spreading chaos and death. Nobody knows the body count yet. What Clay does know is this: it's going to be a long, long night. Longer than he ever could have imagined.
\nBecause when the dust settles, there's an extra victim. One who can't be accounted for. A young woman, strangled instead of shot, without ID and a stranger to all. She is Jane Doe. She is the Unknown. Clay's journey to give her a name and bring her justice will lead him into the bizarre - a seductive world where innocence and perversity meet and mingle; where right and wrong begin to blur.
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It starts with a tape delivered to psychologist Alex Delaware's house - a recording of a soul-sickening scream followed by a twisted, childlike voice chanting 'Bad love. Bad love. Don't give me the bad love . . . '
\nAlex heard that phrase a decade ago, at a symposium for Dr Andres de Bosch and his work with troubled teens, why is he hearing it now? Then there are strange phone calls, a horrific act of vandalism and the discovery that other symposium delegates have been murdered.
\nUnless Alex can make sense of the mind games being played he will be next . . .
A resourceful runaway alone in the wilds of Los Angeles, twelve-year-old Billy Straight suddenly witnesses a brutal stabbing in Griffith Park. Fleeing into the night, Billy cannot shake the horrific memory of the savage violence, nor the pursuit of a cold-blooded killer. For wherever Billy turns - from Hollywood Boulevard to the boardwalks of Venice - he is haunted by the chuck, chuck sound of a knife sinking into flesh.
\nAs LAPD homicide detective Petra Connor desperately searches for the murderer, as the media swarms mercilessly around the story, the vicious madman stalks closer to his prey. Only Petra can save Billy. But it will take all her cunning to uncover a child lost in a fierce urban labyrinth - where a killer seems right at home.
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It is a case unlike any psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware has ever encountered. Five-year-old Woody Swope is ill, but the real problem is his parents. They refuse to agree to the one treatment that could save this boy's life.
\nAlex sets out to convince Mr. and Mrs. Swope - only to find that the parents have left the hospital and taken their son with them. Worse, the sleazy motel room where the Swopes were staying is empty - except for the ominous bloodstain. The Swopes and their son have vanished into the sordid shadows of the city.
\nNow Alex and his friend, homocide detective Milo Sturgis, have no choice but to push the law to the breaking point. They've entered an amoral underworld where drugs, dreams, and sex are all for sale . . . where fantasies are fulfilled at any price - even at the cost of a young boy's life.
\nA woman's body is found in marshland outside LA. By the next morning the police have discovered the decaying corpses of three more women. They were all prostitutes except for the most recent victim; a classically trained pianist employed by a wealthy family, Selena Bass seems out of place in the grim tableau.
\nPsychologist Alex Delaware is drafted in by homicide detective Milo Sturgis to help with the case. Details of the crimes suggest a serial killer is prowling LA's gritty streets. But when a new murder deviates from the pattern, derailing a possible profile, Alex and Milo must look beyond the suspicion of madness . . . and consider an even more sinister mind at work.
\nThere are no easy answers, for the darkest of drives and desires will fuel the most devious of foes.
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Psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware meets beautiful and emotionally fragile TV actress Zelda Chase when called upon to evaluate her five-year-old son, Ovid. Years later, Alex is unexpectedly reunited with Zelda when she is involuntarily committed after a bizarre psychotic episode.
\nShortly after Zelda’s release, an already sad situation turns tragic when she is discovered dead on the grounds of a palatial Bel Air estate. Having experienced more than enough of L.A.’s dark side to recognise the scent of evil, Alex turns to his friend LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis for help in finding out who ended Zelda’s broken life.
At the same time, Alex is caught up in another quest: the search for Zelda’s missing son. And when other victims vanish from the same upscale neighborhood, worry turns to terror.
As Alex struggles to piece together the brief rise and steep fall of a gorgeous, talented actress, he and Milo unveil shattered dreams, the corruption of a family, and a grotesque betrayal of innocence. With each devastating revelation and damning clue, Alex’s brilliant mind is challenged as never before - and his determination grows to see a killer caged and the truth set free.
Los Angeles is a city of sunlight, celebrity, and possibility. The L.A. often experienced by Homicide Lt. Detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware, is a city of the dead.
\nEarly one morning, the two of them find themselves in a neighborhood of pretty houses, pretty cars, and pretty people. The scene they encounter is anything but. A naked young man lies dead in the street, the apparent victim of a collision with a moving van hurtling through suburbia in the darkness. But any thoughts of accidental death vanish when a blood trail leads to a nearby home.
\nInside, a young woman lies butchered. The identity of the male victim and his role in the horror remain elusive, but that of the woman creates additional questions. And adding to the shock, Alex has met her while working a convoluted child custody case. Cordelia Gannett was a self-styled internet influencer who'd gotten into legal troubles by palming herself off as a psychologist. Even after promising to desist, she's found a loophole and has continued her online career, aiming to amass clicks and ads by cyber-coaching and cyber-counseling people plagued with relationship issues.
\nBut upon closer examination, Alex and Milo discover that her own relationships are troublesome, including a tortured family history and a dubious personal past. Has that come back to haunt her in the worst way? Is the mystery man out in the street collateral damage or will he turn out to be the key to solving a grisly double homicide? As the psychologist and the detective explore L.A.'s meanest streets, they peel back layer after layer of secrets and encounter a savage, psychologically twisted, almost unthinkable motive for violence and bloodshed.
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For three months the police have found no clues to the murder of Hope Devane, psychology professor and controversial author of a pop-psych bestseller, an angry indictment of men. Now homicide detective Milo Sturgis, turns to his friend, psychologist Dr Alex Delaware, for help.
\nOne by one, they unlock the very private compartments of her life: her marriage, her shadowy work for a Beverly Hills clinic, and her baffling link to another murder victim. But when Alex delves into her childhood he begins to understand the formidable woman she was - and the ties that entangled her life until the horrifying act of betrayal that ended it . . .
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Juliet Kipper, a gifted painter, is strangled in the LA gallery where her first solo show has opened to critical acclaim, and Milo Sturgis takes on the murder investigation as a favour to an old friend. He consults Alex Delaware, who, researching parallels with other deaths, looks for artists killed when on the verge of a breakthrough or comeback. And he finds two others.
\nThe investigation points to a gruesome, sadistic pattern of death, taking Milo and Alex into the dark side of the art world, and Alex's ex-lover Robin into terrible danger . . .
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A tipsy young woman seeking aid on a desolate highway disappears into the inky black night. A retired schoolteacher is stabbed to death in broad daylight. Two women are butchered after closing time in a small-town beauty parlor. These and other bizarre acts of cruelty and psychopathology are linked only by the killer’s use of luxury vehicles and a baffling lack of motive. The ultimate whodunits, these crimes demand the attention of LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his collaborator on the crime beat, psychologist Alex Delaware.
\nWhat begins with a solitary bloodstain in a stolen sedan quickly spirals outward in odd and unexpected directions, leading Delaware and Sturgis from the well-heeled center of L.A. society to its desperate edges; across the paths of commodities brokers and transvestite hookers; and as far away as New York City, where the search thaws out a long-cold case and exposes a grotesque homicidal crusade. The killer proves to be a fleeting shape-shifter, defying identification, leaving behind dazed witnesses and death - and compelling Alex and Milo to confront the true face of murderous madness.
On a DVD found near her lifeless body, Elise Freeman chronicles a year-and-a-half-long ordeal of monstrous abuse at the hands of three sadistic tormentors. But even more shocking than the lurid details is the revelation that the offenders, like their victim, are teachers at a prestigious LA prep school.
\nIf ever homicide detective Milo Sturgis could use Dr Alex Delaware's psychological prowess, it's now. From the start, this case promises to be an uphill climb for truth and a down-and-dirty fight for justice. Alex and Milo must penetrate the citadel of wealth and scholarship to expose the dirty secrets and deadly sins festering amongst LA's elite.
\nBut power and position are not easily surrendered, and Alex and Milo may well be walking into a highly polished death trap . . .
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Twenty-one-month-old Cassie Jones has spent most of her short life in and out of Western Paediatrics Hospital. Cassie is persistently, seriously ill and when no amount of testing can identify the cause, her doctor is lead to a disturbing diagnosis Cassies mother could be making her daughter deliberately sick.
\nChild psychologist Alex Delaware is brought in to make an independent assessment of the Jones family. But Alex's attempts to find the answers and save a young girls life will reveal a terrifying circle of corruption, abuse and murderous hatred.
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People are voluntarily dying before their time in California. Some call it assisted suicide when cancer, heart disease or painful old age make the quality of life unbearable. Others say it is murder, that no-one has the right to help others take their own life.
\nAs the debate rages over whether euthanasia should be legalised or not, the man at the centre of the row, nicknamed Doctor Death, continues his work. Dr Alex Delaware joins in the argument, but when Detective Milo Sturgis comes to him with the suspicion that some of Doctor Death's patients are not willing collaborators, Delaware finds himself on the frontline of the affair, and increasingly believes that euthanasia is not the prime motivation. So what is driving Doctor Death to kill so many?
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In a half-built mansion in Los Angeles, a watchman stumbles onto the bodies of a young couple - murdered and left in a gruesome postmortem embrace. Veteran homicide cop Milo Sturgis is shocked at the sight: a twisted crime that only Milo and psychologist Alex Delaware can hope to solve.
\nWhile the female victim’s identity remains in question, her companion is ID’d as eco-friendly architect Desmond Backer, notorious for his power to seduce women. The deeper Milo and Alex dig for clues, the longer the list of suspects grows.
\nBut when the investigation veers suddenly in a startling direction, it’s the investigators who may wind up on the wrong end of a cornered predator’s final fury.
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When Alex Delaware first saw Lauren Teague she was a sullen teenager with the usual problems: bad grades at school, moody, uncommunicative with her parents - which is why they thought she needed to see a psychologist.
\nThen years later, a shock: at a bachelor party for a fellow doctor, Delaware finds himself uncomfortably watching two strippers going through a degrading display - and one of them is Lauren Teague. And now her mother is pleading for help once again: Lauren has disappeared - and she thinks Delaware can find her. He's not so sure - but when her disappearance turns into a murder investigation, he knows he owes it to the dead girl to find out what demons drove her to such a horrifying end . . .
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Los Angeles is a city of reinvention. Many come to start anew, to strike it big. Many kill the person they once were, the person they left behind. And in turn, someone else can turn around and kill them, too - permanently.
\nA housekeeper enters a secluded, upscale home and discovers two bodies floating in the The heir of an Italian shoe empire and an unknown woman. The house is untouched, but a “double” in Bel Air certainly makes this case stand out from the usual.
\nNo forced entry means this could have been an inside job. After all, the woman floating in the pool is revealed to be Meagin March, a married neighbor from down the street, who lives in an even more opulent and sprawling mansion. Married woman having an affair? That's a perfect motive.
\nBut not everything is as it seems. At her wedding, Meagin had no family and a tip from Meagin's mother-in-law raises their suspicions. Who was she, exactly?
\nLearning the truth about this mysterious woman - uncovering her identity and motivations - will take Alex and Milo on one of the most shocking journeys of their careers.
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Los Angeles is full of actors. For psychologist Alex Delaware, finding out what's real and what's not is about to become a matter of life and horrific death . . .
\nCalled in to evaluate an aspiring actress accused - along with her boyfriend - of staging her own abduction, Alex is indifferent when the case seems to go nowhere. But then the girl is savagely murdered, and suddenly a straightforward script takes a decidedly unexpected turn. Dylan Meserve, the victim's boyfriend, has also disappeared . . .
\nIs Dylan a deranged killer, or another victim? Alex and detective Milo Sturges begin auditioning suspects and trawling the depths of LA's seedy underbelly. Then more dead wannabes start turning up . . .
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When a young couple takes possession of their dream home, they can't wait to remodel the neglected mansion. That is until they make a gruesome discovery of a rusted metal strongbox containing two rotting leather doctor's bags. And inside each bag, swaddled in sheets of sixty-year-old newspaper, lies a tiny human skeleton.
\nThe case hits the media, and theories abound. The most likely culprit is a mysterious woman, employed as private nurse to wealthy L.A. families during World War Two and Lieutenant Milo Sturgis consults psychologist Alex Delaware for insight into the perpetrator's motives. But the horror is just beginning. Two more bags are discovered, but this time the infants inside have been dead less than a month.
\nIs a copycat at work? Or is there a link between the two finds which goes back decades? By the time both cases close, Alex and Milo will have confronted unprecedented narcissism, cruelty, deceit and a cold but fiendish objectification of the human spirit that shakes both men to the core . . .
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At nearly one hundred years old, Thalia Mars is a far cry from the patients that child psychologist Alex Delaware normally treats. But the charming, witty woman convinces Alex to meet with her in a suite at the Aventura, a luxury hotel with a checkered history.
\nWhat Thalia wants from Alex are answers to unsettling questions - about guilt, patterns of criminal behavior, victim selection. When Alex asks the reason for her morbid fascination, Thalia promises to tell all during their next session. But when he shows up the following morning, he is met with silence: Thalia is dead in her room.
\nWhen questions arise about how Thalia perished, Alex and homicide detective Milo Sturgis must peel back the layers of a fascinating but elusive woman’s life and embark on one of the most baffling investigations either of them has ever experienced. For Thalia Mars is a victim like no other, an enigma who harbored nearly a century of secrets and whose life and death draw those around her into a vortex of violence.
\nThis one looked like a slam a young woman found dead at her kitchen table, DNA on cigarette butts linking quickly to an ex-boyfriend with a criminal record. Or so homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis thought. Then everything changed and a quick close turned into a mind-bending whodunit. That’s when Milo called in psychologist Alex Delaware, his best friend and a long-term consultant on “those cases.” The ones that are different.
\nThen there’s another an old woman found brutally murdered, her body stashed in a deep freeze and mutilated. And when Milo learns who she is, he’s stunned. This victim is someone he once knew. Complicating matters further, her home is an extreme hoarder’s den, virtually impassable due to years of stored trash and apparently meaningless objects. Except for the envelopes of cash stashed among the garbage. As Alex and Milo dig deeper into the seemingly unrelated crimes, they discover shocking links between the victims and realise they have a labyrinthine - and deadly - puzzle to solve.
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Well used to elevated emotions, psychologist Alex Delaware shrugs off a joking death threat from beautiful Beverly Hills physician Constance Sykes, whose attempt to secure legal custody of her baby niece is thwarted by Alex's forthright report to the court. Alex plays down the threat until LAPD's Milo Sturgis rushes to his side with the shocking word on the street that a hit's been taken out on him.
\nBut while Alex may be in grave danger, it won't be from the Beverley Hills doctor, for Connie is soon discovered brutally slain. When her sister Cherie and the baby disappear, apparently on the run, Alex's search for answers leads him to aged rockers, charming homeboys and even Machiavellian judges.
\nAs the darkest of secrets are peeled away, and a cruel system churns through family lives, Alex seeks to stop a vicious killer and save a child from a life of nightmares . . . or worse.
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A corpse is found in a car trunk. The victim was a twenty-five-year-old would-be actor called Richard Dada. He had been sawn in half. Eight months later, the body of Claire Argent, a psychologist at a hospital for the criminally insane, is discovered. She was mutilated in the same horrific way.
\nDetective Milo Sturgis is put on the case and, when the incoherent ramblings of a patient locked up in a mental hospital for the criminally insane begin to make terrifying sense, he calls on psychologist Alex Delaware to help him delve into the muddy waters of insanity.
\nCan Alex and Milo unravel this dark web of family secrets, vengeance and manipulation in time to stop further killing?
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Even hundreds of closed cases to his credit can't keep LAPD police lieutenant Milo Sturgis from agonising over the crimes that don't get solved - and the victims who go without justice. Victims like Katherine Hennepin, a young woman strangled and stabbed in her home. A single suspect with a solid alibi leads to a dead end - one even psychologist Alex Delaware's expert insight can't explain. The only thing to do is move on to the next murder case - because there is always a next one.
\nThis time the victim is Ursula Corey, a successful, attractive divorcee who's been gunned down - not a robbery but an execution, a crime that smacks of simple, savage revenge. And along with that theoretical motive come two strong contenders for the role of suspect: the dead woman's business partner/ex-husband and her divorce lawyer/secret lover. But just as Alex and Milo think they're zeroing in on the killer, a bizarre new clue stirs up echoes of the unsolved Hennepin murder.
\nAnd the discovery of yet another crime scene bearing the same taunting signature raises the spectre of a serial killer on a mission, whose twisted method is exceeded only by his manipulative and cunning madness.
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Alex Delaware's relationship with his long-term partner is on the rocks. He is floored when Robin announces she's heading off on a three-month music tour.
\nBut he soon has other things to think about. He is sent an envelope with no return address. Inside, he finds an album with gold letters on it - THE MURDER BOOK. It's full of macabre pictures of murders, with brief descriptions of how, and why, the victims died. One picture - marked 'Not solved' - shows the horrifically mutilated body of a young woman.
\nUnsettled, Alex calls his friend, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, who seems strangely familiar with the case. What connects the photograph with Milo's past? What's more, why has it been sent to Alex - and by whom?
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LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis has solved a lot of murder cases. On many of them - the ones he calls \"different\" - he taps the brain of brilliant psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware. But neither Alex nor Milo are prepared for what they find on an early morning call to a deserted mansion in Bel Air. This one's beyond different. This is predation, premeditation, and cruelty on a whole new level.
Four people have been slaughtered and left displayed bizarrely and horrifically in a stretch limousine. Confounding the investigation, none of the victims seems to have any connection to any other, and a variety of methods have been used to dispatch them. As Alex and Milo make their way through blind alleys and mazes baited with misdirection, they encounter a crime so vicious that it stretches the definitions of evil.
In a glamorous area of Los Angeles, the Beverley Fauborg hotel is about to close for good. Psychologist Alex Delaware and his girlfriend Robin are making a farewell visit to the hotel bar when one patron in particular grabs their attention - a beautiful but aloof young woman dressed all in white.
\nTwo days later, Alex is called in on a murder case and is shocked when he recognises the victim as the woman in white. Discovering her true identity is not going to be easy though and, Milo's investigation into the girl nicknamed 'Mystery' leads him to the darkest of secrets in the highest of places.
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Even with all his years of experience, LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis knows there are crimes his skill and savvy cannot solve alone. That’s when he calls on brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware to read between the lines, where the darkest motives lurk. And if ever the good doctor’s insight is needed, it’s at the scene of a murder as baffling as it is brutal.
There’s no spilled blood, no evidence of a struggle, and, thanks to the victim’s missing face and hands, no immediate means of identification. And no telling why the disfigured corpse of a stranger has appeared in an upscale L.A. family’s home. Chet Corvin, his wife, and their two teenage children are certain the John Doe is unknown to them. Despite that, their cooperation seems guarded. And that’s more than Milo and Alex can elicit from the Corvins’ creepy next-door neighbor - a notorious cartoonist with a warped sense of humor and a seriously antisocial attitude.
As the investigation ensues, it becomes clear that this well-to-do suburban enclave has its share of curious eyes, suspicious minds, and loose lips. And as Milo tightens the screws on potential persons of interest - and Alex tries to breach the barriers that guard their deepest secrets - a strangling web of corrupted love, cold-blooded greed, and shattered trust is exposed. Though the grass may be greener on these privileged streets, there’s enough dirt below the surface to bury a multitude of sins. Including the deadliest.
Tanya Bigelow was a solemn little girl when Dr. Alex Delaware successfully treated her obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Now, at nineteen, Tanya returns with a curious request: that Delaware investigate her aunt’s deathbed confession of murder. While Delaware doubts that Patty Bigelow was capable of such a horrific act, he agrees to look into the matter.
\nArmed with only the vaguest details, Delaware and LAPD detective Milo Stugris retrace Patty’s and Tanya’s nomadic and increasingly puzzling life. Then a very real murder tears open a terrifying tunnel into the past, where secrets - and bodies - are buried. As the tension mounts, Delaware and Sturgis uncover a tangled history of desperation, vengeance, and death - a legacy of evil that refuses to die.
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Los Angeles is a city of stars, a city of strivers and wannabes. Not everyone can shine bright, but they’ll burn themselves up for a glimpse of the high life. LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis knows it all too The best dreamers often make the worst monsters.
\nThe body of an aspiring actress has been found - and she’d been drugged. The main suspect is a stunt double with the ego of an action star. He’s more brawn than brains, it seems, with few boundaries when it comes to women. But he’s offed before Milo and Alex can get to him. Worse yet, the rifle that killed him was used in a prior case . . . and another case before that. And then it's fired again and again, taking victims right under their noses.
\nThey begin to think that someone is avenging the victims of men without boundaries - but is this a slick, efficient assassin with their own corrupt code of justice, or a knight errant, one who doesn’t want to be seen, but still wants to be known?
\nAlex and Milo soon find themselves in the thick of a truly complicated and twisted case - one with no shortage of suspects or victims that takes them on a wild ride through the surreal underbelly of Los Angeles.
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Jamey Cadmus is clearly a deeply troubled young man. Found clutching a bloodied knife at the scene of a brutal double homicide, surely he must be the vicious serial killer who's been terrorising LA. What other explanation can there be? The public are demanding the death penalty but his lawyer is pleading diminished responsibility.
\nPsychologist Alex Delaware is asked to make an assessment of Jamey's mental health but to do that he needs to look into Jamey's past, and no one wants Alex digging there . . .
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What lies behind closed doors? Gina Prince was set to be a huge Hollywood star. But a vicious acid attack left her facially scarred and her acting career in tatters. Crippled by fear, Gina hid from the world, refusing to leave her home, for two decades.
\nTwenty years on and Gina's daughter, Melissa, contacts Psychologist Alex Delaware, desperate for him to help her mother. But before Alex can do anything Gina gets into her car and disappears. Now Alex is locked in a search that will lead him into a grotesque labyrinth of hidden histories and desires . . .
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Eight years ago, psychologist Alex Delaware evaluated two teenage boys charged with the shocking murder of young Kristal Malley. Now one of the killers is out of prison - and wants to meet up with Alex.
\nBut by the time the pair do come face to face again, one of them is dead. Was Rand Duchay just another victim of an LA street crime? Or is something more sinister going on here?
\nAlex and Detective Milo Sturgis mean to find out. To do so, they will follow a trail of blood that will lead them to the depths of cruelty - and straight to the heart of murderous betrayal.
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Lucy Lowell is traumatised after serving jury duty on the trial of a depraved killer. Horrific images haunt her waking life and at night she's terrorised by the recurring nightmare of a small child watching a terrible scene unfold in a darken wood.
\nLucy's terrified that she's losing her grip on reality. Her psychologist, Alex Delaware, thinks her dreams are repressed memories of something very real - a very real murder. Alex knows that delving into Lucy's mind might awaken past terrors but nothing could have prepared him for the horrors about to be unleashed . . .
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LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis is a master detective. He has a near-perfect solve rate and he's written his own rule book. Some of those successes - the toughest ones - have involved his best friend, the brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware. But Milo doesn't call Alex in unless cases are \"different.\"
This murder warrants an immediate call. Milo's independence has been compromised as never before, as the department pressures him to cater to the demands of a mogul: a hard-to-fathom, megarich young woman who is obsessed with reopening the coldest of cases - the decades-old death of the mother she never knew.
The facts describe a likely loser: a mysterious woman found with a bullet in her head in a torched Cadillac that has overturned on infamously treacherous Mulholland Drive. No physical evidence, no witnesses, no apparent motive. And a slew of detectives have already worked the case and failed. But as Delaware and Sturgis begin digging, the mist begins to lift. Too many coincidences. Facts turn out to be anything but. And as they soon discover, very real threats lurking in the present.
This is Delaware/Sturgis at their best: traversing the beautiful but forbidding place known as Los Angeles and exhuming the past in order to bring a vicious killer to justice.
Dr Sharon Ransom is the most beautiful woman in the room; she's also the most troubled. So when former lover, psychologist Alex Delaware, bumps into her at a lavish LA cocktail party, though still attracted to her, fear of reviving unhappy memories prevents him from offering the help she seems so desperate for.
\nHours later, Sharon's body is discovered with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Tortured by guilt, Alex wants answers. As his investigation begins, dark memories of his past with Sharon emerge, and a present full of madness, murder and sexual violence unfolds.
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The mentally disabled daughter of a diplomat is killed in cold blood in a deserted corner of the Santa Monica mountains. Her father adamantly denies the possibility of a political motive, which leaves LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his friend Alex Delaware to pose the question: why? The father is so intent on controlling the investigation that Alex and Milo start to wonder if he wants to find the truth - or keep it buried.
\nWithin days, and after another killing, Alex finds himself ensnared in one of the darkest, most menacing cases of his career. Driven to find answers, Alex goes undercover, alone, to expose the smug brutality of a murderous conspiracy and a terrifying contempt for human life.
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Investigating the case of a lovers' lane murder of a pair of college students, Homicide Lieutenant Milo Sturgis enlists the help of Alex Delaware. As the two peel back layer upon layer of deception, they encounter shocking truths that extend way beyond the slaughter of two young lovers.
\nSomething other than therapy has been taking place within the plush, soundproof chambers of the young man's therapist . . .
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A sniper opens fire on a crowded Californian schoolyard but is killed before any children are harmed. When the sniper's identity is revealed, a media frenzy erupts. Why would they want to take innocent lives?
\nPsychologist Alex Delaware is brought in to help the kids cope with the ordeal but is drawn into investigating the motives of the would-be assassin. Alex soon finds himself on a bloody and twisted trail into the world of political extremism from which there may be no way back . . .
With her energies focused on a baffling, vicious gang slaying and her personal life in shambles, Hollywood homicide detective Petra Connor has a full plate. The last thing she needs is a whiz-kid grad student claiming to have stumbled upon a bizarre connection between several unsolved murders.
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The victims had nothing in common, yet each died by the same method, on the same date - a date that’s rapidly approaching again. And that leaves Petra with little time to unravel the twisted logic of a cunning predator who’s evaded detection for years - and whose terrible hour is once more at hand.
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Los Angeles is a city of stark contrast, the palaces of the affluent coexisting uneasily with the hellholes of the mad and the needy. It is that shadow world and the violence it breeds that draw brilliant psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis into an unsettling case of altruism gone wrong.
\nOn a superficially lovely morning a woman shows up for work with her usual enthusiasm. She’s the newly hired personal assistant to a handsome, wealthy photographer and is ready to greet her boss with coffee and good cheer. Instead, she finds him slumped in bed, shot to death.
\nThe victim had recently received rave media attention for his latest project: images of homeless people in their personal “dream” situations, elaborately costumed and enacting unfulfilled fantasies. There are some, however, who view the whole thing as nothing more than crass exploitation, citing token payments and the victim’s avoidance of any long-term relationships with his subjects.
\nHas disgruntlement blossomed into homicidal rage? Or do the roots of violence reach down to the victim’s family - a clan, sired by an elusive billionaire, that is bizarre in its own right?
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Not since Jack the Ripper has there been such a gruesome crime scene. One look at the victim's apartment turned charnel house is enough for Milo Sturgis to summon The Crime Reader. But even Alex Delaware's skills may be stymied when more slayings occur in the same ghastly fashion . . . with no apparent connection between them.
\nThe only clue left behind - a blank page bearing a question mark - seems to be both a menacing taunt and a cry for help from a killer baffled by his own lethal urges. This one will haunt The Crime Reader's waking life, and his darkest dreams, long after its end.
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Dr William Moreland has spent much of his life attending to the physical and mental health of the inhabitants of Knife Island, a tiny Micronesian community. Feeling that his records should be analysed to ensure that the wealth of information contained within them should not be lost, he asks Alex Delaware for assistance.
\nThe timing is perfect for Alex and his partner Robin. Desperate to escape the violence of Los Angeles and recuperate from a terrible ordeal, they seize the opportunity for a sabbatical.
\nBut Knife Island is not the tropical paradise it first appears. The murder of a young woman has created an atmosphere of fear and division and Moreland himself is not quite what he seems.
\nSurrounded by tarantulas and giant hissing cockroaches, Alex and Robin find themselves drawn into a grotesque web of intrigue that even Alex, with his deep knowledge of the human psyche, finds it hard to unravel.
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LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis is a fine homicide detective, but when he needs to get into the mind of a killer, he leans on the expertise of his best friend, the brilliant psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware. While Sturgis has a knack for piecing together the details of a crime, Delaware can decipher the darkest intents driving the most vicious of perpetrators. And there’s no better place for the doctor’s analytical skills to shine than a rowdy hall full of young men and women intoxicated on life and lust . . . and suddenly faced with the specter of death.
Summoned to a run-down former strip joint, Delaware and Sturgis find themselves crashing a wild Saints and Sinners–themed wedding reception. But they’re not the only uninvited guests. A horrified bridesmaid has discovered the body of a young woman, dressed to impress in pricey haute couture and accessorised with a grisly red slash around her neck. What’s missing is any means of identification, or a single partygoer who recognises the victim. The baffled bride is convinced the stranger snuck in to sabotage her big day - and the groom is sure it’s all a dreadful mistake.
But Delaware and Sturgis have a hundred guests to question, and a sneaking suspicion that the motive for murder is personal. Now they must separate the sinners from the saints, the true from the false, and the secrets from those keeping them. The party’s over - and the hunt for whoever killed it is on.
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Seven-year-old Melody Quinn is the only witness of a horrific double murder but she can't or won't talk about what she saw. Child psychologist Alex Delaware is brought in to try and get through to her and to the truth of what happened that night. But it soon becomes clear that Melody isn't just traumatised by the murders.
Alex is only too aware that LA is a city which spawns ugliness. But is he prepared for the seemingly bottomless pit of perversion and violence that he's about to uncover?
When Joe Ledger and Echo Team rescue a group of American college kids held hostage in Iran, the Iranian government then asks them to help find six nuclear bombs planted in the Mideast oil fields. These stolen WMDs will lead Joe and Echo Team into hidden vaults of forbidden knowledge, mass-murder, betrayal, and a brotherhood of genetically-engineered killers with a thirst for blood.
\nAccompanied by the beautiful assassin called Violin, Joe follows a series of clues to find the Book of Shadows, which contains a horrifying truth that threatens to shatter his entire worldview. They say the truth will set you free . . . not this time. The secrets of the Assassin's Code will set the world ablaze.
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Ever since her mother’s death, Gabriella “Gutsy” Gomez has spent her days flying under the radar. But when her mother’s undead body is returned to her doorstep from the grave and Gutsy witnesses a pack of ravagers digging up Los Muertos - her mother’s name for the undead - she realizes that life finds you no matter how hard you try to hide from it.
Meanwhile, Benny Imura and his gang set out on a journey to finish what Captain Joe Ledger started: they’re going to find a cure. After what they went through in the Rot and Ruin, they think they’ve seen it all, but as they venture into new and unexplored territory, they soon learn that the zombies they fought before were nothing compared to what they’ll face in the wild beyond the peace and safety of their fortified town.
A covert group is infiltrating the world’s most secure bio-weapons research sites. All across the country, people are acting as human ‘disease bombs’ by infecting themselves and walking into public places. And heavily-armed groups of illegal private soldiers are massing for some unknown strike.
\nJoe Ledger and the members of Rogue Team International, still reeling from the devastation and heartbreaking losses of their last mission, are forced into relentless action to try and save the country, if not the entire world.
\nOld enemies are rising and joining forces to hit Joe and his team with one devastating blow after another. What is the end game for all of this madness and terror? Outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and outgunned, Joe Ledger has to find a way back from the fires of grief in order to make a stand between these enemies and millions of potential innocent lives. But Joe has allies, too. His team, the vicious fighters of Arklight, and friends who may or may not be entirely human.
\nA war of darkness and light is coming. Who will stand? Who will fall? And how will anyone ever survive?
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Joe Ledger and Rogue Team International plunge into mortal peril as this new and deadly arms race threatens to ignite new wars throughout the Middle East.
\nAfter years of searching, a new cave filled with Dead Sea Scrolls is found, and among them are bizarre books of actual magic. Terrorist groups and multinational corporations scramble to acquire these treasures in the hopes that magic is the true WMD of the 21st Century. But everyone who goes near those scrolls goes insane. The fabric of reality is shredding. Is this the result of ancient magic, or is it a new bioweapon that fractures the mind of anyone exposed?
\nCave 13 pits Joe Ledger against warring factions of ideological terrorism, corporate greed, and massive international crime syndicates in what might well become a new Age of Miracles.
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For years the Department of Military Sciences has fought to stop terrorists from using radical bioweapons - designer plagues, weaponised pathogens, genetically modified viruses, and even the zombie plague that first brought Ledger into the DMS. These terrible weapons have been locked away in the world's most secure facility. Until now.
\nJoe Ledger and Echo Team are scrambled when a highly elite team of killers breaks the unbreakable security and steals the world's most dangerous weapons. Within days there are outbreaks of mass slaughter and murderous insanity across the American heartland.
\nCan Joe Ledger stop a brilliant and devious master criminal from turning the Land of the Free into a land of the dead?
Terrorists-for-hire have created a weapon that can induce earthquakes and cause dormant volcanoes to erupt. One terrifying side-effect of the weapon is that prior to the devastation, the vibrations drive ordinary people to suicide and violence. A wave of madness begins sweeping the country beginning with a mass shooting in Congress.
\nJoe Ledger and his team go on a wild hunt to stop the terrorists and uncover the global super-power secretly funding them. At every step the stakes increase as it becomes clear that the end-game of this campaign of terror is igniting the Yellowstone caldera, the super-volcano that could destroy America.
\nDeep Silence pits Joe Ledger against terrorists with bleeding-edge science weapons, an international conspiracy, ancient technologies from Atlantis and Lemuria, and an escalating threat that could crack open the entire Earth.
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Dogs of War: Robots are no longer science fiction. Autonomous, programmed to react like animals: fast, relentless, deadly. From microscopic nanobots to massive self-guided aircraft. This technology is here, it's assessable, and it's dangerous. What's even scarier is that almost anyone can get their hands on it.
\nA freelance terrorist uses the latest generation of robot dogs to deliver WMDs into cities across America. Sophisticated military weapons systems turn on their human masters. A technological apocalypse is coming and we may be too late to stop it.
\nJoe Ledger and a newly rebuilt Department of Military Sciences square off against this new and terrible threat. Dogs of War pits Joe against a merciless new enemy and an army of techno-terrorists in a race to prevent a global destruction.
\nLet loose the Dogs of War.
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Having protected the world from a zombie plague in Patient Zero, Joe Ledger and his crack Department of Special Sciences combat team are thrown into an even more frightening crisis.
\nA genetic-engineering program has been used to create the ultimate fighting machine - soldiers bred for war, soldiers with greater strength, higher reaction speeds and an utter disregard for pain. Theirs and others.
\nIt's a nightmare from the pages of Doctor Moreau and soon Joe and his team are up against both the big business concerns who have billions invested in the project and, on the street, adversaries bred expressly to kill them. It's enough to make you wish you were facing zombies again . . .
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War is coming! War is here! The Witch-king of Hakkia, aided by terrifying dark forces, sits uneasy on his stolen throne. His enemies, led by Kagen the Damned and the Bloody Bastards have found the secrets of ancient magic they hope will defeat him. Strange forces gather on both sides - vast armies of both the living and the dead, devious trickster spirits, strange gods, warrior ghosts, undying vampires, blood plagues that drive people to murderous rage, immortal faeries, and Earth’s last dragon.
\nKagen knows that he faces the impossible task of toppling a usurper whose dark magic conquered an empire in a single night. But the Damned fear nothing and there are no limits to what Kagen will do to destroy the Witch-king. With his allies he will tear apart the veils that separate our world from the infinite realms of supernatural magic. The Witch-king will not go down with a fight, and he is willing to drown the western lands in innocent blood to retain his stolen crown. Even if he rules over an empire of dust and blood. His power is growing and soon he will be unstoppable.
\nBut they are not the only forces at work in the world. Magic of all kinds is awakening and who can tell which side they will pick . . . or if they will pose a new and terrible threat to all! In the frozen North, the last dragon - tortured, captive, dying - cries out in despair. In the inky vastness of the outer dark that cry is heard! And something of incalculable power is coming in answer.
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Six months have passed since the terrifying battle with Charlie Pink-eye and the Motor City Hammer in the zombie-infested mountains of the Rot & Ruin. It’s also six months since Benny Imura and Nix Riley saw something in the air that changed their lives. Now, after months of rigorous training with Benny’s zombie-hunter brother Tom, Benny and Nix are ready to leave their home forever and search for a better future. Lilah the Lost Girl and Benny’s best friend Lou Chong are going with them.
Sounds easy. Sounds wonderful. Except that everything that can go wrong does. Before they can even leave there is a shocking zombie attack in town. But as soon as they step into the Rot & Ruin they are pursued by the living dead, wild animals, insane murderers and the horrors of Gameland - where teenagers are forced to fight for their lives in the zombie pits. Worst of all . . . could the evil Charlie Pink-eye still be alive?
In the great Rot & Ruin everything wants to kill you. Everything . . . and not everyone in Benny’s small band of travelers will make it out alive.
The President of the United States vanishes from the White House.
\nA top-secret prototype stealth fighter is destroyed during a test flight. Witnesses on the ground say that it was shot down by a craft that immediately vanished at impossible speeds.
\nAll over the world reports of UFOs are increasing at an alarming rate.
\nAnd in a remote fossil dig in China dinosaur hunters have found something that is definitely not of this earth. There are rumors of alien-human hybrids living among us.
\nJoe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences rush headlong into the heat of the world’s strangest and deadliest arms race, because the global race to recover and retro-engineer alien technologies has just hit a snag. Someone - or something - wants that technology back.
\nBenny Imura and his friends have found the jet and Sanctuary - but neither is what they expected. Instead of a refuge, Sanctuary is a hospice, and the soldiers who flew the plane seem to be little more than bureaucrats who have given up hope for humanity’s future.
\nWith Chong hovering between life and death, clinging to his humanity by a thread, Benny makes a startling discovery: A scientist may have discovered a cure for the zombie plague. Desperate to save Chong, Benny and his friends mount a search and rescue mission. But they’re not the only ones on the hunt. The reapers are after the cure too, and they want to use it turn all the zombies into superfast shock troops - and wipe humanity off the face of the earth.
In this riveting conclusion to the Rot & Ruin series, the battle to end all battles is just beginning.
Reeling from the tragic events of Dust & Decay, Benny Imura and his friends plunge deep into the zombie-infested wastelands of the great Rot & Ruin. Benny, Nix, Lilah and Chong journey through a fierce wilderness that was once America, searching for the jet they saw in the skies months ago. If that jet exists then humanity itself must have survived . . . somewhere. Finding it is their best hope for having a future and a life worth living.
But the Ruin is far more dangerous than any of them can imagine. They are hunted by fierce animals escaped from zoos and circuses. They must raid zombie-infested towns for food and medical supplies. They discover the very real truth in the old saying: In the Rot & Ruin . . . everything wants to kill you.
And what is happening to the zombies? Swarms of them are coming from the east, devouring everything in their paths. These zoms are different. Faster, smarter, infinitely more dangerous. Has the zombie plague mutated, or is there something far more sinister behind this new invasion of the living dead?
In Flesh & Bone, Benny Imura, Nix Riley, Lou Chong and Lilah the Lost Girl are pitted against dangers greater than anything they've ever faced. To survive, each of them must rise to become the warriors Tom trained them to be.
Rain is a young woman trying to rebuild herself after years of drug addiction and abuse. Ten years ago, at age sixteen, she gave up her baby after the father, her first love, dies in Iraq. Now, three years clean and on the way to a job interview, Rain borrows a pair of reading glasses from an old lady on a Brooklyn train. The lenses are cracked and through the crack she catches a glimpse of a little boy running and screaming. The boy looks so much like Rain’s dead lover. Like their son must look now.
Rain realises that the glasses give her quick glimpses of her lost son, Dylan, who needs her to find him. Dylan is important to our damaged, hopeless world. But he’s in terrible trouble because evil creatures - the Shadow People - are trying to corrupt and destroy him. If Dylan dies, then hope dies.
But how does a recovering junkie fight supernatural monsters? And how far will one woman go to save her lost son?
Tattoo-artist Patty Cakes has her dead daughter’s face tattooed on the back of her hand. Day by day it begins to fade, taking with it all of Patty’s memories of her daughter. All she’s left with is the certain knowledge she has forgotten her lost child. The awareness of that loss is tearing her apart.
Monk Addison is a private investigator whose skin is covered with the tattooed faces of murder victims. He is a predator who hunts for killers, and the ghosts of all of those dead people haunt his life. Some of those faces have begun to fade, too, destroying the very souls of the dead.
All through the town of Pine Deep people are having their most precious memories stolen. The monster seems to target the lonely, the disenfranchised, the people who need memories to anchor them to this world.
Something is out there. Something cruel and evil is feeding on the memories, erasing them from the hearts and minds of people like Patty and Monk and others.
Ink is the story of a few lonely, damaged people hunting for a memory thief. When all you have are memories, there is no greater horror than forgetting.
Kagen Vale is the trusted and feared captain of the palace guard, charged with protection the royal children of the Silver Empire. But one night, Kagen is drugged and the entire imperial family is killed, leaving the empire in ruins.
\nHaunted and broken, Kagen is abandoned by his gods and damned forever. He becomes a wanderer, trying to take down as many of this enemies as possible while plotting to assassinate the usurper - the deadly Witch-king of Hakkia. While all around him magic - long banished from the world - returns in strange and terrifying ways.
\nTo find the royal children and exact his vengeance, Kagen must venture into strange lands, battle bizarre and terrifying creatures, and gather allies for a suicide mission into the heart of the Witch-king’s empire.
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A terrorist group has acquired one hundred E-bombs. Each bomb's electromagnetic pulse is powerful enough to blow out all power and all technology from a major city. The terrorists plan to hit one hundred American cities in a campaign of destruction. Word has gotten out about the coming blackout and gangs, criminals and terrorist strike teams are poised to attack when the lights go out.
Joe Ledger knows how to stop them. He has the names, locations, abort codes. But a targeted EMP weapon kills the electronics aboard his plane. Joe crashes in the deepest and most remote part of the vast rainforests of the Pacific Northwest. Joe and his combat dog, Ghost, survive the crash -but they are lost in the wilderness with no weapons and no way to get the information to the authorities.
Time is running out. And Joe is being hunted by a terrifying new kind of assassin. A team of remote viewers have the ability to take over any person and turn ordinary citizens into killers.
Joe and Ghost may have to kill the innocent in order to save the entire country from falling during a night of darkness and mass murder.
Saturday 09:11 Hours: A blast rocks a London hospital and thousands are dead or injured… 10:09 Hours: Joe Ledger arrives on scene to investigate. The horror is unlike anything he has ever seen.
\nCompelled by grief and rage, Joe rejoins the DMS and within hours is attacked by a hit-team of assassins and sent on a suicide mission into a viral hot zone during an Ebola outbreak. Soon Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences begin tearing down the veils of deception to uncover a vast and powerful secret society using weaponised versions of the Ten Plagues of Egypt to destabilise world economies and profit from the resulting chaos.
\nMillions will die unless Joe Ledger meets the this powerful new enemy on their own terms as he fights terror with terror.
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Gabriella “Gusty” Gomez lost her mother, and now she’s losing her home.
Gutsy and her friends, along with Benny and his crew, have just survived a massive attack on New Alamo by the Night Army - a mix of mindless shambling los muertos and sentient half-zombie ravagers. She’s also reeling from the revelation that the residents of her town were the lab rats of the biological testing facility linked to creating the most dangerous zom, the Raggedy Man, who controls all of the living dead.
And the first raid was only a test. The real Night Army is coming, and this time, it’ll be a handful of survivors against seven billion zombies.
Tristan has known that he and his family were going to be on the first mission to colonize Mars since he was twelve years old, and he has been training ever since. However, knowing that he would be leaving for Mars with no plan to return didn't stop him from falling in love with Izzy.
But now, at sixteen, it's time to leave Earth, and he's forced to face what he must leave behind in exchange for an uncertain future. When the news hits that another ship is already headed to colonise Mars, and the NeoLuddite terrorist group begins threatening the Mars One project, the mission's purpose is called into question. Is this all worth it?
When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week there's either something wrong with your world or something wrong with your skills . . . and there's nothing wrong with Joe Ledger's skills. And that's both a good, and a bad thing. It's good because he's a Baltimore detective that has just been secretly recruited by the government to lead a new taskforce created to deal with the problems that Homeland Security can't handle.
\nThis rapid response group is called the Department of Military Sciences or the DMS for short. It's bad because his first mission is to help stop a group of terrorists from releasing a dreadful bio-weapon that can turn ordinary people into zombies. The fate of the world hangs in the balance . . .
On opening day of the new baseball season a small model-kit airplane flies down from the stands and buzzes the mound, where a decorated veteran pilot is about to throw out the first ball. The toy plane is the exact replica of the one flown by the war hero. Everyone laughs, thinking it's a prank or a publicity stunt. Until it explodes, killing dozens.
\nSeconds later a swarm of killer drones descend upon the picnicked crowd, each one carrying a powerful bomb. All across the country artificial intelligence drive systems in cars, commuter trains and even fighter planes go out of control. The death toll soars as the machines we depend upon every day are turned into engines of destruction.
\nJoe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences go on the hunt for whoever is controlling these machines, but the every step of the way they are met with traps and shocks that strike to the very heart of the DMS. No one is safe. Nowhere is safe. Enemies old and new rise as America burns.
\nJoe Ledger and his team are back in Jonathan Maberry's seventh book in the series. They begin a desperate search for the secret to this new technology and the madmen behind it. But before they can close in the enemy virus infects Air Force One. The president is trapped aboard as the jet heads toward the heart of New York City. It has become Predator One.
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A small island off the coast of Japan is torn apart by a bioweapon that drives everyone - men, women, and children - insane with murderous rage. The people behind that attack want Korea united or destroyed. No middle ground. No mercy. And they are willing to punish any country that stands in the way - the United States, China, and Japan could all be consumed by a plague of pure destructive slaughter.
\nJoe Ledger leads his newly formed band of international troubleshooters in their first mission to stop the terror cell, fighting alongside agents from North and South Korea. With the lives of billions at stake, Ledger is willing to bring his own brand of terror to this frightening new war.
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Hundreds of years after the first waves of the bubonic plague swept through Europe, a new, more dangerous version threatens London. Joe Ledger’s old enemy the Red Empire - reborn as a far more powerful political and military group - has bioengineered a weaponisd version of yersinia pestis - the bacteria responsible for The Black Death that killed tens of millions in the Middle Ages.
\nAs Joe Ledger and Rogue Team International race against the clock to put a stop to the Red Empire’s plans, they’re sucked into the strange and mysterious past of the man called Mr. Church. Secrets come to light that make even his staunchest allies wonder who - and more precisely what - Church really is.
\nWith whispers of an elixir vitae - or elixir of life - circling, Joe Ledger and Rogue Team International are facing the highest possible stakes in their work together yet. As the tension builds and the balance between life and death sways precariously, it seems like tragic losses among them might be inevitable.
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Joe Ledger's world has been torn apart. The people closest to him have been savagely murdered and Ledger is on the hunt for the killers. His already fragile psyche has cracked apart, allowing a dangerous darkness to overwhelm him.
\nHis hunt takes him deep into the world of the deadly black market weapons sales, and standing in his way are a new generation of private military contractors. These mercenaries have been enhanced with cutting-edge cybernetics and chemical enhancements, transforming them into real-world super soldiers. Stronger, faster, harder to hurt, and fitted with built-in weapons. They are beyond anything Joe has ever faced.
\nBut he is not the Joe Ledger they expected to fight. He is defined by the Darkness now. The attempt to destroy him - to break him - has backfired. Instead his enemies have turned him into a far more fearsome weapon.
\nEveryone is out for blood.
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In the zombie-infested, post-apocalyptic America where Benny Imura lives, every teenager must find a job by the time they turn fifteen or get their rations cut in half.
\nBenny doesn't want to apprentice as a zombie hunter with his boring older brother Tom, but he has no choice. He expects a tedious job whacking zoms for cash, but what he gets is a vocation that will teach him what it means to be human.
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The Silver Empire is in ruins. War is in the wind. Kagen and his allies are on the run from the Witch-king. Wild magic is running rampant everywhere. Spies and secret cabals plot from the shadows of golden thrones.
\nKagen Vale is the most wanted man in the world, with a death sentence on his head and a reward for him - dead or alive - that would tempt a saint.
\nThe Witch-king has new allies who bring a terrible weapon - a cursed disease that drives people into a murderous rage. If the disease is allowed to spread, the whole of the West will tear itself apart.
\nIn order to build an army of resistance fighters and unearth magical weapons of his own, Kagen and his friends have to survive attacks and storms at sea, brave the haunted wastelands of the snowy north, fight their way across the deadly Cathedral Mountains, and rediscover a lost city filled with cannibal warriors, old ghosts, and monsters from other worlds. Along with his reckless adventurer brothers, Kagen races against time to save more than the old empire . . . if he fails the world will be drenched in a tsunami of bloodshed and horror.
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Sense of wonder is the lifeblood of science fiction. When we encounter something on a truly staggering scale - metal spheres wrapped around stars, planets rebuilt and repurposed, landscapes transformed, starships bigger than worlds - we react viscerally. Fear, reverence, admiration - how else are we to react to something so grand?
Bridging Infinity puts humanity at the heart of these vast undertakings - as builder, as engineer, as adventurer - reimagining and rebuilding the world, the solar system, and even the entire universe.
This continuation of the award-winning Infinity Project anothology series features bold new stories from Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Bear, Gregory Benford, Zachary Brown, Pat Cadigan, Kameron Hurley, Scott Lynch, Vonda N. McIntyre, Hannu Rajaniemi, Allan Steele, and many more.
\"One giant leap for mankind\". Those were Neil Armstrong's immortal words when he became the first human being to step onto another world. All at once, the horizon expanded; the human race was no longer Earthbound.
Our destiny would now be to reach out to eternity. Brought to you by the creators of Engineering Infinity, Edge of Infinity is an exhilarating new SF anthology that looks at the next giant leap for humankind: the leap from our home world out into the Solar System.
From the eerie transformations in Pat Cadigan's The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi to the frontier spirit of Sandra McDonald and Stephen D. Covey's The Road to NPS, and from the grandiose vision of Alastair Reynolds' Vainglory to the workaday familiarity of Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Safety Tests, the thirteen stories in this anthology span the whole of the human condition in their race to colonise Earth's nearest neighbours.
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The universe shifts and changes: suddenly you understand, you get it, and are filled with wonder. That moment of understanding drives the greatest science-fiction stories and lies at the heart of Engineering Infinity.
\nWhether it’s coming up hard against the speed of light - and, with it, the enormity of the universe - realising that terraforming a distant world is harder and more dangerous than you’d ever thought, or simply realising that a hitchhiker on a starship consumes fuel and oxygen with tragic results, it’s hard science-fiction where a sense of discovery is most often found and where science-fiction’s true heart lies.
\nThis exciting and innovative science-fiction anthology collects together stories by some of the biggest names in the field, including Gwyneth Jones, Stephen Baxter and Charles Stross.
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Conflict is eternal
\nWe have always fought. War is the furnace that forges new technologies and pushes humanity ever onward. We are the children of a battle that began with fists and sticks, and ended on the brink of atomic Armageddon. Beyond here lies another war, infinite in scope and scale.
\nBut who will fight the wars of tomorrow? Join Elizabeth Bear, Indrapramit Das, Aliette de Bodard, Garth Nix and many, many more in an exploration of the furthest extremes of military science fiction . . .
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Life in space is hard, lonely and the only person you can rely on is yourself. Whether you’re living deep in the gravity well of humanity’s watery home, mucking out air vents in a city floating high in the clouds of Jupiter, or re-checking the filtration system on some isolated space station, life is hard and demanding, and life is small.
The stories of Infinity’s End are set in those empty spaces, in futures where planets have been disassembled and reused for parts, or terraformed and settled; where civilisations have risen and fallen; where far future people make their lives anywhere from colonies hanging in the clouds of Neptune or Venus to the repurposed cores of distant asteroids; on worldlets and asteroids, inside Saturn’s rings or distant spheres and wheels, on-board ships trucking from home to home, and port to port. They're set in a future that's lived in. And they make it clear that even if we never leave the Solar System, there's life enough and room enough to live out all of science fiction's dreams.
Infinity’s End is the future. The stories you’ll find here are the stories of your life.
The world we are living in is changing every day. We surf future shock every morning when we get out of bed. And with every passing day we are increasingly asked: how do we have to change to live in the future we are faced with?
Whether it’s climate change, inundated coastlines and drowned cities; the cramped confines of a tin can hurtling through space to the outer reaches of our Solar System; or the rush of being uploaded into some cyberspace, our minds and bodies are going to have to change and change a lot. Meeting Infinity will be one hundred thousand words of SF filled with action and adventure that attempts to answer the question: how much do we need to change to meet tomorrow and live in the future?
The incredible authors contributing tho this collection are: Gregory Benford, James S.A. Corey, Aliette de Bodard, Kameron Hurley, Simon Ings, Madeline Ashby, John Barnes, Gwyneth Jones, Nancy Kress, Yoon Ha Lee, Ian McDonald, Ramez Naam, An Owomoyela, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Bruce Sterling and Sean Williams
The books of the “Infinity Project” trace an arc: from the present day into the far future, and now from the broad canvas of interstellar space to the most intimate space of all - ourselves.
Have you ever wanted a faster-than-light trip to the future? Are you tired of reading science fiction novels that feel like they’re taking literal eons to finish? These fifteen award-winning and bestselling science fiction authors, including Charlie Jane Anders, Alastair Reynolds, Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, Tobias S. Buckell, Ann Leckie, and Sam J. Miller, and more, are here as your speedy guides to infinity and beyond.
\nIn “Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance,” a cloud-based contractor finds a human war criminal clinging to the hull of the ship. The clones of “All the Colours You Thought Were Kings,” about to attend their coming-of-age ceremony, are plotting treason. During “A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime,” two outlaws go on the run after stealing a device from a space cult.
\nHere are the new, adventurous - and most efficient - takes on interstellar battles, sentient spaceships, and political intrigue on a galactic scale. Discover where memories live and die, and where memes rise and fall in moments. Remember, the future is sooner than you think, and there’s only so much time for visiting it.
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What happens when humanity reaches out into the vastness of space? The brightest names in SF contribute new orginal fiction to this amazing anothology from master editor Jonathan Strahan.
\nIncluding new work by Alastair Reynolds,Greg Egan,Ian McDonald, Ken Macleod, Pat Cadigan, Karl Schroeder, Hannu Rajaniemi, Karen Lord, Adam Roberts, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Aliette de Bodard Peter Watts, and others!
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Barbara is born shortly before World War II and lives through the conflict as a desert child trailing her father, an engineer in the famed and infamous Manhattan Project. When Barbara is thirteen, her beautiful, sensitive mother commits suicide. From that point on, these twin poles - the historic and the personal, the political and the violently intimate - vie for control of Barbara’s consciousness.
\nAs Barbara grows up and becomes a successful actress, traveling the world between film sets and love affairs, she takes on and sheds various roles - vampire’s victim and frontier prostitute; a saint and a bored housewife. She marries and divorces and marries again, the second time to a visionary director who proves to be the love of her life. Though they are not faithful to each other, their relationship provides the most enduring anchor in a remarkable life turbulent with fiction.
\nJoni Murphy’s Barbara is a deep character study of a woman losing hold and recapturing her identity through the art and technology of moviemaking. Through an intimate first-person perspective, the novel follows Barbara as she navigates decades and genres - from austere 1950s family dramas to countercultural 1970s gothics - glimpsing herself in the reflective and deadly shards of the long 20th Century.
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Stories from the Center of the World gathers new writing from the greater Middle East (or SWANA), a vast region that stretches from Southwest Asia, through the Middle East and Turkey, and across Northern Africa. The 25 authors included here come from a wide range of cultures and countries, including Palestine, Syria, Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, and Morocco, to name some.
\nIn “Asha and Haaji,” Hanif Kureishi takes up the cause of outsiders who become uprooted when war or disaster strikes and they flee for safe haven. In Nektaria Anastasiadou’s “The Location of the Soul According to Benyamin Alhadeff,” two students in Istanbul from different classes - and religions that have often been at odds with one another - believe they can overcome all obstacles.
\nMK Harb’s story, “Counter Strike,” is about queer love among Beiruti adolescents; and Salar Abdoh’s “The Long Walk of the Martyrs” invites us into the world of former militants, fighters who fought ISIS or Daesh in Iraq and Syria, who are having a hard time readjusting to civilian life.
\nIn “Eleazar,” Karim Kattan tells an unexpected Palestinian story in which the usual antagonists - Israeli occupation forces - are mostly absent, while another malevolent force seems to overtake an unsuspecting family.
\nOmar El Akkad’s “The Icarist” is a coming-of-age story about the underworld in which illegal immigrants are forced to live, and what happens when one dares to break away.
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Harlan Winter has returned to his corner of Appalachia, where his fiery history with a depraved cult has made him a legend. All Harlan wants is to run his occult bookshop and get on with his life - if only his unsettling visions would let him. But when a fellow devotee of the dark arts moves to Coopersville and Harlan’s coveted grimoire is stolen, he’s pulled into a world deadlier than the one that already scarred his soul.
\nThe foolish thieves are two local teenagers hightailing it out of Appalachia in a stolen car and heading south to Florida where a buyer for the coveted grimoire is waiting. They have no idea what evil lies on the road ahead. But Harlan does. Blood has already been spilled. He’s following them mile by mile on a mission to save them before it’s too late. Because once their prized possession is in the wrong hands, there will be hell to pay.
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Med school dropout Harlan Winter returns to his impoverished West Virginia hometown, where the law is scarce, arsonists are turning everything to ash, and his family’s turbulent history lingers. All he wants is to keep the peace in a community cowering from The Lighthouse, a local cult preying on people’s fears. Harlan’s own fears, too, when he’s hired to play detective and find a young couple gone missing.
\nThe vanished artist and his girlfriend have left behind a series of paintings that enrage The Lighthouse’s Pastor Logan, who believes art can have divine power. It’s not easy to believe for a rational man like Harlan. And impossible to ignore when his investigation is haunted by visions of the dead lurking in the shadows of his own violent past.
\nRevelations about the disappearances are being unearthed. The Lighthouse’s grip on the community is tightening. And Harlan fears he’s losing control. As the threats against his town, his sanity, and his life begin to mount, Harlan doesn’t know which is more what’s real, or what’s in his mind.
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Tarisai has always longed for the warmth of a family. She was raised in isolation by a mysterious, often absent mother known only as The Lady. The Lady sends her to the capital of the global empire of Aritsar to compete with other children to be chosen as one of the Crown Prince’s Council of 11. If she’s picked, she’ll be joined with the other Council members through the Ray, a bond deeper than blood.
\nThat closeness is irresistible to Tarisai, who has always wanted to belong somewhere. But The Lady has other ideas, including a magical wish that Tarisai is compelled to obey: Kill the Crown Prince once she gains his trust. Tarisai won’t stand by and become someone’s pawn - but is she strong enough to choose a different path for herself?
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For the first time, an Empress Redemptor sits on Aritsar's throne. To appease the sinister spirits of the dead, Tarisai must now anoint a council of her own, coming into her full power as a Raybearer. She must then descend into the Underworld, a sacrifice to end all future atrocities.
Tarisai is determined to survive. Or at least, that's what she tells her increasingly distant circle of friends.
Months into her shaky reign as empress, child spirits haunt her, demanding that she pay for past sins of the empire.
With the lives of her loved ones on the line, assassination attempts from unknown quarters, and a handsome new stranger she can't quite trust . . . Tarisai fears the pressure may consume her. But in this finale to the Raybearer duology, Tarisai must learn whether to die for justice . . . or to live for it.
A deeply intimate portrait of the lives of four men that examines - in profound and comprehensive ways - what it means to be a man in America.
\nAmerican Men is a journalistic account of the lives of four men from vastly different backgrounds and experiences, charting how each of them construct their relationship to masculinity, and how they navigate that relationship over time. The book searches the rarely-discussed crevices of men’s lives, chronicling traumas they’ve suffered and ways they’ve recovered, the ways they’ve both inflicted and survived violence, their relationships to sex and their own bodies, how they’ve wielded power and struggled with powerlessness, while trying to build families, friendships, and fuller relationships to themselves.
\nThe book's protagonists include Ryan, an amateur MMA fighter who lives on a Mohawk reservation, struggling to come to terms with both his sexuality as a closeted gay man and his draw toward bar room violence; Gideon, an itinerant, tall and handsome West Point graduate and former baseball star who unravels when he encounters challenges to his status as the masculine ideal; Joseph, a Seattle law student whose marriage teeters on the brink as he tries on his own to contend with the effects of childhood sexual trauma; and Nate, an Ohio man still living at home and trying to establish security for himself in a rural pocket of a red state, where he’s under threat as someone who is Black, trans, and poor.
\nThe book draws from five years of interviewing these men and following them though their daily lives, interweaving their stories into a mosaic that explores identity, heritage, and the pressures and performance of modern American masculinity.
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Steve Jensen doesn't believe in love-bouncing from warm body to warm body, bed to bed. His freefall descent into the playboy lifestyle leaves him alone and empty, but he just can't stop. To the outside world, Steve has it all - beautiful women, a flashy car, and his own celebrity gym.
\nBut if they look closer, they'll find a darkness slowly devouring the man he used to be. Dumped by his latest fling in front of everyone at a party in the Hollywood Hills, he starts looking for someone else who will end the night with him. The person he finds just might be the one who changes his life forever.
\nThe ink has barely dried on Ethan LaVoie's new contract for the Pasadena Fighting Parrots - the only pro hockey team willing to sign him. After a traumatic on-ice injury, he's ready to prove he's still got what it takes. So, when the coach signs him up with a personal trainer to ensure he's back in peak form, he's all in.
\nComing from Salem, MA, Ethan isn't one to pass up a Halloween party, but finding someone who sets his heart on fire under the costumes and drinking is the last thing he expects to find there. His feelings could be the secret that ends his career, now he has to decide if he's ready to risk it all?
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Falling into an emotional spiral following a tragic accident, James Barton questioned his ability to handle life in Los Angeles. After abandoning his passions, he was staring at a stack of bills looming as tall as the stack of rejection letters. Broke and downhearted, he lands one last job before making his choice.
\nHe’s ready to give up on more than just LA. Until a chance encounter changes everything.
\nWith incredible friends, an amazing career, and a cute apartment in the heart of the Arts District, Alexis Strauss is living the California dream. She’ll admit her dating life could use some work, but nobody is perfect. Behind her joyful facade, though, secrets haunt her. Secrets that could upend everything she’s worked for.
\nShe loves LA, but a toxic family is doing everything they can to hold her back.
Chase Cooper is the new golden boy of the silver screen. He spends his days bouncing from photo shoots to movie sets. He loves his job, but there's something missing - or someone. This weighs on his mind every time he steps onto the red carpet with no one but his agent by his side. Those are the nights the glamour loses its luster and Hollywood reminds him it's lonely at the top.
\nMost people think Renate Silva’s perfect night involves sweatpants, a big bowl of popcorn, and re-runs of robotics competitions. They don’t know about the black bag tucked away in the back of her closet, or the private life she leads in her free time. Letting those secrets out of the literal bag would end her teaching career.
\nAfter Ren’s sister orchestrates an accidental meeting, Chase and Ren find it hard to stay away from each other. The closer they get, though, the harder it is to keep their secrets their own.
\nWill they be able to survive the paparazzi and going public? Or will enemies they weren’t prepared for come out of the shadows in search of their own fifteen minutes of fame?
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She reunites with the one that got away.
He finds a man who understands his secrets.
They’re a couple who just became a quad.
Are any of them prepared for this?
Dani and Xander always knew they wanted more in their relationship, but finding the right fit proves harder than either of them thought. After breaking up with their most recent girlfriend, Dani loses faith while Xander proposes a long-shot that just might work.
\nDr. Theo Clay spends his days helping Hollywood elite face their problems, and ignoring his own. Coming to LA was never his first choice, but he’s made it work. Lately, though, something keeps drawing him into his past as life does the impossible - offers him one more chance to make wrongs right.
\nSkylar Beck needs to make amends and build their crumbled support system before they stumble. The only way they can do that is to go back home to Los Angeles, a city full of temptation. Fresh out of rehab, a chance encounter from their past offers them their first dose of hope in years.
\n
Golden Vale, Louisiana, is a hardscrabble coastal town 80 miles south of New Orleans but worlds away culturally. For generations, families have made their living working in commercial fishing or in the petroleum industry. After the sudden death of his father, thirty-five-year-old Jordan Pearce becomes the unwitting head of his family's storied oyster company.
\nAmid Jordan's struggles with flighty employees, a fraught romantic life, living with his distressed, widowed mother, and a fishery that's been on life support for years, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig suddenly explodes off the coast of Louisiana, prompting one of the worst environmental disasters in history.
\nAs fallout from the explosion and subsequent oil spill intensifies, Jordan must grapple with the existential repercussions for his family, and the surrounding community, which has already seen its fair share of hardship, having just barely recovered from Hurricane Katrina. Forced to seek help from his estranged brother, Benny - a beatnik musician who ran away to New Orleans years ago - Jordan and what's left of the quarrelsome Pearce clan are reunited under one roof, alongside a cast of unforgettable regional characters.
\nJordan’s desperation to save the business, coupled with Benny’s desire to distance himself from his past, test the bonds of their family and the strength of their principles. Together, they must commit to saving this long overlooked corner of the Gulf Coast - a final act of hope in the face of impending tragedy.
\nThis tender, unflagging exploration of industry, class, culture, and the extraordinary beauty in the margins of life, is eye-opening, eco-fiction that elevates the voices of deeply sympathetic characters.
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The inside story of the largest law-enforcement sting operation ever, in which the FBI made its own tech start-up to wiretap the world, shows how cunning both the authorities and drug traffickers have become, with privacy implications for everyone. In 2018, a powerful app for secure communications called Anom took root among organised criminals. They believed Anom allowed them to conduct business in the shadows. Except for one thing: it was secretly run by the FBI.
\nBackdoor access to Anom and a series of related investigations granted American, Australian, and European authorities a front-row seat to the underworld. Tens of thousands of criminals worldwide appeared in full view of the same agents they were trying to evade. International smugglers. Money launderers. Hitmen. A sprawling global economy as efficient and interconnected as the legal one. Officers watched drug shipments and murder plots unfold, making arrests without blowing their cover. But, as the FBI started to lose control of Anom, did the agency go too far?
\nA painstakingly investigated exposé, Dark Wire reveals the true scale and stakes of this unprecedented operation through the agents and crooks who were there. This fly-on-the-wall thriller is a caper for our modern world, where no one can be sure who is listening in.
It’s a day like any other when Scott Treder first jumps forward through time. One moment, he’s on his way to work, fingers drumming the steering wheel. The next, he’s tumbling head-long down the road, his car gone, a dozen panicked voicemails from his wife waiting on his cell.
\n7:51am. Monday, April 13th.
A blink of an eye.
7:52am. Tuesday, April 14th.
An entire 24 hours, gone.
This one moment - this first spontaneous slip - marks a change in the course not only of Scott’s future, but that of the world. From this point on, at precisely 7:52am every morning, Scott inexplicably travels forward in time in ever-doubling intervals. First one day lost in a blink, then two, then four, until weeks, even years, are passing him by in an instant.
\nMeanwhile, his wife is left to pick up the pieces of the life they once shared together alone, and, before long, Lyle, Scott’s genius seven-year-old son, will surpass him in age.
\nBecause while his dad is rocketing forward in time, Lyle is growing up - graduating early, studying at Berkeley, becoming the foremost scholar of quantum physics, all in an attempt to bring his father back.
\nThe Traveler is the story of a reluctant time-traveler and his son, and the bond between them that even millennia cannot break. An adventure full of heartbreak, hope, and futures beyond imagination.
\n
Seventeen years after the fall of the Third Reich, Max Weill has never forgotten the atrocities he saw as a prisoner at Auschwitz - nor the face of Dr. Otto Schramm, a camp doctor who worked with Mengele on appalling experiments and who sent Max’s family to the gas chambers.
\nAs the war came to a close, Schramm was one of the many high-ranking former-Nazi officers who managed to escape Germany for new lives in South America, where leaders like Argentina’s Juan Perón gave them safe harbor and new identities. With his life nearing its end, Max asks his nephew Aaron Wiley - an American CIA desk analyst - to complete the task Max never could: to track down Otto in Argentina, capture him, and bring him back to Germany to stand trial.
Unable to deny Max, Aaron travels to Buenos Aires and discovers a city where Nazis thrive in plain sight, mingling with Argentine high society. He ingratiates himself with Otto’s alluring but wounded daughter, whom he’s convinced is hiding her father. Enlisting the help of a German newspaper reporter, an Israeli agent, and the obliging CIA station chief in Buenos Aires, he hunts for Otto - a complicated monster, unexpectedly human but still capable of murder if cornered.
Unable to distinguish allies from enemies, Aaron will ultimately have to discover not only Otto, but the boundaries of his own personal morality, how far he is prepared to go to render justice.
\n
Author Joseph Kanon gives us his richest setting yet, pre-World War II Shanghai, where glamour and squalor exist side by side and murder is just a cost of doing business. A love affair against all odds, a city dancing on the rim of a volcano - Shanghai is the story of a political haven that becomes a minefield of conflicting loyalties.
\nAfter the violence of Kristallnacht (1938), European Jews, now desperate to emigrate, found the consular doors of the world closed to them. Only one port required no entry, Shanghai, a self-governing Western trading enclave in what was technically Chinese territory, a political anomaly that became an escape hatch - if you were lucky enough to afford a ticket on one of the great Lloyd liners sailing to the East and safety.
\nDaniel Lohr was one of the lucky ones - lucky enough to have escaped the Gestapo when his colleagues in the resistance were caught, lucky to have an uncle waiting in Shanghai, lucky to find a casual shipboard flirtation turn unexpectedly passionate. But even lucky refugees have to confront the reality of Shanghai. With all their assets, and passports confiscated by the Nazis, they arrive penniless and stateless in a tumultuous, nearly lawless city notorious for vice.
\nWhen you can sink fast, how far are you willing to go to survive? What lines do you cross?
\nAs Daniel tries to navigate his way through his uncle’s world in Shanghai’s fabled nightlife, he finds himself increasingly ensnared in a maze where politics and crime are two sides of the same shiny coin. The trick, his uncle tells him, is to stay one step ahead. But how do you stay ahead of murder? How do you outrun your own past?
\n
Phoenix Rose, a 35-year-old neurodivergent teacher, is at a crossroads in her career and in her relationship with her boyfriend, Zack. But when she receives an urgent plea from a friend in Tasmania who needs to rehome her beloved animals, Phoenix, who has always led with her heart, spontaneously decides to help.
\nWhen she suddenly finds herself the custodian of an eccentric dog, two cats, a clutch of chickens and a geriatric pony, she makes another snap decision - to provide a new home for them all herself. The trouble is, she will have to drive the menagerie all the way back to Brisbane in time to return to Zack and her job - and she cannot do it alone.
\nShe enlists the help of Lily - a colourful younger woman who is also neurodivergent - as well as resourceful members of their online community. Together the new friends must navigate unexpected twists, setbacks and moments of heartbreak and triumph as they both move towards a new identity and understanding of themselves.
\nThe Wonderful Thing about Phoenix Rose is a joyful and moving tale of a woman’s commitment to fulfilling a friend’s dying wish, while finding her own inner strength and power and sharing it with others along the way.
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Something is out there, something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse of it, and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from.
Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remains, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now that the boy and girl are four, it's time to go, but the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat - blindfolded - with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children's trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. Something is following them all the while, but is it man, animal, or monster?
To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”
\nWhen horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the same question, over and over . . . Bela understands that unless she says yes, soon her family must pay.
\nOther Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe but other incidents show cracks in her parents' marriage. The safety Bela relies on is on the brink of unraveling.
\nBut Other Mommy needs an answer.
\nIncidents Around the House is a chilling, wholly unique tale of true horror told by the child Bela. A story about a family as haunted as their home.
\n
The dense Michigan forest. Haunting wails. The clip-clop of demon hooves on a bridge to nowhere. It’s more than a tall tale to Brenda Jennings, whose sister disappeared in those woods one fateful night. Three years later, on a solo stakeout in the dark, Brenda goes in after her. She’s desperate for answers, and terrified to find what lies waiting on the other side of that bridge.
In the old world there were many rules. In the new world there is only one: don't open your eyes. In the seventeen years since the 'creatures' appeared, many people have broken that rule. Many have looked. Many have lost their minds, their lives, their loved ones. In that time, Malorie has raised her two children - Olympia and Tom - on the run or in hiding. Now nearly teenagers, survival is no longer enough. They want freedom.
\nWhen a census-taker stops by their refuge, he is not welcome. But he leaves a list of names - of survivors building a future beyond the darkness - and on that list are two names Malorie knows. Two names for whom she'll break every rule, and take her children across the wilderness, in the hope of becoming a family again . . .
\n
There's something strange about Walter Kopple's farm. At first it seems to be his grandson, who cruelly murders one of Walter's pigs in an act of seemingly senseless violence. But then the rumors begin - people in town whisper that Walter's grandson heard a voice that commanded him to kill.
And that the voice belongs to a most peculiar creature: Walter's pig, Pearl. Walter is not sure what to believe. He knows that he's always been afraid of the strangely malevolent Pearl. But as madness and paranoia grip the town and the townspeople descend on Walter's farm with violent wrath, they begin to discover that true evil wears a human face.
Carol Evers is a woman with a dark secret. She has died many times . . . but her many deaths are not final: They are comas, a waking slumber indistinguishable from death, each lasting days.
Only two people know of Carol’s eerie condition. One is her husband, Dwight, who married Carol for her fortune, and - when she lapses into another coma - plots to seize it by proclaiming her dead and quickly burying her . . . alive.
The other is her lost love, the infamous outlaw James Moxie. When word of Carol’s dreadful fate reaches him, Moxie rides the Trail again to save his beloved from an early, unnatural grave.
And all the while, awake and aware, Carol fights to free herself from the crippling darkness that binds her - summoning her own fierce will to survive. As the players in this drama of life and death fight to decide her fate, Carol must in the end battle to save herself.
Duster Raines has demons. Some visit him in his dreams, reminding him of the choices he made in combat to survive. Others visit him while he’s awake, demanding he pay penance for those sins. But lately, he’s started seeing an alternate version of reality where he leads a life of importance full of wealth and power. Visions so vivid, they seem more real than the life he lives as a PI, scrounging the gutters of Los Angeles for an easy buck. It’s enough to drive anyone insane.
\nPulled into a missing persons case he never wanted, Raines finds himself framed and hunted by the government. But as he searches for answers to clear his name, he discovers a truth he never could have imagined. He possesses the ability to bend spacetime to accomplish incredible feats. With these powers, maybe he’s got a shot at the life he deserves. There’s only one problem standing in his way, the other Duster Raines.
\n
The kingdom of Alyonia has long known peace. But when its sovereigns are mysteriously murdered and its young princes are absent, it’s up to the last royal issue Taryn Kaldor to assume the throne in the interim. But Taryn is hiding a dark family secret, one that threatens to pull apart not only Alyonia, but all the kingdoms of Adria and plunge them into a new world swallowed by shadow.
\nPrince Taaivetti, rightful heir to the throne and commander of the desert fortress at Hann, is torn between his return home to rule Alyonia and stabilise his dying kingdom, or stay to defend Hann against desert terrors like the monstrous Gorsh. In search of answers, Taaivetti discovers the magical dust of legend and the creatures who protect it. Ignoring their warnings, Taaivetti taps into the dust’s power to travel back and forth in time, each trip leading him closer to uncovering the truth of his parents’ deaths, his kingdom’s future - and his own fate.
\nOn the run in the degenerate island of Tourtoufa, Prince Hendrix Kaldor has only his mother’s outlawed book of prophecies, proving strangely accurate of late, to accompany him. With time however, Hendrix grows a band of local misfits and begins deciphering these mysterious prophecies. But as the prophetic puzzles become clear, so too do the horrific shadow gods desperate to hide and destroy them.
\nSecrets and sibyls, pain and prophecy, alliances made and broken sweep through the lands of Adria as its inhabitants face the evil forces that threaten to submerge them into darkness forever.
\nBut how, exactly, do you fight an enemy made of shadow itself?
Seventeen-year-old Eli has been in a near-fatal car crash. As the anniversary looms, his therapist and family struggle to help him deal with the fall out. The accident has left him emotionally numb, with no memory of the months following the crash.
\nDesperate to feel something again, Eli discovers a black market for people’s memories. Erased memories that others can watch via a virtual reality simulation.
\nWhen he enters the story of a boy called Jack, he discovers a darker truth . . . a mind-blowing secret that sets Eli on a dangerous journey of what he was supposed to forget that can lead his heart back to where it belongs, or shatter his life forever.
\n
Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs' weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman.
\nIt turns out the caped crusader has left her with more than just a nice, fuzzy memory. She's having a baby boy - an unexpected but not unhappy development in the thirty-eight year-old's life. But before Leia can break the news of her impending single-motherhood (including the fact that her baby is biracial) to her conventional, Southern family, her step-sister Rachel's marriage implodes. Worse, she learns her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother, Birchie, is losing her mind, and she's been hiding her dementia with the help of Wattie, her best friend since girlhood.
\nLeia returns to Alabama to put her grandmother's affairs in order, clean out the big Victorian that has been in the Birch family for generations, and tell her family that she's pregnant. Yet just when Leia thinks she's got it all under control, she learns that illness is not the only thing Birchie's been hiding. Tucked in the attic is a dangerous secret with roots that reach all the way back to the Civil War. Its exposure threatens the family's freedom and future, and it will change everything about how Leia sees herself and her sister, her son and his missing father, and the world she thinks she knows.
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Fifteen-year-old Mosey Slocumb-spirited, sassy, and on the cusp of womanhood-is shaken when a small grave is unearthed in the backyard, and determined to figure out why it's there. Liza, her stroke-ravaged mother, is haunted by choices she made as a teenager.
\nBut it is Jenny, Mosey's strong and big-hearted grandmother, whose maternal love braids together the strands of the women's shared past - and who will stop at nothing to defend their future.
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Born three minutes apart, Penny and Nix Albright grew up doing everything together, close as only twins can be. But when Nix dies in a tragic accident soon after college, she leaves behind a cryptic voicemail that has Penny guilt-ridden and desperate for justice.
\nFive Years Later
\nPenny has found new purpose as a rookie cop. She’s working to fulfill Nix’s dream of making the world a safer place, but following that dream becomes a nightmare when she’s called to her first murder scene. When she sees the victim, she knows him instantly. It’s Danny Bowery - one of three men she’s long blamed for Nix’s death - splayed in a pool of blood outside a posh Atlanta shopping center, almost as if she’d wished it so.
\nStunned, Penny steps away to catch her breath and discovers a blonde in blood-drenched clothes gripping a box cutter. Before Penny can arrest her, the woman reveals that Bowery’s murder is part of a larger story that is far from over. A story about sisters. And with that, the killer disappears.
\nNow, Penny will stop at nothing to pursue this dangerous woman and learn why she’s avenging Nix’s death. The deeper she dives into the mystery, the less clear it becomes who is hunting whom in this captivating page-turner of hidden motives and deadly consequences.
\n\n
Growing up poor in rural Georgia, Bree Cabbat was warned that the world was a dark and scary place. Bree rejected that fearful outlook, and life has proved her right. Having married into a family with wealth, power, and connections, Bree now has all a woman could ever dream of.
\nUntil the day she awakens and sees someone peering into her bedroom window--an old gray-haired woman dressed all in black who vanishes as quickly as she appears. It must be a play of the early morning light or the remnant of a waking dream, Bree tells herself, shaking off the bad feeling that overcomes her.
\nLater that day though, she spies the old woman again, in the parking lot of her daughters' private school . . . just minutes before Bree's infant son, asleep in his car seat only a few feet away, vanishes. It happened so quickly - Bree looked away only for a second. There is a note left in his place, warning her that she is being is being watched; if she wants her baby back, she must not call the police or deviate in any way from the instructions that will follow.
\n\n
The mysterious woman makes contact, and Bree learns she, too, is a mother. Why would another mother do this? What does she want? And why has she targeted Bree? Of course Bree will pay anything, do anything. It's her child.
\n\n
To get her baby back, Bree must complete one small - but critical - task. It seems harmless enough, but her action comes with a devastating price.
\n\n
Bree will do whatever it takes to protect her family - but what if the cost tears their world apart?
\n
Amy Whey is proud of her ordinary life and the simple pleasures that come with it - teaching diving lessons, baking cookies for new neighbors, helping her best friend, Charlotte, run their local book club. Her greatest joy is her family: her devoted professor husband, her spirited fifteen-year-old stepdaughter, her adorable infant son. And, of course, the steadfast and supportive Charlotte. But Amy’s sweet, uncomplicated life begins to unravel when the mysterious and alluring Angelica Roux arrives on her doorstep one book club night.
\nSultry and magnetic, Roux beguiles the group with her feral charm. She keeps the wine flowing and lures them into a game of spilling secrets. Everyone thinks it’s naughty, harmless fun. Only Amy knows better. Something wicked has come her way - a she-devil in a pricey red sports car who seems to know the terrible truth about who she is and what she once did.
\nWhen they’re alone, Roux tells her that if she doesn’t give her what she asks for, what she deserves, she’s going to make Amy pay for her sins. One way or another.
\nTo protect herself and her family and save the life she’s built, Amy must beat the devil at her own clever game, matching wits with Roux in an escalating war of hidden pasts and unearthed secrets. Amy knows the consequences if she can’t beat Roux. What terrifies her is everything she could lose if she wins.
\nA diabolically entertaining tale of betrayal, deception, temptation, and love filled with dark twists leavened by Joshilyn Jackson’s trademark humor, Never Have I Ever explores what happens when the transgressions of our past come back with a vengeance.
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A fiercely independent divorce lawyer learns the power of family and connection when she receives a cryptic message from her estranged mother.
\nBorn in Alabama, Paula Vauss spent the first decade of her life on the road with her free-spirited young mother, Kai, an itinerant storyteller who blended Hindu mythology with Southern Oral Tradition to re-invent their history as they roved. But everything, including Paula's birthname Kali Jai, changed when she told a story of her own - one that landed Kai in prison and Paula in foster care. Separated, each holding her own secrets, the intense bond they once shared was fractured.
\nThe Opposite of Everyone is a story about story itself, how the tales we tell connect us, break us, and define us, and how the endings and beginnings we choose can destroy us . . . and make us whole.
\n
For actress Meribel Mills, disturbing fan mail is part of the price of fame. So when she starts getting creepy letters written in fruit-scented marker she is mostly unphased and diligently files them along with her other messages from unhinged fans. After all, she’s a single mom approaching forty, not the kind of hot young celeb who sparks dangerous obsessions. But there’s something different about Marker Man . . .
\nMeribel’s sheets smell of unfamiliar cologne, and objects have gone missing around the house. Plus, the letters have become more perverse, with drawings of a naked Meribel tied up or chopped into pieces. While the police insist that stalkers hardly ever escalate to violence, Meribel has played the dead girl one too many times on TV to risk becoming her in real life. She and her daughter move from Los Angeles to Atlanta for a fresh start - but no distance is great enough.
\nYears of being in front of a camera have given Meribel a superpower - she can feel eyes on her, a creeping sensation like bees inside her skin. And someone definitely has her in their sights. Could Marker Man have followed her all the way across the country?
\nWho else might be watching - her ex-husband? The lover she left behind in LA? Her new neighbor? Suddenly, every man in her life is a suspect, but she can’t keep herself and her daughter safe from a monster she can’t identify. When the paths of all of these men collide, Meribel will find herself alone in the fight of her life, desperate to protect those she loves as danger closes in from all sides.
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After the revival of Operation Treadstone, former agent Adam Hayes has retreated to Africa, determined to leave behind the black-ops CIA program behind for good. As a former Treadstone operative, Hayes knows just how destructive the program can be, as it turns government agents into nearly superhuman assassins.
\nBut his quiet life in Africa changes irrevocably, when, while attempting to complete a charitable mission in Burkina Faso, Hayes is attacked by extremists. Forced to make an unexpected landing, his plane is damaged and he is left in a hornet's nest of trouble.
In order to get back in the air, Hayes agrees to transport a passenger - Zoe Cabot, the daughter of a tech baron--to a small coastal city. But just after Hayes completes his flight, Zoe is kidnapped. During his search for Zoe, Hayes funs afoul of multiple enemies, including a rogue Treadstone operative, all of whom are searching for him - and for the information about a wire transfer of millions of dollars bound for the relief effort in Burkina Faso.
In an action-packed, twisty showdown, Hayes must outrun the factions that are hunting him, and prevent the theft of the much-needed millions from one of Africa's poorest nations.
\n
Adam Hayes has stepped away from the field for the last time. He's promised his wife that he won't put his life on the line any more, and there's nothing that will make him break a promise to his wife.
\nWell . . . almost nothing. With America withdrawing from Afghanistan and the Taliban closing in, Abdul Nassir reached out to his old friend. Ten years ago, he saved the American's life, and the time has come for repayment. The Afghan is desperate to flee his homeland.
\nLike most of his countrymen, he is petrified by the Taliban takeover, but he also can't trust the Americans. He’s the only eyewitness to a massacre committed by a rogue team of CIA contractors. Not only can he identify the butcher who directed the bloodbath, he also has photographic proof. He’ll only be safe when those pictures are made public.
\nNow, there’s just one man he can trust to get him to safety - Adam Hayes.
The first novel in an explosive new series inspired by Robert Ludlum's Bourne universe, The Treadstone Resurrection introduces an unforgettable hero and the shadowy world that forged him . . .
\nTreadstone made Jason Bourne an unstoppable force, but he's not the only one.
\nOperation Treadstone has nearly ruined Adam Hayes. The top-secret CIA Black Ops program trained him to be an all but invincible assassin, but it also cost him his family and any chance at a normal life. Which is why he was determined to get out. Working as a carpenter in rural Washington state, Adam thinks he has left Treadstone in the past, until he receives a mysterious email from a former colleague, and soon after is attacked by an unknown hit team at his job site.
\nAdam must regain the skills that Treadstone taught him--lightning reflexes and a cold conscience--in order to discover who the would-be killers are and why they have come after him now. Are his pursuers enemies from a long-ago mission? Rival intelligence agents? Or, perhaps, forces inside Treadstone? His search will unearth secrets in the highest levels of government and pull him back into the shadowy world he worked so hard to forget.
The most pressing issue on Adam Hayes' mind is planning his son's upcoming 5th birthday party. After years of operating in the world's most dangerous spots for Treadstone, he's ready to call it quits, but the feeling isn't mutual.
Levi Shaw, Treadstone's director, calls Hayes back for one more mission. \"It's a walk in the park. You don't even have to go in with the strike team. I just need you to set up the safe house. You'll be home in time to pick up the birthday cake.\"
But nothing is ever easy where Treadstone is concerned. When the mission is blown only Hayes is left alive, and everyone, it seems, is determined to correct that oversight.
When two teenagers break into a house on a remote lake in search of prescription drugs, what starts as a simple burglary turns into a nightmare for all involved. Emmett Burr has secrets he's been keeping in his basement for more than two decades, and he'll do anything to keep his past from being revealed. As he gets the upper hand on his tormentors, the lines blur between victim, abuser, and protector.
\nPersonal tragedy has sent former police officer Ben Packard back to the small Minnesota town of Sandy Lake in search of a fresh start. Now a sheriff's deputy, Packard is leading the investigation into the missing teens, motivated by a family connection. As clues dry up and time runs out to save them, Packard is forced to reveal his own secrets and dig deep to uncover the dark past of the place he now calls home.
\n
It's a hot, miserable summer in the small town of Sandy Lake. Detective Ben Packard has finally settled into life here - just in time for a tornado to sweep through the county, causing irreparable damage. Trees are felled, homes are destroyed, and people are desperate.
\nHiding among the debris is someone with a secret.
\nWhen a mother who made enemies defending her bullied son is killed, the suspect list stretches across the entire town. For Packard, the case hits uncomfortably close to home. The deeper he digs, the more Sandy Lake hums with a tension that refuses to break.
\nAs thick smoke from nearby wildfires chokes the air, someone from Packard's past shows up on his doorstep without warning, forcing him to confront the reality of navigating life as a gay man in a small town bent on tradition, no matter the cost.
\n
Ben Packard was just a boy when his older brother disappeared. Ben watched him walk out the back door of their grandparents' house and into the cold night.
\nHis brother was never seen again.
\nDecades later, Deputy Packard finds himself with too much time on his hands. A shooting has him on leave and under investigation, and all he can do is dwell on the past. For the first time in years, new information about his brother has surfaced that may lead them to the location of a body.
\nThe midwinter ground is frozen solid. Worse, Packard is cut off from department resources. As he strikes out to finally uncover the truth behind his brother's disappearance, he stumbles on a separate, suspicious death. A tenuous connection exists between the two cases, and as Packard starts to dig, he meets fierce resistance from friends and foes alike who want him to stand down.
\nThe winter is long and cold. By the end of it, Packard will risk everything to catch a killer and reveal the shocking truth about his brother.
\n
Bill Sanderson - former high school quarterback, husband to Carrie, one-time husband to Sheri, used car salesman, lover of easy money - had a plan. Now, it's Labor Day weekend and Bill's dead in his bed. An early morning call brings Deputy Ben Packard to the scene of a home invasion.
\nEveryone Packard talks to has a story about Bill, but no one has a clear motive for wanting him dead. The business partner. The ex-wife. The current wife. The high-stakes poker buddies. Any of them - or none of them - could be guilty.
\nAs the investigation begins, tragedy strikes the Sheriff's department, forcing Packard to make a difficult choice about his future: step down as acting Sheriff and pursue the quiet life he came to Sandy Lake in search of, or subject himself to the scrutiny of an election for the full-time role of Sheriff, a job he's not sure he wants.
\nThere's a hidden history to Sandy Lake that Packard, ever the outsider, can't see. Bad blood and old secrets run deep. But an attempt on Packard's life means he's getting uncomfortably close to the dangerous legacy of the quiet Minnesota town. And someone will do anything to keep it hidden.
\n
When physicist Lukas Heuer discovers three anomalous pyramid-shaped objects in deep space, hurtling toward Earth, he knows humanity’s days are numbered. Because the objects are so massive, if he and a small group of scientists can’t unravel their purpose and origin, their gravitational pull will tear Earth to rubble - before they even get close.
\nHalf a world away, archaeologist Mira Najafi discovers a hidden passage in the Great Pyramid containing an ancient drawing of three black pyramids against a blue sky - a clue her vanished father left for her fifteen years ago, the last trace of the man she never stopped searching for.
\nTwo seemingly unrelated discoveries. One impossible convergence.
\nAs Lukas and Mira race toward the same cosmic nexus, they uncover a presence that has been watching humanity for millennia - a presence now awakening in our solar system. Because these physics-defying objects aren’t just arriving.
\nThey’re returning.
\nWhat follows is a desperate mission to the edge of human understanding: a journey that will force a handful of scientists and explorers to confront the limits of physics, consciousness, and reality itself.
\nBecause the pyramids aren’t just objects. They’re keys - and the door they open may change humanity forever . . . or erase it entirely.
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In the year 2381, Peraia, oldest daughter of Emperor Haeron II, disappears from the human space sector with her research ship Persephone. What nobody suspects is that she has ventured into enemy territory, into the mysterious realm the Orb. There, Peraia is on the trail of a secret that could change the future of the universe.
\nBut she is not the only one who wants to solve this mystery. Pyrik, a botanist from the Orb who is charged with the care of a very special plant, finds himself drawn into into perilous situations that will push him beyond his limits.
\nIn the face of huge obstacles, Pyrik fights to unravel the threads and sets off on a journey to reach Peraia and Persephone. But even if he makes it, one question remains: will he arrive as friend or foe?
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Gavin and his crew have left the borders of the human hegemony and are on their way to Sol to stop the dawning catastrophe. But their allies have their own plans, and when the inevitable conflict between the conflicting forces occurs in Earth's orbit, Janus must decide where his loyalties lie.
\nThe enemy has long planned for this war to unfold, and Fleet Admiral Marquandt's connections reach into the deepest recesses of the Human Empire. Can he be stopped? And at what cost? Gavin and Janus are determined to find out - even if it's the hard way.
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For years, Filio Amorosa has had one goal, and only one goal: getting back to Mars. All that matters is finding out what happened on her mission there, and why she can’t remember any of it. But when she finally discovers the truth, it blows her whole world apart.
\nMeanwhile, on Earth, Agatha Devenworth and Pano Hofer have a new mission: travel from the Human Foundation’s secret underground base to New York to uncover what the enemy is plotting. Can they find a way forward for humanity in the midst of this clash of otherworldly forces?
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It’s been twenty years since the first manned mission to Mars discovered a human fossil on the Red Planet. Now, the democracies of the West are buckling under a new crisis emerging from Russia: ten thousand liberated Builders, now fully grown and no longer protected by the UN, are forced to flee. One country is ready to receive the descendants of Xinth: the Special Administrative Region of South Africa, where a lone Builder, Hortat, is running for president.
\nThe situation is unprecedented, and around the world is giving rise to as much distress as it is hope for a better future for humanity. Hortat wins, but is mysteriously assassinated on election night. To unravel the mystery, head of the Human Foundation Luther Karlhammer calls in a familiar face: former investigator Pano Hofer. He’s long since walked away from his old life as an investigator, but another name from the past, Agatha Devenworth, lures him out and draws him into a deadly plot . . .
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A human fossil on Mars. An astronaut who lost her memory and a powerful organisation that keeps a secret in Antarctica - one that will change the world forever.
\nIn 2018, Canadian archaeologist Ron Jackson makes a mind-boggling discovery in Antarctica - right before disappearing without a trace, leaving behind only his controversial theory that humans have lived on Earth far, far longer than we think they have.
\nDecades later, in 2042, when Jackson's wife dies under mysterious circumstances, an unlikely pair of investigators, Agatha Devenworth and Pano Hofer, begin investigating whether her death might be connected to Jackson's disappearance.
\nWhat exactly was it he found before he vanished? Why is the Human Foundation, a hyper-powerful business empire built on an endless series of game-changing inventions it has been rolling out, one after another, for over twenty years, trying to hide the truth from the two investigators? And what could it possibly have to do with the first manned mission to Mars, which ended in disaster leaving countless conspiracy theories in its wake?
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On the International Space Station . . . Was it an accident?
\nESA astronaut Thomas Ehrmann and NASA astronaut Patricia Michaels escape in a Soyuz capsule. The Russian authorities in Kazakhstan have questions and want to know what happened to the third member of the crew, Oleg Rashkin. They both refuse to talk.
\nWhat are they hiding?
\nAmina Young is a psychologist with the ESA. In her mid-thirties, she's specialized in and advanced the field of psychological analysis of astronauts. If anyone can get to the facts about the incidents that happened on the mission, it's her.
\nThe first contradiction of Ehrmann and Michaels' stories starts Amina down a path she's not prepared for.
\nWas the Pentagon involved? Is the Earth's future in peril?
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In the 26th century, human kind has colonised more than 500 worlds. But the centuries of expansion come to a sudden halt, when the Alien Orbs are found. An old race, superior by every metric, they show no desire for co-existence and destroy any human ship that crosses their borders.
\nThe Terran High Command decides to leave them be until a new threat arises in the outer edges, a mysterious swarm of hostile beings from an unknown part of space devours whole systems and leaves nothing in its wake. Is it a new weapon from the Orb who finally decided to get rid of human kind?
\nSoon a crew of misfits under the command of Captain Gavin Andal has to find out, because their homeworld is next and the enemy knows no mercy. But Andal's crew carries a secret on board their ship, that might show a way to save humanity from its imminent extinction.
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Deep space holds secrets . . . and one astronomer for NASA has found a big one. But it’s not what she thinks.
\nDr. Melody Adams, a physicist at the Gemini North Observatory, was studying Pluto in the telescope data and it struck her as odd. The numbers didn’t make sense. Could there be an extraterrestrial object in our solar system? She followed protocol. The scientific community didn’t believe her. And before she knew what happened, her career was over.
\nThe day that changed Melody’s life was like any other over the previous two years. She’d found she had a gift for writing and her career as an author had almost healed the pain of losing her job. When the Secret Service rang her bell, everything changed. Something was nearing Saturn . . . and it was slowing down. Had she been right about the object?
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Andal has fallen, engulfed by the Never and torn from the galaxy. Gavin and his crew of rebels have escaped the mysterious stealth ship and are stranded on an alien world, while Janus Darishma tries to figure out what happened on the edge of the Empire and what part Fleet Admiral Marquandt might have played.
\nDuring his investigation, Darishma comes across his own past, which he wanted to leave behind at any cost. But just like Gavin, he must operate in the shadows and accept any help he can get to reveal the truth. One that will shake all of humanity.
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In the eternal darkness of the moon, something is calling.
\nWhen NASA’s Sentinel I satellite detects an impossible reflection and a mysterious signal from Shackleton Crater, the world is thrown into chaos. The discovery points to one chilling an alien artifact lies hidden beneath the lunar surface - and it wants to be found. As China scrambles to exploit the revelation, a new moon race ignites, pushing humanity to the brink.
\nThrust into the center of the storm, NASA astronaut Charlie Reid must navigate a volatile mission where science, survival, and military might collide. With the fate of humanity hanging in the balance, the question what will they find - and will we survive it?
\nThe race for the future has begun. And the prize may cost us everything.
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What if suddenly you could no longer see the sun? Or the stars? What if the world sank into darkness?
\nOff the coast of Sulawesi, an Indonesian fisherman named Putra Buring Bule nets a strange object from the depths. A few days later, Earth falls into total darkness - an unknown phenomenon blocks out the sun and the starry sky, and the world descends into chaos.
\nIn the midst of a collapsing civilisation, CIA agent Rodea Stone is sent to Sulawesi to retrieve Putra’s puzzling find, and gets caught up in a truth that strains the limits of her imagination. Meanwhile, Montgomery Reed, a physicist at the LIGO gravitational wave observatory, is desperately trying to contact the NASA team on Unity Moon Base, who might well hold Earth’s only hope in their hands.
\nThe Wall: Eternal Night depicts a fateful event that changes Earth and all its inhabitants forever. But there are two sides to every fate. In The Wall: Eternal Day by Brandon Q. Morris, you will learn about the other side.
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In 1967, on the night of the first Apollo mission, a child named Izzy is orphaned when the doomsday cult she was born into clashes with the sheriff in the high desert of New Mexico. She’s taken in by a struggling rancher who is trying to keep his mind from falling apart as NASA rocket tests encroach on his outer range. Inspired by the true story of a UFO cult in a village near White Sands, this novel traces Izzy Gently’s whole from tragedy on the ranch, through addiction and a rich cast of eccentrics in Texas, to New Orleans, where Izzy is haunted by her past even as she uses lessons from childhood to counsel people who have lost the ability to see the moon.
\nIn The High Heaven, Joshua Wheeler explores American piety as it mutates over the course of the Space Age, as technology changes notions of both humanity and the heavens. Shot through with the speculative while paying homage to three iconic genres - neo-Western, picaresque, and Southern gothic - Izzy’s life story becomes a mirror for the warping of manifest destiny and, ultimately, a testament to the human will to seek meaning from the universe.
\nSuffused with the absurdist history of American space travel and the wide-open landscapes of the Southwest, The High Heaven chronicles a larger-than-life adventure of one extraordinary woman who, despite tragedy, never loses sight of redemption.
In this sapphic romance, a superstar women’s college basketball player and a commitment-phobe college student navigate complicated feeling - and busy schedules - after a photo of the two of them goes viral and fans theorise that they’re a couple.
\nMaya’s goals are keep her grades up so she can go to graduate school, prove to her hometown that she can handle the Colorado cold, and avoid the mess of romantic relationships by keeping things casual with everyone.
\nTheo is on the fast track to becoming the future of women's basketball, and she's been preparing her entire career for it. She just didn't realise that she'd become a celebrity in the process - or that people would care so much about her personal life.
\nWhen a photo taken of the two of them after a game sparks dating rumors, Maya uses it as a way to get closer to Theo - and as a way to hopefully get over her crush on Theo in the process.
\nThe only issue? Theo seems to like Maya, too, and she’s really charming . . . maybe even charming enough for Maya to let her walls down.
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Mickey five foot tall, dyslexic, and bullied at school. Mickey knows she's nothing special. Until one day, she discovers running.
\nMickey's new-found talent makes her realise she's everything she thought she wasn't - powerful, strong and special. But her success comes at a cost, and the relentless training and pressure to win leaves Mickey broken, her dream in tatters.
\nYears later, when Mickey is working in a dead-end job with a drop-kick boyfriend, her mother becomes seriously ill. After nursing her, Mickey realises the only way she can overcome her grief - and find herself - is to run again.
\nA chance encounter with a stranger sees Mickey re-ignite her dreams. The two women form an unbreakable bond, as Mickey is shown what it means to run in the right direction.
\nAn unforgettable debut novel about change, family and grit, and what it takes to achieve your dreams.
After the death of their young daughter, Penny Whittaker and Adam Riggs are struggling. Penny's lifelong dream of becoming a successful artist has stalled, and Riggs, battling an addiction to prescription painkillers, is coming to grips with the end of his glittering professional skateboarding career. When Penny is unexpectedly offered a chance to exhibit her work at an Auckland gallery, she accepts, despite her reservations.
\nAt the same time, Jamie Flannery suddenly finds himself out of work and out of options. To recuperate, he moves to his uncle's abandoned bach on the Coromandel, and when his childhood friend Riggs calls out of the blue the three friends reunite.
\nAt first, being together feels just like old times. But secrets from their shared past threaten their newfound peace, forcing them to reckon with their history and themselves.
Ever since a career-ending injury, former elite gymnast Eden has been feeling lost. To add insult to actual injury, her mom has been invited to present at her middle school’s career day, which would be fine except Mom’s company produces period products like pads and tampons. Having the whole school hear about it is total humiliation. And when Eden gets into a fight with a boy who won’t stop mocking her for it, she and her classmate Maribel both end up getting suspended.
\nMom’s corporate executive job means she doesn’t have time to look after Eden while she’s suspended, so Eden is sent to volunteer at the food bank Maribel’s mom runs. There, she meets new friends who open her eyes to period poverty, the struggle that low-income people with periods have trying to afford menstrual products. Eden even meets a boy who gets periods. Witnessing how people fight for fair treatment inspires Eden to join the advocacy work.
\nBut sewing pads to donate and pushing for free access to period products puts Eden at odds with her mom. Even so, Eden’s determined to hold onto the one thing that’s ignited her passion and drive since gymnastics. Can she stand her ground and make a real difference?
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For as long as she can remember, Carmela Tofana has desperately wanted one to be an important part of La Tofana Apothecary, her mother’s apothecary in the Campo Marzio neighborhood of Rome. When she finally turns sixteen, she’s allowed into the workroom of the shop, where her mother and two other women make some of the most effective remedies in all of Rome. They also dispense a healthy amount of good, non-medical advice to their clients.
\nBut the workroom of La Tofana is no simple place, and for every sweet-smelling flower extract to be prepared, there’s another potion where the main ingredient is blood or something even less pleasant. And then there’s Aqua Tofana, the apothecary’s remedy of last resort and one of several secrets Carmela never bargained for in all her years of wishing to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Everything Is Poison is a story of a deadly secret hiding in plain sight and of the women who risk everything to provide care for those most in need.
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A reimagining of Little Women set in the spring of 1942, when the United States is suddenly embroiled in the second World War.
\nIn the spring of 1942, the United States is reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor. While the US starts sending troops to the front, the March family of Concord, Massachusetts grieves their own enormous loss: the death of their daughter, Beth.
\nUnder the strain of their grief, Beth's remaining sisters fracture, each going their own way with Jo nursing her wounds and building planes in Boston, Meg holding down the home front with Marmee, and Amy living a secret life as a Red Cross volunteer in London - the same city where one Mr. Theodore Laurence is stationed as an army pilot.
\nEach March sister's point of view is written by a separate author, three in prose and Beth's in verse, still holding the family together from beyond the grave. Woven together, these threads tell a story of finding one's way in a world undergoing catastrophic change.
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In this stirring, reflective collection of short stories, Joyce Carol Oates ponders alternate destinies: the other lives we might have led if we’d made different choices. An accomplished writer returns to her childhood home of Yewville, but the homecoming stirs troubled thoughts about the person she might have been if she’d never left.
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A man in prison contemplates the gravity of his irreversible act. A student’s affair with a professor results in a pregnancy that alters the course of her life forever. Even the experience of reading is investigated as one that can create a profound transformation: “You could enter another time, the time of the book.”
The (Other) You is an arresting and incisive vision into these alternative realities, a collection that ponders the constraints we all face given the circumstances of our birth and our temperaments, and that examines the competing pressures and expectations on women in particular.
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Finely attuned to the nuances of our social and psychic selves, Joyce Carol Oates demonstrates here why she remains one of our most celebrated and relevant literary figures.
Marguerite, a beautiful woman, has disappeared from her small town in Upstate New York. But is foul play involved? Or did she merely take an opportunity to get away for fun, or finally make the decision to leave behind her claustrophobic life of limited opportunities?
\nHer younger sister Gigi wonders if the flimsy silk Dior dress, so casually abandoned on the floor, is a clue to Marguerite’s having seemingly vanished. The police examine the footprints made by her Ferragamo boots leaving the house, ending abruptly, and puzzle over how that can help lead to her. Gigi, not so pretty as her sister, slowly reveals her hatred for the perfect, much-loved, Marguerite.
\nBit by bit, like ripping the petals off a flower blossom, revelations about both sisters are uncovered.
From one of America's most renowned storytellers comes a novel about love and deceit, and lust and redemption, against a background of child abductions in the affluent suburbs of Detroit.
\nIn the waning days of the turbulent 1970s, in the wake of unsolved killings that have shocked Detroit, the lives of several residents are drawn together, with tragic consequences. There is Hannah, wife of a prominent local businessman, who has begun an affair with a darkly charismatic stranger whose identity remains elusive; Mikey, a canny street hustler who finds himself on an unexpected mission to rectify injustice; and the serial killer known as Babysitter, an enigmatic and terrifying figure at the periphery of elite Detroit.
\nAs Babysitter continues his rampage of killings, these individuals intersect with one another in startling and unexpected ways.
Who is Francis Fox? A charming English teacher new to the idyllic Langhorne Academy, Fox beguiles many of his students, their parents, and his colleagues at the elite boarding school, while leaving others wondering where he came from and why his biography is so enigmatic.
\nWhen two brothers discover Fox’s car half-submerged in a pond in a local nature preserve and parts of an unidentified body strewn about the nearby woods, the entire community, including Detective Horace Zwender and his deputy, begins to ask disturbing questions about Francis Fox and who he might really be.
\nA hypnotic, galloping tale of crime and complicity, revenge and restitution, victim vs. predator, Joyce Carol Oates’s Fox illuminates the darkest corners of the human psyche while asking profound moral questions about justice and the response evil demands.
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An ingenious dystopian novel of one young woman's resistance against the constraints of an oppressive society.
\nWhen a recklessly idealistic girl in a dystopian future society dares to test the perimeters of her tightly controlled world, she is punished by being sent back in time to a region of North America - 'Wainscotia, Wisconsin' - that existed eighty years before.
\nCast adrift in time in this idyllic Midwestern town, she is set upon a course of 'rehabilitation' - but she falls in love with a fellow exile and starts to question the constraints of her new existence, with results that are both devastating and liberating.
From literary icon Joyce Carol Oates comes a brand new collection of haunting and, at times, darkly humorous mystery suspense stories. These are tales of psyches pushed to their limits by the expectations of everyday life - from a woman who gets lost on her drive home to her plush suburban home and ends up breaking into a stranger’s house, to a first-person account of a cloned 1940s magazine pinup girl being sold at auction and embodying America’s ideals of beauty and womanhood.
\nTaken as a whole, the collection forms a poignant tapestry of regular people searching for their place in a social hierarchy, often with devastating and disastrous results. Rendered with stylish, fresh writing from an author who continues to push the envelope, the stories deftly weave in and out of a stream-of-consciousness to reflect the ways we process traumatic experiences and impart that uncertainty and uneasiness to the reader.
\nOriginally appearing in publications as disparate as Harper’s, Vice, and Conjunctions, the stories comprising Night, Neon showcase Oates’ mastery of the suspense story - and her relentless use of the form to conduct unapologetically honest explorations of American identity.
After a childhood filled with heartbreak, Irene, a talented artist, finds herself in a small Central American village where she checks into a beautiful but decaying lakefront hotel called La Llorona at the base of a volcano.
\nThe Bird Hotel tells the story of this young American who, after suffering tragedy, restores and runs La Llorona. Along the way we meet a rich assortment of characters who live in the village or come to stay at the hotel. With a mystery at its center and filled with warmth, drama, romance, humor, pop culture, and a little magic realism, The Bird Hotel has all the hallmarks of a Joyce Maynard novel that have made her a a leading voice of her generation
\nThe Bird Hotel is a big, sweeping story spanning four decades, offering lyricism as well as whimsy. What Joyce Maynard brings to life on the page is rendered from her imagination, it’s one informed by the more than twenty years of which she has spent a significant amount of her time in a small Mayan indigenous village in Guatemala.
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After falling in love in the last years of the 1970s, Eleanor and Cam follow their dream of raising three children on a New Hampshire farm. Theirs is a seemingly idyllic life of summer softball games and Labor Day cookouts, snow days and skating on the pond. But when a tragic accident permanently injures the family’s youngest child, Eleanor blames Cam. Her inability to forgive him leads to a devastating betrayal: an affair with the family babysitter that brings about the end of their marriage.
\nOver the decades that follow, the five members of this fractured family - and the many others who make up their world - make surprising discoveries and decisions that occasionally bring them together, and often tear them apart. As we follow the family from the days of illegal abortion and the draft through the early computer age, the Challenger explosion, the AIDS epidemic, the early awakenings of the #MeToo era, and beyond, through the gender transition of one of the children and another’s choice to cease communication with her mother, we witness a family forced to confront essential, painful truths of its past, and find redemption in the face of unanticipated disaster.
\nWith endearingly flawed characters and a keen eye for detail, Joyce Maynard transforms the territory she knows best - home, family, parenthood, love, and loss. In this achingly beautiful novel, she reminds us how great sorrow and great joy may coexist - and frequently do.
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Following the death of her former husband, Cam, fifty-four-year-old Eleanor has moved back to the New Hampshire farm where they raised three children to care for their brain-injured son, Toby, now an adult. Toby’s older brother, Al, is married and living in Seattle with his wife; their sister, Ursula, lives in Vermont with her husband and two children. Although all appears stable, old resentments, anger, and bitterness simmer just beneath the surface.
\nHow the Light Gets In follows Eleanor and her family through fifteen years as their story plays out against a uniquely American backdrop and the events that transform their world and shape their lives.
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Drawing on Joze’s own incredible journey from being afraid to speak, due to a debilitating stutter, to becoming an award-winning speaker and stand-up comedian, Stop Holding Back will help you harness fear as a catalyst for personal and professional growth. With practical strategies, simple daily habits and inspiring true stories of change, you’ll discover how.
\n• Disrupt the Hollywood Change rarely happens in a single dramatic breakthrough. It’s built in small, everyday acts of courage - micro-moments of bravery where you choose to speak up, take action, or show up.
\n• Let Fear and Action You don’t have to wait to be fearless to act. When you move forward despite fear, you win - regardless of the result. Action builds resilience, confidence, and progress.
\n• Stop Trading Long-Term Growth for Short-Term Avoiding what scares you might feel safe today, but it costs you growth, fulfillment, and opportunity tomorrow.
\n• Reframe the Most fear-inducing moments are psychological discomforts that last just seconds. Facing them can unlock change.
\n• Follow the Fear What scares you might point directly to the next chapter of growth. Let fear guide you toward purpose, not away from it.
\nYour life today does not have to dictate your life tomorrow; change is possible. Your fears might never stop, so why should you?
On July 2, 2022, two criminals set out to rob a jewelry shop in Geneva. But even with a foolproof plan, their “perfect” heist will prove far from uneventful . . .
\nTwenty days earlier, on a luxurious estate along the shores of Lake Geneva, Sophie Braun prepares to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Her life seems she has a fairytale marriage, two perfect children, and lives in a stylish modern mansion surrounded by lush forest.
\nBut her idyllic world is about to crumble. Her husband is becoming embroiled in petty schemes. Her neighbor, a policeman with a spotless reputation, is obsessed with her and spies on the most intimate moments of her life. Then, on her birthday, she receives a gift from a mysterious prowler that endangers her life.
\nIt will take many journeys into the past, far from Geneva, to unravel the origins of this diabolical plot from which no one will emerge unscathed, including readers.
\nTold at a breathtaking pace, filled with nerve-jangling suspense, Wild Animal demonstrates once again why Joël Dicker - since the publication of The Truth About the Harry Quebert Case - reigns supreme as one of the most beloved contemporary mystery writers in the world today.
Antonia Scott is not afraid of anything. Only herself. But there is someone more dangerous than her. Someone who could beat her. The black wolf is getting closer. And Antonia, for the first time, is scared.
\nIn southern Spain, in the Costa del Sol, a key mafia figure is found brutally murdered in his villa. His pregnant wife, Lola Moreno, barely escapes an attempt to kill her in a shopping mall and is on the run. A shipping container from St. Petersburg arrives in port in Spain containing the corpses of nine women, all of whom suffocated.
\nNow Antonia, with the help of her helper and protector, Jon Gutierrez, must track down the missing Lola. But they aren't the only ones on Lola's trail - a dangerous contract killer, known as the Black Wolf, is also on the hunt. And Antonia Scott, still plagued by her personal demons, must outwit, out-manoeuvre, and, ultimately, face this terrible, mysterious rival.
Antonia Scott is special. Very special. She is not a policewoman or a lawyer. She has never wielded a weapon or carried a badge, and yet, she has solved dozens of crimes.
\nBut it's been awhile since Antonia left her attic in Madrid. The things she has lost are much more important to her than the things awaiting her outside.
\nShe also doesn't receive visitors. That's why she really, really doesn't like it when she hears unknown footsteps coming up the stairs.
\nWhoever it is, Antonia is sure that they are coming to look for her.
\nAnd she likes that even less.
“I hope you haven't forgotten me. Shall we play?”
\nAntonia Scott knows exactly who sent her this message: the mysterious Mister White, whom she has been tracking for years. She also knows that it is almost impossible to win against him. But if she loses this game, Inspector Jon Gutiérrez will pay with his life.
\nAntonia and Jon have one last chance: they must solve three cases that are considered unsolvable. A game of life and death begins . . .
When Judith Hermann runs into her psychoanalyst in the middle of the night on Berlin's Kastanienallee, the meeting sparks an exploration of the moments and memories that have made a life: an intense friendship with another young mother; an unconventional childhood with long summers spent on the German coast; and the ties of familial trauma that echo through generations.
In three interconnected sections at once confessional and lyrical, We Would Have Told Each Other Everything explores how the life and work of the writer converge and depart from each other when memory is no longer reliable and dreams intrude on reality.
When Mary Newcombe dutifully returns to Cape Cod with her twelve-year-old son to celebrate Christmas with her adoptive mother, Birdie, the only part of the trip she looks forward to is digging beach clay for pottery to stoke her beloved kiln. But while she’s home, a suspicious fire destroys the town health clinic, and Mary becomes a leading suspect.
\nMary can’t remember the night of the fire (too much eggnog) and, as always, her mother isn’t talking. Birdie has kept secrets from Mary her entire life, beginning with the truth about Mary’s birth mother.
\nWhen Mary discovers her adoptive father socked away a small fortune performing pre-Roe v. Wade illegal abortions in the clinic that burned to the ground, she’s done with being kept in the dark. As the days tick by and pressures mount to find the arsonist, Mary digs deeper into Wellfleet’s history, and more secrets start to unfurl.
\nMeanwhile, Mary’s cousin Jimmy is acting strangely and suddenly, so is her son. As the FBI zeros in on Mary, and another fire burns in the harbor, it's time for Mary and Birdie to face a long brewing reckoning.
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Spanning multiple locales and epochs, and rendered in fine detail and vivid color, this transportive collection shows what it means to live as human inhabitants on our one miraculous planet. Lyrical, at times hilarious, and always heartfelt, each of these ten stories is a reflection of individual choice in the face of man-made in a near-future Seoul, where air pollution has become so fatal that the city has been encased in a translucent biodome, a civil engineer charged with its upkeep contemplates an arranged marriage.
\nA painter, disenchanted with New York City, travels to the South of France and falls into a dalliance with an entrepreneur who claims to have invented a new color. And on an island where the Indian and Pacific Oceans meet, upon which other countries have relegated their waste to form a mountain of landfill, a local boy facing daily privation gets internet famous for his K-pop-inspired dances.
\nWith the clear-eyed reverence of Richard Powers and the sparkling sincerity of George Saunders, Juhea Kim’s first story collection views our broken world - and broken hearts - from breathtaking heights. A Love Story from the End of the World delivers an impassioned reminder that we are human - but without nature, we are nothing at all.
An epic story of love, war, and redemption set against the backdrop of the Korean independence movement, following the intertwined fates of a young girl sold to a courtesan school and the penniless son of a hunter.
\nIn 1917, deep in the snowy mountains of occupied Korea, an impoverished local hunter on the brink of starvation saves a young Japanese officer from an attacking tiger. In an instant, their fates are connected - and from this encounter unfolds a saga that spans half a century.
\nIn the aftermath, a young girl named Jade is sold by her family to Miss Silver’s courtesan school, an act of desperation that will cement her place in the lowest social status. When she befriends an orphan boy named JungHo, who scrapes together a living begging on the streets of Seoul, they form a deep friendship. As they come of age, JungHo is swept up in the revolutionary fight for independence, and Jade becomes a sought-after performer with a new romantic prospect of noble birth. Soon Jade must decide whether she will risk everything for the one who would do the same for her.
\nFrom the perfumed chambers of a courtesan school in Pyongyang to the glamorous cafes of a modernising Seoul and the boreal forests of Manchuria, where battles rage, Juhea Kim’s unforgettable characters forge their own destinies as they wager their nation’s. Immersive and elegant, Beasts of a Little Land unveils a world where friends become enemies, enemies become saviors, heroes are persecuted, and beasts take many shapes.
On a White Night in 2019, prima ballerina Natalia Leonova returns to St. Petersburg two years after a devastating accident stalled her career. Once the most celebrated dancer of her generation, she now turns to pills and alcohol to numb the pain of her past.
\nShe is unmoored in her old city as the ghosts of her former life begin to her loving but difficult mother, her absentee father, and the two gifted dancers who led to her downfall.
\nOne of those dancers, Alexander, is the love of her life, who transformed both Natalia and her art. The other is Dmitri, a dark and treacherous genius. When the latter offers her a chance to return to the stage in her signature role, Natalia must decide whether she can again face the people responsible for both her soaring highs and darkest hours.
\nPainting a vivid portrait of the Russian ballet world, where cutthroat ambition, ever-shifting politics, and sublime artistry collide, City of Night Birds unveils the making of a dancer with both profound intimacy and breathtaking scope. Mysterious and alluring, passionate and virtuosic, Juhea Kim’s second novel is an affecting meditation on love, forgiveness, and the making of an artist in a turbulent world.
Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep-sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah is not the same. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has brought part of it back with her, onto dry land and into their home.
Moving through something that only resembles normal life, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had before might be gone. Though Leah is still there, Miri can feel the woman she loves slipping from her grasp.
Our Wives Under The Sea is the debut novel from Julia Armfield, the critically acclaimed author of salt slow. It’s a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep deep sea.
It’s been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and arcane rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father dies. An architect as cruel as he was revered, his death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way.
\nIn the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will.
\nMore estranged than ever, the sisters’ lives spin out of control: Irene’s relationship is straining at the seams; Isla’s ex-wife keeps calling; and cynical Agnes is falling in love for the first time. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters’ lives.
\nSoon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperiled world.
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On the island of Guernsey, as WWII looms, many islanders make the heartbreaking choice to ship their children to safety in England, not knowing when (or if) they will be reunited. Acting on faith, Ava and Joseph Simon reluctantly send their 9-year-old son Henry and four-year-old daughter Catherine with their children's teacher Helen, who will escort them to the mainland.
\nBut Helen's sister Lily is fleeing an abusive, childless marriage, and, just as the ferry is about to leave, she convinces her sister to let her take Helen's place so that she can make a new start for herself. It is Lily who takes the children to England, and it is Lily who lets Henry get on a train by himself. But Lily has always wanted a child, and she's unable to let Catherine go. So she decides to walk the other way, taking Catherine with her in her arms. That split-second decision impacts the lives of everyone long after the war ends.
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It's the 1960s, and the fashion culture of New York, Paris, and Milan is starting to make an impression on the mid-century American woman. Jackie Kennedy's effortless style leads the nation, although Mia's bustling bakery job doesn't often give her the time or money to craft a stylish closet after her idol in the White House. But when a mysterious stranger suddenly offers her a modeling job in Paris at the esteemed House of Rousseau, she takes a chance on it, despite knowing nothing about the world of fashion. As an orphan with big dreams, holding a one-way plane ticket to Paris, she sets off for what she hopes is a better life.
\nBut the job of a model runs deeper than photoshoots and runway walks, and as Mia adjusts to the Parisienne lifestyle, she realises that not everything is as it seems. Becoming more and more successful in her position as an up-and-coming model, she is soon drawn into the Cold War by the very fashion house she works for. And as she finds herself falling further into national crimes and politics, Mia will soon have to decide which side of history she's really on.
\nJackie Kennedy is no longer the only woman for whom fashion and politics dramatically collide . . .
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Roman Grady is the sole reporter for the local newspaper in a tiny Hudson Valley town - a town so small that every store opening and DUI is considered newsworthy. But when Roman's longtime girlfriend, Ashley, the mother of his four-year-old son, is found dead, he realises he had no idea what was really going on in her life.
\nAnd when he starts asking questions, he’s not prepared for the answers.
\nWhat was Ashley doing at the cliffside home of her troubled ex-girlfriend? How did no one in a house full of people see what happened to her? And why does it seem like everyone in town suddenly has something to hide? As Roman and his mother dig into Ashley’s last few months, the truths they uncover threaten to expose painful secrets. The kind of secrets that can get you killed.
\nA gripping thriller and a moving portrait of a family struggling through tragedy, I Dreamed of Falling showcases Julia Dahl's talent for using crime fiction to tell an immersive and unforgettable story. Dahl’s unflinching novel asks hard questions about love, regret, inequality, and the possibilities and the perils of forgiveness.
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From a distance, Claudia Castro has it all: a famous family, a trust fund, thousands of Instagram followers, and a spot in NYU's freshman class. But look closer, and things are messier: her parents are separating, she's just been humiliated by a sleazy documentary, and her sister is about to have a baby with a man she barely knows.
Claudia starts the school year resolved to find a path toward something positive, maybe even meaningful – and then one drunken night everything changes. Reeling, her memory hazy, Claudia cuts herself off from her family, seeking solace in a new friendship. But when the rest of school comes back from spring break, Claudia is missing.
Suddenly, the whole city is trying to piece together the hours of that terrible night.
After a near death experience, one woman creates her \"reverse\" bucket the things she wants to do after death.
\nNora November was living life on autopilot before she nearly died in a surfing accident. When she recovers, she realizes how close she came to the end of her life and regrets that she let so many wishes and dreams go undone. There are reasons for that - a pressure-filled career working for her impossible-to-please father and chronic depression to name a few.
\nBut with a renewed sense of vigor, she sets out to do all the things she never did before she died. Her \"reverse bucket list\" includes ordinary aspirations like learning how to cook and cleaning out her late grandpa's garden. But it also includes finding the man she was unexpectedly locked for hours with in a backroom while being held hostage in a corner store holdup . . . the one who got away.
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Sam and her sister, Elena, dream of another life. On the island off the coast of Washington where they were born and raised, they and their mother struggle to survive. Sam works long days on the ferry that delivers wealthy mainlanders to their vacation homes while Elena bartends at the local golf club, but even together they can’t earn enough to get by, stirring their frustration about the limits that shape their existence.
\nThen one night on the boat, Sam spots a bear swimming the dark waters of the channel. Where is it going? What does it want? When the bear turns up by their home, Sam, terrified, is more convinced than ever that it’s time to leave the island. But Elena responds differently to the massive beast. Enchanted by its presence, she throws into doubt the plan to escape and puts their long-held dream in danger.
\nA story about the bonds of sisterhood and the mysteries of the animals that live among us - and within us.
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One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern tip of Russia, two girls - sisters, ages eight and eleven - go missing. The police investigation that follows turns up nothing. In the girls' tightly-woven community, everyone must grapple with the loss. But the fear and danger of their disappearance is felt most profoundly among the women of this isolated place.
Taking us one chapter per month across a year on Kamchatka, this powerful novel connects the lives of characters changed by the sisters' abduction: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. Theirs is an ethnically diverse population in which racial tensions simmer, and so-called \"natives\" are often suspected of the worst. As the story radiates from the peninsula's capital city to its rural north, we are brought to places of astonishing beauty: densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, and glassy seas.
Disappearing Earth is a multifaceted story of the intimate lives of women - their vulnerabilities and perils, their desires and dreams. It speaks to the complex yet enduring bonds of community as it offers startlingly vivid portraits of people reaching out to one another and, sometimes, reaching back to save each other.
Once upon a time, a historical romance author created a family . . .
\nBut not just any family. Eight brothers and sisters, assorted in-laws, sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, (not to mention an overweight corgi), plus an irrepressible matriarch who’s a match for any of them . . . These are the Bridgertons: less a family than a force of nature. Through eight bestselling novels, readers laughed, cried, and fell in love. But they wanted more.
\nAnd so the readers asked the author . . .
\nWhat happened next? Does Simon ever read his father’s letters? Do Francesca and Michael become parents? Who would win in a Pall Mall grudge match?
\nDoes “The End” really have to be the end?
\nNow, with The Bridgertons: Happily Ever After, Julia Quinn delivers eight sexy, funny, and heartwarming “2nd epilogues,” plus a bonus story about none other than the wise and witty Violet Bridgerton herself. So get to know the Bridgertons all over again - because Happily Ever After is a whole lot of fun.
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In the ballrooms and drawing rooms of Regency London, rules abound. From their earliest days, children of aristocrats learn how to address an earl and curtsey before a prince - while other dictates of the ton are unspoken yet universally understood. A proper duke should be imperious and aloof. A young, marriageable lady should be amiable . . . but not too amiable.
Daphne Bridgerton has always failed at the latter. The fourth of eight siblings in her close-knit family, she has formed friendships with the most eligible young men in London. Everyone likes Daphne for her kindness and wit. But no one truly desires her. She is simply too deuced honest for that, too unwilling to play the romantic games that captivate gentlemen.
Amiability is not a characteristic shared by Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings. Recently returned to England from abroad, he intends to shun both marriage and society - just as his callous father shunned Simon throughout his painful childhood. Yet an encounter with his best friend’s sister offers another option. If Daphne agrees to a fake courtship, Simon can deter the mamas who parade their daughters before him. Daphne, meanwhile, will see her prospects and her reputation soar.
The plan works like a charm - at first. But amid the glittering, gossipy, cut-throat world of London’s elite, there is only one certainty: love ignores every rule . . .
Gareth St. Clair is in a bind. His father, who detests him, is determined to beggar the St. Clair estates and ruin his inheritance. Gareth's sole bequest is an old family diary, which may or may not contain the secrets of his past . . . and the key to his future. The problem is - it's written in Italian, of which Gareth speaks not a word.
All the ton agreed: there was no one quite like Hyacinth Bridgerton. She's fiendishly smart, devilishly outspoken, and according to Gareth, probably best in small doses. But there's something about her - something charming and vexing - that grabs him and won't quite let go . .
Or don't. But rest assured, he's spinning in his grave when Gareth and Hyacinth cross paths at the annual - and annually discordant - Smythe-Smith musicale. To Hyacinth, Gareth's every word seems a dare, and she offers to translate his diary, even though her Italian is slightly less than perfect. But as they delve into the mysterious text, they discover that the answers they seek lie not in the diary, but in each other . . . and that there is nothing as simple - or as complicated - as a single, perfect kiss.
Will she accept his offer before the clock strikes midnight?
Sophie Beckett never dreamed she'd be able to sneak into Lady Bridgerton's famed masquerade ball - or that \"Prince Charming\" would be waiting there for her! Though the daughter of an earl, Sophie has been relegated to the role of servant by her disdainful stepmother. But now, spinning in the strong arms of the debonair and devastatingly handsome Benedict Bridgerton, she feels like royalty. Alas, she knows all enchantments must end when the clock strikes midnight.
Who was that extraordinary woman? Ever since that magical night, a radiant vision in silver has blinded Benedict to the attractions of any other - except, perhaps this alluring and oddly familiar beauty dressed in housemaid's garb whom he feels compelled to rescue from a most disagreeable situation. He has sworn to find and wed his mystery miss, but this breathtaking maid makes him weak with wanting her. Yet, if he offers his heart, will Benedict sacrifice his only chance for a fairy tale love?
Unlike most men of his acquaintance, Gregory Bridgerton believes in true love. And he is convinced that when he finds the woman of his dreams, he will know in an instant that she is the one. And that is exactly what happened. Except . . .
She wasn't the one. In fact, the ravishing Miss Hermione Watson is in love with another. But her best friend, the ever-practical Lady Lucinda Abernathy, wants to save Hermione from a disastrous alliance, so she offers to help Gregory win her over. But in the process, Lucy falls in love. With Gregory! Except . . .
Lucy is engaged. And her uncle is not inclined to let her back out of the betrothal, even once Gregory comes to his senses and realises that it is Lucy, with her sharp wit and sunny smile, who makes his heart sing. And now, on the way to the wedding, Gregory must risk everything to ensure that when it comes time to kiss the bride, he is the only man standing at the altar . . .
“We are one crown. His weight is mine, and mine is his . . . ”
\nIn 1761, on a sunny day in September, a King and Queen met for the very first time. They were married within hours.
\nBorn a German Princess, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was beautiful, headstrong, and fiercely intelligent . . . not precisely the attributes the British Court had been seeking in a spouse for the young King George III. But her fire and independence were exactly what she needed, because George had secrets . . . secrets with the potential to shake the very foundations of the monarchy.
\nThrust into her new role as a royal, Charlotte must learn to navigate the intricate politics of the court . . . all the while guarding her heart, because she is falling in love with the King, even as he pushes her away. Above all she must learn to rule, and to understand that she has been given the power to remake society. She must fight - for herself, for her husband, and for all her new subjects who look to her for guidance and grace. For she will never be just Charlotte again. She must instead fulfill her destiny . . . as Queen.
Everyone knows that Colin Bridgerton is the most charming man in London. Penelope Featherington has secretly adored her best friend's brother for...well, it feels like forever. After half a lifetime of watching Colin Bridgerton from afar, she thinks she knows everything about him, until she stumbles across his deepest secret . . . and fears she doesn't know him at all.
Colin Bridgerton is tired of being thought nothing but an empty-headed charmer, tired of everyone's preoccupation with the notorious gossip columnist Lady Whistledown, who can't seem to publish an edition without mentioning him in the first paragraph.
But when Colin returns to London from a trip abroad he discovers nothing in his life is quite the same - especially Penelope Featherington! The girl haunting his dreams. But when he discovers that Penelope has secrets of her own, this elusive bachelor must decide . . . is she his biggest threat - or his promise of a happy ending?
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Sir Phillip knew from his correspondence with his dead wife's distant cousin that Eloise Bridgerton was a spinster, and so he'd proposed, figuring that she'd be homely and unassuming, and more than a little desperate for an offer of marriage. Except . . . she wasn't. The beautiful woman on his doorstep was anything but quiet, and when she stopped talking long enough to close her mouth, all he wanted to do was kiss her . . .
Eloise Bridgerton couldn't marry a man she had never met! But then she started thinking . . . and wondering . . . and before she knew it, she was in a hired carriage in the middle of the night, on her way to meet the man she hoped might be her perfect match. Except . . . he wasn't. Her perfect husband wouldn't be so moody and ill-mannered. And he certainly should have mentioned that he had two young - and decidedly unruly - children, as much in need of a mother as Phillip is in need of a wife.
\"1814 promises to be another eventful season, but not, this author believes, for Anthony Bridgerton, London's most elusive bachelor, who has shown no indication that he plans to marry. And in truth, why should he? When it comes to playing the consummate rake, nobody does it better . . . - Lady Whistledown's Society Papers, April 1814\"
But this time, the gossip columnists have it wrong. Anthony Bridgerton hasn't just decided to marry - he's even chosen a wife! The only obstacle is his intended's older sister, Kate Sheffield - the most meddlesome woman ever to grace a London ballroom. The spirited schemer is driving Anthony mad with her determination to stop the betrothal, but when he closes his eyes at night, Kate is the woman haunting his increasingly erotic dreams . . .
Contrary to popular belief, Kate is quite sure that reformed rakes do not make the best husbands - and Anthony Bridgerton is the most wicked rogue of them all. Kate is determined to protect her sister - but she fears her own heart is vulnerable. And when Anthony's lips touch hers, she's suddenly afraid she might not be able to resist the reprehensible rake herself . . .
In every life there is a turning point. A moment so tremendous, so sharp and breathtaking, that one knows one's life will never be the same. For Michael Stirling, London's most infamous rake, that moment came the first time he laid eyes on Francesca Bridgerton.
After a lifetime of chasing women, of smiling slyly as they chased him, of allowing himself to be caught but never permitting his heart to become engaged, he took one look at Francesca Bridgerton and fell so fast and hard into love it was a wonder he managed to remain standing. Unfortunately for Michael, however, Francesca's surname was to remain Bridgerton for only a mere thirty-six hours longer - the occasion of their meeting was, lamentably, a supper celebrating her imminent wedding to his cousin.
But that was then . . .
Now Michael is the earl and Francesca is free, but still she thinks of him as nothing other than her dear friend and confidant. Michael dares not speak to her of his love . . . until one dangerous night, when she steps innocently into his arms, and passion proves stronger than even the most wicked of secrets . . .
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Inspired by true stories from the authors’ grandparents’ lives during one of the darkest periods in Korean history, The Last Tiger is a debut young adult fantasy novel about the power of love to give voice to a broken people.
\nIn a colonised land where tigers are being hunted to extinction and ancient magic stirs, two star-crossed teens from opposite worlds - Lee Seung, a servant yearning for freedom, and Choi Eunji, a noble girl defying tradition - join forces to try and reshape their respective fates.
\nBut their relationship evolves from begrudging accomplices to bitter adversaries as they soon find themselves on opposite sides of a battle over the last tiger, a symbol of their people’s lost freedom and key to the liberation of their country. As the ties between Seung and Eunji are complicated by their conflicting loyalties, tensions rise - especially when a charming princeling of the empire begins to rival for Eunji's affection.
\nIn this friends-to-enemies-to-lovers story of forbidden romance, antagonists turned allies, oppression and liberation, neither Seung nor Eunji can abandon their mission - or each other. And as they embark on separate quests to find the elusive creature, each must also find the power within themselves to make their own destiny.
Feisty, passionate Beatrice Steele has never fit the definition of a true lady, according to the strict code of conduct that reigns in Swampshire, her small English township - she is terrible at needlework, has absolutely no musical ability, and her artwork is so bad it frightens people.
\nNevertheless, she lives a perfectly agreeable life with her marriage-scheming mother, prankster father, and two younger sisters - beautiful Louisa and forgettable Mary. But she harbors a dark secret: She is obsessed with the true crime cases she reads about in the newspaper. If anyone in her etiquette-obsessed community found out, she'd be deemed a morbid creep and banished from respectable society forever.
\nFor her family's sake, she's vowed to put her obsession behind her. Because eligible bachelor Edmund Croaksworth is set to attend the approaching autumnal ball, and the Steele family hopes that Louisa will steal his heart. If not, Martin Grub, their disgusting cousin, will inherit the family's estate, and they will be ruined or, even worse, forced to move to France. So Beatrice must be on her best behavior . . . which is made difficult when a disgraced yet alluring detective inexplicably shows up to the ball.
\nBeatrice is just holding things together when Croaksworth drops dead in the middle of a minuet. As a storm rages outside, the evening descends into a frenzy of panic, fear, and betrayal as it becomes clear they are trapped with a killer. Contending with competitive card games, tricky tonics, and Swampshire's infamous squelch holes, Beatrice must rise above decorum and decency to pursue justice and her own desires - before anyone else is murdered.
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After achieving her lifelong dream of solving a murder, bringing a killer to justice, and proving she is not, in fact, a morbid creep, Beatrice Steele feels like everything is finally falling into place. She's traded her etiquette-obsessed community of Swampshire for the big city of London, accompanied by her ever-trusty chaperone, Miss Bolton. They've settled in a lovely neighborhood, Sweetbriar, known for its proximity to the Sweet Majestic theater, picturesque pleasure gardens, and an unfortunate infestation of flying squirrels. But Beatrice's favorite part is that Sweetbriar is also home to D.S. Investigations, the new office she opened with the prickly, annoyingly logical Inspector Drake to solve the city's brutally thrilling crimes.
\nHowever, nothing is turning out how Beatrice imagined it would. Sir Huxley, famed gentleman inspector and Beatrice's former crush, is still considered the real investigator in London, so the only cases left for Beatrice and Drake are lost pets and spectacles. Not that Beatrice has much time for crime-solving, anyways, as her mother still expects her to find an eligible (rich) husband to protect their family from destitution. Beatrice is struggling to balance all the demands on her and begins to wonder if she can become a true detective in a city that feels full of false promises.
\nThat is until a string of murders thrusts Beatrice and Drake into the center of a scandal that pits the neighborhood's wealthiest against the arts community, spreading fear and chaos throughout the city. As they follow the trail through bewildering ballrooms, secretive shops, and odd operas, Beatrice must survive threats to her partnership, her business, and her place in society to break the case - before it's too late.
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A contemporary lesbian romance that illustrates the power of finding love again and the importance of reaching for your dreams.
\nCate Colson has spent more than a decade building her successful law practice. After losing a woman she loved due to her single-minded career dedication, she’s done with serious relationships (aka she’s terrified of failure). Cate’s drawn to the magnetic widow of a former client, but Meg certainly isn’t the one-night-stand type. Besides, she might be straight. There’s no way Cate’s going to risk her heart again, if only the Meg Effect didn’t leave her wanting more.
\nMeg Mullins wants a relationship with Cate, but things are complicated. She dedicated herself to her family after becoming pregnant at twenty, burying her attraction to women and the dream of becoming a professional artist. As Meg the unMuzzled, she writes a popular anonymous blog, processing her true feelings. Now that her kids are adults, she’s ready to come out and move beyond the fallout of her marriage, but change isn’t as easy as it seems, and not everyone is happy for Meg.
\nCate and Meg are so good for each other, but a second chance at love means untangling their pasts, learning to trust, and daring to let go of who they thought they were to discover who they’re meant to be together.
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When Piper Fernley, Pipes the unPlugged when writing her popular blog, is knocked down by a frightened dog on her morning run, she doesn’t expect the dog’s owner to land on top of her. Or the attraction she feels for the rude woman who isn’t her type. But that’s nothing compared to the shock of finding out the woman is her new boss. Fortunately, the gig at the job is temporary, but how is she supposed to survive six weeks with a guarded, uptight woman who doesn’t even like her?
\nVeterinarian Dahlia Noble prefers animals to most people - they aren’t duplicitous. After a difficult childhood and the divorce from hell, Dal’s focus is her daughter and her work. The unpretentious office temp is growing on Dal, but her past, the boss/employee rulebook, and a divorce agreement mean there is no place in her life for Piper.
\nSometimes when you stop looking, your heart finds exactly what it needs.
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Emiko Soong, newly minted Sentinel of San Francisco, just can't catch a break. Just after she becomes the guardian for a sentient city, a murder strikes close to home. Called by the city and one of the most powerful clans to investigate, she traces the killer whose scent signature bears a haunting similarity to her mother’s talent.
\nThe trail will lead her back to Tokyo where the thread she pulls threatens to unravel her whole world and bring dark family secrets to light.
\nMeanwhile, the General rises in the East and Emiko must fight the hidden enemies of his growing army who are amped up on Blood Jade, while keeping her promises to her brother Tatsuya as he prepares for his tourney.
\nHer duties as Sentinel and her loyalties collide when she must choose between hiding her deepest shame or stopping the General’s relentless march.
Emiko Soong belongs to one of the eight premier magical families of the world. But Emiko never needed any magic. Because she is the Blade of the Soong Clan. Or was. Until she’s drenched in blood in the middle of a market in China, surrounded by bodies and the scent of blood and human waste as a lethal perfume.
\nThe Butcher of Beijing now lives a quiet life in San Francisco, importing antiques. But when a shinigami, a god of death itself, calls in a family blood debt, Emiko must recover the Ebony Gate that holds back the hungry ghosts of the Yomi underworld. Or forfeit her soul as the anchor.
\nWhat's a retired assassin to do but save the City by the Bay from an army of the dead?
Blade.
Butcher.
Thief.
Worldbreaker.
Emiko Soong has been called many things. But Worldbreaker is the worst.
She unmasked the General and returned to San Francisco where her power is greatest. But the city, once her sanctuary from Jiaren intrigues, turns into her living nightmare. Clan wars erupt and Emiko’s life becomes a treacherous quicksand of friend and foe. Unsure of who to trust, Emiko finds herself more alone than ever.
\nWhen an ancient power rips through the Realm to land in her city, the General will stop at nothing to take it for his own. Emiko must face her past, present, and future, as she races to stop the General.
\nIs Emiko’s fate written to be the destroyer of worlds, or can she chart a new course to save her family?
Shortly after our narrator, a writer named Julian, begins this compact book by discussing the workings of involuntary memory, he interrupts himself with a bulletin to the \"There will be a story - or a story within the story - but not just yet.”
\nOf course, whether Departure(s) is mostly a fictional story or not, there is a lot of its author in it, including Barnes's reckoning with the blood disorder he has been living with since he was diagnosed in 2020, his long preoccupation with dying and grief and his mordant sense of the indignities and lost opportunities we're prey to in love. The story he promises to deliver is a love story, that of two friends he met at university in the 1960s, that time of touted but rarely experienced sexual freedom. Julian played matchmaker to Stephen (tall, gangling, uncertain) and Jean (tart and attractive); as the third wheel, he was deeply invested in the success of their love and insulted when they broke up. Time is swift, and forty years later, he tries again, watching as their rekindled affair produces joys, betrayals and disappointments of a different order.
\nBarnes uses both his novelistic memory and his (real?) personal diary entries to examine not just the quixotic relationship of Jean and Stephen but his writer's eye upon it, and how his efforts on their behalf add up in the end. Despite promising them he'd never write about them, he breaks that promise to fulfill another one, amply, to his readers, in this delightful and poignant novelist’s game that only Julian Barnes knows how to play.
Sixteen-year-old Elva has a secret. She has visions and strange powers that she will do anything to hide. She knows the warnings about what happens to witches in their small village of Hanau. She's heard the terrible things people say about the Witch of the North Woods, and the malicious hunts that follow.
\nBut when Elva accidentally witnesses a devastating vision of the future, she decides she has to do everything she can to prevent it. Tapping into her powers for the first time, Elva discovers a magical mirror and its owner-none other than the Witch of the North Woods herself. As Elva learns more about her burgeoning magic, and the lines between hero and villain start to blur, she must find a way to right past wrongs before it's too late.
\nThe Mirror: Broken Wish marks the first book in an innovative four-book fairy-tale series written by Julie C. Dao, Dhonielle Clayton, Jennifer Cervantes, and L. L. McKinney, following one family over several generations, and the curse that plagues it.
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June, 1975.
\nhe Taylor family shatters in a single night when two teenage siblings are found dead in their own home. The only surviving sibling, Vincent, never shakes the whispers and accusations that he was the one who killed them. Decades later, the legend only grows as his career as a horror writer skyrockets.
\nGhostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of Vincent Taylor. Now on the brink of financial ruin, she's offered a job to ghostwrite her father's last book. What she doesn't know, though, is that this project is another one of his lies. Because it's not another horror novel he wants her to write.
\nAfter fifty years of silence, Vincent Taylor is finally ready to talk about what really happened that night in 1975.
Hillary Jean leads an enviable life. She has a loving husband, a beautiful home, caring friends, and meaningful work planning fundraisers. Yet she’s always felt incomplete.
\nAfter a DNA website emails her a match, Hillary sets out to find the daughter she gave up twenty-five years ago. But her hunger to reconnect threatens to destroy the very thing she hopes to gain.
Claire Cook has a perfect life. Married to the scion of a political dynasty, with a Manhattan townhouse and a staff of ten, her surroundings are elegant, her days flawlessly choreographed, and her future auspicious. But behind closed doors, nothing is quite as it seems. That perfect husband has a temper that burns as bright as his promising political career, and he's not above using his staff to track Claire's every move, making sure she's living up to his impossible standards. But what he doesn't know is that Claire has worked for months on a plan to vanish.
A chance meeting in an airport bar brings her together with a woman whose circumstances seem equally dire. Together they make a last-minute decision to switch tickets - Claire taking Eva's flight to Oakland, and Eva traveling to Puerto Rico as Claire. They believe the swap will give each of them the head start they need to begin again somewhere far away. But when the flight to Puerto Rico goes down, Claire realises it's no longer a head start but a new life. Cut off, out of options, with the news of her death about to explode in the media, Claire will assume Eva's identity, and along with it, the secrets Eva fought so hard to keep hidden.
The Last Flight is the story of two women - both alone, both scared - and one agonising decision that will change the trajectory of both of their lives.
The powerful forces of science and family collide when geneticist Paige Robson finds her world in upheaval: Her eight-year-old son Miles is struggling to fit in at his new school and begins asking questions about his biological father that Paige can’t answer - until fate thrusts the anonymous donor she used into their lives.
Paige’s carefully constructed life begins to unravel as the truth of Miles’s paternity threatens to destroy everything she has grown to cherish. As Paige slowly opens herself up - by befriending an eccentric mother, confronting her own deeply buried vulnerabilities, and trying to make sense of her absent father’s unexpected return - she realises breakthroughs aren’t only for the lab. But when tragedy strikes, Paige must face the consequences of sharing a secret only she knows.
Fear of maegic plagues war-torn Anwyvn. Halflings like Rhya Fleetwood are killed on sight. But Rhya’s execution is interrupted by an unexpected savior - one far more terrifying than her would-be killers. The mysterious and mercenary Commander Scythe. In the clutches of this new enemy, Rhya finds herself fighting for her life in the barren reaches of the Northlands. Yet the farther she gets from home, the more she learns that nothing is as it seems - not her fearsome captor, not the blight that ravages her dying realm, not even herself.
\nFor Rhya is no ordinary halfling. The strange birthmark on her chest and the wind she instinctively calls forth means she is a Remnant, one of four souls scattered across Anwyvn, fated to restore the balance of maegic . . . or die trying.
\nBut mastering the power inside her is only the beginning. Desire for the Commander - a man she can never trust, a man with plans of his own - burns just as fiercely as the tempests beating against her rib cage for release. Rhya must choose: smother the flames . . . or let them consume her.
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When seventeen-year-old Sparrow joined the Thieves Guild she made a vow of binding loyalty to their cause. So when a mission comes along from The Circle, a group of mysterious, dangerous beings who control the Thieves Guild from the shadows, Sparrow is determined to cement her place in the guild.
\nWhat ensues is a death-defying adventure that has Sparrow and her band of thieves venturing into the heart of the forgotten city of the Deathless King. The fate of Sparrow, her companions, and Raithe, the enigmatic yet alluring assassin Sparrow is forced to join forces with during their quest, all hang in the balance as they find themselves battling ancient forces within the tombs and facing the unwavering hold of fate.
Ember Hill has learned a shocking truth about herself: she is the blood of the Elder Wyrm, the ancient dragon who leads Talon and who is on the verge of world domination. With the Order of St. George destroyed, Ember, Riley and Garret journey to the Amazon jungle in search of one who might hold the key to take down the Elder Wyrm and Talon - if they can survive the encounter.
Meanwhile, Ember’s brother, Dante, will travel to China with a message for the last Eastern dragons: join Talon or die. With the stakes rising and the Elder Wyrm declaring war, time is running out for the rogues and any dragon not allied with Talon.
The final battle approaches. And if Talon is victorious, the world will burn.
Dragon hatchling Ember Hill was never prepared to find love at all - dragons do not suffer human emotions - let alone the love of a human and a former dragonslayer, at that. With ex-soldier Garret dying at her feet after sacrificing his freedom and his life to expose the deepest of betrayals, Ember knows only that nothing she was taught by dragon organization Talon is true. About humans, about rogue dragons, about herself and what she's capable of doing and feeling.
In the face of great loss, Ember vows to stand with rogue dragon Riley against the dragon-slaying Order of St. George and her own twin brother Dante--the heir apparent to all of Talon, and the boy who will soon unleash the greatest threat and terror dragonkind has ever known.
Talon is poised to take over the world, and the abominations they have created will soon take to the skies, darkening the world with the promise of blood and death to those who refuse to yield.
Remy spends his days trying to survive the mean streets of Cutthroat Wedge - one of the many islands floating in the gravitational pull of the magical Maelstrom raging below. But his life changes forever when a violent storm brings a baby dragon to his doorstep, and he feels a bond he has never felt with anyone. Remy names the dragon Storm and vows to protect this new friend, no matter the cost.
\nGem longs for the day when she call herself a true mage. That is, if she can convince her teachers and peers that just because she’s a princess doesn’t mean she’s lazy and spoiled. But when Gem learns that the floating islands that make up her kingdom are rapidly sinking into the Maelstrom, she makes it her mission to save her world. Against the king’s wishes, she accesses forbidden research and discovers the secret to saving humanity may lie in a True Dragon - a dragon capable of intelligent thought and able to cast and use magic. But True Dragons are extinct . . . aren’t they?
\nRemy’s and Gem’s lives will never be the same when their fates collide, thanks to Storm. With an evil pirate mage named Jhaeros determined to claim the rare dragon for himself, the two must learn to trust in each other as they team up with a shifty pirate captain and her crew, stand together against impossible odds, and embark on the adventure of a lifetime.
Kitsune shapeshifter Yumeko has given up the final piece of the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers in order to save everyone she loves from imminent death. Now she and her ragtag band of companions must journey to the wild sea cliffs of Iwagoto in a desperate last-chance effort to stop the Master of Demons from calling upon the Great Kami dragon and making the wish that will plunge the empire into destruction and darkness.
Shadow clan assassin Kage Tatsumi has regained control of his body and agreed to a true deal with the devil - the demon inside him, Hakaimono. They will share his body and work with Yumeko and their companions to stop a madman and separate Hakaimono from Tatsumi and the cursed sword that had trapped the demon for nearly a millennium.
But even with their combined skills and powers, this most unlikely team of heroes knows the forces of evil may be impossible to overcome. And there is another player in the battle for the scroll, a player who has been watching, waiting for the right moment to pull strings that no one even realized existed . . . until now.
Ember Hill left the dragon organisation Talon to
take her chances with rebel dragon Cobalt and his crew of rogues. But Ember can’t forget the sacrifice made for her by the human boy who could have killed her - Garret Xavier Sebastian, a soldier of the dragonslaying Order of St. George, the boy who saved her from a Talon assassin, knowing that by doing so, he’d signed his own death warrant.
Determined to save Garret from execution, Ember must convince Cobalt to help her break into the Order’s headquarters. With assassins after them and Ember’s own brother helping Talon with the hunt, the rogues find an unexpected ally in Garret and a new perspective
on the underground battle between Talon and St. George.
A reckoning is brewing and the secrets hidden by both sides are shocking and deadly. Soon Ember must decide: Should she
retreat to fight another day . . . or start an all-out war?
One thousand years ago, the great Kami Dragon was summoned to grant a single terrible wish - and the land of Iwagoto was plunged into an age of darkness and chaos.
Now, for whoever holds the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers, a new wish will be granted. A new age is about to dawn.
Raised by monks in the isolated Silent Winds temple, Yumeko has trained all her life to hide her yokai nature. Half kitsune, half human, her skill with illusion is matched only by her penchant for mischief. Until the day her home is burned to the ground, her adoptive family is brutally slain and she is forced to flee for her life with the temple’s greatest treasure - one part of the ancient scroll.
There are many who would claim the dragon’s wish for their own. Kage Tatsumi, a mysterious samurai of the Shadow Clan, is one such hunter, under orders to retrieve the scroll . . . at any cost. Fate brings Kage and Yumeko together. With a promise to lead him to the scroll, an uneasy alliance is formed, offering Yumeko her best hope for survival. But he seeks what she has hidden away, and her deception could ultimately tear them both apart.
With an army of demons at her heels and the unlikeliest of allies at her side, Yumeko’s secrets are more than a matter of life or death. They are the key to the fate of the world itself.
When forced to choose between safety with the dragon organization Talon and being hunted forever as an outcast, Ember Hill chose to stand with Riley and his band of rogue dragons rather than become an assassin for Talon. She's lost any contact with her twin brother, Dante, a Talon devotee, as well as Garret, the former-enemy soldier who challenged her beliefs about her human side.
As Ember and Riley hide and regroup to fight another day, Garret journeys alone to the United Kingdom, birthplace of the ancient and secret Order of St. George, to spy on his former brothers and uncover deadly and shocking secrets that will shake the foundations of dragons and dragon-slayers alike and place them all in imminent danger as Talon's new order rises.
", "series": "Talon", "seriesOrder": 3, "tags": [ "Fantasy" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Julie Kagawa - Soldier.jpeg", "mtime": 1766739341377.7764, "size": 2345812, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:22:02.404Z" }, "Julie Kagawa - Soul of the Sword": { "title": "Soul of the Sword", "author": "Julie Kagawa", "description": "One thousand years ago, a wish was made to the Harbinger of Change and a sword of rage and lightning was forged. Kamigoroshi. The Godslayer. It had one task: to seal away the powerful demon Hakaimono.
Now he has broken free.
Kitsune shapeshifter Yumeko has one task: to take her piece of the ancient and powerful scroll to the Steel Feather temple in order to prevent the summoning of the Harbinger of Change, the great Kami Dragon who will grant one wish to whomever holds the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers. But she has a new enemy now. The demon Hakaimono, who for centuries was trapped in a cursed sword, has escaped and possessed the boy she thought would protect her, Kage Tatsumi of the Shadow Clan.
Hakaimono has done the unthinkable and joined forces with the Master of Demons in order to break the curse of the sword and set himself free. To overthrow the empire and cover the land in darkness, they need one thing: the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers. As the paths of Yumeko and the possessed Tatsumi cross once again, the entire empire will be thrown into chaos.
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In Allison Sekemoto's world, there is one rule left: Blood calls to blood
\nShe has done the unthinkable: died so that she might continue to live. Cast out of Eden and separated from the boy she dared to love, Allie will follow the call of blood to save her creator, Kanin, from the psychotic vampire Sarren. But when the trail leads to Allie's birthplace in New Covington, what Allie finds there will change the world forever - and possibly end human and vampire existence.
\nThere's a new plague on the rise, a strain of the Red Lung virus that wiped out most of humanity generations ago - and this strain is deadly to humans and vampires alike. The only hope for a cure lies in the secrets Kanin carries, if Allie can get to him in time.
\nAllison thought that immortality was forever. But now, with eternity itself hanging in the balance, the lines between human and monster will blur even further, and Allie must face another choice she could never have imagined having to make.
With the death of her beloved, Allison Sekemoto has her answer: MONSTER. Now she will embrace her cold vampire side to hunt down and end Sarren, the irredeemable vampire who murdered him. But the trail is bloody and long, and Sarren has left many shocking surprises along the way.
The trail leads Allie and her companions toward the one place they must protect at any cost - Eden, the last vampire-free zone on earth. And Sarren has one final, brutal shock in store for Allie. In this ruined world where no life is sacred and former allies can turn on you in a heartbeat, Allie will make her final stand. But even if she succeeds, triumph is short-lived in the face of surviving forever alone.
Allison Sekemoto survives in the Fringe, the outermost circle of a walled-in city. By day, she and her crew scavenge for food. By night, any one of them could be eaten. Some days, all that drives Allie is her hatred of the - the vampires who keep humans as blood cattle. Until the night Allie herself dies and becomes one of the monsters.
Forced to flee her city, Allie must pass for human as she joins a ragged group of pilgrims seeking a legend—a place that might have a cure for the disease that killed off most of civilization and created the rabids, the bloodthirsty creatures who threaten human and vampire alike. And soon Allie will have to decide what—and who—is worth dying for…again.
Half Summer faery princess, half human, Meghan Chase has never fit in anywhere. Deserted by the prince she thought loved her, she is prisoner to Mab, the Winter faery queen.
\nAs war looms between Summer and Winter, Meghan knows the real danger comes from the Iron fey - ironbound faeries that only she and her absent prince have seen. Worse, Meghan's fledgling fey powers have been cut off. She's stuck in Faery with only her wits for help.
\nTrusting anyone would be foolish. Trusting a seeming traitor could be deadly. But even as she grows a backbone of iron, Meghan can't help but hear the whispers of longing in her all-too-human heart.
My name is Meghan Chase.
In less than twenty-four hours, I’ll be sixteen. Countless stories, songs and poems have been written about this wonderful age, when a girl finds true love and the stars shine for her and the handsome prince carries her off into the sunset.
I don’t think it will be that way for me.
Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan Chase’s life, ever since her father disappeard when she was six. Ten years later, when her little brother also goes missing, Meghan learns the truth - she is the secret daughter of a mythical faery king and a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn just how far she’ll go to save someone she loves, to stop a mysterious evil no faery creature dare face . . . and to find love with a young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy heart.
Until half-human, half-fey Meghan Chase won his icy heart and bound him to her with his oath to be her knight. But Meghan is now the Iron Queen, ruler of a realm where no Winter or Summer fey can survive.
\nWith an unlikely band of allies, Ash seeks a way to honour his vow to stand by Meghan's side. To stay in the Iron Realm, he must have a soul and a mortal body. But the tests he must endure to earn these things are impossible. And along the way, Ash learns that, sometimes, it takes more than courage to make the ultimate sacrifice.
Don’t look at Them. Never let Them know you can see Them.
\nThat is Ethan Chase’s unbreakable rule. Until the fey he avoids at all costs - including his reputation - begin to disappear, and Ethan is attacked.
\nNow he must change the rules to protect his family. To save a girl he never thought he’d dare to fall for. Ethan thought he had protected himself from his older sister’s world - the land of Faery. His previous time in the Iron Realm left him with nothing but fear and disgust for the world Meghan Chase has made her home, a land of myth and talking cats, of magic and seductive enemies.
\nBut when destiny comes for Ethan, there is no escape from a danger long, long forgotten.
Meghan Chase thought her time with the fey was over, that the sacrifices she had to make were done. But war is brewing as another Iron King rises to destroy the courts of Faery and corrupt the Nevernever forever.
\nThe age-old rivalry of the Summer and Winter courts must be put aside as the rulers prepare to face their mutual enemy . . . and Meghan must step up once more and finally claim her secret destiny. But first, she must make one final, heartbreaking sacrifice.
Wicked faeries and fantastic danger . . .
\nRobin Goodfellow. Puck. Prankster, joker, raven, fool . . . King Oberon's right-hand jester from A Midsummer Night's Dream. The legends are many, but the truth will now be known as never before, as Puck finally tells his own story and faces a threat unlike any before. A threat that brings him face-to-face with a new enemy . . . himself.
\nWith the Iron Queen Meghan Chase and her prince consort, Puck's longtime rival Ash, and allies old and new by his side, Puck begins a fantastical and dangerous adventure not to be missed or forgotten. Evenfall is coming, and with it a reckoning . . .
As Evenfall nears, the stakes grow ever higher for those in Faery . . .
\nBanished from the Winter Court for daring to fall in love, Prince Ash achieved the impossible and journeyed to the End of the World to earn a soul and keep his vow to always stand beside Queen Meghan of the Iron Fey.
\nNow he faces even more incomprehensible odds. Their son, King Keirran of the Forgotten, is missing. Something more ancient than the courts of Faery and more evil than anything Ash has faced in a millennium is rising as Evenfall approaches. And if Ash and his allies cannot stop it, the chaos that has begun to divide the world will shatter it for eternity.
After his unexpected journey into the lands of the fey, Ethan Chase just wants to get back to normal. Well, as ‘normal’ as you can be when you see faeries every day of your life. Suddenly the former loner with the bad reputation has someone to try for - his girlfriend, Kenzie. Never mind that he’s forbidden to see her again.
\nBut when your name is Ethan Chase and your sister is one of the most powerful faeries in the Nevernever, ‘normal’ simply isn’t to be. For Ethan’s nephew, Keirran, is missing, and may be on the verge of doing something unthinkable in the name of saving his own love. Something that will fracture the human and faery worlds forever and give rise to the dangerous fey known as the Forgotten.
\nAs Ethan’s and Keirran’s fates entwine and Keirran slips further away, Ethan’s next choice may decide the fate of them all.
After leaping through the portal to Evenfall, Meghan and her companions find themselves in a terrifying new world where Nightmares roam and glamour is nearly nonexistent.
\nAs their magic wanes and the creatures of Evenfall rise against them, the race to find the Nightmare King grows ever more desperate. But what they discover - about Evenfall, about the Nightmare King, about themselves - will shake everything they thought they knew to the core.
\nThe Nightmare King stirs. A world hangs in the balance. And as twilight descends upon all the realms of Faery, Meghan and her allies must make one more impossible choice.
Waking after a month on the brink of death, Ethan Chase is stunned to learn that the Veil that conceals the fey from human sight was temporarily torn away.
\nAlthough humankind's glimpse of the world of Faery lasted just a brief moment, the human world was cast into chaos, and the emotion and glamour produced by fear and wonder has renewed the tremendous power of the Forgotten Queen. Now she is at the forefront of an uprising against the courts of Faery - a reckoning that will have cataclysmic effects on the Nevernever.
\nLeading the Lady's Forgotten Army is Keirran himself: Ethan's nephew, and the traitor son of the Iron Queen, Meghan Chase. To stop Keirran, Ethan must disobey his sister once again as he and his girlfriend, Kenzie, search for answers long forgotten.
When Gilbert Williams, a resident at Sunset House Care Home, claims to have once killed someone, care assistant Will Cavanagh initially dismisses his claims - he’s frail and vulnerable, he can’t imagine him ever killing someone - but he can’t seem to let his comments go. What if it’s true? What if he really did kill someone and he’s forgotten that he isn’t supposed to tell anybody . . .
Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells “small” fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences . . .
\nEven if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a knead for adventure, and - of course - a slightly magical cat.
\nTao sets down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past are closing in - and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.
\n
Self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean Dickson (dubbed “Dumplin’” by her former beauty queen mom) has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked . . . until Will takes a job at Harpy’s, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn’t surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back.
Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Clover City beauty pageant - along with several other unlikely candidates - to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any twiggy girl does. Along the way, she’ll shock the hell out of Clover City - and maybe herself most of all.
Faith Herbert can finally admit that she’s not a regular teen. Thankfully, her two best friends, Matt and Ches, are now in on her superhero secret. But after the chaos of her first semester, Faith just wants to end her senior year on a normal note - enjoying all the hallmarks of graduating high school - like prom! And, possibly, getting to attend college in the fall.
\nA new teacher has taken over journalism class, and Faith is only occasionally reminded of the empty spot left by Colleen Bristow, the quiet nerd-turned-supervillain. That is, until Faith hears from Peter that other psiots have been going missing, and he suspects that her old classmate is somehow involved. Faith decides the only way to get to the bottom of it is to find Colleen - before enemies can get to her first.
\nAs her search starts to collide with the memorable senior year she’s been hoping for, Faith learns that you gotta have faith . . . that sometimes fate will point you in the right direction.
\n
After having just graduated with a degree in shoe design, and trying to get her feet on the ground, Cindy is working for her stepmother, who happens to be the executive producer of America's favorite reality show, Before Midnight. When a spot on the show needs filling ASAP, Cindy volunteers, hoping it might help jump-start her fashion career, or at least give her something to do while her peers land jobs in the world of high fashion.
\nTurns out being the only plus size woman on a reality dating competition makes a splash, and soon Cindy becomes a body positivity icon for women everywhere. What she doesn't expect? That she may just find inspiration - and love - in the process. Ultimately, Cindy learns that if the shoe doesn't fit, maybe it's time to design your own.
\n
Sully is ready to get out of Hearst, Pennsylvania. With a fashion internship secured, the gender-nonconforming eighteen-year-old is trading in their stifling small town for the big city. Sully even sells their beloved car, to Bread - er, Brad - the most boring (and maybe only other) gay kid in town.
\nWhen Sully’s internship goes up in smoke, they’re trapped in Hearst with no cash - and no car. Desperate, they go to the thrift store, their personal sanctuary. There, they discover a vintage bag - like “put this baby in an airtight case at the MET” vintage. If Sully can authenticate it, the resale value would be enough for a new life in the city.
\nBut when they begin to investigate, Sully finds themself haunted. Literally. With the ghost of Rufus, a drag performer from the fifties with no memory of how he died standing - no, floating - in their bedroom, Sully’s summer has a new 1) help this ghostly honey unlock his past and move on and 2) make bank - after all, the Real Real doesn’t take poltergeist purses.
\nWith Rufus in tow, and Brad - who’s looking pretty scrumptious these days - playing chauffeur, Sully delves into the history of the town they’re so desperate to escape. Only to discover that there might be more to Hearst than they ever knew.
\n
Millie Michalchuk has gone to fat camp every year since she was a girl. Not this year. This year she has new plans to chase her secret dream - and to kiss her crush. Callie Reyes is the pretty girl who is next in line for dance team captain and has the popular boyfriend.
\nBut when it comes to other girls, she’s more frenemy than friend. When circumstances bring the girls together over the course of a semester, they will surprise everyone (especially themselves) by realising they might have more in common than they ever imagined.
Waylon Russell Brewer is a fat, openly gay boy stuck in the small West Texas town of Clover City. His plan is to bide his time until he can graduate, move to Austin with his twin sister, Clementine, and finally go Full Waylon, so that he can live his Julie-the-hills-are-alive-with-the-sound-of-music-Andrews truth.
\nSo when Clementine deviates from their master plan right after Waylon gets dumped, he throws caution to the wind and creates an audition tape for his favorite TV drag show, Fiercest of Them All. What he doesn’t count on is the tape accidentally getting shared with the entire school . . . As a result, Waylon is nominated for prom queen as a joke. Clem’s girlfriend, Hannah Perez, also receives a joke nomination for prom king.
\nWaylon and Hannah decide there’s only one thing to do: run - and leave high school with a bang. A very glittery bang. Along the way, Waylon discovers that there is a lot more to running for prom court than campaign posters and plastic crowns, especially when he has to spend so much time with the very cute and infuriating prom king nominee Tucker Watson.
\nWaylon will need to learn that the best plan for tomorrow is living for today . . . especially with the help of some fellow queens . . .
\n
From Julie Murphy, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dumplin', and Side Effects May Vary, comes another fearless heroine, Ramona Blue, in a gorgeously evocative novel about family, friendship, and how sometimes love can be more fluid than you first think. Perfect for fans of Rainbow Rowell and Morgan Matson.
\nRamona was only five years old when Hurricane Katrina changed her life forever.
\nSince then, it's been Ramona and her family against the world. Standing over six feet tall with unmistakable blue hair, Ramona is sure of three things: she likes girls, she's fiercely devoted to her family, and she knows she's destined for something bigger than the trailer she calls home in Eulogy, Mississippi. But juggling multiple jobs, her flaky mom, and her well-meaning but ineffectual dad forces her to be the adult of the family. Now, with her sister, Hattie, pregnant, responsibility weighs more heavily than ever.
\nThe return of her childhood friend Freddie . . .
\n
What if you'd been living your life as if you were dying - only to find out that you had your whole future ahead of you?
When sixteen-year-old Alice is diagnosed with leukemia, her prognosis is grim. To maximise the time she does have, she vows to spend her final months righting wrongs - however she sees fit. She convinces her friend Harvey, who she knows has always had feelings for her, to help her with a crazy bucket list that's as much about revenge (humiliating her ex-boyfriend and getting back at her archnemesis) as it is about hope (doing something unexpectedly kind for a stranger). But just when Alice's scores are settled, she goes into remission.
Now Alice is forced to face the consequences of all that she's said and done, as well as her true feelings for Harvey. But has she caused irreparable damage to the people around her - and to the one person who matters most?
Faith Herbert is a pretty regular teen. When she’s not hanging out with her two best friends, Matt and Ches, she’s volunteering at the local animal shelter or obsessing over the long-running teen drama The Grove.
\nSo far, her senior year has been spent trying to sort out her feelings for her maybe-crush Johnny and making plans to stay close to Grandma Lou after graduation. Of course, there’s also that small matter of recently discovering she can fly . . .
\nWhen the fictional world of The Grove crashes into Faith’s reality as the show relocates to her town, she can’t believe it when TV heroine Dakota Ash takes a romantic interest in her.
\nBut her fandom-fueled daydreams aren’t enough to distract Faith from the fact that first animals, then people, have begun to vanish from the town. Only Faith seems able to connect the dots to a new designer drug infiltrating her high school.
\nBut when her investigation puts the people she loves in danger, she will have to confront her hidden past and use her newfound gifts - risking everything to save her friends and beloved town.
\n
Gwen Jackson and Xander Thorne are both musical prodigies, but each has had very different paths to success. Xander was born into classical music royalty, while Gwen had a natural ear for music that was nurtured by a kind shop owner.
\nAfter Gwen performs at his friend’s wedding, she’s mortified when she realises Xander has no clue who she is - despite having worked together for a year at the Pops Orchestra. But she’s more furious that he arrogantly critiques her performance.
\nWhen Gwen is offered the role of First Chair of the orchestra, something Xander had secretly coveted for years, their existing hostility goes up a notch. But their respect for each other's music is undeniable, and their onstage chemistry off the scale. As they begin to explore their feelings for one another, suddenly they're box office dynamite and the fragile romance that's growing between them is in danger of being crushed beneath a publicity stunt . . .
Welcome to the Thrashers, the elite friend group at New Helvetia High. They’re everything everyone wants to be.
\nJodi Dillon was never meant to be one of them. Julian, Lucy, Paige, and the infamous Zack Thrasher are rich, sophisticated, and love attention. Jodi feels out of place, but Zack’s her childhood best friend, so she’s in.
\nThen Emily Mills, who desperately wanted to be a Thrasher, dies - and the whispers about the Thrashers begin. As Emily’s journal surfaces, detectives close in, and Jodi faces an impossible choice: betray her friends or protect herself.
\nBut as eerie messages and strange occurrences escalate, it becomes clear - Emily isn’t done with them yet.
One unidentified skeleton. Three missing men. A village full of secrets. The bestselling author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna brings us a sparkling - by turns funny and moving - novel about a young American woman turned amateur detective in a small village in Southern Italy.
\nCalabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there’s no mail, either.
\nMost troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don’t the police come and investigate? When an old woman begs Francesca to help determine if the remains are those of her long-missing son, Francesca begins to ask a lot of inconvenient questions. As an outsider, she might be the only person who can uncover the truth. Or she might be getting in over her head.
\nAs she attempts to juggle a nosy landlady, a suspiciously dashing shepherd, and a network of local families bound together by a code of silence, Francesca finds herself forced to choose between the charitable mission that brought her to Santa Chionia, and her future happiness, between truth and survival.
\nSet in the wild heart of Calabria, a land of sheer cliff faces, ancient tradition, dazzling sunlight - and one of the world’s most ruthless criminal syndicates - The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is a suspenseful puzzle mystery, a captivating romance, and an affecting portrait of a young woman in search of a meaningful life.
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For Stella Fortuna, death has always been a part of life. Stella’s childhood is full of strange, life-threatening incidents - moments where ordinary situations like cooking eggplant or feeding the pigs inexplicably take lethal turns. Even Stella’s own mother is convinced that her daughter is cursed or haunted.
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In her rugged Italian village, Stella is considered an oddity - beautiful and smart, insolent and cold. Stella uses her peculiar toughness to protect her slower, plainer baby sister Tina from life’s harshest realities. But she also provokes the ire of her father Antonio: a man who demands subservience from women and whose greatest gift to his family is his absence.
When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and Tina must come of age side-by-side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them. Soon Stella learns that her survival is worthless without the one thing her family will deny her at any cost: her independence.
In present-day Connecticut, one family member tells this heartrending story, determined to understand the persisting rift between the now-elderly Stella and Tina. A richly told debut, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna is a tale of family transgressions as ancient and twisted as the olive branch that could heal them.
In 2003, at the prestigious Brookfield Conservatory in Boston, a chance encounter sparks an inimitable friendship between driven pianist and singer Anna Buckley and composer wunderkind Will Pendleton. Over the next four years, as they strive toward careers as professional musicians, their bond deepens both from shared prodigious skill and the inexplicable sense that they’re kindred souls. But on the precipice of graduation, one night forever alters the trajectory of their lives, destroying their relationship in the process.
\nTwenty years later in New York, 16-year-old piano virtuoso Lottie Thomas is grappling with the rigors of her elite prep school and the confounding disappearance of the woman who gave her up at birth. When Lottie suddenly discovers the startling truth of her identity, the revelation catalyses a chain of events that not only reunites Lottie with her birth parents, but forces them together on a careening, cross-country rock and roll tour-bus journey. And it is there, trapped in these tight confines, that the three must finally reconcile with the irrevocable choices made a decade-and-a-half earlier.
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Stasya lives in an isolated farming village on the edge of the mysterious Heartwood Forest with her unusual dog for company. Thought odd by the locals, she is tolerated for her rare gift with animals. Engaging with her fellow humans is difficult, with one goatherd Lukas, who shares her love of storytelling.
\nThe peace of Heartwood is shattered when a group of soldiers descends, under orders from the Ruler of the Northlands. Their to hack a path through the forest and find the fabled treasure said to lie deep within. Under the grueling decree, Stasya’s village falls into chaos. The task is clearly impossible. The forest is alive with bears and wolves, and the old tales speak of evil spirits, monsters and uncanny beings. Nobody has ever gone deep into Heartwood Forest and returned safe and well.
\nWhen Stasya raises her voice in protest she is removed from her beloved home and transported to court - a different world. Word of her special skills has reached the Ruler’s ears, and Lady Elisabeta has a job for her. But Stasya will not break her vow to protect the forest, even under the most appalling threat. Help comes from an unlikely quarter.
\nSecrets abound; dangers lie everywhere; and it is hard to tell friend from foe. As Stasya and her band of unlikely allies embark on a perilous mission, it becomes apparent that uncanny forces may indeed be involved. Maybe the old tales of the Hermit are true.
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Magic is fading . . . and the ways of Man are driving the Old Ones to the West, beyond the ken of humankind. The ancient groves are being destroyed, and if nothing is done, Ireland will lose its essential mystic core.
The prophecies of long ago have foretold a way to prevent this horror, and it is the Sevenwaters clan that the Spirits of Eire look to for salvation. They are a family bound into the lifeblood of the land, and their promise to preserve the magic has been the cause of great joy to them . . . as well as great sorrow.
It is up to Fainne, daughter of Niamh, the lost sister of Sevenwaters, to solve the riddles of power. She is the shy child of a reclusive sorcerer, and her way is hard, for her father is the son of the wicked sorceress Oonagh, who has emerged from the shadows and seeks to destroy all that Sevenwaters has striven for. Oonagh will use her granddaughter Fainne most cruelly to accomplish her ends, and stops at nothing to see her will done.
Will Fainne be strong enough to battle this evil and save those she has come to love?
Lovely Sorcha is the seventh child and only daughter of Lord Colum of Sevenwaters. Bereft of a mother, she is comforted by her six brothers who love and protect her. Sorcha is the light in their lives: they are determined that she know only contentment.
But Sorcha's joy is shattered when her father is bewitched by his new wife, an evil enchantress who binds her brothers with a terrible spell, a spell which only Sorcha can lift - by staying silent. If she speaks before she completes the quest set to her by the Fair Folk and their queen, the Lady of the Forest, she will lose her brothers forever.
When Sorcha is kidnapped by the enemies of Sevenwaters and taken to a foreign land, she is torn between the desire to save her beloved brothers, and a love that comes only once. Sorcha despairs at ever being able to complete her task, but the magic of the Fair Folk knows no boundaries, and love is the strongest magic of them all . . .
Healer Blackthorn knows all too well the rules of her bond to the fey: seek no vengeance, help any who ask, do only good. But after the recent ordeal she and her companion, Grim, have suffered, she knows she cannot let go of her quest to bring justice to the man who ruined her life.
Despite her personal struggles, Blackthorn agrees to help the princess of Dalriada in taking care of a troubled young girl who has recently been brought to court, while Grim is sent to the girl’s home at Wolf Glen to aid her wealthy father with a strange task - repairing a broken-down house deep in the woods. It doesn’t take Grim long to realize that everything in Wolf Glen is not as it seems - the place is full of perilous secrets and deadly lies . . .
Back at Winterfalls, the evil touch of Blackthorn’s sworn enemy reopens old wounds and fuels her long-simmering passion for justice. With danger on two fronts, Blackthorn and Grim are faced with a heartbreaking choice - to stand once again by each other’s side or to fight their battles alone . . .
In exchange for help escaping her long and wrongful imprisonment, embittered magical healer Blackthorn has vowed to set aside her bid for vengeance against the man who destroyed all that she once held dear. Followed by a former prison mate, a silent hulk of a man named Grim, she travels north to Dalriada. There she'll live on the fringe of a mysterious forest, duty bound for seven years to assist anyone who asks for her help.
\nOran, crown prince of Dalriada, has waited anxiously for the arrival of his future bride, Lady Flidais. He knows her only from a portrait and sweetly poetic correspondence that have convinced him Flidais is his destined true love. But Oran discovers letters can lie. For although his intended exactly resembles her portrait, her brutality upon arrival proves she is nothing like the sensitive woman of the letters.
\nWith the strategic marriage imminent, Oran sees no way out of his dilemma. Word has spread that Blackthorn possesses a remarkable gift for solving knotty problems, so the prince asks her for help. To save Oran from his treacherous nuptials, Blackthorn and Grim will need all their resources: courage, ingenuity, leaps of deduction, and more than a little magic.
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When Maeve, twenty year old daughter of Lord Sean of Sevenwaters, accompanies a skittish horse back to Erin, she must confront her demons. For Maeve carries the legacy of a childhood fire in her crippled hands. She has lived with her aunt in Britain for ten years, developing a special gift for gentling difficult animals.
Maeve arrives home to find Sevenwaters in turmoil. The forest surrounding her father's keep also has uncanny inhabitants, including a community of Fair Folk. Now the fey prince Mac Dara has become desperate to see his only son return to the Otherworld to rule after him. To force Sean's hand, Mac Dara has made innocent travellers on the Sevenwaters border disappear, and now their bodies are appearing one by one in bizarre circumstances. Mac Dara's malign activities must be stopped. But how? What human army can defeat a force with magic at its fingertips?
Maeve's gift with animals earns her respect at Sevenwaters. She bonds with her enigmatic small brother, Finbar, his druid tutor Luachan, and two stray dogs. When Maeve discovers the body of one of the missing men, she and Finbar are drawn into a journey where the stakes are high: they may bring about the end of Mac Dara's reign, or suffer a hideous death. For Maeve, success may lead to a future she has not dared to believe possible.
The chieftains of Sevenwaters have long been custodians of a vast and mysterious forest - and a new heir has been born. But the family's joy turns to despair when the baby is taken, and something unnatural is left in his place. To reclaim her newborn brother, Clodagh must enter the shadowy Otherworld and confront the powerful prince who rules there . . .
\nJuliet Marillier was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, a town with strong Scottish roots. She graduated from the University of Otago with degrees in languages and music, and has had a varied career that includes teaching and performing music as well as working in government agencies. Juliet now lives in a hundred-year-old cottage near the river in Perth, Western Australia, where she writes full-time. She is a member of the druid order OBOD. Juliet shares her home with two dogs and a cat. Juliet's historical fantasy novels are published internationally and have won a number of awards.
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The young seer Sibeal is visiting an island of elite warriors, prior to making her final pledge as a druid. It's there she finds Felix, a survivor of a Viking shipwreck, who's lost his memory. The scholarly Felix and Sibeal form a natural bond. He could even be her soul mate, but Sibeal's vocation is her true calling, and her heart must answer.
As Felix fully regains his memory, Sibeal has a runic divination showing her that Felix must go on a perilous mission-and that she will join him. The rough waters and the sea creatures they will face are no match for Sibeal's own inner turmoil. She must choose between the two things that tug at her soul-her spirituality and a chance at love . . .
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Beautiful Sorcha is the courageous young woman who risked all to save her family from a wicked curse and whose love shattered generations of hate and bridged two cultures. It was by her sacrifice that the spell was broken and her brothers were finally brought home to Sevenwaters. But not all her brothers were able to escape the spell that transformed them into swans, and even those who did were more-and less-than they were before the change.
It is left to Sorcha's daughter, Liadan, to fulfill the destiny of the Sevenwaters clan. Beloved child and dutiful daughter, she embarks on a journey that opens her eyes to the wonders of the world around her . . . and shows her just how hard-won was the peace that there are forces far darker than anyone could have guessed and ancient powers conspiring to destroy this family's peace - and their world.
She will need all of her strength to stand up to those she loves best, for in the finding of her own true love, Liadan's course may doom them all . . . or may be their salvation.
Disillusioned healer Blackthorn and her companion, Grim, have settled in Dalriada to wait out the seven years of Blackthorn’s bond to her fey mentor, hoping to avoid any dire challenges. But trouble has a way of seeking out Blackthorn and Grim.
Lady Geiléis, a noblewoman from the northern border, has asked for the prince of Dalriada’s help in expelling a howling creature from an old tower on her land - one surrounded by an impenetrable hedge of thorns. Casting a blight over the entire district, and impossible to drive out by ordinary means, it threatens both the safety and the sanity of all who live nearby. With no ready solutions to offer, the prince consults Blackthorn and Grim.
As Blackthorn and Grim begin to put the pieces of this puzzle together, it’s apparent that a powerful adversary is working behind the scenes. Their quest is about to become a life and death struggle - a conflict in which even the closest of friends can find themselves on opposite sides.
Isolated in a dreary Bogotá apartment, Ignacio’s light has dimmed, leaving his teenage daughter Valentina to raise herself in the wake of her mother’s death. Valentina longs to discover the details of her mother’s drowning and for Ignacio to snap out of his depression - his listless afternoons spent smoking cigarettes in long blonde wigs, telenovelas humming in the background, haunted by memories of the young man he loved and betrayed.
\nFrom Ignacio’s dark past emerges the luminous Mamadora Eléctrica, the wise travesti who introduced Ignacio to the city’s queer scene years prior. Stepping into a maternal role for Valentina, Mamadora fears the that Ignacio’s self-loathing may have unleashed a curse on them all.
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As the dutiful second-eldest daughter of a poor family, society would have Haewon believe that her only hope of a decent life is to marry well. But during a time of rampant government censorship and book banning, she instead works as an illegal book transcriber in order to make a little extra money. It’s dangerous work, but she loves it - especially when she gets to transcribe the work of her favorite author, known as Black Lotus.
\nWhen her older sister becomes smitten with a wealthy young gentleman, Haewon is roped into chaperoning them during their courtship. Which wouldn’t be so terrible . . . if it weren’t for the young man’s uptight and annoying best friend who also accompanies them.
\nAs the only son of a noble, Seojun has a lot expected of him. Wealth. Status. Respectability. Certainly not frivolous and often illicit activities such as reading fiction. But Seojun loves to do something even more scandalous: writing. He’s kept his work secret from his father and friends, but with each passing day, the pressure of being his father’s son and the dispiriting actions of the government make Seojun question the purpose of it all. The only thing keeping him going are the encouraging letters he receives from his transcriber, known only as Magpie.
\nWhen his best friend falls hard for a girl of lower social status, Seojun finds himself forced to act as chaperone to the infatuated couple - along with the girl's younger sister, who is as irritating as she is judgmental. But as Haewon and Seojun spend more time together, they begin to suspect they may have judged each other too quickly . . .
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1506, Joseon. The people suffer under the cruel reign of the tyrant King Yeonsan, powerless to stop him from commandeering their land for his recreational use, banning and burning books, and kidnapping and horrifically abusing women and girls as his personal playthings.
\nSeventeen-year-old Iseul has lived a sheltered, privileged life despite the kingdom’s turmoil. When her older sister, Suyeon, becomes the king’s latest prey, Iseul leaves the relative safety of her village, traveling through forbidden territory to reach the capital in hopes of stealing her sister back. But she soon discovers the king’s power is absolute, and to challenge his rule is to court certain death.
\nPrince Daehyun has lived his whole life in the terrifying shadow of his despicable half-brother, the king. Forced to watch King Yeonsan flaunt his predation through executions and rampant abuse of the common folk, Daehyun aches to find a way to dethrone his half-brother once and for all. When staging a coup, failure is fatal, and he’ll need help to pull it off - but there’s no way to know who he can trust.
\nWhen Iseul's and Daehyun's fates collide, their contempt for each other is transcended only by their mutual hate for the king. Armed with Iseul’s family connections and Daehyun’s royal access, they reluctantly join forces to launch the riskiest gamble the kingdom has ever seen:
\nSave her sister. Free the people. Destroy a tyrant.
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Hwani's family has never been the same since she and her younger sister went missing and were later found unconscious in the forest, near a gruesome crime scene. The only thing they remember: Their captor wore a painted-white mask. To escape the haunting memories of this incident, the family flees their hometown.
\nYears later, Detective Min - Hwani's father - learns that thirteen girls have recently disappeared under similar circumstances, and so he returns to their hometown to investigate . . . only to vanish as well.
\nDetermined to find her father and solve the case that tore their family apart, Hwani returns home to pick up the trail. As she digs into the secrets of the small village - and reconnects with her now estranged sister - Hwani comes to realise that the answer lies within her own buried memories of what happened in the forest all those years ago.
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Joseon (Korea), 1758. There are few options available to illegitimate daughters in the capital city, but through hard work and study, eighteen-year-old Hyeon has earned a position as a palace nurse. All she wants is to keep her head down, do a good job, and perhaps finally win her estranged father's approval.
\nBut Hyeon is suddenly thrust into the dark and dangerous world of court politics when someone murders four women in a single night, and the prime suspect is Hyeon's closest friend and mentor. Determined to prove her beloved teacher's innocence, Hyeon launches her own secret investigation.
\nIn her hunt for the truth, she encounters Eojin, a young police inspector also searching for the killer. When evidence begins to point to the Crown Prince himself as the murderer, Hyeon and Eojin must work together to search the darkest corners of the palace to uncover the deadly secrets behind the bloodshed.
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1800, Joseon (Korea). Homesick and orphaned sixteen-year-old Seol is living out the ancient curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Indentured to the police bureau, she’s been tasked with assisting a well-respected young inspector with the investigation into the politically charged murder of a noblewoman.
As they delve deeper into the dead woman's secrets, Seol forms an unlikely bond of friendship with the inspector. But her loyalty is tested when he becomes the prime suspect, and Seol may be the only one capable of discovering what truly happened on the night of the murder.
But in a land where silence and obedience are valued above all else, curiosity can be deadly.
In the woodland community of Shady Hollow, you'll discover a secret. Moose and mice, owls and bears live side by side in civilised harmony. The town has a coffee shop and a bookshop, a haberdasher and a bank. Life is peaceful, until a skeleton is found buried deep under an apple tree. Danger has returned to Shady Hollow.
\nAce reporter Vera Vixen only wants a good news story as harvest time arrives with the promise of glorious feasts ahead. But the discovery of the body casts a darker shadow. Soon enough, the coffeeshop's owner is being dragged down to the police station. Vera can't believe gentle Joe the moose is a killer. To get to the bottom of the matter, she will have to dig into the secrets her neighbours would rather leave buried forever . . .
Change is afoot in Shady Hollow, with an unusually tense election shaping up between long-serving Chief of Police Theodore Meade and Vera's beau, Deputy Orville Braun. But the political tension takes a back seat when resident eccentric Dorothy Springfield becomes convinced her beloved husband, Edward, is dead, and that the rat claiming to be him is actually a fraud.
While most of the town dismisses Dorothy's rants as nothing more than a delusion, Vera has her doubts. More than a few things don't add up in the Springfield household, but Vera will have to tread carefully, since, with Orville's attention on the election, she may be more exposed than ever.
It's a crisp, cool autumn in Shady Hollow, and preparations are underway for the annual Harvest Festival. Creatures have flocked from far and wide to partake in the seasonal festivities, from pumpkin carving to pie tasting to soup throwing. With all these new faces around town, it's the perfect time for someone to slip in unnoticed . . .
\nUnless that someone is Bradley Marvel - famous author and huge personality. Back in the city, a body was found in his penthouse apartment, and Marvel skipped town before the questioning could commence.
\nMarvel claims to be innocent, and it's up to Vera and her friends to piece together what might have happened - but things get even more complicated when Vera recognises the victim's name . . . and might even be implicated herself.
In the woodland community of Shady Hollow, you'll discover a secret. Moose and mice, owls and bears live side by side in civilised harmony. Shady Hollow has a coffee shop and a bookshop, a haberdasher and a bank. All is well . . . until the town's querulous toad shows up dead. It's something this village haven't seen before: a murder.
\nVera Vixen is new in town. She has a nose for news and catches the scent of a story, one that leads her to dark places. As she stirs up the still waters, the fox exposes more than one mystery, and the folks in Shady Hollow learn that some of their neighbours are lying, while others are downright dangerous. It will take all of Vera's cunning and quickness to come out alive.
It's late August in Shady Hollow, and intrepid reporter Vera Vixen agrees to chaperone the school’s annual field trip to Summers End, an ancient tomb built by an early woodland culture. Naturally, her good friend Lenore Lee comes along to help her.
But when the group enters the tomb one morning, they find a corpse that is distinctly more. . . modern than expected. Digging deeper, Vera and Lenore discover that the deceased was involved in the recent excavation at the site, and very unpopular with their colleagues - including Lenore’s sister, Ligeia.
Now the fox and raven must delve into the dark world of academia and archaeology to clear Ligeia’s name. Some creature at Summers End thought they were clever enough to get away with the perfect murder. Can Vera and Lenore unearth the truth in time?
It's spring in Shady Hollow, and romance is in the air. Even reporter Vera Vixen is caught up in the season as her relationship with new police chief Orville Braun blossoms. But true love is not always smooth sailing, as two of the hollow's young residents come to find.
\nJonah Atwater and Stasia von Beaverpelt find themselves battling their families in order to be together. And when Jonah's father, Shelby, goes over the top of Twilight Falls, all signs point to Stasia being the murderer.
The evidence against Stasia appears overwhelming, and Orville arrests her.
It looks like the case is closed, but Vera isn't so sure. There are almost too many clues indicating Stasia is the killer, leading her to suspect someone is setting Stasia up.
\nBesides, what about the mysterious ghostly creature skulking around town at night?
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Three passengers from different backgrounds board a cruise ship shortly after 9/11 and discover they can’t outrun their regrets about risks not taken.
\nIt’s Sunday, September 16, 2001. Franny and her husband have traded in their elegant Park Avenue co-op for a suite on board the Sonata, a once-glittering cruise ship with a complicated history now long past its prime. Although they’re not “cruise people,” Franny is determined to host the trip as planned because it’s her mother’s seventieth birthday, or chilsun, a major rite of passage celebrated by Korean families. But as her husband keeps pointing out, Franny and her mother aren’t close, and it’s surreal, even wrong, to be on a cruise as the death toll from the attacks on 9/11 continues to rise.
\nAlso on board is Doug, an ageing actor and former star of Starlight Voyages, the hit Love Boat–style television series famously filmed on the Sonata.
\nMeanwhile, Lucy, the only Black female graduate student in her department at MIT, has uncharacteristically accepted an invitation to join her roommate on the cruise at a time when tech companies are trying to hire her.
\nAll the World Can Hold explores how we balance our needs, our wants, and regrets. While the great world spins, interpersonal dramas don’t cease, even as more dire ones play out in the larger world.
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Elinor Hanson, a forty-something former model, is struggling to reinvent herself as a freelance writer when she receives an unexpected assignment. Her mentor from grad school offers her a chance to write for a prestigious magazine about the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota. Elinor grew up near the Bakken, raised by an overbearing father and a distant Korean mother who met and married when he was stationed overseas. After decades away from home, Elinor returns to a landscape she hardly recognises, overrun by tens of thousands of newcomers.
\nSurrounded by roughnecks seeking their fortunes in oil and long-time residents worried about their changing community, Elinor experiences a profound sense of alienation and grief. She rages at the unrelenting male gaze, the locals who still see her as a foreigner, and the memories of her family’s estrangement after her mother decided to escape her unhappy marriage, leaving Elinor and her sister behind. The longer she pursues this potentially career-altering assignment, the more her past intertwines with the story she’s trying to tell, revealing disturbing new realities that will forever change her and the way she looks at the world.
\nWith spare and graceful prose, O Beautiful presents an immersive portrait of a community rife with tensions and competing interests, and one woman’s attempts to reconcile her anger with her love of a beautiful, but troubled land.
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Kyung Cho is a young father burdened by a house he can’t afford. For years, he and his wife, Gillian, have lived beyond their means. Now their debts and bad decisions are catching up with them, and Kyung is anxious for his family’s future.
\nA few miles away, his parents, Jin and Mae, live in the town’s most exclusive neighborhood, surrounded by the material comforts that Kyung desires for his wife and son. Growing up, they gave him every possible advantage - private tutors, expensive hobbies - but they never showed him kindness. Kyung can hardly bear to see them now, much less ask for their help. Yet when an act of violence leaves Jin and Mae unable to live on their own, the dynamic suddenly changes, and he’s compelled to take them in. For the first time in years, the Chos find themselves living under the same roof. Tensions quickly mount as Kyung’s proximity to his parents forces old feelings of guilt and anger to the surface, along with a terrible and persistent question: how can he ever be a good husband, father, and son when he never knew affection as a child?
\nAs Shelter veers swiftly toward its startling conclusion, Jung Yun leads us through dark and violent territory, where, unexpectedly, the Chos discover hope. Shelter is a masterfully crafted debut novel that asks what it means to provide for one's family and, in answer, delivers a story as riveting as it is profound.
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At the dawn of their adolescence, on the eve of the summer solstice, four young girls - Helena, Leonie, Niamh and Elle - took the oath to join Her Majesty's Royal Coven, established by Queen Elizabeth I as a covert government department.
\nNow, decades later, the witch community is still reeling from a civil war and Helena is now the reigning High Priestess of the organisation. Yet Helena is the only one of her friend group still enmeshed in the stale bureaucracy of HMRC.
\nElle is trying to pretend she's a normal housewife, and Niamh has become a country vet, using her powers to heal sick animals. In what Helena perceives as the deepest betrayal, Leonie has defected to start her own more inclusive and intersectional coven, Diaspora. And now Helena has a bigger problem. A young warlock of extraordinary capabilities has been captured by authorities and seems to threaten the very existence of HMRC.
\nWith conflicting beliefs over the best course of action, the four friends must decide where their loyalties lie: with preserving tradition, or doing what is right.
Niamh, Ciara, Leonie, Elle and Theo. Five very different witches with one thing in they were unwittingly chosen by the dangerously charming Lucifer, the demon king of desire, to fulfil a dark Satanis will rise and the daughters of Gaia will fall.
\nThe coven is reunited - but broken. Niamh is back from the dead . . . but she hasn’t come back alone. Elle mourns a son she never had. Ciara languishes in a prison for witches, and Leonie reels from a very unexpected surprise.
\nMeanwhile, Lucifer offers fledgling witch Theo a if she helps him, her coven - her family - will be spared. But the magic he asks for will take her out of London - out of time, entirely.
This instalment takes us back to the reign of Henry VIII and the origins of Her Majesty’s Royal Coven under the beautiful, the bewitching, Anne Boleyn.
\nIt’s 1536 and the Queen has been beheaded.
\nLady Grace Fairfax, witch, knows that something foul is at play - that someone had betrayed Anne Boleyn and her coven.
\nWild with the loss of their leader - and her lover, a secret that if spilled could spell Grace’s own end - she will do anything in her power to track down the traitor.
\nBut there’s more at stake than revenge: it was one of their own, a witch, that betrayed them, and Grace isn’t the only one looking for her. King Henry VIII has sent witchfinders after them, and they’re organised like they’ve never been before under his new advisor, the impassioned Sir Ambrose Fulke, a cold man blinded by his faith. His cruel reign could mean the end of witchkind itself.
\nIf Grace wants to find her revenge and live, she will have to do more than disappear.
\nShe will have to be reborn.
Niamh Kelly is dead. Her troubled twin, Ciara, now masquerades as the benevolent witch as Her Majesty's Royal Coven prepares to crown her High Preistess.
\nSuffering from amnesia, Ciara can't remember what she's done - but if she wants to survive, she must fool Niamh's adopted family and friends; the coven; and the murky Shadow Cabinet - a secret group of mundane civil servants who are already suspicious of witches. While she tries to rebuild her past, she realizes none of her past has forgotten her, including her former lover, renegade warlock Dabney Hale.
\nOn the other end of the continent, Leonie Jackman is in search of Hale, rumored to be seeking a dark object of ultimate power somehow connected to the upper echelons of the British government. If the witches can't figure out Hale's machinations, and fast, all of witchkind will be in grave danger - along with the fate of all (wo)mankind.
\nSharp, funny, provocative, and joyous, Juno Dawson's sequel reimagines everything you think you knew about her coven and her witches in a story that spans continents and dives deep into the roots of England and its witchcraft. Ciara, Leonie, Elle, and Theo are fierce, angry, sexy, warm - and absolutely unapologetic as they fight for what they believe in, all in the name of sisterhood.
In the Age of AI, leadership and management are being redefined. Human Robot Agent is a concise, no-nonsense guide for leaders, entrepreneurs, and professionals who want to thrive when human and digital workers collaborate, not compete.
\nBestselling author Jurgen Appelo, recognised by Inc.com as a Top 50 Leadership Expert and Top 100 Leadership Speaker, is a pioneer in organisation design, innovation, and agility. With a track record of reshaping management for the modern era (Management 3.0, How to Change the World, Managing for Happiness), he now tackles the current AI-driven workplace, helping leaders adapt to AI digital agents, algorithmic management, and agile business structures.
\nForget outdated leadership frameworks. This book arms you with real-world strategies, AI-driven teamwork models, and breakthrough management techniques designed for Industry 4.0 and the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
\nLearn how to balance human ingenuity with artificial intelligence, build adaptive teams, and navigate the fast-changing future of work.
\nWhether you’re a manager, founder, or tech leader, Human Robot Agent gives you the insights and tools to lead AI-powered teams with confidence. Don’t wait to adapt; shape the future before it shapes you.
Not so long ago, druid Keltania Tunne thought she knew the world - and her place in it. Magic was all but dead, and the kingdom torn apart. Then she was sent to the court of the Winter Fae and charged with the protection of Valen, the icily arrogant prince who some believed would bring about the destruction of them all . . .
\nInstead, he brought magic.
\nThe greed for magic nearly destroyed their world, and its return could plunge them all back into chaos - or unite the estranged fae courts . . . if they move quickly.
\nNow Keltania and Valen must navigate the temperamental fae, their insidious secrets, and an enemy who would cleave the kingdom in two in the name of vengeance - all the while hiding the truth of their connection.
\nIts magic. Its remarkable power. And its ability to crush their hearts in two.
\nBut no one knows that Valen struck a secret bargain with their enemy . . . and soon everyone in the land will face the consequences.
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Keltania Tunne has spent her whole life training to become a bodyguard for a Winter Fae. It’s the highest of honors for a druid . . . only when Tania arrives at the Winter Court for the first time, nothing is what she expected.
\nHer assignment is the heir to the throne, Valen, and he doesn’t want her protection. In fact, he wants her gone. Yesterday. But Tania will not compromise, even if he is the most arrogant jackass she’s ever met - because something isn’t right in the Winter Court.
\nEveryone has secrets. From the Winter Lord to the kitchen maids to the rising faction that wants the prince dead - no one is who they seem. And now it’s up to Tania to keep her sacred oath and protect Valen, even when his smart mouth makes her skate the razor-thin edge between love and hate.
\nBut the more she gets to know him, the more she realises his secret is the biggest of all - and might just get them both killed.
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In a time not so far from our own, society is run by a global AI system controlled by an all powerful corporation. The Shepherd Organisation oversees every medical school in the country save one in New Orleans, the renegade Hippocrates which still insists on human-led medicine. It is the last choice school for an ambitious young New Yorker named Pok.
\nBut after his father - himself a physician - dies under mysterious circumstance that seems connected to “the shepherds” and their megalomaniacal young CEO, Pok finds himself on a quest for answers that leads right to Hippocrates. Once enrolled, he stumbles upon a further mystery: a strange illness is plaguing newcomers to New Orleans who grew up under shepherd rule.
\nWhat is causing this fatal anomaly? And how does it relate to the mystery of Pok’s father’s death and his own mysterious past?
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When Gianna “Gigi” Ricci lands in detention again, she doesn’t expect the glorified study hall to be her alibi.
\nBut when she and her friends receive a mysterious email directing them to her favorite teacher, Mr. Ford’s room, they find him lying in a pool of blood. But calling the math teacher’s death an accident doesn’t add up, and Gigi needs all the help she can get to find the truth. Luckily, she’s friends with her high school’s “mystery club,” and so with her best friend, Sean, and longtime crush, Mari, Gigi sets out to solve a murder.
\nBut it turns out, murderers are extremely unwilling to be caught, and the deeper Gigi gets in this mystery, the more dangerous things become. Between fending off a murderer, continual flare-ups of her IBS, and her archnemesis turning flirtatious . . . making it out of junior year is going to be one killer problem.
\nWith a wry, hilarious voice and a main character who is the walking definition of a disaster bi, this book is an ode to cozy mysteries, queer found families, and fighting for the people you love, no matter what.
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Kyri was raised a fletcher but after finding a new home and family with the Telequire Amazons, she discovers a desire to take on more responsibility within the tribe. She has skills they desperately need and she is called to action to protect those around her.
\nBut Kyri's path is ever-changing even as she finds herself altered by love, loyalty, and grief. Far away from home, the new Amazon is forced to decide what to sacrifice and who to become in order to get back to all that she has left behind.
\nAnd she wonders what is worse, losing everyone she's ever loved or having those people lose her?
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Sarah Colby is a musician, teacher, lover, sister, and so much more. In the past year, she learned that sometimes life takes you places you never even knew existed. For Sarah and her sister Annie, they found out that not only were the monsters real but sometimes you loved them.
\nNow the Colby sisters and their friends are being targeted by someone with a grudge. They must solve the mystery of who is attacking the people of Columbus or risk losing all that they hold dear.
\nNoble Keller is with them every step of the way but will she bring salvation or merely the end of their lives in Columbus?
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Kyri is a fletcher, following in the footsteps of her father, and his father before him. However, fate is a fickle mistress, and six years after the death of her mother, she's faced with the fact that her father is dying as well.
\nForced to leave her sheltered little homestead in the woods, Kyri discovers that there is more to life than just hunting and making master quality arrows.
\nDuring her journey to find a new home and happiness, she struggles with the path that seems to take her away from the quiet life of a fletcher. She learns that sometimes the hardest part of growing up is reconciling who we were, with who we will become.
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As the heir to the throne, Royal Connate Olivienne Dracore cannot escape having a Shield team protecting her wherever she goes. But with the addition of Shield Commander Castellan Tosh, she has a team that doesn’t just guard her person but also aids in her job as a historical adventurist. She knows without a doubt that together they can unravel the Divine Mystery of who the Makers were and why they created the great temples.
\nWith the conclusion of their last mission, Olivienne acquired the map needed to find the mysterious third great temple of Psiere. And there is no one better to accompany than her beloved Cmdr. Tosh.
\nBut before they can leave to brave the dangers of the unknown, first they must brave their own oathing ceremony. They will need each other for the coming mission because as with all things related to the Makers, mystery often begets mystery and danger is always just a wrong step away.
\nEspecially when the prize is something that could change Psiere forever.
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“Welcome to Paradise Island Resort, where we specialize in sun, sand, and self-improvement.”
\nJess Parker has entered middle age single, bitter, and emotionally wounded. Even her friends have noticed her downward spiral into anger and resentment. Then she wins a self-help vacation to the beautiful Paradise Island Resort. Despite spending the past few years with her emotions on ice, the warm tropical climate and hotter resort manager, Lucia Cruz, succeeds in thawing her heart. Jess falls for Lucia, even knowing that her island stay is limited. Four weeks is hardly long enough when love is on the line.
\nJess will need to make some tough choices about the rest of her life when her time is up. She’s vowed to be a better person and has started making positive changes, but it’s on Jess to put her heart and soul into it. She also holds onto the hope that some connections, no matter how unexpected, simply can’t be broken.
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If we know anything by the third and final installment of this thrilling trilogy, it’s that Royal Connate Olivienne Dracore is an adventurist, not a soldier. Yet after the events over King’s Marsh, the people and land are in need of both.
\nIt’s a good thing her beloved Captain Castellan Tosh is one of the most powerful psi their world has ever seen. Together, with Olivienne’s protective Shield team, they seek to not only right generations of wrongs perpetrated by one family, but to finally solve the mystery of the Makers.
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Jamie is an engineer who keeps humor close to her heart and people at arm's length. Kelsey is a dental assistant who deals with everything from the hilarious to the disgusting on a daily basis. What happens when a driving app brings them together as friends?
\nThe nerd car and the rainbow car both know a thing or two about hazard avoidance. When a flat tire brings them together in person, Jamie immediately realises that Kelsey isn't just another woman on her radar.
\nBoth of them have struggled to break free from stereotypes while they navigate the road of life. As their friendship deepens they realise that sometimes you have to break the rules to get where you need to go.
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Sarah Colby has always run from commitment. But after more than a year on the road following her musical dreams, even she yearns for a little stability. Her sister Annie is only too happy to welcome her back home.
\nWhen she meets Annie’s boss, Nobel Keller, she’s immediately drawn to the woman’s youthful good looks and dangerous charisma. The first night together leaves Sarah aching for more, but the second shows her the true price of passion.
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Kyri has known her share of loss in the two decades that she has been alive. She never expected to find herself a slave in roman lands, nor did she think she had the heart to become a gladiatrix.
\nBut with her soul shattered she must fight to see her way back home again. Will she win her freedom and return to all that she has known, or will she become another kind of slave to the killer that has taken over her mind?
\nThe only thing that is certain through it all is her love and devotion to Queen Orianna.
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The Connate makes her living as a historical adventurist and wants the answer to two important questions. Who were the Makers and where did they go? Because she is the heir, Olivienne travels with a security force and resents it every moment.
\nEvery one of her captains has either quit or been injured trying to keep up with the risk-taking woman. That’s where Commander Castellan Tosh comes in.
\nCapable, confident, and oh-so-dashing, she is forced to switch career corps to take charge of Olivienne’s team. Sparks fly from the moment they meet and things only get hotter as they chase down the clues to the greatest mystery of all time.
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By the end of the 21st century, the world had become a harsh place. After decades of natural and man-made catastrophes, nations fell, populations shifted, and seventy percent of the continents became uninhabitable without protective suits. Technological advancement strode forward faster than ever and it was the only thing that kept human society steady through it all.
\nNo one could have predicted the discovery of the Dream Walkers. They were people born with the ability to leave their bodies at will, unseen by the waking world. Having the potential to become ultimate spies meant the remaining government regimes wanted to study and control them. The North American government, under the leadership of General Rennet, demanded that all Dream Walkers join the military program. For any that refused to comply, they were hunted down and either brainwashed or killed.
\nThe very first Dream Walker discovered was a five year old girl named Julia. And when the soldiers came for her at the age of twenty, she was already hidden away. A decade later found Julia living a new life under the government’s radar. As a secure tech courier in the capital city of Chicago, she does her job and the rest of her time avoids other people as much as she is able. The moment she agrees to help another fugitive Walker is when everything changes. Now the government wants them both and they’ll stop at nothing to get what they want.
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Hollis Brown is stuck. Born to a Blue-Collar American Dream, Hollis lives in a rotting small town where no one can afford to leave. Hollis's only bright spots are his two best friends, cool girls Annie and Yulia, and the thrill of fighting his classmates.
\nAs if his circumstances couldn’t get worse, a chance encounter with a mysterious stranger named Walt results in a frightening trap. After unknowingly making a deal at the crossroads, Hollis finds himself losing control of his body and mind, falling victim to possession. Walt, the ghost making a home inside him, has a deep and violent history rooted in the town Hollis grew up in and he has unfinished business to take care of.
\nAs Walt and Hollis begin working together to put Walt’s spirit to rest, an unspeakable bond forms between them, and the boys begin falling for one another in unexpected ways. But, it’s only a matter of time before Hollis’s best friends begin to notice that something about Hollis isn’t quite . . . right.
\nWith the threat of a long overdue exorcism looming before them, will Walt and Hollis be able to protect their love and undo the curse that turned their town from a garden of possibility into a place where dreams go to die?
On Wendy Darling’s first night in Chicago, a boy called Peter appears at her window. He’s dizzying, captivating, beautiful - so she agrees to join him for a night on the town.
\nWendy thinks they’re heading to a party, but instead they’re soon running in the city’s underground. She makes friends - a punk girl named Tinkerbelle and the lost boys Peter watches over. And she makes enemies - the terrifying Detective Hook, and maybe Peter himself, as his sinister secrets start coming to light. Can Wendy find the courage to survive this night - and make sure everyone else does, too?
\nAcclaimed author K. Ancrum has re-envisioned Peter Pan with a central twist that will send all your previous memories of J. M. Barrie’s classic permanently off to Neverland.
Icarus Gallagher is a thief.
\nHe steals priceless art and replaces it with his father’s impeccable forgeries. For years, one man - the wealthy Mr. Black - has been their target, revenge for his role in the death of Icarus’s mother. To keep their secret, Icarus adheres to his own strict rules to keep people, and feelings, at bay: Don’t let anyone close. Don’t let anyone touch you. And, above all, don’t get caught.
\nUntil one night, he does. Not by Mr. Black, but by his mysterious son, Helios, now living under house arrest in the Black mansion. Instead of turning Icarus in, Helios bargains for something even more dangerous - a friendship that breaks every single one of Icarus’s rules.
\nAs reluctance and distrust become closeness and something more, they uncover the bars of the gilded cage that has trapped both of their families for years. One Icarus is determined to escape. But his father’s thirst for revenge shows no sign of fading, and soon it may force Icarus to choose: the escape he’s dreamed of, or the boy he’s come to love. Reaching for both could be his greatest triumph - or it could be his downfall.
August and Jack weren’t meant to be friends. One is a misfit with a pyro streak and the other a golden boy on the rugby team. But as their relationship intensifies, Jack slowly begins to lose his mind - taking readers on an intimate journey into the fantasy kingdom creeping into the edges of his world.
\nAs the novella moves back and forth between a medieval legend and our own, contemporary world, nothing is as it seems. The boys alienate everyone around them as they struggle with their sanity and as Jack’s quest to fulfill a dark prophecy begins to consume them both . . .
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Jack once saved August's life . . . now can August save him?
\nAugust is a misfit with a pyro streak and Jack is a golden boy on the varsity rugby team - but their intense friendship goes way back. Jack begins to see increasingly vivid hallucinations that take the form of an elaborate fantasy kingdom creeping into the edges of the real world. With their parents' unreliable behavior, August decides to help Jack the way he always has - on his own. He accepts the visions as reality, even when Jack leads them on a quest to fulfill a dark prophecy.
\nAugust and Jack alienate everyone around them as they struggle with their sanity, free falling into the surreal fantasy world that feels made for them. In the end, each one must choose his own truth.
\nIphigenia Pelops lives to serve her family. It is her responsibility and privilege as the Heir, as well as the only safeguard against the family curse. So when Artemis, queen of the Court of the Wild, demands a sacrifice in exchange for her blessing in a dangerous power struggle, Iphigenia is the natural choice.
\nHowever, Artemis is horrified that Iphigenia's family, and not Iphigenia herself, made the final decision. As recompense, she takes Iphigenia under her wing and teaches her the ways of the hunt - and soon, the ways of the body, as feelings blossom between them.
\nBut can their bond survive the weight of the Pelops curse?
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All Psyche ever wanted to do was help people, whether it's in her job as a therapist or online as an influencer. So when a mysterious invitation arrives from the most captivating man she's ever seen, asking for her assistance, she can't refuse. But Psyche soon finds herself in a world of Courts, full of debauchery and treachery, where her only option for survival is to swear a strange oath to a mysterious masked woman named Eros.
\nNow Psyche has to figure out how to fulfill her end of her bargain with Eros, while trying to navigate having a flame-winged goddess show up in her tiny Brooklyn apartment. Uncanny vistas, a spacious mansion, and decadent experiences are all Psyche’s for the taking - so long as she helps Eros, and so long as she never looks under Eros’s mask. But how long can she keep her curiosity at bay when Eros makes her heart tremble?
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Since she was a child, the divine empress O Shizuka has believed she was an untouchable god. When her uncle, ruler of the Hokkaran Empire, sends her on a suicide mission as a leader of the Imperial Army, the horrors of war cause her to question everything she knows.
\nThousands of miles away, the exiled and cursed warrior Barsalyya Shefali undergoes trials the most superstitious would not believe in order to return to Hokkaran court and claim her rightful place next to O Shizuka.
\nAs the distance between disgraced empress and blighted warrior narrows, a familiar demonic force grows closer to the heart of the empire. Will the two fallen warriors be able to protect their home?
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The Hokkaran empire has conquered every land within their bold reach - but failed to notice a lurking darkness festering within the people. Now, their border walls begin to crumble, and villages fall to demons swarming out of the forests.
Away on the silver steppes, the remaining tribes of nomadic Qorin retreat and protect their own, having bartered a treaty with the empire, exchanging inheritance through the dynasties. It is up to two young warriors, raised together across borders since their prophesied birth, to save the world from the encroaching demons.
This is the story of an infamous Qorin warrior, Barsalayaa Shefali, a spoiled divine warrior empress, O-Shizuka, and a power that can reach through time and space to save a land from a truly insidious evil.
Barsalayaa Shefali, famed Qorin adventurer, and the spoiled divine warrior empress, O-Shizuka, have survived fights with demon armies, garnered infamy, and ruled an empire. Raised together since birth, then forced into exile after their wedding, and reunited amidst a poisonous invasion - these bold warrior women have faced monumental adventures and catastrophic battles.
\nAs they come closest to fulfilling the prophecy of generations - Shefali and Shizuka will face a their greatest test yet.
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Reyna Carpenter trusted the wrong people . . . and paid the price.
\nHeld captive in the heart of a vampire empire, her freedom stripped and blood claimed, Reyna survives the only way she knows how - hope. Hope that she’ll find a way to escape. Hope that she’ll be reunited with Beckham. Hope that when she gets out of here, love will be waiting on the other side.
\nExcept escape isn’t salvation. It’s only the beginning.
\nBecause the world outside has changed. Lines have been drawn. Allegiances have shifted. And Reyna? She’s no longer the girl who walked willingly into the dark.
\nBut she’d do it all over again for Beckham.
\nNow she has to decide how far she’ll go to reclaim her freedom . . . and the vampire she’s fallen for. Because power runs through Reyna’s veins, power others will do anything to control - which means she’ll have to do more than just survive.
\nShe’ll have to fight back.
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Kerrigan Argon was born half-human, half-Fae - fully rejected by both. But when she shatters expectations to become a dragon rider, the world that once scorned her can no longer ignore her rise.
\nOnly now, everything she's gained is at risk.
\nHer prince has vanished into shadow. A forced political marriage looms. And in a shocking twist, she's been nominated to lead the very council that once sought to keep her out.
\nWorse, a violent faction known as the Red Masks is gaining ground - fueled by an insider's betrayal. War brews, and Kerrigan is caught between the old ways that tried to crush her and the dangerous hope of what could rise in their place.
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Ten years ago, half-Fae, half human Kerrigan Argon was discreetly dropped off onto the steps of Draco Mountain with nothing but a note. Her life changes completely as she's swept into the care of the House of Dragons - an elite training program for gifted Fae.
\nOn the year of her seventeenth name day, each student will be chosen by one of the twelve houses of Alandria to enter society.
\nEveryone is chosen . . . except Kerrigan.
\nSo, she strikes a bargain with the Dragon Society: convince a house to select her or give up her birthright forever. With the unlikeliest of allies - Fordham Ollivier, the cursed Fae prince, who escaped his dark throne - she must chart her own destiny to reshape the world.
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A god's legacy. A lover's bond. A world on the brink.
\nKerrigan Argon never asked to be a hero. But after falling from the land of the gods with only her mate and her mother's bangle, destiny refuses to let her go.
\nHalf-Fae and humans are disappearing. The Red Masks now rule the Dragon Society, enforcing a reign of terror built on ancient lies Kerrigan has uncovered - and can no longer ignore.
\nAs darkness tightens its grip, Kerrigan must risk everything: her power, her heart, and the fragile future she and her mate barely had a chance to claim.
\nBecause the only way to save their world is to set it ablaze.
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Trapped in a realm of gods. Stripped of her magic. Hunted by fate itself. Kerrigan Argon's only way home is to survive the arena.
\nKerrigan Argon - half-Fae, half-human - has lost everything. Her world. Her powers. The dark prince who held her heart. Now cast into the gods' domain, she finds herself alone, powerless, and forced into a brutal gladiator ring where the price of failure is death.
\nVictory promises a single boon from the gods. And Kerrigan will stop at nothing to win - because beyond the blood-soaked sand lies her only hope to save the people she loves.
\nBut this new world is full of deception, divine cruelty, and enemies cloaked as allies. And as trials escalate, so does the cost of survival. Kerrigan must rise - without magic, without certainty, and against all odds.
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Kerrigan Argon was never meant to be chosen. As a half-human, half-Fae pariah, her admission into the Dragon Society breaks every law of her world. Now she's bound to a dragon - and to a brutal year of training that could claim her life.
\nBut first, she must survive a journey into the infamous House of Shadows, led by the dark Fae prince Fordham Ollivier. No half-Fae has ever returned from its halls. In a place built on cruelty, secrets, and absolute power, Kerrigan must battle not just enemies - but centuries of prejudice and the slow unraveling of magic itself.
\nSomething ancient is cracking. A long-buried spell is weakening. And Kerrigan may be the only one who can stop the collapse - or cause it.
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For Reyna Carpenter, giving up her body isn’t a choice - it’s survival.
\nIn a world where humans are currency and vampires rule from the shadows, Reyna accepts a high-paying position among the wealthy and ruthless elite. Her new job: a live-in blood escort for the enigmatic and dangerously powerful Beckham Anderson. She expects cruelty. She expects hunger. She expects to become his next meal.
\nBut Beckham won’t drink from her.
\nHe keeps his distance, his unreadable gaze shadowed by something far more dangerous than just desire. As the nights pass, Reyna begins to sense it - an invisible war being waged around her, secrets that twist through the corridors of Visage, and whispers of something far more valuable than power.
\nBecause Reyna isn’t just rare - she’s the key to something bigger than she ever imagined. And the reason Beckham refuses to taste her blood?
\nIt might not just change them - it might destroy everything.
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The stunning conclusion to the Blood Type series finds the world in chaos and turmoil with one final battle left to determine who will survive - humans or vampires.
\nShe had the world on her shoulders. Now she has nothing.
\nReyna Carpenter was twenty-one when she became a live-in blood escort for the ruthless and brutally handsome vampire Beckham Anderson. She thought this was a small price to pay for feeding her brothers back home.
\nBut nothing went as planned. Not even her tumultuous relationship with Beckham. And now she wonders if anything will ever be the same again.
\nAs she finds herself in the midst of a losing rebellion, she and her trusted friends must flee from a city conquered by the vampire elite. With their plans blown to pieces and everything they knew and loved gone, their future hangs in the balance.
\nDespite all she has lost, Reyna must rise from the ashes, reclaim the life that was stolen - and complete her mission, once and for all.
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Kierse McKenna just shattered the Monster Treaty. Again.
\nIt wasn’t entirely her fault. The job was supposed to be simple: steal a goblin-made bracelet off of the Queen of the Nymphs in her own palace. Trade the bracelet for a way to uncover the truth about her past. Except everything goes sideways.
\nAnd then he shows up to save her.
\nGraves - the warlock who ensnared her, betrayed her, and left her to fend for herself. He’s a villain. A monster draped in charm and shadows. And gods help her, he always knows exactly what she wants.
\nBut Graves never does anything for free. He has a job for his favorite little thief. One that will pit her against the most powerful monsters in existence, including his mortal enemy, the Oak King.
\nAn ancient artifact has been located, and only together can they hope to steal it. She just has to let him in.
\nBut once she lets a monster in, he’s impossible to forget . . . and even harder to resist.
Thirteen years ago, monsters emerged from the shadows and plunged Kierse’s world into a cataclysmic war of near-total destruction. The New York City she knew so well collapsed practically overnight.
\nIn the wake of that carnage, the Monster Treaty was created. A truce . . . of sorts.
\nBut tonight, Kierse - a gifted and fearless thief - will break that treaty. She’ll enter the Holly Library . . . not knowing it’s the home of a monster.
\nHe’s charming. Quietly alluring. Terrifying. But he knows talent when he sees it; it’s just a matter of finding her price.
\nNow she’s locked into a dangerous bargain with a creature unlike any other. She’ll sacrifice her freedom. She’ll offer her skills. Together, they’ll put their own futures at risk.
\nBut he’s been playing a game across centuries - and once she joins in, there will be no escape . . .
The mission of the Near-Earth Orbital Guard is to ensure the peace and security of the solar system. Commander Maxine Carmichael and Lieutenant Commander Saqib Vahid are at the Mars Orbital Station (MOS) to help facilitate the official handover from NeoG to Mars civilian control as part of the ongoing negotiations. Members of the extreme wings of the fight for Martian independence refuse to remain silent, and are willing to resort to violence to make their voices heard; Max and Saqib find themselves fighting for their lives. The attacks both on the MOS and the ground of Mars sets off a chain reaction that could destabilise the last few years of cautious peace.
\nThe leader of Free Mars, Sylvia Moroz, knows better than anyone how fragile harmony is, having seen for decades the Coalition of Human Nations’ inability to negotiate for peace. Without any assurances - and knowing her splintered people all too well - anything less than complete liberation will only lead to more bloodshed. She’s not opposed to fighting, but when there’s an attempt on her life, she finds she must look for help from the NeoG and Commander D’Arcy Montaglione. The pair will have to overcome their past to figure out who they can trust and how to stop the attacks on the ground before more lives are lost.
\nTrapped inside the station, Carmichael and Vahid are scrambling to not only get to the bottom of the attackers’ motives, but also to simply survive. Because with the rest of the Zuma’s Ghost crew stuck down on Mars, it’s up to them to do what they can to keep the MOS from fully falling into the wrong hands . . . and keep Mars from descending into all-out war.
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Ensign Nell “Sapphi” Zika has been working hard to get past her trauma, but the unnerving pleas for help she's hearing in the Verge and the song she can't get out of her head are making that increasingly difficult. As Zuma's Ghost gears up for a final run at the Boarding Games, their expert hacker is feeling anything but confident. Plus, her chief's robot dog, Doge, is acting weird - a computer problem she can't find an answer to - and the increasing number of missing freighters is putting everyone living on or stationed around Trappist on edge.
\nIt doesn't help the NeoG's mission that Dread Treasure is sidelined from competing in the Boarding Games, and Commander D'Arcy Montaglione is stuck on the front lines of the mystery of the missing ships while also stuck in his own head. Never good at trusting people to begin with, he's struggling to piece together his new crew in the aftermath of a great betrayal, knowing this may be his final chance at command. The last thing he wants to do is prove his enemies right and end up getting shoved behind a desk and forgotten. The easy answer to missing ships is pirates, but D'Arcy soon realises the easiest answer is rarely the right one out in the vacuum of space. What's worse is that the actual pirates are scared of something out beyond the asteroid belt. Something that's been taking their ships too . . .
\nAs the unknowns multiply and one of their mysterious enemies escalates by launching an attack on the NeoG itself, the Interceptor crews must brave both cyber and outer space to hunt down their foes, but no one is prepared for the truth that is revealed or the way it will shake the foundations of everything they believe about the universe.
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Zuma’s Ghost has won the Boarding Games for the second straight year. The crew - led by the unparalleled ability of Jenks in the cage, the brilliant pairing of Ma and Max in the pilot seats, the technical savvy of Sapphi, and the sword skills of Tamago and Rosa - has all come together to form an unstoppable team.
\nUntil it all comes apart. Their commander and Master Chief are both retiring. Which means Jenks is getting promoted, a new commander is joining them, and a fresh-faced spacer is arriving to shake up their perfect dynamics. And while not being able to threepeat is on their minds, the more important thing is how they’re going to fulfill their mission in the black.
\nAfter a plea deal transforms a twenty-year ore-mining sentence into NeoG service, Spacer Chae Ho-ki earns a spot on the team. But there’s more to Chae that the crew doesn’t know, and they must hide a secret that could endanger everyone they love - as well as their new teammates - if it got out. At the same time, a seemingly untouchable coalition is attempting to take over trade with the Trappist colonies and start a war with the NeoG.
\nWhen the crew of Zuma’s Ghost gets involved, they end up as targets of this ruthless enemy. With new members aboard, will the team grow stronger this time around? Will they be able to win the games? And, more important, will they be able to surmount threats from both without and within?
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For the past year, their close loss in the annual Boarding Games has haunted Interceptor Team: Zuma’s Ghost. With this year’s competition looming, they’re looking forward to some payback - until an unexpected personnel change leaves them reeling. Their best swordsman has been transferred, and a new lieutenant has been assigned in his place.
\nMaxine Carmichael is trying to carve a place in the world on her own - away from the pressure and influence of her powerful family. The last thing she wants is to cause trouble at her command on Jupiter Station. With her new team in turmoil, Max must overcome her self-doubt and win their trust if she’s going to succeed. Failing is not an option - and would only prove her parents right. But Max and the team must learn to work together quickly.
\nA routine mission to retrieve a missing ship has suddenly turned dangerous, and now their lives are on the line. Someone is targeting members of Zuma’s Ghost, a mysterious opponent willing to kill to safeguard a secret that could shake society to its core . . . a secret that could lead to their deaths and kill thousands more unless Max and her new team stop them. Rescue those in danger, find the bad guys, win the Games. It’s all in a day’s work at the NeoG.
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A tale of survival as dragon-like monsters invade and two unlikely heroes must save humanity from annihilation.
\nWhen the monsters came, the power went out. Towns and cities became darkened ruins, and terrified survivors fled west, trailed by the blitz, dragon-like creatures screeching down from the sky enshrouded in lightning, delivering death.
\nThe old world is ending, but not all hope is lost.
\nLeft behind is a timid dreamer, Thomas, and a brash and outspoken daredevil, Cassie. When their paths unexpectedly cross, they must outwit both monsters and humans alike on an epic journey across a dangerous ravaged landscape if they hope to do the impossible: Reignite hope. Defeat the blitz. Save humanity.
\n
This is the story of how the City was saved, by Notker the professional liar, written down because eventually the truth always seeps through.
The City may be under siege, but everyone still has to make a living. Take Notker, the acclaimed playwright, actor and impresario. Nobody works harder, even when he's not working. Thankfully, the good citizens of Classis appreciate an evening at the theatre even when there are large rocks falling out of the sky.
But Notker is a man of many talents, and all the world is, apparently, a stage. It seems that the Empire needs him - or someone who looks a lot like him - for a role that will call for the performance of a lifetime. At least it will guarantee fame, fortune and immortality. If it doesn't kill him first.
Academics can be cocky. Atop their perches of authority high above the thrumming masses of the unquestioning world they can begin to think themselves gods. It is extremely rare for this authority to be tested. But a challenge from an idiotic, power-hungry king - that'll do it.
\nOur narrator is one of a dozen professors at the University of the Kingdom of Aelia. Early one morning, all of them are rounded up for an audience with their dictator, Gyges. You see, Gyges is new to the job - he only just invaded Aelia last year - and like any good tyrant, he's looking to expand his empire. But he doesn't think his public image can take the hit of (another) unjustified assault. No problem, he's come up with a plan - have the scholars construct an ancient city from scratch that justifies his right to the lands of the neighboring city-state.
\nNow these bookworms must put their heads together to do the impossible. They must make history. Because if they don't, they'll lose their heads all-together.
This is the true story of Aemilius Felix Boioannes the younger, the intended and unintended consequences of his life, the bad stuff he did on purpose, and the good stuff that happened in spite of him.
It is, in other words, the tale of a war to end all wars, and the man responsible.
Not even the Church of the Invincible Sun is invincible - and somebody has to do its dirty work. Enter Sister Svangerd and her accompanying priest, both first-rate practitioners. Their mission is simple: to make a meddlesome princess disappear (permanently).
\nTo get to her, they must attend the legendary Ecumenical Council, the once-in-a-century convening of the greatest spiritual minds the world has to offer. But when they arrive, they find instead a den of villainy that would make the most hardened criminal blush.
\nTo complicate matters further, it appears that some people who were definitely grim reapered might be not quite dead after all. What began as a little assassination is about to escalate into a theological debate with terrifying consequences for everyone.
\n
This is the story of Orhan, son of Siyyah Doctus Felix Praeclarissimus, and his history of the Great Siege, written down so that the deeds and sufferings of great men may never be forgotten.
A siege is approaching, and the city has little time to prepare. The people have no food and no weapons, and the enemy has sworn to slaughter them all.
To save the city will take a miracle, but what it has is Orhan. A colonel of engineers, Orhan has far more experience with bridge-building than battles, is a cheat and a liar, and has a serious problem with authority. He is, in other words, perfect for the job.
Freya Miller needs a miracle. In the fallout of her husband’s betrayal, she’s about to lose her family home, and with it the security she craves for her five-year-old daughter, Skye. Adrift and alone, she’s on the verge of despair until a chance meeting with the charismatic Dr Marsden changes everything. He’s seeking a new tenant for a shockingly affordable flat in a fashionable area of London.
\nAdder House sounds too good to be true… But Freya really can’t afford to be cynical, and Dr Marsden is adamant she and Skye will be a perfect fit with the other residents.
\nBut Adder House has secrets. Even behind a locked front door, Freya feels as if she’s being watched: objects moving, unfamiliar smells, the blinking light of a concealed camera . . . and it’s not long before she begins to suspect that her dream home is hiding a nightmarish reality. Was it really chance that led her here - or something unthinkably dark?
\nAs the truth about Adder House starts to unravel, can Freya and Skye get out - or will they be locked in forever?
\n
I know my daughter better than I know myself and if there’s one thing I know for sure at this moment: it's that Maisie is not ok.
\nMy ex-husband Shaun and I are still friends.
We would do anything for our beautiful little girl, Maisie.
But now Shaun has moved in with Joanne and suddenly, Maisie has a brand new family.
And there’s something not quite right about it . . . I know Joanne isn’t everything she says she is. Yet no-one will listen.
I need to discover what she’s hiding.
Because if I don’t, my daughter will be in terrible danger.
Everyone’s heard of Simone Fischer. The young mother accused of killing her husband in cold blood, one sunny afternoon, while their son played in the room next door.
\nSo when journalist Esme secures an exclusive interview with her it feels like the opportunity of a lifetime. Simone has remained silent since her husband’s death but after a decade in prison, she is willing to talk to Esme. And Esme, recently freed from her own toxic marriage, is confident she can get Simone to open up.
\nAt their first meeting, when Esme sees Simone sitting across the table from her in jeans and a lemon tunic top, she is stuck by her ordinariness. Then Simone begins to tell her story of an abusive relationship where she was a prisoner in her own home, and Esme decides that the truth needs to come out.
\nBut not everyone is pleased that Esme is telling Simone’s story. And when Esme’s beloved sister is left for dead in a nearby wood, Esme’s life begins to unravel. Forced to question what Simone has told her, she can’t help but wonder if murder was the only way out of Simone’s marriage. Why has it taken Simone so long to tell the world the truth? And will the consequences be devastating for Esme?
\n
The day after her ninth birthday, Lucie and Blake Sullivan agree, for the very first time, to let their daughter, Grace, make the four-minute walk back home alone from a friend’s house just down the street.
They joke with friends about hiding behind bushes to ensure she is safe. But the joke turns sour when Grace does not appear.
Despite the best efforts of the police and local community, Grace seems to have vanished into thin air. With hope fading fast, Lucie knows she can rely on her husband to support her through such dark times. That is until the day she makes a shocking discovery, hidden in Blake’s desk, and suddenly she begins to doubt everything she knew about the man she married.
But Lucie harbours a terrible secret of her own. One that she has never shared with anyone, even Blake …
And as the search for Grace reaches fever pitch, Lucie receives a terrifying message. If she is ever to see Grace again, Lucie has no choice but to face the past she tried hard to bury forever. And she must do it alone.
When the doorbell rings, just days after my beloved husband’s sudden death, I don’t recognise the woman on our doorstep, with buttery blonde highlights and a diamond bracelet identical to my own.
\nMy world implodes when she tells me that she is my husband’s girlfriend, that the baby in her arms is his son, and that she owns our cherished family home.
\nBut she doesn’t want to throw me and my children out on the street. She says she’s no monster, that she wants her baby to grow up with brothers and sisters. With no family, no money and no home, I have no choice but to accept her offer.
\nNow her food is in my fridge and her beautiful clothes are in the wardrobe in our master bedroom, yet as she helps me with chores and plays games with my little daughter, there’s a part of me that’s glad I’m not on my own. And as we sip wine at the kitchen table, I wonder if we could even become friends . . .
\nBut when I find a phone hidden in her underwear drawer, I discover her terrible secret. Could she have had a hand in my husband’s death? And what exactly does she want from me?
\n
We promised to keep each other’s secrets. Until they found the body . . .
\nThe Wife: My husband and I are fighting for our lives in hospital after a terrible car accident. But despite my pain, all I can think about is what our families will find behind our front door. The scarf that has been all over the news, belonging to a dead young woman with honey-coloured hair. I have to speak to the police before my husband can . . .
\nThe Husband: I’m drifting in and out of consciousness, but when I hear my wife talking to the police, accusing me of the murder of an innocent woman, a cold fear grips me. I know I’ve got a temper. That I’ve not always been faithful. Will they think I killed her?
\nI think of my wife’s jealous streak, of the lies she’s told our loved ones. But if I tell the whole truth, they’ll look into her past. And that will destroy me, too . . .
\nTwo people fighting for their lives. Two people with secrets to hide. Who will you believe?
\n
Single dad Ben is doing his best to raise his children alone, with the help of his devoted mother Judi. Life isn’t easy, but Judi’s family means everything to her and together, they manage.
\nThen Ben meets Amber. Everyone thinks this is a perfect match for Ben but Judi isn’t sure . . . there’s just something about Amber that doesn’t add up.
\nBen can’t see why his mother dislikes his new girlfriend. And Amber doesn’t want Judi anywhere near her new family. Amber just wants Ben and the children.
\nThe further Judi delves into Amber’s personal life, the closer she gets to shocking secrets that could change everything. And Judi must make a decision that could lead to the most disastrous consequences.
\n
Ten years ago my darling son Jesse was murdered and our perfect family was destroyed. My strong, handsome boy, so full of life, became a memory, a photo I carried with me everywhere.
\nBut today I’m finally close to finding happiness again. My ash-blonde hair has been curled into ringlets. Carefully placed white flowers frame my delicate features. The small, drab chapel has been prettied up with white satin, and there are tiny red hearts scattered on the small table where I will soon sign the register with my new husband.
\nThe man who killed my son.
\nMy friends and family can’t understand it. My neighbours whisper in the street whenever I walk past. How can I love a man like Tom?
\nThey don’t really know me at all . . .
\n
Saffy is waiting to go into a job interview when she receives a text message from her best friend, Leona:
\nCan’t speak . . . don’t text or call . . . please just come
\nAs Saffy struggles to understand what is happening the phone screen changes:
\nThis message was deleted.
\nSaffy races to Leona’s house, but when her friend answers the door, she insists everything's fine. She doesn't know anything about the message. Saffy can tell something’s not right, but after looking around the house, she can’t think of anything else she can do.
\nSix hours later, Saffy gets a knock on the door. It's the police. Leona is missing, with her young child. There's blood everywhere.
\nAnd Saffy was the last one to see them alive . . .
\n
I've known him all my life. I know he has taken my daughter. His mother says she can help me. But she's the last person I can trust . . . Samuel lived next door when we were children. We were inseparable. But he didn’t like sharing me with my adored little brother. And one terrible night, he got rid of my brother forever.
\nNow, years later, he’s free. And my daughter is missing.
\nI turn on my baby girl’s unicorn nightlight and bury my face in her pillow, my heart breaking. I know Samuel has her - he blames me for ruining his life, and even after all this time, he still doesn’t like to share.
\nAs darkness falls, there’s a knock at my door and I open it to see Samuel’s mother. She says she can help me.
\nI know I can’t trust her, but I don’t have a choice. With each step I take, my fear grows stronger. Can she help me find my daughter? Or does she know something about what really happened all those years ago? Something that could stop me from saving my baby girl . . .
\n
Louise is struggling to cope. As a busy working mum, she often has to leave her eight-year-old son Archie at her sister Alice’s flat.
Alice and Louise used to be close. But there’s a lot they don’t know about each other now - like the bottle of vodka Louise hides in her handbag, Alice’s handsome new friend and the odd behaviour of her next-door neighbour.
Archie is a curious little boy. He likes to play on his own at his auntie’s flat until one day when he sees something he shouldn’t. Now he has a secret of his own. One he can’t tell his mum. One that could put him and his family in terrible danger.
When ten-year-old cousins Maddy and Brianna are arrested for a terrible crime, Maddy’s mother Juliet cannot believe it. How could her bright, joyful daughter be capable of such a thing?
As the small village community recoils in horror, the pressure of the tragedy blows Juliet and her sister’s lives apart. And things get even worse when their daughters retreat into a self-imposed silence. Can anyone reach Maddy and discover the truth before her fate is sealed?
Juliet is crushed. Nothing will ever be the same for her darling girl. But she knows that to find out what really happened that day, she and her sister must unlock the secrets of their own terrible past, a past they swore never to speak about again . . .
When single mother Darcy’s son falls from a rope bridge at a local playground, life stands still. She clutches his small, limp body, frozen, until a pair of strong hands push her aside, and she watches as George, a local doctor, saves her son’s life.
George is a single parent too, and with his twinkling hazel eyes, easy charm, and lack of wedding band is almost too good to be true, but coffee becomes lunch, lunch becomes dinner, and soon they can’t go an evening without seeing each other. When he invites her to move into his beautiful home with its sprawling garden for her boys, Darcy doesn’t hesitate.
But as Darcy is settling in, she receives a bunch of flowers with a chilling message. George says they’re from an obsessed ex-girlfriend, Opal, and days later Opal turns up at Darcy’s son’s football match. She claims to have shocking information that could threaten George’s custody of his daughter.
Darcy doesn’t know who to trust, but she’s starting to suspect that, whatever the truth, she might have put her beloved boys into terrible danger . . .
My job as a waitress means I’m used to watching everything - and used to lying. Soon I’m posing as someone’s girlfriend . . . ut what does he really want from me?
\nWhen I slip on my waitress’s uniform I become a different person. And I’m good at what I do. I instantly identify Trent as the most important man in the room, and I catch his eye as I serve canapes to his rich clients. We share a little smile . . . and later that evening, he asks me to pretend to be his girlfriend.
\nOf course I accept. It’s the perfect way for me to escape my own past. He just needs me to watch certain people. It seems easy.
\nSoon I’m living in his opulent home, wearing a new wardrobe of designer clothes. Then I discover there was a woman here before me. Saskia. Nobody will talk about her . . .
\nSuddenly I don’t feel safe anymore. If I leave, I’m no longer protected. But if I stay here, in this silent apartment of secrets, will anyone miss me if I disappear?
\n
The day my husband, Michael, stepped in front of a lorry after being questioned by the police, my world fell apart. He was devoted to me and our six-year-old daughter. But they’d connected him to the disappearance of a young mother from our tiny village.
\nNow I stand at Michael’s funeral, clutching my little girl’s hand, with tears in my eyes as I insist to all our friends that he died an innocent man. Yet the questions have started, and nothing I say will stop them digging for the truth.
\nBut none of them can read the secrets in my heart, or know about the phone I found hidden in his toolbox . . .
\nI’m determined that my daughter will not remember her father as a monster. I will erase any hint of wrongdoing in this house whatever the cost.
\nBecause to keep my daughter safe, the last thing I need is for people to start looking at me . . .
\n
Being a single mother is tough, but I’d do anything for my little girl Scarlet. I’d given up on my career as a voice actor when the call came, but suddenly I was the new narrator for a secret book from bestselling author Philippa Roberts, who has been missing for eight months. It was a lifeline for me and my daughter.
\nI hated that it meant leaving Scarlet with my ex in his perfect new home with his perfect new girlfriend. But I knew it was the right thing to do.
\nBut as I start reading Philippa’s new novel, I start to wonder if it’s no coincidence that I’ve been chosen to narrate it. There’s something hidden in the pages of this book, I’m sure of it. Some clue to Philippa’s disappearance. And I don’t feel safe. I think I’m being watched. My room has been searched.
\nAnd then my ex’s girlfriend calls in tears and everything starts to click together. If I don’t find answers fast, I’ll lose more than my second chance. I’ll lose my daughter.
\n
All his life, Shara has struggled to keep up with the rest of his shapeshifter clan. A poor shifter with little talent and even less confidence, he excels only at inadequacy.
\nWhen his determination to prove himself results in the brutal injury of a clanmate, Shara flees his home in shame. Taking refuge in the human capital city, he resolves to become as inconsequential as possible - until the prince regent is abducted days before his coronation and Shara is forced to take his place.
\nThrust into a world of controlling advisors, scheming pirates, and calculating dignitaries, Shara fumbles through his royal duties. His next mistake could spell disaster for the entire kingdom, but he may also be the only person capable of seeing beyond old prejudices to the truth of the prince’s disappearance.
\nBut if he’s going to stop a war, find the prince, and return to his life of invisibility, he’ll have to rely on the one person he knows for sure he can’t trust - himself.
\n
The war may be over, but Hai Meilin is still paying a heavy toll. In spite of securing victory for the kingdom of Anlai, she is imprisoned upon her return. Her crime? Wielding a sword as a woman.
\nIn the palace, Meilin is an outcast and a social pariah. But beyond the imperial walls, the legend of the woman warrior has taken on a life of its own. To the east, a new rebel leader needs Meilin to helm his people’s revolution. In the south, a former enemy prince, now a prisoner of war, seeks Meilin’s aid in restoring balance to the Three Kingdoms. And back home in Anlai, Liu Sky, Meilin’s commander and first love, requires Meilin by his side in his bid for the throne.
\nPulled in all directions by those who seek to use her for their own ends, Meilin vows that this time, she will not be so quick to trust. Yet there is one she cannot help but listen to - for he dwells within her.
\nBeyond any human machinations, the sea dragon Qinglong has his own plans for the spirit realm. During the last war, Meilin wielded his power to cheat death and attain victory for Anlai; now the dragon has come to collect his dues. Meilin’s mother warned her long The spirits demand blood. And Qinglong is ravenous.
The Three Kingdoms are at war, but Meilin’s father refuses to answer the imperial draft. Trapped by his opium addiction, he plans to sell Meilin for her dowry. But when Meilin discovers her husband-to-be is another violent, ill-tempered man, she realises that nothing will change for her unless she takes matters into her own hands.
\nThe very next day, she disguises herself as a boy and enlists in her father’s place.
\nIn the army, Meilin's relentless hard work brings her recognition, friendship - and a growing closeness with Sky, a prince turned training partner. But has she simply exchanged one prison for another? As her kingdom barrels toward destruction, Meilin begins to have visions of a sea dragon spirit that offers her true power and freedom, but with a deadly price.
\nWith the future of the Three Kingdoms hanging in the balance, Meilin will need to decide whom to trust - Sky, who inspires her loyalty and love; the sea dragon spirit, who has his own murky agenda; or an infuriating enemy prince who makes her question everything she once knew - about her kingdom and about her own heart.
Ever since he rose up against his father and saved New Anglia from destruction, Ash has been struggling to adapt to his new life. He has nightmares every night, haunted by strange black orbs and his screaming dead mother. Ash is sure she's trying to warn him that the world is still in danger, and becomes determined to find a way to speak to her again - but communicating with the dead isn't easy, even for an alchemist as powerful as Ash.
\nIt doesn't help that violent anti-alchemist sentiment is spreading across New Anglia. When Ash is captured by a radical alchemist group, inspired by his father's legacy, he must decide if alchemist rights can be trusted in the hands of the Houses, along with his partners Callum and Ramsay - or if Ash must follow the path his father laid for him, and become the leader of an alchemist revolution.
\nCan Ash keep his relationships together and stop the world from falling apart?
\n
Felix Love has never been in love - and, yes, he’s painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it’s like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. What’s worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, Felix also secretly fears that he’s one marginalisation too many - Black, queer, and transgender - to ever get his own happily-ever-after.
When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages - after publicly posting Felix’s deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned - Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn’t count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi–love triangle . . .
But as he navigates his complicated feelings, Felix begins a journey of questioning and self-discovery that helps redefine his most important relationship: how he feels about himself.
Felix Ever After is an honest and layered story about identity, falling in love, and recognising the love you deserve.
For Ash Woods, practicing alchemy is a crime.
\nOnly an elite few are legally permitted to study the science of magic - so when Ash is rejected by the Lancaster Mage’s College, he takes a job as the school’s groundskeeper instead, forced to learn alchemy in secret.
\nWhen he’s discovered by the condescending and brilliant apprentice Ramsay Thorne, Ash is sure he's about to be arrested - but instead of calling the reds, Ramsay surprises Ash by making him an offer: Ramsay will keep Ash's secret if he helps her find the legendary Book of Source, a sacred text that gives its reader extraordinary power.
\nAs Ash and Ramsay work together and their feelings for each other grow, Ash discovers their mission is more dangerous than he imagined, pitting them against influential and powerful alchemists - Ash’s estranged father included. Ash’s journey takes him through the cities and wilds across New Anglia, forcing him to discover his own definition of true power and how far he and other alchemists will go to seize it.
\n
A revolution has swept through the islands of Hans Lollik and former slave Loren Jannik has been chosen to lead the survivors in a bid to free the islands forever.
\nBut the rebels are running out of food, weapons and options. And as the Fjern inch closer to reclaiming Hans Lollik with every battle, Loren is faced with a choice that could shift the course of the revolution in their favor - or doom it to failure.
\nLark Winters wants to be a writer, and for now that means posting on their social media accounts - anything to build their platform. When former best friend Kasim accidentally posts a thread on Lark's Twitter declaring his love for a secret, unrequited crush, Lark's tweets are suddenly the talk of the school - and beyond.
\nTo protect Kasim, Lark decides to take the fall, pretending they accidentally posted the thread in reference to another classmate. It seems like a great idea: Lark gets closer to their crush, Kasim keeps his privacy, and Lark's social media stats explode. But living a lie takes a toll - as does the judgment of thousands of Internet strangers. Lark tries their best to be perfect at all costs, but nothing seems good enough for the anonymous hordes - or for Kasim, who is growing closer to Lark, just like it used to be between them . . .
\nIn the end, Lark must embrace their right to their messy emotions and learn how to be in love.
\n
An ambitious young woman with the power to control minds seeks vengeance against the royals who murdered her family, in a Caribbean-inspired fantasy world embattled by colonial oppression.
\nSigourney Rose is the only surviving daughter of a noble lineage on the islands of Hans Lollik. When she was a child, her family was murdered by the islands’ colonisers, who have massacred and enslaved generations of her people - and now, Sigourney is ready to exact her revenge.
When the childless king of the islands declares that he will choose his successor from amongst eligible noble families, Sigourney uses her ability to read and control minds to manipulate her way onto the royal island and into the ranks of the ruling colonizers. But when she arrives, prepared to fight for control of all the islands, Sigourney finds herself the target of a dangerous, unknown magic.
Someone is killing off the ruling families to clear a path to the throne. As the bodies pile up and all eyes regard her with suspicion, Sigourney must find allies among her prey and the murderer among her peers . . . lest she become the next victim.
Logan Gray is Hollywood's bad boy - a talented but troubled actor who the public loves to hate. Mattie Cole is an up‑and‑coming golden boy, adored by all but plagued by insecurities.
\nWhen Logan and Mattie are cast as leads in a new romantic film, Logan claims that Matt has “zero talent,” sending the film’s publicity into a nosedive. To create positive buzz, the two are persuaded into a fake‑dating scheme - but as the two actors get to know their new characters, real feelings start to develop.
\nAs public scrutiny intensifies and old wounds resurface, the two must fight for their relationship and their love.
\n
Nathan Bird doesn’t believe in happy endings.
\nAlthough he’s the ultimate film buff and an aspiring screenwriter, Nate’s seen the demise of too many relationships to believe that happy endings exist in real life.
\nPlaying it safe to avoid a broken heart has been his MO ever since his father died and left his mom to unravel - but this strategy is not without fault. His best-friend-turned-girlfriend-turned-best-friend-again, Florence, is set on making sure Nate finds someone else. And in a twist that is rom-com-worthy, someone does come along: Oliver James Hernández, his childhood best friend.
\nAfter a painful mix-up when they were little, Nate finally has the chance to tell Ollie the truth about his feelings. But can Nate find the courage to pursue his own happily ever after?
\n
It’s the late 1980s, and teenage Kelelo loves going to her school in the the fearless teachers, the rich red earth, trading stories with her friends under the morula trees. But the country is rapidly changing, and Kelelo’s father insists she attend the new school in town, from which Black pupils were barred up until a year ago. On her first day, she is immediately propelled to disorienting celebrity status among the students. The child of revered freedom fighter Kewame “Dolly” Malaka, Kelelo is growing up during a time when the world her mother fought for is seemingly being realised. What her classmates don’t know is that at home, Kelelo wrestles with the painful reality of a haunted, emotionally distant mother who is deeply scarred by a lifelong war with the violence of apartheid.
\nMeanwhile, Kewame is unravelling. A former teenage political prisoner, now the owner of a beautiful home, the wife of a wealthy business owner, and the mother of four beautiful girls, she struggles to maintain the lie of domestic perfection. With her beloved grandmother, Oumama, nearing the end of her life in the segregated hospital, Kewame finds herself alone and trapped in a relentless loop of memories, her mind and body continually returning to both the brutality of the women’s prison and to the unwavering resilience of her fellow prisoners. As forbidden memories resurface and family secrets are dragged into the open, Kewame seeks answers in her increasingly vivid flashbacks, drifting further and further.
\nWeaving together Kelelo’s and Kewame’s perspectives with tender, evocative prose and tenacious heart, We Inherit the Fire is a searing exploration of the gulf of experience between mother and daughter, the untold stories of Black South African women and girls, and the double-edged inheritance of each generation charged with carrying the fight forward.
Dzifa has always felt a bit off. Maybe it's the family baggage, or maybe it's just the way her brain is wired. She's never seemed to be able to do anything right in work, love, or life. She can't seem to pull herself out of her depression. Meanwhile, her best friend, Tatiana, had everything Dzifa never a supportive family, an unshakeable confidence, and the lucky fortune of things often going her way.
\nNow, Dzifa has finally made a home for herself in Oakland. She has her own place, a stable job, new friends. She’s feeling stronger, better even, while trying on the Cali-lifestyle of farmers’ markets and new moon rituals. But when Tatiana tells her that her baby has passed cracks begin to form. Carried by the guilt of not being more present in Tatiana’s new journey of motherhood, Dzifa rushes to Boston to be there for her friend not knowing what to expect.
\nFrom dealing with the baby’s father’s racist family to Tatiana’s overbearingly supportive one, Dzifa tries to guide Tatiana through the grief even as her own life she’s worked so hard to rebuild rapidly starts slipping away. And when Tatiana asks her for the ultimate favor, Dzifa must choose between standing by her friend or saving her own sanity as it all comes crashing down.
\nA riveting, vibrant, and deeply moving exploration of sisterhood, complicated family dynamics, and mental health, Somewhere Soft to Land reckons with the complicated and sometimes fraught friendship between women as they evolve and makings of a second chance at life.
\n
It’s 2002, and fourteen-year-old Maeve - an adopted, closeted trans boy - is facing another lonely year at school. At least he’s got Jeremy, his lifelong imaginary friend, for company. But even Jeremy, in all their wild wisdom, can’t explain the weird things that are happening to Maeve.
\nLike why Maeve’s hair spontaneously changes colour overnight. Or how Maeve knows his granny Beattie is dead, long before anyone can confirm it. Or why a stranger’s voice sounds uncannily familiar . . .
\nMaeve is full of questions - about his birth family and adoption, about Beattie and Jeremy, and about himself. But the answers are out of this world . . . and Maeve may have to give up everything he’s ever known to discover the truth.
\n
An invitation to Catalina Island from billionaire CEO Richard Kingsley. For his sons, Ted and John, and their wives, it’s an opportunity to curry favor, gain control of a real estate empire, and secure their family’s futures. For the controlling patriarch, succession is a contest. He and his newest wife won’t make it an easy win.
\nThen Richard’s estranged live-wire daughter, Sibley, crashes the party. She’s the least of the night’s surprises. As the stakes for the inheritance of the Kingsley legacy are raised, the beautiful waters of the Pacific look more like a menacing illusion.
\nLet the games begin for a family who has everything money can buy, and has used lies, deception, and more to keep it. This weekend one of them will be crowned heir. One is in line to lose everything. That’s the plan. But in the coming storm, so much can go dangerously wrong.
If you ask Jill Tingley, she’ll tell you she and her husband Jack are college sweethearts living the dream in Southern California. Wealthy, popular and genetically blessed, theirs is an enviable life, though they’ve grown distant in recent years. Newly empty nesting with their daughter Maggie away at college, Jill suggests a road trip to reconnect.
\nJack would rather do anything else than drive to Utah with his wife. He’s only stayed in this marriage because of a shared secret, a tragedy in the past he wanted to keep buried. And for his daughter’s sake. But Jack is finished with the charade of his marriage. He’s filing for divorce as soon as they return, no matter what.
\nBut he doesn’t realise what else Jill is hiding.
\nSo begins a cat-and-mouse road trip as a cunning wife - think Ripley in yoga pants - and a reluctant husband match wits and drive each other to the edge. But everything will be fine. Jill still loves Jack and believes he’s the only one for her. She’ll do anything to keep him. Anything. She always has.
Kate Nelson had it all. A flourishing company founded with her husband, John; a happy marriage; and a daughter, Ashlyn. The picture-perfect family. Until John left for another woman. Tish is half his age. Ambitious. She’s cultivated a friendship with Ashlyn. Tish believes she’s won. She’s wrong.
\nTish Nelson has it all. Youth, influence, a life of luxury, and a new husband. But the truth is, there’s a lot of baggage. Namely, his first wife - and suspicions of his infidelity. After all, that’s how she got John. Maybe it’s time for a romantic getaway, far from his vindictive ex. If Kate plans on getting John back, Tish is one step ahead of her . . .
\nBut what happens next is something neither Kate nor Tish saw coming. As best-laid plans come undone, there’s no telling what a woman will do in the name of love - and revenge.
Under the direction of the Kingsleys’ new president, Paige, the family has gathered for a weekend retreat at a luxurious Laguna Beach resort.
\nStill clinging to the hope of succession are the sons of Richard Kingsley, the family patriarch and John, the oldest, who’s clawed his way back from a dark tragedy, and Paige’s estranged husband, Ted, the golden boy. When Richard’s ex and his wayward daughter join the fray, Paige finds herself with two fast allies. They know a secret that could shatter the family legacy. Call it leverage, call it revenge, the Kingsley women believe they have the upper hand.
\nBut as the power games begin, greater threats than the howling Santa Ana winds are coming. Because this weekend, amid so much greed and betrayal, no Kingsley is safe. It’s family. Watch your back.
Meet the sorority sisters of Theta Gamma
\nRoxy Callahan Gentry, the ruthless former sorority president and current hostess who has painstakingly choreographed every detail of this weekend - even matching the cocktails to her couture - to prove that she remains their undisputed queen.
\nAmelia Dell, the widow drenched in old money and alcohol, with her big pot-stirring spoon and uninvited boy-toy in tow, Jamie Vale, the double-legacy pledge, straight-A student with no sparkle, now a top cardiologist with a picture-perfect family - and a well-guarded bad habit.
\nBeth Harrison, the scholarship student who never quite fit in and was only admitted because her best friend Sunny insisted that the two were a package deal.
\nSunny Spencer, the carefree and beloved friend to all, or so it seemed - until she wasn't.
\nThey've been summoned to Roxy's luxurious Palm Springs vacation home to celebrate the engagement of her son to Beth's daughter. But the refurbished 1920s estate is eerily reminiscent of the hotel where tragedy struck during Spring Break twenty-five years ago.
\nLong-simmering tensions and shocking secrets begin bubbling to the surface like bodies - because while the weekend was supposed to be about celebrating the future, it's not so easy to bury the past . . .
\n
Mullory Prudence was supposed to die. Not only that, she was never supposed to inherit Xavier Stoutmire's moody magic. But nothing about the Mystery Royale went according to plan.
\nNow Mullory's left with more questions than answers, the most pressing one being how to use her mother's grave-defying shadow. And when her mother sends her on a dizzying scavenger hunt that spans everywhere from the Stoutmire estate (now all the more glamorous in its winter splendor) to a hidden magical corner of Coney Island, she'll have to team up with unlikely allies to find her way.
\nFamily secrets and threats abound in this thrilling sequel to Mystery Royale as Mullory returns to Stoutmire manor amidst new powers, puzzling questions, and an even deadlier mystery. One thing she knows for certain: the games are far from over.
\n
The only thing sixteen-year-old Mullory Prudence has left of her mom is a warning: “Run if the strange finds you.” But mysterious warnings don’t pay the bills or help take care of her sick Gran. And they certainly don’t make her miserable after-school job any more bearable. When unexpected letters start appearing in peculiar places - sealed in bags of dog food and hidden in the refrigerator - Mullory knows she should avoid them to heed her mother’s warning, but her curiosity thinks otherwise. She uncovers an invitation from Stoutmire Estate to compete in a game of Mystery Royale for the chance at a sizable inheritance.
\nDizzy with the prospect of billions, Mullory enters the game only to unearth the true prize - the illusionary magical properties of Xavier Stoutmire, a recluse without an heir. A recluse who was expected to keep his magic in the family, especially when there isn’t enough for each member. With a prize worth killing for, the game is simple: be the first to solve the mystery - who killed Xavier Stoutmire? One week full of lavish parties dripping with enchantments, in a mansion brimming with clues of the past, and everyone’s a suspect. To win, Mullory will need to untangle a twisted family web and decide who she can trust . . .
\nWhitaker Stoutmire, the golden boy who’s harboring deadly secrets?
\nEllison Stoutmire, his closed off twin, who saw something she shouldn’t have?
\nLyric Stoutmire the youngest sibling, exiled by the family and burning with resentment?
\nOr Mateo Cruz, the only other outsider whose reserved manner allows him to hide in the shadows . . . At least at first.
\nBut most of all, Mullory must ask herself, why? Why her? A question most strange, indeed.
\n
After high school graduation, Mia Peters faces a summer full of painful goodbyes. Songwriting is her only solace. Everyone she knows is moving on, including Britt, her biggest supporter . . . and kind-of-sort-of girlfriend. Britt keeps pushing Mia to go bigger and do better than their small town, but Mia can’t imagine a life beyond Sunset Cove. Besides, she refuses to follow in the footsteps of her late mother - country music star Tori Rose - who abandoned her family to pursue her dream, leaving Mia and her two grandmothers alone.
\nDesperate for a sign of what might lie ahead, Mia finds the opposite - a mysterious letter from the past, addressed to her in her mother’s handwriting. It turns out to be the first of many. One by one they lead Mia on a wild scavenger hunt through a Sunset Cove she never knew, buried under the memorialising that has frozen her mother in time. Each new discovery brings Mia closer to the real Tori Rose, but with the clock ticking on Britt’s departure, Mia knows she is running out of time.
\nWith the summer winding down, Mia must decide if she is ready to face the present, confront her feelings, and forge the destiny she truly wants.
\n
Thia, her allies, and her crow, Res, are planning a rebellion to defeat Queen Razel and Illucia once and for all. Thia must convince the neighboring kingdoms to come to her aid, and Res' show of strength is the only thing that can help her.
But so many obstacles stand in her way. Res excels at his training, until he loses control of his magic, harming Thia in the process. She is also pursued by Prince Ericen, heir to the Illucian throne and the one person she can't trust but can't seem to stay away from.
As the rebel group prepares for war, Res' magic grows more unstable. Thia has to decide if she can rely on herself and their bond enough to lead the rebellion and become the crow rider she was meant to be.
Former con artist Kasira expected to spend her life as a soldier, miserably working off her prison sentence by hunting down magical creatures for the fanatical kingdom of Kalthos. But when the Kalish ambassador arrives with a non-negotiable assignment, Kasira finds herself swept into the biggest con of her life: infiltrating the Library of Amorlin.
\nAs the heart of all magic and the protector of magical creatures throughout the six kingdoms, the Library is historically politically neutral. Kasira is meant to pose as the new Assistant to spy for the ambassador and destabilise the Library from the inside, clearing the way to dethrone its Librarian.
\nBut when she arrives, Kasira learns that the Library is not all she was told it would be. Neither is the prickly, handsome Librarian, Allaster, whose own monstrous secrets are about to catch up with him.
\nSwept into the enchanting world of the Library, Kasira’s reluctant con is jeopardised by her growing affection for the wondrous life the Library promises . . . and by her complicated, burgeoning attraction to Allaster. As the ambassador’s game closes in, Kasira must decide where her loyalties lie: to her newfound home, or to her own survival?
\n
The Illinir may be over, but the race for Enderlain’s future has just begun. The hunt for the old king’s lost heir is on, and the first to find them will win the throne.
\nMikira has allied herself with the rebels in pursuit of the lost heir, but the deeper her search takes her, the closer she gets to the royal family's wicked past.
\nAri is struggling to control her own growing power as she grapples with a dark secret that may be her undoing - and the truth behind Damien's greatest foe.
\nDamien, the new head of House Adair, joins the race to find the heir and secure the crown. But as his influence at court grows, so does his paranoia and hunger for power.
\nReid is trying his best to stay true to the friend who's always had his loyalty - and the flame who has his heart - while trapped in a web of chaos and lies.
\nBut a darker force is festering in Enderlain’s underbelly, and Mikira, Ari, Damien, and Reid will need to find a way back to each other - and themselves - before the kingdom is torn apart. Hearts will be broken and new bonds will be forged in this explosive finale to This Dark Descent, where spellbinding fantasy meets Jewish mythology in a cut-throat race for the throne - and Enderlain’s survival.
\n
In the tropical kingdom of Rhodaire, magical, elemental Crows are part of every aspect of life...until the Illucian empire invades, destroying everything.
\nThat terrible night has thrown Princess Anthia into a deep depression. Her sister Caliza is busy running the kingdom after their mother's death, but all Thia can do is think of all she has lost.
\nBut when Caliza is forced to agree to a marriage between Thia and the crown prince of Illucia, Thia is finally spurred into action. And after stumbling upon a hidden Crow egg in the rubble of a rookery, she and her sister devise a dangerous plan to hatch the egg in secret and get back what was taken from them.
Every ten years, the citizens of Veradell gather for the Illinir, a treacherous horse race famous for its alluring prize money and high body count. Tough-as-nails Mikira Rusel, the last in a line of renowned horse breeders, is desperate to win this year's race at any cost. But to make it to the track, she'll need to gather new friends and escape the crosshairs of old foes . . .
\nA beautiful rogue enchanter with a hidden past just beginning to come into her true power.
\nA dashing and ambitious young lord in the midst of a fierce succession battle.
\nA brilliant, prickly loner loyal only to his friends, and his loveable but mysterious pet cat.
\nA ruthless aristocrat determined to protect his family's prestige - and unrivaled power.
\nEach one has their own vengeful secrets to protect and reasons to help - or hinder - Mikira's odds of winning the Illinir. And in a world as dangerous as this, who among them will be left standing at the finish line?
\n
For the first time, and with surprising and revealing insights, former Vice President Kamala Harris tells the story of one of the wildest and most consequential presidential campaigns in American history.
\nYour Secret Service code name is Pioneer.
\nYou are the first woman in history to be elected vice president of the United States.
\nOn July 21, 2024, your running mate, Joe Biden, announces that he will not be seeking reelection.
\nThe presidential election will occur on November 5, 2024.
\nYou have 107 days.
\nFrom the chaos of campaign strategy sessions to the intensity of debate prep under relentless scrutiny and the private moments that rarely make headlines, Kamala Harris offers an unfiltered look at the pressures, triumphs, and heartbreaks of a history-defining race. With behind-the-scenes details and a voice that is both intimate and urgent, this is more than a political memoir - it’s a chronicle of resilience, leadership, and the high stakes of democracy in action.
\nWritten with candor, a unique perspective, and the pace of a page-turning novel, 107 Days takes you inside the race for the presidency as no one has ever done before.
From one of America's most inspiring political leaders, a book about the core truths that unite us, and the long struggle to discern what those truths are and how best to act upon them, in her own life and across the life of our country.
\nSenator Kamala Harris's commitment to speaking truth is informed by her upbringing. The daughter of immigrants, she was raised in an Oakland, California community that cared deeply about social justice; her parents - an esteemed economist from Jamaica and an admired cancer researcher from India - met as activists in the civil rights movement when they were graduate students at Berkeley.
\nGrowing up, Harris herself never hid her passion for justice, and when she became a prosecutor out of law school, a deputy district attorney, she quickly established herself as one of the most innovative change agents in American law enforcement. She progressed rapidly to become the elected District Attorney for San Francisco, and then the chief law enforcement officer of the state of California as a whole.
\nKnown for bringing a voice to the voiceless, she took on the big banks during the foreclosure crisis, winning a historic settlement for California's working families. Her hallmarks were applying a holistic, data-driven approach to many of California's thorniest issues, always eschewing stale \"tough on crime\" rhetoric as presenting a series of false choices. Neither \"tough\" nor \"soft\" but smart on crime became her mantra.
\nBeing smart means learning the truths that can make us better as a community, and supporting those truths with all our might. That has been the pole star that guided Harris to a transformational career as the top law enforcement official in California, and it is guiding her now as a transformational United States Senator, grappling with an array of complex issues that affect her state, our country, and the world, from health care and the new economy to immigration, national security, the opioid crisis, and accelerating inequality.
\nBy reckoning with the big challenges we face together, drawing on the hard-won wisdom and insight from her own career and the work of those who have most inspired her, Kamala Harris offers in The Truths We Hold a master class in problem-solving, in crisis management, and leadership in challenging times. Through the arc of her own life, on into the great work of our day, she communicates a vision of shared struggle, shared purpose, and shared values.
\nIn a book rich in many home truths, not least is that a relatively small number of people work very hard to convince a great many of us that we have less in common than we actually do, but it falls to us to look past them and get on with the good work of living our common truth. When we do, our shared effort will continue to sustain us and this great nation, now and in the years to come.
Warren University has stood amongst the ivy elite for centuries, built on the bones - and forbidden magic - of its most prized BIPOC students . . . hiding the rot of a secret society that will do anything to keep their own powers burning bright. No matter who they must sacrifice along the way.
\nEllory Morgan is determined to prove that she belongs at Warren University, an ivy league school whose history is deeply linked to occult rumors and dark secrets. But as she settles into her Freshman year, something about the ornate buildings and shadowy paths feels strangely . . . familiar. And, with every passing day, that sense of déjà vu grows increasingly sinister.
\nDespite all logic, despite all reason, despite all the rules of reality, Ellory knows one thing to be true: she has been here before. And if she can't convince brooding legacy student Hudson Graves to help her remember a past that seems determined to slip through her fingers as if by some insidious magic . . . this time, she may lose herself for good.
Faron Vincent can channel the power of the gods. Five years ago, she used her divine magic to liberate her island from its enemies, the dragon-riding Langley Empire. But now, at seventeen, Faron is all powered up with no wars to fight. She’s a legend to her people and a nuisance to her neighbors.
\nWhen she’s forced to attend an international peace summit, Faron expects that she will perform tricks like a trained pet and then go home. She doesn’t expect her older sister, Elara, forming an unprecedented bond with an enemy dragon - or the gods claiming the only way to break that bond is to kill her sister.
\nAs Faron’s desperation to find another solution takes her down a dark path, and Elara discovers the shocking secrets at the heart of the Langley Empire, both must make difficult choices that will shape each other’s lives, as well as the fate of their world.
\n
Faron Vincent was once the saint of San Irie. Now, she’s done the unthinkable: betrayed her country. Alone, disgraced, and kidnapped, Faron is forced to help Iya grow his bloody empire. With her soul bonded to a ruthless killer, Faron has become an enemy to her people . . . and she fears they might be right.
\n\n
Elara Vincent - the new Empyrean - must undo the damage her sister has caused. San Irie has been brought back to the brink of war as Iya proclaims that no nation will be safe from his brutal invasion. But how can Elara save her sister, her best friend, her country, and her world when she’s already cracking under the pressure?
\n\n
This heart-pounding conclusion to the Divine Traitors duology pushes these unforgettable heroines to their breaking point and beyond. Because when the lines between hero and villain are blurred, deadly sacrifices must be made.
\n
Private detective P. Manjunath thinks like fire and works like dust as he sets out to investigate existential cataclysms unfolding all over the globe - not knowing that the ripples in reality he sees are being caused by Dr. Krishna, a scientist in a utopian future and technically the God of their world.
\nAs Manjunath's investigation disrupts God's plans, a Danish police officer attains enlightenment, a lapel pin gives disruptive advice, a sentient wall provides the key to creativity, a pill cures the human condition, and everyone in the world develops a lisp at the same time.
\nA blend of philosophical provocation, inventive lyricism, humor, and chaos, Acts of God marks the evolution of one of the finest voices in comedy.
Mrs. Shim needs money. She’s lost her husband and her job, and she's got three mouths to feed at her kitchen table. If she doesn't find work soon, she and her children are going to lose their home.
\nSo when she answers a vague job ad for the Smile Detective Agency, Mrs. Shim expects the job will be some kind of cleaning position. But when they only ask her questions about her experience as a butcher and what she can do with a cleaver, she begins to realize they want her to do a very different kind of cleaning - they want her to be an assassin. Too scared not to take them up on their offer, she agrees to the position.
\nAnd Mrs. Shim soon finds that her new job isn’t so different from her old one in the butcher shop, quickly becoming the agency's best contract killer - but her rise to the top hasn’t gone unnoticed. Jealous of her talents, her agency’s competitors - and even her own colleagues - begin pointing fingers (and knives) in her direction.
\nIf she wants to keep her job, her family, and her reputation intact, Mrs. Shim is going to have to take out the secretive leader of a rival agency. But when she has the chance to strike, she's stunned to find a familiar face at the end of her blade.
\nAs it turns out, this just may be one mess she can't cut her way out of . . .
\n
In a sprawling complex in Delhi, the sons and daughters of SP Chopra, one of India's political architects, live together vying for influence in a family shaped by the great man's legacy. By the late 1970s, his descendants are scrambling to define their own futures in a still-young nation on the brink of transformation.
\nSachin Chopra leaves for America, with his bride Gita following not long after, as the newlyweds are eager to forge their own lives beyond the pressures of the family compound. Yet Delhi remains an inescapable force, one that keeps pulling them back, even as Gita is menaced by Sachin’s predatory uncle, Laxman. A man of ruthless ambition, Laxman ascends through the ranks of a rising Hindu nationalist movement, caught between his political aspirations and his personal transgressions. Meanwhile, Vibha, his sister, tries to keep the peace and the reputation of the family intact even as she wrestles with her own exile.
\nAs India erupts in violence and long-buried secrets come to light, the embattled Chopras must reckon with the cost of power, the weight of tradition, and the shifting nature of love and allegiance. Equal parts brilliant family saga and piercing political drama, The Complex is a virtuosic novel of revenge and redemption, ambition and undoing, loyalty and love, by one of the most lauded voices in contemporary fiction.
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In the early days of Prohibition, long before Al Capone became a household name, a German immigrant named George Remus quits practicing law and starts trafficking whiskey. Within two years he's a multimillionaire. The press calls him \"King of the Bootleggers,\" writing breathless stories about the Gatsby-esque events he and his glamorous second wife, Imogene, host at their Cincinnati mansion, with party favors ranging from diamond jewelry for the men to brand new Pontiacs for the women. By the summer of 1921, Remus owns 35 percent of all the liquor in the United States.
Pioneering prosecutor Mabel Walker Willebrandt is determined to bring him down. Willebrandt's bosses at the U.S. Attorney's office hired her right out of law school, assuming she'd pose no real threat to the cozy relationship they maintain with Remus. Eager to prove them wrong, she dispatches her best investigator, Franklin Dodge, to look into his empire. It's a decision with deadly consequences: With Remus behind bars, Dodge and Imogene begin an affair and plot to ruin him, sparking a bitter feud that soon reaches the highest levels of government - and that can only end in murder.
Combining deep historical research with novelistic flair, THE GHOSTS OF EDEN PARK is the unforgettable, stranger-than-fiction story of a rags-to-riches entrepreneur and a long-forgotten heroine, of the excesses and absurdities of the Jazz Age, and of the infinite human capacity to deceive.
From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman's OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy.
\nWhen AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?
\nOver time, Hao began to wrestle ever more deeply with that question. Increasingly, she realized that the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that its vision of success requires an almost unprecedented amount of the “compute” power of high-end chips and the processing capacity to create massive large language models, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans “cleaning up” that data for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the usage of energy and water underlying it all. The truth is that we have entered a new and ominous age of only a small handful of globally scaled companies can even enter the field of play. At the head of the pack with its ChatGPT breakthrough, how would OpenAI resist such temptations?
\nSpoiler it didn’t. Armed with Microsoft’s billions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace, chased by a small group of the most valuable companies in human history - toward what end, not even they can define. All this time, Hao has maintained her deep sourcing within the company and the industry, and so she was in intimate contact with the story that shocked the entire tech industry - Altman’s sudden firing and triumphant return. The behind-the-scenes story of what happened, told here in full for the first time, is revelatory of who the people controlling this technology really are. But this isn’t just the story of a single company, however fascinating it is. The g forces pressing down on the people of OpenAI are deforming the judgment of everyone else too - as such forces do.
\nNaked power finds the ideology to cloak itself; no one thinks they’re the bad guy. But in the meantime, as Hao shows through intrepid reporting on the ground around the world, the enormous wheels of extraction grind on. By drawing on the viewpoints of Silicon Valley engineers, Kenyan data laborers, and Chilean water activists, Hao presents the fullest picture of AI and its impact we’ve seen to date, alongside a trenchant analysis of where things are headed. An astonishing eyewitness view from both up in the command capsule of the new economy and down where the real suffering happens, Empire of AI pierces the veil of the industry defining our era.
Milly, Aubrey, and Jonah Story are cousins, but they barely know each another, and they've never even met their grandmother. Rich and reclusive, she disinherited their parents before they were born. So when they each receive a letter inviting them to work at her island resort for the summer, they're surprised . . . and curious.
Their parents are all clear on one point - not going is not an option. This could be the opportunity to get back into Grandmother's good graces. But when the cousins arrive on the island, it's immediately clear that she has different plans for them. And the longer they stay, the more they realize how mysterious - and dark - their family's past is.
The entire Story family has secrets. Whatever pulled them apart years ago isn't over - and this summer, the cousins will learn everything.
Four years ago, Brynn left Saint Ambrose School following the shocking murder of her favorite teacher - a story that made headlines after the teacher’s body was found by three Saint Ambrose students in the woods behind their school. The case was never solved. Now that Brynn is moving home and starting her dream internship at a true-crime show, she’s determined to find out what really happened.
\nThe kids who found Mr. Larkin are her way in, and her ex–best friend, Tripp Talbot, was one of them. Without his account of events, the other two kids might have gone down for Mr. Larkin’s murder. They've never forgotten what Tripp did for them that day. Just like he hasn’t forgotten that everything he told the police was a lie.
\nDigging into the past is bound to shake up the present, and as Brynn begins to investigate what happened in the woods that day, she begins to uncover secrets that might change everything - about Saint Ambrose, about Mr. Larkin, and about her ex-best friend, Tripp Talbot.
\nFour years ago someone got away with murder. The most terrifying part is that they never left.
\n
Ever since Simon died in detention, life hasn't been easy for the Bayview Crew. First the Bayview Four had to prove they weren't killers. Then a new generation had to outwit a vengeful copycat. Now, it's beginning again.
\nAt first the mysterious billboard seems like a bad joke: Time for a new game, Bayview. But when a member of the crew disappears, it's clear this 'game' just got serious - and no one understands the rules.
\nEveryone's a target. And now that someone unexpected has returned to Bayview, things are starting to get deadly.
\nSimon was right about secrets - they all come out in the end.
\nThe thing is, Simon was right about secrets-they all come out, eventually. And Bayview has a lot it's still hiding.
\n
Pay close attention and you might solve this.
On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention.
Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule.
Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess.
Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing.
Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher.
And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High’s notorious gossip app.
Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention Simon's dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn’t an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he’d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who’s still on the loose?
Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.
It is a year after the action of One of Us Is Lying, and someone has started playing a game of Truth or Dare.
\nBut this is no ordinary Truth or Dare. This game is lethal. Choosing the truth may reveal your darkest secrets, accepting the dare could be dangerous, even deadly.
\nThe teenagers of Bayview must work together once again to find the culprit, before it's too late . . .
\n
For all of Kat’s life, it’s just been her and her mother, Jamie - except for the forty-eight hours when Jamie was married and Kat had a stepbrother, Liam. That all ended in an epic divorce, and Kat and Liam haven’t spoken since.
\nNow Jamie is a jewel thief trying to go straight, but she has one last job - at billionaire Ross Sutherland’s birthday party. And Kat has figured out a way to tag along. What Kat doesn’t know, though, is that there are two surprise guests at the dazzling Sutherland compound that weekend. The last two people she wants to run into. Liam and his father - a serial scammer who has his sights set on Ross Sutherland’s youngest daughter.
\nKat and Liam are on a collision course to disaster, and when a Sutherland dies, they realise they might actually be in the killer’s crosshairs themselves. Somehow Kat and Liam are the new targets, and they can’t trust anyone - except each other.
\nOr can they? Because if there’s one thing both Kat and Liam know, it’s how to lie. They learned from the best.
\n
Echo Ridge is small-town America. Ellery's never been there, but she's heard all about it. Her aunt went missing there at age seventeen. And only five years ago, a homecoming queen put the town on the map when she was killed. Now Ellery has to move there to live with a grandmother she barely knows.
\nThe town is picture-perfect, but it's hiding secrets. And before school even begins for Ellery, someone has declared open season on homecoming, promising to make it as dangerous as it was five years ago. Then, almost as if to prove it, another girl goes missing.
\nEllery knows all about secrets. Her mother has them; her grandmother does too. And the longer she's in Echo Ridge, the clearer it becomes that everyone there is hiding something. The thing is, secrets are dangerous--and most people aren't good at keeping them. Which is why in Echo Ridge, it's safest to keep your secrets to yourself.
\nIvy, Mateo, and Cal used to be close. Now all they have in common is Carlton High and the beginning of a very bad day.
\nType A Ivy lost a student council election to the class clown, and now she has to face the school, humiliated. Heartthrob Mateo is burned out - he's been working two jobs since his family's business failed. And outsider Cal just got stood up . . . again.
\nSo when Cal pulls into campus late for class and runs into Ivy and Mateo, it seems like the perfect opportunity to turn a bad day around. They'll ditch and go into the city. Just the three of them, like old times. Except they've barely left the parking lot before they run out of things to say . . .
\nUntil they spot another Carlton High student skipping school - and follow him to the scene of his own murder. In one chance move, their day turns from dull to deadly. And it's about to get worse.
\nIt turns out Ivy, Mateo, and Cal still have some things in common. They all have a connection to the dead kid. And they're all hiding something.
\nNow they're all wondering - could it be that their chance reconnection wasn't by chance after all?
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It took one hell of an effort for the authorities to finally get the jump on master manipulator Bianca St. Ives, but now that they have, it's far from the capture she expected.
\nInstead of taking her in, there's an offer on the table, a one-shot deal that would allow Bianca to walk away scot-free as if they'd never found her. And all she has to do is run one last mission-the kind she might never return from. But if Bianca wants to go back to her normal life in Savannah, it's not like she has a choice . . .
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Bianca St. Ives makes her living as a high-end thief and a genius of disguise, conning criminals out of the money they stole - and all for the greater good. A femme fatale Robin Hood, she's learnt everything she knows from her father. Now that she's taken over running the family business, it's not just Richard St. Ives on most-wanted lists, but Bianca, too.
\nAfter faking his own death, the word is out that Bianca's father is, in fact, alive, and having just pulled off a major heist in Austria, he has a dangerous task for Bianca that will see her travelling to Russia to steal ancient jewels and artifacts. But now all eyes are on Bianca, and escaping international pursuit will be harder than ever . . .
When she swore off love, he was the last man she imagined would steal her heart.
\nIf driving a piece-of-crap tow truck through the seediest part of town with a Smith & Wesson beside her means putting a roof over her son’s head, then Samantha Jones is going to be the best damn repo woman on the books. The streetwalkers, the drug pushers, the bands of looking-for-trouble punks haunting the mean streets at midnight don’t intimidate her. These are her people. The guy she finds bound and bloodied in the trunk of her latest conquest, a flashy new BMW, is a different breed entirely.
\nDaniel Panterro was certain he was going to die. Instead, by a stroke of luck, he was beaten to within an inch of his life and left for dead. But if he’s having a bad day, Sam’s day is about to get way worse. Danny knows he hasn’t seen the last of the vicious drug runners who kidnapped him from protective custody. His only recourse is to take his pretty savior hostage and force her to help him. There’s no going back for Sam and her four-yearold son, Tyler. They’re in way too deep.
\nWith ruthless killers stalking their trail, Sam’s only choice is to trust this handsome, menacing stranger. But as she relinquishes control, Sam feels an unmistakable desire. Could she be tempted by Danny, who seems intent on protecting her and Tyler from even his own darkest secrets? And what is the price of falling in love with a man who operates on the edge of danger - her heart, her life . . . or both?
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September 1943: Berlin is the heart of darkness - and the last place Dr. Elin Lund wishes to be. An expert in psychological profiling, she’s been summoned from Copenhagen to investigate the gruesome murders of eight young women. Even in the midst of unspeakable evil, these killings stand apart. And with her homeland now under Nazi occupation and a young son to protect, Elin can’t refuse such a request.
\nHomicide Detective Kurt Schneider, head of the criminal police unit, is grudging in his welcome. The orders to find the killer come from the top, and to fail means death. The stakes are too high to risk any mistakes - or to trust a stranger. Yet the pair, trapped in an uneasy partnership, each has expertise the other needs. And Schneider, like Elin, is clearly guarding secrets of his own.
\nRacing to complete the investigation and return to her son, Elin feels the net tightening. Every sliver of evidence reveals a killer infinitely more dangerous, and more powerful, than anyone suspected. And in drawing closer to the terrifying truth, Elin has unwittingly made herself his new obsession . . .
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Growing up, Bianca St. Ives knew she was different from all her friends. Instead of playing hopscotch or combing her dolls' hair, she studied martial arts with sensei masters and dismantled explosives with special-ops retirees. Her father prepped her well to carry on the family business. Now a striking beauty with fierce skills, the prodigy has surpassed the master.
She's known as the Guardian. Running a multinational firm with her father, she makes a living swindling con men out of money they stole - and she's damn good at it. She does things on her own terms. But her latest gig had a little hiccup - if you count two hundred million dollars and top secret government documents going missing as little. Her father also died on the mission. The thing is, the US government doesn't believe he's really dead.
They'll stop at nothing to capture Richard St. Ives, a high-value target and someone who has been on most-wanted lists all over the world for over two decades, and they mean to use Bianca as bait. With only a fellow criminal for backup and her life on the line, it's up to Bianca to uncover the terrifying truth behind what really happened . . . and set it right, before it's too late.
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The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing - not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories.
\nThe Antidote follows a “Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.
\nRussell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting - enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been - and what still could be.
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Feeling alone? Join the party in a darkly comic and deeply felt short story about fragility and resilience in the Mojave Desert. Still recovering from a brutal breakup, Stan Dobrev crashes a “divorce party” in the Southern California desert.
\nAn unknown extra in a stranger’s drama, he’s on his way back to the bar when a fellow interloper catches his wandering eye. She’s a formidable tortoise named Greeley, trudging through the drunken revelry and chaos like a true survivor. Before the night is over, she’ll lead Stan on a strange journey beyond oblivion.
Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.
\nThe agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.
\nEerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.
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In the first year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. As her psychiatrist struggles to solve the mystery of what is happening to Jane’s mind, she suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her.
\nAre Jane’s strange experiences related to the overwhelm of single motherhood, or are they the manifestation of a long-buried trauma from her past? Why is she having visions of a young man who died twenty years ago, who warns her of a disaster ahead? Jane’s symptoms lead her psychiatrist ever-deeper into the furthest reaches of her mind, and cause him to question everything he thought he knew about so-called reality - including events in his own life.
\nKaren Thompson Walker’s profound and beautifully written novel is a speculative mystery about memory, identity, and fate, a mesmerising story about the bonds of love between a mother and child, a man and a woman, and those who we’ve lost but may still be alive among us.
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Fifteen years ago, Sara Linton's life changed forever when a celebratory night out ended in a violent attack that tore her world apart. Since then, Sara has remade her life. A successful doctor, engaged to a man she loves, she has finally managed to leave the past behind her.
\nUntil one evening, on call in the ER, everything changes. Sara battles to save a broken young woman who's been brutally attacked. But as the investigation progresses, led by GBI Special Agent Will Trent, it becomes clear that Dani Cooper's assault is uncannily linked to Sara's.
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A small Georgia town erupts in panic when a young college professor is found brutally mutilated in the local diner. But it’s only when town pediatrician and coroner Sara Linton does the autopsy that the full extent of the killer’s twisted work becomes clear.
\nSara’s ex-husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, leads the investigation - a trail of terror that grows increasingly macabre when another local woman is found crucified a few days later. But he’s got more than a sadistic serial killer on his hands, because the county’s only female detective, Lena Adams - the first victim’s sister - wants to serve her own justice.
\nBut it is Sara who holds the key to finding the killer. A secret from her past could unmask the brilliantly malevolent psychopath . . . or mean her death.
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When Special Agent Will Trent arrives in Grant County, he finds a police department determined to protect its own and far too many unanswered questions about a prisoner’s death. He doesn’t understand why Officer Lena Adams is hiding secrets from him. He doesn’t understand her role in the death of Grant County’s popular police chief. He doesn’t understand why that man’s widow, Dr. Sara Linton, needs him now more than ever to help her crack this case.
\nWhile the police force investigates the murder of a young woman pulled from a frigid lake, Trent investigates the police force, putting pressure on Adams just when she’s already about to crack. Caught between two complicated and determined women, trying to understand Linton’s passionate distrust of Adams, the facts surrounding Chief Tolliver’s death, and the complexities of this insular town, Trent will unleash a case filled with explosive secrets - and encounter a thin blue line that could be murderous if crossed.
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Will Trent is a brilliant agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Newly in love, he is beginning to put a difficult past behind him. Then a local college student goes missing, and Will is inexplicably kept off the case by his supervisor and mentor, deputy director Amanda Wagner. Will cannot fathom Amanda’s motivation until the two of them literally collide in an abandoned orphanage they have both been drawn to for different reasons.
\nDecades before, when his father was imprisoned for murder, this was Will’s home. It appears that the case that launched Amanda’s career forty years ago has suddenly come back to life - and it involves the long-held mystery of Will’s birth and parentage. Now these two dauntless investigators will each need to face down demons from the past if they are to prevent an even greater terror from being unleashed.
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A suicide on a college campus.
A tragic case with a simple resolution.
But for medical examiner Sara Linton, it just doesn't add up. When two more suspicious deaths follow and a young woman is brutally attacked, it becomes clear that she's looking for a murderer.
\nThe college authorities are reluctant to cooperate and Sara isn't any closer to finding the answers she needs.
\nWith the violence triggering memories of a past she'd rather forget and the clues pointing ever closer to home, can she uncover the truth in time to save the next victim?
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Deep in the Georgia woods, Dr Sara Linton and Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver stumble across the body of a young girl. Initial evidence suggests that she was buried alive and, quite literally, scared to death.
\nTroubled by their own turbulent past, Sara and Jeffrey must work together to identify the killer and prevent another death.
\nThe trail will soon lead to the neighbouring county, an isolated community, and a terrible secret . . .
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There’s no police training stronger than a cop’s instinct. Faith Mitchell’s mother isn’t answering her phone. Her front door is open. There’s a bloodstain above the knob. Her infant daughter is hidden in a shed behind the house. All that the Georgia Bureau of Investigations taught Faith Mitchell goes out the window when she charges into her mother’s house, gun drawn. She sees a man dead in the laundry room. She sees a hostage situation in the bedroom. What she doesn’t see is her mother. . . .
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Faith is left with too many questions and not enough answers. To find her mother, she’ll need the help of her partner, Will Trent, and they’ll both need the help of trauma doctor Sara Linton. But Faith isn’t just a cop anymore - she’s a witness. She’s also a suspect.
\n\n
The thin blue line hides police corruption, bribery, even murder. Faith will have to go up against the people she respects the most in order to find her mother and bring the truth to light - or bury it forever.
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Leigh Coulton has worked hard to build what looks like a normal life. She has a good job as a defence attorney, a daughter doing well in school, and even her divorce is relatively civilised - her life is just as unremarkable as she'd always hoped it would be.
\nBut Leigh's ordinary life masks a childhood which was far from average . . . a childhood tarnished by secrets, broken by betrayal, and finally torn apart by a devastating act of violence.
\nThen a case lands on her desk - defending a wealthy man accused of rape. It's the highest profile case she's ever been given - a case which could transform her career, if she wins. But when she meets the accused, she realises that it's no coincidence that he's chosen her as his attorney. She knows him. And he knows her. More to the point, he knows what happened twenty years ago, and why Leigh has spent two decades running.
\nIf she can't get him acquitted, she'll lose much more than the case. The only person who can help her is her younger, estranged sister Calli, the last person Leigh would ever want to ask for help. But suddenly she has no choice . . .
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Ansley Park is one of Atlanta’s most upscale neighborhoods - but in one gleaming mansion, in a teenager’s lavish bedroom, a girl has been savagely murdered. And in the hallway, her mother stands amid shattered glass, having killed her daughter’s attacker with her bare hands. Detective Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is one of the first on the scene. Trent soon sees something that the Atlanta cops are missing, something in the trail of blood, in a matrix of forensic evidence, and in the eyes of the stunned mother.
\nWhen another teenage girl goes missing, Trent knows that this case, which started in the best of homes, is about to cut quick and deep through the ruins of perfect lives broken wide-open: where human demons emerge with a vengeance.
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Longbill Beach, 1982. Emily Vaughn gets ready for the prom. For an athlete, who is smart, pretty and well-liked, this night that should be the highlight of her high school career. But Emily has a secret. And by the end of the evening, that secret will be silenced forever.
\nForty years later, Emily’s murder remains a mystery. Her tight-knit group of friends closed ranks; her respected, wealthy family retreated inwards; the small town moved on from her grisly attack. But all that’s about to change.
\nUS Marshal Andrea Oliver arrives in Longbill Beach on her first assignment: to protect a judge receiving death threats. But, in reality, Andrea is there to find justice for Emily. The killer is still out there - and Andrea must discover the truth before she gets silenced, too . . .
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Two girls are forced into the woods at gunpoint. One runs for her life. One is left behind . . .
Twenty-eight years ago, Charlotte and Samantha Quinn's happy small-town family life was torn apart by a terrifying attack on their family home. It left their mother dead. It left their father - Pikeville's notorious defense attorney - devastated. And it left the family fractured beyond repair, consumed by secrets from that terrible night.
Twenty-eight years later, and Charlie has followed in her father's footsteps to become a lawyer herself - the ideal good daughter. But when violence comes to Pikeville again - and a shocking tragedy leaves the whole town traumatised - Charlie is plunged into a nightmare. Not only is she the first witness on the scene, but it's a case that unleashes the terrible memories she's spent so long trying to suppress. Because the shocking truth about the crime that destroyed her family nearly thirty years ago won't stay buried forever . . .
Two armed men enter the police station in tiny Heartsdale, Georgia, and open fire. When the shooting stops, an officer is dead, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver is seriously wounded, and the survivors - including a class of grade-school children and medical examiner Sara Linton - are held hostage.
\nIn a tense standoff that could erupt at any moment into more bloodletting - and with her ex-husband on the threshold of death - Sara must search for answers and an escape in the memories of a time at the start of their relationship when another brutal, shocking crime shattered their small-town world.
\nBecause the sins of the past have caught up with Sara and Jeffrey. . . with a vengeance.
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A body is discovered in an empty Atlanta warehouse. It's the body of an ex-cop, and from the moment Special Agent Will Trent walks in he knows this could be the most devastating case of his career. Bloody footprints leading away from the scene reveal that another victim - a woman - has left the scene and vanished into thin air. And, worst of all, the warehouse belongs to the city's biggest, most politically-connected, most high-profile athlete - a local hero protected by the world's most expensive lawyers. A local hero Will has spent the last six months investigating on a brutal rape charge.
But for Will - and also for Dr Sara Linton, the GBI's newest medical examiner - the case is about to get even worse. Because an unexpected discovery at the scene reveals a personal link to Will's troubled past. The consequences will wreak havoc on his life and the lives of those he loves, those he works with, and those he pursues.
But Sara's scene-of-the-crime diagnosis is that they only have a few hours to find the missing woman before she bleeds out . . .
When a teenage quarrel in the small town of Heartsdale explodes into a deadly shoot-out, Sara Linton - paediatrician and medical examiner - finds herself entangled in a horrific tragedy. What seems at first to be an individual catastrophe has wider implications when the autopsy reveals evidence of long-term abuse and ritualistic self-mutilation.
\nSara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver start to investigate, but the children surrounding the victim close ranks. The families turn their backs. Then a young girl is abducted, and it soon becomes clear that the first death is linked to an even more brutal crime.
\nAnd unless Sara and Jeffrey can uncover the deadly secrets the children hide, it is going to happen again.
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On a hot summer night, a scientist from the Centers for Disease Control is grabbed by unknown assailants in a shopping center parking lot. Vanished into thin air, the authorities are desperate to save the doctor.
One month later, the serenity of a sunny Sunday afternoon is shattered by the boom of a ground-shaking blast - followed by another seconds later. One of Atlanta’s busiest and most important neighborhood’s has been bombed - the location of Emory University, two major hospitals, the FBI headquarters, and the CDC.
Medical examiner Sara Linton and her partner Will Trent, an investigator with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, rush to the scene - and into the heart of a deadly conspiracy that threatens to destroy thousands of innocent lives. When the assailants abduct Sara, Will goes undercover to save her and prevent a massacre - putting his own life on the line for the woman and the country he loves.
What if the person youthought you knew best turns out to be someone you never knew at all?
\nAndreaCooper knows everything about her mother Laura. She's knows she's spent herwhole life in the small beachside town of Gullaway Island; she knows she'snever had any more ambition than to live a quiet life as a pillar of thecommunity; she knows she's never kept a secret in her life. Because we all knowour mothers, don't we?
\nBut all thatchanges when a trip to the mall explodes into violence and Andrea suddenly seesa completely different side to Laura. A side which is a million miles from thequiet, gentle woman who brought her up. And more than that, news coverage ofthe mall attack puts Laura's face on every TV screen in the country - and leavesher terrified.
\nBecause it turns out that before Laura was Laura she was someonecompletely different. For nearly 30 years she's been hiding from her previousidentity, lying low in the hope that no one will ever find her and re-open thewounds left by the terrible events which made it impossible for her ever to goback. But now she's been exposed, and nothing will ever be the same again.
\nTwenty-four hours later Laura is in hospital, shot by an intruder who's spent thirty years trying to track her down and discover what she knows. Andrea is on a desperatejourney following the breadcrumbs of her mother's past. And if she can't uncover the secrets hidden there, there may be no future for either of them . . .
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More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia's teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the horror and heartbreak of their shared loss - a devastating wound that's cruelly ripped open when Claire's husband is killed.
\nThe disappearance of a teenage girl and the murder of a middle-aged man, almost a quarter-century apart: what could connect them? Forming a wary truce, the surviving sisters look to the past to find the truth, unearthing the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago . . . and uncovering the possibility of redemption, and revenge, where they least expect it.
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Atlanta, Georgia. Present day.
\nA young woman is brutally attacked and left for dead. The police investigate but the trail goes cold. Until a chance assignment takes GBI investigator Will Trent to the state penitentiary, and to a prisoner who says he recognizes the MO. The attack looks identical to the one he was accused of eight years earlier. The prisoner’s always insisted that he was innocent, and now he’s sure he has proof. The killer is still out there.
As Will digs into both crimes it becomes clear that he must solve the original case in order to reach the truth. Yet nearly a decade has passed - time for memories to fade, witnesses to vanish, evidence to disappear. And now he needs medical examiner Sara Linton to help him hunt down a ruthless murderer. But when the past and present collide, everything Will values is at stake . . .
Sara Linton - resident medical examiner/pediatrician in Grant County, Georgia, - has plenty of hardship to deal with, including defending herself in a heartbreaking malpractice suit. So when her husband, Police chief Jeffery Tolliver, learns that his friend and coworker detective Lena Adams has been arrested for murder and needs Sara's help, she is not sure she can handle the pressure of it all.
\nBut soon Sara and Jeffery are sitting through evidence, peeling back the layers of a mystery that grows darker by the day - until an intricate web of betrayal and vengeance begins to unravel. And suddenly the lives of Sara, Lena, and Jeffery are hanging by the slenderest of threads.
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For GBI investigator Will Trent and medical examiner Sara Linton, McAlpine Lodge seems like the ideal getaway to celebrate their honeymoon. Set on a gorgeous, off-the-grid mountaintop property, it’s the perfect place to unplug and reconnect. Until a bone-chilling scream cuts through the night.
\nMercy McAlpine, the manager of the Lodge, is dead. With a vicious storm raging and the one access road to the property washed out, the murderer must be someone on the mountain. But as Will and Sara investigate the McAlpine family and the other guests, they realize that everyone here is lying . . . Lying about their past. Lying to their family. Lying to themselves.
\nIt soon becomes clear that normal rules don’t apply at McAlpine Lodge, and Will and Sara are going to have to watch their step at every turn. Trapped on the resort, they must untangle a decades-old web of secrets to discover what happened to Mercy. And with the killer poised to strike again, the trip of a lifetime becomes a race against the clock . . .
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From Atlanta’s wealthiest suburbs to its stark inner-city housing projects, a killer has crossed the boundaries of wealth and race. And the people who are chasing him must cross those boundaries, too. Among them is Michael Ormewood, a veteran detective whose marriage is hanging by a thread - and whose arrogance and explosive temper are threatening his career.
\nAnd Angie Polaski, a beautiful vice cop who was once Michael’ s lover before she became his enemy. But unbeknownst to both of them, another player has entered the game: a loser ex-con who has stumbled upon the killer’s trail in the most coincidental of ways - and who may be the key to breaking the case wide open.
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In the trauma center of Atlanta’s busiest hospital, Sara Linton treats the city’s poor, wounded, and unlucky - and finds refuge from the tragedy that rocked her life in rural Grant County. But then a tortured young woman becomes a patient in her ER . . .
\nIn the backwoods of suburban Atlanta, where Sara’s patient was found, local police have set up their investigation. But Georgia Bureau of Investigation detective Will Trent doesn’t wait for the go-ahead from his boss - he plunges through police lines, single-handedly exposing a hidden house of horror buried beneath the earth . . . and then finds another victim.
\nWresting the case away from the local police chief, Will and his partner, Faith Mitchell, are called into a related investigation. Another woman - a smart, upscale, independent young mother - has been snatched. For the two cops out on the hunt, for the doctor trying to bring her patient back to life, the truth hits like a hammer: The killer’s torture chamber has been found, but the killer is still at work.
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Will Trent is a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent, working undercover in Macon, Georgia, posing as Bill Black, a scary ex-con who trails an air of violence wherever he goes. The cover has worked and he has caught the eye of a wiry little drug dealer who thinks he might be a useful ally.
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But there’s a problem. Cut off from the support of the woman he loves, Sara Linton, Will finds his demons catching up with him.
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Although she has no idea where Will has gone, or why, Sara herself has come to Macon because of a cop shooting. Her stepson, Jared, has been gunned down. Suddenly, without even knowing it, Sara finds herself involved in the same case that Will is working - with danger swirling around both of them.
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When mortal Hanna agreed to marry Tuoni, the God of Death, in exchange for her father's life, the last thing she expected was to fall for the morally grey anti-hero. But it's not only her heart that's in danger now.
\nAs she navigates her new role as the Goddess of Death in the spooky and macabre underworld of Tuonela, Hanna discovers that Death has many enemies in his kingdom, none more powerful than his half-demon ex-wife, Louhi.
\nWith an uprising of Old Gods at her fingertips, and skeleton armies ready to do her bidding, Hanna and Death must work together to make sure the underworld isn't lost forever, even if it means losing each other and all they hold dear.
All Hanna Heikkinen wants is to be reunited with her father again. After all, that's why she ventured into the dark and dangerous fantasy world of Tuonela, the Land of the Dead, in order to save his life. But this time her devotion to her father comes at a cost - her growing relationship with Tuoni, the God of Death himself, who held Hanna captive in exchange for her father's life. The last thing she expects is to feel remorse at how she left things with Death, yet the dark and sexy God is all she can think about.
\nDeath has always prided himself on never trusting the living, but Hanna's apparent betrayal has left a scar fathom's deep. Vowing revenge on his future bride, and making sure she upholds her end of the bargain, Death sets out across his realm to steal Hanna back, which only fans the flames between them.
\nBut Death and Hanna aren't just fighting each other - malevolent Old Gods are rising to power within the realm, magic is being poisoned, and buried secrets are brought to light, secrets that may cause Hanna to lose everyone she loves dear once again.
When Hanna Heikkinen sacrificed herself to the God of Death to save her father, she never imagined she’d fall in love with the grumpy god - or thrive as Queen of Tuonela. Nor did she expect to uncover the truth of her divine lineage, a secret tied to powers far beyond her understanding.
\nBut when the Old Gods rise and Louhi’s dark forces plunge the Land of the Dead into Kaaos, threatening to destroy the balance of life and death, Hanna must fight for more than just her realm. With Tuonela unraveling and the souls of the dead at risk of eternal Oblivion, Hanna and Tuoni face impossible odds as love and duty collide.
\nCan Hanna save Tuonela before it's lost to the void, or will her greatest sacrifice come at the cost of the one she loves most?
Ever since she was a child, Kat Van Tassel knew that her parents had arranged for her to marry her best friend, Brom Bones, when she became of age. That was until Brom mysteriously vanished from the secretive village of Sleepy Hollow when he was just a teenager.
\nNow, at nineteen, Kat is fulfilling the tradition of attending Sleepy Hollow Institute, a shadowy and prestigious school that is run by her powerful family. There she starts to fall for her new teacher, the enigmatic, smart, and much older Ichabod Crane, whose fascination with dark magic and the occult brings out a new side of Kat - in more ways than one.
\nUntil Brom Bones suddenly appears in her class. Her childhood friend doesn’t remember what happened to him in the four years that he’s been gone, all he knows is that he’s back in Sleepy Hollow for good. The only problem is, he’s not the same man that Kat knew. Cocky and brash as a youth, this Brom is violent and prone to bouts of madness. It doesn’t help that his reappearance coincides with gruesome decapitations that are plaguing the town, with rumors swirling about a vengeful ghost called The Headless Horseman.
\nDetermined to get to the bottom of the murders and Brom’s volatility, Crane takes Brom under his wing to study him, and they begin to grow close, just as they do with Kat. But the more that the threesome submits to their sexual desires on the path to the truth, the more dangerous Sleepy Hollow becomes. The Headless Horseman might claim them as his next victims . . . if something even more terrifying doesn’t get to them first.
Katrina Van Tassel, Ichabod Crane, and Brom Bones have unraveled the bone-chilling mystery of Sleepy Hollow's Headless Horseman.
\nBut their journey is far from its end. As they share the enigmatic halls of Sleepy Hollow Institute, their lives become increasingly entangled, both emotionally and intimately. Amidst their exploration of dark desires, Kat grapples with the affections of two possessive men who hunger for not only her, but for each other.
\nAs their passions deepen, unsettling secrets within the school's ancient coven come to light, threatening to unravel the very fabric of their existence. Each character faces a profound test, with one harboring a hidden past that could shatter their newfound unity.
\nIn a suspenseful tale of desire, obsession, and the lurking shadows of Sleepy Hollow, these three souls will be pushed to the brink, facing the chilling consequences of their deepest secrets and darkest cravings.
For Brynla Aihr, crime and survival have always gone hand in hand. Ever since she escaped the fanatical dragon-worshipping cult that controls her homeland, she’s had to carve out a life doing the stealing dragon eggs. Egg theft is illegal and, in most cases, fatal. To breach a dragon's nest means a harrowing journey through the ancient wards spelled to keep the monstrous beasts confined. Dragons can’t get out and only those with a death wish can get in.
\nDespite the risks, dragon eggs are highly coveted for their magic. A black market flourishes under competing criminal empires, and Brynla’s loyalty has always been to the highest bidder. Until she finds herself kidnapped and blackmailed by Lord Andor, a formidable lieutenant of House Kolbeck, and thrust into the dangerous political games of rivaling dynasties.
\nBrynla and Andor clash at every turn, sparking heat in ways Brynla’s never felt before. But in a world that’s prophesized to return to the dragons, and rife with betrayal and secrets at every turn…how close to the flames is she willing to stand?
When 24-year old Hanna Heikkinen's estranged father dies, she reluctantly makes the trip to Northern Finland for his funeral. Being in the enchanting land of ice and snow feels miles away from Hanna's busy life back in Los Angeles, especially under the complicated circumstances.
\nBut when Hanna discovers that her father's body is missing, that's when things really get weird. A mysterious man, Rasmus, tells Hanna the truth: her father was a powerful shaman who went into Tuonela, the Realm of the Dead, in order to barter for more life, and has been held captive by Tuoni, the God of Death. The only way her father can be freed is if she travels with Rasmus into the mythical underworld to rescue him.
\nWilling to do anything to have a second-chance with her father, Hanna accompanies Rasmus into the dark and bloody realm, traveling via the River of Shadows, stalked by dangerous creatures, monsters, and the living dead, until they finally come into the haunted kingdom ruled by Death and his family.
\nOnly for her to be captured and held prisoner by the God of Death himself.
\nTurns out Death is intrigued by Hanna's beauty and fierceness and makes a bargain with her. If she marries him, and spends an eternity in the Realm of the Dead as his wife, he'll set her father free.
\nBut even the most noble sacrifices come with hidden costs, and Hanna's might involve the most unexpected of all things: her heart.
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Karine Giebel makes her American debut with this dark and haunting novel about the unbreakable bond between two brothers, both treated unfairly by the world.
\n“I’m so stupid. I barely have a brain at all.” Léonard knows he isn’t like the other kids in his class, and he understands all too well that the world can be relentlessly cruel to those who are different. Sometimes Léo wishes he could go far away, to beautiful Glen Affric in the Scottish Highlands - where his fierce older brother, Jorge, lives. He dreams of being reunited with Jorge, who will protect him from the torments of his daily life.
\nBut sometimes dreams can turn into nightmares . . .
\nLoosely inspired by John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Glen Affric is a profound story about differences, friendship, and the power of love to withstand abuse and oppression - a story that plunges us into the recesses of the human soul and introduces us to characters we’ll never forget.
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When Lena Preiss unexpectedly loses her job, her father convinces her to travel to Leavenworth, Washington, and help in her aunt’s new restaurant. The charming Christmas village in the Cascade Mountains is a gorgeous place for Lena to relax while between jobs, if not for the minor difficulty of feeding hundreds of tourists every night. Luckily, chocolatier Devin Meyer is on hand to take care of dessert.
\nDevin knows chocolate and enjoys nothing more than mixing and stirring the finest, smoothest, richest chocolate entirely by hand. She has returned home to help her father with one last holiday season before he retires and sells their family business. She is determined to spend the season planning for her future, but the beautiful and overwhelmed Lena proves to be more of a distraction than she expected.
\nAgainst a snowy backdrop glittering with Christmas lights, Lena and Devin learn how to shed the expectations of others and forge their own path - maybe one that they’ll share together.
There are moments when a single choice can define an entire life. Haiwen and Suchi are teenage sweethearts in 1940s Shanghai; their childhood friendship has blossomed into young love, and they believe that they are soulmates. But when Haiwen secretly decides to enlist in the army to keep his brother from the draft, their shared future is shattered. Their paths take them far afield from each other, with the exception of one pivotal chance encounter on the Hong Kong ferry in 1966.
\nSixty years later, Haiwen, now in his late seventies, is bagging bananas at a 99 Ranch in Los Angeles when he lifts his head to once more see Suchi. As they begin to rekindle their friendship, it feels like they might have a second chance to live the life they were supposed to have together. But the weight of the past lives with them at every moment, and only time will tell if they are able to forge something new.
\nTold in alternating narratives, Homeseeking spans seven decades, through the most tumultuous period of modern Chinese history up to contemporary times, tracing the separated lovers as they migrate from Shanghai to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and America.
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Nine lives will be forever changed . . .
\nOne long night in August, Arne and Tove are staying with their children in their summer house in southern Norway. Kathrine, a priest, is flying home from a Bible seminar, questioning her marriage. Journalist Jostein is out drinking for the night, while his wife, Turid, a nurse at a psychiatric care unit, is on a nightshift when one of her patients escapes.
\nAbove them all, a huge star suddenly appears blazing in the sky, and so begins a series of mysterious events. For these six, and three others, life is about to become ever more surprising and unruly . . .
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If no one ever died, what would happen then?
\nFor several days, a bright new star in the sky above Norway has blazed over the restless lives of those below. Tove, an artist, is consumed by intense creativity as she spirals towards psychosis. Line falls in love with a musician named Valdemar and is lured to a secret death metal gig in a remote forest. Geir, a policeman, is investigating a ritual murder but chances upon something more horrifying even than the bodies in the trees - the last bodies he sees, because, as undertaker Syvert is the first to realise, people have stopped dying since the star appeared.
\nWhat is haunting the world - and why?
\nAs profound as it is thrilling, Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The Third Realm is a breathtaking novel about ordinary lives on the cusp of irrevocable change.
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It's 1986 and a nuclear reactor has exploded in Chernobyl. Syvert Løyning returns home from military service to live with his mother and brother on the outskirts of a town in Southern Norway. One night, he dreams of his late father, and can't shake him from his mind. Searching through his father's belongings for clues and connections, he finds a cache of letters that lead to the Soviet Union.
\nIn present-day Russia, Alevtina is trying to balance work and family. She has always sought the answers to life's big questions, but is preoccupied with care of her young son. Her friend Vasilisa offers some nourishment: she is writing a book about an ancient feature of Russian culture, the belief in eternal life. Meantime, Alevtina is heading towards a meeting that will redraw the contours of her world.
\nA searching and humane novel, The Wolves of Eternity is an intimate journey into the experiences of a half-brother and half-sister in their two different - yet deeply connected - lives. The second novel expands the universe of The Morning Star in the decades before the blazing and mysterious star descends.
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Meg Pepper has a fulfilling career and a happy family. Most days she's able to keep it all together and glide through life. But then, in one unalterable moment, everything changes.
After school pickup one day, she stops her car to wave a teenage boy across the street . . . just as another car comes hurtling down the road and slams into him.
Meg can't help but blame herself for her role in this horrific disaster. Full of remorse, she throws herself into helping the boy's family as he rehabs from his injuries. But the more Meg tries to absolve herself, the more she alienates her own family - and the more she finds herself being drawn to the boy's father, Andrew.
Soon Meg's picture-perfect life is unravelling before her eyes. As the painful secrets she's been burying bubble dangerously close to the surface, she will have to decide: Can she forgive herself, or will she risk losing everything she holds dear to her heart?
Mathilde “Tilly” Crewson, a thirty-nine-year-old mother and art conservator, is tasked with restoring The Mother. The painting, believed to be the work of a female surgeon-turned-artist after a personal tragedy, is the rumored fourth piece in a collection of only three known works. But this newly discovered painting, scarred by fire, holds more than meets the eye.
\nSoon after receiving the painting, Tilly discovers she’s unexpectedly pregnant. But almost immediately, strange, inexplicable things begin to terrifying insect swarms, eerie visits from her long-deceased mother, and sinister whispers that invade her mind. As these malevolent forces intensify, Tilly comes to a harrowing the only way to sever the perilous bond she shares with the painting is to destroy it. But The Mother has plans of her own - and they’re darker than Tilly could ever imagine . . .
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After an incident at his school leaves closeted trans teenager Asher Sullivan needing stitches, his mother betrays him in the worst possible way - she sends him to Catholic school for his senior year. Now he has to contend with hideous plaid skirts, cranky nuns, and #bathroomJesus.
\nNighttime brings an escape for Asher when he dreams of the Midnight Circus - the one place where he is seen for the boy he truly is. Too bad it exists only in his sleep. Or at least, that’s what he believes, until the day his annoyingly attractive trapeze rival, Apollo, walks out of his dreams and into his classroom. On the heels of this realisation that the magical circus might be real, Asher also learns that his time there is limited.
\nIn his desperation to hang onto the one place he feels at home, Asher sets both worlds on a collision course that could destroy all the relationships he cares about most. Now he must decide how far he’ll go to preserve the magical circus, even if it means facing his biggest challenge yet - coming out.
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When a girl overhears a guy getting verbally destroyed by his friends for being catfished, she jumps in to save the day - and pretends to be his online crush. A young adult romance from the critically acclaimed author of Places We've Never Been.
\nWren is used to being called a control freak. She doesn’t care; sticking to the list of rules she created for herself helps her navigate life. But when a cute guy named Asher walks through the door of her neighborhood coffee shop, the rulebook goes out the window.
\nAsher is cute, charming . . . and being catfished by his online crush. So Wren makes an uncharacteristically impulsive decision - she pretends to be the girl he's waiting for to save him from embarrassment. Suddenly she’s fake-dating a boy she knows nothing about. And it’s . . . amazing.
\nIt's not long before Asher has her breaking even more of her own rules. But will he forgive her when he finds out she's not who she says she is? Wren's not so sure. . . . After all, rules exist for a reason.
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Maddie’s not impulsive. She’s all about hard work and planning ahead. But one night, on a whim, she buys a lottery ticket. And then, to her astonishment -
She wins!
In a flash, Maddie’s life is unrecognizable. No more stressing about college scholarships. Suddenly, she’s talking about renting a yacht. And being in the spotlight at school is fun…until rumors start flying, and random people ask her for loans. Now Maddie isn’t sure who she can trust.
Except for Seth Nguyen, her funny, charming coworker at the local zoo. Seth doesn’t seem aware of Maddie’s big news. And, for some reason, she doesn’t want to tell him. But what will happen if he learns her secret?
While spacing out in chemistry class, Lily scribbles some of her favorite song lyrics onto her desk. The next day, she finds that someone has continued the lyrics on the desk and added a message to her.
\nIntrigue!
Soon, Lily and her anonymous pen pal are exchanging full-on letters - sharing secrets, recommending bands, and opening up to each other. Lily realises she’s kind of falling for this letter writer. Only, who is he? As Lily attempts to unravel the mystery and juggle school, friends, crushes, and her crazy family, she discovers that matters of the heart can’t always be spelled out . . .
Norah hasn’t seen her childhood best friend, Skyler, in years. When he first moved away, they'd talk all the time, but lately their relationship has been reduced to liking each other’s Instagram posts. That’s why Norah can’t wait for the joint RV road trip their families have planned for the summer.
But when Skyler finally arrives, he seems . . . like he’d rather be anywhere else. Hurt and confused, Norah reacts in kind. Suddenly, her oldest friendship is on the rocks.
An unexpected summer spent driving across the country leads both Norah and Skyler down new roads and to new discoveries. Before long, they are, once again, seeing each other in a different light. Can their friendship-turned-rivalry turn into something more?
When Indy’s life came crashing down, she made a no one could know. To the world, she’s still the same Indy - cool, calm, unshaken. But behind the scenes? It’s chaos.
\nHer tight-knit crew - Beau, Caroline, and Ava - were once her everything. Now they’re strangers she can’t seem to reach - especially Beau. And the only person she talks to these days is Cody, a skater-boy she used to think was so not her type. Funny how everything changes when your world flips upside down.
\nAnd then, as if things couldn’t get weirder, Indy finds herself literally stuck in a school bathroom with Beau. After months of silence, and there’s no escape. If they want out, they’ll have to face the messy truth about what happened between them and find a way back to what they once had. Or maybe even more . . .
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Sutton knows she needs therapy. After all, she’s managing her newly opened restaurant remotely while taking care of her ungrateful sick mother. Plus, her boyfriend of two years just dumped her over the phone. But does therapy with a handsome stranger, who she has to pretend to be engaged to, in order to help her friend’s struggling relationship count? Probably not. Then why did she just agree to go? Because she’s had a few too many drinks? Because this stranger, Elijah, is smug and annoying and really, really handsome? Because she feels guilty that she abandoned her best friend, Tara, after high school and this might just make up for it? Whatever the reason, she has committed to this unhinged plan.
\nWhat the hell is Sutton doing?
\nHelping Tara prove a point: a good therapist can tell the difference between real love and fake love. That’s what she’s doing. But as they attend their sessions, Sutton and Elijah only seem to be proving one thing - the lines between pretend desire and real desire are very blurry. This true connection forming between them is threatening to unravel everything Sutton thought she knew about family, friendship, and her own heart.
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Iceland, 1910. In the middle of a severe storm two sisters - Freyja and Gudrun - rescue a mysterious, charismatic man from a shipwreck near their remote farm.
\nSixty-five years later, a young woman - Sigga - is spending time with her grandmother when they learn a body has been discovered on a mountainside near Reykjavik, perfectly preserved in ice.
\nMoving between the turn of the 20th century and the 1970s as a dark mystery is unravelled, The Swell is a spellbinding, beautifully atmospheric read, rich in Icelandic myth.
Stranger is trapped in the dark, with only her imagination and the scribbles on the wall left by long-dead girls to keep her company. Nearly out of food and water, she makes one last attempt to escape. But if the door opens at last, will it mean salvation, or only the beginning of her fight to survive?
\nAudrey is a search and rescue expert who never stopped looking for her ex-best friend, Janie, who disappeared when they were teenagers. Janie used to love the local legend of a forest witch who saves girls from bad men, but Audrey knows now that for every one saved, there’s always another one lost. When she stumbles upon evidence in the forest that a teenage runaway might have actually been kidnapped from land belonging to the town’s most prominent family, she will have to dig through decades of secrets to reveal the biggest one of all: what happened to the girls before.
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After
Jess is alone. Her cabin has burned to the ground. She knows if she doesn't act fast, the cold will kill her before she has time to worry about food. But she is still alive - for now.
Before
Jess hadn't seen her survivalist, off-the-grid dad in over a decade. But after a car crash killed her mother and left her injured, she was forced to move to his cabin in the remote Canadian wilderness. Just as Jess was beginning to get to know him, a secret from his past paid them a visit, leaving her father dead and Jess stranded.
After
With only her father’s dog for company, Jess must forage and hunt for food, build shelter, and keep herself warm. Some days it feels like the wild is out to destroy her, but she’s stronger than she ever imagined.
Jess will survive. She has to. She knows who killed her father . . . and she wants revenge.
Sophia's first memory is of drowning. She remembers the darkness of the water and the briny taste as it fills her throat. She remembers the cold shock of going under. She remembers her mother pulling her to safety before disappearing forever. But Sophia has never been in the ocean. And her mother died years ago in a hospital. Or so she has been told her whole life.
\nA series of clues have led Sophia to the island of Bitter Rock, Alaska, where she talked her way into a summer internship at the Landon Avian Research Center, the same center her mother worked at right before she died. There, she meets the disarmingly clever Liam, whose own mother runs the LARC, as well as Abby, who's following a mystery of her own: a series of unexplained disappearances. People have been vanishing from Bitter Rock for decades, leaving only their ghostly echoes behind. When it looks like their two mysteries might be one and the same, Sophia vows to dig up the truth, no matter how many lies she has to tell along the way. Even if it leads her to a truth she may not want to face.
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Kate Atkinson's dazzling Life After Life explored the possibility of infinite chances, following Ursula Todd as she lived through the turbulent events of the last century again and again.
\nHer new novel tells the story of Ursula Todd's beloved younger brother Teddy - would-be poet, RAF bomber pilot, husband, and father - as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge is facing the difficulties of living in a future he never expected to have.
\nThe stunning companion to Life After Life, A God in Ruins explores the loss of innocence, the fraught transition from the war to peace time, and the pain of being misunderstood, especially as we age.
Jackson Brodie, ex-military police, ex-Cambridge Constabulary, currently working as a private investigator, makes a highly anticipated return, nine years after the last Brodie, Started Early, Took My Dog.
Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son and an aging Labrador, both at the discretion of his ex-partner Julia. It’s picturesque, but there’s something darker lurking behind the scenes.
Jackson’s current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, is fairly standard-issue, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network - and back across the path of his old friend Reggie.
Case one: A little girl goes missing in the night.
\nCase two: A beautiful young office worker falls victim to a maniac's apparently random attack.
\nCase three: A new mother finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making - with a very needy baby and a very demanding husband - until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.
\nThirty years after the first incident, as private investigator Jackson Brodie begins investigating all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge . . .
Ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off a bad case of midlife malaise when he is called to a sleepy Yorkshire town, and the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But one theft leads to another, including the disappearance of a valuable Turner from Burton Makepeace, home to Lady Milton and her family. Once a magnificent country house, Burton Makepeace has now partially been converted into a hotel, hosting Murder Mystery weekends.
\nAs paying guests, a vicar, an ex-army officer, impecunious aristocrats, and old friends converge, we are treated a fiendishly clever mystery; one that pays homage to the masters of the genre - from Agatha Christie to Dorothy Sayers.
On a peat and heather island off the west coast of Scotland, Effie and her mother Nora take refuge in the large mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories.
\nNora, at first, recounts nothing that Effie really wants to hear, like who her father was – variously Jimmy, Jack, or Ernie. Effie tells of her life at college in Dundee, where she lives in a lethargic relationship with Bob, a student who never goes to lectures, seldom gets out of bed, and to whom the Klingons are as real as the French and the Germans (more real than the Luxemburgers).
\nBut strange things are happening. Why is Effie being followed? Why is everyone writing novels? Is someone killing the old people? And where is the mysterious yellow dog?
During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath.
\nDuring a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.
\nWhat if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?
\nLife After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again.
\nWith wit and compassion, Kate Atkinson finds warmth even in life's bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here she is at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.
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A dazzling collection of eleven interconnected stories.
\nNothing is quite as it seems in this collection of eleven dazzling stories. We meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a man who bets on a horse that may - or may not - have spoken to him. Everything that readers love about the novels of Kate Atkinson is here - the inventiveness, the verbal felicity, the sharp observations on human nature, and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop.
\nA startling and funny feast for the imagination, these stories conjure a multiverse of subtly connected worlds while illuminating the webs of chance and connection among us all.
Two years after the events of Case Histories left him a retired millionaire, Jackson Brodie has followed Julia, his occasional girlfriend and former client, to Edinburgh for its famous summer arts festival.
\nBut when he witnesses a man being brutally attacked in a traffic jam - the apparent victim of an extreme case of road rage - a chain of events is set in motion that will pull the wife of an unscrupulous real estate tycoon, a timid but successful crime novelist, and a hardheaded female police detective into Jackson's orbit.
\nSuddenly out of retirement, Jackson is once again in the midst of several mysteries that intersect in one giant and sinister scheme.
Thoroughly divorced but ever the optimist, Pamela faces the realities of aging and the leaps of faith required to put a “sparkle” on her daily life in this humorous short story.
\nPamela is a newly retired teacher with time on her hands. She’s finding it hard to muster enthusiasm for what’s ahead: exhausting postdivorce dating rituals and an uneasy relationship with her emotionally stunted, live-at-home son. But for Pamela, there’s a surprise in store that could challenge the status quo and, against all expectations, make life interesting again.
1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time.
\nThe notorious queen of this glittering world is Nellie Coker, ruthless but also ambitious to advance her six children, including the enigmatic eldest, Niven, whose character has been forged in the crucible of the Somme. But success breeds enemies, and Nellie’s empire faces threats from without and within. For beneath the dazzle of Soho’s gaiety, there is a dark underbelly, a world in which it is all too easy to become lost.
\nWith her unique Dickensian flair, Kate Atkinson gives us a window in a vanished world. Slyly funny, brilliantly observant, and ingeniously plotted, Shrines of Gaiety showcases the myriad talents that have made Atkinson one of the most lauded writers of our time.
It's a day like any other for Tracy Waterhouse, running errands at the local shopping center, until she makes a purchase she hadn't bargained for. One moment of madness is all it takes for Tracy's humdrum world to be turned upside down, the tedium of everyday life replaced by fear and danger at every turn.
Witnesses to Tracy's Faustian exchange are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie, who has returned to the land of his childhood, in search of someone else's roots.
Variously accompanied, pursued, or haunted by neglected dogs, unwanted children, and keepers of dark secrets, soon all three will learn that the past is never history - and that no good deed goes unpunished.
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Juliet Armstrong is a dissatisfied radio producer in a 1950s London that is recovering from the war as much as she is. During World War Two, Juliet was conscripted into service, transcribing conversations between an MI5 agent and a ring of suspected German sympathisers.
\nThe seemingly dull work quickly plunged Juliet into a treacherous world of code words and secret meetings where Juliet herself was sent into the field. These moments of intrigue and romance feel like a lifetime ago as Juliet trudges through her commute, her job and her new life. But as Juliet and the rest of London find ways to return to normal, her routine is upended by an encounter with a mysterious man from her past life.
Haunted by the relationships and actions of her past and facing a very real threat in the present, Juliet cannot escape the repercussions of her work for the government. With no other choice, Juliet is quickly pulled back into the life of espionage she thought she'd left behind. Kate Atkinson's latest novel brings mid-century London to life in a gripping tale of deception and consequences.
On a hot summer day, Joanna Mason's family slowly wanders home along a country lane. A moment later, Joanna's life is changed forever . . .
On a dark night thirty years later, ex-detective Jackson Brodie finds himself on a train that is both crowded and late. Lost in his thoughts, he suddenly hears a shocking sound . . .
At the end of a long day, 16-year-old Reggie is looking forward to watching a little TV. Then a terrifying noise shatters her peaceful evening. Luckily, Reggie makes it a point to be prepared for an emergency . . .
These three lives come together in unexpected and deeply thrilling ways.
Michelle Monroe’s fifteen minutes are almost up.
\nAfter ten years online, she is a master at her trade: scamming her fans. But her once-bright internet stardom is blinking into oblivion. The brand deals are drying up, the views are plummeting, and even her haters no longer care enough to snark.
\nWhen she spots an ornate, scarlet envelope sitting outside her high-rise condo, she realizes her luck is about to change. It’s an invite to an exclusive brand trip for the new energy drink company, Excelsior. The answer is easy: Yes. Even if she has to tolerate hours with the peers that surpassed her.
\nThe worst she expects is a blow-out fight or two (filmed, of course, from multiple angles). But no one anticipates joining a different kind of Mile-High Club: witnessing the death of their frenemy at 30,000 feet. Still, the most tragic news of all is that there’s no internet on the island, no turndown service, and only each other and their shared grudges for entertainment.
\nAs the backstabbing turns literal, and more influencers die in awful, strange ways, the dwindling group can no longer deny the obvious: someone gathered them there to die.
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Mingshin outsmarted three princes to help the man she loved become king. But she doesn’t see Ren’s betrayal coming, not until she’s lying in a pool of her own blood on the palace steps.
\nAs she’s dying, Mingshin makes a desperate plea to the gods to turn back time and give her a chance to make things right.
\nMingshin wakes up two years earlier, her prayer granted, and swears two things: Ren will never become king, and she will never fall in love again.
\nBut the timeline in this life has changed: a dignitary gifted with dark magic is threatening her kingdom’s peace, and Ren’s thirst for power runs deeper than Mingshin could have imagined.
\nShe finds herself allying with Jieh, another contender for the throne. Mingshin knows better than anyone not to give her heart to a prince. But in the viper’s nest of the royal court, she and Jieh prove a phenomenal team. Can Mingshin avert the catastrophe of her past by once again learning to trust . . . and maybe even love?
Even after defeating her murderer, Prince Ren, Mingshin has no time to rest. The youngest prince's shocking death leaves the royal family shaken, and Mingshin is determined to get answers. She soon discovers that Wen was killed by a magical olfactory - delivered poison that drove him to suicide.
\nBut which dark sorcerer is responsible? The Night Dragon, Ren's shadowy master, has yet to show his face. Mingshin knows it is only a matter of time before he discovers that she carries the immensely powerful Divine Stone. She already used the stone once to change the world's timeline and cannot imagine what will happen if he uses it to gain power.
\nAs the Night Dragon closes in, Mingshin must decide whether she trusts her friends enough to share the secrets of the powerful stone she is fated to protect. Will Jieh, who has been raised to loathe the use of magic, continue loving her after he learns she's becoming a mage? Mingshin must find the courage to unveil her true powers to her friends to stop the Night Dragon from destroying this timeline once and for all.
Ever since her father broke her heart when she was nine, Julia Heimdahl has tried to be good company for bad men: a jovial drinking companion, an easygoing, witty non-complainer, one of the boys. Now a literary novelist in late middle age and late mid-career, she is at a moment of crisis, although she doesn’t know it yet.
\nThe novel takes place over the course of a weekend-long book festival at Baldwin College, which happens to be Julia’s alma mater, where she has come to promote her recently published memoir. She’s been placed on a panel with a fellow memoirist named Ellis Blackwell, a man so outrageously flirtatious and fawningly flattering, Julia is almost too disarmed to recognise how dangerous he is.
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Cut from the US women’s hockey team right before her third chance at gold, Natalie Carpenter is scrambling for a plan that’ll help her avoid moving back home. The answer: a guest-hosting gig on Wake Up, USA’s winter games coverage. Her cohost: Darcy LaCroix, Nat’s ex-girlfriend, one-time college teammate turned adversary.
\nSince leaving Team Canada, Darcy has worked hard to make a name in broadcasting. If her big break requires sharing screen time with the former cocky freshman who turned her world upside down, so be it. At this point, there’s nothing between them except history.
\nBut audiences disagree. #PuckingHotties is trending hard, and Nat and Darcy agree to lean into it - for ratings, obviously. It’s not like Nat can forget the way Darcy broke her heart or their bitter team rivalry.
\nBetween working, traveling together and that irresistible spark, it’s getting hard to separate what’s real and what’s for the camera. Because somewhere underneath everything that went wrong is the sneaking suspicion that nothing will ever feel quite this right again.
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JT Cox never quite fit into Hart’s Landing. Playing on the boys’ hockey team and coming out young didn’t help. Now, thanks to an Olympic gold medal, JT’s name is on a sign greeting visitors to her hometown. Her family of artists and creatives still treat her as an odd duck, but elsewhere there’s a warm welcome. Especially from her best friend’s older sister, newly divorced Ali Porter.
\nSingle for the first time since high school, Ali is ready to take the reins of her own life. She’s never had the chance to date another woman, and JT is an irresistible force of nature. When they team up for the town’s holiday contest, cocoa tasting and gingerbread decorating give way to snow-melting chemistry.
\nIf teenage JT thought Ali was the prettiest girl on the planet, adult JT is completely smitten. But JT can’t see herself living in Hart’s Landing again and Ali can’t imagine leaving her job and her newly purchased home. And with Ali’s mom trying to plot a reconciliation with her ex, this holiday season might be bittersweet . . . or the start of something magical.
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An uncertain and uneasy peace has fallen on the kingdom of Wendar, but at the court of King Henry the various factions still jockey relentlessly and ruthlessly for position. It seems that the king's favor has fallen upon Prince Sanglant, his bastard son, and that he is to be the chosen heir. But Sanglant is too troubled by the recent past to seek that crown. He needs time to recover and, most of all, he needs Liath, the woman who saved him from his terrible captivity - even though such a liaison must incur his father's implacable wrath.
\nLiath, born with a dangerous power beyond her understanding or ability to control, is torn between her longing for Sanglant and the child they are about to have and the call of sorcery, which can open the way into the land of the Aoi, the Lost Ones. She has also learned that her mother, a powerful practitioner of the banned sorcerous arts, is not dead, as she always thought, and is seeking her to school her in the same arts.
\nAnd Alain, their friend and ally, although happily restored to the bosom of his family and married to the saintly Tallia, is in mortal danger from the curse of Bloodheart, who is reaching out from the grave.
\nAs the fates of kingdoms shift with the changing fortunes of those caught up in the dangers of both civil war and continuing attacks by the nonhuman Eika and the Quman invaders, time is running out for Liath, Sanglant, King Henry, and the people of Wendar and Varre.
Lost and alone in an unknown country, Alain struggles to survive as he is unwittingly drawn into an ancient conflict between humankind and their old enemy, the Cursed Ones.
\nSeparated from her husband and child, Liath must undergo her greatest test in a land of exile. Only here can she hope to discover the truth of her parentage and learn the extent of her remarkable powers.
\nMourning the loss of his wife, the bastard prince Sanglant seeks his father, King Henry, to warm him about the conspiracy of powerful sorcerers who wish to destroy the Aoi, the Lost Ones, once and for all – no matter how much destruction their magic will unleash.
\nBut King Henry's gaze is fixed on the throne of Aosta and the imperial crown left vacant for two generations. As a Quman army, sweeping in from the eastern steppes, ravages the Wendish countryside, Henry marches south, ignoring the pleas of his beleaguered subjects.
\nThe great cataclysm, foretold in the stars, is approaching.
Only one thing is certain: when Hallows' Night comes, the Wild Hunt will ride - and it feeds on mortal blood.
Cat and her cousin Bee are caught in a maze of intrigue, treachery, and magic. Everyone seems to want something from them: the Cold Mages are trying to take them prisoner, and the warlord who wants to conquer all of Europa seems sure they have a special destiny to aid him whether they want to or not. Worse, hidden powers deep in the spirit world are rising, and they are the most dangerous of all. Cat must seek allies and figure out who she can trust in order to save the ones she loves. For if she doesn't, everything will be lost.
It is the dawn of a new age... The Industrial Revolution has begun, factories are springing up across the country, and new technologies are transforming in the cities. But the old ways do not die easy.
Young Cat Barahal thinks she understands the world she lives in and her place in it, but in fact she is merely poised, unaware, on the brink of shattering events. Drawn into a labyrinth of politics involving blood, betrayal and old feuds, she will be forced to make an unexpected and perilous journey in order to discover the truth, not just about her own family but about an ancient secret lying at the heart of her world.
Cat and her cousin Bee are part of this revolution. Young women at college, learning of the science that will shape their future and ignorant of the magics that rule their families. But all of that will change when the Cold Mages come for Cat. New dangers lurk around every corner and hidden threats menace her every move. If blood can't be trusted, who can you trust?
King Henry’s kingdom has been ravaged by internecine warfare, in a conflict that has been both long and bloody. Furthermore, the spell holding the exiled Ashioi from the world has failed, and the land, ravaged by the fury of their return, is only now showing signs of recovery.
\nSanglant is struggling to legitimise his leadership as the returned Ashioi are planning war, and Stronghand has begun a march of conquest into the heart of Sanglant's realm. Adelheid and Antonia have made an unholy alliance, and Sabella and Duke Conrad are moving to seize Sanglant's crown. Cultures, religions, and races are clashing in what will be the ultimate struggle for control of this strange new world.
The Republic of Chaonia fleets under the joint command of Princess Sun and her formidable mother, Queen-Marshal Eirene, have defeated and driven out an invading fleet of the Phene Empire, although not without heavy losses. But the Empire remains strong and undeterred. While Chaonia scrambles to rebuild its military, the Empire's rulers are determined to squash Chaonia once and for all by any means necessary.
\nOn the eve of Eirene's bold attack on the rich and populous Karnos System, an unexpected tragedy strikes the republic. Sun must take charge or lose the throne. Will Sun be content with the pragmatic path laid out by her mother for Chaonia's future? Or will she forge her own legend despite all the forces arrayed against her?
The long-dreaded cataclysm is about to descend on the world as the lost land of the Aoi returns to the Earth from which it was cast forth millennia ago. And though Liath has at last found her way back to Earth, she knows disaster will soon follow her. Yet just how little time remains to avert humanity’s destruction she discovers to her horror only when she learns that her brief stay in the bespelled land has actually kept her from her family and allies for nearly four years.
\nIn that time, Sanglant has mobilised an army and journeyed to the land of the griffins, intent on forging an alliance to stand against the forces which are determined to rework the spell that originally exiled the Aoi and their lands from the world.
\nAlain, caught up by Liath as she makes her way back to her own world and time, has been returned to the present bereft of all that matters to him. And though for a while he finds refuge in a monastery, he is soon condemned to a terrible fate. His only hope of rescue lies with the Eika leader Stronghand, who has begun a campaign of conquest into the human lands.
\nAnd even as these diverse forces struggle to avert total ruin, the mathematici, led by Anne and Hugh, strive to re-create the original spell which exiled the ancient Aoi, neither knowing nor caring that their magical workings could tear their world apart . . .
The world of Liath and Alain is breaking apart as King Henry's kingdom is savaged by earthly and supernatural forces, which they alone have the power to understand. The Eika warriors thirst for the King's land and power, their enmity sealed by generations of blood. Bitter in-fighting within King Henry's court and the ceaseless attrition of raiders also weaken his reign.
\nThose who remain true must stay strong as the shadow of the Cursed Ones falls, and the spell holding the exiled from the planet fails. Liath must force her wild sorcery to maturity and Sanglant, her husband and King Henry's heir, must struggle to hold the realm together. The twin destinies of Liath and Alain may yet avert the destruction written in the stars.
There are terrors that dwell in the space between worlds.
\nIt’s been a year since Esther set foot in the Beyond, the alien landscape stretching between worlds, crossing boundaries of space and time. She and her magical travelling party, her Hex, haven’t spoken since the Concilium banned them from the Beyond. But when she wakes in the middle of the night to her son’s cry for help, the members of her Hex are the only ones she can trust to help her bring him back from wherever he has been taken.
\nEsther will have to risk everything to find him. Undercover and hidden from the Concilium, she and her Hex will be tested by dragon lords, a darkness so dense it can suffocate, and the bones of an old crime come back to haunt her.
The Kingdom of Wendar is in turmoil. King Henry still holds the crown, but his reign has long been contested by his sister Sabella, and there are many eager to flock to her banner. Internal conflict weakens Wendar's defences, drawing raiders, human and inhuman, across its borders. Terrifying portents abound and dark spirits walk the land in broad daylight.
\nSuddenly two innocents are thrust into the midst of the conflict. Alain, a young man granted a vision by the Lady of Battles, and Liath, a young woman with the power to change the course of history. Both must discover the truth about themselves before they can accept their fates. For in a war where sorcery, not swords, may determine the final outcome, the price of failure may be more than their own lives.
When the royal party finds themselves in a land they never believed they could access, it will take all of Prince Gevulin's (admittedly impressive) diplomatic skills to forge a coalition with an unlikely group of would-be allies.
\nMeanwhile, as Erin mourns her lost love, an unwelcome visit to the land of her birth brings back the traumatic memories of the childhood she shared with her sister.
\nAnd a surprise visit from an unwelcome family member threatens to derail the plans of multiple opposing factions.
Sanglant - the prince of dogs, King Henry's bastard son - is being held captive in the city of Gent by Bloodheart, The Eika warlord. Liath, now one of the King's Eagles - and still grieving over the loss of Sanglant - is desperately trying to unlock the secrets of her own past.
\n\t\t\t\t\tUnless she masters her powers she may prove a grave danger to everyone, herself included. Alain, now proclaimed a Count's heir, is increasingly troubled by visions of the enemy he befriended and the Lady of Battles whom he's sworn to serve. And Fifth Brother, least favoured son of Bloodheart, has returned to the lands of his own people to unite the scattered tribes and build an army to do his father's bidding.
\nWhile King Henry continues this progress through his troubled realm, Sanglant, Liath, Alain and Fifth Brother fight their own individual battles. Only time will tell who will prove triumphant as all of them are caught up in the dangers and turmoil of a world at war . . .
Fellian is a Lamplighter, able to provide illumination through magic. A group of rebel Monarchists free her from indentured servitude and take her on a journey to rescue trapped compatriots from an underground complex of mines.
\nAlong the way they get caught up in a conspiracy to kill the latest royal child and wipe out the Monarchist movement for good.
\nBut Fellian has more than just her Lamplighting skills up her sleeve . . .
Marit was pretty sure she had been murdered. She vividly recalled the assassin's dagger, and her dying vision had shown her the next world - but her spirit had not made the journey. She woke alone, sprawled on a Guardian's altar, with more questions than answers. The Guardians once ruled the Hundred, but disappeared in ages past, leaving reeves to manage the peace in their stead. But Marit finds this peace has been shattered as a desperate army ravages the land, and its leaders walk in shadow, wearing the cloaks of lost Guardians.
\n\t\t\t\t\tAs she searches for meanings in a changed world, Marit finds her old love Joss and the Outlander Anji struggling to maintain order amidst chaos. But her own enemies are drawing close. Marit tries to untangle the web of betrayals that connect her murder with the razing of the countryside, but she can't run forever. She will be found and there will be choices: complicity or death.
For hundreds of years the Guardians ruled the Hundred, but these unearthly beings have faded from human sight and no longer exert their will on the world. Only the reeves, patrolling from the skies, still represent the Guardians' power. But there is a corruption in the land that not even they can control, and fanatics are devastating villages, towns, and cities, slaughtering all who oppose them.
\n\t\t\t\t\tOutlanders Anji and Mai are fleeing their homeland with a company of dedicated warriors. On reaching the Hundred, they form an alliance with Reeve Joss, and determine to stand against the devouring horde. But, as region after region slips into chaos, a young woman sworn to the Goddess may be all that keeps them from annihilation . . .
Reeve Joss is struggling to defend a country ravaged by the assaults of twin armies. His men now patrol a land of burning villages and homeless refugees as Joss tries to separate traitor from friend.
\nThe Reeve s thoughts are also plagued by the intriguing Zubaidit, pleasure-giver, spy and temple-trained assassin. But Zubaidit is focused on a dangerous mission, her target being warped Guardian Lord Radas. His death would leave the invading militia in chaos, but the old tales tell truly of the Guardians immortality - and of the powers they now wield to twist the hearts of men.
\nJoss's nights are also troubled, disturbed by dreams of Marit. His lost love has returned from death to become a feared Guardian herself, but Marit rejected the corrupt temptations they offered. She now seeks others of her kind, praying some are yet uncontaminated by the blight on the land - and have the will to fight it.
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It has been eight centuries since the beacon system failed, sundering the heavens. Rising from the ashes of the collapse, cultures have fought, system-by-system, for control of the few remaining beacons. The Republic of Chaonia is one such polity. Surrounded by the Yele League and the vast Phene Empire, they have had to fight for their existence. After decades of conflict, Queen-Marshal Eirene has brought the Yele to heel.
\nNow it is time to deal with the Empire. Princess Sun, daughter and heir, has come of age.
\nIn her first command, she drove a Phene garrison from the beacons of Na Iri - an impressive feat. But growing up in the shadow of her mother - a ruler both revered and feared - has been no easy task. While Sun may imagine that her victorious command will bring further opportunity to prove herself, it will in fact place her on the wrong side of court politics. There are those who would like to see Sun removed as heir, or better yet, dead. To survive, the princess must rely on her wits and companions: her biggest rival, her secret lover, and a dangerous prisoner of war.
When an arrogant prince (and his equally arrogant entourage) gets stuck in Orledder Halt as part of brutal political intrigue, competent and sunny deputy courier Elen - once a child slave meant to shield noblemen from the poisonous Pall - is assigned to guide him through the hills to reach his destination.
\nWhen she warns him not to enter the haunted Spires, the prince doesn’t heed her advice, and the man who emerges from the towers isn’t the same man who entered.
\nThe journey that follows is fraught with danger. Can a group taught to ignore and despise the lower classes survive with a mere deputy courier as their guide?
An American veteran of the D-Day landings on a sentimental journey with his old unit to their base is the last body archaeologist Neil Watson expects to find in the ruins of an old chapel. Neil turns to his old friend from student days, Detective Sergeant Wesley Peterson, for help. Ironically, both men are looking at an invading force - Wesley the World War II American veterans, and Neil a group of shipwrecked Spaniards reputed to have met a sticky end at the hands of outraged locals as they limped from the wreckage of the great Armada in 1588.
\nLocal memories prove retentive and Wesley is soon caught up in 50 year-old accusations, resentments, and romances. Wesley's case grows more perplexing, while Neil uncovers a tragic story from the distant past. More than 400 years apart, two strangers in a strange land have died violently, and Wesley is running out of time to find out why.
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Never has DI Wesley Peterson witnessed such a bizarre crime scene. The victim, Charles Marrick, has been murdered, his body drained of blood. Described by those who knew him as 'evil', it seems that Wesley isn't going to have any shortage of suspects - until a popular local vet is murdered in an identical fashion . . . and a third body is discovered many miles away.
And when Wesley's archaeologist friend, Neil Watson, starts getting disturbing anonymous letters written in gory detail about macabre events at a medieval abbey - which Neil fears are being sent by the killer Wesley is looking for - Wesley wonders whether there could be a connection between all these deaths and Neil's letters. And could Neil himself be in danger? As the sinister truth unfolds, both Wesley and Neil are forced to face tragedy and shocking revelations . . . and a killer who bears the scars of past sins.
An excavation at the lost gardens of Earlsacre Hall is called to a halt when a skeleton is discovered under a three-hundred-year-old stone plinth, a corpse that seems to have been buried alive. But Detective Sergeant Wesley Peterson has little time to indulge in his hobby of archaeology. He has a more recent murder case to solve. A man has been found stabbed to death in a caravan at a popular holiday park and the only clue to his identity is a newspaper clipping about the restoration of Earlsacre.
Does local solicitor Brian Willerby have the answer? He seems eager to talk to Wesley, but before he can reveal his secret he is found dead during a “friendly” game of village cricket, apparently struck by a cricket ball several times with some force. What is it about Earlsacre Hall that leads people to murder?
It is 1920 and Scotland Yard detective DI Albert Lincoln is still reeling from the disturbing events of the previous year. Trapped in a loveless marriage and tired of his life in London, he's pleased when he's called to a new case in the North West of England.
Before the War, he led the unsuccessful investigation into the murder of little Jimmy Rudyard in the village of Mabley Ridge. Now a woman has been murdered there and another child is missing, the sole witness being a traumatised boy who lives in a cemetery lodge. Albert's first investigation was a failure but this time he is determined to find the truth . . . and the missing child.
As Albert delves into the lives of the village residents he uncovers shocking secrets and obsessions. With the help of a village schoolmistress with her own secret past, Albert closes in on Jimmy's killer. Then, as more bodies are discovered, he realises that his young witness from the cemetery lodge is in grave danger, from somebody he calls 'the Shadow Man'. As Albert discovers more about the victims he finds information that might bring him a step closer to solving a mystery of his own: the whereabouts of his lost son.
On a stormy night in December a tree is blown down on an isolated Devon farm. Only when the fallen tree is dragged away is a red rucksack found caught amongst the roots - and next to it a human skeleton.
\nThe discovery of the body and the rucksack jolts some memories for DI Wesley Peterson. A hitch hiker who went missing in 2008, and was never found, was last seen carrying a similar backpack. A half-forgotten cold case has suddenly become red hot.
\nMeanwhile, in the small Devon village of Petherham, Damien Lee, a famous TV psychic, is the main attraction at a supernatural weekend. The event is held at the Mill House, a guesthouse that was once home to the owner of Petherham's water-powered woollen mill, now the subject of a study by Wesley's friend, archaeologist Neil Watson
\nThe Mill House has a sinister history and it was the scene of several mysterious deaths back in the nineteenth century. When the psychic dies in suspicious circumstances Wesley discovers a connection between the dead man and the vanished hitch hiker. But was he responsible for her murder? Or has a shady organisation called The Burial Circle, which was connected with those strange deaths over a hundred years before, been revived in the present day?
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When the decaying body of a murdered woman is discovered, DI Peterson has difficulties establishing her true identity. But as he digs deeper, he has another disturbing case to investigate - the naked bodies of two teenagers have been found with fatal shotgun wounds at the foot of a cliff.
As Wesley searches for the truth, both cases become stranger as he uncovers a connection between a sinister manhunt mirroring events from the time of the Napoleonic Wars and an online game that's gripped the imaginations of local teenagers.
Then, as a skeleton is found near the place where the dead teenagers were last seen alive, Wesley has to face a terrible truth . . . and a hunt to the death.
Despite many years living in South Devon, DI Wesley Peterson has never visited the tiny island of St Rumon's. That is until erosion from a storm reveals three bodies buried outside the local churchyard.
\nTwo are ancient skeletons, but one is far more recent, and Wesley realises he has uncovered a case of murder. But whose remains are they? And who killed them?
\nThe island has only a small number of inhabitants. Yet one resident keeps cropping up in Wesley's investigation: the author and self-styled academic, Quentin Search.
\nMeanwhile Wesley's friend, archaeologist Neil Watson, becomes fascinated by the remains of the island's old priory. His discovery of a journal, written by a sixteenth century cleric, reveals an eerie tale of strange rituals and disturbing deaths.
\nAs Wesley begins to wonder whether the past might be repeating itself, another murder occurs . . . There is a calculated killer on the island - one whose grip is as deadly as the rising tide.
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The brutal massacre of the Harford family at Potwoolstan Hall in 1985 shocked the populace and passed into local folklore. When a journalist researching the case is murdered 20 years later, the horror is reawakened. Now a New Age healing center, 16th-century Potwoolstan Hall is reputed to be cursed because of the crimes of its builder, and it seems the inheritance of evil lives.
\nAs more people die violently, detective Wesley Peterson must discover why a young woman has transformed a doll’s house into a miniature reconstruction of the massacre scene. The solution seems to lie in the ruined remains of an early English settlement in Virginia, but when the truth is finally revealed, it turns out to be as horrifying as it is dangerous.
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Strangefields Farm is notorious for its sinister history ever since artist Jackson Temples lured young women there to model for disturbing works of art. Some of those girls never left the house alive.
\nNow, decades later, Strangefields is to be transformed into a holiday village, but the developer's hopes of its dark history being forgotten are dashed when a skull is found on the site. And when a local florist is found murdered in an echo of Temples' crimes, DI Wesley Peterson fears that a copy-cat killer is at large. Especially when another brutal murder in a nearby village appears to be linked.
\nAs Wesley's friend, archaeologist Dr Neil Watson, uncovers the secrets of Strangefields' grisly past, it seems that an ancient tale of the dead returning to torment the living might not be as fantastical as it seems. And Wesley must work fast to discover who's behind the recent murders . . . before someone close to him is put in danger.
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When a body is discovered in a picturesque South Devon village, DI Wesley Peterson is called in to investigate. The victim, Barry Brown, is a celebrity ghostwriter and the theft of his laptop suggests that the motive for murder may lie in his work.
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While Wesley investigates Barry's famous clients, Wesley's teenage son Michael joins family friend, Dr Neil Watson, on an intriguing excavation of a crashed World War Two plane on Dartmoor. The plane was used to ferry secret agents into Europe during the war and, when three skeletons are discovered nearby, it seems the wreckage might hold more secrets than they could ever have imagined.
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Wesley's case leads him to the same area and he discovers a sinister history surrounding the moor and the nearby village of Moor Barton.
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When DI Wesley Peterson is summoned to investigate a killing, he assumes that the case is a routine matter. But soon dark secrets and deadly deceptions start to emerge from the victim's past, and Wesley begins to realise that a simple incident of cold-blooded murder is altogether more calculated and complicated that he could ever imagine. Tracing back through time . . .
\nMeanwhile, archaeologist Neil Watson is pulled from the historic Paradise Court to a ruined village from the First World War. Even with the help of the attractive and enigmatic Lucy, Neil cannot shake the feeling that something is missing from his explorations: a cryptic clue that might have been lost when Sandrock tumbled into the sea many years ago. A clue that could help Wesley solve his most puzzling case to date. DI Wesley Peterson is standing on the edge . . .
\nAs more victims fall prey to a faceless killer, Wesley sees the investigation affecting him more personally than ever before. And when his precious family becomes a target, Wesley has no time to lose. Just like the fallen village of Sandrock, Wesley will have to stand tall if he is to withstand the coming storm . . .
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When Dr James Dalcott is shot dead in his cottage it looks very much like an execution. And as DI Wesley Peterson begins piecing together the victim's life, he finds that the well-liked country doctor has been harbouring strange and dramatic family secrets.
\nMeanwhile, archaeologist Neil Watson has discovered a number of skeletons in nearby Tailors Court that bear marks of dissection and might be linked to tales of body snatching by a rogue physician in the sixteenth century. But when Neil finds the bones of a child buried with a 1930s coin, the investigation takes a sinister turn.
\nWho were the children evacuated to Tailors Court during World War II? And where are they now? When a link is established between the wartime evacuees and Dr Dalcott's death, Wesley is faced with his most challenging case yet.
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When a skeleton is discovered on a Devon smallholding, DS Wesley Peterson, a keen amateur archaeologist, is intrigued by the possibility that it is a Viking corpse, buried in keeping with ancient traditions. But he has a rather more urgent crime to solve- the disappearance of a Danish tourist. Wesley finds disturbing evidence that the attractive Dane has been abducted. His boss Gerry Heffernan believes that Ingeborg's disappearance is linked to a spate of brutal robberies and that she witnessed something she shouldn't have.
\nBut is her disappearance linked to far older events? For it seems that this may not have been Ingeborg's first visit to this far from quiet West Country backwater . . . Kate Ellis's wonderfully addictive series of West Country set crime novels feature Wesley Peterson, one of Devon's first black detectives.
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1919. The Derbyshire village of Wenfield is still reeling from four terrible years of war, and now, just when the village is coming to terms with the loss of so many of its sons, the brutal murder of a young girl shatters its hard-won tranquillity.
Myrtle Bligh is found stabbed and left in woodland, her mouth slit to accommodate a dead dove, a bird of peace.
During the war Myrtle worked as a volunteer nurse with Flora Winsmore, the local doctor's daughter, caring for badly wounded soldiers at the nearby big house, Tarnhey Court.
When two more women are found murdered in identical circumstances, Inspector Albert Lincoln is sent up from London, a man not only wounded in war but damaged in peace by the death of his young son and his cold, loveless marriage. Once in Wenfield, Albert begins to investigate the three recent murders and the Cartwright family of Tarnhey Court and their staff fall under suspicion as their hidden lives and secrets are uncovered.
With rumours of a ghostly soldier with a painted face being spotted near the scene of the murders, the village is thrown into a state of panic - and with the killer still on the loose, who will be the next to die at the hands of this vicious angel of death?
When Darren Hatman reports his daughter missing, DI Wesley Peterson isn't too concerned. Leanne Hatman is an aspiring model, keen to abandon her native Devon for the bright lights of London. However, Darren's claim that a photographer has been stalking Leanne soon changes Wesley's opinion.
\nLeanne works at Eyecliffe Castle, once home to the wealthy D'Arles family and now converted into a luxury hotel. When Darren himself is found brutally murdered in the castle grounds, the police fear is that Leanne has met a similar fate. But, if so, where is her body?
\nMeanwhile, Wesley's friend, archaeologist Neil Watson, recently returned from a thrilling Sicilian excavation, makes a disturbing discovery near Eyecliffe Castle and surprises Wesley with the news that, while in Sicily, he met Leanne's alleged stalker.
\nWith Eyecliffe Castle becoming the scene of another violent death, Wesley suspects a connection between the recent crimes, the disappearance of two girls back in the 1950s and a mysterious Sicilian ruin called the House of Eyes, a place feared by superstitious locals.
\nAs he works to solve one of his most challenging cases yet, Wesley must face alarming revelations, rooted in centuries of fear and evil . . . as well as dealing with a nightmare of his own.
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1921, Derbyshire. When a Member of Parliament goes missing in a small Derbyshire village, Scotland Yard detective Albert Lincoln is sent up North to investigate. He finds that a grim discovery has been made in a cave next to an ancient stone circle called the Devil's Dancers: the naked body of a middle-aged man mutilated beyond recognition.
The local police assume it is the missing politician but when Albert arrives in Wenfield he begins to have doubts. Two years earlier he conducted another traumatic murder investigation in the same village and he finds reminders of a particularly personal tragedy all around him as he tries to help a vicar's widow who claims her husband was murdered.
Then there is another murder in Wenfield when an unfaithful young wife with a passion for books is accused of killing her husband. Could there be a link between all of Albert's cases? And can the detective, damaged by war and love, find peace at last?
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When Clare Mayers is almost killed on her way home by a man she describes as having a ‘dog’s head’ it’s up to DI Wesley Peterson and his team to try and unravel this strange case.Meanwhile, archaeologist Neil Watson has been commissioned to examine the wealth of Egyptian artefacts amassed by the late Frederick Varley.
\nBut as Neil gets closer to uncovering the truth surrounding some sinister allegations of the past, he discovers the shocking secrets that someone is desperate to keep hidden from the prying eyes of the community.As the Jackal Man continues to torment the women of Tradmouth, is it a case of history repeating itself? And can Wesley Peterson stop him before it’s too late . . .
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November. With the tourist season well and truly over in South Devon, Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson is looking forward to a quieter month in the CID. But when a man is shot dead on Bonfire Night, he finds he has a disturbing murder case on his hands.
\nThe body of Patrick North was found in woodland connected to Nesbaraton Hall, a grand estate dating back to the eighteenth century. North worked for the Smithson family who now own the estate. The family are away on holiday, however when an anonymous letter threatening to abduct the Smithson son is uncovered, Wesley fears North's death might have been collateral damage in a kidnap plot.
\nMeanwhile, archaeologist Dr Neil Watson discovers a hidden grotto on land that was once part of the Nesbaraton estate. Evidence of past rituals and the shocking discovery of a skeleton raise questions about strange occurrences, past and present, on the land.
\nThen, just when Wesley's team seem to be making progress in their investigation, a resident of the nearby village is killed in a near-identical shooting to North's. A race is on to find the ruthless killer, before they strike again . . .
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When Kirsten Harbourn is found strangled and naked on her wedding day, DI Wesley Peterson makes some alarming discoveries. Kirsten was being pursued by an obsessed stalker and she had dark secrets her doting fianc, Peter, knew nothing about. But Kirsten's wasn't the only wedding planned to take place that July day in South Devon. At Morbay register office a terrified young girl makes her wedding vows. And a few days later her bridegroom is found dead in a seedy seaside hotel.
\nAs Wesley investigates he suspects that his death and his bride's subsequent disappearance might be linked to Kirsten's murder. Meanwhile the skeleton of a young female is found buried in a farmer's field - a field that once belonged to the family of Ralph Strong, an Elizabethan playwright whose play, 'The Fair Wife of Padua' is to be performed for the first time in four hundred years. Is this bloodthirsty play a confession to a murder committed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1? Or does it tell another story, one that might cast light on recent mysteries?
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When archaeologist Neil Watson unearths a long-buried mechanical figure in a Dartmoor field, he is determined to discover the truth behind the bizarre find.
Soon, however, the sleepy village becomes the focus of press attention for another reason when two people with no apparent connection to each other are found shot dead in nearby Manor Field, seemingly victims of an execution-style double murder.
DI Wesley Peterson is called in to investigate, but the two murders aren't his only problem. The daughter of a local MP has gone missing and the pressure is on to find her, especially when it's revealed that she has a connection to one of the murder victims. And Wesley's own life is thrown into turmoil when a woman he helped on a previous investigation finds herself subjected to a campaign of terror . . .
Is there a link between the double murder and the accidental death of a young history student in Manor Field twenty years ago? And just what is the true identity of the Mechanical Devil?
A black policeman from the Met might expect to meet some resistance, when he's transferred to a West Country seaside town - but, for DS Wesley Peterson, it's like coming home.
\nOne of the first people he bumps into is an old friend - Neil is heading an archaeological dig at a Tudor merchant's house, and Wesley has to tear himself away to become involved in a major search for a missing child. The tension is mounting when a body is found - but to Wesley's relief it is turned up at Neil’s dig and is more than 400 years old. It seems to be a tragic murder nonetheless, for the bones are those of a strangled young woman and a newborn baby.
\nWhen another, more recent body is found, the circumstances surrounding the child's disappearance become more complex, and Wesley is increasingly convinced that the age-old motives of jealousy, sexual obsession, and desperate longing for a child are behind the crimes - ancient and modern - that he must solve soon if further tragedy is to be averted.
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Why did Wynn Staniland, a legend in the literary world, suddenly become a recluse in the 1980s? Most assumed he stopped writing because of his wife's bizarre suicide; a death that mirrored a murder case from the nineteenth century. And now a promising young author called Zac Wilkinson is working on Staniland's biography and hopes to reveal the true story to a waiting world - while at the same time keeping his own troubled past hidden from public view.
\nWhen Wilkinson is found brutally murdered, DI Wesley Peterson finds links to the unexplained poisoning of a middle-aged couple at a local caravan park - and Wynn Staniland appears to be the connection.
\nAs Wesley delves further into the case he suspects a sinister puppet show might provide the solution: a grim re-enactment of the murder of Mary Field, a cause celebre from the reign of Queen Victoria that inspired Staniland's best-known novel.
\nThe case becomes personal for Wesley when he discovers his son is involved, and as he begins to unravel decades of secrets and deception, the shocking truth proves almost too much to bear . . .
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Teenager Lewis Hoxworthy discovers a disturbing painting in a medieval barn; a find which excites archaeologist Neil Watson, who is excavating an ancient manor house nearby.
\nBut when a man is found shot through the head in Lewis's father's field and Lewis himself goes missing, it is Neil's friend, Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson, who faces one of his most intriguing cases yet.
\nIt seems that the Devon village of Derenham is full of secrets, both ancient and modern. As Neil uncovers the story of Derenham's medieval past, it becomes clear that the Doom, a 500-year-old painting of hell and judgement, holds the key to the mystery. And as events reach a terrifying climax, Wesley has to act swiftly if he is to save a young life . . .
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When a woman is burned to death in Grandal Field in Devon, it seems like a case of mistaken identity. Until DI Wesley Peterson learns of a legend involving a French woman who burned to death there in the thirteenth century. And when he discovers that records of a previous excavation on the site have vanished, and that two archaeologists involved in that dig died in tragic circumstances, Wesley starts to investigate the possibility of a link between the legend and recent events.
But edging closer to the truth brings unexpected danger to Wesley. For the truth echoes a story of twisted love and obsession from many centuries ago - a truth that someone wants to keep hidden, whatever the cost . . .
When a letter arrives at Tradmouth police station, addressed to a DCI Norbert it causes quite a stir. For though DCI Norbert has long since moved on, the letter claims to have evidence that the man convicted of murdering the Rev. Shipbourne, Vicar of Belsham, during the course of a robbery in 1991, is innocent. Despite having a full case load, including investigating a series of vicious attacks on a local supermarket chain, DI Wesley Peterson is forced to at least follow up on the letter writer's claims.
\nMeanwhile archaelologist Neil Watson is excavating as site in Pest Field near Belsham church. He discovers a mass grave that leads him to conclude that the site - earmarked for development - is one of an ancient medieval plague pit. But, more disturbing, is the discovery that the grave is home to a more recent resident .
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Serpent's Point in South Devon is the focus of local legends. The large house on the headland is shrouded in an ancient tale of evil, and when a woman is found strangled on the coastal path DI Wesley Peterson is called in to investigate.
\nThe woman had been house-sitting at Serpent's Point and Wesley is surprised to discover that she was conducting an investigation into unsolved missing persons cases. Could these enquires have led to her murder?
\nWhile the case takes Wesley to Yorkshire and the Cotswolds, archaeologist Neil Watson is making a dramatic discovery of his own in the fields near the house.
\nWhen a skeleton is uncovered, the pressure rises to find a killer, and Wesley and Neil realise that Serpent's Point holds more secrets than anyone could have imagined.
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Eighteen years ago, Lilith Benley and her mother - rumoured to be witches - were convicted of the brutal murder of two teenage girls. On Lilith's release from prison, and shortly after she returns to her old home, a young woman is found dead at a neighbouring farm where a celebrity reality TV show is being filmed. When DI Wesley Peterson is called in to investigate, he has to deal with fragile egos and hidden truths, as well as the possibility that Lilith Benley has killed again.
Meanwhile, archaeologist Neil Watson discovers a gruesome wax doll at a house that once belonged to a woman hanged for witchcraft in the seventeenth century. And when Neil has a near fatal accident, some suspect a supernatural connection.
Even though Wesley has problems closer to home to solve, it is up to him to uncover terrible secrets, banish dark shadows collected in the past and bring a dangerous killer to justice - a killer who will stop at nothing to dispense vengeance and death.
Marcus Fallbrook was kidnapped in 1976 and when he never returned home, his grieving family assumed the worst. Thirty years later, teenage singing star Leah Wakefield has disappeared and DI Wesley Peterson has reason to suspect that the same kidnapper is responsible. Another abductor is also at work in the area, a man who tricks blonde women into a bogus taxi and cuts off their hair. Leah may have fallen prey to the man the newspapers call \"The Barber,\" or maybe she suffered a more sinister fate.
\nMeanwhile, archaeologist Neil Watson's gruesome task of exhuming the dead from a local churchyard yields a mystery of its own when a coffin is found to contain one corpse too many. The extra corpse may be linked to a strange religious sect dating back several hundred years. Wesley’s case load now spans several decades, and he soon discovers that the past can be a very dangerous place indeed.
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A year after the mysterious disappearance of Jenny Bercival, DI Wesley Peterson is called in when the body of a strangled woman is found floating out to sea in a dinghy. The discovery mars the festivities of the Palkin Festival, held each year to celebrate the life of John Palkin, a 14th century Mayor of Tradmouth who made his fortune from trade and piracy. Now it seems like death and mystery have returned to haunt the town.
\nCould there be a link between the two women? One missing, one brutally murdered? And is there a connection to a fantasy website called Shipworld which features Palkin as a supernatural hero with a sinister, faceless nemesis called the Shroud Maker? When archaeologist Neil Watson makes a grim discovery on the site of Palkin's warehouse, it looks as if history might have inspired the killer. And it is only by delving into the past that Wesley comes to learn a truth that will bring mortal danger in its wake.
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When workmen converting former girls' boarding school, Chadleigh Hall, into a luxury hotel discover a skeleton in a sealed room, DI Wesley Peterson and his boss, Gerry Heffernan are called in to investigate. But within minutes they have a second suspicious death on their hands: a team of marine archaeologists working on a nearby shipwreck have dragged a woman's body from the sea. And it becomes clear that her death was no accident.
\nThe dead woman's husband may be linked with a brutal robbery of computer equipment but Wesley soon discovers that the victim had secrets of her own. As he investigates Chadleigh Hall's past and the woman's violent death, both trails lead in surprising directions and matters are further complicated when a man wanted for a murder in London appears on the scene, a man who may know more about Wesley's cases than he admits .
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On a summer evening, Robert and Greta Gerdner are shot dead at their home in the Devon countryside.
\nDI Wesley Peterson suspects the execution-style murders might be linked to Robert's past police career - until Robert's name is found on a list of people who've been sent tickets anonymously for a tour of Darkhole Grange, a former asylum on Dartmoor.
\nWesley discovers that other names on the list have also died in mysterious circumstances and, as he is drawn into the chilling history of the asylum, he becomes convinced that it holds the key to the case.
\nWhen his friend, archaeologist Neil Watson, finds the skeleton of a woman buried in a sealed chamber dating back to the fifteenth century at his nearby dig, Wesley wonders whether there might be a connection between the ancient cell and the tragic events at Darkhole Grange.
\nWith the clock ticking, Wesley must solve the puzzle, before the next person on the list meets a terrible end . . .
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When the body of a middle-aged woman is found hanging from a yew tree in Stokeworthy Churchyard, the police suspect foul play. But the victim is an unlikely one. Pauline Brent was the local doctor's receptionist, respected and well liked. She seems to have no real enemies-and yet someone killed her.
\nDetective Sergeant Wesley Peterson, a black detective recently transferred to the quiet, West Country English village, is determined to discover the truth and, once again, it is history that provides him with a clue. For Wesley's archaeologist friend, Neil Watson, has excavated an ancient corpse at a nearby dig: a woman who had been buried at a crossroads, on unhallowed ground. It appears that the body is that of the same woman whom local legend has it was publicly executed in the churchyard centuries before.
\nA chilling echo of the fifteenth-century lynching, Pauline Brent's death forces Wesley to consider the possibility that the killer also knows the tree's dark history. Has Pauline been \"executed\" rather than murdered-and if so, for what crime?
\nTo catch a dangerous killer, Wesley has to discover as much as he can about the victim. But Pauline Brent appears to have been a woman with few friends, no relatives, and a past she has tried carefully to hide . . .
\nCate Kay knows how to craft a story. As the creator of a bestselling book trilogy that struck box office gold as a film series, she’s one of the most successful authors of her generation. The thing is, Cate Kay doesn’t really exist. She’s never attended author events or granted any interviews. Her real identity had been a closely guarded secret, until now.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAs a young adult, she and her best friend Amanda dreamed of escaping their difficult homes and moving to California to become movie stars. But the day before their grand adventure, a tragedy shattered their dreams and Cate has been on the run ever since, taking on different names and charting a new future. But after a shocking revelation, Cate understands that returning home is the only way she’ll be a whole person again.
Viv Abbot is an average twenty-one-year-old girl. She lives in an expensive city where the rent is too high, works long hours at a thankless job, and is dating a guy she doesn’t even like in the hopes of winning her prickly mother’s approval.
\nShe just also happens to be a demon hunter.
\nEver since her father's murder, she's been forced to hunt deviants alone, meaning everyone, including her family, sees her as an outsider. . . . Until the day she crosses paths with a dangerously alluring demon, Reid Graveheart. The reformed deviant tells her of a school for people just like her: Harker Academy for Deviant Defense. If she enrolls, she'll learn to hone her craft, work with other hunters, and never be alone again.
\nBut Viv has a deadly secret. One that not even her new friends at Harker can know about. Not when the school might hold the answers to untangling the mystery surrounding Viv's father’s death. When strange occurrences begin to plague the students, Viv will have to figure out who she can trust, and fast. All while trying to ace her classes, not fall for a demon, and make it through her first year at Harker in one piece. How hard could that be?
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Submitting to unwanted sex destroyed Kate’s love for her husband, but she considered killing herself before she could imagine leaving.
\nIn this electrifying literary memoir, Kate Hamilton deftly traces her complicated journey from loving wife to gaslighted victim to furious feminist with an urgent goal: to expose how women are pressured to uphold the institutions of marriage and family no matter the cost.
\nHamilton braids her personal story with cultural criticism to argue that we must face the misogyny lurking in the shadows of marriage in the 21st century. She examines the beliefs and conditioning that held her in an increasingly destructive marriage, and unflinchingly documents what she did to keep her family together - therapy, unwanted sex with her husband, swinging, affairs, an abortion - without always knowing what she freely chose. And she considers the damage that was done, to herself and others, until she could acknowledge that to save herself and her sons, she had to destroy her marriage.
\nEmotionally intense and timely, Mad Wife interrogates how marriage and the institutions that support it provide the perfect ecosystem for abuse of women and children, endangering their lives and denying them autonomy - all in the service of men’s desires.
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“Mom, why are you so mad at Dad?”
\n“I’m not,” I say, which isn’t exactly true. Putting on a brave face for my two young daughters - pretending everything is fine in my marriage - has been hard. That, and losing the house after Daniel lied to me.
\nI never expected to have to uproot my family to go live in my parents’ isolated cottage on Lost Lake. It’s twenty miles to the nearest town, an insignificant speck in endless pine forests. Nobody’s lived here for a decade.
\nNow, I pick up a rusty pail from its nest of autumn leaves and turn to my daughter. Suddenly, I recall how I used to help my own mother pick wild strawberries up here as a little girl. Maybe, this isn’t a punishment. Maybe this place will be the making of our family.
\nI’m still thinking it when my daughter rests her silky head on my shoulder that evening in the flickering firelight. And when, over a steaming cup of coffee at dawn, I watch a single loon cut a course through the mirrored surface of Lost Lake.
\nLater, I’ll hold on to these memories - ghostly shreds of another life. Because just eight hours after I sat on that sofa, feeling so hopeful, the world as I knew it - as anyone knew it - was gone for good.
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Seven months ago, our family left suburban Connecticut for my parents’ isolated lake house in a naïve attempt to reconnect. Life had imploded, or so I thought then. I hoped the change would reset us. A montage of Hallmark moments - card games in candlelight, hugs and healing chats. What I got was a nuclear holocaust five days after we arrived.
\nLast week, the lake house burned to the ground. Our last place of safety. Now, I watch my children huddle together, their faces lit up by our tiny campfire beneath the towering blackness of endless pine forests. I wonder what tomorrow will bring - for the world, but also for my family.
\nMy daughters are so young. They’ve seen so little of life, but far too much. What future can they possibly have? I must keep them safe. No matter what lies ahead. Already I know it’s a promise I don't have the power to make . . . but I’ll die trying to keep it.
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After years of survival and devastating loss, the promise of a new settlement in North Dakota feels like salvation. A chance for my children to reclaim some semblance of normalcy, studying and making friends again, and for me to find new purpose, reporting on this strange new world we’re living in for a newspaper. I’m even forming new friendships as I grow closer to Jack Wyatt, the settlement’s deputy leader.
\nBut I can’t help feeling haunted by what - and who - we left behind. I desperately miss my eldest daughter, Mattie, who chose to stay in Canada, forging her own future in the community I left behind. I tell myself she’s safe there. But as I learn more about the world I belong to, I begin to understand the disturbing truth of how it has been formed - and I am terrified that Mattie might be in their sights.
\nI've already lost too much to this broken world - I won't lose my daughter too.
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Egypt, 1903: When renowned papyrologist Helen Gardiner arrives at an excavation site in the ancient city of Calliopolis, she learns that she has been given the job because her predecessor has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. One of the only women on the dig, Helen - tasked with restoring and cataloguing the thousands of papyrus fragments recovered at the site - soon discovers that there’s more to Calliopolis than meets the eye. The archaeologists on the dig, mostly men, all have not only their own towering egos, but their own agendas, including secrets they might kill to protect.
\nToronto, 2019: Archivist Maddie Sloan is at a dead she feels like her academic career is stalled, and she’s still healing from her recent breakup with her former partner, Ben. To make matters worse, Ben still works with Maddie’s father, a famous archaeologist, and with whom Maddie has had a major falling out. It feels like her father has chosen Ben over her.
\nWhen famous TV archaeologist Peter Bahar arrives at the Toronto Archaeological Museum to verify the provenance of objects from their Egyptian collection believed to be from Calliopolis, Maddie jumps at the opportunity. After all, she has her own ties to the Cursed City of Calliopolis through her grandmother, Iris, who worked at the site. As Maddie and Peter begin digging into the objects and circumstances surrounding the excavation, they learn that two papyrologists seem to have abruptly disappeared from the dig without explanation. Suddenly, a search for providence becomes a quest to uncover a history shrouded in secrets and lies - and a murder that has been covered up for more than a century.
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Saffron Everleigh is in a race against time to free her wrongly accused professor before he goes behind bars forever. Perfect for fans of Deanna Raybourn and Anna Lee Huber, Kate Khavari’s debut historical mystery is a fast-paced, fearless adventure.
\nLondon, 1923. Newly minted research assistant Saffron Everleigh attends a dinner party for the University College of London. While she expects to engage in conversations about the university's large expedition to the Amazon, she doesn’t expect Mrs. Henry, one of the professors’ wives to drop to the floor, poisoned by an unknown toxin.
\nDr. Maxwell, Saffron’s mentor, is the main suspect, having had an explosive argument with Dr. Henry a few days prior. As evidence mounts against Dr. Maxwell and the expedition's departure draws nearer, Saffron realises if she wants her mentor's name cleared, she’ll have to do it herself.
\nJoined by enigmatic Alexander Ashton, a fellow researcher, Saffron uses her knowledge of botany as she explores steamy greenhouses, dark gardens, and deadly poisons. Will she be able to uncover the truth or will her investigation land her on the murderer’s list?
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Saffron Everleigh returns to Ellington Manor after her grandfather suffers a heart attack. Back in her childhood home for the first time in years, Saffron faces tense family relationships made worse by the presence of the enigmatic Bill Wyatt, hired on as a doctor to the ailing Lord Easting. But the man is no doctor - in reality, he is a mysterious figure involved in the trafficking of dangerous government secrets, and his presence at Ellington can only mean trouble.
\nWhen their neighbors, the Hales, invite a spiritual medium into the village who starts angling for Saffron’s mother’s attention, Saffron realizes that there is more afoot in her hometown than she originally thought. Not to mention inviting Alexander to Ellington has put their budding relationship under her family’s microscope.
\nAs tensions rise at Ellington, Bill demands that Saffron hand over old research documents belonging to her late father. With her relatives under his power as their ‘doctor,’ Saffron fears she may be forced to surrender the files along with her hopes of ever understanding her father’s obscure legacy. Nothing and no one is as they seem at Ellington. It’s through the perfumed haze of the séance’s smoke that Saffron must search for the truth before it’s too late.
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Saffron Everleigh is newly engaged and full of optimism as she sets off on the adventure of a lifetime for any scientist: a research expedition. She sails to newly formed Turkey with her fiancé, Alexander Ashton, and a bevy of fellow researchers under the watchful and reformed eye of Dr. Henry. With only two other women on board, Saffron soon finds she is right back in the same infuriatingly misogynistic environment that marked the earliest days of her career. Only this time, Saffron is determined to show everyone, including Alexander, that she can handle the trials of an expedition.
\nAnd trials she has in spades. Before the expedition team has even arrived, Saffron has managed to find an enemy in historian Joseph Clark, who frequently torments the assistant that Saffron has taken under her wing, Martin Neill. But when Martin unexpectedly dies, Saffron is targeted as the main suspect.
\nFalling ruins, venomous snakes, and mysteriously blocked passages are the least of Saffron’s worries. With unexpected help from a familiar face, Alexander and Saffron have to work fast to prove not only that Saffron is innocent but that they both have nothing to do with a larger conspiracy at play among the expedition crew.
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1920s London isn’t the ideal place for a brilliant woman with lofty ambitions. But research assistant Saffron Everleigh is determined to beat the odds in a male-dominated field at the University College of London. Saffron embarks on her first research study alongside the insufferably charming Dr. Michael Lee, traveling the countryside with him in response to reports of poisonings. But when Detective Inspector Green is given a case with a set of unusual clues, he asks for Saffron’s assistance.
\nThe victims, all women, received bouquets filled with poisonous flowers. Digging deeper, Saffron discovers that the bouquets may be more than just unpleasant flowers - there may be a hidden message within them, revealed through the use of the old Victorian practice of floriography. A dire message, indeed, as each woman who received the flowers has turned up dead.
\nAlongside Dr. Lee and her best friend, Elizabeth, Saffron trails a group of suspects through a dark jazz club, a lavish country estate, and a glittering theatre, delving deeper into a part of society she thought she’d left behind forever.
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London, 1923. Returning from Paris, botanical researcher Saffron Everleigh finds that her former love interest Alexander Ashton’s brother, Adrian, is being investigated for murder. A Russian scientist working for the English government has been poisoned, and expired in Adrian’s train compartment. Alexander asks Saffron to put in a good word for Adrian with Inspector Green. Despite her unresolved feelings for Alexander, Saffron begins to unravel mysteries surrounding the dead scientist.
\nAs if a murder case weren’t enough, her best friend Elizabeth’s war-hero brother, Nick, arrives in town and takes an immediate interest in Saffron. Saffron learns Alexander has been keeping secrets from her, including a connection to Nick, who Saffron and Elizabeth begin to suspect is more than he seems.
\nWhen another scientist is found dead, Saffron agrees to go undercover at the government laboratory. Risking her career and her safety, she learns there are many more interested parties and dangerous secrets to uncover than she’d realised. But some secrets, Saffron will find, are better left undiscovered.
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Reims, France, 1805: Barbe-Nicole Clicquot has just lost her beloved husband but is determined to pursue their dream of creating the premier champagne house in France, now named for her new identity as a Veuve Clicquot.
\nWith the Russians poised to invade, competitors fighting for her customers, and the Napoleonic court politics complicating matters she must set herself apart quickly and permanently if she, and her business, are to survive.
\nIn present day Chicago, broken from her divorce, Natalie Taylor runs away to Paris. In a book stall by the Seine, Natalie finds a collection of the Widow Clicquot’s published letters and uses them as inspiration to step out of her comfort zone and create a new, empowered life for herself. But when her Parisian escape takes a shocking and unexpected turn, she’s forced to make a choice.
\nShould she accept her losses and return home, or fight for the future she’s only dreamed about? What would the widow do?
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In the early aughts, Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey - both young artists trying to figure it all out - met at auditions for what they thought was just an unknown little TV show. Given that it was a show about lesbians living in LA, with the first ever ensemble cast of openly queer female characters, Kate and Leisha knew the project was going to be unlike anything else out there.
\nWhat they didn't foresee was just how huge The L Word would become. One million people watched the premiere, and the show quickly turned into a groundbreaking phenomenon. Its influence on pop culture, in the political arena, and in the lives of queer - and straight - viewers has been lasting, impactful, even life-saving. But in addition to changing the course of television history, The L Word also changed Kate and Leisha's lives forever.
\nFrom their first day on set, Kate and Leisha have always had each other’s backs, inseparable to the degree that the cast joked they were like a pair of pants - you couldn't have one leg without the other. Hence the name for their podcast, PANTS, born during the pandemic and now downloaded over 20 million times.
\nSo Gay for You is a love letter to a life-defining friendship over the decades, and following Kate and Leisha's unlikely and extremely entertaining journey stumbling from closeted queer kids to LGBTQ+ activists to successful actresses, podcasters, and business owners. Full of never-before-shared glimpses into the making of The L Word, Kate and Leisha's real-life loves and losses, and their status as queer icons, So Gay for You is, at its heart, a book about a deep meaningful connection with your ride or die and the gift of finding your chosen family.
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Raised by unconventional Irish Catholics who knew \"how to drink, how to dance, how to talk, and how to stir up the devil,\" Kate Mulgrew grew up with poetry and drama in her bones. But in her mother, a would-be artist burdened by the endless arrival of new babies, young Kate saw the consequences of a dream deferred.
\nDetermined to pursue her own no matter the cost, at 18 she left her small Midwestern town for New York, where, studying with the legendary Stella Adler, she learned the lesson that would define her as an actress: \"Use it,\" Adler told her. Whatever disappointment, pain, or anger life throws in your path, channel it into the work.
\nIt was a lesson she would need. At twenty-two, just as her career was taking off, she became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter. Having already signed the adoption papers, she was allowed only a fleeting glimpse of her child. As her star continued to rise, her life became increasingly demanding and fulfilling, a whirlwind of passionate love affairs, life-saving friendships, and bone-crunching work.
\nThrough it all, Mulgrew remained haunted by the loss of her daughter, until, two decades later, she found the courage to face the past and step into the most challenging role of her life, both on and off screen.
\nWe know Kate Mulgrew for the strong women she's played - Captain Janeway on Star Trek; the tough-as-nails \"Red\" on Orange is the New Black. Now, we meet the most inspiring and memorable character of all: herself. By turns irreverent and soulful, laugh-out-loud funny and heart-piercingly sad, Born with Teeth is the breathtaking memoir of a woman who dares to live life to the fullest, on her own terms.
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In this profoundly honest and examined memoir about returning to Iowa to care for her ailing parents, the star of Orange Is the New Black and author of Born with Teeth takes us on an unexpected journey of loss, betrayal, and the transcendent nature of a daughter’s love for her parents.
\nThey say you can’t go home again. But when her father is diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer and her mother with atypical Alzheimer’s, New York-based actress Kate Mulgrew returns to her hometown in Iowa to spend time with her parents and care for them in the time they have left.
\nThe months Kate spends with her parents in Dubuque - by turns turbulent, tragic, and joyful - lead her to reflect on each of their lives and how they shaped her own. Those ruminations are transformed when, in the wake of their deaths, Kate uncovers long-kept secrets that challenge her understanding of the unconventional Irish Catholic household in which she was raised.
\nBreathtaking and powerful, laced with the author’s irreverent wit, How to Forget is a considered portrait of a mother and a father, an emotionally powerful memoir that demonstrates how love fuses children and parents, and an honest examination of family, memory, and indelible loss.
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In rural Caball Hollow, surrounded by the vast National Forest, the James women serve up more than fried green tomatoes at the Harvest Moon diner, where the family recipes are not the only secrets.
\nLike her sisters, Linden was born with an unusual ability. She can taste what others are feeling, but this so-called gift soured her relationship with the vexingly attractive Cole Spencer one fateful night a year ago . . . A night when Linden vanished into the depths of the Forest and returned with no memories of what happened, just a litany of questions - and a haze of nightmares that suggest there's more to her story than simply getting lost.
\nNow, during the hottest summer on record, another girl in town is gone, and the similarities to last year's events are striking. Except, this time the missing girl doesn't make it home, and when her body is discovered, the scene unmistakably spells murder.
\nAs tempers boil over, Linden enlists the help of her sisters to find what's hiding in the forest . . . before it finds her. But as she starts digging for truth - about the Moth-Winged Man rumored to haunt the Hollow, about her bitter rift with Cole, and even about her family - she must question if some secrets are best left buried.
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18-year-old Rowan James has spent her whole life harboring unpleasant truths - that’s what happens when you can smell people’s lies - and building walls around herself to block them out. Like her younger sister, Linden, who can taste the feelings of others, Rowan has long resented her gift, which has taught her that everyone lies and no one is who they seem to be. So when her old nemesis, Hadrian Fitch, the biggest liar of them all, shows up on her front porch - bloodied, broken, and asking for help only she can give - her first instinct is distrust. But something new is stalking the Forest that surrounds Caball Hollow.
\nNow things are disappearing. At first, it’s small stuff - like letters, photos, and keys. But then, Rowan notices people around her are losing their memories. And when the body of a neighbor is found in the middle of town, Rowan knows there’s a link between this death and all the events disturbing the Hollow. Can she find what - or who - the link is before it takes another life?
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Two women - a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947 - are brought together in a mesmerising story of courage and redemption.
1947. In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie's parents banish her to Europe to have her \"little problem\" taken care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London, determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister.
1915. A year into the Great War, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance when she's recruited to work as a spy. Sent into enemy-occupied France, she's trained by the mesmerising Lili, the \"Queen of Spies\", who manages a vast network of secret agents right under the enemy's nose.
Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house. Until a young American barges in uttering a name Eve hasn't heard in decades, and launches them both on a mission to find the truth . . . no matter where it leads.
Alexandria “Alix” Watson has learned one lesson from her barren childhood in the foster-care system: unlike people, books will never let you down. Working three dead-end jobs to make ends meet and knowing college is a pipe dream, Alix takes nightly refuge in the high-vaulted reading room at the Boston Public Library, escaping into her favorite fantasy novels and dreaming of far-off lands. Until the day she stumbles through a hidden door and meets the Librarian: the ageless, acerbic guardian of a hidden library where the desperate and the lost escape to new lives . . . inside their favorite books.
\nThe Librarian takes a dazzled Alix under her wing, but before she can escape into the pages of her new life, a shadowy enemy emerges to threaten everyone the Astral Library has ever helped protect. Aided by a dashing costume-shop owner, Alix and the Librarian flee through the Regency drawing rooms of Jane Austen to the back alleys of Sherlock Holmes and the champagne-soaked parties of The Great Gatsby as danger draws inexorably closer. But who does their enemy really wish to destroy - Alix, the Librarian, or the Library itself?
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Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences.
\nBut when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career has ended along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.
\nGrace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears apart the house, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst?
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In 1937 in the snowbound city of Kiev (now known as Kyiv), wry and bookish history student Mila Pavlichenko organises her life around her library job and her young son - but Hitler's invasion of Ukraine and Russia sends her on a different path. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper - a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death. When news of her three hundredth kill makes her a national heroine, Mila finds herself torn from the bloody battlefields of the eastern front and sent to America on a goodwill tour.
\nStill reeling from war wounds and devastated by loss, Mila finds herself isolated and lonely in the glittering world of Washington, DC - until an unexpected friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and an even more unexpected connection with a silent fellow sniper offer the possibility of happiness. But when an old enemy from Mila's past joins forces with a deadly new foe lurking in the shadows, Lady Death finds herself battling her own demons and enemy bullets in the deadliest duel of her life.
\nBased on a true story, The Diamond Eye is a haunting novel of heroism born of desperation, of a mother who became a soldier, of a woman who found her place in the world and changed the course of history forever.
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Bold, reckless Nina Markova grows up on the icy edge of Soviet Russia, dreaming of flight and fearing nothing. When the tide of war sweeps over her homeland, she gambles everything to join the infamous Night Witches, an all-female night bomber regiment wreaking havoc on Hitler’s eastern front. But when she is downed behind enemy lines and thrown across the path of a lethal Nazi murderess known as the Huntress, Nina must use all her wits to survive.
British war correspondent Ian Graham has witnessed the horrors of war from Omaha Beach to the Nuremberg Trials. He abandons journalism after the war to become a Nazi hunter, yet one target eludes him: the Huntress. Fierce, disciplined Ian must join forces with brazen, cocksure Nina, the only witness to escape the Huntress alive. But a shared secret could derail their mission, unless Ian and Nina force themselves to confront it.
Seventeen-year-old Jordan McBride grows up in post WWII Boston, determined despite family opposition to become a photographer. At first delighted when her long-widowed father brings home a fiancée, Jordan grows increasingly disquieted by the soft-spoken German widow who seems to be hiding something. Armed only with her camera and her wits, Jordan delves into her new stepmother’s past and slowly realizes there are mysteries buried deep in her family. But Jordan’s search for the truth may threaten all she holds dear.
San Francisco, 1906. In a city bustling with newly minted millionaires and scheming upstarts, two very different women hope to change their fortunes: Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano whose career desperately needs rekindling, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress who is determined to escape an arranged marriage.
\nTheir paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing’s fallen Summer Palace.
\nHis patronage offers Gemma and Suling the chance of a lifetime, but their lives are thrown into turmoil when a devastating earthquake rips San Francisco apart and Thornton disappears, leaving behind a mystery reaching further than anyone could have imagined . . . until the Phoenix Crown reappears five years later at a sumptuous Paris costume ball, drawing Gemma and Suling together in one last desperate quest for justice.
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1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes.
\nVivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything - beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses - but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of east-end London poverty, works the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband.
\nBoth Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.
\n1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends - turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter - the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum.
\nA mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger - and their true enemy - closer . . .
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A riveting short story about an impossible connection across two centuries that could make the difference between peace or war.
\nYorkshire, 1943. Lily Baines, a bright young debutante increasingly ground down by an endless war, has traded in her white gloves for a set of headphones. It’s her job to intercept enemy naval communications and send them to Bletchley Park for decryption.
\nOne night, she picks up a transmission that isn’t code at all - it’s a cry for help.
\nAn American ship is taking heavy fire in the North Atlantic - but no one else has reported an attack, and the information relayed by the young US officer, Matt Jackson, seems all wrong. The contact that Lily has made on the other end of the radio channel says it’s . . . 2023.
\nAcross an eighty-year gap, Lily and Matt must find a way to help each other: Matt to convince her that the war she’s fighting can still be won, and Lily to help him stave off the war to come. As their connection grows stronger, they both know there’s no telling when time will run out on their inexplicable link.
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In this mesmerising and profound novel, the arc of a woman's life in a devout, insular community challenges our deepest assumptions about what infuses life with meaning.
\nRuth is raised in a snow globe of Christian communism, a world without private property, television, or tolerance for idle questions. Every morning she braids her hair and wears the same costume, sings the same breakfast song in a family room identical to every other family room in the community; every one of these moments is meant to be a prayer, but to Ruth they remain puzzles.
\nHer life is seen in glimpses through childhood, marriage, and motherhood, as she tries to manage her own perilous curiosity in a community built on holy mystery. Is she happy? Might this in fact be happiness? Ruth immerses us in an experience that challenges our most fervent beliefs.
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Sasha Fulton looks like she has it all - the glittering media career, the happy marriage, the perfect kids. But the truth behind the shining façade is very different. The job is nothing but pressure, and the stroppy teens aren’t even hers. She’s fast reaching breaking point.
\nWhen Sasha’s new twenty-something assistant Jenna walks through the door, she seems like the answer to her prayers. Dazzlingly efficient, with a whip-smart wit, Sasha’s soon wondering how she ever lived without her.
\nBut with trouble mounting at home and at work, Sasha is starting to lose control. As the lines between professional and personal become dangerously blurred, she feels like there’s only one person she can rely on.
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Bennett Driscoll is a Turner Prize-nominated artist who was once a rising star. Now, at age fifty-five, his wife has left him, he hasn't sold a painting in two years, and his gallery wants to stop selling his work, claiming they'll have more value retrospectively...when he's dead. So, left with a large West London home and no income, he's forced to move into his artist's studio in the back garden and list his house on the popular vacation rental site, AirBed.
A stranger now in his own home, with his daughter, Mia, off at art school, and any new relationships fizzling out at best, Bennett struggles to find purpose in his day-to-day. That all changes when three different guests - lonely American Alicia; tortured artist Emma; and cautiously optimistic divorce Kirstie - unwittingly unlock the pieces of himself that have been lost to him for too long.
Warm, witty, and utterly humane, Super Host offers a captivating portrait of middle age, relationships, and what it truly means to take a new chance at life.
When Rachel Nardelli finds out Alison Petrucci - her childhood rival - is found dead in Pleasant Pond, the same place the two girls had first said goodbye to each other back in eighth grade, the town of Waterbury is outraged by the fear of losing one of their own - the heir to Maine’s largest construction company. But it’s a little more complicated for Rachel. She saw Alison the night she died. Callous, she said something she shouldn’t have. She stirred up the past. The next morning, Alison was gone.
\nPlagued by the complicated memories around Alison, Rachel joins her journalism crew to investigate the murder. But as she revisits their fraught relationship, she falls into a web of cruelties that threaten to undo everything she understood about her past.
\nAn explosive literary thriller from the acclaimed Kate Russo, Until Alison is a brilliantly incisive and resonant novel that is at once about class, gender, and the arbitrary nature of violence.
It’s 1968, and the future is bright for seventeen-year-old Elizabeth “Baker” She’s the valedictorian of her high school, with a place at Stanford in the fall and big dreams of becoming a journalist. But the seductive free-spirited San Francisco atmosphere seeps into her carefully-planned, strait-laced life in the form of a hippie named Wiley. At first, letting loose and letting herself fall in love for the first time feels incredible. But then, everything changes.
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Pregnancy hits Baker with the force of whiplash - in the blink of an eye, she goes from good girl to fallen woman, from her family’s shining star to their embarrassing secret. Sent to a home for unwed mothers, Baker finds herself trapped in an old Victorian house packed with a group of pregnant girls who share her shame and fear. As she reckons with her changing body, lack of choice, and uncertain future, Baker finds unexpected community and empowerment among the “girls who went away.”
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Where the Girls Were is a timely unearthing of a little-known moment in American history, when the sexual revolution and feminist movement collided with the limits of reproductive rights - and society's expectations of women. As Baker finds her strength and her voice, she shows us how to step into your power, even when the world is determined to keep you silent.
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Vita Woods is on the brink. She produces a popular podcast and lives with her successful doctor boyfriend, Max, with whom the sex is great and the future promising. Her brilliant if unreliable sister Gracie is her best friend and sparring partner. And her steadfast goldfish, Whitney Houston, brightens even her dimmest days. Because the days are dark, as much as things are going right. Vita is not leaving the house. In fact, she can barely make it out of bed.
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Instead, she spends long, blurred hours falling in and out of “The Pit,” dead to the world and to herself. For months, Vita has been sick with an illness that no doctor, not even Max, can diagnose. And recently, Luigi, a Renaissance poet nursing a 500-year-old heartbreak, has started showing up at her bedside, bringing snacks and unsolicited romantic advice. He says he’s come to release her. The issue he may be a ghost, an apparition of her sickly mind.
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Then, when, an unexpected mix-up pushes her into the path of her upstairs neighbors, Vita finds friendship - and perhaps more - in the apartment above. But something about her “condition” keeps nagging at her. What if the problem is Vita herself? Because as far as anyone can prove . . . there’s nothing wrong with her.
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In this seductive coming-of-age debut, Jess Walker, a young and uninitiated first year student, falls in love with two great story-tellers. One, Alec, a journalist in exile, the other, Lorna, a charismatic literature professor. Starting out under the flat grey skies of an east Anglian university campus and ending up on an idyllic Mediterranean island, The Truants is about a group of clever and eccentric misfits who yearn to break the rules.
\nAs Jess’ experience of infatuation and betrayal, disappearance and loss gives way to a breathless search for the truth, she finds herself detective in a twisted crime of the heart. Unsettling, challenging, surprisingly funny and beautifully written, The Truants is a compulsively readable literary debut with a twist - and a dead body to boot.
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As Evie and her friends - dubbed the ‘coterie’ in homage to her grandmother’s legendary group of artists - graduate from their elite private school, they prepare to host one last epic summer party at Evie's family mansion, D’olobelle. The D’olobelle parties are notorious, with everyone desperate for an invite and a taste of the debauchery.
\nAnd the Coterie are determined this year’s party will be the most scandalous yet.
\nBut as the festivities unfold, a series of chilling ‘accidents’ begin to plague the group. And it seems that each of them has something to hide. Who is targeting them, and what dark secrets are lurking just beneath the surface?
\nAnd as eerie photos of the previous coterie emerge, it becomes clear that D’olobelle is not just a backdrop for their celebration - it holds secrets of its own.
\nCan the Coterie unravel what is going on - or will the last summer at D’olobelle be their last summer of all?
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After offending the powerful pastor of a cult, Mari McGavin has to flee with her six-year-old son. With no money and no place else to go, she returns to the tiny Maine island where she grew up - a place she swore she’d never see again. There Mari runs into her lifelong friend Harry Richardson, one of the island’s summer residents, now back himself to sell his family’s summer home.
\nMari and Harry’s lives intertwine once again, setting off a chain of events as unexpected and life altering as the shifts in climate affecting the whole ecosystem of the island . . . from generations of fishing families to the lobsters and the butterflies.
Bette is in love for the first time in her life. Finally, everything makes sense. Until it doesn’t.
\nAs Bette approached thirty, she realised something big: she’s into women. And then she fell for Mei, who’s entirely perfect. Until, out of the blue, Mei suggests they take a break. She wants Bette to have the opportunity she missed out on in her twenties: to explore the queer dating scene, and then return certain about their future, her desires, and herself.
\nReluctantly, Bette sets out on a mission: date hot women and have hot casual sex, before returning to her loving girlfriend. Maybe, put that way, it doesn’t sound so bad . . .
\nOften heady and thrilling, occasionally cringe, Bette’s odyssey will take her to some unexpected places. But with her new friend, the gorgeous and self-assured Ruth, as her queer dating guide, Bette can’t possibly fail. Right?
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As a bloodline vampire, Lizzie has never had a problem taking what she wants, and right now what she wants are the family heirlooms that were stolen from her and a portal home. Too bad even that short list is impossible to accomplish on her own - and her allies have bigger things to worry about.
\nWhen they rescue a selkie from captivity, it’s the perfect solution to her problem. Lizzie needs a guide through Threshold and the selkie needs someone to help her get her skin back. Maeve didn’t choose to give up her skin - it was stolen from her. Now she’s in an uneasy partnership with a dangerous woman who seems more apt to kill than to share a kind word. It’s terrifying . . . and a bit alluring. Even though she knows it will end in heartbreak, Maeve can’t help being drawn to Lizzie and her all-too-pleasurable vampire bite.
\nUnfortunately, the danger to Maeve’s heart is the least of her worries. The ship Lizzie’s chasing belongs to the Cŵn Annwn, and they don’t take kindly to people who steal from them. Not even Lizzie’s viciousness or Maeve’s selkie strength will be enough to save them if the Cŵn Annwn seek retribution . . .
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Aphrodite has never flinched at getting her perfectly manicured hands dirty, and she's not about to start now - even if that means marrying Olympus's enemy number one, the new Hephaestus. She has a wicked plan to keep her deadly new husband off-balance, seducing the one person he seems to care about most in this world: Pandora, a woman as beautiful as she is sweet.
\nTwo can play the seduction game, however, and Hephaestus is all too happy to put his new wife in her place. Her ex, Adonis, seems like he'll do the trick. It doesn't hurt that he's gorgeous in the way of fallen angels, either.
\nThe only problem with using seduction as a weapon? Hearts are all too quick to get involved. With Hephaestus and Aphrodite trading venomous strikes that feel a whole lot like foreplay, lines become blurred and emotions entangled. But a broken heart may be the least of their worries. With unrest in Olympus reaching new heights, these bedroom games may have deadly consequences for themselves, their city, and everyone they've come to love.
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Ariadne Vitalis is in trouble. She's betrayed her father - and his benefactor - and now she's left to rely on the questionable mercy of Olympus to keep her safe. As with everything in this city, mercy comes with a price. For Ariadne, that means a marriage to Dionysus. She has no choice but to agree, even if there's only one man she's ever wanted - a man she's feared just as much as she desires.
\nThe Minotaur never had any illusions about Minos's plans. He was willing to get his hands dirty as long as the old man kept his word - at the end of this, the Minotaur would be given Ariadne as a reward. Nowhere in that deal was her walking down the aisle to a different man. She's meant for him, and he means to have her.
\nAriadne knows better than to encourage the Minotaur. Her relationship with her new fiancé might be more friendship than burning passion, but she is all too aware of how much fiery passion can hurt. She and the Minotaur are no good for each other. She can never forgive him for what he's done, and he can never change. But when his hands are on her body and his wicked words are whispered in her ear, she might just be willing to let all of Olympus burn . . .
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He was the most beautiful man alive.
\nAnd if I wasn't careful, he was going to be my death.
\nIn the ultra-modern city of Olympus, there's always a price to pay. Psyche knew she'd have to face Aphrodite's ire eventually, but she never expected her literal heart to be at stake . . . or for Aphrodite's gorgeous son to be the one ordered to strike the killing blow.
\nEros has no problem shedding blood. But when it comes time to take out his latest target, he can't do it. Confused by his reaction to Psyche, he does the only thing he can think of to keep her safe: he marries her. Psyche vows to make Eros's life a living hell until they find a way out of this mess. But as lines blur and loyalties shift, she realises he might take her heart after all . . . and she's not sure she can survive the loss.
\nA scorchingly hot modern retelling of Psyche and Eros that's as sinful as it is sweet.
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Evelyn is a witch with a perfect storm of impulses: terrible taste in bed partners, sticky fingers, and a lust for danger. After she steals from her vampire ex and falls through a portal to another realm, she’s fished out of the waters by a band of seafarers and their telekinetic captain. She’s immediately given a choice - join their group or die.
\nBowen has no memory of his life before he became one of the Cŵn Annwn. He and his pirate crew are bound by vow to patrol through Threshold, the magical sea in between realms, keeping the portals to other worlds safe. When he rescues Evelyn, he doesn’t expect to be attracted to the unflappably brassy pickpocket. The longer he spends in her presence, the more he begins to question if his heart is the next thing she’ll steal.
\nBut as tension heats up between Bowen and Evelyn, danger escalates as well. Because Evelyn has no intention of keeping her vows to the Cŵn Annwn, and if she betrays the crew, both she and Bowen will pay the ultimate price . . .
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Eurydice Dimitriou has always been the innocent sister, but she's finally ready to step out of the long shadow cast by her powerful family . . . and the ex who shattered her heart. Perhaps rough hands on soft skin are exactly what she needs to forget her heartbreak once and for all?
\nCharon Ariti has been Hades's right-hand man for years. He's given everything to the lower city, but now he's ready to take something for himself. He's only too happy to give Eurydice a special kind of education . . . but is her heart really free enough to be claimed?
\nOrpheus Makos will do whatever it takes to make things right. Once the golden boy of the upper city, he's now a shadow of his former self. He'll do anything to get Eurydice back . . . even if it means she's not coming into his arms alone. Three hearts. Three futures. Countless ways to get it wrong.
\nBut with enemies slipping through Olympus's faltering barrier to lay siege on the lower city, a trio of broken hearts will be the least of these would-be lovers' worries . . .
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He was supposed to be a myth.
\nBut from the moment I crossed the River Styx and fell under his dark spell . . . he was, quite simply, mine.
\nSociety darling Persephone Dimitriou plans to flee the ultra-modern city of Olympus and start over far from the backstabbing politics of the Thirteen Houses. But all that’s ripped away when her mother ambushes her with an engagement to Zeus, the dangerous power behind their glittering city’s dark facade.
\nWith no options left, Persephone flees to the forbidden undercity and makes a devil’s bargain with a man she once believed a myth . . . a man who awakens her to a world she never knew existed.
\nHades has spent his life in the shadows, and he has no intention of stepping into the light. But when he finds that Persephone can offer a little slice of the revenge he’s spent years craving, it’s all the excuse he needs to help her - for a price. Yet every breathless night spent tangled together has given Hades a taste for Persephone, and he’ll go to war with Olympus itself to keep her close . . .
\nA modern retelling of Hades and Persephone that’s as sinful as it is sweet.
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As a disgraced member of a fallen house, Cassandra Gataki has seen firsthand what comes from trusting the venomous Thirteen. But when the maddeningly gorgeous and kind Apollo asks her to go undercover as his plus-one at a week-long party hosted by a dangerous new power player . . . Cassandra reluctantly agrees to have his back.
\nOn one condition: when it's all over, and Apollo has the ammunition he needs to protect Olympus, she and her sister will be allowed to leave. For good.
\nApollo may be the city's official spymaster, but it's his ability to inspire others that keeps him at the top. Despite what the rest of Olympus says, there's no one he trusts more than Cassandra. Yet even as their fake relationship takes a wicked turn for the scaldingly hot, a very real danger surfaces . . . threatening not only Cassandra and Apollo, but the very heart of Olympus itself.
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Nox has been steadfastly working for the rebellion for years. They don’t ask for much in return, except for one crucial condition: their ex, the noble Bastian, stays as far away from them as possible. To say things ended poorly between them is an understatement . . . and it’s the only relationship Nox has never quite recovered from.
But now the rules have changed. Siobhan, the rebel leader, has emerged from hiding to tell Nox that Bastian’s been taken captive and the secrets he holds tight are in danger of being revealed. The fate of the entire rebellion now rests on Nox and Siobhan’s ability to rescue Bastian from a Cŵn Annwn ship.
Saving Bastian is only the start of their hardships, and Nox’s complicated relationships and entanglements with Bastian and Siobhan put not only their life at risk but their heart on the line.
Icarus may not have flown particularly close to the sun, but he has fallen . . . right into the rough hands of Olympus's own Poseidon. Being held captive by the gentle giant wouldn't be so bad if Olympus wasn't on the eve of destruction . . . or if Poseidon stopped looking at him with those irresistibly stormy eyes.
\nPoseidon doesn't have time to babysit his increasingly bratty prisoner, but he has no choice: Olympus is officially at war, and someone has to keep their best bargaining chip out of harm's way. The thing is, the longer Poseidon is with Icarus, the more he starts to care for his sworn enemy . . . and the more he realises that Icarus isn't the villain he's been made out to be. There's a warmth to him, a vulnerability, that Poseidon finds difficult to ignore or deny.
\nNow with Circe and the Aeaens at the gate and Olympus a hair's breadth away from falling, Poseidon will have to make a difficult choice: about himself, about his allegiances, and about the man who woke his heart from its long slumber only to threaten to break it for good . . .
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The barrier that's protected Olympus for generations has fallen. The enemy's breached the gates and the Thirteen are scrambling to protect themselves, their loved ones, and the city they've sworn to protect. At least they would be if they weren't at each others' throats instead.
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Hera has no intention of letting her husband, Zeus, survive the oncoming storm. But despite the white-hot hatred burning between them, when Hera and Zeus are forced to work together, enmity crystalizes into something brighter. Hotter. Too powerful to deny or destroy.
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Hera never bartered on falling in love with the man she married - the man she once swore to kill. But now, standing back-to-back in the ruins of Olympus, she may be forced to admit that she's been wrong about Zeus all these years . . . and there may be something about their marriage worth saving if they can survive long enough to turn sworn enemies into something more.
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In Olympus, you either have the power to rule . . . or you are ruled. Achilles Kallis may have been born with nothing, but as a child he vowed he would claw his way into the poisonous city's inner circle. Now that a coveted role has opened to anyone with the strength to claim it, he and his partner, Patroclus Fotos, plan to compete and double their odds of winning.
\nNeither expect infamous beauty Helen Kasios to be part of the prize . . . or for the complicated fire that burns the moment she looks their way.
\nZeus may have decided Helen is his to give away, but she has her own plans. She enters into the competition as a middle finger to the meddling Thirteen rulers, effectively vying for her own hand in marriage. Unfortunately, there are those who would rather see her dead than lead the city. The only people she can trust are the ones she can't keep her hands off - Achilles and Patroclus. But can she really believe they have her best interests at heart when every stolen kiss is a battlefield?
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The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor has lived his entire life in exile, distant from the Imperial Court and the deadly intrigue that suffuses it. But when his father and three sons in line for the throne are killed in an \"accident,\" he has no choice but to take his place as the only surviving rightful heir.
Entirely unschooled in the art of court politics, he has no friends, no advisors, and the sure knowledge that whoever assassinated his father and brothers could make an attempt on his life at any moment.
Surrounded by sycophants eager to curry favor with the naïve new emperor, and overwhelmed by the burdens of his new life, he can trust nobody. Amid the swirl of plots to depose him, offers of arranged marriages, and the specter of the unknown conspirators who lurk in the shadows, he must quickly adjust to life as the Goblin Emperor. All the while, he is alone, and trying to find even a single friend . . . and hoping for the possibility of romance, yet also vigilant against the unseen enemies that threaten him, lest he lose his throne - or his life.
Celehar’s life as the Witness for the Dead of Amalo grows less isolated as his circle of friends grows larger. He has been given an apprentice to teach, and he has stumbled over a scandal of the city - the foundling girls. Orphans with no family to claim them and no funds to buy an apprenticeship. Foundling boys go to the Prelacies; foundling girls are sold into service, or worse.
\nAt once touching and shattering, Celehar’s witnessing for one of these girls will lead him into the depths of his own losses. The love of his friends will lead him out again.
Set in the world of The Goblin Emperor, The Orb of Cairado offers an unlikely hero in historian Ulcetha Zhorvena.
\nFive years ago, Ulcetha was studying at the University of Cairado, working his way toward becoming a scholar first-class in the Department of History. Then a prize artifact disappeared and Ulcetha, deftly framed, was kicked out. Now he works for a crooked importer, using his knowledge of elven history to write provenances for the fake artifacts Salathgarad sells.
\nWhen the airship Wisdom of Choharo explodes, killing the emperor and three of his four sons, it takes with it Ulcetha's best friend, Mara Lilana. But Mara leaves behind a puzzle - the one thing Ulcetha can't resist. And the puzzle leads Ulcetha back to the Department of History . . . and maybe the chance to clear his name.
Thara Celehar has lost his ability to speak with the dead. When that title of Witness for the Dead is gone, what defines him?
\nWhile his title may be gone, his duties are not. Celehar contends with a municipal cemetery with fifty years of secrets, the damage of a revethavar he’s terrified to remember, and a group of miners who are more than willing to trade Celehar’s life for a chance at what they feel they’re owed.
\nCelehar does not have to face these impossible tasks alone. Joining him are his mentee Velhiro Tomasaran, still finding her footing with the investigative nature of their job; Iäna Pel-Thenhior, his beloved opera director friend and avid supporter; and the valiant guard captain Hanu Olgarezh.
\nAmidst the backdrop of a murder and a brewing political uprising, Celehar must seek justice for those who cannot find it themselves under a tense political system. The repercussions of his quest are never as simple they seem, and Celehar’s own life and happiness hang in the balance.
When the young half-goblin emperor Maia sought to learn who had set the bombs that killed his father and half-brothers, he turned to an obscure resident of his father’s Court, a Prelate of Ulis and a Witness for the Dead. Thara Celehar found the truth, though it did him no good to discover it. He lost his place as a retainer of his cousin the former Empress, and made far too many enemies among the many factions vying for power in the new Court. The favor of the Emperor is a dangerous coin.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNow Celehar lives in the city of Amalo, far from the Court though not exactly in exile. He has not escaped from politics, but his position gives him the ability to serve the common people of the city, which is his preference. He lives modestly, but his decency and fundamental honestly will not permit him to live quietly. As a Witness for the Dead, he can, sometimes, speak to the recently dead: see the last thing they saw, know the last thought they had, experience the last thing they felt. It is his duty use that ability to resolve disputes, to ascertain the intent of the dead, to find the killers of the murdered.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNow Celehar’s skills lead him out of the quiet and into a morass of treachery, murder, and injustice. No matter his own background with the imperial house, Celehar will stand with the commoners, and possibly find a light in the darkness.
Anne of Brittany was a child when France invaded and drove her royal father to his death. Now she is a young woman, sovereign duchess of an occupied realm, and France means to crown their conquest by marrying her to their king. Such an alliance would put her title, her lands, and her body forever in the hands of her enemies.
\nBut Anne refuses to be the last duchess of Brittany.
\nHer only hope of resisting conquest is another alliance sealed with marriage, so Anne arranges a daring last gambit: a secret betrothal to Charles of France’s greatest rival. But secrets are hard to keep in a world where rival courts spy on each other with diviners.
\nThe forest of Brocéliande was once the haunt of Merlin the Enchanter and the long-lost faerie queen. But magic is long gone from Broceliande, except for the occasional sight of a unicorn and one critical quirk: This ancient forest is completely hostile to divination.
\nWhile pretending compliance with France, Anne plans a unicorn hunt in Brocéliande. A bit of pointless pageantry. A diversion so she can wed in secret.
\nOr so she thinks.
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Sadie Montgomery never saw what was coming . . . Literally! One minute she’s celebrating the biggest achievement of her life - placing as a finalist in the North American Portrait Society competition - the next, she’s lying in a hospital bed diagnosed with a “probably temporary” condition known as face blindness. She can see, but every face she looks at is now a jumbled puzzle of disconnected features. Imagine trying to read a book upside down and in another language. This is Sadie’s new reality with every face she sees.
\nBut, as she struggles to cope, hang on to her artistic dream, work through major family issues, and take care of her beloved dog, Peanut, she falls into - love? Lust? A temporary obsession to distract from the real problems in her life? - with not one man but two very different ones. The timing couldn’t be worse.
\nIf only her life were a little more in focus, Sadie might be able to find her way. But perceiving anything clearly right now seems impossible. Even though there are things we can only find when we aren’t looking. And there are people who show up when we least expect them. And there are always, always other ways of seeing.
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Hannah Brooks looks more like a kindergarten teacher than somebody who could kill you with a wine bottle opener. Or a ballpoint pen. Or a dinner napkin. But the truth is, she’s an Executive Protection Agent (aka \"bodyguard\"), and she just got hired to protect superstar actor Jack Stapleton from his middle-aged, corgi-breeding stalker.
\nJack Stapleton’s a household name - captured by paparazzi on beaches the world over, famous for, among other things, rising out of the waves in all manner of clingy board shorts and glistening like a Roman deity. But a few years back, in the wake of a family tragedy, he dropped from the public eye and went off the grid.
\nWhen Jack’s mom gets sick, he comes home to the family’s Texas ranch to help out. Only one catch: He doesn’t want his family to know about his stalker. Or the bodyguard thing. And so Hannah - against her will and her better judgment - finds herself pretending to be Jack’s girlfriend as a cover. Even though her ex, like a jerk, says no one will believe it.
\nHannah hardly believes it, herself. But the more time she spends with Jack, the more real it all starts to seem. And there lies the heartbreak. Because it’s easy for Hannah to protect Jack. But protecting her own, long-neglected heart? That’s the hardest thing she’s ever done.
Katie Vaughn has been burned by love in the past - now she may be lighting her career on fire. She has two choices: wait to get laid off from her job as a video producer or, at her coworker Cole’s request, take a career-making gig profiling Tom “Hutch” Hutcheson, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer in Key West.
\nThe catch? Katie’s not exactly qualified. She can’t swim - but fakes it that she can.
\nPlus: Cole is Hutch’s brother. And they don’t get along. Next stop paradise!
\nBut paradise is messier than it seems. As Katie gets entangled with Hutch (the most scientifically good looking man she has ever seen . . . but also a bit of a love hater), along with his colorful Aunt Rue and his rescue Great Dane, she gets trapped in a lie. Or two.
\nSwim lessons, helicopter flights, conga lines, drinking contests, hurricanes, and stolen kisses ensue - along with chances to tell the truth, to face old fears, and to be truly brave at last.
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Emma Wheeler desperately longs to be a screenwriter. She’s spent her life studying, obsessing over, and writing romantic comedies - good ones! That win contests! But she’s also been the sole caretaker for her kind-hearted dad, who needs full-time care. Now, when she gets a chance to re-write a script for famous screenwriter Charlie Yates - The Charlie Yates! Her personal writing god! - it’s a break too big to pass up.
\nEmma’s younger sister steps in for caretaking duties, and Emma moves to L.A. for six weeks for the writing gig of a lifetime. But what is it they say? Don’t meet your heroes? Charlie Yates doesn’t want to write with anyone - much less “a failed, nobody screenwriter.” Worse, the romantic comedy he’s written is so terrible it might actually bring on the apocalypse. Plus! He doesn’t even care about the script - it’s just a means to get a different one green-lit. Oh, and he thinks love is an emotional Ponzi scheme.
\nBut Emma’s not going down without a fight. She will stand up for herself, and for rom-coms, and for love itself. She will convince him that love stories matter - even if she has to kiss him senseless to do it. But . . . what if that kiss is accidentally amazing? What if real life turns out to be so much . . . more real than fiction? What if the love story they’re writing breaks all Emma’s rules - and comes true?
Cassie Hanwell was born for emergencies. As one of the only female firefighters in her Texas firehouse, she's seen her fair share of them, and she's excellent at dealing with other people's tragedies. But when her estranged and ailing mother asks her to uproot her life and move to Boston, it's an emergency of a kind Cassie never anticipated.
The tough, old-school Boston firehouse is as different from Cassie's old job as it could possibly be. Hazing, a lack of funding, and poor facilities mean that the firemen aren't exactly thrilled to have a \"lady\" on the crew, even one as competent and smart as Cassie. Except for the handsome rookie, who doesn't seem to mind having Cassie around.
But she can't think about that. Because she doesn't fall in love. And because of the advice her old captain gave her: don't date firefighters. Cassie can feel her resolve slipping . . . but will she jeopardize her place in a career where she's worked so hard to be taken seriously?
Samantha Casey is a school librarian who loves her job, the kids, and her school family with passion and joy for living. But she wasn’t always that way.
\nDuncan Carpenter is the new school principal who lives by rules and regulations, guided by the knowledge that bad things can happen. But he wasn’t always that way.
\nAnd Sam knows it. Because she knew him before - at another school, in a different life. Back then, she loved him - but she was invisible. To him. To everyone. Even to herself. She escaped to a new school, a new job, a new chance at living. But when Duncan, of all people, gets hired as the new principal there, it feels like the best thing that could possibly happen to the school - and the worst thing that could possibly happen to Sam. Until the opposite turns out to be true. The lovable Duncan she’d known is now a suit-and-tie wearing, rule-enforcing tough guy so hell-bent on protecting the school that he’s willing to destroy it.
\nAs the school community spirals into chaos, and danger from all corners looms large, Sam and Duncan must find their way to who they really are, what it means to be brave, and how to take a chance on love - which is the riskiest move of all.
Rena and Tom have been planning this trip for just the two of them, retired, setting out into remote bush country to enjoy nature's dramatic beauty - and each other's company. When Tom dies unexpectedly just before they are to depart, Rena almost cancels, but there's nothing left at home but painful memories. She hits the road in her kitted-out truck, vowing to follow the itinerary she and Tom had mapped, hoping the trip will at least distract her from her devastating loss.
\nNot far from her first planned stop, Rena notices a fire burning some distance off the highway. Being a good citizen, she ventures off road, and is horrified to find a vehicle consumed by flames, with what's left of the driver still inside. When she learns that the victim is a fellow geologist - a less-than-reputable character whom she hadn't seen in 20 years - Rena begins an unofficial and unwelcome investigation fraught with deceit, diamond theft, and murder. Had her old colleague found a new pipeline for the rare and valuable pink diamond, and been killed for it? And if Rena doesn't mind her own business, will she be next?
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Exactly 19 years ago, in May of 1992, 17-year-old Roland St. Cloud fatally stabbed his twin sister Edna's three best friends. The slaying became instant tabloid fodder leading to a bestselling true-crime book and horror movie franchise. Each year on the anniversary of her family's undoing, Edna reenacts the murders. She is joined by her husband, Roger, the night's definitive chronicler; her younger sister Calla, a failed playwright who spends her days lost in online gaming; her younger brother James and his girlfriend Heather; and her teenage daughter Wren.
\nTogether, the St. Cloud family seals the windows and doors of the house and lights a grim candle. After their macabre theatrics there's nothing to do but wait for dawn, talk among themselves, and remember.
\nAll Us Saints is a literary family drama packaged as a two-act play. Behind the curtain, Packert Burke unveils Roland's childhood as a closeted trans girl in the early 90s and offers a brilliant and scathing commentary on the cisgender gaze.
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When Damien, a cold and hardened thief, is hired to steal a gift from the powerful Fates meant for Andalay’s sweetheart, Wren Hayes, he finds himself entangled in a web of secrets.
\nThe gift? A locket containing his own phototroph.
\nOnce the locket is opened, hidden truths unravel, ones that shed light on the ruthless ways of the upper-class society. Yearning for the three Fates and the magical gifts they bestow, the lords of Andalay will go to any length to keep their power - including murder.
\nBrought together by destiny, and fighting a temptation that neither understand, Wren and Damien navigate a seedy world where the truth can destroy not only their lives, but the city itself.
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Jude Maddox knows nothing of love or even light. He knows only his grim duty as the Hand of Death, to lead the Knights of the Eternal Star into a land filled with nightmares and certain demise. It’s only when he sees her - a young woman with wild, amber eyes who’s as fierce, defiant, and swift as the shadow beasts themselves - that he feels the warmth of life in his blood . . .
\nThe other Knights may fear their lethal commander, with his hard, merciless demeanor. Outcast Kiara Frey sees only a leader, a man who knows how to survive. Someone like her. But wanting him is as treacherous as the shadows themselves . . . and just as seductive.
\nWith a kingdom on the verge of collapse, the Knights must now venture into the darkest heart of the land and uncover the secrets of the misted shadows, where evil will prey upon their minds and feast on their flesh.
\nIt will betray their senses.
It will surpass their nightmares.
Most of them will die.
But they have no other choice. Because the only way to fight the darkness . . . is to become it.
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Some fear the darkness. It’s the place where horror hides, concealing its rank, sharp teeth and insatiable hunger. But there is no darkness more feared than that of the mist that’s overtaken the kingdom . . . and its brave - and ultimately doomed - soldiers.
\nExcept for Kiara Frey.
\nShe has nothing to fear from the night. Not anymore.
\nDriven by the fury of her splintered heart, Kiara knows that the answers - and the only possible way to a future with Jude Maddox - begin with the realm’s most notorious thief, the Fox. Together, they hunt down the path to breaking Asidia’s dark curse, but in the shadows, something more horrifying than the mist lies in wait. Watching. Willing Kiara to find the game pieces set in place long ago.
\nAs Jude and Kiara are lured to a sacred temple - a shrine that is the home to both exquisite dreams and chilling nightmares - Kiara’s newfound powers flourish but her shadows threaten to consume her.
\nBecause here in these cursed lands, it’s not the darkness that destroys the soul . . . it’s love.
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From his seat in the tiny aeroplane, Fred watches as the mysteries of the Amazon jungle pass by below him. He has always dreamed of becoming an explorer, of making history and of reading his name amongst the lists of great discoveries. If only he could land and look about him.
\nAs the plane crashes into the canopy, Fred is suddenly left without a choice. He and the three other children may be alive, but the jungle is a vast, untamed place. With no hope of rescue, the chance of getting home feels impossibly small.
\nExcept, it seems, someone has been there before them . . .
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When Vita’s grandfather’s mansion is taken from him by a powerful real estate tycoon, Vita knows it’s up to her to make things right. With the help of a pickpocket and her new circus friends, Vita creates the plan: Break into the mansion. Steal back what’s rightfully her grandfather’s.
\nExpose the real estate tycoon for the crook he truly is. But 1920s Manhattan is ever-changing and full of secrets. It might take more than Vita’s ragtag gang of misfits to outsmart the city that never sleeps.
\nAward-winning author Katherine Rundell has created an utterly gripping tour de-force about loyalty, trust, and the lengths to which we’ll go for the ones we love.
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Everyone thinks that Sophie is an orphan. True, there were no other recorded female survivors from the shipwreck which left baby Sophie floating in the English Channel in a cello case, but Sophie remembers seeing her mother wave for help. Her guardian tells her it is almost impossible that her mother is still alive, but that means still possible. You should never ignore a possible.
\nSo when the Welfare Agency writes to her guardian threatening to send Sophie to an orphanage, she takes matters into her own hands and flees to Paris to look for her mother, starting with the only clue she has - the address of the cello maker. Evading the French authorities, she meets Matteo and his network of rooftoppers - urchins who live in the sky.
\nTogether they scour the city for Sophie's mother before she is caught and sent back to London, and most importantly before she loses hope.
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The world is more astonishing, more miraculous, and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this brilliant and passionately persuasive book, Katherine Rundell takes us on a globe-spanning tour of the world's most awe-inspiring animals currently facing extinction.
\nConsider the seahorse: couples mate for life and meet each morning for a dance, pirouetting and changing colors before going their separate ways, to dance again the next day. The American wood frog survives winter by allowing itself to freeze solid, its heartbeat slowing until it stops altogether. Come spring, the heart kick-starts itself spontaneously back to life. As for the lemur, it lives in matriarchal troops led by an alpha female (it’s not unusual for female ring-tailed lemurs to slap males across the face when they become aggressive). Whenever they are cold or frightened, they group together in what’s known as a lemur ball, paws and tails intertwined, to form a furry mass as big as a bicycle wheel.
\nBut each of these extraordinary animals is endangered or holds a sub-species that is endangered. This urgent, inspiring book of essays dedicated to 23 unusual and underappreciated creatures is a clarion call insisting that we look at the world around us with new eyes - to see the magic of the animals we live among, their unknown histories and capabilities, and above all how lucky we are to tread the same ground as such vanishing treasures.
\nBeautifully illustrated, and full of inimitable wit and intellect, Vanishing Treasures is a chance to be awestruck and lovestruck, to reckon with the beauty of the world, its fragility, and its strangeness.
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Feodora and her mother live in the snowbound woods of Russia, in a house full of food and fireplaces. Ten minutes away, in a ruined chapel, lives a pack of wolves. Feodora's mother is a wolf wilder, and Feo is a wolf wilder in training. A wolf wilder is the opposite of an animal tamer: it is a person who teaches tamed animals to fend for themselves, and to fight and to run, and to be wary of humans.
\nWhen the murderous hostility of the Russian Army threatens her very existence, Feo is left with no option but to go on the run. What follows is a story of revolution and adventure, about standing up for the things you love and fighting back. And, of course, wolves.
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Twin queens Rose & Wren survived the Battle for Anadawn and brought back magic to their kingdom. But danger lurks in Eana’s shadows.
\nWren is troubled. Ever since she performed the blood spell on Prince Ansel, her magic has become unruly. Worse, the spell created a link between Wren and the very man she’s trying to forget: Icy King Alarik of Gevra. A curse is eating away at both of them. To fix it they must journey to the northern mountains - under the watchful guard of Captain Tor Iversen - to consult with the Healer on High.
\nRose is haunted. Waking one night to find her undead ancestor Oonagh Starcrest by her bed, she receives a warning: surrender the throne - or face a war that will destroy Eana. With nowhere to turn and desperate to find a weapon to defeat Oonagh, Rose seeks help from Shen-Lo in the Sunkissed Kingdom, but what she finds there may break her heart.
\nAs Oonagh threatens all Rose and Wren hold dear, it will take everything they have to save Eana - including a sacrifice they may not be prepared to make.
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Captain Marino Pegasi is never happier than when he’s exploring the oceans. But when his beloved sister, Celeste, falls gravely ill, he is forced to go on a desperate search for a cure. Little does he know that in his search he will find so much more lying beyond the horizon. Does Marino’s fate truly lie in the hands of a bewitching, mysterious mermaid?
Twin queens Wren and Rose have claimed their crowns . . . but not everyone is happy about witches sitting on Eana's throne.
\nCool-headed Rose sets off on a Royal Tour to win over the doubters, but soon finds herself drawn to the Sunless Kingdom. Here secrets are revealed about those closest to her, and Rose finds her loyalties divided.
\nMeanwhile rebellious Wren steals away to the icy north to rescue their beloved grandmother, Banba. But when she accepts King Alarik's deadly magical bargain in exchange for Banba's freedom, the spell has unexpected - and far-reaching - consequences . . .
\nAs an ancient curse begins to arise from the darkness, the sisters must come together and unite the crown. Their lives - and the future of Eana - depend on it.
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Wren Greenrock has always known that one day she would steal her sister's place in the palace. Trained from birth to return to the place of her parents' murder and usurp the only survivor, she will do anything to rise to power and protect the community of witches she loves. Or she would, if only a certain palace guard wasn't quite so distractingly attractive, and if her reckless magic didn't have a habit of causing trouble . . .
\nPrincess Rose Valhart knows that with power comes responsibility. Marriage into a brutal kingdom awaits, and she will not let a small matter like waking up in the middle of the desert in the company of an extremely impertinent (and handsome) kidnapper get in the way of her royal duty. But life outside the palace walls is wilder and more beautiful than she ever imagined, and the witches she has long feared might turn out to be the family she never knew she was missing.
\nTwo sisters separated at birth and raised into entirely different worlds are about to get to know each other's lives a whole lot better. But as coronation day looms closer and they each strive to claim their birthright, the sinister Kingsbreath, Willem Rathborne, becomes increasingly determined that neither will succeed. Who will ultimately rise to power and wear the crown?
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Jandy Nelson meets Friday Night Lights: a sweeping story about love and family from an exceptional new voice in YA. With a grandmother from China and another from Ghana, fifteen-year-old Wing Jones is often caught between worlds.
\nBut when tragedy strikes, Wing discovers a talent for running she never knew she had. Wing's speed could bring her family everything it needs. It could also stop Wing getting the one thing she wants.
When Audrey Collet’s ex Tyson calls, threatening to expose the skeletons in her closet unless she helps him figure out who is blackmailing him, she wants nothing more than to refuse. Though their relationship ended over a decade ago, the scars are deep. And since his tech company made him a billionaire, he’s become more than a little eccentric . . . and paranoid.
\nBut a foot has washed ashore in the Everglades - that’s right, an actual human foot, encased in an Air Jordan - and Tyson is quick to remind Audrey that it’s one whose long-dead owner they both have a connection to. A connection that could prove problematic, if it got out.
\nAudrey reluctantly agrees to meet Tyson at his home on the swanky Caribbean island of St. Barth’s to help him figure out who in his entourage is extorting him, and what they know about the secrets he and Audrey share. Once there, she realises that each person staying at Tyson’s lavish estate has a reason to wish him harm. Could the culprit be the gorgeous Belgian wife whose wings he’s clipped? The celebrity business partner he’s essentially holding hostage? The older brother who’s always been in his shadow? Or the sexy French butler he seems to trust more than he should?
\nAudrey has only just scratched the surface of what’s going on behind closed doors when Tyson’s birthday dive turns deadly, and she realises one of the seven people trapped on his yacht with her is not just a blackmailer, but a murderer. If Audrey can’t catch the killer in time, she might become the next victim.
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A cautious daughter and her eccentric, estranged mother venture west in search of buried treasure - and a way back to each other - before they run out of patience, money, and options.
\nAfter being fired for taking an uncharacteristic risk at her commodities trading job, Bea Macon sublets her New York apartment and books a one-way ticket to stay with her mother, Christy, a free spirit who's been living in Salt Lake City on Bea's dime.
\nUsually the responsible one, Bea isn't about to admit exactly why she's suddenly decided to visit, but she isn’t the only one keeping secrets: Christy has a boyfriend. She has a map. She has a username on a forum devoted to unearthing $1 million in buried treasure that an antiquities dealer claims to have hidden somewhere in the western U.S?
\nBea is convinced this is just another one of her mother’s wild larks, an elaborate way to refuse, as she has for Bea’s entire life, to finally grow up. But Christy believes she’s on to something - and she’s arranged a rendezvous in a rural town called Mercy with the guy she’s been obsessively trading theories with online to prove it. Out in the desert that one woman views as a promised land, the other a wasteland, they find themselves barreling toward a more high-stakes, transformative escapade than either of them could have imagined.
Sub-tropical Bellworth is founded on floodplains and root-bound secrets. And Charlie, remarkable only for vanished friends and a successful sister, plans to leave for good, just as soon as he deals with his dead aunt’s house. Then Grace arrives, desperate, with roses pressing up through her skin, and drags Charlie into the ghost-choked mysteries of Bellworth, uncovering the impossible consequences of loss and desire - and a choice Charlie made when he was a boy.
\nBut peeling back the rumors and lies that cocoon the suburb disturbs more than complacent neighbors and lost souls. And Charlie and Grace are forced to a decision that threatens not only their lives, but all they believed those lives could be.
When rivals Harper and Eve are forced to team up on a high-stakes treasure hunt, sparks fly, secrets unravel, and the biggest prize might just be their hearts.
\nReporter Harper Hendrix is chasing a career-making story - and the legendary Blackburn Diamonds are her ticket to the top. She’s smart, ambitious, and definitely not distracted by the infuriatingly hot antiques salvager standing in her way.
\nEve Bardot has spent years searching for the diamonds, and she’s not about to let a pesky, too-charming reporter ruin her shot. But when rival treasure hunters close in, Eve and Harper strike an uneasy truce to track down the prize together.
\nTheir partnership? Purely strategic. The bickering? Nonstop. The chemistry? A complete disaster.
\nAs clues pile up and tension turns explosive, Harper and Eve must decide what’s more dangerous: the hunt . . . or falling for each other.
A provocative and timely case for how the science of genetics can help create a more just and equal society. In recent years, scientists like Kathryn Paige Harden have shown that DNA makes us different, in our personalities and in our health - and in ways that matter for educational and economic success in our current society.
\nIn The Genetic Lottery, Harden introduces readers to the latest genetic science, dismantling dangerous ideas about racial superiority and challenging us to grapple with what equality really means in a world where people are born different. Weaving together personal stories with scientific evidence, Harden shows why our refusal to recognize the power of DNA perpetuates the myth of meritocracy, and argues that we must acknowledge the role of genetic luck if we are ever to create a fair society.
\nReclaiming genetic science from the legacy of eugenics, this groundbreaking book offers a bold new vision of a society where everyone thrives, regardless of how one fares in the genetic lottery.
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As one of the world's leading scientists examining how our DNA shapes differences in temperament, temptation and behaviour, Harden has seen first-hand how we - in public and in our most private relationships - continue to struggle with the ancient tensions between nature and nurture, freedom and constraint, the desire to punish and the longing to forgive.
\nIn Original Sin, she weaves together insights from her own experience as a daughter, mother, wife and scientist with cutting-edge research in genetics and psychology to grapple with some of the most important questions in modern How do we take responsibility for the people we become, knowing how we are shaped by both biology and experience? How should we respond when people hurt each other - or themselves? And has science made guilt obsolete?
\nNavigating the psychological and biological terrain of addiction, antisocial behaviour and violence, Harden confronts the discomforting ways science unsettles our understanding of wrongdoing and choice. In doing so she asks us not to absolve, but to reckon differently with notions of fairness and blame. A revelatory inquiry into the uneasy space where human behaviour meets inherited biology, Original Sin challenges us to imagine a more humane vision of accountability - for ourselves and for one another.
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In 1933 Oxford, Mississippi, Prohibition is on the wane, and the Great Depression is tightening its grip. Poor and rich folks alike have fallen on hard times, even as the old social order remains. For women on the margins, the options are few and the price of dignity and self-determination is unbearably high.
\nEleven-year-old Meg, one of the unadoptable “big girls” at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed. Birdie, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford on a mission to ask her social-climbing sister to help the struggling family she’s left behind. And Charlie is a woman with a past, running low on luck but driven by fire, fury, and grit.
\nWhen their fates converge, they come up with an audacious plan to take back control of their lives. Together, they form an unlikely sisterhood—but in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife, women’s freedom is fragile, and making an enemy can have dire consequences, will the price they pay for their outrageous risk-taking be too high?
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Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver . . .
\nThere's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared.
\nSkeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they'd be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell . . .
There are 206 bones in the human body. Forensic anthropologists know them intimately, and can use them to recreate every kind of violent end.
\nTempe wakes up to discover that she is enclosed in a kind of very small, very dark, very cold space. She is bound, hands to feet, and there’s something wrong with her ankle. Unsure of where she is, Tempe slowly begins to work out what has happened . . .
\nWhen the body of a missing heiress was discovered, Temperance Brennan and Lieutenant Ryan accompanied the remains from Montreal to the Chicago morgue. Their trip was soon interrupted when an incriminating phone call accused Tempe of mishandling the autopsy - and the case. But before Tempe could face her accuser, the one man with information about the call died, and Tempe was left in the dark. As the facts slowly slot into place, Tempe wonders who wants her dead, or at least out of the way, and why?
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With this opening sentence, Kathy Reichs serves notice that her heroine, Temperance Brennan, is in for one of her scariest, most gruesome adventures yet. As fans of this popular series already know, Tempe is a forensic anthropologist: an expert in the human form (especially bones) who helps solve crimes.
\nThe abovementioned infant is only the first in a series of grisly remains, both human and animal, that Tempe must sort through and decode. Meanwhile, as several seemingly unrelated cases begin to intertwine, her sleuthing puts her in the crosshairs of a very nasty stalker who hides behind an e-mail alias.
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A storm has hit South Carolina, dredging up crimes of the past.
\nOn the way to Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan receives a call from the Charleston coroner. During the storm, a medical waste container has washed up on the beach. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting and bound with electrical wire. Chillingly, Tempe recognizes many details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec fifteen years earlier. With a growing sense of foreboding, she flies to Montreal to gather evidence and convince her boss Pierre LaManch to reopen the cold case. She also seeks the advice - and comfort - of her longtime beau Andrew Ryan.
\nMeanwhile, a storm of a different type gathers force in South Carolina. The citizens of Charleston are struck by a bacterium that, at its worst, can eat human flesh. Thousands panic and test themselves for a rare genetic mutation that may have rendered them vulnerable.
\nShockingly, Tempe eventually discovers that not only are the victims in both grisly murder cases related, but that the murders and the disease outbreak also have a common cause . . .
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Following a series of bizarre disappearances on the islands of Turks and Caicos, Temperance Brennan enters a sinister labyrinth in which a new technology may wreak worldwide havoc.
\nCalled in to examine what is left of a body struck by lightning, Tempe traces an unusual tattoo to its source and is soon embroiled in a much larger case. Young men - tourists - have been disappearing on the islands of Turks and Caicos for years. Seven years ago, the first victim was found in a strange location with both hands cut off; the other visitors vanished without a trace. But, recently, tantalising leads have emerged and only Tempe can unravel them.
\nMaddeningly, the victims seem to have nothing in common - other than the strange locations where their bodies are eventually found, and the fact that the young men all seem to be the least likely to be involved in foul play. Do these attacks have something to do with the islands’ seething culture of gang violence? Tempe isn’t so sure. And then she turns up disturbing clues that what’s at stake may actually have global significance.
\nIt isn’t long before the sound of a ticking clock grows menacingly loud, and then Tempe herself becomes a target.
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A woman calling herself Amy Roberts checks into a Montreal hospital complaining of uncontrolled bleeding. Doctors see evidence of a recent birth, but before they can act, Roberts disappears. Dispatched to the address she gave at the hospital, police discover bloody towels outside in a Dumpster. Fearing the worst, they call Temperance Brennan to investigate.
\nIn a run-down apartment Tempe makes a ghastly discovery: the decomposing bodies of three infants. According to the landlord, a woman named Alma Rogers lives there. Then a man shows up looking for Alva Rodriguez. Are Amy Roberts, Alma Rogers, and Alva Rodriguez the same person? Did she kill her own babies? And where is she now?
\nHeading up the investigation is Tempe’s old flame, homicide detective Andrew Ryan. His counterpart from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is sergeant Ollie Hasty, who happens to have a little history with Tempe himself, which she regrets. This unlikely trio follows the woman’s trail, first to Edmonton and then to Yellowknife, a remote diamond-mining city deep in the Northwest Territories. What they find in Yellowknife is more sinister than they ever could have imagined.
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Unexpectedly called in to the Charlotte PD’s Cold Case Unit, Dr. Temperance Brennan wonders why she’s been asked to meet with a homicide cop who’s a long way from his own jurisdiction. The shocking answer: Two child murders, separated by thousands of miles, have one thing in common - the killer. Years ago, Anique Pomerleau kidnapped and murdered a string of girls in Canada, then narrowly eluded capture. It was a devastating defeat for her pursuers, Brennan and police detective Andrew Ryan.
\nNow, as if summoned from their nightmares, Pomerleau has resurfaced in the United States, linked to victims in Vermont and North Carolina. When another child is snatched, the reign of terror promises to continue - unless Brennan can rise to the challenge and make good on her second chance to stop a psychopath.
\nBut Brennan will have to draw her bitter ex-partner out of exile, keep the local police and feds from one another’s throats, and face more than just her own demons as she stalks the deadliest of predators into the darkest depths of madness.
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When Charlotte police discover the body of a teenage girl along a desolate stretch of two-lane highway, Temperance Brennan fears the worst. The girl’s body shows signs of foul play. Inside her purse, police find an airline club card bearing the name of prominent local businessman John-Henry Story, who died in a horrific fire months earlier. How did Story and the girl know each other? Was she an illegal immigrant turning tricks? Was she murdered? Was he?
\nTempe must also examine a bundle of Peruvian dog mummies confiscated by U.S. Customs. A Desert Storm veteran named Dominick Rockett stands accused of smuggling the objects into the country. Could there be some connection between the trafficking of antiquities and the trafficking of humans?
\nAs the complications pile on, Tempe must also grapple with personal turmoil. Her daughter, Katy, grieving the death of her boyfriend in Afghanistan, impulsively enlists in the army. Meanwhile, Katy’s father, Pete, is growing frustrated by Tempe’s reluctance to finalize their divorce. As pressure mounts from all corners, Tempe soon finds herself at the center of a conspiracy that extends all the way from South America to Afghanistan and right to the center of Charlotte.
\nA tour de force of imagination, Bones of the Lost is a roller coaster of plot twists, punctuated by Tempe’s fierce wit and forensic know-how. “A genius at building suspense” (New York Daily News), Kathy Reichs is at her brilliant best in this sixteenth installment of the Temperance Brennan series. With the Fox series Bones in its ninth season, Kathy Reichs has reached new heights in suspenseful storytelling.
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For Tempe Brennan, the discovery of a young girl's skeleton in Acadia, Canada, is more than just another case. Evangeline, Tempe's childhood best friend, was also from Acadia. Named for the character in the Longfellow poem, Evangeline was the most exotic person in Tempe's eight-year-old world. When Evangeline disappeared, Tempe was warned not to search for her, that the girl was \"dangerous.\"
\nThirty years later, flooded with memories, Tempe cannot help wondering if this skeleton could be the friend she had lost so many years ago. And what is the meaning of the strange skeletal lesions found on the bones of the young girl?
\nMeanwhile, Tempe's beau, Ryan, investigates a series of cold cases. Two girls dead. Three missing. Could the New Brunswick skeleton be part of the pattern? As Tempe draws on the latest advances in forensic anthropology to penetrate the past, Ryan hunts down a serial predator.
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Among the ancient remains in a Native American burial ground, Tempe discovers a fresh skeleton—and what began as an ordinary teaching stint at an archeology field school in Charleston, South Carolina, fast becomes a heated investigation into an alarming pattern of homicides.
\nThe clues hidden in the bones lead to a street clinic where a monstrous discovery awaits, and Tempe - whose personal life is in upheaval, with two men competing for her - can’t afford any distractions as she pieces together a shattering and terrifying puzzle.
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The Virals are put to the ultimate test when they find a geocache containing an ornate puzzle box. Shelton decodes the cipher inside, only to find more tantalizing clues left by \"The Gamemaster.\" A second, greater geocache is within reach - if the Virals are up to the challenge.
\nBut the hunt takes a dark turn when Tory locates the other box--a fake bomb, along with a sinister proposal from The Gamemaster. Now, the real game has begun: another bomb is out there - a real one - and the clock is ticking.
Winter has come to North Carolina and, with it, a drop in crime. Freed from a heavy work schedule, Tempe Brennan is content to dote on her daughter Katy, finally returned to civilian life from the army. But when mother and daughter meet at Tempe’s place one night, they find a box on the back porch. Inside: a very fresh human eyeball.
\nGPS coordinates etched into the eyeball lead to a Benedictine monastery where an equally macabre discovery awaits. Soon after, Tempe examines a mummified corpse in a state park, and her anxiety deepens.
\nThere seems to be no pattern to the subsequent killings uncovered, except that each mimics in some way a homicide that a younger Tempe had been called in to analyze. Who or what is targeting her, and why?
\nHelping Tempe search for answers is detective Erskine “Skinny” Slidell, retired but still volunteering with the CMPD cold case unit - and still displaying his gallows humour. Also pulled into the mystery: Andrew Ryan, Tempe’s Montreal-based beau, now working as a private detective.
\nCould this elaborately staged skein of mayhem be the prelude to a twist that is even more shocking? Tempe is at a loss to establish the motive for what is going on . . . and then her daughter disappears.
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It’s sweltering in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Temperance Brennan, still recovering from neurosurgery following an aneurysm, is battling nightmares, migraines, and what she thinks might be hallucinations when she receives a series of mysterious text messages, each containing a new picture of a corpse that is missing its face and hands. Immediately, she’s anxious to know who the dead man is, and why the images were sent to her.
\nAn identified corpse soon turns up, only partly answering her questions.
\nTo win answers to the others, including the man’s identity, she must go rogue, working mostly outside the system. That’s because Tempe’s new boss holds a fierce grudge against her and is determined to keep her out of the case. Tempe bulls forward anyway, even as she begins questioning her instincts. But the clues she discovers are disturbing and confusing. Was the faceless man a spy? A trafficker? A target for assassination by the government? And why was he carrying the name of a child missing for almost a decade?
\nWith help from a number of law enforcement associates including her Montreal beau Andrew Ryan and the always-ready-with-a-smart-quip, ex-homicide investigator Skinny Slidell, and utilizing new cutting-edge forensic methods, Tempe draws closer to the astonishing truth.
\nBut the more she uncovers, the darker and more twisted the picture becomes . . .
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Examining a badly decomposed corpse is de rigueur for forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. But when an Orthodox Jewish man is shot in Montreal and Tempe is called to the scene, she discovers puzzling damage on the body that suggests it was no ordinary murder. When a stranger slips Tempe a photograph of a skeleton unearthed at an archaeological site, she soon uncovers chilling ties between the dead man and secrets long buried in the dust of Israel.
\nWith Detective Andrew Ryan, Tempe plunges into an international mystery as old as Jesus that centres on the supposed discovery of Christ’s tomb. But each breakthrough raises more radical questions, and the stakes mount ever higher. Has a mastermind lured Tempe into an elaborate hoax? Or is there some truth in the swirling controversy? If so, Tempe may be on the brink of rewriting two thousand years of history - if she can survive the foes dead set on burying her first.
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Nine-year-old Emily Anne Toussaint is fatally shot on a Montreal street. A North Carolina teenager disappears from her home, and parts of her skeleton are found hundreds of miles away.
\nThese shocking deaths propel Tempe Brennan from north to south, and deep into a shattering investigation inside the bizarre culture of outlaw motorcycle gangs - where one misstep could bring disaster for herself or someone she loves.
Tempe Brennan is stuck teaching an archaeology field school for students at UNCC in Charleston, South Carolina.
\nWhen she stumbles upon a recent skeleton among the ancient bones, she starts asking questions. She’s the expert they might have called in, but lucky for the police she’s already there. The skeleton leads her to a free street clinic where patients have begun to go missing, and some have wound up dead. What is going on and who is to blame? The charismatic televangelist who oversees the clinic? The shady doctor who practices there? Or is it the clinic staff?
\nRyan is in Montreal, though he may come down for a visit. If he does, Tempe will have to juggle him and Detective Galiano, an old flame, who is in town investigating the disappearance of a wealthy young woman. This is a phenomenally high stakes business where one dead body can save a couple of lives, maybe more. Along with the corpses, Tempe investigates the sick moral logic of the mastermind behind the operation.
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The raves are in - from Edgar-winning authors and internationally acclaimed forensic experts: Kathy Reichs and Déjà Dead are something special.
\nRarely has a debut crime novel inspired such widespread excitement. A born storyteller, Dr. Kathy Reichs walks in the steps of her heroine, Dr. Temperance Brennan. She spends her days in the autopsy suite, the courtroom, the crime lab, with cops, and at exhumation sites. Often her long days turn into harrowing nights.
\nIt's June in Montreal, and Tempe, who has left a shaky marriage back home in North Carolina to take on the challenging assignment of director of forensic anthropology for the province of Quebec, looks forward to a relaxing weekend.
\nFirst, though, she must stop at a newly uncovered burial site in the heart of the city. One look at the decomposed and decapitated corpse, stored neatly in plastic bags, tells her she'll spend the weekend in the crime lab. This is homicide of the worst kind. To begin to find some answers, Tempe must first identify the victim. Who is this person with the reddish hair and a small bone structure?
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In a house under renovation in Charlotte, North Carolina, a plumber discovers a forgotten cellar, and some rather grisly remains—the severed head of a teenage girl, several decapitated chickens, and a couple of cauldrons containing beads, feathers, bones, and other relics of religious ceremonies. In a river not far away, an adolescent boy’s torso carved with a pentagram, is found. Are these crimes the work of Satanists and devil worshippers?
Nothing is clear, neither when the deaths occurred, nor where. Was the skull brought to the cellar or was the girl murdered there? As Temperance Brennan is called in to investigate, citizen vigilantes intent on a witch hunt are led by a preacher turned politician, looking for revenge.
Small animals - a rat, a rabbit, a squirrel - have been turning up throughout Charlotte, North Carolina, mutilated and displayed in the same bizarre manner. But one day, as Tempe is relaxing at home alongside her aimless, moody great-niece Tory, she’s diverted by a disturbing call. Now, it seems, the perp is upping the ante. This find is larger. Could the remains be human?
\nTempe visits the scene and discovers that the victim is a dog. Someone’s pet. As someone who has always found animal cruelty deeply abhorrent, Tempe vows to help apprehend the person responsible for the killings, and due to Tory’s especially layered knowledge of animal behaviour, the young woman turns out to be a valuable ally in the hunt for answers. Oddly, Tempe discovers that semi-retired homicide detective Erskine ‘Skinny’ Slidell is equally outraged and committed. Needing a better understanding of possible motives, Tempe and Skinny seek input from a forensic psychologist. The doctor has no definitive answer but offers several possibilities, warning that the escalating pattern of aggression suggests even more macabre discoveries - and that the perp’s focus may soon shift to humans.
\nAnd then it happens. A woman is found disfigured and posed in a manner that mimics the earlier killings.
\nAs Tempe and Slidell follow the horrifying clues to a shocking conclusion, they’re forced to confront an increasingly terrifying question: ‘What is pure evil?
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When twin classmates are abducted from Bolton Prep, Tory and the Virals decide there’s no one better equipped than them to investigate. But the gang has other problems to face. Their powers are growing wilder, and becoming harder to control. Chance Claybourne is investigating the disastrous medical experiment that twisted their DNA. The bonds that unite them are weakening, threatening the future of the pack itself.
\nThe Virals must decipher the clues and track down a ruthless criminal before he strikes again, all while protecting their secret from prying eyes. And everyone seems to be watching.
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Temperance Brennan hears the news on her car radio: an Air TransSouth flight has gone down in the mountains of western North Carolina, taking with it eighty-eight passengers and crew. As a forensic anthropologist and a member of the regional DMORT team, Tempe rushes to the scene to assist in body recovery and identification. Tempe has seen death many times, working with the medical examiners in North Carolina and Montreal, but never has tragedy struck with such devastation. She finds a field of carnage. Many of the dead are members of a university soccer team. Is Tempe’s daughter, Katy, among them?
\nFrantic with worry, Tempe joins colleagues from the FBI, the NTSB, and other agencies to search for explanations. Was the plane brought down by a bomb, an insurance plot, a political assassination, or simple mechanical failure? And what about the prisoner on the plane who was being extradited to Canada? Did someone want him silenced forever? Even more puzzling for Tempe is a disembodied foot found near the debris field. Tempe’s microscopic analysis suggests it could not have belonged to any passenger. Whose foot is it, and where is the rest of the body? And what about the disturbing evidence Tempe discovers in the soil outside a remote mountain enclave? What secrets lie hidden there, and why are certain people eager to stop Tempe’s investigation? Is she learning too much? Coming too close?
\nWith help from Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, who has his own sad reason for being at the crash, and from a very special dog named Boyd, Tempe calls upon deep reserves of courage and upon her forensic skill to uncover a shocking, multilayered tale of deceit and depravity.
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Called to Washington, DC to analyse the victims of a mysterious arson attack, Tempe quickly finds her misgivings justified. The fire site is in Foggy Bottom, a neighbourhood with a colourful history, and as the pieces start falling into place, the property’s ownership becomes more and more suspicious.
\nSensing a good story, Tempe teams up with a new ally, telejournalist Ivy Doyle. Delving into the past, the duo learns that back in the Thirties and Forties the home was the hangout of a group of bootleggers and racketeers known as the Foggy Bottom Gang. Though interesting, this fact seems irrelevant - until the son of one of the gang members is shot dead at his farm in Virginia.
\nWhen another Foggy Bottom Gang-linked property burns to the ground, claiming one more victim, what might have been coincidence starts to look more like targeted attacks. As she and Ivy dig deeper, Tempe’s instincts point towards the somehow, her every move since coming to Washington has been anticipated in advance. And every path forward brings with it a lethal threat.
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It was a summer morning in 1982 when soldiers ravaged the village of Chupan Ya, raping and killing women and children. Twenty-three victims are said to lie in the well where, twenty years later, Dr. Temperance Brennan and a team from the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation now dig. No records were kept. To their families, the dead are \"the disappeared.\"
\nForensic anthropologist for the medical examiners in North Carolina and Montreal, Tempe is in Guatemala for a month's service to help some families identify and bury their dead. She digs in a cold, damp pit where she finds a hair clip, a fragment of cloth, a tiny sneaker. Her trowel touches something hard: the hip of a child no more than two years old.
\nIt's heartbreaking work. Something savage happened here twenty years ago. The violence continues today. The team is packing up for the day when an urgent satellite call comes in. Two colleagues are under attack. Shots ring out, and Tempe listens in horror to a woman's screams. Then there is silence. Dead silence.
\nWith this new violence, everything changes, both for the team and for Tempe, who's asked by the Guatemalan police for her expertise on another case. Four privileged young women have vanished from Guatemala City in recent months. One is the Canadian ambassador's daughter. Some remains have turned up in a septic tank, and Tempe unfortunately knows septic tanks.
\nTeaming with Special Crimes Investigator Bartolomé Galiano, and with Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, who may have more than just professional reasons to join her on the case, Tempe soon finds herself in a dangerous web that stretches far beyond Guatemala's borders. The stakes are huge. As power, money, greed, and science converge, Tempe must make life-altering choices.
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Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist for both North Carolina and Quebec, has come from Charlotte to Montreal during the bleak days of December to testify as an expert witness at a murder trial.
\nShe should be going over her notes, but instead she's digging in the basement of a pizza parlor. Not fun. Freezing cold. Crawling rats. And now, the skeletonized remains of three young women. How did they get there? When did they die?
\nHomicide detective Luc Claudel, never Tempe's greatest fan, believes the bones are historic. Not his case, not his concern. The pizza parlor owner found nineteenth-century buttons in the cellar with the skeletons. Claudel takes them as an indicator of the bones' antiquity.
\nBut something doesn't make sense. Tempe examines the bones in her lab and establishes approximate age with Carbon 14. Further study of tooth enamel tells her where the women were born. If she's right, Claudel has three recent murders on his hands. Definitely his case.
\nDetective Andrew Ryan, meanwhile, is acting mysteriously. What are those private phone calls he takes in the other room, and why does he suddenly disappear just when Tempe is beginning to hope he might be a permanent part of her life? Looks like more lonely nights for Tempe and Birdie, her cat.
\nAs Tempe searches for answers in both her personal and professional lives, she finds herself drawn deep into a web of evil from which there may be no escape. Women have disappeared, never to return . . . Tempe may be next.
Tory and her friends are just starting to get a handle on their super-heightened wolf-like capabilities - contracted during a medical experiment gone horribly wrong - when they find out funding is being pulled from the institute where their parents work. The pack now faces its greatest fear - separation.
\nSo when Tory stumbles across ancient lore hinting at a lost pirate treasure, the Virals devise a risky plan that pits them against fiendish traps, headless corpses, and deep underground tunnels. But they're not the only ones looking, and the competition could be lethal.
\nThey'll need to work as one mystery-solving canine force if they to hope to uncover the lost fortune, save the institute, and stick together.
For every case that Temperance Brennan has solved, there remain numerous bodies that remain unidentified in her lab. Information on some of these cold cases is available online, where amateur detectives sometimes take a stab at solving cases.
\nWhen Tempe gets a call from Hazel “Lucky” Strike, a web sleuth who believes she’s successfully connected a body in Tempe’s lab to a missing eighteen-year-old girl, Tempe writes it off as another false alarm. Still reeling from her mother’s diagnosis and the shock of Andrew Ryan’s potentially life-change proposal, Tempe has little patience for chasing false leads. But when the bones in the lab match the missing girl’s medical records, Tempe re-opens the case, returning to the spot where her remains were originally found.
\nWhat seems at first to be an isolated tragedy takes on a more sinister cast as Tempe uncovers two more sets of bones nearby. Even more troubling is that the area is known as a viewing point for a famous unexplained light phenomenon, and that a local cult nearby has significant interest in the site. Tempe’s suspicions turn to murder by ritual sacrifice - a theory that gains even more urgency when Hazel herself turns up dead.
\nStruggling to follow the tracks of a killer who will do anything not to be discovered, Tempe races to solve the murders and unravel the mysteries surrounding the site before the body count climbs higher.
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John Lowery was declared dead in 1968 - the victim of a Huey crash in Vietnam, his body buried long ago in North Carolina. Four decades later, Temperance Brennan is called to the scene of a drowning in Hemmingford, Quebec. The victim appears to have died while in the midst of a bizarre sexual practice. The corpse is later identified as John Lowery. But how could Lowery have died twice, and how did an American soldier end up in Canada?
\nTempe sets off for the answer, exhuming Lowery’s grave in North Carolina and taking the remains to Hawaii for reanalysis - to the headquarters of JPAC, the U.S. military’s Joint POW/ MIA Accounting Command, which strives to recover Americans who have died in past conflicts. In Hawaii, Tempe is joined by her colleague and ex-lover Detective Andrew Ryan (how “ex” is he?) and by her daughter, who is recovering from her own tragic loss. Soon another set of remains is located, with Lowery’s dog tags tangled among them. Three bodies - all identified as Lowery.
\nAnd then Tempe is contacted by Hadley Perry, Honolulu’s flamboyant medical examiner, who needs help identifying the remains of an adolescent boy found offshore. Was he the victim of a shark attack? Or something much more sinister?
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The Virals are back - but they’re not the only pack in town anymore. Terminal finds Tory Brennan and the rest of the Morris Island gang tracking a pack of rogue Virals who call themselves the Trinity. The new pack was infected by a strain of supervirus created by Tory’s nemesis and sometimes-crush, Chance Clayborne, who accidentally infected himself, too.
\nThese red-eyed Virals have openly challenged Tory’s pack for domination of Charleston, and they’ll stop at nothing to bring their rivals down - even if that means giving them up to a shadowy government agency intent on learning the secret to the Virals’ powers. Surviving it all is going to test the limits of the gang’s abilities.
\nIn the riveting conclusion to the Virals series, Tory and the others are nearing an impossible choice - and the ultimate showdown.
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Meet Sunday Night, a woman with physical and psychological scars, and a killer instinct . . .
Sunnie has spent years running from her past, burying secrets and building a life in which she needs no one and feels nothing. But a girl has gone missing, lost in the chaos of a bomb explosion, and the family needs Sunnie's help.
Is the girl dead? Did someone take her? If she is out there, why doesn't she want to be found? It's time for Sunnie to face her own demons because they just might lead her to the truth about what really happened all those years ago.
Tory Brennan, niece of acclaimed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan (of the Bones novels and hit TV show), is the leader of a ragtag band of teenage \"sci-philes\" who live on a secluded island off the coast of South Carolina. When the group rescues a dog caged for medical testing on a nearby island, they are exposed to an experimental strain of canine parvovirus that changes their lives forever.
\nAs the friends discover their heightened senses and animal-quick reflexes, they must combine their scientific curiosity with their newfound physical gifts to solve a cold-case murder that has suddenly become very hot - if they can stay alive long enough to catch the killer's scent.
\nFortunately, they are now more than friends - they're a pack. They are Virals.
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Meet Stanley Huang: father, husband, ex-husband, man of unpredictable tastes and temper, aficionado of all-inclusive vacations and bargain luxury goods, newly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. For years, Stanley has claimed that he’s worth a small fortune. But the time is now coming when the details of his estate will finally be revealed, and Stanley’s family is nervous.
\nFor his son Fred, the inheritance Stanley has long alluded to would soothe the pain caused by years of professional disappointment. By now, the Harvard Business School graduate had expected to be a financial tech god - not a minor investor at a middling corporate firm, where he isn’t even allowed to fly business class.
\nStanley’s daughter, Kate, is a middle manager with one of Silicon Valley’s most prestigious tech companies. She manages the capricious demands of her world-famous boss and the needs of her two young children all while supporting her would-be entrepreneur husband (just until his startup gets off the ground, which will surely be soon). But lately, Kate has been sensing something amiss; just because you say you have it all, it doesn’t mean that you actually do.
\nStanley’s second wife, Mary Zhu, twenty-eight years his junior, has devoted herself to making her husband comfortable in every way - rubbing his feet, cooking his favorite dishes, massaging his ego. But lately, her commitment has waned; caring for a dying old man is far more difficult than she expected.
\nLinda Liang, Stanley’s first wife, knows her ex better than anyone. She worked hard for decades to ensure their financial security, and is determined to see her children get their due. Single for nearly a decade, she might finally be ready for some romantic companionship. But where does a seventy-two year old Chinese woman in California go to find an appropriate boyfriend?
\nAs Stanley’s death approaches, the Huangs are faced with unexpected challenges that upend them and eventually lead them to discover what they most value. A compelling tale of cultural expectations, career ambitions and our relationships with the people who know us best, Family Trust skewers the ambition and desires that drive Silicon Valley and draws a sharply loving portrait of modern American family life.
In 2006 Julia Lerner is living in Moscow, a recent university graduate in computer science, when she’s recruited by Russia’s largest intelligence agency.
\nBy 2018 she’s in Silicon Valley as COO of Tangerine, one of America’s most famous technology companies. In between her executive management (make offers to promising startups, crush them and copy their features if they refuse); self promotion (check out her latest op-ed in the WSJ, on Work/Life Balance 2.0); and work in gender equality (transfer the most annoying females from her team), she funnels intelligence back to the motherland. But now Russia's asking for more, and Julia’s getting nervous.
\nAlice Lu is a first generation Chinese American whose parents are delighted she’s working at Tangerine (such a successful company!). Too bad she’s slogging away in the lower echelons, recently dumped, and now sharing her expensive two-bedroom apartment with her cousin Cheri, a perennial “founder’s girlfriend”.
\nOne afternoon, while performing a server check, Alice discovers some unusual activity, and now she’s burdened with two powerful but distressing suspicions: Tangerine’s privacy settings aren’t as rigorous as the company claims they are, and the person abusing this loophole might be Julia Lerner herself.
\nThe closer Alice gets to Julia, the more Julia questions her own loyalties. Russia may have placed her in the Valley, but she's the one who built her career; isn’t she entitled to protect the lifestyle she’s earned?
Joan Liang’s life is a series of surprising developments: She never thought she would leave Taiwan for California nor did she expect her first marriage to implode - especially as quickly and spectacularly as it did. She definitely did not expect to fall in love with and marry an older, wealthy American and have children with him. Through all this she wrestles with one persistent question: Will she ever feel truly satisfied?
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAs Joan and her children grow older and their circumstances evolve, she makes a drastic change by opening the Satisfaction Café, a place where people can visit for a bit of conversation and to be heard and understood. Through this radical yet pragmatic business, Joan constructs a lasting legacy.
The UNS Women’s Lacrosse team doesn’t have an official policy against inter-teammate relationships, but those words might as well be carved into stone tablets in the middle of the field. After witnessing way too much drama in the past, Captain Becca Moore is intent on keeping her players’ love lives out of the locker room.
\nBecca has no time or tolerance for any distractions from the game. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Hope Hastings has been since the day she showed up for tryouts: one walking, talking, charismatically dorky and way-too-kissable distraction.
\nHope knew she was headed straight to the danger zone from the moment she saw Becca’s flame-red hair and surly captain smirk. She’s spent the past two years writing off her attraction as a harmless crush, but starting a new semester fresh out of an awful relationship makes Hope realise just how far from harmless the heat between her and Becca really is.
\nThe friendships of a tight-knit team and their shot at the title are all lying on the line, but as Hope and Becca get closer to bending rules they’ve sworn never to break, they realise they’ve put their hearts on that line too. Losing has never been an option, but winning might cost more than they’re willing to pay.
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Clover Rivers is completely, totally over her ex.
\nSure, her first ever relationship with a girl might have ended in a catastrophic breakup people still whisper about, but Clover is done with it.
\nThe four years since have made her stronger. Smarter. Four years have turned her into the kind of woman who doesn’t believe in wishes on stars or miraculous second chances. As an aspiring environmental scientist, Clover puts her faith in cold, hard data, and the data says there’s no way anything good can come of messing around with a girl who already broke her heart.
\nNeavh Beaudoin is completely, totally still in love with Clover Rivers.
\nWhen a series of disasters lands her living on her cousin’s couch - and back in the small island town she never thought she’d see again - Neavh is forced to confront the truth: leaving Clover behind was the biggest mistake of her life, and she’d give every star in the sky for another chance.
\nAs cramped small town life makes it impossible to ignore the way the two women still spark like a wildfire, Clover realises Neavh’s reasons for leaving might not have been so straightforward, and the future she’s planned for herself in the meantime might not fit as well as she thought.
\nThe data suggests they’re only in for another heartbreak, but every theory’s got the tiniest chance to be proven wrong - especially when your last shot at love might depend on finally getting things right.
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Some couples are a match made in heaven.
\nMoira and Kenzie are convinced the only place they’re a match is in hell.
\nRaised as the shining prodigies of warring highland dance schools, the two grew up with blaring bagpipes as the backing track for a feud that took them all the way to the world championships.
\nMoira could never keep Kenzie’s icy glares from getting under her skin, and Kenzie could never hold back an eye-roll as she watched the crowds fawn over her rival’s happy-go-lucky charm.
\nStarting college has forced both women to hang up their kilts, but when their local highland dance association announces a scholarship for a life-changing amount of money, they find themselves back onstage for one last season.
\nThe stakes are higher than ever, but between shooting daggers at each other’s backs and insults at each other’s faces, their eyes start lingering, their hearts start pounding, and the sparks begin to build into a fire neither of them can control.
\nHell could freeze before either woman would admit their attraction, but that won’t stop them from using it to play dirty - and getting caught in the crossfire of their feelings along the way.
\nAfter all, sometimes the devil wears tartan.
\n
It’s a good thing Allison Farley isn’t in love with her best friend.
\nThey may both be star students in their costume design program, but when it comes to relationships, Allison and Kate are as different as their fashion senses.
\nKate marches through life in combat boots and crop tops, breaking hearts as fast as she steals them and insisting anything more than an emotionless hook-up is a waste of time.
\nAllison knits her own sweaters, wears socks with tiny strawberries on them, and has spent two years of college utterly failing at her goal of getting a girlfriend before graduation.
\nUntil the day it hits her: she’s got a master flirting coach right at her fingertips.
\nIt doesn't take much to get Kate on board; teaching her best friend the art of seduction seems like the perfect distraction from some of the inconvenient truths Kate would rather not face.
\nLike maybe she doesn’t hate relationships.
\nMaybe she’s just afraid of them - too afraid to reach out and grab one when it’s staring her in the face.
\nSo it’s a good thing Kate Davidson isn’t in love with her best friend either.
\nIt’s a good thing Kate and Allison are just taking part in some purely platonic flirting lessons and are absolutely, totally, definitely not falling in love.
\n
Dane Marner’s aunt is obsessed with soul mates.
As a self-proclaimed ‘cosmically guided matchmaker,’ she’s played every card in the deck trying to set Dane up with the perfect match she’s found.
The problem? The ‘perfect’ match is Evangeline Hudson.
Dane and Evangeline rent rooms in Dane’s eccentric aunt’s house, but that’s where their similarities end. Dane is a drifter who freewheels from one odd job to the next, and Evangeline is an overachieving undergrad with a ten year plan so detailed it reads like an autobiography.
The two can’t even agree on a laundry schedule without feuding, but when Dane’s aunt reveals new tenants ready to take over the lease, they realise they’ll need to play some cards of their own to keep the beautiful old house they both love.
Their plan is simple: fake falling for each other long enough to get some soul mate sympathy - and a lease renewal.
A few lingering glances, some ‘accidental’ touches, maybe some well-timed tiptoeing into each other’s rooms late at night . . .
It’s a stretch, but it just might work.
Only said tiptoeing starts to heat the house up faster than they can stop it. As their plan begins peeling back the layers between them to reveal more similarities and way more feelings than either expected to find, Dane and Evangeline are forced to toe the line between real and fake - and decide which side they’re brave enough to stand on.
Six years ago, her brother left me at the altar.
\nI bundled up my veil along with my stupid dreams of a picture-perfect small town life, and I headed back to the city.
\nI vowed to never leave again, but when the promotion of a lifetime at my interior design firm hangs on returning to the charming tourist town of La Cloche, I decide to brave the ghosts of heartbreak past.
\nI never thought I’d be designing for her.
\nNatalie Sinclair isn’t just my ex-fiancé’s little sister; she’s also the reluctant new owner of the most gorgeous historic home in La Cloche.
\nA mysterious inheritance has left her reeling. On the one hand, the house is the perfect opportunity to make her dream of running an artsy inn with her best friends come true.
\nOn the other, her latest art show ended in a disaster she’s not sure her confidence or creativity will ever recover from.
\nIf I can convince Natalie to believe in herself, I can lock down the job and get my promotion.
\nI’ll just need to remember our lingering glances mean nothing. The way her laugh feels like it’s bringing me back to life doesn’t matter at all. Neither does my urge to thread my hands in her hair and pull her into a dark corner of the house we’re both starting to love.
\nI already fell for a Sinclair. I won’t make the same mistake again.
\n
Emily Rivers does not have time for love.
\nOr dating.
\nOr even a one night stand.
\nAs the eldest of the Rivers sisters, she’s too focused on keeping her family’s campground running in the wake of a devastating tragedy to even think about romance.
\nWhen Kim Jefferies shows up at the local small town bar looking like a lesbian snack on a stick, Emily writes her off as yet another tourist just passing through - no matter how much the butterflies in her stomach try to tell her otherwise.
\nOnly Kim’s plans of ‘passing through’ fade the second she sees Emily Rivers, despite the fact that the whole point of her soul-searching journey was to stop falling for random women in bars who only lead her to heartbreak.
\nThe last thing they’re looking for is a love story, but with the help of some conniving sisters, an interfering bartender, and the magic of the great outdoors, that might be exactly what Kim and Emily are going to get.
\n
One summer can change everything.
\nAt least, that’s what Naomi has heard. Personally, she’s not interested in changing anything. With the start of university looming like the Ghost of Adulthood Yet to Come, Naomi is ready to spend the most uneventful summer of her life house sitting for her dad’s boss.
\nHer friends might be making epic summer bucket lists, but to Naomi, two months alone in a giant mansion sounds like just the escape she needs from the anxiety that’s spent her whole life telling her change can’t be anything but bad.
\nAndrea is ready for a change. Sure, she might have taken things a little too far by dumping her boyfriend, quitting her job, and breaking into her dad’s seemingly empty house to spend the summer plotting her next move, but Andrea has never done anything by halves.
\nWhen she discovers the house is not, in fact, empty, and that the mysterious house sitter with the biggest blue eyes she’s ever seen is hiding a secret summer bucket list, Andrea hatches a plan to tick the items off together.
\nIt’s the perfect trade: Naomi gets an accountability buddy, Andrea gets an excuse to avoid planning her own future for just a little longer, and once the list is complete, they go their separate ways.
\nt’s simple, it’s effective, and it definitely doesn’t leave room for them to fall in love - no matter how many times they stay up all night talking, or how good it feels when their hands touch, or how much they both wish September would stay far, far away.
\nOne summer can change everything . . . for better or for worse.
\n
Meg Doyle did not intend to return home from college with a suitcase and nowhere else to go.
\nIdeally, she would have rolled up to her tiny home town in a limousine and jumped out wearing a designer tuxedo. She would have shaken a few hands, signed a few autographs, and maybe kissed a few girls before riding off into the sunset of her glorious, post-grad future in set design.
\nInstead, she’s stuck spending the summer in her childhood bedroom, trawling the internet for job listings after a last minute internship cancellation in Europe.
\nIt’s anything but triumphant. Her friends in the city won’t stop reminding her what she’s missing, her mom won’t stop researching lesbian slang terms to seem more ‘relatable,’ and around every corner in the small town of Chapel Creek, there’s Connie Shipley.
\nThe girl Meg used to know better than anyone in the world.
\nThe girl she spent countless nights huddled under the blankets with for sleepovers and movie marathons.
\nThe girl who leaned in and kissed her four summers before.
\nThe girl who hasn’t spoken to her since.
\nWhich makes it very inconvenient that Meg’s heart still stops every single time she sees her.
\n
The first time I met her, Jacinthe Gauthier-Laframboise was running screaming after an escaped donkey while covered in manure. It wasn’t exactly a meet-cute, but luckily, I’m not looking for a relationship. Dating has been on the backburner ever since life threw a wrench and left me to raise my daughter on my own.
\nI’m finally finding my feet again, and they’ve led me to the charming small town of La Cloche. It’s the perfect place to grow my business as a farrier and create some stability for me and my kid.
\nUnfortunately, Jacinthe makes me feel anything but stable. She’s a chaotic whirlwind of a woman who doesn’t know the meaning of the word quiet, but somehow, I can’t get her out of my head.
\nOr my house.
\nShe’s my new landlady’s daughter, and living on the same farm together means there’s no escape: not from her devious dark eyes, her surprising moments of softness, or the way she’s cracking open my heart just as fast as she’s falling into my fantasies.
\nLetting her in means risking my new life, but letting her go means giving up what might just be the very best thing in this town. I’ve gotten used to making tough choices, but this could be the most impossible one of all.
\n
Trish Rivers lives a good life.
\nA happy life.
\nA safe and predictable life spent running the cafe at her family’s campground, perfecting her award-winning recipes, and terrorising the local small town bartender with her endless supply of bad jokes.
\nTrish has never wanted more - or at least, she’s never admitted she wants more, but that was before Kennedy March showed up on Vancouver Island.
\nThat was before Trish realised falling for your sister’s girlfriend’s best friend doesn’t fit into a safe and predictable life, especially when you’ve never fallen for a girl before.
\nKennedy’s not sure why life as a real estate star in Toronto doesn’t feel quite as shiny as it used to, but a spontaneous vacation to visit her newly coupled-up best friend seems like the perfect opportunity to ignore the problem.
\nThree weeks without client calls, benefit galas, and, most of all, dating apps is worth braving the woods for, but her plans for relaxation come crashing to a halt at the sight of Trish - the absolutely off-limits and definitely straight little sister of her best friend’s new girlfriend.
\nThere’s no path to each other that doesn’t end in disaster, but the farther they go, the more Trish and Kennedy realise it might be too late to turn back.
\n
On a beautiful summer’s night twenty years ago, troubled seventeen-year-old Tamara Drayton was found floating face-down in the pool of her family’s idyllic mansion in the south of France, leaving her twin brother, golden-boy Blake, to pick up the pieces of their shattered family.
\nAlso left behind was their sister Nina who, at six years old, became the youngest person ever to testify in a French murder trial. Because she’s the only one who saw what happened - who watched as her babysitter, Josie Jackson, pushed Tamara under the water, and held her there until she stopped breathing.
\nDidn’t she? Twenty years later, Nina's memories have faded, leaving her with no idea of what really transpired that night. When a new true crime documentary about her sister’s murder is announced, Nina thinks this might be her chance to finally find out.
\nBut the truth always comes at a cost. Who will pay the price?
\nSet over two unforgettable summers two decades apart, High Season is a dark, tense exploration of the nature of memory, the enduring power of truth, and all the gray areas in between.
Juliette Ricci dreams of only one being the best women’s tennis player in the world. She’s worked nonstop with her strict father/coach to prepare for her big chance in the Australian Open. Unfortunately, she’ll be playing Lucky Luca Kacic, an aloof player whose unorthodox style and reigning popularity deeply irritate Juliette.
\nFor months they’ve traded sly insults in their press conferences leading up to their showdown on the court, and their first ever match is the most anticipated of the season. But Juliette refuses to let her nerves - or Luca’s annoyingly perfect abs - get the best of her.
\nMeanwhile, Luca seemingly has everything Juliette desires but there’s one thing missing from her love. When she shakes hands with Juliette after an agonising match and sees her rival’s name appear on her wrist, it feels like a cruel joke. Juliette is a spoiled, arrogant brat who wants absolutely nothing to do with Luca or a soulmate.
\nBut despite their personal and professional clashes, the two grow closer after late-night massages and one too many shots of limoncello. Their chemistry is tangible, but Luca’s anxiety tells her that Juliette is just messing with her head to throw her off her game, and Juliette can’t understand why Luca is so hot and cold. With the pressure of the world scrutinising their every move, they will have to decide what’s more important - being together or being number one.
\n
Jo Quinn has everything under control. After her engagement suddenly ends, she is perfectly fine, thank you very much. Until her first love crashes through her walls and back into her life.
\nHunter Cleary is looking for a new start after coming out, and moving in with her first love might not be the best way to do it, but it definitely isn’t the worst. When her new roommate finds herself planning her ex-fiance’s wedding, Hunter steps up to the plate and volunteers to help in an unconventional way. Jo surprises herself when she agrees to the outlandish plan because, really, it can’t make things worse.
\nThe more fake they are with the world, the more real Jo and Hunter are with each other, slowly realising that there’s so much more to the other than meets the eye.
\nBecause even though they’re not fifteen anymore, they still might be exactly who the other needs.
\n
Nic Quinn is tired. Tired of her family, tired of masking, and tired of Josh Henry. After successfully avoiding her childhood enemy for a decade, of course she runs into him not once, but twice when she’s at her worst. The bigger surprise is that she wants to continue seeing him.
\nAfter her own less than satisfying experiences and learning of Josh’s prowess in the bedroom, Nic realises he can help her. Just lessons between two enemies, no risk of pesky emotions getting in the way.
\nJosh Henry knows that nothing lasts, and lives his life as such. But when Nic Quinn shows up on his doorstep asking him for help, Josh agrees - despite everything he’s forced himself to believe about intimacy and relationships.
\nThe longer the lessons continue, the more Nic and Josh find themselves unwilling to admit that they’re enjoying much more than just the physical aspect of their arrangement.
\nThe hardest thing to learn, it turns out, is that your enemy can love you exactly as you are.
\n
Ren Quinn is perfect. At least, that's what everyone thinks. By day, he works hard to be a model son, brother, and elementary school music teacher. But by night, Ren is Sky, a content creator for 4Play, an audio erotica app. He anonymously satisfies listeners around the world with his provocative audios...or so he thinks.
\nAudrey Hinton hides in plain sight in her hometown since having her daughter, Piper, as a teenager. Ostracized by her community, Audrey protects herself and Piper by abiding by one rule: don't let anyone close enough to see who she really is.
\nWhen Piper's new piano teacher turns out to be person from Audrey's past and a voice from her present, she's reminded why she keeps people at arms length.
\nAs Ren and Audrey are forced to navigate their unexpected relationship, Ren finds himself wanting to break his strict \"no dating parents\" rule, while Audrey lets someone in for the first time in years. After a lifetime of secrets and trying to control the narrative, can two people hiding their true selves be seen and loved for exactly who they are?
\nAfter all, rules are meant to be broken.
Women experience money differently than men do. In the United States, women have only 55 cents for every dollar of wealth held by men, are more likely to end up in poverty following a divorce, and are less likely to retire with the resources they need. What can women do to build wealth and claim financial power in a system that wasn’t designed for them?
\nKatie Gatti Tassin, personal finance writer and host of the popular podcast The Money with Katie Show, has built an energised following of smart, ambitious women seeking a deeper understanding of the financial issues that affect them. In Rich Girl Nation, Tassin deconstructs the unique challenges women face on their journey to financial freedom, offering context and nuanced guidance on money matters .
1841. Mr Montgomery Hurst of Radcliffe Park is getting married. To the great consternation of the county of Wickenshire, he is not marrying the daughter of an earl, but an impoverished widow with three children, whom nobody has ever heard of. Society is both appalled and intrigued.
\nNobody is more curious than Mr Ashpoint, a wealthy local brewer, who had hoped Mr Hurst might choose his daughter, Amelia, as his bride. Only, Amelia has no interest in marrying Mr Hurst - or indeed in marrying at all.
\nMr Hurst's marriage kicks off a series of events, as it becomes clear his business is everyone's but his own . . .
\n
As a kid, Charlotte Illes’ uncanny sleuthing abilities made her a minor celebrity. But in high school, she hung up her detective’s hat and stashed away the signature blue landline in her “office” - aka garage - convinced that finding her adult purpose would be as easy as tracking down missing pudding cups or locating stolen diamonds.
\nNow twenty-five, Charlotte has a nagging fear that she hit her peak in middle school. She’s living with her mom, scrolling through job listings, and her love life consists mostly of first dates. When it comes to knowing what to do next, Charlotte hasn’t got a clue.
\nAnd then, her old blue phone rings . . .
\nReluctantly, Charlotte is pulled back into the mystery-solving world she knew - just one more time. But that world is a whole lot more complicated for an adult. As a kid, she was able to crack the case and still get her homework done on time. Now she’s dealing with dead bodies, missing persons, and villains who actually see her as a viable threat. And the detective skills she was once so eager to never use again are the only things that can stop a killer ready to make sure her next retirement is permanent . . .
\n
Mention “returning to the scene of a crime,” and people don’t usually picture a middle school. But that’s where kid detective Lottie Illes enjoyed some of her greatest successes, solving mysteries and winning acclaim - before the world of adult responsibilities came crashing in . . .
\nTwentysomething Charlotte is now back in the classroom, this time as a substitute teacher. However, as much as she’s tried to escape the shadow of her younger self, others haven’t forgotten about Lottie. In fact, a fellow teacher is hoping for help discovering the culprit behind anonymous threats being sent to her and her aunt, who’s running for reelection to the Board of Education.
\nAt first, Charlotte assumes the messages are a harmless prank. But maybe it’s a good thing she left a detective kit hidden in the band room storage closet all those years ago - just in case. Because the threats are escalating, and it’s clear that untangling mysteries isn’t child’s play anymore . . .
\n
For the past two years, Amie Teller has been stuck in a time loop. Each day, she wakes up and it’s September 17th. Same day, same weather, same people, same conversations. Until, one day, it’s September 18th, and Amie is free.
\nBefore she can celebrate, Amie learns her neighbor was murdered the day before - the day Amie has lived hundreds of times. Amie knows she has to help; nobody knows yesterday like she does. But acclimating to her new non-repeating life proves to be more difficult than expected. How does one resume their life after a time loop, anyway?
\nAssisted by an ex-girlfriend who wants to make their friendship work, and a grumpy neighbor who spends his days building Rube Goldberg machines, Amie sets out to track down who killed (and killed and killed and killed) Savannah Harlow.
\n
When the love of her life disappeared on a camping trip, Gus Monet was devastated. Her daughter was only nine at the time, but young Bly still remembers the heartbreak vividly. Howard had been like a father to her. He was a journalist working on a story that took a dark and dangerous turn. The last time they saw him, he was going to meet a source he believed could blow the story wide open.
\nThree years later, shocked to see Howard’s obituary in the paper, Gus and Bly are drawn back to Prince Edward County where he was last seen and where the camper Howard was driving has been found. Sneaking into the camper, mother and daughter find what investigators missed. Hidden behind a secret panel are Howard’s notebook, cell phone, and a video message recorded right before he vanished, evidence that turns the cold case red hot. Searching for answers, Gus and Bly vow to follow the story Howard was pursuing and to expose whoever went to deadly lengths to stop him from revealing the truth.
\nTold in the compelling, thoughtful voice of young Bly, this edge-of-your-seat thriller ratchets up the tension, culminating in a heart-pounding, soul crushing, shocking finale. Infused with vivid summer imagery, set among eerie abandoned places, and steeped with sinister small-town secrets, Buried Road is the story of a young girl and a mother whose reckless resolve leads them ever closer to lethal danger - but ultimately might be what ensures their survival.
\n
Augusta (Gus) Monet is living an aimless existence with her grifter boyfriend when she learns that her great grandmother - her last living relative - has just died. Ditching her boyfriend, Gus returns to the home she left as a young girl. Her inheritance turns out to be a dilapidated house and an old dog named Levi. While combing through her great grandmother’s possessions, Gus stumbles across an old trunk filled with long-lost childhood belongings.
\nBut that’s not all the trunk contains. She also discovers cold case files that belonged to her mother, a disgraced police detective who died in a car accident when Gus was eight. Gus remembers her mother obsessing over these very same documents and photographs, especially a Polaroid of a young ballerina.
When Gus spots a front-page news story about the unearthing of a body linked to one of the cold case files from her grandmother’s trunk, she can’t resist following her mother’s clues. As she digs deeper, determined to finish her mother’s investigation, her search leads her to a deserted ghost town, which was left abandoned when the residents fled after a horrific fire.
As Gus’ obsession with the case grows, she inadvertently stirs up the evils of the past, putting her life in danger. But Gus refuses to be undeterred and is committed to uncovering long-buried secrets, including the secrets surrounding a missing geology student, the young ballerina in the Polaroid, a prominent family’s devastating legacy, and a toxic blast that blew an entire town off the map.
But is Gus ready to learn the truths that culminated on one terrible August night, more than a decade earlier, when lives were taken, and secrets were presumed buried forever?
After moving back to her hometown and solving her mother's murder, August (Gus) Monet thought she was done. Settled. Content for the first time in her life.
\nCue hard reset number whatever.
\nShe made a mistake she couldn't undo, so Gus cut and run. Packed all her things in the dead of night and took off. Now somewhat settled into The Ambassador, an art-deco apartment building with cheap rent in one of Ottawa's oldest neighborhoods, Gus has found the perfect place for a fresh start - or a good place to hide.
\nGus also finds friendship in Poppy Honeywell, her reclusive neighbor perpetually wrapped in a pink kimono like an aging Old Hollywood starlet. She's also a descendant of the Mutchmores, one of the town's founding families. When a body is found in the pond of a nearby park, her connection to this powerful and wealthy family turns dangerous, possibly deadly. The Mutchmores are hiding something and are willing to do anything to keep their secrets buried.
\n
Laurel Darby is no stranger to hard work, but most folks can’t see past her family’s name and wealth. Having built her quilt shop from the ground up, she knows how hard it is to keep a business running. But that doesn’t leave much time for a relationship, and the last thing on Laurel’s mind is unraveling herself and disrupting her carefully constructed life for mere love.
\nFresh out of long-term relationship hell, Dallas Hayes has nothing but a dream and the sweat equity for a fresh start. Opening her bourbon lounge is the only thing on her mind, and she’s bound and determined to make it succeed, and maybe find a little peace while she’s at it. But love? Nope, she won’t go down that rabbit hole again.
\nAs Dallas works to build both her bar and her sense of home, she unintentionally irks Laurel and the customers next door. But it’s Laurel’s gentle teasing and unexpected warmth that keep Dallas on her toes. With every fiery jab and kind smile, Dallas finds herself caught somewhere between frustration and fascination, slowly realizing that the woman next door might be the one thing she didn’t know she was missing.
\nWith their feelings deepening, neither Laurel nor Dallas expects a new threat to appear, one that could destroy everything they’ve worked hard for. With old wounds and new obstacles in their path, can they hold onto each other and fight for the future they both deserve?
\nAn age-gap, opposites-attract romance blooms between a silver fox bourbon bar owner starting over and a warmhearted quilt shop owner with thick curves and a charming smile until a new threat puts their budding connection and community at risk.
\n
As a member of the Jade Society, twelve-year-old Faryn Liu dreams of honoring her family and the gods by becoming a warrior. But the Society has shunned Faryn and her brother Alex ever since their father disappeared years ago, forcing them to train in secret.
\nThen, during an errand into San Francisco, Faryn stumbles into a battle with a demon--and helps defeat it. She just might be the fabled Heaven Breaker, a powerful warrior meant to work for the all-mighty deity, the Jade Emperor, by commanding an army of dragons to defeat the demons. That is, if she can prove her worth and find the island of the immortals before the Lunar New Year.
\nWith Alex and other unlikely allies at her side, Faryn sets off on a daring quest across Chinatowns. But becoming the Heaven Breaker will require more sacrifices than she first realised . . . What will Faryn be willing to give up to claim her destiny?
Faryn Liu thought she was the Heaven Breaker, a warrior destined to wield the all-powerful spear Fenghuang, command dragons, and defeat demons. But a conniving goddess was manipulating her all along . . . and her beloved younger brother, Alex, has betrayed her and taken over as the Heaven Breaker instead. Alex never forgave the people who treated him and Faryn like outcasts, and now he wants to wipe out both the demons and most of humanity.
\nDetermined to prevent a war and bring Alex back to her side, Faryn and her half-dragon friend Ren join the New Order, a group of warriors based out of Manhattan's Chinatown. She learns that one weapon can stand against Fenghuang--the Ruyi Jingu Bang. Only problem? It belongs to an infamous trickster, the Monkey King.
\nFaryn sets off on a daring quest to convince the Monkey King to join forces with her, one that will take her to new places - including Diyu, otherwise known as the Underworld - where she'll run into new dangers and more than one familiar face. Can she complete her mission and save the brother she loves, no matter the cost?
Nancy Luo is shocked when her former best friend, Jamie Ruan, top ranked junior at Sinclair Prep, goes missing, and then is found dead. Nancy is even more shocked when word starts to spread that she and her friends - Krystal, Akil, and Alexander - are the prime suspects, thanks to \"The Proctor,\" someone anonymously incriminating them via the school's social media app.
\nThey all used to be Jamie's closest friends, and she knew each of their deepest, darkest secrets. Now, somehow The Proctor knows them, too. The four must uncover the true killer before The Proctor exposes more than they can bear and costs them more than they can afford, like Nancy's full scholarship. Soon, Nancy suspects that her friends may be keeping secrets from her, too.
Twelve-year-old Reyna Cheng is the up-and-coming junior amateur Dayhold gamer, competing in a VR battle royale against AI monsters and human players alike. But despite Reyna's rising popularity and skills, no one know who she is. Gaming is still a boy's club and to protect herself against trolls, she games as the mysterious TheRuiNar.
\nWhen Reyna qualifies for the Dayhold Junior Tournament sponsored by her favorite team, she knows she's got what it takes to win the championship title and the $10,000 prize.
\nBut when she's blackmailed and threatened to be doxed, having her personal identity revealed, by an anonymous troll, Reyna will have to deal with a toxic gaming community, family complications, and the increasing pressure to win as the tournament gets underway.
Anna Xu is moving out of her parent's home and into the dorms across town as she starts freshman year at the local, prestigious Brookings University. But her parents and their struggling Chinese bakery, Sweetea, aren't far from campus or from mind, either.
\nAt Brookings, Anna wants to keep up her stellar academic performance and to investigate the unsolved campus murder of her childhood babysitter. While there she also finds a familiar face – her middle-school rival, Chris Lu. The Lus also happen to be the Xu family's business rivals since they opened Sunny's, a trendy new bakery on Sweetea's block. Chris is cute but still someone to be wary of - until a vandal hits Sunny's and Anna matches the racist tag with a clue from her investigation.
\nAnna grew up in this town, but more and more she feels like maybe she isn't fully at home here - or maybe it's that there are people here who think she doesn't belong. When a very specific threat is made to Anna, she seeks out help from the only person she can. Anna and Chris team up to find out who is stalking her and take on a dangerous search into the hate crimes happening around campus. Can they root out the ugly history and take on the current threat?
Return to the hidden world of the cursed Descendants of the Zodiac, where magic intertwines with dark academia at a boarding school dedicated to restoring their glory. In this thrilling sequel, the Descendants must navigate the aftermath of a chaotic heist and rescue a fallen comrade - all while battling dark forces determined to tear them apart.
\nA vampire on the run. A shapeshifter with a haunting past. A mortal trapped in enemy territory. And a werewolf with a score to settle.
\nAfter the heist of a lifetime to reclaim the source of their magic - the twelve Chinese zodiac statues - Evangeline Long and her crew of supernatural beings are on the run. Something - or someone - is working against the Descendants of zodiac from the shadows, and despite Evangeline’s efforts, her people remain cursed as creatures of darkness.
\nHowever, not everyone wants to return to life before the curse. As factions begin to tear the Descendants apart, Evangeline must travel to London to finish her mission: break the curse and restore the Descendants to their former glory. But with one of her crew in enemy hands and longtime allies turning on her, Evangeline must barter with lives as she decides who to trust . . . and who to target.
\nAnd she’ll have to do it soon. There are whispers of monsters on the loose - longtime foes of the Descendants who have returned for blood - and as long as the Descendants remain cursed, they don’t stand a chance. Now more than ever, Evangeline’s crew must finish their mission and reclaim their powers, before there is nothing left of the Descendants to save . . .
At a secret Manhattan boarding school, the Descendants of the Chinese zodiac have hidden away since the source of their magic - the twelve zodiac statues - was vandalised and lost to time. Thus, a curse befell the Descendants, and they’ve lived as creatures of darkness . . . until now.
\nWhen the lost statues suddenly resurface and a powerful classmate is found dead, all signs point to foul play from the fae. The Descendants finally have the chance to take back what's rightfully theirs and break the curse. To pull this deadly heist off, though, they must assemble an elite crew:
\nTHE VAMPIRE: After a century of burning hunger, Evangeline is out for blood.
\nTHE SHAPESHIFTER: Nicholas yearns to restore justice to his people - and make peace with his past.
\nTHE MORTAL: Alice seeks the truth of her mysterious heritage, and this mission may be the key.
\nTHE WEREWOLF: Tristan will do anything to break free from the monstrous wolf inside.
\nOnly these four have the power to save the Descendants, but the wrath of the fae waits at every turn. One wrong move and the fate of their kind will come crashing down . . .
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At the spry young age of twenty-five, Sai has led a quiet life, keeping the family teahouse up and running - even if that means ignoring the past-due notices - and taking care of his ailing mother. But he has a not-so-secret gift that he’s parlayed into a side career: he was born with the ability see the red threads of fate between soulmates, which lends itself nicely to matchmaking. Sai has thus far been content not to follow his own thread, the only one he’s ever seen that’s gray and fraying.
\nBut Sai’s ordinary existence is about to be turned upside-down by a pair of shining dragon scales. When his mother’s doctor sells them to him, claiming them as a miracle cure, Sai is pretty sure he’s being scammed. When the medicine actually works - and the terrifying, ruthless emperor catches wind - Sai is thrust into the search for a dragon long thought extinct that will lead him into the throes of a brewing war and deep into foreign lands, facing down challenges both magical and mortal on an unexpected adventure. And for the very first time, as his own thread of fate begins to move, he may be able to solve the mystery of his Fated One on the other end of the line.
Lottie Reeves has always struggled with anxiety, and when her beloved Aunt Helen dies, Lottie begins to fear that her own unexpected death might be waiting around every corner.
Aunt Helen wasn’t a typical aunt. She was the author of the best–selling Alvin Hatter series, about siblings who discover the elixir of immortality. Her writing inspired a generation of readers.
In her will, she leaves one last writing project - just for Lottie. It’s a series of letters, each containing mysterious instructions designed to push Lottie out of her comfort zone. Soon, Lottie’s trying some writing of her own, leaping off cliffs, and even falling for a boy she’s only just met. Then the letters reveal an extraordinary secret about the inspiration for the Alvin Hatter series. Lottie finds herself faced with an impossible choice, one that will force her to confront her greatest fear once and for all.
Are the four Farthing sisters really descended from Persephone? This is what their aunt has always told that the women in their family can trace their lineage right back to the Goddess of the Dead. And maybe she's right, because the Farthing girls do have a ghost in the attic of their Manhattan brownstone - a kind and gentle ghost named Henry, who only they can see.
\nWhen one of the sisters falls in love with the ghost, and another banishes him to the Underworld, the sisters are faced with even bigger questions about who they are. If they really are related to Persephone, and they really are a bit magic, then perhaps it’s up to them to save Henry, to save the world, and to save each other.
Anna Lucia Bell believes in luck: bad luck. Bad luck made her best friend stop talking to her. Bad luck caused her parents’ divorce. Bad luck is forcing her mother, Miriam, to sell the family’s beloved bookstore. And it is definitely bad luck that Anna seems to be the only person in the world Miriam is unable to recommend a life-changing book.
\nWhen Anna finds out that she and her mom are spending two months in a New England seaside town called Rockport, she expects a summer plagued with bad luck too. But Rockport has surprises in store for Anna, including a comet making its first appearance in over twenty years and two new - but familiar - friends.
\nIn what will prove to be the most important summer of her life so far, Anna learns about love, herself, and the magic that an ordinary summer can bring . . .
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Georgina Fernweh waits impatiently for the tingle of magic in her fingers - magic that has touched every woman in her family. But with her eighteenth birthday looming at the end of this summer, Georgina fears her gift will never come.
\nOver the course of her last summer on the island - a summer of storms, falling in love, and the mystery behind one rare three-hundred-year-old bird - Georgina will learn the truth about magic, in all its many forms.
Frannie and Louis met online when they were both little and have been pen pals ever since. They have never met face-to-face, and they don’t know each other’s real names. All they know is that they both have a mysterious tendency to lose things. Well, really, things just seem to . . . disappear.
\nLouis and Frannie both receive news in the mail that sets them off on a road trip to Austin, Texas, looking for answers - and each other. Along the way, each one begins to find, as if by magic, important things the other has lost. And by the time they finally meet in person, they realize that the things you lose might be things you weren’t meant to have at all, and that you never know what you might find if you just take a chance.
Magpie Lewis started writing in her yellow notebook the day her family self-destructed. That was the night Eryn, Magpie's sister, skipped town and left her to fend for herself. That was the night of Brandon Phipp's party.
Now, Magpie is called a slut whenever she walks down the hallways of her high school, her former best friend won't speak to her, and she spends her lunch period with a group of misfits who've all been socially exiled like she has. And so, feeling trapped and forgotten, Magpie retreats to her notebook, dreaming up a place called Near.
Near is perfect - somewhere where her father never cheated, her mother never drank, and Magpie's own life never derailed so suddenly. She imagines Near so completely, so fully, that she writes it into existence, right in her own backyard. It's a place where she can have anything she wants . . . even revenge.
At four months old, Olivia Dahl was almost murdered. Driven by haunting visions, her mother became obsessed with the idea that Olivia was a changeling, and that the only way to get her real baby back was to make a trade with the “dead women” living at the bottom of the well. Now Olivia is ready to give birth to a daughter of her own . . . and for the first time, she hears the women whispering.
\nEveryone tells Olivia she should be happy. She should be glowing, but the birth of her daughter only fills Olivia with dread. As Olivia's body starts giving out, slowly deteriorating as the baby eats and eats and eats, she begins to fear that the baby isn't her daughter at all and, despite her best efforts, history is repeating itself.
\nSoon images of a black-haired woman plague Olivia's nightmares, drawing her back to the well that almost claimed her life - tying mother and daughter together in a desperate cycle of fear and violence that must be broken if Olivia has any hope of saving her child . . . or herself.
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They say Cape Disappointment is haunted. That's why tourists used to flock there in droves. They'd visit the rocky shoreline under the old lighthouse's watchful eye and fish shells from the water as they pretended to spot dark shapes in the surf. Now the tourists are long gone, and when Meredith Strand and her young daughter return to Meredith's childhood home after an acrimonious split from her wife, the Cape seems more haunted by regret than any malevolent force.
\nBut her mother, suffering from early stages of Alzheimer's, is convinced the ghost stories are real. Not only is there something in the water, but it's watching them. Waiting for them. Reaching out to Meredith's daughter the way it has to every woman in their line for generations - and if Meredith isn't careful, all three women, bound by blood and heartbreak, will be lost one by one to the ocean's mournful call.
\nPart modern gothic, part ghost story, They Drown Our Daughters explores the depths of motherhood, identity, and the lengths a woman will go to hold on to both.
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As emotional as it is haunting, Through the Midnight Door explores the sometimes-fragile bonds of sisterhood and the way deeply rooted trauma can pass from generation to generation.
\nThe Finch sisters once spent long, hot summers exploring the dozens of abandoned properties littering their dying town - until they found an impossible home with an endless hall of doors . . . and three keys left waiting for them. Curious, fearless, they stepped inside their chosen rooms, and experienced horrors they never dared speak of again.
\nNow, years later, youngest sister Claire has been discovered dead in that old, desiccated house. Haunted by their sister's suicide and the memories of a past they've struggled to forget, Meg and Esther find themselves at bitter odds.
\nAs they navigate the tensions of their brittle relationship, they draw unsettling lines between Claire's death, their own haunted memories, and a long-ago loss no one in their family has ever been able to face.
\nWith the house once again pulling them ever closer, Meg and Esther must find the connection between their sister's death and the shadow that has chased them across the years . . . before the darkness claims them, too.
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When Óttar Karlsson, a wealthy and respected government official and businessman, is found murdered, after failing to turn up at his own surprise birthday party, the police are at a loss. It isn't until young police officer Sigurdís finds a well-hidden safe in his impersonal luxury apartment that clues start emerging.
\nAs Óttar's shady business dealings become clear, a second, unexpected line of enquiry emerges, when Sigurdís finds a US phone number in the safe, along with papers showing regular money transfers to an American account. Following the trail to Minnesota, trauma rooted in Sigurdís's own childhood threatens to resurface and the investigation strikes chillingly close to home . . .
\nAtmospheric, deeply unsettling and full of breakneck twists and turns, Dead Sweet is a startling debut thriller that uncovers a terrifying world of financial crime, sinister cults and disturbing secret lives.
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Icelandic detective-in-training Sigurdís is studying criminal psychology in the USA, but her plans are thrown into disarray when she discovers that her boss and mentor, Garðar, has been put on leave from Reykjavík CID as a result of his investigation into Sigurdís's father's death.
\nReturning to Iceland to deal with the fallout, Sigurdís finds herself pulled into a disturbing case: controversial TV personality Olga Einarsdóttir has been stabbed to death during the Reykjavík Marathon. Struggling to locate a runner wearing bib number 1407, who was seen near the murdered woman during the race, the police soon discover that several masked runners were wearing the same number.
\nAs the mystery deepens, Sigurdís and her fellow detective Unnar soon learn exactly how unpopular Olga was – not just with the interviewees she humiliated on live TV, but with her own son, her business partner, a widower who insists that she had a hand in his wife's death, and her ex-husband, who died in suspicious circumstances thirty years ago . . .
\nAs her exploration into Olga's past becomes ever darker and more harrowing, Sigurdís must also face the truth about her own father, while searching for an attacker who will go to any lengths to cover up their crimes . . .
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In 1992, Sarah Lingate is found dead below the cliffs of Capri, leaving behind her three-year-old daughter, Helen. Despite suspicions that the old-money Lingates are involved, Sarah’s death is ruled an accident. And every year, the family returns to prove it’s true. But on the thirtieth anniversary of Sarah’s death, the Lingates arrive at the villa to find a surprise waiting for them - the necklace Sarah was wearing the night she died.
\nHaunted by the specter of that night, the legendary Lingate family unity is pushed to a breaking point, and Helen seizes the opportunity. Enlisting the help of Lorna Moreno, a family assistant, the two plot their escape from Helen’s paranoid, insular family.
\nBut when Lorna disappears and the investigation into Sarah’s death is reopened, Helen has to confront the fact that everyone who was on Capri thirty years ago remains a suspect - her controlling father, Richard; her rarely lucid aunt, Naomi; her distant uncle, Marcus; and their circle of friends, visitors, and staff. Even Lorna, her closest ally, may not be who she seems.
\nAs long-hidden secrets about that night boil to surface, one thing becomes clear, not everyone will leave the island alive.
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Within an hour of Bora’s arrival in Arahasnor, she runs into her toxic ex-boyfriend, offends a malicious noblewoman, and narrowly escapes from the city guards. Never the type for adventures - unlike her sister, Holy Maiden Ysabel, who left the family farm and scandalously eloped with Dark Lord Kaine - Bora intends to quickly return home and settle back into her usual role as the plain, boring sister. That is, until there’s a freak magical accident.
\nSuddenly, Bora finds herself in the life - and body - of the Blood Duchess, a woman who once threatened to have her killed. Now a noblewoman in a kingdom on the verge of economic collapse, the citizenry hangs her in effigy, and her staff spits in her food. It’s too much for a farm girl without a mean bone in her body to handle. Unfortunately, the previous ruler sold Arahasnor to three different foreign powers, and only their crippling fear of the Blood Duchess is holding them off . . . as long as Bora can successfully embody the ruthless villainess. At least she’s not alone in this bizarre charade; she has the support of Countess Donya, her heroic celebrity crush.
\nAnd she’ll need it. Because if Bora’s real identity gets uncovered, she’ll die. But after an assassin named Ari mistakenly targets her for revenge, she strikes a deal with him: she’ll help find the actual duchess in exchange for his protection. As someone who struggles with body-image issues, Bora feels drawn to Ari’s confidence, rakish charm, and gender queerness. But a love triangle may be a distraction she can’t afford, especially when it turns out her sister is among the enemies coming to town to challenge the Blood Duchess.
\nAfter spending years obsessing over her weight, the death threats scare Bora less than showing off her extremely generous curves in the Blood Duchess’s low-cut dresses. But if she can embrace the beauty of her new body, she might just learn to love her true self as well. Though, appearances will be irrelevant if the duchess’s adversaries remove her head from her shoulders . . .
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In a world where magical powers are commonplace, Holy Maiden Ysabel is revered as a goddess among her people. She's the only one able to heal the sick and injured with a simple touch. But her spectacular gift comes at a steep price. For each person she saves, she loses a day of her own conscripted life. To add insult to injury, she's supposed to maintain a pure image even though she'd rather drink and play dominatrix until her sorrows fade away.
\nAfter the corrupt Head Cardinal Jiang abuses her gift, forbids her from leaving the city, and takes her brother hostage, Ysabel doesn't dare drag anyone else into her problems - especially since it won't change her fate. But when Dark Lord Kaine arrives at her clinic doorstep grievously wounded, she's touched by his refusal to accept her healing lest it cost her another day of her life.
\nThe mysterious and sexy Dark Lord awakens forbidden desires in Ysabel, and the nagging survival instinct she tried to drown with booze and drugs comes back with a vengeance. She's less impressed, however, when he threatens to sack her city in return for his injuries. Fortunately, she can flirt her way to an alliance against the Head Cardinal instead.
\nArmed with only a ferociously loyal female bodyguard named Alzira, Ysabel attempts to make the most of her mere months left to live, protect the refugees around her city, prevent a war, and hide her face blindness. But before her life flickers to its sad end, she must decide: either die a proper Holy Maiden or risk it all to run off with Kaine.
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As the youngest child of two deeply dysfunctional parents, Benoni learned how to make himself invisible. This became useful when he developed the reviled and illegal gift of necromancy.
\nNow, he's haunted by a trio of unruly orcs, who constantly pester him about taking over the world, along with the ghost of his murdered brother, who, incidentally, is scared of other ghosts.
\nAnd during the ritual that allowed his brother to communicate, Benoni accidentally infects himself with a deadly necromantic rot.
\nHis salvation appears in the form of the Dragon Emperor Julong. As a shapeshifting dragon, Julong can eat most of his problems, but he doesn't know what to do about the army of angry ghosts running amok in his palace. In exchange for a cure for the rot, Julong commands Benoni to uncover who summoned the ghosts. The spiritual plague needs to be kept secret, and Benoni needs authority in the palace - a pretend betrothal covers both.
\nIn Julong's kingdom, necromancers are revered and same-sex relationships are normalized, so Benoni finds acceptance for the first time in his life. But even a fake engagement contract draws Benoni into political intrigue and assassination attempts. The captivating, powerful, and handsome Julong serves as Benoni's protector and rock.
\nBut as Benoni cajoles the undead to help him, everyone keeps warning Benoni about an imperial curse, and Julong may have more to do with the ghosts than he's led Benoni to believe. For a necromancer with only the dead as friends, no one living can be trusted - especially not a sexy dragon shapeshifter with literal ghosts in his closet.
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A Fine Piece of Jade is a fictionalised account of the author’s mother’s experiences during the Japanese occupation of China and the rise of Communist China.The story follows Wāng Qí and Yuányuán, two girls sent from their privileged homes to a missionary school in Wuhan’s French Concession during World War II.
\nThrough war, revolution, and political oppression, the fiercely independent Wāng Qí and the ever-cheerful Yuányuán form a bond that gives them strength, though greater dangers may lie closer than they expect.
\nThe novel explores the struggles of women in a male-dominated society, contrasting those who conform with those who fight for change. It celebrates resilience, friendship, and faith in times of loss and betrayal, while weaving Chinese mythology into a vivid portrayal of Hankou under occupation.
The Last Prophet has been found, yet he sees destruction ahead.
\nIn this sequel to the critically-acclaimed There Will Come a Darkness, kingdoms have begun to fall to a doomsday cult, the magical Graced are being persecuted, and an ancient power threatens to break free. But with the world hurtling toward its prophesised end, Anton’s haunting vision reveals the dangerous beginnings of a plan to stop the Age of Darkness.
\nAs Jude, Keeper of the Order of the Last Light, returns home in disgrace, his quest to aid the Prophet is complicated by his growing feelings for Anton.
\nMeanwhile, the assassin known as the Pale Hand will stop at nothing to find her undead sister before she dies for good, even if it means letting the world burn. And in Nazirah, Hassan, the kingdom-less Prince, forms a risky pact to try to regain his throne.
\nWhen the forces of light and darkness collide in the City of Mercy, old wounds are reopened, new alliances are tested, and the end of the world begins.
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Since fleeing the gilded halls of Evergarden for the muck-filled canals of the Marshes, Marlow Briggs has made a name for herself as the best godsdamn cursebreaker in Caraza City. But no matter how many cases she solves, she is still haunted by the mystery of her mother’s disappearance.
\nWhen Adrius Falcrest, Marlow's old friend and scion of one of Caraza's most affluent spell-making families, asks her to help break a life-threatening curse, Marlow wants nothing to do with the boy who spurned her a year ago. But a new lead in her mother’s case makes Marlow realise that the only way to get the answers she desperately seeks is to help Adrius and return to Evergarden society - even if it means suffering through a fake love affair with him to avoid drawing suspicion from the conniving Five Families.
\nAs the investigation draws Marlow into a web of deadly secrets and powerful enemies, a shocking truth emerges: Adrius’s curse and her mother’s disappearance may just be clues to an even larger mystery, one that could unravel the very foundations of Caraza and magic itself.
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Following the destruction of the City of Mercy, an ancient god has been resurrected and sealed inside Beru's body. Both are at the mercy of the Prophet Pallas, who wields the god’s powers to subjugate the Six Prophetic Cities. But every day, the god grows stronger, threatening to break free and sow untold destruction.
\nMeanwhile, far away from Pallas Athos, Anton learns to harness his full powers as a Prophet. Armed with the truth about how the original Prophets killed the god, Anton leads Jude, Hassan, and Ephyra on a desperate quest to the edge of the world.
\nWith time running out, the group’s tenuous alliance is beset by mounting danger, tumultuous romance, and most of all by a secret that Anton is hiding: a way to destroy the god at the price of an unbearable sacrifice. But the cost of keeping that secret might be their lives - and the lives of everyone in the Six Prophetic Cities.
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Cursebreaker Marlow Briggs must deal with the aftermath of her fake romance with one of the most powerful nobles in the illustrious - and deadly - Evergarden society , all while uncovering the mystery behind her mother's disappearance.
\nCaraza sits poised on the edge of chaos. Tensions rise between the Five Families and trouble brews in the Marshes - and Marlow is at the center of it all. In the tragic aftermath of the Vale-Falcrest wedding, Adrius refuses to speak to her, publicly vowing to find a wife before the year is out. Despite her heartbreak, Marlow is still intent on breaking his curse. To do so, she’ll have to play loving daughter to the man who cast it. But the closer she gets to her father, the more she starts to question if he’s really the villain she’s made him out to be.
\nMarlow has learned by now that in a city steeped in secrets and lies, not everything is as it seems. As the lines between enemy and ally blur, Marlow must decide who to trust - and how high a price she’s willing to pay for the truth.
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For generations, the Seven Prophets guided humanity. Using their visions of the future, they ended wars and united nations - until the day, one hundred years ago, when the Prophets disappeared.
All they left behind was one final, secret prophecy, foretelling an Age of Darkness and the birth of a new Prophet who could be the world’s salvation . . . or the cause of its destruction. As chaos takes hold, five souls are set on a collision course:
A prince exiled from his kingdom.
A ruthless killer known as the Pale Hand.
A once-faithful leader torn between his duty and his heart.
A reckless gambler with the power to find anything or anyone.
And a dying girl on the verge of giving up.
One of them - or all of them - could break the world. Will they be savior or destroyer?
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Eira Isolde is one of the nine fae heiresses of The New Reign, burdened by a constant fear of their own inexplicable powers. But when she’s sent to live in a mortal kingdom because of it, it seems that The Fates have a different plan for her in mind - one that involves fellow heiress Meilin Azelie, a dagger-wielding pianist with whom she is suddenly, and indescribably, consumed by.
\nWhen a nefarious king reveals the dark web of deceit he has Eira and Meilin ensnared in, the pair find themselves stripped of their powers, forced to become pawns in the Demir Trials; a twisted game pinning them against the rest of The New Reign. The price of victory is a heavy thing, and with nine heiresses fighting for survival, the path to conquest is one carved out in blood. In the midst of it all, with their thrones and lives on the line, Eira and Meilin know that one wrong move could see everything they know and love reduced to ash - including one another.
Alix Morgan just got her big break as the ghostwriter of a memoir by Sebastian Green, a former member of the boy band True North. And when he offers her a penthouse at a luxurious resort in Vermont, she jumps at the chance to work far away from her noisy, cramped apartment.
\nHer career as an entertainment journalist has been building toward this dream job - after all, she used to cover True North and was one of the last people to interview former front man Jett Beckett before he disappeared. As she combs through her client’s voice memos, the specter of the missing lead singer remains, and fans are desperate to know the full story.
\nBut Alix also has time for some fun at this glamorous resort, where she begins ski lessons with a handsome instructor named Tyler. As Alix and Tyler fall in love on the slopes, Alix’s work takes a complicated turn - and the mystery of True North’s downfall may be hers to solve.
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Liv Latimer grew up on TV.
\nAs the star of the popular teen drama Girl on the Verge , Liv spent her adolescence on the screen trying to be as picture perfect as her character in real life. But after the death of her father and the betrayal of her on-screen love interest and off-screen best friend Ransom Joel, Liv wanted nothing more than to retreat, living a mostly normal life aside from a few indie film roles. But now, twenty years after the show’s premiere, the cast is invited back for a reunion special, financed by a major streaming service.
\nLiv is happy to be back on set, especially once she discovers Ransom has only improved with age. And their chemistry is certainly still intact. They quickly fall into their old rhythms, rediscovering what had drawn them together decades before. But with new rivalries among the cast emerging and the specter of a reboot shadowing their shoot, Liv questions whether returning to the past is what she needs to finally get her own happy ending.
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Before the war, Eden’s life was easy - air conditioning, ice cream, long days at the beach. Then the revolution happened, and everything changed.
Now a powerful group called the Wolfpack controls the earth and its resources. Eden has lost everything to them. They killed her family and her friends, destroyed her home, and imprisoned her. But Eden refuses to die by their hands. She knows the coordinates to the only neutral ground left in the world, a place called Sanctuary Island, and she is desperate to escape to its shores.
Eden finally reaches the island and meets others resistant to the Wolves - but the solace is short-lived when one of Eden’s new friends goes missing. Braving the jungle in search of their lost ally, they quickly discover Sanctuary is filled with lethal traps and an enemy they never expected.
This island might be deadlier than the world Eden left behind, but surviving it is the only thing that stands between her and freedom.
It's December 24, 1979, just before closing at Baker-Taylor's, and Fran (née Baker) is surveying her domain. Her husband, Fred, is charming customers in the front of the store, while last-minute shoppers in the toy aisle are fighting over the lone remaining Atari. The older Taylor kids are on register, while the younger ones’ chaos is contained to the stockroom. All is right in the world as the new decade approaches.
\nWith four healthy children and financial stability their own parents could have only dreamed of, Fred and Fran are the picture of the American Dream - rags to riches - with a family-owned chain of successful discount department stores built on years of hard work and long hours. Underneath the surface, however, the business is changing at a breakneck pace, and each member of the family is struggling to keep up.
\nMoney is transforming Fred, and the extremes he will go to in order to fit in with Lexington, Kentucky’s slicked-back high society crowd are embarrassing, if not downright dangerous. Oldest son Josiah wants nothing to do with the family business, Sam is seeing things that might not really be there, and Benny and Birdie are growing up with a fraction of the parenting that their older brothers did.
\nMeanwhile, Fran, her family’s stable core, is falling for Wendy, a cashier at Baker-Taylor's, risking everything along the way. While trying to maintain the facade of a perfect success story, Fred and Fran learn that in matters of love and money, once it's gone, it’s gone - no returns, no exchanges.
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Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her.
Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
As a child, Kathy - now thirty-one years old - lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory.
And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed - even comforted - by their isolation. But she describes other scenes as well: of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind Hailsham’s nurturing facade.
With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhood - and about their lives now.
The Romans have long since departed, and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. But at least the wars that once ravaged the country have ceased.
The Buried Giant begins as a couple, Axl and Beatrice, set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen for years. They expect to face many hazards--some strange and other-worldly--but they cannot yet foresee how their journey will reveal to them dark and forgotten corners of their love for one another.
Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge and war.
In 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper.
\nIshiguro's dazzling novel is a sad and humorous love story, a meditation on the condition of modern man, and an elegy for England at a time of acute change.
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After writing a sapphic romance runaway bestseller, Bella escapes to the island of Oahu to find a way past her horrible writer's block. When nothing seems to be working, she signs up for a kayaking adventure only to end up face-to-face with JC, her gorgeous college crush.
\nSomewhere over the years, the two women lost touch, but now they are in paradise, and anything can happen, especially love.
Jackie Scott wields incredible influence as a magazine executive in Seattle. As she plans a smashing party for her fortieth birthday, everything is precisely as she wants it. But when a solar storm lights up the night sky in a dazzling display, it not only ruins the party but destroys power around the planet and Jackie must turn for help from the one woman she has tried so hard not to want . . . Taylor.
\nTaylor Barnes is an Army veteran new to Seattle and wants nothing more than to find some peace and quiet working as a rent-a-cop in a corporate high-rise. When she is asked to attend the birthday party of the building's powerful and sexy CEO, she can hardly say no. Little did she realize every skill she ever learned would be put to the test to save the woman she can't seem to stop thinking about . . . Jackie.
\nAnna Patten is a nurse practitioner who has returned one last time to the town she ran away from to pack up the house where she grew up. Trying to avoid any drama, she cannot get away fast enough, or so she tells herself while her heart wonders about her high school crush. When fate lands them together in Seattle at a birthday party, suddenly Anna must lean on the woman she once left behind . . . Lexi.
\nLexi Scott has built a simple life of writing novels and remodeling her farmhouse, but when she runs into a long-lost friend, her world is turned upside down. It's not until she attends her sister Jackie's birthday party that she is forced to not only face the apocalypse but now she must decide if she is willing to risk her heart again to save the only woman she ever loved . . . Anna.
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Laura Kennedy finds herself without a home when part of the city of Astoria, Oregon burns after a solar storm causes a worldwide blackout. Left with few options, she resigns herself to living with her brother's family and trying to get by while food and resources quickly diminish. As she begins to despair about the fate of the world, a handsome young stranger rides into her life and suddenly she finds herself attracted to a woman in a way she never expected . . . Sam.
\nSam Quinn is a veterinarian student when the power goes out everywhere. Believing everything happens for a reason, she decides to ride Northwest on her horse to explore the rapidly changing landscape in hopes of finding a place where she belongs. Instead, she encounters nothing but fear and unrest, or at least until she has an accident, and wakes up to meet a woman who wants nothing to do with her, but who Sam can't stop thinking about . . . Laura.
\nTaylor Barnes is an Army veteran who is happy to simply work on a farm outside of town, which she shares with her close friends. However, when the city of Astoria struggles to maintain order after the world goes dark, she suddenly she finds herself thrust into a leadership role she never wanted. The only reason she agrees is so she can keep the world safe for the woman she loves . . . Jackie.
\nJackie Scott, once a powerful CEO, had the world at her fingertips, but is now adrift in a new reality without any of the modern conveniences she once relied on. Living on her sister's farm near the small town of Astoria, the only stability she can rely on is the one person who she is slowly learning to trust and, if she is willing to listen to her heart, maybe even love . . . Taylor.
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Two years after the solar storm that knocked out power around the world, Astoria stands as an example of all that can be right about a community. Eight women have built lives out of what remains.
\nJackie and Taylor are summoned to a distant summit where their journey is a test of resolve and a leap of faith.
\nGrace and Meg shoulder the weight of leadership after returning to Astoria and face new and old dangers as the community’s fragile peace is threatened.
\nAnna and Lexi find their world challenged by a charismatic outsider and must work together as illness sweeps through the town and fear takes root.
\nSam and Laura fight to protect their home from a hungry bear and the specter of sickness that strikes too close to the heart.
\nAs uncertainty deepens and shadows gather beyond Astoria’s borders, every bond will be tested. In a world that refuses to be tamed, hope is a stubborn thing and the courage to hold fast to love, to truth, and to each other may be the only light left when darkness rises.
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The novella, Darkness San Francisco, takes place in a world with no power. The world lost all electricity after a solar storm destroyed grids around the globe.
\nIn Darkness San Francisco, two main characters from the series, US Army Major Grace Hamilton and her partner, Ship Captain Meg O’Grady, set sail from Astoria to track down the pirate king and bring him to justice. They will chase the outlaw on their ship, Wind Dancer, to his lair in San Francisco, if necessary, to capture him.
\nThe Darkness San Francisco novella focuses solely on their adventure. Although much still happens in the city of Astoria, none of the lives of the women there are included in this book. Their stories are set aside for another day.
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Astoria, Oregon has become a rare beacon of stability. Food is shared, laws are enforced, and community matters. But word of its success is spreading, and with every new arrival comes new pressure on fragile resources and even more fragile trust.
\nChief of Police Taylor Barnes is determined to protect what they’ve built, even as the population grows and tensions simmer beneath the surface. Her partner, Jackie Scott, works tirelessly to keep the town functioning, knowing that leadership now means making impossible decisions and living with the fallout.
\nMeanwhile, far beyond Astoria’s borders, Major Grace Hamilton serves a government clinging to control in a world that no longer plays by the old rules. When her orders bring her face-to-face with Meg O’Grady, the fiercely independent captain of the Wind Dancer, the collision of authority and freedom sparks something neither woman expects or is prepared to handle.
\nAs storms gather, refugees flood in, and lines between right and wrong blur, alliances are tested and loyalties strained. Love offers comfort, but it also demands risk too.
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Return to the story about a world without power where a group of strong women have come together to not only survive the apocalypse but thrive in it.
\nStill haunted by her time in the Middle East, Sergeant Geri Fischer is grateful to be stationed in the simple, almost boring town of Astoria. When First Sergeant Taylor Barnes asks her to escort a civilian on a mission, she accepts out of duty, or at least until she meets the woman she is assigned to protect.
\nJulia Sharpe wants to restart a US postal route, beginning in Astoria and ending in San Francisco. The only practical means is to go by train, but parts of the journey travel through dangerous territory. For her protection, she is assigned a military escort, which she doesn’t want.
\nThe world Sam and Laura have built together with their children is nearly perfect. There is nothing Laura would change about it, but Sam can’t shake an idea, a dream that is close to her heart. An idea that will test their love, courage, and desire for a new beginning.
\nTaylor and Jackie run the bustling town of Astoria together with tremendous success. Rarely do they not see eye-to-eye on an idea. Yet, when one town member’s proposal comes between them, things become a little less easy and are only made more complicated when trouble rides into town.
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The daughter of an actress superstar, Ashley Landish wants nothing more than to simply run her popular coffee shop on the Venice Beach boardwalk and enjoy the sun and beaches of beautiful southern California. There is only one thing missing in her life - someone special to take her breath away.
\nMarine Corporal Bryce Cooper is home on leave after taking care of her father in his last days. Although the Marine Corps is calling, she has a new outlook on life, leaving one last box to check - to tell the woman she knew in college, Ashley Landish, that she loves her.
\nAward-winning author Drew Andersen's mission in life is to spread the message of her novel to the world by having it made into a movie. Everything is going perfectly until a last-minute switch gives the lead actress role to Hollywood diva Tess Landish. She’s ready to do whatever she can to have her kicked off the movie - until the chemistry between them sends Drew into a tailspin.
\nForty-six-year-old Tess Landish realises her illustrious career as an A-list celebrity is starting to fade. When the opportunity comes to take the romantic lead in a film based on a popular novel, she jumps at it only to learn the author of the book doesn’t want her for the role. Tess is determined to change her mind - especially after they meet and sparks fly.
\nWhen a powerful earthquake rocks Los Angeles, the four women must find a way to not only work together to save themselves but also to protect their hearts.
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With their relationship still new, Helen Hardy and her partner, retired LAPD detective Mel Nelson, go to the beautiful island of Oahu, Hawaii. The idea is for Helen to do research for her next sapphic romance novel. However, things don’t go as planned.
\nWhen their reclusive neighbor hints he is working on a dangerous story and then suddenly disappears, everything becomes much more complicated. The two of them find themselves caught up in a web of secrets and suspicious characters. Using Mel’s detective instincts as their guide, they work together to try and uncover the truth before it’s too late.
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As a decorated Space Ranger in the 8th Galaxy, Captain Natalie (Nat) Reynolds has an exciting, albeit lonely, life. Yet, when Nat answers a distress call from a craft in trouble on a nearby planet, it has the possibility of changing the trajectory of her life forever.
Catherine Porter is down on her luck in the worst way. Evicted, almost penniless, she worries all hope is lost until a charismatic stranger flies into her life. Inexplicably drawn to the one woman who can possibly save her, Catherine must face feelings she never considered.
Will their stars align and lead them to a happily ever after? Or will their differences tear their hearts apart?
After six months of exile, Salishan Bransen wonders what the future holds for her until a sexy blonde walks into her life. Before she knows it, Sal is mixed up in a Space Ranger mission to rescue a hostage. Only nothing goes right and once again, Sal is on the run.
\nWorking as a trainer at the Space Ranger academy, Captain Nat Reynolds is living a simple life with her love, Catherine Porter. When a mysterious distress call from Sal comes through, Nat must decide if she will risk everything and take on a new adventure to save her.
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When socialite Melanie Sotheby finds herself abandoned on the wrong side of Los Angeles, she has few options. With no phone, credit cards, or identification, the means to get back home to New York seem slim.
\nNot until she is rescued by a tall, dark stranger in the middle of the night does Melanie think of a plan. With a felony on her record, Milo’s life seems hopeless. She works a dead-end job, lives in a rundown apartment, and has no clear prospects on how to make things better.
\nWhen she hears a woman screaming for help in the night, a series of events unfold that might give Milo an opportunity to start over. All she has to do is drive Melanie across the country. What sounds like an easy prospect turns out to have more twists and turns than either Melanie or Milo could have imagined. Only one thing is certain, by the end of the journey, both women will be changed forever.
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Darkness still prevails throughout the world but in Astoria, Chief of Police Taylor Barnes has everything under control. There is only one more thing she wants to do - marry the always challenging Jackie Scott. Unfortunately, the universe seems to be conspiring against her when a caravan of travelers led by a sexy and mysterious woman named Rosella Cane arrives and pirates start attacking cities along the Oregon coast.
\nFacing the threat of pirates, Major Grace Hamilton must call on the help of the Wind Dancer to chase them down. As much as she hates putting the ship and crew in danger, the outlaws must be brought to justice. The other obstacle is working with the ship’s fiery captain, Meg O’Grady. Close friends, but nothing more, Grace longs for a time she can confess her love but won’t because she knows she will never be enough to make Meg happy.
\nDoing whatever it takes to get by in the aftermath of the catastrophic solar storm responsible for knocking out power around the globe, Cyd Elliott survives by keeping her life simple. It is not an easy task in the ravaged metropolis of San Francisco, but her needs are few until she hears a scream in the distance.
\nNaomi Andrews was the ‘it’ girl. Hollywood could not get enough of her and the movie she starred in was a blockbuster. Everything had been perfect in her life until that night in April when all the lights went out and stayed out. Trapped in San Francisco for months, Naomi can’t take life anymore but when she goes to the Golden Gate Bridge to jump off, she meets someone who changes her mind.
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There have always been whispers. Legends. The warrior who cannot be killed. Who’s seen a thousand civilisations rise and fall. He has had many names: Unute, Child of Lightning, Death himself. These days, he’s known simply as “B.”
\nAnd he wants to be able to die.
\nIn the present day, a U.S. black-ops group has promised him they can help with that. And all he needs to do is help them in return. But when an all-too-mortal soldier comes back to life, the impossible event ultimately points toward a force even more mysterious than B himself. One at least as strong. And one with a plan all its own.
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Homicide Detective Godai of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is assigned to investigate the death of a lawyer, Kensuke Shiraishi, whose body was found on a Central Tokyo riverbank. His investigations leads him to one Tatsuro Kuraki, who claims to have had limited contact with Shiraishi - but, surprising the investigators, Kuraki not only confesses to the lawyer's murder, but another one from thirty years ago - for which another man was arrested and died in custody before trial. This brings unexpected resolution to two cases but there is one problem: to Detective Godai the confession rings false.
\nAnd Godai is not the only one who cannot accept Kuraki's explanation of both murders and his professed motives. The confessed murderer's son and the victim's daughter both feel strongly that both the act and the motive claimed are untrue.
\nAs Godai investigates further, he discovers that the relation between the murder of thirty years ago and the recent one is complex, raising multi-faceted questions of guilt and innocence. Guilt is a rich novel about crime and its aftereffects on those left behind by both the victim and perpetrator, a twisting, compelling work that will surprise and astonish.
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When a run of bad luck lands Reito in prison, about to be sentenced, a distant aunt he has never met offers him a surprising way out: he must become the next keeper of the camphor tree.
\nIn his strange new job, Reito welcomes the people coming by nightfall to commune with the tree, all of whom are lost and all in need of something. There is the stern, middle-aged man who hums to the tree for hours; and his glamorous daughter, who has been secretly following him. Then there is the rich, disaffected young man who seems to come grudgingly, with no faith that the tree will even help.
\nWhat is the secret of the camphor tree? Can its power be more than just a myth?
\nReito begs his aunt Chifune to explain, but she assures him that when he is ready for them, the answers will come to him.
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In the year 2050, the man known as Zinn is on the run from the consequences of his greatest an artificial genome that wildly increases the human lifespan. His “Methuselah gene” has gone viral, and he’s being hunted by Adele, a semi-retired CIA biowarfare specialist who hopes to find a way to reverse the genome’s effects before it’s too late.
\nAs the longevity plague spreads, populations explode, economies are upended, and intergenerational resentments boil over. Adele searches for a cure while her former lover, Dan Altman, and his wife, Marion, wealthy political operatives both, become leaders of a movement of hundred-plus-year-old “lifers” and fight to create a sanctuary for the ultra-aged in the wilds of Colorado.
\nMeanwhile, the Altmans’ son, Nolan, thinks he has the answer to the longevity a suicide pill that kills after one year, a death wish algorithm that will influence the super-aged to take it, and his beautiful daughter, Claire, who is a spokesperson for the growing anti-lifer backlash and the head of the federal government’s new Department for Longevity Management.
\nCombining a hugely topical premise with a vein of social-political satire, Lifers evokes a world where society’s ingrained ageism turns lethal and the fear of death is replaced by the challenge of living on . . . and on.
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Michelle Barret has never been the fun parent. After her husband walks out, leaving her to pick up the pieces, she’s determined to make this winter break unforgettable for her kids. A trip to Mt. Hood, with its snowy slopes and historic charm, is the perfect way to usher in their new life.
\nCas Grazer does life on her own terms. Working as a paramedic and volunteering for the ski patrol, she’s happy in her quiet, independent world. Commitments? Not for her. She’s sworn off anything long-term. But when she meets Michelle and her kids on the slopes, Cas feels a spark she never expected.
\nTheir chance encounter soon develops into something neither can ignore. Torn between comforting solitude and the irresistible pull of connection, they begin to wonder if the life they thought they wanted is enough. After all, they’re no experts in love.
\nIn the midst of uncertainty and fear, can they make room in their hearts for each other?
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Singer-songwriter Kenzie McCall thrives on freedom-writing what she wants, when she wants, for whoever she wants, with no strings attached. Deadlines? Not her thing. Commitment? Even less so. But when a movie studio offers her best friend, pop sensation Braxton, a starring role if Kenzie writes the theme song, she reluctantly agrees. There's just one catch: the song has to be about love, and Kenzie has never truly fallen for anyone.
\nRachel has life mapped out: white picket fence, two kids, a dog, and a marriage filled with spark-and is determined to find someone who wants the same future. When Rachel hears Kenzie sing for the first time, the connection is instant, electric, and impossible to ignore. But how can she plan a future with someone whose life is anything but stable? Kenzie is constantly jetting off to meet with celebrities, and Rachel's cozy suburban dream feels like Kenzie's worst nightmare.
\nWill they be able to write their love story together, or are they destined for different endings?
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After a painful breakup, Hollis is determined to climb the corporate ladder by charting a meticulous three-year plan. Just as she vows to keep love at arm’s length, her new boss threatens to disrupt everything. Ainsley Jones is a force to be reckoned with - brilliant, sophisticated, and irrefutably attractive.
\nAs Hollis navigates her new role, she can’t deny the magnetic pull between them. But workplace policies against fraternization, Hollis’s doubts about mixing business with pleasure, and Ainsley’s micromanaging style prevent their budding romance from blooming. With the unwavering support of her best friend, Harrison, Hollis must risk everything she thought she wanted to have the love she can’t live without.
1650: The Black Forest, Wurttemberg.
\nFifteen years after the witch in the gingerbread house, Greta and Hans are struggling to get by. Their mother and stepmother are long dead, Hans is deeply in debt from gambling, and the countryside lies in ruin, its people recovering in the aftermath of a brutal war. Greta has a secret, the witch's grimoire, secreted away and whispering in her ear, and the recipe inside that makes the most sinfully delicious - and addictive - gingerbread.
\nAs long as she can bake, Greta can keep her small family afloat. But in a village full of superstition, Greta and her intoxicating gingerbread is a source of ever-growing suspicion and vicious gossip.
\nAnd now, dark magic is returning to the woods and Greta's own powers - magic she is still trying to understand - may be the only thing that can save her . . . If it doesn't kill her first.
Saint-Malo, Brittany, 1758.
\nFor Lucinde Leon, the youngest daughter of one of Saint-Malo's wealthiest ship-owners, the high walls of the city are more hindrance than haven. While her sisters are interested in securing advantageous marriages, Luce dreams of escaping her elegant but stifling home and joining a ship's crew.
\nOnly Samuel - Luce's best friend and an English smuggler - understands her longing for the sea, secretly teaching her to sail whenever she can sneak away. For Luce, the stolen time on the water with Samuel is precious.
\nOne stormy morning, Luce's plans are blown off course when she rescues Morgan de Chatelaine, the youngest son of the most powerful ship-owner in Saint-Malo, from the sea. Immediately drawn to his charm and sense of adventure, she longs to attend the glittering ball held in honor of his safe return and begins to contemplate a different kind of future for herself.
\nBut it is not only Luce's hopes at stake - the local fae are leaving Brittany and taking their magic with them, while the long-standing war with the English means Saint-Malo is always at risk of attack.
\nAs Luce is plunged into a world of magic, brutality, and seduction, secrets that have long been lost in the shadowy depths of the ocean begin to rise to the surface. The truth of her own power is growing brighter and brighter, shining like a sea-glass slipper.
\nOr the scales of a sea-maid's tail.
Every season in Rockton seems to bring a new challenge. At least that's what Detective Casey Duncan has felt since she decided to call this place home. Between all the secretive residents, the sometimes-hostile settlers outside, and the surrounding wilderness, there's always something to worry about.
\nWhile on a much needed camping vacation with her boyfriend, Sheriff Eric Dalton, Casey hears a baby crying in the woods. The sound leads them to a tragic scene: a woman buried under the snow, murdered, a baby still alive in her arms.
\nA town that doesn’t let anyone in under the age of eighteen, Rockton must take care of its youngest resident yet while solving another murder and finding out where the baby came from - and whether she's better off where she is.
Book II in the Darkest Powers trilogy takes us deeper into a world where the supernatural intrudes on the everyday with riveting effect.
If you had met me a few weeks ago, you probably would have described me as an average teenage girl - someone normal. Now my life has changed forever and I'm as far away from normal as it gets. A living science experiment - not only can I see ghosts, but I was genetically altered by a group of people who call themselves The Edison Group. What does that mean? For starters, I'm a teenage necromancer whose powers are out of control: I raise the dead without even trying. Trust me, that is not a power you want to have. Ever.
I'm running for my life with three of my supernatural friends - a charming sorcerer, a cynical werewolf, and a disgruntled witch - and we have to find someone who can help us gain our freedom back before The Edison Group finds us first. Or die trying.
The North Yorkshire moors are always a magical place, but they’re particularly enchanting at the holidays . . . especially if one gets to travel back in time to a Victorian Christmas. For Bronwyn Dale, it is the stuff of dreams.
\nFancy-dress balls, quirky small-town traditions, even that classic one-horse open sleigh, complete with jingle bells. There’s just the tiny problem of the Butterfly Effect. How does a time-traveler make a difference without disrupting the future forever?
When Olivia's life exploded - after she found out she was not the adopted child of a privileged Chicago family but of a notorious pair of convicted serial killers - she found a refuge in the secluded but oddly welcoming town of Cainsville, Illinois.
\nWorking with Gabriel Walsh, a fiendishly successful criminal lawyer with links to the town, she discovered the truth about her parents' crimes in an investigation that also revealed the darker forces at work in the place that had offered her a haven. As if that wasn't enough, she also found out that she, Gabriel and her biker boyfriend Ricky were not caught in an ordinary sort of love triangle, but were hereditary actors in an ancient drama in which the elders of Cainsville and the mysterious Huntsmen who opposed them had a huge stake.
Now someone is killing street kids in the city, and the police have tied Ricky to the crimes. Setting out with Gabriel's help to clear Ricky's name, Olivia once again finds her own life at risk. Soon the three are tangled in a web of betrayals that threatens their uneasy equilibrium and is pushing them toward a hard choice: either they fulfill their destinies by trusting each other and staying true to their real bonds, or they succumb to the extraordinary forces trying to win an eternal war by tearing them apart.
Elena Michaels is the world’s only female werewolf. And she’s tired of it. Tired of a life spent hiding and protecting, a life where her most important job is hunting down rogue werewolves. Tired of a world that not only accepts the worst in her - her temper, her violence - but requires it. Worst of all, she realises she’s growing content with that life, with being that person.
\nSo she left the Pack and returned to Toronto where she’s trying to live as a human. When the Pack leader calls asking for her help fighting a sudden uprising, she only agrees because she owes him. Once this is over, she’ll be squared with the Pack and free to live life as a human. Which is what she wants. Really.
Ever since she discovered she's pregnant, Elena Michaels has been on edge. After all, she's never heard of another living female werewolf, let alone one who's given birth. But thankfully, her expertise is needed to retrieve a stolen letter allegedly written by Jack the Ripper.
\nAs a distraction, the job seems simple enough - only the letter contains a portal to Victorian London's underworld, which Elena inadvertently triggers - unleashing a vicious killer and a pair of zombie thugs.
Now Elena must find a way to seal the portal before the unwelcome visitors get what they're looking for - which, for some unknown reason, is Elena . . .
Portia Hastings has spent her life rescuing her younger sister from one scrape or another. Now, she has to step through time to do it, following Miranda from the nineteenth century to the eighteenth.
\nAlmost immediately, Portia is beset by highwaymen, which might be the most exciting thing to happen to her in a long time, even if she’d never admit it. When one of the highwaymen is injured, Portia makes the inexcusable mistake of helping him - she is trained as a doctor after all. Her travel companions abandon her, and she’s left at the mercy of a highwayman who demands she continue tending to his compatriot’s wounds.
\nPortia soon finds herself at a crumbling castle inhabited by the destitute Earl of Ravensford. Benedict Sterling is in desperate need of money, and his solution is a ball, where a wealthy bride will win the title of countess, even if it does come with one thunderously ill-tempered earl. Portia agrees to a scheme to help Benedict look like a slightly more appealing bridegroom, while she continues to search for Miranda. Then there’s the small matter of the castle, complete with a ghost intent on driving her out. But once Portia sets her mind on something, she’s not going anywhere.
Casey Duncan is a homicide detective with a secret: when she was in college, she killed a man. She was never caught, but he was the grandson of a mobster and she knows that someday this crime will catch up to her. Casey's best friend, Diana, is on the run from a violent, abusive ex-husband. When Diana's husband finds her, and Casey herself is attacked shortly after, Casey knows it's time for the two of them to disappear again.
Diana has heard of a town made for people like her, a town that takes in people on the run who want to shed their old lives. You must apply to live in Rockton and if you're accepted, it means walking away entirely from your old life, and living off the grid in the wilds of Canada: no cell phones, no Internet, no mail, no computers, very little electricity, and no way of getting in or out without the town council's approval. As a murderer, Casey isn't a good candidate, but she has something they want: She's a homicide detective, and Rockton has just had its first real murder. She and Diana are in.
However, soon after arriving, Casey realises that the identity of a murderer isn't the only secret Rockton is hiding - in fact, she starts to wonder if she and Diana might be in even more danger in Rockton than they were in their old lives.
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When experienced homicide detective Casey Butler first moved to the secret town of Rockton, she expected a safe haven for people like her, people running from their past misdeeds and past lives. She knew living in Rockton meant living off-the-grid completely: no cell phones, no Internet, no mail, very little electricity, and no way of getting in or out without the town council’s approval. What she didn’t expect is that Rockton comes with its own set of secrets and dangers.
Now, in A Darkness Absolute, Casey and her fellow Rockton sheriff’s deputy Will chase a cabin-fevered resident into the woods, where they are stranded in a blizzard. Taking shelter in a cave, they discover a former resident who’s been held captive for over a year.
When the bodies of two other women turn up, Casey and her colleagues must find out if it’s an outsider behind the killings or if the answer is more complicated than that . . . before another victim goes missing.
After slipping 150 years into the past, modern-day homicide detective Mallory Atkinson has embraced her new life in Victorian Scotland as housemaid Catriona Mitchel. Although it isn’t what she expected, she's developed real, meaningful relationships with the people around her and has come to love her role as assistant to undertaker Dr. Duncan Gray and Detective Hugh McCreadie.
\nMallory, Gray, and McCreadie are on their way to the Scottish Highlands for McCreadie's younger sister's wedding. The McCreadies and the groom’s family, the Cranstons, have a complicated history which has made the weekend quite uncomfortable. But the Cranston estate is beautiful so Gray and Mallory decide to escape the stifling company and set off to explore the castle and surrounding wilderness. They discover that the groom, Archie Cranston, a slightly pompous and prickly man, has set up deadly traps in the woods for the endangered Scottish wildcats, and they soon come across a cat who's been caught and severely injured. Oddly, Mallory notices the cat's injuries don't match up with the intricacies of the trap. These strange irregularities, combined with the secretive and erratic behavior of the groom, put Mallory and Duncan on edge. And then when one of the guests is murdered, they must work fast to uncover the murderer before another life is lost.
Olivia Taylor Jones’s life has exploded. She’s discovered she is not only adopted, but her real parents are convicted serial killers. Fleeing the media frenzy, she took refuge in the oddly secluded town of Cainsville. She has since solved the town’s mysteries and finds herself not only the target of its secretive elders but also her stalker ex-fiancé.
\nVisions continue to haunt her: particularly a little blond girl in a green sundress who insists she has an important message for Olivia, one that may help her balance the light and darkness within herself. Death stalks both Olivia and the two men most important to her, as she desperately searches to understand whether ancient scripts are dictating the triangle that connects them. Will darkness prevail, or does Olivia have the power to prevent a tragic fate?
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Detective Casey Duncan has noticed fewer and fewer residentsIt’s not always easy to live in the hidden town of Rockton, something Detective Casey Duncan knows firsthand. Tucked away in the Yukon wilderness, the community survives - and thrives - because the residents' many secrets stay just that - secret.
\nBut what happens when these secrets start to come out? Overnight, no one is safe. It’s not a question of if your secret will come out - but when.
\nCasey and her boyfriend, Sheriff Eric Dalton, need to find the culprit while protecting those who have been thrust into the spotlight. For a place built on privacy and new beginnings, Rockton isn’t handling these revelations very well. People are turning on one another, and when one of the loudest complainers turns up barely alive, it's clear that their trickster is actually a murderer.
\nThe threat of exposure is reaching its breaking point, and no one knows what’s going to happen next.
Leader of the American Coven, guardian to the preteen daughter of a black witch . . . it’s not the lifestyle twenty-three year-old Paige Winterbourne imagined for herself, and it’s wreaking hell on her social life.
\nBut she’s up to the challenge. When half-demon Leah O’Donnell returns to fight for custody of Savannah, Paige is ready.
\nShe’s not as prepared for the team of supernaturals Leah brings with her, including a powerful sorcerer who claims to be Savannah’s father. Cut off from her friends, accused of witchcraft, Satanism, necromancy, murder . . .
\nPaige quickly realises that keeping Savannah could mean losing everything else. Has she finally found a battle she isn’t willing to fight?
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Victorian Scotland is becoming less strange to modern-day homicide detective Mallory Atkinson. Though inhabiting someone else’s body will always be unsettling, even if her employers know that she’s not actually housemaid Catriona Mitchell, ever since the night both of them were attacked in the same dark alley 150 years apart. Mallory likes her job as assistant to undertaker/medical examiner Dr. Duncan Gray, and is developing true friends - and feelings - in this century.
\nSo, understanding the Victorian fascination with death, Mallory isn't that surprised when she and her friends are invited to a mummy unwrapping at the home of Sir Alastair Christie. When their host is missing when it comes time to unwrap the mummy, Gray and Mallory are asked to step in. And upon closer inspection, it’s not a mummy they’ve unwrapped, but a much more modern body.
Sisters Moria and Ashyn are the Keeper and Seeker of Edgewood. Or at least they were. Their village is gone. Their friends have betrayed them. And now, they are all but prisoners in court, forced to watch and wait while the Emperor decides whether to help the children of Edgewood, who remain hostages of the treacherous Alvar Kitsune.
\nBut when the emperor finally sends the girls on a mission to rescue the children - accompanied by Prince Tyrus and a small band of men - the journey proves more perilous than any of them could have imagined. With lies and unrest mounting in the empire, Moria and Ashyn will have to draw on every bit of influence and power they possess to unite their people and avert an all-out war.
Genevieve has secrets that no one knows. In Rome she can be whoever she wants to be. Her neighbours aren't nosy; her Italian is passable; the shopkeepers and restaurant owners now see her as a local, and they let her be. It's exactly what she wants.
One morning, after getting groceries, she returns to her 500-year-old Trastevere apartment. She climbs to the very top of the staircase, the stairs narrowing the higher she goes. When she gets to her door, she puts down her bags and pushes the key into the lock . . .
It's unlocked. Sometimes she doesn't lock it because break-ins aren't common in Rome. But Genevieve knows she locked the door behind her this morning. She has no doubt.
She should leave, call the police. What if someone is in her apartment, waiting for her? But she doesn't.
The apartment is empty, and exactly as she left it, perfectly tidy and not a thing out of place . . . except for the small box on her kitchen table. A box that definitely wasn't there this morning. A box postmarked from the US. A box that is addressed to \"Lucy Callahan.\"
A name that she hasn't used in ten years.
From the author of the acclaimed Women of the Otherworld series comes an exciting new heroine whose most secret identity is both lucrative...and lethal.
Regulars at Nadia's nature lodge don't ask what she does in the off-season. And that's a good thing. If she told them, she'd have to kill them. She's a hit woman for a Mafia family. Tough and self-sufficient, Nadia doesn't owe anyone any explanations.
But that doesn't mean she always works alone. One of her contacts has recruited her in the hunt for a ruthlessly efficient serial killer cutting a swath of terror across the country. The assassin is far too skilled to be an amateur - and the precision of the killings is bringing the Feds much too close to the hit man community for comfort.
To put an end to the murders, Nadia will have to turn herself from predator to prey as she employs every trick she knows to find the killer. Before the killer finds her...
The time has come! After discovering the true reason for the monster migration, Rowan is on an expedition to ultimately prove that she is worthy of the ebony monster-slaying sword on her back. She and her twin brother, Rhydd, their friends Dain and Alianor, as well as some other trusted advisors - and the ever-growing group of monstrous companions - are on a mission to help protect the dragon living in their homeland and are travelling to kingdoms beyond to make their case.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBut not everyone agrees that people can live peacefully alongside monsters, especially when new terrifying creatures appear. It will take everything Rowan has to fight off threats of all kinds, from both monsters and people. It won't be easy, but if she succeeds, she will become Royal Monster Hunter at long last.
Daphne McFadden is tired of rejection. After submitting her manuscript to dozens of agents, she's gotten rejection after rejection, and now it's time for something drastic. And so, Daphne submits her manuscript again . . . under a man's name.
\nImagine her surprise when it sells for big money at an auction and soon becomes a publicity darling. Only she needs a man to play her super macho alter ego Zane Remington. Enter Chris Stanton, who absolutely looks the part of a survivalist and has a talent for pressing her piss‑me‑off‑I‑dare‑you buttons while somehow being endearing at the same time.
\nBut Chris has a few secrets of his own, including the fact that he’s really an accountant who has no idea how to chop wood or paddle a canoe. When Daphne's book becomes a bestselling sensation and they're forced to go on tour together, Daphne finds herself wondering if this city‑boy geek is exactly what she needs to push her to claim her dreams.
The empire rests on the edge of a knife, and sisters Ashyn and Moria are the handle and the blade. Desperate to outmaneuver the evil Alvar Kitsune, whose hold on the people grows stronger every day, Emperor Tatsu begs Moria to put aside past grievances and ally with Gavril - at least long enough to make an attempt on Alvar's life.
\nMeanwhile, reunited with her long-lost grandfather, Ashyn discovers that she is the key to a ritual that could reawaken an ancient dragon and turn the tide of the coming battle in their favor. But with lies and betrayal lurking around every corner, Ashyn and Moria will have to decide once and for all where their allegiances lie. And it may not be where their hearts would lead them. . . .
\n
For Elena Michaels, being the world's only female werewolf has its advantages, such as having her pick of the Otherworld's most desirable males. And she couldn't have picked a more dangerously sexy and undyingly loyal mate than Clayton Danvers.
\nBut now their bond will be put to the ultimate test. A werewolf more wolf than human and more unnatural than supernatural - a creature whose origins spring from ancient legend - is hunting human prey, and Elena and Clayton must track the predator deep into Alaska's frozen wilderness.
But the personal stakes are even higher. Either Clayton or Elena has been chosen to become the new Pack leader, and every wolf knows that there can be only one Alpha. The couple have always been equals in everything. Now, when their survival depends more than ever on perfect teamwork, will instinct allow one of them to lead and the other to follow?
Maya lives in a small medical-research town on Vancouver Island. How small? You can't find it on the map. It has less than two-hundred people, and her school has only sixty-eight students - for every grade from kindergarten to twelve. Now, strange things are happening in this claustrophobic town, and Maya's determined to get to the bottom of them.
\nFirst, the captain of the swim team drowns mysteriously in the middle of a calm lake. A year later, mountain lions start appearing around Maya's home, and they won't go away. Her best friend, Daniel, starts getting negative vibes from certain people and things. It doesn't help that the new bad boy in town, Rafe, has a dangerous secret - and he's interested in one special part of Maya's anatomy: Her paw-print birthmark.
\n
Victorian novelist Miranda Hastings is in London for a modern-day Christmas with the man she loves, and they want to see everything. Luckily, they have friends who are going to make sure they get their wish.
\nThey're sent on a whirlwind holiday adventure, following their friends' mysterious messages . . . until an encounter with a ghost who was part of an infamous gang of highwaymen. Murder, mystery, and a ghost in need? Now that's Miranda's idea of a holiday treat.
\n
Rowan is now the Royal Monster Hunter, and her twin brother, Rhydd, is destined to be king. But her mother's cousin Heward is still determined that his children be the ones to inherit the titles, and will stop at nothing to show that Rowan and Rhydd are too immature to properly lead. After the gryphon that Rowan captured in Book One gives birth but then dies, Rowan is left with a baby gryphon she knows she cannot keep. And it grows faster than anyone can imagine . . .
\nIn order to save face after an accident involving the troublesome gryphon, Rowan, with the help of her friends Dain and Alianor, along with an entourage of monstrous companions, must make a journey to the mountains to release the gryphon back into the wild. What starts off as a simple enough task soon becomes a dangerous quest, as the group encounters numerous rare and deadly monsters along the way, including wyverns and ceffyl-dwrs. Nothing is easy when you're a “monster magnet” like Rowan.
\nCan she prove herself worthy of the title of Royal Monster Hunter?
Eve Levine - half-demon, black witch and devoted mother - has been dead for three years. She has a great house, an interesting love life and can't be killed again - which comes in handy when you've made as many enemies as Eve. Yes, the afterlife isn't too bad - all she needs to do is find a way to communicate with her daughter, Savannah, and she'll be happy.
\nBut fate - or more exactly, the Fates - have other plans. Eve owes them a favor, and they've just called it in. An evil spirit called the Nix has escaped from hell. She feeds on chaos and death, and is very good at persuading people to kill for her. The Fates want Eve to hunt her down before she does any more damage, but the Nix is a dangerous enemy - previous hunters have been driven insane in the process.
\nAs if that's not problem enough, the only way to stop her is with an angel's sword. And Eve is no angel . . .
When Samantha Payne’s grandfather dies, she figures she won’t even get a mention in the will. After all, she hasn’t seen him in fourteen years, not since her father took his own life after being accused of murdering a child at their lakefront cottage. Her grandfather always insisted her father was innocent, despite Sam having caught him burying the child’s body, his clothing streaked with blood.
\nBut when she does attend the reading of the will at the behest of her aunt, she discovers that her grandfather left her the very valuable lakefront property where the family cottage sits. There’s one catch: Sam needs to stay in the cottage for a month. To finally face the fact she was wrong and her father was innocent, in her grandfather's words.
\nTraveling to Paynes Hollow, Sam is faced with the realities of her childhood and the secrets kept hidden in the shadows of her memories. When her aunt goes missing a couple days into their stay, Sam begins to question everything again. Plagued by nightmares and paranoia, she begins hearing sounds in the forest and seeing shapes crawling from the water as the rippling waves of the lake promise something unspeakably dark lurking just below their surface.
Laney Kilpatrick has been renting her vacation home to strangers. The invasion of privacy gives her panic attacks, but it’s the only way she can keep her beloved Hemlock Island, the only thing she owns after a pandemic-fueled divorce. But broken belongings and campfires that nearly burn down the house have escalated to bloody bones, hex circles, and now, terrified renters who’ve fled after finding blood and nail marks all over the guest room closet, as though someone tried to claw their way out . . . and failed.
\nWhen Laney shows up to investigate with her teenaged niece in tow, she discovers that her ex, Kit, has also been informed and is there with Jayla, his sister and her former best friend. Then Sadie, another old high school friend, charters over with her brother, who’s now a cop.
\nThere are tensions and secrets, whispers in the woods, and before long, the discovery of a hand poking up from the earth. Then the body that goes with it . . . But by that time, someone has taken off with their one and only means off the island, and they’re trapped with someone - or something - that doesn’t want them leaving the island alive.
After Paige Winterbourne is ousted as leader of the American Coven of Witches, all she wants to do is hide under her duvet for a few months. Let the supernatural world manage without her, see if she cares . . .
\nBut fate, of course, has other plans. A murderer is on the loose - someone with superhuman skills. When Paige learns that the killer is targeting children, she realises she has to get involved in the covert investigation.
\nAnd so Paige - desperate to protect those she loves - is thrown into a world of arrogant Cabal leaders, drunken necromancers, sulky druid gods and pretentious leather-clad vampires. Luckily, she has a female werewolf and a certain renegade sorcerer on her side . . .
When Amy Gibson's mother is brutally murdered by her boyfriend, Amy's world is completely undone. Overcome with grief and heartache, she withdraws from everything around her - college, her friends, her entire life. Until her estranged half-brother, Oliver, saves her, pulling her back into her life and giving her family. Giving her a home.
\nEight years later, she's picked herself up and has worked hard to move forward. She’s the host of a popular true crime podcast that focuses on crimes against women committed by their partners and is finding purpose and healing through helping women in ways she couldn't help her mother.
\nAnd then Oliver is accused of the unthinkable - something that is so unlike him. Something that horrifies Amy. But desperate to save the only family she has, she sets out to prove her brother's innocence.
\nBut as the days pass and more information about Oliver and his past slowly comes to light, Amy begins realising that nothing is ever as it seems - especially when it comes to family.
Adolescence is a time of \"firsts.\" First kiss. First love. First loss. First job. The first taste of adult responsibilities, and the first look at an independent life away from both the restrictions and the security of home.
\nAnd in this case, a very different type of \"first\": murder.
\nThis short story collection of murder mysteries adds a sinister spin to the joy and pain of firsts that have always been a major part of life, whether it be high school cliques who take the term \"backstabbing\" too seriously, stumbling upon a body on the way home from school, or receiving a Snapchat message that promises something deadly.
\nContributors include Barry Lyga, Caleb Roehrig, Emmy Laybourne, Jonathan Maberry, R.L. Stine, Rachel Vincent, Y.S. Lee, and more.
\nRobyn Peltier has always lived a normal life. So when her boss is murdered and she is named prime suspect, she is way out of her depth. As the bodies pile up only her friend Hope, and Hope's somewhat spooky boyfriend Karl, are on her side.
\nHope, meanwhile, has a few secrets of her own. Namely that she is half-demon, and her 'spooky' boyfriend is actually a werewolf. Hope also knows that Robyn has accidentally stumbled into a bloody supernatural turf war. And the only way she can keep her friend alive is by letting her enter a world she's safer knowing nothing about . . .
As a curious six-year-old, Clayton didn’t resist the bite - he asked for it. But surviving as a lone child-werewolf was more than he could manage - until Jeremy came along, taught Clayton how to straddle the human-werewolf worlds, and introduced him to the Pack.
\nSo begins this tantalising volume featuring three of the most intriguing members of the American Pack - a hierarchical founding family where bloodlines mean everything and each day presents a new, thrilling, and often deadly challenge.
\nFor as he grows from a wild child to a clever teen who tests his mentor at every turn, Clayton must learn not only to control his animal instincts but to navigate Pack politics - including showing his brutal archnemesis who the real Alpha is.
In her acclaimed Women of the Otherworld series, bestselling author Kelley Armstrong creates a present day in which humans unwittingly coexist with werewolves, witches, and other supernatural beings. Now, in this spellbinding new novel, a beautiful necromancer who can see ghosts must come to terms with her power - and with an evil she never thought possible.
It's the most anticipated reality television event of the season: three spiritualists gathered together in one house to raise the ghost of Marilyn Monroe. For celebrity medium Jaime Vegas, it is to be her swan song - one last publicity blast for a celebrity on the wrong side of forty. But unlike her colleagues, who are more show than substance, Jaime is the real thing.
Reluctant to upstage her fellow spiritualists, Jaime tries to suppress her talents, as she has done her entire life. But there is something lurking in the maze of gardens behind the house: a spirit without a voice. And it won't let go . . .
Twenty-four-year-old Olivia Taylor Jones has the perfect life. The only daughter of a wealthy, prominent Chicago family, she has an Ivy League education, pursues volunteerism and philanthropy, and is engaged to a handsome young tech firm CEO with political ambitions.
\nBut Olivia’s world is shattered when she learns that she’s adopted. Her real parents? Todd and Pamela Larsen, notorious serial killers serving a life sentence. When the news brings a maelstrom of unwanted publicity to her adopted family and fiancé, Olivia decides to find out the truth about the Larsens.
\nOlivia ends up in the small town of Cainsville, Illinois, an old and cloistered community that takes a particular interest in both Olivia and her efforts to uncover her birth parents’ past.
\nAided by her mother’s former lawyer, Gabriel Walsh, Olivia focuses on the Larsens’ last crime, the one her birth mother swears will prove their innocence. But as she and Gabriel start investigating the case, Olivia finds herself drawing on abilities that have remained hidden since her childhood, gifts that make her both a valuable addition to Cainsville and deeply vulnerable to unknown enemies. Because there are darker secrets behind her new home and powers lurking in the shadows that have their own plans for her.
In this thrilling and hugely entertaining collection of novellas and short stories, Kelley Armstrong returns one last time to her bestselling Otherworld series. Among other tales, the werewolf pack is on the hunt for an old and very dangerous enemy; two very different vampires attempt to settle an old feud; a supernatural date turns hot enough to burn down a building and - in a brand-new novella - Paige and Lucas have a huge decision to make about their future.
\nFeaturing much-loved characters, this final collection completes several important storylines, making it a must-have for Kelley Armstrong's many fans.
In this new collection, Kelley Armstrong brings together some of her favourite love matches, taking us on honeymoon with her werewolves, Elena and Clay; showing us how her vampires, Cassandra and Aaron, express their unique bond; revealing how Karl proposed to Hope; and how the young Australian werewolf, Reese, learned the dangers of love, among other stories. And by popular demand, included here is the fan-favourite novella, Hidden.
\nAs an exciting conclusion, Armstrong has written a brand-new novella that takes us beyond the end of Thirteen to show us what happens after Savannah and Adam save the Otherworld - and realise they really do love each other. Lots of excitement as usual, but can these two find happiness?
More than a decade after Kelley Armstrong first opened the doors to the Otherworld, fans are still clamoring for more. In response to their demands - and to coincide with the Syfy Network show based on the series - Plume has signed up three Otherworld anthologies, each of which revolves around a different theme.
\nThe second in the trilogy, Otherworld Secrets, features fan-favorites such as Cassandra, Savannah, and Adam in rare and never before published short stories - plus a brand new novella.
\nFans old and new will flock to this mystery-themed volume to discover the deepest secrets of this captivating world.
\n
Half-demon Hope Adams has inherited not only a gift for seeing the past but a hunger for chaos - along with a talent for finding it wherever she can. Naturally, when she's chosen by a very dangerous group for a very dangerous mission, she jumps at the chance.
\nAs it turns out, Hope is a little too good at this job, and she soon finds it necessary to unleash her most potent primal instincts - and open herself, mind and body, to everything she most fears . . . and desires.
Edinburgh, 1869: Modern-day homicide detective Mallory Atkinson is adjusting to her new life in Victorian Scotland. Her employers know she’s not housemaid Catriona Mitchell - even though Mallory is in Catriona’s body - and Mallory is now officially an undertaker’s assistant.
\nDr. Duncan Gray moonlights as a medical examiner, and their latest case hits close to home. Men are dropping dead from a powerful poison, and all signs point to the grieving widows . . . the latest of which is Gray’s oldest sister.
\nPoison is said to be a woman’s weapon, though Mallory has to wonder if it’s as simple as that. But she must tread carefully. Every move the household makes is being watched, and who knows where the investigation will lead.
The nail-biting climax to Kelley Armstrong's bestselling YA series. Chloe Saunders is fifteen and would love to be normal. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen. First of all, she happens to be a genetically engineered necromancer who can raise the dead without even trying.
\nShe and her equally gifted (or should that be 'cursed'?) friends are on the run from the evil corporation who created them. To top it all, Chloe is struggling with her feelings for Simon, a sweet-tempered sorcerer, and his brother Derek, a not so sweet-tempered werewolf. And she has a horrible feeling she's leaning towards the werewolf. Definitely not normal . . .
May 20, 2019: Homicide detective Mallory is in Edinburgh to be with her dying grandmother. While out on a jog one evening, Mallory hears a woman in distress. She’s drawn to an alley, where she is attacked and loses consciousness.
\nMay 20, 1869: Housemaid Catriona Mitchell had been enjoying a half-day off, only to be discovered that night in a lane, where she’d been strangled and left for dead . . . exactly one-hundred-and-fifty years before Mallory was strangled in the same spot.
\nWhen Mallory wakes up in Catriona's body in 1869, she must put aside her shock and adjust quickly to the reality: life as a housemaid to an undertaker in Victorian Scotland. She soon discovers that her boss, Dr. Gray, also moonlights as a medical examiner and has just taken on an intriguing case, the strangulation of a young man, similar to the attack on herself. Her only hope is that catching the murderer can lead her back to her modern life . . . before it's too late.
Things are getting desperate for Maya and her friends. Hunted by the powerful St. Clouds and now a rival Cabal as well, they're quickly running out of places to hide. And with the whole world thinking they died in a helicopter crash, it's not like they can just go to the authorities for help.
All they have is the name and number of someone who might be able to give them a few answers. Answers to why they're so valuable, and why their supernatural powers are getting more and more out of control.
But Maya is unprepared for the truths that await her. And now, like it or not, she'll have to face down some demons from her past if she ever hopes to move on with her life. Because Maya can't keep running forever.
Old secrets are revealed and unexpected characters make a surprising return in this stunning conclusion to Kelley Armstrong's New York Times bestselling Darkness Rising trilogy.
When Olivia Taylor-Jones found out she was not actually the adopted child of a privileged Chicago family but of a notorious pair of convicted serial killers, her life exploded. Running from the fall-out, she found a refuge in the secluded but oddly welcoming town of Cainsville, Illinois, but she couldn't resist trying to dig out the truth about her birth parents' crimes.
\nShe began working with Gabriel Walsh, a fiendishly successful criminal lawyer who also had links to the town; their investigation soon revealed Celtic mysteries at work in Cainsville, and also entangled Olivia in a tense love triangle with the calculating Gabriel and her charming biker boyfriend, Ricky. Worse, troubling visions revealed to Olivia that the three of them were reenacting an ancient drama pitting the elders of Cainsville against the mysterious Huntsmen with Olivia as the prize.
\nTwelve-year-old Rowan is next in line to be Queen; her twin brother, Rhydd, to be Royal Monster Hunter. Rowan would give anything to switch places, but the rule is, the oldest child is next in line, even if she is only older by two minutes. She resigns herself to admiring her royal monster hunter aunt's official sword and having tea with dignitaries with her mother, the queen. But a tragic event breaks up longstanding rules, and now Rowan finds herself in hunt of a dangerous gryphon.
\nAccompanied by a feisty and determined baby jackalope and a giant wolf that barely tolerates her, she sets off on a journey that will see her join forces with other unlikely allies: a boy who has ambitions of his own to hunt monsters, and a girl from a nearby clan with hidden motives for befriending Rowan. It will take all of Rowan's skills, both physical and diplomatic, to keep this journey on track. The future of the kingdom depends on it.
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In the Forest of the Dead, where the empire’s worst criminals are exiled, twin sisters Moria and Ashyn are charged with a dangerous task. For they are the Keeper and the Seeker, and each year they must quiet the enraged souls of the damned.
\nOnly this year, the souls will not be quieted.
\nAmbushed and separated by an ancient evil, the sisters’ journey to find each other sends them far from the only home they’ve ever known. Accompanied by a stubborn imperial guard and a dashing condemned thief, the girls cross a once-empty wasteland, now filled with reawakened monsters of legend, as they travel to warn the emperor. But a terrible secret awaits them at court - one that will alter the balance of their world forever.
Rowan is Tamarel's Royal Monster Hunter, and her twin brother, Rhydd, will be its king. After the events of The Gryphon's Lair, Rowan, along with her friends, her brother and an entourage of monstrous companions, makes her way back to the Dunnian Woods to deal with the pack of dropbears the group trapped in an abandoned cabin after a vicious attack. The dropbears are just one of a number of rare monster species acting erratically in Tamarel.
\nAfter a swarm of colocolos nearly tramples the group, Rowan becomes convinced that someone (or something) is driving these monsters out of their natural habitats. But nothing can prepare the Royal Monster Hunter for the truth of the matter: monsters even bigger and deadlier than gryphons have returned to the world, and their nest-building, as well as the actions of the humans trying to drive them out, has upset the balance of nature in Tamarel.
\nDo Rowan's monster magnet skills work against the most fearsome monsters imaginable?
It’s a Victorian Christmas at Thorne Manor, and Rosalind Courtenay is staying far, far away from the door that leads to the twenty-first century. It took her four years to get back home, and she’s never going near the time stitch again. But her five-year-old son has other plans, and Rosalind finds herself plunged back into the modern world, where she decides to face her fears and give her family the holiday gift of a lifetime.
\nOnce again, Fate has other ideas, sending a blizzard to derail Rosalind’s cautious planning and toss them all into a whirlwind of savage snowstorms, spectral sleigh bells and, perhaps, a Christmas ghost or two.
Blythe and her friends - Gabrielle, and brother and sister Tucker and Tanya - have always been a tight friend group, attending a local high school and falling in and out of love with each other. But an act of violence has caused a rift between Blythe and Tucker . . . and unexpected bursts of aggression and disturbing nightmares have started to become more frequent in their lives.
\nThe strange happenings culminate in a shocking event at school: Gabrielle is found covered in blood in front of their deceased principal, with no memory of what happened.
\nCracks in their friendship, as well as in their own memories, start appearing, threatening to expose long-forgotten secrets which could change the group’s lives forever. How can Blythe and her friends trust each other when they can’t even trust their own memories?
Savannah Levine is in terrible danger, and for once she’s powerless to help herself. At the conclusion of Waking the Witch, Savannah swore that she would give up her powers if it would help a young girl. Little did she know that someone would take her up on that promise.
\nAnd now, witch hunting assassins, necromancers, half-demons, and rogue witches all seem to be after her. The threat is not just for Savannah; every member of the Otherworld might be at risk. While most of her fellow supernaturals are circling the wagons at a gathering of the council in Miami, Savannah is caught on the road, isolated from those who can protect her and unable to use her vast spell casting talent, the thing she counts on most.
\nIn a story that will change the shape of the Otherworld forever, Spell Bound gathers Elena, Clay, Paige, Lucas, Jaime, Hope, and others, who soon learn that the greatest threat to supernaturals just may come from within.
Thorne Manor has always been haunted . . . and it has always haunted Bronwyn Dale.
\nAs a young girl, Bronwyn could pass through a time slip in her great-aunt's house, where she visited William Thorne, a boy her own age, born two centuries earlier. After a family tragedy, the house was shuttered and Bronwyn was convinced that William existed only in her imagination.
\nNow, twenty years later Bronwyn inherits Thorne Manor. And when she returns, William is waiting.
\nWilliam Thorne is no longer the boy she remembers. He’s a difficult and tempestuous man, his own life marred by tragedy and a scandal that had him retreating to self-imposed exile in his beloved moors. He’s also none too pleased with Bronwyn for abandoning him all those years ago.
\nAs their friendship rekindles and sparks into something more, Bronwyn must also deal with ghosts in the present version of the house. Soon she realizes they are linked to William and the secret scandal that drove him back to Thorne Manor. To build a future, Bronwyn must confront the past.
When a young witch tells Elena that a group of humans are kidnapping supernaturals, Elena ignores the warning. After all, everyone knows there’s no such thing as witches.
\nAs for the thought of other ‘supernaturals’, well, she’d just rather not dwell on the possibility. Soon, however, she’s confronted with the truth about her world, when she’s kidnapped and thrown into a cell-block with witches, sorcerers, half-demons and other werewolves.
\nAs Elena soon discovers, dealing with her fellow captives is the least of her worries. In this prison, the real monsters carry the keys.
\n
Detective Casey Duncan has noticed fewer and fewer residents coming in to the hidden town of Rockton, and no extensions being granted. Her boyfriend, Sheriff Eric Dalton, presumes it’s the natural flux of things, but Casey’s not so sure. Something bigger is happening in the small town they call home.
When an injured hiker stumbles from the woods, the sole survivor of a hostile attack, it’s all hands on deck. Even a member of the elusive Rockton council comes in to help. This council member also comes bearing news: Rockton is being shut down due to the hostile situation.
Casey and Eric must now race to save the town that has allowed residents to have a fresh start, away from the mistakes of their past, while also getting to the bottom of this latest attack.
Chloe Saunders sees dead people. Yes, like in the films. The problem is, in real life saying you see ghosts gets you a one-way ticket to the psych ward. And at 15, all Chloe wants to do is fit in at school and maybe get a boy to notice her. But when a particularly violent ghost haunts her, she gets noticed for all the wrong reasons. Her seemingly crazed behaviour earns her a trip to Lyle House, a centre for disturbed teens.
\nAt first Chloe is determined to keep her head down. But then her room mate disappears after confessing she has a poltergeist, and some of the other patients also seem to be manifesting paranormal behaviour. Could that be a coincidence? Or is Lyle House not quite what it seems? Chloe realises that if she doesn’t uncover the truth, she could be destined for a lifetime in a psychiatric hospital. Or could her fate be even worse? Can she trust her fellow students, and does she dare reveal her dark secret?
Have you ever wondered how lone wolf Clayton Danvers finally got bitten by the last thing he expects: love?
\nOr how the hot-blooded bad-girl witch Eve Levine ensnared the cold, ruthless corporate sorcerer Kristof Nast?
\nWould you like to be a fly on the wall at the wedding of Lucas Cortez and Paige Winterbourne, where nothing goes as planned?
\nOr tag along with Lucas and Paige as they investigate a gruesome crime that may be the work of a rogue vampire?
\nWhether you're new to the Otherworld or a longtime fan, you'll thrill at the discoveries to be found in these eight tales of friendship, adventure, and enduring romance, featuring a cast of superhuman men and women whose fierce passion and undivided sense of purpose make them very human indeed.
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A war is brewing - the first battle has been waged and Savannah Levine is left standing, albeit battered and bruised. She has rescued her half brother from supernatural medical testing, but he’s fighting to stay alive. The Supernatural Liberation Movement took him hostage, and they have a plan to expose the supernatural world to the unknowing.
\nSavannah has called upon her inner energy to summon spells with frightening strength, a strength she never knew she had, as she fights to keep her world from shattering. But it’s more than a matter of supernaturals against one another - both heaven and hell have entered the war; hellhounds, genetically modified werewolves, and all forces of good and evil have joined the fray.
\nUniting Savannah with Adam, Paige, Lucas, Jaime, Hope, and other lost-but-notforgotten characters in one epic battle, for a grand series finale.
When Casey Duncan first arrived at Rockton, the off-the-grid, isolated community built as a haven for people running from their pasts, she had no idea what to expect. There are no cell phones, no internet, no mail, and no way of getting in or out without the town council's approval. She certainly didn't expect to become the town homicide detective. But, the very last thing she expected was for the council to drop a dangerous criminal into their midst without a plan to keep him imprisoned. And she never thought that she'd have to be responsible for him.
The longer Oliver Brady stays in town, the more people seem to die around him. When evidence begins piling up that someone inside Rockton is working as his accomplice, Casey races to figure out who exactly Brady is and what crimes he's truly responsible for committing.
In Thorne Manor there is one locked door. Behind it lies a portal to the twenty-first century, and nothing is going to stop Miranda Hastings from stepping through. After all, she is a Victorian writer of risqué pirate adventures - traveling to the future would be the greatest adventure of them all.
\nWhen Miranda goes through, though, she lands in Georgian England . . . and in the path of Nicolas Dupuis, a privateer accused of piracy. Sheltered by locals, Nico is repaying their kindness by being their “pirate Robin Hood,” stealing from a corrupt lord and fencing smuggled goods on the village’s behalf.
\nMiranda embraces Nico’s cause, only to discover there’s more to it than he realizes. Miranda has the second sight, and there are ghosts at play here. The recently deceased former lord is desperate to stop his son from destroying his beloved village. Then there’s the ghost of Nico’s cabin boy, who he thought safe in a neighboring city. Miranda and Nico must solve the mystery of the boy’s death while keeping one step ahead of the hangman.
\nIt may not be the escapade Miranda imagined, but it is about to be the adventure of a lifetime.
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Three years ago, Rosalind Courtenay stumbled from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first, where she has been trapped ever since, leaving her husband and infant son behind. Now she’s found her way back.
\nThe problem, of course, is how to explain her absence to her husband. Does he think she abandoned him? Has he remarried? Is he happy in a new life? Rosalind decides to don a disguise in hopes of answering her questions before showing up on his doorstep. Instead, a twist of fate has her mistaken for her young son’s new governess.
\nRosalind has every intention of revealing herself as soon as August returns home from business. Until then, she’ll get to know her son, a quiet child who has inexplicably been abandoned by an endless stream of governesses. That’s when the hauntings begin. Rosalind has finally come home and something - or someone - doesn’t just want her gone. They want her dead.
Omens, the first installment in Kelley Armstrong’s exciting new series, introduced Olivia Taylor-Jones, daughter of notorious serial killers, and Gabriel Walsh, the self-serving, morally ambiguous lawyer who became her unlikely ally. Together, they chased down a devious killer and partially cleared her parents of their horrifying crimes.
\nTheir success, however, is short-lived. While Olivia takes refuge in the old, secluded town of Cainsville, Gabriel’s past mistakes have come to light, creating a rift between the pair just when she needs his help the most.
\nOlivia finds a dead woman in her car, dressed to look like her, but the body vanishes before anyone else sees it. Olivia’s convinced it’s another omen, a sign of impending danger. But then she learns that a troubled young woman went missing just days ago—the same woman Olivia found dead in her car. Someone has gone to great lengths to kill and leave this young woman as a warning. But why? And what role has her new home played in this disturbing murder?
\nOlivia’s effort to uncover the truth places her in the crosshairs of old and powerful forces, forces that have their own agenda, and closely guarded secrets they don’t want revealed.
The orphaned daughter of a sorcerer and a half-demon, Savannah is a terrifyingly powerful young witch who has never been able to resist the chance to throw her magical weight around. But at 21 she knows she needs to grow up and prove to her guardians, Paige and Lucas, that she can be a responsible member of their supernatural detective agency.
\nSo she jumps at the chance to fly solo, investigating the mysterious deaths of three young women in a nearby factory town as a favour to one of the agency’s associates. At first glance, the murders look garden-variety human, but on closer inspection signs point to otherworldly stakes.
\nSoon Savannah is in over her head. She’s run off the road and nearly killed, haunted by a mystery stalker, and freaked out when the brother of one of the dead women is murdered when he tries to investigate the crime. To complicate things, something weird is happening to her powers. Pitted against shamans, demons, a voodoo-inflected cult and garden-variety goons, Savannah has to fight to ensure her first case isn’t her last. And she also has to ask for help, perhaps the hardest lesson she’s ever had to learn.
The secret town of Rockton has seen some rocky times lately; understandable considering its mix of criminals and victims fleeing society for refuge within its Yukon borders. Casey Duncan, the town's only detective on a police force of three, has already faced murder, arson and falling in love in less than the year that she's lived there. Yet even she didn't think it would be possible for an outsider to find and cause trouble in the town she's come to call home.
When a US Marshal shows up in town demanding the release of one of the residents, Casey and her boyfriend, Sheriff Dalton, are skeptical. And yet only hours later, the marshal is shot dead and the only visible suspects are the townspeople and her estranged sister, in town for just the weekend. It's up to Casey to figure out who murdered the marshal, and why they would kill to keep him quiet.
“Few crimes are reported as quickly as a snatched kid.”
\nThat’s what the officer tells single mother Aubrey Finch after she reports a kidnapping. So why hasn’t anyone reported the little boy missing? Aubrey knows what she saw: a boy being taken against his will from the park. It doesn’t matter that the mother can’t be found. It doesn’t matter if no one reported it. Aubrey knows he’s missing.
\nInstead, people question her sanity. Aubrey hears the whispers. She’s a former stay-at-home mom who doesn’t have primary custody of her daughter, so there must be something wrong with her, right? Others may not understand her decision to walk away from her safe life at home, but years of hiding her past – even from the people she loves – were taking their toll, and Aubrey knows she can’t be the mother or wife she envisions until she learns to leave her secrets behind.
\nWhen the police refuse to believe her, she realizes that rescuing the boy is up to her alone. But after all the secrets, how far is she willing to go? Even to protect a child.
\n“Few crimes are reported as quickly as a snatched kid.”
That’s what the officer tells single mother Aubrey Finch after she reports a kidnapping. So why hasn’t anyone reported the little boy missing? Aubrey knows what she saw: a boy being taken against his will from the park. It doesn’t matter that the mother can’t be found. It doesn’t matter if no one reported it. Aubrey knows he’s missing.
Instead, people question her sanity. Aubrey hears the whispers. She’s a former stay-at-home mom who doesn’t have primary custody of her daughter, so there must be something wrong with her, right? Others may not understand her decision to walk away from her safe life at home, but years of hiding her past - even from the people she loves - were taking their toll, and Aubrey knows she can’t be the mother or wife she envisions until she learns to leave her secrets behind.
When the police refuse to believe her, she realizes that rescuing the boy is up to her alone. But after all the secrets, how far is she willing to go? Even to protect a child.
Protect the innocent. If there is any one principle that drives hit man Nadia Stafford, it’s this. In her own mind, when she was thirteen, she failed to protect her older cousin Amy from being murdered. Now she fails again, disastrously, when she botches a hit. To help her find her equilibrium, her mentor, Jack, brings her a gift: the location and new identity of the predator who killed her cousin and disappeared after the case against him failed.
\nVengeance, justice? With the predator in her sights, nothing seems more right, more straightforward, more easy. But finding justice is never as simple as it seems.
Debut author Gemma Stanton knows romance readers love a bad boy - and she has the perfect prototype for her novel: Mason Moretti. High school hockey god-turned-pro player, Mason was Gemma's first crush, but she couldn't forget the sting of his very public rejection. So, she casts him as a hot-headed Highlander in her spicy new historical romance. She never expected readers would find out on live TV when a morning show host invites Mason for a surprise on-air reunion . . .
As an aging hockey player with a rep for being ruthless on the ice - and roguish off of it - Mason has an image problem. So, when his meet-cute with Gemma goes viral, Mason proposes they build on the momentum with a few fake dates to...
A radical reframing of the past and present of Black resistance - both nonviolent and violent - to white supremacy.
\nBlack resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary.” In We Refuse , historian Kellie Carter Jackson urges us to move past this false choice, offering an unflinching examination of the breadth of Black responses to white oppression, particularly those pioneered by Black women.
\nThe dismissal of “Black violence” as an illegitimate form of resistance is itself a manifestation of white supremacy, a distraction from the insidious, unrelenting violence of structural racism. Force - from work stoppages and property destruction to armed revolt - has played a pivotal part in securing freedom and justice for Black people since the days of the American and Haitian Revolutions.
\nBut violence is only one tool among many. Carter Jackson examines other, no less vital tactics that have shaped the Black struggle, from the restorative power of finding joy in the face of suffering to the quiet strength of simply walking away.
\nClear-eyed, impassioned, and ultimately hopeful, We Refuse offers a fundamental corrective to the historical record, a love letter to Black resilience, and a path toward liberation.
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Shea Parker has lived her entire life in the shadow of the Gravewood - a deadly forest that’s cut her town off from the world. With resources dwindling, she’s forced to ration her hearing aid batteries. When her stash runs out, she’ll be left in silence.
\nHer only hope is Oliver Lysander, the volatile leader of the vampires who rule the Gravewood. Their deal is simple: she gives him her blood, he brings her batteries. No lines crossed. Nothing personal.
\nUntil Shea’s best friend is lured into the Gravewood, and her brother Asher Thorley returns from the frontlines, willing to expose Shea’s darkest secrets to get his sister back.
\nEver the opportunist, Lysander offers a new bargain: if Asher kills his vampire rival, he’ll help find the missing girl. And if Shea agrees to Turn, he’ll cure her ailing mother.
\nBut every deal pulls her closer to Lysander - and to becoming a monster herself.
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Following the death of his father, Thomas Walsh had to grow up quickly, taking on odd-jobs to keep food on the table and help pay his gravely ill mother's medical bills. When he's offered a highly paid position as an interpreter for an heiress who exclusively signs, Thomas - the hearing child of a Deaf adult - jumps at the opportunity.
\nBut the job is not without its challenges. Thomas is expected to accompany Vivienne wherever she goes, but from the start, she seems determined to shake him. To make matters worse, her parents keep her on an extremely short leash. She is not to go anywhere without express permission. She is not to deviate from her routine.
\nShe is, most importantly, not to be out after dark.
\nA selective-mute, Vivienne Farrow hasn't said a word in years - not since going missing in Red Rock Canyon when she was four years old. No one knows quite what happened to her out in the dark. They only know that the sound of her voice is now as deadly as a poison. Anyone who hears her speak suffers a horrible death.
\nEver since that fatal family vacation, Vivienne has been desperately searching for a way to regain control of both her voice and her body. Because the face staring out of the mirror isn't hers. It's something with teeth.
\nThankfully, Vivienne has a plan. She's finally found someone who claims to be able to perform a surgical exorcism. She just needs to find a way to get rid of Thomas first. But Thomas can't afford to walk away, nor is he willing to abandon the mysterious girl he's quickly falling for, no matter what dark powers threaten to swallow them both whole.
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Kelly Bishop’s long, storied career has been defined by landmark achievements, from winning a Tony Award for her turn in the original Broadway cast of A Chorus Line to her memorable performance as Jennifer Grey’s mother in Dirty Dancing. But it is probably her iconic role as matriarch Emily in the modern classic Gilmore Girls that cemented her legacy.
\nNow, Bishop reflects on her remarkable life and looks towards the future with The Third Gilmore Girl. She shares some of her greatest stories and the life lessons she’s learned on her journey. From her early transition from dance to drama, to marrying young to a compulsive gambler, to the losses and achievements she experienced - among them marching for women’s rights and losing her second husband to cancer - Bishop offers a rich, genuine celebration of her life.
\nFull of witty insights, The Third Gilmore Girl is a warm, unapologetic, and spirited memoir from a woman who has left indelible impressions on her audiences for decades and has no plans on slowing down.
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1939, France: Lavish parties, fast cars, and a closet full of the latest fashion - to the average eye, socialite Violet St. Croix seemingly has it all. But what she truly wants is a life full of meaning and purpose. So when France falls to Germany, Violet defies her parents’ wishes and joins the war effort. With her impeccable skill for driving under pressure, she is soon sent to North Africa to shepherd French Foreign Legion officers carrying valuable intelligence through dangerous territory.
\nBut as the Allies encounter one mishap after another, Violet becomes convinced there is a spy in their ranks. And when her commanding officer is murdered, Violet realises she might be the only one who can uncover the traitor and save the lives of countless soldiers on the front lines. Convincing others to believe her is difficult enough. Finding someone she can trust just might be impossible.
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There is only one way to inherit a windblade. Murder.
\nA slum girl hides a deadly secret - she was born with the ability to throw razor-thin streams of air. In a kingdom ruled by aristocrats who hoard this power, Francie tries her best to hide it. However, a revolution discovers and recruits her, forcing her to lie to her two closest friends. When her true lineage pits all three against each other, she must choose between the man she loves and the kingdom she swore to protect.
\nLevick Roale keeps his own monumental secret - he's the first windwalker in centuries, capable of soaring on powerful gusts of wind. Bound by love and prophecy, he must learn what it means to forge a new future for his people.
\nArturian Exley, heir to a powerful house, is burdened by a chilling to inherit his father's windblade, he must kill him. When caught between a forbidden love and his familial duty, he makes a choice that changes the course of the kingdom forever.
\nAs a mysterious figure plots to ignite chaos, Francie, Levick, and Arturian are forced to trust each other again - a dangerous game in a world where love and betrayal are intertwined. This is a story of love, deadly secrets, and a cursed legacy in a world where the wind itself can be a weapon.
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We never ran the place on paper, but we had reigned here as Kings, reigned over the world we created for ourselves.
\n1957, London. A gang of girls called the Kings rule the bomb-struck streets of Finsbury Park. When Harry, their unpredictable but charismatic leader, tries to encroach on the territory of the rival Seven Sisters gang, the Kings know they're in for a fight.
\nArmed with flick knives and fists, they do battle in dancehalls and on football fields. But with the authorities closing in and conscripted boys threatening to reclaim what was once theirs, the Kings must ask if they're willing to pay the price of loyalty.
\nBound by wild friendship and brutal competition, these young women will do anything to carve a space for themselves in this ruthless city.
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\"I wish to become one of those round vacuum cleaner robots.\" That's what Machi writes while praying at the altar of Japanese goddess Benzaiten. She writes it because ever since her two best friends Angel and Sunny decided they want nothing to do with her, Machi hasn't been able to speak.
\nAfter months and months of online school and seeing different therapists, Machi still hasn't uttered a word, and she can no longer see the point of being human. But she doesn't expect Benzaiten to actually hear her prayer, much less offer a to show Machi all the beauty of humanity, ultimately restoring her voice.
\nBenzaiten is enamored with the human world - possibly a little too enamored - and, as she's the goddess of love, humanity is enamored right back. Being second-best to another friend isn't helping Machi move past her trauma, and with each adventure they share, Machi is reminded of everything she's lost. It isn't until Machi starts interacting with the souls of the dead - a phenomena of spending so much time around a goddess - that she starts to understand pain can serve a purpose.
\nAnd when she really stops to take a look around her, she realises the potential for happiness, and for closure, has been there all along.
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When eighteen-year-old Louisa Wade inherits a gay bar from her late great-uncle, she figures there’s been some kind of mistake. There’s no way Uncle George - football legend and hometown hero of Rustin, Alabama - could have secretly owned a queer bar . . . right?
\nBut The Frisky Cricket is real, and so is the messy legacy Uncle George left behind - including his grumpy ex-partner, Hatch, who wants nothing more than to sell the bar. Louisa may have zero business experience, but she’s determined to keep it open for the vibrant queer community that calls it home.
\nAs the summer heats up, Louisa’s crusade puts her on a collision course with Aubrey the pretty, popular, and sharp-tongued daughter of Rustin University’s newly crowned football coach. The girls start off on the wrong foot, but a tentative truce leads to late nights, shared secrets, and a growing spark.
\nBut things threaten to sputter out when Coach Calhoun sets his sights on The Frisky Cricket, scheming to replace it with a new athletic facility - celebrating Uncle George’s football career while erasing his queerness. Now Louisa must decide if she can fight for Uncle George’s legacy without losing sight of herself in the process.
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As children, Lexie and Annie were incredibly close. Bonded by the death of their beloved father and their mother's swift remarriage, they weathered the storms of life together. When Lexie leaves home to follow her dream, Annie is forced to turn to her leather-bound journal as the only place she can confide her deepest secrets and fears. . .
As adults, sisters Lexie and Annie could not be more different. Lexie is a doctor, successful in her practice and happily engaged. Annie is addicted to heroin - a thief, a liar, and unable to remain clean despite the fact that she is pregnant. When Annie's newborn baby is in danger of being placed in foster care, Annie picks up the phone to beg her sister for help.
Will Lexie agree to help and take in her young niece? And how will Annie survive, losing the only thing in her life worth living for?
Berlin, Germany, 1930: When the Nazis rise to power, Sofie von Meyer Rhodes and her academic husband benefit from the military ambitions of Germany’s newly elected chancellor when Jürgen is offered a high-level position in their burgeoning rocket program.
\nAlthough they fiercely oppose Hitler’s radical views, and joining his ranks is unthinkable, it soon becomes clear that if Jürgen does not accept the job, their income will be taken away. Then their children. And then their lives.
\nHuntsville, Alabama, 1950: Twenty years later, Jürgen is one of many German scientists pardoned and granted a position in America’s space program. For Sofie, this is a chance to leave the horrors of her past behind.
\nBut when rumors about the Rhodes family’s affiliation with the Nazi party spread among her new American neighbors, idle gossip turns to bitter rage, and the act of violence that results tears apart a family and leaves the community wondering - is it an act of vengeance or justice?
A year ago I met the love of my life. For two people who didn’t believe in love at first sight, we came pretty close.
Lilah MacDonald - beautiful, opinionated, stubborn and all kinds of wonderful in ways that words could never quite capture. The woman who taught me to live again.
My Lilah, who gave me so much, and yet kept from me a secret that she knew would break my heart.
My name is Callum Roberts, and this is our story.
Beneath the decaying grandeur of Wurimbirra, a family estate on the east coast of Australia, dark secrets lie buried. Fiona Winslow returns to restore the mansion she once called home, but what she uncovers is more than just decay - it is a mystery locked away for generations.
\nA forgotten book, The Midnight Estate, leads her into a story of love, loss, and betrayal mirroring her own. And as the lines between fiction and reality blur, Fiona must confront a chilling Is the true mystery hidden in the walls of her ancestral home, or within the pages of a book that seems to have chosen her?
Your husband took his own life. Tell the truth and destroy what's left of your family. Or keep a secret that will tear you apart. What would you do? Olivia and David were the perfect couple with their whole lives in front of them. When beautiful baby daughter Zoe came along, their world seemed complete.
\nBut now David is dead and Olivia's world is in pieces. While she is consumed with grief, her mother-in-law Ivy is also mourning the loss of her son. Both women are hiding secrets about the man they loved. Secrets that have put the family in danger.
\nSomething was very wrong in Olivia and David's marriage. Can Olivia and Ivy break their silence and speak the truth? A mother should protect her child, whatever the cost...shouldn't she?
As I saw my new-born baby’s face for the first time I tried desperately to capture her face in my mind - to stamp it onto my eyelids. As she was taken from me I knew I might never see my daughter again.
38 years later . . .
‘You were adopted’. Three short words and Sabina’s life fractures. There would forever be a Before those words, and an After.
Pregnant with her own child, Sabina can’t understand how a mother could abandon her daughter, or why her parents have kept the past a secret.
Determined to find the woman who gave her away, what she discovers will change everything, not just for Sabina, but for the women who have loved her all these years.
2019: Life changed beyond recognition for Alice when her son, Eddie, was born with autism spectrum disorder. She must do everything to support him, but at what cost to her family? When her cherished grandmother is hospitalised, a hidden box of mementoes reveals a tattered photo of a young man, a tiny leather shoe and a letter. Her grandmother begs Alice to return to Poland to see what became of those she held dearest.
\nWWII: Alina and Tomasz are childhood sweethearts. The night before he leaves for college, Tomasz proposes marriage. But when their village falls to the Nazis, Alina doesn't know if Tomasz is alive or dead. 2019: In Poland, separated from her family, Alice begins to uncover the story her grandmother is so desperate to tell, and discovers a love that bloomed in the winter of 1942. As a painful family history comes to light, will the struggles of the past and present finally reach a heartbreaking resolution?
Do you ever wish you had the chance to meet someone again for the first time?
When Leo and Molly met and married, they believed they were invincible. Together they could take on the world. But Leo, a war correspondent, lives for life on the edge, and when he takes a step into the unknown, tragedy strikes and he loses his memory. Molly rushes to help him fill in the gaps and soon they start falling in love all over again.
The trouble is, Molly is hiding something. Something big. The devoted wife at Leo’s bedside is a sham; Leo and Molly’s marriage was on the rocks long before Leo’s accident.
The closer Molly gets to her husband the more scared she becomes that he will remember. As Leo’s memory begins to trickle back will Molly lose the man she loves for a second time?
An emotional, heartbreaking read that will restore your faith in the power of love.
Maggie Wang, a broke young Asian American writer, needs a lifeline. Ingrid Parker, a veteran white Hollywood producer with her career on the edge, offers an impossible $3 million for ten experimental medical sessions promising to turn back time, using Maggie as a transfusion partner.
\nFor Ingrid, it's a chance to reboot her fading career. For Maggie, it's freedom - money to support her parents and finally finish her novel.
\nWhat starts as a professional transaction exchanging blood, quickly becomes a complex psychological dance. Maggie gains unprecedented access to Ingrid's hard-earned wisdom, while Ingrid sees in Maggie a potential protégé - and a weapon against an industry that's been trying to sideline her.
\nAs their relationship intensifies, they're forced to confront the harsh realities of race, age, and success. Who has the power to tell stories? And what are they willing to sacrifice to succeed?
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Today is Sophie Matthews’s sixteenth birthday party, an exclusive black-tie bash in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, where secrets are as deep-rooted as the sprawling live oaks. Sophie’s dad has spared no expense, and his renovated cliffside mansion - once thought haunted - is now hosting the event of the season. Then, just before the candles on the three-tiered red velvet cake are blown out, a body falls from the balcony onto the starlit dance floor below.
\nIt’s a killer guest list . . .
\nDANI: Sophie’s new stepmother who’s been plagued by self-doubt ever since the birth of her own baby girl
\nÓRLAITH: the superstitious Irish nanny who senses a looming danger in this cavernous house
\nMIKAYLA: the birthday girl’s best friend who is not nearly as meek as the popular kids assume
\nKIM: the cunning ex-wife who has a grudge she can’t let go of . . .
\nEveryone is invited in. Not everyone will get out alive.
On July 1, 1975, Kelsey Grammer's younger sister, 18-year-old Karen Grammer, was raped and murdered - now, for the first time, Kelsey discusses how it has affected him and the hope and healing he has found in the decades since.
\nKaren by Kelsey Grammer delves into the deeply personal and tragic story of the author's sister, Karen, who was brutally murdered at the age of 18. Kelsey was just 20 years old and studying theater at Juilliard in New York when his younger sister, a recent high school graduate, moved to Colorado Springs, where she was kidnapped by several men who had intended to rob the Red Lobster where she worked. They instead kidnapped Karen, raped her repeatedly, and ultimately stabbed her to death.
\nThrough this memoir, Grammer poignantly recounts the memories of his sister and the impact her loss had on his life and family. With raw honesty, Grammer explores the profound grief and devastation that followed Karen's death, as well as the long and arduous journey toward healing. He bravely confronts the pain of losing a loved one to senseless violence, offering readers a glimpse into the complexities of coping with such a profound loss.
\nKaren also serves as a testament to Grammer's resilience and determination to transform tragedy into a source of inspiration and empowerment. In sharing his story, Grammer aims to help others who have experienced similar loss, offering them solace and encouragement on their own paths toward healing.
\nKaren is not merely a memoir of loss, but a powerful testament to the enduring strength of the human spirit and the capacity for hope in the face of such overwhelming and devastating loss. This book is a moving tribute to a life cut tragically short, a testament to the enduring bond between siblings, and a message of hope at a time when we need it the most.
As the youngest daughter of the Siren queen, Celeste's life is tightly controlled. Desperate to prove her worth, she intends to join the Chorus - an elite group of siren warriors. With her final test on the horizon, Celeste must finally gain control over her temperamental Song. But when Celeste encounters a seemingly harmless ship, helmed by the intriguing Prince Raiden Sharp, her path veers towards forbidden waters.
\nBelieving the handsome sailor to be innocent of any wrongdoing, Celeste defies Siren law to save Raiden's life - despite knowing he is the son of a king who has murdered many of her kindred. The penalty for Celeste's betrayal should be death, but the queen offers her an alternative: right her wrong by assassinating the prince. Determined to first discover the truth behind the prince's clandestine mission, Celeste agrees to become human.
\nThe human world is nothing like she expected, nor is the prince the charming and noble man she assumed him to be. But as Celeste finds her place aboard the ship, friendships - and attraction - begin to grow. Will Celeste be able to save herself? Or will her choices unravel a kingdom, devastating sirens and humans alike?
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In this Gilded Age gothic homage to “Gaslight” starring Ingrid Bergman, a wealthy young newlywed in early 20th century New York is isolated within her opulent, yet ominously empty mansion by the charismatic and controlling new husband plotting to undermine her sanity . . .
\n1908, Long Island: For Millie Turner, the young and beautiful wife of a powerful New York stockbroker, Rose Briar Hall - a gleaming edifice of white marble on the North Shore - is more than a home. Every lavish detail speaks of Charles Turner’s status and wealth, and its stylish interior is testament to Millie’s sophistication. All that’s left is to prove her worthiness to be his bride. What better way than to throw a grand party for New York’s social elite?
\nAfter painstaking planning, the night of the event arrives and all is perfection - until Millie wakes to a cold, eerily quiet house, and a gray cloud where her memory should be. Can it be true that she has been in and out of consciousness for weeks, ever since the party took a terrifying turn? Millie recalls nothing. But her friends have shunned her, and it soon becomes clear that if she can't find out what really happened that night, much more than her reputation will be at risk . . .
\nAs the house that promised so much happiness begins to feel more like a prison, Millie wonders whether a woman alone, even a wealthy one, can ever be entirely safe. And if she succeeds in finding the truth, will it bring relief, or shake her marriage, and her life, to the core?
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Rome, 1965: Aspiring actress Silvia Whitford arrives at Rome's famed Cinecitt Studios from Los Angeles, ready for her big break and a taste of la dolce vita. Instead, she learns that the movie in which she was cast has been canceled. Desperate for money, Silvia has only one choice: seek out the Italian aunt she has never met.
\nGabriella Conti lives in a crumbling castello on the edge of a volcanic lake. Silvia's mother refuses to explain the rift that drove the sisters apart, but Silvia is fascinated by Gabriella, a once-famous actress who still radiates charisma. And the eerie castle inspires Silvia's second chance when it becomes the location for a new horror movie, aptly named The Revenge of the Lake Witch - and she lands a starring role.
\nSilvia immerses herself in the part of an ingenue tormented by the ghost of her beautiful, seductive ancestor. But when Gabriella abruptly vanishes, the movie's make-believe terrors seep into reality. No one else on set seems to share Silvia's suspicions. Yet as she delves into Gabriella's disappearance, she triggers a chain of events that illuminate dark secrets in the past--and a growing menace in the present . . .
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It's a dream assignment. Former Senator Dorothy Gibson, aka that woman, is the most talked-about person in the country right now, though largely for the wrong reasons. As an independent candidate for President of the United States, Dorothy split the vote and is being blamed for the shocking result. After her very public defeat, she's retreated to her home in rural Maine, inviting her ghostwriter to join her.
\nHer collaborator is impressed by Dorothy's work ethic and steel-trap mind, not to mention the stunning surroundings (and one particularly gorgeous bodyguard). But when a neighbor dies under suspicious circumstances, Dorothy is determined to find the killer in their midst. And when Dorothy Gibson asks if you want to team up for a top secret, possibly dangerous murder investigation, the only answer “Of course!”
\nThe best ghostwriters are adept at asking questions and spinning stories . . . two talents, it turns out, that also come in handy for sleuths. Dorothy's political career, meanwhile, has made her an expert at recognizing lies and double-dealing. Working together, the two women are soon untangling motives and whittling down suspects, to the exasperation of local police. But this investigation - much like the election - may not unfold the way anyone expects.
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Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. So goes the adage, but sometimes, even a first-rate ghostwriter and successful mystery author needs to make a buck. Even if that means setting foot on a cruise ship, something she vowed she’d never do. To top it off, the “Get Lit Cruise” is being organised by Payton Garrett, a very popular, bestselling author - and the ghostwriter’s long-time frenemy from back in their MFA days.
\nOver the years, Payton has reinvented herself. She gained a wife while ditching her journalist husband - who is also on board. And she’s acquired a rabid following who eagerly snapped up the invitations sent to a select few of her newsletter subscribers. The guests, all female, will receive personalised instruction from experts in five different writing genres, while basking in Payton’s reflected glow.
\nBetween mentoring guests, flirting with Payton’s ex, and taking bets on how long before someone performs a reenactment of Titanic’s “I’m flying!” scene (answer: not long enough), there’s plenty to keep a ghostwriter occupied. But there’s one activity nobody expected: solving a murder.
\nWhen an attendee is found dead under suspicious circumstances and several others suffer symptoms of poisoning, there are numerous motives and suspects to choose from. But could it be that the victim wasn’t even the intended target? As the body count rises along with onboard tensions, no one is safe - except, perhaps, for a killer whose scruples have long abandoned ship. And of course, like every well-plotted mystery, this one has an extra twist . . .
1792. A tyrannical government is determined to make England a mighty commercial empire. In France, Napoleon Bonaparte begins his rise to power, and with dissent rife, France’s neighbours are on high alert.
\nUnprecedented industrial change sweeps the land, making the lives of the workers in Kingbridge’s prosperous cloth mills a misery. Rampant modernization and dangerous new machinery are rendering jobs obsolete and tearing families apart.
\nNow, as international conflict nears, a story of a small group of Kingsbridge people - including spinner Sal Clitheroe, weaver David Shoveller and Kit, Sal’s inventive and headstrong son - will come to define the struggle of a generation as they seek enlightenment and fight for a future free from oppression . . .
Seft, a talented flint miner, walks the Great Plain in the high summer heat, to witness the rituals that signal the start of a new year. He is there to trade his stone at the Midsummer Fair, and to find Neen, the girl he loves. Her family live in prosperity and offer Seft an escape from his brutish father and brothers, within their herder community.
\nJoia, Neen's sister, is a priestess with a vision and an unmatched ability to lead. As a child, she watches the Midsummer ceremony, enthralled, and dreams of a miraculous new monument, raised from the biggest stones in the world. But trouble is brewing among the hills and woodlands of the Great Plain.
\nJoia's vision of a great stone circle, assembled by the divided tribes of the Plain, will inspire Seft and become their life's work. But as drought ravages the earth, mistrust grows between the herders, farmers and woodlanders - and an act of savage violence leads to open warfare . . .
As Europe erupts, can one young spy protect his queen?
\nIn 1558, the ancient stones of Kingsbridge Cathedral look down on a city torn apart by religious conflict. As power in England shifts precariously between Catholics and Protestants, royalty and commoners clash, testing friendship, loyalty, and love.
\nNed Willard wants nothing more than to marry Margery Fitzgerald. But when the lovers find themselves on opposing sides of the religious conflict dividing the country, Ned goes to work for Princess Elizabeth. When she becomes queen, all Europe turns against England. The shrewd, determined young monarch sets up the country’s first secret service to give her early warning of assassination plots, rebellions, and invasion plans. Over a turbulent half century, the love between Ned and Margery seems doomed as extremism sparks violence from Edinburgh to Geneva. Elizabeth clings to her throne and her principles, protected by a small, dedicated group of resourceful spies and courageous secret agents.
\nThe real enemies, then as now, are not the rival religions. The true battle pitches those who believe in tolerance and compromise against the tyrants who would impose their ideas on everyone else - no matter what the cost.
East German teacher Rebecca Hoffman discovers she’s been spied on by the Stasi for years and commits an impulsive act that will affect her family for the rest of their lives.
\nGeorge Jakes, the child of a mixed-race couple, bypasses a corporate law career to join Robert F. Kennedy’s Justice Department, and finds himself in the middle not only of the seminal events of the civil rights battle, but a much more personal battle of his own.
\nCameron Dewar, the grandson of a senator, jumps at the chance to do some official and unofficial espionage for a cause he believes in, only to discover that the world is a much more dangerous place than he’d imagined.
\nDimka Dvorkin, a young aide to Nikita Khrushchev, becomes a prime agent both for good and for ill as the United States and the Soviet Union race to the brink of nuclear war, while his twin sister, Tania, carves out a role that will take her from Moscow to Cuba to Prague to Warsaw – and into history.
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It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages. England is facing attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Those in power bend justice according to their will, regardless of ordinary people and often in conflict with the king. Without a clear rule of law, chaos reigns.
\nIn these turbulent times, three characters find their lives intertwined. A young boatbuilder's life is turned upside down when the only home he's ever known is raided by Vikings, forcing him and his family to move and start their lives anew in a small hamlet where he does not fit in. . . .
\nA Norman noblewoman marries for love, following her husband across the sea to a new land, but the customs of her husband's homeland are shockingly different, and as she begins to realise that everyone around her is engaged in a constant, brutal battle for power, it becomes clear that a single misstep could be catastrophic
\nA monk dreams of transforming his humble abbey into a center of learning that will be admired throughout Europe. And each in turn comes into dangerous conflict with a clever and ruthless bishop who will do anything to increase his wealth and power.
A thirteen-year-old Welsh boy enters a man’s world in the mining pits . . . .
\nAn American law student rejected in love finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson’s White House . . .
\nA housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with a German spy . . .
\nAnd two orphaned Russian brothers embark on radically different paths when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution.
From the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty, Fall of Giants takes us into the inextricably entangled fates of five families - and into a century that we thought we knew, but that now will never seem the same again . . .
Two weeks before D-Day, the French Resistance attacks a chateau containing a telephone exchange vital to German communications - but the building is heavily guarded and the attack fails disastrously.
\n\t\t\t\t\tFlick Clairet, a young British secret agent, proposes a daring new she will parachute into France with an all-woman team known as the Jackdaws and they will penetrate the chateau in disguise. But, unknown to Flick, Rommel has assigned a brilliant, ruthless Intelligence colonel, Dieter Franck, to crush the Resistance. And Dieter is on Flick's trail . . .
Set in North Africa, summer 1942, during Rommel's campaign against the British. This is the story of Alex Wolff, master spy, who treks across the Sahara and covertly enters the plot-ridden streets of wartime Cairo. And of Major Vandam, the British officer who is on Wolff's trail, sworn to destroy him.
\n\t\t\t\t\tWolff's mission is to steal British military plans and send them to Rommel, using a code whose key is buried in the pages of Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca. As Rommel's troops come closer to victory, Vandam edges closer to Wolff and the crucial key. There are incredible chase scenes: a motorcycle hurtling through blacked-out Cairo; the flash of a knife, a gush of hot blood, and the fleeting shadow of an escaping assassin; a harrowing race against death and a speeding train.
It is just before the outbreak of World War I and Britain must enlist the aid of Russia. Czar Nicholas's nephew is to visit London for secret naval talks with Lord Walden, who has lived in Russia and has a Russian wife, Lydia. But there are other people who are interested in the arrival of Prince Alexei: the Waldens' only daughter, Charlotte - willful, idealistic, and with an awakening social conscience; Basil Thompson, head of the Special Branch; and, above all, Feliks Kschessinky, the ruthless Russian anarchist. No one could have foretold that Lydia should recognize Feliks, or that she might put her own daughter's life at risk for his sake.
\nAs the secret negotiations progress, the destinies of these characters become ineluctably enmeshed. And as Europe prepares for the catastrophe of war, the final private tragedy which will shatter the complacency of the Waldens is acted out.
In the Sahara Desert, two elite intelligence agents are on the trail of a powerful group of drug-smuggling terrorists, risking their lives - and, when they fall desperately in love, their careers - at every turn. Nearby, a beautiful young widow fights against human traffickers while traveling illegally to Europe with the help of a mysterious man who may not be who he says he is.
\nIn China, a senior government official with vast ambitions for himself and his country battles against the older Communist hawks in the government, who may be pushing China - and its close military ally, North Korea - to a place of no return.
\nAnd in the United States, Pauline Green, the country's first woman president, navigates terrorist attacks, illegal arms trading, and the smear campaigns of her blustering political opponent with careful and deft diplomacy. She will do everything in her power to avoid starting an unnecessary war. But when one act of aggression leads to another, the most powerful countries in the world are caught in a complex web of alliances they can't escape. And once all the sinister pieces are in place, can anyone - even those with the best of intentions and most elite skills - stop the inevitable?
The tale of a twelfth-century monk driven to do the seemingly impossible: build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known. The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known . . . of Tom, the mason who becomes his architect - a man divided in his soul . . . of the beautiful, elusive Lady Aliena, haunted by a secret shame . . . and of a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state and brother against brother.
\nA spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England.
In a brutal world, charismatic rebel miner Mack McAsh - a slave by birth - is a man with the courage to stand up for what is right, and the strength to stick by his beliefs. Independent, rebellious Lizzie Hallim, meanwhile, is engaged to Jay Jamisson, the ruthless landlord's son and heir to an exploitative business empire.
\nBorn into separate worlds, Mack and Lizzie are thrown together when Mack becomes an enemy of the state and is forced to flee his homeland. Lizzie aids his escape, and it is not long before passions rage in the old world as well as the new . . .
Picking up where Fall of Giants, the first novel in the extraordinary Century Trilogy, left off, Winter of the World follows its five interrelated families - American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh -through a time of enormous social, political, and economic turmoil, beginning with the rise of the Third Reich, through the great dramas of World War II, and into the beginning of the long Cold War.
Carla von Ulrich, born of German and English parents, finds her life engulfed by the Nazi tide until daring to commit a deed of great courage and heartbreak . . .
American brothers Woody and Chuck Dewar, each with a secret, take separate paths to momentous events, one in Washington, the other in the bloody jungles of the Pacific . . .
\nEnglish student Lloyd Williams discovers in the crucible of the Spanish Civil War that he must fight Communism just as hard as Fascism . . .
\nDaisy Peshkov, a driven social climber, cares only for popularity and the fast set until war transforms her life, while her cousin Volodya carves out a position in Soviet intelligence that will affect not only this war but also the war to come.
World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge, but this sequel stands on its own.
\nThis time the men and women of an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroads of new ideas - about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice. In a world where proponents of the old ways fiercely battle those with progressive minds, the intrigue and tension quickly reach a boiling point against the devastating backdrop of the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race - the Black Death.
Julia Z, a young woman who gained notoriety at fourteen as the “orphan hacker,” is trying to live a life of digital obscurity in a quiet Boston suburb.
\nBut when a lawyer named Piers - whose famous artist wife, Elli, has been kidnapped by dangerous criminals - barges into her life, Julia decides to put the solitary life she has painstakingly created at risk as she can’t walk away from helping Piers and Elli, nor step away from the challenge of this digital puzzle. Elli is an oneirofex, a dream artist, who can weave the dreams of an audience together through a shared virtual landscape, live, in a concert-like experience by tapping into each attendee’s memories and providing an emotionally resonant narrative experience.
\nWhile these collective dreams are anonymous, Julia discovers that Elli was also dreaming one-on-one with the head of an international criminal enterprise, and he’s demanding the return of his dreams in exchange for Elli.
\nUnraveling the real and unreal leads Julia on an adventure that takes her across the country and deep into the shadows of her psyche.
Wily, charming Kuni Garu, a bandit, and stern, fearless Mata Zyndu, the son of a deposed duke, seem like polar opposites. Yet, in the uprising against the emperor, the two quickly become the best of friends after a series of adventures fighting against vast conscripted armies, silk-draped airships, and shapeshifting gods.
\nOnce the emperor has been overthrown, however, they each find themselves the leader of separate factions - two sides with very different ideas about how the world should be run and the meaning of justice.
From award-winning author Ken Liu comes his much anticipated second volume of short stories.
\nKen Liu is one of the most lauded short story writers of our time. This collection includes a selection of his latest science fiction and fantasy stories over the last five years - sixteen of his best - plus a new novelette.
In addition to these seventeen selections, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories also features an excerpt from book three in the Dandelion Dynasty series, The Veiled Throne.
A woman who fears she’s failing as a painter and as an artist seeks inspiration from one of her favorite poets - finding something even more wondrous, but also more impossible to capture on canvas . . .
Stalked by foes and dogged by betrayal, Princess Théra is pursued across a continent vaster than she could ever have imagined, to the hidden valleys of the World's Edge Mountains, into the barrows and subterranean halls of the City of Ghosts, across the ice floes of the far north. She breached the Wall of Storms intent on taking war to the Lyucu homelands, but how do you conquer the unconquerable?
\nEmpress Jia, Prince Phyro and Pékyu Tanvanaki find themselves bound to paths they never would have chosen. Amid atrocity and subterfuge, they will discover that the Courage of Brutes is no substitute for the Grace of Kings, and that little separates the Grace of Kings from the Madness of Tyrants.
\nOn both sides of the Wall of Storms, defeat's bitter tears mix with the fruits of knowledge new and ancient as two empires bound by blood and bone, by writ and iron, by time and custom, face a whirlwind that threatens to utterly consume them.
Princess Théra, once known as Empress Üna of Dara, yielded the throne to her younger brother in order to journey to Ukyu-Gondé to war with the Lyucu, and has crossed the impenetrable Wall of Storms with a fleet of ships and ten thousand people. Constantly facing adversity, she faces new challenges by doing the most interesting thing and not letting the past dictate the present.
\nIn Dara, the Lyucu leadership bristles with rivalries, as power and perspectives change between the remains of the Dandelion courts. Here, mothers and daughters, Empress and Pékyu alike, nurture the seeds of plans that will take years to bloom. As the conquerors and the conquered jockey for position in these new regimes, tradition gives way to new justifications for power.
Kuni Garu, now known as Emperor Ragin, runs the archipelago kingdom of Dara, but struggles to maintain progress while serving the demands of the people and his vision. Then an unexpected invading force from the Lyucu empire in the far distant west comes to the shores of Dara - and chaos results.
But Emperor Kuni cannot go and lead his kingdom against the threat himself with his recently healed empire fraying at the seams, so he sends the only people he trusts to be Dara’s savvy and cunning hopes against the invincible invaders: his children, now grown and ready to make their mark on history.
When the Confederation gathers a grand armada ostensibly to liberate Earth from the Boxans, the crew of the Athena must stop them before it’s too late.
\nSome species believe they can avoid war and endure the oppression of the Confederation while others choose to resist. The Athena and her crew struggle to keep the Star Alliance from splintering apart by offering them something unthinkable.
\nA journey that began when the brave crew of the Athena left Earth to investigate an alien structure discovered in the furthest reaches of the solar system will now come to an end.
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Exploring New Earth should be a thrilling undertaking. Instead, the more the colonists learn about the planet, the more alarmed they become. Alien ruins hint at a species who fought great wars among themselves and disappeared centuries ago.
\nWhen Connor Gates discovers a hidden bunker, he finds something he never expected. Everything the colonists have learned about New Earth’s previous inhabitants is wrong. Connor must race to unravel the mystery. The colonists must face the possibility that they are not alone and that New Earth was never theirs for the taking.
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As the colony grapples with the realization that New Earth is not as uninhabited as they’d once thought, tensions between the colonial settlements rise to new heights, and the Colonial Defense Force finds itself caught in the middle.
\nWhen Connor uncovers evidence of a militant colonial faction secretly exploiting the NEIIS, he has to investigate. Connor learns that some of the colonial settlements have been holding back discoveries of their own. He’d thought the NEIIS were a threat to the colony, but he was wrong. They all were, and the truth is beyond anything Connor could have imagined.
\nMeanwhile, Colonel Sean Quinn’s latest mission brings him off-world to investigate a previously discovered NEIIS settlement. When all communications from home go silent, he must return to New Earth to investigate. Cut off from everything, Sean must lead the crew of a CDF warship against a mysterious foe. Sean must forge a path into the unknown if he’s to have any hope of unraveling the mystery.
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After a long and exalted military career, General Connor Gates thought he was finally ready to retire. He was wrong.
\nWhen interstellar probes sent to Earth’s star system report back 40 years earlier than expected, the colonists learn that humans somehow survived the cataclysmic events of the past . . . but so did the enemy.
\nThe colonists owe their lives to the sacrifice made by the people of Earth, but the survivors are struggling and the colonists have the technology to turn the tide. Someone must lead an expeditionary force back to Earth. Connor might have been ready for retirement, but Earth calls, promising answers to what happened so long ago.
\nCan Connor and his friends survive one last mission and pay back the huge debt of sacrifice made long ago?
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Years after the first interstellar colony ship departed from Earth, a contagion known as the Vemus spread across all mammalian life on the planet, giving rise to monstrosities that nearly wiped out all humanity.
\nHundreds of years later, the interstellar colonists sent an expeditionary force back to Earth to help the survivors. Among the refugees were a cadre of human survivors who had adapted to resist the Vemus by becoming a hybrid of both.
\nOld war machines quarantined the Earth, preventing refugees from returning. Lieutenant Ethan Gates nearly died to save the colonial fleet sent to destroy the blockade. He survived by becoming a hybrid, and now they aren’t sure he could be trusted.
\nAfter months of being sidelined, Ethan finally returns to active duty, and makes an unexpected discovery . . . evidence hinting at the origins of the Vemus.
\nWhen detractors hinder unification efforts, causing treacherous divides among Earth’s refugees, a much larger threat looms in the shadows.
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Stranded thousands of light-years from home after a hyperspace experiment goes catastrophically wrong, General Connor Gates faces a brutal reality: their ship is failing, supplies are dwindling, and home is an impossible distance away. Their only hope lies with a manipulative alien prisoner who offers a dangerous bargain. Freedom in exchange for guidance to an ancient outpost with technology that could save them all . . . or doom the galaxy if weaponised.
\nEvery step deeper into uncharted space reveals new perils. The massive alien station they discover - a relic adrift in the void - hints at a universe far grander and more treacherous than humanity ever imagined. Meanwhile, across the stars, a dormant threat awakens - silently calls to those who can hear it. The Vemus nearly exterminated humanity once. Their return could mean the end of everything.
\nAs Connor races to unlock the station's secrets before time runs out, he realises the true danger may not be the vast emptiness of space, but what followed them into it. Some enemies are too dangerous to leave behind, even five thousand light-years from home.
\nIn this gripping space epic, betrayal is almost certain, but survival demands risk. Ancient technologies beckon with salvation and ruin in equal measure. Can humanity's scattered defenders outsmart beings who think in centuries rather than moments?
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Colonel Sean Quinn is stranded in another universe, along with two thousand people under his command. They've been hiding from the enemy long enough, now it’s time to return home. Outnumbered against a superior foe, Sean must risk everything in a daring operation, but the mysterious enemy has a few surprises of their own.
\nMeanwhile, a division threatens to tear the colony apart and Connor Gates is caught in the middle. Their best chance to prepare for a formidable multidimensional aggressor is to form an alliance with one of their victims, but the more they learn about New Earth's inhabitants, the more resistant to an alliance the colonial government becomes.
\nWhen a shadow group seeks to undermine the alliance, Connor must do what he swore he would never do in order to protect the colony. For Connor, the stakes have never been so high or so personal. The price will be paid by everyone if he fails.
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Escaping wrongful imprisonment wasn’t something Connor had in mind, but being put into stasis aboard Earth’s first interstellar colony ship was something he couldn’t have prepared for.
\nFor three hundred thousand colonists, the new colony brings the promise of a fresh start . . . a second chance. Connor might be the wrong man for the colony, but he’s the right man to see that it survives what’s coming.
\nA new world with new challenges, but the mission has changed.
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The Krake, a mysterious enemy who has brought about the collapse of entire civilisations, is hunting for New Earth.
\nConnor Gates, former elite soldier and now general of the colonial military, must find a way to protect the colony, which seems all but impossible when both humans and aliens alike are ignoring the very threat that should be uniting them all. To forge a future for the colony, Connor must risk everything.
\nBattle weary but vigilant, Colonel Sean Quinn must rebuild the morale of Trident Battle Group while fulfilling his mission, but when he receives an invitation to meet a Krake rebel faction, he must act. Sean seizes a rare opportunity to gather crucial intel about the enemy and possibly gain an ally, but can he trust them or will their betrayal doom them all.
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Over the years, Connor has pieced together evidence of a mysterious group of aliens who roamed the multiverse and have been to New Earth.
\nSetting off to make new discoveries about them is straightforward enough, but this is New Earth, and Connor Gates has a knack for finding trouble.
\nFor over twenty years, Connor and Diaz have been friends. They’ve survived two wars and have seen the best and the worst of each other. When a terrorist attack takes the life of Diaz’s son, their friendship will be pushed to the breaking point.
\nTo find who is responsible, Diaz is willing to cross as many lines as it takes. Connor will do everything he can to protect his friend, even from himself. It’ll take everything he’s got to find who is responsible while preserving a peaceful coexistence with New Earth’s inhabitants.
\nSometimes protecting your friends is a lot tougher than fighting your enemies.
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Sixty years ago a plan was conceived to help humanity survive its first contact with an alien race. Now it’s time to put that plan to the test. No country can stand alone. The world must unite if there is to be any hope of survival.
\nCommander Kaylan Farrow and her crew are investigating an ancient alien signal from beyond the fringes of known space. After months of searching, the Athena is starting to wear down. It’s only a matter of time before a catastrophic failure destroys their ship, but if they return to Earth now, Kaylan knows that humanity will not survive their first contact with hostile aliens. They must find the source of the signal and with it a means to end this war before it has a chance to reach Earth.
\nThe crew of the Athena will risk everything to unravel the mystery of an ancient alien race whose wars nearly destroyed the galaxy. On Earth, people must accept that the world as they knew it is gone. The Xiiginns are coming to pull Earth into the crosshairs of an interstellar war.
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Venturing into the unknown means pushing the limits of everything thought possible.
\n10 years ago, the Ark II departed on a long journey through interstellar space, but shortly after they reached their destination, all communications ceased. All attempts to re-establish contact have failed.
\nUtilising prototypical FTL technology that he invented, one brave man will lead a small expedition into the unknown to discover the colony’s fate.
\nThe challenges of establishing the first interstellar colony nearly destroyed humanity. What new challenges will the second colony bring?
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As Connor secretly searches for the enemy homeworld, he launches clandestine military operations to liberate other worlds in hopes of gaining allies before the enemy can find the last human colony.
\nThe humans cannot hope to compete with the enemy’s vast empire, but with the discovery of a new ally, Connor believes their luck has finally changed.
\nInstead, when new allies clash with the old, Connor finds himself caught in the middle. Connor will have to choose whether doing what’s necessary to ensure the colony survives is worth compromising his loyalty to allies close to home, but the price could ultimately tear the colony apart.
\nSurviving a war with the enemy isn’t always a numbers game, but in choosing one ally, will Connor lose it all?
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For years, Connor and others in the colony have unraveled the mysteries of New Earth and the global catastrophes that nearly destroyed its previous inhabitants. Their work led to the discovery of other worlds beyond the known universe.
\nIt became clear that many of those worlds had been attacked by an interdimensional invader that left untold amounts of manipulation, hardship, and annihilation in its wake. It's only a matter of time before the colony becomes the next target.
\nWhen a trusted ally requests Connor's help to investigate claims of new widespread invasions, he has no choice but to help. Connor believes that the only way to stop the invaders is to find their homeworld, but its location is a closely guarded secret. Many civilizations sought to discover the invader's homeworld and none have succeeded.
\nTime is running out for the colony, and Connor and a team of CDF soldiers may be the only thing that stands in the between and annihilation.
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After narrowly defeating the invading enemy fleet, there is evidence that the attack isn’t over.
\nThousands have died and all that stands between human extinction and the invaders are the remnants of the colonial military.
\nConnor must find a way to rally the colony using every scrap of ingenuity to stop the invaders. But will he succeed when he finds himself pitted against mankind’s ultimate enemy? This could be mankind’s final hour . . . or its greatest victory.
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Seven years ago the New Earth colony received one final message from Earth . . . a warning. First, a global pandemic, then the emergence of a new species. A war for survival ravaged the Sol system. Now they are coming for the colony.
\nMany colonists don’t believe it, but Connor does. They must prepare. They must fight. But how can they survive something that killed every person back on Earth?
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Experimenting with technology that stretches our understanding of the universe, Connor and a small group of survivors find themselves stranded on a ship far beyond known space.
\nThe answers they seek may lie in a distant star system, but Connor is about to find out that not all encounters are by chance.
\nWith a crew size too small on a ship that is barely holding together, can Connor find a way to bring them home safe?
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General Connor Gates is leading a task force on the most ambitious exploration initiative to date. The crew aboard the ships are mix of military and civilian, and include his son, Ethan, who has grown into a well respected leader.
\nWhile exploring a strange alien world, the team investigating the wreckage of an alien ship is brutally attacked. The survivors barely escape and are now fighting for their lives and their sanity . . . including Ethan. They’ve been exposed to a dangerous contagion, and it’s going to spread.
\nEvidence surfaces that there are prisoners on the planet, and their fates are somehow linked to the survivors on the ship.
\nFor Connor Gates, it’s all or rescue the people left behind and find a way to heal his son, or lose everything. But when a mysterious alien encounter presents an unthinkable choice, Connor’s decision will affect the future of humanity’s place in the galaxy.
\nThey knew they weren’t alone in the galaxy, but no one could’ve predicted an encounter that would change all the rules.
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Eight months have passed since the Star Shroud barrier was engaged to protect the Earth, but it won’t last, and humanity is scrambling to build a fleet.
\nCut off from home, the crew of the Athena has taken refuge on the Boxan colony world, a last safe haven for the creators of the Star Shroud. When Kaylan forms a psychic link to a mysterious Boxan soldier fighting gruesome battles on a dying world she has to act even if the Boxans refuse.
\nKaylan will risk the Alliance to uncover the secrets of the Boxan home world and mount a daring rescue mission for those left behind. She just needs to find a way past a planetary quarantine zone that has kept the Confederation at bay for over fifty years.
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The colony is still recovering from its war with the Vemus, but now they face a new threat. Something is causing a major upheaval among the creatures of New Earth, and the Colonial Defense Force is in trouble.
\nA new discovery sheds light on what happened to the alien race that inhabited New Earth, and their fate may affect whether the colony survives. As the scientists race to unravel the mystery, hordes of super-predators are rushing toward colonial settlements, and Connor must find a way to stop them before all is lost.
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A desperate mission to return Aczar refugees to their distant homeworld spirals into something far deadlier.
\nFreed from their underground exile, the Aczar wield orbital weapons that could challenge the colonial fleet. Their revolution has liberated their species from ancient manipulation, but the refugees are branded traitors for siding with outsiders.
\nAs diplomacy crumbles, Major Ethan Gates traces mysterious signals to a forgotten relic adrift in the void. What lies hidden could shatter everything humanity believes about their greatest enemy.
\nIn uncharted space, forgotten wars echo through the darkness. First contact may bring salvation - or herald annihilation.
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Held prisoner by a vicious alien whose race is determined to conquer the galaxy, Zack wakes to find that he is cut off from everything. Zack must figure out a way to escape his captors and a prison full of dangerous aliens to get back to his ship. Did his friends even know he was still alive?
\nKaylan commands the Athena, Earth’s most advanced spaceship. The crew is far from home and caught in an intergalactic war. The Boxans demand that they leave the star system, Xiiginn warships are hunting them, and the Athena is hopelessly outclassed. Kaylan must choose between leaving Zack to his fate or risk the lives of the crew for the slim chance of rescuing him.
\nKladomaor can’t let the Humans fall into the hands of the Xiiginns. The Boxans have been at war with the Xiiginns for years and they were losing. The Humans might be the key to their salvation, but only if he can bring them before the High Council and convince them to protect Earth. Their stealth ship is no match for the Xiiginn warships hunting them and if he can’t get the Humans to leave soon they would all be doomed.
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After initial contact with an alien entity leaves Kaylan unconscious, she wakes up to discover that she’s now in command of the Athena mission stranded in a star system far from Earth.
\nThe ship’s computer is malfunctioning and former hacker and astronaut trainee, Zack Quick, is the only one who can fix it. If he can’t figure out what’s wrong, they have no hope of getting back home.
\nIn order to survive, the crew of the Athena must explore an alien star system to find the species that summoned them.
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Zack Quick has been on the move for ten years hacking big corporations and exposing their secrets. Then he stumbles upon one of the biggest discoveries that will forever change the world and possibly get him killed.
\nKaylan Farrow is the pilot for Earth’s most advanced spaceship whose maiden voyage is supposed to take her crew to Titan, but newly released images from a deep space probe threaten to cancel the mission.
\nKept secret for 60 years, the discovery of an alien signal forces a NASA pilot and computer hacker to team up to investigate an alien structure discovered in the furthest reaches of the solar system.
\nHumanity is about to learn they aren’t alone.
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Six months ago, Connor learned what the alien race that populated New Earth feared - a mysterious enemy who nearly brought about the collapse of an entire civilisation. To help the colony prepare for this new threat, Connor rejoins the Colonial Defense Force.
\nUsing alien technology, Connor opens a gateway to another universe hoping to learn more about the threat. Instead, he receives a colonial distress beacon. Six months ago, they’d left people behind on a mission, all presumed dead. The beacon might be them, or it might be a trap, but Connor will not ignore the call for help.
\nFearing the beginning of another war, the colonial government would rather do nothing than risk bringing attention to the colony, but it’s already too late. The colony stands upon a crossroads. Its future is uncertain. They’ll have to adapt if they’re to survive.
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When a brilliant scientist gets a letter from herself about faster-than-light travel, she doesn't know what to believe. The equations work, but her paper is discredited - and soon the criticism is more than scientific.
\nExiled by the establishment, she gets an offer to build her starship from an unlikely source. But in the heights of Venus and on a planet of another star, a secret is already being uncovered that will shake humanity to its foundations.
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Humanity has taken to the stars, using faster-than-light travel to reach distant planets and new worlds. But in the far reaches of the galaxy, John Grant will discover a planet of humans who believe he has travelled not only through space to find them, but time.
\nOn Apis, the mysterious Fermi appear to have vanished, taking with them knowledge of the universe that humanity desires. But Marcus Owen, the robot AI now plagued with sentience, knows that the Fermi would not easily abandon the native life of Apis, and that they won't take kindly to mankind asserting dominance on a world that does not belong to them.
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At the heart of the discovery is the Fermi, mysterious beings that have survived on alien worlds for longer than humanity has existed. But now the Fermi are awakening, and they do not seem pleased to find humans in their midst.
\nBut for Lakshmi Nayak and the crew of the Fighting Chance, danger is a lot closer to home. Their search for answers will take them to places, and worlds, they never expected.
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Long before sirens and subways, New York’s first residents - noise-loathing fairies - fled underground to escape the city’s ever-increasing roar. Now, after centuries of failed plots to bring silence to the city, they’re trying something new: hiring a human.
\nWhen Ludwig, a comfort-obsessed slacker, begins hearing a word no one else remembers speaking, he follows its trail to a hidden fairy society beneath Times Square. There, he meets An Exalted Northwind, a fairy enchantress determined to forgo her species’ signature fondness for cruelty in favor of peacefully reclaiming the surface. But she can’t do it without a human go-between.
\nAs payment for Ludwig’s help, she offers him a ruby-defecating piglet. Unfortunately for the fairies, Ludwig’s sudden wealth leaves him free to do any job except the one he’s been given - like becoming an athleisure fashion mogul. As the fairies become increasingly desperate, Ludwig must choose between comfort and accountability before New York City is forever undone by fairy vengeance.
\nThe Loudest Place on Earth is an urban fable of defiance and consequence, where even magic must make way for the modern.
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For generations, the Slayer was supposed to be the chosen, the one girl in all the world with the power to stand against the vampires, demons, and forces of darkness. When Willow used the scythe to call up all the potential slayers at once, it changed everything. For years, the slayers have been working and fighting together as a team.
\nThen the Darkness came, killing many slayers and trapping the rest in an alternate dimension. And Frankie Rosenberg, the world’s first Slayer-Witch, found herself fighting evil alone. Sort of.
\nSure, she has her new Scooby Gang, plus the help of her mom, Willow; Watcher, Spike; and even the brooding-but-hot Hunter of Thrace. But even though they have a master plan (obviously), the gang is more fragmented than ever.
\nSo maybe it really is up to Frankie - and Frankie alone - to stand against the darkness. With Jake’s wild werewolf brother back in town, Dark Willow threatening to return, and the Darkness preparing for the final stage of their attack, now is not a great time to wallow in teen angst. After all, she’s the Slayer. It’s time to slay.
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Summer 1958 - a string of murders plagues the Midwest. The victims are found in their cars and in their homes - even in their beds - their bodies drained, but with no blood anywhere.
\nSeptember 19- the Carlson family is slaughtered in their Minnesota farmhouse, and the case gets its first lead: 15-year-old Marie Catherine Hale is found at the scene. She is covered in blood from head to toe, and at first she’s mistaken for a survivor. But not a drop of the blood is hers.
\nMichael Jensen, son of the local sheriff, yearns to become a journalist and escape his small-town. He never imagined that the biggest story in the country would fall into his lap, or that he would be pulled into the investigation, when Marie decides that he is the only one she will confess to.
\nAs Marie recounts her version of the story, it falls to Michael to find the truth: What really happened the night that the Carlsons were killed? And how did one girl wind up in the middle of all these bodies?
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Aristene are mythical female warriors, part of a legendary order. Though heroes might be immortalised in stories, it’s the Aristene who guide them to victory. They are the Heromakers.
\nEver since she was an orphan taken in by the order, Reed has wanted to be an Aristene. Now, as an initiate, just one challenge stands in her way: she must shepherd her first hero to glory on the battlefield. Succeed, and Reed will take her place beside her sisters. Fail, and she’ll be cast from the only home she’s ever known.
\nNothing is going to stop Reed - until she meets her hero. Hestion is fiery and infuriating, but what begins as an alliance becomes more, and as secrets of the order come to light Reed begins to understand what becoming an Aristene may truly cost. Battle looming, she must choose: the order and the life she had planned, or Hestion, and the one she never expected.
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After the grim confrontation with Queen Katharine, the rebellion lies in tatters. Jules’s legion curse has been unbound, and it is up to Arsinoe to find a cure, even as the responsibility of stopping the ravaging mist lies heavy on her shoulders, and her shoulders alone.
\nMirabella has disappeared. Katharine’s reign remains intact - for now. When Mirabella arrives, seemingly under a banner of truce, Katharine begins to yearn for the closeness that Mirabella and Arsinoe share. But as the two circle each other, the dead queens hiss caution - Mirabella is not to be trusted.
\nIn this conclusion to the Three Dark Crowns series, three sisters will rise to fight as the secrets of Fennbirn’s history are laid bare. Allegiances will shift. Bonds will be tested. But the fate of the island lies in the hands of its queens. It always has.
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Frankie Rosenberg is passionate about the environment, a sophomore at New Sunnydale High School, and the daughter of the most powerful witch in Sunnydale history. Her mom, Willow, is slowly teaching her magic on the condition that she use it to better the world. But Frankie’s happily quiet life is upended when new girl Hailey shows up with news that the annual Slayer convention has been the target of an attack, and all the Slayers - including Buffy, Faith, and Hailey’s older sister Vi - might be dead. That means it’s time for this generation’s Slayer to be born.
\nBut being the first ever Slayer-Witch means learning how to wield a stake while trying to control her budding powers. With the help of Hailey, a werewolf named Jake, and a hot but nerdy sage demon, Frankie must become the Slayer, prevent the Hellmouth from opening again, and find out what happened to her Aunt Buffy, before she’s next.
The battle for the Crown has begun, but which of the three sisters will prevail?
With the unforgettable events of the Quickening behind them and the Ascension Year underway, all bets are off. Katharine, once the weak and feeble sister, is stronger than ever before. Arsinoe, after discovering the truth about her powers, must figure out how to make her secret talent work in her favor without anyone finding out. And Mirabella, once thought to be the strongest sister of all and the certain Queen Crowned, faces attacks like never before - ones that put those around her in danger she can’t seem to prevent.
In this enthralling sequel to Kendare Blake’s New York Times bestselling Three Dark Crowns, Fennbirn’s deadliest queens must face the one thing standing in their way of the crown: each other.
Frankie Rosenberg is coming to terms with the fact that she’s the newest slayer, but that doesn’t mean she has it all figured out just yet. She and her friends are still reeling from the deadly attack on the annual slayer retreat—and the new revelation that some slayers may still be alive. She’s got her own Scooby Gang, but sometimes feels more on the outside than ever. She throws herself into training with her mom, the great witch Willow, and her new Watcher, Spike, but they’ve got demons of their own to contend with (both of the real and metaphorical variety). Buffy made it look easy, but being a slayer is hard - and lonely.
\nBut Frankie doesn’t have time to wander through Sunnydale Cemetery singing about her new responsibilities. With news of Buffy’s possible demise, Demons are making their way back to Sunnydale in droves, called by a Hellmouth that is starting to reawaken. And then an oracle brings news of a new Evil brewing . . . something called The Darkness. Could this be what attacked the slayers? And is it coming for Frankie?
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Historically, baby queens born with the sight gift were drowned. This had been the practice for hundreds of years, so long that few were even born anymore, as if the Goddess knew it would be a waste. It is a harsh sentence, but necessary, for it is well-known that in a queen the sight gift will run strong. Strong enough to drive her mad.
\nThis is the tale the last sight gift queen to be allowed to live. She was overcome by paranoia and false visions, driven past the brink by the phantom thoughts of others in her head, so she set upon the capital with bloody ruin, murdering whole houses, whole family lines without trial. Or at least, that is how the tale is told.
\nThis is her story.
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Uncover the sisters’ origins, dive deep into the catastrophic reign of the Oracle Queen, and reveal layers of Fennbirn’s past, hidden until now.
\nGet a glimpse of triplet queens Mirabella, Arsinoe, and Katharine during a short period of time when they protected and loved one another. From birth until their claiming ceremonies, this is the story of the three sisters’ lives . . . before they were at stake.
\nEveryone knows the legend of Elsabet, the Oracle Queen. The one who went mad. The one who orchestrated a senseless, horrific slaying of three entire houses. But what really happened? Discover the true story behind the queen who could foresee the future . . . just not her own downfall.
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This series is a dark and inventive fantasy about three sisters who must fight to the death to become queen.
\nIn every generation on the island of Fennbirn, a set of triplets is born: three queens, all equal heirs to the crown and each possessor of a coveted magic. Mirabella is a fierce elemental, able to spark hungry flames or vicious storms at the snap of her fingers. Katharine is a poisoner, one who can ingest the deadliest poisons without so much as a stomachache. Arsinoe, a naturalist, is said to have the ability to bloom the reddest rose and control the fiercest of lions.
\nBut becoming the Queen Crowned isn't solely a matter of royal birth. Each sister has to fight for it. And it's not just a game of win or lose...it's life or death. The night the sisters turn sixteen, the battle begins.
\nThe last queen standing gets the crown.
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Queen Katharine has waited her entire life to wear the crown. But now that she finally has it, the murmurs of dissent grow louder by the day. There’s also the alarming issue of whether or not her sisters are actually dead - or if they’re waiting in the wings to usurp the throne.
Mirabella and Arsinoe are alive, but in hiding on the mainland and dealing with a nightmare of their own: being visited repeatedly by a specter they think might be the fabled Blue Queen. Though she says nothing, her rotting, bony finger pointing out to sea is clear enough: return to Fennbirn.
Jules, too, is in a strange place - in disguise. And her only confidants, a war-gifted girl named Emilia and her oracle friend Mathilde, are urging her to take on a role she can’t imagine filling: a legion-cursed queen who will lead a rebel army to Katharine’s doorstep.
This is an uprising that the mysterious Blue Queen may have more to do with than anyone could have guessed - or expected.
Reed is officially a member of the immortal order of the Aristene. She even has a new name: Machianthe. It’s everything she’s ever dreamed of - so why isn’t she happy?
\nMaybe it’s because every hero she helps can only find glory at the cost of their life. Or maybe it’s because she can’t stop thinking about the prince she left behind.
\nNow Reed looks for any opportunity to help with low-risk hero’s trials. And a princess looking for a glorious marriage? Nothing could be less dangerous. But Hestion is one of the suitors, and while Reed is occupied trying to win him back, an old danger is gaining strength.
\nTo battle the growing threat, the Aristene must band together, but the order has never been more divided. Will Reed be able to survive this war with her chosen family and her heart intact?
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Three black witches, born to a descending queen. One would rise to become queen in her place. Perhaps the strongest of the three. Perhaps the cleverest. Or perhaps it would be the girl born under the best shield of luck.
Katharine, Arsinoe and Mirabella - three young queens born to fulfil their destiny - to fight to the death to win the crown. But before they were poisoner, elemental and naturalist, they were children, sisters and friends . . .
In a distant future, a little girl named Anny makes toy mice out of scraps and dust. Anny has never seen a real mouse, just as she’s never seen the planet her family came from many generations ago. All she knows is her home, Tsedt: an isolated village of human colonists’ descendants and their friendly helper robots.
\nBut then one day the Amau arrive in Tsedt: plastic people with luminous eyes, intent on taking young humans to the distant city of Harbor to be educated. It’s not long before Anny is flown away to a place unlike any she’s seen before.
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Xavier Oaks doesn't particularly want to go to the cabin with his dad and his dad's pregnant new wife, Nia. But family obligations are family obligations, and it's only for a short time. So he leaves his mom, his brother, and his other friends behind for a week in the woods. Only . . . one morning he wakes up and the house isn’t where it was before. It's like it's been lifted and placed . . . somewhere else.
\nWhen Xavier, his dad, and Nia go explore, they find they are inside a dome, trapped. And there's no one else around . . .
\nUntil, three years later, another family arrives.
\nIs there any escape? Is there a reason they are stuck where they are? Different people have different answers - and those different answers inexorably lead to tension, strife, and sacrifice.
Audrey Rose Wadsworth and Thomas Cresswell have landed in America, a bold, brash land unlike the genteel streets of London they knew. But like London, the city of Chicago hides its dark secrets well. When the two attend the spectacular World's Fair, they find the once-in-a-lifetime event tainted with reports of missing people and unsolved murders.
Determined to help, Audrey Rose and Thomas begin their investigations, only to find themselves facing a serial killer unlike any they've heard of before. Identifying him is one thing, but capturing him - and getting dangerously lost in the infamous Murder Hotel he constructed as a terrifying torture device - is another.
Will Audrey Rose and Thomas see their last mystery to the end - together and in love - or will their fortunes finally run out when their most depraved adversary makes one final, devastating kill?
Audrey Rose Wadsworth and her partner-in-crime-investigation, Thomas Cresswell, are en route to New York to help solve another blood-soaked mystery. Embarking on a week-long voyage across the Atlantic on the opulent RMS Etruria, they’re delighted to discover a traveling troupe of circus performers, fortune tellers, and a certain charismatic young escape artist entertaining the first-class passengers nightly.
But then, privileged young women begin to go missing without explanation, and a series of brutal slayings shocks the entire ship. The disturbing influence of the Moonlight Carnival pervades the decks as the murders grow ever more freakish, with nowhere to escape except the unforgiving sea.
It's up to Audrey Rose and Thomas to piece together the gruesome investigation as even more passengers die before reaching their destination. But with clues to the next victim pointing to someone she loves, can Audrey Rose unravel the mystery before the killer's horrifying finale?
Following the grief and horror of her discovery of Jack the Ripper's true identity, Audrey Rose Wadsworth has no choice but to flee London and its memories. Together with the arrogant yet charming Thomas Cresswell, she journeys to the dark heart of Romania, home to one of Europe's best schools of forensic medicine... and to another notorious killer, Vlad the Impaler, whose thirst for blood became legend.
But her life's dream is soon tainted by blood-soaked discoveries in the halls of the school's forbidding castle, and Audrey Rose is compelled to investigate the strangely familiar murders. What she finds brings all her terrifying fears to life once again.
After selling her soul to become Queen of the Wicked, Emilia travels to the Seven Circles with the enigmatic Prince of Wrath, where she's introduced to a seductive world of vice.
\nShe vows to do whatever it takes to avenge her beloved sister, Vittoria . . . even if that means accepting the hand of the Prince of Pride, the king of demons.
\nThe first rule in the court of the Wicked? Trust no one. With back-stabbing princes, luxurious palaces, mysterious party invitations, and conflicting clues about who really killed her twin, Emilia finds herself more alone than ever before. Can she even trust Wrath, her one-time ally in the mortal world . . or is he keeping dangerous secrets about his true nature?
\nEmilia will be tested in every way as she seeks a series of magical objects that will unlock the clues of her past and the answers she craves . . .
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Emilia is reeling from the shocking discovery that her twin sister, Vittoria, is alive. But before she faces the demons of her past, Emilia yearns to claim her king, the seductive Prince of Wrath, in the flesh. Emilia doesn’t simply desire his body, she wants his heart and soul - but that’s something the enigmatic demon can’t promise her.
\nWhen a high-ranking member of House Greed is assassinated, Emilia and Wrath are drawn to the rival demon court. Damning evidence points to Vittoria as the murderer and she’s quickly declared an enemy of the Seven Circles. Despite her betrayal, Emilia will do anything to solve this new mystery and find out who her sister really is.
\nTogether Emilia and Wrath play a sin-fueled game of deception as they work to stop the unrest that’s brewing between witches, demons, shape-shifters and the most treacherous foes of all: the Feared.
\nEmilia was warned that when it came to the Wicked nothing was as it seemed. But, have the true villains been much closer all along? When the truth is finally revealed, it just might end up costing Emilia her heart.
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Emilia and her twin sister Vittoria are streghe – witches who live secretly among humans, avoiding notice and persecution. One night, Vittoria misses dinner service at the family’s renowned Sicilian restaurant. Emilia soon finds the body of her beloved twin . . . desecrated beyond belief. Devastated, Emilia sets out to find her sister’s killer and to seek vengeance at any cost-even if it means using dark magic that’s been long forbidden.
Then Emilia meets Wrath, one of the Wicked-princes of Hell she has been warned against in tales since she was a child. Wrath claims to be on Emilia’s side, tasked by his master with solving the series of women’s murders on the island. But when it comes to the Wicked, nothing is as it seems . . .
Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord's daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life.
Against her stern father's wishes and society's expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle's laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world.
Prince Sloth hates leaving his enchanted library, but when a forgotten deity threatens the very fabric of the Underworld, he's thrust into a race against time. He must find the Book of Nightmares - an ancient artifact that has the power to break worlds - before it unleashes a deadly game to free its master, the Goddess of Night. When a betrayal leaves him marked, and desperate, his path collides with a young woman who possesses the legendary Phoenix Tear - a portal stone unlike any other.
\nLore Brimstone has always loved getting lost in a book - but she never meant literally. Yet, after visiting a traveling caravan, she quickly finds herself transported to a terrifying but oddly familiar world - with a calculating prince at her side. Realizing they are living out her favourite novels one by one, they face off against an increasingly dark magic as they try to survive the story.
\nAs Lore and Sloth navigate the pages of her beloved novels gone wrong, she must channel her inner main character to defeat the Book of Nightmares before the wall between the gods and mortals comes crashing down, dooming them all.
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Gabriel Axton - infamous as the Prince of Gluttony, the self-proclaimed rake of rakes - has always lived for indulgence: in delicious food, in tantalising women, and most of all, in the thrill of the hunt, where his love of danger can take over. But when his favorite adventure takes a deadly turn, he realises something is very wrong in his demon court. With the clock ticking, he must turn to the only one who might uncover the truth: a journalist he has spent a decade avoiding . . .
\nAdriana Saint Lucent has been on the hunt for years - if she could just report something damning enough about that no-good scoundrel Gabriel Axton, she knows others would finally see the demon as she does. But she never expected to turn up a rumor too terrifying to be believed: could the ice dragons to the north be growing restless? Drawn into the secrets of the Underworld, Adriana’s investigation leads her into the place she dreads most . . . Axton’s infamous court.
\nTo stop darkness from falling over their kingdom, Axton and Adriana will have to unite against an escalating danger. But with each holding tight to their own secrets, can they find the truth before it’s too late? And what will they do with an equally troubling rumor: that they might not actually hate one another, after all?
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The Prince of Envy has never claimed to be a saint. But when a cryptic note arrives, signaling the beginning of a deadly game, he knows it will take more than a hint of sin to win and save his falling demon court. Riddles, hexed objects, anonymous players, nothing will stand in his way, though none of his meticulous plans prepare him for her, the frustrating artist who ignites his sin like no other . . .
\nThe trouble with scoundrels and blackguards is that they haven’t a modicum of honor, a fact Miss Camilla Antonius learns after one desperate mistake allows Waverly Green’s most notorious rake to blackmail her. To avoid a ruinous scandal, Camilla is forced to enter a devil’s bargain with Envy, little expecting his game will awaken her true nature . . .
\nTogether, Envy and Camilla must embark on a perilous journey through the Underworld - from glittering demon courts to the sultry vampire realm and beyond - while trying to avoid the most dangerous trap of all: falling in love.
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Sam and Daisy have been best friends since university. Back then Daisy was a wild, Fleetwood Mac-obsessed girl descended from the Yorkshire Moors, while Sam’s youth was misspent traipsing around Liverpool on shopping trips and nights out.
\nBut as they lean against each other on a wooden bench in the tired garden of their beloved local pub, gazing out at Sam’s wedding, they have no idea that their paths are about to truly diverge for the first time.
\nAs Sam’s desire to become a mother consumes her, and Daisy’s inability to resist temptation haunts her, these best of friends will lose sight of themselves - and each other. With each misstep and unintentional betrayal the gulf widens. But can they build a bridge, or will they let it burn?
While on a drive in Los Angeles, on a seemingly average afternoon, Kerry Washington received a text message that would send her on a life-changing journey of self-discovery. In an instant, her very identity was torn apart, with everything she thought she knew about herself thrown into question.
\nIn Thicker than Water, Washington gives readers an intimate view into both her public and private worlds - as a mother, daughter, wife, artist, advocate, and trailblazer. Chronicling her upbringing and life’s journey thus far, she reveals how she faced a series of challenges and setbacks, effectively hid childhood traumas, met extraordinary mentors, managed to grow her career, and crossed the threshold into stardom and political advocacy, ultimately discovering her truest self and, with it, a deeper sense of belonging.
\nThroughout this profoundly moving and beautifully written memoir, Washington attempts to answer the questions so many have struggled Who am I? What is my truest and most authentic self? How do I find a deeper sense of connection and belonging? With grace and honesty, she inspires readers to search for - and find - themselves.
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After the accident which tore apart her family, Emma is shocked to be invited away to a beautiful Mediterranean island – but when her mother calls her out of the blue, wanting to make amends, she can’t say no.
Julius hasn’t seen his sister Emma in years. Although he can’t ever trust her again after what she did, he’s willing to put their differences aside for the sake of their elderly parents.
Despite what happened in the past, everything is going surprisingly well – days spent sipping sangria by the pool, evenings spent forcing smiles at the dinner table – until the night Julius and Emma’s father is attacked on the beach and left for dead on the sand.
Everyone is lying about what happened on the beach that hot summer night. And when the truth is revealed, it will be more shocking than either of them ever imagined.
Paige, Richard and me. We thought we’d be friends forever. But everything changed the day we took the short cut home from school along the old railway line. I wish we’d gone the long way. I wish we hadn’t seen our classmate, pale and still in the undergrowth. And I wish we hadn’t promised to keep one, awful detail a secret just between us . . .
Twenty years later, I have a brand-new life, and try never to think about my old one.
But I’m dragged back when Paige calls out of the blue. Richard has been accused of something terrible. Everyone back home is whispering about the body we found years ago, and saying Richard deserves to be locked up . . .
Before I know it, I’ve returned to the small town I thought I’d never see again. Paige is almost the same as I remember - I jet black hair, slender frame - but why does she seem so nervous? She’s adamant the only way to clear our friend’s name is to tell the truth about what we saw twenty years ago.
Can I really trust that Paige is on my side - or is she hiding her own dark secret? And if we clear Richard’s name, will the blame fall on me?
When we find a strange note in Richard’s flat, one thing is for certain: someone else knows the truth too. All three of us are in danger . . .
After her dad’s funeral, all Jodie wants is to clear out her childhood home as quickly as possible and get back to life with her son. But a terrifying discovery changes everything she knew about her kind, loving father.
\nHer boyfriend Ben went missing when they were just teenagers. His parents still stare out the window desperately waiting for him to come home. So how did the T-shirt he was wearing when Jodie saw him walk away from their last date end up in her father’s attic?
\nThe search for answers leads Jodie to an old family friend who knows all her father’s secrets. She can’t shake his questions about her older brother, and the real reason their dad left everything to Jodie, not him. But when a stranger begins to follow her around their little town, and a deadly fire breaks out in her home, it’s clear someone will do anything to stop Jodie finding the truth about Ben's disappearance. Has Jodie unknowingly put her own son in terrible danger?
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Melody gazes across the rippling lake to the trees on the shore, waiting for her fiancé Evan to arrive so their family holiday can begin. Here in this cabin in a small Canadian island town, there’s so much space for their son to play. It’s going to be perfect - just like the first time Melody visited as a child. But then a call from Evan shatters her world.
\n‘There’s someone in the road. I think it’s a little girl. She’s covered in mud. Or . . . is it blood?’ His voice becomes distant. ‘Are you OK? What’s your name?’ Then there’s a thud.
\nEvan never arrives to the holiday cabin. Melody, and her son, are terrified and desperate for answers. But with miles of endless, empty forest, and no reports of a missing girl, what hope is there of finding Evan?
\nThe more questions Melody asks of the locals, the more she fears a terrible secret hides just out of sight. And the closer she gets to the truth, the more danger she is in . . .
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Wheeling my suitcase down the familiar, hedge-lined street, I smile at the sound of children playing in the park nearby. Suddenly, there’s a screech of car brakes. I rush over to see a bent bike wheel sticking out of the ditch, and underneath, a little boy . . .
\nAs I turn the rusty key in the lock of the house I grew up in, memories flood back. None of them happy. I never told anyone why I left home twenty years ago, and all I want is to sort out Dad’s funeral as quickly as possible.
\nNow I’m trapped here, the only witness to a terrible incident that has left an eight-year-old boy fighting for his life. But after a lifetime trying to forget my past, I don’t know if I can trust my memory, or be totally sure of what I saw today.
\nSorting through Dad’s things one night - shopping lists in his curly handwriting, piles of old newspapers, dusty sports trophies - I think I hear the back door handle rattle. I tiptoe downstairs, past an open window I’m sure I locked. And a figure darts across the overgrown garden.
\nSomeone is watching me. Someone who knows I’m the only one who saw what happened to little Ethan… or could they know the real reason why I left? Either way, I’m certain that coming back was my biggest mistake. I can’t leave, but the longer I stay, the more danger I’m in . . .
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Seventeen-year-old Eleanor Parker wakes up cold and alone in the river that twists through her quiet village. She has no memory of how she got there. But she does know that another girl was drowned in the same river the summer before, held under the water by an unknown killer . . .
Eleanor is a normal, every day teenager. She argues with her mum, spends her days with her best friend, and is looking forward to a carefree summer of sunshine and music. Who would want to hurt her?
Determined to unlock the mystery of what really happened to her, Eleanor can't escape the feeling that something awful links her to the previous summer's murder. But will she find out the truth before it’s too late?
A gripping and extraordinary coming of age novel that will make you question everything and keep you guessing until the very end.
Thirteen years ago Olivia Adams went missing. Now she’s back . . . or is she?
When six-year-old Olivia Adams disappeared from her back garden, the small community of Stoneridge was thrown into turmoil. How could a child vanish in the middle of a cosy English village?
Thirteen years on and Olivia is back. Her mother is convinced it’s her but not everyone is sure. If this is the missing girl, then where has she been - and what happened to her on that sunny afternoon?
If she's an imposter, then who would be bold enough to try to fool a child’s own mother - and why?
Then there are those who would rather Olivia stayed missing. The past is the past and some secrets must remain buried.
Even the most perfect home can hide shocking secrets. But on this peaceful street, is one of them dangerous enough to kill for?
\nYoung married couple Heidi and Freddie just moved to Huntington Grove. All the neighbours see they are friendly and polite but why is one door in their house always locked?
\nAcross the street, Willow tries not to argue with her teenage daughter - even as her marriage is falling apart. And where does her husband really go each night, leaving the bed beside her cold?
\nFeeling lonely, she always waves hello to single dad Dylan next door. His wife died in a tragic murder. The culprit was never found. It’s no surprise there are rumours he was involved . . .
\nOn a beautiful sunny day, it’s time for the whole street to gather for a summer party. Everyone plasters on a fake smile. But soon the picnic tables will be overturned, sirens will blare - and one of the residents will be marched away in police handcuffs.
\nEveryone at the party will be questioned. But everyone will lie . . . And with every household hiding something, who has a secret big enough to kill for?
\n
It’s the early hours of the morning and Rose Denton wakes up behind the steering wheel of her car. She’s off the road, through a hedge and in a field.
There’s blood on the windscreen and bonnet - but it’s not hers and there’s no sign of anything or anyone she might have hit. The last thing she remembers is being in a hotel on a business trip but now she’s miles away.
Back home and her daughter’s boyfriend is missing. The last thing he did was argue with Rose over money. He left no note, no text, no clue as to his whereabouts.
The police have questions - and so does Rose’s family. But those are little compared to the ones she has for herself.
What happened last night? And, perhaps more importantly, does she really want to know the answer?
Megan is unpacking in the spare room of her sister’s house when she hears the scream.
\nRacing to the nearby woods, she is shocked to see a young woman’s unconscious her pink top bright against the earth, her long, dark hair wet from a nearby stream. But when desperate Megan returns with the police, all they find is empty woodland.
\nShe’s been through so much, her sister whispers, welcoming her home with a kind smile. You can’t blame her for seeing things.
\nBut Megan knows what she saw - and her past shouldn’t come into it. Was the young woman dead, or dying? How can a body just disappear?
\nMegan left home for a good reason. Now, confronting the past could be the only way to find the truth. But what if Megan is in danger, too? And what price will she have to pay, to find the girl from the woods?
\n
Moonlight falls on the figure of the girl standing on the red-tiled roof. Her white dress and blonde hair flutter in the freezing night wind. And suddenly - she is gone.
\nVolunteering at the local nursing home is Millie Westlake’s one escape from the rumours that swirl around Whitecliff about her past. But speaking with elderly resident, Ingrid, as they play board games, Millie gets chills at her strange story about a young girl being pushed from a roof, somewhere across the valley . . .
\nEverybody thinks Ingrid is confused: but Millie knows how it feels to not be believed. Her parents died a year ago, and the residents of Whitecliff - such a quiet place, other than crashing waves and cawing seagulls - are convinced Millie killed them.
\nDesperately searching for evidence to find the girl Ingrid saw, a broken roof tile could prove Ingrid was telling the truth. But when strange footprints appear in Millie’s garden, she’s certain someone out there is watching.
\nHave Ingrid and Millie stumbled across something terribly dangerous? And with the town against her, will Millie have to face up to her own secrets to solve the mystery before it becomes deadly?
\n
Seventeen-year-old best friends Nicola and Millie were supposed to have a summer night of fun and freedom in the local park. But when dawn comes Millie realises Nicola is missing . Distraught, she searches for her alone: and finds Nicola tied to a tree, her purple Converse shoes missing, her long hair cut and scattered on the ground. With no memory of what happened, terrified Nicola begs Millie never to speak of this again . . .
Fifteen years later. With countless secrets and hurt between them, Millie and Nicola have not spoken in over a decade. But now Nicola has found her old purple Converse strung up in her garden. Is her attacker sending a message? Why now, after all this time?
In the small town of Whitecliff, people have long memories - but Millie is the only one who can help get answers. And, as she asks questions of their school friends, she realises one of them knows more than they should about her own family secrets . . .
Not knowing who to trust, and knowing Nicola’s kidnapper is still out there, Millie must ask: how far will they go to keep the truth buried forever?
Everyone in the small seaside town of Whitecliff knows the name Kevin Ashworth . Two boys disappeared thirty years ago - and although local teacher Kevin never admitted to knowing where their bodies are, he’s been in prison ever since.
Now, Kevin is finally ready to talk: but only to amateur sleuth Millie Westlake and journalist Guy Rushden. With the families of the boys desperate for answers, Guy and Millie are led to a lonely spot on the moors above Whitecliff. They’re on the moors expecting to find bodies . . . but what if they find something even more terrifying?
Reeling from their discovery, as Millie scours the local countryside and speaks to heartbroken families what she discovers changes everything she believes about Whitecliff and the people who live here. With rumours about her own dark past still haunting Millie, can she ever get justice for a decades-old wrong? Or as she gets closer to finding out who else Kevin has hurt, will she learn that some secrets are destined to stay buried?
With their parents gone and nobody left to ask, when Georgia and Oliver first come to amateur sleuth Millie Westlake for help with their daisy-shaped markings she thinks the tattoos are a joke. A funny, if unusual, link between two strangers. In the seaside town of Whitecliff, stranger things have happened - especially to Millie herself.
\nBut then Millie finds an artist who remembers giving someone the same tattoo twenty years ago. Someone who spent years hiding in the isolated woods outside Whitecliff - the same place unidentified bodies were once found . . .
\nEven as Millie gets closer to answers, she witnesses a shocking robbery that changes everything. And as whispers of what happened in the woods decades ago become louder, how much danger will Millie, Georgia and Oliver put themselves in, to uncover the mystery of the daisy-shaped markings and the dark truth about their pasts?
\n
Hannah smiles at her guests. In this grand house rented specially for the evening, everyone admires the sparkling chandelier and raises a glass to say goodbye before Hannah moves away from this little town for good. But the next day, one of them lies cold and lifeless in their bed.
\nThe day of her leaving party, Hannah Ford is nervous. With so many secrets and lies over the years between her friends, and arguments between her sisters, is it really a good idea to gather everyone together? But her mother insists that, after Hannah’s divorce and job struggles, she deserves a send-off to remember. So they all plaster on fake smiles and put aside their rifts for an evening of celebrations.
\nIn the morning, one of the guests is found dead.
\nHannah is desperate to tell the police. But every single guest has something to hide, or someone to protect. The group insists: they will deal with this themselves.
\nAfter all, it must have been an accident. Perhaps too much wine, on a night where emotions were running high.
\nBut what if it wasn’t?
\nAnd what if this was just the first victim?
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In the village of Martindale, hundreds of miles north of the new English capital of Windsor, sixteen-year-old Silver Blackthorne takes the Reckoning. This coming-of- age test not only decides her place in society – Elite, Member, Inter or Trog – but also determines that Silver is to become an Offering for King Victor.
But these are uncertain times and no one really knows what happens to the teenagers who disappear into Windsor Castle. Is being an Offering the privilege everyone assumes it to be, or do the walls of the castle have something to hide?
Trapped in a maze of ancient corridors, Silver finds herself in a warped world of suspicion where it is difficult to know who to trust and who to fear. The one thing Silver does know is that she must find a way out . . .
\n
Silver Blackthorn is a fugitive from the law.
Silver Blackthorn has committed treason.
She is dangerous. Do NOT approach her.
A large reward is on offer. Report any sightings to your nearest Kingsman.
Long live the King.
Silver Blackthorn is on the run. She fled Windsor Castle with eleven other teenagers, taking with her something far more valuable than even she realises: knowledge.
With the entire country searching for the missing Offerings, Silver must keep them all from the vicious clutches of King Victor and the Minister Prime. Until now, no one has escaped the king and lived to tell the tale.
Or have they?
With expectations weighing heavily on the girl with the silver streak in her hair, will she ever find her way home?
An entire country has been lied to.
Silver Blackthorn was supposed to be one of the privileged few, chosen to serve and help rebuild a shattered nation.
Instead, she is a rebel.
Tales of her defiance have spread across the land. King Victor and the Minister Prime want her dead, the resistance groups are desperate for her help.
But Silver's friends and family are in dire jeopardy; hiding is no longer an option.
As her travels take her into the far reaches of an unknown land, she is forced to make new friends and hunt for new allegiances.
Final battle lines are being drawn. The time has come.
Then there's the hardest choice of all: Opie or Imrin.
Anna Applegate’s daughter, Michelle, drowned after a night out with a friend. Anna’s convinced Michelle’s death was deliberate, and that her boyfriend, sports star Jack Marsh, killed her.
As Investigator Andrew Hunter begins to dig into the case, he quickly discovers Jack has a history of violence. And, with only his teammate for an alibi, Andrew is convinced Jack’s lying about where he was the night Michelle died.
But Andrew has more to worry about than just finding out the truth about Michelle’s death, because a former case is back to haunt him - someone willing to put Andrew’s loved ones in terrible danger to get what he wants . . .
Everyone hates Fiona Methodist.
\nHer war veteran father shot a young couple in broad daylight before killing himself. The engaged pair had witnessed a robbery and were due to give evidence but, with all three now dead, no one knows the true motive.
\nFor Fiona, it's destroyed her life. It's not just those who whisper behind her back or the friends who pretend she doesn't exist; it's the landlords who spot her name and say no, the job agencies who can't find her work.
\nBut Fiona knows her dad didn't do it. He couldn't have - he's her father and he wouldn't do that . . . would he?
\nPrivate investigator Andrew Hunter takes pity on the girl and, even with stolen bengal cats to find, plus an ex-wife who's not quite so 'ex', he can't escape the creeping feeling that Fiona might be right after all.
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Nicholas Carr disappeared on his 18th birthday and the world has moved on. His girlfriend has gone to university, his friends have got jobs, the police have other things to look into.
But his father, Richard, is still stuck on the three fingers the police dug up from a sodden Manchester wood. What happened to Nicholas on the night he disappeared and why did he never come home?
Private investigator Andrew Hunter is Nicholas’s last hope - but Andrew has his own problems. There’s something about his assistant that isn’t quite right. Jenny’s brilliant but reckless and he can’t work out what she gets from their working relationship. By the time he figures out who’s a danger and who’s not, it might all be too late . . .
We all remember that one magical summer that changed our lives.
\nFor Joe, it’s 1999. School is over, and with zero idea of what he’s meant to do for the rest of his life, he’s reluctantly accepted a job at the local summer camp. Anything to drown out the sharp grief of missing his dad and move on from what school calls his ‘anger problems’. But getting screamed at by hyperactive ten-year-olds is almost enough to make him quit on day one.
\nAlmost.
\nThen he sees Amy Ashworth for the very first time, her black hair shining in the sun - and learns that nothing hits harder than first love.
\nShe’s the only person he knows who reads for fun, or who’s seen Titanic fourteen times. But there’s another side to Amy. Soon, she’s the only person he’s ever been to a wild house party with, or kissed under the twinkling stars. It’s the happiest Joe has ever been . . . until the terrible day when what’s left of his family fractures into a million pieces.
\nCaught up in Amy’s whirlwind, Joe can’t bring himself to tell the truth about his life. Would his dad have wanted him to fight for the girl he loves, or protect his family, no matter what?
\nOnly one thing is certain: this is the summer Joe will grow up. But when he looks back decades later, will he be ashamed of his choices? And will Amy still be by his side?
\n
They told us he had been missing for nearly two days, that he probably drowned. They told us a lie.
Megan was ten years old when her older brother, Zac, went missing among the cliffs, caves and beaches that surround the small seaside town of Whitecliff.
A decade later and a car crash has claimed the lives of her parents.
Megan and her younger sister Chloe return to Whitecliff one summer for the first time since their brother’s disappearance. Megan says it’s to get her parents’ affairs in order. There are boxes to pack, junk to clear, a rundown cottage to sell. But that’s not the real reason.
Megan has come to confront her family’s past after receiving a postcard on the day of her parents’ funeral. It had a photograph of Whitecliff on the front and a single letter on the back.
‘Z’ is all it read.
Z for Zac.
I return home to our beautiful house on a chilly winter evening expecting to find my handsome husband Richard waiting for me by the fire. We’re still so in love, and he always takes care of me: buying us this home in the little village where he grew up, making sure I settled in and made friends, and treating my teenage daughter like his own. There’s a bit of gossip about our age gap, but the death of his first wife years ago was so tragic that he still gets sympathetic looks. Everyone loves Richard.
He usually comes straight back from work. But tonight, our antique clock ticks on through the dark evening, with no sign of him. Then a knock at the door shatters my perfect life. A 12-year-old-girl, Alice from the village, has been found unconscious in the field behind our house. They say she was last seen getting into Richard’s car.
Now rumours are flying. As Alice fights for her life in hospital, nobody will speak to me: and when they do it’s to ask if he didn’t hurt Alice, why hasn’t Richard come home?
I know that revealing my own darkest secret about Richard’s first wife could prove his innocence… but even if I do, he’s still missing. Is everyone right, and is my husband on the run? And will telling the truth about my past turn my own daughter against me, and tear our lives apart for good?
Charley Willis was thirteen years old when her parents were killed in their family home and she was found hiding in a cupboard upstairs.
Fifteen years later, Charley is marrying Seth Chambers. It should be the happiest day of their lives, a chance for Charley to put her past behind her, but just hours after the ceremony, she is missing.
No one saw her leave. No one knows where she is.
One thing is for certain . . . Seth is about to discover he doesn’t really know the woman he just married. And his nightmare is only just beginning.
It starts with a rift that burns a thousand scars into the sky. It makes the winds stop. It makes the stars go dark. It awakens an ancient beast. And with it, a new reign of blood. It is the Summoning. And at the heart of it is fire.
\nWhen the Summoner's army blazes through her village, Dove is forced into hiding. Torn from everything she knows, she begins training in the elements with only one goal in mind: to find her brother. She just needs to get past the Summoner's army - but how can she slay a dragon that is already dead?
\n
Dove’s plan to slay a dead dragon has backfired spectacularly. Now there are two dragons, and Valerya the Fireborne is burning everything in her path to hunt her down. In the aftermath of battle, Dove must use her courage, wits - and an erratic, impulsive dragon - to protect her companions, make unexpected alliances . . . and survive.
\n
Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch entity - three-faced, hundred-winged, unforgiving - who has granted her the ability to communicate with the newly departed. She pays the rent by using her abilities to investigate suspicious deaths around the troubled city she calls home. When a job goes sideways and connects her to a dying stranger with dangerous secrets, her entire world is upended.
\nFerain is willing to pay a ludicrous sum of money for her help. To save him, Karys inadvertently binds him to her shadow, an act that may doom them both. If they want to survive, they will need to learn to trust one another. Together, they journey to the heart of a faded empire, all the while haunted by arcane horrors and the unquiet ghosts of their pasts.
\nAnd all too soon, Karys knows her debts will come due.
\n
Vasethe, a man with a troubled past, comes to seek a favor from a woman who is not what she seems. With her aid, he enters the nine hundred and ninety-nine realms of Mkalis, the world of spirits, where gods and demons wage endless war.
What Vasethe discovers in Mkalis threatens to bring his own secrets into light and throw both worlds into chaos.
Elfreda Raughn will avoid pregnancy if it kills her, and one way or another, it will kill her. Though she’s able to stomach her gruesome day-to-day duties, the reality of preserving the Sisterhood of Aytrium’s magical bloodline horrifies her. She wants out, whatever the cost.
\nSo when a shadowy cabal approaches Elfreda with an offer of escape, she leaps at the opportunity. As their spy, she gains access to the highest reaches of the Sisterhood, and enters a glittering world of opulent parties, subtle deceptions, and unexpected bloodshed.
\nA phantasmagorical indictment of hereditary power, Star Eater takes readers deep into a perilous and uncanny world where even the most powerful women are forced to choose what sacrifices they will make, so that they might have any choice at all.
\n
Princess Ying Yue believed in love . . . once upon a time.
\nYet when she’s chosen to wed the crown prince, Ying’s dreams of a fairy tale marriage quickly fall apart. Her husband-to-be is cold and indifferent, confining Ying to her room for reasons he won’t explain. Worse still are the rumors that swirl around the imperial palace: whispers of seven other royal brides who, after their own weddings, mysteriously disappeared.
\nLeft alone with only her own reflection for company, Ying begins to see things. Strange things. Movements in the corners of her mirror. Colorful lights upon its surface. And when, on the eve of her wedding, she unwittingly tears open a gateway, she is pulled into a mirror world.
\nThis realm is full of sentient reflections, including the enigmatic Mirror Prince. Unlike his real-world counterpart, the Mirror Prince is kind and compassionate, and before long Ying falls in love - the kind of love she always dreamed of.
\nBut there is darkness in this new world, too.
\nIt turns out the two worlds have a long and blood-soaked history, and Ying has a part to play in the future of them both. And the brides who came before Ying? By the time they discovered what their role was, it was already too late.
\n
October 1891. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city of Butte, Montana is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and ballad-maker of the town, but also a doper, a drinker, and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the extremely devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.
\nA thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho, and briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunmen are soon in hot pursuit and closing in fast. With everything to lose and the safety and anonymity of San Francisco still a distant speck on their horizon, the choices they make will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
\n
A powerful and deeply reported exposé on homelessness in San Francisco, from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and San Francisco Chronicle reporter who has covered homelessness for thirty years and experienced it himself.
\nHousing prices nationwide have skyrocketed, causing people to flee to smaller, cheaper cities, in turn driving up those prices and creating a vicious cycle of real estate mania. But who gets left behind? As cities become less and less affordable, homelessness is on the rise, and California is home to the largest number of homeless people in America.
\nKevin Fagan’s The Lost and the Found takes an empathic and humane approach to explaining what’s behind the homelessness epidemic in one of the most prosperous cities in America - San Francisco. We are introduced to Rita and Tommy, two homeless people whom he has known for over a decade, and their struggle to pull themselves out of homelessness and addiction, and how some of their kids eventually made it out.
\nThis is also a deeply researched commentary on the housing market, and a set of policy solutions to help civil leaders and activists chart a way out of this epidemic.
\n
In ancient Egypt, Atticus agrees to raid a secret chamber underneath the library of Alexandria, dodging deadly traps, only to learn that on-site security includes two members of the Egyptian pantheon.
\nAt a Kansas carnival, fun and games turns to murder and mayhem, thanks to soul-snatching demons and flesh-craving ghouls luring visitors into an all-too-real house of horrors.
\nVerily, in olde England, striking up a friendship with William Shakespeare lands both Atticus and the Bard in boiling hot water with a trio of infamous witches.
\nDuring the Gold Rush, the avatar of greed himself turns the streets of San Francisco red with blood and upsets the elemental Sequoia. Atticus may have to fight fire with fire if he's going to restore balance.
\nMore, you say? Indeed there is - including bogeymen, vampire hordes, wrathful wraiths, and even a journey to the realm of the dead. Prepare to be besieged with nine tantalising tales - not to be missed, never to be forgotten.
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Al MacBharrais has a most unusual job: He’s a practitioner of ink-and-sigil magic, tasked with keeping order among the gods and monsters that dwell hidden in the human world. But there’s one supernatural mystery he’s never been able to solve: Years ago, someone cast twin curses on him that killed off his apprentices and drove away loved ones who heard him speak, leaving him bereft and isolated.
\nBut he’s not quite alone: As Al works to solve this mystery, his friends draw him into their own eccentric dramas. Buck Foi the hobgoblin has been pondering his own legacy - and has a plan for a daring shenanigan that will make him the most celebrated hobgoblin of all. Nadia, goth queen and battle seer, is creating her own cult around a god who loves whisky and cheese.
\nAnd the Morrigan, a former Irish death goddess, has decided she wants not only to live as an ordinary woman but also to face the most perilous challenge of the mortal world: online dating.
\nMeanwhile, Al crosses paths with old friends and new - including some beloved Druids and their very good dogs - in his globe-trotting quest to solve the mystery of his curses. But he’s pulled in so many different directions by his colleagues, a suspicious detective, and the whims of destructive gods that Al begins to wonder: Will he ever find time to write his own happy ending?
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Thor, the Norse god of thunder, is worse than a blowhard and a bully - he’s ruined countless lives and killed scores of innocents. After centuries, Viking vampire Leif Helgarson is ready to get his vengeance, and he’s asked his friend Atticus O’Sullivan, the last of the Druids, to help take down this Norse nightmare.
One survival strategy has worked for Atticus for more than two thousand years: stay away from the guy with the lightning bolts. But things are heating up in Atticus’s home base of Tempe, Arizona. There’s a vampire turf war brewing, and Russian demon hunters who call themselves the Hammers of God are running rampant.
Despite multiple warnings and portents of dire consequences, Atticus and Leif journey to the Norse plain of Asgard, where they team up with a werewolf, a sorcerer, and an army of frost giants for an epic showdown against vicious Valkyries, angry gods, and the hammer-wielding Thunder Thug himself.
\n
Atticus O’Sullivan, last of the Druids, doesn’t care much for witches. Still, he’s about to make nice with the local coven by signing a mutually beneficial nonaggression treaty - when suddenly the witch population in modern-day Tempe, Arizona, quadruples overnight. And the new girls are not just bad, they’re badasses with a dark history on the German side of World War II.
\nWith a fallen angel feasting on local high school students, a horde of Bacchants blowing in from Vegas with their special brand of deadly decadence, and a dangerously sexy Celtic goddess of fire vying for his attention, Atticus is having trouble scheduling the witch hunt. But aided by his magical sword, his neighbor’s rocket-propelled grenade launcher, and his vampire attorney, Atticus is ready to sweep the town and show the witchy women they picked the wrong Druid to hex.
Atticus O’Sullivan, last of the Druids, lives peacefully in Arizona, running an occult bookshop and shape-shifting in his spare time to hunt with his Irish wolfhound. His neighbors and customers think that this handsome, tattooed Irish dude is about twenty-one years old - when in actuality, he’s twenty-one centuries old. Not to mention: He draws his power from the earth, possesses a sharp wit, and wields an even sharper magical sword known as Fragarach, the Answerer.
\nAtticus O’Sullivan, last of the Druids, lives peacefully in Arizona, running an occult bookshop and shape-shifting in his spare time to hunt with his Irish wolfhound. His neighbors and customers think that this handsome, tattooed Irish dude is about twenty-one years old - when in actuality, he’s twenty-one centuries old. Not to mention: He draws his power from the earth, possesses a sharp wit, and wields an even sharper magical sword known as Fragarach, the Answerer.
\nUnfortunately, a very angry Celtic god wants that sword, and he’s hounded Atticus for centuries. Now the determined deity has tracked him down, and Atticus will need all his power - plus the help of a seductive goddess of death, his vampire and werewolf team of attorneys, a sexy bartender possessed by a Hindu witch, and some good old-fashioned luck of the Irish - to kick some Celtic arse and deliver himself from evil.
\n\n
For a two-thousand-year-old Druid, Atticus O’Sullivan is a pretty fast runner. Good thing, because he’s being chased by not one but two goddesses of the hunt - Artemis and Diana - for messing with one of their own. Dodging their slings and arrows, Atticus, Granuaile, and his wolfhound Oberon are making a mad dash across modern-day Europe to seek help from a friend of the Tuatha Dé Danann. His usual magical option of shifting planes is blocked, so instead of playing hide-and-seek, the game plan is . . . run like hell.
Crashing the pantheon marathon is the Norse god Loki. Killing Atticus is the only loose end he needs to tie up before unleashing Ragnarok - AKA the Apocalypse. Atticus and Granuaile have to outfox the Olympians and contain the god of mischief if they want to go on living - and still have a world to live in.
Al MacBharrais is both blessed and cursed. He is blessed with an extraordinary white moustache, an appreciation for craft cocktails - and a most unique magical talent. He can cast spells with magically enchanted ink and he uses his gifts to protect our world from rogue minions of various pantheons, especially the Fae. But he is also cursed. Anyone who hears his voice will begin to feel an inexplicable hatred for Al, so he can only communicate through the written word or speech apps. And his apprentices keep dying in peculiar freak accidents.
\nAs his personal life crumbles around him, he devotes his life to his work, all the while trying to crack the secret of his curse. But when his latest apprentice, Gordie, turns up dead in his Glasgow flat, Al discovers evidence that Gordie was living a secret life of crime. Now Al is forced to play detective - while avoiding actual detectives who are wondering why death seems to always follow Al. Investigating his apprentice’s death will take him through Scotland’s magical underworld, and he’ll need the help of a mischievous hobgoblin if he’s to survive.
\n
There’s only one Al MacBharrais: Though other Scotsmen may have dramatic mustaches and a taste for fancy cocktails, Al also has a unique talent. He’s a master of ink and sigil magic. In his gifted hands, paper and pen can work wondrous spells.
\nBut Al isn’t quite alone: He is part of a global network of sigil agents who use their powers to protect the world from mischievous gods and strange monsters. So when a fellow agent disappears under sinister circumstances in Australia, Al leaves behind the cozy pubs and cafes of Glasgow and travels to the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria to solve the mystery.
\nThe trail to his colleague begins to pile up with bodies at alarming speed, so Al is grateful his friends have come to help - especially Nadia, his accountant who moonlights as a pit fighter. Together with a whisky-loving hobgoblin known as Buck Foi and the ancient Druid Atticus O’Sullivan, along with his dogs, Oberon and Starbuck, Al and Nadia will face down the wildest wonders Australia - and the supernatural world - can throw at them, and confront a legendary monster not seen in centuries.
\n
Unchained from fate, the Norse gods Loki and Hel are ready to unleash Ragnarok, a.k.a. the Apocalypse, upon the earth. They’ve made allies on the darker side of many pantheons, and there’s a globe-spanning battle brewing that ancient Druid Atticus O’Sullivan will be hard-pressed to survive, much less win.
\nGranuaile MacTiernan must join immortals Sun Wukong and Erlang Shen in a fight against the Yama Kings in Taiwan, but she discovers that the stakes are much higher than she thought.
\nMeanwhile, Archdruid Owen Kennedy must put out both literal and metaphorical fires from Bavaria to Peru to keep the world safe for his apprentices and the future of Druidry.
\nAnd Atticus recruits the aid of a tyromancer, an Indian witch, and a trickster god in hopes that they’ll give him just enough leverage to both save Gaia and see another sunrise. There is a hound named Oberon who deserves a snack, after all.
\n
For nearly two thousand years, only one Druid has walked the Earth - Atticus O’Sullivan, the Iron Druid, whose sharp wit and sharp sword have kept him alive as he’s been pursued by a pantheon of hostile deities. Now he’s got company.
Atticus’s apprentice Granuaile is at last a full Druid herself. What’s more, Atticus has defrosted an archdruid long ago frozen in time, a father figure (of sorts) who now goes by the modern equivalent of his old Irish name: Owen Kennedy.
And Owen has some catching up to do.
Atticus takes pleasure in the role reversal, as the student is now the teacher. Between busting Atticus’s chops and trying to fathom a cell phone, Owen must also learn English. For Atticus, the jury’s still out on whether the wily old coot will be an asset in the epic battle with Norse god Loki - or merely a pain in the arse.
But Atticus isn’t the only one with daddy issues. Granuaile faces a great challenge: to exorcise a sorcerer’s spirit that is possessing her father in India. Even with the help of the witch Laksha, Granuaile may be facing a crushing defeat.
As the trio of Druids deals with pestilence-spreading demons, bacon-loving yeti, fierce flying foxes, and frenzied Fae, they’re hoping that this time, three’s a charm.
When a druid has lived for two thousand years like Atticus, he's bound to run afoul of a few vampires. Make that legions of them. Even his former friend and legal counsel turned out to be a bloodsucking backstabber. Now the toothy troublemakers - led by power-mad pain-in-the-neck Theophilus - have become a huge problem requiring a solution. It's time to make a stand.
As always, Atticus wouldn't mind a little backup. But his allies have problems of their own. Ornery archdruid Owen Kennedy is having a wee bit of troll trouble: Turns out when you stiff a troll, it's not water under the bridge. Meanwhile, Granuaile is desperate to free herself of the Norse god Loki's mark and elude his powers of divination - a quest that will bring her face-to-face with several Slavic nightmares.
As Atticus globetrots to stop his nemesis Theophilus, the journey leads to Rome. What better place to end an immortal than the Eternal City? But poetic justice won't come without a price: In order to defeat Theophilus, Atticus may have to lose an old friend.
After twelve years of secret training, Atticus O’Sullivan is finally ready to bind his apprentice, Granuaile, to the earth and double the number of Druids in the world. But on the eve of the ritual, the world that thought he was dead abruptly discovers that he’s still alive, and they would much rather he return to the grave.
Having no other choice, Atticus, his trusted Irish wolfhound, Oberon, and Granuaile travel to the base of Mount Olympus, where the Roman god Bacchus is anxious to take his sworn revenge - but he’ll have to get in line behind an ancient vampire, a band of dark elves, and an old god of mischief, who all seem to have KILL THE DRUID at the top of their to-do lists.
Druid Atticus O’Sullivan hasn’t stayed alive for more than two millennia without a fair bit of Celtic cunning. So when vengeful thunder gods come Norse by Southwest looking for payback, Atticus, with a little help from the Navajo trickster god Coyote, lets them think that they’ve chopped up his body in the Arizona desert.
\nBut the mischievous Coyote is not above a little sleight of paw, and Atticus soon finds that he’s been duped into battling bloodthirsty desert shapeshifters called skinwalkers. Just when the Druid thinks he’s got a handle on all the duplicity, betrayal comes from an unlikely source. If Atticus survives this time, he vows he won’t be fooled again. Famous last words.
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New science reveals the groundbreaking potential of the vagus nerve to regulate your body’s vital systems and heal a wide variety of medical conditions without drugs.
\nThe vagus nerve is fundamental to our health and vitality, coordinating critical functions from the precise heartbeat we need to exercise or rest to the balance of appetite and digestion. Made up of 200,000 fibers, the vagus nerve sends thousands of electrical signals every second between your brain and your most important organs.
\nYet despite its essential role in life, important vagus nerve functions have eluded centuries of scientific investigation. Now neurosurgeon and researcher Kevin Tracey has discovered the previously unknown power of the vagus nerve to reverse inflammation, balance the immune system, treat chronic illness, and keep our organs humming together in harmony.
\nIn The Great Nerve, Dr. Tracey shows us how stimulating the vagus nerve with a tiny electrical implant has the potential to reverse life-altering diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, lupus, MS, diabetes, obesity, stroke, depression, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
\nIf this sounds too good to believe, Dr. Tracey shares stories of patients who have gone from being nearly bedridden to running and dancing, along with the science that makes possible these recoveries. He also explains the evidence for lifestyle strategies like ice baths, meditation, exercise, and breathwork that can maintain and improve vagus nerve function.
\nBy opening the door to the new field of neuroimmunology, The Great Nerve not only revolutionises how we understand and treat disease, it gives us unprecedented hope for our health. This is the story of your body’s ability to heal itself.
On the eve of her wedding to Nicholas Young, heir to one of the greatest fortunes in Asia, Rachel should be over the moon. She has a flawless Asscher-cut diamond from JAR, a wedding dress she loves more than anything found in the salons of Paris, and a fiancé willing to sacrifice his entire inheritance in order to marry her. But Rachel still mourns the fact that her birthfather, a man she never knew, won’t be able to walk her down the aisle.
\nUntil: a shocking revelation draws Rachel into a world of Shanghai splendor beyond anything she has ever imagined. Here we meet Carlton, a Ferrari-crashing bad boy known for Prince Harry-like antics; Colette, a celebrity girlfriend chased by fevered paparazzi; and the man Rachel has spent her entire life waiting to meet: her father.
\nMeanwhile, Singapore’s It Girl, Astrid Leong, is shocked to discover that there is a downside to having a newly minted tech billionaire husband.
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Rufus Leung Gresham, future Duke of Greshambury and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel has a the legendary Gresham Trust has been depleted by decades of profligate spending, and behind all the magazine covers and Instagram stories manors and yachts lies nothing more than a gargantuan mountain of debt. The only solution, put forth by Rufus’s scheming mother, is for Rufus to attend his sister’s wedding at a luxury eco-resort, a veritable who’s-who of sultans, barons, and oligarchs, and seduce a woman with money.
\nShould he marry Solène de Courcy, a French hotel heiress with honey blond tresses and a royal bloodline? Should he pursue Martha Dung, the tattooed venture capital genius who passes out billions like lollipops? Or should he follow his heart, betray his family, squander his legacy, and finally confess his love to the literal girl next door, the humble daughter of a doctor, Eden Tong? When a volcanic eruption burns through the nuptials and a hot mic exposes a secret tryst, the Gresham family plans - and their reputation - go up in flames.
\nCan the once-great dukedom rise from the ashes? Or will a secret tragedy, hidden for two decades, reveal a shocking twist?
When Nicholas Young hears that his grandmother, Su Yi, is on her deathbed, he rushes to be by her bedside--but he's not alone. It seems the entire Shang-Young clan has convened from all corners of the globe, ostensibly to care for their matriarch but truly to stake claim on the massive fortune that Su Yi controls.
\nWith each family member secretly fantasising about getting the keys to Tyersall Park - a trophy estate on 64 prime acres in the heart of Singapore - the place becomes a hotbed of intrigue and Nicholas finds himself blocked from entering the premises. As relatives claw over heirlooms, Astrid Leong is at the center of her own storm, desperately in love with her old sweetheart Charlie Wu, but tormented by his ex-wife - a woman hell bent on destroying Astrid's reputation and relationship.
\nMeanwhile Kitty Pong, married to billionaire Jack Bing, finds a formidable opponent in his fashionista daughter, Colette. A sweeping novel that takes us from the elegantly appointed mansions of Manila to the secluded private islands in the Sulu Sea, from a schoolyard kidnapping to a gold-leaf dancefloor spattered with blood, Kevin Kwan's gloriously wicked new novel reveals the long-buried secrets and rich people problems of Asia's most privileged families.
On her very first morning on the jewel-like island of Capri, Lucie Churchill sets eyes on George Zao and she instantly can’t stand him. She can’t stand it when he gallantly offers to trade hotel rooms with her so that she can have the view of the Tyrrhenian Sea, she can’t stand that he knows more about Curzio Malaparte than she does, and she really can’t stand it when he kisses her in the darkness of the ancient ruins of a Roman villa and they are caught by her snobbish, disapproving cousin, Charlotte. “Your mother is Chinese so it’s no surprise you’d be attracted to someone like him,” Charlotte teases.
\nDaughter of an American-born-Chinese mother and blue-blooded New York father, Lucie has always sublimated the Asian side of herself in favor of the white side, and she adamantly denies having feelings for George. But several years later, when George unexpectedly appears in East Hampton where Lucie is weekending with her new fiancé, Lucie finds herself drawn to George again. Soon, Lucy is spinning a web of deceit that involves her family, her fiancé, the co-op board of her Fifth Avenue apartment, and ultimately herself as she tries mightily to deny George entry into her world - and her heart.
\nMoving between summer playgrounds of privilege, peppered with decadent food and extravagant fashion, Sex and Vanity is a truly modern love story, a daring homage to A Room with a View, and a brilliantly funny comedy of manners set between two cultures.
Ursula, Alvin, Jen, and Duncan grew up as cousins in the sprawling Nguyen family, but the truth about their family is much more complicated. As young adults, they're on the precipice of new ventures - Ursula as a budding journalist in Manhattan, Alvin as an engineering intern for Google, Jen as a naive freshman at NYU, and Duncan as a promising newcomer on his high school football team. Their lives are upended when a series of violent, senseless attacks across America create a national panic, prompting a government policy forcing Vietnamese Americans into internment camps. Jen and Duncan are sent with their mother to Camp Tacoma while Ursula and Alvin receive exemptions.
\nCut off entirely from the outside world, Jen and Duncan try to withstand long dusty days in camp, forced to work jobs they hate and acclimate to life without the internet. That is until Jen discovers a way to get messages to the outside. Her first instinct is to reach out to Ursula, who sees this as an opportunity to tell the world about the horrors of detention - and bolster her own reporting career in the process.
\nInformed by real-life events from Japanese incarceration, the Vietnam War, and modern-day immigrant detention, Kevin Nguyen gives us a version of reality only a few degrees away from our own—much too close for comfort. Moving and finely attuned to both the brutalities and mundanities of racism in America, Mỹ Documents is a strangely funny and touching portrait of American ambition, fear, and family. The story of the Nguyens is one of resilience and how we return to each other, and to ourselves, after tragedy.
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Hunted by those who want to study his gravity powers, Jes makes his way to the best place for a mixed-species fugitive to blend in: the pleasure moon. Here, everyone just wants to be lost in the party. It doesn’t take long for him to catch the attention of the crime boss who owns the resort-casino where he lands a circus job. When the boss gets wind of the bounty on Jes’ head, he makes an offer: do anything and everything asked of him, or face vivisection.
\nWith no other options, Jes fulfills the requests: espionage, torture, demolition. But when the boss sets the circus up to take the fall for his about-to-get-busted narcotics operation, Jes and his friends decide to bring the mobster down together. And if Jes can also avoid going back to being the prize subject of a scientist who can’t wait to dissect him? Even better.
In 2106, Maida Sun possesses the ability to see the entire history of any object she touches. When she starts a job with a cultural recovery project in San Francisco with other psions like her, she discovers a teacup that connects her with Li Nuan, a sex-traffificked girl in a 1906 Chinatown brothel, and with Nathan, a tech-designer and hedonist of 2006.
\nA chance encounter with a prominent political leader reveals to Maida his plan to contain everyone with psionic abilities, eliminate their personal autonomy, and use their skills for his own gain. Maida is left with no choice but to join a fight she doesn’t feel prepared for, with flashes of the past, glimpses of the future and a band of fellow psions as her only tools. She must find a way to stop this agenda before it takes hold and destroys life as she knows it. Can the past give Maida the key to saving her future?
Alissa Paine, heiress and daughter of a Hunter family . . . is also a Wielder. At eighteen, Alissa knows she’s escaped execution thus far only due to painful self-control and the efforts of her beloved father.
\nSummoned to the harsh and glittering royal court for the debutante season, Alissa finds herself caught in a web of intrigue and betrayal - and caught between two equally dangerous one a brutal ruler with the handsome face of a fairy-tale prince, who would destroy her if he knew the truth - and the other a beguiling foreign ambassador with secret agendas of his own.
\nWith the threat of discovery lurking around every corner - and romance becoming an increasingly dangerous temptation - Alissa will find that she has more to lose than her secrets. It’s Rose Season at the palace, but to survive she’ll need to become the most vicious of thorns . . .
When the Frank family throws their annual clambake at their gorgeous beachside home on Cape May, the seafood is always delivered to white-clothed tables on fine bone china. And Peter Frank, the beloved son and perennial heartbreaker, will make the rounds, charming every woman on the guest list.
\nTop of that list this year are Maya, his tennis star girlfriend just coming off the high of winning Wimbledon; Catherine, his high school sweetheart turned wildly successful wedding planner and influencer; and Leanne, the fiercely protective aunt and legal guardian of his only son. When Maya, Catherine, and Leanne arrive expecting an extravagant feast, they’re instead lured into a room together by a mysterious text to find Peter and . . . Tilly.
\nTilly, all golden blonde hair and perfectly tan skin, explains to the three women that she and Peter plan to get married that night, that Maya and Peter are through, that Peter will no longer be investing in Catherine’s company, and that Leanne must give up guardianship of her nephew. The enraged women attend the impromptu wedding, but when a chandelier falls and crushes the bride, suddenly they’re three likely suspects with three perfect motives.
\nNow they’ll have to work together to figure out who really did kill Tilly, and fast - because maintaining a good reputation in this crowd can be murder.
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First, there was the arrangement. A simple, yet salacious fix to the problems looming in their marriage. But when things took a tragic turn, Peter’s and Ainsley’s lives quickly fell into disarray.
\nNow, their secrets have been exposed. They know the truth - about each other and their marriage. As they struggle to move on from their past and the damage they’ve caused, new problems begin to surface.
\nSomeone they love is hiding a catastrophic secret. The fragile ground they stand on is starting to crumble. Their family is being torn apart at the seams. And, maybe worst of all, a threat from the past is lurking, ready to unveil the things they’d kill to keep hidden.
\nThey thought the nightmare they’d made it through was over, but the worst is just beginning . . .
\nOnce, they vowed to do anything to make their marriage work. Now, that vow will push every boundary they have left. In order to survive, they’ll need to completely trust each other. But can they?
\nLast time they did, things went terribly wrong . . . This time, it might be worse. If there’s one thing that’s certain, their secrets are too big to let anyone walk away alive.
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Ainsley Greenburg is a fixer. It’s what she prides herself on.
\nSo, when she realises her marriage is at its breaking point, she makes a decision to repair it, no matter the cost. Approaching her husband to propose the arrangement is supposed to be the hard part, but Peter agrees to the salacious plan almost immediately.
\nThe rules are simple:
\nThey will each date someone new once a week.
\nThey will never discuss what happens on the dates.
\nSoon, though, the rules are broken, turning terrible mistakes into unspeakable consequences.
\nWhen the only person they can count on to keep their darkest secret is each other, new questions and deceits surface. Can they truly trust the person they share a life with, or will the vicious lies that have mounted over the years destroy everything they’ve built?
\nOnce, Peter and Ainsley vowed to stand together forever, but as they push boundaries of deception, suspicion, and temptation, each begins to wonder if ’til death do us part may come sooner than they’d intended.
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Ainsley Greenburg has always been a fixer. But her latest attempt to repair her marriage left it more damaged than ever before.
\nNow, trapped in a vicious game of cat and mouse with the man she thought she knew, Ainsley must do what it takes to put out the fire their arrangement ignited. But it won’t be that simple.
\nAs Peter closes in on her, Ainsley finds herself driven down a path of paranoia and fear. Her only hope lies in her ability to trust her instincts, but they’ve let her down before. This time, there’s so much more at stake, and the secrets waiting to be revealed will change everything.
\nWhom can she trust when her world is up in flames?
\nOne wrong decision could cost her everything she has left - her family, her home, and her life.
\nAnd, with a final showdown looming, Ainsley must decide what she's willing to let burn in order to survive. As the blaze continues to heat up, it's only a matter of time before someone must atone for their sins.
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No one expects a princess to be brutal. And Lada Dragwlya likes it that way. Ever since she and her gentle younger brother, Radu, were wrenched from their homeland of Wallachia and abandoned by their father to be raised in the Ottoman courts, Lada has known that being ruthless is the key to survival. She and Radu are doomed to act as pawns in a vicious game, an unseen sword hovering over their every move. For the lineage that makes them special also makes them targets.
\nLada despises the Ottomans and bides her time, planning her vengeance for the day when she can return to Wallachia and claim her birthright. Radu longs only for a place where he feels safe. And when they meet Mehmed, the defiant and lonely son of the sultan, who's expected to rule a nation, Radu feels that he's made a true friend - and Lada wonders if she's finally found someone worthy of her passion.
\nBut Mehmed is heir to the very empire that Lada has sworn to fight against - and that Radu now considers home. Together, Lada, Radu, and Mehmed form a toxic triangle that strains the bonds of love and loyalty to the breaking point.
Haunted by the sacrifices he made in Constantinople, Radu is called back to the new capital. Mehmed is building an empire, becoming the sultan his people need. But Mehmed has a secret: as emperor, he is more powerful than ever . . . and desperately lonely. Does this mean Radu can finally have more with Mehmed . . . and would he even want it?
\nLada's rule of absolute justice has created a Wallachia free of crime. But Lada won't rest until everyone knows that her country's borders are inviolable. Determined to send a message of defiance, she has the bodies of Mehmed's peace envoy delivered to him, leaving Radu and Mehmed with no choice. If Lada is allowed to continue, only death will prosper. They must go to war against the girl prince.
\nBut Mehmed knows that he loves her. He understands her. She must lose to him so he can keep her safe. Radu alone fears that they are underestimating his sister's indomitable will. Only by destroying everything that came before - including her relationships - can Lada truly build the country she wants.
\nClaim the throne. Demand the crown. Rule the world.
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King Arthur is expanding his kingdom’s influence with Queen Guinevere at his side. Yet every night, dreams of darkness and unknowable power plague her.
Guinevere might have accepted her role, but she still cannot find a place for herself in all of it. The closer she gets to Brangien, pining for her lost love Isolde, Lancelot, fighting to prove her worth as Queen’s knight, and Arthur, everything to everyone and thus never quite enough for Guinevere - the more she realises how empty she is. She has no sense of who she truly was before she was Guinevere. The more she tries to claim herself as queen, the more she wonders if Mordred was right: she doesn’t belong. She never will.
When a rescue goes awry and results in the death of something precious, a devastated Guinevere returns to Camelot to find the greatest threat yet has arrived. Not in the form of the Dark Queen or an invading army, but in the form of the real Guinevere’s younger sister. Is her deception at an end? And who is she really deceiving - Camelot, or herself?
After leaving the Sanguine Spa in pursuit of Edgaren't, the kids find themselves at a mysterious summer camp, Camp Creek. There are lake games and happy counselors, and there's even a tie-dye cabin. It's all very . . . normal.
\nBut if Theo and Alexander know one thing, it's that normal doesn't always mean good. When everyone around her starts acting strange, Theo wonders if maybe the fumes from the tie-dye cabin are seeping into their brains, and she resolves to investigate what's really going on at Camp Creek.
Isadora’s family is seriously screwed up.
\nOf course, as the human daughter of Egyptian gods, that pretty much comes with the territory. She’s also stuck with parents who barely notice her, and a house full of relatives who can’t be bothered to remember her name. After all, they are going to be around forever - and she’s a mere mortal.
\nIsadora’s sick of living a life where she’s only worthy of a passing glance, and when she has the chance to move to San Diego with her brother, she jumps on it. But Isadora’s quickly finding that a “normal” life comes with plenty of its own epic complications - and that there’s no such thing as a clean break when it comes to family. Much as she wants to leave her past behind, she can’t shake the ominous dreams that foretell destruction for her entire family. When it turns out there may be truth in her nightmares, Isadora has to decide whether she can abandon her divine heritage after all.
Evie's paranormal past keeps coming back to haunt her. A new director at the International Paranormal Containment Agency wants to drag her back to headquarters. The Dark Faerie Queen is torturing humans in her poisonous realm. And supernatural creatures keep insisting that Evie is the only one who can save them from a mysterious, perilous fate.
The clock is ticking on the entire paranormal world. And its fate rests solely in Evie's hands.
So much for normal.
While journeying north toward the Dark Queen, Guinevere falls into the hands of her enemies. Behind her are Lancelot, trapped on the other side of the magical barrier they created to protect Camelot, and Arthur, who has been led away from his kingdom, chasing after false promises. But the greatest danger isn’t what lies ahead of Guinevere - it’s what’s been buried inside her.
\nVowing to unravel the truth of her past with or without Merlin’s help, Guinevere joins forces with the sorceress Morgana and her son, Mordred - and faces the confusing, forbidden feelings she still harbors for him. When Guinevere makes an agonising discovery about who she is and how she came to be, she finds herself with an impossible choice: fix a terrible crime, or help prevent war.
\nGuinevere is determined to set things right, whatever the cost. To defeat a rising evil. To remake a kingdom. To undo the mistakes of the past . . . even if it means destroying herself.
\nGuinevere has been a changeling, a witch, a queen - but what does it mean to be just a girl?
There was nothing in the world as magical and terrifying as a girl.
Princess Guinevere has come to Camelot to wed a stranger: the charismatic King Arthur. With magic clawing at the kingdom's borders, the great wizard Merlin conjured a solution - send in Guinevere to be Arthur's wife . . . and his protector from those who want to see the young king's idyllic city fail. The catch? Guinevere's real name - and her true identity - is a secret. She is a changeling, a girl who has given up everything to protect Camelot.
To keep Arthur safe, Guinevere must navigate a court in which the old - including Arthur's own family - demand things continue as they have been, and the new--those drawn by the dream of Camelot - fight for a better way to live. And always, in the green hearts of forests and the black depths of lakes, magic lies in wait to reclaim the land. Arthur's knights believe they are strong enough to face any threat, but Guinevere knows it will take more than swords to keep Camelot free.
Deadly jousts, duplicitous knights, and forbidden romances are nothing compared to the greatest threat of all: the girl with the long black hair, riding on horseback through the dark woods toward Arthur. Because when your whole existence is a lie, how can you trust even yourself?
The challenge: spend a week hiding in an abandoned amusement park and don’t get caught.
\nThe prize: enough money to change everything.
\nEven though everyone is desperate to win - to seize their dream futures or escape their haunting pasts - Mack feels sure that she can beat her competitors. All she has to do is hide, and she’s an expert at that.
\nIt’s the reason she’s alive, and her family isn’t.
\nBut as the people around her begin disappearing one by one, Mack realises this competition is more sinister than even she imagined, and that together might be the only way to survive.
\nFourteen competitors. Seven days. Everywhere to hide, but nowhere to run.
\nCome out, come out, wherever you are.
In the middle of a deadly bog sits the House of Quiet. It’s a place for children whose Procedure triggered powers too terrible to be lived with - their last hope for treatment. No one knows how they’re healed or where they go afterward.
\nBirdie has begged, bargained, and blackmailed her way inside as a maid, determined to find her missing sister, Magpie. But what she discovers is more mysteries. Instead of the destitute children who undergo the Procedure in hopes of social advancement, the house brims with aristocratic teens wielding strange powers they never should have been burdened with.
\nThough Birdie wants to ignore them, she can’t help being drawn to stoic and silent Forest, charmed by clever River, and concerned for the youngest residents. And with fellow maid Minnow keeping tabs on everything Birdie does, danger is everywhere.
\nIn her desperate search for Magpie, Birdie unearths terrifying threats and devastating truths, forcing her to confront just how much she’s willing to sacrifice to save her own sister. Because in the House of Quiet, if you find what’s lurking beneath . . . you lose everything.
Fia and Annie are as close as two sisters can be. They look out for each other. Protect each other. And most importantly, they keep each other's secrets, even the most dangerous ones: Annie is blind, but can see visions of the future; Fia was born with flawless intuition - her first impulse is always exactly right.
When the sisters are offered a place at an elite boarding school, Fia realises that something is wrong . . . but she doesn't grasp just how wrong. The Keane Institute is no ordinary school, and Fia is soon used for everything from picking stocks to planting bombs. If she tries to refuse, they threaten her with Annie's life.
Now Fia's falling in love with a boy who has dark secrets of his own. And with his help, she's ready to fight back. They stole her past. They control her present. But she won't let them take her future.
Thirty years after a tragic accident shut down production of the classic children’s program Mister Magic, the five surviving cast members have done their best to move on. But just as generations of cultishly devoted fans still cling to the lessons they learned from the show, the cast, known as the Circle of Friends, have spent their lives searching for the happiness they felt while they were on it. The friendship. The feeling of belonging. And the protection of Mister Magic.
\nBut with no surviving video of the show, no evidence of who directed or produced it, and no records of who - or what - the beloved host actually was, memories are all the former Circle of Friends has.
\nThen a twist of fate brings the castmates back together at the remote desert filming compound that feels like it’s been waiting for them all this time. Even though they haven’t seen each other for years, they understand one another better than anyone has since.
\nAfter all, they’re the only ones who hold the secret of that circle, the mystery of the magic man in his infinitely black cape, and, maybe, the answers to what really happened on that deadly last day. But as the Circle of Friends reclaim parts of their past, they begin to wonder: Are they here by choice, or have they been lured into a trap?
\nBecause magic never forgets the taste of your friendship . . .
She has no allies. No throne. All she has is what she’s always had: herself.
After failing to secure the Wallachian throne, Lada Dracul is out to punish anyone who dares to cross her blood-strewn path. Filled with a white-hot rage, she storms the countryside with her men, accompanied by her childhood friend Bogdan, terrorising the land. But brute force isn’t getting Lada what she wants. And thinking of Mehmed brings little comfort to her thorny heart. There’s no time to wonder whether he still thinks about her, even loves her. She left him before he could leave her.
What Lada needs is her younger brother Radu’s subtlety and skill. But Mehmed has sent him to Constantinopl - and it’s no diplomatic mission. Mehmed wants control of the city, and Radu has earned an unwanted place as a double-crossing spy behind enemy lines. Radu longs for his sister’s fierce confidence - but for the first time in his life, he rejects her unexpected plea for help. Torn between loyalties to faith, to the Ottomans, and to Mehmed, he knows he owes Lada nothing. If she dies, he could never forgive himself - but if he fails in Constantinople, will Mehmed ever forgive him?
As nations fall around them, the Dracul siblings must decide: what will they sacrifice to fulfill their destinies? Empires will topple, thrones will be won…and souls will be lost.
Evie's always thought of herself as a normal teenager, even though she works for the International Paranormal Containment Agency, her ex-boyfriend is a faerie, she's falling for a shape-shifter, and she's the only person who can see through paranormals' glamours.
\nBut Evie's about to realise that she may very well be at the center of a dark faerie prophecy promising destruction to all paranormal creatures. So much for normal.
Annie and Fia are ready to fight back.
The sisters have been manipulated and controlled by the Keane Foundation for years, trapped in a never ending battle for survival. Now they have found allies who can help them truly escape. After faking her own death, Annie has joined a group that is plotting to destroy the Foundation. And Fia is working with James Keane to bring his father down from the inside.
But Annie's visions of the future can't show her who to trust in the present. And though James is Fia's first love, Fia knows he's hiding something. The sisters can rely only on each other - but that may not be enough to save them.
After leaving Fathoms of Fun, the kids are on their way to the next odd summer destination their aunt has chosen for them. This time, they find themselves dropped off at the Sanguine Spa in the “little Transylvania Mountains.” There they meet the owners: Mina, her mysterious little sister, Lucy (who is extremely pale, can't go in the sunlight, and has an affinity for hanging upside down from the ceiling), and their intimidating guardian, the Count.
\nWhen the Count sends all the children in the spa on a scavenger hunt, the Sinister-Winterbottoms use the excuse to snoop around and discover that this spa may be more than just eerie - it might also hold clues to what happened to their parents. When Wil starts to show vampiric symptoms, the twins resolve to investigate what's really going on at the Sanguine Spa.
Twelve-year-old twins Theodora and Alexander and their older sister Wilhelmina Sinister-Winterbottom don’t know how they ended up with their Aunt Saffronia for an entire summer. She’s not exactly well equipped to handle children. The twins are determined to make it a good vacation, though, so when Aunt Saffronia suggests a waterpark, they hastily agree.
\nBut Fathoms of Fun is not your typical waterpark. Instead of cabanas, guests rent mausoleums. The waterslides are gray tongues extending from horrible gargoyle faces. The few people they encounter are very, very odd. And the owner disappeared under bizarre circumstances, lost to the Cold, Unknowable Sea - the wave pool.
\nWhen Wil goes missing, rule following, cautious Alexander and competitive, brave Theo will have to work together to solve the mystery of Fathoms of Fun. But are they out of their depth?
It’s been five weeks since Io left Alante to follow the golden thread, and she’s no closer to finding the god on the other end. She spends her days in constant, grueling travel and her nights worrying over the fate-thread she shares with Edei - which seems to be fraying. Making matters worse, she and Bianca soon realise that their only lead has shaken them off, snapped the golden thread, and disappeared.
\nBut not before Io gathers some crucial clues. Her investigation leads her to a new mystery, a rash of sibling disappearances across the Wastelands that seems to be connected to the murders in Alante. And all signs point to Nanzy, the golden city, as the center of the whole conspiracy.
\nAs Io and Bianca make their way to Nanzy, they make powerful enemies, find allies new and old, and uncover a horrifying plot that traces back centuries. The more Io learns, the more she begins to suspect that the future of the world may truly rest on her shoulders. But she will have to determine how much of the future is her choice - and how much is simply her fate.
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Descendants of the Fates are always born in threes: one to weave, one to draw, and one to cut the threads that connect people to the things they love and to life itself. The Ora sisters are no exception. Io, the youngest, uses her Fate-born abilities as a private investigator in the half-sunken city of Alante.
\nBut her latest job leads her to a horrific discovery: somebody is abducting women, maiming their life-threads, and setting the resulting wraiths loose in the city to kill. To find the culprit, she must work alongside Edei Rhuna, the right hand of the infamous Mob Queen - and the boy with whom she shares a rare fate-thread linking them as soul mates before they’ve even met.
\nBut the investigation turns personal when Io's estranged oldest sister turns up on the arm of her best suspect. Amid unveiled secrets from her past and her growing feelings for Edei, Io must follow clues through the city’s darkest corners and unearth a conspiracy that involves some of the city’s most powerful players - before destruction comes to her own doorstep.
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Meet the alien species that put the humanity into human beings.
Discover the fate of Slefonia III once warp travel became obsolete.
Visit the Mind Library to commune with the dead.
Kim Choyeop became an instant literary sensation in Korea with her debut short story collection. Each of these bitesize speculative masterpieces represents a journey into the unknown, guided by a writer blessed with a boundless imagination.
\nFrom alternative futures to distant alien planets, in the company of scientists, space explorers and ordinary citizens in extraordinary situations, Kim Choyeop revels in making the impossible seem not only possible but somehow inevitable.
\nEach story focuses on an specific issue of discrimination against women or other marginalised groups, adding a mind-bending twist to hold a mirror to modern society and its everyday iniquities.
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In the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare.
\nEach story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality, and unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us.
\nMesmerising, electric, and wholly original, Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century blurs the boundaries of the real and fantastic, offering intricate and surprising insights into human nature.
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A group of young girls descend on Camp Forevermore, a sleepaway camp in the Pacific Northwest, where their days are filled with swimming lessons, friendship bracelets, and camp songs by the fire. Filled with excitement and nervous energy, they set off on an overnight kayaking trip to a nearby island. But before the night is over, they find themselves stranded, with no adults to help them survive or guide them home.
The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore traces these five girls - Nita, Kayla, Isabel, Dina, and Siobhan - through and beyond this fateful trip. We see them through successes and failures, loving relationships and heartbreaks; we see what it means to find, and define, oneself, and the ways in which the same experience is refracted through different people. In diamond-sharp prose, Kim Fu gives us a portrait of friendship and of the families we build for ourselves - and the pasts we can't escape.
In the aftermath of her mother's death, Eleanor is unmoored. For years, her mother orchestrated every detail of her life - from meals, to laundry, to finances - as Eleanor focused on her career as an online therapist. Left to navigate the world on her own, Eleanor clings to her mother’s final directive: use her inheritance to buy a house.
\nDesperate to obey her mother one last time, Eleanor impulsively buys a model home in a valley-turned-construction site, a picturesque development steeped in a shadowy history. It feels like a fresh start, until the rain comes - an endless, torrential downpour. As water seeps in through the house’s cracks, the line between what is real and what is not begins to blur.
\nHaunted by the stories of her clients, a stream of workmen and bureaucrats she can’t trust, and visions of ghosts from her past and present, Eleanor’s reality unravels, and she is forced to reckon with the secrets she’s buried and the choices she’s made.
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What happens after you've saved the world? Well, if you're Rachel Mariana Morgan, witch-born demon, you quickly discover that something might have gone just a little bit wrong. That the very same acts you and your friends took to forge new powers may have released something bound by the old.
\nWith a rash of zombies, some strange new murders, and an exceedingly mysterious new demon in town, it will take everything Rachel has to counter this new threat to the world - and it may demand the sacrifice of what she holds most dear.
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Rachel Morgan has fought and hunted vampires, werewolves, banshees, demons, and other supernatural dangers as both witch and bounty hunter - and lived to tell the tale. But she’s never faced off against her own kind . . . until now.
\nDenounced and shunned for dealing with demons and black magic, Rachel’s best hope is life imprisonment - the worst, a forced lobotomy and genetic slavery. Only her enemies are strong enough to help her win her freedom, but trust comes hard when it hinges on the unscrupulous tycoon Trent Kalamack, the demon Algaliarept, and an ex-boyfriend turned theif. It takes a witch to catch a witch, but survival bears a heavy price.
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Rachel Morgan lives in a world where a bioengineered virus wiped out most of the world's human population - exposing the existence of supernatural communities that had long lived alongside humanity. It’s her job as a white witch working for Inderland Security to protect the humans from things that go bump in the night.
\nFor the last five years Rachel has been tracking down lawbreaking Inderlanders in modern-day Cincinnati, but now she wants to leave and start her own agency. Her only problem: no one quits the I.S.
\nMarked for death, Rachel will have to fend off fairy assassins and homicidal werewolves armed to the teeth with deadly curses.
\nUnless she can appease her former employers by exposing the city's most prominent citizen as a drug lord, she might just be a dead witch walking.
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What’s a witch to do when the coven of moral and ethical standards demands she untwist a curse - but an essential spell component no longer exists? There’s only one choice: go back in time.
\nCaught between self-exile and an Alcatraz cell, Rachel must find an Atlantean mirror to reverse the curse and prove to Cincinnati’s brand-new witch coven that, no, she does not practice illicit magic. Unfortunately, the only mirror of its kind in existence belonged to the insane demon Newt, forcing Rachel to go to the past to bargain with her for it.
\nBut the time-travel spell goes awry, dragging Elyse, the young leader of the coven, into the past with Rachel. They expect to land five years in the past but instead arrive two days before Rachel’s long-lost love, Kisten, dies. Heartbroken and torn, Rachel knows she can't change the past.
\nEven with no allies, Rachel still has one thing going for her: Cincinnati is her city, now and forever. If she can find a way to work with Newt and prevent Elyse from becoming the demon’s next familiar, they might all get home.
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Rachel Morgan, witch-born demon, suspected that protecting the paranormal citizens of Cincinnati as the demon subrosa would be trouble. But it’s rapidly becoming way more trouble than even she could have imagined.
\nWhile Rachel and her friends may have vanquished the trickster demon Hodin, his mysterious associate known only as “The Mage” is eager to finish what Hodin started, beginning with taking down Rachel’s power structure piece by piece.
\nWith her world falling apart, Rachel desperately needs help. But with all of her supporters under attack, her only hope is to make a deal with the unlikeliest of allies . . .
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As time has passed, Dr. Renee Caisson has begun to see the demonic, alien August as more than a research subject or an unlikely colleague - they’ve become friends. And together she and August have helped the two societies of Nextdoor and Earth through the confusion of first contact, the danger of misunderstandings, and the anger of mistreatment.
\nBut when a popular blogger and conspiracy theorist twists August’s words, an uproar ensues, turning a powerful section of human society against the Neighbors - and resulting in Renee’s house arrest. Her could-be boyfriend, Major Jackson, says it’s to protect her, though that’s not how Renee sees it.
\nTorn between duty and friendship, August jumps Renee to freedom, fully aware that the journey might reveal more to her than she should know. The wily Neighbor has pieced together that Renee has been unconsciously using their magic, a fact that, if revealed, will cause more, not less, conflict between the humans and Neighbors.
\nFor if the people of Earth can master magic and exile August’s people again, the Neighbors will not survive . . .
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The ever after, the demonic realm that parallels the human world, is shrinking. If it disappears completely, so does all magic. It's up to witch-turned-daywalking-demon Rachel Morgan to avert catastrophe and keep life from changing . . . for the worse.
While saving the world is important, it isn't Rachel's only motivation. There's also the small fact that she caused the ley line to rip in the first place, setting off a chain reaction of unfortunate events. That little mistake has made her life forfeit unless she can fix it. It's also made her more than a few enemies, including the most powerful demon in the ever after - a terrifying entity who eats souls and now has an insatiable appetite for her. He's already kidnapped her friend and goddaughter to lure her out, and if Rachel doesn't give herself up soon, they'll die.
But Rachel has more than a few impressive and frightening skills of her own, and she isn't going to hand over her soul and her life without one hell of a fight. She's also got a surprise: elven tycoon Trent Kalamack. With this unlikely ally beside her - a prospect both thrilling and unnerving - she's going to return to the ever after, kick some demon butt, rescue her loved ones . . . and prevent an apocalypse before it's too late. Or, at least that's the plan . . .
If you make a deal with the devil, can you still save your soul?
\nTo avoid becoming the love-slave of a depraved criminal vampire, bounty-hunter and witch, Rachel Morgan, is cornered into a deal that could promise her an eternity of suffering.
\nBut eternal damnation is not Rachel's only worry. Her vampire roommate, Ivy, has rediscovered her taste for blood and is struggling to keep their relationship platonic, her boyfriend, Nick, has disappeared – perhaps indefinitely, and she's being stalked by an irate pack of werewolves.
\nAnd then there's also the small matter of the turf war raging in Cincinnati's underworld; one that Rachel began and will have to finish before she has the smallest hope of preserving her own future.
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Dr. Renee Caisson knows there are worse things than an attractive man in uniform drafting her into a secret government project - especially when Major Jackson makes it clear that he isn’t bothered by her questionable past. But when her labs come back with decidedly odd results, the Major is forced to come clean over who the government is actually studying. Renee is shocked to learn her subjects are demonic-looking beings who call themselves “Neighbors” - refugees from a dying world, who arrived during the nation-wide solar eclipse.
\nThe Neighbors’ technology is unlike anything Renee’s ever encountered. At first, she dismisses an injury that inexplicably heals as “just one of those things”. And surely August, the most gregarious Neighbor, begins to speak English overnight because of the team linguist’s skills?
\nNot until August begins evolving in real time to withstand Earth’s brighter, dryer atmosphere does she admit that the Neighbors’ “tech” feels less like science and more like magic - the same magic that brought them here in the first place, and the same they’re trying to rekindle with a mysterious labyrinth in order to return home and save their world.
\nAt least, that’s what August claims they came for . . .
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There's no rest for the wicked, even when the taint on your soul isn't your fault.
\nIt would be wise for witch and bounty hunter, Rachel Morgan, to keep a low profile right now. Her new reputation for the dark arts has piqued the interest of Cincinnati's night-prowlers, who despise her and long to bring an end to her interference, one way or another.
\nNevertheless, Rachel must risk exposure. Her ex-boyfriend, Nick, has stolen a priceless Were artefact, and, as tempting as it may be to let the Weres him apart, Rachel feels obliged to attempt a rescue. But other sinister forces also covet the relic Nick has hidden. Some who desire it so badly, they will take the city - and everyone in it - apart to wield its frightening power.
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Bargaining with demons has left Rachel Morgan in constant danger of losing her soul.
\nAs if being famous in the underworld - for all the wrong reasons - and sharing her home with a vampire and her jealous girlfriend didn't make her vulnerable enough, one night Rachel finds demons ransacking her home with no fear of sanctified ground. They are searching for something they believe Rachel to possess - a danger that Rachel thought was well hidden and secret.
\nBut when the human morgue starts to fill up with partially-turned lupine women who have been brutally murdered, Rachel realises that someone else knows the Focus still exists and that she may have been betrayed.
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During the last few months, former bounty-hunter Rachel Morgan has been rather busy.
\nHaving escaped relatively unscathed from her corrupt former employers, she's not only acquired a vampiric room-mate called Ivy, faced werewolf assassins and battled shape-shifting demons, but has also found the time to pick up a boyfriend (even if he is only human) and open her very own runner agency.
\nBut cohabiting with a vampire, however reformed, has its dangers. Ivy's evil vampire ex-boyfriend has decided that he wants her back, and views Rachel as a tasty side-dish. To make matters worse, Rachel's demon mark is the ultimate vamp-aphrodisiac; one that works both ways.
\nThe stakes are high, and if Rachel is to save herself and her room mate she must challenge the master vampire and confront the dark secrets she's kept hidden even from herself.
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The new master vampire of Cincinnati has arrived . . . and she wants Rachel Morgan out. No matter where Rachel goes, Constance is there - threatening Rachel's allies, causing city-wide chaos, and, to add insult to injury, even forcing Rachel out of her current quarters. Ever since Rachel found a way to save the souls of vampires, the old undead's longtime ascendancy has been broken. Now Constance sees eliminating Rachel as the key to consolidating her own power.
\nRachel has no desire to be enthralled or killed - and she's terrified of what may become of the city if Constance forces a return to the ancient ways. But even a witch-born demon can't stand against the old undead - at least, not alone. And if Rachel refuses to claim the role of Cincinnati's master demon, the city will tear itself apart, taking her and all those who stand beside her with it.
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Condemned and shunned for black magic, Rachel Morgan has three days to get to the annual witches' conference and clear her name, or be trapped in the demonic ever-after . . . forever after.
But a witch, an elf, a living vampire, and a pixy in one car going across the country? Talk about a recipe for certain disaster, even without being the targets for assassination.
For after centuries of torment, a fearsome demon walks in the sunlight - freed at last to slay the innocent and devour their souls. But his ultimate goal is Rachel Morgan, and in the fight for survival that follows, even embracing her own demonic nature may not be enough to save her.
Ritually murdered corpses are appearing across Cincinnati, terrifying amalgams of human and other. Pulled in to help investigate by the I.S. and FIB, former witch turned day-walking demon Rachel Morgan soon realises a horrifying truth: a human hate group is trying to create its own demons to destroy all Inderlanders, and to do so, it needs her blood.
She's faced vampires, witches, werewolves, demons, and more, but humanity itself might be her toughest challenge yet.
It’s been months since Petra Grady bonded with the shadow Pluck. With the help of researcher Benedict Strom, she has made a place for herself at St. Unoc University as the first weaver to use shadow magic in a thousand years. But some are not happy to acknowledge the new shadow/weaver pair, and Petra and Pluck aren’t surprised when they’re blamed for every recent trouble.
\nWhen a new weaver is drawn to St. Unoc, Pluck quickly realises the novice magic user has not come alone. Trailing her is Thoth, a devious shadow responsible for betraying his own kind and setting mage against weaver thousands of years ago. His goal hasn’t changed, and when Thoth turns both the mage courts and the university against Petra, she and Pluck must risk everything to uncover a truth that even Pluck has forgotten.
\nShadows, though, have earned their terrifying reputation, and if Petra can’t prove her and Pluck’s innocence and capture Thoth, any hope of balance will be gone - taking Pluck and her with it.
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Petra Grady has known since adolescence that she has no talent for magic - and that’s never going to change. But as a sweeper first-class, she’s parlayed her rare ability to handle dross - the damaging, magical waste generated by her more talented kin’s spellwork - into a decent life working at the mages’ university.
\nExcept Grady’s relatively predictable life is about to be upended. When the oblivious, sexy, and oh-so-out-of-reach Benedict Strom needs someone with her abilities for a research project studying dross and how to render it harmless, she’s stuck working on his team - whether she wants to or not.
\nOnly Benedict doesn’t understand the characteristics of dross like Grady does. After an unthinkable accident, she and Benedict are forced to go on the run to seek out the one person who might be able to help: an outcast exiled ten years ago for the crime of using dross to cast spells. Now Grady must decide whether to stick with the magical status quo or embrace her own hidden talents . . . and risk shattering their entire world.
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Dr. Renee Caisson never expected that her scientific expertise would lead to a role playing interpreter between humans and the demonic-looking Neighbors. When the door between their worlds opened, she was drafted by the government to study the otherworldly beings and was able to prove her the Neighbors had been to Earth before - and now they simply wanted to save their dying planet.
\nAt least, that’s the story, and everyone - both human and Neighbor - is sticking to it. The Neighbor in charge of the new portal’s operation, Noel, isn’t that sure anymore. Having succeeded in finding a new planet to inhabit, the leaders of her world have made the dark truth of their existence clear to the Neighbors forcibly tried to make a foothold on Earth in the past - and they can’t afford to fail again.
\nBut the Neighbors’ ability to magically teleport from place to place has convinced Major Jackson that the only way to keep control of the situation is to embrace it and tell the world of the Neighbors’ existence.
\nUnfortunately, not everyone agrees.
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Rachel Morgan, witch-born demon, has one unspoken rule: take chances, but pay for them yourself. With it, she has turned enemies into allies, found her place with her demon kin, and stepped up as the subrosa of Cincinnati - responsible for keeping the paranormal community at peace and in line.
\nLife is . . . good? Even better, her best friend, Ivy Tamwood, is returning home. Nothing’s simple, though, and Ivy’s not coming alone. The vampires’ ruling council insists she escort one of the long undead, hell-bent on proving that Rachel killed Cincy’s master vampire to take over the city. Which, of course, Rachel totally did not do. She only transformed her a little.
\nWith Rachel’s friends distracted by their own lives and problems, she reaches out to a new ally for help - the demon Hodin. But this trickster has his own agenda. In the end, the only way for Rachel to save herself and the city may be to forge a new understanding with her estranged demon teacher, Al. There’s just one problem: Al would sell his own soul to be rid of her. . .
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Witch and day-walking demon Rachel Morgan has managed to save the demonic ever after from shrinking, but at a high cost. Now strange magic is attacking Cincinnati and the Hollows, causing spells to backfire or go horribly wrong, and the truce between the races, between Inderlander and human, is shattering.
Rachel must stop the occurrences before the undead vampire masters who keep the rest of the undead under control are lost and it becomes all-out supernatural war. However, the only way to do so is through the ancient elven wild magic, which carries its own perils.
To save the lives of her friends, Rachel did the unthinkable: she willingly trafficked in forbidden demon magic. And now her sins are coming home to haunt her.
\nAs Rachel searches for the truth behind a terrifying murder, an even greater menace threatens, for the demon Algaliarept will stop at nothing to claim her, and the discovery of a shocking family secret throws Rachel’s entire life into question. If she is ever to live free, Rachel must walk willingly into the demonic ever-after in search of long-lost ancient knowledge.
\nBut when you dance with demons, you lay your soul on the line . . . and there are some lines that should never be crossed.
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Some wounds take time to heal . . . and some scars never fade.
Rachel Morgan, kick-ass witch and bounty hunter, has taken her fair share of hits, and has broken lines she swore she would never cross. But when her lover was murdered, it left a deeper wound than Rachel ever imagined, and now she won't rest until his death is solved . . . and avenged. Whatever the cost.
Yet the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and when a new predator moves to the apex of the Inderland food chain, Rachel's past comes back to haunt her.
Literally.
Rachel Morgan has come a long way from her early days as an inexperienced bounty hunter. She’s faced vampires and werewolves, banshees, witches, and soul-eating demons. She’s crossed worlds, channeled gods, and accepted her place as a day-walking demon. She’s lost friends and lovers and family, and an old enemy has unexpectedly become something much more.
\nBut power demands responsibility, and world-changers must always pay a price. Rachel has known that this day would come - and now it is here.
\nTo save Ivy’s soul and the rest of the living vampires, to keep the demonic ever after and our own world from destruction, Rachel Morgan will risk everything . . .
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Dok-go lives in Seoul Station. He can’t remember his past, and the only thing he knows for certain is that he could really use a drink. When he finds a lost wallet filled with documents, his life is drastically changed.
\nMrs. Yeom, a retired history teacher and current owner of her neighborhood’s corner store, is distraught over the loss of her purse, until she receives a mysterious call from the person who found it. To thank this down-on-his-luck stranger, she offers him a free meal from the convenience store. Seeing the joy the food brings him, Mrs. Yeom impulsively invites him to stop by for lunch every day.
\nIn a twist of fate, Dok-go saves the store from a robber - a brave act that propels Mrs. Yeom to offers the bear-like man a job working the night shift, despite the objections of her wary employees. The store’s new employee quickly wins over the quirky denizens of the neighborhood, becoming a welcoming ear and source of advice for his coworkers and neighbors’ problems, and helping his new boss save the store from financial ruin. But just when things are looking up for Dok-go, Mrs. Yeom's good-for-nothing son, eager to sell the store, hires a detective to dig into the mysterious man’s past and what he seems to be trying so hard to forget.
\nThe Second Chance Convenience Store is a moving and joyful story of a woman fighting for her community and a man who has lost everything except the will to try again.
Situated at the heart of a rapidly gentrifying district of Seoul, the Yeonnam-dong Smiley Laundromat is a place where the extraordinary stories of ordinary residents unfold.
\nIt is already a haven of tranquility and reflection for locals, but when someone leaves a notebook behind, the laundromat becomes a place that brings people together. One by one, customers start jotting down candid diary entries, opening their hearts and inviting acts of kindness from neighbours who were once just faces in the crowd.
\nBut there is more to the diary than first appears, and before long the laundromat's regulars are teaming up to solve a mystery and help the notebook's former owner find peace.
\nA heartwarming, healing debut that instantly captured the hearts of Korean readers, this is a novel about the preciousness of human relationships and the power of solidarity in a world that is increasingly cold, fast-paced and virtual.
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In 1955, a Black family passes for white and moves to a “Whites Only” town in the suburbs. Caught between two worlds, a teen boy puts his family at risk as he uncovers racist secrets about his suburb.
\nCalvin knows how to pass for white. He’s done it plenty of times before. For his friends in Chicago, when they wanted food but weren’t allowed in a restaurant. For work, when he and his dad would travel for the Green Book.
\nThis is different.
\nAfter a tragedy in Chicago forces the family to flee, they resettle in an idyllic all-white suburban town in search of a better life. Calvin’s father wants everyone to embrace their new white lifestyles, but it’s easier said than done. Hiding your true self is exhausting - which leads Calvin across town where he can make friends who know all of him . . . and spend more time with his new crush, Lily. But when Calvin starts unraveling dark secrets about the white town and its inhabitants, passing starts to feel even more suffocating - and dangerous - than he could have imagined.
\nExpertly weaving together real historical events with important reflections on being Black in America, acclaimed author Kim Johnson powerfully connects readers to the experience of being forced to live a life-threatening lie or embrace an equally deadly truth.
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Every week, seventeen-year-old Tracy Beaumont writes letters to Innocence X, asking the organization to help her father, an innocent Black man on death row. After seven years, Tracy is running out of time - her dad has only 267 days left. Then the unthinkable happens. The police arrive in the night, and Tracy’s older brother, Jamal, goes from being a bright, promising track star to a “thug” on the run, accused of killing a white girl.
\nDetermined to save her brother, Tracy investigates what really happened between Jamal and Angela down at the Pike. But will Tracy and her family survive the uncovering of the skeletons of their Texas town’s racist history that still haunt the present?
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When Chrissie Chambers (model actress whatever) discovers her soap opera character is about to be killed off, she finally stops dieting and discovers hitherto untapped supernatural abilities.
\nMeanwhile, Chrissie's aunt - former national heroine Lady Shade - goes missing. Afraid for Jasmine's safety and itching to costume-up, Chrissie and her ghost-possessed best friend Loulee break into Devil's Dyke, the asylum where Jasmine works as a therapist with the most dangerous cutthroats (supervillains) in Britain . . . only to find the inmates have taken over . . . Chrissie debuts successfully as a cloak (superheroine), but who will become the arch-nemesis of Lady Shade II?
\nIn Chrissie's timeline, the Beatles didn't split up and recorded a hallucinodelic album in 1972 - Never Mind (strictly, Never Mind the Beatles) - which literally changed the world. Set in an alternative 2020s London, this hugely entertaining, darkly humorous superhero tale is packed with Newman's trademark wit, and comes with wickedly sharp edges.
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Return to the world of inklings, tattoo magic, and evil deities as Celia uncovers the secrets of the ink in order to stop Diavala once and for all. This eagerly anticipated sequel to Ink in the Blood is perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Wicked Saints.
Celia Sand faced Diavala and won, using ink magic to destroy the corrupt religion of Profeta that tormented her for a decade. But winning came with a cost. Now Celia is plagued with guilt over her role in the death of her best friend. When she discovers that Diavala is still very much alive and threatening Griffin, the now-infamous plague doctor, Celia is desperate not to lose another person she loves to the deity’s wrath.
The key to destroying Diavala may lie with Halycon Ronnea, the only other person to have faced Diavala and survived. But Halcyon is dangerous and has secrets of his own, ones that involve the ink that Celia has come to hate. Forced to choose between the ink and Diavala, Celia will do whatever it takes to save Griffin - even if it means making a deal with the devil himself.
Cursed at birth, 16-year-old Drinn has been hidden away from the world - moved from house to house to ensure that she never finds love. But this year, she has decided to break free.
\nFleeing, Drinn finds herself in Oblison, surrounded by others just like her - cursed girls whose lives are dangerous and wild. They vow to liberate themselves once and for all. But rebellion is dangerous, and if Drinn finds love before the curse can be broken, a terrible fate could befall them all . . .
Celia Sand and her best friend, Anya Burtoni, are inklings for the esteemed religion of Profeta. Using magic, they tattoo followers with beautiful images that represent the Divine’s will and guide the actions of the recipients. It’s considered a noble calling, but ten years into their servitude Celia and Anya know the truth: Profeta is built on lies, the tattooed orders strip away freedom, and the revered temple is actually a brutal, torturous prison.
\nTheir opportunity to escape arrives with the Rabble Mob, a traveling theater troupe. Using their inkling abilities for performance instead of propaganda, Celia and Anya are content for the first time . . . until they realise who followed them. The Divine they never believed in is very real, very angry, and determined to use Celia, Anya, and the Rabble Mob’s now-infamous stage to spread her deceitful influence even further.
\nTo protect their new family from the wrath of a malicious deity and the zealots who work in her name, Celia and Anya must unmask the biggest lie of all - Profeta itself.
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The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future.
The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them.
A major new novel from one of science fiction's most powerful voices, AURORA tells the incredible story of our first voyage beyond the solar system.
Our voyage from Earth began generations ago.
Now, we approach our new home.
AURORA.
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The red planet is no more. Now green and verdant, Mars has been dramatically altered from a desolate world into one where humans can flourish. The First Hundred settlers are being pulled into a fierce new struggle between the Reds, a group devoted to preserving Mars in its desert state, and the Green “terraformers.”
\nMeanwhile, Earth is in peril. A great flood threatens an already overcrowded and polluted planet. With Mars the last hope for the human race, the inhabitants of the red planet are heading toward a population explosion - or interplanetary war.
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Nearly a generation has passed since the first pioneers landed on Mars, and its transformation to an Earthlike planet is under way. But not everyone wants to see the process through. The methods are opposed by those determined to preserve their home planet’s hostile, barren beauty.
\nLed by the first generation of children born on Mars, these rebels are soon joined by a handful of the original settlers. Against this cosmic backdrop, passions, partnerships, and rivalries explode in a story as spectacular as the planet itself.
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It is 2140.
\nThe waters rose, submerging New York City.
\nBut the residents adapted and it remained the bustling, vibrant metropolis it had always been. Though changed forever.
\nEvery street became a canal. Every skyscraper an island.
\nThrough the eyes of the varied inhabitants of one building, Kim Stanley Robinson shows us how one of our great cities will change with the rising tides.
\nAnd how we too will change.
Mars - the barren, forbidding planet that epitomises mankind’s dreams of space conquest.
\nFrom the first pioneers who looked back at Earth and saw a small blue star, to the first colonists - hand-picked scientists with the skills necessary to create life from cold desert - Red Mars is the story of a new genesis.
\nIt is also the story of how Man must struggle against his own self-destructive mechanisms to achieve his dreams: before he even sets foot on the red planet, factions are forming, tensions are rising, and violence is brewing . . . for civilisation can be very uncivilised.
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For nearly a year, Beth has been planning for this day. A day some people might call any other Wednesday, but Beth prefers to see it as her new beginning - one with a new look, new name and new city. Beth has given her plan significant thought, because one small slip and her violent husband will find her.
\nA couple hundred miles away, Jeffrey returns home from a work trip to find his wife, Sabine, is missing. Wherever she is, she's taken almost nothing with her. Her abandoned car is the only evidence the police have, and all signs point to foul play.
\nAs the police search for leads, the case becomes more and more convoluted. Sabine's carefully laid plans for her future indicate trouble at home, and a husband who would be better off with her gone. The detective on the case will stop at nothing to find out what happened and bring this missing woman home. Where is Sabine? And who is Beth? The only thing that's certain is that someone is lying and the truth won't stay buried for long.
When Charlotte married the wealthy widower Paul, it caused a ripple of gossip in their small lakeside town. They have a charmed life together, despite the cruel whispers about her humble past and his first marriage. But everything starts to unravel when she discovers a young woman’s body floating in the exact same spot where Paul’s first wife tragically drowned.
\nAt first, it seems like a horrific coincidence, but the stranger in the lake is no stranger. Charlotte saw Paul talking to her the day before, even though Paul tells the police he’s never met the woman. His lie exposes cracks in their fragile new marriage, cracks Charlotte is determined to keep from breaking them in two.
\nAs Charlotte uncovers dark mysteries about the man she married, she doesn’t know what to trust - her heart, which knows Paul to be a good man, or her growing suspicion that there’s something he’s hiding in the water.
Following a nasty divorce, Rayna Dumont came to Amsterdam for a fresh start. She’s never been the type for a one-night stand, but this move is all about adventure, and Xander is handsome and successful and more than willing to go along for the ride. Until the morning after, when Rayna finds him dead on the shower floor and millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds missing from his safe.
\nFrom her lavish home in the heart of the city, Willow Prins is captivated by the news. Her husband is Xander’s former boss and heir to a diamond house, and the scandal strains their already-rocky marriage. As the house comes under scrutiny, Willow wonders if her life is about to implode - and how much of the blame she can place on Rayna. Soon, Willow and Rayna are dragged into the dark and dangerous underbelly of the diamond market, where they’ll have to uncover the truth to survive.
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Iris and Will have been married for seven years, and life is as close to perfect as it can be. But on the morning Will flies out for a business trip to Florida, Iris's happy world comes to an abrupt halt: another plane headed for Seattle has crashed into a field, killing everyone on board and, according to the airline, Will was one of the passengers.
Grief stricken and confused, Iris is convinced it all must be a huge misunderstanding. Why did Will lie about where he was going? And what else has he lied about? As Iris sets off on a desperate quest to uncover what her husband was keeping from her, the answers she finds shock her to her very core.
When former DC journalist Abigail Wolff attempts to rehabilitate her career, she finds herself at the heart of a US army cover-up involving the death of a soldier in Afghanistan - with unspeakable emotional consequences for one family. As the story of what happened comes to light, Abigail will do anything to write it.
\nThe more evidence she stumbles upon in the case, the fewer people it seems she can trust, including her own father, a retired army general. And she certainly never expected to fall in love with the slain soldier's brother, Gabe, a bitter man struggling to hold his family together. The investigation eventually leads her to an impossible choice, one of unrelenting sacrifice to protect those she loves.
\nBeyond the buried truths and betrayals, questions of family loyalty and redemption, Abigail's search is, most of all, a desperate grasp at carrying on and coping - and seeking hope in the impossible
When Stella met Adam, she thought she had finally found a nice, normal guy - a welcome change from her previous boyfriend and her precarious jetsetter lifestyle with him. But her secure world comes crashing down when Adam goes missing after an explosion in the city square. Unable to reach him, she panics.
\nAs the French police investigate, it’s revealed that Adam was on their radar as a dealer of rare and stolen antiquities with a long roster of criminal clients. Reeling from this news, Stella is determined not to leave Paris until she has the full story. Was Adam a random victim or the target of the explosion? And why is someone following her through the streets of Paris?
When Kat Jenkins awakens to the police on her doorstep, her greatest fear is realized. Her nine-year-old son, Ethan, is missing - vanished from the cabin where he’d been on an overnight field trip with his class. Shocked and distraught, Kat rushes to the campground where he was last seen. But she’s too late; the authorities have returned from their search empty-handed after losing Ethan’s trail in the mountain forest.
\nAnother mother from the school, Stef Huntington, seems like she has it money, prominence in the community, a popular son and a loving husband. She hardly knows Kat, except for the vicious gossip that swirls around Kat’s traumatic past. But as the police investigation unfolds, Ethan’s disappearance will have earth-shattering consequences in Stef’s own life - and the paths of these two mothers are about to cross in ways no one could have anticipated.
\nRacing against the clock, their desperate search for answers begins - one where the greatest danger could lie behind the everyday smiles of those they trust the most.
Nic Gallagher has it all: a great job, supportive family and friends, and a sweet dog. Everything changes after an unexpected reorganisation at work makes Lee Stone her supervisor.
Lee is beautiful, outstanding at her job, and has quickly catapulted to head of sales. According to the rumor mill, she's also a bit of an ice queen who's left a line of broken men in her rise to the top.
Nic and Lee got on well in new hire training and haven't been able to stand each other since. Nic seethes silently as Lee gets promoted while she's stuck at manager. That is, until she's downsized in a strategic layoff, and her simmering anger finally burns openly.
They have good reasons for keeping their distance. So why does their growing attraction seem more like a love-hate relationship?
Sophia McGovern can’t seem to settle down. Memories of all her bad decisions refuse to leave her alone. So, she moves from town to town, from one dead-end job to another, keeping to herself, which serves her well—until she arrives in Ft. Devlin, Colorado. From the first day, Ft. Devlin was different. Maybe that’s why she says yes to teaching a car maintenance class at the local high school.
\nHigh school literacy teacher Pru Glynn is happy with her life just as it is. She has a great job, close friends, and a loving family. She’d like to find a wonderful woman to share it with, but she isn’t about to settle for just anyone. When beautiful Sophia McGovern swings into town, Pru can’t deny an attraction, but Sophia’s itinerant lifestyle doesn’t fit in with her deep-set roots and strong ties to family and friends.
\nSophia and Pru have no intention of falling in love, but sometimes love happens when and where you least expect it.
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Two worlds collide when an airplane goes down in the wilds of Alaska. Nora Kavendash, a retired software developer, finds herself taking care of a mysterious woman with amnesia who she soon nicknames 4B. Weather and rugged terrain work against them as they wait for rescue and Nora worries about a package she must deliver as a matter of life and death.
\nWhen help finally arrives, it seems everything was somehow simpler when it was just the two of them against the unknown. Life sweeps in and threatens to break the tenuous tie the two women have forged, and 4B is faced with discovering who she really is. More importantly, they both learn that it’s impossible to run from yourself.
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Their sordid history started before they were born, so in fifth grade when Lena severed her friendship with Andy, she started a war. For over six years, they lived to make each other miserable. That’s why no one was more astonished than Andy when Lena kissed her, not once, but twice, just before they left for college.
\nTwelve years later, Andy’s unable to find love, Lena runs at the mere hint of emotional entanglement, and family has brought them back home for several weeks. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before they run into each other. Unbelievably, not only are they civil, but they fall into bed, discovering the missing parts of themselves in each other.
\nAmid family drama and new beginnings, they help each other heal. Some things aren’t always what they seem, and others are exactly how they appear, even when they wish they weren’t. Will they let fear ruin what they’ve rediscovered?
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Academy Award-winning actress Reilly Ransome has a life that others can only dream about: fame that opens every door, more money than she can ever spend, and freedom to do what (and whom) she pleases. But something is missing, and the harder she seeks to find it, the more evident the absence becomes. She attempts to fill the gap with behavior that becomes increasingly dangerous until one night, she wakes up on a bench at a deserted beach to find that she has committed the unthinkable.
\nResolved to live the rest of her life doing penance for her mistake, Reilly withdraws from her whirlwind existence and finally finds what she's been missing. But knowing something and accepting something are two different things. It is only when a transformative experience that no one sees coming occurs, turning her life on its axis, that Reilly can finally forgive herself and fill in that missing piece.
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Alice Johns and Bridget Moore were young nuns when a forbidden spark lit between them. After being discovered, they were released from their convent and lost touch. But they never forgot their intense connection.
\nTwenty-five years later, they meet again, and the old spark is just as strong. Outside the convent, they couldn’t be more different from one another. Alice is quiet, still attached to the church, and very much in the closet. Her life at Oceana is the only thing that keeps her from disappearing behind the closet door permanently. Bridget, an outgoing sales executive who embraces her sapphic nature, has sworn off religion. When they’re alone, their passion runs deep. But when they’re out in the world, Alice’s discomfort with her sexuality leads to trouble.
\nFor their love to survive, they must find a way to reconcile the most important passions in their lives - devotion to the church and each other.
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Ang Kennedy used to love riding a bike, but now spends all her time chasing paychecks and lofty titles. When her latest ambition to move into the big corner office unexpectedly falls through, she realizes she was chasing someone else’s dream and quits her job. Unsure what she really wants in life, Ang returns to the one thing that used to make her happy: her bike.
\nKrista Ólafsdóttir dreamed of owning her own bicycle shop since she first started to shadow her uncle at his store. There’s nothing like the freedom of riding. Her uncle retires and the bike shop became hers, but she finds that running a business is a lot more complicated than she expects.
\nAn encounter in a park brings Ang and Krista together, but when Ang's attempts to help Krista go spectacularly wrong, their passion for each other might not be enough to see them to the finish line.
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Sweet Spot - the place on the face of a wave where a surfer can catch the greatest speed.
\nStanding up on the wave is hard enough, but finding the sweet spot is almost impossible when you’re battling riptides. Shia Turning has been battling riptides her entire life and she knows she’s close to finding the sweet spot. Having spent most of her life in the foster system, she’s worked hard to make something of herself in the pro-surfing world. And living at Oceana has given her the community and support she needs to take her there. But when the mother she never expected to hear from again shows up, everything she’s worked for is threatened.
\nAs the property manager for Oceana, her grandfather’s mobile home park, Rose Monroe is anxious to make him proud even at the expense of her own dreams. When Shia and Rose meet, their attraction threatens to distract them from their goals - something neither of them is willing to risk. What they don’t seem to know is that riptides often create the perfect waves. Will they be willing to take a chance of a lifetime to find the sweet spot that can take them to a happily ever after?
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Life changes like the ocean tides, and Mikayla Pierce is discovering that the hard way. Recently divorced and learning more about her bisexuality, she struggles to find her way on her own. Living in a borrowed home in Oceana Mobile Home Park, Mikayla knows one thing for sure. She’s done trying to be the person other people think she should be.
\nGem Helmstaad, the property manager of Oceana, has resigned herself to the life she’s lived since she was a kid, helping her dad take care of his business. She thought she’d broken free of her family obligations, but with her father’s poor health and her siblings having lives of their own, she’s back in Oceana and it’s up to her to keep the business going.
\nFalling in love is the last thing on either of their minds, but when Mikayla and Gem meet, sparks of possibility begin to shine, revealing a new path that just might lead them to a future neither expected.
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It’s a summer of transition for Fiona MacGregor and Meg Jordan.
\nHaving just passed the New York state bar exam, Fiona is excited about her emerging career, but something she never anticipated threatens to upend all of her carefully laid plans.
\nMeg is spending the summer in New York City after finishing veterinary school, and before she moves back to Seattle to join her aunt’s veterinary clinic.
\nA hot summer day at a Morningside Heights coffee shop brings them together when they hear the cries of motherless kittens.
\nFiona and Meg are forced to figure out if love can overcome much more than just geographical distance.
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The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit’s best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They’ll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she’s lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and - most heartbreaking of all - her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago.
\nWhen she returns to the Dallas suburbs, Kit tries to settle into her routine - long afternoons spent caring for her irrepressible daughter, going on therapist-advised dates with her concerned husband, and reluctantly taking her mother’s phone calls. But in the secret recesses of Kit’s mind, she’s reminiscing about the band she used to be in - and how they’d go out to the desert after shows and drop acid.
\nShe’s imagining an impossible threesome with her kid’s pretty gymnastics teacher and the cool playground mom. Keyed into everything that might distract from her surfacing pain, Kit spirals. As her already thin boundaries between reality and fantasy blur, she begins to wonder: Is Julie really gone?
\nNeon bright in its insight, both devastating and laugh-out-loud funny, We Were the Universe is an ambitious, inventive novel from a revelatory new voice in American fiction - a fearless exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, friendship, marriage, psychedelics, and the many strange, transcendent shapes love can take.
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Wylie is finally out of the detention center, but that doesn’t mean she’s safe. As much as she wants to forget everything that's happened and return to her normal life, Wylie knows that true freedom means discovering, once and for all, who is hunting the girls who are Outliers - and why.
\nArmed with only a few clues and a handful of trusted allies, Wylie sets out to separate fact from fiction. But soon she is unearthing long-buried secrets and finds herself entangled in a conspiracy that is much bigger and more dangerous than she ever could have imagined. Worse yet, the nearer Wylie gets to discovering the truth, the closer her enemies get to silencing her and the other girls. This time, maybe forever.
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Everyone has those friends. Doesn’t matter how long it’s been, or how badly they’ve occasionally behaved, or how late it is when that call finally comes - you show up. No questions asked.
\nHonestly, that’s how the five of us ended up here in the Catskills. We did have the best of intentions. Especially after what happened to Alice all those years ago, we can’t bear to think of losing anyone else. In fact, we’ll do anything to make sure that doesn’t happen. We’ll go so much farther than we ever thought we would.
\nIn the end, maybe that’s what caught up with us. That, and the fact that we’re such a complicated group - so much history and so many big personalities. Secrets, too, that can slip out at the most inopportune moments. Of course, we love each other despite all of those things. We love each other no matter what.
\nThere’s something so beautiful about that kind of unconditional love. It can turn ugly, though. Or maybe that’s just us. After all, we’ve already been through so much together. And we have so very much to hide.
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When Cleo, a student at NYU, arrives late for dinner at her childhood home in Brooklyn, she finds food burning in the oven and no sign of her mother, Kat. Then Cleo discovers her mom’s bloody shoe under the sofa. Something terrible has happened.
\nBut what? The polar opposite of Cleo, whose “out of control” emotions and “unsafe” behavior have created a seemingly unbridgeable rift between mother and daughter, Kat is the essence of Park Slope perfection: a happily married, successful corporate lawyer. Or so Cleo thinks.
\nKat has been lying. She’s not just a lawyer; she’s her firm’s fixer. She’s damn good at it, too. Growing up in a dangerous group home taught her how to think fast, stay calm under pressure, and recognise a real threat when she sees one. And in the days leading up her disappearance, Kat has become aware of multiple threats: demands for money from her unfaithful soon-to-be ex-husband; evidence that Cleo has slipped back into a relationship that’s far riskier than she understands; and menacing anonymous messages from her past - all of which she’s kept hidden from Cleo . . .
\nLike Mother, Like Daughter is a thrilling novel of emotional suspense that questions the damaging fictions we cling to and the hard truths we avoid. Above all, it’s a love story between a mother and a daughter, each determined to save the other before it’s too late.
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It all starts with a text: 'Please Wylie, I need your help.' Wylie hasn’t heard from Cassie in over a week, not since their last fight. But that doesn’t matter. Cassie’s in trouble, so Wylie decides to do what she has done so many times before: save her best friend from herself. This time it’s different, though. Instead of telling Wylie where she is, Cassie sends cryptic clues. And instead of having Wylie come by herself, Jasper shows up saying Cassie sent him to help.
\nTrusting the guy who sent Cassie off the rails doesn’t feel right, but Wylie has no choice: she has to ignore her gut instinct and go with him. But figuring out where Cassie is goes from difficult to dangerous, fast. As Wylie and Jasper head farther and farther north into the dense woods of Maine, Wylie struggles to control her growing sense that something is really wrong. What isn’t Cassie telling them? And could finding her be only the beginning?
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Litigation lawyer and harried single mother Kate Baron is stunned when her daughter's exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn, calls with disturbing news: her intelligent, high-achieving fifteen-year-old daughter, Amelia, has been caught cheating.
Kate can't believe that Amelia, an ambitious, levelheaded girl who's never been in trouble would do something like that. But by the time she arrives at Grace Hall, Kate's faced with far more devastating news. Amelia is dead.
Seemingly unable to cope with what she'd done, a despondent Amelia has jumped from the school's roof in an act of \"spontaneous\" suicide. At least that's the story Grace Hall and the police tell Kate. And overwhelmed as she is by her own guilt and shattered by grief, it is the story that Kate believes until she gets the anonymous text:
She didn't jump.
Sifting through Amelia's emails, text messages, social media postings, and cell phone logs, Kate is determined to learn the heartbreaking truth about why Amelia was on Grace Hall's roof that day-and why she died.
Told in alternating voices, Reconstructing Amelia is a story of secrets and lies, of love and betrayal, of trusted friends and vicious bullies. It's about how well a parent ever really knows a child and how far one mother will go to vindicate the memory of a daughter whose life she could not save.
Wylie may have escaped the camp in Maine, but she is far from safe. The best way for her to protect herself is to understand her ability, fast. But after spending a lifetime trying to ignore her own feelings, giving in to her ability to read other peoples’ emotions is as difficult as it is dangerous.
And Wylie isn’t the only one at risk. Ever since they returned home, Jasper has been spiraling, wracked with guilt over what happened to Cassie. After all they’ve been through together, Wylie and Jasper would do anything for each other, but she doesn’t know if their bond is strong enough to overcome demons from the past.
It is amid this uncertainty and fear that Wylie finds herself confronted with a choice. She was willing to do whatever it took to help Cassie, but is she prepared to go to the same extremes to help complete strangers . . . even if they are just like her?
At the end of a long winter, in bucolic Ridgedale, New Jersey, the body of an infant is discovered in the woods near the town’s prestigious university campus. No one knows who the baby is, or how her body ended up out there. But there is no shortage of opinions.
When freelance journalist, and recent Ridgedale transplant, Molly Anderson is unexpectedly called upon to cover the story for the Ridegdale Reader, it’s a risk, given the severe depression that followed the loss of her own baby. But the bigger threat comes when Molly unearths some of Ridgedale’s darkest secrets, including a string of unreported sexual assaults that goes back twenty years.
Meanwhile, Sandy, a high school dropout, searches for her volatile and now missing mother, and PTA president Barbara struggles to help her young son, who’s suddenly having disturbing outbursts.
Told from the perspectives of Molly, Barbara, and Sandy, Kimberly McCreight’s taut and profoundly moving novel unwinds the tangled truth about the baby’s death revealing that these three women have far more in common than they realized. And that their lives are more intertwined with what happened to the baby than they ever could have imagined.
When Hurricane Katrina approaches New Orleans, teenaged Eric and his grandmother and many of their neighbors decide to ride out the storm. Kionna Walker LeMalle’s masterful debut novel brings her readers, like the rising water, onto Eric’s street in the Third Ward, where stranded dogs bark for a time, where neighbors are floating on doors, and where Eric and his grandmother must take refuge in his second floor bedroom.
\nAfter days of heat, dwindling supplies, and relentless rising water, neighbors begin to disappear and Eric’s grandmother, already known as an eccentric, begins to falter. It is then that Eric - in a dream, a hallucination, or something else - discovers a room beyond his closet wall, a place he has never seen. What he discovers inside will send him on a path to discover secrets to survival, bitter progress, and, ultimately, the history of his own people - those he sorely misses and those he never even knew.
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When the world last checked-in with its favorite Cheeto addict, the planet had been overrun by flesh-hungry beasts, and nature had started re-claiming her territory from humankind. S.T., the intrepid crow, alongside his bloodhound-bestie Dennis, had set about saving pets that had become trapped in their homes after humanity went the way of the dodo.
\nThat is, dear reader, until S.T. stumbled upon something so rare - and so precious - that he vowed to do everything in his power to safeguard what could, quite literally, be humanity's last hope for survival. But in a wild world plagued by prejudiced animals, feather-raising environments, new threats so terrifying they make zombies look like baby bunnies, and a horrendous dearth of cheesy snacks, what's a crow to do?
\nWhy, wing it on another big-hearted, death-defying adventure, that's what! Joined by a fabulous new cast of animal characters, S.T. faces many new challenges plus his biggest one yet: parenthood.
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S.T., a domesticated crow, is a bird of simple pleasures: hanging out with his owner Big Jim, trading insults with Seattle's wild crows (those idiots), and enjoying the finest food humankind has to offer: Cheetos ®.
Then Big Jim's eyeball falls out of his head, and S.T. starts to feel like something isn't quite right. His most tried-and-true remedies - from beak-delivered beer to the slobbering affection of Big Jim's loyal but dim-witted dog, Dennis--fail to cure Big Jim's debilitating malady. S.T. is left with no choice but to abandon his old life and venture out into a wild and frightening new world with his trusty steed Dennis, where he discovers that the neighbors are devouring each other and the local wildlife is abuzz with rumors of dangerous new predators roaming Seattle. Humanity's extinction has seemingly arrived, and the only one determined to save it is a foul-mouthed crow whose knowledge of the world around him comes from his TV-watching education.
Hollow Kingdom is a humorous, big-hearted, and boundlessly beautiful romp through the apocalypse and the world that comes after, where even a cowardly crow can become a hero.
A fantastical and endlessly funny story featuring a cast of colorful characters in a dying Italian village and a giant truffle that changes their fate forever.
\nAfter nearly losing the election to a geriatric but wildly popular donkey named Maurizio, newly installed Mayor Delizia Miccuci can’t help but feel like the sun has finally set on the rural Italian village of Lazzarini Boscarino. Tourists only stop by to ask for directions, Nonna Amara’s cherished ristorante is long shuttered, and the town hall is disgustingly overrun with glis glis poo - even Postman Duccio has been disgraced. All that’s left is Bar Celebrità, a rustic establishment where weary locals gather to quibble over decades-long disputes, submit their poor stomachs to bartender Giuseppina’s volcanic espresso, and wonder what will become of the place where together they’ve spent their entire lives.
\nLittle do the villagers know that, mere miles away in the forest, local truffle hunter Giovanni Scarpazza has just happened upon something that could change everything. Swollen to massive proportions, soaking the atmosphere in its pungent fumes, potentially worth six figures in certain international circles, a truffle - un tartufo, that is - sits beneath the soil with the power to either be the greatest gift or the foulest curse the village has ever seen - they’re not completely sure which since Giuseppina’s psychic was a bit unclear on the matter.
\nTartufo is much more than a charming romp through the foothills of Tuscany. Written in the same enchanting style and raucous humor that defines Hollow Kingdom and Feral Creatures, Buxton’s newest story is a reflection on the interconnectedness of life in all its manifestations - and how holding on to harmony in the face of hardship can grow something beautiful and rare beneath the surface.
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High in the Himalayas sits a dilapidated mansion, home to three people, each dreaming of another time. The judge, broken by a world too messy for justice, is haunted by his past. His orphan granddaughter has fallen in love with her handsome tutor, despite their different backgrounds and ideals.
\nThe cook's heart is with his son, who is working in a New York restaurant, mingling with an underclass from all over the globe as he seeks somewhere to call home. Around the house swirl the forces of revolution and change.
\nCivil unrest is making itself felt, stirring up inner conflicts as powerful as those dividing the community, pitting the past against the present, nationalism against love, a small place against the troubles of a big world.
In the snowy mountains of Vermont, Sonia is lonely. A college student and aspiring writer homesick for India, she turns to an older artist for inspiration and intimacy, a man who will cast a dark spell on the next many years of her life.
\nIn Brooklyn, Sunny is lonely, too. A struggling journalist originally from Delhi, he is both beguiled and perplexed by his American girlfriend and the country in which he plans to find his future. As Sonia and Sunny each becomes more and more alienated, they begin to question their understanding of happiness, human connection, and where they belong.
\nBack in India, Sonia and Sunny's extended families cannot fathom how anyone could be lonely in this great, bustling world. They arrange a meeting between the two - a clumsy meddling that only drives Sonia and Sunny apart before they have a chance to fall in love.
\nThe Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next.
Lillian and Henry have been enjoying each other’s company, especially in bed. Even though Lillian’s best friend calls it “situationship,” Lillian is determined to lock Henry down - and she has a plan. She’ll be the best, most accommodating version of herself until he falls in love with her. But when Henry blindsides Lillian with a breakup, Lillian exacts revenge by performing a drunken hex on him.
\nLillian expects Henry to come crawling back to her. What she doesn’t quite anticipate is becoming a prime suspect in his murder case when he’s found dead. As Lillian grapples with the loss of her sort-of-boyfriend, she’s hit with another reckoning: That Henry had a long-term girlfriend he also left behind.
\nDesperate to control the narrative, clear her name, and assume her rightful place as Henry’s mourning girlfriend, Lillian’s pursuit of the truth will throw her into a dangerous tailspin. A deliciously addictive novel that explores our darkest, most human impulses.
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All Bram wanted was to disappear - from her old life, her family's past, and from the scandal that continues to haunt her. The only place left to go is Louth, the tiny town on the Hudson River where her uncle, James, has been renovating an old mansion.
But James is haunted by his own ghosts. Months earlier, his beloved wife died in a fire that people say was set by her daughter. The tragedy left James a shell of the man Bram knew - and destroyed half the house he'd so lovingly restored.
The manor is creepy, and so are the locals. The people of Louth don't want outsiders like Bram in their town, and with each passing day she's discovering that the rumors they spread are just as disturbing as the secrets they hide. Most frightening of all are the legends they tell about the Dead Girls. Girls whose lives were cut short in the very house Bram now calls home.
The terrifying reality is that the Dead Girls may have never left the manor. And if Bram looks too hard into the town's haunted past, she might not either.
Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books - none of which she’s actually read.
\nTo replace the “pornographic” books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need.
\nBut Beverly’s daughter Lindsay sneaks in by night and secretly fills Lula Dean’s little free library with banned books wrapped in “wholesome” dust jackets. The Girl’s Guide to the Revolution is wrapped in the cover of The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette. A jacket that belongs to Our Confederate Heroes ends up on Beloved.
\nOne by one, neighbors who borrow books from Lula Dean’s library find their lives changed in unexpected ways. Finally, one of Lula Dean’s enemies discovers the library and decides to turn the tables on her, just as Lula and Beverly are running against each other to replace the town’s disgraced mayor.
\nThat’s when all the townspeople who’ve been borrowing from Lula’s library begin to reveal themselves. It’s a diverse and surprising bunch - including the local postman, the prom queen, housewives, a farmer, and the former DA - all of whom have been changed by what they’ve read.
\nWhen Lindsay is forced to own up to what she’s done, the showdown that’s been brewing between Beverly and Lula will roil the whole town . . . and change it forever.
Simon saved his best friend, Kat, from the clutches of the Company and their high-tech VR gaming experience, Otherworld. But it was at a steep price. Now he, Kat, and their friend Busara are on the run. They know too much. About the Company's dark secrets. About the real-life consequences of playing Otherworld. And about Kat's stepfather's involvement in everything.
\nThe group is headed to New Mexico to find Simon's old roommate, who is a tech genius and possibly the only person who can help them reveal the truth about the Company before it's too late and the line between what's real and what's fantasy is erased . . . forever.
Simon, Kat, Busara, and Elvis are on the run with the tech super-villains at the Company hot on their heels. The new VR gaming experience the Company created, OtherEarth, will change how the world experiences video games. Paired with the hardware the Company developed, it has the potential to change the world as we know it, altering our reality forever.
The Company is on its way to becoming the world's newest superpower. And Simon is determined to shut them down forever. But to do that, he'll have to survive OtherLife - the next phase of gaming, and a complete reality reboot.
The company says Otherworld is amazing - like nothing you’ve ever seen before. They say it’s addictive - that you’ll want to stay forever. They promise Otherworld will make all your dreams come true. Simon thought Otherworld was a game. Turns out he knew nothing.
\nOtherworld is the next phase of reality. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted. And it’s about to change humanity forever. Welcome to the Otherworld. No one could have seen it coming.
In the Long Island oceanfront community of Mattauk, three different women discover that midlife changes bring a whole new type of empowerment . . .
\nAfter Nessa James's husband dies and her twin daughters leave for college, she's left all alone in a trim white house not far from the ocean. In the quiet of her late forties, the former nurse begins to hear voices. It doesn't take long for Nessa to realise that the voices calling out to her belong to the dead - a gift she's inherited from her grandmother, which comes with special responsibilities.
\nOn the cusp of 50, suave advertising director Harriett Osborne has just witnessed the implosion of her lucrative career and her marriage. She hasn't left her house in months, and from the outside, it appears as if she and her garden have both gone to seed. But Harriet's life is far from over - in fact, she's undergone a stunning and very welcome metamorphosis.
\nAmbitious former executive Jo Levison has spent thirty long years at war with her body. The free-floating rage and hot flashes that arrive with the beginning of menopause feel like the very last straw - until she realises she has the ability to channel them, and finally comes into her power.
\nGuided by voices only Nessa can hear, the trio of women discover a teenage girl whose body was abandoned beside a remote beach. The police have written the victim off as a drug-addicted sex worker, but the women refuse to buy into the official narrative.
\nTheir investigation into the girl's murder leads to more bodies, and to the town's most exclusive and isolated enclave, a world of stupendous wealth where the rules don't apply. With their newfound powers, Jo, Nessa, and Harriet will take matters into their own hands . . .
Sometimes it's easy to fall between the cracks . . .
\nAt 3.04pm on a hot, sticky day in June, Bess finds out she's pregnant.
\nShe could tell her social worker Henry, but he's useless.
\nShe should tell her foster mother, Lisa, but she won't understand.
\nShe really ought to tell Boy, but she hasn't spoken to him in weeks.
\nBess knows more than anyone that love doesn't come without conditions.
\nBut this isn't a love story . . .
When Mattie and Nora’s mother, the brilliant, troubled, and world-renowned Norwegian painter Ingrid Olssen, was on her deathbed, there was one promise she asked her daughters to make: Burn it all. Throw it all away. Ingrid didn’t want any of her art sold, didn’t want it celebrated.
\nTwo years later, Mattie hasn’t done anything except for lock the pieces in a storage unit. She’s barely seen Nora since Nora skipped their mother’s funeral. Besides, she has her hands full raising the bold, creative teenage daughter she had when she was only a teenager herself. It was giving birth to Beanie that let her escape her mother’s house - that and the support of Beanie’s father, Gus.
\nBut when Nora, an artist herself, falls deep into a mental health crisis of her own, she comes to live with Mattie and Beanie. And when their aunt Karo sets up the very last thing their mother ever would have wanted - an enormous retrospective of her work - the two of them somehow find themselves on the road trip of their lives: up the West Coast of the United States, with Beanie and their mother’s ashes in tow.
\nTold partly in the form of the interviews that comprise Ingrid’s biography, Daughters is a tender, comic story of unpicking the scars of the past.
Paulette's the kind of woman who likes the future all mapped the wedding to Denton, the Caribbean honeymoon, the gingham quilt on the baby's crib. Until one morning Garfield, Denton's friend, arrives at her door with news she just can't take that Denton won't be coming around anymore, that there won't be time for her to say goodbye.
\nSomehow Garfield finds his way into her bed, if not her heart, and sooner than anyone can believe there is a baby, and suddenly giving Bird, her son, the best of everything is what gives Paulette's life meaning.
\nSo why is it another little boy, Nellie, who keeps Paulette awake at night? Nellie who is being raised a few streets away with no sign of a mum, with a grandfather who is obviously struggling. Surely Paulette is the last person who should be getting tangled up in any of that?
\nThe Best of Everything is a novel about what it means to care, to learn to live in the aftermath of loss, and the love that can steal into our lives - in spite of the best laid plans.
Leon is nine, and has a perfect baby brother called Jake. They have gone to live with Maureen, who has fuzzy red hair like a halo, and a belly like Father Christmas. But the adults are speaking in low voices, and wearing Pretend faces. They are threatening to take Jake away and give him to strangers. Because Jake is white and Leon is not.
As Leon struggles to cope with his anger, certain things can still make him smile – like Curly Wurlys, riding his bike fast downhill, burying his hands deep in the soil, hanging out with Tufty (who reminds him of his dad), and stealing enough coins so that one day he can rescue Jake and his mum.
Evoking a Britain of the early eighties, My Name is Leon is a story of love, identity and learning to overcome unbearable loss. Of the fierce bond between siblings. And how – just when we least expect it – we somehow manage to find our way home.
Marjan Dastani is successfully leading a double life. Only a few people know that when she’s not in school, she travels the world taking care of mythical beasts, sent on missions by a shadowy organisation known as The Fells.
\nIn an adventure that takes her across continents and connects her with the wildest of mythic beasts around the globe, Marjan must track down the fabled Bird of a Thousand Stories before someone with more nefarious plans finds it. But the more closely she connects with the world’s mythical creatures, the more danger she’s in of losing her friendships - and all that tethers her to the life she’s known.
“Once was, once wasn’t.”
\nSo began the stories Marjan’s father told her as a little girl - fables like the story of the girl who sprung a unicorn from a hunter’s snare, or the nomad boy who rescued a baby shirdal. Tales of extraordinary beasts that filled her with curiosity and wonder.
\nBut Marjan’s not a little girl anymore. In the wake of her father’s sudden death, she is trying to hold it all together: her schoolwork, friendships, and keeping her dad’s shoestring veterinary practice from going under. Then, one day, she receives a visitor who reveals something stunning: Marjan’s father was no ordinary veterinarian. The creatures out of the stories he told her were real - and he traveled the world to care for them. And now that he’s gone, she must take his place.
\nMarjan steps into a secret world hidden in plain sight, where mythical creatures are bought and sold, treasured and trapped. She finds friends she never knew she needed - a charming British boy who grew up with a griffon, a runaway witch seeking magic and home - while trying to hide her double life from her old friends and classmates.
\nThe deeper Marjan gets into treating these animals, the closer she comes to finding who killed her father - and to a shocking truth that will reawaken her sense of wonder and put humans and beasts in the gravest of danger.
Seven struggling customers are given the unique opportunity to take home a “blanket cat” . . . but only for three days, the time it’ll take to change their lives.
\nA peculiar pet shop in Tokyo has been known to offer customers the unique opportunity to take home one of seven special cats, whose “magic” is never promised, but always received. But there are rules: these cats must be returned after three days. They must eat only the food supplied by the owner, and they must travel to their new homes with a distinctive blanket.
\nIn The Blanket Cats, we meet seven customers, each of whom is hoping a temporary feline companion will help them escape a certain reality, including a couple struggling with infertility, a middle-aged woman on the run from the police, and two families in very different circumstances simply seeking joy.
\nBut like all their kind, the “blanket cats” are mysterious creatures with unknowable agendas, who delight in confounding expectations. And perhaps what their hosts are looking for isn’t really what they need. Three days may not be enough to change a life. But it might just change how you see it.
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Seven strangers meet for an anonymously hosted dinner party. As the evening winds down, seven cards appear, one in front of each of the guests. On each card is a number - the age at which the guest will die. Spooked but skeptical, the guests disperse into the rainy night with the hope of forgetting the morbid turn of events.
\nTwo weeks later, one guest is dead. At exactly the age the card predicted.
\nMore guests begin to die as the years go on, each one dead at the same age as their card. It soon becomes clear that something much more sinister is abound. Now, it's up to the quickly dwindling group of dinner guests to figure out who (or what) was behind that fateful dinner party all those years ago, before their numbers catch up with them too.
\nTold from the perspectives of each of the seven guests, which span from hilarious to hateful, Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests is a spellbinding and mysterious exploration of mortality, begging the how would you live your life if you knew your number was up?
Valya’s neural implant is amazing.
\nIts game-like app, CASUAL, has managed her depression and anxiety, stabilised her mood, and helped the infertile Valya get pregnant. But new laws forbid her from using the device when she's sole caregiver for her infant. Her gaslighting ex won't help her, and she can't afford a nanny, so her obstetrician insists that Valya wean off CASUAL before giving birth.
\nDespite a will to quit and a supportive new love interest in her birthing class, disabling CASUAL turns Valya's anxiety into full-blown panic attacks. Her psychiatrist offers to enroll her in a controversial clinical trial that would place a tandem implant in the baby and allow Valya to keep hers active. Valya must decide whether she should attempt parenting without CASUAL or install a minimally tested device in her vulnerable child.
\nCasual is a stark and cutting glance at a near future that looks uncannily like our present, exploring themes of bodily autonomy and the struggle for mental health in a world increasingly divided.
I’m just a man, standing in front of a salad, asking it to be a cake.
\nWhat do you do when you’re too gay for Pakistan, too Pakistani to be gay in America, and you’re ashamed of your body everywhere? How can you find happiness despite years of humiliation, physical danger, and a legion of Brooklyn hipsters who know you only as a queer from Whereveristan? How do you summon the courage to be yourself no matter where you are?
\nEven as a young child in Lahore, Komail Aijazuddin knew he was different - no one else at his all-boys prep school was pirouetting off their desks, or bullied for their “manboobs,” or spontaneously bursting into songs from The Little Mermaid.
\nAijazuddin began to believe his only chance at a happy, meaningful life would be found elsewhere: America, the land of the free, the home of the gays. But the hostility of a post-9/11 world and society’s rejection of his art, his desires, and his body would soon teach him that finding happiness takes a lot more than a plane ticket.
\nSearching for his place between two worlds while navigating a minefield of expectations, prejudice, and self-doubt, Aijazuddin discovered, sometimes painfully, sometimes hilariously, that there are people and places he’d need to let go of to move forward.
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Police officer Peyton Clarke and real estate agent Tory Stevens are complete strangers who experience an instant attraction during a moment of shared misery: trying on bridesmaids’ dresses. But their flirtation comes to an abrupt end when Bradley Richter enters Angelina's Bridal Boutique determined to end every life in the store. He's deranged, heartbroken, and sure of his sharpshooting skills, but he has miscalculated. Two survive.
\nPeyton is determined to capture the guy who killed eleven people, but for Tory the tragedy is a wake up call to open herself up to more than professional success. She and Peyton learn that love can be found in the most hopeless of places. They escaped death once, but will they survive when Bradley's determined to make his kill rate one-hundred percent?
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Peri Logan’s first client is dead, but not in a morbid way. When her great-grandmother passes, her estate bequeathed Peri a piece of jewelry, a stack of cash, and a note that simply reads “find her.” As a newly licensed private investigator, Peri travels to Italy to find the mysterious woman whose photo was perfectly preserved in the heart-shaped locket. What she doesn’t expect is to be given the runaround from a beautiful stranger who offers to help and does anything but.
\nCamila Barnes is bored. Nothing exciting ever happens in the small town of Sequina, Italy. When a pushy American shows up demanding to meet the woman in Camila’s artwork, instead of introducing her to her great-grandmother, Camila decides to lead her on a wild goose chase all over town. Nobody messes with her family, especially people who won’t tell her why.
\nWhen the truth is finally revealed, Peri and Camila realise they are a part of something greater than they ever expected. Attraction is fleeting and true love touches only a few. Do they take the easy road home, or do they fight the odds and give love the chance to last for always?
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Kennedy Wells is desperate to get back her dream job writing for Mainstream, Waters Publishing’s celebrity magazine. She’s worked too hard over the years to have it snatched away because of one tiny indiscretion that ended with a giant lawsuit. After five months of writing mind-numbing articles about current events, her boss agrees to let her get back to reporting on the rich and famous after one last story.
A born and bred city girl, Kennedy is sent to cover fishing in Alaska, which has her feeling just like a fish out of water. When Brynn Coleman, director of Alaska’s Wildlife Rescue and Sanctuary, comes to her rescue time after time, Kennedy can’t help but lower her guard and open herself up to Brynn’s standoffish charm. Falling for the sexy ranger is one thing, but is the possibility of love worth giving up a career she’s always dreamed of?
Once the first female quarterback of her high school team, Sutton McCoy has since landed her dream job as the offensive coordinator for the new NFL team the Connecticut Cheetahs. When the team recruits established quarterback Grayson Moats to lead them, Sutton’s heart is crushed. Grayson isn’t the problem. Sutton’s fifteen-year crush on his wife, Parker O’Neal, is.
\nParker is living a life full of regrets dating all the way back to high school when her parents made her end her relationship with Sutton because there were too many rumors about her, not all of them good. When Grayson accepts the new quarterback position with the Cheetahs, he consults Parker first, knowing the three of them have history. But it’s not like she can tell him the truth, that Sutton still occupies so much of Parker’s head and heart.
\nInterfering in the personal life of the star quarterback and convincing Parker to walk away from her family were never in Sutton’s game plan. But standing on the sidelines when a second chance at true love comes their way proves all but impossible.
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Josie Lockner scores big when she’s awarded a summer artist-in-residence in the small beach town of Goda, Massachusetts. The Wellingtons are the perfect host family and Revere Estates the best backdrop. She’s more than ready to capture the beauty of nature with her pencils and brushes. Falling for the Wellingtons’ quiet neighbor, Olivia Monteclair isn’t in the picture, but just because it won’t last forever doesn’t mean she can’t have some fun.
\nOlivia’s peaceful days are interrupted when Josie, with her infectious grin and sunny disposition, crowds her space. Was Olivia ever that young or that hungry about life? She isn’t in the market, not after her devastating heartbreak, but there’s something about Josie that brings out a lightness she’s missing from her life.
\nBoth cherish the time spent together, but when the summer ends and their temporary romance melts into the real deal, reality gets complicated.
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Sawyer Noel's car troubles leave her coasting into the dreamy town of Ladybug Junction, Alabama, on her way to the Fetch Veterinarian Conference. She tries to make the most of it, but cell phone signal is limited, and the library is the only reliable place for Wi-Fi. The attractive, carefree librarian with her wild, curly hair and infectious smile helps the time go by quickly, and suddenly Sawyer isn't in such a rush.
\nMacey Burr loves helping people. She happily throws herself into her work solving problems and enriching the lives around her. When a sexy stranger rolls through town, Macey goes out of her way to make the doctor feel at home. It's easy to see past Sawyer's hard exterior and impossible to ignore her full lips, sparkling blue eyes, and brilliant mind.
\nWhen life seems to be too good to be true and love is within reach, Sawyer and Macey discover the truth about Ladybug Junction, and the cold light of reality tests the hearts of these dreamers.
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Wedding photographer Alyssa Bates is running late to a job she desperately needs when officer Katy Emerson pulls her over for speeding. She gets a warning from the sexy woman in uniform and the sirens alerting them to an approaching tornado. Their only option is to shelter in an abandoned diner where they must resist temptation and fight for their lives.
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Shaylie Beck just wanted to go home.
\nShe managed to snag the last seat on a late flight from New York to Denver. No one thought anything would go wrong. Nobody expected the unimaginable to happen. When the plane crashes, Shaylie fights for her life and is one of only eleven survivors.
\nPiper Cole wants answers.
\nWhy did her fiancée’s plane crash? She lost everything that night, and the investigation is taking too long. To help cope with losing the woman she loved, Piper attends a support group for survivors.
\nThe friendship Piper and Shaylie develop helps each to heal, but as their feelings turn to love, Shaylie’s torn. She can follow her heart to the woman she loves, or she can come clean about what really happened right before the plane crashed and risk losing Piper forever.
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Who doesn’t want to believe in true love? Ten years ago, Savannah Edwards agreed to be a contestant on the lesbian dating show When Sparks Fly. The last thing she expected was to fall in love and get dumped on national television. When she’s invited to be the next bachelorette for the ten-year anniversary show, she makes up her mind that this time she’ll show the world that finding true love on television can really happen.
\nLauren Lucas breathed life into a show that was on the brink of cancellation. Her charm as the host of When Sparks Fly catapulted it to a nationwide hit. Her own love life is in shambles, but she puts on a dazzling smile and pretends that love isn’t heartbreak waiting to happen.
\nEvery week, Lauren watches Savannah date other women and tries to ignore the spark. When the cameras stop rolling and their attraction becomes impossible to deny, will they take a chance on real-life love and abandon the reality TV fairy tale?
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When Grace Danner finds out her great-aunt has passed away leaving her a flower shop in Ireland, she is anxious to get it off her hands as quickly as possible. Her career with the most prestigious advertising firm in Dallas has her busy six days a week, and she doesn’t have time to step away from her life to handle her aunt’s estate.
\nShe plans a quick trip to sign papers and save family heirlooms, hoping to return home before the end of the week. She meets real estate agent Kerry Mulligan who was consigned to the property quite by accident. Their relationship starts off rocky, and as much as Grace wants to get to know the red-haired Irish beauty in the short time she is there, Kerry is nothing but business.
\nCan Grace break through Kerry’s icy disposition and open her up to a quick affair? Even if Grace manages to seduce Kerry, can she return unscathed to the life she left in Dallas?
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To say Sheriff Natalie Strand is shocked that Sarah Eastman, the girl who kissed her at a high school party, is back in town would be a huge understatement. Between Sarah’s return and a stray dog that gets the best of her, Natalie’s world is suddenly turned upside down.
They say you can’t go home again, but that’s exactly what Sarah does when she returns to Spruce Mountain, Oregon, to live with her aunt and uncle after her divorce. All she wants is peace and to ensure her daughter, Harley, has stability. Seeing Natalie again after seventeen years ignites a passion that she hasn’t felt in a long time. Never mind that her heart tumbles in her chest or that she forgets words when Natalie’s around, she needs to focus on her family and getting her life back together.
Natalie and Sarah are about to discover that anything is possible when love takes the long way home.
Mystery writer Bethany Lange wasn't prepared for the twisting emotions that left her breathless the moment she laid eyes on folk singer sensation Ali Hart. Of course she was flat on her back and looking up and backward at the gorgeous singer, but that didn't stop her body and heart from bursting into a kaleidoscope of want, need, and lust. Scared at the intensity of her feelings, Bethany does everything she can to avoid Ali at Camp Jacomo, the camp designed specifically for children of lesbian and gay families where Bethany volunteers every summer.
\nThe camp director convinces the hottest singer at the moment, Ali Hart, to spend a week teaching the children music to everybody's delight except Bethany's. On her last day at camp, Ali approaches Bethany with an offer of friendship, but they both know it's the prelude to something bolder. Should Bethany take the risk? Does she really believe she can balance her quiet private life with Ali's outspoken one?
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Former child music prodigy Lily Croft spends most days in her home office crunching numbers and analyzing data as an actuary. Once she filled concert halls across the world, until the pressure got to be too much and forced her retreat.
\nWhen her boss hands her a temporary assignment, Lily has to leave the safety of working from home to work with people at an office. She keeps her head down and stays focused, but one night on her way to the train station, she hears music wafting from The Leading Note and the life and feelings she suppressed for over a decade bubble up to the surface.
\nLily is inexplicably drawn to Hope D’Marco, Leading Note’s gorgeous and brilliant founder. But falling for Hope and re-exploring her passion for music force Lily to face her past. Will she go back into hiding, or have the courage to confront the consequences of her past and present colliding?
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Winning the lottery is the best thing that’s ever happened to Serena Evans. Gone are the days of living paycheck to paycheck. On her own and fully funded, Serena’s excited to open Pet Posh Inn. She can’t imagine a more fulfilling dream than caring for and being surrounded by animals.
Gabrielle Barnes can’t understand why anyone would dump millions of dollars into a pet daycare, but if she wants to prove herself worthy of a partner position at Arnest Max Architecture, she’s going to have paste on a smile while designing the ridiculous waste of space.
Serena’s kindness and big heart draw Gabrielle in, but her stubbornness drives a wedge between them. As the design builds, so does their attraction.
Was Serena’s luck really about money, or is she about to get lucky in love?
Claire Weaver’s only goal is to climb the ladder of success. After winning an unwinnable toxic tort case and securing a ninety-million-dollar verdict, she’s a shoo-in for a judgeship at Kansas City’s circuit court.
\nThe last person fire investigator Emery Pearson expects to see in court is the stranger she had the pleasure of dominating last night—only this time, Judge Claire Weaver is definitely in charge. To say she’s excited is an understatement. Claire is everything she needs - sexy, available, and not looking for a relationship.
\nTheir day jobs clash, even as their desire burns, and a discreet sex-only arrangement is the only option. But when pushing their sexual limits threatens the boundary of their hearts, will they be guilty of breaking their own rules, or allow love to tip the scales?
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Behind the lights, camera, action of Hollywood lies the real world and the real lives of the A-list.
\nAlix Somers has it all. New job hosting a primetime dating show, new beach house, and the new face of the queer scene. Fans chase them, paparazzi stalk them, and Hollywood loves them, but the interviews and parties aren’t bringing Alix happiness. Just when they think they’ve had enough, a run-in with a beautiful stranger gives them something they thought was lost. Hope.
\nMarianna Smith hates Hollywood. Her ex-girlfriend dumps her the minute she finds fame, and most of her friends are looking for the next big break. What’s the draw? It’s fake people pretending to be other people. She’s perfectly happy being a teacher and making extra cash working for her aunt’s catering business. Until Alix leaves her swooning.
\nThey say opposites attract, but they have totally different dreams. No Hollywood love story is perfect, right?
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Nico Marshall’s living her best life. Her packaging company’s turning a profit and she’s just been labeled Chicago’s most promising up-and-coming artist. The only thing missing is love. When she meets a beautiful woman on the train with an indescribable sweet and sugary scent, Nico’s ready to make her move.
Sophia Sweet doesn’t have time for distractions. Never mind how fit and tan Nico is, or how she has the most beautiful eyes ever. Sophia only has one goal: keep the family business alive. Her third-generation chocolatier shop, Sweet Stuff, is tanking. In a last-ditch effort, Sophia creates an upscale version of their product and needs the perfect package to ensure success.
When Sophia recognizes Nico from the train but mistakes her for the packaging company’s warehouse employee, Nico doesn’t bother to correct her. She’s been burned by women in the past wanting her for her money. This time, she’s determined to win Sophia over with her charm.
Music runs through Annie Foster’s veins. A jingle writer by day and hostess of Coffee & Chords, an open mic night at her best friend’s coffee shack, by night, Annie is doing exactly what she loves. Hitting the big time was never her dream. She has enough followers online to know her music matters. If it’s the right combination of success and happiness, why does she feel empty inside?
\nBristol Baines is top of the pop charts, internet famous, and so lonely she could cry. She was tossed into the business at fourteen, and any other kind of life wasn’t in the cards. Living the dream with everything at her fingertips really means a life of disguises, secrecy, and failed relationships. Success has been a big disappointment, and she’s ready for a fresh start even if that means walking away from fame.
\nSerendipity brings Annie and Bristol together, and their undeniable attraction keeps them close, but will their different paths drive them apart?
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Determined to fulfill her dream of becoming a chef and winning a coveted scholarship to study cooking in Italy, Ki Blake rushes in late to the first class of her final semester at Kirkwood Culinary Academy and is stopped in her tracks by Taryn Ellis, the school’s newest instructor. A beautiful and accomplished chef, Taryn has walked away from her promising career in the city’s top restaurant to devote her life to her five-year-old daughter.
Ki and Taryn try their best to resist the urge to give in to the undeniable chemistry between them. And when at last they begin a passionate affair that must be kept a secret, they are each convinced it’s only a short-term fling.
It’s up to both Ki and Taryn to decide whether they have found something genuine or whether the taste of romance they’ve had is truly enough.
Cassie Miller is broke. Her parents cut off all funding when she dropped out of medical school, and graduate school is expensive. A full-time nanny job at the Wellington estate is the answer to her problems, except working for beautiful, successful Brook Wellington wasn’t in the job description.
\nBrook has always had a head for business. Born into a global shipping empire, she sits at the helm running it with skill and savvy. But success comes at a cost. Her priority is her six-year-old son, but she can’t be in two places at once. Hiring a nanny isn’t the perfect solution, but it would certainly help, and Cassie came highly recommended. If only she wasn’t so damn attractive.
\nCan Cassie and Brook deny their growing attraction and keep things professional? Or will they sidestep propriety and give in to temptation?
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Breaking up is hard to do, but three weeks before Christmas it’s even more painful. Jessica Raymond isn't in love with her ex-girlfriend anymore; she just hates to emotionally limp through the holidays. When a cute gray kitten shows up on her doorstep, Jessica panics. She doesn’t have time for a pet. Finding sexy Veterinarian Dr. Taylor Mitchell intriguing isn’t part of the plan either, but both manage to turn her world upside down.
Taylor Mitchell isn’t going to let a beautiful woman with a bad attitude bring her down. It’s the holidays and she’s determined to show some much-needed Christmas spirit and help a lonely cat find a good home.
A few kitten-induced mishaps bring them closer and sharing the same space suddenly isn’t so bad. Chatting is actually pretty nice. Did this sweet kitten show up to help them find each other? Or is the holiday spirit to blame for their special connection?
For the past six seasons, Tristan Stark has been chasing storms throughout the Midwest for the University of Oklahoma. Teaching during the winters and hitting the road during the spring, Tristan has little time for herself, let alone time to have a solid relationship.
\nRival storm chaser Kate Brighten is just starting out and winds up riding along with Tristan for two weeks. It doesn't take long for the two to begin a tumultuous love affair on the road. But the road can't last forever and Kate isn't everything she seems.
\nOnce trust is broken, it's difficult to rebuild. Can Tristan accept Kate's secrets? Or will their love be washed away in the spring storms?
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The Frosts are a typical American family. Barb and John, married almost fifty years, are testy and bored with each other . . . who could blame them after all this time? At least they have their daughters - Barb's favorite, the perfect, brilliant Juliet; and John's darling, the free-spirited Sadie. The girls themselves couldn't be more different, but at least they got along, more or less. It was fine. It was enough.
Until the day John had a stroke, and their house of cards came tumbling down.
Now Sadie has to put her career as a teacher and struggling artist in New York on hold to come back and care for her beloved dad - and face the love of her life, whose heart she broke, and who broke hers. Now Juliet has to wonder if people will notice that despite her perfect career as a successful architect, her perfect marriage to a charming Brit, and her two perfect daughters, she's spending an increasing amount of time in the closet having panic attacks.
And now Barb and John will finally have to face what's been going on in their marriage all along.
What's the market price on a decent guy these days?
\nMaggie Beaumont's luck is about to change. Sure, she's known for her bad romantic choices - her former boyfriend broke up with her by bringing his new girlfriend home for a visit. And then there was the crush she had on a gorgeous young Irishman, who turned out to be Father Tim, the parish's new priest.
\nBut romantic salvation has arrived in the form of handsome, if surly, fisherman Malone. It turns out there's a heart of gold underneath his barnacle-clad exterior. Will this catch of the day turn into the dish of a lifetime?
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Millie Barnes is this close to finally achieving her perfect life . . .
\nRewarding job as a local doctor on Cape Cod? Check. Cute cottage of her very own? Check. Adorable dog suitable for walks past attractive locals? Check! All she needs is for golden boy and former crush Joe Carpenter to notice her, and Millie will be set.
\nBut perfection isn't as easy as it looks - especially when Sam Nickerson, a local policeman, is so distracting. He is definitely not part of her master plan. But maybe it's time for Millie to start a new list . . .
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Being one of the guys isn't all it's cracked up to be…
\nSo when journalist Chastity O'Neill returns to her hometown, she decides it's time to start working on some of those feminine wiles. Two tiny problems: #1 - she's five feet eleven inches of rock-solid girl power, and #2 - she's cursed with four alpha-male older brothers.
\nWhile doing a story on local heroes, she meets a hunky doctor and things start to look up. Now there's only one problem: Trevor Meade, her first love and the one man she's never quite gotten over - although he seems to have gotten over her just fine.
\nYet the more time she spends with Dr. Perfect, the better Trevor looks. But even with the in-your-face competition, the irresistible Trevor just can't seem to see Chastity as anything more than just one of the guys . . .
\n
Divorce attorney Harper James can't catch a break. Bad enough that she runs into her ex-hubby, Nick, at her sister's destination wedding, but now, by a cruel twist of fate, she's being forced to make a cross-country road trip with him. And her almost-fiancé back at home is not likely to be sympathetic.
\nHarper can't help that Nick has come blazing back into her life in all of his frustratingly appealing, gorgeous architect glory. But in Nick's eyes, Harper's always been the one. If they can only get it right this time, forever might be waiting - just around the bend.
\n
Lucy Lang isn't looking for fireworks.
\nShe's looking for a nice, decent man. Someone who'll mow the lawn, flip chicken on the barbecue, teach their future children to play soccer. But most important: someone who won't inspire the slightest stirring in her heart…or anywhere else. A young widow, Lucy can't risk that kind of loss again. But sharing her life with a cat named Fat Mikey and the Black Widows at the family bakery isn't enough either. So it's goodbye to Ethan, her hot but entirely inappropriate \"friend with privileges\" and hello to a man she can marry.
\nToo bad Ethan Mirabelli isn't going anywhere. As far as he's concerned, what she needs might be right under her nose. But can he convince her that the next best thing can really be forever?
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Winnie Smith was never supposed to be that woman. She’s the responsible sister, the behind-the-scenes event planner, the one who avoids drama at all costs. So how did she end up publicly branded as the other woman - and promptly canceled by the Mommy Mafia of Cape Cod? One disastrous relationship, a missing background detail, and suddenly Winnie’s quiet life is in shambles.
\n\n
Enter Lorenzo Santini, the world-renowned surgeon, feared and revered by colleagues, with zero patience for incompetence and life’s ordinary tasks. Known to hospital staff as Dr. Satan, Lorenzo needs a personal assistant - and Winnie needs a fresh start. It’s strictly business . . . until it isn’t.
\n\n
As Winnie manages Lorenzo’s demanding schedule and carefully guarded life, she discovers there’s more beneath his intimidating exterior than arrogance and ambition. And Lorenzo begins to see that Winnie is anything but invisible.
\n\n
Once in a blue moon, two people who seem to have nothing in common could turn out to be perfect for each other after all.
\n
Joshua and Lauren are the perfect couple. Newly married, they're wildly in love, each on a successful and rewarding career path. Then Lauren is diagnosed with a terminal illness.
\nAs Lauren's disease progresses, Joshua struggles to make the most of the time he has left with his wife and to come to terms with his future - a future without the only woman he's ever loved. He's so consumed with finding a way to avoid the inevitable ending that he never imagines his life after Lauren.
\nBut Lauren has a plan to keep her husband moving forward. A plan hidden in the letters she leaves him. In those letters, one for every month in the year after her death, Lauren leads Joshua on a journey through pain, anger, and denial. It's a journey that will take Joshua from his attempt at a dinner party for family and friends to getting rid of their bed . . . from a visit with a psychic medium to a kiss with a woman who isn't Lauren. As his grief makes room for laughter and new relationships, Joshua learns Lauren's most valuable lesson: The path to happiness doesn't follow a straight line.
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After her father loses the family fortune in an insider-trading scheme, single mom Parker Welles is faced with some hard decisions. First order of business: go to Gideon's Cove, Maine, to sell the only thing she now owns - a decrepit house in need of some serious flipping. When her father's wingman, James Cahill, asks to go with her, she's not thrilled . . . even if he is fairly gorgeous and knows his way around a toolbox.
Having to fend for herself financially for the first time in her life, Parker signs on as a florist's assistant and starts to find out who she really is. Maybe James isn't the glib lawyer she always thought he was. And maybe the house isn't the only thing that needs a little TLC . . .
When Grace Emerson's ex-fiance starts dating her younger sister, extreme measures are called for. To keep everyone from obsessing about her love life, Grace announces that she's seeing someone . . . Someone wonderful. Someone handsome. Someone completely made up.
\nWho is this Mr Right? Someone . . . exactly unlike her renegade neighbour Callahan O'Shea. Well, someone with his looks, maybe. His hot body. His knife-sharp sense of humour. His smarts and his big heart. Whoa. No. Callahan O'Shea is not her perfect man! Not with his unsavoury past. So why does Mr Wrong feel so . . . right?
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One morning, Jessa-Lynn Morton walks into the family taxidermy shop to find that her father has committed suicide, right there on one of the metal tables. Shocked and grieving, Jessa steps up to manage the failing business, while the rest of the Morton family crumbles.
\nHer mother starts sneaking into the shop to make aggressively lewd art with the taxidermied animals. Her brother Milo withdraws, struggling to function. And Brynn, Milo’s wife - and the only person Jessa’s ever been in love with - walks out without a word.
\nAs Jessa seeks out less-than-legal ways of generating income, her mother’s art escalates - picture a figure of her dead husband and a stuffed buffalo in an uncomfortably sexual pose - and the Mortons reach a tipping point.
\nFor the first time, Jessa has no choice but to learn who these people truly are, and ultimately how she fits alongside them.
Cherry Hendricks might be down on her luck, but she can write the book on what makes something funny: she’s a professional clown who creates raucous, zany fun at gigs all over Orlando. Between her clowning and her shifts at an aquarium store for extra cash, she’s always hustling. Not to mention balancing her judgmental mother, her messy love life, and her equally messy community of fellow performers.
\nThings start looking up when Cherry meets Margot the Magnificent - a much older lesbian magician - who seems to have worked out the lines between art, business, and life, and has a slick, successful career to prove it. With Margot’s mentorship and industry connections, Cherry is sure to take her art to the next level. Plus, Margot is sexy as hell. It’s not long before Cherry must decide how much she’s willing to risk for Margot and for her own explosive new act - and what kind of clown she wants to be under her suit.
If she's being honest, Sammie Lucas is scared of her son. Working from home in the close quarters of their Florida house, she lives with one wary eye peeled on Samson, a sullen, unknowable boy who resists her every attempt to bond with him.
\nUncertain in her own feelings about motherhood, she tries her best - driving, cleaning, cooking, prodding him to finish projects for school - while growing increasingly resentful of Monika, her confident but absent wife.
\nAs Samson grows from feral toddler to surly teenager, Sammie's life begins to deteriorate into a mess of unruly behavior, and her struggle to create a picture-perfect queer family unravels. When her son's hostility finally spills over into physical aggression, Sammie must confront her role in the mess - and the possibility that it will never be clean again.
Once there were two sisters born with a bond so strong that it forged them together forever. Roa and Essie called it the hum. It was a magic they cherished - until the day a terrible accident took Essie’s life and trapped her soul in this world.
\nDax - the heir to Firgaard’s throne - was responsible for the accident. Roa swore to hate him forever. But eight years later he returned, begging for her help. He was determined to dethrone his cruel father, under whose oppressive reign Roa’s people had suffered.
\nRoa made him a deal: she’d give him the army he needed if he made her queen. Only as queen could she save her people from Firgaard’s rule.
\nThen a chance arises to right every wrong - an opportunity for Roa to rid herself of this enemy king and rescue her beloved sister. During the Relinquishing, when the spirits of the dead are said to return, Roa discovers she can reclaim her sister for good.
\nAll she has to do is kill the king.
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No matter how far she runs, the forest of Edgewood always comes for Emeline Lark. The scent of damp earth curls into her nose when she sings and moss creeps across the stage. It’s as if the woods of her childhood, shrouded in folklore and tall tales, are trying to reclaim her. But Emeline has no patience for silly superstitions.
\nWhen her grandfather disappears, leaving only a mysterious orb in his wake, the stories Emeline has always scoffed at suddenly seem less foolish. She enters the forest she has spent years trying to escape, only to have Hawthorne Fell, a handsome and brooding tithe collector, try to dissuade her from searching.
\nRefusing to be deterred, Emeline finds herself drawn to the court of the fabled Wood King himself. She makes a deal - her voice for her grandfather’s freedom. Little does she know, she’s stumbled into the middle of a curse much bigger than herself, one that threatens the existence of this eerie world she’s trapped in, along with the devastating boy who feels so familiar.
\nWith the help of Hawthorne - an enemy turned reluctant ally who she grows closer to each day - Emeline sets out to not only save her grandfather’s life, but to right past wrongs, and in the process, discover her true voice.
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On the night Rune’s life changed forever, blood ran in the streets. Now, in the aftermath of a devastating revolution, witches have been diminished from powerful rulers to outcasts ruthlessly hunted due to their waning magic, and Rune must hide what she is.
\nSpending her days pretending to be nothing more than a vapid young socialite, Rune spends her nights as the Crimson Moth, a witch vigilante who rescues her kind from being purged. When a rescue goes wrong, she decides to throw the witch hunters off her scent and gain the intel she desperately needs by courting the handsome Gideon Sharpe - a notorious and unforgiving witch hunter loyal to the revolution - who she can't help but find herself falling for.
\nGideon loathes the decadence and superficiality Rune represents, but when he learns the Crimson Moth has been using Rune’s merchant ships to smuggle renegade witches out of the republic, he inserts himself into her social circles by pretending to court her right back. He soon realizes that beneath her beauty and shallow façade, is someone fiercely intelligent and tender who feels like his perfect match. Except, what if she’s the very villain he’s been hunting?
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In the beginning, there was the Namsara: the child of sky and spirit, who carried love and laughter wherever he went. But where there is light, there must be darkness - and so there was also the Iskari. The child of blood and moonlight. The destroyer. The death-bringer.
These are the legends that Asha, daughter of the king of Firgaard, has grown up learning in hushed whispers, drawn to the forbidden figures of the past. But it isn’t until she becomes the fiercest, most feared dragon slayer in the land that she takes on the role of the next Iskari - a lonely destiny that leaves her feeling more like a weapon than a girl.
Asha conquers each dragon and brings its head to the king, but no kill can free her from the shackles that await at home: her betrothal to the cruel commandant, a man who holds the truth about her nature in his palm. When she’s offered the chance to gain her freedom in exchange for the life of the most powerful dragon in Firgaard, she finds that there may be more truth to the ancient stories than she ever could have expected. With the help of a secret friend - a slave boy from her betrothed’s household - Asha must shed the layers of her Iskari bondage and open her heart to love, light, and a truth that has been kept from her.
Rune Winters is on the run. Ever since the boy she loved, Gideon Sharpe, revealed who she was and delivered her into enemy hands, everyone wants her dead. If Rune hopes to survive, she must ally herself with the cruel and dangerous Cressida Roseblood, who’s planning to take back the Republic and reinstate a Reign of Witches - something Cressida needs Rune to accomplish.
\nApparently it wasn’t enough for Rune to deceive Gideon; she’s now betrayed him by allying herself with Cressida - the witch who made his life a living hell. Gideon won’t allow the Republic to fall to the witches and be plunged back into the nightmares of the past. In order to protect this new world he fought for, every last witch must die - especially Rune Winters.
\nWhen Rune makes Gideon an offer he can’t refuse, the two must pair up to accomplish dangerous goals. The more they’re forced into each other’s company, the more Gideon realises the feelings he had for Rune aren’t as dead and buried as he thought. And now he’s faced with a terrible choice: sacrifice the girl he loves to stop a monster taking back power, or let Rune live and watch the world he fought so hard for burn.
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At the end of one world, there always lies another.
\nSafire, a soldier, knows her role in this world is to serve the King of Firgaard - helping to maintain the peace in her oft-troubled nation.
\nEris, a deadly pirate, has no such conviction. Known as the Death Dancer for her ability to evade even the most determined of pursuers, she possesses a superhuman power to move between worlds.
\nWhen one can roam from dimension to dimension, can one ever be home? Can love and loyalty truly exist?
\nNow Safire and Eris - sworn enemies - find themselves on a common mission: to find Asha, the last Namsara. From the port city of Darmoor to the fabled faraway Star Isles, their search and their stories become woven ever more tightly together as they discover the uncertain fate they’re hurtling towards may just be a shared one. In this world - and the next.
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Accidentally on Purpose dives into Kristen Kish’s childhood as a Korean adoptee in the Midwest, finding purpose in kitchens, and becoming the season 10 winner of - and now host - of Top Chef all the while navigating life in the spotlight, coming out in her adult years, and all the life lessons in between.
\nKristen Kish never set out to live a public life - not when she was a carefree softball-tossing kid, not in high school working at a pretzel stand, not even, briefly, as a working model. And definitely not when she finally landed her true calling as a chef. But in those early days, becoming a chef meant tethering oneself to a restaurant, not a television set. But it happened naturally (or as naturally as possible, given all the technology and TV magic involved), even if it was totally unanticipated.
\nOf course, like most things in life, the road to this full circle moment - from Top Chef season 10 winner to now hosting - was so much more winding and complicated than it may have appeared from the outside. From growing up as an adoptee in the Midwest, to trying to fit in with all the other girls who were busy dating boys, to coming out and finding love when she least expected it, Kristen learned that, unlike a map, no set of plans or definitions can dictate or explain a life. In fact, accidents happen. That curveballs will come. And they will often be consequential to one’s path.
\nIn Accidentally on Purpose, what defines Kristen’s story aren’t the missteps or even the pleasant surprises that crop up. It’s how to respond when they do, and the decisions made at those intersections. Because while accidents may be unexpected, they don’t have to be at odds with purpose. And as Kristen approaches life’s milestones, big and small, with intention - the ones she expected, and those she didn’t - she realises she can write her own definitions and chart her own course.
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In the wake of her grandmother's passing, Sydney Singleton finds a hidden photograph of a little girl who looks more like Sydney than her own sister, or mother. She soon discovers the mystery girl in the photograph is her aunt, Carol, who was one of six local North Carolina Black girls to go missing in the 1960s. For the last several decades, not a soul has talked about Carol or what really happened to her. With her grandmother gone and Sydney looking to start a family of her own, she is determined to unravel the truth behind her long-lost aunt and the sinister silence surrounding her.
\nUnfortunately, this is familiar territory for Sydney. Several years prior, working the crime beat as a journalist on the case of another missing girl, her obsession eventually led to a psychotic break. And now, in the suffocating grip of fertility treatments and a marriage that's beginning to crumble, Sydney’s relentless pursuit might just lead her down the same path of destruction. As she delves deeper into Carol's fate, her own troubled past resurfaces, clawing its way to the surface with a vengeance. The web of secrets and lies entangling her family leaves Sydney questioning everything - her fixation on the missing girls, her future as a mom, and everyone she’s come to trust.
\nDelving into family, community, secrets, and motherhood, We Don’t Talk About Carol is a gripping and deeply emotional story about overcoming the rotten roots of your family tree - and what we’ll do for those we love.
Eight years after Graceling, Bitterblue is now queen of Monsea. But the influence of her father, a violent psychopath with mind-altering abilities, lives on. Her advisors, who have run things since Leck died, believe in a forward-thinking plan:
\nPardon all who committed terrible acts under Leck's reign, and forget anything bad ever happened. But when Bitterblue begins sneaking outside the castle - disguised and alone - to walk the streets of her own city, she starts realising that the kingdom has been under the thirty-five-year spell of a madman, and the only way to move forward is to revisit the past.
Two thieves, who only steal what has already been stolen, change her life forever. They hold a key to the truth of Leck's reign. And one of them, with an extreme skill called a Grace that he hasn't yet identified, holds a key to her heart.
A must-read title for all fans of Patrick Rothfuss and Trudi Canavan, Fire is an exceptional fantasy novel. From the deft characterisation to the gripping story, the fast-paced action to the evocative prose, this is one of the strongest fantasy novels of the year.
\nSet in a world of stunningly beautiful, exceptionally dangerous monsters, Fire is one of the most dangerous monsters of all - a human one. Marked out by her vivid red hair, she's more than attractive. Fire is mesmerising.
\nBut with this extraordinary beauty comes influence and power. People who are susceptible to her appeal will do anything for her attention, and for her affection. They will turn away from their families, their work, and their duties for her. They will forget their responsibilities to please her . . . and worse, crush nations, neglect kingdoms and abuse their power.
\nAware of her power, and afraid of it, Fire lives in a corner of the world away from people, and away from temptation. Until the day comes when she is needed - a day when, for her king, she has to stand against not only his enemies, but also against herself . . .
Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight - she’s a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live a life of privilege, but Graced as she is with killing, she is forced to work as the king’s thug.
She never expects to fall in love with beautiful Prince Po.
She never expects to learn the truth behind her Grace - or the terrible secret that lies hidden far away . . . a secret that could destroy all seven kingdoms with words alone.
With elegant, evocative prose and a cast of unforgettable characters, debut author Kristin Cashore creates a mesmerizing world, a death-defying adventure, and a heart-racing romance that will consume you, hold you captive, and leave you wanting more.
In the immediate aftermath of the events of Winterkeep, Bitterblue and her entourage begin the journey back to Monsea with the only copies of the formulas for the zilphium weapon. Bitterblue must decide what she will do with her world-shaping power. But before they've even made it halfway home, storms drive their ship off course and then wrecking them in the ice far north of the Royal Continent. The survivors must make a harrowing trek across the ice in order to make it back to Monsea.
\nSeasparrow is told entirely from the point of view of Hava, Bitterblue's personal spy and secret half-sister. And while Bitterblue grapples with how to carry the responsibility of a weapon of mass destruction, Hava must decide what she will do with herself in the new world Bitterblue will make.
Wilhelmina Hart is part of the infamous class of 2020. Her high school years began with the election of Donald Trump and they ended with COVID. Now Wilhelmina, like so many of her peers, is in limbo, having deferred college because of the pandemic. Compounding the national trauma of 2016 to 2020, Wilhelmina has wrestled with the devastating loss of one of her three beloved aunts shortly after the 2016 election.
\nThis is a loss she felt so keenly that she’s spent the last years deep in her personal depression, only obscured by the seemingly endless waves of national trauma. Now on the cusp on the most consequential election in living memory, Wilhelmina may have found a door in her darkness and perhaps the courage to pass through it, if she can decipher the bizarre messages that keep appearing in her life.
Four years after Bitterblue left off, a new land has been discovered to the east: Torla; and the closest nation to Monsea is Winterkeep. Winterkeep is a land of miracles, a democratic republic run by people who like each other, where people speak to telepathic sea creatures, adopt telepathic foxes as pets, and fly across the sky in ships attached to balloons.
But when Bitterblue’s envoys to Winterkeep drown under suspicious circumstances, she and Giddon and her half sister, Hava, set off to discover the truth - putting both Bitterblue’s life and Giddon’s heart to the test when Bitterbue is kidnapped. Giddon believes she has drowned, leaving him and Hava to solve the mystery of what’s wrong in Winterkeep.
Lovisa Cavenda is the teenage daughter of a powerful Scholar and Industrialist (the opposing governing parties) with a fire inside her that is always hungry, always just nearly about to make something happen. She is the key to everything, but only if she can figure out what’s going on before anyone else, and only if she’s willing to transcend the person she’s been all her life.
What happens when a twenty-three-year-old woman stumbles into a world of magick, mystery, and one ridiculously hot, broody hero? She breaks all the rules, obviously.
\nHannah has always played by the book - until a tarot reading goes sideways and drops her into a world where magick is real, danger lurks in the shadows, and men look like they've stepped out of a fantasy novel. Case in point: Kane, the kingdom's gruff yet infuriatingly gorgeous protector, who claims Hannah's arrival isn't an accident. Apparently, she's the key to saving his realm from ruin.
\nHannah's priorities?
\nGet her tarot card back.
\nFind a way home.
\nAbsolutely not fall for the battle-scarred warrior who makes her want to forget all her plans.
\nBut as the palace's secrets unravel, and enemies close in, the line between duty and desire blurs. Because if Hannah wants to return to her world, she'll have to embrace the magick inside her and trust the one man who makes her question everything.
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Amanda Ward has a five-step manifestation routine, a ritual kit in every purse, and a dating profile designed to reflect the version of herself she wishes she could be: grounded, glowing, and in total alignment. In reality, she's overwhelmed, under-satisfied, and one passive-aggressive email away from a full-blown meltdown.
\nWhen a sext thread with her in-app temptation, Declan Thorne, leads to an invitation she can't resist, Amanda finds herself face-to-face with the man behind the messages - a devastatingly hot, emotionally constipated venture capitalist. And the moment she tries bringing a bit of magick into their night, a tarot-triggered portal yanks them both into another realm entirely.
\nNow stranded in the Kingdom of Wands with an aggravating, broody CEO-turned-reluctant-bodyguard and zero clue how to get home, Amanda's facing nightly on-stage performances, suspicious queens, and magick that refuses to cooperate.
\nWhat's worse is that her biggest issue might not be the kingdom - it might be catching real feelings for the one man who makes her want to drop the act.
\nTo survive and find their way back home, she'll have to ditch the affirmations and the carefully controlled persona she's been clinging to and learn how to wield something way more powerful - her truth.
\nEven if it burns everything down.
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For fifty years, the Key Corporation has defended humanity against a deadly virus that spreads through touch. Lovers don't kiss, or even hold hands. Personal boundaries are valued above all. Break the laws, and you'll face execution.
\nElodie, a talented young nurse, believes in the mission of the Key and has never questioned the laws that control her life. But Elodie is forced to break the rules when she sets out in search of a terminal patient who goes missing while under her care.
\nFrom the outside, it seems like Aiden was given everything he could want from the Key - a purpose, an education, and a future. But Aiden knows more than he's letting on, and the dark secrets he's keeping could tear the Key's strict society apart.
\nWhen Elodie and Aiden's lives collide, the fallout will be devastating. What do you do when the brutal system that once kept you safe hunts you down?
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Run.
Safety comes with a price.
\nThe Key Corporation has kept Westfall safe from pandemics for the last fifty years. But that's not all they've done . . .
\nAfter discovering the shocking truth behind the Key Corporation, nurse Elodie and misfit Aiden have managed to escape in search of New Dawn - the stronghold for the Eos resistance movement. There, they can fight for a better world, one where everyone can make their own futures.
\nBut things aren't always as they seem, and as they navigate the tricky paths between perception and reality, freedom and fighting for survival, the two young rebels must discover who they can trust, even as they learn more about who they really are . . .
\nAnd change also comes at a cost.
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Gemma Summers is broke, burnt out, and about three weeks from moving back in with her parents. Her career has imploded, her confidence is circling the drain, and the last thing she needs is a run in with Alder Hawke - the dangerously charming ex who still haunts her dreams and could buy her a new life with just his pocket change.
\nWhen a magickal tarot card sends them spiraling - literally - into another realm and they land in the steampunk inspired Kingdom of Cups, Gemma is forced to rely on the man who shattered her trust, broke her heart, and somehow still makes her weak in the knees.
\nBut survival in the world of Towerfall is anything but simple, especially when she's caught between the ex who wants to own her and a roguish former king who sees through every one of her defenses.
\nWith secrets mounting, identities unraveling, and her heart very much on the line, Gemma must decide: will she cling to the version of herself she built in the real world . . . or risk everything to become the woman she was always meant to be?
\nOne enchanted tarot card. Two infuriatingly hot men. And a modern woman who refuses to be anyone's damsel.
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Atlas James has lost her way.
\nIn a last-ditch effort to pull her life together, she’s working on a community service program rehabbing trails in the Western Sierras. The only plus is that the days are so exhausting that Atlas might just be tired enough to forget that this was one of her dad’s favorite places in the world. Before cancer stole him from her life, that is.
\nUsing real names is forbidden on the trail. So Atlas becomes Maps, and with her team - Books, Sugar, Junior, and King - she heads into the wilderness. As she sheds the lies she’s built up as walls to protect herself, she realises that four strangers might know her better than anyone has before. And with the end of the trail racing to meet them, Maps is left counting down the days until she returns to her old life - without her new family, and without King, who’s become more than just a friend.
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Nieve Monroe is devastated after her boyfriend Carter dies saving her from drowning. Even worse she blames herself for his death . . . and so does his best friend, Max. He was there with them on that fateful day, and he’s never liked Nieve.
\nUnable to pull herself from her grief and wanting to hide from the accusation in his eyes, Nieve goes to stay with her grandmother, who has always had strange stories to tell of uncanny happenings, of magic and make believe. The next morning, Nieve wakes up on the first day of college, the year before.
\nThis time she plans to make sure Carter never follows her into that river. She’ll do everything in her power to keep him safe, even if it means losing him in other ways. But the more distance she puts between her and Carter, the closer she gets to Max, drawn to him in ways she never expected.
\nBut is she betraying Carter if the only way she can save him is to move on? And can she ever forget her past to embrace her future?
\n
Ellis and Easton have been inseparable since childhood. But when a rash decision throws Ellis’s life - and her relationship with Easton - into chaos she’s forced to move halfway across the country, far from everything she’s ever known.
\nNow Ellis hasn’t spoken to Easton in a year, and maybe it’s better that way; maybe eventually the Easton shaped hole in her heart will heal. But when Easton’s mother invites her home for a celebration, Ellis finds herself tangled up in the web of heartache, betrayal, and anger she left behind . . . and with the boy she never stopped loving.
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Inspired by an astonishing true story from World War II, a young woman with a talent for forgery helps hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis.
\nEva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years - a book she recognises as The Book of Lost Names.
The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II - an experience Eva remembers well - and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from - or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer - but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war?
As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears.
After being stolen from her wealthy German parents and raised in the unforgiving wilderness of eastern Europe, a young woman finds herself alone in 1941 after her kidnapper dies. Her solitary existence is interrupted, however, when she happens upon a group of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror.
\nStunned to learn what’s happening in the outside world, she vows to teach the group all she can about surviving in the forest - and in turn, they teach her some surprising lessons about opening her heart after years of isolation. But when she is betrayed and escapes into a German-occupied village, her past and present come together in a shocking collision that could change everything.
\nInspired by incredible true stories of survival against staggering odds
Paris, 1939: Young mothers Elise and Juliette become fast friends the day they meet in the beautiful Bois de Boulogne. Though there is a shadow of war creeping across Europe, neither woman suspects that their lives are about to irrevocably change.
\nWhen Elise becomes a target of the German occupation, she entrusts Juliette with the most precious thing in her life - her young daughter, playmate to Juliette’s own little girl. But nowhere is safe in war, not even a quiet little bookshop like Juliette’s Librairie des Rêves, and, when a bomb falls on their neighborhood, Juliette’s world is destroyed along with it.
\nMore than a year later, with the war finally ending, Elise returns to reunite with her daughter, only to find her friend’s bookstore reduced to rubble - and Juliette nowhere to be found. What happened to her daughter in those last, terrible moments? Juliette has seemingly vanished without a trace, taking all the answers with her. Elise’s desperate search leads her to New York - and to Juliette - one final, fateful time.
A mother makes a heartbreaking choice in this unforgettable story about devotion and sacrifice in World War II–era France.
\nMarie Vachon experiences firsthand the devastation of the German invasion when she takes in a Jewish refugee named Josiane. A loving, if temporary, home for the displaced child. A second chance at motherhood for Marie.
\nAfter three years, an inseparable bond is created. It’s one that leads Marie and Josiane to an inevitable but surprising reckoning that calls into question what motherhood means - and where it ends.
Colette Marceau has been stealing jewels for nearly as long as she can remember, following the centuries-old code of honor instilled in her by her mother, take only from the cruel and unkind, and give to those in need. Never was their family tradition more important than seven decades earlier, during the Second World War, when Annabel and Colette worked side by side in Paris to fund the French Resistance.
\nBut one night in 1942, it all went wrong. Annabel was arrested by the Germans, and Colette’s four-year-old sister, Liliane, disappeared in the chaos of the raid, along with an exquisite diamond bracelet sewn into the hem of her nightgown for safekeeping. Soon after, Annabel was executed, and Liliane’s body was found floating in the Seine - but the bracelet was nowhere to be found.
\nSeventy years later, Colette - who has “redistributed” $30 million in jewels over the decades to fund many worthy organisations - has done her best to put her tragic past behind her, but her life begins to unravel when the long-missing bracelet suddenly turns up in a museum exhibit in Boston. If Colette can discover where it has been all this time - and who owns it now - she may finally learn the truth about what happened to her sister. But she isn’t the only one for whom the bracelet holds answers, and when someone from her childhood lays claim to the diamonds, she’s forced to confront the ghosts of her past as never before.
\nAgainst all odds, there may still be a chance to bring a murderer to justice - but first, Colette will have to summon the courage to open her own battered heart.
Champagne, 1940: Inès has just married Michel, the owner of storied champagne house Maison Chauveau, when the Germans invade. As the danger mounts, Michel turns his back on his marriage to begin hiding munitions for the Résistance. Inès fears they’ll be exposed, but for Céline, half-Jewish wife of Chauveau’s chef de cave, the risk is even greater - rumors abound of Jews being shipped east to an unspeakable fate.
\nWhen Céline recklessly follows her heart in one desperate bid for happiness, and Inès makes a dangerous mistake with a Nazi collaborator, they risk the lives of those they love - and the champagne house that ties them together.
\nNew York, 2019: Liv Kent has just lost everything when her eccentric French grandmother shows up unannounced, insisting on a trip to France. But the older woman has an ulterior motive - and a tragic, decades-old story to share. When past and present finally collide, Liv finds herself on a road to salvation that leads right to the caves of the Maison Chauveau.
Months have passed since General Turner’s attack on Rapid City, and Dani’s group of resistance fighters are still grieving the loss of one of their own. Through tragedy and inner turmoil, Dani and Kate have finally found themselves on the same side of the war and fighting for control of the wasteland.
\nWhen the rumor of a traitor among Dani’s inner circle is revealed and information about the past threatens to completely derail Kate, it makes staying hidden from the general and Simon all but impossible.
\nWith the help of an unexpected ally within the National Armed Forces, and a final showdown imminent, Dani and Kate must push past their grief and rely on each other more than ever if they have any chance of a future together.
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The battle for the wastelands continues as Dani and Kate struggle to find common ground.
\nAs White River burns, Danielle Clark wants revenge. She rejoins the Resistance, only this time, her friends are by her side. With Simon now in pursuit and her relationship with William wavering, her only hope to stay one step ahead of the fight is to trust her once sworn enemy and the general's daughter, Katelyn Turner.
\nBack within the ranks of the National Armed Forces, Kate struggles to understand the push for power and dominance over the wastelands. Her time spent as a prisoner in White River has left her conflicted about her command, and her growing attraction for Dani has awakened a desperate need to protect her from a new lethal force introduced by the general.
\nThrough it all, Danielle and Kate can't seem to stay away from each other even as the war over the Badlands tests their loyalty to each other and to their people.
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Danielle Clark is done with the Resistance. After years of leading a relentless charge against the National Armed Forces, she has nothing left to give. Her brother Lucas in tow, Dani leaves the frontlines for the solitude of the wastelands, content to start a new life as a scavenger. Dani thought she’d finally found peace until the general’s daughter, Katelyn Turner, shows up on her doorstep and brings the fight right back to her.
\nNow Dani has to decide what to do about Kate, ranking member of the NAF, a once-sworn enemy . . . and a woman she can’t keep out of her head. The growing spark of attraction forces Dani into an impossible choice between her newfound life and Kate’s fate. She must act quickly or risk losing everything.
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It’s Emerson Fields’s last summer before she starts her dream internship at the prestigious Bardot Design Studio architectural firm in Paris. The only problem? Her application hasn’t been accepted yet. Without a backup plan in place, Emerson heads to North Carolina to stay with her aunt and uncle and resume her seasonal job waitressing at the beach . . . and her no strings fling with town local Peyton Reilly.
\nIn desperate need of a Bardot distraction, Emerson asks her coworker Alice Scott to teach her how to surf. What she doesn’t expect is to fall so quickly for the Aussie surfer. While her casual relationship with Peyton is in full swing, her feelings for Alice deepen, and her future with Bardot hangs in the balance. Emerson is standing at a crossroads. The question is, which path will she take?
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For Peyton Reilly no strings means no heartache. She hasn’t had a relationship since Hanna Choi, her high school girlfriend, broke her heart almost a decade ago. But everything’s great. She has a job she loves, a loyal group of friends, and plenty of time for surfing. At least until Hanna unexpectedly accepts a job at the aquarium where Peyton works.
Their reunion is anything but joyous. Despite Hanna’s cold shoulder, Peyton can’t stop old and familiar feelings from pouring back. When Hanna slowly begins to open up, painful memories Peyton’s worked hard to forget remind her that getting too close could lead to another broken heart.
Peyton quickly learns that sometimes all your heart needs is a second chance, but are the scars of the past too deep to heal?
When a shocking murder occurs in the home of Angie and David Sheehan, their lives are shattered. Desperate to defend their family, they turn to small-town lawyer Martine Dumont for help, but Martine isn’t just legal counsel - she’s also the mother of Angie’s first love, Julian, a now-successful New York City criminal defense attorney. As Julian and Angie confront their shared past and long-buried guilt from a tragic accident years ago, they must navigate their own culpability and the unresolved feelings between them.
\nSpanning decades, from the ski slopes of rural Colorado to the streets of post-9/11 New York City and back again, Kristin Koval’s debut novel Penitence is an examination of the complexities of familial loyalty, the journey of redemption, and the profound experience of true forgiveness.
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For five friends vacationing on Block Island, it’s a summer to remember. How can they forget it when only four make it back to the mainland? One vanishes without a trace. A friendship is changed forever.
\nFive years after Zoe Gilbert’s disappearance, Callie Sutter invites her estranged friends to reunite on the anniversary of the mystery that tore them apart. Back on Block Island, they can come together again, memorialise Zoe, allay old resentments and recriminations, and put the past to rest. It won’t be easy. A true crime podcaster is most eager for the reunion. She’s made a name for herself by casting suspicion on Zoe’s friends, and threatens to expose them all as cold-blooded liars and conspirators in a crime.
\nDriven by self-preservation, Callie and her friends must reckon with their long-held secrets and shared history if they’re to find out what really happened to Zoe on that hot August day. No one is prepared for the truth.
When Marina’s father summons her to their Croatian island from New York - and away from her evaporating marriage - to help him save his failing cheese factory, she must face her rocky past and an uncertain future.
\nHow do you begin again when the past threatens to drown you?
\nIn the throes of an unraveling marriage, New Yorker Marina Maržić returns to her native Croatian island where she helps her father with his struggling cheese factory, Sirana. Forced to confront her divided Croatian-American identity and her past as a refugee from the former Yugoslavia, Marina moves in with her parents on Pag and starts a new life working at Sirana.
\nAs she gradually settles back into a place that was once home, her life becomes inextricably intertwined with their island’s cheese. When her past with the son of a rival cheesemaker stokes further unrest on their divided island, she must find a way to save Sirana - and in the process, learn to belong on her own terms.
\nExploring underlying cultural and ethnic tensions in a complex region mired in centuries of war and turmoil, The Cheesemaker’s Daughter takes us through the year before Croatia joins the European Union. On the dramatic moonscape island of Pag, we are transported to strikingly barren vistas, medieval towns, and the mesmerising Adriatic Sea, providing a rare window into a tight-knit community with strong family ties in a corner of the world where divisions are both real and imagined.
\nAsking questions central to identity and the meaning of home, this richly drawn story reckons with how we survive inherited and personal traumas, and what it means to heal and reinvent oneself in the face of life’s challenges.
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In 1962 Virginia, with the world teetering on the brink, a schoolteacher searches for strength and hope.
\nPoppy Turner has spent more than a decade teaching children grammar and arithmetic. Suddenly her days are steeped in fears that reach well beyond a classroom filled with air-raid drills and anxious young faces.
\nAs a mother-to-be, she worries about bringing a child into a time of such turmoil. To find stability, she will have to decide if she’s willing to look more closely at her own past.
When Martina Torres arrives in the glamorous and vibrant metropolis of Hong Kong, newly married to her high school sweetheart, the world seems to be her oyster. But looks can be deceiving. Adrift in a foreign city, with no job and no friends, Martina chafes in her new role as Expat Wife.
\nBut her luck changes when she meets Veronica Hawkins. Beautiful, sophisticated, and very, very rich, Veronica is the epitome of Old Hong Kong - the last surviving member of a British mercantile dynasty that built the city during its colonial heyday. Martina can hardly believe her fortune when she's taken under Veronica's wing and into her confidence, with Veronica helping her to find a new apartment, a new career, and most importantly, a new self.
\nVeronica transforms Martina's life and then, shockingly, she dies. She disappears over the side of a yacht during a party attended by Hong Kong's most influential people - yet somehow there are no witnesses.
\nWas it murder? Suicide? A terrible accident? What really happened to Veronica Hawkins?
\nSomebody knows but nobody's telling.
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Meredith Hansel should be having the best week of her life. After establishing herself as a portfolio manager at a prestigious Wall Street firm, she’s in the national spotlight for the innovative funds she created. But as Meredith prepares to celebrate, the plates she’s kept spinning for years begin to Her strained marriage reaches a breaking point. Her conscientious teenage daughter acts out under mysterious pressures. Someone vandalizes her home with disturbing graffiti. And Betsey, her most trusted ally at the financial firm, goes rogue, and Meredith is forced to sign a restraining order against her.
\nThen her worlds collide when she receives a thumb drive and a cryptic note from Betsey threatening to reveal a secret that could have devastating effects on Meredith’s family . . . unless she can figure out what Betsey wants and deliver it in time.
\nAs Meredith begins to dig into the data, however, she begins to suspect that it’s no coincidence her life is crumbling. That maybe what’s happening to her family is connected to what’s boiling beneath the surface at her investment company. Soon Meredith realises there’s only one way to avoid taking the fall, and it all hinges on Betsey’s true motives. Was she really threatening Meredith or trying to warn her?
Senior year would have been stressful enough without an apocalypse. When the holograms arrived, allegedly offering safe passage to those who stepped through their vertexes, Alexandra Lucas thought going or staying would be the hardest decision of her life. She was wrong.
\nBecause she is the one person who knows the truth, a truth that will change everything: the holograms lied.
\nAlex can't deny this new world is mesmerising. Holo technology lets her customize everything from her clothes to her surroundings. But she can't let it distract her from searching for her boyfriend, best friend, and brother. They need to know what happened. Because there's a rebellion brewing, and every utopia has a breaking point. What price must they all pay to survive?
Alexandra Lucas' anxiety disorder was enough to deal with before then mysterious holographic doors suddenly appeared throughout the world, heralding the end of the earth. The holograms claim to be humans from the future offering the promise of safety.
\nA recording plays on loop: heed the warning and step through a portal-like vertex to safety . . . or stay and be destroyed by a comet that is on a collision course with the planet. But without the ability to verify their story, Alex is forced to consider what is best for her friends, her family, and herself.
\nStay or go: everyone must make their own choice. With the deadline of the hologram's prophecy fast approaching, Alex feels as though she's living on a ticking time bomb. But the truth is much, much worse. And every decision comes at a price.
The worst has happened. The Conclave has crashed into the jungle, and humanity builds one last city, clinging to survival in the ruins.
\nForced into a deadly alliance with the Virohi, Ahilya alone can communicate with the cosmic creatures - but she is growing weaker with every encounter. Equally revered and feared by her council, Ahilya desperately tries to balance the needs of her people with the untameable desires of the trapped Virohi.
\nIravan does not believe reconciliation is possible. All he sees is a crumbling bastion being eaten from the inside out. Answering to no law, he would destroy the Virohi before they can destroy humanity.
\nAs Ahilya and Iravan wage war, the planet itself rebels, unleashing new rages of untold power. Caught between a wounded planet and the cosmic creatures, all screaming to exist, the last survivors of the human race confront the approaching maelstrom.
\nAt the last, Ahilya and Iravan must face up to their mistakes to forge peace between themselves - to save each other and humanity.
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Across the mortal and immortal realms, celestial dancers known as apsaras are revered for their beauty, allure, and enchanting magic. But Meneka knows that is not all they are. Trained as a weapon - a warrior - Meneka despises leaving each of her marks in thrall to her potent illusions. With every seduction Lord Indra, king of heaven, demands of her for his political gain, she craves her freedom more and more.
\nWhen a mortal sage’s growing powers threaten Indra’s supremacy in his own realm, Meneka seizes a rare opportunity. She strikes a deal - if she can seduce this dangerous man, Indra will allow her to forgo future missions. But upon meeting the sage, Kaushika, Meneka finds herself captivated by his energy, ignited by his empathy and passion, even though he threatens everything she’s ever known.
\nCan she overthrow the man who is - little by little - stealing her heart, or is Kaushika seducing her instead? As war looms in the skies, Meneka must choose between her duty to protect her home, and the sage who is showing her what true love can mean.
After completing her dangerous mission to seduce Sage Kaushika—and unexpectedly finding love in the process - Meneka enjoys a fragile freedom. She now lives in the mortal realm with Kaushika, both learning to trust each other. Yet deep differences linger between them, and conflicting loyalties may still tear them apart.
\nThe illusion of peace shatters when Meneka is abruptly summoned back to the City of Immortals by Lord Indra, who demands her help in facing a threat from the demonic realm. Meneka wants nothing to do with Indra’s schemes, but she can’t return to Kaushika unless she complies. If she fails, her immortal home will fall, Kaushika will be lost to her, and her very identity as an apsara will become forfeit.
\nTo save all she loves, Meneka must navigate the darkest corners of the Immortal Realm, pursued by monsters and demons. But the greatest danger lies in a truth she cannot outrun - one that could shatter her bond with Kaushika forever.
\nThis sequel to The Legend of Meneka brings the celestial dancer’s saga to a thrilling conclusion, delving deeper into Hindu mythology as she faces an ancient threat - and confronts truths buried in her own heart.
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High above a jungle-planet float the last refuges of humanity - plant-made civilisations held together by tradition, technology, and arcane science. In these living cities, architects are revered above anyone else. If not for their ability to psychically manipulate the architecture, the cities would plunge into the devastating earthrage storms below.
\nCharismatic, powerful, mystical, Iravan is one such architect. In his city, his word is nearly law. His abilities are his identity, but to Ahilya, his wife, they are a way for survival to be reliant on the privileged few. Like most others, she cannot manipulate the plants. And she desperately seeks change.
\nTheir marriage is already thorny - then Iravan is accused of pushing his abilities to forbidden limits. He needs Ahilya to help clear his name; she needs him to tip the balance of rule in their society. As their paths become increasingly intertwined, deadly truths emerge, challenging everything each of them believes. And as the earthrages become longer, and their floating city begins to plummet, Iravan and Ahilya's discoveries might destroy their marriage, their culture, and their entire civilisation.
Two months have passed since Ahilya and Iravan learned the devastating truths behind the earthrages. As the cosmic creatures struggle to break into the world, and Nakshar's architecture disintegrates, the desperate council summons their sister ashrams to a Conclave, to discuss the future of life in the skies.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAhilya, now a councillor, is determined to share the truth about the cosmic beings and the nature of Ecstatic trajection so she can liberate ordinary citizens and save the condemned architects. Her conviction has alienated her allies and created dangerous enemies. Only Iravan has a chance of persuading the Conclave that Ecstatics are not unstable, but he returns from the jungle struggling with his own Ecstasy. He has little control over his second-self, the primal falcon yaksha, and finds the Conclave hostile to his cause.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAs strange, deadly storms break out, threatening refuge even in the skies, Iravan and the other Ecstatic architects face brutal reprisals. And with the barrier restraining the cosmic beings thinning, Ahilya and Iravan know they are running out of time to save everyone. Thrust into the center of the storm, both will have to confront what matters most to them, who they really are, and what it means for the future of humanity.
Seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow has always been strange. Something happened to her and her two older sisters when they were children, something they can’t quite remember but that left each of them with an identical half-moon scar at the base of their throats.
\nIris has spent most of her teenage years trying to avoid the weirdness that sticks to her like tar. But when her eldest sister, Grey, goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Iris learns just how weird her life can get: horned men start shadowing her, a corpse falls out of her sister’s ceiling, and ugly, impossible memories start to twist their way to the forefront of her mind.
\nAs Iris retraces Grey’s last known footsteps and follows the increasingly bizarre trail of breadcrumbs she left behind, it becomes apparent that the only way to save her sister is to decipher the mystery of what happened to them as children.
\nThe closer Iris gets to the truth, the closer she comes to understanding that the answer is dark and dangerous - and that Grey has been keeping a terrible secret from her for years.
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Zara Jones believes in magic because the alternative is too painful to consider - that her murdered sister is gone forever and there is nothing she can do about it. Rather than grieving and moving on, Zara decides she will do whatever it takes to claw her sister back from the grave - even trading in the occult.
\nJude Wolf may be the daughter of a billionaire, but she is also undeniably cursed. After a deal with a demon went horribly wrong, her soul has been slowly turning necrotic. It’s a miserable existence marred by pain, sickness, and monstrous things that taunt her in the night. Now that she’s glimpsed what’s beyond the veil, Jude’s desperate to find someone to undo the damage she’s done to herself.
\nEnter Emer Byrne, an orphaned witch with a dark past and a deadly power, a.k.a. the solution to both Zara’s and Jude’s problems. Though Emer lives a hardscrabble life, she gives away her most valuable asset - her invocations - to women in desperate situations who are willing to sacrifice a piece of their soul in exchange for a scrap of power. Zara and Jude are willing, but they first have to find Emer.
\nWhen Emer’s clients start turning up dead all over London, a vital clue leads Zara and Jude right to her. If a serial killer is targeting her clients, Emer wants to know why - and to stop them. She strikes a tenuous alliance with Zara and Jude to hunt a killer before they are next on his list, even if she can’t give them in return what Zara and Jude want most: a sister and a soul.
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Henry Page has never been in love. He fancies himself a hopeless romantic, but the slo-mo, heart palpitating, can't-eat-can't-sleep kind of love that he's been hoping for just hasn't been in the cards for him - at least not yet. Instead, he's been happy to focus on his grades, on getting into a semi-decent college and finally becoming editor of his school newspaper. Then Grace Town walks into his first period class on the third Tuesday of senior year and he knows everything's about to change.
Grace isn't who Henry pictured as his dream girl - she walks with a cane, wears oversized boys' clothes, and rarely seems to shower. But when Grace and Henry are both chosen to edit the school paper, he quickly finds himself falling for her. It's obvious there's something broken about Grace, but it seems to make her even more beautiful to Henry, and he wants nothing more than to help her put the pieces back together again. And yet, this isn't your average story of boy meets girl.
Krystal Sutherland's brilliant debut is equal parts wit and heartbreak, a potent reminder of the bittersweet bliss that is first love.
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Ellie Efron is heartbroken when her best friend suddenly passes away. How can she possibly refuse her friend’s last request to take care of her rescue dog, Atlas, so he doesn’t end up back at the shelter? Ellie reluctantly agrees but ends up in over her head with the 100-pound, reactive Atlas. Desperate not to let her friend down, she seeks help from an animal behaviorist.
\nFor Hayden Brandt, impermanence is the only constant in life. She’s already lost everyone important to her. Instead of dwelling on her losses, she focuses on helping animals overcome traumas so they can live their best lives. Content, she spends her evenings with simple pleasures such as a glass of wine, a good book, and the occasional no-strings hook-up.
\nEllie and Hayden’s chemistry is instant, though neither is ready to make any promises. But Atlas knows a thing or two about grief, and he just might find a way to give this busy, hopeless romantic and commitment-phobic vet a roadmap to forever.
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When Reagan rescues Sydney from disaster in an Italian cafe, they become instant best friends and spend an idyllic fall sightseeing until Sydney’s semester abroad comes to an end and she returns to the States. Reagan, a young Army lieutenant, has fought her attraction for months, bound by Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and must stay behind and complete her assignment. But their final night together - complete with an illicit kiss - lives on in their minds.
\nOver the next fifteen years, Reagan and Sydney ricochet in and out of each other’s lives, with each parting more excruciating and leaving deeper scars than the last. When DADT is repealed and they both end up in Washington DC , it’s a chance for Reagan to finally win the heart of the woman she’s always loved, if only the Army didn’t threaten to send them to opposite sides of the world. Again.
\nAn epic love story that traverses the complexities of duty, loyalty, and sacrifice across the decades, Sydney and Reagan know what their hearts want, but love keeps slipping through their fingers.
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Bailey Kaczmarek has three loves: her dog, her construction company, and her very large family. After she finds out that her fiancée never stopped dating, she resolves to be content with what she has rather than search for happiness in a relationship. It's not like she has much free time anyway.
\nSkye Kohl is a high-powered commercial real estate broker who spends most of her waking hours negotiating some of the largest leases in the nicest buildings in Chicago. She's so focused on topping the list of the most influential brokers in the city that she ignores her love life.
\nBailey's and Skye's professional and personal lives collide as they join forces on a construction project and deal with their meddling mothers, who think they're perfect for one another. But the more they clash, the hotter their simmering attraction burns.
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In the waning days of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Quinn Prescott and Kirby Davis met during military training. Despite different backgrounds, services, and plans, they fell hard and fast. However, it wasn’t long before distance and the pressures of serving in silence drove them apart.
\nTen years later, Kirby literally runs into Quinn at Chicago Pride. Although she lives in a city of three million, she continues to see Quinn everywhere, and she can’t seem to ignore the pounding in her chest that isn’t always frustration no matter how much she tells herself it is.
\nQuinn knows she made the biggest mistake of her life when she chose her career over Kirby. She’s desperate to make amends, and perhaps even turn their chance meetings into a second chance for romance.
\nKirby’s definitely not giving Quinn a second chance. But how long can she ignore the truth that there's something between them?
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Jane Gray arrives in Milwaukee with a lot to prove and low expectations for success after her former collegiate coach persuades her to sign a WNBA training camp contract. She doesn’t usually throw caution to the wind, but that’s exactly what happens her first night in town, and she lands in bed with a beautiful stranger.
\nJane is shocked to discover she slept with Kinzie Lancaster, brand consultant for Jane’s new team - the Milwaukee Pitbulls. And she’s even more stunned when her career begins to heat up after an ACL injury stalled her bright future and years of bouncing around the league destroyed her confidence. When passion and pleasure turn to promises of forever, the love and success she has always dreamed of is suddenly within reach and she must put everything on the line to discover she deserves love.
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Since Zilan entered the world of royal alchemists, she has learned that alchemy comes at a price. She has lost loved ones in her search for broader justice against the evil Empress and all she wants now is to find some way to bring them back. Resurrection is her specialty, after all.
\nIn search of the myth of Penglai Island, where it’s rumored life can be fully restored, Zilan starts a new adventure. But when old threats come back to haunt her and the path to Penglai Island means facing down unpredictable, sometimes dangerous, alchemists, she wonders just how high of a price she may be willing to pay.
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Half British Reaper, half Japanese Shinigami Ren Scarborough is no longer the girl who was chased out of England - she is the Goddess of Death ruling Japan’s underworld. But her problems have never been greater. Her Shinigami see her as a foreigner on the throne. Her brother, Neven, is gone, lost in the deep darkness. And her fiancé, Hiro, has been killed by her own hand.
\nThen Ren receives the most troubling news yet - Reapers have been spotted in Japan, and it’s only a matter of time before Ivy, now Britain’s Death Goddess, comes to claim her revenge.
\nRen’s last hope is to appeal to the god of storms and seas, who can turn the tides to send Ivy’s ship away from Japan’s shores. But he’ll help Ren only if she finds a sword lost thousands of years ago - an impossible demand.
\nTogether with the moon god Tsukuyomi, who shares an uncanny resemblance to his brother Hiro, Ren ventures across the country in a race against time. As her journey thrusts her into the middle of scheming gods and dangerous Yokai demons, Ren will have to learn who she can truly trust - and the fate of Japan hangs in the balance.
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Half British Reaper, half Japanese Shinigami, Ren Scarborough has been collecting souls in the London streets for centuries. Expected to obey the harsh hierarchy of the Reapers who despise her, Ren conceals her emotions and avoids her tormentors as best she can.
\nWhen her failure to control her Shinigami abilities drives Ren out of London, she flees to Japan to seek the acceptance she’s never gotten from her fellow Reapers. Accompanied by her younger brother, the only being on earth to care for her, Ren enters the Japanese underworld to serve the Goddess of Death . . . only to learn that here, too, she must prove herself worthy. Determined to earn respect, Ren accepts an impossible task - find and eliminate three dangerous Yokai demons - and learns how far she’ll go to claim her place at Death’s side.
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Zilan dreams of becoming a royal alchemist, of providing for her family by making alchemical gold and gems for the wealthy to eat in order to stay young forever. But for now, she’s trapped in her impoverished village in southern China, practicing an illegal form of alchemy to keep food on the table - resurrecting the dead, for a price.
\nWhen Zilan finally has the chance to complete her imperial exams, she ventures to the capital to compete against the best alchemists in the country in tasks she’ll be lucky to survive, let alone pass. On top of that, her reputation for raising the dead has followed her to the capital, and the Crown Prince himself seeks out her help, suspecting a coming assassination attempt.
\nThe more Zilan succeeds in her alchemy, the more she gets caught in the dangerous political games of the royal family. There are monsters lurking within the palace walls, and it’s only a matter of time before they - and secrets of Zilan’s past - catch up with her.
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Liv Whitlock knows she doesn’t belong there. But after years of stumbling between foster homes, often due to her own self-destructive tendencies, Liv desperately needs to change the trajectory of her life . . . so she steals her perfect sister’s identity.
\nLiv starts to rewrite her story, winning a prestigious internship on a movie set filming in Alaska, and finds herself on a luxury yacht alongside pop star Paris Grace, actress sisters Effie and Miri Knight, Olympic gymnast Rosalind Torres, and social media influencer Celia Jones. Liv tries to find common ground with her famous companions, but just as the group starts to bond, a violent storm wrecks their vessel, stranding them on an island in the North Pacific Ocean.
\nAmong the threats of starvation and exposure, they learn there is a predator lurking in the forest, unlike anything they’ve seen before - until they begin to see it in themselves. Every injury they suffer on the island causes inexplicable changes in their bodies. With little hope for rescue and only each other as their final tether to humanity, can the girls endure the ominous forces at work on the island? Or will they lose themselves to their darker natures?
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Tens of thousands of crows invading Auburn, Pennsylvania, is a problem for everyone in town except seventeen-year-old Leighton Barnes. For Leighton, it's no stranger than her house, which inexplicably repairs itself every time her father loses his temper and breaks things.
Leighton doesn't have time for the crows--it's her senior year, and acceptance to her dream college is finally within reach. But grabbing that lifeline means abandoning her sisters, a choice she's not ready to face.
With her father's rage worsening and the town in chaos over the crows, Leighton allows herself a chance at happiness with Liam, her charming classmate, even though falling in love feels like a revolutionary act.
Balancing school, dating, and survival under the shadow of sixty thousand feathered wings starts to feel almost comfortable, but Leighton knows that this fragile equilibrium can only last so long before it shatters.
Beck and Vivian never could stand each other, but they always tried their best for their mutual friend, Cassie. After the town moves on from Cassie’s murder too fast, Beck and Vivian finally find common ground: vengeance. They memorialise Cassie by secretly painting murals of her around town, a message to the world that Cassie won’t be forgotten. But Beck and Vivian are keeping secrets, like the third passenger riding in Beck’s VW bus with them - Cassie’s ghost.
\nWhen their murals catch the attention of a podcaster covering Cassie’s case, they become the catalyst for a debate that Bell Firearms can no longer ignore. With law enforcement closing in on them, Beck and Vivian hurry to give Cassie the closure she needs - by delivering justice to those responsible for her death.
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Blowfish is a postmodern novel in four parts, alternating between the respective stories of a female sculptor and a male architect. Death is the motif connecting these parallel lives. The sculptor’s grandmother killed herself by eating poisonous blowfish in front of her husband and child, while the architect’s elder brother leapt to his death from the fifth floor of an apartment building. Now, both protagonists are contemplating their own suicides. The sculptor and architect cross paths once in Seoul, and meet again in Tokyo, while the sculptor is learning to prepare a fatal serving of blowfish.
\nThe narrative loosely approximates a love story, but this is no romance in the normal sense. For the woman, the man is a pitstop on the road to her own suicide. For the man, the woman forestalls death and offers him a final chance. Through the conflicting impressions they have of one another, the characters look back on their lives; it is only the desire to create art that calls them back from death.
\nEvoking the heterogeneous urban spaces of Seoul and Tokyo, Blowfish delves into the inner life of a woman contemplating her failures in love and art. Jo’s fierce will to write animates the novel; the lethal taste of blowfish, which one cannot help but eat even though one may die in doing so, approximates the inexorable pains of writing a novel.
When nineteen-year-old Sasha’s first album throws her into stardom, her fans become obsessed with discovering who inspired her love songs. Except, Sasha is aroace-spec (aromantic, asexual), and she’s not interested in romance (unless it comes in the shape of a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers book or a star-crossed-lovers manga). Her music is all about her favorite love stories, not her own.
\nAfter running into Kai, her estranged best friend who she hasn’t seen in two years, pictures of them together leak, and everyone assumes he’s Sasha’s muse, the “boyfriend” who broke her heart. Pressured by her label and fearing fan backlash, Sasha agrees to a PR relationship with Kai for six months - but her sense of self is put to the ultimate test. Where does she fit in a society that equates happiness with romantic love? One where even her closest friends prioritise their partners over her?
\nUnder the guise of their faux romance, Sasha and Kai get a chance to rebuild their platonic bond and heal the wounds of their past. But when actor Asher Grish enters the scene, threatening to shake the foundation of Sasha’s PR relationship, she finds herself at a crossroads. Either she loses herself, or her career.
\nL.V. Peñalba’s Shapes of Love is an unforgettable story of finding the people that feel like home - even if that home isn’t what the rest of the world expects. It's not a romance, but it's most definitely a love story.
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When Jen collides with Abi, a magnetic Scottish travel writer, on a serene cycling expedition through France, sparks fly and temperatures rise. But their flirtatious two weeks together challenges everything Jen thought she knew about herself, her beliefs, and her future. Their sizzling chemistry not only makes her question her conservative upbringing but also ignites a fire of self-exploration she thought she had extinguished years before.
\nAs Jen grapples with returning to her old life in Sydney, she finds herself entangled in a heated conflict when a student faces cruel, homophobic bullying. Fuelled by her newfound courage, she takes a stand against injustice, risking her job and confronting her deepest fears to protect her student.
\nJust when the chaos reaches its peak, Abi reappears, forcing Jen to confront her innermost desires and make a heart-wrenching decision. Will she embrace love and acceptance, defying her family and risking it all for a chance at happiness? With the stakes higher than ever, Jen must summon the courage to be true to herself, no matter the consequences.
\nPacked with longing, resilience, and the power of love, “Changing Gears” is a captivating tale that will leave you breathless. Join Jen on this emotional rollercoaster as she navigates the storms of her heart and discovers the true meaning of bravery in the face of adversity. Don't miss this gripping romance where love challenges boundaries and drives one woman's journey to authenticity.
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With a flourishing career, beautiful home, and a famous surgeon for a husband, Polly’s life looks picture-perfect. But when she stumbles on her husband’s infidelity, everything unravels. Unmoored, she does the one thing she thought she’d never do - she flees Sydney and heads back home to England. But instead of a safe harbour, she is haunted by a past she thought she had left behind long ago. Most painful of all are memories of Mari, her estranged best friend who disappeared without a word nearly twenty years ago.
\nAs Polly searches for direction in places from her childhood, she confronts a reality she had been too naïve to face when they were still friends: she’d been in love with Mari from the very beginning. Now, as she tries to rebuild her life, Polly is determined to track down the woman whose heart she unwittingly broke to see if the love she lost might still be there.
\nBut divorcing her husband isn’t as clear-cut as it would seem, nor the only persistent complication she has to deal with. Mari has her own wounds, her own secrets, and a life Polly may no longer fit into.
\nCan Polly find the courage to break free of her past, rekindle a love that never quite faded, and reclaim the life she was always meant to live?
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The fairytale mermaid Arielle might have gotten her happily-ever-after, but her granddaughter Yemi is having a much harder time. Her father, the king of Ixia, was assassinated years ago, her mother is slowly dying of a poisoned wound, and she faces whispers and slights from her own people. Yemi has been raised as the shield of the kingdom and is soon to inherit the throne, but she cannot shake her fury at how Ixia has treated her family after all they’ve sacrificed. Only her patient mother and steadfast personal bodyguard (and fiancée), Nova, help Yemi rein in that fury . . . most of the time.
\nWhen the kingdom’s discontented rumblings reach a fever pitch, a coup erupts and Yemi’s throne is usurped, stripping her of her family and forcing her into exile. Now, only one being has the power to help her: Ursla.
\nLike her grandmother before her, Yemi is tempted by a deal with the sea-witch. With powerful and ancient magic behind her, Yemi could avenge her family, take back her throne, and protect the love of her life. But she should know more than anyone that there is always a price. As much as Yemi wants vengeance, Ursla has been waiting a very, very long time for her own - and it may take more fortune than Yemi possesses to keep her from losing everything all over again.
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In Contrarian, protests against unemployment and poor harvests have become armed riots as the people sink deeper into poverty. They look to a government struggling to emerge from corruption and conspiracy.
\nRecently elected to the Council of Sixty-Six, Steffan Dekkard is the first Councilor who is an Isolate, a man invulnerable to the emotional manipulations and emotional surveillance of empaths - but not the recent bombing of the Council Office Building by insurrectionists.
\nHis patron, the Premier of the Council, has been assassinated, leaving Dekkard with little first-hand political experience and few political allies.
\nNot only must Dekkard handle political infighting, and continued assassination attempts, but it appears that someone high up in the government and corporations has supplied arms and explosives to insurrectionists.
\nInsurrectionists who have succeeded in taking over a naval cruiser that no one can seem to find.
Continued poor harvests and steam-powered industrialisation displace and impoverish thousands. Protests grow and gather followers.
\nAgainst this rising tide of social unrest, Steffan Dekkard, newly appointed to the Council of Sixty-Six, is the first Councilor who is an Isolate, a man invulnerable to the emotional manipulations and emotional surveillance of empaths.
\nThis makes him dangerous.
\nAs unknown entities seek to assassinate him, Dekkard struggles to master political intrigue and infighting, while introducing radical reforms that threaten entrenched political and corporate interests.
Steffan Dekkard is an isolate, one of the small percentage of people who are immune to the projections of empaths. As an isolate, he has been trained as a security specialist and he and his security partner Avraal Ysella, a highly trained empath are employed by Axel Obreduur, a senior Craft Minister and the de facto political strategist of his party.
\nWhen a respected Landor Councilor dies of “heart failure” at a social event, because of his political friendship with Obreduur, Dekkard and Ysella find that not only is their employer a target, but so are they, in a covert and deadly struggle for control of the government and economy.
\nSteffan is about to understand that everything he believed is an illusion.
Fifty years after the establishment of the Imperium, and 450 years before the events of Isolate, Dominic Mikail Ysella - ancestor of Avraal Ysella - is the grandson of the last king of Aloor. Stripped of most of their land, Dominic, as the third son, must support himself.
\nDominic becomes a legalist and is elected to the Imperial Council quietly working as an isolate, someone unreadable by government telepaths.
\nAmid a time of a crumbling imperial line, Dominic must build a coalition within the Council and quietly draft a new constitution to save the Imperium from itself. Uncovering rampant corruption, graft, and potential to be arrested for treason, Ysella discovers any number of ways that simple legal specialist in water rights could get himself killed.
You can’t militarize space. This one rule has led to decades of peaceful development of space programs worldwide. However, increasing resource scarcity and a changing climate on Earth’s surface is causing some interested parties to militarize, namely India, the North American Union, and the Sinese Federation.
The discovery of a strange artifact by Dr. Alayna Wong precipitates a crisis. What appears to be a hitherto undiscovered comet is soon revealed to be an alien structure on a cometary trajectory toward the sun. Now there is a race between countries to see who can study and control the artifact dubbed the \"Solar Express\" before it perhaps destroys itself.
Leading the way for the North American Union is Alayna’s friend, Captain Christopher Tavoian, one of the first shuttle pilots to be trained for combat in space. But, as the alien craft gets closer to its destination, it begins to alter the surface of the sun in strange new ways, ways that could lead Alayna to revolutionary discoveries—provided Chris can prevent war from breaking out as he navigates among the escalating tensions between nations.
Two decades ago, the Bloodmoons ruthlessly murdered Saffron Killoran’s parents, destroying her idyllic childhood. Hell-bent on revenge, she lies her way into Silvercloak Academy - the training ground for her city’s elite order of detectives - with a single goal: to bring the Bloodmoons to justice.
\nBut when Saff’s deception is exposed, rather than being cast out, she’s given a rare opportunity: to go undercover and tear the Bloodmoons down from the inside.
\nDescending into a world where pleasure and pain are the most powerful currencies, Saff must commit some truly heinous deeds to keep her cover - and her life. Not only are there rival gangs and sinister smuggling rings to contend with, but there’s also her growing feelings for the kingpin’s tortured son, with his vicious pet fallowwolf, his dark past, and the curious prophecy foretelling his death at Saffron’s hand.
\nWith each day testing her loyalties further, Saff finds her web of lies becoming harder to spin. And when one false step could destroy everything and everyone she’s ever loved . . . the detective who’s dedicated her life to vengeance just might die for it.
New York City, 2000
\nTwins Trey and Tai are not like other high schoolers. Trey struggles to suppress his surging magical abilities, which continually impede his dream of making first chair cello in orchestra.
\nA budding photographer, Tai just wants to take pictures and maybe find someone to take them with. But disturbing images keep appearing in Tai’s camera lens, reigniting the twins’ search for their mother, who mysteriously disappeared ten years earlier. As the two discover more clues, Trey and Tai also uncover strange secrets about their magical ancestors and about a cunning villain who threatens their very survival. Together, Trey and Tai must work to unearth the past and preserve the future of their family.
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Sylvan, the Wolf Were Alpha, forges an uneasy alliance with Detective Jody Gates, heir to a powerful Vampire clan, to battle a shadow army of humans and rogue Weres.
\nWith outside forces threatening to destroy the Praetern Coalition, Sylvan battles Pack resistance to her newly-turned Were mate and Jody fights her growing hunger for human reporter, Becca Land.
Sylvan forms an alliance with the neighboring Snowcrest wolf pack after an attack on Snowcrest by creatures from beyond the veil, and sends a cadre of warriors to aid in training the Snowcrest soldiers to defend against the next attack.
\nTrent, one of Sylvan's lieutenants, understands her duty, but can’t deny the primal call of another Were, even if Zora is the Alpha of the Snowcrest Pack and any relationship between them risks inter-Pack war.
\nWhen Sylvan receives an unexpected summons - couched in the form of an invitation to parlay - from Cecelia, Queen of Faerie, she decides to cross into Faerie despite Drake’s misgivings and against the advice of her war council.
\nThe Timberwolf stronghold has never been breached, but this time the enemy is shielded by dark magic and no one is safe.
A world of violent passions and inhuman hungers explodes as ancient taboos and primal desires collide.
\nWolf Were Alpha Sylvan Mir wants nothing more than to keep her pregnant mate Drake safe in their secluded stronghold, deep in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains, but enemies, political and praetern, force her into battle. Sylvan must confront the Vampire Chancellor Francesca, a one-time lover, about her part in a recent attack on Mir Laboratories - a confrontation that will test Sylvan’s alliance with the Vampires and lead to war.
\nFrancesca’s enforcer Michel, with a secret sexual conquest in Sylvan’s Pack and a Were centuri newly-turned Vampire, Lara under her command, may have divided loyalties, too. Lara, born to fight in service to the Were alpha, finds herself caught between two worlds, belonging to neither, and her unexpected obsession with an enemy Alpha puts ancient loyalties to the test.
\nIn a world where humans and praeterns conspire for the ultimate power, violence is a way of life . . . and death.
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With her Pack under siege by humans and Praeterns, Sylvan turns her back on the government that has marginalised her wolves and threatened their survival.
\nHunted by human extremists, targeted by the Shadow Lords who fear her growing power, and beset by enemies masquerading as friends, Sylvan leads the Timberwolf Pack deep into the Adirondack wilderness where she challenges her allies to prove their loyalty - on pain of death.
\nDrake, Sylvan’s mate and mother of their newborn young, struggles to shield Sylvan from the feral rage that threatens to turn Sylvan rogue, destroying their union and their pack.
Medic Ryon Drake has never been good at following protocol, so she doesn't think twice about rendering emergency care when a young girl's life is at stake - even if the girl is in the throes of Werefever and any sane mortali should know better.
\nIt isn't the bright shining pain of the bite or even the wrenching agonies of the fever that convinces her everything in her life has changed. It's the way she feels about the blonde with the silver-blue eyes leaning over her hospital bed when she finally wakes up.
\nSylvan, the Alpha of the Adirondack Timberlake Pack - the one woman Drake can't have. And the only one she wants.
Niki Kroff has one mission in life--to lead Sylvan Mir's elite guard and protect the wolf Alpha's life. When Lara, another of the centuri, becomes a Vampire in the course of saving Sylvan's life, Niki is assigned to protect her during her transition. Removed from Sylvan's guard, Niki struggles to find her place in the Pack and control her desire for a forbidden Were whose call grows stronger every day.
\nSylvan, driven by primal instincts to protect her pregnant mate, grows more powerful, and more deadly, than any Alpha Were in centuries. While Sylvan rallies her allies, Vampire and human, to fight extremists, radical groups, and members of their own Praetern coalition in a war to preserve the autonomy of all Praetern species, Niki fights a private battle with her own dark urges - a battle which, if lost, will cost her everything.
Alpha Sylvan Mir's efforts to achieve sovereignty for the Weres, Vampires, and other non-humans is made even more difficult when a neighboring wolf Were Pack petitions Sylvan for aid. Someone, or some thing, is raiding the territory of the Snow Crest wolf Weres along the Canadian border.
\nWhile newly ascended Snow Crest Alpha Zora Constantine, along with the Ash, the captain of her guard, await the decision of Sylvan's war council, inter-Pack tensions rise. Especially when Ash and Sylvan's centuri Jace develop an unexpected and unwanted primal attraction.
\nAre the raids just an attempt to secure more territory by rogue Weres? Or is it all a ruse to bring Sylvan and her mate Drake out into the open where they are vulnerable to enemy attacks? When Sylvan and Drake's war party heads north to hunt the rogue raiders, Ash and Jace must decide between duty and the call of their deepest desires.
\nWhen shadows fill the night, it’s hard to tell friend from foe.With young to raise and her Pack under attack, Sylvan, Alpha of the wolf Weres, takes on her greatest challenge when she determines to uncover the faceless enemies know as the Shadow Lords.
\nWhile her mate Drake struggles to find the link between the deadly Were fever virus and the mutation she carries, Sylvan calls upon her allies among the Vampires and Fae to defeat the secret pact of humans and Praeterns bent on destroying her and those she is bound to safeguard.
\nLiege Jody Gates, Sylvan’s ally and heir to a powerful Vampire Clan, must choose between her promise to Sylvan and her duty to Clan when she aligns her forces against the deposed Vampire Regent Francesca. If the battle to come is lost, all the Praetern species will be sentenced to exile in the shadows.
In the years since she arrived at Green Gables, Anne has earned the love and respect of the people of Avonlea--as well as a reputation for getting herself into predicaments.
\nNow sixteen years old - and bound and determined to look after Marilla in the wake of Matthew's death - she's about to begin her job as the town's new schoolteacher. Soon enough she is the one learning lessons, however, as she starts to realise how complicated life can be.
\nIn her usual well-intentioned but meddlesome way, Anne is quickly interfering in a new friend's thwarted romance, coping with two new orphans at Green Gables, and getting drawn into the lives of her mostly charming and occasionally exasperating students at Avonlea school.
The once awkward, freckle-faced little girl is now a mature and responsible young woman, but Anne's imaginative spirit is as strong as ever
As soon as Anne Shirley arrives at the snug white farmhouse called Green Gables, she is sure she wants to stay forever . . . but will the Cuthberts send her back to to the orphanage? Anne knows she's not what they expected - a skinny girl with fiery red hair and a temper to match.
\nIf only she can convince them to let her stay, she'll try very hard not to keep rushing headlong into scrapes and blurting out the first thing that comes to her mind. Anne is not like anyone else, the Cuthberts agree; she is special - a girl with an enormous imagination. This orphan girl dreams of the day when she can call herself Anne of Green Gables.
There's never a dull moment for busy, bustling Anne, who's now the mother of five children and has a sixth one on the way. With her visiting aunt, the insufferable Mary Maria, also in the mix - and soon wearing out her welcome - Anne's life is a constant whirl.
But despite the endless demands on her time, Anne can't think of any place she'd rather be than her beloved Ingleside. At least not until the day she begins to imagine that her cherished Gilbert doesn't love her anymore. Could it possibly be true? She's a little older, maybe, but in her heart she knows she's still the same fiery redhead who came to Green Gables all those years ago. She hasn't changed, but has he?
Never one to go down without a fight, the irrepressible, indomitable Anne sets out to make her husband fall in love with her all over again.
Eighteen-year-old Anne has left Green Gables for university in nearby Nova Scotia, where she will finally fulfill her dream of earning a degree. She sets up home in a cozy cottage in bustling Kingsport with Avonlea's Priscilla Grant and a new friend, the beautiful Philippa Gordon. But it's not all fun and games.
\nAnne's childhood friend, Ruby Gillis, dies of tuberculosis back in Avonlea, shattering Anne's carefree attitude to life, and Gilbert finally declares his feelings and proposes. But Anne still has a naïve, overly romantic view of love and rejects him, driving a wedge between them.
\nA two-year relationship with a fellow Redmond College student, Roy Gardner, follows, but when he also proposes, Anne realises that he's not the one for her after all. When she returns to Avonlea and learns that Gilbert is deathly ill with typhoid, she is distraught. Will she recognise the depth of her feelings at last? Or is it already too late for Anne and her one true love?
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Anne Shirley has left Redmond College and Green Gables behind to begin a new chapter of her life in the \"dreaming town\" of Summerside. She's soon facing an unexpected challenge, however, in the form of the Pringles - also known as the royal family of Summerside. They quickly let Anne know that she's not the person they had wanted as principal of Summerside High School.
\nBut as she settles into her cozy tower room at Windy Poplars, Anne finds she also has great allies in two elderly widows, Aunt Kate and Aunt Chatty, and their irrepressible housekeeper, Rebecca Dew. Slowly, she begins to unravel Summerside's strangest secrets - revealing everything in letters to Gilbert, who's away at medical school. And in the end, Anne's able to win the support of even the prickly Pringles, in what is only the first of many delicious triumphs.
Gilbert Blythe is finally a doctor, and at long last he and Anne are ready to say their vows. Soon husband and wife will be bound for a new life together in their own house of dreams, on the shores of Four Winds Harbor, near Gilbert's new medical practice in the village of Glen St. Mary.
\nOf course, a new life brings fresh surprises and fresh problems to solve. Anne and Gilbert soon find themselves entangled in the lives of their neighbors, including the lighthouse attendant, Captain Jim, with his sad stories of the sea; Miss Cornelia Bryant, a formidable woman who always speaks her mind; Owen Ford, who longs to write the Great Canadian Novel; and the tragically beautiful Leslie Moore, to whom Anne grows closer when her own perfect life is touched by heartbreak.
Anne and Gilbert have now been married for fifteen years and are busily raising their six rambunctious children in the village of Glen St. Mary. But when a new minister, John Meredith, comes to town with his own four youngsters in tow, things get very boisterous indeed.
\nTogether, the Blythe and Meredith children hatch schemes in their own private hideout - a hollow they call Rainbow Valley. There, they plot to rescue a young runaway named Mary Vance, and even form the Good-Conduct Club so the Meredith children can redeem themselves in the eyes of the disapproving townspeople.
\nBut their grandest and most important scheme centers around poor widowed John Meredith himself, who has surprised everyone by falling in love once more. Will the Meredith children - with the help of their new friends, the Blythes - be able to bring happiness back into the life of their lonely father at last?
\nThere's always an adventure brewing in the world of Rainbow Valley.
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It's 1914 and the world is on the brink of war. But at almost fifteen, Anne and Gilbert's youngest daughter, Rilla, dreams only of her first dance and getting her first kiss from the dashing Kenneth Ford. Soon, however, even far-off Ingleside is engulfed by Europe's raging conflict, as Rilla's brothers Jem and Walter both enlist, and Rilla finds herself caring for an orphaned newborn.
As the conflict spreads, the Blythes wait anxiously for word of their absent sons, and a bad omen leads them to conclude that something terrible has happened overseas. Have Jem and Walter been lost, like so many valiant young men before them? And what of Kenneth Ford? Will he ever return to Ingleside to keep the promise he made to Rilla before he left?
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In this final book in the Anne of Green Gables series, young Rilla Blythe is swept into a drama that tests her courage and changes her life forever.
There are only three real powers in the universe: the corporate power of the Trust versus the Union's labor's leverage. And between them, the Guild tries to keep everyone's hands above the table. It ain't easy.
\nBranded a Guild deserter, Jal “accidentally” lands a ride on a Guild ship. Helmed by an AI, with a ship's engineer/medic who doesn't see much of a difference between the two jobs, and a “don't make me shoot you” XO, the Guild crew of the Ambit is a little . . . different.
\nThey're also in over their heads. Responding to a distress call from an abandoned planet, they find a mass grave, and a live programmer who knows how it happened. The Trust has plans. This isn't the first dead planet, and it's not going to be the last.
\nUnless the crew of the Ambit can stop it.
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After thwarting a space station disaster and planetary destruction, the Ambit crew thought turning Isaiah Drestyn over to the Union would be the end of their troubles. Turns out, it’s only the start.
\nDrestyn is a walking encyclopedia of dirty secrets, and everyone wants a piece of him―the Trust, the Union, even the Guild. Someone wants him bad enough to kill, and with the life of one of their own on the line, the Ambit crew must jail-break the very man they helped capture and expose some of the secrets he’s been keeping before it’s too late.
\nIn the Spiral, everything has a price. In their fight to protect what they love, Eoan, Nash, Saint, and Jal will confront some ugly truths about their enemies, and even uglier truths about their friends. But nothing will come close to the truths they’ll learn about themselves.
\nYou can’t always fix what’s broken . . . and sometimes, it’s better that way.
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Long ago, humans betrayed dragons, stealing their magic and banishing them to a dying world. Centuries later, their descendants worship dragons as gods. But the gods remember, and they do not forgive.
\nThief Arcady scrapes a living on the streets of Vatra. Desperate, Arcady steals a powerful artifact from the bones of the Plaguebringer, the most hated person in Lumet history. Only Arcady knows the artifact's magic holds the key to a new life among the nobles at court and a chance for revenge.
\nThe spell connects to Everen, the last male dragon foretold to save his kind, dragging him through the Veil. Disguised as a human, Everen soon learns that to regain his true power and form and fulfil his destiny, he only needs to convince one little thief to trust him enough to bond completely - body, mind, and soul - and then kill them.
\nYet the closer the two become, the greater the risk both their worlds will shatter.
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Arcady faces their greatest heist yet: posing as a noble student at the arcane University of Vatra. When the University announces the reinstatement of archaic trials of magic, the ever-penniless Arcady seizes the chance. If they win, they not only prove their worth, but the scholarship will give them more time to unlock secrets and reveal, once and for all, that their grandsire was not the Plaguebringer. Yet grief still leaves Arcady broken, and when they close their eyes, they dream of a certain dragon.
\nEveren, once the hope of dragons, is now hated by his kind. When he is eventually released from his prison, the Queen is clear: while he may help protect the island from wraith attacks, he is no longer a prince of the realm. As he struggles to find his place in Vere Celene, visions of the past, the future, and tantalising glimpses of Arcady still haunt him. If he steers the wrong path through fate’s storm, he may never be able to create a future where both humans and dragons live in harmony.
\nArcady soon realises that to survive the rising threats from both their old life and their new one, they must use every trick at their disposal - even magic stolen from a dragon they thought dead. And as time runs out before an ancient danger awakens, Everen must fight his way back to Arcady, earn their forgiveness, and learn what it truly means to be an Emberclaw.
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The gifted can’t hide their talents forever. But monsters await when they step into the light . . .
\nMicah's Chimaera powers are growing, just as dark visions threaten to overwhelm him. Drystan is forced to take him to the Royal Physician, but can they really trust the doctor? Especially when he gets Micah hooked on a mysterious medicine, and a close friend is revealed to be his spy . . .
\nMeanwhile, violent unrest is sweeping the country as anti-royalist factions fight to be heard. When a royal secret and an attack on Chimaera brings Micah into the heart of the conflict, he and his friends must fight an ancient sect that aims to spread terror once more. The fate of all Chimaera - and the world - hangs in the balance.
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R.H. Ragona’s Circus of Magic is the greatest circus of Ellada. Nestled among the glowing blue Penglass – remnants of a mysterious civilisation long gone – are wonders beyond the wildest imagination. It’s a place where anything seems possible, where if you close your eyes you can believe that the magic and knowledge of the vanished Chimeras is still there. It’s a place where anyone can hide.
\nIphigenia Laurus, or Gene, the daughter of a noble family, is uncomfortable in corsets and crinoline, and prefers climbing trees to debutante balls. Micah Grey, a runaway living on the streets, joins the circus as an aerialist’s apprentice and soon becomes the circus’s rising star. But Gene and Micah have balancing acts of their own to perform, and a secret in their blood that could unlock the mysteries of Ellada.
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The circus lies behind Micah Grey in dust and ashes.
He and the white clown, Drystan, take refuge with the once-great magician, Jasper Maske. When Maske agrees to teach them his trade, his embittered rival challenges them to a duel which could decide all of their fates.
People also hunt both Micah and the person he was before the circus - the runaway daughter of a noble family. And Micah discovers there is magic and power in the world, far beyond the card tricks and illusions he's perfecting . . .
A tale of phantom wings, a clockwork hand, and the delicate unfurling of new love, Shadowplay continues Micah Grey's extraordinary journey.
As a child in Beijing in the 1970s, Lai lives with her family in a lively, working-class neighborhood near the heart of the city. Thoughtful yet unassuming, she spends her days with her friends beyond the attention of her Her father is a reclusive figure who lingers in the background, while her mother, an aging beauty and fervent patriot, is quick-tempered and preoccupied with neighborhood gossip. Only Lai's grandmother, a formidable and colorful maverick, seems to really see Lai and believe that she can blossom beyond their circumstances.
\nBut Lai is quickly awakened to the harsh realities of the Chinese state. A childish prank results in a terrifying altercation with police that haunts her for years; she also learns that her father, like many others, was broken during the Cultural Revolution.
\nAs she enters adolescence, Lai meets a mysterious and wise bookseller who introduces her to great works - Hemingway, Camus, and Orwell, among others - that open her heart to the emotional power of literature and her mind to thrillingly different perspectives. Along the way, she experiences the ebbs and flows of friendship, the agony of grief, and the first steps and missteps in love.
\nA gifted student, Lai wins a scholarship to study at the prestigious Peking University where she soon falls in with a theatrical band of individualists and misfits dedicated to becoming their authentic selves, despite the Communist Party's insistence on conformity - and a new world opens before her.
\nWhen student resistance hardens under the increasingly restrictive policies of the state, the group gets swept up in the fervor, determined to be heard, joining the masses of demonstrators and dreamers who display remarkable courage and loyalty in the face of danger. As 1989 unfolds, the spirit of change is in the air . . .
\nDrawn from her own life, Lai Wen's novel is mesmerising and haunting - a universal yet intimate story of youth and self-discovery that plays out against the backdrop of a watershed historic event. Tiananmen Square captures the hope and idealism of a new generation and the lasting price they were willing to pay in the name of freedom.
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Southern China, 1923. Desperate to secure her future, Mei Ling’s parents arrange a marriage to a widower in California. To enter the country, she must pretend to be her husband’s first wife - a paper wife.
\nOn the perilous voyage, Mei Ling takes an orphan girl named Siew under her wing. Dreams of a better life in America give Mei Ling the strength to endure the treacherous journey and detainment on Angel Island. But when she finally reaches San Francisco, she’s met with a surprise. Her husband, Chinn Kai Li, is a houseboy, not the successful merchant he led her to believe.
\nMei Ling is penniless, pregnant, and bound to a man she doesn’t know. Her fragile marriage is tested further when she discovers that Siew will likely be forced into prostitution. Desperate to rescue Siew, she must convince her husband that an orphan’s life is worth fighting for. Can Mei Ling find a way to make a real family - even if it’s built on a paper foundation?
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Sara is returning home from a conference abroad when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside at the airport. Using data from her dreams, their algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming her husband. For his safety, she must be transferred to a retention centre, and kept under observation for twenty-one days.
\nBut as Sara arrives to be monitored alongside other dangerous dreamers, she discovers that with every deviation from the facility's strict and ever-shifting rules, their stays can be extended - and that getting home to her family is going to cost much more than just three weeks of good behaviour . . .
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From the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Moor’s Account, here is a timely and powerful new novel about the suspicious death of a Moroccan immigrant - at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story, informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture.
Late one spring night, as Driss Guerraoui is walking across a darkened intersection in California, he’s killed by a speeding car. The repercussions of his death bring together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui’s daughter Nora, a jazz composer who returns to the small town in the Mojave she thought she’d left for good; his widow, Maryam, who still pines after her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora’s and an Iraqi War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son’s secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself.
As the characters - deeply divided by race, religion, and class - tell their stories, connections among them emerge, even as Driss’s family confronts its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love - messy and unpredictable - is born.
The gripping, true story of one woman’s battle to expose and shut down a criminal online porn empire.
\nPornhub was the 10th most visited site on the Internet, often praised as a progressive champion of women. Then one day, an activist discovered a secret they had been keeping from the world for over a decade: it was infested with child sexual abuse and rape videos.
\nNow for the first time, anti-trafficking expert and mother of two Laila Mickelwait tells the story of her battle against Pornhub’s billionaire executives and the credit card companies who helped them monetise the abuse of countless victims - some as young as three years old. Readers will follow her from her first horrifying discovery of criminal content on Pornhub to closed-door meetings with credit card executives, White House and Justice Department senior officials, a powerful hedge-fund manager and more.
\nThrough insider accounts from Pornhub moderators and executives, you’ll meet the world’s first online porn tycoon, AKA “the Zuckerberg of porn,” along with Pornhub’s top brass (known internally as “The Bro Club”) who operate in secrecy.
\nThe culmination of years of activism, Takedown is the true, never before told story of how Mickelwait mobilised a movement of two million people that resulted in “the biggest takedown of content in Internet history.”
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Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.
\nIn a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.
\nAnd in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.
\nMeet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious \"errands\"; she speaks many languages - not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.
\nWhen one of the strangers - beautiful, haunted Akiva - fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?
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Art student and monster's apprentice Karou finally has the answers she has always sought. She knows who she is - and what she is. But with this knowledge comes another truth she would give anything to undo: She loved the enemy and he betrayed her, and a world suffered for it.
\nIn this stunning sequel to the highly acclaimed Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Karou must decide how far she'll go to avenge her people. Filled with heartbreak and beauty, secrets and impossible choices, Days of Blood & Starlight finds Karou and Akiva on opposing sides as an age-old war stirs back to life.
\nWhile Karou and her allies build a monstrous army in a land of dust and starlight, Akiva wages a different sort of battle: a battle for redemption. For hope.
\nBut can any hope be salvaged from the ashes of their broken dream?
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In this thrilling conclusion to the Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy, Karou is still not ready to forgive Akiva for killing the only family she's ever known.
\nWhen a brutal angel army trespasses into the human world, Karou and Akiva must ally their enemy armies against the threat--and against larger dangers that loom on the horizon. They begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people. And, perhaps, for themselves - maybe even toward love.
\nFrom the streets of Rome to the caves of the Kirin and beyond, humans, chimaera, and seraphim will fight, strive, love, and die in an epic theater that transcends good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy.
In the wake of tragedy, neither Lazlo nor Sarai are who they were before. One a god, the other a ghost, they struggle to grasp the new boundaries of their selves as dark-minded Minya holds them hostage, intent on vengeance against Weep.
Lazlo faces an unthinkable choice - save the woman he loves, or everyone else? - while Sarai feels more helpless than ever. But is she? Sometimes, only the direst need can teach us our own depths, and Sarai, the muse of nightmares, has not yet discovered what she's capable of.
As humans and godspawn reel in the aftermath of the citadel's near fall, a new foe shatters their fragile hopes, and the mysteries of the Mesarthim are resurrected: Where did the gods come from, and why? What was done with thousands of children born in the citadel nursery? And most important of all, as forgotten doors are opened and new worlds revealed: Must heroes always slay monsters, or is it possible to save them instead?
The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around - and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever.
What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving?
The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries - including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? And if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?
Set in the 1960s before Roe, a poignant and powerful novel in the vein of Lessons in Chemistry and Big Little Lies, about the friendship between a group of suburban housewives who help one another navigate through their personal challenges, marriages, and their pregnancies - both wanted and unwanted.
\nIn 1965 America, women can’t have their own bank accounts and credit cards or sign their own leases; divorce is scandalous and difficult; and abortion is illegal. Every Tuesday a group of friends meet for a canasta game. As cards are drawn and discarded, these women share advice and confidences.
\nAfter prim and proper Lily Berg, a doctor’s wife, discovers she’s pregnant with her second child, she follows her friend Becca’s suggestion and takes in Betsy, a pregnant teen from the local home for unwed mothers. Betsy, who’s never met anyone Jewish before, is to live with the Bergs for six months, help with babysitting and housekeeping, have her own baby, and then agree to never contact the family again. But things quickly get complicated.
\nMoving and atmospheric, full of history and heart, In the Family Way captures the experiences of women on the cusp of liberation as they struggle with their own complex feelings about being wives, mothers, and women with their own dreams and ambitions.
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Christine is on tour for her novel, a revenge fantasy based on a real-life relationship gone bad with an older professor ten years prior. Now on the road, Christine is seeking answers - about how to live a good life and what it means to make art - through intimate conversations with strangers, past lovers and friends.
\nBut when the antagonist of her novel - her old painting professor - reaches out in a series of sly communiques after years of silence to tell her he's read her book, Christine must reckon with what it means to lose the reins of a narrative she wrote precisely to maintain control. When her professor invites her to join him at his cabin, deep in the woods of Maine, what she encounters threatens to change the very foundations of her life as she's imagined it.
\nA delicately explosive high-wire act about the fictions we construct for ourselves just to survive, Discipline is a terse triumph about art-making and rigor, intimacy and attention, punishment and release.
Flora Hansen calls herself a medium and makes a living by pretending to commune with the dead. But after a gruesome murder at a rural home for wayward girls, Hansen begins to suffer visions that are all too real. She calls the police, claiming to have seen a ghost, but only one detective puts aside his skepticism long enough to listen: Joona Linna.
\nLinna has spent more time at the scene of the crime than any other detective would. The case seems obvious on the face of it: One of the girls at the home escaped in the middle of the night, leaving behind a bloody bed with a hammer under the pillow. But why does Hansen insist that the murder instrument was a stone, not a hammer? And what’s the story behind the dark red grain of sand, almost like a splinter from a ruby, stuck beneath the dead girl’s fingernail?
\nAs Linna refuses to accept easy answers, his search leads him into darker, more violent territory, and finally to a shocking confrontation with a figure from his past.
In the frigid clime of Tumba, Sweden, a gruesome triple homicide attracts the interest of Detective Inspector Joona Linna, who demands to investigate the murders. The killer is still at large, and there’s only one surviving witness - the boy whose family was killed before his eyes.
\nWhoever committed the crimes wanted this boy to die: he’s suffered more than one hundred knife wounds and lapsed into a state of shock. Desperate for information, Linna sees only one option: hypnotism. He enlists Dr. Erik Maria Bark to mesmerize the boy, hoping to discover the killer through his eyes.
\nIt’s the sort of work that Bark has sworn he would never do again - ethically dubious and psychically scarring. When he breaks his promise and hypnotizes the victim, a long and terrifying chain of events begins to unfurl.
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Jurek Walter was shot and killed years ago. The police moved on and managed to forget the darkness that had tainted their lives.
\nBut now someone is leaving a trail of broken bodies across Sweden and the clues all point to Walter. Detective Joona Linna is convinced his worst nightmare is becoming a reality: the man who tore apart his family has returned to finish the job.
\nWhen Joona’s partner is taken - and locked inside an underground coffin - he finds himself with an impossible choice: leave her to die or walk into the trap set by the only man he ever feared.
Seventeen-year-old Jenny is abducted in broad daylight and taken to a dilapidated, isolated house where she is chained and caged along with several other girls. Their captor is unpredictable, and as wily as he is cruel: he foils every one of their desperate attempts to escape . . . and once caught they rarely survive their punishment.
\nFive years later, Jenny is found dead in a public park, and the police are scrambling to find a lead among the scant evidence. But Detective Joona Linna realizes that this murder has an eerie connection to a death that was declared a suicide years before. And now when Mia, a seventeen-year-old orphan, goes missing, it becomes clear to Joona that they are dealing with a serial killer - and the murderous rampage has just begun.
\nAs the police close in on the killer, Mia and her fellow captives are plunged into ever greater danger, and Joona finds himself in a seemingly impossible race against time to save their young lives.
On a summer night, police recover the body of a young woman from an abandoned pleasure boat drifting around the Stockholm archipelago. Her lungs are filled with brackish water, and the forensics team is sure that she drowned. Why, then, is the pleasure boat still afloat, and why are there no traces of water on her clothes or body?
\nThe next day, a man turns up dead in his state apartment in Stockholm, hanging from a lamphook in the ceiling. All signs point to suicide, but the room has a high ceiling, and there's not a single piece of furniture around - nothing to climb on. Joona Linna begins to piece together the two mysteries, but the logistics are a mere prelude to a dizzying and dangerous course of events.
A stranger wearing a mask stands in the shadow of a garden. He’s watching his first victim through the window. He will kill him slowly, make it last - play him a nursery rhyme - make him pay.
There’s only one person the police can turn to - ex-Detective Joona Linna - but he’s serving time in a high-security prison. So they offer him a chance to secure his freedom: help superintendent Saga Bauer track down the vicious killer known as The Rabbit Hunter, before he strikes again.
Soon another three victims have been murdered and Stockholm is in the grip of terror. Joona Linna must catch a disturbed predator, whose trail of destruction leads back to one horrific night of violence - with consequences more terrifying than anyone could have imagined…
During a cold winter night in Stockholm a man is found walking alongside a railway bridge, suffering from hypothermia and legionella. After he's rushed to the hospital, it's discovered that, according to a death certificate, the man has been dead for over seven years. He is believed to be a victim of notorious serial killer Jurek Walter, who was arrested years ago by Detective Inspector Joona Linna and sentenced to a life of total isolation in forensic psychiatric care.
\nAs Joona Linna investigates where the \"dead man\" has been all these years, some unexpected evidence leads to the reopening of a cold case. Danger is imminent, and someone needs to get under the skin of the serial killer - fast - as they are running out of time.
An emergency call comes in the middle of the night. There is an ongoing burglary at a closed campsite in Bredäng, outside Stockholm. When the police respond to the call, there is a light on in one of the farthest caravans in the otherwise dark area, where the officers are greeted by a horrific sight. The floors, walls, and furniture are completely covered in blood.
\nA person has been killed with an axe and brutally dismembered. In one of the rooms, a young man is sleeping on the floor with a severed arm as his pillow. He is arrested and taken into custody at Kronobergshäktet. There, he is identified as seventeen-year-old Hugo Sand, the son of a famous author.
\nIt turns out that Hugo is suffering from a rare kind of somnambulism, which is triggered by nightmares. He is either the perpetrator or a witness but claims that he remembers nothing from that night.
\nWhen Joona Linna is asked to take on the case, he contacts his old friend Erik Marie Bark to use hypnosis in the quest to find out what happened inside the caravan. This is the start of a complicated hunt for a terrifying killer who has just entered an extremely active phase.
A killer is spinning a sinister web and the police are caught dead centre.
\nThree years ago, Saga Bauer received a postcard with a threatening message. It mentioned a gun and nine white bullets - one of which was intended for Detective Joona Linna. According to the anonymous sender, Saga was the only person who could save him. But as time passed, the threat faded. That is, until now.
\nA sack with a decomposing body has been found tied to a tree in the forest, and a milky white bullet casing turns up at the scene. Soon, the police begin to receive complicated riddles from the killer, taunting them with opportunities to stop further murders. Joona Linna and Saga Bauer struggle to solve the riddles and save further victims before it's too late. As the hunt becomes increasingly desperate, it appears that the killer is unstoppable . . . and that Linna and Bauer may already be caught in the killer’s web.<br><br>
A video-clip is sent to the National Criminal Investigation Department. Someone has secretly filmed a woman through her window from the garden. The next day she is found dead after a frenzied knife-attack. The police receive a second film of another unknown woman. There is no way of identifying her before time runs out.
\nWhen her husband finds her he is so traumatised that he cleans the whole house and puts her to bed. He may have seen a vital clue, but is in such an extreme state of shock that the police are unable to question him. Psychiatrist Erik Maria Bark is called in to hypnotise him - but what the man tells him under hypnosis leads Erik to start lying to the police. If the lights are on, a stalker can see you from outside. But if the lights are off, you can't see a stalker who is already inside the house.
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New Jersey, 2023. Riley Carmichael is getting married and finally joining a huge, loving family but can’t help but feel the emptiness of her own side of the church. For most of Riley’s life it’s just been her and her wonderful grandmother, Betty, but as late-stage dementia overtakes her grandmother’s mind, Riley knows she’s losing her, too. On one of Riley’s visits to Betty’s nursing home, she encounters her grandmother in one of her increasingly rare moments of lucidity as Betty desperately hands Riley a tatty birth certificate for an unknown baby born in Ireland in the 1950s. Full of questions about her heritage, Riley embarks on a trip to Ireland to find that elusive sense of home.
\nTipperary, Ireland, 1954. Margaret Lannigan’s life is made up of weekly dances and spending time with the love of her life, Joseph. But when Margaret’s older sister suddenly passes away, it falls to Margaret to fulfill the family’s commitment to the church. The eldest daughter of the Lannigan family has joined the Sisters of Mercy nuns for generations. Forced to part with Joseph and take the veil, Margaret is sent to a Home for Fallen Girls to care for expectant mothers who fell pregnant outside of marriage. With no training or midwifery skills, she must fight to provide compassionate care she feels these women deserve amid the cruelty and abuse they face.
\nWhen Margaret meets a young and terrified Delia O’Rourke, the sister of her childhood best friend, she must find the strength she needs to protect this young woman and her baby in the face of a system built to ensure they disappear.
\nBased on true historical events, The Forgotten Midwife is a powerful and emotional story of the women lost to Ireland’s “mother and baby homes,” as well as the young women forced to join the orders that ran the establishments. Told with courage and heart, it’s a haunting, hopeful novel of feminine strength, found family, and love that transcends oppression.
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Dublin, 1969: Maura has just married Dr. Christy Davenport and they look forward to growing their family. But as her husband’s vicious temper emerges, Maura worries that her home might never be safe for a child. Meanwhile, her close friend Bernie, a mother of three, learns the devastating news that another pregnancy could prove fatal.
\nDublin, 2023: A close call makes Saoirse realise that she may never want to be a mother. Little does she know that only a few decades ago, a group of women made this option possible for her. And she’s about to meet one of them . . .
On Stenland, there comes a time known as skeld season: one day, any woman on the island can wake with three black lines on her forehead, the mark of a skeld. Skeld season comes around without warning, and while each window of time lasts only three months, anyone a skeld turns to stone is very much dead.
\nThat's how Tess’s mother killed Soren’s parents. Maybe for this reason alone, Tess and Soren should not have fallen in love. Since the time her mother was a skeld, Tess has wanted to leave Stenland, to run from the windswept island, from her family and friends. She is unwilling to bear the responsibility of one day killing anyone, let alone someone she loves.
\nSoren has been determined to stay, to live out his life in the place he knows as home, even if that life could be cut short during the latest skeld season. They cannot see eye to eye - and yet, they cannot stay apart. She tries to come back for him. He tries to leave for her. But can your love for one person outweigh everything else combined? And how do you decide how much you’re willing to risk, if it might mean destroying someone else in the process?
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Growing up on her family’s Sonoma vineyard, Georgia Ford learned some important secrets. The secret number of grapes it takes to make a bottle of wine: eight hundred. The secret ingredient in her mother’s lasagna: chocolate. The secret behind ending a fight: hold hands.
\nBut just a week before her wedding, thirty-year-old Georgia discovers her beloved fiancé has been keeping a secret so explosive, it will change their lives forever.
\nGeorgia does what she’s always done: she returns to the family vineyard, expecting the comfort of her long-married parents, and her brothers, and everything familiar. But it turns out her fiancé is not the only one who’s been keeping secrets . . .
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Five years after her husband, Owen, disappeared, Hannah Hall and her stepdaughter, Bailey, have settled into a new life in Southern California. Together, they've forged a relationship with Bailey's grandfather Nicholas and are putting the past behind them.
But when Owen shows up at Hannah's new exhibition, she knows that she and Bailey are in danger again.
Hannah and Bailey are forced to go on the run in a relentless race to keep their past from catching up with them. As a thrilling drama unfolds, Hannah risks everything to get Bailey to safety - and finds there just might be a way back to Owen and their long-awaited second chance.
Sunshine Mackenzie is living the dream - she’s a culinary star with millions of fans, a line of #1 bestselling cookbooks, and a devoted husband happy to support her every endeavor.
\nAnd then she gets hacked.
\nWhen Sunshine’s secrets are revealed, her fall from grace is catastrophic. She loses the husband, her show, the fans, and her apartment. She’s forced to return to the childhood home - and the estranged sister - she’s tried hard to forget. But what Sunshine does amid the ashes of her own destruction may well save her life.
\nIn a world where celebrity is a careful construct, Hello, Sunshine is a compelling, funny, and evocative novel about what it means to live an authentic life in an inauthentic age.
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Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers: Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.
\nAs Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered; as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss; as a US Marshal and FBI agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity - and why he really disappeared.
\nHannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth, together. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realise they are also building a new future. One neither Hannah nor Bailey could have anticipated.
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Estranged siblings discover their father has been keeping a secret for over fifty years, one that may have been fatal . . .
\nLiam Noone was many things to many people. To the public, he was an exacting, self-made hotel magnate fleeing his past. To his three ex-wives, he was a loving albeit distant family man who kept his finances flush and his families carefully separated. To Nora, he was a father who often loved her from afar - notably a cliffside cottage perched on the California coast from which he fell to his death.
\nThe authorities rule the death accidental, but Nora and her estranged brother Sam have other ideas. As Nora and Sam form an uneasy alliance to unravel the mystery, they start putting together the pieces of their father’s past - and uncover a family secret that changes everything.
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With two brothers on the police force, Leyla Breda is well aware of the rising crime in her small beach town, but she never expected it to show up on her doorstep. When Leyla finds one of her employees murdered in the alley behind her coffee shop, she's deeply shaken, and as a new law enforcement officer in town begins to circle her place of business, her instincts only sharpen.
\nSean Moran is on an undercover assignment. The seaside community of Lost Beach may look like a picturesque postcard, but his team suspects it's a point of intersection for several crime syndicates that the FBI has been investigating for years. Even so, when the brash and beautiful Leyla Breda starts bossing him around, he's immediately intrigued. He knows her brothers want him to back off, but every time he sees her, he feels more of a spark.
\nLeyla's connections in the local community and Sean's skills allow them to go deeper into the case together than they would be able to go alone. But when a single crime spirals into something much darker, Sean's carefully planned mission takes a deadly turn.
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When former forensic photographer Miranda Rhoads moves to the seaside town of Lost Beach, she's decided to make her living as a wildlife photographer and put crime scenes behind her. But her plans are quickly upended when one morning, she comes across a couple sleeping in a canoe, entwined in an embrace. Looking closer, she realises the man and woman aren't asleep - they've been murdered.
\nDetective Joel Breda sets out to find answers - not only about the unidentified victims in the marshy death scene, but also about the aloof and beautiful photographer who seems to know more about his investigation than he does.
\nAs they begin to unravel the motivation of a merciless serial killer, Miranda and Joel must race against the clock to make an arrest before the killer can find them first.
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When a woman is found brutally murdered on Austin's lakeside hike-and-bike trail, investigative reporter Bailey Rhoads turns up on the scene demanding access and answers. She tries to pry information out of the lead detective, Jacob Merritt. But this case is unlike any he's ever seen, and nothing adds up.
\nBailey has a hunch the victim wasn't who she claimed to be and believes this mugging-turned-murder could have been a targeted hit. When she digs deeper, the trail leads her to a high-tech fortress on the outskirts of Austin where researchers are pushing the boundaries of a cutting-edge technology that could be deadly in the wrong hands.
\nAs a ruthless hit man's mission becomes clear, Bailey and Jacob must embark on a desperate search to locate the next target before the clock ticks down on this lethal game of hide and seek.
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Two homicide detectives must separate the puzzling truth from a growing web of lies while investigating a murder victim’s friends and lovers in Lost Beach, Texas.
\nDetective Nicole Lawson is fed up with her job and nonexistent love life. Her first date in months gets cut short by an urgent call from the chief of police. A body has been discovered at Lighthouse Point, and the medical examiner finds an array of strange clues. When the death is ruled a homicide, the news quickly reverberates through Nicole’s beachside hometown.
\nThe Lost Beach police department swings into high gear. Leading the investigation is Emmet Davis, a veteran detective who is Nicole’s fiercest rival at work and also the man she has secretly harbored feelings toward for years. With Emmet calling the shots, Nicole sets out to search for leads, starting with the enigmatic yoga instructor who first discovered the body. Nicole is certain the witness knows more than she’s revealing and may even hold the key to unlocking the case.
\nWhen another person turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, Nicole sees a bizarre pattern, but no one believes her theory. Under the gun to solve the case, Nicole must put aside her tumultuous feelings and work closely with Emmet to figure out who is targeting her beloved hometown . . . before she becomes a target herself.
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After a scandal derails her television reporting career, Macey Burns comes looking for a change of pace in Lost Beach, Texas. She's ready to focus on her first passion - documentary filmmaking - and has a new job working for the island's tourism board, shooting footage of the idyllic beachside community. Her plans for a relaxing rebound are dashed when she realises the cottage she's renting belonged to the woman whose body was just found in the sand dunes.
\nDetective Owen Breda is under intense pressure to solve this murder. Violent crimes are rising in his small town, and he can't stand to see anyone else hurt . . . especially not the beautiful documentarian who keeps showing up at the precinct.
\nWith the clock ticking, cameras rolling, and body count climbing, Macey and Owen must use all their resources to find the killer without getting caught in the crosshairs.
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Corporate lawyer Ava Burch has had enough of the big city and daily grind. She grew up with her father, who raised search-and-rescue dogs, in rural Texas, and has moved to the small town of Cuervo to spend time in the dry, rugged wilderness near Big Bend National Park. When she and her dog Huck discover an abandoned campsite on a volunteer search-and-rescue mission, she’s perplexed but she carefully photographs it all the same.
\nAll Deputy Sheriff Grant Wycoff can see when he looks at Ava is a city slicker - with her designer jeans and expensive car - who has no business on a serious team made of seasoned outdoorsmen and retired cops. But when she tells him of her discovery on the trail, he sees there’s more to her than meets the eye.
\nAva’s discovery reminds Grant of the unsolved case of a young woman who went missing two years ago. As they look into the campsite further, another woman disappears under odd circumstances. With time running out, Ava and Grant must work against the brutal heat from both the Texas sun and their own electric chemistry to solve the case.
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Audrey Adams is starting over. Three days ago, she left her cheating ex. And Audrey did not walk out she sang the best break-up song of all time at her in a packed-out bar and dropped the mic. Then she had an unforgettable night with the most drop-dead gorgeous woman she’s ever seen in her life, a hiking guide with perfectly toned arms and sparkling sky-blue eyes… who she’s been trying not to think about ever since. Audrey is done with romance.
\nBut then on her first morning at her new job at an outdoors store, she walks into someone. Literally headfirst into her, and as coffee begins to stain her shirt, Audrey looks up into a pair of very familiar beautiful blue eyes. It’s Toni. The woman she last saw in her bed, her wild curls thrown across the pillow. Who is now technically her boss.
\nEvery time Toni comes into work in another incredibly sexy plaid shirt, talking about the next Rocky Mountain she’s planning to climb, Audrey daydreams about that amazing night they had together. But dating someone she works with is a line she has never crossed, especially when as she needs this job to go well.
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Lady Theodosia Balfour has certainly gotten the short end of the stick - her stepsister, the newly crowned Princess Beatrice, is telling everyone in polite society that Theo, her sister, and their mother are evil, wicked, and horrid people who treated her like a slave. Though Theo knows this isn't exactly true, it seems her life is thoroughly ruined by the rumor. With the Balfour family estate on the verge of bankruptcy, Theo's only path forward is a forced betrothal to the Duke of Snowbell, a foul-tempered geezer who wishes only to use her as a brood mare for spare heirs.
\nDesperate for help, Theo clings to the only thing that might save the rumor of a fairy godmother, one that supposedly helped her stepsister secure a prince. After discovering a way to summon a fairy in Beatrice's old room, Theo thinks her prayers have been answered. But the fairy she meets isn't at all what she imagined. Drop-dead gorgeous, incredibly cunning, and slightly devious, Cecily of the Ash Fairies is much more interested in gathering powerful favors and smoking her pipe than providing charitable magic for humans in a bind.
\nBefore she receives magical assistance, Cecily sets Theo to three tasks, seemingly to prove that Theo is a selfless and kind person. Helping her along the way are Cecily's familiars, the flirty human-turned-mockingbird Phineas and the aloof Kasra, a fox shapeshifter who should not be as handsome as he is for someone with such cutting remarks. As Theo works on her tasks, she shockingly finds kinship with the magical creatures she's helping, and starts to wonder if a continued life among her human peers is what she really wants after all.
Theodosia Balfour is in a panic - she has no clue how to handle her new life as a fairy’s familiar. She just can’t seem to find her place in Cecily’s land of decadence, doublespeak, and whimsy.
\n\n
Moreover, Theo can’t stop thinking about Kasra, Cecily’s last familiar who is now living a cozy human life without any memories of his time in a fairy’s service. All she wants is to tell Kaz how she feels about him, but that’s impossible now. Then suddenly, the regent of the fairy kingdom reveals a secret that shocks Theo to her core and thrusts her into the role of detective to solve a thousand-year-old royal assassination attempt.
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With time running out to catch the would-be assassin, Theo can rely on only her own wits and unique charm to discover what’s really going on.
This is a novel about grief and ambition, innocence and blame - a tale that spools out of and around a Midwestern swimming pool one summer afternoon, 1969, and into the future of an America yet to be imagined.
\nIn the town of Mission Hills, Michigan, an elementary school child drowns in the Olympic-sized pool at a summer swim club. By most, but not all, the lifeguard on duty that afternoon - a teenage girl who becomes the town's scapegoat, bearing the weight of their grief and fears - is seen as responsible for the tragedy.
\nKasischke weaves together overlapping narratives and shifting perspectives, gradually peeling back the layers of what really happened that day. Through poetic, sensory-rich prose, she explores the liminal spaces between memory and reality, innocence and culpability, childhood and adulthood. The story probes the arbitrary, inexorable nature of fate - how a single moment can alter lives forever, and how the search for answers can reveal unsettling truths about ourselves and those around us.
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After being injured in a freak accident, novelist Gerry Andersen lies in a hospital bed in his glamorous but sterile apartment, isolated from the busy world he can see through his windows, utterly dependent on two women he barely knows: his young assistant and a night nurse whose competency he questions.
\nBut Gerry is also beginning to question his own competency. As he moves in and out of dreamlike memories and seemingly random appearances of a persistent ex-girlfriend at his bedside, he fears he may be losing his grip on reality, much like his mother who recently passed away from dementia.
\nMost distressing, he believes he’s being plagued by strange telephone calls, in which a woman claiming to be the titular character of his hit novel Dream Girl swears she will be coming to see him soon. The character is completely fictitious, but no one has ever believed Gerry when he makes that claim. Is he the victim of a cruel prank - or is he actually losing his mind? There is no record of the calls according to the log on his phone. Could there be someone he has wronged? Is someone coming to do him harm as he lies helplessly in bed?
\nThen comes the morning he wakes up next to a dead body - and realises his nightmare is just beginning . . .
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In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems to know - everyone, that is, except Madeline \"Maddie\" Schwartz. Last year, she was a happy, even pampered housewife. This year, she's bolted from her marriage of almost twenty years, determined to make good on her youthful ambitions to live a passionate, meaningful life.
Maddie wants to matter, to leave her mark on a swiftly changing world. Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl - assistance that leads to a job at the city's afternoon newspaper, the Star. Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name, and she has found just the story to do it: a missing woman whose body was discovered in the fountain of a city park lake.
Cleo Sherwood was a young African-American woman who liked to have a good time. No one seems to know or care why she was killed except Maddie - and the dead woman herself. Maddie's going to find the truth about Cleo's life and death. Cleo's ghost, privy to Maddie's poking and prying, wants to be left alone.
Maddie's investigation brings her into contact with people that used to be on the periphery of her life - a jewelery store clerk, a waitress, a rising star on the Baltimore Orioles, a patrol cop, a hardened female reporter, a lonely man in a movie theater. But for all her ambition and drive, Maddie often fails to see the people right in front of her. Her inability to look beyond her own needs will lead to tragedy and turmoil for all sorts of people - including the man who shares her bed, a black police officer who cares for Maddie more than she knows.
Mrs. Blossom has a knack for blending into the background, which was an asset during her days assisting private investigator Tess Monaghan. But when she finds a winning lottery ticket in a parking lot, everything changes. She is determined to see the world that she sometimes feels is passing her by.
\nWhen Mrs. Blossom booked her cruise through France on the MS Solitaire, she did not expect to meet Allan on her transatlantic flight. He is the first man who’s sparked something inside her since her beloved husband passed.
\nShe also didn’t expect Allan to be found, dead, twenty-four hours later in Paris, a city he wasn’t supposed to be in.
\nNow Mrs. Blossom doesn’t know who to trust on board the ship, especially when a mystifying man, Danny, keeps popping up around every corner, always present when things go awry. He is convinced that Allan was transporting a stolen piece of art, and Mrs. Blossom knows more than she lets on, regarding both the artifact and Allan’s death.
\nMrs. Blossom’s questions only increase as the cruise sails down the Seine. Why does it feel like she is being followed? Who was Allan, and why was he killed? Most alarmingly, why do these mysterious men keep flirting with her?
Amber Glass has spent her entire adult life putting as much distance as possible between her and her hometown of Baltimore, where she fears she will forever be known as “Prom Mom” - the girl who allegedly killed her baby on the night of the prom after her date, Joe Simpson, abandoned her to pursue the girl he really liked. But when circumstances bring Amber back to the city, she realises she can have a second chance - as long as she stays away from Joe, now a successful commercial real estate developer, married to a plastic surgeon, Meredith, to whom he is devoted.
\nThe problem is, Amber can't stay away from Joe. And Joe finds that it's increasingly hard for him to ignore Amber, if only because she remembers the boy he was and the man he said he was going to be. Against the surreal backdrop of 2020 and early 2021, the two are slowly drawn to each other and eventually cross the line they've been trying not to cross.
\nAnd then Joe asks Amber to help him do the unthinkable . . .
The award-winning master of psychological suspense is in top form in this collection of diverse and diabolically clever stories.
\nIn the never-before-published “Just One More,” a married couple - longing for that old romantic spark - creates a playful diversion that comes with unexpected consequences.
\nLippman's beloved Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan keeps a watchful eye on a criminally resourceful single father in “Seasonal Work,” while her mother, Judith, realises that the life of \"The Everyday Housewife\" is an excellent cover for all kinds of secrets.
\nIn “Slow Burner,” a husband's secret cell phone proves to be a dicey temptation for a suspicious wife.
\nA father's hidden past piques the curiosity of a young snoop in \"The Last of Sheila-Locke Holmes.”
\nPlus seven other brilliantly crafted stories of deception, murder, dangerous games, and love gone wrong - irrefutable evidence that Laura Lippman's riveting fiction will more than satisfy any crime reader.
One is playing a long game. But which one?
They meet at a local tavern in the small town of Belleville, Delaware. Polly is set on heading west. Adam says he’s also passing through.
Yet she stays and he stays - drawn to this mysterious redhead whose quiet stillness both unnerves and excites him. Over the course of a punishing summer, Polly and Adam abandon themselves to a steamy, inexorable affair. Still, each holds something back from the other - dangerous, even lethal, secrets that begin to accumulate as autumn approaches, feeding the growing doubts they conceal.
Then someone dies. Was it an accident, or part of a plan? By now, Adam and Polly are so ensnared in each other’s lives and lies that neither one knows how to get away - or even if they want to. Is their love strong enough to withstand the truth, or will it ultimately destroy them?
Something - or someone - has to give.
Which one will it be?
Soon after Anna goes on the best date of her life with a man called James - she and her best friend Nia visit a fortune teller. Who tells Nia that she will have one great love. But all she tells Anna is that her future is with a man whose name begins with a J.
\nIt won’t be James though - he never calls. And then Anna meets Edward - gorgeous, kind, loving. He’s all she’s ever dreamed of. Until he asks her to make a choice about their future.
\nIf Anna says ‘yes’ to him, her life will go one way. If she says ‘no’, it’ll go another. Both of the worlds could be happy. Both of the worlds could be heartbreaking . . . But as Nia meets her one great love in both worlds, which of Anna’s answers - yes or no - will bring her life together with the person who she’s fated to be with?
It happens to her every time. When the kisses lead to the bedroom, just when she thinks she might have found the one . . . Just for a split second, Maddy disappears, and she finds that she’s living her own life. But ten years into the future.
\nShe’s only there for a little while. But each time, it’s long enough to know that she doesn’t want to be any of those future versions of Maddy. Because every man she falls for seems to lead her to a future that is just . . . wrong.
\nUntil she meets Oliver. And the vision of their future is happy. Beautiful even. A little girl runs around, her braids flying behind her, giggling about how she wants sausages for dinner. She has eyes just like Oliver’s.
\nThere’s just one catch. If Maddy wants the family she’s seeing in her future with Oliver, she realises she has to break his heart now . . .
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Would you destroy your present if there’s a chance that it could give you the perfect future?
Zoe Brennan may be the loneliest lesbian in Blue Ridge, but at least she has her family vineyard, a deep, abiding vendetta against her ex-best-friend-now-enemy, and the occasional meaningless hook-up to keep her busy.
\nWhen a prestigious wine festival announces it’s coming to Blue Ridge, it kicks off a battle royale among local vineyards vying for the opportunity to host it. Zoe’s in it to win it - getting chosen would put Brennan Vineyards on the map while also sticking it to the rival vineyard next door. But disaster strikes when Zoe’s father is called home to Italy to care for his sick mother, leaving Brennan Vineyards without a vintner.
\nDejected, Zoe impulsively agrees to a blindfolded threesome with a friend and, excitingly, a stranger. After having the best sex of her life, Zoe’s horrified to discover the butch beneath the blindfold is none other than Laine Woods, Napa-trained vintner, Zoe’s first crush, and her enemy's big sister. The Napa-trained vintner, Zoe discovers, her father’s just hired as his replacement.
\nLaine assures Zoe they can put their sizzling one-night stand behind them, but Laine’s snobbery and Zoe’s pride collide at every step, creating a potent pour of sexual and professional tension. Zoe and Laine must learn to work together to win the wine festival, but when working together means late nights under the stars, letting go of the past, and learning each other all over again, Zoe has to be careful or Laine Woods might crush her heart for good.
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Belinda Bainbridge has spent her life in the shadow of her anxious mother, so when her father-in-law dies at The Bridge, his remote ancestral seat, she is secretly thrilled. His death means she, her husband Wilfred and their children can relocate and finally begin to create their own happy home born a merchant's daughter, she will now be lady of the manor.
\nBut their new home quickly proves far from ideal. The garden is a wilderness, the estate is struggling financially, there are whispers about the mysterious death of a servant many years before while their young son, Freddie, seems unusually fixated on the strange wooden figures - so-called 'silent companions' - that were once owned by his ancestors.
\nWhen Wilfred's charismatic brother, Nathan, arrives unexpectedly from abroad, bringing a very different account of the family's past, Belinda begins to question what her husband has told her. What really lies behind the sad history of the house?
\nAnd are Belinda's children truly safe here?
A new gothic Victorian tale from Laura Purcell, set on the atmospheric Cornish coast in a rambling house by the sea in which a maid cares for a mute old woman with a mysterious past, alongside her superstitious staff.
Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft's family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken. But Dr. Pinecroft has plans for a revolutionary experiment: convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the disease in the caves beneath his new Cornish home. While he devotes himself to his controversial medical trials, Louise finds herself increasingly discomfited by the strange tales her new maid tells of the fairies that hunt the land, searching for those they can steal away to their realm.
Forty years later, Hester arrives at Morvoren House to take up a position as nurse to the now partially paralyzed and mute Miss Pinecroft. Hester has fled to Cornwall to try to escape her past, but surrounded by superstitious staff enacting bizarre rituals, she soon discovers her new home may be just as dangerous as her last.
Dorothea Truelove is young, wealthy, and beautiful. Ruth Butterham is young, poor, and awaiting trial for murder.
When Dorothea's charitable work brings her to Oakgate Prison, she is delighted by the chance to explore her fascination with phrenology and test her hypothesis that the shape of a person's skull can cast a light on their darkest crimes. But when she meets one of the prisoners, the teenaged seamstress Ruth, she is faced with another strange idea: that it is possible to kill with a needle and thread - because Ruth attributes her crimes to a supernatural power inherent in her stitches.
The story Ruth has to tell of her deadly creations - of bitterness and betrayal, of death and dresses - will shake Dorothea's belief in rationality, and the power of redemption. Can Ruth be trusted? Is she mad, or a murderer? The Poison Thread is a spine-tingling, sinister read about the evil that lurks behind the facade of innocence.
As the age of the photograph dawns in Victorian Bath, silhouette artist Agnes is struggling to keep her business afloat. Still recovering from a serious illness herself, making enough money to support her elderly mother and her orphaned nephew Cedric has never been easy, but then one of her clients is murdered shortly after sitting for Agnes, and then another, and another. Why is the killer seemingly targeting her business?
Desperately seeking an answer, Agnes approaches Pearl, a child spirit medium lodging in Bath with her older half-sister and her ailing father, hoping that if Pearl can make contact with those who died, they might reveal who killed them.
But Agnes and Pearl quickly discover that instead they may have opened the door to something that they can never put back . . .
Inspired by the work of Shirley Jackson and Susan Hill and set in a crumbling country mansion, The Silent Companions is an unsettling gothic ghost story to send a shiver down the spine . . .
Newly married, newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband's crumbling country estate, The Bridge.
With her new servants resentful and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie only has her husband's awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. But inside her new home lies a locked room, and beyond that door lies a two-hundred-year-old diary and a deeply unsettling painted wooden figure - a Silent Companion - that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself . . .
At The Mercury Theatre in London's West End, rumours are circulating of a curse. It is said that the lead actress Lilith has made a pact with Melpomene, the tragic muse of Greek mythology, to become the greatest actress to ever grace the stage. Suspicious of Lilith, the jealous wife of the theatre owner sends dresser Jenny to spy on her, and, desperate for the money to help her family, Jenny agrees.
\nWhat Jenny finds is a woman as astonishing in her performance as she is provocative in her nature. On stage, it's as though Lilith is possessed by the characters she plays, yet off stage she is as tragic as the muse who inspires her, and Jenny, sorry for her, befriends the troubled actress.
\nBut when strange events begin to take place around the theatre, Jenny wonders whether the rumours are true and fears that when the muse comes calling for payment, the cost will be too high.
At the brink of summer, Callie arrives in a secluded village in the South of France with her young daughter, after barely escaping her menacing ex-partner. Desperate to hide, she rents a cottage on the grounds of the Chateau of the Lost. Her new home sings with flowing water, rustling olive trees, and whispering poppies - an otherworldly nook of hidden magic. Little by little, she warms to her quirky neighbors - a witchy landlady, an acclaimed truffle hunter, his kind veterinarian son, and their lovable dogs. Oh, and a mischievous ghost boy.
\nSlowly but surely, her new friends help her discover herself again. Years earlier, she gave up music at the insistence of her ex, but as she reclaims her voice, everyone finds that her songs open hearts and heal old wounds. When her ex tracks her down, the stakes grow deadly, and she must tap into her most powerful self to protect her newfound family.
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Theodosia was six when her country was invaded and her mother, the Fire Queen, was murdered before her eyes. On that day, the Kaiser took Theodosia's family, her land, and her name. Theo was crowned Ash Princess--a title of shame to bear in her new life as a prisoner.
For ten years Theo has been a captive in her own palace. She's endured the relentless abuse and ridicule of the Kaiser and his court. She is powerless, surviving in her new world only by burying the girl she was deep inside.
Then, one night, the Kaiser forces her to do the unthinkable. With blood on her hands and all hope of reclaiming her throne lost, she realises that surviving is no longer enough. But she does have a weapon: her mind is sharper than any sword. And power isn't always won on the battlefield.
For ten years, the Ash Princess has seen her land pillaged and her people enslaved. That all ends here.
Empress Margaraux has had plans for her daughters since the day they were born. Princesses Sophronia, Daphne, and Beatriz will be queens. And now, age sixteen, they each must leave their homeland and marry their princes. Beautiful, smart, and demure, the triplets appear to be the perfect brides - because Margaraux knows there is one common truth: everyone underestimates a girl. Which is a grave mistake.
Sophronia, Daphne, and Beatriz are no innocents. They have been trained since birth in the arts of deception, seduction, and violence with a singular goal - to bring down monarchies - and their marriages are merely the first stage of their mother’s grand vision: to one day reign over the entire continent of Vesteria.
The princesses have spent their lives preparing, and now they are ready, each with her own secret skill, and each with a single wish, pulled from the stars. Only, the stars have their own plans - and their mother hasn’t told them all of hers. Life abroad is a test. Will their loyalties stay true? Or will they learn that they can’t trust anyone - not even each other?
Princess Theodosia was a prisoner in her own country for a decade. Renamed the Ash Princess, she endured relentless abuse and ridicule from the Kaiser and his court. But though she wore a crown of ashes, there is fire in Theo’s blood. As the rightful heir to the Astrean crown, it runs in her veins. And if she learned nothing else from her mother, she learned that a Queen never cowers.
Now free, with a misfit army of rebels to back her, Theo must liberate her enslaved people and face a terrifying new enemy: the new Kaiserin. Imbued with a magic no one understands, the Kaiserin is determined to burn down anyone and everything in her way.
The Kaiserin’s strange power is growing stronger, and with Prinz Søren as her hostage, there is more at stake than ever. Theo must learn to embrace her own power if she has any hope of standing against the girl she once called her heart’s sister.
Everyone knows the legend. Of Arthur, destined to be a king. Of the beautiful Guinevere, who will betray him with his most loyal knight, Lancelot. Of the bitter sorceress, Morgana, who will turn against them all. But Elaine alone carries the burden of knowing what is to come - for Elaine of Shalott is cursed to see the future.
\nOn the mystical isle of Avalon, Elaine runs free and learns of the ancient prophecies surrounding her and her friends - countless possibilities, almost all of them tragic.
\nWhen their future comes to claim them, Elaine, Guinevere, Lancelot, and Morgana accompany Arthur to take his throne in stifling Camelot, where magic is outlawed, the rules of society chain them, and enemies are everywhere. Yet the most dangerous threats may come from within their own circle.
\nAs visions are fulfilled and an inevitable fate closes in, Elaine must decide how far she will go to change fate - and what she is willing to sacrifice along the way.
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The Kaiser murdered Theodosia's mother, the Fire Queen, when Theo was only six. He took Theo's country and kept her prisoner, crowning her Ash Princess - a pet to toy with and humiliate for ten long years. That era has ended. The Kaiser thought his prisoner weak and defenseless. He didn't realise that a sharp mind is the deadliest weapon.
\nTheo no longer wears a crown of ashes. She has taken back her rightful title, and a hostage - Prinz Soren. But her people remain enslaved under the Kaiser's rule, and now she is thousands of miles away from them and her throne. To get them back, she will need an army.
\nOnly, securing an army means she must trust her aunt, the dreaded pirate Dragonsbane. And according to Dragonsbane, an army can only be produced if Theo takes a husband. Something an Astrean Queen has never done. Theo knows that freedom comes at a price, but she is determined to find a way to save her country without losing herself.
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They were promised for marriage since birth, and raised to bring down kingdoms, but the true destiny of the triplet princesses of Bessemia has always been to die - and one of them already has. Since Sophronia’s murder, princesses Daphne and Beatriz have discovered the truth: they are pawns in their mother’s game, which will end with her as empress of not just Bessemia but the entire continent of Vesteria. Only the princesses have their own plans.
\nBeatriz and Daphne are still separated by a continent, and there are enemies everywhere, but now they have allies who stretch across the borders of Vesteria: Sophronia’s husband, the deposed King Leopold; Violie, a former spy for Empress Margaraux; and Beatriz’s missing husband, Pasquale, and his lover, Ambrose. Now, with their allies’ help and the magic of the stars, the princesses are ready to make their final stand.
\nBut whispers of an ancient prophecy follow them - secrets from their past are yet to be revealed - and every move they make, the empress seems to be one step ahead them. If there’s to be any hope for the princesses, the girls will need to use every skill their mother taught them, trust in the magic in their veins, and defy fate itself. And if they can’t, all is lost for the people of Vesteria.
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Princesses Beatriz and Daphne have lost their older sister, but their mother's grand scheme of taking the continent of Vesteria is far from complete. With the country of Temarin now under the Empress's control, only the nations of Cellaria and Friv remain free from her rule.
\nWhat's worse, an ominous prophecy has begun to shine through the constellations: the blood of stars and majesty spilled. Usurped by conniving cousins Nico and Gigi, Beatriz fears for her life, while in icy Friv, Daphne continues her shaky alliance with the rebels even as she struggles to stay a step ahead of them.
But when an unlikely ally offers Beatriz a deal, she finds herself back in her mother's sights. With enemies around every corner and the stars whispering of betrayal, Daphne and Beatriz can't trust anyone - least of all each other. If they've learned anything, though, it's that the Empress's game is constantly changing. And the arrival of surprise visitors from Temarin just might tip the scales in the princesses' favor . . . if they manage to avoid meeting their sister's fate before they can make their next move.
Following the murder of her husband in what looks like a violent street robbery, Hannah Cole is struggling to keep her head above water. Her confectionary shop on Piccadilly is barely turning a profit, her suppliers conspiring to put her out of business because they don’t like women in trade. Henry Fielding, the famous author-turned-magistrate, is threatening to confiscate the money in her husband’s bank account because he believes it might have been illicitly acquired. And even those who claim to be Hannah’s friends have darker intent.
\nOnly William Devereux seems different. A friend of her late husband, Devereux helps Hannah unravel some of the mysteries surrounding his death. He also tells her about an Italian delicacy called iced cream, an innovation she is convinced will transform the fortunes of her shop. But their friendship opens Hannah to speculation and gossip and draws Henry Fielding’s attention her way, locking her into a battle of wits more devastating than anything she can imagine.
London, 1782. Desperate for her politician husband to return home from France, Caroline 'Caro' Corsham is already in a state of anxiety when she finds a well-dressed woman mortally wounded in the bowers of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.
\nThe Bow Street constables are swift to act, until they discover that the deceased woman was a highly-paid prostitute, at which point they cease to care entirely. But Caro has motives of her own for wanting to see justice done, and so sets out to solve the crime herself. Enlisting the help of thieftaker, Peregrine Child, their inquiry delves into the hidden corners of Georgian society, a world of artifice, deception and secret lives.
But with many gentlemen refusing to speak about their dealings with the dead woman, and Caro's own reputation under threat, finding the killer will be harder, and more treacherous than she can know . . .
To the world he's a legend. To her he's a liar.
\nLavinia never asked to be fought over. But now Turnus, her childhood sweetheart, has waged a war that threatens to destroy all she holds dear, because Lavinia's father has promised her to somebody else.
\nAeneas, rumoured to be the son of Venus, is famed for his bravery, cunning and his vision for a new great Empire. He is also secretive, slippery, and Lavinia wonders why he will never discuss the past he left behind.
\nSo when a stranger arrives in the camp with stories about Aeneas that suggest he is not what she seems, Lavinia realises she has to take her future, and that of her people, into her own hands.
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Izzy O'Neill here! Impoverished orphan, aspiring comedian and Slut Extraordinaire, if the gossip sites are anything to go by . . .
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Izzy never expected to be eighteen and internationally reviled. But when explicit photos involving her, a politician's son and a garden bench are published online, the trolls set out to take her apart. Armed with best friend Ajita and a metric ton of nachos, she tries to laugh it off - but as the daily slut-shaming intensifies, she soon learns the way the world treats teenage girls is not okay.
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It's the Exact Opposite of Okay.
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They've loved each other in a thousand lifetimes. They've killed each other in every one.
\nEvelyn remembers all her past lives. She also remembers that in every single one, she’s been murdered before her eighteenth birthday by Arden, a supernatural being whose soul - and survival - is tethered to hers.
\nThe problem is that she’s quite fond of the life she’s in now, and her little sister needs her for bone marrow transplants in order to stay alive. If Evelyn wants to save her sister, she’ll have to:
\n1. Find the centuries-old devil who hunts her through each life - before they find her first.
\n2. Figure out why she’s being hunted and finally break their curse.
\n3. Try not to fall in love.
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Ten years ago, four students lost their lives in the infamous North Tower murders at the elite Carvell College of Arts, forcing Carvell to close its doors.
\nNow Carvell is reopening, and fearless student Lottie is determined to find out what really happened. But when her roommate, Alice, stumbles upon a sinister soul-splitting ritual hidden in Carvell’s haunted library, the North Tower claims another victim.
\nCan Lottie uncover the truth before the North Tower strikes again? Can Alice reverse the ritual before her monstrous alter ego consumes her? And can they stop flirting for literally fifteen seconds in order to do this?
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Along with her husband, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author returns to her mother's house in the Florida town where she grew up.
\nAs the summer heat sets in, she wrestles with family secrets and memories of her own troubled youth. Her mercurial sister, who lives next door, spends a growing amount of time using MIND’S EYE, a virtual reality device provided to citizens of the town by ELECTRA, a tech company in South Florida, during the doldrums of a recent pandemic.
\nBut it’s not just the ominous cats, her mother’s burgeoning cult, or the fact that her belly button has become an increasingly deep cavern - something is off in the town, and it probably has to do with the posters of missing citizens spread throughout the streets.
\nDuring a violent rainstorm, the writer’s sister goes missing for several days. When she returns, sprawled on their mother’s lawn and speaking of another dimension, the writer is forced to investigate not only what happened to her sister and the other missing people but also the uncanny connections between ELECTRA, the famous author, and reality itself.
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In Havana, Cuba, a widow tries to come to terms with her husband's death - and the truth about their marriage - in Laura van den Berg's surreal, mystifying story of psychological reflection and metaphysical mystery.
\nShortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, she finds her husband, Richard, standing outside a museum. He's wearing a white linen suit she's never seen before, and he's supposed to be dead. Grief-stricken and baffled, Clare tails Richard, a horror film scholar, through the newly tourist-filled streets of Havana, clocking his every move.
\nAs the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, Clare finds grounding in memories of her childhood in Florida and of her marriage to Richard, revealing her role in his death and reappearance along the way. The Third Hotel is a propulsive, brilliantly shape-shifting novel from an inventive author at the height of her narrative powers.
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Everything needs to be just right for bestselling mystery writer Faye Wader’s first ever fan weekend. Her sales might be slipping - only a little! - but her readers still love her enough to pony up for three days and two nights on Great Misery Island. The retreat is precisely planned, from the small batch artisanal donuts to the perimenopausal Mermaid Meditation, by Faye and her beleaguered assistant Jade - an aspiring author who can’t seem to finish her own novel.
\nFaye’s long-time agent and editor will be there, as well as Faye’s number one fan, Peggy Mercer, who has been first in line at every one of Faye’s events. When news comes that the weekend will be crashed by glamorous, charismatic, rival novelist Abby Schuss, Faye thinks things can’t get worse . . . until one of the attendees is found dead in her room, setting off an unexpectedly murderous chain of events that make pre-pub anxiety seem like a day at the beach. How far is Faye willing to go to get exactly what she wants from her author weekend?
\nThe Author Weekend is a thrilling and hilarious dive into the dark heart of envy, and a glorious exploration of a woman of a certain age desperate to survive the dog-eat-dog world of publishing and control her own narrative.
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Judy never intended to start wearing the dog. But when she stumbled across her son Teddy’s old baby sling during a halfhearted basement cleaning, something in her snapped. So: the dog went into the sling, Judy felt connected to another living being, and she’s repeated the process every day since.
Life hasn’t gone according to Judy’s plan. Her career as a children’s book author offered a glimpse of success before taking an embarrassing nose dive. Teddy, now a teenager, treats her with some combination of mortification and indifference. Her best friend is dying. And her husband, Gary, has become a pot-addled professional “snackologist” who she can’t afford to divorce. On top of it all, she has a painfully ironic job writing articles for a self-help website - a poor fit for someone seemingly incapable of helping herself.
Wickedly funny and surprisingly tender, Separation Anxiety offers a frank portrait of middle-aged limbo, examining the ebb and flow of life’s most important relationships. Tapping into the insecurities and anxieties that most of us keep under wraps, and with a voice that is at once gleefully irreverent and genuinely touching.
A year after her divorce, Joyce is settling into being single again. She likes her job archiving family photos and videos, and she's developed a secret comforting hobby: trolling the neighborhood social networking site, Small World, for posts that help solve life's easiest problems. When her older sister, Lydia, also divorced, calls to tell her she's moving back east from Los Angeles after almost thirty years away, Joyce invites Lydia to move into her Cambridge apartment. Temporarily. Just until she finds a place of her own.
\nBut their unlikely cohabitation - not helped by annoying new neighbors upstairs - turns out to be the post-divorce rebound relationship Joyce hadn't planned on. Instead of forging the bond she always dreamed of having with Lydia, their relationship frays. And they rarely discuss the loss of their sister, Eleanor, who was significantly disabled and died when she was only ten years old. When new revelations from their family's history come to light, will those secrets further split them apart, or course correct their connection for the future?
\nWritten with wry humor and keen sensitivity, Small World is a powerful novel of sisterhood and hope - a reminder that sometimes you have to look back in order to move ahead.
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When Morgan and Benji surprise their families with a wedding invitation to Maine, they’re aware the news of their clandestine relationship will come as a shock. Twelve years have passed since the stunning loss of sixteen-year-old Alice, Benji’s sister and Morgan’s best friend, and no one is quite the same. But the young couple decide to plunge headlong into matrimony, marking the first time their fractured families will reunite since Alice’s funeral.
\nAs the arriving guests descend upon the tranquil coastal town, they bring with them not only skepticism about the impromptu nuptials but also deep-seated secrets and agendas of their own. Peter, Morgan’s father, may be trying to dissuade his daughter from saying “I do,” while Linnie, Benji’s mother, introduces a new boyfriend with his own tumultuous past. Nick, Benji’s father, is scheming to secure a new job before his wife, Caro - formerly his secretary and mistress - discovers he lost his old one. Morgan, too, carries delicate secrets that threaten to jeopardize the happiness she has so longed for. And Benji is just trying to make sure the whole weekend doesn’t implode.
\nAs the whirlwind weekend unfolds, old passions reignite, deep wounds resurface, and unearthed secrets threaten to shatter the fragile peace the wedding promises. With each new revelation, the to-be-weds and their complicated families are forced to question just how well they know the ones they hold dear.
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Callahan:
I’m the Kane brother everyone gossips about behind closed doors.
Trust fund brat. Washed-up athlete. High-functioning alcoholic.
No one knows the real me but her.
Lana Castillo - my childhood best friend and the only woman I ever loved.
When I broke her heart six years ago, I promised to never return to Lake Wisteria.
I kept my word until my grandfather’s will changed everything.
To receive my inheritance, I was tasked with spending a summer at the family lake house before selling it.
The request was simple in theory until my entire plan blew up on the very first day.
Turns out Lana doesn’t just live at the house, but she claims to own it, too.
Alana:
Falling in love with Callahan Kane was a mistake.
He told me so before destroying my heart and our friendship six summers ago.
When he promised never to come back, I foolishly believed him.
But then Cal showed up again, intending to sell his grandfather’s lake house.
The biggest flaw in his plan?
My name is on the deed.
Rowan:
I'm in the business of creating fairy tales. Theme parks. Production companies. Five-star hotels.
Everything could be all mine if I renovated Dreamland.
My initial idea of hiring Zahra was good in theory, but then I kissed her.
Things spiraled out of control once I texted her using an alias.
By the time I realised where I went wrong, it was too late.
People like me don't get happy endings.
Not when we're destined to ruin them.
Zahra:
After submitting a drunk proposal criticizing Dreamland's most expensive ride, I should have been fired.
Instead, Rowan Kane offered me a dream job.
The catch? I had to work for the most difficult boss I'd ever met.
Rowan was rude and completely off-limits, but my heart didn't care.
At least not until I discovered his secret.
It was time to teach the billionaire that money couldn't fix everything.
Especially not us.
LORENZO
Five months. Two people “in love”. One fake relationship with an expiration date.
Sounds simple enough.
\nThe problem is, Lily Muñoz and I have history.
\nSo, when she volunteers to date me so I can improve my public image, I should say no.
\nOur past complicates everything, but since my future depends on her, I agree to her plan.
\nFaking it for the public is expected, but falling in love in private?
\nThat isn’t part of our arrangement.
\n\n
LILY
Using a dating app sounded like a great idea, up until I discovered Lorenzo Vittori was my match.
My sister’s boyfriend hates him. My mom is wary of him.
\nAnd me? I’ve spent the last year avoiding him.
\nBut when my business is threatened, I’m forced into teaming up with Lorenzo to save it.
\nAll I need to do is help him win the mayoral election, and he promises to protect my shop.
\nIt doesn’t take me long to learn that I’m not cut out for fake relationships, but Lorenzo?
\nHe isn’t capable of a real one.
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Julian
If I ever caught on fire, Dahlia Muñoz would fan the flames with a smile.
So, when she returns to Lake Wisteria, I fully intend to avoid the interior designer.
At least until my meddling mother exploits my savior complex.
The faster I help Dahlia find her creative spark, the sooner she will leave town.
But while I was busy getting rid of Dahlia, I overlooked one potential issue.
What happens if I want her to stay?
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Dahlia
People say the devil has many faces, but I know only one.
Julian Lopez - my childhood rival and family frenemy.
I vow to steer clear of him while recovering from my broken engagement, but then the billionaire makes an irresistible offer.
Renovate a historic house together and triple our profits.
Our temporary truce becomes compromised as we face years’ worth of denied attraction and mixed emotions.
Giving into our desire is inevitable . . . but falling in love?
That isn’t part of the plan.
Rafael
Ellie Sinclair is a hopeless romantic who writes love songs.
I’m a struggling workaholic who could inspire a hundred breakup albums.
On paper, we have nothing in common except for my son.
For eight months, I avoid her until our summer trip.
Fourteen days. Two islands. And one nanny I shouldn’t be attracted to.
Spending time with Ellie is expected, but enjoying her company?
That isn’t part of our travel plans.
After my divorce, I swore to protect my heart at all costs.
Even if it means breaking hers in the process.
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Ellie
What’s worse than working for a grumpy single dad?
Admitting that I once had a secret crush on him in high school.
Thankfully, Rafael Lopez and I have changed since we graduated from Wisteria High.
He is a billionaire with a company to run and a child to take care of.
I’m an unemployed songwriter he hired to watch his son and teach music.
We coexist without any issues until a vacation changes everything.
Lines blur and old feelings for Rafael return with vengeance as I face a new dilemma.
Being his son’s nanny is one thing, but wishing for more?
Sounds like a heartbreak song waiting to be written.
Declan:
I'm destined to become the next CEO of my family's media empire.
The only problem? My grandfather's inheritance clause.
Fulfilling his dying wish of getting married and having an heir seemed impossible until my assistant volunteered for the job.
Our marriage was supposed to be the perfect solution to my biggest problem.
But the more we act in love for the public, the more unsure I feel about our contract.
Caring about Iris was never part of the deal.
Especially not when breaking her heart is inevitable.
Iris:
My plan to marry Declan was simple in theory.
Move in together. Throw a wedding. Have a baby.
We set rules to prevent any kind of issues.
Ones that were never meant to be broken, no matter how much Declan tempts me.
But what happens when our fake relationship bleeds into our real one?
Falling in love was never an option.
At least not for me.
One forty-below December night, 18-year-old Ash Hayes finds herself locked out of her family home in rural Minnesota. She seeks shelter from the freezing cold and certain death at the closest house on the road, with neighbours she hasn’t yet met.
\nThe next morning, everything is off-kilter - the neighbours’ house has no mirrors or modern technology, and all the windows blocked. When Ash tries to call her parents, their numbers are disconnected. One of the strange inhabitants there is a doctor, who offers Ash a terrible form of help and won’t take no for an answer.
\nIn her efforts to get out of the house and back to her regular life, though, Ash finds herself transported to an even stranger place and time, setting off a chain of events that connect with (and alter) her past and her future.
Maddie Sanderson would be proud to honor her older brother’s dying wish, that she scatters his ashes over eight destinations that the adventurous 29-year-old never got to visit before he died from cancer. But in his will, Josh assigned her an impossible partner to help complete the mission - Dominic Perry. Seriously, if Maddie weren’t already at his funeral, she would have killed him for this.
\nSure, Dom was Josh’s life-long best friend. He’s also the infuriating man who broke Maddie’s heart back when she was naïve enough to give it to him. But since Dom insists on following the rules and Josh didn’t leave much room for Maddie to argue the matter, they embark together on a farewell trip that spans thousands of miles, exploring new places and revisiting their complicated history along the way.
\nAfter a snowstorm leads to a shared bed, Maddie starts to wonder if her brother might be matchmaking from the grave. But when grief also reopens old wounds between them, Maddie will need more than Josh’s ghostly guidance to trust Dom again.
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Should Liv take herself out of the friend zone, or are they better off there? Liv Granger has been flailing through life since her teens. When her brother, Joe, announces his engagement to his long-term boyfriend, Liv realises that she has never been able to commit to anything - a career, a fixed address, a relationship - and she may, in fact, be a massive loser.
\nWith the help of Joe and Henry, her oldest friend, Liv comes up with the Loser ten tasks to change her life. The most challenging - three dates with the same person. After each increasingly disastrous date, Henry is always there to the rescue. Has what she’s been looking for been right in front of her the whole time?
\nBetween restraining her mother’s wedding planning and doing everything in her power to not be her father’s wingman for his various short-lived girlfriends, Liv learns that the path to self-improvement needs to start with a little self-acceptance . . .
\n
Prudence Wright seems to have it all: a loving husband, Davis; a spacious home in Washington, DC; and the past glories of a successful career at McKinsey, which now enables her to dedicate her days to her autistic son Roland. When she and Davis head out for dinner with one of Davis’s new colleagues on a stormy summer evening filled with startling and unwelcome interruptions, Prudence has little reason to think that certain details of her history might arise sometime between cocktails and the appetiser course.
\nYet when Davis’s colleague turns out to be Matshediso, a man from Prudence’s past, she is transported back to the formative months she spent as a law student in South Africa in 1996. As an intern at a Johannesburg law firm, Prudence attended sessions of the Truth and Reconciliation hearings, which uncovered the many horrors and human rights abuses of the Apartheid state, and which fundamentally shaped her sense of righteousness and justice.
\nBut Prudence experienced personal horrors in South Africa as well, ones she long resolved to keep carefully hidden and ones which Matshediso threatens now to expose. When Matshediso finally reveals the real reason behind his sudden reappearance, he will force Prudence to examine her most deeply held beliefs and to excavate inner reserves of resilience and strength.
\nLauren Francis-Sharma’s previous two novels have established her as a deft chronicler of history and its intersections with flawed humans struggling to find peace in unjust circumstances. With keen insight and gripping tension, Casualties of Truth explosively mines questions of whether we are ever truly able to remove the stains of our past and how we may attempt to reconcile with unquestionable wrongs.
A powerful and fierce reimagining of the earliest Roman legend: the twins, Romulus and Remus, mythical founders of history’s greatest empire, and the woman whose sacrifice made it all possible.
\nThe names Romulus and Remus may be immortalised in map and stone and chronicle, but their mother exists only as a preface to her sons’ journey, the princess turned oath-breaking priestess, condemned to death alongside her children.
\nBut she did not die; she survived. And so does her story.
\nBeautiful, royal, rich: Rhea has it all - until her father loses his kingdom in a treacherous coup, and she is sent to the order of the Vestal Virgins to ensure she will never produce an heir.
\nExcept when mortals scheme, gods laugh.
\nRhea becomes pregnant, and human society turns against her. Abandoned, ostracised, and facing the gravest punishment, Rhea forges a dangerous deal with the divine, one that will forever change the trajectory of her life . . . and her beloved land.
\nTo save her sons and reclaim their birthright, Rhea must summon nature’s mightiest force - a mother’s love - and fight.
\nAll roads may lead to Rome, but they began with Rhea Silvia.
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Even before they were transformed into Gorgons, Medusa and her sisters, Stheno and Euryale, were unique among immortals. Curious about mortals and their lives, Medusa and her sisters entered the human world in search of a place to belong, yet quickly found themselves at the perilous center of a dangerous Olympian rivalry and learned - too late - that a god's love is a violent one.
\nForgotten by history and diminished by poets, the other two Gorgons have never been more than horrifying hags, damned and doomed. But they were sisters first, and their journey from sea-born origins to the outskirts of the Parthenon is a journey that rests, hidden, underneath their scales.
\nMonsters, but not monstrous, Stheno and Euryale will step into the light for the first time to tell the story of how all three sisters lived and were changed by each other, as they struggle against the inherent conflict between sisterhood and individuality, myth and truth, vengeance and peace.
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Thirty-something Layla Smart was raised by her single mother to dream medium. But all Layla’s ever wanted was a career in dance, which requires dreaming big. So when she receives an offer to be the choreographer-in-residence at Briar House in rural Vermont, she temporarily leaves behind Brooklyn, her job, her friends, and her husband to pursue it.
\nLayla has nine months to navigate a complex institution and teach a career-defining dance to a group of Black dancers in a very small, very white town. She has help from a handsome composer, a neurotic costume designer, a witty communications director, and the austere program director who can only compare Layla to Black choreographers. It's an enormous feat, and that’s before Layla’s marriage buckles under the strain of distance, before Briar House’s problematic past comes to light, and before Layla finds out she's pregnant.
\nLittle Movements is a poignant and insightful story that explores issues of race, class, art, and ambition. It is a novel about self-discovery, the pressures placed on certain bodies, and never giving up on your dream.
Zahra Starling and her younger half sister, Aurora, have nothing in common. Not their childhoods or their personalities. And certainly not their outlooks. After a terrible loss, Zahra prefers the solitude of her LA kitchen to people, especially family. Bubbly Aurora, a rising Hollywood starlet, has everything she's ever dreamed of, except a relationship with her sister.
\nThen comes a plea from their dying father, who wants both daughters by his side. He has a secret to share that's been a long time coming.
\nIt's Zahra's last chance to bring closure to the past, even if traumatic memories mean there's no way she's stepping foot on a plane. For Aurora, road-tripping to Seattle is the perfect escape and the chance to win over prickly Zahra.
\nWhat starts as a rough ride reopening old wounds evolves into something neither expects. When they finally reach their destination - and the truth that awaits them - the sisters will need each other like never before.
Set during the time of Fearless, a mysterious figure arrives in the kingdom of Ilya to witness the fight for the throne and the price it costs those sworn to defend the land in this beautiful and heart-wrenching story.
Mara never intended to set foot in Ilya again. But when the king makes a life-altering decision, her interest is piqued, and Death is determined to understand Kitt Azer's mind if he is destined to join her in the Mors.
Spending time with the king while observing the castle's inhabitants reminds Mara that there is more to life than just death. There is love. But even the purest of intentions spur revenge and the pursuit of power. And fate will have its way with all of them - to live, to rule, to love, and most certainly, to die . . .
Ordinary-born Paedyn Gray was prepared for a death sentence, not a proposal. After killing the king, marriage to his son, Kitt, was the last thing she - or the kingdom - expected. But with her role as queen, Paedyn would have the chance to unite Ilya and create a kingdom where Ordinaries live alongside Elites without fear.
\nWith a decision looming, Paedyn battles between her head, her heart, and the hidden trials she now faces. Through it all, Kai Azer fights to call her his, even if it means defying his king. Are vows strong enough to unite a kingdom? Or will betrayal break them? The choice between sacrifice and self has never been more difficult . . . or deadly.
The powers these Elites have possessed for decades were graciously gifted to them by the Plague, though not all were fortunate enough to both survive the sickness and reap the reward. Those born Ordinary are just that - ordinary. And when the king decreed that all Ordinaries be banished in order to preserve his Elite society, lacking an ability suddenly became a crime - making Paedyn Gray a felon by fate and a thief by necessity.
\nSurviving in the slums as an Ordinary is no simple task, and Paedyn knows this better than most. Having been trained by her father to be overly observant since she was a child, Paedyn poses as a Psychic in the crowded city, blending in with the Elites as best she can in order to stay alive and out of trouble. Easier said than done.
\nWhen Paeydn unsuspectingly saves one of Ilyas princes, she finds herself thrown into the Purging Trials. The brutal competition exists to showcase the Elites’ powers - the very thing Paedyn lacks. If the Trials and the opponents within them don’t kill her, the prince she’s fighting feelings for certainly will if he discovers what she is - completely Ordinary.
The kingdom of Ilya is in turmoil . . .
\nAfter surviving the Purging Trials, Ordinary-born Paedyn Gray has killed the King, and kickstarted a Resistance throughout the land. Now she’s running from the one person she had wanted to run to.
\nKai Azer is now Ilya’s Enforcer, loyal to his brother Kitt, the new King. He has vowed to find Paedyn and bring her to justice.
\nAcross the deadly Scorches, and deep into the hostile city of Dor, Kai pursues the one person he wishes he didn’t have to. But in a city without Elites, the balance between the hunter and hunted shifts - and the battle between duty and desire is deadly.
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Mack and Hailey Evans have worked hard to achieve their upper-middle-class life: promising careers, two beautiful children, and a brand-new house in the exclusive lakefront village of Bratenahl, Ohio. Not that everything’s perfect - aging parents, problems at work, and even the upkeep on that gorgeous house have been causing these two increasing amounts of worry.
\nWhen a small check appears in the mailbox from a mysterious company named Sunshine Enterprises, Mack assumes it’s from his wealthy, estranged father, trying to buy his way back into their lives. Though he’d rather rip it up, Mack deposits the needed funds. To his surprise the checks keep coming - each for a larger amount larger than the last. When Hailey finds out what’s going on, she has her own suspicions about the provenance of the payments. Despite growing uncertainty over the identity of their benefactor Mack and Hailey keep taking the money. After all, there are bills to pay.
\nIt is a choice with dark repercussions, as the couple soon learn the hard way that nothing in life is free. Suddenly, the Evans find themselves in a harrowing arrangement with someone who will stop at nothing to get a return on their investment.
The apocalypse didn't take everyone. It just took us.
\nEver since the rain turned green, Kyrie's world has been bathed in glowing dust. She packs it into old mascara tubes and sells it as makeup alongside dried cacti, threadbare blankets, and long-expired canned food. There's not much else to do when everyone outside Kyrie's small town in the Mojave Desert died from the plague-bearing rain ten years ago.
\nEveryone - except the man in the rubber mask.
\nHe's on the dangerous side of the fence, huffing infected air like it's nothing, babbling to Kyrie about college and umbrellas and yogurt and everything else that disappeared the day it rained. He doesn't seem to know that the world ended, and he has no explanation for how he survived the apocalypse. But Kyrie doesn't believe in ghosts.
\nShe can't trust him, but he's right about one Towns without secrets aren't surrounded by chain-link fences. And chain-link fences won't keep out the plague forever.
\n
When sixteen-year-old Angie Stewart starts hearing a mysterious voice in her house, she’s thrilled at the possibility of a ghost. Finally, something interesting is happening in her boring hometown of East Henderson, Pennsylvania. But why is she the only one who can hear it? And what does it want from her?
\nMeanwhile, first-year teacher Madelyn Zhao just got the keys to her new home, which is located close to her job, within walking distance of a dog park - and, most importantly, in the town where her cousin went missing several years ago. No one in East Henderson wants to talk about what happened, but Madelyn is determined to find answers.
\nAs the two strangers search for clues, their investigations begin to point toward the same dark place. But by the time they realise that the truth could be deadly, it’s too late to turn back. And someone out there will stop at nothing to make sure their secrets stay buried.
\n
When Jill becomes both pregnant and single at the end of one spring semester, she and her two closest friends plunge into an experiment in tri-parenting, tri-schooling, and trihabitating as grad students in Seattle.
\n\n
Naturally, everything goes wrong, but in ways no one sees coming. Janey Duncan narrates the adventure of this modern family with hilarity and wisdom and shows how three lives are forever changed by (un)cooperative parenting, literature, and a tiny baby named Atlas who upends and uplifts their entire world.
\n\n
In this sparkling and wise debut novel, Frankel's unforgettable heroines prove that home is simply where the love is.
\n
At seventy-seven, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land. She didn’t choose the Vista View Retirement Community of Austin, Texas - that would be her three grown children - but when she grudgingly moves in, she not only makes new friends, she falls in love. Then the exhaustion, vomiting, and confusion start. Her children and grandchildren worry it’s cancer, dementia, a stroke. But a raft of tests later, the news is even more shocking: she’s pregnant.
\nOnce word gets out, everyone wants a piece of her: the press and the paparazzi, activists and medical researchers, all descending on Vista View as Pepper tries to determine her next move. Soon Pepper has some hard decisions to make - and some she’s not allowed to make.
\nEnormous Wings is an urgent novel about female agency and bodily autonomy, morality and mortality. It’s about what happens when you don’t get to choose. It’s about motherhood and family, sex and love and friendship, and how those bedrocks - even so late in the day - can still change, and then change everything.
\n
India Allwood grew up wanting to be an actor. Armed with a stack of index cards (for research/line memorisation/make-shift confetti), she goes from awkward sixteen-year-old to Broadway ingenue to TV superhero.
\nHer new movie is a prestige picture about adoption, but its spin is the same old tired story of tragedy. India is an adoptive mom in real life though. She wants everyone to know there’s more to her family than pain and regret. So she does something you should never do - she tells a journalist the truth: it’s a bad movie.
\nSoon she’s at the center of a media storm, battling accusations from the press and the paparazzi, from protesters on the right and advocates on the left. Her twin ten-year-olds know they need help - and who better to call than family? But that’s where it gets really messy because India’s not just an adoptive mother . . .
\nThe one thing she knows for sure is what makes a family isn’t blood. And it isn’t love. No matter how they’re formed, the truth about family is this: it's complicated.
Sam Elling works for an internet dating company, but he still can't get a date. So he creates an algorithm that will match you with your soul mate. Sam meets the love of his life, a coworker named Meredith, but he also gets fired when the company starts losing all their customers to Mr. and Ms. Right.
When Meredith's grandmother, Livvie, dies suddenly, Sam uses his ample free time to create a computer program that will allow Meredith to have one last conversation with her grandmother. Mining from all her correspondence - email, Facebook, Skype, texts - Sam constructs a computer simulation of Livvie who can respond to email or video chat just as if she were still alive. It's not supernatural, it's computer science.
Meredith loves it, and the couple begins to wonder if this is something that could help more people through their grief. And thus, the company RePose is born. The business takes off, but for every person who just wants to say good-bye, there is someone who can't let go.
In the meantime, Sam and Meredith's affection for one another deepens into the kind of love that once tasted, you can't live without. But what if one of them suddenly had to?
This entertaining novel, delivers a charming and bittersweet romance as well as a lump in the throat exploration of the nature of love, loss, and life (both real and computer simulated). Maybe nothing was meant to last forever, but then again, sometimes love takes on a life of its own.
\n
In a town where nothing ever changes, suddenly everything does . . .
\nEveryone knows everyone in the tiny town of Bourne, but the Mitchell triplets are especially beloved. Mirabel is the smartest person anyone knows, and no one doubts it just because she can’t speak. Monday is the town’s purveyor of books now that the library’s closed―tell her the book you think you want, and she’ll pull the one you actually do from the microwave or her sock drawer. Mab’s job is hardest of all: get good grades, get into college, get out of Bourne.
\nFor a few weeks seventeen years ago, Bourne was national news when its water turned green. The girls have come of age watching their mother’s endless fight for justice. But just when it seems life might go on the same forever, the first moving truck anyone’s seen in years pulls up and unloads new residents and old secrets. Soon, the Mitchell sisters are taking on a system stacked against them and uncovering mysteries buried longer than they’ve been alive. Because it's hard to let go of the past when the past won't let go of you.
\nThree unforgettable narrators join together here to tell a spellbinding story with wit, wonder, and deep affection. As she did in This Is How It Always Is, Laurie Frankel has written a laugh-out-loud-on-one-page-grab-a-tissue-the-next novel, as only she can, about how expanding our notions of normal makes the world a better place for everyone and how when days are darkest, it’s our daughters who will save us all.
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This is how a family keeps a secret . . . and how that secret ends up keeping them.
This is how a family lives happily ever after . . . until happily ever after becomes complicated.
This is how children change . . . and then change the world.
This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.
When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.
Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.
This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.
After four decades of assuming that the conquest of all infectous diseases was imminent, people on all continents now find themselves besieged by AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, cholera that defies chlorine water treatment, and exotic viruses that can kill in a matter of hours.
\nBased on extensive interviews with leading experts in virology, molecular biology, disease ecology and medicine, as well as field research in sub-Saharan Africa, Western Euope, Central America and the United States, The Coming Plague takes readers from the savannas of eastern Bolivia to the rain forests of northen Zaire on a harrowing, fifty year journey through our battles with the microbes, and tells us what must be done to prevent the coming plague.
Jen Dixon is not your typical Kansas City kindergarten class mom - or mom in general. Jen already has two college-age daughters by two different (probably) musicians, and it’s her second time around the class mom block with five-year-old Max - this time with a husband and father by her side. Though her best friend and PTA President sees her as the “wisest” candidate for the job (or oldest), not all of the other parents agree.
\nFrom recording parents’ response times to her emails about helping in the classroom, to requesting contributions of “special” brownies for curriculum night, not all of Jen’s methods win approval from the other moms. Throw in an old flame from Jen’s past, a hyper-sensitive “allergy mom,” a surprisingly sexy kindergarten teacher, and an impossible-to-please Real Housewife-wannabe, causing problems at every turn, and the job really becomes much more than she signed up for.
As a new Mat Mom of the Pioneer Middle School (PMS) Wrestling team, Jen Dixon finds herself thrown in the middle of the “guerrilla war against so-called perfect mothers,\" armed only with her cutting wit and acerbic sense of humor.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tHandling a whole host of new challenges, from the dreaded seventh-grade science fair to a school fundraiser (again!), Jen faces the somewhat-terrifying new social dynamics of the wrestling moms with her trademark combination of reluctance and exceptional delivery.\t\t\t\t\tBetween school events and teaching spin classes, Jen finds herself fully immersed in sports mom competitiveness. These parents seem perfectly unassuming, until their kids start to wrestle, and they become raging pubescent monsters. Learning to navigate this new world while fielding calls from the principal because of Max’s newfound misogynistic behavior, Jen steels herself for the indignities of middle-school life - with her loyal spin class attendees and her bossy four-year-old granddaughter giving her the strength she needs to press on.
\n\t\t\tMix in a Parent Night, New Year’s Party, and Valentine’s Day Dance, and Jen Dixon certainly has her hands, and her calendar, full. And through it all, Jen continues to charm with her riotously funny quips and memorable one-liners.
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Jen Dixon of Overland Park, Kansas - fearless mother of a fifth-grade boy and two thirty-something daughters - is used to juggling a lot, from her mission to become a spin instructor, to stepping in as the most acerbic class mom ever (again), to taking care of her two-year-old granddaughter. But when the PTA president throws her a mandate to raise $10,000 for the fifth-grade class, even unflappable Jen is going to need more than her regular spin class to get her through this final year at William Taft Elementary School.
\nIn the midst of new complications - organising the class overnight to Topeka, an unexpected spin class fan in the form of her husband’s crazy ex-wife, and trying to navigate her parents’ sudden descent into apparent delusions - Jen hardly has the patience to listen to yet another half-baked idea (come on, ladies, another wrapping paper sale?) from WeFUKCT (We Fundraise Until Kingdom Come Team), her fundraising committee. But if anyone can get elementary parents to pull off the impossible, it’s Jen Dixon.
If you’ve ever been a room parent or school volunteer, Jen Dixon is your hero. She says what every class mom is really thinking, whether in her notoriously frank emails or standup-worthy interactions with the micromanaging PTA President and the gamut of difficult parents. Luckily, she has the charm and wit to get away with it - most of the time. Jen is sassier than ever but dealing with a whole new set of challenges, in the world of parental politics and at home.
\nShe’s been roped into room-parenting yet again, for her son Max’s third grade class, but as her husband buries himself in work, her older daughters navigate adulthood, and Jen’s own aging parents start to need some parenting themselves, Jen gets pulled in more directions than any one mom, or superhero, can handle.
A magnificent house, vast formal gardens, a golden family that shaped California, and a colorful past filled with now-famous artists: the Gardener Estate was a twentieth-century Eden.
\nAnd now, just as the Estate is preparing to move into a new future, restoration work on some of its art digs up a grim relic of the home's past: a human skull, hidden away for decades.
\nInspector Raquel Laing has her work cut out for her. Fifty years ago, the Estate's young heir, Rob Gardener, turned his palatial home into a counterculture commune of peace, love, and equality. But that was also a time when serial killers preyed on innocents - monsters like The Highwayman, whose case has just surged back into the public eye.
\nCould the skull belong to one of his victims?
\nTo Raquel - a woman who knows all about colorful pasts--the bones clearly seem linked to The Highwayman. But as she dives into the Estate's archives to look for signs of his presence, what she unearths begins to take on a dark reality all of its own.
\nEverything she finds keeps bringing her back to Rob Gardener himself. While he might be a gray-haired recluse now, back then he was a troubled young Vietnam vet whose girlfriend vanished after a midsummer festival at the Estate.
\nBut a lot of people seem to have disappeared from the Gardener Estate that summer when the commune mysteriously fell apart: a young woman, her child, and Rob's brother, Fort.
\nThe pressure is on, and Raquel needs to solve this case - before The Highwayman slips away, or another Gardener vanishes.
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Long retired, Sherlock Holmes quietly pursues his study of honeybee behavior on the Sussex Downs. He never imagines he would encounter anyone whose intellect matched his own, much less an audacious teenage girl with a penchant for detection.
\nMiss Mary Russell becomes Holmes's pupil and quickly hones her talent for deduction, disguises and danger. But when an elusive villain enters the picture, their partnership is put to a real test.
The queen is Marie of Roumania: the doubly royal granddaughter to Victoria, Empress of the British Empire, and Alexander II, Tsar of Russia. A famous beauty who was married at seventeen into Roumania's young dynasty, Marie had beguiled the Paris Peace Conference into returning her adopted country's long-lost provinces, single-handedly transforming Roumania from a backwater into a force.
\nThe castle is Bran: a tall, quirky, ancient structure perched on high rocks overlooking the border between Roumania and its newly regained territory of Transylvania. The castle was a gift to Queen Marie, a thanks from her people, and she loves it as she loves her own children.
\nThe threat is . . . now, that is less clear. Shadowy figures, vague whispers, the fears of girls, dangers that may only be accidents. But this is a land of long memory and hidden corners, a land that had known Vlad the Impaler, a land from whose churchyards the shades creep.
\nWhen Queen Marie calls, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are as dubious as they are reluctant. But a young girl is involved, and a beautiful queen. Surely it won't take long to shine light on this unlikely case of what would seem to be strigoi?
\nOr, as they are known in the West . . . vampires.
It is 1925, and Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes arrive home to find a familiar decorative stone installed in their garden. A stone with a name, which they last saw in the Tokyo garden of the future Emperor of Japan.
\nIt is the first indication that the investigation they did for him in 1924 might not be as complete as they had thought. In Japan there were spies, in Oxford there are dreams. In both places there is a small dark-haired woman and danger.
It’s only the second day of 1924, but Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, find themselves embroiled in intrigue. It starts with a New Year’s visit from Holmes’s brother Mycroft, who comes bearing a strange package containing the papers of an English spy named Kimball O’Hara - the same Kimball known to the world through Kipling’s famed Kim. Inexplicably, O’Hara withdrew from the “Great Game” of espionage and now he has just as inexplicably disappeared.
When Russell discovers Holmes’s own secret friendship with the spy, she knows the die is cast: she will accompany her husband to India to search for the missing operative. But Russell soon learns that in this faraway and exotic land, it’s often impossible to tell friend from foe - and that some games aren’t played for fun but for the highest stakes of all . . . life and death.
In a strange room in Morocco, Mary Russell is trying to solve a pressing mystery: Who am I? She has awakened with shadows in her mind, blood on her hands, and soldiers pounding on the door.
\nOut in the hivelike streets, she discovers herself strangely adept in the skills of the underworld, escaping through alleys and rooftops, picking pockets and locks. She is clothed like a man, and armed only with her wits and a scrap of paper containing a mysterious Arabic phrase. Overhead, warplanes pass ominously north.
Meanwhile, Holmes is pulled by two old friends and a distant relation into the growing war between France, Spain, and the Rif Revolt led by Emir Abd el-Krim - who may be a Robin Hood or a power mad tribesman. The shadows of war are drawing over the ancient city of Fez, and Holmes badly wants the wisdom and courage of his wife, whom he’s learned, to his horror, has gone missing.
As Holmes searches for her, and Russell searches for herself, each tries to crack deadly parallel puzzles before it’s too late for them, for Africa, and for the peace of Europe.
Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, have stirred the wrath of a murderous secret organisation bent on infiltrating the government. Now they are separated and on the run, wanted by the police, and pursued across the Continent by a ruthless enemy with limitless resources and powerful connections.
Unstoppable together, Russell and Holmes will have to survive this time apart, maintaining contact only by means of coded messages and cryptic notes. But has the couple made a fatal mistake by separating, making themselves easier targets for the shadowy government agents sent to silence them?
A hermit with a mysterious past and a beautiful young female doctor with a secret, a cruelly scarred flyer and an obsessed man of the cloth: Everyone Russell and Holmes meet could either speed their safe reunion or betray them to their enemies - in the most complex, shocking, and deeply personal case of their career.
As \"A Grave Talent\" begins, theunthinkable has happened in a small community outside of San Francisco. Astring of shocking murders has occurred, each victim an innocent child. For Detective Kate Martinelli, just promoted to Homicide and paired with a seasonedcop who's less than thrilled to be handed a green partner, it's going to be adifficult case.
\nThen the detectives receive what appears to be a case-breakinglead: it seems that one of the residents of this odd, close-knit colony is VaunAdams, arguably the century's greatest painter of women, a man, as it turnsout, with a sinister secret.
\nFor behind the brushes and canvases also stands anotorious felon once convicted of strangling a little girl. What really happened on that day of savage violence eighteen years ago? To bring a murdererto justice, Kate must delve into the artist's dark past - even if she knows itmeans losing everything she holds dear.
A June summer's evening, on the Sussex Downs, in 1925. Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are strolling across their orchard when the telephone rings: an old friend's beloved aunt has failed to return following a supervised outing from Bedlam. After the previous few weeks - with a bloody murder, a terrible loss, and startling revelations about Holmes - Russell is feeling a bit unbalanced herself. The last thing she wants is to deal with the mad, and yet, she can't say no.
The Lady Vivian Beaconsfield has spent most of her adult life in one asylum after another, yet he seemed to be improving - or at least, finding a point of balance in her madness. So why did she disappear? Did she take the family's jewels with her, or did someone else? The Bedlam nurse, perhaps?
The trail leads Russell and Holmes through Bedlam's stony halls to the warm Venice lagoon, where ethereal beauty is jarred by Mussolini's Blackshirts, where the gilded Lido set may be tempting a madwoman, and where Cole Porter sits at a piano, playing with ideas . . .
It's a mystery that begins during the Great War of 1918, when young Gabriel Hughenfort, the late Duke's only son, died amidst scandalous rumors that have haunted the family ever since.
\nWhile Holmes heads to London to uncover the truth of Gabriel's war record, Russell joins an ill-fated shooting party. A missing diary, a purloined bundle of letters, and a trail of ominous clues comprise a mystery that will call for Holmes's cleverest disguises and Russell's most daring journeys into the unknown! from an English hamlet to the city of Paris to the wild prairie of the New World.
\nThe trap is set, the game is afoot, but can they catch an elusive villain in the act of murder before they become his next victims?
When Mary Russell was a child, she adored her black sheep Uncle Jake. But she hasn’t heard from him in many years, and she assumed that his ne’er-do-well ways had brought him to a bad end somewhere - until he presents himself at her Sussex door. Yes, Jake is back, and with a load of problems for his clever niece. Not the least of which is the reason the family rejected him in the first He was involved - somehow - in the infamous disappearance of the Irish Crown Jewels from an impregnable safe in Dublin Castle.
\nIt was a theft that shook a government, enraged a king, threatened the English establishment - and baffled not only the Dublin police and Scotland Yard, but Sherlock Holmes himself. And, now, Jake expects Russell to step into the middle of it all? To slip away with him, not telling Holmes what she’s up to? Knowing that the theft - unsolved, hushed-up, scandalous - must have involved Mycroft Holmes as well?
\nNaturally, she can do nothing of the sort. Siding with her uncle, even briefly, could only place her in opposition to both her husband-partner and his secretive and powerful brother. She has to tell Jake no.
\nOn the other hand, this is Jake - her father’s kid brother, her childhood hero, the beloved and long-lost survivor of a much-diminished family.
\nConflicting loyalties and international secrets, blatant lies and blithe sounds like another case for Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes.
For Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, returning to the Sussex coast after seven months abroad was especially sweet. There was even a mystery to solve - the unexplained disappearance of an entire colony of bees from one of Holmes’s beloved hives.
But the anticipated sweetness of their homecoming is quickly tempered by a galling memory from the past. Mary had met Damian Adler only once before, when the surrealist painter had been charged with - and exonerated from - murder. Now the troubled young man is enlisting the Holmeses’ help again, this time in a desperate search for his missing wife and child.
Mary has often observed that there are many kinds of madness, and before this case yields its shattering solution she’ll come into dangerous contact with a fair number of them. From suicides at Stonehenge to the dark secrets of a young woman’s past on the streets of Shanghai, Mary will find herself on the trail of a killer more dangerous than any she’s ever faced - a killer Sherlock Holmes himself may be protecting for reasons near and dear to his heart.
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After their recent adventures in Transylvania, Russell and Holmes look forward to spending time with Holmes' son, the famous artist Damian Adler, and his family. But when they arrive at Damian’s house, they discover that the Adlers have fled from a mysterious threat.
\nHolmes rushes after Damian while Russell, slowed down by a recent injury, stays behind to search the empty house. In Damian’s studio, she discovers four crates packed with memorabilia related to Holmes’ grand-uncle, the artist Horace Vernet. It’s an odd mix of treasures and clutter, including a tarnished silver lamp with a rotating an antique yet sophisticated form of zoetrope, fitted with strips of paper whose images dance with the lantern’s spin.
\nIn the same crate is an old journal written in a nearly impenetrable code. Intrigued, Russell sets about deciphering the intricate cryptograph, slowly realising that each entry is built around an image - the first of which is a child, bundled into a carriage by an abductor, watching her mother recede from view.
\nRussell is troubled, then entranced, but each entry she decodes brings more questions. Who is the young woman who created this elaborate puzzle? What does she have to do with Damian, or the Vernets - or the threat hovering over the house?
\nThe secrets of the past appear to be reaching into the present. And it seems increasingly urgent that Russell figure out how the journal and lantern are related to Damian - and possibly to Sherlock Holmes himself.
\nCould there be things about his own history that even the master detective does not perceive?
August 1923. All is quiet in the Holmes household in Sussex as Mary Russell works on academic research while Sherlock Holmes conducts malodorous chemistry experiments. But the peace quickly disappears as out of the past comes Dorothy Ruskin, an amateur archeologist from the Holy Land, who brings the couple a lovely inlaid box with a tattered roll of stained papyrus inside.
\nThe evening following their meeting, Miss Ruskin dies in a traffic accident that Holmes and Mary soon prove was murder. But what was the motivation? Was it the little inlaid box holding the manuscript? Or the woman's involvement in the volatile politics of the Holy Land? Or could it have been the scroll itself, a deeply troubling letter that seems to have been written by Mary Magdalene and that contains a biblical bombshell . . .
En route to San Francisco to settle her family’s estate, Mary Russell, in the company of husband Sherlock Holmes, falls prey to troubling dreams - and even more troubling behavior. In 1906, when Mary was six, the city was devastated by a catastrophic earthquake. For years Mary has insisted she lived elsewhere at the time. But Holmes knows better.
\nSoon it is clear that whatever unpleasantness Mary wanted to forget hasn’t forgotten her. A series of mysterious deaths leads Russell and Holmes from the winding streets of Chinatown to the unspoken secrets of a parent’s marriage and the tragic “accident” that Mary alone survived. What Russell discovers is that even a forgotten past never dies . . . and it can kill again.
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Looking for respite in London after a stupefying visit from relatives, Mary encounters a friend from Oxford. The young woman introduces Mary to her current enthusiasm, a strange and enigmatic woman named Margery Childe, who leads something called \"The New Temple of God.\"
\nIt seems to be a charismatic sect involved in the post-World War I suffrage movement, with a feminist slant on Christianity. Mary is curious about the woman, and intrigued. Is the New Temple a front for something more sinister?
\nWhen a series of murders claims members of the movement's wealthy young female volunteers and principal contributors, Mary, with Holmes in the background, begins to investigate. Things become more desperate than either of them expected as Mary's search plunges her into the worst danger she has yet faced.
In the eerie wasteland of Dartmoor, Sherlock Holmes summons his devoted wife and partner, Mary Russell, from her studies at Oxford to aid the investigation of a death and some disturbing phenomena of a decidedly supernatural origin.
\nThrough the mists of the moor there have been sightings of a spectral coach made of bones carrying a woman long-ago accused of murdering her husband--and of a hound with a single glowing eye.
\nReturning to the scene of one of his most celebrated cases, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes and Russell investigate a mystery darker and more unforgiving than the moors themselves.
Mary Russell is used to dark secrets - her own, and those of her famous partner and husband, Sherlock Holmes. Trust is a thing slowly given, but over the course of a decade together, the two have forged an indissoluble bond.
And what of the other person to whom Mary Russell has opened her heart: the couple’s longtime housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson? Russell’s faith and affection are suddenly shattered when a man arrives on the doorstep claiming to be Mrs. Hudson’s son.
What Samuel Hudson tells Russell cannot possibly be true, yet she believes him - as surely as she believes the threat of the gun in his hand. In a devastating instant, everything changes. And when the scene is discovered - a pool of blood on the floor, the smell of gunpowder in the air - the most shocking revelation of all is that the grim clues point directly to Clara Hudson.
Or rather to Clarissa, the woman she was before Baker Street.
The key to Russell’s sacrifice lies in Mrs. Hudson’s past. To uncover the truth, a frantic Sherlock Holmes must put aside his anguish and push deep into his housekeeper’s secrets - to a time before her disguise was assumed, before her crimes were buried away.
There is death here, and murder, and trust betrayed.
And nothing will ever be the same.
At the close of the year 1918, forced to flee England's green and pleasant land, Russell and Holmes enter British-occupied Palestine under the auspices of Holmes' enigmatic brother, Mycroft.
\"Gentlemen, we are at your service.\" Thus Holmes greets the two travel-grimed Arab figures who receive them in the orange groves fringing the Holy Land. Whatever role could the volatile Ali and the taciturn Mahmoud play in Mycroft's design for this land the British so recently wrested from the Turks?
After passing a series of tests, Holmes and Russell learn their guides are engaged in a mission for His Majesty's Government, and disguise themselves as Bedouins - Russell as the beardless youth \"Amir\" - to join them in a stealthy reconnaissance through the dusty countryside.
A recent rash of murders seems unrelated to the growing tensions between Jew, Moslem, and Christian, yet Holmes is adamant that he must reconstruct the most recent one in the desert gully where it occurred. His singular findings will lead him and Russell through labyrinthine bazaars, verminous inns, cliff-hung monasteries - and into mortal danger.
When her mentor's inquiries jeopardize his life, Russell fearlessly wields a pistol and even assays the arts of seduction to save him. Bruised and bloodied, the pair ascend to the jewellike city of Jerusalem, where they will at last meet their adversary, whose lust for savagery and power could reduce the city's most ancient and sacred place to rubble and ignite this tinderbox of a land . . .
In England’s young silent-film industry, the megalomaniacal Randolph Fflytte is king. But rumors of criminal activities swirl around his popular movie studio. At the request of Scotland Yard, Mary Russell travels undercover to the set of Fflytte’s latest cinematic extravaganza, Pirate King. Based on Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, the project will either set the standard for moviemaking for a generation . . . or sink a boatload of careers.
\nAs the company starts rehearsals in Lisbon, the thirteen blond-haired, blue-eyed actresses whom Mary is chaperoning meet the swarm of real buccaneers Fflytte has recruited to provide authenticity. But when the crew embarks for Morocco and the actual filming, Russell senses ominous currents of trouble: a derelict boat, a film crew with many secrets, decks awash with budding romance - and now the pirates are ignoring Fflytte and answering only to their outlaw leader.
\nWhere can Sherlock Holmes be? As movie make-believe becomes true terror, Russell and Holmes themselves may experience a final fadeout.
t's summertime on the Riviera, where the Jazz Age is busily reinventing the holiday delights of warm days on golden sand and cool nights on terraces and dance floors. Just up the coast lies a more traditional pleasure ground: Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and hidden away.
\nSo when Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes happen across the Côte d'Azur in this summer of 1925, they find themselves pulled between the young and the old, hot sun and cool jazz, new friendships and old loyalties, childlike pleasures and very grown-up sins . . .
When a band of homeless people cremate a beloved dog in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the authorities are willing to overlook a few broken regulations. But three weeks later, when the dog's owner gets the same fiery send-off, the SFPD has a real headache on its hands. The autopsy suggests homicide, but Inspector Kate Martinelli and her partner, Al Hawkin, have little else to go on.
\nThey have a homeless victim without a positive ID, a group of witnesses who have little love for the cops, and a possible suspect, known only as Brother Erasmus, who is certainly articulate, but difficult to understand.
Erasmus, Kate learns, is well-acquainted with the park's homeless and with the rarefied atmosphere of Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union, yet he is an enigma to all. He has a genius for blending with his surroundings, yet he stands out wherever he goes. He is by no means crazy - but he is a fool.
Kate begins the frustrating task of interrogating a man who communicates only through quotations. Trying to learn something of his history leads her along a twisting road to a disbanded cult, long-buried secrets, the thirst for spirituality, and the hunger for bloody vengeance.
Adrift in mist-shrouded San Francisco mornings and alcohol-fogged nights, homicide detective Kate Martinelli can't escape the void left by her departed lover, who has gone off to rethink their relationship. But when twelve-year-old Jules Cameron comes to Kate for a professional consultation, Kate's not sure she's that desperate for distraction. Jules is worried about her friend Dio, a homeless boy she met in a park.
\nDio has disappeared without a word of farewell, and Jules wants Kate to find him Reluctant as she is, Kate can't say no - and soon she finds herself forming a friendship with the bright, quirky girl. But the search for Dio will prove to be much more than both bargained for - and it's only the beginning.
\nWhen Jules disappears while taking a trip with Kate, a desperate search begins . . . and Kate knows all too well the odds of finding the child alive.
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The very day Blaze came into the world, she almost drowned it. A Rain Singer born into one of the most powerful fire-wielding families in the empire, Blaze's birth summoned a devastating storm that left thousands dead. She's been hidden away ever since with a dark secret: the same torrential power that branded her an outcast disappeared that fateful day. And she’s not sure she wants it back.
\nWhen an unexpected invitation arrives for Blaze and her twin brother, Flint, to compete as future rulers of the empire, she’s suddenly thrust into the limelight again - and into battle. Threats abound at the Golden Palace, where intrigue and romance await with not one but two handsome suitors: the enchanting Crown Prince and a dangerously alluring newcomer at court.
\nAs Blaze explores her untapped power, she discovers the throne may be within her grasp. But in order to take it, she’ll have to leave behind the stories that others have told about her, and find the courage to write her own.
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Having survived three treacherous trials to win her crown, Blaze is soon to be Queen of the Aquatori. But first she must find the Eye of the Soul before King Balen, the usurper to the throne, claims its power for himself.
\nHer journey will take her deep into the Wildlands and into a temporary alliance with the infuriating but undeniably compelling Fox. She can’t help but feel drawn to him . . . but can she trust him?
\nFortune favours the brave but will it favour the Storm Weaver on her most dangerous mission yet?
After years of struggling in the Chicago theater scene, ambitious actress Kira Rascher finally lands the role of a lifetime. The catch? Starring in Temper means working with Malcolm Mercer, a mercurial director who’s known for pushing his performers past their limits - onstage and off.
Kira’s convinced she can handle Malcolm, but the theater’s cofounder Joanna Cuyler is another story. Joanna sees Kira as a threat - to her own thwarted artistic aspirations, her twisted relationship with Malcolm, and the shocking secret she’s keeping about the upcoming production. But as opening night draws near, Kira and Joanna both start to realize that Malcolm’s dangerous extremes are nothing compared to what they're capable of themselves.
She might not have a famous name, funding, or her family’s support, but Katarina Shaw has always known that she was destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid stuck in the foster care system, their instant connection makes them a formidable duo on the ice. Clinging to skating - and each other - to escape their turbulent lives, Kat and Heath go from childhood sweethearts to champion ice dancers, captivating the world with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style, and rollercoaster relationship. Until a shocking incident at the Olympic Games brings their partnership to a sudden end.
\nAs the ten-year anniversary of their final skate approaches, an unauthorized documentary reignites the public obsession with Shaw and Rocha, claiming to uncover the “real story” through interviews with their closest friends and fiercest rivals. Kat wants nothing to do with the documentary. But she can't stand the thought of someone else defining her legacy either. So, after a decade of silence, she's telling her story: from the childhood tragedies that created her all-consuming bond with Heath to the clash of desires that tore them apart. Sensational rumors have haunted their every step for years, but the truth may be even more shocking than the headlines.
\nInspired by the powerful love and hate that fuel Emily Bronte’s classic, Wuthering Heights, The Favorites is an exhilarating dance between passion, ambition, and what it truly means to win.
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Scarlett Clark is an exceptional English professor. But she’s even better at getting away with murder.
Every year, she searches for the worst man at Gorman University and plots his well-deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she’s avoided drawing attention to herself - but as she’s preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus. Determined to keep her enemies close, Scarlett insinuates herself into the investigation and charms the woman in charge, Dr. Mina Pierce. Everything’s going according to her master plan . . . until she loses control with her latest victim, putting her secret life at risk of exposure.
Meanwhile, Gorman student Carly Schiller is just trying to survive her freshman year. Finally free of her emotionally abusive father, all Carly wants is to focus on her studies and fade into the background. Her new roommate has other ideas. Allison Hadley is cool and confident - everything Carly wishes she could be - and the two girls quickly form an intense friendship. So when Allison is sexually assaulted at a party, Carly becomes obsessed with making the attacker pay . . . and turning her fantasies about revenge into a reality.
Ellie Engle doesn’t stand out. Not at home, where she’s alone with her pet fish since her dad moved away and her mom has to work around the clock. Not at the bakery, where she helps out old Mr. Walker on the weekends. And definitely not at school, where her best friend, Abby - the coolest, boldest, most talented girl in the world - drags Ellie along on her never-ending quest to “make her mark.” To someone else, a life in the shadows might seem boring, or lonely. But not to Ellie. As long as she has Abby by her side and a comic book in her hand, she’s quite content.
\nToo bad life didn’t bother checking in with Ellie. Because when a freak earthquake hits her small town, Ellie wakes up with the power to bring anything back to life with just her touch. And when a video of her using her powers suddenly goes viral, Ellie’s life goes somewhere she never imagined - or wanted: straight into the spotlight.
\nSurviving middle school is hard enough. Surviving middle school when paparazzi are camped out on your front lawn and an international pop star wants you to use your powers on live TV and you might be in love with your best friend but she doesn’t know it?
\nAbsolutely impossible.
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Andy was supposed to shed her too-serious student journalist persona and reinvent herself on New Year's Eve. Instead, she puked on her crush, dropped her phone in a fish tank, and managed to get her car stolen. Now, she only has the first day of the year to stop the gentrification that’s threatening her family’s business right her wrongs from the night before, and figure out why she feels so drawn to the electric new-girl-next-door. . How can Andy find her voice when everything’s being turned upside down?
\nDominique is an influencer on the verge of securing a major brand deal that will ensure his future and family legacy. But when he runs into his former best friend, unresolved feelings emerge - and in a small town, there's nowhere to hide. Not from his cousin, Andy, who has always seen him for his true self, not from his busybody manager, Kim, whose favorite color is money green, and certainly not from himself. When all the world’s a stage, can Dominique rise to superstardom without leaving the ones he loves behind?
\nThere’s Always Next Year is a dual POV, double love story about what it means to nearly blow your life up, and race to put it back together before your time runs out. And if they fail? Well, there’s always next year.
Marion is in deep. She's stolen money from the Manhattan ad agency where she works in a desperate bid to help her sister escape an abusive marriage, but the bus breaks down before she can make it to Saratoga Springs. It's late at night, and the only place with vacancies is an old set of cabins on the outskirts of town. She pays for a room in cash, and ends up chatting with Norm, the young innkeeper who's handsome, charming and a touch hung-up on his elderly mother. Back in her room, she steps into the shower, scrubbing off the late-summer heat, when the curtain is pulled back . . .
\nNorm Billings is there with a knife. He raises his arm to strike, but before he does, Marion knees him in the balls, grabs the knife, and stabs the life out of him. Now, she's covered in blood, and she's a woman on the run - not just a thief, but a killer, too. Where will she go? How will she save both herself and her sister? And what mysteries will she uncover as she does?
\nIn Psycho, Hitchcock shocked audiences when he killed off his protagonist. But what if the leading lady had fought back? Marion offers an alternate history of the most famous dead blonde to ever grace the silver screen. Only this time, the knife is in her hands - and she's no victim.
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Welcome to Baines Creek, a town hidden deep in Appalachia, where one of the last one-room schoolhouses in America is on the brink of closing. It's summer 1980, and Kate Shaw has lived in Baines Creek for ten years. A skeptic by heart, she rejects superstition and the belief in Appalachian folklore, much to the chagrin of local legend Birdie Rocas, a lively and reclusive witch with a trove of secrets.
\nYet when Birdie dies and leaves Kate her collection of handmade books and a trunk of illuminated manuscripts and journals, Kate is thrown into world of things she doesn't understand. Enter Lydia Brown, a psychic with a curious birthmark whose visions stopped the day her parents died. Grief-stricken, without her gift, and in need of spiritual guidance, she travels to Appalachia in search of Birdie and the answers she might provide.
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When Isabel Williams moves to Liverpool, she criticises seemingly everything in Eloise Byrne’s life – her city, her accent, her trademark boldness – so if, when she catches Isabel staring, Eloise feels her pulse race, it must be because they hate each other. It surely couldn’t be for any other reason, could it?
\nEloise needs to get her ADHD under control in time for A-Levels, but when she meets Isabel, school becomes the least of her concerns. What begins as outright contempt turns into an oddly satisfactory rivalry, but for their rivalry to shift further into romance, their relationship must withstand Isabel's classism, Eloise’s distrust, and whatever secrets their friends are hiding from them.
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In present-day New York City, an Albanian interpreter reluctantly agrees to work with Alfred, a Kosovar torture survivor, during his therapy sessions. Despite her husband’s cautions, she soon becomes entangled in her clients’ life. Alfred's nightmares stir up her own buried memories, and an impulsive attempt to help a Kurdish poet leads to a risky encounter and a reckless plan.
\nAs ill-fated decisions stack up, jeopardising the nameless narrator’s marriage and mental health, she takes a spontaneous trip to reunite with her mother in Albania, where her life in the United States is put into stark relief. When she returns to face the consequences of her actions, she must question what is real and what is not.
\nRuminative and propulsive, Ledia Xhoga’s debut novel Misinterpretation interrogates the darker legacies of family and country, and the boundary between compassion and self-preservation.
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It's been a few months now since XR_935 met Emma, a human girl who wasn't supposed to exist. Robots thought they'd eliminated all humans, but some have survived all these years. Now, robots and humans live side by side, and the world is so much better for it. They've formed a new society, living together as equals.
\nEven if XR doesn't always understand humans, it is impressed by their creativity and ingenuity - especially considering all the terrible things that robots did to humans all those years ago. But some humans are not so quick to forgive. A group known as the Machine Breakers has emerged. They won’t stop until they’ve destroyed every robot on earth - and any human who stands in their way. Can XR and Emma stop them? Or could this be the end of the robots - and the world as they know it?
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In a future when humans are believed to be extinct, what will one curious robot do when it finds a girl who needs its help?
\nIn the future, robots have eliminated humans, and 12-year-old robot XR_935 is just fine with that. Without humans around, there is no war, no pollution, no crime. Every member of society has a purpose. Everything runs smoothly and efficiently. Until the day XR discovers something impossible: a human girl named Emma.
\nNow, Emma must embark on a dangerous voyage with XR and two other robots in search of a mysterious point on a map. But how will they survive in a place where rules are never broken and humans aren’t supposed to exist? And what will they find at the end of their journey?
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Few gave tiny Singapore much chance of survival when it was granted independence in 1965. How is it, then, that today the former British colonial trading post is a thriving Asian metropolis with not only the world's number one airline, best airport, and busiest port of trade, but also the world's fourth–highest per capita real income?
\nThe story of that transformation is told here by Singapore's charismatic, controversial founding father, Lee Kuan Yew. Rising from a legacy of divisive colonialism, the devastation of the Second World War, and general poverty and disorder following the withdrawal of foreign forces, Singapore now is hailed as a city of the future. This miraculous history is dramatically recounted by the man who not only lived through it all but who fearlessly forged ahead and brought about most of these changes.
\nDelving deep into his own meticulous notes, as well as previously unpublished government papers and official records, Lee details the extraordinary efforts it took for an island city–state in Southeast Asia to survive at that time.
\nLee explains how he and his cabinet colleagues finished off the communist threat to the fledgling state's security and began the arduous process of nation building: forging basic infrastructural roads through a land that still consisted primarily of swamps, creating an army from a hitherto racially and ideologically divided population, stamping out the last vestiges of colonial–era corruption, providing mass public housing, and establishing a national airline and airport.
\nIn this illuminating account, Lee writes frankly about his trenchant approach to political opponents and his often unorthodox views on human rights, democracy, and inherited intelligence, aiming always \"to be correct, not politically correct.\" Nothing in Singapore escaped his watchful eye: whether choosing shrubs for the greening of the country, restoring the romance of the historic Raffles Hotel, or openly, unabashedly persuading young men to marry women as well educated as themselves. Today's safe, tidy Singapore bears Lee's unmistakable stamp, for which he is unapologetic: \"If this is a nanny state, I am proud to have fostered one.\"
\nThough Lee's domestic canvas in Singapore was small, his vigor and talent assured him a larger place in world affairs. With inimitable style, he brings history to life with cogent analyses of some of the greatest strategic issues of recent times and reveals how, over the years, he navigated the shifting tides of relations among America, China, and Taiwan, acting as confidant, sounding board, and messenger for them. He also includes candid, sometimes acerbic pen portraits of his political peers, including the indomitable Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the poetry–spouting Jiang Zemin, and ideologues George Bush and Deng Xiaoping.
\nLee also lifts the veil on his family life and writes tenderly of his wife and stalwart partner, Kwa Geok Choo, and of their pride in their three children - particularly the eldest son, Hsien Loong, who is now Singapore's deputy prime minister.
\nFor more than three decades, Lee Kuan Yew has been praised and vilified in equal measure, and he has established himself as a force impossible to ignore in Asian and international politics. From Third World to First offers readers a compelling glimpse into this visionary's heart, soul, and mind.
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Ambitious ice queen and corporate lawyer Felicity Simmons has spent her life focused on one thing: scuttling up the career ladder. She’s achingly close to taking charge of a media empire for her boss when she’s sent to investigate a South Bronx charity that helps homeless people’s pets.
\nHas the charity made off with her boss’s generous donation? And who on earth is that gorgeous soft-butch veterinarian who looks as if she could toss a Shetland pony over one shoulder? Not that Felicity has any interest in some opinionated Amazon or her adorable fleabag of a dog.
\nFelicity is quite sure she will not be distracted, thank you very much. She has a minor mystery to solve, a mentor to impress, and her life’s dream to fulfil. Even if a distraction might be exactly what she needs.
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Life has become a farcical mess for icy British A-lister Elizabeth Thornton. America’s most-hated villain stars in a top-rated TV medical drama that she hates. Now, she’s been romantically linked to her perky, new co-star, Summer, due to the young woman’s clumsiness.
\nAs a closeted actress, that’s the last thing Elizabeth needs. If she could just get her dream movie role, life would be so much better. The only problem is that the eccentric French film-maker offering it insists on meeting her “girlfriend”, Summer, first.
Summer Hayes is devastated when her co-star shuns her for accidentally sparking rumors they’re lovers.
Now the so-called British Bitch has the audacity to ask Summer to pretend to be her girlfriend to get her a role? Elizabeth doesn’t even like Summer! Oh, how she’d love to tell her no. And Summer definitely would if it wasn’t for the fact she’s maybe a tiny bit in love with the impossible woman.
\nAustralian crime reporter Maddie Grey is out of her depth in New York, miserable, and secretly drawn to her powerful, twice-married, media mogul boss, Elena Bartell, who eats failing newspapers for breakfast.
\nAs work takes them to Australia, Maddie is goaded into a brief, seemingly harmless bet with her enigmatic boss - where they have to tell the complete truth to each other. It backfires catastrophically. A lesbian romance about the lies we tell ourselves.
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LA-based English indie filmmaker Alex Levitin reluctantly takes a job in New Zealand to save the “worst movie ever”, Shezan: Mistress of the Forest. Things might go easier for her if she didn’t almost run over the standoffish, beautiful local cop on her first day in town. And it’d really help if her film set wasn't being mysteriously sabotaged.
When Ika Whenu’s Senior Constable Sam Keegan isn’t trying to stamp out a motorcycle gang drug problem afflicting her town, she’s publicly slamming everything about the exploitative film, Shezan, and the Hollywood blow-ins making it. That includes its nerdy, cute director, Alex, who has woeful driving skills to go with her smart mouth.
Against the stunning scenery and chaotic film-set backdrop, attraction flares between the two warring women as they’re forced to work together to find the set saboteur.
A funny, small-town lesbian romance about clashing cultures and daring to dream big.
This is a Breaking Character spin-off novel that can easily be read as a standalone story.
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Over one long night at a bar in Las Vegas, two powerful hotel executives meet, flirt, and challenge each other - having no clue they’re rivals after the same dream deal.
\nBrilliant ice queen Amelia Duxton is a hotel vice president who thrives on control, truth, and efficiency. She’s in no mood for love or the mess it brings. All she wants is to buy the coveted Mayfair Palace - a massive deal that could finally help her land the CEO job in her family’s hotel empire.
\nFiery Kai Fisher is charming and chaotic and renowned for closing ambitious deals. Her sights are set on snatching the Mayfair Palace out from under the nose of her hated arch rivals, the Duxton family.
But when secrets emerge and everything starts to fall apart, how can either of the warring women win - especially when they’ve just met their match?
All cool, pragmatic Ottilie Zimmermann has been dreaming of for years is retiring from her top-secret, morally gray job to sip Mai Tais on a Pacific island. While in Las Vegas tying up some final loose ends, she crosses paths with a woman who is clever and intriguing yet far too sex-obsessed for Ottilie’s taste. So why can’t she stop thinking about her?
\nFlirtatious Monique Carson thinks she’s met - or made love to - every type of woman there is until she encounters commanding, charismatic Ottilie. Around others, though, Ottilie shrinks into an older, inconspicuous persona. Who is this chameleon? What secrets does she hide? Monique would dearly love to find out . . . if only Ottilie would let her in.
\nFor two smart women accustomed to seeing through everyone else with ease, it’s disconcerting to discover they cannot read each other. How can they walk away now?
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Ambitious Daily Sentinel journalist Lauren King is chafing on LA’s vapid social circuit, reporting on glamorous A-list parties while sparring with her rival - the formidable, icy Catherine Ayers. Ayers is an ex-Washington political correspondent who suffered a humiliating fall from grace, and her acerbic, vicious tongue keeps everyone at bay. Everyone, that is, except knockabout Iowa girl King, who is undaunted, unimpressed and gives as good as she gets.
One night a curious story unfolds before their eyes: One business launch, 34 prostitutes and a pallet of missing pink champagne. Can the warring pair work together to unravel an incredible story?
Shattergirl, Earth’s first lesbian guardian - a brilliant but aloof alien superheroine who can hurl and destroy large objects - is refusing to save people and has gone off the grid.
Lena Martin, the street-smart tracker with a silver tongue and a disdain for the rogue guardians she chases, has only days to bring her home. As the pair clash heatedly, masks begin to crack and brutal secrets are exposed that could shatter them both.
What do a stolen food-delivery robot, a woman from the past, and a bizarre scheme to microchip military veterans have in common?
The infamous Caustic Queen, Washington DC bureau chief Catherine Ayers, would love to find out but she has a lot on her plate right now. She and her fiancée, reporter and Iowa girl Lauren King, are busy wedding planning in Lauren’s home town.
That means facing a lot of beefy mechanic brothers, a haughty cat, and a sharp-tongued Meemaw. Catherine’s sure she can play nice with everyone. Well, pretty sure. How hard can it be, anyway?
Muffin maker Olivia Roberts has had it with her awful exes taking advantage of her good nature. The theft of her nana’s beloved stuffed penguin is the absolute last straw.
\nShe puts up an ad at her local crime bookstore for a henchperson to help her enact a little mild revenge. To her astonishment, Margaret Blackwood, the mysterious, icy, and annoyingly opinionated bookstore owner, applies.
\nFor two clever, capable women, they turn out to be woeful at vengeance. But much to their dismay, they discover they’re pretty good at falling in love.
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What happens after the morning after? Polar opposites fall in love in this low-angst, ice queen lesbian romance about a DC finance journalist and a cheeky butch flight mechanic.
\nCynthia Redwell can’t believe she bedded some ex-softballer/mechanic at her best friend’s Iowa wedding. Worse, the woman has a smart mouth, a cute grin, and a baffling immunity to her fabulously biting barbs.
\nSuzette Beringer wakes up beside closeted, bitchy, beautiful Cynthia and instantly knows she’s trouble. She should definitely steer clear. So how come they keep reconnecting . . . to the point she’s just invited Cynthia to meet her parents? And why on earth did Cynthia say yes?
\nThe funny short story from Lee Winter’s Red Files universe has now been expanded into a novella.
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When free-spirited artist Sienna Fisher is mistaken for an intern at a New York luxury goods empire, the last thing she expects is for the CEO to be aloof English art curator Jasmine Gemayel. Years ago in London, Jasmine shredded Sienna's art and mocked her for knowing nothing of life, setting her on a path to wander the world.
\nNow Sienna has a second chance to impress Jasmine, and she's not about to waste it. Even if it means becoming an intern at age thirty-four and trying to win an in-house design competition, all to dazzle the woman who changed her life . . . and doesn't even remember her. As if that's not hard enough, there's that strange business of the sparks that keep flying every time she argues art with her boss. Of course, that's entirely one-sided given Jasmine's straight and married . . . right?
\nOr . . . is she?
The world is divided by the Line of Limit. To the north are the Tokkebi - fire people able to manipulate flames as both weapons and illusions; Rekon - giant birdmen with immense strength and warrior acumen; and the humans - as divided as the other races are unified. To the south are the Nhaga - a reptilian people who relinquish their hearts for immortality. For centuries, the races didn’t cross that line, but change is in the air. A Nhaga is being sent North . . . and a trio is being dispatched to make sure this agent from the South makes it out alive - one from each race.
\nBut the illusion of a simple journey is quickly dispelled by the fact that the Tokkebi is merely a scholar, not an adventurer; the Rekon is deathly afraid of water; and the human hunts and eats Nhaga. And when the Nhaga they’re supposed to be escorting out of the Kiboren forest is murdered, the one sent in his place turns out to very much have a heart - meaning he’s quite vulnerable to the dangerous exodus.
\nThe four must quickly forge an alliance and shed the distrust and prejudice that plagues them if they are to survive. And just as crucial, they must figure out what this mission is actually about, because unbeknownst to them, the very fate of the world might rest on this one Nhaga making it to the North intact.
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Kaz Brekker and his crew have just pulled off a heist so daring even they didn't think they'd survive. But instead of divvying up a fat reward, they're right back to fighting for their lives. Double-crossed and left crippled by the kidnapping of a valuable team member, the crew is low on resources, allies, and hope.
\nAs powerful forces from around the world descend on Ketterdam to root out the secrets of the dangerous drug known as jurda parem, old rivals and new enemies emerge to challenge Kaz's cunning and test the team's fragile loyalties. A war will be waged on the city's dark and twisting streets - a battle for revenge and redemption that will decide the fate of magic in the Grisha world.
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In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family's social position.
\nWhat begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England's heretic queen - and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king's favor.
\nDetermined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition's wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive - even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.
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Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy “Alex” Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory - even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale.
\nForbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can’t call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies’ most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it.
\nBut when faculty members begin to die off, Alex knows these aren’t just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if she is going to survive, she’ll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university’s very walls.
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The dashing young king, Nikolai Lantsov, has always had a gift for the impossible. No one knows what he endured in his country's bloody civil war - and he intends to keep it that way. Now, as enemies gather at his weakened borders, Nikolai must find a way to refill Ravka's coffers, forge new alliances, and stop a rising threat to the once-great Grisha Army.
Yet with every day a dark magic within him grows stronger, threatening to destroy all he has built. With the help of a young monk and a legendary Grisha general, Nikolai will journey to the places in Ravka where the deepest magic survives to vanquish the terrible legacy inside him. He will risk everything to save his country and himself. But some secrets aren't meant to stay buried - and some wounds aren't meant to heal.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?
Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.
The capital has fallen. The Darkling rules Ravka from his shadow throne. Now the nation's fate rests with a broken Sun Summoner, a disgraced tracker, and the shattered remnants of a once-great magical army. Deep in an ancient network of tunnels and caverns, a weakened Alina must submit to the dubious protection of the Apparat and the zealots who worship her as a Saint.
\nYet her plans lie elsewhere, with the hunt for the elusive firebird and the hope that an outlaw prince still survives. Alina will have to forge new alliances and put aside old rivalries as she and Mal race to find the last of Morozova's amplifiers. But as she begins to unravel the Darkling's secrets, she reveals a past that will forever alter her understanding of the bond they share and the power she wields.
\nThe firebird is the one thing that stands between Ravka and destruction - and claiming it could cost Alina the very future she’s fighting for.
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The Demon King. As Fjerda's massive army prepares to invade, Nikolai Lantsov will summon every bit of his ingenuity and charm—and even the monster within—to win this fight. But a dark threat looms that cannot be defeated by a young king's gift for the impossible.
The Stormwitch. Zoya Nazyalensky has lost too much to war. She saw her mentor die and her worst enemy resurrected, and she refuses to bury another friend. Now duty demands she embrace her powers to become the weapon her country needs. No matter the cost.
The Queen of Mourning. Deep undercover, Nina Zenik risks discovery and death as she wages war on Fjerda from inside its capital. But her desire for revenge may cost her country its chance at freedom and Nina the chance to heal her grieving heart.
King. General. Spy. Together they must find a way to forge a future in the darkness. Or watch a nation fall.
Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.
\nAlina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life - a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.
\nYet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha . . . and the secrets of her heart.
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Hunted across the True Sea, haunted by the lives she took on the Fold, Alina must try to make a life with Mal in an unfamiliar land. She finds starting new is not easy while keeping her identity as the Sun Summoner a secret. She can’t outrun her past or her destiny for long.
The Darkling has emerged from the Shadow Fold with a terrifying new power and a dangerous plan that will test the very boundaries of the natural world. With the help of a notorious privateer, Alina returns to the country she abandoned, determined to fight the forces gathering against Ravka. But as her power grows, Alina slips deeper into the Darkling’s game of forbidden magic, and farther away from Mal.
Somehow, she will have to choose between her country, her power, and the love she always thought would guide her - or risk losing everything to the oncoming storm.
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Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price - and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can't pull it off alone . . .
A convict with a thirst for revenge.
A sharpshooter who can't walk away from a wager.
A runaway with a privileged past.
A spy known as the Wraith.
A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums.
A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes.
Kaz's crew are the only ones who might stand between the world and destruction - if they don't kill each other first.
In this heartrending spin on the zombie mythos, a brilliant scientist desperately searches for a cure after a devastating epidemic while also hiding a monumental secret - her undead husband.
\nHaving always preferred the company of microbes, British scientist Kesta Shelley has spent her life peering through a microscope rather than cultivating personal relationships. That changed when Kesta met Tim - her cheerleader, her best friend, her absolute everything. So when he was one of the last people in London to be infected with a perplexing virus that left the city ravaged, Kesta went into triage mode.
\nAlthough the government rounded up and disposed of all the infected, Kesta is able to keep her husband (un)alive - and hidden - with resources from the hospital where she works. She spends her days reviewing biopsy slides and her evenings caring for him, but he’s clearly declining. The sedatives aren’t working like they used to, and his violent outbursts are becoming more frequent. As Kesta races against the clock, her colleagues start noticing changes in her behavior and appearance. Her care for Tim has spiraled into absolute obsession. Whispers circulate that a top-secret lab is working on a cure, and Kesta clings to the possibility of being recruited, but can she save her husband before he is discovered?
After her boyfriend dumps her in a Reddit post, unemployed thirty-nine-year-old Dayna accepts an unusual opportunity from a man she stopped speaking to twenty years If Dayna can help Craig transform his crumbling mansion into a successful hype house of influencers, he can restore his birthright to its former glory, and she can bring her career back from the dead.
\nBut missing from the mansion is Becca, an enigmatic tarot card reader who built a rabid fandom with her cryptic, soul-touching videos . . . and then vanished. With nineteen-year-old Olivia, the newest member of the hype house (and one of Becca’s biggest fans), Dayna begins to build a social media campaign around Becca’s disappearance that will catapult the creators to new heights of success. Too bad Craig forbids Dayna from pursuing the mystery at its heart.
\nAs Olivia searches for traces of Becca in a labyrinthine house that seems intent on hiding its secrets, and Dayna becomes entangled with both Craig and Jake, the resident heartthrob and the last person to see Becca, the two women make a shocking discovery that will upend everything.
When Adela Woods tells her parents she’s pregnant, they immediately send her a thousand miles away to stay with her grandmother in Padua Beach. The intention is that she will leave her baby in 'the forgotten Panhandle of Florida'. and resume her suburban life nine months later as though nothing happened. But Adela’s plans are soon washed away by the tide.
\nFirst, Adela meets Emory, a new mother determined to defy the expectations of everyone around her, returning to high school with her newborn baby strapped to her chest. Then she meets Simone, ringleader of ‘the Girls,’ a group of young mothers who create a village together in the back of her red truck - dancing, breastfeeding, raising their children and themselves.
\nThe town thinks they’ve lost their way. Really, they are finding it.
\nBut as they look for love, make and break friendships, navigate the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood, Adela, Emory and Simone also find themselves on an inescapable collision course with one another.
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A dazzling, unforgettable novel about a young Black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system.
\nKiara and her brother, Marcus, are scraping by in an East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent - which has more than doubled - and to keep the nine-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed.
\nOne night, what begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger turns into the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs: nightcrawling. Her world breaks open even further when her name surfaces in an investigation that exposes her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland Police Department.
San Sebastian, 1936.
\nAbene García, a fisherman’s daughter, must make a terrible choice: risk being caught in the crossfires of the escalating Spanish Civil War or abandon her seaside home and make the perilous journey across the Pyrenees to the border of France. But the safety she finds on the other side of the mountains is shattered when the Nazis enter the country. Abene won’t stand by and do nothing while innocent Jewish men, women and children are in desperate need - not when she knows a way to escape.
\nAbene has crossed the mountains before, and she knows the dangers. Joining the resistance network, she helps to set up a route across the mountains. But when her safe house is discovered, a group of injured Allied soldiers is shot down, except for one - a Canadian pilot too sick to make the crossing alone. Abene knows what she must do. She will cross the mountains once again, back to the home she left years before, where her journey truly began, and many dangers remain . . .
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For the last decade, as she’s spent countless hours in doctor’s waiting rooms searching for diagnoses, treatments, and relief, being the owner and operator of Lena Dunham’s body has felt, as she puts it, “like towing a wrecked car across town at midnight.” It’s not easy dragging a wrecked car anywhere, much less to the Met Gala while sewn into a gold lamé corset. Or to the set of the hit show that you - as a twenty-five-year-old - are writing, directing, producing, and starring in. Or to the White House, the Golden Globes, or your publicist’s office to discuss the latest internet disaster.
\nBut Dunham does it - even if it means interminable hospital stays, vomiting in the bathroom when she’s meant to be meeting Oprah, or terrifying those closest to her - because she can no longer tell the difference between fighting to do what she loves and being a servant to her own ambition. All the while, she is holding out for a love that can withstand her personal and public challenges and, more than anything, yearning to feel like herself again - if only she could remember who that self was.
\nAs Dunham takes us through her journey, tracking her rise to fame - from selling the pilot of Girls to the present - in three acts, it becomes clear that the spotlight casts long shadows, distorting the relationships she once held dear and isolating everyone in its glare. When an endless supply of drugs can’t protect you from pain - and begins to control your every move - being famous doesn’t stand a chance against the darker corners of the human experience.
\nIn Famesick, Dunham asks herself what the cost of fulfilling her dreams has really been, and whether it was worth it. What she finds is deeper than physical relief, and more lasting, as she learns to live with what she can’t change and turn her regrets into wisdom that can carry her forward, as she reconnects to what, and who, she loves.
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Lena Dunham, acclaimed writer-director-star of HBO and Sky Atlantic’s ‘Girls’ and the award-winning movie ‘Tiny Furniture’, displays her unique powers of observation, wisdom and humour in this exceptional collection of essays.
\n“If I could take what I’ve learned and make one menial job easier for you, or prevent you from having the kind of sex where you feel you must keep your sneakers on in case you want to run away during the act, then every misstep of mine was worthwhile. I’m already predicting my future shame at thinking I had anything to offer you, but also my future glory in having stopped you from trying an expensive juice cleanse or thinking that it was your fault when the person you are dating suddenly backs away, intimidated by the clarity of your personal mission here on earth. No, I am not a sexpert, a psychologist, or a dietician. I am not a mother of three or the owner of a successful hosiery franchise. But I am a girl with a keen interest in having it all, and what follows are hopeful dispatches from the frontlines of that struggle.”
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A crown princess. A monster the gods fear. A destiny no one can outrun.
\nInspired by Korean history and myths, the first book in the Sacred Bone series is a rich and evocative high-stakes fantasy that is perfect for fans of Gallant and Six Crimson Cranes.
\nMirae was meant to save her queendom, but the ceremony before her coronation ends in terror and death, unlocking a strange new power within her and foretelling the return of a monster even the gods fear. Amid the chaos, Mirae's beloved older brother is taken—threatening the peninsula's already tenuous truce.
\nDesperate to save her brother and defeat this ancient enemy before the queendom is beset by war, Mirae sets out on a journey with an unlikely group of companions while her unpredictable magic gives her terrifying visions of a future she must stop at any cost.
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After her fraught journey to save her queendom, Mirae has finally cast the Netherking back into his dark cage in the Deep.
\nBut his imprisonment brings her no peace - because in his final schemes, the Netherking managed to possess her beloved older brother, Minho, and it is his body that languishes in the Deep, tormented by his possessor.
\nMirae is determined to free her brother and destroy the Netherking once and for all. But when the Netherking steals the all-powerful pearl of Seolla, all of Mirae’s careful plans are destroyed. She must set out once more to stop him, slipping in and out of the future with her divine powers as she races a path to the heavens itself.
\nWhen she discovers the truth about the Netherking’s intentions and learns that the only way to destroy him is with a sacrifice larger than she can bear, Mirae begins to doubt her free will and even the fate of the entire peninsula and the gods beyond.
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Set against the stark background of the Southwestern desert, Lena Valencia’s Mystery Lights glows with the promise - and fear - of the world we know and the worlds we don’t, following women and girls as they navigate dangers both supernatural and existential.
\nAn influencer attempts to derail a viral TV marketing campaign with her violent cult following. A marriage between two ghost hunters is threatened when one of them loses her ability to see spirits. The lives of a famous painter in the twilight of her career and a teenage UFO enthusiast converge when a mysterious glowing orb appears in their small desert town. And a slasher-flick screenwriter looking for inspiration escapes a pack of wild dogs only to find herself locked in an SUV with a strange man beside her. Set primarily in deserts throughout the American Southwest, Lena Valencia’s Mystery Lights is a debut collection of stories about women and girls at the crossroads of mundane daily life and existential dread.
\nFrom the all-too-real horror of a sexual predator on a college campus to a lost sister transformed by cave-dwelling creatures, Mystery Lights grapples with terrors both familiar and fantastic, introducing an electrifying new voice in contemporary fiction while bringing to light the many faces of the forces that haunt us.
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On a bluff above a river rises The House, where elderly and disabled residents live alongside young people who help out in exchange for free rent. The community is led by a former punk singer who never wanted to be responsible for anyone yet now finds herself the caretaker of this precarious collection of lives. It’s not a family, exactly, but it’s got the complicated, sometimes painful, sometimes hilarious, dynamics of kinship.
When two kids - Nola and her little cousin James - show up on The House’s back porch in need of refuge, the whole experiment is thrown into question. All are welcome here, or that was the idea. But the authorities are looking for these children, and The House’s finances are teetering on the edge.
Lake Harlowe may not appear to be your typical State Department diplomat. With the number of skeletons in her closet exceeding the tattoos on her skin, she moves to a new country every few years to keep one step ahead of her personal demons. After two grueling years working in Cambodia, Lake’s desperate for a break and a new posting to sleepy Wellington, New Zealand, seems like a dream come true.
\nThat is, until eighteen-year-old singer-songwriter Bowie Bishop mysteriously vanishes shortly after American NFL player Bruce Walter is found dead in his hotel room. An exchange student from Las Vegas, Bowie was a world away from her possessive, washed-up stage mom who won’t stop calling until Lake finds her superstar daughter.
\nAll at once, Lake finds herself ensnared in a network of deception involving Bowie’s high-profile host family, a shadowy music producer, a casino magnate, and the US ambassador - her boss. Obsessed with finding the truth, Lake soon realises that to find the missing girl, she must confront her own dark past.
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Natalie has only ever wanted to find “the one.” The perfect man, the happy family she never had. But each time she thinks she is finally getting somewhere, she’s bitterly disappointed. Another red line through a list of exes. And that was before the night of the Big Fallout that left her even more alone.
\nThen along comes James - wonderful, handsome James - and Natalie thinks her luck has finally turned. Maybe he’s the one for her. Maybe he’s the one she’s been waiting for all along. Maybe he won’t wind up dead.
\nBut the harder Natalie tries to be a “normal” wife, the more world-upending truths are brought to her door, leaving her unsure of who she really is, and much less what she’ll do . . . leaving her to question whether there is a monster within her or whether there is a villain toying with her from the outside.
\nWhat’s the secret story behind Natalie’s dead exes? Will she and James survive their marriage? And do either of them deserve to?
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When Jude and Aiden are paired up together for an internship at a local radio station, things are awkward. Jude is quiet, withdrawn, has one friend, and is suspicious of everyone. Aiden is charming, outgoing, and popular, with a seemingly easy confidence and golden retriever energy.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBut after they discover a shared love of podcast dramas, Jude and Aiden realise that they have more in common than they first realised - especially after Aiden reveals that he is a huge fan of Jude’s own podcast, The Night Merchant.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWith a wonderful and original meet-cute premise, an adorable couple with a grumpy x sunshine dynamic and gorgeous chemistry, and themes of forced proximity, found family, and mistaken identity.
Sunset Hall doyenne Agnes Sharp is only too pleased when her housemate Edwina wins a trip to a spa hotel in Cornwall - heaven knows the group of elderly sleuths could do with a change of scenery. But it quickly becomes apparent that the hotel is no paradise, despite the romantic package and five-course menu.
\nAs soon as they've made themselves comfortable, Agnes thinks she's witnessed a murder on the cliffs. And it soon becomes clear that the perpetrator is among them. Will Agnes and her friends survive their holiday?
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Sunset Hall, a house-share for the old and unusual, is gearing up as energetically as it's aged inhabitants can for Bernadette's big wedding day. However, with the RSVPs comes an anonymous note that threatens to cast a pall over the upcoming festivities. Agnes is in (somewhat begrudging) wedding planning mode and she and the not-so-sprightly gang of pensioners decide to hide the note from the betrothed, not wanting to cause stress.
\nIt is up to Agnes to dig into this poison pen letter, determined to help the wedding go off without a hitch . . . aside from the bodies they've already had to hide from the blushing bride.
It’s an eventful day at Sunset Hall, a house-share for the old and unruly, when the police arrive with news that a body has been discovered next door. Everyone, including Agnes, is secretly relieved that the body in question is not the one they’re currently hiding in the shed (sorry about that, Lillith).
\nNow the answer to their little problem with Lillith may have fallen into their laps. All they have to do is find out who murdered their neighbour, so they can pin Lillith’s death on them, thus killing two old birds with one stone.
\nTo investigate, the senior sleuths (not forgetting Hettie the tortoise) will tangle with sinister bakers, broken stair lifts, inept criminals and their own dark secrets.
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Something is not right with George the shepherd. His sheep have gathered around him outside the cozy Irish village of Glennkill to assess the situation. George has cared for the sheep, reading them books every night, and now he lies pinned to the ground with a spade. His flock, far savvier about the workings of the human mind than your average sheep, sets out to find George’s killer, led by Miss Maple, the smartest sheep in Glennkill (and possibly the world).
\nHer team of investigators includes Othello, who was rescued from the Dublin Zoo; Mopple the Whale, who is always hungry and remembers everything; and Zora, an existential ewe - just to name a few. Together, the sheep discuss the crime late into the night, and their speculations vary wildly.
\nDetermined to unravel the mystery, they embark on furtive missions into the village, where they encounter a hoof-full of two-legged suspects. There’s Ham, the terrifying butcher who smells of death; Rebecca, the secretive village newcomer; and Father Will, a sinister priest the sheep call God.
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Why do some people become radicalised?
How do ideologies shape the human brain?
And how can we unchain our minds from toxic dogmas?
In The Ideological Brain, Leor Zmigrod reveals the deep connection between political beliefs and the biology of the brain. Drawing on her own pioneering research, she uncovers the complex interplay between biology and environment that predisposes some individuals to rigid ways of thinking, and explains how ideologies take hold of our brains, fundamentally changing the way we think, act and interact with others. She shows how ideologues of all types struggle to change their thought patterns when faced with new information, culminating in the radical message that our politics are not superficial but are woven into the fabric of our minds.
\nThis authoritative, accessible and playful blend of psychology, politics and philosophy explores the cutting-edge of the emerging field of political neuroscience. Zmigrod examines its historical roots before she looks to the future, considering the broader social and political implications of her groundbreaking research. Guiding readers through her experiments, she eventually describes what a free, authentic, and tolerant brain looks like, and explains how anyone can keep their mind open and flexible in the face of extremist ideologies.
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The year is 1959. When Chinese businessman Leo Lin loses his livelihood, his Caucasian American wife Margaret replaces him as sole breadwinner, creating a cascade of domestic crises that mirrors the Cold War raging between the United States and Communist China.
\nTheir oldest daughter Prudence elopes. Denise, the middle daughter, escapes into French literature and her prophetic imagination. Lorraine, the youngest, takes refuge in the Catholic Church and the Mickey Mouse Club. But it is when Leo’s fresh-off-the-boat mother Nai-nai comes to live with them in their New York suburban home that the family unit threatens to rupture.
\nThe final blow is delivered by Leo’s imperious father Guoxin who reveals a terrible secret that has kept him prisoner of his past and all the Lins hostage to his unremitting sense of guilt and shame.
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Brandon is a hopeless romantic. So when a handsome stranger named Jon checks in at the hotel he works at and invites Brandon to his room, Brandon ignores the advice of his crew - a group of loveable and messy queer twenty-somethings - and accepts. What follows is a tale as old as time: they hook up, Jon promises to text, Brandon falls in love, and Jon ghosts. Case closed - or is it?
\nWhen Jon checks out early, leaving behind a bag of belongings and his cellphone, Brandon takes the phone and sets out to find him, thinking that this must at last be his Cinderella story.
\nBut he gets more than he bargained for when he witnesses a murder - and sees Jon fleeing the scene.
\nDetermined (and not in over their heads whatsoever), Brandon, Ollie, Nicole, and Ian decide to solve the mystery of the murder and uncover Jon's true identity . . . they just have to figure it out before a target falls on their own backs.
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A gifted young knight named Collum arrives at Camelot to compete for a spot on the Round Table, only to find he’s too late. The king died two weeks ago at the Battle of Camlann, leaving no heir, and only a handful of the knights of the Round Table survive.
\nThey aren’t the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They’re the oddballs of the Round Tables, from the edges of the stories, like Sir Palomides; the Saracen Knight; and Sir Dagonet, Arthur’s fool, who was knighted as a joke. They’re joined by Nimue, who was Merlin’s apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. Together this ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.
\nBut Arthur’s death has revealed Britain’s fault lines. God has abandoned it, and the fairies and monsters and old gods are returning, led by Arthur’s half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms are turning on each other, warlords are laying siege to Camelot, and rival factions are forming around the disgraced Lancelot and the fallen Queen Guinevere. It is up to Collum and his companions to reclaim Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this ruined world and make it whole again.
\nBut before they can restore Camelot they’ll have to learn the truth of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and of Britain’s dark past.
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A lot has changed for Kate in a year. She and Tom are now full-fledged conductors of the steam-powered, animal-saving Great Secret Intercontinental Railway. Life is good!
\nOr good-ish, anyway. Her uncle Herbert has gone missing, and the worsening climate means that there are more and more animals that need help all the time. How many times does Kate have to save the world before it stays saved?
\nAnd her real life isn’t exactly perfect either. She flunked her audition for the junior high musical and got stuck in the chorus, while her archenemy Jag got a lead.
\nSo, out of desperation, Kate breaks the rules and takes the Silver Arrow out on an unsanctioned mission, to find Uncle Herbert and bring back balance to the world. But she quickly discovers she’s not the only one on the Great Secret Intercontinental Railway. There’s a mysterious train called the Golden Swift out there too, with an agenda of its own. Is it an ally? A rival? An enemy? A bit of all three?
\nThe question will turn Kate’s world upside down, take her from the Scottish Highlands to the Australian outback to the bottom of the Bering Sea, and lead her straight on a collision course with the mysterious masters of the Great Secret Intercontinental Railway itself. Because when you're a human being fighting to save nature, are you the hero or are you the villain? There are no simple answers.
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Quentin Coldwater should be happy. He escaped a miserable Brooklyn childhood, matriculated at a secret college for magic, and graduated to discover that Fillory - a fictional utopia - was actually real. But even as a Fillorian king, Quentin finds little peace. His old restlessness returns, and he longs for the thrills a heroic quest can bring.
\nAccompanied by his oldest friend, Julia, Quentin sets off - only to somehow wind up back in the real world and not in Fillory, as they’d hoped. As they struggle to find their way back to their lost kingdom, they rely on Julia’s illicitly learned sorcery to fight a sinister threat in a world unlike the fantasy novels of their youth.
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Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he’s still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.
\nHe also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn’t bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin’s fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.
\nAt once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren’t black and white, love and sex aren’t simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.
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Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams. With nothing left to lose, he returns to where his story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic, but he can’t hide from his past, and it’s not long before it comes looking for him.
Along with Plum, a brilliant young undergraduate with a dark secret of her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde of gray magic and desperate characters.
But all roads lead back to Fillory, and his new life takes him to old haunts, like Antarctica, and to buried secrets and old friends he thought were lost forever. He uncovers the key to a sorcery masterwork, a spell that could create magical utopia, and a new Fillory - but casting it will set in motion a chain of events that will bring Earth and Fillory crashing together. To save them he will have to risk sacrificing everything.
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Kate and her younger brother Tom lead dull, uninteresting lives. And if their dull, uninteresting parents are anything to go by, they don't have much to look forward to. Why can't Kate have thrilling adventures and save the world the way people do in books?
\nEven her 11th birthday is shaping up to be mundane - that is, until her mysterious and highly irresponsible Uncle Herbert, whom she's never even met before, surprises her with the most unexpected, exhilarating, inappropriate birthday present of all time: a colossal steam locomotive called the Silver Arrow.
\nKate and Tom's parents want to send it right back where it came from. But Kate and Tom have other ideas - and so does the Silver Arrow - and soon they're off to distant lands along magical rail lines in the company of an assortment of exotic animals who, it turns out, can talk.
\nWith only curiosity, excitement, their own resourcefulness and the thrill of the unknown to guide them, Kate and Tom are on the adventure of a lifetime . . . and who knows? They just might end up saving the world after all.
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The story of a modern day Ulysses -- with the reality of post-graduation haze vollying off of Star Trek rerunsHollis lives in an area not too far from where he graduated from college. His friends do too. They all sleep late, talk about jobs they might get, girls they might see, money their parents might send them.
\nAll of these lives are seemingly on hold. Everything is going to happen. But Hollis has more than this: Another reality is running constantly in his head, one that leads him to believe that maybe, just maybe, it's time to get serious.
Unlike other self-indulgent, whiny narratives of postgraduation angst, Warp is a lucid and immediate novel of what and where a twenty-something's mind is when it isn't even made up yet.
It’s been hundreds of years since King Arthur’s reign. His descendant, Arthur, a future Lord and general gadabout, has been betrothed to Gwendoline, the quick-witted, short-tempered princess of England, since birth. The only thing they can agree on is that they despise each other.
\nThey’re forced to spend the summer together at Camelot in the run-up to their nuptials, and within 24 hours, Gwen has discovered Arthur kissing a boy, and Arthur has gone digging for Gwen's childhood diary and found confessions about her crush on the kingdom's only lady knight, Bridget Leclair.
\nRealising they might make better allies than enemies, Gwen and Art make a reluctant pact to cover for each other, and as things heat up at the annual royal tournament, Gwen is swept off her feet by her knight, and Arthur takes an interest in Gwen's royal brother.
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22-year-old aspiring writer Edith 'Eddie' Miller and her best friend Rose have always done everything together - climbing trees, throwing grapes at boys, sneaking bottles of wine, practicing kissing . . .
\nBut following their debutante ball Rose is suddenly talking about marriage, and Eddie is horrified.
\nWhen Eddie meets charming, renowned poet Nash Nicholson, he invites her to his crumbling Gothic estate in the countryside. The entourage of eccentric artists indulging in pure hedonism is exactly what Eddie needs in order to forget Rose and finish her novel.
\nBut Eddie might discover the world of famous literary icons isn't all poems and pleasure . . .
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Mariel, a newly blooded captain of the Merry Men, is desperate to live up to the legacy of her grandfather, the legendary Robin Hood. Clem, a backwoods assistant healer known for her new-fangled cures, just wants to help people.
\nWhen Mariel's ramshackle band kidnap Clem as retribution for her guardian helping the Sheriff of Nottingham, all seems to be going (sort of) to plan . . . until Jack Hartley, Mariel's father and Commander of the Merry Men, is captured in a deadly ambush. Determined to prove herself, Mariel sets out to get him back - with her annoyingly cheerful kidnappee in tow.
\nBut the wood is at war. Many believe the Merry Men are no longer on the right side of history. Watching Clem tend the party's wounds, Mariel begins to doubt the cause to which she has devoted her life. As the two of them grow closer, one thing is clear. They must prepare to fight for their lives - and for the lives of everybody in the greenwood.
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Abandoned by her parents, middle-class Georgiana Ellers has moved to a new town to live with her dreary aunt and uncle. At a particularly dull party, she meets the enigmatic Frances Campbell, a wealthy member of the in-crowd who lives a life Georgiana couldn't have imagined in her wildest dreams.
\nLonely and vulnerable, Georgiana falls in with Frances and her unfathomably rich, deeply improper friends. Georgiana is introduced to a new world: drunken debauchery, mysterious young men with strangely arresting hands, and the upper echelons of Regency society.
\nBut the price of entry to high society might just be higher than Georgiana is willing to pay . . .
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There's a new governess at Fairmont House, and she's going to be nothing but trouble.
\nEmily Laurence is a liar. She is not polite, she's not polished, and she has never taught a child in her life. This position was meant to be her sister's - brilliant, kind Amy, who isn't perpetually angry, dangerously reckless, and who does (inexplicably) like children.
\nBut Amy is unwell and needs a doctor, their father is gone and their mother is useless, so here Emily is, pretending to be something she's not.
\nIf she can get away with her deception for long enough to earn a few months' wages and slip some expensive trinkets into her pockets along the way, perhaps they'll be all right.
\nThat is, as long as she doesn't get involved with the Edwards family's dramas. Emily refuses to care about her charges - Grace, who talks too much and loves too hard, and Aster, who is frankly terrifying but might just be the wittiest sixteen-year-old Emily has ever met - or the servants, who insist on acting as if they're each other's family. And she certainly hasn't noticed her employer, the brooding, taciturn Captain Edwards, no matter how good he might look without a shirt on . . .
\nAs Fairmont House draws her in, Emily's lies start to come undone. Can she fix her mistakes before it's too late?
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For as long as they can remember, Briar Jones dreamed of attending the Temple School of Thaumaturgy. Behind its looming ornate gates, the elite prep school - the place that has produced the most CEOs and Prime Ministers in British history - is whispered to be magical.
\nBriar's best friend, Sebastian Wolfe, never cared about Temple or believed in the rumors. He just wanted them to stay together forever.
\nWhen, at age 11, Seb gets an acceptance letter and Briar doesn't, their childhood friendship is shattered. Seb vanishes onto Temple's grounds and Briar resigns themself to a mundane life. But they can't completely forget their yearning for Temple, for the extraordinary, to be one of the chosen in the ivory tower.
\nSeven years later, a summer job advert a temp position sorting through the junk in Temple’s attics. Briar takes it. And they discover that quiet, sensitive Seb, the boy they once loved more than anything else in the world, has become a beautiful, arrogant villain feared by most of the school. And worse, the secrets Temple is hiding might not be so magical after all, but a dark conspiracy with implications that extend far beyond the gates.
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London, 1986. Trix is a young ballerina striving to make a name for herself in a cut-throat world. Aleksander ‘Sander’ Sylvan is the company’s mysterious, meteoric rising star, whose talents are like nothing anyone has seen before.
\nAn eleventh-hour illness among the cast of The Sleeping Beauty changes everything: Trix and Sander are thrown together in the lead roles. Soon, the pair become the company’s star attraction, their irresistible on-stage chemistry fuelling speculation about their private lives. Trix knows she’s falling for Sander, but relationships have always been difficult for her, and as they grow closer, she cannot help but wonder about his past. Who is Sander really? Why won’t he talk about his family, or where he comes from?
\nThen, on the opening night of Romeo and Juliet, disaster strikes. With Sander missing and only a cryptic note to guide her, Trix begins to wonder if the magic they created together onstage was more than just a fairy tale.
\nPerhaps something truly strange and wondrous has entered the mortal world . . .
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A sensual and provocative coming-of-age novel about a young Arab woman on a quest for sexual and political freedom, set against the backdrop of the past forty years - from one of the most fearless and captivating voices in world literature.
\nMia Belhaj yearns to be free. A child of Morocco in the politically and socially turbulent 1980s, she flees her family and her homeland to seek her own place in the world. Years later, she finds it as a famous author, only for a bout with a virus to jeopardise her memory and the novel she wants to write about her past.
\nWhen she’s advised to retrace her history to reclaim her present, Mia journeys around the world in search of herself, from Casablanca to Paris to New York, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11, and finally back to her grandparents’ farm in Morocco, where her story first began.
\nAcclaimed author Leila Slimani brings her own past to life in this provocative, beautifully written family fresco carried by vigorous poetry and a breath of great power.
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From the outside, the Delaneys appear to be an enviably contented family. Even after all these years, former tennis coaches Joy and Stan are still winning tournaments, and now they've sold the family business they have all the time in the world to learn how to 'relax'. Their four adult children are busy living their own lives, and while it could be argued they never quite achieved their destinies, no-one ever says that out loud.
\nBut now Joy Delaney has disappeared and her children are re-examining their parents' marriage and their family history with fresh, frightened eyes. Is her disappearance related to their mysterious house guest from last year? Or were things never as rosy as they seemed in the Delaney household?
Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed. Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future - age 103! - and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.
\nHow do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.”
\nNot a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.
\nA few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.
\nIf you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?
Mother of three and wife of John-Paul, Cecilia discovers an old envelope in the attic. Written in her husband's hand, it says: to be opened only in the event of my death.
\nCurious, she opens it - and time stops.
\nJohn-Paul's letter confesses to a terrible mistake which, if revealed, would wreck their family as well as the lives of others.
\nCecilia - betrayed, angry and distraught - wants to do the right thing, but right for who? If she protects her family by staying silent, the truth will worm through her heart. But if she reveals her husband's secret, she will hurt those she loves most . . .
\nThe Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty is about the things we know, the things we don't, and whether or not we ever get to choose. Above all, though, it's about how we must live with the consequences of our actions - whether we like it or not.
How far would you go to keep the man of your dreams? From Liane Moriarty, the author of What Alice Forgot, The Hypnotist's Love Story is a stunning novel about love, life and knowing where to draw the line . . .
\nHypnotherapist Ellen is fascinated by what makes people tick. So when she falls in love with Patrick, the fact that he has a stalker doesn't faze her in the slightest. If anything it intrigues her, and the more she hears about Saskia, the more she wants to meet this woman. But what Ellen doesn't know is that they've already met . . .
\nSaskia has been posing as one of Ellen's clients.
\nUnable to let go of the life she so abruptly lost, she wants to know everything about the woman who took her place. And the further she inches her way into Ellen's world, the more trouble she stirs up. Ellen's love story is about to take an unexpected turn. But it's not only Saskia who doesn't know where to stop: Ellen also has to ask herself what lines she's prepared to cross to get the happy ending she's always wanted.
Seventy-three years have passed since sisters Rose and Connie Doughty found an abandoned baby in the only other house on their little island, Scribbly Gum. And since then the 'Munro Baby Mystery' has brought them fame and fortune.
But now, with Connie dead and newcomer Sophie Honeywell inheriting her home, and everyone around them tirelessly trying to solve the mystery, Rose begins to wonder if they made the right decision all those years ago. How much longer they can cover up the truth behind the mystery that has sustained their community for four generations? And what other secrets might be revealed?
It happens sometimes that you accidentally star in a little public performance, your very own comedy, tragedy or melodrama. The three Kettle sisters have been accidentally starring in public performances all their lives, affecting their audiences in more ways than they'll ever know. This time, however, they give a particularly spectacular show when a raucous, champagne-soaked birthday dinner ends in a violent argument and an emergency dash to the hospital. So who started it this time?
\nWas it Cat: full of angry, hurt passion dating back to the 'Night of the Spaghetti'? Was it Lyn: serenely successful, at least on the outside? Or was it Gemma: quirky, dreamy and unable to keep a secret, except for the most important one of all? Whoever the culprit, their lives will have all changed dramatically before the next inevitable clash of shared genes and shared childhoods.
Clementine is haunted by regret. It was just a barbeque. They didn’t even know their hosts that well, they were friends of friends. They could so easily have said no.But she and her husband Sam said yes, and now they can never change what they did and didn’t do that Sunday afternoon.
\nSix responsible adults. Three cute kids. One playful dog. It’s an ordinary weekend in the suburbs. What could possibly go wrong?Marriage, sex, parenthood and friendship: Liane Moriarty takes these elements of our lives and shows us how guilt can expose the fault lines in any relationship, and it is not until we appreciate the fragility of life that we can truly value what we have.
Alice Love is twenty-nine, crazy about her husband, and pregnant with her first child. So imagine Alice’s surprise when she comes to on the floor of a gym and is whisked off to the hospital where she discovers the honeymoon is truly over - she’s getting divorced, she has three kids and she’s actually 39 years old.
\nAlice must reconstruct the events of a lost decade, and find out whether it’s possible to reconstruct her life at the same time. She has to figure out why her sister hardly talks to her, and how is it that she’s become one of those super skinny moms with really expensive clothes. Ultimately, Alice must discover whether forgetting is a blessing or a curse, and whether it’s possible to start over.
After battling a supernatural sleeping sickness that early claimed two of their own, the Diviners have had enough of lies. They're more determined than ever to uncover the mystery behind their extraordinary powers, even as they face off against an all-new terror. Out on Ward's Island, far from the city's bustle, sits a mental hospital haunted by the lost souls of people long forgotten - ghosts who have unusual and dangerous ties to the man in the stovepipe hat, also known as the King of Crows.
With terrible accounts of murder and possession flooding in from all over, and New York City on the verge of panic, the Diviners must band together and brave the sinister ghosts invading the asylum, a fight that will bring them fact-to-face with the King of Crows. But as the explosive secrets of the past come to light, loyalties and friendships will be tested, love will hang in the balance, and the Diviners will question all that they've ever known.
All the while, malevolent forces gather from every corner in a battle for the very soul of a nation - a fight that could claim the Diviners themselves.
1920s New York. A teen clairvoyant. An old evil. It has begun . . .
Evie O'Neill has been exiled from her boring old home town and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City - and she is pos-i-tute-ly thrilled! New York is the city of speak-easies, rent parties, shopping and movie palaces, and soon enough Evie is running with glamorous Ziegfeld girls and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is that Evie has to live with her Uncle Will, curator of the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult - also known as 'The Museum of the Creepy Crawlies'.
When a rash of occult-based murders comes to light, Evie and her uncle are right in the thick of it. Even Evie's new pals - hoofers, numbers runners and activists, but all swell kids - are drawn into the investigation. And through it all, Evie has a secret: a mysterious power that could help catch the killer - if he doesn't catch her first . . .
After the horrifying explosion that claimed one of their own, the Diviners find themselves wanted by the US government, and on the brink of war with the King of Crows.
While Memphis and Isaiah run for their lives from the mysterious Shadow Men, Isaiah receives a startling vision of a girl, Sarah Beth Olson, who could shift the balance in their struggle for peace. Sarah Beth says she knows how to stop the King of Crows-but, she will need the Diviners' help to do it.
Elsewhere, Jericho has returned after his escape from Jake Marlowe's estate, where he has learned the shocking truth behind the King of Crow's plans. Now, the Diviners must travel to Bountiful, Nebraska, in hopes of joining forces with Sarah Beth and to stop the King of Crows and his army of the dead forever.
But as rumors of towns becoming ghost towns and the dead developing unprecedented powers begin to surface, all hope seems to be lost.
In this sweeping finale, The Diviners will be forced to confront their greatest fears and learn to rely on one another if they hope to save the nation, and world from catastrophe . . .
After a supernatural showdown with a serial killer, Evie O'Neill has outed herself as a Diviner. Now that the world knows of her ability to 'read' objects, and therefore the past, she has become a media darling, earning the title 'America's Sweetheart Seer'. There's just one downside - a sham engagement to the irritatingly handsome Sam Lloyd.
But not everyone is so accepting of the Diviners' abilities . . . and across town, a mysterious sleeping sickness is spreading through Chinatown, leaving dead dreamers in its wake.
Can the Diviners descend into the slumberland and catch a killer?
It was said that if you write to the Bridegroom’s Oak, the love of your life will answer back. Now, the tree is giving up its secrets at last.
\nIn 1940s Germany, Sophie is excited to discover a message waiting for her in the Bridegroom's Oak from a mysterious suitor. Meanwhile, her best friend, Hanna, is sending messages too - but not to find love. As World War II unfolds in their small town of Kleinwald, the oak may hold the key to resistance against the Nazis.
\nIn 1980s West Germany, American teen transplant Jenny feels suffocated by her strict parents and is struggling to fit in. Until she finds herself falling for Lena, a punk-rock girl hell-bent on tearing down the wall separating West Germany from East Germany, and meeting Frau Hermann, a kind old lady with secrets of her own.
\nIn Spring 2020, New York City, best friends Miles and Chloe are slogging through the last few months of senior year when an unexpected package from Chloe’s grandmother leads them to investigate a cold case about two unidentified teenagers who went missing under the Bridegroom’s Oak eighty years ago.
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Just about everything has gone wrong for Gwen Gilmore over the past year. She’s lost her mother, her teaching job, and been dumped by her - albeit not that great—long-term boyfriend. Adrift and out of options, she packs her life into her barely functioning car and makes the lonely drive north, to the only place she can think of her family’s aging cottage on the Maine coast, Periwinkle, which she’s recently inherited.
\nThe cottage and Port Anna, the foggy Maine town of Gwen’s childhood, are unchanged in many ways. For Gwen, they are full of the ghosts of her past—boyfriends, forgotten creative dreams, and painful memories of a sister lost too young. Periwinkle is also home to some more literal The Misses, friendly spirits who have long watched over the cottage, but who now seem strangely unsettled, slamming doors and moving furniture in the night. And behind its charming façade, Port Anna has not escaped the realities of modern life. Family homes are being razed to make space for garish condos, the cottage, coveted by a relentless local realtor, is about to be condemned, and the unsolved disappearance of a teenage girl has set the town on edge. On the face of it, it’s an odd place to try to make a new start.
\nBut there are glimmers of hope everywhere, if only Gwen can open herself up to possibility. Sparks fly with Leandro, an Argentinian artist, as aloof and witty as he is wildly attractive. Old friends and former flames come out of the woodwork, bringing with them new opportunities and chances to laugh again. Even in the face of potential happiness, though, it seems some secrets refuse to stay buried. As the summer crowds return to the city and the locals hunker down for another harsh Maine winter, Gwen will be forced to make choices that will change her life forever.
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Lorna's world is small but safe.
\nShe loves her daughter, and the two of them is all that matters. But after nearly twenty years, she and Ella are suddenly leaving London for the Isle of Kip, the tiny remote Scottish island where Lorna grew up.
\nAlice's world is tiny but full.
\nShe loves the community on Kip, her yoga classes drawing women across the tiny island together. Now Lorna's arrival might help their family finally mend itself - even if forgiveness means returning to the past . . .
\nSo with two decades, hundreds of miles and a lifetime's worth of secrets between Lorna and the island, can coming home mean starting again?
A tender, joyous debut novel about a cub reporter and her eighty-six-year-old subject - and the unlikely and life-changing friendship that develops between them.
Kate is a twenty-six-year-old riddled with anxiety and panic attacks who works for a local paper in Brixton, London, covering forgettably small stories. When she’s assigned to write about the closing of the local lido (an outdoor pool and recreation center), she meets Rosemary, an eighty-six-year-old widow who has swum at the lido daily since it opened its doors when she was a child. It was here Rosemary fell in love with her husband, George; here that she’s found communion during her marriage and since George’s death. The lido has been a cornerstone in nearly every part of Rosemary’s life.
But when a local developer attempts to buy the lido for a posh new apartment complex, Rosemary’s fond memories and sense of community are under threat.
As Kate dives deeper into the lido’s history - with the help of a charming photographer - she pieces together a portrait of the pool, and a portrait of a singular woman, Rosemary. What begins as a simple local interest story for Kate soon blossoms into a beautiful friendship that provides sustenance to both women as they galvanize the community to fight the lido’s closure. Meanwhile, Rosemary slowly, finally, begins to open up to Kate, transforming them both in ways they never knew possible.
For Kate, having a newborn baby means she is almost never alone. But that doesn't mean she isn't lonely. The move from London to Somerset with her husband Jay was supposed be the start of an exciting new chapter. But sometimes she can't help but wonder if she turned the pages too soon . . .
\nPhoebe needs help. As a mental health nurse serving her community, the wellbeing of her patients has always come before her own. Yet there's only so long she can pour from an empty cup.
\nLooking for a lifeline, Kate and Phoebe find a sense of community - and each other - through their local river swimming group. But when things get tough, they realise that good friends can both raise us up and stop us sinking.
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When Tilly Nightingale receives a call telling her there’s a birthday gift from her fiancé waiting for her at her local bookshop, it couldn’t come as more of a shock. Partly because she can’t remember the last time she read a book for pleasure. Mainly because Joe died five months ago . . .
\nThe gift is simple - help her turn the page on her first year without him.
\nTilly sets out on a series of reading-inspired adventures that take her around the world. But as she begins to vlog her journey, her story becomes more than her own. With help from Alfie, the bookshop owner, her budding new following and her friends and family, can Tilly’s year of books show her how to love again?
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Spanning twenty years and one life-altering summer in Croatia, Slanting Towards the Sea is at once an unforgettable love story and a powerful exploration of what it means to come of age in a country younger than oneself.
\nIvona divorced the love of her life, Vlaho, a decade ago. They met as students at the turn of the new millennium, when democratic Croatia was alive with hope and promise. But the challenges of living in a burgeoning country extinguished Ivona’s dreams one after another - and a devastating secret forced her to set him free.
\nNow Vlaho is remarried and a proud father of two, while Ivona’s life has taken a downward turn. In her thirties, she has returned to her childhood home to care for her ailing father. Bewildered by life’s disappointments, she finds solace in reconnecting with Vlaho and is welcomed into his family by his spirited new wife, Marina. But when a new man enters Ivona’s life, the carefully cultivated dynamic between the three is disrupted, forcing a reckoning for all involved.
\nSet against the mesmerising Croatian coastline, Slanting Towards the Sea is a cinematic, emotionally searing debut about the fragile nature of potential and the transcendence of love.
This is the story of the deportation of Romanians from Bukovina, an exercise in historical memory which demonstrates how to maintain humanity in impossible conditions.
\nAna is eleven when the Soviet soldiers send her from Bucovina, Romania, to Kazakhstan. She is just one of many forced to leave behind her home and make the three week long journey via train. The trip is a harsh, humiliating one, but in spite of the cold and the closeness of death, life persists in the boxcar in the form of storytelling, riddles, and ritual.
\nYears later, Ana recalls her childhood for her great granddaughter, who is considering moving her to a nursing home. Her story, told with unflinching candor, is a chronicle of a life lived during a time of great political and national change, a story of an existence defined and curtailed by lines drawn on a map.
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What does it cost to pursue your wildest dreams?
\nEvelyn and Sophie, sisters and best friends, were known as one of the climbing world’s strongest teams - but that was before Evelyn had an affair with Sophie’s husband. Now they can’t even be in the same room together. That is, until they’re both offered a mountaineer’s dream: a chance to summit the eight-thousand-meter peak Yama Parvat.
\nSophie has been aimless since Evelyn’s betrayal. She hasn’t summited a Himalayan mountain in nearly two years, all the joy drained from the sport for her, and this trek offers a chance to reestablish herself as a top climber before her sponsors withdraw their funding.
\nEvelyn has been happy with Miles since he left Sophie, but guilt continues to shadow her, clouding her judgment and the ability to move forward. Now she’s willing to gamble everything for the chance to be part of the first team to summit this as-yet-unclimbed mountain and prove herself a capable leader.
\nStranded during a devastating storm on top of the world, Evelyn and Sophie are forced to climb together. Whether or not they make it off the mountain alive hinges on their trust in one another - something lost years ago - as they face down the question of how much they’re willing to sacrifice to get it all back.
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The Outsiders meets Mad Max: Fury Road in this fast-paced dystopian novel about sisterhood and the cruel choices people are forced to make in order to survive.
Nalah leads the fiercest all-girl crew in Mega City. That roles brings with it violent throw downs and access to the hottest boydega clubs, but the sixteen-year-old grows weary of the life. Her dream is to get off the streets and make a home in the exclusive Mega Towers, in which only a chosen few get to live. To make it to the Mega towers, Nalah must prove her loyalty to the city's benevolent founder and cross the border in a search for a mysterious gang the Ashé Ryders. Led by a reluctant guide, Nalah battles other crews and her own doubts, but the closer she gets to her goal, the more she loses sight of everything - and everyone - she cares about.
Nalah must do the unspeakable to get what she wants - a place to call home. But is a home just where you live? Or who you choose to protect?
Fashion-obsessed Samara finally has the life she’s always dreamed of: a high-powered job with legendary designer Antonio Mota. A new home in sunny California, far away from those drab Jersey winters. And an intriguing love interest, Brandon, a wealthy investor in Mota’s fashion line.
\nBut it’s not long before Samara’s dream life begins to turn into a living nightmare, as Mota’s big fashion show approaches and the pressure on Samara turns crushing. Perhaps that’s why Samara begins hearing voices in the dark in her room at night - and seeing strange things that can’t be explained away by stress and anxiety, or by the number of drinks she consumes every night.
\nAnd it may not only be Samara’s unraveling psyche, because she soon discovers hints that her new city - and the house of Mota - may have been built on a foundation of secrets and lies. Now Samara must uncover what hideous truths lurk in the shadows of this illusory world of glamor and beauty, before those shadows claim her . . .
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The world is about to end. Again.
\nEver since the first Storm wreaked havoc on civilisation as we know it, seventeen-year-old Liz Flannery has been holed up in an abandoned bookstore in suburban New Jersey where she used to work, trading books for supplies with the few remaining survivors. It’s the one place left that feels safe to her.
\nUntil she learns that another earth-shattering Storm is coming . . . and everything changes.
\nEnter Maeve, a prickly and potentially dangerous out-of-towner who breaks into the bookstore looking for shelter one night. Though the two girls are immediately at odds, Maeve has what Liz needs - the skills to repair the dilapidated store before the next climate disaster strikes - and Liz reluctantly agrees to let her stay.
\nAs the girls grow closer and undeniable feelings spring up between them, they realise that they face greater threats than the impending Storm. And when Maeve’s secrets and Liz’s inner demons come back to haunt them both, they find themselves fighting for their lives as their world crumbles around them.
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Augustine, a brilliant, aging astronomer, is consumed by the stars. For years he has lived in remote outposts, studying the sky for evidence of how the universe began. At his latest posting, in a research center in the Arctic, news of a catastrophic event arrives. The scientists are forced to evacuate, but Augustine stubbornly refuses to abandon his work. Shortly after the others have gone, Augustine discovers a mysterious child, Iris, and realises the airwaves have gone silent. They are alone.
At the same time, Mission Specialist Sullivan is aboard the Aether on its return flight from Jupiter. The astronauts are the first human beings to delve this deep into space, and Sully has made peace with the sacrifices required of her: a daughter left behind, a marriage ended. So far the journey has been a success, but when Mission Control falls inexplicably silent, Sully and her crew mates are forced to wonder if they will ever get home.
As Augustine and Sully each face an uncertain future against forbidding yet beautiful landscapes, their stories gradually intertwine in a profound and unexpected conclusion. In crystalline prose, Good Morning, Midnight poses the most important questions: What endures at the end of the world? How do we make sense of our lives?
Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels gradually wreak havoc on the state’s infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker; his pregnant wife, Frida; and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds to search for them. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before.
\nAs Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape, but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilisation, Wanda loses family, gains community, and ultimately, seeks adventure, love, and purpose in a place remade by nature.
\nTold in four parts - power, water, light, and time - The Light Pirate mirrors the rhythms of the elements and the sometimes quick, sometimes slow dissolution of the world as we know it. It is a meditation on the changes we would rather not see, the future we would rather not greet, and a call back to the beauty and violence of an untamable wilderness.
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Professor Ember Agni is a rising star in archeology, trying to balance an unfulfilling career in academia and a crumbling marriage, all while pursuing her true passion: unearthing a lost empire that no one else believes existed. Just as she’s about to give up on the ambitious expedition she spent a decade trying to fund, a message arrives from overseas. A former student claims to have found something extraordinary - an artifact that hints at the forgotten world lying beneath history’s tidy surface.
\nWith vindication finally within reach, Ember risks everything for the sake of discovery and undertakes an odyssey that will either make her name or ruin her. Driven by unwavering faith in her vision of the past, she challenges the limits of her nation, her colleagues, and herself in order to exhume the missing pieces of how humanity began. But as she journeys deep into an untouched wilderness, in dogged pursuit of a dead civilisation, she collides with the wreckage of her own life. On the brink of either discovery or destruction, Ember must choose who she wants to be, and to what kind of world she wants to belong.
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For Dee Kwan, every day is the perfect day. No, really. She has a house she loves, a job she adores, and a ridiculously attractive “nemesis” who never seems to mind when she wins their favorite online game. How can life possibly get better? (It can’t, obviously. It can only get much, much worse.)
\nSoon Dee is forced to share her adorably cosy home with her parents and prickly estranged grandmother. Then she's tossed into the deep end, tasked with cleaning up a scandal for intimidatingly chic luxury fashion firm Celeste. If that weren’t enough, she discovers her hot-nemesis works there, too . . . and Teddy is nothing like the man she thought she knew.
\nBefore she can cry foul, Teddy comes clean about his double life: he’s the heir to the CEO and he needs her help to make Celeste a better place - for everyone.
\nBut that means taking down the old guard - including his father - intent on standing in their way. Now in the center of a dizzying corporate coup, Dee is forced to decide whether she’s ready to stop watching the world through rose-colored glasses and instead face the truth: about herself, about her feelings for Teddy, and about what she’s willing to do to truly make a difference.
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Gracie Reed is doing just fine. Sure, she was fired by her overly “friendly” boss, and yes she still hasn't gotten her mother into the nursing home of their dreams, but she's healthy, she's (somewhat) happy, and she's (mostly) holding it all together.
\nBut when a mysterious SUV pulls up beside her, revealing Chinese cinema's golden couple Wei Fangli and Sam Yao, Gracie's world is turned on its head. The famous actress has a proposition: due to their uncanny resemblance, Fangli wants Gracie to be her stand-in. The catch? Gracie will have to be escorted by Sam, the most attractive - and infuriating - man Gracie's ever met.
\nIf it means getting the money she needs for her mother, Gracie's in. Soon Gracie moves into a world of luxury she never knew existed. But resisting Sam, and playing the role of an elegant movie star, proves more difficult than she ever imagined - especially when she learns the real reason Fangli so desperately needs her help. In the end all the lists in the world won't be able to help Gracie keep up this elaborate ruse without losing herself . . . and her heart.
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For Dee Kwan, every day is the perfect day. No, really. She has a house she loves, a job she adores, and a ridiculously attractive “nemesis” who never seems to mind when she wins their favorite online game. How can life possibly get better? (It can’t, obviously. It can only get much, much worse.)
\nSoon Dee is forced to share her adorably cozy home with her parents and prickly estranged grandmother. Then she's tossed into the deep end, tasked with cleaning up a scandal for intimidatingly chic luxury fashion firm Celeste. If that weren’t enough, she discovers her hot-nemesis works there, too…and Teddy is nothing like the man she thought she knew.
\nBefore she can cry foul, Teddy comes clean about his double life: he’s the heir to the CEO and he needs her help to make Celeste a better place - for everyone. But that means taking down the old guard - including his father - intent on standing in their way. Now in the center of a dizzying corporate coup, Dee is forced to decide whether she’s ready to stop watching the world through rose-colored glasses and instead face the truth: about herself, about her feelings for Teddy, and about what she’s willing to do to truly make a difference.
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Told in the intimate voices of unique and endearing characters of all ages, these tales explore desire and heartache, loss and discovery, moments of jolting violence and the inexorable tug toward love at all costs.
\nA bookseller’s unspoken love for his employee rises to the surface, a neglected teenage boy finds much-needed nurturing from an unlikely pair of college students hired to housesit, a girl’s loss of innocence at the hands of her employer’s son becomes a catalyst for strength and confidence, and a proud nonagenarian rages helplessly in his granddaughter’s hospital room.
\nRomantic, hopeful, brutally raw, and unsparingly honest, some even slipping into the surreal, these stories are, above all, about King’s enduring subject of love.
Our narrator understands good love stories - their secrets and subtext, their highs and their free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the simple rules.
\nIn the fall of her senior year of college, she meets two star students from her 17th-Century Lit class: Sam and Yash. Best friends living off-campus in the elegant house of a professor on sabbatical, the boys invite her into their intoxicating world of academic fervor, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. They nickname her Jordan, and she quickly discovers the pleasures of friendship, love and her own intellectual ambition. Youthful passion is unpredictable though, and she soon finds herself at the center of a charged and intricate triangle. As graduation comes and goes, choices made will alter these three lives forever.
\nDecades later, Jordan is living the life she dreamed of, and the vulnerable days of her youth seem comfortably behind her. But when a surprise visit and unexpected news brings the past crashing into the present, Jordan returns to a world she left behind and is forced to confront the decisions and deceptions of her younger self.
\nWritten with the superb wit and emotional sensitivity fans and critics of Lily King have come to adore, Heart the Lover is a deeply moving story that celebrates love, friendship, and the transformative nature of forgiveness. Wise, unforgettable, and with a delightful connective thread to Writers & Lovers, this is King at her very best, affirming her as a masterful chronicler of the human experience and one of the finest novelists at work today.
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Blindsided by her mother's sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors.
\nA former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, mouldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she's been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey's fight to fulfil her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.
Writers & Lovers follows Casey - a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist - in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King's trademark humour, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.
Willow Arches is a queer-destination small town, but Paige doesn’t know that - she’s never even heard of it before a granduncle she never knew about passes and leaves his restaurant, Faux Pas, in her name. A real estate developer by day, for Paige, renovating the restaurant to sell it for a tidy profit is a no-brainer.
\nBut things get harder when the restaurant is in shambles, the town’s bustling queer population is in full force when she arrives right at the start of Pride, and all of them want her gone. With no practical or people skills, and no cooking skills to run the restaurant, she’s in a world of trouble - until Willow Arches’ most eligible bachelorette, brooding soft-butch lumberjane Madison Hartley, sweeps her off her feet and kisses her in the public square.
\nIt’s a tenuous deal: Madison’s help with the restaurant, in exchange for a fake relationship, to keep the suitors off her back for Pride month. Sure, Paige has a massive crush on her, but it’ll all work out somehow, right?
\nRight?
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When Danika Crawley attends events at the Aldon Lakes Country Club, heads turn. Danika has it all - beauty, money, a successful husband, and two perfect children. She plans on making this summer her best season yet and has a secret weapon to secure the envy of her neighbors.
\nAugie Elling has lost it all. Reeling from a post-grad scandal amidst her now-former life in New York, she returns to Aldon Lakes with her tail between her legs. Augie wants to keep her head down, save money, and find a way to leave her hometown for good, but someone keeps distracting her.
\nDanika and Augie have one thing in they are both a little obsessed with Chat, the male nanny Danika hired for the summer. But, unbeknownst to either woman, Chat’s appearance in town sets off a chain reaction that threatens Aldon Lakes' carefully maintained ecosystem. As the heat rises between the three of them, the truth behind a long-buried scandal comes to light, and everyone at the club must reckon with the consequences.
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Not long ago, Earth’s colonies and space stations threw off the yoke of planet Earth’s tyrannical rule. Decades later, trouble is brewing in the Four Systems, and Old Earth is flexing its power in a bid to regain control over its lost territories.
\nThe Order of Saint Rita - whose mission is to provide aid and mercy to those in need - bore witness to and defied Central Governance’s atrocities on the remote planet Phyosonga III. The sisters have been running ever since, staying under the radar while still trying to honor their calling.
\nDespite the sisters’ secrecy, the story of their defiance is spreading like wildfire, spearheaded by a growing anti-Earth religious movement calling for revolution. Faced with staying silent or speaking up, the Order of Saint Rita must decide the role they will play - and what hand they will have - in reshaping the galaxy.
Years ago, Old Earth sent forth sisters and brothers into the vast dark of the prodigal colonies armed only with crucifixes and iron faith. Now, the sisters of the Order of Saint Rita are on an interstellar mission of mercy aboard Our Lady of Impossible Constellations, a living, breathing ship which seems determined to develop a will of its own.
\nWhen the order receives a distress call from a newly-formed colony, the sisters discover that the bodies and souls in their care - and that of the galactic diaspora - are in danger. And not from void beyond, but from the nascent Central Governance and the Church itself.
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Its obligations and demands, its petty foibles and evasions. And sometimes, its crises. Dreams are deferred, shortcomings rationalised. Like favorite old clothes, petty misdemeanors may feel comfortable, but they’re not a good look.
\nThe Talley siblings are planning a family beach vacation - all four of them together for the first time in years. They suspect it will be their last. And God knows they all need a vacation. But wait, is it really such a good idea? Corina, with her recently diagnosed Alzheimer’s, can hardly manage to get through a day without a debacle. Pete is a just-barely-walking catalog of medical calamities stemming from his longtime addictions. Becca is reeling from her teenage son’s latest misadventure. And then there is Kathy, the eldest. After firmly avoiding going back to Rincón Bay, the beach town just a few hours south of the Arizona–Mexico border that has haunted her since a college spring break trip three decades ago, she’s determined to go back and face her ghosts - though she might be better off facing the fact that her marriage is in serious trouble.
\nWhen the Talley siblings and their entourage (two spouses, added on at the last minute, and Corina’s Mexican housekeeper/caregiver) finally land in Rincón Bay, they all encounter unexpected consequences from the wounds inflicted by careless loving - but maybe, too, the seeds of healing and hope.
Amid a fierce snowstorm sweeping across rural Minnesota, near the icy shores of Hammer Lake, an isolated cabin goes up in flames, leaving a critically injured high school drug dealer and a missing girl in its wake. The disappearance propels Sheriff Red Hammergren into action to find the troubled young girl, Missy Klein, the daughter of Junior Klein - the victim of an unsolved cold case years prior.
\nAs Red peels back the layers of Missy's vanishing, she uncovers a chilling nexus of drug trafficking pervading through her community with roots to the local high school. Unknown to Red, her investigations have roused a malevolent presence, a killer lurking within the storm . . . a killer that would do anything to stop the sheriff’s probing.
\nRed soon reveals a terrifying link between Missy's peril and the unresolved cold cases she has tirelessly sought to solve. Engulfed in a battle against both the elements and time, Red must navigate her community's shadowy corners and frozen woods to rescue Missy and halt the advances of a killer - all before the storm engulfs the truth in its icy grasp.
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When Joanie Crea is found strangled on the grounds of the crumbling Grandgeorge estate, Sheriff Red Hammergren faces a chilling mystery as dark as the dense forest surrounding the crime scene. All eyes turn to Derek Grandgeorge, the reclusive heir with a penchant for wearing a green jacket - even in the sweltering Minnesota summer.
\nBut soon, a second body surfaces - a victim found with Joanie’s house key shoved into their mouth.
\nThe gruesome discovery sends a shiver of dread through the tight-knit community. The key isn’t just evidence - it’s a macabre message from a killer who’s growing bolder and more brazen with each passing day. As the oppressive summer heat bears down and the shadows deepen, Red glimpses unsettling flashes of green at the edge of her vision. With a cunning murderer on the loose and the town spiraling into panic, Red must unravel the connection between the victims . . . before she becomes the final piece in the killer's twisted game.
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When Sheriff Red Hammergren welcomes billionaire Vance Judson back to Lykkins Lake for his high school reunion, his return stirs up more than nostalgia - it unearths old grudges, long-buried betrayals, and a reckoning sixty years in the making. At the same time, a young podcaster, drawn to whispers of an unsolved hit-and-run from the same era, begins asking questions - questions that cut too close to the truth and put a target on her back.
\nWhat begins as unease soon turns to fear when reunion attendees start turning up dead and the podcaster vanishes without a trace. Red races to untangle a mystery that refuses to stay in the past, knowing the next victim could already be marked. With help from her friends, she pieces together a history stained with privilege, silence, and revenge. Each bit of evidence brings her closer to the truth - but also closer to a killer who has already waited a lifetime to finish what was started.
\nIn a town where loyalty is a dangerous currency, Red must determine who is paying for old sins - and who is collecting the debt.
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In this enchanting, adventurous debut novel, a band of seafaring smugglers land on the Cornish coast, where a young widow with a mysterious past becomes entangled in their schemes - and with their charismatic captain - as she searches for answers of her own.
\nEngland, early 1800 Destitute and forced to leave her home in London, Isabel, a young widow of the Napoleonic Wars, returns to the village on the rugged Cornish coast where she was found as a small child, dripping wet and alone. Hoping to learn more about her enigmatic origins, she’s shocked to find herself at the center of a local legend claiming she’s the daughter of a sea spirit. As Isabel adjusts to living on her own for the first time in her rented cottage, the village appears a refuge, but the coast is rife with smugglers and the Revenue Officers who hunt them. Then, one evening, a group of dangerous raiders arrive at her door, carrying their wounded captain, Jack.
\nRemembering her late husband’s fatal injuries, Isabel decides to care for Jack and soon senses a powerful connection between them. Unable to forget him and their growing attraction once Jack recovers and leaves, Isabel decides to become involved with the smugglers. Meanwhile, the sea calls to her, and a Revenue Officer who likes to hang smugglers poses a threat in more ways than one. Soon, she finds herself caught on the wrong side of the law, with violence and heartbreak looming.
\nFrom the coves of Cornwall to the wild coast of Brittany, during perilous raids at sea and society dinner parties, Isabel struggles to understand her kinship with the ocean while she seeks answers about her past. But when the threat catches up with them and Jack’s life hangs in the balance, she must draw on all her courage and delve deep into mythical heart of the Cornish coast. For only a Sea Child can turn the tide . . .
First Sister has no name and no voice. As a priestess of the Sisterhood, she travels the stars alongside the soldiers of Earth and Mars - the same ones who own the rights to her body and soul. When her former captain abandons her, First Sister’s hopes for freedom are dashed when she is forced to stay on her ship with no friends, no power, and a new captain - Saito Ren - whom she knows nothing about. She is commanded to spy on Captain Ren by the Sisterhood, but soon discovers that working for the war effort is so much harder to do when you’re falling in love.
Lito val Lucius climbed his way out of the slums to become an elite soldier of Venus, but was defeated in combat by none other than Saito Ren, resulting in the disappearance of his partner, Hiro. When Lito learns that Hiro is both alive and a traitor to the cause, he now has a shot at redemption: track down and kill his former partner. But when he discovers recordings that Hiro secretly made, Lito’s own allegiances are put to the test. Ultimately, he must decide between following orders and following his heart.
Astrid is finally free of the Sisterhood, yet her name carries on. She’s called the Unchained by those she’s inspired and the Heretic by those who want her voiceless once more. Now Astrid uses knowledge of the Sisterhood’s inner workings against them, aiding the moonborn in raids against abbeys and Cathedrals, all the while exploring the mysteries of her forgotten past.
\nHowever, the Sisterhood thrives under the newly appointed Mother Lilian I, who’s engaged in high-stakes politics among the Warlords and the Aunts to rebuild the Sisterhood in her own image. But the evil of the Sisterhood can’t be purged with anything less than fire . . .
\nMeanwhile, Hiro val Akira is a rebel without an army, a Dagger without a Rapier. As protests rock the streets of Cytherea, Hiro moves in the shadows, driven by grief and vengeance, as they hunt the man responsible for all their pain: their father . . .
\nTransformed by the Genekey virus, Luce navigates the growing schism within the Asters on Ceres. Hurting in her new body, she works to bridge two worlds seemingly intent on mutual destruction. All while mourning her fallen brother, though Lito sol Lucius’s memory may yet live on.
\nYet Souji val Akira stands in judgment on them all, plotting the future for all of humanity, and running out of time before war erupts between the Icarii and Geans. But can even the greatest human intellect outwit the Synthetics?
Astrid has reclaimed her name and her voice, and now seeks to bring down the Sisterhood from within. Throwing herself into the lioness’ den, Astrid must confront and challenge the Aunts who run the Gean religious institution, but she quickly discovers that the business of politics is far deadlier than she ever expected.
\nMeanwhile, on an outlaw colony station deep in space, Hiro val Akira seeks to bring a dangerous ally into the rebellion. Whispers of a digital woman fuel Hiro’s search, but they are not the only person looking for this link to the mysterious race of Synthetics.
\nLito sol Lucious continues to grow into his role as a lead revolutionary and is tasked with rescuing an Aster operative from deep within an Icarii prison. With danger around every corner, Lito, his partner Ofiera, and the newly freed operative must flee in order to keep dangerous secrets out of enemy hands.
\nBack on Venus, Lito’s sister Lucinia must carry on after her brother’s disappearance and accusation of treason by Icarii authorities. Despite being under the thumb of Souji val Akira, Lucinia manages to keep her nose clean…that is until an Aster revolutionary shows up with news about her brother’s fate, and an opportunity to join the fight.
Queen Syla Moonmark is delighted that she’s won the game of captives, and the dragon rider Vorik - the man she loves - now stands at her side. But her troubles are far from over.
\nA usurper has the throne, assassins are on the hunt, and Syla still has to figure out how to keep the dangerous stormer tribes from taking over the Garden Kingdom.
\nTo make matters worse, deep within a volcano, enemy dragons have gathered to perform a ritual that could not only threaten the future of the Kingdom but might destroy humanity altogether.
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After her coronation, Queen Syla Moonmark must lead her people against the stormers and their dragon allies to drive them out of the kingdom. That would be easier if she’d managed to bring home the rare magical components that would allow the rebuilding of the sky shielder that was sabotaged early in the war. Without that protection, keeping dragons away from her people’s islands is impossible.
\nAs she battles the kingdom’s enemies, worries about usurpers, and learns what it means to be bonded to the persnickety red dragon, Wreylith, Syla plans to capture and interrogate the dragon rider, Captain Vorik. By questioning him, she might learn where the crucial shielder components are - and how to get them.
\nThe problem is that Vorik is charming, handsome, talented, and keeps saving her life. She might even be falling in love with him.
\nTo make matters worse, Vorikhas orders to capture Syla.
\nIf she can’t outmaneuver him, she could end up in an enemy camp, being tortured and interrogated for secrets with the power to destroy her entire kingdom.
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All Kaylina ever longed to do was open her own meadery and prove her worth to her family. She didn’t want to develop feelings for the haughty royal ranger, Lord Vlerion, and she definitely didn’t want to be accused of trying to poison the queen.
\nBut a conniving competitor has framed her, and now the Kingdom Guard is hunting her down.
\nVlerion wants to help, but a rebel faction has learned that he’s cursed to turn into a deadly beast when his emotions are aroused. They’re blaming numerous murders on him and demanding his death.
\nCaught in a city far more dangerous and chaotic than she expected, Kaylina must avoid capture while finding evidence to clear her name. If she can’t, she may lose Vlerion - and her own life.
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Scarcely two weeks have passed since Princess Syla bested Captain Vorik and returned home with a magical sky shielder to protect her kingdom. Is the powerful dragon rider holding a grudge? Will his people come after her and try to steal or destroy the shielder?
\nSyla may find out sooner than expected when Vorik shows up in her harbor with his general and chiefs. They claim to be on a diplomatic mission, but she suspects they have treachery in mind.
\nAs much as she would like to trust the handsome and charismatic Captain Vorik, especially when he smiles at her instead of scowling, she has to be wary. Her feelings for him might make him her most dangerous enemy.
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In the final installment of The Curse and the Crown series, Lord Vlerion’s secret has been revealed, the kingdom is in upheaval, and dark forces are scheming for the throne.
\nKaylina must learn about her heritage, and the father she never knew she had, so she can help Vlerion save the kingdom. If they fail, neither of them will survive.
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Kaylina must dodge assassins and kidnappers while revelations about her past, and power she never knew she had, stun her to the core.
\nShe has the support of Lord Vlerion, the ranger she’s developed feelings for, but he has problems of his own, and an insidious plot threatens to take him from her forever.
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As a commoner, it’s Kaylina Korbian’s duty to bow to aristocrats, avoid rabble-rousers, and call the haughty royal rangers my lord. Especially the arrogant Vlerion of Havartaft.
\nHandsome, powerful, and a legendary swordsman, he’s the last person you’d want to cross. Naturally, Kaylina irks him at their first meeting, and he arrests her.
\nUnbeknownst to her, the city is dealing with political strife and assassinations, and the rangers are on edge.
\nKaylina must work with Vlerion to clear suspicion from her name, even as she unearths a dark secret about him that will either bind them together . . . or get her killed.
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For generations, magical sky shields have defended the Garden Kingdom from dragons and their savage riders. Now, the shield protecting the capital has been sabotaged, the castle destroyed, and all except the youngest member of the royal family slain.
\nA healer with a love for books, antiques, and avoiding family gatherings, Princess Syla never thought the future of the kingdom would rely upon her - or that assassins would be hunting her down. With only an aged bodyguard with bad knees to protect her, she’s in way over her head.
\nThen he shows up.
\nThe powerful and deadly dragon rider Captain Vorik claims to be from a faction that wants peace, not war, and who opposed the attack. Supposedly, he and his dragon ally were sent to protect Syla.
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The nations of Earth are rapidly militarising against the arrival of the Superorganism, an alien civilisation that promises to destroy humanity before it can develop into a real threat. The Superorganism has done it before - to their distant transient relatives - and they could easily do it again. But the alien Ampersand and his human interpreter Cora Sabino are done with trying to save humanity from both the Superorganism and itself; to them, this is a civilisation that does not deserve to be saved.
\nWhen a strange new form of communication between the two of them reveals to Cora how alien Ampersand truly is, she begins to question her blind devotion. But she soon learns of a danger that may force them to leave Earth before either of them are a group of superorganism enemies that have been wreaking havoc on Earth for decades. Existence on the margins has made them desperate and bent on revenge against any of Ampersand's race whose path they cross. Before Cora and Ampersand can make their final escape, these hostile aliens stage an attack, and take that which is most dear to both of them.
\nAmpersand's enemies will not consider any form of truce; the greatest threat to them is not from the Superorganism, but from an increasingly fearful and violent human civilisation newly aware of their existence. Cora and Ampersand must go to extreme measures to take back what was stolen and prevent wholesale human extermination - but in doing so they may be no better than the civilisations they are trying to escape.
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It’s fall 2007. A well-timed leak has revealed that the US government might have engaged in first contact. Cora Sabino is doing everything she can to avoid the whole mess, since the force driving the controversy is her whistleblower father.
\nEven though Cora hasn’t spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the Internet, the paparazzi, and the government - and with him in hiding, that attention is on her. She neither knows nor cares whether her father’s leaks are a hoax, and wants nothing to do with him - until she learns just how deeply entrenched her family is in the cover-up, and that an extraterrestrial presence has been on Earth for decades.
Realising the extent to which both she and the public have been lied to, she sets out to gather as much information as she can, and finds that the best way for her to uncover the truth is not as a whistleblower, but as an intermediary. The alien presence has been completely uncommunicative until she convinces one of them that she can act as their interpreter, becoming the first and only human vessel of communication.
Their otherworldly connection will change everything she thought she knew about being human - and could unleash a force more sinister than she ever imagined.
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The human race is at a crossroads; we know that we are not alone, but details about the alien presence on Earth are still being withheld from the public. As the political climate grows more unstable, the world is forced to consider the ramifications of granting human rights to nonhuman persons. How do you define “person” in the first place?
\nCora Sabino not only serves as the full-time communication intermediary between the alien entity Ampersand and his government chaperones but also shares a mysterious bond with him that is both painful and intimate in ways neither of them could have anticipated. Despite this, Ampersand is still keen on keeping secrets, even from Cora, which backfires on them both when investigative journalist Kaveh Mazandarani, a close colleague of Cora’s unscrupulous estranged father, witnesses far more of Ampersand’s machinations than anyone was meant to see.
\nSince Cora has no choice but to trust Kaveh, the two must work together to prove to a fearful world that intelligent, conscious beings should be considered persons, no matter how horrifying, powerful, or malicious they may seem. Making this case is hard enough when the public doesn’t know what it’s dealing with - and it will only become harder when a mysterious flash illuminates the sky, marking the arrival of an agent of chaos that will light an already-unstable world on fire.
\nWith a voice completely her own, Lindsay Ellis deepens her realistic exploration of the reality of a planet faced with the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence, probing the essential questions of humanity and decency, and the boundaries of the human mind.
\nWhile asking the question of what constitutes a “person,” Ellis also examines what makes a monster.
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Prince Elician is a Giver - a closely-guarded secret. He can heal any wound and bring the dead back to life. He also can’t be killed, so is cursed to watch his country wage an endless war. Reapers can kill with a single touch. And when one attacks Prince Elician near a hotly contested battlefield, the Reaper expects a terrible punishment. Instead, Elician offers him a new life on enemy territory.
\nCat, as Elician calls him, hadn’t realised he could ever find someone who would make life worth living. Yet Elician’s enemies plan to turn his kindness against him. As the pieces of a deadly plot come together, tensions escalate at court and on the battlefield. The fires of conflict burst into new flame - but can those who wield the powers of life and death find peace?
Having returned from his trip to Londinium, Falco takes up employment with Paccius Africanus and Silius Italicus, two lawyers at the top of their trade. For the trial of a senator they need Falco to make an affidavit confirming repayment of a loan.
\nHaving been out of the country and starved of Forum gossip for some time, Falco has little interest in this trial, so he makes his deposition and then leaves. The prosecution are successful and a large financial judgement is made, but one month later the senator is dead, apparently by suicide.
\nThe heirs are now in a situation of not having to pay up, and the prosecutor Silius Italicus suddenly decides to seek out Falco. With a little coercion, Falco joins the prosecution in seeking to persuade a magistrate to instigate a new trial against Metellus' son.
\nBlinded by the vision of rich pickings to be gained by the prosecution, Falco temporarily forgets that, if they fail, the financial penalties levelled against the informers who brought the case are potentially enormous.
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For Marcus Didius Falco, agent to the Emperor Vespasian, Alexandria holds fascination and a hint of fear. Beautiful, historic and famously unruly, the great cosmopolitan city wears Roman rule lightly. While his wife, Helena Justina, wants to see the Lighthouse and the Pyramids, Falco has a mission at the Great Library that soon turns out to involve much more than stock-taking its innumerable scrolls.
\nA mysterious death in the world-famous library bring him into immediate conflict with the darker side of academic life. With forensic science in its infancy, even an illegal autopsy fails to find real answers. To solve the crime for the Roman Prefect - if indeed it is a crime - Falco will have to draw on his own doggedness and intuition, at first supported only by Helena's commonsense and the loyal backup of her brother Aulus, who goes under cover as a student among the in-fighting academics. The philosophers lust after fame and fortune so ruthlessly there is soon another terrifying death, this time at the royal zoo.
\nAt the same time, his original innocent mission is overshadowed by the machinations of his Uncle Fulvius, who is living in Alexandria with his partner Cassius for obscure reasons. Their involvement in local affairs already seems shady when they are joined by their crony, Falco's father, Geminus, a man well known for disreputable business practices. If the irrepressible Pa has had any hand in what has gone wrong at the Library, Falco knows he stands no chance . . .
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AD75. As a passion for home improvement sweeps through the Roman Empire, Marcus Didius Falco struggles to deal with Gloccus and Cotta, a pair of terrible bath house contractors whose slow progress and bad workmanship have been causing him misery for months. They finally finish their contract, but leave Falco and his father with a ghastly smell from a hypocaust and some gruesome site debris . . .
\nFar away in Britain, King Togidubnus of the Atrebates tribe is planning his own makeover. His huge new residence (known to us as Fishbourne Palace) will be spectacular - but the sensational refurbishment is behind time and over budget, its labour force is beset by 'accidents', corrupt practices are rife, and everyone loathes the project manager. The frugal Emperor Vespasian is paying for all this; he wants someone to investigate.
\nFalco has a new baby, an new house, and he hates Britain. But his feud with Anacrites the Chief Spy has now reached a dangerous level, so with his own pressing reasons to leave Rome in a hurry, he accepts the task.
\nA thousand miles from home, with only his family to support him, he starts restoring order to the chaotic building site. Then, while he searches the feuding workforce for Gloccus and Cotta, he realises that someone with murderous intentions is now after him . . .
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A man falls to his death from the Tarpeian Rock, which overlooks the Forum in the Capitoline Hill in Ancient Rome. While it looks like a suicide, one witness swears that she saw it happen and that he was pushed. Normally, this would attract very little official notice but this man happened to be in charge of organising the Imperial Triumphs demanded by the emperor.
\nThe Emperor Domitian, autocratic and erratic, has decided that he deserves two Triumphs for his so-called military victories. The Triumphs are both controversial and difficult to stage because of the not-so-victorious circumstances that left them without treasure or captives to be paraded through the streets. Normally, the investigation would be under the auspices of her new(ish) husband but, worried about his stamina following a long recovery, private informer Flavia Albia, daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, steps in.
\nWhat a mistake that turns out to be. The deceased proves to have been none-too-popular, with far too many others with much to gain from his death. With the date of the Triumphs fast approaching, Flavia Albia must unravel a truly complex case of murder before danger shows up on her own doorstep.
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Saturnalia, the Romans' mid-December feast, nominally to celebrate the sun's rebirth but invariably a drunken riot. Flavia Albia needs a case to investigate, but all work is paused.
\nThe Aventine is full of fracturing families. Wives plot to leave their husbands, husbands plot to spend more time with their mistresses. Masters must endure slaves taking obscene liberties, while aggressive slaves are learning to ape dangerous masters. But no one wants to hire an investigator during the holiday.
\nAlbia is lumped with her own domestic stress: overexcited children and bilious guests, too many practical jokes, and her magistrate husband Tiberius preoccupied with local strife. He fears a Nut War. Nuts are both the snack and missile of choice of tipsy celebrants, so there is a fortune to be made. This year a hustling gang from the past is horning in on the action.
\nAs the deadly menace strikes even close to home, and with law and order paused for partying, Albia and Tiberius must go it alone. The Emperor has promised the people a spectacular entertainment - but Domitian himself is a target for the old criminals' new schemes. Can the Undying Sun survive the winter solstice, or will criminal darkness descend upon Rome?
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In the blazing July heat of imperial Rome, Flavia Albia inspects a decomposing corpse. It has been discovered in lots to be auctioned by her family business, so she's determined to identify the dead man and learn how he met his gruesome end.
\nThe investigation will give her a chance to work with the magistrate, Manlius Faustus, the friend she sadly knows to be the last chaste man in Rome. But he's got other concerns than her anonymous corpse. It's election time and with democracy for sale at Domitian's court, tension has come to a head. Faustus is acting as an agent for a 'good husband and father', whose traditional family values are being called into question. Even more disreputable are his rivals, whom Faustus wants Albia to discredit.
\nAs Albia's and Faustus' professional and personal partnership deepens they have to accept that, for others, obsession can turn sour, and become a deadly strain that leads, tragically, to murder.
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Rome is in chaos. The empire of a mobster chief is falling apart following his death. Rivals, fearsome relatives and associates are taking up position to vie for the spoils. With hideous murders in the streets of Rome, a lone female traveller arrives with an agenda of her own.
\nBut when her corpse is dragged out of the river bearing signs of foul play, Flavia Albia is drawn in, concerned about her fellow Briton's fate. Albia's quest to find the killer becomes deeply personal when she discovers a man at the centre of the plot is an old adversary of hers.
\nWill she be obsessed by revenge? Can she let the past go, or will it consume her?
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In the first century, under Domitian's reign, strange and brutal goings on are nothing new in Rome. Flavia Albia, daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, has taken over her father's business as a private informer but she tries to shy away from the brutal, the complicated, and the political - because nothing good comes of any of them. Unfortunately, she's not very good at turning them down.
\nThis time a commission shows up on her doorstep - someone is staging brutal murders in some of the most beautiful buildings in Rome, each staging different. So far, the only clue was the phrase that one survivor managed to croak, “The undertaker did it . . . ”
\nWith little to go on and bodies starting to pile up, Albia has to unravel the strangest mystery of her career in short order if she's to stop this dismaying orgy of murder.
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Nobody was poisoned at the dinner for the Society of Oliver Oil Producers of Baetica, though in retrospect this was quite a surprise . . .
\nInimitable sleuth Marcus Didius Falco is back with a vengeance. On one night, a man is killed and Rome's Chief of Spies left for dead/ This leaves no one except Falco to conduct the investigation. Soon he is plunged into the fiercely competitive world of olive oil production. Political intrigue, an exotic Spanish dancer and impending fatherhood all add to Falco's troubles.
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Albia is a remarkable woman in what is very much a man's world: young, widowed and fiercely independent, she lives alone on the Aventine Hill in Rome and makes a good living as a hired investigator. An outsider in more ways than one, Albia has unique insight into life in ancient Rome, and she puts it to good use going places no man could go, and asking questions no man could ask.
\nEven as the dust settles from her last case, Albia finds herself once again drawn into a web of lies and intrigue. Two mysterious deaths at a local villa may be murder and, as the household slaves are implicated, Albia is once again forced to involve herself. Her fight is not just for truth and justice, however; this time, she's also battling for the very lives of people who can't fight for themselves.
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Flavia Albia, daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, has taken over her father's business as a private informer. She only has two hard and fast rules - avoid political cases and family cases because nothing good comes of either of them. Unfortunately, since Albia isn't good at avoiding either, it's really more of a guideline. So when her Aunt Junia demands Albia track down a couple of deadbeats who owe her money, it's an offer Albia can't refuse.
\nIt turns out to be a relatively easy job, requiring only some half-hearted blackmail, and it leads to some new work - tracking down some essential paperwork for the debtor family. But nothing is truly easy in Rome - if Albia doesn't find the paperwork that proves that family's ancestor was a properly freed slave, the family could lose everything. The more she digs, the more skeletons she finds in their closet, until murder in the past leads to murder in the present. Now, it's serious, even deadly, and Albia has precious little time to uncover the truth.
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In first century Rome, Flavia Albia, the daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, has taken up her father's former profession as an informer. On a typical day, it's small cases - cheating spouses, employees dipping into the till - but this isn't a typical day.
\nHer beloved, the plebeian Manlius Faustus, has recently moved in and decided that they should get married in a big, showy ceremony as part of beginning a proper domestic life together. Also, his contracting firm has been renovating a rundown dive bar called The Garden of the Hesperides, only to uncover human remains buried in the backyard.
\nThere have been rumors for years that the previous owner of the bar, now deceased, killed a bar maid and these are presumably her remains. In the choice between planning a wedding and looking into a crime from long ago, Albia would much rather investigate a possible murder. Or murders, as more and more remains are uncovered, revealing that something truly horrible has been going on at the Hesperides.
\nAs she gets closer to the truth behind the bodies in the backyard, Albia's investigation has put her in the cross-hairs - which might be the only way she'll get out of the wedding and away from all her relatives who are desperate to 'help.'
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Too many people tell Flavia Albia, 'Don't go to the Grove'. Such warnings will only lure her to the place she is warned away from, Julius Caesar's Gardens, where she finds more than one intriguing mystery.
\nSomeone has buried tattered scrolls here, by unreadable ancient philosophers. Hardly has she taken an interest in what looks like book collecting fraud, when far worse happens. A present evil stirs in the undergrowth. A man holds a birthday party that goes terribly wrong, exposing a long series of neglected crimes.
\nAlbia learns that a serial killer has haunted the gardens and grove for years targeting women. It isn't her place to investigate; that's the job of a dubious vigiles cohort, beefed up by the sinister imperial agent, Julius Karus who she thinks is vile. But sympathy for the dead women and their grieving relatives resonates with Albia. Even if she has to work with Karus, nothing will stop her until the serial killer in the sacred grove is at last caught and brought to justice.
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Flavia Albia is the adopted daughter of Marcus Didius Falco and Helena Justina. From her mother, she learned how to blend in at all levels of society; from her father, she learned the tricks of their mutual professional trade. But her wits and (frequently) sharp tongue are hers alone.
\nNow, working as a private informer in Rome during the reign of Domitian, Flavia has taken over her father’s old ramshackle digs at Fountain Court in the Surbura district, where she plies her trade with energy, determination, and the usual Falco luck. Recently hired to help investigate a fatal accident, she finds herself stuck with a truly awful person for a client and facing a well-heeled, well-connected opponent.
\nThat is, until her client unexpectedly dies under what might be called “suspicious circumstances.” While this is not a huge loss for society, it is a loss for Flavia Albia’s pocket. Even worse, it’s just one of a series of similar deaths for which she now finds herself under suspicion. Before things go from abysmal to worse, Flavia must sort out what is happening, and who is responsible.
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When Germanic troops in the service of the Empire begin to rebel, and a Roman general disappears, Emperor Vespasian turns to the one man he can trust: Marcus Didius Falco, a private informer whose rates are low enough that even the stingy Vespasian is willing to pay them.
\nTo Falco, an undercover tour of Germania is an assignment from Hades. On a journey that only a stoic could survive, Falco meets with disarray, torture, and murder. His one hope: in the northern forest lives a powerful Druid priestess who perhaps can be persuaded to cease her anti-Rome activities and work for peace. Which Falco is eagerly hoping for as, back in Rome, the Titus Caesar is busy trying to make time with Helena Justina, a senator's daughter and Falco's girlfriend.
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For Falco, a relaxed visit to Helena's relatives in Britain turns serious at the scene of a downtown murder. The renegade henchman of Rome's vital ally, King Togidubnus, has been stuffed head-first down a bar-room well - leading to a tricky diplomatic situation which Falco must diffuse.
\nOne murder leads to others. Londinium now has a forum and an amphitheatre; the town is a magnet for legitimate traders - and for criminals from Rome.
\nDrinking dens are plundered by extortionists; prostitution reigns in the dark streets; the army turns a blind eye. With his vigiles pal Petronius,Falco leads the hunt for gangsters who are intent on taking over. This will bring unwelcome encounters with faces from the past and grave threats to their present relationships.
\nDanger and death lurk throughout their pursuit, all the way from the brand new wharves beside the River Thamesis to the familiar old haunts of organised crime back home in Italy.
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The spirit of adventure callls Marcus Didius Falco on a new spying mission for the Emperor Vespasian to teh untamed East. He's picking up extra fees from his old friend Thalia the snake dancer as he searches for Sophrona, her lost water organist. With teh Chief Spy Anacrites paying his fare, Falco knows anything can go wrong.
\nA dangerous brush with the Brother, the sinister ruler of Nabataean Petra, sends Falco and his girlfriend Helena on a fast camel-ride to Syria. They join a traveling theatre group, which keeps losing members in non-accidental drownings. The bad acting and poor audiences are almost as bad as the desert and its scorpions - then as the killer hovers, Falco tries to write a play . . .
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Rome and the Romans are obsessed with chariot racing. Lepo was the rising star of the Purples, a new team created by the psychotic Emperor Domitian with big money backing. Suspicion immediately falls on Lepo's greatest rival, Agathon, a young man emerging from a rival team, the Golds. Convinced of his guilt, a lynch mob is hunting him.
\nThe Golds faction hire Flavia to clear their man's name. He appears to have an alibi for the night of the murder but, as Flavia soon finds out, nothing is as it seems in the dangerous and glamorous world of the charioteers in which fortunes can be won or lost in seconds and violent death in the arena is always just one race away.
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In the high summer of 77AD, Roman informer Marcus Didius Falco is beset by personal problems. Newly bereaved and facing unexpected upheavals in his life, it is a relief for him to consider someone else's misfortunes. A middle-aged couple who supplied statues to his father, Geminus, have disappeared in mysterious circumstances. They had an old feud with a bunch of notorious freedmen, the Claudii, who live rough in the pestilential Pontine Marshes, terrorising the neighbourhood.
\nWhen a mutilated corpse turns up near Rome, Falco and his vigiles friend Petronius investigate, even though it means travelling in the dread marshes. But just as they are making progress, the Chief Spy, Anacrites, snatches their case away from them. As his rivalry with Falco escalates, he makes false overtures of friendship, but fails to cover up the fact that the violent Claudii have acquired corrupt protection at the highest level. Making further enquiries after they have been warned off can only be dangerous - but when did that stop Falco and Petronius?
\nEgged on by the slippery bureaucrats who hate Anacrites, the dogged friends dig deeper while a psychotic killer keeps taking more victims, and the shocking truth creeps closer and closer to home . . .
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In the long, hot Roman Summer of AD74, Marcus Didius Falco, private informer and spare-time poet, gives a reading for his family and friends. Things get out of hand as usual.
\nThe event is taken over by Aurelius Chrysippus, a wealthy Greek banker and patron to a group of struggling writers, who offers to publish Falco's work - a golden opportunity that rapidly palls.
\nA visit to the Chrysippus scriptorium implicates him in a gruesome literary murder so when Petronius Longus, the over-worked vigiles enquiry chief, commissions him to investigate, Falco is foced to accept.
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A frightened child approaches Roman informer Marcus Didius Falco, pleading for help. Nobody believes Gaia's story that a relation wants to kill her - and neither does he.
\nBeset by his own family troubles, by his new responsibilities as Procurator of the Sacred Poultry, and by the continuing search for a new partner, he turns her away.
\nImmediately he regrets it. Gaia's been selected as the new Vestal Virgin, and when she disappears Falco is officially asked to investigate.
\nFinding Gaia is then a race against time, ending in Falco's most terrifying exploit yet.
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Flavia Albia is a private investigator, always drawn to an intriguing puzzle - even if it is put to her by her new husband's hostile ex-wife. On the Quirinal Hill, Clodia Volumnia, a very young girl with stars in her eyes, has died, amid suggestions that she was poisoned by a love-potion. It will have been supplied by a local witch, who goes by the name of Pandora, though Albia learns that Pandora carries on a trade in herbal beauty products while hiding much more dangerous connections. Pandora's beloved grandson, a trainee hack lawyer, is one of the dead girl's empty-headed friends; can this be relevant?
\nAs she homes in on the truth, Albia has to contend with the occult, organised crime, an unusual fertility symbol, and celebrity dining. She discovers the young girl was a handful; her father mediates in disputes, yet has divorced his grief-stricken wife and is now suing his own mother-in-law; Clodia's so-called friends were none too friendly. The supposedly sweet air of the Quirinal hides the smells of loose morality, casual betrayal and even gangland conflict. When a friend of her own is murdered, Albia determines to expose as much of this local sickness as she can - beginning with the truth about the death of little Clodia.
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Rome AD 72: Marcus Didius Falco returns home from a six-month mission to the German legions. But trouble is in store for him: his apartment has been wrecked by squatters and an ex-legionary friend of his colourfully heroic brother Festus is demanding money, allegedly owed him as the result of one of Festus's wild schemes. Worse still, the only client Falco can get is his mother - who wants him to clear the family name.
\nThen just as Falco thinks things can only get better, fate takes a turn for the worse. The legionary is found viciously stabbed to death with Falco the prime suspect. Now he has only three days to prove he is not a murderer, to trace the real suspect, amass evidence and win a fortune . . .
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It is the Roman holiday of Saturnalia. The days are short, the nights are for wild parties. A general has captured a famous enemy of Rome, and brings her home to adorn his Triumph as a ritual sacrifice. The logistics go wrong; she acquires a mystery illness - then a young man is horrendously murdered and she escapes from house arrest.
\nMarcus Didius Falco is pitted against his old rival, the Chief Spy Anacrites, in a race to find the fugitive before her presence angers the public and makes the government look stupid. Falco has other priorities, for Helena's brother Justinus has also vanished, perhaps fatefully involved once more with the great lost love of his youth.
\nAgainst the riotous backdrop of the season of misrule, the search seems impossible and only Falco seems to notice that some dark agency is bringing death to the city streets . . .
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In the wealthy town of Ostia, our hero Falco appears to be enjoying a relaxing holiday. But when his girlfriend, Helena, arrives carrying a batch of old copies of the Daily Gazette - with the intention of catching up on the latest scandal - Falco is forced to admit to Petronius his real reasons for being there . . .
\n'Infamia', the pen name of the scribe who writes the gossip column for the Daily Gazette, has gone missing. His fellow scribes have employed Falco to find him and bring him back from his lazy, drunken truancy. However, Falco suspects that there is more to his absence than might first appear.
\nBefore long, Falco's enquiries lead him into the world of piracy and the discovery of criminal traditions long believed dead. Is this the right path towards finding 'Infamia'? Why would pirates have taken him? And if they have, will he be found alive?
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With safe seas, good roads, a common currency, and lots of interesting conquered territory, the Romans naturally invented tourism. They believed in a life of leisure - fine for those who could afford it - and some would set off on their travels for maybe five years at a time. As these ancient culture vultures descended on the sights, the tour guide was born to cater to their needs . . .
\n'Marcus, you must help me!'
\nStunned by a dramatic appeal from his otherwise cool mother-in-law, Falco cannot resist. His brother-in-law, Aulus, has been diverted from his route to Athens university by a man whose newly married daughter disappeared, with her husband, while visiting the Olympic Games as part of an extended wedding trip. Suspecting a classic cover-up, Aulus enrols Falco's help in solving the case. And of course his mother-in-law hopes to hurry her son along to university by passing the case over to Falco.
\nJoining the rest of the married couple's tour group on the remains of their Grand Tour, Falco and Helena seize the opportunity to interview the owner/manager of 'Seven Sights Travel', as well as the other guests. Seemingly not getting very far, they can at least make the most of the splendid sights; but finally, on reaching Delphi, Falco and Helena unravel the mystery of the bride and groom . . .
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Rome, AD 71: Against his better judgement, Marcus Didius Falco secretly disposes of a decayed corpse for the Emperor Vespasian, then heads for the beautiful Bay of Naples with his best friend Petronius. It's an opportunity to forget his doomed romance with the beautiful and bright Helena Justina.
\nHe conveniently forgets to mention to his companion that this will be no holiday - they have been sent to investigate the murderous members of a failed coup, now sunning themselves in luxurious villas and on fancy yachts.
\nNor does the idyllic seaside location help matters with Helena. The deeper he probes, the more it seems she is inextricably connected to the elite plotters, in ways that the smitten Falco cannot bear to contemplate . . .
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Marcus Didius Falco is a private informer, the closest thing that first-century Rome has to a detective.
\nA new emperor, Vespasian, has ascended to power. The tides of money and power are in flux, and Rome's vicious games swirl more ferociously than ever.
\nWhen Falco rescues a young girl in trouble, he catapults himself into a dangerous game involving stolen imperial ingots, a dark political plot and, most hazardous of all, a senator's daughter connected to the traitors Falco has sworn to expose.
\nThe rule of law is tenuous for ordinary citizens of Rome. Only a man with a mind as sharp as a gladius can prevail.
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Ten years after the eruption of Vesuvius, the surrounding countryside lies buried and barren. But the destroyed cities and luxury villas on the Bay of Naples are not utterly lost.
\nFlavia Albia and her husband Tiberius Manlius are tasked with restoring one villa and identifying any surviving remains.
\nWhat they unearth is beyond disturbing. When the volcano erupted some people were left to their fate here, unable to escape. They included the previous owner, Publius Primus - laid out carefully and covered by falling ash.
\nWas Primus murdered? And, if so, why? Can Flavia Albia solve the mystery?
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Flavia Albia's day-old marriage is in trouble - her new husband may be permanently disabled and they have no funds. So when Palace officials ask her to help expose a plotter in their midst she is obliged to accept their commission.
\nThe plot could not be bigger. Ever since he died in AD 68, apparently by his own hand, Rome has been haunted by reports that the Emperor Nero is in fact very much alive and about to return to claim his throne.
\nTwo Nero pretenders have emerged in the East and met grisly fates. But now, as the Emperor Domitian, whose tyrannical, paranoid reign grows ever more unpopular, fights a war in faraway Dacia, there emerges a far more sinister contender. What's more the rumour is that this false Nero is already in Rome. Plunged into the conspiracy, Flavia must infiltrate the house of the Parthians who have smuggled in this new impostor, negotiate with spies, dodge the assassins sent by the Palace traitor, and somehow cope with her stricken husband.
\nCan she succeed before the impostor is revealed? Or will Rome once more be plunged into civil war?
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Marcus Didius Falco and his laddish friend Petronius find their local fountain has been blocked- by a gruesomely severed human hand.
\nSoon other body parts are being found in the aqueducts and sewers. Public panic overcomes official indifference, and the Aventine partners are commissioned to investigate. Women are bing abducted during festivals, with the next Games only days away.
\nAs the heat rises in the Circus Maximus, they face a race agaisnt time and a strong test of their friendship. They know the sadistic killer lurks somewhere on the festive streets of Rome- perparing to strike again.
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Petronius Longus, captain of the Aventine watch and Falco's oldest friend, has finally nailed on of Rome's top criminals. Under Roman law citizens are not imprisoned but are allowed 'time to depart' into exile outside the Empire. One dark and gloomy dawn Petro and Falcoput the evit Balbinus aboard ship.
\nBut soon after, an outbreak of robbery and murder suggest a new criminal ring has moved into Balbinus' territory. Petro and Falco must descend into the underworld of Vespasian's Rome to investigate . . .
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Caged in frustration by having to work alongside the reptilian Chief Spy Anacrites, Marcus Didius Falco devises the perfect escape; become a tax collector in the \"Great Census of A.D. 73\". If his services are accepted by Vespasian and Titus, he may even rise high enough in the middle ranks to marry his long-suffering companion, Helena Justina.
\nBut a toothier job roars his way when the Empire's prized lion is mysteriously stabbed to death and Rome's star gladiator is found murdered. Now, Falco must enter the dark and desperate world of the Coliseum to hunt for a madman who must kill - or be killed.
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Marcus Didius Falco, ancient Rome's hangdog investigator, hates sharing a cell with a rodent - though being bailed by his old mother is almost as embarassing. His highborn girlfriend can't decide if she wants him and Titus Caesar's reward for past services is a wet fish. Hoping for a better life, or at least a better apartment, he takes on new clients.
\nOn the elegant slopes of the Pincian Hill, three nouveaux riches freedmen with two flashy wives are under siege by a clever redhead. Severina Zotica has a foul-mouthed parrot, an odd connection with a snake dancer - and a very suspicious past. As he pursues this flame-haired fortune-hunter, Falco finds himself beset by violent rent-racketeers, poisoners, and women without consciences who have dangerous designs on him . . .
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After Emily’s father tragically dies, she is forced to live with the only family she has left, an aunt and grandmother in the heart of Savannah, Georgia in a house as beautiful as it is mysterious.
\nBut all is not what it seems with the Bell family; they’re hiding a magical secret.
\nWhen Emily meets the alluring Wyn, she forms a connection that feels like it was always meant to be. As the spark between them grows more powerful, her life takes an exhilarating and terrifying turn; but every step closer to him, takes her a step further away from her family.
\nEmily will find out that blood is always thicker than water . . .
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When Ros steps off a plane after four years away she’s in need of a job, a flat and a phone that actually works. And, possibly, her old life back. Because everyone at home has moved on, her parents have reignited their sex life, she’s sleeping in a converted shed and she’s got a bad case of nostalgia for the way things were.
Then her new phone begins to ping with messages from people she thought were deleted for good. Including one number she knows off by heart: her ex’s.
Sometimes we’d all like the chance to see what we’ve been missing . . .
Sophie Taylor has a secret and Joe Walsh thinks he knows it (all). He’s devilishly handsome, incredibly hot - and far too sure of himself.
\nUnfortunately, Sophie desperately needs his help. She has lost her laptop - and her sequel to the sensational, spicy romance that everybody’s talking about.
\nBecause Sophie is not just hiding something small. She is Este Cox, the mysterious romance author the entire world is desperate to unmask.
\nWhen a trip to Sophie’s home town leads to the disgruntledpair sharing a one-bed cottage, it’s a short step to sharing a whole lot more besides . . .
\nCan Sophie trust Joe with the truth - and be herself?
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Since arriving in Savannah, Emily Bell has faced prophecies, werewolves, family secrets and her own grandmother's attempt to take her life.
\nBut, strangely, surrounded by her friends and new family, Savannah has never felt more like home.
\nNow, faced with the absence of her love, Wyn, as he wrestles with his new abilities as a werewolf, and burdened with the task of finding her fellow witches to avert the prophecy that surrounds her, Emily is attacked by a new threat. A lone wolf that will stop at nothing to destroy her.
\nEmily must act fast and find out the wolf's identity before it kills her and all those she cares about. She will soon find out she can’t do everything alone, and that a burden shared is a burden halved . . .
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In bestselling author Lindy West’s most ambitious book yet, she takes readers along on an uproarious cross-country road trip as she unpacks her last few tumultuous years, rediscovers herself, and reinvents her marriage in the process.
\nThrough Shrill, the book and then the Hulu series, Lindy West became an inspiration. To this day she is stopped on the street and hailed as a beacon of empowerment by women who felt badly for not conforming to the categories deemed acceptable - thin, straight, compliant. But behind the scenes, Lindy never felt like she was the self-actualised woman fans made her out to be. When she found herself in the throes of a deep depression, with her marriage and sense of self-worth hanging in the balance, she knew she needed to make a change.
\nIn ADULT BRACES, Lindy shares the story of her rock bottom, and of the solo cross-country road trip she took to claw her way out of it. With her trademark candor and sense of humor, she examines her post-Shrill emotional implosion, her shifting feelings about traditional marriage, and her search for her long-lost self. She also tracks the highs and lows of her journey, from eye-opening natural wonders and kitschy roadside attractions to lackluster excursions and campground epiphanies. The result is an engaging and laugh-out-loud narrative of becoming as Lindy transforms from a passenger into the active navigator of her own life.
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Being snubbed by Mr Darcy - passed over for Elizabeth Bennet, no less - is humiliating.
\nBeing told she's arrogant and unkind, and that if she doesn't mend her ways, she might never find love . . . that's simply preposterous. Isn't it?
\nFeeling the sting of Darcy's rejection, Caroline Bingley does what any self-respecting woman of means would do: she hatches a plan. Get Georgiana Darcy, the epitome of grace and sweetness, to teach Caroline how to be perfect like her.
\nBut Caroline’s transformation from status-hungry socialite to proper marriage material won’t be easy. She must be charming, and even worse . . . she must be kind. And Georgiana herself isn’t so sure about playing fairy godmother. Beneath Miss Darcy’s polished facade lies an entirely different set of struggles.
\nAs the two grow closer, Caroline discovers she’s less interested in securing a man, and more intrigued by the woman helping her to reform her character. Before long, their lessons in finding love and acceptance blossom into something completely unexpected . . .
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When Mr. Collins dies after just four years of marriage, Charlotte is lost. While not exactly heartbroken, she will soon have to quit the parsonage that has become her home. In desperate need of support, she writes to her best friend, Lizzie. Unable to leave Pemberly, Lizzie sends her sister, Mary Bennet, in her stead.
\nTo Charlotte’s surprise, Mary Bennet is nothing like she remembers. Mary’s discovery of academia and her interest in botany (as well as getting out from under her mother’s thumb) have caused her to flourish. Before long, Charlotte is enraptured - with Mary, and with the possibilities that lie beyond their societal confines. With each stolen glance and whispered secret, their friendship quickly blossoms into something achingly real.
\nBut when her time at the parsonage begins to dwindle and a potential suitor appears, Charlotte must make a choice - the safety and security of another husband, or a passionate life with Mary outside the confines of the ton’s expectations.
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Enka meets Mathilde in art school. Mathilde is a dizzyingly talented yet tortured artist whose star is on the rise - and Enka, struggling to make art that feels original, is immediately drawn to her. The two strike up an intense bond that soon turns codependent. But when Mathilde’s fame reaches new heights, Enka becomes desperate to keep her best friend close - no matter the cost.
\nEnka quickly falls in love with and marries a billionaire whose family’s company is funding an unconventional technology purported to heighten empathy, which could allow someone else to inhabit Mathilde’s mind and absorb the trauma from her brain. Soon, the boundaries between Mathilde and Enka begin to blur even further, setting in motion a disturbing series of events that forever changes their lives.
\nBlisteringly smart, thought-provoking, and shocking, Immaculate Conception deftly navigates big questions of art, technology, authorship, and what makes us human. Ling Ling Huang offers us a portrait of close friendship - achingly tender and twisted - that captures the tenuous line between love and possession that will haunt you long after you turn the final page.
Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents - also talented musicians - who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.
\nHolistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures - from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk - and her new job affords her entry into a world of privilege and a long-awaited sense of belonging. She becomes transfixed by Helen, the niece of Holistik’s charismatic owner, and the two strike up a friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister.
\nA piercing, darkly funny debut, Natural Beauty explores questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity - and leaves readers with a shocking and unsettling truth.
Dell Danvers is barely keeping it together. She’s behind on rent for her studio apartment (formerly a walk-in closet), she’s being plagued by perpetual stomach pain, and her younger sister, Daisy, is in a coma at a hospital that wants to pull the plug. Freshly unemployed and subsisting on selling plants to trust fund kids, Dell impulsively starts a 24-hour livestream under the username mademoiselle_dell to fundraise for private life support for Daisy.
\nDell is her stream’s dungeon master, banishing those who don’t abide by her terms and steadily rising up the platform’s ranks with her sympathetic story and angry-funny screen presence. Once she discovers she has a talent for eating spicy food, her streaming fame explodes and her pepper consumption escalates from jalapeño to ghost to the hottest pepper on the Carolina Reaper. Dell is finally good at something - but as her behavior becomes riskier and a shadowy troll threatens to expose her dark past, Dell must reckon with what her digital life ignores, and what real redemption means.
\nNarrated in seven taut chapters, one for each day of Dell’s livestream, Just Watch Me careens through a week in the life of this charismatic misfit with a heart of gold. Voyeuristic and visceral, audacious and outrageous, Lior Torenberg’s debut is both a razor-sharp tragicomedy about the internet economy and a surreptitiously moving tale about the desire to be watched, and the terror of being seen.
An accomplished concert pianist, Richard received standing ovations from audiences all over the world in awe of his rare combination of emotional resonance and flawless technique. Every finger of his hands was a finely calibrated instrument, dancing across the keys and striking each note with exacting precision. That was eight months ago.
Richard now has ALS, and his entire right arm is paralysed. His fingers are impotent, still, devoid of possibility. The loss of his hand feels like a death, a loss of true love, a divorce - his divorce.
He knows his left arm will go next.
Three years ago, Karina removed their framed wedding picture from the living room wall and hung a mirror there instead. But she still hasn’t moved on. Karina is paralysed by excuses and fear, stuck in an unfulfilling life as a piano teacher, afraid to pursue the path she abandoned as a young woman, blaming Richard and their failed marriage for all of it.
When Richard becomes increasingly paralyzed and is no longer able to live on his own, Karina becomes his reluctant caretaker. As Richard’s muscles, voice, and breath fade, both he and Karina try to reconcile their past before it’s too late.
Poignant and powerful, Every Note Played is a masterful exploration of redemption and what it means to find peace inside of forgiveness.
I’m always hearing about how my brain doesn’t work right. . . . But it doesn’t feel broken to me.
\nOlivia Donatelli’s dream of a “normal” life shattered when her son, Anthony, was diagnosed with autism at age three. Understanding the world from his perspective felt bewildering, nearly impossible. He didn’t speak. He hated to be touched. He almost never made eye contact. And just as Olivia was starting to realise that happiness and autism could coexist, Anthony died.
\nNow she’s alone in a cottage on Nantucket, separated from her husband, desperate to understand the meaning of her son’s short life, when a chance encounter with another woman facing her own loss brings Anthony alive again for Olivia in a most unexpected way.
\nBeth Ellis’s entire life changed with a simple note: “I’m sleeping with Jimmy.” Fourteen years of marriage. Three beautiful daughters. Yet even before her husband’s affair, she had never felt so alone. Heartbroken, she finds the pieces of the vivacious, creative person she used to be packed away in a box in her attic. For the first time in years, she uncaps her pen, takes a deep breath, and begins to write. The young but exuberant voice that emerges onto the page is a balm to the turmoil within her, a new beginning, and an astonishing bridge back to herself.
\nIn a piercing story about motherhood, autism, and love, New York Times bestselling author Lisa Genova offers us two unforgettable women on the verge of change and the irrepressible young boy whose unique wisdom helps them both find the courage to move on.
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Maddy Banks is just like any other stressed-out freshman at NYU. Between schoolwork, exams, navigating life in the city, and a recent breakup, it’s normal to be feeling overwhelmed. It doesn’t help that she’s always felt like the odd one out in her picture-perfect Connecticut family. But Maddy’s latest low is devastatingly low, and she goes on an antidepressant. She begins to feel good, dazzling in fact, and she soon spirals high into a wild and terrifying mania that culminates in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
\nAs she struggles to find her way in this new reality, navigating the complex effects bipolar has on her identity, her relationships, and her life dreams, Maddy will have to figure out how to manage being both too much and not enough.
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A fascinating exploration of the intricacies of how we remember, why we forget, and what we can do to protect our memories, from the Harvard-trained neuroscientist and bestselling author of Still Alice.
\nHave you ever felt a crushing wave of panic when you can't for the life of you remember the name of that actor in the movie you saw last week, or you walk into a room only to forget why you went there in the first place? If you're over forty, you're probably not laughing. You might even be worried that these lapses in memory could be an early sign of Alzheimer's or dementia. In reality, for the vast majority of us, these examples of forgetting are completely normal. Why? Because while memory is amazing, it is far from perfect. Our brains aren't designed to remember every name we hear, plan we make, or day we experience. Just because your memory sometimes fails doesn't mean it's broken or succumbing to disease. Forgetting is actually part of being human.
\nIn Remember, neuroscientist and acclaimed novelist Lisa Genova delves into how memories are made and how we retrieve them. You'll learn whether forgotten memories are temporarily inaccessible or erased forever and why some memories are built to exist for only a few seconds (like a passcode) while others can last a lifetime (your wedding day). You'll come to appreciate the clear distinction between normal forgetting (where you parked your car) and forgetting due to Alzheimer's (that you own a car). And you'll see how memory is profoundly impacted by meaning, emotion, sleep, stress, and context. Once you understand the language of memory and how it functions, its incredible strengths and maddening weaknesses, its natural vulnerabilities and potential superpowers, you can both vastly improve your ability to remember and feel less rattled when you inevitably forget. You can set educated expectations for your memory, and in doing so, create a better relationship with it. You don't have to fear it anymore. And that can be life-changing.
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Fallon Little has a secret - and it’s not how she got the enormous scar that divides her face in two. Thirteen-year-old Fallon has only ever told one person what really happened on the day she got her scar. Why would she? The truth is dark, and Fallon has much brighter things to focus on, like being cast as the lead in the school play, and hanging out with her two best friends, Trent and Kaia. But when Fallon's uncle Geebie dies, his funeral ignites a wildfire of events that Fallon can't manage to tamp down.
\nThe school play is spiraling out of control, Fallon's impossible Aunt Lune comes to live with them, and Trent and Kaia might just be so into each other that there isn't room for Fallon in their friend group any more. And when secrets even worse than the one about Fallon's scar threaten to come to light, Fallon might not have the strength to keep them buried for much longer.
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They say every marriage has its secrets. But no one sees what happens behind closed doors. And sometimes those doors should never be opened . . .
\nSal and Charlie are married. They love each other. But they aren’t happy. Sal cannot leave, no matter what Charlie does - no matter how much it hurts.
Becky is back on the tiny island where she was born, the island she swore she’d never return to.
\nApart from her former best friend Megan, everyone makes it clear she isn’t wanted. The islanders have long memories. They haven’t forgotten the scandal. What Becky did.
\nBecky decides to leave as soon as she can. But first she must discover what happened to Violet.
\nViolet disappeared exactly a year ago, the day of the summer festival. Everyone assumes she ran off to the mainland with her boyfriend. Only her sister believes something more sinister happened to her.
\nBecky starts to ask questions - and becomes convinced that Violet never left the island. Someone in this remote, suspicious community knows exactly what happened to her. Someone who’s determined to keep the truth hidden - whatever it takes.
\nAs Becky pieces the clues together, she is forced to confront the dark secrets of her own past. But has she got it tragically wrong . . . yet again?
\nAnd then another teenage girl goes missing . . .
Bonfire Night. A missing girl. Anna only takes her eyes off Laurel for a second. She thought Laurel was following her mum through the crowds. But in a heartbeat, Laurel is gone. Laurel's parents are frantic. As is Anna, their nanny.
\nBut as the hours pass, and Laurel isn't found, suspicion grows. Someone knows what happened to Laurel. And they're not telling.
When Anna applies to a job as a housekeeper for wealthy widow Nick, it’s a chance to start over - steady job, regular money means she can work towards her own place, not sharing a grimy flatshare with old mate, Mel.
\nAs Anna gets to know more about Nick’s world - how likes his supper when he comes in from work, who his friends are - she can make sure everything is just as he wants it.
\nAnd soon there’s a spark of chemistry between them. Nick likes having Anna around, and one evening invites her to stay . . .
\nThere’s just the small issue of what actually happened to his first wife . . .
From the moment Seb and Tamsin moved in next door, I couldn’t look away. They’re everything Nate and I aren’t - glamorous, magnetic, intoxicating.
\nIt started with drinks in the garden, shared meals, easy laughter. They made me feel seen again. Special.
\nAnd then comes the night that crosses a line.
\nIt’s Tamsin’s idea. She leans in, eyes glinting. “We should swap. Partners. Just for the night.”
\nI should have said no. But I didn’t.
\nThe next morning, I creep home full of guilt . . . and walk into something far worse.
\nThere are no rules now. And not all of us will survive.
Jessica and Linda have been best friends since the first day of school. Both are from broken, but different, homes, and willful Jessica has always ensured their survival. Now eighteen, the two have come to Wilde - an elite university in the heart of Dublin, far away from their troubled childhoods. Jessica thrives immediately and, with the faithful Linda by her side, finds herself at the heart of a new friend circle.
\nThen Mark enters the picture. A philosophy student a few years older than them, he has strange and compelling ideas about self-discovery. When Linda and Mark start dating, Jessica is disturbed by the change in her friend - and how quickly she seems to have fallen under the charismatic man’s control.
\nBut Mark’s influence is not limited to Linda. Soon Jessica's group of friends are keeping secrets for him, and it will culminate in ways that change their lives forever.
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Dark secrets and revenge converge as former students from an elite boarding school, which is also a haven for the daughters of the rich and famous, come face to face with the crimes of the past . . .
\nLucy Champagne was sent to St. Cecilia’s after her movie-star mother was brutally attacked by her sleazy boyfriend, Ray Watkins. Lucy’s damning testimony landed Ray a twenty-five-year sentence. But now, Ray is free. And he’s going to find Lucy and make her pay, no matter how far and how fast she runs . . .
\nRayne Taylor found unexpected happiness at St. Cecilia’s, until her roommate, Natalie, committed suicide. Only when Rayne finds a box of mementoes from that time does she realize how wrong she may have been about Natalie’s death - and how far someone will go to keep the truth hidden . . .
\nErin MacDonald remembers little about the long-ago night she and her sister, Anna Beth, were kidnapped. While Erin was found safe, Anna Beth vanished forever. Now Erin has reluctantly come back to the family estate, where Detective Rafe Montego hopes to finally crack the case. But as flashes of Erin’s memory reemerge, she learns how deep the danger goes . . .
The first victim is pushed to her death. The second suffers a fatal overdose. The third takes a bullet to the heart. Three down, more to go. They’re people who deserve to die. People who are in the way. And when she’s finished, there will be no one left.
\nCissy Cahill’s world is unraveling fast. One by one, members of her family are dying. Cissy’s certain she’s being watched. Or is she losing her mind? Lately she’s heard footsteps when there’s no one around, smelled a woman’s perfume, and noticed small, personal items missing from her house. Cissy’s right to be afraid - but not for the reason she thinks. The truth is much more terrifying.
\nHidden in the shadows of the Cahill family’s twisted past is a shocking secret - a secret that will only be satisfied by blood. And Cissy must uncover the deadly truth before it’s too late, because fear is coming home…with a vengeance…
Single mother Danielle Summers is convinced her ranch is slowly being sabotaged. Newcomer Chase McEnroe insists she should trust him. But Dani’s suspicion that Chase is in league with her enemy is complicated by a secret from his past. Can she put aside her concerns about his potential deception to find out who is behind these awful acts?
There’s nothing secretive about the hostility between two of Oregon’s leading lumber families. The feud has been long, ruthless, and bloody, and Ashley Stephens and Trevor Daniels are still reeling from the damage it’s caused. Now, eight years after their relationship ended, Trevor discovers that not only is his bid for a senate seat in jeopardy, but his life may be too. And the future of both may lie with Ashley…
“Trask McFadden is back.”
\nThose are words that Tory has been waiting to hear, half in dread, half with longing. It’s been five years since Trask landed her father behind bars for horse swindling, using things she’d told him in confidence. Her father died there, but now Trask insists he has information that could help prove who was really responsible for the crime, not to mention his own brother’s death. Trask needs her help. But he won’t get it, not after destroying her family, her ranch, and the love they shared.
\nLauren Regis’s ex-husband has kidnapped her children. There’s nothing she won’t do to get them back, including hiring Zachary Winters. The unconventional attorney has made a name for himself by locating people - especially those who don’t want to be found. But he’s got a darker reputation too, and there are rumors swirling about the fate of his ex-wife. How much is Lauren willing to trust him - or to lose?
All her life, she’s been the girl who survived. Orphaned at age seven after a horrific killing spree at her family’s Oregon cabin, Kara McIntyre is still searching for some kind of normal. But now, twenty years later, the past has come thundering back. Her brother, Jonas, who was convicted of the murders has unexpectedly been released from prison. The press is in a frenzy again.
\nAnd suddenly, Kara is receiving cryptic messages from her big sister, Marlie - who hasn’t been seen or heard from since that deadly Christmas Eve when she hid little Kara in a closet with a haunting, life-saving command: Don’t make a sound.
\nAs people close to her start to die horrible deaths, Kara, who is slowly and surely unraveling, believes she is the killer’s ultimate target.
\nKara survived once. But will she survive again? How many times can she be the girl who survived?
It begins on a dark stretch of highway in northern California. Caught in a blinding glare of headlights, two vehicles swerve and crash - leaving one woman dead, and another in a coma. When the surviving woman awakens, her memory is gone and her face has been reconstructed. Her family tells her that her name is Marla Cahill - but they're all strangers to her.
\nRecuperating in her isolated San Francisco mansion, Marla waits for something to trigger recognition. Yet the only thing she's left with is the unshakable feeling that she is not who everyone says she is, and that something is very, very wrong. Marla knows her life isn't just different - it's in danger. And as her fear builds, a killer waits for the perfect moment to strike - the moment Marla remembers . . .
The huge Victorian house on Lake Twilight belongs to Harper Reed Prescott, as does the private island on which it sits. Harper wants little to do with either. Twenty years ago, Harper’s grandmother died suspiciously while in her care, on the same night that Harper’s boyfriend disappeared. His body was never found, and no charges were filed. But the rumors haven’t faded. There have been other deaths, other accidents. All revolving around Harper and her family.
\nNow Harper’s marriage is over, her college-age daughter is estranged, and Harper just wants to sell the property and make a fresh start. Except returning to the lake has stirred everything up again. Whispers. Memories. And the persistent feeling that, as she gazes out at the houses across the water, she’s being watched in turn.
\nThe whole town has always thought Harper has something to hide, and they’re right. But she might have even more to fear . . .
A woman is frantic as she awakens in a dark, closed space. From above her comes the muffled sound of cruel laughter, followed by the hard splatter of dirt. Pure terror takes over as she realizes she’s being buried alive - and her last breath is a scream that no one but a sadistic killer will hear . . .
\nTo journalist Nikki Gillette, this disturbing story is a ticket out of small-town Savannah and on to the big time. She’s already given the killer a nickname - The Grave Robber - and she’s spending every minute dogging tough cop Pierce Reed’s investigation, trailing him through Savannah’s deep thickets and crumbling cemeteries . . . even though she’s starting to wonder about the secrets he’s keeping . . .
\nAnother body is found. And another. Each gruesome discovery unnerves Nikki a little more . . . there’s something familiar about it, something she should know. Now, as a serial killer pulls her ever deeper into his sick game, she has no idea how close she’s getting to the truth - or how deadly it will be . . .
In the dark shadows of a sultry southern town, a serial killer strikes. It's an act of sinister precision that has happened many times before . . . every victim an offering to a hunger that can never be sated. . .
\nThe next morning, Caitlyn Montgomery Bandeaux wakes covered in blood. But Caitlyn has no memory of the night before, when her estranged husband was brutally murdered like so many others she has known. . .
\nWanted by the police and haunted by horrifying, fragmented memories, Caitlyn turns to Adam Hunt, the town's new psychologist. But how far can she really trust him? For as a twisted killer strikes again and again, Caitlyn's about to discover that those who appear the most innocent are usually the most evil. . .
Brooke Hastings is ready to end her six-week affair. Gideon Ross is charming and sexy, but he’s not worth throwing away her marriage and family for. So she breaks it off, hoping Gideon will understand.
\nHe doesn’t. Gideon insists that he and Brooke are meant to be together. Finally, he backs off, but not before issuing a he’ll never let her go.
\nSix years later, Brooke wants to believe it’s all behind her. Her family has survived intact. Gideon has vanished.
\nBut the fear hasn’t disappeared. Brooke can’t tell how much of it is paranoia, and how much is justified, but she’s worried. And maybe she’s right to be.
\nBecause Gideon is a man who keeps his promises . . .
The most hated woman in Savannah, Georgia, is about to be set free. Twenty years ago, beautiful Blondell O'Henry was convicted of murdering her eldest daughter, Amity, and wounding her two other children. The prosecution argued that Blondell wanted to be rid of them to be with her lover. But Blondell's son has now recanted his crucial testimony. . .
\nReporter Nikki Gillette is determined to get the truth, and this time it's personal. Amity was her childhood friend. The night she died, Amity begged Nikki to meet with her, insisting she had a secret to tell, but Nikki didn't go. Now Nikki's fiancé, Detective Pierce Reed, worries for her safety. Because somehow, the events of that tragic night connect to Nikki's own fractured family.
\nIs Amity's murderer still at large, or is there a new, darker danger? Soon Nikki will discover what really happened two decades ago, but the answers may come too late to save her life. . .
The old Beaumont mansion is a rotting shell of its once-grand self, especially after a disastrous hurricane sweeps through Georgia. The storm does more than dislodge shutters and shingles. It leads to a grisly find in the cellar. Three graves. But only two skeletons . . .
\nFor Nikki, the discovery is a gift, the perfect subject for her next crime book - though Reed has made her promise not to keep involving herself in dangerous police business. But despite the increasing tension between them, Nikki can’t stay away from this story. Rumors are widespread that the burial site is the resting place of the Duval sisters - three young girls who went to the movies with their older brother, Owen, twenty years ago, and never returned. Forensics confirms that the remains belong to Holly and Poppy Duval. But where is the youngest sister, Rose?
\nOwen Duval was, and remains, the prime suspect, alibi or no. But as Nikki and Reed delve deep into the mystery, fractures in the case begin to show. There is more to the sisters’ disappearance than anyone ever guessed. Far from an isolated act, those deaths were just the beginning. And there will be no rest, and no relenting, until the killer has buried the twisted truth along with his victims . . .
The Cahills of San Francisco are famous for two things: their vast wealth, and the scandals that surround them. Murder, greed, deadly ambition . . . some people will do anything to get, and keep, the Cahills’ kind of money. Not that James Cahill wants any of it. He’s tried to make his own way, less interested in a future inheritance than in his construction company - and in enjoying the many women taken in by the easy charms of a handsome, soon-to-be-rich bad boy. Perhaps there’ve been too many women.
\nWaking up in a small hospital in Washington State, bandaged and bruised, James barely recognises the gorgeous blonde who comes to visit. Through the haze of pain and medication, he recalls that she is Sophia, the woman he’s been cheating with. Gradually memories return - his girlfriend, Megan, had found out about Sophia. Now Megan is missing, her sister, Rebecca, is hounding him - and police and reporters are asking questions too. James insists he has no idea what happened. Yet he can’t escape a feeling of dread . . .
\nMeanwhile, in a locked room, a woman waits, trapped, petrified, and desperate. She thought she knew who to trust. But the betrayal you can’t imagine - or can’t remember - may be the most terrifying weapon of all . . .
It starts as a prank, a way to blow off steam after a long summer at Camp Horseshoe. Among the teen counselors, tensions and hormones are running high. No wonder the others agree when Jo-Beth Chancellor suggests they scare Monica O'Neal a little . . . or a lot. Monica has it coming, and no one will really get hurt. What could go wrong?
\nEverything . . .
\nTwenty years later, Lucas Dalton, a senior detective with the sheriff's department, is investigating the discovery of human remains in a cavern at what used to be Camp Horseshoe. Lucas knows the spot well. His father, a preacher, ran the camp, and Lucas worked there that infamous summer when two girls went missing.
\nOne is believed to have been killed by a convict on the loose. Monica O'Neal is thought to have drowned and been washed out to sea. Lucas knows he should step down from such a personal case. He's already jeopardised his career by removing evidence of his involvement. But maybe it's time to uncover the whole truth at last.
\nThat's why five former female counselors are coming back to the small Oregon town among them, Bernadette Warden, the woman Lucas has never forgotten. Each one knows something about that terrible night. Each promised not to tell. And as they reunite, a new horror unfolds.
\nFirst come notes containing a personal memento and a simple, terrifying message: 'You will pay.' Then, the murders begin. It started years ago. But it will end here as a web of lust, greed, and betrayal is untangled to reveal a killer waiting to enact the perfect revenge.
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Nina Swann is intrigued when she received a condolence card from Nick Radcliffe, an old friend of her late husband, who is looking to connect after her husband’s unexpected death. Nick is a man of substance and good taste. He has a smile that could melt the coldest heart and a knack for putting others at ease. But to Nina’s adult daughter, Ash, Nick seems too slick, too polished, too good to be true. Without telling her mother, Ash begins digging into Nick’s past. What she finds is more than unsettling . . .
\nMartha is a florist living in a neighboring town with her infant daughter and her devoted husband, Alistair. But lately, Alistair has been traveling more and more frequently for work, disappearing for days at a time. When Martha questions him about his frequent absences, he always has a legitimate explanation, but Martha can’t share the feeling that something isn’t right.
\nNina, Martha, and Ash are on a collision course with a shocking truth that is far darker than anyone could have imagined. And all three are about to wish they had heeded the same warning: Don’t let him in. But the past won’t stay buried forever.
Early one morning on the shore of the Thames, DCI Samuel Owusu is called to the scene of a gruesome discovery. When Owusu sends the evidence for examination, he learns the bones are connected to a cold case that left three people dead on the kitchen floor in a Chelsea mansion thirty years ago.
\nRachel Rimmer has also received a shock - news that her husband, Michael, has been found dead in the cellar of his house in France. All signs point to an intruder, and the French police need her to come urgently to answer questions about Michael and his past that she very much doesn’t want to answer.
\nAfter fleeing London thirty years ago in the wake of a horrific tragedy, Lucy Lamb is finally coming home. While she settles in with her children and is just about to purchase their first-ever house, her brother takes off to find the boy from their shared past whose memory haunts their present.
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As they all race to discover answers to these convoluted mysteries, they will come to find that they’re connected in ways they could have never imagined.
Be careful who you let in.
Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am.
She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well - and she is on a collision course to meet them.
Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.
Imagine that you live on a picturesque communal garden square, an oasis in urban London where your children run free, in and out of other people's houses. You've known your neighbors for years and you trust them. Implicitly. You think your children are safe. But are they really?
On a midsummer night, as a festive neighborhood party is taking place, preteen Pip discovers her thirteen-year-old sister Grace lying unconscious and bloody in a hidden corner of a lush rose garden. What really happened to her? And who is responsible?
Owen Pick’s life is falling apart.
In his thirties, a virgin, and living in his aunt’s spare bedroom, he has just been suspended from his job as a geography teacher after accusations of sexual misconduct, which he strongly denies. Searching for professional advice online, he is inadvertently sucked into the dark world of incel - involuntary celibate - forums, where he meets the charismatic, mysterious, and sinister Bryn.
Across the street from Owen lives the Fours family, headed by mom Cate, a physiotherapist, and dad Roan, a child psychologist. But the Fours family have a bad feeling about their neighbor Owen. He’s a bit creepy and their teenaged daughter swears he followed her home from the train station one night.
Meanwhile, young Saffyre Maddox spent three years as a patient of Roan Fours. Feeling abandoned when their therapy ends, she searches for other ways to maintain her connection with him, following him in the shadows and learning more than she wanted to know about Roan and his family. Then, on Valentine’s night, Saffyre Maddox disappears - and the last person to see her alive is Owen Pick.
2017: 19 year old Tallulah is going out on a date, leaving her baby with her mother, Kim. Kim watches her daughter leave and, as late evening turns into night, which turns into early morning, she waits for her return. And waits.
\nThe next morning, Kim phones Tallulah's friends who tell her that Tallulah was last seen heading to a party at a house in the nearby woods called Dark Place. She never returns.
\n2019: Sophie is walking in the woods near the boarding school where her boyfriend has just started work as a head-teacher when she sees a note fixed to a tree. 'DIG HERE' . . .
Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summers crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins.
\nA few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.
\nJosie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life - and into her home.
\nBut, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.
\nWho is Josie Fair? And what has she done?
When she was nine years old, Melody Browne's house burned down, taking every toy, every photograph, every item of clothing and old Christmas card with it. But not only did the fire destroy all her possessions, it took with it all her memories - Melody Browne can remember nothing before her ninth birthday.
\nNow in her early thirties, Melody lives in a council flat in the middle of London with her seventeen-year-old son. She hasn't seen her parents since she left home at fifteen, but Melody doesn't mind, she's better off on her own.
\nShe's made a good life for herself and her son and she likes it that way. Until one night something extraordinary happens. Whilst attending a hypnotist show with her first date in years she faints - and when she comes round she starts to remember.
\nAt first her memories mean nothing to her but then slowly, day by day, she begins to piece together the real story of her childhood. Her journey takes her to the seaside town of Broadstairs, to oddly familiar houses in London backstreets and to meetings with strangers who love her like their own.
\nBut with every mystery she solves another one materialises, with every question she answers another appears. And Melody begins to wonder if she'll ever know the truth about her past.
In the early 1980s, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng are three teenagers drawn together by their shared sense of alienation and desire for something different. “Allied in the weirdest parts of themselves,” they envision each other as artistic collaborators and embark on a future defined by freedom and creativity.
\nBy the time they are adults, their dreams are murkier. As a performance artist, Giselle must navigate an elite social world she never conceived of. As a coder thrilled by the internet’s early egalitarian promise, Jackie must contend with its more sinister shift toward monetization and surveillance. And as a community activist, Ellen confronts the increasing gentrification and policing overwhelming her New York City neighborhood. Over time their friendship matures and changes, their definitions of success become complicated, and their sense of what matters evolves.
\nMoving from the predigital 1980s to the art and tech subcultures of the 1990s to a strikingly imagined portrait of the 2040s, Memory Piece is an innovative and audacious story of three lifelong friends as they strive to build satisfying lives in a world that turns out to be radically different from the one they were promised.
A split-screen view of the tech industry’s underbelly - and the unifying campaign of two distant women seeking to expose their employer.
\nIn this eye-opening short story, a tech reporter’s mistake unites two women eight thousand miles apart. One in New Jersey, one in the Philippines. Same name: Sandra Guzman. Same job: content moderators for a mega social media website. What transpires between them is a friendship that changes their perceptions of each other’s privilege and challenges the power of the very industry they work for.
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Deni Rydell believes her life is finally about to change for the better just as soon as she marries Cal Cooper Jr., heir to a massive California mining fortune.
\nWhen Cal and his parents perish in a plane crash, Deni’s dreams are shattered. She’s hoping to find solace with Cal’s brother Grant, who only recently returned to the small town of Gold Hills after a year’s stay in rehab. Too bad Grant is caught up trying to please Erika, the mysterious woman he brought home with him.
\nMeanwhile, Gold Hills detective Robyn Torres is assigned to investigate a vicious murder which she assumes to be a drug robbery that turned deadly. The deeper she digs, though, the clearer it is that she couldn’t be further from the truth. Soon enough, Torres begins to uncover a series of disturbing family secrets and dark lies connected to the Cooper family that threaten to destroy everything Deni knew to be true.
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s, Jane Kim and her brother Kevin dutifully embodied the model minority myth as their parents demanded: both stellar tennis players and academically gifted, they worked hard to make their parents proud. Jane went on to law school. Kevin came close to becoming a professional tennis player.
\nBut where they started is nowhere near where they have ended up: Jane has stopped going to her law school classes, and Kevin, now a policeman, has become increasingly distant. Their parents, each on their own path toward the elusive American Dream (their mother hellbent on having the perfect house and the perfect family, their father obsessed with working his way up from one successful business to the next), don’t want to see the family unraveling. When Kevin goes missing, no one recognises his absence as the warning sign it is until it erupts, forcing them all to come to terms with their past and present selves in a country that isn’t all it promised it would be.
\nBoth deeply serious and wickedly funny, American Han is a profound story about striving and assimilation, difficult love, and family fidelity. A searing portrait that challenges assumptions about the immigrant experience, Lisa Lee’s debut introduces a powerful new voice on the literary landscape.
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Minnow Greenwood, previously known for stealing her way into the hearts of viewers as Melbourne’s number one morning show host, is now back in her small hometown of Kangaroo Bay. After a horrifying and unexpected episode, she has no choice but to join her estranged brother in their family business of shark fishing. For an insomniac like Minnow, the work is strangely thrilling - there’s something alluring about the dark water at night. Something exciting, grimy . . . fitting. And maybe it’s not even so bad reconnecting with her brother, who’s the only person who ever saw her for herself. But the last thing she expects to surface on the beach is a human body.
\nKangaroo Bay is a town quietly brimming with rage towards invasive tourists and host to a disquieting number of shark attacks - there's no sympathy for the wayward swimmer. Except the media soon uncover that the victim was declared missing weeks before, and was long dead before they even entered the water. When the journalist in Minnow kicks back into drive, she discovers something for over forty years, there have been a steady number of missing persons around the area, including her own father’s disappearance ten years ago.
\nThis is her one opportunity to reclaim her career as a journalist, and to learn what really happened to her father, but as Minnow digs deeper into the spate of missing tourists and the mystery of her father, she realises someone is desperate to keep the secrets buried . . . and then another body washes ashore.
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Dak, Sera, and Riq return to the United States and walk immediately into a deadly trap. The year is 1850, and the nation is divided over the issue of slavery.
\nIn these dark days, the Underground Railroad provides a light of hope, helping runaway slaves escape to freedom. But the SQ has taken control of the Underground Railroad from within.
\nNow Dak and Sera are left wondering who to trust . . . while Riq risks everything to save the life of a young boy.
Bo is running out of time. Yet time is one of the few things he’s got left. These days, his quiet existence is broken up only by daily visits from his home care team.
\nFortunately, he still has his beloved elkhound Sixten to keep him company . . . though now his son, with whom Bo has had a rocky relationship, insists upon taking the dog away, claiming that Bo has grown too old to properly care for him. The threat of losing Sixten stirs up a whirlwind of emotion, leading Bo to take stock of his life, his relationships, and the imperfect way he’s expressed his love over the years.
In this emotional short story by number one bestselling author Lisa Scottoline, one man’s past drives him to take a stand against his neighborhood’s criminal underbelly, whatever the personal cost.
\nWhen amiable Italian immigrant Pigeon Tony discovers that local drug dealers are pressuring his young neighbor into joining their ranks, he resolves to put an end to the crime wave before it can take over the community.
\nPigeon Tony knows the law isn’t always on the right side, but it takes only one person to rally a revolution.
In 1870, three Chinese women arrive in the small, dusty and violent pueblo of Los Angeles. Dove, the bound-footed daughter of an imperial scholar, is entrancing and innocent. These characteristics should bring her great rewards, beginning with her arranged marriage to a much older merchant. Petal, the big-footed daughter of peasants, has grown up hungry and with dirt between her toes.
\nIn a moment of desperation, Petal’s father sells her to buy money for rice seed, and she is loaded onto a ship to the Gold Mountain - America - where she is once again sold. Moon is married to a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. She is educated, speaks fluent English and has been endowed with a face of great beauty, yet her failed footbinding as a child has left her with a limp that lessens her value in the eyes of many.
\nEach woman has her own desires. Dove wants to love and be loved, Petal desires freedom and Moon seeks justice. Together they face a larger society that wishes them not one ounce of good will. Anti-Chinese sentiment is strong in Los Angeles, and this eventually leads to the Night of Horrors during which all three women are challenged in ways they could not have imagined.
\nBrought together by hardship and heartbreak, they must use their bravery, endurance and ability to ‘eat bitterness,’ discover their voices, find freedom and connect through solace and friendship. Together they are daughters of the sun and moon.
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How much do you know about the couple next door?
\nWhen Emily and Ben move in next door to Dr Burman and his wife Anita, they are keen to get to know their new neighbours. Outgoing and sociable, Emily tries to befriend the doctor's wife, but Anita is strangely subdued, barely leaving the house, and terrified of answering the phone.
\nWhen Emily goes missing a few weeks later, Ben is plunged into a panic. His wife has left him a note, but can she really have abandoned him for another man? Or has Emily's curiosity about the couple next door led her straight into danger?
When Jasmine moves into 13 Ravens Lane with her husband and two daughters, she’s excited to be finally settling into their forever home.
\nBut very soon, it becomes clear that something is wrong with the house. Sudden drops in temperature, unexplained swarms of insects, plants that keep dying for no reason. It’s almost like someone, or something, doesn’t want them there.
\nIt’s not long before Jasmine is forced to question whether she and her family are really safe in their new home. Or if whatever is lurking somewhere inside is going to be the death of them all . . .
After ten years, Sarah and her husband Roshan are looking forward to catching up with their closest school friends. So when one of them invites the group to spend a week in a beautiful converted church, they eagerly accept.
\nVery quickly though, Sarah becomes unsettled. She is frightened by the church's creepy surroundings, and she thinks she might be seeing ghosts. Even more disturbing, a masked woman is committing armed robberies in the area - and the police can't catch her.
\nAs Sarah and her friends begin to have more frightening visions, the armed woman strikes again. Sarah and her friends begin to wonder just what they've got themselves into . . .
The bloody murder of her mother when she was a teenager made Lydia Strong into a woman obsessed with bringing brutal killers to justice. Now thirty years old, she is a reclusive bestselling true crime writer and investigative consultant whose intuitions never lie. The latest case to capture her attention is the disappearance of three adults, each the kind of loner whose sudden absence isn't missed - they have no family, few friends. The Santa Fe Police don't see a pattern, just three people who left their empty lives behind.
\nBut when another woman turns up missing, her apartment streaked with blood, even the police have to admit that something is wrong in their usually quiet town. Lydia and P.I. Jeffrey Mark, the ex-FBI agent who solved her mother's murder, begin a relentless investigation. But it is only when the killer ups the ante and goes after Lydia herself that, just like fifteen years ago when she put the FBI on the trail of her mother's killer, the real hunt begins . . .
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When my mother named me Ophelia, she thought she was being literary. She didn’t realize she was being tragic.
\nOn the surface, Annie Powers’ life in a wealthy Floridian suburb is happy and idyllic. Her husband, Gray, loves her fiercely; together, they dote on their beautiful young daughter, Victory. But the bubble surrounding Annie is pierced when she senses that the demons from an ugly past are gaining on her quickly, triggering frightening - and unwanted - memories of someone she used to be.
\nA lifetime ago Annie was Ophelia March, a young girl who fled a troubled home only to find herself in the thrall of a killer-someone who Annie thought she’d left far behind. After a series of disturbing events - the appearance of a familiar dark figure on the beach and a mysterious man asking too many questions - Annie realises she must piece together her fractured memory to finally make sense of who she was and who she is and, ultimately, to save herself and her daughter.
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Madeline Martin has built a life for herself as the young owner of a thriving business, The Next Chapter Bookshop, despite her tragic childhood and now needing to care for her infirm father.
\nWhen Harley Granger, a failed novelist turned true crime podcaster, drifts into her shop in the days before Christmas, he seems intent on digging up events that Madeline would much rather forget. She’s the only surviving victim of Evan Handy, the man who was convicted of murdering her best friend Steph, and is suspected in the disappearance of two sisters, also good friends of Madeline’s, who have been missing for nearly a decade. It’s an investigation that has obsessed her father Sheriff James Martin right up until his stroke took his faculties.
\nHarley Granger has a gift for seeing things that others miss. He wasn’t much of a novelist, but his work as a true crime author and podcaster has earned him fame and wealth - and some serious criticism for his various unethical practices. Still, visiting Little Valley to be closer to his dying father has caused him to look into a case that many people think is closed - and some want reopened. And he has a lot of questions about the night Stephanie Cramer was killed, Ainsley and Sam Wallace disappeared, and Madeline Martin was left for dead, bleeding out on a riverbank.
\nSince Evan Handy went to jail, three other young women have gone missing, most recently a young college dropout named Lolly. Five young women missing in the same area in a decade. Are they connected? Was Evan Handy innocent after all? Or was there some else there that night? Someone who is still satisfying his dark appetites?
\nAs Christmas approaches and a blizzard bears down, Madeline and her childhood friend Badger return to a past they both hoped was dead - to find the missing Lolly and to answer questions that have haunted them both, discovering that the truth is more terrible and much closer to home than they think.
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Charismatic daredevil and extreme adventurer Maverick Dillan invites you to the ultimate game of hide-and-seek. But as the players gather on Falcao Island, the event quickly spirals into a chilling test of survival. A storm rages as a deadly threat stalks the contestants, turning the challenge into something far more sinister than the social media stunt it was intended to be.
\nEnter Adele, a single mother with a fierce determination to protect her children at all costs. When she begins the game, she unwittingly enters a twisted web of deception and intrigue. Can she maneuver through the treacherous storm and the relentless competition and get home to her family? In a ruthless battle for survival where the stakes are higher than ever, the blurry line between the virtual and the real proves that the only person we can trust is ourselves.
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Fresh from a tour promoting her last case, reclusive true crime writer Lydia Strong receives an anonymous cry for help, begging her to find and protect Tatiana Quinn, \"and all the other girls in need of rescue.\" Maybe the plea strikes close to her heart; maybe her investigator's intuition starts buzzing. She takes it on.
But this simple case of a missing teenager soon becomes much more. Someone wants Lydia to drop the case, someone powerful, someone anxious enough to engineer the reappearance of one of Lydia's first - and most dangerous - adversaries. Now, in addition to tracing the roots of Tatiana's disappearance on a trail across the country and eventually overseas, Lydia must find the man who wants her dead, his unfinished business from years ago.
Long after anyone expected Kate to do anything with her life, she did. Using the journals left behind by her aunt and grandmother, she wrote a novel based on a very real generation-old love story that ended in tragedy.
\nOn the other side of town, Emily is about to set fire to her life. She’s in a dead-end job and is involved with the wrong man; she can feel herself being drawn into darkness, with horrific consequences. With nowhere to go, she finds herself on the run. Without knowing each other, and with lives that couldn't be more different, Kate and Emily head to the same point on the map: Heart Island, an idyllic place in the middle of a lake in the Adirondacks, owned for generations by Birdie Burke's family.
\nThe harsh and unyielding Birdie is at one with this island, which has a terrifying history all its own. She, too, has consequences to face.
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She met him through a dating app. An intriguing picture on a screen, a date at a downtown bar. What she thought might be just a quick hookup quickly became much more. She fell for him - hard. It happens sometimes, a powerful connection with a perfect stranger takes you by surprise. Could it be love?
\nBut then, just as things were getting real, he stood her up. Then he disappeared - profiles deleted, phone disconnected. She was ghosted.
\nMaybe it was her fault. She shared too much, too fast. But isn't that always what women think - that they're the ones to blame? Soon she learns there were others. Girls who thought they were in love. Girls who later went missing. She had been looking for a connection, but now she's looking for answers. Chasing a digital trail into his dark past - and hers - she finds herself on a dangerous hunt. And she's not sure whether she's the predator - or the prey.
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Rosie and Chad Lowan are barely making ends meet in New York City when they receive life-changing news: Chad’s late uncle has left them his luxury apartment at the historic Windermere in glamorous Murray Hill. With its prewar elegance and impeccably uniformed doorman, the building is the epitome of old New York charm. One would almost never suspect the dark history lurking behind its perfectly maintained facade.
\nAt first, the building and its eclectic tenants couldn’t feel more welcoming. But as the Lowans settle into their new home, Rosie starts to suspect that there’s more to the Windermere than meets the eye. Why is the doorman ever-present? Why are there cameras everywhere? And why have so many gruesome crimes occurred there throughout the years? When one of the neighbors turns up dead, Rosie must get to the truth about the Windermere before she, too, falls under its dangerous spell.
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Claudia Bishop’s perfect life fell apart when the aftermath of a brutal assault left her with a crumbling marriage, a newborn daughter, and a constant sense of anxiety about the world around her. Now, looking for a fresh start with a home restoration project and growing blog, Claudia takes on a crumbling old house - one that unbeknownst to her has an ugly history and may hide long buried secrets.
\nFor Zoey Drake the defining moment of her childhood was the horrific home invasion murder of her parents. Years later, she has embraced the rage that fuels her. Training in the martial arts has made her strong and ready to face the demons from the past - and within.
\nStrangers to each other, and walking very different paths in the wake of trauma, these two women are on a collision course - because Zoey’s past nightmare and Claudia’s dreams for her future take place in the very same house. As Zoey seeks justice, and Claudia seeks peace, both will confront the monsters at the door that are the most frightening of all.
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What could be more restful, more restorative, than a weekend getaway with family and friends? An isolated luxury cabin in the woods, complete with spectacular views, a hot tub and a personal chef. Hannah’s loving and generous tech-mogul brother found the listing online. The reviews are stellar. It’s his birthday gift to Hannah and includes their spouses and another couple. The six friends need this trip with good food, good company and lots of R & R, far from the chatter and pressures of modern life.
\nBut the dreamy weekend is about to turn into a nightmare. A deadly storm is brewing. The rental host seems just a little too present. The personal chef reveals that their beautiful house has a spine-tingling history. And the friends have their own complicated past, with secrets that run blood deep. How well does Hannah know her brother, her own husband? Can she trust her best friend? And who is the new boyfriend, crashing their party? Meanwhile, someone is determined to ruin the weekend, looking to exact a payback for deeds long buried. Who is the stranger among them?
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Ana Blacksmith has gathered her closest friends and sister Vera together for a girls’ brunch to celebrate her recent breakup from her boyfriend Paul. But when shocking news about Paul and his new girlfriend arrives, all eyes are on Ana, the angry ex with a bad reputation. Suspicions only intensify when Ana’s best friend falls deathly ill after the brunch.
\nBut Ana is not the only one who had a score to settle with Paul, a business mogul with a whispered history. And the list of people who will not shed a tear over his fate is long. As the investigation unfolds, rumours of a secret network that uses ancient methods to obtain justice begin to emerge. Vengeance is sweet, but it can also be deadly.
\nAna and Vera are determined to find the truth before Ana takes the fall and their own long-buried history comes to light. Served Him Right is a riveting thriller that shows you can never underestimate the power of a woman looking for justice.
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An NYPD detective visits Lydia and her husband, P.I. Jeffrey Mark, to inform them that Lily, one of Lydia’s former writing students, has been missing for more than two weeks. Before she disappeared, Lily had tried to get in touch with Lydia, seeking her help.
\nCould this have had something to do with the death of Lily’s brother, which Lily refused to accept as a suicide? If they want to discover the truth, Lydia and Jeffrey will have to follow the trail that Lily left behind, a trail of evidence that - like Lily herself - seems to disappear like smoke.
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Even good people are drawn to do evil things . . . Twelve-year-old Rain Winter narrowly escaped an abduction while walking to a friend's house. Her two best friends, Tess and Hank, were not as lucky. Tess never came home, and Hank was held in captivity before managing to escape. Their abductor was sent to prison but years later was released. Then someone delivered real justice - and killed him in cold blood.
Now Rain is living the perfect suburban life, her dark childhood buried deep. She spends her days as a stay-at-home mom, having put aside her career as a hard-hitting journalist to care for her infant daughter. But when another brutal murderer who escaped justice is found dead, Rain is unexpectedly drawn into the case. Eerie similarities to the murder of her friends' abductor force Rain to revisit memories she's worked hard to leave behind. Is there a vigilante at work? Who is the next target? Why can't Rain just let it go?
Introducing one of the most compelling and original killers in crime fiction today, Lisa Unger takes readers deep inside the minds of both perpetrator and victim, blurring the lines between right and wrong, crime and justice, and showing that sometimes people deserve what comes to them.
\nEven good people are drawn to do evil things ... Twelve-year-old Rain Winter narrowly escaped an abduction while walking to a friend's house. Her two best friends, Tess and Hank, were not as lucky. Tess never came home, and Hank was held in captivity before managing to escape. Their abductor was sent to prison but years later was released. Then someone delivered real justice - and killed him in cold blood.
Now Rain is living the perfect suburban life, her dark childhood buried deep. She spends her days as a stay-at-home mom, having put aside her career as a hard-hitting journalist to care for her infant daughter. But when another brutal murderer who escaped justice is found dead, Rain is unexpectedly drawn into the case. Eerie similarities to the murder of her friends' abductor force Rain to revisit memories she's worked hard to leave behind. Is there a vigilante at work? Who is the next target? Why can't Rain just let it go?
Acclaimed artist Julian Ross has just been found standing over her husband’s bloody corpse in their New York City apartment. Julian claims that she slept peacefully beside him while he was violently stabbed in their bed. But police are skeptical, especially since Julian’s first husband was killed and mutilated in exactly the same way. Julian turns to the tough-as-nails crime writer Lydia Strong, who plunges into the case with her signature grit and the help of her partner, P.I. Jeffrey Mark.
Meanwhile, Lydia learns that Jed McIntyre, the serial killer who murdered her mother, is on the loose in New York. McIntyre is out for Lydia’s blood, and his presence forces her to confront the evils of her past while solving her toughest murder case yet.
What if the nightmares are actually memories?
It's been a year since Poppy's husband, Jack, was brutally murdered during his morning run through Manhattan's Riverside Park. In the immediate aftermath, Poppy spiraled into an oblivion of grief, disappearing for several days only to turn up ragged and confused wearing a tight red dress she didn't recognize. What happened to Poppy during those lost days? And more importantly, what happened to Jack?
The case was never solved, and Poppy has finally begun to move on. But those lost days have never stopped haunting her. Poppy starts having nightmares and blackouts--there are periods of time she can't remember, and she's unable to tell the difference between what is real and what she's imagining. When she begins to sense that someone is following her, Poppy is plunged into a game of cat and mouse, determined to unravel the mystery around her husband's death. But can she handle the truth about what really happened?
Charlie Kroft’s job at the crisis center means she’s often seen as a hero: she’s helped countless people climb out of the deepest pits of personal despair.
\nBut when one phone call thrusts Charlie into the spotlight, she must contend with the hidden pain that drives her . . . and with the mysterious stranger who knows the truth.
Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge - until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents - but they quickly realise that the truth is much darker. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together - in a world of danger and uncertainty.
Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions - and compels her to take a journey through her family's long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation . . . or redemption.
Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals - in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organisation, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country - Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.
Louisiana, 1875 In the tumultuous aftermath of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest: Lavinia, the pampered heir to a now-destitute plantation; Juneau Jane, her illegitimate free-born Creole half-sister; and Hannie, Lavinia's former slave. Each carries private wounds and powerful secrets as they head for Texas, following dangerous roads rife with ruthless vigilantes and soldiers still fighting a war lost a decade before.
\nFor Lavinia and Juneau Jane, the journey is one of inheritance and financial desperation, but for Hannie, torn from her mother and eight siblings before slavery's end, the pilgrimage westward reignites an agonising question: Could her long-lost family still be out there? Beyond the swamps lie the seemingly limitless frontiers of Texas and, improbably, hope.
\nLouisiana, 1987 For first-year teacher Benedetta Silva, a subsidised job at a poor rural school seems like the ticket to canceling her hefty student debt - until she lands in a tiny, out-of-step Mississippi River town. Augustine, Louisiana, seems suspicious of new ideas and new people, and Benny can scarcely comprehend the lives of her poverty-stricken students.
\nBut amid the gnarled oaks and run-down plantation homes lies the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey, and a hidden book that could change everything.
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Oklahoma, 1909. Eleven-year-old Olive Augusta Radley knows that her stepfather doesn’t have good intentions toward the two Choctaw girls boarded in their home as wards. When the older girl disappears, Ollie flees to the woods, taking six-year-old Nessa with her.
\nTogether they begin a perilous journey to the rugged Winding Stair Mountains, the notorious territory of outlaws, treasure hunters, and desperate men. Along the way, Ollie and Nessa form an unlikely band with others like themselves, struggling to stay one step ahead of those who seek to exploit them . . . or worse.
\nOklahoma, 1990. Law Enforcement Ranger Valerie Boren O’dell arrives at Horsethief Trail National Park seeking a quiet place to balance a career and single parenthood. But no sooner has Valerie reported for duty than she’s faced with local controversy over the park’s opening, a teenage hiker gone missing from one of the trails, and the long-hidden burial site of three children deep in a cave. Val’s quest to uncover the truth wins an ally among the neighboring Choctaw Tribal Police but soon collides with old secrets and the tragic and deadly history of the land itself.
\nIn this emotional and enveloping novel, Lisa Wingate traces the story of children abandoned by the law and the battle to see justice done. Amid times of deep conflict over who owns the land and its riches, Ollie and Val traverse the wild and beautiful terrain, each leaving behind one life in search of another.
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After years of working abroad as a chef, Zoe returns to her home town in Spain to embark on the next step in her career: executive chef in a new hotel. She’s excited to put together a team and create a menu to die for before the hotel opens, but after meeting the building contractor, wounds from her past put a dampener on the challenge.
\nMarcy keeps herself busy. Apart from her day-to-day job as a contractor, she’s either working on her dream home or chasing the ladies. She’s a people pleaser; always friendly and on good terms with everyone, yet the new chef at the hotel she’s renovating can’t stand her, and she can’t figure out why.
\nWhen they meet at a pool party during a women’s only weekend, Marcy is shocked to discover she shares a brief history with Zoe. A history she’d long forgotten about.
Riley, a New-York workaholic, has health issues and that leaves her no choice but to move to a small town to lead a calmer life. She hates the huge mansion she bought on a whim and stands out like a sore thumb in the cheery community of Mystic.
\nQuinn, a Mystic-based contractor, has once again missed out on purchasing the house her family built. After saving up for years, she’s still not able to buy back her childhood home that her grandfather lost years ago.
\nWhen a beautiful and swanky city girl who has no respect for the house’s history buys it without even viewing it, Quinn decides she has no place in Mystic, yet she can’t seem to stay away . . .
American born project manager Nora Bloom enjoys her life in London, but love hasn’t been easy. To stop herself from thinking about her ex for a night, she signs up for a speed-dating event. Not looking for anything other than distraction, she’s surprised when she meets an Israeli woman who leaves a lasting impression on her.
\nLondon-based diamond dealer Yael Kehim joins her single friend on a speed-dating night. Already casually dating someone, she’s only there for moral support, but after meeting Nora, her mind keeps going back to that night, and she can’t help but wonder what would have happened if she’d made different choices.
\nCupid reports to The Almighty. Roaming the earth, spreading love, and bringing destined souls together, they take their assignments very seriously. To blend in, they manifest in many different forms, but when morphing into Toby, a cuddly ginger cat, they find a whole new level of joy in their job, and distractions are lurking around every corner.
\nWhen Nora and Yael finally meet again, strange things start to happen - things that are too bizarre to be coincidental. Is there free will in love? Or is our destiny written in the stars?
Felicia Perez, a carefree, hopeless flirt from Miami, is working a second job as a fitting model in Bangkok while saving up to expand her own clothing line. She loves women and her freedom and never shies away from going after what she wants.
\nKate Simmons is a passionate interior designer who is married to her job. Her love for beauty is universal; she can’t imagine tying herself down to anything that might limit her enjoyment of it, and that includes the shackles of a relationship.
\nWhen they meet in a hotel bar in Bangkok, they are instantly drawn to each other, but with both being used to having the upper hand, the situation is confusing to say the least. When two hunters cross paths, will one end up being the prey?
\nTogether, they embark on a journey of self-discovery in the beautiful surroundings of exotic and mystical Thailand. Is the irresistible attraction between them merely the excitement of finally meeting their match or is the universe trying to steer them in the right direction?
Ruby Walsh has spent two years hiding behind merger agreements and corporate acquisitions, burying her grief in work since her wife's death. Her mansion in The Ridges, Las Vegas's most exclusive enclave, has become an empty shrine to a life no longer lived, but the night she confronts her neighbor about the music coming from her property, everything changes.
\nAthena Stavros runs the Olympus, the Strip's most glamorous casino, but her true domain lies hidden beneath her home - a secret world of indulgence accessible only to a select circle of powerful women. Behind her white armor - tailored suits and wide-brimmed hats - stands a woman who orchestrates desire but never loses control... until she meets Ruby.
\nIn the shadows of Sin City two women accustomed to writing the rules become caught in a dangerous dance of their own making. When power shifts, the greatest risk might not be falling into desire, but daring to believe in something more.
When a mysterious guest boards the luxury yacht Maiden Voyage, chef Lindsay Brewin expects nothing more than another routine week of five-star service in the Bahamas. What she doesn't expect is Maddie McDean - global superstar, tabloid sensation, and the woman currently accused of assaulting her husband.
\nFalsely accused and hounded by the media, Maddie seeks refuge on a yacht where she hopes to find some peace. But when sleepless nights lead to midnight wine sessions with the yacht's chef, their intimate conversations over candlelit meals ignite a dangerous attraction.
\nLindsay has built her life around responsibility - supporting her sister's family and maintaining her spotless professional reputation. She's never been the type to fall for a guest, let alone a married celebrity embroiled in scandal. But Maddie's vulnerability beneath her fame, and the chemistry that sparks between them, makes Lindsay break every rule she's ever lived by. Will the price of being together prove too high to pay?
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Hannah Hudson decides to take a break from her busy restaurant and her life in London after her girlfriend, who she thought she’d spend her life with, suddenly walks out on her. She travels to a small boutique hotel in Kirkenes, Norway, hoping to spend a peaceful and relaxing Christmas by herself.
\nKristine Miller loves adventure. A bank manager living in a small town in Louisiana, she’ll take every opportunity she can get to explore the world. Kristine travels to Norway hoping to see the famous northern lights but when she meets Hannah, a fellow guest at her hotel, she realizes soon enough that the northern lights might not be the most fascinating thing there.
\nBoth women expected Christmas in Norway to be special but neither of them expected it to bring magic into their lives . . .
Their love story began over a magical Christmas holiday and now Hannah and Kristine have returned to Norway to stay at Espen and Dani's new eco-resort. They are excited to be taking part in the festivities surrounding Midsummer's Eve, but they also have a bigger celebration to plan. This time, there will be no sad goodbyes because this time, they're getting married!
\nMadison, Ally, and Theo, along with the supporting cast of the 'The Compass Series,' all have their part to play in making Hannah and Kristine's wedding a memorable one. For Kate and Felicia, this trip is a chance to reconnect after too much time spent apart, but they are faced with another important decision, one that could change their lives forever.
\nDaisy, a waitress at The Radley and aspiring photographer, is delighted to be responsible for their wedding pictures. Yet, when her lens meets a bathing Scandinavian beauty in the early hours of the day, she captures way more than she bargained for.
London-based casino manager Meghan has no expectations of her two-week holiday in Spain; she’s just tagging along with her friend who’s visiting her love interest. When they arrive at a deserted hotel due to a booking fault and her friend leaves to see her boyfriend, she’s left with the bartender who stays on for the night.
\nBartender Florence is excited for the Pride weekend held at Paradise Hotel, but she did not anticipate working a shift the night prior to serve only one guest. Meghan, the guest in question, is anxious about staying in her room alone, and after an unexpectedly pleasant evening together, Florence offers her company to make her feel safe.
\nMeghan is delighted with the arrangement that serves them both, but her attraction to Florence confuses her. As the only straight woman at a Pride event, she can’t help but feel conflicted about all the female attention her new friend is getting, and she starts questioning everything she thought to be true about herself.
Olivia Barnes plans million-dollar weddings for Manhattan's elite. She doesn't believe in love - not since her fiancée shattered her heart on what should have been the happiest day of her life.
\nWhen her family won't stop asking about her imaginary girlfriend \"Sailor,\" Liv does the only logical she hires a stranger to play the part for one weekend at her sister's wedding.
\nBlair Davis is bored, brilliant, and looking for a distraction. Playing fake girlfriend to an uptight wedding planner at a farm in Maryland? Why not? But falling for each other wasn't part of the plan. And when the charade is over, Liv discovers she's not the only one who's been lying.
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Hannah Hudson has had a rough start to the year. Returning home to London from her magical holiday in Norway, still on a high after meeting the wonderful Kristine, her newfound happiness is dealt a crushing blow when she discovers that her ex has been stealing from her and she is going to lose her business. A letter from an American lawyer throws her an unexpected lifeline, informing her that she’s inherited a house and a restaurant in Presley, Louisiana, from her biological mother who gave her up for adoption at birth.
\nMeanwhile back in Covington, nothing ever changes in Kristine Miller’s life. She’s grown tired of her job at the local bank, and she’s reluctant to go back to dating, unable to get Hannah, who has gone silent on her, out of her mind.
\nWhen Hannah suddenly shows up in Kristine’s life again there is no denying that destiny has a plan for them, but Hannah’s life is in London and Kristine’s is deeply attached to the beautiful South.
\nAs Hannah searches for the story behind her Southern roots, can they overcome the challenge of distance to give themselves another shot at love? Second chances are rare, and you can’t question fate when it keeps drawing you back together . . .
First mate Zoe Freeman has her sights set on one thing: earning her captain's license aboard the luxury yacht Maiden Voyage. The last thing she needs is drama from entitled charter guests - especially when one of those guests is Stormy Clarke, the woman who made her high school years a nightmare.
\nFifteen years later, Stormy is reluctantly aboard her sister's bachelorette charter, watching Vanessa's wedding plans spiral while nursing her own regrets. She never imagined she'd face the girl she once tormented, now a confident woman commanding respect on the open seas.
\nAs the Caribbean charter turns turbulent, old wounds surface alongside long-forgotten feelings and Zoe's professional boundaries blur when Stormy's genuine remorse awakens emotions she thought she’d buried.
\nBetween a bridezilla's catastrophic meltdowns and unpredictable weather, Zoe and Stormy must navigate the treacherous waters between their painful past and an uncertain future.
\nSome storms are worth weathering - if you're brave enough to let love chart the course.
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Control-freak CEO Evelyn Rothschild has conquered every challenge in her path at the helm of a luxury resort empire - until she meets Val Mendoza. Much younger and unapologetically idealistic, Val is a sustainable resort developer who won't bend her principles for anyone.
\nHaving lost her parents young, Val keeps her guard up and her relationships casual. But there's something magnetic about Evelyn's rigid exterior and the softer side she glimpses beneath it.
\nAs they clash over their forced collaboration on a development in Mallorca, their professional rivalry transforms into a connection that confuses them both. For two women who see the world so differently, falling in love might be their riskiest venture yet.
\nSet against the stunning Mediterranean, The Turning Tides of Us is a slow-burn, emotional age-gap romance about identity and sexual awakening.
Paradise Hotel is anything but paradise. Lisa Walker comes to that conclusion the moment she arrives at the all-inclusive resort in Benidorm, Spain. Recovering from a painful break-up and the loss of her job and her flat, she was hoping the low-budget escape might do her good, yet she couldn’t have been more wrong.
\nStella Castillo, poolside manager at Paradise Hotel, is delighted to be back at work after a long lockdown. The guests are equally excited, celebrating life going back to normal. Apart from one woman, who her colleagues refer to as ‘Miss Grumpy’.
\nWhen Stella’s colleague makes a faux pas and insults Lisa, Stella steps in to try and smooth over the situation. What starts out as a tentative friendship soon leads to more and as Stella begins to understand why Lisa is so unhappy, she unexpectedly finds herself falling head over heels with the beautiful Brit.
Madison Wilson, a marine biologist, has recently graduated and is ready to start her adult life with her first job as a research technician in Santa Cruz. After moving to Capitola, a sweet and colorful beach town in Northern California, she is immediately enchanted by her new house, as well as her beautiful landlady, Ally.
\nAlly Santos, a widow and single mother, is relieved to be rid of the fuss of holiday tenants, as she’s busy enough with her highly gifted son Theo and her bar, Western Shores. When a young, pink-haired girl moves into her pink house, she’s hoping life will get calmer, but nothing could have prepared her for the curious attraction she feels toward her new neighbor . . .
\nIs Ally ready to embrace her feelings for someone who is not only a woman but also seventeen years her junior? And is Madison ready to take on the challenge of instant full adulthood with all its trappings, instead of slowly easing into it?
In college, Emersyn Tanner and Savannah Sanchez were fierce competitors, basketball savants, and reluctant teammates forced to play on the same side of the ball. When competition gives way to intense attraction they desperately try to resist, it’s too late. The pressure of their futures, risking it all, and coming out prove too much.
\nYears later, the game clock resets as fate brings the former college team to a luxury resort in Mexico in celebration of their old coach’s wedding. As soon as Emersyn and Savannah lock eyes, the temptation they buried rushes back to the surface and threatens to burn down their carefully constructed walls - and neatly curated lives. The chemistry is instant and impossible to ignore.
\nSet against the tantalising heat of the tropics, this slow-burn second-chance romance explores love that never ends, passion that can’t be denied, and the courage to claim forever.
\n
Princess Mikaela de Medreno Soliz wasn’t supposed to fall in love like this. But duty demands she choose a wife in 75 days or risk inheriting the Crown. When a royal matchmaking scheme leads to a chance encounter with Isabella Acosta-Ramon, a slow burn sparks that neither can deny. As their undeniable chemistry turns into something deeper, secrets, betrayals, and mounting political unrest threaten to unravel their romance before they can decide if \"I do\" is in their future.
\nThe kingdom is watching, and the clock is ticking. Mikaela must confront the legacy she was born into and the love she never saw coming while outsmarting her political enemies and realizing that real power lies in the deep vulnerability beyond her sky-high walls.
\n
How far would you go to make all your dreams come true?
\nAmber Patterson is tired of being a nobody: a plain, invisible woman who melts into the background. She deserves more. She deserves a life of wealth, luxury and leisure.
\nDaphne Parrish is golden girl of the exclusive town of Bishops Harbor, Connecticut. With her modelesque looks, her picture-perfect mansion and her millionaire husband, Jackson, she has everything Amber has ever wanted.
\nAmber’s envy could eat her alive - if she didn't have a plan. Gradually, Amber insinuates herself into the Parrish family’s life. Before long, she has become Daphne’s closest confidante, and is catching the eye of Jackson. But a skeleton from her past could undermine everything Amber has worked for, and if discovered, her well-laid plan may end in disaster . . .
\n
Dr. Kate English has it all. Not only is she the heiress to a large fortune; she has a gorgeous husband and daughter, a high-flying career, and a beautiful home anyone would envy.
But all that changes the night Kate’s mother, Lily, is found dead, brutally murdered in her own home. Heartbroken and distraught, Kate reaches out to her estranged best friend, Blaire Barrington, who rushes to her side for the funeral, where the years of distance between them are forgotten in a moment.
That evening, Kate’s grief turns to horror when she receives an anonymous text: You think you’re sad now, just wait. By the time I’m finished with you, you’ll wish you had been buried today. More than ever, Kate needs her old friend’s help.
\nOnce Blaire decides to take the investigation into her own hands, it becomes clear that all is not as it seems in Baltimore high society. As infidelity, lies, and betrayals come to light, and tensions rise to a boiling point, she begins to alienate Kate’s friends and relatives with her relentless, accusatory questions, as she tries to find Lily’s killer. The murderer could be anyone - friend, neighbor, loved one. But whoever it is, it’s clear that Kate is next on their list . . .
\n
Amber Patterson Parrish has come a long way from being an invisible wallflower. Her hard work and immaculate planning have paid off now that she’s a prominent socialite, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been bumps along the way. Less than a year since her husband Jackson’s tax-evasion scandal, Amber is still at the top of the Bishops Harbor community pecking order, free to do as she wishes while Jackson sits in prison. But that freedom is quickly coming to an end. With Jackson getting released from prison, Amber’s time - and money - is vanishing.
\nMeanwhile, Daphne Parrish left Bishops Harbor after her divorce from Jackson Parrish, swearing she would never go back. But when one of her daughters runs away from home, desperate to see her father, Daphne agrees to return for the summer to allow him supervised visits. Once out of prison, Jackson swears he’s a changed man, but Daphne knows all too well that he can’t be trusted.
\nWhen a ghost from Amber’s past emerges looking for revenge, the three of them find unlikely allies in one another, but who is playing who? When all is said and done, they’ll have to fight tooth and nail for everything they have left in this zero-sum game.
\n
It's the mid-nineties, and in the small, shitty coastal town of Vincent, four girls - each hailing from single-mother, multi-sibling families, form a band. Friends since they were children, they consider themselves 'forgettable girls' - poor, not particularly clever, distracted at school, disengaged and disillusioned from the other kids, and desperate to escape the fates of their mothers, who seem locked into a life of minimum-wage jobs and domestic drudgery. Winning the Battle of the Bands is their ticket out - they might not have talent, but they can play three chords and scream until their vocal folds burst out of their throats - and nobody wants it more than them.
\nBut when lead singer Lily Lucid quits, and accuses their idolized music teacher of sexual assault, the three remaining girls are left with nothing. They'll do anything to keep their dream alive, even if it means sacrificing school, Lily and their mothers. But how far out of control can they spin before there's no turning back?
\nBrash and bold, grunge-inflected and straight-forwardly compelling, In Bloom is a novel about class and coming-of-age, young womanhood in precarious circumstances, and how to build a sense of self when the foundations of tight female friendship fail.
When Laurel and Rob West move into their new home in New Jersey, it seems too good to be true. But Laurel can't shake off her old feelings of anxiety. The neighbour who pays far too much attention to the Wests' two young children . . . Rob watching her every miss step . . . and there's something people aren't telling her about this house . . .
\nCorey Sutton is trying to outrun her past. Recently divorced and reeling from a devastating loss, she moves into her widowed mother's retirement condo in Florida. Everyone says she just needs some time to recover and rebuild . . . but is Corey beyond saving? She wants answers. And there's very little she won't do to get them.
\nThough Laurel and Corey have never met, the women have something in common, and if they're not careful, it may just destroy them both . . .
\n
When actress and model Allison Langley leaves her former rockstar husband, Christopher, in the middle of the night, it’s all her Oak Hill neighbors can talk about. The gossip comes to an abrupt halt when five-year-old Billy Barnes goes missing on his walk home from kindergarten.
\nBilly’s mother, Rachel, blames herself for being at work and letting her only child walk alone. Cassidy, Billy’s teenage babysitter, was also late to arrive on the afternoon he disappeared and blames herself for his disappearance.
\nAs the clock ticks down, police are unable to find any trace of Billy, forcing Rachel to ponder the enemies she’s made in their well-off suburb. Could it be one of her neighbors who stole her son? Would they abduct Billy to hurt her? How easy would it be to take a child while the parents or nannies are distracted?
\nWhen another child goes missing, the town is put under a microscope as the police try to get to the bottom of the disappearances. Will they be able to find the two children, or will it be too late? What secrets lie at the heart of this tragedy, and how far will one go to keep those dangerous secrets buried?
\n
Closed-off teacher Sloane Sullivan sees only shades of gray since she lost her wife. Desperate for escape and healing, she travels from the US to Australia to find color. Instead, she finds an unexpected home with a reclusive, prickly actress and her cheeky daughter.
\nActress Ava James chooses her flings the way she chooses her roles: safe, fleeting, and short-lived. Better not to try than to risk humiliating failure - again. Her ordered life is upended when an American she had one sexy morning with only days earlier turns out to be staying in her mother’s guest house - for a whole year!
\nAfter an awkward beginning, a tentative friendship forms promising the start of something much deeper . . . if only they can let go of their ghosts.
\n
Harriet Baker thought that when she left Logan Island, she was leaving for good. But after getting fired from her dream magazine job, she finds herself stuck back in the sleepy New Jersey beach town living with her eccentric mother and desperate to escape.
\nAnd her ticket out might be . . . murder?
\nWhen Harriet's extravagant birthday party ends with a dead body, all fingers point to Sara Allbright, the troublesome sister of none other than Nic, Harriet's short-lived fling from years ago that she's been eager to forget. And the feeling is entirely mutual. But murder makes for a good story, and when Harriet is told that she can get her old job back if she writes an article uncovering what really happened the night of her party, she readily agrees. To write her piece, Harriet will need Nic's full cooperation, and if Nic wants to clear his sister's name, he'll need Harriet's investigative skills. But working together? That's less than ideal.
\nAs the two team up to find the real killer, they'll uncover the dark underbelly of their seemingly perfect hometown, uncover long buried feelings, and maybe, just maybe, realize that they might work well together after all.
\n
Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.
\nAs a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances.
\n
In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.
Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit - and her sister - before it's too late.
Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters' childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.
On the surface, Lydia Fitzsimons has the perfect life - wife of a respected, successful judge, mother to a beloved son, mistress of a beautiful house in Dublin. That beautiful house, however, holds a secret.
\nAnd when Lydia’s son, Laurence, discovers its secret, wheels are set in motion that lead to an increasingly claustrophobic and devastatingly dark climax.
\n
This story begins with a funeral. One of three brothers is dead, mourned by his siblings. But which one? And how? And, most importantly: why?
William, Brian, and Luke are each born a year apart in a lower middle class Catholic family in 1960s Dublin. William, the eldest, rises to the top of the heap in the film industry as a successful movie producer. Luke, the baby of the family, surprises everyone by morphing into a worldwide pop star. Brian, the compliant middle son, is the eternal adult in the room: the helpful, steady one, the manager of finances and careers.
But none of them is actually quite what he seems. Wounded by childhood, they have betrayed one another in myriad ways, hiding behind little lies that have developed into full blown treachery. With an unnerving eye for the complexities of families, Nugent delves into the secret life of a deeply troubled household and provides stunning insights into the many forces that shape us from childhood.
Cordelia Russell has been living on the French Riviera for twenty-five years, passing herself off as an English socialite. But her luck, and the kindness of strangers, have run out.
\nThe arrival of a visitor from her distant past shocks Cordelia. She reacts violently to the intrusion and flees her flat to spend a drunken night at a glittering party. As dawn breaks she stumbles home through the back streets. Even before she opens her door she can hear the flies buzzing. She did not expect the corpse inside to start decomposing quite so quickly . . .
\n
Sally Diamond cannot understand why what she did was so strange. She was only doing what her father told her to do, to put him out with the rubbish when he died.
\nNow Sally is the centre of attention, not only from the hungry media and worried police, but also a sinister voice from a past she has no memory of. As she begins to discover the horrors of her childhood, recluse Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends, finding independence, and learning that people don't always mean what they say.
\nBut when messages start arriving from a stranger who knows far more about her past than she knows herself, Sally's life will be thrown into chaos once again . . .
\n
Ruby Cooper and her sister, Erin, live an idyllic life in their close-knit church community in Boston. But when Ruby is sixteen, she is involved in an incident that causes her family’s world to implode.
\nAcross decades, the fallout leaves a wake of destruction behind Ruby in Dublin and Erin in Boston.
\nNot that Ruby wants to think about the past.
\nBut it can’t stay a secret forever.
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Oliver Ryan, handsome, charismatic, and successful, has long been married to his devoted wife, Alice. Together they write and illustrate award-winning children’s books; their life together one of enviable privilege and ease - until, one evening after a delightful dinner, Oliver delivers a blow to Alice that renders her unconscious, and subsequently beats her into a coma.
In the aftermath of such an unthinkable event, as Alice hovers between life and death, the couple’s friends, neighbours, and acquaintances try to understand what could have driven Oliver to commit such a horrific act. As his story unfolds, layers are peeled away to reveal a life of shame, envy, deception, and masterful manipulation.
Uptight lecturer Jane Miles reluctantly takes her superfan niece along to meet touring Aussie singer Amber Hatfield. Jane comes away with a happy niece and . . . Amber’s phone number? How on earth does that happen?
\nBeing whisked into Amber’s creative and free-flowing life feels so right but it also threatens to jeopardise Jane’s promotion at a prestigious university.
\nCan two such different career women ever find a way to create an unexpected harmony together?
\n
Two soccer stars share a secret along with a rivalry that stretches halfway around the world.
\nKnockabout Australian Keeley McGee is living her childhood dream of playing soccer at the World Cup. The only thing that could kill her focus is coming up against the cool and dispassionate US team’s star striker.
\nBeautiful, brilliant Christine Delacourt was the college girlfriend who dumped Keeley out of the blue years before.
\nWhat will it be like reuniting under the stadium lights, especially since they know the other’s game - and each other - so intimately?
\nDespite a strict “no distractions” rule from her coach, Keeley finds herself drawn to Christine in a way that feels almost dangerous. Will Keeley be able to rekindle what she once shared with her now on-field enemy with the eyes of the world on them? Dare she even try?
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After high-powered politician Bridget O’Keefe sweeps into the uninspiring life of Australian electorate officer Emma Ives, nothing is the same again.
\nHapless, hopeless Emma is smacked with an instant crush on the polished woman who’s her new boss . . . her hot, untouchable, straight boss. Yes, she knows she’s an idiot because unrequited lust at work is a terrible idea. Even so, she can dream.
\nOne long night changes everything. A political scandal leads to a fall from grace and Emma suddenly finds herself the one Bridget turns to for comfort. There’s a lot for Emma to wrap her mind around, even as her body loves wrapping itself around Bridget’s curves.
\nIs it just a meaningless night of passion, nothing more? Because there’s absolutely no way ambitious, beautiful Bridget wants anything more from Emma. Is there?
\n
KAI
I’m a single dad and starting pitcher for Chicago’s MLB team.
I’m stretched too thin, but I don’t want help raising my son.
\nEach of his previous nannies only lasted a few weeks before I let them go.
\nNow, my coach is putting his foot down by hiring the one person I can’t fire-his daughter.
\nMiller Montgomery is the last woman I should fall for. Too wild, too young, and too unattached.
\nChicago is just a quick stop for her. I thought I’d be counting down the days until she left, but summer feels too short when I start thinking about forever.
\n\n
MILLER
As a high-end pastry chef who recently won the most prestigious award in my industry, I’m desperate to prove I deserve it. But with a new title comes new pressure, and I can’t create a fresh and inspiring dessert to save my life.
With only two months to get back on track, I should be focusing in the kitchen, but instead, I let my dad talk me into using my time off to nanny for his star player’s kid.
\nKai Rhodes forgot how to have fun, and I’m eager to jog his memory. But when he and his son start to feel like home, I have to remind us both that my time in Chicago ends with the summer.
\nBesides, I’ve always been a runner, and the last thing I want is to get caught.
ZANDERS
Chicago hockey isn’t complete without me - everyone’s favorite player to hate. I know my role, and I play it well. In fact, I thoroughly enjoy spending the majority of my game time in the penalty box before leaving the arena with a new girl on my arm each night.
What I don’t like is the new flight attendant on our team’s private plane. She works for me, not the other way around. But I’ll be sure to remind her of that, and I can guarantee, by the end of the season, she’ll be begging to quit her job.
\nBut every road trip blurs the lines, and I can’t quite figure out if I keep pushing that flight attendant call button in order to push her buttons or if it’s more than that.
\n\n
STEVIE
I’ve been a flight attendant for years. I thought I’d see it all, but when my new job lands me onboard working for the most egotistical and self-righteous diva in the NHL, I start to second guess everything. Including the promise I made to myself of never hooking up with an athlete again . . . no matter how annoyingly tempting he may be.
Evan Zanders is unfiltered, unapologetic, and too attractive for his own good. He loves his image, but I hate everything about it.
\nEverything but him.
KENNEDY
I’m the only woman on staff for the Windy City Warriors, and after years of putting up with a sexist lead doctor, I’m desperate to land my dream job with a new team next year. All I have to do is maintain my professional reputation for my final season in Chicago.
But a Las Vegas run-in with the team’s shortstop threatens it all, leaving me with a fuzzy memory and a ring on my left hand.
\nNow, not only am I legally bound to the most persistent man I’ve ever met, but thanks to Isaiah’s scheme to save my job, I have to pretend the whole thing was a planned elopement and not a drunken mistake.
\nIsaiah Rhodes is reckless, impulsive, and frustratingly charming. He’s also my brand-new husband.
\nThey got the saying wrong. What happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas . . . sometimes it follows you right back home.
\n\n
ISAIAH
As the shortstop for Chicago’s professional baseball team, I’ve had my fair share of fun. But that all ended the day Kennedy Kay became a single woman.
I’ve crushed on the team’s athletic trainer for years. I’ve flirted to no avail, so imagine my surprise when I woke up in Sin City with a ring on my finger and my favorite redhead in my bed.
\nWe agree to stay married for one baseball season, just long enough to keep her job safe, but in my mind, I’m using our time together to prove to her I’m husband material.
\nKennedy might be reluctant to join in on our game, but it’s one I refuse to lose.
\nSo come on, wife . . . play along.
HALLIE
When I was eleven, my family moved next door to his.
When I was thirteen, he was my first crush.
\nWhen I was sixteen, we fell for each other.
\nAnd when I was nineteen, we broke each other’s hearts.
\nSix years later, I’ve landed an internship with a big-name interior designer in a new city. Unfortunately, that city just so happens to be the one he plays hockey for.
\nI thought Chicago was big enough to avoid him, until I get the surprise of a lifetime and unknowingly move in right next door. Even worse? The renovation project I’m assigned to in hopes of turning that internship into my full-time dream job . . .
\nIt’s his house.
\nBut how am I supposed to update his bachelor pad into a family home when we can’t even stand to be in the same room?
\nI may have loved Rio DeLuca once, but I’m not that same girl anymore.
\n\n
RIO
I never thought I’d be the only single one left in my friend group. But after years of trying to find love, I’ve concluded it may not exist for me anymore.
That is, until I accidentally hire Hallie Hart to renovate my house and our jaded history has me rewinding memories I’ve kept secret for years.
\nYou see, there’s something that my friends don’t know.
\nThat connection I’ve been looking for since I moved to Chicago, that one person some search their entire lives to find . . . I had already found her when I was twelve years old.
\nAnd now the only girl I’ve ever loved is moving into the house next door.
\nAgain.
RYAN
She’s a distraction, that’s what she is.
I’m the newest Captain of the Devils, Chicago’s NBA team, and the last thing I needed this year was for Indy Ivers, my sister’s best friend, to move into my apartment. She’s messy, emotional, and way too tempting.
\nBut when the team’s General Manager vocalizes his blatant disapproval of my promotion to Captain, referring to me as an unapproachable lone wolf with no work-life balance, I can’t think of a better way to convince him otherwise than pretending to date my outgoing roommate.
\nThe only problem? Faking it feels far too natural.
\nHaving a fake girlfriend wasn’t supposed to be messy but having Indy under my roof and in my bed is complicated, especially when she wants all the romantic parts of life that I could never give her.
\n\n
INDY
I never imagined I’d be living with my best friend’s brother, NBA superstar Ryan Shay. Even more unbelievable? He needs me to act as his loving girlfriend who’s suddenly changed him into a friendly and approachable guy.
Because, well . . . he’s not. He’s controlling of his space and untrusting of others.
\nOur arrangement isn’t one-sided, though. I’m in a wedding coming up, one where every one of my childhood friends, including my ex-boyfriend, will be in attendance, and there’s no better date than my ex’s celebrity hero.
\nBlurred lines make it almost impossible to separate real from fake. Falling for my roommate was never part of the deal, especially when Ryan is quick to remind me that he doesn’t believe in love.
\nI’m a romantic and can’t help fantasising that he’ll change, but soon enough, I find myself questioning if sharing a roof with my best friend’s brother was the right move after all.
When the World's Greatest Detective reunites with her college friends, she discovers that time doesn't heal all wounds.
\nIt's been four decades since the women of Sigma Delta Tau were last together. The years have been kind to some but not to others.
\nStill this is supposed to be a pleasant diversion for former sorority member and current private investigator Aubrey Merritt. She's come to New Mexico to reconnect with old friends, and she's brought her personal assistant Olivia Blunt along with her to help with her bags.
\nBut when one of the sorority sisters is murdered, all eyes turn to the World's Greatest Detective to solve the case. It's going to take both Aubrey and Olivia to cut through the knot of old hurts and current grievances to find the killer.
\n
Olivia Blunt doesn't want to be an assistant detective for the rest of her life. She's determined to learn everything she can from her mentor and renowned investigator, Aubrey Merritt, but the latter is no easy grader.
\nAfter weeks of fielding phone calls from parties desperate for the world-renowned detective’s help, a case comes across Olivia’s desk that just might be worthy of Merritt’s skills. On the evening of her sixty-fifth birthday party, Victoria Summersworth somehow fell over her balcony railing to her death on the rocky shore of Lake Champlain. She was a happy woman - rich, beloved, in love, and matriarch of the preeminent Summersworth family. The police have ruled it a suicide, but her daughter Haley thinks it was murder.
\nMerritt is ever the skeptic, but Olivia believes Haley. Plus, she’s desperate to prove her investigative skills to her aloof boss. But the Summersworth family drama is a complicated web.
\nOlivia realises she might be in over her head with this whole detective thing . . . or she might be unravelling a mystery even bigger than the one she’d started with.
\n
Once, Beth was a different person, convinced she was living her dream life with the enigmatic wellness group, Elixir. But when that dream became a nightmare, she had no choice but to run, no matter what - or who - stood in her way.
\nTen years later, exhausted and struggling with the pressures of motherhood, she receives a mysterious letter bearing only the infinity symbol, and knows immediately it is from them.
\nThe past she’d run from has finally caught up with her, and the secrets she’s tried so hard to hide will soon be uncovered. Can she finally escape them for good, or will her freedom pay the ultimate price?
\nIf wellness is the new religion, what happens when it’s taken too far?
ANNA has been taught that virtue is the path to God. But on her eighteenth birthday she defies her Mamma’s rules and visits Florida’s biggest theme park.
She has never been allowed to go - so why, when she arrives, does everything seem so familiar? And is there a connection to the mysterious letter she receives on the same day?
ROSIE has grown up in the shadow of the missing sister she barely remembers, her family fractured by years of searching without leads. Now, on the fifteenth anniversary of her sister’s disappearance, the media circus resumes in full flow, and Rosie vows to uncover the truth.
But will she find the answer before it tears her family apart?
When Lily finally leaves her toxic relationship, a job as a nanny at Kewney Manor seems like the perfect solution. There, she can cut herself off from her old life, and never have to see him again.
\nThe Rowes seem like a model family, and Lily falls instantly in love with her new home. But she can’t help feeling that something isn’t quite right. Why will nobody tell her about the nanny before? Where does Laurie go at night? And what does Charles really want?
\nAs Lily becomes increasingly entangled in the Rowes’ lives, she realises that the perfect family may not be all that they seem. And as that as much as she fears the past she is running from, perhaps the present is where the real danger lies . . .
For years Erik, the scarred king of the Ever Kingdom, has thought of nothing but vengeance against the man who killed his father and trapped him beneath the waves, making him a prisoner in his own realm.
\nUntil his enemy’s daughter unintentionally breaks the chains on the Ever, and Erik makes her the unwitting pawn in his vicious game of revenge.
\nShe’s innocent. He’s vicious. But he will take back what he lost, no matter the price.
\nUnless she steals his heart first.
Enemies took her from the man who holds her heart. They might see her as weak, as a pawn in wicked games, but they’re no match for her cunning.
\nLet them think they’ve won. Her heart belongs to a beautiful monster, and she will never stop fighting until she’s back in his arms.
\nThey’ll die for touching her.
\nHe will never stop searching for her light across the skies. Not until the blood of his enemies spills at her feet.
\nNot until his queen wears their bones around her neck.
Skadi first met her husband-to-be with blades in hand on the opposite side of a battle. She lost, and he claimed his prize.
\nTo her horror, the king of the shadow elven agrees to marry her off to Jonas, a prince in the fae realms, as a way to unite their kingdoms against a shared enemy - the light elves. Skadi knows the marriage is nothing but a political game. Feelings won’t come into play.
\nExcept her new husband makes not falling in love . . . challenging.
\nWhen new threats arise, Skadi must decide to either love her enemy or keep him alive by betraying him to another.
After a nationwide manhunt for notorious felon Carl Deere left two women hospitalised in a critical condition, clinical psychiatrist and criminal profiler Doctor Alexander Gregory is left heartbroken. Both are special to him: one is his new friend, Detective Chief Inspector Ava Hope, and the other is the woman he loves, Doctor Naomi Palmer. However, there’s something he doesn’t know . . .
\nOne of them is a killer.
\nEnlisted by the Metropolitan Police, Doctor Gregory must embark on a journey into the past - theirs, as well as his own. In doing so, he comes to understand that justice is seldom black and white, and even good people can commit murder . . .
\n
After a turbulent time, DCI Ryan’s life is finally beginning to return to normal and he’s looking forward to spending an uneventful Easter bank holiday weekend with his fiancée.
Then, on Good Friday morning he is called out to a crime scene at one of the largest cemeteries in Newcastle. The body of a redheaded woman has been found buried in a shallow grave and the killer has given her wings, like an angel.
Soon, another woman is found at a different cemetery, followed quickly by another. Panic spreads like wildfire as a new serial killer is born, and Ryan’s band of detectives must work around the clock to unmask him before he can strike again.
When a cantankerous old woman dies at her home in the sleepy, picturesque village of Bamburgh, DCI Ryan doesn’t think much of it - except, that is, for the small matter of it having been his wife who happened to find her body. Then another body turns up amongst the sand dunes at the base of the mighty castle fortress, and he decides it can’t be a coincidence . . .
\nMeanwhile, after a recent revelation about her sister, DC Melanie Yates’ quest to avenge her death is becoming an obsession - much to the concern of those around her. With a new DCS to contend with and hundreds of cold case files to sift through, the chances of uncovering a dormant killer seem unlikely. But as Melanie delves deeper into the secrets of the past to uncover the truth, she soon realises it lies much closer to home . . .
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In the picturesque seaside town of St Ives, Detective Sergeant Sophie Keane is a pillar of the community. Between the occasional collar and lazy weekends spent on the beach, it seems a perfect life. But for Sophie, the golden sands and crystal waters hide a dark secret, one that’s lain buried for twenty years.
\nWhen a body turns up on the opening night of a glittering new art gallery on the seafront, the town is left shaken - especially Sophie, who recognises the killer’s style but knows that what she fears just couldn’t be possible . . .
\nWith a killer on the loose, everyone’s a suspect - especially newcomer Gabriel Rowe, who seems to have settled in far too quickly for her liking. For Sophie, he’s guilty until proven innocent . . .
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Fresh from a high-profile case in the Paris fashion world, elite forensic psychologist and criminal profiler Dr Alexander Gregory receives a call from the FBI. The wife of a notorious criminal has been admitted to a private psychiatric hospital and can no longer testify in his upcoming trial. Without her, their case will collapse but, amidst reports that the staff are as unpredictable as their patients, who can the police trust?
In desperation, they turn to an outsider and now Gregory must find the courage to step inside the fortified walls of Buchanan Hospital to uncover the truth. The question is, will he ever be the same again?
After a long year of crime-fighting, DCI Ryan and his team are looking forward to a peaceful Christmas filled with festive treats - including the occasional turkey stottie, or three. To celebrate a job well done, the entire team are treated to a party at beautiful Belsay Hall, a spectacular country estate on the outskirts of the city. But, when their dinner is interrupted by the untimely arrival of a dead body, they’re reminded that crime never sleeps - and nor do the secrets within the walls of Belsay.
\nIt's time to find out who’s been naughty or nice . . .
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Detective Chief Inspector Ryan is living a nightmare.
\nAs one of the country’s foremost murder detectives, Ryan knows he can face the worst of humanity and step into the darkest minds because, every night, he returns home to the loving arms of his young daughter and wife, Anna, whom he trusts implicitly. When he receives a call to say she’s been arrested for the murder of a well-known author, he refuses to believe the evidence which seems to be piling up against her. Anna could never murder anyone - he’s sure of it.
\nIsn’t he?
\nTo the outside world, she’s a quiet academic, a devoted wife and mother, and a good friend. But Anna’s father was a killer, and he taught her how to use a gun.
\nWith the case mounting against her, Ryan must search his soul to answer the question that seems to be on everybody’s lips . . .
\nDoes he really trust the woman he married?
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After uncovering a fresh wave of corruption within the ranks of Northumbria CID, Detective Chief Inspector Ryan was looking forward to an uneventful summer. But, when a young woman is shot dead on the remote army ranges of the Northumberland National Park, Ryan is called in to investigate.
Meanwhile, violent crimes are being committed across sites of historic importance in the North East, the perpetrator leaving only a graffitied symbol as their calling card. As the body count rises, Ryan and his team must unravel the mystery behind its meaning - before it's too late . . .
Gabrielle Adams has it all - brains, beauty, a handsome fiancé, and a dream job in publishing. Until, one day, everything changes.
\n'The Tube Killer’ takes his victims when they least expect it: standing on the edge of a busy London Underground platform, as they wait for a train to arrive through the murky underground tunnels of London.
\nGabrielle soon learns that being a survivor is harder than being a victim, and she struggles to return to her old life. Desperate to break free from the endless nightmares, she snatches up an opportunity to run a tiny bookshop in a picturesque cove in rural Cornwall.
\nShe thinks she’s found the perfect escape, but has she swapped one nightmare for another?
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After his climactic battle with notorious serial killer The Hacker, DCI Ryan is spending the summer with his fiancée within the grounds of Cragside, a spectacular Bavarian-style mansion surrounded by acres of woodland. When they are invited to attend the staff summer party - a Victorian murder mystery evening - it’s all a joke until the lights go out and an elderly man is found dead.
\nIt looks like an unfortunate accident but, as the dead man’s life begins to unfold, Ryan and his team of detectives realise that all is not as it appears. When a second body is found, terror grips the close-knit community and Ryan must uncover the killer who walks among them, before they strike again . . . Murder and mystery are peppered with romance and humour in this fast-paced crime whodunit set amidst the spectacular Northumbrian landscape.
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Kate Irving arrives at her grandfather’s cottage at Frenchman’s Creek in the dead of night with her young son, a small suitcase and little else. Its scattered community of fishermen, farmers, artists and jetsetters barely bat an eyelid, because theirs is a rarefied world, tucked beneath the lush forest that lines the banks of the Helford estuary, deep in the heart of Cornwall, where life is slow and people generally mind their own business. Unless, of course, your grandfather happens to be a pillar of the local community . . .
\nKate’s left the past behind and guards her privacy and her son fiercely. She’s wary of accepting the friendship her new neighbours offer, but their kindness is too great to refuse and she begins to feel she has found her place in the world. That is, until tragedy strikes, and her new friends look to her for the answers . . .
\nKate soon learns that the past always catches up with you, in the end - the question is, will she be able to face it, when it does?
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After the dramatic theft of a priceless artefact from Durham Cathedral, the rest of the world believes that DCI Ryan and his team were able to recover and return St. Cuthbert’s cross to its rightful home. But Ryan knows the cross he recovered was a fake - far from being over, their problems are only just beginning . . .
\nJust as Ryan and his team begin to unravel the truth behind the spate of mysterious thefts, something even more priceless is stolen - something that can never be replaced.
\nAs the nationwide manhunt continues without success, Ryan is thrust into despair - until he realises the answer lies not in modern policing but in an age-old secret known only to a chosen few. To recover what’s been lost, he must first crack ‘Cuthbert’s Code’, following the trail of a long-dead saint across the wild, unpredictable hills and valleys of the borderlands.
\nCan Ryan find what he’s looking for, before it’s too late?
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One fateful, starry night, three friends embark on a secret camping trip but only two return home. Thirty years later, the body of a teenage boy rises from the depths of England’s biggest reservoir and threatens to expose a killer who has lain dormant . . . until now.
Detective Chief Inspector Ryan returns from honeymoon to face danger from all sides. In the depths of Kielder Forest, a murderer has escaped justice before and will do anything to protect the secrets of the past. Meanwhile, back at Northumbria CID, an old foe has taken the helm as Superintendent and is determined to destroy Ryan at any cost.
Who will prevail in Ryan’s most dangerous case yet?
When the body of a talented photographer is found on the rocks beneath the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle, DCI Ryan and his team of detectives immediately suspect the worst. But, since none of their potential suspects seems to have a motive, the case runs cold.
\nThen, when another body is found dead on a lonely stretch of road near Hadrian’s Wall and their only suspect has an airtight alibi, the team are faced with another crime without a perpetrator.
\nWith the number of unexplained deaths in the area increasing rapidly and only a series of coincidences to work from, Ryan and his team must find the invisible link between them to crack the case - before it’s too late.
\nCan Ryan solve his most dangerous case yet?
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Irish newsreader Isolde Malone has a face many would recognise; in fact, she can’t walk through the streets of Dublin without bumping into a horde of fans, all of whom want their picture taken with the darling of broadcast journalism. She’s living a dream life and has never been happier . . .
\nUntil the night everything changes.
\nForced to take a sabbatical from her glittering career, Isolde needs a haven from ordinary life and the support of her only remaining family. So, when a gilt-edged invitation to attend one of her brother’s fundraising events drops through the post, it seems like the perfect opportunity. There’s just one problem . . .
\nShe must cross the sea to Cornwall.
\nWhat promised to be the perfect escape soon turns into a nightmare when a body washes up at the foot of the legendary castle at Tintagel, and Isolde soon realises that the ghosts in that part of the world can be just as deadly as the ones she’s left behind in Ireland.
\nTrapped in a windswept country house hotel for the weekend, surrounded by suspects, Isolde hardly knows who to trust, but she knows it isn’t Tristan Williams - no matter what the old legend might say . . .
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When a man is found dead at the remote church of Heavenfield, DCI Ryan is the only other person for miles around. The police have no weapon, no motive and no other suspects.
\nAlready suspended from Northumbria CID, Ryan must fight to clear his name. But soon, more than his career is at stake when prominent members of the mysterious ‘Circle’ begin to die. Somebody wants Ryan’s name to be next on the coroner’s list and to survive he must unmask the devil who walks among them - before it is too late.
\nUnfortunately for Ryan, the devil looks just like everybody else . . .
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When an old man is found dead inside the ancient hermitage at Warkworth Castle, Northumbria CID are called in to investigate. With no apparent motive, it’s their job to unravel why he was murdered - and this time they’re forced to do it without their star detective . . .
DCI Ryan is thousands of miles away. He’s tracked a killer across Europe and has sworn not to return until he has his man in custody. Nathan Armstrong is a dangerous psychopath but there’s just one problem - he’s also an international celebrity; a world-famous thriller writer with money and connections.
Ryan is a stranger in a foreign land, but he knows one thing - he’ll never give up.
Detective Chief Inspector Ryan’s worst nightmare has just become a reality. Notorious serial killer The Hacker has escaped prison and kidnapped one of his best detectives from her own home. His brutality is the stuff of legend - Ryan lost his sister and nearly his own life bringing the man to justice first time around. Can Ryan do it again to save his friend?
There’s a nationwide manhunt underway but the trail has gone cold and fear spreads like a virus. Ryan and his team must find The Hacker before he takes another life - but are they too late?
The clock is ticking . . .
Detective Chief Inspector Ryan retreats to Holy Island seeking sanctuary when he is forced to take sabbatical leave from his duties as a homicide detective. A few days before Christmas, his peace is shattered and he is thrust back into the murky world of murder when a young woman is found dead amongst the ancient ruins of the nearby Priory.
\nWhen former local girl Dr Anna Taylor arrives back on the island as a police consultant, old memories swim to the surface making her confront her difficult past. She and Ryan struggle to work together to hunt a killer who hides in plain sight, while pagan ritual and small-town politics muddy the waters of their investigation.
\nMurder and mystery are peppered with a sprinkling of romance and humour in this fast-paced crime whodunnit set on the spectacular Northumbrian island of Lindisfarne, cut off from the English mainland by a tidal causeway.
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Recently returned from his last case in Ireland, elite forensic psychologist and criminal profiler Dr Alexander Gregory receives a call from the French police that he can’t ignore. It’s Paris fashion week and some of the world’s most beautiful women are turning up dead, their faces slashed in a series of frenzied attacks while the world’s press looks on.
\nAmidst the carnage, one victim has survived but she’s too traumatised to talk. Without her help, the police are powerless to stop the killer before he strikes again - can Gregory unlock the secrets of her mind, before it’s too late?
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After an elite criminal profiling unit is shut down amidst a storm of scandal and mismanagement, only one person emerges unscathed. Forensic psychologist Doctor Alexander Gregory has a reputation for being able to step inside the darkest minds to uncover whatever secrets lie hidden there and, soon enough, he finds himself drawn into the murky world of murder investigation.
\nIn the beautiful hills of County Mayo, Ireland, a killer is on the loose. Panic has a stranglehold on its rural community and the Garda are running out of time. Gregory has sworn to follow a quiet life but, when the call comes, can he refuse to help their desperate search for justice?
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In the stifling summer heat of 2014, a killer has been stalking the streets of Newcastle causing city-wide panic. When the officer in charge of the case turns up dead, it falls upon Detective Chief Inspector Ryan to take up the baton and find the person responsible.
\nTo the close-knit team of police in Northumbria CID, Ryan is still an outsider; aloof and uncompromising. He’s lived a charmed life and has an unbroken track record to match. But, as The Hacker’s death toll rises, Ryan realises this is one adversary he’ll never bring to justice on his own . . .
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When the ancient waters of Lady’s Well in the rural village of Holystone begin to run red, it seems to be a nasty Hallowe’en prank and nothing more. But things take a sinister turn when the entire village suffers severe poisoning, and one old man turns up dead.
\nAccusations abound in the small, close-knit community, and ‘old’ religions spar against ‘new’ while fear runs like wildfire through the streets. With so many potential motives and countless opportunities, there’s only one man who can help solve this particular mystery . . .
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Viking treasure is discovered beneath the icy waters of the North Sea and local historian Doctor Anna Taylor is called in to help catalogue the most exciting hoard in living memory. But when a shipwreck diver washes up dead, she’s soon out of her depth. Luckily, she knows just the person to call . . .
When DCI Ryan arrives at the picturesque fishing town of Seahouses, he's faced with an impenetrable wall of secrets and lies. As he juggles marine archaeology and the cutthroat world of shipwreck diving, another murder blows the case wide open. To uncover the truth, Ryan must delve deeper into the hearts of those around him to find what lies beneath . . .
Back in London after a dramatic trip to North America, Doctor Alexander Gregory finds himself without an occupation while he awaits the all-important decision of the disciplinary panel at Southmoor Hospital. That is, until he witnesses the death of a famous actor, live on stage during the opening night of King Lear. When the police rule the death suspicious, they call upon the elite services of Gregory and his partner in criminal profiling, Bill Douglas.
\nGregory is paired with attractive investigating officer DCI Hope and tensions arise - especially when an old foe resurfaces.
\nWith bodies piling up and no new leads, Gregory and Hope realise they must look to the past to uncover the truth - before it’s too late. Immersed in the glamorous world of celebrity, Gregory soon learns that, beneath the surface, things are far murkier than they seem . . .
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When a ten-year-old girl turns up on DCI Ryan’s doorstep to tell him she’s witnessed a murder, he has no idea he’s about to step into his most spellbinding case yet. The circus has rolled into Newcastle upon Tyne, bringing with it a troupe of daring acrobats, magicians, jugglers - and one of them is a killer.
Ryan and his team must break through their closed ranks to uncover a secret which has lain buried for eight years, before the killer strikes again - this time, to silence the only living witness . . .
When a senior Metropolitan Police officer and High Court judge die in quick succession, criminal profiler Doctor Alex Gregory is convinced their deaths are linked to the most shameful case of his the notorious wrongful conviction of Carl Deere, an innocent man found guilty of a series of heinous murders perpetrated by the ‘Soho Killer’.
\nFour years later, released from prison and with his record wiped clean, Deere is an invisible spectre with a new name and a new face. But, as Gregory knows only too well, the past isn’t easily forgotten, and revenge can be a powerful motive - even for an innocent man . . .
\nWith Scotland Yard determined to avoid any further scandal, Gregory and his friend and mentor, Professor Bill Douglas, are left to fend for themselves. With no real evidence and the body count racking up, they know it’s only a matter of time before their names are next on the killer’s list . . .
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When an old man is burned alive in a sleepy ex-mining village, Detective Chief Inspector Ryan is called in to investigate. He soon discovers that, beneath the facade of a close-knit community, the burn from decades-old betrayal still smoulders. When everyone had a motive, can he unravel the secrets of the past before the killer strikes again?
Meanwhile, back at Northumbria CID, trouble is brewing with rumours of a mole in Ryan’s department. With everyone under suspicion, can he count on anybody but himself?
For Detective Chief Inspector Ryan, the stakes have never been higher. Most of the world thinks he’s dead, killed by an assasin's rifle in his own home. But another man took the bullet intended for him, and now Ryan’s living on borrowed time. As long as he stays ‘dead’, in the sanctuary of his parents’ home in Devon, there’s a chance to find the people behind the deadly killing network. It’s only a matter of time before his secret’s uncovered, and nowhere will be safe.
\nBack in Northumberland, Ryan’s team are called in to investigate the mysterious death of a man in Alnwick, who collapsed yards from the walls of its Mediaeval castle. When a second person is rushed to hospital with the same symptoms, her life hangs in the balance unless they can discover the toxic substance that’s killing her. For DCs Lowerson and Reed, there’s only one place to look for inspiration - the Poison Garden . . .
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When a fishing boat is wrecked off the treacherous North Sea coast and the body of a young woman washes up on the beach beside the iconic ‘Marsden Rock’, DCI Ryan cannot ignore the call to duty.
\nWith one already dead and more human cargo missing from the wreckage, Ryan and his team race to find the remaining souls — before it’s too late, and their investigation turns to murder. As they uncover the seedy underbelly of Tyneside, cold and calculated opportunism clashes with the rock-hard arm of the Law, but there’s one thing that proves stronger than stone . . .
\nThe human spirit.
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After a busy year fighting crime, DCI Ryan and his team of murder detectives are enjoying a festive season of goodwill, mulled wine and, in the case of DS Phillips, a stottie cake or two - that is, until a freak snowstorm forces their car off the main road and into the remote heart of Northumberland.
\nTheir Christmas spirit is soon tested when they’re forced to find shelter inside England’s most haunted castle, where they’re the uninvited guests at a ‘Candlelit Ghost Hunt’. It’s all fun and games - until one of the guests is murdered. It seems no mortal hand could have committed the crime, so Ryan and Co. must face the spectres living inside the castle walls to uncover the grisly truth, before another ghost joins their number . . .
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It's been five months since a killer walked free and DCI Ryan is preparing to leave Newcastle to hunt him down - this time, for good.
But Ryan's plans are scuppered when events take a dramatic turn and he is forced to stay and face his past one last time, or watch a friend suffer the consequences.
Amid the chaos, another killer is preparing to strike. When the Tyne Bridge explodes, Ryan's team are faced with a frantic race to uncover a deadly foe who won't stop until every bridge is burned, along with everybody on it . . .
After a long and eventful winter, DCI Ryan and his team are looking forward to the joys of spring. But, when one of their colleagues is shot dead on her own doorstep and the brass think it’s an inside job, Ryan finds himself drafted in to investigate.
\nHe’s barely scratched the surface when reports flood in of a terror explosion at Durham Cathedral. Chaos descends on the sleepy, historic city and, when the smoke clears, they find a priceless artefact that once belonged to Saint Cuthbert is missing.
\nWith tensions running at an all-time high, unable to trust the local police, can Ryan and his team bring a killer to justice - and restore Cuthbert’s cross to its natural resting place?
\nMurder and mystery are peppered with romance and humour in this fast-paced crime whodunnit set amidst the spectacular landscape of County Durham.
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Detective Chief Inspector Ryan believes he has put his turbulent history behind him. Then, in the early hours of the summer solstice, the skeleton of a young woman is found inside the Roman Wall at Sycamore Gap. She has lain undiscovered for ten years and it is Ryan's job to piece together her past.
Enquiry lines cross and merge as Ryan is forced to face his own demons and enter into a deadly game of cat and mouse with a killer who seems unstoppable.
Arlene has lived in a small town on the edge of nowhere Georgia her whole life. Now married to her long-time high school sweetheart, Tommy, Arlene is itching to start a family and become the mother she always dreamed of being. But that's proving more difficult than she thought, and Arlene is desperate to find something to do to keep her mind off things. And get some distance from her husband, who is increasingly getting on her nerves.
\nAs the summer gives way to a chilly, lonesome fall up in the mountains of northern Georgia, she takes a part-time job bagging evidence at the local police department, which involves about twenty minutes of actual work, and the rest of her shift she reads over old cold cases. One in particular fascinates - the mysterious deaths of three young brothers murdered on Deck River, followed by the suicide of Mitchell Wright, the prime suspect in the murders.
\nArlene becomes obsessed with the case, and with the help of the police department's receptionist and a family friend of the Wrights, she sets out on discovering the truth. She can't help but feel that if she solves the case of the Broderick boys' deaths, she'll find her footing in her young marriage and maybe find what she's been looking for all along.
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Sixteen-year-old Kellan DuCuivre is the descendant of traitors. She never knew her family members or which one of them betrayed the isle of Nanseau. But like all Du orphaned after the war, Kellan is forbidden by law from practicing makecraft, the trade of carving magic into metal that was perfected by the Guild of Engineers and their maker apprentices. No one can know that Kellan has been using makecraft in secret and that, in the wake of a tragic miscarve, she’s been helping her adoptive father, Edgar, run his celebrated makeshop.
\nBut Edgar’s condition is worsening, and his shop is on the brink of ruin. On the eve of the Eighty-Fourth Annual Makers’ Exposition in Nanseau’s sparkling city of Riz, Kellan is thrust into the Guild’s twisted web of political intrigue and ancient secrets when she strikes a dangerous deal with one of its members to save Edgar and his shop. Now Kellan must compete in a rigorous gauntlet against the nation’s elite for a coveted spot as a maker’s apprentice.
\nBut danger lurks at every turn. And as Kellan falls into a budding relationship with the illegitimate son from one of Nanseau’s most revered families, she’s put into the limelight when something sinister begins targeting the Gauntlet’s competitors and wreaking havoc on Riz. Amid a crumbling city and a ticking clock, winning the Gauntlet won’t just be a test of survival - it will mean pulling back the veil of secrets behind the Guild and uncovering the shrouded legacies of Nanseau itself.
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Ember, Miles, and Sam have been called home - only home is a place none of them have ever been before. The choices they make will not only determine their own futures but will also have vast and permanent consequences - they will either restore a cosmic balance or destroy the dams that separate two worlds, ending them both. Ember was called because she belonged, Miles because his mother belonged, and Sam . . . well, Sam arranged his own invitation.
\nThe Fountain itself is beautiful and alluring - yet so is the light of an anglerfish. Hidden below the surface, the world of the Fountain is unexplored and unmapped and full of wild things - leviathan and tiny, scuttling things and all manner of creature in between. There are other entities as well, entities that haunt and hunt in the Fountain, because it rewards nearly as often as it punishes, and it has been punishing the greedy and merciless and cruel for a very long time. For those, the Fountain becomes a prison.
\nThe borders between our world and the world of the Fountain are already porous. If the balance between them is upset and control of the Fountain is lost, the consequences will be rapid, merciless, and world-ending. In every timeline that has been or will be, everywhere that water stands in our world will become a passageway for the violent damned to enter ours from the Fountain. For Ember, Miles, and Sam, all from different times, what starts as a journey to take control of their lives quickly becomes a quest to save - or destroy - both worlds, depending on whom you ask.
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In the bestselling tradition of Hidden Figures and Code Girls, the remarkable true story of America’s first women astronauts - six extraordinary women, each making history going to orbit aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle.
\nWhen NASA sent astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s the agency excluded women from the corps, arguing that only military test pilots - a group then made up exclusively of men - had the right stuff. It was an era in which women were steered away from jobs in science and deemed unqualified for space flight.
\nEventually, though, NASA recognised its blunder and opened the application process to a wider array of hopefuls, regardless of race or gender. From a candidate pool of 8,000 six elite women were selected in 1978 - Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon.
\nIn The Six , acclaimed journalist Loren Grush shows these brilliant and courageous women enduring claustrophobic - and sometimes deeply sexist - media attention, undergoing rigorous survival training, and preparing for years to take multi-million-dollar payloads into orbit.
\nTogether, the Six helped build the tools that made the space program run. One of the group, Judy Resnik, sacrificed her life when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded at 46,000 feet. Everyone knows of Sally Ride’s history-making first space ride, but each of the Six would make their mark.
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Orphaned as a baby, Shay has spent her life training as the midwife’s apprentice. Her role grants her stability, yet Shay has always yearned for more. Namely, motherly affection and answers regarding her mysterious birth - neither of which the midwife deems practical to provide.
\nAfter Shay discovers her birth mother, Hind, is still alive and addicted to a magical drug called Snow, she determines to get the woman clean. But when Hind betrays Shay to get her hands on more Snow, Shay’s abandoned within a deadly forest and forced to rely on a band of monstrous ghouls for safety.
\nShay’s realm has long stood on the brink of war between the men who control magic and the revolutionaries who want to eliminate it. But in the forest, Shay hears the pleading call of ancient spirits who claim that not only has magic been stolen, but she has the power to return it. With the help of a spitfire revolutionary and the boy who’s winning over her heart, Shay discovers the horrific truth of who produces Snow and will have to decide for herself whether to heed the spirits’ charge or fade into obscurity.
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Honor seems to have everything. She adores her daughter Chloe and her husband Tom (even if he does work one hundred hours a week). But her longing for another baby threatens to eclipse all of it - until a shocking event changes their lives forever.
\nYears later Tom makes a decision that ripples through their families' lives in ways he could not have foreseen. As the consequences of that fateful choice unfold, two women's paths become irrevocably intertwined. But when old love clashes with new, who will be left standing? And what happens when your secrets come back to haunt you?
Marlow Heddings is starting over. She’s carried the outrage of her husband Dylan’s affair with a younger woman - and the expectations of his family’s powerful Chicago holdings company - long enough. Now, after another devastating twist of fate, she’s unapologetically moving on.
\nArriving in tiny Bramble, Kentucky, Marlow revels in her freedom, swapping her executive suits for sundresses . . . and scouting places to open her dream boutique. Best of all is her new residence, an adorable cottage with gorgeous lake views - and a breathtaking landlord, former Marine Cort Easton. Soon they’re sharing dockside morning coffee and nighttime firefly gazing. Marlow’s new life feels like a dream.
\nThen Pixie Nolan arrives on her doorstep. With a shocking secret.
\nTo Marlow’s astonishment, Dylan’s “other woman” is a desperate girl of nineteen, destitute, exhausted, and disowned by her family. Defying her manipulative in-laws’ demands, and surprising even herself, Marlow vows to lay down roots in Bramble and help Pixie get on her feet. Then they’ll part ways. But empathy has a way of forging bonds. As Marlow grows close to the hard-working, devoted young woman, she becomes something of a big sister to Pixie.
\nNow, with each sunrise, Marlow awakens to the life she was truly meant to live, one filled with deepening connections, supportive friendship . . . and even a second chance at love.
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When Pixie Nolan first came to Bramble, Kentucky, the abandoned and desperate young single mother found hope, healing, and a fresh start. With the loving support of her best friends - Marlow Heddings and her handsome Marine husband, Cort-Pixie is now happily raising her toddler son in a cozy cottage, managing Marlow’s thriving boutique, and designing firefly logo t-shirts that are selling like hotcakes. The past is behind her, and life is good.
\nShe never expected to make an electrifying connection with a summer renter, a retired Navy SEAL with his own complicated past . . .
\nA rugged warrior with scars both seen and unseen, Brogan Rafferty arrives with an adorable baby girl in tow and settles into the lake house next door. And while he’s a stunning addition to the gorgeous scenery, it’s his caring devotion that captures Pixie’s heart - the way he gently snuggles away the precious infant’s cries, or swoops Pixie’s delighted little boy high in the air with his tattooed, muscular arms.
\nBut it’s no coincidence that Brogan has found Pixie, and his startling revelations make it clear she’s the key to healing old regrets and building new dreams. And when a hostile stranger turns up with shocking accusations against Bramble’s new hometown hero, Pixie must put her own fears and heartbreak away for good - and learn what it truly means to trust.
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Everleigh Page is on the cusp of greatness. Executive producer of an award-winning primetime news magazine, she’s just been offered a role never attained by a woman at her president of the news division. It will be her job to shape coverage of world events and mold the journalists of tomorrow.
\nToo bad in order to get here she’s sold out most of the principles she held as an idealistic young reporter. Too bad she’s just, at the direction of her boss, fired two of her best staffers and killed an important investigative story that could save lives.
\nAs a woman, she knows, you have to play ball to get to the top. Even if it means bending your moral code or breaking up with your boyfriend. Sean may be the love of her life, but his large, complicated family has started taking up too much of her time.
\nHer younger self wouldn’t recognise her. Or will she?
\nWhen a college reunion takes a mystical twist, Everleigh finds herself defending her choices to the toughest critic in the world and confronting a crucial can she possibly right all the wrongs she was willing to tolerate just an hour ago?
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As a New England mother struggles to support her family in the wake of her husband’s service in the Civil War, her four daughters struggle, too - caught between childhood dreams and the realities of burgeoning adulthood. For Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March, raised in integrity and virtue, negotiating the right path in life means making choices that will either narrow or expand their destinies.
Based on the author’s life, Little Women transcends genre, gender, and class with its examination of personal quests, societal restrictions, family ties, and the end of innocence.
Harriet Bishop, descended from a long line of witches, uses magic to help women in need - not only ordinary women, but also those with powers of their own. She must intervene when a distant cousin wields dangerous magic to change the lives of two unsuspecting young people . . . one of whom might just be a witch herself.
Frances Allington has used her wiles and witchcraft to claw her way out of poverty and into a spectacular marriage with one of New York's wealthiest new tycoons. She is determined to secure the Allingtons' position amongst the city's elite Four Hundred families by any means necessary - including a scheme to make a glorious aristocratic match for her headstrong and reluctant step-daughter, Annis, using the same strange power with which she ensnared Annis's father.
To save Annis from this dark magic, Harriet reveals to her Frances' misuse of their shared birthright and kindles in Annis her own nascent powers. Together, Harriet and Annis must resist her stepmother's agenda, lest she - and the dashing young lord she suspects she could come to love - lose their freedom, and possibly their lives.
To the other priestesses of the Nine, a powerful council at the Lady’s Temple, Morgana is haughty and arrogant as she performs feats of magic no human should be capable of. Rumors start that she must be a fearsome fae.
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To King Arthur, Morgana is a trusted and devoted advisor, but his court is wary of her and her prodigious talent at divination. But his wife sees Morgana as a rival and a malevolent witch.
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To Braithe, Morgana’s faithful acolyte, she is simply the most powerful priestess Camelot has seen.
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Morgana doesn’t know why she’s so different from everyone else, and she doesn’t much care. But when she aids Arthur to ascend the throne before his time, she sets off a series of events that will change everything Morgana believes about her power.
The Heights is a tall, slender apartment building among the warehouses of Shad Thames, its roof terrace so discreet you wouldn’t know it existed if you weren't standing at the window of the flat directly opposite. But you are. And that’s when you see a man up there - a man you’d recognise anywhere. He’s older now and his appearance has subtly changed, but it’s definitely him.
\nWhich makes no sense at all since you know he has been dead for over two years.
\nYou know this for a fact.
\nBecause you’re the one who killed him.
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Alex lives a comfortable life with his wife Beth in the leafy suburb of Silver Vale. Fine, so he’s not the most sociable guy on the street, he prefers to keep himself to himself, but he’s a good husband and an easy-going neighbour.
\nThat’s until Beth announces the creation of a nature trail on a local site that’s been disused for decades and suddenly Alex is a changed man. Now he’s always watching. Questioning. Struggling to hide his dread . . .
\nAs the landscapers get to work, a secret threatens to surface from years ago, back in Alex’s twenties when he got entangled with a seductive young woman called Marina, who threw both their lives into turmoil.
\nAnd who sparked a police hunt for a murder suspect that was never quite what it seemed. It still isn’t.
\nNo one else could have done it. Could they?
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You’re feeling pretty smug about your commute to work by riverboat. No more traffic gridlock or getting stuck on the tube in tunnels (you’re claustrophobic); now you’ve got an iconic Thames view, fresh air ? - a whole lifestyle upgrade. You’ve made new friends onboard - led by your hedonistic young neighbour, Kit? - and just had your first ‘water rats’ Christmas drinks.
But the first day back after Christmas, Kit isn’t on the morning boat. The river landmarks are all the same, but something’s off. You disembark to find the police waiting. Kit’s wife, Melia, has reported him missing and another passenger witnessed the two of you arguing on the last boat home after your drinks. Police say you had a reason to lash out at him. To kill him.
You protest. You and Kit are friends? - ask Melia, she’ll vouch for you. And who exactly is this other passenger pointing the finger? What do they know about your private lives? No, whatever coincidences might have occurred that night, you are innocent, totally innocent.
Aren’t you?
Charlotte and Perry have owned their clifftop holiday home in Pine Ridge for years. They’ve worked hard for it - why shouldn’t they enjoy it? Even if the locals can’t afford to live in the village these days . . .
\nNow city friends Amy and Matt have bought a second home nearby and when the two families descend, they plan lazy days at the beach and evenings sipping rosé and watching the sun set from Charlotte’s summerhouse veranda.
\nBut this summer is different. A group of locals - headed by the charismatic Robbie - will stop at nothing to make the second home owners pay for their holiday. By the end of their break, marriages will be torn apart, friendships shattered and crimes exposed.
\nAnd one of them will have lost their life.
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When Fiona Lawson comes home to find strangers moving into her house, she's sure there's been a mistake. She and her estranged husband, Bram, have a modern co-parenting arrangement: bird's nest custody, where each parent spends a few nights a week with their two sons at the prized family home to maintain stability for their children. But the system built to protect their family ends up putting them in terrible jeopardy. In a domino effect of crimes and misdemeanors, the nest comes tumbling down.
Now Bram has disappeared and so have Fiona's children. As events spiral well beyond her control, Fiona will discover just how many lies her husband was weaving and how little they truly knew each other. But Bram's not the only one with things to hide, and some secrets are best kept to oneself, safe as houses.
It's summer when Elm Hill lido opens, having stood empty for years. For Natalie Steele - wife, mother, teacher - it offers freedom from the tightly controlled routines of work and family. Especially when it leads her to Lara Channing, a charismatic former actress with a lavish bohemian lifestyle, who seems all too happy to invite Natalie into her elite circle.
\nSoon Natalie is spending long days at the pool, socializing with new friends and basking in a popularity she didn't know she'd been missing. Real life, and the person she used to be, begins to feel very far away.
\nBut is such a change in fortunes too good to be true? Why are dark memories of a summer long ago now threatening to surface? And, without realizing, could Natalie have been swept dangerously out of her depth?
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The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself, affecting every living creature on earth. Science cannot stop the world from running backwards, as woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. Thirty-two-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant.
Though she wants to tell the adoptive parents who raised her from infancy, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, Mary Potts, an Ojibwe living on the reservation, to understand both her and her baby’s origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity.
There are rumors of martial law, of Congress confining pregnant women. Of a registry, and rewards for those who turn these wanted women in. Flickering through the chaos are signs of increasing repression: a shaken Cedar witnesses a family wrenched apart when police violently drag a mother from her husband and child in a parking lot. The streets of her neighborhood have been renamed with Bible verses. A stranger answers the phone when she calls her adoptive parents, who have vanished without a trace. It will take all Cedar has to avoid the prying eyes of potential informants and keep her baby safe.
In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding.
\nGary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his.
\nHugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He’s determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker.
\nKismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs, tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future, her daughter’s and her own.
\nHuman time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths, is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009.
\nHow much does a dress cost? A used car? A package of cinnamon rolls? Can you see the shape of your soul in the everchanging clouds? Your personal salvation in the giant expanse of sky? These are the questions the people of the Red River Valley of the North wrestle with every day.
\nThe Mighty Red is a novel of tender humor, disturbance, and hallucinatory mourning. It is about on-the-job pains and immeasurable satisfactions, a turbulent landscape, and eating the native weeds growing in your backyard.
\nIt is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets; men and women both complicated and contradictory, flawed and decent, lonely and hopeful.
\nIt is about a starkly beautiful prairie community whose members must cope with devastating consequences as powerful forces upend them. The Mighty Red is about our tattered bond with the earth, and about love in all of its absurdity and splendor.
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Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”?
Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice’s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn’t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.
Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.
In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature.
One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.
\nWhile his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning.
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In this powerful and timely novel, National Book Award winning author Louise Erdrich explores how the burdens of history, and especially identity, appropriation, exploitation, and violence done to human beings in the name of justice, manifest in ordinary lives today.
\nRevolving around a small independent bookstore in contemporary Minneapolis, The Sentence follows a turbulent year in the life of a strong though vulnerable Ojibwe woman named Tookie.
\nAfter serving part of an outrageously long sentence, Tookie, who “learned to read with murderous attention” while in prison, naturally gravitates toward working at a bookstore. There she joins a dedicated community of artists and book lovers and begins to build a new life for herself.
\nWhen Flora, the store’s most persistent customer, suddenly dies, her ghost refuses to leave. Flora returns on All Soul’s Day to haunt the bookstore and in particular, Tookie. Why? The mystery of this revenant’s appearance leads Asema, a fellow Ojibwe bookseller, and Tookie to a shocking personal discovery with historical reverberations. Tookie finds that this year of disease, violence, and political upheaval is, on a worldwide scale, a year of ghosts and hauntings.
\nA complicated love finds Tookie as well when Pollux, who has been in love with her for years, proposes, and they marry. Pollux was the tribal police officer who arrested Tookie all those years ago for a crime which turned out to be more serious than Tookie knew. How Pollux and Tookie overcome past betrayal and learn to trust each other is a challenge that will either deepen or destroy their love.
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Global politics become personal for two unlikely heroines. Alice Li, a first-generation Chinese-American, is an erstwhile food blogger who has lived in the shadow of her mother, Vivien Li. A Chinese dissident who escaped China after Tiananmen Square, Vivien is now a globally recognised human rights activist and passionate advocate for a free and democratic China.
\nWhen security and fire alarms go off simultaneously all around the world, setting off a panic, the signal is traced back to China. As world leaders scramble to respond, Vivien and Alice are called to the White House in hopes Madame Li can decode the Chinese intentions.
\nWhile it makes some sense that the President would turn to Vivien, since she regularly advises world leaders on the actions of today’s Chinese government, what isn’t clear is why they’d want to talk to Alice.
\nAfter looking at the evidence, Vivien says that the only thing worse than the Chinese government being behind it, is if they are not. It would mean, she explains, that some clandestine element within China is calling the shots. That the President of China has lost control. And an unstable China cannot be good for anyone.
\nOr perhaps that’s exactly what the shrewd old politician wants everyone to think.
\nCaught up in the chaos, Vivien and Alice are uniquely placed to stop the next, cataclysmic attack. But there are forces deep within both the American and Chinese governments intent on stopping mother and daughter. The estranged pair, who excels at misunderstanding each other, must figure out how to work together.
\nThe increasingly frantic search for answers takes the women from the Oval Office to an office building in Akron, Ohio, from the noodle shops of Hong Kong to the necropolis of the first emperor. Along the way they must decode an old legend, and an old language invented by women, for women.
\nThe Last Mandarin is an electrifying study of absolute power and voracious greed, political terror and personal conviction. But it is also, as to be expected from the minds of Louise Penny, beloved author of the Gamache novels, and Mellissa Fung, an acclaimed international journalist, an intimate examination of choice, of sacrifice, of memory and myths, both cultural and personal. It is the story of a mother and daughter, as well as a compelling international thriller about the precarious balance of power across the world, and within a family. And what happens when both break down.
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On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather for a family dinner with Armand’s godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. But the evening ends in horror when Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Armand is convinced is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on an elderly man’s life.
\nWhen a strange key is found in Stephen’s possession it sends Armand on a desperate search for the truth that will take him from the top of the Tour Eiffel, to the bowels of the Paris Archives.
\nAnd as Armand begins to uncover the secrets his godfather has kept hidden for decades, he finds himself ensnared in a web of lies and deceit that threatens to destroy everything - and everyone - he holds dear.
\nFor even the City of Light casts long shadows. And in that darkness devils hide . . .
Hidden deep in the wilderness are the cloisters of two dozen monks – men of prayer and music, famous the world over for their glorious voices. But a brutal death throws the monastery doors open to the world. And through them walks the only man who can shine light upon the dark deeds within: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.
\nWho among the brothers has become an angel of death? As the peace of the monastery crumbles around him, Gamache finds clues in the divine, the human . . . and the cracks in between.
The air is unbearably tense as Armand Gamache returns to the Sûreté du Québec for his first day of work since being demoted from its command to head of homicide.
\nAmid blistering personal social media attacks, Gamache sets out on his first assignment. He has been tasked with finding a missing woman, but while he leads the search for Vivienne Godin, Three Pines itself is threatened when the river breaks its banks, and a province-wide emergency is declared.
\nAs the waters rise, a body is discovered – and the victim’s distraught father contemplates a murder of his own. Gamache is a father himself, and is haunted by a question . . . what would he do, if his child’s killer might walk free?
Several weeks ago, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and his team uncovered and stopped a domestic terrorist attack in Montréal, arresting the person behind it. A man they called the Black Wolf.
\nBut their relief is short-lived. In a sickening turn of events, Gamache has realized that plot, as horrific as it was, was just the beginning. Perhaps even a deliberate misdirection. One he fell into. Something deeper and darker, more damaging, is planned. Did he in fact arrest the Black Wolf, or are they still out there? Armand is appalled to think his mistake has allowed their conspiracy to grow, to gather supporters. To spread lies, manufacture enemies, and feed hatred and division.
\nStill recovering from wounds received in stopping the first attack, Armand is confined to the village of Three Pines, leading a covert investigation from there. He must be careful not to let the Black Wolf know he has recognized his mistake. In a quiet church basement, he and his senior agents Beauvoir and Lacoste, pore over what little evidence they have. Two notebooks. A few mysterious numbers on a tattered map of Québec. And a phrase repeated by the person they had called the Grey Wolf. A warning . . .
\nIn a dry and parched land where there is no water.
\nGamache and his small team of supporters realize that for the Black Wolf to have gotten this far, they must have powerful allies, in law enforcement, in industry, in organized crime, in the halls of government.
\nFrom the apparent peace of his little village, Gamache finds himself playing a lethal game of cat and mouse with an invisible foe who is gathering forces and preparing to strike.
When Chief Inspector Gamache arrives in picturesque Three Pines, he steps into a village in chaos. A man has been found bludgeoned to death, and there is no sign of a weapon, a motive or even the dead man’s name.
\nAs Gamache and his colleagues start to dig under the skin of this peaceful haven for clues, they uncover a trail of stolen treasure, mysterious codes and a shameful history that begins to shed light on the victim’s identity - and points to a terrifying killer . . .
As Quebec City shivers in the grip of winter, its ancient stone walls cracking in the cold, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache plunges into the strangest case of his celebrated career.
\nA man has been brutally murdered in one of the city’s oldest buildings – a library where the English citizens of Quebec safeguard their history. And the death opens a door into the past, exposing a mystery that has lain dormant for centuries . . . a mystery Gamache must solve if he’s to catch a present-day killer.
It's Easter, and on a glorious Spring day in peaceful Three Pines, someone waits for night to fall. They plan to raise the dead . . .
\nWhen Chief Inspector Gamache of the Surete du Quebec arrives the next morning, he faces an unusual crime scene. A seance in an old abandoned house has gone horrifically wrong and someone has been seemingly frightened to death.
\nIn idyllic Three Pines, terrible secrets lie buried, and even Gamache has something to hide. One of his own team is about to betray him. But how far will they go to ensure Gamache's downfall?
Winter in Three Pines, and the sleepy village is carpeted in snow. It's a time of peace and goodwill - until a scream pierces the biting air. A spectator at the annual Boxing Day curling match has been fatally electrocuted. Despite the large crowd, there are no witnesses and - apparently - no clues.
\nChief Inspector Armand Gamache discovers a history of secrets and enemies in the dead woman's past. But he has enemies of his own, and as he is frozen out of decision-making in the Surete du Quebec, he has to decide who he can trust . . .
One cold November day, a mysterious figure appears on the village green in Three Pines, causing unease, alarm and confusion among everyone who sees it. Chief Superintendent, Armand Gamache knows something is seriously wrong, but all he can do is watch and wait, hoping his worst fears are not realised. But when the figure disappears and a dead body is discovered, it falls to Gamache to investigate.
\nIn the early days of the murder inquiry, and months later, as the trial for the accused begins, Gamache must face the consequences of his decisions, and his actions, from which there is no going back . . .
Former Chief Inspector Gamache has been hunting killers his entire career and as the new commander of the Sûreté Academy, he is given the chance to combat the corruption and brutality that has been rife throughout the force. But when a former colleague and professor of the Sûreté Academy is found murdered, with a mysterious map of Three Pines in his possession, Gamache has an even tougher task ahead of him.
\nWhen suspicion turns to Gamache himself, and his possible involvement in the crime, the frantic search for answers takes the investigation to the village of Three Pines, where a series of shattering secrets are poised to be revealed . . .
Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Though the tiny Québec village is impossible to find on any map, someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Sûreté, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick up, though he clearly knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning.
\nThat's only the first in a sequence of strange events.
\nA missing coat, an intruder alarm, a note for Gamache reading “this might interest you”, a puzzling scrap of paper with a mysterious list - and then a murder. All propel Chief Inspector Gamache and his team toward a terrible realisation. Something much more sinister than any one murder or any one case is fast approaching.
\nArmand Gamache, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his son-in-law and second in command, and Inspector Isabelle Lacoste can only trust each other, as old friends begin to act like enemies, and long-time enemies appear to be friends. Determined to track down the threat before it becomes a reality, their pursuit takes them across Québec and across borders. Their hunt grows increasingly desperate, even frantic, as the enormity of the creature they’re chasing becomes clear. If they fail the devastating consequences would reach into the largest of cities and the smallest of villages.
\nIncluding Three Pines.
On a cold November morning, a jogger runs through the woods in the peaceful Quebec village of Three Pines. On his run, he finds a dead man hanging from a tree.
The dead man was a guest at the local Inn and Spa. He might have been looking for peace and quiet, but something else found him. Something horrible.
Did the man take his own life? Or was he murdered? Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called to the crime scene. As Gamache follows the trail of clues, he opens a door into the past. And he learns the true reason why the man came to Three Pines.
This book is a quick and easy read for people on the go.
As a fierce, unrelenting winter grips Quebec, shadows are closing in on Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. When he receives a message about a mysterious case in Three Pines, he is compelled to investigate - a woman who was once one of the most famous people in the world has vanished.
\nThe investigation gathers momentum and Gamache is drawn into a web of murder, lies and unimaginable corruption at the heart of the city. Facing his most challenging, and personal, case to date, can he save the reputation of the Sûreté, those he holds dear and himself?
When Armand Gamache receives a letter inviting him to an abandoned farmhouse outside of Three Pines, the former head of the Sûreté du Québec discovers that a complete stranger has named him as an executor of her will. The bequests are so wildly unlikely that he suspects the woman must have been delusional - until a body is found.
\nBut it isn’t the only menace Gamache is facing. The investigation into the events that led to his suspension delves deeper, and he takes increasingly desperate measures to rectify previous actions. As he does, Gamache begins to see his own blind spots - and the terrible things hiding there . . .
Clara Morrow’s husband is missing. When he fails to come home on the first anniversary of their separation, as promised, Clara asks the only person she trusts to try and find him: former Chief Inspector of Homicide, Armand Gamache.
\nAs Gamache journeys further into the case, he is drawn deeper into the tortured mind of Peter Morrow, a man so desperate to recapture his fame as an artist that he would sell his soul. As Gamache gets closer to the truth, he uncovers a deadly trail of jealousy and deceit. Can Gamache bring Peter, and himself, home safely? Or in searching for answers, has he placed himself, and those closest to him, in terrible danger?
When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is asked to provide crowd control at a statistics lecture given at the Universite de l'Estrie in Quebec, he is dubious. Why ask the head of homicide to provide security for what sounds like a minor, even mundane lecture?
\nBut dangerous ideas about who deserves to live in order for society to thrive are rapidly gaining popularity, fuelled by the research of the eminent Professor Abigail Robinson. Yet for every person seduced by her theories there is another who is horrified by them. When a murder is committed days after the lecture, it's clear that within crowds can lie madness.
\nTo uncover the truth, Gamache must put his own feelings about the divisive Professor to one side. But with her ideas gaining ground, the line separating good and evil, right and wrong, is quickly blurring - especially when the case leads unexpectedly close to home . . .
Hardly a day goes by when nine-year-old Laurent Lepage doesn’t cry wolf. His boundless sense of adventure and vivid imagination mean he has a tendency to concoct stories so extraordinary and so far-fetched that no one can possibly believe him.
\nBut when Laurent disappears, former Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is faced with the possibility that one of his tall tales might have been true.
\nSo begins a frantic search for the boy and the truth. And what Gamache uncovers deep in the forest leads back to crimes of the past, betrayal and murder, with more sinister consequences than anyone could have possibly imagined . . .
aka The Murder Stone
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It’s the height of summer, and the wealthy Finney family have gathered at the Manoir Bellechasse to pay tribute to their late father. But as the temperature rises, old secrets and bitter rivalries begin to surface. When the heat wave boils over into a mighty storm, a dead body is left in its wake.
Chief Inspector Gamache, a guest at the Bellechasse, finds himself with a building full of suspects. With the hotel locked down, the murderer is trapped. But a cornered predator is always the most dangerous of all . . .
The discovery of a dead body in the woods on Thanksgiving Weekend brings Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his colleagues from the Surete du Quebec to a small village in the Eastern Townships. Gamache cannot understand why anyone would want to deliberately kill well-loved artist Jane Neal, especially any of the residents of Three Pines - a place so free from crime it doesn't even have its own police force.
\nBut Gamache knows that evil is lurking somewhere behind the white picket fences and that, if he watches closely enough, Three Pines will start to give up its dark secrets . . .
In the green depths of spring, morning breaks on a woman splayed in a bed of flowers - her eyes wide, her neck broken.
\nHer death is a mystery; so is the woman herself. But as Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team peer into the dark corners of the victim’s past, they expose a secret that rots at the very heart of their community - a secret that will implicate someone they’ve trusted for years. And as Gamache knows too well, in the flickering shadows of death, the truth may be just a trick of the light.
It's spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again. Not everything lying dormant should reemerge.
\nBut something has.
\nAs the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators' lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they've arrived in the village of Three Pines.
\nBut to what end?
\nGamache and Beauvoir's memories of that tragic case, the one that first brought them together, come rushing back. Did their mother's murder hurt them beyond repair? Have those terrible wounds, buried for decades, festered and are now about to erupt?
\nAs Chief Inspector Gamache works to uncover answers, his alarm grows when a letter written by a long dead stone mason is discovered. In it the man describes his terror when bricking up an attic room somewhere in the village. Every word of the 160-year-old letter is filled with dread. When the room is found, the villagers decide to open it up.
\nAs the bricks are removed, Gamache, Beauvoir and the villagers discover a world of curiosities. But the head of homicide soon realises there's more in that room than meets the eye. There are puzzles within puzzles, and hidden messages warning of mayhem and revenge.
\nIn unsealing that room, an old enemy is released into their world. Into their lives. And into the very heart of Armand Gamache's home.
On the eve of her sixty-first birthday, Elizabeth Harte decides to run away from home, where she is living with her daughter and son-in-law. Elizabeth has experienced deep trauma in her life, including, twenty-five years earlier, the abduction of her other daughter, five-year-old, Nina.
\nAs the novel opens, Elizabeth feels both trapped and lost. It’s this deep-seeded unhappiness which pushes her to leave her home to find her daughter, in order to reconcile her present with her past. After running away, she soon crosses path with a young autistic girl called April, and it’s this relationship, alongside Elizabeth’s determination to find her missing daughter, which forge an awakening within her.
\nMeanwhile, disgraced detective Nick is revisiting a series of cold cases for the Irish police. His father worked Nina’s case, back in the day, and came up empty-handed, and in despair, took his own life. Soon, young women start to go missing, resulting in a series of murders, with a pattern emerging.
\nWhen Elizabeth reaches out to Nick to discuss her daughter’s disappearance, he realises his cold cases are a crucial lead to stopping this killer from striking again.
Once upon a time, there was a writer named Fern. She was a bestseller. An award-winner. Loved by readers and critics alike. With her words, she changed the world.
\nUntil her story took a turn.
\nNow Fern is a cleaner in a hospital. Condemned to anonymity. Because reading books is now a crime. Only, Fern doesn't plan on going down without a fight. She'll keep writing, no matter the consequences. She will make her voice heard.
\nBecause Fern's story is only the beginning. But can you guess how it will end?
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Magpie Beach is a quiet seaside town - full of small-town prejudices and small-town cliques. Meg, Rosemary and Lily are all outsiders. Meg and Lily because they came to Magpie Beach to escape their former lives, Rosemary because her upbringing was the subject of much local gossip and upturned noses. The three women come together as friends, partly because their homes are so close together on the outskirts of town - and partly because their neighbours treat them with such suspicion.
\nWhen Jessie Else, all of 9 years old, goes missing - it’s easy to see why this small band of outcasts are first on the list of suspects - but what they didn't realise is that Jessie’s disappearance is only the beginning of their troubles. Soon all those secrets they’ve been trying to hide are going to be uncovered - and nothing will ever be the same again.
\n
Winter Robins is a happy enough child, growing up in the north of England, with parents who love her and the constant companion of a twin brother, but a cold wind blows through when her mother dies. Her father turns to the bottle, her grandmother struggles to cope, and she and her brother are sent to live in Western Australia with family their mother had never mentioned.
\nAlthough Winter quickly settles in Australia and comes to love her life and the people in it, she notices strange happenings in the shadows of her new home. When a news story prompts her to look back as her past, she begins to wonder whether things were as idyllic as she had thought at the time.
\nAs she uncovers secret after secret, she realises a much darker narrative may have been - and perhaps still is - playing out . . .
\n
Clea McAllister returns to the Newport haven of her childhood, a gilded mansion by the sea once owned by her beloved grandmother. Now she is a paying guest at her own ancestral home, and Clea’s vacation hides a darker intention: to confront the estate lawyer who stole her rightful inheritance. But wicked games are still being played at Belle Mer, and Clea uncovers more than she ever intended.
Oli Parish is numb after the death of her sister Eloise. She was her other half who went missing one day and was later found buried in the woods. And the killer? He's still on the loose. This should scare Oli but nothing gets in the way of her visiting the site in the woods where her sister's body was discovered. Oli can sense Eloise's spirit there.
\nBut on one of her visits, Oli hears a voice calling for help and then she sees a hand clawing its way through the dirt. But this is no ghost - it's a young girl named Iris. She has no memory of what happened to her and how she ended up in the same shallow grave as Eloise. But Oli knows that Iris must in some way be connected to her sister's murder. Together, the two girls team up to try to help Iris recover her memory and unravel the mystery of who is behind the crimes.
\nTheir detective work leads them all around Oli's seemingly idyllic small town - and to her shock, to a classmate of hers named Harry, who may or may not be looking for a desperate way to help his ailing sister . . . and at the expense of other girls.
\n
Years ago, Beth Lathrop and her sister Kate suffered what they thought would be the worst tragedy of their lives the night both the famous painting Moonlight and their mother were taken. The detective assigned to the case, Conor Reid, swore to protect the sisters from then on.
Beth moved on, throwing herself fully into the art world, running the family gallery, and raising a beautiful daughter with her husband Pete. Kate, instead, retreated into herself and took to the skies as a pilot, always on the run. When Beth is found strangled in her home, and Moonlight goes missing again, Detective Reid can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu.
Reid immediately suspects Beth’s husband, whose affair is a poorly kept secret. He has an airtight alibi - but he also has a motive, and the evidence seems to point to him. Kate and Reid, along with the sisters’ closest childhood friends, struggle to make sense of Beth’s death, but they only find more questions: Who else would have wanted Beth dead? What’s the significance of Moonlight?
Twenty years ago, Reid vowed to protect Beth and Kate - and he’s failed. Now solving the case is turning into an obsession . . .
After artist Claire Beaudry Chase is attacked and left for dead in her home on the Connecticut coast, she doesn’t know who she can trust. But her well-connected husband, Griffin - who is running for governor - is her prime suspect.
Just before the attack, Claire was preparing for an exhibit of her shadow boxes, one of which clearly accuses Griffin of a violent crime committed twenty-five years ago. If the public were to find out who her husband is, his political career would be over. Claire’s certain her husband and his powerful supporters would kill her to stop the truth from getting out.
When one of Claire’s acquaintances is murdered, the authorities suspect the homicide is linked to the attack on Claire. As the dual investigations unfold, Claire must decide how much she’s willing to lose to take down her husband and the corrupt group of elites who will do anything to protect Griffin’s interests and their own.
Austin, It’s the summer of 1998, and there’s a new face on the scene at Terry Tucker’s Boxing Gym. Sixteen-year-old Nathaniel Rothstein has never felt comfortable in his own skin, but under the tutelage of a swaggering, Haitian-born ex-fighter named David Dalice, he begins to come into his own. Even the boy’s slightly-stoned uncle, Bob Alexander, who is supposed to be watching him for the summer, notices the change. Nathaniel is happier, more confident - tanner, even. Then one night he vanishes, leaving little trace behind.
\nAcross the city, Charles Rex, now going simply by “X,” has been undergoing a teenage transformation of his own, trolling the phone sex hotline that his mother works, seeking an outlet for everything that feels wrong about his body, looking for intimacy and acceptance in a culture that denies him both. As a surprising and unlikely romance blooms, X feels, for a moment, like he might have found the safety he’s been searching for. But it's never that simple.
\nMore than a decade later, Nathaniel’s uncle Bob receives a shocking tip, propelling him to open his own investigation into his nephew’s disappearance. The resulting search involves gymgoers past and present, including a down-on-his-luck twin and his opportunistic brother; a rookie cop determined to prove herself; and Alexis Cepeda, a promising lightweight, who crossed the US-Mexico border when he was only fourteen, carrying with him a license bearing the wrong name and face.
\nBobbing and weaving across the ever-shifting canvas of a changing country, The Slip is an audacious, daring look at sex and race in America that builds to an unforgettable collision in the center of the ring.
Lucinda Berry serves up a haunting thriller about four friends sworn to secrecy over the events of one fateful summer - and the dark truths that threaten to erupt years later.
\nThey never considered how his wife might react, or that by the end of the summer a man would be dead. But Blakely always got her way, and the others followed her lead - even when they knew it was dead wrong.
\nThe girls had been friends from day one at Camp Pendleton, a haven for gifted children. But their senior summer was different. When Mr. Crosby, the handsome tennis coach, wound up murdered after a reckless lie, Blakely, Grace, Meg, and Thera swore themselves to secrecy. And never spoke to each other again.
\nUntil now. Twenty years later a sinister note claiming to know what they did brings them back together. And once again Blakely is pulling the strings.
\nUnfolding in a dual timeline, If You Tell a Lie is a disturbing journey into the dangerous, sometimes deadly consequences of peer pressure - with a bone-chilling twist you’ll never see coming.
\n
When Kiersten McCann, president of the West Hollywood Moms’ Club, turns up dead in her own pool, it quickly becomes clear this wasn’t an accident. And the party guests - all members of the exclusive club - are now key suspects in her murder.
\nAccusations fly, and three mothers find themselves at the center of the investigation. Whitney, Brooke, and Jade all have heavy secrets to bear . . . and possible motives for their friend’s murder. But as the police look closer, more secrets, betrayals, and sinister plots are revealed than the women could ever imagine.
\nWith everything at stake, deceit threatens to shatter their illusions of the perfect life. West Hollywood will never be the same.
\n
Therapist turned stay-at-home mom Jules Hart’s idyllic suburban life shatters when she crashes her car into an icy lake. Her son and another teenage boy plunge into the water with her, but Jules can only manage to save one - the wrong one.
\nReeling from the death of her son, Jules spirals into a violent and unstable mental state. Ten months after the accident, she’s still trying to reckon with the fact that she rescued Isaac Greer, another woman’s child, when Isaac suddenly vanishes.
\nJules finds herself at the center of a massive police investigation. While she harbors her own dangerous secrets, Jules is adamant that she didn’t take Isaac. But then who did? Is Isaac the victim of a dangerous killer who’s been targeting boys in the Midwest? Or is someone else pulling the strings in this deadly game?
\n
Felicia, a single mother and lawyer by day, volunteers at a local crisis center to give back to her tightknit community in a small Wisconsin town. One night, she answers a horrifying call: through tears, a frantic teenage girl tells her that she was a victim of sexual assault at a local house party.
\nFelicia is shocked, and breaking protocol, she begins communicating with the girl on her own, determined to keep her safe and hold her assailants accountable. But as she gets closer and closer to the truth, she can’t shake the feeling that she and the girl are connected by more than the phone call. As the girl shares more details, Felicia begins to think the unthinkable - someone close to her may be involved in this heinous crime.
\nAs Felicia earns the girl’s trust and more facts emerge about the incident, she faces a gut-wrenching battle between her protective instincts and the moral responsibility to do what’s right.
\n
Christopher and Hannah are a happily married surgeon and nurse with picture-perfect lives. All that’s missing is a child. When Janie, an abandoned six-year-old, turns up at their hospital, Christopher forms an instant connection with her, and he convinces Hannah they should take her home as their own.
But Janie is no ordinary child, and her damaged psyche proves to be more than her new parents were expecting. Janie is fiercely devoted to Christopher, but she acts out in increasingly disturbing ways, directing all her rage at Hannah. Unable to bond with Janie, Hannah is drowning under the pressure, and Christopher refuses to see Janie’s true nature.
Hannah knows that Janie is manipulating Christopher and isolating him from her, despite Hannah’s attempts to bring them all together. But as Janie’s behavior threatens to tear Christopher and Hannah apart, the truth behind Janie’s past may be enough to push them all over the edge.
Emily and Elizabeth spend their childhood locked in a bedroom and terrorized by a mother who drinks too much and disappears for days. The identical twins are rescued by a family determined to be their saviors.
But there’s some horrors love can’t erase . . .
Elizabeth wakes in a hospital, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak. The last thing she remembers is finding Emily’s body in their bathroom. Days before, she was falling in love and starting college. Now, she’s surrounded by men who talk to themselves and women who pull out their eyebrows.
As she delves deeper into the mystery surrounding Emily’s death, she discovers shocking secrets and holes in her memory that force her to remember what she’s worked so hard to forget - the beatings, the blood, the special friends. Her life spins out of control at a terrifying speed as she desperately tries to unravel the psychological puzzle of her past before it’s too late.
Meet Noah - an A-honor roll student, award-winning swimmer, and small-town star destined for greatness. There weren’t any signs that something was wrong until the day he confesses to molesting little girls during swim team practice. He’s sentenced to eighteen months in a juvenile sexual rehabilitation center.
His mother, Adrianne, refuses to turn her back on him despite his horrific crimes, but her husband won’t allow Noah back into their home. In a series of shocking and shattering revelations, Adrianne is forced to make the hardest decision of her life. Just how far will she go to protect her son?
Foster sisters Krystal and Nichole have always been there for each other, so when Nichole is committed to a psychiatric hospital after trying to kill her husband, Krystal drops everything to defend her.
\nScarred by a hard upbringing, Nichole and Krystal managed to construct comfortable lives for themselves. Krystal became a respected lawyer, and Nichole was happily married to an architect - until Nichole starts raving that her husband isn’t her husband, believing that he’s an imposter.
\nDriven by fierce loyalty, Krystal starts asking questions, but she’s not sure she can bear the answers. Her investigation leads to the sisters’ dark shared past . . . to a horrible tragedy and a well-guarded lie that cemented their sisterly bond.
\nBut that lie can’t kill the truth - the battered, gasping, clawing truth that’s coming for them both. Now Krystal and Nichole must both fight for the lives they’ve built before they’re consumed by the one they left behind.
\n
On a humid summer day in Alabama, a mayor’s wife turns up brutally murdered under a railroad bridge. Standing next to her body is fourteen-year-old Mason Hill, the autistic son of former Miss USA Genevieve Hill. The locals are quick to level their verdict on young Mason: he did it.
\nThe town detective calls in local autism expert Casey Walker to consult on the case. At first, Casey tries to keep an open mind. But the more time she spends with Genevieve, the more her unease grows, and she suspects that Genevieve is doing more than just protecting her son.
\nCasey’s misgivings surrounding Genevieve’s story only intensify when she meets Savannah, Genevieve’s nineteen-year-old daughter. Savannah, as it turns out, has some disturbing secrets of her own. But as Casey dives ever deeper into the Hill family dynamic, her search for the truth leads to another shocking murder - one that shatters her understanding of the human condition in ways she never imagined.
\n
Between the blood of gods and monsters, I am both killer and healer. The Darkhavens were once my obstacle. Now, they may be the only safe haven I have left.
\nThe Gods are lying to us all.
\nThey are not Gods at all, but creatures that came from another world to rule over ours. Through blood, death, and pain, I will uncover what they have hidden from us and I will reveal their secrets. I am Kiera Nezerac of the Hinterlands, daughter of the Divine. Assassin of the Underworld. And I am not leaving this world without the truth.
\n
My closest friend has lost his mind.He killed my father.Took over my Kingdom,And despite the blood that now stains his hands . . . he claims that we’re fated to be together.
\nMy salvation comes from the most unlikely of sources.To reclaim my throne I’ll have to rely on the one man I’ve hated my entire life for survival.Solomon Winett is the noble descendant of barbarian warriors and the bane of my existence. He’s obnoxious, stubborn, and the only one who rescued me from a fate worse than death.I just need to remember one once the line between hatred and passion has been crossed . . . there is no going back.
\n
Born as the daughter of the Saintess Queen, now my hands are soaked in blood.
\nI am a killer.
I am Awakened.
I am a Queen without a throne.
Against the wishes of my escort guard, Solomon, I must seek the aid from the kingdom of my betrayer. As the connection between Solomon and I soars to new heights, one thing is becoming incredibly clear . . .
\nMy newfound abilities have brought with them secrets.
\nDreams torment me, and I am lost to understand what they mean . . . and why the image of my Goddess’s lover looks like Solomon.
\nA mad prince, a lost friend, mortal enemies . . . I have to find a way to save my country and my sanity.
\n
Weapons are not born, they’re made. And a weapon, I have become.
\nI am the scythe that will cleave the Gods’ traitorous heads from their not-so-Divine bodies.
\nForced to the dangerous Ortus Island and the very first Mortal Gods Academy, I know that time is running out for both me and the Darkhavens.
\nIf we can’t figure out what the Gods are planning and how to stop them, it’s no longer just our lives on the line. It’s the lives of every Mortal God in existence.
\nIn the world of the Gods, there is only one truth.
\nTrust no one. Not even your blood.
\n
I am not a chosen of the Gods, but a bloody tragedy of their choices. I have endured worse than the Darkhavens. Torture. Pain. Manipulation. There is nothing anyone can do to me that I have not already done to myself. Ruen’s betrayal will not break me. Despite the punishment I receive, my goal remains the same.
\nFind the target. Terminate them. Free myself from the Underworld Assassination Guild.
\nIt doesn’t matter if I let a single night of weakness bind me to one of them. I can’t let it matter. They’re all guilty in my eyes. Before I am done, they will learn I am more. I am the kiss of death.
\n
The Gods split the skies and rained down tyranny upon the mortal realm long ago. Ever since then, the only thing worse than being human is being of Divine Blood.<br><br>
\nFor someone like me - an undocumented God child, indebted to the Underworld Assassination Guild - that means only one thing: A life in the shadows.
\nOr so it should have been . . . until Mortal Gods Academy. Until them.
\nThe Darkhaven Brothers are truly the worst of all the Gods’ spawn. Arrogant. Wicked. Violent.
\nTo them, I’m nothing more than a human plaything meant for torment. For me . . . they’re the path and the key to my freedom.
\nBut if any of them find out who I am, what I am . . . even the shadows won’t be able to save me.
\n
Betrayed by Bartoli and the man that was once supposed to be my King consort, I now realize that I never needed another’s power. All I need is my Kingdom, for which I will return.
\nAerea, the Goddess of fire, lives in my veins.
I am Awakened.
I am angry.
With my newfound abilities and my Blood General at my side, nothing else matters.
\nI am the rightful Queen of Rozentine and I will take my throne back.
\nThe time for peace is over.
The only path left is revenge.
If Nasir thinks he can keep my Kingdom hostage, he’ll learn that an Awakened Queen is a death sentence.
\n
In the disunited states, no person of color - especially not a girl whose body reimagines flight - is safe. A quest for Freedom has brought former Muleseed Jellybean “Ji-ji” Silapu to D.C., aka Dream City, the site of monuments and memorials - where, long ago, the most famous Dreamer of all time marched for the same cause.
\nAs Ji-ji struggles to come to terms with her shocking metamorphosis and her friends, Tiro and Afarra, battle formidable ghosts of their own, the former U.S. capital decides whose dreams it wants to invest in and whose dreams it will defer. The journeys the three friends take to liberate themselves and others will not simply defy the status quo, they will challenge the nature of reality itself.
\n
In the aftermath of a cataclysmic civil war known as the Sequel, ideological divisions among the states have hardened. In the Homestead Territories, an alliance of plantation-inspired holdings, Black labor is imported from the Cradle, and Biracial “Muleseeds” are bred.
\nRaised in captivity on Planting 437, kitchen-seed Jellybean “Ji-ji” Lottermule knows there is only one way to escape. She must enter the annual Freedom Race as a runner.
\nJi-ji and her friends must exhume a survival story rooted in the collective memory of a kidnapped people and conjure the voices of the dead to light their way home.
\n
Lou McCallister owns Howl, the only surviving queer bar in Boston. When an investment opportunity to save the floundering bar is inadvertently sabotaged by Clementine Darby, Howl’s newest employee, Lou is ready to give up.
\nNow Clem will do anything she can to make it right and keep Howl alive, but will she be able to save the bar in time? This sapphic Coyote Ugly reimagining brings the funny and the feels.
\n
You wake on a beautiful, remote island.
\nSparkling blue seas, golden sunsets, barely a footprint in the sand.
\nYet this is no ordinary escape.
\nNext to the wreck of a plane, a stranger paces. Another sharpens a knife, scoring a list of the dead onto a palm tree. Others watch from the shadows of a campfire - all with untold stories, and closely-guarded secrets . . .
\n
Maggie, Liz, Helena & Joni. Old friends bound by history, adventures, old secrets.
\nAnd now, bound by murder.
\nThey lace up their hiking boots for the adventure of a lifetime in the Norwegian wilderness: a place of towering mountains, glass-like lakes, log cabins and forests stolen from a fairytale.
\nIt’s the perfect place to lose yourself - until a broken body is found at the bottom of a ravine.
\nSomewhere out there, someone knows exactly why a woman has died. And in this deep, dark wilderness, there’s a killer on the trail . . .
\n
Seven years ago, two boys went missing at sea - and only one was brought to shore. The Sandbank, a remote stretch of coast dotted with beach huts, was scarred forever.
\nSarah’s son survived, but on the anniversary of the accident, he disappears without trace. As new secrets begin to surface, The Sandbank hums with tension and unanswered questions. Sarah’s search grows more desperate and she starts to mistrust everyone she knows - and she’s right to.
\nSomeone saw everything on that fateful day seven years ago. And they’ll do anything to keep the truth buried.
\n
It was supposed to be the perfect weekend away. Six very different women travel to a sun-soaked Greek island for a bachelorette trip, to celebrate Lexi’s upcoming wedding. From the glorious ocean views to the quaint tavernas and whitewashed streets, the vacation seems too good to be true.
\nBut dangerous undercurrents run beneath the sunset swims and midnight cocktails - because each of the women is hiding a secret. Someone is determined to make sure that Lexi’s marriage never happens - and that one of them doesn’t leave the island alive.
\n
High on the wave-pounded cliffs, far from the bustling souks of Marrakech, sits The Surf House. A hidden gem on Morocco’s shores, the house is a sanctuary for the surfers, travellers and dreamers who wash in.
\nBut the idyll is built on something rotten. And when Bea arrives, relieved to find refuge after a dangerous encounter in a Marrakech alleyway, she soon gets caught in the swell of a deep, dark mystery.
\nBecause another young woman went missing one year ago - and the last place she was sighted was The Surf House.
\n
On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.
But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.
And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?
During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands - the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves.
They arrive on December 30th, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.
Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead.
The trip began innocently enough: admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery, champagne in front of a crackling fire, and reminiscences about the past. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps.
Now one of them is dead . . . and another of them did it.
Keep your friends close, the old adage goes. But just how close is too close?
It’s the opening night of The Manor, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. The infinity pool sparkles; crystal pouches for guests’ healing have been placed in the Seaside Cottages and Woodland Hutches; the “Manor Mule” cocktail (grapefruit, ginger, vodka, and a dash of CBD oil) is being poured with a heavy hand. Everyone is wearing linen.
\nBut under the burning midsummer sun, darkness stirs. Old friends and enemies circulate among the guests. Just outside the Manor’s immaculately kept grounds, an ancient forest bristles with secrets. And the Sunday morning of opening weekend, the local police are called. Something’s not right with the guests. There’s been a fire. A body’s been discovered.
\n
Jess needs a fresh start. She’s broke and alone, and she’s just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn’t sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn’t say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up - to find a very nice apartment, could Ben really have afforded this? - he’s not there.
\nThe longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother’s situation, and the more questions she has. Ben’s neighbors are an eclectic bunch, and not particularly friendly. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it’s starting to look like it’s Ben’s future that’s in question.
\nThe socialite - The nice guy - The alcoholic - The girl on the verge - The concierge.
\nEveryone’s a neighbor. Everyone’s a suspect. And everyone knows something they’re not telling.
\n
The year is 1920. The place is a remote farmhouse in Provence, home to the reclusive painter Edouard Tartuffe and his niece, Ettie. Into this strange, silent house walks a young journalist hoping to write an article about Tartuffe. But the more he entangles himself in the peculiar household, the more Joseph's curiosity grows . . .
\nEttie cooks and cleans for her uncle. She prepares his studio, scrubs his paintbrushes, and creates the perfect environment for him to work. She has never gone further than the local village. She is sharp-eyed and watchful. But beneath her cool exterior, Joseph senses something simmering. Ettie, Joseph and Tartuffe circle each other throughout the hot, crackling summer, until finally they collide.
\nThe Artist is about two people grabbing the other by the hand and pulling each other into life.
\n
During a scorching summer in 1920s Provence, a young journalist, Joseph Adelaide, turns up at the farmhouse of reclusive artist Edouard Tartuffe, hoping to write an article about him. There, he meets Ettie, Tartuffe’s niece, who appears to do everything for her uncle - from cooking and cleaning to catering to his maniacal moods. Joseph is beguiled by where he finds himself, not just by this foreign place or Tartuffe himself, but by Ettie, who watches everything so quietly from the periphery. Both Joseph and Ettie carry scars from their pasts and it’s as they get to know each other that they start to lay bare those scars to themselves and to each other.
\nAs the summer wears on, and as new ideas and passions are explored, Joseph, Ettie, and Tartuffe are propelled toward a finale that reveals long-held secrets and sets the world on fire.
The former head of the Pentagon program responsible for the investigation of UFOs - now known as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) - reveals long-hidden truths with profound implications for not only national security but our understanding of the universe.
\nLuis “Lue” Elizondo is a former senior intelligence official and special agent who was recruited into a strange and highly sensitive US government program to investigate UAP incursions into sensitive military installations and air space.
\nTo accomplish his mission, Elizondo had to rely on decades of experience gained working some of America’s most sensitive and classified programs. Even then, he was not prepared for what he would learn, and the truth about the government’s long shadowy involvement in UAP investigations, and the lengths officials would take to keep them a secret.
\nThe stakes could not be higher. Imminent is a first-hand, revelatory account inside the Pentagon’s most closely guarded secret and a call to action to confront humanity’s greatest existential questions.
\n
The name's Fetch Phillips - what do you need?
Cover a Gnome with a crossbow while he does a dodgy deal? Sure.
Find out who killed Lance Niles, the big-shot businessman who just arrived in town? I'll give it shot.
Help an old-lady Elf track down her husband's murderer? That's right up my alley.
What I don't do, because it's impossible, is search for a way to bring the goddamn magic back.
Rumors got out about what happened with the Professor, so now people keep asking me to fix the world.
But there's no magic in this story. Just dead friends, twisted miracles, and a secret machine made to deliver a single shot of murder.
Welcome to Sunder City. The magic is gone but the monsters remain.I'm Fetch Phillips, just like it says on the window. There are a few things you should know before you hire me:
\n1. Sobriety costs extra.
2. My services are confidential.
3. I don't work for humans.
It's nothing personal - I'm human myself. But after what happened, to the magic, it's not the humans who need my help. Walk the streets of Sunder City and meet Fetch, his magical clients, and a darkly imagined world
In a city that lost its magic, an angel falls in a downtown street. His wings are feathered, whole - undeniably magical - the man clearly flew, because he left one hell of a mess when he plummeted into the sidewalk.
\nBut what sent him up? What brought him down? And will the answers help Fetch bring the magic back for good?
\nWorking alongside necromancers, genies, and shadowy secret societies, through the wildest forests and dingiest dive bars, this case will leave its mark on Fetch's body, his soul, and the fate of the world.
Once a detective, all he wants now is to run his café in peace. Sunder City is still recovering from the sudden and violent end of magic, and if one man can't solve all its problems, he can at least stop some people going hungry.
\nBut when a kid on the run shelters in Fetch's café, and a chain of gruesome murders begins among Sunder's high and mighty, trouble is brought to Fetch's door.
\nThere's a word whispered on the wind, and that word is revolution . . .
Retail worker Emmett Truesdale has never fit the Southern California mold of six-pack, suntanned masculinity. Over three hundred pounds, he carries the weight of his childhood trauma and millennial ennui around his waist and in his soul. After trying every diet under the sun, he remains stuck - in his dead-end job, in love, and in his body.
\nDesperate for help, he enrolls in a clinical trial for a new weight loss product called Obexity. The treatment is as horrifying as the results are miraculous and as Emmett sheds pounds at superhuman speed, every part of his life improves overnight.
\nUnfortunately, Obexity comes with some killer side effects, including lost stretches of time and overwhelming cravings. Worse, people who were cruel to him have started disappearing and when the police warn of a cannibalistic killer on the loose, he fears that Obexity is turning him into a monster. But how can he give it up now that people are finally starting to treat him like he’s human?
\n
A storm batters the seaside town of Lagunes Bay, unleashing a king tide across the wintry beach. As the water recedes, it reveals a long-buried secret: a body, framed and exposed in the sand.
\nWhen the body is identified as a young woman who vanished years ago - with little effort ever made to find her - the entire community comes under suspicion. How did she meet such a gruesome end? What did those closest to her know? Was Tate, the town's golden boy, her final boyfriend? And why has the return of an Anglican priest and his daughter left everyone so tense?
\nThis isn't the first disappearance to rock this small town, but the local families aren't giving much away. As Detective Harper Lewis investigates this insular world, the mystery deepens with every uncovered clue. In Lagunes Bay, everyone has something to hide and every shadow tells a story.
An out-of-work actor accepts the role of a lifetime - sitting soundlessly in a lecture theater, zipped into a large leather bag - to aid a professor’s psychological experiment. What could possibly go wrong?
\nIn Luke Kennard’s audacious new novel, a penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr. Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr. Blend’s students react to someone zipped into an oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of Fall lectures? The role, eagerly accepted, soon has unexpected consequences. A professor of post-humanism develops research questions of her own - in particular, can you love someone secreted away inside a black bag? - and the actor’s childhood friend forms a vision for monetizing this new situation . . .
\nA warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity, and an off-kilter love story, Black Bag is a firework of a blazingly funny and profoundly humane.
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What do you do with a generation who’ve had everything, but still can’t grow up?
\nPerhaps this is you. Perhaps you still owe your student loan, and make jokes about how you’ll never pay it back, so it’s easy to ignore. We know. Perhaps you spend more than you earn. Perhaps you still live with your parents. We know. Perhaps those ignored bills and reminders have become threats and court summonses. We know, and we can help.
\nWelcome to The Transition.
\nWhile taking part in The Transition you and your partner will spend six months living under the supervision of your mentors, two successful adults of a slightly older generation. Freed from your financial responsibilities, you will be coached through the key areas of the scheme Employment, Nutrition, Responsibility, Relationship, Finances and Self-Respect until you are ready to be reintegrated into adult society.
\nAt the end of your six months who knows what discoveries you’ll have made about yourself? The friends’ you no longer need. The talents you’ll have found time to nurture. The business you might have kick-started.
\nWho knows where you’ll be?
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Professional treasure hunter EDEN BLACK is no stranger to action. After all, the artifacts she spends her life returning to their rightful owners aren’t always easy to access.
\nWhen Eden’s father dies in a plane crash, her life’s turned upside down. Grief turns to fear when she learns that it wasn't an accident. Everyone involved in an archaeological dig twenty years ago has met with a similar untimely end. Everyone that is, but Eden who was ten at the time.
\nWhen her father’s house is raided and burned to the ground, Eden’s forced into action. To learn the truth about her father’s death and save herself from sharing his fate, Eden must uncover the manuscript and expose its secrets once and for all.
\nBut this time the world is watching, and not everyone is on her side.
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When an orb is discovered in the ruins of an ancient Mexican city, archaeologists around the world start to speculate. The orb’s strange markings point to a civilisation even older than the city itself - could this be the lost city of Atlantis?
\nBefore the orb can be analysed, it and the team of archaeologists responsible for its discovery vanish without a trace.
\nEnter Eden Black.
\nDetermined to uncover the truth and rescue her colleagues, Eden and her team embark on a dangerous mission to unravel the mysteries of the orb.
\nBut they soon discover that they are not alone in their quest. Powerful and dangerous forces are determined to keep the secrets of the orb hidden forever, and they will stop at nothing to ensure that Eden fails.
\nFighting to stay one step ahead, Eden and her crew are drawn into a thrilling race against time. Will they be able to uncover the secrets of the orb before it's too late, or will Atlantis remain forever lost to the world?
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When an undiscovered temple emerges from the waters of a drought-stricken lake, the world of archaeology starts to pay attention.
\nOn the discovery of a set of hieroglyphs suggesting the location of an ancient power source so abundant it could boil the world’s oceans dry, a lot more people start to listen.
\nEnter Eden Black.
\nWith forest fires, droughts, and famine worldwide, Eden and her band of unlikely heroes must move quickly to make sure this lifeline for humankind doesn’t become another asset for the super-rich.
\nFrom Lake Nasser to the labyrinthine tunnels beneath The Giza Plateau, Eden will find herself trapped in the crosshairs of a tycoon on the make, an enigmatic secret society, and a foe who’s closer to home than she could ever imagine.
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Deep within Cambodia's Angkor Wat, a millennia-old secret is waiting to be unleashed - one powerful enough to build empires and now poised to destroy the world.
\nThe Lotus Key, a long-lost relic with the ability to control millions of minds, has resurfaced. As dark forces converge, its promise of absolute peace comes with an unthinkable cost: the death of free will itself.
\nEden Black and her team are thrust into a deadly race across the treacherous Cambodian jungle, battling Khmer Rouge minefields, ancient traps, and ruthless mercenaries, all to stop the Lotus Key from falling into the wrong hands.
\nBut as Eden uncovers the truth behind the artifact, she faces a devastating moral dilemma: Can humanity’s freedom survive the allure of perfect control?
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On April 15, 1912, the \"unsinkable\" Titanic went down, taking 1,500 souls with it. But what if that sinking was no accident?
\nCut to the present: Senator Everett Van Wick survives an assassination attempt, thanks to a small-town doctor. But now, the doctor knows too much and becomes the target himself.
\nCue Eden Black. What starts as a simple rescue soon becomes a high-stakes conspiracy led by the senator’s reclusive father. But, when Eden learns that a relic in the bowels of the stricken ocean liner holds a clue to the Van Wick’s shady success, she knows there’s only one thing to do.
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Medea possesses both witchcraft and cunning, yet she endures a lonely and constrained life under the rule of her wicked father, Aeetes. When the hero Jason arrives, they strike a deal: If Medea helps him win her father’s Golden Fleece, Jason will marry her and take her with him back to Greece. But as the journey unfolds, Medea is forced to choose between the life she expected and the love she secretly desires - and the cost may be greater than she ever imagined.
\nAtalanta, raised by bears, is a capable warrior caught between the wilderness and the human world but never fully part of either. After the sudden disappearance of the woman she loves, Atalanta joins Jason’s Argonauts in an attempt to find her. But when Medea becomes part of the crew, the sorceress awakens something in Atalanta that she cannot ignore.
\nJason, a skilled diplomat but a reluctant warrior, depends on his heroic companions to help him claim the Golden Fleece and retake the stolen throne of his father. Medea and Atalanta are among his most useful allies, but Jason soon finds that success may demand more than he can give.
\nBursting with mythological references and cameos, Luna McNamara’s The Witch and the Huntress is a daring, enchanting story about two singular women in search of love, power, and redemption, set against a backdrop of epic quests and meddling gods.
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The threads of fate pull Iona to Lysander College, an illustrious school for aristocratic witches of great renown. Though Iona is only a novice witch with no ancestral claim to old magic, her anomalous power garners the unwanted attention of imperious witches in her class.
\nAriadne is her family’s one hope of maintaining their noble status in high society. When Iona arrives at college under mysterious circumstances, wielding magic that somehow rivals Ariadne’s, she makes it her vendetta to put Iona in her place.
\nWithin the pendant's shimmering stones lies indomitable power, which can only be claimed by the witch who wins Morgan’s arcane trials in Spring. Ariadne must claim the pendant for her family or face the consequences should she fail. Ariadne will not let Iona steal her victory, though she might steal her heart.
Now imbued with bountiful magic, she is given a unique opportunity to reform the corrupt hierarchy she’s come to despise, but the great covens cling to tradition and threaten to hinder her benefaction. She must learn to control her power and fulfill the daunting expectations of others, or risk losing everything she holds dear.
\nA part of her always knew her family would not let her go so easily, despite their threats of exile. When long hidden ancestral secrets are revealed, her very perception of freedom is indelibly altered. Grievances must be set aside when faced with a common enemy, a reckoning beyond her worst nightmares.
\nMorgan Le Faye’s pendant signifies Iona as an imminent leader of her people, but after only a single year of study, she's left woefully disadvantaged in her efforts to preserve peace. Ariadne seeks to help her, vows to protect her, but when fate itself seems to turn against them, their arduous circumstances become a formidable strain on their eternal bond. Allegiances are tested, mysteries are unraveled, and time is swiftly running out.
After a childhood spent combing the dive bars of Sarsaparilla Falls to collect her fun-loving momma, Cordelia West now enjoys a simple, respectable life in Dallas. Then one phone call from the hometown she’s spent years trying to forget throws it into chaos.
\nCordelia's great-aunt Penelope has passed away, naming Cordelia the sole heir to the Chickadee Motel. She has no memory of a great-aunt and no interest in hospitality, but the will stipulates that the motel can’t be sold until its residents leave or pass away – so she reluctantly heads back down to Sarsaparilla Falls to figure out who's living in the Chickadee, and how to get them out.
\nBut upon her arrival, Cordelia discovers the Chickadee isn’t a motel—it’s a brothel, housing three women in their sixties known as the Chicks. For decades, Daisy, Arline, and Belinda Sue have entertained the men of Sarsaparilla Falls (with their wives’ blessings) - including the upright Pastor Reed-Smythe, who thunders against the town’s favorite sins when he’s not indulging. Cordelia doesn’t want to be a hotel manager or a madam, but she can’t just sell the only home the Chicks have known - especially not after the pastor is found poisoned in Daisy’s bed.
\nWith the Chicks - and the town - on the verge of a breakdown, Cordelia steps up to mop up the mess. For a small town, there are plenty of could it be the obsessed nurse with access to arsenic? Developers eager to gobble up the land? The righteously angry town librarian? Things are heating up in Sarsaparilla Falls, and with the Pastor’s obnoxiously attractive son Archer - Cordelia’s childhood nemesis - investigating the Chicks and getting close, straightlaced Cordelia may just have to get a little dirty to make a killer come clean.
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In Taiwan, the bond between grandmother and granddaughter opens up a healing world for them both in an inspiring family saga about the comfort of food, untold histories, and indomitable mother love.
\nChef Liv Kuo’s star is on the rise . . . until a traumatic incident leaves her emotionally unable to venture outside her Manhattan apartment. But an unexpected reason to break free comes from Ah-Ma, Liv’s beloved grandmother in Taiwan. Ah-Ma needs Liv’s help in finding her fourth daughter, taken from her when the girl was an infant. After all these years, it seems impossible. It’s also a Ah-Ma’s fourth daughter is an aunt Liv never even knew existed.
\nAfter landing in Taiwan, Liv hears the heartbreaking story of her grandmother’s plight in a country once under martial law, of choices made for her, and of the hopeful search for a lost girl that has endured for more than sixty years. Like the enriching food and traditions that bind Liv and Ah-Ma, their journey for answers brings them together.
\nAnd it’s a quest that turns up both a precious old cookbook and a tale of fatal betrayal that shakes everything Liv believed about her family - revelations that could also give her the courage to face the trauma she left behind.
Two days before Tam and Tony Kwan receive their letter of acceptance for the son they are adopting from China, Tony and his estranged cousin Mia are killed unexpectedly in an accident. A shell-shocked Tam learns she is named the guardian to Mia's five-year-old daughter, Angela. With no other family around, Tam has no choice but to agree to take in the girl she hasn't seen since the child was an infant.
\nOverwhelmed by her life suddenly being upended, Tam must also decide if she will complete the adoption on her own and bring home the son waiting for her in a Chinese orphanage. But when a long-concealed secret comes to light just as she and Angela start to bond, their fragile family is threatened.
\nAs Tam begins to unravel the events of Tony and Mia's past in China, she discovers the true meaning of love and the threads that bind her to the family she is fated to have.
A new life in paradise should have healed her wounds. But for a woman struggling to hold on to her family and her sanity, one stormy night could change everything.
\nBlow by blow, Annie Lin’s life crumbles. Her dance studio goes bankrupt. Her mother and beloved dog are gone the same year. Then a terrible accident leaves her young son traumatised.
\nIt’s time for a change.
\nPalm trees, mai tais, peace and quiet - Annie should be at ease, safe in her new Kauai home with her husband and son. She hopes proximity to her family can provide them all with a sense of belonging and calm. But soon items from her past start turning up - her dog’s collar, a bracelet that disappeared years ago - and she has the unnerving sensation she’s being watched.
\nReality begins to fracture, and Annie’s panic attacks return. When, during a brewing storm, a woman appears on her doorstep looking for shelter, Annie is relieved to have the company and feels an unexplainable bond with her visitor.
\nAs the night progresses, Annie realises the woman is no stranger. Their lives are inextricably intertwined - and Annie might just lose everything.
Lexa Thomas has never quite fit in. Having grown up in a family of blondes while more closely resembling Constance Wu, she's neither white enough nor Asian enough. Visiting her father in Taiwan as a child, Lexa thought she'd finally found a place where she belonged. But that was years ago, and even there, some never truly considered her to be Taiwanese.
\nWhen her estranged father dies unexpectedly, leaving the fate of his Taiwanese family in Lexa's hands, her safe life in New York City is no longer enough. She is faced with the choice to return to Taiwan and claim her place in her heritage . . . or leave her Taiwanese family to lose their home for good.
\nArmed with the advice of two half sisters (one American and the other Taiwanese, who can't stand each other), a mother who has rediscovered her sexuality, and a man whose kisses make her walk into walls, Lexa finally confronts the person who drove her away from Taiwan all those decades ago.
\nAs the truth of the last fateful summer in Taiwan slowly unfolds, Lexa must stand up for herself and open her heart to family and love, or allow the repercussions of her family's choices to forever dictate the path of her life.
On the cusp of turning eighty, newly retired pharmacist Augusta Stern is adrift. When she relocates to Rallentando Springs - an active senior community in southern Florida - she unexpectedly crosses paths with Irving Rivkin, the delivery boy from her father’s old pharmacy - and the man who broke her heart sixty years earlier.
\nAs a teenager growing up in 1920’s Brooklyn, Augusta’s role model was her father, Solomon Stern, the trusted owner of the local pharmacy and the neighborhood expert on every ailment. But when Augusta’s mother dies and Great Aunt Esther moves in, Augusta can’t help but be drawn to Esther’s curious methods. As a healer herself, Esther offers Solomon’s customers her own advice - unconventional remedies ranging from homemade chicken soup to a mysterious array of powders and potions.
\nAs Augusta prepares for pharmacy college, she is torn between loyalty to her father and fascination with her great aunt, all while navigating a budding but complicated relationship with Irving. Desperate for clarity, she impulsively uses Esther’s most potent elixir with disastrous consequences. Disillusioned and alone, Augusta vows to reject Esther’s enchantments forever.
\nSixty years later, confronted with Irving, Augusta is still haunted by the mistakes of her past. What happened all those years ago and how did her plan go so spectacularly wrong? Did Irving ever truly love her or was he simply playing a part? And can Augusta reclaim the magic of her youth before it’s too late?
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Two estranged sisters, raised in Brooklyn and each burdened with her own shocking secret, are reunited at the Springfield Armory in the early days of WWII. While one sister lives in relative ease on the bucolic Armory campus as an officers wife, the other arrives as a war widow and takes a position in the Armory factories as a soldier of production.
\nResentment festers between the two, and secrets are shattered when a mysterious figure from the past reemerges in their lives.
The coroner’s report identifies the body as young, black, female, and impossibly anonymous. Yet one thing is clear to Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison about the latest victim discovered in one of London’s poorest districts - that news of her murder will tear apart a city already crackling with racial tensions, hurling Scotland Yard and Tennison herself into a maelstrom of shocking accusations and sudden, wrenching violence.
\nEven as London’s brutal killer remains at large, Tennison remains locked in a struggle to overcome her station house’s brutal chauvinism and insidious politicking. And as the department’s deeply rooted racism rears its head to overshadow every facet of her new investigation, the trail of her prime suspect is growing colder. Worse, when the details of the beleaguered detective’s stormy personal life explode across the headlines of London’s sleaziest tabloids, Tennison’s already frenzied determination to bring the killer to justice will be catapulted into obsession - one that could send her spiraling over the edge.
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Young Cassie Booth goes missing on her paper round. Then her bloodstained jacket is found in a boathouse belonging to Karl Wilding - but there is little evidence against him.
\nMeanwhile, a routine visit by Detective Inspector Pat North to appease persistent complainer Stephen Warrington soon spirals into something far more sinister. As his behaviour becomes increasingly obsessive, North suspects that Warrington has been involved in a far more horrific crime.
\nOnly one of the men is guilty of Cassie's murder. But can the jury unravel the complex web of lies and deliver justice?
Jane Tennison must navigate the salacious world of theatre to solve a brutal murder in the heart of London's West End, in the brilliant new thriller from the Queen of Crime Drama, Lynda La Plante.
Things can't get much worse for detective Jane Tennison. Unceremoniously kicked off the adrenaline-fuelled Flying Squad, she now plies her trade in Gerald Road, a small and sleepy police station in the heart of London's affluent Knightsbridge.
With only petty crime to sink her teeth into, Tennison can feel her career slowly flatlining. That is until the discovery of the most brutal murder Jane has ever seen: Charlie Foxley has been found viciously beaten to death with a cricket bat - his body dismembered and disembowelled.
As a big-time theatrical agent, Foxley had a lot of powerful friends - but just as many enemies. And alongside her old friend DS Spencer Gibbs, Tennison must journey into the salacious world of show business to find out which one is the killer, before they strike again.
DC Jack Warr and his girlfriend Maggie have just moved to London to start a new life together. Though charming, Jack can't seem to find his place in the world - until he's drawn into an investigation that turns his life upside down.
In the aftermath of a fire at an isolated cottage, a badly charred body is discovered, along with the burnt remains of millions of stolen, untraceable bank notes.
Jack's search leads him deep into a murky criminal underworld - a world he finds himself surprisingly good at navigating. But as the line of the law becomes blurred, how far will Jack go to find the answers - and what will it cost him?
Detective Jack Warr should be resting on his laurels. He's just put sadistic serial killer Rodney Middleton behind bars and he's ready to enjoy some time at home with his young family.
\nInstead, Jack is having violent nightmares that leave his wife Maggie terrified.
\nWhat Jack needs is a break, but instead he finds himself sucked into another grisly case as a man is found horrifically murdered in an art-framer's shop. Jack becomes fascinated by the elaborately staged killing - especially coming straight after the surprise reappearance of charismatic forger Adam Border.
\nCould Adam be the victim?Or the murderer?
\nFinding the truth will unveil a shocking portrait of a corrupt art world - but will it also expose the secrets Jack is so desperately trying to keep hidden?
Helena Lanark is the only one who knows about the horrors which once occurred in her family's house. The heiress of an immense family fortune, she now resides in a luxurious care home; her mind and memory fading fast.
\nJane Tennison is leading a murder investigation into the recent brutal death of a young girl, her decomposed, starved body discovered in an old air raid shelter in the garden of the Lanark's now derelict house. Initially the focus is on identifying the victim, until another body is found hidden in the walls of the shelter.
\nAs the investigation and search for answers intensifies, Jane travels to Australia. There she discovers the dark secret that the Lanark family has kept hidden for decades. A secret that not only threatens to bring down a family dynasty, but also places Jane Tennison in mortal danger . . .
A prostitute dressed in a blue rabbit fur coat walks through the darkness of Hackney Fields, seemingly alone. But someone is waiting for her . . .
\nA woman is found dead in her bath, a small child crying in the room next door . . . Is it accidental death or the perfect murder?
\nWhen WPC Jane Tennison is promoted to the role of Detective Constable in London’s Bow Street CID, she is immediately conflicted. While her far more experience colleagues move on swiftly from one criminal case to another, Jane is often left with doubts about their findings.
\nBecoming inextricably embroiled in a multiple-rape case, Jane must put her life at risk in the search for answers. Will she toe the CID line, or endanger her position by seeking the truth . . .?
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Wild mustangs are difficult to rope, their lead stallion wary and protective of his herd. To capture that special stallion takes time. He is separated, roped, and lead back to the ranch. Once tamed, he is sent back into the wild. And before long, he will lead the entire herd back to the ranch. He is given the name 'Judas Horse'.
\nWhen Detective Jack Warr identifies an informer, the terrified man begins to give details of a massive robbery planned by a team of unscrupulous and dangerous men. These men have already orchestrated many audacious robberies, leaving terrified victims in their wake. And they have already killed to get what they want.
\nDetective Jack Warr and his team must use their informant as a 'Judas Horse' to draw in the unsuspecting robbers, so that they go ahead with the planned robbery. However, one false move, and more blood will be spilled . . .
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In the dark night of the soul . . . . If Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison hadn't been a woman, she might not have noticed the victim's shoes . . . . and that they didn't match the size given on the info sheet now so obviously misidentifying the dead blonde as a hooker named Della Mornay. Being so through, so good at the details, made Jane a top investigator; being a woman made the boys in the squadron want to see her fall on her face.
\nBut Jane Tennison was determined to catch the madman stalking women in London's street shadows. She had a prime suspect, and she needed to make the charges against him stick. She also needed to keep her own secret in check: she couldn't let anyone see that she was falling apart inside, as her obsession with cracking this case and breaking out from under the heel of the station house boy's club took over life, destroying her relationship with the man she loved, pushing her closer and closer to the dark urges of a killer . . . .
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It was supposed to be a simple case: a young man arrested for armed assault.
\nBut it was just the beginning.
\nAs Rodney Middleton awaits trial, Detective Jack Warr is warned by his mentor DCI Ridley that they have only scratched the surface of the man's crimes.
\nThen DCI Ridley is suddenly removed from his post. No one is to contact him - and no one will say why.
\nAs Warr digs into Middleton's past, Ridley calls pleading for help, now accused of a murder he insists he didn't commit.
\nTo catch a monster and exonerate his friend, Warr must weed out the lies. But what awaits Warr if he uncovers the truth?
Chief Detective Inspector Jane Tennison has moved up the ranks, fighting every step of the way to break through the station house’s glass ceiling. Now, on her first day as the head of the Vice Squad, a case comes in that threatens to destroy everything she has worked for.
\nAs Vera Reynolds, drag queen and night club star, swayed onstage singing “Falling in Love Again,” a sixteen-year-old rent boy lay in the older man’s apartment, engulfed in flames. When Tennison’s investigation reveals an influential public figure as her prime suspect, a man with connections to politicians, judges, and Scotland Yard, she’s given a very clear message about the direction some very important people would like her investigation to take. Suddenly, in a case defined by murky details, one fact becomes indisputably clear - that for Tennison, going after the truth will mean risking her happiness, her career, and even her life.
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In 1973 Jane Tennison, aged 22, leaves the Metropolitan Police Training Academy to be placed on probationary exercise in Hackney where criminality thrives. We witness her struggle to cope in a male-dominated, chauvinistic environment, learning fast to deal with shocking situations with no help or sympathy from her superiors. Then comes her involvement in her first murder case.
", "series": "Tennison", "seriesOrder": 1, "tags": [ "Crime", "Thriller" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Lynda La Plante - Tennison.jpeg", "mtime": 1765953200727.9287, "size": 804213, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:22:48.856Z" }, "Lynda La Plante - The Dirty Dozen": { "title": "The Dirty Dozen", "author": "Lynda La Plante", "description": "April 1980 and Jane is the first female detective to be posted to the Met's renowned Flying Squad, commonly known as the 'Sweeney'. Based at Rigg Approach in East London, they investigate armed robberies on banks, cash in transit and other business premises.
Jane thinks her transfer is on merit and is surprised to discover she is actually part of a short term internal experiment, intended to have a calming influence on a team that likes to dub themselves as the 'Dirty Dozen'.
The men on the squad don't think a woman is up to the dangers they face when dealing with some of London's most ruthless armed criminals, who think the only 'good cop' is a dead cop. Determined to prove she's as good as the men, Jane discovers from a reliable witness that a gang is going to carry out a massive robbery involving millions of pounds.
But she doesn't know who they are, or where and when they will strike . . .
The husband of a prominent and infamously ruthless barrister is found in horrific condition after a robbery and brutal assault. Now in a coma, a major investigation is launched using the newly formed, experimental Metropolitan Police Serious Crime Analysis Unit.
\nJessica Russell is an experienced CSI with degrees in psychology and criminology with an exceptional Masters in Investigative psychology and behaviour analysis. But Jessica's first job as team leader of MSCAN is entirely new to to bring together a team of three trusted officers.
\nBetween them, the team has dealt with every kind of murder and major crime scene - their expertise ranges from forensic DNA to blood spatter analysis, digital forensics and beyond.
\nNow they must piece together the complex puzzle at the heart of this brutal crime. If it was a robbery gone horrifically wrong, what was so important to have been stolen?
A coffin is dug up by builders in the grounds of an historic convent - inside is the body of a young nun.
\nIn a city as old as London, the discovery is hardly surprising. But when scratch marks are found on the inside of the coffin lid, Detective Jane Tennison believes she has unearthed a mystery far darker than any she's investigated before.
\nHowever, not everyone agrees. Tennison's superiors dismiss it as an historic cold case, and the Church seems desperate to conceal the facts from the investigation.
\nIt's clear that someone is hiding the truth, and perhaps even the killer. Tennison must pray she can find both - before they are buried forever . .
When an eccentric elderly widow claims she is being stalked, Detective Jack Warr is the only person willing to dig into the truth behind her wild claims.
\nJack soon finds himself embroiled in an international drugs operation, art theft - and a murder investigation. On the back foot throughout, he is forced to play second fiddle to the Drug Squad, confront an old adversary, and even fight off accusations of assault.
\nBut Jack believes that every aspect of this multi-faceted case is simply a distraction from the one person who lies at the heart of it all - the widow's elusive stalker. Find him, and the truth will come out...
While she has elbowed her way into an elite team investigating non-domestic murders, there is nothing elite about her first assignments: a missing teenager cold case and an apparent suicide Tennison suspects is, in fact, murder.
\nBut as she uncovers explosive evidence, Tennison's new colleagues watch like vultures circling prey. And, one by one, the cases no one else wanted are taken from her - and the glory along with them.
\nNow Tennison has had enough: of the rampant sexism, snide remarks and undermining. It's time to take what is rightfully hers from those who have held her back.
\nShe just has to do what she does best: find her prime suspect . . .
The Devoted Lands was once home to many Salt, Stone, Storm, Green, Shadow. Now, after centuries of devastating wars, only Tempestra-Innara, the Eternal Flame, remains.
\nConscripted as a child, Lys, potentiate of the Dawn Cloister, is outwardly a loyal servant to her goddess. If she harbors impossible dreams of deicide, that’s her business. But when a routine heretical execution erupts into a near-fatal assassination attempt on Tempestra-Innara, Lys sees a glimmer of hope for her freedom.
\nLys is chosen to hunt down the heretics and find an ancient reliquary that holds the power to kill a god. Annoyingly, she’s not alone. Paired with Nolan, a potentiate from a rival cloister who is as pious as he is determined, Lys must feign devotion if she hopes to keep her own heretical thoughts hidden and god-killing ambitions within reach.
\nAs they pursue a dangerous network of heretics linked to the assassination, Lys uncovers a world brimming with more possibility - and peril - than she ever anticipated.
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The city of Aravell is in peril, plagued by a deadly blackmist that kills all it touches and reapers who roam the streets, stealing magic from innocent children in their thirst for power. Seventeen-year-old Viridia Solace has trained for years to hunt these reapers, but their ranks keep growing, led by the man who murdered her parents: the notorious Reaper Priest.
\nWhen the Priest's most loyal follower, Reeve Ashton, is captured, he offers Viri a chance to avenge her parents . . . for a price. She knows better than to bargain with a reaper, let alone this reaper, but his offer is too good to resist.
\nSoon she's breaking him out of prison, colluding with his crew of magic thieves, and following him deep into the blackmist forest in search of an ancient legend, all so they can stop the Reaper Priest’s plot to doom the city. Viri is staking her life on Reeve's plan, but how can she trust a silver-tongued criminal to keep his word? And how can she trust her own heart when a buried secret could shatter everything?
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Liz Buxbaum has always known that Wes Bennett was not boyfriend material. You would think that her next-door neighbor would be a prince candidate for her romantic comedy fantasies, but Wes has only proven himself to be a pain in the butt, ever since they were little. Wes was the kid who put a frog in her Barbie Dreamhouse, the monster who hid a lawn gnome's severed head in her little homemade neighborhood book exchange.
\nFlash forward ten years from the Great Gnome Decapitation. It's Liz's senior year, a time meant to be rife with milestones perfect for any big screen, and she needs Wes's help. See, Liz's forever crush, Michael, has just moved back to town, and - horribly, annoyingly - he's hitting it off with Wes. Meaning that if Liz wants Michael to finally notice her, and hopefully be her prom date, she needs Wes. He's her in.
\nBut as Liz and Wes scheme to get Liz her magical prom moment, she's shocked to discover that she actually likes being around Wes. And as they continue to grow closer, she must reexamine everything she thought she knew about love - and rethink her own perception of what Happily Ever After should really look like.
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After living through a dumpster fire of a Valentine’s Day, Emilie Hornby escapes to her grandmother’s house for some comfort and a consolation pint of Ben & Jerry’s. She passes out on the couch, but when she wakes up, she’s back home in her own bed - and it’s Valentine’s Day all over again. And the next day? Another nightmare V-Day.
\nEmilie is stuck in some sort of time loop nightmare that she can’t wake up from as she re-watches her boyfriend, Josh, cheat on her day after day. In addition to Josh’s recurring infidelity, Emilie can’t get away from the enigmatic Nick, who she keeps running into - sometimes literally - in unfortunate ways.
\nHow many days can one girl passively watch her life go up in flames? And when something good starts to come out of these terrible days, what happens when the universe stops doling out do-overs?
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When Sophie Steinbeck finds out just before her nuptials that her fiancé has cheated yet again, she desperately wants to call it off. But because her future father-in-law is her dad’s cutthroat boss, she doesn’t want to be the one to do it. Her savior comes in the form of a professional objector, whose purpose is to show up at weddings and proclaim the words no couple (usually) wants to hear at their ceremony: “I object!”
\nDuring anti-wedding festivities that night, Sophie learns more about Max the Objector’s job. It makes perfect sense to her: he saves people from wasting their lives, from hurting each other. He’s a modern-day hero. And Sophie wants in.
\nThe two love cynics start working together, going from wedding to wedding, and Sophie’s having more fun than she’s had in ages. She looks forward to every nerve-racking ceremony saving the lovesick souls of the betrothed masses. As Sophie and Max spend more time together, however, they realize that their physical chemistry is off the charts, leading them to dabble in a little hookup session or two - but it’s totally fine, because they definitely do not have feelings for each other. Love doesn’t exist, after all.
\nAnd then everything changes. A groom-to-be hires Sophie to object, but his fiancée is the woman who broke Max’s heart. As Max wrestles with whether he can be a party to his ex’s getting hurt, Sophie grapples with the sudden realisation that she may have fallen hard for her partner in crime.
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For a few beautiful months, Wes had his dream girl: the strong-willed girl next door Liz. But right as the two were about to set off for college to start their freshman year together, tragedy struck. Wes was left dealing with the fallout, which ultimately meant losing Liz in the process.
\nFlash forward months later, and Wes and Liz find themselves in college, together. In a healthier place now, Wes knows he broke Liz’s heart when he ended things, but he is determined to make her fall back in love with him.
\nWes knows Liz better than anyone, and he has a foolproof plan to win her back with rom-com-worthy grand gestures she loves. Only . . . Liz will have none of it! Wes has to scheme like a rom-com hero to figure out how to see her. Even worse, Liz has a new friend . . . a guy friend.
\nStill, Wes won’t give up, adapting his clever plans and going hard to get Liz’s attention and win back her affection. But after his best efforts get him nowhere, Wes is left wondering if their relationship is really over for good.
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Akemi’s desire for independence and aversion to marriage are unusual in her small village. A gift for drawing allows her to move to Tokyo to study medical illustration, and although the more privileged girls in her rooming house ignore her, she finds satisfaction in the precision and purpose of her work. Sayako is the first roommate to pay Akemi attention, and they quickly become inseparable - Sayako drawn to Akemi’s humble origins, so distinct from her own insufferable, wealthy family; Akemi attracted to Sayako’s rebelliousness and her aspiration to be a painter.
\nAs Akemi begins to model for Sayako, their connection deepens. Together they attend ‘happenings’, encounters arranged by two enigmatic artists, Nezu and Kaori, in arbitrary locations, intended to free them from their worldly attachments. Following a devastating betrayal, Sayako disappears, and Akemi becomes determined to find her - and in the process, must newly face herself.
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Sylvie has always known she deserves more. Out in the permanent twilight of the Dusklands, her guardians called her power to create illusions a curse. But Sylvie knows it gives her a place in Coeur d'Or, the palais of the Amber Empress and her highborn legacies.
So Sylvie sets off toward the Amber City, a glittering jewel under a sun that never sets, to take what is hers.
But her hope for a better life is quickly dimmed. The empress invites her in only as part of a wicked wager among her powerful courtiers. Sylvie must assume a new name, Mirage, and begin to navigate secretive social circles and deadly games of intrigue in order to claim her spot. Soon it becomes apparent that nothing is as it appears and no one, including her cruel yet captivating sponsor, Sunder, will answer her questions. As Mirage strives to assume what should be her rightful place, she'll have to consider whether it is worth the price she must pay.
After her sacrifice on the Ember Moon, Fia is flush with powerful magic and eager to rush into battle against her murderous sister, Eala. However, Fia's new husband Irian suggests they bide their time and retreat to the Silver Isle, a snowy island at the edge of the fae world.
\nRuled by the cunning smith-king, the Silver Isle proves far from a safe haven. Fia and Irian become embroiled in the Tournament of Kings competing for a magical forging of immense power. Fia and Irian's relationship will be put to the test as they navigate their conflicting motivations, shifting allegiances and ancient magic.
\nWith the end of the tournament looming and Eala's threat growing, Fia must decide just how much she's willing to sacrifice to defeat her sister.
Mirage, triumphant in her coup of the Amber Empire, returns to the palais prepared to take her place as Empress. With the support of her friends, Luca and Lullaby, and a tentative, blossoming romance with Sunder, Mirage is on the cusp of taking hold of everything she has wanted.
However, her place in the sun is not as sure as she expected; nor is it quite as bright as she imagined.
When the Empress Severine's body is recovered from the battle, she is not dead after all - in a coma, she still represents a threat to Mirage's newfound power. Worse, a distant cousin, Gavin d'Ars, Duc de Douane, appears in court to challenge both women with his blood claim, and to propose a series of trials to determine the most deserving heir. In Mirage's fight to defend her vision for the empire, she begins to splinter all of her networks. Will the battle for control leave anyone untainted?
In a kingdom where magic has been lost, Fia is a rare changeling, left behind by the wicked Fair Folk when they stole the High Queen's daughter and retreated behind the locked gates of Tír na nÓg.
\nMost despise Fia's fae blood. But the queen raises her as a daughter and trains her to be a spy. Meanwhile, the real princess Eala is bound to Tír na nÓg, cursed to become a swan by day and only returning to her true form at night.
\nWhen a hidden gate to the realm is discovered, Fia is tasked by the queen to retrieve the princess and break her curse. But she doesn’t go with her is prince Rogan, Fia's dearest childhood friend - and Eala’s betrothed.
\nAs they journey through the forests of the Folk, where magic winds through the roots of the trees and beauty can be a deadly illusion, Fia’s mission is complicated by her feelings for the prince . . . and her unexpected attraction to the dark-hearted fae lord holding Eala captive. Irian might be more monster than man, but he seems to understand Fia in a way no one ever has.
\nSoon, Fia begins to question the truth of her mission. But time is running out to break her sister's curse. And unraveling the secrets of the past might destroy everything she has come to love.
After the explosive finale of the Tournament of Kings, Fia and Irian manage to escape to the wildlands, dodging pursuit by Fia's cunning sister Eala. With Fia locked in her own mind, battling a powerful celestial entity; Irian must form new alliances to come up with a plan to defeat Eala's terrifying magic.
\nWith both the human and fae realm under threat, Fia and Irian must pursue their dangerous plan, no matter the cost. On Bealtain Eve, when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest, they will finally face off against the swan princess and forge the ending to their love story that was written in the stars.
In 1810, the Atlantia vanished from the Atlantic Ocean only to reappear, trapped in a frozen inland sea beneath endless ice and pale skies.
\nThree hundred years later, the ship's descendants have built a glittering matriarchy sustained by a strange new magic - one that grants women power and drives men to madness. In New London, tension thrums between those who revere the memory of England and those who would see it buried in snow.
\nLillia Pennyworth, a Truthtaker gifted with the power to unearth secrets, lives on the edge of both worlds - useful, feared, and utterly alone. When the Lady Regent summons her to a distant frontier town to conduct an unorthodox trial, Lillia doesn't know what to expect. She certainly didn't foresee fleeing through the snowy woods with unlikely companions - a creature born of her own making in relentless pursuit. Nor did she believe she would do so with a man whose very gaze reveals the truth she's buried deep inside.
\nAs forbidden truths come to light, she must decide what - and who - she's willing to risk for the fragile warmth of love.
An expansive debut collection exploring the complex lives of women in China and the Chinese diaspora.
\nStretching from the present day to the near future, from China to America and beyond, M Lin’s piercing and melodious debut captures the spirit of China’s One-Child Generation as its characters navigate homes and cultures, hopes and contradictions, survival and resistance. These frank, tender, and playful stories offer profound insight into the ambivalence of migration, the perverse ways race and class can operate, and what it means to be Chinese today.
\nThe collection begins with “Scenes from Childhood,” in which a lonely, elderly woman in a dystopian reality remembers her grandfather’s village. In “Magic, or Something Less Assuring,” a politically divided couple goes on a divorce honeymoon in Morocco. “You Won’t Read This in the News” features four migrant workers during one night of petty theft and connection. In “Tough Egg,” a filmmaker thwarted by censorship untangles her fraught relationship to motherhood. Other stories portray a photographer reuniting with her first love in Beijing; the historic White Paper protests that ended the zero-COVID policy; and generations into the future, a newly instated Memory Museum where two sensory architects share their vision for a utopian world.
\nWith daring political and creative commitment, The Memory Museum brims with joy even as Lin exposes the knife’s edge between powerlessness and agency, pain and intimacy, our memories and our futures.
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Ren came to Nadežra with a plan. She would pose as the long-lost daughter of the noble house Traementis. She would secure a fortune for herself and her sister. And she would vanish without a backward glance. She ought to have known that in the city of dreams, nothing is ever so simple.
\nNow, she is Ren, con-artist and thief. But she is also Renata, the celebrated Traementis heir. She is Arenza, the mysterious pattern-reader and political rebel. And she is the Black Rose, a vigilante who fights alongside the legendary Rook.
\nEven with the help of Grey Serrado and Derossi Vargo, it is too many masks for one person to wear. And as the dark magic the three of them helped unleash builds to storm that could tear the very fabric of the city apart, it's only a matter of time before one of the masks slips - and everything comes crashing down around them.
In Nadezra, peace is as tenuous as a single thread. The ruthless House Indestor has been destroyed, but darkness still weaves through the city’s filthy back alleys and jewel-bright gardens, seen by those who know where to look. Derossi Vargo has always known. He has sacrificed more than anyone imagines to carve himself a position of power among the nobility, hiding a will of steel behind a velvet smile.
\nHe'll be damned if he lets anyone threaten what he's built. Grey Serrado knows all too well. Bent under the yoke of too many burdens, he fights to protect the city’s most vulnerable. Sooner or later, that fight will demand more than he can give. And Ren, daughter of no clan, knows best of all.
\nCaught in a knot of lies, torn between her heritage and her aristocratic masquerade, she relies on her gift for reading pattern to survive. And it shows her the web of corruption that traps her city. But all three have yet to discover just how far that web stretches. And in the end, it will take more than knives to cut themselves free...
Ren is a con artist who has come to the sparkling city of Nadežra with one goal: to trick her way into a noble house, securing her fortune and her sister's future.
But as she's drawn into the elite world of House Traementis, she realizes her masquerade is just one of many surrounding her. And as nightmare magic begins to weave its way through the City of Dreams, the poisonous feuds of its aristocrats and the shadowy dangers of its impoverished underbelly become tangled…with Ren at their heart.
'You have one hour to live.'
\nThose are the only words on the phone call. Then they hang up. Surely, a prank? A mistake? A wrong number? Anything but the chilling truth . . . That someone is watching, waiting, working to take your life in one hour.
\nBut why?
\nThe job of finding out falls to DI Helen Grace: a woman with a track record in hunting killers. However, this is one case where the killer seems to always be one step ahead of the police and the victims.
\nWith no motive, no leads, no clues - nothing but pure fear - an hour can last a lifetime . . .
A silent killer stalks the city, targeting those home alone at night - killing without pity or remorse.
\nAs panic spreads, Detective Inspector Helen Grace leads the investigation, but is herself a hunted woman, her every step dogged by a ruthless killer bent on revenge.
\nAs she tracks the murderer, Grace begins to suspect there is a truly shocking home truth that connects these brutal crimes . . .
There is a sickness in the forest. First, it was the wild horses. Now it's innocent men and women, hunted down and murdered by a faceless figure. Lost in the darkness, they try to flee, they try to hide. In desperation, they call out for help. But there is no-one to hear their cries here . . .
DI Helen Grace must face down a new nightmare. The arrow-ridden victims hang from the New Forest's ancient oaks, like pieces of strange fruit. Why are helpless holidaymakers being targeted in peak camping season? And what do their murders signify? Is a psychopath stalking the forest? Is there an occult element to the killings? Could the murders even be an offering to the Forest itself? Helen must walk into the darkness to discover the truth behind her most challenging, most macabre case yet.
Eeny Meeny is the rocket-paced serial-killer thriller debut from M. J. Arlidge.
The girl emerged from the woods, barely alive. Her story was beyond belief. But it was true. Every dreadful word of it. Days later, another desperate escapee is found - and a pattern is emerging. Pairs of victims are being abducted, imprisoned then faced with a terrible choice: kill or be killed. Would you rather lose your life or lose your mind? Detective Inspector Helen Grace has faced down her own demons on her rise to the top. As she leads the investigation to hunt down this unseen monster, she learns that it may be the survivors - living calling cards - who hold the key to the case. And unless she succeeds, more innocents will die...
Introducing M. J. Arlidge's Detective Inspector Helen Grace. Eeny Meeny is an electrifying debut, with the nerve-shredding intensity of Saw and Along Came a Spider. Fans of James Patterson and Mo Hayder should pay attention. M. J. Arlidge has worked in television for the last fifteen years, specialising in high end drama production. In the last five years Arlidge has produced a number of prime-time crime serials for ITV, including Torn, The Little House and most recently Undeniable, broadcast in spring 2014. Currently writing for Silent Witness, Arlidge is also piloting original crime series for both UK and US networks. Debut thriller Eeny Meeny, which introduces Detective Inspector Helen Grace, has sold to publishers around the world. The follow up, Pop Goes the Weasel, is published by Penguin Books in September 2014.
Only nine criminals in the UK have been granted lifelong anonymity.
\nTheir crimes so heinous that their identities are permanently changed for their own safety.
\nUpon release, they're given a second chance: new identities and new homes with new neighbours who have no idea. Because, by law, they cannot be named as who they are - or were . . .
\nBut what if someone started systematically exposing their true identities? Not to the press, or the public, but to the families of their victims.
\nWho deserves justice? And who gets to decide?
A gang war grips the city, and the police force is under fire from all sides. But Detective Inspector Helen Grace defies direct orders as she becomes drawn to the case of a missing teenager.
\nNaomi's mother is desperate for help - and Helen is her only hope. Keeping the investigation secret, she finds a disturbing trail of questions - and more who have vanished off the streets . . .
\nSometimes, the truth hides in plain sight. But proving it is another matter entirely. The clock is ticking - and the only person looking for Naomi is about to meet her match.
Detective Inspector Helen Grace has spent her whole life running. From the past. From herself. From everyone who's ever tried to get close to her. She's spent her whole life hiding. Behind the badge. Behind her reputation as one of the country's best detectives. Until - framed for murder - she became one of its most high-profile prisoners. Now there is nowhere to run.
\nNowhere to hide. Because HMP Holloway is a place of dark days and long nights with dangers at every turn. Despised by the inmates and reviled by the guards, Helen must face her nightmare alone. And then a carefully mutilated body is found in a locked cell. Now Helen must find a ruthless serial killer. Before the killer finds her.
Helen Grace is sure she made the right decision to quit the force. Until the day she looks out from her window to see a desperate young woman being beaten by two thugs.
\nStill a force to be reckoned with, Helen races into the night and strikes the men down. For a moment, it feels like she doesn't need her badge to do good, but as she leads the girl to safety, she's struck from behind, regaining consciousness just in time to see the victim being dragged into a white van.
\nHelen's determined to find the woman and save her, but even begging her former colleagues to help gets her nowhere. It's clear it'll be up to her alone to make the rescue.
\nTaking matters into her own hands, Helen uncovers more women connected to the first who need her help. But fighting crime as a maverick is a dangerous game. One that could cost Helen her life, and the life of those she holds most dear . . .
Detective Helen Grace gets caught in an inferno of death and destruction in the red-hot new thriller from the author of Eeny Meeny, Pop Goes the Weasel, and The Doll’s House
Detective Helen Grace has never seen such destruction. Six fires in twenty-four hours. Two people dead. Several more injured. It’s as if someone wants to burn the city to the ground . . .
With the whole town on high alert, Helen and her team must sift through the rubble to find the arsonist, someone whose thirst for fire - and control - is reducing entire lives to ashes.
One misstep could mean Helen’s career - and more lives lost. And as the pressure mounts and more buildings burn, Helen’s own dark impulses threaten to consume her . . .
Detective Inspector Helen Grace is no stranger to tragedy. But when a body is found in a Southampton nightclub, the death cuts too close to the bone. Hiding her personal connection to the victim - and a double-life which must remain secret at all costs - Helen becomes a woman possessed, working her team around the clock to chase down every lead. As the killer strikes again, the investigation takes its toll not only on Helen but also her senior officers.
\nTempers flare, friendships fray and Helen faces an impossible choice. Confess her sins and lose control of the case? Or keep living a lie, protecting her darkest secrets, and risk getting trapped in this tangled web? But whatever she does, this killer will not stop until the truth is revealed: there are some fates worse than death . . .
A desperate young woman runs through the storm. She hares up the path, hammering desperately on the front door, crying for help. The startled owner opens the door, ushers her inside, promising her whatever assistance she needs. This fateful decision will be his last. He should never have opened the door . . .
A middle aged couple are found brutally murdered in their ransacked suburban house. Helen Grace, now back at Southampton Central following her release from prison, is first on the scene. The crime is baffling, hideous, cruel, but before Helen can process the evidence, another double murder is reported - identical in almost every way to the first. What follows is the darkest, most dangerous night of Helen's life as a sequence of brutal home invasions takes place.
By sunrise eight people will be dead and Helen may well be the ninth as she finds herself locked on a collision course with a pair of rampaging spree killers. Is there method in their madness? Or are they selecting their victims at random? It falls to Helen to wrestle with these questions - only by answering them can she end the bloodshed.
A man's body is found in an empty house. His heart has been cut out and delivered to his wife and children. He is the first victim, and Detective Inspector Helen Grace knows he will not be the last.
\nBut why would a happily married man be this far from home in the dead of night? The media call it Jack the Ripper in reverse: a serial killer preying on family men who lead hidden double lives.
\nHelen can sense the fury behind the murders. But what she cannot possibly predict is how volatile this killer is - or what is waiting for her at the end of the chase..
A young woman wakes up in a cold, dark cellar, with no idea how she got there or who her kidnapper is. So begins her terrible nightmare. Nearby, the body of another young woman is discovered buried on a remote beach. But the dead girl was never reported missing - her estranged family having received regular texts from her over the years.
\nSomeone has been keeping her alive from beyond the grave. For Detective Inspector Helen Grace it's chilling evidence that she's searching for a monster who is not just twisted but also clever and resourceful - a predator who's killed before. And as Helen struggles to understand the killer's motivation, she begins to realize that she's in a desperate race against time .
Written with Lisa Hall.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tPete never wanted another child. Before baby Erin was born, they were happy. If Natalie hadn’t got pregnant, he would never have done what he did. Natalie knows things have been difficult since the surprise arrival of Erin. Life with Pete and their two other children - Emily and Zadie - has been balancing on a knife-edge.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNow their home is full of guests at a party Natalie didn’t want to throw - and she’s about to reach breaking point. But so is her family. Because everyone has a secret that they’ve been hiding and when Erin suddenly disappears everyone becomes a suspect.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tSurely no one here would want to harm their baby? But after the events of the party there are plenty of people who would want to hurt Natalie.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tIncluding her husband . . .
It's the day of the demolition at White Cross Academy, and a crowd of former pupils and teachers have gathered to watch. But as the final charges are laid in the basement, the crew make a shocking discovery - a human skull.
\nFormer student DI Jennie Whitmore is assigned to the case, her first big murder investigation and one where there can be no room for mistakes. The remains are identified as Hannah Jennings, a popular, but troubled classmate who went missing during her lower Sixth year.
\nAs news of the body's discovery soon leaks, the small town erupts with intrigue, conspiracy and accusation. Jennie now finds herself at the heart of the storm, tasked with making up for the failings of the initial investigation to ensure that justice is finally done. At the centre is Hannah's five closest friends who used the basement as a base for the photography club.
\nJennie knows many of the suspects personally and she is convinced that one of this group of five knows the truth about what happened to the wilful, beguiling teenager. As Jennie unearths secrets buried deep, and lies repeatedly told, the assembled friends must reassess their past, before confronting the terrible realisation that one amongst them would rather kill to protect their new life, than pay for the sins of their teenage years.
A crimewave sweeps through the city and no one is safe.
\nA murderous arson attack at the docks.
\nA brutal carjacking in a deserted car park.
\nA fatal hammer attack in a lonely country park.
\nCrimes without motive, without suspects, without leads.
\nEach crime is a piece of a puzzle - with many more pieces still to come. And as they gradually fall into place, Detective Inspector Helen Grace comes to realise just how twisted and devious this web of crime is - and how impossible it will be to stop it . . .
Professor Kate Walker is a tenured, world-renowned engineer. She has a job she loves, a daughter she adores, and friends who've been with her through thick and thin. It's a fulfilling life that doesn’t really need anything - or anyone - else. Especially not a charming, downright amazing woman who happens to be twenty years her junior.
\nCarter Burke has lived a storied life and has the Olympic medals to prove it. She’s got her dream job coaching a collegiate women’s lightweight rowing team in her beloved Boston, and is happily married to the sport she’s dedicated her life to. She’s happy with her life and not really looking for more, but all that changes when a blonde professor with hypnotising sea glass green eyes waltzes into her boathouse.
\nThe Charles River has played host to countless scenes of overwhelming joy and crushing heartbreak over the years - but never quite on a scale like this. Because when hearts are involved, the stakes are infinitely higher. Carter is hooked from the moment she first lays eyes on Kate, and their chemistry is undeniable, but is that chemistry enough to help Kate push past her reservations and into Carter’s arms?
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In the final moments of Prophecy, a truth was revealed to Persephone and Azriel - one that could change everything forever. For her. For him. For them. For the entire kingdom.
\nBut the murderous Regent Mordesius wants this truth buried and them along with it. Cornered and out of options, Azriel boldly bargains: release them, and they will seek out the mythical healing pool. Mordesius agrees but warns that if they do not find it, he'll make those dearest to them suffer - starting with King Finnius.
\nPersephone has never needed Azriel's teasing warmth more, but she is discovering that there is a price to pay for having broken past promises. Together, the pair set off on a journey that will take them to the farthest corners of the kingdom. Danger will ever lie ahead and behind them; they will battle men and beasts alike.
\nWill Persephone and Azriel survive these perils? And will this quest see their romance grow cold - or will it burn hotter than ever?
A lifetime of hardship and toil has left Persephone dreaming of a destiny that belongs to none but her. When a chance encounter with a handsome thief offers hope of escape, she recklessly sets her plan in motion.
\nBut the thief, Azriel, has plans of his own and no intention of letting her go anywhere. For he and his clan believe that Persephone could be the key to defeating the king's regent, a sadistic monster who has hunted them for years. Torn between her longing for freedom and her growing feelings for Azriel, Persephone finds herself plunging ever deeper into a dark and dangerous world where death is never more than one careless word away.
\nAs tensions rise to a fever pitch, Persephone faces the hardest choice she has ever had to make. And no one - least of all her - could have imagined the shocking truth her decision will reveal.
When war comes to Skyhome itself, Aram has no choice but to flee. An ancient evil, more powerful than anything he has ever faced, has marked him as its target, threatening everyone and everything he holds dear. Separated from Markus and Calise, he journeys to the one place where the knowledge he desperately needs still survives: the Void between worlds, where the memories of fallen civilisations await.
\nIn this new heart-stirring epic, journey with Aram and his dragon Agaroth on a quest to learn the secrets of the ancients.
\nAnd with Calise, who has been swept away to a dangerous land where she must explore her own wild magic and confront the shadows within herself.
\nAnd with Markus, as he searches to find a purpose without the Champion he has sworn to protect.
\nThe dangers ahead are too vast for any one Champion to face. Only together can they hope to defend and heal their Riven World.
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Aram thinks he's nothing but a misfit from a small fishing village in a dark corner of the world. As far as Aram knows, he has nothing, with hardly a possession to his name other than a desire to make friends and be accepted by those around him, which is something he’s never known.
\nBut Aram is more. Much, much more.
\nUnknown to him, Aram bears within him a gift so old and rare that many people would kill him for it, and there are others who would twist him to use for their own sinister purposes. These magics are so potent that Aram earns a place at an academy for warrior mages training to earn for themselves the greatest place of honor among the armies of men: dragon riders.
\nAram will have to fight for respect by becoming not just a dragon rider, but a Champion, the caliber of mage that hasn’t existed in the world for hundreds of years. And the land needs a Champion. Because when a dark god out of ancient myth arises to threaten the world of magic, it is Aram the world will turn to in its hour of need.
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Western Australia, 1958. A truck rumbles along a lonely outback road. A moment’s inattention, and in a few muddled seconds the lives of the MacBride family are shattered.
\nInstead of leaving them to heal, fate comes back for them in a twist of consequences that will cause one of them to lose their life, and another to sacrifice theirs for the sake of an innocent child.
\nSet in the expanse of a vast and flat landscape, where the weather is a capricious god and a million-acre sheep station is barely a dot on the map, A Far-Flung Life explores the hearts of a handful of isolated souls and the secrets they shield in order to survive.
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Mary Williams - faced with unexpectedly losing her job and the possibility of losing custody of her daughter as well - answers an unusual help wanted ad. When an ailing man offers her an outrageous proposal that could solve all her problems, Mary takes fate into her own hands and accepts, agreeing to the extraordinary thing this man is asking.
\nIt's a decision that changes everything.
\nBecause what Mary thought was true is in fact a lie, and now she faces a new reality that is far more disastrous than anything she could have imagined.
\nRelentless and propulsive, The Helper is a compulsive page-turner fueled by lies, deceit, and revenge. Punctuated with biting wit and satirical social commentary, Dewil's debut gives us a peek behind the lie that was once the American dream and explores the story of one woman struggling for footing in the modern world.
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Two mighty empires are at war - and both will lose, with thousands of planets falling to the extinction event called the Scour. At least that's what the artificial intelligence known as Rupshe believes.
\nBut somewhere in the multiverse there exists a force - the Mother Mass - that could end the war in an instant, and Rupshe has assembled a team to find it. Essien Nkanika, a soldier trying desperately to atone for past sins; the cat-woman Moon, a conscienceless killer; the digitally recorded mind of physicist Hadiz Tambuwal; Paz, an idealistic child and the renegade robot spy Dulcimer Coronal.
\nTheir mission will take them from the hellish prison world of Tsakom to the poisoned remains of a post-apocalyptic Earth, and finally bring them face to face with the Mother Mass itself. But can they persuade it to end eons of neutrality and help them? And is it too late to make a difference?
\nBecause the Pandominion's doomsday machines are about to be unleashed - and not even their builders know how to control them.
Fellside is a maximum security prison on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors. It's not the kind of place you'd want to end up. But it's where Jess Moulson could be spending the rest of her life.
It's a place where even the walls whisper.
And one voice belongs to a little boy with a message for Jess.
Will she listen?
Infinity is only the beginning.
\nThe Pandominion: a political and trading alliance of a million worlds. Except that they’re really just one world, Earth, in many different realities. And when an A.I. threat arises that could destroy everything the Pandominion has built, they’ll eradicate it by whatever means necessary.
\nScientist Hadiz Tambuwal is looking for a solution to her own Earth’s environmental collapse when she stumbles across the secret of inter-dimensional travel, a secret that could save everyone on her dying planet. It leads her into the middle of a war on a scale she never dreamed of. And she needs to choose a side before every reality pays the price.
Eleven hundred and some years after the death of Christ, in the kingdom that had but recently begun to call itself England, I, Once Was Willem, rose from the dead to defeat a great evil facing the humble village of Cosham. The words enclosed herein are true.
I speak of monsters and magic, battle and bloodletting, and the crimes of desperate men. I speak also of secret things, of that which lies beneath us and that which impends above. By the time you come to the end of this account you will know the truth of your own life and death, the path laid out for your immortal soul, your origin and your inevitable end.
You will not thank me.
This is the story of Bess - or Dog-Bitch Bess as she came to be known. It's the story of the gun she carried, whose name was Wakeful Slim. It's the story of the dead man who carried that gun before her and left a piece of himself inside it. And it's the tale of how she turned from teacher, to renegade, and ultimately to hero.
\nThis is also the tale of the last violent engagements in an inter-dimensional war - one of the most brutal the multiverse had ever seen.
\nThis is how Bess learned the truth about her world. Came to it the hard way, through pain and loss and the reckless spilling of blood, and carried it with her like a brand on her soul. And once she knew it - knew for sure how badly she'd been used - she had no option but to do something about it.
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Liz Kendall wouldn't hurt a fly. Even when times get tough, she's devoted to bringing up her two kids in a loving home.
But there's another side to Liz - one that's dark and malicious. She will do anything to get her way, no matter how extreme.
And when this other side of her takes control, the consequences are devastating.
Beyond the walls of the small village of Mythen Rood lies an unrecognizable world. A world where overgrown forests are filled with choker trees and deadly vines and seeds that will kill you where you stand. And if they don't get you, one of the dangerous shunned men will.
Koli has lived in Mythen Rood his entire life. He knows the first rule of survival is that you don't venture beyond the walls.
What he doesn't know is - what happens when you aren't given a choice?
Once upon a time, in a land blighted by terror, there was a very clever boy.
\nThe people thought the boy could save them, so they opened their gates and sent him out into the world.
\nTo where the monsters lived.
Koli has come a long way since being exiled from his small village of Mythen Rood. In his search for the fabled tech of the old times, he knew he'd be battling strange, terrible beasts and trees that move as fast as whips. But he has already encountered so much more than he bargained for.
Now that Koli and his companions have found the source of the signal they've been following - the mysterious \"Sword of Albion\" - there is hope that their perilous journey will finally be worth something.
Until they unearth terrifying truths about an ancient war . . . and realise that it may have never ended.
Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her 'our little genius'. Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh.
\nMelanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children's cells. She tells her favourite teacher all the things she'll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn't know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.
Beyond the walls of Koli’s small village lies a fearsome landscape filled with choker trees, vicious beasts and shunned men. As an exile, Koli’s been forced to journey out into this mysterious, hostile world. But he heard a story, once.
\nA story about lost London, and the mysterious tech of the Old Times that may still be there. If Koli can find it, there may still be a way for him to redeem himself – by saving what’s left of humankind.
When Daphne confesses to killing a number of men throughout her lifetime, she chooses Ruth to produce the podcast reporting her story. Each episode charts Daphne's humble beginnings from the Dust Bowl in Canada to her glittering life in 70s New York - and a string of murders in her wake.
\nDaphne tells her story. Ruth listens. And edits it.
\nThe public are hooked. Is she a feminist icon taking revenge on bad men? Or just a ruthless criminal? Then, as the podcast finale approaches, it becomes clear that neither woman has been entirely honest with the other. Who has been controlling the narrative?
\nAfter all, the truth doesn't always make for the best story . . .
Lily Rosewood dreams of taking over her family's company one day. Her grandmother, Rosewood Inc's current chair, has always encouraged her, and Lily can't wait for Gram to teach her everything she needs to know to run the business.
\nBut then Gram dies suddenly, and Lily's world is upended. When it's revealed that Gram's quarter of a billion dollar fortune is missing, Lily can't fathom what her future will hold now.
\nEven in death, Gram has a few tricks up her couture sleeve. A last letter from her with a cryptic clue sends Lily and three other teens on a treasure hunt that could change their lives forever - if they can survive it. And if they pull it off, they may be rewarded with more than just money. But they're not the only ones hunting for Gram's treasure, and soon the hunt becomes more dangerous than they ever could have imagined.
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Chloe Gatti will do whatever it takes to win her elite boarding school’s annual competition, the Wilde Trials. In the two weeks leading up to graduation from Wilde Academy, a dozen seniors are chosen to compete in a series of seven ultimate physical and mental tests, and the winner will take home over half a million dollars - money that Chloe needs to help her sick sister.
\nBut the competition is fierce, and includes her brooding ex-boyfriend, Hayes Stratford, whose brother was the only student to die during the Trials a few years ago. When someone starts blackmailing Chloe during the competition, she’s forced to strike a deal with Hayes - if he helps her discover who is sabotaging her, she’ll help him solve the mystery his brother left behind.
\nFollowing clues from Hayes’s brother, the unlikely allies discover that something isn’t right about the Wilde Trials. With a lifechanging prize looming over her head and her buried feelings for Hayes rising to the surface, Chloe will have to decide what’s really worth fighting for, and if the cost of competing outweighs the potential consequences, even if that includes ending up like Hayes’s brother - dead.
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After too many dates, thirtysomething Mimi Perkins is still single, unmoored, and longing for love. So when Ren Yardley - a handsome, divorced fellow drama teacher and single father - falls in love with her and proposes, she’s sure this is at last the good news her psychic predicted.
\nSoon after proposing, Ren receives the devastating news that his ex-wife has been in a debilitating car accident, prompting him to temporarily move back into his former home to care for her and his daughters. The unfailingly loyal Ren also wants to keep Mimi close, so she packs up her life in New York City and follows him to New Haven, Connecticut.
\nThere, she finds a job and unexpected community at a quirky local daycare. But as time goes by, it begins to seem that Ren and his estranged family might be slowly reuniting, and Mimi has to figure out what she’s willing to fight for and what she needs to let go of.
\nOne thing is for she would have never guessed that her psychic was right after all. Life’s twists, turns, and disasters just might lead her to unexpected happiness.
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Marnie MacGraw wants an ordinary life—a husband, kids, and a minivan parked in front of a suburban house. Now that she’s marrying the man of her dreams, she’s sure this is the life she’ll get. Then Marnie meets Blix Holliday, her fiance’s irascible matchmaking great aunt who is dying, and everything changes - just as Blix told her it would.
\nWhen her marriage ends after two miserable weeks, Marnie is understandably shocked. She’s even more astonished to find that she’s inherited Blix’s Brooklyn brownstone along with all of Blix’s unfinished “projects”: the heartbroken, oddball friends and neighbors running from happiness. Marnie doesn’t believe she’s anything special, but Blix somehow knew she was the perfect person to follow in her matchmaking footsteps.
\nAnd Blix was also right about some things Marnie must learn the hard way: love is hard to recognize, and the ones who push love away often are the ones who need it most.
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Newly orphaned, recently divorced, and semiadrift, Nina Popkin is on a search for her birth mother. She’s spent her life looking into strangers’ faces, fantasising they’re related to her, and now, at thirty-five, she’s ready for answers.
Meanwhile, the last thing Lindy McIntyre wants is someone like Nina bursting into her life, announcing that they’re sisters and campaigning to track down their mother. She’s too busy with her successful salon, three children, beautiful home, and . . . oh yes, some pesky little anxiety attacks.
But Nina is determined to reassemble her birth family. Her search turns up Phoebe Mullen, a guarded, hard-talking woman convinced she has nothing to offer. Gradually sharing stories and secrets, the three women make for a messy, unpredictable family that looks nothing like Nina pictured . . . but may be exactly what she needs. Nina’s moving, ridiculous, tragic, and transcendent journey becomes a love story proving that real family has nothing to do with DNA.
As the healer’s daughter, Malka has seen how the curse of the woods has plagued her village, but when the Ozmini Church comes to collect their tithes, they don’t listen to the warnings about a monster lurking in the trees. After a clergy girl wanders too close to the forest and Malka’s mother is accused of her murder, Malka strikes a bargain with a zealot Ozmini priest. If she brings him the monster, he will spare her mother from execution.
\nWhen she ventures into the blood-soaked woods, Malka finds a monster, though not the one she expects: an inscrutable, disgraced golem who agrees to implicate herself, but only after Malka helps her free the imprisoned rabbi who created her.
\nBut a deal easily made is not easily kept. And as their bargain begins to unravel a much more sinister threat, protecting her people may force Malka to endanger the one person she left home to save - and face her growing feelings for the very creature she was taught to fear.
No matter how different best friends Adelle and Connie are, one thing they’ve always had in common is their love of a little-known gothic romance novel called Moira. So when the girls are tempted by a mysterious stranger to enter the world of the book, they hardly suspect it will work. But suddenly they are in the world of Moira, living among characters they’ve obsessed about for years.
\nExcept . . . all is not how they remembered it. The world has been turned upside down: The lavish balls and star-crossed love affairs are now interlaced with unspeakable horrors. The girls realise that something dark is lurking behind their foray into fiction - and they will have to rewrite their own arcs if they hope to escape this nightmare with their lives.
After the frightful events of last autumn, seventeen-year-old Louisa Ditton has settled into her role as a maid at Coldthistle House, but she has not settled into what that means for her humanity.
As Louisa struggles to figure out whether she is worthy of redemption, the devilish Mr. Morningside plans a fete - one that will bring new guests to Coldthistle House. From wicked humans to Upworlders, angelic beings who look down upon Mr. Morningside’s monstrous staff, all are armed with their own brand of self-righteous justice.
Even a man claiming to be Louisa’s father has a role to play, though what his true motive is, Louisa cannot tell. The conflicts will eventually come to a head on the grounds of Coldthistle House - and the stakes include Louisa’s very soul.
For as long as she can remember, Valla’s been told her beauty would give her a life most people only dreamed of. So when the mysterious Count Leonid calls on her to be his betrothed, Valla jumps at the chance to leave her small, bleak village. The only thing standing in her way? The journey through the dangerous Gottyar Wood that many don’t survive.
\nFilled with deadly and cunning creatures, the Gottyar immediately delivers on its reputation with an attack that leaves Valla injured; her face torn to shreds. Barely making it to the castle in one piece, Valla is relieved to finally be safe. But things have changed. Valla’s face is no longer beautiful. And the Count is not happy . . . Valla thought making it through the Gottyar was a victory, but when she sees what awaits beyond the palace walls, the true battle begins.
\nIn this ruthlessly female-forward narrative that borrows from the best of horror, fairy tales, and folklore, a chewed-up-and-spit-out heroine must lean on the brutality of nature and her biggest fears in order to win back what’s she's been robbed her life.
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After escaping a harsh school where punishment was the lesson of the day, seventeen-year-old Louisa Ditton is thrilled to find employment as a maid at a boarding house. But soon after her arrival at Coldthistle House, Louisa begins to realise that the house’s mysterious owner, Mr. Morningside, is providing much more than lodging for his guests. Far from a place of rest, the house is a place of judgment, and Mr. Morningside and his unusual staff are meant to execute their own justice on those who are past being saved.
Louisa begins to fear for a young man named Lee who is not like the other guests. He is charismatic and kind, and Louisa knows that it may be up to her to save him from an untimely judgment. But in this house of distortions and lies, how can Louisa be sure whom to trust?
Clemency Fry has always been certain that marriage is a ludicrous arrangement - a notion she has believed ever since reading a scandalous feminist treatise as a girl. But her outlook on romance suddenly changes after meeting the handsome Lord Boyle.
\nWith promises of a different sort of union, one with mutual respect and financial security for her family, Clemency is won over, but when the wedding is set and the plans are in motion, Lord Boyle turns cold and dismissive. Clemency fears the worst has come to fruition; she had been right all along about affairs of the heart. She has fallen into the one trap she swore she never would.
\nThen Audric Ferrand comes to town seeking revenge against Lord Boyle on behalf of his sister, who also fell for his charm and wealth. Audric sees Clemency's predicament as the opportunity he needs. He suggests they join forces, a proposition that is risky and outrageous, and could possibly lead to the destruction of both their reputations.
\nFalling in love was never in the bargain, but the season has just begun - and romance is surely in the air.
In this claustrophobic science fiction thriller, a woman begins to doubt her own sanity and reality itself when she undergoes a dangerous experiment.
The Ganymede compound is a fresh start. At least that's what Senna tells herself when she arrives to take part in a cutting-edge scientific treatment, where participants have traumatic memories erased.
And Senna has reasons for wanting to escape her past.
But almost as soon as the treatment begins, Senna finds more than just her traumatic memories disappearing. She hardly recognises her new life or herself. Even though the symptoms for the process might justify the cure, Senna knows that something isn't right. As her symptoms worsen, Senna will need to band together with the other participants to unravel the mystery of her present, and save her future.
In this dark science fiction thriller, a young woman must confront her past so the human race will have a future.
Rosalyn Devar is on the run from her famous family, the bioengineering job she's come to hate, and her messed-up life. She's run all the way to outer space, where she's taken a position as a \"space janitor,\" cleaning up ill-fated research expeditions. But no matter how far she goes, Rosalyn can't escape herself. After too many mistakes on the job, she's given one last chance: take care of salvaging the Brigantine, a research vessel that has gone dark, with all crew aboard thought dead.
But the Brigantine's crew are very much alive . . . if not entirely human. Now Rosalyn is trapped on board, alone with a crew infected by a mysterious parasitic alien. The captain, Edison Aries, seems to still maintain some control over himself and the crew, but he won't be able to keep fighting much longer. Rosalyn and Edison must find a way to stop the parasite's onslaught . . . or it may take over the entire human race.
Free from the nightmares of Coldthistle House, Louisa and her friends have taken up a posh new London residence. But there’s no rest for the wicked. Religious zealots from the shepherd’s flock are gathering in the city, and ominous warnings are being left on Louisa’s doorstep. With the evil influence of her father’s spirit growing stronger - trying to take over - Louisa knows she will be forced to pick a side in the coming war between the old gods, whether she’d like to or not.
To save herself, Louisa is desperate enough to do whatever it takes - even if it means returning to Coldthistle House and striking another deal with Mr. Morningside. To uphold her end of the bargain, Louisa will have to rejoin his supernatural staff to venture to a gateway between worlds, a place of legend: the Tomb of Ancients. But, as always, there’s a catch . . .
They call it Company Town - a city-sized oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes, now owned by one very wealthy, powerful, byzantine family: Lynch Ltd.
\nHwa is of the few people in her community (which constitutes the whole rig) to forgo bio-engineered enhancements. As such, she's the last truly organic person left on the rig - making her doubly an outsider, as well as a neglected daughter and bodyguard extraordinaire.
\nStill, her expertise in the arts of self-defense and her record as a fighter mean that her services are yet in high demand. When the youngest Lynch needs training and protection, the family turns to Hwa. But can even she protect against increasingly intense death threats seemingly coming from another timeline?
\nMeanwhile, a series of interconnected murders threatens the city's stability and heightens the unease of a rig turning over. All signs point to a nearly invisible serial killer, but all of the murders seem to lead right back to Hwa's front door. Company Town has never been the safest place to be - but now, the danger is personal.
\nA brilliant, twisted mystery, as one woman must evaluate saving the people of a town that can't be saved, or saving herself.
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A group of employees and their CEO, celebrating the sale of their remarkable emotion-mapping-AI-alogorithm, crash onto a not-quite-deserted tropical island.
\nLuckily, those who survived have found a beautiful, fully stocked private palace, with all the latest technological updates (though one without connection to the outside world).
\nThe house, however, has more secrets than anyone might have guessed, and a much darker reason for having been built and left behind.
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Javier is a self-replicating humanoid on a journey of redemption.
\nJavier’s quest takes him from Amy’s island, where his actions have devastating consequences for his friend, toward Mecha where he will find either salvation . . . or death.
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In the third and final installment of the Machine Dynasty, the rapture for which the self-replicating humanoid vN were engineered finally comes to pass. Now that the failsafe that once kept vN from harming humans has been hacked, all vN are discovering the promise - and the peril - of free will. Her consciousness unleashed across computer systems all across the world, the vicious vN Portia stands poised to finally achieve her lifelong dream of bringing humanity to its knees.
\nThe old battle between her and her grand-daughter Amy comes to its epic conclusion in the war for the very systems that keep the planet running. Can Amy get her family to the stars before Portia destroys every opportunity for escape and freedom?
Amy Peterson is a von Neumann machine, a self-replicating humanoid robot.
\nFor the past five years, she has been grown slowly as part of a mixed organic/synthetic family. She knows very little about her android mother’s past, so when her grandmother arrives and attacks her mother, little Amy wastes no time: she eats her alive.
\nNow she carries her malfunctioning granny as a partition on her memory drive, and she’s learning impossible things about her clade's history - like the fact that the failsafe that stops all robots from harming humans has failed . . . Which means that everyone wants a piece of her, some to use her as a weapon, others to destroy her.
The Flynn family is coming undone. Catherine and Bud's open marriage has reached its breaking point as their daughters spiral in their own chaotic: Abigail, the eldest, is dating a man in his twenties nicknamed War Crime Wes; Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist; the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone - or something - is monitoring the town’s citizens.
\nCasting a shadow across their lives, and their small coastal town, is Paul Alabaster, a billionaire shipping magnate. Rumors of corruption circulate, but no one dares dig too deep. No one except Harper, whose obsession with a mysterious shipping container sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy - one that may just bring them closer together.
\nIrreverent and addictive, pinging between the voices of the Flynn family and those of the panorama of characters around them, Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs is a debut novel of quick-witted observation and surprising tenderness. With Lost Lambs, Cash has crafted a family saga for the twenty-first century, all held together with crazy glue.
In her ambitious debut Madeline Claire Franklin crafts a gripping exploration of how the world teaches young girls to cage their wildness - and what happens when they claw themselves free.
\nAfter being placed in foster care, Rhi is hungry for a fresh start and begins working at the Happy Valley Wildlife Preserve. While in the woods, she stumbles upon a surreal sight: a pack of wolves guarding four feral and majestic girls. After Rhi gains their trust, they reveal that they’re princesses from another land, raised by a magical prophet they call Mother - and they're convinced Rhi is their lost fifth sister.
\nUnsure what to believe, Rhi ushers the girls to civilisation, where they’re met with societal uproar and scrutiny, dubbed by the ravenous media and true crime junkies as “The Wild Girls of Happy Valley.” Desperate to return to their kingdom, the girls look to Rhi for help. Rhi knows the girls are deluded, but at the same time she’s drawn in by their boldness and authenticity - traits she is afraid she has lost within herself. And when Rhi witnesses strange phenomena she can’t quite explain, the line between fantasy and reality grows blurry.
\nAs the hunt for answers intensifies, Rhi must make a decision that will change the course of her life and the lives of her Wild Girls forever.
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Katie Price is known in every living room in America. A small-town Wisconsin girl who became an A-list star, she rarely makes it home, but this year is different . . . Little does she know it will lead her straight into the piercing blue-eyed gaze of Wil Greene.
\nA lot has happened in the decade since those cold Wisconsin nights when Wil and Katie drove around in Wil’s Bronco senior year. Since then, Wil's law career hasn’t taken off. Her father passed away. And what started as a personal challenge - kissing a new person twice a week, every week - has made her a growing sensation, but her life is still stuck in phase one. Through the years, the two have never left each other's thoughts and desires, but now suddenly, they are back in each others' lives. Their reconnection is instantaneous and the passion is palpable . . . but can it stand the test of time?
Second-generation spy Yardley Whitmer, code name “the Unicorn,” can do no wrong. With her combination of debutante-style charm and expert spycraft, she’s become an instant legend in the field. If only finally moving out of her girlfriend’s home were as easy as rappelling off the Eiffel Tower. But living a full-time cover story has slowly eroded her relationship with KC until there’s nothing left but lies.
\nKC “Tabasco” Nolan, hacker extraordinaire, can crack anything - except the code that would tell her the right moment to confess her secret job to Yardley. Now it’s too late, and she’s in danger of losing the best chance at love she’s ever had.
\nWhen an undercover shakedown goes wrong, Yardley and KC discover the unbelievable truth - that they are Unicorn and Tabasco, and they’ve both been working with the agency for years. To salvage the mission, they’re compelled to partner up and fly across oceans, race through winding European streets, and give in to inconvenient passion while hiding in an ambassador’s linen closet. But can they throw away their Plan A and fight through the betrayal and secrets to fall in love with each other’s true selves?
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When Sarah Phillips lands on top of Harriett Roberts in an overturned car it’s not an ideal first meeting. The overwhelming confusion she feels threatens her plans for a fresh start as a doctor in the inhospitable Australian Outback.
\nVeterinarian Harry Roberts doesn’t need some city girl-pretty girl rocking her world. The Outback is no place for lightweights - and no place for women who ask too many questions.
\nOne touch, one unguarded look. The future could be promising, if neither of them had a past.
Two strong-willed women are fighting for survival in a primitive wilderness of venomous snakes, stinging insects, and crocodile-infested swamps. Too bad those are the least of their worries.
\nAfter being severely wounded in a covert operation, ex-Australian Secret Service officer Vivian Andrews has built a quiet life for herself in a small fishing village in Northern Queensland. Or so she believes, until she discovers a rotting corpse in the mangroves. An angry crocodile drags the body away, but not before Vivian snags the man’s money belt which contains nearly $75,000 - and a phone number that Vivian knows all too well.
\nAt the police station to report her discovery, Vivian finds two government agents who are looking for her. A young man has gone missing and they need an experienced guide to help them negotiate the terrain to find him. Vivian knows they aren’t telling her the whole story but is attracted to the idea of returning to action - and to behavioral scientist Claire Walker.
\nWhen Claire’s partner is injured, tough, resilient Vivian and smart, intuitive Claire must use every skill they possess to complete their mission despite nearly impenetrable walls of vegetation, trails that lead to deadly traps, the damp simmering heat - and another kind of heat neither of them wishes to acknowledge. Could the woman sleeping next to her be a master thief . . . or worse.
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What if you’re a nerdy med student and a womanising rock star wants you as her next conquest - then leaves you totally humiliated.
Now fast-forward eleven years.
Sexy and magnetic, Australian rock star Austen Farleigh is at the height of her spectacular career. Her penchant for one-night stands is as famous as her many songs.
American Dr. Merritt Harrington now works for Doctors Without Borders and is at a crossroads in her life. Her last assignment in the Andes Mountains was harrowing, and her love life at a dead end. No one has been able to ignite even a tiny spark since Austen - damn her.
\nWhen they meet again in Australia, Merritt is desperate to keep Austen at arm’s length. But temptation whispers in her ear.
From the US to Peru to Australia and the highlands of Papua New Guinea, their desire for one another is on an uncontrollable collision course - with a force they may no longer be able to ignore.
Mac Griffith is used to risk and digging up dirty secrets in dangerous places, and this time it’s her twin that’s gone missing. Rachel Anderson wants no help from a war-shocked journalist - what police detective ever needs an amateur tagging along, especially a damnably attractive one?
\nBut Brisbane is under siege and a serial killer’s body count is rising. With the clock ticking, no lead is too slim. Rachel needs Mac’s help, and there’s no chance Mac won’t take. Neither of them means for it to go as far as it does . . .
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Harper Price has spent her career chasing the truth - ruthless, relentless, and never afraid to burn bridges to get the story. But when one reckless night leads to an unforgettable encounter, she finds herself entangled with the last woman she should ever want.
\nEvelyn Voss is the head of one of the most influential global tech companies. Polished, lethal, and untouchable, she’s used to controlling every aspect of her world - until she meets Harper.
\nTheir connection is instant. Their chemistry, volatile.
\nIn a world built on secrets and control, love may be the most dangerous game of all.
Abby Benton thought she’d have the last laugh when she painted her competition portrait of the arrogant Victoria Myers. In her opinion, the beautiful, poised mining magnate needed to be taken down a peg.
\nWhen their paths cross again it’s Victoria’s chance to turn the tables. There’s no way the struggling artist can refuse the job Victoria has for her, not when it comes with a breathtaking paycheck.
\nSix months doesn’t seem so long for Abby to have to put up with the insufferable Ms Myers. Not when it means giving her dependent mother a better life. Victoria might think she’s in charge, but Abby is going to pipe her own tune . . .
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Hollywood star and the nation’s favorite daughter, Eleanor Godwin wants nothing more than time by herself, especially from the persistent press. What better place to recuperate after a particularly gruelling round of interviews than a picture-perfect exclusive island resort in the Great Barrier Reef?
\nPolitical reporter Sophie Marsh is used to digging up dirt. When her editor underhandedly snags her the position as Eleanor’s housekeeper for two months, she reluctantly agrees to spy on the star. After all, her hard-won position at the paper is on the line.
\nAgainst the background of the breathtaking island, passions run high. As secrets are revealed, the assignment becomes Sophie’s worst nightmare - write the article or lose her job. She knows that succumbing to temptation can’t be an option. But tell that to her heart . . .
Corporate lawyer Winter Carlyle is the first to admit that she’s become jaded with romance after a very messy public breakup.
When her bossy aunt asks her to visit a high-end nightclub to check on her young cousin, Winter reluctantly agrees. Poking her nose into her cousin’s love life is the last thing she wants to do. So what if he has a giant crush on Pandora, a lounge singer thirteen years his senior? The cougar just might teach him a thing or two.
For Pandora, the sultry siren with the slinky low-cut gown façade is all an act. It’s showbiz. She dislikes the adulation and the numerous advances, especially from the Russian gangster and the aging playboy. Besides, she has an ulterior motive for being at the club, and romance is definitely off the agenda.
But uptight, reserved Winter is a complication she hasn’t foreseen. And even with the best intentions, love has a way of striking at the most inopportune times.
Studying the past hasn’t prepared Daisy Parker - anthropologist-turned-matchmaker - for her latest client. Finding Lindsey Jamieson-Ford a life partner isn’t exactly a simple exercise. Not only hasn’t Lindsey dated for years, the prickly reclusive scientist relates better with her robots than with people.
\nLindsey has no idea what matchmaking involves when she hires Daisy. She’s never met anyone quite like the bubbly matchmaker and doesn’t know how she’s going to survive the infuriating woman. Now her life has lurched onto a roller coaster that just won’t damn well stop.
\nGuiding Lindsey through the courtship process is a challenge. Before the reticent scientist can move forward, Daisy has to teach her to leave the past behind. But another problem soon enters into the mix . . .
\nHow can Daisy stay detached when her body seems to be answering Lindsey’s mating call?
Vanessa Templeton, the formidable head of a global media empire, has it all. Until she doesn’t. Her world changes in an instant, tumbling her into the unknown.
\nEden Ford, a renowned photographer, has been travelling the world in her quest for the perfect pictures. She thought she was past finding love, especially on an isolated island in the middle of the sea. That is until Vanessa falls into her world.
\nWhen they meet, the attraction is powerful, but is it real?
\nThe Shattered Path is a poignant story of love, loss, and the enduring hope that even the most fractured memories can find a way back to the heart where they belong.
In the tranquil town of Cedar Plains, where safety and community are sacred, Courtney Faith’s ideal life is upended by a body found on a local farm, shattering her peaceful existence. Her friend, Alexa Huston, intimately familiar with chaos, gets entangled in an accidental murder that escalates her spiraling life into deeper darkness. Alexa wrestles with a disturbing question: Is murder justifiable if it targets the deserving?
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAs bodies accumulate, the local police scramble for answers. Torn between loyalty and justice, Courtney discovers evidence linking Alexa to the crimes. Their friendship frays as Courtney grapples with a dire choice: expose Alexa and risk her own darkest secret, or protect a friend and possibly destroy everything she cherishes.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tIn Cedar Plains, some truths are too perilous to unearth. Caught in a deadly dance of secrets and lies, Courtney must decide whether to confront the monster behind a familiar face or let their secrets stay hidden, buried within the town’s heart. Their darkest deeds are cloaked in silence, and no one truly knows anything.
Detective Ryan Boone thought the simple jewelry heist was an open-and-shut case. That is until he discovers an unknown drug, and this minor crime he was investigating may be tied to a string of seemingly unconnected murders.
\nMeanwhile, Mel Parker, unscrupulous leader of a less-than-legal high-end escort service, stumbles across the same pills. On top of protecting her \"investment,\" she has her own reasons for attempting to unravel the mystery behind the medication.
\nRyan knows someone has the answers he seeks, and Mel can't come forward. To complicate things further, five other women are implicated in the murders despite most having never met.
\nAs the trail turns up as many mysteries as resolutions, Ryan and Mel must discover the twisted connection before someone else ends up dead.
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Detective Ryan Boone just can’t let this case go. While the mystery behind the robbery and murders in Twisted was uncovered a few months back, there is still a very large loose thread that Boone desperately wishes to tie up. He convinces his superiors to allow him to travel to Ottawa, where he’s uncovered a lead into a conspiracy that hints what happened in Toronto has nation-wide, and horrific, implications.
\nFormer detective Cora Porter has moved to forensics, but when a strange case involving a murder, a runaway, and a case of mistaken identity hits close to home, she squeezes her way into the investigation. It also doesn’t help that a certain visiting detective has caught her eye, and is also willing to work with her on the case.
\nTheir suspect, Blaine Roche, always seems to be one step ahead of Ryan and Cora. What they don’t know is that he’s not just trying to evade arrest, but take down the conspiracy for his own purposes. Given he’s already a wanted man, Blaine is willing to do whatever it takes to get revenge. He has nothing else to lose . . . or so he thinks. Wicked picks up where Twisted left off, but in a new location and with several new twists.
Alana and Gray have been the perfect pair all through high school, and neither of them think that should have to change just because Alana came out as a lesbian. Sure, their romantic relationship is over, but their best-friends-since-forever dynamic is stronger than ever. Really, the only difference is that instead of kissing Gray herself, Alana sets him up with other girls to do that.
\nEnter Talia: tall, confident, gorgeous. Gray's master plan is simple: befriend Tal and charm her into being his girlfriend. With Alana's help, of course.
\nBut as Alana spends more time with Tal, she is introduced to a world of possibilities. A world outside her small town. A world in which Alana can fully embrace her queer identity. A world where Alana and Talia are . . . together.
\nAs the two get closer, Alana must juggle her loyalty to Gray with her growing feelings for Tal. Can she stay true to herself and to her best friend? More importantly, does she want to?
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By the time the Beaumont-Gardiner Award is announced, everyone's going to hate Levi Preston. And they're going to love us.
\nFreddie and Stella are on a mission: take down their former best friend turned queen bee Levi Preston by depriving her of the one thing she wants more than anything: The Beaumont-Gardiner Award. Only the coolest, smartest, and - let’s face it - hottest girls win . . . so Freddie and Stella are going to have to get a whole lot cooler, smarter, and hotter.
\nAt first, it seems to work - Freddie and Stella slowly manage to worm their way in with the cool girls. With every shopping date, agonizing salon appointment, and hot yoga class, the girls get closer to the in-crowd and Levi fades more and more into the background. The higher they rise, though, the more uneasy Freddie starts to feel. Stella’s gone from her lovable, goofy best friend to someone she barely recognises, using her newfound power for evil at every opportunity. Soon, Freddie realises she’s created a monster - and she needs Levi’s help to put a stop to it.
A spellbinding story of separation, longing, recovery and survival as a family makes a new home in the aftermath of tragedy.
\nOn a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.
\nThe British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?
\nLand is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away.
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Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs.
The trick with found things, though, is how easily they can be lost.
Friends can betray.
Mothers can disappear.
Visions can mislead.
Certainties can unravel.
Merida goes on an all-new, life-changing adventure in this original YA novel set several years after the close of Brave.
\nWhat if you had one year to save everything you loved?
\nMerida of DunBroch needs a change. She loves her family - jovial King Fergus, proper Queen Elinor, the mischievous triplets - and her peaceful kingdom. But she’s frustrated by its sluggishness; each day, the same. Merida longs for adventure, purpose, challenge - maybe even, someday, love.
\nBut the fiery Princess never expects her disquiet to manifest by way of Feradach, an uncanny supernatural being tasked with rooting out rot and stagnation, who appears in DunBroch on Christmas Eve with the intent to demolish the realm - and everyone within. Only the intervention of the Cailleach, an ancient entity of creation, gives Merida a shred of hope: convince her family to change within the year - or suffer the eternal consequences.
\nUnder the watchful eyes of the gods, Merida leads a series of epic journeys to kingdoms near and far in an attempt to inspire revolution within her family. But in her efforts to save those she loves from ruin, has Merida lost sight of the Clan member grown most stagnant of all - herself?
Ronan Lynch is a dreamer. He can pull both curiosities and catastrophes out of his dreams and into his compromised reality.
\nJordan Hennessy is a thief. The closer she comes to the dream object she is after, the more inextricably she becomes tied to it.
\nCarmen Farooq-Lane is a hunter. Her brother was a dreamer . . . and a killer. She has seen what dreaming can do to a person. And she has seen the damage that dreamers can do. But that is nothing compared to the destruction that is about to be unleashed. . . .
Now that the ley lines around Cabeswater have been woken, nothing for Ronan, Gansey, Blue, and Adam will be the same. Ronan, for one, is falling more and more deeply into his dreams, and his dreams are intruding more and more into waking life.
\nMeanwhile, some very sinister people are looking for some of the same pieces of the Cabeswater puzzle that Gansey is after . . .
This is the story of the Lynch family.
\nNiall and Mór escaped their homeland for a new start, and lost themselves in what they found.
\nDeclan has grown up as the responsible son, the responsible brother - only to find there is no way for him to keep his family safe.
\nRonan has always lived on the edge between dreams and waking . . . but now that edge is gone, and he is falling.
\nMatthew has been the happy child, the brightest beam. But rebellion beckons, because it all feels like an illusion now.
\nThis world was not made for such a family - a family with the power to make a world and break it. If they cannot save each other or themselves, we are all doomed.
January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa has always offered elegant luxury in the wilds of West Virginia, its mountain sweetwater washing away all of high society’s troubles.
\nLocal girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, have trained her well. But when the family heir makes a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats, June must persuade her staff - many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the front lines - to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile.
\nMeanwhile FBI Agent Tucker Minnick, whose coal tattoo hints at an Appalachian past, presses his ears to the hotel’s walls, listening for the diplomats’ secrets. He has one of his own, which is how he knows that June’s balancing act can have dangerous consequences: the sweetwater beneath the hotel can threaten as well as heal.
\nJune has never met a guest she couldn’t delight, but the diplomats are different. Without firing a single shot, they have brought the war directly to her. As clashing loyalties crack the Avallon’s polished veneer, June must calculate the true cost of luxury.
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Something is happening to the source of the dreamers' power. It is blocked. Diminished. Weak. If it goes away entirely, what will happen to the dreamers and those who depend on them?
\nRonan Lynch isn't planning to wait and find out. Backed by his mentor, Bryde, he is ready to do what needs to be done to save the dreamers and the dreamed . . . even if it takes him far from his family and the boy he loves.
\nJordan Hennessy knows she will not survive if the dreaming fails. So she plunges into a dark underworld in order to find an object that may sustain her.
\nCarmen Farooq-Lane is afraid of the dreamers - which is why she's agreed to hunt them down. The closer she gets, though, the more complicated her feelings become. Will the dreamers destroy the world . . . or will the world be destroyed trying to eliminate the dreamers?
Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them - not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.
\nHis name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.
\nBut Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all - family money, good looks, devoted friends - but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.
\nFor as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.
Nothing living is safe. Nothing dead is to be trusted. For years, Gansey has been on a quest to find a lost king. One by one, he’s drawn others into this quest: Ronan, who steals from dreams; Adam, whose life is no longer his own; Noah, whose life is no longer a lie; and Blue, who loves Gansey . . . and is certain she is destined to kill him.
\nNow the endgame has begun. Dreams and nightmares are converging. Love and loss are inseparable. And the quest refuses to be pinned to a path.
The daughter of a Taiwanese father and white mother, Vi Liu has never quite fit into her Midwestern college town. Now at twenty-three, after getting dumped and dropping out of college, Vi works as a front desk attendant at a hotel where she refills cucumber water samovars and fends off overtures of friendship from her bubbly blond coworker, Rachel.
\nBut when Vi decides to accompany Rachel to a local drag show, her life changes forever. In the alley outside the bar, next to a trash can, is a blob with beady black eyes. Unable to leave it behind, Vi picks up the creature and, in a moment of drunken desperation, takes it home with her.
\nAs her pet blob becomes sentient, Vi realises it obeys her commands and she decides to mold the blob into her ideal partner. She feeds it sugary cereal and a stream of pop culture, and soon the creature transforms into a movie-star handsome white man.
\nBut as Vi's desire to be loved unconditionally threatens to spiral out of control, she is forced to confront her lonely childhood, the ex-boyfriend who has unfriended her, and the racial marginalisation that has defined her relationships. Ultimately, Vi embarks on a journey of self-discovery and learns that it's impossible to control those you love.
\nBlending the familiar with the fantastical, BLOB tells a witty, heartfelt story of what it means to be human.
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The Safina is a city ship, two hundred years into its voyage from the ruins of Earth towards a new habitable world. Its crew maintain the ship, generation after generation, while protecting their 'ancestors' - the final remnants of Earth's doomed Network Empire - by keeping them alive in cryostasis.
\nBut a lot can change in two hundred years, and people are starting to ask questions. Why should the crew continue to toil for people none of them remember? What exactly gives Administration its authority over everyone else?
\nAnd when the blackouts start, they set in motion a chain of events that will change life on the Safina forever. A reckoning is coming. The system is only secure so long as those in power maintain the obedience of those beneath them.
\nAnd the crew has had enough.
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The five most dangerous liars in the land have been mysteriously summoned to work together for a single objective: to kill the God King Joon.
\nHe has it coming. Under his merciless immortal hand, the nobles flourish, while the poor and innocent are imprisoned, ruined . . . or sold.
\nAnd now each of the five blades will come for him. Each has tasted bitterness - from the hired hitman seeking atonement, a lovely assassin who seeks freedom, or even the prince banished for his cruel crimes. None can resist the sweet, icy lure of vengeance.
\nThey can agree on murder.
\nThey can agree on treachery.
\nBut for these five killers - each versed in deception, lies, and betrayal - it’s not enough to forge an alliance. To survive, they’ll have to find a way to trust each other . . . but only one can take the crown.
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The King of Yusan may be the greatest liar of them all.
\nHis sister's ring is in his sights, and he will do anything to get what he wants. Even manipulating the five blades to steal it . . . Bonded by deceit, the blades must rely on their skills to pull off King Joon's pursuit or risk his legendary wrath.
\nA foreign rule of law stands between them and Quilimar, the Queen of Khitan. Now they have one month to steal the powerful Golden Ring of the Dragon Lord. But that impossible task might be easier than trusting one another, even though their lives, their families, and the realms depend on it.
\nThey can all agree on one thing: the king can't win. But can they beat him at his own game? Because for the blades, this time it's not just personal, it's revenge. Lies may have torn them apart, but now vengeance will bring them together.
\nThe lies have only just begun . . .
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The Blades were never supposed to survive this long. But after the battle in Quu Harbor, escaping is no longer enough. The most dangerous liars in the four realms have one last mission - return to Yusan and finish what they started.
\n\n
But now a usurper sits on the serpent throne. And he may be more dangerous than the god-king.
\n\n
With three relics of the Dragon Lord in their possession, the Blades will face the might of the four realms. Enemies will become allies. Allies will become traitors. And the ones they love most? They'll be the ones to break them.
\n\n
Grief will carve the Blades into something ruthless and unrecognisable. But only by losing everything can they win this game of kings and crowns.
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In the summer of 2020, as Europe is beginning to open back up after the first phase of the pandemic, a young Japanese woman based in the German city of Göttingen is working on a PhD about the iconography of medieval saints. She waits at the train station to meet her old friend from graduate school, Nomiya, who died nine years earlier in Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster, but has suddenly returned without any explanation.
\nWhen Nomiya arrives, the narrator guides him through Göttingen’s scale model of the solar system, talking about her studies, her roommate, and their mutual friends. Yet it isn’t long before his spectral presence in the city begins to fray the narrator’s psyche and destabilise the world beyond: eerie discoveries are made in the forest, Pluto begins disappearing and reappearing, and threads unravel in the fabric of time. The narrative continues to spiral and unfold to include the Japanese physicist Terada Torahiko, mysteriously sprouting teeth, and Saint Lucia, all set against the ever-lingering presence of death.
\nWith a literary style reminiscent of W. G. Sebald, Yoko Tawada, and Yu Miri, The Place of Shells is a hypnotic, poetic novel that explores the ebb and flow of memory - its physical manifestations, its strange and sudden metaphors - and the overwhelming stranglehold of trauma.
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In Japanese legend, cats are symbols of good luck. If you are kind to them, they'll return the favour one day. And if you are kind to the right cat, you might find yourself invited to a celestial cafe.
\nUnder a glittering full moon, a Kyoto coffee shop appears only where and when it's needed. It's run by talking cats serving delicious desserts and age-old astrological wisdom.
\nThe cafe's first customer of the night, Satomi, catches wind of her boyfriend's plan to propose, and feels torn between love and success. Her disaffected intern, Koyuki, is having a hard time fitting into the new version of her family, while Junko is visiting home for the first time after decades away.
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In Japan cats are a symbol of good luck. As the myth goes, if you are kind to them, they’ll one day return the favor. And if you are kind to the right cat, you might just find yourself invited to a mysterious coffee shop under a glittering Kyoto moon. This particular coffee shop is like no other. It has no fixed location, no fixed hours, and seemingly appears at random to adrift young people at crucial junctions in their lives.
\nIt’s also run by talking cats.
\nWhile customers at the Full Moon Coffee Shop partake in cakes, coffees, and teas, the cats also consult them on their star charts, offer cryptic wisdom, and let them know where their lives have veered off course - because every person who visits the shop has been feeling more than a little lost.
\nAnd for a down-on-her-luck screenwriter, a romantically stuck movie director, a hopeful hairstylist, and a technologically challenged website designer, the feline guides will set them back on their fated paths. After all, there is a reason the shop appeared to each of them . . .
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Prince Ashoka is the youngest son of the tyrannical Emperor Adil Maurya. Considered an outcast by his father for his rejection of the emperor’s brutal onslaught against the witches of the empire, Ashoka longs for change.
\nWhen the sudden and unexpected death of his father leaves the monarchy in disarray, Ashoka is sent to govern a tumultuous region annexed by Emperor Adil that is terrorised by nature spirits - a task many see as doomed to fail. Suspected by a disdainful governor and evaded by distrustful witches, Ashoka must question his rigid ideals and fight against becoming the one person he despises the most - his father.
\nShakti is a a witch bound by a pacifist code. After witnessing the murder of her aunt and village at the hands of the emperor, Shakti hurtles down a path of revenge, casting a curse with unexpected consequences. Posing as a maidservant in the famed palace of the Mauryas and armed with newfound powers beyond her imagination, Shakti attempts to dismantle the monarchy from within by having the royal progeny ruin themselves and turn their father’s legacy into nothing but ash.
\nIn a world where nature spirits roam the land, and witches are hunted to extinction, Ashoka and Shakti will be forced to grapple with the consequences of to take it for themselves or risk losing it completely.
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Prince Ashoka’s sister, Aarya, has named herself empress and is determined to reverse her brother’s mercy for the mayakari.
\nShakti is being held by shadowy figures, drugged and forced to commit an unspeakable crime. When she wakes, she finds herself prisoner, but gaps in her memory around the curse she has cast trap her more thoroughly than any cage.
\nAshoka must find allies and quickly if he is to usher in a new dawn for the mayakari, but the tougher the decision he makes, the farther he gets from his true self. He must determine what he is willing to lose in pursuit of his vision of the future.
\nThe first blow has been dealt by Ashoka and Shakti, but the empire not only remains, it appears stronger - and more brutal - than ever. Both must find ways to fight back before nature is deprived of its spirits and guardians, and the reign of the new empress spreads its destruction and oppression to lands beyond.
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HAMMAJANG | adjective. Definition: In a disorderly or chaotic state; messed up. Chiefly in predicative use, esp. in all hammajang. Etymology: A borrowing from Hawaiian Pidgin.
\nEdie is done with crime. Eight years behind bars changes a person - costs them too much time with too many of the people who need them most.
\nAnd it's all Angel's fault. She sold Edie out in what should have been the greatest moment of their lives. Instead, Edie was shipped off to the icy prison planet spinning far below the soaring skybridges and neon catacombs of Kepler space station - of home - to spend the best part of a decade alone.
\nBut then a chance for early parole appears out of nowhere and Edie steps into the pallid sunlight to find none other than Angel waiting - and she has an offer.
\nOne last job. One last deal. One last target. The trillionaire tech god they failed to bring down last time. There's just one thing Edie needs to do - trust Angel again - which also happens to be the last thing Edie wants to do. What could possibly go all hammajang about this plan?
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After the heist of a lifetime, Malia has it all: a loft apartment aboard the massive Kepler Station, expensive clothes, and a dev credit in her favorite video game. She’s also bored as hell. Three years after retiring her mantle as the Obake, the most infamous hacker in the quadrant - and arguably the galaxy - Malia hasn’t taken well to civilian life. So what’s the harm in rigging a few cybernetic prizefights and making a little cash on the side?
\nWhen Malia’s scheme is uncovered, she runs afoul of Jeongah Song - the dangerous leader of a local gang with a reputation for brutality. Malia is ready for retribution. But what she gets instead is an offer she can’t refuse: take down the local politician leading a “clean up the streets” campaign displacing residents and hindering Jeongah’s operations on the space station . . . or die. Without another way out, Malia takes the deal.
\nLuckily, she has some friends she can call on in times of need: a master thief, a street racing wheelman, and a femme fatale grifter. But as Malia digs deeper into the politician’s shady dealings, she finds herself embroiled in a conspiracy that might be too big for her to handle. One that has roots in her own rise as the Obake - a cybernetically enhanced superhacker created by a power-mad genius . . . a superhacker whose mods are rapidly degrading. Faced with threats on all sides, Malia may finally be in over her head . . . or stuck - forever - inside her own mind.
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Ramya and Juliet begin to uplift each other and heal the moment they match on Tinder. For nearly a decade, Ramya, an American of Indian origin from Virginia, has grappled with her survivor’s guilt from a devastating mass shooting that occurred during her last year of university. Halfway around the world in Nigeria, Juliet has survived family tragedies, economic downturns, and an oppressive patriarchy. With a one-chance swipe on their phones in a country foreign to them both, the two women begin a remarkable romantic relationship that most fairy tales wouldn’t dare to depict.
\nBut can they hold onto each other?
\nAs their lives intertwine, Ramya suffers acute memory loss so pronounced that she sometimes forgets where she is, who she’s with, and even who she is. Periodically, Juliet experiences time freezes that throw her out of sync with everyone around her. Ultimately, the two women choose to begin a new life together in New York City, where their love will be acknowledged and respected. But for Juliet to make it through the American immigration process, the two women must get to the root causes of these memory loss and time-lapse episodes by coming to terms with their pasts.
\nWritten by a singularly talented, wildly imaginative novelist, What It Meant to Survive is a powerful and bracing work of fiction inspired by the Virginia Tech Massacre, and the author's real-life experience navigating its long-term social and emotional impacts.
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After a botched high-profile murder investigation, Sergeant Elderick Cole is exiled to the remote, rugged landscape of Nunavut, a vast territory in the Arctic Circle known for its untamed beauty, frigid temperatures, and endless winter nights.
\nHis bleak existence takes a sinister turn when he discovers the hanging body of Pitseolala, a troubled Inuit girl whom he had sworn to protect. Her death dredges up demons he thought he'd buried along with the scars of a fractured marriage and the aching divide between himself and his estranged daughter.
\nAs Cole's life unravels - and with it, the fragile thread of his investigation - he turns to Pitseolala's younger brother, Maliktu, a fellow outsider. It's then that Cole uncovers what binds them: a singular mission to find her killer.
\nAgainst fierce backlash, Cole's overriding desire to redeem just one aspect of his otherwise failed life becomes an obsession - and he's willing to break every rule in his unyielding pursuit of justice and the smallest shred of redemption.
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The Soviet Union 1938: Lavrentiy Beria, 'The Boss' of the Georgian republic, nervously prepares a Black Sea resort for a visit from 'The Boss of Bosses', his fellow Georgian Josef Stalin. Under escalating pressure from enemies and allies alike, never certain who he can trust, Beria slowly but surely descends into dark murderous paranoia.
\nBy his side is his driver and right-hand man, Vasil Murtov, Beria's closest friend since childhood. But to be a witness is the most dangerous act in this world; Murtov must protect his family and play his own game of survival while remaining outwardly loyal to an increasingly unstable Beria. With the action moving between Moscow and Georgia, the tension ramps up as Stalin's visit and the inevitable bloodbath approaches. Is Murtov playing Beria, or is he being played?
\nThe First Friend is a novel in a time of autocrats, where reality is a fiction created by those who rule. Reflecting on Putin's Russia, Trump's America, Xi's China and Murdoch's planet Earth, it is at once a satire and a thriller, a survivor's tale in which a father has to walk a tightrope every day to save his family from a monster and a monstrous society. Where safety lies in following official fictions, is a truthful life the ultimate risk?
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Queenie Rivers was raised by her grandparents in coastal Los Angeles. As she approaches thirty, her erratic lifestyle is forced back on course by a car accident and her grandmother’s intervention.
\nBut her recovery is interrupted by a break-in and Gran’s death. Gran’s last act was to set Queenie up with a job at an upscale seaside bistro with a shady reputation - the owner of which, it turns out, was once a close friend. As Queenie digs into Gran’s past for answers about the break-in, the murder, and the unnerving circumstances surrounding the restaurant and her new boss, she discovers that her grandmother, a Romani Holocaust survivor, kept many secrets, some of them otherworldly - secrets that become hers to unravel when she becomes a suspect in Gran’s murder case.
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As Lan lies dying, she makes a promise that binds her long into the Beyond. Fifteen years later, her teenage granddaughter, Kaitlyn, triggers an international storm of outrage that unleashes the rage of a whole betrayed generation. For one shining fragment of time, the world is with her. But then the backlash begins and soon she and those closest to her find themselves facing the wrath of the old establishment, who will use every dirty trick in the book to fight them off.
\nWatching over the growing chaos is Lan, who taught them all to think independently, approach power sceptically and dream with clear intent. She knows more than one generation’s hopes are on the line. Nothing less than the future of humanity stands in the balance.
\nGrand in scope, rich in courageous characters who breathe new life into ancient wisdom, here is a dream of a better future: a world we’d be proud to leave to our children and their children and on, generations down the line.
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Mira's days are filled with duty and light on freedom. In a new country, living with a husband she barely knows - and who she fears she'll never love - Mira is desperate to discover all that her new life in England might offer. And then there's Tahliil. The quiet, beautiful man she sees at work each day. With a depth in his eyes and a face full of questions.
\nThe first person in this new world who listens to Mira's hopes for who she yearns to become. But beyond their lunchtime encounters, the pair couldn't lead more different the duties that bind them, the homes they are trying to build threaten to subsume them. As Mira and Tahliil navigate the deep and turbulent waters of their new worlds can they find a way to be together, and will finding each other set them free?
Dylan was six when The End came, back in 2018; when the electricity went off for good, and the 'normal' 21st century world he knew disappeared.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNow he's 14 and he and his mam have survived in their isolated hilltop house above the village of Nebo in north-west Wales, learning new skills, and returning to old ways of living. Despite their close understanding, the relationship between mother and son changes subtly as Dylan must take on adult responsibilities. And they each have their own secrets, which emerge as, in turn, they jot down their thoughts and memories in a found notebook - the Blue Book of Nebo.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tIn this prize-winning novel, Manon Steffan Ros not only explores the human capacity to find new strengths when faced with the need to survive, but also questions the structures and norms of the contemporary world.
For readers of Matthew Desmond, Katherine Boo, and Anand Giridharadas comes a deeply reported work of journalism that explores the promise and peril of global microfinance, told through the eyes of those who work in microfinance and women borrowers in Sierra Leone, West Africa.
\nIn 2005, pop star Bono proclaimed, “Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Give a woman microcredit, she, her husband, her children and her extended family will eat for a lifetime.” By the mid-2000s, it had become international development dogma that microfinance - very small, high-interest loans - was the way to end poverty. The UN had dubbed 2005 the year of microcredit. A year later, when Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on microfinance, he proclaimed that tiny loans would “put poverty in museums.”
\nIt was a beautiful vision. But there was just one microfinance doesn’t work - at least not as promised.
\nMara Kardas-Nelson's We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky is a story about unintended consequences, blind optimism, and the decades-long ramifications of seemingly small policy choices that reverberate around the world. It is a story of poor women doing their best to make ends meet under the toughest circumstances, and of international development workers, funders and advocates - from Bono to Bill Gates to Bill Clinton - who promise a brighter future with a quick-fix solution that may ultimately trap poor people in poverty.
\nThe book is deeply rooted in the deeply immersive narratives of women who take out microfinance loans in Sierra Leone; their stories are set against a detailed history of the meteoric rise of Muhammad Yunus’ lofty vision and the gradual shift from a small non-profit program to a booming for-profit industry.
\nWe Are Not Able to Live in the Sky puts in harsh relief the questions we all should have been asking for who makes money off microfinance - and more importantly, who, and what, gets left behind?
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Nor once dreamed of seeing the wondrous wealth and beauty of Ilara, the kingdom that’s ruled her village for as long as anyone can remember. But when a childhood accident left her with a permanent scar, it became clear that her identical twin sister, Zadie, would likely be chosen to marry the Crown Prince - while Nor remained behind, unable to ever set foot on land.
Then Zadie is gravely injured, and Nor is sent to Ilara in her place. To Nor’s dismay, her future husband, Prince Ceren, is as forbidding and cold as his home - a castle carved into a mountain and devoid of sunlight. And as she grows closer to Ceren’s brother, the charming Prince Talin, Nor uncovers startling truths about a failing royal bloodline, a murdered queen… and a plot to destroy the home she was once so eager to leave.
In order to save her people, Nor must learn to negotiate the treacherous protocols of a court where lies reign and obsession rules. But discovering her own formidable strength may be the one move that costs her everything: the crown, Varenia and Zadie.
Everyone in Ardmuir knows that Willow Stokes is a charlatan, including Willow herself. Her father's shoppe hasn't sold anything magical in decades, and it's only hanging on by the skin of the fake dragon's teeth Willow sells as charms, along with “enchanted” ostrich eggs, taxidermied chimeras, and talismans made of fools' gold.
\nUntil outlander Brianna Hargrave appears and turns Willow's fakes into exactly what they're purported to be. But try as Willow might to enlist Bri's help, she wants nothing to do with Willow and her curiosities.
\nBecause Brianna is harboring a secret of her own: everything she touches turns to magic, and the consequences have chased her all the way to Ardmuir. All she wants to do is find a particular missing grimoire, which contains a spell that can finally put an end to her curse.
\nDesperate to keep her father's shoppe, Willow proposes a bargain that could save them both. Together with the frustratingly handsome printer's assistant, the girls will uncover a plot that goes far deeper than either could have imagined. But when Willow is forced to participate in an ambitious collector's quest for the rarest magical object in the world - a quest that risks almost-certain death - she learns that not all treasure is for sale, and that true magic is closer than she ever could have imagined.
In Wisteria, the very act of innovation is forbidden. Any creation - art, music, engineering - conjures a demon from the other side. The greater the innovation, the more dangerous the demon.
\nThis has never stopped Aurelie from inventing - but it has made it more difficult. Her inventions are small by necessity, producing demons that she is capable of dispatching alone. But she knows she’s meant for something greater, and each day has her chafing more at the boundaries of her society.
\nDestrier lost his parents to demons as a child, and has devoted his life to preventing more senseless murder at the hands of demons. He was young when he joined the hunters, and each year he’s grown stronger. But it’s never enough.
\nWhen a mysterious figure offers Aurelie a job she can’t refuse - an impossible, magnificent invention - her decision to accept sets off a chain of events that will alter every aspect of their world . . . and sparks the connection that will change both Aurelie and Des irrevocably.
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Ever since Nor was forced to go to a nearby kingdom in her sister’s place, she’s wanted nothing more than to return to the place and people she loves. But when her wish comes true, she soon finds herself cast out from both worlds, with a war on the horizon.
\nAs an old enemy resurfaces more powerful than ever, Nor will have to keep the kingdom from falling apart with the help of Prince Talin and Nor’s twin sister, Zadie. There are forces within the world more mysterious than any of them ever guessed - and they’ll need to stay alive long enough to conquer them . . .
Liora has spent her life in hiding, knowing discovery could mean falling prey to the king's warlock, Darius, who uses mages' magic to grow his own power. But when her worst nightmare comes to pass, Darius doesn't take her. Instead, he demands that her younger sister return to the capital with him. To make matters worse, Evran, Liora's childhood friend and the only one who knows her secret, goes missing following Darius's visit, leaving her without anyone to turn to.
\nTo find Evran and to save her sister, Liora must embrace the power she has always feared. But the greatest danger she'll face is yet to come, for Darius has plans in motion that will cause the world to fall into chaos - and Liora and Evran may be the only ones who can stop him. A witch who must learn to harness her power - or risk losing her loved ones forever.
A reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death.
\nPrincess Imogen of Goslind has lived a sheltered life for three years at the boarded-up castle - she and the rest of its inhabitants safe from the bloody mori roja plague that’s ravaged the kingdom. But Princess Imogen has a secret, and as King Stuart descends further into madness, it’s at great risk of being revealed. Rations dwindle each day, and unhappy murmurings threaten to crack the facade of the years-long charade being played within the castle walls.
\nNico Mott once enjoyed a comfortable life of status, but the plague took everyone and everything from him. If not for the generosity of a nearby lord, Nico may not have survived the mori roja’s aftermath. But does owing Lord Crane his life mean he owes him his silence?
\nWhen Lord Crane sends Nico to search for more plague survivors in the castle, Nico collides with a princess who wants to break out. They will each have to navigate the web of lies they’ve woven if they’re going to survive the nightmares that lie ahead.
Leelo has spent her entire life on Endla, coexisting with the bloodthirsty Forest and respecting the poisonous lake that protects her island from outsiders who seek to destroy it. But as much as Leelo cares for her community, she struggles to accept that her younger brother will be exiled by his next birthday, unless he gains the magic of enchanted song so vital to Endla.
\nWhen Leelo sees a young outsider on the verge of drowning in the lake, she knows exactly what she's supposed to do. But in a moment that will change everything, Leelo betrays her family, her best friend, and Endla by making an unthinkable choice.
\nDiscovery could lead to devastating consequences for both Leelo and the outsider, Jaren, but as they grow closer, Leelo realises that not all danger comes from beyond the lake - and they can only survive if Leelo is willing to question the very fabric of her society, her people, and herself.
Ophelia Dahl has just buried her beloved father when she finds among his personal effects a blindsiding document. The mother Ophelia thought died thirty years ago isn’t dead after all - she abandoned her. But how could she, and where is she now? With some neighborly help, Ophelia’s going to find out.
\nBeau Augustin is an acclaimed author and Ophelia’s childhood bestie turned teenage nemesis, still chafing after all these years. As luck would have it, Beau’s current project - family deceptions - is set to take him across the West Coast. Ophelia has a brilliant Beau’s book. Her life. Win-win. In a Subaru filled with baggage, they hit the road.
\nDespite detours, dead ends, and old grudges, Ophelia is desperate to unravel a lifetime of lies. And Beau’s research is a little more personal than he’s letting on. Mile by mile, they’re getting closer to their truths - and to each other - than they ever thought possible.
A devoted husband defies fate and risks everything to find the one universe where his beloved wife is still alive in this bold and thought-provoking novel.
\nDr. Jonas Cullen has spent his career as a groundbreaking physicist defying the odds. But on the best night of his life - the night his wife, Amanda, tells him they’re finally having a baby - everything is taken away when a tragic car accident claims the lives of Amanda and their unborn child.
\nGutted by pain, Jonas sets out to find a way to bring back Amanda - or rather, find a parallel universe in which she’s still alive. But that’s easier said than done. As Jonas comes to understand all too well, the universe favors certain outcomes . . . and Amanda’s death is one of them.
\nGuggenheim’s novel takes readers on a suspenseful journey, intercutting scenes of Jonas’s frantic, present-day search across multiple realities with glimpses from the past of his unfolding romance and eventual marriage. Will Jonas and Amanda reunite in some other world, or will fate succeed in taking her from him forever?
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets 1984. In the near-future, all decision-making is automated, until one man makes a brazen choice of his own, with global consequences.
\nWelcome to QualityLand, the best country on Earth. Here, a universal ranking system determines the social advantages and career opportunities of every member of society. An automated matchmaking service knows the best partners for everyone and helps with the break up when your ideal match (frequently) changes. And the foolproof algorithms of the biggest, most successful company in the world, TheShop, know what you want before you do and conveniently deliver to your doorstep before you even order it.
\nIn QualityCity, Peter Jobless is a machine scrapper who can't quite bring himself to destroy the imperfect machines sent his way, and has become the unwitting leader of a band of robotic misfits hidden in his home and workplace. One day, Peter receives a product from TheShop he absolutely, positively knows he does not want, and which he decides, at great personal cost, to return. The only problem: doing so means proving the perfect algorithm of TheShop wrong, calling into question the very foundations of QualityLand itself.
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Sixteen-year-old Lena Palmer has gone missing when a violent video of her assault by masked men goes viral. Yashira, chief inspector at the German FBI, has been put in charge of the case. As a single mother of a sixteen-year-old girl herself, Yashira is deeply affected by the crime and swears she will do everything in her power to find Lena Palmer. Surely the video must contain clues. Who are these people? Why would they commit such a horrible crime?
\nTogether with her partner Michael they follow all the usual suspects. Lena's father. Her boyfriend. Her friends. Nothing in this case seems to follow any of the usual patterns. Far-right groups are quickly taking matters into their own hands. Yashira is running out of time, but it feels like she's chasing a ghost.
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Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. She knows what happens to people who look like her. Just a girl when Jimmy Sky jumped off the railway bridge and she ran for help, Quill realizes now that she hasn’t ever stopped running. As she trains for the Boston Marathon early one morning out in the woods, she hears a scream. When she investigates, she finds tire tracks and a lone, beaded earring.
\nThings are different now for Quill than when she was a lonely girl. Her friends Punk and Gaylyn are two women who don’t know what it means to quit; she has her loving husband, Crow, and two beautiful children who challenge her to be better every day. So when she realises another woman has been stolen, she is determined to do something - and her first stop is the group of men working the pipeline construction just north of their homes.
\nAs Quill closes in on the truth behind the missing woman in the woods, someone else disappears. In her quest to find justice for the women of the reservation, she is confronted with the hard truths of their home and the people who purport to serve them. When will she stop losing neighbors, friends, family? As Quill puts herself, her family, and everything she’s built on the line to make a difference, the novel asks searing questions about bystander culture, the reverberations of even one act of crime, and the long-lasting trauma of being invisible.
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EXCITING OPPORTUNITY: Caretaker urgently needed. Three days of work. Competitive pay. Serious applicants ONLY.
\nMacy Mullins can’t say why the job posting grabbed her attention - it had the pull of a fisherman’s lure, barbed hook and all - vaguely ominous. But after an endless string of failed job interviews, she's not exactly in the position to be picky. She has rent to pay, groceries to buy, and a younger sister to provide for.
\nBesides, it’s only three days’ work . . .
\nThree days, cooped up in a stranger’s house, surrounded by Oregon Coast wilderness.
\nWhat starts as a peculiar side gig soon becomes a waking nightmare. An incomprehensible evil may dwell on this property - and Macy Mullins might just be the only thing standing between it, and the rest of humanity.
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As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood. As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. People pleaser to a fault, Eve lets them in.
\nAs soon as the strangers enter their home, uncanny and inexplicable things start happening, including the family’s youngest child going missing and a ghostly presence materialising in the basement. Even more weird, the family can’t seem to take the hint that their visit should be over. And when Charlie suddenly vanishes, Eve slowly loses her grip on reality. Something is terribly wrong with the house and with the visiting family - or is Eve just imagining things?
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For the last decade, the small mountain town of Edenville in Victoria’s high country has been haunted by the horrific murders of five hikers up on Jagged Ridge.
\nAlso found dead near the scene was Bill ‘Creeper’ Durant, a bushland loner, expert deer-hunter, and a man with a known reputation for stalking campers . . . murder-suicide. Case closed.
\nBut as the ten-year anniversary of the massacre draws near, Detective Constable Sally White - the only officer at Edenville’s modest police station - finds herself drawn into the dark world of the notorious Durant family.
\nLex Durant, in particular, has started to publicly protest his brother's innocence and accuse the police of persecution.
\nAs Sally combs the investigation to prove him wrong, it becomes all too clear that each murdered hiker had skeletons in their closet - and possible enemies in their past . . .
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As the new chieftain of the Crows, Fie knows better than to expect a royal to keep his word. Still she’s hopeful that Prince Jasimir will fulfill his oath to protect her fellow Crows. But then black smoke fills the sky, signaling the death of King Surimir and the beginning of Queen Rhusana's merciless bid for the throne.
With the witch queen using the deadly plague to unite the nation of Sabor against Crows - and add numbers to her monstrous army - Fie and her band are forced to go into hiding, leaving the country to be ravaged by the plague. However, they’re all running out of time before the Crows starve in exile and Sabor is lost forever.
A desperate Fie calls on old allies to help take Rhusana down from within her own walls. But inside the royal palace, the only difference between a conqueror and a thief is an army. To survive, Fie must unravel not only Rhusana’s plot, but ancient secrets of the Crows - secrets that could save her people, or set the world ablaze.
It's been nearly two years since Vanja brought down the cult she started, and she's still paying the price. As the Pfennigeist, she bucks the law in order to help the desperate and haunt the corrupt all across the empire - and no matter what, she works alone.
But an impossible killer is tearing through royalty, and leaving Vanja's signature red penny on every victim. Suddenly the Pfennigeist is no longer a folk hero but a nightmare. When even the Blessed Empress falls, the empire's seven royal families must gather to elect her successor within a matter of weeks, or risk the collapse of reality itself . . . even though it puts every house in the killer's sights.
Vanja tells herself she's wading into the royalty's vicious games only to save the name she made, and the loved ones also in jeopardy. But the Order of Prefects has also put their sharpest official on the case, the one who swore he'd always find Vanja - until she broke his heart. Journeyman . . .
Vanja Schmidt knows that no gift is freely given, not even a mother's love - and she's on the hook for one hell of a debt. Vanja, the adopted goddaughter of Death and Fortune, was Princess Gisele's dutiful servant up until a year ago.
\nThat was when Vanja's otherworldly mothers demanded a terrible price for their care, and Vanja decided to steal her future back . . . by stealing Gisele's life for herself. The real Gisele is left a penniless nobody while Vanja uses an enchanted string of pearls to take her place. Now, Vanja leads a lonely but lucrative double life as princess and jewel thief, charming nobility while emptying their coffers to fund her great escape.
\nThen, one heist away from freedom, Vanja crosses the wrong god and is cursed to an untimely end: turning into jewels, stone by stone, for her greed. Vanja has just two weeks to figure out how to break her curse and make her getaway. And with a feral guardian half-god, Gisele's sinister fiancé, and an overeager junior detective on Vanja's tail, she'll have to pull the biggest grift yet to save her own life.
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Fie abides by one rule: look after your own. Her Crow caste of undertakers and mercy-killers takes more abuse than coin, but when they’re called to collect royal dead, she’s hoping they’ll find the payout of a lifetime.
When Crown Prince Jasimir turns out to have faked his death, Fie’s ready to cut her losses - and perhaps his throat. But he offers a wager that she can’t refuse: protect him from a ruthless queen, and he’ll protect the Crows when he reigns.
Hawk warrior Tavin has always put Jas’s life before his, magically assuming the prince’s appearance and shadowing his every step. But what happens when Tavin begins to want something to call his own?
Let’s get one thing straight - Vanja Schmidt wasn’t trying to start a cult.
\nAfter taking down a corrupt margrave, breaking a deadly curse, and finding romance with the vexingly scrupulous Junior Prefect Emeric Conrad, Vanja had one great mystery left: her long-lost birth family . . . and if they would welcome a thief. But in her search for an honest trade, she hit trouble and invented a god, the Scarlet Maiden, to scam her way out. Now, that lie is growing out of control - especially when Emeric arrives to investigate, and the Scarlet Maiden manifests to claim him as a virgin sacrifice.
\nFor his final test to become a prefect, Emeric must determine if Vanja is guilty of serious fraud, or if the Scarlet Maiden - and her claim to him - are genuine. Meanwhile, Vanja is chasing an alternative sacrifice that may be their way out. The hunt leads her not only into the lairs of monsters and the paths of gods, but the ties of her past. And with what should be the simplest way to save Emeric hanging over their heads, he and Vanja must face a more dangerous question: Is there a future for a thief and a prefect, and at what price?
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Nearly a decade ago, iconic magician Violet Volk performed her greatest trick yet: vanishing mid-act. Though she hasn’t been seen since, her hold on the public hasn’t wavered.
\nWhile Violet sought out the spotlight, her sister Sasha, ever the responsible one, took over their mother’s salon and built a quiet life for her daughter, Quinn. But Sasha can never seem to escape her sister’s orbit or her memories of their unresolved, tumultuous relationship.
\nThen there’s Cameron Frank, determined to finally get his big break hosting a podcast devoted to all things Violet - though keeping his job hinges on an exclusive interview with Sasha, the last person who wants to talk to him.
\nAs the ten-year anniversary approaches, the podcast picks up steam, and Cameron’s pursuit of Sasha becomes increasingly intrusive. He isn’t the only one wondering what secrets she might be keeping: Quinn, loyal to the aunt she always idolized, is doing her own investigating.
\nMeanwhile, Sasha begins to experience an unsettling series of sleepwalking episodes and coincidences, which all lead back to Violet. Pushed to her emotional limits, Sasha must finally confront the most painful truths about her sister, and herself, even at the risk of losing everything.
A traumatic car accident erases Astrid’s memories of September 9th, the day she spent with an oddly charming stranger named Theo. Ever since, she’s haunted by surreal dreams and an urgent sense that she’s forgotten something important.
\nOne night, she gets a mysterious call from Oliver, who knows more about her than he should and claims he can help her remember. She accepts his help, even as she questions his motives and fights a strange attraction to him.
\nIn order to find Theo and piece together that lost day in September, Astrid must navigate a maze of eccentric Boston nightlife, from the seedy corners of Chinatown to a drug-fueled Alice-in-Wonderland-themed party to a club where everyone dresses like the dead. In between headaches and nightmares, she struggles to differentiate between memory, fantasy, and reality, and starts to wonder if Theo really exists.
\nEventually, she’ll need to choose between continuing her search for him or following her growing feelings for Oliver. Astrid might go to extreme lengths to find what she’s lost . . . or might lose even more in her pursuit to remember (like her sanity).
Ivy Gordon is living a borrowed life on borrowed time. For the past eighteen years, she has been the most famous star at the Dollhouse Academy, the ultra-secretive, elite boarding school and talent incubator that every aspiring performer dreams of attending. But now, at age thirty-four, she is tired of pretending everything is fine.
\nIn secret diary entries, Ivy begins to reveal the sordid truth of her life at the strange medical exams, mysterious supplements, and something unspeakable that’s left Ivy terrified and feeling like a prisoner. As she forces herself to confront the most painful parts of her past, she begins to realise that something truly sinister might be powering the Dollhouse’s success.
\nRamona Halloway and her best friend, Grace Ludlow, grew up idolising Ivy. Now both twenty-two, neither has made much headway in showbiz, until a lucky break grants them entry to the Dollhouse. They’re enchanted by the picturesque campus and the chance to perform alongside their idols - though nothing prepares them for the fiercely competitive training bootcamp.
\nWhen Ramona begins to receive anonymous, threatening messages, it’s easy to dismiss them as a prank from a rival. Her bigger concern is Grace’s skyrocketing success, while Ramona falls ever further behind.
\nBut the messages grow more unsettling, as does life at the Dollhouse. Can Ramona overcome her jealousy and resentment to figure out what’s really going on? And can Ivy finally find her voice, before another young performer follows her catastrophic path to stardom?
\nWith dark academia twists and enormous heart, The Dollhouse Academy is a novel about the complexities of friendship, our desire to be seen and understood, and the true cost of making our dreams a reality.
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A remarkably inventive novel that explores what it means to live a life fully in the moment, even if those moments are out of order.
It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend?
As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random. And so begins Oona Out of Order . . .
Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she’s never met?
Surprising, magical, and heart-wrenching, Margarita Montimore has crafted an unforgettable story about the burdens of time, the endurance of love, and the power of family.
Ivy Gordon is living a borrowed life on borrowed time. For the past eighteen years, she has been the most famous star at the Dollhouse Academy, the ultra-secretive, elite boarding school and talent incubator that every aspiring performer dreams of attending.
\nBut now, at age thirty-four, she is tired of pretending everything is fine. In secret diary entries, Ivy begins to reveal the sordid truth of her life at the strange medical exams, mysterious supplements, and something unspeakable that’s left Ivy terrified and feeling like a prisoner.
\nAs she forces herself to confront the most painful parts of her past, she begins to realise that something truly sinister might be powering the Dollhouse’s success.
\nRamona Halloway and her best friend, Grace Ludlow, grew up idolising Ivy. Now both twenty-two, neither has made much headway in showbiz, until a lucky break grants them entry to the Dollhouse. They’re enchanted by the picturesque campus and the chance to perform alongside their idols - though nothing prepares them for the fiercely competitive training bootcamp.
\nWhen Ramona begins to receive anonymous, threatening messages, it’s easy to dismiss them as a prank from a rival. Her bigger concern is Grace’s skyrocketing success, while Ramona falls ever further behind. But the messages grow more unsettling, as does life at the Dollhouse.
\nCan Ramona overcome her jealousy and resentment to figure out what’s really going on? And can Ivy finally find her voice, before another young performer follows her catastrophic path to stardom?
\nWith dark academia twists and enormous heart, The Dollhouse Academy is a novel about the complexities of friendship, our desire to be seen and understood, and the true cost of making our dreams a reality.
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Bly won the Revenant Games, but she lost everything else.
\nIn her desperation to resurrect her sister, Bly betrayed Kerrigan, the vampire who she’d planned to sacrifice to the witches before she fell in love with him - only to find out that Elise was never dead. With nothing left, Bly will do whatever it takes to locate her sister.
\nHer only lead on Elise lies with Kerrigan’s brother, Donovan, who she turned over to the witches in place of Kerrigan. She spends her nights tracking down witch prisons to rescue him. Meanwhile, Kerrigan is also searching for Donovan, but after Bly’s treachery, he refuses her help.
\nBut when the vampire queens accuse the two of them of treason, they’re only offered one escape from retrieving a mystical root that only grows on the banks of the Hallow Pool, where legend says that vampires and witches were created. Now Kerrigan and Bly must find a way to work together if they want to keep their lives and save their siblings.
\nBut they’re not the only ones hunting in the forest, and as their feelings for each other rekindle, they risk being torn apart once more.
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Blood is survival for seventeen-year-old Bly, who lives in the poverty-stricken human villages caught between enemy vampire and witch kingdoms. Most of the time, vampires and witches live in uneasy truce, buying human blood for their food and spells. But for two weeks a year, the ceasefire dissolves, and they hold the Revenant Games.
\nAny human can play in the games for either the witches or the vampires. Alongside life-changing riches, the witches will raise one person from the dead for whoever captures the highest-ranking vampire. In turn, the vampires offer immortality to whoever captures the most powerful witch. For most humans, the games are a ticket out of poverty. For Bly, it’s a chance to get back her dead sister, Elise, and save the life of her dying best friend, Emerson.
\nTogether, she and Emerson forge a dangerous plan to play both sides and win both prizes: resurrection for Elise and immortality for Emerson. But when the vampire they capture stirs a passion in Bly that she hasn’t felt in a long time, she’ll have to make a choice: her sister or the boy who’s shown her there’s more to life than just survival.
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Honey Singh and Cara Espinoza have two things in common: Their despicable, odious, lying spouses are having an affair, and they need a vacation.
\nThey take a road trip, filming their adventures and posting them online to prove to everyone back home that they're fine - not heartbroken and not staying home grief-eating cartons of ice cream. What better way to make a new friend than late nights and long drives? As their heartbreak takes a back seat to healing, they realize that they want more from each other than just conversation. Passion and friendship are a potent combination, but a seemingly small secret could end their romance before it truly begins.
\nSet against the backdrop of ever-changing landscapes and starlit skies, Anywhere with You is full of hope and humor, a second chance at love, searching for aliens, hooking up in nature, and avoiding dangerous wildlife (most of the time).
A decade of love ended with one vicious fight.
\nWhen Elsie’s brother announces his divorce and their no-nonsense grandmother cuts him from her will, Elsie makes her soon-to-be ex, Petra, a desperate proposal: pretend to be happily married through the holidays, and split the inheritance. Then they can finalise their divorce.
\nBut Petra doesn’t want money. She wants the love of her life back.
\nOver three chaotic holidays, old wounds reopen, new truths emerge, and pretending begins to blur into reality. As Petra fights for happiness instead of stability, and Elsie wonders if she ever stopped loving the woman who broke her heart, they must face what really ended their marriage. And what it will take to rebuild it.
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Tattooed from her neck to her toes and sporting a gold tooth as sharp as her wisecracks, Sister Holiday struggles to stay on the righteous path. Never one to make things easy for herself, she’s committed to taking her permanent vows with the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and joining former fire inspector Magnolia Riveaux’s latest venture, Redemption Detective Agency - both in service of satisfying her eternal quest for answers.
\nWhen Sister Holiday and Riveaux set out to bust a philandering husband, they instead find the body of a priest floating in the swollen Mississippi River, and with it, Redemption’s next case. It’s significantly more gruesome than their original mission, but Sister Holiday feels called on by God to hunt down the murderer and keep her community safe.
\nAs a torrential rainstorm drowns New Orleans for three harrowing days over Easter weekend, Sister Holiday and Riveaux follow the clues. With the stakes rising alongside the relentless floodwaters, our favorite punk nun-sleuth throws herself into the deep end yet again.
It’s a steamy, restless end of the school year in New Orleans. Sister Holiday is staying busy with her music classes and preparing for her permanent vow ceremony, a pivotal moment in her journey of faith. But when one of her favorite students is found dead of a fentanyl overdose, Sister Holiday and her partner-in-PI, Magnolia Riveaux, are launched on a mission to track down the drug dealers.
\nAs students continue to fall prey to this sinister drug under her watch, Sister Holiday becomes more and more desperate to stop this epidemic. All the while, she must contend with her own past with addiction, a demon that is never too far.
\nSister Holiday’s darkest and most shocking case yet will test the limits of her faith - and her sanity - as she goes deep undercover with a local gang and ultimately uncovers a truth with lethal implications for those she loves.
When Saint Sebastian's School becomes the target of a shocking arson spree, the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and their surrounding New Orleans community are thrust into chaos.
\nPatience is a virtue, but punk rocker turned nun Sister Holiday isn't satisfied to just wait around for officials to return her home and sanctuary to its former peace, instead deciding to unveil the mysterious attacker herself. Her investigation leads her down a twisty path of suspicion and secrets, turning her against colleagues, students, and even fellow Sisters along the way. And to piece together the clues of this high-stakes mystery, she must at last reckon with the sins of her own past.
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The Library of Fates was designed to show you who you are - and who you could become. Its rarest book, The Book of Dark Nights, holds a when you write an intimate confession on its pages, you'll receive a prediction for your future, penned in your own handwriting.
\nFor Eleanor, whose childhood was defined by a senseless tragedy, the library offers a world where everything makes sense. She’s spent most of her life there as an apprentice to the brilliant librarian, showing other people how to find the meaning of their lives in stories.
\nBut when her mentor dies in a freak accident and The Book of Dark Nights goes missing - along with the secrets written inside - Eleanor is pulled out of the library and into a quest to locate it with the last person she the librarian’s estranged son, Daniel, who Eleanor once loved before he suddenly ran off to Europe decades ago.
\nTogether, as they hunt down clues from Harvard to Paris, Eleanor and Daniel grow closer again, regaining each other’s trust. But little do they know that they’re entangled in a much larger web. Someone else wants the book, and they may be willing to kill to get it . . .
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It’s been twenty-five years since The Midnight Club last convened. A tight-knit group of college friends bonded by late nights at the campus literary magazine, they’re also bonded by something darker: the death of their brilliant friend Jennet junior year. But now, decades later, a mysterious invitation has pulled them back to the pine-shrouded Vermont town where it all began.
\nAs the estranged friends gather for a weeklong campus reunion, they soon learn that their host has an ulterior motive: she wants them to uncover the truth about the night Jennet died, and she’s provided them with an extraordinary method - a secret substance that helps them not only remember but relive the past.
\nBut each one of the friends has something to hide. And the more they question each other, the deeper they dive into their own memories, the more they understand that nothing they thought they knew about their college years, and that fateful night, is true.
\nTwisty, nostalgic, and emotionally thrilling, The Midnight Club explores that innate desire to revisit our first loves, our biggest mistakes, and the gulf between who we are and who we hoped we’d be.
Celeste is the talk of the town when she moves to Montana from Montreal, but the only friend she makes is Vivvy, the heir to the town’s name and a social pariah.
\nInspired by a passion-fueled school incident, they begin writing a love-story fan fic between the popular guy and the school stoner, one that gradually reveals Celeste’s past. While their bond makes Celeste feel safe and alive again, Vivvy keeps prodding Celeste to turn fantasy into reality. When they finally try, one drunken night on a dark mountainside, Celeste is the one who ends up kissing golden boy Joss. And Joss ends up dead.
\nCeleste doesn’t remember the end of that night and can’t be sure she didn’t deliver the killing blow. Could she still be that scared of getting close to a boy? Secrets are hard to keep in a small town, and even Vivvy seems to suspect her. Exploring the winding passages of the cave where Joss died, Celeste learns he had his own dark secrets, as does Vivvy. The town isn’t as innocent as it appears.
Meet Sam, an adjunct professor at a public university in Baltimore who takes a last-minute gig at the private liberal arts college down the road. Overworked and underpaid, her life is a blur of back-to-back classes, side hustles, and job applications as she attempts to claw her way toward a full-time position. But her already precarious existence is thrown into disarray when she runs into her former grad school adviser, Dr. Tom Sternberg, on campus.
\nTom and Sam have a complicated history, the lasting impact of which has haunted her academic career, and it’s the last thing she wants to think about as she navigates academic politics, institutional hurdles, and romantic entanglements with men and women that further complicate a sexuality not even she can define. Then she learns that Tom left his old job for undisclosed reasons - and his long-awaited second novel is about a professor’s reckoning with his checkered past. As whispers spread that Sam is the inspiration behind a central character, she fights to regain control of the story while questioning everything she thought she knew about her future - and herself.
\nWith biting humor and a keen eye for detail, Maria Adelmann offers a fresh twist on a tangled #MeToo story and turns Sam’s downward spiral into a searing critique of class and the hollow promises of the American dream. A hilarious yet sobering look at how hustle culture has come to define modern academia. Who really controls the narratives of success, identity, and power?
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In present-day New York City, five women meet in a basement support group to process their traumas. Bernice grapples with the fallout of dating a psychopathic, blue-bearded billionaire. Ruby, once devoured by a wolf, now wears him as a coat. Gretel questions her memory of being held captive in a house made of candy. Ashlee, the winner of a Bachelor-esque dating show, wonders if she really got her promised fairy tale ending. And Raina's love story will shock them all.
\nThough the women start out wary of one another, judging each other’s stories, gradually they begin to realise that they may have more in common than they supposed . . . What really brought them here? What secrets will they reveal? And is it too late for them to rescue each other?
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Josephine Haven is about to find out exactly where she fits into the march of Progress. Her outbursts are infamous at the House of Industry, the school for children who can wield radiance, an electricity-like magic. She’s tried to follow the rules, but her fiery nature is at odds with the core tenet of the House: Never form attachments. If she is meant to feel nothing, why are her emotions so volatile?
\nNo one is surprised when, upon graduation, Josephine is banished from the city to a remote Mission. In Frostbrook, she must work under standoffish Julian, the former golden boy of the House of Industry who seems determined to watch her fail. And then there’s Ezra, the flirtatious stranger who’s a little too curious about how the Mission operates.
\nBut there are bigger problems than Julian and Ezra’s secrets. A deadly disease is spreading across the countryside, and in Frostbrook, not everyone is eager to embrace Progress. As Josephine questions the system that raised her - and gives in to desire she’s been taught to suppress - she must decide what she’s willing to sacrifice to expose not just corruption within the House, but the devastating truth about the radiance in her core.
Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick biologist who lives out of her mobile lab. She scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails while her relatives urge her to give up, settle down, and start a family.
\nWhat they don’t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men - not for love, but to fund her work - entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides uninfluenced by feminism and modernity.
\nNastia and her sister Solomiya are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother - a flamboyant protestor who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours.
\nSo begins a journey of a lifetime across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt as Russia invades.
A bureaucratic glitch omits an entire building, along with its residents, from municipal records. So begins Reva's ingeniously intertwined narratives, nine stories that span the chaotic years leading up to and immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union. But even as the benighted denizens of 1933 Ivansk Street weather the official neglect of the increasingly powerless authorities, they devise ingenious ways to survive.
In \"Bone Music,\" an agoraphobic recluse survives by selling contraband LPs, mapping the vinyl grooves of illegal Western records into stolen X-ray film. A delusional secret service agent in \"Letter of Apology\" becomes convinced he's being covertly recruited to guard Lenin's tomb, just as his parents, not seen since he was a small child, supposedly were. Weaving the narratives together is the unforgettable, chameleon-like Zaya: a cleft-lipped orphan in \"Little Rabbit,\" a beauty-pageant crasher in \"Miss USSR,\" a sadist-for-hire to the Eastern Bloc's newly minted oligarchs in \"Homecoming.\"
Good Citizens Need Not Fear tacks from moments of intense paranoia to surprising tenderness and back again, exploring what it is to be an individual amid the roiling forces of history. Inspired by her and her family's own experiences in Ukraine, Reva brings the black absurdism of early Shteyngart and the sly interconnectedness of Anthony Marra's Tsar of Love and Techno to a collection that is as clever as it is heartfelt.
Adora Hazzard has it all figured out. A Stoic philosopher and divorcée, she lives a contented life on New York City’s Upper West Side. Having discovered that the secret to happiness is to desire only what you have, she’s applied this insight to blissful effect: relishing her teenage daughter, the freedom of being solo, and her job as a moral tutor for the twin boys of an old-money family. She’s even assembled a “coven” - like-minded women who live on the same floor in the legendary Ansonia - and is making active efforts to grow its membership. Adora’s carefully curated life is humming along brilliantly until a chance meeting with a handsome stranger.
\nSoon, her ordered world is upended by black-market art deals, secret rendezvous, and international intrigue . . . and her past - which she has worked so hard to bury - lands like a bomb in her present. Inflamed by unquenchable desire, Adora finds herself a woman wanting more: and she’ll risk everything to get it.
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Violet Parry is living the quintessential life of luxury in the Hollywood Hills with David, her rock-and-roll manager husband, and her darling toddler, Dot. She has the perfect life - except that she's deeply unhappy. David expects the world of Violet but gives little of himself in return.
When she meets Teddy, a roguish small-time bass player, Violet comes alive, and soon she's risking everything for the chance to find herself again. Also in the picture are David's hilariously high-strung sister, Sally, on the prowl for a successful husband, and Jeremy, the ESPN sportscaster savant who falls into her trap.
For all their recklessness, Violet and Sally will discover that David and Jeremy have a few surprises of their own. This One is Mine is a compassionate and wickedly funny satire about our need for more - and the often disastrous choices we make in the name of happiness.
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Year 2522.
\nLyra Daniels is dead.
Okay, so I only died for sixty-six seconds. But when I came back to life, I got a brand new name and a snazzy new uniform. Go me! Seriously, though, it's very important that Lyra Daniels stays dead, at least as far as the murdering looters, know.
While dying is the scariest thing that's happened to me, it morphed my worming skills. I can manipulate the Q-net like never before. But the looters have blocked us from communicating with the rest of the galaxy and now they believe we've gone silent, like Planet Xinji (where silent really means dead).
A Protector Class spaceship is coming to our rescue, but we still have to survive almost two years until they arrive - if they arrive at all. Until then, we have to figure out how to stop an unstoppable alien threat. And it's only a matter of time before the looters learn I'm not dead and returns to finish what they started.
There's no way I'm going to let the looters win. Instead I'll do whatever it takes to save the people I love. But even I'm running out of ideas...
Despite the odds, Yelena and Valek have forged an irrevocable bond - and a family - that transcends borders. Now, when their two homelands stand on the brink of war, they must fight with magic and cunning to thwart an Ixian plot to invade Sitia.
\nYelena seeks to break the hold of the insidious Theobroma that destroys a person's resistance to magical persuasion. But the Cartel is determined to keep influential citizens and Sitian diplomats in thrall - and Yelena at bay. With every bounty hunter after her, Yelena is forced to make a dangerous deal. With might and magic, Valek peels back the layers of betrayal surrounding the Commander.
\nAt its rotten core lies a powerful magician . . . and his latest discovery. The fate of all rests upon two unlikely weapons. One may turn the tide. The other could spell the end of everything.
Junior Officer Ara Lawrence here, reporting for duty. Again. It's situation critical for the security team and everyone in the base - including my parents - with a new attack from the looters imminent, a possible galaxy-wide crime conspiracy and an unstoppable alien threat.
\nBut this all pales in the face of my mind-blowing discovery about the Q-net. Of course, no one believes me. I'm not sure I believe me. It could just be a stress-induced delusion. That's what my parents seem to believe . . .
\nTheir concern for me is hampering my ability to do my job. I know they love me, but with the Q-net in my corner, I'm the only one who can help the security team beat the shadowy aliens from the pits we discovered. We're holding them at bay, for now, but the entire Milky Way Galaxy is in danger of being overrun.
\nWith battles on too many fronts, it's looking dire. But one thing I've learned is when people I love are in jeopardy, I'll never give up trying to save them. Not until my dying breath. Which could very well be today . . .
The news that Yelena is a Soulfinder, able to manipulate the spirits of the dead and the living, hasn't made her popular with the inhabitants of Sitia's Magician's Keep, since the last Soulfinder turned people into mindless slaves.
\nFirst Magician Roze Featherstone's hostility toward Yelena increases until the Sitian Council decides to send Yelena north as diplomatic liaison to the rival nation of Ixia. When Roze takes over the council, imprisoning her rivals and driving the nation to the brink of war with Ixia, Yelena is caught between her duties as liaison, her love for Ixian intelligence officer Valek and her fear of her own power, which she must embrace fully to defeat Roze and restore the council.
\nSnyder delivers another excellent adventure, deftly balancing international and local hostilities against Yelena's personal struggles.
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I'm Trella. I'm a scrub. A nobody. One of thousands who work the lower levels, keeping Inside clean for the Uppers. I've got one friend, do my job and try to avoid the Pop Cops.
\nSo what if I occasionally use the pipes to sneak around the Upper levels? The only neck at risk is my own . . . until I accidentally start a rebellion and become the go-to girl to lead a revolution.
With her greatest enemy dead, and on her way to be reunited with the family she'd been stolen from long ago, Yelena should be pleased. But though she has gained her freedom, she can't help feeling isolated in Sitia. Her Ixian background has changed her in many ways - and her newfound friends and relatives don't think it's for the better . . .
Despite the turmoil, she's eager to start her magic training - especially as she's been given one year to harness her power or be put to death. But her plans take a radical turn when she becomes involved with a plot to reclaim Ixia's throne for a lost prince - and gets entangled in powerful rivalries with her fellow magicians.
If that wasn't bad enough, it appears her brother would love to see her dead. Luckily, Yelena has some old friends to help her with all her new enemies . . .
Year 2471.
\nA new discovery. Those three words thrill my parents - the galaxy's leading archaeologists - but for me, it means another time jump to a different planet. One so big, my friends will be older than my dad when we arrive. And I'll still be seventeen. Thanks, Einstein.
\nI really can't blame Einstein, though. No one expected to find life–sized terracotta warriors buried on other planets. So off we go to investigate, traveling through space and time. With my social life in ruins, I fill my days illegally worming into the quantum net – the invention that allows us to travel in space. Of course the only person close to my age is a hot–but–pain–in–the–neck security officer who threatens to throw me into the brig.
\nBut when one of the warrior planets goes silent, we have bigger problems on our hands. The planet's entire population might be dead. And now my worming skills, along with a translation of an ancient alien artefact, might be the key to finding out why. But my attempts to uncover the truth lead to the discovery of a deadly new alien phenomenon, and also alert those who wish to keep it quiet. The galaxy is in real danger and time is not on our side . . .
\nEver since being kidnapped from the Illiais Jungle as a child, Yelena Zaltana's has been fraught with peril. But the recent loss of her Soulfinding abilities has endangered her more than ever before. As she desperately searches for a way to reclaim her magic, her enemies are closing in, and neither Ixia nor Sitia are safe for her anymore. Especially since the growing discord between the two countries and the possibility of a war threatens everything Yelena holds dear.
Valek is determined to protect Yelena, but he's quickly running out of options. The Commander suspects that his loyalties are divided, and he's been keeping secrets from Valek . . . secrets that put him, Yelena and all their friends in terrible danger. As they uncover the various layers of the Commander's mysterious plans, they realize it's far more sinister that they could have ever imagined.
Me? A leader? Okay, I did prove that there's more to Inside than we knew. That a whole world exists beyond this cube we live in. And finding that led to a major rebellion between worker scrubs like me and the snobby uppers who rule our world. Make that ruled.
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Because of me, we're free. I thought that meant I was off the hook, and could go off on my own again while still touching base with Riley, of course. He's the one upper I think I can trust. But then we learned that there's outside and then there is Outside. And something from Outside wants In.
About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. She'll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace - and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia.
And so Yelena chooses to become a food taster. But the chief of security, leaving nothing to chance, deliberately feeds her Butterfly's Dust - and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonising death from the poison.
As Yelena tries to escape her new dilemma, disasters keep mounting. Rebels plot to seize Ixia and Yelena develops magical powers she can't control. Her life is threatened again and choices must be made. But this time the outcomes aren't so clear...
As the last Healer in the Fifteen Realms, Avry of Kazan is in a unique position: in the minds of friends and foes alike, she no longer exists. Despite her need to prevent the megalomaniacal King Tohon from winning control of the Realms, Avry is also determined to find her sister and repair their estrangement. And she must do it alone, as Kerrick, her partner and sole confidant, returns to Alga to summon his country into battle.
Though she should be in hiding, Avry will do whatever she can to support Tohon's opponents. Including infiltrating a holy army, evading magic sniffers, teaching forest skills to soldiers and figuring out how to stop Tohon's most horrible creations yet: an army of the walking dead - human and animal alike and nearly impossible to defeat.
War is coming and Avry is alone. Unless she figures out how to do the impossible . . . again.
Like the colorful pieces of sea glass washed up on shore, Opal has weathered rough waters and twisting currents. But instead of finding a tranquil eddy, Opal is caught in a riptide. Her unique glass messengers which allow instant communication over vast distances have become a vital part of Sitian society. Once used solely by the Councilors and magicians, other powerful factions are now vying for control. Control of the messengers equals control of Sitia.
\nUnfortunately that also means control of Opal. If that isn’t enough of a problem, Opal’s determination to prove blood magic is still being used is met with strong resistance. The Council doubts her, her mentor doubts her, and even her family is concerned. When her world is turned upside down, she begins to doubt herself. In the end, Opal must decide who to believe, who to trust, and who has contro - otherwise she will shatter into a million pieces and be swept out by the tide.
Once, only her own life hung in the balance . . .
\nOddly enough, when Yelena was a poison taster, her life was simpler. But she'd survived to become a vital part of the balance of power between rival countries Ixia and Sitia. Now she uses her magic to keep the peace in both lands - and protect her relationship with Valek.
\nSuddenly, though, they are beset on all sides by those vying for power through politics and intrigue. Valek's job and his life are in danger. As Yelena tries to uncover the scope of these plots, she faces a new challenge: her magic is blocked. She must keep that a secret - or her enemies will discover just how vulnerable she really is - while searching for who or what is responsible for neutralising her powers.
\nYes, the days of tasting poisons were much simpler. And certainly not as dangerous . . .
After siphoning her own blood magic in the showdown at Hubal, student glass magician Opal Cowan lost her powers. Immune to the effects of magic, Opal is now an outsider looking in, spying through the glass on those with the powers she once had. Powers that make a difference in the world.
Suddenly the beautiful pieces she makes begin to flash in the presence of magic and Opal learns that someone has stolen some of her blood. Finding it might let her regain her powers or discover that they're lost forever . . .
As a glassmaker and a magician-in-training, Opal Cowan understands trial by fire. Now it's time to test her mettle. Someone has sabotaged the Stormdancer clan's glass orbs, killing their most powerful magicians. The Stormdancers - particularly the mysterious and mercurial Kade - require Opal's unique talents to prevent it happening again. But when the mission goes awry, Opal must tap in to a new kind of magic as stunningly potent as it is frightening.
\nAnd the further she delves into the intrigue behind the glass and magic, the more distorted things appear. With lives hanging in the balance - including her own - Opal must control powers she hadn't known she possessed . . . powers that might lead to disaster beyond anything she's ever known.
She's fought death and won. But how can she fight her fears?
\nAvry knows hardship and trouble. She fought the plague and survived. She took on King Tohon and defeated him. But now her heart-mate, Kerrick, is missing, and Avry fears he's gone forever.
\nBut there's a more immediate threat. The Skeleton King plots to claim the Fifteen Realms for his own. With armies in disarray and the dead not staying down, Avry's healing powers are needed now more than ever.
\nTorn between love and loyalty, Avry must choose her path carefully. For the future of her world depends on her decision . . .
Through her courage and tenacity, Shyla Sun-Kissed has awoken the power of The Eyes of Tamburah. But this feat only marks the beginning of the challenges that the magical order, the Invisible Sword, faces to free the underground city of Zirdai.
\nThough they have allies among the monks and splinter cells inside the city, Shyla knows the Invisible Sword doesn't have the strength to win. With the group fracturing due to the strain of losses from their latest ordeal, thinly veiled suspicions and endless disagreements, it's up to Shyla to forge a new united order.
\nWhen both the draconian Water Prince and brutal Heliacal Priestess learn of Shyla's new powers, life becomes even more complicated as they will stop at nothing to capture Shyla and take the magic of The Eyes for themselves. Hunted at every turn and unable to hide, Shyla and the Invisible Sword must use every resource at their command - and unearth new ones - in their race to save the city from destruction. But their enemies always seem to be one step ahead. And the cost to win the battle may be more than Shyla would ever be willing to pay . . .
Shyla is a researcher who resides in the underground desert city of Zirdai, which is ruled by the wealthy Water Prince and brutal Heliacal Priestess. Even though Shyla is sun-kissed - an outcast, considered cursed by the Sun Goddess - she is still renowned for uncovering innumerable archaic facts, lost artefacts, ancient maps, and obscure historical documents.
\nHer quiet life is about to change when Banqui, an archaeologist, enlists her services to find The Eyes of Tamburah: legendary gemstones that bestows great magic to its wielder. These ancient objects can tip the balance of power and give whoever possesses them complete control of the city.
But chaos erupts when The Eyes are stolen soon after they're found - and Shyla is blamed for the theft. Forced to flee, with the Prince's soldiers and the Priestess' deacons on her trail, Shyla must recover the jewels and clear her name. A quest that will unearth secrets even more valuable than The Eyes of Tamburah themselves . . .
Hard on the heels of trouble in Zirdai city, Shyla Sun-Kissed and Rendor are ordered to report to the King of Koraha - a summons that is deadly to ignore. The King holds the key to Koraha's existence, but a formidable new enemy threatens Koraha's very survival and the King desperately needs Shyla and Rendor's help.
\nWielding a terrifying and unknown magical power that can convert opponents into devoted soldiers, the mysterious army is hellbent on usurping the crown. Shyla and Rendor are tasked with discovering who in the seven hells these insurgents are. And what their real endgame is.
\nTrekking through the punishing conditions across the searing surface of Koraha, and facing numerous unseen foes and untold danger, they must follow the clues to uncover the truth before it's too late. The fate of the King and all the citizens of Koraha rests in their hands . . .
There's just no rest for Valek, Ixia’s Chief of Security. Challenges are constant and new problems arrive daily, including a request to help Castletown’s watch solve the mystery of a string of nighttime disturbances, and keeping a close eye on the Commander’s food taster as she schemes her way back into business. As if that isn't enough, the Commander’s life is threatened.
\nIs the assassination attempt on the Commander a declaration of war by the Sitian Council, or is it a ruse by an unknown party to incite a war between Ixia and Sitia? Valek is sent to Sitia to discover the answer and deal with the threat.
\nUnfortunately, the problem turns out to be much bigger than even the council and the master magicians can handle. An unsanctioned clan with powerful warpers is plotting to take over both countries. As the danger heats up, Valek and Yelena must reunite and stop the group before they can set their entire world on fire.
\nA companion novel to Fire Study, The Study of Fire reveals Valek’s side of the story.
As Chief of Ixia’s Security, Valek’s work is never done. After rescuing Commander Ambrose with, Yelena, his heartmate’s, help and seeing her off to Sitia, Valek discovers the nefarious scheme to overthrow their country is far more complex and far reaching than anyone could have guessed.
\nValek must discover who is continuing with Brazell and Mogkan’s conniving plans, all while dealing with a tense political situation. The Ixian generals are questioning his abilities to keep the Commander safe, and whispers of a possible coup are circulating.
\nWill Valek be able to survive a plot that seeks to sabotage all he and the Commander have worked for? Also, having opened his heart to love, will Yelena still wish to be with him when all is said and done?
\nA companion novel to Magic Study, The Study of Magic reveals Valek’s side of the story.
As Chief of Security of Ixia, Valek has spent the last fifteen years keeping Commander Ambrose and his citizens safe. With his complex network of spies, informers, and soldiers, it’s his job to hunt down and capture criminals, including the intriguing Yelena.
\nSensing there is more to the story of why she killed a general’s son, Valek arranges for Yelena to become the Commander’s new food taster, training her in the delicate art of detecting poisons. As mysteries and a devious plot to harm the Commander unravel, Yelena’s presence becomes crucial. Will her intelligence, stubbornness, and survivor instincts be a help to Valek’s investigation, or a hinderance?
\nA companion novel to Poison Study, The Study of Poisons reveals Valek’s side of the story.
Magician, heal thyself. Laying hands upon the injured and dying, Avry of Kazan absorbs their wounds and diseases into herself. But rather than being honored for her skills, she is hunted. Healers like Avry are accused of spreading the plague that has decimated the Fifteen Realms, leaving the survivors in a state of chaos.
\nStressed and tired from hiding, Avry is abducted by a band of rogues who, shockingly, value her gift above the golden bounty offered for her capture. Their leader, an enigmatic captor-protector with powers of his own, is unequivocal in his demands: Avry must heal a plague-stricken prince - leader of a campaign against her people. As they traverse the daunting Nine Mountains, beset by mercenaries and magical dangers, Avry must decide who is worth healing and what is worth dying for. Because the price of peace may well be her life....
A landmark investigation of the chemical industry's decades-long campaign to hide the dangers of forever chemicals, told through the story of a small town on the frontlines of an epic public health crisis.
\nIn 2014, after losing several friends and relatives to cancer, an unassuming insurance underwriter in Hoosick Falls, New York, began to suspect that the local water supply was polluted. When he tested his tap water, he discovered dangerous levels of forever chemicals. This set off a chain of events that led to 100 million Americans learning their drinking water was tainted. Although the discovery came as a shock to most, the U.S. government and the manufacturers of these toxic chemicals - used in everything from lipstick and cookware to children’s clothing - had known about their hazards for decades.
\nIn They Poisoned the World, investigative journalist Mariah Blake tells the astonishing story of this cover-up, tracing its roots back to the Manhattan Project and through the postwar years, as industry scientists discovered that these chemicals refused to break down and were saturating the blood of virtually every human being. By the 1980s, manufacturers were secretly testing their workers and finding links to birth defects, cancer, and other serious diseases. At every step, the industry’s deceptions were aided by our government’s appallingly lax regulatory system - a system that has made us all guinea pigs in a vast, uncontrolled chemistry experiment.
\nDrawing on years of on-the-ground reporting and tens of thousands of documents, Blake interweaves the secret history of forever chemicals with the moving story of how a lone village took on the chemical giants - and won. From the beloved local doctor to the young mother who took her fight all the way to the nation’s capital, citizen activists in Hoosick Falls and beyond have ignited the most powerful grassroots environmental movement since Silent Spring.
\nHumane and revelatory, this book will provoke outrage - and hopefully inspire the change we need to protect the health of every American for generations to come.
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Back in the long ago nineties, Rachel Walsh was a mess.
\nBut a spell in rehab transformed everything. Life became very good, very quickly. These days, Rachel has love, family, a great job as an addiction counsellor, she even gardens. Her only bad habit is a fondness for expensive trainers.
\nBut with the sudden reappearance of a man she'd once loved, her life wobbles.
\nShe'd thought she was settled. Fixed forever. Is she about to discover that no matter what our age, everything can change?
\nIs it time to think again, Rachel?
After catching her husband having an affair and being fired from her job, Maggie Walsh suddenly finds her perfectly organised existence has become a perfect mess. She decides, for the first time in her life, to do something daring - and flees to her best friend, Emily, in the faraway wonderland of Los Angeles.
\nIn this mecca of tanned, beautiful bodies, unsvelte, uncool Maggie is decidedly a fish out of water. Yet, overnight, she's mixing with film folk, pitching scripts, even experimenting with sex - and discovering that the end of a marriage is not the end of the world.
Anna Walsh is officially a wreck. Physically broken and emotionally shattered, she lies on her parents' Dublin sofa with only one thing on her mind: getting back to New York. New York means her best friends, The Most Fabulous Job In The World™ and above all, it means her husband, Aidan.
But nothing in Anna's life is that simple anymore . . . Not only is her return to Manhattan complicated by her physical and emotional scars - but Aidan seems to have vanished. Is it time for Anna to move on? Is it even possible for her to move on? A motley group of misfits, an earth-shattering revelation, two births and one very weird wedding might help Anna find some answers - and change her life forever.
They're a glamorous family, the Caseys.
Johnny Casey, his two brothers Ed and Liam, their beautiful, talented wives and all their kids spend a lot of time together - birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, weekends away. And they're a happy family. Johnny's wife, Jessie - who has the most money - insists on it.
Under the surface, though, conditions are murkier. While some people clash, other people like each other far too much . . .
Everything stays under control until Ed's wife Cara, gets concussion and can't keep her thoughts to herself. One careless remark at Johnny's birthday party, with the entire family present, starts Cara spilling out all their secrets.
In the subsequent unravelling, every one of the adults finds themselves wondering if it's time - finally - to grow up?
Ever since legwarmers were cool, best friends Tara, Katherine, and Fintan have survived small-town ennui, big-city heartbreak, and endless giddy nights out on the town. But now that they've graduated to their slightly more serious thirties, only Fintan has what can honestly be called a \"love life.\"
\nWith Tara struggling daily with her eternal diet - and her dreadful, penny-pinching boyfriend - and Katherine keeping her single existence as organized as her drawer full of matching bra and panty sets, it seems they'll never locate the exit door out of the \"last chance saloon.\"But it's always when you are least ready for change that fate insists on one. And when catastrophe inevitably follows crisis, the lives of three best friends are sure to change in unexpected ways . . . and not necessarily for the worse.
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What happens when a psychic tells Lucy that she'll be married within the year? Her flatmates panic! What is going to happen to their blissful existence of eating take-out food, drinking too much wine, bringing men home, and never vacuuming?
\nLucy reassures her friends that she's far too busy arguing with her mother and taking care of her irresponsible father to get married. And then there's the small matter of not even having a boyfriend. But then Lucy meets gorgeous, unreliable Gus.
\nCould he be the future Mr. Lucy Sullivan? Or could it be handsome Chuck? Or Daniel, the world's biggest flirt? Or even cute Jed, the new guy at work? Will Lucy find her soulmate?
Mammy Walsh's A-Z of the Walshes does exactly what it says on the tin but here's a brief word from its author, Mammy Walsh herself:
\n'There's this woman I know from bridge, Mona Hopkins, a lovely woman she is, even if I must admit I'm not that keen on her myself, and she said a great thing the other day. I was expecting her to say “Two no trumps,” but instead she comes out with a saying about her children. She says, “Boys wreck your house and girls wreck your head.”
\nIsn't that a marvellous bit of wisdom - “Boys wreck your house and girls wreck your head!” And God knows it's the truest thing I've heard in a long time. I should know. I have five girls. Five daughters. And let me tell you, my head is wrecked from them. Although, now that I think of it, so is my house . . .'
Anna has a life to envy. An apartment in New York. A well-meaning (too well-meaning?) partner. And a high-flying job in beauty PR. Who wouldn't want all that? Anna - it turns out.
\nTurning a minor mid-life crisis into a major life event she packs it in, heads back to Ireland, and gets a PR job for a super-high-end coastal retreat.
\nTougher than it sounds. Newsflash: the locals hate it. So much so, there have been threats - and violence.
\nAnna, however, worked in the beauty industry. There's no ugliness she hasn't seen. No wrinkle she can't smooth over. Anna's got this.
\nUntil she discovers that leaving New York doesn't mean escaping her mistakes.
\nOnce upon a time she'd had a best friend. Once upon a time she'd loved a man. Now she has neither. And now she has to face them.
\nWe all make mistakes.
\nBut when do we stop making the same one over and over again?
RACHEL'S HOLIDAY, Marian's classic novel about addiction, is being given a new lease of life with a fantastic new jacket treatment.
\nHere's Rachel Walsh, twenty-seven and the miserable owner of size 8 feet. She has regular congress with Luke Costello, a man who wears his leather trousers tight. And she's fond - some might say too fond - of recreational drugs. Until she finds herself being frogmarched to the Cloisters - Dublin's answer to the Betty Ford Clinic. She's outraged.
\nSurely she's not thin enough to be an addict? Heartsick and Luke-sick, she seeks redemption in the shape of Chris, a Man with a Past. A man who might be more trouble than he's worth.
A nervous breakdown seems like a great idea: all that lying in bed and watching daytime TV. But who's going to have it? Will it be housewife Clodagh, who spends her days microwaving pasta for her demanding toddlers and waiting for her beautiful husband Dylan to come home?
\nOr Lisa, hard, brittle and shiny as an M&M, reeling from the shock of a demotion from her fabulous job in London to a one-horse magazine in Dublin? Or Ashling, so normal she's weird?
Amy's husband Hugh says he isn't leaving her.
He still loves her, he's just taking a break - from their marriage, their children and, most of all, from their life together. Six months to lose himself in south-east Asia. And there is nothing Amy can say or do about it.
Yes, it's a mid-life crisis, but let's be clear: a break isn't a break up - yet . . .
However, for Amy it's enough to send her - along with her extended family of gossips, misfits and troublemakers - teetering over the edge.
For a lot can happen in six-months. When Hugh returns, if he returns, will he be the same man she married? And will Amy be the same woman?
Because if Hugh is on a break from their marriage, then isn't she?
The Break isn't a story about falling in love but about staying in love.
Meet Helen - youngest of the Walsh sisters and a law unto herself. She's easily bored, has an inability to filter her thoughts and was fired from every job she ever had before she found her true calling as a private investigator. But times are tough for PIs and Helen's had no choice but to take on the search for AWOL boyband has-been Wayne Diffney - The Wacky One. It's not all bad this game of Where's Wayne.
\nIt may have brought her charming crook of an ex Jay Parker back into her life, but it's giving her an excuse to avoid the usual Walsh family dramas and the intense looks from her gorgeous boyfriend Artie that make her heart beat wildly with lust and panic in equal measure. But most of all it's an excellent distraction from the huge swarm of black vultures gathering over her head. If she hides out in her target's empty house on Mercy Close for long enough maybe they'll go away . . .
\nBut as Helen begins to unravel the mysteries secreted on Mercy Close she discovers a kindred spirit in a man unwilling to be found. Could someone be telling her to look a little closer to home?
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Jojo Harvey is a dead ringer for Jessica Rabbit and the most ferocious literary agent in town. A former NYPD cop, she now lives in London making million-dollar book deals while trying to make partner at her firm . . . all the while sleeping with the boss man.
\nLily Wright is an author who believes in karma, and is waiting for the sky to fall after stealing her former best friend's man. Though her first book failed to sell, her life turns upside down when her most recent book becomes a huge bestseller.
\nGemma Hogan is an event designer extraordinaire, but her personal life is nonexistent after losing the love of her life and her best friend in one fell swoop. To make matters worse, her father has just left her mother.
\nWhile taking care of her mother, she e-mails a close colleague about her frustrations, who in turn forwards the hilarious e-mails to a famous literary agent named Jojo Harvey, who just happens to represent her former friend, now enemy, Lily Wright.
Lola has just found out that her boyfriend - charismatic politician Paddy de Courcy - is getting married. To someone else. Heartbroken, Lola flees the city for a cottage by the sea. But will Lola's retreat prove as idyllic as she hopes?
\nJournalist Grace wants the inside story on Paddy de Courcy's engagement and thinks Lola holds the key to it. Grace knew Paddy a long time ago. But why can't she forget him?
\nGrace's sister, Marnie, might have the answer but she also has issues with the past. Her loving loving husband and beautiful daughters are wonderful, but they can't take away memories of her first love: a certain Paddy de Courcy. What will it take for Marnie to be able to move on?
\nAlicia Thornton is Paddy's wife-to-be. Determined to be the perfect wife, Alicia would do anything for her fiancée. But does she know the real Paddy?
\nFour very different women. One awfully charming man. And the dark secret that binds them all . . .
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Claire has everything she ever wanted: a husband she adores, a great apartment, a good job. Then, on the day she gives birth to their first baby, James informs her that he's leaving her. Claire is left with a newborn daughter, a broken heart, and a postpartum body that she can hardly bear to look at.
\nShe decides to go home to Dublin. And there, sheltered by the love of a quirky family, she gets better. So much so, in fact, that when James slithers back into her life, he's in for a bit of a surprise.
Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre: populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror.
\nThe stories in her next collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken - fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history - with unsettling urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can't let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death by a question of morality they fail to answer correctly.
\nWritten against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, and with resounding tenderness towards those in pain, in fear, and in limbo, this new collection from one of Argentina's most exciting writers finds Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.
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A delicious, diabolical collection of short stories, from the International Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed and Our Share of Night.
\nMariana Enriquez's A Sunny Place for Shady People is her first story collection since the International Booker Prize-shortlisted The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. Featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, the occult and the macabre, the stories explore love, womanhood, LGBTQ counterculture, parenthood and Argentina's brutal past.
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Eddie Winston is 90 years old. He has lived and loved, but he has never been kissed.
\nA true gentleman and incurable romantic, Eddie spends his days volunteering at a charity shop, where he sorts through the donations of the living and the dead, preserving letters and tokens of love. It is here that he meets Bella, a troubled young woman who, at 24 years old, has just lost the love of her life.
\nWhen Bella learns that Eddie is yet to have his first kiss, she resolves to help Eddie Winston finally find love, sparking an adventure that will take them to unexpected places and, they hope, bring Eddie Winston to the moment he has waited for all his life.
\nA tale of friendship and kindness that reminds us that those we love are never forgotten and it is never too late to try again.
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An extraordinary friendship. A lifetime of stories.
\nTheir last one begins here.
\nLife is short. No-one knows that better than seventeen-year-old Lenni living on the terminal ward. But as she is about to learn, it's not only what you make of life that matters, but who you share it with.
\nDodging doctor's orders, she joins an art class where she bumps into fellow patient Margot, a rebel-hearted eight-three-year-old from the next ward. Their bond is instant as they realize that together they have lived an astonishing one hundred years.
\nTo celebrate their shared century, they decide to paint their life stories: of growing old and staying young, of giving joy, of receiving kindness, of losing love, of finding the person who is everything.
\nAs their extraordinary friendship deepens, it becomes vividly clear that life is not done with Lenni and Margot yet.
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In this stunning conclusion to the Raven’s Trade duology that began with The Gilded Crown, Hellevir’s bargains with Death to save the ones she loves - including the princess she risked everything to bring back to life - may just lead to the ultimate sacrifice.
\nHellevir’s gift to raise the dead once thrust her into the center of a court filled with backstabbing and treason, where she became duty bound to protect Princess Sullivain, the sole heir to the kingdom’s throne and target of many rivals eager for the crown. But the more Hellevir risked to keep Sullivain alive, and the more deeply she fell in love with the princess, the greater the cost became - for Hellevir’s power can only be granted by the strange figure who rules the afterlife, and there is always a price to pay.
\nNow Hellevir may have risked too much, and Sullivain has become obsessed with consolidating power to vanquish her foes once and for all - by whatever means necessary. Cast out to the fringes of a country on the verge of civil war, Hellevir is torn between protecting her heart or giving what little she has left to finish what she started. Yet, her connection with Sullivain runs deeper than the mortal world, and saving her friends and family might mean risking the woman she is still bound to by soul and blood.
\nTo stop a war, Hellevir must unravel the last of Death’s riddles and decide, once and for all, who deserves to live, what a life is worth, and whether she can pay the price.
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The first time Hellevir visited Death, she was ten years old . . . Since she was a little girl, Hellevir has been able to raise the dead. Every creature can be saved for a price, a price demanded by the shrouded figure who rules the afterlife, who takes a little more from Hellevir with each soul she resurrects. Such a gift can rarely remain a secret.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWhen Princess Sullivain, sole heir to the kingdom’s throne, is assassinated, the Queen summons Hellevir to demand she bring her granddaughter back to life. But once is not enough; the killers might strike again. The Princess’s death would cause a civil war, so the Queen commands that Hellevir remain by her side. But Sullivain is no easy woman to be bound to, even as Hellevir begins to fall in love with her. With the threat of war looming, Hellevir must trade more and more of herself to keep the Princess alive. But Death will always take what he is owed.
Clara Kelley is not who they think she is. She's not the experienced Irish maid who was hired to work in one of Pittsburgh's grandest households. She's a poor farmer's daughter with nowhere to go and nothing in her pockets. But the other woman with the same name has vanished, and pretending to be her just might get Clara some money to send back home.
\nIf she can keep up the ruse, that is. Serving as a lady's maid in the household of Andrew Carnegie requires skills he doesn't have, answering to an icy mistress who rules her sons and her domain with an iron fist. What Clara does have is a resolve as strong as the steel Pittsburgh is becoming famous for, coupled with an uncanny understanding of business, and Andrew begins to rely on her. But Clara can't let her guard down, not even when Andrew becomes something more than an employer. Revealing her past might ruin her future - and her family's.
\nWith captivating insight and heart, Carnegie's Maid tells the story of one brilliant woman who may have spurred Andrew Carnegie's transformation from ruthless industrialist into the world's first true philanthropist . . .
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1920’s London was enthralled by the discovery of the treasure-filled tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Filled with priceless statues, jewels, and the gold-encased mummy of the boy Pharaoh himself, the burial site unleashed a fascination with the ancient world and revolutionised the world of archeology.
\nThe discovery was made by Lord Carnarvon of Highclere Castle and his associate, famed archeologist Howard Carter. What no one knows is that without the pioneering spirit of Lady Evelyn Herbert, Carnarvon’s daughter, the tomb might never have been found. As a young woman, Evelyn was fascinated by the story of Hatshepsut, a woman who had to assume the guise of a man in order to rule Egypt. Although she brought peace and prosperity to Egypt, her male successors ruthlessly and thoroughly erased her name from history.
\nLady Evelyn’s ambition to find the tomb of Egypt’s first woman ruler exposes her to life-threatening danger and pits her against archeologists who refuse to believe the tomb can be found - and certainly not by a woman. Refusing to give up, Evelyn is on the verge of success when she is suddenly forced to make an agonising choice between loyalty to her beloved father and Carter and realising the dream of a lifetime.
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Rosalind Franklin has always been an outsider - brilliant, but different. Whether working at the laboratory she adored in Paris or toiling at a university in London, she feels closest to the science, those unchanging laws of physics and chemistry that guide her experiments. When she is assigned to work on DNA, she believes she can unearth its secrets.
\nRosalind knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture - one more after thousands - she can unlock the building blocks of life. Never again will she have to listen to her colleagues complain about her, especially Maurice Wilkins who'd rather conspire about genetics with James Watson and Francis Crick than work alongside her.
\nThen it finally happens - the double helix structure of DNA reveals itself to her with perfect clarity. But what unfolds next, Rosalind could have never predicted.
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From Marie Benedict, comes an incredible novel that focuses on one of the people who had the most influence during World War I and World War II: Clementine Churchill.
\nIn 1909, Clementine Churchill steps off a train with her new husband, Winston. An angry woman emerges from the crowd to attack, shoving him in the direction of an oncoming train. Just before he stumbles, Clementine grabs him by his suit jacket. This will not be the last time Clementine Churchill saves her husband.
\nLady Clementine is the ferocious story of the brilliant and ambitious woman beside Winston Churchill, the story of a partner who did not flinch through the sweeping darkness of war, and who would not surrender either to expectations or to enemies.
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Between the World Wars, the six Mitford sisters dominate the English political, literary, and social scenes. Though they've weathered scandals before, the family falls into disarray when Diana divorces her husband to marry a fascist leader and Unity follows her sister's lead, inciting rumors that she's become Hitler's own mistress.
\nNovelist Nancy Mitford is the only member of her family to keep in touch with Diana and Unity after their desertion, so it falls to her to act when her sisters become spies for the Nazi party.
\nProbing the torrid political climate of World War II and the ways that sensible people can be sucked into radical action, The Mitford Affair follows Nancy's valiant efforts to end the war and the cost of placing loyalty to her country above loyalty to her family.
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In December 1926, Agatha Christie goes missing. Investigators find her empty car on the edge of a deep, gloomy pond, the only clues some tire tracks nearby and a fur coat left in the car - strange for a frigid night. Her husband and daughter have no knowledge of her whereabouts, and England unleashes an unprecedented manhunt to find the up-and-coming mystery author. Eleven days later, she reappears, just as mysteriously as she disappeared, claiming amnesia and providing no explanations for her time away.
The puzzle of those missing eleven days has persisted. With her trademark exploration into the shadows of history, acclaimed author Marie Benedict brings us into the world of Agatha Christie, imagining why such a brilliant woman would find herself at the center of such a murky story.
Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich's plans while at her husband's side and understood more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, and the whirlwind escape landed her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star.
\nBut she kept a secret more shocking than her heritage or her marriage: she was a scientist. And she had an idea that might help the country fight the Nazis and revolutionise modern communication . . . if anyone would listen to her.
\nA novel based on the true story of the glamour icon and scientist whose groundbreaking invention revolutionised modern communication.
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The remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan's personal librarian - who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true.
\nIn her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps build a world-class collection.
\nBut Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle's complexion isn't dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white - her complexion is dark because she is African American.
\nThe Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths to which she must go - for the protection of her family and her legacy - to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.
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By early 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan, Viv Buschetti, and Bitsy Cobb, suburban housewives in a brand-new \"planned community\" in Northern Virginia, appear to have it all. The fact that \"all\" doesn't feel like enough leaves them feeling confused and guilty, certain the fault must lie with them. Things begin to change when they form a book club with Charlotte Gustafson - the eccentric and artsy \"new neighbor\" from Manhattan - and read Betty Friedan's just-released book, The Feminine Mystique.
\nControversial and groundbreaking, the book struck a chord with an entire generation of women, helping them realise that they weren't alone in their dissatisfactions, or their longings, lifting their eyes to new horizons of possibility and achievement. Margaret, Charlotte, Bitsy, and Viv are among them. But is it really the book that alters the lives of these four very different women? Or is it the bond of sisterhood that helps them find courage to confront the past, navigate turmoil in a rapidly changing world, and see themselves in a new and limitless light?
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Esme Cahill thinks she has failed spectacularly: fired from her New York City publishing job, divorced from her husband, and possessing little more than a broken-down car and a pile of unfinished manuscripts, she drives home to Asheville at the request of her late grandmother, Adele, who had begged her, just before she died, to return to the place she grew up.
\nThere she discovers the once-charming lakeside retreat run by her family is sliding toward financial ruin, so with the help of her grandfather, George; estranged mother, Robyn; and a travelling chef Dawes (maker of the world's best grilled cheese sandwich) they set to work. In the attic, Esme unearths a trove of museum-worthy art quilts, sewn by Adele. Piecing together the inspiration behind them, Esme discovers a forgotten chapter in her family history and her grandmother's untold story, that of a gifted artist who never received her due.
\nThis is an always - emotional, sometimes humorous, very human novel of what it means to be family - the ties that bind us together and the unintentional hurts that can rend us apart. And, along the way, Esme learns that failure can be the first step toward the life you're meant to find.
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Celia Fairchild, known as advice columnist ‘Dear Calpurnia’, has insight into everybody’s problems - except her own. Still bruised by the end of a marriage she thought was her last chance to create a family, Celia receives an unexpected answer to a “Dear Birthmother” letter. Celia throws herself into proving she’s a perfect adoptive mother material - with a stable home and income - only to lose her job. Her one option: sell the Charleston house left to her by her recently departed, estranged Aunt Calpurnia.
Arriving in Charleston, Celia learns that Calpurnia had become a hoarder, the house is a wreck, and selling it will require a drastic, rapid makeover. The task of renovation seems overwhelming and risky. But with the help of new neighbors, old friends, and an unlikely sisterhood of strong, creative women who need her as much as she needs them, Celia knits together the truth about her estranged family - and about herself.
He is a Legend. She is a Prodigy. Who will be Champion? June and Day have sacrificed so much for the people of the Republic - and each other - and now their country is on the brink of a new existence. June is back in the good graces of the Republic, working within the government's elite circles as Princeps Elect while Day has been assigned a high level military position.
\nBut neither could have predicted the circumstances that will reunite them once again. Just when a peace treaty is imminent, a plague outbreak causes panic in the Colonies, and war threatens the Republic's border cities. This new strain of plague is deadlier than ever, and June is the only one who knows the key to her country's defence. But saving the lives of thousands will mean asking the one she loves to give up everything he has.
A year has passed since superstar Winter Young last saw secret agent Sydney Cossette. After barely surviving their first assignment together in London - and their intense chemistry - the two haven’t spoken at all. Though they’re never far from the other’s thoughts, or fantasies.
\nSo when Syndey shows up at Winter’s studio one day with a new mission from Panacea, he has no choice but to accept. With the clock ticking, the duo prepares to head to Singapore to rescue an operative in danger - only to learn he’s none other than Sydney's ex, a rogue agent known as the Arsonist.
\nOf course, nothing is ever simple when it comes to Winter and Sydney. Especially not with the glamorous Gavi Ginsburg, a globe-trotting socialite and Winter’s one-time girlfriend, in the mix. Is she back for Winter’s heart - or does she have her eye on another prize?
\nThe sequel to Stars and Smoke follows Winter and Sydney on yet another treacherous mission that grows more sinister with each twist and turn. To make it out alive, they'll have to figure out how to be partners again - and if they can resist the burn of something more.
Two siblings. Two brilliant talents. But only one Mozart.
Born with a gift for music, Nannerl Mozart has just one wish - to be remembered forever. But even as she delights audiences with her masterful playing, she has little hope she'll ever become the acclaimed composer she longs to be. She is a young woman in 18th century Europe, and that means composing is forbidden to her. She will perform only until she reaches a marriageable age - her tyrannical father has made that much clear.
And as Nannerl's hope grows dimmer with each passing year, the talents of her beloved younger brother, Wolfgang, only seem to shine brighter. His brilliance begins to eclipse her own, until one day a mysterious stranger from a magical land appears with an irresistible offer. He has the power to make her wish come true - but his help may cost her everything.
What was once the western United States is now home to the Republic, a nation perpetually at war with its neighbors. Born into an elite family in one of the Republic's wealthiest districts, fifteen-year-old June is a prodigy being groomed for success in the Republic's highest military circles. Born into the slums, fifteen-year-old Day is the country's most wanted criminal. But his motives may not be as malicious as they seem.
\nFrom very different worlds, June and Day have no reason to cross paths - until the day June's brother, Metias, is murdered and Day becomes the prime suspect. Caught in the ultimate game of cat and mouse, Day is in a race for his family's survival, while June seeks to avenge Metias's death. But in a shocking turn of events, the two uncover the truth of what has really brought them together, and the sinister lengths their country will go to keep its secrets.
Find out more about June and Day in this never-before-seen glimpse into their daily lives before they met in Marie Lu’s New York Times bestselling LEGEND series.
\nAs twelve-year-olds struggling to survive in two very different worlds within the Republic’s stronghold, June was starting her first day of school at Drake University as the youngest cadet ever admitted, and Day was fighting for food on the streets of the Lake sector.
\nLIFE BEFORE LEGEND contains two original stories written by Marie Lu that give readers a sneak peek into the lives of their favorite characters in a thrilling new context.
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Injured and on the run, it has been seven days since June and Day barely escaped Los Angeles and the Republic with their lives. Day is believed dead having lost his own brother to an execution squad who thought they were assassinating him.
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June is now the Republic's most wanted traitor. Desperate for help, they turn to the Patriots - a vigilante rebel group sworn to bring down the Republic. But can they trust them or have they unwittingly become pawns in the most terrifying of political games?
Eden Wing has been living in his brother’s shadow for years. Even though he’s a top student at his academy in Ross City, Antarctica, and a brilliant inventor, most people know him only as Daniel Wing’s little brother.
A decade ago, Daniel was known as Day, the boy from the streets who led a revolution that saved the Republic of America. But Day is no longer the same young man who was once a national hero. These days he’d rather hide out from the world and leave his past behind. All that matters to him now is keeping Eden safe - even if that also means giving up June, the great love of Daniel’s life.
As the two brothers struggle to accept who they’ve each become since their time in the Republic, a new danger creeps into the distance that’s grown between them. Eden soon finds himself drawn so far into Ross City’s dark side, even his legendary brother can’t save him. At least not on his own . . .
Alchemy is the hidden art of transformation. An exclusive power wielded by crime syndicates that market it to the world’s elites in the form of sand, a drug that enhances those who take it into a more perfect version of themselves: more beautiful, more charismatic, simply more.
\nAmong the gleaming skyscrapers and rolling foothills of Angel City, alchemy is controlled by two rival syndicates. For years, Grand Central and Lumines have been balanced on a razor’s edge between polite negotiation and outright violence. But when two childhood friends step into that delicate equation, the city - and the paths of their lives - will be irrevocably transformed.
\nThe daughter of a poor single mother, Sam would do anything to claw her way into the ranks of Grand Central in search of a better life. Plucked away from his family as a boy to become a Lumines apprentice, Ari is one of the syndicates' brightest rising stars. Once, they might have loved each other. But as the two alchemists face off across opposite sides of an ever-escalating conflict, ambition becomes power, loyalty becomes lies, and no transformation may be perfect enough for them both to survive the coming war.
Adelina Amouteru’s heart has suffered at the hands of both family and friends, turning her down the bitter path of revenge. Now known and feared as the White Wolf, she flees Kenettra with her sister to find other Young Elites in the hopes of building her own army of allies. Her goal: to strike down the Inquisition Axis, the white-cloaked soldiers who nearly killed her.
But Adelina is no heroine. Her powers, fed only by fear and hate, have started to grow beyond her control. She does not trust her newfound Elite friends. Teren Santoro, leader of the Inquisition, wants her dead. And her former friends, Raffaele and the Dagger Society, want to stop her thirst for vengeance. Adelina struggles to cling to the good within her. But how can someone be good when her very existence depends on darkness?
Talin is a Striker, a member of an elite fighting force that stands as the last defense for the only free nation in the world: Mara.
A refugee, Talin knows firsthand the horrors of the Federation, a world-dominating war machine responsible for destroying nation after nation with its terrifying army of mutant beasts known only as Ghosts.
But when a mysterious prisoner is brought from the front to Mara's capital, Talin senses there’s more to him than meets the eye. Is he a spy from the Federation? What secrets is he hiding?
Only one thing is clear: Talin is ready to fight to the death alongside her fellow Strikers for the only homeland she has left . . . with or without the boy who might just be the weapon to save - or destroy - them all.
Meet Winter Young - International pop sensation, with a voice like velvet and looks that could kill. His star power has smashed records, selling out stadiums from LA to London. His rabid fans would move heaven and earth for even a glimpse of him - just imagine what they’d do to become his latest fling.
\nMeet Sydney Cossette - Part of an elite covert ops group, Sydney joined their ranks as their youngest spy with plans to become the best agent they’ve ever had. An ice queen with moves as dangerous as her comebacks, Sydney picks up languages just as quickly as she breaks hearts. She's fiery, no-nonsense, and has zero time for romance - especially with a shameless flirt more used to serving sass than taking orders.
\nWhen a major crime boss gifts his daughter a private concert with Winter for her birthday, Sydney and Winter's lives suddenly collide. Tasked with infiltrating the crime organisation’s inner circle, Sydney is assigned as Winter's bodyguard with Winter tapped to join her on the mission of a lifetime as a new spy recruit. Sydney may be the only person alive impervious to Winter's charms, but as their mission brings them closer, she’s forced to admit that there's more to Winter Young than just a handsome face . . .
As a Striker, Talin was taught loyalty is life. Loyalty to the Shield who watches your back, to the Strikers who risk their lives on the battlefield, and most of all, to Mara, which was once the last nation free from the Karensa Federation’s tyranny.
\nBut Mara has fallen. And its destruction has unleashed Talin’s worst nightmare.
\nWith her friends scattered by combat and her mother held captive by the Premier, Talin is forced to betray her fellow Strikers and her adopted homeland. She has no choice but to become the Federation’s most deadly war machine as their newest Skyhunter.
\nRed is no stranger to the cruelty of the Federation or the torture within its Skyhunter labs, but he knows this isn’t the end for Mara - or Talin. The link between them may be weak, but it could be Talin and Red's only hope to salvage their past and safeguard their future.
\nWhile the fate of a broken world hangs in the balance, Talin and Red must reunite the Strikers and find their way back to each other.
For the millions who log in every day, Warcross isn't just a game - it's a way of life. Struggling to make ends meet, teenage hacker Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter, tracking down players who bet on the game illegally. Needing to make some quick cash, Emika takes a risk and hacks into the opening game of the international Warcross Championships - only to accidentally glitch herself into the action and become an overnight sensation.
Convinced she's going to be arrested, Emika is shocked when she gets a call from the game's creator, the elusive young billionaire Hideo Tanaka, with an irresistible offer. He needs a spy on the inside of this year's tournament in order to uncover a security problem . . . and he wants Emika for the job. Emika's whisked off to Tokyo and thrust into a world of fame and fortune that she's only dreamed of. But soon her investigation uncovers a sinister plot, with major consequences for the entire Warcross empire.
Adelina Amouteru is a survivor of the blood fever. A decade ago, the deadly illness swept through her nation. Most of the infected perished, while many of the children who survived were left with strange markings. Adelina’s black hair turned silver, her lashes went pale, and now she has only a jagged scar where her left eye once was. Her cruel father believes she is a malfetto, an abomination, ruining their family’s good name and standing in the way of their fortune.
\nBut some of the fever’s survivors are rumored to possess more than just scars - they are believed to have mysterious and powerful gifts, and though their identities remain secret, they have come to be called the Young Elites.
Teren Santoro works for the king. As Leader of the Inquisition Axis, it is his job to seek out the Young Elites, to destroy them before they destroy the nation. He believes the Young Elites to be dangerous and vengeful, but it’s Teren who may possess the darkest secret of all.
Enzo Valenciano is a member of the Dagger Society. This secret sect of Young Elites seeks out others like them before the Inquisition Axis can. But when the Daggers find Adelina, they discover someone with powers like they’ve never seen.
Adelina wants to believe Enzo is on her side, and that Teren is the true enemy. But the lives of these three will collide in unexpected ways, as each fights a very different and personal battle. But of one thing they are all certain: Adelina has abilities that shouldn’t belong in this world. A vengeful blackness in her heart. And a desire to destroy all who dare to cross her.
Emily has, by all appearances, a beautiful townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, two healthy children, and a husband who showers her with attention. But the truth is Emily’s marriage is in trouble, her relationship with her parents is fraught, and she is still nursing a heartbreak from long ago. When Emily runs into her high school best friend, Gen, at a cocktail party, that heartbreak comes roaring back. But Gen Hall is no longer the lanky, hungry kid with holes in her shoes who Emily loved in her youth.
\nInstead, Gen is now a prominent Olympic athlete with sponsorship deals and a string of high-profile ex-girlfriends. Emily and Gen circle one another cautiously, both drawn together by a magnetic attraction and scarred by their shared history. Once upon a time, Gen knew everything about Emily. And yet, she still abandoned her. Can Emily trust Gen again? Can they forgive each other for mistakes they made in their youth? Can Emily risk her children, her privacy, and the fragile peace she has found with her family just to be with a woman she loved long ago?
\nA sweeping queer romance, Ordinary Love is the beautiful, wrenching, completely seductive story of two people trying to forge a path through fear, bound by a love they discovered when they were too young to understand its power.
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It’s 1999, and Samantha has danced for years at the Lovely Lady strip club. She’s not used to taking anyone under her wing - after all, between her disapproving boyfriend and his daughter, who may as well be her own child, she has enough to worry about. But when Samantha overrides her better judgment to drive a new dancer home, they are run off the road. The police arrive at the scene of the accident - but find only one body.
\nGeorgia, another dancer, is drawn into the investigation as she tries to assist Holly, a Harvard-educated detective with a complicated story of her own. As the point of view shifts from dancers and detectives to club patrons and children, the women round up a list of suspects, all the while grappling with their understandings of loss and love.
\nDrawing on her personal experiences as well as interviews with police, Rutkoski immerses us in a subculture that is all too often reduced to cliché. Gripping, deeply feminist, and character-driven, Real Easy spellbinds us and gets to the heart of this timeless question: How do women live out their lives knowing that men can hurt them?
At the end of The Midnight Lie, Nirrim offered up her heart to the God of Thieves in order to restore her people’s memories of their city’s history. The Half Kith who once lived imprisoned behind the city’s wall now realise that many among them are powerful. Meanwhile, the person Nirrim once loved most, Sid, has returned to her home country of Herran, where she must navigate the politics of being a rogue princess who has finally agreed to do her duty.
\nIn the Herrani court, rumors begin to grow of a new threat rising across the sea, of magic unleashed on the world, and of a cruel, black-haired queen who can push false memories into your mind, so that you believe your dearest friends to be your enemies.
\nSid doesn’t know that this queen is Nirrim, who seeks her revenge against a world that has wronged her. Can Sid save Nirrim from herself? Does Nirrim even want to be saved? As blood is shed and war begins, Sid and Nirrim find that it might not matter what they want . . . for the gods have their own plans.
Where Nirrim lives, crime abounds, a harsh tribunal rules, and society’s pleasures are reserved for the High Kith. Life in the Ward is grim and punishing. People of her low status are forbidden from sampling sweets or wearing colors. You either follow the rules, or pay a tithe and suffer the consequences.
Nirrim keeps her head down and a dangerous secret close to her chest.
But then she encounters Sid, a rakish traveler from far away who whispers rumors that the High Caste possesses magic. Sid tempts Nirrim to seek that magic for herself. But to do that, Nirrim must surrender her old life. She must place her trust in this sly stranger who asks, above all, not to be trusted.
Set in the world of the New York Times–bestselling Winner’s Trilogy, beloved author Marie Rutkoski returns with an epic LGBTQ romantic fantasy about learning to free ourselves from the lies others tell us—and the lies we tell ourselves.
The engagement of Lady Kestrel to Valoria’s crown prince means one celebration after another. But to Kestrel it means living in a cage of her own making. As the wedding approaches, she aches to tell Arin the truth about her engagement . . . if she could only trust him. Yet can she even trust herself? For - unknown to Arin - Kestrel is becoming a skilled practitioner of deceit: an anonymous spy passing information to Herran, and close to uncovering a shocking secret.
As Arin enlists dangerous allies in the struggle to keep his country’s freedom, he can’t fight the suspicion that Kestrel knows more than she shows. In the end, it might not be a dagger in the dark that cuts him open, but the truth. And when that happens, Kestrel and Arin learn just how much their crimes will cost them.
Winning what you want may cost you everything you love
\nAs a general’s daughter in a vast empire that revels in war and enslaves those it conquers, seventeen-year-old Kestrel has two choices: she can join the military or get married. But Kestrel has other intentions.
\nOne day, she is startled to find a kindred spirit in a young slave up for auction. Arin’s eyes seem to defy everything and everyone. Following her instinct, Kestrel buys him - with unexpected consequences. It’s not long before she has to hide her growing love for Arin.
\nBut he, too, has a secret, and Kestrel quickly learns that the price she paid for a fellow human is much higher than she ever could have imagined.
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War has begun. Arin is in the thick of it with untrustworthy new allies and the empire as his enemy. Though he has convinced himself that he no longer loves Kestrel, Arin hasn’t forgotten her, or how she became exactly the kind of person he has always despised. She cared more for the empire than she did for the lives of innocent people - and certainly more than she did for him.
At least, that’s what he thinks.
In the frozen north, Kestrel is a prisoner in a brutal work camp. As she searches desperately for a way to escape, she wishes Arin could know what she sacrificed for him. She wishes she could make the empire pay for what they’ve done to her.
But no one gets what they want just by wishing.
As the war intensifies, both Kestrel and Arin discover that the world is changing. The East is pitted against the West, and they are caught in between. With so much to lose, can anybody really win?
A terrible accident. A horrible loss. A regrettable tragedy. That's all anyone in Fenix can talk about when a fire consumes the local high school, taking the life of a student. The town mourns, except who really knew - let alone cared about - Eden when she was alive? And why was she in the building that night?
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tFive teens each hold a piece of the truth about what happened. They also have their own secrets, secrets they will fight to protect with the same fury as the blaze that killed Eden. But silence is meant to be broken, and this story can't be extinguished . . .
The Hope Juvenile Treatment Center is ironically named. No one has hope for the delinquent teenagers who have been exiled there; the world barely acknowledges that they exist.
\nThen the guards at Hope start acting strange. And one day . . . they don't show up. But when the teens band together to make a break from the facility, they encounter soldiers outside the gates. There's a rapidly spreading infectious disease outside, and no one can leave their houses or travel without a permit. Which means that they're stuck at Hope. And this time, no one is watching out for them at all.
\nAs supplies quickly dwindle and a deadly plague tears through their ranks, the group has to decide whom among them they can trust and figure out how they can survive in a world that has never wanted them in the first place.
Best friends Corey and Kyra were inseparable in their snow-covered town of Lost Creek, Alaska. When Corey moves away, she makes Kyra promise to stay strong during the long, dark winter, and wait for her return.
\nJust days before Corey is to return home to visit, Kyra dies. Corey is devastated - and confused. The entire Lost community speaks in hushed tones about the town's lost daughter, saying her death was meant to be. And they push Corey away like she's a stranger.
\nCorey knows something is wrong. With every hour, her suspicion grows. Lost is keeping secrets - chilling secrets. But piecing together the truth about what happened to her best friend may prove as difficult as lighting the sky in an Alaskan winter . . .
New thriller about a group of friends tied together by a game and the deadly weekend that tears them apart.
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FIVE friends go to a cabin.
\nFOUR of them are hiding secrets.
\nTHREE years of history bind them.
\nTWO are doomed from the start.
\nONE person wants to end this.
\nNO ONE IS SAFE.
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Are you ready to play?
Ash - or Princess Adelisa - is the youngest child of the queen, recently returned to the city of Kestrel's Haven after spending six years on the other side of the country. Ash was hoping for a joyous reunion, but the reality is far from it. Her mother is holding the kingdom together by a thread; her brother has only taunts and jibes for her; and court is full of nobles who openly mock and dismiss Ash, who uses a cane and needs braces to strengthen her joints.
\nSplinter is the youngest child of one of Haven's most prominent families. She's fierce, determined, and adventurous, and she has her sights set on becoming a knight just like her older brother. Even if everyone says she can't because she's not a boy. So what? She's not a girl, either.
\nA chance encounter throws Ash and Splinter into each other's orbits and changes the course of the kingdom's history. The princess and her new squire will face bullies, snobs, gossips, and their own disapproving families. But when they uncover a shadowy group of nobles plotting to overthrow the queen, they will show everyone how legends are born. Together.
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10:00 a.m.
The principal of Opportunity, Alabama's high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve.
10:02 a.m.
The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class.
10:03
The auditorium doors won't open.
10:05
Someone starts shooting.
Told over the span of 54 harrowing minutes from four different perspectives, terror reigns as one student's calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival.
They call her many things. Witch, Nagual Warrior, lady, Pantera. And after defeating the Obsidian Butterfly, Leonora carries a new Godslayer.
\nPeace in Mexico City is fragile. Rebellion brews in the North, and when the people’s safety is at risk, Pantera must once again become the demure viceregent Leonora to stop a war before it begins. But her friends are scattered, Tezca is gone, and one wrong move could seal her fate. Caution is her ally, for the real Prince of Asturias - her former betrothed - has arrived at court, reigniting Leonora and Pantera are one.
\nA greater threat looms in the mountains, where a false king seeks to summon the god of night using a weapon of untold power. It’s up to the Godslayer to confront this enemy. . . and the one growing within her. Only by embracing her divine origins can Leonora triumph over the forces of darkness - and maybe even spark a revolution that could change Mexico’s fate forever. But in doing so, she risks losing herself forever . . .
In sixteenth-century New Spain, witchcraft is punishable by death, indigenous temples have been destroyed, and tales of mythical creatures that once roamed the land have become whispers in the night. Hidden behind a mask, Pantera uses her magic and legendary swordplay skills to fight the tyranny of Spanish rule.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tTo all who know her, Leonora de Las Casas Tlazohtzin never leaves the palace and is promised to the heir of the Spanish throne. The respectable, law-abiding Lady Leonora faints at the sight of blood and would rather be caught dead than meddle in court affairs.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNo one suspects that Leonora and Pantera are the same person. Leonora's charade is tragically good, and with magic running through her veins, she is nearly invincible. Nearly. Despite her mastery, she is destined to die young in battle, as predicted by a seer.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWhen an ancient prophecy of destruction threatens to come true, Leonora - and therefore Pantera - is forced to decide: surrender the mask or fight to the end. Knowing she is doomed to a short life, she is tempted to take the former option. But the legendary Pantera is destined for more than an early grave, and once she discovers the truth of her origins, not even death will stop her.
Estranged sisters - Eva and Elisabeta Novak - have not spoken since Eva’s young daughter, Gracie, was killed in a road accident. More than a decade later, and long after Eva has moved overseas, Elizabeta calls, insisting that Eva return home.
\nBut when Eva arrives at her sister’s house, she discovers that Elizabeta is dead. Eva finds that she has been appointed the executor of Elizabeta’s estate, and as she undertakes the monumental task of clearing out the house, she comes to know her sister again through the objects and documents that she encounters. Through this process, Eva is forced to reckon with their shared history and the possibility that her mind cannot be trusted.
\nForeign Country engages with themes of grief and loss, and the instability of memory. The novel explores the difficulty of coming to terms with conflicting accounts of the past and asks how well we ever really know the ones that we love, or our own past selves.
An epic, heart-racing fantasy romance, for fans of Powerless, about the battle to survive a deadly tournament to win the wish your heart most desires.
\nWhen Talia unwittingly steals cursed jewels from a powerful Soulreaper, she pays the ultimate price: the Soulreaper takes her sister's soul. Desperate to save her sister, Talia strikes a deal. She will enter a deadly, magical tournament and if she survives, she will claim the prize of a wish - the only payment the Soulreaper will accept in exchange for the return of her sister.
\nBut the tournament can only be won in pairs. Talia is paired with Taron, the Soulreaper's brooding, mysterious protégé harbouring secrets of his own. They must find a way to work together if they are going to make it through the deadly trials alive. And as Talia's feelings for Taron grow, the stakes get even higher. She realises the ultimate price might just be her heart.
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When Unit Four - a biological soft robot built and stored high above the Jovian atmosphere - is activated for the first time, it’s in crisis mode. Aliens are attacking the Helium-3 mine it was created to oversee, and now its sole purpose is to defend Earth’s largest energy resource from the invaders in ship-to-ship combat.
\nBut something’s wrong. Unit Four doesn’t feel quite right.
\nThere are files in its databanks it can’t account for, unusual chemical combinations roaring through its pipes, and the primers it possesses on the aliens are suspiciously sparse. The robot is under orders to seek and destroy. That’s all it knows.
\nAccording to its handler, that’s all it needs to know.
\nDetermined to fulfill its directives, Unit Four launches its ship and goes on the attack, but it has no idea it’s about to get caught in a downward spiral of misinformation, reprograming, and interstellar conflict.
\nMost robots are simple tools. Unit Four is well on its way to becoming something more . . .
Krona and her Regulators survived their encounter with Charbon, the long-dead serial killer who returned to their city, but the illusions of their world were shattered forever.
\nAllied with an old friend they will battle the elite who have ruled their world with deception, cold steel, and tight control of the magic that could threaten their power, while also confronting beasts from beyond the foggy barrier that binds their world.
\nNow they must follow every thread to uncover the truth behind the Thalo, once thought of as only a children's tale, who are the quiet, creeping puppet masters of their world.
In a daring and deadly heist, thieves have made away with an artifact of terrible power--the death mask of Louis Charbon. Made by a master craftsman, it is imbued with the spirit of a monster from history, a serial murderer who terrorized the city with a series of gruesome murders.
\nNow Charbon is loose once more, killing from beyond the grave. But these murders are different from before, not simply random but the work of a deliberate mind probing for answers to a sinister question.
\nIt is up to Krona Hirvath and her fellow Regulators to enter the mind of madness to stop this insatiable killer while facing the terrible truths left in his wake.
Generations ago, Convoy Seven and I.C.C. left Earth on a mission that would take them far beyond the solar system. Launched by the Planet United Consortium, a global group formed to pursue cooperative Earth-wide interests in deep space, nine ships headed into the unknown to explore a distant star called LQ Pyx.
Eons later, the convoy has returned to LQ Pyx to begin work on the Web, the alien megastructure that covers the star. Is it a Dyson Sphere, designed to power a civilisation as everyone believes - or something far more sinister?
Meanwhile, Planet United’s littlest convoy, long thought to be lost, reemerges in a different sector of deep space. What they discover holds the answers to unlocking the Web’s greater purpose.
Each convoy possesses a piece of the Web’s puzzle . . . but they may not be able to bring those pieces together and uncover the structure’s true nature before it’s too late.
In 2088, humankind is at last ready to explore beyond Earth’s solar system. But one uncertainty remains: Where do we go?
\nAstrophysicist Reggie Straifer has an idea. He’s discovered an anomalous star that appears to defy the laws of physics, and proposes the creation of a deep-space mission to find out whether the star is a weird natural phenomenon, or something manufactured.
\nThe journey will take eons.
\nIn order to maintain the genetic talent of the original crew, humankind’s greatest ambition - to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy - is undertaken by clones. But a clone is not a perfect copy, and each new generation has its own quirks, desires, and neuroses. As the centuries fly by, the society living aboard the nine ships (designated “Convoy Seven”) changes and evolves, but their mission remains the same: to reach Reggie’s mysterious star and explore its origins - and implications.
\nA mosaic novel of discovery, Noumenon - in a series of vignettes - examines the dedication, adventure, growth, and fear of having your entire world consist of nine ships in the vacuum of space.
\nThe men and women, and even the AI, must learn to work and live together in harmony, as their original DNA is continuously replicated and they are born again and again into a thousand new lives. With the stars their home and the unknown their destination, they are on a voyage of many lifetimes - an odyssey to understand what lies beyond the limits of human knowledge and imagination.
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After barely surviving their encounter with the Savior, who has shaped the rules and realities of Arkensyre for generations, Krona and the other members of the growing rebellion see only one chance of overcoming his power: free and enlist the ancient gods he caged to augment his own power.
\nBut it’s one thing to believe in gods. It is quite another to meet them.
\nAnd it’s not only the Savior who wants to hold fast to the illusions that govern all the lives in the valley, the Grand Marquis, his agencies and the elites of Arkensyre will do anything they can to snuff out change.
\nTo remake the world, first you must break it.
Deep in the heart of an alien mountain range, ICC. has lain dormant, its ships silent, for eons. Now, after one hundred thousand years, the AI is awakening. Someone is roaming the convoy's halls, someone that isn't human.
This planet, Noumenon, created by the megastructure known as the Web, is too young and brutal to have evolved intelligent life. Its surface is bombarded by unusual meteors. Crystal trees abruptly and violently arise from its bedrock. Its solar system is surrounded by a frightening space-time anomaly. So where did these visitors come from? What do they want? And do the people of Earth, whose ancestors launched Convoy Seven, know they are here?
ICC reaches out to the descendants of its convoy crew to help decipher this primordial riddle. Noumenon was created and seeded by ancient aliens, and clearly their plans for it are unfinished. Together, the AI, the new lifeforms who have awakened it, and the humans will embark on an epic adventure of discovery billions of years in the making.
In the wild and lush kingdom of Twinsbane, everyone has a look-alike, and each twin is cursed to die when their double breathes their last. When an ancient plague arises, the kingdom’s only hope is to sever these deadly ties. Yet King Daccias refuses to relinquish the cure, a legendary potion called the Separator.
\nWaruu, an orphan determined to break these ties, discovers he’s the king’s doppelgänger. He’s certain that if he can switch places, he can save the kingdom. But if anyone learns his true identity, he’ll lose everything - including the people he’s desperately trying to protect.
\nKing Daccias wants nothing more than for his subjects to cease threatening to behead him if he doesn’t hand over the Separator. Intent on catching those opposing him, he finds himself ensnared in his own trap. If he doesn’t break loose, the kingdom will rest in the hands of an insolent boy who knows nothing about the truth behind the events unfolding around him.
\nTo save their kingdom, both Waruu and Daccias must face their greatest enemy - each other.
A debut essay collection by the inimitable cultural critic Maris Kreizman - an introspective, searing account of the life experiences that have pushed this former “good Democrat” even further to the political left.
\nAt the heart of this funny, acerbic, and bravely honest book of essays is Maris Kreizman, a former rule follower and ambition monster who once believed the following truths to be that working very hard would lead to admission to a good college, which would lead to a good job at a good company, which would then lead to personal fulfillment and a sense of purpose, along with adequate health care and eventual home ownership and plenty of money waiting in a retirement account. Like any good Democrat and feminist, she believed that if she just worked hard and played by the rules, she was guaranteed a safe and comfortable life.
\nNow in her forties, the only thing Maris Kreizman knows for sure is that she no longer has faith in American institutions or any of their hollow promises. Now she knows that the rules are meant to serve some folks better than others; and, actually, they serve no one all that well - not even Kreizman. Disturbed by the depth and scope of the liberal myths in which she once so fervently believed, Kreizman takes readers on an intimate journey that revisits some of her most profound revelations, demonstrating that it’s never too late to become radicalised.
\nWith Kreizman’s signature wit and blunt self-reflection, and more than a little transformative rage, I Want to Burn This Place Down is a book for anyone who wishes they could go back in time to give their younger selves the real truth about the fractured country they have inherited - and the encouragement to rebuild something better in its place.
In a United States not so unlike our own, the Department of Balance has adopted a radical new form of law enforcement: rather than incarceration, wrongdoers are given a second (and sometimes, third, fourth, and fifth) shadow as a reminder of their crime - and a warning to those they encounter. Within the Department, corruption and prejudice run rampant, giving rise to an underclass of so-called Shadesters who are disenfranchised, publicly shamed, and deprived of civil rights protections.
\nKris is a Shadester and a new mother to a baby born with a second shadow of her own. Grieving the loss of her wife and thoroughly unprepared for the reality of raising a child alone, Kris teeters on the edge of collapse, fumbling in a daze of alcohol, shame, and self-loathing. Yet as the kid grows, Kris finds her footing, raising a child whose irrepressible spark cannot be dampened by the harsh realities of the world.
\nWith a first-person register reminiscent of the fierce self-disclosure of Sheila Heti and the poetic precision of Ocean Vuong, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself is a bold debut novel that examines the long shadow of grief, the hard work of parenting, and the power of queer resistance.
Star point guard Mack Morris’s senior year of high school begins with twin cataclysms: the death of Mack’s father and the arrival of transfer student Liv Cooper. Playing side by side for their high school basketball team, Mack and Liv discover an electrifying, game-winning chemistry on the court. Off the court, they fall into an equally intoxicating more-than-friendship - one that feels out-of-bounds in their small Pennsylvania town.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMack teeters on the precipice of adulthood as desire and grief collide with drugs, sex, and the looming college signing deadline. Caught between the dual impulses of ambition and self-destruction, Mack must decide what kind of life they want to fight for.
An insanely competitive housing market. A desperate buyer on the edge. In Marisa Kashino’s darkly humorous debut novel, Best Offer Wins, the white picket fence becomes the ultimate symbol of success - and obsession. How far would you go for the house of your dreams?
\nEighteen months and 11 lost bidding wars into house-hunting in the overheated Washington, DC suburbs, 37-year-old publicist Margo Miyake gets a tip about the perfect house, in the perfect neighborhood, slated to come up for sale in one month. Desperate to escape the cramped apartment she shares with her husband Ian - and in turn, get their marriage, plan to have a baby, and whole life back on track - Margo becomes obsessed with buying the house before it’s publicly listed and the masses descend (with unbeatable, all-cash offers in hand).
\nA little stalking? Harmless. A bit of trespassing? Necessary. As Margo infiltrates the homeowners’ lives, her tactics grow increasingly unhinged - but just when she thinks she’s won them over, she hits a snag in her plan. Undeterred, Margo will prove again and again that there’s no boundary she won’t cross to seize the dream life she’s been chasing. The most unsettling part? You’ll root for her, even as you gasp in disbelief.
Helene Simonauer and Evelyn Turner are two formidable women whose paths cross when their children marry. Both women are sharp, cunning, and unwavering in their conflicting beliefs about marriage, responsibility, and family and, most pressingly, their efforts to vie for the love of their shared granddaughter.
\nAt Last paints a vivid portrait of the American Midwest, capturing the essence of a time and place where societal norms and personal aspirations often clashed. Marisa Silver’s narrative weaves together the lives of Helene and Evelyn, from their vastly different childhoods through the pivotal events that define them. Both intimate and expansive, and capturing the complexities of ambition and love with humor and insight, At Last is a testament to what happens when an unintended, even unwanted relationship turns out to be a central one that defines a life.
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Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they're plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and her army. Their best hope lies with Cress, who has been trapped on a satellite since childhood with only her net screens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker unfortunately, she's just received orders from Levana to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice.
\nWhen a daring rescue goes awry, the group is separated. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a high price. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing stop her marriage to Emperor Kai. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only ones who can.
Adalheid Castle is in chaos.
\nFollowing a shocking turn of events, Serilda finds herself ensnared in a deadly game of make-believe with the Erlking, who is determined to propel her deeper into the castle’s lies. Meanwhile, Serilda is determined to work with Gild to help him solve the mystery of his forgotten name and past.
\nBut soon it becomes clear that the Erlking doesn’t only want to use Serilda to bring back his one true love. He also seeks vengeance against the seven gods who have long trapped the Dark Ones behind the veil. If the Erlking succeeds, it could change the mortal realm forever.
\nCan Serilda find a way to use her storytelling gifts for good - once and for all? And can Serilda and Gild break the spells that tether their spirits to the castle before the Endless Moon finds them truly cursed?
Long ago cursed by the god of lies, a poor miller's daughter has developed a talent for spinning stories that are fantastical and spellbinding and entirely untrue.
\nOr so everyone believes.
\nWhen one of Serilda's outlandish tales draws the attention of the sinister Erlking and his undead hunters, she finds herself swept away into a grim world where ghouls and phantoms prowl the earth and hollow-eyed ravens track her every move. The king orders Serilda to complete the impossible task of spinning straw into gold, or be killed for telling falsehoods. In her desperation, Serilda unwittingly summons a mysterious boy to her aid. He agrees to help her . . . for a price. Love isn't meant to be part of the bargain.
\nSoon Serilda realises that there is more than one secret hidden in the castle walls, including an ancient curse that must be broken if she hopes to end the tyranny of the king and his wild hunt forever.
Mallory Fontaine is a fraud. Though she comes from a long line of witches, the only magic she possesses is the ability to see ghosts, which is rarely as useful as one would think. She and her sister have maintained the family business, eking out a paltry living by selling bogus spells to gullible buyers and conducting tours of the infamous mansion where the first of the Saphir murders took place.
\nMallory is a self-proclaimed expert on Count Bastien Saphir - otherwise known as Monsieur Le Bleu - who brutally killed three of his wives more than a century ago. But she never expected to meet Bastien's great-great grandson and heir to the Saphir estate. Armand is handsome, wealthy, and convinced that the Fontaine Sisters are as talented as they claim. The perfect mark. When he offers Mallory a large sum of money to rid his ancestral home of Le Bleu's ghost, she can’t resist. A paid vacation at Armand’s country manor? It’s practically a dream come true, never mind the ghosts of murdered wives and the monsters that are as common as household pests.
\nBut when murder again comes to the House Saphir, Mallory finds herself at the center of the investigation - and she is almost certain the killer is mortal. If she has any hope of cashing in on the payment she was promised, she’ll have to solve the murder and banish the ghost, all while upholding the illusion of witchcraft.
\nBut that all sounds relatively easy compared to her biggest learning to trust her heart. Especially when the person her heart wants the most might be a murderer himself.
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Chronic overachiever Prudence Daniels is always quick to cast judgment on the lazy, rude, and arrogant residents of her coastal town. Her dreams of karmic justice are fulfilled when, after a night out with her friends, she wakes up with the sudden ability to cast instant karma on those around her.
\nPru giddily makes use of the power, punishing everyone from public vandals to karaoke hecklers, but there is one person on whom her powers consistently backfire: Quint Erickson, her slacker of a lab partner and all-around mortal enemy. Soon, Pru begins to uncover truths about Quint, her peers, and even herself that reveal how thin the line is between virtue and vanity, generosity and greed . . . love and hate.
The Renegades are a syndicate of prodigies - humans with extraordinary abilities - who emerged from the ruins of a crumbled society and established peace and order where chaos reigned. As champions of justice, they remain a symbol of hope and courage to everyone . . . except the villains they once overthrew.
\nNova has a reason to hate the Renegades, and she is on a mission for vengeance. As she gets closer to her target, she meets Adrian, a Renegade boy who believes in justice - and in Nova. But Nova's allegiance is to a villain who has the power to end them both.
Cinder, the cyborg mechanic, returns in the second thrilling installment of the bestselling Lunar Chronicles. She's trying to break out of prison - even though if she succeeds, she'll be the Commonwealth's most wanted fugitive. Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit's grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn't know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life.
\nWhen Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother's whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.
The epic conclusion to Marissa Meyer's thrilling Renegades Trilogy finds Nova and Adrian fighting to keep their identities secret. While the battle rages on between their alter egos and their allies, there is a darker threat shrouding Gatlon City.
The Renegades' worst enemy is back among them, threatening to reclaim Gatlon City. Nova and Adrian must brave lies and betrayal to protect those they love. Their greatest fears are about to come to life, and unless they can bridge the divide between heroes and villains, they stand to lose everything. Including each other.
Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mar her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana.
Winter despises her stepmother, and knows Levana won’t approve of her feelings for her childhood friend - the handsome palace guard, Jacin. But Winter isn’t as weak as Levana believes her to be and she’s been undermining her stepmother’s wishes for years. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even have the power to launch a revolution and win a war that’s been raging for far too long.
Can Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter defeat Levana and find their happily ever afters?
Jude is determined to fly under the radar. He just wants to draw comics, host D&D night with his friends, work at his parents’ vinyl record store, and escape high school as unscathed as possible. That is, until the night he finds himself inexplicably gifted with a bout of supernatural good luck.
\nSuddenly, everything Jude has ever wanted is within reach. His art is being published. He helps his friend’s song become a finalist in a songwriting competition. And he wins a pair of coveted concert tickets, which he can use to ask out the popular girl he’s been crushing on since elementary school.
\nBut how long can Jude’s good fortune last? And why does he find himself thinking about Ari, his best friend since forever? If Jude has been dreaming of the wrong girl this whole time, does that mean he's doomed to be unlucky in love forever?
In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation.
\nLuckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming 'lion women.'
\nBut their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls’ high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.
\nTogether, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.
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1953, Tehran. In a small shop in a country on the brink of unrest, two people meet for the very first time.
\nRoya loves nothing better than to while away the hours in the stationery shop run by Mr Fakhri. The store, stocked with fountain pens, shiny ink bottles, and thick wads of writing paper, also carries translations of literature from all over the world. Bahman, with his burning passion for justice, is like no one else she has ever met.
\nBut all around them, as their relationship blossoms, life in Tehran is changing.
\nSuddenly, shockingly, violence erupts: a coup d'etat that forever changes their country's future, as well as their own.
Isabella Rose is on the run, hunted by the very people she had been hired to work for. Trained killer Isabella and former handler Michael Pope are forced into hiding in India and, when a mysterious informer passes them clues on the whereabouts of Pope’s family, the prey see an opportunity to become the predators.
\nChased from the poverty of Mumbai’s slums into the sights of a sniper’s rifle amongst the lavish wealth of Shanghai, Isabella and Pope hunt fleeting shadows in a race against time. And they can’t afford to lose.
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John Milton has finally found a place to escape the bloodshed: off-season Coney Island. No tourists. No special ops. Just peace and quiet. But when a local boy witnesses a grisly murder, Milton can’t resist investigating.
Milton uncovers a vicious drug kingpin and a group of crooked cops from a notorious precinct known as “The Alamo.” Against such dangerous foes, Milton’s quest for redemption could come to an end.
White light. Heat. A drawn-out moment of complete silence. And then the screaming starts.
\nAn Underground carriage in London is destroyed by a suicide bomber. The injured and the dead litter the platform. But as a crowd forms at street level, Michael Pope knows that this is only the beginning.
\nPope, head of top-secret Group 15, is tasked with finding the perpetrators of this atrocity and bringing them to justice, any way he can. He knows that the answers to many of his questions will lie at the end of the money trail, but he also knows that whoever funded and organized the attack will kill again for their freedom.
\nThis is an operation that requires a very special kind of agent. Pope needs someone who exists outside of normality. Someone who floats above it, treading softly through a fractured life.
\nHe needs the Angel.
Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is the most dangerous city in the world. And when a mission to break the local cartel’s grip goes wrong, Isabella Rose, the Angel, finds herself on the wrong side of prison bars. Fearing the worst, Isabella plays her only remaining card . . .
\nBritish agent Vivian Bloom is determined to be the first to reach her, certain she will lead him to other operatives he’s under pressure to hunt down. But US agents are circling too. And with the shadowy Prometheus group pulling the strings, Isabella knows that she and her mentor, the Asset, are living on borrowed time . . .
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Isabella Rose, the Angel, is used to surprises, but being abducted is an unwelcome novelty. She’s relying on Michael Pope, the head of the top-secret Group Fifteen, to get her back.
\nWhen ISIS get involved, the situation becomes even bleaker. Isabella’s abductors are in turn abducted, and she finds herself trapped in Raqqa, the capital of the self-styled caliphate.
\nMeanwhile, Pope has problems of his own: a new danger has emerged from the shadows and is threatening both him and his family. His only option is to head for the war-torn border of Turkey and Syria - a murderous, lawless place where potential enemies lurk around every bombed-out corner. Pope knows that he is risking everything to find Isabella, but finding the Angel is not a choice - it’s a necessity.
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Living under new identities in rural France, trained killer Isabella Rose and her former handler Michael Pope are trying to lay low. Tired of hiding, all Isabella wants is the chance to live an ordinary life.
\nBut Isabella is an extraordinary young woman and the people pursuing her will never, ever, give up. Her unique abilities have attracted the attention of the Academy of Military Science in Beijing. And it’s not only Isabella who needs to stay in the shadows. Ex-head of top-secret Group Fifteen, Pope has his fair share of enemies and a family that he's desperate to protect.
\nIsabella and Pope can’t stay off the grid forever. Someone isn't going to let them. From the hills of Montpellier to the cliffs of Malta, they find themselves caught in a violent game of cat and mouse.
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John Milton has been many things: assassin, fugitive, vigilante. But after months of hard-earned sobriety, he’s finally rebuilding his life - until he wakes up in a Manila hotel room with no memory of the night before, a dead woman next door, and blood on his hands.
\nArrested and thrown into one of Southeast Asia’s most dangerous prisons, Milton quickly realises he’s been set up. With corrupt officials, violent inmates, and a deadly conspiracy closing in, he must survive long enough to uncover the truth.
\nAs the body count rises and his enemies circle, Milton dives into a deadly game of cat and mouse that stretches far beyond the Philippines. But with no allies, no escape, and no time to lose, can he clear his name before he disappears for good?
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Beatrix Rose has worked her way through her Kill List. Four are dead and just two remain. But now her enemies know she has them in her sights. The hunter becomes the hunted.
In a thrilling conclusion to the breakneck trilogy, Beatrix and her daughter must fight them in North Africa, New York and finally in the swamps of North Carolina. It's a lightning-paced roller-coaster of action that pits a deadly assassin against the might of the most powerful private army on the planet.
It's long odds for Beatrix. And that's just how she likes it.
Charlie Cooper, a member of the covert Group Fifteen, travels to Israel to find his estranged half-brother, Freddy, who has mysteriously disappeared. Freddy's ties to NetGuardian, a cybersecurity firm implicated in dubious activities, propel Cooper into a dangerous web of corporate espionage, state-of-the-art surveillance technology, and the ruthless world of intelligence.
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Ten years ago, Beatrix Rose headed an off-the-books hit squad to carry out the dirty work of the British government. When she discovered that the commander of the squad was corrupt, he sent five of his assassins to rub her out. But they failed. Bad mistake.
There were six names on Beatrix’s Kill List. Two have been accounted for, and she has number three in her sights. But Bryan Duffy is in Iraq, surrounded by mercenaries, and there’s no easy way for Beatrix to get to him and no easy way to get out.
In a world where loyalty is fleeting and alliances are temporary, John Milton is on a mission that will bring him face-to-face with enemies old and new. When his friend, Alex Hicks, finds himself pursued by mysterious adversaries, the two men are thrust back into the web of international espionage.
\nNavigating a perilous path that stretches from the war-torn streets of Ukraine to the icy wastelands of Siberia, Milton will stop at nothing to protect his friends and expose a conspiracy that could topple governments and jeopardise global security. As Russian intelligence crumbles from within and a new, unpredictable threat arises, can Milton outwit his most formidable enemies yet?From the clandestine corridors of French intelligence to the explosive frontlines of a covert war, Bloodlands will keep you on the edge of your seat, questioning where true loyalty lies.
\nIn a daring game of cat and mouse that sees Milton, Hicks, and an ensemble of unforgettable characters crossing paths and double-crossing enemies, the stakes have never been higher.
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John Milton only wanted to help a woman escape the grip of a powerful crime family. Instead, he finds himself entangled in a deadly feud between the Russos and the Delgado cartel. Betrayal runs deep, and when Milton is double-crossed, he realises he’s been cast as a pawn in a game rigged for blood.
\nFrom Oakland’s backstreets to the neon glare of the Strip and across the Mexican border, Milton fights to protect the innocent and balance his own ledger. But in a city built on lies and vice, the line between friend and enemy blurs - and Milton may discover too late that some debts can’t be settled except in blood.
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John Milton thought he could run forever. He was wrong.
\nFor years, former secret service agent and trained killer John Milton thought he could outrun his past, his demons and his enemies. His enemies had other ideas.
\nCaptured and imprisoned by the organisation he once worked for, Milton must do one last job in exchange for his freedom. Bullheaded billionaire fixer Tristan Huxley is brokering a weapons deal between Russia and India. He needs protection and he wants Milton by his side. Huxley has trusted Milton with his life before but these days his world is more decadent and his enemies more dangerous, in ways that nobody could ever have suspected.
\nFinally, the man who thought he’d never be forgiven has the chance to wipe the slate clean, once and for all. But is it really a case of no more running for Milton? Can the Group be trusted to keep their word and let him go? And who is it that really needs protecting?
\nAfter all, nobody is bulletproof, not even John Milton.
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When tech genius Nathan Wiley is ambushed outside his London home, Group Fifteen operative Charlie Cooper is pulled back into the shadows. The attack was no random mugging - Wiley’s name was leaked by a whistleblower with access to one of the most sensitive intelligence troves in Five Eyes history.
\nThe source? Sienna Jones, a former Australian spy who vanished without a trace after exposing the West’s illegal use of AI trained on its own citizens. But now a signal has emerged from a luxury wellness resort on a remote Greek island. Jones might be hiding there - or someone wants the world to think she is.
\nUndercover and outnumbered, Cooper enters a world where nothing is as it seems. Staff members are lying. Surveillance is everywhere. And when a deadly ambush leaves Cooper fighting for his life, the mission becomes clear: locate Sienna Jones, secure the stolen intelligence, and survive long enough to discover who else is playing this deadly game.
\nBecause someone wants the truth buried - along with everyone who tries to expose it.
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Deception Runs Deep. Betrayal Runs Deeper.
\nDelve into the clandestine world of Group 15, the covert organization also featured in the acclaimed John Milton series. Charlie Cooper, an elite Group Fifteen agent, faces a complex mission: eliminate Igor Sidorov, a security-obsessed Russian oligarch implicated in international subterfuge. The only avenue to reach the paranoid Sidorov? Through Crispin Fairweather, the owner of a small yet influential reputation management firm.
\nMasquerading as an analyst, Cooper manipulates his way into the company and soon finds himself en route to Istanbul. The stage is set for a high-octane showdown on Sidorov's private island. With geopolitical tensions on a knife's edge, Cooper must navigate a labyrinth of deception and danger to complete his mission.
\nWill he succeed or become another casualty in a deadly game of power and betrayal? Don't miss this pulse-pounding thriller that explores the murky corridors of espionage and moral ambiguity.
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A career of state-sanctioned murder has taken its toll. Milton is troubled by nightmares, a long line of ghosts who torment his dreams. He resolves to make his next job his last and, then, perhaps, he can start to make amends for everything that he has done.
Sharon Warriner is a single mother in the East End of London, suicidal with fear that she's lost her young son to a life in the gangs. After Milton saves her life, he promises to help. But the gang, and the charismatic rapper who leads it, is not about to cooperate with him.
As London burns through summer riots, Milton finds himself in unfamiliar territory, dealing with an unfamiliar foe. And when his employer sends another agent after him, the odds against him are stacked even higher.
John Milton was just passing through.
\nBut when a chance glimpse of an old friend drags him off course, he finds himself in Clearwater Springs - a forgotten town poisoned by corporate greed and held hostage by fear.
\nCaterina Moreno was supposed to disappear. Years ago, Milton risked everything to help her escape a cartel death sentence. Now she’s resurfaced under a new name, fighting a different kind of war. As a law student and community advocate, she’s taking on the powerful fracking company that’s been making people sick and silencing anyone who dares speak out.
\nMilton offers protection from the shadows. But danger is circling. The deeper Caterina digs, the more violent the pushback becomes - and far beyond the reach of corporate lawyers, someone else is watching. Someone sent to finish what was started years ago.
\nTo save a woman who refuses to run, Milton will have to face a threat that’s been stalking her for years - and make a stand in a town where justice has long since been buried.
Former MI6 officer Charlie Cooper is thrust into a high-stakes mission when a fellow operative, codenamed NORTH STAR, vanishes in Macao. The trail leads to a shadowy team of Russian mercenaries with a chilling agenda: to expose Group Fifteen, the clandestine organisation that operates beyond the reach of conventional intelligence agencies.
\nCooper races to New York, believing the Russians will unveil their shocking plan at the upcoming UN General Assembly. Operating undercover as a lowly IT technician, he infiltrates the Russian delegation and forms a dangerous alliance with Irina, a disillusioned diplomat trapped in a brutal relationship with a ruthless intelligence officer.
\nAs the clock ticks down, Irina's loyalty is tested, Cooper's cover is threatened, and NORTH STAR's true allegiance remains a mystery.
\nWill Cooper expose the Russian plot and escape with his life? Or will the Group's secrets be revealed to the world?
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In the opulent city of Dubai, a high-stakes game of espionage is about to explode. When Iranian diplomat Arash Heydari jeopardises his position as a valuable CIA asset with a drunken outburst, British operative Charlie Cooper is thrust into a mission that is as dangerous as it is complex. Tasked with monitoring the increasingly volatile Heydari, Cooper must navigate a treacherous world of secrets, lies and betrayals.
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As Heydari closes in on critical intelligence, the mission becomes a race against time. Cooper’s loyalties are tested as he fights to protect his cover, all while navigating a world where everyone has a hidden agenda.
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Charlie Cooper is sent to Prague to investigate - and eliminate - the leader of a group of far right hooligans guilty of the murder of an Interpol agent. Cooper is on his final warning and is expected to get in and out with minimal fuss, leaving just the body of his target in his wake.
\nBut then Cooper meets a young man who has fallen under the spell of the group's charismatic leader... will he be able to ignore his conscience and follow his orders, or will he complicate matters by trying to get the young man to safety first?
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Beatrix Rose has been betrayed. Her husband has been murdered and her daughter, Isabella, abducted. She flees to the Hong Kong underworld to plot her revenge.
\nThose who wronged her will pay. Beatrix is the most dangerous woman you’ve ever met. She was an assassin for The Firm, the beyond top secret agency that did the dirty work for the British Secret Services.
\nShe is lethal. Ethically flexible. Totally ruthless.
\nAnd you know what they say about payback . . .
\nMr. Ying, the underboss of the ruthless Wo Shun Wo triad clan, wants Beatrix dead. He has Grace, the young Chinese girl who Beatrix rescued from death at his hand. Beatrix appeals to the leader of the triads, the almost mythical Dragon Head. But will he be prepared to help her? And, if he is, what will he want in return?
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John Milton had started to hope that he might have a future. He has a job driving a taxi around the streets of San Francisco. He has his anonymity and his solitude. Being invisible has become a comfortable habit. He doesn't want to be found.
But when a girl he drives to a party goes missing, Milton is worried. Especially when two dead bodies are discovered and the police start treating him as their prime suspect. Milton is a fugitive from the British Secret Service and a man in his position needs extra attention like he needs a hole in the head.
As unpleasant secrets leak out, and the body count rises, one thing is for sure: Milton might just be the right guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When Group FIfteen assassin Charlie Cooper is ordered to eliminate a rogue Chinese scientist, he’s thrust into a deadly game that stretches from the backstreets of London to the glittering towers of Singapore.
\nThe target, Dr. Zhang, holds the key to a breakthrough in genetic engineering that could change the balance of global power. But Cooper isn’t the only one hunting him. Also in pursuit is Vanessa, a former agent and Cooper’s old flame, now working for a ruthless biotech corporation willing to kill for Zhang’s research.
\nAs rival agencies and mercenaries close in, Cooper and Vanessa form a fragile alliance that can’t last. Betrayals pile up, bullets fly, and what begins as an extraction becomes a race to stop a bioweapon from falling into the wrong hands.
\nIn the world of Group Fifteen, loyalty is a myth and survival is never guaranteed. And Charlie Cooper is about to learn that some secrets are worth killing for - and dying for.
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John Milton is a ghost. He was Number One. The most dangerous assassin in Group Fifteen, the black-ops organisation that solves problems when diplomacy has failed. Now Milton is Her Majesty's most wanted fugitive - an anonymous loner with a deadly set of skills. So when he is arrested following a brawl in a Texas bar, the last person he expected to bail him out was a glamorous operative from the Russian Secret Service.
\nMilton is blackmailed into finding his predecessor as Number One. But she's a ghost, too, and just as dangerous as him.
\nHe finds himself in deep trouble, playing the Russians against the British in a desperate attempt to save the life of his oldest friend.
\nSome ghosts are better left alone. But now these two have been disturbed there's going to be hell to pay.
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When John Milton stumbles into a small town plagued by scams, secrets, and a brutal criminal family, he plans to keep his head down. But after a deadly ambush leaves him tied up and dragged into the Appalachians, Milton finds himself face-to-face with an ancient tree - and a noose meant for his neck.
\nAs he fights to survive, Milton uncovers a sprawling a crooked banker, a string of ruined lives, and a drug operation hiding in plain sight. With time running out and bodies piling up, Milton must bring the whole operation crashing down.
Bury your enemies, and bury them deep.
John Milton thought he was done with Avi Bachman. The most dangerous man he's ever known has been incarcerated in Angola, the brutal Louisiana prison. Inmates rarely leave Angola. Once you go in, the only way out is in a box.
But Bachman is no ordinary prisoner. He was an assassin for the Mossad, and he has favours to call in.
Milton is in the Australian outback with an old friend and his flirtatious kid sister, looking for a summer’s peace to put his troubled mind to rest. But Bachman has other plans. He thinks that Milton killed his wife, and now he wants revenge.
From Australia to Israel, from Hong Kong to Croatia, here is the conclusion of this brutal chapter in Milton’s life. The two headhunters are on a collision course, and only one of them will walk away.
Mark Dawson is the new master of the page-turning thriller and more than 350,000 copies of the Milton series have been downloaded since it was first published. Don’t start this book in bed - you will lose sleep.
When MI6 assassin Charlie Cooper is ordered to take a leave of absence, he uses the time to settle a personal score.
\nA former ally sold him out to the Chinese in Singapore. In London, he tracks her routine, finds her weakness, and sets the trap. But the explosion that should have killed her doesn’t.
\nBefore Cooper can finish what he started, Control recalls him to duty. His target: Hisham Al Iraqi, a legendary bombmaker hiding among the ancient ruins of Petra. Cooper embeds himself on an archaeological dig in the Jordanian desert, waiting for a heatwave to drive the terrorist into the open. But the deeper he digs, the more enemies he unearths - one of them much closer than he realises.
\nAnd in the shadows of the red rock canyons, an old friend is waiting . . .
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When a covert operator with links to Charlie Cooper is killed, the trail leads to a secret outfit few believe is real: Hemlock.
\nNo witnesses. No records. No proof it ever existed. Just rumours, half-forgotten files, and a growing body count.
\nAs Cooper digs deeper, the evidence keeps disappearing - and so do the people who get too close. Hemlock doesn’t operate in the shadows. It owns them, using blackmail, corruption and murder to shape events from the inside.
\nThe closer Cooper gets to the truth, the clearer it becomes: this isn’t a conspiracy you expose.
\nIt’s one you survive.
\nBecause Hemlock has endured for decades by doing one thing better than anyone else - making sure it’s forgotten.
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Beatrix Rose was the most dangerous assassin in an off-the-books government kill squad until her former boss betrayed her. A decade later, she emerges from the Hong Kong underworld with payback on her mind. They gunned down her husband and kidnapped her daughter, and now the debt needs to be repaid. It’s a blood feud she didn’t start but she is going to finish.
Beatrix has already crossed one name off her Kill List. Her second target is a mercenary being held hostage by Somali terrorists. Can she infiltrate the most dangerous failed state on the planet and scrub him off the List, too?
An assassin haunted by his past. Two young refugees out of their depth and in need of his special talents.
John Milton is no stranger to the world’s seedy underbelly. But when the former British Secret Service agent comes up against a ruthless human trafficking ring, he’ll have to fight harder than ever to conquer the evil in his path.
After Milton meets a refugee who lost a sister to people smugglers, he travels through war-torn Libya and the murkiest parts of Italy and France to get the girl back. As enemies watch his every move, Milton confronts a group of Albanian pimps and smugglers so dangerous, they could easily make this mission his last.
John Milton has a nose for trouble. He can smell it a mile away. And when he witnesses a suspicious altercation between a young man and two thugs in a car auction parking lot, he can’t resist getting involved.
\nMilton came to Kansas City hoping to find a way out of danger. His recent vendetta against a cartel hitman who killed his friend has made him enemies in high places. Now he needs to find the only man who can get him out of this mess. But, like a moth to a flame, Milton is drawn to anyone who needs his help. And this time, he’s also drawing the attention of money laundering criminals who really mean business.
\nDriven by a desire to atone for the darkness in his past, Milton is a man on a mission. But, in a city of undercover crime and corruption, what does that mean for his future? With danger all around him, will Milton’s burning conscience finally be the death of him?
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Charlie Cooper is tasked with a mission unlike any other: assess whether Kristof Dalrymple, a powerful British arms dealer, is secretly working for the Russians - and eliminate him if necessary. But when Dalrymple ends up dead and all the evidence points to Cooper, he finds himself framed for a crime he didn’t commit.
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Cut off from Group Fifteen, hunted by the police, and betrayed from within, Cooper must rely on old friends and sharp instincts to clear his name and expose the real killer. But the deeper he digs, the more chilling the truth becomes: someone is systematically murdering key players in the arms trade… and Cooper is next on the list.
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Bjorn Thorsson joined the Special Air Service to forget the horrors of his childhood. He killed for Queen and country, and he was good at it.
He quits the army and settles down, looking for a quieter life. When his beautiful sister Gudrun finds herself in trouble with the owner of a hedge fund, Bjorn promises to get her out of danger. But there’s another factor in play. Group 15, a clandestine government agency, has plans for the financier, and Bjorn is in their way.
Bjorn must outwit the Group in the streets of London and in the Highlands of Scotland if he is to protect his sister and survive.
Can the man who never was catch the criminals who never get caught?
\nJohn Milton is used to operating in the shadows, weaving his way through dangerous places behind a fake identity. Now, to avenge the death of a close friend, he must wear his mask of deception once more.
\nBeau Baxter was brutally murdered by a drugs cartel but that doesn’t stop Milton from blaming himself for his friend’s death. With the help of a trusted team of undercover experts and Beau’s son, Milton is determined to track down the killers. And he isn't just after the man who gave the order. He’s heading right for the top.
\nMilton plans to follow the trail of cocaine from the nightclubs of Amsterdam all the way to its source in Colombia. Disguised as an ambitious buyer, he’s prepared to work his way up the cartel hierarchy one rung at a time. But the ladder can be slippery and, as Milton travels deeper into a world of violence, ruthlessness and greed, he finds himself in a jungle that could prove impossible to escape.
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Sometimes your past catches up with you. But John Milton has decided to catch up with his past.
\nEighteen years ago, on a mission in Iraq, Captain John Milton made a reckless decision with serious consequences. But it was Major Connor Gordon who really paid the price.
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Beatrix Rose has been betrayed. Her husband has been murdered and her daughter, Isabella, abducted. She flees to the Hong Kong underworld to plot her revenge.
Those who wronged her will pay. Beatrix is the most dangerous woman you’ve ever met. She was an assassin for The Firm, the beyond top secret agency that did the dirty work for the British Secret Services.
She is lethal. Ethically flexible. Totally ruthless.
And you know what they say about payback…
Beatrix and Chau have disposed of Donnie Qi, the triad gangster who wanted Chau dead. They are given work by Mr. Ying, the underboss of the Wo Shun Wo clan. But when Beatrix intervenes to save the life of a young girl who has inadvertently crossed the triads, she finds herself in direct opposition to Ying.
Ying wants her dead. What will Beatrix be prepared to do to keep her loved ones safe?
The ninth step of all twelve step programs requires addicts to make amends to the people they’ve hurt. John Milton’s been trying to do that for months, but it’s not a simple matter for him. Milton used to be an assassin, and most of the people that he hurt are dead.
Milton is keeping a low profile in London. He is at his usual meeting when a man confesses the reason for his alcoholism: he was abused as a child. Milton offers to help, but when the man is found dead in circumstances that Milton considers to be suspicious, events take a turn that no-one could have anticipated.
Milton’s attempted good deed becomes a quest to unveil corruption at the highest levels of government and murder at the dark heart of the criminal underworld.
When a rogue agent sets his sights on Group Fifteen, Charlie Cooper must draw on every ounce of his skill and cunning to survive.
\nAfter escaping an assassination attempt in Iceland, former operative turned Russian asset North Star disappears without a trace. Burdened by guilt and driven by vengeance, Control orders Cooper to track him down and neutralise the threat.
\nThe hunt leads to Cyprus, where North Star has fortified his retreat into an impenetrable stronghold. With time running out, Cooper and Control resort to unconventional methods to breach his defences and exploit his vulnerabilities.
\nCaught in a dangerous game of deception, betrayal, and deadly secrets, Cooper is forced to question who is truly in control. Can he outwit North Star, or will the predator become the prey?
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She does Britain's dirty work, but this time she needs help. Beatrix Rose, meet John Milton . . .
Beatrix Rose has a knack for making the British government's problems go away. When the assassin is sent to Venezuela to track down a missing scientist, she meets a contact who knows the lay of the land: none other than John Milton...
As the state-sanctioned assassin and the special forces soldier team up in South America, they'll do more than capture a missing scientist. They'll discover a secret that will change Beatrix's life forever...
Phoenix is a short story that unites two landmark thriller characters in a single tale. If you like ruthless assassins, fast-moving plots, and Jack Reacher-style action, then you'll love USA Today bestselling author Mark Dawson's latest short.
Beatrix Rose will stop at nothing to find her missing daughter, Isabella. When the ruthless Triad overlord, Michael Yeung, offers to help in exchange for a small favour, Beatrix is forced to venture into the treacherous jungles of Venezuela to take down a local bandit terrorising an illegal goldmine run by the vile Aurelio Rincon.
\nBut as she battles her way through the jungle, she uncovers a dark secret that pits her against a private army and corrupt government officials. Caught between the rebels who believe she has been sent to save them and her own troubled conscience, Beatrix must make a choice that could cost her everything she holds dear.
\nAs the violence escalates and the true extent of Rincon's empire is revealed, Beatrix must fight to survive and protect her daughter at all costs. Will she emerge victorious, or lose her soul in the process?
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Isabella Rose lives a quiet life in Marrakech, hiding a dark secret: she pays the bills by accepting wet work for an unknown broker. Her one solace is the time she spends at a local orphanage that offers a haven to children who have lost everything.
\nWhen a powerful and corrupt general sets his sights on acquiring the orphanage’s land, Isabella finds her two worlds colliding. Brutal tactics escalate, culminating in a devastating fire that forces Isabella to risk everything to save the children she's grown to love.
\nBut now, she must confront a terrible choice: disappear and protect her own safety or use all her deadly skills to bring the general down and secure a future for the orphanage.
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John Milton is in Rio de Janeiro to strike a couple of things off his bucket list. He’s staying with an old army friend who runs a private security company with a contract to protect government officials. When one of the bodyguards doesn’t turn up for work, Milton offers to stand in. The job is routine: take the wife and daughter of an anti-corruption judge to a school recital. What could possibly go wrong?
But the girl is snatched off the street and Milton is nearly killed. As he recovers at a Group Fifteen safe house, he works out what to do next.
He has two objectives: first, he’s going to find the girl. And, second, he’s going to find the criminals who took her and punish them for what they’ve done.
The conspirators think Milton is an old, washed-up drunk living on past glories.
They couldn’t have made a worse mistake. Milton’s trip to Rio turns into a lethal quest that leads to the lawless favelas and the corridors of power, and then right into the horrific heart of darkness.
John Milton travels to Bali in search of a new identity, but he can't even manage the flight without finding someone who needs his help.
\nA beautiful woman falls ill and confesses that she has swallowed packages of cocaine in order to smuggle it across the border. She has been forced to work as a mule by a Yakuza gang in Tokyo who are holding her child to guarantee her compliance.
\nMilton decides that's unacceptable, and promises to lend her his help.
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John Milton has been off the grid for six months. He surfaces in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and immediately finds himself drawn into a vicious battle with the narco-gangs that control the borderlands.
\nHe saves the life of an idealistic young journalist who has been targeted for execution. The only way to keep her safe is to smuggle her into Texas. Working with the only untouchable cops in the city, and a bounty hunter whose motives are unclear, Milton must keep her safe until the crossing can be made.
\nBut when the man looking for her is the legendary assassin Santa Muerta - Saint Death - that's a lot easier said than done.
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John Milton is trying to make amends for a career spent killing for the British Secret Service. He has a burning need to right wrongs - and rewrite his own bloody past. He finds himself in Louisiana - the Big Sleazy, the bayou, and the post-Katrina wreckage of the Gulf Coast - with a debt of honor to repay.
\nIsadora Bartholomew, who saved his partner's life, needs his help. Joel Babineaux, a ruthless property magnate, is out to sink the charity she established to help rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward. Just when Milton thinks he has neutralised Babineaux's scheming, a dangerous man from his past takes an unhealthy interest in his present.
\nClaude Boon used to work for the Mossad and might be more than Milton can handle. And then the stakes get even higher . . . 'Salvation Row' is the most explosive thriller yet in Mark Dawson's bestselling John Milton series. It's a book no self-respecting suspense fan will want to be without.
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When an inmate is found unresponsive in his high security cell at Belmarsh prison, he’s rushed to hospital for treatment. The prisoner is human trafficker and international fixer Tristan Huxley, a man a lot of people have good reason to want dead.
\nBut Huxley mysteriously never makes it to the hospital. He may have plenty of enemies but it seems he has some very powerful friends too.
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Group Fifteen operative and ex-MI6 officer Charlie Cooper is working undercover as a political negotiator. Attending a conference surrounded by diplomats, businessmen and lobbyists, nobody would suspect what he really does for a living. Also in their midst is Aisha, a Saudi activist whose protests against human rights abuses have made her an enemy of her country’s regime.
\nIt isn’t just Cooper visiting Cairo under false pretenses. A hit squad has been sent to eliminate Aisha and their reputation precedes them. Cooper knows all too well that these men mean business and is given the order to take them out. But when he is told to use Aisha as bait, he starts to question what he is doing.
\nThe hunt is on and the sandstorm is heading their way. Can Cooper eliminate the assassins before they reach Aisha? Can he keep her safe from harm without any means of escape?
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They call him 'Scorpion.' No-one knows his real name and the only people who have seen his face are dead. He works for the highest bidder, and he’s never missed a target.
\nThe assassin appears in London with the name of an investigative reporter on his list. But has Scorpion met his match? The reporter has a protector - John Milton. And Milton might be the only man in the world more dangerous than him.
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When a Russian defector is assassinated in a sleepy English seaside town, Group Fifteen agents John Milton and Michael Pope find themselves in a rush to uncover the culprits and bring them to justice.
Their investigation leads them to Moscow and a confrontation with Directorate S, the agency responsible for seeding Russian sleeper agents around the world. When lies and double crossing mean that no-one is what they seem, the two agents - alone and without backup – struggle to achieve their goals under the most dangerous of circumstances.
Set one week before the opening of The Cleaner, this compulsive thriller turns back the clock to Milton as a barely functioning alcoholic, still tormented by the ghosts of the men and women he has killed in the service of his country.
Milton must fight his own demons as well as the Russian assassin sent to eliminate him. Will he be able to complete his mission and escape with his life?
John Milton has blood on his conscience.
He was an assassin for the British government for a decade until he got out. He treks into the Michigan wilderness for the solitude he needs to forget his guilt. He isn't looking for trouble, but trouble always seems to come looking for him.
Morten Lundquist, a man with his own dark secrets, is a deputy in the town of Truth. He finds himself investigating Milton, but Lundquist has no idea how dangerous his quarry is.
Double crossed and badly injured, Milton flees into the remote Porcupine Mountains with a posse on his tail. His enemies thought that they could hunt him down. They were wrong - and where John Milton is concerned, there are no second chances.
Danny Nakamura deserted from Vietnam and disappeared into Hong Kong's Walled City. He stayed hidden for forty years but now, with his health failing, he decides that he wants to go home one last time. Unfortunately for Danny, he has powerful enemies in the CIA and his reappearance is not welcome.
When an attempt is made on his life, Danny turns to a woman who he has helped to adapt to a new life as an assassin in the Hong Kong underworld.
Beatrix Rose.
John Milton hasn't seen Elijah Warriner for three years. The last time they met, Milton's efforts to keep the boy safe didn't go exactly to plan. Now Elijah is a promising boxer, preparing for the bout that will take him to the big time. Milton decides that he will spend the week before Christmas in London so that he can watch the fight.
But Elijah's burgeoning fame has brought him to the attention of old acquaintances with long memories and grudges to bear. They have noticed Elijah, too, and decide that now is the time to settle old scores.
Can Milton keep the young man and his mother safe, or will Elijah's old running mates get to him first?
John Milton is working in a hotel kitchen while searching for information on the Group Fifteen agent who betrayed him in Russia. His plans are upended when a deadly shooting places an innocent young girl in his path. Aided by an enigmatic woman he meets in the hotel, he rescues the girl and plunges headfirst into a deadly conflict between two criminal families feuding in the run-up to a high-stakes MMA fight.
\nIn the underbelly of the city, where alliances are as brittle as glass, Milton must navigate through treacherous secrets and betrayals, ensuring the safety of the girl while locating the only person who can clear his name. The fight draws closer, the stakes are raised and survival becomes a race against time.
\nIn a world where loyalty comes with a price, and the truth is often disguised, Milton will have to use all his wits and skills to protect the innocent, uncover the truth, and make it out alive.
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When Harry Mackintosh is called upon to exfiltrate a valuable asset from East to West Berlin, what could have been an intelligence coup becomes an international embarrassment. Mackintosh’s men and his lover are killed by the East German secret police in a brutal crossfire and he barely escapes with his life. He flees to the West and promises himself that he will have vengeance.
Mackintosh is the head of Berlin Station but he doesn’t have the staff to compete with the Stasi. He returns to London to plead for the resources to fight back. But instead of the seasoned operatives that he needs, Mackintosh is given a single man: Jimmy Walker, a petty criminal with a record for robbing banks.
Mackintosh takes Walker to Berlin and sets in train an audacious plan that will see them both on the other side of the Wall. Mackintosh and Walker face off against Karl-Heinz Sommer, the Stasi general known as die Spinne - the Spider - a man known for his brutality and ruthlessness.
The plan is already a longshot, and then Walker learns of the riches that Sommer stole from displaced Berliners in the days after the Wall was constructed. Will Walker follow orders or will he find the prospect of the Stasi gold in Sommer’s secret vault too tempting to ignore? Will Mackintosh have his revenge or will he become another fly caught in the Spider’s web?
With ambiguous loyalties, clashing agendas and danger beyond measure, these two men will struggle to form a team. But in a battle as unequal as this, the unexpected might be the best strategy that they have.
A visionary genius introduces a new cryptocurrency that promises to upend the global banking system and change the lives of those who invest in it. Tens of thousands of people around the world part with millions of dollars, only to discover that everything is not what it seems.
\nJohn Milton finds himself in a support group for investors who lost everything. And if there's one thing about Milton, it's he's not about to let an injustice this unfair go uncorrected.
Prequel novella.
\nBeatrix Rose has been betrayed. Her husband has been murdered and her daughter, Isabella, abducted. She flees to the Hong Kong underworld to plot her revenge.
Those who wronged her will pay. Beatrix is the most dangerous woman you’ve ever met. She was an assassin for The Firm, the beyond top secret agency that did the dirty work for the British Secret Services.
She is lethal. Ethically flexible. Totally ruthless.
And you know what they say about payback . . .
Beatrix needs cash to pay for the search for Isabella. When she rescues a local man from a brutal beating in a Kowloon karaoke bar, she ends up finding moneymaking opportunities in the local underworld. The triads have a need for a woman with her particular skills, but when the local boss goes too far, he has to pay the price.
In a breakneck-paced roller-coaster of action, Beatrix discovers that danger lurks in the unlikeliest of places and nothing is as it seems.
Bryan Duffy is Witness X - a government agent implicated in a national scandal and banished to Spain until the agenda can be moved on.
But when North Korean hitmen attack a seeming innocent on the streets of London, Duffy is called back to the fold. He is tasked with finding the woman's assailants and bringing them to justice.
Why has the woman been attacked? Duffy investigates, and finds himself sucked into a whirlwind of action and mayhem that is particularly well suited to his special set of skills . . .
1969. Eloise Shepherd, one of MI6’s brightest rising stars, is working undercover in Soviet Russia as Magdalina Novikova. Her mission is to persuade nuclear physicist Stanislav Kalashnik to defect and bring his knowledge of Russian weapons back to the UK. On the verge of success, the operation fails suddenly and spectacularly.
\n17 years later, Kalashnik is Chief Engineer at the power plant near Pripyat known as Chernobyl. His concerns for the safety of the plant are growing. When his views lead to accusations that question his patriotism, he finds himself in a very risky position.
\nMeanwhile, back in London, Eloise Shepherd’s life and career are spinning out of control when she’s approached with a one-time offer to redeem herself. The mission: to get Kalashnik over Soviet borders once more. It’s an opportunity that could change everything and Eloise knows there’s no reward without risk. But she’s heading straight towards a danger far greater than she could ever have anticipated.
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From the moment that Jim and his best friend Charlie bug the staffroom and overhear two of their teachers speaking to each other in a secret language, they know there’s an adventure on its way. But what does ‘spudvetch’ mean, and why do Mr Kidd’s eyes flicker with fluorescent blue light when Charlie says it to him?
\nPerhaps Kidd and Pearce are bank robbers talking in code. Perhaps they’re spies. Perhaps they’re aliens. Whatever it is, Jimbo and Charlie are determined to find out. There really is an adventure on its way. This is a nuclear-powered, one hundred-ton adventure with reclining seats and a buffet car. And as it gathers speed and begins to spin out of control, it can only end in one way . . . with a Boom!
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Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.
\nThis improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.
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Greek myths have fascinated people for millenia, seeing in them lessons about fate and hubris and the contingency of existence. Mark Haddon digs into the heart of these ancient fables and sees them anew. The dawn goddess Eos asked asks Zeus to give her lover Tithonus eternal life, but forgets to ask for eternal youth.
\nIn “The Quiet Limit of the World” Haddon imagines Tithonus’ life as he slowly ages over thousands of years, turning the cautionary tale of tempting the gods into a spellbinding meditation on witnessing death from the outside, and ultimately, how carnal love evolves into something richer and more poignant with time.
\nIn “The Mother’s Story,” Haddon takes the myth of the minotaur in his labyrinth, in which the beast is the spawn of the monstrous lust of the king’s wife Pasiphae, and turns it into a wrenching parable of maternal love for a damaged child, and the more real monstrosities of patriarchy.
\nIn “D.O.G.Z.” the story of Actaeon, who was turned into a stag after glimpsing the naked goddess Diana and torn to pieces by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor about the continuum of human and animal behavior.
\nOther stories play with contemporary mythic tropes - genetic engineering, trying to escape the future, the viciousness of adolescent ostracism - to showcase how modern humans are subject to the same capriciousness that obsessed the Greeks. Haddon’s tales cover a vast range, from the mythic to the domestic, from ancient Greece to the present day, from stories about love to stories about cruelty, from battlefields to bed and breakfasts, from dogs in space to doors between worlds, all of them bound together by a profound sympathy and an understanding of how human beings act and think and feel when pushed to the very edge.
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In the prize-winning story \"The Gun,\" a man's life is marked by a single afternoon and a rusty .45; in \"The Island,\" a mythical princess is abandoned on an island in the midst of war; in \"The Boys Who Left Home to Learn Fear,\" a cadre of sheltered artistocrats sets out to find adventure in a foreign land and finds the gravest dangers among themselves.
\nThese are but some of the men and women who fill this searingly imaginative and emotionally taut collection of short stories by Mark Haddon, that weaves through time and space to showcase the author's incredible versatility.
\nYet the collection achieves a sum that is greater than its parts, proving itself a meditation not only on isolation and loneliness but also on the tenuous and unseen connections that link individuals to each other, often despite themselves. In its titular story, the narrator describes with fluid precision a catastrophe that will collectively define its victims as much as it will disperse them - and brilliantly lays bare the reader's appetite for spectacle alongside its characters'.
\nCut with lean prose and drawing inventively from history, myth, fairy tales, and, above all, the deep well of empathy that made his three novels so compelling, The Pier Falls reveals a previously unseen side of the celebrated author.
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Mark Haddon's breathtaking novel begins with a harrowing plane crash: Maja, the pregnant wife of the unimaginably wealthy Philippe, is killed, but their daughter, Angelique, survives. Philippe's obsession with the girl's safety morphs into something sinister and grotesque. A young man named Darius, visiting Philippe with a business proposition, encounters Angelique and intuits their secret - he decides to rescue her, but the attempt goes awry.
This contemporary story mirrors the ancient Greek legend of Antiochus, whose love for the daughter of his dead wife was discovered by the adventurer Appolinus of Tyre. The tale appeared in many forms through the ages; Shakespeare transformed Appolinus into the swashbuckling Pericles in his play. In The Porpoise, as Angelique grapples with the wreck of her life, trapped on her father's estate, Darius morphs into Pericles, voyaging through a mythic world.
Richard, a wealthy doctor, invites his estranged sister Angela and her family to join his for a week at a vacation home in the English countryside. Richard has just re-married and inherited a willful stepdaughter in the process; Angela has a feckless husband and three children who sometimes seem alien to her. The stage is set for seven days of resentment and guilt, a staple of family gatherings the world over.
But because of Haddon's extraordinary narrative technique, the stories of these eight people are anything but simple. Told through the alternating viewpoints of each character, The Red House becomes a symphony of long-held grudges, fading dreams and rising hopes, tightly-guarded secrets and illicit desires, all adding up to a portrait of contemporary family life that is bittersweet, comic, and deeply felt.
As we come to know each character they become profoundly real to us. We understand them, even as we come to realize they will never fully understand each other, which is the tragicomedy of every family.
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George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not at quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood, or manly bonhomie. He does not understand the modern obsession with talking about everything. “The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.” Some things in life, however, cannot be ignored.
At 61, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels and listening to a bit of light jazz. Then his tempestuous daughter, Katie, announces that she is getting re-married, to the deeply inappropriate Ray. Her family is not pleased - as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has “strangler’s hands.” Katie can’t decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful way he has with her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life affair with one of her husband’s ex-colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials.
Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind.
The way these damaged people fall apart - and come together - as a family is the true subject of Haddon’s disturbing yet amusing portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely.
The Academy of Kindness exists to create agents of retribution, cast in the image of the Furies - The Kindly Ones - against whom even the gods hesitate to stand.
\nEach year one hundred girls are sold to the Academy. Ten years later only three emerge.
\nThe Academy’s halls run with blood. The few who survive its decade-long nightmare have been forged on the sands of the Wound Garden. They have learned ancient secrets amid the necrotic fumes of the Bone Garden. They leave its gates as avatars of vengeance, bound to uphold the oldest of laws.
\nOnly the most desperate would sell their child to the Kindnesses. But Rue . . . she sold herself. And now, a lifetime later, a long and bloody lifetime later, just as she has discovered peace, war has been brought to an old woman’s doorstep.
\nThat was a mistake.
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Sometimes being wrong is the right answer.
Nick Hayes’s genius is in wringing out the universe’s secrets. It’s a talent that’s allowed him to carve paths through time. But the worst part is that he knows how his story will end. He’s seen it with his own eyes. And every year that passes, every breakthrough he makes, brings him a step closer. Mia’s accident is waiting for them both in 2011. If it happens then he’s out of choices.
Then a chance 1992 discovery reveals that this seeker of truth has been lying to himself. But why? It’s a question that haunts him for years. A straw he clings to as his long-awaited fate draws near.
Time travel turns out not to be the biggest problem Nick has to work on. He needs to find out how he can stay on his path but change the destination. Failure has never been an option, and neither has survival. But Nick’s hoping to roll the dice one more time. And this new truth begins with a lie.
Behind its walls, the Convent of Sweet Mercy has trained young girls to hone their skills for centuries. In Mystic Class, Novice Nona Grey has begun to learn the secrets of the universe. But so often even the deepest truths just make our choices harder. Before she leaves the convent, Nona must choose which order to dedicate herself to - and whether her path will lead to a life of prayer and service or one of the blade and the fist.
All that stands between her and these choices are the pride of a thwarted assassin, the designs of a would-be empress wielding the Inquisition like a knife, and the vengeance of the empire's richest lord.
As the world narrows around her, and her enemies attack her through the system she is sworn to, Nona must find her own path despite the competing pulls of friendship, revenge, ambition, and loyalty.
And in all this only one thing is certain: there will be blood.
They came against her as a child. Now they face the woman.
The ice is advancing, the Corridor narrowing, and the empire is under siege from the Scithrowl in the east and the Durns in the west. Everywhere, the emperor’s armies are in retreat.
Nona Grey faces the final challenges that must be overcome if she is to become a full sister in the order of her choice. But it seems unlikely that she and her friends will have time to earn a nun’s habit before war is on their doorstep.
Even a warrior like Nona cannot hope to turn the tide of war.
The shiphearts offer strength that she might use to protect those she loves, but it’s a power that corrupts. A final battle is coming in which she will be torn between friends, unable to save them all. A battle in which her own demons will try to unmake her.
A battle in which hearts will be broken, lovers lost, thrones burned.
To reach greatness you must step on bodies, and many brothers lie trodden in my wake. I’ve walked from pawn to player and I’ll win this game of ours, though the cost of it may drown the world in blood . . .
The land burns with the fires of a hundred battles as lords and petty kings fight for the Broken Empire. The long road to avenge the slaughter of his mother and brother has shown Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath the hidden hands behind this endless war. He saw the game and vowed to sweep the board. First though he must gather his own pieces, learn the rules of play, and discover how to break them.
A six nation army, twenty thousand strong, marches toward Jorg's gates, led by a champion beloved of the people. Every decent man prays this shining hero will unite the empire and heal its wounds. Every omen says he will. Every good king knows to bend the knee in the face of overwhelming odds, if only to save their people and their lands. But King Jorg is not a good king.
Faced by an enemy many times his strength Jorg knows that he cannot win a fair fight. But playing fair was never part of Jorg’s game plan.
One choice. Two possible timelines. And a world hanging in the balance.
\nIt’s the summer of 1986 and reluctant prodigy Nick Hayes is a student at Cambridge University, working with world-renowned mathematician Professor Halligan. He just wants to be a regular student, but regular isn’t really an option for a boy-genius cancer survivor who’s already dabbled in time travel.
\nWhen he crosses paths with a mysterious yet curiously familiar girl, Nick discovers that creases have appeared in the fabric of time, and that he is at the centre of the disruption. Only Nick can resolve this time paradox before the damage becomes catastrophic for both him and the future of the world. Time is running out - iterally.
\nWrapped up with him in this potentially apocalyptic scenario are his ex-girlfriend, Mia, and fellow student Helen. Facing the world-ending chaos of a split in time, Nick must act fast and make the choice of a lifetime - or lifetimes.
\nGame on.
In January 1986, fifteen-year-old boy-genius Nick Hayes discovers he’s dying. And it isn’t even the strangest thing to happen to him that week.
Nick and his Dungeons & Dragons-playing friends are used to living in their imaginations. But when a new girl, Mia, joins the group and reality becomes weirder than the fantasy world they visit in their weekly games, none of them are prepared for what comes next. A strange - yet curiously familiar - man is following Nick, with abilities that just shouldn’t exist. And this man bears a cryptic message: Mia’s in grave danger, though she doesn’t know it yet. She needs Nick’s help - now.
He finds himself in a race against time to unravel an impossible mystery and save the girl. And all that stands in his way is a probably terminal disease, a knife-wielding maniac and the laws of physics.
Challenge accepted.
The Red Queen’s grandson, Prince Jalan Kendeth - drinker, gambler, seducer of women - is one who can see The Silent Sister. Tenth in line for the throne and content with his role as a minor royal, he pretends that the hideous crone is not there. But war is coming. Witnesses claim an undead army is on the march, and the Red Queen has called on her family to defend the realm. Jal thinks it’s all a rumor - nothing that will affect him - but he is wrong.
\n\t\t\t\t\tAfter escaping a death trap set by the Silent Sister, Jal finds his fate magically intertwined with a fierce Norse warrior. As the two undertake a journey across the Empire to undo the spell, encountering grave dangers, willing women, and an upstart prince named Jorg Ancrath along the way, Jalan gradually catches a glimmer of the truth: he and the Norseman are but pieces in a game, part of a series of moves in the long war - and the Red Queen controls the board.
When he was nine, he watched as his mother and brother were killed before him. At thirteen, he led a band of bloodthirsty thugs. By fifteen, he intends to be king . . .
It's time for Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath to return to the castle he turned his back on, to take what's rightfully his. Since the day he hung pinned on the thorns of a briar patch and watched Count Renar's men slaughter his mother and young brother, Jorg has been driven to vent his rage.
Life and death are no more than a game to him - and he has nothing left to lose. But treachery awaits him in his father's castle. Treachery and dark magic. No matter how fierce his will, can one young man conquer enemies with power beyond his imagining?
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Evar and Livira stand side by side and yet far beyond each other's reach. Evar is forced to flee the library, driven before an implacable foe. Livira, trapped in a ghost world, has to recover her book if she's to return to her life. While Evar's journey leads him outside into the vastness of a world he's never seen, Livira's destination lies deep inside her own writing, where she must wrestle with her stories in order to reclaim the volume in which they were written.
\n\t\t\t\t\tAnd all the while, the library quietly weaves thread to thread, bringing the scattered elements of Livira's old life - friends and foe alike - back together beneath new skies.
\n\t\t\t\t\tLong ago, a lie was told, and with the passing years it has grown and spread, a small push leading to a chain of desperate consequences. Now, as one edifice topples into the next with ever-growing violence, it threatens to break the world. The secret war that defines the library has chosen its champions and set them on the board. The time has come when they must fight for what they believe, or lose everything.
The fate of an infinite library hangs on one book, a book that holds the power to break the unbreakable. In the face of such forces, fragile things like hearts, family, and the world seem certain to fail.
\nThe people most vital to Livira are scattered across time and space, lost, divided into factions, in mortal peril. Somehow, she must bring them together and resolve the unresolvable argument that fuels the library’s war. The bond between Livira and Evar has stretched and stretched again. Can it hold at the end, when things fall apart? Can it bring them together against impossible odds? This is the last chapter, the final page. The end threatens and no one, not characters, readers, or even the author, will emerge unscathed.
The boy has lived his whole life trapped within a book-choked chamber older than empires and larger than cities.
\nThe girl has spent hers in a tiny settlement out on the Dust, where nightmares stalk and no one goes.
\nThe world has never even noticed them. That’s about to change.
Their stories spiral around each other, across worlds and time. This is a tale of truth and lies and hearts, and the blurring of one into another.
A journey on which knowledge erodes certainty and on which, though the pen may be mightier than the sword, blood will be spilled and cities burned.
The green world overwhelms all of Yaz’s expectations. Everything seems different but some things remain the same: her old enemies are still bent on her destruction.
\nThe Corridor abounds with plenty and unsuspected danger. To stand a chance against the eyeless priest, Eular, and the god-like city-mind, Seus, Yaz will need to learn fast and make new friends.
\nThe Convent of Sweet Mercy, like the Corridor itself, is packed with peril and opportunity. Yaz needs the nuns’ help - but first they want to execute her.
\nThe fate of everyone squeezed between the Corridor’s vast walls, and ultimately the fate of those labouring to survive out on ice itself, hangs from the moon, and the battle to save the moon centres on the Ark of the Missing, buried beneath the emperor’s palace. Everyone wants Yaz to be the key that will open the Ark - the one the wise have sought for generations. But sometimes wanting isn’t enough.
On the planet Abeth there is only the ice. And the Black Rock. For generations the priests of the Black Rock have reached out from their mountain to steer the fate of the ice tribes.
\nWith their Hidden God, their magic and their iron, the priests’ rule has never been questioned. But when ice triber Yaz challenged their authority, she was torn away from the only life she had ever known, and forced to find a new path for herself. Yaz has lost her friends and found her enemies. She has a mountain to climb, and even if she can break the Hidden God’s power, her dream of a green world lies impossibly far to the south, across a vast emptiness of ice.
\nBefore the journey can even start, she has to find out what happened to the ones she loves and save those that can be saved. Abeth holds its secrets close, but the stars shine brighter for Yaz and she means to unlock the truth.
In the ice, east of the Black Rock, there is a hole into which broken children are thrown.
On Abeth the vastness of the ice holds no room for individuals. Survival together is barely possible. No one survives alone.
To resist the cold, to endure the months of night when even the air itself begins to freeze, requires a special breed. Variation is dangerous, difference is fatal. And Yaz is not the same.
Yaz is torn from the only life she’s ever known, away from her family, from the boy she thought she would spend her days with, and has to carve out a new path for herself in a world whose existence she never suspected. A world full of difference and mystery and danger.
Yaz learns that Abeth is older and stranger than she had ever imagined. She learns that her weaknesses are another kind of strength. And she learns to challenge the cruel arithmetic of survival that has always governed her people.
Only when it’s darkest you can see the stars.
Winter is keeping Prince Jalan Kendeth far from the luxuries of his southern palace. And although the North may be home to his companion, the warrior Snorri ver Snagason, he is just as eager to leave.
\nFor the Viking is ready to challenge all of Hel to bring his wife and children back into the living world. He has Loki’s key - now all he needs is to find the door.
\nAs all wait for the ice to unlock its jaws, the Dead King plots to claim what was so nearly his - the key into the world - so that the dead can rise and rule.
All the horrors of Hell stand between Snorri Ver Snagason and the rescue of his family, if indeed the dead can be rescued. For Jalan Kendeth getting back out alive and with Loki’s Key is all that matters. Loki’s creation can open any lock, any door, and it may also be the key to Jal’s fortune back in the living world.
\n\t\t\t\t\tJal plans to return to the three Ws that have been the core of his idle and debauched life: wine, women, and wagering. Fate however has other, larger, plans . . . The Wheel of Osheim is turning ever faster and it will crack the world unless it’s stopped. When the end of all things looms, and there’s nowhere to run, even the worst coward must find new answers.
\n\t\t\t\t\tJal and Snorri face many dangers - from the corpse-hordes of the Dead King to the many mirrors of the Lady Blue; but in the end, fast or slow, the Wheel of Osheim will exert its power.
\n\t\t\t\t\tIn the end it’s win or die.
I met my husband on the same day I committed my very last murder. There's a joke in there somewhere, about ending two men's lives.'
\nOlivia Hodges used to do horrible things - back when she worked for a Spanish crime syndicate - but she fled that life and moved home to Australia, building a family in the hippie, hipster community of the Dandenong Ranges.
\nWhen a small-time criminal gang brings tragedy to her family, superstitious Olivia believes it's the universe demanding payment for her crimes. She wants revenge, but has to get it without adding to her karmic debt. So she creates situations where these bad men get themselves killed through their anger, ego and greed - all while trying to mislead the cops long enough to finish what she started.
\n
Across the six-planet expanse of the Gaia system, the Earthlike Gretia struggles to stabilise in the wake of an interplanetary war. Amid an uneasy alliance to maintain economies, resources, and populations, Aden Robertson reemerges. After devoting twelve years of his life to the reviled losing side, with the blood of half a million casualties on his hands, Aden is looking for a way to move on. He’s not the only one.
\nA naval officer has borne witness to inconceivable attacks on a salvaged fleet. A sergeant with the occupation forces is treading increasingly hostile ground. And a young woman, thrust into responsibility as vice president of her family’s raw materials empire, faces a threat she never anticipated.
\nNow, on the cusp of an explosive and wide-reaching insurrection, Aden plunges once again into the brutal life he longed to forget. He’s been on the wrong side of war before. But this time, the new enemy has yet to reveal themselves . . . or their dangerous endgame.
\n
The alien forces known as the Lankies are gathering on the solar system’s edge, consolidating their conquest of Mars and setting their sights on Earth. The far-off colony of New Svalbard, cut off from the rest of the galaxy by the Lanky blockade, teeters on the verge of starvation and collapse.
\nThe forces of the two Earth alliances have won minor skirmishes but are in danger of losing the war. For battle-weary staff sergeant Andrew Grayson and the ragged forces of the North American Commonwealth, the fight for survival is entering a catastrophic new phase.
\nForging an uneasy alliance with their Sino-Russian enemies, the NAC launches a hybrid task force on a long a stealth mission to breach the Lanky blockade and reestablish supply lines with Earth.
\nPlunging into combat against a merciless alien species that outguns, outmaneuvers, and outfights them at every turn, Andrew and his fellow troopers could end up cornered on their home turf, with no way out and no hope for reinforcement. And this time, the struggle for humanity’s future can only end in either victory or annihilation.
\n
There is a personal price to pay for having aligned with the wrong side in a reckless war. For Aden Jansen it’s the need to adopt a new identity while keeping his past hidden. Now he’s integrated himself aboard the Zephyr, a merchant ship smuggling critical goods through dangerous space. But danger is imminent on planet Gretia, as well. Under occupation, torn between postwar reformers and loyalists, it’s a polestar for civil unrest.
\nMeanwhile an occupation forces officer is pulled right back into the fray when the battle alarm is raised, an ambitious heiress is entangled in a subversive political conspiracy, and an Allied captain is about to meet the enemy head-on.
\nAs Aden discovers, the insurgents on Gretia - and in space - are connected, organised, and ready to break into full-scale rebellion. History is threatening to repeat itself. It’s time that Aden rediscovers who he is, whom he can trust, and what he must fight for now.
\n
Stranded light-years from home, Major Andrew Grayson and his crew are on a desperate mission to discover the Lankies’ secrets. They can’t let what they’ve found die with them.
\nNine hundred light-years from home, Major Andrew Grayson and the crew of NACS Washington are marooned in a sunless system with limited water, reactor fuel, and food. The last hope for survival is to go where nothing human has gone before.
\nAfter embarking on a scouting mission to the only moon with surface signs of life, Andrew and his special tactics team make two startling discoveries. One is a dream: a form of protein and plant life that could save the starving humans in the rogue system.
\nThe second is a nightmare: this harvested rock is infested with Lankies. Far from the seemingly mindless aggressors Andrew has battled for years, these show a terrifying awareness, and they have surprising secrets of their own hidden away in the darkness.
\nWhen the Lankies sense an uninvited presence in their world, Andrew’s operation becomes an expedition to hell. The odds against his small crew are stacked high. Of all the mysteries of space, how to escape with their lives is the greatest unknown of all.
\n
The assault on Earth was thwarted by the destruction of the aliens’ seed ship, but with Mars still under Lanky control, survivors work frantically to rebuild fighting capacity and shore up planetary defenses. Platoon sergeant Andrew Grayson must crash-course train new volunteers - all while dulling his searing memories of battle with alcohol and meds.
\nKnowing Earth’s uneasy respite won’t last, the North American Commonwealth and its Sino-Russian allies hurtle toward two dangerous options: hit the Lanky forces on Mars or go after deserters who stole a fleet of invaluable warships critical to winning the war.
\nAssigned to a small special ops recon mission to scout out the renegades’ stronghold on a distant moon, Grayson and his wife, dropship pilot Halley, again find themselves headed for the crucible of combat - and a shattering new campaign in the war for humanity’s future.
\n
The war should have been over. But it’s not for a group of nationalists grabbing for control.
\nIt’s been two weeks since a missile with a nuclear warhead tore through the planetary defenses in the most blistering large-scale attack ever committed in the history of the Gaia system. Commander Dunstan Park of the Rhodian navy has been handpicked to command an experimental cruiser that could dictate the course of the escalating conflict. All he has to do is keep the ship from falling into the wrong hands.
\nOn Gretia, the powder keg is beyond control. A terrorist attack against civilians draws Idina Chaudhary into a costly battle. It also forces a cautious Aden Jansen back into the fray. Now dedicated to a just cause, he’s still keeping his past hidden. The risk of exposing his former alliance could twist not only his fate but also that of his sister, Solveig, heir to the family empire.
\nWith no time to waste, Dunstan hits the ground running. But as insurgents threaten the unstable peace, what’s ahead for both sides could change the destiny of the Gaia system forever.
\n
Alex Archer is a soldier now, the only civilian survivor from Scorpio to join the NAC Defense Corps. With their training complete, Alex and her friend Private Isa Cressey find themselves on emergency combat deployment with their new unit. The destination is the Alpha Corvi system, where an allied warship has vanished. Alex can guess why.
\nHer fears prove true - Alpha Corvi is under new ownership. Alex must face the monsters from her childhood again as her regiment mounts a rescue operation to find and save the planet’s colonists. But this time, there is something terrifyingly different about their enemy. The Corps has evolved to meet the threat, but the Lankies have adapted as well - and they are more lethal than ever.
\nWhat began as a rescue turns into a desperate fight for survival for Alex and her new friends, stranded on a hostile world forty-nine light-years from Earth. And the only way home goes right through the Lankies.
\n
POW Aden Jansen has lost a decade of his life to both the war and internment when he’s recruited by the Alliance. He’s to return to Gretia as an undercover Blackguard operative and destroy Odin’s Wolves - an insurgency that’s setting his home world afire. The mission comes with a full pardon and a chance to reclaim his identity. It also means rejoining his friends and family in space. That’s motive enough. If he can succeed - and survive.
\nDunstan Park is on piracy patrol to track down the spaceborne arm of the uprising. Meanwhile, the rebels’ insidious terrorist cells are targets for battle-hardened insurgent hunter Idina Chaudhary and her Palladian commandos. As for Aden’s sister, Solveig, she’s put herself in the line of fire before, but discovering who’s bankrolling Odin’s Wolves is as dangerous as it is personal.
\nAs Aden works his way back into the confidence of his comrades, the stealth campaign to sow discontent descends into chaos. At Aden’s legacy, and the very stability of a galaxy struggling for peace against all odds.
\n
The time has come to take the fight to the Lankies.
\nMars has been under Lanky control for more than a year. Since then, the depleted forces of Earth’s alliances have rebuilt their fleets, staffing old warships with freshly trained troops. Torn between the need to beat the Lankies to the punch and taking enough time to put together an effective fighting force, command has decided to strike now.
\nOnce again, seasoned veterans Andrew and Halley find themselves in charge of green troops and at the sharp tip of the spear as the combined military might of Earth goes up against the Lankies. But if there’s one constant in war, it’s that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy . . . and the Lankies want to hold on to Mars as badly as humanity wants to reclaim it.
\n
Humanity is on the ropes, and after years of fighting a two-front war with losing odds, so is North American Defense Corps officer Andrew Grayson. He dreams of dropping out of the service one day, alongside his pilot girlfriend, but as warfare consumes entire planets and conditions on Earth deteriorate, he wonders if there will be anywhere left for them to go.
\nAfter surviving a disastrous space-borne assault, Grayson is reassigned to a ship bound for a distant colony - and packed with malcontents and troublemakers. His most dangerous battle has just begun.
\n
The battle against the Lankies has been won. Earth seems safe. Peacetime military? Not on your life.
\nIt’s been four years since Earth threw its full military prowess against the Lanky incursion. Humanity has been yanked back from the abyss of extinction. The solar system is at peace. For now.
\nThe future for Major Andrew Grayson of the Commonwealth Defense Corps and his wife, Halley? Flying desk duty on the front. No more nightmares of monstrous things. No more traumas to the mind and body. But when an offer comes down from above, Andrew has to make a choice: continue pushing papers into retirement, or jump right back into the fight? What’s a podhead to do?
\nThe remaining Lankies may have retreated in fear, but the threat isn’t over. They need to be wiped out for good before they strike again. That’ll take a new offensive deployment. Aboard an Avenger warship, Andrew and the special tactics team under his command embark on the ultimate search-and-destroy mission. This time, it’ll be on Lanky turf.
\nNo big heroics. No unnecessary risks. Just a swift hit-and-run raid in the hostile Capella system. Blow the alien seed ships into oblivion and get the hell back to Earth. At least, that’s the objective. But when does anything in war go according to plan?
\n
Earth's armed forces have stopped the Lanky advance and chased their ships out of the solar system, but for CDC officer Andrew Grayson, the war feels anything but won. On Mars, the grinding duty of flushing out the twenty-meter-tall alien invaders from their burrows underground is wearing down troops and equipment at an alarming rate. And for the remaining extrasolar colonies, the threat of a Lanky attack is ever present.
\nEarth's game changer? New advanced ships and weapons, designed to hunt and kill Lankies and place humanity's militaries on equal footing with their formidable foes. Andrew and his wife, Halley, both now burdened with command responsibilities and in charge of more lives than just their own, are once again in humanity's vanguard as they prepare for this new phase in the war.
\nBut the Lankies have their own agenda . . . and in war, the enemy doesn't usually wait until you are prepared. As Andrew is once again plunged into the chaos and violence of war with an unyielding species, he is forced to confront the toll this endless conflict is taking on them all, and the high price of survival . . . at any cost.
\n
It’s been eight years since an alien invasion drove a small surviving group of settlers to seek refuge in an underground shelter. Cut off from the rest of humanity, the ragtag band has maintained a narrowly functioning colony due to communal effort and salvage runs. Alex Archer has her own duties as a dog handler. While this off-world colony may be harsh, Ash, Alex’s black shepherd raised to sense threats, makes living in it a little nicer.
\nBut the tenuous hide-and-seek with the monstrous species known as the Lankies is about to come to an end for Alex and her close-knit crew of soldiers, techs, and friends. When a salvage operation goes catastrophically wrong, the Lankies home in on the humans.
\nWith hopes of a rescue long faded, all Alex has left is will - and the fear that there’s so much more to lose.
\n
The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements: You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world . . . or you can join the service.
\nWith the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth. But as he starts a career of supposed privilege, he soon learns that the good food and decent health care come at a steep price . . . and that the settled galaxy holds far greater dangers than military bureaucrats or the gangs that rule the slums.
\n
It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.
\nBy her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.
\nBut these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.
The breathtaking story of five brothers who bring each other up in a world run by their own rules. As the Dunbar boys love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world, they discover the moving secret behind their father’s disappearance.
At the center of the Dunbar family is Clay, a boy who will build a bridge - for his family, for his past, for greatness, for his sins, for a miracle.
The question is, how far is Clay willing to go? And how much can he overcome?
The Fifth Year follows a five-year-old girl, Marili, through each season of a single year on her grandparents’ farm in the mountains of Austria. Her grand-mother is a quiet, melancholic woman; her grandfather, with his calm, cheerful disposition, radiates warmth. Marili’s parents have presumably died in the war, and she is left to discover - with curiosity, wonder, and fear - the beauty and darkness of a quiet pastoral life.
\nSinister elements lurk beneath the surface of The Fifth Year, in Marili’s dreams and fantasies, and this deceptively simple tale of childhood, told in effervescent and evocative prose, bubbles to life in Marlen Haushofer’s inimitably alarming style.
\n
A woman's weekend away in the Austrian mountains takes an inexplicable and sinister turn, becoming a fight for survival.
\nDuring her holiday in the Austrian mountains, a woman spends a few days with her cousin and his wife at their hunting lodge. When the couple fails to return from a walk, she sets off to look for them. Her journey, however, reaches a mysterious dead end when she discovers a transparent wall, behind which there seems to be no life. Trapped alone behind this wall, she begins the arduous work of survival.
\nThis is at once a simple account of potatoes and beans, hoping for a calf, counting matches, forgetting the taste of sugar, and the use of one's name. Simultaneously, it offers a disturbing dissection of the place of human beings in the natural world.
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By the time Suzanne Valadon was 15 years old, she’s been a horse walker, a milliner’s assistant, a funeral wreath maker, and a circus acrobat (among other adventures). Then she became a sought-after model, painted by the greatest of the great. Her close friends included Degas, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Paris celebrated her - until she decided to take up the brush herself at a time when art schools refused to accept female students.
\nRead the story of Suzanne, a bastard from the tenements who fought to be seen for herself, and Ellie, a modern woman a century later, at a crossroads of her life, who pulls Suzanne into the light from the shadows of the past.
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She survived the Titanic—and that was the least interesting thing about her. Based on the extraordinary true story of Helen Churchill Candee.
\nDespite her initial misgivings, forensic artist Madison McClain joins an ambitious effort to exhume and identify the final forty-four unnamed victims of the Titanic disaster.
\nThe project is backed by a splashy new docuseries - and under the all-seeing lens of the camera, long-buried truths begin to surface.
\nAs Madison painstakingly reconstructs faces lost to time, she uncovers the remarkable story of a woman history unjustly forgot - a trailblazer whose courage and resilience echo across the decades. Drawn into her life, Madison finds herself inspired in ways she never expected.
\n
When Hollywood auctioneer Emsley Wilson finds her famous grandmother's diary while cleaning out her New York brownstone, the pages are full of surprises. The first surprise is, the diary isn't her grandmother's. It belongs to Johanna Bonger, Vincent van Gogh's sister-in-law.
\nJohanna inherited Vincent van Gogh's paintings. They were all she had, and they weren't worth anything. She was a 28 year old widow with a baby in the 1800s, without any means of supporting herself, living in Paris where she barely spoke the language. Yet she managed to introduce Vincent's legacy to the world.
\nThe inspiration couldn't come at a better time for Emsley. With her business failing, an unexpected love turning up in her life, and family secrets unraveling, can she find answers in the past?
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When World War II halts ocean travel in 1940, two American sisters find themselves stranded in Ireland - but in different realities. In 18-year-old Gaby' s world, Ireland remains neutral, just as history records. But in 17-year-old Sabine' s world, Germany has invaded Ireland, and she must survive on the run. Both sisters find refuge at the same remote Irish manor owned by distant relatives.
\nThere, for one hour each dusk - \" the time of pookies and ghosts\" in Celtic lore - their two worlds overlap, and they can be together again. But when Sabine falls in love with a German officer who is charming in her world but sinister in Gaby's, even that brief time is in danger.
\nWe Meet Apart evokes the dreamlike style of Haruki Murakami, revealing how thin the veil between worlds can be. If you lose the people you love in one world, how hard would you fight to keep them in another?
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2016: Thirty-four-year-old Mari Starwood is still grieving after her mother’s death as she travels to the storied island of Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. She’s come all the way from California with nothing but a name on a piece of paper: Elizabeth Devereaux, the famous but reclusive Vineyard painter.
\nWhen Mari makes it to Mrs. Devereaux’s stunning waterfront farm under the guise of taking a painting class with her, Mrs. Devereaux begins to tell her the story of the Smith sisters, who once lived there. As the tale unfolds, Mari is shocked to learn that her relationship to this island runs deeper than she ever thought possible.
\n1942: The Smith girls - nineteen-year-old aspiring writer Cadence and sixteen-year-old war-obsessed Briar - are faced with the impossible task of holding their failing family farm together during World War II as the U.S. Army arrives on Martha’s Vineyard. When Briar spots German U-boats lurking off the island’s shores, and Cadence falls into an unlikely romance with a sworn enemy, their quiet lives are officially upended.
\nIn an attempt at normalcy, Cadence and her best friend, Bess, start a book club, which grows both in members and influence as they connect with a fabulous New York publisher who could make all of Cadence’s dreams come true. But all that is put at risk by a mysterious man who washes ashore - and whispers of a spy in their midst.
\nWho in their tight-knit island community can they trust? Could this little book club change the course of the war . . . before it’s too late?
In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.
But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.
On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid - a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.
But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.
It has a dark past - one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself \"Murderbot\". But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.
\nTeaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don't want to know what the \"A\" stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.
\nWhat it discovers will forever change the way it thinks . . .
\nYou know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you're a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you're Murderbot.
Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century.
“I’m usually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are.”
When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.
Drastic action it is, then.
Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good.
\nAfter volunteering to run a rescue mission, Murderbot realises that it will have to spend significant time with a bunch of humans it doesn't know.
\nIncluding human children. Ugh.
\nThis may well call for . . . eye contact!
\n(Emotion check: Oh, for f-)
\n\n
Dahin believes he has clues to the location of the Hierarchs' Well, and the Witch King Kai, along with his companions Ziede and Tahren, knowing there's something he isn't telling them, travel with him to the rebuilt university of Ancartre, which may be dangerously close to finding the Well itself.
\nCan Kai stop the rise of a new Hierarch?
\nAnd can he trust his companions to do what’s right?
In The Falling World, Jade, ruler of the Indigo Cloud Court, has travelled with Chime and Balm to another Raksuran court. When she fails to return, her consort Moon, along with Stone and a party of warriors and hunters, must track them down. Finding them turns out to be the easy part; freeing them from an ancient trap hidden in the depths of the Reaches is much more difficult.
\nThe Tale of Indigo and Cloud explores the history of the Indigo Cloud Court, long before Moon came to Court. In the distant past, Indigo stole Cloud from Emerald Twilight. But in doing so, the reigning Queen Cerise and Indigo are now poised for a conflict that could ruin everything.
\nStories of Moon and the shape changers of Raksura have delighted readers for years. This world is a dangerous place full of strange mysteries, where the future can never be taken for granted, and must always be fought for with wits and ingenuity, and often tooth and claw. With two brand-new novellas, Martha Wells shows that the world of Raksura has many more stories to tell . . .
Martha Wells continues to enthusiastically ignore genre conventions in her exploration of the fascinating world of the Raksura. Her novellas and short stories contain all the elements fans have come to love from the Raksura books: courtly intrigue and politics, unfolding mysteries that reveal an increasingly strange wider world, and threats both mundane and magical.
\n“The Dead City” is a tale of Moon before he came to the Indigo Court. As Moon is fleeing the ruins of Saraseil, a groundling city destroyed by the Fell, he flies right into another potential disaster when a friendly caravanserai finds itself under attack by a strange force. In “The Dark Earth Below,” Moon and Jade face their biggest adventure yet; their first clutch. But even as Moon tries to prepare for impending fatherhood, members of the Kek village in the colony tree’s roots go missing, and searching for them only leads to more mysteries as the court is stalked by an unknown enemy.
\nStories of Moon and the shape changers of Raksura have delighted readers for years. This world is a dangerous place full of strange mysteries, where the future can never be taken for granted and must always be fought for with wits and ingenuity, and often tooth and claw. With these two new novellas, Martha Wells shows that the world of the Raksura has many more stories to tell . . .
Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonised planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.
\nBut there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!
Moon has spent his life hiding what he is - a shape-shifter able to transform himself into a winged creature of flight. An orphan with only vague memories of his own kind, Moon tries to fit in among the tribes of his river valley, with mixed success. Just as Moon is once again cast out by his adopted tribe, he discovers a shape-shifter like himself . . . someone who seems to know exactly what he is, who promises that Moon will be welcomed into his community.
\nWhat this stranger doesn't tell Moon is that his presence will tip the balance of power . . . that his extraordinary lineage is crucial to the colony's survival . . . and that his people face extinction at the hands of the dreaded Fell! Now Moon must overcome a lifetime of conditioning in order to save and himself . . . and his newfound kin.
An expedition of groundlings from the Empire of Kish have traveled through the Three Worlds to the Indigo Cloud court of the Raksura, shape-shifting creatures of flight that live in large family groups. The groundlings have found a sealed ancient city at the edge of the shallow seas, near the deeps of the impassable Ocean.
\nThey believe it to be the last home of their ancestors and ask for help getting inside. But the Raksura fear it was built by their own distant ancestors, the Forerunners, and the last sealed Forerunner city they encountered was a prison for an unstoppable evil.
\nPrior to the groundlings’ arrival, the Indigo Cloud court had been plagued by visions of a disaster that could destroy all the courts in the Reaches. Now, the court’s mentors believe the ancient city is connected to the foretold danger.
\nA small group of warriors, including consort Moon, an orphan new to the colony and the Raksura’s idea of family, and sister queen Jade, agree to go with the groundling expedition to investigate. But the predatory Fell have found the city too, and in the race to keep the danger contained, the Raksura may be the ones who inadvertently release it.
Together in one volume for the first time.
\nEmilie and the Hollow World:
Running away from home, and stowing away on the wrong ship, Emilie embarks on a fantastic adventure.
Emilie learns that the crew hopes to use an experimental engine to journey to the interior of the planet, but when the ship becomes damaged on arrival, and evidence points to sabotage they encounter the treacherous Lord Ivers, along with a strange new race.
\nCan Emilie and her new-found friends possibly reach the surface world again?
\n\n
Emilie and the Sky World:
When Emilie arrives in Silk Harbor, Professor Abindon, an old colleague of her friend Lady Marlende, warns them of something strange and potentially deadly in the sky, a disruption in an upper air aether current. On further investigation they realize it’s a ship from another aetheric plane.
How to determine if it’s a friendly explorer, or something far more sinister . . . Nothing less than a journey into the dangerous air currents will do.
\nJoin Emilie and she navigates the strange landscapes of the upper air, and the deadly menace that inhabits the Sky World.
\n
A former friend has betrayed the Raksura and their groundling companions, and now the survivors must race across the Three Worlds to rescue their kidnapped family members. When Moon and Stone are sent ahead to scout, they quickly encounter an unexpected and potentially deadly ally, and decide to disobey the queens and continue the search alone.
\nFollowing in a wind-ship, Jade and Malachite make an unlikely alliance of their own, until word reaches them that the Fell are massing for an attack on the Reaches, and that forces of the powerful Empire of Kish are turning against the Raksura and their groundling comrades.
But there may be no time to stage a rescue, as the kidnapped Raksura discover that their captors are heading toward a mysterious destination with a stolen magical artifact that will cause more devastation for the Reaches than anything the lethal Fell can imagine. To stop them, the Raksura will have to take the ultimate risk and follow them into forbidden...
Moon, once a solitary wanderer, has become consort to Jade, sister queen of the Indigo Cloud court. Together, they travel with their people on a pair of flying ships in hopes of finding a new home for their colony. Moon finally feels like he's found a tribe where he belongs. But when the travelers reach the ancestral home of Indigo Cloud, shrouded within the trunk of a mountain-sized tree, they discover a blight infecting its core.
\nNearby they find the remains of the invaders who may be responsible, as well as evidence of a devastating theft. This discovery sends Moon and the hunters of Indigo Cloud on a quest for the heartstone of the tree - a quest that will lead them far away, across the Serpent Sea. In this followup to The Cloud Roads, Martha Wells returns with a world-spanning odyssey, a mystery that only provokes more questions - and the adventure of a lifetime.
All his life, Moon roamed the Three Worlds, a solitary wanderer forced to hide his true nature - until he was reunited with his own kind, the Raksura, and found a new life as consort to Jade, sister queen of the Indigo Cloud court. But now a rival court has laid claim to him, and Jade may or may not be willing to fight for him.
\nBeset by doubts, Moon must travel in the company of strangers to a distant realm where he will finally face the forgotten secrets of his past, even as an old enemy returns with a vengeance. The Fell, a vicious race of shape-shifting predators, menaces groundlings and Raksura alike. Determined to crossbreed with the Raksura for arcane purposes, they are driven by an ancient voice that cries out from . . . The siren depths.
\n
A traitor and a swordsman join forces to save the world from being rewritten into devastation.
\nEvery year the image of the Wheel of the Infinite must be painstakingly remade to ensure another year of peace and harmony for the Celestial Empire. Every hundred years the very fabric of the world must be rewoven. Linked by the mystic energies of the Infinite, the Wheel and world are one. But a black storm is spreading across the Wheel, reappearing each morning, bigger and darker than before, unraveling the beautiful and orderly patterns.
\nMaskelle, a murderer and traitor, has been summoned back to help put the world right with the assistance of the mysterious Rian, a swordsman of some renown. If they can’t find the source of the problems that plague the Wheel, the world may find its latest rotation is its last.
After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to go well.
\nBut why was Kai imprisoned in the first place? What has changed in the world since his assassination? And why does the Rising World Coalition appear to be growing in influence?
\nKai will need to pull his allies close and draw on all his pain magic if he is to answer even the least of these questions.
\nHe’s not going to like the answers.
Charisat is a city at the Fringe of the Waste, a rocky and treacherous area of desolation formed more than a thousand years ago when a mysterious holocaust drained the sea and destroyed the flourishing civilisation of the Ancients. It is a city which survives by trade, and its most valuable merchandise is relics, artifacts from the remains of the Ancient city that once occupied Charisat's present location. Relics are priceless, and in a city where living space is at a premium and water is a scarce and valuable commodity, they are dangerous to own.
\nKhat, a member of a humanoid race created by the Ancients to survive in the Waste, and Sagai, his human partner, are relic dealers working on the edge of society, trying to stay one step ahead of the Trade Inspectors and to support Sagai's family. When Khat is hired to find relics believed to be part of one of the Ancients' arcane engines, they are both reluctant to become involved.
\nBut the request comes from the Warders, powerful mages who serve Charisat's Elector. Khat soon discovers that the deadly politics of Charisat's upper tiers aren't the only danger. The relics the Warders want are the key to an Ancient magic of unknown power, and, as all the inhabitants of Charisat know, no one understands the Ancients' magic.
\n
Murderbot wasn’t programmed to care. So, its decision to help the only human who ever showed it respect must be a system glitch, right?
\nHaving traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah - its former owner (protector? friend?) - submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit.
\nBut who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue?
\nAnd what will become of it when it’s caught?
“No, I didn't kill the dead human. If I had, I wouldn't dump the body in the station mall.”
When Murderbot discovers a dead body on Preservation Station, it knows it is going to have to assist station security to determine who the body is (was), how they were killed (that should be relatively straightforward, at least), and why (because apparently that matters to a lot of people - who knew?)
Yes, the unthinkable is about to happen: Murderbot must voluntarily speak to humans!
Again!
Nesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. As a child with godly blood in her, if she cannot earn a divine chaperone, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But with ninety-six failed auditions and few options left, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.
\nIn folk tales, the Fox is a lovable prankster. But despite their humor and charm, T’sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin.
\nNow, Nesi must learn a trickster’s guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.
\nThis is a novella.
A triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and New York police as he performs the impossible--and tries to stay alive doing it.
", "series": "Arkady Renko", "seriesOrder": 1, "tags": [ "Mystery", "Thriller" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Martin Cruz Smith - Gorky Park.jpeg", "mtime": 1769408812667.1995, "size": 848096, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:23:05.305Z" }, "Martin Cruz Smith - Havana Bay": { "title": "Havana Bay", "author": "Martin Cruz Smith", "description": "When the corpse of a Russian is hauled from the oily waters of Havana Bay, Arkady Renko comes to Cuba to identify the body. Looking for the killer, he discovers a city of faded loneliness, unexpected danger, and bewildering contradictions. His investigation introduces him to a beautiful Cuban policewoman; to the rituals of Santeria; to an American fugitive and a group of ruthless mercenaries.
\nIn this place where all things Russian are despised, where Hemingway fished and the KGB flourished, where the hint of music is always in the air, Arkady finds a trail of deceit that reaches halfway around the world - and a reason to relish his own life again.
When Arkady Renko is charged with investigating the murder of Alexei Kazasky, the Deputy Minister of Defence, he knows he has to tread carefully. Alexei Kazasky is a high-profile politician and has a complicated relationship with Putin. This investigation clearly has Kremlin approval, but, as with everything in Russia, things are not always what they seem.
\n\n
Already preoccupied with his developing Parkinson’s, Arkady finds he has more to worry about. The war in Ukraine is gaining momentum, and his adopted son Zhenya has become involved with the Black Army, a Russo-Ukrainian group of hacktivists. Moreover, as Arkady digs deeper into Kazasky’s murder, he realises that the man’s death may have been more politically motivated than he first assumed.
\n\n
Now it seems that the people behind the killing have him firmly in their crosshairs - but this time Arkady’s life is not the only one on the line.
It’s June 2021, and Arkady knows that Russia is preparing to invade and subsequently annex Ukraine as it did Crimea in 2014. He is, however, preoccupied with other grievances. His longtime lover, Tatiana Petrovna, has deserted him for her work as an investigative reporter. His corrupt boss has relegated him to a desk job. And he is having trouble with his dexterity and balance. A visit to his doctor reveals that these are symptoms for Parkinson’s Disease.
\nThis is an ingenious autobiographical conceit, as Martin Cruz Smith has Parkinson’s, and is able through Arkady to movingly describe his own experience with the disease. Parkinson’s hasn’t stopped Smith from his work, and neither does it stop Arkady. Rather than dwell on his diagnosis, he throws himself into another case.
\nAn acquaintance has asked him to find his daughter, Karina, an anti-Putin activist who has disappeared. In the course of the investigation, Arkady falls for Karina's roommate, Elena, a Tatar from Ukraine. The search leads them to Kyiv, where rumblings of an armed conflict grow louder. Later, in Crimea, Tatiana reemerges to complicate Arkady’s new romance. And as he gets closer to locating Karina, Arkady discovers something that threatens his life as well as the lives of both Elena and Tatiana.
Arkady Renko has made too many enemies and now he toils in obscurity on a Russian factory ship in the middle of the Bering Sea. But when a female crew member is picked up dead with the day's catch, Arkady becomes obsessed with the case and once again discovers more than he wants to know and certainly more than he bargained for....
", "series": "Arkady Renko", "seriesOrder": 2, "tags": [ "Mystery", "Thriller" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Martin Cruz Smith - Polar Star.jpeg", "mtime": 1769408816285.9475, "size": 903908, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:23:05.562Z" }, "Martin Cruz Smith - Red Square": { "title": "Red Square", "author": "Martin Cruz Smith", "description": "In the Prosecutor's Office, Renko is looking into the murder of Rosen, a black marketeer. But all the witnesses to the car bomb that caused his death have disappeared, and Renko is taken off the case. But continuing the investigation, he is led to Irina, a woman he thought he'd lost forever.
Journalist Tatiana Petrovna is on the move. Arkady Renko, iconic Moscow investigator and Tatiana’s part-time lover, hasn’t seen her since she left on assignment over a month ago. When she doesn’t arrive on her scheduled train, he’s positive something is wrong. No one else thinks Renko should be worried - Tatiana is known to disappear during deep assignments - but he knows her enemies all too well and the criminal lengths they’ll go to keep her quiet.
Renko embarks on a dangerous journey to find Tatiana and bring her back. From the banks of Lake Baikal to rundown Chita, Renko slowly learns that Tatiana has been profiling the rise of political dissident Mikhail Kuznetsov, a golden boy of modern oil wealth and the first to pose a true threat to Putin’s rule in over a decade. Though Kuznetsov seems like the perfect candidate to take on the corruption in Russian politics, his reputation becomes clouded when Boris Benz, his business partner and best friend, turns up dead.
In a land of shamans and brutally cold nights, oligarchs wealthy on northern oil, and sea monsters that are said to prowl the deepest lake in the world, Renko needs all his wits about him to get Tatiana out alive.
Investigator Arkady Renko, the pariah of the Moscow prosecutor's office, has been assigned the thankless job of investigating a new phenomenon: late-night subway riders report seeing the ghost of Joseph Stalin on the platform of the Chistye Prudy Metro station.
\nThe illusion seems part political hocus-pocus and also part wishful thinking, for among many Russians Stalin is again popular; the bloody dictator can boast a two-to-one approval rating. Decidedly better than that of Renko, whose lover, Eva, has left him for Detective Nikolai Isakov, a charismatic veteran of the civil war in Chechnya, a hero of the far right and, Renko suspects, a killer for hire.
\nThe cases entwine, and Renko's quests become a personal inquiry fueled by jealousy. The investigation leads to the fields of Tver outside of Moscow, where once a million soldiers fought. There, amidst the detritus, Renko must confront the ghost of his own father, a favorite general of Stalin's.
\nIn these barren fields, patriots and shady entrepreneurs - the Red Diggers and Black Diggers - collect the bones, weapons and personal effects of slain World War II soldiers, and find that even among the dead there are surprises.
In Three Stations, Renko's skills are put to their most severe test. Though he has been technically suspended from the prosecutor's office for once again turning up unpleasant truths, he strives to solve a last case: the death of an elegant young woman whose body is found in a construction trailer on the perimeter of Moscow's main rail hub.
\nIt looks like a simple drug overdose to everyone - except to Renko, whose examination of the crime scene turns up some inexplicable clues, most notably an invitation to Russia's premier charity ball, the billionaires' Nijinksy Fair. Thus a sordid death becomes interwoven with the lifestyles of Moscow's rich and famous, many of whom are clinging to their cash in the face of Putin's crackdown on the very oligarchs who placed him in power.
\nRenko uncovers a web of death, money, madness and a kidnapping that threatens the woman he is coming to love and the lives of children he is desperate to protect. In Three Stations, Smith produces a complex and hauting vision of an emergent Russia's secret underclass of street urchins, greedy thugs and a bureaucracy still paralysed by power and fear.
In Wolves Eat Dogs, Renko returns for his most enigmatic and baffling case: the death of one of Russia's new billionaires, which leads him to Chernobyl and the Zone of Exclusion - closed to the world since 1986's nuclear disaster.
\nIt is still aglow with radioactivity, now inhabited only by the militia, shady scavengers, a few reckless scientists, and some elderly peasants who refuse to relocate. Renko's journey to this ghostly netherworld, the crimes he uncovers there, and the secrets they reveal about the New Russia make for an unforgettable adventure.
The gripping true story, that reads like fiction, of how legendary FBI Special Agent Martin Suarez went deep undercover - and lived a double-life for years - to infiltrate Colombia's most insidious drug cartels.
\nMartin Suarez, a legend within the FBI who specialised in Colombian drug cartels, holds the record for the longest time spent continuously undercover. As his alter ego Manny, Martin followed the unspoken rules of the cartels: He knew the right lingo to use, the right whiskey to drink, the right watch to wear, the wrong questions to ask. He smuggled over $1 billion worth of cocaine into the United States for the Medellín Cartel and, as his cover deepened, he graduated to become a high-level money launderer for the North Coast Cartel. He helped wash tens of millions of dollars worth of drug money, ensnaring himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse while simultaneously exposing the Black Market Peso Exchange, the most insidious money laundering apparatus in the world that involved billionaire bankers, blue-chip American corporations, and even the President of Colombia himself.
\nMartin was raised by a father who served in the military and valorized the nobility of the FBI, and Martin stopped at nothing to allow his father to live vicariously through his son. He wanted nothing more than to make his father proud - and to be a good husband to his wife, and a loving father to his two young sons. He became a man caught between two worlds - that of an undercover agent who wanted to rid the world of its evils, but also that of a family man who was trying not to lose himself in this dark, brutal underworld that captivated the globe during the War on Drugs.
\nAnd yet his worlds begin to collide as danger creeps dangerously close to his doorstep when his cover is blown and a cartel-hired sicario comes hunting for him.
\nInside the Cartel is told with the pulse-racing action of a Hollywood blockbuster. This is the story of Suarez and his time undercover and how maintaining the trust of hardened criminals can start to tear away at even the most principled soldier.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. And your family should be closest of all.
Patrick Brodie knows exactly how far he's prepared to go to get what he wants. And he wants it all. Now. Before long, Patrick has become a legend in his own lifetime. Violently.
Lily Diamond is different from the kind of woman Patrick is normally attracted to. But together they are determined that their children will have everything they didn't. Until the unthinkable happens and Lily is left on her own to look after their family in a dangerous world. The Brodies must stay close to survive. But as everyone knows, your sins will always find you out.
No one thinks a seventeen-year-old girl can take on the hard men of London’s gangland, but it’s a mistake to underestimate Maura Ryan: she’s tough, clever and beautiful - which makes her one very dangerous lady.
\nTogether, she and her brother Michael are unbeatable but notoriety has its price. The police are determined to put away Maura once and for all - and not everyone in the family think that's such a bad idea.
\nWhen it comes to the crunch, Maura has to face the pain of lost love in her past - and the dangerous lady discovers her heart is not make entirely of stone.
\n
Eleven years ago Marie Carter was convicted of killing her two best friends. And she's paid the price. Now she is being released from prison. It's time to go home.
\nBut life has moved on, and Marie has nowhere to go. Her parents have disowned her, her friends have abandoned her, even her kids don't want to know. But some people out there are watching her, following her every move - they know that Marie Carter wants retribution.
\n
Gabby looked at the woman she had hated nearly all her life. Then she sat down on the ladder-backed chair, put her face into her bloodied hands and cried. To the outside world, Cynthia Tailor is a woman to envy; she has a devoted husband, a lovely home and two gorgeous children. But Cynthia is deeply unhappy with her lot; she has always craved the best things in life, and is determined to see that she gets them.
\nCynthia will let nothing stand in her way, even if it means devastation and tragedy for those nearest to her. And the casualties are many: her husband Jimmy, weak and unable to fight the wife he can never please; her sister Celeste, from whom Cynthia steals her most precious possession; and her parents, Mary and Jack, who pick up the pieces. But the victims who suffer the most are Cynthia's children.
\nFor James Junior and Gabby, the pain she causes will stay with them for ever . . .
\n
Phillip Murphy is a family man. He worships his old mum; he takes care of his siblings who help run his business empire in Southend; he dotes on his two young sons who will one day take over the reins. And then there's his wife and saviour Christine, whom he loves with a vengeance.
\nChristine has always understood this about her husband; it was one of the things that first attracted her to him. But there is another side to Phillip, and it's a side he never wanted his wife to see. Though, even if she did, could she do anything but stand by him? Because Phillip has rules, and he expects loyalty from his nearest and dearest.
\n
Steph Barker can't forget her past. A single mother, Steph runs a women's shelter for local prostitutes while coming to terms with a tragic loss. And it's people like Joseph Potter, battling with his own grief, who keep her going.
\nWhen Hennie, one of her friends from the shelter, goes missing, Steph's convinced Hennie's violent pimp Artie Rogers has something to do with it. Steph and Artie go way back, but his reign of terror throughout the Medway towns is out of control and even she can't do anything to stop him. Then another prostitute disappears and it's time to find out who's guilty. Written with Jacqui Rose.
\n
Donna Brunos worships her husband and is devastated when he is jailed for armed robbery. Georgio swears he's been set up and persuades Donna to help him escape. Implementing 'the jump' takes Donna into a twilight world she never believed existed - a world of brutal sex and casual violence.
\nFinally, she is confronted by a series of shattering revelations that threaten not only everything she believes in but also, ultimately, her own life . . .
\n
Dara Tailor has had to grow up fast. With a mother addicted to cocaine, Dara must look after her seven younger siblings, until social services split them up for ever. Grace Perry has led a sheltered life.
\nUntil her widowed mother is attacked and left for dead and Grace is taken into care. At Holly Brookes Children's Home, the two girls unite in the face of horrific abuse and form an unbreakable bond of loyalty. But when their loyalty is tested can they rely on each other to do the right thing?
\n
Maura Ryan has left her life of crime behind her after a big score, and fondly imagines that she can settle down with the man she loves. But the life she has left behind is full of enemies who have plans to make things very tough for her, unless she can make things tough for them first.
\nThe proceeds from her last gold-bullion robbery can't help her: she needs all her wit and sinew to survive.
\n
Diana Davis has been head of the family business since the death of her husband, an infamous bank robber. She’s a woman in a man’s world, but no one messes with her.
Her only son, Angus, is a natural born villain, but he needs to earn Diana’s trust before she’ll allow him into the business.
Once he’s proved he has the brains to run their clubs in Marbella, he is given what he’s always wanted. It’s the beginning of a reign of terror that knows no bounds.
But Angus has a blind spot: his wife, Lorna, and their three kids, Angus Junior, Sean and Eilish. And as the next generation enters the business, Angus has a painful truth to learn. Even when it comes to family, he must show no mercy . . .
Freddie Jackson thinks he owns the underworld when he gets out of prison. He's done his time, made the right connections, and now he's ready to use them. His wife Jackie just wants her husband home, but she's forgotten the rows, the violence, and the girls Freddie can't leave alone. Bitter, resentful, and increasingly unstable, Jackie watches her life crumble while her little sister Maggie's star rises.
\nIn love with Freddie's cousin Jimmy, Maggie is determined not to end up like her sister. Families should stick together, but behind closed doors, jealousy and betrayal can fester until everyone's life is infected. And for the Jacksons, loyalty cannot win out. Because in their world you can trust no one. In their world everyone is on the take.
\n
Fifteen-year-old Allie Lau is not excited to attend Heartwood Academy, a posh boarding school deep in a remote forest.
\nSubject to the whims of senior students, Allie faces an initiation ritual called the test, which requires her and other new students to spend the entire night in the forest. The senior students warn that a ghost lurks in the woods, preying on those who trespass.
\nAllie braves the test, but when she accidentally kicks over a gravestone in an overgrown burial site, she finds herself pursued by some kind of zombie.
\n
1908: The Lowcountry of South Carolina is at the cusp of change. Mayfield, the grand estate held for generations by the Rivers family, is the treasured home of young Eliza. Free spirited, she refuses to be confined by societal norms. Instead, Eliza revels in exploring the golden fields and sparkling ponds of Mayfield, observing wildlife, and riding horses.
\nBut her halcyon days are cut short by the Great War, coastal storms, and unexpected challenges to Mayfield. As Eliza battles personal pains and the ravages of family turmoil over the years, her love and devotion for the natural world puts her on a collision course with the patriarchal traditions of a bygone era.
\n1988: At 88, Eliza is the scion of the Rivers/DeLancey family. She’s fought a lifetime to save her beloved Mayfield and is too independent and committed to quietly retire and leave the fate of the estate to her greedy son. She must make decisions that will assure the future of the land and her family - or watch them both be split apart.
\nSet against the evocative landscape of the twentieth-century low country, Where the Rivers Merge is a dramatic and sweeping multigenerational family story of unyielding love, lessons learned, profound sacrifices, and the indomitable spirit of a woman determined to persevere in the face of change in order to protect her family legacy and the land she loves.
\n
Who is Jenna Fox?
\nSeventeen-year-old Jenna has been told that is her name. She has just awoken from a coma, they tell her, and she is still recovering from a terrible accident in which she was involved a year ago.
\nBut what happened before that? Jenna doesn't remember her life. Or does she? And are the memories really hers?
Lia has survived Venda - but so has a great evil bent on the destruction of Morrighan. And only Lia can stop it.
\nWith war on the horizon, Lia has no choice but to assume her role as First Daughter, as soldier - as leader. While she struggles to reach Morrighan and warn them, she finds herself at cross-purposes with Rafe and suspicious of Kaden, who has hunted her down.
\n
After losing both their parents, Bristol Keats and her sisters struggle to stay afloat in their small, quiet town of Bowskeep. When Bristol begins to receive letters from an 'aunt' she’s never heard of, who promises to help, she reluctantly agrees to meet her - and discovers that everything she thought she knew about her family is a lie. Her father might even still be alive, not killed but kidnapped by terrifying creatures and taken to another realm - the one he is from.
\nDesperate to save her father and find the truth, Bristol journeys to a land of gods, fae and monsters. Pulled into a dangerous world of magic and intrigue, she makes a deadly bargain with the fae king, Tyghan. But what she doesn't know is that he's the one who drove her parents to live a life on the run. And he is just as determined as she is to find her father - dead or alive . . .
\n
When the patriarch of the Ballenger empire dies, his son, Jase, becomes its new leader. Even nearby kingdoms bow to the strength of this outlaw family, who have always governed by their own rules.
\nBut a new era looms on the horizon, set in motion by a young queen, which makes her the target of the dynasty's resentment and anger. At the same time, Kazi, a legendary former street thief, is sent by the queen to investigate transgressions against the new settlements. When Kazi arrives in the forbidding land of the Ballengers, she learns that there is more to Jase than she thought.
\nAs unexpected events spiral out of their control, bringing them intimately together, they continue to play a cat and mouse game of false moves and motives in order to fulfill their own secret missions.
\n
Locke Jenkins has some catching up to do. After spending 260 years as a disembodied mind in a little black box, he has a perfect new body. But before he can move on with his unexpected new life, he’ll have to return the Favor he accepted from the shadowy resistance group known as the Network.
\nLocke must infiltrate the home of a government official by gaining the trust of his daughter, seventeen-year-old Raine, and he soon finds himself pulled deep into the world of the resistance - and into Raine’s life.
\n
Once there were three. Three friends who loved each other - Jenna, Locke, and Kara. And after a terrible accident destroyed their bodies, their three minds were kept alive, spinning in a digital netherworld. Even in that disembodied nightmare, they were still together. At least at first. When Jenna disappeared, Locke and Kara had to go on without her. Decades passed, and then centuries.
\nTwo-hundred-and-sixty years later, they have been released at last. Given new, perfect bodies, Locke and Kara awaken to a world they know nothing about, where everyone they once knew and loved is long dead.
\nEveryone except Jenna Fox.
\n
| \n Held captive in the barbarian kingdom of Venda, Lia and Rafe have little chance of escape . . . and even less of being together. |
In a society steeped in tradition, Princess Lia’s life follows a preordained course. As First Daughter, she is expected to have the revered gift of sight - but she doesn’t - and she knows her parents are perpetrating a sham when they arrange her marriage to secure an alliance with a neighboring kingdom - to a prince she has never met.
\nOn the morning of her wedding, Lia flees to a distant village. She settles into a new life, hopeful when two mysterious and handsome strangers arrive - and unaware that one is the jilted prince and the other an assassin sent to kill her. Deception abounds, and Lia finds herself on the brink of unlocking perilous secrets - even as she finds herself falling in love.
\n\n
After losing both their parents, Bristol Keats and her sisters struggle to stay afloat in their small, quiet town of Bowskeep. When Bristol begins to receive letters from an 'aunt' she's never heard of, who promises to help, she reluctantly agrees to meet her - and discovers that everything she thought she knew about her family is a lie. Her father might even still be alive, not killed but kidnapped by terrifying creatures and taken to another realm - the one he is from.
\nDesperate to save her father and find the truth, Bristol journeys to a land of gods, fae, and monsters. Pulled into a dangerous world of magic and intrigue, she makes a deadly bargain with the fae king, Tyghan. But what she doesn't know is that he's the one who drove her parents to live a life on the run. And he is just as determined as she is to find her father - dead or alive . . .
\n
Kazi and Jase have survived, stronger and more in love than ever. Their new life now lies before them - the Ballengers will be outlaws no longer, Tor's Watch will be a kingdom, and Kazi and Jase will meet all challenges side by side, together at last.
\nBut an ominous warning mars their journey back, and they soon find themselves captured in a tangled web of deceit woven by their greatest enemies and unlikeliest allies, a place where betrayals run deeper and more deadly than either had thought possible, and where timeless ambitions threaten to destroy them both.
\n
Lucy Preston just wants to go on vacation. The beach-swimsuit-sleeping-in kind. Not the impromptu stop in a creepy small town at the edge of the forest kind.
\nBut being the daughter of a famous private detective means that sometimes, your beach vacay goes off the rails a bit. Because what's the first thing Lucy’s mom does? Takes her to the abandoned amusement park for a clandestine meeting - except instead of a meeting, they find a body.
\nBecause of course they do.
\nAs Lucy’s mom is swept into top-secret private-detective stuff, Lucy sets out on her own to investigate her mom’s mysterious connection with this town. Lucy’s snooping sets her on a collision course with Audrey Nelson, the mysterious girl on the motorcycle who Lucy could swear she saw near the amusement park the night the body was found.
\nIf Lucy and Audrey can’t work together to uncover secrets that go back generations, there will likely be another body found at the base of the old vine-covered roller coaster outside of town. And this time it might just be Lucy’s.
\n
Ella is the oldest five-year-old in the universe. For fifty-eight years, the founder of a simulated colony-planet has forced her to pretend to be his daughter. Her “Daddy” has absolute power over all elements of reality, which keeps the colonists in line even when their needs are not met. But his failing experiments and despotic need for absolute control are increasingly dangerous.
\nElla’s very life depends on her performance as a child. She has watched Daddy delete her stepmother and the loved ones of anyone who helps her.
\nBut every sixty years, a Technician comes from the world above. Ella has been watching and working and biding her time. Because if she cannot make the technician help her, the only solution is a desperate measure that could lead to consequences for the entire universe.
\n
In the wake of a brutal crime, three people cross paths in this unflinching deconstruction of moral uncertainty, shifting perceptions, and sexual violence.
\nMark is the accused rapist. Miss P. is the victim, his former teacher. Moira M. is an apathetic juror. As the trial unfolds in this intense short story, three personal histories emerge, along with three alarmingly different points of view: Obsessed and angry. Menaced and disillusioned. Disaffected and searching through an unexamined life for moral conviction.
Stevie Moon cannot escape her mother. Abandoning college plans to work a dead-end job, her days are a purgatorial bore. Many dream of moving to L.A. and into the spotlight, but Stevie can’t wait to move away from it, and her mother’s orbit, to start over.
\nDelilah (not her real name) or “Moon” (as everyone calls her) is many an out-of-work actress, a former alcoholic, whatever a mistress becomes when she’s widowed, and a mother. Reeling in the aftermath of her lover and TV husband’s death, Moon struggles to process her grief. And the last thing she expects is for Stevie to leave her too.
\nUnable to afford their home, Moon and Stevie rent it out and live in their glass pool house. But when Adam, Moon’s former TV son and Stevie’s forever crush, arrives for the funeral, the three are pulled into a messy orbit, moving back into the ‘Big House’ and playacting a picture-perfect family even as tensions rise and relationships unravel.
\nPool House is a course charted through the wilderness of motherhood, a story about the challenges of navigating class, fame, burgeoning sexuality, and grief as two women grapple with what it means to grow up and grow older in Tinseltown.
\n
Five years ago Amanda Pierce was excitedly preparing to marry her college sweetheart. She and Jeffrey had already battled through sickness and health, although their lives were certainly more richer than poorer as Amanda was set to inherit her father's successful garment company.
\nThen Amanda disappeared the night of her bachelorette party.
\nIn present-day New York City, Laurie Moran realises a missing bride is the perfect cold case for her Under Suspicion television series to investigate. By recreating the night of the disappearance at the wedding's Florida resort with Amanda's friends and family, Laurie hopes to find the same success solving the cases featured in the series' first episodes. With Amanda's former fiancé now married to a bridesmaid, and a jealous sister, playboy groomsmen, and rumors about the “beloved” bride herself, Laurie and Under Suspicion host Alex Buckley quickly realise everyone has their own theory about why Amanda disappeared into thin air.
\nOne thing is certain, whoever was behind Amanda's vanishing plans to keep the truth hidden “til death do they part” . . .
\n
Television producer Laurie Moran is elated when the pilot for her reality drama Under Suspicionis a success. Even more, the program - a cold case series that revisits unsolved crimes by recreating them with those affected - is off to a fantastic start when it helps solve an infamous murder in the very first episode.
\nNow Laurie has the ideal case to feature in the next instalment of Under Suspicion: the Cinderella Murder. When Susan Dempsey, a beautiful and multi-talented UCLA student, was found dead, her murder left numerous questions. Why was her car parked miles from her body? Had she ever shown up for the acting audition she was due to attend at the home of an up-and-coming director? Why does Susan's boyfriend want to avoid questions about their relationship? Why was Susan so concerned about her roommate's infatuation with a new-age religious sect? Was she close to her computer science professor because of her technological brilliance, or something more? And why was Susan missing one of her shoes when her body was discovered?
\nWith the help of lawyer and Under Suspicionhost Alex Buckley, Laurie knows the case will make a great program, especially when the former suspects include Hollywood's elite and tech billionaires. The suspense and drama are perfect for the silver screen - but is Cinderella's murderer ready for a close-up?
\n
Laurie Moran’s professional life is a success - her television show Under Suspicion is a hit, both in the ratings and its record of solving cold cases. But her romantic break from former host Alex Buckley has left her with on-air talent she can’t stand - Ryan Nichols - and a sense of loneliness, despite her loving family.
\nNow Ryan has suggested a new case. Three years ago, Virginia Wakeling, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and one of the museum’s most generous donors, was found in the snow, after being thrown from the museum’s roof on the night of its most celebrated fundraiser, the Met Gala. The leading suspect then and now is her much younger boyfriend and personal trainer, Ivan Gray.
\nIvan runs a trendy, successful boutique gym called Punch - a business funded in no small part by the late Virginia - which happens to be the gym Ryan frequents. Laurie’s skepticism about the case is upended by a tip from her father’s NYPD connection, and soon Laurie realises there are a bevy of suspects - including Virginia’s trusted inner circle.
\n
When Laurie Moran's husband was brutally murdered, only three-year-old Timmy saw the face of his father's killer. Five years later his piercing blue eyes still haunt Timmy's dreams. Laurie is haunted by more: the killer's threat to her son as he fled the scene: Tell your mother she's next, then it's your turn . . .
\nNow Laurie is dealing with murder again, this time as the producer of a true-crime, cold-case television show. The series will launch with the twenty-year-old unsolved murder of Betsy Powell. Betsy, a socialite, was found suffocated in her bed after a gala celebrating the graduation of her daughter and three friends. The sensational murder was news nationwide. Reopening the case in its lavish setting and with the cooperation of the surviving guests that night, Laurie is sure to have a hit on her hands. But when the estranged friends begin filming, it becomes clear each is hiding secrets . . . small and large.
\nAnd a pair of blue eyes is watching events unfold, too . . .
\n
The two identical brothers seemed perfect in every way - handsome, intelligent, popular - until a shocking summer night when one brother killed his parents in cold blood while the other brother had an iron-clad alibi. But which twin was where during the murders? And is it possible the two of them planned the perfect crime together?
\nYears later, the twins are long estranged, each of them claiming to be convinced that the other is responsible for the death of their parents. Married now with children of their own, they may finally be ready to clear one name at the expense of the other and turn to Laurie Moran and her team to reinvestigate their parents’ murder.
\nBut as the Under Suspicion crew gets closer to the truth, the danger that was assumed to be left in the past finds its way into the present.
\n
After a party when her parents are away, eighteen-year-old Kerry Dowling is found fully dressed at the bottom of the family pool.
The immediate suspect is her boyfriend who had a bitter argument with her at the party. Then there is a twenty-year-old neighbor who was angry because she didn’t invite him to the party.
Or is there someone else who has not yet been seen on the radar?
Kerry’s older sister Aline, a twenty-eight-year-old guidance counselor, is determined to assist the Prosecutor's Office in learning the truth. She does not realize that now she is putting her own life in danger . . .
Television producer Laurie Moran and her fiancée, Alex Buckley, the former host of her investigative television show, are just days away from their mid-August wedding, when things take a dark turn. Alex’s seven-year-old nephew, Johnny, vanishes from the beach.
\nA search party begins and witnesses recall Johnny playing in the water and collecting shells behind the beach shack, but no one remembers seeing him after the morning. As the sun sets, Johnny’s skim board washes up to shore, and everyone realises that he could be anywhere, even under water.
\n
Casey Carter was convicted of murdering her fiancé fifteen years ago. But Casey claims - has always claimed - she’s innocent. And although she was charged and served out her sentence in prison, she is still living ‘under suspicion’. She hears whispers at the grocery store. She can’t get a job. Even her own mother treats her like she’s guilty.
\nHer story attracts the attention of Laurie Moran and the Under Suspicion news team - it’s Casey’s last chance to finally clear her name, and Laurie pledges to exonerate her.
\nNow Laurie must face an egomaniacal new co-host, a relentless gossip columnist who seems to have all the dirt and Casey’s longstanding bad reputation to once and for all prove Casey’s innocence - that is, if she’s innocent . . .
\n
When we last saw Laurie Moran, she had recently become engaged to her show’s former host, Alex Buckley. Since then, the two have been happily planning a summer wedding and honeymoon, preparing for Alex’s confirmation to a federal judicial appointment, and searching for the perfect New York City home for their new life together.
\nBut then Laurie is approached by Robert and Cynthia Bell, parents of Dr. Martin Bell, a famously charming and talented physician who was shot dead as he pulled into the driveway of his Greenwich Village carriage house five years ago. The Bells are sure that Martin’s disgraced and erratic wife, Kendra, carried out the murder. Determined to prove Kendra’s guilt and win custody over their grandchildren, they plead with Laurie to feature their son’s case on “Under Suspicion,” ensuring her that Kendra is willing to cooperate.
\nKendra has lived under a blanket of suspicion since Martin’s death, with the tabloid media depicting her as a secretive, mentally unstable gold-digger. Laurie’s show is a chance for her to clear her name. But unbeknownst to the Bells, Kendra has already refused once before to go forward with a re-investigation of her husband’s murder, and her statements to the contrary only add to the appearance of guilt.
\nBut once Laurie dives into the case, she learns that Martin wasn’t the picture-perfect husband, father, and doctor he appeared to be and was carrying secrets of his own. And what does the web of lies ensnaring the Bell family have to do with a dangerous stranger, who gazes at Laurie from afar and thinks, What a pretty girl, I’m sure she’s going to be missed?
\n
Maeve and Therese Dunigan are sisters - but the two have been estranged for years. They could not be more Maeve, a rule-follower and Therese, a rebel. But when their mother's death brings the family back together, the two find that they have inherited a painting - one that could be worth millions and could save each of them from their respective wolves at the door.
\nThe only issue is, the painting might be a fake and the only way the can solve the problem is to find the original. This means a road trip - to Ireland, to their family roots, and to a mysterious crime that occurred years ago. With tensions simmering, the two hit the road and find themselves on twisty lanes, in colorful villages, at local pubs, and with handsome men whose gift of the gab is surpassed only by their charm.
\nCan Maeve and Therese find the real painting, remove a family curse, solve a cold case, and actually survive without killing each other? Join Mary Kay Andrews on a road trip that will entertain you for miles.
\n
Clara Solberg's world shatters when her husband and their four-year-old daughter are in a car crash, killing Nick while Maisie is remarkably unharmed. The crash is ruled an accident . . . until the coming days, when Maisie starts having night terrors that make Clara question what really happened on that fateful afternoon.
\nTormented by grief and her obsession that Nick's death was far more than just an accident, Clara is plunged into a desperate hunt for the truth. Who would have wanted Nick dead? And, more important, why? Clara will stop at nothing to find out - and the truth is only the beginning of this twisted tale of secrets and deceit.
\nTold in the alternating perspectives of Clara's investigation and Nick's last months leading up to the crash, master of suspense Mary Kubica weaves her most chilling thriller to date - one that explores the dark recesses of a mind plagued by grief and shows that some secrets might be better left buried.
\n
Courtney Gray’s peaceful vacation turns into a nightmare when she discovers her brother and sister-in-law dead in their lakeside cottage. Her niece Reese is missing. Her nephew Wyatt is asleep upstairs - unharmed.
\nAs police swarm the quiet resort, dark truths about Courtney’s family - and the town itself - begin to surface. Is Reese a victim . . . or the killer?
\nWith everyone hiding something, Courtney races to uncover the terrible mystery. But the closer she gets, the harder it is to know who - or what - to trust.
Jake Hayes is missing. This much is certain. At first, his wife, Nina, thinks he is blowing off steam at a friend’s house after their heated fight the night before. But then a day goes by. Two days. Five. And Jake is still nowhere to be found.
\nLily Scott, Nina’s friend and coworker, thinks she may have been the last to see Jake before he went missing. After Lily confesses everything to her husband, Christian, the two decide that nobody can find out what happened leading up to Jake’s disappearance, especially not Nina. But Nina is out there looking for her husband, and she won’t stop until the truth is discovered.
Shelby Tebow is the first to go missing. Not long after, Meredith Dickey and her six-year-old daughter, Delilah, vanish just blocks away from where Shelby was last seen, striking fear into their once-peaceful community. Are these incidents connected? After an elusive search that yields more questions than answers, the case eventually goes cold.
\nNow, 11 years later, Delilah shockingly returns. Everyone wants to know what happened to her, but no one is prepared for what they’ll find . . .
\nIn this smart and chilling thriller, Mary Kubica takes domestic secrets to a whole new level, showing that some people will stop at nothing to keep the truth buried.
\n
Meghan Michaels is trying to find balance between being a single mom to a teenage daughter and working as a full time nurse. While on duty at the hospital one day, a patient named Caitlin arrives in a coma with a traumatic brain injury, having jumped from a bridge and plunging over twenty feet to the train tracks below.
\nBut when a witness comes forward with shocking details about the fall, it calls everything they know into question. Was Caitlin pushed and if so, by whom and why?
\nMeghan has always tried to stay emotionally detached from her patients, but this time, she mistakenly lets herself get too close until she’s deeply entangled in Caitlin’s and her family’s lives. Only when it’s too late, does she realize that she and her daughter could be the next victims.
\n
Thirty years ago, Laura’s mother, Viola, went missing. She left behind her purse, her keys and her mysterious paintings of a red house. Viola was never found, and her family never recovered. Laura, an artist herself, held on to the paintings. On the back of each work, her mother scrawled in Italian, “I will not be here forever.” The family never understood what Viola meant.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tDecades later, at a crossroads in her marriage and her life, Laura returns to Italy, where her parents met after World War II. Laura spent the earliest years of her childhood there before the family moved to New Jersey and settled into an American dream that eventually became a nightmare. Viola, who claimed to be an orphan, staunchly refused to speak of her life before marriage.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tIn Italy, Laura finds herself on a strange scavenger hunt to solve the puzzle of her mother’s lost years. She is certain that the paintings of the red house hold the answer to her mother’s past and her search takes her from her hometown of Brindisi, deep into Puglia where she encounters a man who knew her mother and who illuminates little-known secrets of Italy’s Second World War.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBlending elements of true crime with settings that evoke Elena Ferrante, Laura follows her mother’s trajectory as she ventures north to Naples, Turin and finally home. Along the way, she confronts the dark truth of her mother's story and at last makes sense of her own.
The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what’s available - sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet canopies and breasts from petroleum by-products. Today we’re attempting to grow body parts from scratch using stem cells and 3D printers. How are we doing? Are we there yet?
\nIn Replaceable You, Mary Roach explores the remarkable advances and difficult questions prompted by the human body’s failings. When and how does a person decide they’d be better off with a prosthetic than their existing limb? Can a donated heart be made to beat forever? Can an intestine provide a workable substitute for a vagina?
\nRoach dives in with her characteristic verve and infectious wit. Her travels take her to the OR at a legendary burn unit in Boston, a “superclean” xeno-pigsty in China, and a stem cell “hair nursery” in the San Diego tech hub. She talks with researchers and surgeons, amputees and ostomates, printers of kidneys and designers of wearable organs. She spends time in a working iron lung from the 1950s, stays up all night with recovery techs as they disassemble and reassemble a tissue donor, and travels across Mongolia with the cataract surgeons of Orbis International.
\nIrrepressible and accessible, Replaceable You immerses readers in the wondrous, improbable, and surreal quest to build a new you.
A meteor decimates the U.S. government and paves the way for a climate cataclysm that will eventually render the earth inhospitable to humanity. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated timeline in the earth’s efforts to colonize space, as well as an unprecedented opportunity for a much larger share of humanity to take part.
One of these new entrants in the space race is Elma York, whose experience as a WASP pilot and mathematician earns her a place in the International Aerospace Coalition’s attempts to put man on the moon. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots and scientists involved with the program, it doesn’t take long before Elma begins to wonder why they can’t go into space, too - aside from some pesky barriers like thousands of years of history and a host of expectations about the proper place of the fairer sex. And yet, Elma’s drive to become the first Lady Astronaut is so strong that even the most dearly held conventions may not stand a chance.
Continuing the grand sweep of alternate history laid out in The Calculating Stars, The Fated Sky looks forward to 1961, when mankind is well-established on the moon and looking forward to its next step: journeying to, and eventually colonizing, Mars.
Of course the noted Lady Astronaut Elma York would like to go, but could the International Aerospace Coalition ever stand the thought of putting a woman on such a potentially dangerous mission? Could Elma knowingly take the place of other astronauts who have been overlooked because of their race? And could she really leave behind her husband and the chance to start a family? This gripping look at the real conflicts behind a fantastical space race will put a new spin on our visions of what might have been.
Years after a meteorite strike obliterated Washington, D.C. - triggering an extinction-level global warming event - Earth’s survivors have started an international effort to establish homes on space stations and the Moon.
\nThe next step - Mars.
\nElma York, the Lady Astronaut, lands on the Red Planet, optimistic about preparing for the first true wave of inhabitants. The mission objective is more than just building the infrastructure of a habitat - they are trying to preserve the many cultures and nuances of life on Earth without importing the hate.
\nBut from the moment she arrives, something is off.
\nDisturbing signs hint at a hidden disaster during the First Mars Expedition that never made it into the official transcript. As Elma and her crew try to investigate, they face a wall of silence and obfuscation. Their attempts to build a thriving Martian community grind to a halt.
\nWhat you don’t know CAN harm you. And if the truth doesn’t come to light, the ripple effects could leave humanity stranded on a dying Earth . . .
\n
The Earth is coming to the boiling point as the climate disaster of the Meteor strike becomes more and more clear, but the political situation is already overheated. Riots and sabotage plague the space program. The IAC's goal of getting as many people as possible off Earth before it becomes uninhabitable is being threatened.
Elma York is on her way to Mars, but the Moon colony is still being established. Her friend and fellow Lady Astronaut Nicole Wargin is thrilled to be one of those pioneer settlers, using her considerable flight and political skills to keep the program on track. But she is less happy that her husband, the Governor of Kansas, is considering a run for President.
Tesla Crane, a brilliant inventor and an heiress, is on her honeymoon on an interplanetary space liner, cruising between the Moon and Mars. She’s traveling incognito and is reveling in her anonymity. Then someone is murdered and the festering chowderheads who run security have the audacity to arrest her spouse.
\nArmed with banter, martinis and her small service dog, Tesla is determined to solve the crime so that the newlyweds can get back to canoodling - and keep the real killer from striking again.
One mistake. One moment of fury. Margot Avondale’s past still bleeds beneath the surface.
\nBut on the outside, everything sparkles.
\nAs an influencer, she’s adored, admired, envied. An inspiration. A star. But Margot is lying - about her past, her photos, her perfect husband. She thinks the truth is buried. She’s wrong.
\nSomeone’s watching. Someone knows the rot beneath the filters. Her world isn’t just cracking . . . it’s collapsing. And the truth she hides won’t just destroy her reputation.
\nIt might kill her.
\n
When the Ruby Red Spectacle Circus rolls into town, chaos and death follow in its wake. At first, the accidents seem coincidental, but as the body count rises, it becomes clear that a killer is lurking within the big top’s shadows.
\nAfter a third performer turns up dead, the newly formed FBI Violent Crimes Unit in Washington, DC is called in to investigate. For FBI Special Agent Emma Last, the case is a chance to prove herself to her new SSA - and a welcome distraction from the ghosts who’ve invaded her life.
\nAs Emma delves deeper into the twisted world of the circus, she begins to see things that can't be explained. And when the animal rights activists outside the fairgrounds grow increasingly aggressive, the team must protect the performers from both outside threats and their own dark secrets.
\nWhen the investigation takes a sinister turn, Emma knows she's not the only one haunted by ghosts. With each shocking revelation, she's forced to confront the terrifying truth . . . someone is willing to do whatever it takes to keep the circus's secrets buried.
\n
Fresh from the adrenaline rush of her latest case, FBI Special Agent Emma Last dropped a bombshell on her friend and coworker Mia Logan - she can communicate with ghosts. Worse, one spectral figure is Mia’s brother.
\nAnd he insists he was murdered.
\nBut there's little time to grapple with the supernatural when the Violent Crimes team is thrust into the heart of Randall County, West Virginia where a local diner is reduced to rubble in a powerful explosion. Although the owner and his daughter live above the restaurant, no human remains are found in the rubble. Did they have the motive, or the skill, to make a bomb?
\nOr are they the victims of a more disturbing vendetta?
\nThe stakes heighten when another local diner faces the same fate, its owner and his daughter also conspicuously missing. The pattern is undeniable. As a winter storm encroaches, Emma and her team are in a race against time to find the victims before a third explosion blows Randall County apart.
\n
There’s nothing like an old-fashioned bank robbery to get the D.C. FBI office moving, even as half the team are sidelined with the flu. But this isn’t a normal heist, and Special Agent Emma Last is no typical FBI operative, something her partner, Leo Ambrose, is quickly realising.
\nAnd he doesn’t know the half of it.
\nAs Emma struggles with her secret, a masked assailant stages a morning robbery, making off with forty thousand dollars and leaving a trail of chaos in his wake. Beyond the money, he forces the bank manager, a guard, and the only two customers - a mother and her young daughter - into the vault.
\nThe loot? A safety deposit box containing nothing more than notebooks. The devastation? He murders the mother after cutting and collecting a lock of her hair. As a gift or a trophy?
\nUpon their arrival, Emma and Leo are thrust into a relentless chase, hot on the robber’s trail. But just like the ghosts that haunt Emma, he vanishes into thin air.
\nAs the team tracks down one dead end after another, they discover this wasn’t the perp’s first heist. Or his first act of murder. Driven by a desperate need for money, Emma knows he’s on the edge of disappearing forever or striking again. The race is on.
\n
Special Agent Emma Last is finally ready to confront the ‘Other’ side of her life - the part filled with ghosts that only she can see. However, her supernatural abilities must take a back seat as a real-world crisis demands her urgent attention.
\nThe D.C. Violent Crimes Unit joins forces with the Bureau’s Safe Streets Task Force to investigate a perplexing double homicide in the gritty underworld of gang territories. The crime scene bears an unusual signature - a bizarre, multi-bladed knife - suggesting a murder too peculiar and personal for a typical gang war. Besides, if the gangs wanted a war, they’ve had plenty of time to start one
\nAs tensions simmer and the body count rises, a gifted but elusive graffiti artist seems pivotal to the investigation. But little does Emma know that unmasking the artist might unleash a torrent of danger, jeopardising not just the case but also the lives of the entire team, with one member standing on the edge of a treacherous precipice.
\n
Overwhelmed with grief and anger, Special Agent Emma Last is now haunted by more than the ghosts who seek her out. Guilt becomes her constant companion as she attempts to unwind the clock, undo what’s been done to yet another person she loves.
\nWhen a fellow agent rescues a little girl hidden in the tunnels under the Washington National Opera House, Emma finds a focus for her energy. And she’s determined to find the person responsible. Especially when two more children are found in the same tunnel network, their lives gruesomely claimed by blood-sucking leeches.
\nWith no clear connection between the young victims other than their impoverished backgrounds, the investigation hits a dead end. But Emma isn't alone in her quest for justice. She receives cryptic clues from ghosts that only she can see.
\nThe challenge for Emma isn't just finding the killer - it's convincing her team to believe her insights, especially with her reputation tarnished by recent transgressions. She’s on thin ice, but her resolve is unshakable.
\n
Haunted by the whispers of the Other, a chilling real-world threat has Special Agent Emma Last and the Violent Crimes Unit on high alert. Their recent victory against D.C.’s gangs is overshadowed by a sinister promise of vengeance that materialises swiftly, claiming the life of a young FBI recruit.
\nThis brutal act marks the beginning of a deadly game, drawing Emma and her team into a dark web of danger, where every clue leads them deeper into the mystery and closer to the monster stalking them from the unseen.
\nAnd that’s just the beginning. When the body of a cop working the dead agent’s crime scene surfaces the next day, the VCU team comes to the chilling realisation that the killer isn’t just watching. He’s one step ahead of them.
\nHe knows where they live. And he’s not just coming for one of them. He’s coming for them all. And they may not get out of this one alive.
\n
FBI Special Agent Emma Last is still trying to catch her breath after what went down in Salem. The trauma lingers. The secrets she’s held tight? Not so secret anymore. And as her team reels from the fallout, her once-solid foundation is starting to crack.
\nAnd that’s not even the worst of it.
\nWhen a rookie DC cop is gunned down in a federal garage by someone wearing an FBI windbreaker, the storm only intensifies. The killer might be posing as one of their own - or worse, might actually be one of them. Before Emma can make sense of the ambush, another officer’s gunned down.
\nNow it’s not just murder - it’s a message.
\nThe media is circling. Tensions are high. And the arrival of a new agent with a murky past is the last thing she needs.
\nAs questions mount and alliances shift, Emma must navigate a minefield of suspicion, betrayal, and a personal vendetta that may trace back to a sister she’s never met. One with a dangerous grudge - and a growing body count.
\n
After barely surviving the ghosts of her past, Special Agent Emma Last is desperate to move forward. But just as she starts to believe she can leave it all behind, her colleague makes a shocking claim.
\nShe saw Emma in the afterlife. And she wants answers.
\nNow, Emma’s sanity is in question, and she fears her career may be on the line.
\nBut any questions about what really happened during her last case are put on hold when a mutilated body is found - a tattoo cut from his skin. Emma and her team suspect gang activity. Until they find a dead cockroach stuffed in his pocket, and a sinister email is directed to the police.
\n“Cockroaches overrun our city…and someone needs to do the cleaning.”
\nWhen a second victim appears, it’s clear this isn’t a turf war - it’s a vigilante’s hunt. A predator collecting trophies. And now, Emma is the ultimate prize.
\n
Special Agent Emma Last knows that Leo Ambrose is watching her closely. Her fellow agent suspects she’s different, that something strange is happening to her. She can feel his questions in the air between them. She’s not ready to answer them, though, and is happy when a new case diverts his attention.
\nIt’s a bad day when blood and death is easier to discuss than the truth.
\nA bar owner and a bartender, embroiled in a secret affair, are found shot execution style shortly after closing time. Security footage reveals the perp forcing his victims to their knees before taking their lives. With only a Bible verse left behind, the religious undertone is unmistakable.
\nAnother zealot making an entire faith look bad.
\nThe message is impersonal, self-righteous . . . and indicates the killer isn’t done. Now Emma and the rest of the team must find him before he leaves his next blood-spattered clue.
\nWhen the gunman’s signature is found at a nearby mosque, Emma thinks he’s marked his next location. Her hunch proves wrong, though, and he had a different location in mind, executing two more victims.
\nWith a body count of four in just a day, the urgency escalates.
\nAs this killer becomes more unhinged, nothing can prepare Emma for who and where he strikes next.
\n
Special Agent Emma Last barely survived the psychic attack that tore through her when she drove past her hometown of Salem for a case. At the time, she was chasing a cannibal through a booby-trapped wilderness, but the shadows of Salem have lingered, haunting her every mile.
\nNow, she’s not just driving past - she’s going back. On purpose.
\nEmma and two of her closest colleagues arrive to assist with a puzzling crime wave plaguing Salem. Four unrelated arsons, over a dozen muggings, vandalism, carjacking, home invasions. Every crime has been committed by a person with no criminal background. Stranger still, none remember their crimes.
\nEmma knows something sinister and supernatural is at play. Her late mother’s two best friends each blame the other for using magic to manipulate the people of Salem into acts of violence. But as the attacks escalate to murder, Emma uncovers a chilling truth. One of the women deliberately lured Emma to Salem to kill her.
\nBut which one?
\nFighting a threat she can’t see and unsure who she can trust, Emma must find the source of the madness destroying Salem. Before it destroys her.
\n
After a deadly shootout between impostor agents and the FBI’s Violent Crimes Unit, Special Agent Emma Last thought nothing could shock her again. But when her friend is found hacked to pieces, her severed hand left on Emma’s doorstep like a calling card, the violence veers into something darker - intimate, targeted, and cruel.
\nAnd the horror is just beginning.
\nAn FBI bomb specialist is next - his mutilated body scattered like shrapnel in his own home. Emma suspects her long-lost sister may be behind the attacks, but the truth is tangled in blood, betrayal, and lies. Whoever the killer is, she’s escalating. Armed with a weapon that defies science and fueled by a personal vendetta, her target isn’t just Emma.
\nIt’s everything - and everyone - Emma loves.
\nWith guilt mounting and chaos closing in, Emma must outmaneuver a killer who’s always one step ahead. Before the next ignition. Before her team suffocates. Before everything - and everyone - is consumed.
\n
Decapitated bodies seem to be following Special Agent Emma Last. First, it was the haunting appearance of the ghost of Ned, the late brother of Emma’s friend and colleague, who was beheaded in a car accident years ago. Now, D.C.’s Violent Crimes Unit has two more headless victims.
\nOr is it four?
\nOver two eerie nights, a crypt raider exchanged ancient skeletal skulls for the freshly severed heads of two unidentified men. Yet, the whereabouts of their bodies and the stolen bones remain shrouded in mystery.
\nThe why behind the seemingly ritualist crimes is even more perplexing. The victims have nothing in common other than age and orientation. But without their bodies, the cause of their deaths remains elusive.
\nCould Emma and her team be dealing with some type of dark occult practice? More importantly, is there a method to the killer’s madness? The clock is ticking. And if bad things come in threes, Emma and the team only have one more day to decipher the mind of a killer before they strike again.
\n
With two members of the Violent Crimes Unit just out of the hospital and another still recovering, things are finally beginning to settle - except for Special Agent Emma Last. Her disturbing dreams of the Other are growing more vivid, and now a desperate fortune teller from a past case arrives on her doorstep. The woman’s estranged husband took their ten-year-old camping, and they haven’t been heard from in five days.
\nAre they lost? Or has the boy been abducted by his own father?
\nAs Emma and her team investigate, they uncover something far more disturbing than a routine missing persons case. Four other hikers have recently vanished without a trace - until a severed foot is discovered, stark evidence of something far more sinister lurking in the wilderness.
\nAs they navigate the fifteen thousand acres of unforgiving wilderness, they encounter deadly traps hidden along the trails, meticulously designed to kill. This isn’t just a man gone rogue - this is a predator, and he’s hunting them.
\nThe deeper they push into the woods, the more dangerous their mission becomes. There’s a madman on the loose, and if they’re not careful, they’ll become his dinner.
\n
It sounds like a scene from a horror movie. But the carnage left by a literal axe murderer in the small town of Little Clementine is far too real.
\nTwo families gruesomely slaughtered, two days apart, the only survivor a two-year-old girl.
\nThe tight-knit community in the Allegheny Mountains is known for its religious fanaticism and aversion to the government. But without a police force, the sheriff has no choice but to begrudgingly accept the assistance of FBI’s Washington, D.C. Violent Crimes Unit to solve the grisly case.
\nThe brutality of the murders suggests the killer is one of the town’s own - and these slayings were as personal as they were violent. But the residents of Little Clementine only take their problems to the Lord or their pastor, and neither are talking.
\nWith no fingerprints, evidence, DNA, or leads, Special Agent Emma Last almost wishes for the appearance of the ghosts she can suddenly see to provide a clue. Because the murderer is the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing, and the whole flock is in danger.
\n
With two team members in the hospital and another traumatized by their last near-fatal case, Special Agent Emma Last and her partner are the only ones left standing - and the only ones available to tackle a gruesome murder in Boston.
\nHer increasing encounters with the Other and the terrifying dreams that haunt her are nothing compared to the disturbing pull of her childhood home. But making peace with the Other will have to wait.
\nThe husband of a local politician has been found murdered, his naked body - minus a certain appendage - thrown from the rooftop of a high-class hotel, the Roman numeral one carved in his chest. The case seems cut and dried. The victim’s wife is running for mayor, and with all but one of her opponents suspiciously forced out of the race, his murder reeks of a warning message.
\nWith leads piling up as fast as the bodies, the countdown is on. Because if two follows one, then the killer has his sights on victim three. Unless Emma can stop him first.
\n
This prizewinning debut novel weaves together four meticulously observed animal odysseys in a poignant meditation on migration, displacement, and the inextricability of the human and the natural worlds.
\nIn Only a Little While Here, an award-winning author evokes a sensation birders and naturalists know well - the deep gratification that comes through close, compassionate observation of fauna. With characteristic grace and curiosity, Ospina trains our attention on the lives of four a south-bound songbird dazzled by city lights, an orphaned porcupine saved by human kindness, a loyal dog grieving the abduction of her human companion, and a determined beetle transported to a vast, unimaginable world. The surprising drama of everyday animal life brings to life the fragility and resilience of belonging, and what it means to create - or lose - a home.
\nEach animal’s journey challenges us to confront the beauty and brutality of the world we shape around our non-human fellows. The result is a profound commentary that models the intense interest needed to mend the rift between humans and animals, and celebrates their often-overlooked status as witnesses of our shared world.
\nTender, meditative, and soul-stirring, Only a Little While Here is ecological fiction and storytelling at its most inventive and heartfelt.
\n
Tōru Sakanishi is a recent university graduate who joins the prestigious Murai Office, a small architecture firm founded by Shunsuke Murai, former student of Frank Lloyd Wright. A sensitive and observant narrator, Sakanishi is captivated by the artistic quality and careful consideration the Murai Office shows to each of its designs.
\nAs the sweltering summer months approach, the Murai Office migrates from Tokyo to Kita-Asama, a mountain village and artists’ colony whose heyday has passed. There, this small team of architects, including two women who Sakanishi is clumsily attracted to, set out to design the National Library of Modern Literature, competing against a rival firm that snaps up one government project after the next.
A speculative novel about a young woman - invisible by birth and relegated to second-class citizenship - who sets off on a mission to find her older brother, whom she had presumed dead but who is now the primary suspect in a high-profile political murder.
\nDespite the odds, Sweetmint, a young invisible woman, has done everything right her entire life - school, university, and now a highly sought-after apprenticeship with one of the Northwestern Hemisphere’s premier inventors, a non-invisible man belonging to the dominant population who is as eccentric as he is enigmatic. But the world she has fought so hard to build after the disappearance of her older brother comes crashing down when authorities claim that not only is he well and alive, he’s also the main suspect in the murder of the Chief Executive of the Northwestern Hemisphere.
\nA manhunt ensues, and Sweetmint, armed with courage, intellect, and unwavering love for her brother, sets off on a mission to find him before it’s too late. With five days until the hemisphere’s big election, Sweetmint must dodge a relentless law officer who’s determined to maintain order and an ambitious politician with sights set on becoming the next Chief Executive by any means necessary.
\n
Ted Ainsworth has always worked at his family's ice cream business in the quiet Lancashire town of St Luke's-on-Sea.
\nHe doesn't even like ice cream, though he's never told his parents that. When Ted's husband suddenly leaves him, the bottom falls out of his world.
\nBut what if this could be an opportunity to put what he wants first? This could be the chance to finally follow his secret dream: something Ted has never told anyone . . .
\n
Charlie Matthews’ love story begins in a pebble-dashed house in suburban Bolton, at a time when most little boys want to grow up to be Michael Jackson, and girls want to be Princess Di. Remembering the Green Cross Code and getting out of football are the most important things in his life, until Auntie Jan gives him a gift that will last a lifetime: a seven-inch single called ‘Lucky Star’ . . .
\nOn his ninth birthday, Charlie discovers Madonna, and falls in love. His obsession sees him through some tough times in life: being persecuted at school, fitting in at a posh university, a glamorous career in London, finding boyfriends, getting rid of boyfriends, and family heartbreak. Madonna’s music and videos inspire him, and her fierce determination to succeed gives him the confidence to do the same. Ultimately, though, he must learn to let go of his idol and find his own voice.
\nCharlie’s story is Billy Elliot meets Beautiful Thing wearing a conical bra - a story for anyone who ever sang their heart out, looked for love and dreamed of more . . . The Madonna of Bolton will make you laugh, cry and Get Into the Groove. It’s a book to Cherish and a Ray of Light, and it even has a little Hanky Panky.
\n
Albert Entwistle is a private man with a quiet, simple life. He lives alone with his cat Gracie. And he’s a postman. At least he was a postman until, three months before his sixty-fifth birthday, he receives a letter from the Royal Mail thanking him for decades of service and stating he is being forced into retirement.
\nAt once, Albert’s sole connection with his world unravels. Every day as a mail carrier, he would make his way through the streets of his small English town, delivering letters and parcels and returning greetings with a quick wave and a “how do?” Without the work that fills his days, what will be the point? He has no friends, family, or hobbies - just a past he never speaks of, and a lost love that fills him with regret.
\nAnd so, rather than continue his lonely existence, Albert forms a brave plan to start truly living. It’s finally time to be honest about who he is. To seek the happiness he’s always denied himself. And to find the courage to look for George, the man that, many years ago, he loved and lost - but has never forgotten. As he does, something extraordinary happens. Albert finds unlikely allies, new friends, and proves it’s never too late to live, to hope, and to love.
\n
Since her village chased her out with pitchforks, Tara Abernathy has resurrected gods, pulled down monsters, averted wars, and saved a city, twice. She thought she'd left her dusty little hometown forever. But that was before her father died.
\nAs she makes her way home to bury him, she finds a girl, as powerful and vulnerable and lost as she once was. Saving her from the raiders that haunt the area, twisted by a remnant of the God Wars, Tara changes the course of the world. Max Gladstone's world of the Craft is a fantasy setting like no other. When Craftspeople rose up to kill the gods, they built corporate Concerns from their corpses and ushered in a world of rapacious capital. Those who work the Craft wield laws like knives and weave chains from starlight and soulstuff.
\nDead Country is the first book in the Craft Wars Trilogy, a tight sequence of novels that will bring the sprawling saga of the Craft to its end, and the perfect entry point for this incomparable world.
The time until the endtimes is ticking away. If the world has any hope to survive, it must come together now.
\nThe foundations of the world are quaking. Markets crash and cities burn as a new god struggles to be born. Ancient hunters skitter across space, eager and hungry. Dark forces conspire to undermine that could stand in their way. Divided, the world of the craft is certain to fall.
\nIn Alt Coulomb, the great powers of the world gather in conference. Empires, divinities, and corporate concerns take seats at the table. Untold wealth and inexhaustible might is on offer, but coalition will not come easily. Can these forces come together to save the world? And if they do, what parts of it will they choose to save, and for whom?
A wildly successful innovator to rival Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, Vivian Liao is prone to radical thinking, quick decision-making, and reckless action. On the eve of her greatest achievement, she's trying to outrun those who are trying to steal her success.
\nIn the chilly darkness of a Boston server farm, Viv sets her ultimate plan into motion. A terrifying instant later, Vivian Liao is catapulted through space and time to a far future where she confronts a destiny stranger and more deadly than she could ever imagine.
\nThe end of time is ruled by an ancient, powerful Empress who blesses or blasts entire planets with a single thought. Rebellion is literally impossible to consider - until Vivian arrives. Trapped between the Pride, a ravening horde of sentient machines, and a fanatical sect of warrior monks who call themselves the Mirrorfaith, Viv must rally a strange group of allies to confront the Empress and find a way back to the world and life she left behind.
The great city of Alt Coulumb is in crisis. The moon goddess Seril, long thought dead, is back - and the people of Alt Coulumb aren't happy. Protests rock the city, and Kos Everburning's creditors attempt a hostile takeover of the fire god's church. Tara Abernathy, the god's in-house Craftswoman, must defend the church against the world's fiercest necromantic firm - and against her old classmate, a rising star in the Craftwork world.
As if that weren't enough, Cat and Raz, supporting characters from Three Parts Dead, are back too, fighting monster pirates; skeleton kings drink frozen cocktails, defying several principles of anatomy; jails, hospitals, and temples are broken into and out of; choirs of flame sing over Alt Coulumb; demons pose significant problems; a farmers' market proves more important to world affairs than seems likely; doctors of theology strike back; Monk-Technician Abelard performs several miracles; The Rats! play Walsh's Place; and dragons give almost-helpful counsel.
Sometimes, the friend you need is the one you never saw coming.
\nFrank and Red are a mess.
\nFrank is a grumpy old curmudgeon. A recluse whose only company is the 'ghost' of his dead wife, Marcie. He is estranged from his friends, his son, and the ever-changing world beyond his front gate. And then Red moves in next door.
\nRed is six. A boy struggling to adjust to the separation of his mum and dad, a new school, and the demonic school bully. Red is curious, smart, he never stops talking, and he's got a trampoline. From the moment Red's blonde mop appears over the top of the fence that divides their two gardens, the unlikeliest of friendships is born . . . And it is a friendship that will change both of their lives forever.
On the island of Kavekana, Kai builds gods to order, then hands them to others to maintain. Her creations aren’t conscious and lack their own wills and voices, but they accept sacrifices, and protect their worshippers from other gods - perfect vehicles for Craftsmen and Craftswomen operating in the divinely controlled Old World.
\nWhen Kai sees one of her creations dying and tries to save her, she’s grievously injured - then sidelined from the business entirely, her near-suicidal rescue attempt offered up as proof of her instability. But when Kai gets tired of hearing her boss, her coworkers, and her ex-boyfriend call her crazy, and starts digging into the reasons her creations die, she uncovers a conspiracy of silence and fear - which will crush her, if Kai can’t stop it first.
Ten years ago, Zelda led a band of merry adventurers whose knacks let them travel to alternate realities and battle the black rot that threatened to unmake each world. Zelda was the warrior; Ish could locate people anywhere; Ramon always knew what path to take; Sarah could turn catastrophe aside. Keeping them all connected: Sal, Zelda’s lover and the group's heart.
\nUntil their final, failed mission, when Sal was lost. When they all fell apart.
\nTen years on, Ish, Ramon, and Sarah are happy and successful. Zelda is alone, always traveling, destroying rot throughout the US.
\nWhen it boils through the crack in the Liberty Bell, the rot gives Zelda proof that Sal is alive, trapped somewhere in the alts.
\nZelda’s getting the band back together - plus Sal’s young cousin June, who has a knack none of them have ever seen before.
\nAs relationships rekindle, the friends begin to believe they can find Sal and heal all the worlds. It’s not going to be easy, but they’ve faced worse before.
\nBut things have changed, out there in the alts. And in everyone's hearts.
\n
Forty years after the God Wars, Dresediel Lex bears the scars of liberation - especially in the Skittersill, a poor district still bound by the fallen gods' decaying edicts. As long as the gods' wards last, they strangle development; when they fail, demons will be loosed upon the city. The King in Red hires Elayne Kevarian of the Craft firm Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao to fix the wards, but the Skittersill's people have their own ideas. A protest rises against Elayne's work, led by Temoc, a warrior-priest turned community organiser who wants to build a peaceful future for his city, his wife, and his young son.
As Elayne drags Temoc and the King in Red to the bargaining table, old wounds reopen, old gods stir in their graves, civil blood breaks to new mutiny, and profiteers circle in the desert sky. Elayne and Temoc must fight conspiracy, dark magic, and their own demons to save the peace - or failing that, to save as many people as they can.
The God Wars destroyed the city of Alikand. Now, a century and a half and a great many construction contracts later, Agdel Lex rises in its place. Dead deities litter the surrounding desert, streets shift when people aren’t looking, a squidlike tower dominates the skyline, and the foreign Iskari Rectification Authority keeps strict order in this once-independent city - while treasure seekers, criminals, combat librarians, nightmare artists, angels, demons, dispossessed knights, grad students, and other fools gather in its ever-changing alleys, hungry for the next big score.
\nPriestess/investment banker Kai Pohala (last seen in Full Fathom Five) hits town to corner Agdel Lex’s burgeoning nightmare startup scene, and to visit her estranged sister Ley. But Kai finds Ley desperate at the center of a shadowy, and rapidly unravelling, business deal. When Ley ends up on the run, wanted for a crime she most definitely committed, Kai races to track her sister down before the Authority finds her first. But Ley has her own plans, involving her ex-girlfriend, a daring heist into the god-haunted desert, and, perhaps, freedom for an occupied city. Because Alikand might not be completely dead - and some people want to finish the job.
\n
A god has died, and it’s up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart.
Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis’s steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot.
Tara’s job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who’s having an understandable crisis of faith.
When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb’s courts—and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb’s slim hope of survival.
Set in a phenomenally built world in which justice is a collective force bestowed on a few, craftsmen fly on lightning bolts, and gargoyles can rule cities, Three Parts Dead introduces readers to an ethical landscape in which the line between right and wrong blurs.
“Max Gladstone has created a fascinating universe and equally fascinating characters. It's a world in which Magic is Craft, and religion has some very practical rules, and he shows it through the stories of some very interesting characters. This is his first novel. I can't wait for his second.”
—Jerry Pournelle, author of The Mote in God’s Eye and *Lucifer’s Hammer
“This has so many of my favorite things: an intriguing world, fun characters, a puzzle of a story that manages to be both funky fantasy and legal thriller. Three Parts Dead* is simultaneously fast paced and thoughtful, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.”
—Carrie Vaughn, author of the Kitty Norville series
“With his first book, Max Gladstone gives promise of being a true star of twenty-first century fantasy.”
—John Crowley, author of Little, Big and *The Deep
“Max Gladstone has evidently devised a necromantic steampunk machine that enabled him to channel the Roger Zelazny of Lord of Light, cathect the Neil Gaiman of American Gods, and subsume the oeuvre of John Grisham, all with the aim of producing loopy, metaphysically-minded legal thrillers. It you doubt my conclusion, consider Exhibit A, the author’s delirious and delightful first novel.”
— James Morrow, author of The Last Witchfinder and Shambling Towards Hiroshima.*
“Combining murder mystery, corporate intrigue, and thaumaturgic fireworks, Three Parts Dead gives us not just an excellent urban fantasy, but a brilliant new world to explore. I can't wait to see what he does next.” —Maragret Ronald, author of Spiral Hunt
MAX GLADSTONE went to Yale, where he wrote a short story that became a finalist in the Writers of the Future competition. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
", "series": "Craft Sequence", "seriesOrder": 1, "tags": [ "Fantasy" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Matt Coyne - Three Parts Dead.jpeg", "mtime": 1766963467915.715, "size": 740676, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:23:07.985Z" }, "Matt Coyne - Two Serpents Rise": { "title": "Two Serpents Rise", "author": "Max Gladstone", "description": "Shadow demons plague the city reservoir, and Red King Consolidated has sent in Caleb Altemoc - casual gambler and professional risk manager - to cleanse the water for the sixteen million people of Dresediel Lex. At the scene of the crime, Caleb finds an alluring and clever cliff runner, crazy Mal, who easily outpaces him.
But Caleb has more than the demon infestation, Mal, or job security to worry about when he discovers that his father - the last priest of the old gods and leader of the True Quechal terrorists - has broken into his home and is wanted in connection to the attacks on the water supply.
From the beginning, Caleb and Mal are bound by lust, Craft, and chance, as both play a dangerous game where gods and people are pawns. They sleep on water, they dance in fire . . . and all the while the Twin Serpents slumbering beneath the earth are stirring, and they are hungry.
A deadly force has been unleashed into the world. With apocalypse on the horizon, a girl and a god have joined in order to turn back the coming end. Young, brash, and desperate, they are willing to destroy anything and everything that stands between them and their goals. The structures of the Craft are theirs to overturn, with billions of lives in the balance. And it is all Tara Abernathy’s fault.
\nThe battle for the world of the Craft is heating up. A dead god will rise. A mountain will fall. Ancient fire will be stolen. And while Tara races to stop Dawn’s plans, the end draws ever closer, skittering across the stars to swallow the world.
Sera has a secret. She's seen the future, and it is terrifying. Unfortunately, she can't do anything to prevent the Cataclysm while stranded with Dak and Riq thousands of years in the past.
\nTheir only hope lies with the ancient Maya, a mysterious people who claim to know a great deal about the future. Is there more to these ancients than meets the eye?
The New York Times bestselling series returns . . . and so does Matt de la Peña!
Dak, Sera, and Riq have fixed the Great Breaks in history . . . but the SQ isn't beaten yet, and the biggest, boldest Infinity Ring adventure of all time has just begun!", "series": "Infinity Ring", "seriesOrder": 8, "tags": [ "Science Fiction" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Matt De La Pena - Eternity.jpeg", "mtime": 1766739297432.8213, "size": 7454098, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:23:08.647Z" }, "Matt Dinniman - Butcher's Masquerade, The": { "title": "The Butcher's Masquerade", "author": "Matt Dinniman", "description": "
Attention. Attention. The gates are down. The hunters are loose.
\nRun, Run, Run.
\nA lush jungle teeming with danger. Savage dinosaurs seeking blood. A fallen princess intent on vengeance. A mysterious, end-of-floor celebration for the top crawlers, dubbed “The Butcher’s Masquerade.” But that’s not all.
\nJust when Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, think they’ve seen it all as they compete to survive in the galaxy’s most popular game show, the latest dungeon level introduces a terrible new threat.
\nThe sixth floor. The Hunting Grounds.
\nAs the remaining crawlers battle for their lives, outside tourists are finally allowed to enter the game, and they are ready to hunt. Among them is Vrah, a famed and veteran hunter, intent on collecting the biggest trophy of her career.
\nBut her prey is far from harmless, and this season they are fighting back.
\nWelcome, crawlers. Welcome to the sixth floor of the dungeon.
\n
“Greetings, Crawlers! The training levels have concluded. Now the games may truly begin.”
\nThe aliens have come, and they’ve transformed Earth into a multilevel, video game–like dungeon. It’s the newest season of the galaxy’s most watched game show, Dungeon Crawler World. Now on the third floor, Carl and Donut have to fight harder than ever. They’ve already proven that a Coast Guard vet and once-and-forever feline royalty are an almost unstoppable team. Their ratings are off the charts. Viewers can’t get enough. But the dungeon gets more dangerous each day, and now there’s a whole new problem to deal with: Quests.
\nThey call it the Over City. A sprawling, once-thriving metropolis devastated by a mysterious calamity. But these streets are far from abandoned. An undead circus trawls the ruins. Murdered women rain from the sky. An ancient spell is finally ready to reveal its dark purpose. Can Carl and Donut solve the mystery in time?
\nAnd can Carl finally find some pants?
\n
Earth has been transformed into the set of the galaxy’s most watched game show: Dungeon Crawler World, a nightmarish, multilevel, video game–like dungeon filled with traps, monsters, and mind-bending puzzles. Carl and Donut have survived so far, but this fourth level is unlike anything they could imagine.
\nThe Iron Tangle: an impossibly complicated subway system tied together into a knot of trains of all kinds, from classic steam engines to sleek modern cars. Up is down. Down is up. Close is far. The cars are filled with monsters, the railway stations aren’t always what they seem, and the exit is perpetually just a few stops away.
\nThe top ten list is populated, and Carl and Donut have made it. But that popularity comes with a price. They each now have a bounty on their head. They must work with other crawlers to solve the puzzle of the floor, but how can they do that when they don’t know who to trust? The secret to unraveling it all may be hidden in the pages of a seemingly useless book.
\nWelcome, Crawlers. Welcome to the fourth floor of the dungeon.
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You know what’s worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Being stuck with her prize-winning show cat. And you know what’s worse than that? An alien invasion, the destruction of all man-made structures on Earth, and the systematic exploitation of all the survivors for a sadistic intergalactic game show. That’s what.
\nJoin Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, as they try to survive the end of the world - or just get to the next level - in a video game–like, trap-filled fantasy dungeon. A dungeon that’s actually the set of a reality television show with countless viewers across the galaxy. Exploding goblins. Magical potions. Deadly, drug-dealing llamas. This ain’t your ordinary game show.
\nWelcome, Crawler. Welcome to the Dungeon. Survival is optional. Keeping the viewers entertained is not.
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Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, have survived longer and leveled up higher than anyone ever thought they could in the galaxy’s most popular reality show, but after the shocking conclusion of the seventh level, it’s now anyone’s game.
\nA pantheon of forgotten gods. An old grudge between a talk show host, an heiress, and the man they shattered along the way. A rapidly deteriorating AI system. An inconvenient tiara upon the head of a friend.
\nIt is bedlam on the eighth floor.
\nThe crawlers are given a new task: Find and capture six monsters, each of which will be turned into a card. The stronger, the deadlier, the better. At the end of the floor, the bad guys will also have decks, made of some of the most powerful cards available. So it’s crucial for crawlers to assemble the toughest squad possible. But, like always, there is a catch. There’s always a catch.
\nIf Carl and Donut want a winning hand, they’ll have to capture the most lethal and terrifying monster of them all: Shi Maria. She was once married to a now-missing god. Her special attack is known to drive one insane. They call her the Bedlam Bride.
\nBut even if Carl and Donut can capture her, they know all too well that just because someone has been captured, it doesn’t mean they have been tamed.
\nWelcome, Crawlers. Welcome to the eighth floor of the dungeon.
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New Achievement! Total, Utter Failure.
\nYou failed a quest less than five minutes after you received it. Now that’s talent.
\nSurviving in a multilevel dungeon that also happens to be the set of the galaxy’s most watched game show has taught Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, that there’s only one thing they can count on apart from each other: they never know what’s coming next. And this floor is no exception.
\nA floating fortress occupied by warrior gnomes. A castle made of sand. A derelict submarine guarded by malfunctioning machines. A haunted crypt surrounded by lethal traps.
\nIt was supposed to be easy. One bubble. Four castles. Fifteen days. Capture each one, and the stairwell is unlocked. Here’s the thing. It’s never easy. Going it alone is not an option this time, so Carl and his team must rely on the help of the low-level, I-can’t-believe-these-idiots-are-still-alive crawlers trapped in the bubble with them. But can they be trusted?
\nWelcome, Crawlers. Welcome to the fifth floor of the dungeon.
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As chaos and mass panic spread outside the dungeon in the wake of Faction Wars, Carl and Donut find themselves on the tenth floor, where they’re forced to compete in a surprisingly normal set of tasks. Well, normal for the dungeon.
\nRaces. Get from point A to point B, and don’t come in last. After each race, they pick an upgrade for their vehicle and the track gets more challenging. It all seems a little too normal, a little too simple.
\nIgnore those strange glitches that are occurring with increasing frequency. Don’t listen to those whispers about what’s happening on the mysterious eleventh floor, something the system AI calls A Parade of Horribles. Nobody, not even the showrunners, knows what that means. Just that the AI has ominously dubbed it “a coming-out party for the ages.”
\nEverything is fine, Crawler. I repeat, everything is fine.
\nCarl hates that it’s business as usual. The rules of this floor have taken away his agency. That just will not do.
\nSo Carl is planning a party of his own. It’s a plan so dangerous, so insane, he can’t even consult his friends lest the AI put a stop to it. Because if it goes wrong, it’s not just the end of Carl and Donut. No. The stakes are higher than they’ve ever been.
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The ninth floor. Faction Wars. Nine armies enter, led by rich and powerful aliens from across the galaxy. The winning team must capture and hold the castle at the very center of the battlefield. Strategy, alliances, pitched battles, betrayal . . . It all makes for great fun and even greater television.
\nBut thanks to Carl, Donut, and Katia, this season is different.
\nFor the first time ever, the crawlers have their own army. The NPCs, who are normally used as nothing but cannon fodder, have become fully self-aware and have formed an unprecedented team of their own. And it’s not just the crawlers who are at risk this Faction Wars. Any combatant who dies on the battlefield stays in the ground.
\nFor Donut and Katia, the stakes are even higher. No matter who wins the war, only one of them will be allowed to leave this level. If they all want to survive, they’re going to need a little help from a veteran or two.
\nThis is it. This is what they’ve been fighting toward. This is war.
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Nils Shapiro has been hired to find missing Linnea Engstrom, a teenager from the small northern hockey town of Warroad, MN. Most of Warroad is in Minneapolis for the state high school hockey tournament, and Linnea never returned from last night’s game. Linnea’s friend Haley Housch is also missingand soon found dead.
\nShot through the arm with an arrow at the Haley Housch crime scene, only the quick work of medical examiner Char Northagen saves Nil’s life.
\nNils should be in the hospital recovering from his near fatal injury, but he knows that the clock is ticking. Linnea could be anywhere, and someone doesn’t want her found. Is Linnea a victim, or is she playing a dangerous game? As bodies start piling up, the clues lead Nils and Ellegaard north to Warroad, a small, quiet town with many secrets to hide.
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Joey Green has returned to Beaufort, South Carolina, with its palmettos and shrimp boats, to look after his ailing father, who is succumbing to dementia, while his overstressed mother takes a break. Marshall Green’s short-term memory has all but evaporated, but, as if in compensation, his oldest memories are more vivid than ever. His mind keeps slipping backwards in time, retreating into long-ago yesterdays of growing up in Beaufort as a boy.
\nAt first this seems like a blessing of sorts, with the past providing a refuge from a shrinking future, but Joey grows increasingly anxious as his father’s hallucinatory arguments with figures from his youth begin to hint at deadly secrets, scandals, and suspicions long buried and forgotten. Resurfacing from decades past are mysteries that still have the power to shatter lives - and change everything Joey thought he knew.
\nEspecially when a new murder brings the police to his door . . .
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Nils is on a mission to hunt down Sammy Sykes, the drug kingpin responsible for the ambush that led to his wife’s death two years ago. Despite the efforts of local law enforcement and the FBI, Sammy is still on the loose.
\nA trip to see Sammy's daughter in prison gifts him a lead that’s impossible to ignore. Resuming his life as a private investigator, Nils goes deep undercover. Fueled by revenge and a deep sense of justice, Nils’ pursuit of Sammy takes him all the way from Minnesota to Europe, where his survival skills - and resolve - are put to the ultimate test . . .
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Nils Shapiro accepts what appears to be an easy, lucrative job: find out if Beverly Mayer’s grandson is foolishly throwing away his trust fund in Hollywood, especially now, in the wake of his fiancée’s tragic death. However, that easy job becomes much more complicated once Nils arrives in Los Angeles, a disorienting place where the sunshine hides dark secrets.
Nils quickly suspects that Ebben Mayer’s fiancée was murdered, and that Ebben himself may have been the target. As Nils moves into Ebben’s inner circle, he discovers that everyone in Ebben’s professional life - his agent, manager, a screenwriter, a producer - seem to have dubious motives at best.
With Nil's friend Jameson White, who has come to Los Angeles to deal with demons of his own, acting as Ebben’s bodyguard, Nils sets out to find a killer before it’s too late.
Set in Minnesota, Gone to Dust is the debut private eye murder mystery from Emmy Award-winning Seinfeld writer Matt Goldman.
\nA brutal crime. The ultimate cover-up. How do you solve a murder with no useable evidence?
\nPrivate detective Nils Shapiro is focused on forgetting his ex-wife and keeping warm during another Minneapolis winter when a former colleague, neighboring Edina Police Detective Anders Ellegaard, calls with the impossible.
\nSuburban divorcee Maggie Somerville was found murdered in her bedroom, her body covered with the dust from hundreds of emptied vacuum cleaner bags, all potential DNA evidence obscured by the calculating killer.
\nDigging into Maggie’s cell phone records, Nils finds that the most frequently called number belongs to a mysterious young woman whose true identity could shatter the Somerville family - but could she be guilty of murder?
\nAfter the FBI demands that Nils drop the case, Nils and Ellegaard are forced to take their investigation underground, where the case grows as murky as the contents of the vacuum cleaner bags. Is this a strange case of domestic violence or something with far reaching, sinister implications?
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A prominent lawyer is found dead, tied to his own dock by a fishing stringer through his jaw, and everyone wants private detective Nils Shapiro to protect them from suspicion: The unfaithful widow. Her artist boyfriend. The lawyer’s firm. A polarizing congressional candidate. A rudderless suburban police department. Even the FBI.
Nils and his investigative partners illuminate a sticky web of secrets and deceit that draws national attention. But finding the web doesn’t prevent Nils from getting caught in it. Just when his safety is most in peril, his personal life takes an unexpected twist, facing its own snarl of surprise and deception.
Liv and Gabe Ahlstrom are estranged siblings who haven’t seen each other in years, but that’s about to change when they receive a rare call from their older brother’s wife. “Mack is dead,” she says. “He died of a seizure.” Five minutes after they hang up, Liv and Gabe each receive a scheduled email from their dead brother, claiming that he was murdered.
\nThe siblings return to their family run resort in the Northwoods of Minnesota to investigate Mack's claims, but Leech Lake has more in store for them than either could imagine. Drawn into a tangled web of lies and betrayal that spans decades, they put their lives on the line to unravel the truth about their brother, their parents, themselves, and the small town in which they grew up. After all, no one can keep a secret in a small town, but someone in Leech Lake is willing to kill for the truth to stay buried.
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A small book for anyone in search of hope, looking for a path to a more meaningful life, or in need of encouragement.
\nHappiness occurs when you forget who you're expected to be. And what you're expected to do. Happiness is an accident of self-acceptance. It's the warm breeze you feel when you open the door to who you are.
\nYears ago, Matt Haig began writing notes to his future self. These notes were meant as gifts to his future self: offerings of hope to help himself through anything from the darkest periods of his life to a not-so-great day. As time went on, he added new thoughts and stories, and he turned them into The Comfort Book so that everyone could draw on this well of reassurance and encouragement.
\nEach of its short meditations gives a new perspective on life and all of its highs and lows - small islands of hope for anyone looking for a more fulfilling, more uplifting way through life. Incorporating a diverse array of sources from across the world, history, science, and his own experiences, Haig offers warmth and reassurance, reminding us to slow down and appreciate the beauty and unpredictability of existence.
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Philip Noble is an eleven-year-old in crisis. His pub landlord father has died in a road accident, and his mother is succumbing to the greasy charms of her dead husband's brother, Uncle Alan. The remaining certainties of Philip's life crumble away when his father's ghost appears in the pub and declares Uncle Alan murdered him.
\nArming himself with weapons from the school chemistry cupboard, Philip vows to carry out the ghost's relentless demands for revenge. But can the words of a ghost be trusted any more than the lies of the living?
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Our hero, Professor Andrew Martin, is dead before the book even begins. As it turns out, though, he wasn’t a very nice man - as the alien imposter who now occupies his body discovers. Sent to Earth to destroy evidence that Andrew had solved a major mathematical problem, the alien soon finds himself learning more about the professor, his family, and “the humans” than he ever expected.
\nWhen he begins to fall for his own wife and son - who have no idea he’s not the real Andrew - the alien must choose between completing his mission and returning home or finding a new home right here on Earth.
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Meet the Hunter family: Adam, Kate, and their children Hal and Charlotte. And Prince, their black Labrador.
\nPrince is an earnest young dog, striving hard to live up to the tenets of the Labrador Pact (Remain Loyal to Your Human Masters, Serve and Protect Your Family at Any Cost). Other dogs, led by the Springer Spaniels, have revolted.
\nAs things in the Hunter family begin to go badly awry - marital breakdown, rowdy teenage parties, attempted suicide - Prince’s responsibilities threaten to overwhelm him and he is forced to break the Labrador Pact and take desperate action to save his Family.
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When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.
\nAmong the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.
\nFilled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.
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Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
When your life flashes before your eyes, where would you stop?
\nNo one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there. The chance to re-live the moments that meant most. To see what kind of person you really were.
\nFor Wilbur his best days were with Maggie, the love of his life. On his honeymoon in Venice.
\nBefore he gave it all away.
\nHe wishes he could go back and live differently. But to do so risks everything . . .
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The societies we live in are increasingly making our minds ill, making it feel as though the way we live is engineered to make us unhappy. When Matt Haig developed panic disorder, anxiety, and depression as an adult, it took him a long time to work out the ways the external world could impact his mental health in both positive and negative ways.
\nNotes on a Nervous Planet collects his observations, taking a look at how the various social, commercial and technological \"advancements\" that have created the world we now live in can actually hinder our happiness. Haig examines everything from broader phenomena like inequality, social media, and the news; to things closer to our daily lives, like how we sleep, how we exercise, and even the distinction we draw between our minds and our bodies.
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Terence Cave, intellectual, music-lover and owner of Cave Antiques, has experienced more than his share of tragedies. His mother's suicide and his young wife's death at the hands of burglars left him to bring up his young twins alone. And now one of them has died in a grotesque accident as a result of bullying.
\nBryony, the remaining twin, has always been the family's great hope: a golden teenager, in love with her cello and her pony, clever, sweet and eager to please. Now that she is all Terence has left, he realises that his one duty in life is to keep her safe from the world's malign forces, whatever that may take. As he starts to follow his grieving daughter's movements, and enforces a draconian set of rules purely for her own safety, the voices in his head convince him to protect her innocence at any cost.
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Just about everyone knows a family like the Radleys. Many of us grew up next door to one. They are a modern family, averagely content, averagely dysfunctional, living in a staid and quiet suburban English town. Peter is an overworked doctor whose wife, Helen, has become increasingly remote and uncommunicative.
\nRowan, their teenage son, is being bullied at school, and their anemic daughter, Clara, has recently become a vegan. They are typical, that is, save for one devastating exception: Peter and Helen are vampires and have - for seventeen years - been abstaining by choice from a life of chasing blood in the hope that their children could live normal lives.
\nOne night, Clara finds herself driven to commit a shocking - and disturbingly satisfying - act of violence, and her parents are forced to explain their history of shadows and lies. A police investigation is launched that uncovers a richness of vampire history heretofore unknown to the general public.
\nAnd when the malevolent and alluring Uncle Will, a practicing vampire, arrives to throw the police off Clara’s trail, he winds up throwing the whole house into temptation and turmoil and unleashing a host of dark secrets that threaten the Radleys’ marriage.
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Matt Haig’s accessible and life-affirming memoir of his struggle with depression, and how his triumph over the illness taught him to live.
\nLike nearly one in five people, Matt Haig suffers from depression. Reasons to Stay Alive is Matt’s inspiring account of how, minute by minute and day by day, he overcame the disease with the help of reading, writing, and the love of his parents and his girlfriend (and now-wife), Andrea. And eventually, he learned to appreciate life all the more for it.
\nEveryone’s lives are touched by mental illness: if we do not suffer from it ourselves, then we have a friend or loved one who does. Matt’s frankness about his experiences is both inspiring to those who feel daunted by depression and illuminating to those who are mystified by it. Above all, his humor and encouragement never let us lose sight of hope.
\nSpeaking as his present self to his former self in the depths of depression, Matt is adamant that the oldest cliché is the truest - there is light at the end of the tunnel. He teaches us to celebrate the small joys and moments of peace that life brings, and reminds us that there are always reasons to stay alive.
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No one knows how to destroy the Ash.
\nTwo years ago, the flesh-eating microbots escaped from a lab in France and quickly spread across the globe. Twenty percent of humanity was killed in under a month. The people who managed to seal themselves inside survived, but now they're only able to access the outside world through remote-controlled drones or hazmat suits.
\nKai Braddock is one of those survivors. He used to be a cop, but the machine plague and a bitter divorce led to him quitting the department. Now he tracks down bounties via drone, eats cricket burgers with his two sons online, and spends every waking hour in a 70 square-foot studio in downtown Los Angeles.
\nBut when his partner is murdered while helping him locate a missing scientist, Braddock realises he'll have to do what almost no one has done in over twenty-six months: He'll have to go outside.
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An energetic and impassioned work of popular science about scientists who have had to fight for their revolutionary ideas to be accepted - from Darwin to Pasteur to modern day Nobel Prize winners.
\nFor two decades, Matt Kaplan has covered science for the Economist. He’s seen breakthroughs often occur in spite of, rather than because of, the behavior of the research community, and how support can be withheld for those who don’t conform or have the right connections. In this passionately argued and entertaining book, Kaplan narrates the history of the 19th century Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis, who realized that Childbed fever - a devastating infection that only struck women who had recently given birth - was spread by doctors not washing their hands. Semmelweis was met with overwhelming hostility by those offended at the notion that doctors were at fault, and is a prime example of how the scientific community often fights new ideas, even when the facts are staring them in the face.
\nIn entertaining prose, Kaplan reveals scientific cases past and present to make his case. Some are familiar, like Galileo being threatened with torture and Nobel laureate Katalin Karikó being fired when on the brink of discovering how to wield mRNA–a finding that proved pivotal for the creation of the Covid-19 vaccine. Others less so, like researchers silenced for raising safety concerns about new drugs, and biologists ridiculed for revealing major flaws in the way rodent research is conducted. Kaplan shows how the scientific community can work faster and better by making reasonably small changes to the forces that shape it.
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What makes a bridge wobble when it's not meant to? How do billions of dollars mysteriously vanish into thin air? How does a building rock when its resonant frequency matches a gym class leaping to Snap's 1990 hit I've Got The Power? The answer is maths. Or, to be precise, what happens when maths goes wrong in the real world.
\nAs Matt Parker shows us, our modern lives are built on maths: computer programmes, finance, engineering. And most of the time this maths works quietly behind the scenes, until . . . it doesn't. Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches, near-misses and mishaps involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries, the Roman empire and a hapless Olympic shooting team, Matt Parker shows us the bizarre ways maths trips us up, and what this reveals about its essential place in our world.
\nThis book shows how, by making maths our friend, we can learn from its pitfalls. It also contains puzzles, challenges, geometric socks, jokes about binary code and three deliberate mistakes. Getting it wrong has never been more fun.
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An ode to trigonometry, the most important idea in mathematics and the key concept that enables our modern world, from the internationally bestselling author of Humble Pi.
\nContrary to what your friends may have grumbled in high school math class, trigonometry is perhaps the most essential concept humans have ever devised. The simple yet versatile triangle allows us to map the world, launch ships into space, and send cat gifs. Trigonometry also makes it possible to play the piano so that it sounds like a human voice and was crucial to prosecuting the balloon trip company that caused a pig stampede.
\nIn Love Triangle , Matt Parker shares plenty of relevant and irreverent reasons we should all show a lot more love for the triangles in our lives. He tells extraordinary and entertaining stories of mathematicians, philosophers, and engineers - starting with Pythagoras - who dared to take triangles seriously. Humans have been using triangles for thousands of years to measure the earth and build structures. But trigonometry also underpins all modern data technology and is the essential component of GPS - without triangles, we’d still be at the gas station asking for directions.
\nParker convincingly makes the case that trigonometry is vital, fun, and deeply useful. Its rules are the hidden pattern beneath the surface of just about everything we encounter, and we wouldn’t exist without them. Luckily, it’s never too late to learn!
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Even at the ragged edge of civilisation, some lines should not be crossed.
\nEveryone believes Adam to be something he’s not. Sometimes that’s because he’s told them a story. Sometimes he’s told himself one. But when Adam joins an Alaskan fishing crew that’s promising quick money, the dangerous work and harsh lifestyle strip away all fabrications and force a dark-hearted exploration of who he really is.
\nOn the unforgiving Bering Sea, Adam finds the adventure and authenticity of a fisherman’s life revelatory. The labor required to seize bounty from the ocean invigorates him, and the often crude comradery accompanies a welcome, hard-earned wisdom. But when a strike threatens the entire season and violence stalks the waves, Adam is thrust into a struggle for survival at the edge of the world, where evolutionary and social forces collide for outcomes beyond anyone’s control.
Eld should’ve known better. Hell, he did know better. But watching lesser men hit big paydays - men who didn’t fight in Europe - grew unbearable. So, when the opportunity arises, he reaches for a little something extra for his family, and even more for himself. With Prohibition expiring in a matter of months, his turn from fisherman to rumrunner was supposed to be temporary. It seemed the perfect plan. Even Maggie, Eld’s normally sensible wife, is on board.
\nThings don’t go to plan. Amid the region’s players battle to capture the biggest piece of a shrinking pie, Eld’s tiny family operation is caught in the crossfire. One bitterly cold night packing whiskey across Lake Huron costs Eld dearly, and his family even more.
\nHunted by gangsters and squeezed by the Depression, Eld, Maggie, and the children are Eld to Canada on a doomed quest, Maggie and her daughter forced into finding sanctuary in a faith more cult than religion. When they finally reunite, they may not even recognise each other as the same people who crossed their fingers and threw the dice for a shot at a better life.
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What was it like? It's the only thing anyone wants to know about war - and the last thing Corporal Dean Pusey wants to talk about, at least not with one of these fat and happy civilians crowding the bar. Dean is two months free from the Marine Corps, and life back in his Indiana hometown is anything but peaceful.
\nThat's when the woman next to him offers to buy him a drink. Max is nice - gorgeous, funny, easy to talk to. Dean doesn't dare tell her about the sheep he took care of on his first deployment, only to watch it get torn to shreds by a pack of wild dogs; or the naked, shivering Iraqi teenager his platoon detained after an IED blast.
\nHe needs to leave all that behind and become a new person-the kind who sticks around when Max gets pregnant. He's white-knuckling it, trying to keep calm, and it's not easy. Harder still when his friend and comrade Ruiz starts showing up all over the place like he's been invited-like he didn't die a year ago. He has Max now, he has his baby daughter, River. He doesn't have time for ghosts.
\nWith his signature black humor, hard-eyed honesty, and stylistic ingenuity, Matt Young delivers a novel that turns the typical war story on its head-beginning not with enlistment but with retirement, and locating the life-or-death stakes not in battle, but in the domestic theaters of fatherhood, family, forgiveness, and love.
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Casch Abbey is a waitress, single mom, and recreational boxer who falls in love first with a veteran who secretly grows pot on a rich man’s land in Vermont’s Green Mountains, and then with a painkiller that eases her long-buried pain.
\nAfter her foot is crushed under the wheel of a station wagon, Casch loses her waitressing gig and goes broke - and the meds for her foot are her only source of relief. But when the drug is recalled due to outcries of widespread addiction, Casch’s dependence imperils her already tenuous life, as cravings lead her into her small town’s simmering netherworld.
\nIntimate and exhilarating, The Untended will upend your every assumption about who is a hero and who is worthy of love.
From popular personality and storyteller Matt Eicheldinger, a collection of 100 true, uplifting short stories that capture the meaning behind everyday encounters, and the small lessons woven in-between.
\nWhen middle school teacher Matt Eicheldinger had a student who wouldn’t speak at all, he decided to leave her a sticky note on her desk everyday, each one with a funny cartoon or encouraging messages. Years later, she returned to share she had saved every sticky note he had left to encourage her, leaving Eicheldinger to wonder what other extraordinary moments he missed from seemingly ordinary interactions.
\nLuckily, he had a way to revisit them all. For the past fifteen years, Eicheldinger has written down moments like this from his classroom, capturing literally hundreds of daily interactions between himself, students, and families.
\nSticky Notes offers readers a chance to experience one hundred of these stories that capture friendship, grief, joy, and so much more. Although each story can stand on its own, Eicheldinger offers a new perspective that will help you understand what he has grown to learn over the years: there is always a greater message within the story, we just need to be ready to see it.
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Cloning is a luxury for the wealthy. For Chance Harker, it’s a way of getting on with his lives. Five years ago, when he was sixteen, he and his brother, Marley, were murdered in a kidnapping gone wrong. Chance was revived - and his grieving parents met his existence with anger, neglect, and aversion. The public, though? They can’t get enough of the death-defying stunts he has parlayed into a social media spectacle.
\nBut after Chance’s latest “refresh,” he awakens to accusations that he’s killed Lee Conway, a stranger Chance has never met. Has one of his clones? With no memory of his previous selves, and working fast before he’s arrested, Chance digs into Conway’s background, the mysteries of his own life - and death - and the tragic abduction that tore his family apart.
\nAll Chance has to do is stay ahead of the LAPD; his kidnappers, who are back on the hunt; and a growing mob of incensed protesters outraged that a rich clone appears to be getting away with murder.
After a period of brutal isolation in a CIA black-site prison, former Marine and gifted hacker Gibson Vaughn is free - but with no idea where he was or how much time he’s lost. Struggling to maintain his grip on reality, he races to return to the life he left behind.
\nAngry and disoriented, his thoughts turn to vengeance and the man responsible for his rendition. But Gibson’s drive for retribution and the ghosts of his violent past plunge him back into a world he wants only to escape.
\nAs old enemies and once-trusted allies resurface, the architects of a murderous conspiracy will beat a sinister path to Gibson’s doorstep. In discovering the shocking truth about those he thought he knew best, only one thing is certain: those responsible must be made to answer . . . and pay.
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In the near future, advances in medicine and quantum computing make human cloning a reality. For the wealthy, cheating death is the ultimate luxury. To anticloning militants, it’s an abomination against nature. For young Constance “Con” D’Arcy, who was gifted her own clone by her late aunt, it’s terrifying.
\nAfter a routine monthly upload of her consciousness - stored for that inevitable transition - something goes wrong. When Con wakes up in the clinic, it’s eighteen months later. Her recent memories are missing. Her original, she’s told, is dead. If that’s true, what does that make her?
\nThe secrets of Con’s disorienting new life are buried deep. So are those of how and why she died. To uncover the truth, Con is retracing the last days she can recall, crossing paths with a detective who’s just as curious. On the run, she needs someone she can trust. Because only one thing has become clear: Con is being marked for murder - all over again.
Lying low on the sun-kissed coast of Portugal is a far cry from twenty-four-hour lockdown in a CIA black-site prison. But even in paradise, Gibson Vaughn is a long way from being home free.
\nWith the feds hot on his heels, he and his crew of fellow fugitives know they can’t hide in a sunny beach town forever. And before they go on the run again, their generous host - a wealthy drug smuggler - expects to be paid for his hospitality. And paid double.
\nHis price? A nearly impossible operation that Gibson and his gang must pull off to retrieve a king’s ransom in hijacked narcotics. Even if they make it out alive, they’ll have to face the wrath of a ruthless Mexican cartel that plays dirty . . . and is used to winning.
\nBut when Gibson discovers there’s far more than drugs at stake, the heist becomes a daring mission of rescue and mercy - and righteous vengeance.
To stop a terrorist threat, Gibson Vaughn must trust a man who can’t be trusted.
\nFormer Marine, brilliant hacker, and wanted fugitive Gibson Vaughn is off the grid in the Caymans. Until the ice-cold assassin Tinsley draws him out of the shadows. Complying with the man who murdered his father and left Gibson for dead? In the war against terror, never say never.
\nEspecially when half a million lives are at stake.
\nTinsley’s in possession of a heavily encrypted thumb drive. But the details of the plot - the motive, the targets, and the day of execution - are a mystery. The one certainty is that a tenuous truce must be made. After joining forces with Tinsley, Gibson and his team have their mission: access the drive and abort a massacre in the making.
\nHow far can Gibson really trust Tinsley? Time will tell. Right now they’re both running out of it as they race across Europe to find an elusive cyber-psycho behind the mother of all malware.
\nWhoever said to keep your friends close but your enemies closer never meant it like this.
When jailed billionaire Charles Merrick hints publicly that he has stashed a fortune in an offshore cache, a school of sharks converges upon his release from federal prison. Among his swindled victims is Judge Hammond Birk, the man who saved Gibson Vaughn’s life when he was a troubled teenager.
\nNow Gibson intends to repay that debt by recovering Merrick’s victims’ money. But Gibson isn’t the only one on the trail of the hidden fortune. The promise of billions has drawn a horde of ruthless treasure hunters, including an edgy ex-con, a female bartender with a mysterious history, a Chinese spy with a passion for fly-fishing, and a veritable army of hardened mercenaries.
\nTo stay ahead of the sharks and win justice for his mentor, Gibson will need all his formidable skills. But at the end of the road, he’ll still have to face “Poisonfeather” - a geopolitical secret that just might get Gibson killed . . . or worse.
A decade ago, fourteen-year-old Suzanne Lombard, the daughter of Benjamin Lombard - then a senator, now a powerful vice president running for the presidency - disappeared in the most sensational missing-person case in the nation’s history.
\nStill unsolved, the mystery remains a national obsession. For legendary hacker and marine Gibson Vaughn, the case is personal - Suzanne Lombard had been like a sister to him. On the tenth anniversary of her disappearance, the former head of Benjamin Lombard’s security asks for Gibson’s help in a covert investigation of the case, with new evidence in hand.
\nHaunted by tragic memories, he jumps at the chance to uncover what happened all those years ago. Using his military and technical prowess, he soon discovers multiple conspiracies surrounding the Lombard family - and he encounters powerful, ruthless political players who will do anything to silence him and his team.
\nWith new information surfacing that could threaten Lombard’s bid for the presidency, Gibson must stay one step ahead as he navigates a dangerous web to get to the truth.
No longer a trainee but a freshly-minted Detective Constable, Joseph Stark finds himself working a double homicide. Thomas and Mary Chase were shot dead in their London home, and first impressions are that this is a burglary-gone-bad.
But Stark is unconvinced. Burglary-murders are usually a tragic case of unfortunate timing, but this feels like something else entirely. And when evidence arises to link this murder to a twenty year old cold case the hunt is well and truly on.
Julian Sinclair is a serial killer. Charming, manipulative, deadly. He hunted girls for sport, and it's high time justice was served.
\nBut when Sinclair's conviction is thrown out in court, DC Joseph Stark and DS Fran Millhaven are forced to protect the man they're sure is guilty from those who would rather see him pay in blood.
\nThen another girl dies. And Sinclair can't have killed her from his hospital bed . . . Is a killer lurking in someone they never suspected?
\n
Lucinda Drummond, art history expert, was beautiful, clever, successful and loved.
\nWhen she is found at the bottom of her museum's Tulip Staircase during the pinnacle event of her career, people are as shocked as they are suspicious.
\nWho could have wanted her dead?
\nDetectives Joe Stark and Fran Millhaven are quick on the case, leading them into a world of high art and extravagant wealth that proves far more twisted than they could have imagined.
\nAs the bodies begin to mount, and the case grows ever more complex, Stark and Fran must race discover the perpetrator - before the next victim falls . . .
\n
Europe is in the grip of the Dark Ages, but there is a light in the dark: Baghdad.\n
\n\nThe great city has become a center of learning, populated by scholars, \nmerchants, and explorers from all across the known world. But danger \nlurks in the desert . . . and Dak, Sera, and Riq must act fast to save \nthe world's greatest library from utter destruction.
David Trent is an aspiring novelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to navigate his ambitions in a place that has writers around every corner.
\nHe lives in an apartment above a Very Famous Author named Silas Hale who, beneath his celebrated image, is a bombastic, vindictive monster who refuses to allow his new neighbor even to make eye contact with him.
\nUntil young David wins a prestigious award for his new book.
\nSuddenly Silas is interested - if intensely spiteful.
\nBut soon, the administrator of the award comes to David with alarming news, forcing the writer into a desperate set of choices.
\nFate intervenes - with shocking consequences . . .
A long, burning summer in Sydney. A young woman found murdered in the deserted grounds of an elite boarding school. A serial killer preying on victims along the banks of the Parramatta River. A city on edge.
\nAdam Bowman, a battling journalist who grew up as the son of a teacher at Prince Albert College, might be the only person who can uncover the links between the school murder and the 'Blue Moon Killer'. But he will have to go into the darkest places of his childhood to piece together the clues.
\nDetective Sergeant Rose Riley, meanwhile, is part of the taskforce desperately trying to find the killer before he strikes again. Adam Bowman's excavation of his past might turn out to be Rose's biggest trump card or it may bring the whole investigation crashing down, and put her own life in danger.
A young woman is found dead in her isolated town house in rural Red Creek, an up-and-coming wine tourism destination outside Sydney. No forced entry. No signs of struggle. And her geologist husband has an alibi, though it’s not exactly solid. While a tabloid journalist is quick to spin her own damning narrative, homicide detective Rose Riley is questioning everything she sees - especially in a rapidly developing community that already seems on edge.
\nWhile Riley and her partner, Priya Patel, work the case with a local detective, crime reporter Adam Bowman follows his own leads. Then forensic evidence matches that of a pair of unsolved murders elsewhere in two other married women, murdered months apart yet in the exact same manner. Riley realises she’s dealing with a serial killer. But one whose victims weren’t random. These women were chosen, watched, and targeted for a purpose.
\nAs the secrets in this small town emerge, the suspects mount. Now Riley must unearth the deadliest secret of all - the true motive behind the murders - before another woman dies.
When Abigail agreed to move to Soap Lake, Washington, for her husband’s research, she expected old-growth forests and craft beer, folksy neighbors and the world’s largest lava lamp. Instead, after her husband jets off to Poland for a research trip, she finds herself alone, in a town surrounded by sand and haunted by its own urban legends.
\nBut when a young boy runs through the desert into Abigail’s arms, her life becomes entwined with his and the questions surrounding the death of his mother, Esme. In Abigail’s search for answers, she enlists the help of a recovering addict turned librarian, a grieving brother, a broken motel owner and a mentally shattered conspiracy theorist to unearth Esme’s tragic past, the town’s violent history and the secret magic locked in the lake her husband was sent there to study.
\nAs she gets closer to the answers, past and present crimes begin to collide, and Abigail finds herself gaining the unwelcome attention of the town’s unofficial mascot, the rubber-suited orchard stalker known as TreeTop, a specter who seems to be lurking in every dark shadow and around every shady corner.
\n
These are dark times for the Kingdom of Khalad. As the magical mists of the Veil devour the land, the populace struggles beneath the rule of ruthless noble houses and their uncaring immortal king. Kat doesn’t care about any of that. A talented thief, she’s pursuing one big score that will settle the debt that destroyed her family. No easy feat in a realm where indentured spirits hold vigil over every vault and treasure room.
\nHowever, Kat has a unique gift: she can speak to those spirits, and even command them. And she has no qualms using her power to her advantage. Kat’s not a hero. She just wants to be free. To have her old life back. But as rebellion rekindles and the war for Khalad’s future begins, everyone - Kat included - will have to pick a side.
For the first time in a millennium, the kingdom of Khalad is divided. The Battle of Athenoch has fanned the spark of Bashar Vallant’s rebellion to a raging flame. Tyzanta, jewel of the east, has declared for his cause, and other cities have followed. Vallant, the people’s hero, may soon be powerful enough to challenge Caradan Diar, Khalad’s immortal king.
\nBut such power demands great personal sacrifice.
\nAfflicted with omen rot after channeling the Deadwinds to save Athenoch from the koilos army, Kat searches for a means to stop the disease killing her as it did her mother. Her journey will uncover secrets long since buried - secrets concerning her past, her family and the kingdom itself. Eventually she’ll learn that the past never stays buried in Khalad - and that the truth can cut deeper than any blade.
While the armies of the Hadari Empire invade the borderlands, the Republic’s noble families plot against each other, divided by personal ambition.
Viktor Akadra is the Republic’s champion and conqueror of the rebellious south. A warrior without equal, he also hides a secret that would see him burned as a heretic.
Josiri Trelan would gladly see Viktor condemned to the flames - vengeance for a rebellion crushed and a mother slain. And while Josiri plots fresh insurrection, his sister, Calenne, is determined to escape their tarnished legacy and break the shackles of the past.
As dark days beckon, these three must overcome their differences to save the Republic. Yet decades of bad blood are not easily set aside. Victory - if it comes at all - will command a higher price than they could have imagined.
For the first time in many years, the Tressian Republic and the Hadari Empire are at peace. But war never sleeps.
\nIn Tregard, Empress Melanna Saranal struggles to protect a throne won at great cost.
\nIn Tressia, Lord Protector Viktor Droshna seeks to harness forbidden power to restore all he's lost.
\nAs the sins of the past are once more laid bare, every road leads to war. Darkness gathers, alliances shatter and one final battle looms. What hope remains, lies within the light.
A year has passed since an unlikely alliance saved the Tressian Republic from fire and darkness, at great cost. Thousands perished, and Viktor Akadra - the Republic's champion - has disappeared.
While the ruling council struggles to mend old wounds, other factions sense opportunity. The insidious Parliament of Crows schemes in the shadows, while to the east the Hadari Emperor gathers his armies. As turmoil spreads across the Republic, its ripples are felt in the realms of the divine.
War is coming . . . and this time the gods themselves will take sides.
The kingdom of Khalad is ruled by a new and brutal despot and its rebels scattered across its vast lands. With folk hero Vallant missing, Kat is now the leader of the rebellion.
\nWhen an assassination attempt rattles the kingdom, Kat turns to a powerful new ally for help. The cost of victory will be high, but time is running out to save Khalad.
Was it one of the war’s most memorable feats of valor or an act of desperation, even madness?
\n\n
In Out of the Sky, Matti Friedman unravels one of the strangest episodes of World War II: In 1944, a team of young women and men who had escaped the Holocaust made the inconceivable choice to parachute back into Nazi-occupied Europe under the cover of a British military operation. Yet by the end of the mission, not a single Nazi was harmed and not a single Jew was saved, and many of the parachutists died in the process. Even so, some of their names would become legendary, especially that of twenty-three-year-old Hannah Senesh, the author of the beloved Hebrew song “Eli, Eli.” Their story would become one of the young state of Israel’s founding myths - but what exactly was the mission, and what had the parachutists actually accomplished? What made them heroes?
\n\n
Using thousands of original documents from once-secret files, manuscripts, memoirs, and unpublished letters, Matti Friedman follows four of the parachutists from the spring of 1944 to the operation’s dramatic end that winter. In Out of the Sky, he tells the gripping and surprising tale of a forgotten moment, demonstrating how storytelling itself can have a power even greater than warfare. And in exploring the line between myth and reality, heroism and futility, he creates an argument that has resonance in our own time.
\n
Amateur sleuth Stevie Bell needs a good murder. After catching a killer at her high school, she’s back at home for a normal (that means boring) summer.
\nBut then she gets a message from the owner of Sunny Pines, formerly known as Camp Wonder Falls - the site of the notorious unsolved case, the Box in the Woods Murders. Back in 1978, four camp counselors were killed in the woods outside of the town of Barlow Corners, their bodies left in a gruesome display. The new owner offers Stevie an invitation: Come to the camp and help him work on a true crime podcast about the case.
\nStevie agrees, as long as she can bring along her friends from Ellingham Academy. Nothing sounds better than a summer spent together, investigating old murders.
\nBut something evil still lurks in Barlow Corners. When Stevie opens the lid on this long-dormant case, she gets much more than she bargained for. The Box in the Woods will make room for more victims. This time, Stevie may not make it out alive.
\n
The fire wasn’t Marlowe Wexler’s fault. Dates should be hot, but not hot enough to warrant literal firefighters. Akilah, the girl Marlowe has been in love with for years, will never go out with her again. No one dates an accidental arsonist.
\nWith her house-sitting career up in flames, it seems the universe owes Marlowe a new summer job, and that’s how she ends up at Morning House, a mansion built on an island in the 1920s and abandoned shortly thereafter. It’s easy enough, giving tours. Low risk of fire. High chance of getting bored talking about stained glass and nut cutlets and Prohibition.
\nOh, and the deaths. Did anyone mention the deaths?
Ellingham Academy must be cursed. Three people are now dead. One, a victim of either a prank gone wrong or a murder. Another, dead by misadventure. And now, an accident in Burlington has claimed another life. All three in the wrong place at the wrong time. All at the exact moment of Stevie’s greatest triumph . . .
\nShe knows who Truly Devious is. She’s solved it. The greatest case of the century.
\nAt least, she thinks she has. With this latest tragedy, it’s hard to concentrate on the past. Not only has someone died in town, but David disappeared of his own free will and is up to something. Stevie is sure that somehow - somehow - all these things connect. The three deaths in the present. The deaths in the past. The missing Alice Ellingham and the missing David Eastman. Somewhere in this place of riddles and puzzles there must be answers.
\nThen another accident occurs as a massive storm heads toward Vermont. This is too much for the parents and administrators. Ellingham Academy is evacuated. Obviously, it’s time for Stevie to do something stupid. It’s time to stay on the mountain and face the storm - and a murderer.
\n
Rory Deveaux has changed in ways she never could have imagined since moving to London and beginning a new life at boarding school. As if her newfound ability to see ghosts hadn’t complicated her life enough, Rory’s recent brush with the Jack the Ripper copycat has left her with an even more unusual and intense power.
\nNow, a new string of inexplicable deaths is threatening London, and Rory has evidence that they are no coincidence. Something sinister is going on, and it is up to her to convince the city’s secret ghost-policing squad to listen before it’s too late.
\n
The day Louisiana teenager Rory Deveaux arrives in London marks a memorable occasion. For Rory, it's the start of a new life at a London boarding school. But for many, this will be remembered as the day a series of brutal murders broke out across the city, gruesome crimes mimicking the horrific Jack the Ripper events of more than a century ago.
\nSoon Rippermania\" takes hold of modern-day London, and the police are left with few leads and no witnesses. Except one. Rory spotted the man police believe to be the prime suspect. But she is the only one who saw him. Even her roommate, who was walking with her at the time, didn't notice the mysterious man.
\nSo why can only Rory see him? And more urgently, why has Rory become his next target? In this edge-of-your-seat thriller, full of suspense, humor, and romance, Rory will learn the truth about the secret ghost police of London and discover her own shocking abilities.
\n
Senior year at Ellingham Academy for Stevie Bell isn’t going well. Her boyfriend, David, is studying in London. Her friends are obsessed with college applications. With the cold case of the century solved, Stevie is adrift. There is nothing to distract her from the questions pinging around her brain - questions about college, love, and life in general.
\nRelief comes when David invites Stevie and her friends to join him for study abroad, and his new friend Izzy introduces her to a double-murder cold case. In 1995, nine friends from Cambridge University went to a country house and played a drunken game of hide-and-seek. Two were found in the woodshed the next day, murdered with an ax.
\nThe case was assumed to be a burglary gone wrong, but one of the remaining seven saw something she can’t explain. This was no break-in. Someone’s lying about what happened in the woodshed.
\nSeven suspects. Two murders. One killer still playing a deadly game.
\n
Rory and her friends are reeling from a series of sudden and tragic events. While racked with grief, Rory tries to determine if she acted in time to save a member of the squad. If she did, how do you find a ghost? Also, Rory's classmate Charlotte has been kidnapped by Jane and her nefarious organisation. Evidence is uncovered of a forty-year-old cult, ten missing teenagers, and a likely mass murder. Everything indicates that Charlotte's in danger, and it seems that something much bigger and much more terrible is coming.
Time is running out as Rory fights to find her friends and the ghost squad struggles to stop Jane from unleashing her spectral nightmare on the entire city. In the process, they'll discover the existence of an organisation that underpins London itself - and Rory will learn that someone she trusts has been keeping a tremendous secret.
Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early twentieth century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. \"A place\" he said, \"where learning is a game.\"
\nShortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym, Truly Devious. It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history.
\nTrue-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester. But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder.
\n
All Stevie Bell wanted was to find the key to the Ellingham mystery, but instead she found her classmate dead. And while she solved that murder, the crimes of the past are still waiting in the dark. Just as Stevie feels she’s on the cusp of putting it together, her parents pull her out of Ellingham academy.
For her own safety they say. She must move past this obsession with crime. Now that Stevie’s away from the school of topiaries and secret tunnels, and her strange and endearing friends, she begins to feel disconnected from the rest of the world. At least she won’t have to see David anymore. David, who she kissed. David, who lied to her about his identity - son of despised politician Edward King.
Then King himself arrives at her house to offer a deal: He will bring Stevie back to Ellingham immediately. In return, she must play nice with David. King is in the midst of a campaign and can’t afford his son stirring up trouble. If Stevie’s at school, David will stay put.
The tantalising riddles behind the Ellingham murders are still waiting to be unraveled, and Stevie knows she’s so close. But the path to the truth has more twists and turns than she can imagine - and moving forward involves hurting someone she cares for.
Being a first-generation Asian American immigrant is hard. You know what’s harder? Being the daughter of one. Samantha Kang has never gotten along with her mother, Priscilla - and has never understood her bougie-nightmare, John Hughes high school expectations. After a huge fight between them, Sam is desperate to move forward - but instead, finds herself thrown back. Way back.
\nTo her shock, Sam finds herself back in high school . . . in the ’90s . . . with a 17-year-old Priscilla. Now this Gen Z girl must try to fit into an analog world. She’s got the fashion down, but everything else is baffling. What is “microfiche”? What’s with the casual racism and misogyny? And why does it feel like Priscilla is someone she could actually be . . . friends with?
\nSam's blast to the past has her finding the right romance in the wrong time while questioning everything she thought she knew about her mom . . . and herself. Will Sam figure out what she needs to do to fix things for her mom so that she can go back to a time she understands? Brimming with heart and humor, Maurene Goo’s time-travel romance asks big questions about what exactly one inherits and loses in the immigrant experience.
\n
From the author of I Believe in a Thing Called Love, a laugh-out-loud story of love, new friendships, and one unique food truck.
Clara Shin lives for pranks and disruption. When she takes one joke too far, her dad sentences her to a summer working on his food truck, the KoBra, alongside her uptight classmate Rose Carver. Not the carefree summer Clara had imagined. But maybe Rose isn't so bad. Maybe the boy named Hamlet (yes, Hamlet) crushing on her is pretty cute. Maybe Clara actually feels invested in her dad's business. What if taking this summer seriously means that Clara has to leave her old self behind? With Maurene Goo's signature warmth and humor, The Way You Make Me Feel is a relatable story of falling in love and finding yourself in the places you'd never thought to look.
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "Young Adult", "Contemporary" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Maurene Goo - Way You Make Me Feel, The.jpeg", "mtime": 1769408805039.8506, "size": 655926, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:23:10.330Z" }, "Maurice Broaddus - Breath of Oblivion": { "title": "Breath of Oblivion", "author": "Maurice Broaddus", "description": "Beyond the Orun Gate, Epyc Ro and her elite soldiers are stranded. Capturing an alien ship and searching for a way home, they discover a stowaway who may be the key to overcoming the alien forces swarming all around them.
\nOn board the Cypher, Captain Stacia Chikeke is struggling to keep her ship and its fractured crew together. But the discovery of an interstellar phenomenon and the opportunity to explore unites them in a singular purpose, for now.
\nIn the slums of Indianapolis, Wachiru Adisa works to free the children of the diaspora detained in Old Earth facilities, only to be captured and sent to a nightmarish criminal justice facility, the Panopticon.
\nOn Old Earth, Ishant Sangsuwangul is the newly assigned liaison to the corporate entity running the government there. He feels like a prisoner, but must find a way to stem the tide of conflict as animosity toward his people grows.
\nIn the Badlands of Mars, Amachi Adisa and her new teacher Nehanda begin her training to learn from her past, chart her future, and unlock the power that is her birthright.
\nIn the Dreaming City, the lunar heart of Muungano power, Maulana Buhari struggles with how to lead his people. Is now the time for isolation or aggression?
\nTogether they, and all of Muungano, will guide the empire forward by any means necessary, as enemies of old and new extraterrestrial threats mount.
\n
The Muungano empire strived and struggled to form a utopia when they split away from old earth. Freeing themselves from the endless wars and oppression of their home planet in order to shape their own futures and create a far-reaching coalition of city-states that stretched from Earth and Mars to Titan.
\nWith the wisdom of their ancestors, the leadership of their elders, the power and vision of their scientists and warriors they charted a course to a better future. But the old powers could not allow them to thrive and have now set in motion new plots to destroy all that they've built.
\nIn the fire to come they will face down their greatest struggle yet.
\nAmachi Adisa and other young leaders will contend with each other for the power to galvanize their people and chart the next course for the empire.
\nFela Buhari and her elite unit will take the fight to regions not seen by human eyes, but no training will be enough to bring them all home.
\nStacia Chikeke, captain of the starship Cypher, will face down enemies across the stars, and within her own vessel, as she searches for the answers that could save them all.
\n
As the ash and chaos from Mount Rainier's eruption swirled and finally settled, the story of the Greenloop massacre has passed unnoticed, unexamined . . . until now.
But the journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town's bloody wreckage, capture a tale too harrowing - and too earth-shattering in its implications - to be forgotten.
In these pages, Max Brooks brings Kate's extraordinary account to light for the first time, faithfully reproducing her words alongside his own extensive investigations into the massacre and the legendary beasts behind it.
Kate's is a tale of unexpected strength and resilience, of humanity's defiance in the face of a terrible predator's gaze, and inevitably, of savagery and death.
Yet it is also far more than that.
Because if what Kate Holland saw in those days is real, then we must accept the impossible. We must accept that the creature known as Bigfoot walks among us--and that it is a beast of terrible strength and ferocity.
Part survival narrative, part bloody horror tale, part scientific journey into the boundaries between truth and fiction, this is a Bigfoot story as only Max Brooks could chronicle it - and like none you've ever read before.
China thought it would be a quick war, an easy war. But now, years later, as the insurgency on the streets of Los Angeles escalates but the propaganda never changes, a Chinese officer can’t keep silent any longer.
\nTorn between loyalty to his country and loyalty to his troops, he writes a brutally honest - and possibly suicidal - letter home to unmask the truth.
\n
The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.
\n\n
Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.
\n\n
Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, \"By excluding the human factor, aren't we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn't the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as 'the living dead'?\"
\n\n
Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission.
\n
During a celestial civil war, an angel-like soldier searches for her missing brother.
When the witness protection program fails catastrophically, Sarah Bennett is forced to go on the run, narrowly escaping with her life as she is hunted across London by the organised crime group she is imminently due to testify against.
\nWith the National Crime Agency compromised, private bodyguard Alex Drayce is hired to find Sarah and keep her safe.
\nBut with Britain’s most powerful criminals on their trail, he’ll need to use every weapon in his arsenal to keep them both alive. Because one thing is certain: Sarah knows something these people want to keep hidden, and they’ll go to any lengths to keep it a secret.
\n
Private bodyguard Alex Drayce is on assignment in the States, tasked with protecting a wealthy businessman under threat of assassination.
\nHe is presented with the opportunity to make some quick cash for a week’s work, aiding one Carlos Garcia is finding his daughter, who has gone missing in Las Vegas. A seemingly simple task . . .
\nAs events soon spiral out of control, Alex must go on the run, hunted down by the combined might of the Las Vegas police department, fronted by DI Naomi Ocean, and a ruthless gang out for blood.
\nBut his pursuers should be wary. Alex Drayce is not a man to be taken lightly . . .
\n
Private bodyguard Alex Drayce meets with the SIO in charge of his wife Lily's reopened murder investigation. With forensic evidence linking her death to the killer of another serving police officer, it should be an open-and-shut case.
\nWhen the DNA record comes up blank, Drayce goes on the hunt across the city, a one-man army with no rules. He speaks to witnesses in a manner the police can't, unearthing clues that lead him to a conspiracy between an international organised crime group and the Metropolitan Police.
\nRisking everything to discover the truth, Drayce refuses to rest until those responsible are punished, fulfilling a promise he made to his wife many years ago.
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Kathy Valence is forty-two, mid-divorce, and pregnant with her ex's baby. She's also a modern-day grim reaper employed by S.C.Y.T.H.E. (Secure Collection, Yielding, and Transportation of Human Essences), but frankly that's the easiest part of her life right now. Or at least it was, until her latest client's soul goes missing.
\nWhen she finally tracks down seventeen-year-old Conner Ortiz, he angrily denies he died of natural causes, despite what his file says. He insists that someone at S.C.Y.T.H.E. murdered him, and he demands Kathy find out who and why.
\nKathy has only forty-five days to figure out what happened to Conner and help him move on before the boy's soul is doomed to roam the Earth as a ghost forever. She’s forced to rely on the help of her retired mentor, her almost ex-husband - and some sneaky moves by Conner himself. This is the wildest case of her career . . . and one wrong move could cost Kathy her job, not to mention her life.
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Nora Bird works for S.C.Y.T.H.E., which might seem odd for someone as terrified of death as she is. But ever since her parents died in an accident when she was six, she's been obsessed with avoiding risk, and what better place to learn how to cheat death than the company that employs the nation's grim reapers?
\nThe work enables Nora to learn all about the myriad ways you can kick the bucket, which is comforting . . . until one day, a file crosses her desk with a name she recognises. Her twin brother’s.
\nThe twins haven’t spoken in six months, but Charlie is all Nora has left. Completely against her cautious nature, Nora steals the file and flees, racing to her brother’s house. She begs him to trust her that his death is imminent, and they hit the road (with his parrot, Jessica, who has plenty to say) in an attempt to evade both death and S.C.Y.T.H.E., whose sole mission of collecting souls has been disrupted by Charlie’s continued existence.
\nAlas, every time Nora saves him, a new cause of death appears in his file. Someone is determined to take Charlie out, and Nora will have to use everything she's ever learned about death to discover the culprit.
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This is a story about love, grief and redemption. And a very unusual cat . . .
\nMeet Frankie. He's a cat who knows a thing or two - like that a really perfect piece of string is meant for playing with, not for looping around your neck and hanging from the ceiling. When Frankie does his best to let Richard Gold know that he's playing with the string wrong, he unwittingly saves Gold's life, and neither of them will ever be the same.
\nFrankie moves in with Gold because he has a large TV, an extremely soft bed and mostly serves food on time - except for when he drinks that clear liquid that doesn't smell like water and then refuses to move. But that just won't do, because Frankie has plans, and letting Gold waste away is not one of them.
\nSo begins an extraordinary friendship between two one realist who pays the rent and one noisy freeloader whose zest for life might just snag them a happy ending.
Some say it's better to live as a villain, than to die as a hero. But why choose, when you can go back in time and try each option?
\nRyan “Quicksave” Romano has begun a new time-loop. His goal? To prevent New Rome's destruction at the hands of the vicious Meta-Gang. To do so, our favorite courier must explore both sides of the law: to become a corporate superhero in one loop, and a scenery-chewing supervillain in the next!
\nBut not is all as it seems. What is this heavy secret that the Dynamis corporation keeps hidden from him? Who is this person who seems to remember events from the previous loop? And most importantly, where did his cashmere suit go?
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It's one thing to go back to the beginning, and another to reach the perfect ending.
\nRyan Romano has done it. He has gathered information about all the villains threatening New Rome. He listed all the people he wants to protect. He knows which places he has to blow up and which car he has to steal. All that's left is going back in time one final time, achieve the perfect sequence of events, save everyone, get the girl, and defeat the ultimate enemy.
\nIt's time for the Perfect Run.
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Ryan “Quicksave” Romano is an eccentric adventurer with a strange power: he can create a save-point in time and redo his life whenever he dies. Arriving in New Rome, the glitzy capital of sin of a rebuilding Europe, he finds the city torn between mega-corporations, sponsored heroes, superpowered criminals, and true monsters. It's a time of chaos, where potions can grant the power to rule the world and dangers lurk everywhere.
\nRyan only sees different routes; and from Hero to Villain, he has to try them all. Only then will he achieve his perfect ending . . . no matter how many loops it takes.
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Edira Brillwyn is a threadmender. She holds a rare, lifesaving power that can cure disease and heal injuries in the blink of an eye. But magic always comes with a cost, and saving anyone sacrifices a sliver of her own life. She’s always kept her abilities hidden . . . until the powerful Fernglove family discovers her secret.
\nThe Ferngloves are charming and beautiful, possess powerful magic, and don’t take no for an answer - especially Orin, the head of these ruling elites. When Edira’s brothers unexpectedly contract blight - an incurable virus killing people throughout the town, and an illness too strong for her to heal them both - Orin offers to help. Together at his estate they’ll research a cure while Orin slows their sickness and Edira hones her magic. His kindness and honesty surprises Edira, as does her undeniable attraction to him.
\nBut the other Ferngloves are suspicious of her power and may be more dangerous than the ever-present disease. The longer Edira stays within the confines of the Manor, the more the family’s pristine exterior begins to crack - until Edira discovers a terrifying secret and must choose who she can save and at what cost . . .
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It's the mid-1980s in the tiny town of Longview, Texas. Nellie Anderson, the beautiful daughter of the Anderson family dynasty, has burst onto the scene. She always gets what she wants. What she can't get for herself . . . well, that's what her mother is for. Because Charleigh Andersen, blond, beautiful, and ruthlessly cunning, remembers all too well having to claw her way to the top.
\nWhen she was coming of age on the poor side of East Texas, she was a loser, an outcast, humiliated, and shunned by the in-crowd, whose approval she'd so desperately thirsted for. When a prairie-kissed family moves to town, all trad wife, woodworking dad, wholesome daughter vibes, Charleigh's entire self-made social empire threatens to crumble.
\nWho will be left standing when the dust settles?
Sophie O’Neill left behind an envy-inspiring career and the stressful, competitive life of big-city Chicago to settle down with her husband and young son in a small Texas town. It seems like the perfect life with a beautiful home in an idyllic rural community. But Sophie soon realises that life is now too quiet, and she’s feeling bored and restless.
Then she meets Margot Banks, an alluring socialite who is part of an elite clique secretly known as the Hunting Wives. Sophie finds herself completely drawn to Margot and swept into her mysterious world of late-night target practice and dangerous partying. As Sophie’s curiosity gives way to full-blown obsession, she slips farther away from the safety of her family and deeper into this nest of vipers.
When the body of a teenage girl is discovered in the woods where the Hunting Wives meet, Sophie finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation and her life spiraling out of control.
Jen Hansen, Kittie Spears, and Cynthia Nichols have been friends since childhood. They are now approaching forty and their lives have changed, but their insular East Texas town has not. They stay sane by drinking wine in the afternoons, dishing about other women in the neighborhood, and bonding over the heartache of their own encroaching middle age and raising ungrateful teens.
\nThen Will Harding comes to town, moving into one of the neighborhood’s grandest homes. Mysterious and charming, he seems like the answer to each woman’s prayers. He’s a source of fascination for Jen, Kittie, and Cynthia, but none of them are ready for the way Will disrupts their lives.
\nAs Will grows closer with each of the women, their fascination twists into obsession, threatening their friendships and their families. When he abruptly pulls away, each woman scrambles to discover the source of his affection. But what they’ll uncover is far more sinister and deadly than any of them could have ever imagined.
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A beloved Japanese modern classic that chronicles the author’s twenty-year bond with her cat, meditating on solitude, independence, and the writing life.
\nOn a cool summer evening in 1977, Mayumi Inaba hears a forlorn cry carried by the breeze of Tokyo’s Tamagawa River. She follows the sound to find a newborn kitten, just the size of her palm, dangling from a fence, abandoned. Overcome by tender affection, she takes the cat back to the small apartment she shares with her husband and christens her Mii, and so begins an ineffable bond.
\nOver the next twenty years, we follow Inaba, a poet and novelist by moonlight, through a lifetime of choices and compromises made in pursuit of quiet, solitude, and a space to create. Through it all, her cat, a formidably independent creature in her own right, is her confidante and muse.
\nFrom the late Mayumi Inaba, the winner of the Kawabata Yasunari Prize and the Tanizaki Prize, Mornings Without Mii is more than a love letter to feline companionship - it is a probing, stirring meditation on the forces that enable us to connect, to create, and to build a life.
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There is a cancer at the heart of the mighty Cerani a plague that marks each victim with a fragment of a greater design. Geometric patterns spread across the skin, until the victim dies in agony or becomes a Carrier, doing the bidding of an evil intelligence.
\nThe lost prince Sarmin, the emperor's only surviving brother, lies locked in a hidden room. As the pattern draws closer to the palace he is at last now he awaits a bride, Mesema, a Windreader from the northern plains. She is accustomed to riding free across the grasslands and finds the Imperial Court stifling, but she soon realizes the politicking is not a game. It is in deadly earnest.
\nEyul, the imperial assassin, is burdened by the atrocities he has committed. As commanded, he bears the emperor's Knife to the desert in search of a cure for the pattern-markings.
\nAs long-planned conspiracies boil over into open violence, the enemy moves towards victory. Now only three people stand in his a lost prince, a world-weary killer, and a young girl from the steppes who saw a path in a pattern once, among the waving grasses.
After a lifetime locked in his tower room, Sarmin has come into his own. He is the crowned emperor; he has wed Mesema of the horse tribes; the Pattern-Master is dead. Everything should be happy-ever-after.
\nBut war ignites in the north, and in the palace, Sarmin’s new baby brother is seen as a threat to Mesema’s unborn child. Scheming courtiers surround the Petal Throne, and when a peace envoy is invited, their plots blossom. Sarmin has no royal assassin as proof against their treachery; no one to whom he can give the twisted Knife.
\nThose whom Sarmin saved from the Pattern-Master’s curse, unsure how to live without the Many, turn to Mogyrk, the god of their ancient foe, for comfort. And Sarmin has not been left the remnants of the Many haunt his thoughts; he hears their voices in the darkness of his room. The worst damage left by the Pattern-Master is about to take Sarmin unawares . . .
The world is at breaking point. The nothing, a terrible darkness caused by the festering wounds of a god, bleeds out the very essence of all, of stone, silk - and souls. Emperor Sarmin thought he had stopped it, but it is spreading towards his city, Cerana - and he is powerless to halt the destruction.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tEven as Cerana fills with refugees, the Yrkmen armies arrive with conquest in mind, but they offer to spare Sarmin's people if they will convert to the Mogyrk faith. Time is running out for Sarmin and his wife, Mesema: the Mage's Tower is cracked; the last mage, sent to find a mysterious pattern-worker in the desert, has vanished; and Sarmin believes his kidnapped brother Daveed still has a part to play. The walls are crumbling around them . . .
It's the 1960s and Lorraine Delford has it all - an upstanding family, a perfect boyfriend, and a white picket fence home in North Carolina. Yet every time she looks through her father's telescope, she dreams of the stars. It's ambitious, but Lorraine has always been exceptional.
\nBut when this darling girl-next-door gets pregnant, she's forced to learn firsthand the realities that keep women grounded. To hide their daughter's secret shame, the Delfords send Lorraine to a maternity home for wayward girls. But this is no safe haven - it's a house with dark secrets and suffocating rules. And as Lorraine begins to piece together a new vision for her life, she must decide if she can fight against the powers that aim to take her child or submit to the rules of a society she once admired.
\nPowerful and affecting, The Girls We Sent Away is a timely novel that explores autonomy, belonging, and a quest for agency when the illusions of life-as-you-know-it fall away.
Some folks will do anything to control the wild spirit of a Carolina girl . . .
\nFor fourteen-year-old Leah Payne, life in her beloved coastal Carolina town is as simple as it is free. Devoted to her lumberjack father and running through the wilds where the forest meets the shore, Leah's country life is as natural as the Loblolly pines that rise to greet the Southern sky.
\nWhen an accident takes her father's life, Leah is wrenched from her small community and cast into a family of strangers with a terrible secret. Separated from her only home, Leah is kept apart from the family and forced to act as a helpmate for the well-to-do household. When a moment of violence and prejudice thrusts Leah into the center of the state's shameful darkness, she must fight for her own future against a world that doesn't always value the wild spirit of a Carolina girl.
\nSet in 1935 against the very real backdrop of a recently formed state eugenics board, The Last Carolina Girl is a powerful and heart-wrenching story of fierce strength, forgotten history, autonomy, and the places and people we ultimately call home.
Lulu Mayfield has spent the last five years molding herself into the perfect 1950s housewife. Despite the tragic memories that haunt her and the weight of exhausting expectations, she keeps her husband happy, her household running, and her gelatin salads the talk of the neighborhood. But after she gives birth to her second child, Lulu's carefully crafted life begins to unravel.
\nWhen a new neighbor, Bitsy, moves in, Lulu suspects that something darker lurks behind the woman's constant smile. As her fixation on Bitsy deepens, Lulu is drawn into a web of unsettling truths that threaten to expose the cracks in her own life. The more she uncovers about Bitsy, the more she questions everything she thought she knew - and soon, others begin questioning her sanity. But is Lulu truly losing her mind? Or is she on the verge of discovering a reality too terrifying to accept?
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Gwen is sick of hiding - hiding the fact that she’s taken over her father’s blacksmithing duties, hiding her attraction to girls, hiding her yearning for glory as a knight.
\nMeanwhile, Lady Isobelle of Avington, queen bee of the castle, has never once considered hiding who she is - until now. She’s been chosen as the grand prize in the Tournament of Dragonslayers, to be given to whichever knight can claim her hand. And for the first time in her life, she can’t talk her way out of trouble.
\nWhen Isobelle discovers Gwen’s knightly ambitions, they hatch a scheme together - Gwen will joust in the tournament, disguised as Sir Gawain. Winning means freedom for Isobelle, and glory for Gwen. Losing means . . . well, let’s not go there.
\nOne thing’s for sure: falling in love was never the plan.
\nBut the best laid plans . . . are often trampled all over by dragons.
When the Signal - a mysterious transmission pulsing from the edge of the solar system - arrives, the world changes overnight. Planes are grounded, satellites fail, and speculation abounds. With many believing it could be first contact with extraterrestrial life, humanity holds its breath. But for Alex, a thirtysomething lawyer who’s spent years distancing himself from the unexplainable, the Signal feels deeply personal - the opening of an old wound.
\nDecades ago, Alex and a girl named Ana both vanished for thirty-six hours while on vacation in Palm Springs. When they returned, dazed but unharmed, the six-year-olds' account of the experience had all the hallmarks of an alien abduction. The media frenzy that followed made them famous, and the long months of child stardom, of talk shows and sitcom cameos, forged a seemingly unbreakable bond between them - until the mystery behind their disappearance began to tear them apart.
\nNow, with the world on edge and the Signal growing stronger, Alex is drawn back to the one person who might have answers. Ana - now a professional advocate for experiencers of extraterrestrial contact - is leading a retreat near Palm Springs, a stone's throw from the site of their childhood disappearance. As the former best friends tentatively reunite, what starts as a quest to confront the reality of their original experience becomes a larger reckoning with friendship, faith, family, and truth itself - what it means to see the stories we tell ourselves for what they really are.
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Lucy Barnes has an uncanny ability to know exactly which scent among the flowers she grows will return a person to a long-forgotten memory, a key from their past that has the potential to change their future. When she takes a position as the gardener at a somber, colorless assisted-living home, the evocatively scented flowers that she grows awaken not only the home’s gardens, but the entire community, stirring new pleasures and unearthing long-buried secrets within all who venture through the gardens’ gates.
\nBut when a secret comes to light that threatens to shatter the newly close-knit community, the future suddenly looks uncertain. Have the memories that Lucy has unearthed awakened something wonderful . . . or are some memories better left buried?
Former tennis prodigy Scottie Sinclair is a cheat.
\nOr at least, that’s what the world thinks. After all, who would believe she was secretly drugged by her own father before winning the women’s singles title at Wimbledon?
\nThe tabloids have called “Game, Set, Match” on Scottie’s career - but an offer at redemption, and more importantly revenge, may give her the chance at a clean serve.
\nNico Kotas reigned the tennis world for almost a decade - until an injury took him from the baseline.
\nNow with a clean bill of health, he’s hungry for one last title. But his public image needs a new game plan - and according to his coach, his former rival’s daughter is the perfect advantage.
\nBut with old enemies on the sidelines, scandal is seconds away.
\nBecause, after all, revenge is best served Centre Court.
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In the aftermath of Dylan Bailey’s tenth Grand Slam loss, she decides to put her racket away for good. Until a tempting bet from fellow pro Oliver Anderson convinces her to give it one last shot.
\nIf she sticks it out, and still loses the next tournament, she takes home his US Open Trophy, and is free to walk away from the sport forever. To sweeten the deal, Oliver proposes a twist - he’ll swap his racket for a whistle and coach Dylan in the months leading up to the Australian Open.
\nAfter all, with the solid friendship they’ve built, surely working together could score a game point.
\nThey just need to keep their eyes on the ball and ignore their sizzling tension.
\nAs Oliver and Dylan navigate the unpredictable court, they rediscover their love for the sport, but the feelings they share could complicate things. With the world watching their every move, they must ensure their partnership stays on-court.
\nBut as the lines between coach and player blur, especially in a sport where every detail is scrutinised, keeping their feelings in check may be their toughest match yet.
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Once queen of the court, Inés is limping through qualifiers. And after losing her biggest sponsor to Chloe Murphy, the sport’s fiery new favorite, she and her bank account are running on fumes.
\nChloe, known as much for her talent as her temper, is a top seed for the upcoming US Open. But thanks to broken rackets, code violations, and the inability to play well with others, her “favorite” status is slipping away.
\nHowever, when they are forced to share the same side of the court, and the world surprisingly doesn’t implode, Chloe makes an she’ll fund Inés’s journey to the US Open, but only if Inés agrees to be her hitting partner and teach her to keep a level head.
\nIt’s strictly business, but somewhere between practice drills and tour stops, the line between rival and something more begins to blur.
\nAs the summer burns toward Flushing Meadows, their sizzling tension catches fire. With a trophy in sight and emotions running high, will their romance double fault at set point?
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As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.
\nFifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons’ investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy.
\nJeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find Emilie’s sister. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets comes to an end as the quest for Emilie’s sister begins. The former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories.
\nAlongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy must return to the enchanted world they called home for six months - for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.
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Lucy Hart knows better than anyone what it's like to grow up without parents who loved her. In a childhood marked by neglect and loneliness, Lucy found her solace in books, namely the Clock Island series by Jack Masterson. Now a twenty-six-year-old teacher's aide, she is able to share her love of reading with bright, young students, especially seven-year-old Christopher Lamb, who was left orphaned after the tragic death of his parents. Lucy would give anything to adopt Christopher, but even the idea of becoming a family seems like an impossible dream without proper funds and stability.
\nJust when Lucy is about to give up, Jack Masterson announces he's finally written a new book. Even better, he's holding a contest at his home on the real Clock Island, and Lucy is one of the four lucky contestants chosen to compete to win the one and only copy.
\nFor Lucy, the chance of winning the most sought-after book in the world means everything to her and Christopher. But first she must contend with ruthless book collectors, wily opponents, and the distractingly handsome (and grumpy) Hugo Reese, the illustrator of the Clock Island books. Meanwhile, Jack \"the Mastermind\" Masterson is plotting the ultimate twist ending that could change all their lives forever.
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From the brilliantly funny (and rightfully furious) creator of the viral Men Write Women Twitter account Let's face it, women's representation in literature really sucks. And that's mostly because of the male authors who write female characters like they're nothing more than playthings in their stories.
\nWhether they have breasts like ripe peaches or curves like a racetrack, the literary ladies gracing the pages of bestselling books rarely serve a purpose beyond supporting a male character (or giving him something to fantasise about). But what are you supposed to do about it if you can't even get a foot (or, I guess, a boob) in the door? You beat them at their own game.
\nIn this hilarious yet incisive guide, you'll learn how to write women just like a bestselling male author - stereotypes, tropes, objectification, and all - so you can start dismantling the system from the inside.
\nWith thoughtful literary analysis, interactive exercises, and commentary that perfectly straddles the line between satirical hilarity and righteous indignation, A Tale of Two Titties is both an illuminating study of women's representation in literature and an absurd (yet accurate) guide to writing through the male gaze.
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Newly married and with a baby on the way, Jacy has everything she ever wanted. When she and her husband, Jed, go to visit his father in his remote cottage, Jacy feels bathed in love by Dr. Ash, if less so by his housekeeper, the enigmatic Mrs. Brandt.
\nThen Jacy has a health scare. Swiftly, all eyes are on Jacy's condition, and whispers about Jed's long-dead mother seem to be intruding upon the present. As the days pass, Jacy feels trapped in the cottage, her body under the looking glass.
\nBut are her fears founded or is this - as is suggested to her - a stubborn refusal to take necessary precautions to protect her unborn child? The dense woods surrounding the cottage are full of dangers, but are the greater ones inside?
Addy Hanlon has always been Beth Cassidy's best friend and trusted lieutenant. Beth calls the shots and Addy carries them out, a long-established order of things that has brought them to the pinnacle of their high-school careers. Now they're seniors who rule the intensely competitive cheer squad, feared and followed by the other girls - until the young new coach arrives.
Cool and commanding, an emissary from the adult world just beyond their reach, Coach Colette French draws Addy and the other cheerleaders into her life. Only Beth, unsettled by the new regime, remains outside Coach's golden circle, waging a subtle but vicious campaign to regain her position as \"top girl\" - both with the team and with Addy herself.
Then a suicide focuses a police investigation on Coach and her squad. After the first wave of shock and grief, Addy tries to uncover the truth behind the death - and learns that the boundary between loyalty and love can be dangerous terrain.
The raw passions of girlhood are brought to life in this taut, unflinching exploration of friendship, ambition, and power.
When Harper moves in with her sister Pam, she’s surprised to find Pam doing so well financially after her messy divorce. After all, Pam’s ex-husband wiped their bank accounts, even stole from their kids. But Pam managed to find her way back - thanks to the Wheel.
\nTwice a month the women of the Wheel meet. New members bring cash to add to a pool and then gift to one lucky member. It’s all about giving back. Lifting each other up - as women should, as they must.
\nWhen Harper is invited, with the promise of an end to her financial burdens, the sisters inadvertently unleash a darkness lurking within the group. If they’re not careful it might just get them killed.
Kit Owens harbored only modest ambitions for herself when the mysterious Diane Fleming appeared in her high school chemistry class. But Diane's academic brilliance lit a fire in Kit, and the two developed an unlikely friendship. Until Diane shared a secret that changed everything between them.
More than a decade later, Kit thinks she's put Diane behind her forever and she's begun to fulfill the scientific dreams Diane awakened in her. But the past comes roaring back when she discovers that Diane is her competition for a position both women covet, taking part in groundbreaking new research led by their idol.
Soon enough, the two former friends find themselves locked in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse that threatens to destroy them both.
Ballet flows through their veins. Dara and Marie Durant were dancers since birth, with their long necks and matching buns and pink tights, homeschooled and trained by their mother. Decades later the Durant School of Dance is theirs. The two sisters, together with Charlie, Dara's husband and once their mother's prize student, inherited the school after their parents died in a tragic accident nearly a dozen years ago.
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Marie, warm and soft, teaches the younger students; Dara, with her precision, trains the older ones; and Charlie, back broken after years of injuries, rules over the back office. Circling around each other, the three have perfected a dance, six days a week, that keeps the studio thriving. But when a suspicious accident occurs, just at the onset of the school's annual performance of The Nutcracker, a season of competition, anxiety, and exhilaration, an interloper arrives and threatens the delicate balance of everything they've worked for.
Katie and Eric Knox have dedicated their lives to their fifteen-year-old daughter Devon, a gymnastics prodigy and Olympic hopeful. But when a violent death rocks their close-knit gymnastics community just weeks before an all-important competition, everything the Knoxes have worked so hard for feels suddenly at risk.
\nAs rumors swirl among the other parents, revealing hidden plots and allegiances, Katie tries frantically to hold her family together while also finding herself drawn, irresistibly, to the crime itself, and the dark corners it threatens to illuminate.
As a slave in the Kipchak Khanate, Jinghua has lost everything: her home, her family, her freedom . . . until the kingdom is conquered by enemy forces and she finds herself an unlikely conspirator in the escape of Prince Khalaf and his irascible father across the vast Mongol Empire. On the run, with adversaries on all sides and an endless journey ahead, Jinghua hatches a scheme to use the Kipchaks’ exile to return home, a plan that becomes increasingly fraught as her feelings for Khalaf evolve into a hopeless love.
Jinghua’s already dicey prospects take a downward turn when Khalaf seeks to restore his kingdom by forging a marriage alliance with Turandokht, the daughter of the Great Khan. As beautiful as she is cunning, Turandokht requires all potential suitors to solve three impossible riddles to win her hand - and if they fail, they die.
Jinghua has kept her own counsel well, but with Khalaf’s kingdom - and his very life - on the line, she must reconcile the hard truth of her past with her love for a boy who has no idea what she’s capable of . . . even if it means losing him to the girl who’d sooner take his life than his heart.
Gelya is a Vessel, a girl who channels the word of the One True God through song. Cloistered with the other Vessels of her faith, she believes - as all Ovinists do - that a saint imprisoned Elath the Great Demon centuries ago, saving humanity from earthly temptation.
When Gelya stumbles into a deadly cover-up by the Ovinists’ military, she reluctantly teams up with Tavik, an enemy soldier, to survive. Tavik believes that Elath is actually a mother goddess who must be set free, but while he succeeds in opening Her prison, he inadvertently turns Gelya into Elath’s unwilling human vessel.
Now the church that raised Gelya considers her a threat. In a race against the clock, she and Tavik must find a way to exorcise Elath’s presence from her body. But will this release stop the countdown to the end of the world, or will it be the cause of the earth’s destruction? And as Tavik and Gelya grow closer, another question lingers between them: What will become of Gelya?
Immortal demigod Rosie Fox has been patrolling Tanria for decades, but lately, the job has been losing its lustre. After one hundred and fifty-seven years of being alive, everything is beginning to lose its lustre. When Rosie dies (again) by electrocution (again) after poking around inside a portal choked with shadowy thorns only she can see, she feels stuck in the rut that is her unending life.
\nThanks to Rosie's meddling, the portal inventor, Dr. Adam Lee, must come in person to repair the damage. When all the portals begin to break down, he declares an emergency evacuation of Tanria. In the mad rush to get out, Rosie and Adam end up trapped inside the Mist. Together.
\nAnd uptight Adam Lee in his bespoke menswear seems to know a lot more about what's happening than he lets on . . .
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The entire town of Eternity was shocked when widowed, middle-aged Twyla Banneker partnered up with her neighbor and best friend, Frank Ellis, to join the Tanrian Marshals. Eight years later, Twyla and Frank are still patrolling the dangerous land of Tanria, the former prison of the Old Gods.
\nTwyla might look like a small town mom who brings cheesy potatoes to funerals and whips up a batch of cookies for the school bake sale, but her rewarding career in law enforcement has been a welcome change from the domestic grind of mom life, despite the misgivings of her grown children.
\nFortunately (or unfortunately) a recent decrease in on-the-job peril has made Twyla and Frank's job a lot safer . . . and a lot less exciting. So when they discover the body of one of their fellow marshals covered in liquid glitter - and Frank finds himself the inadvertent foster dad to a baby dragon - they are more than happy to be back on the beat.
\nSoon, the friends wind up ensnared in a nefarious plot that goes far deeper than any lucrative Tanrian mineshaft. But as the danger closes in and Twyla and Frank's investigation becomes more complicated, so does their easy friendship. And Twyla starts to realise that her true soul mate might just be the person who has lived next door all along . . .
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Hart is a marshal, tasked with patrolling the strange and magical wilds of Tanria. It’s an unforgiving job, and Hart’s got nothing but time to ponder his loneliness.
\nMercy never has a moment to herself. She’s been single-handedly keeping Birdsall & Son Undertakers afloat in defiance of sullen jerks like Hart, who seems to have a gift for showing up right when her patience is thinnest.
\nAfter yet another exasperating run-in with Mercy, Hart finds himself penning a letter addressed simply to “A Friend”. Much to his surprise, an anonymous letter comes back in return, and a tentative friendship is born.
\nIf only Hart knew he’s been baring his soul to the person who infuriates him most - Mercy. As the dangers from Tanria grow closer, so do the unlikely correspondents. But can their blossoming romance survive the fated discovery that their pen pals are their worst nightmares - each other?
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When Jezebel learns she can’t be a king like her father simply because she’s a girl, she vows never to become someone’s decorative wife, nameless and lost to history. At fifteen she’s married off, despite her protests, to Prince Ahab of Israel. There, she does what she must to gain power and remake the dry and distant kingdom in the image of her beloved, prosperous seaside homeland of Tyre, beginning by building temples to the gods she grew up worshipping. As her initiatives usher in an era of prosperity for Israel, her new subjects love her, and her name rings through the land.
\nThen Elijah, the prophet of Yahweh and her former lover, begins to speak out against her. Bitter at having been abandoned by Jezebel, he lashes out, calling her a slut. Harlot. Witch. And the people, revering their prophet’s message, turn on her.
\nAs ancient powers and faiths are pitted against each other, bloodshed descends on Israel and Jezebel faces the fall of her legacy. Determined despite the odds to make Israel a great nation, she must decide how far she’s willing to go to protect her family, her throne - her name. A stunning revision of a notorious queen’s story, Jezebel is a thrilling lyrical debut about a fierce woman who refuses to be forgotten.
A goddess is cursed to endlessly live and die as a mortal until she understands the value of human life, in this inventive, moving reimagining of Gaelic mythology.
\nCailleach, goddess of winter, was not born to be a blight on humanity, but she became it. If anyone asked her, she would say with scorn that it was their own humans were selfish, thoughtless, and destructive, bringing harm to each other and the Earth without cause or qualms.
\nOne day, Cailleach goes too far. Thousands die, lost to her brutal winter. In punishment, her mother Danu, the queen of the gods, strips the goddess of her powers and sends Cailleach to Earth, to live and die as the mortals she so despises, until she understands what it is to be a human. Though determined to live in solitude, Cailleach finds that she cannot help but reach for the people she once held in such disdain. She loves and mourns in equal measure, and in opening herself to humanity, hears tales not meant for immortal ears - and a secret long-buried, that will redefine what it means to be a god.
Sixteen and living in a small Michigan town, Gertie is harboring a secret heavy enough to fracture her closest friendship. She and Cindy have been bonded since birth by the fact their fathers are addicts, but their unsteady home lives are a little easier when they’re together, sprawled on trampoline vinyl with pilfered vodka and dreams of moving to New York.
\nAfter an accident involving a bonfire and an aerosol can sends Gertie to the hospital, she finds herself with nowhere to go but to Sioux Falls to live with her newly clean father. She sees it as a chance to escape the hometown drama she's caused, but it finds her all the same: parties without curfews, boys without boundaries, a compromising photo, tragedy back home . . . and her father, once again teetering on the edge of oblivion. Terrified of the consequences of being honest with Cindy, her sole refuge is the fantasy novel she’s writing, a portal to another world and the story of a young girl roaming a strange land, trusting her wits to survive.
\nYears later, when ghosts of the past surface, Gertie decides to write again about that explosive summer from the stabler shores of adulthood. Powered by the fierce imagination of her youth, Gertie finally allows herself the grace to tell a version of her story that she always hoped would be true.
\nWritten with the feel and power of a ticking time bomb, Atomic Hearts is an unforgettable story of the ways we can be saved by friendship, love, and imagination.
Ella was supposed to have fun night with her friends until a crippling headache tied to a recent diagnosis cancels her plans and leaves her babysitting her cousin instead.
\nBut when she arrives at the house, she immediately knows something is wrong. The lights are off and the door is wide open. But it’s the creeping smell coming from the house that warns Ella of the real danger inside: a gas leak.
\nIn a panic, Ella charges into the house and calls 911. Her aunt and cousins lie unconscious on the floor - and Ella can’t rescue them all.
\nAs Ella tries to recover from the tragic accident, deadly lies begin to seep through the cracks of the investigation, and Ella’s side effects escalate. She’ll soon discover the gas leak might not have been an accident after all - and that someone might be out to kill her next.
When twelve-year-old Maddie hatches a scheme for a secret sleepover with her two best friends, she ends up waking up to a nightmare. She’s alone - left behind in a town that has been mysteriously evacuated and abandoned. With no one to rely on, no power, and no working phone lines or internet access, Maddie slowly learns to survive on her own. Her only companions are a Rottweiler named George and all the books she can read.
\nAfter a rough start, Maddie learns to trust her own ingenuity and invents clever ways to survive in a place that has been deserted and forgotten. As months pass, she escapes natural disasters, looters, and wild animals. But Maddie’s most formidable enemy is the crushing loneliness she faces every day. Can Maddie’s stubborn will to survive carry her through the most frightening experience of her life?
After an imminent yet unnamed danger forces people across Colorado to leave their homes, a group of kids including an aspiring filmmaker and a budding journalist find themselves in the same evacuation camp. As they cope with the aftermath of having their world upended, they grow curious about the mysterious threat.
\nAnd as they begin to investigate, they start to discover that there’s less truth and more cover-up to what they’re being told. Can they get to the root of the conspiracy, expose the bad actors, and bring an end to the upheaval before it’s too late?
Humanity is running out of options. Habitable planets are being destroyed as quickly as they’re found and Naira Sharp knows the reason why. The all-powerful Mercator family has been controlling the exploration of the universe for decades, and exploiting any materials they find along the way under the guise of helping humanity’s expansion. But Naira knows the truth, and she plans to bring the whole family down from the inside.
\nHe’s the heir to the dynasty. Tarquin Mercator never wanted to run a galaxy-spanning business empire. He just wanted to study rocks and read books. But Tarquin’s father has tasked him with monitoring the mining of a new planet, and he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter.
\nDisguised as Tarquin’s new bodyguard, Naira plans to destroy his ship before it lands. But neither of them expects to end up stranded on a dead planet. To survive and keep her secret, Naira will have to join forces with the man she’s sworn to hate. And together they will uncover a plot that’s bigger than both of them.
Naira and Tarquin have found a new home on Seventh Cradle. But the peace they’ve built is short-lived as mysterious assailants ambush the settlement and Naira is haunted by visions of a monstrous future. Catastrophe strikes when Tarquin uncovers a plot to bring about the end of the universe.
\nAs humanity races against the clock to prevent their extinction, old secrets come to light and loyalties fracture, and Naira realises she may be the key to saving the world - or ending it.
As the city that produces the most selium - that precious gas that elevates airships and powers strange magic - Hond Steading is a jewel worth stealing. To shore up the city's defenses, Detan promises his aunt that he'll recover Nouli, the infamous engineer who built the century gates that protect the imperial capital of Valathea.
\nBut Nouli is imprisoned on the Remnant Isles, an impervious island prison run by the empire, and it's Detan's fault. Detan doesn't dare approach Nouli himself, so his companions volunteer to get themselves locked up to make contact with Nouli and convince him to help. Now Detan has to break them all out of prison, and he's going to need the help of a half-mad doppel to do it.
The code has been cracked. The secrets of the Casimir gates have been revealed. But humanity still isn't safe. The alien intelligence known as Rainier and her clones are still out there, hell-bent on its destruction. And only Sanda can stop them.
With the universe's most powerful ship under her command and some of the most skilled hackers, fighters, and spies on her team, it will still take everything she has to find the key to taking down an immortal enemy with seemingly limitless bodies, resources, and power.
Sanda and Tomas are fleeing for their lives after letting the most dangerous smartship in the universe run free. Now, unsure of who to trust, Sanda knows only one thing for certain - to be able to save herself from becoming a pawn of greater powers, she needs to discover the secret of the coordinates hidden in her skull.
But getting to those coordinates is a problem she can't solve alone. They exist beyond a dead gate - a Casimir gate that opened up into a dead-end system without resources worth colonising, and was sealed off. To get through the dead gate, she needs the help of the enemy Nazca. But some Nazca are only interested in the chip in her head - and they'll crack her open to get to it.
It doesn't matter what you call her. Riley. Burner. She forgot her name long ago. But if you steal from the supply lines crossing the wasteland, her face is the last one you'll see. She is the force of nature that keeps the balance in the hot arid desert. Keep to yourself and she'll leave you well enough alone. But it's when you try to take more than you can chew that her employers notice and send her off to restore the balance.
\nThen she gets the latest call.
\nA supply truck knocked over too cleanly. Too precise. And the bodies scattering the wreckage weren't killed by her normal prey of scavengers. These bodies are already rotting hours after the attack. Cowering in the corner of the wreckage is a young girl. A girl that shouldn't be there. A girl with violently blue eyes. Just like hers.
Naira and Tarquin have escaped vicious counter-revolutionaries, misprinted monsters, and the pull of a dying planet. Now, bound together to find the truth behind the blight that has been killing habitable planets, they need to hunt out the Mercator family secrets.
\nBut, when the head of Mercator disappears, taking the universe’s remaining supply of starship fuel with him, chaos breaks loose between the ruling families. Naira’s revolution must be put aside for the sake of humanity’s immediate survival.
After Detan retrieves the renowned engineer Nouli from the clutches of the empire, he returns his aunt's city to find it under siege by Thratia's army. With Nouli's help, they turn back the tide - until imperial forces show up, prepared to hammer Thratia's army against the anvil of the city's walls. Worse yet, the imperial advance is aided by an elite force of deviant magic users. His aunt is forced to forge an uneasy alliance with Thratia to keep the city from falling back under imperial control - but Detan's wary.
\nWhile Thratia and his aunt bring their forces to bear against the imperial threat, Detan puts his own plans into motion, scheming to ensure that when the final blow is dealt, Thratia and her army find themselves on the other side of the city's walls.
Detan Honding, a wanted conman of noble birth and ignoble tongue, has found himself in the oasis city of Aransa. He and his trusted companion Tibs may have pulled off one too many cons against the city’s elite and need to make a quick escape. They set their sights on their biggest heist yet - the gorgeous airship of the exiled commodore Thratia.
But in the middle of his scheme, a face changer known as a doppel starts murdering key members of Aransa’s government. The sudden paranoia makes Detan’s plans of stealing Thratia’s ship that much harder. And with this sudden power vacuum, Thratia can solidify her power and wreak havoc against the Empire. But the doppel isn’t working for Thratia and has her own intentions.
Did Detan accidentally walk into a revolution and a crusade? He has to be careful - there’s a reason most people think he’s dead. And if his dangerous secret gets revealed, he has a lot more to worry about than a stolen airship.
The Black Celeste is a ghost story. A once-legendary spaceship collecting dust in a cosmic graveyard known as the Clutch. Only famed pirate Bitter Amandine knows better, and she’ll do anything to never go near it again. No matter the cost.
\nFaven Sythe is crystborn, a member of the near-human species tasked with charting starpaths from station to station. She’s trained to be a navigator her entire life. But when her mentor disappears, leaving behind a mysterious starpath terminating in the Clutch, she is determined to find the truth. And only Amandine has the answers.
\nWhat they will find is a conspiracy bigger than either of them. Their quest for the truth will uncover secrets Amandine has long fought to keep buried - secrets about how she survived her last encounter in the Clutch, and what’s really hidden out there amongst the stars . . .
Sanda and Biran Greeve were siblings destined for greatness. A high-flying sergeant, Sanda has the skills to take down any enemy combatant. Biran is a savvy politician who aims to use his new political position to prevent conflict from escalating to total destruction.
However, on a routine maneuver, Sanda loses consciousness when her gunship is blown out of the sky. Instead of finding herself in friendly hands, she awakens 230 years later on a deserted enemy warship controlled by an AI who calls himself Bero. The war is lost. The star system is dead. Ada Prime and its rival Icarion have wiped each other from the universe.
Now, separated by time and space, Sanda and Biran must fight to put things right.
On an ordinary summer morning, the world is changed by the appearance of seven mysterious doors that seemingly lead to another world. People are, of course, mesmerised and intrigued: A new dimension filled with beauty and resources beckons them to step into an adventure. But, perhaps inevitably, people soon learn that what looks like paradise may very well be filled with danger.
\nAyanna and Olivia, two Black Midwestern teens - and twin sisters - have different ideas of what may lie in the world beyond. But will their personal bond endure such wanton exploration? And when one of them goes missing, will the other find solace of her own? And will she uncover the circumstances of what truly happened to her once constant companion and best friend?
A piercing dystopian novel about the unbreakable bond between a young woman and her mysterious mother, set in a world in which witches are real and single women are closely monitored.
\nJosephine Thomas has heard every conceivable theory about her mother's disappearance. That she was kidnapped. Murdered. That she took on a new identity to start a new family. That she was a witch. This is the most worrying charge because in a world where witches are real, peculiar behavior raises suspicions and a woman - especially a Black woman - can find herself on trial for witchcraft.
\nBut fourteen years have passed since her mother's disappearance, and now Jo is finally ready to let go of the past. Yet her future is in doubt. The State mandates that all women marry by the age of 30 - or enroll in a registry that allows them to be monitored, effectively forfeiting their autonomy. At 28, Jo is ambivalent about marriage. With her ability to control her life on the line, she feels as if she has her never understood her mother more. When she's offered the opportunity to honor one last request from her mother's will, Jo leaves her regular life to feel connected to her one last time.
\nIn this powerful and timely novel, Megan Giddings explores the limits women face--and the powers they have to transgress and transcend them.
A damning indictment of the private equity industry told through the stories of four American workers whose lives and communities were upended by the ruinous effects of private equity takeovers.
\nPrivate equity runs our country, yet few Americans have any idea how ingrained it is in their lives. Private equity controls hospitals, daycare centers, supermarket chains, voting machine manufacturers, local newspapers, nursing home operators, fertility clinics, and prison service providers. The industry manages highways, municipal water systems, fire departments, emergency medical services, and owns a growing swath of commercial and residential real estate.
\nPrivate equity executives, meanwhile, are not only among the wealthiest people in American society, but also modern-day barons with outsized influence on our politics and legislation. Yet their firms have to disclose almost nothing about how they operate, leaving workers and communities on the hook when a company begins to flounder without warning.
\nTwenty percent of companies acquired through private equity buyouts go bankrupt within ten years, accounting for forty percent of all U.S. bankruptcies and putting millions’ of workers jobs at risk. How did private equity firms become so good at making money for themselves and so damaging for the rest of society?
\nAcclaimed journalist Megan Greenwell’s Bad Company tells the hidden story of private equity through the experiences of four American workers who watched as private equity upended their employers and a Toys R Us floor supervisor, a rural doctor, a local newspaper journalist, and a public housing organiser.
\nIn the tradition of deeply human reportage like Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, Megan Greenwell pulls back the curtain on shadowy multibillion dollar companies like Apollo Global Management, Bain Capital, and KKR, telling a larger story about how private equity is reshaping the economy, disrupting communities, and hollowing out the very idea of the American dream itself.
\nTimely and masterfully told, Bad Company is a forceful rebuke of America’s most consequential, yet least understood economic forces.
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In 2017, Megan Hunter burst onto the literary scene with her debut novel, The End We Start From, a startlingly beautiful story of climate change and motherhood that is now a feature film starring Jodi Comer. Her second book, The Harpy, fiercely explored marriage and power through a dark, imaginative tale of revenge. A writer of remarkable range, Hunter now delivers her first historical novel, a gorgeous story of art, desire, and faith set against the backdrop of a changing England.
\nEaster Sunday, 1938. Ivy is nineteen and ready for her life to finally begin. Her sprawling, bohemian family and their friends gather in the idyllic English countryside for lunch, arranging themselves around well-worn roles. They trade political views and artistic arguments as they impatiently await the arrival and first sight of Frances, the new beau of Ivy’s beloved older brother, Joseph. In this auspicious atmosphere of springtime, Ivy’s world feels on the cusp of something grand - but neither she nor those closest to her predicts how a single, enchanted evening will alter the rest of their lives.
\nA radiant, philosophical, and intimate journey through time, Days of Light chronicles six pivotal days across six decades to tell the story of Ivy’s pursuit of answers - to the events of this fateful Easter Sunday and to the shifting desires of her own heart. Moving through the Second World War up to the close of the 20th century, Hunter captures the galvanic beauty to be found in loss and love and the transformative days, hours, and moments that define a winding, beautiful life.
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In the midst of a mysterious environmental crisis, as London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, the family are forced to leave their home in search of safety. As they move from place to place, shelter to shelter, their journey traces both fear and wonder as Z's small fists grasp at the things he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds.
\nThis is a story of new motherhood in a terrifying setting: a familiar world made dangerous and unstable, its people forced to become refugees. Startlingly beautiful, Megan Hunter's The End We Start From is a gripping novel that paints an imagined future as realistic as it is frightening. And yet, though the country is falling apart around them, this family's world - of new life and new hope - sings with love.
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Lucy and Jake live in a house by a field where the sun burns like a ball of fire. Lucy has set her career aside in order to devote her life to the children, to their finely tuned routine, and to the house itself, which comforts her like an old, sly friend. But then a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: his wife has been having an affair with Lucy's husband, Jake. The revelation marks a turning point: Lucy and Jake decide to stay together, but make a special arrangement designed to even the score and save their marriage - she will hurt him three times.
As the couple submit to a delicate game of crime and punishment, Lucy herself begins to change, surrendering to a transformation of both mind and body from which there is no return.
Told in dazzling, musical prose, The Harpy is a dark, staggering fairy tale, at once mythical and otherworldly and fiercely contemporary. It is a novel of love, marriage and its failures, of power, control and revenge, of metamorphosis and renewal.
What if the key to happiness, success, and love was as simple as two words?
\nIf you've ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or frustrated with where you are, the problem isn't you. The problem is the power you give to other people. Two simple words - Let Them - will set you free. Free from the opinions, drama, and judgments of others. Free from the exhausting cycle of trying to manage everything and everyone around you. The Let Them Theory puts the power to create a life you love back in your hands - and this book will show you exactly how to do it.
\nIn her latest groundbreaking book, The Let Them Theory, Mel Robbins - New York Times bestselling author and one of the world's most respected experts on motivation, confidence, and mindset - teaches you how to stop wasting energy on what you can't control and start focusing on what truly YOU. Your happiness. Your goals. Your life.
\nUsing the same no-nonsense, science-backed approach that's made The Mel Robbins Podcast a global sensation, Robbins explains why The Let Them Theory is already loved by millions and how you can apply it in eight key areas of your life to make the biggest impact. Within a few pages, you'll realise how much energy and time you've been wasting trying to control the wrong things - at work, in relationships, and in pursuing your goals - and how this is keeping you from the happiness and success you deserve.
\nWritten as an easy-to-understand guide, Robbins shares relatable stories from her own life, highlights key takeaways, relevant research and introduces you to world-renowned experts in psychology, neuroscience, relationships, happiness, and ancient wisdom who champion The Let Them Theory every step of the way.
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Feuding Windsor brothers and their wives - some things, it seems, never change. The Men: Edward David Windsor, heir to the British throne, and Albert, known as Bertie, his younger brother, “the spare.” The Women: Edward’s wife Wallis, an American divorcée, and Bertie's wife Elizabeth, descended from Scottish nobility. The Feud: a rivalry that will last all their lives, make headlines, and still fuel gossip pages nearly a century later.
\nThe Windsor Affair recreates the cataclysmic events that nearly toppled the monarchy and incited the power struggle between Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the queen-to-be, and Wallis Simpson, aka “That Woman,\" who fell into a calculated love affair with Prince Edward. Told from the perspective of both women, the novel propels readers into the fabulous world of the debonair Prince of Wales, café society of the 1930s, and the glittering private lives of the Windsors.
\nThe first novel dedicated to the infamous rivalry between these two world-famous women, The Windsor Affair brings us all the gossip and intrigue between the two very different - yet perhaps more similar than they would admit - wives of royals. As Queen, Elizabeth would become the symbol of British pluck and courage during World War II and remain a British institution for the rest of her long life. Wallis would be forever forced to enact the World’s Greatest Love Story even after it sours, as she goes from being admired to vilified and, ultimately, pitied.
\nAgainst the backdrop of the Abdication Crisis, World War II, coronations, funerals, births, and deaths, these two women maintain a bitter, biting, sharp-tongued feud - until age and the long arm of history bring about a kind of understanding. For the last communication between these bitter rivals was a simple, surprising “In friendship, Elizabeth.”
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After a failed relationship and an unsettled teaching career, Sara Barlow returns to her childhood home in Arlington, Virginia, hoping for a fresh start. But when she applies for a job at her old high school, a chance glimpse into the gymnasium shakes her to the core - she spots the man she suspects was involved in a classmate's violent death a decade earlier.
\nHaunted by the past, Sara confronts the memories she's spent years trying to suppress - her sister Suzanne's fatal car crash, her secret summer with the reckless Devlin Barrie, and the anonymous 911 call she made after witnessing what she believes was a murder. As the construction of Interstate 66 physically fractures her community, Sara grapples with emotional fault lines of her own - guilt, silence, and buried truth.
\nSet against the backdrop of suburban upheaval in the 1970s and '80s, Road Longer Than Memory is a compelling story of memory, reckoning, and the cost of what we leave unsaid.
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Finnikin was only a child during the five days of the unspeakable, when the royal family of Lumatere were brutally murdered, and an imposter seized the throne. Now a curse binds all who remain inside Lumatere’s walls, and those who escaped roam the surrounding lands as exiles, persecuted and despairing, dying by the thousands in fever camps.
\nIn a narrative crackling with the tension of an imminent storm, Finnikin, now on the cusp of manhood, is compelled to join forces with an arrogant and enigmatic young novice named Evanjalin, who claims that her dark dreams will lead the exiles to a surviving royal child and a way to pierce the cursed barrier and regain the land of Lumatere.
\nBut Evanjalin’s unpredictable behavior suggests that she is not what she seems - and the startling truth will test Finnikin’s faith not only in her, but in all he knows to be true about himself and his destiny.
Three years after the curse on Lumatere was lifted, Froi has found his home . . . or so he believes. Fiercely loyal to the Queen and Finnikin, Froi has been taken roughly and lovingly in hand by the Guard sworn to protect the royal family, and has learned to control his quick temper with a warrior's discipline. But when he is sent on a secretive mission to the kingdom of Charyn, nothing could have prepared him for what he finds in its surreal royal court.
\nSoon he must unravel both the dark bonds of kinship and the mysteries of a half-mad princess in this barren and mysterious place. It is in Charyn that he will discover there is a song sleeping in his blood . . . and though Froi would rather not, the time has come to listen.
Abandoned by her mother on Jellicoe Road when she was eleven, Taylor Markham, now seventeen, is finally being confronted with her past. But as the reluctant leader of her boarding school dorm, there isn't a lot of time for introspection. And while Hannah, the closest adult Taylor has to family, has disappeared, Jonah Griggs, the boy who might be the key to unlocking the secrets for Taylor’s past, is back in town, moody stares and all.
\nIn this absorbing story by Melina Marchetta, nothing is as it seems and every clue leads to more questions as Taylor tries to work out the connection between her mother dumping her; Hannah finding her; Hannah’s sudden departure; a mysterious stranger who once whispered something in her ear; a boy in her dreams; five kids who lived on Jellicoe Road eighteen years ago; and the maddening and magnetic Jonah Griggs, who knows her better than she thinks he does.
\nIf Taylor can put together the pieces of her past, she just might be able to change her future.
Separated from the girl he loves and has sworn to protect, Froi must travel through Charyn to search for Quintana, the mother of Charyn's unborn king, and protect her against those who will do anything to gain power. But what happens when loyalty to family and country conflict?
When the forces marshalled in Charyn's war gather and threaten to involve the whole of the land, including Lumatere, only Froi can set things right, with the help of those he loves.
Francesca is stuck at St. Sebastian’s, a boys' school that pretends it's coed by giving the girls their own bathroom. Her only female companions are an ultra-feminist, a rumored slut, and an impossibly dorky accordion player. The boys are no better, from Thomas, who specialises in musical burping, to Will, the perpetually frowning, smug moron that Francesca can't seem to stop thinking about.
Then there's Francesca's mother, who always thinks she knows what's best for Francesca - until she is suddenly stricken with acute depression, leaving Francesca lost, alone, and without an inkling of who she really is.
Simultaneously humorous, poignant, and impossible to put down, this is the story of a girl who must summon the strength to save her family, her social life and - hardest of all - herself.
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When Bish Ortley, a suspended cop, receives word that a bus carrying his daughter has been bombed, he rushes to her side. A suspect has already been singled out: a 17-year-old girl who has since disappeared from the scene.
The press has now revealed that she is the youngest member of one of London's most notorious families. Thirteen years earlier, her grandfather set off a suicide bomb in a grocery store, a bomb her mother confessed to building. Has the girl decided to follow in their footsteps?
To find her, Bish must earn the trust of her friends and family, including her infamous mother, now serving a life sentence in prison - but as he delves into the deadly bus attack that claimed five lives, the ghosts of older crimes become impossible to ignore.
Award-winning author Melina Marchetta reopens the story of the group of friends from her acclaimed novel Saving Francesca - but five years have passed, and now it's Thomas Mackee who needs saving.
\nAfter his favorite uncle was blown to bits on his way to work in a foreign city, Tom watched his family implode. He quit school and turned his back on his music and everyone that mattered, including the girl he can't forget. Shooting for oblivion, he's hit rock bottom, forced to live with his single, pregnant aunt, work at the Union pub with his former friends, and reckon with his grieving, alcoholic father. Tom's in no shape to mend what's broken. But what if no one else is either?
\nAn unflinching look at family, forgiveness, and the fierce inner workings of love and friendship, The Piper's Son redefines what it means to go home again.
When Rosie Gennaro first meets Jimmy Hailler, she has walked away from life in Sydney, leaving behind the place on Dalhousie that her father, Seb, painstakingly rebuilt for his family but never saw completed.
\nTwo years later, Rosie returns to the house and living there is Martha, whom Seb Gennaro married less than a year after the death of Rosie’s mother. Martha is struggling to fulfil Seb’s dream, while Rosie is coming to terms with new responsibilities. And so begins a stand-off between two women who refuse to move out of the home they both lay claim to.
As the battle lines are drawn, Jimmy Hailler re-enters Rosie’s life. Having always watched other families from the perimeters, he’s now grappling, heartbreakingly, with forming one of his own . . .
An unforgettable story about losing love and finding love; about the interconnectedness of lives and the true nature of belonging, from one of our most acclaimed writers.
A debut from Forbes' third most powerful woman in the world, Melinda Gates, a timely and necessary call to action for women's empowerment.
For the last twenty years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission. Her goal, as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, invest in women.
In this candid and inspiring book, Gates traces her awakening to the link between women's empowerment and the health of societies. She shows some of the tremendous opportunities that exist right now to “turbo-charge\" change. And she provides simple and effective ways each one of us can make a difference.
Convinced that all women should be free to decide whether and when to have children, Gates took her first step onto the global stage to make a stand for family planning. That step launched her into further efforts: to ensure women everywhere have access to every kind of job; to encourage men around the globe to share equally in the burdens of household work; to advocate for paid family leave for everyone; to eliminate gender bias in all its forms.
Throughout, Gates introduces us to her heroes in the movement towards equality, offers startling data, shares moving conversations she's had with women from all over the world - and shows how we can all get involved.
A personal statement of passionate conviction, this book tells of Gates' journey from a partner working behind the scenes to one of the world's foremost advocates for women, driven by the belief that no one should be excluded, all lives have equal value, and gender equity is the lever that lifts everything.
An utterly fantastical and undeniably queer melding of Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein that recasts Mary Bennet as an insatiable scientist, one who creates a monster in an attempt to save herself from spinsterdom.
\nMary Bennet is the middlest middle child of all time. Awkward, plain, and overlooked, she’s long been out of favor not only with her own family but with generations of readers of Pride and Prejudice.
\nBut what was Mary really doing while her sisters were falling in love? Well, what does any bright, hardworking girl do in an age when brains and hard work are only valued if they come with a pretty face? Take to the attic and teach herself to reanimate the dead of course. The world refuses to make a place for peculiar Mary, but no Bennet sister ever gives up on happiness that easily. If it won’t give this fierce, lonely girl a place, she’ll carve one out herself. And if finding acceptance requires a husband, she’ll get one. Even if she has to make him herself, too.
\nHowever, Mary’s genius and determination aren’t enough to control what she unwittingly unleashes. Her desperate attempts to rein in the destruction wreaked by her creations leads her to forge a perhaps unlikely friendship with another brilliant young woman unlike any she’s ever known. As that friendship blossoms into something passionate and all-consuming, Mary begins to realize that she may have to choose between the acceptance she’s always fought for and true happiness.
Guinevere Sharpe has two childhoods.
\nIn one, she lives in the wooded shadow of her family's isolated Vermont farmhouse; in the other, the pages of her mother’s world-famous Ninth City books, where her magical adventures have made her a household name. In reality, Guinevere's childhood isn't the enchanted idyll her mother’s readers imagine: she and her older brother are growing up near-feral, unwashed and underfed, escaping each day to the lichen-clotted woods they’ve made their playland. As Edith Sharpe’s books explode into epic popularity, the threats of a rural childhood give way to the escalating perils of fame - until the night it all goes up in flames, leaving Edith’s series unfinished and her children the sole survivors.
\nNow an adult coasting on her mother's name, Guinevere is mid-promotion for a ghostwritten memoir when her estranged brother, an artist who has until now spurned his family's legacy, announces an upcoming installation titled Mother. As rumors swirl around a death connected to his last show, unsettling recollections from Guinevere’s childhood begin to surface. Her public facade starts to crack, forcing her to confront the questions she's spent the last twenty years running from: What really happened the night of the fire? And what dark history lies behind their mother’s creative genius?
\nWise to the mythic weight childhood memories gather over time, The Children whispers to you from the hallway outside your bedroom, lights flickering as you turn the pages of a book that didn't seem so scary a moment ago. It's a story for anyone who's ever revisited an old favorite and found it cast in a darker light, the line separating magic and memory blurring as the gap widens between the authors we imagined and the people they turn out to be.
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Thanks to a thrown beer bottle and a fan letter to a P.O. box, Melissa Auf der Maur's first band scored an opening slot for the Smashing Pumpkins in her bohemian home town, Montreal. Sensing Melissa's talent, Billy Corgan recommended her to Courtney Love. Whisked from her local scene, Melissa joined Hole just after the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Hole's prior bassist, Kristen Pfaff, with the just-widowed Courtney Love at the centre of it all.
\nThat was only the beginning of Melissa's journey through alternative rock, a trip she undertook alongside 90s luminaries including Rufus Wainwright, Michael Stipe and her former boyfriend, Dave Grohl. Even the Good Girls Will Cry is a vivid dispatch from the last analogue decade, capturing that bygone era in all its messy, angsty glory.
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Ella Baker is tired of being an afterthought in her own life. First, her fiancé dumps her six days before the wedding. Then her family jets off on a world tour - without her. And just when she thinks it can’t get worse, her longtime employer forgets to lay her off . . .
\nThat is, until now. It’s time for a reinvention, starting with something totally out of joining a book club. Thank God for her best friend, Rachel, who’s always there with popcorn and wine. But when a kiss from a smart, gorgeous, and maddeningly irresistible book club member leaves Ella breathless, she’s stunned to learn the woman who just turned her world upside down is the very ex who broke Rachel’s heart.
\nMax Wyler doesn’t believe in forever. As a divorce mediator, she’s built a career on helping people walk away amicably. The book club is just an escape - until new member Ella Baker arrives, all sunshine and sass, making Max question everything she thought she knew about love. There’s just one Ella’s best friend is Max’s worst mistake. Which means those pretty blue eyes? Completely off-limits.
\nOr at least, they should be.
Savanna Potter is having an off year. Her aunt died, and the woman of her dreams, who had agreed to meet her on the suspension bridge one year after their first amazing date, stood her up. Then, in news that rocks her, it turns out the dad she knew isn’t her biological father. So, who the hell is?
\nSavanna, angry and adrift, can’t believe it when Dr. Kyle Remington, the very woman who left her standing on that bridge like a fool, shows up in Dreamer’s Bay.
\nNot only has Kyle landed in Savanna’s small town, but she’s managed to charm every other person who lives there. Savanna has no plans to forgive and forget. There’s nothing between them anymore, even if Kyle’s sparkling blue eyes and shiny dark hair make Savanna’s pesky knees go weak. Life is too complicated for second chances. Or is it?
Her new job as an on-air reporter in sunny San Diego is a big break for Skyler Ruiz. No more covering small-town softball games or vegetable growing competitions. She’ll be working at the same station as her TV mega-crush and longtime idol, anchorwoman Carolyn McNamara, and that doesn’t hurt either.
\nUnfortunately, people don’t always live up to expectations.
\nSkyler’s hopes of impressing Carolyn are dashed when she discovers Carolyn has little time for newbie reporters and is downright unwelcoming. But when Carolyn drops her guard, Skyler is left with her head happily spinning, her heart wide open, and oh-so ready to explore a romance she never saw coming.
\nSo, of course, the network pits them against each other.
\nIt’s only when Skyler is ready to sacrifice everything she’s ever dreamed of for Carolyn does she begin to suspect love is nothing but fake news.
Is it truly better to have loved and lost? Bethany Cahill says nope. Eleven years ago, her fellow cheerleader Reid Thatcher held her heart in her hand . . . and crushed it like a bug. Since then, Bethany avoids risk, reward, and anything romantic on TV. Just, no. But when grown-up Reid’s shopping cart bumps into hers, Bethany is catapulted into the past and staring into Reid’s eyes, which are still annoyingly stunning. Forgiveness doesn’t come easy, and Bethany isn’t about to let Reid in. Not after all she took.
\nReid never fully understood why Bethany withheld forgiveness all those years ago, but no kiss since has ever been as satisfying as Bethany’s lips on hers. The happenstance run-in was a stroke of luck and ignites Reid’s plan to get to the bottom of Bethany’s silence, a mystery she can’t let drop. But she hadn’t planned on the reckoning in store when she learns the truth.
\nWhen Bethany and Reid confront their past, they give new meaning to letting go, forgiveness, and a future worth fighting for.
Happily ever after is easier said than done . . .
\nSarah Matamoros can’t complain. After immigrating from Mexico when she was nine years old, she’s content with the life she’s made for herself in sunny San Diego. She works hard at her mother’s housecleaning service by day and spends the evenings with her quirky eight-year-old daughter, Grace.
\nFrom a very young age, Emory Owen had several concepts drilled into her head. Success is everything. Be the best. Fight your way to the top. Expectations were high in the Owen household and the world was watching. Born into a high society family, Emory never wanted for anything . . . at least anything money could buy. When she meets Sarah, hired to sort her mother’s home, her sterile life suddenly sparks into color.
\nBut when the emotional logistics of combining two very different worlds proves to be too much, a terrifying turn of events spurs the question: If love exists, can it really find a way?
Some things are better than chocolate...
Molly O’Brien is a sweetheart. Her friends and neighbors all think so. While she enjoys her quiet life running the town bakeshop in Applewood, Illinois, she wonders if there could be more. After losing the love of her life four years prior in a plane crash, Molly thinks she’s ready to navigate the dicey dating waters once again. However, you can’t always pick who your heart latches on to. When Jordan Tuscana, the beautiful younger sister of her lost love, returns to town, Molly finds her interest piqued in a manner she wasn’t prepared for.
As secrets are uncovered, Molly and Jordan must figure out how to navigate the difficult terrain of their multi-faceted relationship. Especially when something much deeper seems to be bubbling between them.
Sometimes the one you want is the one you least suspect . . .
\nAccountant Samantha Ennis craves order and structure. As the bookkeeper at the boutique advertising agency she owns with her three best friends, it’s her job to apply logic to the chaos. When one of those best friends, laid back Hunter Blair, moves in to share her loft apartment, Sam’s carefully organised world is thrown wildly askew.
\nHunter Blair’s been the coolest one in the room since elementary school. Until recently, her biggest worry in the world was which of the girls in her cell phone to call on a Saturday night. But it’s not long before Samantha sparks a fire in Hunter that has her questioning her old habits and longing for new ones. Isn’t it a bad idea to fall for one of your best friends? Samantha and Hunter are about to find out.
Sleeping with the enemy has never been so complicated. Twenty-eight-year-old Brooklyn Campbell is having a bad day. A speeding ticket, a towed car, and a broken heel are all working against her laid-back vibe. To top it all off, her birth mother, whom she's never met, has requested contact. The only bright spot is an impromptu date with a beautiful and mysterious brunette. Jessica Lennox is what you would call a high-powered executive.
\nShe's the head of a multimillion-dollar advertising firm in New York City, and it didn't happen by accident. But when the blonde head turner from the wine bistro turns out to be her number one competitor, her life gets infinitely more complex. Is New York big enough for both Brooklyn and Jessica? Maybe it's just time they experienced it together...
When your parents name you and your three siblings after flowers, the world is stacked against you. At least, that’s how Aster Lavender feels. The youngest daughter, Aster always keeps her head down and lets her siblings stand in the spotlight. She sells her gourmet doughnuts from Hole in One, the small drive-through stand in sleepy Homer’s Bluff, Kansas, and daydreams about seeing the big beautiful world. Love is never going to happen, especially when the only other lesbians in town are already married to each other.
\nBeautiful Brynn Garrett arrives to fill in for Homer Bluff’s only veterinarian, and suddenly every pet in town is sick. Brynn’s older, smarter, and way out of Aster’s league. Plus, she’s only in town temporarily and definitely running from something. Aster didn’t plan for a connection so strong it knocks the wind right out of her, but Brynn makes her feel like anything but a wallflower.
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Melissa Brayden - Last Lavender Sister, The.jpeg", "mtime": 1767084065253.1804, "size": 661458, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:23:14.551Z" }, "Melissa Brayden - Love Like This": { "title": "Love Like This", "author": "Melissa Brayden", "description": "\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n\n\n
Juliette Jennings lives her life like a tightly laced corset - not that she’d ever wear one. As a business owner of a stationery store, structure is her favorite. But when her best friend and her ex fall head over heels for each other, everything unravels and leaves her exposed. Even worse, a scandalous lingerie shop has moved in next door, and its tantalising window displays will drive away her conservative customers. If only the owner would turn off the charm, Juliette is sure she could stop imagining her in nothing but the shop’s lacy best sellers.
\nPeyton Lane loves a clean slate. In fact, she desperately needs one after a series of bad choices. She also likes sexy things, and uptight Juliette next door would be a fun bow to untie. But when Peyton’s feelings enter new territory, she realises the world might be scarier than she’d planned. Juliette has Peyton longing for forever on one hand and lacing up her running shoes with the other.
\nWhat’re a structured stationery store owner and a sexy lingerie peddler to do?
When enemies fall into temptation, love brings out the most delicious flavor of all.
Marigold Lavender lights up every room she enters. Then she's left to turn out the lights and head home alone. Soft on the inside and a go-getter on the outside, Marigold just wants to make sure everyone else is okay before worrying about herself. When an awful big-city food critic trashes her sister Aster's new restaurant, Marigold pauses her search for her own happily-ever-after to go to war with the woman, who happens to be just as delectable as she is sour.
Alexis Wakefield's brutal honesty is what makes her successful. Her readers trust her judgment, and a few sharp strokes from her keyboard can make or break a new restaurant. When, on a whim, she reviews a small-town eatery getting lots of buzz, the owner's sister sabotages everything, leaving her professional world in jeopardy. Marigold Lavender has gone too far and must pay for the damage she's caused.", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Melissa Brayden - Marigold.jpeg", "mtime": 1767084064864.2185, "size": 545420, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:23:14.665Z" }, "Melissa Brayden - Marry Me": { "title": "Marry Me", "author": "Melissa Brayden", "description": "
Allison Hale had always played second fiddle. She didn’t win the science fair, have a million friends, or become the world’s best mom. That was her sister, Betsy. However, Ally’s managed to do something her sister couldn’t, connect her family’s failing business to the wealthy Carmichaels through her engagement to their son, Brent. All she has to do is plan the wedding of the century with the hottest wedding planner in town, Megan Kinkaid. How could she have ever guessed that Megan and her zest for life would threaten everything she’d carefully planned?
\nMegan Kinkaid knows how to produce a wedding for the history books and she’s not about to miss out on the chance to tackle high-profile Brent Carmichael’s. His fiancée, however, is not who Megan imagined for shiny Brent. Ally Hale is beautiful, earnest, selfless, and fun. She’s also everything Megan ever wanted for herself, and their chemistry hovers in the stratosphere. But can she make Ally see that there’s more to life than making others happy before it’s too late?
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Melissa Brayden - Marry Me.jpeg", "mtime": 1767084065182.6238, "size": 570922, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:23:14.702Z" }, "Melissa Brayden - Ready or Not": { "title": "Ready or Not", "author": "Melissa Brayden", "description": "Sometimes wrong is extra right. Mallory Spencer is in charge. As the face of Soho Savvy, the advertising firm she owns with her three best friends, it’s important that she’s poised, polished, and put together.
\nHowever, as she watches her friends couple up and settle down, she wonders about her own happily ever after. One thing’s for sure. It’s not going to happen with that blue-eyed bartender from Showplace. It’s irritatingly clear they couldn’t be more wrong for each other . . . or have more chemistry.
\nHope Sanders wants nothing more than to keep her head down and craft a better life for herself running everyone’s favorite nightspot. That means ignoring the groupies that flock to the bar to stare at her all night. However, an uptight brunette has snagged Hope’s attention and she knows a challenge when she sees it.
Just because you’re through with your past, doesn’t mean it’s through with you.
Margaret Beringer didn’t have an easy adolescence. She hated her name, was less than popular in school, and was always cast aside as a “farm kid.” However, with the arrival of Courtney Carrington, Margaret’s youth sparked into color. Courtney was smart, beautiful, and put together - everything Margaret wasn’t. Who would have imagined that they’d fit together so perfectly?
But first loves can scar.
Margaret hasn’t seen Courtney in years and that’s for the best. But when Courtney loses her father and returns to Tanner Peak to take control of the family store, Margaret comes face-to-face with her past and the woman she’s tried desperately to forget. The fact that Courtney has grown up more beautiful than ever certainly doesn’t help matters.
As a renowned chef, Gabriella Russo knows how to season a good dish. It’s her personal life that’s been too spicy for her liking. Ready to take a break from the rollercoaster of romance, Gabriella’s moved to Oregon to open Tangled, a restaurant on the grounds of Tangle Valley Vineyard. A good glass of wine and space to create is all she requires.
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Ryan Jacks brings all the girls to the yard, or so it should say on her business card. She’s a skilled carpenter who’s been told more than once that she’s good with her hands. When Ryan takes a job building a new restaurant, her world comes to a halt. The sassy chef is sexy, insightful, and comes with the kind of smart mouth that has Ryan rethinking just about everything. But with Gabriella off the menu, what’s Ryan supposed to do?
If you don’t get lost, there’s a chance you may never be found. Jenna McGovern has spent her whole life training for the stage. She’s taken dance classes, voice lessons, and even earned her performance degree from one of the most prestigious musical theater programs in the nation.
\nAt graduation, she’s stunned when a chance audition lands her a prime supporting role in the hottest Broadway touring production in the country. In more exciting news, Jenna discovers acclaimed television star Adrienne Kenyon is headlining the production. Jenna settles easily in to life on tour and has a promising career laid out in front of her, if only she plays her cards right. She’s waited for this opportunity her entire life and will let nothing stand in her way. The one thing she didn’t prepare for, however, was Adrienne.
\nHer new costar is talented, beautiful, generous, and the utmost professional. As the two women grow closer onstage and off, they must learn how to fit each other into a demanding lifestyle full of unexpected twists and difficult decisions. But is Jenna ready to sacrifice what she’s worked so hard for in exchange for a shot at something much deeper?
Have you ever had a crush on your babysitter? Taryn Ross sure did. Sixteen-year-old Charlotte was sophisticated, thoughtful, gorgeous, and fun. Taryn counted the minutes until they’d hang out. But Charlotte and her family moved away.
\nNow a transfer student at Hillspoint University, Taryn is ready to officially come out when she runs into a familiar face at a party. Charlie, now a grad student, insists on walking a drunk Taryn home. To the detriment of Taryn’s heart (and libido), Charlie has only grown kinder (and hotter) with time.
\nCharlie Adler has a five-year finish her MFA without any hiccups, figure out a timeline for her engagement, and become an acclaimed fiction writer. Easy, right? That is until Taryn shows up at Hillspoint and shakes up her world like a snow globe. This Taryn is soulful, brooding, and all grown up. Charlie’s never been attracted to a woman before, and isn’t dating your one-time charge against the rules? If only their toe-curling, mind-dulling, body-aching chemistry would calm the hell down.
Bordeauxnuts is New York City magic, and it all belongs to Jamie Tolliver. A charming coffee and doughnut spot by day, Bordeauxnuts transforms with a sprinkle of powdered sugar into a cozy sophisticated wine bar each evening. Jamie’s enjoying a blueberry latte with her quirky band of regulars when a stunning and enigmatic stranger saunters in, flips her laptop open, and Jamie’s world upside down. Each time Jamie speaks to Leighton Morrow, her crush multiplies. She’s drawn to Leighton's captivating presence, her kindness, and the faint lip print she leaves on her cup that winds a tingle up Jamie’s spine.
\nBut sexy spine tingles can be deceiving.
\nLeighton Morrow didn’t set out to ruin anyone’s life, but she has a job to do. As a development coordinator for Carrington’s Department Store, Leighton’s part of the team that plans to take over the city block for the new location, including demolishing her new favorite café, Bordeauxnuts. A shame, but that’s life. She’ll miss the apple fritters and the cute owner. But work is a No Feelings Zone and she definitely cannot give in to the ones she has percolating for Jamie. Leighton and Jamie have all the ingredients to turn their attraction into love, but it’s a recipe for disaster.
The Dark Days have returned. The Demon of Carnage mercilessly cuts through villagers and armies. The Demon of Corruption poisons/rots the land. The Serene Empire and the Witch Lords race towards war. And in the middle of it all stands Rxyander, the Warden of Gloamingard.
\nBurdened by conflicting loyalties and guilt, Ryx searches desperately for a way to defeat the demons before the world she loves is completely destroyed. To find answers, she’ll have to return to where it all started…the black tower at the heart of Gloamingard.
\nBy blood the Door was opened and only by blood will the Dark Days end.
Follow a star investigator and her rival as they journey through layers of reality to save the world as they know it in this whip-smart adventure fantasy about rival guilds, reality-bending magic and unexpected mystery.
\nKembral Thorne is spending a precious few hours away from her newborn, and she's determined to enjoy herself at the year-turning ball. But when the guests start dropping dead, Kem has no choice but to get to work. She's a member of the Guild of Hounds, after all, and she can't help picking up the scent of trouble. Especially when her professional and personal nemesis, notorious cat burglar Rika Nonesuch, is also on the prowl.
\nAt the heart of the mayhem is a mysterious clock that sends the ballroom down into strange and otherworldly new layers of reality every time it chimes. As the party plunges through increasingly dangerous versions of their city, Kem will have to rely on her wits - and Rika - to unravel the mystery before catastrophe is unleashed on their world.
All Kembral Thorne wants is to finish her maternity leave in peace. But when her best friend asks for help, she can’t say no, even if it means a visit to a run-down mansion on an isolated island for a will reading. She arrives to find an unexpected reunion of her childhood friends - plus her once-rival, now-girlfriend Rika Nonesuch, there on a mysterious job. Then the will is read, and everything goes sideways.
\nEight potential heirs, half of them Kem’s oldest friends.
\nThree cursed relics.
\nThe rules: one by one, the heirs will die.
\nThe prize for the lone survivor: A wish. And wishes are always bad business.
\nTo save their friends, Kem and Rika must race against the clock and descend into other realities once more. But the mansion is full of old secrets and new schemes, and soon the game becomes far more dangerous - and more personal - than they could have imagined.
\n
The mage-marked granddaughter of a ruler of Vaskandar, Ryx was destined for power and prestige at the top of Vaskandran society. But her magic is broken; all she can do is uncontrollably drain the life from everything she touches, and Vaskandar has no place for a mage with unusable powers.
Then, one night, two terrible accidents befall her: Ryx accidentally kills a visiting dignitary in self-defense, activating a mysterious magical artifact sealed in an ancient tower in the heart of her family’s castle.
Ryx flees, seeking a solution to her deadly magic. She falls in with a group of unlikely magical experts investigating the disturbance in Vaskandar - and Ryx realizes that her family is in danger and her domain is at stake. She and her new colleagues must return to the family stronghold to take control of the artifact that everyone wants to claim - before it destroys the world.
Ryxander, Warden of Gloamingard, has failed. Unsealed by her blood, the Door hidden within the black tower has opened. Now, for the first time since the age of the Graces, demons walk the world.
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As tensions grow between nations, all eyes-and daggers are set on Morgrain, fallen under the Demon of Discord's control. In an attempt to save her home from destruction, Ryx and the Rookery set out to find a powerful artifact. But powerful enemies are on the hunt and they're closing in fast.
In the Raverran Empire, magic is scarce and those born with power are strictly controlled - taken as children and conscripted into the Falcon Army.
\nZaira has lived her life on the streets to avoid this fate, hiding her mage-mark and thieving to survive. But hers is a rare and dangerous magic, one that threatens the entire empire.
\nLady Amalia Cornaro was never meant to be a Falconer. Heiress and scholar, she was born into a treacherous world of political machinations.
\nBut fate has bound the heir and the mage. And as war looms on the horizon, a single spark could turn their city into a pyre.
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Who is Chloe Lovejoy, really? A straight-C student, a girl with a crush on the cutie from chorus, an all-powerful being responsible for taking care of the planet . . . or perhaps all three. That’s what Chloe finds out on her sixteenth birthday, when she unexpectedly inherits the role of Mother Nature from her grandmother. Chloe is overwhelmed, to say the least. Then, when the unthinkable happens, and Grandma is no longer around to guide her, Chloe is left to oversee the natural laws of the world all by herself.
\nBetween managing earthquakes and hurricanes, rivals at school, and her not-very-helpful mother, Chloe tries to maintain balance and harmony on Earth and in her everyday life. But someone in the community has an eye toward harnessing her powers for nefarious purposes, which means Chloe needs to dig deep and get her act together before her secret is found out. After all, the universe is depending on her.
\n
Welcome to New Vegas, a city once covered in bling, now blanketed in ice. Like much of the destroyed planet, the place knows only one temperature - freezing. But some things never change. The diamond in the ice desert is still a 24-hour hedonistic playground and nothing keeps the crowds away from the casino floors, never mind the rumors about sinister sorcery in its shadows.
At the heart of this city is Natasha Kestal, a young blackjack dealer looking for a way out. Like many, she's heard of a mythical land simply called “the Blue.” They say it’s a paradise, where the sun still shines and the waters are turquoise. More importantly, it’s a place where Nat won’t be persecuted, even if her darkest secret comes to light.
But passage to the Blue is treacherous, if not impossible, and her only shot is to bet on a ragtag crew of mercenaries led by a cocky runner named Ryan Wesson to take her there. Danger and deceit await on every corner, even as Nat and Wes find themselves inexorably drawn to each other. But can true love survive the lies? Fiery hearts collide in this fantastic tale of the evil men do and the awesome power within us all.
Recast the spell. Light the flame. Make the world anew.
In this epic conclusion to the trilogy, Nat and Wes go on a journey to find the Rift, save the source of magic and defeat the Drau, the pirates, and the RSA - but at a great sacrifice. Wes is dying, and as he's rotting the Drau will let the rot \"cleanse\" the source of magic, dooming Wes forever.
Nat and Wes discover that the source of the magic lies in the Drakon - the key to the Blue, the protector, the soul of the world. But in order to close the Rift, a great sacrifice is needed. Nat must decide to sacrifice her beloved drakon in order to save the world, and to save Wes. In the words of the sylphs, death is life, and now the worlds can be reborn again.
\n
Caledon Holt is the Kingdom of Renovia's deadliest weapon. No one alive can best him in brawn or brains, which is why he's the Guild's most dangerous member and the Queen's one and only assassin. He's also bound to the Queen by an impossible vow--to find the missing Deian Scrolls, the fount of all magical history and knowledge, stolen years ago by a nefarious sect called the Aphrasians.
Shadow has been training all her life to follow in the footsteps of her mother and aunts--to become skilled enough to join the ranks of the Guild. Though magic has been forbidden since the Aphrasian uprising, Shadow has been learning to control her powers in secret, hoping that one day she'll become an assassin as feared and revered as Caledon Holt.
When a surprise attack brings Shadow and Cal together, they're forced to team up as assassin and apprentice to hunt down a new sinister threat to Renovia. But as Cal and Shadow grow closer, they'll uncover a shocking web of lies and secrets that may destroy everything they hold dear. With war on the horizon and true love at risk, they'll stop at nothing to protect each other and their kingdom.
Lilac's birthright makes her the Queen of Renovia, and a forced marriage made her the Queen of Stavin. But being a ruler does not mean making the rules. For Lilac, taking the throne means giving up the opportunity to be with love of her life, the kingdom's assassin, Caledon Holt.
Worse, Cal is forced to leave the castle when a horrific set of magical attacks threatens Lilac's sovereignty. Now Cal and Lilac will have to battle dark forces separately, even though being together is the only thing that's ever saved them.
Who is Eliza Wesson?
Months after Nat and Wes said good-bye on the shores of the Blue, Nat is learning how to control and use her new power. She and her drakon are the last of their kind - and she’s risked her life for their reunion. When she receives a mysterious distress call, she races to help, soliciting the guidance of her new friend, the beautiful and aloof Faix Lazaved of the Blue.
Still heartbroken over losing Nat, Wes is racing cars on a New Vegas racetrack while his team is scattered and lost. When he finds out that his sister, Eliza, is being held in the golden domes of El Dorado, he does what he’s best at - running to her side - and gambles on luck to see him through one more time.
Magic, romance, and danger collide as Nat and Wes become entangled in a dark new adventure that leads right to the heart of the mystery of their frozen, broken world. They soon discover that the answer to both their quests lies in the same question: Who is Eliza Wesson - what is she capable of, and why was she stolen from her family so long ago?
Jisu's traditional South Korean parents are concerned by what they see as her lack of attention to her schoolwork and her future. Working with Seoul's premiere matchmaker to find the right boyfriend is one step toward ensuring Jisu's success, and going on the recommended dates is Jisu's compromise to please her parents while finding space to figure out her own dreams. But when she flubs a test then skips out on a date to spend time with friends, her fed-up parents shock her by shipping her off to a private school in San Francisco. Where she'll have the opportunity to shine academically - and be set up on more dates!
Navigating her host family, her new city and school, and more dates, Jisu finds comfort in taking the photographs that populate her ever-growing social media account. Soon attention from two very different boys sends Jisu into a tailspin of soul-searching. As her passion for photography lights her on fire, does she even want to find The One? And what if her One isn't parent and matchmaker approved?
After defeating Lucifer and saving the world, Schuyler Van Allen woke up in an entirely different reality and learned she had to do it all over again. Find the villain, take him down, save the world. But after losing her only allies, Jack Force - who ran off to protect her - and Kingsley Martin - who was captured and killed by the enemy, Schuyler has to face facts. She's going to have to do this alone . . . or is she?
\nWhen a mysterious new girl named Eoife shows up at Duchesne Academy, Schuyler at first thinks she must be yet another enemy, but she soon finds out that Eoife could be the answer Schuyler's been looking for. A member of an ages old secret society of heroes called the Palladins, Eoife is here to help - and she has friends - lots of them.
\nUnited with another unlikely ally in Max Force, the group might just have a fighting chance - if they can find and rescue Jack, get Max's Blue Blood powers back, solve the theory of chaos magic and take down a friend turned foe. Oh, and fight off an army of Silver Bloods and otherworldly monsters led by the devil himself.
\nCan Schuyler finally put an end to the war between heaven and hell? Or will she have another world to save each time she opens her eyes?
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The Blue Bloods are back . . . more fanged and fabulous than ever. After defeating Lucifer and sacrificing the love of her life, Jack, Schuyler wakes up back in New York safe and sound. Only it's not quite the New York she knows, and she's not in her regular body. She looks different and feels different and so does everyone else.
\nSchuyler soon discovers that in this world, her best friend has a different last name, her parents are both alive and well and one of them is an entirely different person, and the love of her life? Not so dead after all. The catch? Jack has no idea who she is. As it turns out, Schuyler is not in her New York. She's not even in her universe. This is an alternate reality. One where Lucifer is alive and well and acting as mayor of New York, Blue Bloods are luring humans to clinics to drain their blood, and Jack is Lucifer's right hand man.
\nJust when she thinks all is lost, Schuyler is contacted by a familiar friend - the Silver Blood, Kingsley. The Kingsley from her world. He actually remembers the Schuyler she used to be! But he also has a theory, and it's one she doesn't like. That Schuyler was sent here to defeat Lucifer. Again. And that she's the only person in this universe or any universe that can defeat him.
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1777. Albany, New York.
As battle cries of the American Revolution echo in the distance, servants flutter about preparing for one of New York society’s biggest events: the Schuylers’ grand ball. Descended from two of the oldest and most distinguished bloodlines in New York, the Schuylers are proud to be one of their fledgling country’s founding families, and even prouder still of their three daughters - Angelica, with her razor-sharp wit; Peggy, with her dazzling looks; and Eliza, whose beauty and charm rival that of both her sisters, though she’d rather be aiding the colonists’ cause than dressing up for some silly ball.
Still, she can barely contain her excitement when she hears of the arrival of one Alexander Hamilton, a mysterious, rakish young colonel and General George Washington’s right-hand man. Though Alex has arrived as the bearer of bad news for the Schuylers, he can’t believe his luck - as an orphan, and a bastard one at that - to be in such esteemed company. And when Alex and Eliza meet that fateful night, so begins an epic love story that would forever change the course of American history.
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1785. New York, New York.
As a young nation begins to take shape, Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler are on top of the world. They’re the toast of the town, keeping New York City buzzing with tales of their lavish parties, of Eliza’s legendary wit, and of Alex’s brilliant legal mind.
But new additions to Alex & Eliza’s little family mean change is afoot in the Hamilton household. When they agree to take in an orphaned teenage girl along with Eliza’s oldest brother, John Schuyler, Eliza can’t help but attempt a match. It’s not long before sparks start to fly…if only Eliza can keep herself from interfering too much in the course of true love. After all, she and Alex have an arrival of their own to plan for, though Alex’s latest case brings a perilous threat that may destroy everything.
For Red, growing up in Wonderland has been no piece of cake (literally - dessert is outlawed). Her mom, the Queen of Hearts, rules the kingdom with an iron scepter, while Red longs for a life of her own. She’s heard rumors about an island that once housed all the villains of folklore. A place with no rules? It sounds perfect.
\nBut then the Queen declares that Red will issue a royal decree at the annual Wonderland Tea Ceremony (aka she'll come up with new ridiculous laws). Of course, Red loathes idea of following in her mother’s crimson-heeled footsteps. Banding together with new friends, Ace and Chester, Red plans the ultimate a party. Little does she know that they’ll be setting off a chain of events (or un-events) that could change things forever.
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Ellie de Florent-Stinson is celebrating her fortieth birthday with a grand celebration in her fabulous house in Palm Springs.
At forty, it appears Ellie has everything she ever wanted: a handsome husband; an accomplished, college-age stepdaughter; a beautiful ten-year-old girl; two adorable and rambunctious six-year-old twin boys; lush, well-appointed homes in Los Angeles, Park City, and Palm Springs; a thriving career as a well-known fashion designer of casual women's wear; and a glamorous circle of friends.
Except everything is not quite as perfect as it looks on the outside - Ellie is keeping many secrets. This isn’t the first of her birthday parties that hasn't gone as planned. Something happened on the night of her sweet sixteenth. Something she’s tried hard to forget.
But hiding the skeletons of her past comes at a cost, and all of Ellie’s secrets come to light on the night of her fabulous birthday party in the desert - where everyone who matters in her life shows up, invited or not. Old and new, friends and frenemies, stepdaughters and business partners, ex-wives and ex-husbands congregate, and the glittering facade of her life crumbles in one eventful night.
When the Mayflower set sail in 1620, it carried on board the men and women who would shape America: Miles Standish; John Alden; Constance Hopkins. But some among the Pilgrims were not pure of heart; they were not escaping religious persecution. Indeed, they were not even human. They were vampires.The vampires assimilated quickly into the New World. Rising to levels of enormous power, wealth, and influence, they were the celebrated blue bloods of American society.
The Blue Bloods vowed that their immortal status would remain a closely guarded secret. And they kept that secret for centuries. But now, in New York City, the secret is seeping out. Schuyler Van Alen is a sophomore at a prestigious private school. She prefers baggy, vintage clothes instead of the Prada and pearls worn by her classmates, and she lives with her reclusive grandmother in a dilapated mansion. Schuyler is a loner.. . . . and happy that way.
Suddenly, when she turns fifteen, there is a visible mosaic of blue veins on her arm. She starts to crave raw food and she is having flashbacks to ancient times. Then a popular girl from her school is found dead . . . drained of all her blood. Schuyler doesn't know what to think, but she wants to find out the secrets the Blue Bloods are keeping. But is she herself in danger?
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The Never After crew is back for another twisted adventure. This time, they’re off to Snow Country - that is, after they rescue the beleaguered Lord Sharif of Nottingham from the evil Robin Hood, who has been plaguing the land with his thievery and mischief.
\nBut Robin’s antics aren’t the only dangers afoot in the Kingdom of Never After. At the behest of her daughter, the evil Cinderella, Queen Olga has turned Prince Charming into a Frog after his wedding to the beautiful Hortense. And how could we forget the ominous Prophecy, which still looms large over Filomena and her friends?
\nAlong with Jack, Alistair, Gretel, Beatrice, Byron Bessley, and some new Snow Country pals like Rose Red and a chatty magic mirror, Filomena sets off to find the only ones who can save the kingdom once and for The League of the Seven - a group of fearless warriors devoted to fighting the ogres at any cost.
\nStill, new threats lurk around every corner, both in Never After and back home in North Pasadena . . . Even with the League of the Seven’s help, can Filomena and her friends rescue the land from Olga’s clutches? Or will the ogres finally prevail?
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A curse has befallen Biringan. Stalking the night sky and sinking sharp teeth in its prey, a vampire-like creature - a manananggal - is terrorizing the kingdom. Now MJ Robertson-Rodriguez must fulfill her duties as the newly crowned queen and restore peace. Except . . . when MJ wakes up in tattered clothes stained with blood, she quickly realizes the monster lives within her.
\nTo prevent more destruction, MJ flees to Mount Makiling with select members of her court, all while keeping her curse secret. By her side is Lucas, the talented knight who broke her heart by giving his own to another. And there’s Prince Qian, the devilishly handsome monster hunter from the Jade Empire who's visiting on a diplomatic mission.
\nIn the mountains, MJ is charmed by Qian's valiant spirit. Could he be the one to finally mend her broken heart, which still beats for Lucas? But as the manananggal fills MJ with bloodthirst, she must set love aside and break the curse before it consumes her forever.
\nWhen a neighboring kingdom threatens to wage war on Biringan, can the young queen regain control of herself before she loses control of the crown?
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MJ Rodriguez has spent her life hiding in the human world, keeping a heavy secret. She’s half-encanto. As the only child of King Vivencio of the Sirena Court, she’s also next in line for the throne. And now, upon her estranged father’s sudden death, MJ must claim her place as rightful heir.
\nIn wondrous Biringan, the road to the throne is paved with thorns. Without a reigning monarch, the realm has spiraled into disarray. MJ has to win over a backstabbing council that objects to a half-human ruler. And when it looks like her father’s passing wasn’t natural but possibly inflicted by a curse, she must hunt down the sorceress behind this merciless magic.
\nIn a bind, MJ forges an unlikely alliance with the striking Sir Lucas of the feared Sigbin Court, and soon, she loses her heart to the mysterious knight. But with peril looming over Biringan, the princess must decide if she can both open herself to love and carry the weight of the crown.
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With Olga drawing ever nearer, Filomena and her friends race to find the last surviving fairy, Sabine, and protect her at all costs. For if Sabine dies, so does all of Never After. Without a moment to lose, Fil, Jack, Alistair, Gretel, and the rest of the gang - along with some new pals like Captain Hook - set off for Neverland to find Sabine.
\nBut even in Neverland, there's mischief afoot. Pan turns out to be an agent of chaos, and the crew discovers Sabine goes by another name in this mysterious land. . .Tinker Bell! With the aid (and hindrance) of new allies like Pan's gossip-loving nymphs - mermaids, magical fruit, and prophecies are just the beginning for Fil and her adventurous friends . . .
\nWith Olga's evil forces closing in, will Fil find a way to protect the magic of Never After once and for all, and ensure a happily-ever-after for the End of the Story?
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Mal, Evie, Jay, and Carlos may have once been the baddest of the bad, but their wicked ways are (mostly) behind them-and now graduation is almost here! But before the seniors can don their custom-designed caps and gowns, courtesy of Evie, they've got an epic plan to put into action. There are tons of villain kids on the Isle of the Lost who are eager for their chance to come to Auradon Prep-even Celia, Dr. Facilier's trickster daughter, wants in on the deal!-and Mal's crew is using their upcoming visit to the Isle to help make it happen. But Auradon's biggest threat is still at large?
\nTrapped on the other side of the barrier, Uma is more desperate than ever to get her long-awaited revenge against Mal. When she discovers an underground lair belonging to Hades, god of the underworld, Uma realizes she's found the perfect partner in crime. Together, they can defeat Mal, bring down the barrier, and escape the Isle for good.
\nMal and Uma have a score to settle, and they'll come face to face in an explosive underwater battle that could determine the fates of Auradon and the Isle of the Lost once and for all.
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Schuyler Van Alen is running out of time. The Dark Prince of Hell is storming the Gates of Paradise, intent on winning the heavenly throne for good. This time he has his greatest angels by his side, Abbadon and Azrael - Jack and Mimi Force, as they are known in the Coven.
\nOr so he thinks. Even as Lucifer assigns Jack and Mimi the tasks of killing their true loves, the Force twins secretly vow to defeat the Dark Prince once and for all. But how far will Mimi and Jack go to conceal their real loyalties?
\nMeanwhile, former vampire Bliss Llewellyn has joined forces with Lawson, the greatest wolf of the underworld, to free his people from their imprisonment in Hell. As they struggle against impossible odds, an ancient message, woven into the very fabric of time, reveals just how much depends on the success of their mission.
\nLucifer seeks the key to the Gate of Promise, and when Schuyler is taken captive and delivered straight to Hell, she must make an unthinkable choice - the same one the archangel Michael was forced to make during the Crisis in Rome. Will Schuyler find the strength to do what he could not?
\nThe epic, heartbreaking Blue Bloods series comes to a close with this final novel about staggering courage, unbearable sacrifice, and the immortality of true love.
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#WhereisAmeliaAshley
\nAmelia Ashley shares everything with her followers - her favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurants, her best fashion tips, and her European trip-of-a-lifetime with her hot boyfriend.
\nJosh has no choice but to return home without Amelia after she abandons him in Rome. He has no clue where she went or how her blood got in his suitcase. Why won’t anyone believe him?
\nTo Harper Delgado, Amelia Ashley is just another missing white girl whipping up a media frenzy. But with each digital knot she untangles about the influencer, Harper wonders: who is Amelia Ashley?
\nTwo years ago, another girl went missing, one who never made headlines or had a trending hashtag.
\nAmelia’s disappearance has captured the world’s attention. What comes next? Watch this space . . .
\nTold through a mixture of social media posts, diary entries, and firsthand accounts, Going Dark is a gripping, suspenseful thriller about all the missing girls who fall off the radar.
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Twenty years ago, all the evil villains were banished from the kingdom of Auradon and made to live in virtual imprisonment on the Isle of the Lost. The island is surrounded by a magical force field that keeps the villains and their descendants safely locked up and away from the mainland. Life on the island is dark and dreary. It is a dirty, decrepit place that's been left to rot and forgotten by the world.
\nBut hidden in the mysterious Forbidden Fortress is a dragon's eye: the key to true darkness and the villains' only hope of escape. Only the cleverest, evilest, nastiest little villain can find it . . . who will it be?
\nMaleficent, Mistress of the Dark: As the self-proclaimed ruler of the isle, Maleficent has no tolerance for anything less than pure evil. She has little time for her subjects, who have still not mastered life without magic. Her only concern is getting off the Isle of the Lost.
\nMal: At sixteen, Maleficent's daughter is the most talented student at Dragon Hall, best known for her evil schemes. And when she hears about the dragon's eye, Mal thinks this could be her chance to prove herself as the cruelest of them all.
\nEvie: Having been castle-schooled for years, Evil Queen's daughter, Evie, doesn't know the ins and outs of Dragon Hall. But she's a quick study, especially after she falls for one too many of Mal's little tricks.
\nJay: As the son of Jafar, Jay is a boy of many talents: stealing and lying to name a few. Jay and Mal have been frenemies forever and he's not about to miss out on the hunt for the dragon's eye.
\nCarlos: Cruella de Vil's son may not be bravest, but he's certainly clever. Carlos's inventions may be the missing piece in locating the dragon's eye and ending the banishment for good.
\nMal soon learns from her mother that the dragon's eye is cursed and whoever retrieves it will be knocked into a deep sleep for a thousand years. But Mal has a plan to capture it. She'll just need a little help from her \"friends.\" In their quest for the dragon's eye, these kids begin to realize that just because you come from an evil family tree, being good ain't so bad.
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The kingdom of Ophir was one of the most powerful and beautiful places in the world. But after an invasion by the land of Lacon, it was lost to the waves. Now, the Ophir live as second-class citizens beneath Lacon’s golden palaces.
\nWhen two bands of Ophir thieves - one led by Eban Sadreal and the other by Gineth Strong - go after the same treasure, a priceless relic, their worlds and hearts suddenly collide. For the relic releases an ancient magic that could restore the legacy of Ophir - a magic that could change the course of Eban and Gin’s lives forever.
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The stakes have never been higher for the young Blue Bloods of Manhattan. After their brief yet beautiful bonding ceremony in Italy, Schuyler Van Alen and Jack Force depart for Egypt, desperate to find the elusive Gate of Promise before Jack must face his twin, Mimi, for a blood trial. A blood trial that only one of them can survive.
\nBut everything Schuyler thought she knew about the gate turns out to be a lie, and they soon find themselves ensnared in a deadly battle against the demon-born. Schuyler and Jack take up arms, only to realize that there is a much graver threat simmering in the Kingdom of the Dead.
\nMeanwhile, determined to save the only vampire she still loves, Mimi has followed Kingsley Martin into Hell. With the help of her new human Conduit, Oliver Hazard-Perry, Mimi makes a bargain with the Queen of the Dead that she may soon regret. When the time comes to choose between love and revenge, both Mimi and Oliver will learn the true meaning of sacrifice.
\nConfronted by danger, betrayal, and loss at every turn, the Blue Bloods must find the will to fight - and love - another day.
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1780. Albany, New York.
As the war for American Independence carries on, two newlyweds are settling into their new adventure: marriage. But the honeymoon's over, and Alexander Hamilton and Eliza Schuyler are learning firsthand just how tricky wedded life can be.
Alex is still General George Washington's right-hand man and his attention these days is nothing if not divided - much like the colonies' interests as the end of the Revolution draws near. Alex & Eliza's relationship is tested further by lingering jealousies and family drama.
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Schuyler Van Alen is starting to get more comfortable with her newfound vampire powers, but she still has many unanswered questions. A trip to Italy in search of her grandfather only serves to make things more confusing.
\nWhat secrets are the leaders of The Committee hiding? Meanwhile, back in New York, preparations are feverishly underway for the famous Four Hundred Ball. In true Blue Blood fashion, the ball is totally fab, complete with masks - and hidden behind this masquerade is a revelation that will change the course of a young vampire's destiny.
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After inheriting the dark Van Alen Legacy, Schuyler fled to Florence with her forbidden love, Jack. Now the two of them must embark on the mission Schuyler was destined to complete: to find and protect the five remaining gates that guard the earth from Lucifer, lord of the Silver Bloods.
Back in New York, Mimi has been elected Regent of a crumbling coven. Struggling with her heartache over the loss of Kingsley and with her overwhelming desire to destroy Jack, she must focus all of her energy on a perilous new threat. Vampires are being abducted and their captors are planning to burn them alive online...for all the world to see. Help arrives in the form of Deming Chen, a Venator from Shanghai, who must untangle the web of deceptions before the killers strike again.
As the young vampires struggle for the survival of the coven, they uncover a deadly secret, a truth first discovered by Schuyler’s mother during the Renaissance but kept buried for centuries. And as the Blue Blood enclave weakens yet further, fate leads Schuyler to a terrible choice that will ultimately map the destiny of her heart.
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To save her mother from Olga's evil clutches, Filomena and her friends will set off for new lands and new adventures. Without a moment to lose, Filomena must travel to the legendary land of Camelot to find the sword of Excalibur - the only thing that can save Fil's mother from Olga's mysterious illness that has poisoned her body.
\nBut Camelot is not all that it seems. Fil and the crew quickly realize that there is another fairy tale that has taken hold in the land of Arthurian Legend. . . that of the Wizard of Oz! With the help (and hindrance) of the Wicked Witches of the East and West, lions and tigers and bears will surely be the least of Fil and the gang's troubles.
\nAs the League of Seven follows the yellow brick road to retrieve the sword and complete their most important quest yet, they find nothing will thwart the ogres and their mission to destroy Never After. In a land where nothing is truly as it seems, will Fil and the League of the Seven survive the witch's tests? Or will Olga's perilous plans rip Fil's mother away from her forever?
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Mal's an expert at intimidating her enemies, but she's broken the habit since leaving her villainous roots behind. So when she and her friends Evie, Carlos, and Jay all receive threatening messages demanding they return home, Mal can't believe it. Sure, she's King Ben's girlfriend now, and she's usually nice to her classmates, but she still didn't think anyone would be silly enough to try to push her around.
\nThe thing is, it kind of worked. Especially since she and her friends have a sneaking suspicion that their villainous parents are behind the messages. And when Evie looks into her Magic Mirror, what she sees only confirms their fears. Maleficent's just a tiny lizard after her run-in with Mal at Ben's Coronation, but she's the worst villain in the land for a reason. Could she have found a way to escape? Whatever's going on, Mal, Evie, Carlos, and Jay know they have to sneak back to the Isle and get to the bottom of it.
\nWithout its infamous leader, the island's even worse than when they left it, but the comforts of home - even a home as gloomy as the Isle of the Lost - can be hard to resist for recently reformed villains. Will the kids be able to beat the evil bubbling at the Isle's wicked core, or will the plot to destroy Auradon succeed?
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Deep beneath the waves, King Triton’s powerful trident has passed through the magical barrier that surrounds the Isle of the Lost - keeping villains in and magic out. And when Mal’s longtime rival Uma, daughter of Ursula, gets wind of this, she can’t believe her luck. The tide has dragged in something good for a change, and Uma is determined to get her wicked hands on it. But first, she needs a pirate crew.
\nA storm is brewing back in Auradon, and when Mal, Evie, Carlos, and Jay hear that the trident has been washed away, they realize they’ll have to find it before anyone from the Isle does. Luckily, they seem to have a talent for locating missing magical objects.
\nAs Uma readies for the high seas alongside Harry, son of Captain Hook, Gil, son of Gaston, and the toughest rogues on the Isle of the Lost, the reformed villains of Auradon devise their own master plan. And with King Ben away on royal business, they won’t have to play by all the rules. Using bad for good can’t be totally evil, right?
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Raven, Atticus, and Dorian have dreamed of attending Sibylline for as long as they can remember. But when the magical ivy league rejects them, the friends’ plans of a future together studying the arcane begin crashing down.
\nUntil they decide to steal an education.
\nGetting jobs on campus, they sneak into lectures and swipe forbidden texts, dodging the administration’s watchful eye. In the quiet of night, in the thrill of secrecy, their magic awakens. And so do long-buried attractions that turn their friendship into something more.
\nBut like magic, love can create, and it can destroy. As unrequited feelings and resentment threaten to fracture their bond, the trio discovers an insidious magic that has sunk its claws into Sibylline, killing students and corroding the very bones of the university. Now the three intruders may be the key to saving the institution from wreckage . . . if they don’t wreck one another first.
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Constantly in the spotlight thanks to her politician father's rising star, Olivia Blakely feels the pressure to be perfect. As the youngest girl in her class, she tries hard to keep up and to seem mature to the older boy she's crushing on, even as she catches his eye. But the need to look good on camera and at school soon grows into an all-consuming struggle with bulimia.
As Liv works toward her goal of gaining early admission to art school, including taking part in an upcoming student show, her life spirals out of control. Swept up in demands to do more than she's ready for, to always look perfect and to succeed, Liv doesn't know who she is anymore. It will take nearly losing her best friend and even her life for Liv to learn that loving herself is far more important than earning the world's approval.
It feels like there’s no ground beneath me, like everything I’ve ever done has been a lie. Like I’m breaking apart, shattering. Who am I? Where do I belong?
Jasmine de los Santos has always done what’s expected of her. Pretty and popular, she’s studied hard, made her Filipino immigrant parents proud and is ready to reap the rewards in the form of a full college scholarship.
And then everything shatters. A national scholar award invitation compels her parents to reveal the truth: their visas expired years ago. Her entire family is illegal. That means no scholarships, maybe no college at all and the very real threat of deportation.
For the first time, Jasmine rebels, trying all those teen things she never had time for in the past. Even as she’s trying to make sense of her new world, it’s turned upside down by Royce Blakely, the charming son of a high-ranking congressman. Jasmine no longer has any idea where—or if—she fits into the American Dream. All she knows is that she’s not giving up. Because when the rules you lived by no longer apply, the only thing to do is make up your own.
Tossed back into the not-so-familiar fairy-tale world of Never After, Filomena Jefferson-Cho and her friends set off on another adventure . . . this time in search of Cinderella’s glass slipper. Or rather, glass slippers.
\nIt turns out the classic story of Cinderella is full of lies - starting with how Cinderella herself is far from the innocent heroine everyone thinks she is. She is manipulative and cunning - willing to do anything to be the princess of Eastphalia. The real heroines of her story are her “wicked” stepsisters, Hortense and Beatrice, who aren’t actually wicked at all!
\nWith the help of the dashing Jack Stalker, adorable Alastair, and glamorous Gretel, Filomena must track down the slippers, which may be the key to a certain mysterious prophecy . . . And when Filomena and Beatrice get tossed into the Beast’s dungeon, all hope seems to be lost. Will the conniving Cinderella shatter everyone’s hopes for a true un-twisted ending? Or will Filomena and her friends secure the happily ever after Cinderella’s stepsisters deserve?
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Nothing ever happens in Filomena Jefferson-Cho's sleepy little suburban town of North Pasadena. The sun shines every day, the grass is always a perfect green, and while her progressive school swears there's no such thing as bullying, she still feels bummed out. But one day, when Filomena is walking home on her own, something strange happens.
Filomena is being followed by Jack Stalker, one of the heroes in the Thirteenth Fairy, a series of books she loves about a brave girl and her ragtag group of friends who save their world from an evil enchantress. She must be dreaming, or still reading a book. But Jack is insistent--he's real, the stories are real, and Filomena must come with him at once!
Soon, Filomena is thrust into the world of evil fairies and beautiful princesses, sorcerers and slayers, where an evil queen drives her ruthless armies to destroy what is left of the Fairy tribes. To save herself and the kingdom of Westphalia, Filomena must find the truth behind the fairytales and set the world back to rights before the cycle of sleep and destruction begins once more.
With the stunning revelation surrounding Bliss's true identity comes the growing threat of the sinister Silver Bloods. Once left to live the glamorous life in New York City, the Blue Bloods now find themselves in an epic battle for survival.
\nNot to worry, love is still in the air for the young vampires of the Upper East Side. Or is it? Jack and Schuyler are over. Oliver's brokenhearted. And only the cunning Mimi seems to be happily engaged.
A stay in a remote cabin is supposed to help Emily Rose finish her book - a feminist retelling of a fairytale about a princess and her lady-in-waiting imprisoned in a tower. Instead, it becomes the setting for a reckoning seven years in the making.
\nEmily has spent years hiding her trauma from the night she found her roommate murdered. When her husband, Tristan, books her writing retreat at an isolated property, she meets Alex, a woman with secrets of her own - including one that that could destroy Emily’s marriage.
\nTrapped by a fierce storm and haunted by the brutal attacks that marked their pasts, a series of unnerving events - a watcher in the woods, a smashed cell phone, slashed tires - forces the women together to rescue themselves from a very real, present danger.
Two years ago, the aliens made contact. Now Cara Sweeney is going to be sharing a bathroom with one of them.
Handpicked to host the first-ever L’eihr exchange student, Cara thinks her future is set. Not only does she get a free ride to her dream college, she’ll have inside information about the mysterious L’eihrs that every journalist would kill for. Cara’s blog following is about to skyrocket.
Still, Cara isn’t sure what to think when she meets Aelyx. Humans and L’eihrs have nearly identical DNA, but cold, infuriatingly brilliant Aelyx couldn’t seem more alien. She’s certain about one thing, though: no human boy is this good-looking.
But when Cara's classmates get swept up by anti-L'eihr paranoia, Midtown High School suddenly isn't safe anymore. Threatening notes appear in Cara's locker, and a police officer has to escort her and Aelyx to class.
Cara finds support in the last person she expected. She realises that Aelyx isn’t just her only friend; she's fallen hard for him. But Aelyx has been hiding the truth about the purpose of his exchange, and its potentially deadly consequences. Soon Cara will be in for the fight of her life - not just for herself and the boy she loves, but for the future of her planet.
The Great Betrayal changed everything for the Allied Realm. Long ago, the kingdom’s noble houses rose up against the goddess . . . and for their treachery, the firstborn of each noble family was cursed.
\nOne with perilous beauty.
One with destructive knowledge.
One with insatiable bloodlust.
But the royal house Mortara received the worst affliction of all. For while the king exists during the day, he fades into nothingness at night . . . until his twenty-first birthday, when he will be lost to the shadows forever.
\nNow an acolyte has arrived at court. Like all the second-born children of the Allied Realm, she’s destined to serve the goddess and become a Seer . . . only Cerise Solon has no gift of foretelling. In fact, she has no magical gift at all.
\nInstead, she’s surrounded by courtiers and priests - smiling sycophants whose hearts are filled with secrets and lies. And at the center of it all sits His Majesty Kian Hannibal Mortara, with his haunting eyes, sharp tongue, and an unerring ability to send her pulse skittering at the worst possible moments.
\nFalling for him is unthinkable. Because the king is the last of his line, and as the specter of his twenty-first birthday - and the full force of his curse - approaches, the kingdom holds its breath.
\nBut there’s only one way to save a dying king . . . and it lies with the one person who’s hiding the biggest secret of all. Cerise.
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Cara always knew life on planet L’eihr would be an adjustment. With Aelyx, her L’eihr boyfriend, back on Earth, working to mend the broken alliance between their two planets, Cara is left to fend for herself at a new school, surrounded by hostile alien clones. Even the weird dorm pet hates her.
Things look up when Cara is appointed as human representative to a panel preparing for a human colony on L’eihr. A society melding their two cultures is a place where Cara and Aelyx could one day make a life together. But with L’eihr leaders balking at granting even the most basic freedoms, Cara begins to wonder if she could ever be happy on this planet, even with Aelyx by her side.
Meanwhile, on Earth, Aelyx, finds himself thrown into a full-scale PR campaign to improve human-L’eihr relations. Humans don’t know that their very survival depends on this alliance: only Aelyx’s people have the technology to fix the deadly contamination in the global water supply that human governments are hiding. Yet despite their upper hand, the leaders of his world suddenly seem desperate to get humans on their side, and hardly bat an eye at extremists’ multiple attempts on Aelyx’s life.
The Way clearly needs humans’ help . . . but with what? And what will they ask for in return?
Boarding school student Talia Morris has no idea her boyfriend, Nathaniel, is a Mystic, let alone second in line to the throne of a secretive, aspirational magical community - one no mortal has ever been allowed to step inside. Until now. Nathanial’s cousin is about to be married in the biggest wedding the magical world has ever seen, and Nathaniel is allowed to bring a date.
\nTalia is the lucky recipient of the golden ticket every Mystic wannabe in the world would kill for - only she doesn’t want it. Talia thinks Mystic worship is lame and stupid and unnecessarily aggrandises people for being born a certain way. When she finds out Nathaniel is “one of them,” she almost jumps ship. But Nathaniel loves her, and she loves him. So when he begs her to give his family and their community a shot, she reluctantly agrees.
\nEnter the most fantastical world any mortal has ever seen, and the coolest magical wedding ever. After a few days of bonding with Nathaniel’s family on the island, of seeing how beautiful their magic is and how peaceful their community, Talia’s about to be won over - until the entire wedding party suddenly falls into an unexplainable coma and the community goes on lockdown.
\nTalia, the outsider, is pegged as the culprit and has to do everything in her meager non-power to prove her innocence. As she embarks on a journey to find the truth, Talia soon discovers reality is not all it seems, and her past may put her in more danger than she ever imagined.
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Veronica Mars gets a fantastical twist in this novel about a girl with a transferrable consciousness, who uses her power for good, only to have it turned on her when someone uses her body to commit murder. Now she must solve the crime before the killer comes after her.
\nCaught red handed . . . for a crime she didn't commit.
\nWithin the secret circles of Harvey Davis High School, everyone knows Tia Dante is worth her weight in hall passes. Using her genetic gift of transferable consciousness, she can slip inside your mind and do your dirty work - humiliate your cheating boyfriend, bring a bully to his knees, tell your boss where to stick it - and then return your body with no one the wiser. No task is too awkward, and unlike the competition, she takes care of business without peeking at your goods.
\nBut while Tia is occupied during a routine payback mission, someone uses her body for a few dirty deeds of their own . . . like murdering the town prosecutor. With the crime caught on camera and no concrete alibi, Tia is forced to ask her infuriatingly gorgeous ex - Nash Brock - to help unravel the mystery. The heat is on, in more ways than one, and a few stray bullets later, Tia is in a frantic race against the clock to find the killer before they find her.
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When Princess Cassia Rose fled her home world of Eturia to escape an arranged marriage, she had no idea her sudden departure would spark a war. Now after two years hiding as a ship hand, she is finally returning to her beloved home, but not in the way she imagined. Shackled by bounty hunters, she is violently dragged back to account for her crimes. Her only solace is that the Banshee crew managed to evade capture, including Kane Arric, her best friend . . . with occasional benefits.
Meanwhile, Kane and the rest of the crew of the Banshee plan a desperate rescue mission. But when they arrive on Eturia, Cassia isn't exactly in need of heroics - she's claimed her birthright as Eturia's queen, but has inherited a war-torn planet simmering with rebellion. Cassia must make alliances, and Kane, the bastard son of a merchant, isn't a choice that will earn her any friends. Kane knows he will never find someone to replace Cassia - and is certain she returns his feelings - but how can he throw away his own promising future waiting on a queen?
When the outer realm is threatened by the dangerous Zhang mafia, Cassia, Kane and the rest of the Banshee crew uncover a horrifying conspiracy that endangers the entire universe. In the face of unspeakable evil, Cassia must confront her own family's complicated legacy on Eturia and decide once and for all who her real family is.
Life in the outer realm is a lawless, dirty, hard existence, and Solara Brooks is hungry for it. Just out of the orphanage, she needs a fresh start in a place where nobody cares about the engine grease beneath her fingernails or the felony tattoos across her knuckles. She's so desperate to reach the realm that she's willing to indenture herself to Doran Spaulding, the rich and popular quarterback who made her life miserable all through high school, in exchange for passage aboard the spaceliner Zenith.
When a twist of fate lands them instead on the Banshee, a vessel of dubious repute, Doran learns he's been framed on Earth for conspiracy. As he pursues a set of mysterious coordinates rumored to hold the key to clearing his name, he and Solara must get past their enmity to work together and evade those out for their arrest.
Life on the Banshee may be tumultuous, but as Solara and Doran are forced to question everything they once believed about their world - and each other - the ship becomes home, and the eccentric crew family. But what Solara and Doran discover on the mysterious Planet X has the power to not only alter their lives, but the existence of everyone in the universe . . .
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In the thrilling conclusion to the Alienated series, Cara and Aelyx must unite their people against an ancient species that threatens to destroy them all.
\nAfter thwarting a deadly coup and saving the alliance between their worlds, Cara and Aelyx have finally earned a break. Their tiny island colony is everything they dreamed it would be - days spent gathering shells on the beach and nights in each other’s arms.
\nBut the vacation is short-lived.
\nThe treaty between Earth and L’eihr has awoken an ancient force that threatens to destroy them all. The Aribol, mysterious guardians charged with maintaining interstellar peace, deem the alliance a threat to the galaxy. They order the separation of both races, decreeing humans and L’eihrs must return to their own planets within the month or face extinction. In fact, they already have agents in place on Earth, ready to begin.
\nWith the clock ticking, Aelyx and Cara assemble a team of colonists and race back to Earth, where they unite with old friends to solve the mystery of who the Aribol are, what they want, and the real reason the alliance has provoked them. As tensions build to a full-scale war, Aelyx and Cara must fight harder than ever - not just for their future, but for the survival of both their worlds.
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Caro and Danny grew up side by side at the waterhole. Bound by love, loss and a promise Caro made to Danny' s mother, their lives are entwined. But as Danny spirals into addiction and self-destruction, Caro is caught between loyalty and the need to save herself. She becomes haunted by memories, by the stories she told herself of the life they' d have, and by the waterhole that shaped them both.
\nFrom southern Tasmania to Lisbon' s winding streets, she searches for escape from lost dreams, until a return home forces her to confront what it means to let go. Frogsong is a lyrical and devastating story of love, addiction and the ghosts that shadow us.
Send the messengers for the Faery Courts. This is the end.
\nThe Summer King is missing; the Dark Court is bleeding; and a stranger walks the streets of Huntsdale, his presence signifying the deaths of powerful fey.
\nAislinn tends to the Summer Court, searching for her absent king and yearning for Seth. Torn between his new queen and his old love, Keenan works from afar to strengthen his court against the coming war. Donia longs for fiery passion even as she coolly readies the Winter Court for battle. And Seth, sworn brother of the Dark King and heir to the High Queen, is about to make a mistake that could cost his life.
\nLove, despair, and betrayal ignite the Faery Courts, and in the final conflict, some will win . . . and some will lose everything.
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Seth never expected he would want to settle down with anyone - but that was before Aislinn. She is everything he'd ever dreamed of, and he wants to be with her forever. Forever takes on new meaning, though, when your girlfriend is an immortal faery queen.
\nAislinn never expected to rule the very creatures who'd always terrified her - but that was before Keenan. He stole her mortality to make her a monarch, and now she faces challenges and enticements beyond any she'd ever imagined.
\nIn Melissa Marr's third mesmerising tale of Faerie, Seth and Aislinn struggle to stay true to themselves and each other in a milieu of shadowy rules and shifting allegiances, where old friends become new enemies and one wrong move could plunge the Earth into chaos.
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NY publishing is Greta Clayborne’s life, and she’s on a high since she edited a hot new series that was just adapted for television. In her career, everything is on track. On the relationship front, there are no relationships, not since she had her heart broken. Now Greta uses a dating app, Sappho’s Kiss Society, for casual connections.
\nThat’s all the tattooed taciturn Lee was supposed to be when Greta invites the enigmatic woman to her hotel room, expecting to never see her again.
\nKaelee has more secrets than truths. She changed her name, finished a couple degrees, and just sold her book in a deal that will replace the money she’s spent on her tiny studio during grad school. Her life is writing, teaching, and too much time at the gym. But after she meets “Marie” on her app, she can’t get the curvaceous woman out of her mind.
\nLong distance chat lead to another meeting, and the two discover that they both want more. Maybe. The possibility of something real seems in reach - until Kaelee walks into her meeting with her editor only to find the woman she’s starting to fall for is her editor. Now Greta’s career and reputation are at risk, but when Kaelee’s wealthy and influential family shows up to put a stop to the “embarrassment” of writing sapphic fiction, Greta has to decide what matters, her heart or her career.
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Half-dead witch Geneviève Crowe makes her living beheading the dead - and trying to juggle her new duties as a faery princess now that she's married Eli Stonecroft, a faery prince who was in self-imposed exile in New Orleans.
\nBut monsters have no patience with royal obligations, and the same creature who once hunted her great-times-great grandmother is now trying to put Gen in the ground.
\nWhen the relentless monster from her family's past decides to hex Geneviève, she's forced to go on the run or expose how much power she's started amassing. Her royally impatient uncle-in-law, the faery king, has already threatened her and Eli.
Unbeknownst to mortals, a power struggle is unfolding in a world of shadows and danger. After centuries of stability, the balance among the Faery Courts has altered, and Irial, ruler of the Dark Court, is battling to hold his rebellious and newly vulnerable fey together. If he fails, bloodshed and brutality will follow.
\nSeventeen-year-old Leslie knows nothing of faeries or their intrigues. When she is attracted to an eerily beautiful tattoo of eyes and wings, all she knows is that she has to have it, convinced it is a tangible symbol of changes she desperately craves for her own life.
\nThe tattoo does bring changes, but not the kind Leslie has dreamed of, but sinister, compelling changes that are more than symbolic. Those changes will bind Leslie and Irial together, drawing Leslie deeper and deeper into the faery world, unable to resist its allures, and helpless to withstand its perils . . .
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After entering an accidental engagement, overcoming attempted murder, and discovering a family secret, Geneviève is ready for things to settle down, but carnival season in New Orleans is not the best time of year for “normal.”
\nWhen Eli Stonecroft, the faery who has claimed her heart despite her best attempts, offers her a new faery bargain - she's smart enough to say no . . . right up to the point when she has to decide between dealing with the consequence of this faery bargain or facing the killer alone.
\nAs the draugar mix with the locals and tourists, and bodies start to pile up, Geneviève is enlisted by the faery king and the draugar queen to find the killer amidst the swirl of parades and parties of carnival season.
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Half-human and half-faery, Ani is driven by her hungers.
\nThose same appetites also attract powerful enemies and uncertain allies, including Devlin. He was created as an assassin and is brother to the faeries' coolly logical High Queen and to her chaotic twin, the embodiment of War. Devlin wants to keep Ani safe from his sisters, knowing that if he fails, he will be the instrument of Ani's death.
\nAni isn't one to be guarded while others fight battles for her, though. She has the courage to protect herself and the ability to alter Devlin's plans - and his life. The two are drawn together, each with reason to fear the other and to fear for one another. But as they grow closer, a larger threat imperils the whole of Faerie. Will saving the faery realm mean losing each other?
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After discovering she's a witch and being whisked away to the magical land of Crenshaw, Ellie wants nothing more than to spend time with her new wife, Prospero, who has magically altered Ellie's memories to convince her of exactly that.
\nProspero herself is guilt-wracked after erasing Ellie's memories and being forced into a sham marriage with the woman she loves for real. But Crenshaw is dying, poisoned by Prospero's enemies who want their community to return to the human world, and she will do anything to save it.
\nThe most powerful witch in anyone's memory is in Prospero's home, in her bed, with no idea that she's a prisoner there . . . yet.
\nAs the very fabric of their world is being destroyed, Ellie and Prospero must find a way to work together and save the world, and themselves.
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Ellie loves working in her local library in the small town of Ligonier. She loves baking scones and investigating the mysterious and captivating in her spare time. And there is nothing more mysterious and captivating than the intriguingly beautiful, too properly dressed woman sipping tea in her library who has appeared as if out of nowhere. The pull between them is undeniable, and Ellie is not sure that she wants to resist.
\nProspero, a powerful witch from the magical land of Crenshaw, is often accused of being . . . ruthless in her goals and ambitions. But she is driven to save her dying homeland, and a prophecy tells her that Ellie is the key. Unbeknownst to Ellie, her powers have not yet awakened. But all of that is about to change.
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Hot new author and her lead actress stun fans in a secret wedding - is it all a publicity stunt? Or something more . . .
\nOn a whim - and hoping to pay off the hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt her grifter father left behind - Victorian history professor Toni Darbyshire sells her lesbian detective novel in a massive deal. Suddenly thrust into the overwhelming new world of publishing, plus a television adaptation, Toni’s life gets even more complicated when her one-night stand turned pen pal (and the namesake for her main character) shows up in person for casting of the show.
\nAspiring actress Addie’s had a crush on the professor ever since she watched her lectures on the Victorian era to prep for a stage role. Now, getting cast in Toni’s TV series could be her big break. But Addie’s in over her head when promo pictures of their fake Victorian wedding go viral. She could lose more than just her heart . . . and her historically accurate underthings.
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In near-future New Orleans, Draugar, again-walkers, are faster and stronger than most humans, but not venomous until they are a century old. Until then, they shamble and bite. Since not everyone wants to see their relatives end up that way, Geneviève Crowe makes her living beheading the dead.
\nBut now, her magic’s gone sideways, and the only person strong enough to help her is the one man who could tempt her to think about picket fences: Eli Stonecroft, a faery who chose to be a bar-owner in New Orleans rather than live in Elphame.
\nThen human businessmen start turning up as draugar.
\nSuddenly, the queen of the again-walkers and the wealthy son of one of the victims, both hire Geneviève to figure it out. She works to keep her magic in check, the dead from crawling out of their graves, and enough money for a future that might be a lotlonger than she’d like. Neither her heart nor her life are safe now that she’s juggling a faery prince, murder, and magic.
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Rule #3: Don't stare at invisible faeries.
\nAislinn has always seen faeries. Powerful and dangerous, they walk hidden in the mortal world. Aislinn fears their cruelty - especially if they learn of her Sight - and wishes she were as blind to their presence as other teens.
\nRule #2: Don't speak to invisible faeries.
\nNow faeries are stalking her. One of them, Keenan, who is equal parts terrifying and alluring, is trying to talk to her, asking questions Aislinn is afraid to answer.
\nRule #1: Don't ever attract their attention.
\nBut it's too late. Keenan is the Summer King, who has sought his queen for nine centuries. Without her, summer itself will perish. He is determined that Aislinn will become the Summer Queen at any cost - regardless of her plans or desires.
\nSuddenly none of the rules that have kept Aislinn safe are working anymore, and everything is on the line: her freedom; her best friend, Seth; her life; everything.
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Luciana is the baby of her large Colombian American family. And despite usually being relegated to the sidelines, she now finds herself the voice of reason in the middle of their unexpected crisis. Her older sister, Mari, is away at college and reduced to a mere listening ear on the other end of their many phone calls, so when South Florida residents are ordered to evacuate before a hurricane, it’s up to Luciana to deal with her eccentric grandmother, Abue, who’s refusing to leave.
\nBut the storm isn’t the only danger. Abue, normally glamorous and full of life, is given a crushing medical diagnosis. While she’d prefer to ignore it and focus on upholding her reputation and her looks instead, the news sets Abue on her own personal journey, with Luciana reluctantly along for the ride.
\nWhen Abue moves into Luciana’s bedroom, their complicated bond only intensifies. Luciana would rather be skating or sneaking out to meet girls, but Abue’s wild demands and unpredictable antics are a welcome distraction from Luciana’s misguided mother, absent sister, and uncertain future. Forced to step into the role of caretaker, translator, and keeper of the devastating secrets that Abue begins to share, Luciana suddenly finds herself center stage, facing down adulthood - and rising to the occasion.
\nAs Luciana chronicles the events of her upended senior year over the phone, Oye feels like the most entertaining conversation you’ve ever eavesdropped a rollicking, heartfelt, and utterly unique novel by an author as original as she is insightful.
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Virginia 1954. A young woman wakes, agitated and confused, on a patient transport bus arriving at Hanover State Psychiatric Hospital. She remembers nothing of her life before that moment, none of the dark things she must've seen - and done - that have forged her into such a skilled and cunning fighter. Once she's been subdued, doctors tell her she's Dorothy Frasier, a paranoid schizophrenic, committed to Hanover for treatments they hope will quell her increasingly violent delusions.
\nShe’s certain they’re wrong - until disturbing visions begin to invade her reality: of a dystopian future where frantic scientists urge her to complete \"the mission\" and save humankind. Convinced it's Hanover causing the hallucinations, she tells no one, focuses only on escape . . . Until there's a visitor, a man whose loving face - and touch - she remembers, a man who knows all about her visions because he's spent years helping her cope with them: her husband, Paul Frasier.
\nNow she's sure of nothing, caught between two realities. Believe in the future, and she might save the world. Believe in her doctors and Paul, and she might save herself. She's desperate for answers, but she'll have to harness the darkness inside her to get them, risking her freedom, her mind, and ultimately her life in a heart-stopping quest for the truth.
At Sunny Pines Retirement Community, where the “Sixty-Two and Better!” share their golden years, secrets abound. Some scandalous, some haunting, and some dangerous. For Birdie Allen, a retired business owner and grandmother, her secret is the only thing she’s got left. Getting old isn’t the hardest part about life. It’s the memories from more than fifty years ago of the death of her unrequited love. And Birdie’s abandoned quest to root out the killer.
\nWith retirement comes a lot of time to revisit old ghosts, so when Birdie ties together a string of recent murders, and a woman disappears, she’s drawn into the same chase she gave up decades earlier. But this time she has the help of an eccentric community of eager new friends. And they’re not alone.
\nRestless souls are watching, including Birdie’s lost love, and they sense the danger that lies ahead. They’re not leaving Birdie’s side until she finishes what she set out to do. But will Birdie’s pursuit of a killer finally free her of regrets and allow her to embrace the beauty of the life she’s created?
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Vega Jones escapes an abusive relationship with nothing but her two-month-old baby and the van she grew up in. Her destination is a small Ohio town her late vagabond mother left years ago. It’s one full of nobodies, her mother warned. That makes it the ideal refuge for Vega to lie low, feel safe, and maybe learn more about a past her mother never spoke of.
\nVega warms to the town and to new acquaintances like Heff, the young deputy and artist who prefers his yard art to actual policing, and empathetic Eve, a local farmer whose near-death experience gave her more than just her life back. But even in this welcoming community, there’s an undercurrent of something unsettled, talk of a tragedy that unfolded in the woods years ago, and a mystery connected to Vega in ways she couldn’t have anticipated.
\nAs a mother on the run and following a path of mounting risks and illuminating secrets, Vega discovers that even during the darkest of times, there’s light in unexpected places.
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Ten years ago, Claire Hines lost her unborn child - and her short-term memory - following a heartrending tragedy. With notebooks, calendars, to-do lists, fractured pieces of the past, and her father’s support, Claire makes it through each day, hour by hour, with relative confidence. She also has a close-knit community of friends in the remote Alaskan town where she teaches guitar to the local children. It’s there, in the reminders.
\nAs determined as Claire is to regain all that’s disappeared, she’d prefer to live without some memories of her before life - especially those of her mother, Alice, who abandoned her, and Tate, the ex-boyfriend who broke her heart.
\nBut when Alice and Tate return from the past, there’ll be so much more for Claire to relive. And to discover for the very first time. Through healing, forgiveness, and second chances, Claire may realise that what’s most important might not be re-creating the person she was, but embracing the possibilities of being the person she is.
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Orphaned at a young age and witness to her brother’s decline into addiction, Nora Martinez has every excuse to question the fairness of life. Instead, the openhearted librarian in the small Colorado community of Silver Ridge sees only promise. She holds on to the hope that she’ll be reunited with her missing brother and does what she can at the town library. It’s her home away from home, but it’s also a sanctuary for others who, like her brother, could use a second chance.
\nThere’s Marlene, an elderly loner who believes that, apart from her husband, there’s little good left in the world; Jasmine, a troubled teen; Lewis, a homeless man with lost hope and one last wish; and Vlado, the security guard who loves a good book and, from afar, Nora.
\nAs a winter storm buries Silver Ridge, this collection of lonely hearts takes shelter in the library. They’ll discover more about each other, and themselves, than they ever knew - and Nora will be forced to question her brother’s disappearance in ways she never could have imagined. No matter how stranded in life they feel, this fateful night could be the new beginning they didn’t think was possible.
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Thirty-two-year-old Jess Abbot has lost everything: her job, her apartment, and - most heart-wrenching - her eight-year-old son, Chance, to a tragic accident. Haunted by memories and grief, Jess packs what’s left and heads for the small mountain town of Pine Lake, where she takes a position as caregiver to an eccentric old woman.
\nA rumored clairvoyant, Lucy is strange but welcoming and immediately intuits Jess as a “loose end” in need of closure. But Jess isn’t the only guest in Lucy’s large Victorian home. There’s also Star, a teenage runaway with a secret too painful to share. And the little boy with heart-shaped stones, who comes with a hope for reconciliation - and a warning.
\nSoon Jess learns that she’s not the only lost soul running from the ghosts of the past. She and Star have been brought together for a reason: to be saved by the very thing that destroyed them.
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A stunning reimagining of Tristan and Isolde set in a dystopian world woven with magic.
\nIt’s been thirty-seven years since the Republic was destroyed. Now two settlements - the five clans and the Kingsland - fight for control of the untainted land. Though the five clans are outnumbered, they’ve finally struck, killing Kingsland’s brutal leader.
\nIn the war that follows, Isadora, an eighteen-year-old healer, risks her life to help injured soldiers. But when she stops an attack from Tristan, a Kingsland assassin, his soldiers shoot her with a poisoned arrow. As Isadora lies dying, Tristan does the unimaginable: He offers to save her life using a rare magic.
\nIn choosing to live, Isadora is unknowingly bound to the mysterious Tristan. Worse, even acknowledging the attraction between them allows him to glean fragments of her memories and the very knowledge he needs to destroy the five clans. But their magical connection works both ways. So to save her people, Isadora will have to open her heart to her most cunning enemy. Because in a race for ultimate survival, she’ll need to destroy Tristan and his people first.
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Penelope Auberge is at her breaking point. With an overbearing mother, a married boyfriend, and a boss who gives Pen’s high-profile finance clients to male colleagues, it feels like nothing she’s accomplished in her thirty-two years belongs to her.
\nDetermined to build a life entirely her own, Pen moves from Minnesota to Tennessee to open a solo financial business. There, she meets siblings Deanna and Grant, who attempt to coax Pen out of her socially anxious shell. Hesitant to open up so she doesn’t get hurt (again), Pen is slow to develop a friendship with Deanna, and she’s determined to ignore her feelings for Grant, which is difficult given she’s joined his cycling group and a clear something begins blossoming between them.
\nPen’s path in Nashville appears to be smoothing out, but she soon learns that packing up her past isn’t quite that easy. If she wants to start fresh, she’ll have to decide what she really wants - even if that means riding away from her old life for good.
A failed coup. A nation in turmoil. A desperate rebellion.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBroken and bitter, Elivya’s allies secret her from the enemy-infested capital city and back to her family’s province in the countryside. The rolling hills of Laezon may seem untouched by war, but the Persican armies will not leave it that way for long. The White Priest hunts her. Guilt and grief haunt her. Can Elivya conquer her past in time to protect her homeland and her people?
Swordplay. Spycraft. These are the skills Elivya has studied all her life - skills she must keep secret at all costs.
\nAs the sole heir to one of the kingdom’s Great Houses, the time has come for her debut at court. One whisper of her unorthodox training could ruin her prospects and spell the end of her ancient bloodline. Under the watchful eye of her father’s deadliest - and most irritating - guard, Elivya joins the nobility’s vicious game of gossip, seduction, and ambition to secure her family's future.
\nBut the stakes are far higher than she ever imagined.
\nA shadow grows in the East, a ruthless empire bent on conquest. When a foreign agent infiltrates the royal court, whispering in the king’s ear and sowing the seeds of war, Elivya knows that exposing him will take every one of her carefully-hidden skills. A single misstep could destroy her House - or doom her nation.
As the newspaper clipping falls from the cardboard box Tegan takes in the woman in the picture: her chestnut hair, her eyes full of laughter, the way she nestles against the man beside her. And as she reads the words in the article, Tegan almost stops breathing. Was coming here a terrible mistake?
\nWhen Tegan’s family is torn apart by a terrible tragedy, she runs away in search of somewhere to keep safe from the past that haunts her, and the painful secrets she’s never told anyone. Arriving in Copper Canyon, Colorado, where wooden storefronts line the quiet streets and no-one knows her name, Tegan breathes easy for the first time in years. And when she grows close with Jack, another lost soul who won’t talk about his home, it seems she’s found the perfect companion to explore the mountain landscapes with.
\nBut just as Tegan starts to think maybe safety isn’t a place, it’s a person, she notices the box of photos and newspaper clippings that Jack takes everywhere in the trunk of his car. Who is the woman in every frame? And why does she look so familiar?
\nTegan knows the only way to protect herself, and keep her dark family history locked away, is to discover more about the woman in Jack’s photos. But when she does, will the truth help her build a new life, or will it send her running once more?
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Anna works two jobs to get herself through college and never, ever talks about her family. It’s easier to keep her distance from everyone until she can finally leave her old life behind. That is, until chance throws her together with Gabe . . .
\nGabe is top of the class, in a fancy fraternity, and has a big, perfect, warm-hearted family. He is everything Anna is not. Their connection is undeniable. His silver-blue eyes pierce right through her, and he makes her laugh in ways she never thought possible. But Anna would do anything to stop Gabe from discovering her darkest secret, and the real reason she goes home every night to a cold, silent apartment . . .
\nWhen Gabe and his family get close to the truth, Anna runs, vowing to never see them again. But forever is a long time . . .
\nYears later. Tragedy brings Anna back to the town she grew up in - a place she escaped a decade ago. When Gabe wraps his strong arms around her, it’s like finally finding home.
\nBut when the truth comes out after all these years, will both their worlds come crashing down? Gabe is the one person Anna trusts but what if he has secrets, too? And how much pain can two hearts endure, before they are torn apart forever?
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High school seniors Jane and Nik are inseparable. Best friends who share all their hopes and dreams - and one day, their first stolen kiss. But that day soon becomes the best and worst of Jane’s life . . .
\nBecause there’s one thing Jane has never been able to share with the truth she carries about a devastating family secret. To protect Nik, Jane is forced to make a heartbreaking choice. Stay in town and risk Nik’s life being destroyed. Or run far, far away and never see him again . . .
\nTen years later. After news reaches Jane of her father’s death, she finally comes home, where bittersweet memories of Nik wait on every quiet street. And when she bumps into him, the years melt away in a single instant.
\nNik is broad-shouldered now and stands over six feet tall, but his deep brown eyes are just the same. Jane takes in Nik’s blue scrubs and doctor’s ID badge, happy that at least one of them got to live their dream. And when he breathes her name and caresses the fresh bruise on her cheek - like he can’t help but touch her - her heart speeds up just like the first time they kissed.
\nBut Nik still doesn’t know the real reason she left town. Or who put that bruise on her cheek . . .
\nJane knows the truth would destroy him. So why can’t she stay away from the boy who broke her heart? And when the past comes calling, will it tear them apart forever?
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It is an age when Valdemar is yet unfounded, its organization of Heralds yet unformed, and magic is still a wild and uncontrolled force. Skandranon Rashkae is perhaps the finest specimen of his race, with gleaming ebony feathers, majestic wingspan, keen magesight and sharp intelligence. Courageous, bold, and crafty, Skan is everything a gryphon should be. He is the fulfillment of everything that the Mage of Silence, the human sorcerer called Urtho, intended to achieve when he created these magical beings to be his champions, the defenders of his realm - a verdant plain long coveted by the evil mage Maar.
\nNow Maar is once again advancing on Urtho's Keep, this time with a huge force spearheaded by magical constructs of his own - cruel birds of prey ready to perform any evil their creator may demand of them. And when one of Urtho's Seers wakes from a horrifying vision in which she sees a devastating magical weapon being placed in the hands of Maar's common soldiers, Skandrannon is sent to spy across enemy lines, cloaked in the protective of Urtho's powerful Spell of Silence.
\n
On the border between Valdemar and the deadly Pelagirs Forest, the gryphon hero Kelvren returns from a near-fatal self-sacrifice that won him the approval of Valdemar's ground troops, but caused a diplomatic crisis. Frustrated by his lack of a hero's welcome, Kelvren is talked into helping with an expedition by his old friend, Firesong.
\nFiresong struggles with his own age and mortality, and he intends to solve a vast mystery at the center of legendary Lake Evendim as his crowning achievement. Just getting the multicultural fleet underway is a challenge, but what awaits them is a situation none of them could expect.
\n
Apprenticed to a venerable wizard when his hunter and trapper parents disappear into the forest never to be seen again, Darian is difficult and strong willed - much to the dismay of his kindly master. But a sudden twist of fate will change his life forever, when the ransacking of his village forces him to flee into the great mystical forest.
\nIt is here in the dark forest that he meets his destiny, as the terrifying and mysterious Hawkpeople lead him on the path to maturity. Now they must lead the assault on his besieged home in a desperate attempt to save his people from certain death!
\n
Two years after his parents disappearance, Darian has sought refuge and training from the mysterious Hawkbrothers. Now he has opened his heart to a beautiful young healer. Finally Darian has found peace and acceptance in his life. That is, until he learns that his parents are still alive - and trapped behind enemy borders . . .
\n
It has been four years since Darian saw his village sacked and burned by barbarians. Taking refuge with the Hawkbrothers, he soon finds his life's calling - as a Healing Adept.
\nBut even as he learns the mystical ways of this ancient race, Darian cannot escape the dangers threatening his future. Another tribe of barbarians is approaching. The time has come . . . to stand up and fight.
\n
A dozen years of peace have passed in the city of White Gryphon, providing well-deserved and much-needed security for the people who lost their homes in the magical Cataclysm that killed the Mage Urtho, creator of the gryphons.
\nBut the inhabitants of White Gryphon have not forgotten their long struggles, and have trained an elite guard force, the Silver Gryphons, to protect their city, and if necessary, to join with the army of the Black Kings for mutual defense.
\n
It has been ten years since the magical Cataclysm, which destroyed the twin strongholds of the world's two most powerful Mages, killing Urtho, creator of the gryphons, and sending his forces into exile. Now Urtho's peoples - human and non-human alike - live in a terraced city carved into the face of a gleaming white cliff on the edge of the Western Ocean.
\nSecure at least, until the fleet of the mysterious Black Kings appears in their harbor, bringing envoys who inform the residents of White Gryphon that their newfound home lies on the northern perimeter of lands claimed by this powerful kingdom. Desperate not to lose their hard won home, Skandranon, along with his longtime friend Amberdrake, agree to accompany the envoys back to the Court of the Black Kings, hoping to negotiate an alliance.
\nWhen a high ranking noble who opposes this alliance is found murdered, Skandranon and Amberdrake realise that they are up against unknown enemies who will stop at nothing, even the use of diabolical Blood Magic, to destroy White Gryphon.
\n
The Heralds of Valdemar are the kingdom's ancient order of protectors. They are drawn from all across the land, from all walks of life, and at all ages - and all are Gifted with abilities beyond those of normal men and women. They are Mindspeakers, FarSeers, Empaths, ForeSeers, Firestarters, FarSpeakers, and more. These inborn talents - combined with training as emissaries, spies, judges, diplomats, scouts, counselors, warriors, and more - make them indispensable to their monarch and realm.
\nSought and Chosen by mysterious horse-like Companions, they are bonded for life to these telepathic, enigmatic creatures. The Heralds of Valdemar and their Companions ride circuit throughout the kingdom, protecting the peace and, when necessary, defending their land and monarch.
\n
Talia could scarcely believe that she had finally earned the rank of full Herald. Yet though this seemed like the fulfillment of all her dreams, it also meant she would face trials far greater than those she had previously survived. For now Talia must ride forth to patrol the kingdom of Valdemar, dispending Herald's justice throughout the land.
\nBut in this realm beset by dangerous unrest, enforcing her rulings would require all the courage and skill Talia could command - for if she misused her own special powers, both she and Valdemar would pay the price.
\n
Chosen by the Companion Rolan, a mystical horse-like being with powers beyond imagining, Talia, once a runaway, has now become a trainee Herald, destined to become one of the Queen’s own elite guard. For Talia has certain awakening talents of the mind that only a Companion like Rolan can truly sense.
\n\n
But as Talia struggles to master her unique abilities, time is running out. For conspiracy is brewing in Valdemar, a deadly treason that could destroy Queen and kingdom. Opposed by unknown enemies capable of both diabolical magic and treacherous assassination, the Queen must turn to Talia and the Heralds for aid in protecting the realm and insuring the future of the Queen’s heir, a child already in danger of becoming bespelled by the Queen’s own foes.
With Elspeth, the heir to the throne of Valdemar, come of marriageable age, Talia, the Queen’s Own Herald returns to court to find Queen and heir beset by diplomatic intrigue as various forces vie for control of Elspeth’s future.
\nBut just as Talia is about to uncover the traitor behind all these intrigues, she is sent off on a mission to the neighboring kingdom, chosen by the Queento investigate the worth of a marriage proposal from Prince Ancar. And, to her horror, Talia soon discovers there is far more going on at Prince Ancar’s court than just preparation for a hoped-for royal wedding.
\nFor a different magic than that of the Heralds is loose in Ancar’s realm - an evil and ancient sorcery that may destroy all of Valdemar unless Talia can send warning to her Queen in time.
\n
Mags returns to the Collegium, but there are mixed feelings - his included - about him actually remaining there. No one doubts that he is and should be a Herald, but he is afraid that his mere presence is going to incite more danger right in the heart of Valdemar. The heads of the Collegia are afraid that coming back to his known haunt is going to give him less protection than if he went into hiding. Everyone decides that going elsewhere is the solution for now.
\nSo since he is going elsewhere - why not return to the place he was found in the first place and look for clues? And those who are closest to him, and might provide secondary targets, are going along. With Herald Jadrek, Herald Kylan (the Weaponsmaster's chosen successor), and his friends Bear, Lena, and Amily, they head for the Bastion, the hidden spot in the hills that had once been the headquarters of a powerful band of raiders that had held him and his parents prisoner. But what they find is not what anyone expected.
\n
Within the Eastern Empire, Duke Kordas Valdemar rules a tiny, bucolic Duchy that focuses mostly on horse breeding. Anticipating the day when the Empire’s exploitative and militant leaders would not be content to leave them alone, Korda’s father set out to gather magicians in the hopes of one day finding a way to escape and protect the people of the Duchy from tyranny.
\nKordas has lived his life looking over his shoulder. The signs in the Empire are increasingly dire. Under the direction of the Emperor, mages have begun to harness the power of dark magics, including blood magic, the powers of the Abyssal Planes, and the binding and “milking” of Elemental creatures.
\nBut then one of the Duchy’s mages has a breakthrough. There is a way to place a Gate at a distance so far from the Empire that it is unlikely the Emperor can find or follow them as they evacuate everyone that is willing to leave.
\nBut time is running out, and Kordas has been summoned to the Emperor's Court.
\nCan his reputation as a country bumpkin and his acting skills buy him and his people the time they need to flee? Or will the Emperor lose patience, invade to strip Valdemar of everything of worth, and send its conscripted people into the front lines of the Imperial wars?
\n
The Heralds of Valdemar are the kingdom's ancient order of protectors. They are drawn from all across the land, from all walks of life, and at all ages - and all are Gifted with abilities beyond those of normal men and women. They are Mindspeakers, FarSeers, Empaths, ForeSeers, Firestarters, FarSpeakers, and more.
\nThese inborn talents - combined with training as emissaries, spies, judges, diplomats, scouts, counselors, warriors, and more - make them indispensable to their monarch and realm. Sought and Chosen by mysterious horse-like Companions, they are bonded for life to these telepathic, enigmatic creatures. The Heralds of Valdemar and their Companions ride circuit throughout the kingdom, protecting the peace and, when necessary, defending their land and monarch.
\n
Brightly Burning marks Mercedes Lackey's return to the kingdom of Valdemar, and introduces us to a portion of the otherwise unchronicled reign of King Theran. The book's principle figure is Valdemar's most powerful herald, Lavan Firestorm, who comes of age during Valdemar's war with its long-time enemy, the kingdom of Karse.
\nSixteen-year-old Lavan Chitward's world is turned upside down when his mother is selected as a textile guild representative in the small rural community where he was raised. Moving to the capital city of Haven rips him away from his friends and boyhood pleasures, and nothing in Haven seems to fill that void. Unable to fit into the nouveau riche society, and unwilling to follow his parents into the textile guild, he finds himself adrift and depressed. His father enrolls him in a special school that will allow him to choose a trade that interests him, rather than be apprenticed against his will. There he finds himself terrorised and tortured by the boys in the sixth form until, with an awful roar, the gift of fire awakens deep within him and extracts revenge for his sadistic treatment.
\nWith the help of a unique herald, an empathetic healer and a special companion, Lavan soon learns to keep his gift under control and eventually, to direct his awful firestorm as far as he can see. When the kingdom of Karse attacks, Lavan is hurried to the border to assist his king and country by repelling the invasion. During the final battle Lavan earns the name Firestorm and becomes one of the most famous heralds in the history of Valdemar.
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Granddaughter of the sorceress Kethry, daughter of a noble house, Kerowyn had been forced to run the family keep since her mother's untimely death. Yet now at last her brother was preparing to wed, and when his bride became the lady of the keep, Kerowyn could return to her true enjoyments - training horses and hunting.
\nBut all Kerowyn's hopes and plans were shattered when her anscestral home was attacked, her father slain, her brother wounded, and his fiancee kidnapped. Drive by desperation and the knowledge that a scorcerer had led the journey which would prove but he first step on the road to the fulfillment of her destiny.
\n
Enter the thrilling third volume in the epic Collegium Chronicles . In Mercedes Lackey's classic coming-of-age story, the orphan Magpie pursues his quest for his parent's identity with burning urgency-while also discovering another hidden talent and being trained by the King's Own Herald as an undercover agent for Valdemar.
\nShy Bardic Trainee Lena has to face her famous but uncaring father, one of Valdemar's most renowned Bards. And Healing Trainee Bear must struggle against his disapproving parents, who are pressuring Bear to quit the Healers' Collegium because he lacks the magical Healing Gift. Each of the three friends must face his or her demons and find their true strength as they seek to become the full Heralds, Bards, and Healers of Valdemar.
\n
In March 1987, a young author from Oklahoma published her first novel, Arrows of the Queen. This modest book about a magical land called Valdemar was the beginning of a fantasy masterpiece that would span decades and include more than two dozen titles.
\nNow sixteen of today’s hottest fantasy authors - including Tanya Huff, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Fiona Patton, and Judith Tarr - visit the world of Valdemar, adding their own special touches.
\n
The Heralds of Valdemar are the kingdom's ancient order of protectors. They are drawn from all across the land, from all walks of life, and at all ages--and all are Gifted with abilities beyond those of normal men and women. They are Mindspeakers, FarSeers, Empaths, ForeSeers, Firestarters, FarSpeakers, and more. These inborn talents - combined with training as emissaries, spies, judges, diplomats, scouts, counselors, warriors, and more - make them indispensable to their monarch and realm.
\nSought and Chosen by mysterious horse-like Companions, they are bonded for life to these telepathic, enigmatic creatures. The Heralds of Valdemar and their Companions ride circuit throughout the kingdom, protecting the peace and, when necessary, defending their land and monarch.
\nNow, twenty-three authors ride with Mercedes Lackey to her magical land of Valdemar, adding their own unique voices to the Heralds, Bards, Healers, and other heroes of this beloved fantasy realm.
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Mags was once an enslaved orphan living a harsh life in the mines, until the King's Own Herald discovered his talent and trained him as a spy. Now a Herald in his own right, at the newly established Heralds' Collegium, Mags has found a supportive family, including his Companion Dallen.
\nAlthough normally a Herald in his first year of Whites would be sent off on circuit, Mags is needed close to home for his abilities as a spy and his powerful Mindspeech gift. There is a secret, treacherous plot within the royal court to destroy the Heralds. The situation becomes dire after the life of Mags' mentor, King's Own Nikolas, is imperiled. His daughter Amily is chosen as the new King's Own, a complicated and dangerous job that is made more so by this perilous time. Can Mags and Amily save the court, the Heralds, and the Collegium itself?
\n
Herald Mags, the King of Valdemar’s Herald Spy, has been developing a clandestine network of young informants who operate not only on the streets of the capital city of Haven, but also in the Great Halls and kitchens of the wealthy and highborn. In his own established alternate personas, Mags observes the Court and the alleys alike, quietly gathering information to keep Haven and the Kingdom safe.
\nHis wife Amily is growing into her position as the King’s Own Herald, though she is irritated to encounter many who still consider her father, Herald Nikolas, to be the real King’s Own. Nonetheless, she finds it increasingly useful to be underestimated, for there are dark things stirring in the shadows of Haven and up on the Hill. Someone has discovered many secrets of the women of the Court and the Collegia— and is using those secrets to terrorize and bully them. Someone is targeting the religious houses of women, too, leaving behind destruction and obscene letters.
\nBut who? Someone at the Court? A disgruntled Palace servant? One of the members of the Collegia? Someone in the patriarchal sect of the god Sethor? Could the villain be a woman? And what is this person hoping to achieve? It isn’t blackmail, for the letters demand nothing; the aim seems to be the victims’ panic and despair. But why?
\nMags and Amily take steps to minimize the damage while using both magic and wits to find the evildoer. But just as they appear to be on the verge of success, the letter writer tires of terror and is now out for blood.
\nMags and Amily will have to track down someone who leaves few clues behind. They must thwart whatever plans have been set in motion, and quickly - before terror turns to murder.
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Mags was a Herald of Valdemar. But he had once lived the brutal life of a child slave. When he was Chosen by his Companion Dallen, his young life was saved, and he slowly adjusted to being well fed, educated, and treasured as a trainee in the Herald's Collegium at Haven.
\nSingled out by the King's Own Herald, Mags would thrive in his secret training as a spy. His unusually strong Gift - an ability to Mindspeak and Mindhear anyone, not just others who were Gifted - made him a perfect undercover agent for the king.
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An original short fiction anthology set in Mercedes Lackey's bestselling world of Valdemar-featuring heroic Heralds and their horselike companions-and including an all-new novella by Lackey herself, as well as stories by masters such as Mickey Zucker Reichert, Judith Tarr, Tanya Huff, and others\"
\n
In March 1987, Mercedes Lackey, a young author from Oklahoma, published her first novel, Arrows of the Queen. No one could have envisioned that this modest book about a magical land called Valdemar would be the beginning of a fantasy masterwork series that would span decades and include more than two dozen titles.
\nNow the voices of other authors add their own special touches to the ancient land where Heralds \"Chosen\" from all walks of life by magical horse-like Companions patrol their ancient kingdom, dispensing justice, facing adversaries, and protecting their monarch and country from whatever threatens. Trained rigorously by the Herald's Collegium, these special protectors each have extraordinary Gifts: Mindspeaking, FarSeeing, FarSpeaking, Empathy, Firestarting and ForeSeeing, and are bonded for life with their mysterious Companions. Travel with these astounding adventurers in these original stories.
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Alberich had spent most of his youth in the Karsite military schools training to be an officer. As the son of an impoverished mother, he had no other career choice open to him. And Alberich had risen in the ranks with almost unnatural speed. He developed expertise with many weapons and excelled in academic subjects with an ease that was the envy of his classmates. But in fact, the reclusive Alberich studied long and hard, pushing himself ruthlessly.
\nIn battle, Alberich had always had a sort of “sixth sense” about things which were about to happen - when and from where the enemy would attack. Instinctively, he hid this ability, for the Sunpriests kept careful watch for anyone exhibiting “demon powers” which were the hallmark of Karse’s greatest enemy - the witch-nation of Valdemar. Those they caught were “cleansed” in the fires of Vkandis Sunlord.
\nBoth Alberich’s skill and secret served him well in the army of Karse, and when Alberich became one of Karse’s youngest captains, he received a special gift - a powerful white stallion “liberated” from the enemy. But this honor was merely a distraction, for the Sunpriests had laid a trap which even Alberich’s strange foresight could not predict . . .
\nSaved from burning as a witch when this odd white stallion braved flames and carried him over the border into Valdemar, he was healed by the same enemies he had been taught to hate his entire life. Though he knew he could never again return to his home, Alberich also knew he could never truly become a Valdemaran. How could Alberich remain true to his own people and still retain his honor while helping to train the direst enemy of Karse?
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This stand-alone novel in the Valdemar series continues the story of prickly weapons-master Alberich. Once a heroic Captain in the army of Karse, a kingdom at war with Valdemar, Alberich becomes one of Valdemar's Heralds. Despite prejudice against him, he becomes the personal protector of young Queen Selenay. But can he protect her from the dangers of her own heart?
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Mags, Herald Spy of Valdemar, and his wife, Amily, the King’s Own Herald, are happily married with three kids. Their daughter, Abidela, dreams of building upon her parents’ legacy by joining the Artificers, hoping to offset her seeming lack of a Gift.
\nBut when Abi senses the imminent collapse of a bridge only moments before it happens, she saves countless lives, including that of her best friend, Princess Katiana. The experience, though harrowing, uncovers her unique Gift - an ability to sense the physical strains in objects.
\nIntrigued by the potential of her Gift, the Artificers seek to claim her as their own - but so do the Healers. Through training with both of them, Abi discovers unique facets of her Gift, including a synesthetic connection to objects that allows her to “see” as well as feel the strains.
\nHer Gift may also grant her a distinct advantage as a spy - there won’t be a building in the entire kingdom of Valdemar with a secret room that she doesn’t know about. With the help of her mentors, she must hone her gift to uncover the hidden secrets in the depths of Valdemar.
\n
In March 1987, a young author from Oklahoma published her first novel, Arrows of the Queen. This modest book about a magical land called Valdemar was the beginning of a fantasy masterwork series that would span decades and include more than two dozen titles.
\nNow readers can take a journey to the world of Valdemar - including Tanya Huff, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Fiona Patton, and Judith Tarr - each adding their own special touches.
\n
Magpie has slaved in the gem mines of Valdemar for as long as he can remember. Overworked and underfed, he has nowhere else to go, until a stranger and two huge white horses force their way into the quarry, looking for him. An eternal outcast, Mags is stunned when he is chosen to be trained as a herald at the newly founded Collegium in Valdemar’s capital city, Haven.
\nLoyal, noble and just, heralds are called upon to deliver messages, gather information and dispense justice on behalf of the King. Thrust into the centre of a legend in the making, Mags discovers talents he never knew he had and friendships he never thought possible. but when discord spreads through the capital, he learns that life in the court can be just as treacherous as the mines he left behind.
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Mags, Herald Spy of Valdemar, and his wife, Amily, the King’s Own Herald, are happily married with three kids. The oldest, Peregrine, has the Gift of Animal Mindspeech - he can talk to animals and persuade them to act as he wishes. Perry's dream is to follow in his father's footsteps as a Herald Spy, but he has yet to be Chosen by a Companion.
\nMags is more than happy to teach Perry all he knows. He regularly trains his children, including Perry, with tests and exercises, preparing them for the complicated and dangerous lives they will likely lead. Perry has already held positions in the Royal Palace as a runner and in the kitchen, useful places where he can learn to listen and collect information.
\nBut there is growing rural unrest in a community on the border of Valdemar. A report filled with tales of strange disappearances and missing peddlers is sent to Haven by a Herald from the Pelagirs. To let Perry experience life away from home and out in the world, Mags proposes that his son accompany him on an expedition to discover what is really going on.
\nDuring their travels, Perry’s Animal Mindspeech allows him to communicate with the local wildlife of the Pelagirs, whose connection to the land aids in their investigation. But the details he gleans from the creatures only deepen the mystery. As Perry, Mags, and their animal companions draw closer to the heart of the danger, they must discover the truth behind the disappearances at the border - before those disappearances turn deadly.
\n
Baron Valdemar and his people have found a temporary haven, but it cannot hold all of them, or for long. Trouble could follow on their heels at any moment, and there are too many people for Crescent Lake to support.
\nThose who are willing to make a further trek by barge on into the West will follow him into a wilderness depopulated by war and scarred by the terrible magics of a thousand years ago and the Mage Wars. But the wilderness is not as empty as it seems. There are potential friends and rapacious foes . . . and someone is watching them.
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Magpie is a thirteen-year-old orphan chosen by one of the magical Companion horses of Valdemar and taken to the capital city, Haven, to be trained as a Herald. Like all Heralds, Magpie learns that he has a hidden Gift - the Gift of telepathy.
\nBut life at the court is not without obstacles. When Mags is \"recognized\" by foreign secret operatives whose purpose is unknown, Mags himself comes under suspicion. Who are Magpie's parents-who is he, really? Can Mags solve the riddle of his parentage and his connection with the mysterious spies - and prove his loyalty - before the king and court banish him as a traitor?
\n
Though Vanyel has been born with near-legendary abilities to work both Herald and Mage magic, he wanted no part in such things. Nor does he seek a warrior’s path, wishing instead to become a Bard.
\nYet such talent as his, if left untrained, may prove a menace not only to Vanyel but to others as well. So he is sent to be fostered with his aunt, Savil, one of the fame Herald-Mages of Valdemar.
\nBut, strong-willed and self-centered, Vanyel is a challenge which even Savil cannot master alone. For soon he will become the focus of frightening forces, lending his raw magic to a spell that unleashes terrifying wyr-hunters on the land.
\nAnd by the time Savil seeks the assistance of a Shin’a’in Adept, Vanyel’s wild talent may have already grown beyond anyone’s ability to contain, placing Vanyel, Savil, and Valdemar itself in desperate peril.
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Valdemar - the once-peaceful kingdom protected by the magic of its Herald-Mages - is now besieged on all fronts. The king lies near death, the neighboring land of Karse wages a relentless war against Valdemar, and the forces led by a master of dark forbidden magic are massing to strike the final devastating blow against the kingdom.
\nAnd Vanyel, the most powerful Herald-Mage Valdemar has even known, has become the primary target of the evil which is reaching out to poison all the land.
\nWith all his fellow mages slain, Vanyel alone remains to defend his people against the dark master’s army. Yet a dream vision has revealed to Vayel the fate which awaits should he and his Companion Yfandes take up the dark master’s challenge.
\nAnd if either Vanyel or Yfandes falters, the dream will become a horrifying reality in which both Valdemar and its last Herald-Mage must pay the ultimate price.
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Wild magic is taking its toll on the land. Many Heralds and Herald-Mages have died fighting to preserve the peace. Even Vanyel, the most powerful of the Herald-Mages is almost at the end of his strength, in need of a respite from the dual threats of war and dark magic.
\nBut for Vanyel, there can be no rest. Not when his Companion, Yfandes, receives a summons which can’t be ignored - a desperate cry of a magical holocaust in the neighboring kingdom. Almost overwhelmed by the devastations they discover there, Herald-Mage and Companion must try to unravel this tragic mystery.
\nIs the young Prince Tashir, a newly Chosen Herald who can’t control his magic, responsible for the destruction? Or is Tashir a pawn in a deeper, more deadly game - and, if so, will Vanyel be able to find and defeat the true destroyer before this master of dark powers can strike again?
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Fourteen original stories set in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar universe, including a new novella by Mercedes Lackey!
\nToday's hottest fantasy authors visit Mercedes Lackey's bestselling world of Valdemar, adding their own special touches to the ancient land where Heralds chosen from all walks of life by magical horse-like Companions patrol their ancient kingdom, dispensing justice, facing adversaries, and protecting their monarch from whatever threatens. Travel with Tanya Huff, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Fiona Patton, Judith Tarr, Rosemary Edghill, and others in this exciting, all-new anthology.
\n
In March 1987, Mercedes Lackey, a young author from Oklahoma, published her first novel, Arrows of the Queen. No one could have envisioned that this modest book about a magical land called Valdemar would be the beginning of a fantasy masterwork series that would span decades and include more than two dozen titles.
\nNow the voices of other authors add their own special touches to the ancient land where Heralds “Chosen” from all walks of life by magical horse-like Companions patrol their ancient kingdom, dispensing justice, facing adversaries, and protecting their monarch and country from whatever threatens. Trained rigorously by the Heralds Collegium, these special protectors each have extraordinary Gifts: Mindspeaking, FarSeeing, FarSpeaking, Empathy, Firestarting, and ForeSeeing, and are bonded for life with their mysterious Companions.
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Read after Owlflight from the Owl Mage series.
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This exciting new anthology includes a new novella featuring Mercedes Lackey's most popular heroines, Tarma (one of the sword-sworn and most feared of all warriors) and Kethry (who wields magic and weapons for the greater good), whose fates are suddenly bound together in blood by the powers that control their destinies. Also included in the unique volume is the complete collection of Lackey's short stories about these two brave sisters as they answer the call of their destinies with sword and sorcery!
She was Tarma. Born to the Clan of the Hawk of the nomadic Shin'a'in people she saw her entire clan slain by brigands. Vowing blood revenge upon the murderers, she became one of the sword-sworn, the most elite of all warriors. And trained in all forms of death-dealing combat, she took the road in search of her enemies . . .
\nAnd the She was Kethry. Born to a noble house, sold into a hateful “marriage,” she fled life's harshness for the sanctuary of the White Winds, a powerful school of sorcery. Becoming an adept, she pledged to use her talents for the greatest good. Yet unlike other sorcerers, Kethry could use worldly weapons as well as magical skills. When she became the bearer of a uniquely magical sword which drew her to those in need, Kethry was led to a fateful meeting with Tarma.
\nThe United by sword-spell and the will of the Goddess, Tarma and Kethry swore a blood oath to carry on their mutual fight against evil. And together, swordmaster and sorceress set forth to fulfill their destiny . . .
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When Idra, leader of the crack mercenaries known as the Sunhawks, failed to return froma a journey to her home kingdom of Rethwellan, Tarma and Kethry, warrior and mage, set out in search of their vanished leader. Sisters of sword and apell, their fates bound together by a Goddess-sworn oath, they were eternally pledged to fight the forces of evil.And evil had indeed cast its shadow over Rethwellan.
\nIdra, so they were told, had left long ago on a search for a legendary magical sword which could reveal which of her two brothers was meant to become the new king. With the princess gone, her younger brother had been branded an outlaw and her older brother had claimed the throne. Both instinct and mage-lore told Kethry and Tarma that all was not as it seemed, that both Idra and her people were in terrible jeopardy. Yet would their Goddess-given powers, aided b those of a Herald of Valdemar, prove strong enough to break the dark enchantment possessing this land?
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The Heralds of Valdemar are the kingdom's ancient order of protectors. They are drawn from all across the land, from all walks of life, and at all ages - and all are Gifted with abilities beyond those of normal men and women. They are Mindspeakers, FarSeers, Empaths, ForeSeers, Firestarters, FarSpeakers, and more.
\nThese inborn talents - combined with training as emissaries, spies, judges, diplomats, scouts, counselors, warriors, and more - make them indispensable to their monarch and realm. Sought and Chosen by mysterious horse-like Companions, they are bonded for life to these telepathic, enigmatic creatures. The Heralds of Valdemar and their Companions ride circuit throughout the kingdom, protecting the peace and, when necessary, defending their land and monarch.
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The eleventh anthology of short stories set in Mercedes Lackey's beloved Valdemar universe features stories by debut and established authors and a brand-new story from Lackey herself.
\nThe Heralds of Valdemar are the kingdom’s ancient order of protectors. They are drawn from all across the land, from all walks of life, and at all ages - and all are Gifted with abilities beyond those of normal men and women. They are Mindspeakers, FarSeers, Empaths, ForeSeers, Firestarters, FarSpeakers, and more. These inborn talents - combined with training as emissaries, spies, judges, diplomats, scouts, counselors, warriors, and more - make them indispensable to their monarch and realm. Sought and Chosen by mysterious horse-like Companions, they are bonded for life to these telepathic, enigmatic creatures. The Heralds of Valdemar and their Companions ride circuit throughout the kingdom, protecting the peace and, when necessary, defending their land and monarch.
\nNow, twenty-three authors ride with Mercedes Lackey to her magical land of Valdemar, adding their own unique voices to the Heralds, Bards, Healers, and other heroes of this beloved fantasy realm.
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Mags, a young Herald trainee in Haven, the capital city of the kingdom of Valdemar, has talents not commonly found in Herald trainees. Recognizing this, the King's Own Herald decides to train Mags as a spy in order to uncover the secrets of a mysterious new enemy who has taken an interest in Mags himself.
\nWhy is the even deeper mystery. The answers can only be found in the most unexpected corners of Mags' past . . . assuming he can live long enough to find them.
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Valdemar are the kingdom's ancient order of protectors. They are drawn from all across the land, from all walks of life, and at all ages - and all are Gifted with abilities beyond those of normal men and women. They are Mindspeakers, FarSeers, Empaths, ForeSeers, Firestarters, FarSpeakers, and more. These inborn talents - combined with training as emissaries, spies, judges, diplomats, scouts, counselors, warriors, and more - make them indispensable to their monarch and realm.
\nSought and Chosen by mysterious horse-like Companions, they are bonded for life to these telepathic, enigmatic creatures. The Heralds of Valdemar and their Companions ride circuit throughout the kingdom, protecting the peace and, when necessary, defending their land and monarch.Now, twenty-three authors ride with Mercedes Lackey to her magical land of Valdemar, adding their own unique voices to the Heralds, Bards, Healers, and other heroes of this beloved fantasy realm.
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The Heralds of Valdemar are the kingdom's ancient order of protectors. They are drawn from all across the land, from all walks of life, and at all ages - and all are Gifted with abilities beyond those of normal men and women. They are Mindspeakers, FarSeers, Empaths, ForeSeers, Firestarters, FarSpeakers, and more. These inborn talents - combined with training as emissaries, spies, judges, diplomats, scouts, counselors, warriors, and more - make them indispensable to their monarch and realm.
\nSought and Chosen by mysterious horse-like Companions, they are bonded for life to these telepathic, enigmatic creatures. The Heralds of Valdemar and their Companions ride circuit throughout the kingdom, protecting the peace and, when necessary, defending their land and monarch.
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Thirteen year old Prince Kyril and Mags and Amily's fourteen-year-old son Tory “share” the Gift of Farsight - although neither of them are Chosen. They are self-trained, though currently, their shared Gift only allows them to see what is happening with their immediate family members.
\nAfter much debate, the Herald's Collegium has decided to test and train them anyway. That's when the surprises start. They do not share a single Gift; they have two complementary Gifts working together in a way that the Heralds have never seen before. Tory is the Farseer - Kee's Gift is to extend his range beyond a few dozen feet.
\nTheir Gifts become crucial when Mags gets a desperate message from his cousin Bey, the head of the enigmatic assassin-tribe, the Sleepgivers. Bey's eldest daughter has been kidnapped, but he doesn't know why or by whom. He's calling in the debt Mags owes him to find his daughter before it's too late.
\nTory is certain that if anyone can find her, he can. But that will mean traveling out of Valdemar into an unknown, dangerous country.
\nAnd it will mean taking a Royal Prince with him.
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As Storm Breaking opens, the western allies, led by Karal, Karsite Sunpriest and delegate to the Valdemaran Court, and the Adepts Firesong and An'desha, have traveled deep into the Dorisha Plains to locate the ancient ruins of the Tower of Urtho, Mage of Silence, creator of the gryphons. Legend has it that below the Tower, deeply buried beneath the plains, is Urtho's Vault, hidden stronghold of some of the most powerful magical weapons ever devised - weapons that Urtho himself felt were too dangerous to use.
\nWith the help of the Shin'a'in plainsmen, they have successfully excavated this ancient arsenal, and risked their lives triggering one of these antique but potent tools of death to unleash a monstrous burst of mage-energy. With this explosion of magical power, Karal, Firesong, and their companions have temporarily counteracted the ever-increasing waves of the mage storms. But they know that this desperate action will not save them - they have bought themselves precious time, but are still far from a permanent solution. They know now that the mage storms are an “echo” through time of the prehistoric Cataclysm which destroyed Urtho's Tower, created the vast and barren Dorisha Plains, and permanently warped their world more than two thousand years ago.
\nAnd they also know that if they don't find a way to banish these magical vibrations they will culminate in another Cataclysm - this time destroying their world for good. But the Vault is not the only thing buried for centuries below the Dorisha Plains, and camped in the ruins of what once was the workplace of the most ingenious mage their world has ever known, the desperate allies soon come to realise that their solution may lie beneath the dust at their feet. The saving of their world just might be accomplished by the work of a man who has been dead for millennia!
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In Storm Rising , mysterious mage-storms are wreaking havoc on Valdemar, Karse, and all the kingdoms of the West, plaguing these lands not only with disastrous earthquakes, monsoons, and ice storms, but also with venomous magical constructs - terrifying creatures out of nightmare.
\nBoth Valdemar's Heralds and Karse's Sunpriests struggle to marshal their combined magical resources to protect their realms from these devastating, spell-fueled onslaughts. But as the situation becomes bleaker and bleaker, the still fragile alliance between these long-hostile lands begins to fray. And unless Valdemar and Karse can locate and destroy the creator of the storms, they may see their entire world demolished in a final magical holocaust.
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With her phenomenal Mage Winds trilogy, bestselling author Mercedes Lackey captivated fans across the country. Now in the first volume of the series sequel, she continues the same storyline, returning readers to a war-torn Valdemar in preparation to confront an ancient Eastern Empire - ruled by a monarch whose magical tactics by be beyond any sorcery known to the western kingdoms.
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Step into the ancient land of Valdemar! A world beset by war and internal conflicts, it’s protected by the Chosen Heralds - Mindspeakers, Firestarters, and Empaths alike - who endeavor to keep the peace and defend their country in the name of their monarch. Emissaries, spies, diplomats, scouts, warriors, judges and counselors, the Heralds follow a rigorous code of ethics and are bonded for life with their horse-like Companions.
\nJoin Tanya Huff, Michelle West, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Judith Tarr, Fiona Patton and others as they add their own special touch to the world of Valdemar. Discover how the abilities of one remarkable individual can bring peace to two lands which have been sworn enemies for centuries . . . Learn why pain and tragedy are the most valuable teachers an empath can have . . . and see how a man never Chosen can still be a Herald in this heart.
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Filled with magic, intrigue, romance and adventure, Mercedes Lackey's world of Valdemar is one of the most popular domains in fantasy literature. Home to the Heralds and their mysterious horselike Companions, the magical Tayledras Hawk-people, and of course, the powerful gryphons, Valdemar has garnered a devoted global following.
\nThis anthology contains:
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Take a Thief reveals the untold story of Skif - a popular character from Lackey's first published novel, Arrows of the Queen . Skif was an orphan who would have died from malnutrition and exposure if he had never met Deke the pickpocket.
\nBy the time he was twelve, Skif was an accomplished cat burglar. But it wasn't until he decided to steal a finely tacked-out white horse, which was, oddly enough, standing unattended in the street, that this young thief discovered that the tables could turn on him - and that he himself could be stolen.
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The Heralds of Valdemar are the kingdom's ancient order of protectors. They are drawn from all across the land, from all walks of life, and at all ages - and all are Gifted with abilities beyond those of normal men and women. They are Mindspeakers, FarSeers, Empaths, ForeSeers, Firestarters, FarSpeakers, and more.
\nThese inborn talents - combined with training as emissaries, spies, judges, diplomats, scouts, counselors, warriors, and more - make them indispensable to their monarch and realm. Sought and Chosen by mysterious horse-like Companions, they are bonded for life to these telepathic, enigmatic creatures. The Heralds of Valdemar and their Companions ride circuit throughout the kingdom, protecting the peace and, when necessary, defending their land and monarch.
\nNow, twenty-three authors ride with Mercedes Lackey to her magical land of Valdemar, adding their own unique voices to the Heralds, Bards, Healers, and other heroes of this beloved fantasy realm.
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Under the Vale is the latest collection of short stories set in the world of Valdemar.
\nThe Heralds of Valdemar are an ancient order, drawn from all across the land, from all walks of life, and at all ages, these unusual individuals are Gifted with abilities beyond those of normal men and women. They are Mindspeakers, FarSeers, Empaths, ForeSeers, Firestarters, FarSpeakers, and more. Sought and Chosen by mysterious horselike Companions, they are bonded for life to these telepathic, enigmatic creatures. With their Companions, the Heralds of Valdemar ride circuit throughout the kingdom protecting the peace and, when necessary, defending their land and monarch.
\nNow readers can travel to the world of Valdemar with Tanya Huff, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Fiona Patton, Rosemary Edghill, Judith Tarr, and others in these original stories, including an all-new novella from Mercedes Lackey.
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The refugees from the Empire have established a thriving city called Haven with the help of the Tayledras and their allies. But the Tayledras have begun a slow withdrawal to the dangerous lands known as the Pelagirs, leaving the humans of Haven to find their own way.
\nBut even with Haven settled, the lands around Haven are not without danger. Most of the danger comes in the form of magicians: magicians taking advantage of the abundant magical energy in the lands the Tayledras have cleansed; magicians who have no compunction about allying themselves with dark powers and enslaving magical beasts and the Elementals themselves.
\nKordas, his family, and his people will need all the help they can get. But when a prayer to every god he has ever heard of brings Kordas a very specific and unexpected form of help, the new kingdom of Valdemar is set on a path like nothing else the world has ever seen.
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With the protective barrier set so long ago over Valdemar crumbling, and with the realm imperiled by the dark magic of Ancar of Hardorn, Princess Elspeth, Herald and heir to the throne, has gone on a desperate quest in search of a mentor.
\nNow, as she trains her powers at the Vale of the Tayledras Clan, the Vale calls for desperately needed help in the ongoing fight to defend the threatened kingdom.
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High magic had been lost to Valdemar centuries ago when the lost Herald-Mage gave his life to save the kingdom from destruction by dark sorceries. Yet now the realm is at risk again. And Elspeth - Herald and heir to the throne - must take up the challenge, abandoning her home to find a mentor who can awaken her untrained mage abilities. But others, too, are being caught up in a war against sorcerous evil.
\nThe Tayledras scout Darkwind is the first to stumble across the menace creeping forth from the “Uncleansed Lands.” And as sorcery begins to take its toll, Darkwind may be forced to call upon powers he has sworn never to use again if he and his people are to survive an enemy able to wreak greater devastation with spells of destruction than with swords . . .
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Valdemar is once again in peril, threatened by Ancar of Hardorn, who has long sought to seize control of the kingdom by any means at his command.
\nYet this time Ancar may well achieve his goal, for by harnessing the power of Mornelithe Falconsbane, the Dark Adept, he has set into motion a magical strike against Valdemar the like of which hasn’t been attempted in more than five hundred years - not since Vanyel, the last Herald-Mage, shielded the kingdom from attack by the deadliest of sorceries.
\nAnd with Valdemar’s ancient spell-generated protections finally breaking down, Queen Selenay, Herald-Princess Elspeth, and their people could soon be left defenseless against an enemy armed with spells no one in Valdemar has the knowledge to withstand.
\nBut as the long dormant magic of Valdemar begins to awaken, Elspeth finds that she too has a mysterious ally - a powerful spirit from the long-forgotten past . . .
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Detective Rory Scott was in college when six-year-old Savannah Armitage vanished and the body of a missing teen was found nearby in a shallow grave. The case went unsolved, but Rory’s mother's partner, Stephen, was convicted in the court of public opinion. When Rory’s mother refused to leave him, Rory broke familial ties.
\nSix years later, Rory has built a life with her girlfriend Cade. When another child disappears and the unidentified body of a missing teen is found nearby, Rory knows it’s more than a coincidence. She steps in as the lead investigator, determined to find the killer and bring home the missing girls. As media swarms law enforcement for details, the state steps in, and a rookie special agent yanks Rory’s case.
\nIn a renegade move, Rory teams up with Savannah’s mother, a woman still desperate to find her daughter alive. When the investigation leads to the two people Rory most wants to avoid - her own mother and Stephen - Rory must face the fallout of her estrangement.
\nAs Rory’s personal and professional lives converge, it’s a race against time to find the connection between the cases and bring the killer to justice.
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Nora Davies doesn’t exactly fit in to Winter Park, Florida, where old-guard Floridians mix with the tax-fleeing coastal elite. Twenty-eight and barely making ends meet working at a country club, Nora feels like she’s going nowhere fast.
\nEnter Will a prominent forty-six-year-old lawyer, father to a teenage daughter and recently divorced. The two set Winter Park’s social scene agog when they fall in love and marry after a whirlwind Cinderella-style courtship.
\nBut Winter Park is fully upended when Will disappears the morning after a birthday bash Nora throws for him. Going back and forth between Nora and Will’s romance and the search in the wake of Will’s mysterious disappearance, Nora must answer the question from all: Where. Is. Will?
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An uproarious debut novel about a young woman from the Canary Islands whose internship with a supermarket chain reveals the soul-crushing vagaries of modern life.
\nMeryem is twenty-five years old, drinks too much coffee, goes on dates with terrifying men and never says what she really thinks. A Canarian from a Moroccan family, she’s just started working as an intern at a mega-chain supermarket, where the only thing she and her boss have in common is their mutual hatred for each other.
\nTo pass the time, Meryem begins to write fan fiction starring her office mates. Surrounded by insecure and inept individuals, she reimagines her bland day job through fabricated office crushes and coworker drama. But to get through the daily grind, she’s going to have to summon more than just her imagination.
\nBold, refreshing and darkly comedic, Supersaurio vividly portrays the everyday trials and tribulations of entering your twenties in a world that feels like everything’s pitted against you.
Lonely, broke, and depressed, Gia is desperate for a lifeline. When Nathan, a wealthy stranger on a sugar dating site approaches her with a very specific offer, she can’t refuse.
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The instructions are simple, he says. For eight hours a day, she must wear the collar. Drink from the bowl. Sleep in the cage. Be a dog.
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Be his dog.
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Then, she can go home and be Gia again, and if she ever feels uncomfortable or unsafe, she can always leave.
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Those were the terms of the agreement. But Gia soon finds out Nathan isn’t a man who keeps his promises. In this harrowing tale of survival and revenge, Mia Ballard crafts a visceral, unflinching descent into the dark heart of lost autonomy and the feral rage it awakens. Shy Girl is a scream against the cage of expectation, where justice isn’t quiet - it’s bloody and unapologetic.
Twenty-six and broke, Skye didn't think twice before selling her eggs and happily pocketing the cash. Now approaching forty, Skye moves through life entirely - and unrepentantly - on her own terms, living out of a suitcase and avoiding all manner of serious relationships. Her personal life might be a mess, and no one would be surprised if she died alone in a hotel room, but at least she's free to do as she pleases.
\nBut then a twelve-year-old girl shows up during one of Skye's brief visits to her hometown of Philadelphia, and tells Skye that she's \"her egg.\" Skye's life is thrown into sharp relief and she decides that it might be time to actually try to have a meaningful relationship with another human being. Spoiler alert: It's not easy.
\nThings gets even more complicated when Skye realises that the woman she tried and failed to pick up the other day is the girl's aunt and now it's awkward. All the while, her brother is trying to get in touch, her problematic mother is being bewilderingly kind, and the West Philly pool halls and hoagie shops of her youth have been replaced by hipster cafes.
\nTold in a fresh, lively voice, this novel is a relentlessly clever, deeply moving portrait of a woman and the relationships she thought she could live without.
Where do you get an abortion in 1960 Georgia, especially if the town midwife goes to the same church as your parents? For seventeen-year-old Doris Steele, the answer is Atlanta, where her favorite teacher, Mrs. Lucas, calls upon her brash, wealthy childhood best friend, Sylvia, for help. While waiting to hear from the doctor who has agreed to do the procedure, Doris spends the weekend scandalised by, but drawn to, the people who move in and out of Sylvia's celebrities whom Doris has seen in the pages of Jet and Ebony, political leaders like Coretta Scott King and Diane Nash, women who dance close together, atheists! And even more shocking? Mrs. Lucas seems right at home.
\nFrom the guests at a queer kickback to the student activists at a SNCC conference, Doris suddenly finds herself surrounded by so many people who seem to know exactly who or what they want. Doris knows she doesn’t want a baby, but what does she want? Will this trip help her find out?
\nThese Heathens! is a funny, poignant story about Black women’s obligations and ambitions, what we owe to ourselves, and the transformative power of leaving your bubble, even for just one chaotic weekend.
Multiverse travel is finally possible, but there’s just one catch: No one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying - from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn’t outrun. Cara’s life has been cut short on 372 worlds in total. On this Earth, however, Cara has survived. Identified as an outlier and therefore a perfect candidate for multiverse travel, Cara is plucked from the dirt of the wastelands.
\nNow she has a nice apartment on the lower levels of the wealthy and walled-off Wiley City. She works - and shamelessly flirts - with her enticing yet aloof handler, Dell, as the two women collect off-world data for the Eldridge Institute. She even occasionally leaves the city to visit her family in the wastes, though she struggles to feel at home in either place. So long as she can keep her head down and avoid trouble, Cara is on a sure path to citizenship and security. But trouble finds Cara when one of her eight remaining doppelgängers dies under mysterious circumstances, plunging her into a new world with an old secret.
\nWhat she discovers will connect her past and her future in ways she could have never imagined - and reveal her own role in a plot that endangers not just her world, but the entire multiverse.
In Ashtown, a rough-and-tumble desert community, the Emperor rules with poisoned claws and an iron fist. He can’t show any sign of weakness, as the neighboring Wiley City has spent lifetimes beating down the people of Ashtown and would love nothing more than its downfall. There’s only one person in the desert the Emperor can fully trust - and her name is Scales.
\nScales is the best at what she does: keeping everyone and everything in line. As a skilled mechanic - and an even more skilled fighter, when she needs to be - Scales is a respected member of the Emperor’s crew, who’s able to keep things running smoothly. But the fragile peace Scales helps to maintain is fractured when a woman is mangled and killed before her eyes. Even more incomprehensible: There doesn’t seem to be a murderer.
\nWhen more bodies start to turn up, both in Ashtown and in the wealthier, walled-off Wiley City, Scales is tasked with finding the cause - and putting an end to it by any means necessary. To protect the people she loves, she teams up with a frustratingly by-the-books partner from Ashtown and a brusque-but-brilliant scientist from the City, delving into both worlds to track down an invisible killer.
\nBut the answers Scales finds are bigger than she ever could have imagined, leading her into the brutal heart beneath Wiley City’s pristine façade and dredging up secrets from her own past that she would rather keep hidden. If she wants to save the world from the earth-shattering truths she uncovers, she can no longer remain silent - even if speaking up costs her everything.
Lake Herrod, a once-thriving community, now lies in the shadow of a nearly dry lake. The town, like the water, is evaporating and its residents are left clinging to what little remains.
\nWhen Aaron Love discovers a fresh corpse near the cracked lakebed - along with evidence his missing father is alive and linked to a web of organised crime - he is thrust into a world of deception, injustice and betrayal. With the town on the brink of collapse, Aaron and a haunted detective, Martyn Kravets, uncover a web of conspiracy that reaches far beyond the small community.
An activist attorney is killed in a cute little L.A. trolley called Angels Flight, far from Harry Bosch's Hollywood turf. But the case is so explosive - and the dead man's enemies inside the L.A.P.D. are so numerous - that it falls to Harry to solve it.
\nNow the streets are superheating. Harry's year-old Vegas marriage is unraveling. And the hunt for a killer is leading Harry to another high-profile L.A. murder case, one where every cop had a motive. The question is, did any have the guts?
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May 1992, and after four LAPD officers are acquitted following the savage beating of Rodney King, Los Angeles is ablaze. As looting and burning take over the city, law and order are swept away in a tidal wave of violence. But under threat of their lives, homicide detectives like Harry Bosch are still stubbornly trying to do their job. With no effective police presence on the streets, murder just got a whole lot easier - and investigating them a whole lot harder.
\nWhen Harry finds the body of a female journalist in an alley, he is forced to hand over the case to the Riot Crimes Task Force, knowing that it will never be solved.
\nTwenty years later, new evidence confirms her death was not a case of random violence but something much more personal. This time Harry is determined that the killer isn’t going to escape - even if it means stepping back into the darkest days of the city he loves . . .
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For maverick LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic. This one is personal . . . because the murdered man was a fellow Vietnam \"tunnel rat\" who had fought side by side with him in a hellish underground war. Now Bosch is about to relive the horror of Nam.
\nFrom a dangerous maze of blind alleys to a daring criminal heist beneath the city, his survival instincts will once again be tested to their limit. Pitted against enemies inside his own department and forced to make the agonising choice between justice and vengeance, Bosch goes on the hunt for a killer whose true face will shock him.
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When a body is found in a hotel room, reporters are soon all over the case: it appears to be a missing LAPD narcotics detective, apparently gone to the bad. The rumours were that he had been selling a new drug called Black Ice that had been infiltrating Los Angeles from the Mexican cartel.
\nThe LAPD are quick to declare the death a suicide, but Harry Bosch is not so sure. There are odd mysteries and unexplained details from the crime scene which just don’t add up. Fighting an attraction to the detective’s widow, Bosch starts his own maverick investigation, which soon leads him over the borders and into a dangerous world of shifting identities, police politics and deadly corruption . . .
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‘Blood Work’ - that’s what Terry McCaleb used to call his job at the FBI. Eight weeks ago he was a dead man, but now someone else’s heart is keeping him alive. Then a newspaper report of his brush with death brings him an unwanted visitor. Graciela Rivers reveals to McCaleb that the anonymous donor of his heart was her murdered sister, and that the police investigation into the case is going nowhere. McCaleb feels he has no choice but to take on the investigation.
\nNothing about the seemingly random killing makes sense. McCaleb realises that someone is watching his every move - someone who has killed before and will kill again . . .
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Lincoln lawyer Mickey Haller and LAPD Detective Harry Bosch team up in this new novel by Michael Connelly.
Things are finally looking up for defence attorney Mickey Haller. After two years of wrong turns, Haller is back in the courtroom. When Hollywood lawyer Jerry Vincent is murdered, Haller inherits his biggest case yet: the defense of Walter Elliott, a prominent studio executive accused of murdering his wife and her lover. But as Haller prepares for the case that could launch him into the big time, he learns that Vincent's killer may be coming for him next.
Enter Harry Bosch. Determined to find Vincent's killer, he is not opposed to using Haller as bait. But as danger mounts and the stakes rise, these two loners realise their only choice is to work together.
In the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit, not many murder victims die almost a decade after the crime. So when a man succumbs to complications from being shot by a stray bullet nine years earlier, Bosch catches a case in which the body is still fresh, but any other evidence is virtually nonexistent.
\nNow Bosch and his new partner, rookie Detective Lucia Soto, are tasked with solving what turns out to be a highly charged, politically sensitive case. Starting with the bullet that's been lodged for years in the victim's spine, they must pull new leads from years-old information, which soon reveals that this shooting may have been anything but random.
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Henry Pierce is about to become very rich--as soon as his firm, Amedeo Technologies, gets an infusion of capital from a big backer. But the brilliant chemist's workaholic habits are disrupted when his lover, the former intelligence officer of his company, breaks up with him. Lonely and dispirited, he moves into a new apartment and gets a new phone number that attracts a lot of callers, but not for him. His new telephone number seems to have previously belonged to one Lilly Quinlan, an escort whose Internet photo arouses Henry's curiosity, especially when L.A. Darlings, whose Web page features the beautiful young woman, can't tell Henry how to find her.
\nWith the same single-mindedness that made him a high-tech superstar, Pierce pursues his search for the missing girl, motivated by his guilt over the disappearance years earlier of his own sister, who, like Lilly, was also a prostitute. But that motive is too thin to support Pierce's sudden abandonment of his career at such a critical juncture, even if forces unknown to him are setting him up for a fall.
When the bones of a boy are found scattered in the Hollywood Hills, Harry Bosch is drawn into a case that brings up dark memories from his past.
\nUnearthing hidden stories, he finds the child’s identity and reconstructs his fractured life, determined that he won’t be forgotten. At the same time, a new love affair with a female cop begins to blossom - until a stunningly blown mission leaves him in more trouble than ever before. The investigation races to a shocking conclusion and leaves Bosch on the brink of an unimaginable decision . . .
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Harry is back, assigned to the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit with his former cop ally and partner, Kizmin Rider. These detectives are the Closers. They are thrown into a politically sensitive and dangerous case when a white supremacist is connected to the 1988 murder of a mixed race girl.
\nThe police department has changed, but one thing hasn’t - Harry’s nemesis, Irving. The former Deputy Chief has been pushed from power and given a virtually meaningless new role. Full of vengeance, Irving calls Harry a ‘retread’. He watches from the sidelines like an injured bear, hoping Harry will make a mistake . . .
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When LAPD detective Harry Bosch shot and killed Norman Church - the ‘Dollmaker’ - the police were convinced it marked the end of the search for one of the city’s most bizarre serial killers.
\nBut four years later, Norman Church’s widow is taking Bosch to court, accusing him of killing the wrong man. To make matters worse, Bosch has just received a note, eerily reminiscent of the ones the Dollmaker used to taunt him with, giving him a location where a body can be found.
\nIs the Dollmaker still alive? Or is this the work of a vicious copycat killer, determined to repeat the Dollmaker’s grisly feats and destroy Bosch’s career in the process?
\n
Six months ago, Harry Bosch left the LAPD before they could fire him, and then hired maverick Defense Attorney Mickey Haller to sue the department for forcing him out. Although it wasn’t the way he wanted to go, Harry has to admit that being out of the game has its benefits. Until Mickey asks him to help on one of his cases, and suddenly Harry is back where he belongs, right in the centre of a particularly puzzling murder mystery.
\nThe difference is, this time Harry is working for the defense, aiming to prevent the accused, Da’Quan Foster, from being convicted. And not only does the prosecution seem to have a cast-iron case, but having crossed over to ‘the dark side’ as his former colleagues would put it, Harry is in danger of betraying the very principles he’s lived by his whole career.
\n
A murder in the middle of a street party seems a senseless tragedy. But the victim had a dark past which came back to haunt him.
\nDetective Renée Ballard connects the killing to an unsolved case last worked by ex-LAPD legend Harry Bosch. But then a new crime shatters the night shift . . .
\nThe Midnight Men are a deadly pair of predators who stalk the city during the dark hours and disappear without a trace.
\nBallard once believed her job was to bring the truth to light. In a police department shaken to the core by protests and pandemic, both cases have the power to save her - or end her . . .
\n
Has a killer lain dormant for years only to strike again on New Year’s Eve? LAPD Detective Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch team up to find justice for an innocent victim.
\nThere's chaos in Hollywood on New Year's Eve. Working her graveyard shift, LAPD Detective Renée Ballard seeks shelter at the end of the countdown to wait out the traditional rain of lead as hundreds of revelers shoot their guns into the air. As reports start to roll in of shattered windshields and other damage, Ballard is called to a scene where a hardworking auto shop owner has been fatally hit by a bullet in the middle of a crowded street party.
\n\n
It doesn't take long for Ballard to determine that the deadly bullet could not have fallen from the sky. Ballard’s investigation leads her to look into another unsolved murder - a case at one time worked by Detective Harry Bosch.
\n\n
Ballard and Bosch team up once again to find out where the old and new cases intersect. All the while they must look over their shoulders. The killer who has stayed undetected for so long knows they are coming after him.
Daisy Clayton’s killer was never caught. In over ten years, there has been no breakthrough in her murder case.
\nDetective Renée Ballard has faced everything the LAPD’s notorious dusk-till-dawn graveyard shift has thrown at her. But, until tonight, she’d never met Harry Bosch - an ex-homicide detective consumed by this case.
\nSoon, she too will become obsessed by the murder of Daisy Clayton.
\nBecause Ballard and Bosch both know: every murder tells a story. And Daisy’s case file reads like the first chapter in an untold tragedy that is still being written - one that could end with Ballard herself, if she cannot bring the truth to light . . .
\n
Detective Renée Ballard is working the night beat - known in LAPD slang as \"the late show\" - and returns to Hollywood Station in the early hours to find a stranger rifling through old file cabinets. The intruder is retired detective Harry Bosch, working a cold case that has gotten under his skin.
\nBallard can't let him go through department records, but when he leaves, she looks into the case herself and feels a deep tug of empathy and anger. She has never been the kind of cop who leaves the job behind at the end of her shift - and she wants in.
\nThe murder, unsolved, was of fifteen-year-old Daisy Clayton, a runaway on the streets of Hollywood who was brutally killed, her body left in a dumpster like so much trash. Now Ballard joins forces with Bosch to find out what happened to Daisy, and to finally bring her killer to justice.
\nAlong the way, the two detectives forge a fragile trust, but this new partnership is put to the test when the case takes an unexpected and dangerous turn.
\n
Terrence McCaleb is asked by the LAPD to help them investigate a series of murders that have them baffled. They are the kind of ritualised killings that McCaleb specialised in solving with the FBI, and he is reluctantly drawn from his peaceful new life back into the horror and excitement of tracking down a terrifying homicidal maniac.
\nMore horrifying still, the suspect who seems to fit the profile that McCaleb develops is someone he has known and worked with in the past: Detective Harry Bosch.
\n
Terry McCaleb’s enforced quiet lifestyle on the island of Catalina is a far cry from the hectic excitement of his former role as an FBI profiler. However, when small-time criminal Edward Gunn is found dead, McCaleb becomes embroiled in a disturbing and complex case leading him to cross the path of Harry Bosch.
\nThis infamous detective has always teetered on the brink of darkness in order to get inside the head of the killer. Is it possible that he has stepped across that finely drawn line and embraced darkness?
\n
Detective Renée Ballard is given the chance to revive the LAPD’s cold case unit and find justice for the families of the forgotten. The only catch is she must first unravel an unsolved murder, or lose this opportunity of a lifetime . . .
\nHarry Bosch is top of the list of investigators Ballard wants to recruit. The ex-detective is a living legend - but for how long?
\nBecause Bosch has his own agenda: a crime that has haunted him for years - the murder of a whole family, buried out in the desert - which he vowed to close.
\nWith the killer still out there and evidence elusive, Bosch is on a collision course with a choice he hoped never to make . . .
\n
A year has passed since LAPD detective Renée Ballard quit the force in the face of misogyny, demoralization, and endless red tape. Yet, after the chief of police himself tells her she can write her ticket within the department, Ballard takes back her badge, leaving “the Late Show” to rebuild the cold case unit at the elite Robbery-Homicide Division.
\nFor years, Harry Bosch has been working a case that haunts him but that he hasn’t been able to crack - the murder of an entire family by a psychopath who still walks free. Ballard makes Bosch an offer: come work with her as a volunteer investigator in the new Open-Unsolved Unit, and he can pursue his “white whale” with the resources of the LAPD behind him.
\nThe two must put aside old resentments to work together again and close in on a dangerous killer.
\n
When evidence links a brutal murder in 1989 to a convicted rapist named Clayton Pell, the case should be watertight. Pell’s DNA was found on the victim - but he was only eight years old at the time.
\nThis is not the only mystery Harry Bosch has to solve. A man jumped - or was pushed - from a window. The victim’s father is Councilman Irving, who’s been intent on destroying Harry’s career for years. Now Irving wants Harry to head up the investigation.
\nHarry uncovers traces of two of the city’s deepest secrets: a killer operating for as many as three decades without being detected, and a conspiracy that goes back into the dark history of the police department . . .
\n
In 1993 Homicide Detective Harry Bosch was assigned the case of a missing person, Marie Gesto. The young woman was never found - dead or alive - and the case has haunted Bosch ever since.
\nThirteen years later, Bosch is back in the Open Unsolved Crimes Unit when he gets a call from the DA’s office. A man accused of two killings is willing to confess to several other murders in a deal to avoid the death penalty. One of his victims, he says, is Marie Gesto.
\nWhen investigating these previously unsolved crimes, Bosch begins to crack when he realises that he and his partner missed a clue that could have prevented the serial killer striking again.
\n
A murderer stalks the shadows and stalwart journalist Jack McEvoy finds himself on the trail of a serial killer who has been operating for years completely under the radar.
\nJack has taken down killers before, but when a woman he once had a one-night stand with is murdered in a particularly brutal way, he realises he might be facing a criminal mind unlike any he's ever encountered. A hunter with a unique kill signature.
\nAgainst the warnings of the police and his own editor, Jack sets out to track down the predator, walking a thin line between investigation and obsession, and he makes a shocking discovery, connecting mysterious deaths across the country. Is the link between targets the personal data shared by the victims themselves?
\n
In tough times, crime is one of the few things that still pays, but even criminals are having to make cut-backs. So for defence lawyer Mickey Haller, most of his new business is not about keeping people out of jail; it's about keeping a roof over their heads as the foreclosure business is booming.
\nLisa Trammel has been a client of Mickey's for eight months, and so far he's stopped the bank from taking her house. But now the bank's CEO has been found beaten to death - and Lisa is about to be indicted for murder.
\n
Defense attorney Mickey Haller returns with a haunting case in the gripping new thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly.
Mickey Haller gets the text, \"Call me ASAP - 187,\" and the California penal code for murder immediately gets his attention. Murder cases have the highest stakes and the biggest paydays, and they always mean Haller has to be at the top of his game.
When Mickey learns that the victim was his own former client, a prostitute he thought he had rescued and put on the straight and narrow path, he knows he is on the hook for this one. He soon finds out that she was back in LA and back in the life. Far from saving her, Mickey may have been the one who put her in danger.
Haunted by the ghosts of his past, Mickey must work tirelessly and bring all his skill to bear on a case that could mean his ultimate redemption or proof of his ultimate guilt.
Harry Bosch's life is on the edge. His earthquake-damaged home has been condemned. His girlfriend has left him. He's drinking too much. And after attacking his commanding officer, he's even had to turn in his L.A.P.D. detective's badge. Now, suspended indefinitely pending a psychiatric evaluation, he's spending his time investigating an unsolved crime from 1961: the brutal slaying of a prostitute who happened to be his own mother.
\nEven after three decades, Harry's questions generate heat among L.A.'s top politicos. And as the truth begins to emerge, it becomes more and more apparent that someone wants to keep it buried. Someone very powerful . . . very cunning . . . and very deadly.
\n
Renée Ballard works the night shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing none as each morning she turns her cases over to day shift detectives. A once up-and-coming detective, she's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor.
But one night she catches two cases she doesn't want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Ballard is determined not to give up at dawn. Against orders and her own partner's wishes, she works both cases by day while maintaining her shift by night. As the cases entwine they pull her closer to her own demons and the reason she won't give up her job no matter what the department throws at her.
Defense attorney Mickey Haller is pulled over by police, who find the body of a client in the trunk of his Lincoln. Haller is charged with murder and can't make the exorbitant $5 million bail slapped on him by a vindictive judge.
Mickey elects to defend himself and must strategize and build his defense from his jail cell in the Twin Towers Correctional Center in downtown Los Angeles, all the while looking over his shoulder--as an officer of the court he is an instant target.
Mickey knows he's been framed. Now, with the help of his trusted team, he has to figure out who has plotted to destroy his life and why. Then he has to go before a judge and jury and prove his innocence.
In his highest stakes case yet, Mickey Haller fights for his life and shows why he is \"a worthy colleague of Atticus Finch.
Mickey Haller has spent all his professional life afraid that he wouldn’t recognize innocence if it stood right in front of him. But what he should have been on the watch for was evil.
Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. Bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers - they’re all on Mickey Haller’s client list. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence - it’s about negotiation and manipulation. Sometimes it’s even about justice.
A Beverly Hills playboy arrested for attacking a woman he picked up in a bar chooses Haller to defend him, and Mickey has his first high-paying client in years. It is a defense attorney’s dream, what they call a franchise case. And as the evidence stacks up, Haller comes to believe this may be the easiest case of his career.
Then someone close to him is murdered and Haller discovers that his search for innocence has brought him face-to-face with evil as pure as a flame. To escape without being burned, he must deploy every tactic, feint, and instinct in his arsenal - this time to save his own life.
When he left the LAPD, Bosch took a file with him: the case of a production assistant murdered four years earlier during a movie set robbery. The LAPD thinks the stolen money was used to finance a terrorist training camp. Thoughts of the original murder victim were lost in the federal zeal, and when Bosch decides to reinvestigate, he quickly falls foul of both his old colleagues and the FBI.
\nWhen the private investigation enables him to meet up with an old friend, shadows from his past come back to haunt him . . .
\n
Bosch agrees to look into the death of his old colleague Terry McCaleb and soon collides with FBI agent Rachel Walling and the return of the serial killer known as the Poet, drawing together dangerous threads from several earlier cases.
\nFBI agent Rachel Walling finally gets the call she's dreaded for years, the one that tells her the Poet has surfaced. She has never forgotten the serial killer who wove lines of poetry in his hideous crimes - and apparently he has not forgotten her.
Former LAPD detective Harry Bosch gets a call, too - from the widow of an old friend. Her husband's death seems natural, but his ties to the hunt for the Poet make Bosch dig deep.
Arriving at a derelict spot in the California desert where the feds are unearthing bodies, Bosch joins forces with Rachel. Now the two are at odds with the FBI . . . and squarely in the path of the Poet, who will lead them on a wicked ride out of the heat, through the narrows of evil, and into a darkness all his own . . .
\n\n
Former FBI agent Rachel Walling is working a dead-end stint in South Dakota when she gets the call she’s been dreading for four years. The Poet is back. And he has not forgotten Rachel. He has a special present for her.
\nHarry Bosch is adjusting to life in Las Vegas as a private investigator and a new father. He gets a call, too, from the widow of a friend who died recently. Previously in his FBI career, the friend worked on the famous case tracking the killer known as The Poet. This fact alone makes some of the elements of his death doubly suspicious.
\nAnd Harry Bosch is heading straight into the path of the most ruthless and inventive murderer he has ever encountered . . .
\n
LAPD Detective Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch come together again on the murder case that obsessed Bosch's mentor - but was this flame kept alive, or a secret that was meant to be snuffed out?
\nBack when Harry Bosch was just a rookie homicide detective, he had an inspiring mentor who taught him to take the work personally and light the fire of relentlessness for every case. Now that mentor, J.J. Thompson, is dead, but after his funeral his widow hands Bosch a murder book that Thompson took with him when he left the LAPD 20 years before - the unsolved killing of a troubled young man in an alley used for drug deals.
\nBosch brings the murder book to Renée Ballard and asks her to help him find what about the case lit Thompson's fire all those years ago. That will be their starting point.
\nThe bond between Bosch and Ballard tightens as they become a formidable investigation team. And they soon arrive at a worrying question: Did Thompson steal the murder book to work the case in retirement, or to make sure it never got solved?
\n
Back when Harry Bosch was just a rookie homicide detective, he had an inspiring mentor who taught him to take the work personally and light the fire of relentlessness for every case. Now that mentor, John Jack Thompson, is dead, but after his funeral his widow hands Bosch a murder book that Thompson took with him when he left the LAPD 20 years before - the unsolved killing of a troubled young man in an alley used for drug deals.
Bosch brings the murder book to Renée Ballard and asks her to help him find what about the case lit Thompson's fire all those years ago. That will be their starting point.
The bond between Bosch and Ballard tightens as they become a formidable investigation team. And they soon arrive at a worrying question: Did Thompson steal the murder book to work the case in retirement, or to make sure it never got solved?
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell has been “exiled” to a low-key post policing rustic Catalina Island, after department politics drove him off a homicide desk on the mainland. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Detective Stilwell gets a report of a body found weighed down at the bottom of the harbor - a Jane Doe identifiable at first only by a streak of purple dye in her hair. At the same time, a report of poaching on a protected reserve turns into a case fraught with violence and danger as Stilwell digs into the shady past of an island bigwig.
\nCrossing all lines of protocol and jurisdiction, Stilwell doggedly works both cases. Though hampered by an old beef with an ex-colleague determined to thwart him at every turn, he is convinced he is the only one who can bring justice to the woman known as “Nightshade.” Soon, his investigation uncovers closely guarded secrets and a dark heart to the serene island that was meant to be his escape from the evils of the big city.
\n\n
The shooting of a Chinese liquor store owner in LA brings Harry Bosch back to the Rodney King riots and the moment a stranger gave a young cop sanctuary. Now the debt must be repaid, and Harry soon discovers the old man’s death was no ordinary hold-up.
\nHoming in on clues disregarded by the cops on the scene, Harry builds a picture of corruption and intimidation, with the local triads at the heart of it. But as he tries to build a case and breach the impenetrable wall of silence in the local community, he finds he is taking a dragon by the tail - a dragon whose talons reach well beyond LA, and even the States.
\nSuddenly the most precious thing in Harry’s life is under threat, and he will need to leave the familiarity of his home turf, alone and without backup, if he is going to stop his worst nightmare from happening.
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An execution on the overlook above the Mulholland Dam entangles Bosch with FBI Agent Rachel Walling and Homeland Security.
\nWhen a physicist is murdered in LA, it seems the killer has no fear of publicity, leaving the body on the Mulholland overlook, a site with a stunning view over the city. And when it’s discovered that the victim turned over a quantity of a lethal chemical to his killer before he died, Harry knows he has more than just a single death to worry about.
\nAlongside the forces of Homeland Security, Harry realises he must solve the murder or face unimaginable consequences.
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Death is reporter Jack McEvoy's beat: his calling, his obsession. But this time, death brings McEvoy the story he never wanted to write - and the mystery he desperately needs to solve.
\nA serial killer of unprecedented savagery and cunning is at large. His targets: homicide cops, each haunted by a murder case he couldn't crack. The killer's calling card: a quotation from the works of Edgar Allen Poe. His latest victim is McEvoy's own brother. And his last . . . may be McEvoy himself.
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Defense attorney Mickey Haller - The Lincoln Lawyer - rides the wave of freeing a wrongfully convicted man from prison.
\nInundated with pleas from incarcerated people claiming innocence, Haller enlists the help of ex-LAPD detective Harry Bosch to find the next case which could result in a resurrection walk.
\nWhen Bosch finds a needle in the haystack - a woman imprisoned for murdering her husband, a sheriff's deputy - they discover evidence that doesn't add up, and a department pushed for quick closure in the killing of one of its own.
\nBut is this rushed justice - or something more sinister?
\nAs they face a David versus Goliath court battle, the secrets which could lead to an innocent woman walking free could also mark the end of the Haller-Bosch dream team . . .
\n
Longtime defense attorney Mickey Haller is recruited to change stripes and prosecute the high-profile retrial of a brutal child murder. After 24 years in prison, new DNA evidence means convicted killer Jason Jessup has been granted another trial. Haller is convinced Jessup is guilty, and he takes the case on the condition that he gets to choose his investigator, LAPD Detective Harry Bosch.
\nTogether, Bosch and Haller set off on a case fraught with political and personal danger. Opposing them is Jessup, now out on bail, a defense attorney who excels at manipulating the media, and a runaway eyewitness reluctant to testify after so many years.
\nWith the odds and the evidence against them, Bosch and Haller must nail a sadistic killer once and for all. If Bosch is sure of anything, it is that Jason Jessup plans to kill again.
\n
Like his father before him, Brian Holloway is a safe man. That is, his specialty is opening safes. Every job is a little mystery, and he has yet to encounter a lock he can't break or a box he can't crack.
\nBut the day Holloway gets called in to open a rare, antique safe in a famous author's library, his skills open a door that should have remained closed.
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Jack McEvoy is at the end of the line as a crime reporter. With cuts being made, he's got 30 days left on the job. His last assignment? Training his young replacement. But Jack has other plans. He is going to go out with a bang - a final story that will win journalism's highest honour: a Pulitzer Prize.
\nJack focuses on a 16-year-old drug dealer who has confessed to a brutal murder. But he soon realises that the so-called confession is bogus. The investigation leads him to a killer known as The Scarecrow, who has worked completely below the police radar.
\nJack is off and running on the biggest story he's had since The Poet crossed his path twelve years before - but The Scarecrow knows he's coming . . .
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When B-grade L.A. movie producer Tony Aliso is found stuffed into the trunk of his Rolls Royce, all signs point to 'trunk music' --a mob hit. Detective Harry Bosch, just back from an 'involuntary stress leave,'' is not so sure. And when he finds the money trail, he follows it . . . all the way to Vegas. Seems this Tony had his share of enemies, and in no time, so does Harry: Vegas thugs, LAPD's organized crime unit, a smarmy internal affairs investigator and, of course, Tony's killers.
\nEveryone wants a piece of Harry. And somehow, they've found just the way to get it. . . Turns out that just before his death, Tony was seen at a Vegas poker table with one Eleanor Wish? ex-FBI agent, ex-convict . . . and ex-love of Harry's life. Now it's time for Harry to keep his cards close to the table - and his enemies even closer before it's time to face the TRUNK MUSIC.
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Harry Bosch works cold cases, helping out the under-funded San Fernando police department. When a double murder at a local pharmacy is called in, Bosch is the most seasoned detective on the scene.
\nBut with experience, come the ghosts of long-forgotten crimes. A death row inmate claims Bosch framed him, and that new DNA evidence proves it. The LAPD investigators say the case is watertight, leaving Bosch out in the wilderness to clear his name and keep a sadistic killer behind bars.
\nThere’s only one person he can trust to help prove his innocence: Micky Haller, The Lincoln Lawyer . . .
\nAs both cases tangle around him, Bosch learns there are two kinds of truth: the kind that won’t die and the kind that kills.
\n
In this electrifying tour de force, he takes us into a world of extremes: too much criminality, too much money, and too many ways to die. In L.A. Cassie Black is another beautiful woman in a Porsche: except Cassie just did six years in prison and still has \"outlaw juice\" flowing in her veins. Now Cassie is returning to her old profession, taking down a money man in Vegas.
\nBut the perfect heist goes very wrong, and suddenly Cassie is on the run--with a near-psychotic Vegas \"fixer\" killing everyone who knew about the job. Between Cassie and the man hunting her are a few last secrets: like who really set up the job, why Cassie had to take the change, and how, in the end, it might all be a matter of the moon . . .
\n
LAPD Detective Renée Ballard gets a DNA hit in a case that has gone unsolved for twenty years. A recently arrested man is genetically related to a serial rapist who terrorised the city of angels.
\nBut when the relative is revealed, it is the last person you want to accuse unless the evidence is watertight . . .
\nWith the help of the newest volunteer to the cold case unit - patrol officer Maddie Bosch, Harry’s daughter - Ballard finally has another badge on the team. But Maddie has an ulterior motive for getting access to the city’s library of souls.
\nBecause some crimes have been waiting to be solved longer than others . . .
\n
Renée Ballard and the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit get a hot shot DNA connection between a recently arrested man and a serial rapist and murderer who went quiet twenty years ago. The arrested man is only twenty-three, so the genetic link must be familial. It is his father who was the Pillowcase Rapist, responsible for a five-year reign of terror in the city of angels. But when Ballard and her team move in on their suspect, they encounter a baffling web of secrets and legal hurdles.
\nMeanwhile, Ballard’s badge, gun, and ID are stolen - a theft she can’t report without giving her enemies in the department the ammunition they need to end her career as a detective. She works the burglary alone, but her solo mission leads her into greater danger than she anticipates. She has no choice but to go outside the department for help, and that leads her to the door of Harry Bosch.
\nFinally, Ballard takes on a new volunteer to the cold case unit. Bosch’s daughter Maddie wants to supplement her work as a patrol officer on the night beat by investigating cases with Ballard. But Renée soon learns that Maddie has an ulterior motive for getting access to the city’s library of lost souls.
\n
Harry Bosch is working as a part-time detective in the town of San Fernando outside of Los Angeles, when he gets the invitation to meet with the ageing aviation billionaire Whitney Vance. When he was eighteen Vance had a relationship with a Mexican girl called Vibiana Duarte, but soon after becoming pregnant she disappeared.
\nNow, as he reaches the end of his life, Vance wants to know what happened to Vibiana and whether there is an heir to his vast fortune. And Bosch is the only person he trusts to undertake the assignment.
\nHarry’s aware that with such sums of money involved, this could be a dangerous undertaking - not just for himself, but for the person he’s looking for - but as he begins to uncover Vibiana’s tragic story, and finds uncanny links to his own past, he knows he cannot rest until he finds the truth.
\n
Two of the world’s most respected scientists reveal the forces behind the dangerous anti-science movement - and show us how to fight back.
\nFrom pandemics to the climate crisis, humanity faces tougher challenges than ever. Whether it’s the health of our people or the health of our planet, we know we are on an unsustainable path. But our efforts to effectively tackle these existential crises are now hampered by a common politically and ideologically motivated opposition to science.
\nMichael E. Mann and Peter J. Hotez are two of the most respected and well-known scientists in the world and have spent the last twenty years on the front lines of the battle to convey accurate, reliable, and trustworthy information about science in the face of determined and nihilistic opposition.
\nIn this powerful manifesto, they reveal the five main forces threatening plutocrats, pros, petrostates, phonies, and the press. It is a call to arms and a road map for dismantling the forces of anti-science. Armed with the information in this book, we can be empowered to promote scientific truths, shine light on channels of dark money, dismantle the corporations poisoning the planet, and ultimately avert disaster.
When Bastian happens upon an old book called The Neverending Story, he's swept into the magical world of Fantastica - so much that he finds he has actually become a character in the story. And when he realises that this mysteriously enchanted world is in great danger, he also discovers that he is the one chosen to save it.
\nCan Bastian overcome the barrier between reality and his imagination in order to save Fantastica?
16-year-old Eve Spiker lives an easy life with her geneticist mother, Terra. That is, until she's involved in a freak accident and left with life-threatening injuries. Injuries that seem to be healing faster than physically possible.
\nRecuperating at her mum's lab, Eve meets Solo, a hot teenage lab assistant who seems to know more about what's going on at Spiker Biotech than he should do. Joining forces to investigate, Solo and Eve uncover a secret so huge it could change the world completely. Because Terra's research is about more than just saving human lives. It's about creating them . . .
It's been one year since all the adults disappeared. Gone.
Despite the hunger and the lies, even despite the plague, the kids of Perdido Beach are determined to survive. Creeping into the tenuous new world they've built, though, is perhaps the worst incarnation yet of the enemy known as the Darkness: fear.
Within the FAYZ, life breaks down while the Darkness takes over, literally - turning the dome-world of the FAYZ entirely black. In darkness, the worst fears of all emerge, and the cruelest of intentions are carried out. But even in their darkest moments, the inhabitants of the FAYZ maintain a will to survive and a desire to take care of the others in their ravaged band that endures, no matter what the cost.
1942. World War II. The most terrible war in human history. Millions are dead; millions more are still to die. The Nazis rampage across Europe and eye far-off America.
The green, untested American army is going up against the greatest fighting force ever assembled - the armed forces of Nazi Germany.
But something has changed. A court decision makes females subject to the draft and eligible for service. So in this World War II, women and girls fight, too.
As the fate of the world hangs in the balance, three girls sign up to fight. Rio Richlin, Frangie Marr, and Rainy Schulterman are average girls, girls with dreams and aspirations, at the start of their lives, at the start of their loves. Each has her own reasons for volunteering. Not one expects to see actual combat. Not one expects to be on the front lines.
Rio, Frangie, and Rainy will play their parts in the war to defeat evil and save the human race. They will fear and they will rage; they will suffer and they will inflict suffering; they will hate and they will love. They will fight the greatest war the world has ever known.
In the blink of an eye. Everyone disappears. GONE.
Except for the young. Teens. Middle schoolers. Toddlers. But not one single adult. No teachers, no cops, no doctors, no parents. Just as suddenly, there are no phones, no internet, no television. No way to get help. And no way to figure out what's happened.
Hunger threatens. Bullies rule. A sinister creature lurks. Animals are mutating. And the teens themselves are changing, developing new talents - unimaginable, dangerous, deadly powers - that grow stronger by the day.
It's a terrifying new world. Sides are being chosen, a fight is shaping up. Townies against rich kids. Bullies against the weak. Powerful against powerless. And time is running out: On your birthday, you disappear just like everyone else...
Four years after the Perdido Beach dome went down, the alien virus that created it is still wreaking havoc, and virus-infested rock has created a new set of humans with mutant powers.
Rockborn gang members Dekka, Shade, Cruz, Malik, Armo, and Francis are fresh off their defeat of Dillion Poe and in need of answers to some very pressing questions about their own powers: who are the Dark Watchers? And what is this Fourth Dimension that only Francis can access?
But heroes don’t get down time. When the alien-virus infested rock hits New York, a new foe, Bob Markovic, rises amongst the newly rockborn. Markovic’s arrogance and lack of a moral compass already made him unbearable. With his newfound power to inflict a deadly disease, he could send all of humanity into a living hell. As they try to find their footing on morally gray grounds, the Rockborn Gang will have to make some tough decisions if they want to save the world.
Old friends and new foes come together in this battle for humanity. The mind-blowing and existential ending will make you rethink: What does it take to be a hero?
It's been seven months since all the adults disappeared. Gone.
It happens in one night. A girl who died now walks among the living; Zil and the Human Crew set fire to Perdido Beach; and amid the flames and smoke, Sam sees the figure of the boy he fears the most: Drake. But Drake is dead. Sam and Caine defeated him along with the Darkness - or so they thought.
As Perdido Beach burns, battles rage: Astrid against the Town Council; the Human Crew versus the mutants; and Sam against Drake, who is back from the dead and ready to finish where he and Sam left off. And all the while deadly rumors are raging like the fire itself, spread by the prophetess Orsay and her companion, Nerezza. They say that death is a way to escape the FAYZ. Conditions are worse than ever and kids are desperate to get out. But are they desperate enough to believe that death will set them free?(
It's been over a year since all the adults disappeared. Gone.
\nIn the time since everyperson over the age of fourteen disap-peared from the town of Perdido Beach, California, countless battles have been fought: battles against hunger and lies and plague, and epic battles of good against evil. And now, the gaiaphage has been reborn as Diana's malicious mutant daughter, Gaia.
\nGaia is endlessly hungry for destruction. She yearns to conquer her Nemesis, Little Pete, and then bend the entire world to her warped will. As long-standing enemies become allies, secrets are revealed and unexpected sacrifices are made. Will their attempts to save themselves and one another matter in the end, or will the kids of Perdido Beach perish in this final power struggle?
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It's been four years since a meteor hit Perdido Beach and everyone disappeared. Everyone, except the kids trapped in the FAYZ - an invisible dome that was created by an alien virus. Inside the FAYZ, animals began to mutate and teens developed dangerous powers. The terrifying new world was plagued with hunger, lies, and fear of the unknown.
\nNow the dome is gone and meteors are hitting earth with an even deadlier virus. Humans will mutate into monsters and the whole world will be exposed. As some teens begin to morph into heroes, they will find that others have become dangerously out of control . . . and that the world is on the brink of a monstrous battle between good and evil.
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It's 1944, and it feels to everyone like the war will never end. Rio Richlin, Frangie Marr and Rainie Shulterman have all received accolades, been 'heroes', earned promotion - in short, they've all done 'enough' to allow them to leave this nightmare and go home. But they don't.
D-Day, June 6th 1944. On that day, many still doubted the American soldier.
By June 7th no one did.
The summer of 1943, World War II. With heavy memories of combat, Frangie, Rainy, Rio, and the rest of the American army are moving on to their next target: the Italian island of Sicily.
The women won’t conquer Italy alone. They are not heroes for fighting alongside their brothers - they are soldiers. But Frangie, Rainy, Rio, and the millions of brave females fighting for their country have become a symbol in the fight for equality. They will brave terrible conditions in an endless siege; they will fight to find themselves on the front lines of WWII; and they will come face-to-face with the brutality of war until they win or die.
The Perdido Beach dome is down, but the horrors within have spread, and now all of humanity is in danger. The alien virus-infested rock that created the FAYZ is creating monsters - monsters that walk the cities and countryside, terrorising all. There are tanks in the street and predator drones in the sky, doomed efforts to stop the disintegration of civilization. Into this chaos comes a villain with the power to control anyone with just the sound of his voice.
Dillon Poe wanted to be a comedian once . . . but everyone made fun of him. Dillon the loser. Dillon the freak. Now he’s sending thousands to their death. Who’s laughing now?
The only people who can stop a superpowered villain are superpowered heroes. Dekka, Shade, Cruz, Malik, Armo, and a new mutant with unmatched powers, are all that stand in Dillon’s way. But when the lines begin to blur between hero and villain - some begin to wonder who’s really the monster. The fight will be bloody. This isn’t another battle, this is the war to save the human race.
Combining realistic thrills with sophisticated spycraft and witty dialogue, The Collaborators delivers a gut-punch answer to the biggest geopolitical question of our time: how, exactly, did post-Soviet Russia turn down the wrong path?
\nCrisscrossing the globe on the way to this shocking revelation are disaffected millennial CIA officer Ari Falk, thrown into a moral and professional crisis by the death of his best asset; and brash, troubled LA heiress Maya Chou, spiraling after the disappearance of her Russian American billionaire father. The duo’s adventures take us to both classic and surprising locales - from Berlin, to Latvia, Belarus, and a 1980s Jewish refugee camp near Rome.
Disheartened CIA officer Ari Falk, now hiding in the Republic of Georgia, is hailed as a hero by some and branded a traitor by others after blowing the lid off a massive conspiracy. But his quiet exile is shattered when a mission arises - one perfectly suited for someone as jaded and unpredictable as him.
\nThis stand-alone sequel thrusts us into a modern era of geopolitical conflict, where a hot war in Europe and shadowy political schemes set the stage for danger at every turn. Enter Asha Tamaskar, a brilliant, neurodivergent CIA officer with her own secrets, and Felix Burnham, a chilling antagonist with radical alliances that could change the global balance of power. From Tbilisi to Prague, Andorra to Bethesda, Idov crafts vivid, authentic settings that amplify the pulse-pounding action.
\nFar from the usual spy thriller, The Cormorant Hunt is brimming with razor-sharp dialogue, heart-stopping twists, and complex character dynamics that bring humanity to the chaos. Every border crossed carries real-world consequences, making this a thriller that feels both urgent and unforgettable. Blending suspense, wit, and authentic storytelling, it’s a must-read for fans of political intrigue, espionage, and thrillers that don’t play by the rules.
In early 1985, Michael J. Fox was one of the biggest stars on television. His world was about to get even bigger, but only if he could survive the kind of double duty unheard of in Hollywood. Fox's days were already dedicated to rehearsing and taping the hit sitcom Family Ties, but then the chance of a lifetime came his way. Soon, he committed his nights to a new time-travel adventure film being directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Steven Spielberg, Back to the Future. Sitcom during the day, movie at night - day after day, for months.
\nFox's nightly commute from a soundstage at Paramount to the back lot at Universal Studios, from one dream job to another, would become his own space-time continuum. It was in this time portal that Alex P. Keaton handed the baton to Marty McFly while Michael J. Fox tried to catch a few minutes of sleep. Alex's bravado, Marty's flair, and Fox's comedic virtuosity all swirled together to create something truly special.
\nIn Future Boy, Fox tells the remarkable story of playing two landmark roles at the same time - a slice of entertainment history that's never been told. Using new interviews with the cast and crew of both projects, the result is a vividly drawn and eye-opening story of creative achievement by a beloved icon.
You need to know who your husband really was . . .
When Paula Gadd’s husband of almost thirty years dies, just days away from the seventh anniversary of their son, Christopher’s death, her world falls apart. Grieving and bereft, she is stunned when a young woman approaches her at the funeral service, and slips something into her pocket. A note suggesting that Paula’s husband was not all that he seemed . . .
When the two women eventually meet, a series of revelations challenges everything Paula thought they knew, and it becomes immediately clear that both women’s lives are in very real danger.
Both a dark, twisty slice of domestic noir and taut, explosive psychological thriller, After He Died is also a chilling reminder that the people we trust the most can harbour the deadliest secrets . . .
Ran McGhie's world has been turned upside down. A young, lonely and frustrated writer, and suffering from mental-health problems, he discovers that his long-dead mother was related to one of Glasgow's oldest merchant families. Not only that, but Ran has inherited Newton Hall, a vast mansion that belonged to his great-uncle, who appears to have been watching from afar as his estranged great-nephew has grown up.
\nEntering his new-found home, he finds that Great-Uncle Fitzpatrick has turned it into a temple to the written word - the perfect place for poet Ran. But everything is not as it seems. As he explores the Hall's endless corridors, Ran's grasp on reality appears to be loosening. And then he comes across an ancient lift; and in that lift a mirror. And in the mirror . . . the reflection of a woman . . .
\nA terrifying psychological thriller with more than a hint of the Gothic, House of Spines is a love letter to the power of books, and an exploration of how lust and betrayal can be deadly . . .
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Vowing once again to remove herself from society, Annie is back living alone in her little cottage by the shores of a loch. But when an old enemy - now locked up in a high security hospital - comes calling, begging her to find the son that she was forced to give up at the age of seventeen, Annie is tempted out of seclusion. The missing boy holds the key to ending Annie's curse, and he may be the only chance that both she and Lewis have of real happiness.
\nAnnie and Lewis begin an investigation that takes them back to the past, a time etched in Scottish folklore, a period of history that may just be repeating itself. And what they uncover could destroy not just some of the most powerful people in the country, who will stop at nothing to protect their wealth and their secrets, but also Annie's life, and everything she holds dear . . .
\nDark, immersive, and utterly compelling, The Howling is a story of deception, betrayal, and misplaced power, and a reminder that the most public of faces can hide the darkest of hearts . . .
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John Docherty’s mother has just been taken into a nursing home following a massive stroke and she’s unlikely to be able to live independently again.
\nWith no other option than to sell the family home, John sets about packing up everything in the house. In sifting through the detritus of his family’s past he’s forced to revisit, and revise his childhood.
\nFor in a box, in the attic, he finds undeniable truth that he had a brother who disappeared when he himself was only a toddler. A brother no one ever mentioned. A brother he knew absolutely nothing about. A discovery that sets John on a journey from which he may never recover.
\nFor sometimes in that space where memory should reside there is nothing but silence, smoke and ash. And in the absence of truth, in the absence of a miracle, we turn to prayer. And to violence.
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A young woman starts experiencing terrifying premonitions of people dying, as it becomes clear that a family curse known only as The Murmurs has begun, and a long-forgotten crime is about to be unearthed . . .
\nOn the first morning of her new job at Heartfield House, a care home for the elderly, Annie Jackson wakens from a terrifying dream. And when she arrives at the home, she knows that the first old man she meets is going to die.
\nHow she knows this is a terrifying mystery, but it is the start of horrifying premonitions . . . a rekindling of the curse that has trickled through generations of women in her family - a wicked gift known only as 'the murmurs' . . .
\nWith its reappearance comes an old, forgotten fear that is about to grip Annie Jackson.
\nAnd this time, it will never let go . . .
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In this breathtakingly brutal and intensely topical psychological thriller, a man is accused of child sexual abuse, and his life and that of his actress girlfriend are thrown into turmoil.
\nFilm star Amelie Hart is the darling of the silver screen, appearing on the front pages of every newspaper. But at the peak of her fame she throws it all away for a regular guy with an ordinary job. The gossip columns are aghast: what happened to the woman who turned heads wherever she went?
\nAny hope the furor will die down are crushed when Amelie’s boyfriend Dave is arrested on charges of child sexual abuse. Dave strongly asserts his innocence, and when Amelie refuses to denounce him, the press witch hunt quickly turns into physical violence, and she has to flee the country.
\nWhile Dave is locked up with the most depraved men in the country and Amelie is hiding on the continent, Damaris, the victim at the center of the story, is isolated - a child trying to make sense of an adult world.
\nBreathtakingly brutal, dark, and immensely moving, A Song of Isolation looks beneath the magpie glimmer of celebrity to uncover a sinister world dominated by greed and lies, and the unfathomable destruction of innocent lives . . . in an instant.
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Hiding from the world in her little white cottage on the shores of a loch, Annie Jackson is fighting to come to terms with the world of the murmurs, a curse that has haunted female members of her family for centuries.
\nWhile she is within the ancient, heavy stone of the old dwelling, the voices merely buzz, but the moment she steps outside the door they clamour to torment her all over again, bringing with them shocking visions of imminent deaths.
\nInto this oasis comes her adoptive mother, Mandy McEvoy, begging for Annie's help. Mandy's nephew Damien has gone missing, after dropping off his four-year old son at his mother's home.
\nUnable to refuse, but terrified to leave her sanctuary, Annie, with the help of her brother Lewis, is drawn in to a secretive, seductive world that will have her question everything she holds dear, while Lewis' life may be changed forever . . .
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Winter blankets the land, and more than just hope has died. Prevented from invading the Fhrey homeland by the tower of Avempartha, the western army seeks a way across the Nidwalden River before the fane obtains the secret of dragons.
\nAs time runs out for both humanity and the mystic Suri, the only chance for the living rests with the dead. Having made their fateful choice, can a handful of misfits do the impossible, or are they forever lost to an inescapable grave? Do gods truly exist? Is it possible to know the future? And what lies beyond the veil of death?
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After obtaining the secret to creating dragons, the leader of the Fhrey has turned the tide of war once more - but gaining the advantage has come at a terrible price. While Imaly plots to overthrow the fane for transgressions against his people, a mystic and a keeper are the only hope for the Rhunes.
\nTime is short, and the future of both races hangs in the balance. In this exciting conclusion to the Legends of the First Empire series, the Great War finally comes to a climactic end, and with it dawns a new era in the Age of Empyre.
\nThis series chronicles a pivotal point in Elan’s history when humans and those they once saw as gods warred until a new world order was born. Set three thousand years before the Riyria tales, Legends is a standalone fantasy series that is independent of the Riyria novels.
\nBut for those who do read both series, Legends will unmask lies and reveal the truth about Elan’s history and the men and women who shaped what the world became.
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After years of warfare, humanity has gained the upper hand and has pushed the Fhrey to the edge of their homeland, but no farther. Now comes the pivotal moment. Persephone’s plan to use the stalemate to seek peace is destroyed by an unexpected betrayal that threatens to hand victory to the Fhrey and leaves a dear friend in peril.
\nHumanity’s only hope lies in the legend of a witch, a forgotten song, and a simple garden door.
Since time immemorial, humans have worshipped the gods they call Fhrey, truly a race apart: invincible in battle, masters of magic, and seemingly immortal. But when a god falls to a human blade, the balance of power between humans and those they thought were gods changes forever.
\nNow only a few stand between humankind and annihilation: Raithe, reluctant to embrace his destiny as the God Killer; Suri, a young seer burdened by signs of impending doom; and Persephone, who must overcome personal tragedy to lead her people. The Age of Myth is over. The time of rebellion has begun.
Raithe, the God Killer, may have started the rebellion by killing a Fhrey, but long-standing enmities dividing the Rhune make it all but impossible to unite against a common foe. And even if the clans can join forces, how will they defeat an enemy whose magical prowess makes the Fhrey indistinguishable from gods?
The answer lies across the sea in a faraway land populated by a reclusive and dour race who feels nothing but disdain for both Fhrey and mankind. With time running out, Persephone leads the gifted young seer Suri, the Fhrey sorceress Arion, and a small band of misfits in a desperate search for aid - a quest that will take them into the darkest depths of Elan. There, an ancient adversary waits - an enemy as surprising as it is deadly.
The alliance of humans and renegade Fhrey is fragile - and about to be tested as never before. Persephone keeps the human clans from turning on one another through her iron will and a compassionate heart. The arrogant Fhrey are barely held in check by their leader, Nyphron, who seeks to advance his own nefarious agenda through a loveless marriage that will result in the betrayal of the person Persephone loves most: Raithe, the God Killer.
As the Fhrey overlords marshal their army and sorcerers to crush the rebellion, old loyalties will be challenged while fresh conspiracies will threaten to undo all that Persephone has accomplished. In the darkest hour, when hope is all but lost, new heroes will rise . . . but at what terrible cost?
Two men who hate each other. One impossible mission. A legend in the making.
\nHadrian Blackwater, a warrior with nothing to fight for is paired with Royce Melborn, a thieving assassin with nothing to lose. Together they must steal a treasure that no one can reach. The Crown Tower is the impregnable remains of the grandest fortress ever built and home to the realm's most prized possessions. But it isn't gold or jewels that the old wizard is after, and if he can just keep them from killing each other, just might do it.
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Three times they tried to kill her. Then a professional was hired. So was Riyria.
\nWhen the last member of the oldest noble family in Avryn is targeted for assassination, Riyria is hired to foil the plot. Three years have passed since the war-weary mercenary Hadrian and the cynical ex-assassin Royce joined forces to start life as rogues-for-hire. Things have gone well enough until they're asked to help prevent a murder.
\nNow they must venture into an ancient corner of the world to save a mysterious woman who knows more about Royce than is safe and cares less about herself than is sane.
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A daughter vanishes. Two rogues are paid a fortune to find her. It isn't enough.
When Gabriel Winter's daughter mysteriously disappears and is presumed dead, the wealthy whiskey baron seeks revenge. Having lived in Colnora during the infamous Year of Fear, he hires the one man he knows can deliver a bloody retribution - the notorious Duster.
Ride with Royce and Hadrian as the cynical ex-assassin and idealistic ex-mercenary travel to a mysterious old-world city filled with nobles claiming descent from imperial aristocracy. Riyria's job appears easy: discover what happened to the missing duchess and, if she lives, bring her home . . . if not, punish those responsible. But nothing is simple in the crowded, narrow, mist-filled streets of Rochelle, where more than one ancient legend lurks.
When a master-craftsmen dwarf is fired, he threatens retaliation. The rogues-for-hire known as Riyria are commissioned to find and stop him. Traveling to the paradise resort of Tur Del Fur, the two are granted a lavish allowance that, along with the easy job, promises to turn the trip into a vacation. Everything would have been perfect except that the disgruntled employee’s last name is Berling and the target of his wrath is the legendary towers of Drumindor.
\nIt's been more than five years since the last adventure with Royce Melborn (a cynical ex-assassin) and Hadrian Blackwater (an idealistic ex-mercenary), a pair whose bonds of friendship are bound with blood.
The man who became known as Esrahaddon is reported to have destroyed the world’s greatest empire - but there are those who believe he saved it. Few individuals are as divisive, but all agree on three facts: He was exiled to the wilderness, hunted by a goblin priestess, and sentenced to death by a god - all before the age of eight. How he managed to survive and why people continued to fear his name a thousand years later has always been a mystery . . . until now.
Although Farilane is born a princess she cares for only two things: books and adventure. Being an unwanted twin in the imperial line of succession, Farilane becomes a scholar, an adventurer, and - in a time when reading is forbidden - a hunter of books. Her singular obsession is finding the mythical Book of Brin, a tome not just lost but intentionally buried.
\nAlthough she is respected and beloved by the Teshlor Knights, not even their legendary skills can protect her, for what she finds is more dangerous than what she sought.
The New Empire intends to mark its victory over the Nationalists with a bloody celebration. On the high holiday of Wintertide, the Witch of Melengar will be burned and the Heir of Novron executed. On that same day the Empress faces a forced marriage, with a fatal accident soon follow.
\nThe New Empire is confident in the totality of its triumph but there's just one problem-Royce and Hadrian have finally found the true Heir of Novron---and they have their own holiday plans.
After more than five hundred years of exile, the heir to the empyre is wary about his sudden reassignment to active duty on the Goblin War’s front lines. His assignment to rescue an outpost leads to a dead-end canyon deep inside enemy territory, and his suspicion turns to dread when he discovers the stronghold does not exist.
\nBut whoever went to the trouble of planning his death to look like a casualty of war did not know he would be assigned to the Seventh Sikaria Auxiliary Squadron. In the depths of an unforgiving jungle, a legend is about to be born, and the world of Elan will never be the same.
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War has come to Melengar and once more Royce and Hadrian are hired to make a desperate gamble and form an alliance with the Nationalists whom are fighting the Imperialists in the south.
\nAs the power of the Nyphron Empire grows, so does Royce's suspicion that the wizard Esrahaddon is using the thieves as pawns in his own grab for power. To find the truth, he must unravel the secret of Hadrian's past - what he discovers may end their friendship and break Riyria in two.
For more than a year Royce Melborn has tried to forget Gwen DeLancy, the woman who saved him and his partner Hadrian Blackwater from certain death. Unable to get her out of his mind, Royce returns to Medford with Hadrian but the two receive a very different reception - Gwen refuses to see them.
\nThe victim of abuse by a powerful noble, she suspects that Royce will ignore any danger in his desire for revenge. By turning the thieves away, Gwen hopes to once more protect them. What she doesn’t realise is what the two are capable of - but she’s about to find out.
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Royce Melborn, a skilled thief, and his mercenary partner, Hadrian Blackwater, make a profitable living carrying out dangerous assignments for conspiring nobles-until they are hired to pilfer a famed sword. What appears to be just a simple job finds them framed for the murder of the king and trapped in a conspiracy that uncovers a plot far greater than the mere overthrow of a tiny kingdom.
Can a self-serving thief and an idealistic swordsman survive long enough to unravel the first part of an ancient mystery that has toppled kings and destroyed empires?
And so begins the first tale of treachery and adventure, sword fighting and magic, myth and legend.
Something stirs in the boundless dark of the Canadian north. Listen. Can you hear it?
\nNorthern Nights is an anthology of strange stories, featuring the dark dreams and feverish imaginations of Canada's finest speculative authors. Steel yourself for a journey through these northern nights.
\nFeaturing all new original stories from Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Camilla Grudova, Premee Mohamed, David Demchuk, Senaa Ahmad, A.C. Wise, Naben Ruthnum, Simon Strantzas, Richard Gavin, Rich Larson, Hiron Ennes, Siobhan Carroll, Lynn Hutchinson Lee, Rory Say, David Nickle, Marc A. Godin, EC Dorgan, K.L. Schroeder, Nayani Jensen, and David Neil Lee.
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The young man at the center of this extraordinary and moving story will one day be among the most highly paid athletes in the National Football League.
\nWhen we first meet him, he is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or any of the things a child might learn in school such as, say, how to read or write. Nor has he ever touched a football.
\nWhat changes? He takes up football, and school, after a rich, Evangelical, Republican family plucks him from the mean streets. Their love is the first great force that alters the world's perception of the boy, whom they adopt. The second force is the evolution of professional football itself into a game where the quarterback must be protected at any cost.
\nOur protagonist turns out to be the priceless combination of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback's greatest vulnerability: his blind side.
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For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. But the president insisted there was nothing to worry about.
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Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios. Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19.
\nThe characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected. A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control. A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society. A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu . . . everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work.
\nMichael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.
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Who works for the government and what do they do? A timely and absorbing civics lessons from an all-star team of writers and storytellers.
\nThe government is a vast, complex system that Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognised and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone.
\nMichael Lewis invited his favorite writers to find someone doing an interesting job for the government and write about them. The stories they found are unexpected, riveting, and inspiring, including a former coal miner devoted to making mine roofs less likely to collapse, saving thousands of lives; an IRS agent straight out of a crime thriller; and the manager who made the National Cemetery Administration the best-run organization, public or private, in the entire country. Each essay shines a spotlight on the essential behind-the-scenes work of exemplary federal employees.
\nWhether they’re digitising archives, chasing down cybercriminals, or discovering new planets, these workers are committed to their work and universally reluctant to take credit. The vivid profiles in On Duty blow up the stereotype of the irrelevant bureaucrat. They show how the essential business of government makes our lives possible, and how much it matters.
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As World War III rages on, the scientists in Antarctica are thankful for the isolation - until a group of Chinese scientists arrive at the American research base. In their truck is a dead body, the first murder in Antarctica. The potential for a geopolitical firestorm is great, and, with no clear jurisdiction, the Americans don’t know what to do. But they soon realise the Chinese scientists have brought far more with them than the body . . .
\nWithin seventy-two hours, thirteen others lie dead in the snow, murdered in acts of madness and superhuman strength. An extremophile parasite from the truck, triggered by severe cold, is spreading by touch. It is learning from them. Evolving. It triggers violent tendencies in the winter crew, and, more insidiously, the beginnings of a strange symbiotic telepathy.
\nExhausted by suspicion and fear, with rescue impossible for months, the desperate crew members turn on each other. A small group of survivors try to resist the siren call of the growing hive mind and stay alive long enough to solve the mystery of the symbiotic microbe’s origins. But the symbiote is more than a disease - it is a biological weapon that can change the balance of power in a time of war.
\nThe survivors cannot let anyone infected make it to the summer season, when planes will arrive to take them - and potentially the symbiote - back to civilisation.
Life on a remote island is turned upside down by a stranger's arrival, testing bonds of family and tradition and leaving a young dreamer's future hanging in the balance.
\nIt's no ordinary existence on the rugged isle of Muckle Flugga. The elements run riot and the very rocks that shape the place begin to shift under their influence. The only human inhabitants are the lighthouse keeper, known as The Father, and his otherworldly son, Ouse. Them, and the occasional lodger to keep the wolf from the door.
\nWhen one of those lodgers - Firth, a chaotic writer - arrives from Edinburgh, the limits of the world the keeper and his son cling to begin to crumble. A tug of war ensues between Firth and the lighthouse keeper for Ouse's affections - and his future. As old and new ways collide, and life-changing decisions loom, what will the tides leave standing in their wake?
When it comes to the phenomenon that is consciousness, there is one point on which scientists, philosophers, and artists all it feels like something to be us. Yet the fact that we have subjective experience of the world remains one of nature’s greatest mysteries. How is it that our mental operations are accompanied by feelings, thoughts, and a sense of self? What would a scientific investigation of our inner life look like, when we have as little distance and perspective on it as fish do of the sea? In A World Appears, Michael Pollan traces the unmapped continent that is consciousness, bringing radically different perspectives - scientific, philosophical, literary, spiritual and psychedelic - to see what each can teach us about this central fact of life.
\nWhen neuroscientists began studying consciousness in the early 1990s, they sought to explain how and why three pounds of spongy gray matter could generate a subjective point of view - assuming that the brain is the source of our perceived reality. Pollan takes us to the cutting edge of the field, where scientists are entertaining more radical (and less materialist) theories of consciousness. He introduces us to “plant neurobiologists” searching for the first flicker of consciousness in plants, scientists striving to engineer feelings into AI, and psychologists and novelists seeking to capture the felt experience of our slippery stream of consciousness.
\nIn Pollan’s dazzling exploration of consciousness, he discovers a world far deeper and stranger than our everyday reality. Eye-opening and mind-expanding, A World Appears takes us into the laboratories of our own minds, ultimately showing us how we might make better use of the gift of awareness to more meaningfully connect with the world and our deepest selves.
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When Sienna Hegarty turns up at his family home one night, covered in blood and frozen in shock, psychologist Joe O'Loughlin finds himself drawn deep into her world, trying to unearth the dark secrets her mind has buried.
\nThe police find a major piece of the puzzle at Sienna s house: her father, a retired cop, is face-down in a pool of his own blood, his throat slashed and his skull caved in. The blood covering Sienna was his. The 14-year-old can't remember what happened that night but, at the same time, Sienna doesn't mourn her father s death.
\nWhat was going on behind closed doors in the Hegarty household? Is Sienna guilty of brutal murder? And what part has her charismatic teacher Gordon Ellis played in this blood-soaked event?
A girl is discovered hiding in a secret room in the aftermath of a terrible crime. Half-starved and filthy, she won’t tell anyone her name, or her age, or where she came from.
\nMaybe she is twelve, maybe fifteen. She doesn’t appear in any missing persons file, and her DNA can’t be matched to an identity. Six years later, still unidentified, she is living in a secure children’s home with a new name, Evie Cormac.
\nWhen she initiates a court case demanding the right to be released as an adult, forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven must determine if Evie is ready to go free. But she is unlike anyone he’s ever met - fascinating and dangerous in equal measure. Evie knows when someone is lying, and no one around her is telling the truth.
Meanwhile, Cyrus is called in to investigate the shocking murder of a high school figure-skating champion, Jodie Sheehan, who dies on a lonely footpath close to her home. Pretty and popular, Jodie is portrayed by everyone as the ultimate girl-next-door, but as Cyrus peels back the layers, a secret life emerges - one that Evie Cormac, the girl with no past, knows something about.
A man haunted by his own tragic history, Cyrus is caught between the two cases - one girl who needs saving and another who needs justice. What price will he pay for the truth?
Vincent Ruiz is lucky to be alive. A bullet in the leg, another through the hand, he is discovered clinging to a buoy in the River Thames, losing blood and consciousness fast. It takes six days for him to come out of his coma, and when he does, his nightmare is only just beginning. Because Vincent has no recollection of what happened, and nobody believes him.
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A mile away from his body, a boat was found covered in blood - Vincent's and that of three others. Forensics say at least one of them must be dead. Vincent, a police detective, had signed his service pistol out of the station armoury, despite being on leave. Many murder suspects fake amnesia, and the investigating team are not sure this case is any different. The only clue is a picture in his pocket, a photograph of a young girl, Mickey Carlyle, who disappeared three years ago.
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And though Mickey is presumed dead, Vincent has the nagging doubt that she is alive and in terrible danger . . .
Twenty years ago, Cyrus Haven's family was murdered. Only he and his brother survived. Cyrus because he hid. Elias because he was the killer.
\nNow Elias is being released from a secure psychiatric hospital and Cyrus, a forensic psychologist, must decide if he can forgive the man who destroyed his childhood.
\nAs he prepares for the homecoming, Cyrus is called to a crime scene in Nottingham. A man is dead and his daughter, Maya, is missing. Then a second woman is abducted . . . The only witness is Evie Cormac, a troubled teenager with an incredible gift: she can tell when you are lying.
\nBoth missing women have dark secrets that Cyrus must unravel to find them - and he and Evie know better than anybody how the past can come back to haunt you . . .
Alisha Barba s dreams of being a detective were shattered when a murder suspect broke her back across a brick wall. Now on her feet again, with her police career in limbo, she receives a message from an old school friend, Cate Beaumont, who is eight months pregnant and in trouble.
On the night they arrange to meet, Cate is mown down by a car that kills her husband instantly. As paramedics fight to save her life they discover there is no baby. Her pregnancy is an elaborate lie, a cruel deception.
Why? What happened? As Alisha sets out to answer these questions she is drawn deeper and deeper into a dangerous quest that will take her from the East End of London to Amsterdam s red light district and into a murky underworld of sex trafficking, slavery and exploitation.
Childhood sweethearts William and Mary have been married for sixty years. William is a celebrated surgeon, Mary a devoted wife. Both have a strong sense of right and wrong. This is what their son, Joe O'Loughlin, has always believed. But when Joe is summoned to the hospital with news that his father has been brutally attacked, his world is turned upside down. Who is the strange woman crying at William's bedside, covered in his blood - a friend, a mistress, a fantasist or a killer?
\nAgainst the advice of the police, Joe launches his own investigation. As he learns more, he discovers sides to his father he never knew - and is forcibly reminded that the truth comes at a price.
Fresh from the highest selling book of his career, The Secrets She Keeps, multi-million-copy bestselling author Michael Robotham returns to his beloved Joe O’Loughlin series in this compelling psychological thriller that delves into the consequences of a tragedy, exposing a lifetime of shocking cover-up that is too close to home for the famous psychologist.
When pretty and popular teenagers Piper Hadley and Tash McBain disappear one Sunday morning, the investigation captivates a nation but the girls are never found.
\nThree years later, during the worst blizzard in a century, a husband and wife are brutally killed in the farmhouse where Tash McBain once lived. A suspect is in custody, a troubled young man who can hear voices and claims that he saw a girl that night being chased by a snowman.
\nConvinced that Piper or Tash might still be alive, clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin and ex-cop Vincent Ruiz, persuade the police to re-open the investigation. But they are racing against time to save the girls from someone with an evil, calculating and twisted mind . . .
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When pretty and popular teenagers Piper Hadley and Tash McBain disappear one Sunday morning, the investigation captivates a nation but the girls are never found.
\nThree years later, during the worst blizzard in a century, a husband and wife are brutally killed in the farmhouse where Tash McBain once lived. A suspect is in custody, a troubled young man who can hear voices and claims that he saw a girl that night being chased by a snowman.
\nConvinced that Piper or Tash might still be alive, clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin and ex-cop Vincent Ruiz, persuade the police to re-open the investigation. But they are racing against time to save the girls from someone with an evil, calculating and twisted mind . . .
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Agatha is pregnant and works part-time stocking shelves at a grocery store in a ritzy London suburb, counting down the days until her baby is due. As the hours of her shifts creep by in increasing discomfort, the one thing she looks forward to at work is catching a glimpse of Meghan, the effortlessly chic customer whose elegant lifestyle dazzles her.
\nMeghan has it all: two perfect children, a handsome husband, a happy marriage, a stylish group of friends, and she writes perfectly droll confessional posts on her popular parenting blog—posts that Agatha reads with devotion each night as she waits for her absent boyfriend, the father of her baby, to maybe return her calls.
When Agatha learns that Meghan is pregnant again, and that their due dates fall within the same month, she finally musters up the courage to speak to her, thrilled that they now have the ordeal of childbearing in common. Little does Meghan know that the mundane exchange she has with a grocery store employee during a hurried afternoon shopping trip is about to change the course of her not-so-perfect life forever . . .
A naked woman in red high-heeled shoes is perched on the edge of Clifton Suspension Bridge with her back pressed to the safety fence, weeping into a mobile phone. Clinical psychologist Joseph O'Loughlin is only feet away, desperately trying to talk her down. She whispers, 'you don't understand,' and jumps.
\nLater, Joe has a visitor - the woman's teenage daughter, a runaway from boarding school. She refuses to believe that her mother would have jumped off the bridge. Not only would she not commit suicide, she is terrified of heights.
\nJoe wants to believe her, but what would drive a woman to such a desperate act? Whose voice? What evil?
Joseph O Loughlin appears to have the perfect life - a beautiful wife, a loving daughter and a successful career as a clinical psychologist. But nothing can be taken for granted. Even the most flawless existence is only a loose thread away from unravelling. All it takes is a murdered girl, a troubled young patient and the biggest lie of his life.
Caught in a complex web of deceit and haunted by images of the slain girl, he embarks upon a search that will take him from London to Liverpool and into the darkest recesses of the human mind. Ultimately, he will risk everything to unmask the killer and save his family.
Marnie Logan often feels like she's being watched: a warm breath on the back of her neck, or a shadow in the corner of her eye that vanishes when she turns her head.
\nNow her life is frozen. Her husband Daniel is missing. She can't access his bank accounts or his life insurance. Depressed and increasingly desperate, she seeks the help of clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin.
\nO'Loughlin discovers Daniel's Big Red Book--a collage of pictures, interviews, and anecdotes. The book, which Daniel intended as a surprise birthday gift, now leads to a shocking discovery. Any person who has ever crossed Marnie has paid an exacting price. And O'Loughlin may be next in line.
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Six years ago, Evie Cormac was found hiding in a secret room in the aftermath of a brutal murder. But nobody has ever discovered her real name or where she came from, because everybody who tries ends up dead.
\nForensic psychologist Cyrus Haven believes the truth will set Evie free. Ignoring her warnings, he begins to dig into her past, only to disturb a hornet's nest of corrupt and powerful people, who have been waiting to find Evie - the final witness to their crimes. Unbeknownst to him, Cyrus is leading them straight to Evie.
\nThe truth will not set her free. It will get them killed.
\nPhilomena McCarthy is a young, ambitious police office with the elite Metropolitan Police in London. When she responds to a domestic violence call, she finds the victim, Tempe Brown, trying to protect her abuser, a married man named Darren Goodall, a decorated Scotland Yard detective afraid of no one. As Philomena pursues the case against him, she not only encounters resistance from her police force colleagues but also becomes dangerously entangled with the victim - who is not at all whom she appears to be - much to the increasing endangerment of herself and Henry, her fiancée.
\nComplicating matters is Philomena’s estranged father Edward McCarthy, a powerful man who has built a criminal empire along with his brothers. Philomena has long tried to pursue her career as a police officer without her father’s involvement, but as she falls under suspicion of stalking and harassing Goodall, her father becomes involved.
\nAs the situation escalates, Tempe’s sinister maneuvers further entangle Philomena in a web of secrets, corruption, and murder, putting Philomena’s impending marriage, career, and very survival in jeopardy . . .
Philomena McCarthy has defied the odds to become a young officer with the Metropolitan Police because her father and her uncles are notorious London gangsters.
\nOn patrol one night, Philomena finds a barefoot child, covered in blood, who says she can’t wake her mother. Meanwhile, three miles away, a London jeweler has a bomb strapped to his chest in his ransacked store and millions are missing.
\nThese two events collide and threaten Philomena’s career, her new marriage, and her life. In too deep, and falling further, Phil must decide who she can trust - her family or her colleagues - and on what side of the thin blue line she wants to live.
In London, ex-cop Vincent Ruiz rescues a young woman from a violent boyfriend but wakes next morning to find that he's been set up and robbed. As he tracks down the thieves, he discovers the boyfriend's tortured body and learns that powerful men are looking for the girl. What did Holly Knight steal that is so important to them
\nMeanwhile in Baghdad, the bank robbery capital of the world, billions of dollars in reconstruction funds has gone missing and Pulitzer prize-winning Journalist Luca Terracini is trying to 'follow the money'. The dangerous trail will lead him to London where he teams up with Vincent Ruiz and together they investigate the disappearance of an international banker and a mysterious 'black hole' in the bank's accounts.
Far in Earth's future, in a post-utopian hell-hole, Hanson works ten solid back-breaking hours a day, shoveling endless mountains of coal, within sight of the iridescent wall that separates what’s left of humanity from their gods.
One day, after a tragedy of his own making, Hanson leaves York, not knowing what he will do, or how he will survive in the wilderness without work. He finds himself drawn to the wall, to the elusive promise of God. And when the impossible happens, he steps through, into the city beyond.
The impossible was only the beginning.
In engaging stories, Mischling the thief races through time to defeat three trolls before the sun rises for the first time and turns the inhabitants of her city into stone. A scientist is on the run from assassins, because her research in merging human intelligence with sentient AI is too dangerous.
\nAn aging veteran obtains a military weapon from his past: a VR robotic leopard in which he rediscovers the consequences of the hunt. In the biggest heist in the history of the universe, a loser Trickster (and the girlfriend who is better than he deserves) sets out to violate every trope and expectation of fiction possible.
\nWith two stories original to this collection, Michael Swanwick aptly demonstrates with poignant humor why he is widely respected as a master of imaginative storytelling.
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The story of the early trans athletes and Olympic bureaucrats who lit the flame for today’s culture wars.
\nIn December 1935, Zdeněk Koubek, one of the most famous sprinters in European women’s sports, declared he was now living as a man. Around the same time, the celebrated British field athlete Mark Weston, also assigned female at birth, announced that he, too, was a man. Periodicals and radio programs across the world carried the news; both became global celebrities.
\nA few decades later, they were all but forgotten. And in the wake of their transitions, what could have been a push toward equality became instead, through a confluence of bureaucracy, war, and sheer happenstance, the exact opposite: the now all-too-familiar panic around trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming athletes.
\nIn The Other Olympians, Michael Waters uncovers, for the first time, the gripping true stories of Koubek, Weston, and other pioneering trans and intersex athletes from their era. With dogged research and cinematic flair, Waters also tracks how International Olympic Committee members ignored Nazi Germany’s atrocities in order to pull off the Berlin Games, a partnership that ultimately influenced the IOC’s nearly century-long obsession with surveilling and cataloging gender.
\nImmersive and revelatory, The Other Olympians is a groundbreaking, hidden-in-the-archives marvel, an inspiring call for equality, and an essential contribution toward understanding the contemporary culture wars over gender in sports.
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DCI Matilda Darke has been kidnapped and her nemesis, Steve Harrison appears to be behind it. He’s currently residing in the supermax of Wakefield Prison and spends twenty-three hours a day in his cell, so how could he possibly be responsible?
\nAs Matilda’s team race to find her, they’re alerted to a body found in an abandoned car on the outskirts of Sheffield. With forensics scouring the woodland for clues, the last thing they expect is for the body count to rise.
\nMeanwhile the search intensifies for the DCI when a video of her kidnapping is leaked to the media. And as she desperately tries to uncover what has led to her being held captive in an underground cell, she’s about to find out how much danger she’s truly in.
\nIf Matilda’s team don’t find her soon, they might not find her at all . . .
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DCI Matilda Darke has returned to work after a nine month absence. A shadow of her former self, she is tasked with re-opening a cold case: the terrifyingly brutal murders of Miranda and Stefan Harkness. The only witness was their eleven-year-old son, Jonathan, who was too deeply traumatised to speak a word.
Then a dead body is discovered, and the investigation leads back to Matilda's case. Suddenly the past and present converge, and it seems a killer may have come back for more . . .
The Hangman waits in the darkness of your living room. As soon as you get home, he will kill you – hang you by the neck – and make you pay for all the crimes you have tried desperately to forget.
The police are running out of time. DCI Matilda Darke is facing her worst nightmare: a serial killer pursuing his own brand of lethal justice, whose campaign of violence is spreading fear throughout the city.
As the body count rises, Matilda is personally targeted and even her most trusted colleagues fall under suspicion. But can she keep those closest to her from harm? Or is it already too late?
DCI Matilda Darke receives an anonymous email from someone claiming to have committed the perfect murder. Experience tells her this isn’t possible, but as she investigates, she discovers a killer questioning everything she’s ever known.
\nNow, Matilda is on the trail of a murderer who targets the most vulnerable people in society. Apart from ‘With Sympathy…’ cards, hand delivered to the family of his victims, he leaves no trace of his crimes.
\nAs the threat escalates, and those closest to Matilda are targeted, she finds herself isolated and alone in bringing down her opponent before it’s game over. After all, there can only be one winner in this game of cat-and-mouse, and the clock is ticking . . .
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DI Brady has been tracing victims of systemic abuse at a local children’s home after a high-profile accusation pitched it into the spotlight - a case that couldn’t be more personal.
\nAs Matilda and her team piece together the disturbing picture of the history of the home, it soon becomes clear that this is much bigger than they ever suspected.
\nBut nothing prepares them for what they uncover next . . .
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They were the perfect family. It was the perfect crime.
\nThe new gripping DCI Matilda Darke crime thriller about the dark secrets that lie within a perfect family. For fans of Patricia Gibney and Angela Marsons.
\nIt’s the most disturbing crime scene DCI Matilda Darke has ever seen . . .
The morning after a wedding reception at a beautiful suburban home in Sheffield, the bride’s entire family are stabbed to death - in a frenzied attack more violent than anything DCI Matilda Darke could have imagined.
Forensics point to a burglar on the run across the country. But cracks are starting to appear in Matilda’s team, someone is playing games with the evidence - and the killer might be closer to home than they thought . . .
When elderly George Rainsford goes to investigate a suspicious noise one night, the last thing he expects to find is a bloodbath. A man has been killed and a woman brutally beaten, left for dead.
\nThe victims are Lois Craven and Kevin Hardaker - both married, but not to each other. Their spouses swear they knew nothing of the affair and, besides, they both have alibis for the attack. With nothing else to link the victims, the investigation hits a dead end.
\nThe pressure is on for investigating officer, DCI Matilda Darke: there's a violent killer on the loose, and it looks like her team members are the new targets. With no leads and no suspects, it's going to take all Matilda's wits to catch him, before he strikes again.
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Feared by the people of Sheffield, Starling House is home to some of Britain’s deadliest teenagers, still too young for prison. Now the building’s latest arrival, Ryan Asher, has been found brutally murdered – stabbed twelve times, left in a pool of blood.
When DCI Matilda Darke and her team investigate, they uncover the secrets of a house tainted by evil. Kate Moloney, the prison’s manager, is falling apart, the security system has been sabotaged, and neither the staff nor the inmates can be trusted.
There’s only one person Matilda believes is innocent, and he’s facing prison for the rest of his life. With time running out, she must solve the unsolvable to save a young man from his fate. And find a murderer in a house full of killers . . .
DCI Matilda Darke and her team have been restricted under special measures after a series of calamitous scandals nearly brought down the South Yorkshire police force.
\nNow Matilda is on the trail of another murderer, an expert in avoiding detection with no obvious motive but one obvious method.
\nWhen his latest victim survives the attack despite her vocal cords being severed, Matilda is more convinced than ever of the guilt of her key suspect. If only she had a way to prove it . . .
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A young boy walks into a police station in France. He claims to be Carl Meagan - a missing child from Sheffield whose name is still whispered as a warning to kids who stay out after dark.
\nOn her way home from the supermarket, nine-year-old Keeley Armitage vanishes without trace. Her family is overcome with shock and DCI Matilda Darke can’t help but focus on memories of the Carl Meagan case that almost ruined her career.
\nAs Matilda investigates, she peels back the layers of grief and sadness that surround Keeley’s family. Until she is left with an unimaginable choice: betray those closest to her or let a violent killer walk free . . .
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Nine months ago DCI Matilda Darke survived a bullet to the head. The brutal attack claimed dozens of lives, including those she loved most, and the nightmares still plague her every waking thought.
\nNow, she’s ready to get back on the job. But a new terror awaits. A woman is found murdered and her wounds look eerily similar to several cold cases. Desperate to find a lead, DCI Darke and her team must face a terrifying truth: a serial killer is on the loose in Sheffield.
\nMatilda has led countless murder investigations before but the lingering emotional scars from her ordeal and the uneasiness within her once-tight team have left tensions high. As the body count rises, Matilda realises that this might just be where it all ends.
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When DCI Matilda Darke receives a mysterious telephone call, she immediately dismisses the threat. Afterall the Homicide and Major Enquiries team are a regular target for prank calls.But ignoring this warning might soon be the biggest regret of Matilda Darke's life.
\nA lone gunman is on a deadly rampage around Sheffield, leaving a bloody trail in his wake. Taking his shots with a sickening precision, he's about to leave his mark on the world and change Matilda and her team's lives forever.
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Leaving behind Sheffield, her friends and her job, a grieving DCI Matilda Darke finds solace in the wild, untamed beauty of the Lake District. But she can’t outrun her reputation.
\nPC Alison Pemberton is living in the shadow of her twin sisters, who were abducted thirty years ago. As the only witness, Alison has spent her life trying to remember the details of that fateful summer day and discover the truth about what happened to her sisters and why, a few months later, her father also disappeared.
\nMatilda finds herself agreeing to try and unearth the truth about the Pemberton twins. With nothing left to lose, Matilda throws herself into the cold case, but someone doesn’t want her digging up the past and will do anything to keep the truth hidden . . .
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Six weeks after Lyla Smith dragged her sister’s dead body onto the Lake Erie shore, she escapes her small Ohio town to work as a nanny for distant relatives on their remote private island. Plagued by strange memories and drowning in the guilt she tried to leave behind, Lyla struggles to break up with her boyfriend and forget her feelings for her sister’s girlfriend. Especially now that she has met another girl on the island who seems to be flirting with her.
\nLyla’s first family dinner is a tense affair, and mid-argument the matriarch, Crystal Payne, takes a sip from her wineglass and dies. Suddenly everyone is a suspect. From rival interests in Crystal’s corporation to family secrets that won’t stay hidden, there are too many people with a motive for murder, and Lyla’s trapped with an unknown killer.
\nThe only way to save herself is to be free of the secrets that drag her down. But when the killer strikes again, it’s only a matter of time before Lyla drowns.
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On the trail of a serial killer, the path splits in two . . .
\nFBI special agent Kelly Jones has worked on many disturbing cases in her career, but nothing like this. A mass grave site unearthed on the Appalachian Trail puts Kelly at the head of an investigation that crosses the line - from Massachusetts to Vermont, from wealthy vacationers to poor transients, from a serial killer to a copycat nemesis.
\nAssisted by law enforcement from both states and a forensic anthropologist, Kelly searches for the killers. But as darkness falls, another victim is taken. Kelly must race to save him before he joins the rest…in the boneyard.
The thrilling finale to the Don't Turn Around trilogy, which Kirkus Reviews called \"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for teens, a surefire hit.\" Noa Torson is out of options. On the run with Peter and the two remaining teens of Persephone's Army, and with quickly failing health, she is up against immeasurable odds. The group is outnumbered, outsmarted, and outrun. But they will not give up. They know they must return to where this all began. But when they come face-to-face with the man who started it all, the question becomes, can they win?
This riveting final installment of the Don't Turn Around trilogy ratchets up the action as Noa and Peter confront the evil that has chased them and won't let them go.
Noa Torsen is on the run. Having outsmarted the sinister Project Persephone, Noa and her friend Zeke now move stealthily across the country, protecting runaways before they become test subjects for the Project's horrific experiments. Noa knows all too well what that feels like: Whatever was done to her has left her exhausted and scared.
\nBack in Boston, Peter anxiously follows Noa's movements from his computer, using his hacker skills to feed her the information she needs to stay alive. But he's desperate to do something more, especially when he learns what the Project has done to his ex-girlfriend, Amanda.
\nThen, in an explosive confrontation, Noa and her team are trapped in the one place they thought was safe. It will take everything Noa and Peter have to bring down the Project . . .
Sixteen-year-old Noa has been a victim of the system ever since her parents died. Now living off the grid and trusting no one, she uses her computer-hacking skills to stay safely anonymous and alone. But when she wakes up on a table in an empty warehouse with an IV in her arm and no memory of how she got there, Noa starts to wish she had someone on her side.
Enter Peter Gregory. A rich kid and the leader of a hacker alliance, Peter needs people with Noa's talents on his team. Especially after a shady corporation called AMRF threatens his life in no uncertain terms.
But what Noa and Peter don't realize is that Noa holds the key to a terrible secret, and there are those who'd stop at nothing to silence her for good.
Fans of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will devour the story of Noa, a teen soul mate to Lisbeth Salander.
\"Be prepared to stay up all night reading.\" -VOYA (starred review)
“Gagnon’s YA debut is a pulse-pounding scary-great read…[that] will have teens begging for more. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for preteens and teens, a surefire hit.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred review) )
“A tight, well-written thriller from a best-selling adult writer. The action and the developments come fast and furious all the way to the end.” (School Library Journal (starred review) )
“Be prepared to stay up all night reading.” (Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) (Starred Review) )
“A fast-paced, rip-roaring thriller for all ages.” (Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author )
“Gagnon’s writing draws readers effortlessly into an adrenaline-packed ride. This is a smart, gripping addition to the growing hacker-action genre with strong appeal to fans of Doctorow’s Little Brother and Falkner’s Brain Jack.” (Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books )
“A sophisticated, mind-bending thriller.” (Katie Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Girls in Trucks and The Magnolia League )
Michelle Gagnon has been a modern dancer, a dog walker, a bartender, a freelance journalist, a personal trainer, and a model. Her bestselling thrillers for adults have been published in numerous countries and include The Tunnels, Boneyard, The Gatekeeper, and Kidnap & Ransom. This is her first novel for young adults.
From the moment sixteen-year-old Madison Grant is abducted, an unthinkable terrorist plot is set in motion - pitting Special Agent Kelly Jones against her most powerful adversary yet. The kidnapper's ransom demands aren't monetary . . . they come at a cost that no American can afford to pay.
\nAs Kelly's fiancé, Jake Riley, races to find Madison, Kelly is assigned to another disturbing case: the murder and dismemberment of a senator. At first the two cases don't appear to be related. But as Kelly navigates her way through the darkest communities of America - from skinheads to biker gangs to border militias - she discovers a horrible truth.
\nA shadowy figure who calls himself The Gatekeeper is uniting hate groups, opening the door to the worst homegrown attack in American history.
\nWhen the world's foremost kidnap and ransom negotiator is snatched by a ruthless drug cartel, Jake Riley becomes ensnared in the effort to save him. But he's up against Los Zetas, an elite paramilitary organisation renowned for its ferocity and skill.
\nNow he and his colleagues must navigate the dark underbelly of Mexico, from raging street wars to perilous jungles, in an effort to rescue him before time runs out.After nearly losing her life on her last case, FBI Agent Kelly Jones may never do fieldwork again.
\nDetermined to regain her confidence, she joins Jake on his mission - and quickly realises she's in over her head. Then in the slums of Mexico City, she encounters a former nemesis who's enacting a nightmarish ritual on the weak and vulnerable.
\nNow she has one last, desperate shot to prove herself - by taking down a killer.
Amber Jamison cannot believe she’s about to become the latest victim of a serial killer - she’s savvy and street smart, so when she gets pushed into, of all things, a white windowless van, she's more angry than afraid. Things get even weirder when she’s miraculously saved by a mysterious woman . . . who promptly disappears. Who was she? And why is she hunting serial killers?
\nYou’d think escaping one psychopath would be enough, but Amber’s problems are just beginning. Her close call has law enforcement circling a past she’s tried to outrun. So she’s forced to flees across the country, ending up at a seedy motel in Las Vegas with a noir-obsessed manager and a sex worker as her unlikely companions . . . and danger right behind. She’s landed in the crosshairs of the world’s most prolific killer, caught up in a deadly game that’s been going on for years. To survive, she's forced to dust off her old playbook and partner with someone she can’t trust. The odds are against her, but sometimes you just have to roll the dice.
Grace and Amber share a harrowing they both escaped the clutches of the same vicious psychopath. After dealing with him, they went their separate ways, determined to reclaim their lives. neither of them is very good at being “normal.” Despite their best efforts, they both feel an irresistible pull toward the dark side.
\nWhen a friend's Vegas wedding reunites these reluctant allies, they uncover something a dangerous killer is targeting their inner circle. With time running out and bodies piling up, Grace and Amber must tap into their hard-earned survival skills. They've outsmarted a murderer before, but this time, the stakes are higher and the killer is smarter . . . can they do it again?
On a day like any other, six smarter-than-most teens wake up in the same hospital after having experienced a traumatic event that they can't quite remember . . . other than being forcibly sucked into an abyss at the moment of their deaths. Somebody or something seems to be pulling the strings. With individual clocks ticking - and with each guarding an individual secret - they band together and conspire to piece together the whole of what happened.
Soon they discover that they've been trapped in a future that isn't of their making: a deadly, desolate world at once entirely familiar and utterly strange. Only one of them holds the key to getting them home. But which one, and why? As the truth is revealed through the eyes of its three key players, the reader is taken on a dark journey into both the hearts of teens who must do anything to survive, and into the heart of a parent who will do anything to protect his child.
An old, abandoned tunnel system beneath a prestigious New England college becomes the gruesome stalking ground of a serial killer . . .
\nThe crime scenes are both grim and otherworldly. The bodies of two female students are found mutilated and oddly positioned in the dark labyrinth beneath the school - haunting symbols painted on the walls above them.
\nIn her decade tracking serial killers, FBI special agent Kelly Jones has seen some of the worst humanity can inflict. Yet the tragedy unfolding at her alma mater chills her to the bone. Evidence suggests that the connection between the victims - daughters of powerful men - and the cryptic message behind the killings is rooted in a dark, ancient ritual.
\nAs the body count rises, so do the stakes. The killer is taunting Kelly, daring her to follow him down a dangerous path from which only one can emerge.
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After losing her parents in a tragic accident, surfer girl Janie Mason trades the sunny beaches of Hawaii for the cold fog of San Francisco and new guardians - the Rochesters - she’s never even met. Janie feels hopelessly out of place in their world of Napa weekends, fancy cotillions, and chauffeurs. The only person she can relate to is Daniel, a fellow surfer. Meeting him makes Janie feel like things might be looking up.
Still, something isn’t right in the Rochester mansion. There are noises - screams - coming from the attic that everyone else claims they can’t hear. Then John, the black sheep of the family, returns after getting kicked out of yet another boarding school. Soon Janie finds herself torn between devil-may-care John and fiercely loyal Daniel. Just when she thinks her life can’t get any more complicated, she learns the truth about why the Rochesters took her in. They want something from Janie, and she’s about to see just how far they’ll go to get it.
When Sally Samuelson was eight years old, her golden boy brother Ellis went missing the summer he graduated high school. Ellis finally turned up at the bucolic Bug Hollow, a last gasp of the beautiful Northern California counterculture in the seventies. He had found joy in the communal life there, but died in a freak accident weeks later.
\nFrom that point, the world of the Samuelsons never spins on the same axis, especially after Julia, Ellis’s girlfriend from Bug Hollow, shows up pregnant on their doorstep. Each Samuelson has sought their own solace: Sybil Samuelson pours herself into teaching and numbing her pain after the loss of her beloved son; her husband, Phil, had found respite in a love that developed while he was working as an engineer in Saudi Arabia; Katie, the high achieving middle Samuelson, comes home to try and make peace with her mother after a cancer diagnosis. And Sally has become the de facto caretaker to Eva, the child Ellis never knew.
Tensions run as hot as the Khamsin winds in the great kingdom of Khetara. Rumors of the pharaoh's mysterious illness abound, and with them, murmurs of rebellion grow. Meanwhile, in the quiet desert, a forgotten oracle begins to unfold, setting a dark prophecy into action and drawing together four strangers . . .
\nPrincess SITA lives in the abundance of the palace, and in a moment of passion, she unmasks a betrayal that will put her life - and the entire royal court - in grave danger.
\nA priestess-in-training, NEFF strives to understand her intense visions from the gods, except theirs is not the only magic at play in the grand temple.
\nAs a farmer's daughter, RAE knows how much the pharaoh's men have taken from her land, her people. Still, who will step forward to confront the king?
\nKARIM was raised among the pyramids of the Red Lands and survives on the wealth of the dead as a tomb robber. But amid the spoils, an ancient evil awakens . . .
\nBloodshed is coming. Only together do these four have the potential to save the kingdom from destruction. But when the dust has settled, who will sit on the throne of Khetara?
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Fresh to the throne, the cunning new pharaoh schemes to bring unprecedented power to the Kingdom of Khetara. He commands absolute allegiance, leaving bloodshed in his wake as he searches for the missing Princess Sitamun, and at his side, the young priestess Nefermaat serves as divine counsel. Having witnessed the king's merciless acts, Neff furtively plots to free the kingdom from his grip, though she knows the heavy price of treason.
\nMeanwhile, the rebellion in Low Khetara grows, and Raetawy, a courageous farm girl, leads the resistance. Her quest is clear: infiltrate the capital and free the imprisoned rebels - including her beloved father. Yet in her desperation, Rae agrees to a plan that could destroy all she is fighting for . . .
\nIn the Red Lands, the thief Karim grapples with the new life he's been given. Is it a blessing or a curse? He fears what lurks within him, yet he and his unlikely companion, Princess Sita, grow ever closer as they search for a lost city believed to harbor the secret to saving Khetara from destruction.
\nThe ancient oracle that once whispered to these four strangers now speaks with an urgency as powerful as the mighty Iteru. The current of destiny is strengthening, but will it bring redemption . . . or annihilation?
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Barren’s Peak, West Virginia, is not a place anyone would call magical, but Thea LaGuerre calls it home. A high school drop-out whose mother died in an accident, Thea is stuck working part-time jobs just to make ends meet. The most she has to look forward to are barn parties where she can make out with Callum, the one interesting boy who moved to town six months ago.
\nThea doesn’t know it yet, but Callum was sent to Barren’s Peak to watch her. He was raised within the magicians’ order, a shadowy organization meant to keep humanity safe from an underworld of monsters. Callum would sacrifice anyone, including himself, to help their cause, but he still can’t help falling into Thea’s orbit. She’s the first person he’s felt seen by since his childhood sweetheart, Oliver - who he hasn’t seen since Oliver’s banishment from the order.
\nBut Oliver hasn’t given up on Callum or on magic. Following a magical creature’s trail to Barren’s Peak, Oliver happens upon Callum and Thea at a barn party that turns into a monster-overrun massacre. To save Callum and the girl he’s protecting from a wave of deadly fairies, Oliver opens a portal for the three of them to flee into the Labyrinth.
\nTo get home again, Thea, Oliver, and Callum will have to work together to survive the Labyrinth’s trials and discover the threads that brought them there.
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Once a globe-trotting anthropologist, Harry Lancaster is now certain that all his grand adventures are behind him. Recently widowed and suffering from a fractured hip, Harry spends his days and nights behind a pair of binoculars, nose-deep in his neighbors’ affairs. His millennial caregiver, Emma, is determined to get him out of his armchair and back into the world.
\nFate intervenes when Harry’s mysterious neighbor Sue phones, pleading for help. But instead of rescuing her, Harry and Emma find Sue dead: poisoned, days after a break-in at Sue’s house. Harry resolves to find out what happened, and Emma insists on going along for the ride. Together, they discover motives and suspects abound in Harry’s quaint condominium community - putting them both in the crosshairs of a cold-blooded killer.
In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era.
\nAs First Lady of the United States of America - the first African-American to serve in that role - she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments.
\nAlong the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare. In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerising storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her - from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address.
\nWith unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it - in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations - and whose story inspires us to do the same.
There may be no tidy solutions or pithy answers to life’s big challenges, but Michelle Obama believes that we can all locate and lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux.
\nIn The Light We Carry, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with readers, considering the questions many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What tools do we use to address feelings of self-doubt or helplessness? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much?
\nMichelle Obama offers readers a series of fresh stories and insightful reflections on change, challenge, and power, including her belief that when we light up for others, we can illuminate the richness and potential of the world around us, discovering deeper truths and new pathways for progress.
\nDrawing from her experiences as a mother, daughter, spouse, friend, and First Lady, she shares the habits and principles she has developed to successfully adapt to change and overcome various obstacles - the earned wisdom that helps her continue to “become.”
\nShe details her most valuable practices, like “starting kind,” “going high,” and assembling a “kitchen table” of trusted friends and mentors. With trademark humor, candor, and compassion, she also explores issues connected to race, gender, and visibility, encouraging readers to work through fear, find strength in community, and live with boldness.
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In the City of Elantra, only one holds the key to - or eternal darkness.
\nAt the end of three long wars, Bellusdeo is the last of her kind, the sole surviving female Dragon in the City of Elantra. When she appears one evening on the doorstep of her former roommate, Corporal Kaylin Neya, her demeanor is dreadful - more so than what’s expected of the Dragons’ notoriously tempestuous temperament. Kaylin’s new roommate, Mrs. Erickson, is quick to see the reason for Bellusdeo’s despair - the eight ghosts of the Dragon’s dead sisters, chained to her and unseen. Pleading for release, revenge and, above all, peace.
\nNow Kaylin and Mrs. Erickson must embark on a perilous journey, from the hallowed halls of the Academia to the depths of forbidden magic, to confront the very essence of mortality itself. Can Kaylin help release the untapped power within Mrs. Erickson to save Bellusdeo’s sisters . . . or will unlocking the past plunge the realm into an unfathomable darkness forever?
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Kaylin has been warned to steer clear of the lords of the Barrani High Court. She’d be more than happy to oblige, but it’s a bit difficult considering she lives with ten of them, all sent to the green to gain power or die. With Kaylin’s help, they finally escaped their imprisonment. But their attempts at freedom had devastating consequences - and a price that has yet to be paid.
\nThe first warning sign is the Consort’s invitation to visit the High Halls - a Barrani invitation, which means an immediate visit.
\nThe second sign is less subtle: Kaylin finds Nightshade’s unresponsive body. He hovers on the edge of death, beyond saving through Kaylin’s healing power. No one can explain his state, nor why she’s powerless to save him. And if she and her Barrani friends can’t figure out a way to bring him back, he’ll be lost forever.
\nYet even as Kaylin struggles to keep Nightshade from death, there is deeper magic at play, a growing threat with the potential to affect the entire Barrani race. Factions are shifting, new lines are being drawn - and Nightshade’s near assassination is only the beginning. Can Kaylin uncover the nebulous forces that threaten the balance of Barrani - and their entire world - before it’s too late?
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Kaylin Neya is a Hawk, part of the elite force tasked with keeping the City of Elantra safe. Her past is dark, her magic uncontrolled and her allies unpredictable. And nothing has prepared her for what is coming, when the charlatans on Elani Street suddenly grow powerful, the Oracles are thrown into an uproar and the skies rain blood . . .
\nThe powerful of Elantra believe that the mysterious markings on Kaylin's skin hold the answer, and they are not averse to using her - how ever they have to - in order to discover what it is.
Something is coming, breaking through the barriers between the worlds. But is it a threat that Kaylin needs to defend her city against - or has she been chosen for another reason entirely?
After the near-destruction of the High Halls, Corporal Kaylin Neya is looking forward to resuming her patrol. But once more an empty Tower stands in Elantra, and Kaylin’s companions won’t let an advantage slip by. They see the Tower as a base to fight Shadow. The Dragon Bellusdeo as a protection for the cohort; Sedarias as a potential hoard. And others are interested as well.
\nKaylin knows when she’s in over her head. Claiming a Tower is not the future she wants. And the Tower has strict requirements - ones that daunt even the Dragons and the Barrani. But as the various factions strategise, the Shadows are making their own plans. They still want to cross into Elantra, and this might be the perfect chance.
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In Elantra, a job well done is rewarded with a more dangerous task. And so, after defeating a dark evil, Kaylin must enter a place of deceit and treachery. A world where silk and jewels hide deadly secrets . . .
\nKaylin goes before the Barrani High Court, where a misspoken word brings sure death. And Kaylin's never been known for her grace or manners. But the High Lord's heir is suspiciously ill and Kaylin's healing magic is the only shot at saving him -- if she manages to dodge the traps laid for her.
Only to discover that the healing might turn out to be the simplest of the tasks before her . . .
Private Kaylin Neya thought her home couldn’t possibly get more crowded. But when one of her housemates, Annarion, decides to undertake the Barrani Test of Name, his friends refuse to let him face his task alone - and Kaylin’s sentient home, Helen, is the only structure capable of shielding the rest of Elantra from the magnitude of their power.
Annarion and Mandoran almost caused the destruction of the High Halls once already. Add nine of their closest friends, and the danger is astronomically higher - especially since these guests are at the heart of a political firestorm. Imprisoned almost a millennium ago, their recent freedom threatens the rulership of several prominent Barrani families, and the machinations of those Lords make it almost impossible to tell friend from foe.
As political tensions ramp up, the shadows beneath the High Halls are seeking a freedom that has never been possible before. Kaylin must find a way to keep those shadows from escaping, or that freedom will destroy her city, the empire and everything she holds dear.
When Corporal Kaylin Neya is assigned front desk duty - a task hated by every Hawk - the only thing she can look forward to besides an endless stream of complaints is visits from a dotty old woman. She always brings baked goods along with information passed on by her friends . . . who happen to be ghosts no one else can see.
\nBut then the old woman’s invisible friends have news about Severn Handred: his unusual weapon has caught their attention. Concerned, Kaylin accompanies the woman home because she has a few questions to ask these so-called ghosts.
\nSadly, Kaylin can also see them. And she can see other spirits in the woman’s house as well - four children who’ve been trapped there for decades. When Kaylin looks into the deaths in the records at the Halls of Law, something doesn’t add up. Factor in a building that isn’t supposed to exist, and nothing makes sense.
\nBut Kaylin is a Hawk, and she’s determined to free the trapped ghosts of the children, even if she’s suddenly landed in the middle of the bad kind of Barrani history. Someone doesn’t want the past to be uncovered, and they’re perfectly willing to destroy Kaylin if it preserves the secrets of the dead . . .
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Any day that starts with dragon arguments is going to be bad
\nKaylin returned from the West March in one piece. Now that piece is fraying. She's not at home in the Imperial Palace - and she never intends to be. All she wants is normal garden-variety criminals and a place of her own. Of course, normal in her new life involves a dragon as a roommate, but she can handle that.
\nShe can't as easily handle the new residents to the city she polices, because one of them is Nightshade's younger brother. On a night when she should be talking to landlords in perfectly normal buildings, she's called to the fief - by Teela. A small family disagreement has become a large, complicated problem: Castle Nightshade's latent magic is waking.
\nAnd it's not the only thing.
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Private Kaylin Neya already has Dragons and Barrani as roommates. Adding one injured, flightless Aerian to her household should be trivial. Sure, the Aerian is Sergeant Moran dar Carafel, but Kaylin's own sergeant is a Leontine, the definition of growly and fanged. She can handle one Aerian.
\nBut when a walk to the Halls of Law becomes a street-shattering magical assassination attempt on the sergeant, Kaylin discovers that it's not the guest who's going to be the problem: it's all of the people who suddenly want Moran dar Carafel dead.
\nAnd though Moran refuses to tell her why she's being targeted, Kaylin is determined to discover her secret and protect her at all costs - even if keeping Moran safe means dealing with Aerian politics, angry dragons and something far more sinister.
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When a minority race of telepaths is wrongly suspected of causing a near–devastating tidal wave, Private Kaylin Neya is summoned to Court - and into a PR nightmare. To ease racial tensions, the Emperor has commissioned a play, and the playwright has his own ideas about who should be the focus . . .
\nBut Kaylin works her best magic behind the scenes, and though she tries to stay neutral, she is again drawn into a world of politics . . . and murder. To make matters worse, Marcus, her trusted Sergeant, gets stripped of his command - leaving Kaylin vulnerable. Now she's juggling two troubling cases, and even magic's looking good by comparison. But then, nobody ever said life in the theater was easy . . .
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Elantra stands strong, but countless numbers of Hawks, the city's staunchest protectors, were lost in the brutal attack. Humans, Barrani, Aerians, Leontines none of the races emerged unscathed from the defense of the city. Homes were lost, families were scattered and the outcast Barrani Lord Nightshade is missing from his castle in the fiefs.
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Yet as the chaos surrounding the battle begins to wane, Private Kaylin Neya's duties must resume, despite her grief. Called in to investigate a triple murder in a quiet part of town, Kaylin and her companions are soon embroiled in a case that is anything but routine. Evidence of the deadly Shadows that still threaten the city leads to hints of ancient, forgotten magics and everything can be traced directly to Ravellon, the heart of the Shadows and the darkness they contain.
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But it is there that Lord Nightshade will be found if he still survives.
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Kaylin wasn’t sent to the West March to start a war. Her mission to bring back nine Barrani might do just that, though. She traveled with a Dragon, and her presence is perceived as an act of aggression in the extremely hostile world of Barrani-Dragon politics. Internal Barrani politics are no less deadly, and Kaylin has managed - barely - to help the rescued Barrani evade both death and captivity at the hands of the Consort.
Before the unplanned “visit” to the West March, Kaylin invited the Consort to dinner. For obvious reasons, Kaylin wants to cancel dinner - forever. But the Consort is going to show up at the front door at the agreed upon time. The fact that she tried to imprison Kaylin’s guests doesn’t matter at all . . . to her.
A private Barrani Hell, built of Shadow and malice, exists beneath the High Halls. It is the High Court’s duty to jail the creature at its heart - even if it means that Barrani victims are locked in the cage with it. The Consort is willing to do almost anything to free the trapped and end their eternal torment. And she needs the help of Kaylin’s houseguests - and Kaylin herself. Failure won’t be death - it’s Hell. And that’s where Kaylin is going.
It has been a busy few weeks for Private Kaylin Neva. In between angling for a promotion, sharing her room with the last living female Dragon and dealing with more refugees than anyone knew what to do with, the unusual egg she'd been given began to hatch. Actually, that turned out to be lucky, because it absorbed the energy from the bomb that went off in her quarters . . .
So now might be the perfect time to leave Elantra and journey to the West March with the Barrani. If not for the disappearances of citizens in the fief of Tiamaris - disappearances traced to the very Barrani Kaylin is about to be traveling with . . .
Seven corpses are discovered in the streets of a Dragon's fief. All identical, down to their clothing.
\nKaylin Neya is assigned to discover who they were, who killed them - and why. Is the evil lurking at the borders of Elantra preparing to cross over?
\nAt least the investigation delays her meeting with the Dragon Emperor. And as the shadows grow longer over the fiefs, Kaylin must use every skill she's ever learned to save the people she's sworn to protect. Sword in hand, dragons in the sky, this time there's no retreat and no surrender . . .
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Still avoiding magic whenever possible, Corporal Kaylin Neya relished investigating a regular theft once again. Until she found out the mysterious box was taken from Elani Street, where the mages and charlatans mingled, and it was sometimes hard to tell the difference between the two. But she was hoping this might be a mundane case - when in a back room Kaylin saw a lost-looking girl in a reflective pool . . . who called out Kaylin's name.
Shaken, Kaylin tried to stay focused on the case at hand. But since the stolen item was ancient, without a keyhole, and held tremendous darkness inside, Kaylin knew unknown forces were again playing with her destiny - and her life , , ,
Seven years ago Kaylin fled the crime-riddled streets of Nightshade, knowing that something was after her. Children were being murdered - and all had the same odd markings that mysteriously appeared on her own skin . . .
Since then, she's learned to read, she's learned to fight and she's become one of the vaunted Hawks who patrol and police the City of Elantra. Alongside the winged Aerians and immortal Barrani, she's made a place for herself, far from the mean streets of her birth.
But children are once again dying, and a dark and familiar pattern is emerging, Kaylin is ordered back into Nightshade with a partner she knows she can't trust, a Dragon lord for a companion and a device to contain her powers - powers that no other human has. Her task is simple - find the killer, stop the murders . . . and survive the attentions of those who claim to be her allies.
A member of the elite Hawk force that protects the City of Elantra, Kaylin Neya has sacrificed much to earn the respect of the winged Aerians and immortal Barrani she works alongside. But the mean streets she escaped as a child aren't the ones she's vowed to give her life guarding. Those were much darker . . .
\nKaylin's moved on with her life - and is keeping silent about the shameful things she's done to stay alive. But when the city's oracles warn of brewing unrest in the outer fiefdoms, a mysterious visitor from Kaylin's past casts her under a cloud of suspicion. Thankfully, if she's anything, she's a survivor . . .
The Barrani would be happy to see her die. So Kaylin Neya is a bit surprised by her safe arrival in the West March. Especially when enemies new and old surround her and those she would call friends are equally dangerous . . .
And then the real trouble starts. Kaylin's assignment is to be a \"harmoniste\" - one who helps tell the truth behind a Barrani Recitation. But in a land where words are more effective than weapons, Kaylin's duties are deadly. With the wrong phrase she could tear a people further asunder. And with the right ones . . . well, then she might be able to heal a blight on a race.
If only she understood the story . . .
The fiefs that exist at the heart of the city of Elantra are home to sentient Towers that guard the world against the incursion of Shadow. But between the fiefs exists the gray world of the border zone. In it, geography changes between one passage across a border and the next. The rules of magic are different there - and yet somehow familiar to Kaylin Neya.
When a Shadow escapes, Kaylin must find out how . . . and why. If Shadows can breach the barrier erected by the Towers, the whole of Elantra will be devoured. It’s happened on other worlds. Bellusdeo, Kaylin’s Dragon companion, absolutely believes it can happen on theirs.
The border zone holds secrets and ancient histories, and people are gathering there in search of its power. Without even understanding what that power is, or why it exists, Kaylin is in a desperate race against time to find those secrets first. She doesn’t know who her enemies are. She doesn’t know how many she’ll face. But she won’t face them alone.
Multiple races carefully navigate the City of Elantra under the Dragon Emperor’s wing. His Imperial Wolves are executioners, the smallest group to serve in the Halls of Law. The populace calls them assassins.
\nEvery wolf candidate must consent to a full examination by the Tha’alani, one of the most feared and distrusted races in Elantra for their ability to read minds. Most candidates don’t finish their job interviews.
\nSevern Handred, the newest potential recruit, is determined to face and pass this final test - even if by doing so he’s exposing secrets he has never shared.
\nWhen an interrogation uncovers the connections to a two-decade-old series of murders of the Tha’alani, the Wolves are commanded to hunt. Severn’s first job will be joining the chase. From the High Halls to the Tha’alani quarter, from the Oracles to the Emperor, secrets are uncovered, tensions are raised and justice just might be done . . . if Severn can survive.
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Emma and her friends have survived the Necromancers sent to the city to kill them. They've gone to ground in a cottage north of the city, but time is not on their side. There are no barriers that can keep the dead out, and the dead obey their Queen. It's only a matter of time before they're found.
\nNathan has been blessed by the Queen of the Dead. She has granted him a physical body. He can eat, he can breathe, he can speak and be heard. The Queen calls this resurrection. Nathan calls it Hell. The living think he's alive. He's not. He's trapped in the citadel that the Queen of the Dead calls home.
\nEmma wants to free him. To do that she has to survive long enough to reach the City of the Dead, and face its ancient Queen. But the city of the dead is the heart of the Queen's stronghold - and her power. Emma can't do it alone.
\nShe's not alone. But even with hunters and her own dead at her side, what hope does she have against a woman who has lived so long, and grown so powerful, she's almost a god?
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With the Academia now awakened from its centuries-long slumber, Robin, a student who hails from a prestigious family, must own up to his destiny. As heir to the Gardianno seat, a highly coveted position within the human caste court, Robin stands to inherit great power when he assumes his birthright - but at what cost?
\nUnder the guidance of a formidable Barrani lord named Teela, Robin wrestles with his newfound duties and the societal complexities that come with the privilege. Soon, however, it’s apparent that others feel entitled to the seat . . . and they’re willing to do the unthinkable in order to get it.
\nWith Teela and his best friend, Raven, at his side, Robin is ready to battle for what is rightfully his. But when the Halls of Law consider reopening the investigation into the baffling murder of his parents, the truth could lead Robin right to the heart of danger.
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The Academia, once an elite proving ground for the rulers of the world, has been frozen for centuries. Now its strange slumber has ended, and a new Chancellor, an orange-eyed dragon, has reopened its lecture halls and readied its dorms. In order to thrive once more, however, the Academia needs fresh blood - new students with a passion and talent for learning.
\nOne such student, Robin, has the perfect recruit in his friend Raven, an orphan who lives in the dangerous Warrens. Robin grew up in the Warrens, and he wouldn't have made it if not for Raven. He knows she’ll be safe at the Academia, where her unusual gifts can be appreciated.
\nBut when students start turning up dead, the campus threatens to collapse completely. Raven and Robin will not let that happen to their new home . . . if they can survive long enough to figure out who - or what - is trying to kill them.
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It began in the graveyard . . . Ever since her boyfriend Nathan had died in a tragic accident, Emma had been coming to the graveyard at night. During the day she went through the motions at her prep school, in class, with her friends, but that’s all it was. For Emma, life had stopped with Nathan’s death.
\nBut tonight was different. Tonight Emma and her dog were not alone in the cemetery. There were two others there - Eric, who had just started at her school, and an ancient woman who looked as though she were made of rags. And when they saw Emma there, the old woman reached out to her with a grip as chilling as death . . .
\nEmma was not quite like other girls. It was true that other girls had experienced grief. Other girls had also lost their fathers, or had their boyfriends die in senseless accidents. But though she hadn’t known it till that night in the graveyard, unlike those other girls, she could see, touch, and speak with the dead . . .
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In exchange for information about his past, Severn Handred joins a Barrani lord on a mission to the West March - an enclave well outside the boundaries of the Empire. Granted a leave of absence from the Wolves, Severn is in danger the moment he steps outside the reach of Imperial law. But the instincts that led him to the Wolves and the sense of duty that keeps him there can’t be discarded as easily as the tabard he wears.
\nIn the heart of the West March, enmeshed in a tangled web of secrets that have been kept for centuries, Severn's belief in justice is going to be tested. There are murders to solve, people to protect, and truths to uncover. It's one mortal man and his single Barrani friend against a community of immortals who will die and kill to keep their secrets. But they’re up against the Wolves now.
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Nathan died in the summer before his final year in high school, leaving behind a mother who was devoted to him and a girlfriend he loved. His mother and his girlfriend, Emma, are still alive; Nathan is not. But he wakes in his room - or in the shrine his mother’s made of his room - confused, cold, and unable to interact with anyone or anything he sees.
\nThe only clear memory he has is a dream of a shining city, and its glorious queen, but the dream fades, until he once again meets Emma - by the side of his own grave. Nathan wants life. He wants Emma. He wants warmth, sensation, a sleep that doesn’t leave him confused and aching. But the cost, to Emma, will be incalculably high - because Emma just might be able to give him what he wants.
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Alma would not have chosen the Beast. But when her mother falls ill, she is not left with the luxury of choice. After all, luxury was never something they could afford.
\nForced into a desperate bargain with her estranged father and his house, one of the noble families that serve the gods and wield their powers, she irrevocably binds herself to the Dread Beast, the most fearsome of the gods. However, it is a vow made in vain when death comes for her mother anyway.
\nNow vengeance is Alma’s sole aim. And she has a god on her side - a beautiful, eldritch monster with starlit hair. The Beast that has chosen her.
\nA darkly enchanting fairy tale with blood on its teeth, House of the Beast is a story of revenge, resilience, and the power of love to see us through the darkness - beautifully illustrated throughout by the author.
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Across a bridge in a quiet neighborhood in Tokyo, a seasonal cherry blossom sits on the river. Nearby is the Marble Cafe, where a woman writes in a notebook and a young waiter prepares her favorite hot drink. Both wonder about each other and about the other lives of the clientele who frequent this charming little cafe behind the trees . . .
\nWithout even realising it, we may touch and change someone else's life.
\nTaking a walk along the river, cooking the best tamagoyaki, ordering hot chocolate, forgetting to remove our nail polish . . . The small, everyday acts that we do can lead to unexpected encounters and reverberate far beyond your own circle and ultimately make a difference in the world.
\nHot Chocolate on Thursday is a tapestry of slice-of-life moments that each open and close with a woman ordering her regular hot chocolate at the mysterious Marble Cafe. What happens in between will touch and swell your heart, as we connect with a community of untold unfolding lives.
\n
“What are you looking for?”
\nThis is the famous question routinely asked by Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. Like most librarians, Komachi has read every book lining her shelves - but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of her library guests. For anyone who walks through her door, Komachi can sense exactly what they’re looking for in life and provide just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.
\nEach visitor comes to her library from a different juncture in their careers and dreams, from the restless sales attendant who feels stuck at her job to the struggling working mother who longs to be a magazine editor. The conversation that they have with Sayuri Komachi - and the surprise book she lends each of them - will have life-altering consequences.
\nWith heartwarming charm and wisdom, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is a paean to the magic of libraries, friendship and community, perfect for anyone who has ever found themselves at an impasse in their life and in need of a little inspiration.
\n
A governmental think-tank, whose remit is to curb the independence of the intelligence service, has lost one of its key members, and Claude Whelan - one-time head of MI5's Regent’s Park - is tasked with tracking her down. But the trail leads straight back to the Park itself, with Diana Taverner as chief suspect. Has Diana overplayed her hand at last? What’s her counterpart, Moscow’s First Desk, doing in London? And does Jackson Lamb know more than he’s telling?
\nOver at Slough House, with Shirley Dander in rehab, Roddy Ho in dress rehearsal, and new recruit Ashley Khan turning up the heat, the slow horses are doing what they do best, and adding a little bit of chaos to an already unstable situation . . .
\nThere are bad actors everywhere, and they usually get their comeuppance before the credits roll. But politics is a dirty business, and in a world where lying, cheating and backstabbing are the norm, sometimes the good guys can find themselves outgunned.
“Old spies grow ridiculous, River. Old spies aren’t much better than clowns.” Or so David Cartwright, the late retired head of MI5, used to tell his grandson. He forgot to add that old spies can be dangerous, too, especially if they’ve fallen on hard times - as River Cartwright is about to learn the hard way.
\nDavid Cartwright, long buried, has left his library to the Spooks’ College in Oxford, and now one of the books is missing. Or perhaps it never existed. River, once a “slow horse” of Slough House, MI5’s outpost for demoted and disgraced spies, has some time to kill while awaiting medical clearance to return to work, and starts investigating the secrets of his grandfather’s library.
\nOver at the Park, MI5 First Desk Diana Taverner is in a pickle. An operation carried out during the height of the Troubles laid bare the ugly side of state security, and those involved are threatening to expose details. But every threat hides an opportunity, and Taverner has come up with a scheme. All she needs is the right dupe to get caught holding the bag.
\nJackson Lamb, the enigmatic and odiferous head of Slough House, has no plans to send in the clowns. On the other hand, if the clowns ignore his instructions, any harm that befalls them is hardly his fault. But they’re his clowns. And if they don’t all make it home, there’ll be a reckoning.
London's Slough House is where the washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what's left of their failed careers. The \"slow horses,\" as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated here. Maybe they messed up an op badly and can't be trusted anymore. Maybe they got in the way of an ambitious colleague and had the rug yanked out from under them. Maybe they just got too dependent on the bottle - not unusual in this line of work. One thing they all have in common, though, is they all want to be back in the action. And most of them would do anything to get there - even if it means having to collaborate with one another.
\nNow the slow horses have a chance at redemption. An old Cold War-era spy is found dead on a bus outside Oxford, far from his usual haunts. The despicable, irascible Jackson Lamb is convinced Dickie Bow was murdered. As the agents dig into their fallen comrade's circumstances, they uncover a shadowy tangle of ancient Cold War secrets that seem to lead back to a man named Alexander Popov, who is either a Soviet bogeyman or the most dangerous man in the world. How many more people will have to die to keep those secrets buried?
When a house explodes in a quiet Oxford suburb and a young girl disappears in the aftermath, Sarah Tucker - a young married woman, bored and unhappy with domestic life - becomes obsessed with finding her. Accustomed to dull chores in a childless household and hosting her husband’s wearisome business clients for dinner, Sarah suddenly finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew, as her investigation reveals that people long believed dead are still among the living, while the living are fast joining the dead.
\nWhat begins in a peaceful neighborhood reaches its climax on a remote, unwelcoming Scottish island as the search puts Sarah in league with a man who finds himself being hunted down by murderous official forces.
In Slough House memories are stirring, all of them bad. Catherine Standish is buying booze again, Louisa Guy is raking over the ashes of lost love, and new recruit Lech Wicinski, whose sins make him outcast even among the slow horses, is determined to discover who destroyed his career, even if he tears his life apart in the process.
\nMeanwhile, in Regent's Park, Diana Taverner's tenure as First Desk is running into difficulties. If she's going to make the Service fit for purpose, she might have to make deals with a familiar old devil . . .
\nAnd with winter taking its grip Jackson Lamb would sooner be left brooding in peace, but even he can't ignore the dried blood on his carpets. So when the man responsible breaks cover at last, Lamb sends the slow horses out to even the score.
\nThis time, they're heading into joe country.
\nAnd they're not all coming home.
Zoë Boehm doesn't do death. It's a rule. Yet here she is - in this new ambitious detective novel from the sure-footed Mick Herron - worried by three of them. Zoë herself has killed a man, and self-defense or not, it cripples her emotions still. She also remembers Wez, a twelve-year-old kid afraid of heights, who tumbled to his death from the top of a tower block; she knew him when he was nine and snatching purses from middle-aged ladies.
\nThen, there's Caroline Daniels. They're saying that Caroline's death was accidental: that she fell off the crowded underground platform and died beneath the wheels of an oncoming train. Nonetheless, Caroline's employer, Amory Grayling, is disturbed. Caroline, it seems, had recently acquired a lover who remains mysteriously faceless and nameless.
\n\n
So it is that Zoë begins searching for a man whom no one knows by attempting to uncover the secrets locked in the heart of a woman she has never met. Though the questions outnumber Zoë's answers, she is certain that Caroline did not fall accidentally to death. Nor did Wez, she comes to realise, and soon finds herself dangerously pursuing two murderers, though one of them may find her first.
London Rules might not be written down, but everyone knows rule one.
Cover your arse.
Regent's Park's First Desk, Claude Whelan, is learning this the hard way. Tasked with protecting a beleaguered prime minister, he's facing attack from all directions himself: from the showboating MP who orchestrated the Brexit vote, and now has his sights set on Number Ten; from the showboat's wife, a tabloid columnist, who's crucifying Whelan in print; from the PM's favourite Muslim, who's about to be elected mayor of the West Midlands, despite the dark secret he's hiding; and especially from his own deputy, Lady Di Taverner, who's alert for Claude's every stumble.
Meanwhile, the country's being rocked by an apparently random string of terror attacks, and someone's trying to kill Roddy Ho.
Over at Slough House, the crew are struggling with personal problems: repressed grief, various addictions, retail paralysis, and the nagging suspicion that their newest colleague is a psychopath. But collectively, they're about to rediscover their greatest strength - that of making a bad situation much, much worse.
It's a good job Jackson Lamb knows the rules. Because those things aren't going to break themselves.
Set in the same fictional London as his CWA Gold Dagger Award-winning Slough House series, Mick Herron now introduces Tom Bettany, an ex-spook with a violent past and only one thing to live for: Avenging his son's death.
Tom Bettany is working at a meat processing plant in France when he gets a voicemail from an Englishwoman he doesn't know telling him that his estranged 26-year-old son is dead--Liam Bettany fell from his London balcony, where he was smoking dope.
Now for the first time since he cut all ties years ago, Bettany returns home to London to find out the truth about his son's death. Maybe it's the guilt he feels about losing touch with his son that's gnawing at him, or maybe he's actually put his finger on a labyrinthine plot, but either way he'll get to the bottom of the tragedy, no matter whose feathers he has to ruffle. But more than a few people are interested to hear Bettany is back in town, from incarcerated mob bosses to those in the...
London: Slough House is the MI5 branch where disgraced operatives are reassigned after they've messed up too badly to be trusted with real intelligence work. The \"Slow Horses,\" as the failed spies of Slough House are called, are doomed to spend the rest of their careers pushing paper, but they all want back in on the action.
\nLondon’s Slough House is where disgraced MI5 operatives are reassigned to spend the rest of their spy careers pushing paper. But when one of these “slow horses” is kidnapped by a former soldier bent on revenge, the agents must breach the defenses of Regent’s Park to steal valuable intel in exchange for their comrade’s safety. The kidnapping is only the tip of the iceberg, however, as the agents uncover a larger web of intrigue that involves not only a group of private mercenaries but also the highest authorities in the Security Service.
\nAfter years spent as the lowest on the totem pole, the slow horses suddenly find themselves caught in the midst of a conspiracy that threatens not only the future of Slough House, but of MI5 itself.
Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating “historical over-reaching” by the British Secret Service “to investigate historical over-reaching.” Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer - and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so.
\nBut MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn. Now the administration that created Monochrome has been ousted, the investigation is a total bust - and Griselda and Malcolm are stuck watching as their career prospects are washed away by the pounding London rain.
\nUntil the eve of Monochrome’s shuttering, when an MI5 case file appears without explanation. It is the buried history of a classified operation in 1994 Berlin - an operation that ended in tragedy and scandal, whose cover-up has rewritten thirty years of Service history.
A year after a calamitous blunder by the Russian secret service left a British citizen dead from novichok poisoning, Diana Taverner is on the warpath. What seems a gutless response from the government has pushed the Service's First Desk into mounting her own counter-offensive - but she's had to make a deal with the devil first. And given that the devil in question is arch-manipulator Peter Judd, she could be about to lose control of everything she's fought for.
Meanwhile, still reeling from recent losses, the slow horses are worried they've been pushed further into the cold. Slough House has been wiped from Service records, and fatal accidents keep happening. No wonder Jackson Lamb's crew are feeling paranoid. But have they actually been targeted? With a new populist movement taking a grip on London's streets, and the old order ensuring that everything's for sale to the highest bidder, the world's an uncomfortable place for those deemed surplus to requirements. The wise move would be to find a safe place and wait for the troubles to pass.
But the slow horses aren't famed for making wise decisions. And with enemies on all sides, not even Jackson Lamb can keep his crew from harm.
Slough House is a dumping ground for British intelligence agents who've screwed up a case in any number of ways--by leaving a secret file on a train or blowing a surveillance. River Carter, one such \"slow horse,\" is bitter about his failure and about his tedious assignment transcribing cell phone conversations.
When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, River sees an opportunity to redeem himself.
Is the victim who he first appears to be? And what's the kidnappers' connection with a disgraced journalist? As the clock ticks on the execution, River finds that everyone has his own agenda.
From the Hardcover edition.",
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When a body is hauled from the River Tyne, Sarah Tucker heads to Newcastle for a closer look. She identifies the dead woman as private detective Zoe Boehm, but putting a name to the corpse only raises further questions. Did Zoe kill herself, or did one of her old cases come back to haunt her? Why was she wearing the jacket a murderer had stolen years before? And what's brought Sarah's former sparring partner Gerard Inchon to the same broken-down hotel where she's staying?
\nCoincidence is an excuse that soon appears pretty unconvincing. Sarah can't leave until she's found the answers to her questions, however dangerous they might turn out to be.
What happens when an old spook loses his mind? Does the Service have a retirement home for those who know too many secrets but don’t remember they’re secret? Or does someone take care of the senile spy for good? These are the questions River Cartwright must ask when his grandfather, a Cold War–era operative, starts to forget to wear pants and begins to suspect everyone in his life has been sent by the Service to watch him.
\nBut River has other things to worry about. A bomb goes off in the middle of a busy shopping center and kills forty innocent civilians. The agents of Slough House have to figure out who is behind this act of terror before the situation escalates.
When Tim Whitby checks into a hotel, he's not intending to check out again - but then he meets Katrina Blake, a woman in need of rescue.
\nWhen Arkle, Baxter and Trent inherit the family business, they're not planning on making a go of it - there are quicker ways of getting rich, if you're not squeamish about the violence involved. And when Zoë Boehm agrees to track down the the masked men who robbed Harold Sweeney's jewellery shop, she's hoping to pay off the taxes she's avoided.
\nShe's not expecting to wind up in a coffin. But Arkle has a crossbow; Tim has a life that's run out of purpose, and even battered Katrina has her secrets. And death, like taxes, can't be avoided forever.
Seventeen-year-old Kel Varra and her team of underdogs, the Crimson Howlers, are desperate to win the annual races and the fortune that comes with it. But the Howlers need a new rider, which leads Kel to join forces with Warren “Coup” Coupers - an arrogant rival she can’t get out of her head.
\nAs tensions rise on and off the track, Kel's home is mistakenly burned down, and she’s forced to take a job from a mysterious tech mogul with an unsettling interest in her phoenix, Savita. This sets in motion a conspiracy that threatens everyone Kel cares for, especially Coup, for whom her embers of resentment are quickly igniting into something dangerously new.
Before he died, Castor's fellow exorcist John Gittings made several calls asking for help and if Castor had answered them, John might still be alive. So when a smooth-talking lawyer comes out of nowhere to claim the remains, Castor owes it to John's unhappy ghost and even more unhappy widow to help out.
\nIf only life were that simple. A brutal murder in King's Cross bears all the hallmarks of an American serial killer supposedly forty years dead, and it takes more good sense than Castor possesses not to get involved. He's also fighting a legal battle over the body - if not the soul - of his possessed friend, Rafi, and can't shake the feeling that his three problems are related.
\nWith the help of the succubus Juliet, paranoid zombie data-fence Nicky Heath and a little judicious digging, Castor just might have a chance of fitting the pieces together before someone drops him down a lift shaft or rips his throat out. Or not . . .
Felix Castor is a freelance exorcist, and London is his stomping ground. It may seem like a good ghostbuster can charge what he likes and enjoy a hell of a lifestyle, but there's a risk: sooner or later he's going to take on a spirit that's too strong for him.
\nWhen Castor accepts a seemingly simple ghost-hunting case at a museum in the shadowy heart of London, what should have been a perfectly straightforward exorcism is rapidly turning into the Who Can Kill Castor First Show, with demons and ghosts all keen to claim the big prize.
\nBut that's business as usual: Castor knows how to deal with the dead. It's the living who piss him off . . .
They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but if you ask Castor, he'll tell you there's quite a bit of arrogance and reckless stupidity lining the streets as well.
\nHe should know. There's only so many times you can play both sides against the middle and get away with it. Now, the inevitable moment of crisis has arrived and it's left Castor with blood on his hands.
\nCastor drowns his guilt in cheap whiskey, while an innocent woman lies dead and her daughter comatose, his few remaining friends fear for their lives, and there's a demon loose on the streets. But not just any demon - this one rides shotgun on Castor's best friend's soul, and can't be expelled without killing him.
\nLooks like Felix Castor's got some tough choices to make, because expel the demon he must - or all Hell will break loose.
Old ghosts are coming back to haunt Felix.
\nNames and faces he thought he'd left behind in Liverpool resurface in London, bringing Felix far more trouble than he'd anticipated. Childhood memories, family traumas, sins old and new, and a council estate that was meant to be a modern utopia until it turned into something like hell. . ..These are just some of the sticks life uses to beat Felix Castor with, as things go from bad to worse for London's favorite freelance exorcist.
\nSee, Castor's stepped over the line this time, and he knows he'll have to pay. The only question is: how much? Not the best of times, then, for an unwelcome confrontation with his holier-than-thou brother, Matthew. And just when he thinks things can't possibly get any worse, along comes Father Gwilliam and the Anathema.
\nOh joy . . .
Castor has reluctantly returned to exorcism after the case of the Bonnington Archive ghost convinced him that he really can do some good with his abilities ('good', of course, being a relative term when dealing with the undead). But his friend, Rafi, is still possessed; the succubus, Ajulutsikael (Juliet to her friends), still technically has a contract on him; and he's still - let's not beat around the bush - dirt poor.
\nDoing some consulting for the local constabulary helps pay the bills, but Castor needs a big, private job to really fill the hole in his overdraft. That's what he needs. What he gets, good fortune and Castor not being on speaking terms, is a seemingly insignificant 'missing ghost' case that inexorably drags himself and his loved ones into the middle of a horrific plot to raise one of Hell's fiercest demons.
\nAnd when Satanists, sacrifice farms, stolen spirits and possessed churches all appear on the same police report, the name of Felix Castor can't be too far behind . . .
After ten years trapped across the expanse of space, Captain Demora Kim and the crew aboard the Horizon are finally home. Only it’s not the home they know. The Cluster, formerly a peaceful cooperative between planets, is on the verge of collapse due to a civil war.
\nA way to end the conflict may lie in the limitless energy that trapped the Horizon crew halfway across the galaxy and the engine they crafted to bring them home. But that means going back to the pocket of space they’ve only just escaped.
\nDemi isn’t sure she’s up for the task. She fulfilled her promise. She brought her crew home. Maybe it’s time to walk away. However, leaving everything behind won’t be as simple as she thinks. Conspiracies are afoot, loyalties will be tested, and Demi’s choices could shake the foundation of the galaxy.
\n
Set between New York and Shanghai, Masquerade is a queer coming-of-age mystery about a lovelorn bartender and his complex friendship with a volatile artist.
\nNewly single Meadow Liu is house-sitting for his friend, artist Selma Shimizu, when he stumbles upon The Masquerade, a translated novel about a masked ball in 1930s Shanghai. The author’s name is the same as Meadow’s own in Chinese, Liu Tian - a coincidence that proves to be the first of many strange happenings. Over the course of a single summer, Meadow must contend with a possibly haunted apartment, a mirror that plays tricks, a stranger speaking in riddles at the bar where he works, as well as a startling revelation about a former lover.
\nAnd when Selma vanishes from her artist residency, Meadow is forced to question everything he knows as the boundaries between real and imagined begin to blur.Exploring social, cultural, and sexual identities in New York, Shanghai, and beyond, Mike Fu’s Masquerade is a skillfully layered, brilliantly interwoven debut novel of friendship, queer longing, and worlds on the brink, asking how we can find ourselves among ghosts of all kinds, and who we can trust when nothing - and no one - is as it seems.
\n
In weekly phone calls to his daughter in Australia, widower Hubert Bird paints a picture of the perfect retirement, packed with fun, friendship and fulfilment.
\nBut Hubert Bird is lying.
\nThe truth is day after day drags by without him seeing a single soul.
\nUntil, that is, he receives some good news - good news that in one way turns out to be the worst news ever, news that will force him out again, into a world he has long since turned his back on.
\nNow Hubert faces a seemingly impossible task: to make his real life resemble his fake life before the truth comes out.
\nAlong the way Hubert stumbles across a second chance at love, renews a cherished friendship and finds himself roped into an audacious community scheme that seeks to end loneliness once and for all . . .
\nLife is certainly beginning to happen to Hubert Bird. But with the origin of his earlier isolation always lurking in the shadows will he ever get to live the life he's pretended to have for so long?
When thirty-two-year-old Rob Brooks's long term girlfriend asks him to leave London and live with her in Manchester not only will it mean moving cities and changing the only job he's ever had, it'll also mean leaving behind his best mate in the entire world, Phil Clarke.
\nBelieving in love conquering all Rob takes the plunge and convinced of his ability to make new friends Rob tries his best to sort out the situation. But when six months in he still finds himself without even so much as a regular drinking buddy he begins to realise that sometimes making friends in your thirties can be the hardest thing to do. With this is mind Rob begins a strategy that though risky has the potential to deliver the one thing he wants: a brand new friend. His strategy?
\nAdvertising in a classified ad in a Manchester magazine. After three excruciatingly embarrassing \"bloke dates\" Rob begins to despair. But then his luck changes. He finds himself a brand new friend. But there's a problem. Apart from knowing less than nothing about music trivia, football and supermodels vital statistics Rob's new friend has one huge flaw. She's a girl.
Dave Harding's got a wonderful wife, a beautiful home, and a job he could do in his sleep . . .
\nSo no one is more surprised than Dave when he hears his own biological clock start ticking. Loudly. Unfortunately, his better half, Izzy, has no nine-month plan for fat ankles or a credit line at Baby Gap. With even worse timing, the music magazine Dave writes for folds. Desperate for work, he's forced to become an advice columnist for a teen magazine.
\nBut he's about to get a serious wake-up call.
\nWading through letter after letter of adolescent angst is the last thing Dave wants to do, especially since he could use some help dealing with his own. But one letter is about to make all his little problems disappear - and replace them with one big one.
\nThe letter is from a teenage girl named Nicola. But she doesn't need advice about boys, or friends, or the latest fads. She's looking for her father, whom she's never met. She's looking for a man to call Dad.
\nShe's looking for Dave.
Strangers living worlds apart. Strangers with nothing in common. But it wasn't always that way . . . Kerry Hayes is a single mum, living on a tough south London estate. She provides for her son by cleaning houses she could never hope to afford. Taken into care as a child, Kerry cannot ever forget her past.
\nNoah Martineau is a successful barrister with a beautiful wife, daughter and home in fashionable Primrose Hill. Adopted as a child, Noah always looks forward, never back. When Kerry reaches out to the sibling she lost on the day they were torn apart as children, she sets in motion a chain of events that will have life-changing consequences for them both.
With the help of a relationship counsellor, Jim and Alison are setting off on a journey through the past to the present which will lead them to the biggest decision of their adult lives. The failure of their relationship results in a painfully funny, romantic comedy of acute observations of the human condition.
Tom Hope is broken. Ever since his wife Laura died he hasn't been the same man, and definitely not the same father. Luckily for Tom his mother-in-law Linda is around to pick up the pieces and look after his two struggling daughters, Evie and Lola.
\nBut Tom getting arrested on the first anniversary of his wife's death is the last straw for Linda.
\nIn a last bid attempt to make Tom reconnect with his daughters she takes drastic action and leaves for Australia. With two fast-maturing daughters Tom has to learn how to accept his responsibilities and navigate the newly discovered world of single fatherhood - starting immediately.
\nWith only himself to rely on, will Tom fall back into grief or finally step up and be the father his girls need?
The greatest adventure is coming back home.
\nLila Metcalfe is a trainee journalist in Derby and she's very used to being given the stories that no one else wants. So, when her editor tells her that the city's Cossington Park development is being held up by a solitary resident on Hope Street who is refusing to leave, she knows she is going to be the one sent to find out more. And that's how she meets Connor.
\nTwenty-something Connor is the sole resident of Hope Street and he is not at all what Lila is expecting. And he has a very clear reason not to move: he is waiting for his mum to come home.
\n
George and Joan Bachelor are the proud (albeit slightly disappointed) parents of three grown-up boys whose lives aren’t quite what they had hoped for . . .
\nAdam is addicted to TWKGs (The Wrong Kinds of Girls); Luke bears the scars of a savage divorce; and ‘baby’ Russell’s love life contains nothing but heartache.
\nWhen months shy of his 40th wedding anniversary George Bachelor announces he’s leaving the family home to try his hand at the single life, everything is thrown into turmoil. Now as well as sorting out their own love lives, the boys have got to sort out their parents’ too…or face losing the one thing they thought they could always count on.
Meet Melissa and Paul: Five years after they split up he’s still looking for love in all the wrong places while she wants the one thing she can’t have: Paul.
\nMeet Chris and Vicky: They’re so in tune they even brush their teeth in time with each other. So what is Chris doing risking it all for a meaningless affair?
\nMeet Cooper and Laura: He wants to settle down, she wants to take a grown-up gap year - but can their relationship really survive a year apart?
\nSet across a year of leaving dos, birthday parties and anniversary celebrations The Life and Soul of the Party is a warm, funny and moving tale celebrating love, life and those special moments we’ve all spent in the kitchen at parties.
A powerful and bittersweet story of an unexpected male friendship and an unlikely love story, a thought provoking storyline told with Mike's distinctive wit and insight, touching on issues which affect us all. This uplifting tale reminds us of the simple courage at the heart of every human being.
\nEver since The Incident, James DeWitt has stayed on the safe side.
\nHe likes to know what happens next.
\nDanny Allen is not on the safe side. He is more past the point of no return.
\nThe past is about to catch up with both of them in a way that which will change their lives forever, unexpectedly.
\nBut redemption can come in the most unlikely ways.
Benjamin Duffy is a stand-up comic/temp who, like many men in their late twenties, is forced to face the eternal question: \"To commit or not to commit?\"
\nAfter four years of biding her time, Benjamin's girlfriend has proposed, issuing an ultimatum that sets Benjamin's head spinning. He knows that Mel's the one for him, but should he swap his stellar record collection and fridge full of beer for dinner parties and trips to IKEA?
\nMaybe if Benjamin could swap \"till death do us part\" with \"renewable on a four-year basis\" he'd be happy, but the choice-as far as Mel sees it-is all or nothing. Now or never. Mel or no Mel.
\nSo after a lifetime as Mr. Irresponsible, does Benjamin have what it takes to become Mr. Commitment?
Still reeling from the sudden death of her mother, Jess is about to do the hardest thing she's ever done: empty her childhood home so that it can be sold.
\nBut when in the process Jess stumbles across the mysterious Alex, together they become custodians of a strange archive of letters, photographs, curios and collections known as The Museum of Ordinary People.
\nAs they begin to delve into the history of the objects in their care, Alex and Jess not only unravel heartbreaking stories that span generations and continents, but also unearth long buried secrets that lie much closer to home.
\nInspired by a box of mementos found abandoned in a skip following a house clearance, The Museum of Ordinary People is a thought-provoking and poignant story of memory, grief, loss and the things we leave behind.
It’s been three years since Will Kelly's heartthrob, Agnes, wrecked his life with a chat that started, “It’s like that song. ‘If you love somebody, set him free.’” But no matter how much time goes by, Will doesn’t feel very free. He still makes lists of each birthday present Aggi ever gave him, has gymnastic fantasies about a perfect reunion night with her, dwells on the first words she uttered to him.
\nHow long can a person stay down in the dumps after being dumped? And how much longer before Will dumps Martina, the sweet but clingy girl he’s seeing? Will anyone ever measure up to his Legendary Girlfriend?
\nFresh, endearing, and full of humor, My Legendary Girlfriend tells a story that will ring true for everyone who’s ever tried to mend a broken heart.
When Joe Clarke writes a feature for his newspaper on the guys called the Divorced Dads' Club, he doesn't think he'll ever see this sorry bunch of losers again. Why would he? He's happily married to Penny, his university sweetheart and he is the father of two lovely children that they both dote upon. Joe has never strayed from his marriage vows . . . until one drunken night which leaves his life in ruins, and Penny showing him the door.
\nHe is still in love with Penny and still crazy about his kids, who can't understand why their lives have been turned upside down, but Joe knows he deserves to be cast out into the world of bedsits and baked beans. And it soon becomes clear that as far as Penny is concerned, there is no way back. Joe feels totally alone. And then he bumps into none other than Van, lead singer of West London's most famous Van Halen tribute band and leading light of the Divorced Dads' Club.
\nCould this motley crew of fathers, all in some way separated from their children but determined to support each other, help Joe get back together with Penny and the kids? Not if his first meeting with Penny and her new boyfriend is anything to go by . . .
Helen and Ben parted as heartbroken 18-year-olds and went their very separate ways.
\nTwenty years later, mother-of-two-teenagers Helen is still in Manchester, a part-time primary teacher, stunned by the behaviour of her love-rat husband. In an old T shirt and scruffy jeans, she feels at the lowest point in her life.
\nAnd suddenly, impossibly, Ben is standing on her doorstep. Tired maybe, lonely even, but clearly still the world-famous, LA-based multi-millionaire rockstar he has become.
\nBut can you ever go back?
\nFor Helen and Ben, so much has happened in the years between. But just to sit in the kitchen for a while and talk - that would be nice.
\nBefore the world comes crashing in.
The Stag and Hen Weekend is the story of Phil and Helen, a couple in their thirties about to commit their lives to one another . . . that is of course if they can just manage to get through their respective stag and hen weekends (his: Amsterdam; hers: a country house and day spa in the Peak District) without falling apart.
High flier Matt Beckford's sole ambition is to turn forty with his life sorted. And with a Porsche on the drive and a job that requires him to spend more time in BA's club lounge than his own lounge, it looks like things are going in the right direction. But when Matt's wife unexpectedly calls time on their marriage, a chain of events is set in motion that very quickly sees him facing forty, broke, homeless and completely alone.
\nBut all is not lost because Matt has a plan . . .
Unlike most people Matt Beckford is actually looking forward to turning thirty. After struggling for most of his twenties, he thinks his career, finances and love life are finally sorted. But when he split up with his girlfriend, he realises that life has different plans for him.
\nUnable to cope with his future falling apart, Matt temporarily moves back to his parents. During his enforced exodus only his old school mates can keep him sane - friends he hasn’t seen since he was nineteen. Back together after a decade apart. But things will never be the same for any of them because when you’re turning thirty nothing’s as simple as it used to be.
After ten years together Charlie Mansell has been dumped by his live-in girlfriend, Sarah. All he wants to do is wallow in misery, but mates Andy and Tom have a better idea: a week of sun, sea and souvlaki in Malia party capital of the Greek islands.
\nBut Charlie and his mates aren’t eighteen any more. Or even under thirty. And it shows. It isn’t the cheap beer, the late nights or even the fast-food that’s the problem. It’s girls. And life. And most of all . . . each other.
What’s the point of giving someone a beautiful death if you can’t give yourself a beautiful life?
\nFrom the day she watched her kindergarten teacher drop dead during a dramatic telling of Peter Rabbit , Clover Brooks has felt a stronger connection with the dying than she has with the living. After the beloved grandfather who raised her dies alone while she is traveling, Clover becomes a death doula in New York City, dedicating her life to ushering people peacefully through their end-of-life process.
\nClover spends so much time with the dying that she has no life of her own, until the final wishes of a feisty old woman send Clover on a trip across the country to uncover a forgotten love story– - and perhaps, her own happy ending. As she finds herself struggling to navigate the uncharted roads of romance and friendship, Clover is forced to examine what she really wants, and whether she’ll have the courage to go after it.
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For over eighty years, Joy Bridport has played by the rules: she's been a devoted wife and mother, contributing to the community in her small Hudson Valley town. But her quiet existence is jolted when she learns that her best friend, Hazel, only has months left to live. Hazel has always been the more adventurous one of their duo, and she seems at peace with all that she’s squeezed out of her long life. Yet Joy realises she can’t say the same.
\nDetermined to live boldly and make the most of the time that she and Hazel have left together, Joy steps outside of her comfort zone - and into a bit of trouble. But as her foray into rule-breaking escalates into committing petty crime, Joy must consider what kind of legacy she wants to leave behind, and whether there's a way for her to embrace the liberation that \"Bad Joy\" offers without losing all that she holds dear.
\nIs it ever too late to become who we're meant to be? With laugh-out-loud hijnks and emotional heft, Good Joy, Bad Joy is a heartwarming and wise celebration of the choices we make, the friendships we cherish, and the lengths we go for love.
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It's the carefree '80s and Juliette Lucian-Sorel has it all. She’s the greatest dancer to ever grace the floorboards of Palais Garnier, she's royalty to her adoring fans, and Paris is at her feet. Or so it seems . . .
\nKatarina Vyatka is defecting from behind the Iron Curtain, desperate to save herself and her career. Or so she claims . . .
\nWhat happens when the Princess of Paris rescues the brightest star in the history of Bolshoi? Will the Paris ballet stage be big enough for both of them?
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In the heart of Paris, Chiara Conti is a Queen trapped in an Ivory Tower of haute couture, fortune and lovelessness. Lonely and dejected, she’s longing for inspiration, for direction, for understanding.
\nWhen Vi Courtenay falls at her feet, losing her shoe like a veritable Cinderella, events are set in motion that will unravel their carefully fashioned lives.
\nWith everything tainted, will the thin lines they rend ever be mended?
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Neve Blackthorne, head of one of the most successful Studios in Hollywood, is the one to rule them all. Powerful, beautiful, and aloof, she’s ruthless, yet irresistible. Above all, she has an unquenchable survival instinct.
\nSurely a fleeting entanglement with one Audrey Avens, a bright, young, rising star in her company, won’t bring down the Wicked Queen of Tinseltown. Or will it?
\nNeve’s public persona has no chink in the untouchable armor, but when the lights go out and the cameras stop rolling, what becomes of an Ice Queen whose heart is ruled by love and fear?
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Rhiannon Crowhart, the renegade second sister of the notorious family, returns to Dragons Island and its sleepy town of Crow’s Nest in a flurry of storms and scandal. Her homecoming is not hospitable, as the townspeople and her own sisters are keen to hold onto old grudges. Not that Rhiannon requires their welcome. She left twenty-two years ago and has never looked back–until now. After all, she hated everything about the island, the town, and the old Atelier she recently inherited.
\nEverything except a pair of gray eyes that look at her from the bookstore next door. Eyes that belong to the Mayor’s daughter. Eyes that Rhiannon keeps seeing in her dreams.
\nPrudence Fowler has never seen a more fascinating woman than the one who glides around town in four-inch heeled boots carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. Rhiannon Crowhart is as beautiful as she is troubled. And, above all, Rhiannon Crowhart is dangerous.
\nWhen their connection upends both their lives, Prudence needs to choose between family loyalty and loving the woman who is Wind herself.
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Out in the darkness of space, something is targeting the Greatships.
\nWith their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, the Greatships are the lifeblood of human occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume - and value - of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species.
\nIt has always been Marca Nbaro's dream to achieve the near-impossible: escape her upbringing and venture into space.
\nAll it took, to make her way onto the crew of the Greatship Athens was thousands of hours in simulators, dedication, and pawning or selling every scrap of her old life in order to forge a new one. But though she's made her way onboard with faked papers, leaving her old life - and scandals - behind isn't so easy.
\nShe may have just combined all the dangers of her former life, with all the perils of the new . . .
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Return to the Universe of the Arcana Imperii with a collection of novellas from Miles Cameron.
\nFollowing the events of Artifact Space, the galaxy continues to change and expand. Frontiers are challenged and what was once a safe space becomes contested, hostile, and unpredictable.
\nFrom normal people caught up in the unstoppable machinations of politics and war, to spies faced with making the ultimate sacrifice for their nations, these stories follow the DHC as it faces a challenge to everything it holds dear - human rights, fairness and equality. When a rogue system questions their values and power, how can they stay true to their beliefs and protect their citizens?
\nAnd what are these rumours about new aliens lurking beyond the edges of known space?
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Aranthur and his friends have come together across different continents and realms with one purpose: to strike back against the forces which have torn a hole in the heavens and threaten to tear the world beneath them apart as well.
\nWith time running short, and treason at home, there are battles to be fought on the field, in the magical arena, and in the ever-deadly realm of politics, and they cannot fail anywhere or everything will fall. Victory will require enemies to trust one another, old foes to fight together, spies to reveal the truth and steadfast allies to betray long-corrupt rulers.
\nIs Aranthur, a twenty-year-old student, really the master strategist to bring it all together?And can he and his friends build enough trust to overcome aeons of lies when their plans inevitably fall to pieces?
\nDo they even know, for sure, who the enemy is . . . ?
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Aranthur is a student. He showed a little magical talent, is studying at the local academy, and is nothing particularly special. Others are smarter. Others are more talented. Others are quicker to pick up techniques. But none of them are with him when he breaks his journey home for the holidays in an inn. None of them step in to help when a young woman is thrown off a passing stage coach into the deep snow at the side of the road. And none of them are drawn into a fight to protect her.
One of the others might have realised she was manipulating him all along . . .
Only fools think war is simple or glorious.
\nOn the magic-drenched battlefield, information is the lifeblood of victory, and Aranthur is about to discover that carrying messages, scouting the enemy, keeping his nerve, and passing on orders is more dangerous, and more essential, then an inexperienced soldier could imagine . . . especially when everything starts to go wrong.
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Marca Nbaro had always dreamed of serving aboard the Greatships, with their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city.
\nThey are the lifeblood of human-occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume - and value - of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species.
And now, out in the darkness of space, something is targeting them.
Nbaro and her friends are close to locating their enemy, in this gripping sequel to the award-nominated Artifact Space, but they are running out of time - and their allies are running out of patience.
The Red Knight has stood against soldiers, against armies and against the might of an empire without flinching. He's fought on real and on magical battlefields alike, and now he's facing one of the greatest challenges yet.
A tournament.
A joyous spring event, the flower of the nobility will present arms and ride against each other for royal favour and acclaim. It's a political contest - and one which the Red Knight has the skill to win. But the stakes may be higher than he thinks. The court of Alba has been infiltrated by a dangerous faction of warlike knights, led by the greatest knight in the world: Jean de Vrailly - and the prize he's fighting for isn't royal favour, but the throne of Alba itself.
Where there is competition there is opportunity; the question is, will the Red Knight take it? Or will the creatures of the Wild seize their chance instead . . .
The Red Knight's final battle lies ahead . . . but there's a whole war still to fight first.
\nHe began with a small company, fighting the dangerous semi-mythical creatures which threatened villages, nunneries and cities. But as his power - and his forces - grew, so the power of the enemy he stood against became ever more clear. Not the power of men . . . but that of gods, with thousands of mortal allies.
\nNever has strategy been more important, and this war will end where it started: at Lissen Carak. But to get there means not one battle, but many - to take out the seven armies which stand against them and force Ash, the huge black dragon, to finally take to the field himself . . .
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In The Fell Sword the Red Knight and his company go across the mountains to the Morea and Thrake - those are the kingdoms to the east of Alba - to put down what appears to be a local rebellion and proves to be larger. In the process, the readers will get to see a little more of the meta-plot.
The Red Knight will meet a beautiful princess. Jean de Vrailly will grow in power and worldly glory. Amicia will develop her own power while getting into a quarrel with the church that will have long term effects for everyone. Readers will meet the Faery Knight and the irks are developed as people and not ‘enemies’. The sides shift, and the stakes grow.
With one army defeated in a victory which will be remembered through the ages, now the Red Knight must fight again.
\nFor every one of his allies, there is a corresponding enemy. Spread across different lands, and on sea, it will all come down to one last gamble. And to whether or not the Red Knight has guessed the foe's true intentions.
\nWith each throw of the dice, everything could be lost.
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Twenty eight florins a month is a huge price to pay, for a man to stand between you and the Wild.
\nTwenty eight florins a month is nowhere near enough when a wyvern's jaws snap shut on your helmet in the hot stink of battle, and the beast starts to rip the head from your shoulders. But if standing and fighting is hard, leading a company of men - or worse, a company of mercenaries - against the smart, deadly creatures of the Wild is even harder.
\nIt takes all the advantages of birth, training, and the luck of the devil to do it.
\nThe Red Knight has all three, he has youth on his side, and he's determined to turn a profit. So when he hires his company out to protect an Abbess and her nunnery, it's just another job. The abby is rich, the nuns are pretty and the monster preying on them is nothing he can't deal with.
\nOnly it's not just a job. It's going to be a war . . .
Thor Stokel had always dreamed of being master of his own ship, and the Silver Star is a dream ship: fast, sleek and powerful. But leaving the safety of his military career in the DHC behind to become an independent merchant fast becomes a nightmare of endless solo flights, paperwork, bad deals and customs disasters.
\nWhen he's imprisoned over the latest customs and paperwork mistake, Thor's luck finally starts to change. Incarceration leads to his first crewmate - and then a second. But it also leads to an increase in his paranoia: something doesn't add up about his beautiful new ship, the AI is erratic, and he's increasingly sure that his crewmates are hiding something. And now he thinks the Silver Star is being followed . . .
\nExhausted, isolated, and still just trying to make ends meet, Thor Storkel is either the most paranoid man in space . . . or he's a vital part of a galaxy-spanning conspiracy, that's going to depend on his being paranoid enough to survive it . . .
\nAnd Marca N'baro still needs a whale . . .
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Princess Cyrelle has always been faithful and true to her family, country, and Goddess. But now her brother, King Elias of Cicia, has asked for - no, commanded - her hand in marriage.
\nDesperate to avoid this incestuous union, Cyrelle requests a series of increasingly impossible gifts and petitions the Goddess for a sign to sway her resolute brother's proposal. As Elias persists undeterred, Cyrelle must risk everything to escape the only life she's ever known.
\nSoon, she becomes Green Scales, hiding and struggling to survive on her own, far across the galaxy. But Phau isn't the peaceful refuge Cyrelle had hoped for, and when the leader of its burgeoning rebel faction recognizes the runaway princess, she is forced to choose between safety and freedom. With the fate of two kingdoms on the line and nowhere left to run, Cyrelle must decide what it means to be true to herself, to her people, and to her heart.
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In 1932 Berlin, Bertie, a trans man, and his friends spend carefree nights at the Eldorado Club, the epicenter of Berlin's thriving queer community.
\nAn employee of the renowned Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institute of Sexual Science, Bertie works to improve queer rights in Germany and beyond, but everything changes when Hitler rises to power. The institute is raided, the Eldorado is shuttered, and queer people are rounded up. Bertie barely escapes with his girlfriend, Sofie, to a nearby farm. There they take on the identities of an elderly couple and live for more than a decade in isolation.
\nIn the final days of the war, with their freedom in sight, Bertie and Sofie find a young trans man collapsed on their property, still dressed in Holocaust prison clothes. They vow to protect him - not from the Nazis, but from the Allied forces who are arresting queer prisoners while liberating the rest of the country. Ironically, as the Allies' vise grip closes on Bertie and his family, their only salvation becomes fleeing to the United States.
\nBrimming with hope, resilience, and the enduring power of community, The Lilac People tells an extraordinary story inspired by real events and recovers an occluded moment of trans history.
Leeann Wu’s hands have started glowing at the most inconvenient times, and the single mother and midwife doesn’t know why. Could it be perimenopause? A hallucination brought on by a lack of sleep? On top of that concerning development, her daughter is off to university in a few months, her tenuous relationship with her ob-gyn mother is in peril of cracking, and she’s attracted the attention of a younger man who sees far more than she’s comfortable with. Her hands, glowing or not, are already full.
\nBut as widespread insomnia plagues the town and life-threatening accidents begin to pile up, Leeann discovers the glow is not an anomaly at all - rather, she’s part of a long line of women who possess a power unlike anything Leeann’s ever known. Yet, even with the cryptic clues left by her great aunt before her untimely death, Leeann has no idea how to use her new skills.
\nWith her town in imminent danger, Leeann doesn’t have time to waste. She’ll need to make peace with her magical heritage and do whatever it takes to find out if her glow means something more - before it’s too late.
Sheriff Del Goodman, a close friend of Hattie's dad, vows to find her killer, but the investigation yields more secrets than answers: it turns out Hattie played as many parts offstage as on. Told from three perspectives, Del's, Hattie's high school English teacher and Hattie herself, The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman tells the story of the Hattie behind the masks, and what happened in that final year of her life. . .
Wonderfully evocative of its Midwestern setting and with a cast of unforgettable characters, this is a book about manipulation of relationships and identity; about the line between innocence and culpability; about the hope love offers and the tragedies that occur when it spins out of control.
Nora Trier catches thieves. As a forensic accountant and partner in her downtown Minneapolis firm, she’s unearthed millions in every corner of the world. She prides herself on her independence, the most essential currency of accounting, until her firm is hired by Strike.
An anti-corporate, feminist athletic empire, Strike is owned by Logan Russo, a brash and legendary kickboxer, and her marketing genius husband, Gregg Abbott. They’re about to host a major kickboxing tournament with twenty million dollars in prize money, and the chance for the champion to become the new face of the company. Gregg suspects his wife already has a new face in mind - a young trainer named Aaden, for whom Logan feels an unexpected connection.
Days before the tournament begins, it’s discovered that the prize money is missing. Gregg hires Nora’s firm to find both the thief and the money but Nora has a secret connection to Strike that threatens her independence. Her partner pressures her into taking the case anyway, hinting he has information about Strike that could change the course of the investigation in a shocking and deadly way.
When her husband’s car is found abandoned and on fire - in the middle of a rainstorm - Eve Roth becomes the police's number one suspect. After all, her husband was suspended from the University of Iowa for inappropriate conduct with a student, and who else but an atmospheric physicist could incinerate a car in a downpour? But Eve has no idea why her husband disappeared. She's desperate to find him, both for herself and her beloved, disabled father-in-law.
\nJonah Kendrick appears on their doorstep with a theory. He’s seen Eve’s husband, bound and bleeding in a barn. Claiming to be a psychic detective who dreams of the lost, Jonah has helped find missing people his entire life. He dreamed about a young woman trapped in the same barn months ago, and she’s still missing.
\nAs a firm believer in the laws of nature, Eve rejects anything to do with psychics, but their investigations soon collide. As the temperature drops and Iowa turns to ice, Eve and Jonah race across the state to discover what happened to the people they’ve lost. But the truth is more deadly either of them expected, and the physicist and the psychic must learn to believe in each other if they want to escape this storm alive.
How do you find a woman who doesn’t exist?
\nAs a former police officer and a psychic detective, Max Summerlin and Jonah Kendrick may not be the most conventional business partners. But together, they have years of investigative experience, and opening Celina Investigations feels like a natural decision.
\nWhen a man walks into their office searching for his missing girlfriend without a past or even a name, Max and Jonah realise their newest client may present their hardest challenge yet. Their first task: find out why he refuses to go to the police.
\nMeanwhile, a woman drives across the country with all her belongings packed into a car, desperate to escape a dark past. The question posed to the fleeing woman is the same one that keeps Max and Jonah awake at night: can you ever really change your life?
\nFrom an 80’s-inspired bakery to a horrifying house at the edge of the woods, Max and Jonah unearth the missing woman’s shocking past, and in the process, put themselves directly in the path of the terror she was trying to outrun.
Kara Johnson always knew she’d die young and violently. It didn’t matter who delivered the final blow, she would deserve it - her years spent running drugs and spreading violence would guarantee it. But death doesn’t always go as planned. When her girlfriend sacrifices herself to save Kara’s life, Kara is left grieving and adrift. She doesn’t know why she’s alive until the DEA shows up and offers her a go to prison or turn informant to lure out the last of the drug trafficking ring that murdered her girlfriend.
\nMax Summerlin is the kind of cop who needs answers - he’s been shot twice in the last year while looking for them. Despite his family’s objections and his struggle with chronic pain, he accepts an invitation from the DEA task force eagerly. That is, until he realizes he’ll be babysitting reformed drug trafficker Kara Johnson as she goes undercover. Max knows Kara is keeping secrets. Kara doesn’t trust anyone, let alone Max. But the cop and the criminal will have to find a way to work together fast, because they aren’t the only ones hunting down the remains of a drug empire. And the kingpin who lurks in the shadows will stop at nothing to win.
Veronica and Ryan Hartley are the envy of Auburn Drive. When the exclusive neighborhood hosts its annual progressive dinner party, the couple’s perfection is on display.
\nThe neighbors are obsessed - entranced by the “it” couple’s movie-star looks and smoldering gazes. But is the perfect pair too good to be true?
It’s 1953 when Memory Feather and her mother, Virginia, are welcomed back home to the Mississippi Gulf Coast community of Belle Cote by Virginia’s childhood friend Mac McFadden, whose verve and energy buoy the recently divorced Virginia to embrace this new chapter.
\nMemory (“Mem”) is not like other she is attune to the voices of plants and animals, and is missing two fingers on her left hand. The three of them knit their lives together and become a close, though unconventional, family.
\nWhile Mac’s wealth, brains, and good humor have allowed him to carve out a niche in Belle Cote, his position as a gay man active in the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement exposes him to censure, harassment, and even brutality. When the unscrupulous and charismatic Tony Amato arrives in Belle Cote as Mac’s “guest,” he sets in motion a series of events that will shatter familial bonds and forever change Mem’s life.
\nAn adult Mem recounts the story of the scars Tony left on her teenage years, confronting her own role in the disastrous events of that final summer.
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A history professor mourning his wife. His young protégé’s search for a path forward. Four witty mountain gods with much to say and not enough time to listen. A gifted storyteller bringing a world into being out of thin air . . .
\nFamous for his dispelling of the national myth, the Historian understands the power of narrative. He has inspired another young professor to search for her own truths, while trying to understand the way fiction creates fact and how sometimes the past can only be understood by filling in holes with a new narrative. Which is exactly what he needs when his wife passes away to parse meaning out of a world that no longer makes sense.
\nTogether the protégé and the Historian find comfort in each other. Yet they know their time together is fleeting, as time usually is. Only the gods have an abundance of time, and yet - the two discover - even that might not be so clear cut.
\nPart of their homeland’s myth tells of four gods who squabbled and argued and destroyed and rebuilt time and again. Or did they? Because, of course, even the gods need mouthpieces on earth. And the one the Historian knows of - the elusive Storyteller - may have just been spinning tales for his own amusement and, ultimately, revenge.
\nBy fabricating the exploits of the gods, he could have set a course for certain events to unfold and a particular story to survive today. Spanning 3,000 years and multiple voices - with tales within tales woven expertly together - The Melancholy of Untold History reveals a people and its individuals who seek to confront the hardships of life through storytelling.
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An original young adult novel of the Alien universe
Olivia and her twin sister Viola have been dragged around the universe for as long as they can remember. Their parents, both xenobiologists, are always in high demand for their research into obscure alien biology.
Just settled on a new colony world, they discover an alien threat unlike anything they've ever seen. And suddenly the sisters' world is ripped apart.
On the run from terrifying aliens, Olivia's knowledge of xenobiology and determination to protect her sister are her only weapons as the colony collapses into chaos. But then a shocking family secret bursts open—one that's as horrifying to Olivia as the aliens surrounding them.
The creatures infiltrate the rich wildlife on this untouched colony world—and quickly start adapting. Olivia's going to have to adapt, too, if she's going to survive...
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What if you could fix the worst parts of yourself by confronting your worst fears?
Dr. Jennifer Webb has invented proprietary virtual reality technology that purports to heal psychological wounds by running clients through scenarios straight out of horror movies and nightmares. In a carefully controlled environment, with a medical cocktail running through their veins, sisters might develop a bond they’ve been missing their whole lives - while running from the bogeyman through a simulated forest. But . . . can real change come so easily?
Esther Hoffman doubts it. Esther has spent her entire journalism career debunking pseudoscience, after phony regression therapy ruined her father’s life. She’s determined to unearth the truth about Dr. Webb’s budding company.
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Dr. Webb’s willing to let her, of course, for reasons of her own. What better advertisement could she get than that of a convinced skeptic? But Esther’s not the only one curious about how this technology works. Enter real-world threats just as frightening as those created in the lab. Dr. Webb and Esther are at odds, but they may also be each other’s only hope of survival.
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Since she was three years old, Anastasia Miller has been telling anyone who would listen that she's an alien disguised as a human being, and that the armada that left her on Earth is coming for her. Since she was three years old, no one has believed her.
\nNow, with an alien signal from the stars being broadcast around the world, humanity is finally starting to realise that it's already been warned, and it may be too late. The invasion is coming, Stasia's biological family is on the way to bring her home, and very few family reunions are willing to cross the gulf of space for just one misplaced child.
\nWhat happens when you know what's coming, and just refuse to listen?
A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease.
We owe our good health to a humble parasite - a genetically engineered tapeworm developed by the pioneering SymboGen Corporation. When implanted, the tapeworm protects us from illness, boosts our immune system - even secretes designer drugs. It's been successful beyond the scientists' wildest dreams. Now, years on, almost every human being has a SymboGen tapeworm living within them.
But these parasites are getting restless. They want their own lives . . . and will do anything to get them.
When the Imagine Network commissioned a documentary on mermaids, to be filmed from the cruise ship Atargatis, they expected what they had always received before: an assortment of eyewitness reports that proved nothing, some footage that proved even less, and the kind of ratings that only came from peddling imaginary creatures to the masses.
\nThey didn't expect actual mermaids. They certainly didn't expect those mermaids to have teeth.
\nThis is the story of the Atargatis, lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy.
\nWhatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the bathypelagic zone in the Mariana Trench . . . and the depths are very good at keeping secrets.
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The girls of Unbreakable Starlight were part of an ancient tradition of magical warriors defending the Earth from the forces of the Outside. They knew their powers and their place, and they planned to fight to the very end. They just didn't think the end would come so very soon.
\nAnd they never dreamt that when the dust settled, two of their members would be the last magical protectors in the world.
\nFor Piper, her time as a member of Unbreakable Starlight was the best part of her life, the first and only time that she had been truly happy. She'd had friends, she'd had powers, and she'd had her animal companion to make sure that she understood the patterns she saw in all things. Until it all came crashing down.
\nFor Yuina, whose sister died on the night of the assault that killed most of the world's magical protectors, forgetting what she used to be is all that's mattered to her for years. She's been trying her best to toe the line and be the good little symbol of a forbidden calling that her government wants her to be, and she'll keep trying even if it kills her.
\nBut magical protectors existed for a reason, and even if they've all died and the heralds who used to invite replacements to the fight have been forced into hiding. And if the magical protectors aren't holding the line against the Outside, who is?
\nLines exist because somebody drew them, and now, with the world left undefended, the lines are getting blurred. Soon enough, something's going to break.
I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You. I know - what an intriguing title!
\nBasically, I have had an unexpectedly difficult decade - there have been surprising joys, but also deep revelations and challenging lows. I shall be honest about those, because what I discovered in the difficult times were my, what I call, treasures. Treasures - practical tools, values, ways, answers researched from some great scientists, neuroscientists, therapists, sociologists (all the ‘ists’) out there, that have genuinely led to a sense of freedom, joy, peace and physical recovery I never would have thought possible. Life now, amazingly, with what I will share, is - SUCH FUN! (always important to quote your own catch phrases . . . )
\nIf you fancy having a read, then I hope my story might help your story. After all, we are in this beautiful, mysterious, challenging life together. Rest assured there are funny stories along the way - we will have a laugh too, my dear reader chum. Oh, and I couldn’t possibly say if there is a love story in it . . . (There is - shush) Exciting.
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In the final installment of Rorie and Cecily's story, these reunited lovers are looking forward to a quiet, predictable life when unexpected news changes the course of their future forever.
This book concludes the story that began in A Road Through Mountains and continued in Your Name in Lights.
Don't miss the conclusion of this touching trilogy about fame, fortune, and finding a second chance at love.
In a tiny village in the hills of Tuscany is a statue of Cupid with the power to grant the deepest desires of the heart to all who ask. The village is home to single mother Valentina, who runs a struggling chocolate shop. All she's ever wanted was to fit in, determined to provide a quiet, normal life for herself and her daughter. She works hard to keep it together, asking for nothing . . . especially not Cupid's help. Not when that would mean admitting to herself and everyone else that her deepest desire is to find the love of a woman.
\nAmerican celebrity chef Andie should be having the time of her culinary life while on a PR blitz in Tuscany. Instead, a tabloid scandal that threatens to destroy her career has her hiding in a remote hillside village. With nothing to do but worry and wait, she spends her time avoiding shame and infamy by flirting with a local chocolate maker who's as irresistible as the sweets she sells. She's shocked by the discovery that her heart longs for much more than a temporary distraction, but even if she can convince the reluctant Valentina to give her a chance, how can she balance a relationship in Italy with a career in the States?
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Jordan is an American journalist living in London, but when her newspaper is sold to an infamous tabloid king, she has one week to produce a sensational tell-all article, or she’s out of a job - and out of the country. When a runaway princess nearly falls into her lap, it seems like the answer to her prayers.
\nAbby was a typical California girl until a twist of fate turned her into Princess Abigail, the heir to the throne of her father’s kingdom. When presented with an opportunity to escape her royal duties for a night out on the town while on an official state visit to London, she seizes the chance. But when she’s rescued by the woman of her dreams, she begins to doubt that she can ever return to royal life again.
\nAs their madcap adventure carries them through the streets of London, both Jordan and Abby suspect they’ve found their perfect match, but if the secrets they are hiding are exposed, will their relationship survive?
\nLondon Holiday is a modern-day fairytale inspired by the classic film Roman Holiday, with a sapphic twist and the happy ending you always wanted.
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When Cecily Parker volunteers backstage at the Oakwood Theater, the only thing she wants is a few hours of relief from the doldrums of her upper class suburban existence. The last thing she expects is to be reunited with the only person she ever truly loved, a woman she left behind almost twenty years ago.
\nRorie Mulloy has built a career as an award winning production designer in Hollywood, but her personal life is anything but a success. When she agrees to design the sets for a community theater production of A Streetcar Named Desire in Connecticut, she has no idea that the woman who broke her heart and ruined her for love will be assigned to her crew.
\nAs the sparks are rekindled between them, these star-crossed lovers just might have a second chance at a life together. But only if they can overcome the ghosts of their past, and survive the evil suburban soccer moms and reality television divas determined to keep them from their happily ever after.
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Ever wonder what would happen if a spy dialed a wrong number?
Leigh is a secret agent in peril with only one hope to save her life: her agency’s emergency hotline. But who memorizes phone numbers these days? She's praying the number in her head is the right one. Guess what? It’s not.
Amanda is an office temp, working the phones at the public radio pledge drive. When a strange call comes in from a woman claiming to be a spy, she assumes it’s make believe. A late-night rescue mission? She's willing to play along. How’s she supposed to know the mysterious woman in the trunk of an overturned sedan is the real deal?
They're drawn to each other from the start, but things quickly shift from flirty to furious when Leigh is forced to reveal her true identity and take Amanda with her on the run. The answers lie in Stockholm, but whether Leigh faces more danger from the Russian mobsters who want her dead, or from Amanda’s wrath at being kidnapped, is anyone’s guess. But if they can figure out a way to work together, the seasoned agent and the savvy civilian just might make the perfect team.
Jamie Richards is a scientist who embraces reason - except when it comes to romance. Tired of her impulsive streak leaving her heartbroken, she's determined to do everything right the next time she's in love. But her resolve crumbles when a technical glitch matches her with perfection in Claire, a woman who lives on the opposite side of the country.
\nWho is straight. And under the impression that Jamie's a guy. But Jamie can't help being smitten. Would one tiny lie be so terrible if it gets her closer to the woman of her dreams?
Claire Flores is a dreamer and a believer in signs, but she has a secret that keeps her cautious about love. All she wants is a picture-perfect family of her own, but she's never met a man who attracts her. Until now. Throwing caution to the wind, she goes from Portland to Boston to meet Jay, her online love.
Instead she meets Jamie, his work colleague, who befriends her in Jay's unexpected absence. Claire's heart is aflutter. Jamie stirs up feelings Claire never knew possible, but how close can she get without having to admit that she's been lying to herself about her dreams all along?
What starts as a simple fib soon snowballs as Jamie fabricates increasingly ridiculous tales to keep her identity as Jay under wraps, until a comedy of errors threatens to topple the whole charade to the ground. Can true love prevail when it's founded on a lie?
Jeanie Brooks is a small town history teacher who sometimes looks before she leaps, but when she books a last minute river cruise for lesbian singles, she knows she'll have no regrets. Two weeks of beautiful women and glorious adventure against the backdrop of Europe's most famous cities - what more could she want?
Eleanor Fielding is an actuarial accountant from Manhattan, and an expert at assessing risk from every angle. Analytical and reserved, the only thing worse than spending the summer floating around with a gaggle of desperate single women is the prospect of her sister nagging her for all eternity if she refuses to go.
But thanks to a ticketing mishap, Jeanie and Eleanor unexpectedly find themselves the only two eligible women on the Danube. What starts as an awkward alliance to salvage some enjoyment from the trip soon transforms into something more. When it comes to love, can this odd-couple learn to dance to the same rhythm?
When Cecily Parker volunteers backstage at the Oakwood Theater, the only thing she wants is a few hours of relief from the doldrums of her upper class suburban existence. The last thing she expects is to be reunited with the only person she ever truly loved, a woman she left behind almost twenty years ago.
Rorie Mulloy has built a career as an award winning production designer in Hollywood, but her personal life is anything but a success. When she agrees to design the sets for a community theater production of A Streetcar Named Desire in Connecticut, she has no idea that the woman who broke her heart and ruined her for love will be assigned to her crew.
As the sparks are rekindled between them, these star-crossed lovers just might have a second chance at a life together. But only if they can overcome the ghosts of their past, and survive the evil suburban soccer moms and reality television divas determined to keep them from their happily ever after.
After eighteen years, the stars may have finally aligned to give Cecily and Rorie a second chance at happiness together. The trouble with stars, though: they don't stay aligned for long.
As Cecily settles into her life in sunny California, she imagines her biggest challenge will be learning to take care of herself as a newly divorced mother and publicly out lesbian. The last thing she expects is to land the acting role of a lifetime. But is it worth being so far away from the loving support of her girlfriend and son?
Rorie is dismayed by the prospect of a long distance relationship, but there's no time to dwell on it. Between stepping in as a surrogate parent and facing a family crisis of her own, she's soon in over her head. Will Cecily ever be the true partner that Rorie needs?
Despite time, distance, and some very persistent paparazzi, Cecily and Rorie have found in each other a love to last a lifetime, but only if they can learn to navigate the dual pressures of fame and family.
Two years ago, Bea’s life was upended when her beloved twin sister died. Audrey was captivating, an extrovert, their mother’s golden child. Bea was “different,” too intense, and chronically lonely.
\nNow, in her late twenties, Bea is back home in Park Slope, Brooklyn, her spirits finally buoyed by her plan to start a dog kennel. Inspired by the childhood dream she once shared with Audrey and old, now-estranged friends Tatum and Layla, she’s sure this will be the perfect ode to her sister’s memory.
\nBut as they reintegrate into one another’s lives, Audrey’s absence is keenly felt by all. Soon, simmering tensions and attractions emerge, and a sinister darkness breaks through to the surface. What do they really want? What happens when old secrets come to light? And when is it best to bury a dream, or a cherished friendship?
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Sixteen-year-old Sana Kiyohara has too many secrets. Some are small, like how it bothers her when her friends don’t invite her to parties. Some are big, like that fact that her father may be having an affair. And then there’s the one that she can barely even admit to herself - the one about how she might have a crush on her best friend.
When Sana and her family move to California she begins to wonder if it’s finally time for some honesty, especially after she meets Jamie Ramirez. Jamie is beautiful and smart and unlike anyone Sana’s ever known. There are just a few problems: Sana’s new friends don’t trust Jamie’s crowd; Jamie’s friends clearly don’t want her around anyway; and a sweet guy named Caleb seems to have more-than-friendly feelings for her. Meanwhile, her dad’s affair is becoming too obvious to ignore anymore.
Sana always figured that the hardest thing would be to tell people that she wants to date a girl, but as she quickly learns, telling the truth is easy . . . what comes after it, though, is a whole lot more complicated.
After vanquishing a demon king, saving her mom, and reconnecting with her friend Danny, Momo ought to be living the life she's always wanted. But lately, Danny has been ditching her to hang out with mean-girl Ryleigh - and groups of kids have begun vanishing without a trace. Then a whole backyard full of cool kids at Ryleigh's exclusive birthday party becomes the latest to disappear, leaving Momo, Ryleigh, Danny, boy band superstar Jin, and Momo's old friend Niko the fox to fight a dangerous new enemy from Shinto legend.
\nThis time they are up against Tamamo-no-mae - beautiful, bloodthirsty, and manipulative, she's the ultimate mean girl of the Kami-verse. To defeat her, Momo must travel to the Sky Kingdom and steal the legendary Mirror of the Sun. But if she’s going to survive monster ambushes, escape giant snakes, and pull off the heist of the millennium, Momo will have to find a way to work with her team (even Ryleigh), and grapple with the growing power that connects her with her storm god grandfather, Susano'o', and her greatest foe - Izanami the Destroyer.
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Momo Arashima is half goddess and half human – torn between two worlds. But with her friends Danny, Ryleigh, Jin and Niko by her side, she’s finally starting to find a place where she belongs. Too bad none of that matters when Izanami, the treacherous goddess of death, threatens the life of someone Momo loves and forces her into a terrible bargain.
\nIzanami is after the Jewel of the Heart, an artefact that will help her finally escape the land of the dead . . . and she wants Momo to get it for her. Along with her friends, Momo must face fire demons, fanged mermaids,and spiders as big as horses. But even if they succeed, what will Momo do? Sacrifice the person most precious to her, or hand over the Jewel and unleash Izanami on the world?
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All Momo wants for her twelfth birthday is a normal life - a life like everyone else's. At home, she has to take care of her absentminded widowed mother. At school, kids ridicule her for mixing up reality with the magical stories her mother used to tell her.
\nBut then Momo's mother falls gravely ill, and a death hag straight out of those childhood stories attacks Momo at the mall, where she's rescued by a talking fox . . . and “normal” goes out the window. It turns out that Momo's mother is a banished Shinto goddess who used to protect a long-forgotten passageway to Yomi - a.k.a. the land of the dead. That passageway is now under attack, and countless evil spirits threaten to escape and wreak havoc across the earth.
\nJoined by Niko the fox and Danny - her former best friend turned popular jerk, whom she never planned to speak to again, much less save the world with - Momo must embrace her (definitely not normal) identity as half human, half goddess to unlock her divine powers, save her mother's life, and force the demons back to Yomi.
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Katsuyamas never quit—but seventeen-year-old CJ doesn’t even know where to start. She’s never lived up to her mom’s type A ambition, and she’s perfectly happy just helping her aunt, Hannah, at their family’s flower shop.
She doesn’t buy into Hannah’s romantic ideas about flowers and their hidden meanings, but when it comes to arranging the perfect bouquet, CJ discovers a knack she never knew she had. A skill she might even be proud of.
Then her mom decides to sell the shop - to the family who swindled CJ’s grandparents when thousands of Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps during WWII. Soon a rift threatens to splinter CJ’s family, friends, and their entire Northern California community; and for the first time, CJ has found something she wants to fight for.
Cole rescues Ava, a pilot from the Cloud City of Easton who crash-lands near her farm, setting in motion events that will alter the course of her life. It’s a hundred years after peak oil and the rich have risen above the Earth, inhabiting great Cloud Cities, while those left behind live a rural existence, off the grid. After suffering a vicious attack, Cole is transported to the Cloud City of Easton for emergency surgery.
\nWhile recuperating and adrift in the unfamiliar social landscape of Easton, Cole begins a journey of discovery. When she meets Audrey, a beautiful doctor, the attraction they share is penetrating and possibly life altering. Explosions, staged by a ruthless underground movement, nearly bring Easton to the brink of collapse. The crisis that rocks the city forces Cole and Audrey to weigh what truly holds meaning and what each is willing to sacrifice for love.
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When her spies bring news that a swordswoman imprisoned in a neighboring kingdom bears the Royal mark, Princess Kathryn sets out to rescue Aiden, the woman she’s sure is the true heir to the Belstaff throne and the solution to a tyrant’s campaign to overrun her small queendom of Olmstead.
\nThat solution, however, is more of a problem. Too footloose for responsibility and distrustful of Kathryn’s selfless moral code, Aiden is a resistant heir. Her only interests are freedom and adventure. Despite their differences, Kathryn and Aiden discover common ground and a growing attraction as they set out on their mission to defeat the ruthless rogue ruler of Belstaff.
\nThe true test lies ahead, when they find they must free their hearts to finally liberate their queendoms.
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Taylor Finn aspires to be a stunt driver, but driving a limo is what pays the bills. When she finds herself chauffeuring a drunk guy harassing his date, she leaves him stranded and is sure she’s going to get fired. Maybe it's finally time to pursue her dream.
\nIris Fleming’s flight to Atlanta was a scene from a disaster movie, the scariest landing ever. She’d desperately wanted a part on a new sci-fi series, until the director made a pass at her. Now Iris doesn’t want the role and has no intention of getting back on a plane.
\nMaking their escape from Atlanta, Iris and Finn end up at Hideaway Haven, in neighboring cabins. Iris isn’t sure what’s scarier, sexy Taylor Finn or woodland nighttime noises. But maybe they can help each other out. There are schools for stunt drivers in LA, and Iris needs a ride. Wrong turns and roadside hijinks ensue as Iris and Finn set off on a road trip, chasing the sunset and falling for each other along the way.
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Cody Walsh leaves Arkansas for California. Lured by stories of opportunity, even for women, Cody disguises herself as a man and prepares for the arduous journey west.
Lillie Ellis leaves New York to accept a post as a schoolteacher on the frontier near a small homestead she just inherited from her uncle. Lillie’s ultimate desire is to become a painter, and she hopes the Kansas frontier will offer her the freedom to follow that dream. In the nineteenth-century, a young woman has few options in the East that don’t revolve around marriage and motherhood. Lillie is interested in neither.
Cody rescues Lillie after a chance encounter in Independence, Missouri. Their destinies and desires become entwined as they face the perils of the untamed West. Despite their differences, they discover that love’s uncharted frontier is not for the weak in spirit or the faint of heart.
How did a club night with friends go so off the rails?
\nNash’s day had started out so well. An adorable barista flirted with her as she picked up her morning espresso, which might have contributed to the distraction that moments later nearly ended in disaster. Nash had used the word “disaster” carelessly not realizing how far the rest of her day would spiral after her tragic morning commute.
\nPicking up girls after midnight in an ER is a clear sign of desperation, right? Unless that girl is the enchanting nurse who keeps coming to her rescue.
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Wesley Holden migrated west with her brother, Clyde, to build a life neither of them could hope for back East. To share the homestead claim, Wesley had to disguise herself as a man. As brothers, Wesley and Clyde began to carve a new home out of the Kansas frontier. When Clyde is unexpectedly killed, Wes is left alone with the farm, determined to carry on, but more isolated as the days pass.
\nRomanced and abandoned, Charlotte Rose embarks on a journey west in search of a better life. But the trip is cut short by disaster. Even worse, Charlotte can’t return home because she discovers after arriving in Kansas that she’s pregnant. Her only hope is to find a frontier husband. Desperate and out of options, Charlotte is resolved to win Wes’s heart.
\nAllowing Charlotte to get too close is dangerous. If Wes marries, she’ll have to reveal her secret and risk everything for a woman who might never really love her, but resisting Charlotte is easier said than done.
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Samantha Casey has been burned by love. She’s determined to remain single and keep a safe distance from any and all female temptations. Her plan is derailed when Jessica Walker strikes a barter deal with her that includes dinner together every night for a month. Jessica’s never been in love, but her sights are set on Sam. Night after night, in the face of Jessica’s beauty and hopefulness, Sam’s resolve weakens.
\nThey live in a time long after peak oil. The climate has permanently shifted, and storms rise quickly and with vengeance. One such storm descends on Sam’s farm and Jessica has to spend the night, forcing them to face their feelings for each other.
\nAfter the storm, Jessica is on her way home when a man who’s been stalking her sets up an ambush. Can Sam find them in time to rescue Jessica and allow true love to rescue her?
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Successful but suffocated by the demands of her corporate career, Shaw Daily walks out on it all. She returns to her grandparents’ rural property in Cooper’s Creek, North Carolina, with a plan to hide out and reboot her life to be simple and stress free. But escapism eludes her when her attentions are captured by small town beauty Kate Elkins.
Kate has spent almost her entire life in Cooper’s Creek. For Kate, the bonds of small-town life are a source of strength and comfort. When her aging mother weakens, Kate takes a leave from teaching to care for her. Romance is the last thing on her mind when she bumps into her unrequited teen crush Shaw Dailey just back from California. Long-buried feelings resurface for Kate, but all Shaw sees is a beautiful woman saddled with the responsibilities she is finally free from.
Children’s book illustrator Garet Allen has just escaped her most recent ill-fated relationship and accepts a temporary teaching position at a rural public school. After all, how hard can teaching kids about art really be? Apparently, pretty hard because her first day on the job is a complete disaster, and that has nothing at all to do with the fact that Tess Hill, the captivating and overly conscientious music teacher, shares the same classroom.
\nTess, a dedicated teacher and single mother focused on creating a stable life for her daughter, is immediately attracted to the handsome, cavalier Garet for all the wrong reasons. Everything about Garet says short-term, and Tess refuses to consider anything less than forever. She’s not about to give her heart away to someone she can’t count on.
\nCan Garet and Tess survive three months sharing the same classroom without killing each other . . . or falling in love?
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Nash Wiley, aka slow learner, discovers that hooking up with your sexy neighbor isn’t such a great idea, especially if you like your apartment and you’d like to keep living there. Having sex with both of your neighbors is an even worse idea, especially if those neighbors happen to be in a relationship . . . with each other.
\nThreesomes always sounded so exotic and exciting in the abstract. As it turns out, the reality of sleeping with two women at the same time is a lot more complicated. But it wasn’t like it was Nash’s idea, and when the offer presented itself she found it impossible to say no.
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As Nash Wiley entered the elegant Savannah Victorian and scanned the room she had one thought: This is one gay wedding that could really get out of hand. Only a lesbian would think it was a good idea to ask her long time ex to be maid of honor and then let Ms. Ex offer up a toast after drinking way too much white wine.
\nBut the evening turns even more surreal when Nash commandeers a stretch limo and her best friend for a late night drive out to the beach, and friendship turns into something more. Champagne on ice, seat belts optional and privacy glass a must.
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Geologist Dr. Leah Warren wakes after extended cryogenic hibernation to discover she’s crash-landed on a foreign planet. The sole survivor of her crew, she struggles to piece together what went wrong. Leah ventures from the ship in search of signs of life only to be captured by desert raiders.
\nKeegan, a clan warrior, discovers Leah, weak and barely alive. Her kindness and affection for Leah seem in direct conflict with her tough and emotionally remote façade, and Leah’s attraction for the reserved warrior grows.
\nUnfortunately, Tiago, the clan’s volatile chieftain, is a tyrant who wants Leah for himself. Keegan will have to relinquish Leah or challenge Tiago. Will love give Keegan the strength to defeat him?
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Demon hunter Jordan Price has a sacred calling she can’t escape. But when her target turns out to be an innocent, the truth shakes the foundations of her belief. Betrayed, conflicted, and badly wounded, Jordan retreats to consecrated ground to recover.
\nGrace Jameson wakes in a shallow grave, terrified and alone. She stumbles toward a light in the thick woods with no memory of how she got there. The light from a cabin window guides her through the darkness until she collapses.
\nThe last thing Jordan needs is a beautiful stranger showing up in the one place she thought was truly safe. She’s certain Grace is not who she claims to be, but as the days pass, an overwhelming attraction builds between them. Doubts are vanquished by desire until Jordan discovers Grace’s demonic secret. Jordan is honor bound to hunt her, but Grace may be the only thing standing between Jordan and certain death.
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Scientists have sounded alarms about the demise of Earth’s oceans for decades, and now the extinction event is here. As the world braces for disaster, paleobotanist Dr. Elle Graham finds a possible cure. Unfortunately, it’s been extinct for over one hundred thousand years.
Captain Jackson Drake lives in the past because she can’t stand to face the present after the woman she loved sacrificed herself to save others, a casualty of a world ravaged by superbugs.
The last person Jackson wants to travel back in time with is another woman trying to save the world at the cost of her own life.
When things go sideways on primeval Earth, Jackson and Elle must put aside conflicts and work together to save the mission. Faith in each other just might give them the strength to save the world and rescue a broken heart in the process. But can Elle convince Jackson that the future is worth saving?
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Firefighter Grayson Reeves barely survived a harrowing California wildfire, and the experience has shaken everything she believes about herself. Returning to her hometown of Sky Valley, NC, to heal and regroup seems like a good idea, but past mistakes and a small town that never forgets are painful reminders of why she left.
\nFaith Owen didn’t grow up in Sky Valley, but when an opportunity arises to relocate to one of her favorite childhood haunts, she jumps at the chance. A new environment is just what she needs to refocus on her art and regain her confidence after her last ill-fated relationship left her with loads of self-doubt.
\nWhen Faith meets Gray, she sees a suffering soul in need of saving. Gray can only see a woman for whom she could never be enough. Despite their misgivings, their mutual attraction ignites passions neither can fight.
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The last person Nash Wiley expects to bump into over a two a.m. breakfast at Waffle House is her college crush, decked out in a curve-hugging law enforcement uniform. Nash can’t believe her luck when Ms. Crush asks to join her, explaining that she’s just getting off shift.
\nBut something seems a little off. It could be the glitter in her eye shadow, or the black lace bra peeking from her barely buttoned uniform shirt, or maybe the exotic dancers who stroll in from the local gentleman’s club and crash their private reunion. Nash isn’t sure she’s still hungry until the waitress takes her order.
\n“How you want those hashbrowns, hon?” Ms. Crush pins Nash with a sultry gaze and answers for her. “Mmm. I’ve heard she likes hers smothered and covered.”
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Successful mystery author Foster Owen hasn’t finished a manuscript in three years and her writer’s block shows no signs of retreating. When the bills start piling up, an unexpected offer to ghost write a memoir for an heiress on the West Coast seems like too good an opportunity to ignore.
\nPainfully shy Abigail Spencer has just returned from studying abroad. The sprawling estate she inherited from her parents includes a crumbling mansion rumored to be haunted and an historic lighthouse nestled along the remote northern Pacific coast.
\nWhen the executor of the Spencer estate hires Foster to write the history of the family, Foster and Abby are drawn together as they peel back the layers of history and uncover a story of lives adrift, loves lost, and true love found. Can seeds from the past help love to blossom in the present?
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More than fifty years have passed since “peak oil” has left the Earth without access to modern technology while great Cloud Cities for the rich float above the oceans.
\nOn the ground below, Vivian Yates leaves Oklahoma on an epic 700-mile journey east to her ancestral home. Early on, she encounters Elizabeth, who preys on Vivian’s inexperience and naivety, luring her into a brief affair that ends in disaster. Betrayed and withdrawn, Vivian sets out again on her eastward trek.
\nAlong the way, she meets the beautiful, lighthearted Ida. Together they face obstacles both natural and manmade. Ida brings Vivian, wounded in both body and spirit, back to life. Destiny has thrown them into each other’s arms where they find not only love, but hope, trust, and forever.
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Ava Wynne wants to start fresh, in a place where nothing reminds her of her failed relationships in Easton. Once awarded a transfer she is paired with a beautiful co-pilot she doesn’t really like. After two cross-continent cargo flights, Ava and her co-pilot are assigned to fly a member of the ruling elite to the cloud city of Miami. The last thing Ava wants is to fly an air taxi for some spoiled member of the Chancellor’s family.
\nBut Ava will have bigger problems than her dislike for the ruling elite. A member of the “Return To Earth” insurgency forces their cruiser to crash-land in the desert region of North America. Held captive in this barren outpost, Ava and her privileged, yet captivating, passenger begin to discover things about each other and themselves that will change them both forever.
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Royal Duval is the pride of her grandfather, Duke, from whom she learned all about faith, ambition, and women.
\nAfter her father passed, Royal inherited his part of the family business: running bootleg whiskey. The back roads of Georgia had been perfect for the dissemination of the much sought after illegal elixir until the local Baptist minister, Abraham Porter, decided to make prohibition his mission, and Royal the target of his evangelical wrath.
\nLovey Porter, Abraham’s daughter, is the living embodiment of chaste beauty, until she meets the charmingly handsome Royal Duval. Their growing attraction for each other challenges every belief that Lovey holds dear and calls into question every truth she felt sure was absolute.
\nEven if she must defy her father, in the end, Lovey has to find her own path to faith and love. She alone must decide whether that path leads to Royal.
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On his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic amusement park ride accident in an attempt to save a little girl's life. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by both loved ones and distant strangers.\t\t\t\t\t\t
\nAs the story builds to its stunning conclusion, Eddie desperately seeks redemption in the still-unknown last act of his life: Was it a heroic success or a devastating failure? The answer, which comes from the most unlikely of sources, is as inspirational as a glimpse of heaven itself.
Eleven-year-old Nico Crispi never told a lie. When the Nazi's invade his home in Salonika, Greece, the trustworthy boy is discovered by a German officer, who offers him a chance to save his family. All Nico has to do is convince his fellow Jewish residents to board trains heading towards \"the east\" where they are promised jobs and safety.
\nUnaware that this is all a cruel ruse, the innocent boy goes to the station platform every day and reassures the passengers that the journey is safe. But when the final train is at the station, Nico sees his family being loaded into a large boxcar crowded with other neighbors. Only after it is too late does Nico discover that he helped send the people he loved - and all the others - to their doom at Auschwitz.
\nNico never tells the truth again.
\nIn The Little Liar, his first novel set during the Holocaust, Mitch Albom interweaves the stories of Nico, his brother Sebastian, and their schoolmate Fanni, who miraculously survive the death camps and spend years searching for Nico, who has become a pathological liar, and the Nazi officer who radically changed their lives. As the decades pass, Albom reveals the consequences of what they said, did, and endured.
\nA moving parable that explores honesty, survival, revenge and devotion, The Little Liar is Mitch Albom at his very best. Narrated by the voice of Truth itself, it is a timeless story about the harm we inflict with our deceits, and the power of love to ultimately redeem us.
Frankie, born in a burning church, abandoned as an infant, and raised by a music teacher in a small Spanish town, until war rips his life apart. At nine years old, he is sent to America in the bottom of a boat. His only possession is an old guitar and six precious strings. His amazing journey weaves him through the musical landscape of the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, with his stunning playing and singing talent affecting numerous stars (Duke Ellington, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley) until, as if predestined, he becomes a pop star himself.
\nHe makes records. He is adored. But Frankie Presto’s gift is also his burden, as he realizes the power of the strings his teacher gave him, and how, through his music, he can actually affect people’s lives. At the height of his popularity, tortured by his biggest mistake, he vanishes. His legend grows. Only decades later, having finally healed his heart, does Frankie reappearjust before his spectacular death—to change one last life. With the Spirit of Music as our guide, we glimpse into the lives that were changed by one man whose strings could touch the music - and the magic - in each of us.
In Mitch Albom's beloved novel, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, the world fell in love with Eddie, a grizzled war veteran-turned-amusement park mechanic who died saving the life of a young girl named Annie. Eddie's journey to heaven taught him that every life matters. Now, in this magical sequel, Albom reveals Annie's story.
\nThe accident that killed Eddie left an indelible mark on Annie. It took her left hand, which needed to be surgically reattached. Injured, scarred, and unable to remember why, Annie's life is forever changed by a guilt-ravaged mother who whisks her away from the world she knew. Bullied by her peers and haunted by something she cannot recall, Annie struggles to find acceptance as she grows. When, as a young woman, she reconnects with Paulo, her childhood love, she believes she has finally found happiness.
\nAs the novel opens, Annie is marrying Paulo. But when her wedding night day ends in an unimaginable accident, Annie finds herself on her own heavenly journey--and an inevitable reunion with Eddie, one of the five people who will show her how her life mattered in ways she could not have fathomed.
\nPoignant and beautiful, filled with unexpected twists, The Next Person You Meet in Heaven reminds us that not only does every life matter, but that every ending is also a beginning - we only need to open our eyes to see it.
Adrift in a raft after a deadly ship explosion, nine people struggle for survival at sea. Three days pass. Short on water, food and hope, they spot a man floating in the waves. They pull him in.
\n“Thank the Lord we found you,” a passenger says.
\n“I am the Lord,” the man whispers.
\nSo begins Mitch Albom’s most beguiling and inspiring novel yet.
\nAlbom has written of heaven in the celebrated number one bestsellers The Five People You Meet in Heaven and The First Phone Call from Heaven. Now, for the first time in his fiction, he ponders what we would do if, after crying out for divine help, God actually appeared before us? What might the Lord look, sound and act like?
\nIn The Stranger in the Lifeboat, Albom keeps us guessing until the end: Is this strange and quiet man really who he claims to be? What actually happened to cause the explosion? Are the survivors already in heaven, or are they in hell?
\nThe story is narrated by Benji, one of the passengers, who recounts the events in a notebook that is later discovered - a year later - when the empty life raft washes up on the island of Montserrat.
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It falls to the island’s chief inspector, Jarty LeFleur, a man battling his own demons, to solve the mystery of what really happened.
In Mitch Albom's newest work of fiction, the inventor of the world's first clock is punished for trying to measure God's greatest gift. He is banished to a cave for centuries and forced to listen to the voices of all who come after him seeking more days, more years. Eventually, with his soul nearly broken, Father Time is granted his freedom, along with a magical hourglass and a mission: a chance to redeem himself by teaching two earthly people the true meaning of time.
\nHe returns to our world - now dominated by the hour-counting he so innocently began - and commences a journey with two unlikely partners: one a teenage girl who is about to give up on life, the other a wealthy old businessman who wants to live forever. To save himself, he must save them both. And stop the world to do so.
\nTold in Albom's signature spare, evocative prose, this remarkably original tale will inspire readers everywhere to reconsider their own notions of time, how they spend it and how precious it truly is.
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When he is eight years old, Alfie Logan discovers the magical ability to get a second chance at everything. He can undo any moment and live it again. The one catch: he must accept the consequences of his second try - for better or worse.
\nHe grows up correcting his mistakes and saving himself from adolescent embarrassments. He even takes foolishly dangerous risks, just to see what it’s like to come close to death, before tapping back to safety.
\nEventually, Alfie turns his gift to his love life, studying his crushes and going back to make himself more appealing. In time, he falls deeply in love with Gianna, the woman he believes is the one. He seems to find contentment.
\nBut as the years pass, Alfie’s eye begins to wander. Which is when he learns a lone caveat to his power: once he undoes a love, that person can never fall in love with him again. Knowing if he gives into to temptation, he will risk losing what he has with Gianna, Alfie makes a choice that changes his life forever.
\nThe book begins many years later, after an ailing Alfie is arrested for allegedly cheating and winning millions at a casino roulette wheel. As a curious detective interrogates him, he slowly uncovers Alfie’s incredible story, and its most unlikely conclusion.
Set in a world inspired by pre-Shogun era Japan, this is a stunning debut fantasy in the vein of Grace Lin about how a young pearl diver goes to the ends of the earth to rescue her twin sister, who has been stolen by a ghost whale.
\nKai and Kishi share the same futon, the same face, and the same talent for pearl diving. But Kishi is the obedient daughter, while Kai tries to push the rules, and sometimes they fight. Still, when Kishi is stolen and killed by the legendary Ghost Whale, nothing will stop Kai from searching for her, deep in the ocean, hoping for a way to bring her back to life.
\nBut such a rescue is beyond the power of an ordinary mortal. Kai strikes a deal with the gods: she’ll steal a magic pearl in exchange for her sister’s soul. As she journeys across treacherous land scape, Kai must navigate encounters with scheming bandits, a power-hungry war lord, and a legion of conniving fox spirits. And when a new friendship becomes something almost as powerful as her love for her sister, Kai must make impossible choices and risk everything just to get home again.
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Inspired by The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and set in a magical imperial Japan.
\nYuki Snow wishes she were anywhere but here.
\nShe hates Santa Dolores, where her mom and stepdad just moved the family. Her BFF back home, Julio, has already forgotten his promise to stay in touch - and worse, he like likes Yuki’s mortal enemy. At her new school, the kids think she’s either invisible or a know-it-all nerd.
\nThe only friend she’s made so far is the shopkeeper at a Japanese antiques store. Among the treasures there is an ancient brass mirror supposedly once owned by celebrated Japanese writer Sei Shonagon. It’s also rumored to be a portal to Shonagon’s world, which opens every hundred years. So when a woman with long jet-black hair and flowing silk robes appears in the glass, beckoning, Yuki knows there’s only one thing to do - step through to the unknown . . .
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In a mysterious town hidden in our collective subconscious there's a department store that sells dreams. Day and night, visitors both human and animal shuffle in to purchase their latest adventure. Each floor specialises in a specific type of dream: childhood memories, food dreams, ice skating, dreams of stardom. Flying dreams are almost always sold out. Some seek dreams of loved ones who have died.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tFor Penny, an enthusiastic new hire, working at the store is the opportunity of a lifetime. As she uncovers the workings of this whimsical world, she bonds with a cast of unforgettable characters, including DallerGut, the flamboyant and wise owner, Babynap Rockabye, a famous dream designer, Maxim, a nightmare producer, and the many customers who dream to heal, dream to grow, and dream to flourish.
It's been a year since Penny first walked through the doors of the Dallergut Dream Department Store, and surviving a year at the store means one thing . . . She is now an official employee of the dream industry! She can finally take the express commuter train to the Company District, where all the dream-production companies are located, and discover how all raw dream materials and testing equipment are produced.
\nBut the Company District is not quite what she expected. Instead it hides a secret underbelly of the magical industry that Penny thought she was a part of.
\nPenny discovers the Civil Complaint Center, full of people filing complaints about their dreams. She also learns about the regular customers who have stopped coming to the store. As she gets to the bottom of each complaint, she begins to expand her horizons, moving beyond the role of dreamseller to understanding what lies in the hearts of their lost regulars.
\nThe Dallergut Dream-Making District delves deeper into the dream industry and its customers. Why do some of them buy a dream and never return? And can Penny and her colleagues bring their regulars back?
Life under a microscope is stifling for anyone, but for Grace Easton, the world’s most recognizable pop superstar who has both feet firmly cemented in the closet, it’s particularly hellish. After walking away from the love of her life five years ago because she wasn’t ready to come out, she’s become a master of smiling for the cameras that hound her every step to hide the fact that she’s miserable.
\nMost days, Veronica Adams would say that she’s happy. Her work as an actress is fulfilling, and while it’s not easy to heal a broken heart when the woman responsible for it is a global superstar, with every year that passes, the ache in her chest gets a little easier to manage. She’s not over it, but she’s past it.
\nOr so she thinks.
\nTheirs was a love story that once played out in secret before being crushed under the weight of the world’s attention. When they’re thrown together in an impromptu chemistry read and then by an unexpected offer, they’re forced to confront the past. Their broken hearts are proof that love isn’t always enough, but maybe, just maybe, this time will be different.
Professional underachiever Dan Foster is finally taking a vacation. Sure, his life has been average at best, and yeah, he’s never quite lived up to his potential. But after a few Miller Lites in paradise with his girlfriend, Mara, things are starting to look up.
\nThen the sun explodes.
\nWith the island resort suddenly plunged into darkness (he really should’ve sprung for the travel insurance), Dan’s holiday goes from bad to worse when elite guests stage a coup and commandeer supplies. As temperatures drop and class tensions rise, revolution begins to brew on the island, and Dan accidentally becomes a beacon of hope for the surviving vacationers. But when one six-person plane is discovered that could get them back to the mainland, Dan realises he has a choice to make.
\nDoes he escape the island with Mara? Or does he stay and fight to become the most unlikely hero of the end of the world?
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After seven years in prison, Warif is released to a changed Cairo. Freedom so far has been endless, inscrutable meetings with official-looking strangers, trying to get his job as a translator back. This new Cairo, busy with expats and bureaucrats, is proving disorienting: What is he supposed to make of these self-assured newcomers who are so certain of his obsolescence, his subjugation, his solitude? They seem happy to provide him with a salary, if he’s willing to give up the work that gave his life meaning.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAs his encounters more-and-more resemble interrogations and the futility of trying to escape the system set against him threatens to suffocate him, Warif escapes into the vivid colors of the city, looking deeper and deeper into the food, the people, the buildings, and the flowers, until what’s real blurs into fantasy.
Elsa is used to hiding the most important parts of herself - her feelings for Rye, her distaste for a world ruled by men, and, most crucially, her gift of songlight. She buries that secret deep inside. In Brightland, those with songlight are called Unhumans and are abhorred. Rye is the only other person Elsa has known with songlight, and their shared bond has brought them together.
\nElsa’s world begins to fall apart one desperate, heart-wrenching day and she doesn’t know where to turn until a girl appears before her. But the girl isn’t really there - her songlight has been drawn to Elsa’s frantic grief.
\nElsa lives in a remote seaside village; Nightingale, her new friend, lives in a city hundreds of miles away with her father, a government official responsible for rooting out Unhumans. The two never expected to connect via songlight. But when they do, and when they realise the extent of their power, they’ll be thrust in the middle of a war that threatens their very existence.
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They are hunting those who shine . . .
\nDon't be deceived by Northaven's prettiness, by its white-wash houses and sea views. Many of its townsfolk are ruthless hunters. They revile those who have developed songlight, the ability to connect telepathically with others. Friends, neighbours, family will turn on each other in an instant . . .
\nLark has lived in grave danger ever since her own songlight emerged. Then she encounters a young woman in peril, from a city far away. An extraordinary bond is forged. But when power is everything, how will they survive?
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At forty-four, Kay Sorensen has quit drinking, smoking, and overeating, and she has almost quit reading self-help books about quitting drinking, smoking and overeating. She has divorced her deadbeat husband, finished college, and landed a job she loves directing a small branch of the county library.
\nBut Kay still has one unconquered addiction: she just can't say no to someone who needs her.
As teens, Harlow Drake and Lainey Piper built an online fandom solving small-town crimes. Harlow was the star, Lainey the behind-the-scenes genius (and often, Harlow’s scapegoat). Years later, Harlow’s hosting a hit true crime tv show. Lainey? She’s working in forensics. Well, forensic accounting . . . from home. In pajamas. With her cat.
\nBut when Harlow faces significant backlash over fumbling a case, she needs a quick win - like a special investigation into the decades-old disappearance of a starlet from a once-glamorous, now decrepit island hotel. The catch? It’s bankrolled by Deke and Bryce of DBag Games, who are looking to shed their “frat bro” reputations. As long-time fans, they have one requirement for their funding: Lainey has to play the sidekick again.
\nLainey is wary, but the offer is a lifeline in a sea of unpaid student loans. After reaching the Crossings Hotel, she realizes she’s not content to be Harlow’s helper anymore. As the cold case heats up, a crew member falls over dead, presenting Harlow and Lainey with a more modern mystery: what secrets does this hotel hide within its walls?
\nWith sabotage, hidden staircases, and a killer in their midst, Lainey steps into the spotlight and takes charge of the investigation. It’s up to her to crack the case - as long as she can stay alive.
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Growing up with parents who owned a restaurant, Molly Irani understood the power of community but also had a keen understanding of the industry’s challenges. When her husband Meherwan - a fortysomething former car salesman with no prior culinary training - suggested opening a restaurant in their North Carolina town to showcase the vibrant Indian street food of his childhood, Molly thought he was nuts. And yet, the couple turned this bold vision into reality, creating Chai Pani, an eatery crowned by the James Beard Foundation as Most Outstanding Restaurant in America. In Service Ready, Molly Irani takes readers on an inspiring journey from an unlikely dream to the heights of culinary success.
\nReflecting on her upbringing in a family-run restaurant, Molly was determined to do things differently at Chai Pani. While her husband perfected the food, she developed a groundbreaking business culture that prioritised a nurturing, inclusive work environment. This philosophy not only distinguished Chai Pani from competitors but helped launch a growing food empire, which now includes multiple locations, the spice business Spicewalla, and the fast-casual spin-off, Botiwalla.
\nMolly shares the ten core principles that have driven Chai Pani’s success, providing valuable lessons for any industry. Her story celebrates the power of female leadership in a traditionally male-dominated field, demonstrating how empathy and care can redefine the meaning of success and help entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. She opens up about the challenges and rewards of being business partners with your life partner, and reveals how she and Meherwan learned to merge their strengths in order to thrive at work and at home. And she reflects on navigating the recession of 2009, the pandemic, and the devastation of the floods in Asheville, illustrating the resilience and innovation needed to overcome anything. Their philosophy - being a restaurant that is a “people company that happens to sell great food” - has fostered a loyal team and a powerful sense of community.
\nA heartfelt tribute to the hospitality industry, Service Ready is a beacon of inspiration for aspiring restaurateurs and business leaders everywhere.
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When Maggie Bennett agreed to take a break from her own research to be the test subject in an experiment, all she wanted to do was help her best friend Sierra secure grant funding for the new medical imaging machine she was developing. But when Sierra’s ex-boyfriend Garrett causes an explosion in the lab next door, Maggie finds herself gifted with Superpowers and in the custody of the High Guard, Sun City’s most prominent Superhero Team.
\nAt first, it isn’t bad. The High Guard is helping her learn to use her powers while also working to keep her and Sierra from getting blamed for the explosion. And there’s Varsha, the cute speedster that keeps showing up at her room with homemade ice cream and staying for lesbian movie marathons. But when Maggie discovers that Garrett is alive, and part of a plot to steal dangerous alien technology with ties to Maggie’s past, she finds herself pushed into the role of a reluctant Superhero.
\nCaught in a race against time, Maggie must master her new abilities, and use her skills as a scientist to figure out why Garrett and his accomplices want the technology - and who they intend to sell it to.
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Sean is a mercenary who works as the bodyguard of Grand Master Caila of the Order of the Paladins of the Republic. A fact that the entire Order, except for Caila herself, resents deeply since they kicked Sean out almost twenty years earlier. It doesn’t help matters that Caila has taken a vow of Celibacy, but everyone knows that she and Sean have feelings for each other.
\nSean’s presence is only tolerated because Caila is the official Seer of the Paladin Order. While all Paladins can see the future to a limited extent, Caila’s gift with foresight exceeds even the head of the order.
\nBut when a mine destroys Caila’s ship just as they arrive in the Ptolemy system to settle a dispute over a hyperspace route, it quickly becomes clear that someone doesn’t want their mission to succeed.
\nWith only Reagan, a Paladin with a personal grudge against Sean for support, Sean and Caila make their way to Ptolemy, recruiting allies along the way to help them complete their mission, but each time they look into the future, Caila sees a vision showing her that Ptolemy will be reduced to a lifeless cinder if they leave, and Sean receives a warning that Caila will die if they stay.
\nCan they avoid disaster, or will Caila be forced to sacrifice herself to save an entire world?
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When Jakari got orders taking her to a primitive alien world, she expected the mission to be like any other. Get in, eliminate the target and get out again. Instead, when she arrived, she found out that one of the leaders of the fascist Char Oram was there, seeking to turn the inhabitants into mindless soldiers that could tip the war in favor of the Char.
\nWhen Hayami Takahashi followed a strange woman down a dark street, all she wanted to do was make sure the woman didn’t wind up as the next victim of a kidnapping ring working the streets of Dallas. Instead, she found herself in the middle of a civil war between two factions of shape shifting cyborg aliens.
\nAfter Jakari saves Hayami from becoming a test subject in a Char lab, the two of them end up working together to try to stop a war that’s been raging for nine thousand years.
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Megan Harwood never wanted to be a hero. She just wanted to indulge the two great loves of her life, woodworking and music, and for the last few years, she’s done just that running a small guitar making business in Sun City Florida with her dad’s help. But when Megan refuses to sell her shop, she ends up on the hit list of the Unitarium, an organised crime syndicate made of up supervillains and their minions.
\nAfter being grabbed off the street and used as a test subject in one of their experiments, Megan begins hearing a woman’s voice in her head. A voice that turns out to be Eurion, the beautiful woman Megan has had a crush on for the past year. A woman who also claims to be an ancient red dragon. With Eurion’s guidance, Megan is able to escape from the Unitarium’s clutches, and in the process, she discovers that they have infiltrated the Department of Metahuman Affairs.
\nBefore Megan can decide who to trust, she finds herself framed for Eurion’s murder, putting her squarely in the crosshairs of some of the world’s most powerful Superheroes. Frightened, alone, with only the voice in her head for guidance, Megan has to find a way to rescue Eurion and clear her name, before Eurion’s friends hunt her down.
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When Deputy US Marshal Danielle ‘Danny’ Martin was told she’d gotten a promotion, she expected to be leading her own fugitive retrieval team. Instead, she got transferred to Pontian Florida of all places, and assigned to a Superhero support detail for Focus, a seemingly immortal superhero who is also one of the most famous lesbian icons on the planet.
\nBad enough she’s got to spend every day working with a woman she’s had a crush on since she was five years old, but when she arrives at her new post, things start getting weird. It turns out that Focus asked for her by name, and it quickly becomes apparent that Focus wants to be more than just coworkers, or even friends.
\nAfter Focus has a violent reaction to Danny getting hurt in the line of duty, she starts looking into why the Superhero might be so fixated on her. She begins to suspect that seeing the future might be one of Focus’ powers, but when a mission leaves her stranded thirty years in the past, right at the start of Focus’s superhero career, everything becomes clear, except why the Focus in the past can barely seem to tolerate her presence.
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When Naomi Woodward’s doctor recommended her for a clinical trial, it seemed like the answer to her prayers. She was finally able to get her gender confirmation surgery and the surgery was a resounding success. She finally looked and felt like the woman she always knew she was.
\nHer new face and new body finally helped her work up the nerve to ask out Anika, the beautiful nurse that lived across the hall. To her delight Anika said yes, but when they are attacked during their date, Naomi quickly discovers that the experimental procedure she went through had some unexpected side effects, and that when Anika told her things with her family were complicated, she really should have listened.
\nNow, armed with superpowers she barely understands, a snarky artificial intelligence in her head, and allies that include a Superhero, a Dragon, and the literal Devil, she has to keep Anika safe from the archangel who’s out to kill her while they work desperately to prevent a second civil war in heaven.
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When Malt, the goddess of death, is accidentally turned into a human by a wayward spell, she finds she's ill-equipped to deal with the trials of a mortal life.
\nAfter all, why would a goddess need to know how to gather food or light a fire?
\nTrapped in a body that's frustratingly feeble, she's forced to team up with Bellis, warrior daughter of Boudicca on a perilous journey across Roman-occupied Britain to the afterlife to try to restore her powers. As animosity turns to attraction, these two very different women must learn to work together if they are to have any hope of surviving their quest.
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For three hundred years, humanity’s greatest works of art have been on loan at the Museum of the Seed-Born. It was finally time for them to come home . . . but the alien curators were disinclined to return them.
\nForce was out of the question. Earth’s government was they were not going to press the issue. So, all we had was guile and hubris to fuel our little intergalactic art heist.
\nMy old friend Tarquin was our leader, but not the captain. That was Tchik-tchik, though whether Tchik-tchik was our insectoid pilot’s name or species is still unclear to me. Misora, with her extremely illegal biotech mods, was our muscle.
\nJack was there to hack the security systems of the biggest museum in the galaxy. He was a sensynth, a sentient synthetic being, and the most powerful machine intelligence on Earth uncorrupted by alien technology.
\nMy name is Fennel Tycho. I’d like to tell you I was there because of my expertise in Art History. Truth is, I was there because without me, Jack would not have agreed to go. He was notorious for being difficult to work with - but it was a mistake to think I could make things any easier.
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eventeen years ago, Quinn McKinley left her small town of Kingsford for a shot at a happier life. Now a successful real estate agent in New York City, she’s brought back on behalf of a client, begrudgingly accepting her return home in order to close the deal of a lifetime.
\nComing back opens doors she’s done her best to keep closed all these years, namely, how she felt about her childhood best friend, Sawyer Kent.
\nSawyer’s spent her whole life in Kingsford, working at her family’s antique store and trying to make everyone happy. Quinn’s return is unexpected, knocking her routine existence more than a little off balance. She’s still frustrated at how Quinn left things between them, and even if she has all kinds of unresolved feelings, she’s got bigger problems to worry about right now.
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Taylor Tate has one last chance to turn things around. As the owner of Charm City Events, she needs her upcoming week of Valentine’s Day events to go off without a hitch. She’s painstakingly planned every detail down to the last red heart decoration, but what Taylor doesn’t plan on is the less than enthusiastic bar manager she’s paired with stumbling into her life at the worst possible time, making things more difficult every step of the way.
\nCarson Smith is getting by fine. She loves her job as the bar manager at Second Chances, a dive bar staple of the Baltimore landscape, and she doesn’t need anything or anyone disrupting the delicate balance she’s finally created. Especially for a stupid Valentine’s gimmick to take advantage of desperate singles. When the owner of the bar forces her to work with an event planning company to drum up business, she has no choice but to begrudgingly agree. It’s either play along or see the bar close, and she can’t let that happen.
\nIt’s only a week, but time passes differently when there’s love in the air and too much on the line, and both women soon find their lives, and hearts, intertwined as they work together to make the week a success.
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Olivia Carver’s life in Lake Cabot, New York is simple. That’s how she likes it, even if she can’t stop the town she loves from being overrun by wealthy tourists each summer. When she’s not working at her family’s paddleboard shop or spending time with her lovable but infuriating brothers, she puts her energy into writing professionally, a dream that has yet to materialise.
\nValerie Maycomb used to summer in Lake Cabot with her family when she was younger, until school and planning for her future became the driving forces in her existence. For the first time in years, following her college graduation, she’s spending a few months in the small, lakeside town she loved as a child. All she wants is a little time to decompress before law school in the fall and maybe even strike up the courage to talk to a woman.
\nA chance meeting at the lake opens up the possibility of a summer romance, with the explicit understanding that it can’t become something more. Olivia’s not built for falling in love, and Val needs to keep her eye on the prize of a successful career. But neither of them can deny the attraction, and summer quickly takes on a life of its own.
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Emery Bates has exactly one problem she’s willing to admit, and it’s that she doesn’t have a girlfriend to take as her date to a wedding. Not because she needs a girlfriend, but because she needs an easier way to come out to college friends that she hasn’t seen in five years. When her next door neighbor ends up single a few weeks before the wedding, problem solver Emery realises inviting Jordan along and faking romance for a week in Hawaii could be perfect for both of them.
\nJordan Davis doesn’t worry about much, especially what will happen tomorrow. Life’s too short to plan every second, and it usually doesn’t work out anyway. When Emery invites her on an all-expenses paid trip to Hawaii, it’s not a hard sell. She’ll get to enjoy a tropical vacation with one of her closest friends, and she’ll get to spend more time with Emery, away from Emery’s hectic work schedule back in Austin.
\nBut, there’s more to the request than Emery’s letting on, and there’s more to Jordan’s willingness to help than she wants to admit. It’s only eight days, but time passes differently when there’s nowhere to be and nowhere to hide. When lines blur between reality and fiction, both women have to decide if falling in love is worth the jump.
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Nora Gallagher can begrudgingly admit that she and Gray Ferris are both stellar Philadelphia real estate agents, but that’s the beginning and the end of the similarities between them.
\nNora’s life has been in a self-imposed holding pattern for half a decade. Depending on people in her personal life only leads to disappointment, and she has no plans of making that mistake again.
\nGray Ferris is extroversion personified. Bubbly. Conversational. Vibrant. She’s trying to make the best of life, even if it hasn’t always gone her way.
\nWhen the two women begin to learn that maybe they’re not as different as they think, they may finally figure out the most important thing they have in common when it comes to finding a life worth living.
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A year ago, Sydney King was a successful pro tennis player with a long-term boyfriend, a plan for the future, and a shot at fulfilling all her dreams.
\nNow, she has a cheating ex-boyfriend and a career-ending injury, and - quite frankly - things could not be going worse for her.
\nShe hopes that returning home to Stoneport, Massachusetts will be the reset her life needs - until she finds out her ex’s wedding to the woman he cheated with is the social event of the season.
\nThe last person Sydney expects to find camaraderie with is her former fiancé’s sister, Reese Devereux. Back home after the purchase of a local inn, Reese has wounds of her own and seems even less enthused about her brother’s wedding than Sydney.
\nWhen an unexpected mix-up creates the perfect story that she and Reese are dating, shockingly, Reese runs with it. Sydney knows it’s a bad idea, but being on Reese’s arm gives her the chance to pretend life is just a little bit more in her control than it feels.
\nBoth women are coming home to their pasts, but it’s up to them to decide what they want their futures to look like.
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Six months ago, Hallie Thatcher’s parents sold The Stone’s Throw Inn, where she’s lived and worked for her entire life. Everything is changing around her, and she’s been trying to adjust. Really. Even when it means navigating her new promotion at the inn. Helping to plan her best friend’s wedding to Hallie’s new boss. And now, there’s an interim manager joining the team, ensuring that Hallie can go visit her family over the holidays.
\nWhat she’s not expecting is to like the new manager, Brynn Fitzpatrick, as much as she does. Nothing about them should click, but they do. And though Brynn’s time in Stoneport is temporary, Hallie can’t help but lean into her unassuming charm, even when it means getting roped into Brynn’s ridiculous plan to start online dating. Or, more dangerously, when it means wondering why, as Hallie tries to start dating, no one compares to Brynn.
\nBrynn Fitzpatrick thinks helping out at The Stone’s Throw Inn is the right next step after a very public failed engagement. It’s a perfect favor to her ex-fiancé’s sister, whom she’s come to consider a friend. And friends have always been in short supply in Brynn’s life. Plus, she’s not ready to settle back in Boston, under the scrutiny of her parents’ overbearing but well-meaning support, in a city that’s never really felt like home.
\nFor someone who was supposed to be getting married a few months ago, Brynn’s never really thought a lot about love, but spending so much time with Hallie is making her think about all kinds of things for the first time. And it’s making her want things that she’s never expected to crave. Including Hallie.
Lucy Parsons wants absolutely nothing to do with the Westmoore family or the maple syrup they produce. When Sierra Westmoore blows back into town after her father’s death and tries to rent a room at Lucy’s family’s bed-and-breakfast, The Maple Inn, Lucy kicks her out on the spot. It doesn’t matter that Sierra hasn’t set foot in Maple Run in fifteen years - the Westmoores are not allowed.
\nBut small towns don’t leave a lot of room to hide, and Sierra and her brother, Drake, have set their sights on improving the town’s opinion of them now that their father is gone.
\nLucy doesn’t believe any Westmoore could have good intentions, and although she may have to play nice with Sierra, it doesn’t mean she’s going to like it.
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Lily Connor has focused all her energy into becoming a successful wedding planner, and after five years, she's on the precipice of taking on more responsibility at Southerland Wedding Company. When the chance finally presents itself, it comes with a complication she couldn't have dreamt up in her worst nightmares. With the bride and groom away for a month, Lily needs to work with the bride's best friend, Bennett Burke, a woman she never thought she'd see again.
\nIt was only for a few months, a study abroad experience that felt plucked from those same dreams turned nightmares, but Bennett is back, and Lily wants nothing to do with her. Bennett broke her heart the first time, and Lily swore she'd never let something like that happen again.Working together can't be avoided, but falling in love? Lily needs to stop that at all costs, even if it comes at the sake of her own happiness.
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Kennedy Ryan likes her life neat and orderly. Growing up in a big, rambunctious family, all she’s ever wanted is a little peace and quiet. She may not love her job, but she knows what to expect from it. And maybe she’s never been head over heels for any of her boyfriends, but they’re stable and practical. In her world, a life well-lived is a life well-planned. And there is nothing that gets under her skin more than the chaotic energy of Brooke Nicholas.
\nAfter an adolescence filled with unpredictability, Brooke Nicholas never got in the habit of expecting things. She managed to finish college, moved to Philadelphia, and lucked her way into working at a hip wine bar after graduation. Other than that, she takes life one day (or night) at a time, choosing to spend her time meeting new people and enjoying the moment.
\nKennedy and Brooke have circled around one another for years without growing close, and it takes getting stuck together during a post-graduation trip for Kennedy to finally realise she may have only scratched the surface where Brooke is concerned. A growing friendship, an abandoned puppy, and no one to act as a buffer between them is going to upend a lot of ideas Kennedy had about her perfectly crafted world. And it’s going to terrify Brooke because, for the first time in her life, she feels like maybe she’s found a home.
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Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher. Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest. Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn’t yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.
\nWhen the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland - Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman - their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways.
\nHow to Read a Book is an unsparingly honest and profoundly hopeful story about letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. With the heart, wit, grace, and depth of understanding that has characterised her work, Monica Wood illuminates the decisions that define a life and the kindnesses that make life worth living . . .
The story of your life never starts at the beginning. Don't they teach you anything at school?
So says 104-year-old Ona to the 11-year-old boy who's been sent to help her out every Saturday morning. As he refills the bird feeders and tidies the garden shed, Ona tells him about her long life, from first love to second chances. Soon she's confessing secrets she has kept hidden for decades.
One Saturday, he doesn't show up. Ona starts to think he's not so special after all, but then his father Quinn arrives on her doorstep, determined to finish his son's good deed. The boy's mother is not so far behind. Ona is set to discover that even at her age the world can surprise you, and that sometimes sharing a loss is the only way to find yourself again.
molka (n): the Korean term for spy cameras secretly and illegally installed, often to capture voyeuristic images and videos.
\nDahye can't believe her luck when she finds herself in a whirlwind romance with handsome, charismatic Hyukjoon, the heir to a multi-million dollar fortune.
\nBut then a shocking revelation threatens: the couple has been caught on a spycam amid Korea's growing molka epidemic, and the video is all over the internet. When Hyukjoon flees the country to avoid the intense public scrutiny, Dahye is left to grapple with the ramifications on her own; and the demons from her childhood, long dormant, begin to surface.
\nAmid the chaos, she catches the attention of Junyoung, a nerdy, introverted IT tech at work. Junyoung harbours a dark secret: he has been spying on the women at work with his own hidden cameras. As Dahye's life begins to unravel, she unknowingly becomes the sole target of Junyoung's perverse obsession.
\nWhen the facts surrounding the invasion of her privacy come to light, Dahye is faced with the humiliating truth. Her pain and hurt turn to rage as she faces her past. Her desire for vengeance is insatiable, and she will not rest until the men who have wronged her have paid in blood . . .
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London, 1990. Zivoin is newly arrived in a strange country. The dependable oldest son, he works all hours of the day and night, sending every penny he can save back to his family. On the news, he watches his homeland, Yugoslavia, slowly fracturing.
\nThousands of miles away, in the tropical heat of Uberlândia, Brazil, Alegria prepares to leave behind the country - and the family - she loves dearly. Bright and ambitious, she strives to give her parents the life they deserve, even if it takes her far from them.
\nA chance meeting throws Alegria and Zivoin together - and for a brief moment, they feel at home. But their journey is just beginning, and what follows will draw them irresistibly across countries and continents, leaving them both forever changed.
\nThe powerful, exhilarating debut novel from an award-winning new voice in fiction, Strangerland is a heartfelt testament to the endurance that has come to define a generation of immigrants. Above all, it is a soaring, emotionally rich story about the power of love to transcend languages, borders and time.
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When fame tastes sweet, how far can you go before it turns sour?
\nWith AI influencer robots taking the internet by storm, Mikah and his friends team up to make their own content. No robots, no AI, just human beings in all their fallible glory.
\nMikah’s mukbang channel where he stuffs his face with food soars to great heights, but what will happen when his body can no longer fly?
Anequs has not only survived her first year at Kuiper’s Academy but exceeded all of her professors’ admittedly low expectations—and passed all her courses with honors. Now, she and her dragon, Kasaqua, are headed home for the summer, along with Theod, the only other Native student at the Academy.
\nBut what should have been a relaxing break takes a darker turn. Thanks to Anequs’s notoriety, there is an Anglish presence on Masquapaug for the first time ever: a presence which Anequs hates. Anequs will always fight for what she believes in, however, and what she believes in is her people’s right to self-govern and live as they have for generations, without the restrictive yoke of Anglish rules and social customs. And fight she will - even if it means lighting a spark which may flare into civil war.
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The remote island of Masquapaug has not seen a dragon in many generations - until fifteen-year-old Anequs finds a dragon’s egg and bonds with its hatchling. Her people are delighted, for all remember the tales of the days when dragons lived among them and danced away the storms of autumn, enabling the people to thrive. To them, Anequs is revered as Nampeshiweisit - a person in a unique relationship with a dragon.
\nUnfortunately for Anequs, the Anglish conquerors of her land have different opinions. They have a very specific idea of how a dragon should be raised, and who should be doing the raising - and Anequs does not meet any of their requirements. Only with great reluctance do they allow Anequs to enroll in a proper Anglish dragon school on the mainland. If she cannot succeed there, her dragon will be killed.
\nFor a girl with no formal schooling, a non-Anglish upbringing, and a very different understanding of the history of her land, challenges abound - both socially and academically. But Anequs is smart, determined, and resolved to learn what she needs to help her dragon, even if it means teaching herself. The one thing she refuses to do, however, is become the meek Anglish miss that everyone expects.
\nAnequs and her dragon may be coming of age, but they’re also coming to power, and that brings an important realisation: the world needs changing - and they might just be the ones to do it.
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Rufyllys Vergana, the usurper, has stolen the throne from his adopted brother, Prince Ilruyn, plunging the empire of Navessea into civil war. The very first casualty of that war: Karthtag-Kal Sandaros, Marilia’s father.
\nWith the help of Ben Espeleos, Prince of Svartennos, Marilia has sworn to bring the usurper and the rest of her father’s killers to justice . . . including her own traitorous brother, Annuweth, now serving as the usurper’s right hand.
\nAnnuweth has sworn an oath of his own - to protect his wife and their unborn child from the forces who mean to destroy them. To guard Rufyllys Vergana’s reign against its enemies - even if one of those enemies is his own sister.
\nNavessea’s bloody civil war comes to a head in the third and final chapter of the Chrysathamere Trilogy. No one is safe, and no one will be the same.
The race for the throne of Navessea is on.
\nThe war with Tyrace is over. It was supposed to be a time of celebration. Of triumph. But for Marilia Sandara, hero of Chrysathamere Pass, the cost was too high. After watching her childhood friends slaughtered before her eyes, all she wants to do is sail back to Svartennos and try to forget the price she had to pay for her victory. But the peace isn’t long to last.
\nFirst comes the news that the woman Marilia loves may soon be engaged to another. Then, when Emperor Vergana makes a shocking announcement - that he means to disinherit his true-born son, Rufyllys, in favor of his adopted child, Prince Ilruyn - the seeds are sown that will plunge Navessea back into war.
\nThis time, Marilia and her twin brother, Annuweth, find themselves on opposite sides of a conflict that threatens to undo all they fought for. By the time the dust settles and the killing stops, only one of the children of Karthtag-Kal may be left standing.
Born the bastard daughter of a painted lady, Marilia was told she would live out her days within the walls of her mother’s brothel, a companion for the rich men of Tyrace. But after a terrible betrayal, Marilia’s world turns upside down. With the help of her twin brother, Annuweth, she flees the only home she’s ever known in search of the one man who can offer her a chance at a better life - the Emperor of Navessea’s greatest general, a friend of her deceased father.
\nWhat follows is a journey spanning years, from the streets of the desert city of Tyracium to the splendor of the emperor’s keep and the wind-swept, wild island of Svartennos. Along the way, Marilia discovers, for the first time, the gift she has for strategy and warfare - a world that is forbidden to girls like her
\nWhen the empire is threatened by a foreign invasion, the defense of Navessea is left in the hands of a cruel and arrogant general no match for the empire's enemy. With the fate of her new home and her family hanging in the balance, Marilia swears to use all her courage and cunning to do whatever she can to help repel the invasion - if she can convince anyone to follow her.
\nThe struggle that follows will test her to her core and lead her back to the past she thought she had escaped. Facing treachery within her own ranks as well as a devious enemy commander, Marilia will need all the help she can get, even if it means doing something her brother may never forgive - making a deal with the man who murdered her father.
\nInspired by The Song of Achilles and Ender’s Game, Marilia, the Bastard is a blend of the epic and the personal, a story of romance, envy, the rivalry between brother and sister, and one woman’s painful discovery that her childhood dreams weren’t quite what she imagined.
Mickey and Arlo are half sisters. But they’ve never spoken and never met. Arlo adored her father - but always lived in the shadow of his magnetic personality and burdensome vices. Meanwhile, their father abandoned Mickey and her mother years ago, and Mickey has hated him since. When she receives news of her father’s passing, Mickey is shocked to learn that he’s left her his not-inconsiderable fortune. The catch: Mickey must attend a series of therapy sessions before the money can be released.
\nUnbeknownst to either woman, the psychologist Mickey’s father has ensured she meets with is her half sister, Arlo. Having cared for her beloved father on his sickbed, Arlo is devastated to discover he’s cut her out of his will. She resolves to learn where the money went and why.
\nWorking together as therapist and patient - with no idea that they’re in fact sisters - Arlo and Mickey soon get under each other’s skin. Arlo, eager to outrun a mistake in her professional past, is keen to redeem herself with her new client. But Mickey is far from the model patient. As Mickey’s personal and professional lives spiral out of control and Arlo uncovers the truth about who her new patient really is, the sisters find themselves on a crash course that will break - or save - them both.
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Can money buy happiness? Yes. Can spending it make you happier? Absolutely. Yet, many of us struggle to unlock its full potential - either by spending on things that don't bring as much joy as they should or by avoiding investments that would truly enhance our mental well-being.
\nIn The Art of Spending Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel offers a refreshingly practical approach to managing wealth while finding deeper meaning and contentment. Instead of cookie-cutter financial advice, Housel provides you with psychological tools to navigate your personal relationship between money and optimising for happiness. Discover why people often mistake envy for admiration, how to align your expectations with your income, and ways to invest in future happiness while avoiding regret. Learn about the dangers of social debt and embrace the radical idea that the fastest way to build wealth is by going slow.
\nThe Art of Spending Money delves into the complexities that surround money - envy, social aspirations, identity, and insecurity - crucial aspects often missed in traditional financial books. Armed with new insights into money and wealth, you’ll learn to sidestep common spending traps, make smarter investing choices, and wield money to its fullest potential to enhance your enjoyment of life.
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Morgan Jerkins is only in her twenties, but she has already established herself as an insightful, brutally honest writer who isn’t afraid of tackling tough, controversial subjects. In This Will Be My Undoing, she takes on perhaps one of the most provocative contemporary topics: What does it mean to “be”—to live as, to exist as—a black woman today? This is a book about black women, but it’s necessary reading for all Americans.
Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality. In This Will Be My Undoing, Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.
Harlem, 2019. Ardelia and Oliver are hosting their engagement party. As the guests get ready to leave, he hands her a love letter on a yellowing, crumbling piece of paper . . .
\nNatchez, 1865. Discharged from the Union Army as a free man after the war’s end, Harrison returns to Mississippi to reunite with the woman he loves, Tirzah. Upon his arrival at the Freedmen’s Bureau, though, he catches the eye of a woman working there, who’s determined to thwart his efforts to find his beloved. After tragedy strikes, Harrison resigns himself to a life with her.
\nMeanwhile in Louisiana, the newly free Tirzah is teaching at the Freedmen’s School, and discovers an advertisement in the local paper looking for her. Though she knows Harrison must have placed it, and longs to find him, the risks of fleeing are too great, and Tirzah chooses the life of seeming security right in front of her.
\nSpanning over a hundred and fifty years, Morgan Jerkins’s extraordinary novel intertwines the stories of these star-crossed lovers and their descendants. As Tirzah's family moves across the country during the Great Migration, they challenge authority with devastating consequences, while of the legacy of heartbreak and loss continues on in the lives of Harrison's progeny.
\nWhen Ardelia meets Oliver, she finds his family’s history is as full of secrets and omissions as her own. Could their connection be a cosmic reconciliation satisfying the unfulfilled desires of their ancestors, or will the weight of the past, present and future tear them apart?
\nSweeping, textured, and meticulously researched, Zeal is both a story of how one generation’s choices reverberate through the years and an indelible portrait of an enduring love.
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Literary icon Brielle Stone has crafted an admirable life - an adoring daughter, a handsome partner, and a stunning Manhattan apartment. It would be perfect if only she could fall in love with the safe, kind man she’s dating.
\nTherapist Maeve Raleigh has spent a career helping others untangle complicated emotions, but nothing prepares her for the quiet allure of her client, Brielle.
\nWorse, a chance encounter at a seaside escape reveals the unthinkable: Maeve’s brother is the man Brielle is trying so hard to love. But ending their professional relationship doesn’t stop the women’s intense attraction. Even torn by family, emotions, and ethics, the ache and longing remains.
\nAre they willing to risk everything for a forbidden love that feels like coming home?
Retired master florist Kate Willow moved to remote Serenity Springs for one reason: peace. All she wants is a glass of wine, her creaky rocking chair, and the company of her horse, Moose.
\nHer effervescent neighbor Margot Reed is sunshine and glitter-soaked chaos who just won't leave her alone. Worse, Margot's wild, messy garden ruins Kate's tranquil view and chafes her fraying nerves.
\nTheir simmering rivalry ignites every year at the Rose Festival. Margot has won for five years straight - a crown Kate is determined to reclaim.
\nBut when a crisis forces them to work together, they discover beneath the passive-aggressive barbs an unlikely attraction is starting to bloom.
After two decades of togetherness, Julia's world shatters when her wife, Marin, leaves her without a word. Left with only fractured memories and a love story with missing pieces, Julia is trapped in a hollow existence, clinging to the hope of Marin's return. It's not until an electrifying moment with a mysterious woman in a bar that a glimmer of Julia's old self rekindles.
\nWhen Kleinton High hires an outside company to evaluate her school, Julia never expects it to be Erin, the woman she almost took home the night before. With their undeniable connection between them - a familiarness in Erin’s touch, a magnetic pull neither can ignore - Julia is compelled to face her past.
\nCan she rediscover the hope she thought was lost forever, or will the hollowness of Marin’s absence overtake her completely? Will Erin be the exact home she always deserved, or will the past creep back in? Hope and Other Lost Things is an exploration of love and rediscovery in the face of heartbreak. Julia’s story is a tribute to the humanistic anguish we harbor inside ourselves, and how a little bit of hope can hold us together on the journey to where we need to be.
In this sweeping debut novel Now Then follows a Harvard student navigating her own path to self-discovery while uncovering her mother’s secret past fleeing the Cuban Revolution.
\nNow - 1991 Cambridge, MA. Liliana Soto Walker is an 18-year-old freshman who arrives at Harvard from the humble Appalachian home of her Cuban immigrant mother and Black American father. Lily feels out of place in this new world of privilege, but her roommate Hana and a budding romance with Vikram - a charming Indian-British postdoctoral student - stirs a new sense of belonging. As Lily navigates the complexities of college life, her mother, Marisol, finally begins to reveal her past through heartfelt letters, sparking Lily's journey to uncover hidden histories and discover what it means to endure - and find happiness again. Meanwhile, Lily and Vikram form a deep bond that sweeps across decades and continents, one marked by amazing-turned-devastating missed connections.
\nThen - 1957 Havana, Cuba. Marisol, Lily’s mother, is a bright young woman with dreams of becoming a journalist. But as the calls for a government coup reach a deadly crescendo, one deadly night ahead of the Cuban Revolution forces Marisol to flee her homeland, leaving her scarred in ways she has never revealed. Until now. Through their letters, the secrets Marisol has kept hidden for years finally begin to surface, challenging Lily’s understanding of who her mother really is - and by extension, herself.
\nHeartfelt and romantic, suspenseful and surprising, Now Then is a powerful tale that explores the weight of secrets, the hope that comes with second chances, and the choices we live with - and love through - forever.
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From the porch of his home, Charles Lamosway has watched the life he might have had unfold across the river on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation. On the far bank, he caught brief moments of Roger and Mary raising their only child, Elizabeth - from the day she came home from the hospital to her early twenties.
\nBut there’s always been something deeper and more dangerous than the river that divides him from this family and the rest of the tribal community. It’s the secret that Elizabeth is his daughter, a secret Charles is no longer willing to keep.
\nNow it’s been weeks since he’s seen Elizabeth and Charles is worried. As he attempts to hold on and care for what he can: his home and property, his alcoholic, quick-tempered and big-hearted friend Bobby, and his mother, Louise, who is slipping ever-deeper into dementia - he becomes increasingly haunted by his past.
\nForced to confront a lost childhood on the reservation, a love affair cut short, and the death of his beloved stepfather, Fredrick, in a hunting accident - a death that he and Louise cannot agree where to lay the blame - Charles contends with questions he’s long been afraid to ask. Is it his secret to share? And would his daughter want to know the truth?
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They say there is no water in the City of Lies. They say there are no heroes in the City of Lies. They say there are no friends beyond the City of Lies. But would you believe what they say in the City of Lies?
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tIn the City of Lies, they cut out your tongue when you turn thirteen, to appease the terrifying Ajungo Empire and make sure it continues sending water. Tutu will be thirteen in three days, but his parched mother won’t last that long. So Tutu goes to his oba and makes a deal: she provides water for his mother, and in exchange he will travel out into the desert and bring back water for the city. Thus begins Tutu’s quest for the salvation of his mother, his city, and himself.
One thousand years after Tutu and five hundred years after Osi the City of a Thousand Stories stands resolute on the edge of the Forever Desert. A teeming oasis, water flows into every mouth that thirsts and knowledge sprouts in every mind that hungers for it.
\nEthike is an Ogisi, one of the City's many historians, who has devoted his life to studying a little-known figure named Osi. Unfortunately, the city has never approved any of his research papers and if he doesn’t find Osi’s story soon he will be stripped of his position.
\nDesperate to keep himself and his family from losing everything, Ethike ventures into the Forever Desert in search of the Lost Tomb of Osi. If he can find it, he will finally be able to prove his worth to the City’s elders and, more importantly, cement Osi’s role in history. But history is a tale told by those with power. What Ethike uncovers beneath the sand is far beyond anything he could have expected . . . and it is extremely angry.
500 years after the events of The Lies of the Ajungo , the City of Truth stands as is the last remaining free city of the Forever Desert. A bastion of freedom and peace, the city has successfully weathered the near-constant attacks from the Cult of Tutu, who have besieged it for three centuries, attempting to destroy its warriors and subjugate its people.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t17-year-old Osi is a Junior Peacekeeper in the City. When the mysterious leader of the Cult, known only as the Aleke, commits a massacre in the capitol and steals the sacred God's Eyes, Osi steps forward to valiantly defend his home. For his bravery he is tasked with a tremendous responsibility - destroy the Cult of Tutu, bring back the God's Eyes, and discover the truth of the Aleke.
Mallory Viridian would rather not be an amateur detective, and fled to outer space to avoid it . . . but when one of the new human arrivals on a space shuttle is murdered, she’s back in the game.
\nMallory Viridian would rather not be an amateur detective, thank you very much. But no matter what she does, people persist in dying around her - and only she seems to be able to solve the crime. After fleeing to an alien space station in hopes that the lack of humans would stop the murders, a serial killer had the nerve to follow her to Station Eternity. (Mallory deduced who the true culprit was that time, too.)
\nNow the law enforcement agent who hounded Mallory on Earth has come to Station Eternity, along with her teenage crush and his sister, Mallory’s best friend from high school. Mallory doesn’t believe in coincidences, and so she’s not at all surprised when someone in the latest shuttle from Earth is murdered. It’s the story of her life, after all.
\nOnly this time she has more than a killer to deal with. Between her fugitive friends, a new threat arising from the Sundry hivemind, and the alarmingly peculiar behavior of the sentient space station they all call home, even Mallory’s deductive abilities are strained. If she can’t find out what’s going on (and fast), a disaster of intergalactic proportions may occur.
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Amateur sleuth Mallory Viridian has just about got her bearings aboard the space station she calls home, but now the physical embodiment of the Internet is on its way, and it's bringing murder with it.
\nMallory Viridian has had a quiet few months. Even with the increased influx of humans visiting Station Eternity, she hasn’t seen so much as a bar brawl. Used to people dying left and right around her, the lack of murders to solve has left her unexpectedly . . . bored.
\nBut humanity's favorite way to waste time is on its way to her sector of the galaxy. The Alexandria, a giant data ship that contains the entire Internet from Earth, docks outside of Eternity and offers access to the world wide web to anyone on board who's interested.
\nWhich is exactly when another killer decides to strike. When Mallory finds her book agent dead, she knows she has to work fast to find the murderer. What with alien influencers, a lonely living comprehensive Internet, and a deadly crime to solve, Mallory has her work cut out for her . . .
A space adventure set on a lone ship where the clones of a murdered crew must find their murderer - before they kill again.
It was not common to awaken in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood.
At least, Maria Arena had never experienced it. She had no memory of how she died. That was also new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died.
Maria's vat was in the front of six vats, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it could awaken. And Maria wasn't the only one to die recently . . .
From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah.
\nSo when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet . . . and markedly devoid of homicide.
\nBut when the station agrees to allow additional human guests, Mallory knows the break from her peculiar reality is over. After the first Earth shuttle arrives, and aliens and humans alike begin to die, the station is thrown into peril. Stuck smack-dab in the middle of an extraterrestrial whodunit, and wondering how in the world this keeps happening to her anyway, Mallory has to solve the crime - and fast - or the list of victims could grow to include everyone on board . . .
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Acid rainstorms have transformed New York City into a toxic wasteland. Thousands have died and thousands more have been left stranded inside the five self-contained boroughs under military control. In one apartment building, an unlikely family of humans and ghosts survives. Mira reels from a devastating breakup with her partner Mal who is lost in the faraway expanse of Queens.
\nA second generation Chinese American now back at home with her mother, Mira calls out to the empty airwaves with her HAM radio in the hopes of reconnecting with Mal, or connecting with anyone at all. Across the hall, Shin, a ghost cockroach, replays his lost life, and a headless man named Sad falls in love. Mira’s mother is plagued by furious dreams alongside Grandpa Why, now a rambunctious ghost. As the world around them worsens, each character must learn to redefine what it means to live, die, and love at the end of the world.
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Set in a country where being gay is punishable by law, These Letters End in Tears is the heart-wrenching forbidden love story of a Christian girl with a deviant heart and a Muslim girl leading a double life
\nBessem notices Fatima for the first time on the soccer field - muscular and focused, she’s the only woman playing and seems completely at ease. When Fatima chases a rogue ball in her direction, Bessem freezes, mesmerised by the athlete’s charm and beauty. One playful wink from Fatima, and Bessem knows her life will never be the same.
\nIn Cameroon, a country where same-sex relationships are punishable by law, the odds are stacked against Bessem and Fatima from the start. And when Fatima’s older brother, a staunch Muslim, finds out about their affair, he intervenes by physically assaulting them, an incident that precedes a police raid at the only gay bar in town. After spending days in jail, Fatima goes missing without a trace, and Bessem is left with only rumors of her whereabouts. Has Fatima been sentenced to an unknown prison? Has she been banished from her community, or married off, as some have suggested? Or something even more sinister?
\nThirteen years later, Bessem is now a university professor leading a relatively quiet life, occasionally and secretly dating other women. However, she has never forgotten Fatima. After spotting a mutual friend for the first time in years - the last person who may have seen Fatima - Bessem embarks on a winding search for her lost love.
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Juniper O'Reilly is good at only two things: demolishing a pint of mead and finding the perfect skincare routine. Everything else - taking care of the farm, bartering for goods, any sort of manual labor - falls to Juniper’s best friend, the absurdly capable, endlessly patient Mo Elmthorn.
\nBut when Juniper accidentally volunteers them both for a quest to kill a fearsome monster, he knows he’s finally gotten in over his head. Juniper hates camping, he hates the dark, and there’s no way all these foraged mushrooms are going to sit well in his stomach. One thing he doesn’t hate? How good Mo’s thighs look in his questing pants - he doesn’t have time to think about that, though, with a monster to hunt and their futures on the line.
\nBut monsters come in all shapes and sizes. When Juniper and Mo realise that the terrifying beast they’ve sworn to kill is just a scared little girl torn from their family, they’re off to find not only the true villain of the story, but maybe even a happy ending.
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In the near future, best friends Noa and Nicole flee their home in Guayaquil, Ecuador to attend the Solar Noise Festival, a week-long, retro-futuristic gathering at the foot of an active volcano. While Noa fully embraces the haze of narcotics and hedonism in an effort to obscure her true reason for attending, Nicole senses something darker at play behind the festival’s so-called “celebration of life.”
\nAmid technoshamanic poetry, collective hallucinations, and ritualistic dances, each girl navigates her own path in an effort to escape her past and reclaim her right to a future.
What will become of our self-destructed planet? The answer shatters all expectations in this subversive speculation from the Hugo Award–winning author of the Broken Earth trilogy.
An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet’s finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: a graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind - hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out eons ago. After all this time, there’s no telling how they’ve devolved. Steel yourself, soldier. Get in. Get out. And try not to stare.
N. K. Jemisin is one of the most powerful and acclaimed speculative fiction authors of our time. In the first collection of her evocative short fiction, Jemisin equally challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption.
\nDragons and hateful spirits haunt the flooded streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow South must save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. And in the Hugo award-nominated short story \"The City Born Great,\" a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis's soul.
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The gods have broken free after centuries of slavery, and the world holds its breath, fearing their vengeance. The saga of mortals and immortals continues in THE BROKEN KINGDOMS.
\nIn the city of Shadow, beneath the World Tree, alleyways shimmer with magic and godlings live hidden among mortalkind. Oree Shoth, a blind artist, takes in a homeless man who glows like a living sun to her strange sight. This act of kindness engulfs Oree in a nightmarish conspiracy.
\nSomeone, somehow, is murdering godlings, leaving their desecrated bodies all over the city. Oree's peculiar guest is at the heart of it, his presence putting her in mortal danger - but is it him the killers want, or Oree? And is the earthly power of the Arameri king their ultimate goal, or have they set their sights on the Lord of Night himself?
In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realises he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power.
\nIn the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her.
\nIn Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels.
\nAnd they're not the only ones.
This is the way the world ends. Again.
Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze - the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years - collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.
Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She'll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.
Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle.
In the ancient city-state of Gujaareh, peace is the only law. Upon its rooftops and amongst the shadows of its cobbled streets wait the Gatherers - the keepers of this peace. Priests of the dream-goddess, their duty is to harvest the magic of the sleeping mind and use it to heal, soothe . . . and kill those judged corrupt.
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But when a conspiracy blooms within Gujaareh's great temple, Ehiru - the most famous of the city's Gatherers - must question everything he knows. Someone, or something, is murdering dreamers in the goddess' name, stalking its prey both in Gujaareh's alleys and the realm of dreams. Ehiru must now protect the woman he was sent to kill - or watch the city be devoured by war and forbidden magic.
For two thousand years the Arameri family has ruled the world by enslaving the very gods that created mortalkind. Now the gods are free, and the Arameri's ruthless grip is slipping.
\nYet they are all that stands between peace and world-spanning, unending war.Shahar, last scion of the family, must choose her loyalties. She yearns to trust Sieh, the godling she loves. Yet her duty as Arameri heir is to uphold the family's interests, even if that means using and destroying everyone she cares for.
\nAs long-suppressed rage and terrible new magics consume the world, the Maelstrom - which even gods fear - is summoned forth. Shahar and Sieh: mortal and god, lovers and enemies. Can they stand together against the chaos that threatens the kingdom of gods?
The season of endings grows darker, as civilisation fades into the long cold night.
\nEssun - once Damaya, once Syenite, now avenger - has found shelter, but not her daughter. Instead there is Alabaster Tenring, destroyer of the world, with a request. But if Essun does what he asks, it would seal the fate of the Stillness forever.
Far away, her daughter Nassun is growing in power - and her choices will break the world.
For more from N. K. Jemisin, check out:
The Inheritance Trilogy
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
The Broken Kingdoms
The Kingdom of Gods
The...
Gujaareh, the city of dreams, suffers under the imperial rule of the Kisuati Protectorate. A city where the only law was peace now knows violence and oppression. And nightmares: a mysterious and deadly plague haunts the citizens of Gujaareh, dooming the infected to die screaming in their sleep. Trapped between dark dreams and cruel overlords, the people yearn to rise up - but Gujaareh has known peace for too long.
Someone must show them the way.
Hope lies with two outcasts: the first woman ever allowed to join the dream goddess’ priesthood, and an exiled prince who longs to reclaim his birthright. Together, they must resist the Kisuati occupation and uncover the source of the killing dreams... before Gujaareh is lost forever.
The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women.
\nEssun has inherited the power of Alabaster Tenring. With it, she hopes to find her daughter Nassun and forge a world in which every orogene child can grow up safe.
\nFor Nassun, her mother's mastery of the Obelisk Gate comes too late. She has seen the evil of the world, and accepted what her mother will not admit: that sometimes what is corrupt cannot be cleansed, only destroyed.
All is not well in the city that never sleeps. Even though the avatars of New York City have temporarily managed to stop the Woman in White from invading - and destroying the entire universe in the process - the mysterious capital “E” Enemy has more subtle powers at her disposal. A new candidate for mayor wielding the populist rhetoric of gentrification, xenophobia, and “law and order” may have what it takes to change the very nature of New York itself and take it down from the inside.
\nIn order to defeat him, and the Enemy who holds his purse strings, the avatars will have to join together with the other Great Cities of the world in order to bring her down for good and protect their world from complete destruction.
What is a promise worth? To Saída, it is worth her life.
\nSaída Abbas is a bounty hunter surviving in a galaxy controlled by the sinister Grand Design. She has spent a decade in pursuit of a single goal: rescuing her beloved Uncle Abbas from their colonised home planet of Sektor 47. Joining her in her mission is her android partner, Rodok, who was an instrumental part in her own escape from Sektor 47.
\nTheir quest takes them on a journey to find an elusive medallion - a key to safe passage back to their home planet. But even as they make progress, the Grand Design stands in their way and it’s not the only obstacle. Is Saída’s promise to her uncle worth taking up arms against the greatest power in the galaxy?
Mal Caldera - former rockstar, retired wild-child and excommunicated black sheep of her Catholic family - is dead. Not that she cares. She only feels bad that her younger sister, Cris, has been left alone with their religious zealot of a mother, picking up the pieces Mal has left behind. While her fellow ghosts party their afterlives away at an abandoned mansion they call the Haunt, Mal is determined to make contact with Cris from beyond the grave.
\nShe manages to enlist the help of reluctant local medium Ren, and together, they concoct a plan to pass on a message to Cris. But the more time they spend together, the more both begin to wonder what might have been if they'd met before Mal died.
\nMal knows it's wrong to hold on so tightly to her old life. Bad things happen to ghosts who interfere with the living, and Mal can't help wondering if she's hurting the people she loves by hanging around, haunting their lives. But Mal has always been selfish, and letting go might just be the hardest thing she's ever had to do . . .
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Amira Valdez’s adventures continue in the sequel to The Sentient, as she finds herself in unprecedented danger. The ruthless new leader of the fundamentalist Trinity Compound seeks to understand his strange neurological connection with Amira and unleash an army on an unstable North America.
\nThe first human clone has been born, but thanks to the mysterious scientist Tony Barlow, it may unlock the secret to human immortality - or disaster. Together, Amira and Barlow form an uneasy alliance in pursuit of scientific breakthroughs and protection from shared enemies.
\nBut new discoveries uncover dark secrets that Barlow wants to keep hidden.
Kezza, an aerialist in the Martian circus, can never return to Earth - but she can assassinate the man she blames for her grim life on the red planet. Her murderous plans take an unexpected turn, however, when she uncovers a sinister secret.
\nA thousand years into the future, Azad lives a safe but controlled life on the beautiful desert planet of Nabatea. His world is upended when he joins a crew of space-traveling historians seeking to learn the true reason that their ancestors left Mars
\nSeparated by time and space, Kezza and Azad’s stories collide in the Martian desert.
Amira Valdez is a brilliant neuroscientist trying to put her past on a religious compound behind her. But when she’s assigned to a controversial cloning project, her dreams of working in space are placed in jeopardy. Using her talents as a reader of memories, Amira uncovers a conspiracy to stop the creation of the first human clone - at all costs.
\nAs she unravels the mystery, Amira navigates a dangerous world populated by anti-cloning militants, scientists with hidden agendas, and a mysterious New Age movement. In the process, Amira uncovers an even darker secret, one that forces her to confront her own past.
After a fateful confrontation with her former ally, Tony Barlow, Amira Valdez is on the run, pregnant with her own clone and desperate.
\nThe fundamentalist Trinity Compound has grown in strength and numbers, and with the help of the powerful mind-controlling drug Tiresia, is ready to march on the city of Westport. All of Amira's hopes lie with finding Nova, the first human clone, and solving the greatest riddle in human history - how to preserve human consciousness after death.
\nOnly Amira and Nova, together, can stand in the face of a world on the brink of disaster.
The year is 1920, in a small, unnamed city in a colonial empire. Soraya Matas believes she has found the ideal job as a personal maid to the eccentric Mrs. Hattingh, whose beautiful, decaying home is not far from The Muslim Quarter where Soraya lives with her parents. As Soraya settles into her new role, she discovers that the house is alive with spirits.
\nWhile Mrs. Hattingh eagerly awaits her son’s visit from London, she offers to help Soraya stay in touch with her fiancé Nour by writing him letters on her behalf. So begins a strange weekly meeting where Soraya dictates and Mrs. Hattingh writes - a ritual that binds the two women to one another and eventually threatens the sanity of both.
\nCape Fever is a masterful blend of gothic themes, folk-tales, and psychological suspense, reminiscent of works by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Daphne du Maurier, and Soraya Matas is an unforgettable narrator, whose story of love and grief, is also a chilling exploration of class and the long reach of history.
As a financial crisis looms, Jamal “Jack” Shaban is trying to save the residents of his Chicago condo from bankruptcy. But who is Jack, really?
\nIs he Midwestern, born and bred? Egyptian? Straight or gay? For his flight attendant colleagues, he’s an object of desire, even love, particularly for his sweetly bawdy Wisconsinite best friend, Birdy. Birdy knows nothing about Dimra, Jack’s traditional Muslim wife, with whom Jack is desperate to have a child. Enter an angry single mom new to Jack’s building. The resulting tangle of love, desire, and conflict returns Jack to the violence of 1980s Gaza, where a taboo affair nearly destroyed his life. All that anyone truly knows about Jack is how readily he sacrifices himself for peace between his embittered neighbors.
\nWith Jack’s impassioned care for others at its heart, this gorgeous novel weaves past and present, tragedy and bittersweet comedy, into a brilliant allegory for this wounded world we must all share.
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The vast Umar Empire has flourished for centuries thanks to the miraculous Ohaleh rice, a sacred grain brought by the first Empress Kokun from a distant land. Resistant to all parasites, the rice has sustained peace and prosperity - until now. When a mysterious infestation strikes, famine spreads, and the empire begins to crumble.
\nFifteen-year-old Aisha, granddaughter of the deposed king of the West Kantar domain, flees to the imperial capital with her younger brother after a violent coup. There, she meets the reigning Kokun, Olie - an enigmatic girl worshipped for her supposed gift of scent, yet secretly powerless. As Aisha uncovers her own latent ability to perceive the natural world through smell, she and Olie form an unlikely alliance.
\nTogether, they must confront a hidden history, uncover the truth behind the Ohaleh rice, and confront forces that threaten not just the empire’s survival, but the very balance of nature.
\nKokun: Volume 1 marks the beginning of an epic tale of rebellion, inheritance, and the fight to reconnect with a world on the brink of collapse.
The Psy-Changeling world has undergone a staggering transformation and now stands at a crossroads. The Trinity Accord promises a new era of cooperation between disparate races and groups. It is a beacon of hope held together by many hands: Old enemies. New allies. Wary loners.
But a century of distrust and suspicion can’t be so easily forgotten and threatens to shatter Trinity from within at any moment. As rival members vie for dominance, chaos and evil gather in the shadows and a kidnapped woman’s cry for help washes up in San Francisco, while the Consortium turns its murderous gaze toward a child who is the embodiment of change, of love, of piercing hope: A child who is both Psy . . . and changeling.
To find the lost, protect the vulnerable - and save Trinity - no one can stand alone. This is a time of loyalty across divisions, of bonds woven into the heart and the soul, of heroes known and unknown standing back to back and holding the line. But is an allegiance of honor even possible with traitors lurking in their midst?
Alpha wolf Selenka Durev’s devotion to her pack is equaled only by her anger at anyone who would harm those under her care. That currently includes the empaths who’ve flowed into her city for a symposium that is a security nightmare, a powder keg just waiting for a match.
\nEthan Night is an Arrow who isn’t an Arrow. Numb and disengaged from the world, he’s loyal only to himself. Assigned as part of the security force at a world-first symposium, he carries a dark agenda tied to the power-hungry and murderous Consortium. Then violence erupts and Ethan finds himself crashing into the heart and soul of an alpha wolf.
\nMating at first sight is a myth, a fairytale. Yet Selenka’s wolf is resolute: Ethan Night, broken Arrow and a man capable of obsessive devotion, is the mate it has chosen. Even if the mating bond is full of static and not quite as it should be. Because Selenka’s new mate has a terrible secret, his mind surging with a power that is a creature of madness and death . . .
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Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux knows she's the best - but she doesn't know if she's good enough for this job. Hired by the dangerously beautiful Archangel Raphael, a being so lethal that no mortal wants his attention, only one thing is clear - failure is not an option . . . even if the task she's been set is impossible.
\nBecause this time, it's not a wayward vamp she has to track. It's an archangel gone bad.
\nThe job will put Elena in the midst of a killing spree like no other . . . and pull her to the razor's edge of passion. Even if the hunt doesn't destroy her, succumbing to Raphael's seductive touch just may. Because when archangels play, mortals break . . .
Finally reunited in New York, they must now learn to navigate the monumental shift in their relationship. But for these two members of Archangel Raphael's legendary Seven, there is no time to rest. As they investigate a case for the Tower that echoes the darkness from Aodhan's past, they will be forced to confront not only the scars that mark them both, but the promise of a vast power that flickers in Illium.
\nThe threat of ascension has haunted and troubled Aodhan's Blue for too long, the forces of change immutable and without mercy . . . and uncaring of Illium's fierce wish to remain part of the Seven. Change is a constant in an immortal's life, and this new horizon will bring with it both terrible heartbreak and a joy extraordinary enough to reverberate through time . . .
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The severed head marked by a distinctive tattoo on its cheek should have been a Guild case, but dark instincts honed over hundreds of years of life compel the vampire Dmitri to take control. There is something twisted about this death, something that whispers of centuries long past . . . but Dmitri's need to discover the truth is nothing to the vicious strength of his response to the hunter assigned to decipher the tattoo.
\nSavaged in a brutal attack that almost killed her, Honor is nowhere near ready to come face to face with the seductive vampire who is an archangel's right hand, and who wears his cruelty as boldly as his lethal sensuality . . . the same vampire who has been her secret obsession since the day she was old enough to understand the inexplicable, violent emotions he aroused in her.
\nAs desire turns into a dangerous compulsion that might destroy them both, it becomes clear the past will not stay buried. Something is hunting, and it will not stop until it brings a blood-soaked nightmare to life once more . . .
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Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux and her lover, the lethally beautiful archangel Raphael, have returned home to New York only to face an uncompromising new evil . . .
\nA vampire has attacked a girls' school - the assault one of sheer, vicious madness - and it is only the first act. Rampant bloodlust takes vampire after vampire, threatening to make the streets run with blood. Then Raphael himself begins to show signs of an uncontrolled rage, as inexplicable storms darken the city skyline and the earth itself shudders.
\nThe omens are suddenly terrifyingly clear.
\nAn ancient and malevolent immortal is rising. The violent winds whisper her name: Caliane. She has returned to reclaim her son, Raphael. Only one thing stands in her way: Elena, the consort who must be destroyed . . .
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Naasir is the most feral of the powerful group of vampires and angels known as the Seven, his loyalty pledged to the Archangel Raphael. When rumors surface of a plot to murder the former Archangel of Persia, now lost in the Sleep of the Ancients, Naasir is dispatched to find him. For only he possesses the tracking skills required-those more common to predatory animals than to man.
\nEnlisted to accompany Naasir, Andromeda, a young angelic scholar with dangerous secrets, is fascinated by his nature-at once playful and brilliant, sensual and brutal. As they race to find the Sleeping archangel before it's too late, Naasir will force her to question all she knows . . . and tempt her to walk into the magnificent, feral darkness of his world. But first they must survive an enemy vicious enough to shatter the greatest taboo of the angelic race and plunge the world into a screaming nightmare . . .
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One of the most vicious archangels in the world has disappeared. No one knows if Lijuan is dead or has chosen to Sleep the long sleep of an immortal. But with her lands falling into chaos under a rising tide of vampiric bloodlust, a mysterious and ancient order of angels known as the Luminata calls the entire Cadre together to discuss the fate of her territory.
\nAccompanying her archangel lover Raphael to the Luminata compound, Guild Hunter-turned-angel Elena senses that all is not as it seems. Secrets echo from within the stone walls of the compound, and the deeper Elena goes, the uglier the darkness. But neither Raphael nor Elena is ready for the brutal truths hidden within - truths that will change everything Elena thinks she knows about who she is . . .
\nNothing will ever be the same again.
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Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux wakes from a year-long coma to find herself changed - an angel with wings the colors of midnight and dawn - but her fragile body needs time to heal before she can take flight. Her lover, the stunningly dangerous archangel Raphael, is used to being in control - even when it comes to the woman he considers his own. But Elena has never done well with authority . . .
\nThey’ve barely begun to understand each other when Raphael receives an invitation to a ball from the archangel Lijuan. To refuse would be a sign of fatal weakness, so Raphael must ready Elena for the flight to Beijing - and to the nightmare that awaits them there. Ancient and without conscience, Lijuan holds a power that lies with the dead. And she has organised the most perfect and most vicious of welcomes for Elena . . .
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Angels are falling from the sky in New York, struck down by a vicious, unknown force.
\nVampires are dying impossibly of disease.
\nGuild hunter Elena Deveraux and the Archangel Raphael must discover the source of the wave of death before it engulfs their city and their people, leaving New York a ruin and Raphael's Tower under siege by enemy archangels.
\nYet even as they fight desperately to save the city, an even darker force is stirring, its chill eyes trained on New York . . . and on Raphael. Rivers of crimson and nightmares given flesh, the world will never again be the same . . .
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Illium and Aodhan. Aodhan and Illium. For centuries they've been inseparable: the best of friends, closer than brothers, companions of the heart. But that was before - before darkness befell Aodhan and shattered him, body, mind, and soul. Now, at long last, Aodhan is healing, but his new-found strength and independence may come at a devastating cost-his relationship with Illium.
\nAs they serve side by side in China, a territory yet marked by the evil of its former archangel, the secret it holds nightmarish beyond imagining, things come to an explosive decision point. Illium and Aodhan must either walk away from the relationship that has defined them-or step forward into a future that promises a bond infinitely precious in the life of an immortal . . . but that demands a terrifying vulnerability from two badly bruised hearts.
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Raphael and Elena are experiencing their first ever year of true peace. No war. No horrors of archangelic power. No nightmares given flesh. Until . . . the earth beneath the Refuge begins to tremble, endangering not only angelkind’s precious and fragile young, but the very place that has held their most innocent safe for eons.
\nAmid the chaos, Elena’s father suffers a violent heart attack that threatens to extinguish their last chance to heal the bonds between them and make sense of the ruins of their agonising shared history.
\nEven as Elena battles grief, Raphael is torn from her side by the sudden disappearance of an archangel. But worse yet is to come. An Ancestor, an angel unlike any other, stirs from his Sleep to warn the Cadre of a darkness so terrible that it causes empires to fall and civilisations to vanish.
\nThis time, even the Cadre itself may not be able to stop a ticking clock that is counting down at frightening speed . . .
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Midnight and dawn, Elena's wings are unique among angelkind . . . and now they're failing. The first mortal to be turned into an immortal in angelic memory, she's regressing. Becoming more and more human. Easier to hurt. Easier to kill.
\nElena and Raphael must unearth the reason for the regression before it's too late, and Elena falls out of the sky. Yet even as they fight a furious battle for Elena's very survival, violent forces are gathering in New York and across the world.
\nIn China, the Archangel Favashi is showing the first signs of madness. In New York, a mysterious sinkhole filled with lava swallows a man whole. In Africa, torrential monsoon rains flood rolling deserts. And in Elena's mind whispers a haunting voice that isn't her own.
\nThis time, survival may not be possible . . . not even for the consort of an archangel.
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For thousands of years, the passion between Alexander, Archangel of Persia, and Zanaya, Queen of the Nile, burned furious and bright, seemingly without end. But to be an archangel is to be bound to power violent and demanding. Driven by its primal energy, Alexander and Zanaya fought as fiercely as they loved, locked in an endless cycle of devotion and heartbreak. It is only Zanaya's decision to Sleep that ends their love story.
\nEons later, the Cascade of Death wakens them both. The passion between them a flame that yet burns, Alexander and Zanaya stand together in one last battle against the ultimate darkness. But even a warrior archangel cannot win every war. Alexander's scream shatters the world as Zanaya falls, broken and silent . . . only to rise again in a miracle that may be a devastating curse. For is it truly the Queen of the Nile who has been resurrected?
\nOnly one thing is clear: This is the last beat of their passionate, angry dance. The final song for Alexander and his Zani . . .
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In the wake of a brutal war, the archangel Raphael and his hunter consort, Elena, are dealing with the treacherously shifting tides of archangelic politics and the people of a battered but not broken city. The last thing their city needs is more death, especially not a death that bears the eerie signature of an insane enemy archangel who cannot - should not - be walking the streets.
\nThis hunt must be undertaken with stealth and without alerting their people. It must be handled by those who can become shadows themselves . . .
\nAsh is a gifted tracker and a woman cursed with the ability to sense the secrets of anyone she touches. But there's one man she knows all too well without a single instant of skin contact: Janvier, the dangerously sexy Cajun vampire who has fascinated and infuriated her for years.
\nNow, as they track down a merciless killer, their cat-and-mouse game of flirtation and provocation has turned into a profound one of the heart. And this time, it is Ash's secret, dark and terrible, that threatens to destroy them both.
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With wings of midnight and an affinity for shadows, Jason courts darkness. But now, with the Archangel Neha's consort lying murdered and her rage threatening cataclysmic devastation, Jason steps into the light, knowing he must unearth the murderer before it is too late.
\nEarning Neha's trust comes at a price - Jason must tie himself to her bloodline through the Princess Mahiya, a woman with secrets so dangerous, she trusts no one. Least of all an enemy spymaster.
\nWith only their relentless hunt for a violent, intelligent killer to unite them, Jason and Mahiya embark on a quest that leads to a centuries-old nightmare . . . and to the dark storm of an unexpected passion that threatens to drench them both in blood.
The Archangel of Death and the Archangel of Disease may be gone but their legacy of evil lives on - especially in Africa, where the shambling, rotting creatures called the reborn have gained a glimmer of vicious intelligence.
\nIt is up to Titus, archangel of this vast continent, to stop the reborn from spreading across the world. Titus can't do it alone, but of the surviving powerful angels and archangels, large numbers are wounded, while the rest are fighting a surge of murderous vampires.
\nThere is no one left . . . but the Hummingbird. Old, powerful, her mind long a broken kaleidoscope. Now she must stand at Titus's side against a tide of death, upon a discovery more chilling than any other. For the Archangel of Disease has left them one last terrible gift . . .
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Once a broken girl known as Sorrow, Holly Chang now prowls the shadowy gray underground of the city for the angels. But it's not her winged allies who make her a wanted woman - it's the unknown power coursing through her veins. Brutalised by an insane archangel, she was left with the bloodlust of a vampire, the ability to mesmerise her prey, and a poisonous bite.
\nNow, someone has put a bounty on her head . . .
\nVenom is one of the Seven, Archangel Raphael's private guard, and he's as infuriating as he is seductive. A centuries-old vampire, his fangs dispense a poison deadlier than Holly's. But even if Venom can protect Holly from those hunting her, he might not be able to save himself - because the strange, violent power inside Holly is awakening . . .
\nNo one is safe.
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The world is in chaos as the power surge of the Cascade rises to a devastating crescendo. In furiously resisting its attempts to turn Elena into a vessel for Raphael's power, Elena and her archangel are irrevocably changed . . . far beyond the prophecy of a cursed Ancient.
\nAt the same time, violent and eerie events around the world threaten to wipe out entire populations. And in the Archangel Lijuan's former territory, an unnatural fog weaves through the land, leaving only a bone-chilling silence in its wake. Soon it becomes clear that even the archangels are not immune to this deadly evil. This time, even the combined power of the Cadre may not be enough . . .
\nThis war could end them all.
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Justice-Psy Eleri Dias knows the end is near for her, her mind one step away from fatal psychic exposure. In the short time that remains, she is determined to atone for an act of omission that has haunted her for a long, cruel decade. But that decision not only means facing a powerful changeling wing leader, but also putting herself in the path of a serial killer.
\nFalcon wing leader Adam Garrett is fiercely protective of his family and his clan. After losing his parents as a teenager in a shocking act of malice, Adam has no forgiveness in him for the J-Psy who betrayed him, betrayed them, at the most painful moment of his life. But the evil that stalks his territory will allow him no respite, forcing him once more into contact with the J he has never been able to forget.
\nEverything that could've been between Eleri and Adam was lost years ago, a shimmering promise crushed. As they work to uncover a monster, the moment of reckoning looms ever closer. Soon, there may be no more time left for either atonement . . . or love . . .
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A woman without a past becomes the pawn of the man who controls her future . . .
Dev Santos discovers her unconscious and battered, with no memory of who she is. All she knows is that she's dangerous. Charged with protecting his people's most vulnerable secrets, Dev is duty-bound to eliminate all threats. It's a task he's never hesitated to complete...until he finds himself drawn to a woman who might prove to be the enemy's most insidious weapon yet.
Stripped of her memories by a shadowy oppressor and programmed to carry out cold-blooded murder, Katya Haas is fighting desperately for her sanity. Her only hope is Dev. But how can she expect to gain the trust of a man who could very well be her next target? For in this game, one must die . . .
Max Shannon is a good cop, one of the best in New York Enforcement. Born with a natural shield that protects him against Psy mental invasions, he knows he has little chance of advancement within the Psy- dominated power structure.
\nThe last case he expects to be assigned to is that of a murderer targeting a Psy Councilor's closest advisors. And the last woman he expects to compel him in the most sensual of ways is a Psy on the verge of catastrophic mental fracture.
Though DarkRiver sentinel Mercy is feeling the pressure to mate, she savagely resists when Riley Kincaid, a lieutenant from the SnowDancer pack, tries to possess her. The problem is not simply that he pushes her buttons; the problem is that he's a wolf, she's a cat, and they're both used to being on top.
\nBut when a brilliant changeling researcher is kidnapped from DarkRiver territory, Mercy and Riley must work together to track the young man - before his shadowy captors decide he's no longer useful. Along the way, the two dominants may find that submitting to one another uncovers not just a deadly conspiracy, but a passion so raw that it'll leave them both branded by fire . . .
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As an Arrow, an elite soldier in the Psy Council ranks, Judd Lauren was forced to do terrible things in the name of his people. Now a defector, his dark abilities have made him the most deadly of assassins - cold, pitiless, unfeeling. Until he meets Brenna . . .
\nBrenna Shane Kincaid was an innocent before she was abducted - and had her mind violated - by a serial killer. Her sense of evil runs so deep, she fears she could become a killer herself. Then the first dead body is found, victim of a familiar madness. Judd is her only hope, yet her sensual changeling side rebels against the inhuman chill of his personality, even as desire explodes between them.
\nShocking and raw, their passion is a danger that threatens not only their hearts, but their very lives . . .
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A dangerous, volatile rebel, hands stained bloodred.
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A woman whose very existence has been erased.
A love story so dark, it may shatter the world itself.
A deadly price that must be paid.
The day of reckoning is here.
Separated from her son and forced to create a neural implant that will mean the effective enslavement of her psychically gifted race, Ashaya Aleine is the perfect Psy - cool, calm, emotionless . . . at least on the surface. Inside, she's fighting a desperate battle to save her son and escape the vicious cold of the PsyNet. Yet when escape comes, it leads not to safety, but to the lethal danger of a sniper's embrace.
\nDarkRiver sniper Dorian Christensen lost his sister to a Psy killer. Though he lacks the changeling ability to shift into animal form, his leopard lives within. And that leopard's rage at the brutal loss is a clawing darkness that hungers for vengeance. Falling for a Psy has never been on Dorian's agenda. But charged with protecting Ashaya and her son, he discovers that passion has a way of changing the rules . . .
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Since the moment of her defection from the PsyNet and into the SnowDancer wolf pack, Sienna Lauren has had one weakness. Hawke. Alpha and dangerous, he compels her to madness.
\nHawke is used to walking alone, having lost the woman who would've been his mate long ago. But Sienna fascinates the primal heart of him, even as he tells himself she is far too young to handle the wild fury of the wolf.
\nThen Sienna changes the rules-and suddenly, there is no more distance, only the most intimate of battles between two people who were never meant to meet. Yet as they strip away each other's secrets in a storm of raw emotion, they must also ready themselves for a far more vicious fight . . .
\nA deadly enemy is out to destroy SnowDancer, striking at everything they hold dear, but it is Sienna's darkest secret that may yet savage the pack that is her home - and the alpha who is its heartbeat.
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Termed merciless by some, and a robotic sociopath by others, Payal Rao is the perfect Psy: cardinal telekinetic, CEO of a major conglomerate, beautiful - and emotionless.
\nFor Canto Mercant, family and loyalty are everything. A cardinal telepath deemed “imperfect” by his race due to a spinal injury, Canto cares for the opinions of very few - and ruthlessly protects those he claims as his own. Head of intel for the influential Mercant family, he prefers to remain a shadow in the Net, unknown and unseen. But Canto is also an anchor, part of a secretive designation whose task it is to stabilise the PsyNet. Now that critical psychic network is dying, threatening to collapse and kill the entire Psy race with it.
\nTo save those he loves, Canto needs the help of a woman bound to him by a dark past neither has been able to forget. A woman who is the most powerful anchor of them all: Payal Rao. Neither is ready for the violent inferno about to ignite in the PsyNet . . . or the passionate madness that threatens to destroy them both.
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On the rugged West Coast of New Zealand, Golden Cove is more than just a town where people live. The adults are more than neighbors; the children, more than schoolmates.
That is until one fateful summer - and several vanished bodies - shatters the trust holding Golden Cove together. All that's left are whispers behind closed doors, broken friendships, and a silent agreement not to look back. But they can't run from the past forever.
Eight years later, a beautiful young woman disappears without a trace, and the residents of Golden Cove wonder if their home shelters something far more dangerous than an unforgiving landscape.
It's not long before the dark past collides with the haunting present and deadly secrets . . .
Clay Bennett is a powerful DarkRiver sentinel, but he grew up in the slums with his human mother, never knowing his changeling father. As a young boy without the bonds of Pack, he tried to stifle his animal nature. He failed . . . and committed the most extreme act of violence, killing a man and losing his best friend, Talin, in the bloody aftermath. Everything good in him died the day he was told that she, too, was dead.
\nTalin McKade barely survived a childhood drenched in bloodshed and terror. Now a new nightmare is stalking her life - the street children she works to protect are disappearing and turning up dead. Determined to keep them safe, she unlocks the darkest secret in her heart, and steels herself to ask the help of the strongest man she knows . . .
\nClay lost Talin once. He will not let her go again, his hunger to possess her is a clawing need born of the leopard within. As they race to save the innocent, Clay and Talin must face the violent truths of their past, or risk losing everything that ever mattered to them.
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Security specialist Bowen Knight has come back from the dead. But there's a ticking time bomb in his head: a chip implanted to block telepathic interference that could fail at any moment - taking his brain along with it. With no time to waste, he should be back on land helping the Human Alliance. Instead, he's at the bottom of the ocean, consumed with an enigmatic changeling . . .
\nKaia Luna may have traded in science for being a chef, but she won't hide the facts of Bo's condition from him or herself. She's suffered too much loss in her life to fall prey to the dangerous charm of a human who is a dead man walking. And she carries a devastating secret Bo could never imagine . . .
\nBut when Kaia is taken by those who mean her deadly harm, all bets are off. Bo will do anything to get her back - even if it means striking a devil's bargain and giving up his mind to the enemy . . .
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Indigo, a SnowDancer lieutenant, will only date someone who is her equal in rank. As the pack's tracker, Andrew Kincaid is outside of the rigid ranking structure, and he'll use all his charm and persistence to strike the right balance between wooing and challenging aggressive, dominant Indigo. The game between them, alternately playful and deliciously sexy, is set against a backdrop of a war among members of the emotionless Psy Council, a war that puts the entire SnowDancer pack at risk.
\nLongtime fans will welcome the return to the well-drawn and engaging culture of changelings after two installments focused on human/Psy relationships. The overarching series plot looms over the romance, drawing readers further into a world of intrigue, deception, and love.
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Daughter of two ruthless high-gradient telepaths, Auden Scott is not the child her Psy parents wanted or expected, even before her brain injury. Her thoughts are scattered, her memories fuzzy - or just terrifyingly blank. The only thing she knows for certain is that she must protect her unborn baby . . . a baby she has no recollection of conceiving and who draws an abnormal intensity of notice from her dead mother’s closest associates.
\nLeopard alpha Remi Denier is a man driven by the primal instinct to protect. Protect his pack, protect his allies . . . and protect the mysterious woman who has become a most unlikely neighbor. With eerie eyes that see too much and a scent that alters in ways disturbing and impossible, Auden Scott is the enemy . . . but nothing about this strange Psy is what it seems, Remi’s feline heart as fascinated by her as the human half of his soul.
\nThen Auden asks Remi to help her shatter the wall of secrets that is the Scott bloodline. What they unearth will reveal a nightmare beyond imagination. This time, the battle is to the death . . .
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When socialite Nina Rai disappeared without a trace, everyone wrote it off as another trophy wife tired of her wealthy husband. But now her bones have turned up in the shadowed green of the forest that surrounds her elite neighborhood, a haven of privilege and secrets that's housed the same influential families for decades.
The rich live here, along with those whose job it is to make their lives easier. And somebody knows what happened to Nina one rainy night ten years ago. Her son Aarav heard a chilling scream that night, and he's determined to uncover the ugly truth that lives beneath the moneyed elegance...but no one is ready for the murderous secrets about to crawl out of the dark.
Even the dead aren't allowed to break the rules in this cul-de-sac.
StoneWater bears Pavel and Yakov Stepyrev have been a unit since birth, but now Pavel’s life is veering in a new direction, his heart held in the hands of Arwen Mercant, a Psy empath - and the only man who has ever brought Pavel to his knees.
\nThis is it. A point of irrevocable change. For Pavel . . . for Arwen . . . for Yakov . . . and for another pair of twins whose bond has a far darker history.
\nA low-gradient Psy, Theodora Marshall is considered worthless by everyone but her violently powerful twin, Pax. She is the sole person he trusts in their venomous family to investigate a hidden and terrible part of their family history - an unregistered rehabilitation center established by their grandfather.
\nPlaces of unimaginable pain designed to psychically wipe minds, leaving the victims shells of their former selves, the Centers are an ugly vestige of the Psy race’s Silent past. But this Center was worse. Far, far worse. And now Theo must uncover the awful truth - in the company of a scowling bear named Yakov who isn’t about to take a Marshall at face value . . . especially a Marshall who has turned his dreams into chilling nightmares.
\nBecause Yakov is the great-grandson of a foreseer . . . and he has seen Theo die in an unstoppable surge of blood. Night after night after night . . .
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Awakening wounded in a darkened cell, their psychic abilities blocked, Aden and Zaira know they must escape. But when the lethal soldiers break free from their mysterious prison, they find themselves in a harsh, inhospitable landscape far from civilisation. Their only hope for survival is to make it to the hidden home of a predatory changeling pack that doesn’t welcome outsiders.
\nAnd they must survive. A shadowy enemy has put a target on the back of the Arrow squad, an enemy that cannot be permitted to succeed in its deadly campaign. Aden will cross any line to keep his people safe for this new future, where even an assassin might have hope of a life beyond blood and death and pain.
\nZaira has no such hope. She knows she’s too damaged to return from the abyss. Her driving goal is to protect Aden, protect the only person who has ever come back for her no matter what. This time, even Aden’s passionate determination may not be enough - because the emotionless chill of Silence existed for a reason. For the violent, and the insane, and the irreparably broken . . . like Zaira.
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Assassin. Soldier. Arrow. That is who Vasic is, who he will always be. His soul drenched in blood, his conscience heavy with the weight of all he’s done, he exists in the shadows, far from the hope his people can almost touch - if only they do not first drown in the murderous insanity of a lethal contagion. To stop the wave of death, Vasic must complete the simplest and most difficult mission of his life.
\nFor if the Psy race is to survive, the empaths must wake . . .
\nHaving rebuilt her life after medical “treatment” that violated her mind and sought to suffocate her abilities, Ivy should have run from the black-clad Arrow with eyes of winter frost. But Ivy Jane has never done what she should. Now, she’ll fight for her people, and for this Arrow who stands as her living shield, yet believes he is beyond redemption. But as the world turns to screaming crimson, even Ivy’s fierce will may not be enough to save Vasic from the cold darkness . . .
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Control. Precision. Family. These are the principles that drive Silver Mercant. At a time when the fledgling Trinity Accord seeks to unite a divided world, with Silver playing a crucial role as director of a worldwide emergency response network, wildness and chaos are the last things she needs in her life. But that's exactly what Valentin Nikolaev, alpha of the StoneWater bears, brings with him.
\nValentin has never met a more fascinating woman. Though Silver is ruled by Silence - her mind clear of all emotion - Valentin senses a whisper of fire around her. That's what keeps him climbing apartment buildings to be near her. But when a shadow assassin almost succeeds in poisoning Silver, the stakes become deadly serious . . . and Silver finds herself in the heart of a powerful bear clan.
\nHer would-be assassin has no idea what their poison has unleashed . . .
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A fresh new talent in the realm of paranormal romance, Nalini Singh dives into a world torn apart by a powerful race with phenomenal powers of the mind and none of the heart . . .
\nIn a world that denies emotions, where the ruling Psy punish any sign of desire, Sascha Duncan must conceal the feelings that brand her as flawed. To reveal them would be to sentence herself to the horror of rehabilitation, the complete psychic erasure of everything she ever was
\nBoth human and animal, Lucas Hunter is a Changeling hungry for the very sensations the Psy disdain. After centuries of uneasy coexistence, these two races are now on the verge of war over the brutal murders of several Changeling women. Lucas is determined to find the Psy killer who butchered his packmate, and Sascha is his ticket into their closely guarded society. But he soon discovers that this ice-cold Psy is very capable of passion and that the animal in him is fascinated by her. Caught between their conflicting worlds, Lucas and Sascha must remain bound to their identities or sacrifice everything for a taste of darkest temptation.
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Silence has fallen. The Psy are free to feel emotion. Free to love. But Silence was never a prison for Ivan Mercant. The biggest threat to his future lies dormant in his brain - a psychic monster that wants only to feed. And now, the brutal leash he’s kept on that monster is slipping. He prepared for this day, for the end of Ivan Mercant . . . but that was before he met Lei.
\nAs primal as she is human, this wild changeling brings color into his life, laughter to his soul. Then the dream shatters in a rain of blood, in silent bodies in the snow. Lei is gone. Vanished without a trace . . . until he meets strangely familiar eyes across a busy San Francisco street.
\nSoleil Bijoux Garcia is a healer who has lost everything. She exists in a world of desolate aloneness . . . till the day she finds herself face-to-face with a lethal stranger. The animal who is her other half knows this man, but her memories are tattered fragments. Sorrow and a need for vengeance are all that drive her. Her mission? To kill the alpha of the DarkRiver leopard pack.
\nBut fate has other plans. Soon, a deadly soldier who believes himself a monster and a broken healer might be all that stand between life and death for the entire Psy race.
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Love at first sight, a whirlwind Vegas wedding, a fairy-tale romance.
\nFor seventy-nine days, Tavish Advani has been the happiest man in the world - until his new life turns to ash, his wealthy in-laws’ house going up in a fiery explosion. His badly injured wife lies in a coma, her family all but annihilated.
\nTavish thought he left the sins of his Los Angeles life behind, but it’s not so easy to leave behind an investigation into the deaths of several high-profile women - all of whom he professed to love. Tragedy and death follow him no matter where he goes . . . but this time, he knows he’s innocent.
\nDesperately trying to clear his name as the authorities zero in, he begins his own investigation into the fire - and learns that his wife’s picture-perfect family may have been nothing but a meticulously constructed mirage. The truth is much darker than anything Tavish could’ve imagined . . .
Adria, wolf changeling and resilient soldier, has made a break with the past--one as unpredictable in love as it was in war. Now comes a new territory, and a devastating new complication: Riaz, a SnowDancer lieutenant already sworn to a desperate woman who belongs to another.
\nFor Riaz, the primal attraction he feels for Adria is a staggering betrayal. For Adria, his dangerous lone-wolf appeal is beyond sexual. It consumes her. It terrifies her. It threatens to undermine everything she has built of her new life. But fighting their wild compulsion toward one another proves a losing battle.
\nTheir coming together is an inferno . . . and a melding of two wounded souls who promise each other no commitment, no ties, no bonds. Only pleasure. Too late, they realize that they have more to lose than they ever imagined. Drawn into a cataclysmic Psy war that may alter the fate of the world itself, they must make a decision that might just break them both.
\nThey met when they were teenagers. Now they’re adults, and time has been kind to some and unkind to others - none more so than to Bea, the one they lost nine long years ago.
\nThey’ve gathered to reminisce at Bea’s family’s estate, a once-glorious mansion straight out of a gothic novel. Best friends, old flames, secret enemies, and new lovers are all under one roof. But when the weather turns and they’re snowed in at the edge of eternity, there’s nowhere left to hide from their shared history.
\nAs the walls close in, the pretense of normality gives way to long-buried grief, bitterness, and rage. Underneath it all, there’s the nagging feeling that Bea’s shocking death wasn’t what it was claimed to be. And before the weekend is through, the truth will be unleashed - no matter the cost . . .
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Hailed as a major new talent in paranormal romance, Nalini Singh takes us deeper into the world of the Psy and the changelings in her latest extraordinary novel, where a gifted woman sees passion in her future - a passion that is absolutely forbidden by her kind. In danger from fellow Psy, Faith NightStar's fragile sanity will be tested by an all-consuming passion for a changeling who can take the form of man or jaguar.
Used to cold silence, Faith NightStar is suddenly being tormented by dark visions of blood and murder. A bad sign for anyone, but worse for Faith, an F-Psy with the highly sought after ability to predict the future. Then the visions show her something even more dangerous-aching need . . . exquisite pleasure. But so powerful is her sight, so fragile the state of her mind, that the very emotions she yearns to embrace could be the end of her.
Changeling Vaughn D'Angelo can take either man or jaguar form, but it is his animal side that is overwhelmingly drawn to Faith. The jaguar's instinct is to claim this woman it finds so utterly fascinating and the man has no argument. But while Vaughn craves sensation and hungers to pleasure Faith in every way, desire is a danger that could snap the last threads of her sanity. And there are Psy who need Faith's sight for their own purposes. They must keep her silenced - and keep her from Vaughn . . .
The end of Silence was supposed to create a better world for future generations. But trust is broken, and the alliance between Psy, Changeling, and human is thin. The problems that led to Silence are back in full force. Because Silence fixed nothing, just hid the problems.
\nThis time, the Psy have to find a real answer to their problems - if one exists. Or their race will soon go extinct in a cascade of violence. The answer begins with an empath who is attuned to monsters - and who is going to charm a wolf into loving her despite his own demons.
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An illuminating, electrifying exploration of the work of Toni Morrison by an award-winning novelist and Harvard professor.
\nToni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and one of our most beloved writers, has inspired generations of readers. But her artistic genius is often overshadowed by her monumental public persona, perhaps because, as Namwali Serpell puts it, “she is our only truly canonical black, female writer - and her work is highly complex.” In On Morrison, Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and professor who teaches a course on Morrison to illuminate her masterful experiments with literary form.
\nThis is Morrison as you’ve never encountered her before, a journey through her oeuvre - her fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry - with contextual guidance, archival discoveries, and original close readings. At once accessible and uncompromisingly rigorous, On Morrison is a primer not only on how to read one of the most significant American authors of all time, but also on how to read great works of literature in general. This dialogue on the page between two black women artist-readers is stylish, edifying, and thrilling in its scope and intelligence.
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When her mother emigrates to China for work, twenty-year-old Chizu moves in with 71-year-old Ginko, an eccentric distant relative, taking a room in her ramshackle Tokyo home, with two its resident cats and the persistent rattle of passing trains.
\nLiving their lives in imperfect symmetry, they establish an uneasy alliance, stress tested by Chizu's flashes of youthful spite. As the four seasons pass, Chizu navigates a series of tedious part-time jobs and unsatisfying relationships, before eventually finding her feet and salvaging a fierce independence from her solitude.
\nA Perfect Day to Be Alone is a moving, microscopic examination of loneliness and heartbreak. With flashes of deadpan humour and a keen eye for poignant detail, Aoyama chronicles the painful process of breaking free from the moorings of youth.
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Andrea Daniels’s life is overflowingly full. She puts every ounce of energy she has into being a mom to her two daughters and her work as a registered nurse. When her best friend, Sara, asks her to be her maid of honor at her wedding in Fairbanks, Alaska, Andrea accepts. A week off from work and an adults-only trip filled with relaxation and scenic tours sounds amazing.
\nWedding photographer Riley Canon can pick and choose her clients, so when she’s asked to shoot a wedding in a remote lodge in Alaska, she jumps at the opportunity for a trip of a lifetime. It’s been on her bucket list for years.
\nThe last thing either Andrea or Riley expects is to bump into the one who broke her heart fifteen years ago, but when they meet at the welcome party, their feelings come rushing back. Trusting each other again might be impossible, but if they can overcome the hurt from the past, they just might get a second chance at love.
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Facing yet another failed relationship and a full-blown identity crisis after losing her job in a corporate merger, unemployed executive Amber Shaw realises she hasn't been happy in a long time. Who is she if not a CEO, and if everything she's worked for hasn't made her happy, what will? Inspired after learning about the Appalachian Trail, Amber sets off in hopes of figuring it all out.
\nLeslie Brown lives life on her own terms with nothing to tie her down. She's an experienced hiker and has one final trail left on her bucket list, the Appalachian Trail. Only problem, all her friends have settled down and started lives that don't allow for seven months away from responsibilities. She's out there alone.
\nAmber and Leslie assume they are polar opposites based on their first impressions of each other, but the more their paths cross, the more this hike of a lifetime begins to look like a love of a lifetime.
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Aren Jacobs trusts no one. Reeling from a devastating altercation with her foster family that left her scarred inside and out, she’s suddenly unemployed and all too happy to isolate herself from the world. But when a severe storm threatens her small community, Aren goes out to help and ends up saving Carol Matthews’s life.
\nCarol doesn’t know who to turn to after the storm leaves her homeless and grief stricken. Taking refuge with the woman who saved her is only one of her bad options, but there’s something about Aren that makes her feel safe despite all the rumors flying around town about what really happened the night Aren returned to visit her foster family.
\nThe last thing Aren expects is to fall for Carol. Sharing her home is one thing, but sharing her heart means sharing the demons in her past and risking everything to keep Carol safe.
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Alexandria Trenton is tired of living alone, but keeping secrets comes with a steep price. After growing up in witness protection, Alex is now a US deputy marshal specializing in protecting those awaiting trial. It’s a life that she simply can’t share, especially not when omitting the truth feels so wrong.
\nAlex’s world is turned upside down when her mentor passes away and his granddaughter, Elina Hawkins, shows up at the ranch the marshals are using to hide witnesses. Will the ranch be able to continue the sanctioned work? Or will she get a new assignment and be pulled away from the only place that feels like home? If she stays, can she resist the attraction she feels for Elina?
\nEven love has to wait when danger threatens everyone at the ranch. It’s the fight of Alex’s life to defend the secret sanctuary, and most importantly, protect Elina.
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Sam Phillips is going through the motions. She was happily married for thirty-four years when a car accident stole her wife and destroyed her perfectly planned future. Now, it's all she can do to exist day by day. The one thing that keeps her going is her IT administration job at Walsh Software Design. All seems lost when software stability issues threaten her career, until a hotshot programmer struts into her world and makes Sam want to feel again.
\nJennifer Delgado doesn't do cold and snow, but when a fluke February wildfire in the Southwest means evacuating for the third time in two years, it's time for a change and she accepts a contract job in Minnesota. The weather is nothing compared to the unexpected feelings she develops for Sam. Jennifer has no idea if she can mend Sam's broken soul, but it's never too late for starting over.
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After nineteen years as a conservation warden on some of the busiest lakes in Southern Wisconsin, Jordan Pearce is ready for a change of pace in the quiet of the Northwoods on the same lake she used to vacation on with her family. Her wish is granted when a colleague quits without notice. Everything seems to be falling into place.
\nHanna Quinn returns to the Northwoods to help care for her aunt Dottie after a cancer diagnosis. Both her aunts have been her saving grace and now it’s her turn to be their strength. There’s plenty to keep her busy, and the new conservation warden is a welcome distraction from her overflowing plate.
\nOdd occurrences put the community on edge, and the serenity of the Northwoods is rocked when a body is discovered floating in the flowage. Jordan pushes the limits of her authority to keep Hanna and her new town safe, but the truth isn’t always as it seems.
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Whitney was supposed to be the shining star of Locust Grove. But behind closed doors, even the brightest facade can hide dark secrets.
\nThe peaceful town of Locust Grove seemed like the perfect place to raise a family. Good schools, friendly neighbors, and a strong sense of community. That is, until the star student is found strangled to death.
\nAs she stares at the lifeless body, Detective Shelby Reed can't shake the feeling of deja vu. She's worked hard to escape her own troubled past, but the universe seems determined to keep dragging her back. And to make matters worse, her new partner, a charming detective who prefers making jokes over solving cases, is only getting in her way.
\nAs the evidence starts to stack up against their number one suspect, Shelby must confront her own fears and take a leap of faith. But can she trust her new partner, or will he be the one to bring her carefully constructed world crashing down?
\nWill Shelby be able to close the case and move on, or will her own personal demons push her to dig deeper and possibly put herself in danger?
Agatha, a bristly painter fleeing her own darkness, decamps to rural New Mexico to live the reclusive life of a small-town curmudgeon. It is there she meets Alice, a mild widow with a deepening case of dementia who keeps steady vigil at her daughter’s backyard grave. Despite Agatha’s rough edges and fierce aversion to sentimentality, she surprises herself by falling in love, and her well-worn convictions begin to upend.
\nAs Alice’s condition worsens, Agatha hatches a plan for them to live together at her remote residence at Mesa Portales. But when Alice’s wayward son comes along with different ideas - and Alice suddenly goes missing - Agatha takes matters into her own hands with the help of a faithful twelve-year-old-neighbor, a pair of shovels, and her trusty pickup, embarking on an unusual mission that calls into question whether some secrets are better kept buried . . .
\nSharp, watchful, at once thrillingly perceptive and hidden from herself, Agatha is as imposing and full of feeling as the vast canyon her rustic adobe home overlooks. Loosely inspired by the life of Agnes Martin, I Am Agatha introduces us to this irascible, indelible character over the course of a strange, singular stretch of days - days during which she learns new ways to fathom life, death, and her own heart.
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An aspiring actress, Jan is sure she’ll get the lead role in her high school’s production of The Crucible - so she’s shocked when the part goes to a new student named Kerry. Even though she’s hurt and disappointed, Jan can’t imagine not being part of the production and accepts the position of stage manager.
As she begins to work with the cast, Jan and Kerry develop a friendship that soon grows into something more, which doesn’t go unnoticed by the arrogant male lead, Kent. When Kent spreads rumors throughout the whole school, Jan and Kerry become the center of another kind of witch hunt - one that threatens to destroy their new relationship and their self-worth.
On the long drive to her family's summer cottage Liz Hardy was dreading the cobwebs, dust, and memories that surely awaited her after five uninhabited years. She knew there was no reason to put it off any longer now that both of her parents were gone. It was time to sell the rustic old place and nothing would ever be the same for her again.
Nora Tillot gazed out the window at her thriving garden and then across the kitchen to her failing parents. Today. Yesterday. Tomorrow. All the same she thought. But looking at her mother, Nora smiled radiantly, took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and went to help her father with his lunch.
One Journey . . .
When her rental car has a flat tire Liz reluctantly stops at the old Tillot farm to borrow a jack. Walking out to the barn together the two women unknowingly take the first steps on a path that will change both of their lives forever. But when their tender friendship turns passionate, Nora and Liz’ s happiness is shattered by accusations and rumors. Trying desperately to rise above the tumult, they silently wonder if their love can survive . . .
A comatose patient undergoes an experimental procedure that uses favorite childhood stories to pull the patient back into consciousness - but the experiment doesn't go quite as planned . . .
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Ten years after the Aliens left Earth, humanity has succeeded in building a ship, Friendship, in which to follow them home to Kindred. Aboard are a crew of scientists, diplomats, and a squad of Rangers to protect them. But when the Friendship arrives, they find nothing they expected. No interplanetary culture, no industrial base - and no cure for the spore disease.
A timeslip in the apparently instantaneous travel between worlds has occurred and far more than ten years have passed.
Once again scientists find themselves in a race against time to save humanity and their kind from a deadly virus while a clock of a different sort runs down on a military solution no less deadly to all. Amid devastation and plague come stories of heroism and sacrifice and of genetic destiny and free choice, with its implicit promise of conscious change.
Humankind has expanded out into interstellar space using star gates-technological remnants left behind by an ancient, long-vanished race. But the technology comes with a price. Among the stars, humanity encountered the Fallers, a strange alien race bent on nothing short of genocide. It's all-out war, and humanity is losing.
\nIn this fragile situation, a new planet is discovered, inhabited by a pre-industrial race who experience “shared reality” - they're literally compelled to share the same worldview. A team of human scientists is dispatched - but what they don't know is that their mission of first contact is actually a covert military operation.
\nFor one of the planet's moons is really a huge mysterious artifact of the same origin as the star gates . . . and it just may be the key to winning the war.
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In Probability Space, humanity's war with the alien Fallers continues, and it is a war we are losing. Our implacable foes ignore all attempts at communication, and they take no prisoners. Our only hope lies with an unlikely coalition: Major Lyle Kaufman, retired warrior; Marbet Grant, the Sensitive who's involved with Kaufman; Amanda, a very confused fourteen-year-old girl; and Magdalena, one of the biggest power brokers in all of human space.
\nAs the action moves from Earth to Mars to the farthest reaches of known space, with civil unrest back home and alien war in deep space, four humans - armed with little more than an unproven theory - try to enter the Fallers' home star system. It's a desperate gamble, and the fate of the entire universe may hang in the balance.
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A strange artifact has been discovered on a distant planet, an artifact that may be the key to humanity's salvation. For we at war with the Fallers, an alien race bent on nothing short of genocide, and this is a war we are losing.
\nThe artifact is not only a powerful weapon, but possibly the rosetta stone to a lost superscience . . . a superscience that the Fallers may have already decoded. Or it may be a doomsday machine that could destroy the very fabric of space.
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The diplomatic mission from Earth to World ended in disaster, as the Earth scientists discovered that the Worlders were not the scientifically advanced culture they believed. Though they brought a limited quantity of the vaccine against the deadly spore cloud, there was no way to make enough to vaccinate more than a few dozen. The Earth scientists, and surviving diplomats, fled back to Earth.
\nBut once home, after the twenty-eight-year gap caused by the space ship transit, they find an Earth changed almost beyond recognition. In the aftermath of the spore cloud plague, the human race has been reduced to only a few million isolated survivors. The knowledge brought back by Marianne Jenner and her staff may not be enough to turn the tide of ongoing biological warfare.
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The aliens have arrived . . . they've landed their Embassy ship on a platform in New York Harbor, and will only speak with the United Nations. They say that their world is so different from Earth, in terms of gravity and atmosphere, that they cannot leave their ship. The population of Earth has erupted in fear and speculation.
\nOne day Dr. Marianne Jenner, an obscure scientist working with the human genome, receives an invitation that she cannot refuse. The Secret Service arrives at her college to escort her to New York, for she has been invited, along with the Secretary General of the UN and a few other ambassadors, to visit the alien Embassy.
\nThe truth is about to be revealed. Earth's most elite scientists have ten months to prevent a disaster - and not everyone is willing to wait.
\nIn vivid, poetic prose, Nancy Kricorian’s The Burning Heart of the World tells the story of a Beirut Armenian family before, during, and after the Lebanese Civil War.
\nReturning to the fabular tone of Zabelle, her popular first novel, Kricorian conjures up the lost worlds and intergenerational traumas that haunt a family in permanent exile. Leavened with humor and imbued with the timelessness of a folktale, The Burning Heart of the World is a sweeping saga that takes readers on an epic journey from the mountains of Cilicia to contemporary New York City.
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Everyone knows Dr. Watson is Sherlock Holmes' right-hand man - so when he goes missing, it's a shock. Even Sherlock hasn't, well, the slightest clue as to where he could be. Enola is intrigued, but weary; she's still hiding from her older brothers - and getting involved could be disastrous.
But when a bizarre bouquet shows up at the Watson residence, full of convolvulus, hawthorn, and white poppies, Enola must act. She dons her most discerning disguise yet to find the sender - and quickly, for Enola knows the blossoms symbolize death!
Hold your breath, because Enola's about to take it away.
Enola may have met her match with . . . Florence Nightingale? For Enola, who has been longing for her absent mother, it’s difficult to make personal connections. Other than her occasional run-ins with her brother Sherlock, Enola doesn’t have many people in her life, except her landlady, Mrs. Tupper.
\nWhile she’s nearly deaf and can’t cook to save her life, Mrs. Tupper is endearing - really the closest thing Enola has to family these days. So imagine her horror when Enola comes home to find Mrs. Tupper kidnapped! Who would take her, and why? And what does Florence Nightingale have to do with it? There must be more to the kind, homely Mrs. Tupper than meets the eye.
\nEnola will put absolutely everything at risk to find Mrs. Tupper. And whoever took her had better watch out - because this time, it’s personal.
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Enola Holmes - sister of the world's most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes - always has an eye for mystery-solving. Still on the run from her brothers, Enola continues her investigative work in the busy streets of London, disguised under a new alias, and is now searching for the missing Lady Blanchefleur del Campo.
\nShe soon finds out that Sherlock is searching for Enola herself, but not to return her home this time. He has a message from their long-lost mother, a message only Enola can decipher.
\nArmed with clues about her mother's whereabouts, Enola walks a path of self-discovery and reconciliation.
\nWill Enola finally be reunited with her mother? And can she solve the mystery of what has happened to Lady Blanchefleur del Campo before it's too late?
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Enola's name backwards spells \"alone,\" and alone she is, in the world's biggest, darkest, dirtiest city. She is being hunted down by the world's most famous detective - her own brother, Sherlock Holmes. For the sake of freedom she must elude him, but what can she do to ease her loneliness?
\nWhen she discovers a hidden cache of brilliant charcoal drawings, she feels as if she's a soul mate to the girl who drew them - but that girl, young Lady Cecily, has disappeared without a trace. Braving midnight streets where murderers roam, Enola must unravel the clues - a leaning ladder, a shifty-eyed sales clerk, political pamphlets - to find the left-handed lady, but in order to save Lady Cecily from a powerful villain, Enola risks revealing more than she should. Will her own lonely heart betray her?
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When Enola Holmes, much younger sister of detective Sherlock Holmes, discovers her mother has disappeared - and on her 14th birthday, to make matters worse - she knows she alone can find her. Disguising herself as a grieving widow, Enola sets out to the heart of London to uncover her mother’s whereabouts - but not even the last name Holmes can prepare her for what awaits.
\nSuddenly involved in the kidnapping of the young Marquess of Basilwether, Enola must escape murderous villains, free the spoiled Marquess, and perhaps hardest of all, elude her shrewd older brother - all while collecting clues to her mother’s disappearance.
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Enola is thrown into a tailspin when she receives a desperate message from her old friend, Lady Cecily. Enola knows she must help her friend before it's too late - but she doesn't know how!
\nThis complicated case has Enola hunting down clues all over London until she finally discovers the awful truth: Lady Cecily is being held prisoner! Enola must risk her own freedom and join forces with her brother, the famed Sherlock Holmes, to free Cecily. Can Enola trust her brother, and can they save Cecily in time?
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When Miss Letitia Glover arrives at Sherlock Holmes's door, desperate to uncover the truth about her twin sister, Flossie, it is Enola who steps up to solve the case.
\nLetitia is convinced Flossie's husband is lying about her death. And indeed, Enola discovers that this is not the first time a wife of the Earl has met an untimely end. Could Flossie's fate be tied to a mysterious black barouche that arrived at the Earl's home in the dead of night? Enola is determined to unravel the secrets within Dunhench Hall . . .
Enola Holmes is back for one final mystery, and she faces a deadly foe - from the series that inspired the films, starring Millie Bobby Brown. Read them all before the next film lands. When Enola Holmes hears a muffled clanging sound coming from a 'safety coffin' in a chilly cemetery, she follows the sound to a crudely dug fresh grave. She starts digging . . . and inside a coffin she finds a girl who is drugged but not quite dead.
\nBut how to find where the girl belongs - or where she is running from - when she can't remember anything about who she is? Only Enola could persevere to solve the mystery, in the face of a gang of heavies on her trail and her brother Sherlock's strict warning to stay away from the case.
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Enola Holmes discovers that her friend Lady Cecily Alastair is in need of help. Twice before, Enola has rescued Lady Cecily from the sinister schemes of her father, Sir Eustace Alastair. And when Enola is brusquely turned away at the door of the Alastair home it soon becomes apparent that something is awry.
\nAfter a daring escape involving bows, arrows and prickly bushes, Enola quickly discovers she is not the only person trying to rescue Lady Cecily. Sherlock Holmes, the world-famous detective, is also on the case. Unfortunately, the girl has already disappeared again, and is now on the loose in the unforgiving city of London.
\nWill Enola and Sherlock work together to save Cecily? And can they agree on what they are saving her from?
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May, 1890. Wolcott Balestier, the representative of an American book publisher, has arrived in London on a singular mission - to contract English authors for their latest works.
\nWhen Balestier disappears on the streets of London one day, his great friend - Rudyard Kipling - bursts into Enola's office looking for help in finding him. Brash and unwilling to hire a young woman, instead he turns to Sherlock Holmes. Convinced that evil has befallen Balestier, at the hands of rival American publishers who pirate the works of English authors, he sets the elder Holmes on the trail.
\nBut Enola is determined to learn the truth behind the disappearance of the young American. Can book publishing truly be so deadly?
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On an ordinary day in an upscale Atlanta suburb, Maya is making breakfast for her two sons, when her husband drops a red-and-blue striped envelope on the counter and asks a devastating question: Who is Sunny?
\nMaya is sent reeling back to her childhood in Guyana - a time when Sunny was her only name. Unbeknownst to her husband, Maya is not who she claims to be. The letter, from her long-lost sister Roshi, now threatens to expose her true identity and shatter the seemingly perfect existence Maya worked so hard to build.
\nAs she frantically weighs the impact of the truth on her future, Maya relives the harrowing details of her past - her journey to America on the “backtrack,” the shock of being delivered into the hands of an abusive family while being severed from her own, and her many evolutions of self as she struggles to find a path forward against all odds.
\nSteeped in sensory detail, this striking debut transports the reader from the sugar cane fields of Guyana to the world of immigrant laborers in Miami to the affluent suburbs of Atlanta. Nanda Reddy takes us on a wrenching journey of assimilation, survival, and reinvention that explores the very construct of identity - all the while underscoring the strength of chosen family, love, and the resilience of the human spirit.
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There once was a book-loving king who lived in the Kingdom of - well, no need to get into details.
\nThe story went something like this: One day the king called two men to his castle and said, ‘I love books. I think I’ve read most of them, but my eyes are so bad now that I can’t read. Still, I love books, and I want to hear stories about them. I command the two of you to travel the world searching for anyone who knows of unusual books. Come back and tell me their stories.’
\nThe two men set out on their journey. A year later they returned. By then, the king could no longer so much as sit up in bed. Night after night the two men took turns telling him the stories they collected: tales of detective novels, romances, comedies, diaries, and quests.
\nThe Neverending Book is the story of the books they found and of what happened next.
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Tokunaga is a young comedian struggling to make a name for himself in Osaka, when he is taken under the wing of the more experienced, but no more famous, Kamiya. But as much as Kamiya's indestructible confidence inspires him, it also makes him doubt the limits of his own talent, and his own dedication to comedy.
Winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, Spark is about art and friendship, about what it means to be committed to our own ambitions and to each other. A novel about comedy that's as moving and thoughtful as it is funny, it's already been a sensation in Japan.
When Martha Einkorn fled her father’s isolated compound in Oregon, she never expected to find herself working for a powerful social media mogul hell-bent on controlling everything . Now, she’s surrounded by mega-rich companies designing private weather, predictive analytics, and covert weaponry while spouting technological prophecy. Martha may have left the cult, but if the apocalyptic warnings in her father’s fox and rabbit sermon - once a parable to her - are starting to come true, how much future is actually left?
\nAcross the world, in a mall in Singapore, Lai Zhen, an internet-famous survivalist, flees from an assassin. She's cornered, desperate and - worst of all - might die without ever knowing what’s going on. Suddenly, a remarkable piece of software appears on her phone telling her exactly how to escape. Who made it? What is it really for? And if those behind it can save her from danger, what do they want from her, and what else do they know about the future?
\nMartha’s and Zhen’s worlds are about to collide. An explosive chain of events is set in motion. While a few billionaires assured of their own safety lead the world to destruction, Martha’s relentless drive and Zhen’s insatiable curiosity could lead to something beautiful or the cataclysmic end of civilisation.
Chicago, 1944: Twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, where they have been detained by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, together with thousands of other Japanese Americans. The life in California the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone; instead, they are being resettled two thousand miles away in Chicago, where Aki’s older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier and moved to the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family’s reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train.
\nAki, who worshipped her sister, is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose’s death a suicide. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished, and optimistic sister would end her life. Her instinct tells her there is much more to the story, and she knows she is the only person who could ever learn the truth.
\nInspired by historical events, Clark and Division infuses an atmospheric and heartbreakingly real crime with rich period details and delicately wrought personal stories Naomi Hirahara has gleaned from thirty years of research and archival work in Japanese American history.
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Pasadena, 1903: Eighteen-year-old Ryunosuke “Ryui” Wada staggers off the boat from Yokohama, Japan, ready to reinvent himself after the untimely deaths of his parents. Though battling loneliness and culture shock, Ryui does his best to settle into his work as an art dealer’s apprentice while adjusting to his new home. From his enigmatic photographer roommate, Jack, to the beautiful seamstress living downstairs, Ryui finds himself surrounded by colorful characters and unbelievable opportunities and is soon utterly swept up in all “Crown City” has to offer.
\nBut tensions are seething under Pasadena’s bustling prosperity. Ryui is the victim of an anti-Japanese attack, and a painting is stolen from the studio of Toshio Aoki, Pasadena’s most successful Japanese artist, who then hires Ryui and Jack to investigate. It’s not long before their sleuthing leads them into real danger. Ryui is a naive young man in a foreign country - has he bitten off more than he can chew?
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Los Angeles, 1946: It’s been two years since Aki Ito and her family were released from Manzanar detention center and resettled in Chicago with other Japanese Americans. Now the Itos have finally been allowed to return home to California - but nothing is as they left it. The entire Japanese American community is starting from scratch, with thousands of people living in dismal refugee camps while they struggle to find new houses and jobs in over-crowded Los Angeles.
\nAki is working as a nurse’s aide at the Japanese Hospital in Boyle Heights when an elderly Issei man is admitted with suspicious injuries. When she seeks out his son, she is shocked to recognise her husband’s best friend, Babe Watanabe. Could Babe be guilty of elder abuse?
\nOnly a few days later, Little Tokyo is rocked by a murder at the low-income hotel where the Watanabes have been staying. When the cops start sniffing around Aki’s home, she begins to worry that the violence tearing through her community might threaten her family. What secrets have the Watanabes been hiding, and can Aki protect her husband from getting tangled up in a murder investigation?
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Toshiko, Jun and Mei Kawakami are a family, bonded through loyalty if not blood, who live outside the increasingly corrupt law and who are seeking revenge for the murder of their beloved “aunt” Reiko by the Lucky Crows. Haru is the son of the Emperor, destined to one day rule over the Archipelago and uphold his mother’s ignoble legacy, but he is more interested in making friends with the magical Sun Spirits it seems only he can see. Theo, forced to leave his homeland, is a reluctant foot-soldier for the Lucky Crows. He doesn’t want to be a gangster, but as an illegal immigrant to the city, his choices are severely limited.
\nWhen Toshiko steals a dragon pearl from the leader of the Crows, it sets them all on a thrilling path which will determine the future of Rainshadow City. Tightly set across two days and peopled with unforgettable characters, The Rainshadow Orphans blends the anime fantasy of works like Pokémon and Studio Ghibli and the anime science fiction of revolutionary cyberpunk like Akira to explore what it means to stand up to corruption and take charge of destiny.
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Beck Garrison lives on a seastead - an archipelago of constructed platforms and old cruise ships, assembled by libertarian separatists a generation ago. She's grown up comfortable and sheltered, but starts doing odd jobs for pocket money.
\nTo her surprise, she finds that she's the only detective that a debt slave can afford to hire to track down the woman's missing sister. When she tackles this investigation, she learns things about life on the other side of the waterline - not to mention about herself and her father - that she did not expect. And that some people will stop at nothing to keep her from talking about . . .
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Doctor Liz has just been acquitted for performing the last abortion in North Dakota when she's kidnapped.
\nThey're not just any kidnappers, but a fundamentalist cult, deep in the rural west, without respect for law or decency, and in desperate need of an OB/GYN.
\nGuarded, isolated, without access to the outside world, Liz nevertheless is treated with respect as the only doctor on the compound, but she is very aware of what happened to the last obstetrician they kidnapped.
\nShe must escape, and bring help to the girls trapped at the compound, if it's the last thing she does.
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After their fateful adventure in China, Capt. Will Laurence of His Majesty’s Aerial Corps and his extraordinary dragon, Temeraire, are waylaid by a mysterious envoy bearing urgent new orders from Britain. Three valuable dragon eggs have been purchased from the Ottoman Empire, and Laurence and Temeraire must detour to Istanbul to escort the precious cargo back to England. Time is of the essence if the eggs are to be borne home before hatching.
\nYet disaster threatens the mission at every turn - thanks to the diabolical machinations of the Chinese dragon Lien, who blames Temeraire for her master’s death and vows to ally herself with Napoleon and take vengeance. Then, faced with shattering betrayal in an unexpected place, Laurence, Temeraire, and their squad must launch a daring offensive. But what chance do they have against the massed forces of Bonaparte’s implacable army?
Shipwrecked and cast ashore in Japan with no memory of Temeraire or his own experiences as an English aviator, Laurence finds himself tangled in deadly political intrigues that threaten not only his own life but England’s already precarious position in the Far East. Age-old enmities and suspicions have turned the entire region into a powder keg ready to erupt at the slightest spark - a spark that Laurence and Temeraire may unwittingly provide, leaving Britain faced with new enemies just when they most desperately need allies instead.
\nFor to the west, another, wider conflagration looms. Napoleon has turned on his former ally, the emperor Alexander of Russia, and is even now leading the largest army the world has ever seen to add that country to his list of conquests. It is there, outside the gates of Moscow, that a reunited Laurence and Temeraire - along with some unexpected allies and old friends - will face their ultimate challenge . . . and learn whether or not there are stronger ties than memory.
From the dragon-filled Temeraire series and the gothic, magical halls of the Scholomance trilogy to the fairy tale worlds of Spinning Silver and Uprooted, this stunning collection takes us from fairy tale to fantasy, myth to history, and mystery to science fiction as we travel through Naomi Novik’s most beloved stories.
\nIn Buried Deep, we move from ancient Greece and Rome, through the Middle Ages and the Black Death, and into the modern era. We meet Mark Antony, Sherlock Holmes, and Elizabeth Bennet, in ways we have never seen them before. We visit exotic fantasy cities and alien civilisations among the stars.
\nThough the stories are vastly different, there is a unifying theme: the act of finding and seizing one’s destiny, and the lengths one will go to achieve that - be it turning pirate, captaining a fighting dragon, or shifting from marriage to seek your destiny with a sword.
\nAnd in the two tales original to this collection, we first reenter the remade Scholomance in the wake of El’s revolution and see what life is like for the new crop of students. Then, we get a glimpse at the world of Novik’s upcoming series, a deserted land, populated only by silent and enigmatic architectural behemoths whose secrets are yet to be unlocked.
For Laurence and Temeraire, put out to pasture in Australia, it seems their part in the war has come to an end just when they are needed most. But perhaps they are no longer alone in this opinion. Newly allied with the powerful African empire of the Tswana, the French have occupied Spain and brought revolution and bloodshed to Brazil, threatening Britain’s last desperate hope to defeat Napoleon.
\nAnd now the government that sidelined them has decided they have the best chance at negotiating a peace with the angry Tswana, who have besieged the Portuguese royal family in Rio - and thus offer to reinstate Laurence to his former rank and seniority as a captain in the Aerial Corps.
\nTemeraire is delighted by this sudden reversal of fortune, but Laurence is by no means sanguine, knowing from experience that personal honor and duty to one’s country do not always run on parallel tracks. Nonetheless, the pair embark for Brazil, only to meet with a string of unmitigated disasters that force them to make an unexpected landing in the hostile territory of the Incan empire, where they face new unanticipated dangers.
\nNow with the success of the mission balanced on a razor’s edge, and failure looking more likely by the minute, the unexpected arrival of an old enemy will tip the scales toward ruin. Yet even in the midst of disaster, opportunity may lurk - for one bold enough to grasp it.
There are no teachers, no holidays, friendships are purely strategic, and the odds of survival are never equal. Once you're inside, there are only two ways out: you graduate or you die.
\nEl Higgins is uniquely prepared for the school's many dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out untold millions - never mind easily destroy the countless monsters that prowl the school.
\nExcept, she might accidentally kill all the other students, too. So El is trying her hardest not to use it . . . that is, unless she has no other choice.
Tragedy has struck His Majesty’s Aerial Corps, whose magnificent fleet of fighting dragons and their human captains valiantly defend England’s shores against the encroaching armies of Napoleon Bonaparte. An epidemic of unknown origin and no known cure is decimating the noble dragons’ ranks - forcing the hopelessly stricken into quarantine. Now only Temeraire and a pack of newly recruited dragons remain uninfected - and stand as the only means of an airborne defence against France’s ever bolder sorties.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBonaparte’s dragons are already harrowing Britain’s ships at sea. Only one recourse remains: Temeraire and his captain, Will Laurence, must take wing to Africa, whose shores may hold the cure to the mysterious and deadly contagion. On this mission there is no time to waste, and no telling what lies in store beyond the horizon or for those left behind to wait, hope, and hold the line.
The one thing you never talk about while you're in the Scholomance is what you'll do when you get out. Not even the richest enclaver would tempt fate that way. But it's all we dream about, the hideously slim chance we'll survive to make it out the gates and improbably find ourselves with a life ahead of us, a life outside the Scholomance halls.
\nAnd now the impossible dream has come true. I'm out, we're all out - and I didn't even have to turn into a monstrous dark witch to make it happen. So much for my great-grandmother's prophecy of doom and destruction. I didn't kill enclavers, I saved them. Me, and Orion, and our allies. Our graduation plan worked to perfection: we saved everyone and made the world safe for all wizards and brought peace and harmony to all the enclaves of the world.
\nHa, only joking! Actually it's gone all wrong. Someone else has picked up the project of destroying enclaves in my stead, and probably everyone we saved is about to get killed in the brewing enclave war on the horizon. And the first thing I've got to do now, having miraculously got out of the Scholomance, is turn straight around and find a way back in.
Thrust into England’s Aerial Corps, Laurence and Temeraire undergo rigorous training while staving off French forces intent on breaching British soil. But the pair has more than France to contend with when China learns that an imperial dragon intended for Napoleon - Temeraire himself - has fallen into British hands.
\nThe emperor summons the new pilot and his dragon to the Far East, a long voyage fraught with peril and intrigue. From England’s shores to China’s palaces, from the Silk Road’s outer limits to the embattled borders of Prussia and Poland, Laurence and Temeraire must defend their partnership and their country from powerful adversaries around the globe. But can they succeed against the massed forces of Bonaparte’s implacable army?
Elle is gifted with an incredibly deadly and destructive ‘affinity’ - even the simplest of household spells could twist into something cataclysmic if she’s not on her guard. Elle knows what might happen if she ever gave into using the wrong kind of magic. A prophecy claimed she would cause the downfall of wizarding society as they know it, and so she has fought against her dark affinity all her life.
\nAnd outside the school’s walls, not all is as it seems. A terrible secret festers at the heart of wizarding society and Elle will have to find people she can trust and embrace her powers - maybe even her dark affinity - in an attempt to set things right and save her world.
Napoleon’s invasion of Russia has been roundly thwarted. But even as Capt. William Laurence and the dragon Temeraire pursue the retreating enemy through an unforgiving winter, Napoleon is raising a new force, and he’ll soon have enough men and dragons to resume the offensive. While the emperor regroups, the allies have an opportunity to strike first and defeat him once and for all - if internal struggles and petty squabbles don’t tear them apart.
\nAware of his weakened position, Napoleon has promised the dragons of every country - and the ferals, loyal only to themselves - vast new rights and powers if they fight under his banner. It is an offer eagerly embraced from Asia to Africa - and even by England, whose dragons have long rankled at their disrespectful treatment.
\nBut Laurence and his faithful dragon soon discover that the wily Napoleon has one more gambit at the ready - one that that may win him the war, and the world.
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Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders . . . but her father isn't a very good one. Free to lend and reluctant to collect, he has loaned out most of his wife's dowry and left the family on the edge of poverty - until Miryem steps in. Hardening her heart against her fellow villagers' pleas, she sets out to collect what is owed - and finds herself more than up to the task. When her grandfather loans her a pouch of silver pennies, she brings it back full of gold.
But having the reputation of being able to change silver to gold can be more trouble than it's worth - especially when her fate becomes tangled with the cold creatures that haunt the wood, and whose king has learned of her reputation and wants to exploit it for reasons Miryem cannot understand.
Celia discovered her talent for magic on the day her beloved oldest brother Argent left home. Furious at him for abandoning her in a war-torn land, she lashed out, not realising her childish, angry words would suddenly become imbued with the power of prophecy, dooming him to a life without love.
\nWhile Argent wanders the world, forced to seek only fame and glory instead of the love and belonging he truly desires, Celia attempts to undo the curse she placed on him. Yet even as she grows from a girl to a woman, she cannot find the solution - until she learns the truth about the centuries-old war between her own people and the summerlings, the immortal beings who hold a relentless grudge against their mortal neighbors.
\nNow, with the aid of her unwanted middle brother, Celia may be able to both undo her eldest brother's curse and heal the lands so long torn apart by the Summer War.
When Britain intercepted a French ship and its precious cargo - an unhatched dragon’s egg - Capt. Will Laurence of HMS Reliant unexpectedly became master and commander of the noble dragon he named Temeraire. As new recruits in Britain’s Aerial Corps, man and dragon soon proved their mettle in daring combat against Bonaparte’s invading forces.
\nNow China has discovered that its rare gift, intended for Napoleon, has fallen into British hands - and an angry Chinese delegation vows to reclaim the remarkable beast. But Laurence refuses to cooperate. Facing the gallows for his defiance, Laurence has no choice but to accompany Temeraire back to the Far East - a long voyage fraught with peril, intrigue, and the untold terrors of the deep. Yet once the pair reaches the court of the Chinese emperor, even more shocking discoveries and darker dangers await.
Convicted of treason despite their heroic defense against Napoleon’s invasion of England, Temeraire and Laurence - stripped of rank and standing - have been transported to the prison colony at New South Wales in distant Australia, where, it is hoped, they cannot further corrupt the British Aerial Corps with their dangerous notions of liberty for dragons.
\nTemeraire and Laurence carry with them three dragon eggs intended to help establish a covert in the colony and destined to be handed over to such second-rate, undesirable officers as have been willing to accept so remote an assignment - including one former acquaintance, Captain Rankin, whose cruelty once cost a dragon its life. Nor is this the greatest difficulty that confronts the exiled dragon and rider: Instead of leaving behind all the political entanglements and corruptions of the war, Laurence and Temeraire have instead sailed into a hornet’s nest of fresh complications. For the colony at New South Wales has been thrown into turmoil after the overthrow of the military governor, one William Bligh - better known as Captain Bligh, late of HMS Bounty.
\nBligh wastes no time in attempting to enlist Temeraire and Laurence to restore him to office, while the upstart masters of the colony are equally determined that the new arrivals should not upset a balance of power precariously tipped in their favor. Eager to escape this political quagmire, Laurence and Temeraire take on a mission to find a way through the forbidding Blue Mountains and into the interior of Australia. But when one of the dragon eggs is stolen from Temeraire, the surveying expedition becomes a desperate race to recover it in time - a race that leads to a shocking discovery and a dangerous new obstacle in the global war between Britain and Napoleon.
Naomi Novik's triumphant debut, His Majesty's Dragon, introduced a dynamic new pair of heroes to the annals of fantasy fiction: the noble fighting dragon
Temeraire and his master and commander, Capt. Will Laurence. Now in the latest novel, they soar to new heights of breathtaking action and brilliant imagination.
It is a grim time for the dragon Temeraire. On the heels of his mission to Africa, seeking the cure for a deadly contagion, he has been removed from military
service - and his captain, Will Laurence, has been condemned to death for treason. For Britain, conditions are grimmer still: Napoleon's resurgent forces
have breached the Channel and successfully invaded English soil. Napoleon's prime objective: the occupation of London.
Separated by their own government and threatened at every turn by Napoleon's forces, Laurence and Temeraire must struggle to find each other amid the turmoil of war and to aid the resistance against the invasion before Napoleon's foothold on England's shores can become a stranglehold.
\nIf only they can be reunited, master and dragon might rally Britain's scattered forces and take the fight to the enemy as never before - for king and country, and for their own liberty. But can the French aggressors be well and truly routed, or will a treacherous alliance deliver Britain into the hands of her would-be conquerors?
After suffering her first big heartbreak two years earlier, Penelope Lin has built a quiet life with no romantic entanglements. She spends her days cataloging a museum’s vast collection of Qing Dynasty bound-foot shoes and in the comfortable company of close friends. One day, she happens to meet Hoang, who confesses to releasing mice from the cancer research lab where he works. Hoang’s openness catches Penelope off guard; from then on, she finds her carefully constructed life slowly starting to unravel. Told in Penelope’s witty, vulnerable, and thoroughly endearing voice, Gingko Season captures three seasons of reawakening, challenges, and transformation.
\nThis wise and tenderhearted novel explores the nature of our deepest friendships as seriously as it does the dizzying terror and thrill of falling in love, and the complications of trying to live a life that matches your ideals.
East Village, summer of 1984. Renata is a young dyke-about-town who happens to have the ability to see ghosts, which has been happening more and more frequently as her friends have started dying of what has recently been named AIDS.
\nSo, when her best friend Mark dies, she assumes she'll see him again. There's no way Mark wouldn't give her a chance to say goodbye, would he? But to her disappointment - and increasingly, her concern - Mark doesn't appear.
\nRenata has other problems, too. There's something strange happening in her advertisements for paranormal 'exterminators' who promise to clear out bad energy keep showing up. At first, she's sure they're scam artists, but it becomes clear they're actually trapping ghosts as part of a city-wide gentrification plot to make downtown safe for Reaganites.
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The year is 2251. Jamie Cartwright is a gifted young army officer, the owner of a sexy smile, handsome looks, and a fiery temper. Stationed on-board the Atlantis, the finest spaceship the Quantum Fleet has ever commissioned, her future as a member of the Alliance military is looking bright.
\nUnbeknownst to her though, and to everyone else except an old shaman in a distant and mysterious universe, Jamie’s destiny is accelerating, headed fast toward an extraordinary conclusion . . .
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Newly-appointed National Geographic photographer Melissa Douglas is travelling to the Amazon to cover the work of Dr Jane Grayson, a rebel academic with a wildly dissident take on history. A huge fan of Grayson’s books, Melissa is beyond excited to accompany her on expedition.
\nGrayson herself has dedicated her life to the search for a lost civilisation that she believes may be Atlantean in origin. Specifically, she is on a quest to find a vanished temple which could hold tantalising clues. She has neither the time nor the inclination to babysit a fledgling reporter.
\nJane is all heat and brazenness, Melissa quietly strong under her apparent shyness. As they battle the jungle, the heat, deadly snakes and predators, their mutual attraction to each other soon starts to grow. But a sinister evil is lurking in the shadows, and the search for archaeological remains quickly turns into something much darker: a desperate race to stay alive . . .
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Once a rising star journalist, Lia Kennedy built a reputation for excellence on the frontlines of the Middle East. Even so, three years on the sidelines caring for her ailing father have left her exhausted, single, without a career. Eager for a fresh start, Lia takes on a job as a Police reporter on the West Coast. All she wants is to work hard and avoid complications.
\nEx-Army officer, Quinn Wesley, also knows the meaning of sacrifice. She lost teammates in Iraq and barely made it back alive. Her life now only includes her job as a cop, CrossFit training, and the odd one-night stand. She likes her life just the way it is.
\nFor different reasons, neither woman wants a relationship. Love? Even less! But sometimes, when you think you’re done, Life will laugh and say . . .
\nNOT YET!
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During a ferocious thunderstorm in Glastonbury, England, a woman gets run over by a bus a few miles from the legendary Tor. When she comes to, she explains that she was on her way to the island, to pray to the Goddess at the temple on the hill. Her name is Ashleigh. She cannot remember anything else.
\nOnly one person, local historian and past life regression therapist Andrew Monaghan, understands what this could really mean. He asks his colleague, New Yorker Kathleen Edwards, to fly over to help him with this unusual, and potentially extraordinary case.
\nFrom the start, it is obvious that the two women share a deep, meaningful, yet troubling connection. But who is Ashleigh, really? And will the dark secrets of her past eventually catch up with her, and cost her the life, and love she has always been searching for?
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When the Coastguard are called to a stranded sailboat in the Gulf of Lion, the last thing Team Leader Louka Scott expects to find is a woman whose allure and charm make her forget to breathe. If she let her, Elizabeth would threaten her carefully erected walls. Louka has no intention of allowing her close.
\nIn Provence for a summer of teaching at the Maritima archaeological centre, Oxford University lecturer Elizabeth McLean would have no such qualms. She is absolutely up for some fun on the side, and the sexy coastguard has got under her skin.
\nAs the weeks unfold, and the two women get close, not all is as it seems.
\nIn the end . . .
\nWhat’s the best that could happen?
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Elite Special Forces Operator Major Evan K. Williams should not be alive. She does not want to be. Tell that to those callous military doctors though. Now Williams has AI inside her brain, and PTSD is making her life hell. Filled with rage, and consumed by guilt, the bottle is her only escape. But a broken marine unable to return to active duty is not something her commanding officer will tolerate for long.
\nA reluctant Williams is sent to Mars for compulsory R&R, and thrown into the hands of a sadistic therapist. She is surprised to discover that when she hits rock bottom, love is waiting for her there. Still, life on the front-line as a leading officer of the Interstellar Commando Unit is anything but safe.
\nAnd Williams will soon be facing her toughest and most dangerous challenge, which could very well land her right back where she started. Dead.
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Community rescue pilot, Kai Walker, has learned the hard way that needing anyone can be dangerous. Appreciated by all, she is known by few. Her intimate relationships also remain short, sweet, and superficial. Her life may be empty, but it is safe, and good enough.
\nScience-fiction author, Eleanor St James, needs peace and quiet to work. Her new house on Sully’s Rock, part of a chain of islands located a hundred miles off the coast of Scotland, should ensure that she gets all the solitude she needs. She, too, has learned the art of aloneness.
\nThen, Eleanor meets a woman who is as attractively untamed and fierce as the island itself.
\nFor Kai, the writer is a painful reminder of all that she craves but cannot have. And yet . . .
\nWhat if?
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Tristan Briggs was once a member of an elite law-enforcement task force. Following the murder of her partner, for which she blames herself, Tristan now works as a close-protection officer. Used to guarding CEOs or high-ranking diplomats, the last thing she expects is a bubblegum singer for a client. Still, a job is a job.
\nAlys Huxley is no longer a kid pop-star. Now twenty-eight, she has established herself as a rock goddess with millions of followers all over the world. When a stalker comes along, the last thing she wants is another damn bodyguard to restrict her lifestyle.
\nHandsome but aloof Tristan Briggs is not what Alys expected. Edgy yet vulnerable Alys Huxley makes Tristan weak. A tragedy brings the two women closer. But with a stalker on the loose, could it all end before it starts?
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Rookie detective, Ellie James, always wanted to be a cop. Being promoted to a special crimes unit under her mentor, Quinn Wesley, is a dream come true. But when a job brings her face to face with past trauma, Ellie realises that she has a lot to prove.
\nFollowing the brutal rape and murder of two local women, and recognising a kindred spirit in Ellie, Quinn offers her a chance to do it by putting her in charge of the investigation.
\nJanet Fox, gifted neurosurgeon and equally skilled lover in her time, is done with meaningless affairs. And when an injured Ellie shows up in the ER one day, sparks fly that she cannot ignore. Janet is older, beautiful, and a lethal distraction Ellie doesn’t need. As their attraction grows, so does danger.
\nA killer is on the loose, and coming for them.
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For NASA astronaut, Nicola Peake, this isn’t just a line on her t-shirt. Having survived a freak accident onboard the International Space Station, beating injury and saving her career is now her only goal. Houston is too familiar, too painful. When a close friend offers her to stay at her cabin in the mountains of New Mexico, Nic jumps at the opportunity.
\nIn a neighboring house, Tayen Stoney is also working on putting back the pieces of her life. Separated from her husband following a miscarriage, and definitely at odds with her mother, Tayen is on a quest for self-acceptance and transformation.
\nShe doesn’t know the woman next door. She’s not a SpaceX junkie. Not gay, either! As for Nic, why would she be interested in a straight woman? All she yearns for is a spartan summer, focused on training. Nothing can happen between the two women.
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When British Army medic Kate Sanderson arrives at Cobel, an American checkpoint deep inside Afghanistan's Helmand Province, the only thing on her mind is her mission to save lives.
\nThere she meets USMC Captain Tyler Jackson, a talented young officer who uses her career as an excuse to avoid personal relationships. The handsome captain has learnt the hard way that love can hurt beyond life itself, but Kate's presence in camp is making it difficult for her to keep her distance.
\nWhen fate blows them apart, both women will discover the power of hope, trust, and that destiny really is only a matter of choice.
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When Liz Jackson arrives at the Whanau Ano Holiday Park on the beautiful west coast of New Zealand, the last thing she expects to find is love. Fresh from an abusive relationship, the British surgeon wants nothing but peace, solitude, and time to indulge in her passion for painting.
\nKristan Holt is a kayak instructor and a helicopter pilot. Handsome and charismatic, she owns the park and the Activity Centre, and when the beautiful doctor literally knocks her off her feet one morning in the café, she leaves an indelible mark on her heart.
\nWhen both women fall in love it looks as if both have finally found the missing piece in their lives. But someone will stop at nothing, including murder, to deny them the future that they want.
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Jennifer Middleton, gifted Wall Street executive, works and plays hard. When compromising photos of her are leaked to the press, her uncle, president of the prestigious family firm, imposes a condition: if Jenn wants the top job, she’ll need to prove that she’s not just a loose cannon by attending a bootcamp-style training course for top-level CEOs. This is Jenn’s idea of hell . . .
\nUntil she meets Hudson Grays: former army captain, medic, and drop-dead gorgeous instructor. Hudson, recovering from traumatic events on the frontline, has been warned about Middleton. But instead of an arrogant trainee with a chip on her shoulder, she discovers an alluring, intense, and captivating woman with her own struggles.
\nBoth aren’t what the other expected. Both may be what the other needs. And training will soon heat up in the Caribbean jungle.
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After her sister Nena’s sudden death, Xiomara, an Afro-Latina singer and actress born and raised in Washington Heights, is numb. With her sister gone, Xiomara is painfully close to thirty, living in a tiny apartment with her ultra-Catholic Puerto Rican mother, and having the same shitty sex with the same shitty men that she’s been entertaining for years. Behind on rent despite two minimum-wage jobs, one of which involves singing show tunes while serving pancakes to tourists at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, Xiomara is bitingly cynical, especially in her grief, and barely treading water.
\nBut when a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to audition for Manny Santos, the most charismatic director of the moment, falls into her lap, it seems to Xiomara like a second chance to pursue the dream she thought she’d left behind has finally come. Meanwhile, something about Santi, a new coworker at the print shop where she spends half of her days photocopying other performers’ headshots, starts to tug at the threads of her apathy. Nothing is simple, and soon Xiomara finds herself interacting with the ugliest sides of the industry and the powerful men that control it. While Xiomara grapples with the hard truth that sometimes the closer you are to your dreams, the further away from yourself you become, she is forced to ask herself if she has what it takes to build a new shiny life without losing the truth of her old one.
\nWith hopeful spirit and unapologetic energy, My Train Leaves at Three is a coming-of-age story about the balancing act between moving on and moving forward.
When you have grown up as I have, there is no security in not knowing things, in avoiding the ugliest truths because they can't be faced . . . Because that is what happened the last time, and that is why my siblings and I have grown up in a cursed house, children of cursed parents . . .
\nJocasta is just fifteen when she is told that she must marry the King of Thebes, an old man she has never met. Her life has never been her own, and nor will it be, unless she outlives her strange, absent husband.
\nIsmene is the same age when she is attacked in the palace she calls home. Since the day of her parents' tragic deaths a decade earlier, she has always longed to feel safe with the family she still has. But with a single act of violence, all that is about to change.
\nWith the turn of these two events, a tragedy is set in motion. But not as you know it.
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Jason and his Argonauts set sail to find the Golden Fleece. The journey is filled with danger, for him and everyone he meets. But if he ever reaches the distant land he seeks, he faces almost certain death.
\nMedea - priestess, witch, and daughter of a brutal king - has the power to save the life of a stranger. Will she betray her family and her home, and what will she demand in return?
\nMedea and Jason seize their one chance of a life together, as the gods intend. But their love is steeped in vengeance from the beginning, and no one - not even those closest to them - will be safe.
The Greek myths are one of the most important cultural foundation-stones of the modern world.
\nStories of gods and monsters are the mainstay of epic poetry and Greek tragedy, from Homer to Virgil to from Aeschylus to Sophocles and Euripides. And still, today, a wealth of novels, plays and films draw their inspiration from stories first told almost three thousand years ago. But modern tellers of Greek myth have usually been men, and have routinely shown little interest in telling women’s stories.
\nNow, in Pandora’s Jar, Natalie Haynes - broadcaster, writer and passionate classicist - redresses this imbalance. Taking Greek creation myths as her starting point and then retelling the four great mythic sagas: the Trojan War, the Royal House of Thebes, Jason and the Argonauts, Heracles, she puts the female characters on equal footing with their menfolk. The result is a vivid and powerful account of the deeds - and misdeeds - of Hera, Aphrodite, Athene and Circe. And away from the goddesses of Mount Olympus it is Helen, Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Antigone and Medea who sing from these pages, not Paris, Agamemnon, Orestes or Jason.
Medusa is the only mortal in a family of gods. Growing up with her sisters, she quickly realises that she is the only one who gets older, experiences change, feels weakness. Her mortal lifespan gives her an urgency that her family will never know.
\nWhen desire pushes a God to commit the unforgivable, Medusa’s mortal life is changed forever. Her punishment is to be turned into a Gorgon: sharp teeth, snakes for hair, and a gaze that will turn any living creature to stone. Appalled by her own reflection, Medusa can no longer look upon anything she loves without destroying it. She condemns herself to a life of solitude in the shadows to limit her murderous range.
\nThat is, until Perseus embarks upon a fateful quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon . . .
\nThis is the story of how a young woman became a monster. And how she was never really a monster at all.
This was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of them all . . .
In the middle of the night, a woman wakes to find her beloved city engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over. Troy has fallen.
From the Trojan women whose fates now lie in the hands of the Greeks, to the Amazon princess who fought Achilles on their behalf, to Penelope awaiting the return of Odysseus, to the three goddesses whose feud started it all, these are the stories of the women whose lives, loves, and rivalries were forever altered by this long and tragic war.
A woman’s epic, powerfully imbued with new life, A Thousand Ships puts the women, girls and goddesses at the center of the Western world’s great tale ever told.
Successful trusts and estates attorney Lena Connolly is asked by a colleague to assist on a case: the Italian government claims an artifact was looted and sold to a museum illegally and is seeking repatriation. The object in question is a cup made of dichroic glass, which would have been rare even in Ancient Rome, let alone thousands of years later.
\nLena has done everything she can to put the study abroad summer she spent on an archaeological dig in the Italian Alps behind her. Her dreams of being an archaeologist shattered when her mentor Cyrille disappeared and her enigmatic boyfriend Giamma went dark, but with this new case, the past comes roaring back.
\nTold in alternating timelines, Artifacts follows young Lena as she falls in love with both archaeology and Giamma on the streets of Torino while her adult self pieces together what truly happened on the dig, now a fully restored Roman villa with World Heritage status. The dichroic cup, Lena discovers, may have been taken from the very site she helped unearth.
\nPowerful and exuberant, Natalie Lemle’s Artifacts brings readers behind the museum glass and asks questions about cultural heritage and the historical preservation of our shared sense of humanity.
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Valerie Danners is in a cult. She just doesn't know it yet. When she finds a queer book at the library and smuggles it home, her conservative Christian homeschooling world begins to crack. And when the cutest girl she's ever met shows up to Bible class, she starts to question everything.
\nRiley is so confident and kind, and she and Valerie bond quickly over existing as multiracial teens in a very white Christian community. As Valerie explores her feelings for Riley, she begins to see that the world she knows is a carefully crafted narrative.
\nPublicly, the girls are close friends - holding hands in prayer, rooming together at a conference. Privately, they grasp at any chance to continue their forbidden romance - until they are found out. Now Valerie must choose between staying with a family she fears will never accept her, or running away with the girl she loves.
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As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries.
\nHer secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text colour to white so no one can see. That is, until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.
\nWhen an IT mix-up grants her access to her entire department’s private emails and DMs, Jolene knows she should report it, but who could resist reading what their coworkers are really saying? And when she discovers layoffs are coming, she realises this might just be the key to saving her job. The plan is simple: gain her boss’s favour, convince HR she’s Supershops material and beat out the competition.
\nBut as Jolene is drawn further into her coworker’s private worlds and secrets, her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble - especially around Cliff, who she definitely cannot have feelings for. Soon she will need to decide if she’s ready to leave the comfort of her cubicle, even if it means coming clean to her colleagues.
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You know how Medusa’s story ends, but you’ve never heard her tell her own story . . . until now.
\nThe only mortal daughter of two sea gods, and a priestess of Athena, Medusa was a woman who thought she had found her place in the world. But when Medusa suffers a horrific violation at the hands of Poseidon, Athena is outraged over the desecration of her name and sends a message by transforming Medusa into the snake-haired monster of legend.
\nWith one look, any who meet her gaze is turned to stone. Word of her monstrosity travels fast, igniting a king’s fear so greatly that he commands the boy-hero Perseus to bring him her head. With a power that will spare no one, Medusa begins to wonder if this is a blessing or a curse. Medusa only knows that she must leave the city she has come to call home before she harms another soul.
\nSearching for a haven free from mortals, anger buoying her every step, Medusa journeys across ancient Greece. Her eyes are hidden beneath a blindfold, with nothing but the snakes for company. Through her travels, Medusa discovers solace and understanding in the mythical figures she stumbles upon: A debaucherous wine god, an alluring nymph, and a three-headed dog.
\nBut one cannot escape fate forever. As Perseus closes in, Medusa faces a choice: become the monster everyone expects her to be, or cling to the last piece of her humanity.
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Morocco, 1928. Eighteen-year-old Frenchwoman Marie-Madeleine is not the kind of woman who goes through life sitting down, something her new husband can attest. Her unconventionalities - rally car driving, flying planes and dabbling in intelligence work for the government - earn her a reputation, but she knows who she is at an adventurer.
\nParis, 1938. As Europe teeters on the brink of war, a chance encounter with a mysterious man codenamed Navarre turns Marie-Madeleine's life upside down. Recruited to help build a resistance network known only as Alliance, she conceals her identity - and gender - as she navigates a perilous double life away from her children and the man she loves. Capture and death are only a heartbeat away.
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When Mackenzie treks to a secluded cabin in the woods with six friends, she expects a fun weekend of partying, drinking, and hookups. But when they wake to find two of their own dead and covered in blood, it's clear there's a killer among them.
As the police try to unravel the case, Mackenzie launches her own investigation. Before long secrets start to emerge, revealing a sinister web of sins among the original seven friends. The killer is still free. Every one of them is a suspect. And Mackenzie starts to realise that no one is innocent . . .
It’s just a stupid meme that’s going around their small fishing town in the dead of winter - people reposting and sharing their biggest fear. But when her classmates start turning up dead - dying in the way that they said scared them the most - Izzy knows it’s no joke.
\nWith each death hitting closer to home, Izzy sets out to try to stop the killer. Could her older sister’s friend Tristan have something to do with the deaths? He’s given her some strange vibes. Or what about his brooding cousin, Axel? But he’s in her classes at school. He’s not a murderer . . . is he? Izzie’s soon on a path that will lead her right to the killer . . . and her own worst nightmare.
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Penny's trying to forget about her ex, Nash. His father was arrested for the brutal murder of four teenagers on Devil's Night last year. Penny's parents have forbidden her to have anything to do with Nash or his family. It's hard not to think of what happened as spooky season gets underway - but she's trying.
\nThat stops when she goes to the Halloween store with her friends to find a costume. What she finds instead is ripped from a horror movie: a girl from school bleeding out on the floor of a dressing room. Stabbed.
\nIs a copycat killer on the loose? The adults are saying no. But Penny knows better.
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Esme and Kayla once were campers at Camp Pine Lake. They're excited to be back this year as CITs (counselors in training). Esme loves the little girls in her cabin and thinks it's funny how scared they are of everything - spiders, the surly head counselor, the dark, boys . . . even swimming in the lake! It reminds her a little of how she and Kayla used to be, once. Before . . . it happened.
Because Esme and Kayla did something bad when they were campers. Afterwards, the girls agreed to keep it secret. They've moved on - or so they say - and this summer is going to be great. Two months of sun, s'mores, and flirting with the cute boy counselors. But then they get a note. THE LAKE NEVER FORGETS. And the secret they've kept buried for so many years is about to resurface.
In Piper's hometown, teenagers keep disappearing, and everyone assumes they're just a bunch of runaways. But when yet another person disappears, Piper and her best friend Hazel suspect something more sinister is going on.
\nSo they decide to investigate, determined to learn the truth. Their search for answers leads them to the source of the missing people . . . and their captors. Piper and Hazel suddenly find themselves locked away in a secluded building in the middle of a privately owned forest.
\nBut the building isn't only meant to keep them imprisoned; every room is a test to see if they can make it out alive.
\nAnd failure means being lost . . . forever.
\nIn the heart of the English countryside, Bessie and her closest friends gather at a remote castle for a secret party destined to make this the best spring break ever. But when the first of them dies, the party takes a lethal turn.
\nAs the body count continues to rise, Bessie and her friends must contend with a deadly storm and growing internal suspicion, all while trapped inside with a killer.
\nSet against the backdrop of a sprawling English estate, Natasha Preston's latest thriller will keep you on the edge of your seat until the party’s over . . .
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After their parents divorced, 10-year-old twins Ivy and Iris were split up - Ivy lived with Dad, Iris with Mom. Now, after a tragic accident takes their mom's life, the twins are reunited and Iris moves in with Ivy and their dad. Devastated over Mom's death, Iris spends the first few weeks in almost total silence - the only person she will speak to is Ivy. Iris feels her life is over and she doesn't know what to do. Ivy promises her twin that she can share her life now. After all, they're sisters. Twins.
It's a promise that Iris takes seriously. And before long, Ivy's friends, her life at school, and her boyfriend, Tyler, fall under Iris's spell. Slowly, Ivy realises she's being pushed out of her own life. But she's just being paranoid, right? And Mom's accident was . . . just an accident. Right? It's not like she - or Dad - or Tyler - are in any danger . . .
In 1859, ex–East India Company smuggler Merrick Tremayne is trapped at home in Cornwall with an injury that almost cost him his leg. When the India Office recruits him for an expedition to fetch quinine - essential for the treatment of malaria - from deep within Peru, he knows it's a terrible idea; nearly every able-bodied expeditionary who's made the attempt has died, and he can barely walk. But Merrick is eager to escape the strange events plaguing his family's crumbling estate, so he sets off, against his better judgment, for the edge of the Amazon.
\nThere he meets Raphael, a priest around whom the villagers spin unsettling stories of impossible disappearances, cursed woods, and living stone. Merrick must separate truth from fairy tale, and gradually he realises that Raphael is the key to a legacy left by generations of Tremayne explorers before him, one which will prove more valuable than quinine, and far more dangerous.
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Raised in a Greek legion, Phaidros has been taught to fight for the homeland he’s never seen and to follow his commander’s orders at all costs. But when he rescues a baby from a fire at Thebes’s palace, his commander’s orders cease to make sense: Phaidros is forced to abandon the blue-eyed boy at a temple, and to keep the baby’s existence a secret.
\nYears later, after a strange encounter that led to the death of his battalion, Phaidros has become a training master for young soldiers. He struggles with panic attacks and flashbacks, and he is not the only one: all around him, his fellow veterans are losing their minds.
\nPhaidros’s risk of madness is not his only problem: his life has become entangled with Thebes’s young crown prince, who wishes to escape the marriage his mother, the Queen, has chosen for him. When the prince vanishes, Phaidros is drawn into the search for him - a search that leads him to a blue-eyed witch named Dionysus, whose guidance is as wise as the events that surround him are strange. In Dionysus’s company, Phaidros witnesses sudden outbursts of riots and unrest, and everywhere Dionysus goes, rumors follow about a new god, one sired by Zeus but lost in a fire.
\nNatasha Pulley transports us to an ancient empire on the edge of ruin to tell an utterly captivating story about a man needing a god to remind him how to be a human.
\n
Joe Tournier has a bad case of amnesia. His first memory is of stepping off a train in the nineteenth-century French colony of England. The only clue Joe has about his identity is a century-old postcard of a Scottish lighthouse that arrives in London the same month he does.
\nWritten in illegal English - instead of French - the postcard is signed only with the letter “M,” but Joe is certain whoever wrote it knows him far better than he currently knows himself, and he's determined to find the writer.
\nThe search for M, though, will drive Joe from French-ruled London to rebel-owned Scotland and finally onto the battle ships of a lost empire's Royal Navy. In the process, Joe will remake history, and himself.
\n
1888. Five years after they met in The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Thaniel Steepleton, an unassuming translator, and Keita Mori, the watchmaker who remembers the future, are traveling to Japan. Thaniel has received an unexpected posting to the British legation in Tokyo, and Mori has business that is taking him to Yokohama.
\nThaniel's brief is odd: the legation staff have been seeing ghosts, and Thaniel's first task is to find out what's really going on. But while staying with Mori, he starts to experience ghostly happenings himself. For reasons Mori won't - or can't - share, he is frightened. Then he vanishes.
\nMeanwhile, something strange is happening in a frozen labor camp in Northern Japan. Takiko Pepperharrow, an old friend of Mori's, must investigate.
\nAs the weather turns bizarrely electrical and ghosts haunt the country from Tokyo to Aokigahara forest, Thaniel grows convinced that it all has something to do with Mori's disappearance - and that Mori may be in serious danger.
\n
In the wake of environmental catastrophe, January, once a principal in London’s Royal Ballet, has become a refugee on Tharsis, the terraformed colony on Mars. In Tharsis, January’s life is dictated by his status as an Earthstronger - a person whose body is not adjusted to Mars’s lower gravity and so poses a danger to those born on, or naturalised to, Mars.
\nJanuary’s job choices, housing, and even transportation options are dictated by this second-class status, and now a xenophobic politician named Aubrey Gale is running on a platform that would make it all worse: Gale wants all Earthstrongers to be surgically naturalised, a process that can be anything from disabling to deadly.
\nWhen Gale chooses January for an on-the-spot press junket interview that goes horribly awry, January’s life is thrown into chaos, but Gale’s political fortunes are damaged, too. Gale proposes a solution to both their problems: a five-year made-for-the-press marriage that would secure January’s financial future without naturalisation and ensure Gale’s political future.
\nBut when January accepts the offer, he discovers that Gale is not at all like they appear in the press. And worse, soon, January finds himself entangled in political and personal events well beyond his imagining. Gale has an enemy, someone willing to destroy all of Tharsis to make them pay - and January may be the only person standing in the way.
\n
1883. Thaniel Steepleton returns home to his tiny London apartment to find a gold pocket watch on his pillow. Six months later, the mysterious timepiece saves his life, drawing him away from a blast that destroys Scotland Yard.
\nAt last, he goes in search of its maker, Keita Mori, a kind, lonely immigrant from Japan. Although Mori seems harmless, a chain of unexplainable events soon suggests he must be hiding something. When Grace Carrow, an Oxford physicist, unwittingly interferes, Thaniel is torn between opposing loyalties.
\nThe Watchmaker of Filigree Street is a sweeping, atmospheric narrative that takes the reader on an unexpected journey through Victorian London, Japan as its civil war crumbles long-standing traditions, and beyond. Blending historical events with dazzling flights of fancy, it opens doors to a strange and magical past.
\n
1592. Cybil Harding is a First Daughter. Cursed to bring disaster to those around her, she is trapped in a house with a mother paralyzed by grief and a father willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of magic.
\nMiriam Richter is a creature of shadow. Forged by the dark arts many years ago, she is doomed to exist for eternity and destined to be alone - killing mortals and consuming their souls for sustenance. Everything changes when she meets Cybil, whose soul shines with a light so bright, she must claim it for herself. She offers a bargain: she will grant Cybil reincarnation in exchange for her soul.
\nThus begins a dance across centuries as Miriam seeks Cybil in every lifetime to claim her prize. Cybil isn’t inclined to play by the rules, but when it becomes clear that Miriam holds the key to breaking her family curse, Cybil finds that - for the first time in her many lives - she might have the upper hand. As they circle each other, drawn together inescapably as light and dark, the bond forged between them grows stronger. In their battle for dominance, only one of them can win - but perhaps they can’t survive without each other.
Taking readers on a global journey through human history, historian Natasha Tidd examines how lies can change the world around us, from Julius Caesar’s deceptive PR machine to the cover ups that caused Chernobyl.
\nFrom forgeries that created centuries worth of conflict and domination, such as The Donation of Constantine, the Protocols of Zion and the mysterious Testament of Peter the Great, to mass political and press cover ups including Britain’s Boer War concentration camps, a Pulitzer Prize winning whitewash of the Ukraine Famine and France’s infamous Dreyfus Affair.
\nAlongside these are examinations of how our retellings of history can turn fiction into fact , including The Spanish Inquisition’s deceitful legacy and the demonization of Chinese Empress, Wu Zetian. Plus, an in-depth look at how historic lies can still impact our lives today, such as the deadly legacy of America’s Tuskegee Experiment.
\nA Short History of the World in 50 Lies details the profound impact of this secretive side of history and shows that the truth really is stranger - and far more dangerous - than any fiction.
Gina Nash is a great assistant. Maybe a little too good. Because when her socially awkward boss Olivia Noble meets the woman of her dreams, she turns to Gina to assist her in bedding the target of her affections. Gina isn’t exactly thrilled to find herself sending flowers and coaching her boss through dates with Harper Blake.
\nGorgeous, confident, charming, Harper’s a little too perfect in the eyes of cynical, snarky Gina. But when Gina finds herself getting pulled deeper into Olivia's and Harper’s fledgling romance, she gets a peek underneath Harper’s flawless exterior. And it doesn’t take very long for Gina to develop a rather inconvenient connection to the woman she’s trying to push into her boss’s arms . . .
When Nicole Penrose comes home unexpectedly to find her TV producer husband Ethan with a younger woman, she’s madder than she’s ever been in her life. She leaves, unseen by her betrayers, to stew on the end of her marriage. Who the hell is this hot young blonde who has wrecked her marriage for the hell of it? Nicole decides to confront her, as a warmup for the big showdown with her husband.
\nBut when she finds the other woman, it’s not as simple as all that. Her name is Alex Torrence and she’s been lied to as well, having no idea about Ethan’s marital status. And when Alex finds out she’s been made a mistress, she’s as angry as Nicole. The two of them decide that getting mad isn’t enough. Getting even seems a lot more satisfying. And Ethan has no idea he’s been rumbled as a liar and a cheat. He’ll never see them coming.
\nIt starts with infiltrating Ethan’s real love - his successful medical drama - to create mayhem behind the scenes and drive the oblivious love-rat to the brink of madness. And damn if it’s not fun. It turns out that Nicole and Alex are a hell of a team. In fact, Nicole is starting to see what her husband might have found so attractive about Alex . . .
When actress Delilah Day lands the role of a lifetime playing a legendary tennis champion, there’s only one problem - she’s never picked up a racket in her life. With six weeks until filming, she needs help fast.
\nEnter Cassie Thorne. Once destined for greatness, Cassie’s tennis career ended too soon. Now she’s stuck coaching wealthy amateurs and nursing the bitterness of what might have been. Blunt, disciplined and perpetually cranky, Cassie has no patience for beginners - especially not Delilah, who just might be her worst student yet.
\nBut as practices turn into sparring matches, their on-court battles spark something neither woman expected. And when attraction collides with ambition, both Delilah and Cassie must face the toughest match of their keep playing it safe, or take the ultimate risk - on each other.
Julia Hawke and Penny Stone are finally together. From meeting while Julia was Penny’s writing professor three years ago to where they are now, it’s been a long, complicated (yet sexy) road. But at last, they’re a couple and they’ve never been more in love. Nine months in and the honeymoon is going strong.
But every honeymoon has to end sometime . . .
And when reality comes knocking, Julia and Penny find that their love is about to be tested. Parents, pasts, careers and love rivals are lining to up to get in the way of the relationship. How will they handle the ambush of problems? Will they figure out how to make it work despite everything the world has to throw at them? Or will they simply keep making the same mistakes that tore them apart before?
Eighteen months after the events of the first book, Julia is getting her life back together. She's in a steady relationship, with a novel about to be published. But on the verge of publication, someone powerful and mysterious throws a spanner in the works of her book release, ending her career before it has begun.
\nBut whoever it is underestimates Julia's resolve and ingenuity. She's out for revenge and she'll use her best weapons; her intelligence, her guile and her seductiveness.
\nIn the midst of her quest to even the score, a chance meeting with Penny Stone, her former love, makes her wonder if she really wants to plumb the dark depths of her own soul. And as she spends more time with Penny, can they remain friends or will they both be pulled back into the maelstrom of their sexual attraction?
\n**
Julia Hawke is a writing professor, renowned for her skill at coaxing the best out of the young first year writers in her class. But at night, she coaxes female students into her bed, where they’ll get an education that isn’t on the syllabus. Julia is a serial seductress who enjoys the chase and once she’s had her fun, discards her prey. However, she never chooses a virgin to take to bed, for fear they’ll get too attached. Only the more experienced girls know how to play Julia’s game and that’s the way she needs it to be. No attachments, no love.
\nEnter Penny Stone, a small town girl who’s new to the big bad city, with a love of writing that puts her in Julia’s class. She thinks that once she has her education her life is all mapped out, with a future that holds going home to run the family shop and saving herself for marriage to her childhood sweetheart. But as she spends time in Julia’s class, she begins to feel something new and strange around her teacher, something that might derail the life set out for her.
\nJulia knows she should leave the girl alone and stick to her strict set of rules for her conquests, but a natural chemistry pulls the two inescapably towards one another. But can innocent Penny teach jaded Julia some lessons she thought she was long past learning?
\nEvery family wedding involves a bit of drama, right? However, when Sasha Malone attends her cousin's nuptials, she gets a bit more than she bargained for. When both brides abandon the wedding, Sasha gets roped in to accompany her broken-hearted cousin on what should have been her honeymoon aboard a swanky yacht around the Mediterranean. So far, so not-so-bad. But when Sasha's cousin doesn't turn up for the voyage without a word of warning, Sasha is left setting sail all alone and none the wiser.
\nBut the shocks keep coming.
\nAboard the boat is another person who isn't supposed to be there. The other bride's sister, Josie Adler, has snuck aboard the boat posing as her sibling - determined to take advantage of a fancy (not to mention free) trip. When the boat's crew mistakenly believe that both women are the original and intended honeymooners, Sasha, thinking she's already accidentally committed a crime by going on the trip without her cousin, panics and assumes her cousin's identity.
\nNow both of them are lying. And if they stop, they could be in serious trouble.
\nSasha is stuck on the boat with Josie with no choice but to play the happy honeymooners or get arrested for stealing the trip. Which would be bad enough if Sasha and Josie could stand the sight of each other. But Sasha is furious that the pathologically laidback Josie doesn't seem to care about the trouble they could get in if they're rumbled, and Josie thinks Sasha is an uptight buzzkill who's getting in the way of her good time.
\nBut since the alternative is probably prison, Sasha and Josie will need to work hard to make their love look real. Very hard indeed . . .
Ava Gale is a cinch for prom queen. She has the perfect reputation and the perfect boyfriend. Until Mr Perfect is caught publicly cheating with his BFF. Now Ava’s prom queen bid is in jeopardy because her ex, Leo, and his new boyfriend are making a play for prom kings. Worse, people are saying they might actually win because they ‘found love’ against the odds. It’s a load of crap, but people are buying it. And Ava’s social stock is plummeting. But what if Ava could fake a love story that would put her back in the picture? What if she were to fall for the most unexpected person in the school - the resident cool rebel? It could put Leo’s new relationship in the shade and bring Ava back into the limelight, just in time to grab the crown.
\nCody Foster has always been a loner. That’s her choice and she’s cool with it. Until it impacts her college application. Rejected on the basis of not being well-rounded enough sucks. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to listen to that annoying Barbie doll Ava and her crazy idea to fake being a couple to win the prom together, even if it would prove to her dream school that she’s more than just a square peg in a round hole. Pretending to be a surprising and attention-grabbing couple so they can reign over their queer queendom together? It could never work.
\nBut . . . if they could pull it off? They’ll both get what they want. Cody realises she’s just desperate enough to agree to Ava’s bonkers scheme. But as Ava and Cody fake their forbidden love in the pursuit of their goals, what they really want starts to change . . .
Molly Kaminski is a strong willed till girl, working the late shift. Jamie Jenson is an impulsive, hot headed thief in need of money. Their paths are about to cross in a way they could never have anticipated . . .
When Jamie tries to rob the mini-mart where Molly works, she doesn’t expect an argument. Not with a gun in her hand. But that’s exactly what she gets. Molly, at the end of a very long work day, has no patience for a hold-up and instead of giving her aspiring robber the contents of the till, gives her the business end of her temper instead. Both as bull-headed as each other, it becomes a standoff, with neither willing to back down.
And then, just when both of them think the night couldn’t possibly get any worse… What do you know? There’s always further to plummet.
Because there’s someone else in the shop, Henry O’Donnell, a teenager with a crippling crush on Molly. And when he interferes with the robbery, thinking he’ll save his one true love and be hailed a hero, he accidentally does something quite different. Something he didn’t know he could do.
He curses Molly and Jamie to be stuck together, attached by an invisible force. Forever.
Unbeknownst to Henry, he carries a magical ‘gift’ passed down the family tree. And now Molly and Jamie, two people who were five minutes from killing each other, are doomed to stay together until defective Harry Potter can figure out how to undo his dodgy hex. Which is harder than it looks. But if Molly and Jamie can just stop arguing for two minutes, maybe they could find a solution. As well as something else.
What if all the anger between them translates into another kind of passion altogether?
Keira Evans likes an easy existence. That goes double for her love life. She’s happy to remain single and wants every woman she takes to bed to know exactly what the deal is. Trouble is, some of them don’t heed the warning and fall in love with her anyway. Keira doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, nor does she want to have to take out restraining orders every week. It’s a pickle.
\nBut when Keira is trying to pry yet another lovesick woman out the door, her next-door neighbour, Alanna Hall, decides to come to her rescue - pretending to be Keira’s serious girlfriend who is furious at catching her in the act of cheating. The one-night stand, shocked at Keira's seeming deceit, decides to ditch the drama and never bothers her again. Keira’s amazed by the effectiveness of the charade and becomes convinced that a fake girlfriend could be the solution to all her woes. But how the hell can she convince Alanna to take on the position of phony girlfriend full time?
\nWith spectacular timing, Alanna finds herself abruptly homeless when her relationship implodes. And look who happens to have a bed going spare in exchange for a little quid pro quo? Alanna’s uncertain about repeating her spontaneous performance for her philandering neighbour. But she’s a hell of a lot more uncertain about where’s she’s gonna sleep. And Alanna is nothing if not a practical woman.
\nKeira thinks she’s got it made now that Alanna’s ready to chase off every casual sex partner who doesn’t know when it’s time to leave. But living with Alanna creates more chaos in Keira’s perfect little world than she’s expecting. Particularly when the sham starts to feel real . . .
Amelia Wells has never left Solhaven, a secluded island commune where technology and outsiders are forbidden. But when her grandmother, the commune’s leader, dies, Amelia must venture to the mainland to secure Solhaven’s future - despite having no clue how the modern world works.
\nTara Blake, a sharp-tongued journalist, sees Amelia as the key to an exposé and poses as a helpful stranger to get close. But as she guides Amelia through city life, Tara’s cynical walls start to crumble, and Amelia begins questioning everything - including her growing attraction to Tara.
\nWith their worlds at odds, can they bridge the gap between duty and desire?
\nIn Nobody Quite Like You, Natasha West delivers a heartwarming sapphic romance that explores the transformative power of love and self-discovery. Set against the vibrant backdrop of contemporary life, this friends-to-lovers tale introduces readers to two compelling women whose unexpected connection challenges their perceptions and reshapes their futures.
Juliet Sullivan loves her job as a nanny to wealthy families. It isn’t her world, but she’s a wonder with kids and anyone would consider her a gift to their household. Well, almost anyone. Because when she goes to work in the Powell household, there’s one person who’s not so thrilled to see her. And Juliet's not so happy to see that old face either . . .
\nRiley Powell is in a bind. She’s been given the boot by her landlord, finding herself forced to move in her with rich father and his second family. Oh, and the nanny. Who just happens to be Juliet Sullivan, an old school friend. Friend might be the wrong way to put it, though. It might be more accurate to describe her as the object of a catastrophic crush that went right off the rails, breaking both their hearts.
\nJuliet and Riley haven’t seen each other in ten years. But when fate forces them under the same roof, things are about to get awkward. Because some sparks don’t die so easily, and even a decade hasn’t killed this one . . .
No one expects to be widowed at thirty-eight. But that’s exactly what happens to Jessie Downes after her wife dies in a tragic accident. Jessie is left devastated and angry and after she lashes out in grief, she finds herself in court-ordered group therapy. For self-contained Jessie, it’s a fresh nightmare. She’d rather be picking litter on the side of a highway than forced to attend a group where people talk about their problems.
\nBut little by little she finds herself drawn into the workings of the group and its assortment of eccentric members. Specifically, Annie Perkins, a sweet yet closeted woman who is trying to work through her pathological fear of making decisions.
\nJessie and Annie are surprised to find a connection. But is it more than friendship? And if it is, does Jessie have the strength to allow someone in after losing the only woman she ever expected to love? Or should she just commit to being alone?
Charlie Black has found the one. And this time it’s for real. Not like the last time. Or the time before that. Or the time before that…
\nAnd now she’s going to parade the one in front of everyone at her sister’s upcoming wedding. She wants to prove that her new girlfriend Lucy is special. She’s going to show everyone she can make it work. Especially her judgmental sister Maddie, Bride-Zilla herself.
\nBut a few weeks before the wedding, Charlie gets dumped. Again. And she can’t face the humiliation of going to Maddie’s wedding stag. Not after loudly and repeatedly telling her family that this one is different.
\nShe needs a date to the wedding and fast. Maybe she could get someone to go with her, but how the hell is she supposed to convince anyone to pretend to be Lucy, her very serious girlfriend of four months? It’s too humiliating. But the wedding creeps closer and closer, with no obvious solution in sight.
\nThen Charlie happens across a website. ‘Rent-a-Date. It's just the thing Charlie needs to save her from the embarrassment of admitting that her sister was right again. That’s one wedding gift Charlie refuses to give her.
\nSo after booking herself a date from the company, she’s guaranteed that a hot woman will show up to the wedding with enough knowledge to pretend to be the real Lucy, at least for the length of the big day. But when Charlie turns up at the church, her date has a surprise in store…
\n**
Daisy Howard has always wanted to act. And on the cusp of thirty, she’s waited longer than most of her fellow drama school graduates to throw herself into the theatre world, the place she’s always wanted to be. When an agent snaps her up, she allows herself to dream that her moment might finally have come . . .
But Daisy’s new agent turns out to be of the unscrupulous variety and instead of pushing her toward the theatre, chucks her into the deep end of scripted reality TV. Daisy would be happier playing a corpse on a police procedural. But being a single mother with a boat load of bills, the money proves too seductive and she finds herself thrust into the crazy world of Laid in Medford, a show about jealousy, sex and fake tans.
Meanwhile, Laid in Medford’s leading lady Alexa Lockwood is miserable. Playing a vapid beauty with a perfect body and the ability to argue with a brick wall is wearing pretty thin. She’s bored of the world of scripted reality and wants to get out. But if she were to leave, she’s not sure what else is out there for her.
Daisy and Alexa are both stuck, going nowhere in a fake reality. But when these co-stars are given an onscreen romance, real sparks fly and passion rapidly begins to develop offscreen. Amidst the D-list celebrities and manipulative producers, can they make it work? And will they ever escape the claws of scripted reality television?
Talia Knox is a fiercely ambitious corporate lawyer with one making partner at her prestigious law firm. Her boss places great importance on family - and Talia’s carefully crafted lie about her long-term girlfriend, ‘Alex’, has kept her professional image impeccable. But when the firm announces a corporate retreat, with obligatory attendance for significant others, Talia’s lie is suddenly at risk of being exposed.
\nThe worst is yet to come, after a chance mix-up leads Talia’s boss to mistake Imogen Lake - unemployed art curator, walking disaster, and the last person Talia wants to see - for her elusive partner. Given that Talia has despised Imogen ever since she found her in bed with her then-girlfriend, it’s less than ideal.
\nDesperate to protect her career, Talia proposes a Imogen will pretend to be her devoted girlfriend for one weekend at the luxury countryside retreat, in exchange for a much-needed payday. Broke and out of options, Imogen agrees.
\nBut between couples yoga, blindfolded hikes, and a classic one-bed situation, the line between performance and real emotion begins to blur. Old wounds resurface. Sparks fly. And soon, Talia faces the biggest decision of her hold on to everything she’s built or risk it all for the last woman she ever expected to want.
Back in their teens, musician Poppy and artist Norah were glued at the hip, their friendship blossoming into a whirlwind romance. But just as quickly as things heated up, something happened that forced Poppy to pull the plug, leaving Norah heartbroken and in the dark about what went wrong. With a secret she couldn't share, Poppy hit the road to pop stardom, reluctantly leaving Norah behind.
\nFast forward twenty Poppy has retired from her embarrassing career as a cheesy popstar and Norah has given up on her artistic dreams altogether. Both of them are now parents and strangers to one another, their youthful love affair just a painful memory. Until they unexpectedly bump into each other at the school gates and learn their kids aren’t just in the same class but total besties. And while it’s extremely awkward for Norah and Poppy to be around each other, they’ve got no choice but to play nice. Between playdates, bake sales, and kids parties, old sparks start flying, reigniting their long-lost friendship and the attraction they once shared.
\nAs they navigate the chaos of parenting, rediscover each other's quirks, and confront the mystery of their sudden separation years ago, Poppy and Norah find themselves laughing, bickering, and maybe even falling in love all over again. But will their history get in the way? Or could everything they ever wanted still be in front of them?
A teachers' conference doesn’t sound like a sexy place. And that’s because it’s not.
\nBut shy literature teacher Chloe Price and brash PE teacher Jess Cooper are about to be thrown together at this particular conference at a time of crisis in each of their young-ish lives. And it will lead them to what they both believe will be a simple one-night stand . . .
\nBut each year, back they come to the conference, always finding themselves intertwined. And as the years pass, their relationship grows in all sorts of unexpected ways. Even as their lives take them in opposite directions, the annual weekend keeps pulling them back together. Whether they like it or not.
\nA book reminiscent of One Day (‘One Gay’ if you will) taking place on the same annual weekend over the course of a decade. It’s a tale of what happens when no matter what you do and how far you go, life just keeps bouncing you back to the same spot, to the same person and the same pull to them that you just can’t seem to shake.
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When free-spirited socialite Ari Stark invites her no-nonsense chauffeur, Nancy Doyle, to be her date to her ex-fiancé’s wedding, Nancy’s first instinct is to decline. Pretending to be a couple with her boss? Risky. But Ari is persuasive - and Nancy could use the extra cash.
\nAs they navigate the lavish wedding weekend, their fake relationship starts to feel all too real. Nancy uncovers a vulnerable side to Ari beneath her party-girl facade, while Ari discovers unexpected warmth in Nancy's reserved demeanour.
\nThe chemistry between them is undeniable. But so are the obstacles. Ari lives in the spotlight. Nancy prefers to blend into the background. And neither of them were expecting this connection to feel so real.
\nAs tensions rise and secrets come to light, Nancy must will she play it safe, or take a chance on something unexpected?
As a happily married presenter of a top-rated morning news show, Olivia Ross has it all. Only none of it’s real. The show’s ratings are flailing, her boss is out to get her, and her marriage has become a hollow sham. And things are about to get worse. Because after her co-anchor falls ill, the show needs a temporary stand-in. And Olivia needs only one look at her youthful, sexy new co-host to know that she’s there to replace her.
\nYoung and hungry, Holly Reynolds is thrilled to get a temporary gig on the biggest show on the network. She’s even more thrilled to work with Olivia, her idol. Only icy Olivia doesn’t seem to like her very much. Nevertheless, Holly is determined to get close to the woman she admires more than anyone.
\nOlivia tries desperately to resist the charms of her rival. But as their working relationship develops, it becomes difficult for Olivia to keep seeing Holly as the enemy. Against all odds, they find themselves falling for each other . . .
\nAs the network schemes and the bosses connive, can Olivia and Holly find a way to be together and take on the world at the same time? And can they report the news without becoming the top story?
A romantic comedy set over three decades, chronicling the relationship between Megan Hunter and Phoebe Fitzgerald, two people who will affect the course of each other’s lives again and again.
\n1994
Musical prodigy Phoebe and class clown Megan meet at twelve and despite being as different as night and day, become friends. Bullies, school pressure, interfering parents and malfunctioning clothing are thrown into their path but as the friendship grows, they find that life's not so hard when they have each others backs.
2000
At eighteen, Megan and Phoebe are still as close as could be. But their friendship becomes complicated as romantic feelings arise between the two. If they act on it, will they ruin the relationship? Or find something better?
2017
Megan and Phoebe are now adults, Megan a comedian, Phoebe a musician. They connect over one crazy weekend and all hell breaks loose as they try to figure out if they still need each in their lives as much as they once did.
Alex Walker is a ruthless and ambitious PR agent, navigating the tumultuous seas of celebrity scandal with a knack for turning the tide in her favour. Securing hot actress Isabelle Kane could propel her business to new heights, but winning the spin war in Isabelle’s impending divorce is crucial. However, what could trip up Alex, a master at the game?
\nRepresenting the other side of this high-profile split is Leigh Calloway. She’s a passionate advocate for integrity in the world of PR, and when she signs rising star Erin Porter, she is determined to ensure Erin’s perspective on the troubled marriage is the main narrative. With the truth on Leigh’s side, what could go wrong?
\nWell, Alex and Leigh’s romantic history might cause one or two problems. Because under the glitz and chaos that define their professional lives, Alex and Leigh share a hidden decade-old secret - a passionate one-night stand gone disastrously wrong.
\nWhen Alex and Leigh find themselves pushing up against each other in the media frenzy surrounding the high-profile split, they both know it’s vital that they maintain a fierce professional rivalry. But amid traded barbs and hilarious one-liners, it’s undeniable that the chemistry between Alex and Leigh is back with a vengeance.
\nFrom staged paparazzi moments to orchestrated social media campaigns, the two PR agents are determined to beat each other. But will their past throw a spanner in the works, or is it destined to open the door to a second chance at love?
A vivid collection of surprising true stories that brings to life long-forgotten icons, heroes who never got their due, and ordinary people who never made it to the history books, from the creator of the popular podcast The Memory Palace.
\nWhat was Dreamland, Brooklyn's most popular attraction, like before it burned down? Whatever happened to Shipwreck Kelly? What were the glistening orbs John Glenn saw from his capsule on his first trip to space? For more than a decade, Nate DiMeo has brought the big and small of American history to life in The Memory Palace, a podcast of crystalline short stories that are all completely true.
\nIn this beautifully designed collection, where DiMeo takes advantage of the visual form of a book by creating striking juxtapositions between images and text, he gathers the best of the show and adds brand-new stories exclusive to the book, which especially take their inspiration from photographs and the emergence of photography.
\nThe collection adds up to a unique take on the past that asks what gets to count as history in the first place, draws deep meaning from forgotten lives, and often dives into past crazes and the sometimes humorous and sometimes devastating fact that what or who is popular in one moment can become a barely remembered curiosity in the next. He resurrects stories that deserve to be memorialised, like that of the Surfmen of the Outer Banks who saved countless sailors' lives and the workers who risked theirs daily to dig the base of the Brooklyn Bridge.
\nEach one of these poignant, vivid stories brings the past completely alive with the potential to shift our perspectives on the world today and to send readers out searching for all of the hidden stories it contains, just beyond the surface.
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There are two halves of Charlie Duchamp. One is a brain in a jar, stranded on Jupiter’s jungle moon, Io, who just wants to go home. The other is hanging on the wall of Barrowfield Home on Earth’s own moon, host to the eggs of the Moon Spider and filled with a murderous rage.
\nOn Io, deep in the flooded remains of a crashed cathedral ship, lives a giant centipede called The Bishop, who has taken control of the drowned astronauts inside. Both Charlies converge here, stalking each other in the haunted ruins, while a new Moon Spider prepares to hatch.
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Veronica Brinkley has been committed to The Barrowfield Home, run by Dr. Cull, to treat her depression. The institution is built on the crypt of a giant Lunar Spider, tended to by a monastic group of worshippers called the Alabaster Scholars. Dr. Cull is using the lunar silk from the dead spider to \"repair\" people's brains.
\nAs Veronica's memories are tampered with, she finds a surprising reserve of power within herself, upending everyone else's plans for her and stepping into a grand new role she had never imagined for herself.
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When Will discovers a cell phone after a violent brawl his life descends into a nightmare.
Affable, charismatic and a little shallow, he’s been skating across the surface of life in a state of carefully maintained contentment. He decides to keep the cell phone just until the owner returns and everything changes. Then the messages begin.
Will’s discovered something unspeakable and it’s crawling slowly into the light.
In 1977 - a world in which America launched its space program shortly after WWII - Mitch Ward followed Flynn, the lost love of his youth, into the US Space Guard. Now, he’s stuck on a backwater moon base with his only friend, Gloria, watching every shuttle in the hope Flynn will be on it.
\nAfter an inexplicable encounter with a strange, euphoric being, Mitch and Gloria find themselves dishonorably discharged, and stuck in a USA rapidly sliding into fascism with no plans and no future. There’s nothing for it but to move to Los Angeles to chase their dreams, and find their people in the discos of the city.
\nBut when Flynn crashes back into their lives, claiming to be the host for an emissary of a utopian civilization approaching Earth, he offers Mitch the power to protect himself and friends across the queer community, so they never have to live in the shadows or face oppression again.
\nWith the world on the brink of cataclysm, and Mitch and his friends being squeezed out of every space, it’s down to this community of disco-loving outcasts to stand up for what is beautiful and right.
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Anton and his friends are the kings of Year 9.
\nThey're used to ruling the school and Anton wears the crown. The other kids run away when he's about but that's the way he wants it - he's got a reputation to live up to after all.
\nSo when he gets into serious trouble at school, he doesn't really care, but his mum most definitely does. She decides it's time for Anton to make some new friends and join the Happy Campers, a local activity group. Anton would quite literally rather do anything else, especially when he finds out Matthew, the biggest loser in school, is also a member.
\nBut after Matthew unexpectedly saves Anton's life, Anton figures maybe this kid is worth a shot. Teaching him some game is the least Anton can do to repay the debt. As the boys strike up an unlikely friendship, Anton finds himself questioning everything he thought was important.
\nDoes he want ruling the school to be his crowning glory or should he set his sights on better things?
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Shaun (aka MC Growls) is ready to drop his best bars and smash the competition at Raptology. That way, he's convinced Tanisha, his crush, will finally give him a chance.
\nBut when a livestream practice goes epically wrong, Growls's dirty laundry is literally exposed. He's finally achieved his dreams of going viral - not in the good way.
\nNow Tanisha won't look at him, he's the joke of the school and there's no way he can show his face at the competition. Will he ever catch a break?
\nThen a new girl on the block appears who might be just the friend Growls needs. Especially when she points out that Raptology could be the answer to his problems after all . . .
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Online, Fred goes by Existor@stmarks. His alter ego is the best gamer around - constantly on a winning streak, with tonnes of followers, and the confidence to go with it.
\nBut offline, Fred's life is miserable. His dad's always working, his mum's struggling, and at school, everyone looks straight through him. Until Existor's notoriety spreads to his school, and Fred sees everyone listens to what Existor has to say, so why not use that?
\nSoon, Fred is coming up with outlandish rumours about his classmates, and everyone's lapping it up. His bullies are shunned, and people are finally taking notice of him. But it's a slippery slope and Fred struggles to keep track of all the stuff he's posted as his lies start to wreak unexpected havoc.
\nFred will have to answer for his crimes against reality, but will he ever find someone to like him for who he really is?
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Indian-American Mira Guhathakurta is a poetry editor at a distinguished literary magazine in New York. She reconnects with Jack, an old acquaintance from college, and feels as if she might have found her soulmate. All that remains is for Jack to meet her family: her beloved father and sister Joy, a high-powered lawyer. But when Joy commits an unthinkable act of betrayal, the sisters are impossibly fractured and their father's heart is broken. As the sisters navigate their tumultuous relationship and Mira starts over, it turns out that Joy isn't the only one who has been or continues to be dishonest.
\nIn a propulsive story of love and passion and the ultimate pull of family and for fans of The Rachel Incident and The Paper Palace, Sisters of a Halved Heart examines the lengths we will go to in order to make our own narratives of love work out, the lies we tell ourselves, and the ways in which the truth, often right in front of you, can be impossible to see.
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On the primitive world Cull, a knight errant called Anderson hunts a dragon, not knowing that elsewhere is a resurrected brass killing machine, Mr Crane, assisting in a similar hunt. Learning that this old enemy still lives, agent Cormac pursues, while scientist Mika begins discovering the horrifying truth about an ancient alien technology.
\nEach day is a survival struggle for the people of Cull. Ferocious insectile monsters roam their planet, as they try to escape to their forefathers' starship still orbiting far above them. But an entity with questionable motives, calling itself Dragon, assists them with genetic by-blows created out of humans and the hideous local monsters. And now the supposedly geologically inactive planet itself is increasingly suffering earthquakes . . .
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In the far future, the Heliothane Dominion is triumphant in the solar system, after a bitter war with their Umbrathane progenitors. But some of the Umbrathane have escaped into the distant past, where they can position themselves to wreak havoc across time and undo their defeat.
\nThe most fanatical of them is the superhuman Cowl, more monstrous than any of the creatures outside his prehistoric redoubt. Cowl sends his terrifying hyperdimensional pet, the torbeast, hunting through all the timelines for human specimens. It sheds its scales - each one an organic time machine - where its master orders.
\nAnyone who picks one up is dragged back to the dawn of time, where Cowl awaits. Then the beast can feed, growing ever larger . . . In our own near-future, Tack is one of U-gov's programmable killers. When a scale latches onto him, his doom seems inevitable, but the Heliothane have other ideas: they can use Tack against Cowl.
\nTack is no stranger to violence, but the Heliothane, hardened in their struggle for humanity's very existence, have much to teach him. He will need it all for his encounter with Cowl. Once one of Tack's targets, Polly escaped with her life when a torbeast scale snatched her. Now, like Tack, she must learn fast as she is dragged back to Day Zero. To cheat death again, she will have to help him save the human race.
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Captain Blite knows that someone, or something, is trying to kill him. But a device he possesses, known only as the dark diamond, won't let that happen. After surviving a series of catastrophic accidents and assassination attempts, Blite realizes that whenever he dies the dark diamond reverses time to a moment before his death. He must go through the traumatic experience again and again until he escapes.
\nEvery encounter Blite survives generates a time flash which reveals potential futures. This extraordinary phenomenon attracts the attention of Polity agents and the crab-like p-Prador who wish to acquire this power for themselves. Hunted across space and time, Blite must uncover the true nature of the dark diamond before it causes his destruction . . .
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Thorvald Spear wakes in a hospital to find he's been brought back from the dead. What's more, he died in a human vs. alien war that ended a century ago. Spear had been trapped on a world surrounded by hostile Prador forces, but Penny Royal, the AI inside the rescue ship sent to provide backup, turned rogue, annihilating friendly forces in a frenzy of destruction and killing Spear. One hundred years later the AI is still on the loose, and Spear vows for revenge at any cost.
Isobel Satomi ran a successful crime syndicate, but after competitors attacked she needed power and protection. Negotiating with Penny Royal, she got more than she bargained for: Turning part-AI herself gave Isobel frightening power, but the upgrades hid a horrifying secret, and the dark AI triggered a transformation that has been turning her into something far from human…
Spear hires Isobel to track Penny Royal across worlds to its last known whereabouts. But he cheats her in the process and quickly finds himself in her crosshairs. As Isobel continues to evolve into a monstrous predator, it’s clear her rage will eventually win out over reason. Will Spear finish his hunt before he himself becomes the hunted?
Visible in the night sky the Argus Station, its twin smelting plants like glowing eyes, looks down on nightmare Earth. From Argus the Committee keep an oppressive control: citizens are watched by cams systems and political officers, it's a world inhabited by shepherds, reader guns, razor birds and the brutal Inspectorate with its white tiled cells and pain inducers.
\nSoon the Committee will have the power to edit human minds, but not yet, twelve billion human being need to die before Earth can be stabilized, but by turning large portions of Earth into concentration camps this is achievable, especially when the Argus satellite laser network comes fully online . . .
\nThis is the world Alan Saul wakes to in his crate on the conveyor to the Calais incinerator. How he got there he does not know, but he does remember the pain and the face of his interrogator. Informed by Janus, through the hardware implanted in his skull, about the world as it is now Saul is determined to destroy it, just as soon as he has found out who he was, and killed his interrogator . . .
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In the eight years since his first full-length novel Gridlinked was published by Pan Macmillan, Neal Asher has firmly established himself as one of the leading British writers of Science Fiction, and his novels are now translated in many languages. Most of his stories are set in a galactic future-scape called The Polity, and with this collection of marvellously inventive and action-packed short stories, he takes us further into the manifold diversities of that amazing universe.
\nNo one does monsters better than Neal Asher, so be prepared to revisit the lives and lifestyles of such favourites as the gabbleduck and the hooder, to savour alien poisons, the walking dead, the Sea of Death, and the putrefactor symbiont.
\nThrough these 13 stories, welcome to a universe of unbridled imagination, each one of them a delight in itself.
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Cormac is a legendary Earth Central Security agent, the James Bond of a wealthy future where \"runcibles\" (matter transmitters controlled by AIs) allow interstellar travel in an eye blink throughout the settled worlds of the Polity. Unfortunately Cormac is nearly burnt out, \"gridlinked\" to the AI net so long that his humanity has begun to drain away. He has to take the cold-turkey cure and shake his addiction to having his brain on the net.
Now he must do without just as he’s sent to investigate the unique runcible disaster that's wiped out the entire human colony on planet Samarkand in a thirty-megaton explosion. With the runcible out, Cormac must get there by ship, but he has incurred the wrath of a vicious psychopath called Arian Pelter, who now follows him across the galaxy with a terrifying psychotic killer android in tow. And deep beneath Samarkand's surface there are buried mysteries, fiercely guarded.
During a war between two planets in the same solar system - each occupied by adapted humans - what is thought to be a cosmic superstring is discovered.
\nAfter being cut, this object collapses into four cylindrical pieces, each about the size of a tube train. Each is densely packed with either alien technology or some kind of life. They are placed for safety in three ozark cylinders of a massively secure space station. There a female research scientist subsequently falls pregnant, and gives birth to quads. Then she commits suicide - but why?
By the end of the war one of the contesting planets has been devastated by the hilldiggers - giant space dreadnoughts employing weapons capable of creating mountain ranges. The quads have meanwhile grown up and are assuming positions of power in the post-war society. One of them will eventually gain control of the awesome hilldiggers . . .
A Jain warship has risen from the depths of space, emerging with a deadly grudge and a wealth of ancient yet lethal technology. It is determined to hunt down the alien Client, and will annihilate all those who stand in its way. So Orlandine must prepare humanity’s defence.
\nBoth humanity and the Prador thought their ancient foe - the Jain - had perished in a past age. And they resolve to destroy these outliers at any cost. Orlandine wants the Client’s inside knowledge to act, but the Client has her own agenda. Earth Central therefore looks to the Prador for alliance, after the Jain destroy their fleet. However, not everyone is happy with this, and some will do anything to shatter this fragile coalition.
\nAs the Jain warship makes its way across the galaxy, it seems unstoppable. Human and Prador forces alike struggle to withstand its devastating weaponry. Orlandine’s life work is to neutralize Jain technology, so if she can't triumph, no one can. But will she become what she’s vowed to destroy?
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In the outskirts of space, and the far corners of the Polity, complex dealings are in play.
Several forces continue to pursue the deadly and enigmatic Penny Royal, none more dangerous than the Brockle, a psychopathic forensics AI and criminal who has escaped the Polity's confinements and is upgrading itself in anticipation of a deadly showdown, becoming ever more powerful and intelligent.
Aboard Factory Station Room 101, the behemoth war factory that birthed Penny Royal, groups of humans, alien prador, and AI war drones grapple for control. The stability of the ship is complicated by the arrival of a gabbleduck known as the Weaver, the last living member of the ancient and powerful Atheter alien race.
What would an Atheter want with the complicated dealings of Penny Royal? Are the Polity and prador forces playing right into the dark AI's hand, or is it the other way around?
Jack Four – one of twenty human clones – has been created to be sold. His purchasers are the alien prador and they only want him for their experimentation program. But there is something different about Jack. No clone should possess the knowledge that’s been loaded into his mind. And no normal citizen of humanity’s Polity worlds would have this information.
\nThe prador’s king has been mutated by the Spatterjay virus into a creature even more monstrous than the prador themselves. And his children, the King’s Guard, have undergone similar changes. They were infected by the virus during the last humans-versus-prador war, now lapsed into an uneasy truce. But the prador are always looking for new weapons - and their experimentation program might give them the edge they seek.
\nSuzeal trades human slaves out of the Stratogaster Space Station, re-engineering them to serve the prador. She thinks the rewards are worth the risks, but all that is about to change. The Station was once a zoo, containing monsters from across known space. All the monsters now dwell on the planet below, but they aren’t as contained as they seem. And a vengeful clone may be the worst danger of all.
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Alan Saul is now part human and part machine, and our solar system isn't big enough to hold him. He craves the stars, but can't leave yet. His sister Var is trapped on Mars, on the wrong side of a rebellion, and Saul's human side won't let her die. He must leave Argus Station to stage a dangerous rescue - but mutiny is brewing on board, as Saul's robots make his crew feel increasingly redundant.
\nSerene Galahad will do anything to prevent Saul's escape. Earth’s ruthless dictator hides her crimes from a cowed populace as she readies new warships for pursuit. She aims to crush her enemy in a terrifying display of interstellar violence.
\nMeanwhile, The Scourge limps back to earth, its crew slaughtered, its mission to annihilate Saul a disaster. There are survivors, but while one seeks Galahad's death, Clay Ruger will negotiate for his life. Events build to a climax as Ruger holds humanity’s greatest asset - seeds to rebuild a dying Earth. This stolen Gene Bank data is offered at a price, but what will Galahad pay for humanity’s future?
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Outlink station Miranda has been destroyed by a nanomycelium, and the very nature of this sabotage suggests that the alien bioconstruct Dragon - a creature as untrustworthy as it is gigantic - is somehow involved. Sent out on a titanic Polity dreadnought, the Occam Razor, agent Cormac must investigate the disaster.
Meanwhile, on the remote planet Masada, the long-term rebellion can never rise above-ground, as the slave population is subjugated by orbital laser arrays controlled by the Theocracy in their cylinder worlds, and by the fact that they cannot safely leave their labour compounds. For the wilderness of Masada lacks breathable air . . . and out there roam monstrous predators called hooders and siluroynes, not to mention the weird and terrible gabbleducks.
The Polity is under attack from a 'melded' AI entity with control of the lethal Jain technology, yet the attack seems to have no coherence. When one of Erebus's wormships kills millions on the world of Klurhammon, a high-tech agricultural world of no real tactical significance, agent Ian Cormac is sent to investigate, though he is secretly struggling to control a new ability no human being should possess . . . and beginning to question the motives of his AI masters.
Further attacks and seemingly indiscriminate slaughter ensue, but only serve to bring some of the most dangerous individuals in the Polity into the war. Mr Crane, the indefatigable brass killing machine sets out for vengeance, while Orlandine, a vastly-augmented haiman who herself controls Jain technology, seeks a weapon of appalling power and finds allies from an ancient war.
Meanwhile Mika, scientist and Dragon expert, is again kidnapped by that unfathomable alien entity and dragged into the heart of things: to wake the makers of Jain technology from their five-million-year slumber.
But Erebus's attacks are not so indiscriminate, after all, and could very well herald the end of the Polity itself . . .
Old Captain Orbus commandeered a ship to flee Spatterjay, desperate to escape the violent planet. Orbus’s alien enemy, the Prador Vrell, is also moving on. The Spatterjay virus mutated him into something even more dangerous. And he’s hunting the Prador King himself - who sought to kill him, to bury the secret of their similar transformations.
\nOrbus and Vrell clash in the Graveyard, a lawless zone where the Prador have seized a key space station. Official action by humanity or Prador would end peace, as a centuries-long cold war simmers. So Earth commands Orbus to destroy the station, even as the King recruits a monster to exterminate Vrell. But their actions will awaken an intelligence that annihilated civilisations, as it stirs after five million years . . .
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From eight hundred years in the future, a runcible gate is opened into the Polity and those coming through it have been sent specially to take the alien maker back to its home civilization in the Small Magellanic cloud.
Once these refugees are safely through, the gate itself is rapidly shut downbecause something alien is pursuing them. The gate is then dumped into a nearby sun.
From those refugees who get through, agent Cormac learns that the Maker civilization has been destroyed by pernicious virus known as the Jain technology. This, of course, raises questions: why was Dragon, a massive biocontruct of the Makers, really sent to the Polity; why did a Jain node suddenly end up in the hands of someone who could do the most damage with it?
Meanwhile an entity called the Legate is distributing pernicious Jain nodes...
And a renegade attack ship, The King of Hearts, has encountered something very nasty outside the Polity itself.
The Polity Collective is the pinnacle of space-faring civilization. Academic and insightful, its dominion stretches from Earth Central into the unfathomable reaches of the galactic void.
\nBut when the Polity finally encounters alien life in the form of massive, hostile, crab-like carnivores known as the Prador, there can be only one outcome - total warfare!
\nStarships clash, planets fall, and space stations are overrun, but for Jebel Krong and Moria Salem, two unlikely heroes trapped at the center of the action, this war is far more than a mere clash of cultures, far more than technology versus brute force . . . this war is personal.
On the planet Spatterjay arrive three travelers: Janer, acting as the eyes of the hornet Hive mind, on a mission not yet revealed to him; Erlin, searching for Ambel - the ancient sea captain who can teach her how to live; and Sable Keech, on a vendetta he cannot abandon, though he himself has been dead for 700 years. This remote world is mostly ocean, and it is a rare visitor who ventures beyond the safety of the island Dome.
\nOutside it, only the native Hoopers dare risk the voracious appetites of the planet's wildlife. But somewhere out there is Spatterjay Hoop -- and Keech will not rest until he brings this legendary renegade to justice for hideous crimes committed centuries ago during the Prador Wars.
While Keech is discovering that Hoop is now a monster - his body and head living apart from each other - Janer is bewildered by a place where the native inhabitants just will not die and angry when he finally learns the Hive mind's intentions for him.
Meanwhile, Erlin thinks she has plenty of time to find the answers she seeks, but could not be more wrong. For one of the most brutal of the alien Prador is about to pay the planet a surreptitious visit, intent on exterminating all remaining witnesses to his wartime atrocities. As the visitors' paths converge, major hell is about to erupt in a chaotic waterscape where minor hell is already a remorseless fact of everyday life . . . and death.
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In a far corner of space, on the very borders between humanity’s Polity worlds and the kingdom of the vicious crab-like prador, is an immediate threat to all sentient life: an accretion disc, a solar system designed by the long-dead Jain race and swarming with living technology powerful enough to destroy entire civilisations.
Neither the Polity or the prador want the other in full control of the disc, so they’ve placed an impartial third party in charge of the weapons platform guarding the technology from escaping into the galaxy: Orlandine, a part-human, part-AI haiman. She’s assisted by Dragon, a mysterious, spaceship-sized alien entity who has long been suspicious of Jain technology and who suspects the disc is a trap lying-in-wait.
Meanwhile, the android Angel is planning an attack on the Polity, and is searching for a terrible weapon to carry out his plans?a Jain super-soldier. But what exactly the super-soldier is, and what it could be used for if it fell into the wrong hands, will bring Angel and Orlandine’s missions to a head in a way that could forever change the balance of power in the Polity universe.
The Theocracy has been dead for twenty years, and the Polity rules on Masada. But the Tidy Squad consists of rebels who cannot accept the new order. Their hate for surviving theocrats is undiminished, and the iconic Jeremiah Tombs is at the top of their hitlist.
Escaping his sanatorium Tombs is pushed into painful confrontation with reality he has avoided since the rebellion. His insanity must cured, because the near mythical hooder called the Technician that attacked him all those years ago, did something to his mind even the AIs fail to understand. Tombs might possess information about the suicide of an entire alien race.
The war drone Amistad, whose job it is to bring this information to light, recruits Lief Grant, an ex-rebel Commander, to protect Tombs, along with the black AI Penny Royal, who everyone thought was dead. The amphidapt Chanter, who has studied the bone sculptures the Technician makes with the remains of its prey, might be useful too.
Meanwhile, in deep space, the mechanism the Atheter used to reduce themselves to animals, stirs from slumber and begins to power-up its weapons.
Sable Keech is a walking dead man, and the only one to have been resurrected by nanochanger. Did he succeed because he was infected by the Spatterjay virus, or because he came late to resurrection in a tank of seawater?
\nTracing the man's last-known seaborne journey, Taylor Bloc wants to know the truth. He also wants so much else - adulation, power, control - and will go to any lengths to achieve them. An ancient hive mind, almost incomprehensible to the human race, has sent an agent to this uncertain world. Does it simply want to obtain the poison 'sprine' that is crucial to immortality - and, if so, maybe Janer must find it and stop it.
\nMeanwhile, still faced with the ennui of immortality, Erlin has her solitude rudely interrupted by a very angry whelkus titanicus, and begins the strangest of journeys. Deep in the ocean the Spatterjay virus has wrought a terrible change that will affect them all.
\nSomething dormant for ten years is breaking free, and once again the aftershocks of an ancient war will focus on this watery world. And Sniper, for ten years the Warden of Spatterjay, finally takes delivery of his new drone shell. It's much better than his old one: powerful engines, more lethal weapons, thicker armour. He's going to need them.
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Long ago, the Cyberat left Earth to co-evolve with machines. Now, led by the powerful dictator Castron, their Old Guard believe that machines should replace the physical body. But these beliefs are upended with the arrival of the human Polity - and their presence ignites rebellion.
\nPiper was raised as a weapon against the Cyberat, implanted with secretive hardware. When his parents are captured by the Old Guard, the Polity offer him unexpected aid. Piper knows the Polity want more from him, but at what cost? The rebellion also attracts the deadly prador, placing an entire world in peril.
\nAs war rages across the planet, Piper must battle with the unknown technology implanted in his bones. It may be the Polity’s answer to their relentless fight against the prador. It could also be civilisation-ending Jain tech - or something far more extraordinary.
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Thorvald Spear, resurrected from his death over a hundred years earlier, continues to hunt Penny Royal, the rogue AI and dangerous war criminal on the run from Polity forces. Beyond the Graveyard, a lawless and deadly area in deep space, Spear follows the trail of several enemy Prador, the crab-like alien species with a violent history of conflict with humanity.
Sverl, a Prador genetically modified by Penny Royal and slowly becoming human, pursues Cvorn, a Prador harboring deep hatred for the Polity looking to use him and other hybrids to reignite the dormant war with mankind.
Blite, captain of a bounty hunting ship, hands over two prisoners and valuable memplants from Penny Royal to the Brockle, a dangerous forensics entity under strict confinement on a Polity spaceship that quickly takes a keen interest in the corrupted AI and its unclear motives.
Penny Royal meanwhile continues to pull all the strings in the background, keeping the Polity at bay and seizing control of an attack ship. It seeks Factory Station Room 101, a wartime manufacturing space station believed to be destroyed. What does it want with the factory? And will Spear find the rogue AI before it gets there?
Orlandine has destroyed the alien Jain super-soldier by deploying an actual black hole. And now that same weapon hoovers up clouds of lethal Jain technology, swarming within the deadly accretion disc’s event horizon. All seems just as she planned. Yet behind her back, forces incite rebellion on her home world, planning her assassination.
\nEarth Central, humanity’s ruling intelligence, knows Orlandine was tricked into releasing her weapon, and fears the Jain are behind it. The prador king knows this too – and both foes gather fleets of warships to surround the disc.
\nThe alien Client is returning to the accretion disc to save the last of her kind, buried on a ship deep within it. She upgrades her vast weapons platform in preparation, and she’ll need it. Her nemesis also waits within the disc’s swirling dusts - and the Jain have committed genocide before.
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With the advent of new AI technology, Polity citizens now possess incredible lifespans. Yet they struggle to find meaning in their longevity, seeking danger and novelty in their increasingly mundane lives.
\nOn a mission to find a brighter future for humanity, ex-soldier Ursula fosters a colony on the hostile planet Threpsis. Here, survival isn’t a given, and colonists thrive without their AI guidance. But when deadly alien raptors appear, Ursula and her companions find themselves forced to adapt in unprecedented ways. And they will be pushed to the very brink of what it means to be human.
\nAs a desperate battle rages across the planet, Ursula must dig deep into her past if she is to save humanity’s future.
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As a totalitarian Inspectorate tightens its grip, one man discovers the power to slip through the gaps and traverse alternate universes.
\nOttanger is a rebel and mutant on an Earth governed by a ruthless Committee. But after its Inspectorate experiments on him, Ottanger realises the mutation allows him to reach alternate worlds. The multiverse is revealed in all its glory and terror - and he understands that he can finally flee his timeline.
\nThen Ottanger meets the Fenris, an evolved human, visiting his Earth from the far future. He’d engineered the original world walking mutation, so those altered could escape the Committee’s nightmarish regime. Yet this only worked for a few, and millions continued to suffer. And Ottanger sees that that Committee will become unstoppable if not destroyed.
\nHowever, the Fenris has drawn yet another threat to Ottanger’s Earth. With the power of its trillion linked minds, it craves world-walking biotech and will do anything to get it. As conflict looms at home, and war threatens the multiverse - the Fenris, Ottanger and his companions must prepare for a galaxy-altering battle.
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Earth’s Zero Asset citizens no longer face extermination from orbit. Thanks to Alan Saul, the Committee’s network of control is a smoking ruin and its robotic enforcers lie dormant. But power abhors a vacuum and, scrambling from the wreckage, comes the ruthless Serene Galahad. She must act while the last vestiges of Committee infrastructure remain intact – and she has the means to ensure command is hers.
\nOn Mars, Var Delex fights for the survival of Antares Base, while the Argus Space Station hurls towards the red planet. And she knows whomever, or whatever, trashed Earth is still aboard. Var must save the base, while also dealing with the first signs of rebellion. And aboard Argus Station, Alan Saul’s mind has expanded into the local computer network.
\nIn the process, he uncovers the ghastly experiments of the Humanoid Unit Development, the possibility of eternal life, and a madman who may hold the keys to interstellar flight. But Earth’s agents are closer than Saul thinks, and the killing will soon begin.
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An unprecedented condition is on the rise. It behaves like a virus, with the first symptom being a fever, but those who contract it experience long-term effects no one has ever seen utter contentment. Soon after infection, people find the stress, depression, greed, and other negative feelings that used to weigh them down are gone.
\nAlmost everyone revels in this mass unburdening. But people in power - who depend on malcontents tuning into their broadcasts, prey on the insecure to sell their products, and convince people they need more, new, faster, better everything - know this new state of being is bad for business. Soon, campaigns start up convincing people that being happy all the time is dangerous. There’s even a vaccine developed to rid people of their inner peace and get them back to normal because, surely, without anger or jealousy as motivators, productivity will grind to a halt and the world will be thrown into chaos.
\nIt’s nearly impossible to determine the truth when everyone with a platform is pushing their own agendas, and two teens from very different backgrounds who’ve had their lives upended in different ways by the virus find themselves enmeshed in the center of a dangerous power play. Can they reveal the truth?
Adriana knows that if she can manage to keep her head down for the next seven months, she might be able to get through her sentence in the Compass juvenile detention center. Thankfully, she’s allowed to keep her journal, where she writes down her most private thoughts when her feelings get too big.
\nUntil the day she opens her journal and discovers that her thoughts are no longer so private. Someone has read her writings - and has written back. A boy who lives on the other side of the gender-divided detention center. A boy who sparks a fire in her to write back.
\nJon’s story is different than Adriana’s; he’s already been at Compass for years and will be in the system for years to come. Still, when he reads the words Adriana writes to him, it makes him feel like the walls that hold them in have melted away.
When the California drought escalates to catastrophic proportions, one teen is forced to make life and death decisions for her family in this harrowing story of survival.
The drought - or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it - has been going on for a while now. Everyone's lives have become an endless list of don'ts: don't water the lawn, don't fill up your pool, don't take long showers.
Until the taps run dry.
Suddenly, Alyssa's quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation; neighbors and families turned against each other on the hunt for water. And when her parents don't return and her life - and the life of her brother - is threatened, Alyssa has to make impossible choices if she's going to survive.
All it takes is one hit on the football field, and suddenly Ash’s life doesn’t look quite the way he remembers it.
Impossible though it seems, he’s been hit into another dimension - and keeps on bouncing through worlds that are almost-but-not-really his own.
The changes start small, but they quickly spiral out of control as Ash slides into universes where he has everything he’s ever wanted, universes where society is stuck in the past . . . universes where he finds himself looking at life through entirely different eyes.
And if he isn’t careful, the world he’s learning to see more clearly could blink out of existence . . .
There are still countless tales of the Scythedom to tell. Centuries passed between the Thunderhead cradling humanity and Scythe Goddard trying to turn it upside down. For years humans lived in a world without hunger, disease, or death with Scythes as the living instruments of population control.
\nNeal Shusterman - along with collaborators David Yoon, Jarrod Shusterman, Sofía Lapuente, Michael H. Payne, Michelle Knowlden, and Joelle Shusterman - returns to the world throughout the timeline of the Arc of a Scythe series. Discover secrets and histories of characters you’ve followed for three volumes and meet new heroes, new foes, and some figures in between.
\nGleanings shows just how expansive, terrifying, and thrilling the world that began with Scythe truly is.
This collection of unforgettable and uncanny stories could only come from the mind of award winner Neal Shusterman. Compiled for the first time in one epic volume, these stories both classic and brand-new will stretch your imagination from terror to the sublime and back again.
\nExplore a world where bats block out the sun, where soup is a trap for your soul, or where the life-force of a glacier can bring back the dead. Journey to a place where the wind can be captured, time can be crafted into infinite attic space, or a hot tub can house an ancient monster. And revisit the Arc of the Scythe universe for two all-new tales of gleaning.
\nIn this collection, the only thing that is truly certain is nothing is certain.
The freeway is coming.
\nIt will cut the neighborhood in two. Construction has already started, pushing toward this corridor of condemned houses and cracked concrete with the momentum of the inevitable. Yet there you are, in the fifth house on the left, fighting for your life.
\nRamey, I.
\nThe victim of the bet between two manufactured gods: the seductive and lethal Roxy (Oxycontin), who is at the top of her game, and the smart, high-achieving Addison (Adderall), who is tired of being the helpful one, and longs for a more dangerous, less wholesome image. The wager - a contest to see who can bring their mark to “the Party” first - is a race to the bottom of a rave that has raged since the beginning of time. And you are only human, dazzled by the lights and music. Drawn by what the drugs offer - tempted to take that step past helpful to harmful . . . and the troubled places that lie beyond.
\nBut there are two I. Rameys - Isaac, a soccer player thrown into Roxy’s orbit by a bad fall and a bad doctor and Ivy, his older sister, whose increasing frustration with her untreated ADHD leads her to renew her acquaintance with Addy.
\nWhich one are you?
Six teens struggle to discover the source of their strange and horrific abilities in this first book of The Star Shards Chronicles.
\nDillon has the terrifying power to create massive amounts of destruction with the slightest tweak of his will. Deanna is so consumed by fear, it has become like a black hole, drawing to her the very things that terrify her.
\nThen, when the glare of a supernova sixteen light-years away illuminates the night sky, they have a vision: There are six of them out there, all teenagers, and all suffering from supernatural afflictions that disfigure their bodies and souls. Only by finding one another will the six ever be strong enough to defeat these mysterious forces that, bit by bit, are devouring their souls from the inside out.
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Two teens are forced to murder - maybe each other - in the first in a chilling new series from Neal Shusterman, author of the New York Times bestselling Unwind dystology.
A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery: humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now Scythes are the only ones who can end life - and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.
Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe - a role that neither wants. These teens must master the \"art\" of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own.
Scythe is the first novel of a thrilling new series by National Book Award–winning author Neal Shusterman in which Citra and Rowan learn that a perfect world comes only with a heavy price.
In this conclusion to The Star Shards Chronicles, powerful and terrifying invaders have arrived from a parallel dimension, and only the Star Shards can prevent the destruction of the human race.
\nSix children were conceived at the exact moment that the star Mentaras-H went supernova, and the explosion transformed their souls into living star fragments. Now the Star Shards face the ultimate battle - and the true purpose of their gifts be revealed, for it is no accident they have these powers.
\nOnce despised for their \"deformities,\" the Star Shards are now worshiped and feared as gods. Their power is unlimited, as is the temptation to abuse it. But a new and terrifying force has torn a wound in the universe, infecting it like a deadly, intelligent virus.
\nOnly one power exists that could conceivably prevent the extermination of the human race: the Star Shards. But only if they can put aside their titanic egos and join forces one final time.
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A group of monumentally powerful teens must face an ancient, soul-eating foe in this second book of The Star Shards Chronicles.
\nA cataclysmic explosion has given earthly teens astronomical powers - when the star Mentarsus-H went supernova at their conceptions, the teens absorbed the shattered soul of the star and inherited unimaginable abilities.
\nNow the Star Shards have become like gods, drunk on their own power - and ripe for manipulation by The Bringer, a creature who would turn them against one another and transform the planet into his own personal feeding ground. But who is more dangerous: The Bringer or the Star Shards?
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Rowan and Citra take opposite stances on the morality of the Scythedom, putting them at odds, in the chilling sequel to the Printz Honor Book Scythe from New York Times bestseller Neal Shusterman, author of the Unwind dystology.
The Thunderhead cannot interfere in the affairs of the Scythedom. All it can do is observe - it does not like what it sees.
A year has passed since Rowan had gone off grid. Since then, he has become an urban legend, a vigilante snuffing out corrupt scythes in a trial by fire. His story is told in whispers across the continent.
As Scythe Anastasia, Citra gleans with compassion and openly challenges the ideals of the “new order.” But when her life is threatened and her methods questioned, it becomes clear that not everyone is open to the change.
Will the Thunderhead intervene?
Or will it simply watch as this perfect world begins to unravel?
In the highly anticipated finale to the New York Times bestselling trilogy, dictators, prophets, and tensions rise. In a world that's conquered death, will humanity finally be torn asunder by the immortal beings it created?
Citra and Rowan have disappeared. Endura is gone. It seems like nothing stands between Scythe Goddard and absolute dominion over the world scythedom. With the silence of the Thunderhead and the reverberations of the Great Resonance still shaking the earth to its core, the question remains: Is there anyone left who can stop him?
The answer lies in the Tone, the Toll, and the Thunder.
Find out what happens to Connor, Risa, and Lev now that they've finally destroyed the Proactive Citizenry in this collection of short stories set in the world of the New York Times bestselling Unwind Dystology by Neal Shusterman.
Connor Lassiter's fight to bring down Proactive Citizenry and find a suitable alternative to unwinding concluded in UnDivided. Now Connor, Risa, and Lev are free to live in a peaceful future - or are they? Neal Shusterman brings back his beloved Unwind characters for his fans to see what's left for those who were destined to be unwound.
Proactive Citizenry, the company that created Cam from the parts of unwound teens, has a plan: to mass produce rewound teens like Cam for military purposes. And below the surface of that horror lies another shocking level of intrigue: Proactive Citizenry has been suppressing technology that could make unwinding completely unnecessary. As Conner, Risa, and Lev uncover these startling secrets, enraged teens begin to march on Washington to demand justice and a better future.
But more trouble is brewing. Starkey’s group of storked teens is growing more powerful and militant with each new recruit. And if they have their way, they’ll burn the harvest camps to the ground and put every adult in them before a firing squad - which could destroy any chance America has for a peaceful future.
Thanks to Connor, Lev, and Risa - and their high-profile revolt at Happy Jack Harvest Camp people can no longer turn a blind eye to unwinding. Ridding society of troublesome teens while simultaneously providing much-needed tissues for transplant might be convenient, but its morality has finally been brought into question.
\nHowever, unwinding has become big business, and there are powerful political and corporate interests that want to see it not only continue, but also expand to the unwinding of prisoners and the impoverished. Cam is a product of unwinding; made entirely out of the parts of other unwinds, he is a teen who does not technically exist.
\nA futuristic Frankenstein, Cam struggles with a search for identity and meaning and wonders if a rewound being can have a soul. And when the actions of a sadistic bounty hunter cause Cam’s fate to become inextricably bound with the fates of Connor, Risa, and Lev, he’ll have to question humanity itself.
Set in the future, the second civil war is fought over abortion. To end the war, a compromise is reached that ends the practice of abortion but creates an alternative called \"unwinding.\" Between the ages of 13 and 17, parents or guardians can choose to have their children unwound, which involves having every part of their bodies harvested to be \"donated\" to another person so, technically, they don't really die.
\nThe complex and compelling plot follows three teens whose stories intertwine when they escape while on their way to the harvest camps. Fifteen-year-old Connor's parents can no longer control him. Lev, a tithe, was raised by religious parents for the sole purpose of being unwound. Risa, a ward of the state, is a victim of shrinking budgets since she is not a talented enough musician to be kept alive.
There's no way William A. Cozzano can lose the upcoming presidential election. He's a likable midwestern governor with one insidious advantage - an advantage provided by a shadowy group of backers. A biochip implanted in his head hardwires him to a computerised polling system.
\nThe mood of the electorate is channeled directly into his brain. Forget issues. Forget policy. Cozzano is more than the perfect candidate. He's a special effect.
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In this history-bending adventure, the ragtag team of ex-D.O.D.O. agents must traverse time and space to stop the powerful Irish witch Gráinne from reversing the evolution of all modern technology.
\nFrom Jacobean England to the ancient Roman Empire, Mel Stokes and her fellow outcasts must untangle the knotted threads of history while the diabolical Gráinne jumps from timeline to timeline, always staying one step ahead - or is it behind?
\nHistorical objects disappear, cities literally rise and fall, and nothing less than the fate of humanity is at stake. Will they be able to fix the past - in order to save the future?
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When Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics and languages, accidently meets military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons in a hallway at Harvard University, it is the beginning of a chain of events that will alter their lives and human history itself. The young man from a shadowy government entity approaches Mel, a low-level faculty member, with an incredible offer. The only condition: she must swear herself to secrecy in return for the rather large sum of money.
\nTristan needs Mel to translate some very old documents, which, if authentic, are earth-shattering. They prove that magic actually existed and was practiced for centuries. But the arrival of the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment weakened its power and endangered its practitioners. Magic stopped working altogether in 1851, at the time of the Great Exhibition at London's Crystal Palace - the world's fair celebrating the rise of industrial technology and commerce. Something about the modern world \"jams\" the \"frequencies\" used by magic, and it's up to Tristan to find out why.
\nAnd so the Department of Diachronic Operations - D.O.D.O. - gets cracking on its real mission: to develop a device that can bring magic back, and send Diachronic Operatives back in time to keep it alive . . . and meddle with a little history at the same time. But while Tristan and his expanding operation master the science and build the technology, they overlook the mercurial - and treacherous - nature of the human heart.
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Erasmas, 'Raz', is a young avout living in the Concent, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers. Three times during history's darkest epochs, violence has invaded and devastated the cloistered community. Yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe.
\nBut they now prepare to open the Concent's gates to the outside world, in celebration of a once-a-decade rite. Suddenly, Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world - as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet . . . and beyond.
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When a foreign exchange student is found murdered at an Iowa University, Deputy Sheriff Clyde Banks finds that his investigation extends far beyond the small college town - all the way to the Middle East. Shady events at the school reveal that a powerful department is using federal grant money for highly dubious research. And what it’s producing is a very nasty bug.
Navigating a plot that leads from his own backyard to Washington, D.C., to the Gulf, where his Army Reservist wife has been called to duty, Banks realizes he may be the only person who can stop the wholesale slaughtering of thousands of Americans. It’s a lesson in foreign policy he’ll never forget.
In the year 1689, a cabal of Barbary galley slaves - including one Jack Shaftoe, aka King of the Vagabonds, aka Half-Cocked Jack - devises a daring plan to win freedom and fortune. A great adventure ensues - a perilous race for an enormous prize of silver - nay, gold - nay, legendary gold.
In Europe, the exquisite and resourceful Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, is stripped of her immense personal fortune by France's most dashing privateer. Penniless and at risk from those who desire either her or her head (or both), she is caught up in a web of international intrigue, even as she desperately seeks the return of her most precious possession.
Meanwhile, Newton and Leibniz continue to propound their grand theories as their infamous rivalry intensifies, stubborn alchemy does battle with the natural sciences, dastardly plots are set in motion . . . and Daniel Waterhouse seeks passage to the Massachusetts colony in hopes of escaping the madness into which his world has descended.
In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy - is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Waterhouse and Detatchment 2702 - commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe - is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by the gung-ho Shaftoe and his forces.
\nFast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a \"data haven\" in Southeast Asia - a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails grandaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a data haven afloat.
\nBut soon their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702 linked to an unbreakable Nazi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital liberty . . . or to universal totalitarianism reborn.
\n
The future is small. The future is nano . . .
\nAnd who could be smaller or more insignificant than poor Little Nell - an orphan girl alone and adrift in a world of Confucian Law, Neo-Victorian values and warring nanotechnology?
\nWell, not quite alone. Because Nell has a friend, of sorts. A guide, a teacher, an armed and unarmed combat instructor, a book and a computer: the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is all these and much much more. It is illicit, magical, dangerous.
\nAnd it isn't Nell's. It was stolen. And now some very powerful people want to get their hands on this highly desirable object. Nell is about to discover that the world can feel very small indeed . . .
\n
In his youth, Richard “Dodge” Forthrast founded Corporation 9592, a gaming company that made him a multibillionaire. Now in his middle years, Dodge appreciates his comfortable, unencumbered life, managing his myriad business interests, and spending time with his beloved niece Zula and her young daughter, Sophia.
\nOne beautiful autumn day, while he undergoes a routine medical procedure, something goes irrevocably wrong. Dodge is pronounced brain dead and put on life support, leaving his stunned family and close friends with difficult decisions. Long ago, when a much younger Dodge drew up his will, he directed that his body be given to a cryonics company now owned by enigmatic tech entrepreneur Elmo Shepherd. Legally bound to follow the directive despite their misgivings, Dodge’s family has his brain scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud, until it can eventually be revived.
\nIn the coming years, technology allows Dodge’s brain to be turned back on. It is an achievement that is nothing less than the disruption of death itself. An eternal afterlife - the Bitworld - is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls.
\nBut this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem . . .
\n
Born in the American West to a clan of cowboy anarchists, Dawn is raised in Leningrad after the Russian Revolution by her Russian father, a party line Leninist who re-christens her Aurora. She spends her early years in Russia but then grows up as a teenager in Montana, before being drawn into gunrunning and revolution in the streets of Washington, D.C., during the depths of the Great Depression.
\nWhen a surprising revelation about her past puts her in the crosshairs of U.S. authorities, Dawn returns to Russia, where she is groomed as a spy by the organisation that later becomes the KGB.
\n
Quicksilver is history, adventure, science, truth, invention, sex, absurdity, piracy, madness, death, and alchemy. It sweeps across continents and decades with the power of a roaring tornado, upending kings, armies, religious beliefs, and all expectations.
\nIt is the story of Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and conflicted Puritan, pursuing knowledge in the company of the greatest minds of Baroque-era Europe, in a chaotic world where reason wars with the bloody ambitions of the mighty, and where catastrophe, natural or otherwise, can alter the political landscape overnight.
\nIt is a chronicle of the breathtaking exploits of \"Half-Cocked Jack\" Shaftoe - London street urchin turned swashbuckling adventurer and legendary King of the Vagabonds - risking life and limb for fortune and love while slowly maddening from the pox . . . and Eliza, rescued by Jack from a Turkish harem to become spy, confidante, and pawn of royals in order to reinvent a contentious continent through the newborn power of finance.
\nA gloriously rich, entertaining, and endlessly inventive novel that brings a remarkable age and its momentous events to vivid life - a historical epic populated by the likes of Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton, William of Orange, Benjamin Franklin, and King Louis XIV - Quicksilver is an extraordinary achievement from one of the most original and important literary talents of our time.
\nAnd it’s just the beginning . . .
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What would happen if the world were ending?
\nA catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.
\nBut the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . .
\nFive thousand years later, their progeny - seven distinct races now three billion strong - embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.
\n
The only relief from the sea of logos is within the well-guarded borders of the Burbclaves. Is it any wonder that most sane folks have forsaken the real world and chosen to live in the computer-generated universe of virtual reality?
\nIn a major city, the size of a dozen Manhattans, is a domain of pleasures limited only by the imagination. But now a strange new computer virus called Snow Crash is striking down hackers everywhere, leaving an unlikely young man as humankind's last best hope.
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Set in the early 18th century and featuring a diverse cast of characters that includes alchemists, philosophers, mathematicians, spies, thieves, pirates, and royalty, The System of the World follows Daniel Waterhouse, an unassuming philosopher and confidant to some of the most brilliant minds of the age, as he returns to England to try and repair the rift between geniuses Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
\nAfter reluctantly leaving his family in Boston, Waterhouse arrives in England and is almost killed by a mysterious Infernal Device. Having been away from the war-decimated country for two decades, Waterhouse quickly learns that although many things have changed, there is still violent revolution simmering just beneath the surface of seemingly civilised society.
\nWith Queen Anne deathly ill and Tories and Whigs jostling for political supremacy, Waterhouse and Newton vow to figure out who is trying to kill certain scientists and decipher the riddle behind the legend of King Solomon's gold, a mythical hoard of precious metal with miraculous properties.
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Neal Stephenson’s sweeping, prescient new novel transports readers to a near-future world where the greenhouse effect has inexorably resulted in a whirling-dervish troposphere of superstorms, rising sea levels, global flooding, merciless heat waves, and virulent, deadly pandemics.
One man has a Big Idea for reversing global warming, a master plan perhaps best described as “elemental.” But will it work? And just as important, what are the consequences for the planet and all of humanity should it be applied?
Ranging from the Texas heartland to the Dutch royal palace in the Hague, from the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas to the sunbaked Chihuahuan Desert, Termination Shock brings together a disparate group of characters from different cultures and continents who grapple with the real-life repercussions of global warming. Ultimately, it asks the question: Might the cure be worse than the disease?
Sangamon Taylor's a New Age Sam Spade who sports a wet suit instead of a trench coat and prefers Jolt from the can to Scotch on the rocks. He knows about chemical sludge the way he knows about evil - all too intimately. And the toxic trail he follows leads to some high and foul places. Before long Taylor's house is bombed, his every move followed, he's adopted by reservation Indians, moves onto the FBI's most wanted list, makes up with his girlfriend, and plays a starring role in the near-assassination of a presidential candidate.
\nClosing the case with the aid of his burnout roomate, his tofu-eating comrades, three major networks, and a range of unconventional weaponry, Sangamon Taylor pulls off the most startling caper in Boston Harbor since the Tea Party. As he navigates this ecological thriller with hardboiled wit and the biggest outboard motor he can get his hands on, Taylor reveals himself as one of the last of the white-hatted good guys in a very toxic world.
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Through its radical honesty, and also through its thoughtful interrogations into the nature of life and literature, Neige Sinno shares with her readers her journey from someone who considered her life to have been stolen from her to someone who over the twenty years that elapsed from her reporting the rape to writing this book, somehow got her life back, all without ever being able to erase or even change what had happened to her as a child.
\nThis international literary phenomenon - the title inspired by William Blake’s poem The Tyger - is a forensic exploration into how to speak about the unspeakable. Repeatedly exposed to sexual violence as a child, Neige Sinno tells of a family life built around lies and deception. She was seven or eight years old when her stepfather started abusing her. At fourteen or fifteen the abuse stopped. At nineteen, she decided to break her silence which leads to a public trial and prison for her stepfather, and Sinno starts a new life in Mexico, far away from France.
\nIt is through the craft of her narrative and her powerful direct analysis of the deep-seated taboo that Sinno explores the different facets of memory, her own, her mother’s, as well as her abusive stepfather’s; and of abuse itself in all its monstrosity and banality. How do we become who we are? What remains unsaid in families? How is society implicated? This harrowing auto-fictional account of the author's sexual abuse as a child is mediated through analysis of various literary texts, including works by Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Christine Angot, and Virginie Despentes.
\nIn this unparalleled work that contains a thousand questions, a thousand jewel-like insights, there is an abiding how to protect others from the rape, the incest that she herself endured? In the midst of so much darkness, an answer reads crystal by speaking up and asking questions. A striking, shocking, and necessary masterpiece.
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What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There’s no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson.
But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.
While you wait for your morning coffee to brew, for the bus, the train, or a plane to arrive, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.
Bringing his cosmic perspective to civilisation on Earth, Neil deGrasse Tyson shines new light on the crucial fault lines of our time - war, politics, religion, truth, beauty, gender, and race - in a way that stimulates a deeper sense of unity for us all.
\nIn a time when our political and cultural views feel more polarized than ever, Tyson provides a much-needed antidote to so much of what divides us, while making a passionate case for the twin chariots of enlightenment - a cosmic perspective and the rationality of science.
\nAfter thinking deeply about how science sees the world and about Earth as a planet, the human brain has the capacity to reset and recalibrates life’s priorities, shaping the actions we might take in response. No outlook on culture, society, or civilization remains untouched.
\nWith crystalline prose, Starry Messenger walks us through the scientific palette that sees and paints the world differently. From insights on resolving global conflict to reminders of how precious it is to be alive, Tyson reveals, with warmth and eloquence, an array of brilliant and beautiful truths that apply to us all, informed and enlightened by knowledge of our place in the universe.
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Locked behind bars for three years, Shadow did his time, quietly waiting for the magic day when he could return to Eagle Point, Indiana. A man no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, all he wanted was to be with Laura, the wife he deeply loved, and start a new life. But just days before his release, Laura and Shadow’s best friend are killed in an accident.
With his life in pieces and nothing to keep him tethered, Shadow accepts a job from a beguiling stranger he meets on the way home, an enigmatic man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. A trickster and rogue, Wednesday seems to know more about Shadow than Shadow does himself. Life as Wednesday’s bodyguard, driver, and errand boy is far more interesting and dangerous than Shadow ever imagined - it is a job that takes him on a dark and strange road trip and introduces him to a host of eccentric characters whose fates are mysteriously intertwined with his own. Along the way Shadow will learn that the past never dies; that everyone, including his beloved Laura, harbors secrets; and that dreams, totems, legends, and myths are more real than we know.
Ultimately, he will discover that beneath the placid surface of everyday life a storm is brewing - an epic war for the very soul of America - and that he is standing squarely in its path.
Anansi Boys God is dead. Meet the kids. When Fat Charlie's dad named something, it stuck. Like calling Fat Charlie 'Fat Charlie.' Even now, twenty years later, Charlie Nancy can't shake that name, one of the many embarrassing 'gifts' his father bestowed - before he dropped dead on a karaoke stage and ruined Fat Charlie's life. Mr. Nancy left Fat Charlie things.
Things like the tall, good-looking stranger who appears on Charlie's doorstep, who appears to be the brother he never knew.
A brother as different from Charlie as night is from day, a brother who's going to show Charlie how to lighten up and have a little fun . . . just like Dear Old Dad. And all of a sudden, life starts getting very interesting for Fat Charlie. Because, you see, Charlie's dad wasn't just any dad. He was Anansi, a trickster god, the spider-god. Anansi is the spirit of rebellion, able to overturn the social order, create wealth out of thin air, and baffle the devil. Some said he could cheat even Death himself.
In Coraline's family's new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close.
\nThe fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.
\nOnly it's different.
\nAt first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there's another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to *change* her and never let her go.
\nOther children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.
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After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own.
\nNobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.
\nThere are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack - who has already killed Bod's family . . .
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Strange destinies lie in wait in London below - a world that seems eerily familiar. But a world that is utterly bizarre, peopled by unearthly characters such as the Angel called Islington, the girl named Door, and the Earl who holds Court on a tube train.
\nNow a single act of kindness has catapulted young businessman Richard Mayhew out of his safe and predictable life - and into the realms of \"Neverwhere.\" Richard is about to find out more than he ever wanted to know about this other London. Which is a pity. Because Richard just wants to go home . . .
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Neil Gaiman, long inspired by ancient mythology in creating the fantastical realms of his fiction, presents a bravura rendition of the Norse gods and their world from their origin though their upheaval in Ragnarok.
In Norse Mythology, Gaiman stays true to the myths in envisioning the major Norse pantheon: Odin, the highest of the high, wise, daring, and cunning; Thor, Odin’s son, incredibly strong yet not the wisest of gods; and Loki - son of a giant - blood brother to Odin and a trickster and unsurpassable manipulator.
Gaiman fashions these primeval stories into a novelistic arc that begins with the genesis of the legendary nine worlds and delves into the exploits of deities, dwarfs, and giants. Through Gaiman’s deft and witty prose, these gods emerge with their fiercely competitive natures, their susceptibility to being duped and to duping others, and their tendency to let passion ignite their actions, making these long-ago myths breathe pungent life again.
Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie - magical, comforting, wise beyond her years - promised to protect him, no matter what.
In the tranquil fields and meadows of long-ago England, there is a small hamlet that has stood on a jut of granite for 600 years. Just to the east stands a high stone wall, for which the village is named. Here, in the hamlet of Wall, young Tristran Thorn has lost his heart to the hauntingly beautiful Victoria Forester.
\nAnd here, one crisp October eve, Tristran makes his love a promise - an impetuous vow that will send him through the only breach in the wall, across the pasture . . . and into the most exhilarating adventure of his life.
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A brilliant writer and accomplished stylist whose creative genius is unparalleled, Neil Gaiman entrances with his literary alchemy, transporting us deep into the realm of imagination, where the fantastical becomes real and the mundane incandescent.
\nAbounding in miracles and terror, surprises and amusements, Trigger Warning is a rich compendium that illustrates the strength, breadth, and sheer genius of Gaiman’s storytelling mastery and demonstrates the breathtaking range and power of this artistic powerhouse who “dreams up stories as naturally as he breathes”.
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In a windswept corner of a forgotten peninsula, love and loss echo through the halls of a mansion built on secrets. Here memory is currency of the future, and the past refuses to stay buried.
\nIn the year 2084, Christian Cartwright, a quiet librarian at the enigmatic Huxley Institute, spends his days archiving the world’s most painful memories in the Library of Traumatic Memory.
\nBut when his lover Isolde dies in a mysterious car crash, Christian secretly resurrects her as a digital consciousness - an act of grief, obsession, and defiance.
\nAs Christian navigates a world where memories can be edited, dreams harvested, and the dead made to speak, he uncovers a deeper conspiracy buried in the Institute’s foundations - one that stretches back centuries to his 18th-century ancestor Montagu Cartwright, the architect of the Huxley Mansion.
\nMontagu’s obsidian mirror and copper model may hold the key to a reality where architecture shapes fate and time loops back on itself.
\nBlending gothic mystery, speculative science, and philosophical depth, The Library of Traumatic Memory is a haunting meditation on love, loss, and the ethics of memory.
\nAs the past and future collide, Christian must decide what it means to remember - and what it costs to forget.
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\"The lad is a bit like a stray dog. I keep an eye on him and throw him a few scraps. There are plenty of people in this town who'd just as soon drop him off in the wilderness and hope there's no scent to follow home. The problem is that Patrick could find his way out of any wilderness and they wouldn't like whatever starved thing came back.\"
\nSergeant Jim Field feels a guilty paternalism for Patrick Hatten, a young man struggling to find a job, a life and a purpose in a small-town Wexford community. Both are used to being on the fringes but while Jim is a romantic with bad health and regret, Patrick is full of anger and action, and his actions could have devastating effects.
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The Protector is dead.
For fifty years, the Protector ruled, reshaping her country in her image and driving her enemies to the corners of the map. For half a century the world turned around her as she built her armies, trained her Tensors, and grasped at the reins of fate itself. Now she is dead. Her followers will quiver, her enemies rejoice.
But in one tavern, deep in rebel territory, her greatest enemy drowns her sorrows. Lady Han raised a movement that sought the Protector's head, yet now she can only mourn her loss. She remembers how it all began, when the Protector was young, not yet crowned, and a desperate dancing girl dared to fall in love with her.
Mokoya and Akeha, the twin children of the Protector, were sold to the Grand Monastery as children. While Mokoya developed her strange prophetic gift, Akeha was always the one who could see the strings that moved adults to action. While his sister received visions of what would be, Akeha realised what could be. What's more, he saw the sickness at the heart of his mother's Protectorate.
A rebellion is growing. The Machinists discover new levers to move the world every day, while the Tensors fight to put them down and preserve the power of the state. Unwilling to continue to play a pawn in his mother's twisted schemes, Akeha leaves the Tensorate behind and falls in with the rebels. But every step Akeha takes towards the Machinists is a step away from his sister Mokoya. Can Akeha find peace without shattering the bond he shares with his twin sister?
The fiercely independent nation of Quanbao is isolated, reclusive, and something of a mystery to the rest of the world. It is rumored that there, dragons are not feared as is right and proper but instead loved and worshiped.
\nYeva is perhaps a strange emissary to these people. Not only because their face has never been seen in public, but because they are a hero born to a birthright that makes them suited for their task - hunting dragons.
\nAnd so the dragon hunter must woo Quanbao's queen - the Lady Sookhee - to understand what secrets she is hiding. A woman reasonably suspicious of Yeva's intentions, and the imperial might of the throne she represents, Sookhee bears the burden of the safety of her entire people. How can she trust this stranger newly arrived to her court, a weapon forged in blood and fire, to understand what her people need and how best to safeguard their future?
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This is the story of Misery Nomaki (she/they) – a nobody from a nowhere mining planet who possesses the rare stone-working powers of a saint. Unfortunately, these saint-like abilities also manifest in those succumbing to voidmadness, like that which killed Misery’s mother. Knowing they aren’t a saint but praying they aren’t voidmad, Misery keeps quiet about their power for years, while dreaming and scheming up ways off their Forge-forsaken planet.
\nBut when the voice of an angel, or a very convincing delusion, leads Misery to the center of the Empire, they find themself trapped between two powerful and dangerous factions, each hoping to use Misery to win a terrible war.
\nStill waiting to be convinced of their own divinity and secretly training with a crew of outlaws and outcasts, Misery grows close to a rebel royal, Lady Alodia Lightning, who may know something of saints and prophecy herself. The voice that guides Misery grows bolder by the day, and it seems the madness is catching . . .
Xin is an ansible, using her song magic to connect the originworld of the Imperial Authority and its far-flung colonies - a role that is forced upon magically-gifted women \"of a certain closeness\".
\nWhen a dead body comes through her portal at a time of growing rebellion, Xin is drawn deep into a station-wide conspiracy along with Ouyang Suqing, one of the station's mysterious, high-ranking starmages
\nNeon Yang writing as J.Y Yang.
Zooming between the bohemian demimonde of New York and the affluent Black community of Detroit in the 1970s, Lewis Jones is a party girl for the ages - a woman in her thirties who has reached a point of freedom, confidence, and mayhem. She is supported in her adventures, in every way, by her husband, Woody. She is accompanied by her friend Kitty Kat, a gay hustler with impeccable style and a knack for finding all the best spots. She soaks in baths of champagne, powders her nose with cocaine, wakes up on silk sheets with a variety of lovers. And then she is finally, truly upended by the handsome, erudite, often cruel Brook - a man who won’t tolerate her attempts to take control.
\nA wild swirl of desire, pleasure, power, drugs, and sex, Nettie Jones's Fish Tales is a bold exploration of the blurred spaces we inhabit - sexuality and race, agency and exploitation, selfhood and intimacy, sanity and self-destruction, art and the profane. As action-packed as it is brief, Fish Tales is a collage, a time capsule, a snapshot, a message. And it is strikingly, unnervingly current in its deluge of desire on top of anxiety, on top of ego and identity, on top of freedom, on top of love.
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The Cleric Chih accompanies a beautiful young bride to her wedding to the aging ruler of a crumbling estate situated at the crossroads of dead empires. The bride's party is welcomed with elaborate courtesies and extravagant banquets, but between the frightened servants and the cryptic warnings of the lord's mad son, they quickly realize that something is haunting the shadowed halls.
\nAs Chih and the bride-to-be explore empty rooms and desolate courtyards, they are drawn into the mystery of what became of Lord Guo's previous wives and the dark history of Do Cao itself. But as the wedding night draws to its close, Chih will learn at their peril that not all monsters are to be found in the shadows; some monsters hide in plain sight.
The demon Vitrine - immortal, powerful, and capricious - loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot.
\nAnd then the angels come, and the city falls.
\nVitrine is left with nothing but memories and a book containing the names of those she has lost - and an angel, now bound by her mad, grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he burned.
\nShe mourns her dead and rages against the angel she longs to destroy. Made to be each other’s devastation, angel and demon are destined for eternal battle. Instead, they find themselves locked in a devouring fascination that will change them both forever.
\nTogether, they unearth the past of the lost city and begin to shape its future. But when war threatens Azril and everything they have built, Vitrine and her angel must decide whether they will let the city fall again.
\nThe City in Glass is both a brilliantly constructed history and an epic love story, of death and resurrection, memory and transformation, redemption and desire strong enough to burn a world to ashes and build it anew.
Nick Carraway - paper soldier and novelist - has found a life and a living watching the mad magical spectacle of New York high society in the late thirties. He's good at watching, and he's even better at pretending to be straight, pretending to be human, pretending he's forgotten the events of that summer in 1922.
\nOn the eve of the second World War, however, Nick learns that someone's been watching him pretend and that memory goes both ways. When he sees a familiar face at a club one night, it quickly becomes clear that dead or not, damned or not, Jay Gatsby isn't done with him.
\nIn all paper there is memory, and Nick's ghost has come home.
A young royal from the far north, is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully.
\nRabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor's lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for.
\nAt once feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this evocative debut follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She's a northern daughter in a mage-made summer exile, but she will bend history to her will and bring down her enemies, piece by piece.
Wandering cleric Chih of the Singing Hills travels to the riverlands to record tales of the notorious near-immortal martial artists who haunt the region. On the road to Betony Docks, they fall in with a pair of young women far from home, and an older couple who are more than they seem. As Chih runs headlong into an ancient feud, they find themself far more entangled in the history of the riverlands than they ever expected to be.
Accompanied by Almost Brilliant, a talking bird with an indelible memory, Chih confronts old legends and new dangers alike as they learn that every story - beautiful, ugly, kind, or cruel - bears more than one face.
On the banks of the Ya-lé River, the town of Luntien gathers to celebrate the start of the rainy season, but the celebration is marred by the arrival of refugees from the sea. Everyone has a story about the foreigners newly in their midst - lazy, violent, unwanted - while the refugees themselves grieve the loss of the home they loved.
\nCleric Chih, very recently still Novice Chih, is also a stranger in Luntien. A moment of carelessness and bad luck leaves them waiting tables as they struggle to establish themself as a real cleric. A cleric’s job is to listen and record, but the stories emerging in Luntien are ugly and violent, as hard to predict as the river itself. With their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant by their side, Chih must help the refugees while also unraveling a mystery that may have roots in their own faraway home in the abbey of Singing Hills.
\nIn the seventh entry of the award-winning Singing Hills series, we meet Chih and Almost Brilliant just beginning their journey together as Chih assumes their place on the road and in the world.
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The wandering Cleric Chih returns home to the Singing Hills Abbey for the first time in almost three years, to be met with both joy and sorrow. Their mentor, Cleric Thien, has died, and rests among the archivists and storytellers of the storied abbey. But not everyone is prepared to leave them to their rest.
Because Cleric Thien was once the patriarch of Coh clan of Northern Bell Pass - and now their granddaughters have arrived on the backs of royal mammoths, demanding their grandfather's body for burial. Chih must somehow balance honoring their mentor's chosen life while keeping the sisters from the north from storming the gates and destroying the history the clerics have worked so hard to preserve.
But as Chih and their neixin Almost Brilliant navigate the looming crisis, Myriad Virtues, Cleric Thien’s own beloved hoopoe companion, grieves her loss as only a being with perfect memory can, and her sorrow may be more powerful than anyone could anticipate . . . The novellas of The Singing Hills Cycle are linked by the cleric Chih, but may be read in any order, with each story serving as an entrypoint.
Wandering Cleric Chih of Singing Hills and their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant come to the river town of Baolin chasing stories of a legendary famine. Amid tales of dishes served to royalty and desserts made of dust, they discover the secrets of what happens when hunger stalks the land and what the powerful will do to hide their crimes.
\nTrapped in the mansion of a sinister magistrate, Chih and Almost Brilliant must learn what happened in Baolin when the famine came to call, and they must do so quickly . . . because the things in the shadows are only growing hungrier.
While learning the ropes from a crafty Jazz Age bank robber, a young stowaway discovers their authentic self, a hidden gift, and that there are no straight lines when you run the fox roads. . .
Luli Wei is beautiful, talented, and desperate to be a star. Coming of age in pre-Code Hollywood, she knows how dangerous the movie business is and how limited the roles are for a Chinese American girl from Hungarian Hill - but she doesn’t care. She’d rather play a monster than a maid.
\nBut in Luli’s world, the worst monsters in Hollywood are not the ones on screen. The studios want to own everything from her face to her name to the women she loves, and they run on a system of bargains made in blood and ancient magic, powered by the endless sacrifice of unlucky starlets like her. For those who do survive to earn their fame, success comes with a steep price. Luli is willing to do whatever it takes - even if that means becoming the monster herself.
The cleric Chih finds themself and their companions at the mercy of a band of fierce tigers who ache with hunger. To stay alive until the mammoths can save them, Chih must unwind the intricate, layered story of the tiger and her scholar lover - a woman of courage, intelligence, and beauty - and discover how truth can survive becoming history.
Brought up in a devout household in Ireland, Jay is now living in London with her girlfriend, determined to live day to day and not think too much about either the future or the past. But when she learns that her beloved older brother, who died in a terrible accident, may be made into a Catholic saint, she realises she must at last confront her family, her childhood and herself . . .
\nInspired by the author's own devout upbringing, Ordinary Saints is a brilliant debut novel from a fresh, exciting new voice which asks - who gets to decide how we are remembered - and who we will become?
Maggie Webb has lived the last decade caring for elderly husband, Stanley, as memory loss gradually erases all the beautiful moments they created together. It's the loneliest she's ever felt in her life.
\nWhen a mysterious stranger named Hassan appears at her door, he reveals a shocking truth: Stanley isn't losing his memories. Someone is actively removing them to hide a long-buried secret from coming to light. If Maggie does what she's told, she can reverse it. She can get her husband back.
\nLed by Hassan and his technological marvels, Maggie breaks into her husband's mind, probing the depths of his past in an effort to save him. The deeper she dives, the more she unravels a mystery spanning continents and centuries, each layer more complex than the last.
\nBut Hassan cannot be trusted. Not just memories are disappearing, but pieces of reality itself. If Maggie cannot find out what Stanley did all those years ago, and what Hassan is after now, she risks far more than her husband's life. The very course of human history hangs in the balance.
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Tam Hashford is tired of working at her local pub, slinging drinks for world-famous mercenaries and listening to the bards sing of adventure and glory in the world beyond her sleepy hometown.
When the biggest mercenary band of all rolls into town, led by the infamous Bloody Rose, Tam jumps at the chance to sign on as their bard. It's adventure she wants - and adventure she gets as the crew embark on a quest that will end in one of two ways: glory or death.
It's time to take a walk on the wyld side.
Clay Cooper and his band were once the best of the best - the meanest, dirtiest, most feared crew of mercenaries this side of the Heartwyld.
\nTheir glory days long past, the mercs have grown apart and grown old, fat, drunk - or a combination of the three. Then an ex-bandmate turns up at Clay's door with a plea for help. His daughter Rose is trapped in a city besieged by an enemy one hundred thousand strong and hungry for blood. Rescuing Rose is the kind of mission that only the very brave or the very stupid would sign up for.
\nIt's time to get the band back together for one last tour across the Wyld.
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There are a few things Jeremy Marsh was sure he’d never do: he’d never leave New York City; never give his heart away after barely surviving one failed marriage; and never become a parent. Now Jeremy is living in the tiny town of Boone Creek, North Carolina, engaged to Lexie Darnell, the love of his life, and anticipating the start of their family.
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But just as his life seems to be settling into a blissful pattern, a mysterious and disturbing e-mail sets off a chain of events that will change the course of this young couple’s relationship. How well do we really know the ones we love? How do we handle the inevitable doubts, fears concerning parenthood, and stumbling blocks that are sometimes placed in our way?
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Continuing the story of the young couple introduced in Sparks’s bestselling True Believer, this novel captures all the heartbreak, tension, romance and surprises of those who are newly wed. An astonishing tale about the love between a man and a woman and between a parent and a child, At First Sight is about endings that bring new beginnings . . . tragedies that lead to unexpected joy . . . and, most of all, the magic of everlasting love.
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Miles Ryan's life seemed to end the day his wife was killed in a hit-and-run accident two years ago. As deputy sheriff of New Bern, North Carolina, he not only grieves for her and worries about their young son Jonah but longs to bring the unknown driver to justice.
\nThen Miles meets Sarah Andrews, Jonah's second-grade teacher. A young woman recovering from a difficult divorce, Sarah moved to New Bern hoping to start over. Tentatively, Miles and Sarah reach out to each other . . . soon they are falling in love.
\nBut what neither realises is that they are also bound together by a shocking secret, one that will force them to reexamine everything they believe in-including their love.
In the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole fell deeply, irrevocably in love. Though they were from opposite sides of the tracks, their love for one another seemed to defy the realities of life in the small town of Oriental, North Carolina. But as the summer of their senior year came to a close, unforeseen events would tear the young couple apart, setting them on radically divergent paths.
\nNow, twenty-five years later, Amanda and Dawson are summoned back to Oriental for the funeral of Tuck Hostetler, the mentor who once gave shelter to their high school romance. Neither has lived the life they imagined . . . and neither can forget the passionate first love that forever changed their lives.
\nAs Amanda and Dawson carry out the instructions Tuck left behind for them, they realise that everything they thought they knew - about Tuck, about themselves, and about the dreams they held dear - was not as it seemed.
\nForced to confront painful memories, the two former lovers will discover undeniable truths about the choices they have made. And in the course of a single, searing weekend, they will ask of the living, and the dead: Can love truly rewrite the past?
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Tanner Hughes was raised by his grandparents, following in his grandfather’s military footsteps to become an Army Ranger. His whole life has been spent abroad, and he is the proverbial rolling stone . . . happiest when off on his next adventure, zero desire to settle down. But when his grandmother passes away, her last words to him are: find where you belong. She also drops a bombshell, telling him the name of the father he never knew - and where he might be found.
\nTanner is due at his next posting soon, but his curiosity is piqued, and he sets out for Asheboro, North Carolina, to ask around. He’s been in town less than twenty-four hours when he meets Kaitlyn Cooper, a doctor and single mom. They both feel an immediate connection; Tanner knows Kaitlyn has a story to tell, and he wants to hear it. For Kaitlyn, Tanner is mysterious, exciting - and possibly leaving in just a few weeks.
\nMeanwhile, nearby, eighty-three-year-old Jasper lives alone in a cabin bordering a national forest. With only his old dog Arlo for company, he lives quietly, haunted by a tragic accident that took place decades before. When he hears rumors that a white deer has been spotted in the forest - a creature of legend that inspired his father and grandfather - he becomes obsessed with protecting the deer from poachers.
\nAs these characters’ fates orbit closer together, none of them is expecting a miracle . . . but that may be exactly what is about to alter their futures forever.
An angry rebel, John dropped out of school and enlisted in the Army, not knowing what else to do with his life - until he meets the girl of his dreams, Savannah. Their mutual attraction quickly grows into the kind of love that leaves Savannah waiting for John to finish his tour of duty, and John wanting to settle down with the woman who captured his heart. But 9/11 changes everything.
\nJohn feels it is his duty to re-enlist. And sadly, the long separation finds Savannah falling in love with someone else. \"Dear John,\" the letter read . . . and with those two words, a heart was broken and two lives were changed forever. Returning home, John must come to grips with the fact that Savannah, now married, is still his true love - and face the hardest decision of his life.
Colby Mills once felt destined for a musical career, until tragedy grounded his aspirations. Now the head of a small family farm in North Carolina, he spontaneously takes a gig playing at a bar in St. Pete’s Beach, Florida, seeking a rare break from his duties at home.
\nBut when he meets Morgan Lee, his world is turned upside-down, making him wonder if the responsibilities he has shouldered need dictate his life forever. The daughter of affluent Chicago doctors, Morgan has graduated from a prestigious college music program with the ambition to move to Nashville and become a star. Romantically and musically, she and Colby complete each other in a way that neither has ever known.
\nWhile they are falling headlong in love, Beverly is on a heart-pounding journey of another kind. Fleeing an abusive husband with her six-year-old son, she is trying to piece together a life for them in a small town far off the beaten track. With money running out and danger seemingly around every corner, she makes a desperate decision that will rewrite everything she knows to be true.
\nIn the course of a single unforgettable week, two young people will navigate the exhilarating heights and heartbreak of first love. Hundreds of miles away, Beverly will put her love for her young son to the test. And fate will draw all three people together in a web of life-altering connections . . . forcing each to wonder whether the dream of a better life can ever survive the weight of the past.
Julie Barenson's young husband left her two unexpected gifts before he died-a Great Dane puppy named Singer and the promise that he would always be watching over her. Now, four years have passed. Still living in the small town of Swansboro, North Carolina, twenty-nine-year-old Julie is emotionally ready to make a commitment to someone again.
\nBut who? Should it be Richard Franklin, the handsome, sophisticated engineer who treats her like a queen? Or Mike Harris, the down-to-earth nice guy who was her husband's best friend?
\nChoosing one of them should bring her more happiness than she's had in years. Instead, Julie is soon fighting for her life in a nightmare spawned by a chilling deception and jealousy so poisonous that it has become a murderous desire . . .
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Seventeen year old Veronica \"Ronnie\" Miller's life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from New York City to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.
\nThree years later, she remains angry and alientated from her parents, especially her father . . . until her mother decides it would be in everyone's best interest if she spent the summer in Wilmington with him.
\nRonnie's father, a former concert pianist and teacher, is living a quiet life in the beach town, immersed in creating a work of art that will become the centerpiece of a local church.
\nThe tale that unfolds is an unforgettable story of love on many levels - first love, love between parents and children - that demonstrates, as only a Nicholas Sparks novel can, the many ways that love can break our hearts . . . and heal them.
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Ira Levinson is in trouble. Ninety-one years old and stranded and injured after a car crash, he struggles to retain consciousness until a blurry image materializes beside him: his beloved wife Ruth, who passed away nine years ago. Urging him to hang on, she forces him to remain alert by recounting the stories of their lifetime together - how they met, the precious paintings they collected together, the dark days of WWII and its effect on them and their families. Ira knows that Ruth can't possibly be in the car with him, but he clings to her words and his memories, reliving the sorrows and everyday joys that defined their marriage.
A few miles away, at a local bull-riding event, a Wake Forest College senior's life is about to change. Recovering from a recent break-up, Sophia Danko meets a young cowboy named Luke, who bears little resemblance to the privileged frat boys she has encountered at school. Through Luke, Sophia is introduced to a world in which the stakes of survival and success, ruin and reward - even life and death - loom large in everyday life. As she and Luke fall in love, Sophia finds herself imagining a future far removed from her plans - a future that Luke has the power to rewrite . . . if the secret he's keeping doesn't destroy it first.
Ira and Ruth. Sophia and Luke. Two couples who have little in common, and who are separated by years and experience. Yet their lives will converge with unexpected poignancy, reminding us all that even the most difficult decisions can yield extraordinary journeys: beyond despair, beyond death, to the farthest reaches of the human heart.
U.S. Marine Logan Thibault carries a picture of a woman he'snever met because it brings him good luck. But when he sets out to find the woman, he is met with unexpected circumstances surrounding his new love and his shrouded past. Though not Sparkss most original tale, the story flows well and narrator John Bedford Lloyd delivers a solid performance.
\nLloyds deep bass tone is perfectly suited for Thibault, a manly man if ever there was one. Lloyds supporting characters are rich and interesting in their own right, some speaking in comical Southern drawls, others with a raw reality.
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Divorced and disillusioned about relationships, Theresa Osborne is jogging when she finds a bottle on the beach. Inside is a letter of love and longing to \"Catherine,\" signed simply \"Garrett.\"
\nChallenged by the mystery and pulled by emotions she doesn't fully understand, Theresa begins a search for this man that will change her life. What happens to her is unexpected, perhaps miraculous - an encounter that embraces all our hopes for finding someone special, for having a love that is timeless and everlasting . . .
At forty-five, Adrienne Willis must rethink her entire life when her husband abandons her for a younger woman. Reeling with heartache and in search of a respite, she flees to the small coastal town of Rodanthe, North Carolina, to tend to a friend's inn for the weekend. But when a major storm starts moving in, it appears that Adrienne's perfect getaway will be ruined-until a guest named Paul Flanner arrives.
\nAt fifty-four, Paul has just sold his medical practice and come to Rodanthe to escape his own shattered past. Now, with the storm closing in, two wounded people will turn to each other for comfort-and in one weekend set in motion feelings that will resonate throughout the rest of their lives.
Every so often a love story so captures our hearts that it becomes more than a story - it becomes an experience to remember forever. The Notebook is such a book. It is a celebration of how passion can be ageless and timeless, a tale that moves us to laughter and tears and makes us believe in true love all over again . . .
\nAt thirty-one, Noah Calhoun, back in coastal North Carolina after World War II, is haunted by images of the girl he lost more than a decade earlier. At twenty-nine, socialite Allie Nelson is about to marry a wealthy lawyer, but she cannot stop thinking about the boy who long ago stole her heart.
\nThus begins the story of a love so enduring and deep it can turn tragedy into triumph, and may even have the power to create a miracle . . .
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When New York architect Tate Donovan arrives in Cape Cod to design his best friend’s summer home, he is hoping to make a fresh start. Recently discharged from an upscale psychiatric facility where he was treated for acute depression, he is still wrestling with the pain of losing his beloved sister.
\nSylvia’s deathbed revelation - that she can see spirits who are still tethered to the living world, a gift that runs in their family - sits uneasily with Tate, who struggles to believe in more than what reason can explain. But when he takes up residence at a historic bed-and-breakfast on the Cape, he encounters a beautiful young woman named Wren who will challenge every assumption he has about his logical and controlled world.
\nTate and Wren find themselves forging an immediate connection, one that neither has ever experienced before. But Tate gradually discovers that below the surface of Wren’s idyllic small-town life, hatred, jealousy, and greed are festering, threatening their fragile relationship just as it begins to blossom. Tate realises that in order to free Wren from an increasingly desperate fate, he will need to unearth the truth about her past before time runs out . . . a quest that will make him doubt whether we can ever believe the stories we tell about ourselves, and the laws that govern our existence. Love - while transformative - can sometimes be frightening.
\nA story about the power of transcendent emotion, Remain asks us all: Can love set us free not only from our greatest sorrows, but even from the boundaries of life and death?
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Denise Holden's life is a fragile mix of luck and hard work. A single mom of a speech-delayed son, Denise makes ends meet by moving to the small town of Edenton, North Carolina, and working the late shift as a waitress. When Denise crashes her car and her son Kyle flees the accident and disappears into the storm, her only stroke of luck is the quick arrival of Taylor McAden, a volunteer fireman. Taylor's got a knack for fixing people, and he can't help wanting to be involved with Denise beyond the initial rescue of Kyle.
\nAs Taylor helps Denise recover from the accident and get to know the town, they discover a sweet bond and a magical chemistry that pulls them closer and closer. Though Taylor fits perfectly into Denise's family, he's unable to open his heart to being loved by her. As Taylor struggles to understand his conflicting desires, Denise questions the wisdom of gambling with Kyle's and her own emotions.
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Trevor Benson never intended to move back to New Bern, NC. But when a mortar blast outside the hospital where he worked as an orthopedic surgeon sent him home from Afghanistan with devastating injuries, the dilapidated cabin he inherited from his grandfather seemed as good a place to regroup as any.
Tending to his grandfather's beloved bee hives while gearing up for a second stint in medical school, Trevor isn't prepared to fall in love with a local . . . and yet, from their very first encounter, his connection with Natalie Masterson can't be ignored. But even as she seems to reciprocate his feelings, she remains frustratingly distant, making Trevor wonder what she's hiding.
Further complicating his stay in New Bern is the presence of a sullen teenage girl, Callie, who lives in the trailer park down the road from his grandfather's cabin. Claiming to be 19, she works at the local sundries store and keeps to herself. When he discovers she was once befriended by his grandfather, Trevor hopes Callie can shed light on the mysterious circumstances of his grandfather's death, but she offers few clues - until a crisis triggers a race that will uncover the true nature of Callie's past, one more intertwined with the elderly man's passing than Trevor could ever have anticipated.
In his quest to unravel Natalie and Callie's secrets, Trevor will learn the true meaning of love and forgiveness . . . and that in life, to move forward, we must often return to the place where it all began.
When a mysterious young woman named Katie appears in the small North Carolina town of Southport, her sudden arrival raises questions about her past. Beautiful yet self-effacing, Katie seems determined to avoid forming personal ties until a series of events draws her into two reluctant relationships: one with Alex, a widowed store owner with a kind heart and two young children; and another with her plainspoken single neighbor, Jo.
\nDespite her reservations, Katie slowly begins to let down her guard, putting down roots in the close-knit community and becoming increasingly attached to Alex and his family. But even as Katie begins to fall in love, she struggles with the dark secret that still haunts and terrifies her . . . a past that set her on a fearful, shattering journey across the country, to the sheltered oasis of Southport.
\nWith Jo's empathic and stubborn support, Katie eventually realizes that she must choose between a life of transient safety and one of riskier rewards . . . and that in the darkest hour, love is the only true safe haven.
At twenty-eight, he's focused on getting his teaching degree and avoiding all the places and people that proved so destructive in his past. The last thing he's looking for is a serious relationship. But when he crosses paths with Maria Sanchez one rainswept night, his carefully structured life is turned upside down. And when Maria, a hardworking lawyer, meets Colin she begins to question every notion she has ever had about herself and her future - and what truly makes her happy.
Before the couple has a chance to envision a life together, menacing reminders from events in Maria's past begin to surface. And as the threat of violence begins to shadow her every step, she and Colin will be pushed to breaking point.
Jeremy Marsh is the ultimate New Yorker: handsome, almost always dressed in black, and part of the media elite. An expert on debunking the supernatural with a regular column in Scientific American, he's just made his first appearance on national TV. When he receives a letter from the tiny town of Boone Creek, North Carolina, about ghostly lights that appear in a legend-shrouded cemetery, he can't resist driving down to investigate.
\nHere, in this tightly knit community, Lexie Darnell runs the town's library, just as her mother did before the accident that left Lexie an orphan. Disappointed by past relationships, including one that lured her away from home, she is sure of one thing: her future is in Boone Creek, close to her grandmother and all the other people she loves. Jeremy expects to spend a quick week in 'the sticks' before speeding back to the city.
\nBut from the moment he sets eyes on Lexie, he is intrigued and attracted to this beautiful woman who speaks with a soft drawl and confounding honesty. And Lexie, while hesitating to trust this outsider, finds herself thinking of Jeremy more than she cares to admit.
\nNow, if they are to be together, Jeremy Marsh must make a difficult choice: return to the life he knows, or do something he's never done before - take a giant leap of faith.
At 32, Russell Green has it all: a stunning wife, a lovable six year-old daughter, a successful career as an advertising executive and an expansive home in Charlotte. He is living the dream, and his marriage to the bewitching Vivian is the center of that.
\nBut underneath the shiny surface of this perfect existence, fault lines are beginning to appear . . . and no one is more surprised than Russ when he finds every aspect of the life he took for granted turned upside down. In a matter of months, Russ finds himself without a job or wife, caring for his young daughter while struggling to adapt to a new and baffling reality.
\nThrowing himself into the wilderness of single parenting, Russ embarks on a journey at once terrifying and rewarding - one that will test his abilities and his emotional resources beyond anything he ever imagined.
There was a time when the world was sweeter . . . when the women in Beaufort, North Carolina, wore dresses, and the men donned hats . . . Every April, when the wind smells of both the sea and lilacs, Landon Carter remembers 1958, his last year at Beaufort High. Landon had dated a girl or two, and even once sworn that he'd been in love.
\nCertainly the last person he thought he'd fall for was Jamie, the shy, almost ethereal daughter of the town's Baptist minister . . . Jamie, who was destined to show him the depths of the human heart - and the joy and pain of living.
\nThe inspiration for this novel came from Nicholas Sparks's sister: her life and her courage. From the internationally bestselling author Nicholas Sparks, comes his most moving story yet . . .
Attorney Wilson Lewis has been married to Noah and Allie's daughter, Jane, for 30 years. Wilson and Jane have raised three children and lived a satisfying and prosperous life in the bucolic town of New Bern, N.C.
\nAfter forgetting his anniversary, Wilson realises that the passion and romance have gone out of his marriage and fears his wife no longer loves him. Being a methodical man, he decides to embark on a yearlong program to renew his romantic ties to his wife, seeking out the advice of Noah, who now spends his days in a retirement home feeding a swan he is sure is the reincarnation of his beloved Allie.
\nIn the midst of Wilson's machinations, his daughter Anna announces she is getting married. The upcoming wedding provides Wilson with the opportunity to bring his elaborate plan to fruition.
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1996 was the year that changed everything for Maggie Dawes. Sent away at sixteen to live with an aunt she barely knew in Ocracoke, a remote village on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, she could think only of the friends and family she left behind . . . until she meets Bryce Trickett, one of the few teenagers on the island. Handsome, genuine, and newly admitted to West Point, Bryce gradually shows her how much there is to love about the wind-swept beach town - and introduces her to photography, a passion that will define the rest of her life.
\nBy 2019, Maggie is a renowned travel photographer. She splits her time between running a successful gallery in New York and photographing remote locations around the world. But this year she is unexpectedly grounded over Christmas, struggling to come to terms with a sobering medical diagnosis. Increasingly dependent on a young assistant, she finds herself becoming close to him.
\nAs they count down the last days of the season together, she begins to tell him the story of another Christmas, decades earlier - and the love that set her on a course she never could have imagined.
In Tokyo - one of the world's largest megacities - a stray cat is wending her way through the back alleys. And, with each detour, she brushes up against the seemingly disparate lives of the city-dwellers, connecting them in unexpected ways. But the city is changing.
\nAs it does, it pushes her to the margins where she chances upon a series of apparent strangers - from a homeless man squatting in an abandoned hotel, to a shut-in hermit afraid to leave his house, to a convenience store worker searching for love. The cat orbits Tokyo's denizens, drawing them ever closer.
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Flo is sick of Tokyo. Suffering from a crisis in confidence, she is stuck in a rut, her translation work has dried up and she's in a relationship that's run its course. That's until she stumbles upon a mysterious book left by a fellow passenger on the Tokyo Subway. From the very first page, Flo is transformed and immediately feels compelled to translate this forgotten novel, a decision which sets her on a path that will change her life . . .
\nIt is a story about Ayako, a fierce and strict old woman who runs a coffee shop in the small town of Onomichi, where she has just taken guardianship of her grandson, Kyo. Haunted by long-buried family tragedy, both have suffered extreme loss and feel unable to open up to each other.
\nAs Flo follows the characters across a year in rural Japan, through the ups and downs of the pair's burgeoning relationship, she quickly realises that she needs to venture outside the pages of the book to track down its elusive author. And, as her two protagonists reveal themselves to have more in common with her life than first meets the eye, the lines between text and translator converge. The journey is just beginning.
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On a remote island in the Canadian wilderness, five elderly volunteers are offering themselves up to an extraordinary secret they'll take a miracle drug, one that promises to stall the human biological clock or even reverse it, to restore lost youth. The chance to put death on pause, perhaps forever.
\nOne miracle By harnessing an ancient and extraordinary biological agent, scientists can turn back time for their five patients. But this real-world fountain of youth is derived from the DNA of something with no heart, no mind and no conscience, something possessed with a single-minded the will to survive, whatever it takes.
\nAnd as the experiment takes on a terrifying life of its own, those few who are able to fight back will have to use everything they've got just to stay alive . . . and human.
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Josie may be the youngest sister, but she takes care of everyone. She is the left-brained scientist to her twin sisters’ right-brained artistic chaos. She makes sure their rent gets paid on time, they make their therapy appointments, and has also been their de-facto band manager since she was a teenager. When Ara, her middle sister (by a few minutes), calls from jail, it isn’t exactly a surprise, and Josie knows exactly how to snap into action.
\nEmma is the quintessential frontwoman, complete with looks and attitude. But the success of The Twins’ first (and only) album—gold records, Grammy nominations, and diehard fans - is two decades behind her. Hiding under the surface of her swagger is a long-held guilt that has turned her into her sister’s enabler. Emma knows she needs Ara’s creative genius and thinks a jailhouse record could be just the thing to get Ara her freedom and their band back on the main stage.
\nAra is detoxing, not only from her opioid habit but also from her family. The truth is, as crazy as it sounds, she’s not in a hurry to get out of lock-up. In the most unlikely and dangerous of places, this could be her chance to face the demons of her past and disentangle herself from her family.
\nBertie, who raised her three daughters as a single mother, has always taught them that family won’t always be around to take care of you. A former defense attorney and perennial do-gooder, she’s committed to taking care of everyone less fortunate even if that means putting her girls’ needs second. But now Bertie must decide if she should reenter her daughters’ lives in their greatest time of need - or watch to see if the resilience she’s taught them will help carry them through.
\nA story both intimate and sweeping, The Frequency of Living Things explores the timeless question of how our individual destinies are intertwined with our family, our siblings, and our history no matter how we try to untangle ourselves from them.
What happens after we save the world?
\nIn the near future, humanity hasn’t avoided the worst of climate change - wildfires, rising oceans, mass migration, and skyrocketing inequality have become the daily reality. But just when it seems that it can’t get any worse, remarkably, a movement of workers, migrants, and refugees inspires the world to band together, save the planet, and rebuild a society for all. This is The Great Transition.
\nTeenager Emi Vargas was born post-Transition, into a utopia compared to the world known by previous generations. Her parents both suffered and sacrificed, playing pivotal roles in The Great Transition, but now their marriage is deteriorating. And when Emi’s mother goes missing amidst a shocking new political upheaval, Emi’s illusion of comfort and safety is shattered.
\nAlternating between Emi’s suspenseful search for her mother in the present and The Great Transition when her mother and father battled climate devastation and fell in love, this astonishing debut is a remarkable story of struggle, change, and hope.
In a place and time unknown, two elderly sisters live in a walled garden, secluded from the outside world. Evelyn and Lily have only ever known each other. What was before the garden, they have forgotten; what lies beyond it, they do not know. Each day is spent in languid service to their home: tending the bees, planting the crops, and dutifully following the instructions of the almanac written by their mother.
\nSo when a nameless boy is found hiding in the boarded house at the center of their isolated grounds, their once-solitary lives are irrevocably disrupted. Who is he? Where did he come from? And most importantly, what does he want?
\nAs suspicions gather and allegiances falter, Evelyn and Lily are forced to confront the dark truths about themselves, the garden, and the world as they’ve known it.
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The last thing Alice expects to see at her husband’s graveside on his birthday is a giant, talking frog. On closer inspection, it’s a grown man dressed as Kermit.
\nTurns out Alice’s husband is buried next to Ben’s older brother Harry, who - as a parting practical joke in his will - insisted that Ben visit his grave each year, on this specific day, dressed in an as-yet-undisclosed pageant of embarrassing fancy dress.
\nWith little but their grief and this one day in common, Alice and Ben form a very special, very strange friendship, meeting just once a same day, same time, same place - different silly costume. As the years pass and grief alters, can their unique bond help them cope with the hardest part of life?
Amy and Joel’s honeymoon in the Maldives was the perfect week of love, sun, sex and a free minibar . . . but unfortunately, it was also the high point of a marriage that quickly descended into an absolute disaster zone.
\nEight years on, they’re back in paradise, trying to recreate the magic with new partners. What a crying shame they’ve picked the same week to do it . . .
\nTrapped together on an island small enough to spit across with the wind behind you, Amy and Joel pick up right where they left off: at total loggerheads. And so begins a hideous week of rivalry, one-upmanship and score-settling - as each tries to prove they’ve now comprehensively won at life.
\nThe thing is, hurt and pain are strongest where there was once love. And what if being back in this island paradise, with all its wonderful memories, sets sparks flying in more ways than one?
In the Dominions, the dead linger, violent and unpredictable, unless a bonesmith severs the ghost from its earthly remains. For bonesmith Wren, becoming a valkyr - a ghost-fighting warrior - is a chance to solidify her place in the noble House of Bone and impress her frequently absent father. But when sabotage causes Wren to fail her qualifying trial, she is banished to the Border Wall, the last line of defense against a wasteland called the Breach where the vicious dead roam unchecked.
\nDetermined to reclaim her family’s respect, Wren gets her chance when a House of Gold prince is kidnapped and taken beyond the Wall. To prove she has what it takes to be a valkyr, Wren vows to cross the Breach and rescue the prince. But to do so, she’s forced into an uneasy alliance with one of the kidnappers - a fierce ironsmith called Julian from the exiled House of Iron, the very people who caused the Breach in the first place . . . and the House of Bone’s sworn enemy.
\nAs they travel, Wren and Julian spend as much time fighting each other as they do the undead, but when they discover there’s more behind the kidnapping than either of them knew, they’ll need to work together to combat the real danger: a dark alliance that is brewing between the living and the undead.
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In a world ruled by fierce warrior queens, a grand empire was built upon the backs of Phoenix Rider - legendary heroes who soared through the sky on wings of fire - until a war between two sisters ripped it all apart.
\nSixteen years later, Veronyka is a war orphan who dreams of becoming a Phoenix Rider from the stories of old. After a shocking betrayal from her controlling sister, Veronyka strikes out alone to find the Riders - even if that means disguising herself as a boy to join their ranks.
\nJust as Veronyka finally feels like she belongs, her sister turns up and reveals a tangled web of lies between them that will change everything. And meanwhile, the new empire has learned of the Riders’ return and intends to destroy them once and for all.
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Wren is still reeling from the revelation that the mother she thought was dead is actually the Corpse Queen, a ghostsmith with the terrifying power to control the undead. It was Wren’s own mother who created the iron revenants - an army of near unbeatable undead soldiers. When the iron revenants attack, no one in the Dominions will have the strength to stand in their way.
\nNow Wren, Leo, and Julian find themselves once more in the Breach, this time on the run from Wren’s father, who is determined to secure more power for himself and the House of Bone. The three are desperate to stop the upcoming war, but working together is easier said than done with Julian still furious about Wren double-crossing him. And to make matters worse, Wren is plagued by powerful new abilities that force her to reassess everything she knows about being a bonesmith.
\nWhen Wren’s long-lost twin brother shows up and vows to help her destroy the well of magic that feeds the iron revenants, she must decide if trusting him is worth potentially playing right into their mother’s hands.
\nAfter all, the dead might be dangerous, but it’s the living who can betray you.
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The world is balanced on the edge of a knife, and war is almost certain between the empire and the Phoenix Riders.
\nVeronyka finally got her wish to join the Riders, but while she’s supposed to be in training, all she really wants to do is fly out to defend the villages of Pyra from the advancing empire. Tristan has been promoted to Master Rider, but he has very different ideas about the best way to protect their people than his father, the commander. Sev has been sent to spy on the empire, but maintaining his cover may force him to fight on the wrong side of the war. And Veronyka’s sister, Val, is determined to regain the empire she lost - even if it means inciting the war herself.
\nAs tensions reach a boiling point, the characters all find themselves drawn together into a fight that will shape the course of the empire - and determine the future of the Phoenix Riders. Each must decide how far they’re willing to go - and what they’re willing to lose in the process.
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Veronyka is no longer an orphaned stable boy or a nameless Phoenix Rider apprentice: she is the daughter of Pheronia Ashfire, the last queen of the Golden Empire . . . and the niece of Avalkyra Ashfire, the resurrected rebel queen who tore the empire apart.
\nNow that the secret is out, everyone at the Eyrie treats Veronyka differently, and with Tristan still a hostage of the scheming Lord Rolan - and Sev with him as a spy - Veronyka feels very much alone. Except for her beloved phoenix, Xephyra, of course, and her new friend, Kade, who has his own reasons for wanting to save Tristan.
\nWas it always going to come down to this? Sister against sister? Darkness against light?
\nVeronyka is determined to do whatever it takes to get Tristan back, even if that means revealing her identity to the world and inheriting a throne she’s not sure she wants. But when she discovers that Avalkyra has bonded with a strix - a legendary creature of darkness that feeds off the life force of others - Veronyka realises she has more to deal with than an encroaching war with the empire.
\nVal is willing to destroy everything to get her revenge on a world that rejected her, and if Veronyka wants to bring peace to the empire and Pyra alike, she must face down her sister once and for all.
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An immortal, doomed to die. A time traveler, desperate to save her.
\nWhen Zera travels back in time to 2040, she aims to investigate the geomagnetic storm that scorched the earth. Instead, she finds the beautiful Katherine, who speaks of past storms and asks with her dying breath, “Is this the first time we meet?”
\nFrom WWII-era New York to early 2000s New Orleans and everywhere in between, Zera chases both storms and Katherine, thinking her immortality is the key to fixing the future. But as the immortal goes from a reluctant ally with a deadly hunter to a romantic complication, Zera wonders if the past is really set in stone, or if she can still save the world - and Katherine.
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It begins as your typical boy meets boy. While out with friends at their local university drag night, Tom buys Ming a drink. Confident and witty, a magnetic young playwright, Ming is the perfect antidote to Tom’s awkward energy, and their connection is instant. Tom finds himself deeply and desperately drawn into Ming’s orbit, and on the cusp of graduation, he’s already mapped out their future together. But shortly after they move to London to start their next chapter, Ming announces her intention to transition.
\nFrom London to Kuala Lumpur, New York to Cologne, we follow Tom and Ming as they face tectonic shifts in their relationship and friend circle in the wake of Ming’s transition. Through a spiral of unforeseen crises - some personal, some professional, some life-altering - Tom and Ming are forced to confront the vastly different shapes their lives have taken since graduating, and each must answer the essential question: Is it worth losing a part of yourself to become who you are?
Thirty years old with a lifetime of dysphoria and irritating exes rattling around in her head, Max is plagued by a deep dissatisfaction. Shouldn’t these be the best years of her life? Why doesn’t it feel that way? After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity.
\nMax thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent. While his corporate colleagues, trad friends, and Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman, he cares for Max in a way she’d always dismissed as a foolish fantasy. But he is also carrying baggage of his own. When the fall-out of a decades-old entanglement resurfaces, Max must decide what forgiveness really means. Can we be more than our worst mistakes? Is it possible to make peace with the past?
Known for her gorgeously supple prose that soars effortlessly over genre boundaries, Griffith is also an incisive essayist whose ground-breaking, data-driven work on gender bias in the literary ecosystem sparked self-searching conversations worldwide. In this heady mélange of essays, poems, art, and stories - some seen here for the first time - the author makes foundational assertions about love versus ownership (“Wife”), advocates for the writer as explorer (“ It Burns”), and points out the gaping hole in our literary landscape where we’d expect to find disability fiction (“Overwriting the Old Story”).
\nThese and other public-facing essays are followed by four powerfully intimate poems. Returning to prose, Griffith immerses us so seamlessly in her viscerally imagined fiction that we feel how it is to be hurled like light through the stars in “Glimmer,” hunted through the urban alleys of “Cold Wind” during a holiday blizzard, swept along irresistible currents of “Down the Path of the Sun,” and, in “Many Things in Dumnet,” a novella published here for the first time, brought ashore as a stranger to land where something is very wrong.
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1956: On idyllic Balboa Island, just off the California coast, life seems peaceful and welcoming. But when the lives of three women begin to unravel in shockingly different ways, an unlikely friendship - and the game of tennis - may be the only thing that can save them.
\nMilly Kinkaid's plan to fix her crumbling marriage seems to be falling apart before it even begins. She believed that moving her young family from Hollywood to Balboa Island might entice her increasingly distant husband to come home earlier after work. Instead, he's barely coming home at all.
\nSociety matriarch Sylvia Johnson and her husband have been pillars of their community for decades, and have just recently begun a new business venture: The Island Club, a place for members to swim, play tennis and dine in style. But when she learns that he has been risking their financial security and putting their family's future in grave danger, she's not only poised to lose the club, but the entire community she holds dear.
\nMeanwhile, standoffish loner Adele Lambert's entire world is on the brink of being destroyed if the dark secrets of her past and her hidden identity is revealed. Twenty years ago, she ran from a shameful scandal and left behind the only thing she ever loved. Now, terrified that the anonymity she's spent decades guarding will be exposed, but desperate to stay afloat, she risks everything to return to the game that brought her to her knees all those years before.
\nSet against the sun-drenched beaches of Balboa Island, with its prim and proper 1950s facade, The Island Club is a story of love, loneliness and the lies we tell ourselves - and what can be gained when the truth is finally revealed.
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Complicated, driven, loving; manipulative, irresistible, monstrous - whether you love her or hate her, Harriet is impossible to say no to. But someone has finally snapped and as Harriet lies dying, she is determined to figure out who has killed her.
\nWas it her devoted husband? Or was it her best friend and sometimes lover?
\nOr Karen, a fellow school mum and seemingly the woman who has it all - until the night Harriet persuaded her into playing Two Truths and a Lie?
\nTeenage bullies, complicated friendships, and games (both on and off the playground) combine with envy, obsession and revenge.
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Joni, Deb, Eden, and Trina have been best friends since high school, sharing a bond that has seen them through their teenage years and into adulthood. But now, time and circumstance is starting to pull them apart as careers, husbands, and babies get in the way. As their yearly vacation becomes less of a priority - at least for three of the women - how can Joni find a way to draw the four of them back together?
\nDuring a laughter and wine-filled night, the women dare one another to write anonymous letters, spilling their deepest, darkest secrets. But the fun game turns devastating, exposing cracks in their lives and the friendships they share. Each letter is a dark confession revealing shocking information. A troubled marriage? A substance abuse problem? A secret pregnancy? A heartbreaking diagnosis?
Late on one of their last nights together, after the other three have gone to bed, Joni notices something in the fireplace - a burnt, crumpled, nearly destroyed, sheet of paper that holds the most shattering revelation of all. It is a fifth letter - a hate-filled rant that exposes a vicious, deeply hidden grudge that has festered for decades. But who wrote it? Which one of them has seethed with resentment all these years? What should Joni do?
Best friends are supposed to keep your darkest secrets. But the revelations Joni, Deb, Eden and Trina have shared will ripple through their lives with unforeseen consequences . . . and things will never be the same.
The holidays are here. The extended family has gathered. The cars are packed and the convoy sets off. The cottage is a few hours' drive - but not everyone will live to see it . . .
\nFor Jill, her three sons, their wives and children, a terrifying road crash will tear apart their family.
\nThe crash will be an accident but the shattering that follows has been long coming.
\nBecause at the heart of this family lies a secret - concealed, wrestled with, festering and harmful - and nothing now can stop it coming out.
\nBut will any of them survive it?
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An engaging and far-reaching exploration of refrigeration, tracing its evolution from scientific mystery to globe-spanning infrastructure, and an essential investigation into how it has remade our entire relationship with food - for better and for worse.
\nHow often do we open the fridge or peer into the freezer with the expectation that we’ll find something fresh and ready to eat? It’s an everyday act, easily taken for granted, but just a century ago, eating food that had been refrigerated was cause for both fear and excitement.
\nBanquets were held just so guests could enjoy the novelty of eggs, butter, and apples that had been preserved for months in cold storage - and demonstrate that such zombie foods were not deadly. The introduction of artificial refrigeration overturned millennia of dietary history, launching an entirely new chapter in human nutrition. We could now overcome not just rot, but also seasonality and geography. Tomatoes in January? Avocados in Shanghai? All possible.
\nIn Frostbite, New Yorker contributor and co-host of the award-winning podcast Gastropod Nicola Twilley takes readers with her on a tour of the cold chain from farm to fridge, visiting such off-the-beaten-track landmarks as Missouri’s subterranean cheese caves, the banana-ripening rooms of New York City, and the vast refrigerated tanks that store the nation’s OJ reserves.
\nToday, more than three-quarters of everything on the average American plate is processed, shipped, stored, and sold under refrigeration. It’s impossible to make sense of our food system without understanding the all-but-invisible network of thermal control that underpins it. Twilley’s eye-opening book is the first to reveal the transformative impact refrigeration has had on our health and our guts; our farms, tables, kitchens, and cities; global economics and politics; and even our environment.
\nIn the developed world, we’ve reaped the benefits of refrigeration for more than a century, but as Twilley soon discovers, the costs are catching up with us. We’ve eroded our connection to our food, extending the distance between producers and consumers and redefining what “fresh” really means. More importantly, refrigeration is one of the leading contributors to climate change.
\nAs the developing world races to build a U.S.-style cold chain, Twilley asks, can we reduce our dependence on refrigeration? Should we? A deeply-researched and reported, original, and entertaining dive into the most important invention in the history of food and drink, Frostbite makes the case for a recalibration of our relationship with the fridge - and how our future might depend on it.
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My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I'm allergic to the world.I don't leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla.
But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He's tall, lean and wearing all black--black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly.
Maybe we can't predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love . . .
Evie Thomas doesn't believe in love anymore. Especially after the strangest thing occurs one otherwise ordinary afternoon: She witnesses a couple kiss and is overcome with a vision of how their romance began . . . and how it will end. After all, even the greatest love stories end with a broken heart, eventually.
\nAs Evie tries to understand why this is happening, she finds herself at La Brea Dance studio, learning to waltz, fox-trot, and tango with a boy named X. X is everything that Evie is not: adventurous, passionate, daring. His philosophy is to say yes to everything - including entering a ballroom dance competition with a girl he's only just met.
\nFalling for X is definitely not what Evie had in mind. If her visions of heartbreak have taught her anything, it's that no one escapes love unscathed. But as she and X dance around and toward each other, Evie is forced to question all she thought she knew about life and love. In the end, is love worth the risk?
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Jasmyn and King Williams move their family to the planned Black utopia of Liberty, California hoping to find a community of like-minded people, a place where their growing family can thrive. King settles in at once, embracing the Liberty ethos, including the luxe wellness center at the top of the hill, which proves to be the heart of the community. But Jasmyn struggles to find her place. She expected to find liberals and social justice activists striving for racial equality, but Liberty residents seem more focused on booking spa treatments and ignoring the world’s troubles.
\nJasmyn’s only friends in the community are equally perplexed and frustrated by most residents' outlook. Then Jasmyn discovers a terrible secret about Liberty and its founders. Frustration turns to dread as their loved ones start embracing the Liberty way of life.
\nWill the truth destroy her world in ways she never could have imagined?
\nThrilling with insightful social commentary, One of Our Kind explores the ways in which freedom is complicated by the presumptions we make about ourselves and each other.
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This book is inspired by Big History (to learn about one thing, you have to learn about everything). In The Sun is Also a Star, to understand the characters and their love story, we must know everything around them and everything that came before them that has affected who they are and what they experience.
Two teens - Daniel, the son of Korean shopkeepers, and Natasha, whose family is here illegally from Jamaica - cross paths in New York City on an eventful day in their lives - Daniel is on his way to an interview with a Yale alum, Natasha is meeting with a lawyer to try and prevent her family's deportation to Jamaica - and fall in love.
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Laila Moretti was on the verge of making her UFC dream a reality. A standout in the regional circuit, she was one win away from a contract - until a crushing defeat shattered her confidence. Convinced she’s not cut out for the big leagues, she walks away from the cage, her coach, and the future she fought for.
\nHarlow Hayes doesn’t believe in limits - only opportunities. Running an underground fight promotion takes nerve, ambition, and a willingness to play dirty. She’s built an empire on giving fighters a shot the system never would. But the audience craves blood, and with her reputation on the line, she needs a star who can do more than survive - she needs someone who can win.
\nWhen Laila steps into Harlow’s world, she sees the fighter Laila refuses to believe she is. Their attraction is undeniable, their ambitions impossible to ignore, and as the lines between business and something far more dangerous begin to blur, Harlow faces a choice: push Laila to reclaim the dream she abandoned or admit she’s already lost sight of her own.
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Welcome to The Program, an immersive week-long experience set to the backdrop of the breathtaking island of O'ahu, where mothers in all stages of crisis can come to take control of their lives. It's not exactly the type of thing Georgia Evans - a busy working mother of two - would usually consider. However, still spiraling from a debacle that crowned her \"internet's worst mom,\" she is desperate enough to try anything.
\nOnce on the island, Georgia is quickly won over by the elegant (and somewhat enigmatic) founder of The Program, Cecilia Clements. Cecilia shows The Program's attendees how the biology of motherhood has imprisoned them. More importantly, she promises them freedom from that prison. Captivated by this possibility and the compelling science behind it, Georgia grows deeply involved with Cecilia's mission, ignoring any doubt that starts to creep in. That's the whole point of The Program, after all: you can't really trust a mom brain.
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In the quiet streets of Prague all manner of otherworldly creatures lurk in the shadows. Unbeknownst to its citizens, their only hope against the tide of predators are the dauntless lamplighters - a secret elite of monster hunters whose light staves off the darkness each night. Domek Myska leads a life teeming with fraught encounters with the worst kind of evil: pijavice, bloodthirsty and soulless vampiric creatures.
\nDespite this, Domek find solace in his moments spent in the company of his friend, the clever and beautiful Lady Ora Fischerová - a widow with secrets of her own. When Domek finds himself stalked by the spirit of the White Lady - a ghost who haunts the baroque halls of Prague castle - he stumbles across the sentient essence of a will-o'-the-wisp, a mischievous spirit known to lead lost travellers to their death, but who, once captured, are bound to serve the desires of their owners.
\nAfter discovering a conspiracy amongst the pijavice that could see them unleash terror on the daylight world, Domek finds himself in a race against those who aim to twist alchemical science for their own dangerous gain.
When Artemisia Gentileschi arrives in Florence seeking a haven for her art, she faces instant opposition from the powerful Accademia, self-proclaimed guardians of the healing and necrotic magic that protect the city from plague and curses. The all-male Accademia jealously guards its power over art and architecture, and has no place for an ambitious young woman arriving from Rome under a cloud of scandal.
\nAlone and fighting for every commission, Artemisia begins winning allies among luminaries such Galileo and Michelangelo the Younger, as well as the wealthy and powerful Cristina de’ Medici. But when the shadow of her infamous rape trial in Rome turns her thoughts to vengeance, and an incendiary preacher turns his ire from Galileo to Florence's art world, Artemisia must choose between revenge and her dream of creating a legacy that will span the generations.
Kate has always been troubled by visions of the future. No matter what she does, her disturbing premonitions are always realised - often with terrible consequences. But Kate has swirling, romantic dreams of a strange boy, and a chance meeting in the woods.
\nOliver returned from the Great War disabled, disillusioned, and able to speak to the dead. Haunted by the death of his best friend and his traumatic memories of the trenches, Oliver realises that his ability to communicate with spirits may offer the chance of closure he desperately seeks.
\nNora Jo’s mother and grandmother were witches, but she has never nurtured her own power. Always an outsider, she has made a place for herself in the town as Chatuga's schoolteacher, clinging to the independence the job affords her. But when her unorthodox ideas lead to her dismissal, salvation comes in the form of a witch from the mountains who offers her a magical apprenticeship.
\nRumours of a dark force stalking the town only push Kate, Oliver and Nora Jo onwards in their quest to determine their own destinies. But as they close in on their goals, each will have to consider whether what they seek is worth the price.
When Mia was a young woman, she read a magazine article about a murderous teenage girl with a rare and disturbing psychiatric delusion. Fascinated by the details, she sought out the doctor who’d treated the girl, and eventually married him. Twenty years later, Mia’s curiosity is piqued once again when her husband announces that his famous case study will be republished - and that he will be reconnecting with his former patient.
\nLainey has never felt that her feet are fully on the ground - not since she was released from a psychiatric institution at the age of twenty-one. When her former doctor reaches out, she decides to tell him the truth about what happened all those years ago. Perhaps she can finally lighten the darkness that has defined her entire existence.
\nWith mirroring software, Mia pores over every recorded therapy session with Lainey, almost as though she’s watching a true crime drama unfold. On the opposite side, Lainey becomes intensely interested in her doctor’s family. How far will she go to insert herself into his seemingly perfect life?
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Sam Hayes thought she’d moved on. It’s been eight years since Jess crashed into her life before slipping away, and four years since they tore each other apart for good. Now Sam’s within reach of her ultimate goal: selling her software company and proving herself in the tech industry. All she needs to do is integrate her software with a new financial firm, lock in the deal, and walk away with everything she’s worked for.
\nBut on day one, everything unravels. The person overseeing the project is her childhood best friend - someone she hasn’t seen since her mother’s death. A living reminder of the life she barely managed to escape. And to twist the knife even deeper - that best friend just happens to be Jess' current girlfriend.
\nDetermined to stick it out, Sam forces herself to focus - until she’s dragged back into Jess’ orbit when they’re both caught up in the whirlwind of their mutual friend, Scarlett’s, wedding. Between dress fittings, late-night parties, and quiet moments that linger too long, Sam and Jess find themselves colliding once again, forced to confront the broken pieces of their past.
\nNow, with everything she's worked toward at risk, Sam must face what she’s truly willing to sacrifice - and whether a future with Jess is something she can hold onto, or something she’s bound to lose all over again.
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In a world overrun by an unprecedented outbreak, two young women find themselves on opposite sides of the struggle for survival.
\nSaff, a determined new doctor in the first year of her internship, had clawed her way out of a tumultuous past, only to be dragged back into it when the zombie outbreak hits. Forced to join her estranged father and his band of raiders, she’s confronted with the harsh reality that desperation can make monsters out of anyone - even her.
\nMaddie, on the other hand, lived a surprisingly easy life after the zombies first appeared, safe behind the walls of the community at her parent’s lake house. That is, until they’re attacked, and she’s ripped away from everything she’s known. Now, she’ll do anything to make it back to her family. And when Saff’s father dies, she finally has the chance she’s been waiting for. The chance to escape. But only if she can steal the medication she desperately needs and survive long enough to get to safety.
\nWith both girls fighting their way to stay alive day by day, in a world where every circumstance is against them, they realize that maybe travelling together can help them both get what they need. But Maddie doesn’t know Saff’s secret. She doesn’t know where she came from - what she was. And Saff will do anything, especially lie, to get the medication she needs.
\nThe absolute last thing she needs is to fall for some smart ass rich girl who will get in the way of that.
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Jess Miller is a focused, driven high school senior whose only goal is to get into the strict Christian college that her late mother attended. But when another student gets picked for early admission instead of her, she can see her dream slipping away.
\nWith only two months left until winter break, Jess gets one final chance to prove herself to the board of admissions by doing a volunteer project at the local rehab center. Although it'll just be one more thing to add on top of her already packed academic and athletic schedule, she's determined to make it work and secure her spot at Trinity University.
\nThat is, until she meets Sam, the charismatic and mysterious girl she's forced to volunteer with every day.
\nWith time running out, and everything on the line, Jess must finally confront her inner demons and choose between what she's always known, and what her heart truly wants. And she has to do it before it's too late.
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Jo Waterstone knows what you should read next. She’s honed the skill of sizing up a person and recommending their next book in the decades she’s worked at Bruebaker’s Books. Her life has been shaped by the store, the bustle of customers exploring the stacks, and managing the eager staff. She can honestly say it’s the best job she’s ever had.
\nThen the store’s elderly owner, Mr. Bruebaker, suffers a stroke, and just like that Jo’s perfect job is on the chopping block. Mr. B’s daughters and the bookstore’s icy CEO think the time is right to close for good, and they order Jo to lock up. But she doesn’t know what she would be without Bruebaker’s - and besides, the place is an institution. So instead of following orders, she decides to take a along with a few brave team members, she barricades herself in the store, trying to buy time until Mr. Bruebaker recovers and can speak for himself.
\nLiving in a bookstore has a certain magic to it, but the quiet hours among the books throw the choices Jo has made in her life into sharp relief. As supporters - and detractors - start to voice their opinions about her actions, Jo will have to decide what, exactly, is worth saving.
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After Sara’s father, famous sculptor Thomas “TR” Harlow, is badly injured in a fire, she’s suddenly forced to care for a man who is more of a stranger than a parent. Once known as his muse, Sara long ago lost her father to his desire to live the celebrity life.
Now TR’s abrasive and unpredictable presence in her home is reopening old wounds - and causing the rift in her already-strained marriage to deepen. As her young son begins bonding with the grandfather he never knew, Sara must decide if she can find it within herself to forgive the man who broke her heart all those years ago. Will she walk away from a chance to rebuild what was lost, or will she find, by bringing her father back to health, that healing can come in many forms?
Mia Gladwell’s life is going nowhere. The media has skewered her debut novel, her fiancé Carson, a successful Hollywood producer, has jumped ship, and now she’s living in her sister’s carriage house - unattached, unemployed, and uninspired. Then she learns that the Los Angeles estate of iconic author Ray Bradbury is up for sale, and she feels an immediate urge to buy the wonky old house, convinced that moving into the late author’s home will inspire her to create her best work yet.
Life in the Bradbury house is not what Mia imagined, however. Soon after moving in, to fulfill a debt she owes to Carson, she agrees to take in a pill-popping young actress as a tenant, and suddenly she finds herself in a balancing act between her needy ex, an unpredictable starlet, and her disapproving sister, who’s keeping a close eye on her. Add to this a series of mysterious sketches left at her doorstep by a stranger, and Mia’s life is more complicated than ever. As she searches for clues, though, Mia discovers insights into her own life. Maybe moving into Bradbury’s house was a big mistake - but maybe not.
Elin, the Princess of Norway, never planned to become the country’s Queen - her twin brother, older by minutes, would be the next King. When her father decided to retire, and her brother abdicated to continue his career in the military service, Elin was thrust into being not only the next in line, but the new Queen.
\nIngrid, the Princess’s Private Secretary, was happy for her sometimes nervous and often klutzy Princess ascending to the throne, but because of her lack of seniority, she was disappointed to find out she won’t be Elin’s secretary any longer. When the new Queen moves mountains to keep Ingrid on her staff, Ingrid begins to wonder why she’d do that.
\nThe new Queen’s crush is close to being revealed, and the Secretary, who’s always been professional, cannot take her eyes off of the woman she’s worked with for years. While it might seem impossible, Ingrid also can’t stop thinking about the possibility of more with the woman who will now be Queen of Norway.
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Asher Hahn is one of the top wedding planners in New Orleans, and her best friend, Linden Washington, is the other. They’ve both planned extravagant weddings and watched couple after couple share their love in front of their friends and families, all without ever really falling in love themselves.
\nWhen, after a decade of friendship, Linden comes out to Asher, Asher’s job, as she sees it, is to be there for Linden as she explores the part of herself that she’s hidden for so long. The only problem is that now that Linden is more fully herself, Asher begins to question her own identity, and part of that questioning means realising that she might be in love with her best friend.
\nFor Linden, coming out has been a great experience so far. She has her best friend by her side and has enjoyed finally being able to be herself, but when Asher tells her that she thinks she’s bisexual, Linden starts to feel like she might not want to date just anyone. She could be ready for something real . . . with her best friend.
\nAsher knows she only wants Linden but thinks Linden can’t possibly feel the same way. Linden wants Asher but doesn’t think she can tell her because it could ruin their friendship. Good thing they have some meddling friends who help them figure things out and finally admit their feelings for one another.
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Alice, a small-town teacher who had lost her parents years ago, had always felt out of place. There was just something missing in her life that she could never seem to identify. When a man showed up to tell her that she was the long-lost daughter of a King and Queen who had been exiled from their country and were now dead, Alice didn’t believe him.
\nNora, a Major in the Royal Protection Service of Kleinland - a small island nation in the North Sea - had always fought for the crown, including the war that was lost to the rebels. While Kleinland was now being run by a dictator, who’s intent on ruining her country, Nora volunteers to find and bring back the nation’s rightful heir, a teacher in America named Alice.
\nAlice is hesitant to believe and claim her title as Queen of Kleinland, but the Major could be very persuasive. She’s also very attractive, and Alice is wondering why she’s never thought of a woman the way she’s thinking about the Major when she should be focused on trying to oust a dictator with his army and regain control of her new country.
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Growing up fifth in line for the throne, Elizabeth never thought she would have to rule the small island nation of St. Rais. When a plot to take down the monarchy also takes her entire family from her, Elizabeth is thrust into the role of reluctant Queen. Not only did she lose most of her family, but she also lost the only love she’d ever known.
\nPalmer Honeycutt, a reporter for a popular New York City newspaper, was on vacation in a country nearly no one had heard of before. A deal she’d gotten at the relaxing resort and spa had been just what she’d needed. Little did she know that while she was trying to relax, the whole royal family would nearly be lost to tragedy, and a young Queen would present her a perfect story.
\nBoth women approach their new relationship cautiously at first, but it doesn’t take long for Palmer to start wishing the new Queen was someone she could spend more time with. Elizabeth also seems to have a lot of time for Palmer, which only confuses Palmer more.
\nAfter all Elizabeth has lost and what she’s willing to give up for her country, is she also willing to risk it all to possibly find love again in an American reporter who’s been there for her during the toughest part of her life?
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Myra Davies owns her own contractor company and loves working in the city of New Orleans, but after her ex-wife left her for another woman and a more exciting life, she’s left feeling lonely and unsure of what to do with herself outside of work.
\nElisa Benedetti finally had the courage to divorce her husband and tell the world that she’s gay. She’s ready to start over in New Orleans with her twins, who are about to go off to college. Unfortunately, the first house she’s ever bought herself needs a lot of work, and Elisa is surprised to discover that she just moved in right next door to a very attractive contractor named Myra.
\nWhen Myra and Elisa meet, it’s clear that there’s something there between them. Elisa has a lot to deal with, though, from her ex-husband to her kids and a new house that needs fixing up, and she’s not sure if Myra is willing to put up with all of it. Still, to Myra, Elisa is exactly what she’s always been looking for.
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Alexandria - or Alex, as she preferred to be called - would one day be the next Queen of the United Kingdom. She would also be the first out lesbian who would take that title. Born before her younger, more accomplished brother, she’d always wondered if her parents would have preferred he’d been born first so that it would be him up next and she could fall to next-in-line after his children and never rule. When she first met the best friend of the Queen of Kleinland, she was smitten. Meeting her again and again at various events and gatherings had Alex more than smitten and wishing the woman would give her the time of day.
\nBexley Woods earned her Ph. D in speech pathology and was asked by her best friend, now Queen of Kleinland, to bring speech therapy to the small country after the events of the two recent wars. Bexley moved temporarily, with the intention of building a program, and found herself with the future Queen of England there to help. Both inconvenient and interesting, Bexley wasn’t sure why the Princess was there. But, in time, she realized that the woman she thought Alex was couldn’t be further from the truth.
\nFinding time together and figuring out their feelings was easy when they were both in the same place at the same time. But with a domineering mother in the picture, who wanted what was best for her Princess daughter, and the need for Bexley to go home to care for a sick grandparent, the reality of their situation came to light sooner than both women would have preferred.
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As a caterer working on film sets, Dana Sterling feels like she’s at least adjacent to the industry she’s always wanted to be a part of, but serving people food isn’t the same as acting in a feature film. When a movie based on her friends falling in love is being made in New Orleans, she’s assigned to be a gofer to one of the lead actresses, a diva who seems impossible to please.
\nSamara Barber is an A-lister with a secret, headed to New Orleans to work on a small-budget indie film. This production isn’t exactly the blockbusters she’s used to, though, and not having her very specific requirements met makes her wonder if she made a mistake. Things can’t get any worse when the other actress in the film has to drop out at the last minute.
\nDana’s dream might be about to come true when she’s called on to play the role, and maybe there’s more to the diva that is Samara, who’s never broken her one rule: never sleep with a co-star.
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Bridgette Musgrave has been planning on taking over the family business her entire life, but her parents have mismanaged it, and it’s in danger of being sold off to Arnette Assets, a giant corporation that might come in and steal the one thing Bridgette has been working toward for a decade.
\nMonica Arnette is slated to take over the multinational business based in New York when her aging father retires. It’s been her plan all along. Not part of that plan is to take a trip down to hot and humid New Orleans as a favor to an old friend of her father’s to buy some small greeting card company that Arnette Assets doesn’t need to add to their portfolio. Also not on her list of things to do is meeting a fiery redhead who doesn’t want Monica there.
\nAs the two women are tasked with working together, Monica discovers that there’s more to New Orleans than her first impression. Moreover, as they begin to get to know one another, maybe, just maybe, Bridgette might discover that she doesn’t mind having Monica there at all.
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Kyle Schafer had to grow up fast. Being a daughter of a reluctant mother and an older sister on top of that had practically guaranteed it. When she discovers that the stories her mother told her about her recently deceased grandmother might not be true, she treks to New Orleans to find out the truth about her own history.
\nMelinda Andrews loves New Orleans. So much so that she runs NOLA Guides, the top tour company in the city, knowing it will be handed to her by the owner and her mentor soon enough. When her unlucky-in-love best friend suggests that they go out so she can meet someone, Melinda sees a woman, who she knows is a tourist, and now, she can’t help but think that she should have said hello.
\nEnding up in New Orleans with her younger sister, trying to uncover the truth about her family, was never part of Kyle’s plan, but maybe that’s okay because meeting Melinda on a tour and figuring out that there was more to the story than her mother led her to believe might just be worth it.
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Jill Solomon has watched her friends fall in love over the past year and a half, and she feels like she’s the only single lesbian left in New Orleans. When her mother runs off unexpectedly, leaving Jill to take care of her ten-year-old sister, Jill worries that her entire life is about to change, and not for the better.
\nWilla Mailor is a teacher at a wildly underfunded public school while also working a part-time job, trying to make ends meet, when she discovers that her favorite summer school student has a beautiful older sister, who is also kind and funny and all the other things that cause Willa to feel an instant connection with Jill.
\nForced to become a parent overnight, Jill feels like she might not get to have the life she’d hoped for, and Willa is worried about not getting the job she needs to be able to pay bills. At the same time, they both feel like they’ve found something real in each other, and if only they can figure out how to handle everything else, they could have the love they’ve always dreamed of finding.
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Enid Becker did all the right things. She went to college, graduated, and got a job right away. She moved to another state and thought she was living the dream. Then, she got laid off and had to move back home and in with her parents. She decides that going to grad school might help her find a better job, but she’s not happy about feeling like she has to start over.
\nCaroline Timothy is a college junior who doesn’t want to be in college. Her parents have given her strict instructions, though, so she decides to take some summer classes in order to graduate on time. A budding artist, she hates the classroom and doesn’t see the point in going to school.
\nA chance meeting at a bar, followed by running into each other at a career fair, has Enid wondering if losing that job and returning home was the best thing that could have happened, after all, because it led her to the creative, smart, and funny Caroline Timothy, whom she can’t keep off her mind.
\nWith both of them feeling lost on their own, together, they discover that they’re right where they should be.
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Sophie Santiago goes out with friends one night and ends up bumping into the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen, a tourist named Bryce. After a few hours with her, spent talking and dancing, Sophie knows that Bryce isn’t meant to be someone she knows for only one night, but something causes them to lose each other in the crowd. How will she find Bryce again when they didn’t exchange phone numbers or even last names?
\nBryce Wilburn is a food blogger who lives in Tennessee. One year ago, she took a trip to New Orleans with her friends, and that trip changed her life forever. There, she met Sophie, a woman who Bryce instantly knew was the right one for her. While her friends mock her for believing in love at first sight, Bryce decides to stop wallowing and finally blogs about the night she met Sophie.
\nWhen a friend of Sophie’s discovers that blog post, she tells her about it, and Sophie and Bryce are finally able to reconnect. But can the magic of their chance encounter translate into more?
\nFinding love in a New Orleans bar after a few hours of talking isn’t supposed to happen. Yet, with Sophie and Bryce, it just might have.
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Logan Luna has made a lot of mistakes in her life stemming from a gambling addiction. She’s been sublimating in other ways recently but doesn’t want to do that any longer. When she gets a job at a new bar in the city, she hopes it’s the start of something big, something that might help take her mind off of everything wrong with her life.
\nRory Winter helps her friend with her new bar whenever she can, which is probably more often than she should because she has a full-time job and is also in grad school. She’s doing that because she doesn’t like to let people down, but there’s another reason why she spends all of her free time at the bar: a new, older, and very attractive bartender works there.
\nRory doesn’t think Logan will ever look her way because Logan is out, gorgeous, and can have any woman she wants, while Rory is shy, studious, and isn’t out to everyone in her life yet.
\nLogan feels like she can be herself with Rory in a way she’s never felt before, and she can’t seem to stop talking to the younger woman whenever she stops by the bar.
\nThey both have some things to work through, but for the first time, Rory can see herself falling in love and being more fully herself, and Logan begins to think about how good her life could be for the first time in a long time.
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India Sheridan knows that her long-term on-again, off-again relationship is over, but that doesn’t mean she enjoys watching her ex fall in love with someone else. Moving on isn’t as easy as she hoped it would be, but as she struggles through that, she’s given a project to buy up the land next to her office. The only problem is that an old bookshop sits on that lot, and when she stops by one afternoon to get the lay of the land, she meets the shop’s cute owner.
\nMaisie Lincoln is running her family’s legacy into the ground, but it’s not her fault. People don’t read books how they used to. She’s been trying to get historical landmark status for her shop for years, not only to protect it but also to attract more visitors, but after multiple denials, she takes matters into her own hands and runs for city council, hoping to help herself from within the belly of the beast.
\nWhen Maisie meets India, she’s taken with her immediately. They’re very different people, and that’s more than obvious to both of them, but there’s an even bigger issue. When they met, India didn’t tell Maisie that the wealthy incumbent whom she’s running against and who has threatened to take Maisie’s shop is her brother, who only sees his seat as a stepping stone to something greater.
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Molly Jewel has had a crush on Finley, the IT person at work, for years now, but Finley has always been on and off with her girlfriend. Molly hasn’t ever had the courage to tell her how she feels whenever they’ve been off, and working with Finley and her girlfriend, having to watch them get back together over and over again, hasn’t made things any easier.
\nFinley Storm is ready to move on from her past relationship, and her new feelings for Molly confirm that for her. She’s been frozen for years, but spending time with Molly has her feeling like she could get the fresh start with someone she’s been craving for a long time.
\nThe only problem is that Molly has had to watch her break up with her ex and get back together so many times that she doesn’t believe it when Finley tells her that it’s finally over for good. Finley is determined to show Molly just how much she’s ready for her now and how perfect they could be for each other if they only give it a chance.
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When Ruby Simon wanted something, she usually got it and didn't mind working hard for it. Her small town had never done anything for Pride month, and she was determined to change that. Starting with a parade would be a little much, so Ruby started planning a festival.
\nChance Curtis was used to always being pulled into her best friend's orbit. She was an ally to the community, believing that love was love and that she'd find her person one day, but she never had anyone in her life like that, so it didn't matter anyway.
\nJo Hemsworth never fit in. When Jo's single mother decided to move to a small town toward the end of Jo's junior year, Jo planned not to talk to anyone and just hoped to go to college one day. Never feeling like fitting in, and only in part because of being gay, Jo had no idea Chance was helping to plan a festival and would change Jo's life.
\nJaden Hugo had been the girl with two gay dads ever since they adopted her, and she'd been questioning things about herself for a while. When her dads volunteer themselves and her to work at a Pride festival in another town, Jaden is completely taken aback because there was Ruby Simon, the girl who had made it all happen.
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On the cusp of their high school graduation, Ruby and Chance were about to leave this place they'd called home and wanted to leave it better than they found it. In planning this first Pride event for their community, their lives also end up changing for the better.
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Gwen Benedetti has spent most of her life being a disappointment to her wealthy parents, who don’t understand why she has to be a professional dog walker and pet sitter when, in their mind, she could be so much more. Gwen loves her job working with animals, her small New Orleans apartment, and the life she’s made for herself. The only thing she’s missing is someone at her side to share that life with.
\nJuliet Francis is a corporate trainer at Southern Roastery, a growing coffee chain, and when an opportunity to take on a little extra work comes with a possible future promotion, she grabs it. The only downside is that it comes with a lot of travel, and that means leaving her dog at home alone.
\nWhen Juliet requests Gwen’s dog-walking and pet-sitting services, she thinks she’s only getting someone to take care of her dog, but as they continue to spend time together, she discovers she might get a lot more than that.
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After agreeing it’s safer to stick together, Anson takes Quinn & Ava to the one place he swore never to return to. He believes it’s the only safe place left to survive the winter, but when it proves as dangerous as the rest of the world, the unlikely family is out of time. Winter has come, and with it, a whole new host of attacks.
\nNow forced to face an increasingly hostile environment and humans alike, as well as the growing tensions in their own relationships, the trio sets out to find a place they can call home in this apocalypse.
Snow never falls on Mount Olympus, so when impenetrable ice forms around Hades’ old room, the gods know something is wrong. It blocks all except Hades from entering, and despite Alkaios’ reservations, she steps through the shimmer guarding her door. She is the Omega, the last remaining Old One, and if this frost is a threat to the Olympian reign, she will not let it grow.
\nOnly the world Hades steps into is not hers. It is cruelty and ice. It is filled with death, and a new and dangerous enemy traps her alone, cutting her off from everyone she loves. An enemy she may not have the strength to defeat. But with the apocalypse fast approaching, Hades calls on the one man who has always been at her side - the man who made the myth of Hades and Persephone a legend. Together they face the frozen evil, resolved to save the world or perish trying.
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“The first have come, and they seek the last.” The Oracle Of Delphi prophesied in the dead of night, carving ancient runes into the temple’s stone with her own blood, but she has no memory of her midnight trance. She knows not who spoke through her, yet one thing is certain. It was not an Olympian.
Alkaios and the Olympians are at a loss, the Oracle’s foretelling igniting unease in their holy ranks, but Hades finds herself drawn to those words, haunted by those words. This prophecy plagues her nightmares and consumes her mind, yet they just might hold the key to who Hades truly is . . . or herald an ancient terror that could destroy the earth and end the reign of the Olympians. The Evils of the Underworld are no match for what is coming.
All legends are born out of truth. Yet there is one true story that has all been but forgotten. Legend tells us that Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades were brothers who overthrew the first gods, taking the world for themselves. Drawing lots, Zeus, king of the gods, became ruler of the skies. Brave Poseidon drew the lot of the seas, but wicked Hades was tricked into drawing the lot of the Underworld where he became the most feared and hated of the gods. This is merely legend though. The truth . . . The truth is very different.
For in the beginning, Hades was not a god, but an immortal of Olympus. Once a mortal of earth, Hades had so pleased the gods that life among them was granted. On Mount Olympus, Hades’ eternal youth was that of pure beauty said to have rivaled the beauty of Aphrodite herself. All were captivated by the splendor that was Hades, but Zeus most of all. For Zeus loved her.
But the love of a fickle god can be cruel, and Hades’ betrayal will have its vengeance. For Hades is destined for a dark and terrible greatness.
Today is the day. Today is our turn to run, and if we win, if we finish the maze, we are free. We get out. Today is the day. If I win, I am free.
The winners will be released into the world as heroes, worshipped by all who watch, and believe me, the nation is watching. Today will prove which of our youths are the most athletic and intelligent. The maze houses many obstacles. Obstacles that will require teamwork and problem solving, great feats of strength and speed, and one team will come together to beat the odds and claim the coveted title of winner. They will be our nation’s best and brightest. Not only is fame waiting across the finish line, but our future, a future filled with promise and success.
The maze is equipped with three hundred and sixty degree cameras that will track our every move as we navigate the race. There are no blind spots, but if this is only a competition, a contest to test us, why are there armed guards? And why do men guarding teenagers need such punishing weapons?
A 36-year-old sheriff on his way to a meeting.
A 21-year-old student returning to her senior year of college.
A 6-month-old baby in the backseat of her mother’s car.
Three strangers who should’ve never met.
\nBut when the bridge all three are on collapses in a cataclysmic event, Quinn risks her life to save the trapped Ava. The baby’s mother is dead, but her rescue is too little too late. They both hurtle for death, but before the poisoned river below claims them, Anson finds them and carries the girls to the safety of dry land.
\nOnly nothing is safe anymore. As nature mutates, each disaster more disturbing than the last, Anson feels responsible for Quinn and Ava. He promises to find them somewhere safe before he continues his solo journey south, but as weeks turn to months, the unusual trio faces two questions that will forever change the course of their lives. Is any place truly safe? And is blood the only thing that makes us family?
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Six years ago
Megan waits at the school gates for her six-year-old son, Daniel. As children come and go, the playground emptying, panic bubbles inside her. Daniel is nowhere to be found.
According to his teacher, Daniel’s father, Greg, has picked up his son. Except Greg and Megan are no longer together. After years of being controlled by her cruel husband, Megan has finally found the courage to divorce him. Hands trembling, she dials his number, but the line is dead.
Six years later
Megan is feeding baby daughter, Evie, when she gets the call she has dreamt about for years. Daniel has walked into a police station in a remote town just a few miles away. Her son is alive – and he’s coming home.
But their joyful family reunion does not go to plan. His room may have been frozen in time, with his Cookie Monster poster and stack of Lego under the bed, but Daniel is no longer the sweet little boy Megan remembers.
Cold and distant, Daniel is grieving the death of his father, blaming Megan for his loss and rejecting his family. And as Megan struggles to connect with the son she no longer recognises as her own, she begins to realise that Daniel has a secret. A secret that could destroy their family and put them in terrible danger.
Katelyn smiles around at her husband and friends, gathered to celebrate her thirty-sixth birthday in their beautiful home decorated with fairy lights. But the next day Katelyn wakes up shaken and terrified in a hospital bed . . .
\nShe doesn’t remember the sweet taste of birthday cake icing, or how angry her best friend was at midnight, or the terrible things her husband said. She doesn’t remember the party at all.
\nWhen she asks her husband what happened the night of the party he says ‘nothing’. But her blood runs cold at the way his voice lilts slightly. The way it always does when he is lying.
\nDid someone at the party harm her?
\nWhat is her husband hiding?
\nOr did Katelyn herself do something terrible?
\nOnly one thing is certain. Nobody can be trusted. And if Katelyn’s memories of the party do come back, it will tear them all apart . . .
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Sometimes, the most perfect families are hiding the most terrible secrets. How well do you know the people next door?
\nEverybody wants to live on Hogarth Street, the pretty, tree-lined avenue with its white houses. The new family, The Wests, are a perfect fit. Katherine and Josh seem so in love and their gorgeous five-year-old twins race screeching around their beautiful emerald-green lawn.
\nBut soon people start to notice: why don’t they join backyard barbecues? Why do they brush away offers to babysit? Why, when you knock at the door, do they shut you out, rather than inviting you in?
\nEvery family has secrets, and on the hottest day of the year, the truth is about to come out. As a tragedy unfolds behind closed doors, the dawn chorus is split by the wail of sirens. And one by one the families who tried so hard to welcome the Wests begin to realise: Hogarth Street will never be the same again.
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Elizabeth is Joe’s foster mother, but she loves him like her own. The five-year-old, who adores superheroes and watching the birds outside, is the child she has dreamed of. As she looks into the garden, where he was playing just moments ago, her heart feels like it has been ripped from her chest.
\nShe was meant to save Joe from his birth mother who almost harmed his chances at life. The woman who has been trying to desperately get him back.
\nShe was meant to protect Joe from her husband. The man who, right now, lies to the police, saying he was making breakfast when Joe disappeared. Who squeezes her shoulder, ordering her to be quiet.
\nShe was meant to look after Joe. They are just footsteps from the ocean, and little Joe can’t swim.
\nThen Joe’s tiny blue sandal is found in the water. If the worst has happened - the unimaginable - Elizabeth will never forgive herself. Because what if the secret she has been keeping for years, the guilt eating her alive, has somehow hurt her little boy?
\nIt’s time to tell the truth - even if it means losing the child who is her whole world. Even if it could be the death of her.
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She has my husband. She has my child. She has my life.
\nI never thought I would end up here. Alone, in a cold one-bedroom apartment, only seeing my precious daughter once a week.
\nAnother woman is living the life that was once mine. I wish I was still married to my ex-husband, the love of my life. I dream of tucking my five-year-old child into her ballerina bed sheets every night. I miss living in a beautiful house, the perfect family home, with a winding staircase and a sprawling garden.
\nI’d do anything to be with my family again. To start over and prove to them that I’ve changed, that I won’t lose control like before.
\nBut when I get my second chance, the vicious messages come. The noises at night. The feeling of being watched. It’s happening all over again. I know I’m not going mad, but no one will believe me. I don’t know if I even believe myself.
\nAll I wanted was my life back. But now my life is under threat - and my darling little girl is in danger . . .
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You tell him everything. The husband you adore, the father of your child, your best friend.
\nHe knows, just by looking at your sage-green eyes, when something is wrong. The two of you can communicate with a glance, or a touch of the hand.
\nExcept what if you can’t?
\nWhat if your happy marriage has plastered over one huge lie? A lie you have even started to believe yourself, in order to survive?
\nWhat if you have a secret, something you have hidden from your beloved husband and your strawberry-scented baby girl, to keep them safe? What if the guilt has kept you up, night after night, for as long as you can remember?
\nWhat happens when suddenly, after twenty-eight years, that secret refuses to stay buried? What will you do now everyone you love, everything you cherish, is in harm’s way?
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I stare at the photo of my beautiful daughter. Her hair is shining and her face is lit up with a smile. The man with her looks so happy too. But my mother’s instinct is screaming. I know something is terribly, terribly wrong. And I know what I have to do . . .
\nI wish I could hold her tight. See if she still wears the same perfume she always wore. But my daughter blames me for her father’s death. She won’t even talk to me . . . I just know she isn’t really safe with her boyfriend, Garth. I will keep my distance and I will just watch her. For now.
\nBut I tremble with fear when the police knock at her door. Garth has gone missing. And my daughter is accused of his murder.
\nThere’s no evidence that I ever hurt anyone . . . is there? Do the police know about my past - and what I’ve really been doing?
\nOnly one thing is certain. My beautiful girl is in terrible danger.
\nBut from the man she loves?
\nFrom herself?
\nOr from me?
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Have you ever looked at those mothers who seem to be perfect - with sweet little children, a full-time job, a beautiful home - and thought: am I not good enough? Ava has. She’s desperate to become just like them. That’s exactly why I’m here . . .
‘Don’t worry, I’m here to help!’ I say with a big smile. I can see the relief in Ava Green’s face. She has two beautiful children, a charming husband and a high-flying job. But there is so much stress in the lines around her eyes. She worries she isn’t good enough. I understand.
Before she knows it, I’ve cleaned the kitchen and offered to babysit her two little girls. It’s not why she hired me, but I like to go above and beyond. I’m just glad she didn’t check my application too carefully. Because even before we met, I made sure I knew everything about Ava and her lovely little family . . .
Her husband never helps out. He takes phone calls at strange times. He’s hiding something - and Ava is close to breaking point. Those poor children.
But everything will be okay. I have plans for Ava. She just has to trust me . . .
If you passed Alice on the street, you couldn’t help but smile. At how she holds hands with her husband, Jack, who she has been with since she was at university. At the way she admires her three boys, the centre of her universe.
But if you looked very closely, you’d see how tightly she holds Jack’s hand, afraid to let go. You’d see how carefully she watches her boys, scared to look away. You’d see her smile fading in a matter of seconds, and the pain she hides behind her eyes.
She has told Jack that she ran away from home when she was younger - but she didn’t tell him the whole story. Her husband doesn’t know about the guilt she bears about her little sister she failed to save.
Now, after a lifetime of fresh starts, Alice can feel her past playing catch-up. She is sure she is being watched, certain she is being followed. She may not be able to stop her secret coming out - but can she stop the world she has lovingly built collapsing in on her?
Her chest tightens, her heart speeding up. The kitchen is chaos. She steps on something hard, and looks down. Toy dinosaurs are scattered everywhere. But her son is nowhere - her baby boy is gone
\nThe police arrive. She can’t look at her husband. Instead, she studies the network of lines on her shaking hands.
\nThen her phone beeps with a voice message. ‘Listen to it on speaker,’ says the detective.
\nA woman’s voice fills the air.
\n“I’m assuming this is the Andrea Gately listed as a contact on the Missing Children of the World website. I’m calling to let you know that I’ve given your details to the police. Why are you using a picture of my son on a missing children’s website? Why are you using it and where did you get it?”
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Three-year-old Millie Everleigh disappears on a crisp winter’s day, and nothing is as it seems . . .
\nIt’s the phone call every mother dreads.
\nI’m climbing into the car after a trip to the grocery store. As the engine starts, my phone rings. It’s my stepdaughter, Shelby, who is babysitting my three-year-old little girl Millie.
\n‘I only went upstairs for a second,’ she says through her sobs. ‘She’s gone.’
\nI race home to find my blue-eyed baby girl missing, and my heart ripped out of my chest.
\nWhen the police turn up, Shelby’s story starts to unravel. What is she hiding?
\nThen I get a message saying, ‘Your husband is not who you think he is.’ Could he be lying?
\nSuddenly, my family feel like strangers. Everyone has a secret - even me.
\nNo one knows why I was late coming back from the store, and the guilt I’ve been feeling ever since . . .
\nOnce the truth comes out, all of our lies exposed, will it be too late to save my precious child?
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I gaze at my husband’s once handsome face, so still and pale in the hospital bed. The doctors say I should keep talking. He might be able to hear me even after the terrible accident that left him fighting for his life. But all I have to whisper to my husband is I know what you did.
\nEvery day I wave my husband Damon off with a kiss and a smile, drive our precious children to school, and make sure our house is pristine before preparing a delicious meal. I pretend I’m not filled with fury that he once nearly destroyed our perfect life. It’s important to carry on as normal.
\nThat is, until the accident.
\nMy husband was hit by a car. It was pouring with rain. Nobody saw what happened. But the police are asking questions…
\nDo they know about the terrible argument we had that day?
\nDo they know about the text message I sent, telling someone to Delete everything?
\nAnd do they know that no one is happier that my husband is in a hospital bed, than me?
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From a renowned biographer comes the greatest untold story of the Civil how two American presidents faced off as the fate of the nation hung in the balance - and how Abraham Lincoln came to embrace emancipation as the last, best chance to save the Union.
\nOf all the books written on Abraham Lincoln, there has been one surprising the drama of how the “railsplitter” from Illinois grew into his critical role as U.S. commander-in-chief, and managed to outwit his formidable opponent, Jefferson Davis, in what remains history's only military faceoff between rival American presidents. Davis was a trained soldier and war hero; Lincoln a country lawyer who had only briefly served in the militia.
\nConfronted with the most violent and challenging war ever seen on American soil, Lincoln seemed ill-suited to the inexperienced, indecisive, and a poor judge of people’s motives, he allowed his administration's war policies to be sabotaged by fickle, faithless cabinet officials while entrusting command of his army to a preening young officer named George McClellan - whose defeat in battle left Washington, the nation’s capital, at the mercy of General Robert E. Lee, Davis’s star performer.
\nThe war almost ended there. But in a Shakespearean twist, Lincoln summoned the courage to make, at last, a climactic issuing as a “military necessity” a proclamation freeing the 3.5 million enslaved Americans without whom the South could not feed or fund their armed insurrection. The new war policy doomed the rebellion - which was in dire need of support from Europe, none of whose governments now would dare to recognise rebel “independence” in a war openly fought over slavery. The fate of President Davis was sealed.
\nWith a cast of unforgettable characters, from first ladies to fugitive coachmen to treasonous cabinet officials, Lincoln vs. Davis is a spellbinding dual biography from renowned presidential chronicler Nigel a saga that will surprise, touch, and enthrall.
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It’s 1995, and fourteen-year-old Tati is determined to uncover the identity of her father. But her mother, Nadia, keeps her secrets close, while her grandmother Gladys remains silent about the family’s past, including why she left Land’s End, Alabama, in 1953. As Tati digs deeper, she uncovers a legacy of family secrets, where every generation of Dupree women has posed more questions than answers.
\nFrom Jubi in 1917, whose attempt to pass for white ends when she gives birth to Ruby; to Ruby’s fiery lust for Sampson in 1934 that leads to a baby of her own; to the night in 1980 that changed Nadia’s future forever, the Dupree women carry the weight of their heritage. Bound by a mysterious malediction that means they will only give birth to daughters, the Dupree women confront a legacy of pain, resilience, and survival that began with an enslaved ancestor who risked everything for freedom.
Eight ordinary people. One extraordinary choice.
\nIt seems like any other day. You wake up, pour a cup of coffee, and head out.
\nBut today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. This box holds your fate inside: the answer to the exact number of years you will live.
\nFrom suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise?
\nAs society comes together and pulls apart, everyone faces the same shocking choice: Do they wish to know how long they’ll live? And, if so, what will they do with that knowledge?
\nThe Measure charts the dawn of this new world through an unforgettable cast of characters whose decisions and fates interweave with one another: best friends whose dreams are forever entwined, pen pals finding refuge in the unknown, a couple who thought they didn’t have to rush, a doctor who cannot save himself, and a politician whose box becomes the powder keg that ultimately changes everything.
Welcome to the Poppy Fields, where there’s hope for even the most battered hearts to heal.
\nHere, in a remote stretch of the California desert, lies an experimental and controversial treatment center that allows those suffering from the heartache of loss to sleep through their pain . . . and keep on sleeping. After patients awaken from this prolonged state of slumber, they will finally be healed. But only if they’re willing to accept the potential shadowy side effects.
\nOn a journey to this mystical destination are four very different strangers and one little dog: Ava, a book illustrator; Ray, a fireman; Sasha, an occupational therapist; Sky, a free spirit; and a friendly pup named PJ. As they attempt to make their way from the Midwest all the way west to the Poppy Fields - where they hope to find Ellis, its brilliant, enigmatic founder - each of their past secrets and mysterious motivations threaten to derail their voyage.
\nA high-concept speculative novel about heartache, hope, and human resilience, The Poppy Fields explores the path of grief and healing, a journey at once profoundly universal and unique to every person, posing the questions: How do we heal in the wake of great loss? And how far are we willing to go in order to be healed?
Dorothy Gale doesn’t know where she came from. She has only the vaguest memory of her life before landing in the dull, gray world of the vast Kansas prairie.
\nThen a cyclone rips through the night and carries her, her dog, and the farmhouse somewhere a lot farther than Dorothy imagined. She’s in a strange land that’s apparently cursed, shrouded in shadow. And to get home, Dorothy needs to seek out a wizard, following a treacherous path and watch out for a never-ending list of forest beasts, witches, a cursed mercenary, and perhaps most dangerous of all, the wizard himself.
\nNikki St. Crowe vividly reimagines the world of the Wizard of Oz, where the villain gets the girl . . . and the girl gets the power.
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Raynin is supposed to be in her final year at the academy. Instead, she’s been sent to the Aarga with her mentor to fight a mysterious illness that’s tearing through the population. No one, not even the court’s best healers, can figure it out. Long shifts. No sleep. No answers. The bodies are piling up.
\nAs if that's not enough, strange dreams have begun to plague her - white hair, burning sand, a truth hovering in the fringes of her consciousness. When she bumps into a handsome southern stranger at a bar, she's at her wits end. There's something about the man that sets her on edge. She doesn't think, she reacts: she pulls a knife on him.
\nMeanwhile, in the Blackwoods, Theia and the others are regrouping. Healing. Strategising. Bringing down the rebel leader is going to take an army, and it’s not like she can just waltz into the king’s palace and demand one.
\nExcept, she may not have a choice. The war has begun. The flames are growing. And everything - loyalty, honor, love - will be put to the test.
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“If you can hear me, I’m coming for you. I will paint Ezuria in your blood.”
\nTheia would sacrifice anything for her kingdom. She’d give her magic, her sword, and even her life. It's what she was raised for, after all. It’s only a matter of time.
\nWhen a night out ends in her being captured by rebels, her time may be up. Especially since their ruthless, bloodthirsty leader seems intent on drawing out her court's secrets - the secrets of people she’d do anything to protect.
\nShe’s prepared. She’ll take them all down. Including that surly, powerful fire mage who held a dagger to her throat and expected her to submit. Stubborn and cold as ice, Theia Stormfury submits to no one but her kingdom.
\nExcept, Theia’s in for a rude awakening. The rebel camp is the ultimate test. One that will force her to confront the very truth of her identity, her purpose, her existence. Even if she makes it out alive, she’d be a fool to think anything will ever be the same.
\n
In this raw and ultimately uplifting memoir, a queer Black woman, fresh out college, adopts her baby brother after their incarcerated mother dies, and creates the kind of family she never had.
\nGrowing up, Nikkya Hargrove’s mother was in and out of prison. Hargrove, one of the 5 million children dealing with the effects of an incarcerated parent, spent a good portion of her childhood in prison visiting rooms but almost never actually living with her mother. In Hargrove’s case, though, life got even more complicated when her mother - addicted to cocaine and just out of prison - had a son. When that child was just months old, Hargrove’s mother died and Hargrove, who had just graduated from college, decided to fight for custody of her half brother. And fight she does.
\nWe see how she is subjected to preconceived notions that she, a Black, queer, young woman, cannot be given such responsibility. She’s honest about the shame she feels accepting food stamps, about her family’s reaction to her coming out, and about the joy she experiences when she meets the woman who will become her wife. But whether she’s clashing with Jonathan’s biological father or battling for Jonathan’s education rights after he’s diagnosed with ADHD, this is a woman who won’t give up.
\nHargrove’s memoir picks up where Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy left off, exploring generational trauma and pulling back the curtain on family court and poverty in America. Moving and inspiring, Mama is an ode to motherhood and identity, to never giving up, and to finding strength in family and community.
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Olivia Shaw has been missing since last Tuesday. She was last seen outside the entrance of her elementary school in Hunts Point wearing a white spring jacket, blue jeans, and pink boots. I force myself to look at the face in the photo, into her slightly smudged features, and I can't bring myself to move. Olivia Shaw could be my mirror image, rewound to thirteen years ago. If you have any knowledge of Olivia Shaw's whereabouts or any relevant information, please contact . . .
\nI've spent a long time peering into the faces of girls on missing posters, wondering which one replaced me in that basement. But they were never quite the right age, the right look, the right circumstances. Until Olivia Shaw, missing for one week tomorrow. Whoever stole me was never found. But since I was taken, there hasn't been another girl. And now there is.
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When Izzy is dragged from Brooklyn to a tiny town for her parents' new job, she's not thrilled. The silver lining is the gorgeous old mansion she's moved into: the former home of an artist's muse who died tragically in a fire. But the house has its quirks: whole floors are closed off, paintings are covered up, and cell reception is nonexistent.
\nIzzy throws herself into starting an Instagram fashion account using the gowns and jewelry she finds hidden away in the house. She looks perfect in the photos - almost unnaturally perfect - and they quickly go viral.
\nSoon she's got a new best friend, a potential boyfriend, and is surrounded by a group of girls who want the photoshoots and fame for themselves. But there's a darkness in the house, and a darkness growing in Izzy, too. When girls start dying, it's clear that something - or someone - in the house is growing in power, with deadly intentions.
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Georgina Prescott’s world collapses when her daughter, star dancer at a prestigious ballet academy, is grounded by a metatarsal fracture - the same injury that ended Georgina’s own career two decades prior. And one person knows what happened: Naomi Thompson, Anna’s best friend who takes over the principal role.
\nDawn Thompson is proud of her daughter. But suddenly, ugly rumors course through the close-knit ballet community saying that Naomi somehow caused Anna to fall and hurt herself. But Naomi would never do such a thing . . . Would she?
\nWhile Georgina grows obsessed with Naomi, Dawn wonders just how far a mother should go to protect her daughter. Then Anna receives an anonymous letter telling her to keep her mouth shut - and vanishes without a trace . . .
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High-powered businesswoman Lana Rubicon has a lot to be proud her keen intelligence, impeccable taste, and the L.A. real estate empire she’s built. But when she finds herself trapped 300 miles north of the city, convalescing in a sleepy coastal town with her adult daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack, Lana is stuck counting otters instead of square footage - and hoping that boredom won’t kill her before the cancer does.
\nThen Jack - tiny in stature but fiercely independent - happens upon a dead body while kayaking. She quickly becomes a suspect in the homicide investigation, and the Rubicon women are thrown into chaos. Beth thinks Lana should focus on recovery, but Lana has a better idea. She’ll pull on her wig, find the true murderer, protect her family, and prove she still has power.
\nWith Jack and Beth’s help, Lana uncovers a web of lies, family vendettas, and land disputes lurking beneath the surface of a community populated by folksy conservationists and wealthy ranchers. But as their amateur snooping advances into ever-more dangerous territory, the headstrong Rubicon women must learn to do the one thing they’ve always depend on each other.
For too long the cruel, beautiful Automae have lorded over the kingdom of Rabu, oppressing the humans who live there. But the human revolution is on the rise, and at its heart is Ayla. Once handmaiden, now fugitive, Ayla escaped the palace of Lady Crier, the girl Ayla had planned to kill . . . but instead fell in love with. Now Ayla has pledged her allegiance to Queen Junn, whom she believes can accomplish the ultimate goal of the human rebellion: destroy the Iron Heart. Without it, the Automae will be weakened to the point of extinction.
But playing at Ayla’s memory are the powerful feelings she developed for Crier. And unbeknownst to her, Crier has also fled the palace, taking up among travelling rebels, determined to find and protect Ayla.
As their paths collide, neither are prepared for the dark secret underlying the Iron Heart.
When Juniper Harvey’s family moves to the middle of nowhere in Florida, her entire life is uprooted. As if that's not bad enough, she keeps having dreams about an ancient-looking temple, a terrifying attack, and a mysterious girl who turns into an ivory statue. One night after a disastrous school dance, Juniper draws a portrait of the girl from her dreams and thinks, I wish you were here. The next morning, she wakes up to find the girl in her room . . . pointing a sword at her throat!
\nThe unexpected visitor reveals herself as Galatea, a princess from a magical other world. One problem - her crown is missing, and she needs it in order to return home. Now, it’s up to Juniper to help find the crown, all while navigating a helpless crush on her new companion. And things go from bad to worse when a sinister force starts chasing after the crown too.
\nPacked with adventure and driven by a pitch-perfect voice, this middle grade debut from Nina Varela is about one tween forging new friendships, fighting nightmarish monsters, and importantly, figuring out who she is and who she ultimately wishes to be.
\n
With the Heart Crown now in her possession, Lor must navigate the dangers of being an heir on the run, knowing more than one power-hungry ruler is after her blood. When she returns to Aphelion to unlock her magic and recover her family's legacy, it becomes clearer than ever that all that’s gold doesn’t sparkle. No stranger to battles, she continues to fight her attraction to the Aurora Prince, understanding this might be the one she finally loses.
\nAs the past mixes with the present, Lor uncovers the truth about the Artefacts and their role in shaping her destiny. Now, her future hangs in the balance, leaving her closer than ever to getting everything she's ever wanted . . . or losing it all forever.
\n
Freed from the golden clutches of the Sun King, Lor now finds herself in the hands of Nadir, the Aurora Prince. Convinced she’s hiding something, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to make her talk. But Lor knows the value of secrets - she’s been keeping them her entire life - and she’s not letting hers go without a fight.
\nWhen Lor and Nadir team up to search for a lost item that holds the key to her past and her future, she isn’t sure if she can trust him. All she knows is she won’t fall for his promises and make the same mistakes again.
\nLor also hasn’t forgotten her vow to destroy the Aurora King. As Atlas hunts her across Ouranos, Lor plots to bring down the Imperial Fae who took everything. But she soon realises the future of the continent is about so much more than just her shattered legacy.
\n
For nineteen-year-old Poet Graves, New Manhattan has always promised safety - if she obeys. Raised within the ruling Houses and betrothed to a powerful heir, she enters Amery Academy knowing her future has already been decided.
\n\n
But Amery is nothing like she imagined. Its trials are brutal, its loyalties conditional, and its rules designed to expose weakness. As Poet struggles to survive, she must hide the truth that could get her executed: the storms don’t fear her - they answer back.
\n\n
When a dangerous outsider from beyond the city walls enters the academy, Poet is drawn to him despite everything she’s been taught to believe. He threatens the life she’s been promised. And choosing him could cost her not just her future, but her freedom.
\n
After Lor makes the biggest mistake of her life, she finds herself on the run from the Aurora King and decides it's time to end this, once and for all. But when a new enemy emerges to claim her freedom, the entire fate of Ouranos comes to rest on her shoulders.
\nAs the land continues to rebel, Lor must admit she is the key to saving the continent, whether she likes it or not. To fight for Nadir, she must lie, steal, and do whatever it takes to hunt down the remaining arks. Growing more and more desperate, she worries her actions are turning her into something she doesn't recognize, dooming her to repeat her grandmother's mistakes.
\nWhen the Aurora King finally comes for her, Lor ventures into the Underworld's shadowy depths, where, once again, she finds herself at the heart of another deadly test. Only this time, she’s competing for everyone's future, not just a crown.
\nThe only thing Lor ever wanted was to be free, but she may soon find she was always destined for a cage.
\n
Lor has endured twelve long years of torment under the Aurora King's rule. Her only desire is to get free and pay him back for every moment of misery.
\nWhen a surprise release finds her in the hands of the Sun King, Lor is thrust into the spotlight when she competes against nine other Tributes for the role of queen. If she wins his heart, she'll earn her freedom and finally get her revenge.
\nBut Lor doesn't belong in the Sun Queen Trials. She doesn't understand why she was freed, and she isn't a citizen of the Sun King's court. The other Tributes resent her presence and will stop at nothing to ensure Lor is wiped off the gameboard, permanently.
\nNow Lor must win, because if she loses, she dies. Or worse, she'll be sent back into the hands of the Aurora King.
\n
Molly Gray’s life is about to change in ways she could never have imagined. As the esteemed Head Maid and recently promoted Special Events Manager of the Regency Grand Hotel, good things are just around the corner, including her marriage to her beloved fiancé, Juan Manuel, only two months away.
\nBut Molly’s entire existence is upended when a film crew descends upon the hotel to shoot the hit reality TV show Hidden Treasures, starring popular art appraisers Brown and Beagle. On a whim, Molly brings in a shoebox containing a few of her gran’s old things for appraisal, and much to everyone's surprise, one item turns out to be a rare and priceless treasure. Instantly, Molly is both a multi-millionaire and a media sensation - the world’s rags-to-riches darling - until the priceless piece vanishes from the hotel in the boldest, brashest antiquities heist in recent memory.
\nThe key to the mystery lies in the past, in a long-forgotten diary written by Molly’s gran. For the first time ever, Molly learns about Gran’s true-to-life fairytale, a young girl to the manor born, the only child of a wealthy magnate. But when Gran falls head over heels in love with a young man her parents deem below her station, her life is thrown into turmoil. As fate would have it, the greatest love of Gran’s life is someone Molly knows quite well . . .
\nTogether with her friends, Molly combs the past and the present to catch the thief before looming threats against her become real.
\n
Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misreads the intentions of others. Her gran used to interpret the world for her, codifying it into simple rules that Molly could live by.
\nSince Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has been navigating life's complexities all by herself. No matter - she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection.
\nBut Molly's orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself dead in his bed. Before she knows what's happening, Molly's unusual demeanor has the police targeting her as their lead suspect. She quickly finds herself caught in a web of deception, one she has no idea how to untangle.
\nFortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had unite with her in a search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black - but will they be able to find the real killer before it's too late?
\n
Grace is an usher at the stately (and possibly haunted) Royal Ruby Theater. She’s also an aspiring actress ready for her big break. Vanessa is the glamorous yet spiteful star who’s made more enemies than friends on her rise to the top.
\nWhen Vanessa winds up dead in act one, Grace is determined to find the killer. But is she seeking justice, or something darker?
Molly Gray is not like anyone else. With her flair for cleaning and proper etiquette, she has risen through the ranks of the glorious five-star Regency Grand Hotel to become the esteemed Head Maid. But just as her life reaches a pinnacle state of perfection, her world is turned upside down when J.D. Grimthorpe, the world-renowned mystery author, drops dead - very dead - on the hotel’s tea room floor.
\nWhen Detective Stark, Molly's old foe, investigates the author’s unexpected demise, it becomes clear that this death was murder most foul. Suspects abound, and everyone wants to who killed J.D. Grimthorpe? Was it Lily, the new Maid-in-Training? Or was it Serena, the author’s secretary? Could Mr. Preston, the hotel’s beloved doorman, be hiding something? And is Molly really as innocent as she seems?
\nAs the case threatens the hotel’s pristine reputation, Molly knows she alone holds the key to unlocking the killer's identity. But that key is buried deep in her past - because long ago, she knew J.D. Grimthorpe. Molly begins to comb her memory for clues, revisiting her childhood and the mysterious Grimthorpe mansion where she and her dearly departed Gran once worked side by side. With the entire hotel under investigation, Molly must solve the mystery post-haste. If there's one thing Molly knows for sure, it's that dirty secrets don't stay buried forever . . .
\n
Born in New York, but living in Aba, Nigeria, twelve-year old Sunny is understandably a little lost. She is albino and thus, incredibly sensitive to the sun. All Sunny wants to do is be able to play football and get through another day of school without being bullied.
\nBut once she befriends Orlu and Chichi, Sunny is plunged in to the world of the Leopard People, where your worst defect becomes your greatest asset. Together, Sunny, Orlu, Chichi and Sasha form the youngest ever Oha Coven. Their mission is to track down Black Hat Otokoto, the man responsible for kidnapping and maiming children.
\nWill Sunny be able to overcome the killer with powers stronger than her own, or will the future she saw in the flames become reality?
From the moment Sunny Nwazue discovered she had magic flowing in her blood, she sought to understand and control her powers. Throughout her adventures in Akata Witch and Akata Warrior, she had to navigate the balance between nearly everything in her life - America and Nigeria, the “normal” world and the one infused with juju, human and spirit, good daughter and powerful Leopard Person.
\nNow, those hard lessons and abilities are put to the test in a quest so dangerous and fantastical, it would be madness to go . . . but deadly not to. With the help of her friends, Sunny embarks on a mission to find a precious object hidden deep in a magical realm. Defeating the guardians of the prize will take more from Sunny than she has to give, and triumph will mean she will be forever changed.
Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.
Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach.
If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself - but first she has to make it there, alive.
", "series": "Binti", "seriesOrder": 1, "tags": [ "Science Fiction" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Nnedi Okorafor - Binti.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856853494.4766, "size": 550637, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:23:37.968Z" }, "Nnedi Okorafor - Broken Places & Outer Spaces": { "title": "Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected", "author": "Nnedi Okorafor", "description": "A powerful journey from star athlete to sudden paralysis to creative awakening, award-winning science fiction writer Nnedi Okorafor shows that what we think are our limitations have the potential to become our greatest strengths.
Nnedi Okorafor was never supposed to be paralyzed. A college track star and budding entomologist, Nnedi’s lifelong battle with scoliosis was just a bump in her plan - something a simple operation would easily correct. But when Nnedi wakes from the surgery to find she can’t move her legs, her entire sense of self begins to waver.
Confined to a hospital bed for months, unusual things begin to happen. Psychedelic bugs crawl her hospital walls; strange dreams visit her nightly. Nnedi begins to put these experiences into writing, conjuring up strange, fantastical stories. What Nnedi discovers during her confinement would prove to be the key to her life as a successful science fiction author: In science fiction, when something breaks, something greater often emerges from the cracks.
In Broken Places & Outer Spaces, Nnedi takes the reader on a journey from her hospital bed deep into her memories, from her painful first experiences with racism as a child in Chicago to her powerful visits to her parents’ hometown in Nigeria. From Frida Kahlo to Mary Shelly, she examines great artists and writers who have pushed through their limitations, using hardship to fuel their work. Through these compelling stories and her own, Nnedi reveals a universal truth: What we perceive as limitations have the potential to become our greatest strengths - far greater than when we were unbroken.
A guidebook for anyone eager to understand how their limitations might actually be used as a creative springboard, Broken Places & Outer Spaces is an inspiring look at how to open up new windows in your mind.
Najeeba has something terrible to kill.
\nAnd now she’s off to go and kill it. A fully trained, mature, and sharply focused sorcerer (don’t call her sorceress), Najeeba has left the comfort and security of her town with two companions, the glass maker Dedan and the old camel MorningStar. This journey takes her back to where it all began. And despite the fact that her training with the sorcerer Aro forced her to face her deepest fears, she hasn’t seen anything close to what she’s about to see.
\nAs the Igbo proverb goes, a masquerade does not dance for nothing. The Daughter Who Remains is the final book in the She Who Knows trilogy. This tale isn’t about Najeeba learning to master her powerful skills, it’s about her having the audacity and courage to use them and use them well . . . no matter the consequence.
\n
Life has thrown Zelu some curveballs over the years, but when she's suddenly dropped from her university job and her latest novel is rejected, all in the middle of her sister's wedding, her life is upended. Disabled, unemployed and from a nosy, high-achieving, judgmental family, she's not sure what comes next.
\nIn her hotel room that night, she takes the risk that will define her life - she decides to write a book VERY unlike her others. A science fiction drama about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. And everything changes.
\nWhat follows is a tale of love and loss, fame and infamy, of extraordinary events in one world, and another. And as Zelu's life evolves, the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur.
\nBecause sometimes a story really does have the power to reshape the world.
It's been a year since Binti and Okwu enrolled at Oomza University. A year since Binti was declared a hero for uniting two warring planets. A year since she found friendship in the unlikeliest of places.
And now she must return home to her people, with her friend Okwu by her side, to face her family and face her elders.
But Okwu will be the first of his race to set foot on Earth in over a hundred years, and the first ever to come in peace.
After generations of conflict can human and Meduse ever learn to truly live in harmony?
Tornado Onwubiko is one of seven people on Earth paired with sentient ships to explore and research the cosmos for twenty million euros. A decade of solitary life for a lifetime of wealth.
\nFive years into the ten-year mission of total isolation comes a a temporary meetup among fellow travelers. A lot can happen in a week. For Tornado, who left a normal life behind, a little company can be life-changing.
When a massive object crashes into the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous and legendary city, three people wandering along Bar Beach (Adaora, the marine biologist- Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa- Agu, the troubled soldier) find themselves running a race against time to save the country they love and the world itself . . . from itself.
Told from multiple points of view and crisscrossing narratives, combining everything from superhero comics to Nigerian mythology to tie together a story about a city consuming itself.
‘There was no time to flee. No time to turn. No time to shriek. And there was no pain. It was like being thrown into the stars.’
Niger, West Africa, 2077: Welcome back. This second volume is a breathtaking story that sweeps across the sands of the Sahara, flies up to the peaks of the Aïr Mountains, cartwheels into a wild megacity - you get the idea.
\nI am the Desert Magician; I bring water where there is none.
\nThis book begins with Dikéogu Obidimkpa slowly losing his mind. Yes, that boy who can bring rain just by thinking about it is having some . . . issues. Years ago, Dikéogu went on an epic journey to save Earth with the shadow speaker girl, Ejii Ubaid, who became his best friend. When it was all over, they went their separate ways, but now he’s learned their quest never really ended at all.
\nSo Dikéogu, more powerful than ever, reunites with Ejii. He records this story as an audiofile, hoping it will help him keep his sanity or at least give him something to leave behind. Smart kid, but it won’t work - or will it?
\nI can tell you it won’t be like before. Our rainmaker and shadow speaker have changed. And after this, nothing will ever be the same again.
\nAs they say, ‘ Onye amaro ebe nmili si bido mabaya ama ama onye nyelu ya akwa oji welu ficha aru .’
\nOr, ‘If you do not remember where the rain started to beat you, you will not remember who gave you the towel with which to dry your body.’
Binti has returned to her home planet, believing that the violence of the Meduse has been left behind. Unfortunately, although her people are peaceful on the whole, the same cannot be said for the Khoush, who fan the flames of their ancient rivalry with the Meduse.
Far from her village when the conflicts start, Binti hurries home, but anger and resentment has already claimed the lives of many close to her.
Once again it is up to Binti, and her intriguing new friend Mwinyi, to intervene--though the elders of her people do not entirely trust her motives--and try to prevent a war that could wipe out her people, once and for all.
Anwuli Okwudili prefers to be called AO. To her, these initials have always stood for Artificial Organism. AO has never really felt . . . natural, and that's putting it lightly. Her parents spent most of the days before she was born praying for her peaceful passing because even in-utero she was wrong. But she lived. Then came the car accident years later that disabled her even further.
\nYet instead of viewing her strange body the way the world views it, as freakish, unnatural, even the work of the devil, AO embraces all that she is: A woman with a ton of major and necessary body augmentations. And then one day she goes to her local market and everything goes wrong.
\nOnce on the run, she meets a Fulani herdsman named DNA and the race against time across the deserts of Northern Nigeria begins. In a world where all things are streamed, everyone is watching the reckoning of the murderess and the terrorist and the saga of the wicked woman and mad man unfold.
\nThis fast-paced, relentless journey of tribe, destiny, body, and the wonderland of technology revels in the fact that the future sometimes isn't so predictable. Expect the unaccepted.
\n
As a teen, Najeeba learned to become the beast of wind, fire and dust: the kponyungo. When that took too much from her, including the life of her father, she let it all go, and for a time, she was happy - until only a few years later, when the small, normal life she’d built was violently destroyed.
\nNow in her forties and years beyond the death of her second husband, Najeeba has just lost her beloved daughter. Onyesonwu saved the world. Najeeba knows this well, but the world does not. This is how the juju her daughter evoked works. One other person who remembers is Onyesonwu’s teacher Aro, a harsh and hard-headed sorcerer. Najeeba has decided to ask him to teach her the Mystic Points, the powerful heart of sorcery. There is something awful Najeeba needs to kill and the Mystic Points are the only way. Najeeba is truly her daughter’s mother.
\nWhen Aro agrees to help, Najeeba is at last ready to forge her future. But first, she must confront her past - for certain memories cannot lie in unmarked graves.
The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa - a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past.
Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall. And she walks - alone, except for her fox companion - searching for the object that came from the sky and gave itself to her when the meteors fell and when she was yet unchanged; searching for answers.
But is there a greater purpose for Sankofa, now that Death is her constant companion?
Niger, West Africa, 2074: It is an era of tainted technology and mysterious mysticism. A great change has happened all over the planet, and the laws of physics aren’t what they used to be.
\nNiger, West Africa, 2074: It is an era of tainted technology and mysterious mysticism. A great change has happened all over the planet, and the laws of physics aren’t what they used to be.
\nWithin all this, I introduce you to Ejii Ugabe, a child of the worst type of politician. Back when she was nine years old, she was there as her father met his end. Don’t waste your tears on him: this girl’s father would throw anyone under a bus to gain power. He was a cruel, cruel man, but even so, Ejii did not rejoice at his departure from the world. Children are still learning that some people don’t deserve their love.
\nNow 15 years old and manifesting the abilities given to her by the strange Earth, Ejii decides to go after the killer of her father. Is it for revenge or something else? You will have to find out by reading this book. I am the Desert Magician, and this is a novel I have conjured for you, so I’m certainly not going to just tell you here.
When there is a call, there is often a response.
\nNajeeba knows.
\nShe has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men and boys experience the annual call to the Salt Roads. What’s just happened to Najeeba has never happened in the history of her village. But it’s not a terrible thing, just strange.
\nSo when she leaves with her father and brothers to mine salt at the Dead Lake, there’s neither fanfare nor protest. For Najeeba, it’s a dream come true: travel by camel, open skies, and a chance to see a spectacular place she’s only heard about. However, there must have been something to the rule, because Najeeba’s presence on the road changes everything and her family will never be the same.
\nSmall, intimate, up close, and deceptively quiet, this is the beginning of the Kponyungo Sorceress.
In a far future, post-nuclear-holocaust Africa, genocide plagues one region. The aggressors, the Nuru, have decided to follow the Great Book and exterminate the Okeke. But when the only surviving member of a slain Okeke village is brutally raped, she manages to escape, wandering farther into the desert. She gives birth to a baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand and instinctively knows that her daughter is different. She names her daughter Onyesonwu, which means “Who Fears Death?” in an ancient African tongue.
\nReared under the tutelage of a mysterious and traditional shaman, Onyesonwu discovers her magical destiny - to end the genocide of her people. The journey to fulfill her destiny will force her to grapple with nature, tradition, history, true love, the spiritual mysteries of her culture - and eventually death itself.
Somewhere in the Pacific, 1943. Kate Campbell is a nurse who bravely flies back and forth from the front to rescue wounded soldiers, amid long days, harsh conditions and often dangerous weather. Driven by a deep personal need to help in the war effort, she is conflicted when an injury results in her reassignment to the relative comfort of the English countryside.
\nLove has never been part of her plan, but despite herself, she falls for an officer with three bullet wounds, startling blue eyes and a wicked sense of humor. For the first time, Kate sees a future far from the horrors of war and hate. But before she can pursue it, a secret from her past calls her to duty, and she'll have to travel back into danger one more time to rescue a part of herself she'd left behind. But will she make it back? And will that future still be waiting for her if she does?
\n
2023, The Smithsonian's National Museum of American: A costume conservator is preparing an exhibition featuring movie costumes from the 1920s to present day. As she gingerly places a gown once worn by Greta Garbo on a mannequin, she discovers another name hidden beneath the designer's label, leaving her to wonder - who is Zora Lily?
\n1924, Poverty-stricken Zora Hough spends her days looking after her younger siblings while sewing up holes and fixing hems for clients to bring in extra money, working her fingers to the bone just to survive. But at night, as she lies in the bed she shares with one of her three sisters, she secretly dreams of becoming a designer like Coco Chanel and Jeanne Lanvin.
\nWhen her best friend gets a job dancing in a club downtown, Zora is lured in by her stories of music, glittering dresses and boys. She follows her friend to the underground speakeasies that are at once exciting and frightening - with smoke hanging in the air, alcohol flowing despite Prohibition, couples dancing in a way that makes Zora blush and a handsome businessman named Harley. It’s a world she has only ever imagined, and one with connections that could lead her to the life she's always dreamed of. But as Zora's ambition is challenged by tragedy and duty to her family, she'll learn that dreams come with a cost.
\n
A powerful, incisive reckoning with the impacts of school desegregation that traces four generations of the author’s family to show how integration decimated Black school systems and was a disservice to much of the Black community.
\nOn May 17, 1954 the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education deemed racial segregation in schools unconstitutional. Heralded as a massive victory for civil rights, the decision's goal was to give Black students equal access to educational opportunities and clear a path to a better future. Yet in the years following the ruling, schools in predominantly Black neighborhoods were shuttered or saw their funding dwindle; Black educators were fired en masse; and Black students faced discrimination and violence from their white peers as they joined resource-rich schools that were ill-prepared for the influx of additional students.
\nAward-winning interdisciplinary scholar of education and Black history Noliwe Rooks weaves together sociological data and cultural history to challenge the idea that integration was a boon for Black people. She shows how present-day discrimination lawsuits directly stem from the mistakes made during integration. She tells the story of her grandparents, who were among the thousands of Black teachers fired following the Brown decision; of her father, who was traumatised by his experiences at a predominantly white school; of her own experiences moving from a flourishing, racially diverse school to an underserved inner-city one; and finally, of her son and his Black peers, who struggle with hostility and prejudice from white teachers and white students alike.
\nAt once assiduously researched and deeply engaging, Integrated proves how education has remained both a tool for community progress and a seemingly inscrutable cultural puzzle. Rooks's deft hand turns the story of integration's past and future on its head, and shows how to better understand and support generations of students to come.
\n
Leah Dawson and McKenna Hawkins had a lot in common, but they had never met.
\nThey are smart, professional women living in the same sunny, prosperous neighbourhood in lovely houses with picket fences and beautiful gardens. And they were both married to successful, good-looking men who both seem bent on having ‘the perfect wife’.
\nThey don’t - ever - find themselves in the same train carriage or meet accidentally at the gym or in the coffee shop. And they don’t - ever - discuss their problems and find common ground.
\nBut they do cross paths. And they see something each recognises in the other.
\nThat they are living in hell.
\nNeither narrator is unreliable. They always tell us the truth. And their truth hurts. A lot. Because these two attractive, intelligent professional women are living in a hell of their husband’s making. And there is no way to get out of hell. Is there?
\n
Nothing is simple about being a new mom alone in a new house, especially when your baby is collicky. Natalie Fanning loves her son unconditionally, but being a mother was not all she wanted to be.
\nEnter Paul, the neighbor.
\nPaul provides the lifeline she needs in what feels like the most desperate of times. When Paul is helping with Oliver, calmed by his reassuring, steady presence, Nat feels like she can finally rest.
\nBut Paul wants something in return. It’s no coincidence that he has befriended Nat—she is the perfect pawn for his own plan. Will Nat wake up in time to see it?
\n
Klara never wanted the house with the white picket fence. Troy never wanted anything else.
\nNothing is quite right with this happy couple, but they fit right in. The mother in the blue house, Mary, is cleaning out her son's old room before she sells, haunted by the mistakes of her past and afraid of what her home has become. Next door, Henry, freshly laid off and back living with his parents, has plenty of time to watch everyone - especially wives. He knows something is wrong. But then then nothing is quite as it seems, and sometimes you miss what is right in front of you.
\nMurder will soon thread its way through this world in ways no one will see coming - unless you've been plotting all along.
\n
When Breen Kelly was a girl, her father would tell her stories of magical places. Now she’s an anxious twentysomething mired in student debt and working a job she hates. But one day she stumbles upon a shocking discovery: her mother has been hiding an investment account in her name. It has been funded by her long-lost father - and it’s worth nearly four million dollars.
This newfound fortune would be life-changing for anyone. But little does Breen know that when she uses some of the money to journey to Ireland, it will unlock mysteries she couldn’t have imagined. Here, she will begin to understand why she kept seeing that silver-haired, elusive man, why she imagined his voice in her head saying \"Come home, Breen Siobhan. It’s time you came home. \"
Why she dreamed of dragons. And where her true destiny lies - through a portal in Galway that takes her to a land of faeries and mermaids, to a man named Keegan, and to the courage in her own heart that will guide her through a powerful, dangerous destiny . . .
\n
The world of magick and the world of man have long been estranged from one another. But some can walk between the two - including Breen Siobhan Kelly. She has just returned to Talamh, with her friend, Marco, who’s dazzled and disoriented by this realm - a place filled with dragons and faeries and mermaids (but no WiFi, to his chagrin).
\nIn Talamh, Breen is not the ordinary young schoolteacher he knew her as. Here she is learning to embrace the powers of her true identity. Marco is welcomed kindly by her people - and by Keegan, leader of the Fey. Keegan has trained Breen as a warrior, and his yearning for her has grown along with his admiration of her strength and skills.
\nBut one member of Breen’s bloodline is not there to embrace her. Her grandfather, the outcast god Odran, plots to destroy Talamh - and now all must unite to defeat his dark forces. There will be losses and sorrows, betrayal and bloodshed. But through it, Breen Siobhan Kelly will take the next step on the journey to becoming all that she was born to be.
With Odran's defeat at the Battle of the Dark Portal, his quest to rule over Talamh and Breen has stalled - for now. But the terrible battle and heart-breaking losses have taken their toll. It's a time as painful as any Breen has ever known as she helps to treat the wounded, bring the dead home from blood - and ash-soaked battlegrounds and support her friends and family in their grief.
\nWith the enemy cast out and the portal sealed it is a time to recover but there is little time to rest. Soon the enemy's witches begin to appear to Breen in her sleep, practicing black magick, sacrificing the innocent, and plotting brutal destruction. It is time for Breen to seek out those in desperate need of rescue and confront the darkness with every weapon she has.
\nAn epic battle is coming. A battle Breen cannot afford to lose . . .
The Bodine ranch and resort in western Montana is a family business, an idyllic spot for vacationers. A little over thirty thousand acres and home to four generations, it’s kept running by Bodine Longbow with the help of a large staff, including new hire Callen Skinner. There was another member of the family once: Bodine’s aunt, Alice, who ran off before Bodine was born. She never returned, and the Longbows don’t talk about her much. The younger ones, who never met her, quietly presume she’s dead. But she isn’t. She is not far away, part of a new family, one she never chose - and her mind has been shattered . . .
When a bartender leaves the resort late one night, and Bo and Cal discover her battered body in the snow, it’s the first sign that danger lurks in the mountains that surround them. The police suspect Cal, but Bo finds herself trusting him - and turning to him as another woman is murdered and the Longbows are stunned by Alice’s sudden reappearance. The twisted story she has to tell about the past - and the threat that follows in her wake - will test the bonds of this strong family, and thrust Bodine into a darkness she could never have imagined.
He showed up at Arden Bowie’s debut author appearance with a copy of her novel and an eager smile. He showered her with compliments and got her autograph. Then he came to her next event. And the one after that.
\nDustin was just an aspiring writer who wanted advice, Arden reassured herself. But after giving in to one of his incessant invitations and chatting with him over coffee, she discovered that ignoring her inner alarm bell had been a terrible mistake . . .
\nAn introvert at heart, Arden had long craved solitude - but now, after a harrowing assault, she finds herself hiding behind locked doors and startling at every sound. And her relief at his imprisonment is tempered by anxiety when Dustin’s wealthy mother helps to get him a paltry five-year sentence at a psychiatric facility.
\nArden decides to write a new story for herself, moving to a tiny Oregon town and befriending Gideon, an ex-LAPD detective. But while she learns to thrive, Dustin remains his delusional, twisted self, as fixated as ever and now seething with anger. He still believes Arden's purpose on earth is to serve and please him. And his job is to protect her. But who will protect her from him?
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Natural Resources police officer, Sloan Cooper, and her partner had just taken down three men preying on hikers in the Western Maryland mountains. Driving back, she pulled in at a convenience store - and walked right into a robbery in progress. One gunshot from a jittery thief was about to change her world.
\nAfter being shocked back to life on the operating table, she has a long recovery ahead, so she moves back to her parents’ peaceful house in Heron’s Rest. As for the boyfriend who dumped her via text while she was in the hospital, good riddance.
\nShe may be down, but she’s not out. So when a woman vanishes, leaving her car behind in a supermarket parking lot, Sloan searches online for similar cases. She finds them, spread across three states. Men and women, old and young - the missing seem to have nothing in common. And the abductions keep happening.
\nLuckily, the new man in her life shares her passion for solving this mystery. But it will take every ounce of endurance to get to the dark heart of this bizarre case - and she's willing to risk her life again if that's what it takes to stop the horror.
Caitlyn Sullivan, a daughter of Hollywood royalty, was already a star at ten, but still loved to play hide-and-seek with her cousins at the family home in Big Sur. It was during one of those games that she disappeared.
Despite her glamorous background, Cate was a shrewd, scrappy survivor, and she managed to escape her abductors. Dillon Cooper was shocked to find the bruised and terrified girl huddled in his ranch house kitchen - but when the teenager and his family heard her story they provided refuge and comfort, reuniting her with her loved ones.
Cate’s ordeal, though, was far from over. First came the discovery of a betrayal that would send someone she’d trusted to prison. Then there were years away in Ireland, sheltered and protected but with restlessness growing in her soul. Then, finally, she returned to Los Angeles, hoping to act again and get past the trauma that had derailed her life. What she didn’t yet know was that two seeds had been planted that long-ago night - one of a great love, and one of a terrible vengeance . . .
After an assault at her family home in Maine, Dr. Miranda Jones is determined to put the experience behind her. Distraction comes when she is summoned to Italy - to verify the authenticity of a Renaissance bronze of a Medici courtesan known as The Dark Lady.
\nBut instead of cementing Miranda’s reputation as the leading expert in the field, the job nearly destroys it when her professional judgment is called into question. Emotionally estranged from her mother, with a brother immersed in his own troubles, Miranda has no one to turn to . . . except Ryan Boldari, a seductive art thief whose own agenda forces them into a reluctant alliance.
\nNow it becomes clear that the incident in Maine was not a simple mugging - and that The Dark Lady may possess as many secrets as its beautiful namesake once did. For Miranda, forced to rely on herself - and a partner who offers her both unnerving suspicion and intoxicating passion - the only way home is filled with deception, treachery, and a danger that threatens them all.
Former Army brat Morgan Albright has finally planted roots in a friendly neighborhood near Baltimore. Her friend and roommate Nina helps her make the mortgage payments, as does Morgan's job as a bartender. But after she and Nina host their first dinner party - attended by Luke, the flirtatious IT guy who'd been chatting her up at the bar - her carefully built world is shattered. The back door glass is broken, cash and jewelry are missing, her car is gone, and Nina lies dead on the floor.
\nSoon, a horrific truth emerges: It was Morgan who let the monster in. “Luke” is actually a cold-hearted con artist named Gavin who targets a particular type of woman, steals her assets and identity, and then commits his ultimate goal: murder.
\nWhat the FBI tells Morgan is beyond chilling. Nina wasn't his type. Morgan is. Nina was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Morgan's nightmare is just beginning. Soon she has no choice but to flee to her mother's home in Vermont. While she struggles to build something new, she meets another man, Miles Jameson. He isn't flashy or flirtatious, and his family business has deep roots in town. But Gavin is still out there hunting new victims, and he hasn't forgotten the one who got away.
1806: Astrid Poole sits in her bridal clothes, overwhelmed with happiness. But before her marriage can be consummated, she is murdered, and the circle of gold torn from her finger. Her last words are a promise to Collin never to leave him . . .
\nGraphic designer Sonya MacTavish is stunned to learn that her late father had a twin he never knew about - and that her newly discovered uncle, Collin Poole, has left her almost everything he owned, including a majestic Victorian house on the Maine coast, which the will stipulates she must live in it for at least three years. Her engagement recently broken, she sets off to find out why the boys were separated at birth - and why it was all kept secret until a genealogy website brought it to light.
\nTrey, the young lawyer who greets her at the sprawling clifftop manor, notes Sonya’s unease - and acknowledges that yes, the place is haunted . . . but just a little. Sure enough, Sonya finds objects moved and music playing out of nowhere. She sees a painting by her father inexplicably hanging in her deceased uncle’s office, and a portrait of a woman named Astrid, whom the lawyer refers to as “the first lost bride.” It’s becoming clear that Sonya has inherited far more than a house. She has inherited a centuries-old curse, and a puzzle to be solved if there is any hope of breaking it . . .
Adrian Rizzo was seven when she met her father for the first time. That was the day he nearly killed her - before her mother, Lina, stepped in.
\nSoon after, Adrian was dropped off at her grandparents’ house in Maryland, where she spent a long summer drinking lemonade, playing with dogs, making a new best friend - and developing the stirrings of a crush on her friend’s ten-year-old brother. Lina, meanwhile, traveled the country promoting her fitness brand and turning it into a billion-dollar business. There was no point in dwelling on the past.
\nA decade later, Adrian has created her own line of yoga and workout videos, following in Lina’s footsteps but intent on maintaining creative control. And she’s just as cool-headed and ambitious as her mother. They aren’t close, but they’re cordial - as long as neither crosses the other.
\nBut while Lina dismisses the death threats that Adrian starts getting as a routine part of her daughter’s growing celebrity, Adrian can’t help but find the vicious rhymes unsettling. Year after year, they keep arriving - the postmarks changing, but the menacing tone the same. They continue after she returns to Maryland and becomes reacquainted with Raylan, her childhood crush, all grown up and as gorgeously green-eyed as ever. Sometimes it even seems like the terrifying messages are indeed routine, like nothing will come of them. Until the murders start, and the escalation begins . . .
As they do each June, the Foxes have driven the winding roads of Appalachia to drop off their children for a two-week stay at their grandmother’s. Here, twelve-year-old Thea can run free and breathe in the smells of pine and fresh bread and Grammie’s handmade candles. But as her parents head back to suburban Virginia, they have no idea they’re about to cross paths with a ticking time bomb.
\nBack in Kentucky, Thea and her grandmother Lucy both awaken from the same nightmare. And though the two have never discussed the special kind of sight they share, they know as soon as their tearful eyes meet that something terrible has happened.
\nThe kids will be staying with Grammie now in Redbud Hollow, and thanks to Thea’s vision, their parents’ killer will spend his life in supermax. Over time, Thea will make friends, build a career, find love. But that ability to see into minds and souls still lurks within her, and though Grammie calls it a gift, it feels more like a curse - because the inmate who shattered her childhood has the same ability. Thea can hear his twisted thoughts and witness his evil acts from miles away. He knows it, and hungers for vengeance. A long, silent battle will be waged between them - and eventually bring them face to face, and head to head . . .
When Sonya MacTavish inherits the huge Victorian mansion on the coast of Maine, she has no idea that the house is haunted. The footsteps she hears at night, the doors slamming, the music playing, are not figments of her imagination. In her dreams she sees glimpses of the past. In the present she finds portraits of brides. And when she has visions of an antique mirror, she is drawn to it, sensing it holds dark family secrets.
\nThen one night the mirror appears and Sonya glides through this looking glass, into the past - and sees a bride murdered on her wedding day, the circle of gold torn from her finger. It is a scene that will play out again and again - a centuries-old curse that must be broken - and a puzzle she must solve if there is any hope of breaking the curse.
Harry Booth started stealing at nine to keep a roof over his ailing mother’s head, slipping into luxurious, empty homes at night to find items he could trade for precious cash. When his mother finally succumbed to cancer, he left Chicago - but kept up his nightwork.
\nWandering from the Outer Banks to Savannah to New Orleans, he dons new identities and stays careful, observant, distant. He can’t afford to attract attention - or get attached. Still, he can’t help letting his guard down when he meets Miranda Emerson. But the powerful bond between them cannot last - because not all thieves follow Harry’s code of honor. Some pay others to take risks so they can hoard more treasures. Some are driven by a desire to own people the way they own paintings and jewels. And after Harry takes a lucrative job commissioned by Carter LaPorte, LaPorte sees a tool he can use, and decides he wants to own Harry.
\nThe man is a predator more frightening than the alligators that haunt the bayou - and when he strongarms Harry into robbing a Baltimore museum, Harry abandons Miranda - cruelly, with no explanation - and disappears. But no matter what name he uses or where he goes, LaPorte casts a shadow over Harry’s life. To truly free himself, he must face down his enemy once and for all. Only then can he hope to possess something more valuable than anything he has ever stolen . . .
They look like an everyday family living an ordinary life. But beyond the edges of this peaceful farm, unimaginable forces of light and dark have been unleashed.
Fallon Swift, approaching her thirteenth birthday, barely knows the world that existed before - the city where her parents lived, now in ruins and reclaimed by nature since the Doom sickened and killed billions. Traveling anywhere is a danger, as vicious gangs of Raiders and fanatics called Purity Warriors search for their next victim. Those like Fallon, in possession of gifts, are hunted - and the time is coming when her true nature, her identity as The One, can no longer be hidden.
In a mysterious shelter in the forest, her training is about to begin under the guidance of Mallick, whose skills have been honed over centuries. She will learn the old ways of healing; study and spar; encounter faeries and elves and shifters; and find powers within herself she never imagined. And when the time is right, she will take up the sword, and fight. For until she grows into the woman she was born to be, the world outside will never be whole again.
After the sickness known as the Doom destroyed civilisation, magick has become commonplace, and Fallon Swift has spent her young years learning its ways. Fallon cannot live in peace until she frees those who have been preyed upon by the government or the fanatical Purity Warriors, endlessly hunted or locked up in laboratories, brutalised for years on end. She is determined to save even those who have been complicit with this evil out of fear or weakness - if, indeed, they can be saved.
Strengthened by the bond she shares with her fellow warrior, Duncan, Fallon has already succeeded in rescuing countless shifters and elves and ordinary humans. Now she must help them heal - and rediscover the light and faith within themselves. For although from the time of her birth, she has been The One, she is still only one. And as she faces down an old nemesis, sets her sights on the enemy’s stronghold, and pursues her destiny - to finally restore the mystical shield that once protected them all - she will need an army behind her . . .
Long ago, Arthur Poole built a grand house overlooking the turbulent ocean, in a Maine village that bore his name. Today, Sonya MacTavish lives in that house - a manor that has been cursed for generations. Within its walls, she has witnessed the deaths of seven brides and the thefts of seven wedding rings.
\nDetermined to bring light to this haunted place-to fill it with people, with life and hope, once again - Sonya decides it is time to break the curse and banish a malevolent spirit once and for all.
\nBut the enemy in the black dress continues to hover, to come at her in frightening forms. They may be illusions-but illusions can be powerful enough to wound, even kill. This dark-hearted witch wants to be mistress of Poole Manor, at any cost. And Sonya will need to fight a battle across two realms to finally take possession of the house on the clifftop - and of her own future . . .
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Zane Bigelow grew up in a beautiful, perfectly kept house in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Strangers - and even Zane’s own aunt across the lake - see his parents as a successful surgeon and his stylish wife, making appearances at their children’s ballet recitals and baseball games. Only Zane and his sister know the truth, until one brutal night finally reveals cracks in the facade, and Zane escapes for college without a thought of looking back . . .
\nYears later, Zane returns to his hometown determined to reconnect with the place and people that mean so much to him, despite the painful memories. As he resumes life in the colorful town, he meets a gifted landscape artist named Darby, who is on the run from ghosts of her own.
Together they will have to teach each other what it means to face the past, and stand up for the ones they love.
It began on New Year’s Eve.
The sickness came on suddenly, and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed - and more than half of the world’s population was decimated.
Where there had been order, there was now chaos. And as the power of science and technology receded, magic rose up in its place. Some of it is good, like the witchcraft worked by Lana Bingham, practicing in the loft apartment she shares with her lover, Max. Some of it is unimaginably evil, and it can lurk anywhere, around a corner, in fetid tunnels beneath the river - or in the ones you know and love the most.
As word spreads that neither the immune nor the gifted are safe from the authorities who patrol the ravaged streets, and with nothing left to count on but each other, Lana and Max make their way out of a wrecked New York City. At the same time, other travelers are heading west too, into a new frontier. Chuck, a tech genius trying to hack his way through a world gone offline. Arlys, a journalist who has lost her audience but uses pen and paper to record the truth. Fred, her young colleague, possessed of burgeoning abilities and an optimism that seems out of place in this bleak landscape. And Rachel and Jonah, a resourceful doctor and a paramedic who fend off despair with their determination to keep a young mother and three infants in their care alive.
In a world of survivors where every stranger encountered could be either a savage or a savior, none of them knows exactly where they are heading, or why. But a purpose awaits them that will shape their lives and the lives of all those who remain.
The end has come. The beginning comes next.
When Nadia Amin, a witty and bighearted PhD, publishes an article on deradicalisation, everything changes. The United Nations comes calling with an opportunity to put her theory into practice and lead a rehabilitation program for women caught in the crosshairs of harmful ideology. And why not? Abandoned by her mother and devastated by unrequited love, she leaps at the chance.
\nIn Iraq, Nadia quickly realises she’s in over her head. The UN is a mess of competing interests, and her team consists of Goody Two-shoes Sherri who never passes up an opportunity to remind Nadia of her objections; and Pierre, a snippy Frenchman who has no qualms about perpetually scrolling through Grindr. But then Nadia meets Sara, a hilarious, foul-mouthed East Londoner who was pulled into radicalism at just fifteen. The two are kindred spirits, and Nadia vows to get Sara home.
\nAs the rehabilitation program picks up traction, Sara reveals a secret that upends everything, forcing Nadia to make a drastic choice. In the fallout, Nadia’s brown-savior fantasies crumble, leaving her to wonder if she can save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.
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Set in a wonderfully reimagined 15th century West Africa, Masquerade is a dazzling, lyrical tale exploring the true cost of one woman’s fight for freedom and self-discovery, and the lengths she’ll go to secure her future. Loosely based on the myth of Persephone, O.O. Sangoyomi’s Masquerade takes you on a journey of epic power struggles and political intrigue that turn an entire region on its head.
\nÒdòdó’s hometown of Timbuktu has been conquered by the the warrior king of Yorùbáland. Already shunned as social pariahs, living conditions for Òdòdó and the other women in her blacksmith guild grow even worse under Yorùbá rule.
\nThen Òdòdó is abducted. She is whisked across the Sahara to the capital city of Ṣàngótẹ̀, where she is shocked to discover that her kidnapper is none other than the vagrant who had visited her guild just days prior. But now that he is swathed in riches rather than rags, Òdòdó realises he is not a vagrant at all; he is the warrior king, and he has chosen her to be his wife.
\nIn a sudden change of fortune, Òdòdó soars to the very heights of society. But after a lifetime of subjugation, the power that saturates this world of battle and political savvy becomes too enticing to resist. As tensions with rival states grow, revealing elaborate schemes and enemies hidden in plain sight, Òdòdó must defy the cruel king she has been forced to wed by re-forging the shaky loyalties of the court in her favor, or risk losing everything - including her life.
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A young farmer named Chinonso prevents a woman from falling to her death. Bonded by this strange night on the bridge, he and Ndali fall in love, but it is a mismatch according to her family who reject him because of his lowly status. Is it love or madness that makes Chinonso think he can change his destiny?
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Set across Nigeria and Cyprus, An Orchestra of Minorities, written in the mythic style of the Igbo tradition, weaves a heart-wrenching tale about fate versus free will.
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London, 2019. It’s the hottest June on record, and a whale is stuck in the Thames River. In the streets of the city, four old acquaintances want more from life than they’ve been given. On the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, their paths will intersect at a party that will change their lives forever . . .
\nMaggie, a once-hopeful artist turned waitress, is pregnant and preparing to move back to her hometown with her boyfriend and father-to-be Ed, leaving the city she loves and the life she imagined for herself.
\nEd, coasting through life as a barely competent bike courier, is ready for a new start with Maggie and their baby, if only to finally leave behind his secret past of hooking up with strange men in train station bathrooms - and his secret past with Maggie’s best friend, Phil.
\nPhil, who sleepwalks through his office job and lives for the weekends, is on the brink of achieving his first real relationship with his roommate Keith. The two live in an illegal warehouse commune with other quirky creatives and idealists - the site of the party to end all parties.
\nAs the temperature continues to climb, Maggie, Ed, and Phil will have to confront their shared pasts, current desires, and limits of their future lives together before the weekend is over.
\nStrikingly heartfelt, sexually charged, and disarmingly comic, Oisín McKenna’s addictive, page-turning debut is a mesmerising dive into the soul of a city and a critical look at the political, emotional, and financial hurdles facing young adults trying to build lives there and often living for their evenings and weekends.
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A decade after her father walks out on her family, the narrator of Steppe, now a literature student, decides to spend some time with him on the road as he makes deliveries across the vast plains of Russia. She’s attracted and repulsed by his rugged life as a trucker, eager to reckon with the ways he’s imprinted on her, to understand the person who made her, to witness their family likenesses.
\nBut the prematurely aged, drug-ruined man secretly being consumed by AIDS who meets her at the train station has little revelation to offer her yearning heart. As he drives her across a severe landscape in his freight truck, the narrator reflects on her father’s role as a small piece of the extensive, violent patriarchal structure of Russian society and the post-Soviet chaos of the 1990s. Always humming in the background, the austere beauty and mercurial nature of the steppe reminds her of the contradictions at the heart of their relationship - both natural and forced; intimate and estranged.
\nOksana Vasyakina’s second novel of aching familial hurt pierces the surface of human relations and reaches into the depths of shame, longing, and grief that lie beneath. In simple, precise prose she paints a vivid portrait of estrangement and situates it in the broader context of her country’s attempts to reckon with its troubled history.
In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans.
\nThen a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .
A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?
The Nobelist's latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas.
\nIn September 1913, Mieczysław, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort in what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?
\nMeanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the surrounding highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone - or something - seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczysław realise, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target.
\nA century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.
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A seventeenth-century Dutch anatomist discovers the Achilles tendon by dissecting his own amputated leg. Chopin's heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister.
\nA woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear.
\nThrough these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time.
\nWhere are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler.
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As a result of childhood learning disabilities and educational neglect, Oliver James graduated from high school and became one of over eight million functionally illiterate Americans. However, at age 34, with big dreams and few tools to actualise them, he dedicated himself to learning the key skill that had evaded him his entire reading.
\nOliver become a TikTok/BookTok sensation for the way he’s candidly documented his decision to learn to read as an adult, and his struggles and triumphs along the way. Here, he tells the full story behind his journey for the first time through the 21 key books that shaped and informed his experience. His story reveals the ways in which reading can teach each of us how to be better, more empathetic people.
\nIn just 365 days, Oliver went from barely being able to read a restaurant menu to closing in on his goal of finishing 100 books in a year. This Book Saved My Life is a moving reminder to all of us that words and stories have power, and that, no matter our past, it's never too late to grow.
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American Gods meets The Chronicles of Narnia in this adult fantasy about the Biblical Adam recovering the lost pieces of the Garden of Eden.
\nMany millennia after the fall of Eden, Adam, the first man in creation, still walks the Earth - exhausted by the endless death and destruction, he is a shadow of his former hope and glory. And he is not the only one. The Garden was deconstructed, its pieces scattered across the world and its inhabitants condemned to live out immortal lives, hiding in plain sight from generations of mankind.
\nBut now pieces of the Garden are turning up on the Earth. After centuries of loneliness, Adam, haunted by the golden time at the beginning of Creation, is determined to save the pieces of his long lost home. With the help of Eden's undying exiles, he must stop Eden becoming the plaything of mankind.
\nAdam journeys across America and the British Isles with Magpie, Owl, and other animals, gathering the scattered pieces of Paradise. As the country floods once more, Adam must risk it all to rescue his friends and his home - because rebuilding the Garden might be the key to rebuilding his life.
A vibrant and emotional science fantasy about cousins trapped in mirrored worlds - the resplendent and verdant summer city and the ice-carved wastes of the winter city.
\nWelcome to Jamie Pike’s Fairharbour - a city stuck in perpetual winter, its windows and doorways bricked shut to keep out the freezing cold, its residents striving to survive in the arctic conditions.
\nWelcome to Esther Pike's Fairharbour - a city stuck in constant summer, its walls crumbling in the heat, its oppressive sunlight a relentless presence.
\nWinter and Summer alike, have both fallen under the yoke of oppressive powers, that have taken control after the cataclysm.
\nBut both Fairharbours were once a single, united city. And in certain places, at certain times, one side can catch a glimpse of the other. As Jamie and Esther find a way to communicate across the divide, they set out to solve the mystery of what split their city in two, and what, if anything, might repair their fractured worlds.
The city of Vox survives in darkness, under a sun that burns without light. In Vox’s permanent night, light bulbs are precious, the rich live in radiance and three Hearts beat light into the city. Aquila. Corvus. Cancer.
\nHearts that bring power to the light-deprived citizens of the city of Vox whilst ghosts haunt the streets, clawing at headlights. Prometheus, liquid light, is the drug of choice. The body of young Vivian North, her blood shining brightly with unnatural light, has no place on the streets.
\nWhen Cancer is stolen, the weaponisation of its raw power threatens to throw Vox into chaos. Vox needs a hero, and it falls to cop Virgil Yorke to investigate.
\nBut Virgil has had a long cycle and he doesn’t feel like a hero. With the ghosts of his last case still haunting his thoughts, he craves justice for the young woman found dead with veins full of glowing. Aided by his partner Dante, Virgil begins to shed light on the dark city’s even darker secrets.
\nHaunted by the ghosts of his past and chased by his addictions, which will crack first, Virgil or the case?
Simone is one of the Glitterati, the elite living lives of luxury and leisure. Slave to the ever-changing tides - and brutal judgements - of fashion, he is immaculate. To be anything else is to be unfashionable, and no one wants to be unfashionable, or even worse, ugly . . .
\nWhen Simone accidentally starts a new fashion with a nosebleed at a party, another Glitterati takes the credit. Soon their rivalry threatens to raze their opulent utopia to the ground, as no one knows how to be vicious like the beautiful ones.
\nEnter a world of the most fantastic costumes, grand palaces in the sky, the grandest parties known to mankind and the unbreakable rules of how to eat ice cream. A fabulous dystopian fable about fashion, family and the feckless billionaire class.
The Sleepwalkers hunt the nightmares that haunt sleeping minds. They traverse the connected dreamworlds where reason is banished and the imagination holds sway.
\nBut tonight, one Sleepwalker has gone rogue. Abandoning her oath to protect the dreamscapes, she devotes herself to another cause, threatening to unleash a nightmare older than man
\nOnce a feted musician, Manderlay lives in an Edinburgh care home, riddled with arthritis. He longs for his youth and the open seas, to regain the use of his hands and play the violin again.
\nFor too long, Manderlay's nights have been host to dark, corrupted dreams. His comrades in the retirement home fear Manderlay is giving in to age and senility - but the truth is much worse. The dreamworld is mapped with music – and one of Manderlay's forgotten compositions holds the key to an ancient secret. The Sleepwalkers are closing in on him. He might be their saviour, or his music might be their damnation . . .
The extraordinary true story of four women pioneers in physics during World War II and their daring escape out of Nazi Germany.
\nIn the 1930s, Germany was a hotbed of scientific thought. But after the Nazis took power, Jewish and female citizens were forced out of their academic positions. Hedwig Kohn, Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer, and Hildegard Stücklen were eminent in their fields, but they had no choice but to flee due to their Jewish ancestry or anti-Nazi sentiments.
\nTheir harrowing journey out of Germany became a life-and-death situation that required Herculean efforts of friends and other prominent scientists. Lise fled to Sweden, where she made a groundbreaking discovery in nuclear physics, and the others fled to the United States, where they brought advanced physics to American universities. No matter their destination, each woman revolutionized the field of physics when all odds were stacked against them, galvanising young women to do the same.
\nWell-researched and written with cinematic prose, Sisters in Science brings these trailblazing women to life and shows us how.
\nsisterhood and scientific curiosity can transcend borders and persist - flourish, even - in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
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Lauded for the power of her writing and having attracted an online fan base of millions for her extraordinary spoken-word performances, Olivia Gatwood now weaves together her own coming-of-age with an investigation into our culture’s romanticisation of violence against women.
\nAt times blistering and riotous, at times soulful and exuberant, Life of the Party explores the boundary between what is real and what is imagined in a life saturated with fear. Gatwood asks, How does a girl grow into a woman in a world racked by violence? Where is the line between perpetrator and victim?
\nIn precise, searing language, she illustrates how what happens to our bodies can make us who we are.
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Only when Lena stepped into that house did she realize what she'd been missing. A life. An entire life. There’s no way Sebastian would have planned for that epiphany. Because as soon as she had it, she felt the urge to run.
\nOn the Santa Cruz waterfront, every house is as flawless as the people inside - except for Mitty and her elderly roommate, Bethel. For ten years, Mitty has found refuge in their secluded existence after a traumatic adolescence. Now, they’re the oddball pair in the dilapidated bungalow, the last vestiges of a town taken over by the tech elite. But their lives are about to be irrevocably disrupted when a new couple, Lena and Sebastian, move in next door. Because on the quiet outskirts of Silicon Valley, nothing is off-limits, and what was once considered dystopia is now reality . . .
\nSebastian is a renowned tech founder and Lena is his spellbinding girlfriend, seemingly floating through their luxurious life. But just like Mitty, Lena has her own secrets; she feels uneasy about her oddly spotty memory, and is growing increasingly wary of the way Sebastian closely controls their life together. As the two women begin to form a close friendship, they are finally forced to face their pasts - or lack thereof - which have overpowered their lives for far too long, and the urgent truths that could change everything.
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It’s 1947 when Sister Mary Agnes arrives in New Mexico. Her mission is to establish a monastery in the town of Roswell, where weeks before rumors of the crash landing of an unidentified craft have triggered a crisis of faith. Residents are drifting away from the divine, awed no longer by the heavens but rather the stars.
\nIn service to the frightened and confused, Sister Mary Agnes soon befriends Betty Campbell, a teenager marked both physically and psychically by the inexplicable event. Mary Agnes is also unsettlingly drawn to Harvey, an attentive handyman refurbishing the monastery - and a firsthand witness to the crash. But as Mary Agnes tries to guide her wayward friends back to the church, it’s the fantastic and the forbidden that begin to loom large in her imagination.
\nThrown into her own crisis of doubt, Mary Agnes must choose whether to uphold the order in which she came of age or embrace the truth she feels in her heart, despite its terrifying complexity.
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Willow has everything: a rich daddy, a pony and a place at a prestigious boarding school. Everything except the one thing she really wants - a father who cares enough to find her when she runs away from home.
\nOn the eve of her father’s wedding, Willow runs again into the unknown. Her mother was a circus performer and Willow longs to follow in her footsteps. But when all of her money is stolen and her only friend, a street performer called Suz, betrays her, Willow is left penniless and alone. So begins a journey. Will Willow ever make it to the big top and find a place she can truly call home?
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Silver has been trained since birth for her collect data on the humans to test if Earth is viable for her home ship, Charybdis, to colonise. The only rules are that she must feed back the data she collects to the ship, and at all times follow the To touch is agony. To feel is pain.
\nSo when Silver inhabits the body of a young woman and infiltrates the house she is staying in, she must learn to pass as a human without revealing her true identity. But she isn't prepared for how the humans will get under her skin. And she definitely isn't prepared for Finch, the boy she starts to fall for. Especially when he touches her - and it doesn't hurt.
\nIt is not how Charybdis said it would be.
\nHave they been lying all along?
\nConflicted by the war between her growing feelings for Finch and her allegiance to her ship, Silver must decide who to stand by and who to betray.
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This year was supposed to be different. I had three simple goals: stop lying, get my life together, and maybe stop humiliating myself in public. It’s February, and I'm failing across the board.
\nThe job? Gone. The girlfriend? Also gone. My dignity? Probably still somewhere over Ohio, where I overshared my life story to a gorgeous stranger after one too many cocktails and a bout of turbulence.
\nBack home and out of options, I agree to cover for my sister at the ad agency while she's on maternity leave. It sounds like the perfect reset - until I meet my new boss.
\nAshley Morgan. She’s sharp. Unsmiling. And very familiar. Because she’s the woman from the plane.
\nAnd while I can’t remember exactly what I said to her at 30,000 feet, I have a sinking feeling it was . . . a lot. Turns out this wild ride isn't over - it’s just getting started.
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From the outside, Catharine West’s childhood sounds idyllic - balmy days spent running barefoot through the gardens, plucking ripe tomatoes straight from the vine as sunlight warmed her skin. Her parents built a life that was simple and community-focused, an ethos that soon attracted others in need of a change. For a time, Catharine’s magnetic father was enough to keep the farm thriving, and temptation outside its gates. But as she grew older, the farm and family she was raised to love faded into something darker, forcing Catharine to evolve with it.
\nIt’s now been a decade since Catharine abandoned the farm and has done her best to reinvent her life, until an email from a charismatic journalist interrupts her peace. Her first instinct is to ignore the stranger’s prying questions - whether she knew about a mysterious “cult” in central Florida, whether she is the same “Catharine-with-an-A” who lived there for a time. But when she realises the journalist knows far more than he’s letting on, she reconsiders. If Catharine can stay one step ahead of him, she may be able to find the one thing she never wanted to leave behind - her sister, Linna - and make sure her own secrets remain buried too.
\nSharp-eyed and sweltering, Little One masterfully captures the dread of facing your deepest desires, when the hunger to become your best self threatens to drown out everything else. An achingly astute look at modern womanhood and wellness culture, it tackles the enduring How far would you go to be good?
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Hazel Davis is drifting: she’s stalled in her career, living in a city she hates, and less successful than her younger sister @evelyn, a lifestyle influencer. Evie came of age on the family YouTube channel after a viral video when she was five. Ten years older and spotlight-averse, Hazel managed to dodge the family business - so although she can barely afford her apartment, at least she made her own way.
\nEvie is eighteen now, with a multimillion-dollar career, but Hazel is still protective of her little sister and skeptical of the way everyone seems to want a piece of her: Evie’s followers, her YouTuber boyfriend and influencer frenemies, and their opportunistic mother. So when Evie disappears one day during an unsettling live stream that cuts out midsentence, Hazel is horrified to have her worst instincts proven right.
\nAs theories about Evie’s disappearance tear through the internet, inspiring hashtags, Reddit threads, and podcast episodes, Hazel throws herself into the darkest parts of her sister’s world to untangle the truth. After all, Hazel knows Evie better than anyone else . . . doesn’t she?
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Near the topmost deck of an interstellar generation ship, Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers - just as someone else is found murdered. As one of the ship’s detectives, Dorothy usually delights in unraveling the schemes on board the Fairweather, but when she finds that someone is not only killing bodies but purposefully deleting minds from the Library, she realises something even more sinister is afoot.
\nDorothy suspects her misfortune is partly the fault of her feckless nephew Ruthie who, despite his brilliance as a programmer, leaves chaos in his cheerful wake. Or perhaps the sultry yarn store proprietor - and ex-girlfriend of the body Dorothy is currently inhabiting - knows more than she’s letting on.
\nWhatever it is, Dorothy intends to solve this case. Because someone has done the impossible and found a way to make murder on the Fairweather a very permanent state indeed. A mastermind may be at work - and if so, they’ve had three hundred years to perfect their schemes . . .
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Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty's most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger.
\nA wild baby appears! Dorothy Gentleman, ship detective, is put to the test once again when an infant is mysteriously left on her nephew's doorstep. Fertility is supposed to be on pause during the Fairweather’s journey across the stars - but humans have a way of breaking any rule you set them. Who produced this child, and why did they then abandon him? And as her nephew and his partner get more and more attached, how can Dorothy prevent her colleague and rival detective, Leloup, a stickler for law and order, from classifying the baby as a stowaway or a piece of luggage?
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Chicago, sometime . . .
\nTwo people meet in the Art Institute by chance. Prior to their encounter, he is a doctoral student who manages his destructive thoughts with compulsive calculations about time travel; she is a bipolar counterfeit artist, undergoing court-ordered psychotherapy. By the end of the story, these things will still be true. But this is not a story about endings.
\nFor Regan, people are predictable and tedious, including and perhaps especially herself. She copes with the dreariness of existence by living impulsively, imagining a new, alternate timeline being created in the wake of every rash decision.
\nTo Aldo, the world feels disturbingly chaotic. He gets through his days by erecting a wall of routine: a backbeat of rules and formulas that keep him going. Without them, the entire framework of his existence would collapse.
\nFor Regan and Aldo, life has been a matter of resigning themselves to the blueprints of inevitability - until the two meet. Could six conversations with a stranger be the variable that shakes up the entire simulation?
An explosive return to the library leaves the six Alexandrians vulnerable to the lethal terms of their recruitment.
\nOld alliances quickly fracture as the initiates take opposing strategies as to how to deal with the deadly bargain they have so far failed to uphold. Those who remain with the archives wrestle with the ethics of their astronomical abilities, while elsewhere, an unlikely pair from the Society cohort partner to influence politics on a global stage.
\nAnd still the outside world mobilizes to destroy them, while the Caretaker himself, Atlas Blakely, may yet succeed with a plan foreseen to have world-ending stakes. It’s a race to survive as the six Society recruits are faced with the question of what they're willing to betray for limitless power - and who will be destroyed along the way.
Six magicians. Two rivalries. One researcher. And a man who can walk through dreams. All must pick a side: do they wish to preserve the world - or destroy it?
\nIn this electric sequel to the viral sensation, The Atlas Six, the society of Alexandrians is revealed for what it is: a secret society with raw, world-changing power, headed by a man whose plans to change life as we know it are already under way.
\nBut the cost of knowledge is steep, and as the price of power demands each character choose a side, which alliances will hold and which will see their enmity deepen?
The Alexandrian Society is a secret society of magical academicians, the best in the world. Their members are caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilisations of antiquity. And those who earn a place among their number will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams. Each decade, the world’s six most uniquely talented magicians are selected for initiation - and here are the chosen few . . .
\n- Libby Rhodes and Nicolás Ferrer de Varona: inseparable enemies, cosmologists who can control matter with their minds.
\n- Reina Mori: a naturalist who can speak the language of life itself.
\n- Parisa Kamali: a mind reader whose powers of seduction are unmatched.
\n- Tristan Caine: the son of a crime kingpin who can see the secrets of the universe.
\n- Callum Nova: an insanely rich pretty boy who could bring about the end of the world. He need only ask.
\nWhen the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they must spend one year together to qualify for initiation. During this time, they will be permitted access to the Society’s archives and judged on their contributions to arcane areas of knowledge. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. If they can prove themselves to be the best, they will survive. Most of them.
Thayer Wren, the brilliant CEO of Wrenfare Magitech and so-called father of modern technology, is dead. Any one of his three telepathically and electrokinetically gifted children would be a plausible inheritor to the Wrenfare throne.
\nOr at least, so they like to think.
\nMeredith, textbook accomplished eldest daughter and the head of her own groundbreaking biotech company, has recently cured mental illness. You're welcome! If only her father's fortune wasn't her last hope for keeping her journalist ex-boyfriend from exposing what she really is: a total fraud.
\nArthur, second-youngest congressman in history, fights the good fight every day of his life. And yet, his wife might be leaving him, and he's losing his re-election campaign. But his dead father’s approval in the form of a seat on the Wrenfare throne might just turn his sinking ship around.
\nEilidh, once the world's most famous ballerina, has spent the last five years as a run-of-the-mill marketing executive at her father’s company after a life-altering injury put an end to her prodigious career. She might be lacking in accolades compared to her siblings, but if her father left her everything, it would finally validate her worth - by confirming she'd been his favorite all along.
\nOn the pipeline of gifted kid to clinically depressed adult, nobody wins - but which Wren will come out on top?
Every member of The House, the most exclusive sorority on campus, and all its alumni, are beautiful, high-achieving, and universally respected.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAfter a freshman year she would rather forget, sophomore Nina Kaur knows being one of the chosen few accepted into The House is the first step in her path to the brightest possible future. Once she's taken into their fold, the House will surely ease her fears of failure and protect her from those who see a young woman on her own as easy prey.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMeanwhile, adjunct professor Dr. Sloane Hartley is struggling to return to work after accepting a demotion to support her partner's new position at the cutthroat University. After 18 months at home with her newborn daughter, Sloane's clothes don’t fit right, her girl-dad husband isn’t as present as he thinks he is, and even the few hours a day she's apart from her child fill her psyche with paralyzing ennui. When invited to be The House’s academic liaison, Sloane enviously drinks in the way the alumnae seem to have it all, achieving a level of collective perfection that Sloane so desperately craves.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAs Nina and Sloane each get drawn deeper into the arcane rituals of the sisterhood, they learn that living well comes with bloody costs. And when they are finally invited to the table, they will have to decide just how much they can stomach in the name of solidarity and power.
Viola Marek is a struggling real estate agent, and a vampire. But her biggest problem currently is that the house she needs to sell is haunted. The ghost haunting the house has been murdered, and until he can solve the mystery of how he died, he refuses to move on.
\nFox D’Mora is a medium, and though is also most-definitely a shameless fraud, he isn’t entirely without his uses - seeing as he’s actually the godson of Death.
\nWhen Viola seeks out Fox to help her with her ghost-infested mansion, he becomes inextricably involved in a quest that neither he nor Vi expects (or wants). But with the help of an unruly poltergeist, a demonic personal trainer, a sharp-voiced angel, a love-stricken reaper, and a few high-functioning creatures, Vi and Fox soon discover the difference between a mysterious lost love and an annoying dead body isn’t nearly as distinct as they thought.
In New York City where we lay our scene, two rival witch families fight to maintain control of their respective criminal ventures. On one side of the conflict are the Antonova sisters, each one beautiful, cunning, and ruthless, and their mother, the elusive supplier of premium intoxicants known only as Baba Yaga. On the other side, the influential Fedorov brothers serve their father, the crime boss known as Koschei the Deathless, whose community extortion ventures dominate the shadows of magical Manhattan.
\nAfter twelve years of tenuous coexistence, a change in one family’s interests causes a rift in the existing stalemate. When bad blood brings both families to the precipice of disaster, fate intervenes with a chance encounter, and in the aftershocks of a resurrected conflict, everyone must choose a side. As each of the siblings struggles to stake their claim, fraying loyalties threaten to rot each side from the inside out.
\nIf, that is, the enmity between empires doesn’t destroy them first.
Dash, a reporter in Monterey, California, is desperate to outrun his past. During the day, he investigates the reemergence of a long-dormant serial killer. At night, he has become entangled with a criminal cult that promises a pill to erase his traumatic memory.
\nBut as Dash begins to lose his memories - and his sense of self - he discovers a dark secret about the cult, one that would horrify its members. And soon he finds himself in a race against time to evade the cult, unveil the killer, and reconcile his past before his own memories fade away . . .
Every second of Anuri’s life has been documented on social media. Now, it's time to take back control.
\nAnuri's stepmother, Ophelia, is the ultimate 'mumfluencer'. Throughout Anuri's childhood, she catalogued every minute, milestone and carefully curated family outing on social media, cultivating a devoted - and sizeable - following.
\nNow twenty-five years old, life looks pretty perfect on the outside. Ophelia's fans could be forgiven for wondering why Anuri spends much of her time insulting men online for money, battling the call of alcohol, running from a PhD application, and reminding herself that she is now allowed to choose her own outfits.
\nBut when she sees her little sister being pushed down the same rocky path by Ophelia, she decides to take back control. Her stepmother, however, isn't giving up without a fight.
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A fictional thirty-something writer named Osamu Dazai has just mailed his publisher a terrible manuscript, filling him with dread and shame. Shortly afterward, while moping around a park in suburban Tokyo, he spots a figure drowning in a nearby aqueduct.
\nHe doesn’t want to become a witness to a suicide and eventually decides to flee the park. But as he is leaving, he trips over the boy who had been drowning, and the two begin an unlikely conversation that turns into an intellectual spat. Hoping to ingratiate himself with the boy - a high-school dropout - Dazai finds himself agreeing to perform that very night as the live narrator of a film screening in the boy’s stead . . .
\nSo begins the madcap adventure of The Beggar Student, where there is glamor in destitution and glimmerings of truth in intellectual one-upmanship. Replete with settings straight out of the popular anime Bungo Stray Dogs and echoes of the themes in No Longer Human, this biting novella captures the infamous Japanese writer at his mordant best.
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The Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba - the narrator of No Longer Human at a younger age - is being kept after a failed suicide attempt. While he is convalescing, his friends and family visit him, and other patients and nurses drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, everyone tries to maintain a lighthearted, even clownish atmosphere: playing cards, smoking cigarettes, vying for attention, cracking jokes, and trying to make each other laugh.
\nWhile No Longer Human delves into the darkest corners of human consciousness, The Flowers of Buffoonery pokes fun at these same emotions: the follies and hardships of youth, of love, and of self-hatred and depression. A glimpse into the lives of a group of outsiders in prewar Japan, The Flowers of Buffoonery is a darkly humorous and fresh addition to Osamu Dazai’s masterful and intoxicating oeuvre.
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Young Susumu is at a turning point. Should he continue his education or chase his dream of becoming Japan's most famous actor? And how can he succeed with his father dead, his mother bedridden and an older brother who is a dropout?
\nBased on the diary of a real-life actor, Susumu's dilemma becomes a uniquely powerful tale of teenage angst and survival.This novel, translated into English for the first time, explores the self-destructive dynamics that are a hallmark of Dazai's fiction, but from a different viewpoint - that of a bright eyed teenager.
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The poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings.
\nOba Yozo's attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a \"clown\" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult.
\nWithout sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.
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The post-war period in Japan was one of immense social change as Japanese society adjusted to the shock of defeat and to the occupation of Japan by American forces and their allies. Osamu Dazai’s The Setting Sun takes this milieu as its background to tell the story of the decline of a minor aristocratic family.
\nThe story is told through the eyes of Kazuko, the unmarried daughter of a widowed aristocrat. Her search for self meaning in a society devoid of use for her forms the crux of Dazai’s novel. It is a sad story, and structurally is a novel very much within the confines of the Japanese take on the novel in a way reminiscent of authors such as Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata - the social interactions are peripheral and understated, nuances must be drawn, and for readers more used to Western novelistic forms this comes across as being rather wishy-washy.
\nKazuko’s mother falls ill, and due to their financial circumstances they are forced to take a cottage in the countryside. Her brother, who became addicted to opium during the war is missing. When he returns, Kazuko attempts to form a liaison with the novelist Uehara. This romantic displacement only furthers to deepen her alienation from society.
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A young woman must find a way to end the curse on her heart before it claims her forever in this delightfully witty fantasy romance.
\nSare Silverbirch has already had her heart broken three times. A fifth heartbreak will stop her heart forever. Such is the nature of the curse she was born under, which forces her to live a life without letting anyone get too close.
\nWhen her mother dies unexpectedly and her heart breaks for the fourth time, Sare begins to urgently question the curse. Where did it come from? Why her? And rather than accept it, could there be a way to break it?
\nHer questions lead her to Istanbul where she meets Leon, a seer who helps her track down the mysteries of her mother’s past. But Sare’s heart is a fragile thing and their blossoming romance poses a great risk to her survival. Especially when she discovers that her fate is in the hands of celestials beyond this earthly realm.
\nNow the heavens are stirring, for they have a stake in Sare’s destiny - and they don’t like their plans being overturned.
A woman’s evocative chronicle of modern womanhood, navigating love, family, and the radical desire to remain child-free in a patriarchal world.
\nKaren has spent years building an independent life in the city, far from her fractured family, leaving no room for love - until she receives news of her mother’s sudden death. The devastating news unravels her carefully curated life as Karen grapples with painful memories and the sister she left behind a decade ago.
\nAs grief, memories, and long-buried resentment reemerge, Karen’s troubles have only she’s pregnant, her secret affair with a younger colleague is exposed, and Omo is gravely ill.
\nIn the face of cultural expectations surrounding love, duty, and motherhood, Karen finds solace in The Women’s Group - a circle of fierce, resilient women who challenge her to confront the truth: forgiveness isn’t always mutual, and love can take unexpected forms.
\nSet against the vibrant landscapes of contemporary Lagos City and Eastern Nigeria, Your Tomorrow Was Today is a poignant journey of feminist reckoning, exploring autonomy, identity, and the choices that shape us.
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When a failed experiment renders everything within a mile completely weightless, Dr. Kyle Kessler narrowly avoids joining the countless cars, buildings, and people falling into the sky.
\nIn the aftermath, he and the other survivors are given a choice: regain their weight with time or become astronauts in the newest space program. With the wealth of weightless materials, NASA plans to build a spacecraft capable of venturing anywhere in the Solar System without gravity to hold it back.
\nBut for this diverse and inexperienced crew, astronaut training may prove to be as dangerous as space itself. And if Kyle can't keep the truth of the failed experiment out of the wrong hands, it could destroy the only thing holding Earth together.
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The year is 2098. Humanity is no more. Earth is a ravaged, radioactive wasteland.
\nOn Mars, a small group of synthetic humanoids survive - their memories of the apocalypse wiped, seeking to understand their role in the fall of humanity.
\nUntil Sol-5 receives a message. A message from a possible human survivor, and a plea to go to Earth to find her.
\nBut what he finds there will change everything.
\nThe humans were wiped out for a reason.
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The survivors of the Vu-Hak nuclear destruction of Earth have arrived in a distant galaxy, fifteen thousand years in the past. They have settled on a moon orbiting a gas giant in a binary star system: the world from which the Vu-Hak did - will - launch its murderous assault on Earth.
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While the survivors search for the ancestors of their attackers, adult humans are being grown from embryonic stem cells under Cain’s direction. Others are cloned and all are pre-loaded with the entirety of human knowledge. Genetically upgraded and biologically enhanced, these ‘post-humans’ will ensure the future of the race.
\n\n
Kate Morgan now in a cloned body, is about to meet her resurrected daughter. Before that, she must communicate with the Vu-Hak that has taken over William Hubert’s mind. The last time this was attempted, Adam Benedict nearly died. The tiny band of survivors and their newborn charges need Kate to learn everything she can from the stowaway Vu-Hak - because its ancestors are nowhere to be found. Locating them is a priority for the survivors or all will be for nothing.
\n\n
Meanwhile . . . something unforeseen is happening as a result of the machine-biological interface within the post-humans . . . and there are unexpected developments elsewhere in the solar system too.
\n\n
Is the galaxy as uninhabited as it seems?
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Kate Morgan has had her memory wiped and has no idea of her true identity, her encounter with the monstrous Vu-Hak, or her relationship with humanity’s presumed saviour, Adam Benedict. But despite his apparent sacrifice, the portal has opened and the Vu-Hak are here on Earth in huge numbers. Invisible, wraith-like. And searching for Kate.
\nKate needs to rediscover the truth and recapture the threads of her life, and what is at stake. She takes charge of an around-the-world hunt for the one person who may be able to help stop the invasion; but no-one wants to believe her.
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The Vu-Hak: An ancient and malevolent alien race, once organic, now entities of pure thought, drifting between the stars, limitless and immortal. An alpha species. A species that colonises on a galactic-scale.
The portal: A rift in space connecting Earth to the Vu-Hak galaxy. A result of the Cold War’s secret nuclear arms race. Hidden by scientists and U.S. governments for half a century. Forgotten.
Kate Morgan: A doctor grieving the recent death of her child. She encounters a strange man in her emergency room. A man who speaks to her telepathically. A man who knows things about her he could not possibly know.
Adam Benedict: Amnesic, enigmatic, and not entirely human. The FBI and the Government are desperate to capture him. Driven by urges he cannot understand, he goes on the run, taking Kate Morgan with him.
With Adam questioning whether humanity is worth saving, Kate realizes that she is the only thing keeping him human.
And time is running out.
Zoey is alive and stronger than ever, being cared for by her new Guardian, and finally finding some peace far from the ongoing battle against Neferet. But in her brief moment of happiness, it's easy to forget that the House of Night needs her, as do her friends.
\nIn Zoey's absence, Stevie Rae has found her feelings for the Raven Mocker Rephaim are stronger than she ever could have expected, even while he still admits loyalty to their sworn enemy. Then a terrible murder threatens to destroy their group and tear their world apart - and that death will not be the last . . .
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It seems that (un)life is going pretty well for Zoey Redbird. She's settled in at the House of Night finishing school and is coming to terms with the vast powers the vampyre goddess, Nyx, has given her. She even has a boyfriend . . . or two. Best of all, Zoey finally feels she has found somewhere she belongs. Then the unthinkable happens.
\nHuman teenagers are being killed, and all the evidence points to the vampires at Zoey's school. While danger stalks the humans from Zoey's past life, she begins to realise that the very powers that made her so unique might also threaten those she loves. Then, when she needs her new friends the most, death strikes the House of Night. Zoey finds herself facing a betrayal that could break her heart and jeopardise the very fabric of her world.
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Zoey Redbird's soul has been shattered by the death of her high school sweetheart Heath, and she has followed him to the Otherworld. As the world threatens to fall under Neferet's control, the only hope is that Zoey might find the strength to bring her soul together again.
\nStark, Zoey's Warrior, is determined to save her, no matter what the cost to himself. And Heath is only just beginning to understand that, in the Otherworld, the only way to save Zoey is to lose her - completely . . .
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Zoey's best friend, Stevie Rae, is undead - in an eww! zombie! kind-of-way, not in a cool vampire kind-of-way. She's struggling to retain her humanity and Zoey doesn't have a clue how to help. But she does know that anything they discover must be kept secret.
\nTrust has become a rare commodity. Sinister forces are at work at the House of Night, where the line between friend and enemy is becoming dangerously blurred.
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Zoey finds herself weakened, this time by the brutal death of her mother. While Neferet gathers the forces of Darkness, Zoey must battle grief to rally her own troops; not least Stevie Rae and her newly human consort Rephaim, who has finally turned his back on his cruel immortal father, Kalona.
\nWorking to create chaos at the House of Night, Neferet has joined with the White Bull of pure evil to create a vessel of Darkness, a beautiful boy named Aurox. Yet this strange Dark creature is somehow drawn to be near Zoey - and even to protect her . . .
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Beginning with Dragon Lankford, DRAGON'S OATH tells the story of the House of Night's formidable fencing instructor and warrior, whose mercy for one beast in the past will come back to haunt him in the future.
Wren Nightingale isn't supposed to have any powers. Born of magickal parents but not under a moon sign, she was destined for life as a Mundane - right up until she starts glowing on her eighteenth birthday. In a heartbeat, Wren's life is turned upside down, and she's suddenly leaving her home for the mystical Academia de la Luna - a secret magickal school on a hidden island off the Seattle coast.
\nLee Young has always known about his future at the Academia. He has one goal: pass the trials, impress the Moon Council, and uphold his family's reputation. But he wasn't expecting to be attending alongside the girl he's been secretly in love with for as long as he can remember.
\nAs Wren and Lee are thrown into the Academie's gruelling trials, they quickly learn there's something different - and dangerous - about the school this year. Wren will have to navigate a web of secrets, prophecies - and murder. And Lee will have to decide who to protect - his family's legacy, or the girl he loves.
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Since becoming Moonstruck on her eighteenth birthday, Wren Nightingale has found herself thrust into a world filled with deception, danger, and murder. Uncovering that their magick was fractured and limited when the original Moonstruck ritual was broken by Selene, Wren is determined to find a way to restore it. But the Elementals are split into two factions - some want the ritual completed and their freedom - and others are so terrified of change that they’re willing to end Wren before she can reach the center of the island where the ritual Selene ruined can be completed.
\nBetween his overbearing father’s arrival, Rottingham delegating him more and more responsibility, and Celeste taking a special interest in him, Lee Young has been struggling to find his own path. As much as Lee wants to take his place in the Moonstruck hierarchy, he knows something’s not right at the Academia de la Luna. He thinks if he can talk some sense into Wren and get her to return to the Academia, that everything will turn out alright.
\nAs Wren and Lee both battle for what they believe is right, they’ll have to uncover who their true allies are . . . and if they’re even on the same side of this magickal fight.
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Twin sisters, Mercy and Hunter are witches, direct descendants of the Goode family, the founders of their town. After the murder of their mother at the hands of a foul demon, they have become the protectors of the Gates to different underworlds - ancient portals between their world and realms where mythology rules and the darkest of creatures exist.
\nMercy and Khenti are trapped in the Ancient Egyptian Underworld and need Hunter's help to escape. But while Hunter searches for a way to save them, other evil threatens Goodeville. Amphitrite is still looming - and she wants vengeance against Hunter. With the gates rapidly weakening, Amphitrite lures out a deadly creature and sets it free on the residents of Goodeville. It will take everything in Mercy and Hunter's power to stop the goddess and seal the gates once and for all.
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At last, Zoey has what she wanted: the truth is out. Neferet's evil has been exposed, and the High Council is no longer on her side - but she's far from done wreaking havoc in the vampyre world.
\nWith the seeds of distrust sown and Darkness breeding chaos at the House of Night, everyone must band together - but that's proving to be more difficult than ever before. The twins are barely speaking and the House of Night's former enemy, Kalona, has now become their warrior, pushing their trust to the limits. To top it all off, Zoey is pretty darn sure she might be losing her mind - she saw something when she looked at Neferet's minion, Aurox, through the Seer Stone that she can hardly explain to herself, let alone her friends. Zoey knows that following her instincts might be just what they need to defeat evil . . . but if she's wrong, it could cause the destruction of those closest to her.
\nWith the tension at a breaking point and friendships on the line, can the nerd herd come together to stop the spread of Darkness before it's too late?
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After the terrible arrival of the dark angel Kalona at the House of Night, Zoey Redbird and her friends have fled to the tunnels under the town, where they hide out with the strange new red Vampyre fledglings.
\nEverything changes when Zoey is badly injured - and finds herself back at the House of Night, face to face with Stark, who she hasn't forgotten since he died in her arms. But now Stark is working for Neferet. Can Zoey trust him? Who is really on her side as the battle begins? And what price will she have to pay for following her heart?
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The shadows in Kalonas past will finally come to light We will learn about the winged immortal's secret history and discover how he went from being the Goddess's Warrior and Guardian to her enemy and betrayer.
\nDid Darkness taint Kalona as it did Neferet, or has the powerful immortal always preferred power over honor, and control over faith?
Before becoming Zoey's favourite professor and the House of Night's powerful horse mistress, Lenobia was just a normal 16-year-old girl - but with enough problems to last a lifetime.
\nIn 1788, Lenobia's father places her on a ship bound for New Orleans. An evil bishop, skilled in Dark magic, makes the same journey. His appetite for beautiful young women forces Lenobia to remain hidden, but she secretly visits the ship's stables, where a handsome young man and his horses capture her attention.
\nCan they make it to the New World before the bishop discovers her true identity and a powerful evil breaks loose? And will Lenobia follow her heart, even if it puts lives at risk?
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When sixteen-year-old Zoey Redbird gets Marked as a fledgling vampire she must join the House of Night school where she will train to become an adult vampire. That is, if she makes it through the Change. But Zoe is no ordinary fledgling. She has been chosen as special by the Goddess Nyx and discovers her amazing new power to conjure the elements: earth, air, fire, water and spirit.
\nWhen Zoey discovers that the leader of the Dark Daughters, the school's most elite group, is misusing her Goddess-given gifts, Zoey must look within herself to embrace her destiny - with a little help from her new vampire friends.
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Neferet, the Tulsa House of Night's darkly seductive High Priestess, wasn't always a powerful vampyre, but she has always been beautiful. Raised in turn-of-the-century Chicago in a motherless home, her beauty makes her the prey of unwanted attention and abuse, leaving her with scars that will never heal - and a Darkness that will eventually need to find its way out.
\nBut when she is Marked and gains strength, both physical and magickal, she turns her anger into power and looks for a way to regain what was stolen from her. From victim to High Priestess, beautiful young woman to powerful seductress, Neferet's journey begins . . .
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Twin sisters, Mercy and Hunter are witches, descendants of the Goode family of witches. After the murder of their mother at the hands of a foul demon, they have become the protectors of the Gates to different underworlds - ancient portals between their world and realms where mythology rules and the darkest of creatures exist.
\nThe problem is that the Goode sisters have split from each other. Grief and anger have torn them apart, driving Mercy to save the cursed Gates on her own and Hunter into the arms of a dangerous goddess. And when Mercy shifts her focus to the Egyptian Gate and Khenti, the guardian of its Underworld, little does she know that her connection to him will land her in the kind of trouble that only Hunter can save her from.
\nWhen it comes to breaking the curse, Mercy and Hunter's bonds are put to the ultimate test.
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In the final electrifying novel in the phenomenal House of Night series, Neferet has finally made herself known to mortals. A Dark Goddess is loose on Tulsa and the world. No single vampyre is strong enough to vanquish her - unless that creature has the power to summon the elements as well as the ability to wield Old Magick.
\nOnly Zoey Redbird is heir to such power . . . but because of the consequences of using Old Magick, she is unable to help. Find out who will win and who will lose in this epic battle of Light versus Darkness.
Drastically altered after her fall at the end of HIDDEN, Neferet is now more dangerous than ever - and her quest for vengeance will wreak havoc on humans as well as Zoey and her friends. Chaos is loosed in Tulsa and the House of Night is blamed.
\nCan Zoey stop Neferet in time to keep her anger from escalating to full-on war? Or will someone else have to step in to take the fall?
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Hunter and Mercy Goode are twin witches, direct descendants of the founder of their town of Goodeville. As their ancestors have done before them, it is now time for the twins to learn what it means to be Gatekeepers–the protectors of the Gates to different underworlds, ancient portals between their world and realms where mythology rules and nightmares come to life.
\nWhen their mother becomes the first victim in a string of murders, the devastated sisters vow to avenge her death. But it will take more than magic to rein in the ancient mythological monsters who’ve infected their peaceful town.
\nNow Hunter and Mercy must come together and accept their destiny or risk being separated for good.
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Zoey Redbird, now High Priestess of the shattered House of Night, is doing her best to hold everything together while dealing with her beloved, injured grandmother, her moody boyfriend, her secretive best friend, and the aftermath of the victory over her former mentor and a terrible, beautiful dark angel.
\nBut Neferet and Kalona have only been banished, not defeated, and everyone knows they're heading straight for the Vampyre High Council, where Zoey must follow.
\nZoey might be a High Priestess, but she's still just a teenager. And she's the only hope the world has.
As if it's not enough to lose her friends and all three boyfriends, Zoey Redbird, the most powerful fledgling the Vampyre world has ever seen, knows that great trouble is coming to the House of Night.
\nDespite her nightmares, Zoey finds herself distracted by the new kid Stark, brought to the House by Neferet, who clearly has something she wants from him. There's something between Stark and Zoey that she never imagined - but disaster is awaiting them all, and she doesn't know if she can fight the approaching evil alone any more . . .
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In Roman-occupied Britain, the Iceni tribe crowns an extraordinary new queen. Tall and flame-haired, Boudicca is devoted to Andraste, the Iceni’s patron goddess, known for her raven familiar, her fierceness and her swirling blue tattoos. Boudicca and her two young daughters will carry the tribe forward in dangerous times.
\nRoman tax collector Catus Decianus, expecting weakness in a female ruler, launches a devastating attack on the tribe’s stronghold. Boudicca and her family barely survive - but they refuse to bend the knee. She calls a war council, bringing together her most trustworthy allies, including her childhood friend Rhan, now a powerful Druid seer, and the horse master Maldwyn, whose devotion to Boudicca runs deeper than a warrior to a queen.
\nSurprising the Romans, Boudicca’s armies sack the wealthy cities of Camulodunum, Londinium and Veralamium. As the snow falls, the Celts retreat to a hidden valley to plot their assault on the remaining Roman legions, determined to force the invaders from Britan.
\nBut in the jagged ice of winter the Druid Rhan foresees a tragic end to Boudicca’s rebellion. Although the defeat of the Iceni is spelled out in signs sent by the gods, Rhan swears she will alter the future and save her queen. Now the battle-hardened Boudicca must put her trust in the powers of the otherworld to save her from both the traitors in her midst and from Rome’s mighty legions.
\nInspired by the rich history of Boudicca’s attack on Roman Britain, bestselling author P. C. Cast crafts an epic, mythic retelling of one of time’s most legendary female warriors.
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After her car plummets off a bridge, Isabel, a world-weary photojournalist, struggles between life and death when she's saved by the Water Goddess-with one tiny caveat: Isabel must travel to another time to seduce the legendary Lancelot du Lac away from Queen Guinevere.
The handsome knight is a dream for any woman in any century. But Isabel is the one who's seduced by King Arthur. For Isabel, a deal is a deal. Now, the King watches as fate takes from him the mysterious beauty he has come to worship, knowing all too well that any interference on his part could destroy the kingdom he loves.
Tired of dating egomaniacs, interior designer Pamela Gray has nearly given up on men. She wants to be treated like a goddess - preferably by a god. As she whispers her wish, she unwittingly invokes the goddess Artemis, who has some tricks up her celestial sleeve . . .
\nTwins Artemis and Apollo have been sent to the Kingdom of Las Vegas to test their mantle. Their first assignment: make Pamela’s wish come true. So Artemis volunteers her golden brother. After all, who better than the handsome God of Light to bring love to this lonely woman?
\nIt might be a first, but here in Sin City, where life is a gamble, both god and mortal are about to bet on a high-stakes game of love. Hey, you only live once. Or do you?
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My Goddess, does Pea Chamberlain ever need a makeover! Her shoes, hair, clothes, makeup are all disasters, especially if she wants to attract über-sexy fireman Griffin DeAngelo at the firemen’s masked ball. And who better to coax Pea out of her pod than the Goddess of Love, whom she invokes when she gets her hands on a book of enchantments.
Sure enough, Venus works her magic on Pea, which is what she has been doing for eons - helping others find love. But who will help the Goddess of Love when she finds herself falling head over heels for the same sexy fireman she is trying to land for Pea? Could it be that Venus needs a love makeover herself? Check out the fireworks when the Goddess of Love unexpectedly loses her heart . . .
It’s not a green thumb that’s kept the Empousai family’s roses blooming for centuries - it’s the drops of blood that their women secretly sacrifice for their gardens. But Mikki would rather forget this family quirk and lead a normal life. Until the day she unwittingly performs a ritual and ends up in the strangely familiar Realm of the Rose. As its goddess, Hecate, reveals to her, Mikki has the blood of a high priestess running through her veins. And the realm has been waiting for her . . .
In a long ago flash of temper, Hecate cursed her Guardian beast with a slumber that only her priestess can undo - and Hecate is counting on Mikki to set things right. At first the beast terrifies Mikki – but soon he intrigues her more than any man ever has. But the only way he and the realm can be saved is for Mikki to sacrifice her life-giving blood - and herself . . .
On the night of her twenty-fifth birthday, alone in her apartment, Air Force Sergeant Christine Canady wished for one thing: a little magic in her life. After drinking way too much champagne, she performed, of all crazy things, a goddess-summoning ritual, hoping that it would somehow make her life a little less ordinary . . . but she never believed the spell would actually work.
When her military plane crashes into the ocean, CC's mission overseas takes an unexpected turn. She awakens to find herself in a legendary time and place where magic rules the land - occupying the body of the mythic mermaid Undine. But there is danger in the waters and the goddess Gaea turns this modern, military gal into a beautiful damsel so that she can seek shelter on land.
CC is soon rescued (literally) by a knight in shining armor. She should he falling in love with this dream-come-true, but instead she aches for the sea and Dylan, the sexy merman who has stolen her heart.
The Goddesses have had it with the Trojan War. So much devastation?all because of some silly male egos. The worst of the bunch is that cocky, handsome brute Achilles. But the only way to stop a man like Achilles is to distract him with something far more pleasurable than combat?
Enter Kat, a modern girl from Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Goddesses transform her into a Trojan princess, having no doubt that she?ll capture Achilles?s attention. But can her independent spirit match the unquenchable fire of his epic rage? Goddess only knows?
Lina’s trendy bakery in Tulsa is proving to be less than lucrative, and she must come up with a plan. When she stumbles upon an Italian Goddess cookbook, Lina can’t help but think she’s found the answer to her problem - even if it means invoking a goddess to save her business.
Soon enough, Lina finds herself face-to-face with Demeter, who has a plan of her own. She proposes that Lina exchange souls with Persephone, the Goddess of Spring, who will breathe new life into the bakery. In return, Lina must set order to the Underworld.
Before all this, Lina’s problems mostly involved sourdough and second dates. Now that she embodies the enchanting Persephone, Lina has weightier things on her mind - like the formidable task of bringing Spring to a world of spirits. But when the handsome, brooding Hades kindles a spark in her heart, Lina wonders if this Lord of the Underworld might be the man of her dreams . . .
The world as we know it ends when an attack on the U.S. unleashes bombs that deliver fire and biological destruction. Along with sonic detonations and devastating earthquakes, the bombs have also brought the green mist. If breathed in, it is deadly to all men - but alters the body chemistry of many women, imbuing them with superhuman abilities.
\nA group of high school teachers heading home from a conference experiences firsthand the strength of these new powers. Mercury Rhodes is the Warrior, possessing heightened physical powers. Stella Carver is the Seer, with a sixth sense about the future. Imani Andrews is the Watcher, with a rare connection to the earth. Karen Gay is the Priestess, demonstrating a special connection with Spirits. And Gemma Jenkins is the Healer, a sixteen-year-old student who joins the group after losing her parents.
\nAs they cross the Pacific Northwest, trying to find a safe place to ride out the apocalypse, the women soon learn they can't trust anyone, and with fresh danger around every corner, it will take all their powers to save themselves - and possibly the world.
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Mercury Rhodes barely remembers life before the bombs fell, before the green mist. While it proved deadly to all the men who breathed it in, it gave new life to some women who did the same. The green mist provided each member of her newfound family an ability: Stella’s sense of the future, Imani’s earthly connection, Karen’s bond with Spirit, and Gemma’s healing ability. Although Mercury now has incredible physical strength - she doesn’t know if she will be strong enough for what comes next. Especially after the death of Ford, their companion through the aftermath of the mist.
\nThe group finds respite in creating a small community in the Painted Hills. Together, they hope to find a place where they can start over. But Mercury knows it won’t be that simple, not when she knows someone, or something, is hunting them. Something that wants to rule the ruins of the world and something who sees Mercury as a threat to get rid of.
\nMercury will have to muster all her strength if she is to fight for a new dawn. The fate of her friends - and the world - depend on it.
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With a leading role on a hit TV show and a relationship with Hollywood's latest heartthrob, Meg Bryan appears to have everything she ever wanted. But underneath the layers of makeup and hairspray, her happiness is as fake as her stage name, Lana Lord. Following a small breakdown at her thirtieth birthday party, she books an impromptu trip where she knows the grass is greener: Ireland. Specifically, the quaint little village where she and her best friend Aimee always dreamt of moving - a dream that fell apart when an accident claimed Aimee’s life a decade ago.
\nWhen Meg arrives, the people in town are so nice, treating her not as a stranger, but a friend. Except for the (extremely hot) bartender giving her the cold shoulder. Meg writes it all off as jetlag until she looks in the mirror. Her hair is no longer bleached within an inch of its life, her skin has a few natural fine lines, and her nose looks like . . . well, her old nose. Her real nose.
\nHer phone reveals hundreds of pictures of her life in this little town: with an adorable dog she doesn’t know; with the bartender who might be her (ex?) boyfriend; and at a retail job unrelated to acting. Eventually, she comes to accept that she somehow made a quantum slide into an alternate version of her life. But the most shocking realisation of all? In this life, her best friend Aimee is alive and well . . . but wants nothing to do with Meg.
\nDespite her bewilderment, Meg is clear-eyed about one thing: this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reconnect with her friend and repair what she broke. She finagles an opportunity to act in the play Aimee is writing and directing and as the project unfolds, Meg realises that events as she remembers them may not be the only truth, and that an impossible choice looms before her.
It’s 1943 in London. Paige Miller, an ordinary shopgirl at the fabled department store Selfridges, falls for Danny, an American GI who comes by the books counter at the same time every day. As she slowly lets him into her heart, Paige realises that Danny is keeping a secret. One that could change the course of the war - and both their lives.
London, 1953. Louise is still adjusting to her postwar role as a housewife when she discovers a necklace in a box at a secondhand shop. The box is marked with the name of a department store in Paris, and she is certain she has seen the necklace before when she worked with the Red Cross in Nazi-occupied Europe - and that it holds the key to the mysterious death of her friend Franny during the war.
\nFollowing the trail of clues to Paris, Louise seeks help from her former boss Ian, with whom she shares a romantic history. The necklace leads them to discover the dark history of Lévitan - a once-glamorous department store that served as a Nazi prison, and Helaine, a woman who was imprisoned there, torn apart from her husband when the Germans invaded France.
\nLouise races to find the connection between the necklace, the department store and Franny’s death. But nothing is as it seems, and there are forces determined to keep the truth buried forever. Inspired by the true story of Lévitan, Last Twilight in Paris is both a gripping mystery and an unforgettable story about sacrifice, resistance and the power of love to transcend in even the darkest hours.
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Sixteen-year-old Noa has been cast out in disgrace after becoming pregnant by a Nazi soldier and being forced to give up her baby. She lives above a small rail station, which she cleans in order to earn her keep . . .
\nWhen Noa discovers a boxcar containing dozens of Jewish infants bound for a concentration camp, she is reminded of the child that was taken from her. And in a moment that will change the course of her life, she snatches one of the babies and flees into the snowy night.
Noa finds refuge with a German circus, but she must learn the flying trapeze act so she can blend in undetected, spurning the resentment of the lead aerialist, Astrid. At first rivals, Noa and Astrid soon forge a powerful bond.
But as the facade that protects them proves increasingly tenuous, Noa and Astrid must decide whether their friendship is enough to save one another - or if the secrets that burn between them will destroy everything.
1942. Sadie Gault is eighteen and living with her parents amid the horrors of the Kraków Ghetto during World War II. When the Nazis liquidate the ghetto, Sadie and her pregnant mother are forced to seek refuge in the perilous sewers beneath the city. One day Sadie looks up through a grate and sees a girl about her own age buying flowers.
\nElla Stepanek is an affluent Polish girl living a life of relative ease with her stepmother, who has developed close alliances with the occupying Germans. Scorned by her friends and longing for her fiancé, who has gone off to war, Ella wanders Kraków restlessly. While on an errand in the market, she catches a glimpse of something moving beneath a grate in the street. Upon closer inspection, she realises it’s a girl hiding.
\nElla begins to aid Sadie and the two become close, but as the dangers of the war worsen, their lives are set on a collision course that will test them in the face of overwhelming odds. Inspired by harrowing true stories, The Woman with the Blue Star is an emotional testament to the power of friendship and the extraordinary strength of the human will to survive.
The Dragon from Chicago tells the gripping tale of American journalist Sigrid Schultz's fights on two to establish herself as a serious foreign correspondent in an era when her male colleagues saw a powerful unmarried woman as a “freak” and to keep the news flowing out of Nazi Germany despite the regime’s tightening controls on the media.
\nSchultz was the Chicago Tribune 's Berlin bureau chief and primary foreign correspondent for Central Europe from 1925 to January 1941, and one of the first reporters - male or female - to warn American readers of the growing dangers of Nazism.
\nDrawing on extensive archival research, Pamela D. Toler unearths the largely forgotten story of Schultz’s years spent courageously reporting the news from Berlin, from the revolts of 1919 through Nazi atrocities and air raids over Berlin in 1941. At a time when women reporters rarely wrote front page stories, Schultz pulled back the curtain on how the Nazis misreported the news to their own people, and how they attempted to control the foreign press through bribery and threats.
\nSharp and enlightening, Schultz’s story provides a vital lesson for how we can reclaim truth in an era marked by the spread of disinformation and claims of “fake news.”
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In late 1960s Appalachia, many things loom darkly over June the Vietnam War is dividing the country, and a strip mine is eating away the mountain at the head of the holler where she lives, threatening the natural landscape and the only way of life she has ever known. While still in high school, June has fallen in love. She is pregnant, and the father may be Ellis Akers. Ellis is the son of Solomon, a mortal enemy of June’s stepfather, Isom. The feud is so old it fuels two vengeful men with the power of long animosity between rival families.
\nJune’s brother, Tom, leaves to enlist in the war, and so does Ellis. Suddenly, June is on her own, at sixteen with a newborn, and is a mother unable to protect her daughter from the wrath of Isom. Without warning, her baby is kidnapped. Guided by her love for the generations of women before her, but now desperately alone, June must carefully navigate the search for her child alongside family and strangers in a wild and disappearing landscape.
\nIn the Fields of the Fatherless Children is a powerful story of love and perseverance, masterfully told by a writer of exquisite care who knows intimately the rural people of this time and place.
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In a dark future America where violence, terror, and grief touch everyone, young refugees Mahlia and Mouse have managed to leave behind the war-torn lands of the Drowned Cities by escaping into the jungle outskirts.
\nBut when they discover a wounded half-man - a bioengineered war beast named Tool - who is being hunted by a vengeful band of soldiers, their fragile existence quickly collapses.
\nOne is taken prisoner by merciless soldier boys, and the other is faced with an impossible decision: Risk everything to save a friend, or flee to a place where freedom might finally be possible.
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In Navola, a bustling city-state dominated by a handful of influential families, business is power, and power is everything. For generations, the di Regulai family - merchant bankers with a vast empire - has nurtured tendrils that stretch to the farthest reaches of the known world.
\nAnd though they claim not to be political, their staggering wealth has bought cities and toppled kingdoms. Soon, Davico di Regulai will be expected to take the reins of power from his father and demonstrate his mastery of the games of Navolese knowing who to trust and who to doubt, and how to read what lies hidden behind a smile.
\nBut in Navola, strange and ancient undercurrents lurk behind the gilt and grandeur - like the fossilised dragon eye in the family’s possession, a potent symbol of their raw power and a talisman that seems to be summoning Davico to act.
\nAs tensions rise and the events unfold, Davico will be tested to his limits. His fate depends on the eldritch dragon relic and on what lies buried in the heart of his adopted sister, Celia di Balcosi, whose own family was destroyed by Nalova’s twisted politics. With echoes of Renaissance Italy, The Godfather , and Game of Thrones , Navola is a stunning feat of world-building and a mesmerising depiction of drive and will.
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In America's Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts, Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota - and hopefully live to see another day.
\nBut when, by luck or chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it's worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life . . .
Tool, a half-man/half-beast designed for combat, is capable of so much more than his creators had ever dreamed. He has gone rogue from his pack of bioengineered \"augments\" and emerged a victorious leader of a pack of human soldier boys.
\nBut he is hunted relentlessly by someone determined to destroy him, who knows an alarming secret: Tool has found the way to resist his genetically ingrained impulses of submission and loyalty toward his masters . . .
\nThe time is coming when Tool will embark on an all-out war against those who have enslaved him. From one of science fiction's undisputed masters comes a riveting page-turner that pulls no punches.
The American Southwest has been decimated by drought.
\nIn the American Southwest, Nevada, Arizona, and California skirmish for dwindling shares of the Colorado River. Into the fray steps Angel Velasquez, leg-breaker, assassin, and spy. A Las Vegas water knife, Angel \"cuts\" water for his boss, Catherine Case, ensuring that her luxurious developments can bloom in the desert, so the rich can stay wet while the poor get dust.
\nWhen rumors of a game-changing water source surface in drought-ravaged Phoenix, it seems California is making a play to monopolize the life-giving flow of the river, and Angel is sent to investigate. There, he encounters Lucy Monroe, a drought-hardened journalist, and Maria Villarosa, a young refugee who survives by her wits in a city that despises everything she represents.
\nFor Angel, Lucy, and Maria, time is running out and their only hope for survival rests in each other’s hands. But when water is more valuable than gold, alliances shift like sand, and the only thing for certain is that someone will have to bleed if anyone hopes to drink.
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Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko . . .
Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.
What Happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution?
It is the winter of 1893, and in London the snow is falling.
It is falling as Gideon Bliss seeks shelter in a Soho church, where he finds Angie Tatton lying before the altar. His one-time love is at death’s door, murmuring about brightness and black air, and about those she calls the Spiriters. In the morning she is gone.
The snow is falling as a seamstress climbs onto a ledge above Mayfair, a mysterious message stitched into her own skin. It is falling as she steadies herself and closes her eyes.
It is falling, too, as her employer, Lord Strythe, vanishes into the night, watched by Octavia Hillingdon, a restless society columnist who longs to uncover a story of real importance.
She and Gideon will soon be drawn into the same mystery, each desperate to save Angie and find out the truth about Lord Strythe. Their paths will cross as the darkness gathers, and will lead them at last to what lies hidden at the house on Vesper Sands.
London, 1894. Inspector Henry Cutter is in an unconvivial temper.
\nThen the murders begin. The first to die is Sir Aneurin Considine, a decorated but long-retired civil servant, is found dead amongst his beloved orchid collection, killed by a wound inflicted with surgical precision.
\nSoon, other victims suffer similar fates. More men in powerful positions; more murders that are gruesome but immaculately orchestrated. The perpetrator comes and goes like a ghost, leaving only carefully considered traces.
\nHot on the tails of this invisible adversary are Inspector Cutter, along with his hapless but endlessly enthusiastic sidekick, Sergeant Gideon Bliss.
\nBut as the pressure mounts, victims will start to look like perpetrators, murderers like truth-tellers, long-hidden failings will come resurface, and not even their very selves are safe from suspicion.
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In a world where divine power bleeds into the mortal realm, Thais Morvaren has mastered the art of deception. To her seaside village, she's just a fisherman's daughter, serving oysters to summer tourists. In secret, she hides her ability to forge weapons from starlight - a power that would force her into the deadly Trials of Ascension.
\nBut when a priest's ritual exposes her divine heritage, Thais is seized and conscripted into the trials against her will. Now trapped in a competition she never wanted to enter, she transforms her fear into purpose: to kill Olinthar, King of the Gods-the father whose divine touch proved fatal to her mother.
\nTo take down a god, she must become one, even if it costs her everything.
\nWhat she doesn't expect is her twin brother's powers suddenly manifesting, forcing him into the trials alongside her - leaving Thais to protect more than just herself.
\nWorse still, the selection ceremony binds her to a mentor: Xül. A necromancer prince with blood-soaked hands, a sharp tongue, and dark secrets of his own. From the moment they meet, sparks fly. He's insufferably arrogant, she's stubborn to the bone, and neither has any intention of yielding to the other . . . or to the heat between them.
\nEach trial survived brings her closer to godhood, but beneath the spectacle of competition, something ancient and malevolent stalks the shadows of the divine realm-a darkness that threatens to unravel the heavens themselves.
\nThais may have been forced into the Trials seeking survival, but she'll finish them seeking vengeance.
\nAnd the cost of godhood is rising.
\nBecause some stars aren't meant to be weapons.
\nSome stars are meant to fall.
Ria Riftborne thought joining the Sidhe Guard was the hardest choice she'd ever make.
\nShe was wrong.
\nTaken prisoner by the very shadows she was sworn to fight, Fia uncovers a devastating truth. The wraiths who brought destruction to the Isle's western border aren't monsters at all, but a race of people from a dying realm called the Kálfar, and they believe Fia's growing powers are tied to their survival.
\nAs war looms on two fronts, Fia must navigate a world of shadow magic and political upheaval. A disgraced Kálfar lord builds an army in the south while tensions within Sídhe reach a breaking point. And the Void that gave Fia her power is calling - but answering it means betraying everyone she left behind.
\nThe Guard. Her friends. Laryk.
\nIn a war where nothing is as it seems, choosing the wrong side could cost her everything, including the brooding commander whose darkness seems to recognise her own.
Twenty years after a rebellion branded her an outcast, Fia Riftborne navigates a city rife with prejudice so deep, it's often deadly. But she harbors a secret, one that would paint an even larger target on her back. A hidden power within her is growing, threatening to destroy everything she's built for herself.
\nEnter the elusive Sidhe General, Laryk Ashford, who is building a unit of powerful wielders within the Guard to face a growing threat. Wraiths of darkness devour the Western border, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake.
\nWhen Fia's power erupts, and two daughters of Nobility are seemingly dead, General Ashford offers her a chilling choice: join the Sidhe Guard or face execution.
\nBecause Fia might be the only hope for the Isle's survival.
\nTorn between surrendering to the chaos or becoming a weapon for those who took everything from her, Fia must confront her growing feelings for the General and face a dark truth that could shatter everything she's ever known.
Emory might be a student at the prestigious Aldryn College for Lunar Magics, but her healing abilities have always been mediocre at best - until a treacherous night in the Dovermere sea caves leaves a group of her classmates dead and her as the only survivor. Now Emory is plagued by strange, impossible powers that no healer should possess.
\nPowers that would ruin her life if the wrong person were to discover them.
\nTo gain control of these new abilities, Emory enlists the help of the school’s most reclusive student, Baz - a boy already well-versed in the deadly nature of darker magic, whose sister happened to be one of the drowned students and Emory’s best friend. Determined to find the truth behind the drownings and the cult-like secret society she’s convinced her classmates were involved in, Emory is faced with even more questions when the supposedly drowned students start washing ashore - alive - only for them each immediately to die horrible, magical deaths.
\nAnd Emory is not the only one seeking answers. When her new magic captures the society’s attention, she finds herself drawn into their world of privilege and power, all while wondering if the truth she’s searching for might lead her right back to Dovermere . . . to face the fate she was never meant to escape.
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Emory refuses to lose Romie again. Her friend’s fate hangs in the balance as the monstrous Clover plans to use her as a sacrifice to steal power from the deity Atheia - and make himself into a proper god. To stop Clover, Emory needs the help of Atheia’s dark counterpart, Sidraeus. Yet this enigmatic deity cannot be trusted, and if Emory is to ally with him, she must invoke an ancient magic to keep him tethered to her side.
\nMeanwhile, in the divine workshop of the god of balance, Baz learns he has a role to play in the coming fight to save the crumbling worlds and their weakening magics. Yet all he can think of is Kai and the gruesome fate that awaits him at Clover’s side - a fate, the god tells him, that is beyond even his reach. But Baz is determined to save Kai, even if he has to rewrite time itself.
\nAs chaos reigns and the tides of a corrupted magic threaten to consume all, Emory and Baz must contend with mercurial gods, vengeful deities, and those hell-bent on eradicating Eclipse magic to save the people they love - and write an ending to their stories that defies fate itself.
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After going through the door that called to them both in dreams, Emory and Romie find themselves in the Wychwood, albeit a twisted, rotting version of it that feels wrong. Meanwhile, tensions flare at Aldryn College when the truth about Collapsings comes to light, sparking rumours of the Shadow’s imminent return. Determined to cross into the Deep, Baz and Kai go through the door - only to be pulled back in time instead.
\nAcross time and worlds, the four friends find their fates eerily interwoven with those of the heroes from Clover’s book. But when they encounter a deadlier enemy than they ever thought possible, they must decide for themselves how their story will end. Opening locked doors has a price - even for those who hold a key . . .
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The Sharaf family is the picture of success. Successful, rich, happy. They came to this country as refugees with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. And now, after years of hard work, they live in the most exclusive neighborhood, their growing family attending the most prestigious schools. Zorah, the eldest daughter, is the apple of her father’s eye.
\nWhen an unthinkable tragedy strikes, everyone is left reeling and the family is thrust into the court of public opinion. There is talk that behind closed doors the Sharafs’ happy household was anything but. Did the Sharaf family achieve the American dream? Or was the image of the model immigrant family just a façade?
\nLike a literary game of ping-pong, Good People compels the reader to reconsider what might have happened even on the previous page. Told through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, it is a riveting, provocative, and haunting story of family - sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, and the communities that claim us as family in difficult times.
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Maddie is living her best second life on a 40-acre sheep farm in rural Wisconsin. In addition to her passion for training sheepdogs - including her spirited border collie Jack - she sees all manner of dogs with behavioral problems ranging from biting to thunder phobia as part of her local practice. No stranger to trauma herself, Maddie has worked hard to recover from the ordeal of her previous marriage.
\nBut things take a turn when Maddie’s friend and mentor, George, is inexplicably killed by a rifle shot fired from the woods during a sheepdog trial. Maddie is devastated and also baffled - it’s not hunting season, and who could mistake a man, standing alone in a field, for a deer?
\nShe’s still reeling from George’s shooting when a shelter calls her for help with a German shepherd found half dead beside the highway who’s too aggressive to feed and care for. The dog flourishes at the farm, but when Maddie returns one day to find her house invaded, it’s clear that she has stumbled into a situation far more complex and sinister than she realised. And her romantic involvement with an enigmatic young shelter worker soon leads to even more trouble. As Maddie continues to search for answers to George’s death, it quickly becomes apparent that her own life is once again in danger . . .
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When the bodies of young courting couples start turning up in remote woodlands areas, Dr Kay Scarpetta's task as Chief Medical Examiner is made more difficult by the effects of the elements. Eight times she must write that the cause of death is undetermined.
\nBut when the latest girl goes missing turns out to be the daughter of one of the most powerful women in America, Kay finds herself prey to political pressure and press harassment. As she starts to investigate, she finds that vital evidence is being withheld from her - or even faked. And all the time a cunning, sadistic killer is still at large . . .
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Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has returned to Virginia as the chief medical examiner. She and her husband Benton are headquartered five miles from the Pentagon, in a post-pandemic world that's been torn apart by civil and political unrest.
\nJust weeks into the job, Scarpetta is called to investigate a woman's body which has been shockingly displayed on railroad tracks. As Scarpetta follows the trail, it leads unnervingly close to her own neighbourhood . . .
\nAt the same time, two scientists are found dead in a top-secret laboratory in outer space. Scarpetta is summoned to the White House Situation Room and tasked with finding out what happened. But even as she's working the first crime scene in space from the ground, an apparent serial killer strikes again. And this time, Scarpetta could be in greater danger than ever before . . .
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The case begins when a cargo ship arriving at Richmond, Virginia’s Deep Water Terminal from Belgium is discovered to be transporting a locked, sealed container holding the decomposed remains of a stowaway. The post mortem performed by the Chief Medical Examiner, Kay Scarpetta, initially reveals neither a cause of death nor an identification.
\nBut the victim’s personal effects and an odd tattoo take Scarpetta on a hunt for information that leads to Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon, where she receives critical instructions: go to the Paris morgue to receive secret evidence and then return to Virginia to carry out a mission. It is a mission that could ruin her career.
\nIn a story which crosses international borders, BLACK NOTICE puts Dr Kay Scarpetta directly in harm’s way and places her and those she holds dear at mortal risk.
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Six years ago Benton Wesley was tortured and murdered. Since then life has become exceedingly difficult for Kay Scarpetta. Serial Killer Jean Baptiste Chardonne, the unwanted son of a crime cartel family, tried to make Kay one of his victims. When he was caught, he tried to turn the situation around and Kay was forced to go before a grand jury to defend her reputation and honor. Her one time lover Jay Talley, Jean-Baptist's fraternal twin, used her to find out if Benton told her anything about the Chardonne crime cartel.
Unable to live in her precious Virginia home, Kay moved to Del Rey Beach, Florida working as a free lance consultant. Talley and his lover are fugitives living in the bayou near Baton Rouge where ten women in fourteen months have disappeared. Jean-Baptiste is days away from state execution and wants to see Scarpetta. Marino's son is a lawyer for the Chardonne family and is a threat to all of Kay's friends. All those people are being played by one of the world's most intelligent puppet masters.
The Body Farm - a research institute that tests the decomposition of corpses.
\nBlack Mountain, North Carolina: a sleepy little town where the local police deal with one homicide a year, if they're unlucky, and where people are still getting used to the idea of locking their doors at night.
\nBut violent death is no respecter of venue, and the discovery of the corpse of the corpse of an 11-year-old girl sends shock waves through the community. Dr Kay Scarpetta, Chief medical Examiner on a similar case in Virginia, is called in to apply her forensic skills to this latest atrocity, but the apparent simplicity of the case proves something of a poisoned chalice - until Scarpetta finds enlightenment through the curious pathologists' playground known as the Body Farm . . .
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Someone is stalking Beryl Madison. Someone who spies on her and makes threatening, obscene phone-calls. Terrified, Beryl flees to Key West - but eventually she must return to her Richmond home. The very night she arrives, Beryl inexplicably invites her killer in . . .
\nThus begins for Dr Kay Scarpetta the investigation of a crime that is as convoluted as it is bizarre. Why would Beryl open the door to someone who brutally slashed and then nearly decapitated her? Did she know her killer? Adding to the intrigue is Beryl's enigmatic relationship with a prize-winning author and the disappearance of her own manuscript.
\nAs Scarpetta retraces Beryl's footsteps, an investigation that begins in the laboratory with microscopes and lasers leads her deep into a nightmare that soon becomes her own.
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A woman has vanished while digging a dinosaur bone bed in the remote wilderness of Canada. Somehow, the only evidence has made its way to the inbox of Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, over two thousand miles away in Boston. She has no idea why. But as events unfold with alarming speed, Scarpetta begins to suspect that the paleontologist’s disappearance is connected to a series of crimes much closer to home: a gruesome murder, inexplicable tortures, and trace evidence from the last living creatures of the dinosaur age.
\nWhen she turns to those around her, Scarpetta finds that the danger and suspicion have penetrated even her closest circles. Her niece Lucy speaks in riddles. Her lead investigator, Pete Marino, and FBI forensic psychologist and husband, Benton Wesley, have secrets of their own. Feeling alone and betrayed, Scarpetta is tempted by someone from her past as she tracks a killer both cunning and cruel.
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The 'book of the dead' is the morgue log, the ledger in which all cases are entered by hand. For Kay Scarpetta, however, it is about to have a new meaning.
\nFresh from her bruising battle with a psychopath in Florida, Scarpetta decides it's time for a change of pace. Moving to the historic city of Charleston, South Carolina, she opens a unique private forensic pathology practice, one in which she and her colleagues offer expert crime scene investigation and autopsies to communities lacking local access to competent death investigation and modern technology. It seems like an ideal situation, until the murders and other violent deaths begin.
\nA woman is ritualistically murdered in her multi-million-dollar beach home. The body of an abused young boy is found dumped in a desolate marsh. A sixteen-year-old tennis star is found nude and mutilated near Piazza Navona in Rome.
\nScarpetta has dealt with many brutal and unusual crimes before, but never a string of them as baffling, or as terrifying, as the ones before her now. Before she is through, that book of the dead will contain many names - and the pen may be poised to write her own.
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On New Year’s Eve, the last day of Virginia’s bloodiest year since the Civil War, Dr. Kay Scarpetta plunges into the murky depths of the Elizabeth River to recover the very human remains of Ted Eddings, an investigative reporter. Was Eddings probing the Inactive Shipyard for a story, or simply diving for sunken trinkets? And why did Scarpetta receive a phone call from someone reporting the death before the police were notified?
\nWith the advent of a second murder - this one closer to home - the case envelops Scarpetta, her niece Lucy, and police captain Pete Marino in a world where both cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned detective work are critical offensive weapons. Together they follow the trail of death to a well of violence as dark and forbidding as the water that swirled over Ted Eddings.
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In the quiet of twilight, on an early autumn day, twenty-six-year-old Elisa Vandersteel is killed while riding her bicycle along the Charles River. It appears she was struck by lightning - except the weather is perfectly clear with not a cloud in sight. Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the Cambridge Forensic Center’s director and chief, decides at the scene that this is no accidental Act of God.
Her investigation becomes complicated when she begins receiving a flurry of bizarre poems from an anonymous cyberbully who calls himself Tailend Charlie. Though subsequent lab results support Scarpetta’s conclusions, the threatening messages don’t stop. When the tenth poem arrives exactly twenty-four hours after Elisa’s death, Scarpetta begins to suspect the harasser is involved, and sounds the alarm to her investigative partner Pete Marino and her husband, FBI analyst Benton Wesley.
She also enlists the help of her niece, Lucy. But to Scarpetta’s surprise, tracking the slippery Tailend Charlie is nearly impossible, even for someone as brilliant as her niece. Also, Lucy can’t explain how this anonymous nemesis could have access to private information. To make matters worse, a venomous media is whipping the public into a frenzy, questioning the seasoned forensics chief’s judgment and \"a quack cause of death on a par with spontaneous combustion.\"
When convicted killer Ronnie Joe Waddell is executed in Virginia's electric chair, he becomes what should be a routine postmortem case for Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta. But after Waddell's execution, the murders continue, as everyone connected to him begins to die - including a member of Scarpetta's staff.
Then, when crucial records disappear from her files, Scarpetta comes under fire for incompetence. Caught in a web of political intrigue, betrayed by those she trusted, Scarpetta must fight to free herself from murderous insinuations - and threats to her own life.
To save her career, Scarpetta soon finds herself retracing Waddell's bloody footprints, following a trail that might lead to long-hidden secrets deep within the state government. Either the truth will set her free - or unleash upon her a punishment both cruel and unusual.
Dr. Kay Scarpetta is working a highly suspicious death scene in a historic home in Cambridge, Massachusetts when an emergency alert sounds on her phone. A video link lands in her text messages, immediately begins playing . . . and seems to be from her niece Lucy. But how can it be? It’s clearly a surveillance film of Lucy taken almost twenty years ago.
\nAs Scarpetta watches she comes to grips with frightening secrets about her niece, whom she loves like a daughter. That first clip and others sent soon after raise dangerous implications that increasingly isolate Scarpetta and leave her confused, alarmed, and not knowing where to turn. She doesn’t know whom she can tell - not her FBI agent husband, Benton Wesley, or her investigative partner, Pete Marino. Not even Lucy.
\nCornwell launches these unforgettable characters on an intensely psychological odyssey that includes the bizarre death of a Hollywood mogul’s daughter, wreckage on the bottom of the sea in the Bermuda Triangle, a grisly gift left in the back of a crime scene truck, and videos from the past that threaten to destroy Scarpetta’s entire world and everyone she loves. The diabolical presence and singularly \"depraved heart\" behind what unfolds seems obvious - but strangely, not to the FBI. Certainly that’s the message they send when they start harassing Lucy and begin building a case that could send her to prison for the rest of her life.
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Massachusetts Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta has just returned from working one of the worst mass murders in U.S. history when she’s awakened at an early hour by Detective Pete Marino.
\nA body, oddly draped in an unusual cloth, has just been discovered inside the sheltered gates of MIT and it’s suspected the identity is that of missing computer engineer Gail Shipton, last seen the night before at a trendy Cambridge bar. It appears she’s been murdered, mere weeks before the trial of her $100 million lawsuit against her former financial managers, and Scarpetta doubts it’s a coincidence. She also fears the case may have a connection with her computer genius niece, Lucy.
\nAt a glance there is no sign of what killed Gail Shipton, but she’s covered with a fine dust that under ultraviolet light fluoresces brilliantly in three vivid colors, what Scarpetta calls a mineral fingerprint. Clearly the body has been posed with chilling premeditation that is symbolic and meant to shock, and Scarpetta has reason to worry that the person responsible is the Capital Murderer, whose most recent sexual homicides have terrorized Washington, D.C. Stunningly, Scarpetta will discover that her FBI profiler husband, Benton Wesley, is convinced that certain people in the government, including his boss, don’t want the killer caught.
It's a sunny morning in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also Dr. Kay Scarpetta's birthday. She's about to head to Miami for a vacation with Benton Wesley, her FBI-profiler husband, when she notices seven pennies on a wall behind their home. Is this a kids' game? And if so, why are all of the coins dated 1981 and so shiny they could be newly minted?
\nHer cell phone rings, and Detective Pete Marino tells her there's been a homicide five minutes away. A high school teacher was shot with uncanny precision as he unloaded groceries from his car. Yet no one heard or saw a thing.
\nLooking for more clues that only she can discover and analyse, Scarpetta embarks on the unsettling pursuit of a serial sniper who leaves no incriminating evidence except tiny fragments of copper . . .
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Christmas had never been a particularly good time for Dr Kay Scarpetta. Although a holiday for most, it always seem to heighten the alienation felt by society's violent fringe; and that usually means more work for Scarpetta, Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner. The body was naked, female and found propped against a fountain in a bleak area of New York's Central Park. Her apparent manner of death points to a modus operandi that is chillingly familiar: the gunshot wound to the head, the sections of skin excised from the body, the displayed corpse - all suggest that Temple Brooks Gault, Scarpetta's nemesis, is back at work.
\nCalling on all her reserves of courage and skill, and the able assistance of colleagues Marino and Wesley, Scarpetta must track this most dangerous of killers in pursuit of survival as well as justice - heading inexorably to an electrifying climax amid the dark, menacing labyrinths of the New York subway.
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Summoned to an unnerving, abandoned theme park to retrieve a body, Dr Kay Scarpetta is devastated to learn that the victim is a man she once loved. While teaching in Rome during the early days of her career, Scarpetta had an intense love affair with Sal Giordano that led to a lifelong friendship.
\nThe murder scene is bizarre, with a crop circle of petals around the body, and Giordano’s skin is strangely red. Scarpetta’s niece Lucy believes he was dropped from an unidentified flying craft. Scarpetta knows an autopsy can reveal the dead’s secrets, but she is shocked to find her friend seems to have deliberately left her a clue.
\nAs the investigators are torn between suspicions of otherworldly forces, and of Giordano himself, Scarpetta detects an explanation closer to home that, in her mind, is far more evil . . .
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Physically and psychologically bruised by her encounter with the killer Chandonne, Dr Kay Scarpetta has to leave her home in the hands of the police team investigating the attack. She finds shelter with an old friend, Anna Zenner, but it is not the haven of security she needs when she discovers that Anna has been sub-poenaed to appear before a Grand Jury which is investigating Scarpetta for murder. Kay knows she is being framed and she also knows she can trust no-one.
\nMeanwhile it appears that Chandonne killed a woman in New York before his murderous spree in Virginia, but when Scarpetta looks more closely into that case with the NY prosecutor Jaime Berger, proof of his guilt is far from certain - in fact she begins to believe that he may not be the perpetrator of any of the crimes he is accused of. As she follows the forensic trail to the real killer she gradually realises that someone has been spinning a web for years with the aim of entrapping her. Who is it, and why are they so desperate to be rid of her?
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Chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta is the reluctant star witness in a sensational murder trial when she receives shocking news. The judge's sister has been found dead. At first glance, it appears to be a home invasion, but then why was nothing stolen, and why is the garden strewn with dead plants and insects?
\nAlthough there is no apparent cause of death, Scarpetta recognises tell-tale signs of the unthinkable, and she knows the worst is yet to come. The forensic pathologist finds herself pitted against a powerful force that returns her to the past, and her time to catch the killer is running out . . .
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Dr Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner and consulting pathologist for the federal law enforcement agency ATF, is called out to a farmhouse in Virginia which has been destroyed by fire. In the ruins of the house she finds a body which tells a story of a violent and grisly murder. The fire has come at the same time as another, even more incendiary horror: Carrie Grethen, a killer who nearly destroyed the lives of Scarpetta and those closest to her, has escaped from a forensic psychiatric hospital. Her whereabouts is unknown, but her ultimate destination is not, for Carrie has begun to communicate with Scarpetta, conveying her deadly - if cryptic - plans for revenge.
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Kay Scarpetta has been training at the Dover Port Mortuary, mastering the art of virtual autopsy a groundbreaking procedure that could soon revolutionise forensic science. And it is not too long before these new skills urgently need to be put into practice. A young man drops dead, apparently from a heart condition, eerily close to Scarpetta s home. But when his body is examined the next morning, there are stunning indications that he may have been alive when he was zipped inside a pouch and locked inside the cooler.
\nWhen the revolutionary 3D radiology scans reveal more shocking details about internal injuries unlike any Scarpetta has ever seen, Scarpetta realizes that this is a case of murder and that she is fighting a cunning and uniquely cruel enemy. Now it is a race against time to discover who and why before more people die. But that time is running out.
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Under cover of night in Richmond, Virginia, a human monster strikes, leaving a gruesome trail of stranglings that has paralysed the city. Medical examiner Kay Scarpetta suspects the worst: a deliberate campaign by a brilliant serial killer whose signature offers precious few clues.
\nWith an unerring eye, she calls on the latest advances in forensic research to unmask the madman. But this investigation will test Kay like no other, because it's being sabotaged from within and someone wants her dead.
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Scarpetta, now freelancing with the National Forensic Academy in Florida, digs into a case more bizarre than any she has ever faced, one that has produced not only unusual physical evidence, but also tantalizing clues about the inner workings of an extremely cunning and criminal mind.
She and her team - Pete Marino, Benton Wesley, and her niece, Lucy - track the odd connections between several horrific crimes and the people who are the likely suspects. As one psychopath, safely behind bars and the subject of a classified scientific study at a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital, teases Scarpetta with tips that could be fact - or fantasy - the number of killers on the loose seems to multiply. Are these events related or merely random? And what can the study of one man's brain tell them about the methods of a psychopath still lurking in the shadows?
On the eve of a top secret space mission, Captain Calli Chase detects a tripped alarm in the tunnels deep below a NASA research center. A NASA pilot, quantum physicist, and cybercrime investigator, Calli knows that a looming blizzard and government shutdown could provide the perfect cover for sabotage, with deadly consequences.
As it turns out, the danger is worse than she thought. A spatter of dried blood, a missing security badge, a suspicious suicide - a series of disturbing clues point to Calli’s twin sister, Carme, who’s been MIA for days.
Desperate to halt the countdown to disaster and to clear her sister’s name, Captain Chase digs deep into her vast cyber security knowledge and her painful past, probing for answers to her twin’s erratic conduct. As time is running out, she realises that failure means catastrophe - not just for the space program but for the safety of the whole nation.
Kay Scarpetta has arranged to meet an inmate at the high-security Georgia Prison for Women. The prisoner is a convicted sex offender and the mother of a vicious and diabolically brilliant killer.
\nAgainst advice, Scarpetta is determined to hear this woman out - she believes she may hold some answers to the murder of her former deputy. But soon she finds connections to a string of grisly killings.
\nAs she learns more, Scarpetta is compelled to conclude that this is only the beginning of a terrifying terrain of conspiracy on an international scale. And she is the only one who can stop it . . .
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It is the week before Christmas. The effects of the credit crunch have prompted Dr Kay Scarpetta to offer her services pro bono to New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. But in no time at all, her increased visibility seems to precipitate a string of dramatic and unsettling events. She is asked live on the air about the sensational case of Hannah Starr, who has vanished and is presumed dead. Moments later during the same broadcast, she receives a startling call-in from a former psychiatric patient of Benton Wesley's.
\nWhen she returns after the show to the apartment where she and Benton live, she finds a suspicious package - possibly a bomb - waiting for her at the front desk. Soon the apparent threat on Scarpetta's life finds her embroiled in a deadly plot that includes a famous actor accused of an unthinkable sex crime and the disappearance of a beautiful millionairess with whom Scarpetta's niece Lucy seems to have shared a secret past . . .
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Leaving behind her forensic pathology practice in South Carolina, Kay Scarpetta takes up an assignment in New York City, where the NYPD has asked her to examine an injured patient in a psychiatric ward.
\nThe handcuffed and chained patient, Oscar Bane, has specifically asked for her, and when she literally has her gloved hands on him, he begins to talk - and the story he has to tell turns out to be one of the most bizarre she has ever heard.
\nHe says his injuries were sustained in the course of a murder . . . that he did not commit. Is Bane a criminally insane stalker who has fixed on Scarpetta? Or is his paranoid tale true, and it is he who is being spied on, followed and stalked by the actual killer? The only thing Scarpetta knows for certain is that a woman has been tortured and murdered - and that more violent deaths will follow . . .
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During the early hours of Christmas morning, chief medical examiner Dr Kay Scarpetta receives a chilling call. The Phantom Slasher has struck again.
\nThe serial killer has terrorized Northern Virginia for months. His pattern is to stalk with a sophisticated technology that enables him to invade his victims' homes and watch their every move. They wake up to a ghost-like hologram before being murdered in their beds.
\nScarpetta is summoned to Mercy Island, the site of a notorious psychiatric hospital where two people have been brutalized, one of them from Scarpetta's past. It soon becomes apparent that she could be next . . .
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In the aftermath of a NASA rocket launch gone terribly wrong, Captain Calli Chase comes face-to-face with her missing twin sister - as well as the startling truth of who they really are. Now, a top secret program put in motion years ago has spun out of control, and only Calli can redirect its course.
Aided by cutting-edge technologies, the NASA investigator and scientist turned Space Force pilot sets out on a frantic search for the missing link between the sabotaged rocket launch and her predetermined destiny . . . a search that someone else seems very interested in stopping.
From NASA to the Chase family farm, to the White House to distant orbits of space, Calli plays a high-stakes game of hide-and-seek with a cunning and ruthless adversary. One wrong move will unleash cataclysmic consequences reaching far beyond the boundaries of Earth.
Dr. Kay Scarpetta, now freelancing from South Florida, returns to the city that turned its back on her five years ago. Richmond, Virginia's recently appointed chief medical examiner claims that he needs Scarpetta's help to solve a perplexing crime. When she arrives, however, Scarpetta finds that nothing is as she expected: Her former lab is in the final stages of demolition; the inept chief isn't the one who requested her after all; her old assistant chief has developed personal problems that he won't reveal; and a glamorous FBI agent, whom Scarpetta dislikes instantly, meddles with the case.
Deprived of assistance from colleagues Benton and Lucy, who are embroiled in what appears to be an unrelated attempted rape by a stalker, Scarpetta is faced with investigating the death of a fourteen-year-old girl, working with the smallest pieces of evidence - traces that only the most thorough hunters can identify. She must follow the twisting leads and track the strange details in order to make the dead speak - and to reveal the sad truth that may be more than even she can bear . . .
Chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta finds herself in a Northern Virginia wilderness examining the remains of two campers wanted by federal law enforcement.
\nThe victims have been mauled beyond recognition, and other evidence is terrifying and baffling including a larger-than-life footprint.
\nAfter the most frightening body retrievals of her career, Scarpetta must discover who would commit murders this savage, and why.
\n
Dublin, Ireland and Richmond, Virginia: separated by thousands of miles - linked by murder. For Dr Kay Scarpetta a lecture stint in Ireland provides the perfect opportunity to find out if the murders on both sides of the Atlantic are indeed connected. Five dismembered, beheaded bodies were found in Ireland five years ago - now four have been discovered in the States.
\nBut the tenth corpse in Virginia is different. There are vital discrepancies, and an indication that the elderly victim was already seriously ill. A copy-cat killing. Ghoulish, perhaps, but not unusual. And then abject terror grips Scarpetta and her colleagues when the next body is found. The circumstances of death broadcast a clear and horrifying message: the killer is armed with the most lethal weapon on earth - smallpox.
\n
Loch Battersby is the kind of famous that everyone in Manhattan wants to be. The first female in the modeling industry to work exclusively as a male model, she’d become wildly successful by the age of twenty-six. Then in a single day, everything spins out of control, and she finds herself in Innis Harbor, on the windswept coast of Maine, where she’d spent her childhood summers.
\nAs the city smog finally clears, she realises that not everything in her life was as it seemed.
\nAmir Farzaneh built her Innis Harbor construction company from the ground up, despite the challenges of being a woman in a field dominated by men and ever-present opinions of her conservative Persian community. When she meets Loch, a dark secret from her past reappears, threatening the life she’d managed to build in spite of it and the happiness she’d started to believe could be hers.
\n
Picturesque retreat Valley of Rubies is intended only for the young women of Sanctity Covenant, but dark secrets lurk behind locked doors. The truth that emerges from the shadows is nothing less than terrifying.
\nAdel Rosse, an investigative journalist for Vanity Fair in the cutthroat world of Manhattan journalism, has just been handed an assignment that will catapult her career—if she can survive undercover at Valley of Rubies and find out what lies beneath the surface. Just as she starts to uncover the nefarious truth behind the shadowy cult running the organisation, she falls in love with the one woman who holds the key to the story . . . if only she knew the reason Adel was there was to write one.
\nGrace Waters is an old maid at twenty-six, at least by Covenant standards, and her annual idyllic summers spent as an instructor at Valley of Rubies are rocked by the sudden expectation that she must marry a man she despises at the end of the session. If she refuses, she risks being excommunicated - or worse - but a mysterious new writing instructor at camp makes her brave enough to wonder what would happen if she dared to write her own story.
\n
Bronwyn Charles had everything she'd always wanted; a handsome fiancée, a career she loved, and a brilliant group of friends she adored. That is until she ran into Jaq Bailey, her first love from boarding school, during a classmate's wedding in the English countryside. Suddenly, her perfect life started to seem like it belonged to someone else.
\nJaq came from a trailer park in east Texas but attended Stratford Academy in London on a math scholarship, where she met and fell in love with Bronwyn. Despite being forced apart by Bronwyn's wealthy family when their romance was discovered, Jaq never forgot the first girl she'd ever loved.After the wedding, they returned to the lives they once knew, but then are brought back together as dangerous secrets emerge and Bronwyn's life starts to unravel.
\nAre they strong enough to resist the forces still trying to keep them apart or will they lose each other again, this time forever?
\n
Sara Brighton, Savannah’s rising star in the competitive culinary scene, is devastated when her historic riverside restaurant burns to the ground. Finding herself without the creative chaos that has defined her world for the last decade, she impulsively decides to pack up her life and return to McCall, Idaho, the last place she remembers being truly happy.
\nSam Draper, head of the Lake Patrol division of McCall Police Department, is less than pleased to see another entitled tourist putting down roots in her picturesque hometown. Still, Sara surprises her by helping her swerve a professional disaster, and Sam returns the favor by teaching Sara to drive the ski boat languishing at the marina.
\nTheir chemistry heats up under the summer sun, and they are falling in love, at least until Sara decides to buy her late father’s iconic diner and turn it into yet another pretentious gastropub. Can they build a future amid the ghosts of the past that surround them?
\n
Overwhelmed by sudden fame, Lily Larimer retreats from LA and returns to McCall, the last place she's felt truly happy, even if that means seeing her ex, Sam, who seems to have found exactly what she wanted in life. Hoping to get her future back on track, Lily isn't looking for romance - not until she meets Alex, the gorgeous Cuban dance instructor at Lake Haven, Sam's newly opened lesbian retreat.
\nSam Draper, McCall's chief of police, and her wife, Sara, are ready to start their family, but their plans go awry when Sara experiences fertility issues. Summer heats up as they open Lake Haven, but cracks soon start to emerge with the realisation that what they want most, a family, might be just out of reach.
\nAs the secret evil lurking just beneath the surface of their sleepy little lake town emerges, all four women discover that sometimes happiness comes when you least expect it.
\n
Would you trade the life you have for a chance at a life you’ll love?
\nDevri Cahn is poised on the knife edge of getting everything she’s always wanted: an enviable rental empire in Brooklyn, guaranteed top-tier income, and elevated social status in the cutthroat world of the NYC lesbian elite. It’s finally all at her fingertips, so why does she want to leave it all behind?
\nSiobhan Byrne has returned to her tiny rural fishing village on the southern coast of Ireland with one goal: to buy the rundown cottages by the sea and turn them into slick, modern holiday rentals. After university in Dublin and some real-world experience, she’s determined to reach her goal of marketing Ireland’s undeniable pull to rich American tourists. It’s about time Ireland stepped into the twenty-first century, and she’s the woman for the job, especially if she gets filthy rich doing it.
\nDevri and Shiv never expected their feelings for each other to linger, but sometimes the search for what you’ve always wanted leads home, to the one you've always needed.
\n
When bodies start washing up on the shore in Salem Harbor, Massachusetts, an elite task force of FBI agents, profilers, and detectives join forces in a remote log cabin to decode the clues and stop the killer from targeting another victim.
\nAgent Tala Marshall overcame a childhood of deep generational wounds to become the country’s best criminal profiler. Now she faces her most challenging case yet, racing against the clock to profile the elusive killer before they strike again. She must partner with Wilder Mason, a local detective convinced that the murders are connected to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, and Tala builds a connection to the task force that helps her come to terms with her tumultuous past. But Wilder wants more and is determined to find the key to both the case and Tala’s guarded heart.
\nCan they find the undercurrent that connects Salem’s past and present before another victim washes to shore?
\n
Aisling Moss is balanced on the crystal edge of success as one of the most sought-after wedding planners in London . . . until one ill-advised move brings her career crashing down around her feet like a toppled tower of champagne flutes. The next day, a letter from a family solicitor arrives at her flat, and she has to choose between picking up the pieces of her career in London or taking the next flight to Wales to honor the wishes of someone she loves.
\nFinn Morgan was forced to end her fighting career after an injury sidelined her dreams of being a star in the cutthroat world of professional women’s boxing. Her job as a short-order cook in a Brooklyn diner certainly doesn’t compare, but it also doesn’t require her to think about what she wants to do with her life. Sleeping with her boss’s wife and spending quality time with a punching bag is all she needs, until the day she comes home to find a letter from across the pond, surrounded by a pool of warm sunlight, on her entry table.
\nOnce in Wales, long-kept secrets and unexpected demands surface for both Finn and Aisling, and they are forced to make hard decisions about their futures: Do they return to rebuild the lives they had, or take a chance on love in wild, windswept Wales?
\n
An unexpected letter sends a man and his wife into their pasts – and offers them both a shot at redemption.
\nAfter an involuntary retirement from his high-flying Hollywood career, Stafford Hopkins has retreated to a luxury estate on Maui, along with his wife Agnes, both grimly resigned to life in a paradise where neither feels fully at home. Stafford is ready to retreat into himself, too, when a letter arrives with shocking news.
\nStafford has been named guardian of four children he didn’t know: the grandchildren of his late childhood friend, Bobby Shepherd, whose ghost Stafford can no longer ignore. Returning to both the hardscrabble farming town and the dark secret he’d tried to forget for decades, Stafford is forced to confront his past in order to rebuild his future - and to redirect the fates of his family and the four young people suddenly in his care.
\nSlyly funny and deeply moving, The Golden Boy is a captivating debut about love, mercy, and second chances.
\n
The Price of Salt tells the riveting story of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, whose salvation arrives one day in the form of Carol Aird, an alluring suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce. They fall in love and set out across the United States, pursued by a private investigator who eventually blackmails Carol into a choice between her daughter and her lover.
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Patricia Highsmith - Price of Salt, The.jpeg", "mtime": 1782078849809.8694, "size": 469503, "cachedAt": "2026-06-21T23:30:12.735Z" }, "Patrick Hoffman - Friends Helping Friends": { "title": "Friends Helping Friends", "author": "Patrick Hoffman", "description": "Bunny Simpson is at his usual post behind the counter at a Denver cigarette store when his volatile friend Jerry presents an opportunity: 500 dollars to beat a guy up. Jerry has been dealing steroids to Helen, a lawyer, who is getting rapidly stronger just as she gets more erratic, vengeful towards her cheating ex-husband who she asks Jerry to attack. Bunny’s relatively solid conscience isn’t enough to stop him from biting - Ray, his beloved quasi-uncle, is behind on rent for the apartment they share, and Bunny will do anything to bail him out. And it’s a small favor; just friends helping friends. Right?
\nNot quite. When Bunny and Jerry arrested, Bunny finds himself faced with a choice: Go to jail for years, or take a plea deal to go undercover in a white nationalist group under federal investigation. Bunny obliges, and soon he finds himself witness to a new world of startling violence, toxic masculinity, and warped conceptions of discipline, religion, and patriotism. If these men discover that he’s a snitch, they’ll kill him without blinking. His life is at stake, but so is his freedom. Soon Bunny is embroiled in a criminal enterprise far darker than he could’ve imagined - a wasp’s nest with eyes on him from all sides - and he needs to penetrate it at its center.
\n
A memoir of the author's journey from an office job to restoring a cabin in the Pacific Northwest, based on his wildly popular Outside Magazine piece.
\nWit’s End isn’t just a state of mind. It’s the name of a gravel road, the address of a run-down off-the-grid cabin, 120 shabby square feet of fixer-upper Patrick Hutchison purchased on a whim in the mossy woods of the Cascade Mountains in Washington state.
\nTo say Hutchison didn’t know what he was getting into is no more an exaggeration than to say he’s a man with nearly zero carpentry skills. Well, used to be. You can learn a lot over six years or renovations.
\nCabin is the story of those renovations, but it's also a love story; of a place, of possibilities, and of the process of renovation, of seeing what could be instead of what is. It is a book for those who know what it’s like to bite off more than you can chew, or who desperately wish to.
\n
Every parent's nightmare: shots fired at their child's school.
\nFor FBI Agent Chase Adams, the terror is personal. The chaos unfolds at her niece's school, thrusting Chase into a high-stakes showdown. Partnered with her former flame, Profiler Jeremy Stitts, Chase faces the daunting task of negotiating with a killer before more lives are lost.
\nAs Chase digs deeper into the troubled past of the shooter, she uncovers disturbing clues suggesting he might not be acting alone. With each revelation, the danger intensifies, putting her own family at the center of the threat.
\nIn a race against time, Chase must rely on her instincts and skills to stop the carnage. The bonds she's forged are tested like never before, as the line between professional duty and personal sacrifice blurs.
\n
New York City, 14th Street Subway Station.
\n7:11 AM. Four teenage girls from St. Ignatius High School are smiling and sipping lattes while waiting for their train.
\n7:16 AM. All four girls receive a text message.
\n7:18 AM. The train enters the station.
\n7:19 AM. Cell phones in hand, the girls all jump onto the tracks.
\nWhat could possibly possess these happy, affluent girls to commit mass suicide? Is this another episode of malicious cyber-bullying, or is the real answer something far more sinister?
\nJoin FBI Special Agent Chase Adams as she tackles her most mind-bending mystery yet, one that leads her not just down a dangerous path, but one that might finally help her exorcise the demons that have haunted her for decades.
\nBut the big question is, will Chase be able to unravel the deadly secret behind why these teenagers committed suicide before others follow suit? Or is New York City destined to be overrun by a very different type of pandemic?
\n
In a world where personal value has been distilled down to how many likes, shares, and comments your posts receive, some people will do anything to become famous . . . And if you can't make it on talent or looks alone, sometimes you have to resort to more sinister means of acquiring the attention you crave.
\nWhat starts off as a simple assignment-finding a missing cat-ends up being one of the most volatile, and personal, cases of ex-NYPD Detective Damien Drake's career. Drawn back to the city that he both loves and loathes, Drake is once again thrust into the spotlight. This time, it's to search for a missing Tabby.
\nBut while, at the outset, this seems straight-forward and benign, he should know better; after all, with a child he hasn't seen since birth, an entire police department out to get him, and a PI Firm on the brink of financial ruin, nothing in his life is easy. But that won't stop him from doing the right thing, no matter the personal cost.
\nAs a general rule, you should never f**k with cats. Equally as dangerous is messing with Detective Damien Drake or his inner circle. Because if you piss Drake off, he's coming for you. And there aren't enough Internet trolls on earth to stop him.
\n
Two murders, hundreds of miles apart with identical MOs: a foul-smelling vagrant slits the throat of an innocent bystander and then puts the knife to their own flesh.
\nNormally, the FBI wouldn’t be called in for such cases, given that they’re already technically ‘solved’. But as a favor, Special Agents Floyd Montgomery and Tate Abernathy head to Columbus to investigate the first of two murder-suicides. What they find is disturbing, beyond the details of the individual crimes.
\nThe murders have more in common than just their MO. And when Agent Chase Adams arrives on the scene, things go from bizarre to downright disturbing. That’s before she becomes the target of a killer who just may, or may not, be already dead.
\n
Twenty years ago, more than a dozen children went missing from in and around the small town of Franklin, Tennessee. Chase's sister was one of them. Now, after two decades of silence, eight-year-old Lacy Anthony's bike is found at the end of the driveway. Only problem is, Lacy isn't riding it.
Chase fears that little Lacy's disappearance is only the start of another kidnapping spree. This time, Chase won't stop until she finds out who's responsible, no matter the cost.
She won't stop until she finds out what really happened to her sister all those years ago.
Stay out of trouble, they said. Lay low until things blow over, they suggested. Sound advice for Senior Medical Examiner Dr. Beckett Campbell, considering he was found hovering over the body of accused serial killer Craig Sloan, a bloody rock in his hand.
Sound advice, all of it.
Problem is, even a vacation in the Virgin Gorda isn't far enough for Beckett to escape his demons. It doesn't help that there's something strange happening on the island, something that has to do with bitter drinks and bikinis. Something that involves drug smuggling and a secret room full of women... women who are gagged and bound.
Beckett would like nothing more than to heed the sage advice of his colleagues, but he's not like them; he’s no ordinary Medical Examiner. Beckett has his own set of rules, guiding principles that take him places that the law simply refuses to go.
But this comes at a price. Every time Beckett acts on his urges, he leaves a little piece of himself behind . . . a piece of his soul that he can never get back.
When a drug addict finds the body of a man in the basement of an abandoned warehouse in NYC, Detective Damien Drake is called in to lead the murder investigation.
The victim was a philanthropist, father, doting husband, and wealthy junior partner in one of the cities most respected law firms; he seemed to have the perfect life.
Yet when Damien probes deeper, he realises that this man isn’t the first. His investigation soon connects this murder with two other killings of wealthy professionals - one in Montreal, the other in Detroit - all of which were emblazoned with the same bloody butterfly.
As Damien inches closer to uncovering the truth, the killer is closing in on him . . . and his family.
Damien’s last case cost him his wife and daughter. This case threatens not only his job, but his sanity, as well. And this time, the killer may even be smarter than he is.
One thing for certain is that if he doesn’t catch the killer soon, more people will die. The only question is, will the next victim be someone close to Detective Damien Drake?
\n
How do you catch a killer when no one believes that a crime has even been committed?
Detective Damien Drake is back, but after what happened with the Butterfly Killer, he’s no longer associated with the NYPD.
Now Drake heads his own PI firm, which specializes in dealing with paranoid housewives and rich suburbanites suspicious that their nannies are stealing their silverware.
That is until a visitor comes to him with a series of photographs of dead people. The problem is, no one believes that they have actually been murdered.
Some don’t even believe that the people in the photos are dead.
When the first body is found, Damien thinks that he finally has the lead they need to solve these crimes, which might be the workings of the most prolific serial killer in the history of the United States.
But finding the bodies is only the first step; the real difficulty is in determining the victims’ true Cause of Death . . .
For more than two decades, Detective Veronica Shade has tried to forget about the horrible massacre that befell her family. The problem is, with every new case, the colors return. Veronica is no normal detective; she sees the world differently than everyone else. Those who know her well say that her rare condition, multi-modal synesthesia, is a gift that makes her the best detective North Dakota has ever seen. Others chalk her nearly perfect closing rate up to sheer luck and careful case selection.
\nBut when a young girl is found hanging from the rafters of an abandoned barn in the small town of Denbra Heights, the town that Veronica grew up in, she is compelled to return to her roots. Hoping to reconnect with old friends, and quickly close another case, Veronica is shocked when she unearths a terrible truth that has links to her own past. But the question remains: why would this young girl commit suicide after being the lone survivor of a terrible accident?
\nThe local PD wants to wrap this case up and move on, but where they see suicide, Veronica sees murder. And when another young girl intentionally overdoses a few days later, Veronica fears that these deaths are only the start of something far more sinister.
\nAs Veronica Shade hunts for a brutal and sadistic killer, more of her forgotten past is revealed. Soon, it becomes clear that her special talent might not be a gift but a curse that prevents her from ever living a normal life. And it might just result in her being the killer’s next victim.
\n
After investigating two of the most disturbing and deadly cases of his career, PI Damien Drake is grateful when Roger Park steps through his doors and offers him work. The man's son, Kevin, has been arrested and charged with his business partner's murder.
\nSeems simple enough: prove Kevin’s innocence. But nothing is simple when it comes to Damien Drake.
\nNot only was Kevin found covered in his partner's blood, but he also confessed to the murder. It's a case that Drake knows that he should stay away from, but DSLH is hemorrhaging cash and they desperately need the work.
\nThe police don’t seem to care about the fact that there is no body. And as more confusing details are uncovered, Drake and his team find themselves ensconced in mystery that might just be too bizarre for even them to deal with.
\nBut one fact remains: somebody wants Kevin to remain behind bars. Someone who will kill to make sure that happens.
\n
As part of the FBI’s Children's Victims Unit, Chase thought she’d seen it all. That is, until a truck loaded with the bodies of children is discovered abandoned on a mountain pass in the middle of nowhere.
\nIt's a sight no one can unsee, and the more they look, the worse things get - signs point to the chilling use of a biological weapon.
\nAnd the person or group responsible for this macabre scene is only getting started.
\nNow, Chase is plunged into a race against evil, unearthing shadows and following trails that might not just lead to more dead children, but a sinister plot that has far greater implications for all of the United States.
\nTo her horror, Chase soon realises that the master plot that she’s uncovered places the lives of every man, woman, and child who lives there in jeopardy.
\n
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
\nOver the course of twelve years, thirty-one women have mysteriously gone missing, never to be seen again.
\nAnd no one seems to care. The missing women were from the fringes of society, illegals, street workers, junkies.
\nNo one cares, except for FBI Agent Chase Adams.
\nIn order to hunt one of the most sadistic serial killers in US history, Chase first needs to convince those in charge that he actually exists. And that includes a brooding partner, a man with whom she made a mistake, and a relationship that will never be the same.
\nWhen the New Mexico dust settles, it won’t be just the killer who has blood on his hands, but Chase as well. And the consequences will be devastating for everyone she has ever loved . . .
\n
FBI Special Agent Chase Adams is shocked when an old friend reaches out to her for help . . . she's even more surprised to find out that he’s been charged with murder.
\nChase doesn’t believe it, but it’s hard to ignore the mountain of evidence against him: GPS data showing his car was at the scene, gunshot residue on his right hand, and most damning of all, a video of him committing the murder.
\nThe problem? He’s never fired a gun and he doesn’t even know the man he’s supposedly killed. Things become even more muddled when the victim is revealed to oversee the creation of the most realistic metaverse ever. An exclusive virtual world full of possibilities, dreams, and nightmares.
\nAs Chase digs deeper into the crime, her already tenuous hold on reality begins to waver. Soon, she begins to question the very nature of reality. And before long, she finds herself questioning whether a crime has actually been committed . . . and where.
\nThe only undeniable fact is that if Chase doesn’t navigate the increasingly blurred lines between reality and the metaverse, she just might be the next victim in both worlds.
\n
FBI Special Agent Chase Adams has hit rock bottom.
Literally.
Found in a rock quarry in Virginia, Chase is battered, bruised, and clinging to life. It takes the collective efforts of the few people she hasn't burned over the years to drag her back to the land of the living and make sure that she stays there.
But their efforts aren't entirely altruistic.
While Chase undoubtedly needs her friends, the FBI also needs her. They have two dead bodies on their hands, but these aren't your regular run-of-the-mill vics. Two prominent politicians are shot dead in broad daylight in Washington, D.C., the only clue being the presence of a low flying drone at both scenes. One thing is clear, however; there will be more deaths if the killer's demands aren't met.
The only problem is, the FBI has no idea what the killer wants. Neither does the ATF nor the Secret Service. Which is why they need Chase and her special ability, her strange capacity to see through the eyes of the dead, in order to find out who's behind these murders before they strike again. But Chase isn't sure if she can handle going back into the field after what happened in Tennessee, let alone whether her talent will lead them anywhere.
Or if she can keep her own demons at bay long enough to catch another killer before they strike again.
More mockery.
More mayhem.
More murder.
Your favorite homicidal forensic pathologist Dr. Beckett Campbell is back!
\nAnd this time, it appears that he might have someone on his side, someone who understands him, someone who has his back no matter what.
\nBut there is no such thing as a free lunch, nor are there drugs without side-effects. Before he can wrap his head around what, exactly, he's gotten into, Beckett finds himself tangled in a messy web of lies, deceit, and most importantly of all, relationship troubles. Can he overcome the demons in his head and protect those he loves even if it means making the ultimate sacrifice?
\nOr will he continue to give in to his tingling fingers and the desire to render justice on those who deserve the ultimate punishment?
\n
Detective Damien Drake is from the old guard, and he doesn’t have time for reading, let alone staring at a glowing screen. But when gets called in to help with a case, he suddenly finds himself thrust into the world of digital books.
And one particular story, about murdered women, their lips painted bright red with their own blood, captivates not only Damien, but the entire world.
Except these books aren’t fiction, they’re real. But unlike other true crime stories, not all of these murders have been committed . . . yet.
Someone is targeting high-stakes poker games in Las Vegas, brutally murdering the players and stealing the cash. The last time Chase went undercover, things went terribly wrong.
\nThis time, the potential is far worse. But who else can infiltrate the best poker games in Vegas and stop the killer or killers before they strike again?
\n
There's a new brand of heroin flooding the streets, powder cut with a drug 25-times more powerful and deadly than fentanyl. And addicts can't get enough of it. Heralded as one of the deadliest drug epidemics in American history, accidental opioid overdoses have reached an all-time high in New York City. And that was before this new brand of heroin became available.
\nThe War Against Drugs might be a losing battle, but if someone doesn't do something soon, there'll be no one left to fight for. And yet, no one seems willing to step up and put everything on the line to follow the trail of tainted heroin to the source. Nobody . . . except for one man. Only ex-NYPD Detective Damien Drake has problems of his own, foremost of which is staying out of prison.
\nThis is no easy task, especially when his quest to end the import of this deadly substance puts him in the cross hairs of those driven by greed and obsessed with power -- those who also just happen to be some of the richest and most influential members of New York's elite.
\n
rake is a wounded man. He's given everything, and lost even more. In order to save what little remains of his soul, he has to chase a man to another continent in hopes of retribution. But despite his efforts, New York City still isn't safe - it appears that not all rats went down with the ship.
\nThe rag-tag team that Drake left behind-Screech, Hanna, and Leroy-must do their best to clean up his mess before they are targeted by a group of ruthless drug lords . . . who just also happen to be some of the richest and most powerful people in New York City.In the end, everyone must pay for their sins, even the most righteous.
\n
Beckett's dead and Suzan's been institutionalised.
\nAnd now, with the two of them out of the way, the twisted DNR Group is free to pursue their brutal agenda without opposition. What they didn't count on, however, is someone unexpected stepping up and trying to put a stop to them. I mean, there are more than seven billion people on this planet . . . somebody has to step up, don't they?
\nDON'T THEY?
\n
Hawkesbury's tranquility is shattered when Emily Dawson, a senior at the prestigious Tenbury Academy, is found brutally murdered at 'The Shack', a secluded hangout for the town's youth. What initially appears to be a simple crime of passion soon spirals into a complex case of deception when a shocking video surfaces, implicating more than just a jealous boyfriend.
\nFBI Agents Chase Adams and Tate Abernathy, part of a newly formed Children's Victim Unit, quickly find themselves tangled in a web of lies and betrayal that runs deeper than they could have ever imagined. Not even the town's local sheriff or The Academy’s headmaster are above suspicion and the deeper they dig, the more Emily's case unveils a series of heinous crimes that rock Hawkesbury to its poisoned core.
\nIn unearthing Hawkesbury's 'Filthy Secrets', Chase and Tate are playing with fire. Every unveiled secret not only threatens the CVU’s reputation but also puts their own family in the crosshairs. Can they catch the killer before the hunter becomes the hunted?
\n
FBI Agent Chase Adams' honeymoon takes a deadly turn when a storm diverts their flight to snowy Denver, far from their intended Hawaiian paradise. Determined to make the best of it, Chase and her family pivot to a ski vacation. But things go from bad to worse when a child goes missing.
\n\n
As a brutal blizzard traps them at Silver Peaks Resort, the serene snowscape transforms into a frozen nightmare. Cut off from the world with limited communication, a series of clandestine clues leads Chase to suspect that the missing child may not have just wandered off in the storm.
\n\n
When it comes to light that the exclusive five-star resort has a dark history, Chase fears the worst: that the blizzard might not be the only deadly force they have to contend with.
\n\n
There might be a killer in their midst - a killer who has called Silver Peaks Resort his hunting ground for more than three decades.
\n
With no evidence, no leads, and no clues, the local PD has no choice but to call in the FBI.
Enter FBI recruit Chase Adams. While she may be new to the Bureau, Chase is no rookie when it comes to murder. First a Narcotics Officer in Seattle, then a NYPD Detective, Chase has insight into the workings of some of the most demented minds of our society.
But this case will push even Chase to the limits–it’s like nothing she has investigated before. The killer has no MO. No particular victim type. No signature other than sheer brutality.
When a third body surfaces across the country, Chase realizes that she is on the hunt for a killer whose murder spree knows no boundaries.
Chase fears that these murders are only the beginning. But what she doesn’t know is that as she closes in on the murderer, he’s closing in on her.
And her family.
This might be FBI recruit Chase Adams’ first case, but if she doesn’t catch the killer soon, it may also be her last.
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The Thanksgiving atmosphere of a small town is shattered by a string of heinous crimes. Children are mysteriously disappearing, their body parts found in nightmarish arrangements within the town’s harvest festival attractions. FBI Agent Chase Adams is called onto the chilling scene, but what begins as a routine investigation quickly turns dire as she realizes that not only does the killer have an agenda, but he knows she's looking for him.
\nAs she navigates a confounding labyrinth of clues, Chase uncovers disturbing clues that hint at the killer's twisted logic. But with every reveal, a new trap is set and Chase realises she's not just pursuing a murderer - she's become the hunted.
\nTrapped in a maze with a cunning psychopath, her skills are pushed to the limit. As the line between hunter and prey blurs, Chase must use all her wits to survive and solve the case.
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It starts with a simple Happy Face drawn on a business card.
\nIt ends in murder.
\nDrake is hunting a murderer like no other: a coward who gets others to do his bidding for them, leveraging those they love to commit the worst possible crimes imaginable.
\nCatching one killer is difficult enough, but catching dozens when he is the primary target may be more than even the ignominious Damien Drake can handle.
\nOh, and first he needs to escape the clutches of a deranged cartel leader deep in the jungles of Colombia.
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Nearly two dozen girls are found dead in a shipping container on the shores of New York City. No one knows where they came from or how they got there. But one man is compelled to find out why they died, no matter the cost . . .
Ex-NYPD Detective Damien Drake has no business meddling in a police case, especially with what happened on the last one.
But when the only survivor from the shipping container shows up at Triple D Investigations' doorstep with a horrific tale of drug smuggling, human trafficking, and links to a dangerous cartel, there's no way he can turn her down . . . can he?
Beckett knows he should ignore the ignominious words of a previously unknown pastor that find their way into his inbox. He also knows that it's not just the wrath of a man in cloth he risks infuriating should he decide to investigate, but cutting his vacation short is guaranteed to piss off his girlfriend, Suzan Cuthbert.
\nBut when there's a serendipitous discovery of three murder victims in the church's backyard . . . well, the temptation becomes too great to resist. Beckett lost his faith years ago and has since done things that have landed him on the permanent naughty list.
\nBut that wont stop him from extracting his particular brand of justice, should the need arise. And it will . . . because trouble seems to follow the good doctor around like the plague.
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It's like a scene out of a painting: the place settings, the food, the decor, the ambience . . . everything is perfect.
\nAlmost everything. Every single member of the family sitting at the table has been murdered.
\nWhen FBI Agent Chase Adams arrives at the crime scene with her temprary partner Agent Alex Frost, the massacre raises more questions than answers.
\nWho staged this gruesome display? And why?
\nThe deeper she digs, the stranger it gets - especially when a missing child, presumed dead, resurfaces in the most shocking way imaginable.
\nThe past and present are colliding, time is folding in on itself, and Chase is running out of it. Because in this case, murder isn’t the only cycle repeating itself.
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Beckett is no ordinary pathologist, which is why he isn't surprised when a container with expertly removed organs arrive on his desk. What is alarming, however, is the note that accompanies them... the note that says that this is only the beginning, that more organs will be delivered on a weekly basis.
And that the author of the note knows Beckett's darkest secrets, the ones that set him apart from other pathologists and even society in general.
He can't go to the police, his colleagues, or even his closest friends for help.
It's up to him alone to figure out where the organs came from, and in the process he finds himself locked in a sadistic cat-and-mouse game with a brutal killer that has him reevaluating his own unique moral code. And when Beckett finally discovers the shocking truth about where the organs come from, it has him asking the question, with more than 100,000 people waiting for an organ in the United States and less than 15,000 donors, who deserves to live and who deserves to die?
Torn between loyalty and the law, things become even more complicated when the body of a brutally murdered man shows up, a bloody butterfly scrawled on his bare chest. Chase may have lost her 'touch', but her determination to seek out evil in this world has grown even stronger.
\nThe real question is, how far is she willing to go to bring her own blood to justice? And just how much is she willing to sacrifice along the way?
\nOne thing is for certain, however: this time, she can't do it alone.
\nThis time, Chase is going to have to bring back an old friend, someone with deep-rooted problems of his own, in order to finally snuff out her perpetual demons. If she lives long enough, that is.
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Ex-NYPD Detective Damien Drake thought that nothing could draw him out of 'retirement' and away from the Virgin Gorda . . . he was wrong. His friends back in New York need him and Drake can only ignore their requests for so long . . . even if returning to his home means prison time for himself.
Meanwhile, SLH Investigations is struggling to pay the bills, to keep from going bankrupt. Which is why, when a man appears on their doorstep with a gun in hand, Screech knows he should turn him away. But how can he judge others for what they've done, when his own actions are more than questionable? How can he turn away a potential murderer, when he himself has blood on his hands?
All Screech wants to do it is clear his conscience, but every decision he makes seems to put him further and further in debt. And if he isn't careful, Screech might just find himself owing some very bad men. Men who make the former mayor look like a bonafide Boy Scout.
The PI business is tough, especially in New York City. Keeping afloat while remaining morally and ethically sound? Well, that’s damn near impossible . . .
Dr. Beckett Campbell, the hero nobody knew they wanted, but the one everyone (kinda) needs.
\nLong before Craig Sloan, there was Larry Duffy, a vicious killer whom Beckett had the pleasure of meeting - and whose life he saved - in the ER. But as the saying goes, he who healeth can alsoeth taketh awayeth . . . or something like that.
\nWitness the birth of America's most beloved serial killer in this 'Just the Tip' Dr. Beckett Campbell Short.
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Protecting our world from scumbags and murderers, both living and the dead, is a tough job . . . especially for an accountant.
\nRobert, Shelly, and Cal are left battered, bruised, and reeling after the most recent attack at the Harlop Estate. Although they somehow, against all odds, managed to survive, they are left with more questions than answers. And things are about to get more complicated when the police start to inquire about all the missing bodies . . .
\nDesperate for answers, Robert soon finds himself pushed to the brink of his sanity trying to reunite his family. In the process, he recalls a dark time from his childhood, all that took place within the walls of a place known as Sacred Heart Orphanage. A place where they plan a final stand against their seemingly immortal enemies.
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Burning bodies is a sure-fire method of guaranteeing that that they don't come back...isn't it? No rest for the wicked; as Seaforth sinks, Cal and Shelly waste no time getting back at it.
\nWith Allan's technological expertise, they desperately try to find a less personal way to send the dead back to where they belong. But they soon find out that it's not just the dead that they have to worry about; they've made enemies among the living as well, vengeful enemies that are hellbent on extracting their pound of flesh.
\nMeanwhile, Robert digs even deeper into his past, drudging up secrets that make him question everything he knows about himself and about reality. As he struggles to come to terms with what he finds, it quickly becomes apparent that he isn't the only one searching for his secrets - people that he previously trusted are now willing to go to great lengths to make sure that his past remains unknown. And that says nothing of his adversaries, the ones that are congregating in a derelict crematorium, who are still desperate to open a rift in the Marrow, to unleash their personal hell on Earth.
\nOnly now they have recruited help. But the final secret that Robert discovers proves to be the most shocking of all, one that will have drastic consequences for both the living and the dead.
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They call him The Dollmaker. His victims are painted to look like dolls and are posed in lewd positions for everyone to see.
\nTwo victims and counting.
\nDetective Veronica Shade doesn’t need her sixth sense to know that the killer has no designs of stopping. His twisted agenda requires more victims, more dolls. But it’s not her case. And after what happened last time, all eyes are on her, making sure she does everything by the book. Breaking even the smallest rule might mean losing her job.
\nOr worse. But with a killer on the loose, and a bear running rampage, how can Veronica just sit by and do nothing?
\nShe can’t.
\nOnce again, she turns to her special gift, her multi-modal synesthesia, to try and help her solve the case. But her condition has proven unreliable in the past, and Veronica soon begins to question whether it is more of a hinderance than a gift. And going rogue has put her directly in the path of a budding serial killer, who’s dead set on turning Veronica Shade into his next doll.
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Sometimes prisons are designed to keep things out as much as they are to keep people in . . .
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Robert, Shelly, and Cal barely made it out of the Seventh Ward with their lives, let alone their sanity. But now, flush with cash, they have settled into a comfortable routine.
Underlying it all, however, are nagging questions that continue to bother all three, questions that can't be ignored once Robert starts experiencing dreams - dreams of a prison isolated on an island with ties to Leland Black. Before long, he comes to the uncomfortable conclusion that their encounters with ghosts are only the beginning.
Robert believes that they all have a role to play in something larger, something with even greater consequences than what he has already lost.
Now he needs to decide how much he is willing to risk to uncover the truth about his friends and family.
Not all hospital wards were built to heal people . . .
\nA grieving Robert Watts has little down time. Though he now has a house to live in, and friends new and old to join him, his financial woes have not been resolved.
And he has yet to come to terms with the things that he has seen . . . and experienced.
That is until Rob, Shelly, and Cal receive a visit from the mysterious Sean Sommers who offers them another job. Only this time, it's not a haunted estate that they are commissioned to purge, but an abandoned hospital ward . . . The Seventh Ward, a place that has been locked for decades, trapping more than just a horrible history within.
This time, Robert finds himself narrowly tight-rope walking between life and death, the living and the dead. The problem is, Robert isn't sure which side he falls on anymore . . .
The first victim was suffocated using a garbage bag. The second with plastic wrap.
\nThe third was decapitated, the head shoved inside a grocery bag.
\nAs Chase develops her profile, she begins to fear that she may not be chasing just one serial killer, but two . . . one of whom lurks in the shadows, always just one step ahead of her.
\nOne who is watching her every move.
\nRobert Watts is having the worst day of his entire life: first he's laid off, then he finds out that his wife is having an affair . . . with his boss no less. And that's only the beginning.
\nBefore the month is out, Robert finds himself alone to raise his daughter with no money, no job, and a house that is minutes from being repossessed. Just when he hits rock bottom, a strange visitor arrives at the doorstep of his soon to be foreclosed house with a letter from an Aunt he didn't know existed.
\nThe offer is simple: look after Aunt Ruth during her dying days, and in return Robert will be bequeathed the Harlop Estate in which she currently resides. It's a no brainer and Robert jumps at the opportunity, equally motivated by the prospect of financial security as he is for a fresh start.
\nProblem is, it only takes a few nights in the Harlop Estate before he begins to question Aunt Ruth's claims that they are the home's only inhabitants . . .
\nIt's the scratching he hears during the night, the voices that he can barely make out over the constant rain, and then there's the girl with the rat . . .
\nWith their house foreclosed and their bank accounts liquidated, Robert and his daughter Amy desperately need a place to live. But the question Robert soon finds himself struggling with is whether living in the Harlop Estate is worth it . . . and if he can survive until Aunt Ruth passes to collect his inheritance.
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Everyone will make a sacrifice in the battle between the living and the dead . . .
As the smoke clears over Sacred Heart Orphanage, Cal and Rob find themselves wounded and missing several of their own. To make things worse, the demon called The Goat, the Overlord of the Marrow, has managed to claw his way back to the land of the living.
But he won’t stop there: The Goat is hellbent on releasing all of the evil trapped in the Marrow, even if it means murdering more of Rob’s friends and family in the process.
In the meantime, Cal is drawn back to a past he thought long forgotten and one he isn’t prepared to remember.
Rob and his ragtag group of ghostbusters are in way over their heads, and just when they think things can’t get any worse, they are put to another impossible decision. This time, however, the choices they make won’t just affect themselves, but every being on earth.
Including the dead ones.
When a body is found - dissolved in acid, a ring of finger bones cemented to the skull - Drake is floored.
\nFor over a year he's been telling the NYPD that the man he had killed, the man who had taken his partner's life, wasn't the real Skeleton King.
\nNobody believed him.
\nEven now, with a new skeleton as proof, Drake is met with resistance.
\nA copycat killer, they say. A deranged fan of Peter Kellington, perhaps. But Drake knows differently. He knows that this is the work of the original Skeleton King, and he is driven to seek revenge for his dead partner.
\nOnly, like before, he has no suspects.
\nDrake is on his own, trying to stop a sadistic murderer before he strikes again. Seeking answers, he turns to an unlikely ally to catch the Skeleton King once and for all: another serial killer that he put away during his time as an NYPD detective. But it doesn't take long before Drake starts to wonder who's asking the questions, and who's providing the answers.
\nAnd if he can catch a killer with his sanity still intact.
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He hides in the darkness, waiting. Watching. Lusting. Soon, he will strike. And when he does, no one is safe. Not the media, the police, and least of all a small-town detective.
\nCatching the notorious Dollmaker has made detective Veronica Shade something of a cult hero. Encouraged by her peers, she reluctantly accepts an invitation to speak of her experiences. But a mysterious caller quickly sours the experience by revealing secrets of Veronica’s past. Secrets that only a select few know. And then the madman decides to serenade her with a song.
\nThis isn’t the first time Veronica is haunted by a children’s tune, and she’s determined not to take the threat lightly. Five, six, I crossed the River Styx. Seven, eight, I’ve sealed your fate.
\nWhen people close to her start winding up dead, Veronica realises that she’s made a terrible mistake. And that she is being hunted by a killer whose deadly symphony of violence echoes the chilling sound of murder.
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But what the media and guests don't expect is that one of these outfits isn't made from cloth or denim. It's made out of human skin.Out of their depths, the NYPD recruits Private Investigator Damien Drake to hunt a serial killer the media dubs 'The Straw Man'.
\nBut unlike many of the sadistic murderers Drake has pursued during his time first in the NYPD and now as a PI, The Straw Man doesn't bother hiding the bodies of his many victims.On the contrary, The Straw Man likes to show them off like morbid pieces of art.
\nNot only that, but someone on Drake's team has encountered The Straw Man before and barely escaped with their life. This time, more people are going to die it's only a matter of figuring out how many . . .
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Beckett's back, but this time he isn't worried about a new tattoo . . . unless it's a prison tat, that is.
\nHe should have seen this coming; after all, a person can only go around extracting his unique brand of justice for so long without drawing unwanted attention.
\nCaught between a scalpel and a bedpan, only an unlikely ally can help keep him out of prison. But this will require revealing his true self, including the icky parts that Beckett has never shown to anyone. This also means putting the people he cares for in danger. . . . not just from harm, or potentially the law, but of becoming like him.
\nBesides, there's barely enough room in this world for one sarcastic, crazy doctor, let alone a second.
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A countrywide manhunt is on, but while Chase’s focus is singular, a mysterious video of an apparent dead teenage boy arises, making it clear that Felix isn’t the only one in danger.
\nChase and Tate’s relentless investigation reveals a grim tally of bodies, pointing to a conspiracy within the US government.
\nAs the case unravels, it’s clear that it’s too big for them to tackle alone. But who do you turn to when some of the prime suspects in a string of murders are the very people who typically offer to help?
\nJust how far are these Washington elites willing to go to ensure that the truth doesn’t come out?
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Detective Veronica Shade’s life is in freefall. Her partner is behind bars. Her boyfriend just lost his badge. Her retired father is dating her psychiatrist. And that’s the easy part.
\n\n
When an explosion rips through the local mall, sending a toxic cloud over Greenham, panic spreads. Terrorist attack? Biological weapon? Or something even worse?
\n\n
As the dust settles in this explosive final chapter of the bestselling series, Veronica is left with no one to trust. Corruption runs deep and stretches higher than she ever imagined. As she digs for the truth, she unearths something far more personal: her entire life has been a lie.
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But someone is determined to make sure Veronica's secrets don’t stay buried. And they’ll stop at nothing to expose everything she’s tried to keep hidden . . . even if it destroys her in the process.
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Eleven years ago, Los Angeles was terrorised by The Sandman, a serial killer who claimed at least twelve women’s lives. Young FBI Agent Constantine 'Con' Striker stopped him, but not before enduring a devastating personal loss - his twin sister, Valerie, was one of the victims.
\nOr so he believes.
\nEven after a decade on death row and confessing to twelve murders, The Sandman denies knowing Valerie Striker. Desperate for closure, Con demands the killer reveal where his sister’s remains are buried. But The Sandman refuses to talk.
\nCon’s obsession with finding his sister has cost him nearly everything he his marriage is in tatters, his career is on the brink, and he’s burned through partners faster than he changes his clothes.
\nNow, rookie agent Alex Frost joins Con on a new stopping the piracy of Hollywood films before their release. As they investigate, they uncover a web of darkness and complexity far beyond simple theft . . . and more deadly.
\nWhen they discover a connection between the pirated films and Valerie’s disappearance, Con believes he’s on the brink of finally finding out the truth.
\nBut the stakes have never been higher.
\nCon’s relentless pursuit of answers risks not only his sanity but also Alex’s life. And as the pieces come together, it soon becomes apparent that he may soon be searching for his partner’s body in addition to his sister’s.
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When a human femur engraved with an ominous symbol washes ashore at Laguna Beach, California, FBI Agent Chase Adams and the CVU are thrust into one of their darkest investigations yet.
\nThe bone, corroded by six months in the unforgiving ocean, is revealed to belong to a ten-year-old girl - a girl who has no missing persons report, no grieving family, and no history that ties her to the shores of Laguna Beach.
\nAs Chase teams up with local agent Alex Frost, they unravel cryptic, bone-chilling clues carved by a murderer whose obsession with the sea and its legends runs as deep as the abyss. But as they close in, the killer’s trail grows darker, and the tides begin to turn in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
\nWith each new twist, Chase is pushed closer to a truth more horrifying than she imagined - and a predator who is already preparing to claim their next victims: Chase and Frost.
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In blood-soaked letters, the word 'Sinner' drips from the walls. Victims lie mangled beneath, their bodies grotesquely contorted to resemble angels.
\nVeronica Shade returns, now joined by a fresh partner. Half a year has passed since the unforgettable face-off on Donovan's Bridge, and the scars still linger as Veronica grapples with the shattering truth about those closest to her. And about herself. But her battle with personal demons must take a backseat, for a ruthless murderer stalks Bear County, leaving behind only sinners in their wake.
\nHowever, in a world where everyone harbors sins, anyone could be next - including the tenacious Detective Veronica Shade. And maybe, just maybe, she's the killer's ultimate prize.
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For readers of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs and Chris Miller’s Chip War, a riveting look at how Apple helped build China’s dominance in electronics assembly and manufacturing only to find itself trapped in a relationship with an authoritarian state making ever-increasing demands.
\nApple isn’t just a brand; it’s the world’s most valuable company and creator of the 21st century’s defining product. The iPhone has revolutionised the way we live, work, and connect. But Apple is now a victim of its own success, caught in the middle of a new Cold War between two superpowers.
\nOn the brink of bankruptcy in 1996, Apple made a strategic move to offshore its operations. By 2003 it was being lured to China by the promise of affordable labor that allowed the company to churn out premium products at an unprecedented scale. For years, the Silicon Valley giant sent thousands of America’s top engineers to China and spent tens of billions of dollars on equipment, spurring the transformation of a cheap labor country into the world’s most sophisticated electronics manufacturing powerhouse. Fast forward to 90% of iPhone assembly happens in China. Despite capturing less than 20% of the global smartphone market, Apple’s operations allow it to rake in 80% of the sector’s profits.
\nYet Beijing has tightened its grip, incentivising Apple to work with more Chinese companies in its production, exerting control over what Chinese users can do on the iPhone, and requiring customer data for its citizens to be stored in state-backed data centers. The visionary company that Steve Jobs dreamed of finds itself in a tight spot. No other nation can match China’s quality, volumes, and flexibility as a producer of nearly half a billion iGadgets yearly, and Apple isn’t keen to abandon a market where it generates more profit than even China’s own tech giants.
\nInvestigative journalist Patrick McGee draws on 200 interviews with former Apple executives and engineers to reveal how Cupertino’s choice to anchor its supply chain in China has increasingly made it vulnerable to the regime’s whims. Both an insider’s historical account and a cautionary tale, Apple in China is the first history of Apple to go beyond the biographies of its top executives and set the iPhone’s global domination within an increasingly fraught geopolitical context.
The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions - Harvard; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Oxford; the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations in the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing Oxycontin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis-an international epidemic of drug addiction which has killed nearly half a million people.
\nIn this masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe exhaustively documents the jaw-dropping and ferociously compelling reality. Empire of Pain is the story of a dynasty: a parable of 21st century greed.
A spellbinding account of a family devastated by the sudden death of their nineteen-year-old son, only to discover that he had created a secret life which drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies beneath London’s glittering surface.
\nIn the early morning of November 29th, 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of MI6, Britain’s spy agency, captured video of a young man pacing back and forth on a high balcony of Riverwalk, a luxury tower on the bank of the river Thames. At 2:24 AM he jumped into the river.
\nIn a quiet London neighborhood several miles away, Rachelle Brettler was worried about her son. Zac had told her that he had gone to stay with a friend, but then he did not come home. Days later, a police car pulled up and two officers relayed the dreadful news: her son was dead.
\nIn their unbearable grief, Rachelle and her husband, Matthew, struggled to understand what had happened to Zac. He had his troubles, but in no way seemed suicidal. As they would soon discover, however, there was a lot they did not know about their son. Only after his death did they learn that he had adopted a fictitious alter-ego: Zac Ismailov, son of a Russian oligarch and heir to a great fortune. Under this guise, Zac had become entangled with a slippery London businessman named Akbar Shamji, and a murderous gangster known as “Indian Dave.”
\nAs the Brettlers set about investigating their son’s death, they were pulled into a different and more dangerous London than the one they’d always known, and came to believe that something much more nefarious than a suicide had claimed Zac’s life. But to their immense frustration, Scotland Yard seemed unable - or unwilling - to bring the perpetrators to justice.
\nIn a bravura feat of reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe chronicles the Brettlers’ quest, peeling back layers of mystery and exposing the seedy truths behind the glamorous London of posh mansions and private nightclubs, a city in which everything is for sale, and aspirational fantasies are underwritten by dirty money and corruption.
\nLondon Falling is a mesmerising investigation of an inexplicable death and a powerful narrative driven by suspense and staggering revelations. But it is also an intimate and deeply poignant inquiry into the nature of parental love and the challenges of being a parent today, a portrait of a family trying to solve the riddle not just of how their son died, but of who he really was in life.
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In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it.
\nIn 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress - with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.
\nPatrick Radden Keefe's mesmerising book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.
\nPatrick Radden Keefe writes an intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.
In Bonhomie, Ohio, a stolen moment of passion, sparked in the exuberant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, binds Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, to Margaret Salt, a woman trying to obscure her past. Cal’s wife, Becky, has a spiritual gift: She is a seer who can conjure the dead, helping families connect with those they’ve lost. Margaret’s husband, Felix, is serving on a Navy cargo ship, out of harm’s way - until a telegram suggests that the unthinkable might have happened.
\nLater, as the country reconstructs in the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie - but nothing stays buried forever in a small town. Against the backdrop of some of the most transformative decades in modern America, the consequences of that long-ago encounter ripple through the next generation of both families, compelling them to reexamine who they thought they were and what the future might hold.
\nSweeping yet intimate, rich with piercing observation and the warmth that comes from profound understanding of the human spirit, Buckeye captures the universal longing for love and for goodness.
Bryan Benson is the Ark’s greatest living sports hero, enjoying retirement working as a detective in Avalon, his home module. The hours are good, the work is easy, and the perks can’t be beat.
\nBut when a crewmember goes missing, Bryan is thrust into the centre of an ever-expanding web of deception, secrets, and violence that overturns everything he knows about living on the Ark and threatens everyone aboard.
\nAs the last remnants of humanity hurtle towards their salvation, Bryan finds himself in a desperate race to unravel the conspiracy before a madman turns mankind’s home into its tomb.
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A new generation comes of age eighteen years after humanity arrived on the colony planet Gaia. Now threats from both within and outside their Trident threaten everything they've built.
The discovery of an alien installation inside Gaia's moon, terrorist attacks and the kidnap of a man's daughter stretch the community to breaking point, but only two men stand a chance of solving all three mysteries before the makeshift planetary government shuts everything down.
Against all odds, the Ark and her thirty-thousand survivors have reached Tau Ceti G to begin the long, arduous task of rebuilding human civilisation. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Tau Ceti G’s natives, the G’tel, are coming to grips with the sudden appearance of what many believe are their long-lost Gods.
\nBut first contact between humans and g’tel goes catastrophically wrong, visiting death on both sides. Rumors swirl that the massacre was no accident. The Ark’s greatest hero, Bryan Benson, takes on the mystery.
\nPartnered with native ‘truth-digger’ Kexx, against both of their better judgment, Benson is thrust into the heart of an alien culture with no idea how to tell who wants to worship him from who wants him dead.
\nTogether, Benson and Kexx will have to find enough common ground and trust to uncover a plot that threatens to plunge both of their peoples into an apocalyptic war that neither side can afford to fight.
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The epic of the American West became a tale of progress, redemption, and glorious conquest that came to shape the identity of a new nation. Over time a darker story emerged - one of ghastly violence and environmental spoliation that stained this identity.
\nIn The Undiscovered Country, Paul Andrew Hutton strips away the layers of myth to reveal the true story of this first epoch of American history. From the forests of Pennsylvania and Kentucky to the snow-crested California Sierras, and from the harsh deserts of the Southwest to the buffalo range of the Great Plains, Hutton masterfully chronicles a story that defined America and its people. From Braddock’s 1755 defeat to the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, Hutton unfolds a grand narrative steeped in romantic impulses and tragic consequences.
\nHutton uses seven main protagonists - Daniel Boone, Red Eagle, Davy Crockett, Mangas Coloradas, Kit Carson, Sitting Bull, and William “Buffalo Bill” Cody - as the biographical threads by which to weave a tapestry across seven generations, revealing a story of heroic conquest and dark tragedy, of sacrifice and greed, and of man-made wonders and environmental spoliation on an epic scale.
\nThe American frontier movement has proven eternally fascinating around the world - the subject of countless books, paintings, poems, television shows, and films. The Undiscovered Country reveals the truth behind America’s great creation myth.
Paul Bierman’s discovery that Greenland’s ice sheet melted when Earth was no warmer than it is today sounds an alarm for our planet.
\nIn 2018, frozen soil from the bottom of the world’s first deep ice core, lost for decades, reappeared in Denmark. When geologist Paul Bierman and his team analyzed this material, it led them to a startling Greenland’s ice sheet melted naturally 400,000 years ago. That meant the ice was unstable even without human interference. In When the Ice Is Gone , Bierman traces the story of this pivotal discovery, delving into the nuances of polar science and arctic history.
\nHe explains how scientists, across more than a century, learned to read the language of ice and snow. He describes how engineers drilled the ice core at Camp Century, a Cold War military base built inside the ice sheet. And he explores the cataclysmic events the discovery portends if we don’t address climate change, urging us to heed the warning from the ice and understand Greenland’s significance for our collective future.
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Only Native Americans have held the political identity of being citizens of nations within a nation. After the American Revolution, they had to decide whether gaining United States citizenship would help to preserve their rights and property or be used to take them away - and they found out that either decision could end in loss.
\nTo understand the profound consequences of their choices, historian Paul C. Rosier creates a sweeping portrait of the broad history of Indigenous Americans. Indigenous Citizens is unique in its breadth, its focus on the evolution of Native Americans' dual citizenship, and its coverage of Indigenous issues from the founding of the United States through the twenty-first century.
\nThis masterful work highlights Native people’s efforts to preserve their tribal sovereignty and to secure the civil rights afforded to other Americans. In it, Rosier chronicles Native Americans’ extraordinary resistance to colonialism, forced removals from ancestral homelands, and coercion into Indian Boarding Schools, even as the United States government broke treaty after treaty. He explores how Native people defended their right to be both Native and American. Native Americans differ religiously, culturally, and politically. But, as Rosier weaves together their experiences negotiating tribal, state, and national status, he reveals their vision for a country that could live up to the ideals of its Constitution. Through military service, activism, and political writings, Native people have long championed their belief in a United States of civil liberties and called on it to honor its legal obligations.
\nIn Indigenous Citizens, Rosier demonstrates how their campaigns for justice have helped to expand, redefine, and strengthen democratic freedoms for all American citizens, even as the rights of their citizenship continue to be contested.
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While on vacation, Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch receives a strange summons from Billy Cronk, one of his oldest friends and a man he had to reluctantly put behind bars for murder. Billy wants him to investigate a new female prison guard with a mysterious past, and Mike feels honor-bound to help his friend. But when the guard becomes the victim in a brutal attack at the prison, he realises there may be a darker cover-up at play - and that Billy and his family might be at risk.
Then Mike receives a second call for help, this time from a distant mountain valley where Shadow, a wolf-hybrid he once cared for, has been found shot by an arrow and clinging to life. He searches for the identity of the bowman, but his investigation is blocked at every turn by the increasingly hostile community. And when Billy’s wife and children are threatened, Mike finds himself tested like never before. How can he possibly keep the family safe when he has enemies of his own on his trail?
Torn between loyalties, Mike Bowditch must respond in the only way he knows how: by bending every law and breaking every rule to keep his loved ones safe and the true predators at bay.
Maine game warden Mike Bowditch has been sent into exile, transferred by his superiors to a remote outpost on the Canadian border. When a blizzard descends on the coast, Bowditch is called to the rustic cabin of a terrified couple. A raving and half-frozen man has appeared at their door, claiming his friend is lost in the storm.
\nBut what starts as a rescue mission in the wilderness
soon becomes a baffling murder investigation. The dead man is a notorious drug dealer, and state police detectives suspect it was his own friend who killed him. Bowditch isn’t so sure, but his
vow not to interfere in the case is tested when he finds himself powerfully attracted to a beautiful woman with a dark past and a troubled young son. The boy seems to know something about what really happened in the blizzard, but he is keeping his secrets locked in a cryptic notebook, and Mike fears for the safety of the strange child.
Meanwhile, an anonymous tormentor has decided
to make the new warden’s life a living hell. Alone and outgunned, Bowditch turns for assistance to his old friend, the legendary bush pilot Charley Stevens. But in this snowbound landscape - where smugglers wage blood feuds by night - help seems very far away indeed. If Bowditch is going to catch a killer, he must survive on his own wits and discover strength he never knew he possessed.
In the aftermath of a family tragedy, Mike Bowditch has left the Maine Warden Service and is working as a fishing guide in the North Woods. But when his mentor Sgt. Kathy Frost is forced to kill a troubled war veteran in an apparent case of \"suicide by cop,\" he begins having second thoughts about his decision.
\nNow Kathy finds herself the target of a government inquiry and outrage from the dead soldier's platoon mates. Soon she finds herself in the sights of a sniper, as well. When the sergeant is shot outside her farmhouse, Mike joins the hunt to find the mysterious man responsible. To do so, the ex-warden must plunge into his friend's secret past - even as a beautiful woman from Mike's own past returns, throwing into jeopardy his tentative romance with wildlife biologist Stacey Stevens.
\nAs Kathy Frost lies on the brink of death and a dangerous shooter stalks the blueberry barrens of central Maine, Bowditch is forced to confront the choices he has made and determine, once and for all, the kind of man he truly is.
Maine game warden Mike Bowditch is fighting for his life. Ambushed on a darkened winter road, he plunges his Jeep into a frozen river and must escape drowning beneath the ice. Surviving the crash is only the first challenge he faces in a nightlong battle to stay alive and one step ahead of his unknown, heavily armed pursuers.
\nTo outwit them and return to his friends and family, none of whom knows where he is, Bowditch must dissect the hours leading up to the ambush and solve two riddles: who are these people who desperately want him dead and what has he done to incur their wrath?
On the evening of their engagement party, Maine Game Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch and Stacey Stevens witness what seems to be a hit-and-run speedboat crash on a darkened lake. When they arrive at the scene, their spotlight reveals a gruesome sight: a severed arm beneath the surface.
\nAs day breaks, the warden dive team recovers not one but two naked corpses: the dismembered man and the married woman with whom he was having an affair.
\nMike begins to suspect the swimmers' deaths were not a senseless accident but a coldly calculated murder. Alone among his fellow officers, Mike begins to sense the involvement of a trained professional, smarter and more dangerous than any enemy he has faced.
\nAs Mike and Stacey get closer to identifying the killer, their own lives are suddenly put on the line, leading to a confrontation designed to silence them forever.
A call for help from a former colleague leads Maine game warden investigator Mike Bowditch and his girlfriend Stacey Stevens on a sea kayaking trip to a research station far off the coast. Stacey spent summers interning on the island, a sanctuary for endangered seabirds, and they are shocked by what they hear when they come ashore.
\nThe biologists are being threatened by local fishermen and stalked by a mysterious boatman who seems intent on trespassing on the refuge. Even worse, their leader, whose mind is slowly unraveling after the unexplained suicide of a young intern, has now gone missing.
\nCamped on a nearby islet for the night, Mike and Stacey waken to the sound of a gunshot. When they return to the refuge at dawn, their darkest fears are confirmed: two of the three researchers have been brutally murdered and the third has disappeared, along with the island skiff. Mike’s quest to find the missing man reveals new suspects including a Marine Patrol officer with a history of violence and the sanctuary's enigmatic founder, who conveniently reappears after the killings.
\nThe search expands to a nearby island owned by a world-renowned photographer with a scandalous reputation. The artist and his equally brilliant wife wield a powerful hold over the inhabitants of their private kingdom, and Mike increasingly comes to believe that someone in the village knows more about the killings than they dare admit.
\nWith no one to trust and miles from shore, Mike Bowditch must stop a ruthless murderer determined to make sure a terrifying secret never sees the light of day.
When Maine game warden Mike Bowditch is tasked with shooting invasive feral hogs that are tearing up the forest in his district, he makes a horrific discovery a dead baby buried in a shallow grave.
\nEven more disturbing: evidence suggests the infant was the child of a young woman who was presumed to have died four years earlier after she disappeared from a group rafting trip.
\nAs Bowditch assists the reopened investigation, he begins to suspect that some of his neighbors aren’t who they seem to be. When violence strikes close to home, he realizes that his unknown enemies will stop at nothing to keep their terrible secrets.
\nMike Bowditch has bucked the odds his whole career, but this time the intrepid warden may have finally followed his hunches one step too far.
Edgar finalist Paul Doiron's superb new novel featuring Game Warden Mike Bowditch and a beautiful, enigmatic woman whose mission to save the Maine wilderness may have incited a murder . . . .
\nOn an unseasonably hot October morning, Bowditch is called to the scene of a bizarre crime: the corpses of seven moose have been found senselessly butchered on the estate of Elizabeth Morse, a wealthy animal rights activist who is buying up huge parcels of timberland to create a new national park.
\nWhat at first seems like mindless slaughter - retribution by locals for the job losses Morse's plan is already causing in the region - becomes far more sinister when a shocking murder is discovered and Mike's investigation becomes a hunt to find a ruthless killer. In order to solve the controversial case, Bowditch risks losing everything he holds dear: his best friends, his career as a law enforcement officer, and the love of his life.
\nThe beauty and magnificence of the Maine woods is the setting for a story of suspense and violence when one powerful woman’s missionary zeal comes face to face with ruthless cruelty.
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“Never trust a man without secrets.”
\nThese are the last words retired game warden Charley Stevens speaks to his surrogate son, Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch, before the old man vanishes without explanation. Mike suspects his friend’s mysterious departure has to do with an antique warden badge that recently resurfaced at a flea market - a badge connected to a cold case from Charley’s past that the Maine Warden Service would rather forget.
Fifteen years ago, a young warden was sent on an undercover mission to infiltrate a notorious poaching ring and never returned. He was presumed dead, but his body was never recovered. Mike is desperate to find Charley before he meets a similar fate. His investigation brings him to the miles of forest and riverside towns along the Canadian border - but he soon learns that even his fellow wardens have secrets to keep. And Charley’s past isn’t the only one coming to light; his daughter, Stacey, has resurfaced to search for her missing father, and Mike must grapple with the return of the woman he once thought was gone forever.
Forced to question his faith in the man he sees as a father, Mike must reopen a cold case that powerful people - one of whom may be a killer - will do anything to keep closed.
Legendary bush pilot Josie Jonson can’t believe her luck when a skilled builder just happens to show up after she purchases land near Prentiss Pond. All Mark Redmond asks in return for building Josie’s dream cabin is that he be left alone to homeschool his 12-year-old daughter, Cady.
\nFor Maine game warden investigator Mike Bowditch, the intensity of Redmond's secretiveness is troubling, especially in light of suspicious criminal activity being reported around the area - including rumors of an armed man offering large sums of money in exchange for the location of Redmond and Cady.
\nJosie, though hesitant to violate the trust of her prized builder, eventually agrees to fly Mike and his father-in-law Charley Stevens to the secluded pond in an attempt to protect Redmond and Cady. But hours after landing, the trip takes a dark turn when they witness a horrific murder and are taken captive themselves.
\nFreeing himself, Mike is forced to set off through the impenetrable Maine forest towards Canada, alone and unarmed in pursuit of a mysterious fugitive. As he navigates a windblown landscape choked with deadfalls and blocked by swollen streams, he marvels at his enemy’s bush craft.
\nThe killer possesses skills surpassing his own, and Bowditch can't tell if he is the cat or the mouse in this dangerous game. Can Mike Bowditch stop his adversary in time to save the life of a young girl, or will he be forced to watch another innocent soul die?
Set in the wilds of Maine, this is an explosive tale of an estranged son thrust into the hunt for a murderous fugitive - his own father.
\nGame warden Mike Bowditch returns home one evening to find an alarming voice from the past on his answering machine: his father, Jack, a hard-drinking womaniser who makes his living poaching illegal game. An even more frightening call comes the next morning from the police: They are searching for the man who killed a beloved local cop the night before - and his father is their prime suspect. Jack has escaped from police custody, and only Mike believes that his tormented father might not be guilty.
\nNow, alienated from the woman he loves, shunned by colleagues who have no sympathy for the suspected cop killer, Mike must come to terms with his haunted past. He knows firsthand Jack's brutality, but is the man capable of murder?
\nDesperate and alone, Mike strikes up an uneasy alliance with a retired warden pilot, and together the two men journey deep into the Maine wilderness in search of a runaway fugitive. There they meet a beautiful woman who claims to be Jack's mistress but who seems to be guarding a more dangerous secret. The only way for Mike to save his father now is to find the real killer - which could mean putting everyone he loves in the line of fire.
When two female hikers disappear in the Hundred Mile Wilderness-the most remote stretch along the entire Appalachian Trail-Maine game warden Mike Bowditch joins the desperate search to find them.
\nHope turns to despair after two unidentified corpses are discovered-their bones picked clean by coyotes. Do the bodies belong to the missing hikers? And were they killed by the increasingly aggressive wild dogs?
\nSoon, all of Maine is gripped with the fear of killer coyotes. But Bowditch has his doubts. His new girlfriend, wildlife biologist Stacey Stevens, insists the scavengers are being wrongly blamed. She believes a murderer may be hiding in the offbeat community of hikers, hippies, and woodsmen at the edge of the Hundred Mile Wilderness. When Stacey herself disappears along the AT, the hunt for answers becomes personal.
\nCan Mike Bowditch find the woman he loves before the most dangerous animal in the North Woods strikes again?
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While on patrol one foggy March evening, Bowditch receives a call for help. A woman has reportedly struck a deer on a lonely coast road. When the game warden arrives on the scene, he finds blood in the road - but both the driver and the deer have vanished. And the state trooper assigned to the accident appears strangely unconcerned.
\nThe details of the disappearance seem eerily familiar. Seven years earlier, a jury convicted lobsterman Erland Jefferts of the rape and murder of a wealthy college student and sentenced him to life in prison. For all but his most fanatical defenders, justice was served. But when the missing woman is found brutalised in a manner that suggests Jefferts may have been framed, Bowditch receives an ominous warning from state prosecutors to stop asking questions.
\nFor Bowditch, whose own life was recently shattered by a horrific act of violence, doing nothing is not an option. His clandestine investigation reopens old wounds between Maine locals and rich summer residents and puts both his own life and that of the woman he loves in jeopardy.
\nAs he closes in on his quarry, he suddenly discovers how dangerous his opponents are, and how far they will go to prevent him from bringing a killer to justice.
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When a mysterious woman in distress appears outside his home, Mike Bowditch has no clue she is about to blow his world apart. Amber Langstrom is beautiful, damaged, and hiding a secret with a link to his past. She claims her son Adam is a wrongfully convicted sex offender who has vanished from a brutal work camp in the high timber around the Widowmaker Ski Resort. She also claims that Adam Langstrom is the illegitimate son of Jack Bowditch, Mike’s dead and diabolical father. He is the half-brother Mike never knew he had.
\nAfter trying so hard to put his troubled past behind him, Mike is reluctant to revisit the wild country of his childhood and again confront his father’s history of violence. But Amber’s desperation and his own need to know the truth make it hard for him to refuse her pleas for help.
\nIn search of answers, Bowditch travels through a mountainous wilderness to a place hidden from the rest of the world, where the military guards a top-secret interrogation base, sexual predators live together in a backwoods colony, and self-styled vigilantes are willing to murder anyone they consider their enemies.
\nMike Bowditch must exorcise the demons of the past before the real-life demons of the present kill him first.
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In 1939, Anton, a captain in the Polish army, says goodbye to his wife, Elisabeth. He is leaving to defend their homeland against the invasion by Nazi Germany and Russia. They make a vow that - whatever happens, however much time passes - they'll meet again at the Winter Palace, their stately home in the Polish countryside. The winds of war draw them far apart.
\nAnton is captured and sent to slave in a Siberian logging camp. He joins other POWs in a lost army that battles through snowstorms and scorching deserts in Central Asia. They finally arrive in Jerusalem, where the allies are preparing to invade Nazi-occupied Europe. Anton survives, driven by his determination to join Elisabeth again.
\nThe Winter Palace is taken over by the German army, and Elisabeth is forced to be the ‘mistress’ of a Nazi officer. She is sent to work in an army brothel but escapes to join the Polish resistance. After the war ends, Anton and Elisabeth are at the opposite ends of the world. He is mistakenly told that she is dead. After nearly going mad with grief, he emigrates to start a new life in Australia. Elisabeth, meanwhile, waits for Anton to return for months and then years. Will they ever meet again at the Winter Palace?
\nFrom 1930s Europe to present-day Australia, this is a sweeping story of love that cannot be broken by time, distance, war or even death.
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My name is Caitlin and up until forty-eight hours ago I had never:
Tasted alcohol, kissed a boy, sang in public at the top of my lungs, kidnapped anyone or—WHAT? STOLEN A CONVERTIBLE?
Now I’m in jail and I have no idea what I’m going to tell:
The police, my parents, the mayor, all of those camera crews and everyone on Twitter.
I have just noticed that:
My nose is pierced and I have - WAIT? IS THAT A TATTOO?
I blame one person for this entire insane weekend:
My famous cousin.
Who is also my former best friend.
Who I have HATED for the past four years.
Who I miss like crazy. NO I DON’T!!!!
IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT, HELLER HARRIGAN!!!!
When Andrew Birnbaum, a struggling actor making ends meet by working in a candle shop, gets invited to have dinner with the exclusive Tuxedo Society by his best friend, Brock, his life takes an unexpected turn. What seems like a group of wealthy socialites gathering for gossip and cocktails quickly spirals into a world of espionage, danger, and hilarity.
\nAndrew soon meets Reggie O’Malley, a Navy SEAL with a penchant for black tie, who recruits Andrew to join the society’s covert mission to protect national security. Armed with gadgets like an inflatable life raft backpack, a yoga mat that doubles as an assault rifle, and, of course, an AMEX Black Card, Andrew quickly finds himself tackling spies, thwarting assassinations, and facing a host of unexpected threats in settings from the White House to the Vatican to the Summer Olympic Games.
\nThe stakes escalate when Andrew and his comrades are sent on a jet-setting mission to uncover the truth about an ancient artifact. Along the way, they clash with oligarchs, crooked senators, and a smarmy televangelist with sinister plans for world domination.
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A tech billionaire and the flight attendant he’s marrying. A TV superhero who used to be married to the flight attendant. A Manhattan book editor and the sensitivity associate who got him fired. A twenty-three-year-old wild child prodigy who’s perhaps the savior of American literature. A vengeful Arkansas sheriff who sells a vitamin-enriched, ten-pounds-off-today demulsifier. A Wall Street bro who raps on TikTok. Two dentists - possibly stalking each other.
\nWhat do these people have in common? Invited or not, they’re all headed to the most anticipated destination wedding ever, on the billionaire’s private island, to seek romance, to cause mayhem, and to figure out everyone else’s futures and maybe even their own.
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Journalist Heidi Cohen is in Cape Cod investigating the sources of recurring toxic algae blooms along the coast. A local named Jimmy has his own theory for her. Every year the fetid growth gets worse - but it’s been going on longer than anyone knows. Decades ago, something happened to Jimmy that he’s never forgotten. Is Heidi ready for the real story?
Hereford, England 1881.
\nThe adventure continues! After the fire and the tumultuous events in the cathedral library, Hecate is determined never again to come so close to losing the beloved mappa mundi. She has shown herself to be the greatest threat to the Essedenes and their plans and they will stop at nothing to be rid of her. With the help of her archeologist father, and the support of the redoubtable and loyal Inspector Winter, she must take the fight to her enemies.
\nBut the numbers of Embodied Spirits are growing with terrifying speed, and an atmosphere of violence and danger has taken hold of the ancient city of Hereford. Hecate dare not trust anyone beyond her inner circle, no matter how benevolent they might seem. Nor will she risk the lives of those she loves ever again. The goddess Hekate has called her to action. She must draw upon all her gifts, and the assistance of her family of ghostly allies, if the city is not to be lost to darkness forever.
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City of Time and Magic sees Xanthe face her greatest challenges yet. She must choose from three treasures that sing to her; a beautiful writing slope, a mourning brooch of heartbreaking detail, and a gorgeous gem-set hat pin. All call her, but the wrong one could take her on a mission other than that which she must address first, and the stakes could not be higher.
\nWhile her earlier mission to Regency England had been a success, the journey home resulted in Liam being taken from her, spirited away to another time and place. Xanthe must follow the treasure that will take her to him if he is not to be lost forever.
\nXanthe is certain that Mistress Flyte has Liam and determined to find them both. But when she discovers Lydia Flyte has been tracking the actions of the Visionary Society, a group of ruthless and unscrupulous Spinners who have been selling their talents to a club of wealthy clients, Xanthe realises her work as a Spinner must come before her personal wishes.
\nThe Visionary Society is highly dangerous and directly opposed to the creed of the Spinners. Their actions could have disastrous consequences as they alter the authentic order of things and change the future. Xanthe knows she must take on the Society. It will require the skills of all her friends, old and new, to attempt such a thing, and not all of them will survive the confrontation that follows.
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As the bustle of the winter holidays in the Little Shop of Found Things gives way to spring, Xanthe is left to reflect on the strange events of the past year. While she's tried to keep her time-traveling talents a secret from those close to her, she is forced to take responsibility for having inadvertently transported the dangerous Benedict Fairfax to her own time. Xanthe comes to see that she must use her skills as a Spinner if she and Flora are ever to be safe, and turns to the Spinners book for help.
It is then that a beautiful antique wedding dress sings to her. Realising the dress and her adversary are connected in some way, she answers the call. She finds herself in Bradford-on-Avon in 1815, as if she has stepped into a Jane Austen story.
Now in Xanthe's time, Fairfax is threatening Xanthe into helping him with his evil doings, and demonstrates all too clearly how much damage he is capable of causing. With Fairfax growing ever more powerful, Xanthe enlists the help of her boyfriend Liam, taking him back in time with her. It is a decision that might just ensure she prevails over her foe, but only by putting her life - and his - on the line.
England, 1881. Hereford cathedral stands sentinel over the city, keeping its secrets, holding long forgotten souls in its stony embrace. Hecate Cavendish speeds through the cobbled streets on her bicycle, skirts hitched daringly high, heading for her new life as Assistant Librarian.
\nBut this is no ordinary collection of books. The cathedral houses an ancient chained library, wisdom guarded for centuries, mysteries and stories locked onto its worn, humble shelves.
\nThe most prized artifact, however, is the medieval world map which hangs next to Hecate’s desk. Little does she know how much the curious people and mythical creatures depicted on it will come to mean to her. Nor does she suspect that there are lost souls waiting for her in the haunted cathedral.
\nSome will become her dearest friends. Some will seek her help in finding peace. Others will put her in great peril, and, as she quickly learns, threaten the lives of everyone she loves.
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Xanthe and her mother Flora leave London behind for a fresh start, taking over an antique shop in the historic town of Marlborough. Xanthe has always had an affinity with some of the antiques she finds. When she touches them, she can sense something of the past they come from and the stories they hold. So when she has an intense connection to a beautiful silver chatelaine she has to know more.
It’s while she’s examining the chatelaine that she’s transported back to the seventeenth century. And shortly after, she's confronted by a ghost who reveals that this is where the antique has its origins. The ghost tasks Xanthe with putting right the injustice in its story to save an innocent girl’s life, or else it’ll cost her Flora’s.
While Xanthe fights to save her amid the turbulent days of 1605, she meets architect Samuel Appleby. He may be the person who can help her succeed. He may also be the reason she can’t bring herself to leave.
After five years in the Summerlands, Gideon has gained his freedom. Elizabeth knows he will go straight for Tegan, and that she must protect the girl she had come to regard as her own daughter. In the time since she the dramatic night in Batchcombe woods, Tegan has traveled the world learning from all manner of witches, and she is no longer the awkward teenager and novice spellcaster she once was.
\nHowever, her skills are no match for Gideon's dark, vengeful power, and he succeeds in capturing her. Will Elizabeth be able to find her? Will they be able to defeat their nemesis once and for all?
\nIn a breathless journey that takes them through history to the 17th and 19th centuries, witch pursues warlock. Three people steeped in magic weave a new story, but not all will survive until the end.
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After her adventures in the seventeenth century, Xanthe does her best to settle back into the rhythm of life in Marlborough. She tells herself she must forget about Samuel and leave him in the past where he belongs. With the help of her new friends, she does her best to move on, focusing instead on the success of her and Flora’s antique shop.
But there are still things waiting to be found, still injustices needing to be put right, still voices whispering to Xanthe from long ago about secrets wanting to be shared.
While looking for new stock for the shop, Xanthe hears the song of a copper chocolate pot. Soon after, she has an upsetting vision of Samuel in great danger, compelling her to make another journey to the past.
This time she'll meet her most dangerous adversary. This time her ability to travel to the past will be tested. This time she will discover her true destiny. Will that destiny allow her to return home? And will she be able to save Samuel when his own fate seems to be sealed?
In the spring of 1628, the Witchfinder of Wessex finds himself a true Witch. As Bess Hawksmith watches her mother swing from the Hanging Tree she knows that only one man can save her from the same fate at the hands of the panicked mob: the Warlock Gideon Masters, and his Book of Shadows.
\nSecluded at his cottage in the woods, Gideon instructs Bess in the Craft, awakening formidable powers she didn't know she had and making her immortal. She couldn't have foreseen that even now, centuries later, he would be hunting her across time, determined to claim payment for saving her life.
\nIn present-day England, Elizabeth has built a quiet life for herself, tending her garden and selling herbs and oils at the local farmers' market. But her solitude abruptly ends when a teenage girl called Tegan starts hanging around.
\nAgainst her better judgment, Elizabeth begins teaching Tegan the ways of the Hedge Witch, in the process awakening memories - and demons - long thought forgotten.
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When a young man is found gruesomely murdered in a London houseboat, it triggers questions about three women who knew him. Laura is the troubled one-night-stand last seen in the victim’s home. Carla is his grief-stricken aunt, already mourning the recent death of yet another family member. And Miriam is the nosy neighbor clearly keeping secrets from the police. Three women with separate connections to the victim.
\nThree women who are - for different reasons - simmering with resentment. Who are, whether they know it or not, burning to right the wrongs done to them. When it comes to revenge, even good people might be capable of terrible deeds. How far might any one of them go to find peace? How long can secrets smolder before they explode into flame?
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from - a place to which she vowed she'd never return.
With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present.
Beware a calm surface - you never know what lies beneath.
Welcome to Eris: An island with only one house, one inhabitant, one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day.
\nOnce home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago.
\nNow home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation.
\nBut when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling.
\nAnd the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge . . .
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and every night. Every day she rattles over the same track junctions, flashes past the same stretch of cozy suburban homes. And every day she stops at the same signal and she sees the same couple, breakfasting on their roof deck, living the perfect life that Rachel craves for herself - a lifestyle she recently lost. She looks forward to observing this household every morning, even makes up names and narratives for its residents. Then one day Rachel sees someone new in their garden, and soon after, the woman who lived there disappears.
Unable to keep this information to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and in the process is drawn into the lives of the couple she thought of as Jason and Jess but whose names - she has learned from the news - are really Megan and Scott Hipwell.
In a world where divine power bleeds into the mortal realm, Thais Morvaren has mastered the art of deception. To her seaside village, she's just a fisherman's daughter, serving oysters to summer tourists. In secret, she hides her ability to forge starlight - a power that would force her into the deadly Trials of Ascension.
\nBut when a priest's ritual exposes her powers, Thais is seized and conscripted into the trials against her will. Now trapped in a competition she never wanted to enter, she transforms her fear into purpose: to kill the King of the Gods.
\nTo take down one of the Aesymar, she must become one, even if it costs her everything.
\nThe selection ceremony binds her to a mentor: Xül. A necromancer prince with blood-soaked hands, a sharp tongue, and dark secrets of his own. From the moment they meet, sparks fly. He's insufferably arrogant, she's stubborn to the bone, and neither has any intention of yielding to the other . . . or to the heat between them.
\nEach trial survived brings her closer to godhood, but beneath the spectacle of competition, something ancient and malevolent stalks the shadows of the divine realm - a darkness that threatens to unravel the heavens themselves.
\nThe cost of godhood is rising.
\nBecause some stars aren't meant to be weapons.
\nSome stars are meant to fall.
Sometimes a second chance is your only hope.
Is there a fate beyond the fates? Julian has failed Josephine once. Despite grave danger and impossible odds, he is determined to do the unimaginable and try again to save the woman he loves.
What follows is a love story like no other as the doomed lovers embark on an incredible adventure across time and space. Racing through history and against the merciless clock, they face countless dangers and deadly enemies.
Living amid beauty and ecstasy, bloodshed and betrayal, each time they court and cheat death brings Julian and Josephine closer to an unthinkable sacrifice and a confrontation with the harshest master of all . . . destiny.
How well can you ever really know someone?
If anyone asked Larissa's husband, children or friends if she was happy, they would say yes. Sometimes too busy, sometimes irritable - but really, what in her wonderful life could be wrong? She has a happy marriage, a dream house, and everything she ever wanted at her fingertips.
Yet a chance encounter with a young man new to town hits her like a lightning bolt. Their connection is electric. Suddenly her lovely home life seems claustrophobic, and the familiar mundane. Irresistible passion drives her to contemplate the unthinkable. But if she dares to make the impossible leap, what will her life be then? Whatever choice she makes, someone will be betrayed . . .
The passionate love story that led to The Bronze Horseman.
\nThey gave up everything to be together, but love was just the beginning . . .
Italian immigrant Gina, independent, compassionate and strong, desperately wants a family. Boston blue-blood Harry, idealistic and political, wants to create a better world.
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Bound together by tormented passion, they rail, rage, and break each other's hearts, only to come face to face with a stark final choice that will forever determine their destiny.
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Their journey takes them through four decades and two continents, through triumph and turmoil, from the wooden planks of the troubled immigrant town of Lawrence, Massachusetts, to the marble halls and secret doors of a mystical place called . . . Bellagrand.
Before Tatiana and Alexander . . . before Leningrad and Lazarevo . . . before everything, there was Gina Attaviano, who came from Belpasso to Boston's Freedom Docks seeking a new and better life. There she meets Harry Barrington. Their bond is instantaneous, urgent . . . but so are the forces against them.
\nAt the turn of the century and the dawning of the modern world, the fortunes and future of the Barringtons and Attavianos become intertwined, on a collision course between the old and the new, between what is expected and what is desired, what is chosen and what is bestowed, what is given and what is taken away.
\nAs America races headlong into the future, much will be lost and much will be gained for Gina and Harry, and for a nation and a people that have the blessing and the curse of unrivaled opportunity . . . and unlimited potential.
They were ready for anything . . . except the end
Julian has lost everything he ever loved and is almost out of time. His life and death struggle against fate offers him one last chance to do the impossible and save the woman to whom he is permanently bound.
Together, Julian and Josephine must wage war against the relentless dark force that threatens to destroy them. This fight will take everything they have and everything they are as they try once more to give each other their unfinished lives back.
As time runs out for the star-crossed lovers, Julian learns that fate has one last cruel trick in store for them - and even a man who has lost everything still has something left to lose.
It is 1929. The world is about to change.
\nFinn Evans is a successful Boston banker harboring a secret that threatens to unravel his carefully constructed idyllic life. Isabelle Lazar, a young Ukrainian farmer, endures unspeakable hardships in her homeland as she fights to save her family from the Soviet Union's iron grip. Barely escaping the Terror-Famine, she washes up alone on America's distant shores.
\nFate throws Finn and Isabelle together just as the stock market crash causes a devastating collapse of his world. Amid the Great Depression and the trials of their new lives, an undeniable connection grows between them that they both must hide.
\nAs their intertwined destinies hang in the balance, they discover that even those who have lost everything still have something left to lose. Light at Lavelle is the breathtaking epic love story from the worldwide bestselling author of Tully and The Bronze Horseman . Paullina Simons weaves an unforgettable tapestry of love, hope, and fate, showing us that sometimes the greatest battles are fought within our own hearts.
Chloe is weeks away from college when she embarks on a grand European adventure with her boyfriend and two best friends. Their destination is Barcelona, with its promise of romance and mystery, but first they must detour through the historic cities of Eastern Europe to settle an old family debt.
\nAs they traverse the unfamiliar landscape of the post-Communist world, Chloe meets a boy on a train who is going off to war. Johnny carries a guitar, an easy smile - and a lifetime of secrets.
\nAs the trip becomes a treacherous journey into Europe's and Johnny's darkest past, it threatens to shatter the bonds holding together four lifelong friends.
On a New England college campus, the naked body of a beautiful student is found frozen in a bank of snow. Why had she not even been reported missing by her friends?
\nSpencer O'Malley, the police detective assigned to the case, is soon drawn into the strange world of four friends, Jim, Conni, Albert and Kristina. O'Malley finds that these children of privilege who played, studied, and occasionally slept together also kept secrets of their own, secrets that must be pieced together to form an entirely new picture.
\nO'Malley is a stranger in this Ivy League environment, yet he feels an affinity with the victim. In her death, he gradually discovers the truth of her mysterious and complex life, and each revelation is more shocking than the last.
Meet Shelby and Gina. Eighteen years old, fresh out of high school, and once best friends. When Shelby gets a bright yellow Mustang for a graduation gift, she decides to drive across America to find her missing mother, who walked out years before. Gina invites herself along for the ride, in a hurry to get to California to stop her wayward boyfriend from marrying someone else.
\nWhat begins as a journey of big dreams and high spirits quickly changes when the girls pick up a young hitchhiker named Candy. Haunted by a mysterious past, she's got reasons of her own to get to California as quickly as possible.
\nThe three girls, uneasy and unlikely companions, find themselves on America's darkest backroads, pursued by fear and betrayal, and slowly learn they cannot count on anything but each other. The Road to Paradise, a story of intense friendship, fierce loyalty, and love, will take them to the last place they expected to be.
Tatiana is eighteen years old and pregnant when she miraculously escapes war-torn Leningrad to the West, believing herself to be a widow. Her husband, Major Alexander Belov, a decorated hero of the Soviet Union, has been arrested by Stalin's infamous secret police and is awaiting imminent death as a traitor and a spy.
\nTatiana begins her new life in America. In wartime New York City she finds work, friends and a life beyond her dreams. However, her grief is inescapable and she keeps hearing Alexander calling out to her.
\nMeanwhile, Alexander faces the greatest danger he's ever known. An American trapped in Russia since adolescence, he has been serving in the Red Army and posing as a Soviet citizen to protect himself. For him, Russia's war is not over, and both victory and defeat will mean certain death.
\nAs the Second World War moves into its spectacular close, Tatiana and Alexander are surrounded by the ghosts of their past and each other. They must struggle against destiny and despair as they find themselves in the fight of their lives.
The golden skies, the translucent twilight, the white nights, all hold the promise of youth, of love, of eternal renewal. The war has not yet touched this city of fallen grandeur, or the lives of two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha Metanova, who share a single room in a cramped apartment with their brother and parents. Their world is turned upside down when Hitler's armies attack Russia and begin their unstoppable blitz to Leningrad.
Yet there is light in the darkness. Tatiana meets Alexander, a brave young officer in the Red Army. Strong and self-confident, yet guarding a mysterious and troubled past, he is drawn to Tatiana - and she to him. Starvation, desperation, and fear soon grip their city during the terrible winter of the merciless German siege.
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Tatiana and Alexander's impossible love threatens to tear the Metanova family apart and expose the dangerous secret Alexander so carefully protects - a secret as devastating as the war itself - as the lovers are swept up in the brutal tides that will change the world and their lives forever.
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A stunning and powerful contemporary love story from one of the best storytellers this century.
\nWhat if everything you believed about your life was a lie?
\nMeet Lily Quinn. She is broke, struggling to finish college, pay her rent, find love. Adrift in bustling New York City, the most interesting things in Lily's life happen to the people around her. But Lily loves her aimless life . . . until her best friend and roommate Amy disappears.
\nThat's when Spencer Patrick O'Malley, a cynical, past his prime NYPD detective with demons of his own, enters Lily's world. And a sudden financial windfall which should bring Lily joy instead becomes an ominous portent of the dark forces gathering around her. But fate isn't finished with Lily.
\nShe finds herself fighting for her life as Spencer's search for the missing Amy intensifies, leading Lily to question everything she knew about her friend and family. Startling revelations about the people she loves force her to confront truths that will leave her changed forever.
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Through years of war and devastation, Tatiana and Alexander suffered the worst the twentieth century had to offer. Miraculously reunited in America, they now have a beautiful son, Anthony, the gift of a love strong enough to survive the most terrible upheavals. Though they are still young, the ordeals they endured have changed them - and after living apart in a world laid waste, they must now find a way to live together in postwar America.
\nWith the Cold War rising, dark forces at work in their adopted country threaten their lives, their family, and their hard-won peace. To regain the happiness they once knew, to wash away the lingering pain of the past, two lovers grown distant must somehow forge a new life . . .or watch the ghosts of their yesterdays destroy their firstborn son.
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Julian lives a charmed life in Los Angeles. Surrounded by friends, he is young, handsome, and runs a successful business. Everything changes after he has a fateful encounter with a mysterious young woman named Josephine. Julian’s world is turned upside down by a love affair that takes him - and everyone else in his life - by storm. For the two new lovers, the City of Angels is transformed into a magical playground.
But Josephine is not what she seems and carries secrets that threaten to tear them apart - seemingly forever.
A broken man, his faith in tatters, Julian meets a mysterious stranger who tells him how to find Josephine again if he is willing to give up everything and take a death-defying trip from which no one has ever returned.
So begins Julian and Josephine’s extraordinary adventure of love, loss, and the mystical forces that bind people across time and space. It is a journey that propels Julian toward an impossible choice which will lead him to love fulfilled . . . or to oblivion.
The Tiger Catcher takes readers from the depths of despair to the dizzying heights of joy in the first novel of an unforgettable trilogy of love lost and found.
Tully Makker is a tough young woman from the wrong side of the tracks and she is not always easy to like. But if Tully gives friendship and loyalty, she gives them for good, and she forms an enduring bond with Jennifer and Julie, schoolfriends from very different backgrounds.
\nAs they grow into the world of the seventies and eighties, the lives of the three best friends are changed forever by two young men, Robin and Jack, and a tragedy which engulfs them all.
\nAgainst the odds, Tully emerges into young womanhood, marriage and a career. At last Tully Makker has life under control. And then life strikes back in the most unexpected way of all . . .
The Last Dream brings together for the first time twelve unpublished stories from Almodóvar’s personal archive, written between the late sixties and the present day. Both a tantalising glimpse into Almodóvar’s creative mind and a masterclass in how to tell a story, this intimate and mischievous collection reflects Almodóvar’s obsessions and many of the themes of his cinematic work, spanning genres from autofiction to comedy, parody, pastiche and gothic. The title story, ‘The Last Dream’, is a beautiful chronicle of the death of Almodóvar’s mother, and other stories a love story between Jesus and Barabbas; a cult film director out in search of painkillers on a bank holiday weekend; the primary version of the film Bad Education; and a gothic tale of a repentant vampire among monks.
\nIn his introduction, Almodóvar ‘I’ve been asked to write my autobiography more than once, and I’ve always refused; it’s also been suggested that I let someone else write my biography, but I have always felt somewhat resistant to the idea of a book entirely about me as an individual. I’ve never kept a diary, and whenever I’ve tried, I’ve never made it to page two; in a sense, then, this book represents something of a paradox. It might be best described as a fragmentary autobiography, incomplete and a little cryptic.’
\nA celebration of the relationship between life and art, fiction and reality from an artist unafraid to write about our most intimate moments, these stories explore desire, mortality, loneliness and the pain and glory of artistic creation, laced with playful humour and a deep love of literature and culture.
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Schoolteacher Rachel Logan is living an ordinary life in a small community at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. As a single mother still reeling from the sudden death of her husband, she refuses to allow her life to be shaken by whispers of a local thief called the Collector. But when a little boy and girl are taken, everything changes.
\nOn her isolated ranch on the edge of the forest, Rachel feels someone is watching her. The scent of magnolias clings to her bedsheets each morning, which her family’s gift tells her is a bad omen. And when a photograph is stolen from her house with a tarot card left in its place - the Collector’s twisted signature - she knows her children will be his next victims.
\nTerrified, Rachel is relieved when her husband’s best friend Hank offers to move in to protect her family. Especially because she can feel something dark stirring in the woods just beyond her ranch. But it soon becomes clear that the Collector isn’t after her children, and has instead set his sights on Rachel . . .
\nCan Rachel outwit an unimaginable evil before time runs out for two innocent children? And even if she does manage to save their lives, can a monster like the Collector ever be stopped?
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Jen Logan is living her dream life on the water in a small community in Florida. Content with her husband and twins, she feels settled and at peace in nature. But when frightening notes start appearing in her home - signed simply by Invisible - her perfect world shatters.
\nThen she arrives home to find flowers placed all over her house, and the gift passed down through her family tells her she’s in terrible danger. The delicate white blooms of the oleander plant are an omen of death, and whoever is sending them knows this too. But why are they targeting her, and what do they want?
\nBefore Jen can begin to find the culprit, her children are taken. In a shuddering heartbeat, she realizes that Invisible isn’t out to destroy her, but her family. And with the light fading and a storm brewing over the water, Jen knows there isn’t much time to find her children before darkness falls . . .
\nCan she find them before it’s too late? And if she does, will she do what it takes to stop Invisible forever?
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When Annie Logan travels to her mother’s birthplace, she is shocked to discover a string of murders have recently taken place. And as she watches the local news, she realises with horror that she bears an uncanny resemblance to each victim . . .
\nInstantly, she knows this is no coincidence, and that the killer they are calling Shadow is trying to send her a twisted message. And when Annie discovers a family connection between her and one of the victims, she feels more frightened than ever. Was it a mistake to return to this place, and is that why she’s being targeted?
\nTerrified, Annie journeys deep into Louisiana’s bayou, hoping to escape the killer. But when a threatening note appears outside her remote cabin, she knows Shadow has followed her. And although she can’t see anyone among the mosses and trees of the bayou, she knows that its thick mists can hide anything.
\nDesperate, Annie reaches out to the only women who can save her: her sisters and her grandmother. But as the Logan women arrive, are they already too late to prevent the next attack? And can they stop a killer as elusive and twisted as Shadow?
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Meek, play-it-safe Marsh has just turned forty-five, and her life is in shambles. Her career is stagnant, her marriage has imploded, and her teenage daughter grows more distant by the day. Marsh is convinced she’s missed her chance at everything - romance, professional fulfillment, and adventure - and is desperate for a do-over.
\nShe can’t believe her luck when she’s selected to be the star of the global sensation All This and More, a show that uses quantum technology to allow contestants the chance to revise their pasts and change their present lives. It’s Marsh’s only shot to seize her dreams, and she’s determined to get it right this time.
\nBut even as she rises to become a famous lawyer, gets back together with her high school sweetheart, and travels the world, she begins to worry that All This and More’s promises might be too good to be true. Because while the technology is amazing, something seems a bit off . . .
\nCan Marsh really make her life everything she wants it to be? And is it worth it?
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Set in a dangerous near future world, The Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself.
One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears - an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories.
Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too.
Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the shadowless.
As they journey, each searches for answers: for Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force growing in the south that may hold the cure.
Nell Young’s whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell’s personal hero. But she hasn’t seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map.
\nBut when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell can’t resist investigating. To her surprise, she soon discovers that the map is incredibly valuable and exceedingly rare. In fact, she may now have the only copy left in existence . . . because a mysterious collector has been hunting down and destroying every last one - along with anyone who gets in the way.
\nBut why?
\nTo answer that question, Nell embarks on a dangerous journey to reveal a dark family secret and discovers the true power that lies in maps . . .
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More than a hundred years from now, an arborist fighting to save the last remaining forest on Earth discovers a secret about the trees - one that changes not only her life, but also the fate of our world.
\nInspired by the real-life “Future Library,” a long-term environmental and literary public art project currently underway in the Norwegian wilderness.
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The war has begun. Both sides demand Diem’s allegiance - or her death.
\nAfter her disastrous coronation, Diem finds herself at the center of the conflict between the Descended and the Guardians. With her newfound friends and the man she’s falling for on one side, and the mortals she has vowed to protect on the other, Diem must walk a careful line to save the people she loves . . . even from each other.
\nThe mystery of her unusual heritage begins to unravel, sending Diem and Luther on an unexpected journey across the realms. The answers may hold the key to winning the war, but finding them will require her to face painful truths about her mother, her bloodline, and her fate.
\nMeanwhile, the Crowns have set Diem in their sights. Some could be her greatest allies - while others want her dead. To end their oppressive reign, Diem must sort friend from foe and risk it all to build an army of her own.
\nBut a powerful figure in the north has plans that could change everything . . .
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In a mortal world colonised by the gods and ruled over by the Descended, their cruel offspring, Diem Bellator yearns to escape the insular life of her poor village.
\nHer mother’s sudden disappearance - and the discovery of a dangerous secret about her past - offer Diem an unexpected opportunity to enter the dark world of Descended royalty and unlock the web of mysteries her mother left behind.
\nWith the dying King’s handsome, mysterious heir watching her every move, and a ruthless mortal alliance recruiting her to join the growing civil war, Diem will have to navigate the unwritten rules of love, power, and politics in order to save her family - and all of mortalkind.
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For best friends Nikki and Sadie, college was supposed to be a fresh start, a way to blast Courtney Love from car speakers and leave their youth behind. But along with sadness-obsessed girls and intrusive professors, a dark story plagues their small all-women’s school: the Sylvia Club, a campus legend surrounding the deaths of multiple Sylvia Plath-adoring students, all written off as suicides.
\nAspiring writer Nikki finds herself drawn to the tragic tales, so much so that dead girls begin to haunt her dark imagination. As she digs deeper, Nikki soon suspects there's much more to the story - a suspicion that will lead to a tragedy of its own, one that will tear her and Sadie apart.
\nIt’s been nearly twenty years since Sadie last saw her estranged friend. Now, Nikki is dead, and when Sadie ends up pregnant by Nikki’s grieving husband not long after the funeral, she finds herself stepping into her ex-best friend’s seemingly perfect life.
\nBut the longer Sadie lives in Nikki’s eerily preserved home, the more she sees her appear and soon, she’s convinced that Nikki is sending her clues from beyond the grave. Because it seems Nikki never stopped looking for answers about what happened to the girls of the Sylvia Club, and she may have been its latest victim.
\nTold in a dual timeline, Doll Parts is an evocative and irresistible debut, at once an exploration of the dark chasms that break apart friendships, an ode to the aching beauty of girlhood, and a sharp portrayal of grief that can physically haunt you.
Izzy Edgewood is a wannabe bookstore owner, quote queen, and Lord of the Rings nerd who has been waiting for Prince Charming to sweep her off her sneakered feet. But it’s hard to meet people when you spend more time with fictional humans than real ones. Which is why her pragmatist cousin Josephine decides to take Izzy’s future into her own meddling hands and create an online dating profile for the hopeful romantic.
\nTo Izzy’s shock (and suspicion), Josie’s plan works. Soon, she’s dialoguing with a Hobbit-loving man named Brodie who lives in a small town an ocean away from her home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. But is their shared love of books, family, and correspondence enough to overcome Izzy’s fear of flying and the literal distance between them? And is a long-distance relationship even worth considering when a local author has been frequenting the library where she works and is proving to be a perfectly fine gentleman?
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Luke Edgewood isn’t a romantic. Or, at least, he’s always felt certain things like rom-coms were invented as punishment for average guys. Besides, he’s always preferred to be a behind-the-scenes guy who lives a quiet life being a good friend, neighbor, and brother.
\nSo when he travels to the island of Skymar to work a few months on restoring abandoned buildings, he never expects to find himself directly in the middle of a romantic, trope-filled story.
\nFrom a meet-cute that was anything but cute and an aging orphanage in need of as much tender care as the children it houses, Luke begins to wonder if he and his heart may be victims of some sort of hidden-camera movie moment.
\nOnly a few years out of university and attempting to find her feet in royal adult life, Aliana Roselynn St. Claire, youngest daughter of the king and queen of the Skymarian Islands, pours her energies and talents into charities and art throughout her beloved Skymar. Her parents do not seem very interested in her love of interior design but lavish her with praise over her support of Skymar’s largest orphanage and place her in charge of the renovations of the dilapidated building.
\nHappy to escape her mother’s strong encouragement of building a romantic relationship with Ally’s lifelong acquaintance, the earl of South Waithe, she escapes to the secluded mountains to take charge of the orphanage’s renovations. When Ally learns the man she’d literally run into at the coffee shop is the one who has been hired to help with the orphanage’s repairs, she’s determined to keep her royal status as secret as possible.
\nFrom fundraisers to fake dates to sleigh rides and snowball fights, Ally and Luke begin to discover that the wrong first impressions may lead to a romantic possibility with rom-com flavored magic included. But when Ally’s true identity is revealed and royal expectations bring Luke out of his preferred anonymity into the spotlight of the royal life, will their budding relationship fall prey to a very unhappily-ever-after ending?
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Penelope Edgewood is practically positive in every way, so when, fresh out of college, she is awarded a paid internship to help save a century-old theater on the island of Skymar, she jumps at the chance. After all, a crumbling theater needs the special touch of someone who reveres all things vintage and adores the stage.
\nUnfortunately, not everything is as it seems at Darling House Theatre. Finances are in shambles, the local theater group is disenchanted, and the two brothers, Matt and Alec Gray, can’t seem to see eye-to-eye about how to run their theatrical business. So, of course, it’s the perfect place for Penelope to shine her own personal brand of sunshine.
\nWith a little help from GK, the person emailing her encouragement along the way, she puts all her heart into helping the Grays save Darling House. But between Matt’s ever-present skepticism, Alec’s tendency to treat Penelope a little too much like the “princess” she thinks she wants to be (until someone actually started treating her that way), a grandfather who is stuck in his grief, and a mysterious person stealing Penelope’s marketing ideas, she’s not sure her optimism is enough to make a happily-ever-after of her own story, let alone The Darling House’s.
\nBetween an adorable little girl, a matchmaker, a sea monster or two, and a copious amount of musical references, can Penelope draw enough confidence from her faith, her family, and her adoration of all things Julie Andrews, to find the thief and save the theater . . . without getting her heart broken in the process?
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Chevy Cole left her conservative family behind for life as a Launch Tech marine and never looked back, proud of her role as a first-into-the-fire grunt, even if she were well below the revered female super soldiers known as Aces. When rumors spread that one of the Big Six has created a fusion device that would put the stars within reach, all-out war looms.
\nAfter the catastrophic failed siege of a Nevada mine leaves most of her comrades dead, Chevy encounters a dying Ace in possession of a mysterious package and a this Ace is a man. Joined by Dolon, an aging mercenary \"phantom\" sent by Launch Tech to transport the package to an Idaho safehouse, the three form an uneasy alliance.
\nAs they try to outrun a rival corporation’s ruthless agents across the desert in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, Chevy realises that their survival may also determine who controls the future. But when greed is the only rule of law, who can she trust?
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Deep within the Congo, a team of scientists prepares for the greatest event in the history of humanity, making First Contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species, only the jungle is no place for doubts.
\nCould First Contact be our last?
A 1950s hospital. Temporary amnesia. A naked man running through Central Park yelling something about alien space tentacles. Tinfoil, duct tape, and bananas. These are the ingredients for a spectacular romp through a world you never thought possible as aliens reach out and make contact with Earth.
\nThis novella extends a short story from The Alien Chronicles.
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Dr. Christopher Walters has been assigned to a medical evac team serving on the front line of the war against the alien invaders known as the Novo.
\nAs part of the Dog Food Squad, his role is to provide battlefield triage to wounded soldiers in no man’s land. Life expectancy at the Front is so low no one uses their real names, and he teams up with Hawk, Mouse, Leech, Lavender and William Sunday to save those he can from the brutal reality of war.
\nThe Novos, though, are not what they seem. Inconsistencies leave Doc questioning the war and wondering what the price will be for peace . . .
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Anomaly examines the prospect of an alien intelligence discovering life on Earth. The technological gulf between humanity and the alien species is measured in terms of millions of years. The only way to communicate is using science, but not everyone is so patient.
\nHumanity's first contact with an alien intelligence is far more radical than anyone has ever dared imagine. With a technological gap of millions of years, mankind is barely able to recognize the arrival of an alien space craft outside the gates of the United Nations in New York.
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In 1558, during the reign of Bloody Queen Mary, Earth is visited by extraterrestrials who initiate First Contact. Their mission is to gather samples of life on Earth and observe, but not interact with humanity. After witnessing a brutal execution, their patience is tested beyond breaking point . . .
Commander Lisa Chao works in the US Navy’s Strategic Planning Center in Pearl Harbor. When tensions rise with China over Taiwan, she has to unravel exactly what is happening in the Pacific and why. What she uncovers leads America to war, but not with China.
\nBullets and bombs are no match for an extraterrestrial warship that can fly between stars, but perhaps the answer to the coming war lies not in the present but in the past. Could Sun Tzu’s The Art of War provide humanity with a fighting chance against a technologically superior alien enemy?
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Five hundred miles from the Mediterranean, deep in the interior of Libya, lost in the heart of the Sahara itself, lies an oasis trapped in the past. With no surface water, Harat Zuwayyah barely supports any life at all. The scorching wind howls across the desert, driving the sand and threatening to bury the village.
\nProfessor Susan Taylor excavates an Egyptian tomb dated to prehistoric times. She uncovers the mummified remains of a wealthy family that died on the trade route, revealing insights into a lost culture, but it's the talisman watching over the grave that causes her heart to race. Red eyes glow from the back of the cave . . .
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At the start of the 22nd century, the starship Acheron is in orbit around WISE 5571 only, unbeknownst to the crew, the ship has been overrun by telepathic extraterrestrials. How do you fight an enemy that distorts everything you see? What do you do when you can't trust your own senses, let alone anyone around you?
Humanity's First Contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species exploring the solar system occurred over a decade ago, but only one man was involved, a clown named Buster. Since then, he's established a counter-culture group called the Clowns that seeks to radically overhaul society. When a coup unfolds to replace the President of the United States, Secret Service agent Breezy De la Cruz finds herself partnering with a prostitute to track down the elusive Buster.
\nDeep fakes aren't simply misleading videos anymore, they're entire situations and scenarios that have been artificially contrived so as to look real and deceive the public. Enter the Clowns - an enigmatic, decentralised group of activists committed to exposing the truth about how social media has become distinctly untrustworthy and antisocial.
Cold Eyes is a First Contact tribute to the 1974 science fiction classic, The Mote in Gods Eyes.
\nThe UN warship Magellan is twelve light-years from Earth, exploring a cold eye, a tidally-locked super-earth called Bee. At least two advanced, intelligent species evolved on the planet, but no one is waiting for them in orbit. Dali Patel has to figure out why.
\nAny breakdown in communication could lead to war.
Tunguska, Roswell, the Bermuda Triangle, the Mary Celeste . . . For hundreds of years, the danger of collision has been ignored as mere crackpot theories, until now, and now it's too late.\t
Jessica Rowe is an astrobiologist onboard the starship Intrepid, bound for the star system Procyon Alpha A. As much as she tries to quell her nerves, she can't shake the feeling she's going to die. She feels as though she's never going to leave the Intrepid alive - and she's right.
Twenty years ago, a UFO crashed into the Yellow Sea off the Korean Peninsula. The only survivor was a young English-speaking child, captured by the North Koreans. Two decades later, a physics student watches his girlfriend disappear before his eyes, abducted from the streets of New York by what appears to be the same UFO.
\nFeedback will carry you from the desolate, windswept coastline of North Korea to the bustling streets of New York and on into the depths of space as you journey to the outer edge of our solar system looking for answers.
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Galactic Exploration is a compilation of four closely related stories following the exploration of the Milky Way by the star ships Serengeti, Savannah and the Rift Valley. These three generational space ships are manned by clones and form part of the ongoing search for intelligent extra-terrestrial life.
\nWith the Serengeti heading out above the plane of the Milky Way, the Savannah exploring the outer reaches of the galaxy, and the Rift Valley investigating possible alien signals within the galactic core, this story examines the Rare Earth Hypothesis from a number of different angles.
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Two years have passed since comet Anduru skimmed the clouds of Saturn on its way to Earth. Kath and Nolan are looking for answers, trying to find ways to protect Earth from the possibility of an invasive alien species overrunning the planet.
\nThe US Presidential Election changes the political landscape. With new, hostile leadership, Kath and Nolan find themselves out of favor. Lies continue to dominate social media. Perhaps the greatest threat doesn't come from the stars. Perhaps there's already a generation of vipers here on Earth.
\nAlthough Generation of Vipers is a sequel it has been written so it can be read as a stand-alone novel.
When an alien spacecraft four times the size of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier enters the solar system, tensions run hot within the UN, but the alien vessel doesn't approach Earth. Instead, it sits off at L4, over a hundred million miles from Earth, baffling scientists from around the world. Chris 'Crash' Williams leads an international crew to investigate the appearance of this ghost ship, but he quickly learns that the spacecraft isn't as dead as it seems.
\nGhosts was inspired by Arthur C. Clarke’s 1973 novel Rendezvous with Rama. Rendezvous with Rama is a classic. It examined a plausible, realistic alien encounter, considering not only the physics involved but also the inevitable politics and religious implications.
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Hello World represents a decade of science fiction by author Peter Cawdron. This collection of sixteen short stories and novellas, including four previously unpublished stories, will take you out of this world.
When two worlds collide, landscapes are swapped and a portal explodes into the unknown. Officer Mark Janos of the NYPD finds himself stranded on a parallel world full of hostile creatures. He rallies survivors together, but where can he lead them? There's no way to escape.
The United Nations is thrown into chaos when an alien spacecraft is discovered buried beneath the ice in Antarctica.
\nWith no one nation able to lay claim to the craft, a multinational effort is undertaken to salvage the vessel, which is estimated to have crashed several million years ago.
\nRather than leaving key decisions to hostile governments or their armies, a jury is established to represent the average global citizen, being selected from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
\nTheir job is to review findings and guide the process of discovery.
Little Green Men is a tribute to the works of Philip K. Dick, hailing back to classic science fiction stories of the 1950s. The crew of the Dei Gratia set down on a frozen planet and are attacked by little green men.
\nChief Science Officer David Michaels struggles with the impossible situation unfolding around him as the crew are murdered one by one. With the engines offline and power fading, he races against time to understand this mysterious threat and escape the planet alive.
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Disaster strikes in orbit around Mars. A Chinese spacecraft is disabled, stranded near Phobos. Well over a hundred million miles from Earth, their only hope for rescue comes from the American base on the edge of the Vallis Marineris on the surface of Mars. The Americans need to decide, do they lose Mars or their humanity?
Tunguska, Roswell, the Bermuda Triangle, the Mary Celeste . . . For hundreds of years, the danger posed by colliding worlds has been ignored as a crackpot theory, until now, and now it's too late.
\nMaelstrom contains three novellas set in the Colliding Worlds universe (Collision, Impact and the conclusion, Maelstrom).
Tunguska, Roswell, the Bermuda Triangle, the Mary Celeste . . . For hundreds of years, the danger posed by colliding worlds has been ignored as a crackpot theory, until now, and now it's too late.
\nMaelstrom contains three novellas set in the Colliding Worlds universe (Collision, Impact and the conclusion, Maelstrom).
Life has been found beneath the icy shell of the moon of a gas giant orbiting a red dwarf at a distance of 11 light-years from Earth. When the crew of the original exploration mission crashes on the alien moon, a rescue ship is launched.
\nArriving decades later, the crew of the Kelvin finds a colony of survivors living in the labyrinth of caves beneath the surface of the moon. When people start dying, they realise they need to unravel the secrets of this alien world and the mystery of the minotaur.
\nThe Minotaur is a tribute to the 1961 classic Solaris, written by Stanislaw Lem, and considers the psychological impact of examining an exotic alien life form unlike anything ever encountered on Earth.
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The crew of the Copernicus is sent to investigate Bestla, one of the remote moons of Saturn. Bestla has always been an oddball, orbiting Saturn in the wrong direction and at a distance of thirty million kilometers, so far away Saturn appears smaller than Earth's moon in the night sky.
\nBestla hides a secret. When mapped by an unmanned probe, Bestla awoke and began transmitting a message, only it’s a message no one wants to hear: “I want to live and die for you, Satan.”
Someone is altering old astronomical images. In one small patch of the sky, the digital versions don't match the original prints and photographic plates taken by observatories from around the world over the past century.
\nDawn McAllister is a PhD student tasked with figuring out why Przybylski’s Star is attracting unwanted attention from a malicious hacker . . . Her high-achieving brother, Ryan, is an astronaut on the backup crew for NASA's Ample mission to the asteroid Psyche in orbit between Mars and Jupiter . . . At the same time, NSA analyst Gabriel Rodrigez stumbles upon a collaboration between Russia and China to interfere with SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
\nAs the body count rises, it seems that the approach of an extraterrestrial spacecraft over a period of decades is being hidden from both astronomers and the public.
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James Patterson is a gay accountant living in Keyes, Oklahoma - deep in the Bible Belt - the religious heartland of America. He’s also the first person to make contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence seeking to understand our world, and that makes him the most important person on the planet.
Marc and Emma are on the graveyard shift onboard the Sycorax, an interstellar spacecraft bound for New Haven, a colony world fifty light years from Earth. Eighteen thousand colonists lie in suspended animation, awaiting a new life around another star.
\nFor the crew of the Sycorax, interstellar flight is boring - that is until they run into a tempest. Before long, they find themselves on a crippled spacecraft falling in toward a black hole, but that's the least of their problems . . .
Ashley Kelly is your typical American teenager - or she would be if it wasn’t for the cluster bomb that crippled her. Seven years after the invasion, over a hundred million Americans have been displaced by the war, with millions more dead. Ash has spent seven years learning to walk again, and she’ll be damned if she’s going to lie down for anyone, human or otherwise.
Astronomers from around the world watch in awe as an extrasolar comet approaches Saturn, being drawn in by its immense gravity. When the comet grazes the planet rather than plunging beneath the clouds, speculation is rife.
\nWith the comet now on course to collide with Jupiter, even the most skeptical scientists can no longer deny what's happening - an alien spacecraft has entered the solar system and is using the gas giants to slow its approach to Earth.
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Xenophobia examines the impact of first contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence on the Third World. Dr Elizabeth Bower works at a field hospital in Malawi as a civil war smolders around her. With an alien spacecraft in orbit around Earth, the US withdraws its troops to deal with the growing unrest at home. Bower refuses to abandon her hospital.
\nA troop of US Rangers accompanies Bower as she attempts to get her staff and patients to safety. Isolated and alone, cut off from contact with the West, they watch as the world descends into chaos with alien contact.
Amahle is a Light Chaser - one of a number of explorers, who travel the universe alone (except for their onboard AI), trading trinkets for life stories.
\nBut when she listens to the stories sent down through the ages she hears the same voice talking directly to her from different times and on different worlds. She comes to understand that something terrible is happening, and only she is in a position to do anything about it.
\nAnd it will cost everything to put it right.
When a so-called prophet sees visions of a lost civilisation, Nigel Sheldon is asked to investigate. Especially as these dreams seem to be coming from the Void - a mysterious area of space with hugely destructive capabilities. Then Nigel crash-lands inside the Void, and finds so much more than he expected. Bienvenido: a planet populated by survivors from long-vanished Commonwealth ships.
\nFor centuries their descendants have been fighting a desperate battle against the Fallers, space-born predators that have evolved to conquer worlds. And Nigel soon realises that the Fallers hold the key to the destruction of the Void itself. If he can survive long enough to find it . . .
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AD 3580. The Commonwealth has spread its civilisation throughout the galaxy. Its citizens are privileged and protected by a powerful navy. And at the galaxy’s centre is the Void, a sealed universe created by aliens billions of years ago. Yet the Void isn’t inert. It’s expanding - and now it wants to make contact.
\nThe Void chooses Inigo as its conduit and he channels dreams of a simpler, better life within its bounds. His visions attract followers - determined to seek this utopia. And they’ll cross the Void’s forbidden boundaries to reach it. However, this act could trigger push it to grow beyond all control . . . destroying everything in its path.
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Millions of Leaving Dream pilgrims have boarded ships, and are speeding towards the Void at the centre of the galaxy. They are chasing their dream - and expect to find paradise. Yet breaching the Void will trigger its expansion, destroying everything in its path.
\nPaula Myo is desperate to find Void’s latest prophet - Second Dreamer Araminta. As without her, the ships can’t enter the Void. But when Araminta finally chooses her path, it will change things in ways no one could have imagined. And within the Void, Edeard realises the price of peace may be too high. However, what will this mean for the pilgrims - and the galaxy beyond?
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Forty thousand years ago, humanity fled a dying Earth. Traveling in massive arkships, these brave pioneers spread out across the galaxy to find a new home. After traveling thousands of light-years, one fleet of arkships arrived at Centauri, a dense cluster of stars with a vast array of potentially habitable planets. The survivors of Earth signaled to the remaining arkships that humanity had finally found its new home among the stars.
\nThousands of years later, the Centauri Cluster has flourished. The original settlers have evolved into advanced beings known as Celestials and divided themselves into powerful Dominions. One of the most influential is that of the Crown Celestials, an alliance of five great houses that controls vast areas of Centauri. As arkships continue to arrive, the remaining humans and their descendants must fight for survival against overwhelming odds or be forced into serving the Crown Dominion.
\nAmong those yearning for a better life is Finn, for whom Earth is not a memory but merely a footnote from humanity’s ancient history. Born on one of the Crown Dominion worlds, Finn has known nothing but the repressive rule of the Celestials, though he dreams of the possibility of boundless space beyond his home.
\nWhen another arkship from Earth, previously thought lost, unexpectedly arrives, Finn sees his chance to embrace a greater destiny and become a Traveler - one of a group of brave heroes dedicated to ensuring humanity’s future by journeying into the vast unknown of distant space.
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In the distant future, corporations have become sustainable communities with their own militaries, and corporate goals have essentially replaced political ideology. On a youthful, rebellious impulse, Lawrence joined the military of a corporation that he now recognizes to be ruthless and exploitative. His only hope for escape is to earn enough money to buy his place in a better corporation.
\nWhen his platoon is sent to a distant colony to quell a local resistance effort, it seems like a stroke of amazing fortune, and Lawrence plans to rob the colony of their fabled gemstone, the Fallen Dragon, to get the money he needs. However, he soon discovers that the Fallen Dragon is not a gemstone at all, but an alien life form that the local colonists have been protecting since it crashed in their area.
\nNow, Lawrence must decide if he will steal the alien to exploit the use of its inherent biotechnical processes - which far exceed anything humans are capable of - or if he will help the Resistance get the alien home.
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When attending a Newcastle murder scene, Detective Sidney Hurst finds a dead North family clone. Yet none have been reported missing. And in 2122, twenty years ago, a North clone billionaire was horrifically murdered in the same manner on the tropical planet of St Libra. So, if the murderer is still at large, was Angela Tramelo wrongly convicted? She never wavered under interrogation, claiming she alone survived an alien attack.
\nInvestigating this potential alien threat now becomes the Human Defence Agency's top priority. St Libran bio-fuel is the lifeblood of Earth's economy and must be secured. A vast expedition is mounted via the Newcastle gateway, and experts are dispatched to the planet - with Angela Tramelo, grudgingly released from prison.
\nBut the expedition is cut off deep within St Libra's rainforests, and the murders begin. Angela insists it's the alien, but her new colleagues aren't sure. Did she see an alien, or does she have other reasons for being on St Libra?
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For millennia, the Crown Dominion has been at relative peace, with the Celestials in control and the human population little better than serfs. But now the Crown Dominion is facing a crisis of epic proportions - one that could change the balance of power in the Centauri Cluster forever - as an exiled faction that has been waiting for seven thousand years beyond the Helium Sea has returned to wreak their vengeance.
\nFor Finn and his human allies, who have ended up at the centre of this conflict either through circumstance or manipulation, this is an unprecedented opportunity. If they can band together, they may be able to outwit the Celestials and finally earn their fellow humans a place of independence and power in the Crown Dominion.
\nTo achieve this, they must first locate and master ancient artefacts of immense power that could give them a much-needed edge in the conflict ahead. And all while ducking the forces that are determined to knock them off the board for good.
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It had been a big year for Taggie Paganuzzi. From learning that she was actually the Queen-to-be of a magical realm, to learning to use magic, to fighting for her life against the King of Night, there had been a lot of 'firsts'. And when someone tried to assassinate her as she was cycling home from the local pool in Stamford, England. Well, that was a first too.
\nIt turns out that someone has been killing royal heirs throughout the magical kingdoms, and every leader from every realm believes the King of Night's army, the Karraks, are responsible. War seems inevitable . . . and yet Taggie has just discovered two very interesting facts. Firstly, that the Karraks come from a cold, dark universe, and they cannot abide warmth and light. And secondly, that there was once a gate to this universe . . . now lost in the mists of time.
\nBut where do you begin to look for a gate which was deliberately hidden centuries ago? To find out, Taggie must rescue the one Karrak Lord who also hopes for peace. Who happens to be imprisoned in an impenetrable fortress . . .
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Over hundreds of years, the human race has been manipulated into starting a war. And it's one that could destroy our entire civilization. Chief Investigator Paula Myo is nominated to hunt the creature behind this ploy, while our invasion continues and multiple worlds fall to the enemy. In response, Admiral Kime commands humanity's defense, marshaling war-ready super-weapons. Yet he discovers his adversaries wield equally powerful armaments.
\nThe question is - where did these come from? Has the Commonwealth's top-secret defense project been compromised, or is the truth even worse than we can imagine?
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Greg Mandel, late of the Mindstar Battalion, has been many things in his life. Commando. Freedom fighter. Assassin. Now he's a freelance operative with a very special edge: telepathy.
In the high-tech, hard-edged world of computer crime, zero-gravity smuggling, and artificial intelligence, Greg Mandel is the man to call when things get rough. But when an elusive saboteur plagues a powerful organization known as Event Horizon, Mandel must cut his way through a maze of corporate intrigue and startling new scientific discoveries.
And nothing less than the future is at stake.
It is 2040 and, after decades of research, we can finally rejuvenate a human being. At seventy-eight years old, Jeff Baker - renowned inventor and philanthropist - has given the world much of his creative genius. He’s therefore selected as first choice for this gift.
\nAt first, rejuvenation feels like a miracle. Until the glow begins to fade. Personal relationships start to break down and the world waits for more brilliant new work. Living the dream will come at a cost, but can Jeff pay the price?
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The Confederation is starting to collapse politically and economically, allowing the 'possessed' to infiltrate more worlds. Quinn Dexter is loose on Earth, destroying the giant arcologies one at a time. As Louise Kavanagh tries to track him down, she manages to acquire some strange and powerful allies whose goal doesn't quite match her own.
\nThe campaign to liberate Mortonridge from the possessed degenerates into a horrendous land battle, the kind which hasn't been seen by humankind for six hundred years; then some of the protagonists escape in a very unexpected direction.Joshua Calvert and Syrinx fly their starships on a mission to find the Sleeping God - which an alien race believes holds the key to overthrowing the possessed.
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Julia Evans: billionairess, owner of Event Horizon, for fifteen years undisputed power behind the world's economic renaissance. And in trouble.
With her computer-genius husband missing and rival companies suddenly claiming to have acquired a technology impossibly superior to anything on Earth, Julia has no time to notice an anonymously delivered flower. But this flower has genes millions of years in advance of terrestrial DNA.
Is it a cryptic alien message or a poignant farewell from her husband?Only Greg Mandel can discover its origin, but he is not alone in his desperate search. A vicious mercenary killer, a jade merchant, and a high-priced courtesan all have a part to play.
It was never going to be easy, but as Greg and Julia discover, simply being first in the race ins't nerly good enough as teh Nano Flower starts to bloom . . .
Not every fallen angel comes from heaven...
The ancient menace has finally escaped from Lalonde, shattering the Confederation's peaceful existence. Those who succumbed to it have acquired godlike powers, but now follow a far from divine gospel as they advance inexorably from world to world.
On planets and asteroids, individuals battle for survival against the strange and brutal forces unleashed upon the universe. Governments teeter on the brink of anarchy, the Conferderation Navy is dangerously over-stretched, and a dark messiah prepares to invoke his own version of the final Night.
In such desperate times the last thing the galaxy needs is a new and terrifyingly powerful weapon. Yet Dr Alkad Mzu is determined to retrieve the Alchemist - so she can complete her thirty-year vendetta to slay a star. Which means Joshua Calvert has to find Dr. Mzu and bring her back before the alchemist can be reactivated.
But he's not alone in the chase, and there are people on both sides who have their own ideas about how to use the ultimate doomsday device.
Part of the Commonwealth, the planet of Bienvenido is in crisis. They are battling the Fallers, a fearsome alien race who have now infiltrated every level of human society. Nowhere is safe - and no one can be trusted.
\nKnown as the ‘Warrior Angel’, a mysterious individual is leading a desperate resistance, aided by forbidden technology. Yet the technophobic government obstructs the Angel’s efforts at every turn.
\nAs Fallers prepare to attack from the skies, the odds seem impossible on the ground. However, astronaut Ry Evine has made a discovery. It could unlock powerful secrets of the Commonwealth - and prevent their annihilation. But time isn’t on humanity’s side . . .
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Earth AD 2329: Humanity has colonized over four hundred planets, all interlinked by wormholes. For the first time in mankind's history there is peace. Then a star over a thousand light years away suddenly vanishes, imprisoned inside a force field of immense size. Yet who - or what - has that sort of technology? And what could this mean for us? Only a faster-than-light starship, captained by ex-NASA astronaut Wilson Kime, can reach that distance to investigate.
\nFor Wilson, getting inside the force field could be easy. It may be harder to stop something else from getting out.
\nWhat if there was a very good reason to seal off an entire star system?
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Professor Edward Kitchener, a double Nobel laureate researching quantum cosmology for the powerful Event Horizon conglomerate, has been savagely murdered. But was he the victim of industrial espionage, personal revenge, or a crime of passion by one of his handpicked team of live-wire students?
Event Horizon needs to know, and fast, so Greg Mandel, PSI-boosted veteran of the infamous Mindstar Battalion, must embark on an urgent investigation that ultimately leads him to an astounding confrontation with a past, which, according to the dead man's theories, might never have happened.
In AD 2600 the human race is finally beginning to realize its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets scattered across the galaxy host a multitude of prosperous and wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary spaceborn creatures. Huge fleets of sentient trader starships thrive on the wealth created by the industrialization of entire star systems. And throughout inhabited space the Confederation Navy keeps the peace. A true golden age is within our grasp.
But now something has gone catastrophically wrong. On a primitive colony planet a renegade criminal's chance encounter with an utterly alien entity unleashes the most primal of all our fears. An extinct race which inhabited the galaxy aeons ago called it \"The Reality Dysfunction.\" It is the nightmare which has prowled beside us since the beginning of history.
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Humanity welcomed the Olyix and their utopian technology. But mankind was tricked. Now these visitors are extracting a terrible price.
\nFor two years, the Olyix have laid siege to Earth, harvesting its people for their god. One by one, cities are falling to their devastating weaponry. And while millions have fled to seek refuge in space, others continue to fight an apparently unwinnable war.
\nAs Earth's defeat draws near, a team attempts to infiltrate the Salvation of Life - the Olyix’s arkship. If it succeeds, those chosen will travel to a hidden enclave thousands of light years away. Once there, they must signal its location to future generations, to bring the battle to the enemy. Maybe allies scattered throughout space and time can join forces. Yet in the far future, humanity are still hunted by their ancient adversary. And as forces battle on in the cold reaches of space, hope seems distant indeed . . .
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In the twenty-third century, humanity is enjoying a comparative utopia. Yet life on Earth is about to change, forever. Feriton Kane’s investigative team has discovered the worst threat ever to face mankind - and we’ve almost no time to fight back. The supposedly benign Olyix plan to harvest humanity, in order to carry us to their god at the end of the universe. And as their agents conclude schemes down on earth, vast warships converge above to gather this cargo.
\nSome factions push for humanity to flee, to live in hiding amongst the stars - although only a chosen few would make it out in time. But others refuse to break before the storm. As disaster looms, animosities must be set aside to focus on just one goal: wiping this enemy from the face of creation. Even if it means preparing for a future this generation will never see.
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AD 2204:
An alien shipwreck is discovered on a planet at the very limits of human expansion - so Security Director Feriton Kayne selects a team to investigate. The ship’s sinister cargo not only raises bewildering questions, but could also foreshadow humanity’s extinction. It will be up to the team to bring back answers, and the consequences of this voyage will change everything.
Back on Earth, we can now make deserts bloom and extend lifespans indefinitely. Humanity seems invulnerable. We therefore welcomed the Olyix to Earth when they contacted us. They needed fuel for their pilgrimage across the galaxy - and in exchange they helped us advance our technology. But were the Olyix a blessing or a curse?
\nThe Far Future:
Many lightyears from Earth, Dellian and his clan of genetically engineered soldiers are raised with one goal. They must confront and destroy their ancient adversary. The enemy that caused mankind to flee across the galaxy and that hunts us still. If they aren’t stopped, we will be wiped out - and we’re running out of time.
This collection includes Sonnie's Edge, as seen in the award-winning Netflix anthology series Love, Death & Robots.
\nSet in the same universe as the Night’s Dawn trilogy, Peter F. Hamilton presents a compelling mix of human dilemmas, imagined technologies and extraordinary new cultures.
\nAmong others, this collection includes Sonnie’s Edge, a story of contests to the death between constructed monsters. But one has a special advantage . . .
\nWe also visit an abandoned alien spacecraft in Escape Route. Abandoned, but is it really as empty as it seems?
\nIn the title novella, A Second Chance at Eden, the co-creator of a genetically-engineered habitat is found murdered. But nobody can identify the perpetrator - or the motive.
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Taggie and her younger sister Jemima are just like any other girls their age. They live with their mum, go to school, play sports and spend their holidays with their dad in the countryside. But one day, everything changes . . . when a white squirrel wearing purple glasses turns up in their lives.
\nThe next thing the sisters know, their dad has been kidnapped, and it's up to the girls to get him back. But it seems their father has been keeping some very large secrets from his young daughters, for their dad is no ordinary man. He is an otherworldly prince in exile, and the land he should be ruling, the First Realm, has been overthrown by the King of Night.
\nCan Taggie and Jemima find their way between the worlds to save their father, and what other secrets has he been hiding? Before long, the sisters realise that it is not just their dad's life at stake. It's the future of a whole world.
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The Commonwealth is in turmoil, as a cult prepares for its pilgrimage into the Void. Breaching its boundaries could cause an irreparable rift in space. Yet these fanatics are unstoppable, convinced by the Void’s projections of a paradise within. An alien invasion fleet is also on the way, as the Oscien Empire attempts to take advantage of humanity’s confusion.
\nInvestigator Paula Myo must hunt the Void’s latest prophet, in an attempt to stop her spreading its enticing visions. And at the heart of events is Edeard the Waterwalker, who lived long ago within the Void. Tales of his glorious story inspired the Pilgrimage - but may yet expose the Void’s true nature.
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War is coming - and every leader of every realm has sided with the War Emperor and pledged to fight the Karrak invaders - apart from Taggie, the teenage Queen of Dreams-to-be.
\nAided by an unusual band of allies, including a Karrak Lord, an elf and a feisty skyfolk captain, Taggie knows that the only way to stop the war is to find the long-lost gateway between our universe and the dark universe: the home of the Karrak people.
\nBut where do you begin to look for something that was deliberately hidden? And just how much is Taggie willing to lose in her desperate quest for peace?
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The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
\nTeenage Julian has perfect recall, which means he has trouble finding his place in the world. But he really does know his own mind. So when he starts experiencing someone else's memories, which are also glimpses of the future, Julian realizes he must find out why.
\nIt soon becomes clear that this unmet friend is in danger. And Julian resolves to do everything in his power to track down this mysterious other person - and prevent him from being killed.
Every year Jess and Storey have made an annual pilgrimage to northern Maine where they camp, hunt, and hike, leaving much from their long friendship unspoken. Although the state has convulsed all summer with secession mania - a mania that had simultaneously spread across other states - Jess and Storey figure it’s a fight reserved for legislators or, worse-case scenario, folks in the capitol. But after two weeks hunting moose off the grid, the men reach a small town and are shocked to find a bridge blown apart, buildings burned to the ground, and bombed-out cars abandoned on the road.
\nTrying to make sense of the sudden destruction all around them, the men set their sights on finding their way home, dragging a wagon across bumpy dirt roads, ransacking boats left in the lakes, and dodging men who are armed - secessionists or military, they cannot tell - as they seek a path to safety. And then, a startling discovery, a child in the cabin of a boat, drastically alters their path and the stakes of their escape.
\nDrenched with the beauty of the natural world, and attuned to the specific cadences of male friendship, even here at the edge of doom, Heller’s magisterial new novel is both a blistering warning of a divided country’s political strife and an ode to the salvation of our chosen families.
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Hig somehow survived the flu pandemic that killed everyone he knows. Now his wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley.
But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail, only to find something that is both better and worse than anything he could ever hope for.
Thriller about a young man who, escaping his own grief, is hired by an elite fishing lodge in Colorado, where amid the natural beauty of sun-drenched streams and forests he uncovers a plot of shocking menace.
\nKingfisher Lodge, nestled in a canyon on a mile and a half of the most pristine river water on the planet, is known by locals as Billionaire's Mile and is locked behind a heavy gate. Sandwiched between barbed wire and a meadow with a sign that reads: Don't Get Shot! the resort boasts boutique fishing at its finest.
\nSafe from viruses that have plagued America for years, Kingfisher offers a respite for wealthy clients. Now it also promises a second chance for Jack, a return to normalcy after a young life filled with loss. When he is assigned to guide a well-known singer, his only job is to rig her line, carry her gear, and steer her to the best trout he can find.
\nBut then a human scream pierces the night, and Jack soon realises that this idyllic fishing lodge may be merely a cover for a far more sinister operation.
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The Last Ranger a lush and vivid mystery set in Yellowstone National Park where a skirmish between a local hunter and a wolf biologist turns violent, and a park ranger, facing his own personal demons, sets out to determine what really happened.
\nRen is a park ranger, tasked with duties both mundane and thrilling: breaking up fights at campgrounds, saving tourists from moose attacks, and attempting to broker an uneasy peace between the wealthy vacationers who tromp around with cameras and the locals who want to carve out a meaningful living amid this western landscape.
\nWhen Ren discovers his friend Hilly, a biologist and wolf expert, nearly dead in the steel jaws of a wolf trap, he hopes it’s just an accident, but the small red ribbon tied to the stake makes him fairly certain that it wasn’t. What begins as an inquiry into a known poacher soon opens into the discovery of a local group of ranchers who have formed an alliance at odds with both the park and with Ren’s responsibility to protect it.
\nRife with surprising humor, populated by a cast of extraordinary characters, each drawn to Yellowstone for their own reasons, Peter Heller once again mines the rich vein where our very human impulses play out against the stunning beauty of the natural world.
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Wynn and Jack have been best friends since freshman orientation, bonded by their shared love of mountains, books, and fishing. Wynn is a gentle giant, a Vermont kid never happier than when his feet are in the water. Jack is more rugged, raised on a ranch in Colorado where sleeping under the stars and cooking on a fire came as naturally to him as breathing.
When they decide to canoe the Maskwa River in northern Canada, they anticipate long days of leisurely paddling and picking blueberries, and nights of stargazing and reading paperback Westerns. But a wildfire making its way across the forest adds unexpected urgency to the journey.
When they hear a man and woman arguing on the fog-shrouded riverbank and decide to warn them about the fire, their search for the pair turns up nothing and no one. But: The next day a man appears on the river, paddling alone. Is this the man they heard? And, if he is, where is the woman?
An intimate and revelatory eyewitness account of two generations of students in China’s heartland, chronicling a country in the midst of tumultuous change through the prism of its education system.
\nMore than twenty years after teaching English to China’s first boom generation at a small college in Sichuan Province, Peter Hessler returned to Sichuan to teach the next generation. At the same time, Hessler and his wife enrolled their twin daughters in a local state-run elementary school, where they were the only Westerners in a student body of about two thousand.
\nOver the years, Hessler had kept in close contact with more than a hundred of his former students, who were now in their forties. By reconnecting with these individuals - members of China’s “Reform generation” - while teaching current undergrads, Hessler was able to gain a unique perspective on China's incredible transformation over the past quarter-century.
\nIn the late 1990s, almost all of Hessler's students were the first member of their extended families to become educated. Their parents were subsistence farmers who could offer little guidance as their children entered a brand-new world. By 2019, when Hessler arrived at Sichuan University, he found a very different China and a new kind of student - an only child whose schooling was the object of intense focus from a much more ambitious and sophisticated cohort of parents.
\nHessler’s new students have a sense of irony about the regime but mostly navigate its restrictions with equanimity, and embrace the astonishing new opportunities China’s boom affords. But the pressures of this system of extreme “meritocracy” at scale can be gruesome, even for much younger children, including his own daughters, who give him and his wife an intimate view into the experience at their local school.
\nIn Peter Hessler’s hands, China’s education system is the perfect vehicle for examining what’s happened to the country, where it’s going, and what we can learn from it, for good and ill. At a time when anti-Chinese rhetoric in America has grown blunter and uglier, Other Rivers is a tremendous, indeed an essential gift, a work of enormous human empathy that rejects cheap stereotypes and shows us China from the inside out and the bottom up, using as a measuring stick this most universally relatable set of experiences.
\nAs both a window onto China and a distant mirror onto America and its own education system, Other Rivers is a classic, a book of tremendous value and compelling human interest.
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March 31, 1985. Two white patrol officers in search of a gang member followed a pickup truck carrying seven young Black men up a dirt driveway in the Encanto neighborhood of Southeastern San Diego. Minutes later, gunshots rang out, and the truck’s driver, Sagon Penn, fled the scene in an officer’s patrol car. The incident stunned the city. What followed would change it forever.
\nPenn was an idealist who believed in the power of Buddhist chants to bring about the oneness of humanity. The two police officers were rising stars in one of the most progressive police departments in the country, yet one that had suffered more officers killed in the line of duty than any other. While the facts of the case were never in dispute, what remained unresolved was what, if anything, could justify such a violent confrontation?
\nFor over two years, a determined prosecutor and a charismatic defense attorney engaged in a sensational courtroom drama that revolved around matters of mental health, racial biases, and the self-image of a once-sleepy beach town grappling with its transformation into a major metropolitan area. The Sagon Penn incident forever altered how San Diego would respond to incidents involving police and communities of color.
\nBased on court transcripts, personal interviews, and archival police reports, Reap the Whirlwind is a gripping true-crime narrative set against the evocative backdrop of Southern California.
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In 1939, just as the clouds of war are gathering, Richard Halifax - boys' adventure writer of manly bravado and the breeziest of prose styles - vanishes in the Pacific. Halifax was attempting to sail a Chinese junk from Hong Kong to San Francisco as part of the World's Fair festivities on Treasure Island. But while his disappearance upends the lives of those left in his wake back home, both his machinations and his letters to his young readers live on.
\nHildegard Rauch, an émigré painter and the daughter of Germany's greatest living writer in exile, finds her twin brother in a coma after an attempted suicide. He left a mysterious note that sends her on a search for the truth about her brother's relationship with Richard Halifax and the dangerous secret he entrusted to the writer before his voyage.
\nSimon Faulk, a British intelligence officer, has been assigned to ferret out Nazi spies in California. He learns of the arrival of a mysterious American agent from across the Pacific, part of a joint German-Japanese operation.
\nTold in the alternating voices of these three characters, set against the growing threat of another world war and a World's Fair dedicated to peace, World Pacific is a madcap quixotic tale that explores the many forms of shipwreck, exile, betrayal, and the stories we tell ourselves in the fight to stay afloat.
The definitive biography of Hideki Tojo, the controversial general who redefined military leadership in Shōwa-era Japan before his downfall during World War II.
\nThe military general who became Emperor Hirohito’s prime minister, Hideki Tojo is most often remembered as an iron-fisted leader who dragged Japan into World War II and - after spectacular losses - was eventually executed as a war criminal. Yet Tojo was far more than his ignominious end. In fact, as Peter Mauch argues, he was one of the twentieth century’s most accomplished military statesmen.
\nOver a career of some forty years, Tojo successfully launched himself into the highest echelons of political power. He was not only a tactical genius, Mauch shows, but also a savvy administrator, a fierce imperialist, and a deeply loyal advisor to the emperor. Tojo’s career took off with the notorious Kwantung Army in Manchuria, where he played a key role in escalating the Sino-Japanese War during the 1930s. As he rose through the ranks, becoming minister of war and then army chief of staff, he honed the efficiency of the Imperial Army and enhanced its influence within the emperor’s court. All the while, he deftly negotiated the fractious military rivalries that arose wherever he went. Brilliant, ambitious, and often ruthless, Tojo reached political heights that were perhaps matched only by his precipitous fall in the final months of World War II.
\nLayered and evocative, Tojo is at once a riveting military history of Shōwa-era Japan and a nuanced portrait of the relentless personality at its center.
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The body of eighteen-year-old TV personality Caitlin is found abandoned on a remote beach at the head of An Loch Dubh - the Black Loch - on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis. A swimmer and canoeist, it is inconceivable that she could have drowned.
\nFin Macleod left the island ten years earlier to escape its memories. When he learns that his married son Fionnlagh had been having a clandestine affair with the dead girl and is suspected of her murder, he and Marsaili return to try and clear his name.
\nBut nothing is as it seems, and the truth of the murder lies in a past that Fin would rather forget, and a tragedy at the cages of a salmon farm on East Loch Roag, where the tense climax of the story finds its resolution.
\nThe Black Loch takes us on a journey through family ties, hidden relationships and unforgiving landscapes, where suspense, violent revenge and revelation converge in the shadow of the Black Loch.
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A brutal killing takes place on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland: a land of harsh beauty and inhabitants of deep-rooted faith.
\nDetective Inspector Fin Macleod is sent from Edinburgh to investigate. For Lewis-born Macleod, the case represents a journey both home and into his past.
\nSomething lurks within the close-knit island community. Something sinister.
\nAs Fin investigates, old skeletons begin to surface, and soon he, the hunter, becomes the hunted.
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Enzo MacLeod, a Scot teaching on a faculty at Cahors in southwest France, confidently bet that he could use his expertise to crack seven notorious murders described in a book on cold cases by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin. Enzo has in fact solved the first two crimes.
But the third is far from his mind right now: he’s just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and he’s become the victim of someone who seems intent on destroying his credit and his relationships - and getting him arrested for murder. This is one instance where his Scottish stubbornness might pay off.
Having established a safe house to protect his loved ones, besieged now as it were, he sets to work. Are his personal woes somehow connected to the digging he’s done into the brutal murder of a rent boy in a Paris apartment sixteen years ago, as Raffin has described? What further remnants of evidence can he review - and can he stay alive long enough to catch the long-hidden killer?
When France's top chef, Marc Fraysse, summoned the world's press to make a shattering announcement, rumors abounded that he was about to lose one of his three coveted Michelin stars. Instead, on arrival at his remote restaurant on a volcanic plateau in central France, they were greeted with the news that the troubled genius had been murdered, and the message he intended to deliver was never made. Seven years on, the identity of his killer also remains an enigma.
\nEnzo Macleod takes on his fifth cold case and delves into the big business and high stakes of French haute cuisine. As winter sets in, and snow gathers along a volcanic horizon, he retraces long cold footsteps across a remote hilltop. But unravelling the complex web of relationships that surrounded the brilliant and mercurial chef - a spurned lover, a jealous wife, an estranged brother, an embittered food critic - also leads to strange parallels with his own life. And in opening up this celebrated cold case, he finds himself reopening old wounds from his past.
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West of France, 1989.
A weeping killer deposits the unconscious body of nineteen year old Lucie Martin, her head wrapped in a blue plastic bag, into the water of a picturesque lake.
Lot-et-Garonne, 2003.
Fourteen years later a summer heatwave parches the earth, killing trees and bushes and drying out streams. In the scorched mud and desiccated slime of the lake a fisherman finds a skeleton wearing a bag over its skull.
Paris, October 2011.
In an elegant apartment in Paris, forensic expert Enzo Macleod pores over the scant evidence of this, the sixth cold case he has been challenged to solve. In taking on this old and seemingly impossible task he will put everything and everyone he holds dear in a peril he could never have imagined.
Fin Macleod, now head of security on a privately owned Lewis estate, is charged with investigating a spate of illegal game-hunting taking place on the island.
\nThis mission reunites him with Whistler Macaskill - a local poacher, Fin's teenage intimate, and possessor of a long-buried secret.
\nBut when this reunion takes a violent, sinister turn and Fin puts together the fractured pieces of the past, he realises that revealing the truth could destroy the future.
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He calls himself the Beijing Ripper. His victims are young, beautiful and viciously mutilated. Li Yan, the head of Beijing's serious crime squad, has been put in the spotlight. His bosses, the media, and the terror-stricken public are demanding a fast result.
\nWhen American pathologist Margaret Campbell is invited to perform the autopsy on one of the victims, her results send shockwaves through the investigation. Then Li begins receiving personal letters from the killer, and his life and career start falling apart. The need to uncover the Ripper's identity becomes paramount if he is to save himself and his family from ruin.
A man is washed up on a deserted beach on the Hebridean Isle of Harris, barely alive and borderline hypothermic. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. The only clue to his identity is a map tracing a track called the Coffin Road. He does not know where it will lead him, but filled with dread, fear and uncertainty he knows he must follow it.
A detective crosses rough Atlantic seas to a remote rock twenty miles west of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. With a sense of foreboding he steps ashore where three lighthouse keepers disappeared more than a century before - a mystery that remains unsolved. But now there is a new mystery - a man found bludgeoned to death on that same rock, and DS George Gunn must find out who did it and why.
A teenage girl lies in her Edinburgh bedroom, desperate to discover the truth about her father's death. Two years after the discovery of the pioneering scientist's suicide note, Karen Fleming still cannot accept that he would wilfully abandon her. And the more she discovers about the nature of his research, the more she suspects that others were behind his disappearance.
Coffin Road follows three perilous journeys towards one shocking truth - and the realisation that ignorance can kill us.
Gaillac, South-West France.
\nGil Petty, America's most celebrated wine critic, is found strung up in a vineyard, dressed in the ceremonial robes of the Order of the Divine Bottle and pickled in wine.
\nFor forensic expert Enzo Macleod, the key to this unsolved murder lies in decoding Petty's mysterious reviews - which could make or break a vineyard's reputation.
\nEnzo finds that beneath the tranquil façade of French viticulture lurks a back-stabbing community riddled with rivalry - and someone who is ready to stop him even if they have to kill again.
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In the first book of the Enzo Files, ex forensic scientist Enzo Macleod makes a daring wager and attempts to solve the ten-year-old case of a vanished man
\nParis: As midnight strikes, a man desperately seeking sanctuary flees into a church. The next day, his sudden disappearance will make him famous throughout France.
\nForensic expert Enzo Macleod takes a wager to solve the seven most notorious French murders, armed with modern technology and a total disregard for the justice system.
\nDeep in the catacombs below the city, he unearths dark clues deliberately set - and as he draws closer to the killer, discovers that he is to be the next victim.
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A grotesquely burned corpse found in a city park is a troubling mystery for Beijing detective Li Yan. Yan, devoted to his career as a means of restoring the respect his family lost during the Cultural Revolution, needs outside help if he is to break the case.
\nThe unidentified cadaver in turn provides a welcome distraction for forensic pathologist Margaret Campbell. Campbell, married to her work and having left America and her broken past behind, throws herself into the investigation, and before long uncovers a bizarre anomaly.
\nAn unlikely partnership develops between Li and Campbell as they follow the resulting lead. A fiery and volatile chemistry ignites: exposing not only their individual demons, but an even greater evil - a conspiracy that threatens their lives, as well as those of millions of others.
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Margaret Campbell had finally decided to leave Beijing - and the man she loved - and return home to the States. She had first come to Beijing to conduct a seminar on her specialty, forensic pathology, for the city’s police. The invitation turned out to ask for more than she expected; she was thrust into the search for a murderer. This was how she met and came to fall in love with the Beijing police detective Li Yan. Although they began as enemies, the attraction between them was overwhelming - until personal tragedies pulled them apart.
Now the police need an answer to a series of gruesome murders. Four men have been killed; the first three were Chinese and the fourth man was born in China but became an American in his youth. All were victims of what looks like ritual sacrifices.
The U.S. ambassador practically forces Margaret to work once more with Li Yan. She buries her pain and turns to a new admirer for her free time - an American archaeologist who is making a television documentary. As Margaret and Li Yan investigate, they come closer and closer to finding the truth behind the killer’s executions. They also come closer to a killer who will sacrifice anyone to conceal a secret.
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The tiny island of Ile de Groix off the coast of Brittany is the scene of a murder left shrouded in mystery and grief.
\nAdam Killian's study has been left intact since his death twenty years ago. He left it to his son to decipher; who died before he got a chance. Now the only hope left is Enzo Macleod.
\nHe believes that his modern forensic skills might find something in the cryptic study that everyone else has missed. And his investigation will lead him to a suspect once acquitted, a widow still hoping, and eventually, to a treacherous hellhole where a long-kept secret promises to be revealed.
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It has been a whirlwind few years for Li Yan and Margaret Campbell. Nowadays, both are busy juggling their huge professional workloads - Li as the newly promoted chief of Beijing's serious crime squad, and Campbell as lecturer at the University of Public Security - with the day-to-day raising of their young son, Li Jon.
\nWhen a desperate mother appeals to Campbell's own maternal instincts, Li agrees to look into the disappearance of a 17-year-old Beijing girl, Jiang Meilin.
\nYet Li's investigation soon turns from a favour into a full-scale murder enquiry. And when he receives an anonymous note he learns Jiang Meilin's death is tied to a dangerous underground trade, and a dark marital rite from China's past.
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Niamh and Ruairidh Macfarlane co-own the Hebridean company Ranish Tweed. On a business trip to Paris to promote their luxury brand, Niamh learns of Ruairidh's affair, and then looks on as he and his lover are killed by a car bomb. She returns home to Lewis, bereft.
Niamh begins to look back on her life with Ruairidh, desperate to identify anyone who may have held a grudge against him. The French police, meanwhile, have ruled out terrorism, and ruled in murder - and sent Detective Sylvie Braque to shadow their prime suspect: Niamh.
As one woman works back through her memories, and the other moves forward with her investigation, the two draw ever closer to a deadly enemy with their own, murderous, designs.
When the mutilated and dismembered bodies of eighteen women are discovered in a mass grave in Shanghai, Li is sent to establish if the corpses are related to an unsolved murder in Beijing, and he finds the most horrifying catalog of killings ever uncovered in the Middle Kingdom.
Once more, Margaret is unsure of her mercurial relationship with Li, and if it will threaten their professional collaboration. Having just suffered the heartbreak of burying her father, she arrives in Shanghai to find any partnership with Li threatened by another woman named Mei-Ling. Born in the Year of the Tiger, Mei-Ling seems to have her claws firmly fixed in Li. How can Margaret, a mere “foreign devil,” compete with Mei-Ling, the deputy head of Shanghai’s serious crime squad?
Faced with the grisly proposition that the murdered women have been subjected to “live” autopsies, the three soon realize they are tracking a monster of inhuman capacity. The closer they get to this ruthlessly cold-blooded killer, the closer they come to realising their own personal nightmares.
An unidentified corpse is recovered from a Lewis peat bog; the only clue to its identity being a DNA sibling match to a local farmer.
\nBut this islander, Tormod Macdonald - now an elderly man suffering from dementia - has always claimed to be an only child.
\nWhen Tormod's family approach Fin Macleod for help, Fin feels duty-bound to solve the mystery.
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There are two men on their way to Brussels from the UK: Neil Bannerman, an iconoclastic journalist on Scotland's Daily Standard whose irate editor wants him out of the way, and Kale - a professional assassin.
Expecting to find only a difficult, dreary political investigation in Belgium, Bannerman has barely settled in when tragedy strikes. His host, a fellow journalist, along with a British Cabinet Minister, are discovered dead in the Minister's elegant Brussels townhouse. Apparently they have shot each other. But the dead journalist's young autistic daughter, Tania, was hidden in a closet during the killings, and when she draws a chilling picture of a third party - a man with no face - Bannerman suddenly finds himself a reluctant participant in a desperate murder investigation.
As the facts slowly begin to emerge under Bannerman's scrutiny, he comes to suspect that the shootings may have a deep and foul link with the rotten politics that brought him to Brussels in the first place. And as Kale threatens to strike again, Bannerman begins to feel a change within himself. His jaded professionalism is combining with a growing concern for the lonely and frightened Tania, and a strong attraction for a courageous woman called Sally, to draw him out of himself and into the very heart of a profound, cold-blooded, and infinitely dangerous conspiracy.
Gaillac, South-West France.
\nGil Petty, America's most celebrated wine critic, is found strung up in a vineyard, dressed in the ceremonial robes of the Order of the Divine Bottle and pickled in wine.
\nFor forensic expert Enzo Macleod, the key to this unsolved murder lies in decoding Petty's mysterious reviews - which could make or break a vineyard's reputation.
\nEnzo finds that beneath the tranquil façade of French viticulture lurks a back-stabbing community riddled with rivalry - and someone who is ready to stop him even if they have to kill again.
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A top Chinese swimmer kills himself of the eve of an international event - shattering his country's hopes of victory against the Americans. An Olympic weightlifter dies in the arms of his Beijing mistress - a scandal to be hushed up at the highest level.
\nBut the suicides were murder, and both men's deaths are connected to an inexplicable series of \"accidents\" which has taken the lives of some of China's best athletes.
\nIn this fifth China Thriller, Chinese detective Li Yan and American pathologist Margaret Campbell are back in Beijing confronting a sinister sequence of murders which threatens to destroy the future of international athletics.
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Spain, 2020. When ex-pat fugitive Jack Cleland watches his girlfriend die, gunned down in a pursuit involving officer Cristina Sanchez Pradell, he promises to exact his revenge by destroying the policewoman.
\nCristina's aunt Ana has been deaf-blind for the entirety of her adult life: the victim of a rare condition named Usher Syndrome. Ana is the centre of Cristina's world - and of Cleland's cruel plan.
\nJohn Mackenzie - an ingenious yet irascible Glaswegian investigator - is seconded to aid the Spanish authorities in their manhunt. He alone can silence Cleland before the fugitive has the last, bloody, word.
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The macabre discovery of a truck full of dead Chinese in southern Texas brings together again the American pathologist Margaret Campbell with Li Yan, the Beijing detective with whom she once shared a turbulent personal and professional relationship.
\nForced back into an uneasy partnership, they set out to identify the Snakehead who is behind the 100-million-dollar trade in illegal Chinese immigrants which led to the tragedy in Texas - only to discover that the victims were also unwitting carriers of a deadly cargo.
\nLi and Margaret have a biological time-bomb of unimaginable proportions on their hands, and an indiscriminate killer who threatens the future of humankind.
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It is the year 2051. Warnings of climate catastrophe have been ignored, and vast areas of the planet are under water, or uninhabitably hot. A quarter of the world's population has been displaced by hunger and flooding, and immigration wars are breaking out around the globe as refugees pour into neighboring countries.
\nBy contrast, melting ice sheets have brought the Gulf Stream to a halt and northern latitudes, including Scotland, are being hit by snow and ice storms. It is against this backdrop that Addie, a young meteorologist checking a mountain top weather station, discovers the body of a man entombed in ice.
\nThe dead man is investigative reporter, George Younger, missing for three months after vanishing during what he claimed was a hill-walking holiday. But Younger was no hill walker, and his discovery on a mountain-top near the Highland village of Kinlochleven, is inexplicable.
\nCameron Brodie, a veteran Glasgow detective, volunteers to be flown north to investigate Younger's death, but he has more than a murder enquiry on his agenda. He has just been given a devastating medical prognosis by his doctor and knows the time has come to face his estranged daughter who has made her home in the remote Highland village.
\nArriving during an ice storm, Brodie and pathologist Dr. Sita Roy, find themselves the sole guests at the inappropriately named International Hotel, where Younger's body has been kept refrigerated in a cake cabinet. But evidence uncovered during his autopsy places the lives of both Brodie and Roy in extreme jeopardy.
\nAs another storm closes off communications and the possibility of escape, Brodie must face up not only to the ghosts of his past, but to a killer determined to bury forever the chilling secret that George Younger's investigations had threatened to expose.
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In the shifting sands of the desert, near an unnamed metropolis, there is an institute where various fellows come to undertake projects of great significance. But when our sort-of hero, Percy Frobisher, arrives, surrounded by the simulated environment of the glass-enclosed dome of the Institute, his mind goes completely blank.
\nWhen he spills something on his uniform - a major faux pas - he learns about a mysterious shop where you can take something, utter the command \"same same,\" and receive a replica even better than the original.
\nImagining a world in which simulacra have as much value as the real - so much so that any distinction between the two vanishes, and even language seeks to reproduce meaning through ever more degraded copies of itself - Peter Mendelsund has crafted a deeply unsettling novel about what it means to exist and to create . . . and a future that may not be far off.
Ed is a weeper. A professional weeper. He's a card-carrying member of Local 312, an eccentric union of mourners, hired for funerals and wakes, services and burials. But all that feeling can wear a man down, and the tears don’t come like they used to. Especially as the normals, the privileged non-weepers, appear to feel less and less every day, even as the world gets worse and worse. Lately it’s been drier and hotter than hell itself.
\nAnd then one morning a new kid shows up. No belongings, no parents, no name. He’s young, scrawny, non-union. Ed can’t help but feel a fondness for him. The kid never sheds a tear, but he is charged with a strange, divine power to make others feel. He leaves a trail of something - call them miracles, call them disasters - in his wake. And then he disappears.
Harry Ackerson has always considered his stepmother Alice to be sexy and beautiful, in an \"otherworldly\" way. She has always been kind and attentive, if a little aloof in the last few years.
Days before his college graduation, Alice calls with shocking news. His father is dead and the police think it’s suicide. Devastated, Harry returns to his father’s home in Maine. There, he and Alice will help each other pick up of the pieces of their lives and uncover what happened to his father.
Shortly after he arrives, Harry meets a mysterious young woman named Grace McGowan. Though she claims to be new to the area, Harry begins to suspect that Grace may not be a complete stranger to his family. But she isn’t the only attractive woman taking an interest in Harry. The sensual Alice is also growing closer, coming on to him in an enticing, clearly sexual way.
Mesmerised by these two women, Harry finds himself falling deeper under their spell. Yet the closer he gets to them, the more isolated he feels, disoriented by a growing fear that both women are hiding dangerous - even deadly - secrets . . . and that neither one is telling the truth.
Hen and her husband Lloyd have settled into a quiet life in a new house outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Hen (short for Henrietta) is an illustrator and works out of a studio nearby, and has found the right meds to control her bipolar disorder. Finally, she’s found some stability and peace.
But when they meet the neighbors next door, that calm begins to erode as she spots a familiar object displayed on the husband’s office shelf. The sports trophy looks exactly like one that went missing from the home of a young man who was killed two years ago. Hen knows because she’s long had a fascination with this unsolved murder - an obsession she doesn’t talk about anymore, but can’t fully shake either.
Could her neighbor, Matthew, be a killer? Or is this the beginning of another psychotic episode like the one she suffered back in college, when she became so consumed with proving a fellow student guilty that she ended up hurting a classmate?
The more Hen observes Matthew, the more she suspects he’s planning something truly terrifying. Yet no one will believe her. Then one night, when she comes face to face with Matthew in a dark parking lot, she realizes that he knows she’s been watching him, that she’s really on to him. And that this is the beginning of a horrifying nightmare she may not live to escape . . .
Ashley Smith, an American art student in London for her junior year, was planning on spending Christmas alone, but a last-minute invitation from fellow student Emma Chapman brings her to Starvewood Hall, country residence of the Chapman family. The Cotswold manor house, festooned in pine boughs and crammed with guests for Christmas week, is a dream come true for Ashley. She is mesmerised by the cozy, firelit house, the large family, and the charming village of Clevemoor, but also by Adam Chapman, Emma's aloof and handsome brother.
\nBut Adam is being investigated by the local police over the recent brutal slaying of a girl from the village, and there is a mysterious stranger who haunts the woodland path between Starvewood Hall and the local pub. Ashley begins to wonder what kind of story she is actually inhabiting. Is she in a grand romance? A gothic tale? Or has she wandered into something far more sinister and terrifying than she'd ever imagined?
\nOver thirty years later the events of that horrific week are revisited, along with a diary from that time. What began in a small English village in 1989 reaches its ghostly conclusion in modern-day New York, many Christmas seasons later.
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Abigail Baskin never thought she’d fall in love with a millionaire. Then she met Bruce Lamb. He’s a good guy, stable, level-headed, kind - a refreshing twist from her previous relationships.
\nBut right before the wedding, Abigail has a drunken one-night stand on her bachelorette weekend. She puts the incident - and the sexy guy who wouldn’t give her his real name - out of her mind, and now believes she wants to be with Bruce for the rest of her life.
\nThen the mysterious stranger suddenly appears - and Abigail’s future life and happiness are turned upside down. He insists that their passionate night was the beginning of something much, much more. Something special. Something real - and he’s tracked her down to prove it.
\nDoes she tell Bruce and ruin their idyllic honeymoon - and possibly their marriage? Or should she handle this psychopathic stalker on her own? To make the situation worse, strange things begin to happen. She sees a terrified woman in the night shadows, and no one at the resort seems to believe anything is amiss . . . including her perfect new husband.
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On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the stunning and mysterious Lily Kintner. Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revealing very intimate details about themselves. Ted talks about his marriage that’s going stale and his wife Miranda, who he’s sure is cheating on him. Ted and his wife were a mismatch from the start - he the rich businessman, she the artistic free spirit - a contrast that once inflamed their passion, but has now become a cliché.
\nBut their game turns a little darker when Ted jokes that he could kill Miranda for what she’s done. Lily, without missing a beat, says calmly, “I’d like to help.” After all, some people are the kind worth killing, like a lying, stinking, cheating spouse . . .
\nBack in Boston, Ted and Lily’s twisted bond grows stronger as they begin to plot Miranda's demise. But there are a few things about Lily’s past that she hasn’t shared with Ted, namely her experience in the art and craft of murder, a journey that began in her very precocious youth.
\nSuddenly these co-conspirators are embroiled in a chilling game of cat-and-mouse, one they both cannot survive . . . with a shrewd and very determined detective on their tail.
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There was always something slightly dangerous about Joan. So, when she turns up at private investigator Henry Kimball’s office asking him to investigate her husband, he can’t help feeling ill at ease. Just the sight of her stirs up a chilling memory: he knew Joan in his previous life as a high school English teacher, when he was at the center of a tragedy.
\nNow Joan needs his help in proving that her husband is cheating. But what should be a simple case of infidelity becomes much more complicated when Kimball finds two bodies in an uninhabited suburban home with a “for sale” sign out front. Suddenly it feels like the past is repeating itself, and Henry must go back to one of the worst days of his life to uncover the truth.
\nIs it possible that Joan knows something about that day, something she’s hidden all these years? Could there still be a killer out there, someone who believes they have gotten away with murder? Henry is determined to find out, but as he steps closer to the truth, a murderer is getting closer to him, and in this hair-raising game of cat and mouse only one of them will survive.
\n
Nine strangers receive a list with their names on it in the mail. Nothing else, just a list of names on a single sheet of paper. None of the nine people know or have ever met the others on the list. They dismiss it as junk mail, a fluke - until very, very bad things begin happening to people on the list.
\nFirst, a well-liked old man is drowned on a beach in the small town of Kennewick, Maine. Then, a father is shot in the back while running through his quiet neighborhood in suburban Massachusetts. A frightening pattern is emerging, but what do these nine people have in common? Their professions range from oncology nurse to aspiring actor.
\nFBI agent Jessica Winslow, who is on the list herself, is determined to find out. Could there be some dark secret that binds them all together? Or is this the work of a murderous madman? As the mysterious sender stalks these nine strangers, they find themselves constantly looking over their shoulders, wondering who will be crossed off next . . .
\n
A series of unsolved murders with one thing in common: each of the deaths bears an eerie resemblance to the crimes depicted in classic mystery novels.
\nThe deaths lead FBI Agent Gwen Mulvey to mystery bookshop Old Devils. Owner Malcolm Kershaw had once posted online an article titled 'My Eight Favourite Murders,' and there seems to be a deadly link between the deaths and his list - which includes Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders, Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train and Donna Tartt's The Secret History.
\nCan the killer be stopped before all eight of these perfect murders have been re-enacted?
Martha Ratliff conceded long ago that she’d likely spend her life alone. She was fine with it, happy with her solo existence, stimulated by her job as an archival librarian, constantly surrounded by thought-provoking ideas and the books she loved. But then she met Alan, a charming and sweet-natured divorcee with a job that took him on the road for half the year. When he asked her to marry him, she said yes, even though he still felt a little bit like a stranger.
\nA year in and the marriage was good, except for that strange blood streak on the back of one of his shirts he’d worn to a conference in Denver. Her curiosity turning to suspicion, Martha investigates the cities Alan visited over the past year and uncovers a disturbing pattern - five unsolved cases of murdered women.
\nIs she married to a serial killer? Or could it merely be a coincidence? Unsure what to think, Martha contacts an old friend from graduate school for advice. Lily Kintner once helped Martha out of a jam with an abusive boyfriend and may have some insight. Intrigued, Lily offers to meet Alan to find out what kind of man he really is . . . but what Lily uncovers is more perplexing and wicked than they ever could have expected.
\n
When local businessman Rusco Hog is found dead out on the old Tanner farm, it appears to be a demon attack. But for Selia Barren, the Town Speaker, the evidence doesn’t add up.
\nShe suspects foul play, but Rusco didn’t become the richest man in town by making friends, and it seems everyone in Tibbet’s Brook has a motive.
\nNovella, set in the Demon Cycle Universe.
Though humanity won a hard-fought victory in its war against demonkind, the Demon King has escaped in search of a new queen to restart his dark hive, and has found signs of one on a distant shore.
\nBut pursuing him are humanity's best Olive Paper and Darin Bales, whose legendary parents brought demonkind low once before. Olive and Darin will not rest until the demons are defeated, and so relentless is their hunt that they have followed Alagai Ka across the sea to a strange new land.
\nThere they discover a culture unlike any they have never known, where demons live alongside humans as servants and companions. And there they meet the demon's masters - including a seductive prince who is drawn to Olive - who seem unable or unwilling to understand the danger they are in.
\nBecause no human is safe from the Demon King's thirst for war - and every human must join the battle against his kingdom of death.
\n
For time out of mind, bloodthirsty demons have stalked the night, culling the human race to scattered remnants dependent on half-forgotten magics to protect them. Then two heroes arose - men as close as brothers, yet divided by bitter betrayal. Arlen Bales became known as the Warded Man, tattooed head to toe with powerful magic symbols that enable him to fight demons in hand-to-hand combat - and emerge victorious. Jardir, armed with magically warded weapons, called himself the Deliverer, a figure prophesied to unite humanity and lead them to triumph in Sharak Ka - the final war against demonkind.
But in their efforts to bring the war to the demons, Arlen and Jardir have set something in motion that may prove the end of everything they hold dear - a Swarm. Now the war is at hand and humanity cannot hope to win it unless Arlen and Jardir, with the help of Arlen’s wife, Renna, can bend a captured demon prince to their will and force the devious creature to lead them to the Core, where the Mother of Demons breeds an inexhaustible army.
Trusting their closest confidantes, Leesha, Inevera, Ragen and Elissa, to rally the fractious people of the Free Cities and lead them against the Swarm, Arlen, Renna, and Jardir set out on a desperate quest into the darkest depths of evil - from which none of them expects to return alive.
The night of the new moon, an army of demons rises in force, seeking the deaths of two men with the potential to become the Deliverer - the man prophesied to reunite the scattered remnants of humanity.
\nArlen Bales, the Warded Man, denies he is the Deliverer, but the more he tries to live as one with the common folk, the more fervently they believe.
\nAmong the desert tribes, Ahmann Jardir has proclaimed himself the Deliverer, forging his followers into a mighty demon-killing force. But Jardir’s rise was engineered by his First Wife, Inevera, a cunning and powerful priestess whose motives and past are shrouded in mystery.
\nOnce Arlen and Jardir were as close as brothers. Now they are the bitterest of rivals. As humanity’s enemies rise, the two must first contend with the most deadly demons of all - those lurking in the human heart.
Olive, Princess of Hollow, has her entire life planned out - a steady march toward succession. But the more her mother writes the script, the more Olive rails against playing the parts she is assigned.
\nDarin is the son of the man people say saved the world. Everyone expects greatness from Darin, but the only thing he’s ever been great at is hiding.
\nBut now it’s time to fight the darkness.
\nWhen Olive and Darin step across the wards one night, they learn that the demons are not all gone, and those that remain hunger for revenge.
\nAre Darin and Olive ready to be heroes?
The sun is setting on humanity. The night now belongs to voracious demons that prey upon a dwindling population forced to cower behind half-forgotten symbols of power. Legends tell of a Deliverer: a general who once bound all mankind into a single force that defeated the demons. But is the return of the Deliverer just another myth?
\nOut of the sands rides Ahmann Jardir, who has forged the desert tribes of Krasia into a demon-killing army. He has proclaimed himself Shar’Dama Ka, the Deliverer, and carries ancient weapons - a spear and a crown - that give credence to his claim.
\nBut the Northerners claim their own Deliverer: the Warded Man, a dark, forbidding figure. Once, the Shar’Dama Ka and the Warded Man were friends. Now they are fierce adversaries. Yet as old allegiances are tested and fresh alliances forged, all are unaware of the appearance of a new breed of demon, more intelligent - and deadly - than any that have come before.
Humanity thought the war with demonkind was over. Now, after less than a generation to rebuild, the demon corelings have returned with a vengeance. The Spear of Ala - the fortress that stands at the gates of the demon’s hive - is the last bastion against the horde, and reports say it may already have fallen.
\nOlive Paper is expected to take the vanguard in the fight. Only an heir of Kaji can wield the artifact that opens the gates of the Spear of Ala, and as Ahmann Jardir’s child, Olive seems destined for a role as leader and savior. But Olive does not wish to follow in her father’s footsteps any more than she did her mother’s.
\nDarin Bales was born with supernatural senses that he struggles to process, so much that even those who love him believe he can barely take care of himself. Yet to save his mother from the clutches of Alagai Ka, the demon king, Darin will brave anything to mount a rescue.
\nDarin and Olive each strive to walk their own path but find themselves inextricably tied to the legacies of their parents and to a fated confrontation with the demon king and his new hatchling queen. If they fail, humanity may not survive.
The Skull Throne of Krasia stands empty.
\nBuilt from the skulls of fallen generals and demon princes, it is a seat of honor and ancient, powerful magic, keeping the demon corelings at bay. From atop the throne, Ahmann Jardir was meant to conquer the known world, forging its isolated peoples into a unified army to rise up and end the demon war once and for all.
\nBut Arlen Bales, the Warded Man, stood against this course, challenging Jardir to a duel he could not in honor refuse. Rather than risk defeat, Arlen cast them both from a precipice, leaving the world without a savior and opening a struggle for succession that threatens to tear the Free Cities of Thesa apart.
\nIn the south, Inevera, Jardir’s First Wife, must find a way to keep their sons from killing one another and plunging their people into civil war as they strive for glory enough to make a claim to the throne.
\nIn the north, Leesha Paper and Rojer Inn struggle to forge an alliance between the duchies of Angiers and Miln against the Krasians before it is too late.
\nCaught in the crossfire is the duchy of Lakton - rich and unprotected, ripe for conquest.
\nAll the while, the corelings have been growing stronger, and without Arlen and Jardir, there may be none strong enough to stop them. Only Renna Bales may know more about the fate of the missing men, but she, too, has disappeared . . .
For hundreds of years the demons have terrorized the night, slowly culling the human herd that shelters behind magical wards - symbols of power whose origins are lost in myth and whose protection is terrifyingly fragile. It was not always this way.
\nOnce, men and women battled the corelings on equal terms, but those days are gone. Night by night the demons grow stronger, while human numbers dwindle under their relentless assault. Now, with hope for the future fading, three young survivors of vicious demon attacks will dare the impossible, stepping beyond the crumbling safety of the wards to risk everything in a desperate quest to regain the secrets of the past.
\nTogether, they will stand against the night.
In a dystopian world, equity begins at birth. Every newborn is placed into a pool and randomly reassigned to a different family-no child should have the advantage of the \"right\" family. Even stillborn infants are entered into this cruel lottery.
\nBrooke Yeled is an agent of the powerful Progeny Agency, tasked with enforcing this chilling ideal. But when Brooke discovers she herself is pregnant, her world begins to unravel. Surrounded by betrayal, intrigue, and escalating violence, she quickly learns the fierce power of motherhood and the depths she will go to protect her unborn child.
\nAs Brooke fights for what is hers, she becomes a target of the very system she once upheld-a system obsessed with absolute equity at any cost, guided by ruthless artificial intelligence and relentless surveillance.
\nWith danger at every turn and trust becoming an impossible luxury, Brooke must find the truth hidden beneath layers of deceit. Can she gather the proof she needs in time to save her baby, as well as herself? Or will she become yet another victim of equity's unforgiving rule?
Anabelle Gage is trapped in a male body, and it’s rotting from the inside out. In Caimor, where the magical elite buy and swap designer bodies like clothes, Ana can’t afford to escape her tattered form. When she fails the entrance exam to the prestigious Paragon Academy, her last hope of earning a new body implodes. As the clock ticks down to her last breath, she’s forced to use her illusion magic to steal a healthy chassis - before her own kills her.
\nBut Ana is caught by none other than the headmaster of Paragon Academy, who poses a brutal ultimatum: face execution for her crime or become a mercenary at his command. Revolt brews in Caimor's smog-choked underworld, and the wealthy and powerful will stop at nothing to take down the rebels and the infamous dark witch at their helm, the Black Wraith.
\nWith no choice but to accept, Ana will steal, fight, and kill her way to salvation. But her survival depends on a dangerous band of an impulsive assassin, a brooding bombmaker, and an alluring exile who might just spell her ruin. As Ana is drawn into a tangled web of secrets, the line between villain and hero shatters - and Ana must decide which side is worth dying for.
\n
A bridge-burning, riotous memoir by a top PR operative in Washington who exposes the secrets of the $129-billion industry that controls so much of what we see and hear in the media - from a man who used to pull the strings, and who is now pulling back the curtain.
\nAfter nearly two decades in the Washington PR business, Elwood wants to come clean, by exposing the dark underbelly of the very industry that’s made him so successful. The first step is revealing exactly what he’s been up to for the past twenty years - and it isn’t pretty.
\nElwood has worked for a murderer’s row of clients, including Gaddafi, Assad, and the government of Qatar - namely, the bad guys. In All the Worst Humans , Elwood unveils how the PR business works, and how the truth gets made, spun, and sold to the public - not shying away from the gritty details of his unlikely career.
\nThis is a piercing look into the corridors of money, power, politics, and control, all told in Elwood’s disarmingly funny and entertaining voice. He recounts a four-day Las Vegas bacchanal with a dictator’s son, plotting communications strategies against a terrorist organization in Western Africa, and helping to land a Middle Eastern dictator’s wife a glowing profile in Vogue on the same time the Arab Spring broke out. And he reveals all his slippery tricks for seducing journalists in order to create chaos and ultimately cover for politicians, dictators, and spies - the industry - secret tactics that led to his rise as a political PR pro.
\nAlong the way, Phil walks the halls of the Capitol, rides in armored cars through Abuja, and watches his client lose his annual income at the roulette table. But as he moved up the ranks, he felt worse and worse about the sleaziness of it all - until Elwood receives a shocking wake-up call from the FBI. This risky game nearly cost Elwood his life and his freedom. Seeing the light, Elwood decides to change his ways, and his clients, and to tell the full truth about who is the worst human.
\n
In 1962, fresh out of business school, Phil Knight borrowed $50 from his father and created a company with a simple mission: import high-quality, low-cost athletic shoes from Japan. Selling the shoes from the boot of his Plymouth, Knight grossed $8000 in his first year. Today, Nike's annual sales top $30 billion. In an age of start-ups, Nike is the ne plus ultra of all start-ups, and the swoosh has become a revolutionary, globe-spanning icon, one of the most ubiquitous and recognisable symbols in the world today.
\nBut Knight, the man behind the swoosh, has always remained a mystery. Now, for the first time, he tells his story. Candid, humble, wry and gutsy, he begins with his crossroads moment when at 24 he decided to start his own business. He details the many risks and daunting setbacks that stood between him and his dream - along with his early triumphs. Above all, he recalls how his first band of partners and employees soon became a tight-knit band of brothers. Together, harnessing the transcendent power of a shared mission, and a deep belief in the spirit of sport, they built a brand that changed everything.
\nA memoir rich with insight, humour and hard-won wisdom, this book is also studded with lessons - about building something from scratch, overcoming adversity, and ultimately leaving your mark on the world.
\n
Oyster McLellen has spent his life causing mischief. Running with a small-time gang and fleecing money from tourists in Hyde Park to support his struggling family in the absence of his father, who abandoned them years ago.
\nWhen a simple money drop for his boss, Big Mickey, goes wrong, Oyster's future looks bleak. His only chance to redeem himself in the eyes of Mickey is to get the money back, but as he pursues the thieves across South London he suddenly finds himself washed up on a beach, surrounded by broken phones and shattered office furniture.
\nHis new world: Greater London. A city built on the detritus of our own, where leviathans crafted from broken skyscrapers roam the seas, where ink beetles nestle beneath the skin of its residents and where Oyster's father, Lucas, may well have escaped to all those years ago.
\nBut there are bigger things at stake. Oyster's allegiances are torn between the enigmatic Nonesuch, the eccentric escapist Marya Petrovna, and the terrifying Mr Primrose - and he will have to choose who to align himself with quickly. Because plans are afoot: something ancient is brewing, and a choice needs to be made, the consequences of which will determine the fate of Londons, and life, everywhere.
\n
The scales have tipped. The battle for Namdhor, the north, and the entire realm of man was a sure victory for the orcs. But they lost.
\nNow, under the rule of a would-be-king, the armies of man fuel the war when they should be bolstering their defences. Only a few understand that time is against them, yet these few must fight alone if the dawn is to rise over Illian once more.
\nThe heroes of the realm have banded together, but they cannot fight side by side. There is only one way they can win, seen by the oldest dragon and preserved inside the broken mind of a ranger.
\nFrom the shadows, The Crow muddies the waters, making it all the harder to see the path to victory. In the depths of The Bastion, where even time is his slave, the ancient necromancer has finished his work. The king is almost ready . . .
\n
This is the end.
\nHow could it not be? Fate waits for none. It has unravelled across the ages, its web woven throughout millennia of chaos and blood. Now, all that was seen shall come to pass and there is nothing the heroes of Verda can do to stop it.
\nAfter years of planning and preparation, Alijah Galfrey is finally ready to change the world. He will break the scales of power across the realm, securing his victory and eternal reign. There is no line he will not cross, no sacrifice he will not make to bring peace to the land.
\nSpread thin, The Rebellion must work fast to muster their forces and meet the enemy head on. Vighon Draqaro and his allies give their lives to stand against the growing darkness, but only the children of fire and flame can determine the fate for all.
\n
War is set to ravage Illian. The elves sail from the east. The savage Darkakin rise from the south. Valanis, the dark elf, is finally free of his prison and eager to see his work finished. Only then will he be free of the gods who still haunt him.
\nA new hope rises in The Red Mountains. There, the last remaining dragons have been discovered. Gideon and Galanör, human and elf, will have to work together if they are to convince Adriel, the last of the Dragorn order, to intervene in the coming war.
\nDevoid of hope and unsure what road to take, Asher and his companions must decide what role they will play as the realm unravels into bloodshed. The only weapon known to rival Valanis’ power is in a place the ranger has avoided for a long time, a place where, until now, neither man nor elf would dare to tread.
\nCivil war has shattered the empire in The Arid Lands as the slaves make their stand against the highborns. But, while revolution brews, a greater threat looms. As a thunderous cacophony of steel and savagery marches through The Undying Mountains, who will stand before this army of death . . .
\n
Millennia in the dark has left these lost and forgotten monsters hungry for war. The people of Illian can do nothing but rely on their peacekeepers, the Dragorn.
\nAre the dragon riders ready for what has been buried under their feet?
\nGideon Thorn, Master of the Dragorn, can feel the Third Age coming to an ominous end. With Inara Galfrey and her dragon by his side, they must investigate the return of this ancient evil.
\nAlijah Galfrey has only one talent - getting into trouble. When he isn’t drinking, the half-elf is gambling his life away in the pursuit of relics no one cares about. Now, he finds himself at the sharp end of history. Can he take charge of his own future, or is he destined to be controlled by others?
\nDeep in the mines of Vengora, something ancient has been found, and the dwarves of Dhenaheim would go to war with the North over it. After sixty years in the world of men, Doran Heavybelly must finally return to his homeland if any peace is to be found . . .
\n
Now a man with nothing to lose, Kalian Gaines has chosen to travel through the Conclave’s new Starforge and explore what remains of the Terran Empire. This graveyard of worlds holds secrets long forgotten and better left alone, but regardless of the dangers, answers must be found and soon. The threat of the Vanguard looms over the entire Conclave, its purpose; to pave the way for something worse, something ancient.
\nKalian must adapt and evolve, or risk losing everything in humanity’s battle to not only survive those who seek their extinction, but also their place in the Conclave. Roland North is carving a bloody trail across the criminal underworld, seeking his own answers. He refuses to believe that Li’ara is gone, and if he must maim, torture and kill everyone connected to Protocorps to learn the truth, then he will.
\nThe oldest beings in the known universe have traversed an ocean of stars for a singular purpose. War is coming and the harvest is inevitable. The only chance for hope has been discovered in the darkest corner of the galaxy, where at last, the heretic has been found . . .
\n
ONLY ONE CAN END THE WAR.
\nHE STANDS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS, A SAVIOUR AND A DESTROYER TO BOTH.
\nDRAGONS AND AEGRES WILL FALL.
\nBUT ONE CAN TURN THE TIDE.
\n\n
One who stands in the shadow of kings. Such has been seen by the doomed. The weight of ten thousand lives and all the realm besides now sits on Joran’s shoulders. So much has already been sacrificed to bring him to the ancient doors of Drakanan, where he might take on the mantle of Dragon Rider and usher in a new age of heroes.
\n\n
But a time of dragons is not all that has been seen . . .
\n\n
The days are shadowed by approaching night. The war to devour all wars has come again. He who lies entombed in the dark will rise and the fires with him. Death cannot hold him.
\n\n
The Skaramangians hold to this, their fingers pulling the strings of war to hide their dark deeds. In past and present they work towards a future that will reset the world. Evil will be made manifest in that world, and there remains no power in all of Verda capable of preventing it.
\n\n
And so the few, those who would be heroes, must take the road to madness if they are to prepare for the inevitable war. It is not a road they can all survive . . .
\n\n
Kalian Gaines has a secret; he just doesn’t know it yet. He looks like us, he lives like us... but he is not one of us.
Kalian knows nothing outside of his mundane life teaching history on 30th century Earth, until a day like any other triggers a series of events, which will tie his fate to that of humanity.
A human hand print, embedded into a rock with alien script, is discovered on a moon that mankind has never set foot on. This discovery holds a secret, which will sweep Kalian into the heart of a conspiracy that has corrupted the galaxy for two hundred thousand years.
Orcs, an ancient fiend thought lost to history, have risen from The Under Realm. Their hunger for total dominance has plunged Illian into war, pushing the survivors to Namdhor, the last refuge of man at the top of the world.
\nFor those who stand up to this foe, they do so in darkness. Ash clouds smother the skies, blocking out the sun as the orcs rampage across the land.
\nBehind it all, manipulating from the shadows, The Black Hand fuels the war on both sides. The Crow, the one who was promised, has seen the future and works in the depths of The Bastion to forge a new weapon, a weapon that can stand against the dark at all costs.
\nGideon Thorn is adrift, his order decimated, and his oath to protect the realm meaningless. The Master Dragorn faces his greatest test yet, balancing his duty to the people and his duty to his order.
\nInara Galfrey has a choice to make as the realm’s darkest hour approaches. Malliath and Asher cannot be ignored but holding fast to her courage could save the world. It could also spell her end.
\nDoran Heavybelly finds himself at the throne of his father. There are realms of hell he would rather visit than the halls of his ancestors. Shackled and bound, however, the dwarf has no choice but to face his past . . .
\n
It’s fifteen years since the Orcs were defeated. Fifteen years since a new king rose from the battlefield. Fifteen years since Illian knew the horror of war. Fifteen years of peace are about to end. Something is coming. Shadows gather. Whispers of rebellion have reached the king. Darkness stirs beyond Illian’s borders.
\nBeyond the mountains, Dhenaheim has lost a quiet war. Refugees pour into Illian, bringing suspicion and unrest. For Doran Heavybelly, Dhenaheim's war means facing a personal tragedy that demands his attention . . . and his axe. A simple job for too much coin should have been warning enough for Asher but, like Fate, trouble always has a way of finding him.
\n
Evil has been made manifest, returned from shadow and madness. Try as they might, those who would be heroes could not prevent the return of The Dark One.
\nIn the shattering aftermath, the survivors have but one choice: hunt down what cannot be killed. Cob, the ranger - the cursed - must find his quarry before the enemy makes his first move. By his side rides Androma, fearless and unyielding. They must succeed. To fail would doom the realm to a new war, a war without end.
\nBut in a world slipping into darkness, not all hope is lost.
\nA time of dragons is yet to come. Joran Pendain must shoulder the weight of that destiny, but he need not shoulder it alone anymore. In the depths of Azad-guul, where only despair might breed, Joran’s path crossed with that of a dragon egg - his egg.
\nTheirs was not the only path to cross, however.
\nTrue to his word, Baelon Vos - Dragonlord - would make Joran a Rider worthy of legend - if he could survive the training. Baelon’s designs for the world have been years in the making, and Joran might just be the missing piece to bring it all together. Or bring it all down.
\nAnd beneath the waves, the ocean races stir, the currents swelling with revolution and the hope of freedom. Kitrana Voden, a battle maiden of the Swordsworn and proud Nimean, must find her way back to the people of Nimala before extinction drowns them all - before the oldest demon from the oldest world awakens from its slumber.
\nAbove or below, it matters not to The Dark One. He is not afraid to be called evil. If evil could not be corrupted, bound, or destroyed, then he would gladly endure the title, if only to weed out the beasts that clothe themselves as men.
\n
Alijah's reign sweeps from Erador to Ayda. Those who would stand against the king are few, their numbers cast across too many battlefields. Does hope lie in the east? Can the elves turn the tide and keep The Rebellion alive?
\nThe weight of Dhenaheim now rests on Doran's shoulders. Chained and imprisoned, the clans are shattered and spread across the realm. On the island of Qamnaran, they build to the heavens. In The Moonlit Plains, they dig down into the dark. Only the Heavybellys have the mettle to do what must be done.
\nAstride the mighty Athis, Inara Galfrey fights for The Rebellion as both sword and shield. With blood and sweat she has kept Alijah's forces at bay, but Inara knows there is only one way to defeat her brother. Following this path, however, will take her far from the front lines and into lands long forgotten.
\nAfter ten thousand years, the future that was foretold looms near. But Fate has one last hand to deal . . .
\n
And so it ends . . .
They wiped out humanity's ancestors.
They laid waste to the Terran Empire.
They destroyed Earth.
Now, they have come to harvest what remains.
The Conclave has been preparing for war, but no one guessed the scale of what waits on the edge of the galaxy.
Humanity's battle for survival has spread across every world. The planet Evalan shelters the remnants, but too few remain to keep the enemy at bay.
Kalian Gaines can only see one way to win the war. If he chooses that path, will the cost of victory be too high?
With human and alien blood being spilled, Roland North is in his element. Might the fate of humanity rest on the kind of decision a natural-born scoundrel hates to make?
Once there were heroes. Brave men and women who showed their quality to be above the rest. Those whose deeds earned them the heart of a dragon. Those whose courage and strength resonated with the unborn, who, in their eggs, can wait thousands of years for a warrior worthy of them.
\nThese heroes rose up on young battlefields and defended the weak and oppressed across all of Erador. They did so because they were inspired. They had only to look up and see.
\nDragons Riders!
\nThe last noble warriors in the realm. Only heroes can embolden the ordinary. For centuries, millennia, the Dragon Riders galvanised generation after generation, adding Riders to their ranks, birthing dragons from their eggs.
\nBut there are no more heroes. War with the Andarens is like nothing the Riders, nor the armies of Erador, have ever faced. In the place of heroes there are only soldiers now. Fodder for the machine of war.
\nThis time of twilight is set to be the crowning hour of the dark, when the light is losing its grip. There are those who have been waiting, biding their time in the shadows while the heroes of Verda die out. They worship something ancient. Something forgotten by myth and legend. Something evil.
\nIt falls on a few to keep back that darkness. A few who must rise without inspiration and prove themselves worthy.
\n
The final days of hope have come and gone. The kingdoms of Illian stand on the edge of ruin, threatened by the armies of Valanis. As evil spreads across the land, too few are left to hold the line.
\nA world away, the children of fire and flame may be the only hope for the realm, but the dragons have been defeated before. Now Verda’s future hangs in the balance.
\nReeling from their losses, Asher and his companions journey north, trying to outrun the savage Darkakin. A confrontation awaits the ranger but, even with Paldora’s gem, he dare not challenge Valanis yet.
\nThe days of the Dragorn have come again, and with them, a relic of the gods has been brought into the light. The knowledge of Verda’s true history weighs on Gideon Thorn, and he would see the world rid of the evil that has cursed it from the shadows for so long.
\nA great change is coming, and a new Age dawns on the horizon. Whether it be the light or the dark that finds victory, one soul will suffer the burden of destiny for all . . .
\n
Mankind has lorded over the land of Illian for a thousand years, building on the ruins left by the elves, as if it were their birthright. A thousand years is a long time for an immortal race to see the truth of things, a truth that has remained unsaid for a millennium - elves are superior. They are faster, stronger and connected to the magical realm in a way that man could never grasp. Illian should belong to them.
\nUnaware of the shadow that looms in the east, the six kingdoms of man are fractured, unallied, and clawing at each other’s gates for more power.
\nThis isn’t just war set to ravage the land, but a slaughter - the world of man cannot hope to survive.
\nThrown into the heart of this war is a man known by many names; an Outlander of the wilds, an assassin, a ranger. Asher was born a thousand years ago, to a life he doesn’t remember. Forty years of brutal training and killing for money has beaten the earliest years of his life away, leaving his ties to the oldest of evils a mystery to all . . .
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Kalian Gaines and the remains of humanity are forced to forge a new beginning in a galaxy that doesn't want them. After the Gomar wrought destruction across the Conclave, those taking refuge aboard the Gommarian are tainted by the same brush - humans are dangerous.
\nAfter a Conclave excavation unearths an object that predates even their ancient society, Kalian Gaines and Li'ara Ducarté are allowed off the Gommarian and asked to assist in an investigation that will take them deeper into the conspiracy of their origins.
Meanwhile, Roland North has escaped the confines of the Gommarian and taken up the life of a bounty hunter, causing more trouble for both the Conclave and humanity.
Esabelle, the daughter of Savrick, is secretly tasked with using her unique Terran abilities to track Roland down before he does something they'll all regret.
Set on different paths, these few will be thrown into the tempest of machinations planned out long before humanity learned to walk.
They are coming. They are hungry . . .
The Dark One cannot be stopped.
\nAfter thousands of years in shadow, Skara Pendain has claimed the name as he would a crown. And with it he has gained the throne of Erador. The east has fallen. The realm of men now bends to his will . . . or breaks beneath it.
\nWith Baelon Vos cast down, the Dragon Riders - once the last shield of the realm - are his to command. Their fire, their fury, an extension of his dominion. From horizon to horizon, Skara’s rule is absolute.
\nAll but one.
\nIn the south, the Kedradi of Qalanqathrefuse to kneel. They do not hide. They do not yield. They are hunters. Drawing Skara’s armies into a trap, they prepare for a clash that will decide the fate of Verda itself. Led by Kassanda Grey and Joran Pendain, the survivors of Skara’s wrath place their faith in the few Riders who still remember their oaths . . . in those who might yet bring about a Time of Dragons.
\nIt is only a vision.
\nSeen by ten thousand eyes. Paid for with ten thousand lives. A future that could be - not one that will be. Because the board is breaking.
\nWhile Baelon Vos searches in the dark for a relic that could turn the tide of war, and new heroes draw their line in the hot sands of Kanofell, something far older has awakened.
\nSomething no one can command, not even Daijen Saeth.
\nThe Dragon Lord. The first of his kind.
\nMalliath.
\nFreed from the Shadow Realm, the ancient black dragon breathes the air of Verda once more. He remembers it all.
\nThe betrayal.
\nThe chains.
\nHis heart now beats to the ancient song of vengeance.
\nSkara must turn from conquest to survival. His throne can wait. His war cannot. For what comes next is not a battle for kingdoms . . . but a reckoning.
\nA duel of man and beast. Rider against dragon. And this time, there will be no victor.
\nOnly Death - at last stepping onto the board, to claim them all.
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Beneath a Pale Sky collects eight stories of horror, including two original novelettes, that will take you from the high-security ward of a mental hospital to the top of a Ferris Wheel on an ocean pier. These stories will bury you in the rubble of an earthquake, pull back the veil on a soul's journey into the afterlife, and turn a small Midwestern town into the secret domain of cross-dimensional gods.
\nCombining old-school horror with the modern weird, Philip Fracassi will take you places you've never been before, and show you sights you won't soon forget. The supernatural intrudes upon a wedding; a pier becomes the site of tragedy; a collapsed building is only the start of the nightmare for those trapped in the ruins; a scientist who makes the discovery of a lifetime, only to find out that what he's unearthed has dire consequences not only for himself, but for all of mankind.
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Rule One: Travel can only occur to a point within your lifetime.
\nRule Two: You can only travel for ninety seconds.
\nRule Three: You can only observe.
\nThe rules cannot be broken.
\nA scientist has unlocked the mysteries of time travel. This is not the story you think you know. And the rules are only the beginning.
\nScientist Beth Darlow has discovered the unimaginable. She's built a machine that allows human consciousness to travel through time - to any point in the traveler's lifetime - and relive moments of their life. An impossible breakthrough, but it's not perfect: the traveler has no way to interact with the past. They can only observe.
\nAfter Beth's husband, Colson, the co-creator of the machine, dies in a tragic car accident, Beth is left to raise Isabella - their only daughter - and continue the work they started. Mired in grief and threatened by her ruthless CEO, Beth pushes herself to the limit to prove the value of her technology.
\nThen the impossible happens. Simply viewing personal history should not alter the present, but with each new observation she makes, her own timeline begins to warp.
\nAs her reality constantly shifts, Beth must solve the puzzles of her past, even if it means forsaking her future.
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Malcolm Polstead is the kind of boy who notices everything but is not much noticed himself. And so perhaps it was inevitable that he would become a spy . . .
\nMalcolm's father runs an inn called the Trout, on the banks of the river Thames, and all of Oxford passes through its doors. Malcolm and his dæmon, Asta, routinely overhear news and gossip, and the occasional scandal, but during a winter of unceasing rain, Malcolm catches wind of something new: intrigue.
\nHe finds a secret message inquiring about a dangerous substance called Dust - and the spy it was intended for finds him.
\nWhen she asks Malcolm to keep his eyes open, Malcolm sees suspicious characters everywhere; Lord Asriel, clearly on the run; enforcement agents from the Magisterium; an Egyptian named Coram with warnings just for Malcolm; and a beautiful woman with an evil monkey for a dæmon. All are asking about the same thing: a girl - just a baby - named Lyra.
\nLyra is the kind of person who draws people in like magnets. And Malcolm will brave any danger, and make shocking sacrifices, to bring her safely through the storm.
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Here lives an orphaned ward named Lyra Belacqua, whose carefree life among the scholars at Oxford's Jordan College is shattered by the arrival of two powerful visitors.
\nFirst, her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, appears with evidence of mystery and danger in the far North, including photographs of a mysterious celestial phenomenon called Dust and the dim outline of a city suspended in the Aurora Borealis that he suspects is part of an alternate universe. He leaves Lyra in the care of Mrs. Coulter, an enigmatic scholar and explorer who offers to give Lyra the attention her uncle has long refused her.
\nIn this multilayered narrative, however, nothing is as it seems. Lyra sets out for the top of the world in search of her kidnapped playmate, Roger, bearing a rare truth-telling instrument, the compass of the title. All around her children are disappearing - victims of so-called \"Gobblers\" - and being used as subjects in terrible experiments that separate humans from their daemons, creatures that reflect each person's inner being. And somehow, both Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are involved.
Lyra and Will are in unspeakable danger. With help from Iorek Byrnison the armored bear and two tiny Gallivespian spies, they must journey to a dank and gray-lit world where no living soul has ever gone. All the while, Dr. Mary Malone builds a magnificent Amber Spyglass. An assassin hunts her down, and Lord Asriel, with a troop of shining angels, fights his mighty rebellion, in a battle of strange allies - and shocking sacrifice.
As war rages and Dust drains from the sky, the fate of the living - and the dead - inally comes to depend on two children and the simple truth of one simple story.
Lyra Silvertongue is alone in a city haunted by daemons, searching for her beloved Pan. Malcolm Polstead isn’t far behind, searching for Lyra. And they are both racing toward the desert of Karamakan, following the trail of roses said to hold the secret of Dust.
\nTheir allies and enemies are converging on the mysterious red building at the heart of the desert: Marcel Delamare and the military might of the Magisterium; the radical Men from the Mountains; scientists, scholars, and spies; troops of witches and other people of the air. And awaiting them all is a previously unseen and chilling new threat that will change everything.
\nThe intertwining odysseys of Malcolm and Lyra, their journeys both internal and external, will test their limits and challenge even their most dearly held beliefs.
\nAs ever, Philip Pullman is using the language of fantasy to illuminate our world and to explore the deepest questions of what it means to be alive and awake to all the splendors and horrors around us.
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It is twenty years since the events of La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One unfolded and saw the baby Lyra Belacqua begin her life-changing journey.
\nIt is seven years since readers left Lyra and the love of her young life, Will Parry, on a park bench in Oxford's Botanic Gardens at the end of the ground-breaking, bestselling His Dark Materials sequence.
\nNow, in The Secret Commonwealth, we meet Lyra Silvertongue. And she is no longer a child . . .
\nThe second volume of Sir Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust sees Lyra, now twenty years old, and her daemon Pantalaimon, forced to navigate their relationship in a way they could never have imagined, and drawn into the complex and dangerous factions of a world that they had no idea existed.
\nPulled along on his own journey too is Malcolm; once a boy with a boat and a mission to save a baby from the flood, now a man with a strong sense of duty and a desire to do what is right.
\nTheirs is a world at once familiar and extraordinary, and they must travel far beyond the edges of Oxford, across Europe and into Asia, in search for what is lost - a city haunted by daemons, a secret at the heart of a desert, and the mystery of the elusive Dust.
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Lyra finds herself in a shimmering, haunted otherworld - Cittàgazze, where soul-eating Spectres stalk the streets and wingbeats of distant angels sound against the sky.
\nBut she is not without allies: twelve-year-old Will Parry, fleeing for his life after taking another's, has also stumbled into this strange new realm.
\nOn a perilous journey from world to world, Lyra and Will uncover a deadly secret: an object of extraordinary and devastating power.
\nAnd with every step, they move closer to an even greater threat - and the shattering truth of their own destiny.
The whole country has been riveted by the Beloved TV star and national treasure Anna Finbow, standing in court, accusing her daughter’s therapist Jean Guest of brainwashing her daughter Mary for her own financial gain. Jean insists Mary’s traumatic memories arise from her upbringing and her time studying at a prestigious art school in Rome; wounds only Jean’s therapy can heal. But as the trial unfolds, it’s Augusta “Gus” Bird, Anna’s former employee - a seemingly insignificant bystander, a nobody - who holds the key to unraveling the tangled web of lies and deceit.
\nWhat really happened to Mary in Rome? And if her memories can’t be trusted, how will they ever uncover the truth behind her estrangement?
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For a decade Darrow led a revolution against the corrupt color-coded Society. Now, outlawed by the very Republic he founded, he wages a rogue war on Mercury in hopes that he can still salvage the dream of Eo. But as he leaves death and destruction in his wake, is he still the hero who broke the chains? Or will another legend rise to take his place?
Lysander au Lune, the heir in exile, has returned to the Core. Determined to bring peace back to mankind at the edge of his sword, he must overcome or unite the treacherous Gold families of the Core and face down Darrow over the skies of war-torn Mercury.
But theirs are not the only fates hanging in the balance.
On Luna, Mustang, Sovereign of the Republic, campaigns to unite the Republic behind her husband. Beset by political and criminal enemies, can she outwit her opponents in time to save him?
Once a Red refugee, young Lyria now stands accused of treason, and her only hope is a desperate escape with unlikely new allies.
Abducted by a new threat to the Republic, Pax and Electra, the children of Darrow and Sevro, must trust in Ephraim, a thief, for their salvation—and Ephraim must look to them for his chance at redemption.
As alliances shift, break, and re-form—and power is seized, lost, and reclaimed—every player is at risk in a game of conquest that could turn the Rising into a new Dark Age.
As a Red, Darrow grew up working the mines deep beneath the surface of Mars, enduring backbreaking labor while dreaming of the better future he was building for his descendants. But the Society he faithfully served was built on lies.
\nDarrow’s kind have been betrayed and denied by their elitist masters, the Golds - and their only path to liberation is revolution. And so Darrow sacrifices himself in the name of the greater good for which Eo, his true love and inspiration, laid down her own life. He becomes a Gold, infiltrating their privileged realm so that he can destroy it from within.
\nA lamb among wolves in a cruel world, Darrow finds friendship, respect, and even love - but also the wrath of powerful rivals. To wage and win the war that will change humankind’s destiny, Darrow must confront the treachery arrayed against him, overcome his all-too-human desire for retribution - and strive not for violent revolt but a hopeful rebirth.
\nThough the road ahead is fraught with danger and deceit, Darrow must choose to follow Eo’s principles of love and justice to free his people. He must live for more.
A decade ago, Darrow was the hero of the revolution he believed would break the chains of the Society. But the Rising has shattered everything: Instead of peace and freedom, it has brought endless war. Now he must risk everything he has fought for on one last desperate mission. Darrow still believes he can save everyone, but can he save himself?
And throughout the worlds, other destinies entwine with Darrow’s to change his fate forever:
A young Red girl flees tragedy in her refugee camp and achieves for herself a new life she could never have imagined.
An ex-soldier broken by grief is forced to steal the most valuable thing in the galaxy - or pay with his life.
And Lysander au Lune, the heir in exile to the sovereign, wanders the stars with his mentor, Cassius, haunted by the loss of the world that Darrow transformed, and dreaming of what will rise from its ashes.
Red Rising was the story of the end of one universe, and Iron Gold is the story of the creation of a new one. Witness the beginning of a stunning new saga of tragedy and triumph.
The Reaper is a legend, more myth than man: the savior of worlds, the leader of the Rising, the breaker of chains.
But the Reaper is also Darrow, born of the red soil of Mars: a husband, a father, a friend.
Marooned far from home after a devastating defeat on the battlefields of Mercury, Darrow longs to return to his wife and sovereign, Virginia, to defend Mars from its bloodthirsty would-be conqueror Lysander.
Lysander longs to destroy the Rising and restore the supremacy of Gold, and will raze the worlds to realize his ambitions.
The worlds once needed the Reaper. But now they need Darrow, and Darrow needs the people he loves - Virginia, Cassius, Sevro - in order to defend the Republic.
So begins Darrow’s long voyage home, an interplanetary adventure where old friends will reunite, new alliances will be forged, and rivals will clash on the battlefield.
Because Eo’s dream is still alive - and after the dark age will come a new age: of light, of victory, of hope.
Darrow would have lived in peace, but his enemies brought him war. The Gold overlords demanded his obedience, hanged his wife, and enslaved his people. But Darrow is determined to fight back. Risking everything to transform himself and breach Gold society, Darrow has battled to survive the cutthroat rivalries that breed Society’s mightiest warriors, climbed the ranks, and waited patiently to unleash the revolution that will tear the hierarchy apart from within.
Finally, the time has come.
But devotion to honor and hunger for vengeance run deep on both sides. Darrow and his comrades-in-arms face powerful enemies without scruple or mercy. Among them are some Darrow once considered friends. To win, Darrow will need to inspire those shackled in darkness to break their chains, unmake the world their cruel masters have built, and claim a destiny too long denied - and too glorious to surrender.
Darrow is a miner and a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he digs all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of the planet livable for future generations. Darrow has never seen the sky.
Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better future for his children.
But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow and Reds like him are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.
Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow joins a resistance group in order to infiltrate the ruling class and destroy society from within. He will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.
On the surface of the Sun, spots appear and fade in a predictable cycle, like a great clock in the sky. In medieval Russia, China, and Korea, monks and court astronomers recorded the appearance of these dark shapes, interpreting them as omens of things to come.
\nIn Western Europe, by contrast, where a cosmology originating with Aristotle prevailed, the Sun was regarded as part of the unchanging celestial realm, and it took observations through telescopes by Galileo and others to establish the reality of solar imperfections. In the nineteenth century, amateur astronomers discovered that sunspots ebb and flow about every eleven years - spurring speculation about their influence on the weather and even the stock market.
\nExploring these and many other crucial developments, Pierre Sokolsky provides a history of knowledge of the Sun through the lens of sunspots and the solar cycle. He ranges widely across cultures and throughout history, from the earliest recorded observations of sunspots in Chinese annals to satellites orbiting the Sun today, and from worship of the Sun as a deity in ancient times to present-day scientific understandings of stars and their magnetic fields.
\nConsidering how various thinkers sought to solve the puzzle of sunspots, Sokolsky sheds new light on key discoveries and the people who made them, as well as their historical and cultural contexts. Fast-paced, comprehensive, and learned, The Clock in the Sun shows readers our closest star from many new angles.
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If Nox and Amaris are ever to have the life together they've always hoped for, they will have to use all the power and strength within them to protect their continent. When powerful enemies from Sulgrave wielding unspeakable access to magic threaten to shatter their world for good, they must join with Raascot's military, the reevers, and an unlikely ally from the mountains to have any hope of saving their kingdoms.
\nTogether, their forces press north across deadly wastelands, facing unknowable threats, impossible battles . . . and new questions of what their fate truly holds. Their entire lives have been building toward this moment. Caught between faith and frenzy, questions and identity, love and lust, past and present, Nox and Amaris's story draws to an explosive conclusion as they fight once and for all to protect their people, their future, and each other.
Marlow needs to believe she's crazy. The alternative would mean embracing the gift - or curse - shared by her mother and grandmother: she can see angels and demons, including a dark and haunting entity who's been with Marlow her entire life. At least, she believes that's all he is until a fae from the Nordic pantheon strolls into her life and informs her that she's been sharing a bed with the Prince of Hell.
\nA Prince who's now gone missing.
\nBefore she knows it, Marlow is deeply entangled in a centuries-old war, stumbling straight into a battleground between mighty beings of myth and legend from powerful pantheons around the world. And who will come out on top may just depend on her and the love she never dared to believe in.
Marlow has spent most of her life believing the shadowy demon she loves isn't real. Not only is he the living, breathing Prince of Hell, but he is now in serious danger. Their reunion is cut short as Caliban remains in a vicious battle with a Phoenician goddess after Marlow's escape. To save him, Marlow must venture into her ancestors' domain for help - the Norse Pantheon - where shared blood is no guarantee of an alliance and the line between gods and beasts blurs.
\nMajor players from even more realms team up in the ever-growing war between Heaven and Hell, and it will be up to Marlow to determine friend from foe to get Caliban back and save her world as she knows it. No one said the games of gods would be easy, but Marlow is prepared to sacrifice everything to save the one she loves.
Nox and Amaris learn their dreams of reunion come at an unspeakable cost. Passion and politics collide as the two young women learn to navigate an unknown future in the kingdom of Raascot. With new titles thrust upon them, Nox and Amaris find themselves more uncertain than ever of who they are meant to become - both to their people and to each other.
\n\t\t\t\tHumans, fae, and monsters are on the precipice of war, and time is running short in their search for answers. Victory will take more than just battles as alliances shift and new threats emerge. To have a chance at stopping their enemies, securing the continent's succession, and uncovering the truth of their bond, the two women must find a way to break the curse on Raascot's fae and face their fate once and for all . . . and hope that they survive it.
Farleigh is just an orphanage. At least, that’s what the church would have the people believe, but beautiful orphans Nox and fae-touched Amaris know better. They are commodities for sale, available for purchase by the highest bidder. So when the madame of a notorious brothel in a far-off city offers a king’s ransom to purchase Amaris, Nox ends up taking her place - while Amaris is drawn away to the mountains, home of mysterious assassins.
\nEven as they take up new lives and identities, Nox and Amaris never forget one thing: they will stop at nothing to reunite. But the threat of war looms overhead, and the two are inevitably swept into a conflict between human and fae, magic and mundane. With strange new alliances, untested powers, and a bond that neither time nor distance could possibly break, the fate of the realms lies in the hands of two orphans - and the love they hold for one another.
“I love you . . .”
\nNox's tear-filled words echo across the sand as she and Amaris are torn apart. They've battled fiercely to find each other again, and have barely reunited when Amaris is taken away by the queen's dragon.
\nInjured and desperate, Amaris is forced to navigate her new surroundings with the help of Raascot's enigmatic general if she hopes to stay alive. At the same time, across the land and running out of options, Nox forms a partnership with the continent's league of peacekeeping assassins, begging their help to find Amaris and forge some stability between the kingdoms.
\nAs wounds heal and new relationships blossom, Nox and Amaris must confront impossible obstacles and stretch their magic to its limits if they are ever to create a world that might finally reunite them for good. The odds are narrow, the stakes are high, and one question remains: Is it fate, love, or something else entirely that binds these two women together?
Sixteen-year-old Quinn is a liar, but she isn’t a murderer. When the sleepy town of Boiling Springs, North Carolina is roused by the murder of a local teen, Quinn is thrust into a life of danger, disrupting her normally unnoticeable existence. As Quinn becomes romantically involved with Gilly, the best friend of the dead girl and daughter of the town sheriff, the situation becomes even more complicated.
\nDespite the lurk of danger, Quinn tries to keep her mind on her new and exciting relationship. When another one of Gilly’s friends turns up dead, and more clues start to pile up, Quinn can’t help but start her own investigation. With everyone in town lying to each other, the suspect list grows. To make matters even more complicated, Quinn feels the killer could be closer to home than anyone suspects.
Pope Francis originally intended this exceptional book to appear only after his death, but the needs of our times and the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope have moved him to make this precious legacy available now.
\nHope is the first autobiography in history ever to be published by a Pope. Written over six years, this complete autobiography starts in the early years of the twentieth century, with Pope Francis’s Italian roots and his ancestors’ courageous migration to Latin America, continuing through his childhood, the enthusiasms and preoccupations of his youth, his vocation, adult life, and the whole of his papacy up to the present day.
\nIn recounting his memories with intimate narrative force (not forgetting his own personal passions), Pope Francis deals unsparingly with some of the crucial moments of his papacy and writes candidly, fearlessly, and prophetically about some of the most important and controversial questions of our present times: war and peace (including the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East), migration, environmental crisis, social policy, the position of women, sexuality, technological developments, the future of the Church and of religion in general.
\nHope includes a wealth of revelations, anecdotes, and illuminating thoughts. It is a thrilling and very human memoir, moving and sometimes funny, which represents the “story of a life” and, at the same time, a touching moral and spiritual testament that will fascinate readers throughout the world and will be Pope Francis’s legacy of hope for future generations.
\nThe book is enhanced by remarkable photographs, including private and unpublished material made personally available by Pope Francis himself.
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While in Japan researching her family’s history, a vicious typhoon sends Isla Mackenzie 128 years back in time, to the dawn of the Satsuma Rebellion. There she meets her ancestors, and a charismatic samurai, Kei, with whom she unexpectedly finds romance.
\nBut, unlike her Beloved, Isla knows about the looming Samurai rebellion - and Kai’s fate. Should she attempt to change history or somehow make her way back to the life she’d had before?
A young woman finds herself back in 1920s Tokyo as Japan enters a new and dangerous era - and a deadly tragedy awaits her city.
\nYui Sanada struggles to raise her twelve-year-old brother, Hiro, while contending with the antics of their neglectful, alcoholic mother. During a trip to Ueno Park, Hiro runs away from his sister into a strange passage beneath a samurai statue. Yui chases after him and soon finds herself in a Tokyo far removed from the familiar world of 1995.
\nWhen Yui emerges from the tunnel, she cannot find Hiro but meets a young woman named Chiyo and her family and learns she has traveled back through time to 1923. As feelings between the two women develop, Yui and realises it’s just weeks before the devastating Great Kanto Earthquake will happen, killing tens of thousands and leveling the city. Will Yui be able to find her brother and save her new family from the coming disaster?
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It’s 1983 and Becks can’t wait to get the hell out of Cincinnati. She’s nineteen, blasting her Walkman, and hiding from the fact that her beloved uncle, the only person who understood her, is dead. But she has work to do: he left her a half-finished game to complete - one last collaboration to find her way out of loneliness.
\nLittle does she know, what Becks is making will echo far into the future and shape the lives of a scientist, a sentient automaton, and a flinty sea captain in ways she cannot imagine. All are bound together by their search for connection - and by a futuristic traveler on a mysterious mission through space.
\nA novel about our deep interconnectedness, Homebound is a clear-eyed, hopeful adventure into humanity’s future and capacity for love.
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Once, Ana was an orphaned space outlaw. Then she was the Empress of the Iron Kingdom. Now, thought dead by most of the galaxy after she escaped from the dark AI program called the HIVE, Ana is desperate for a way to save Di from the HIVE’s evil clutches and take back her kingdom.
Ana’s only option is to find Starbright, the one person who has hacked into the HIVE and lived to tell the tale. But when Ana’s desperation costs the crew of the Dossier a terrible price, Ana and her friends are sent spiraling through the most perilous reaches of the Iron Kingdom to stop the true arbiter of evil in her world: an ancient world-ending deity called the Great Dark.
Their journey will take the sharp-witted pilot, Jax, to the home he never wanted to return to, and the dangerous fate he left behind. And when Robb finds out who Jax really is, he must contend with his own feelings for the boy he barely knows, and whether he truly belongs with this group of outcasts.
When facing the worst odds, can Ana and her crew of misfits find a way to stop the Great Dark once and for all?
What happens when a police officer’s fight for justice conflicts with an ER doctor’s commitment to patient care?
\nPolice officer Finley Masters wants to interview an injured suspect and make an arrest so she can move on to the next case. As long as she keeps closing cases she can hide the pain of caring for her alcoholic father. Dr. Dylan Carlyle dedicates herself to healing the sick and looking after her family. She doesn’t have time for dating, especially not a reckless cop who thinks she’s God’s gift to women. When Finley Masters strolls into the emergency room making demands, Dylan protects her turf and her heart.
\nA tragic incident brings them together, but their feelings keep them coming back.
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The world is nothing like it once was: climate disasters have wracked the continent, causing food shortages, ending industry, and leaving little behind. Then came Cad, mysterious mind-altering fungi that invade the bodies of the now scattered citizenry. Reid, a young woman who carries this parasite, has been given a chance to get away - to move to one of the last remnants of pre-disaster society - but she can't bring herself to abandon her mother and the community that relies on her.
\nWhen she's offered a coveted place on a dangerous and profitable mission, she jumps at the opportunity to set her family up for life, but how can Reid ask people to put their trust in her when she can't even trust her own mind?
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Hope has a Price
\nNick Prasad has always enjoyed a quiet life in the shadow of his best friend, child prodigy and technological genius Joanna 'Johnny' Chambers. But all that is about to end.
\nWhen Johnny invents a clean reactor that could eliminate fossil fuels and change the world, she awakens primal, evil Ancient Ones set on subjugating humanity.
\nFrom the oldest library in the world to the ruins of Nineveh, hunted at every turn, they will need to trust each other completely to survive . . .
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It’s been a year and a half since the Anomaly, when They tried to force their way into the world from the shapeless void. Nick Prasad is piecing his life together, and has joined the secretive Ssarati Society to help monitor threats to humanity - including his former friend Johnny.
Right on cue, the unveiling of Johnny’s latest experiment sees more portals opened to Them, leaving her protesting her innocence even as the two of them are thrown together to fight the darkness once more . . .
A world-weary woman races against the clock to rescue the children of a wrathful tyrant from a dangerous, otherworldly forest.
\nAt the northern edge of a land ruled by a monstrous, foreign tyrant lies the wild forest known as the Elmever. The villagers know better than to let their children go near - once someone goes in, they never come back out.
\nNo one knows the strange and terrifying traps of the Elmever better than Veris Thorn, the only person to ever rescue a child from the forest many years ago. When the Tyrant’s two young children go missing, Veris is commanded to enter the forest once more and bring them home safe. If Veris fails, the Tyrant will kill her; if she remains in the forest for longer than a day, she will be trapped forevermore.
\nSo Veris will travel deep into the Elmever to face traps, riddles, and monsters at the behest of another monster. One misstep will cost everything.
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Henryk Mandrusiak, finding nothing left for him in his community following his best friend Reid's departure, travels through the devastated land in search of a new place to call home.
\nAfter making a grievous mistake that ended in death, Henryk Mandrusiak feels increasingly ostracised within his own community, and after the passing on of his parents and the departure of his best friend, Reid, there is little left to tie him to the place he calls home. Henryk does something he never expected: he sets out into the harsh wilds alone, in search of far-flung family.
\nHe finds his uncle's village, but making a life for himself in this unfriendly new place - rougher and more impoverished than the campus where he grew up - isn't easy. Henryk strives to carve out a place of his own but learns that some corners of his broken world are darker than he could have imagined.
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The Empires of Varkal and Med’ariz have always been at war.
\nAlefret, the founder of Varkal’s pacifist resistance, was bombed and maimed by his own government, locked up in a secret prison and tortured by a ‘visionary’ scientist. But now they’re offering him a chance of freedom.
\nOrdered to infiltrate one of Med’ariz’s flying cities, obeying the bloodthirsty zealot Qhudur, he must find fellow anti-war activists in the enemy’s population and provoke them into an uprising against their rulers.
\nHe should refuse to serve the warmongers, but what if he could end this pointless war once and for all? Is that worth compromising his own morals and the principles of his fellow resistance members?
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Seven years ago, the last survivor of Earth crashed through uncountable dimensions to a strange new world. Nick Prasad found shelter, and a living, as a prophet for the ruling family -servants of the Ancient Ones who destroyed his home.
\nNow, he’s been offered a chance to rid the multiverse of the Ancient Ones, past and present and forever, although he’ll have to betray his new masters to do it. The first step is jailbreaking a god - and that’s the easy part . . .
Traveling alone through the climate-crisis-ravaged wilds of Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, 19-year-old Reid Graham battles the elements and her lifelong chronic illness to reach the utopia of Howse University. But life in one of the storied “domes” - the last remnants of pre-collapse society - isn’t what she expected.
\nReid tries to excel in her classes and make connections with other students, but still grapples with guilt over what happened just before she left her community. And as she learns more about life at Howse, she begins to realise she can’t stand idly by as the people of the dome purposely withhold needed resources from the rest of humanity. When the worst of news comes from back home, Reid must make a choice between herself, her family, and the broken new world.
\nIn this powerful follow-up to her award-winning novella The Annual Migration of Clouds, Premee Mohamed is at the top of her game as she explores the conflicts and complexities of this post-apocalyptic society and asks whether humanity is doomed to forever recreate its worst mistakes.
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Miss Mildred Percy has no wish to go to London.
\nUnfortunately, her niece, Belinda, has recently absconded from Nyth y Ddraig with 1) a newly-hatched white dragon, 2) over a dozen (unhatched) dragon eggs, and 3) an extraordinary surfeit of hubris. All clues lead to London, and so Mildred and company have no choice but to follow her to town.
\nBut retrieving a hoard of dragon eggs in the middle of a vast city is no easy task, especially when confronted with such impediments as journalism, pelicans, and a certain Prince Regent. Now Mildred must do everything in her power to return the stolen eggs to Wales - before they hatch! - and finally carve out the life for herself she has always wanted.
\n
Miss Mildred Percy inherits a dragon.
\nAh, but we’ve already got ahead of ourselves . . .
\nMiss Mildred Percy is a spinster. She does not dance, she has long stopped dreaming, and she certainly does not have adventures. That is, until her great uncle has the audacity to leave her an inheritance, one that includes a dragon’s egg.
\nThe egg - as eggs are wont to do - decides to hatch, and Miss Mildred Percy is suddenly thrust out of the role of “spinster and general wallflower” and into the unprecedented position of “spinster and keeper of dragons.”
\nBut England has not seen a dragon since… well, ever. And now Mildred must contend with raising a dragon (that should not exist), kindling a romance (with a humble vicar), and embarking on an adventure she never thought could be hers for the taking.
\n
First, there was a trunk. Inside the trunk was an egg, and inside the egg was . . .
\nWell, it certainly was not a chicken.
\nMiss Mildred Percy, former wallflower and current adventurer, is now in charge of a dragon. Along with Mr. Wiggan and Mrs. Babbinton - our stalwart companions from the first volume of Miss Percy’s adventures - she embarks on a journey across Wales, in search of the mysterious Nyth y Ddraig, or Nest of Dragons.
\nBut traveling with a young dragon in an unfamiliar land proves more difficult than anticipated. Between angry mobs, midnight rescues, and recalcitrant sheep, they battle (figuratively) their way across the countryside, defend themselves against enemies old and new, and discover something remarkable hidden in the mountains of Wales.
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1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he'll enroll in Oxford University's prestigious Royal Institute of Translation - also known as Babel.
\nBabel is the world's center of translation and, more importantly, of silver-working: the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation through enchanted silver bars, to magical effect. Silver-working has made the British Empire unparalleled in power, and Babel's research in foreign languages serves the Empire's quest to colonize everything it encounters.
\nOxford, the city of dreaming spires, is a fairytale for Robin; a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge serves power, and for Robin, a Chinese boy raised in Britain, serving Babel inevitably means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to sabotaging the silver-working that supports imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide: Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence? What is he willing to sacrifice to bring Babel down?
\nBabel - a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal response to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of translation as a tool of empire.
After saving her nation of Nikan from foreign invaders and battling the evil Empress Su Daji in a brutal civil war, Fang Runin was betrayed by allies and left for dead.
Despite her losses, Rin hasn’t given up on those for whom she has sacrificed so much - the people of the southern provinces and especially Tikany, the village that is her home. Returning to her roots, Rin meets difficult challenges - and unexpected opportunities. While her new allies in the Southern Coalition leadership are sly and untrustworthy, Rin quickly realizes that the real power in Nikan lies with the millions of common people who thirst for vengeance and revere her as a goddess of salvation.
Backed by the masses and her Southern Army, Rin will use every weapon to defeat the Dragon Republic, the colonising Hesperians, and all who threaten the shamanic arts and their practitioners. As her power and influence grows, though, will she be strong enough to resist the Phoenix’s intoxicating voice urging her to burn the world and everything in it?
In the aftermath of the Third Poppy War, shaman and warrior Rin is on the run: haunted by the atrocity she committed to end the war, addicted to opium, and hiding from the murderous commands of her vengeful god, the fiery Phoenix. Her only reason for living is to get revenge on the traitorous Empress who sold out Nikan to their enemies.
With no other options, Rin joins forces with the powerful Dragon Warlord, who has a plan to conquer Nikan, unseat the Empress, and create a new Republic. Rin throws herself into his war. After all, making war is all she knows how to do.
But the Empress is a more powerful foe than she appears, and the Dragon Warlord’s motivations are not as democratic as they seem. The more Rin learns, the more she fears her love for Nikan will drive her away from every ally and lead her to rely more and more on the Phoenix’s deadly power. Because there is nothing she won’t sacrifice for her country and her vengeance.
The sequel to R.F. Kuang’s acclaimed debut The Poppy War, The Dragon Republic combines the history of 20th-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating effect.
The sequel to R.F. Kuang’s acclaimed debut THE POPPY WAR, THE DRAGON REPUBLIC combines the history of 20th-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating effect.\n
Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek:
\nThe story of a hero's descent to the underworld
\nTwo graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.
\nAlice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality - her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world - that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.
\nGrimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.
A brilliantly imaginative talent makes her exciting debut with this epic historical military fantasy, inspired by the bloody history of China's twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic, in the tradition of Ken Liu's Grace of Kings and N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy.
\nWhen Rin aced the Keju, the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies, it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard, the most elite military school in Nikan, was even more surprising.
But surprises aren’t always good.
Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power - an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive - and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.
For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . .
Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . . . and that it may already be too late.
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena's a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn't even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.
\nSo when June witnesses Athena's death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena's just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I.
\nSo what if June edits Athena's novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song - complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn't this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That's what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.
\nBut June can't get away from Athena's shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June's (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
Girton Club-foot, apprentice to the land's best assassin, still has much to learn about the art of taking lives. But their latest mission tasks him and his master with a far more difficult challenge: to save a life. Someone, or many someones, is trying to kill the heir to the throne, and it is up to Girton and his master to uncover the traitor and prevent the prince's murder.
\nIn a kingdom on the brink of civil war and a castle thick with lies Girton finds friends he never expected, responsibilities he never wanted, and a conspiracy that could destroy an entire land.
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Joron Twiner's dreams of freedom lay shattered. His Shipwife is gone and all he has left is revenge. Leading the black fleet from the deck of Tide Child, he takes every opportunity to hurt the Hundred Isles he is given. But his time is limited.
\nHis fleet is shrinking, the Keyshan's Rot is running through his body and he hiding from a prophecy that says he and the avian sorcerer, the Windseer will end the entire world.
\nBut the Sea Dragons have returned, a miracle in itself, and who is to say that if you can have one miracle, there cannot be another?
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For generations, the Hundred Isles have built their ships from the bones of ancient dragons to fight an endless war.
The dragons disappeared, but the battles for supremacy persisted.
Now the first dragon in centuries has been spotted in far-off waters, and both sides see a chance to shift the balance of power in their favour. Because whoever catches it will win not only glory, but the war.
Dragons have returned to the Hundred Isles. But their return heralds only war and destruction.
\nWhen a horde of dying slaves are discovered in the bowels of a ship, Shipwife Meas and the crew of the Tide Child find themselves drawn into a vicious plot that will leave them questioning their loyalities and fighting for their lives.
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The northlands of Crua are locked in eternal winter, but prophecy tells of the chosen child - who will rule in the name of their God, and take warmth back from the South. Cahal du Nahere was raised to be this person: the Cowl-Rai, the saviour. Taken from his parents and prepared for his destiny.
\nBut his time never came.
\nWhen he was fifteen he ceased to matter. Another Cowl-Rai had risen, another chosen one, raised in the name of a different God. The years of vicious physical and mental training he had endured, the sacrifice, all for nothing. He became nothing.
\nTwenty years later, and Cahal lives a life of secrecy on the edges of Crua’s giant forests - hiding what he is, running from what he can do. But when he is forced to reveal his true nature, he sets off a sequence of events that will reveal secrets that will shake the bedrock of his entire world, and expose lies that have persisted for generations.
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Cahan Du Nahare is lost, taken by a dark god whose tendrils reach throughout the world, intent on its destruction. Those who followed Cahan are spread across the land, desperate and lost now fate has turned against them. The Reborn warriors are toys for the enemy, the warrior Dassit, forestal Ania and monk Ont are drawn to the dangerous north but do not know why.
\nUdinny is forced into the company of a woman who desires nothing more than her death and the Rai, Sorha, leads a dwindling band on a mission even she believes is doomed to failure. Only the trion Venn remains hopeful, slowly growing in power and trusting in the path of their god.
\nBut maybe all is not lost. The great Wyrdwoods of Crua may be ancient and slow to act, but something in them is waking.
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Many years of peace have passed in Maniyadoc, years of relative calm for the assassin Girton Club-Foot. Even the Forgetting Plague, which ravaged the rest of the kingdoms, seemed to pass them by.
\nBut now Rufra ap Vthyr eyes the vacant High-King's throne and will take his court to the capital, a rat's nest of intrigue and murder, where every enemy he has ever made will gather and the endgame of twenty years of politics and murder will be played out in his bid to become the King of all Kings.
Friends become enemies, enemies become friends, and the god of death, Xus the Unseen, stands closer than ever - casting his shadow over everything most dear to Girton.
Irody Hasp is a Mortedant, a cleric tasked with reading the last thoughts of the dead - though no one thanks him for it. No Mortedant is popular, but Irody is scarcely tolerated even by the other members of his own guild, and rarely selected for anything but the lowliest of jobs.
\nThis impoverished existence would be dismal enough - but after reading the corpse of a low-level records keeper, Irody's troubles quickly multiply when his own apprentice is murdered, and all fingers point to him as a suspect. The only way to save his own skin is to find the real culprit himself, an investigation that quickly attracts powerful enemies with few scruples, and draws him into a plot that threatens the entire corrupt yet wondrous city he calls home.
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The Forester known as Cahan led the village of Harn in rebellion against the all-powerful, oppressive forces of the Rai. A great victory was won, but to avoid retaliation, he must now lead the people of Harn into the forest.
\nCahan never wanted this responsibility, but fate and his gods have conspired against him. Without him, the people will be helpless against the great beasts and poisonous traps of the forest - not to mention worse things that dwell there. A corruption grows in the fungi and decay of the Wyrdwood, a magic unlike any Cahan has ever seen - can he resist its deadly pull, while avoiding his pursuers, and trying to turn his charges into true people of the Wyrdwood?
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When a maiden is selected to marry the emperor, her journey to the palace will see her fighting both a spark of magical power and her growing feelings for her broody escort in this romantic fantasy duology opener, inspired by a true story from the Inca empire.
\nIn the Amaru Empire, it’s considered an honor to be chosen for the annual harvest. But when guards stole Nina’s brother away, it devastated her family. So, when the guards returned for Nina’s sweet sister, she threw herself into their clutches instead. And Nina has spent every moment since then in the acllahuasi, a gilded cage where women are trained to become servants or wives.
\nWhen Kasik, an obedient lieutenant in Amaru’s army, is sent to the acllahuasi to retrieve the emperor’s new wife, it’s only the promise of his own command - and a chance to escape his controlling father - that forces him to accept.
\nKasik has no reason to trust Nina, nor she to trust him. But, as they begin their journey, their chemistry is hard to ignore. Also hard to ignore? The tugging sensation of magic in Nina’s chest, awakening more questions than she can possibly answer as she travels with a handsome stranger to her unknown fate.
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Ireland, 1988. Storm Cordelia rages through the village of Kilcraven.
\nStill reeling from a devastating love affair and the collapse of a promising career in the Gardaí, Emma Daly is stuck. She's moved back in with her dad and taken a job as a librarian in Kilcraven, the small West Cork village she thought she left behind.
\nBut when Emma witnesses a murder and the local police arrest the wrong man for the crime, she's forced to act. To prove a man innocent, she must sift through the village's past - all its secrets and gossip and complexity - before either the police or the murderer can stop her. She's joined by a stubborn widow, an elderly hypochondriac and a charming ex-boyfriend - but quickly finds herself at the centre of a mystery that threatens to tear the whole village apart.
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Ari the Binder's legend spans continents and eras. Moving in and out of myth as easy as the wind, as tales and their echoes spread across a sun-drenched land.
\nNow, the storyteller himself awaits judgment for the murder of a prince. The stories say he has killed more than one. But what is truth and what is a man if not a liar?
\nAs the telling of the storyteller's past grows, so too does the list of his enemies - and of mysteries yet to be solved.
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All legends are born of truths. And just as much lies. These are mine. Judge me for what you will. But you will hear my story first.
\nI buried the village of Ampur under a mountain of ice and snow. Then I killed their god. I've stolen old magics and been cursed for it. I started a war with those that walked before mankind and lost the princess I loved, and wanted to save. I've called lightning and bound fire. I am legend. And I am a monster.
\nMy name is Ari.
\nAnd this is the story of how I let loose the first evil.
Detective Vincent Graves has made a habit of dying. Waking up in someone else’s body isn’t pleasant, especially when it's inside a coffin with tons of dirt pressing down on it. Once he’s out, he learns his soul has 13 hours to find the borrowed body’s killer.
\nWith the help of a brilliant FBI agent, Vincent’s quest for clues leads to a looming supernatural presence. And escaping the dark threat may be impossible with his ever-ticking clock . . .
\nCan Vincent close the case in time, or will a powerful being make him rest in peace for good?
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Paranormal investigator and soul without a body, Vincent Graves, did just that - a deal made in desperation. Now it's coming back to bite him in the middle of a case. He has 57 hours to investigate a string of deaths involving people who've made some devilish bargains. Too bad devils don't deal in good faith. It'd be easy enough, if he didn't have to deal with things such as:
\n- Being hunted through the streets of Queens by a dark elf with a motorcycle fetish.
\n- Ending up the target of a supernatural hit.
\n- An old acquaintance dragging him to a paranormal ball where he could end up on the menu.
\n- And having one of his closest guarded secrets brought to light . . .
\nNot great for a tight clock, because if he doesn't get to the bottom of this case in time, Vincent and company might just lose their souls.
\n\n
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Dirty deals are never done dirt cheap. And the supernatural always collect - big!
What do shadows darting across the walls, cryptic writing, black fog, and a little girl who can see ghosts have in common? Paranormal investigator and soul without a body, Vincent Graves, has forty-four hours to find out.
\nTo make matters worse, his years of body-hopping and monster-hunting are catching up with him. He’s losing his mind. An old contact has shut him out. To top it all off, something’s skulking through an asylum, killing patients.
\nThree guesses who might be next, and the first two don’t count. The writing on the wall is not so clear. But one thing is: if he doesn’t figure this out he’s a dead man - well, deader - and a strange young girl might follow. Vincent’s got his back against a wall, and that wall’s crumbling.
\nSome days it’s not worth it to wake up in someone else’s body.
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It’s been four months since glaciologist Rachael Beckett left her husband and daughter to join an urgent research trip to a remote field station deep in the Antarctic. But after losing all communication with her crew at base camp, she’s trapped and alone - and running out of supplies. The only information she has about what’s gone so catastrophically wrong is an emergency radio broadcast playing on a a nuclear war has broken out, and Rachael might be the last survivor on Earth.
\nAbandoned and starving, all she has left is a fierce determination to stay alive in the extreme cold and perpetual darkness of the polar winter. The research she’s gathered about catastrophic climate damage means she holds the fate of the continent and the world in her grasp . . . if there’s even a world left to save.
\nStruggling with loneliness and grief over the unknown fate of her family back home, Rachael knows both her life and her sanity balance on a knife edge. As she battles to stay alive in unimaginable conditions, she soon discovers she’s not completely alone in the dark and cold - but she might wish she was . . .
In a world where magic has vanished, rival nations vie for power in a continent devastated by war.
\nWhen a young farm girl, Livia, demonstrates magical powers for the first time in a century there are many across the land that will kill to obtain her power. The Duke of Gothelm’s tallymen, the blood-soaked Qeltine Brotherhood, and cynical mercenary Josten Cade: all are searching for Livia and the power she wields.
\nBut Livia finds that guardians can come from the most unlikely places . . . and that the old gods are returning to a world they abandoned.
Torwyn burns as Sanctan Egelrath tightens his grip on power. The Draconate Ministry has gathered its forces, determined to eradicate the Guilds, but Rosomon Hawkspur still stands in their way.
\nHer only hope could lay with Lancelin Jagdor, sent to gather allies in their struggle against the usurper. Can even the greatest warrior in Torwyn hope to succeed with so many adversaries determined to stop him?
\nTyreta returns home with newfound strength and mysterious sorcerous abilities, only to discover it is not the land she left behind. She will have to call upon her untested powers to survive when she embarks on a mission that could turn the tide of war.
\nConall, trapped in a dangerous land, has his own enemies to defeat before he can hope to escape and join the conflict that threatens his family. Even if he succeeds, he must overcome the demons that threaten from within or face damnation.
\nThough Rosomon is vastly outnumbered, and her family lost, she is determined to strike back against her enemies. But saving her homeland might prove an impossible task.
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The nation of Torwyn is run on the power of industry, and industry is run by the Guilds. Chief among them are the Hawkspurs, and their responsibility is to keep the gears of the empire turning. It’s exactly why matriarch Rosomon Hawkspur sends each of her heirs to the far reaches of the nation.
\nConall, the eldest son, is sent to the distant frontier to earn his stripes in the military. It is here that he faces a threat he could have never seen coming: the first rumblings of revolution.
\nTyreta’s sorcerous connection to the magical resource of pyrstone that fuels the empire’s machines makes her a perfect heir - in theory. While Tyreta hopes that she might shirk her responsibilities during her journey one of Torwyn’s most important pyrestone mines, she instead finds the dark horrors of industry that the empire would prefer to keep hidden.
\nThe youngest, Fulren, is a talented artificer, and finds himself acting as consort to a foreign emissary. Soon after, he is framed for a crime he never committed. A crime that could start a war.
\nAs each of the Hawkspurs grapple with the many threats that face the nation within and without, they must finally prove themselves worthy - or their empire will fall apart.
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Though the Guilds have scored a decisive victory against the Ministry, Sanctan Egelrath still holds Torwyn's capital in his iron grip. Each day the Guild army marches closer, ready to unleash its fury. But the Archlegate has no intention of losing, and even if the Guilds take the Anvil, Sanctan intends to call upon greater powers to secure his final victory.
\nBeset on all sides, Rosomon Hawkspur is presented with a dark bargain to secure victory - one that carries a heavy price. Faced with the prospect of defeat, she must ask herself: is winning the war worth such sacrifice?
\nWith her children ready to fight alongside her, there is at least some light to dispel the shadow of war. But each of them is much changed, and the path to victory may be more treacherous than any of the Hawkspurs can possibly imagine . . .
After uniting the bandit clans, the Iron Tusk has swept into Shengen and taken control of the empire. With an army behind him, he marches along the Skull Road, ready to lay waste to the lands in the west. The mountain fortress of Dunrun and its rag-tag defenders are all that stand in his way.
\nWith their country besieged on all sides, troubling rumours of a priestess amassing power in the north, and unnatural alliances to the south, no help is coming. Alone, they must hold back the inhuman powers of the Iron Tusk, or see life as they know it come to an end.
\nThe old gods have returned . . .
As its neighbours muster for war, the city state of Kantor clings desperately to neutrality. Suraan, the queen regent, is beset on all sides, her son Rahuul still too young to take the throne. As his elder sister and guardian, Adaali's only purpose is to protect Rahuul from would be usurpers.
\nBut dark forces are at play from within and without, and she must seek help from the most unlikely of places, or be consumed by the war of the gods that threatens to destroy the very fabric of her world.
In a tiny Beirut apartment, sixty-three-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. A beloved high school philosophy teacher and “the neighborhood homosexual,” Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order, and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son’s desire for privacy as a personal affront. She demands to know every detail of Raja’s work life and love life, boundaries be damned.
\nWhen Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn’t be better. It arrives on the heels of a series of personal and national disasters that have left Raja longing for peace and quiet away from his mother and the heartache of Lebanon. But what at first seems a stroke of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to forget.
\nTold in Raja’s irresistible and wickedly funny voice, the novel dances across six decades to tell the unforgettable story of a singular life and its absurdities - a tale of mistakes, self-discovery, trauma, and maybe even forgiveness. Above all, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) is a wildly unique and sparkling celebration of love.
Beatrice Barnard doesn't believe in magic. She definitely doesn't believe the predictions of the celebrity psychic who claims that she will experience seven miracles and soon after she will die. When she discovers her husband is cheating on her, Bea flees to Skerry Island, off the Pacific Northwest coast, in desperate need of solitude - taking her husband's birthday vacation by herself. Immediately upon arrival, she finds her life on the line as a rogue woodchopper blade almost kills her. Her survival feels like a miracle.
\nAnd then things get more miraculous when she discovers her twin sister, Cordelia, whom she never knew about, and her mother Astrid, who supposedly died when Beatrice was two years old. Astrid and Cordelia reveal that Beatrice (given name Beatrix) is an immensely powerful witch who can commune with the dead, like all the local Holland family witches. When their twin magic is joined, it shines like a beacon to the Velamen family, whose malevolent spirits are locked in an age-old struggle for magical dominance over the Hollands.
\nBeatrice doesn't know what to believe, but she begins to fear that the seven predicted miracles may occur, and that her imminent death will rip her away from her rediscovered family. Beatrice resolves to learn everything she can about her own power, in the hope of saving herself. But when her niece, Minna, goes missing, Bea's own life suddenly seems much less important. Beatrice must join her mother and her sister to save Minna even if she dies in the process.
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On the isolated island of Brack, the people live by an ancient bargain: every year, a sacrifice must be made to the Glimm, the creature that haunts the salt marshes. Once, it demanded children. Eight years ago, it should have taken Lotta. Instead, the monster spared her and claimed her pony, shattering tradition and anointing her both folk hero and object of suspicion.
\nNow sixteen, Lotta tends the Council’s sacrificial horses, keeping her distance from the islanders who whisper about her fate. But something is stirring. The island hums beneath her feet, and a song threads through her dreams. Is the Glimm calling Lotta back?
\nWhen she crosses paths with Moss - a boy once hidden from sacrifice - a daring bog rescue sparks a chain of events that forces them both to question the Council’s rule and the lore that binds their people. As crops and animals are blighted and uncanny weather plagues the community, Lotta and Moss must decide whether to obey the Council or risk everything to uncover the island’s deepest secrets.
\nBecause on Brack, monsters come in many forms.
\n
Newly minted high school teacher Lily Cross is young, bubbly, and can’t wait to put her fresh ideas into practice in the classroom. Her excitement is derailed after a disastrous run-in with a colleague. Lily didn’t realize she’d have to win over her fellow teachers as well as her students, but that’s okay. Lily’s up to the challenge.
\nDisillusioned Eva Thomas never imagined she’d wind up as a teacher in her hometown, or worse, suffer the boundless, puppy dog enthusiasm of a new colleague. Eva has no interest in making friends - or making nice. She just wants to survive her day and be left alone. That’s easier said than done when Lily Cross has you in her sights.
\nTheir clashing arguments lead to sparks and then the impossible . . . attraction. But how can two such different people ever work?
New Yorker Kenzie Wilson agrees to play a fake girlfriend for her best friend for a family Christmas vacation in an idyllic Portuguese town. It’s no hardship for Kenzie . . . until she meets Alice’s aloof, rude, and annoyingly attractive aunt.
\nCEO Carolina Costa returns to her family’s home after years of estrangement. About the only thing making the dreary reunion worthwhile is meeting her niece’s new “girlfriend.” Making her squirm is vastly entertaining.
\nIt doesn’t take long for Kenzie to creep under Carolina’s walls, which is concerning. It’s even worse when the truth comes out, because Kenzie being free - and interested - might mean Carolina having to risk her own heart. And there’s no way she’s ever doing that . . .
After her father’s death, property developer Chloe Roberts has only one goal: to renovate and sell the old family house as quickly as possible so she never has to return home ever again. The last thing she expects is to run into Amy Edwards, the first woman she ever loved.
\nDairy farmer Amy is deeply shaken by Chloe’s sudden reappearance. Burnt bridges from bad teenage decisions still fill her with regret. What if she reaches out, though? Just a little? Can some bridges ever be saved?
\nAs the childhood friends grow closer, old feelings start to resurface. Should those old, aching wounds be left in the past, along with all the mistakes they might only repeat? Or should the women again risk their hearts trying to conquer the distance between them—one last time?
Lucy Holloway is dying for an escape. The high-flying lawyer’s life has just spectacularly imploded so it’s time to hit the reset button and soak up some sun, sea, and relaxation at a swanky hotel across the Atlantic.
\nLaid-back physical therapy student Elena Garcia is home for the holidays. Picking up a few shifts as a lifeguard at Sol Plaza, the hotel her father manages, sounds like fun. Speaking of fun . . . there’s also that sweet summer flirtation she’s having with a smoking hot American lawyer. But when their sizzling romance slides into real emotions, everything gets complicated.
\nAlso complicated? Wild accusations against Elena’s father about how Sol Plaza’s being run. Teaming up with Lucy, Elena’s determined to clear his name.
\nBut will working together bring the two even closer? Where do flings end and feelings begin, anyway?
Reserved tattoo artist Riley Foster has just moved apartments and can’t take her eyes off the single mom who lives next door. Riley is trying very hard not to succumb to the cliché of falling for the straight girl as she gets to know Kim Jackson, an outgoing baker with an adorable nine-year-old son.
\nA friendship forms and Riley even finds herself roped into playing Kim’s fake girlfriend to get her meddling family off her back.
\nWhat could go wrong . . . except for Kim suddenly questioning whether she’s not as straight as she thought! As the sexual tension slowly builds, it’s hard not to wonder whether they’d be good together for real. But is it worth risking a great friendship if Riley doesn’t feel the same way?
Ambitious corporate shark Camila Evans might have just lost her marriage but she decides she doesn’t need love to build a television empire and raise her young son alone. What she does need is a nanny, but the incompetent idiots sent her way make her lose faith in ever finding anyone useful. Enter Emily Walker - fresh out of college, bright, a little naive, and new to New York City.
\nEmily is everything Camila is not and frankly it’s a little unsettling how innocent and gentle the young woman is. That’s not all that’s unsettling. Camila’s growing feelings for Emily are making it hard to maintain a professional distance. Surely she can’t possibly be falling for the nanny? God, it’s such a mid-life crisis cliché. But would it be too impossible?
\nAs time goes on, Camila starts to wonder if maybe even she can get her happy ending after all.
Acclaimed football star Erin Finch has the sporting world at her feet until a brutal injury sidelines her.
\nEnter bubbly striker Lia Ashcroft, the up-and-coming hotshot setting the English women's league on fire. With her personal life in tatters, she's determined to rule professionally.
\nFilling in for Erin seems like a good way to kick her career up a notch. Icy Erin might be out for a season, but she's damned if she'll let someone steal her spot for good.
\nWhat starts as fierce tension between the rivals turns into something else: respect, then simmering attraction.
\nExploring it, though, would break every rule Erin has.
\n
To save his family from his tyrannical mother, Julius had to step on a lot of tails. That doesn’t win a Nice Dragon many friends, but just when he thinks he’s starting to make progress, a new threat arrives.
\nTurns out, things can get worse. Heartstriker hasn’t begun to pay for its secrets, and the dragons of China are here to collect. When the Golden Emperor demands his surrender, Julius will have to choose between loyalty to the sister who's always watched over him and preserving the clan he gave everything to protect.
\n
A hulked-out wrath demon who eats gamer rage and loves cats, a shapeshifting lust demon who enjoys their food a bit too much, and a void demon who doesn’t see the point of any of this. They’re not the sort of mercenaries you'd hire on purpose, but Bex wouldn’t trust her life to anyone else.
\nEver since the ancient Mesopotamian king Gilgamesh decided death wasn’t for him, killed the gods, and conquered the afterlife, times have been rough for a free demon. But the denizens of the Nine Hells aren’t the quitting sort, and Bex and her team have been choking a living out of the Eternal King’s lackeys for years. It’s not honest work, but when Heaven itself declares you a non-person, you smash-and-grab what you can get.
\nThis next gig looks like more of the same . . . until Bex meets the client.
\nAdrian Blackwood is a witch with a problem. His family has skirted the edges of King Gilgamesh’s ire for centuries, but thanks to a decision he made as a child, Adrian is personally responsible for putting his entire coven in Heaven’s crosshairs.
\nDetermined to set things right, Adrian drags his broom, caldron, and talking cat thousands of miles across the country to Seattle where he can fight the Eternal King’s warlocks without bringing the rest of his family into the fray. But witchcraft - like all crafts - takes time, and if the warlocks catch him before his spells are ready, he’s dead. So Adrian does what any professional witch would do and hires a team of mercenaries to keep the warlocks off his back. He didn’t expect to get demons, but when you’re already on the killing-edge of Heaven’s bad side, what’s a bit more fuel on the fire?
\nNeither Adrian nor Bex knew what to expect when they signed their contract, but witch-plus-demon turns out to be a match made in the Hells. With this much chaos at their fingertips, even impossible dreams can come back into reach, because Bex wasn’t always a mercenary. She used to be the Eternal King's biggest nightmare, and now that she’s got a witch in her corner, it’s time to put the old magics back on the field and show Adrian Blackwood just how much Hell he’s hired.
\n
The Queen of Wrath may go down, but she’s never out. At least, that’s how it’s been for the last five thousand years. With the loss of her horns, hand, sword, name, and witch, Bex is closer to defeat than she’s ever been before, but the Blade of Ishtar has never been a quitter. She’s determined to come back from her ashes, which means it’s time to do something crazy, something she’s never attempted in any of her previous lives.
\nShe’s going to hell. Literally.
\nIf the only way to get back what she lost is for Bex and crew to personally storm the Eternal King's prison, that’s what they’re going to do, because while the Hells were designed to contain demons, they’re completely unprepared for the fire of revolution Bex is bringing with her, especially since the demons aren’t fighting alone. Adrian is also deep in Heaven’s backstage, and like any good witch, he hasn’t been an idle prisoner. It’s time to show Gilgamesh that winning the battle isn’t the same as winning the war, and that hell hath no fury like a queen - or a witch - scorned.
\n
One month ago, Bex, the demon Queen of Wrath, and Adrian, witch of the Blackwood, pulled off the upset victory of the century. Now, they find themselves facing the question all unexpected champions must answer: what next? They've declared war on Heaven, but how do you actually bring down a divinely powerful tyrant when your army's still in the single digits and your magical fortress is an illegally modified Winnebago?
\nIt seems like a hopeless situation. As always, though, Adrian Blackwood has a plan, and this time, he's going big. He's got an idea to take down the Seattle Anchor, the giant magical fortress that houses the Anchor Market and every other bit of critical infrastructure that connects Heaven to Earth.
\nHow the Anchors work is a closely guarded secret, and getting to the good stuff will require going deep into the heart of Gilgamesh's power. There's a reason even the Queen of Wrath has never attacked one directly, but now that Adrian's on her team, Bex thinks they can do it. She's finally got the power she needs to actually move the needle on this war, and she's going to hit that Anchor with all the fire she's got.
\nBut the enemies of Heaven aren't the only ones making plans. After the fiery return of his most persistent annoyance, Gilgamesh has ordered his princes to take care of the demon queen problem personally. It's time to roll out the big guns and show these rebels what divine wrath really means, starting with the Hell of a Witch who made it all possible.
\n
It's been one month since Bex's rebel crew took over the Seattle Anchor, and things have been suspiciously good. They're emancipating slaves by the busload, earning money from their thriving Free Market, and basically living the Gilgamesh-free life of their dreams. It's what Bex always wanted for her people, so why does she feel so uneasy?
\nIt could be because she's working twenty-hour days desperately trying to free her wrath demons. Or because Gilgamesh has sealed off all the Anchors still under his control, creating a worldwide shortage of the magical quintessence their new fortress needs to stay afloat.
\nEverywhere Bex looks, timers are ticking down on the safe haven she's built for her demons, but the biggest threat is the one she doesn't see, because Heaven hasn't been idle. The man who killed the gods knows how to handle a rebellion. The closer the demons get to victory, the tighter the invisible noose becomes, and when the Queen of Wrath crosses the final line, there will be Hell to Pay.
\n
Dear Reader, There is no way to write a blurb for this final book without spoiling all the others. Suffice it to say, mysteries resolve, dragons war, pigeons abound, and no one is safe as Bob’s grand plan finally comes to fruition.
\nBut the Great Seer of the Heartstrikers isn’t the only one whose schemes are nearing completion. The Nameless End is coming, and even the machinations of the world’s most brilliant dragon seer might not be enough to stop it. As everything comes crashing down, it’s up to Julius to prove what he’s always known: that seers can be wrong, and Nice Dragons don’t always finish last.
\n
Eli Monpress is talented. He's charming. And he's a thief.
\nBut not just any thief. He's the greatest thief of the age - and he's also a wizard. And with the help of his partners - a swordsman with the most powerful magic sword in the world but no magical ability of his own, and a demonseed who can step through shadows and punch through walls - he's going to put his plan into effect.
\nThe first step is to increase the size of the bounty on his head, so he'll need to steal some big things. But he'll start small for now. He'll just steal something that no one will miss - at least for a while.
\nLike a king.
As the smallest dragon in the Heartstriker clan, Julius survives by a simple code: keep quiet, don’t cause trouble, and stay out of the way of bigger dragons. But this meek behavior doesn't fly in a family of ambitious magical predators, and his mother, Bethesda the Heartstriker, has finally reached the end of her patience.
\nNow, sealed in human form and banished to the DFZ - a vertical metropolis built on the ruins of Old Detroit - Julius has one month to prove that he can be a ruthless dragon or kiss his true shape goodbye forever. But in a city of modern mages and vengeful spirits where dragons are considered monsters to be exterminated, he’s going to need some serious help to survive this test. He only hopes humans are more trustworthy than dragons . . .
\n
When Julius overthrew his mother and took control of his clan, he thought he was doing right by everyone. But sharing power isn’t part of any proper dragon’s vocabulary, and with one seat still open on the new ruling Council, all of Heartstriker is ready to do whatever it takes to get their claws on it, including killing the Nice Dragon who got them into this mess in the first place.
\nTo keep his clan together and his skin intact, Julius is going to have to find a way to make his bloodthirsty siblings play fair. But there’s more going on in Heartstriker Mountain than politics. Every family has its secrets, but the skeletons in Bethesda’s closet are dragon sized, and with Algonquin’s war looming over them all, breaking his clan wide open might just be the only hope Julius has of saving it.
\n
After barely escaping the machinations of his terrifying mother, two all-knowing seers, and countless bloodthirsty siblings, the last thing Julius wants to see is another dragon. Unfortunately for him, the only thing more dangerous than being a useless Heartstriker is being a useful one. Now that he's got an in with the Three Sisters, Julius has become a key pawn in Bethesda the Heartstriker's gamble to put her clan on top.
Refusing to play along with his mother's plans means death, but there's more going on than even Bethesda knows. Heartstriker futures are disappearing, and Algonquin's dragon hunter is closing in. With his most powerful family members dropping like flies, it's up to Julius to save the family that never respected him and prove once and for all that the world's worst dragon is the best one to have on your side.
Eli Monpress is vain. He’s cocky. And he’s a thief.
\nBut he’s a thief who has just seen his bounty topped and he’s not happy about it. The bounty topper, as it turns out, is his best friend, bodyguard, and master swordsman, Josef. Who has been keeping secrets from Eli. Apparently, he’s the only prince of a rather feisty country and his mother (a formidable queen who’s every bit as driven and stubborn as he is) wants him to come home and do his duty, which means throwing over personal ambitions like proving he’s the greatest swordsman who ever lived.
\nFamily drama aside, Eli and Josef have their hands full. The Spirit Court has been usurped by the Council of Thrones and someone calling herself the Immortal Empress is staging a massive invasion. But it’s not just politics - the Immortal Empress has a specific target in mind: Eli Monpress, the greatest thief in the world.
\n
Eli Monpress is clever, he's determined, and he's in way over his head.
First rule of thievery: don't be a hero. When Eli broke the rules and saved the Council Kingdoms, he thought he knew the price, but resuming his place as the Shepherdess's favorite isn't as simple as bowing his head. Now that she has her darling back, Benehime is setting in motion a plan that could destroy everything she was created to protect, and even Eli's charm might not be enough to stop her. But Eli Monpress always has a plan, and with disaster rapidly approaching, he's pulling in every favor he can think of to make it work, including the grudging help of the Spirit Court's new Rector, Miranda Lyonette.
But with the world in panic, the demon stirring, and the Lord of Storms back on the hunt, it's going to take more than luck and charm to pull Eli through this time. He's going to have to break a few more rules and work with some old enemies if he's going to survive.
Five thousand years of war and rebirth have all come down to this.
\nBex and her army have made it to the precipice of Gilgamesh's Heaven. They've occupied the white mansions, taken the golden streets, freed the house slaves of Heaven's warlocks. The final fortress of the enemy stands right in front of them, but the demons' fight is far from over.
\nThough she defeated the Queen of War and freed her people from the Hells, Bex's sword is still silent, her horns are still missing, and her army is little more than a mob of terrified former slaves who can barely stand. What the demons need most are rest and recuperation, but time is not on their side. For all the battles they've won, Gilgamesh hasn't stopped racing toward the culmination of his grand - yet still unknown - ambition, and he's not about to let Bex's ragtag rebellion get in his way.
\nTo save her people and reclaim their ancient home, the Queen of Wrath is going to have to take the fight to the enemy. It's finally time to end the war the Eternal King started five thousand years ago.
\nIt's time to Tear Down Heaven.
\n
Mark and Evie had a whirlwind romance. Evie brought Mark back to life after the sudden death of his first wife. Cleo, Mark's sister, knows she should be happy for him. But Cleo doesn't trust Evie . . .
When Evie starts having accidents at home, her friends grow concerned. Could Mark be causing her injuries? Called out to their cliff-top house one night, Sergeant Stephanie King finds two bodies entangled on blood-drenched sheets.
Where does murder begin? When the knife is raised to strike, or before, at the first thought of violence? As Evie stands trial, the jury is forced to consider - is there ever a proper defence for murder?
One girl is fighting for her life in hospital . . . One village is struggling to hold tight to its secrets.
When a young girl is knocked over and left for dead at the side of the road, the small community of Little Melham goes into shock. Why was Abbie out so late at night, and why wasn’t she missed?
For Ellie Saunders, the truth about that night could put her marriage and even the safety of her children in jeopardy. She has to protect her family, no matter what the consequences.
Former DCI Tom Douglas thought that Little Melham would offer a peaceful retreat from the daily trauma of his work for the Met. But as he is drawn into the web of deceit, his every instinct tells him that what happened to Abbie was more than a tragic accident . . .
Only one person knows the whole story - why Abbie was out that night, and who was driving the car. For that person, the accident spells disaster, and somebody has to pay.
Don’t let him under your skin. He’ll destroy you.
Don’t fight him. He’ll win.
Run. Never let him find you.
I thought I was safe here, but I’m not. I’ve stayed too long. Now Genevieve is dead, and the police are on their way. It’s time for me to go.
I must stick to the plan – the one I made the day I arrived in this city. My bag is packed. It always is. I will destroy every shred of evidence of my existence. The police must never find me. If they do, so will he.
I made a mistake, and someone had to die. But I’m the one who has truly lost her life.
I need to make a choice. If I keep running, I’ll never stop. If I go back, he will make me suffer.
How many lives can one person ruin?
She never wanted to come back. Now she'll never leave.
\nNancy Holland's sister disappeared on a holiday in Cornwall eleven years ago. She hasn't been seen since, and Nancy never returned. Until now.
\nLife has pulled her back to the seaside village and cottage where young Lola was last seen.
\nBack then, Nancy couldn't see what was right in front of her eyes. Can she now finally uncover what happened to her sister?
\nBut somebody doesn't want her here, digging into the past. If she discovers the truth at last, they'll never let her leave again.
When your life is a lie, who can you trust?
When Maggie Taylor accepts a new job in Manchester, she is sure it is the right move for her family. The children have settled well although her husband, Duncan, doesn’t appear to be so convinced.
But nothing prepares her for the shock of coming home from work one night to find that Duncan has disappeared, leaving their young children alone. His phone is dead, and she has no idea where he has gone, or why. And then she discovers she’s not the only one looking for him.
When a woman who looks just like Maggie is brutally murdered and DCI Tom Douglas is brought in to investigate, Maggie realises how little she knows about Duncan’s past. Is he the man she loves? Who is he running from?
She doesn’t have long to decide whether to trust him or betray him. Because one thing has been made clear to Maggie - another woman will die soon, and it might be her.
Celia, Juliette and Nadia are complete strangers with one thing in common: they have all been wronged by Ellis Cobain. A wealthy philanthropist on course for a knighthood, Ellis' public persona is bulletproof - but lurking beneath this veneer is a sinister side that only the women closest to him have seen.
\nWhen they meet at a boutique hotel on the Cornish coast, brought together by the blind arrogance of their tormentor, they realise what connects them and form a pact to free themselves from his grasp.
\nBut when a body is discovered they are left scrambling, desperate to cover their tracks. This was never part of the plan.
\nWill they keep each other's secrets, or will they turn on each other, not knowing if one of them could be next?
The first time Jemma and Matt were invited to Polskirrin - the imposing ocean-view home belonging to Matt’s childhood friend Lucas Jarrett - it was for an intimate wedding that ended in tragedy. Jemma will never forget the sight of the girl’s pale body floating listlessly towards the rocky shore.
\nNow, exactly one year later, Jemma and her husband have reluctantly returned at Lucas’s request to honor the anniversary of an event they would do anything to forget.
\nBut what Lucas has in store for his guests is nothing like a candlelight vigil. Someone who was there that night remembers more than they’ll admit to, and Lucas has devised a little game to make them tell the truth.
\nJemma believes she and Matt know nothing about what happened to that woman . . . but what if she’s wrong? Before you play a deadly game, make sure you can pay the price . . .
Recently life has been good for Mallory Hansen: a great job, a lovely home, and a wonderful man, Nathan, to share it with. But now she must ask herself: is it all built on lies? A terrible accusation has been made against Nathan, and Mallory doesn't know who to believe. All the signs point to his guilt. She has learned to trust Nathan, but she also remembers the boy he used to be.
\nTogether, Mallory and Nathan were part of a close-knit group of six friends until a vicious argument drove them apart. Now, fifteen years later, they are back in touch - only to find themselves drawn into a web of mutual distrust, one by one . . .
\nThe attacks on their lives are cleverly targeted, designed to hit them where they hurt the most, and when a young woman disappears and a baby is abducted, DCI Tom Douglas must try to unravel the past and discover who is the architect of their misery.
Every moment of Sir Hugo Fletcher’s life has been chronicled in the British press: his privileged upbringing, his high-profile charity work to end human trafficking- even his two marriages. But when the billionaire philanthropist is discovered murdered in his London home, tied naked to a bed, the scandal is only a shadow of the darkness lurking off-camera.
Laura Fletcher returns from an Italian vacation to find her husband dead and her home under siege by paparazzi. Is she shocked? Yes. But is she distraught? Not exactly. Especially when Chief Inspector Tom Douglas reveals his suspicions that Hugo’s killer is female. Laura always knew she wasn’t the only woman in Hugo’s life. And she knows she wasn’t the only one with a motive to kill.
The deeper Douglas digs, the more sordid details about Hugo Fletcher he uncovers. And yet nothing compares to the secret Laura guards, a secret that could bring the guilty to justice - or destroy an innocent life forever.
Some doors should not be opened.
Some can never be closed.
Jo Palmer’s peaceful and happy life is about to end.
Ash – the man she loves – will be arrested by the police.
Millie – her precious daughter – will be taken from her.
She will lose her friends.
She will doubt her sanity.
Someone is stealing everything Jo loves, and will stop at nothing.
But right now, Jo is laughing in her kitchen, eating dinner with her family, suspecting nothing.
It’s raining outside.
There’s a knock on the door. They are here.
Yesterday, Scott was dead.
Today, he’s back.
And Anna doesn’t believe in ghosts.
Fourteen years ago Scott was Anna’s boyfriend. She loved him, but he ruined her life. When he died, she should have been free.
But today Scott is on the radio, talking about her. Threatening to spill her secrets.
Anna is a mother, a wife, and head teacher of a primary school. And she’s a very good liar. She has been lying about herself for so long, she doesn’t really know who she is any more.
Anna used to think she was a good person. She made one stupid mistake, and now she is having to pay for it - over and over again.
Scott is the only person who knows the truth about her past. But how can Scott be alive?
Soon, DCI Tom Douglas is going to knock on her door looking for answers. But Anna is already running scared: from the man she used to love; the man she watched die all those years ago; the man who has come back to life.
She has one week to find him. One week to stop him.
Natalie Grey is living a nightmare. She has discovered a disturbing website link on her new partner’s computer and fears he has a dark side, and even darker intentions. When her husband died in a hit and run accident, Ed had seemed like a safe harbour. Now where can she turn?
\nConcerned for the safety of her fifteen-year-old daughter Scarlett, she moves them both to a new home beyond his reach, unaware that the apartment holds secrets of its own. Left alone during the long days of the school holiday, Scarlett investigates strange sounds coming from the other side of the wall, never anticipating the danger that awaits her there.
\nDCI Tom Douglas’s investigation into the apparent suicide of a teenage girl draws him ever closer to Natalie and Scarlett. But will he be too late to protect them from the danger they face, or from the truths that will tear their lives apart?<
How far would you go to hold on to the people you love?
When Olivia Brookes calls the police to report that her husband and children are missing, she believes she will never see them again. She has reason to fear the worst; this isn’t the first tragedy that Olivia has experienced.
Now, two years later, Detective Chief Inspector Tom Douglas is called in to investigate this family again, but this time it’s Olivia who has disappeared. All the evidence suggests that she was here, in the family home, that morning. But her car is in the garage, and her purse is in her handbag – on the kitchen table.
The police want to issue a national appeal, but for some reason every single picture of this family has been removed from albums, from phones, from computers.
And then they find the blood . . .
Has the past caught up with Olivia?
When Emma Joseph met her husband David, he was a man shattered by grief. His first wife had been killed outright when her car veered off the road. Just as tragically, their six-year-old daughter mysteriously vanished from the scene of the accident.
Now, six years later, Emma believes the painful years are behind them. She and David have built a new life together and have a beautiful baby son, Ollie.
Then a stranger walks into their lives, and their world tilts on its axis.
Emma's life no longer feels secure. Does she know what really happened all those years ago? And why does she feel so frightened for herself and for her baby?
When a desperate Emma reaches out to her old friend DCI Tom Douglas for help, she puts all their lives in jeopardy. Before long, a web of deceit is revealed that shocks both Emma and Tom to the core.
They say you should never trust a stranger. Maybe they're right.
Recovering from a gunshot wound that nearly cost him his life, DCI Tom Douglas isn't focused on himself - his concern is for his brother Jack, who seems to have vanished without a trace. Jack's past is as dangerous as it is complicated. Years ago, he faked his own death to escape an organised crime group, and ever since, he's been living in the shadows, always one step ahead of those who want to hunt him down.
\nNow, Tom's worst fears are coming true. Has Jack's past finally caught up with him? And what does that mean for his family? Tom has to find them, but the answers he seeks are hidden in a brutal underworld - one more threatening than anything Tom has faced before.
\nWith time running out and his own life on the line, Tom must decide how far he's willing to go and how much he's prepared to sacrifice, knowing it will mean crossing a line he swore he never would.
\nBut there is another player in this game - one who will stop at nothing to find the answers she seeks. And if Tom makes the wrong move, he, and everyone he loves, will lose.
Natasha Rothwell leads a sheltered life with her beautiful, bohemian mother in a crumbling house by the sea. From a young age she has been beset by strange dreams that she believes predict the future.
\nThe summer Natasha turns fifteen, strange dancing lights appear in the sky above her small seaside town, lights that she interprets as portents of doom and which lead her to reveal her gift to the small, insular community. Meanwhile, the arrival of a new lodger, the handsome Mr Bowen, threatens to upset the delicate equilibrium between mother and daughter.
\nAs news of the lights spreads, more and more visitors arrive, creating a feverish atmosphere of anticipation and dread. Then a local teenager goes missing, and Natasha is called on to use her powers to help. But her actions over that long, hot summer will have unforeseen and ultimately tragic consequences that will cast a shadow for many years to come . . .
\n
1963: At the stark and isolated modernist mansion of controversial political philosopher Richard Acklehurst, the glittering annual New Year party has not gone quite as planned. Considered a genius by some, and something far darker by others, by the end of the evening Acklehurst will be dead in mysterious circumstances, casting a long shadow over the lives of his teenage daughters, Aisling and Stella.
\n1999: Richard Acklehurst's remains are defiled in the country graveyard where they have lain undisturbed for over thirty years, forcing his daughters to return to their childhood home where they must finally confront the complex and dark dynamic at the heart of their family.
\nMoving from the West of Ireland to Dublin, London, Florence and back, The Glass House is a captivating and compelling tale of two sisters and their secrets, of love, regret and vengeance.
\n
Twenty-five years ago, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl and her charismatic teacher disappeared without trace . . .
\nIn an elite Catholic girls' boarding-school the pupils live under the repressive, watchful gaze of the nuns. Seeking to break from the cloistered atmosphere two of the students - Louisa and Victoria - quickly become infatuated with their young, bohemian art teacher, and act out passionately as a result.
\nThat is, until he and Louisa suddenly disappear. Years later, a journalist uncovers the troubled past of the school and determines to resolve the mystery of the missing pair. The search for the truth will uncover a tragic, mercurial tale of suppressed desire and long-buried secrets. It will shatter lives and lay a lost soul to rest.
\n
A carefree New England vacation is just what sixteen-year-old Lucia needs to chase her sadness away. At least, according to her mom, who whisks them away for the summer with her ridiculously wealthy new boyfriend. Nothing bad happens in Nantucket, a charming island with cobblestone streets and million-dollar cottages.
\nBut when Lucia stumbles upon the body of a teenage girl on a beach, the discovery reopens old wounds from her past. With the dead girl's identity a mystery, Lucia takes it upon herself to investigate and crosses paths with Selah and her pack of devil-may-care besties. The three girls are beautiful, chaotic, and a little wild - and they help Lucia forget her crushing sense of grief and loneliness.
\nBut as Lucia becomes a part of their shimmering world, she begins to suspect that there are dark secrets hidden in this quiet enclave, and that uncovering them may be the key to solving the dead girl’s murder. Not everything on this island is what it seems . . .
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On a street corner in Chicago, a violinist plays each day, offering a melody to anyone willing to stop and listen.
\nAnd as they pause - artists, scientists, students, executives - he glimpses something beyond their polished faces: the unseen fractures, the invisible battles they carry.
\nBut it’s not his place to tug at the fraying threads of their lives. They are already pulling at them, even if they don’t know it yet.
\nAnd this week, each will have to decide:
\nWill they keep holding the image they’ve built?
\nOr surrender to the truth breaking through?
\nTold through nine unforgettable voices, Image of the Invisible is a lyrical and introspective debut that explores fractured identities, hidden struggles, and the quiet grace that finds us in the unraveling.
A gothic, mist-cloaked tale of a prophetess who is forced beyond the safety of her cloister on an impossible quest to defeat the gods with the one knight whose future is beyond her sight.
\nSybil Delling has spent nine years dreaming of having no dreams at all. Like the other foundling girls who traded a decade of service for a home in the great cathedral, Sybil is a Diviner. In her dreams she receives visions from six unearthly figures known as Omens. From them, she can predict terrible things before they occur, and lords and common folk alike travel across the kingdom of Traum's windswept moors to learn their futures by her dreams.
\nJust as she and her sister Diviners near the end of their service, a mysterious knight arrives at the cathedral. Rude, heretical, and devilishly handsome, the knight Rodrick has no respect for Sybil's visions. But when Sybil's fellow Diviners begin to vanish one by one, she has no choice but to seek his help in finding them. For the world outside the cathedral's cloister is wrought with peril. Only the gods have the answers she is seeking, and as much as she'd rather avoid Rodrick's dark eyes and sharp tongue, only a heretic can defeat a god.
A dark, lushly gothic fantasy about a maiden who must unleash the monster within to save her kingdom - but the monster in her head isn't the only threat lurking.
\nElspeth Spindle needs more than luck to stay safe in the eerie, mist-locked kingdom of Blunder - she needs a monster. She calls him the Nightmare, an ancient, mercurial spirit trapped in her head. He protects her. He keeps her secrets.
\nBut nothing comes for free, especially magic.
\nWhen Elspeth meets a mysterious highwayman on the forest road, her life takes a drastic turn. Thrust into a world of shadow and deception, she joins a dangerous quest to cure Blunder from the dark magic infecting it. And the highwayman? He just so happens to be the King’s nephew, Captain of the most dangerous men in Blunder . . . and guilty of high treason.
\nTogether they must gather twelve Providence Cards - the keys to the cure. But as the stakes heighten and their undeniable attraction intensifies, Elspeth is forced to face her darkest secret yet: the Nightmare is slowly taking over her mind. And she might not be able to stop him.
Elspeth and Ravyn have gathered most of the twelve Providence Cards, but the last, and most important one remains to be found: The Twin Alders.
\nIf they are going to find it before the Solstice and cure the kingdom of the dark magic infecting it, they will need to journey beyond the dangerous mist-cloaked forest that surrounds their kingdom.
\nAnd the only one who can lead them there is the monster that shares Elspeth's head. The Nightmare. And he's not eager to share any longer.
Mira is a wrecker, one of the seven chosen to swim out and plunder the wrecked ships beyond the Isle of Rosevear. The waves sing to her soul, the call of the sea beckoning her into deeper waters. But Rosevear needs her, and she could never abandon her home. Until one evening when lightning splits the sky and the Watch descend, taking Mira’s father away.
\nMira must set off on a journey to win back her father’s freedom. She will encounter two strangers along the way - enigmatic Seth and smouldering Elijah - and learning who to trust will not be easy. When she discovers a dark family secret, buried deep in the ocean, Mira finds that securing her future - and that of her island - will come at a high price . . .
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On Rosevear, Mira is plagued by nightmares. She is lost and untethered - and then the watch strike, burning her home. The attack ignites a spark within her, and Mira knows it’s time to call in her bargain with Elijah, and tear down Captain Renshaw and the watch.
\nMira must find allies and she turns to the witches for help unlocking her siren abilities. But the witches aren’t all on Mira’s side; and what they ask of her may be her undoing.
\nAs she desperately fights for a way to keep her home safe, with Elijah by her side, more deadly and seductive than ever, Mira realises she is being hunted. For in the eyes of the ruling council, Mira is a monster, and monstrous creatures must be tamed . . .
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Mira is trapped in a deadly situation which could see the end of everything she has fought for. She must enter into one final desperate bargain, but this time, it’s with her greatest enemy, the ruling council. To save her life, her home, and the people she loves most, Mira is forced to compete in a series of terrifying trials filled with dark magic and dangerous monsters.
\nHer allies are scattered, her people without a home. With Eli lost in another world, Mira must shape herself into a weapon in order to survive. But with the true nature of the ruling council and their ambitions finally revealed, the battle for the future of the Fortunate Isles has become a war. And in war, there is only ever one victor . . .
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Tana Fairchild’s fate has never been in question. Her life has been planned out since the moment she was born: she is to marry the governor’s son, Landon, and secure an unprecedented alliance between the witches of her island home and the mainlanders who see her very existence as a threat.
\nTana’s coven has appeased those who fear their power for years by releasing most of their magic into the ocean during the full moon. But when Tana misses the midnight ritual - a fatal mistake - there is no one she can turn to for help . . . until she meets Wolfe.
\nWolfe claims he is from a coven that practices dark magic, making him one of the only people who can help her. But he refuses to let Tana’s power rush into the sea, and instead teaches her his forbidden magic. A magic that makes her feel powerful. Alive.
\nAs the sea grows more violent, her coven loses control of the currents, a danger that could destroy the alliance as well as her island. Tana will have to choose between love and duty, between loyalty to her people and loyalty to her heart. Marrying Landon would secure peace for her coven but losing Wolfe and his wild magic could cost her everything else.
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For centuries, witches have maintained the climate, their power from the sun peaking in the season of their birth. But now their control is faltering as the atmosphere becomes more erratic. All hope lies with Clara, an Everwitch whose rare magic is tied to every season.
\nIn Autumn, Clara wants nothing to do with her power. It's wild and volatile, and the price of her magic - losing the ones she loves - is too high, despite the need to control the increasingly dangerous weather.
\nIn Winter, the world is on the precipice of disaster. Fires burn, storms rage, and Clara accepts that she's the only one who can make a difference.
\nIn Spring, she falls for Sang, the witch training her. As her magic grows, so do her feelings, until she's terrified Sang will be the next one she loses.
\nIn Summer, Clara must choose between her power and her happiness, her duty and the people she loves . . . before she loses Sang, her magic, and thrusts the world into chaos.
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Nestled deep in the snowy mountains of the Lost Range, the small village of Reverie endures on a miracle. Beyond the reach of the Sun, Reverie is dependent upon the magic of the mysterious Starmaker: every morning, he trudges across a vast glacier and pulls in sunlight over the peaks, providing the village with the light it needs to survive.
\nAurora Finch grew up on tales of the Starmaker’s magic, never imagining she’d one day meet him. But on the morning of her wedding, a fateful encounter in the frostbitten woods changes everything. The Starmaker senses a powerful magic within her and demands she come study under his guidance. With her newfound abilities tied to the survival of the village, Aurora is swept away to his ice-covered castle at the mountain’s peak.
\nThe Starmaker is as cold and distant as the dark woods, leaving Aurora to explore his enchanted castle with only an immortal rabbit for company. Yet the more she discovers about the sorcerer, the stronger their ruinous attraction grows, pulling her closer to the secrets he refuses to share. A deadly frost approaches, and Aurora must uncover what the Starmaker is hiding before she is left in an endless winter that even the Sun cannot touch.
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Iris Gray knows witches aren't welcome in most towns. When she was forced to leave her last home, she left behind a father who was no longer willing to start over. And while the Witches' Council was lenient in their punishment, Iris knows they're keeping tabs on her.
\nNow settled in Washington, Iris never lets anyone see who she really is; instead, she vents her frustrations by writing curses she never intends to cast. Otherwise, she spends her days at the wildlife refuge which would be the perfect job if not for Pike Alder, the witch-hating aspiring ornithologist who interns with them.
\nIris concocts the perfect curse for Pike: one that will turn him into a witch. But just as she's about to dispel it, a bird swoops down and steals the curse before flying away. If the bird dies, the curse will be unleashed - and the bird is a powerful amplifier, and unleashing the curse would turn not just Pike, but everyone in the region, into a witch.
\nNew witches have no idea how to control their magic and the consequences would be dire. And the Witches' Council does not look kindly on multiple offenses; if they found out, Iris could be stripped of her magic for good. Iris begs Pike to help her track the bird, and they set out on a trek through the Pacific Northwest looking for a single bird that could destroy everything.
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Clio Louise Barnes leads a picture-perfect life as a stylist and influencer, but beneath the glossy veneer she harbors a not-so glamorous secret: she grew up in a haunted house. Well, not haunted. Possessed. After Clio’s parent’s messy divorce, her mother, Alex, moved Clio and her sisters into a house occupied by a demon. Or so Alex claimed. That’s not what Clio’s sisters remember or what the courts determined when they stripped Alex of custody after she went off the deep end. But Alex was insistent; she even wrote a book about her experience in the house.
\nAfter Alex’s sudden death, the supposedly possessed house passes to Clio and her sisters. Where her sisters see childhood trauma, Clio sees an opportunity for house flipping content. Only, as the home makeover process begins, Clio discovers there might be some truth to her mother’s claims. As memories resurface and Clio finally reads her mother’s book, the presence in the house becomes more real, and more sinister, revealing ugly truths that threaten to shake Clio’s beautiful life to its very foundation.
Unravel one of history's greatest mysteries in this spellbinding narrative exploring three leading theories of Amelia Earhart’s tragic disappearance.
\nWhen Amelia Earhart’s plane disappeared in 1937, the clues poured in, attracting wild conspiracies about her tragic fate.
\nIn Lost, former National Geographic reporter Rachel Hartigan delves into Earhart’s disappearance, introducing a host of eccentric characters who have become obsessed with finding the truth. Did the great aviator crash land near the Marshall Islands, only to be captured by Japanese soldiers? Did she manage to land on Nikumaroro Island but die of injury or starvation? Or did she run out of fuel and crash into the ocean?
\nInterspersed with the search for Earhart is the story of her extraordinary unstable childhood, her itinerant early career, and how a PR-savvy publisher transformed her into an aviation icon and became her husband in an unconventional marriage.
\nIn the spirit of nonfiction blockbusters like The Lost City of Z, Hartigan draws us into the world of Earhart's devotees and unspools a beguiling tale. The theories lead Hartigan from the pilot's birthplace of Atchison, Kansas to an expedition on a remote Pacific Island, where forensic dogs attempt to recover a potential sample of Earhart’s DNA.
\nAs tantilising new evidence mounts, Hartigan and her fellow investigators descend deeper into a world of conspiracy and obsession. Through its irresistible characters and prodigious research, Lost reveals not just why we remember Amelia Earhart as a trailblazer and adventurer, but why unsolved mysteries keep us forever searching for answers.
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Set in the world of Seraphina.
\nA few things to know about the town of St. Muckle' It's too out-of-the-way to interest greedy lords, and too damp and muddy for marauding dragons to burn. And anyone, from a humble serf to a runaway nun, may earn their freedom by living for a year and a day within the town walls.
\nSeven years ago, Charl and his mother fled to St. Muckle's and made it their safe-haven, building a new life in this so-called Peasant's Paradise. But when Charl sees something impossible - a ghost - soon the embers of his past are threatening to engulf his world in flames. A tragic accident is quickly followed by murder, a deadly plague, and a mercenary dragon.
\nCharl manages to escape to an abandoned abbey outside of town, but finds no safety within those ruined walls. A treacherous nun, a chorus of murdered girls, and the fearsome Battle Bishop await, ready to ensnare him in a complex web of history, magic, and fate.
\nFor some things should never be forgotten, however much they haunt us, and Charl will need all his wisdom and resiliency if he is to fight for the world he knows . . . and the people he calls home.
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At the bottom of the world lies a Serpent, the last of its kind.
\nFinding the Serpent will change lives.
\nTess is a girl on a mission to save a friend.
\nSpira is a dragon seeking a new identity.
\nMarga is a woman staking her claim on a man’s world.
\nJacomo is a priest searching for his soul.
\nThere are those who would give their lives to keep it hidden.
\nAnd those who would destroy it.
\nBut the only people who will truly find the Serpent are those who have awakened to the world around them - with eyes open to the wondrous, the terrible, and the just.
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Four decades of peace have done little to ease the mistrust between humans and dragons in the kingdom of Goredd. Folding themselves into human shape, dragons attend court as ambassadors, and lend their rational, mathematical minds to universities as scholars and teachers. As the treaty's anniversary draws near, however, tensions are high.
\nSeraphina Dombegh has reason to fear both sides. An unusually gifted musician, she joins the court just as a member of the royal family is murdered - in suspiciously draconian fashion. Seraphina is drawn into the investigation, partnering with the captain of the Queen's Guard, the dangerously perceptive Prince Lucian Kiggs. While they begin to uncover hints of a sinister plot to destroy the peace, Seraphina struggles to protect her own secret, the secret behind her musical gift, one so terrible that its discovery could mean her very life.
\nIn her exquisitely written fantasy debut, Rachel Hartman creates a rich, complex, and utterly original world. Seraphina's tortuous journey to self-acceptance is one readers will remember long after they've turned the final page.
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The kingdom of Goredd: a world where humans and dragons share life with an uneasy balance, and those few who are both human and dragon must hide the truth. Seraphina is one of these, part girl, part dragon, who is reluctantly drawn into the politics of her world. When war breaks out between the dragons and humans, she must travel the lands to find those like herself - for she has an inexplicable connection to all of them, and together they will be able to fight the dragons in powerful, magical ways.
As Seraphina gathers this motley crew, she is pursued by humans who want to stop her. But the most terrifying is another half dragon, who can creep into people’s minds and take them over. Until now, Seraphina has kept her mind safe from intruders, but that also means she’s held back her own gift. It is time to make a choice: Cling to the safety of her old life, or embrace a powerful new destiny?
In the medieval kingdom of Goredd, women are expected to be ladies, men are their protectors, and dragons get to be whomever they want. Tess, stubbornly, is a troublemaker. You can't make a scene at your sister's wedding and break a relative's nose with one punch (no matter how pompous he is) and not suffer the consequences. As her family plans to send her to a nunnery, Tess yanks on her boots and sets out on a journey across the Southlands, alone and pretending to be a boy.
Where Tess is headed is a mystery, even to her. So when she runs into an old friend, it's a stroke of luck. This friend is a quigutl--a subspecies of dragon--who gives her both a purpose and protection on the road. But Tess is guarding a troubling secret. Her tumultuous past is a heavy burden to carry, and the memories she's tried to forget threaten to expose her to the world in more ways than one.
Sophie Mercer thought she was a witch.
That was the whole reason she was sent to Hex Hall, a reform school for delinquent Prodigium (aka witches, shapeshifters, and fairies). But that was before she discovered the family secret, and that her hot crush, Archer Cross, is an agent for The Eye, a group bent on wiping Prodigium off the face of the earth.
Turns out, Sophie’s a demon, one of only two in the world - the other being her father. What’s worse, she has powers that threaten the lives of everyone she loves. Which is precisely why Sophie decides she must go to London for the Removal, a dangerous procedure that will destroy her powers.
But once Sophie arrives she makes a shocking discovery. Her new friends? They’re demons too. Meaning someone is raising them in secret with creepy plans to use their powers, and probably not for good. Meanwhile, The Eye is set on hunting Sophie down, and they’re using Archer to do it. But it’s not like she has feelings for him anymore. Does she?
When Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore dies, she’s not only North Carolina’s richest woman, she’s also its most notorious. The victim of a famous kidnapping as a child and a widow four times over, Ruby ruled the tiny town of Tavistock from Ashby House, her family’s estate high in the Blue Ridge mountains. In the aftermath of her death, that estate - along with a nine-figure fortune and the complicated legacy of being a McTavish - pass to her adopted son, Camden.
\nBut to everyone’s surprise, Cam wants little to do with the house or the money - and even less to do with the surviving McTavishes. Instead, he rejects his inheritance, settling into a normal life as an English teacher in Colorado and marrying Jules, a woman just as eager to escape her own messy past.
\nTen years later, Camden is a McTavish in name only, but a summons in the wake of his uncle’s death brings him and Jules back into the family fold at Ashby House. Its views are just as stunning as ever, its rooms just as elegant, but coming home reminds Cam why he was so quick to leave in the first place.
\nJules, however, has other ideas, and the more she learns about Cam’s estranged family - and the twisted secrets they keep - the more determined she is for her husband to claim everything Ruby once intended for him to have.
\nBut Ruby’s plans were always more complicated than they appeared. As Ashby House tightens its grip on Jules and Camden, questions about the infamous heiress come to light. Was there any truth to the persistent rumors following her disappearance as a girl? What really happened to those four husbands, who all died under mysterious circumstances? And why did she adopt Cam in the first place? Soon, Jules and Cam realise that an inheritance can entail far more than what’s written in a will - and that the bonds of family stretch far beyond the grave.
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Millie Quint is devastated when she discovers that her sort-of-best friend/sort-of-girlfriend has been kissing someone else. And because Millie cannot stand the thought of confronting her ex every day, she decides to apply for scholarships to boarding schools . . . the farther from Houston the better.
\nMillie can't believe her luck when she's accepted into one of the world's most exclusive schools, located in the rolling highlands of Scotland. Everything about Scotland is different: the country is misty and green; the school is gorgeous, and the students think Americans are cute.
\nThe only problem: Mille's roommate Flora is a total princess.
\nShe's also an actual princess. Of Scotland.
\nAt first, the girls can barely stand each other - Flora is both high-class and high-key - but before Millie knows it, she has another sort-of-best-friend/sort-of-girlfriend. Even though Princess Flora could be a new chapter in her love life, Millie knows the chances of happily ever afters are slim . . . after all, real life isn't a fairy tale . . . or is it?
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Three years ago, Sophie Mercer discovered that she was a witch. It's gotten her into a few scrapes. Her non-gifted mother has been as supportive as possible, consulting Sophie's estranged father-an elusive European warlock-only when necessary. But when Sophie attracts too much human attention for a prom-night spell gone horribly wrong, it's her dad who decides her punishment: exile to Hex Hall, an isolated reform school for wayward Prodigium, a.k.a. witches, faeries, and shapeshifters.
\nBy the end of her first day among fellow freak-teens, Sophie has quite a scorecard: three powerful enemies who look like supermodels, a futile crush on a gorgeous warlock, a creepy tagalong ghost, and a new roommate who happens to be the most hated person and only vampire on campus. Worse, Sophie soon learns that a mysterious predator has been attacking students, and her only friend is the number-one suspect.
\nAs a series of blood-curdling mysteries starts to converge, Sophie prepares for the biggest threat of all: an ancient secret society determined to destroy all Prodigium, especially her.
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When Lux McAllister and her boyfriend, Nico, are hired to sail two women to a remote island in the South Pacific, it seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. Stuck in a dead-end job in Hawaii, and longing to travel the world after a family tragedy, Lux is eager to climb on board The Susannah and set out on an adventure. She’s also quick to bond with their passengers, college best friends Brittany and Amma. The two women say they want to travel off the beaten path. But like Lux, they may have other reasons to be seeking an escape.
\nShimmering on the horizon after days at sea, Meroe Island is every bit the paradise the foursome expects, despite a mysterious history of shipwrecks, cannibalism, and even rumors of murder. But what they don’t expect is to discover another boat already anchored off Meroe’s sandy beaches.
\nThe owners of the Azure Sky, Jake and Eliza, are a true golden couple: gorgeous, laidback, and if their sleek catamaran and well-stocked bar are any indication, rich. Now a party of six, the new friends settle in to experience life on an exotic island, and the serenity of being completely off the grid. Lux hasn’t felt like she truly belonged anywhere in years, yet here on Meroe, with these fellow free spirits, she finally has a sense of peace.
\nBut with the arrival of a skeevy stranger sailing alone in pursuit of a darker kind of good time, the balance of the group is disrupted. Soon, cracks begin to emerge: it seems that Brittany and Amma haven’t been completely honest with Lux about their pasts - and perhaps not even with each other. And though Jake and Eliza seem like the perfect pair, the rocky history of their relationship begins to resurface, and their reasons for sailing to Meroe might not be as innocent as they first appeared.
\nWhen it becomes clear that the group is even more cut off from civilisation than they initially thought, it starts to feel like the island itself is closing in on them. And when one person goes missing, and another turns up dead, Lux begins to wonder if any of them are going to make it off the island alive.
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Just as Sophie Mercer has come to accept her extraordinary magical powers as a demon, the Prodigium Council strips them away. Now Sophie is defenseless, alone, and at the mercy of her sworn enemies - the Brannicks, a family of warrior women who hunt down the Prodigium.
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Or at least that’s what Sophie thinks, until she makes a surprising discovery. The Brannicks know an epic war is coming, and they believe Sophie is the only one powerful enough to stop the world from ending. But without her magic, Sophie isn’t as confident.
Sophie’s bound for one hell of a ride - can she get her powers back before it’s too late?
St. Medard’s Bay, Alabama is famous for three things: the deadly hurricanes that regularly sweep into town, the Rosalie Inn, a century-old hotel that’s survived every one of those storms, and Lo Bailey, the local girl infamously accused of the murder of her lover, political scion Landon Fitzroy, during Hurricane Marie in 1984.
\nWhen Geneva Corliss, the current owner of the Rosalie Inn, hears a writer is coming to town to research the crime that put St. Medard’s Bay on the map, she’s less interested in solving a whodunnit than in how a successful true crime book might help the struggling inn’s bottom line. But to her surprise, August Fletcher doesn’t come to St. Medard’s Bay alone. With him is none other than Lo Bailey herself. Lo says she’s returned to her hometown to clear her name once and for all, but the closer Geneva gets to both Lo and August, the more she wonders if Lo is actually back to settle old scores.
\nAs the summer heats up and another monster storm begins twisting its way towards St. Medard’s Bay, Geneva learns that some people can be just as destructive - and as deadly - as any hurricane, and that the truth of what happened to Landon Fitzroy may not be the only secret Lo is keeping . . .
As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable. But by their 30s, their bond has been strained by the demands of their adult lives. So when Chess suggests a girls trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance to reconnect with her best friend.
\nVilla Aestas in Orvieto is a high-end holiday home now, but in 1974, it was known as Villa Rosato, and rented for the summer by a notorious rock star, Noel Gordon. In an attempt to reignite his creative spark, Noel invites up-and-coming musician, Pierce Sheldon to join him, as well as Pierce’s girlfriend, Mari, and her stepsister, Lara. But he also sets in motion a chain of events that leads to Mari writing one of the greatest horror novels of all time, Lara composing a platinum album - and ends in Pierce’s brutal murder.
\nAs Emily digs into the villa’s complicated history, she begins to think there might be more to the story of that fateful summer in 1974. That perhaps Pierce’s murder wasn’t just a tale of sex, drugs, and rock & roll gone wrong, but that something more sinister might have occurred - and that there might be clues hidden in the now-iconic works that Mari and Lara left behind.
\nYet the closer that Emily gets to the truth, the more tension she feels developing between her and Chess. As secrets from the past come to light, equally dangerous betrayals from the present also emerge - and it begins to look like the villa will claim another victim before the summer ends.
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Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates - a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded tchotchkes and jewelry off the side tables of her well-heeled clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name.
But her luck changes when she meets Eddie Rochester. Recently widowed, Eddie is Thornfield Estates’ most mysterious resident. His wife, Bea, drowned in a boating accident with her best friend, their bodies lost to the deep. Jane can’t help but see an opportunity in Eddie - not only is he rich, brooding, and handsome, he could also offer her the kind of protection she’s always yearned for.
Yet as Jane and Eddie fall for each other, Jane is increasingly haunted by the legend of Bea, an ambitious beauty with a rags-to-riches origin story, who launched a wildly successful southern lifestyle brand. How can she, plain Jane, ever measure up? And can she win Eddie’s heart before her past - or his - catches up to her?
With delicious suspense, incisive wit, and a fresh, feminist sensibility, The Wife Upstairs flips the script on a timeless tale of forbidden romance, ill-advised attraction, and a wife who just won’t stay buried. In this vivid reimagining of one of literature’s most twisted love triangles, which Mrs. Rochester will get her happy ending?
Isabel Lincoln is gone.
But is she missing?
It's up to Grayson Sykes to find her. Although she is reluctant to track down a woman who may not want to be found, Gray's search for Isabel Lincoln becomes more complicated and dangerous with every new revelation about the woman's secrets and the truth she's hidden from her friends and family.
Featuring two complicated women in a dangerous cat and mouse game, And Now She's Gone explores the nature of secrets -- and how violence and fear can lead you to abandon everything in order to survive.
Seventy-three-year-old Eugene Washington appears to have died in an unremarkable way - a heatwave combined with food poisoning from a holiday barbecue - but LAPD homicide detective Elouise \"Lou\" Norton is positive that something doesn't quite add up.
\nEspecially when she learns that the only family Washington had was his fellow church-goers. Lou is convinced that something wicked is lurking among the congregants. Could the murderer be sitting in one of those red velvet pews? And is someone protecting the wolf in the flock? Lou must force the truth into the light and confront her own demons in order to save another soul before it's too late.
Kaivara Megidrail was once worshipped as the Grand Defender of Vallendor - until betrayal, punishment, and exile left her Diminished. Now, the realm she abandoned teeters on the edge of collapse. Monsters roam free. Gods whisper in shadows. And one man - Jadon Wake, prince, blacksmith, liar - may be the key to her salvation . . . or her final ruin.
\nHaunted by the past, hunted by divine enemies, and armed with only fractured Memories and an unrelenting will, Kaivara must choose: reclaim her power and face the truth about Jadon, or watch Vallendor fall to a traitorous god’s rising.
\nThe realm called her a destroyer. This time, they’ll learn what she was truly made for.
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After ten years on the force, LAPD cop Sonny Rush relocates with her elderly mother to peaceful Haven, California, to join her godfather’s burgeoning PI business. What crimes could possibly happen in a town nicknamed “Mayberry by the Sea”? Sonny’s first case: find Figgy, a missing goldendoodle last seen sporting a Versace collar. At least scouting out a dognapper gives Sonny a chance to get to know her new neighbors.
\nForty-eight hours in town and Figgy’s disappearance entangles Sonny in an unwelcome reunion with her ex, one of Haven’s wealthiest citizens. And when the body of a teenage boy is found along a popular hiking trail, Sonny is drawn into a web of strange beyond anything she ever saw in LA.
\nThen comes a local’s warning: question everything. Haven hides secrets that could destroy its idyllic façade. Or destroy Sonny first.
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Thrown into a desolate land of sickness and unnatural beasts, Kai wakes in the woods with no idea who she is or how she got there. All she knows is that if she cannot reach the Sea of Devour, even this hellscape will get worse. But when she sees the village blacksmith fight invaders with unspeakable skill, she decides to accept his offer of help.
\nToo bad he’s as skilled at annoying her as he is at fighting.
\nAs she searches for answers, Kai only finds more questions, especially regarding the blacksmith who can ignite her body like a flame, then douse it with ice in the next breath.
\nAnd no one is what - or who - they appear to be in the kingdom of Vinevridth, including the man whose secrets might be as deadly as the land itself.
Los Angeles homicide detective Elouise “Lou\" Norton arrives at the scene of a tragic house fire, to find the bodies of a mother and two children. Left behind is grieving husband Christopher Chatman. Unless, of course, he's the one who killed them.
\nOr was the fire sparked by a serial arsonist known as The Burning Man? Searching for justice through the ashes of a picture-perfect family, Lou doesn't know if she will catch an arsonist or be burned ...
Mickie Lambert creates “digital scrapbooks” for clients, ensuring that precious souvenirs aren’t forgotten or lost. When her latest client, Nadia Denham, a curio shop owner, dies from an apparent suicide, Mickie honors the old woman’s last wish and begins curating her peculiar objets d’art. A music box, a hair clip, a key chain - twelve mementos in all that must have meant so much to Nadia, who collected them on her flea market scavenges across the country.
\nBut these tokens mean a lot to someone else, too. Mickie has been receiving threatening messages to leave Nadia’s past alone.
\nIt’s becoming a mystery Mickie is driven to solve. Who once owned these odd treasures? How did Nadia really come to possess them? Discovering the truth means crossing paths with a long-dormant serial killer and navigating the secrets of a sinister past. One that might, Mickie fears, be inescapably entwined with her own.
It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime.
\nDelighted by a surprise invitation, Miriam Macy sails off to a luxurious private island off the coast of Mexico with six other strangers. Surrounded by miles of open water in the gloriously green Sea of Cortez, Miriam is soon shocked to discover that she and the rest of her companions have been brought to the remote island under false pretenses - and all seven strangers harbor a secret.
\nDanger lurks in the lush forest and in the halls and bedrooms of the lonely mansion. Sporadic cell-phone coverage and miles of ocean keeps the group trapped in paradise. And strange accidents stir suspicions, as one by one . . .
\nThey all fall down
\nOn a rainy spring day in Los Angeles, homicide detective Elouise \"Lou\" Norton is called away from a rare lunch date to Bonner Park, where the body of thirteen-year-old Chanita Lords has been discovered. When Lou and her partner, Colin Taggert, take on the sad task of informing Chanita's mother, Lou is surprised to find herself in the apartment building she grew up in.
Chanita was interested in photography and, much like Lou, a girl destined to leave the housing projects behind. Her death fits a chilling pattern of exceptional girls - dancers, artists, honors scholars-gone recently missing in the same school district, the one Lou attended not so long ago.
Lou is valiantly trying to make a go of life after her divorce and doing everything she can to avoid her long estranged father. She races to catch a serial killer, but he remains frustratingly out of her reach, sending cryptic cyphers and taunting clues that arrive too late to prevent the next death.Thisone is personal, and it's only a matter of time before he comes after Lou herself.
TV writer Yara Gibson’s hometown of Palmdale, California, isn’t her first choice for a vacation. But she’s back to host her parents’ twentieth-anniversary party and find the perfect family mementos for the celebration. Everything is going to plan until Yara receives a disturbing text: I have information that will change your life.
\nThe message is from Felicia Campbell, who claims to be a childhood friend of Yara’s mother. But they’ve been estranged for years - drama best ignored and forgotten. But Yara can’t forget Felicia, who keeps texting, insisting that Yara talk to her “before it’s too late.”
\nBut the next day is already too late for Felicia, whose body is found floating in Lake Palmdale. Before she died, Felicia left Yara a key to a remote lakeside cabin. In the basement are files related to a mysterious tragedy, unsolved since 1998. What secrets was Felicia hiding? How much of what Yara knows about her family has been true?
\nThe deeper Yara digs for answers, the more she fears that Felicia was right. Uncovering the truth about what happened at the cabin all those years ago will change Yara’s life - or end it.
Colette “Coco” Weber has relocated to her Catalina Island home, where, twenty years before, she was the sole survivor of a deadly home invasion. All Coco wants is to see her aunt Gwen, get as far away from her ex as possible, and get back to her craft - writing obituaries. Thankfully, her college best friend, Maddy, owns the local paper and has a job sure to keep Coco busy, considering the number of elderly folks who are dying on the island.
\nBut as Coco learns more about these deaths, she quickly realises that the circumstances surrounding them are remarkably similar . . . and not natural. Then Coco receives a sinister threat in the mail: her own obituary.
\nAs Coco begins to draw connections between a serial killer’s crimes and her own family tragedy, she fears that the secrets on Catalina Island might be too deep to survive. Because whoever is watching her is hell-bent on finally putting her past to rest.
Ten years ago, Harold Fry set off on his epic journey on foot to save a friend. But the story doesn't end there.
\nNow his wife, Maureen, has her own pilgrimage to make.
\nMaureen Fry has settled into the quiet life she now shares with her husband Harold after his iconic walk across England. Now, ten years later, an unexpected message from the North disturbs her equilibrium again, and this time it is Maureen's turn to make her own journey.
\nBut Maureen is not like Harold. She struggles to bond with strangers, and the landscape she crosses has changed radically. She has little sense of what she'll find at the end of the road. All she knows is that she must get there.
\nMaureen Fry and the Angel of the North is a deeply felt, lyrical novel, full of warmth and kindness. Short, exquisite, powerful: it is about love, loss, and how we come to terms with the past in order to understand ourselves and our lives a little better.
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It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson, a schoolteacher and spinster, is trying to get through life, surviving on scraps. One day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and small existence to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession: an insect that may or may not exist--the golden beetle of New Caledonia.
\nWhen she advertises for an assistant to accompany her, the woman she ends up with is the last person she had in mind. Fun-loving Enid Pretty in her tight-fitting pink suit and pom-pom sandals seems to attract trouble wherever she goes. But together these two British women find themselves drawn into a cross-ocean adventure that exceeds all expectations and delivers something neither of them expected to find: the transformative power of friendship.
World-famous artist Vic Kemp has relied on his four children ever since their mother died when they were young. Netta, the oldest, is a litigator who often serves as co-parent to her siblings; Susan, a housewife who cooks and cleans for both her husband and her father; Goose's own thwarted artistic ambitions have left him resigned to a job in Vic's studio; and Iris, the baby, drops everything the moment her father calls.
\nWhen Vic summons the siblings with the promise of big news, they hope their father is about to tell them he has finished the mysterious masterpiece he claims will be the capstone to his career. Instead, he announces he’s getting remarried. Bella-Mae, his wife to be, is apparently beautiful, a fellow artist - and twenty-seven to his seventy-six years. When his children dare to express concern, Vic decamps with Bella-Mae to his summer home in Italy. Six weeks later, he is found dead. There is no sign of his will, or his promised final painting.
\nNetta, Susan, Goose, and Iris gather at the house on Lake Orta to piece together what happened and prepare to bring their father’s body home. They spend the summer in a waiting game, living under the same roof as Bella-Mae, and forced to confront Vic's legacy and the buried wounds they have incurred as his children. So who is Bella-Mae? Is she the woman their father believed her to be? Or is she the force that will destroy the family for good? How long can their old bonds hold?
\nWith sparkling wit, compassion and tender insight, The Homemade God explores memory, identity, grief, healing, and the bonds of siblinghood - what happens when they splinter, and what it might take to find a new way forward.
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When Queenie Hennessy discovers that Harold Fry is walking the length of England to save her, and all she has to do is wait, she is shocked. Her note had explained she was dying. How can she wait?
A new volunteer at the hospice suggests that Queenie should write again; only this time she must tell Harold everything. In confessing to secrets she has hidden for twenty years, she will find atonement for the past. As the volunteer points out, 'Even though you've done your travelling, you're starting a new journey too.'
Queenie thought her first letter would be the end of the story. She was wrong. It was the beginning.
It is 1988. On a dead-end street in a run-down suburb there is a music shop that stands small and brightly lit, jam-packed with records of every kind. Like a beacon, the shop attracts the lonely, the sleepless, and the adrift; Frank, the shop's owner, has a way of connecting his customers with just the piece of music they need. Then, one day, into his shop comes a beautiful young woman, Ilse Brauchmann, who asks Frank to teach her about music.
\nTerrified of real closeness, Frank feels compelled to turn and run, yet he is drawn to this strangely still, mysterious woman with eyes as black as vinyl. But Ilse is not what she seems, and Frank has old wounds that threaten to reopen, as well as a past it seems he will never leave behind. Can a man who is so in tune with other people's needs be so incapable of connecting with the one person who might save him?
\nThe journey that these two quirky, wonderful characters make in order to overcome their emotional baggage speaks to the healing power of music - and love - in this poignant, ultimately joyful work of fiction.
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Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does, even down to how he butters his toast. Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning the mail arrives, and within the stack of quotidian minutiae is a letter addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl from a woman he hasn’t seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye.
Harold pens a quick reply and, leaving Maureen to her chores, heads to the corner mailbox. But then, as happens in the very best works of fiction, Harold has a chance encounter, one that convinces him that he absolutely must deliver his message to Queenie in person. And thus begins the unlikely pilgrimage at the heart of Rachel Joyce’s remarkable debut. Harold Fry is determined to walk six hundred miles from Kingsbridge to the hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed because, he believes, as long as he walks, Queenie Hennessey will live.
Still in his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold embarks on his urgent quest across the countryside. Along the way he meets one fascinating character after another, each of whom unlocks his long-dormant spirit and sense of promise. Memories of his first dance with Maureen, his wedding day, his joy in fatherhood, come rushing back to him - allowing him to also reconcile the losses and the regrets. As for Maureen, she finds herself missing Harold for the first time in years.
And then there is the unfinished business with Queenie Hennessy.
A few days after Christmas in a small suburb outside of L.A., pairs of a man's pants hang from the trees. The pants belong to Howard Young, a prominent history professor, recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Howard's wife, Annie, summons their daughter, Ruth. Freshly disengaged from her fiance and still broken up about it, feeling that life has not turned out quite the way she planned, thirty-year-old Ruth quits her job and arrives home to find her parents' situation worse than she'd realised.
\nHer father is erratically lucid and her mother, a devoted and creative cook, sees the sources of memory loss in every pot and pan. But as Howard's condition intensifies, the comedy in Ruth's situation takes hold, gently transforming her grief. She throws herself into caretaking: cooking dementia-fighting meals (a feast of jellyfish!), researching supplements, anything to reignite her father's once-notable memory. And when the university finally lets Howard go, Ruth and one of her father's handsome former students take their efforts to help Howard one step too far.
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The characters in My Dear You find themselves facing extraordinary choices in scenarios that range from the everyday to the The U.S. government injects all citizens with a drug that makes them see everyone else as members of their own race and gender. God does away with humans in favor of something much better. A woman adopts a cat who conjures the ghosts of her ex-loves. A factory worker decides to liberate a sex doll she is tasked with selling.
\nThese stories go deep beneath the surface, touching on the particular awkwardness of dating in your thirties and What does it mean to be an Asian woman in America? Or an American? Or a human? Along the way, the characters stop to consider interventions from the supernatural, the earthly, the robotic, and the immortal.
\nPlayful, profane, and yet enveloped with profound compassion for life, however you define it, My Dear You takes on dating, marriage, and the pressures of having or not having children; intimacy, memory, race, and capitalism; living, dying, and being dead. At their very core, they are tales of love in its many being in love when you’re not supposed to be, or not being in love but wishing you were; failing at dating apps or finding yourself in weird but wonderful lifelong friendships; struggling in heaven to remember your loved ones.
\nRanging from the sinister to the tender, these witty and expertly paced stories will have you laughing out loud one minute and reaching for your best friend the next.
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New York City, 1999. Lily Chen is an unpaid intern, pursuing the American Dream, when she falls for a young financier – and the life of luxury his vast fortune promises. Everything she wants seems to finally be within reach. But deep down, she knows that her ambitious scientist mother, Mei, imagined so much more for her when she fled the unspoken horrors of Mao’s cultural revolution.
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Twenty years later, Lily is a single parent, estranged from her own family and increasingly isolated from her teenage son, Nick. Desperate to break free from their life on a remote island in Washington State, Nick strives to live better than the generation before him, unable to understand his mother’s choices. But when he looks into the past and is unexpectedly confronted by the ghosts of his grandmother’s young life in 1960s China, he risks unsettling a legacy of family secrets – passed on from mother, to daughter, to son.
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Following three generations of one Chinese American family, Real Americans is a mesmerising, multilayered family drama which explores the choices we make for ourselves, and for our children. Spanning decades and continents, it is a soaring, heartfelt story about fate, fortune, and what it means to belong.
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A new novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France - a propulsive page-turner of glittering insights and dark humor.Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics, bold opinions, and clean beauty, who is sent to do dirty work in France.
\n“Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts” - shadowy figures in business and government - instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more.
\nIn this region of centuries-old farms and ancient caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who communicates only by email. Bruno believes that the path to emancipation from what ails modern life is not revolt, but a return to the ancient past. Just as Sadie is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story. Written in short, vaulting sections, Rachel Kushner’s rendition of “noir” is taut and dazzling.
Romy Hall is at the start of two consecutive life sentences, plus six years, at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility. Outside is the world from which she has been permanently severed: the San Francisco of her youth, changed almost beyond recognition. The Mars Room strip club where she once gave lap dances for a living. And her seven-year-old son, Jackson, now in the care of Romy’s estranged mother.
Inside is a new reality to adapt to: thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive. The deadpan absurdities of institutional living, which Kushner details with humour and precision. Daily acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike. Allegiances formed over liquor brewed in socks, and stories shared through sewage pipes.
Romy sees the future stretch out ahead of her in a long, unwavering line – until news from outside brings a ferocious urgency to her existence, challenging her to escape her own destiny and culminating in a climax of almost unbearable intensity. Through Romy - and through a cast of astonishing characters populating The Mars Room - Rachel Kushner presents not just a bold and unsentimental panorama of life on the margins of contemporary America, but an excoriating attack on the prison-industrial complex.
Six months after a traumatic event left actress Piper Sheridan confined to her apartment with debilitating panic attacks, she’s determined to start living her life again. Motivated by an upcoming audition, she summons her courage and goes out for a drink, keeping her identity under wraps. It sounds simple enough, but nothing about going out in public is easy for Piper these days. And her hopes of going unnoticed are stymied by the bubbly blonde on the next barstool.
\nFlight attendant Chloe Carson is only in New York for the night, and she’s only looking for a little casual fun to go with her cocktail. The mysterious woman beside her isn’t fun, exactly . . . but she’s intriguing. And beautiful. Even without knowing her name, Chloe is drawn to her. When they share an unexpectedly intimate moment, Chloe knows this is a night she’ll never forget.
\nCan these two strangers turn a chance encounter into something lasting?
Natalie Keane is one of Hollywood’s top leading ladies, but she’s paid a steep price for her fame. After she was stalked eight years ago, the ensuing media frenzy almost broke her. So when a new threat arises, Natalie agrees to extra security, but she wants to keep it under wraps. The last thing she needs is another tabloid spectacle, especially during awards season.
\nTaylor Vaughn has made a career as a bodyguard to the stars, but an injury has kept her sidelined for the past three months, jeopardising her future in the job she loves. When an opportunity arises to work for Natalie Keane, Taylor jumps at the chance - even before knowing the details of the assignment.
\nFrom the moment they meet, Natalie knows this could Taylor, the bodyguard, masquerading as her girlfriend. The perfect cover story. But as circumstances push the two women closer, the lines between fantasy and reality begin to blur.
Eve Marlow has her eyes on the prize: a third season of her popular business makeover show, Do Over. But when her ratings take an unexpected dive, Eve needs a blockbuster new client, or she can kiss season three goodbye. She has her work cut out for her, and that's before she discovers a litter of newborn kittens in a trash can. Now she's desperate to find someone to take them so she can concentrate on reviving her career.
\nJosie Swanson had to put her kitten rescue on the back burner when she inherited her father's bar two years ago. Since then, she's invested all her time and energy into keeping it afloat, but despite her best efforts, Swanson's is going under. When she gets a phone call from Eve Marlow, host of the television show Josie applied to earlier that year, the woman she's convinced can save her bar, Josie hopes her luck has finally turned.
\nEve knows what she needs to succeed, and it isn't Josie - or her bar. There's no denying the chemistry sizzling between them, though. Josie's personality is as vibrant as her turquoise-tipped hair. She stirs things in Eve that haven't been stirred in a long time, but there's a reason she keeps her heart under lock and key. Eve stands to lose a lot more than her TV show if she lets her guard down, no matter how tempted she is to see if Josie's love would be worth the risk.
Sophie Rindell has dreamed of performing on Broadway since she was a little girl. But after more than ten years of auditioning, she’s still waiting tables and sleeping on a friend’s couch while she waits for her big break. When she lands an audition for a new musical called It’s in Her Kiss, she’s sure this is the one. Not only is she auditioning for the lead, but it’s a queer role, the role of a lifetime for Sophie.
\nJulia Vega has been working on Broadway for years now, but she hasn’t landed a starring role . . . yet. When she meets Sophie at the audition for It’s in Her Kiss, she senses a kindred spirit. They’re both talented and driven, but unlike Sophie, who’s been out since high school, Jules is still coming to terms with her sexuality. This role - if she lands it - could help define more than her career.
\nAs their rivalry heats up, Jules and Sophie fight an attraction that blazes hotter than the spotlight. When the curtain rises on opening night, love might take center stage.
For Audrey Lind, working with clay still evokes memories of her favorite professor. The woman’s zeal for art history ignited Audrey’s own academic career - and her tweed blazers and British accent kindled her first female crush. After fate brings Audrey back to Northshire University to teach, she’s thrilled to be working alongside her former mentor, but the grumpy woman she encounters upon her return is nothing like the dynamo she remembers.
\nDivorce and a stalling career have turned Dr. Michelle Thompson bitter and guarded. When Audrey swoops in to teach the Women in Art class Michelle’s been pitching for years, she longs to hate her. But her young rival is too kind, too enthusiastic, too irresistible. And her passion for life slowly reawakens Michelle’s own.
\nWary of age gaps and workplace politics, they suppress their smoldering attraction - until one wine-filled night at the pottery wheel puts their romantic truce to the test. Will they keep things on the tenure track or risk it all for love?
Two years after an accident in Manhattan almost claimed her life, Marin is determined to take advantage of her second chance. She’s left her husband, her job, even her home to pursue the life she’s always wanted. Now she’s teaching statistics at Northshire University and preparing to do something she’s spent decades dreaming of: date a woman. But the last woman she expects to encounter on her journey is the one she’s been fantasising about since their chance encounter the morning Marin nearly died.
\nCharlotte has made big changes in her life since that fateful day too. Most importantly, she’s moved back to her Vermont hometown, determined to finally solve the thirty-year-old mystery of her mother’s disappearance. An unexpected - and unexpectedly intense - friendship? That wasn’t in the plan. Neither was questioning her sexuality, but the more time Charlotte spends with Marin, the more she realises her feelings run deeper than friendship.
\nSurely this would be a disaster, both of them being each other’s first, except the chemistry between them feels too strong to deny. But as they get to the heart of the mystery - and the heart of who they are - what brought them together just might tear them apart.
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Renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Laurel Adler is no stranger to being wanted. Her services are in such demand, people travel from all over the world to see her. Today, though, she only wants one thing. One very specific thing. She wants her ex-husband to feel regret as he watches her walk out of his life, and she's chosen the perfect revenge dress for the occasion.
But a chance encounter with a stray dog and a hauntingly beautiful veterinarian cause Laurel to question everything, including what it means to want and be wanted . . .
Lia Harris is tired of being the odd one out. She’s never quite fit in with her uptight family, and now that her roommates have all found love, she’s starting to feel like a third wheel in her own apartment. Fed up with her mother’s constant meddling in her love life, Lia drops hints about a girlfriend she doesn’t have. But with her brother’s London nuptials approaching, she needs to find a date to save face. Lia turns to her best friend, Rosie, for help, and Rosie delivers - with the fun, gorgeous Grace Poston.
\nGrace loves to have a good time, hiding her insecurities behind a sunny smile. Her recent move to London has provided her with a much-needed fresh start. Grace isn’t looking for love, and she hates weddings, having weathered more than her fair share of heartache. Friendships are different, though, so for Rosie’s sake, she reluctantly agrees to pose as Lia’s adoring girlfriend for the wedding festivities.
\nBoth Grace and Lia are prepared for an awkward weekend, complete with prying family members and a guest room with only one bed. As it turns out, they get along well - spectacularly, in fact. Before they know it, the chemistry they’re faking feels all too real. But is their wedding weekend a fleeting performance or the rehearsal for a love that’s meant to last?
Books are Rosie Taft’s life. And ever since she took over her mother’s beloved Manhattan bookstore, they’ve become her home too. The only thing missing is her own real-life romance like the ones she loves to read about, and Rosie has an idea of who she might like to sweep her off her feet. She’s struck up a flirty online friendship with lesbian romance author Brie, and what could be more romantic than falling in love with her favorite author?
\nJane Breslin works hard to keep her professional and personal lives neatly separated. By day, she works for the family property development business. By night, she puts her steamier side on paper under her pen name: Brie. Jane hasn’t had much luck with her own love life, but her online connection with a loyal reader makes Jane wonder if she could be the one.
\nWhen Rosie learns that her bookstore’s lease has been terminated by Jane’s family’s business, romance moves to the back burner. Even though they’re at odds, there’s no denying the sparks that fly every time they’re together. When their online identities are revealed, will Jane be able to write her way to a happy ending, or is Rosie’s heart a closed book?
Last year, Lauren Booker fled New York with a warrant out for her arrest. Now she’s back and ready to make amends for her crime. She wants to rebuild her life, and Brooklyn is home. There’s not much waiting for her here now, though, nothing except an online friend who’s brought her so much joy during one of the hardest years of her life. When they finally meet in person, Lauren’s unprepared for her attraction to Mia, but she’s even less prepared to discover that Mia has an unexpected connection to her crime, putting Lauren’s plans in jeopardy.
\nMia Solano has also had a difficult year. Recently divorced, she walked away from her legal career after a health scare caused her to reexamine her priorities. Now Mia owns a cat café, and she’s struggling to adjust to a slower pace of life. She finds an unlikely friend in Lauren, but Lauren’s legal troubles force Mia to revisit a part of her life she’s trying to leave behind. She can’t explain why she’s so drawn to Lauren. They shouldn’t have much in common, and yet, they just seem to click.
\nAs the connection between them strengthens, Lauren and Mia wrestle with growing feelings, but neither wants to risk their friendship by crossing that line. With Lauren’s court date looming ever closer, they might lose everything, including each other.
Eden Sands has been a star for twenty years, but it’s lonely at the top. Her mediocre marriage just ended, and her inner circle is smaller than ever. The stage is the only place she’s ever felt like she truly belonged, and yet, her last album flopped, and her upcoming tour hasn’t sold out. Eden’s desperate for her star to shine bright again, but when her team suggests a collaboration with an up-and-coming young star to give her a boost, she balks.
\nAnna Moss is pop music’s rising star. She’s idolised Eden Sands for most of her life - so it’s a dream come true when she’s invited to perform with her at the Grammys. Anna’s tired of being defined by her bubbly persona. She wants to be taken seriously as an artist, and a duet with Eden could be just what she needs.
\nAs Anna and Eden rehearse, they soon realise they have more in common than their musical talents. Now they just have to decide if what is between them is a one-hit wonder or the making of a romance worthy of one of the greatest love songs of all time.
Emily Janssen prefers to play it safe. At thirty-five, she’s still working at the inn her grandmothers own while dreaming of a day when she’s able to support herself fully with her art. And while her friends have all hiked to the summit of the mountain in their hometown of Crescent Falls, Vermont, something has always held Emily back.
\nDiana Devlin has already made it to the top. Well, almost. She’s this close to securing the promotion that will put her in line to take over as CEO of her family’s hotel chain when her father retires. Everything is going to plan until an unexpected run-in with an alluring artist on a mountainside throws Diana off course, resulting in one of the hottest nights either she or Emily have ever experienced.
\nEmily walks away from their rendezvous feeling inspired to channel some of Diana’s confidence and finally chase her dreams. For Diana, it’s a reminder that with the right woman, she is capable of wanting more than one night.
\nBut their growing passion threatens to burn them both when they learn that the hotel Diana’s in town to buy is none other than Emily’s grandmothers’ beloved inn. It’s Emily’s home, and no big city outsider - not even Diana - is going to take it away from her.
\nWill the view from the top be worth the climb, or will they both have farther to fall?
A groundbreaking look at how Black visionaries - from Wall Street to Lagos and beyond - are reimagining capitalism to benefit the needs of Black people and, ultimately, everyone.
\nTo many, the term “Black Capitalists” is oxymoronic. Black people were the labor force that built the infrastructure of American capitalism through the violent enforcement of legalized slavery, so they cannot, and should not, aspire to be the beneficiaries of it. But, Wall Street professional and Yale-educated anthropologist Dr. Rachel Laryea poses a provocative What if there was a way to thrive within capitalism without diminishing someone else’s life chances through exploitative practices? There is - and Black Capitalists are showing us how.
\nTold through Rachel’s own compelling narrative, growing up the child of a single mother who immigrated to the U.S. from Ghana, rising to the Ivy league and on Wall Street, with original on-the-ground reporting and rigorous historical analysis, Black Capitalists challenges readers to reconsider who gets to be the beneficiary of capitalism and reckons with the responsibility that comes with using the tools of our imperfect economic system to advance social good.
\nDr. Laryea reveals in detail how race profoundly shapes the way we participate in capitalism - and how understanding these differences can guide us towards a more inclusive and equitable future. From newly minted undergraduates who find themselves working 20-hour-days to prove their worth on Wall Street to the Nigerian startup founder working to build a global credit score, innovators who are as ambitious as they are altruistic, spanning the streets of Accra to the boardrooms of Goldman Sachs, the stories and analysis in Black Capitalists demonstrate the resilience, creativity, and ingenuity of Black people who have long been excluded from the full benefits of the American economic system.
\nAt its core, Black Capitalists shows a more productive, and more inclusive, way forward.
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Chandler Cohen has never felt more like the ghost in \"ghostwriter\" until she attends a signing for a book she wrote - and the author doesn’t even recognise her. The evening turns more promising when she meets a charming man at the bar and immediately connects with him. But when all their sexual tension culminates in a spectacularly awkward hookup, she decides this is one night better off forgotten.
\nUnfortunately, that’s easier said than done. Her next project is ghostwriting a memoir for Finn Walsh, a C-list actor best known for playing a lovable nerd on a cult classic werewolf show who now makes a living appearing at fan conventions across the country. But Chandler knows him better from their one-night stand of hilarious mishaps.
\nChandler’s determined to keep their partnership as professional as possible, but when she admits to Finn their night together wasn’t as mind-blowing as he thought it was, he’s distraught. He intrigues her enough that they strike a deal: when they’re not working on his book, Chandler will school Finn in the art of satisfaction. As they grow closer both in and out of the bedroom, they must figure out which is more important, business or pleasure - or if there's a way for them to have both.
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Aspiring choreographer Sophie Orenstein would do anything for Peter Rosenthal-Porter, who’s been on the kidney transplant list as long as she’s known him. Peter, a gifted pianist, is everything to Sophie: best friend, musical collaborator, secret crush. When she learns she’s a match, donating a kidney is an easy, obvious choice. She can’t help wondering if after the transplant, he’ll love her back the way she’s always wanted.
\nBut Peter’s life post-transplant isn’t what either of them expected. Though he once had feelings for Sophie too, he’s now drawn to Chase, the guitarist in a band that happens to be looking for a keyboardist. And while neglected parts of Sophie’s world are calling to her - dance opportunities, new friends, a sister and niece she barely knows - she longs for a now-distant Peter more than ever, growing increasingly bitter he doesn’t seem to feel the same connection.
\nPeter fears he’ll forever be indebted to her. Sophie isn’t sure who she is without him. Then one blurry, heartbreaking night twists their relationship into something neither of them recognises, leading them to question their past, their future, and whether their friendship is even worth fighting for.
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They fell for each other in just twenty-four hours. Now Rowan and Neil embark on a long-distance relationship during their first year of college in this romantic, dual points of view sequel to Today Tonight Tomorrow.
\nWhen longtime rivals Rowan Roth and Neil McNair confessed their feelings on the last day of senior year, they knew they’d only have a couple months together before they left for college. Now summer is over, and they’re determined to make their relationship work as they begin school in different states.
\nIn Boston, Rowan is eager to be among other aspiring novelists, learning from a creative writing professor she adores. She’s just not sure why she suddenly can’t seem to find her voice.
\nIn New York, Neil embraces the chaos of the city, clicking with a new friend group more easily than he anticipated. But when his past refuses to leave him alone, he doesn’t know how to handle his rapidly changing mental health - or how to talk about it with the girl he loves.
\nOver a year of late-night phone calls, weekend visits, and East Coast adventures, Rowan and Neil fall for each other again and again as they grapple with the uncertainty of their new lives. They’ve spent so many years at odds with each other - now that they’re finally on the same team, what does the future hold for them?
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Barrett Bloom is hoping college will be a fresh start after a messy high school experience. But when school begins on September 21st, everything goes wrong. She’s humiliated by the know-it-all in her physics class, she botches her interview for the college paper, and at a party that night, she accidentally sets a frat on fire. She panics and flees, and when she realizes her roommate locked her out of their dorm, she falls asleep in the common room.
\nThe next morning, Barrett’s perplexed to find herself back in her dorm room bed, no longer smelling of ashes and crushed dreams. It’s September 21st. Again. And after a confrontation with Miles, the guy from Physics 101, she learns she’s not alone - he’s been trapped for months.
\nWhen her attempts to fix her timeline fail, she agrees to work with Miles to find a way out. Soon they’re exploring the mysterious underbelly of the university and going on wild, romantic adventures. As they start falling for each other, they face the universe’s biggest unanswered question yet: what happens to their relationship if they finally make it to tomorrow?
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It’s the last day of senior year. Rowan Roth and Neil McNair have been bitter rivals for all of high school, clashing on test scores, student council elections, and even gym class pull-up contests. While Rowan, who secretly wants to write romance novels, is anxious about the future, she’d love to beat her infuriating nemesis one last time.
\nWhen Neil is named valedictorian, Rowan has only one chance at victory: Howl, a senior class game that takes them all over Seattle, a farewell tour of the city she loves. But after learning a group of seniors is out to get them, she and Neil reluctantly decide to team up until they’re the last players left - and then they’ll destroy each other.
\nAs Rowan spends more time with Neil, she realises he’s much more than the awkward linguistics nerd she’s sparred with for the past four years. And, perhaps, this boy she claims to despise might actually be the boy of her dreams.
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Quinn Berkowitz and Tarek Mansour’s families have been in business together for years: Quinn’s parents are wedding planners, and Tarek’s own a catering company. At the end of last summer, Quinn confessed her crush on him in the form of a rambling email - and then he left for college without a response.
\nQuinn has been dreading seeing him again almost as much as she dreads another summer playing the harp for her parents’ weddings. When he shows up at the first wedding of the summer, looking cuter than ever after a year apart, they clash immediately. Tarek’s always loved the grand gestures in weddings - the flashier, the better - while Quinn can’t see them as anything but fake. Even as they can’t seem to have one civil conversation, Quinn’s thrown together with Tarek wedding after wedding, from performing a daring cake rescue to filling in for a missing bridesmaid and groomsman.
\nQuinn can’t deny her feelings for him are still there, especially after she learns the truth about his silence, opens up about her own fears, and begins learning the art of harp-making from an enigmatic teacher.
\nMaybe love isn’t the enemy after all - and maybe allowing herself to fall is the most honest thing Quinn’s ever done.
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Ari Abrams has always been fascinated by the weather, and she loves almost everything about her job as a TV meteorologist. Her boss, legendary Seattle weatherwoman Torrance Hale, is too distracted by her tempestuous relationship with her ex-husband, the station’s news director, to give Ari the mentorship she wants. Ari, who runs on sunshine and optimism, is at her wits’ end. The only person who seems to understand how she feels is sweet but reserved sports reporter Russell Barringer.
\nIn the aftermath of a disastrous holiday party, Ari and Russell decide to team up to solve their bosses’ relationship issues. Between secret gifts and double dates, they start nudging their bosses back together. But their well-meaning meddling backfires when the real chemistry builds between Ari and Russell.
\nWorking closely with Russell means allowing him to get to know parts of herself that Ari keeps hidden from everyone. Will he be able to embrace her dark clouds as well as her clear skies?
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Dani Dorfman has somehow made it to her thirties without knowing what she wants to do with her life. So when an office romance ends poorly and gets her fired, she applies for a job in Amsterdam, idly dreaming of escaping the mess she’s created, but never imagining she'll actually get it.
\nExcept she does. By the end of her first week in Amsterdam, she’s never felt more adrift or alone. Then she crashes her bike into her high school ex-boyfriend - and suddenly life is blooming with new opportunities.
\nWouter van Leeuwen was a Dutch exchange student Dani’s family hosted, a forbidden love that ended in a painful breakup. Years later, there’s still sizzling chemistry between them, and okay, maybe a little animosity. More importantly, Wouter needs to be married to inherit a gorgeous family home on a canal - and when Dani's job falls apart, she needs a visa.
\nAs the marriage of convenience pushes them together in unexpected ways, Dani must decide whether her new life is yet another mistake - or if it's worth taking a risk on a second chance.
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Eighteen-year-old twins Adina and Tovah have little in common besides their ambitious nature. Viola prodigy Adina yearns to become a soloist—and to convince her music teacher he wants her the way she wants him. Overachiever Tovah awaits her acceptance to Johns Hopkins, the first step on her path toward med school and a career as a surgeon.
But one thing could wreck their carefully planned futures: a genetic test for Huntington’s, a rare degenerative disease that slowly steals control of the body and mind. It’s turned their Israeli mother into a near stranger and fractured the sisters’ own bond in ways they’ll never admit. While Tovah finds comfort in their Jewish religion, Adina rebels against its rules.
When the results come in, one twin tests negative for Huntington’s. The other tests positive.
These opposite outcomes push them farther apart as they wrestle with guilt, betrayal, and the unexpected thrill of first love. How can they repair their relationship, and is it even worth saving?
Sawyer Stone III and Dani Fox, a young couple who spends their time circumnavigating the globe aboard their 42' sailboat and documenting it for their fledgling YouTube channel Sailing with the Foxes, have anchored in Exuma, in the Bahamas.
\nAs they wait for the price of crypto to rebound so they can provision and continue their journey, they’re partying and exploring with their fellow cruisers off shore. On the surface, everything looks perfect. But one night, Dani vanishes after a boat party, and Sawyer has no memory of her disappearance.
\nThe search for Dani is initially fueled by concerns that she drowned during one of her daily ocean swims, but Dani's pre-scheduled video posts, recorded before she went missing, soon reveal a darker side to her relationship with Sawyer.
\nMeanwhile, Royal Bahamas Police Force Inspector Veronique Knowles has her hands full trying to keep the investigation on course as the story of the American woman missing in the Bahamas goes viral and the internet sleuths unearth secrets from Sawyer’s past. Sawyer Stone is far from perfect, but is he a murderer?
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DI Jade Tanner has been plunged into managing the Complex Crimes Unit, Police Scotland's newest investigating team. She's recruited Dr Petra McBride, fresh from losing her job at Dundee University, and DS Mo Uddin, who's reluctantly transferred from Birmingham. When America's newest internet billionaire is shot on the shores of Loch Lomond, the team is brought in.
\nJade suspects a connection with the shooting of a local millionaire, an unsolved case which has been haunting her. But the team has its problems. Jade is only just back at work after a personal trauma, and can barely leave her own front drive. Petra is receiving anonymous phone calls and trying to establish a relationship with the latest in a string of girlfriends.
\nAnd Mo is missing the city and his old boss DI Zoe Finch. Can the team work together despite their differences and find the killer before the next shooting? Or will the next victim be a member of the Complex Crimes Unit?
DCI Lesley Clarke is a busy woman. She's dealing with the reopened investigation into DCI Mackie's death, supporting DS Dennis Frampton through recurring mental health problems, and making plans for her own future.
\nAnd then prominent crime boss Arthur Kelvin is found dead at a local beauty spot.
\nWho killed him? Could it have been a member of his own gang? A rival, from within Dorset or further afield? Or maybe one of Kelvin's many victims?
\nWhen Lesley starts to suspect that someone close to her might be involved, her world turns on its head.
\nCan she solve the murder and keep her career, team and relationship intact?
An old enemy and a new colleague bring twin problems for DCI Lesley Clarke.
\nLesley and her team think that their battles with Dorset's organised crime gangs are over. The Kelvins are all dead or in prison and Trevor Hamm's Birmingham gang have given up their attempts to expand into the county.
\nBut then a man's body is found near Chesil Beach, his fingertips and teeth removed. And his DNA isn't on the system.
\nWhy did his killer want to hide his identity? Was he killed by an organised crime gang and, if so, which one?
\nAnd then there's the return of DC Johnny Chiles, who left for London in disgrace years earlier, and whose father, a retired sergeant, appears to have a connection to the murder.
\nLesley's two teams must work together to find the killer before more die.
DCI Lesley Clarke is settling into her new job in Dorset's Major Crimes Unit, and becoming accustomed to a slower pace of life.
\nBut then she's called in to solve the murder of a woman with links to Lesley's new girlfriend.
\nHas Lesley made a grave error of judgement? Can she track down the killer or does she already know her? And how will Lesley's new colleagues react when she tells them she's dating a suspect?
After being injured in a bomb attack, Lesley is presented with a choice - early retirement, or a period of respite in a calmer location. But things don’t stay calm for long. Before she’s even started her new job, Lesley is dragged into investigating a murder at one of England’s most iconic landmarks, the imposing Corfe Castle.
\nLesley must hit the ground running. Can she get along with her new partner DS Dennis Frampton, a traditionalist who doesn’t appreciate her style? How will she navigate the politics of a smaller force where she’s a bigger, and less welcome, fish? And most importantly, can she solve the murder before the killer strikes again?
When Alison Osman takes her children on a trip to Cadbury World, she thinks their squabbling is her worst problem. But when she turns to find them gone, she's plunged into every mother's worst nightmare.
\nAnd then the message arrives, telling Alison she has three days to choose one of her children.
\nDetective Inspector Zoe Finch and her team need to find answers, and fast. Why is Alison's police officer husband behaving suspiciously? If the children's father died in a climbing accident, why was there no body? And should Zoe listen to the nagging voice reminding her that two of the men behind the notorious Canary paedophile ring have been released?
\nCan Zoe track down the kidnapper before it's too late? Or will Alison be forced to make the choice that no mother should face?
Christmas in Birmingham means the Frankfurt Christmas Market. Loved and hated by brummies in equal measure, it certainly makes life interesting for West Midlands Police.
\nBut when the body of a homeless man is found behind a market stall early one Sunday morning, it looks like Christmas might be cancelled for DI Zoe Finch and her team. And when they discover that the victim has a history that makes his death politically sensitive, things get even more complicated.
\nCan Zoe and her team find the killer before Christmas is ruined for another victim - and avoid putting their careers on the line
When two men are found mutilated in Birmingham's gay village just before Christmas, DI Zoe Finch and her team are perplexed.
\nDid their attacker mean to kill one of the men, or simply injure them both? And who would have the surgical skills for such a precise mutilation?
\nWhen more bodies are found with the same injuries, the city's gay population is rightfully scared.
\nAnd then someone close to Zoe becomes a target . . .
\nCan Zoe and her team find the killer before it's too late? And will the new members of the team help crack the case, or make things worse?
A corrupt detective found dead . . . a senior officer with links to organised crime . . . and a former colleague on trial.
\nWhen a detective who's been suspended pending a corruption investigation is murdered, alarm bells start ringing for DI Zoe Finch and her team.
\nWas the victim connected to organised crime boss Trevor Hamm? Was he in league with Zoe's former colleague Ian Osman? And why is CID boss David Randle trying to curtail the investigation?
\nWith her mentor off sick and a new boss breathing down her neck, Zoe must investigate without drawing attention to herself.
\nCan she prove what she knows about Detective Superintendent Randle? Will she escape suspicion herself? And can she protect the people she cares about from the threat of retribution?
When a young man is found dead at Birmingham University, the police initially think it's a drug overdose.
\nBut when DI Zoe Finch learns that the victim was accused of raping a fellow student, she starts to suspect this might not be so straightforward.
\nSuspicion falls on the rape victim, but when she provides an alibi, Zoe's team. must look elsewhere.
\nAnd then another man dies in the same way . . .
\nDoes someone want to teach these men a lesson? And if so, who?
A devastating terror attack strikes at the heart of Birmingham . . . but is all as it seems?
\nWhen Di Zoe Finch and her colleagues rush to respond to a terrorist attack, the city is plunged into chaos.
\nBut Zoe begins to suspect that all is not as it seems.
\nCould the attack be a smoke shield for other criminal activity? And are Zoe's own colleagues involved in that cover-up?
Meet Zoe Finch, West Midlands Police's newest Detective Inspector. She's outspoken, ambitious, and damaged. And she's working a case that could make her career, or cost her everything . . .
\nFresh from the success of the Canary investigation into depravity and corruption at the highest levels, she's attracted attention. Not least from Assistant Chief Constable Bryn Jackson.
\nBut when Jackson is brutally murdered on the night of his retirement party, Zoe is dragged into a case that's deeply personal.
\nAll the evidence points to the victim's downtrodden wife, who has secrets of her own. But Zoe begins to suspect all isn't as it seems. Could Jackson's death be linked to the Canary case? And what is her new boss, DCI David Randle, hiding?
\nSeeking out the truth will force Zoe to confront her own past, and put her career, and her team's lives, on the line.
DI Jade Tanner's new Complex Crimes Unit is finding its feet. DS Mo Uddin is settling into his new Scottish home, Dr Petra McBride has stopped receiving anonymous calls, and Jade is working to support her son over the loss of his dad.
\nBut then a mysterious crime is added to their workload. The body of a young man is discovered at the top of Dunsinane Hill, with soil from Birnam Wood in his pockets.
\nThe two sites are sixteen miles apart, so this is no fluke. Petra and Jade immediately spot the Macbeth reference. And when another body is found at a second location linked to the play, they worry there could be more killings.
\nCan the team solve the puzzle and work out where the killer will strike next, or will it be too late?
The Susannah Ramsay and Sadie Dawes cases are solved and DCI Lesley Clarke's team is back together.
\nBut there are tensions. Is Dennis hiding more than just mental health problems? Did Superintendent Carpenter cover up the details of DCI Mackie's death? And does Lesley's girlfriend Elsa know more about Mackie than she's letting on?
\nJust as Lesley feels she is getting closer to answers, she's forced to work on the other side of Dorset after a body is uncovered by a landslide at Lyme Regis's beach. Who is the body and is there a connection to DCI Mackie, Arthur Kelvin, and Elsa's law firm?
\nThe Fossil Beach Murders will provide Lesley with her toughest challenges yet, both professional and personal.
Who killed DCI Mackie? DCI Lesley Clarke thinks she’s close to solving her predecessor’s murder. But when the body of a police officer connected to the crime turns up in the abandoned village of Tyneham, the case steps up a gear.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAnd when someone she's close to is threatened by the killer, Lesley’s quest for the truth becomes even more urgent. Can Lesley convince her senior officers of the truth, keep her team on track and protect her family?
When a body washes up on the shores of Brownsea Island, DCI Lesley Clarke initially suspects suicide. But as she gets closer to the island's close-knit community, she starts to suspect foul play.
\nWhy did the victim argue with her closest friend days before her death? What secrets is the victim's manager keeping? And can Lesley get to the bottom of the mystery before someone else dies?
DCI Lesley Clarke is back in Dorset, and her world has turned upside down.
\nOne of the people she's closest to is to under arrest for the murder of DCI Mackie and a body has been found in the remote lighthouse at Portland Bill. And not just any body, but the body of someone she investigated before moving to Dorset.
\nCan Lesley win the trust of the close-knit Portland community and find the killer? And can DI Zoe Finch of the West Midlands force help her track down potential suspects?
\nDoes Superintendent Carpenter know more than he's letting on about Mackie's death? And most importantly, can Lesley find her predecessor's real killer and ensure justice is done?
An anonymous murder victim and a missing journalist: can Lesley uncover the truth?
\nDCI Lesley Clarke has too many suspects to choose from when a wealthy lawyer and her unidentified companion are found brutally murdered in a Sandbanks mansion.
\nWas it the victim's ex-husband, resentful at her new lifestyle? Her housekeeper, who found the bodies? Or could it have been a murder-suicide?
\nLesley and her team must unravel the evidence and find the real killer, while also investigating the disappearance of local journalist Sadie Dawes. Did Sadie go on planned leave, as her manager insists, or did she get too close to the truth about DCI Mackie's death? Can Lesley's old colleague Zoe Finch find out more?
Lesley must find the killer before he or she strikes again, all while dealing with a mutiny in her team and political pressure from her boss.
\nAt the same time, she’s becoming increasingly aware that her predecessor was involved with an organised crime gang, and that people close to her are covering it up.
\nWill Lesley come out of this case with her reputation, her team, and her career intact?
The dust has settled after the arrest of DCI Mackie's killer and Lesley has been told to make a few changes. She's got two DIs to manage, including one she's clashed with in the past, and is overseeing the return of a colleague who left Dorset under a cloud.
\nJust as she's starting to get to grips with it all, a body is found in Poole Harbour. Is it Jackie Kendal, who went missing a year ago, or Rowena Sharp, who mysteriously vanished after leaving her baby alone in a Sandbanks hotel in 1973?
\nEstablishing the body's identity, and therefore whose case this will be, will require Lesley's investigatory skills and, more challenging, all of her tact and diplomacy.
Friday, 6am. Three powerful people die simultaneously at a luxury estate on the banks of Loch Lomond.
\nWhen the G7 summit comes to Loch Lomond, DI Jade Tanner and her team are on high alert. But they aren’t expecting three delegates from three of the most powerful countries to all die in suspicious circumstances - in separate locations, but at the same time.
\nAre the deaths linked? If so, how did the killer or killers get away? And can forensic psychologist Dr Petra McBride help Jade solve the case before there’s an international incident?
DI Jade Tanner is finally allowing herself to be happy. She’s got a new relationship and is coping with balancing being a single mum and heading up the Complex Crimes Unit.
\nBut her team aren’t doing so well. Petra has made yet another relationship misstep and DS Mo Uddin is teetering at the brink of depression.
\nAnd then two bodies are found at an archaeological dig on the Isle of Arran. One killed recently, one historical.
\nAre the two bodies connected? And how will Mo cope with being sent up to Arran to investigate? Will the remoteness finally send him into the grip of despair? Or will it allow him to discover a love of Scotland?
\nAnd can he and Petra solve the crime before the killer strikes again?
When MC Calloway’s best friend Joe, an editor at the notorious gossip website Jawbreaker, calls her in for an emergency meeting, MC is unprepared for how frantic he is. But when he shows her a copy of Girl Next Door, the steamy, bestselling rom-com taking the literary world by storm, written under a pen name, points to one of the women on the front cover, and says, “that's you,” its MC who begins to panic.
\nJoe is convinced that the author is Nora Pike, MC's prickly, childhood next-door neighbor, and their former high school classmate - and MC knows he’s right, since the book describes actual events that happened their senior year, down to the tiniest details. But in the book, the characters based on MC and Nora are desperately in love, rather than the awkward acquaintances MC remembers being in real life.
\nJoe begs MC to go home undercover and get the scoop on Nora. That’s the last thing MC wants to do, especially for an assignment that seems morally dubious at best, but she reluctantly agrees, knowing Joe is desperate to break a big story. Crashing in her childhood home with her older brother Conrad (now married to MC's secret high school crush, Gabby), MC begins untangling truth from fiction, trying to get close to Nora, who is just as hot and prickly as ever - and now suspicious of MC to boot. But the more involved she gets with Nora, the more it becomes clear they’re both hiding secrets . . . and MC realises she might be in over her head.
Beth Greenwood has spent her life playing it safe. She’s been a graphic designer at the same company for a decade, she dutifully meets men from the apps for dinner and sometimes casual sex, she thinks about decorating her sterile, small apartment. Her comfort and joy are her Sunday catch-ups with her sister Elspeth, whose perfect life, very different from Beth’s, has recently started to unravel.
\nOne day, Beth meets a woman who invites her to join a secret club. It’s not knitting or books; it’s living out an experience you’ve always wanted to have. Cirque du Soleil acrobat, gonzo graffiti artist, performer in the BDSM underground these women will get you everything you need in order to - temporarily - be the person you might have been, had your life taken one or two different turns.
\nAt first Beth is dazzled by her new friendships and the opportunity they offer her to test the boundaries of her identity, to escape from her quiet, ordinary life. But even the best of clubs can offer only so much distraction, and when the stakes of Beth’s real life become uncomfortably high, she must ask herself, really and truly, who she’s going to choose to be, and who is going to nurture her when she needs it most.
\nThe Players Club is a high-concept but grounded debut about the power of female friendship, the bonds that hold us in place, the human need for creativity, and the seductive possibility of reinvention.
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Disillusioned with her life in New York, Ruth returns to a lake town in Guatemala where she had been happy a decade earlier. There, in Panajachel, she meets two very different women: the calm and practical Emilie, and the turbulent and intoxicating Carmen.
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Deciding to stay and build a life at the lake, Ruth finds work first as a nanny to a wealthy local family, then as an English teacher at a village school. Meanwhile, she becomes increasingly infatuated by her friendship with Carmen, pushing away the stability of her connection with Emilie. As Carmen’s fragile relationship with the world splinters, the difference between being a visitor and truly belonging becomes clear, and Ruth is forced to act.
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The Sun Was Electric Light is a sublime novel about searching for belonging and a life that makes sense.
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Kelly Rolen is a smart and focused accountant with a respectable, if unexciting, life in Darlington, Illinois. When her father has a stroke during tax season, Kelly finds herself overworked, exhausted, behind schedule, and forced to hire an intern to meet her deadlines. Elliot Garza is young and brash and counting the days until she can leave Darlington for good. She knows she has the professional skills necessary to be Kelly's intern, but she is less certain about her ability to handle her beautiful, prickly, and compelling new boss.
\nRachel Spangler returns with another delightful lesbian romance in the Darlington Romances series.
Annabelle Taylor has been in her ideal relationship with an adoring partner for thirteen years. Davis Chandler is jaded from years of bad luck with women, but she thinks she's finally started dating the girl of her dreams. The only problem is they're both in love with the same woman. Nic McCoy is living a double life that is about to come crashing down on all of them.
All three women are left trying to rebuild their lives in the wake of shocking realizations that leave them second-guessing everything about themselves and each other. As they struggle toward recovery, they each face life-altering questions about trust, redemption, and the possibility of finding love in the wake of betrayal.
Corey LaCroix only wanted to snowboard, but Olympic medals and world championships only carry you so far when your knees ache and you’re suddenly an underdog for the first time in her career. Elise Brandeis doesn’t need a training partner, especially an unorthodox has-been snowboarder with an attitude.
\nBut Elise has already lost a full season to injury, and she’s struggling to make the Olympic ski team. Can teaming up with Corey give her the edge she needs to go for gold, or will the snowboarder’s infuriatingly cocky smile and rock hard abs prove a distraction she simply can’t afford?
\nBoth champions brace themselves for the run of a lifetime. Putting their broken bodies on the line, they fight the competition, the clock, and the frozen terrain for one more chance at glory. But this time, as they ride the razor’s edge between victory and defeat, the stakes are steeper than any mountain they will ever face when legacies and hearts collide.
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Will the heat building between a disgraced reporter and a rising curling star melt the already thin ice they each are on?
\nMax Lauren made a mistake that shattered her pride, her heart, and her career in one fell swoop. Relegated to covering the lowly game of curling, she already resents the so-called “sport,” and then she steps onto the ice, where things get infinitely worse. She’s been knocked down before, and she’s always gotten back up, but a frosty resolve goes only so far in a world of people who thrive on ice.
\nCallie Mulligan is the amiable skipper of America’s second-place curling team. Upbeat, optimistic, and with a fiery passion for an icy sport, she has both the mental and physical skills to become Team USA’s top contender. What she doesn’t have is the fame or the funding. Coverage from a journalist of Max’s caliber could be the answer to both problems if only Max wasn’t so cold to the idea. As Callie tries to warm her to the sport, a little bit of heat grows into a fire neither of them can contain.
\nPassion, competition, ambition, redemption, and raw need collide as the bright lights of success and celebrity grow hotter, but can the fire between Max and Callie be sustained when it’s put on ice?
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A heartbroken and reclusive author hides herself away in a small English seaside village and discovers that an unexpected friendship just might become a full English romance.
\nAfter a publicly humiliating divorce, best-selling author Emma Volant runs away to the English seaside village of Amberwick. She wants nothing more than to surrender to her broken heart in peace and in private.
\nBartender Brogan McKay, has built a comfortable life by never overreaching. Part-time jobs and short-term flings have always been good enough, but when she meets her beautiful and wounded new neighbor, Brogan realises Emma has the potential to wreck the carefully controlled expectations she uses to protect her heart.
\nDespite their growing friendship and attraction, both Emma and Brogan are in firm agreement that neither of them is in a position to look for love. But how long can they fight their fears and desires as the events and the townspeople around them all conspire to create a full English love story?
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Sometimes baseball is just a metaphor for life, and sometimes it works the other way around. All Sarah Duke ever cared about was baseball, and she’s finally earned her shot as a full-time sports writer. She loves the work, she loves being one of the few women to ever gain access to a man’s world, but most of all, she loves the game.
\nWhen Duke meets Molly Grettano and her two sons at the ballpark, she instantly connects with the young family, but Molly isn’t sure Duke’s ready for something more. Molly wants someone softer, more feminine, and more importantly, someone steady. She and her boys have been abandoned before, and she’s vowed to never to put them in that position again.
\nIf she were ever to trust anyone, it would have to be someone fully dedicated to her and her children. Duke has a lot of heart, but neither woman is sure there’s enough room left in it for anything other than baseball.
\nFrom a young age, Cobie Galloway made a career of playing the girl-next-door on the silver screen. Only, she's not a teenager anymore. Ready to challenge herself artistically and earn the part she's always dreamed of, she's forced to face the realization that in order to win the roles afforded to edgier actresses, she might first have to audition by playing someone edgier in her day-to-day life.
Pop star Lila Wilder built a multimedia empire by always having her finger on the pulse of what's hot. However, as she struggles to produce her next smash hit record, she's finding it hard to keep her name in the public eye, and a string of tumultuous relationships with Hollywood boy-toys no longer captivates anyone's attention.
Both women tentatively agree to a headline-grabbing fauxmance, with two simple rules: Always stick to the script, and never forget that on the stage of public perception, nothing is real. Can two women find love in a world of carefully crafted illusions, or will a successful charade mean the potential for something more gets left on the cutting-room floor?
Brooke Metcalf is an accomplished therapist who’s fallen into a rut she can’t seem to shake. Tegan Cooper is a recent graduate trying to acclimate to a new city before starting the job she’s worked for years to secure. At the nudging of good friends, they end up at the same bar, seeming to have little in common but a desire to do something different.
\nA spark of connection and immediate attraction spurs them to take chances they wouldn’t normally consider, ending with an amazing and affirming one-night stand that leaves both women at peace, until they arrive at work on Monday to find Tegan is a new junior colleague under supervision in the practice where Brooke works.
\nShocked and unprepared for the far-reaching fallout of one uncharacteristic encounter, Tegan and Brooke cling to their careers as they start a delicate dance between forging a workplace relationship and protecting their hearts in the process. With the help of amazing colleagues and a determination to do right by everyone in the office, they build a friendship based on mutual care and a healthy respect for boundaries.
\nHowever, in a business that requires intimate conversations and vulnerable moments, lines between professional and personal soon blur, as the connection that once overtook them proves too powerful to ignore.
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Ashton Clarke, a local Casanova with a long history of falling into bed with a different woman every night, is perfectly content with her free and easy existence until she gives in to her best friend's request to spend an evening helping out at the local gay and lesbian youth center.
\nThere, Ash meets Carrie Fletcher, a women's studies professor who not only intrigues Ash but causes her to question the direction her life has taken. As if this disquieting attraction isn't aggravating enough, Ash is forced to deal with Carrie's teenage neighbor Tess, whose bad attitude and biting wit seem to complicate every situation.
\nAsh doesn't want to be attracted to Carrie, who isn't looking for a relationship with anyone, and Tess is angry at the world, but especially, it seems, with Ash. Despite resistance on the part of all three women, it soon becomes obvious that the trio's destinies are hopelessly intertwined and the lessons in store will change all their lives.
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They say you can’t go home again, but Raine St. James doesn’t know why anyone would want to.Rory St. James was disowned after she came out at seventeen. She rebounded by moving to Chicago, changing her name to Raine and putting down her hometown to audiences around the country.
\nNow, ten years later, too old to be considered a gay youth, broke, evicted, and fresh off a much needed break-up, Raine St. James is forced to accept a job teaching at Bramble University in Darlington, the town she’s been publicly bashing for the last decade. Beth Devoroux was born and raised in Darlington.
\nDespite losing her parents at a young age, she has been nurtured by the people of the town and is well loved by everyone who knows her. She leads a comfortable life with good job at Bramble University, a long-term but closeted relationship, friends that she can count on, and everything she thinks she wants, so why is she so drawn to a rabble-rouser like Raine St. James?
\nCan Raine and Beth face their pasts and come to terms with their differences in order to have any hope for a future together?
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Throughout her long career, professional tennis player Jay Pierce has been burned by both players and the press. She's learned the hard way that she can trust no one and nothing, especially her own judgment. So, when she starts one last career comeback, she knows the only hope she has to redeem her legacy is to go it alone.
Sadie Larsen knows virtually nothing about the world of professional tennis when her daughter, Destiny, breaks onto the women's tour at the age of 17. She learned everything she needed to know about single parenting on her own, and she knows she can do the same now that the stakes are higher than ever - all she has to do is stay laser-focused on protecting her family of two.
Neither Jay nor Sadie expects the path ahead to be easy. Each believes she's prepared to face every single challenge with the stony resolve of a woman who has been counted out and bet against her entire life. The only thing neither woman had counted on was each other.
As Jay and Destiny fight their battles on the court, Sadie and Jay fight their attraction off it. Can they survive the crushing crucible of competition, press pressure, and parenting, or will love all really mean no one goes home a winner?
Life coach Elaine Raitt is educated, elegant, and dedicated to her profession. Blue-collar boi Joey Lang is too insecure to even approach her - that is until her well-meaning but meddling best friend Lisa decides to break the ice and makes Joey a life-coaching appointment with Elaine. A session meant to bring clarity only leaves them both feeling more confused about their purpose in life and love.
\nWill Joey be able to find the strength to chase the woman of her dreams, and even if she does, will Elaine be willing to risk the life she loves for the woman who could be the love of her life?
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When dreams and expectations clash in a flurry of sparks, an actress and an aristocrat find themselves searching for common ground. Lady Victoria Penchant has had enough scandal for one lifetime, and she’s sworn off drama for good. But when she makes an unexpected return to her family’s castle during high tourist season, drama is exactly what she finds - in the form of a Hollywood film crew and their sharp-tongued, stunning star, Sophia LeBlanc.
\nSparks of every kind fly from their first encounter, and the drama doubles as Vic’s every decision draws her closer to Sophia and further from the expectations of the prestigious position she has been raised to protect. Sophia has worked and scraped and fought her way up from nothing to the brink of stardom. She’s spent her career taking direction from rich, pretty, privileged men, and she has no intention of letting some rich, pretty, privileged aristocrat stand in the way now that her wildest dreams are within reach. She vows to stay in control of every situation during filming, but the Lady of the Manor proves to be an unexpectedly stubborn and alluring challenge to the goals she’s fought so hard to achieve.
\nAs the summer heats up, Vic and Sophia learn they have far more in common than their intense sexual attraction, but will that be enough for them to overcome the pressures of proud histories and find their way toward a new vision of forever?
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Hal Orion is an accomplished chef and food truck owner. She loves her life, her longtime sous chef and best friend, and the food she shares with the residents of her beloved city of Buffalo. Her life is exactly how she wants it: no strings, no commitments, and no roots - just great grilled cheese and a whole lot of freedom on the side.
Quinn Banning is an investment banker, and the dividend she seeks is a resurgence of the once great city of Buffalo. Putting together her next business venture, she recognizes Hal's talent and charm as necessary assets for success - her good looks don't hurt, either. But Hal's transient ways are in direct opposition to the stability Quinn craves. Relying on their shared love of Buffalo, Quinn makes her an offer she can't refuse - a restaurant under her own name, complete creative control, and secure financial backing. It's every chef's dream. But Hal utters the one word Quinn can't stand to hear, \"no.\"
Will their physical attraction grow cold as they argue over their ideals, or will they find that the most distinctive ingredients often make for the perfect pairing?
When Claire Bailey left London to open her own art gallery in the tiny village of Amberwick, she'd hoped the slower pace and lower cost of living might allow her to focus on her own painting, away from all the drama and distractions that had plagued her in the city. She fully intended to make an honest go at simple living right up until the moment a shockingly attractive aristocrat rocketed off the road and knocked her world off its axis.
\nPip has learned to play the part of a ne'er-do-well upper elite: charismatic, enigmatic, and a little bit erratic. Luckily, women tend to like those characteristics. After leading such a charmed existence, where even motorcycles wrecks come with the added bonus of meeting beautiful women, Pip finds that Claire's complete lack of interest in money or status sparks both curiosity and attraction.
\nSurrendering to both boredom and sheer chemistry, the two agree to an unconventional, no-strings, romantic adventure designed to provide them both a bit of freedom and entertainment. However, once released from the pressure to project perfect images of themselves, the walls they depended on for protection begin to crumble.
\nWorlds blend and identities blur as their whirlwind romance quickly becomes more than they bargained for. Will their almost elemental attraction be enough to overcome the complexities rushing in from all sides? Or will the pressures they've both sought to escape force them to forge a new path neither of them had dared to dream of?
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Kye Manchester is no stranger to ambition. She sacrificed more than she cares to admit to become a highly acclaimed actress. Now more than a decade after her big break, her prospects are waning, and in a moment of desperation, she tells a lie that sends her spiraling back to where she started, and to the one woman she swore she’d never let herself need again.
\nFletcher Bouchard isn’t just Kye’s first love and her greatest heartbreak, she’s also a world-champion mounted archer in a unique position to help Kye gain the skills she needs with a horse and bow, only she has no inclination to do so. Tensions flare immediately after Kye returns to their small hometown, and neither woman knows how to back down where the other is concerned. Driven, wounded, and resentful, they also happen to be the only person in each other’s lives who understands how to walk the razor’s edge between sanity and obsession.
\nThe two women reluctantly agree to work together under the common goal of getting back to the lives they each built in spite of the other. However, during long days and nights of training, embers of the past rekindle fires hot enough to incinerate their defenses. As arrows and tempers fly, will passion burn hot enough to push Kye and Fletcher past old patterns in search of true healing? Or will the sharp point of lingering pain shatter their second chance at the love story of a lifetime?
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When Emery Pembroke returns home after her father’s untimely death, she’s shocked to learn her mother has been named CEO of the family’s green energy business instead of her. Faced with a directive from the board to prove her stability and community commitment, she sets out to bolster her credentials by finding a woman of the right social standing to woo and marry. Enter Arden Gilderson, the wealthy, socially anxious daughter of one of the area’s most prominent families, who has admired Emery from afar for most of her life.
\nOverwhelmed by the sudden attention, Arden vows to overcome her nerves long enough to enjoy herself for once in her life. Against all odds, the two women find they share not only an immediate sense of attraction and quirky sense of humor, but also the ability to offer one another balance and perspective. However, their unique and unexpected bond is tested as social and family pressure come crashing in from all sides.
\nOpposites might be enough to attract, but can Arden and Emery sustain each other as perceptions of who they’ve always been clash with who they must become?
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What’s the point of finding yourself if you lose your heart in the process?
\nRen Molson should be chasing a bright new future. Instead, she’s spent the last two years floundering in a small-town community college. She hates being the only lesbian she knows, and a virgin. She’s tired of watching her friends move forward while her momentum stalls. Most of all, she’s sick of feeling lost and confused about who she is or what she’s supposed to do with her life. Desperate for a change, Ren hopes to use her Spanish class tour through Spain to remake herself.
\nTrue to her plan, as Ren travels through Spain, she learns more about herself than the country she’s visiting. What she doesn’t expect is to fall in love with her beautiful young tour guide, Lina Montero. She’ll have to decide if her life can handle any more uncertainty and just how far she’s willing to go in order to become the person she thought she wanted to be.
Simone and Loreto don’t have to like each other. They only need to work together, but the heat and the history around them and between them conspires to demand so much more.
\nWhen Simone Price lands in southern Spain, she has one job upon which the future of her entire career rests: She must convince a small, Spanish publishing house to sell their business to her much larger American corporation. The job should be easy, but many others have failed. Refusing to repeat their mistakes, she hires a guide, translator, and purveyor of Andalucían culture for the week leading up to her big meeting.
\nThe plan seems simple enough until she meets Loreto Molina, and it quickly becomes apparent that Loreto knows more than her casual demeanor might suggest. The complications only escalate as the two set out on a scorching path through a region that shatters all expectations. As their time together stretches on, both women must confront not only their assumptions about each other, but also their own world views amidst a steamy landscape of temptation, power, purpose and raw attraction. Spain acts as both catalyst and conduit for unearthing desires long buried and threatening carefully planned futures.
\nAs the stakes and emotions rise like the hot, unrelenting sun, Simone and Loreto fight to hold onto the ideals they hold dear, but what if the only way for either of them to truly win is to surrender?
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Fencing prodigy Jess Kidman has always been ahead of her peers. At the age of thirteen she made the varsity team, won a state championship, came out, and fell head over heels in love with her team captain, Lauren Standish.
\nAfter being gently rebuffed by the high school senior, young Jess vowed she would return for her some day when their age difference became irrelevant and her own accomplishments made her not merely an equal, but an Olympian. Eleven years later, Jess makes good on her promise, but when she arrives back in Buffalo a few months before the big games, she’s intrigued to find that the woman she’s always dreamed of could also be exactly the coach she needs to win gold.
\nLauren, however, isn’t the bubbly team captain she’d been at eighteen. After a stellar collegiate career of her own, circumstances forced her to her dreams on the shelf and return to Buffalo. She’d made peace with a quiet life spent running a rustbelt fencing club and coaching kids when Team USA’s hottest young fencer waltzes back into her life.
\nAs much as Lauren finds Jess’s confidence and athleticism alluring, she also sees the hot-headed superstar as a threat to the carefully controlled world rebuilt in the wake of the traumatic loss she is desperate to avoid reliving. Never one to turn her back on a friend in need, Lauren agrees to coach Jess on the condition that they focus only on the swordplay and not the sharp point of attraction threatening to sever the bonds of her professionalism.
\nThe two women set to work preparing for the biggest event of their lives, but as tension mounts in the lead-up to the Olympic games, the pressure and the passion building between them also grows, leaving both to wonder if Jess is trying to win the gold, or win the girl.
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What would you change about your past if you had the chance? What if you didn't have a choice?
\nStevie Geller doesn't do conflict. She likes her job as a successful novelist and playwright because it allows her to peacefully ensconce herself in her New York City loft, avoid human interactions, and leave personal drama for the page and stage. When her agent asks her to return to her hometown of Darlington, Illinois, to accept an award, she agrees only because he promises the process will be quick and easy.
\nOne panic attack and concussion later, Stevie is forced to confront her past in ways that seem to defy reality. As if befriending a social outcast and confronting high school bullies weren't enough, she also finds herself falling for a closeted teacher. Along the way, Stevie must decide if some things are worth fighting for. In her rush to escape the past, will she leave behind a better future, or are some conflicts really timeless?
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Every skier knows that anything can happen when trails merge without warning. After a devastating ultimatum from her lover, Campbell Carson returns to her childhood home, Bear Run Ski Resort, seeking her family's unconditional solace and support. Parker Riley escapes to the mountain after the high-powered world of Chicago's political machine leaves her questioning her judgment in both life and love.
\nDespite their initial wariness, the women find their budding friendship snowballing toward romance. The idyllic mountain resort is the perfect setting for them to learn to rebuild trust, and perhaps to find a second chance at love. However, when Parker's past resurfaces, Campbell is forced to face her own hard truths.
\nAs barely healed wounds reopen, the unexpected obstacles in their path threaten any hope for a future together.
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Hunter Sarah left her religious witch-hunting family behind for the freedom to be herself. Simplicity is her mantra now, as she lives and works alongside her found family of supernatural women. The day Sarah shows up at a witch's property to build a yoga studio, though, her mantra skips a beat.
\nFor witch Oriana, leaving her abusive ex was her first step toward a new life. Moving to Obsidian Falls and becoming a yoga instructor quickly followed. Her dismal romantic track record is proof she needs to focus on anything but love. But the moment she sets eyes on a member of the supernatural construction crew building her studio, she knows her heart didn't get the memo.
\nWhen Oriana's ex shows up, and Sarah's inner Hunter responds, their painful pasts collide in a waterfall of revealed secrets and fears come to life. They must decide if their love is worth building, or better left behind.
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What if the love you lost walked back into your life - on a sapphic reality dating show?
\nElly Straus thought she was ready for love again. One year after her fiancée walked out, she’s finally putting herself out there - on a sapphic reality dating show. Eager to spend weeks swooning in a Spanish villa, Elly's hoping for flirtation, fireworks, and maybe even a second chance at happiness. She doesn’t expect a surprise twist that brings in new contestants - including her ex-fiancée.
\nSonia Comstock has spent the last year healing from losing her dad. When her friends sign her up for a sapphic dating show filmed during Madrid’s Pride festival, she says yes - her dad would want her to be happy. But nothing prepares her for the gut punch of seeing Elly again.
\nForced to face the heartbreak they never quite got over, Elly and Sonia must decide: breathe fresh life into an old love or try again with someone new?
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Lucy Golden is a true-crime icon, infamous for the murder she committed while escaping a California cult twenty years ago. But as everyone in Los Angeles knows, fame is fleeting, and Lucy and her story are always just one news cycle away from obscurity. Not to mention, she’s fending off a stalker and moderating an icy feud between her acclaimed photographer mother and her scandalous rock star sister. Worst of all, online trolls are asking increasingly threatening questions about the legendary crime. Questions that could tear her life apart.
\nSo when a hotshot documentarian makes her case the subject of his next film, Lucy sees a chance to silence any doubters once and for all. But as filming begins, she must return to the California desert and come face-to-face with a cast of players from her torrid history. Of course, the past is never what it seems, and long-buried secrets soon collide with present-day threats. Can Lucy stop her doubters from digging up the truth before it’s too late? And how far will she go to protect the story she’s been telling - and selling - all along?
\nTold in a narrative split between the present day and Lucy’s hit memoir about her fated summer in the cult, Paper Cut combines psychological suspense with coming-of-age Californian cult noir and a sharp examination of the true-crime phenomenon.
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In the first in the Honor series, Above All, Honor introduces single-minded Secret Service agent Cameron Roberts and the woman she is sworn to protect - Blair Powell, the daughter of the President of the United States. Cam’s duty is her life and the only thing that keeps her from self-destructing under the unbearable weight of her own deep personal tragedy.
\nHowever, she hasn’t counted on the fact that the beautiful, willful first daughter will do anything in her power to escape the watchful eyes of her protectors, including seducing the agent in charge. Both women struggle with long-hidden secrets and dark passions as they are forced to confront their growing attraction amidst the escalating danger drawing ever closer to Blair.
There’d been a Rivers at the helm of Argyle Community Hospital for six generations, and Harper Rivers was set to take her father’s place whenever he decided to hang up his shingle.
\nUnfortunately, the board of directors had other ideas - they accepted a buyout offer from a health care conglomerate with plans to close the hospital’s doors to the community that depended on it. And Presley Worth, a high-powered corporate financier, came to town to oversee the closure.
\nFunny thing was, no one asked Harper, and she had no intentions of following anyone’s orders but her own - no matter how beautiful, smart, or commanding the new boss might be.
In Beyond the Breakwater, Sheriff Reese Conlon and Doctor Tory King face the challenges of personal change as they define their lives and future together.
\nTory’s pregnancy forces her to examine her personal needs and goals while Reese struggles with her escalating anxieties over conditions she cannot control. Twenty-year-old Brianna Parker makes a sacrifice for love that threatens not just her happiness, but her life, when she returns home as the newest member of the Sheriff's department.
\nA life-threatening accident, a suspicious fire, and the appearance of more than one woman vying for Bri’s attentions makes one Provincetown summer a time of transformation as each woman learns the true meaning of love, friendship, and family.
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The face of terror is hard to recognise especially when it’s homegrown. Blair Powell is set to join her father on the campaign trail even though a domestic terrorist group has already launched one attack on President Andrew Powell's life. The orchestrators of the assassination attempt are still at large, and Andrew's opponent is a popular ultra-conservative with questionable ties to the radical right.
\nBlair's wife, DHS Deputy Director Cameron Roberts has been charged with the task of tracking down those responsible for the attack, while secretly searching for proof that a powerful senator is involved in treason. Cam has an ace in the hole no one knows about, however an agent deep undercover in the stronghold of a radical militia group, FBI SA Loren McElroy.
\nCam's biggest challenge is running the terrorists to ground without getting McElroy and her renegade handler, Skylar Dunbar, killed in the cross fire.The Honor series.
Literary agent Emily May is in danger of losing everything she’s worked for - her job, her home, her friends, and the security she provides her older sister back in Singapore - all because she doesn’t have a green card. Racecar enthusiast, high-flying, fast-living Derian Winfield is called home when the only family member she still cares about falls ill.
\nForced into assuming a role in her father’s dynasty she’s spent years avoiding, Derian needs to rehabilitate her black sheep reputation in a hurry or the agency will likely end up being lost in a takeover. Together, she and Emily take on Derian’s father and his hatchet woman, and in the process, Derian comes up with a plan to solve both their problems.
\nNow she only needs to convince Emily to marry her, a perfectly reasonable solution to all their troubles, or so she thinks. She just hadn’t counted on falling in love.
\nSecret Service Agent Oakes Weaver is in the midst of the biggest assignment of her career - leading the advance team for President Andrew Powell’s impending trip to Philadelphia where everyone expects he will be nominated to run for a second term.
\nThe last thing she needs is a tragedy among the president's inner circle that might not be an accident, or the sudden recruitment of Ari Rostof, a woman who might be a lot more than she seems. But Oakes doesn't get a say in policy. She only has to secure the president’s safety - at all costs.
\nFirst Daughter Blair Powell and her spouse, Cameron Roberts, are among the reelection campaign members accompanying President Andrew Powell to Philadelphia. While the president may be protected by his Secret Service agents, those close to him are literally in the kill zone, and his adversaries will stop at nothing to further their cause - even mass murder.
Dr. Hollis Monroe specializes in short-terms relationships, typically eight months or less. As an obstetrician dealing with high-risk pregnancies, she spends all her time and energy in caring for women at a nice, comfortable professional distance until she delivers their babies and can walk away. They're happy, she's satisfied, and no one gets hurt. The perfect relationship.
Pregnant mother-to-be Annie Colfax is alone and barely making ends meet - she didn't plan on starting a family by herself, but she's determined to succeed. All she had to do is survive.
Neither woman wants a relationship, but fate brings them together at a crossroads that will change their lives forever.
Army National Guard Colonel Sawyer Kincaid has served her time dueling with death in the deserts of Africa. Now that she’s home, the only sand she wants to see is on the beach in South Florida. Too bad Tropical Storm Leo, swiftly gaining strength out over the Atlantic, is about to draw her in to another life or death war, this time on home soil.
Dr. Dara Sims has too many critical patients in the intensive care units at Miami Memorial to consider evacuation, no matter how determined the battle-hardened colonel is to make her. As far as Dara is concerned, evacuate is just another word for abandon.
When a state of emergency becomes a state of siege waged by Leo, all she can do is hope the rising waters relent before she loses everyone, herself included.
Best-selling romance author Jenna Hardy, aka Cassandra Hart, sprints through life from one appearance to the next, always on deadline, always in demand, always on the arm of a different beautiful woman. She has no personal life because her entire existence is public, and part of her appeal. She loves the tempo, the power, the thrill until the pace catches up to her and she collapses at a book signing.
\nHer doctor orders rest, her editor wants a three book series yesterday, and her attorney informs her she has just inherited a farm in the backcountry of Vermont. Divine intervention or Fate's little joke? The only thing that might possibly save her from dying of boredom during a summer of forced R&R is a dalliance with Gardner Davis, the local vet.
\nUnfortunately, everything about Jenna’s high-profile lifestyle is exactly what Gard wants to leave far, far behind, that and a dark secret that haunts the new life she’s made.
For Doctor KT O'’Bannon, a near-fatal tragedy derails a career and disrupts everything she thought she knew about herself and her future.
\nBattered and nearly broken, she turns for solace to the one woman who knows her best, her ex-lover Doctor Tory King. Their unexpected reunion in Provincetown uncovers old wounds, forges new bonds, and awakens long-buried passions.
\nWhile Tory’s lover Sheriff Reese Conlon struggles to uncover a deadly drug ring and Officer Bri Parker navigates the torturous path between friendship and desire, Tory and KT - and those who love them - are forced to examine the boundaries of love, friendship, and the ties that transcend time.
When Quinn Maguire, a dashing young trauma surgeon, unaccountably accepts a position as an ER physician, her new boss, Honor Blake, suspects that Quinn is hiding a dark secret. While the two declare an uneasy truce in an effort to work together, both struggle with mutual, and unexpected, attraction.
\nHonor, however, has more than one reason to resist her growing feelings for the attractive newcomer - not the least of which is that her heart belongs to the woman whose wedding ring she wears.
Forest Ranger Nat Evans is perfectly happy with the safe haven she has created in the Adirondack Forest and her life fighting forest fires, aiding stranded and injured hikers, and policing the waters of Lake George, New York. She has a good friend with uncomplicated benefits, and romance with a much younger woman is not on her to-do list.
\nAfter losing everything that matters, Vic O'Brien takes a seasonal position on the Water Patrol unit while she figures out her life. Emotionally bereft, when Vic reconnects with Nat over their shared past and the present challenges of keeping the tourists safe on lake and land, she refuses to deny the attraction kindling between them.
\nOne wounded woman, one determined to protect her - and a summertime of risk, danger, and desire.
Tally Dewilde forges her own path when she chooses to go into veterinary medicine and ignores her mother’s desire that she establish a boutique clinic for the pets of the wealthy in Manhattan. When she arrives in upstate rural New York to join Sydney Valentine’s animal hospital, the break with her old life seems complete on every level. Until an unwelcome reminder of the painful past arrives at her door in the form of Roman Ashcroft.
\nRome Ashcroft was forced to give up her dreams when accused of a crime that cost her everything. She intends to start a new life as a PA at the Rivers community hospital, until a simple act of kindness throws all her plans into question. Her past, it seems, is not so easily forgotten when fate brings her and Tally Dewilde together - along with an attraction neither welcomes.
Kelsey Brunel knows exactly what the future holds: she’ll one day inherit the Arizona dude ranch that has been in her family for three generations. She tells herself that the business and her good friends are all she’ll ever want or need. Long-term relationships aren’t in the picture, which after witnessing the devastation of her parents’ failed marriage, is just fine with her.
\nElizabeth Sutton has grown up proving to her family that she’s as capable and accomplished as they demand her to be, even if that means working for the family business. Her latest assignment, to turn a backwater ranch in Arizona into another link in their international chain of wellness centers, feels like a demotion and she can’t wait to get it done and escape back to civilisation.
\nTwo women from different worlds have nothing in common and every reason to wish they’d never met - except for the attraction neither can deny.
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Firefighter paramedic Mallory \"Ice\" James commands a crew of smokejumpers - twenty women and men who eat together, sleep together, and parachute into the face of raging forest fires together.
\nDiscipline and teamwork mean the difference between life and death on the line, and she's earned her reputation as cool and controlled in the face of danger. \"Hot Shot\" Jace Russo never met a rule she wouldn't break and doesn't plan to stop just because the woman setting the terms is drop-dead gorgeous and hotter than the blazes they're supposed to be dousing.
\nMallory and Jace may not like each other much, but lust isn't something either can control - and they soon discover ice burns as fiercely as flame.
Jay \"Flash\" Reynolds has a brilliant future as a trauma surgeon until a truck on a rainy night changes her life. Assistant chief medical examiner Olivia Price is more at ease with the dead than the living - at least the dead never lie. All she needs to do is listen to their stories. What she doesn't need is a surly new resident who would rather be somewhere else.
\nTwo women, one with a damaged body, the other a damaged spirit, challenge each other to dare to live again.
Tess Rogers grew up in the midst of chaos and uncertainty, but she always knew one thing to be true - one day six hundred acres of prime farmland would be hers. Then she discovers not even that truth can be counted on.
\nTess's stepfather has kept important secrets, and Tess's dream of breeding a line of organic dairy cows suddenly goes up in a burst of smoke and flame. R. Clayton Sutter is an expert at managing just about anything - money, businesses, and people.
\nGetting NorthAm Fuel's newest shale refinery operational in the rolling hills of Upstate New York shouldn’t be much of a challenge, but then, she hadn't counted on dealing with vandalism, petitions, and a woman she’d never expected to see again - one who still haunts her dreams.
\nWhen Tess and Clay square off on opposite sides of the heated debate, past and present collide in a battle of wills and unbidden desire.
Secret Service Agent Cameron Roberts made a promise to Blair Powell, the President's daughter - not to place her own life in danger protecting Blair - but a request from the Commander in Chief forces her to break her word.
\nIn this sequel to Above All, Honor, Cameron places duty before love and accepts reassignment as the chief of Blair's security detail, despite knowing that this decision may destroy their tenuous new relationship. As the rift between them widens, more than one woman is happy to offer Blair the company that Cam cannot.
\nAmidst political intrigue, an escalating threat to Blair's safety, and the seemingly irreconcilable personal differences that force them ever further apart, these two unusual women struggle to find their way back.
Against a back-drop of international terror and intrigue, Secret Service agent Cameron Roberts and first daughter Blair Powell return in Honor Guards.
\nWhen you're the president's daughter and the closest thing the country has to a first lady, your life is never really your own. When you're the woman charged to guard the first daughter, and you also happen to be her lover, every moment of every day is filled with challenges-and a mistake could cost you everything.
\nUnbeknownst to either Blair Powell or Secret Service agent Cameron Roberts, they are at the center of a conspiracy that will rock the world when a net of violence and death draws down upon them and the nation.
\nIn a journey that begins on the streets of Paris's Left Bank and culminates in a wild flight for their lives, the president's daughter and those who are sworn to protect her wage a desperate struggle for survival.
In the chaotic aftermath of 9/11, Secret Service agent Cameron Roberts and her lover, first daughter Blair Powell, must contend with recriminations from within the government and danger from without as they struggle to uncover those who betrayed the nation and nearly claimed Blair’s life.
\nThe hunt for those who betrayed the nation is a very personal quest for Secret Service agent Cameron Roberts because the traitors targeted her lover, first daughter Blair Powell, in a secret assassination attempt. Despite reprisals from within the Justice Department and criticism in the press, Cam is determined to bring those responsible to justice. Her search takes her deep into the shadow worlds of counter-intelligence where even a friend might be a foe.
\nWhile Cam struggles to uncover the traitor’s trail, Blair wages her own war to prevent the woman she loves from becoming a scapegoat during the chaotic aftermath of 9/11. Not just honor, but their future together, is on the line as Blair and Cam join forces with their loyal friends to strike back at the terrorists.
With the nation on the verge of war, security takes on new meaning for Secret Service Agent Cameron Roberts, whose lover just happens to be the President's daughter.
\nFirst daughter Blair Powell and her \"secret\" Secret Service agent lover, Cameron Roberts, intend to get married - with her father's blessing. But being in the spotlight isn't the safest place to be in a country still reeling from 9/11 and with the domestic terrorists who tried to assassinate Blair still at large.
\nCam doesn't want to give up the reins of control when Blair's life is at stake, but there are other dangers at home and abroad that the President needs her to investigate - including the whereabouts of her previous lover - Valerie Ross.
In the dynamic double sequel to Shield of Justice and A Matter of Trust, Det. Sgt. Rebecca Frye struggles to return to duty after a near fatal shooting. Joining forces with enigmatic computer consultant J.T. Sloan, Rebecca accepts a temporary assignment with a Federal task force investigating an Internet child pornography ring.
\nRebecca's obsession with finding her partner's killer and her involvement in the multi-jurisdictional investigation threaten both her life and her new relationship with Doctor Catherine Rawlings. When Catherine becomes professionally involved and an attempt on the life of a task force member ensues, the pursuit of justice becomes a deadly race against time.
While Detective Lt. Rebecca Frye's elite unit attempts to uncover the connection between the local organised crime syndicate and a human trafficking ring, she and her team, and those they love, unwittingly become targets.
\nAs part of the operation, Dellon Mitchell goes undercover with a young woman posing as her lover - a woman with a secret agenda that might cause them both their lives.
\nBefore long, the hunters and the hunted are caught in a complex web of doublecrosses and desire where the lines between good and evil blur, and justice may be the ultimate victim.
In a shadow world of secrets, lies, and hidden agendas, Detective Sergeant Rebecca Frye and her lover, Dr. Catherine Rawlings, join forces once again in the elusive search for justice.
\nRebecca is aided in her struggle to uncover a pornography ring and expose its connections to a traitor within the police department by a rag-tag team of dedicated cops and civilians: JT Sloan, a cybersleuth committed to avenging her lover’s devastating injury, who walks the fine line between justice and revenge; Dellon Mitchell, a young police officer who discovers an unforeseen talent for undercover work; and Sandy, a prostitute who develops an unexpected passion for cops.
\nUltimately, this secret investigation may risk not just their careers, but may cost one their life.
Fourth in the Justice Series. The hunt for an informant in the ranks draws Lieutenant Rebecca Frye, her lover Doctor Catherine Rawlings, and Officer Dellon Mitchell into a deadly game of hide and seek with an underworld kingpin who traffics in human souls.
\nNewly promoted Detective Lieutenant Rebecca Frye once again assembles her unorthodox team of lovers and friends to bring the hunt for a deadly informant in the police department to justice. Aided by JT Sloan, a cyber sleuth with a personal score to settle, Rebecca soon discovers the conspiracy extends far beyond the police department into the underworld of those who trade in human souls.
\nPressured by her superiors, driven by the private need to avenge her murdered partner, and determined to succeed, she must put one officer’s life at risk and her own heart on the line.
Take three friends, add two ex-lovers and several new ones, then mix with more secrets than any of them know - and the result is a recipe for explosive rivalries and incendiary romance.
\nCandace Lory is a high-power commodities trader and swinging playgirl who meets her match when she hooks up with older, butch corporate attorney, Parker Jones, an associate of Candace's ex-lover, Liz Ramsey. Parker is as much a swinger as Candace but try as they might, the two can't seem to stop repeating their one night stand.
Brenda Beal writes best-selling erotic romance novels under a pseudonym even her closest friends don't know. One of the only members of \"the group\" who didn't sleep with every available woman during college, Bren would rather fantasize about a perfect lover than have one, especially if she's obedient and willing to do anything Bren orders. A surprise birthday \"trip\" and a dashing, dark-eyed submissive transforms Bren's fantasies into reality and her dark secrets into delicious pleasures.
Attorney Liz Ramsey thought she had everything - a devoted partner, a challenging job, and plans for a family in the making. Unfortunately, as soon as the test strip turned blue, her lover Julia got cold feet and left her. Now pregnant, Liz bumps into, literally, young surgeon Riley Danvers during an appointment at the University Hospital. Conversation leads to coffee, but despite Riley's charms, courtship is not part of Liz's plans.
Carrie Longmire loves life with a passion - whether it’s her job as a hospital CEO’s admin, star pitcher for the hospital’s softball team, or her latest romantic possibility, she gives 110 percent and won’t take less from anyone else. Maybe that’s why she’s still single. She’s never met anyone who could convince her they wanted anything more than a fling. Friendly was fun, but not where she wanted to hang her heart.
Gina Antonelli had big dreams once, of riding her athletic achievements all the way to West Point and being the first in a long family line of soldiers to serve as an officer. When that dream died along with the girl she’d planned to marry one day, she’d vowed to forget about happily ever afters. Love hadn’t gotten her anything but a broken heart and a ruined body.
When Gina agrees to renovate Carrie’s soon-to-be new house as a favor to her brother’s boss, she doesn’t welcome Carrie’s overtures at friendship or her own unexpected attraction.
US Secret Service agent Cameron Roberts has more than one secret that could destroy her career, not the least of which is that she’s in love with the president’s daughter. Blair Powell, the first daughter, returns the feeling despite her ambivalence about Cam’s role as her security chief, particularly in the aftermath of an assassination attempt that nearly cost Cam her life.
\nIn this third book of the Honor series, Blair and Cam struggle to protect their relationship from intensified media exposure even as they are unwillingly drawn into a shadowy conspiracy that puts Cam’s career and the president’s political future at risk.
\nWhen Cam's previous lover resurfaces to offer support and solace, the president's daughter and her security chief are faced with difficult choices as they battle a tangled web of Washington intrigue for . . . love and honor.
Some people work to pay the bills or send the kids to school or afford playtime. Ex-Army medic physician-assistant Glenn Archer works, as much as she possibly can, to atone for all the lost lives on her conscience. No matter how many patients she helps save at the Rivers Community Hospital, it will never be enough, but it helps her look at herself in the mirror in the morning.
\nMariana Mateo needs to make a new life, one without the daily reminders of all she’s lost and far away from the suffocating sympathies of her well-meaning family, and moving to a place as different as possible from the bustling LA she grew up in seems like a good idea. A cousin she hasn’t seen in twenty years is the only person who knows her in the tiny upstate New York farming community, and that’s just the way she wants it.
\nWhen working side by side with Glenn Archer in the ER makes Mari remember what desire feels like, Mari determines to ignore the feelings, which isn’t all that difficult since Glenn is as unapproachable as the beautiful but remote mountains.
\nBetween ruling the night shift in the ER at the Rivers and raising her teenage daughter, Blaise Richeilieu has all the drama she needs in her life.
\nWhen a dashing young attending appears on the scene and relentlessly pursues her, Blaise has plenty of reasons to say no - or at least she tells herself she does, despite Grady’s nearly irresistible charm. Even if Blaise had the slightest desire to play Grady’s game, the past she’s kept hidden from everyone is a secret she intends to keep buried.
\nWhat Blaise doesn’t know is the barriers she constructs make Grady even more determined to find a way through them.
The last time Brody Clark left the Rivers, she walked away from her life - her foolish dreams, her few friends, and the secrets she'd kept from everyone. For ten years she'd told herself there was nothing in her past she cared about - not the family who'd given her a home or the one girl she never stopped thinking about. But now she’s back as part of the new medevac flight crew, for at least as long as it takes to finally bury her ghosts.
\nVal Valentine, DVM, planned on a big city boutique vet practice with high profile clients, easy hours, and lucrative profits. All until the man who was more father to her than her own asks for her help, and she ends up back in the backwater where all she has are bad memories.
\nBrody figures cutting her ties to the past would be a hell of a lot easier if she could only avoid the woman she’s never been able to forget. Since Val never even knew she was alive back in high school, that shouldn’t be too hard now. When their lives collide, both women discover what might have been is closer than they think.
Plunged into the often indistinguishable realms of fiction, fantasy, and hidden desires, Auden Frost discovers a shifting landscape that will force her to question everything she has believed to be true about herself and the nature of love.
\nIt began one winter morning when Auden set out to interview for a much-needed position as an editor in the nonfiction division of Palmer Publishing. Haydon Palmer, however, the powerful young head of the company, offers Auden something far different - something that ultimately forces them both to confront their deepest fears and utmost desires.
\nUnable to resist Hays's challenge and unaware of the charismatic woman's closely-guarded secrets, Auden soon finds herself on a journey that will transform both their lives.
A secretive artist with a haunted past and a young woman escaping a life that proved to be a lie find their destinies entwined.
\nVictim of a terrible accident, famed composer and pianist Graham Yardley loses her sight, her heart and her soul. Wealth and fame mean nothing after the devastating loss of her beloved music; her life is reduced to silence, darkness and bitter regret.
\nIn a bleak mansion atop windswept cliffs, the blind woman withdraws from the world, her once consuming passions now a source of anguish and fear. Then Anna, a lost woman seeking a place in the world, comes into her life and awakens feelings she thought were dead forever.
\nA fragile melody of love is played between these damaged souls, a song made sweeter and stronger by the day . . . but will their blossoming romance be destroyed by an outsider's greed or will it succumb to the discord of Graham's tormented heart?
Drew Clark, ex-Marine and martial arts master, is the new instructor at the Golden Tiger dojang. Intense and aloof, she hides dark secrets and unhealed wounds beneath her warrior's exterior. Sean Gray is the young psychologist and senior student who threatens to bring down the barriers Drew has erected around her heart.
\nBattle hardened and world weary, Drew discovers that Sean wields a weapon she has no defense against--tenderness. Together, two women who have accepted loneliness as a way of life learn that love is worth fighting for, and a battle they cannot afford to lose.
A Prequel to In Pursuit of Justice.
\nMichael Lassiter, a theoretical design executive, is about to wage war on the corporate battlefield as she fights to maintain control of her company in the midst of divorce. She hires JT Sloan, an internet security consultant, to protect her most important asset - her dreams and visions, which are suddenly vulnerable within the corporate computer system.
\nSloan, a brilliant cybersleuth who steadfastly avoids emotional commitments, shares a painful, secret past with her associate and friend, Jason McBride. Sarah Martin, a gentle practitioner of eastern medicine, searches for a way to heal a damaged soul.
\nThese four very different individuals, each wounded by personal betrayal, find their lives becoming ever more inextricably bound as they struggle to trust, and to love, again.
Medivac helicopter pilot Jett McNally's heart belongs to an Army officer she left behind in Afghanistan, and good-time anesthesiologist Tristan Holmes is no substitute, except possibly in bed.
\nWhen Jett comes home from the war and destruction in the Middle East, everyone she knows thinks she should be happy. How can she explain she left a big part of her life behind, including her heart? Flying and the adrenaline-rush of a crisis are the only things that make her happy, and she volunteers to fly night call where all the action is. So maybe once in a while she takes a few chances. Hey, that's life, right?
\nDr. Tristan Holmes is an expert at two things - high risk anesthesia and pleasing women. Sure she plans on settling down - later - like in ten years. Until then, life is meant to be lived, and Jett McNally really gets her engines revving. Since she isn't looking for anything more than a good time, Tris can't understand why it bothers her so much that Jett isn't either. After all, why spoil a great relationship by getting serious?
Navy Captain Wes Masters is a physician with only one patient, but her job is twenty-four/seven. Her charge is simple—protect and preserve the well-being of the most powerful man in the world—the president of the United States. As the First Physician, Wes travels by President Andrew Powell's side, in the hot zone, with everything she needs to save his life if he is injured or falls ill.
\nHer job gets even harder when Powell embarks on the campaign trail, accompanied by his high-profile daughter, Blair, and shadowed by paparazzi, zealots masquerading as patriots, and not-so-peaceful protesters. Campaign manager Evyn Daniels has a twenty-four/seven mission, too - to get Andrew Powell re-elected, and she can't do that if the president is invisible.
\nAt odds as to what best serves the president, Wes and Evyn square off professionally, while privately their battle is personal, and heating up fast.
Dr. Lily Davenport is the poster child for burnout - physically and emotionally. All she wants is a few months of nondemanding work at a summer camp, of all places, so she can figure out what to do with the rest of her life. The last thing she expects is to run into a woman who awakens a passion she hadn’t even realised had died along with all those she’d failed to save.
\nChase Fielder is not in the market for a relationship. Counting on people never leaving is for fools. A fling with Lily promises to be exactly what Chase is looking for - short-term, hot as a forest fire, and one Chase can extinguish whenever she wants. Now all she has to do is convince Lily they’re a perfect match.
\nAfter all, it’s only one summer.
When a trauma surgeon and a filmmaker become reluctant allies on the battleground between life and death, passion strikes without warning. Saxon Sinclair, the broodingly secretive Chief of Trauma at a busy Manhattan hospital is less than pleased to learn that her new resident is going to be the subject of a documentary film.
\nThe arrival of Jude Castle, a fiery independent filmmaker, soon sets sparks flying as the two driven women clash both personally and professionally. Both have secrets they have spent a lifetime guarding, and both have chosen careers over love. Desire and destiny clash in this fiery romance.
Emmett McCabe never expected to see Sydney Stevens - a woman with whom she'd shared a brief, incendiary connection before it all went up in flames - again. Luckily, ascending the cutthroat ladder of a high-pressure surgery residency to reach the top spot makes it easy to ignore what's missing in her life.
\nThen Sydney reappears after nearly five years. Emmett is barely over her shock when she discovers Sydney is her new competition for the coveted chief's position everyone, including Emmett, expects will be hers.
\nProfessional rivalry and long-simmering passions create a combustible combination when the two are forced to work together, especially when past attractions won't stay buried.
Dr. Bennett Anderson accepts a short-term contract at a rural medical center to fill the gap year before taking the high-profile job she’d put on hold while chasing a dream that had slipped away. In a deep-rooted community where everyone seems to know everyone else, Ben is an oddity - a stranger just passing through with no plans to build any ties.
\nCourtney Valentine is looking for a woman exactly like Ben - smart, sexy, and not in the market for anything serious. All she has to do is convince Ben that sex-without-strings is the perfect pathway to pleasure. What could be better?
Ren Dunbar is used to never fitting in - anywhere. Graduating high school at thirteen and med school at nineteen pretty much guaranteed she'd always have trouble proving she belonged, but she's okay with that. She prefers the solitude of the lab over the raucous atmosphere in the OR, which would be fine except she's a surgery resident. Winning the Benjamin Franklin Prize in surgery is just the proof she needs to show everyone she deserves to be part of their world.
\nDani Chan knows she's disappointed her family in choosing a mundane clinical career - in surgery no less - over the far more valuable world of medical research. When she wins the Franklin Prize and the national acclaim that comes with it, she'll finally gain their approval, and maybe, at last, their affection.
\nRen and Dani set out to win, no matter what it takes, but their unexpected attraction is an obstacle neither has counted on and love may be the final reward.
Flannery Rivers is content to let her sister Harper carry on the family dynasty - at the Rivers hospital where they both work and on the home front. Now that Harper is settled and soon to be happily married, Flannery can ease back into her life of casual flirtations and find all the excitement she needs in the ER. She’s even got her next playmate all lined up, or so she thinks.
\nAbigail Remy is a city girl who accepts a position at the imperiled country hospital in the hope of finding a stable, safe community for her teenaged trans son. Unfortunately, when she arrives to work, she discovers the current ER chief is less than happy to be replaced by a fresh-out-of-residency newcomer.
\nAdd unexpected attraction to the incendiary mix of city and country, fire and ice, tradition and change - and the prescription is combustible.
Honor and duty are not always black and white—and when self-styled patriots take up arms against the government, the price of honor may be a life.
\nBlair Powell and Jane Graves have much in common and even more that sets them apart in an invisible battle raging on home soil. Blair's father is the president of the United States, while Jane's is a domestic terrorist bent on bringing about a new world order at the expense of the present one.
\nWhen Blair takes to the campaign trial to support her father's re-election, Cameron Roberts and the newest members of Blair's security detail must protect the president and his daughter from foes bent on revenge. Jane and her secret ally within the president's inner circle vow to destroy them all, at any cost.
Dr. Vance Phelps lost everything in the War Between the States - her professional future, her place in Philadelphia society, and her faith in herself. She travels to New Hope, Montana with no hope of happiness and no desire for anything except forgetting.
\nMae is a frontier madam, used to standing alone. She fiercely guards the well-being of the lost young women who come under her care - she just never expected one of them to be a doctor, wounded in body and soul.
Insurance investigator Ashley Walker faces more than a dangerous opponent when she returns to the town, and the woman, she left behind.
\nIn the aftermath of a devastating natural disaster, Reese Conlon and Tory King deal with the challenges of a community in turmoil while insurance investigator Ashley Walker faces more than a dangerous opponent when she returns to the town, and the woman, she left behind.
A mysterious newcomer, a reclusive doctor, and a troubled gay teenager learn about love, friendship, and trust during one tumultuous summer in Provincetown. Reese Conlon, LtCol USMCR, is the new sheriff who has heads turning amidst speculation as to who will be the first woman to capture her attentions.
\nDoctor Victoria King has been betrayed by love once and refuses to risk heartbreak again. Brianna Parker, the teenaged daughter of Reese's chief, fears her father’s wrath when he learns that she loves another girl. As these three women struggle to live and love in freedom, they risk their hearts and souls to give one another a Safe Harbor.
Kip Kensington owes four hundred hours of community service for a joyride gone wrong. Jordan Rice has no time for younger women with trouble written all over them no matter how sexy they might be, even if she is in desperate need of more hands - and more funds - to keep her community garden project alive.
\nKip’s past follows her into Jordan’s carefully constructed, and safe, world, disrupting Jordan’s orderly life and threatening to uncover all the secrets she’d locked away: secrets she guarded as closely as her heart. Together they discover the only way to build a future is to make peace with the past.
Rooke Tyler lives a solitary life in a small western Pennsylvania town, making a living by carving intricate headstones in an exclusive cemetery for the county's wealthy families. At night she sculpts stone, pouring her dreams and desires into the figures she chisels.
\nThen two women enter life, one offering her passion, the other fame. Rooke's choice may expose her secrets and change her life . . . if she follows her heart.
In a world on the far edge of desire, two women are drawn together by power, passion, and dark pleasures. When Kyle Kirk embarks on a daring exploration of her most secret fantasies, she finds that Dane, the stranger who guides her on the journey of self-discovery, awakens something far more dangerous than her senses.
\nIn the dark hours of the night, when passions rule and the barriers of convention are stripped away, both Dane and Kyle are forced to confront the true nature of what has long lain buried within their hearts.
The pasts, presents, and futures of three women collide in a single moment that will alter all their lives forever. Michelle Galvez is running from a past that just may kill her if she’s ever caught.
\nParamedic and ordained priest Flynn Edwards struggles to reconcile her faith with her passions. Sheriff Reese Conlon fights to leave the scars of battle behind and embrace the joy of new life.
\nIn one explosive night their destinies entwine when a man with nothing to lose threatens to take all of them with him to the grave.
First in the Justice Series. Special Crimes Unit investigator Detective Sergeant Rebecca Frye is attempting to solve a series of sexual assaults and running into dead ends at every turn.
\nFinally, she has a break in the case - a witness - one person who may help her bring a madman to justice. But, the witness is a victim herself and Rebecca must convince the injured woman's physician, Dr. Catherine Rawlings, to assist her - a task that will force both women to confront their own darkest fears.
\nAmidst professional conflicts and a growing mutual attraction, the two women become reluctant allies in the battle to stop the perpetrator before he strikes again.
Amidst war abroad and upheaval at home, Reese Conlon and Tory King face their gravest challenge to their life together. Can love and passion survive the unforgiving storms of change?
\nIn the continuing saga of the Provincetown Tales, Reese Conlon’s obligations to family and country are put to the test as war engulfs the Middle East, while her partner Tory King must chose between her career and motherhood when her family is disrupted. While friends and family struggle with the fears and uncertainties of a world in strife, the small seaside town is rocked by a series of crimes that suggest newly arrived real estate entrepreneur, Ricarda Grechi, may have connections to more than just the business world.
\nState Police Detective Carter Wayne intends to find out.
When ER physician Sloane Marshall is called in as a last-minute replacement for a federal outreach mission in the remote mountain town of Coulter’s Gap, she views the temporary assignment as an unwelcome interruption in her “real” work in a level one trauma center where she is actually saving lives.
\nJax Kincaid, a sharp-edged helicopter pilot and former Army flight medic tasked with medical evacuations and disaster logistics, is none too happy about a lead physician who's never been to battle. And the increasingly worsening storm predictions might turn out to be just that.
\nIn the month leading up to a catastrophic natural disaster, Sloane and Jax forge an uneasy partnership that begins as mutual respect and turns into something neither expected.
\n
After two years and too many lost troops, Navy medic Max de Milles is ready to go home. Her last tour is up in four days and she will soon be catching a transport to the States. Life is looking good until she gets detailed to evacuate a humanitarian group in south Somalia.
\nRachel Winslow and her Red Cross team are caught in the crossfire during a vicious civil uprising, but she refuses to abandon her team members as the rebels close in on their camp. By the time Max and the Black Hawk arrive, it may already be too late.
\nHunted by extremists, Max and Rachel are forced to work together if they are to survive, and in the process, discover something far more lasting.
\n
Adrienne Pierce, buffeted by fate and abandoned by love, seeks refuge from her past as well as her uncertain future on Whitley Point, a secluded island off the coast of Maine. Tanner Whitley - young, wild, restless - and heir to a dynasty, desperately tries to escape both her destiny and the memories of a tragic loss with casual sex and wild nights, a dangerous course that may ultimately destroy her.
\nOne timeless summer, these two very different women discover the power of passion to heal--and the promise of hope that only love can bestow.
Dr. Ali Torveau knows just how fragile life can be - she sees death and tragedy every day in the trauma unit. Battling the dark forces of fate is her life’s work and she doesn’t want or need anything else, certainly nothing as transient as love.
\nPlenty of women try to change her mind, but she never has any trouble saying no. Not until the day firefighter Beau Cross shows up in her ER and sets Ali’s carefully ordered world aflame.
Love has a way of derailing the best of plans. Wynter Thompson, divorced with a young child, struggles to balance the demands of her surgical residency with the responsibilities of motherhood -and between the two, discovers there is little time left for anything else. She manages to convince herself that she has everything she needs, because another chance at love is definitely not in her game plan.
\nPearce Rifkin is a woman with a plan, and it doesn’t include a serious relationship. Chief Surgical Resident is just a stepping stone to her lifelong goal - chairmanship at one of the top ten medical centers. Determined to follow in her father’s footsteps, even though she isn’t the son he dreamed of, Pearce has no time for romance.
\nTwo women with nothing in common but a shared passion for surgery clash at every opportunity, especially when matters of the heart are suddenly at stake.
Zoey Cohen spent a lifetime learning to hide disappointment and loss behind a mask of unshakeable calm and control, even when her longtime friend-with-benefits lover moves on for true love.
\nDeclan Black returns to Philadelphia Medical Center after an accident costs her the life she’d built and her career. She’s resolved to protect herself from ever being vulnerable to past mistakes by rebuilding her life around her new role as an ER attending, and that life does not include love.
\nZoey will never accept second place in matters of the heart, even when her rival is a career, and Dec has nothing left to give of herself or her heart. Sometimes change is a force more powerful than will.
\n
Leslie Harris's return home after a decade of triumphs and disappointment resembles a nightmare more than the quiet stroll down memory lane she'd hoped for.
\nA run-in with much-changed town bad girl Devon Watts, a woman she'd once secretly lusted after, rekindles small town jealousies and old heart aches-and reminds Leslie just why she left.
Maya Sanchez never planned on starting over - not like this. After losing her wife in a tragic accident, she moves back to her Arizona hometown with her four-year-old daughter, determined to rebuild their lives. But their fixer-upper needs more than she can handle alone. Enter Nolan Wright - skilled contractor, ex-Army machinist, and exactly the kind of reliable help Maya needs. What she doesn’t need? The way Nolan makes her feel something she thought was long buried.
\nNolan is trying to move forward, too - one renovation, one day at a time. Helping Maya should be just another job, but from the moment they meet, the connection is undeniable. As attraction kindles, so do the secrets neither of them are ready to share.
\nFalling wasn’t part of the plan, but love doesn’t wait for perfect timing. Can they trust each other enough to build something real, or will the past tear them apart?
Olivia Martinez, forced to leave her high-power Manhattan job with no prospects, is at a crossroad. Not only is she a city girl down to the tips of her Jimmy Choos, she wants to stay close to her parents, who depend on her more than they'd like to. Generally not a risk taker, Olivia steps out of her comfort zone when her best friend, Elizabeth Sutton, asks her to temporarily lend a hand at the Red Sky Ranch. After all, what can a few months change, and New York City is just a plane ride - or three - away, right?
\nHaunted by an hour that changed her life, Riley Mitchell escapes the memories and the guilt by riding motorcycles way too fast, skydiving, and running into burning buildings. She is good-looking, charming, and never wants for female company, as long as no commitment is expected. When Olivia returns to the Red Sky Ranch, Riley's carefully crafted safe world goes up in flames.
\nCan they take a risk and cross the fire line to find love?
Gillian “Gem” Martin is the lead biologist at a wildlife sanctuary on the Northeast coast and head of the Wildlife Emergency Response Team called in when catastrophes, man-made or natural, threaten the endangered species she studies. Austin Germaine is a troubleshooter, the hired gun for a big oil company, whose job is to help contain leaks and prevent media coverage of a pending disaster until the danger can be eliminated. If it can be. When Gem and Austin meet by chance in the midst of an approaching hurricane, neither expects their immediate connection to lead them into uncharted territory as wild as the looming storm. When word of the spill gets out, Gem and Austin find themselves reluctant allies in a race against time to divert the spill and save the wildlife refuge and its endangered inhabitants—all while battling an attraction as unlikely as it is powerful. A high-stakes race against time, the forces of nature, and the strongest power of all—the desire of the human heart. A First Responders Novel
", "series": "First Responders", "seriesOrder": 5, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Radclyffe - Wild Shores.jpeg", "mtime": 1774683028176.8232, "size": 602555, "cachedAt": "2026-03-28T07:58:46.726Z" }, "Radclyffe - Winds of Fortune": { "title": "Winds of Fortune", "author": "Radclyffe", "description": "For Provincetown local Deo Camara, the only winds that have ever blown her way have been cold and lonely, and she doesn't expect things to improve when she is drawn into a family crisis against her will. Despite a decade of estrangement, however, Deo can't turn her back on the call of blood, no matter how high the price in heartache.
\nDr. Bonita Burgoyne is pleased with the changes she's made in her life . . . she has a rewarding new job and is looking forward to renovating the historic sea captain's house she has just purchased. She's content, and that's all she needs to be, or so she thinks until she hires Deo to head up the renovations. They have nothing in common except a shared legacy of betrayal by those they'd trusted the most, and an impossible attraction they would both prefer to ignore.
\nMeanwhile, Bonita's new associate Dr. Tory King and her partner, Reese Conlon, must cope with the aftermath of the winds of war and the approaching fury of a very real gathering storm.
\n
A fast-paced romance shot-through with danger, passion, and excitement. First Daughter Blair Powell and her lover Cameron Roberts, newly appointed deputy director of the Homeland Security Office, escape to a ski chalet in the Rockies after a harrowing attack by members of a domestic terrorism organisation.
\nHowever, Blair and Cam come under fire both publicly and privately when the media spotlights their plans to wed and an old nemesis resurfaces to threaten their lives. With the nation under attack, the world on the verge of war, and their personal lives the focus of intense public scrutiny, Cam and Blair struggle to preserve what matters most - their love.
In 1978, as the Cultural Revolution fades into history, Lei is bartered away into marriage for two cartons of cigarettes and a handful of eggs. She finds herself in the unfamiliar village of her new husband, where she is met with indifference. When a disaster upends their world, she and her husband are forced to join China’s vast wave of city-bound, rural migrants, leaving behind children whom they may never see again.
\nSixteen-year-old LuLu arrives in Shanghai with nothing but ambition. Denied a factory job and determined to keep her family from starving, she turns to sex work - navigating the dangers of the city’s underbelly with sharp wit and a fierce will to survive. When the powerful and ruthless Farmer Master Wang offers her a chance at security, LuLu faces an impossible choice: seize a future that could lift her family from poverty, or risk everything for a life on her own terms.
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Sparks fly when Prince Zayd, fresh from defending the borders of Dakaria meets Princess Layla of Sawan, determined to run away from her cruel, power-hungry mother.
\nWhen Layla discovers she has latent powers, ones she doesn't understand and begins to fear, and Zayd begins to negotiate with the mages, who have been in hiding for a hundred years, the young royals' paths become intertwined.
\nBut the kingdoms are divided, still suffering from the fallout of colonial rule, and both the prince and the princess must marry to build alliances, not for love. As Layla and Zayd struggle between their hearts and their duties, a centuries-old prophecy is set into motion, calling upon a saviour to restore the mages to their true power.
\nCould Layla be the key to finally uniting their kingdoms, or will forbidden love plunge the lands into a devasting war?
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Raised by her literary icon father Carson Wells, Allison Wells always felt loved, even though her mother died when she was a teen. But when she takes a DNA test on a whim and discovers she has a sister that she’s never heard about before, it’s clear there are things her father never told her before he died.
\nDetermined to meet Juniper - her half sister - and unravel the truth of what happened all those years ago, Ali finds herself taking a job as Juniper’s intern. She’ll eventually figure out a way to tell Juniper the truth of their relationship. But she never could have imagined what would happen next . . .
\nJuniper Connolly has always been incredibly healthy . . . until she wakes up in the hospital after experiencing cardiac arrest, with her new - and recently fired - intern to thank for saving her life. It’s clear June needs to de-stress her life a little, so when Ali offers her the use of her family’s cabin in a small Wyoming town, June has no reason not to go. But when she arrives in the small town, her life will never be the same.
\nUnder the wide-open spaces of the Wyoming summer sun, Ali and June will untangle the secrets and lies their lives were built on to discover who they really are and what family really means. But even more than that, they'll build a real relationship with one another and finally become sisters.
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Sandwiched between caring for her mother and rebuilding the relationship with her estranged daughter, Emma, Rosie Lucas’s life is full. In the best way. With Emma and her 3-year old daughter, Olive, back home, Rosie has a partner for The Rainy Day Bookshop, the family business, and a chance to fix the past. What she doesn’t have time for is a romantic relationship. And even if she did, Andrew Morgan is the last person she’d choose.
\nNot only is he an arrogant and reclusive writer, but he’s a single dad with two young kids. She’s already been there, done that. Still as an irresistible flirtation builds between them, he becomes her unexpected confidante on the distance Rosie can’t seem to overcome with Emma, a secret she can’t quite unravel . . .
\nEmma isn’t proud of her past. But she’s pulled herself up by the bootstraps, caring for her own daughter, and protecting her mom at all costs. Just as she always has. She never told Rosie what she saw all those years ago and she never will. But some secrets refuse to stay buried, and sometimes the truth is more shocking than fiction. Rosie and Emma will have to navigate an unimaginable path forward. Together.
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No one remembers the calamity that killed the gods and stole the names of their people. Now Shipwright and Shroudweaver are known only by their professions.
\nShe's a master of magical shipbuilding. He's a maker of the gilded gods that fuel their sails, stitched from the souls of dead sailors.
\nWhen a chance to save their world sets the horizon alight, they decide they'll stop at nothing to vanquish the ultimate evil, embarking on a deadly race against time to beat the grief-wracked sorceress Crow-kisser to the notorious mountain kingdom in the legend-infested north before she unleashes the ancient evil entombed at its heart - the one that could destroy them all.
In Carry On, Simon Snow and his friends realised that everything they thought they understood about the world might be wrong. And in Wayward Son, they wondered whether everything they understood about themselves might be wrong.
\nIn Any Way the Wind Blows, Simon and Baz and Penelope and Agatha have to decide how to move forward.
\nFor Simon, that means deciding whether he still wants to be part of the World of Mages - and if he doesn't, what does that mean for his relationship with Baz? Meanwhile Baz is bouncing between two family crises and not finding any time to talk to anyone about his newfound vampire knowledge. Penelope would love to help, but she's smuggled an American Normal into London, and now she isn't sure what to do with him. And Agatha? Well, Agatha Wellbelove has had enough.
\nAny Way the Wind Blows takes the gang back to England, back to Watford, and back to their families for their longest and most emotionally wrenching adventure yet.
\nThis book is a finale. It tells secrets and answers questions and lays ghosts to rest.
\nCarry On was conceived as a book about Chosen One stories; Any Way the Wind Blows is an ending about endings. About catharsis and closure, and how we choose to move on from the traumas and triumphs that try to define us.
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Simon Snow is the worst Chosen One who's ever been chosen.
That's what his roommate, Baz, says. And Baz might be evil and a vampire and a complete git, but he's probably right.
Half the time, Simon can't even make his wand work, and the other half, he starts something on fire. His mentor's avoiding him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and there's a magic-eating monster running around, wearing Simon's face. Baz would be having a field day with all this, if he were here — it's their last year at the Watford School of Magicks, and Simon's infuriating nemesis didn't even bother to show up.
Cherry and Tom had built a quiet, contented life together in Omaha, until Tom’s semi-autobiographical webcomic went viral and turned their marriage into public property.
\nNow the world knows Baby, the character based on Cherry, better than Cherry knows herself - and Tom and Cherry have been separated for months.
\nThat’s when Russ Sutton shows up. Floppy-haired, blue-eyed Russ Sutton, who Cherry had a crush on in college, and who now seems to have a crush on her.
\nAll that’s left is for Cherry to rewrite her own story. Because if she isn’t Baby, and she isn’t Tom’s wife, then who can she be?
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Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits-smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.
\nWhen Eleanor meets Park, you'll remember your own first love-and just how hard it pulled you under.
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Cath is a Simon Snow fan.
Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan . . .
But for Cath, being a fan is her life - and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.
Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.
Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.
Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.
For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?
Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?
And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?
Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble; it has been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply - but that almost seems beside the point now.
Maybe that was always beside the point.
Two days before they’re supposed to visit Neal’s family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can’t go. She’s a TV writer, and something’s come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her - Neal is always a little upset with Georgie - but she doesn't expect him to pack up the kids and go home without her.
When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she’s finally done it. If she’s ruined everything.
That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It’s not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she’s been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts . . .
Is that what she’s supposed to do?
Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened?
Rainbow Rowell has won fans all over the world by writing about love and life in a way that feels true.
\nIn her first collection, she gives us nine beautifully crafted love stories. Girl meets boy camping outside a movie theater. Best friends debate the merits of high school dances. A prince romances a troll. A girl romances an imaginary boy. And Simon Snow himself returns for a holiday adventure.
\nIt’s a feast of irresistible characters, hilarious dialogue, and masterful storytelling - in short, everything you’d expect from a Rainbow Rowell book.
Back in high school, everybody thought Shiloh and Cary would end up together . . . everybody but Shiloh and Cary.
\nThey were just friends. Best friends. Allies. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north Omaha - Shiloh would go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change.
\nWell, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed.
\nNow Shiloh’s thirty-three, and it’s been fourteen years since she talked to Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back living in the same house she grew up in. Her life is nothing like she planned.
\nWhen she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is whether Cary will be there - and whether she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything?
\nThe answer is yes. And yes. And yes.
\nSlow Dance is the story of two kids who fell in love before they knew enough about love to recognise it. Two friends who lost everything. Two adults who just feel lost.
\nIt’s the story of Shiloh and Cary, who everyone thought would end up together, trying to find their way back to the start.
The story is supposed to be over.
Simon Snow did everything he was supposed to do. He beat the villain. He won the war. He even fell in love. Now comes the good part, right? Now comes the happily ever after . . .
So why can’t Simon Snow get off the couch?
What he needs, according to his best friend, is a change of scenery. He just needs to see himself in a new light . . .
That’s how Simon and Penny and Baz end up in a vintage convertible, tearing across the American West.
They find trouble, of course. (Dragons, vampires, skunk-headed things with shotguns.) And they get lost. They get so lost, they start to wonder whether they ever knew where they were headed in the first place . . .
A magisterial journey through the epic life and transformative times of John Quincy Adams.
\nIn this masterful biography, historian Randall B. Woods peels back the many layers of John Quincy’s long life, exposing a rich and complicated family saga and a political legacy that transformed the American Republic.
\nBorn the first son of John and Abigail Adams, he was pressured to follow in his father’s footsteps in both law and politics. His boyhood was spent amid the furor of the American Revolution, and as a teen he assisted his father on diplomatic missions in Europe, hobnobbing with monarchs and statesmen, dining with Ben Franklin, sitting by Voltaire at the opera. He received a world-class education, becoming fluent in Latin, Greek, German, and French. His astonishing intellect and poise would lead to a diplomatic career of his own, in which he'd help solidify his fledgling nation’s standing in the world.
\nHe was intertwined with every famous American of his day, from Washington to Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, Jackson, Calhoun, Clay, and Webster. He was on stage, frequently front and center, during the Revolutionary Era, the fractious birth of American party politics, the War of 1812, the Era of Good Feelings, and the peak of Continental Expansion.
\nIt was against this backdrop that he served as an ambassador, senator, secretary of state, and, unhappily, as president. The driving force behind both the Transcontinental Treaty and the Monroe Doctrine, this champion of Manifest Destiny spent the last years of his life fighting against the annexation of Texas because it would facilitate the spread of slavery.
\nThis deeply researched, brilliantly written volume delves into John Quincy’s intellectual pursuits and political thought; his loving, yet at times strained, marriage to Louisa Catherine Johnson, whom he met in London; his troubling relationships with his three sons; and his fiery post-presidency rebirth in Congress as he became the chamber’s most vocal opponent of slavery.
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Born into a wealthy Black Indianapolis family, Earl “Trey” Singleton III leaves his overbearing parents and their expectations behind by running away to New York City with only a few dollars in his pocket.
\nIn the city, Trey meets up with a cast of characters that changes his life forever. He volunteers at a renegade home hospice for AIDS patients, and after being put to the test by gay rights activists, becomes a member of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP).
\nAlong the way Trey attempts to navigate past traumas and searches for ways to maintain familial relationships - all while seeking the meaning of life amid so much death.
\nVibrant, humorous, and fraught with entanglements, Rasheed Newson’s My Government Means to Kill Me is an exhilarating, fast-paced coming-of-age story that lends itself to a larger discussion about what it means for a young gay Black man in the mid-1980s to come to terms with his role in the midst of a political and social reckoning.
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Humankind discovers intelligent life in an octopus species with its own language and culture, and sets off a high-stakes global competition to dominate the future.
\nRumors begin to spread of a species of hyperintelligent, dangerous octopus that may have developed its own language and culture. Marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching cephalopod intelligence, will do anything for the chance to study them.
\nThe transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where the octopuses were discovered, off from the world. Dr. Nguyen joins DIANIMA’s team on the islands: a battle-scarred security agent and the world’s first android.
\nThe octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence. The stakes are high: there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of the octopuses’ advancements, and as Dr. Nguyen struggles to communicate with the newly discovered species, forces larger than DIANIMA close in to seize the octopuses for themselves.
\nBut no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. And what they might do about it.
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In Ray Nayler’s speculative novel of the recent past, four young teens caught between Nazis and the Red Army survive winter in the woods with the help of a flock of highly intelligent crows with a magnificent secret of their own to protect.
\nNeriya, a young Jewish girl who dreams of becoming a biologist, has befriended a local flock of crows in her shtetl. Czeslaw is an underage Polish soldier who deserts the Red Army and runs into the freezing Lithuanian woods. Kezia is a Roma horse trader whose family is on the run from Soviet collectivisation. As the German blitzkrieg crashes across the border in June 1941, all three are caught up in the onslaught.
\nAlong with Innokentiy, an abandoned boy who cannot speak, they are driven into the primeval forest, where they survive by forming an unbreakable bond with one another - and with Neriya’s intelligent crows, who for years have been bringing her intricate gifts suggesting they are no ordinary corvids.
\nAs the war goes on, the crows warn the children of danger and help them hide from the human threats of the forest - not only the Germans but also Russian deserters, Polish partisans, fascist Lithuanian police, and the other bandits and outcasts wandering the benighted landscape.
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In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power. Meanwhile, on the fringes of a Western Europe that has renounced human governance in favor of ostensibly more efficient, objective, and peaceful AI Prime Ministers, an experimental artificial mind is malfunctioning, threatening to set off a chain of events that may spell the end of the Western world.
\nAs the Federation and the West both start to crumble, Lilia, the brilliant scientist whose invention may be central to bringing down the seemingly immortal President, goes on the run, trying to break out from a near-impenetrable web of Federation surveillance. Her fate is bound up with a worldwide group of others fighting against the global status quo: Palmer, the man Lilia left behind in London, desperate to solve the mystery of her disappearance; Zoya, a veteran activist imprisoned in the taiga, whose book has inspired a revolutionary movement; Nikolai, the President’s personal physician, who has been forced into more and more harrowing decisions as he navigates the Federation’s palace politics; and Nurlan, the hapless parliamentary staffer whose attempt to save his Republic goes terribly awry. And then there is Krotov, head of the Federation’s security services, whose plots, agents, and assassins are everywhere.
\nA cybernetic novel of political intrigue, Where the Axe is Buried combines the story of a near-impossible revolutionary operation with a blistering indictment of the many forms of authoritarianism that suffocate human freedom.
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War rages in Midkemia but behind the chaos there is disquieting evidence of dark forces at work.
\nJim Dasher's usually infallible intelligence network has been cleverly dismantled; nowhere is safe. He feels that the world is coming apart at the seams and is helpless to protect his nation.
\nQuiet palace coups are underway in Roldem and Rillanon; and King Gregory of the Isles has yet to produce an heir. In each kingdom a single petty noble has risen from obscurity to threaten the throne.
\nLord Hal of Crydee and his great friend Ty Hawkins, champion swordsman of the Masters' Court, are entrusted with the task of smuggling Princess Stephané and her lady-in-waiting, the lovely but mysterious Lady Gabriella, out of Roldem to a place of greater safety. But is there any safe haven to be found?
\nMeanwhile, Hal's younger brothers Martin and Brendan are attempting to hold the strategic city of Ylith against an onslaught of Keshian Dog Soldiers, and a mysterious force from beneath the sea. The Kingdom might lose Crydee and recover; but if Ylith falls, all is lost.
\nAn unknown player appears to be orchestrating these conflicts. Can Pug and the Conclave of Shadows track down this source before Midkemia is destroyed?
Hatushaly, last scion of the Firemane dynasty; his beloved Hava, and their dubious friend Donte have been transported across space and time from their war-torn world of Garn to the relative peace of Midkemia. There, on Sorcerer’s Isle, under the guidance of the great magician Magnus and his reincarnated father Pug, Hatu will explore and expand his unique magical for if Garn is to be saved, they will be needed.
\nWith the evil Pride Lords defeated, the Church of the One has risen to bring death and destruction to Hatu’s home world. The kingdom of Ilcomen has fallen, and now the Church is sending forces to Marquensas, where Daylon Dumarch has declared himself king, and master swordsmith Declan Smith finds himself suddenly raised to the status of prince and war commander. But there are even greater menaces than the Church of the One waiting in the wings, beings from the Void, creatures born of Darkness . . .
The Darkness is coming . . .
\nThe Kingdom is plagued by rumour and instability. Kingdom spies in Kesh have been disappearing - either murdered, or turned to the enemy side. Information has become scant and unreliable; but one thing appears clear. Dark forces are on the move . . .
\nSince Pug and the Conclave of Shadows enforced peace after the last Keshian invasion, the Empire has offered no threat. But now factions are rising and Jim Dasher reports mobilisations of large forces in the Keshian Confederacy. As the men of the West answer the King's call to muster, Martin conDoin - left as caretaker of Crydee Keep - will suddenly be confronted with the vanguard of an invading army.
\nHe reminds himself that he is a year older than his legendary ancestor, Prince Arutha, was when he stood firm against the Tsurani invasion, but Arutha had an army to command, and Martin is left with old men and young boys. Massive events are about to unfold, events which threaten the future of all human life in Midkemia . . .
The first book in a brand new 2 book series by the master of epic fantasy, Raymond E. Feist. Ten years after the cataclysmic events of Wrath of a Mad God took place, Midkemia now faces a new danger thought buried in myth and antiquity.
\nA lost race of elves, the taredhel or ‘people of the stars’, have found a way across the universe to reach Midkemia. On their current home world, these elves are hard pressed by a ravaging demon horde, and what was once a huge empire has been reduced to a handful of survivors. The cornerstone of taredhel lore is the tale of their lost origins in the world they call simply ‘Home’, a place lost in the mists of time. Now they are convinced that Midkemia is that place, and they are coming to reclaim it.
\nRuthless and arrogant, the taredhel intend to let nothing stand in their way; but before long, Pug and the Conclave realise that it's not necessarily the elves, but the demon horde pursuing them where the true danger lies. And hanging over Pug always is the prophecy that he will be doomed to watch everyone he loves die before him . . .
Magic and murder engulf the realm of Kelewan. Fierce warlords ignite a bitter blood feud to enslave the empire of Tsuranuanni. While in the opulent Imperial courts, assassins and spy-master plot cunning and devious intrigues against the rightful heir.
\nNow Mara, a young, untested Ruling lady, is called upon to lead her people in a heroic struggle for survival. But first she must rally an army of rebel warriors, form a pact with the alien cho-ja, and marry the son of a hated enemy. Only then can Mara face her most dangerous foe of all - in his own impregnable stronghold. An epic tale of adventure and intrigue.
Saved by a mage's intervention from certain death, Kaspar, the evil Duke of Olasko, is lord no more - reduced to an exile's existence and forced to wander the harshest realms of the world he once enslaved.
Merciless deserts, forbidding mountains, and vast oceans now separate the once powerful despot from his former seat of power - his dark dreams of vengeance overwhelmed by the daily struggle for survival. But there is a larger drama that will entangle the broken dictator. An evil devastating and deadly seeks entrance to the land - the mystical tool of a dark empire hungry for conquest and destruction - and Kaspar has inadvertently discovered the key.
Suddenly, Midkemia's last hope is a disgraced and exiled duke whose history is written in blood, and who now must wield his sword as her champion . . . if he so chooses..
A new evil threatens Midkemia, its web stretching from the deepest criminal underworld all the way up to the highest seats of power in ancient Kesh. And the Conclave of Shadows, charged unexpectedly with the training of two apprentices, must also best powerful agents of the darkest magic . . . for the fate of two worlds lies in the balance.
\nRaymond E. Feist returns to his signature world of Midkemia in this first book in a new trilogy that ushers in the third, and most dramatic, Riftwar yet: the Darkwar. In the middle of the night on Sorcerer's Isle, the powerful sorcerer Pug is awakened from a nightmare that portends destruction for all of Midkemia. Disturbed by the dream, Pug calls for a convening of the Conclave of Shadows.
\nThough Pug does not yet know it, his son Magnus has discovered the cause of Pug's prophetic dream: a beacon has been unleashed, directing a vast army of alien invaders to Midkemia, an army so formidable that even the might of the Tsurani Empire might fall before its fury. Meanwhile, in far Stardock town, two boys are coming of age. But on the dusty path that leads them from home they are thrust by fate into a life undreamed of, becoming enmeshed in intrigue, murder, and treason.
\nThough untrained and unready, they are called upon by the mysterious Conclave to travel deep into the heart of the Empire of Great Kesh, to confront a plot so dark and twisted it will implicate even the highest-ranking nobles of the Empire, even members of the royal family itself. And behind this plot they discover the ancient Brotherhood of Death, the clan of assassins known as the Nighthawks. And Pug will find himself once again facing his old nemesis, the evil wizard formerly known as Sidi, now Leso Varen, in a confrontation with everything at stake: his honour, his life, and the future of Midkemia.
Hartraft's Marauders, a crack band of Kingdom raiders, are a special unit designed to infiltrate and fight behind enemy lines. They are currently heading for a frontier garrison, after a disastrous encounter with the Tsurani. Meanwhile, a Tsurani patrol is sent to support an assault on the same garrison.
\nBoth sides arrive at the same time and discover the garrison has been overrun by a migrating horde of moredhel (dark elves) and they are forced by circumstances to band together and fight as one to survive. The only problem is, who do they hate the most - their mutual enemy, or each other?
\nAs they make their way across the unknown Northlands to freedom, they have to struggle not only with the elements and their enemies, but also their conscience. For what is more important - one's life? or one's honour?
Chaos threatens to overwhelm two worlds as the most dangerous force ever encountered threatens to invade Midkemia, while the most treacherous magician in history - the madman Leso Varen - begins to wreak havoc on the world of Kelewan.
\nPug and the Conclave of Shadows are determined to find Varen, only to discover that he has usurped the body of one of the most powerful men in the Empire of Tsuranuani - a Black Robe and member of the Assembly of Magicians. Pug has the almost impossible task of uncovering the true identity of the fiendish magician in an entire city full of Black Robes.
\nMurder, mayhem, horror, and the darkest evil await Pug's son, Magnus, and his companions as they attempt to discover the ultimate source of the terrible threat that hovers over Midkemia and Kelewan. Leading a desperate expedition into the realm of the Dasati, the vast and malevolent empire which is threatening his homeworld, Magnus hopes to find the key to defeating this enemy who is capable of overwhelming the combined might of two worlds. But even if he does, the companions will have a desperate struggle to return home with their vital information.
\nThree worlds will teeter on the brink of destruction as the third Riftwar: the Darkwar, is unleashed.
A fantastic new novella from the master of magic and adventure. Best selling author Raymond E. Feist returns to the city of Krondor and one of his most loved characters, Jimmy the Hand.
\nThe Crawler: a name whispered in fear . . .
\nIn the crime-ridden back alleys of Krondor a rival gang has sprung up to threaten the Upright Man’s Mockers. Does the Crawler control the rival gang? Where does his power come from? And does it threaten the peace of the Kingdom?
\nJames, personal squire to Prince Arutha of Krondor, but in the underworld known as the thief and trickster Jimmy the Hand, must travel to Kesh in disguise. There, working with William, lieutenant of the prince’s household guard and son of the magician Pug, and Jazhara, niece to the Keshian lord Hazara-Khan, he must attempt to unmask the mysterious Crawler and rid Krondor of his influence.
Jimmy the Hand, boy thief of Krondor, lived in the shadows of the city. The sewers were his byways and a flea-ridden, rat infested cellar his home. Although gifted beyond his peers, he was still but a nimble street urchin, a pickpocket with potential. Until the day he met Prince Arutha.
\nAiding the Prince in his rescue of Princess Anita from imprisonment by Duke Guy du Bas-Tyra, Jimmy ran afoul of Black Guy's secret police. But his situation gets worse when he blatantly disregards the Upright Man's instruction to lie-low in order to rescue his fellow Mockers from the cruel reprisal of the Dukes henchmen.
\nGiven the choice of disapearing on his own, or with the Upright Man's help - in a weighted barrel at the bottom of Krondor's harbour - Jimmy flees the only home he's ever known, and ventures south to the relatively safe haven of Lands End. Suspecting the rural villagers have never encountered a lad with his talent and nose for finding wealth - other peoples wealth, he's fairly optimistic about his broadening his horizons. But Jimmy is completely unprepared for what greets him.
\nFor Lands End is home to others who tred the crooked path, and more, to a darker secret; a dangerous presence unknown to even the local thieves and smugglers. Jimmy's youthful bravado and courage plunge him deep into the maw of chaos and death.
For centuries, the five greatest kingdoms of North and South Tembria, twin continents on the world of Garn, have coexisted in peace. But the balance of power is destroyed when four of the kingdoms violate an ancient covenant and betray the fifth: Ithrace, the Kingdom of Flames, ruled by Steveren Langene, known as \"the Firemane\" for his brilliant red hair. As war engulfs the world, Ithrace is destroyed and the Greater Realms of Tembria are thrust into a dangerous struggle for supremacy.
\nAs a Free Lord, Baron Daylon Dumarch owes allegiance to no king. When an abandoned infant is found hidden in Daylon’s pavilion, he realizes that the child must be the missing heir of the slain Steveren. The boy is valuable - and vulnerable. A cunning and patient man, Daylon decides to keep the baby’s existence secret, and sends him to be raised on the Island of Coaltachin, home of the so-called Kingdom of Night, where the powerful and lethal Nocusara, the \"Hidden Warriors,\" legendary assassins and spies, are trained.
Years later, another orphan of mysterious provenance, a young man named Declan, earns his Masters rank as a weapons smith. Blessed with intelligence and skill, he unlocks the secret to forging King’s Steel, the apex of a weapon maker’s trade known by very few. Yet this precious knowledge is also deadly, and Declan is forced to leave his home to safeguard his life. Landing in Lord Daylon’s provinces, he hopes to start anew.
Soon, the two young men - an unknowing rightful heir to a throne and a brilliantly talented young swordsmith - will discover that their fates, and that of Garn, are entwined. The legendary, long-ago War of Betrayal has never truly ended . . . and they must discover the secret of who truly threatens their world.
In the mountains of Midkemia, a boy came brutally of age in blood and in terror. And now he lives for one purpose alone . . . revenge!
An exceptionally skilled swordsman, young Tal Hawkins was the only survivor of the massacre of his village - rescued, recruited, and trained by the mysterious order of magicians and spies, the Conclave of Shadows. Now one of the secret society's most valuable agents, he gains entrance into the court of Duke Olasko, the bloodthirsty and powerful despot whose armies put Tal's village to the sword, by posing as a nobleman from the distant Kingdom of the Isles.
But the enemy is cunning and well protected - in league with the foul necromancer Leso Varen, dark master of death -magic - and to gain the Duke's trust and confidence, Tal Hawkins must first sell his soul.
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The Assassin's Guild returns to Krondor, seemingly killing without pattern or purpose. Squire James and newly commissioned Lieutenant William conDoin are plummeted into a dark world of Murder and politics as war threatens to engulf the Kingdom, for among those murdered is a noble from a neighbouring state.
\nTime is short and the city is gripped in terror as the two young men race to find the man responsible for this act of war, a mysterious figure known as the Crawler.
A raid upon the high seas signals an attack of unprecedented magnitude by the forces of darkness. For the holiest of holies, the Tear of the Gods has been lost to the Temple of Ishap. After a raid planned by Bear, one of the most brutal pirates to sail the Bitter Sea, goes dramatically wrong, the colossal gem sinks below the waves.
\nOnly one man survives with knowledge of its exact location. But he's gone underground in Krondor. He is Knute, treacherous pilot of the pirate ship. Bear wants him alive - until he extracts the information he needs, by whatever means necessary.
\nSo begins the story of the Tear of the Gods, the most powerful artifact known to the Temples of Midkemia. since it allows the temples to speak with their gods. Without it, they will be lost for a decade, until another gem is formed in the distant mountains
\nSquire James, William, and Jazhara, new court magician, must seek out the location of this gem, with Brother Solon, a warrior priest of Ishap, and Kendaric, the sole member of the Wreckers' Guild with the power to raise the ship. They are opposed by the minions of Sidi, servant of the Dark God, who seeks to possess the Tear for his own ends, or to destroy it, denying it to the forces of light.
\nThis third tale in the Riftwar Legacy is a breathless race for priceless treasure. It's a race against time, against the myriad sinister and competing evil forces desperate for the all-powerful prize, and ultimately against the fundamentals of nature, which in Midkemia can be as formidable as the Gods themselves . . .
It is nine years on from the aftermath of Sethanon and news is feeding through to the people of the Kingdom of the Isles that deadly forces are stirring on the horizon. the bringer of the latest grim tidings is Gorath, a moredhel (dark elf).
\nThe bloodletting has started. Nighthawks are murdering again. Politics is a dangerous, cut-throat game once more. At the root of all this unrest lie the mysterious machinations of a group of magicians known as the Six.
\nMeanwhile, renegade Tsurani gem smugglers, a rival criminal gang to the Mockers led by someone known only as the Crawler, and traitors to the crown, are all conspiring to bring the Kingdom of the Isles to its knees.
At Crydee, a frontier outpost in the tranquil Kingdom of the Isles, an orphan boy, Pug, is apprenticed to a master magician - and the destinies of two worlds are changed forever.
Suddenly the peace of the Kingdom is destroyed as mysterious alien invaders swarm the land. Pug is swept up into the conflict but for him and his warrior friend, Tomas, an odyssey into the unknown has only just begun.
Tomas will inherit a legacy of savage power from an ancient civilisation. Pug’s destiny is to lead him through a rift in the fabric of space and time to the mastery of the unimaginable powers of a strange new magic.
War has swept across Marquensas. Ruthless raiders have massacred the inhabitants of Beran's Hill, including Gwen, the beloved wife of Declan Smith. Hollow of heart, his hopes burned to ashes, Declan swears to track down and destroy the raiders, an ambition shared by Baron Daylon Dumarch, whose family was massacred as they fled the capital.
\nMeanwhile Hava, whose gift for piracy has seen her acquire the treasure ship Borzon's Black Wake and the swift Azhante sailing vessel, Queen of Storms, and won her the name of “the Sea Demon,” is closing in on the whereabouts of those who unleashed the murderous hordes. Her husband, Hatushaly, the last remaining member of the ruling family of Ithrace, the legendary Firemanes, seeks to control the magical powers he has inherited.
\nHe is able now to visualise and even travel among the filaments of energies that power all existence: the furies. But will he be able to channel his magic in time to combat the deepest, darkest threat the world of Garn has ever faced?
Besieged by spies and rival houses, stalked by a secret and merciless brotherhood of assassins, the brilliant Lady Mara of the Acoma faces the most deadly challenge she has ever known. The fearsome Black Robes see Mara as the ultimate threat to their ancient power.
\nIn search of allies who will join her against them, Mara must travel beyond civilization's borders and even into the hives of the alien cho-ja. As those near and dear to her fall victim to many enemies, Mara cries out for vengeance. Drawing on all of her courage and guile she prepares to fight her greatest battle of all - for her life, her home, and the Empire itself.
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The heavy action was supposedly at Crydee these days which meant that the one place they could be sure the three of them were not going was Crydee. Come spring, the privateer Melanie was due in Ylith, and its captain could be counted on for a swift conveyance away for sure, and likely not to murder them in their sleep. That would be bad for business.
\nBut away where?
\nThat wasnt Durines worry. Kethol would surely be able to find the three of them somebody who needed men who knew which part of the sword you used to cut with and which part you used to butter your bread, and Pirojil would be able to negotiate a price at least half again what the employer was ready to pay.
\nAll Durine would have to do was kill people.
\nThat was fine with him.
\nDurine, Kethol and Pirojil are three mercenaries who have spent twenty years fighting other peoples battles: against the Tsurani and the Bugs and the goblins, and now it seems theyve run out of Tsurani, Bugs and goblins to kill. The prospect of a few months of garrison duty offers a welcome respite; but then they are given an assignment that seems, on the surface, like cushy work to protect a lady and her husband and deliver them safely to the city of LaMut.
\nIt should all have been so simple.
If there were two more impetuous and carefree men in the Kingdom of the Isles, they had yet to be found. Twins Borric and Erland wore that mantle proudly, much to the chagrin of their father, Prince Arutha of Krondor. But their blissful youth has come to an end. Their uncle, the King, has produced no male children.
\nBypassing himself, Arutha names Borric, the eldest twin by seconds, the Royal Heir. As his brother, Erland will have his own great responsibilities to shoulder. To drive home their future roles, Arutha sends them as ambassadors to Kesh, the most feared nation in the world. Borric and Erland will be presented to the Queen of Kesh - the single most powerful ruler in the known world - at her Seventy-fifth Jubilee Anniversary.
But they have not even left Krondor when an assassination attempt on Borric is thwarted. Aware that he is being provoked into war, Arutha does not rise to the bait. His sons’ journey will not be deterred, for nothing less than peace is riding on it. Yet there is to be no peace for the young princes.
When their traveling party is ambushed, Borric disappears and is presumed dead - sending Erland into spirals of rage and grief as he is forced to navigate alone the court intrigues at Kesh. But unbeknownst to anyone, Borric lives and has escaped his captors. In a strange land, with a price on his head, Borric must use all his wits and stamina to find his way back to his brother.
On separate paths, the two men - one a fugitive and one a future king - make their journey toward maturity, honor, and duty. For every step they take could sway the fragile peace of the land, as those who crave war rally against them - and become ever more daring.
Hatushaly and his young wife Hava are living a good life, working to reopen the burned-out Inn of the Three Stars in the prosperous trading town of Beran's Hill.
But there is a great deal more to this bucolic scene than meets the eye. Both Hatu and Hava were raised on the secret island of Coaltachin, and though they may appear to be no more than a young couple in love, preparing for the midsummer festival where their friends Declan and Gwen will be wed, they are in fact assassins on a mission, waiting instructions from their masters in the Kingdom of Night.
Moreover, Hatu is the last remaining member of the ruling family of Ithrace - the legendary Firemanes. He dyes his flaming red hair, and has studied to control his dangerous magical powers. But however hard Hatu may be hiding from all those who would seek to use or to destroy him, fate has other plans.
Horrific events are approaching Beran's Hill, bringing death and devastation to the peaceful town as unknown and monstrous forces are unleashed. And nothing will ever be the same again.
Midkemia once again lies under the terrible shadow of the Emerald Queen. Her dark forces are ready to launch a devastating invasion against the Kingdom of the Isles.
\nCome the battle's dawn the magician Pug, along with his life-long warrior friend Tomas, discover that something far worse than the Queen's mere sorcery is afoot.
\nFor elemental, malevolent forces are being unleashed . . . forces that threaten to tear Midkemia apart unless Pug and his band of supporters can track down the long-missing sorcerer Macros the Black and confront his formidable powers.
The first book in a brand new 2 book series by the master of epic fantasy, Raymond E. Feist. Ten years after the cataclysmic events of Wrath of a Mad God took place, Midkemia now faces a new danger thought buried in myth and antiquity.
\nA lost race of elves, the taredhel or ‘people of the stars’, have found a way across the universe to reach Midkemia. On their current home world, these elves are hard pressed by a ravaging demon horde, and what was once a huge empire has been reduced to a handful of survivors. The cornerstone of taredhel lore is the tale of their lost origins in the world they call simply ‘Home’, a place lost in the mists of time.
\nNow they are convinced that Midkemia is that place, and they are coming to reclaim it. Ruthless and arrogant, the taredhel intend to let nothing stand in their way; but before long, Pug and the Conclave realise that it's not necessarily the elves, but the demon horde pursuing them where the true danger lies. And hanging over Pug always is the prophecy that he will be doomed to watch everyone he loves die before him . . .
Roo Avery, recently returned from a harrowing brush with the armies of the Emerald Queen, is now free to choose his own destiny and his ultimate ambition is to become one of the richest and most powerful merchants in Midkemia.
\nBut nothing can prepare him for the dangers of the new life he has chosen where the demand for repayment of a debt can be as deadly as a knife in the shadows. Even those closest to him are suspect and as Roo struggles to build his financial empire, betrayel is forever close at hand. His instinctive cunning will serve him well, but he will soon realise that the road to success is far from smooth.
\nAnd while Roo works towards achieving his goal, the memory of the distant forces of darkness are never far away. For the war with the Emerald Queen is far from over and the inevitable confrontation will pose the biggest threat yet to his new found wealth and power.
As leader of her noble house, the Lady Mara must contend with battles on two fronts: in the hotbed of intrigue and treachery that is the court of Tsurani, and in her heart, where her affections for a barbarian slave from the enemy world of Midkemis lead her to question the principles by which she lives.
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Something dark is moving in distant nations, and ancient powers ready themselves for a final confrontation.
\nA Dark Queen has raised a standard in remote lands and is gathering armies of unmatched might.
\nInto this battleground of good and evil come a band of 'desperate men' who will embark on a quest that is at best dangerous and at worst suicidal. Among them is Nakor the Isalani, a gambler who knows more magic than most magicians, yet who claims magic doesn't exist. He alone knows the true nature of the Dark Queen whose shadow threatens to engulf their world.
\nAnd travelling with the group is the mysterious Miranda upon whom all must wager their lives. She appears to be an ally but knows much more than she is willing to tell. Does she have a hidden agenda of her own And will she prove ally or even more deadly foe when the final confrontation is at hand
The enemy has been routed, yet peace still eludes the Kingdom. Midkemia lies in smouldering ruins following the Demon King's siege. Many lives have been lost, including that of the brave James, Duke of Krondor.
\nAs the people turn their hands to rebuilding their once great nation, a new threat arises from the ashes of war: the fearsome Fadawah, Former Commanding General of the Army of the Emerald Queen. He has grasped the fallen reins of command and seeks to forge a personal empire out of the wreckage of the Western Realm.
\nAnd so it falls to two young men - Jimmy and Dash - grandsons of the late Duke, to gather together the shards of the broken crown and resurrect the Kingdom to its former glory.
Evil has come to a distant land high among the snow-capped mountains of Midkemia, as an exterminating army wearing the colors of the Duke of Olasko razes village after village, slaughtering men, women, and children without mercy. And when the carnage is done, only one survivor remains: a young boy named Kieli.
\nA youth no longer, there is now but one road for him to travel: the path of vengeance. And he will not be alone. Under the tutelage of the rescuers who discovered him, Kieli will be molded into a sure and pitiless weapon. And he will accept the destiny that has been chosen for him . . . as Talon of the Silver Hawk.
But the prey he so earnestly stalks is hunting him as well. And Talon must swear allegiance to a shadowy cause that already binds his mysterious benefactors - or his mission, his honor, and his life will be lost forever.
Long recovered from the ravages of the Riftwar, the land and people of the kingdom of the Isles thrive. Nicholas, the youngest son of Prince Arutha, is intelligent and gifted but vastly inexperienced.
\nIn hopes of hardening him, his father sends him and his irreverent squire, Harry, to live at Rustic Castle Crydee to learn of life beyond the halls of privilege. But within weeks of Nicholas and Harry's arrival, Crydee is viciously attacked by unknown assailants, resulting in murder, massive destruction, and the abduction of two young noblewomen.
\nThe raiders have come from a pirate haven and are no ordinary foe . . . but an enemy connected to dark magical forces that threaten the lands Nicholas will someday rule . . . if he survives.
The Darkwar has fallen upon the worlds of Kelewan and Midkemia; a time of heroes, trials and destruction. Following their dangerous mission to the realm of the alien Dasati, Magnus and the other members of the Conclave must now find a way to use what they discovered to help save their own people from the Wrath of a Mad God.
Raynor Winn knows that her husband Moth's health is declining, getting worse by the day. She knows of only one cure. It worked once before. But will he - can he? - set out with her on another healing walk?
\nThe Cape Wrath Trail is over two hundred miles of gruelling terrain through Scotland's remotest mountains and lochs. But the lure of the wilderness and the beguiling beauty of the awaiting glens draw them northwards. Being one with nature saved them in their darkest hour and their hope is that it can work its magic again.
\nAs they set out on their incredible thousand-mile journey back to the familiar shores of the South-west Coast Path, Raynor and Moth map the landscape of an island nation facing an uncertain path ahead.
\nIn Landlines, Winn records in luminous prose the strangers and friends, wilderness and wildlife they encounter on the way - it's a journey that begins in fear but can only end in hope.
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Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years, is terminally ill, their home and livelihood is taken away. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall.
\nThey have almost no money for food or shelter and must carry only the essentials for survival on their backs as they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea and sky. Yet through every step, every encounter, and every test along the way, their walk becomes a remarkable journey.
\nThe Salt Path is an honest and life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world. Ultimately, it is a portrayal of home, and how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways.
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Nature holds the answers for Raynor and her husband Moth. After walking 630 homeless miles along The Salt Path, living on the windswept and wild English coastline; the cliffs, the sky and the chalky earth now feel like their home.
\nMoth has a terminal diagnosis, but against all medical odds, he seems revitalised in nature. Together on the wild coastal path, with their feet firmly rooted outdoors, they discover that anything is possible.
\nNow life beyond the Salt Path awaits and they come back to four walls, but the sense of home is illusive and returning to normality is proving difficult - until an incredible gesture by someone who reads their story changes everything.
\nA chance to breathe life back into a beautiful farmhouse nestled deep in the Cornish hills; rewilding the land and returning nature to its hedgerows, becomes their saving grace and their new path to follow.
\nThe Wild Silence is a story of hope triumphing over despair, of lifelong love prevailing over everything. It is a luminous account of the human spirit's instinctive connection to nature, and how vital it is for us all.
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Single mother Lee has the daily routine down to a science: shower in six minutes. Cut food into perfect squares. Never leave her on-the-spectrum son Mason in someone else’s care. She’ll do anything - anything - to keep his carefully constructed world from falling apart. Do anything to keep him safe.
But when her best friend Grace convinces her she needs a small break from motherhood to recharge her batteries, Lee gives in to a weekend trip. Surely a long weekend away from home won’t hurt?
Noah, Mason’s handsome, bright, charismatic tutor - the first man in ages Lee’s even noticed- is more than happy to stay with him.
Forty-eight hours later, someone is dead.
But not all is as it seems. Noah may be more than who he claims to be. Grace has a secret - one that will destroy Lee. Lee has secrets of her own that she will do anything to keep hidden.
As the dominoes begin to fall and the past comes to light, perhaps it's no mystery someone is gone after all . . .
When a body is presumed to be her missing husband’s, a woman must unravel the secrets of her own past to clear her name, find the truth, and put her conscience to rest once and for all. All Ruby wanted was a fresh start. But after an early retirement and a relocation to a tight-knit community with her husband, Tom, and her daughter, Lily, her new beginning takes a turn.
\nFirst her troubled daughter and then her husband disappear without a trace. Unsure how to cope, grief-ridden Ruby turns to her neighborhood friends to find a way forward with new hobbies, including a murder club where they try to solve cold cases. But just as unexpectedly as her family vanished, a body floats to the surface of the nearby lake. And everyone is sure the body belongs to Tom . . . everyone except Ruby.
\nDetermined to find out what happened to her family once and for all, Ruby digs into her neighbors’ lives, and her own, only to uncover secrets that raise more questions than they answer. And the biggest question of all - why doesn’t she recognise the body?
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What happens when a husband's dying wish is for his wife to find a new love . . . before he's even gone?
\nBen and Harper started off their marriage with a cancer diagnosis, but they eventually celebrated as Ben went into remission. Now they know what matters. Now they won't waste a second. But the cancer comes back, and this time, the doctors insist there's no viable treatment option. As they are ticking things off Ben's bucket list - sail a boat, ride an elephant, become a cashier, take the stage, jump out of a plane - Ben is forced to truly face his own mortality. He comes up with his final He wants to find Harper a new husband before he dies.
\nHarper is resistant to this wacky plan. If she can't have Ben, then she doesn't want anyone. Finally, he lets it drop, but not before a journalist gets wind about His Crazy Idea. Before they know it, reporters are knocking down their door to write up such a romantic gesture of a husband's dying wish for his beloved wife.
\nWhen the New York Times sends a journalist to their house to do a feature, Harper opens the door to find the one man who got away. Or, rather, the man she spent one perfect week with a decade ago and never saw Leo Hale.
\nSuddenly, Harper is faced with old, unresolved feelings for Leo and her ultimate what-if. What would have happened if Harper had ended up with Leo? Is the grass really greener, or is she standing right where she should be, even as she inevitably faces the pain of losing the one she loves?
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Emma is lonely. Living with her cruel mother and clueless father, Emma retreats into her own world of quiet and solitude.
\nSarah has never seen a girl so precious as the gray-eyed child in a crowded airport terminal. When a second-chance encounter with Emma presents itself, Sarah takes her - far away from home. But if it’s to rescue a little girl from her damaging mother, is kidnapping wrong?
\nAmy’s life is a string of disappointments, but her biggest issue is her inability to connect with her daughter. And now Emma is gone without a trace.
\nAs Sarah and Emma avoid the nationwide hunt, they form an unshakeable bond. But what about Emma’s real mother, back at home?
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Can the entire course of a life be traced back to a single moment?
\nOn a coveted two-week beach vacation, working mom Kate Baker’s nine-year-old daughter, Olivia, vanishes suddenly among the waves - a heart-dropping incident that threatens to uproot her entire reality. But in the next moment, Olivia resurfaces, joyously splashing.
\nWhat would I do if she didn’t come up? Kate wonders. How would I live without her?
\nIn another set of circumstances that hold a different fate, Kate doesn’t have to wonder. Because in that “other” world, in the pulse-pounding seconds after Olivia goes under, she doesn’t come back up.
\nTold in parallel timelines, Kate begins to live two lives - one in which Olivia resurfaces and one in which she doesn’t. In the reality that follows her daughter’s death, she maneuvers through every mother’s worst nightmare, facing grief, rage, and the question of purpose in the aftermath of such profound loss. She endures, day by day, in a world without her daughter.
\nIn her alternate timeline, while she explores a tremulous romance with her best friend, Jason, she finds herself grappling with the ex-husband who abandoned Kate and Olivia years prior. Even as Kate scrambles to hold her daughter close, Olivia pulls further away. The line between joy and loss seems to get thinner with each passing day.
\nWoven into a single story, both Kates discover a breathtaking fragility and resilience in their respective journeys. Bringing to light the drastic polarities dire circumstances often create, The Other Year explores truths about love, loss, and the sharp turns any life can take in the blink of an eye.
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Desi is the mastermind behind her dream getaway house. Nestled high into the mountains of North Carolina, it is a sleek place, a luxurious place, a dark place.
\nA place full of secrets.
\nSecrets about the man she longs for, a man who is not her husband. Secrets about the roots of her family that must never, ever, see the light of day. When Desi and her family arrive from Chicago to spend the summer in the mountains, the seeds for the tumultuous months to follow are planted - her marriage on the rocks, not knowing which way they'll go. Her seventeen year-old daughter Jules, falling in love for the first time with a local boy - and forging a new path that will take her to uncharted places. And Carter - a man Desi knew long ago, before she expunged him from her life for good.
\nAll hurtling toward events none of them can undo.
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Since Rebecca Gray was diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease, everything in her life consists of numbers. Each day her world grows a little darker and each step becomes a little more dangerous.
Following days of feeling like someone’s watching her, Bec awakes at home to the cries of her son in his nursery. When it’s clear he’s not going to settle, Bec goes to check on him.
She reaches in. Picks him up. But he’s not her son.
And no one believes her.
In a world where seeing is believing, Bec must rely on her own conviction and a mother’s instinct to uncover the truth about what happened to her baby and bring him home for good.
A thoroughly researched and deeply personal examination of how women unintentionally condone workplace abuse in a post - #MeToo world - and what we can do to change things for the better.
\nWhen Reah Bravo began working at the Charlie Rose show, the open secret of Rose’s conduct towards women didn’t deter her from pursuing a position she thought could launch her career in broadcast journalism. She considered herself more than capable of handling any unprofessional behavior that might come her way. But she soon learned a devastating truth: we don’t always react to abusive situations as we imagine we will.
\nWhen we live in a society where many feminist ideals are mainstream and women hold positions of power, how is it possible that sexual misconduct remains so prevalent? When many employers mandate trainings to prevent harassment of all kinds, why is workplace abuse still so rampant?
\nWeaving her own experience with those of other women and insights from experts, Bravo reveals the psychological and cultural forces that make us all enablers of a sexist and dangerous status quo. By bringing these hard truths into the light, Complicit charts an accessible path toward a better future.
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Four women. Thirty-five years. A lyrical and unsettling look at female friendship across time.
\nA failed rockstar, an awarded scientist, a work-obsessed misanthrope, and a ghost, whose untimely death ruptured the once-solid quartet, steel themselves for their thirty-fifth high school reunion dinner.
\nSet during a surprise snowstorm in New York City the day of the reunion, Talking to the Wolf is a lyrical exploration of female friendship, friend breakups, and reconciliations across decades.
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Two-hundred years after World War III, the world is at peace, all thanks to the soul-identification system. Every 18-year-old must report to the government to learn about their past lives, a terrifying process known as kirling. Good souls leave the institute with their inheritance, a career path, and if they’re lucky, a soulmate. Bad souls leave in handcuffs.
\nIt's a nerve-wracking ordeal for Sivon, who, given her uncanny ability to win every chess match, already suspects her soul isn’t normal. Turns out, she was right to worry. Sivon’s results stun not only her, but the entire world, making her the object of public scrutiny and anonymous threats.
\nSaddled with an infuriating and off-limits bodyguard, Sivon is thrust into a high-stakes game where souls are pawns and rules don’t exist. As deaths mount, Sivon must decipher friend from foe while protecting her heart against impossible odds. One wrong move could destroy the future lives of everyone Sivon loves, and she can’t let that happen, even if they’ll never love her back.
It’s 1997, and snow is blanketing a New England beach. Two befuddled seven-year-olds watch as their mother’s body is tipped overboard a crumbling boat - a Viking funeral followed by a raucous wake, a send-off fit for soap opera star Susan Bliss.
\nFifteen years earlier Susan is a blazing, beautiful young woman, passionate about her art. It’s impossible not to fall in love with her, and so Alcott, a practical professor, does - hopelessly. And so begins the love story of Susan’s two-paneled life, an unconventional, jetlag-filled arrangement that takes her back and forth between her home in New England as a wife and mother to young twins, and the bright lights of soapy Los Angeles.
\nIn the present day Susan’s twins grow up in the shadow of her all-consuming absence. Sebastian, a sensitive artist, cleaves to her memory, fascinated with the artifacts of her starry past. Viola, resentful of her mother’s torn allegiances, distances herself from the memories of her. But when Viola runs into her mother’s old costar Orson Grey - now a renowned Hollywood star - she finds herself falling deeply in love with him and begins to put together the pieces of a mother she never truly knew.
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Ruth Johnson and her sister Jules have been small-time hustlers on the interstellar cruise lines for years. But then Jules fell in love with one of their targets, Esteban Mendez-Yuki, sole heir to the family insurance fortune. Esteban seemed to love her too, until she told him who she really was, at which point he fled without a word.
\nNow Ruth is set on revenge: disguised as provincial debutante Evelyn Ojukwu and set for the swanky satellite New Monte, she's going to make Esteban fall in love with her, then break his heart and take half his fortune. At least, that's the plan. But Ruth hadn't accounted for his older sister, Sol, a brilliant mind in a dashing suit . . . and much harder to fool.
\nSol is hot on Ruth's tail, and as the two women learn each other's tricks, Ruth must decide between going after the money and going after her heart.
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Connie splashed through puddles, the rain slapping her face. Everywhere was tarmac and concrete, fog and drizzle, but no sign of her child. ‘Have you seen my daughter? Please, you must’ve seen her?’ Connie’s face crumpled, preparing to cry. But there wasn’t time for tears, she told herself, she had to find her child.
\nManchester, England, 1965: In an instant Connie’s life has changed. She only left her daughter Kathy alone for a moment but that was enough for her to vanish without a trace. As Connie desperately searches for her, she has to put the news reports of other missing children to the back of her mind. She is determined to find her safe. She will bring her daughter home.
\nAs local farmer Ronald listens to the news, he is shocked by what he hears. He has spent his life away from the spotlight, quietly tending to his farm. But when a young couple begin acting suspiciously on his land, he knows that trouble is about to reach his door.
\nAnd then he sees her. A girl in a bright red coat who looks completely lost. Ronald knows he needs to help keep her safe and find her family. But on the wild and desolate farmland, Ronald has buried his own dark secret. Can he risk it coming to light to save her life?
\nInspired by a real-life true crime story.
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Angela Milligan’s world shatters when her close friend, Toni Perry, goes missing from the hotel they both work in. Dismissed by the police and isolated from those she loves, Angela becomes fixated on the man she believes is responsible.
\nIs Toni missing, or has she suffered a worse fate? Could someone Angela works with hold the key to the mystery that surrounds her disappearance?
\nAs Angela digs deeper, she soon realises that some secrets are best left buried . . .
\nCan Angela uncover the truth before it’s too late, or will her relentless pursuit lead her straight into danger?
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As a teenager, Sarah D'Villez famously escaped a man who abducted and held her hostage for eleven days. The case became notorious, with Sarah's face splashed across the front of every newspaper in the country.
Now, seventeen years later, that man is about to be released from prison. Fearful of the media storm that is sure to follow, Sarah decides to flee to rural Wales under a new identity, telling nobody where she's gone.
Settling into the small community she is now part of, Sarah soon realises that someone is watching her. Someone who seems to know everything about her.
On the night of the Summer Solstice in 1999, nine-year-old Roisin O’Halloran marched into the Hanging Woods, the mysterious copse that had inspired fear in decades of children in the small Irish town of Bannakilduf. She was never seen again.
\nTwenty years later, two women are drawn together to discover the truth of what happened to Roisin’s older sister Deedee, a rookie cop who’s barely hanging on to the appearance of keeping it all together, and Roisin’s childhood best friend Caitlin, a petty criminal who was the last person to see the young girl before she disappeared, now returned to her hometown after her mother’s death.
\nReluctantly brought together after decades of mistrust, Caitlin and Deedee must reckon with their shadowy pasts, the monsters that still haunt them, and the role they each may have played in Roisin’s disappearance.
\nWith old wounds made fresh, the unresolved events of that summer years ago rise to the surface, and the truth threatens to reshape the small town that would prefer the past remain buried.
\nThe siren of the Hanging Woods rings out once more. After all, nothing can stay hidden forever.
Mikey Callahan is a thirty-year-old who is suffering from the clouded vision of macular degeneration. He struggles to establish human connections - even his emotional life is a blur.
As the novel begins, he is reconnecting with \"The Gunners,\" his group of childhood friends, after one of their members has committed suicide. Sally had distanced herself from all of them before ending her life, and she died harboring secrets about the group and its individuals. Mikey especially needs to confront dark secrets about his own past and his father.
How much of this darkness accounts for the emotional stupor Mikey is suffering from as he reaches his maturity? And can The Gunners, prompted by Sally's death, find their way to a new day? The core of this adventure, made by Mikey, Alice, Lynn, Jimmy, and Sam, becomes a search for the core of truth, friendship, and forgiveness.
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With empathy, insight, and humor, Rebecca Kauffman explores overlapping narratives involving a couple whose struggle to become pregnant has both softened and hardened them; a woman whose husband of forty years has left her for reasons he’s unwilling to share and the man who is now disastrously attempting to woo her; a couple in denial about a looming health crisis, and their son who is fumbling toward middle age and can’t stop lying.
\nThese storylines converge into a dramatic and harrowing turn of events.
Early morning on the day of the most important booking in this august establishment’s history, the discovery of the theft of 22 ribeye steaks roils Aunt Orsa’s. Hers is the finest restaurant in this midwestern college town and Orsa anticipates a large party that will honor a very special guest, the bestselling author, a writer of international renown.
\nAnd what’s up with the recent Yelp reviews, insulting to frankly terrible? Is Orsa, who wants only to be loved, being sabotaged on several fronts? And now no one is above suspicion, not the pretty Mennonite baker nor the tatted-up hard-ass chef de cuisine nor the various servers nor the great-looking, if unsure, co-ed working as hostess.
\nRebecca Kauffman’s talent for crafting rich, empathetic characters is on full display in The Reservation, where she guides a vibrant cast through a single, high-stakes day in the life of a bustling restaurant. With her signature wit and spirit, Kauffman serves up a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the drama, grace, and grit it takes to bring a beautiful meal to the table - served with a side of chaos.
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Susan arrives on Dune Island with a plan, settle her late uncle’s estate, sign the papers, and leave within a week. The inheritance is simple: a weathered cottage, a small distillery and a stubborn dog named Walter.
\nOn paper, nothing she couldn't sort in a week.
\nExcept Susan isn’t just there to close a chapter. She’s running, from Jen, from a loss she cannot yet name, and from a life that has quietly unravelled.
\nBut Dune Island has been keeping its own secrets.
\nCut off on the edge of the Wild Atlantic Way, where the ferry runs on Mick’s time and every glance carries a question, Susan begins to uncover what her uncle Frank left behind, not just property, but a lifetime of silence. And the longer she stays, the more the island reveals, buried stories, unspoken grief, a family history shaped as much by what was hidden as by what was known.
\nAnd as the past begins to surface, Susan must confront the truths she came to escape.
\nShe came to Dune Island to be alone. The island had other ideas.
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A powerful work of reportage and American history that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation’s earliest days, and a small-town murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later
\nBefore 2020, American Indian reservations made up roughly 55 million acres of land in the United States. Nearly 200 million acres are reserved for National Forests - in the emergence of this great nation, our government set aside more land for trees than for Indigenous peoples.
\nIn the 1830s, Muscogee people were rounded up by the US military at gunpoint and forced into exile halfway across the continent. At the time, they were promised this new land would be theirs for as long as the grass grew and the waters ran. But that promise was not kept. When Oklahoma was created on top of Muscogee land, the new state claimed their reservation no longer existed.
\nOver a century later, a Muscogee citizen was sentenced to death for murdering another Muscogee citizen on tribal land. His defense attorneys argued the murder occurred on the reservation of his tribe, and therefore Oklahoma didn’t have the jurisdiction to execute him. Oklahoma asserted that the reservation no longer existed. In the summer of 2020, the Supreme Court settled the dispute. Its ruling that would ultimately underpin multiple reservations covering almost half the land in Oklahoma, including Nagle’s own Cherokee Nation.
\nHere Rebecca Nagle recounts the generations-long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma. By chronicling both the contemporary legal battle and historic acts of Indigenous resistance, By the Fire We Carry stands as a landmark work of American history. The story it tells exposes both the wrongs that our nation has committed and the Native-led battle for justice that has shaped our country.
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A god will return
When the earth and sky converge
Under the black sun
In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.
\nMeanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.
Light-years from home, it’s Ira’s second chance. Just another anonymous student at a space station university. Not the orphan whose Earther heritage was erased. Not some social experiment put on display by his adoptive father.
\nNot the criminal recruited by the human rebels. But when Ira’s loyalties clash once again, two wars break one on the ground and one within himself. Which will Ira stand with? Which will take him down?
The great city of Tova is shattered. The sun is held within the smothering grip of the Crow God’s eclipse, but a comet that marks the death of a ruler and heralds the rise of a new order is imminent.
\nThe Meridian: a land where magic has been codified and the worship of gods suppressed. How do you live when legends come to life, and the faith you had is rewarded?
\nAs sea captain Xiala is swept up in the chaos and currents of change, she finds an unexpected ally in the former Priest of Knives. For the Clan Matriarchs of Tova, tense alliances form as far-flung enemies gather and the war in the heavens is reflected upon the earth.
\nAnd for Serapio and Naranpa, both now living avatars, the struggle for free will and personhood in the face of destiny rages. How will Serapio stay human when he is steeped in prophecy and surrounded by those who desire only his power? Is there a future for Naranpa in a transformed Tova without her total destruction?
Serapio, avatar of the Crow God Reborn and the newly crowned Carrion King, rules Tova. But his enemies gather both on distant shores and within his own city as the matrons of the clans scheme to destroy him. And deep in the alleys of the Maw, a new prophecy is whispered, this one from the Coyote God. It promises Serapio certain doom if its terrible dictates are not fulfilled.
\nMeanwhile, Xiala is thrust back amongst her people as war comes first to the island of Teek. With their way of life and their magic under threat, she is their last best hope. But the sea won’t talk to her the way it used to, and doubts riddle her mind. She will have to sacrifice the things that matter most to unleash her powers and become the queen they were promised.
\nAnd in the far northern wastelands, Naranpa, avatar of the Sun God, seeks a way to save Tova from the visions of fire that engulf her dreams. But another presence has begun stalking her nightmares, and the Jaguar God is on the hunt.
Lately, seventh grader Nizhoni Begay has been able to detect monsters, like that man in the fancy suit who was in the bleachers at her basketball game. Turns out he's Mr. Charles, her dad's new boss at the oil and gas company, and he's alarmingly interested in Nizhoni and her brother, Mac, their Navajo heritage, and the legend of the Hero Twins. Nizhoni knows he's a threat, but her father won't believe her.
When Dad disappears the next day, leaving behind a message that says \"Run!\", the siblings and Nizhoni's best friend, Davery, are thrust into a rescue mission that can only be accomplished with the help of Diné Holy People, all disguised as quirky characters. Their aid will come at a price: the kids must pass a series of trials in which it seems like nature itself is out to kill them.
If Nizhoni, Mac, and Davery can reach the House of the Sun, they will be outfitted with what they need to defeat the ancient monsters Mr. Charles has unleashed. But it will take more than weapons for Nizhoni to become the hero she was destined to be . . .
While most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse, Dinétah (formerly the Navajo reservation) has been reborn. The gods and heroes of legend walk the land, but so do monsters.
Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer. When a small town needs help finding a missing girl, Maggie is their last - and best - hope. But what Maggie uncovers about the monster is much larger and more terrifying than anything she could imagine.
Maggie reluctantly enlists the aid of Kai Arviso, an unconventional medicine man, and together they travel to the rez to unravel clues from ancient legends, trade favors with tricksters, and battle dark witchcraft in a patchwork world of deteriorating technology.
As Maggie discovers the truth behind the disappearances, she will have to confront her past - if she wants to survive.
Welcome to the Sixth World.
High in the remote mountains, the town of Goetia is booming as prospectors from near and far come to mine the powerful new element Divinity. Divinity is the remains of the body of the rebel Abaddon, who fell to earth during Heaven's War, and it powers the world’s most inventive and innovative technologies, ushering in a new age of progress. However, only the descendants of those that rebelled, called Fallen, possess the ability to see the rich lodes of the precious element. That makes them a necessary evil among the good and righteous people called the Elect, and Goetia a town segregated by ancestry and class.
\nCeleste and Mariel are two Fallen sisters, bound by blood but raised in separate worlds. Celeste grew up with her father, passing in privileged Elect society, while Mariel stayed with their mother in the Fallen slums of Goetia. Upon her father’s death, Celeste returns to Goetia and reunites with Mariel. Mariel is a great beauty with an angelic voice, and Celeste, wracked by guilt for leaving her sister behind, becomes her fiercest protector.
\nWhen Mariel is accused of murdering a Virtue, the powerful Order of the Archangels that rule Goetia, Celeste must take on the role of Advocatus Diaboli (Devil’s Advocate) and defend her sister in the secretive courts of the Virtue. Celeste, aided by her ex-lover, Abraxas, who was once one of the rebels great generals, sets out to prove Mariel innocent. But powerful forces among the Virtues and the Elect mining barons don’t want Celeste prying into their business, and Mariel has secrets of her own. As Celeste is drawn deeper into the dark side of Goetia, she unravel a layer of lies and manipulation that may doom Mariel and puts her own immortal soul at risk.
All her life, Vaasa Kozár has been sharpened into a blade.
\nAfter losing her mother - her only remaining parent - to a mysterious dark magic that has since awakened within her, Vaasa is certain death looms. So is her merciless brother, who aims to eliminate Vaasa as a threat to his crown. In one last political scheme, he marries her off to Reid of Mireh, a ruthless foreign ruler, in hopes that he can use her death as a rallying cry to finally invade Reid’s nation. All Vaasa has to do is die.
\nBut she is desperate to live. Vaasa enters her new marriage with every intent to escape it, wielding the hard-won political prowess and combat abilities her late father instilled in her. But to her surprise, Reid offers her a deal: help him win the votes to rise in power, and she can walk free. In exchange, he will share his knowledge about the dark magic running through her veins - and help keep it at bay.
\nThis proposal may be too good to refuse, yet Vaasa and Reid’s undeniable attraction threatens to break the rules of their arrangement. As her brother’s lethal machinations take form, everything is at stake: Vaasa must learn to trust her new husband, but how can she, especially when their perfect political marriage begins to feel like the real thing?
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Torn from her husband Reid’s arms and dragged back to her homeland in chains, Vaasa is no longer a ruler, but a political pawn. Now under the control of Ozik - a cunning Zetyr witch with a stranglehold on her magic - she faces annulment, forced betrothal, and a kingdom that no longer feels like her own. As Ozik’s machinations aim to install himself as the true power behind the Asteryan throne, Vaasa is forced to take part in his game.
\nMeanwhile, across the continent, Reid is done playing politics. But waging war is never simple, and a soldier’s fury cannot stand up against Icruria’s bureaucracy. With allies fading and time slipping away, Reid may have no choice but to infiltrate Asterya on his own to find the woman he loves and bring her home.
\nAs Vaasa’s magic begins to flare, she desperately seeks control, even if Ozik is the only one who can offer it. She then finds a cryptic final message from her mother about a precious missing necklace that might just be the answer to finally freeing her magic from Ozik. Yet when a ghost from Vaasa’s past reemerges among the suitors vying for her hand, escape might be within reach - but will it demand a betrayal that real love may not survive?
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Nineteen-year-old Ness used to be terrified of Nightmares - people who'd turned into their worst fears while they slept. Now, after two assassination attempts, an explosion, and a bargain with a demon, she's finally free of her terror.
\nBut Nightmares aren't the only dangerous thing in Newham. And Ness still has to reckon with her other fears - including her fear of mortality. It's easy to die in Newham, but hard to live. So when the monster responsible for creating Nightmares asks her for a favour, she agrees - as long as he will turn her into an indestructible Nightmare of her choice in exchange, so she can finally feel safe.
\nSoon things spiral out of control. Ness finds herself in the crosshairs of enemies old and new, and this time, she can't run from her problems. If she wants to survive, she's going to have to conquer the most difficult enemy of all: herself.
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Ever since her sister became a man-eating spider and slaughtered her way through town, nineteen-year-old Ness has been terrified - terrified of some other Nightmare murdering her, and terrified of ending up like her sister. Because in Newham, the city that never sleeps, dreaming means waking up as your worst fear.
\nWhether that means becoming a Nightmare that's monstrous only in appearance, or transforming into a twisted, unrecognisable creature that terrorises the city, no one is safe. Ness will do anything to avoid becoming another victim, even if that means lying low among the Friends of the Restful Soul, a questionable organisation that may or may not be a cult.
\nBut being a member of this maybe-cult has a price. In order to prove herself, Ness cons her way into what's supposed to be a simple job for the organisation - only for it to blow up in her face. Literally. Tangled up in the aftermath of an explosive assassination, now Ness and the only other survivor - a Nightmare boy who Ness suspects is planning to eat her - must find their way back to Newham and uncover the sinister truth behind the attack, even as the horrors of her past loom ominously near.
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Nita doesn’t murder supernatural beings and sell their body parts on the internet - her mother does that. Nita just dissects the bodies after they’ve been “acquired.” But when her mom brings home a live specimen, Nita decides she wants out - dissecting living people is a step too far.
But when she tries to save her mother’s victim, she ends up sold on the black market in his place - because Nita herself is a supernatural being. Now Nita is on the other side of the bars, and there is no line she won’t cross to escape and make sure no one can ever capture her again.
Nita did a good deed, and it cost her everything. Now she’s going to do a lot of bad deeds to get it all back.
After escaping her kidnappers and destroying the black market where she was held captive, all Nita wants is to find a way to live her life without looking over her shoulder. But with a video of her ability to self-heal all over the dark web, Nita knows she’s still a prime target on the black market.
There’s only one way to keep herself safe.
Nita must make herself so feared that no one would ever dare come after her again. And the best way to start building her reputation? Take her revenge on the person who sold Nita to her kidnappers. But doing that is harder than Nita thought it would be, even with Kovit by her side. Now caught in a game of kill or be killed, Nita will do whatever it takes to win.
Nita finally has Fabricio, the boy who betrayed her to the black market, within her grasp. But when proof that Kovit’s a zannie - a monster who eats pain in order to survive - is leaked to the world, Nita must reevalute her plans.
With enemies closing in on all sides, the only way out is for Nita and Kovit to take on the most dangerous man in the world: Fabricio’s father. He protects the secrets of the monsters who run the black market. Stealing those secrets could be the one thing that stands between Nita and Kovit and certain death.
A mother-to-be is awed by her own mother’s chaotic and unknowable approach to life and its natural mysteries.
\nGrowing up with an eccentric but loving mother who levitates for a living, Charlie always wondered, How does she do it? Defying gravity is no easy trick. Neither is motherhood.
\nNow that her mother is leaving New York for bigger skies in New Mexico, it’s a new stage in life for both of them in an ever-evolving relationship that reveals the true magic of being a mother.
Avalon Dale is a masterful grifter. She researches her victims thoroughly, kidnaps and sedates them, cleans out their bank accounts, and uses injections and hair clippers to change their appearance so that when they wake up, they can't easily prove who they are. It gives her a head start and a new identity to get away. She's targeted Primrose Meath for her last big score, and then she'll fade away to a life of ease and luxury - something she's dreamed of since a very tough childhood.
\nOn paper, Prim is the perfect wealthy, workaholic, and distracted by her cheating husband. But when Avalon finds Prim's husband dead, she can't get away so easily - not when she's been mistaken for Prim who's now wanted for murder. The two women, opposites, enemies, are suddenly on the run together, and must learn to get along, to depend on each other, in order to get away. And then, what starts as a cat-and-mouse run to the coast of England becomes a fight for their survival.
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Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells - taken without her knowledge - became one of the most important tools in medicine.
\nThe first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons - as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilisation, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.
\nNow Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia - a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo - to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.
\nHenrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits.
\nAs Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family - past and present - is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
\nOver the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family - especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?
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Sergeant Nix Marr is a damn good soldier, but she's desperate to leave her haunted past in the bioluminescent ocean, buried alongside old friends . . . and old flames. Unfortunately, even the icy ocean can't extinguish some fires. When Kessandra, everyone's favorite princess - and Nix's loathed ex - requests Nix's help investigating a massacre in the abyssal city of Fall, Nix refuses. Vehemently.
\nBut Kessandra always gets what she wants.
\nConsigned as Kessandra's bodyguard, Nix grudgingly boards a luxurious submersible that offers the only transportation to Fall. It's frustrating, irritating, how quickly Nix and Kess fall back in sync - much as she tries to fight, Nix can't deny their spark. But Kessandra wasn't truthful - surprise, surprise - and Nix quickly realizes their \"investigation\" isn't about the massacre, but rather what caused it: an illness that incites its victims into a violent craze.
\nWhen another royal is brutally murdered, it becomes apparent the disease has spread - and no one on the submersible is safe. Suddenly, survival hinges on trusting each other, which would be a hell of a lot easier if Kessandra didn't keep lying. Injured, fighting for their lives, Nix has to decide if she can trust Kessandra again . . . and what she'll lose this time.
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Lt. Grayson Masters is focused on graduating the Apache helicopter course, and the last thing he needs is his gorgeous new roommate Samantha Fitzgerald distracting him. While her smart mouth and free spirit are irresistibly irritating, he can’t deny their off-the-charts chemistry, no matter how hard he tries.
\nHaving just been expelled from college, Sam has no business digging for Grayson’s secrets while she’s hiding her own, but that doesn’t stop her from trying to tear down his walls. Each barrier she busts through drops one of her own, though, and she’s not prepared for the truth: another woman laid claim to Grayson’s heart long ago.
\nFalling in love is something neither Grayson nor Sam can afford, and when that line is crossed and secrets are exposed, they’ll learn that sometimes it’s the answered prayers that will put you through hell.
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Since her sister's death, twenty-year-old Paisley Donovan, who shares her sister’s heart condition, is treated like delicate glass by her parents. But nothing will stop her from completing her Bucket List - even if it kills her. And it almost does, until Jagger Bateman pulls her from the ocean and breathes more than air into her lungs - he sets her soul on fire.
\nJagger is enrolled in the country's toughest flight school. He's wickedly hot, reckless, and perfect for a girl looking to live life to the fullest. Except that Paisley is the commanding general's daughter, and her boyfriend is Jagger's biggest rival. Now Paisley must decide just how much to risk for a guy who makes her heart pound a little too hard.
\nThey're flying through dangerous territory - and one wrong move could make them crash and burn . . .
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Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general - also known as her tough-as-talons mother - has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.
\nBut when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away . . . because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.
\nWith fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter - like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.
\nShe’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.
\nYet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.
\nFriends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda - because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.
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She knew. That’s why Mom hadn’t opened the door. She knew he was dead.
\nTwenty years as an army brat and Ember Howard knew, too. The soldiers at the door meant her dad was never coming home. What she didn’t know was how she would find the strength to singlehandedly care for her crumbling family when her mom falls apart.
\nThen Josh Walker enters her life. Hockey star, her new next-door neighbor, and not to mention the most delicious hands that insist on saving her over and over again. He has a way of erasing the pain with a single look, a single touch. As much as she wants to turn off her feelings and endure the heartache on her own, she can’t deny their intense attraction.
\nUntil Josh’s secret shatters their world. And Ember must decide if he’s worth the risk that comes with loving a man who could strip her bare.
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How do you define yourself when others have already decided who you are?
\nSix years ago, when Camden Daniels came back from war without his younger brother, no one in the small town of Alba, Colorado, would forgive him - especially his father. He left, swearing never to return.
\nBut a desperate message from his father brings it all back. The betrayal. The pain. And the need to go home again. But home is where the one person he still loves is waiting. Willow. The one woman he can never have. Because there are secrets buried in Alba that are best left in the dark.
\nIf only he could tell his heart to stay locked away when she whispers she’s always loved him, and always will . . .
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Josh Walker is loyal, reckless, and every girl’s dream. But he only has eyes for December Howard, the girl he's craved since his high school hockey days. Together they have survived grief, the military, distance, and time as they’ve fought for stolen weekends between his post at Ft. Rucker and her college at Vanderbilt. Now that Josh is a medevac pilot and Ember is headed toward graduation, they’re moving on - and in - together.
\nEmber never wanted the Army life, but loving Josh means accepting whatever the army dictates - even when that means saying goodbye as Josh heads to Afghanistan, a country that nearly killed him once before and that took her father. But filling their last days together with love, passion, and plans for their future doesn’t temper Ember’s fear, and if there’s one thing she’s learned from her father’s death, it’s that there are some obstacles even love can’t conquer.
\nFlight school is over.
\nThis is war.
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When Izzy Astor gets on a plane to go home, she isn’t expecting much. It’s the usual holiday travel experience: busy, crowded, stressful.
\nThen she spots her seatmate, who is anything but ordinary. Nate Phelan sports dark hair, blue eyes, and a deliciously rugged charm that Izzy can’t resist. Their connection is undeniable. Izzy never believed in destiny before, but she does now.
\nJust ninety seconds after takeoff, their plane goes down in the Missouri River.
\nTheir lives change. They change. Nate goes on to a career in the military while Izzy finds her way into politics. Despite a few chance encounters over the years, the timing never feels right.
\nThen comes a high-stakes reunion in Afghanistan, where Nate is tasked with protecting Izzy’s life.
\nHe’ll do anything to keep her safe. And everything to win her heart.
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Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College - Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky.
\nNow the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is - unless she betrays the man she loves.
\nAlthough Violet’s body might be weaker and frailer than everyone else’s, she still has her wits - and a will of iron. And leadership is forgetting the most important lesson Basgiath has taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules.
\nBut a determination to survive won’t be enough this year.
\nBecause Violet knows the real secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College - and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.
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Beckett,
\nIf you’re reading this, well, you know the last-letter drill. You made it. I didn’t. Get off the guilt train, because I know if there was any chance you could have saved me, you would have.
\nI need one thing from you: get out of the army and get to Telluride.
\nMy little sister Ella’s raising the twins alone. She’s too independent and won’t accept help easily, but she has lost our grandmother, our parents, and now me. It’s too much for anyone to endure. It’s not fair.
\nAnd here’s the kicker: there’s something else you don’t know that’s tearing her family apart. She’s going to need help.
\nSo if I’m gone, that means I can’t be there for Ella. I can’t help them through this. But you can. So I’m begging you, as my best friend, go take care of my sister, my family.
\nPlease don’t make her go through it alone.
\nRyan.
\n
There was a time when all Violet Sorrengail had to worry about was surviving. Make it across the parapet. Survive training. To try not to get roasted alive by a dragon.
\nThat was then.
\nNow it’s not enough that Violet survived Threshing. Or that she sits astride the scales of the most terrifying creature imaginable, with the overwhelming expanse of wings keeping her aloft.
\nBecause her world now sits on the precipice of annihilation. The Aretian wards are failing . . . and with them, hope. Their enemies are far more powerful than anyone knows - and one of them has marked Violet with a power as terrifying as her own.
\nWith enemies circling Navarre on tainted wings, Violet knows they have everything to lose. Friends. Family. Home. And Xaden. Him most of all.
\nAretia needs an army. It needs power. And it needs the one thing Violet, more than any other rider, knows how to find - the truth. Every dark, cryptic, and damned scrap of it.
\nThe time for “surviving” is done.
\nAnd Violet will have to choose what - or rather, who - she’s always been: Violence.
\n
Two years after the man she loved was killed in Afghanistan, Morgan Bartley is trying to put the pieces of her life back together. The reno on her dilapidated beach house in the Outer Banks might be just the distraction she needs to keep her debilitating anxiety attacks at bay and begin to heal her heart . . . if she can ignore the ridiculously handsome guy next door.
\nAt twenty-eight, single-dad Jackson Montgomery’s life revolves around his five-year-old daughter and his job as a search-and-rescue pilot for the coast guard. He’s no stranger to saving a damsel in distress, and though his gorgeous new neighbor is clearly in distress, she’s no damsel. She’s stubborn as hell with walls a mile thick, and the dog tags hanging from her rearview mirror give him a pretty good clue as to why.
\nIt doesn’t matter that their attraction is undeniable - she swore she’d never fall for another pilot, let alone a military man. There are some wounds time can’t heal, and some fears too consuming to conquer.
\nShe’s a barely breathing heartbreak on the edge of recovery.
\nHe’s a crash waiting to happen. Together they could have it all . . . if they can endure the coming storm.
\n
Twenty-eight-year-old Georgia Stanton has to start over after she gave up almost everything in a brutal divorce - the New York house, the friends, and her pride. Now back home at her late great-grandmother’s estate in Colorado, she finds herself face-to-face with Noah Harrison, the bestselling author of a million books where the cover is always people nearly kissing. He’s just as arrogant in person as in interviews, and she’ll be damned if the good-looking writer of love stories thinks he’s the one to finish her grandmother’s final novel . . . even if the publisher swears he’s the perfect fit.
Noah is at the pinnacle of his career. With book and movie deals galore, there isn’t much the “golden boy” of modern fiction hasn’t accomplished. But he can’t walk away from what might be the best book of the century - the one his idol, Scarlett Stanton, left unfinished. Coming up with a fitting ending for the legendary author is one thing, but dealing with her beautiful, stubborn, cynical great-granddaughter, Georgia, is quite another.
But as they read Scarlett’s words in both the manuscript and her box of letters, they start to realize why Scarlett never finished the book - it’s based on her real-life romance with a World War II pilot, and the ending isn’t a happy one. Georgia knows all too well that love never works out, and while the chemistry and connection between her and Noah is undeniable, she’s as determined as ever to learn from her great-grandmother’s mistakes - even if it means destroying Noah’s career.
Told in alternating timelines, The Things We Leave Unfinished examines the risks we take for love, the scars too deep to heal, and the endings we can’t bring ourselves to see coming.
Elite ballerina Allie Rousseau is no stranger to pressure. With her mother’s eyes always watching, perfection was expected, no matter the cost. But when an injury jeopardises all she’s sacrificed for, Allie returns to her summer home to heal and recover. But the memories she’s tried to forget rush in and threaten to take her under.
\nAs a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, Hudson Ellis knows that hesitation can mean the difference between life and death. He’s always prided himself on being in the right place at the right time, especially when it came to Allie Rousseau . . . until the night he left for basic. After the biggest regret of his life, the secrets he keeps mean he can never be with the one woman he wants more than his next breath.
\nWhen Hudson’s niece shows up on Allie’s doorstep, desperate to find her birth mother, Allie finds herself in an unimaginable position. Allie and Hudson’s past and present might be endlessly complicated. The thread that tied them to each other all those years ago may have unraveled, but the truth could pull them back together, or drive them apart forever.
\n
The last thing Chicagoan Maeve Kaminski expects to inherit from her estranged biological father is a pub. Now thousands of miles from home, Maeve is on a remote Irish island and the new owner of The Moorings. Charming? Yes. Practical? No. The bright side: Maeve is in debt, and off-loading a famous pub for a pretty penny could be the gift she’s been waiting for.
\nBriggs Murphy is suffering from a broken heart. Literally. Recently diagnosed with the same condition that killed his father, he’s not looking for love. But when Maeve shows up with her color-coordinated datebook and striking blue eyes, he falls hard. Too bad she’s off-limits. According to familial legend, they’re enemies. And for the sake of the island, they better stay that way.
\nLove was never the plan. But for Briggs and Maeve, it might just save them both. To make it work, they’ll have to rewrite history . . . before it’s too late.
\n
According to sixteen-year-old Zander Osborne, nowhere is an actual place - and she’s just fine there. But her parents insist that she get out of her head - and her home state - and attend Camp Padua, a summer camp for at-risk teens.
Zander does not fit in - or so she thinks. She has only one word for her fellow campers: crazy. In fact, the whole camp population exists somewhere between disaster and diagnosis. There’s her cabinmate Cassie, a self-described manic-depressive-bipolar-anorexic. Grover Cleveland (yes, like the president), a cute but confrontational boy who expects to be schizophrenic someday, odds being what they are. And Bek, a charmingly confounding pathological liar.
But amid group “share-apy” sessions and forbidden late-night outings, unlikely friendships form, and as the Michigan summer heats up, the four teens begin to reveal their tragic secrets. Zander finds herself inextricably drawn to Grover’s earnest charms, and she begins to wonder if she could be happy. But first she must come completely unraveled to have any hope of putting herself back together again.
Martina \"Marty\" Hart is really nice. At least, that's what people think. It's Marty's junior year at Minster High. Minster's a small town where making great grades, smiling pretty, helping old people, running the new-student Welcoming Committee, and putting up decorations for all the dances - including the totally awful Hot Shot fall hunting celebration - gets you . . . what?
\nMarty's not sure. Instead of dreaming about a sororities-and-frats future at nearby University of Michigan, she's restless, searching for a way out of the box her controlling mother and best frenemy Sarah have locked her in. When Lil - don't call her Lily! - Hatfield transfers to Minster, Marty gets her chance. Lil's different. She smokes, wears black, listens to angry punk records, and lives in a weird trailer with her mother.
\nLil has secrets - secrets that make her a target for all the gossiping and online bullying Minster can muster. But so does Marty. And Marty sees something different in Lil. Something honest. Something real. Playing Nice is the achingly true story of a girl who's been following the rules for so long she's forgotten who she was when she started.
\nIt's about falling in love with the wrong people and not seeing the right ones, about the moments in life when you step out of line, take a chance . . . and begin to break free.
\nEveryone eventually leaves Wren Plumley. First it was her mother, then her best friend, and then her sister. Now living with only her cop father and her upended dreams, Wren feels stranded, like a songbird falling in a storm.
When Wilder, a sickly housebound teen, moves in next door, Wren finally finds what she’s always wanted - a person who can’t leave. But a chance meeting with Luca, the talkative, crush-worthy boy in her driver’s ed class, has Wren wondering if maybe she’s too quick to push people away. Soon, Wren finds herself caught between the safety of a friendship and a love worth fighting for.
Wren starts to dream again. But when postcards begin arriving from her sister, Wren must ultimately confront why her mother left fourteen years before and why her sister followed in her footsteps. For her new life to take flight, Wren will have to reconcile the heartbreaking beauty of lost dreams and the beautiful heartbreak of her new reality.
For Clementine Haas, finding herself is more than a nice idea. Ever since she woke up in an Irish hospital with complete amnesia, self-discovery has become her mission.
They tell her she’s the lone survivor of a plane crash. They tell her she’s lucky to be alive. But she doesn’t feel lucky. She feels . . . lost.
With the relentless Irish press bearing down on her, and a father she may not even recognise on his way from America to take her home, Clementine assumes a new identity and enlists a blue-eyed Irish stranger, Kieran O’Connell, to help her escape her forgotten life . . . and start a new one.
Hiding out in the sleepy town of Waterville, Ireland, Clementine discovers there’s an upside to a life that’s fallen apart. But as her lies grow, so does her affection for Kieran, and the truth about her identity becomes harder and harder to reveal, forcing Clementine to decide: Can she leave her past behind for a new love she’ll never forget?
Deepa and Ruchi are 12 years old when they meet at their Catholic school in India, but their connection is swift and lasting. As the two girls grow up and face their families' expectations and the limits of their ambitions, their friendship is marked by intimacy, jealousy, and suppressed desire.
\nWhen, in their twenties, Deepa marries a doctor and moves from India to the suburbs of Connecticut, Ruchi quickly finds an engineer bound for the same state and follows her friend across the world. But life in the United States is different than either woman expects. Deepa's daughter seeks affection Deepa refuses to give, and Ruchi's son resists her smothering care. At the same time, Deepa and Ruchi find their closeness tested by a growing class disparity, competing family needs, and the differences in their desires.
\nUltimately, when Ruchi discovers a dangerous secret about Deepa's husband's wealth, both women are forced to weigh the tangled bonds of their friendship with their lives, and their families', in the burgeoning Indian American community.
\n
Maggie McCabe is teetering on the brink. A highly skilled and renowned Army combat surgeon, she has always lived life at the edge, where she could make the most impact. And it was all going to plan . . . until it wasn’t.
\nUpside down after a devastating series of tragedies leads to her medical license being revoked, Maggie has lost her purpose, but not her nerve or her passion. At her lowest point, she is thrown a lifeline by a former colleague, an elite plastic surgeon whose anonymous clientele demand the best care money can buy, as well as absolute discretion.
\nHalfway across the globe, sequestered in the lap of luxury and cutting-edge technology, one of the world’s most mysterious men requires unconventional medical assistance. Desperate, and one of the few surgeons in the world skilled enough to take this job, Maggie enters his realm of unspeakable opulence and fulfills her end of the agreement. But when the patient suddenly disappears while still under her care, Maggie must become a fugitive herself - or she will be the next one who is . . . Gone Before Goodbye.
Reese Witherspoon’s grandmother Dorothea always said that a combination of beauty and strength made southern women “whiskey in a teacup.” We may be delicate and ornamental on the outside, she said, but inside we’re strong and fiery.
Reese’s southern heritage informs her whole life, and she loves sharing the joys of southern living with practically everyone she meets. She takes the South wherever she goes with bluegrass, big holiday parties, and plenty of Dorothea’s fried chicken. It’s reflected in how she entertains, decorates her home, and makes holidays special for her kids - not to mention how she talks, dances, and does her hair (in these pages, you will learn Reese’s fail-proof, only slightly insane hot-roller technique).
Reese loves sharing Dorothea’s most delicious recipes as well as her favorite southern traditions, from midnight barn parties to backyard bridal showers, magical Christmas mornings to rollicking honky-tonks.
It’s easy to bring a little bit of Reese’s world into your home, no matter where you live. After all, there’s a southern side to every place in the world, right?
Sissy has an . . . interesting family. Always the careful one, always the cautious one, she has handled the cleanup while her serial killer sisters have carved a path of carnage across the U.S. Now, as they arrive in the Arizona heat, Sissy must step up and embrace the family pastime of making a man fall in love and then murdering him. Her first target? A young widower named Edison - and their mutual attraction is instant. While their relationship progresses, and most couples would be thinking about picking out china patterns and moving in together, Sissy's family is reminding her to think about picking out burial sites and moving on.
\nBut then something happens that Sissy never anticipated: She begins to feel protective of Edison, and then, before she can help it, she's fallen in love. But the clock is ticking, and her sisters are growing restless. It becomes clear that the gravesite she chooses will hide a body no matter what happens; but if she betrays her family, will it be hers?
\n
Margaux leads a double life that would make most people dizzy. By day, she's a seemingly ordinary interior decorator with a picture-perfect marriage. By night, she works for a mysterious employer known only as Mr. X. Her infiltrating the lives of dangerous targets, gaining their trust, and ultimately exposing their crimes.
\nHer latest Unraveling the secret life of Bertram Casimir, a billionaire tech CEO whose career is as mysterious as his past. His sister claims he stole her app to build his fortune. Not only that, his girlfriend may or may not have recently gone missing.
\nHe sees through her carefully constructed facade, matching her move for move. As the lines between hunter and prey blur, Margaux finds herself unexpectedly drawn to Bertram. They share more than she'd like to admit - a dangerous intelligence, a taste for high-stakes manipulation. When the evidence begins to shift, threatening to unravel everything she knows, Margaux realises this is far more than just another job.
\nHer secrets - and her life - are now on the line. One lie remains, and it might just save her.
\n
High in the Accursed Mountains, in a village ruled by the ancient laws of the Kanun, Bekja escapes an arranged marriage by becoming a sworn virgin, renouncing her womanhood to live as a man. Her decision sets off a brutal chain of events, destroying her family and separating her from the one she loves the most.
\nYears later, as Bekija - now Matija - tells their story to a visiting journalist, long-buried truths come to light, along with the realisation of all that might have been.
In 1872, New Orleans is a city ruled by the dead. But to seventeen-year-old Celine Rousseau, New Orleans provides her a refuge after she's forced to flee her life as a dressmaker in Paris. Taken in by the sisters of the Ursuline convent along with six other girls, Celine quickly becomes enamored with the vibrant city from the music to the food to the soirées and - especially - to the danger.
\nShe soon becomes embroiled in the city's glitzy underworld, known as La Cour des Lions, after catching the eye of the group's leader, the enigmatic Sébastien Saint Germain. When the body of one of the girls from the convent is found in the lair of La Cour des Lions, Celine battles her attraction to him and suspicions about Sébastien's guilt along with the shame of her own horrible secret.
When more bodies are discovered, each crime more gruesome than the last, Celine and New Orleans become gripped by the terror of a serial killer on the loose - one Celine is sure has set her in his sights . . . and who may even be the young man who has stolen her heart. As the murders continue to go unsolved, Celine takes matters into her own hands and soon uncovers something even more shocking: an age-old feud from the darkest creatures of the underworld reveals a truth about Celine she always suspected simmered just beneath the surface.
Seventy-one days and seventy-one nights had come and gone since Khalid began killing his brides. This dawn, Khalid would mark the loss of the seventy-second girl, Shahrzad al-Khayzuran. Khalid didn’t know how many more of these dawns he could take. And there was something about this latest girl that piqued his interest.
\n\n
Not only had she volunteered to marry him, but at their wedding ceremony, she had seemed not the least bit afraid. In fact, what he had seen in her eyes was nothing short of pure hatred. She was about to lose her life. Why wasn’t she afraid? Why did she hate him so? He had never before gone to his wife’s chambers before her death at dawn. Tonight would be different.
Following the events of The Beautiful, Sébastien Saint Germain is now cursed and forever changed. The treaty between the Fallen and the Brotherhood has been broken, and war between the immortals seems imminent. The price of loving Celine was costly. But Celine has also paid a high price for loving Bastien.
Still recovering from injuries sustained during a night she can’t quite remember, her dreams are troubled. And she doesn’t know she has inadvertently set into motion a chain of events that could lead to her demise and unveil a truth about herself she’s not quite ready to learn.
Forces hiding in the shadows have been patiently waiting for this moment for centuries. And just as Bastien and Celine begin to uncover the danger around them, they learn their love could tear them apart.
The city of Rey is burning. With smoke billowing, fires blazing and his people fleeing, Khalid races back to defend his city, and protect his queen. But Khalid is too late to do either. He and his men arrive to find the city in ruins, nothing but a maze of destruction, and Shahrzad is gone.
\nBut who could have wrought such devastation? Khalid fears he may already know the answer, the price of choosing love over the people of Rey all too evident.
It started as playful, if barbed, banter before rising to a fateful wager with a most notorious rake - the Captain of the Guard, Jalal al-Khoury - who may have finally met his match in a lovely, if haughty, handmaiden, Despina. But she, too, seems to have met her match in the handsome Jalal. What begins as a tempestuous battle of will and wit in short order becomes a passionate affair spurred on by tragedy of the worst kind.
Jia Song was always destined for greatness. As the daughter of Korean bodega owners, she promised herself that she would have every Fifth Avenue luxury when she grew up, and it is all within reach. She has just made junior partner at her prestigious Manhattan law firm, she has two best friends who are always there for her, and she is even about to score the ultra-luxe Birkin bag of her dreams.
\nSure, maybe her love life is in shambles and she’s spending too much time at the office. But she is set up to become the firm’s next star. So when her boss asks her for a Friday morning favor, sitting in on the hush-hush family implosion of a high-level client, she accepts without hesitation - only to find out that the client in question is one of the most famous Korean families in the world.
\nThe Park family’s net worth is estimated at a billion dollars, and their mega-successful Korean beauty brand has shaped the culture for the past two decades. But the patriarch is filing for divorce while his wife is dying, and their three children can’t stop snapping at each other.
\nWith both the family fortune and legacy under threat from the worst kind of scandal, it’s up to Jia to set things right - and she only has a month to do it. Suddenly, Jia is thrust into the three Park siblings’ back-stabbing family politics and embroiled in a drama that feels straight out of a Korean soap opera.
\nAs Jia sorts through the lies and subterfuge, chasing the truth across the globe on private jets, she finds herself falling for this broken, badly-behaving family in ways she can’t quite explain. But it is also becoming all too clear that the Parks are hiding dark secrets, from themselves and from Jia.
\nCan she separate the truth from the lies in time to protect the Parks’ fortune and secure her success at the firm? And can she hold on to what’s most important, even if it means admitting that what she always wanted isn’t what she actually needs?
Following the explosive events of The Damned, Odette faces a vampire's final death. The Court of the Lions have done everything they can to save her but have failed. A healer from the Sylvan Vale could help her, but only Arjun Desai, as a half fey, can cross the boundary between realms. The Sylvan Vale is a world Arjun despises, and in return, it despises him. But knowing it could save Odette, he returns to the Vale with all haste, leaving the mirrored tare between the two worlds open and unwittingly setting the stage for both love and war.
\nIt's mere days until Pippa Montrose is to wed Phoebus Devereux and become a member of his well-heeled family, offering salvation to her own. But Celine is missing. Pippa has no idea where her best friend has gone, but she's certain it's in the company of vampire Sébastien Saint Germain and that Arjun can lead her to them. Pippa enjoins the help of Eloise, the daughter of a powerful sorceress, to discover the gateway Arjun uses to travel between worlds. Pippa, tired of hesitating in life, marches right through in search of her friend. But what she discovers on the other side is a dangerous, duplicitous world full of mischief and magic she doesn't understand, and most unexpectedly, she finds love.
In a land on the brink of war, Shahrzad has been torn from the love of her husband Khalid, the Caliph of Khorasan. She once believed him a monster, but his secrets revealed a man tormented by guilt and a powerful curse - one that might keep them apart forever. Reunited with her family, who have taken refuge with enemies of Khalid, and Tariq, her childhood sweetheart, she should be happy. But Tariq now commands forces set on destroying Khalid's empire. Shahrzad is almost a prisoner caught between loyalties to people she loves. But she refuses to be a pawn and devises a plan.
While her father, Jahandar, continues to play with magical forces he doesn't yet understand, Shahrzad tries to uncover powers that may lie dormant within her. With the help of a tattered old carpet and a tempestuous but sage young man, Shahrzad will attempt to break the curse and reunite with her one true love.
The Sylvan Vale and the Sylvan Wyld are at war. Now that the unsteady truce between them has been broken, lines must be drawn. In an effort to protect the weakened Winter Court, Bastien rallies powerful allies and friends in New Orleans to come to their aid.
\nMeanwhile, under protection alongside her injured mother in the Summer Court, Celine is uncertain of whom to trust. She cannot get word to Bastien, and does not understand why he has not returned. When she realizes war between the fey courts is imminent, she journeys with Ali in an effort to find the time traveling mirror and change their fate.
\nBut when Celine's rivals realise Bastien has rallied his allies in the mortal world, they decide to take the fight to him.
Every dawn brings horror to a different family in a land ruled by a killer. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. So it is a suspicious surprise when sixteen-year-old Shahrzad volunteers to marry Khalid. But she does so with a clever plan to stay alive and exact revenge on the Caliph for the murder of her best friend and countless other girls. Shazi's wit and will, indeed, get her through to the dawn that no others have seen, but with a catch... she’s falling in love with the very boy who killed her dearest friend.
\nShe discovers that the murderous boy-king is not all that he seems and neither are the deaths of so many girls. Shazi is determined to uncover the reason for the murders and to break the cycle once and for all.
Master carpenter Blaze Carter has upheld her family legacy for honesty and excellence and honed a reputation to match. Her greatest desire is to pass her knowledge on to her children. All she has to do is find her perfect partner who wants the same things - a full life and a family of their own.
Trinity Greene grew up poor and has risen above the stigma of believing she’ll never amount to anything. She’s worked hard and is well on her way to becoming a head nurse in the ED. Her dream is within reach and the last thing she needs is an oh-so-attractive distraction.
When a devastating injury threatens to derail her future, Blaze struggles with the possibility of giving up on her dream. Trinity knows all too well the odds are against Blaze but isn’t willing to let her stop believing. Not when she’s beginning to care for Blaze’s heart as well as her recovery. Together, they must decide if love and a future is a possibility worth fighting for.
Montessori teacher Sky Roberts doesn’t think twice about entering a charity raffle for a free vacation. She can hardly believe it when the winning ticket turns out to be hers, but the trip conflicts with the summer school program she’s scheduled to teach. She can’t give up on her students.
\nDrew Mitchell excels in her job as a travel agent, and her success makes up for never quite measuring up to her family’s gender expectations and her disappointingly single status. That’s why she’s determined to win her company’s latest competition for best travel package and be named the top regional agent.
\nDrew can’t believe Sky is turning down a free vacation. She to take this trip. In a desperate attempt to get Sky to change her mind and ask another teacher to step in for her, Drew suggests they go on the vacation together. What better way to relax than with your very own travel guide? Plus, she can win the competition by keeping tabs on her travel plan as it unfolds.
\nAs Sky and Drew travel beautiful Fiji together, they’re about to discover that the trip of a lifetime may just lead to the kind of love they've been searching for.
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Hudson Frost thinks she has it all until her relationship is cut short. Unprepared for the end she didn’t see coming, she relocates to mend the pieces of her broken heart. Ariana Marks is out to prove she’s got what it takes to start a catering business and show her parents she isn’t a failure. When her business loan is denied, she’s left wondering if they’re right.
\nWhen Hudson’s and Ari's paths keep crossing, it feels like destiny. Hudson has the expertise to help Ari get her business up and running. Ari can help with Hudson’s awkward living situation. Both women want control over their lives - one to protect her heart, the other, her lifelong dream. Can they learn to give up control and give in to the growing attraction between them? Or will their reluctance to rely on each other prevent either from the life they’ve always wanted?
\n
Jordan Spade doesn’t get involved. The last thing she wants is to be responsible for someone. When her father needed her the most she wasn’t there, and she never got a chance to express her regret. She’s channeled her guilt into building her business as a general contractor, to at least have a sense of purpose even if she isn’t exactly happy.
\nCallie Burke is well on her way to making a name for herself as a stained-glass artist. Her next job puts her on a job site with Jordan, where some of the crew harass her. Callie knows how to handle it. She doesn’t need Jordan’s assistance, but she can’t help but notice Jordan doesn’t intervene.
\nJordan later feels compelled to make it up to Callie, and an unlikely friendship fans their simmering attraction. But to get close to Callie, Jordan must open her heart and accept she can’t control every outcome, and that means forgiving herself for a mistake she can never undo.
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Cole Jackson’s promise to her dying father has left her destined for a solitary life in the small town of Inlet, NY.
\nAfter Lee Walker's employer goes bankrupt, her world crumbles, and she’s forced to move in with her uncle.
\nWhen Cole and Lee meet, instant attraction quickly flares into uncontrollable passion, but their connection might be short-lived. Lee’s identity is tied to her life in the city, and she’s worked hard to make it on her own terms. Inlet, NY, is just a way station on her trip back to the world where she belongs.
\nIt will be up to Cole, and the heated nights they share, to give her a reason to stay.
\n
Rayne Thomas is an introvert and likes it that way. But after being spectacularly dumped and losing out on professional opportunities because she doesn’t put herself out there, she definitely needs to make a change. Enter her new personal trainer, Maggie Flanders. Kind? Yes. Fun? Yes. Sexy? Oh God, yes. But not even the most erotic dream of her life gives Rayne the confidence to risk this tentative new friendship.
\nMaggie Flanders has thrown herself into her work since her partner died eight years ago. There’s lots of opportunity to meet women and an occasional night of pleasure to satisfy her needs without letting anyone close. She lets everyone think she’s a player. It’s less lonely than the truth. But Maggie is never, ever falling in love again.
\nAs Rayne and Maggie work together in and outside the gym to build Rayne’s confidence, they struggle even harder at denying their attraction. Letting go of the past to embrace a better future takes herculean effort, but with love on the line, will Rayne be brave enough to tell Maggie how she really feels?
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Sean Moore is a dedicated agent for the Secret Service until a political scandal forces her into the private sector, making her question the values she has always held true. Jade Rivers has only ever wanted to be a writer. A breakout success catapults her into the mainstream literary world and she couldn’t be happier, but fame comes with a high price.
\nWhen an religious fanatic becomes a stalker and threatens her life, Jade hires Sean to be her personal bodyguard. Neither expects the instant attraction that sizzles between them. Will the perfect working relationship end in disaster when Sean's true feelings for Jade are revealed? And can Sean protect Jade before the stalker ends any chance they have of finding the kind of love that's always been missing from their lives?
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Harlen McGhee is miserable at work and barely holding it together in her personal life. Annie Duncan, bold and unapologetic, can’t pin down what - or who - she really wants. When a fender bender throws them together, Harlen and Annie feel a flicker of something special and neither wants to let it go.
\nBut chemistry has limits. Harlen is haunted by a past love and the tragedy that holds her heart captive in the present, and Annie is keeping a secret she’s too afraid to share. As their hearts collide and the truth grows ever nearer, will they have the courage to take a chance on something real?
\n
When Sarah Peters hires a private investigator to find the twin brother she’s just discovered exists, she’s unprepared for the cocky, self-assured Camdyn Stark.
\nFinding missing persons is Cam’s specialty and she knows she can get the job done, even if she’s not too keen to delve into the system she blames for her abusive childhood. There’s no denying her attraction to the quietly beautiful Sarah, but when she uncovers the truth, Cam’s torn between keeping Sarah safe and doing the job she was hired to do.
\nAs Cam gets closer to solving the case and revealing the danger threatening them both, will her own dark secrets and the lies she’s buried jeopardize her future with Sarah?
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Iranian exile Yadollah is barely scraping by in 1990s Paris. He lives in a run-down attic apartment with his friend Seyyed, and his girlfriend Ra’na. It’s an all too common situation - their apartment building houses a cast of eccentric neighbors, most of them fellow down-on-their-luck exiles from all over the world. When a mysterious new neighbor arrives on the scene, a man who ominously goes by the name of Prophet, Yadollah and his friends’ world is turned upside down.
\nYadollah suddenly finds himself confronted by the Islamic angels of death, and realizes that he must untangle the mystery of his own murder, which occurred at some unknown point after Prophet’s arrival. Suspenseful, yet darkly humorous, Woodwind Harmony In The Nighttime explores the trauma of displacement, and challenges readers to piece together the story of a life shattered by exile.
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Financial struggle is caused by one thing—our thoughts. To have a rich life, you have to use your mind, the very thing that has previously kept money from you. You must free yourself once and for all of a scarcity mindset, which unfortunately plagues the majority of people. When your mind becomes wealthy, YOU become wealthy.
\nCountdown to Riches reveals simple, proven wealth-attracting practices that are easily incorporated into daily life, and that will rapidly change the financial circumstances of anyone who applies them.
\nIn this book, you will:
• Find 21 days of life-changing practices leading to financial freedom.
• Unlock the power of the mind to create a rich life in every sense.
\n• Adopting new habits that will create and maintain wealth.
\n• Learn profound wisdom about our world and how life really works.
New York, Autumn, 1907: Former private detective Molly Murphy Sullivan is happy with her place in the world. She and her policeman husband, Daniel, have built quite a life for themselves in Greenwich Village, in their modest-yet-beautiful-home in Patchin Place, filled with family, friends, and laughter. Molly and Daniel have a good marriage, a true partnership where they value each other’s opinions in all things.
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So when he tells her they’re moving to a fancy home on Fifth Avenue - and that he’s running for the sheriff of New York - Molly is left reeling. Daniel begs Molly to trust him, but why would he run for sheriff on the Tammany ticket? A party known more for kickbacks and quid pro quo than anything else, it used to be everything Daniel despised. So what’s changed? And why didn’t he discuss it with her beforehand? Molly can’t help but wonder what Daniel’s got himself tangled up in . . . and whether he needs her help to get out.
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New York, 1908: The days are getting longer - and warmer - in Manhattan. Molly Murphy Sullivan doesn’t want to leave her home in the city, but typhoid is back, and she’s expecting. So she heads north with the children to summer with her mother-in-law in Westchester County. Molly tells herself it won’t be so bad, after all the countryside is pretty, and she’s determined to make the best of it. Even if she’s leaving her husband, Daniel, behind. And at least she’s not the only one heading north. Her great friends, Sid and Gus, are headed to the Catskills to visit Sid’s family.
\nThough her mother-in-law is a surprisingly excellent host, Molly quickly grows bored. And when Sid and Gus invite her to visit, Molly jumps at the chance to stay with them at an artist’s community. What a pleasant time they’ll have, so far from the city, although Sid isn’t so enthusiastic about having to visit her family in the nearby Jewish bungalow community. But deep in the Catskills, tensions are running high, and it’s not long before a body delays Molly’s return to Westchester.
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With a newborn and two children, Molly Murphy Sullivan is tackling motherhood. Her husband, Daniel, is off to work in Washington as Easter break begins in New York. Her dear friend and writer, Ryan O’Hara, is shooting a movie, one of the first to involve a real plot and actors. He invites Molly and the children to visit the set and watch the excitement.
\nWhen one of the actresses is fired, Molly’s adopted daughter, Bridie, is called to replace her in the scene. Turns out she’s a natural and is asked to star in the rest of the film. Molly is skeptical about leaving Bridie alone on set, but her great friends, Sid and Gus, offer to chaperone her.
\nThe movie industry is still experimenting with ways to get the best shot, like pretending to tie Bridie to real train tracks. But soon, their special effects start to malfunction. After a few mishaps where no one is hurt, the special effects turn deadly. With rumors of a feud between studios, Molly believes these malfunctions are sabotage. She is invited to go undercover on set to investigate the burgeoning film war.
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New York is busier than ever as two million visitors come to the city to witness the Hudson-Fulton celebration in 1909, marking the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson's discovery of the Hudson River. Parades, exhibitions, carnivals, and a marvelous display of the wonders of the latest invention - electricity - across the city make for two straight weeks of celebrations, which Molly and her family, along with their friends Sid and Gus, are excited to enjoy. But Molly is secretly dealing with financial troubles. She is too proud to ask her friends for a loan, but when they want to hire her as a detective she jumps at the chance.
\nSid and Gus are hosting fellow Vassar graduates to take part in one of the parades but one of the women, a brilliant scientist, never shows up. It seems nobody knows where she is, including her husband. Is she trying to run away from her life or is it something more sinister? Why have the Vassar women really come to New York City? When Daniel asks Molly to spy on her friends and find out just what they are planning she finds her loyalties horribly divided. Then the parade turns deadly and only Molly has the tools to find out the truth.
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New York, 1907: Now that she’s no longer a private detective - at least not officially - Molly Murphy Sullivan is looking forward to a time of settled tranquility with friends and family. Back in New York, where her own story began, Molly decides to accompany some friends to Ellis Island to help distribute clothing to those in need. This journey quickly stirs up memories for Molly. When you’re far from home and see people from your country, every face looks like a family member.
\nThat evening Molly’s policeman husband, Daniel, is late returning home. He comes with a tale to tell: there was a murder on Ellis Island that day, and the main suspect is the spitting image of Molly. The circumstances are eerily similar to when Molly herself arrived on Ellis Island, and she can’t help but feel a sense of fate. Molly was meant to be there that day so that she can clear this woman’s name.
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It’s Christmastime in 1905 New York City, and for once, Molly Murphy Sullivan is looking forward to the approaching holidays. She has a family of her own now: she and Daniel have a baby son and twelve-year-old Bridie is living with them as their ward.
\nAs Molly and the children listen to carolers in the street, they hear a lovely little voice, the voice of an angel, and see a beggar girl, huddled in a doorway, singing Away in a Manger. Bridie is touched by the girl’s ragged clothes and wants to help her out if they can. They give her a quarter, only to watch a bigger boy take it from her. But Molly discovers the boy is the girl’s older brother. They’ve come from England, their mother has disappeared, and they’re living with an aunt who mistreats them terribly.
\nMolly quickly realises that these children are not the usual city waifs. They are well-spoken and clearly used to better things. So who are they? And what has happened to their mother? As Molly looks for a way to help the children and for the answers to these questions, she gets drawn into an investigation that will take her up to the highest levels of New York society.
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With Molly Murphy’s wedding to NYPD Captain Daniel Sullivan quickly approaching, the Irish sleuth heads to the Westchester County countryside, where his mother can lend her a hand and advise her on a bride’s proper place. And shockingly, Molly seems to be agreeing. She has already promised that she’ll close up her PI business and settle down after marrying, but she isn’t a married woman yet. So, when she gets word of a possible case, she sneaks back into the city to squeeze in a little more sleuthing before the wedding bells can ring.
\nA wealthy Chinese immigrant wants her to find his missing bride, and Molly - sure she isn’t getting the whole story - suspects that his bride ran off. But where could she go? The only Chinese women in early-twentieth-century New York are kept under lock and key, and Molly can’t help but wonder if she’s saving the woman from the streets or helping to lock her away for good.
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Molly and Daniel Sullivan are settling happily into the new routines of parenthood, but their domestic bliss is shattered the night a gang retaliates against Daniel for making a big arrest. Daniel wants his family safely out of New York City as soon as possible. In shock and grieving, but knowing she needs to protect their infant son Liam, Molly agrees to take him on the long journey to Paris to stay with her friends Sid and Gus, who are studying art in the City of Light.
\nBut upon arriving in Paris, nothing goes as planned. Sid and Gus seem to have vanished into thin air, and Molly's search to figure out what happened to them will lead her through all levels of Parisian society, from extravagant salons to the dingy cafes where starving artists linger over coffee and loud philosophical debates. And when in the course of her search she stumbles across a dead body, Molly, on her own in a foreign country, starts to wonder if she and Liam might be in even more danger in Paris than they had been at home.
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Lady Georgiana Rannoch knows nothing is simple when you're thirty-fifth in line for the British crown, but her upcoming marriage proves to be the ultimate complication.
\nAs Lady Georgiana's beloved Darcy drives her out of London, she soon discovers that he isn't planning to introduce her to the pleasures of sinning in secret - as she had hoped - but to make her his wife!
\nOf course, she'll need special permission from the king to marry a Roman Catholic. Though he will inherit a title, Darcy is as broke as Georgie. Even his family's Irish castle has been sold to a rich American who now employs his father.
\nNothing will deter them from their mission - except perhaps the news that Georgie's future father-in-law has just been arrested for murdering the rich American. With the elopement postponed, they head for Ireland, where the suspect insists he's innocent, and it's up to them to prove it - for better or worse.
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Molly Murphy can't seem to fit in anywhere. Not with the new immigrants pouring in from the Old World and certainly not with the society folk she envies from afar. After bungling a job as a lady's companion, Molly decides to become an assistant to the notorious private investigator, Paddy Riley. Unfortunately, Paddy's underworld dealings leave him deader than a doornail and Molly in possession of his detective agency.
\nBefore long, Molly has set off on a journey that will take her through the back alleys of Manhattan and into the bars and lounges of the literary scene, where she spends time with writers, actors, poets, and musicians. It's quite an eye-opening turn for innocent young Molly, but she's resolute in her decision to find out exactly what happened that day in the office of Paddy Riley.
\nArmed with nothing more than her fiery will and matching wild red hair, Molly has no idea of the danger her pursuit may bring.
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Molly Murphy Sullivan's husband Daniel, a captain in the New York City police force, is stumped. He's chasing a murderer whose victims have nothing in common - nothing except for the taunting notes that are delivered to Daniel after each murder. And when Daniel receives a note immediately after Molly and her young son Liam are in a terrible subway crash, Daniel and Molly both begin to fear that maybe Molly herself was the target.
\nMolly's detective instincts are humming, but finding the time to dig deeper into this case is a challenge. She's healing from injuries sustained in the train crash and she's refurbishing her house, which has only just been rebuilt after burning down. She's also sidetracked by her friends Sid and Gus's most recent hobby, dream analysis. And when Molly herself starts suffering from strange dreams, she wonders if they just might hold the key to solving Daniel's murder case.
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Molly Sullivan is a year into her marriage, expecting her first child, and confined to the life of a housewife. She's restless and irritable in the enforced idleness of pregnancy and the heat of a New York summer in 1905.
\nSo when a trip to the post office brings a letter addressed to her old detective agency asking her to locate a missing Irish serving maid, Molly figures it couldn't hurt to at least ask around, despite her promise to Daniel to give up her old career as a detective. On the same day, Molly learns that five babies have been kidnapped in the past month.
\nRefusing to let Molly help with the kidnapping investigation, Daniel sends her away to spend the summer with his mother. But even in the quiet, leafy suburbs, Molly's own pending motherhood makes her unable to ignore these missing children. What she uncovers will lead her on a terrifying journey through all levels of society, putting her life - and that of her baby - in danger.
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Having inherited the cases of her deceased mentor Paddy Reilly, private investigator Molly Murphy is following philandering husbands, tracking down runaway debutantes and working in a sweatshop to discover who is purloining dress designs. None of these jobs seem very dangerous . . . at first.
\nBut when a woman's body is fished out of the East River, Molly fears it is the missing society girl everyone is talking about. Then Molly's sometime beau, police captain Daniel Sullivan, reveals that another corpse may be the girl's cheating lover, Mike Kelly.
\nAs the threads of passion and greed weave a vivid tapestry of violence, Molly must descend into the underworld of the gangs of New York - only to realise that she may need more than her street smart to get to the truth . . . and get out alive.
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Georgie is finally able to plan for her wedding in the summer. It is going to be a summer of weddings: her mother is marrying Max, her German beau; Georgie's grandfather is marrying his next door neighbor, Mrs. Huggins; and Darcy's father is getting up the courage to ask the princess to marry him. Georgie is staying at the princess's London house when she receives a letter from one of her mother's former husbands, Sir Hubert Anstruther. Georgie is now his sole heir, and he's offering her the use of his lovely country house. He suggests she move in right away to keep an eye on the place because all might not be well since his butler died.
Georgie talks this through with her husband-to-be, Darcy, who is off to Europe again, this time to Berlin. They decide that she will take Sir Hubert up on his offer. However, when Georgie arrives, it becomes clear that she is definitely not wanted in the house. Strange things are happening, including a lively ghost and a less than friendly reception from the new butler. When a body shows up, Georgie realizes that Sir Hubert's invitation may not have been entirely altruistic and begins to wonder if she'll even make it to her wedding day.
Georgie may be figuring out what it means to be a new mother but she does know one thing for sure: she absolutely despises the strict nanny who was foisted upon her by her meddlesome sister-in-law. In search of a new nanny, Georgie travels to London to see her old friend ZouZou only to find her about to depart for a funeral, after the unexpected death of a young man in her social circle.
\nIt quickly becomes clear there’s more than one mysterious death around town, when another friend reveals he’s also just returned from the funeral of a school friend, who seemingly died in a boating accident. But when word arrives that the son of family friend has also died tragically and unexpectedly, Georgie is certain it can’t be a coincidence. Yet the victims don’t seem to have any connection to one another.
\nZouZou shares Georgie’s suspicions that the deaths were not an accident and begs Georgie to solve the case. As Georgie delves deeper, she can’t help worrying that her own husband, Darcy, may be next. It seems likely there is a serial killer at work and Darcy fits the bill to be their next victim. Will Georgie solve the murders before it’s too late for Darcy, and manage to find the perfect nanny all at the same time?
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Semi-retired private detective Molly Murphy Sullivan is suffering from depression after a miscarriage following her adventure in San Francisco during the earthquake of 1906. She and her husband, Daniel, are invited for Christmas at a mansion on the Hudson, and they gratefully accept, expecting a peaceful and relaxing holiday season.
\nNot long after they arrive, however, they start to feel the tension in the house’s atmosphere. Then they learn that the host couple's young daughter wandered out into the snow ten years ago and was never seen again. Molly can identify with the mother's pain at never knowing what happened to her child and wants to help, but there is so little to go on. No ransom note. No body ever found. But Molly slowly begins to suspect that the occupants of the house know more than they are letting on.
\nThen, on Christmas Eve, there is a knock at the door and a young girl stands there. “I'm Charlotte,” she says. “I've come home.”
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Georgie is back and hanging the stockings with care when a murder interrupts her Christmas cheer in this all-new installment in the New York Times bestselling Royal Spyness series from Rhys Bowen.
\nGeorgie is excited for her first Christmas as a married woman in her lovely new home. She suggests to her dashing husband, Darcy, that they have a little house party, but when Darcy receives a letter from his aunt Ermintrude, there is an abrupt change in plans. She has moved to a house on the edge of the Sandringham estate, near the royal family, and wants to invite Darcy and his new bride for Christmas.
\nAunt Ermintrude hints that the queen would like Georgie nearby. Georgie had not known that Aunt Ermintrude was a former lady-in-waiting and close confidante of her royal highness. The letter is therefore almost a royal request, so Georgie, Darcy, and their Christmas guests: Mummy, Grandad, Fig, and Binky all head to Sandringham.
\nGeorgie soon learns that the notorious Mrs. Simpson, mistress to the Prince of Wales, will also be in attendance. It is now crystal clear to Georgie that the Queen expects her to do a bit of spying. There is tension in the air from the get-go, and when Georgie pays a visit to the queen, she learns that there is more to her request than just some simple eavesdropping.
\nThere have been a couple of strange accidents at the estate recently. Two gentlemen of the royal household have died in mysterious circumstances and another has been shot by mistake during a hunt. Georgie begins to suspect that a member of the royal family is the real target but her investigation will put her new husband and love of her life, Darcy, in the crosshairs of a killer.
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As thirty-fifth in line for the throne, Lady Georgiana Rannoch may not be the most sophisticated young woman, but she knows her table manners. It's forks on the left, knives on the right, not in His Majesty's back.
Here I am thinking the education I received at my posh Swiss finishing school would never come in handy. And while it hasn't landed me a job, or a husband, it has convinced Her Majesty the Queen, and the Dowager Duchess to enlist my help. I have been entrusted with grooming Jack Altringham, the Duke's newly discovered heir fresh from the Outback of Australia, for high society.
The upside is I am to live in luxury at one of England's most gorgeous stately homes. But upon arrival at Kingsdowne Place, my dearest Darcy has been sent to fetch Jack, leaving me stuck in a manor full of miscreants, none of whom are too pleased with the discovery of my new ward.
And no sooner has the lad been retrieved than the Duke announces he wants to choose his own heir. With the house in a hubbub over the news, Jack's hunting knife somehow finds its way into the Duke's back. Eyes fall, backs turn, and fingers point to the young heir. As if the rascal wasn't enough of a handful, now he's suspected of murder. Jack may be wild, but I'd bet the crown jewels it wasn't he who killed the Duke.
London 1932. Narrator Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, 34th in line for the throne, is flat broke. She bolted from Scotland - and engagement to Fishface (Prince Stiegfriend) - for London, where she has:
a) built a fire in the hearth
b) fallen for an absolutely unsuitable Irish peer
c) made a few quid housekeeping incognita, and
d) been summoned by the Queen to spy on her playboy son
When an arrogant Frenchman trying to swipe her family estate winds up dead in her bathtub, how can she clear her very long family name?
Molly Murphy is supposed to give up sleuthing now that she's married, but the murder of an alderman puts her on the trail of a killer.
\nMolly Murphy, now Molly Sullivan, and her husband Daniel, a captain in the New York Police department, have been invited to spend their honeymoon on the Newport, RI, estate of Alderman Brian Hannan in the spring of 1904. Molly doesn't entirely trust the offer. Hannan - an ambitious man - has his eye on a senate seat and intentions of taking Tammany Hall to get it.
\nWhen Hannan is found dead at the base of the cliffs that overlook the Atlantic, Molly's suspicions are quickly justified, and as much as she wants to keep her promise to Daniel that she won't do any more sleuthing now, there isn't much she can do once the chase is on.
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Irish immigrant Molly Murphy and her New York City P.I. business are in the midst of a sweeping influenza epidemic and a fight for women's suffrage that lands her in jail. Her betrothed, Police Captain Daniel Sullivan, finds her, but he hardly has time to bail her out, what with Chinese gangs battling for control of a thriving opium trade. The only consolation Molly can take from her vexing afternoon in the clink is that it made her some new friends among the Vassar suffragists - and brought her a pair of new cases.
For the first, Emily Boswell is convinced her miserly uncle stole her inheritance and wants Molly to uncover the truth behind her parents' lives and deaths. Second, Emily's college roommate Fanny Poindexter wants Molly to find proof of her husband's philandering so that she can leave him without one red cent. But when Fanny dies and her husband claims she's a victim of the epidemic, it's more than Molly's conscience can take.
When New York theatre impresario Tommy Burke asks Molly Murphy to help him take care of some family business back in Ireland, Molly is happy to oblige. Tempted by the prospect of going home for the first time in years (and putting her fledging detective agency on firm financial ground), Molly throws caution to the wind and climbs aboard the White Start Liner Majestic with hopes of sneaking on and off the isle without raising a peep.
\nUntil one passenger, who happens to be a famous Broadway actress goes missing - and another turns up dead. So much for smooth sailing . . .
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A woman private eye in a man's world, Molly Murphy is having a hard time succeeding in running her detective agency in New York. That's why she agrees to go undercover for the NYPD to expose a pair of spiritualist sisters as con artists, even though the offer of work has come from police captain Daniel Sullivan. Sullivan had once won Molly's heart - until she discovered he has a socialite fiancée and an upcoming society wedding.
\nStill, needs must, and so Molly finds herself posing as an Irish cousin at the uptown mansion of Senator Barney Flynn. Flynn's invalid wife hopes the psychic sisters can contact her dead son, kidnapped and lost in a sensational crime, and after a spooky séance, Molly isn't so sure the sisters are fake . . . but she's certain the police bungled the kidnapping case.
\nAll too soon her questions are leading her to danger . . . and it doesn't take a psychic to tell Molly that if she continues she may very well end up dead!
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Irish immigrant and PI Molly Murphy is thrilled to have a ticket to the theater to see a trio of illusionists that are all the rage. Indeed, headlining is Harry Houdini, the most sensational of them all; he has just returned from entertaining European kings and queens for a brief run on Broadway.
\nBut before Houdini can even take the stage, the opening act goes horribly wrong and to the crowd's shock the illusionist saws into his assistant. In the aftermath, the stunned performer accuses Houdini of tampering with the equipment he keeps under lock and key. And he's not the only one critical of \"The King of Handcuffs.\" Risking his life every night, Houdini has raised the stakes to such a perilous level that he's putting lesser acts out of business.
\nWith everyone on edge, Houdini's wife hires Molly to be part investigator/part bodyguard, but how can she protect a man who literally risks his life every night?
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Georgie's best friend, Belinda, inherits a spooky old house in Cornwall and asks Georgie to go with her to inspect the property. When they arrive, they meet Rose, a woman Belinda knew as a child when she spent her summers with her grandmother in Cornwall. Belinda never liked Rose, who has always been bossy and a bit of a bully, but when Belinda's house proves to be uninhabitable, Rose invites them to stay with her.
Rose is now married to Tony Summers, Belinda's childhood crush, and lives in the lovely house on the cliffs that he has inherited. Rose confides that she thinks Tony killed his first wife and now she is afraid. She asks Georgie and Belinda to observe Tony's behavior and their surroundings. Is Rose imagining things? Is Tony dangerous? In their quest for answers, they encounter a creepy housekeeper, Mrs. Manners, and learn that some kind of forgotten tragedy occurred on the property years ago involving them all.
There is a lot of strange to go around and things only get weirder - and deadlier - when one night a member of the household is found dead. All clues point to Belinda as the prime suspect. Now Georgie must uncover some long buried secrets that may prove the victim was really a villain before Belinda takes the fall for the murder.
Georgie is excited when Darcy announces out of the blue that they are flying to Kenya for their extended honeymoon. It is only after they arrive that she suspects he has actually been sent there on an assignment. She tries not to be angry, because she is, after all, in a paradise!
They are picked up in Nairobi and taken to a lovely house in Happy Valley - the center of upper-class English life there. Darcy finally confides that there have been some spectacular robberies in London and Paris, and it is suspected that the thief was a member of the aristocracy and may have fled to Kenya.
Georgie is shocked at the completely decadent lifestyle that involves wild parties and rampant infidelity. One of the leading lights in the community, Lord Cheriton, makes a play for Georgie. She rebuffs him. Then he is found dead along a lonely stretch of road. At first it seems to be a lion attack. But why was he on that stretch of road, alone, late at night? It seems the Happy Valley community wants to close the case, but as Georgie and Darcy investigate, almost everyone has a motive to want Lord Cheriton dead.
While my beau Darcy is off on a mysterious mission, I am once again caught between my high birth and empty purse. I am therefore relieved to receive a new assignment from the Queen - especially one that includes lodging. The King's youngest son, George, is to wed Princess Marina of Greece, and I shall be her companion at the supposedly haunted Kensington Palace.
\nMy duties are simple: help Marina acclimate to English life, show her the best of London and, above all, dispel any rumours about George's libertine history. Perhaps that last bit isn't so simple.
\nGeorge is known for his many affairs with women as well as men - including the great songwriter Noel Coward. But things truly get complicated when I search the Palace for a supposed ghost only to encounter an actual dead person: a society beauty said to have been one of Prince George's mistresses.
\nNothing spoils a royal wedding more than murder, and the Queen wants the whole matter hushed. But as the investigation unfolds - and Darcy, as always, turns up in the most unlikely of places - the investigation brings us precariously close to the prince himself.
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At the end of her first unsuccessful season out in society, Lady Georgiana has all but given up on attracting a suitable man - until she receives an invitation to a masked Halloween ball at Broxley Manor. Georgie is uncertain why she was invited, until she learns that the royal family intends to marry her off to a foreign prince, one reputed to be mad.
When the prince, dressed as the devil, rescues her from an embarrassing situation at the ball, Georgie is surprised to find her unwanted suitor to be a dashing, charming man - especially when he pulls her aside and gives her the kiss of a lifetime. But as the time comes for the unmasking, Georgie’s rescuer vanishes and the party is thrown into chaos, making it clear that everything at Broxley Manor is not as it appears . . .
Molly Murphy always knew she'd end up in trouble - just as her mother had predicted. After committing a murder in self-defense, Molly is forced to flee her cherished Ireland for the anonymous shores of America. Arriving in New York, and seeing the welcoming promise of freedom in the Statue of Liberty, Molly begins to breathe a little easier. But when a man is murdered on Ellis Island, a man Molly was seen arguing with, she becomes a prime suspect in the crime.
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If she can't clear her name, Molly will be sent back to Ireland where the gallows await. Using her Irish charm and sharp wit, she escapes Ellis Island and sets out to find the wily killer on her own. Pounding the notorious streets of Hell's Kitchen and the Lower East Side, Molly undertakes a desperate mission to clear her name before her deadly past comes back to haunt her new future.
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In turn-of-the-century New York City, Irish immigrant Molly Murphy is contemplating giving up PI work for something a little less complicated, less exciting. Molly has had quite enough excitement recently, thank you very much. Especially from the handsome but deceptive NYPD captain Daniel Sullivan, whom she'd like to avoid completely.
\nBut when Daniel is accused of accepting bribes and lands himself in the Tombs, the notorious city jail, he begs Molly to help prove he was framed, and after everything they've been through, she cannot turn him down.
\nAs she finds herself drawn further and further into the case, she begins to fear that Daniel's trouble is related to one of his investigations-catching the Eastside Ripper, a serial killer who is targeting prostitutes.
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When royal sleuth Georgie Rannoch receives a letter from her dearest friend Belinda, who’s in an Italian villa awaiting the birth of her illegitimate baby, she yearns to run to her side. If only she could find a way to get there! But then opportunity presents itself in a most unexpected way - her cousin the queen asks her to attend a house party in the Italian Lake Country. The Prince of Wales AND the dreadful Mrs. Simpson have been invited, and Her Majesty is anxious to thwart a possible secret wedding.
What luck! A chance to see Belinda, even if it is under the guise of stopping unwanted nuptials. Only that’s as far as Georgie’s fortune takes her. She soon discovers that she attended finishing school with the hostess of the party - and the hatred they had for each other then has barely dimmed. Plus, she needs to hide Belinda’s delicate condition from the other guests. And her dashing beau, Darcy is (naturally) working undercover on a dangerous mission.
Then her actress mother shows up, with a not-so-little task to perform. With all this subterfuge, it seems something is bound to go horribly wrong - and Georgie will no doubt be left to pick up the pieces when it does.
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What a delight it is to finally be able to enjoy a simple meal again! I have been in the throes of morning sickness for the last few months as Darcy and I prepare to welcome a brand-new addition to our little family. Now that I am feeling better, I have realized I am dreadfully bored! It seems that all my nearest and dearest are off leading their own busy lives while I sit at home and attempt to train our two adorably naughty puppies. Fun as it may be, it is hard not to long for a little adventure, a change of pace, before my true confinement begins when the baby comes.
\nHappily, it seems that Darcy has read my mind. When I receive a letter from my glamorous best friend, Belinda, Darcy suggests we take a trip to Paris to visit her. It seems he also has a spot of business of which to take care, so I will be staying in Belinda’s flat as she works feverishly on Coco Chanel’s fall collection. I happen to know Coco from a disastrous encounter in Nice years ago, and I am hoping this visit will go much more smoothly. But I soon learn that nothing about my time in Paris is going to be simple . . . or safe for that matter.
\nDarcy has asked me to take on a small chore as a part of his latest assignment. I am to covertly retrieve something from an attendee of Coco’s show. It seems easy enough, but I discover that this little errand could have terrifying consequences for a world on the brink of war. When things go horribly wrong, I am left to find a killer all while trying to fend off a French policeman who is certain that I am a criminal mastermind. But I have no plans to deliver my darling little one in a prison cell, and so I will muster every ounce of my courage to save the day . . . and, quite possibly, the world.
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Georgie, back home at her estate in Eynsleigh, impatiently awaits the birth of her baby. But she has plenty to occupy her: her new chef, Pierre, has arrived from Paris, and Sir Hubert, who owns Eynsleigh, is back from his latest expedition. It's time for Georgie to throw her first house party to celebrate his return and show off her new chef. The dinner party is a smashing success.
\nSir Mortimer Mordred - famous author of creepy Gothic horror novels - is one of the guests. He recently purchased a nearby Elizabethan manor nearby because it has a famous poison garden. After the dinner, Sir Mortimer approaches Georgie and asks to borrow her new chef for his upcoming party, and Georgie and Darcy, her dashing husband, are invited.
\nThe tour of the poison garden is fascinating, as is Sir Mortimer’s laboratory. Shockingly, just after the banquet several of the guests become sick. And one dies, apparently poisoned by berries from the garden. But how could this be when they all ate the same meal and the same delectable dessert? Georgie has to find the culprit to save her new chef and her own reputation - all before her bundle of joy arrives.
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My mother, the glamorous and much-married actress, is hearing wedding bells once again - which is why she must hop across the pond for a quickie divorce in Reno. To offer my moral support, and since all expenses are paid by her new hubby-to-be, Max, I agree to make the voyage with her.
Crossing the Atlantic, with adventure in the air and wealthy men aboard, Mother all but forgets about Max and matrimony - especially when movie mogul Cy Goldman insists on casting her in his next picture.
Meanwhile, I find myself caught up in the secret investigation of a suspected jewel thief. Lucky for me, the lead investigator happens to be my dashing beau, Darcy!
Mother’s movie and Darcy’s larceny lead everyone to Cy’s Hollywood home, where the likes of Charlie Chaplin are hanging about and there’s enough romantic intrigue to fill a double feature. But we hardly get a chance to work out the sleeping arrangements before Cy turns up dead - as if there wasn’t enough drama already . . .
1968. Liz Houghton is languishing as an obituary writer at a London newspaper when a young girl’s disappearance captivates the city. If Liz can break the story, it’s her way into the newsroom. She already has a her best friend, Marisa, is a police officer assigned to the case.
\nLiz follows Marisa to Dorset, where they make another disturbing discovery. Over two decades earlier, three girls disappeared while evacuating from London. One was found murdered in the woods near a train line. The other two were never seen again.
\nAs Liz digs deeper, she finds herself drawn to the village of Tydeham, which was requisitioned by the military during the war and left in ruins. After all these years, what could possibly link the missing girls to this abandoned village? And why does a place Liz has never seen before seem so strangely familiar?
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Penniless and thirty-fourth in line to the throne, Lady Georgiana Rannoch finds herself in a truly draining state of affairs. To escape her hateful brother, Georgie accepts an invitation from the Queen to represent the royals at a wedding in Transylvania.
\nBut at the macabre-looking castle, Georgie finds the bride with blood running down her chin, and a wedding guest is poisoned. Now it's up to Georgie to save the nuptial festivities before the couple's vows become: to love and to cherish, till \"undeath\" do them part . . .
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With its posh clientele in the country for the summer, Georgie's housecleaning business has fizzled. So she tries hiring herself out as a dinner-and-theatre companion. But her first client has quite the wrong idea. To avoid further scandal, Georgie's shipped home to Castle Rannoch, where her summer plans include honoring a promise to Her Majesty to keep Castle Rannoch's divorcée houseguest from seducing the Prince of Wales.
\nShe's also been coerced into helping Scotland Yard with a top-secret mission - namely keeping an eye on the shooting party at Balmoral and preventing someone from shooting the Prince. And Georgie must manage all this without strangling her odious sister-in-law Fig or spineless brother Binky.
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Baked beans and boiled eggs. That's what my houseguest, the Bavarian princess, will have to eat if I don't get help posthaste. The Queen of England has requested I entertain said princess, placing her in the playboy prince's path, in hopes he might finally marry.
But queens never consider money, of which I have little. And which is why I moonlight as a maid-in-disguise. My plans:
1) Clean house in manner of palace.
2) Blackmail brother, Binky, into sending a few quid.
3) Unteach Princess Hanni English from gangster movies - lest she address the queen as \"old broad.\"
4) Keep eye on princess at parties, where she drinks like a fish.
Then there's the matter of the body in the bookshop and Hanni's unwitting involvement with the communist party. It's enough to drive a girl mad . . .
It's wintertime in New York, and for the first time since Irish immigrant Molly Murphy started her early-twentieth-century detective agency, she is completely snowed in with work. While she's proving to be quite the entrepreneur and is very much in demand by some of Broadway's brightest stars and Fifth Avenue's richest families, she has to grudgingly admit that if she's going to work more than one case at a time, then she's going to need some help.
\nMolly's beau, the recently and wrongly suspended police captain Daniel Sullivan, would make an ideal associate, but before they can agree on the terms of his employment, they stumble upon a young woman lying unconscious in the middle of a snow-covered Central Park. When the woman wakes up she is disorientated and has and lost her ability to speak, the authorities are about to pack her off to an insane asylum when Molly can't help but step in and take on yet another case.
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Molly Murphy Sullivan's husband Daniel, a police captain in turn-of-the-century New York City, is in a precarious position. The new police commissioner wants him off the force altogether.
\nSo when Daniel’s offered an assignment from John Wilkie, head of the secret service, he’s eager to accept. Molly can’t draw any details of the assignment out of him, even where he’ll be working. But when she spots him in San Francisco during a movie news segment, she starts to wonder if he’s in even more danger than she had first believed.
\nAnd then she receives a strange and cryptic letter from him, leading her to conclude that he wants her to join him in San Francisco.
\nMolly knows that if Daniel’s turning to her rather than John Wilkie or his contacts in the police force, something must have gone terribly wrong. What can she do for him that the police can’t? Especially when she doesn’t even know what his assignment is?
\nEmbarking on a cross-country journey with her young son, Molly can’t fathom what’s in store for her, but she knows it might be dangerous - in fact, it might put all of their lives at risk.
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In 1944, British bomber pilot Hugo Langley parachuted from his stricken plane into the verdant fields of German-occupied Tuscany. Badly wounded, he found refuge in a ruined monastery and in the arms of Sofia Bartoli. But the love that kindled between them was shaken by an irreversible betrayal.
Nearly thirty years later, Hugo’s estranged daughter, Joanna, has returned home to the English countryside to arrange her father’s funeral. Among his personal effects is an unopened letter addressed to Sofia. In it is a startling revelation.
Still dealing with the emotional wounds of her own personal trauma, Joanna embarks on a healing journey to Tuscany to understand her father’s history - and maybe come to understand herself as well. Joanna soon discovers that some would prefer the past be left undisturbed, but she has come too far to let go of her father’s secrets now . . .
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me—well, actually, my true love, Darcy O’Mara, is spending a feliz navidad tramping around South America. Meanwhile, Mummy is holed up in a tiny village called Tiddleton-under-Lovey with that droll Noel Coward! And I’m snowed in at Castle Rannoch with my bumbling brother, Binky, and sourpuss sister-in-law, Fig.
So it’s a miracle when I contrive to land a position as hostess to a posh holiday party in Tiddleton. The village is like something out of A Christmas Carol! But no sooner have I arrived than a neighborhood nuisance, a fellow named Freddie falls out of a tree, dead . . . Dickensian, indeed.
Freddie’s merely a stocking stuffer. On my second day in town, another so-called accident turns up another mincemeat pie - and yet another on my third. The village is buzzing that a recent prison break could have something to do with it . . . that, or a long-standing witch’s curse. I’m not so sure. But after Darcy shows up beneath the mistletoe, anything could be possible in this wicked wonderland.
It's late 1936, and King Edward is in turmoil, having fallen in love with the scandalously divorced and even more scandalously American Wallis Simpson. He wants to marry her but knows that doing so will jeopardize his crown. Edward confides in his dear friend Darcy, Georgie's husband, and the couple agree to hide Wallis in their home while Edward figures out what to do.
\nBut unbeknownst to Georgie and Darcy, Sir Hubert, the owner of the estate, has given a film crew permission to shoot a motion picture about Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn on the grounds. Trying to keep Mrs. Simpson hidden while raising a newborn baby seems like it couldn't be any more stressful for the Rannochs, until one of the stars of the film is found murdered on set. Georgie must solve the murder for king and country before scandal threatens to envelop them all.
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In ten piercing new stories Richard Bausch fleshes out the rich inner worlds of his characters and plumbs the nuances of infidelity, loss, and profound loneliness.
\nIn “Donnaiolo,” a young divorcee moves back into her childhood home, with no plans other than to eat her parents’ food and smoke cigarettes in her room.
\nIn “Isolation,” a woman pines for her lover while quarantining from the COVID-19 pandemic with her husband, a situation that deteriorates when she learns her beloved has fallen gravely ill.
\nIn “Broken Home,” a Catholic school field trip takes a violent turn when the unsupervised altar boys discover an abandoned house in the woods. And in “The Widow’s Tale,” a recent widow attends a séance after her sister reports having reoccurring dreams about her late husband.
\nThroughout The Fate of Others, Bausch illuminates the tender, comic, and profound facets of the human condition, affirming once again his status as a modern master of the short story form.
There are three great kingdoms of life - Animals, Plants and Fungi - but the fungi always come in third place. This may be because fungi seem alien to many their strange forms, their rapid appearance and disappearance, their hidden means of feeding and propagation.
\nIn Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind, acclaimed scientist and author Richard Fortey acknowledges this otherworldliness, marvels at their unique charm and boots-up as a guide through this great, mysterious Kingdom of life.
\nTo Fortey, the strangeness of fungi is what makes them so exciting. Many people find them alien and the way so many toadstools appear so quickly and disappear with equal dispatch; their strange forms and colours; their reputation as poisoners.
\nBut for Fortey, the extraordinary nature of fungi makes him wonder, think and marvel. In Close Encounters of a Fungal Kind, Fortey leads us on a glorious literary journey, narrated through field trips to real places in search of the strangest, most extraordinary, or even most delicious fungi.
\nWriting with characteristic warmth, wit and wisdom, Fortey focuses on a selection of the larger fungi, the kind that might be spotted on a country walk, and a handful of microfungi that have particularly caught his attention. His enthusiasm and passion as a life-long ‘mushroom twitcher’ is infectious as he shares his own ‘close encounters’ and brings us along on his treks through this magnificent Kingdom.
\nThe unique charm of the mushrooms themselves is centre stage in this gripping narrative that explains what fungi do in the natural world and rejoices in their profusion and diversity.
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Margaret Winterbottom, 89, has lived on Garnon Crescent her entire life - except for a few years she never talks about. She knows all the their lives, their hopes, their heartbreaks. Only recently, Margaret’s memory isn’t what it used to be. She’s sure Barbara, her best friend and neighbor, told her something very important . . . but what?
\nWhen Barbara is found dead in an apparent homicide, Margaret is determined to recover the missing memory. Margaret and her grandson, James, begin investigating, but soon strange things begin happening in her home - objects moving and cropping up in odd places, the television turning on by itself. Some believe her memory is worsening, but Margaret knows somebody wants her out of the way because she holds the key to solving the case - if only she could recall where she put it . . .
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Four hundred years from now mankind is strung out across a region of interstellar space inherited from an ancient civilisation discovered on Mars. The colonies are linked together by the occasional sublight colony ship voyages and hyperspatial data-casting. Human consciousness is digitally freighted between the stars and downloaded into bodies as a matter of course.
\nBut some things never change. So when ex-envoy, now-convict Takeshi Kovacs has his consciousness and skills downloaded into the body of a nicotine-addicted ex-thug and presented with a catch-22 offer, he really shouldn¿t be surprised. Contracted by a billionaire to discover who murdered his last body, Kovacs is drawn into a terrifying conspiracy that stretches across known space and to the very top of society.
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Cynical, quick-on-the-trigger Takeshi Kovacs, the ex-U.N. envoy turned private eye, has changed careers - and bodies - once more . . . trading sleuthing for soldiering as a warrior-for-hire, and helping a far-flung planet's government put down a bloody revolution.
\nBut when it comes to taking sides, the only one Kovacs is ever really on is his own. So when a rogue pilot and a sleazy corporate fat cat offer him a lucrative role in a treacherous treasure hunt, he's only too happy to go AWOL with a band of resurrected soldiers of fortune. All that stands between them and the ancient alien spacecraft they mean to salvage are a massacred city bathed in deadly radiation, unleashed nanotechnolgy with a million ways to kill, and whatever surprises the highly advanced Martian race may have in store.
\nBut armed with his genetically engineered instincts, and his trusty twin Kalashnikovs, Takeshi is ready to take on anything - and let the devil take whoever's left behind.
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With The Steel Remains, award-winning science fiction writer Richard K. Morgan turned his talents to sword and sorcery. The result: a genre-busting masterwork hailed as a milestone in contemporary epic fantasy. Now Morgan continues the riveting saga of Ringil Eskiath - Gil, for short - a peerless warrior whose love for other men has made him an outcast and pariah.
\nOnly a select few have earned the right to call Gil friend. One is Egar, the Dragonbane, a fierce Majak fighter who comes to respect a heart as savage and loyal as his own. Another is Archeth, the last remaining daughter of an otherworldly race called the Kiriath, who once used their advanced technology to save the world from the dark magic of the Aldrain - only to depart for reasons as mysterious as their arrival. Yet even Egar and Archeth have learned to fear the doom that clings to their friend like a grim shadow . . . or the curse of a bitter god.
\nNow one of the Kiriath’s uncanny machine intelligences has fallen from orbit - with a message that humanity faces a grave new danger (or, rather, an ancient one): a creature called the Illwrack Changeling, a boy raised to manhood in the ghostly between-world realm of the Grey Places, home to the Aldrain. A human raised as one of them - and, some say, the lover of one of their greatest warriors - until, in a time lost to legend, he was vanquished. Wrapped in sorcerous slumber, hidden away on an island that drifts between this world and the Grey Places, the Illwrack Changeling is stirring. And when he wakes, the Aldrain will rally to him and return in force - this time without the Kiriath to stop them.
\nAn expedition is outfitted for the long and arduous sea journey to find the lost island of the Illwrack Changeling. Aboard are Gil, Egar, and Archeth: each fleeing from ghosts of the past, each seeking redemption in whatever lies ahead. But redemption doesn’t come cheap these days. Nor, for that matter, does survival. Not even for Ringil Eskiath. Or anyone - god or mortal - who would seek to use him as a pawn.
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Ringil Eskiath, a reluctant hero viewed as a corrupt degenerate by the very people who demand his help, has traveled far in search of the Illwrack Changeling, a deathless human sorcerer-warrior raised by the bloodthirsty Aldrain, former rulers of the world.
\nSeparated from his companions - Egar the Dragonbane and Archeth - Ringil risks his soul to master a deadly magic that alone can challenge the might of the Changeling. While Archeth and the Dragonbane embark on a trail of blood and tears that ends up exposing long-buried secrets, Ringil finds himself tested as never before, with his life and all existence hanging in the balance.
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From the award-winning author of Altered Carbon and Broken Angels–a turbocharged new thriller set in a world where killers are stars, media is mass entertainment,
and freedom is a dangerous proposition . . .
A coup in Cambodia. Guns to Guatemala. For the men and women of Shorn Associates, opportunity is calling. In the superheated global village of the near future, big money is made by finding the right little war and supporting one side against the other - in exchange for a share of the spoils. To succeed, Shorn uses a new kind of corporate gladiator: sharp-suited, hard-driving gunslingers who operate armored vehicles and follow a Samurai code. And Chris Faulkner is just the man for the job.
\nHe fought his way out of London’s zone of destitution. And his kills are making him famous. But unlike his best friend and competitor at Shorn, Faulkner has a side that outsiders cannot see: the side his wife is trying to salvage, that another woman - a porn star turned TV news reporter - is trying to exploit. Steeped in blood, eyed by common criminals looking for a shot at fame, Faulkner is living on borrowed time. Until he’s given one last shot at getting out alive. . . .
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The Great War was supposed to be the war to end all wars-and maybe it would have been, had an even greater, otherworldly foe not arisen to extinguish the conflict. Overnight, as guns blazed away in France and Flanders, village after village in the quiet British countryside were swallowed by the Forest. And within the Forest lurk the Huldu - an ancient fae race, monstrous in their inhumanity, who have decided that mankind's ascendency over the world can endure no longer.
\nEnter Duncan Silver. Scarred by the war, fueled by a rage deeper than the trenches in which he once fought, Duncan is determined to show the Huldu that the world is not theirs for the taking. Armed with a cut-down trench gun filled with iron shot and a deadly iron knife, Duncan will stop at nothing to return the children the Huldu have stolen from the arms of their families. No matter how many Huldu he may have to slaughter along the way.
\nBut when he is hired by a mother to return her four-year-old daughter, Miriam - taken by the Huldu six months past and replaced with a Changeling - all hell breaks loose. Miriam is a pawn in a much bigger game for dominance than Duncan ever expected, and several long-buried secrets from his past are about to be violently resurrected.
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Ringil, the hero of the bloody slaughter at Gallows Gap is a legend to all who don’t know him and a twisted degenerate to those that do. A veteren of the wars against the lizards he makes a living from telling credulous travellers of his exploits. Until one day he is pulled away from his life and into the depths of the Empire’s slave trade. Where he will discover a secret infinitely more frightening than the trade in lives . . .
\nArcheth - pragmatist, cynic and engineer, the last of her race - is called from her work at the whim of the most powerful man in the Empire and sent to its farthest reaches to investigate a demonic incursion against the Empire’s borders.
\nEgar Dragonbane, steppe-nomad, one-time fighter for the Empire finds himself entangled in a small-town battle between common sense and religious fervour. But out in the wider world there is something on the move far more alien than any of his tribe’s petty gods.
\nAnti-social, anti-heroic, and decidedly irritated, all three of them are about to be sent unwillingly forth into a vicious, vigorous and thoroughly unsuspecting fantasy world. Called upon by an Empire that owes them everything and gave them nothing.
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On a Mars where ruthless corporate interests violently collide with a homegrown independence movement as Earth-based overlords battle for profits and power, Hakan Veil is an ex–professional enforcer equipped with military-grade body tech that’s made him a human killing machine. But he’s had enough of the turbulent red planet, and all he wants is a ticket back home - which is just what he’s offered by the Earth Oversight organisation, in exchange for being the bodyguard for an EO investigator. It’s a beyond-easy gig for a heavy hitter like Veil . . . until it isn’t.
When Veil’s charge, Madison Madekwe, starts looking into the mysterious disappearance of a lottery winner, she stirs up a hornet’s nest of intrigue and murder. And the deeper Veil is drawn into the dangerous game being played, the more long-buried secrets claw their way to the Martian surface. Now it’s the expert assassin on the wrong end of a lethal weapon - as Veil stands targeted by powerful enemies hellbent on taking him down, by any means necessary.
Marsalis is one of a new breed. Literally. Genetically engineered by the U.S. government to embody the naked aggression and primal survival skills that centuries of civilization have erased from humankind, Thirteens were intended to be the ultimate military fighting force. The project was scuttled, however, when a fearful public branded the supersoldiers dangerous mutants, dooming the Thirteens to forced exile on Earth’s distant, desolate Mars colony. But Marsalis found a way to slip back - and into a lucrative living as a bounty hunter and hit man before a police sting landed him in prison - a fate worse than Mars, and much more dangerous.
Luckily, his “enhanced” life also seems to be a charmed one. A new chance at freedom beckons, courtesy of the government. All Marsalis has to do is use his superior skills to bring in another fugitive. But this one is no common criminal. He’s another Thirteen - one who’s already shanghaied a space shuttle, butchered its crew, and left a trail of bodies in his wake on a bloody cross-country spree. And like his pursuer, he was bred to fight to the death. Still, there’s no question Marsalis will take the job.
Though it will draw him deep into violence, treachery, corruption, and painful confrontation with himself, anything is better than remaining a prisoner. The real question is: can he remain sane - and alive - long enough to succeed?
Takeshi Kovacs has come home. Twice.
\nThe gains of the Quellist revolution are lost. The First Families, corporations and Yakuza battle to exploit even the dregs of Harlan’s World. And Kovacs has returned to extract revenge for his murdered dreams. As, it is whispered, has Quellcrist Falconer . . .
\nMutterings of a second rebellion stir in a maelstrom of political intrigue, and in the technological recesses of machine-infested New Hokkaido, fostered by a fragile craving for Quell’s return from the dead an dthe freedom of Harlan’s World. But when faced with a kernel of defiance the First Families act, bringing a savage young Envoy called Takeshi Kovacs out of storage to up-root the rebellion and crush it . . .
\nOnly one thing is certain: someone called Takeshi Kovacs is going to have to die. For good.
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The dramatic story of an ingenious man who explained nature and created a country.
\nBenjamin Franklin was one of the preeminent scientists of his time. Driven by curiosity, he conducted cutting-edge research on electricity, heat, ocean currents, weather patterns, chemical bonds, and plants. But today, Franklin is remembered more for his political prowess and diplomatic achievements than his scientific creativity.
\nIn Ingenious, Richard Munson recovers this vital part of Franklin’s story, reveals his modern relevance, and offers a compelling portrait of a shrewd experimenter, clever innovator, and visionary physicist whose fame opened doors to negotiate French support and funding for American independence. Munson’s riveting narrative explores how science underpins Franklin’s entire story - from tradesman to inventor to nation-founder.
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It is an ordinary Thursday and things should finally be returning to normal.
\nExcept trouble is never far away where the Thursday Murder Club are concerned. A decade-old cold case leads them to a local news legend and a murder with no body and no answers.
\nThen a new foe pays Elizabeth a visit. Her mission? Kill . . . or be killed.
\nAs the cold case turns white hot, Elizabeth wrestles with her conscience (and a gun), while Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim chase down clues with help from old friends and new. But can the gang solve the mystery and save Elizabeth before the murderer strikes again?
Who's got time to think about murder when there's a wedding to plan?
\nIt’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table plans and first dances. Elizabeth is grieving. Ron is dealing with family troubles, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to his favourite criminal.
\nBut when Elizabeth meets a wedding guest who’s in trouble, kidnap and death are hot on their heels once more. A villain wants access to an uncrackable code, and will stop at nothing to get it. Plunged back into action once more, can the gang solve the puzzle and a murder in time?
Shocking news reaches the Thursday Murder Club.
\nAn old friend in the antiques business has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing.
\nAs the gang springs into action they encounter art forgers, online fraudsters and drug dealers, as well as heartache close to home.
\nWith the body count rising, the package still missing and trouble firmly on their tail, has their luck finally run out? And who will be the last devil to die?
It's the following Thursday.
\nElizabeth has received a letter from an old colleague, a man with whom she has a long history. He's made a big mistake, and he needs her help. His story involves stolen diamonds, a violent mobster, and a very real threat to his life.
\nAs bodies start piling up, Elizabeth enlists Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron in the hunt for a ruthless murderer. And if they find the diamonds too? Well, wouldn't that be a bonus?
\nBut this time they are up against an enemy who wouldn't bat an eyelid at knocking off four septuagenarians. Can The Thursday Murder Club find the killer (and the diamonds) before the killer finds them?
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.
\nWhen a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it’s too late?
A wondrous, exhilarating novel about nine strangers brought together by an unfolding natural catastrophe.
\nAn artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing - and speech - impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. An Air Force crewmember in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan.
\nThis is the story of these and five other strangers, each summoned in different ways by the natural world, who are brought together in a last stand to save it from catastrophe.
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Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.
\nThey meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, whose deposits of phosphorus once helped to feed the world. Now the tiny atoll has been chosen for humanity’s next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But first, the island’s residents must vote to greenlight the project or turn the seasteaders away.
\nSet in the world’s largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonise in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterisation, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.
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Blood once turned the wheels of empire. Now it is money.
\nA new age of exploration and innovation has dawned, and the Empire of the Wolf stands to take its place as the foremost power in the known world. Glory and riches await.
\nBut dark days are coming. A mysterious plague has broken out in the pagan kingdoms to the north, while in the south, the Empire’s proxy war in the lands of the wolfmen is weeks away from total collapse.
\nWorse still is the message brought to the Empress by two heretic monks, who claim to have lost contact with the spirits of the afterlife. The monks believe this is the start of an ancient prophecy heralding the end of days - the Great Silence.
\nIt falls to Renata Rainer, a low-ranking ambassador to an enigmatic and vicious race of mermen, to seek answers from those who still practice the arcane arts. But with the road south beset by war and the Empire on the brink of supernatural catastrophe, soon there may not be a world left to save . . .
As an Emperor's Justice, Sir Konrad Vonvalt always has the last word. His duty is to uphold the law of the empire using whatever tools he has at his disposal: whether it's his blade, the arcane secrets passed down from Justice to Justice, or his wealth of knowledge of the laws of the empire. But usually his reputation as one of the most revered - and hated - Justices is enough to get most any job done.
\nWhen Vonvalt investigates the murder of a noblewoman, he finds his authority being challenged like never before. As the simple case becomes more complex and convoluted, he begins to pull at the threads that unravel a conspiracy that could see an end to all Justices, and a beginning to lawless chaos across the empire.
The true horror of the Great Silence has been revealed. As nation after nation succumbs to the mind-plague and Sova scrambles to enlist help from across the globe, Ambassador Renata Rainer has been given a simple task: save the world.
\nWhile she travels to the Principality of Casimir to enlist the help of the Empire's oldest enemy, Lieutenant Peter Kleist returns to the haunted forests of the New East to search for ancient answers - and finally confront the terrible fate that awaits him. In their wake, a task force of engineers, soldiers, and arcane experts will try and unpick the final secrets of the Great Silence - on both sides of the mortal plane.
\nBut time is running out. Count Lamprecht von Oldenburg has returned to the capital, armed with a terrible vision and enough madness to see it through. Those who stand in his way face a simple choice: join the revolution, or die.
\nAs the world tips towards chaos, all paths converge on the Eye of the Sea, where the fabric of reality wears thin - and where the Empire of the Wolf must confront the most terrible enemy it has ever known.
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The Empire of the Wolf is on its knees, but there's life in the great beast yet.
\nTo save it, Sir Konrad Vonvalt and Helena must look beyond its borders for allies - to the wolfmen of the southern plains, and the pagan clans in the north. But old grievances run deep, and both factions would benefit from the fall of Sova.
\nEven these allies might not be enough. Their enemy, the zealot Bartholomew Claver, wields infernal powers bestowed on him by a mysterious demonic patron. If Vonvalt and Helena are to stand against him, they will need friends on both sides of the mortal plane - but such allegiances carry a heavy price.
\nAs the battlelines are drawn in both Sova and the afterlife, the final reckoning draws close. Here, at the beating heart of the Empire, the two-headed wolf will be reborn in a blaze of justice . . . or crushed beneath the shadow of tyranny.
The Battle of Galen's Vale is over, but the war for the Empire's future has just begun. Concerned by rumors that the Magistratum's authority is waning, Sir Konrad Vonvalt returns to Sova to find the capital city gripped by intrigue and whispers of rebellion. In the Senate, patricians speak openly against the Emperor, while fanatics preach holy vengeance on the streets.
\nYet facing down these threats to the throne will have to wait, for the Emperor's grandson has been kidnapped - and Vonvalt is charged with rescuing the missing prince. His quest will lead him - and his allies Helena, Bressinger and Sir Radomir - to the southern frontier, where they will once again face the puritanical fury of Bartholomew Claver and his templar knights - and a dark power far more terrifying than they could have imagined.
Whom can you trust when all the world is a lie?
\nDecades after a cataclysmic cyberattack wiped out humanity’s digital memory, civilisation survives only because a shadowy elite known as the Consortia rose from the ruins to reconstruct the world’s lost knowledge. They gave society a seductive new form of AI, promising order, safety, and ease. But at what cost?
\n\n
For Robyn Sheridan, once a rising scientist whose career and reputation were destroyed in the chaos, the world never made sense again. Now a relentless truth investigator, she still feels the sting of the secrets that shattered her life.
\n\n
For Darius Tourner, an art hacktivist whose creations challenge the official narrative, every act of rebellion is personal - his way of fighting back against a world that erased someone he loved.
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Neither knows the other exists. Nor that an emergent AGI is beginning to ask unanswered questions. None of them realises they’re each uncovering fragments of a dreadful reality.
Jason Wade, a rookie crime reporter with The Seattle Mirror, a loner who grew up in the shadow of a brewery in one of the city's blue-collar neighborhoods.
\nAt the Seattle Mirror, Jason Wade is competing for the single full-time job being offered through the paper's intense intern program. But unlike the program's other young reporters, who attended big name schools and worked at other big metro dailies, Wade put himself through community college, and lacked the same experience.
\nWade struggles with his haunting past as he pursues the story of Karen Harding, a college student whose car was found abandoned on a lonely stretch of highway in the Pacific Northwest. How could this beloved young woman with the altruistic nature simply vanish?
\nWade battles mounting odds and cut-throat competition to unearth the truth behind Karen Harding's disturbing case. Her disappearance is a story he cannot give up, never realizing the toll it could exact from him. The Dying Hour is a bone-chilling, mesmerizing page-turner that introduces readers to an all-too-human young hero who journeys into the darkest regions of the human heart to confront a nightmare.
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On an ordinary morning, Maria Colson takes her baby son Dylan to the corner store. She turns her back for only a few seconds. When she looks again, she sees his empty stroller, as Dylan is being abducted into a waiting van. Maria climbs into the van, but is violently thrown to the road where she is left for dead as the vehicle vanishes without a trace.
\nAs Maria fights for her life and her anguished young husband keeps a beside vigil, the FBI and police across metro Sea-Tac and Washington State search for Dylan.
\nSeattle Mirror reporter Jason Wade is under pressure to bring in a big story, and the Colson kidnapping could be it. It’s certainly a bizarre case with pieces that just don’t add up: The Colsons are a hard-working couple. Former high school sweethearts. No problems. No enemies.
\nThen Jason and his dad, a private detective haunted by his former life as a cop, discover a grisly murder of a young woman that is somehow connected to the Colsons.
\nNow, in a dark Seattle underground of desperate dreamers and ex-convicts, Jason embarks on an investigation that parallels one led by Homicide Detective Grace Garner.
\nThey're both hunting for the one piece of the puzzle that connects the baby’s disappearance with a spine-tingling case of revenge. And time is running out, because whoever took little Dylan Colson is more dangerous than anyone could ever imagine.
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Perfect wife. Doting mom. Jennifer Griffin was loved by everyone, including the women in her suburban-neighborhood book club. Their meetings sometimes went late, but Jenn always came home.
\nUntil that night.
\nWhen Greg Griffin wakes to find his wife is not in bed, his blood runs cold. Her book club friends say Jenn left for home hours ago. But she's missing. Greg tells detectives their marriage is good, but his alibi is razor-thin. With their young son away at a sleepover, Greg had all night to commit a crime. And there are scrapes on his hands . . .
\nInvestigators discover Jenn has troubling secrets, but she isn't the only one. With the threads of their picture-perfect life unraveling, Greg is forced to confront the lies that hold their marriage together - and a dark past that refuses to stay buried.
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While driving to Canada with her boyfriend to start a new life, Samantha Moore, a college student from New York City, vanishes from a lonely, low-rent motel in Vermont.
\nRay Wyatt, a veteran reporter grappling with the tragic loss of his wife and son, is assigned to delve into the mystery enveloping the young woman's disappearance.
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Hikers find a traumatised boy wandering in a remote corner of New York's Adirondack Mountains. Retracing his steps to a cabin, they make a terrifying discovery that leads to an investigation entangling crime reporter Ray Wyatt and FBI Special Agent Jill McDade.
\nWyatt is dispatched to cover the disturbing case, while still haunted by the loss of his son and wife years earlier.
\nMcDade and Wyatt race the clock to learn the truth behind one of the most unconscionable crimes in the history of Upstate New York. At the same time, they grapple with the dawning horror that the monstrous event is linked to them.
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One sunny day in California, Jessie is hugging her nine-year-old son, Dylan, goodbye at the airport. He's travelling by himself, all the way across the country, to visit his father, Jessie's soon-to-be ex-husband, and his grandparents. Her heart breaks, but she puts on a brave face and gives her son one last wave as a flight attendant leads him away.
\nSeveral hours later, Jessie gets a frantic call from Dylan's grandmother in New York. Dylan is missing.
\nIn a second, Jessie's world turns upside down. The AirTag she'd stuck in his backpack says he's still at LAX. The airline insists that he was picked up at JFK by an elderly couple claiming to be his grandparents - but Jessie's in-laws insist they haven't seen him. Dylan has disappeared into thin air.
\nAt the same moment, miles away, in Toronto, a train operator loses control of a subway train, and the fiery crash injures dozens of passengers.
\nJessie doesn’t know it yet, but this crash is inextricably linked to Dylan's disappearance. She has to find out how - and where her son is.
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Rookie crime reporter Jason Wade, a troubled loner from the wrong side of the tracks, pursues the story of a murdered Seattle nun.
\nThe case leads him to a hermit nun who founded a mysterious religious order; and ultimately to the dark secret that has tormented his ex-cop father for decades. It culminates in a life and death struggle against the clock. With time running out, Jason and his father battle the odds to confront a terrible truth.
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On a flight from Mexico City, Wanda Stroud sees troubling content on the laptop of a passenger seated ahead of her. The next day, Wanda fails to show up for a coffee date she’s made with her friend.
\nRay Wyatt investigates the story while clinging to his last thread of hope that his son, Danny, is not dead.
At a truck stop near Las Vegas, fourteen-year-old Riley Jarrett vanishes from her family’s RV, turning their cross-country dream of starting over into a nightmare.
Investigators have their work cut out for them. The massive, bustling truck plaza in the desert is the perfect place for someone to disappear - or be taken.
Detectives pursue every chilling lead as all eyes fall to the newly blended family with a tragic past. With the clock ticking down on the likelihood that Riley’s alive, suspicions run deep. Everyone - from Riley’s mom to her stepdad to her stepbrother and her ex-boyfriend - has something to hide. And their secrets could prove deadly.
A missing child is every parent’s worst nightmare. For journalist Corina Corado, it’s a terrifying reality. When six-year-old Gabriel vanishes from Central Park, his mother, news anchor Corina Corado, is desperate for answers. Who would take her son - and why? Detectives suspect there’s a connection to the barrage of hate mail Corina’s received over the years.
\nIn her line of work, it’s not unusual for agitated conspiracy theorists to send messages that threaten violence . . . or worse. But as the investigation deepens, the secrets that Corina, her husband, Robert, and her stepdaughter, Charlotte, have kept start to unravel. As the truth behind Gabriel’s disappearance emerges, Corina must race the clock to track down her missing child . . . before paying the ultimate price.
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Jeff Griffin, a mechanic, and his wife, Sarah, travel from Montana to Manhattan to give their nine-year-old son, Cole, his dream vacation as they secretly face the heart-wrenching turmoil that has them teetering on divorce.
\nWhile sightseeing near Times Square, Jeff steps into a store to buy batteries for their camera - but upon returning to the street he finds that Sarah and Cole have vanished.
\nBattling his anguish and police suspicions, Jeff fights to rescue Sarah and Cole. He knows now that the love he and Sarah have is worth saving. But he could lose the chance to tell her amid growing fears that they have become entangled in an unfolding plot that could have global consequences.
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After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.
Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker.
Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother - or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.
How do you rid the Earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.
Surviving the first four waves was nearly impossible. Now Cassie Sullivan finds herself in a new world, a world in which the fundamental trust that binds us together is gone. As the 5th Wave rolls across the landscape, Cassie, Ben, and Ringer are forced to confront the Others' ultimate goal: the extermination of the human race.
Cassie and her friends haven't seen the depths to which the Others will sink, nor have the Others seen the heights to which humanity will rise, in the ultimate battle between life and death, hope and despair, love and hate.
The enemy is Other. The enemy is us. They’re down here, they’re up there, they’re nowhere. They want the Earth, they want us to have it. They came to wipe us out, they came to save us.
\nBut beneath these riddles lies one truth: Cassie has been betrayed. So has Ringer. Zombie. Nugget. And all 7.5 billion people who used to live on our planet. Betrayed first by the Others, and now by ourselves.
\nIn these last days, Earth’s remaining survivors will need to decide what’s more important: saving themselves . . . or saving what makes us human.
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Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the spirit of her dead sister as her only companion. Desperate to survive the hell that awaits her at their destination, Yetunde finds help in an unexpected form - the Devil himself. The Devil, seeking a way to reenter the pearly gates of heaven, decides to prove himself to an indifferent God by protecting Yetunde and granting her a piece of his supernatural power. In return, Yetunde makes an incredible sacrifice.
\nTheir bargain extends far beyond Yetunde's mortal lifespan. Over the next 175 years, the Devil visits Yetunde's descendants in their darkest hour of need: Lucille, a conjure woman; Asa, who passes for white; Louis and Virgil, who risk becoming a twentieth-century Cain and Abel; Cassandra, who speaks to the dead; James, who struggles to make sense of the past while fighting to keep his family together; and many others. The Devil offers each of them his own version of salvation, all the while can he save himself, too?
Welcome to the Japan of tomorrow. Here, the practice of radical sympathy toward criminals has become normalized. The incarcerated are considered victims influenced by their environments to commit crime and are labeled accordingly as Homo miserabilis.
\nA grand, yet controversial, skyscraper in the heart of Tokyo is planned to house lawbreakers in compassionate comfort - Sympathy Tower Tokyo. Acclaimed architect Sara Machina has been tasked with designing the city’s new centerpiece but is filled with doubt. Haunted by a terrible crime she experienced as a young girl, she wonders if she might inherently disagree with the values of the project, which should be the pinnacle of her career. As Sara grapples with these conflicting emotions, her relationship with her gorgeous - and much younger - boyfriend grows increasingly strained. In search of solace and in need of creative inspiration, Sara turns to the knowing words of an AI chatbot . . .
\nThe recipient of Japan’s highest literary prize, Sympathy Tower Tokyo is an extraordinary novel from one of the most exciting new global voices. Partly inspired by conversations with an artificial intelligence, it offers an urgent and brilliant defense of the power of language written by humans, a moving exploration of the imaginative impulse, and an often hilarious send-up of our modern world’s unrelenting conformity.
When the Home worlds finally achieved the technology to venture out into the stars, they found a graveyard of dead civilisations. What befell them is unknown. All Home knows is that they are the last ones left - and whatever came for the others will one day come for them.
\nScout is an Archivist who scours the dead worlds of the cosmos for their last gifts: interesting technology, cultural rituals - anything left behind that might be useful to Home and their survival. During an excavation on a lifeless planet, Scout unearths something unbelievable: a surviving message from an alien who witnessed the world-ending entity thousands of years ago.
\nNow Scout, their brother and their sometimes-fearless, space-faring cat, Pumpkin, must race to save what matters most.
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Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie–scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to - a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls. Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout's knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them, and, with that, one another. Despite the media's attempts, they never meet.
\nNow, Quincy is doing well - maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fiancé, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past.
\nThat is, until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit, and Sam, the second, appears on Quincy's doorstep. Blowing through Quincy's life like a whirlwind, Sam seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam is really seeking her out. And when new details about Lisa's death come to light, Quincy's life becomes a race against time as she tries to unravel Sam's truths from her lies, evade the police and hungry reporters, and, most crucially, remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished.
Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity - and skepticism.
Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father’s book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father.
Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself - a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father’s book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.
No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen's new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan's most high-profile and mysterious buildings. Recently heartbroken and just plain broke, Jules is taken in by the splendor of her surroundings and accepts the terms, ready to leave her past life behind.
As she gets to know the residents and staff of the Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, who comfortingly, disturbingly reminds her of the sister she lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story - until the next day, when Ingrid disappears.
Searching for the truth about Ingrid's disappearance, Jules digs deeper into the Bartholomew's dark past and into the secrets kept within its walls. Her discovery that Ingrid is not the first apartment sitter to go missing at the Bartholomew pits Jules against the clock as she races to unmask a killer, expose the building's hidden past, and escape the Bartholomew before her temporary status becomes permanent.
The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul de sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again.
\nThirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul de sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?
\nThe mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed monsters roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate.
\nThe closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realises that no place - be it quiet forest or suburban street - is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.
Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of liquor, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple who live in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing - a tech innovator, Tom is rich; and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous.
\nOne day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. But the more they get to know each other - and the longer Casey watches - it becomes clear that Katherine and Tom’s marriage is not as perfect and placid as it appears. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey becomes consumed with finding out what happened to her. In the process, she uncovers eerie, darker truths that turn a tale of voyeurism and suspicion into a story of guilt, obsession and how looks can be very deceiving.
Two Truths and a Lie. The girls played it all the time in their tiny cabin at Camp Nightingale. Vivian, Natalie, Allison, and first-time camper Emma Davis, the youngest of the group. The games ended when Emma sleepily watched the others sneak out of the cabin in the dead of night. The last she - or anyone - saw of them was Vivian closing the cabin door behind her, hushing Emma with a finger pressed to her lips.
Now a rising star in the New York art scene, Emma turns her past into paintings - massive canvases filled with dark leaves and gnarled branches that cover ghostly shapes in white dresses. The paintings catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the socialite and wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale. When Francesca implores her to return to the newly reopened camp as a painting instructor, Emma sees an opportunity to try to find out what really happened to her friends.
Yet it's immediately clear that all is not right at Camp Nightingale. Already haunted by memories from fifteen years ago, Emma discovers a security camera pointed directly at her cabin, mounting mistrust from Francesca and, most disturbing of all, cryptic clues Vivian left behind about the camp's twisted origins. As she digs deeper, Emma finds herself sorting through lies from the past while facing threats from both man and nature in the present. And the closer she gets to the truth about Camp Nightingale, the more she realizes it may come at a deadly price.
In 1942, six people destroyed Anna Matheson’s family. Twelve years later, she’s ready for retribution.
\nUnder false pretenses, Anna has lured those responsible for her family’s downfall onto a luxury train from Philadelphia to Chicago, an overnight journey of fourteen hours. Her goal? Confront the people who’ve wronged her, get them to confess their crimes, and deliver them into the hands of authorities waiting at the end of the line. Justice will at last be served.
\nBut Anna’s plan is quickly derailed by the murder of one of the passengers. As the train barrels through the night, it becomes clear that someone else on board is enacting their own form of revenge - and that they won’t stop until everyone else is dead.
\nWith time running out before the train reaches its destination, Anna is forced to hunt the killer in their midst while protecting the people she hates the most. In order to destroy her enemies, she must first save them - even though it means putting her own life at risk.
Meet the Bang-Bang Sisters: Brea, Jessie, and Flo. Together, they’re a kick-ass rock band with an unbreakable bond.
\nBut that’s only half the story. Offstage, they’re highly skilled vigilantes, traveling the country in their beaten-up tour van to exact justice on criminals who have slipped through the system. Part rock stars, part assassins, they’re a force to be reckoned with.
\nDrawn by a tantalizing lead, the sisters head to Reedsville, Alabama - a city crawling with destitution and corruption - where they close in on a notorious serial killer known as “the wren.” But they soon discover that they have walked straight into a trap set by Chance Kotter, a ruthless mobster with a personal vendetta.
\nBruised and beaten, the sisters find themselves at the mercy of Chance and a sadistic game of survival that will pit them against each other: Forty-eight hours. One city. Three sisters. Only one of them can survive.
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Harvey Anderson is a twenty-six-year-old street performer from New Jersey. He likes his peaceful life, but everything he knows is turned upside down when he is abducted and beaten by a group of nondescript thugs. Working for a sinister man known as \"The Spider,\" these goons have spent the last nine years searching for Harvey’s girlfriend, Sally Starling. Now they think they know where she lives. And who she loves.
There's only one problem: Sally is gone and Harvey has no memory of her. Which doesn't make any sense, until The Spider explains that Sally has the unique ability to selectively erase a person’s memories. An ability she has used to delete herself from Harvey’s mind.
But as Harvey recovers from his beating, he discovers that Sally left him with one partial memory... a dancing girl in a blue dress.
Life isn’t peaceful for Harvey anymore, and he soon finds himself in a war he can never win.
Or can he?
The remote town of Crooked Creek has barely recovered from its most recent tragedy when wildfires tear through the mountains. Detective Ellie Reeves is grappling with her own heartbreak - she has just discovered she was adopted and that her childhood was a lie.
\nUnder the scorching summer sun, Ellie is called to a river where a body has been found. She spots a lone woman’s shoe caught in a nearby tangle of vines, and a pearl necklace scattered by the water’s edge. The remains are surrounded by a circle of stones, which Ellie is certain means something. Was the victim - whoever she was - caught in the fire or is something more sinister at play?
\nThe Fourth of July usually means festivals and fireworks, but when another body turns up the town is left in tatters. A young girl with dark hair lies dead, surrounded by stones, smoke drifting in the air. Thanks to an engraved silver necklace, Ellie identifies the body as eighteen-year-old Katie Lee Curtis, and the diary she finds hidden under the teenager’s mattress could get her close to the killer.
\nWith two victims in less than twenty-four hours, it’s clear Ellie’s up against a serial killer, and she vows that no more innocent girls will be sacrificed. For her, every day is a battle to come to terms with her past, but when this case becomes personal, will she win?
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Traumatized as a child when she witnessed a grisly murder, Marilyn Ellis kept silent for fear she and her mother would become targets of a cold-blooded killer.
But guilt and nightmares have plagued her ever since that stormy night. Her silence allowed a predator to go free, a predator who may have killed others.
A predator who may be on the hunt again. As a topnotch investigative reporter, she will do anything to find the answers, including using her ruggedly sexy lover, Detective Ryker Brocket, for information.
She and Ryker make a good team in and out of bed. But can she trust him with her darkest secrets?
Detective Ryker Brocket has devoted his life to solving crimes and chasing killers. Sure, feisty reporter Marilyn Ellis inflames his passion, but he has no time for love.
Then Marilyn becomes the main suspect in one of his high-profile murder cases, and their professional and personal lives collide.
Clues lead them back to the cold case he’s working and the disappearance of the Darling sisters. And even though he’s suspicious of her, he feels compelled to keep her safe.
Then Marilyn becomes the killer’s prime target, and Ryker will risk his life - and his heart - to protect her.
But can he save her from the crazed killer who wants her dead and win her love?
As a snowstorm wreaks havoc in the mountain town of Crooked Creek, a woman is found buried in ice. Detective Ellie Reeves is first on the scene. Examining the body, she finds frozen blonde hair, pink nail polish and a silver heart necklace engraved with Mine Forever.
\nEllie has first-hand experience of the monsters that lurk in the mountains - her childhood is testament to that. She vows to catch this one, but she’s up against the brutal weather, with snow covering footprints and making forensics impossible.
\nFrantically trawling through missing-person’s reports, Ellie identifies the victim. Nadine Houser disappeared eleven years ago. Where has she been all this time? Why was she only murdered now?
\nAs storm clouds roll in, another girl is reported missing. Ellie retraces the steps of Ginger Weston who was renting a cabin in the mountains. She discovers a gold chain in the snow, spotted with blood. The killer is accelerating, and it’s just a matter of time before more innocent lives are robbed.
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With the town blaming Ellie for the missing girl on her watch, and everyone fearing for their safety of their daughters, it’s down to Ellie to solve the toughest case of her career. But when the killer comes after her, will she live to save Crooked Creek from its ruthless monster?
Detective Ellie Reeves should be enjoying the wedding of her dear friend Mia Norman. But instead of celebrating, she is frantically searching for the missing bride. Something is terribly wrong - just hours ago, Mia was blissfully happy. Why would she suddenly vanish?
\nBursting through the dressing room, Ellie finds it in disarray - chairs overturned, a perfume bottle shattered. Hiding in the bathroom is Mia’s six-year-old daughter Pixie, curled in a ball and sobbing her heart out. The little girl says she was locked inside when she heard a man’s voice, and her mother crying. “I just want my mommy back,” she pleads. Ellie vows to make that happen.
\nTurning the venue upside down, Ellie’s blood turns to ice when she reaches the riverbank. Someone is dead in the rippling water, floating beside a white veil. Ellie holds her breath as she turns the body over. It belongs to Tori, Mia’s bridesmaid, a gunshot wound in her back. Near the murder scene, Ellie discovers a button from a man’s shirt, and her friend’s engagement ring. The race is on to find Mia - before it’s too late.
\nWhen forensics come back, the investigation takes a dark turn. DNA proves that Mia was actually Jesse Habersham, a woman who went missing five years ago. Ellie is certain that Mia was running from someone. Did her past finally catch up with her?
\nFacing the most complex case of her career, Ellie is in a race against time. Can she uncover the truth before her friend is brutally killed? And when the murderer comes after innocent little Pixie, will Ellie save her from the clutches of death?
Tinsley Jensen survived the torturous clutches of an elusive masked killer dubbed the Skull, only to be held hostage by her nightmares. She’s terrified of leaving her cottage on Seahawk Island, knowing that the madman is still out there. FBI special agent Wyatt Camden knows it too. He may have rescued Tinsley, but her captor got away. Now he’s driven by guilt, the need for vengeance, and the desire to protect - at any cost - the woman he’s come to love.
\nToo paranoid to deal with the police, the media, and her sister, Tinsley finds solace in an online support group. She’s too broken to let even Wyatt into her life. But when the threats against Tinsley escalate and her friend disappears, Tinsley is forced out of her self-imposed seclusion to finally face her fears. Wyatt is the only man she can trust to help her, and to save a killer’s latest catch. Now, Wyatt just wants to finish the job he started.
\nBut that’s all the Skull wants too.
When the skeletal remains of a teenage girl are discovered buried in a deserted graveyard it’s a chilling case for Detective Ellie Reeves. Her heart catches with emotion as she examines the grave for clues and uncovers a haunting detail. One red shoe lies in the dirt, just like the one sixteen-year-old Ruth Higgins was wearing when she disappeared years earlier. Everyone in the town mourned beautiful golden girl Ruth, but her suspected killer, gravedigger Earl Bramble, escaped from police custody and hasn’t been seen since.
\nEllie knows she must work fast, and then a call comes in that turns the blood in her veins to ice. Another teenage girl, a recent runaway, has been found buried with one red shoe. The evidence suggests that Earl must be back. But when Ellie goes to the old clapboard house where Earl’s daughters still live, they claim to know nothing about their father . . .
\nEllie needs her team on side to help her solve this shocking case. But just as she begins to make headway, she discovers a connection from the past between one of her most trusted colleagues and the gravedigger’s daughters that throws everything she thought into disarray. With parents terrified, girls in danger and a cold-hearted killer stealing innocent lives, can Ellie find him, and make him pay, before it is too late?
In the small town of Crooked Creek, where the Appalachian Mountains climb into the clouds, nineteen-year-old Mandy’s Spring Break takes a sinister turn. Detective Ellie Reeves races straight to the scene, driving through the winding roads to the abandoned orphanage.
\nEllie saves the teenage girl but discovers human remains that have been there for thirty years, ever since the home for children closed down. Her heart shatters at the thought that they might belong to the helpless orphans.
\nWorking day and night on the case, Ellie searches for the orphanage’s files, but they have been stolen - somebody is clearly trying to cover their tracks. As she interviews the residents of the mountain community, Ellie finds out that almost everyone connected to the children’s home has disappeared.
\nThen a woman is found dead, her body marked with a strange symbol. When Ellie learns that the victim used to work at the orphanage, it’s clear that a twisted killer is trying to stop the truth coming out.
\nEllie vows to solve this case that spans decades and, when her research into the meaning of the symbol leads her to a local business at the heart of recent controversy, she’s on the right track. Can she bring the secrets to light before another innocent person is murdered? And when she gets too close to uncovering the truth, will she survive?
As the snow falls and a bitter wind blows, Detective Ellie Reeves is devastated to discover the bodies of two little girls, alone and frozen on an icy lake, in the isolated town of Cold Mountain. The girls are holding hands, with matching bows in their blonde curls, and when Ellie realises they are twin sisters, her heart breaks for their mother, who must be desperately wondering where her little darlings are.
\nBut, back at the police station, she is horrified to discover that nobody has reported the sisters missing. Are their parents in danger too? When an abandoned car is found near the girls’ bodies, and Ellie learns that the female driver is in hospital, she prays that the injured woman will know something about the twins.
\nA DNA test shows that the woman in hospital is the twins’ mother Barbara, and Ellie rushes to interview her. But when Ellie arrives at the hospital she is faced with an empty bed. Barbara has fled and her house is abandoned too. As Ellie searches the family home, she is chilled to see there is no sign of any children. If Barbara is the twins’ mother, where are the toys and photos of her precious girls?
\nWhen another little girl disappears, Ellie knows that finding Barbara might well be the key to saving an innocent child. But who is Barbara running from? Or does she have something to hide? And with the clock ticking and a fearsome winter storm brewing, can Ellie find the truth before another innocent life is lost?
All Detective William Flagler ever wanted was to be a cop,
Yet in his obsession to protect and serve, his marriage and family fell apart.
Now, on New Year’s Eve, three teenage girls disappear without a trace, creating panic and fear in the locals.
His search for the Darling sisters leads to family secrets and lies that make him evaluate his role as a father.
Secrets and lies that make him wonder if a serial predator called the Punisher is targeting the young girls on the island - girls just like his own daughter . . .
Can he save the sisters and his family, or will this case destroy him?
Still haunted by his wife’s murder—and stained by the blood of avenging it—FBI special agent Hatcher McGee can’t believe he’s being teamed up with rookie agent Korine Davenport. She is his most guilty secret - the one - night stand who almost cost him everything.
Korine has her own demons. As a child, she witnessed her father’s murder, and she’s spent her life waiting for the killer’s return. She and Hatcher are both looking for closure, but the disturbing case that draws them together could be their last.
When the mutilated body of a corrupt Savannah judge surfaces, Hatcher and Korine find themselves on the trail of a vigilante who is showing no mercy. Not for the predators who’ve gone free. And not for anyone who gets in the way.
As the body count rises, and as Hatcher’s and Korine’s own pasts unfold, they must risk their lives tracking a killer they’ve come to understand all too well. After all, the ends justify the means.
When Penny Matthews, a seven-year-old girl with blonde curls and a gap-toothed smile, goes missing in the Appalachian mountains, Detective Ellie Reeves is called straight to the scene. According to Penny’s parents, their daughter vanished after a picnic by the creek. All that’s left behind is a pink friendship bracelet etched with “Penny”.
Ellie knows all too well that the mountains’ endless miles of dark forest and winding rivers are the perfect place for a criminal to hide. Racing against the rapidly setting sun and a brutal winter storm on the horizon, she searches desperately for Penny.
Special Agent Derrick Fox is determined to join the hunt. His younger sister, Kim, disappeared in the same area twenty-five years ago - on the day he was meant to be watching her. He’s certain the cases are linked and that over a dozen girls have vanished in the last decade. Ellie refuses to believe that their tight-knit mountain community could be home to a deadly criminal, but even she can’t deny the similarities in the cases. And when they discover the remains of a small body buried with a carved wooden doll, it’s clear they’re up against a deadly serial killer preying on innocent little girls.
As the temperature plunges, Penny’s life hangs in the balance. Most people who get lost in the woods never make it out alive. Can Ellie and Derrick defy the odds and find out the truth about all the stolen girls? Or will the mountain, and its twisted killer, claim another victim?
When the call comes in that fifteen-year-old Kelsey Tiller has gone missing from her bedroom in the middle of the night, Detective Ellie Reeves rushes to talk to her distraught parents. They tell her that Kelsey, a slender blond with green eyes and a timid smile, had plans to go shopping for her homecoming dress the next day, insisting she would have no reason to run away. But when neighbors report seeing Kelsey with a secret boyfriend, Ellie wonders how much Kelsey really told her parents.
\nEllie is determined to find Kelsey’s boyfriend and interviews her friends and teachers at school. But just as she is making headway with the case, she receives some devastating news. Kelsey’s parents have received a photo of their daughter lying on a bed with white sheets over her body, skin ghostly pale under the freckles dotting her nose, her precious life snuffed out.
\nDesperate to find answers for those who loved Kelsey, Ellie studies the picture and realises that her body has been posed in the same way as a teenage girl murdered ten years earlier. And when she learns Darnell, the killer in that case, has just been released from prison, fear crawls through her. Could Darnell have stolen another innocent life?
\nBut just as Ellie thinks she has cracked the case, Kelsey’s best friend Ruby is snatched from her home, and Darnell has an unbreakable alibi. Haunted by Kelsey’s ashen face, Ellie knows she must race against time to find Ruby alive. And when she discovers one of her team is hiding critical information, she realises she needs to act alone. But is she dealing with a twisted copycat killer or is the danger far closer to home?
Lara is baking cupcakes when her six-year-old daughter Ava runs to catch the school bus just one block away. Chasing after her, Lara sees the bus tumbling past, and waves. But Ava never turns up at school.
\nDetective Ellie Reeves is in a race against time to find her - in missing child cases, every second counts. Searching the small town of Crooked Creek, she finds the girl’s bunny in the local park, the toy Ava carried around everywhere. Did Ava ever get on the bus?
\nWhile Ellie works around the clock, a local reporter gets a message: There are other missing girls out there. Digging into previous cases, Ellie discovers that another girl went missing on the same day the previous year. How many more could there be?
\nEllie is certain that the date means something - and that the person who sent the message is the key. But the community is up in arms, everyone worried that their daughter will be next, and blaming Ellie. The pressure is mounting, and time is running out to bring little Ava home. Can Ellie solve the toughest case of her career - and save Ava - before it’s too late?
On the hottest day of the year, as a heatwave takes hold of the Appalachian Mountains, a five-year-old girl goes missing. Just as the sun is setting, a family vacation becomes a worst nightmare - Betsy, with her green eyes, ponytail and rainbow t-shirt - disappears in the woods by Widow Lake. Detective Ellie Reeves is straight on the scene, promising Betsy’s heartbroken parents that she will stop at nothing to find their precious daughter.
\nHours later, Ellie is called back to the lake. One of her team have discovered some remains near where Betsy disappeared. The bones belong to a local girl, Amy Dean, who vanished ten years ago to the day, along with her two-year-old baby girl Paisley. But why was Paisley never reported missing? And could she still be alive?
\nEllie is suddenly up against the toughest case of her career. Her instincts tell her that the two cases are somehow connected, and she works day and night to uncover the link. When she comes across some little graves beside the water’s edge, she knows she needs to stop the evil lurking around this tranquil lake.
\nWhen Ellie discovers a notebook scrawled with the handwriting of a little girl, it could be the breakthrough she needs. Can she unravel a decades-old mystery, and stop the monster claiming innocent lives?
Detective Ellie Reeves heads into the wilds of the Appalachian Mountains when she wants to get lost––to forget the whispers chasing her and the past that keeps her up at night. She’s sick of having to prove herself to her small town.
But hiking in the endless miles of woods isn’t the escape she was hoping for. One night, as dusk falls, a gust of wind blows some petals on to Ellie’s path. Following the trail, she finds a golden-haired young woman dead on a bed of daffodils, with a note: Monday’s child is fair of face.
When Ellie emerges from the forest, there is a message on her phone. Someone has sent her a picture of her colleague, Officer Shondra Eastwood, with the words: Can you find her, Detective Reeves? Ellie is racked with guilt– - while she was busy hiding from life a killer was on the loose, and he has taken her beloved friend.
The wilderness, and its shadows, are the perfect hunting ground for a criminal––but what does the sinister nursery rhyme mean? It soon becomes clear when another dead woman, Tuesday’s Child, is found.
Ellie is up against a serial killer who will claim a victim for every day of the week, and in the next twenty-four hours there will be another body. As this ruthless murderer closes in on her, can she save more innocent women––and Shondra––from his clutches? Or will he get to Ellie first?
Two worlds collide when Rain Hargrove, a progressive lesbian, and Ivy Nash, a conservative Christian, clash at a political rally. Normally, that would be the end of the story, but it’s just the beginning when they’re approached by an old woman. Her bizarre chanting about love and hate disrupts their argument, and the two go their separate ways, pushing the incident from their minds.
\nThat is, until, without warning, they find themselves in each other’s bodies. Then they’re suddenly switched back. This can’t be real . . . can it? Did the old woman have something to do with this? The unpredictable body swaps continue, sometimes with hilarious consequences.
\nWhile Rain and Ivy search for a way to stop these unsettling events, they’re forced to see the world through each other’s eyes. As the unlikely friendship develops, they must face some of their deeply held beliefs and prejudices.
\nIs it possible to not only accept their differences, but also embrace them? If so, could the bond they’ve developed lead to something deeper?
Ambitious Blake Saunders is about to have it all. The forty-two-year-old is set to become CEO of a multibillion-dollar private equity firm and win at life. Until everything starts to unravel for the woman who is all about control.
\nHer sympathetic sister, Emma, offers her a One month with Emma where she makes all of Blake’s decisions for her. How bad could it be?
\nThen Blake finds herself at rundown Blissful Breeze Sanctuary stuck doing activities including pug yoga, emotion charades, and sharing circles.
\nWorse, the sizzling hot lawyer at the retreat who Blake has her eye on for “stress relief” is definitely not Emma-approved. No, her sister thinks she should instead romance the soft-spoken feminist bookstore owner who practices yoga and Stoicism.
Hollywood darling Mallory St. Cloud has it An Emmy, Grammy, and now an Oscar. She’s forty, feted, fabulous . . . and empty. On a whim, she leaves LA for Maplecrest, Pennsylvania, the hometown she fled when she was eighteen.
\nDependable Andi Grainger, owner of Maplecrest’s successful handy business Chicks with Tool Belts, is startled to see her famous former best friend back in town.
\nSoon, it’s as if their friendship never ended. Mallory discovers the connection she’s been missing in her shallow social circle. But Andi has to deal with the fact her straight, gorgeous, unattainable friend, the subject of Andi’s hopeless teenage crush, is right in front of her again.
\nExcept . . . Mallory’s not quite so straight anymore. And there’s a whole lot of pain beneath the surface they’ve been tiptoeing around. Is it time to be honest with each other at long last?
Dark clouds are gathering for cocky storm chaser Oakley Pierce as she throws herself into a bruising Oklahoma tempest that will change the course of four lives.
\nTracking her path is down-to-earth TV meteorologist Lana Monroe, who’d dearly love a commitment from her free-spirited partner, Oakley, after eight long years of absence and career sacrifice.
\nBuckled in with Oakley for the storm-chasing ride of a lifetime is butch, brave EMT Riley Gatlin. She can’t help but be drawn to the sweet newly divorced single mother Chloe Crawford, who seems as out of place in the group as she is sad.
\nAs the weather closes in, the women are forced to face their worst fears and buried truths. Will two couples emerge from the damage and debris, or will they be torn apart?
Greer Coffey is a principal dancer with a renowned Harlem company. Sebastian Coffey is an architect with a prestigious Midtown firm. The Coffey’s are the ultimate dream couple - until their world completely unravels. After Greer develops a career-ending neurologic disorder, she finds herself back in her hometown of Detroit. Angry, lonely, her marriage buckling under the strain, she takes to aimlessly wandering the city streets. One night, she stumbles through a vortex, a portal through time that transports her back into 1925 Detroit, where she meets a handsome, charming doctor.
\nDr. Montgomery Gray is a member of Detroit’s Black Aristocracy, wealthy and connected to some of the most powerful Black families in the country. Detroit in 1925 is the beating heart of an industrial nation, but it is also a tinderbox of poor immigrants, Prohibition-driven gang wars, and the Klan. As a member of the Talented Tenth, Monty is expected to be the tip of the spear in the fight for the Race, no matter the cost. Exhausted, frustrated, and longing to break free of expectations, he is stunned to find a woman from the future roaming Detroit’s Black Bottom.
\nInitially cautious, Monty and Greer slowly grow increasingly exhilarated with the visits. For Greer, 1925 offers an escape from the sorrow of her “real life,” and for Monty, the future that Greer lays before him is irresistible. But 2025 becomes gradually less and less recognisable, as each visit back through time causes increasing rips in the timeline. Ultimately, Greer finds herself trapped in 1925 and Monty is forced into a deadly confrontation that changes the trajectory of his life.
After her mother’s unexpected death, Layla Hurley must accept that their relationship was always distant and fraught. In the wake of her passing, Layla reconnects with the maternal side of her family - aunts she hasn’t been allowed to visit or speak to for years, and stories she’s never heard. She travels to South Carolina in search of closure, but discovers much more than she bargained for. While her mother harbored dark and disturbing secrets, there is also talk of her inheritance: a piece of land on the Gullah-Geechee island off the shore is now her own.
\nBut Layla inherits more than land. A long-buried mysterious power, dropped through generations of her Gullah ancestors, awakens. Like many women before her, Layla is a dreamwalker. She can inhabit and manipulate the dreams of others. As she dives into dark memories of her mother and the history of the island, she’s desperate to hold onto what’s real and untangle it from the looming dread that someone else, someone cloaked in malice, inhabits these dreams too.
\nNo gift is without its consequences, and Layla finds herself thrust in the middle of a nightmare against an enemy that could snatch away her family and her life as she knows it.
Remembrance . . . It’s a rumor, a whisper passed in the fields and veiled behind sheets of laundry. A hidden stop on the underground road to freedom, a safe haven protected by more than secrecy . . . if you can make it there.
Ohio, present day. An elderly woman who is more than she seems warns against rising racism as a young woman grapples with her life.
Haiti, 1791, on the brink of revolution. When the slave Abigail is forced from her children to take her mistress to safety, she discovers New Orleans has its own powers.
1857 New Orleans - a city of unrest: Following tragedy, house girl Margot is sold just before her 18th birthday and her promised freedom. Desperate, she escapes and chases a whisper . . . Remembrance.
Lythlet and her only friend Desil are shackled to a life of debt and poverty that she fears they will never escape. Desperate for money, they sign up as arena combatants who fight sun-cursed beasts in the seedy underworld of the city.
\nMatch-master Dothilos is initially enamored of Desil’s brawling reputation, but after seeing Lythlet lead the pair to triumph with her quick cunning, he takes her under his wing, scorning Desil. Ambition takes root in Lythlet’s heart as a life of fame and wealth unfolds in her imagination.
\nBut Lythlet isn’t the only one out for coin and glory, and she soon finds herself playing an entirely different game - a game of politics and deception. As the cost of her ambition grows, she will have to decide if sacrificing her honor, and only friendship, is worth the chance to shape her own fortune.
\n
I don't know what the humans are so cranky about.
\nTheir enclosures are large, they ingest over a thousand calories per day, and they're allowed to mate. Plus, they have me.
\nAn Autonomous Servile Unit, housed in a mobile/bipedal chassis. I do my job well: keep the humans healthy and happy.
\n\"Hey you.\"
\nHeyoo. That's my name, I suppose. It's easier for the humans to remember than 413s98-itr8. I guess I've gotten used to it.
\n---
\nRob Dircks, has a \"unit\" with a problem: how to deliver his package, out in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to guide him. Oh, and with the fate of humanity hanging in the balance.
\nIt's a science fiction tale of technology gone haywire, unlikely heroes, and the nature of humanity. (Woah. That last part sounds deep. Don't worry, it's not.)
\n
Mark was the most dangerous killer-for-hire in the world. But after learning the hard way that his life’s work made him more monster than man, he left all of that behind, and joined a twelve-step group for reformed killers.
\nWhen Mark is viciously attacked by an unknown assailant, he is forced on the run. From New York to Singapore to London, he chases after clues while dodging attacks and trying to solve the puzzle of who’s after him. All without killing anyone. Or getting killed himself. For an assassin, Mark learns, nonviolence is a real hassle.
If life were fair, ace pilot Jose Carriles should have ended up a desk jockey like his former friend Corin Timony, back on the lunar colony of New Destiny. Instead, he’s the pilot of the Mosaic - a massive ship taking the Interstellar Union’s first-ever mission to outside our solar system.
\nTimony should have been the best spy at the Bazaar, the lunar colony’s international intelligence arm. Instead, she’s been demoted to admin duties like monitoring long-range communications. She has no one to blame but herself - and maybe Carriles.
\nBut when the Mosaic experiences a series of strange malfunctions and Carriles is forced to take a wild gamble to save the ship, he begins to suspect the reasons behind the exploratory mission weren’t exactly on the up and up.
\nAt the same time, Timony’s old instincts kick in as she realises the distress call she received from the Mosaic has been wiped without a trace.
\nAs people start to end up dead and loyalties are tested, Timony and Carriles find themselves entangled in a star-spanning conspiracy that drags them through the darkest corners of their government - and their own personal failures - and face-to-face with a reckoning that could destroy humanity as we know it.
When Astrid, known in her assassin days as Azrael, stopped showing up to Assassins Anonymous, the group assumed her past had caught up with her. Only her sponsor Mark, formerly the deadliest killer in the world, holds out hope that she’s okay. Then, during a meeting, the group gets a sign, or rather, a pizza delivery. Is there another psychopath out there who actually likes olives on their pizza, or is Astrid trying to send Mark a message?
\nMeanwhile, Astrid wakes up in the cell of a black site prison, on a remote island. A doctor subjects her to mysterious experiments, plumbing the depths of her memory and looking for a vital clue from her past. She’ll do anything to escape, except . . . killing anyone. Hmm. Turns out it’s not easy to blow this joint without blowing anything, or anyone up.
January Cole’s job just got a whole lot harder.
\nNot that running security at the Paradox was ever really easy. Nothing’s simple at a hotel where the ultra-wealthy tourists arrive costumed for a dozen different time periods, all eagerly waiting to catch their “flights” to the past.
\nOr where proximity to the timeport makes the clocks run backward on occasion - and, rumor has it, allows ghosts to stroll the halls.
\nNone of that compares to the corpse in room 526. The one that seems to be both there and not there. The one that somehow only January can see.
\nOn top of that, some very important new guests have just checked in. Because the U.S. government is about to privatise time-travel technology - and the world’s most powerful people are on hand to stake their claims.
\nJanuary is sure the timing isn’t a coincidence. Neither are those “accidents” that start stalking their bidders.
\nThere’s a reason January can glimpse what others can’t. A reason why she’s the only one who can catch a killer who’s operating invisibly and in plain sight, all at once.
\nBut her ability is also destroying her grip on reality - and as her past, present, and future collide, she finds herself confronting not just the hotel’s dark secrets but her own.
Assassins Anonymous isn't just a weekly recovery meeting for reformed killers - it's also a family.
\nWhen Valencia receives troubling news that her brother has gone missing, she wants rush off to LA to find him. But she can’t bring her baby girl, Lucia. Enter the other members of Assassins Anonymous - Mark, Astrid, and Booker, who offer to watch the toddler while she's gone. After all, they're three of the deadliest, most highly skilled people on the planet; what could go wrong?
\nTurns out, a lot. Shortly after Valencia leaves, Mark is summoned to the lair of Zmeya, a Russian mob boss calling in a deadly favor - she wants him to kill Astrid, his protege and friend. Mark refuses, but Zmeya reveals that she knows the identity of Mark’s ex-girlfriend . . . and his son. Either Astrid goes, or they do.
\nMeanwhile, Lucia spikes a dangerously high fever, and when Booker and Astrid take her to urgent care, they realise too late, that their fabricated identities are a real liability. Also, they don't know Valencia’s last name, let alone Lucia's. They can hardly blame the staff for calling the NYPD.
\nSuddenly the splintered group is on the run from both the Russian mob and the police, dodging bad guys and do-gooders while trying to find refuge in a city full of surveillance cameras - all without killing anyone. That is, until Zmeya captures Sara and Bennett, and Mark is ready to throw his sobriety out the window.
\n
Paxton never thought he’d be working for Cloud, the giant tech company that’s eaten much of the American economy. Much less that he’d be moving into one of the company’s sprawling live-work facilities. But compared to what’s left outside, Cloud’s bland chainstore life of gleaming entertainment halls, open-plan offices, and vast warehouses . . . well, it doesn’t seem so bad. It’s more than anyone else is offering.
\nZinnia never thought she’d be infiltrating Cloud. But now she’s undercover, inside the walls, risking it all to ferret out the company’s darkest secrets. And Paxton, with his ordinary little hopes and fears? He just might make the perfect pawn. If she can bear to sacrifice him.
\nAs the truth about Cloud unfolds, Zinnia must gamble everything on a desperate scheme - one that risks both their lives, even as it forces Paxton to question everything about the world he’s so carefully assembled here. Together, they’ll learn just how far the company will go . . . to make the world a better place.
\nSet in the confines of a corporate panopticon that’s at once brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, The Warehouse is a near-future thriller about what happens when Big Brother meets Big Business - and who will pay the ultimate price.
Ismail Karaman is one of the deadliest terrorists in recent history. So why is he free to float around the Persian Gulf on his luxury yacht?
\nEx intelligence agent James Ryker thinks he knows why, and the answer lies at the corrupt heart of the SIS. Ryker isn’t one to let the bad guys get away with murder, but Karaman has many enemies, and one in particular will make all their lives much more complicated . . .
\nThey call her the Angel of Death - a former agent whose last encounter with Karaman cost her everything, and left her in a Lebanese prison cell. Now she’s free, and with nothing else to lose, she’s determined to get her revenge . . . whatever it takes.
\nRyker and the Angel may have the same target, but that doesn’t mean they’re on the same side. Who will reach Karaman first? And who will still be standing when the bodies pile up?
\n
He's never going to stop . . .
\nStalking the streets of Prague, James Ryker is on the hunt for justice when he hears a news report of a murder in rural England. Big problem. He knows the victim. Ten years ago, in Qatar, Ryker led a team of assassins to kill him. He thought they had.
\nSo how has a man Ryker thought dead for over a decade suddenly resurfaced?
\nTravelling across the globe, Ryker sets off on a quest to discover the truth from that fateful night in Qatar. When he realises that his old team members are now under threat from a ruthless female assassin, he knows his problems have only just started.
\nIn a race against time, Ryker must work out who is behind the killings and evade the assassin before he becomes the next victim . . .
\n
What do you do when the love of your life vanishes without a trace? If you’re ex-intelligence agent James Ryker you search for the answers whatever the cost, however much blood and sacrifice it takes . . .
\nSix months ago Lisa was taken from Ryker, and he’ll stop at nothing to find out who is responsible and why. Following a trail to Mexico, the ex-Joint Intelligence Agency asset soon finds himself in the firing line of enemies he long thought he’d left behind.
\nSet-up for the murder of a former informant, Ryker is thrown into a crumbling jail run by The Black Hornet, the notorious leader of a Mexican drug cartel. But what connects the cartel to the informant’s murder, and to Lisa’s disappearance? And just who is the mystery American claiming he can help Ryker in his hour of need?
\n
Annie and Terry Eccles seemed to have it all, until one night they are brutally murdered in their bed.
\nCalled in to head up the case, DI Dani Stephens delves into the couple’s past, quickly realising that beneath the comfortable veneer of this apparently golden family, lies uncomfortable truths.
\nBut when Dani finds her own safety threatened, it becomes clear that someone wants those truths to remain hidden - whatever it takes . . .
\n
The most dangerous people are those with nothing to lose. Who don't care if they live or die.
\nSimon Peake does care . . . he just isn’t sure about what right now. The ex-soldier’s life is as close to rock bottom as it gets.
\nHe needs a job and he needs a quiet life.
\nWhat he gets is a whole load of mess working for New York-based Irish mobster Harry Lafferty. A job that requires him to use his special skills on some very unsavory people. His relationship with Harry’s niece isn’t exactly conducive to a quiet existence either . . .
\nAs Peake tries to walk the fine line between surviving in this new life, and atoning for his old one, he struggles on both counts. And when his past comes back to bite him, and those closest to him are threatened, the reckoning will be merciless for anyone who stands in his way.
A knock on the door in the middle of the night catches ex-Special Forces Simon Peake off guard. He only recognises one of the three men standing on the other side, and the ‘help’ they need is to dispose of a dead body crumpled in the trunk of their car.
\nProblem is - the woman in the trunk isn’t dead at all.
\nIn a matter of moments, Peake makes a call to help and protect this stranger, but it’s a decision that will drag him back into the dark and dangerous world of drug cartels, mob bosses, and rogue CIA operatives who will stop at nothing to use Peake as a pawn in their games.
\nHaving spent the last few months living in near seclusion in small town Georgia, Peake is once again faced with his past. He knows why these men have chosen to come to his door in their hour of need, but unfortunately for them, they didn’t realise what a deadly mistake that would be . . .
James Ryker knows the ghosts of his dark and violent past are never far away. Yet he’s still taken aback when he sees Leia Devereaux’s face at his door. Even more surprising is that the woman he knows to be a lethal assassin claims she’s not there to hurt him, but to ask for his help in keeping the stranger accompanying her, David Muller, alive.
\nShe says Muller is more valuable than Ryker can imagine. But Ryker isn’t given any time to investigate before chaos descends upon them. In the aftermath, Devereaux disappears and Ryker is left with only questions.
\nWhy would the deadly Leia Devereaux come to Ryker for help? What did the notorious assassin want with David Muller? Most importantly, who are the armed assailants now out for Ryker’s blood?
\n
A woman drowned in a bath; half a bottle of vodka and a packet of pills. But then evidence suggests that the woman was murdered – and that solving this mystery will mean delving deep into the past.
\nStill haunted by the previous investigation that left her boyfriend in intensive care, Dani’s search takes her into the world of organised crime - people willing to kill for their secrets.
\nAs more bodies are discovered, smiling in the background is the man who tried to end her life: her own twin brother. Even behind bars, it seems that Ben might just hold the key to everything.
\nBut can she trust him enough to help her? And can Dani trust herself to catch a killer who will stop at nothing to keep her silent?
\n
When D.I Dani Stephens returns to work after the attack that almost ended her life, she’s quickly plunged into a horrific new case, as dead bodies are discovered on the streets of Birmingham.
\nBut with no link between the victims, Dani has to get inside a killer’s mind - so turns to the murderer she knows best. Her own twin brother . . .
\nBut what makes a psychopath? Can understanding her twin help her find a murderer who leaves no trace? As the circle closes on Dani, the clock is ticking and she needs a breakthrough - before she becomes the latest victim.
I need your help. Call me.
Ex-intelligence agent James Ryker receives a coded message through a secret drop point, a means of communication known only to him and one other person. The problem is, that person is his ex-boss, Mackie . . . and he’s already dead.
But the cry for help is real, and it’s a request Ryker can’t refuse.
Travelling to New York alone and without official sanction, Ryker has a single goal in mind, yet even he couldn’t have bargained for the violent world he’s soon embroiled in. Caught in the middle of a spiraling chaos, with the FBI on one side and warring underworld bosses on the other, Ryker must put all of his skills to the test in order to come out on top and keep his word.
In a world full of lies and deceit, loyalty is everything, and it’s time for James Ryker to pay his dues.
Travelling through frozen north Norway, Ryker isn’t looking for trouble, but he has a habit of finding it. After a near miss on the road with a young moped driver, a local policeman assists the teenager and encourages Ryker on his way. But when Ryker travels to the nearby small town of Blodstein - only to be warned off by the locals when he asks questions about the boy he nearly killed - his instincts as a longtime intelligence agent fire.
\nRyker is determined to find out who the boy is, and where he has gone, but soon finds himself pulling at the edges of a conspiracy that threatens to erupt with blood and violence.
\nUnless he can determine the truth and put an end to it all. But as the outsider, is there anyone he can trust?
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James Ryker and his protege, Henrik Svenson, travel to the small alpine town of St Vincent, recently rocked by the triple murder of a prominent family. The sole survivor of the horrific crime, teenager Sophie Thibaud, has since been cared for by her aunt. Upon their arrival, however, Ryker and Svenson discover that Sophie is now missing too, and it's not long before Ryker uncovers evidence of a wider conspiracy at play.
\nTheir search for Sophie and the truth takes them to Lyon and beyond, crossing paths with ruthless mobsters and corrupt police on the way as Ryker looks to expose those involved in enriching themselves through any means possible. But in searching for answers against all odds, can Ryker remain protector to those who need him most?
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Carl Logan dedicated nearly twenty years of his life to the Joint Intelligence Agency. Now living in a secret location, under the new identify of James Ryker, he wants nothing more than to be left alone, the chance to start a new life away from chaos, violence, destruction and deceit.
\nIt’s not long, however, before Ryker’s short-lived idyll is destroyed when he is tracked down by Peter Winter, his ex-boss at the JIA. Winter brings with him news of the murder of a woman in Spain, Kim Walker, whose fingerprints match those of one of Ryker’s former adversaries who’s been missing presumed dead for years - an infamous female assassin known as the Red Cobra.
\nA cyberattack at the JIA led to the Red Cobra’s profile being compromised, and Winter believes JIA agents may now be at risk too, Ryker included. But Ryker knew the elusive Red Cobra better than anyone, and when he sees the grisly pictures of Kim Walker’s corpse, he has news for Winter - she isn't the assassin at all . . .
\nSo just who is the mystery dead woman? And where is the real Red Cobra?
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James Ryker, a veteran intelligence agent now freelancer, working for the secretive Joint Intelligence agency on an op-by-op basis, finds himself embroiled in a complicated mission that will test him to his limit.
\nWhen a simple surveillance mission goes awry and the key target is kidnapped in broad daylight in a busy London square, Ryker knows he has his work cut out.
\nRyker is tasked with figuring out what went wrong. But when his good friend Sam Moreno disappears without a trace, the mission becomes more personal than he could have imagined.
\nTorn between toeing the government line, and finding the answers he needs, Ryker realises there’s only one way to find those responsible and to punish them . . . His way.
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Curtis Delaney watches the footage play out on the news, and immediately recognises the unidentified hero. He hasn’t seen his brother Finn in six years. He doesn’t know where he’s been in that time, or what he’s been doing. But there’s one thing he does know: Finn is no hero.
\nCurtis is determined to find his brother, but equally, Curtis is no detective. A husband and lawyer (and not the 'good' kind), with a mortgage and responsibilities, Curtis isn’t cut out for delving into whatever seedy business Finn has gotten involved with. But when armed men turn up on his doorstep, claiming to be FBI, he quickly realises he's been left with no choice.
\nThe hunt for the truth will take them from the Capitol building in Washington, to the sun-kissed beaches of Mexico, and the cold streets of London, uncovering secrets of fraud, blackmail and murder. Can the brothers reunite before the real hero is discovered by the wrong people.
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The case was closed. Now everyone connected is getting killed. Let the games begin . . .
\nHenry and Caroline Redfearne's annual ball is the hottest social event of the year.
\nBut the fun is cut short by the discovery of their son's body, apparently the victim of a frenzied assault. He was last seen heading off with 17-year-old Sophie Blackwood, and a blood trail seems to show that Sophie has been kidnapped.
\nDI Dani Stephens, still struggling after an attack by her serial killer brother, is thrown into a desperate search for a murderer who kills and keeps on killing. With Sophie still missing, and no clues in sight, she has nowhere to turn. Nowhere, that is, except her brother . . .
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Still tormented by the disappearance of his wife, ex-intelligence agent James Ryker sets out on a personal mission of revenge, prepared to go to any lengths in search of the truth.
\nThe trail takes him from the crystal waters of Mexico’s Caribbean coast, back to a place he thought he would never set foot again - his country of birth, England. But there he discovers more than even he bargained for. Stumbling across a terrorist attack targeted against his old employers - the secretive Joint Intelligence Agency -the faint clues to many events in his recent past are all seemingly linked to one mysterious character; The Silver Wolf.
\nBut just who is the Silver Wolf, and why is he hell bent on punishing not just Ryker, but his closest allies at the JIA too?
\nHas Ryker finally met his match?
\nJames Ryker thought he’d gotten the gangsters out of the Norwegian town of Blodstein, so when he hears of a wave of murders, it gets his attention. Then he discovers that an unidentified teenager has been found dead in Crete, and the description of the victim raises an alarm - could the boy be Henrik Svenson, who Ryker had once rescued in Blodstein?
To get some answers, Ryker heads for Athens - and meets the seductive but duplicitous Eleni. Soon the search begins for a known associate of the elusive Eastern European drug kingpin known only as Jesper. But just as it looks like he’s about to get a break in the case, Ryker finds himself in jail for murder.
Someone is setting him up - and after two Russian agents visit him in prison, things take a turn he never expected . . .
Rule number one for an agent of the secretive JIA is to follow orders, no matter what.
But James Ryker has never cared much for rules. He only wants to do what is right.
Assigned to join of crew of elite security personnel in Chabon, Africa, Ryker’s mission objective is clouded by politics and obfuscation, and he knows only that to protect British interests in the region, he is to infiltrate the close protection team of the government of Chabon, a country with a dark and violent past.
Arriving in Chabon’s crumbling capital, Kilpassa, Ryker finds a country on the brink of civil war. A growing civilian rebellion threatens peace, with claims of atrocities committed by both sides, in-cluding the frail government run by enigmatic President Benyu - a former military general who took control of the country in a violent coup.
Drawn into Benyu’s inner circle, it soon becomes clear to Ryker that in Chabon, the lines be-tween good and bad, and right and wrong, are nearly impossible to identify.
With a crisis of epic proportions unfolding before his eyes, Ryker knows one thing for sure: with or without the backing of his superiors, he must take drastic action, and quickly, or risk putting mil-lions of innocent lives in danger.
Travel to other planets is a reality, and with overpopulation stretching the resources of Earth, the necessity to find habitable worlds is growing ever more urgent. With no time to wait years for communication between slower-than-light spaceships and home, the Long Range Foundation explores an unlikely solution - human telepathy.
\nIdentical twins Tom and Pat are enlisted to be the human radios that will keep the ships in contact with Earth. The only problem is that one of them has to stay behind, and that one will grow old while the other explores the depths of space.
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Detective Erika Foster is about to face her deadliest case yet - a case where the lines between justice and vengeance blur, and long-buried secrets come to light.
\nA collapsed ceiling. A dead body. What begins as a routine 999 call quickly spirals into a chilling mystery when Detective Chief Inspector Erika Foster discovers a woman’s body in an empty flat, all traces of DNA wiped clean. But when forensics uncover cocaine residue coating the ceiling, Erika calls in the drug dogs - who lead her to a mysterious parcel locker.
\nTracking the locker’s owner drags Erika into a confrontation she never expected: face-to-face with Jerome Goodman, the drug dealer who murdered her husband, Mark, ten years ago. She arrests him - but there’s a twist. His passport and solicitor claim his name is Kieron Bagshaw, and his criminal record is spotless.
\nWith her superiors demanding she take leave to address her PTSD, and even her closest colleagues questioning her sanity, Erika turns her time off into a secret investigation. Sifting through old newspapers, encrypted messages, and hidden passageways, she uncovers shocking truths that reopen Mark’s murder case - while staying one step ahead of the Met.
\nEvery revelation pushes Erika to the edge, forcing her to confront the trauma of her past and uncover who among her friends has been pulling strings from the shadows.
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When a battered suitcase containing the dismembered body of a young man washes up on the shore of the river Thames, Detective Erika Foster is shocked. She’s worked on some terrifying cases but never seen anything like this before.
As Erika and her team set to work, she makes the link with another victim – the body of a young woman dumped in an identical suitcase two weeks ago.
Erika quickly realises she’s on the trail of a serial killer who’s already made their next move. Yet just as Erika starts to make headway with the investigation, she is the victim of a brutal attack.
But nothing will stop Erika. As the body count rises, the twin daughters of her colleague Commander Marsh are abducted, and the stakes are higher than ever before. Can Erika save the lives of two innocent children before it’s too late? She’s running out of time and about to make a disturbing discovery . . . there’s more than one killer.
Beneath the water the body sank rapidly. She would lie still and undisturbed for many years but above her on dry land, the nightmare was just beginning.
When Detective Erika Foster receives a tip-off that key evidence for a major narcotics case was stashed in a disused quarry on the outskirts of London, she orders for it to be searched. From the thick sludge the drugs are recovered, but so is the skeleton of a young child.
The remains are quickly identified as seven-year-old Jessica Collins. The missing girl who made headline news twenty-six years ago.
As Erika tries to piece together new evidence with the old, she must dig deeper and find out more about the fractured Collins family and the original detective, Amanda Baker. A woman plagued by her failure to find Jessica. Erika soon realises this is going to be one of the most complex and demanding cases she has ever taken on.
Is the suspect someone close to home? Someone is keeping secrets. Someone who doesn’t want this case solved. And they’ll do anything to stop Erika from finding the truth.
Kate Marshall’s investigation into a journalist’s disappearance sends her down an unexpectedly twisted path in a riveting thriller by the author of Shadow Sands.
\nKate Marshall’s fledgling PI agency takes off when she and her partner, Tristan Harper, are hired for their first big case. It’s a cold one. Twelve years before, journalist Joanna Duncan disappeared after exposing a political scandal. Most people have moved on. Joanna’s mother refuses to let go.
\nWhen Kate and Tristan gain access to the original case files, they revisit the same suspects and follow the same leads - but not to the same dead ends. Among Joanna’s personal effects, Kate discovers the names of two young men who also vanished without a trace.
\nAs she connects the last days of three missing persons, Kate realises that Joanna may have been onto something far more sinister than anyone first believed: the identity of a serial killer hiding in plain sight. The closer Kate comes to finding him, the darker it’s going to get.
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On an icy morning, a mother wakes to find her daughter’s blood-soaked body frozen to the road. Who would carry out such a killing on the victim’s doorstep?
\nStraight off her last harrowing case, Detective Erika Foster is feeling fragile but determined to lead the investigation. As she sets to work, she finds reports of assaults in the same quiet South London suburb where the woman was killed. One chilling detail links them to the murder victim - they were all attacked by a figure in black wearing a gas mask.
\nErika is on the hunt for a killer with a terrifying calling card. But the case only gets more complicated when she uncovers a tangled web of secrets surrounding the beautiful young woman’s death.
\nYet just as Erika begins to piece the clues together, she is forced to confront painful memories of her past. Erika must dig deep, stay focused and find the killer. Only this time, one of her own is in terrible danger . . .
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When Private Investigator Kate Marshall is rushed to hospital after being pulled into a riptide current in the sea, the near-death experience leaves her shaken. During her recovery, she befriends Jean, an elderly lady on the same ward. Jean tells the harrowing story of how her three-year-old grandson, Charlie, went missing eleven years ago during a camping trip on Dartmoor.
\nBy the time Kate is well enough to go home, she's agreed to take on the case, but when Kate and her trusty sidekick Tristan start to look at the events of that fateful night, they discover that Jean has a dark past that could have put Charlie in jeopardy.
\nWas Charlie abducted? Or did he fall into Devil's Way? A rushing river that vanishes into a gorge close to where they were camping.
\nWhen Kate and Tristan discover that a social worker who flagged concerns about Jean and her daughter was found brutally murdered shortly after Charlie vanished, it makes them question everything they thought they knew about the family . . .
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Her eyes are wide open. Her lips parted as if to speak. Her dead body frozen in the ice . . . She is not the only one.
When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation.
The victim, a beautiful young socialite, appeared to have the perfect life. Yet when Erika begins to dig deeper, she starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound and dumped in water around London.
What dark secrets is the girl in the ice hiding?
As Erika inches closer to uncovering the truth, the killer is closing in on Erika.
The last investigation Erika led went badly wrong . . . resulting in the death of her husband. With her career hanging by a thread, Erika must now battle her own personal demons as well as a killer more deadly than any she’s faced before. But will she get to him before he strikes again?
He’s your perfect date. You’re his next victim.
When the tortured body of a young woman is found in a dumpster, her eyes swollen shut and her clothes soaked with blood, Detective Erika Foster is one of the first at the crime scene. The trouble is, this time, it’s not her case.
While she fights to secure her place on the investigation team, Erika can’t help but get involved and quickly finds a link to the unsolved murder of a woman four months earlier. Dumped in a similar location, both women have identical wounds - a fatal incision to their femoral artery.
Stalking his victims online, the killer is preying on young pretty women using a fake identity. How will Erika catch a murderer who doesn’t seem to exist?
Then another girl is abducted while waiting for a date. Erika and her team must get to her before she becomes another dead victim, and, come face to face with a terrifyingly sadistic individual.
When Detective Erika Foster arrives at the home of prominent politician Neville Lomas, she finds a scene straight out of a nightmare: the man is naked, hog-tied, and very much dead. The official cause? Natural. The case? Closed - by order of the top brass.
\nBut two months later, when a famous casting director and a Premier League footballer are found murdered in eerily similar circumstances, Erika knows this is no coincidence. Someone is out for vengeance - and they’re just getting started.
\nAs the body count rises, Erika’s investigation leads to a bizarre twist: CCTV footage reveals five female suspects . . . all with the same face. And the deeper she digs, the more she uncovers a shadowy trail leading to a high-end sex worker who knows too much - and may be the key to unraveling a scandal the Met will do anything to keep buried.
\nIn a race against time, Erika must untangle a web of lies, secrets, and powerful enemies before the killer strikes again. But in a case where nothing is what it seems, one wrong move could be her last.
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When school girl Janey Macklin disappeared from the seedy side of London in 1988, her case went cold, with no body and no witnesses. Now, thirty years later, private detective Kate Marshall has been approached by a true crime podcast producer with an intriguing question they need her help answering: What if Janey was killed by Peter Conway, the notorious Nine Elms Cannibal?
\nThe contract would be the most lucrative of Kate’s career, but it comes with a price of its own, dredging up a sordid, complicated past that she would sooner forget . . . one that the paparazzi are determined to keep in the headlines.
\nAs Kate and her partner, Tristan, scour King’s Cross for clues, no two leads seem to point in the same direction. The last person to see Janey alive has already been tried, convicted, and then acquitted of her murder, Peter Conway is in poor health and fading fast, and the line between their clients and their suspects is blurring with each new revelation about the case.
\nWith little to work from, can Tristan and Kate wade through clandestine phone calls, decades-old secrets, and deteriorating DNA evidence to solve Janey’s murder, or will she remain one of London’s countless missing persons, forever lost to time?
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If the Night Stalker is watching, you’re already dead . . .
In the dead of a swelteringly hot summer’s night, Detective Erika Foster is called to a murder scene. The victim, a doctor, is found suffocated in bed. His wrists are bound and his eyes bulging through a clear plastic bag tied tight over his head.
A few days later, another victim is found dead, in exactly the same circumstances. As Erika and her team start digging deeper, they discover a calculated serial killer – stalking their victims before choosing the right moment to strike.
The victims are all single men, with very private lives. Why are their pasts shrouded in secrecy? And what links them to the killer?
As a heat wave descends upon London, Erika will do everything to stop the Night Stalker before the body count rises, even if it means risking her job. But the victims might not be the only ones being watched . . . Erika’s own life could be on the line.
From the breakthrough international bestselling author of The Girl in the Ice, a breathtaking, page-turning novel about a disgraced female detective’s fight for redemption. And survival . . .
Kate Marshall was a promising young police detective when she caught the notorious Nine Elms serial killer. But her greatest victory suddenly turned into a nightmare. Traumatized, betrayed, and publicly vilified for the shocking circumstances surrounding the cannibal murder case, Kate could only watch as her career ended in scandal.
Fifteen years after those catastrophic events, Kate is still haunted by the unquiet ghosts of her troubled past. Now a lecturer at a small coastal English university, she finally has a chance to face them. A copycat killer has taken up the Nine Elms mantle, continuing the ghastly work of his idol.
Enlisting her brilliant research assistant, Tristan Harper, Kate draws on her prodigious and long-neglected skills as an investigator to catch a new monster. Success promises redemption, but there’s much more on the line: Kate was the original killer’s intended fifth victim…and his successor means to finish the job.
When Kate Marshall finds the bloated body of a young man floating in the Shadow Sands reservoir, the authorities label it a tragic accident.
But the details don't add up: why was the victim there, in the middle of the night? If he was such a strong swimmer, how did he drown?
Kate is certain there is more to this case than meets the eye. As she and her research assistant Tristan Harper dig deeper, they discover a bloody trail that points towards an active serial killer hiding in plain sight. People have been silently disappearing for years, and when another woman is taken, Kate and Tristan have a matter of days to save her from meeting the same fate.
When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman’s severed leg.
Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but no less alarmed. There are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible – and Strike knows that any one of them is capable of sustained and unspeakable brutality.
With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike is increasingly sure is not the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands, and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men. But as more horrendous acts occur, time is running out for the two of them…
Career of Evil is the third in the highly acclaimed series featuring private detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott. A fiendishly clever mystery with unexpected twists around every corner, it is also a gripping story of a man and a woman at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives.
When Billy, a troubled young man, comes to private eye Cormoran Strike’s office to ask for his help investigating a crime he thinks he witnessed as a child, Strike is left deeply unsettled. While Billy is obviously mentally distressed, and cannot remember many concrete details, there is something sincere about him and his story. But before Strike can question him further, Billy bolts from his office in a panic.
Trying to get to the bottom of Billy’s story, Strike and Robin Ellacott - once his assistant, now a partner in the agency - set off on a twisting trail that leads them through the backstreets of London, into a secretive inner sanctum within Parliament, and to a beautiful but sinister manor house deep in the countryside.
And during this labyrinthine investigation, Strike’s own life is far from straightforward: his newfound fame as a private eye means he can no longer operate behind the scenes as he once did. Plus, his relationship with his former assistant is more fraught than it ever has been - Robin is now invaluable to Strike in the business, but their personal relationship is much, much trickier than that.
After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.
\nThen John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, thelegendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.
\nYou may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this.
\nA dismembered corpse is discovered in the vault of a silver shop. The police initially believe it to be that of a convicted armed robber - but not everyone agrees with that theory. One of them is Decima Mullins, who calls on the help of private detective Cormoran Strike as she's certain the body in the silver vault was that of her boyfriend - the father of her newborn baby - who suddenly and mysteriously disappeared.
\nThe more Strike and his business partner Robin Ellacott delve into the case, the more labyrinthine it gets. The silver shop is no ordinary one: it's located beside Freemasons' Hall and specialises in Masonic silverware. And in addition to the armed robber and Decima's boyfriend, it becomes clear that there are other missing men who could fit the profile of the body in the vault.
\nAs the case becomes ever more complicated and dangerous, Strike faces another quandary. Robin seems increasingly committed to her boyfriend, policeman Ryan Murphy, but the impulse to declare his own feelings for her is becoming stronger than ever.
When frantic, dishevelled Edie Ledwell appears in the office begging to speak to her, private detective Robin Ellacott doesn't know quite what to make of the situation. The co-creator of a popular cartoon, The Ink Black Heart, Edie is being persecuted by a mysterious online figure who goes by the pseudonym of Anomie. Edie is desperate to uncover Anomie's true identity.
\nRobin decides that the agency can't help with this - and thinks nothing more of it until a few days later, when she reads the shocking news that Edie has been tasered and then murdered in Highgate Cemetery, the location of The Ink Black Heart.
\nRobin and her business partner Cormoran Strike become drawn into the quest to uncover Anomie's true identity. But with a complex web of online aliases, business interests and family conflicts to navigate, Strike and Robin find themselves embroiled in a case that stretches their powers of deduction to the limits - and which threatens them in new and horrifying ways . . .
Private Detective Cormoran Strike is contacted by a worried father whose son, Will, has gone to join a religious cult in the depths of the Norfolk countryside.
\nThe Universal Humanitarian Church is, on the surface, a peaceable organisation that campaigns for a better world. Yet Strike discovers that beneath the surface there are deeply sinister undertones, and unexplained deaths.
\nIn order to try to rescue Will, Strike's business partner, Robin Ellacott, decides to infiltrate the cult, and she travels to Norfolk to live incognito among its members. But in doing so, she is unprepared for the dangers that await her there or for the toll it will take on her . . .
When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days - as he has done before - and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.
But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives - meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced.
When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before . . .
Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough - who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974.
Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one forty years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. And Robin herself is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention, as well as battling her own feelings about Strike.
As Strike and Robin investigate Margot's disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn that even cases decades old can prove to be deadly . . .
Strolling through Central Park on a blind date with the hilarious, irrepressible Molly Bent, Henry Parsons feels hopeful for the first time in years. He’s even daring to wonder if he and Molly might have a future together . . . when a migratory warbler, the sweetest of little birds, tells him to f*** off.
\nA gentle soul, troubled enough by the unkindness of fellow humans, Henry tries to brush the moment aside as a hallucination. But soon he’s hearing voices, dogs mocking their owners, sparrows fat-shaming each other, police horses profiling attendees at a street fair - even a pontificating, misogynistic snake. The man who never speaks up for himself is now besieged by animals who do.
\nWhen (inevitably) he overhears three rats discussing a corpse in the New York subway, he lets it slip to Molly. She’s keen to investigate, and Henry’s desperate for a second date, so he follows her nervously into an abandoned tunnel under the West Fourth Street Station. There, sure enough, they find a body . . . and the murderers find them.
\nCue the most terrifying week of this cautious man’s life. Inspiration and courage arrive, unexpectedly, from a pair of feuding betta fish and the neighbor’s yapping Pomeranian - whose wisdom will transform both Henry and Molly forever.
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In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire’s reach, an impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air - abducted from his quarters while the door and windows remained locked from the inside, in a building whose entrances and exits are all under constant guard.
\nTo solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial investigator, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol.
\nBefore long, Ana’s discovered that they’re not investigating a disappearance, but a murder - and that the killing was just the first chess move by an adversary who seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and who can predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see the future.
\nWorse still, the killer seems to be targeting the high-security compound known as the Shroud. Here, the Empire's greatest minds dissect fallen Titans to harness the volatile magic found in their blood. Should it fall, the destruction would be terrible indeed - and the Empire itself will grind to a halt, robbed of the magic that allows its wheels of power to turn.
\nDin has seen Ana solve impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and Ana seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, he fears that his superior has finally met an enemy she can’t defeat.
Some places are too good to be true.
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Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map.
In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things.
After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's home in Wink, New Mexico. And the closer Mona gets to her mother's past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different . . .
From one of our most talented and original new literary voices comes the next great American supernatural novel: a work that explores the dark dimensions of the hometowns and the neighbors we thought we knew.
A generation ago, the city of Voortyashtan was the stronghold of the god of war and death, the birthplace of fearsome supernatural sentinels who killed and subjugated millions.
Now, the city’s god is dead. The city itself lies in ruins. And to its new military occupiers, the once-powerful capital is a wasteland of sectarian violence and bloody uprisings.
So it makes perfect sense that General Turyin Mulaghesh - foul-mouthed hero of the battle of Bulikov, rumored war criminal, ally of an embattled Prime Minister - has been exiled there to count down the days until she can draw her pension and be forgotten.
At least, it makes the perfect cover *story.
The truth is that the general has been pressed into service one last time, dispatched to investigate a discovery with the potential to change the world or destroy it.
The trouble is that this old soldier isn't sure she's still got what it takes to be the hero.
Revenge. It’s something Sigrud je Harkvaldsson is very, very good at. Maybe the only thing.
So when he learns that his oldest friend and ally, former Prime Minister Shara Komayd, has been assassinated, he knows exactly what to do - and that no mortal force can stop him from meting out the suffering Shara’s killers deserve.
Yet as Sigrud pursues his quarry with his customary terrifying efficiency, he begins to fear that this battle is an unwinnable one. Because discovering the truth behind Shara’s death will require him to take up arms in a secret, decades-long war, face down an angry young god, and unravel the last mysteries of Bulikov, the city of miracles itself. And - perhaps most daunting of all - finally face the truth about his own cursed existence.
The city of Bulikov once wielded the powers of the gods to conquer the world, enslaving and brutalizing millions—until its divine protectors were killed. Now Bulikov has become just another colonial outpost of the world's new geopolitical power, but the surreal landscape of the city itself - first shaped, now shattered, by the thousands of miracles its guardians once worked upon it - stands as a constant, haunting reminder of its former supremacy.
\nInto this broken city steps Shara Thivani. Officially, the unassuming young woman is just another junior diplomat sent by Bulikov's oppressors. Unofficially, she is one of her country's most accomplished spies, dispatched to catch a murderer. But as Shara pursues the killer, she starts to suspect that the beings who ruled this terrible place may not be as dead as they seem - and that Bulikov's cruel reign may not yet be over.
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Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a heavily guarded warehouse on Tevanne’s docks, is nothing her unique abilities can’t handle.
But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic--the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience--have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine. But if they can unlock the artifact’s secrets, they will rewrite the world itself to suit their aims.
Now someone in those Houses wants Sancia dead, and the artifact for themselves. And in the city of Tevanne, there’s nobody with the power to stop them.
To have a chance at surviving—and at stopping the deadly transformation that’s under way—Sancia will have to marshal unlikely allies, learn to harness the artifact’s power for herself, and undergo her own transformation, one that will turn her into something she could never have imagined.
Sancia, Clef, and Berenice have gone up against plenty of long odds in the past. But the war they’re fighting now is one even they can’t win. This time, they’re not facing robber-baron elites, or even an immortal hierophant, but an entity whose intelligence is spread over half the globe - a ghost in the machine that uses the magic of scriving to possess and control not just objects, but human minds.
\nTo fight it, they’ve used scriving technology to transform themselves and their allies into an army - a society - that’s like nothing humanity has seen before. With its strength at their backs, they’ve freed a handful of their enemy’s hosts from servitude, even brought down some of its fearsome, reality-altering dreadnaughts. Yet despite their efforts, their enemy marches on - implacable. Unstoppable.
\nNow, as their opponent closes in on its true prize - an ancient doorway, long buried, that leads to the chambers at the center of creation itself - Sancia and her friends glimpse a chance at reaching it first, and with it, a last desperate opportunity to stop this unbeatable foe. But to do so, they’ll have to unlock the centuries-old mystery of scriving’s origins, embark on a desperate mission into the heart of their enemy’s power, and pull off the most daring heist they’ve ever attempted.
\nAnd as if that weren’t enough, their adversary might just have a spy in their ranks - and a last trick up its sleeve.
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The upstart firm Foundryside is struggling to make it. Orso Igancio and his star employee, former thief Sancia Grado, are accomplishing brilliant things with scriving, the magical art of encoding sentience into everyday objects, but it's not enough. The massive merchant houses of Tevanne won't tolerate competition, and they're willing to do anything to crush Foundryside.
\nBut even the merchant houses of Tevanne might have met their match. An immensely powerful and deadly entity has been resurrected in the shadows of Tevanne, one that's not interested in wealth or trade routes: a hierophant, one of the ancient practitioners of scriving. And he has a great fascination for Foundryside, and its employees - especially Sancia.
\nNow Sancia and the rest of Foundryside must race to combat this new menace, which means understanding the origins of scriving itself - before the hierophant burns Tevanne to the ground.
The year is 1919.
The McNaughton Corporation is the pinnacle of American industry. They built the guns that won the Great War before it even began. They built the airships that tie the world together. And, above all, they built Evesden-a shining metropolis, the best that the world has to offer.
But something is rotten at the heart of the city. Deep underground, a trolley car pulls into a station with eleven dead bodies inside. Four minutes before, the victims were seen boarding at the previous station. Eleven men butchered by hand in the blink of an eye. All are dead. And all are union.
Now, one man, Cyril Hayes, must fix this. There is a dark secret behind the inventions of McNaughton and with a war brewing between the executives and the workers, the truth must be discovered before the whole city burns. Caught between the union and the company, between the police and the victims, Hayes must uncover the mystery before it kills him.
In Daretana’s most opulent mansion, a high Imperial officer lies dead - killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Even in this canton at the borders of the Empire, where contagions abound and the blood of the Leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death at once terrifying and impossible.
\nCalled in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.
\nAt her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears - quite literally, in this case, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.
\nDin is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps - not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalising her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.
\nAs the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realises he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra - and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.
The United States. 2030. John McDean executive produces \"Vigilance,\" a reality game show designed to make sure American citizens stay alert to foreign and domestic threats. Shooters are introduced into a \"game environment,\" and the survivors get a cash prize.
\nThe TV audience is not the only one that's watching though, and McDean soon finds out what it's like to be on the other side of the camera.
\nOn Parrish Island, off the coast of Virginia, there is a little known and never visited psychiatric facility where the government stores former intelligence employees whose psychiatric state makes them a danger to their own government.
One of these employees is former agent Hal Ambler. But there's one difference between Hal and the other patients - Hal isn't crazy. Hal pulls off a daring escape and now he's out to discover who stashed him here and why.
But the world he returns to has changed. No one remembers him, there are no official records of Hal Ambler and, when he first looks in the mirror, the face he sees is not his own...
After three years deep under cover, US agent Harry Latham has penetrated the fortress-like mountain hideaway of the Brotherhood of the Watch, a neo-Nazi organisation born after the fall of the Third Reich. Then, on the eve of his most spectacular success, Harry disappears.
Drew Latham is frantic to discover his older brother's fate. But when he receives word that Harry has surfaced, serious doubts arise. Has Harry's cover been blown? And if so, why has the Brotherhood of the Watch let him live?
The search for the truth about Harry plunges Drew into a labyrinth of deceit and death...
It begins in Geneva. There American lawyer Joel Converse meets a man he hasn't seen in twenty years, a covert operative who dies violently at his feet, whispering words that hand Converse a staggering legacy of death: 'The generals . . . they're back . . . Aquitaine!'
\nSuddenly Converse is running for his life, alone with the world's most shattering secret. Pursued by anonymous executioners to the darkest corners of Europe, he is forced to play a game of survival by blood-rules he thought he'd long left behind. And only Converse and the woman he once loved and lost, can wrest the world from the iron grasp of Aquitaine . . .
In this thrilling and absorbing new novel Jason Bourne is faced with an impossible mission. He has been hired to impersonate a high-level government minister at a political summit meeting in Qatar, shielding the minister from any assassination attempts. Suddenly, armed gunmen storm the room, killing everyone but Bourne. Their target, however, isn't the minister Bourne impersonates . . . it is Bourne himself.
\nKidnapped and transported to an underground bunker, Bourne finds himself face-to-face with an infamous terrorist named El Ghadan (\"Tomorrow\"). El Ghadan holds as his captive Soraya Moore, former co-director of Treadstone, and a close friend to Bourne, along with her two year old daughter.
\nMeanwhile, the President of the United States is in the midst of brokering a historic peace treaty between the Israelis and the Palestinians-an event that El Ghadan is desperate to prevent. He demands that Bourne carry out a special mission: kill the President. If Bourne refuses, Soraya and her daughter will die.
\nBourne must make a monstrous choice: save Soraya and her daughter, or save the President.
SUMMARY:
Jason Bourne takes a mission to rescue his only friend in the CIA, Martin Lindros, who disappeared in Africa while tracking shipments of yellowcake uranium. Once safely back in America, Lindros persuades Bourne to help track the money trail of terrorists buying the nuclear material in Odessa. But once there, Bourne is hampered by confusing flashbacks of unfamiliar places and events and he wonders if is someone brainwashing him in order to throw him off the trail? Worse, is the man he saved in Africa really Martin Lindros? Now, Bourne is alone gathering evidence while trying to stay one step ahead of the terrorists who won't let anyone stand in their way of destroying the U.S.
When Jason Bourne is ambushed and attacked, he fakes is own death and goes into hiding to figure out who tried to assassinate him.
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Meanwhile, an American passenger airplane is shot down over Egypt by what seems to be an Iranian missile. Jason Bourne's search for his attacker intersects with the search for the people who shot down the airplane.
Around the world, Treadstone agents are being hunted down and murdered. Someone high up in the U.S. government is erasing all evidence of a shocking mission from Jason Bourne’s past known as Defiance - including Bourne himself.
\nStaying one step ahead of a team of killers, Bourne follows a global trail that leads him to one of the government’s darkest secrets. But exposing the truth about the Defiance mission will also bring Bourne face to face with his arch-enemy, the assassin known as Lennon, for a final deadly confrontation.
Bourne's enemies are gathering force. Severus Domna, a secret and ancient cabal, has called forth its members from around the globe, with one objective: to vanquish the last person capable of destroying their bid to de-stabilise the world economy - Jason Bourne. But how can they possibly succeed where so many others have failed? By turning Bourne's most trusted friend into his greatest - and most deadly - enemy. Boris Karpov has reached the pinnacle of his career.
\nHe has taken over one of the most powerful security organisations in the world - but at a price. Karpov agreed to a devil's pact with the former head, and now he has to deliver. But it's far worse than anything Karpov could have imagined - he must kill his oldest friend, Jason Bourne. Now Bourne finds himself in a world where friend and foe go hand-in-hand. Bourne's journey will lead him down a path of brutal murder and destruction - one from which there is no escape . . .
On the eve of Russian General Boris Karpov's wedding, Jason Bourne receives an enigmatic message from his old friend and fellow spymaster. In Moscow, what should be a joyous occasion turns bloody and lethal. Now Bourne is the only one who can decipher Karpov's cryptogram. He discovers that Karpov was willing to betray his Sovereign to warn Bourne of a crippling disaster about to be visited on the world. Bourne has only four days to discover the nature of the disaster and stop it.
The trail Karpov has been following leads Bourne to Cairo and the doorstep of Ivan Borz, the elusive international arms dealer infamous for hiding behind a never-ending series of false identities, a man Bourne has been hunting ever since he abducted former Treadstone director Soraya Moore and her two-year-old daughter, and brutally murdered her husband.
In war-torn Syria and then Cyprus Bourne moves ever closer to discovering the astonishing truth, and ever closer to his own death.
The clock is ticking, and Bourne has less than four days to solve Karpov's riddle - and hunt down Borz - if he hopes to prevent a cataclysmic international war . . .
Jason Bourne is on a boat in the Mediterranean moonlight with his lover, Johanna. He’s happy for the first time in years. Then in the next instant, he finds himself floating on wreckage as fire and smoke choke the sky. Johanna is gone. And Bourne finds the darkness of lost memory closing around his mind again.
\nAs he did once before, Bourne must piece together the fragments of who he is, even as assassins hunt him across Europe. He teams up with his spy chief, Shadow, who reveals the shocking secret that Bourne’s surrogate father – David Abbott, the founder of Treadstone - is alive and missing. Together they must find Abbott before his enemies do.
\nBut Shadow is a master of manipulation who won’t hesitate to betray Bourne to get what she wants. With his memory returning in bits and pieces, Jason discovers that the explosion that stole away his identity is part of a deadly game being played among powerful adversaries from Moscow to Washington. It’s a game with no winners - because even if he finds David Abbott, Bourne may still find himself with no way out and everything to lose.
After the death of his wife in a mass shooting, secret agent Jason Bourne is convinced that there is more to her murder than it seems. Worse, he believes that the agency that trained him and made him who he is - Treadstone - is behind the killing. Bourne goes rogue, leaving Treadstone behind and taking on a new mission to infiltrate and expose an anarchist group, Medusa.
But when a congresswoman is assassinated in New York, Bourne is framed for the crime, and he finds himself alone and on the run, hunted by both Treadstone and the tech cabal who had hired him. In his quest to stay one step ahead of his enemies, Bourne teams up with a journalist, Abbey Laurent, to figure out who was behind the frame-up, and to learn as much as he can about the ever-growing threat of the mysterious Medusa group.
As more and more enemies begin to hunt Bourne, it's a race against the clock to discover who led him into a trap . . . and what their next move may be.
He was dragged from the sea, his body riddled with bullets. There are a few clues: a frame of microfilm surgically implanted beneath the skin of his hip; evidence that plastic surgery has altered his face; strange things he says in his delirium, which could be code words. And a number on the film negative that leads to a bank account in Zurich, four million dollars and a name for the amnesiac: Jason Bourne.
\nNow he is running for his life. A man with an unknown past and an uncertain future, the target of assassins and at the heart of a deadly puzzle. He’s fighting for survival and no one can help him – except the one woman who once wanted to escape him.
The man Jason Bourne fishes out of the freezing sea is near death, half-drowned and bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound. He awakens with no memory of who he is or why he was shot-and Bourne is eerily reminded of his own amnesia. Then Bourne discovers that the Mossad agent named Rebeka is so determined to find this injured man that she has gone off the grid, cut her ties to her agency, and is now being stalked by Mossad's most feared killer. Do the answers to these mysteries lie back in southeast Lebanon, in a secret encampment to which Bourne and Rebeka escaped following a firefight weeks ago?
The complex trail links to the mission given to Treadstone directors Peter Marks and Soraya Moore: find the semi-mythic terrorist assassin known as Nicodemo.
In the course of Bourne's desperate, deadly search for a secret that will alter the future of the entire world, he will experience both triumph and loss, and his life will never be the same.
Now everything turns on the amnesiac. Bourne must learn his identity and purpose before both he and Rebeka are killed. From Stockholm to Washington, D.C., from Mexico City to Beijing, the web of lies and betrayals extends into a worldwide conspiracy of monumental proportions.
General Boris Karpov, head of the feared Russian FSB, is dead. But Karpov has reached out from the grave with an unstoppable cyber operation he conceived before his murder, aimed at the heart of the United States - a way to steal the president's nuclear launch codes. Who has taken over the operation? Karpov trusted only one man: Jason Bourne. But can Bourne be working against his own country?
\nThe U.S. Government is convinced of his treason, and is doing everything in its power to kill him. Flushed from cover and gravely wounded, Bourne's only hope is to join forces with his bitterest enemy: a powerful Somali terrorist named Keyre, and his protégée, the Angelmaker. If he hopes to survive, Bourne has no choice but unravel the mystery of Karpov's last legacy - a weaponised code that may bring about the unthinkable: a violent end to America.
Once, Jason Bourne was notorious in the clandestine world of covert-ops as one of the CIA's most expert international killers for hire. Out of the ashes of his violent past he's emerged today as a Georgetown professor, living a quiet life, retired from danger - until he narrowly escapes the bullet of a faceless assassin. And when two of Bourne's closest associates are murdered, Bourne knows that his legacy has followed him - and set him up as prime suspect for the brutal crimes.
\nThe quicksand of lies and betrayals is deeper than Bourne ever imagined. Hunted by the CIA as a dangerous rogue agent, he has only one option to stay alive - and one last chance to stay one step ahead of an unseen assailant whose vengeance is personal. Pursued across the globe, Bourne's on the run, and on the edge of discovering the truth - that he's become the expendable pawn in an international terrorist plot.
\nOne that's taking every living witness with it and plunging Bourne one step closer to the world-shattering consequences of . . . The Bourne Legacy.
\nWritten by Eric Van Lustbader.
Facing down mercenaries in Africa, Jason Bourne witnesses the death of an art dealer named Tracy Atherton. Her killing dredges up snatches of Bourne's impaired memory, in particular the murder of a young woman on Bali who entrusted him with a strangely engraved ring - an artifact of such powerful significance that people have killed to obtain it.
\nNow he's determined to find the ring's owner and purpose. But Bourne never knows what terrible acts he'll discover he committed when he digs into the past. The trail will lead him through layers of conspiracy to a vicious Russian mercenary, Leonid Arkadin, who was also a graduate of the Central Intelligence training program Treadstone. A covert course designed to create ruthless assassins for C.I., it was shuttered by Congress for corruption. Yet before it was dismantled, it produced Bourne and Arkadin, giving them equal skills, equal force, and equal cunning.
\nAs Bourne's destiny circles closer to Arkadin's, it becomes clear that the eventual collision of these men is not of their own making. Someone else has been watching and manipulating them. Someone who wants to know, \"Who is the more deadly agent?
Bourne's friend Eli Yadin, head of Mossad, learns that Ouyang Jidan, a senior member of China's Politburo, and a major Mexican drug lord may have been trafficking in something far more deadly than drugs. Yadin needs Bourne to investigate. Bourne agrees, but only because he has a personal agenda: Ouyang Jidan is the man who ordered Rebeka - one of the only people Bourne has ever truly cared about - murdered. Bourne is determined to avenge her death, but in the process he becomes enmeshed in a monstrous world-wide scheme involving the Chinese, Mexicans, and Russians.
\nBourne's increasingly desperate search for Ouyang takes him from Tel Aviv to Shanghai, Mexico City, and, ultimately, a village on China's coast where a clever trap has been laid for him. Bourne finds himself pursued on all sides and unsure whom he can trust. As he moves closer to Ouyang, closer to avenging the woman he loved, he also moves ever closer to his own death . . .
Jason Bourne has faced many killers before, but none as dangerous or as cruelly inventive as the assassin who calls himself Lennon. Bourne thought he had Lennon cornered in Iceland, only to have the killer escape in a fiery explosion. Now Lennon’s trail leads Bourne to New York and then to Washington - and the body count rises with each deadly encounter.
\nBut who is Lennon working for? Bourne believes the assassin has a shadowy new employer called the Pyramid. The only clue to the group’s agenda is a young German woman murdered in Washington on her way to a covert meeting. But the woman’s entire identity turns out to be a lie, and news reports of her death have been strangely twisted and suppressed.
Finding the truth about this woman may be Bourne’s only chance to catch Lennon . . .
Jason Bourne needs to regain his life as David Webb so he accepts an invitation from his beloved mentor, Dominic Specter, to join the linguistics department at Georgetown. It's a relief to leave the Bourne identity behind, but Jason soon finds himself in a life-or-death confrontation where every move might be his last. Specter tells him that a former student and son of his old friend was killed by Muslim extremists known as the Eastern Brotherhood.
\nTheir leader is a man named Semian Icoupov, and he must be stopped because his next terrorist target is believed to be right here in America. While Jason is busy pursuing Icoupov in Russia, he's become a target himself. Inside CI, a battle is brewing for control over the agency. In order to show the incompetence of its current director, two Pentagon operatives plan to accomplish what CI never could - hunt Bourne down and destroy him.
\nWritten by Eric Van Lustbader.
It's been over a decade since Nash Rollins recruited a brilliant, talented, but disaffected young man named David Webb to join Treadstone. Webb became the agent known as Cain - and later took on the identity of Jason Bourne.
\nThat violent winter - which included Cain’s first mission for Treadstone - was also a story of betrayal in ways that David never knew. So after the injury that erased Bourne’s whole life, Nash lied about the circumstances of David’s recruitment to Treadstone. He was afraid that learning the truth might drive Bourne out of the agency forever.
\nBut now, when Bourne meets a woman who recognises him as David Webb, the secrets of those days begin to come out - and Bourne is forced to confront the dangerous ghosts of a past he doesn’t even remember.
\nWritten by Brian Freeman.
Re-enter the shadowy world of Jason Bourne, an expert assassin still plagued by the splintered nightmares of his former life. This time the stakes are higher than ever. For someone else has taken on the Bourne identity - a ruthless killer who must be stopped or the world will pay a devastating price.
\nTo succeed, the real Jason Bourne must maneuver through the dangerous labyrinth of international espionage - an exotic world filled with CIA plots, turncoat agents, and ever-shifting alliances - all the while hoping to find the truth behind his haunted memories and the answers to his own fragmented past. This time there are two Bournes - and one must die
Three years ago, Jason Bourne embarked on a mission in Estonia with his partner and lover, a fiery UK-based Treadstone agent code-named Nova. Their job was to rescue a Russian scientist and activist, the leader of an anti-Putin protest movement, who'd recently been smuggled out of St. Petersburg in the midst of an FSB manhunt.
\nThey failed.
\nNow, three years later, everything has changed for Bourne. Nova is gone, killed in a mass shooting in Las Vegas. Bourne is a lone operative working in the shadows for Treadstone. He's ready for a new mission when his handler brings him shocking news.
\nThe Estonian mission was a set-up. Their target had not been killed. She is still in hiding in Russia and the Russian state intelligence agency is desperately seeking her. Bourne must find her first, but his race to correct the errors of the past will lead him to one inevitable conclusion: Some secrets should stay buried.
The world's two deadliest spies in the ultimate showdown. At a small-town carnival two men, each mysteriously summoned by telegram, witness a bizarre killing. The telegrams are signed Jason Bourne. Only they know Bourne's true identity and understand the telegram is really a message from Bourne's mortal enemy, Carlos, known also as the Jackal, the world's deadliest and most elusive terrorist. And furthermore, they know that the Jackal wants: a final confrontation with Bourne.
\nNow David Webb, professor of Oriental studies, husband, and father, must do what he hoped he would never have to do again - assume the terrible identity of Jason Bourne. His plan is simple: to infiltrate the politically and economically Medusan group and use himself as bait to lure the cunning Jackal into a deadly trap - a trap from which only one of them will escape.
Two years ago, and with assassins after his head, Bourne knew he had to let Abbey Laurent walk away from his dangerous world.
\nNow Abbey is back - and she's married to a top government official. But she's convinced someone is trying to kill her husband, and she wants Bourne's help.
\nBourne follows the plot into a deadly web of conspiracy that puts them all at risk. But the deeper he descends into the violence and duplicity, the more he believes that Abbey may not know who her husband really is . . .
Alex McAuliff has just received an offer he can't refuse. A company called Dunstone Ltd will pay him two million dollars for a geological survey of Jamaica's interior - and they require his absolute secrecy.
But British Intelligence are aware of the deal and they've let Alex in on a secret of their own: the last survey team Dunstone dispatched to Jamaica vanished without trace. Now it's too late to turn back.
From the moment he lands in Jamaica Alex is a marked man. He already knows about Dunstone...which means he knows too much.
December 1939. A train winds its way through Italy towards the Alps with a cargo too precious to destroy, too awful to reveal. On board is an iron box. Its sinister contents, documents concealed for centuries, could rip apart the Christian world and set religion against religion, an entire people against another.
Now, as the Nazi threat marches closer, good men and evil are drawn into a violent and deadly hunt. The richest aristocrat in Italy is responsible for the documents' safety, but he's marked for death by the Nazis. Some people want the secrets told. Some people want to plunge the world into a catastrophic holy war...
The Second World War is over. Three top Nazis have embezzled $780 million from Nazi funds - and then committed suicide. Their Covenant, to be inherited by their three eldest children, is to redistribute this vast wealth amongst the survivors of the Holocaust. Reparation must be made.
Conventional Noel Holcroft is one of the inheritors and his mission is to find the other two 'children' and prove himself worthy of his task. But the Sonnenkinder, the Children of the Sun, are determined to gain control of the millions and establish a Nazi Fourth Reich. As Holcroft tries to carry out his destiny, he finds himself enmeshed in a bewildering, horrifying nightmare...
In the Sultanate of Oman over two hundred hostages are being held at gunpoint. And the world watches helplessly as the madness begins. The spirit of the Mahdi is abroad, intent on complete financial and political domination.
Evan Kendrick, a quiet Congressman, is an unlikely hero. But in his past is a violence that he cannot forget.
On the other side of the world, five very eccentric, very rich people are meeting. They are the Inheritors of Inver Brass. Their aim - to utterly transform the world. They seek a new saviour, an innocent messiah. Evan Kendrick is to be their unwilling victim...
Retired operative Paul Janson is called back to the spy game to settle a personal debt he owes. Peter Novak, the legendary Hungarian immigrant and head of the Liberty Foundation, has been kidnapped and faces execution at the hands of terrorist extremists. It is up to Janson to rescue Novak before he is murdered.
Janson puts together a top team immediately and manages the nearly impossible task of extricating Novak, but something goes horribly wrong - something that indicates the operation had been compromised from the start - and only Janson himself survives.
Now the major intelligence services think that Janson was responsible for Novak's death and are sending their finest operatives after him...
The Matarese Circle are the Corsican Brotherhood. Terrifying killers, their power could plunge the world into chaos and destruction within two years.
\nOnly two rival spies - and one mysterious woman - can stop them. Brandon Scofield, CIA and the West's most professional assassin and Vasili Taleniekov, former KGB, now wanted by the Politburo. They share a genius for espionage - and a life of terror and explosive violence.
\nSworn enemies, Scofield and Taleniekov have vowed to terminate each other, but now they must become allies. Because only they possess the brutal skills and ice-cold nerves vital to destroy an international circle of killers: the Matarese . . .
Twenty years ago, KGB and CIA agents worked together to bring down The Matarese, a dynasty of killers who threatened the world. But the terrifying group has regained its power.
CIA officer Cameron Pryce is hot on the trail of the new Matarese alliance. His only chance to terminate its ruthless activities is to follow the trail of blood money and stone-cold killers.
Then he gets a lucky break. One of the Matarese victims lives long enough to whisper dying words that will blow the case wide open: the code name for legendary CIA agent Brandon Scofield - the only man to infiltrate the Matarese circle and survive.
James Matlock is a Vietnam veteran and college professor - with a disturbing past. The faceless men in Washington know his secrets. And they want him to investigate what seems to be a large-scale drugs and prostitution business.
Matlock is given a piece of silver paper with codes on it and the name of the criminal organisation: Nimrod. He is soon trapped in a maze of unrelenting terror, as the people he cares for most are under threat.
Would he have accepted the job if he'd known just what it would mean? Or that disclosure of the truth could cause such horror?
In a secret room in Washington DC John Tanner is asked to stake his life - and his wife and children - on a gamble whose goals and risks no one will fully reveal to him.
\nIn a small suburban town, where only the nicest people live, friends, neighbours, everyone and anyone could be part of a monstrous conspiracy of international evil.
\nThe machinery has already been set in motion. And at stake is the very existence of America - and the future of the entire free world . . .
Michael Havelock watched as his partner and lover, Jenna Karas, double agent, was gunned down by his own agency. There's nothing left for him but to get out, quit the game. Until, in one frantic moment on a crowded railway platform in Rome, Havelock sees Jenna. She's alive - and suddenly Havelock is a marked man, on the run from both US and Russian assassins.
Racing around the globe after his beautiful betrayer, Havelock is trapped in a massive mosaic of treachery created by a top-level mole with the world in his fist - Parsifal...
Nicholas Bryson spent years as a deep cover operative for the American secret intelligence group, The Directorate. After a disastrous mission, Bryson was retired to a new identity.
Now, years later, his cover is cracked and Bryson learns that The Directorate was not what it claimed - and that he was, in fact, a pawn being used against his country's interests.
The Directorate is headed for a dangerous endgame and the CIA recruits Bryson to stop them. But after years on the sidelines, Bryson's field skills are rusty, his contacts unreliable, his instincts suspect and he no longer knows who - if anyone - can be trusted.
David Spaulding is the most feared and efficient Allied agent in wartime Europe. Expert, deadly and professional, he is also high on the Gestapo's 'most wanted' list. Now Spaulding has been selected by the Allied Command to transact an undercover deal in Argentina involving top secret Nazi scientific plans. The dealer is Erich Rhinemann, an exiled German Jew who is awaiting the end of the war with his millions in an impenetrable retreat near Buenos Aires.
But there's something Spaulding doesn't know. The other side of the deal. And it involves the most bizarre, horrific intrigue of the Second World War...
General MacKenzie Hawkins is a living military legend, a hero and a rogue. When he gets kicked out of the army for conduct unbecoming to an officer, his options are limited - but not for long. He has a plan, a plan so ambitious it will shock the world and make him a very rich man: he is going to get $400 million - a dollar from every Catholic in the world. And he's going to do it by kidnapping the Pope...
Still a legend in his own lifetime, the Hawk, hero or anti-hero of THE ROAD TO GANDOLFO, is back, irrepressibly maddening, a $500 million caper up his sleeve.
Worshipped by the men he once led into battle, General MacKenzie Hawkins is now in his sixties and shows no sign of retiring from the intrigue and politicking which is his lifeblood. Now he's planning to take on the Government.
From the Oval Office to the Pentagon, the President's men do all they can to stop him before he threatens national security.
In Washington, word is received that an elite member of the Nazi High Command is willing to defect and divulge information that will shorten the war.
But his defection entails the release of the ultra-top-secret file on the Scarlatti Inheritance - a file whose contents will destroy many of the Western world's greatest and most illustrious reputations if they are made known...
Tyrell Hawthorne was a naval intelligence officer until his wife was murdered. Now Hawthorne has been called out of retirement for one last assignment. For he is the only man who can track down the world's most dangerous terrorist, Amaya Bajaratt, who has set in motion a chilling conspiracy that a desperate government cannot stop.
Hawthorne must follow Amaya's serpentine trail to uncover the sinister network that exists to help this consummate killer. And Hawthorne must discover the shattering truth behind the Scorpio Illusion...
Ben Hartman is on holiday in Switzerland when he meets a childhood friend - who promptly tries to kill him. In self-defence, Ben kills his attacker, but soon the body and all evidence of the confrontation have disappeared.
\nAnna Navarro, a US government agent, is sent to look into a string of deaths around the world. The only thing the victims have in common is an old OSS file, codenamed SIGMA. But as soon as she starts to get somewhere, she is dragged off the case and declared rogue.
\nSomeone wants this secret kept and not only the future of Hartman and Navarro is at stake, but that of the world . . .
Trevayne was a self-made millionaire by the time he was thirty. Then he went into government, carving out a brilliant and honourable career. Now he is head of one of the biggest foundations in the USA. Fearless, intelligent and incorruptible, he thought no one could touch him . . .
\nThen his investigation into the 'secret government' led him beyond the corridors of official power into a nightmare maze where Mafia leaders and 'legitimate' billionaires mixed, where even the Presidency can be bought and sold. And where a man like Trevayne could be a dreaded enemy, a duped victim, or maybe, just maybe, a king.
1940. American Stephen Metcalfe is a minor asset in the US's secret intelligence forces in Europe. Through a wild twist of fate, he must instigate a bold plan that may be the only hope for what remains of the free world. Now he must travel to wartime Moscow to find and possibly betray a former lover . . .
\n1991. The Communist empire is on the verge of oblivion and a coup is being planned by a powerful new cabal.
\nStephen Metcalfe, now a retired ambassador, must return to Moscow and finally reveal a secret that has haunted him since the fall of Berlin...a secret that might just avert a global cataclysm.
Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow of the royal court by his father's gruff stableman. He is treated like an outcast by all the royalty except the devious King Shrewd, who has him sectetly tutored in the arts of the assassin.
\nFor in Fitz's blood runs the magic Skill - and the darker knowledge of a child raised with the stable hounds and rejected by his family. As barbarous raiders ravage the coasts, Fitz is growing to manhood.
\nSoon he will face his first dangerous, soul-shattering mission. And though some regard him as a threat to the throne, he may just be the key to the survival of the kingdom.
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As FitzChivalry confronts his destiny as the catalyst who holds the fate of the kingdom of the Six Duchies . . . and the world itself.
\nKing Shrewd is dead at the hands of his son Regal. As is Fitz - or so his enemies and friends believe. But with the help of his allies and his beast magic, he emerges from the grave, deeply scarred in body and soul. The kingdom also teeters toward ruin: Regal has plundered and abandoned the capital, while the rightful heir, Prince Verity, is lost to his mad quest - perhaps to death.
\nOnly Verity's return - or the heir his princess carries - can save the Six Duchies.But Fitz will not wait. Driven by loss and bitter memories, he undertakes a quest: to kill Regal. The journey casts him into deep waters, as he discovers wild currents of magic within him - currents that will either drown him or make him something more than he was . . .
The dragons and their dedicated band of keepers have at last found the lost city of Kelsingra. The magical creatures have learned to use their wings and are growing into their regal inheritance. Their humans, too, are changing. As the mystical bonds with their dragons deepen, Thymara, Tats, Rapskal, and even Sedric, the unlikeliest of keepers, have begun transforming into beautiful Elderlings raked with exquisite features that complement and reflect the dragons they serve.
\nBut while the humans have scoured the empty streets and enormous buildings of Kelsingra, they cannot find the mythical silver wells the dragons need to stay health and survive. With enemies encroaching, the keepers must risk \"memory walking\"- immersing themselves in the dangerously addictive memories of long-deceased Elderlings - to uncover clues necessary to their survival.
\nAnd time is of the essence, for the legendary Tintaglia, long feared dead, has returned, wounded in a battle with humans hunting dragon blood and scales. She is weakening and only the hidden silver can revive her. If Tintaglia dies, so, too, will the ancient memories she carries - a devastating loss that will ensure the dragons' extinction.
Once, dragons ruled the Rain Wilds, tended by privileged human servants known as Elderlings. But a series of cataclysmic eruptions nearly drove these magnificent creatures to extinction.
\nBorn weak and deformed, the last of their kind had one hope for survival: to return to their ancient city of Kelsingra. Accompanied by a disparate crew of untested young keepers, the dragons embarked on a harsh journey into the unknown along the toxic Rain Wild River. Battling starvation, a hostile climate, and treacherous enemies, dragons and humans began to forge magical connections, bonds that have wrought astonishing transformations for them all. And though Kelsingra is finally near, their odyssey has only begun.
Because of the swollen waters of the Rain Wild River, the lost city can be reached only by flight - a test of endurance and skill beyond the stunted dragons’ strength. Venturing across the swift-running river in tiny boats, the dragon scholar Alise and a handful of keepers discover a world far different from anything they have ever known or imagined. Immense, ornate structures of black stone veined with silver and lifelike stone statues line the silent, eerily empty streets. Yet what are the whispers they hear, the shadows of voices and bursts of light that flutter and are gone? And why do they feel as if eyes are watching them?
The dragons must plumb the depths of their ancestral memories to help them take flight and unlock the secrets buried in Kelsingra. But enemies driven by greed and dark desires are approaching. Time is running out, not only for the dragons but for their human keepers as well.
Centuries had passed since dragons last roamed the war-torn world of the Rain Wild River. But as peace once again settled upon the land, a lost generation of sea serpents - ancient, half-starved, and weary - returned to cocoon, certain that they would be reborn as the beautiful and powerful dragons of legend. But their arduous journey exacted a heavy toll, and the proud serpents emerged as sickly, half-formed beasts, unable to fly or hunt . . . or thrive. For years now they have been trapped on a swampy riverbank between forest and river, hungry and barely alive, reliant on humans to provide for them.
With their survival at stake, fifteen dragons - among them the wise golden Mercor, the haughty and dazzling silver-blue queen Sintara, and the delicate copper beauty Relpda - have set off on a dangerous trek into the unknown, up the Rain Wild River, in hopes of rediscovering the ancient Elderling city of Kelsingra, the lost haven for dragons and Elderlings alike.
The dragons are accompanied by a disparate group of human keepers, rejects from Rain Wild society. They, too, yearn to find Kelsingra and create a home of their own, one in which they may make their own rules and decide their own fate. But is Kelsingra real or merely a fragment of a glorified past buried deep in the dragons' shared memories? No map exists to guide them, and the noble creatures find their ancient recollections of little use in a land changed by generations of flooding and seismic chaos.
As the dragons, the humans - including the strong and defiant Rain Wild girl Thymara; the wealthy dragon scholar and Trader's wife, Alise; and her companion, the urbane Sedric - and their magical supply barge, captained by the gruff Leftrin, forge their way ever deeper into uncharted wilderness, human and beast alike discover they are changing in mysterious and dangerous ways. While the bonds between them solidify, starvation, flashfloods, and predators will imperil them all. But dragons and humans soon learn that the most savage threats come from within their own company . . . and not all of them may survive.
Too much time has passed since the powerful dragon Tintaglia helped the people of the Trader cities stave off an invasion of their enemies. The Traders have forgotten their promises, weary of the labor and expense of tending earthbound dragons who were hatched weak and deformed by a river turned toxic. If neglected, the creatures will rampage - or die - so it is decreed that they must move farther upriver toward Kelsingra, the mythical homeland whose location is locked deep within the dragons' uncertain ancestral memories.
Thymara, an unschooled forest girl, and Alise, wife of an unloving and wealthy Trader, are among the disparate group entrusted with escorting the dragons to their new home. And on an extraordinary odyssey with no promise of return, many lessons will be learned--as dragons and tenders alike experience hardships, betrayals . . . and joys beyond their wildest imaginings.
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Years have passed since Fitz was tortured by Prince Regal. Now he lives in self-imposed exile far from the court. Even his beloved Molly believes him dead. It is safer that way.
\nBut safety remains an illusion. Even though war is over dangerous undercurrents still swirl around the Six Duchies and suddenly young Prince Dutiful disappears just before his crucial diplomatic wedding to shore up the peace.
\nThe Fools brings Fitz a secret mission. He and his bonded companion, the wolf Nighteyes, must find Dutiful and bring him back to be wed. For if the Outislanders are snubbed, war will surely resume. But what if the prince does not wish to be found?
FitzChivalry Farseer has become firmly ensconced in the queen’s court. Along with his mentor, Chade, and the simpleminded yet strongly skilled Thick, Fitz strives to aid Prince Dutiful on a quest that could secure peace with the Out Islands - and win Dutiful the hand of the Narcheska Elliania.
\nThe Narcheska has set the prince an unfathomable task: to behead a dragon trapped in ice on the isle of Aslevjal. Yet not all the clans of the Out Islands support their effort. Are there darker forces at work behind Elliania’s demand? Knowing that the Fool has foretold he will die on the island of ice, Fitz plots to leave his dearest friend behind. But fate cannot so easily be defied.
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After surviving a plague that wiped out many of the students and instructors at the king's military academy, Nevare returns home for his brother's wedding, only to learn that he has been medically discharged from the school. The plague usually leaves its survivors skeletally thin, but Nevare, inexplicably, has begun to gain massive amounts of weight.
\n\t\t\t\t\tWith his family believing he's a glutton, Nevare is disowned by his father and eventually ends up finding work as a lowly cemetery guard in a frontier town near the border with the Specks, a race of dapple-skinned forest dwellers who possess powerful natural magic. But in a world where technology never stops advancing, can the Specks survive? And what does the suddenly bloated Nevare have to do with their struggle?
Prince Dutiful has been rescued from his Piebald kidnappers and the court has resumed its normal rhythms. But for FitzChivalry Farseer, a return to isolation is impossible. Though gutted by the loss of his wolf bondmate, Nighteyes, Fitz must take up residence at Buckkeep and resume his tasks as Chade’s apprentice assassin.
\nPosing as Tom Badgerlock, bodyguard to Lord Golden, FitzChivalry becomes the eyes and ears behind the walls. And with his old mentor failing visibly, Fitz is forced to take on more burdens as he attempts to guide a kingdom straying closer to civil strife each day. The problems are legion. Prince Dutiful’s betrothal to the Narcheska Elliania of the Out Islands is fraught with tension, and the Narcheska herself appears to be hiding an array of secrets.
\nThen, amid Piebald threats and the increasing persecution of the Witted, FitzChivalry must ensure that no one betrays the Prince’s secret - a secret that could topple the Farseer throne: that he, like Fitz, possesses the dread “beast magic.”
\nMeanwhile, FitzChivalry must impart to the Prince his limited knowledge of the Skill: the hereditary and addictive magic of the Farseers. In the process, they discover within Buckkeep one who has a wild and powerful talent for it, and whose enmity for Fitz may have disastrous consequences for all. Only Fitz’s enduring friendship with the Fool brings him any solace. But even that is shattered when unexpected visitors from Bingtown reveal devastating secrets from the Fool’s past.
\nNow, bereft of support and adrift in intrigue, Fitz’s biggest challenge may be simply to survive the inescapable and violent path that fate has laid out for him.
In the second breathtaking volume of Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy, a new tide of glory and terror sweeps forward the story of the Vestrit clan, their liveship Vivacia, and all who strive to possess her.
\nAs the ancient tradition of Bingtown's Old Traders slowly erodes under the cold new order of a corrupt ruler, the Vestrits anxiously await the return of their liveship - a rare magic ship carved from sentient wizardwood, which bonds the ships mystically with those who sail them. And Althea Vestrit waits even more avidly, living only to reclaim the ship as her lost inheritance and captain her on the high seas.
\nBut the Vivacia has been seized by the ruthless pirate captain Kennit, who holds Althea's nephew and his father hostage. Althea and her onetime sea mate Brashen resolve to liberate the liveship - but their plan may prove more dangerous than leaving the Vivacia in Kennit's ambitious grasp . . . From the Paperback edition.
The people of Getty's town remember the death of their cemetery soldier vividly. They remember believing him guilty of unspeakable crimes, condemning him, and then watching as other men of his unit beat him until he no longer drew breath.
\nBut Nevare Burvelle didn't die that day, though everyone believes they saw it happen. He was cornered by a power far more intractable than any angry mob.
\nWhen he was a boy, the magic of the Specks - the dapple-skinned tribes of the frontier forests - claimed Nevare as a saviour; severing his soul in two, naming his stolen half Soldier's Boy and shaping him into a weapon to halt the Gernian expansion into their lands and save their beloved ancestor trees.
\nUntil now Nevare has defied the magic, unable to accept his traitorous fate. But the magic has won: it has extinguished his once golden future, devastated his family and has now turned his own people against him. Faced with endangering the only loved-ones he has left, Nevare has no choice but to surrender to its will and enter the forest.
\nBut surrendering to his Speck destiny is only the beginning of his trials. Before he submits completely, Nevare makes one desperate last attempt to deter the Gernians from the Barrier Mountains without causing them harm. But the magic accepts no compromise. Exhausted, Nevare can no longer suppress his traitorous Speck self, Soldiers Boy. Losing control, he becomes a prisoner in his own body; able only to watch helplessly as his other half takes
\nSoldier's Boy is determined to stop the Gernian expansion at all cost, and unlike Nevare, he has no love, nor sympathy for his spirit-twin's world.
Young Fitz, the illegitimate son of the noble Prince Chivalry, is ignored by all royalty except the devious King Shrewd, who has had him tutored him in the dark arts of the assassin. He has barely survived his first, soul-shattering mission, and returns to the court where he is thrown headfirst into the tumult of royal life. With the King near death, and Fitz's only ally off on a seemingly hopeless quest, the throne itself is threatened.
\nMeanwhile, the treacherous Red Ship Raiders have renewed their attacks on the Six Duchies, slaughtering the inhabitants of entire seaside towns. In this time of great peril, it soon becomes clear that the fate of the kingdom may rest in Fitz's hands - and his role in its salvation may require the ultimate sacrifice.
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Young Nevare Burvelle is the second son of a second son. Traditionally in Gernia, the firstborn son is heir to the family fortunes, the second son bears a sword and the third son is consecrated to the priesthood. Nevare will follow his father - newly made a lord by the King - into the cavalry; to the frontier and thence to an advantageous marriage, to carry on the Burvelle name. It is a golden future, and Nevare looks forward to it with relish.
\nFor twenty years King Troven's cavalry have pushed the frontiers of Gernia out across the grasslands, subduing the fierce tribes of the plain on its way. Now they have driven the frontier as far as the Barrier Mountains, home to the enigmatic Speck people. The Specks - a dapple-skinned, forest-dwelling folk - retain the last vestiges of magic in a world which is becoming progressive and technologised. The 'civilised' peoples base their beliefs on a rational philosophy founded on scientific principle and a belief in the good god, who displaced the older deities of their world. To them, the Specks are primeval savages, little better than beasts. Superstitions abound; it is said that they harbour strange diseases and worship trees. Sexual congress with them is regarded as both filthy and foolhardy: the Speck plague which has ravaged the frontier has decimated entire regiments.
\nAll these beliefs will touch Nevare's training at the Academy; but his progress there is not as simple as he would wish. He will experience prejudice from the old aristocracy: as the son of a 'new noble' he is segregated into a patrol comprising other new nobles' sons, all of whom will encounter injustice, discrimination and foul play in that hostile and deeply competitive environment. In addition, his world view will be challenged by his unconventional girl-cousin Epiny; and by the bizarre dreams which visit him at night. And then, on Dark Evening, the circus comes to Old Thares, bringing with it the first Specks Nevare has ever seen . . .
In the powerful conclusion to the Liveship Traders trilogy, Robin Hobb weaves the spellbinding story of a once-thriving city on the brink of ruin, a glorious and mythic species on the edge of extinction, and the Vestrit clan, whose destiny is intertwined with both . . .
\nAs Bingtown slides toward disaster, clan matriarch Ronica Vestrit, branded a traitor, searches for a way to bring the city’s inhabitants together against the Chalcedean threat. Meanwhile, Althea Vestrit, unaware of what has befallen Bingtown and her family, continues her perilous quest to track down and recover her liveship Vivacia from the ruthless pirate Kennit. Bold though it is, her scheme may be in vain.
\nFor her beloved Vivacia will face the most terrible confrontation of all as the secret of the liveships is revealed. It is a truth so shattering, it may destroy Vivacia and all who love her, including the boy-priest Wintrow Vestrit, whose life already hangs in the balance....
Bingtown is a hub of exotic trade and home to a merchant nobility famed for its liveships - rare vessels carved from wizardwood, which ripens magically into sentient awareness. The fortunes of one of Bingtown's oldest families rest on the newly awakened liveship Vivacia.
\nFor Althea Vestrit, the ship is her rightful legacy unjustly denied her--a legacy she will risk anything to reclaim. For Althea's young nephew Wintrow, wrenched from his religious studies and forced to serve aboard ship, Vivacia is a life sentence.But the fate of the Vestrit family - and the ship - may ultimately lie in the hands of an outsider. The ruthless pirate Kennit seeks a way to seize power over all the denizens of the Pirate Isles . . . and the first step of his plan requires him to capture his own liveship and bend it to his will . . .
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers.
\nIn Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.
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As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.
\nMeanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth - its abundance of sweet, juicy berries - to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”
\nElizabeth Gilbert writes, Robin Wall Kimmerer is “a great teacher, and her words are a hymn of love to the world.” The Serviceberry is an antidote to the broken relationships and misguided goals of our times, and a reminder that “hoarding won’t save us, all flourishing is mutual.”
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A celebration of the seemingly simple idea that allowed us to imagine the world in new dimensions - sparking both controversy and discovery. The stars of this book, vectors and tensors, are unlikely celebrities. If you ever took a physics course, the word “vector” might remind you of the mathematics needed to determine forces on an amusement park ride, a turbine, or a projectile. You might also remember that a vector is a quantity that has magnitude and (this is the key) direction.
\nIn fact, vectors are examples of tensors, which can represent even more data. It sounds simple enough - and yet, as award-winning science writer Robyn Arianrhod shows in this riveting story, the idea of a single symbol expressing more than one thing at once was millennia in the making. And without that idea, we wouldn’t have such a deep understanding of our world.Vector and tensor calculus offers an elegant language for expressing the way things behave in space and time, and Arianrhod shows how this enabled physicists and mathematicians to think in a brand-new way.
\nThese include James Clerk Maxwell when he ushered in the wireless electromagnetic age; Einstein when he predicted the curving of space-time and the existence of gravitational waves; Paul Dirac, when he created quantum field theory; and Emmy Noether, when she connected mathematical symmetry and the conservation of energy. For it turned out that it’s not just physical quantities and dimensions that vectors and tensors can represent, but other dimensions and other kinds of information, too.
\nThis is why physicists and mathematicians can speak of four-dimensional space-time and other higher-dimensional “spaces,” and why you’re likely relying on vectors or tensors whenever you use digital applications such as search engines, GPS, or your mobile phone.In exploring the evolution of vectors and tensors - and introducing the fascinating people who gave them to us - Arianrhod takes readers on an extraordinary, five-thousand-year journey through the human imagination. She shows the genius required to reimagine the world - and how a clever mathematical construct can dramatically change discovery’s direction.
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Natalie, a young art student in New York City, is struggling to pay her bills when a friend makes a suggestion: Why not go online and find a sugar daddy - a wealthy, older man who will pay her for dates, and even give her a monthly allowance? Lots of girls do it, Nat learns. All that’s required is to look pretty and hang on his every word. Sexual favours are optional.
Though more than thirty years her senior, Gabe, a handsome corporate finance attorney, seems like the perfect candidate, and within a month, they are madly in love. At least, Nat is . . . Gabe already has a family, whom he has no intention of leaving.
So when he abruptly ends things, Nat can’t let go. She begins drinking heavily and stalking him: watching him at work, spying on his wife, even befriending his daughter, who is not much younger than she is. But Gabe’s not about to let his sugar baby destroy his perfect life. What was supposed to be a mutually beneficial arrangement devolves into a nightmare of deception, obsession, and, when a body is found near Gabe’s posh Upper East Side apartment, murder.
There are two sides to every breakup.
Lucy had no clue that her husband of sixteen years was about to bolt. Now she's dealing with shock, loneliness, and girlfriends who alternately pity her and provoke her. She also-unbelievably-is apparently competing with her own teenage daughter for a new man's attention.
Trent pictured freedom, self-discovery...and maybe some sex with actual passion. So far, he's mostly watching hockey in a hotel room and wondering what's next. Being middle-aged and married isn't easy. The jury's still out on being middle-aged and single . . .
There are two sides to every breakup. In this witty, heartfelt novel, Robyn Harding explores them both-and takes us on a journey through the end of a marriage and the beginning of something new...which may or may not be something old too.
A deliciously twisted story of friendship, retribution, and betrayal about a homeless woman fleeing a dangerous past - and the wealthy society wife she saves from drowning, who pulls her into a dark web of secrets and lies.
\nLee Gulliver never thought she’d find herself living on the streets - no one ever does - but when her restaurant fails, and she falls deeper into debt, she leaves her old life behind with nothing but her clothes and her Toyota Corolla. In Seattle, she parks in a secluded spot by the beach to lay low and plan her next move - until early one morning, she sees a sobbing woman throw herself into the ocean. Lee hauls the woman back to the surface, but instead of appreciation, she is met with fury. The drowning woman, Hazel, tells her that she wanted to die, that she’s trapped in a toxic, abusive marriage, that she’s a prisoner in her own home. Lee has thwarted her one chance to escape her life.
\nOut of options, Hazel retreats to her gilded cage, and Lee thinks she’s seen the last of her, until her unexpected return the next morning. Bonded by disparate but difficult circumstances, the women soon strike up a close and unlikely friendship. And then one day, Hazel makes a shocking request: she wants Lee to help her disappear. It’ll be easy, Hazel assures her, but Lee soon learns that nothing is as it seems, and that Hazel may not be the friend Lee thought she was.
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Camryn Lane is living her dream. After years of struggle and rejection, her first novel has finally been published. Her editor is happy; her teenage daughter is proud; and her boyfriend and friends are all excited for her. She’s on top of the world - until she receives a disturbing message from an unknown sender.
\nRattled by the accusations she finds there, Camryn swallows the sick feeling in her stomach and resolves to put the missive out of her mind. But when she checks her ratings on a popular book site, she finds a scathing one-star review. The reviewer is so articulate and convincing that soon, Camryn’s book is flooded with bad reviews. Could the reviewer be the same person who sent the ugly email? And why do they want to ruin her?
\nAs the online harassment creeps into Camryn’s personal life, she vows to find out who’s behind it. Is it really a disgruntled reader? Or could it be someone she knows? The troll’s actions are escalating, and when the abuse turns deadly, it will take everything Camryn has to unmask the enemy so intent on destroying her - and finally learn why she's being targeted.
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Frances Metcalfe is struggling to stay afloat.
A stay-at-home mom whose troubled son is her full-time job, she thought that the day he got accepted into the elite Forrester Academy would be the day she started living her life. Overweight, insecure, and lonely, she is desperate to fit into Forrester’s world. But after a disturbing incident at the school leads the other children and their families to ostracise the Metcalfes, she feels more alone than ever before.
Until she meets Kate Randolph.
Kate is everything Frances is not: beautiful, wealthy, powerful, and confident. And for some reason, she’s not interested in being friends with any of the other Forrester moms - only Frances. As the two bond over their disdain of the Forrester snobs and the fierce love they have for their sons, a startling secret threatens to tear them apart . . . because one of these women is not who she seems. Her real name is Amber Kunick. And she’s a murderer.
In her masterful follow-up to The Party, Robyn Harding spins a web of lies, deceit, and betrayal, asking the question: Can people ever change? And even if they can, is it possible to forgive the past?
Kerry Spence is unfulfilled by her soulless career in advertising, disappointed by her dysfunctional relationship, and horrified by the ever-increasing size of her ass. Ever since her gorgeous, self-absorbed boyfriend Sam demoted her to late night hook-up status, she has fortified herself with prime-time TV and blissful binges on cream cheese frosting, awaiting an epiphany that will reveal her next move.
Of course, everybody in her life is full of advice. Her free-spirited divorcee mother–when not necking furiously with her much younger boyfriend - sagely counsels her daughter to do whatever it takes to snag Sam back, since, quite frankly, he is the best she can do. Her friends ply her with fruity cocktails and dispense bits of ‘Cosmo’ wisdom like “Divide your age in half and add seven–that’s the youngest man you are allowed to date” and “Scotch tape can eliminate forehead wrinkles.” And then there is Kerry’s shrink, the calm, unflappable therapist who suggests she start “a diary of past encounters with men that may be contributing to her negative and dysfunctional quasi-relationship.” Or, as Kerry sees it, a journal of mortifying moments.
Beginning with a kissing game gone bad in grade school, the journal jump-starts Kerry’s stroll down memory lane of man troubles. But just as Kerry decides her poorly dressed therapist is as crazy as everybody else in her orbit, she begins to realise the journal may actually make some sense - as she plumbs the depths of her most embarrassing experiences on a quest for personal awareness that will give her the strength to turn her life around - and just maybe find love again.
The Journal of Mortifying Moments is a hysterically funny glimpse into the quirky, slightly obsessive, and completely lovable mind of Kerry Spence. But somewhere amidst the laugh-out-loud hilarity of Kerry’s exploits emerges the story of a woman who learns to stop trying to be someone she’s not, and start loving the wonderful, quirky person she is, once and for all.
In this stunning and provocative domestic drama about a sweet sixteen birthday party that goes horribly awry, a wealthy family in San Francisco finds their picture-perfect life unraveling, their darkest secrets revealed, and their friends turned to enemies.
One invitation. A lifetime of regrets.
Sweet sixteen. It’s an exciting coming of age, a milestone, and a rite of passage. Jeff and Kim Sanders plan on throwing a party for their daughter, Hannah - a sweet girl with good grades and nice friends. Rather than an extravagant, indulgent affair, they invite four girls over for pizza, cake, movies, and a sleepover. What could possibly go wrong?
But things do go wrong, horrifically so. After a tragic accident occurs, Jeff and Kim’s flawless life in a wealthy San Francisco suburb suddenly begins to come apart. In the ugly aftermath, friends become enemies, dark secrets are revealed in the Sanders’ marriage, and the truth about their perfect daughter, Hannah, is exposed.
Harkening to Herman Koch’s The Dinner, Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap, and Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, The Party takes us behind the façade of the picture-perfect family, exposing the lies, betrayals, and moral lapses that neighbors don’t see - and the secrets that children and parents keep from themselves and each other.
Until one morning, when they wake up to find their porch has been pelted with eggs. It’s a prank, Thomas insists; the work of a few out-of-control kids. But when a smoke bomb is tossed on their front lawn, and their car’s tires are punctured, the family begins to worry.
\nSurveillance cameras show nothing but grainy images of shadowy figures in hoodies. And the police dismiss the attacks, insisting they’re just the work of bored teenagers. Unable to identify the perpetrators, the Adlers are helpless as the assaults escalate into violence, and worse. And each new violation brings with it a growing fear. Because everyone in the Adler family is keeping a secret - not just from the outside world, but from each other. And secrets can be very dangerous . . .
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Sydney Lowe’s life in New York is shattered when her husband, Curtis, admits to a meaningless affair with a client. Begging for forgiveness and vowing to prove his devotion, Curtis suggests the couple retreat to a remote hilltop house in Spain to repair their marriage.
\nHigh above the Mediterranean, Sydney and Curtis are working on the isolated property and their relationship when a pair of Australian travelers turns up at their door in dire need of help. Lonely for companionship and desperate for free labor, Sydney and Curtis invite the attractive young couple to stay. But as the days pass, dark secrets come to light, the Lowes’ bond is tested, and not everyone will leave the villa alive.
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Low Morrison is not your average teen. You could blame her hippie parents or her looming height or her dreary, isolated hometown on an island in the Pacific Northwest. But whatever the reason, Low just doesn’t fit in - and neither does Freya, an ethereal beauty and once-famous social media influencer who now owns the local pottery studio.
After signing up for a class, Low quickly falls under Freya’s spell. And Freya, buoyed by Low’s adoration, is compelled to share her darkest secrets and deepest desires. Finally, both feel a sense of belonging . . . that is, until Jamie walks through the studio door. Desperate for a baby, she and her husband have moved to the island hoping that the healthy environment will result in a pregnancy. Freya and Jamie become fast friends, as do their husbands, leaving Low alone once again.
Then one night, after a boozy dinner party, Freya suggests swapping partners. It should have been a harmless fling between consenting adults, one night of debauchery that they would put behind them, but instead, it upends their lives. And provides Low the perfect opportunity to unleash her growing resentment.
Working in the past is hell on your future.
Landry’s life has always been about doing her duty and giving it her all, and when they have to stop a deranged serial killer in the past, she tries to stay focused. But now, with Jade Carter always on her mind, her worry about Delaney’s mental welfare, and her attempt to have a normal life, things feel more complex than ever before.
Plagued by nightmares and memories of the woman she left behind in Nazi Germany, Delaney knows things have to change, and she’s the one to make it happen. But making those changes may mean she loses Landry forever. When she sets her plans in motion during their mission, she has no idea how it will end. Will their differences demand the ultimate sacrifice?
When ambition and love collide, can Chase and Rayne’s fledgling relationship withstand the fallout? The Copper Scroll is a treasure seeker’s dream, and Rayne Marcellus is used to dreaming big. Going after it means playing in the underworld she’s trying to turn away from.
\nBut with the Ark of the Covenant as a possible prize, she simply can’t say no. Chase Stinsen gets her warrior queen back and unknowingly sets off a deadly chain of events.
\nCan she stay at Rayne’s side in the shadows, or will their worlds collide in a deadly explosion?
An extractor is elite in every way, and Landry Donovan is no exception. Pulsus, an organization working to build a better future by saving people from the past, sends Landry’s team back to Nazi Germany to save a Jewish doctor working on a cure for cancer. For the first time on a mission, she’s distracted by thoughts of a woman - the enticing basketball player, Jade Carter.
Jacqulyn Delaney, a Pulsus Operative, waits in a concentration camp for Landry’s arrival. Her job is slowly messing with her mind, as is her desire to be more to Landry than just a friend with benefits. When an unexpected relationship blooms in Germany, it puts a new perspective on the future.
Can they save the doctor? Or will their personal demons leave them stuck in the past?
Rayne Marcellus knows what people want, and she’s damn good at getting it. Antiquities is her game, and she’s the best there is, moving in the shadows even as she trades in the light. When an ambitious criminal approaches her to take on a deadlier game than even she’s willing to play, she knows she has to stop him. But she’ll need help . . .
\nAfter a previous betrayal, Chase Stinsen doesn’t want anything to do with Rayne. Chase believes archaeology is a tool to understand the past in an effort to help the future and has no use for profiting from the finds of history. But when Rayne proposes they track the legendary Golden Trinity, with the added benefit of helping indigenous tribes, she’s hooked.
\nDanger lurks around every corner, and their defenses crumble as they have to depend on one another to survive. If Chase can finally trust Rayne again, she might just end up with more than the gold.
Louie Francis is ready for another life and she’s going to make it happen. When she sets out to make her dreams of being a songwriter in Nashville come true, she has no idea what’s in store, but she’s determined to be the person she’s always wanted to be.
\nLike a zillion other people, Heather King had dreams of being the next Country superstar. But it isn’t long before she figures out her real talent is in discovering the next big thing, and her dream of creating her own label is within reach. If only she can play the game just a little longer . . .
\nWhen they meet at the Bluebird Café, sparks fly. But Heather knows what being an out lesbian in Nashville would do to her career. Louie isn’t willing to be anything other than exactly who she is. Thrust together to work with Country royalty, they must figure out how to be Music City dreamers without losing themselves and, ultimately, each other.
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Fresh from an epic victory over sorceress Morgana Le Fay to keep the doorway between worlds safely closed, Emry Merlin should be flying high. She no longer has to hide that she's a girl wizard in Camelot, and the battle has brought her closer than ever to Prince Arthur, with whom she has slowly fallen in love. Even her hapless but beloved twin brother Emmett has joined her at court.
\nBut Emry is hiding a secret, and she's not the only one. Her magic has become unpredictable and dangerous, casting spells that she doesn't intend. Despite destiny acting like he's worthy, Prince Arthur knows he doesn't have what it takes to rule Camelot - until a terrible tragedy forces his hand. And though Guinevere is hooking up with the hottest guy in the palace, it's not who she's actually betrothed to . . .
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Everything is finally going right for Emry Merlin. Now that Arthur is the king and her wayward magic is under control, she’s enjoying life as Camelot’s official court wizard - and as Arthur’s girlfriend. But when an unexpected visitor arrives at court, Emry finds her hard-won position threatened. And Arthur is torn between listening to his advisors and following his heart.
\nEven more troubling, war is on the horizon, with King Yurien’s access to dark magic ensuring Camelot’s doom. That is, unless Emry, Arthur, and Lance can find a way to defeat the evil sorceress Bellicent with magic from her own world. But undertaking a quest to Anwen is perilous business, and our young heroes will face many obstacles on their journey - from dangerous beasts to suspicious nobles to cursed maidens determined to find someone to marry.
\nCan Emry and Arthur save their kingdom and fix their relationship, or will they have to choose between their future and Camelot’s?
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Welcome to the great kingdom of Camelot! Prince Arthur's a depressed botanist who would rather marry a library than a princess, Lancelot's been demoted to castle guard after a terrible lie, and Emry Merlin has arrived at the castle disguised as her twin brother since girls can't practice magic.
\nLife at court is full of scandals, lies, and backstabbing courtiers, so what's a casually bisexual teen wizard masquerading as a boy to do? Other than fall for the handsome prince, stir up trouble with the foppish Lord Gawain, and offend the prissy Princess Guinevere.
\nWhen the truth comes out with disastrous consequences, Emry has to decide whether she'll risk everything for the boy she loves, or give up her potential to become the greatest wizard Camelot has ever known.
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At sixty-six, Paula Spencer - mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor - is finally living her life. A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, a man - Joe - with whom she shares what she wants, friends who see her for who she is, and four grown children, now with families and petty dramas the likes of which Paula could only have hoped for.
\nDespite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside.That is until Paula’s eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep. Independent, affluent, a loving wife and mother, “a success” - Nicola is suddenly determined to leave it all behind.
\nOver the next few days, as Nicola gradually confides in Paula the secret that unleashed this moment of crisis, mother and daughter find themselves untangling anecdotes, jokes, memory and revelation to confront the bruised but beautiful symmetry of what each means to the other.
\nThe next sequence in the life of Roddy Doyle’s quietly remarkable, ever-memorable Paula Spencer, The Women Behind the Door is a delicately devastating portrait of shame and the inescapable shadow it casts over families.
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Rumi and his family are Odu, stricken with poverty and disparaged by the other tribes. When ruthless agents of the Palmaine - the colonising nation that dominates the continent of Basmine - threaten to destroy the village market, Rumi takes it upon himself to liberate his family. Taking a place in the prestigious Golden Room, where earnings from his music offer a chance at freedom, he shoulders his pride and resentment in a bid to make it to the top.
\nOn what should be Rumi's greatest night at the Golden Room, his life is turned upside down. A terrifying individual known as the Priest of Vultures attacks Rumi and his family. Before her death, Rumi's mother, Adunola, solicits the help of a dying god and saves Rumi, setting him on the path to become a Shadowwielder: warriors with the ability to use their shadow as a weapon. But Rumi's need for vengeance may be more important to him than the future of his people . . .
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For those with the wit to learn, there is no better teacher than death. Nowhere is this truth better known than in the Eredo; where death's signature marks every corner as its leaders and people try to recover from a devastating attack. The lost princess Falina Almarak has been crowned queen of the Kasinabe and charged with the unenviable task of rebuilding a broken nation.
\nRumi Voltaine, seen by so many as a hero, struggles to come to terms with the revelations of his ancestral past and the expectations that come with it. With the Shadow Order deprived of its essential healing elixir, Rumi and his companions embark upon an impossible mission: to journey into the deepest parts of the forest known as the bush of ghosts.
\nThe forest holds many secrets - including the gateway known as the Door of Testimony which may hold the power to bring the dead back to life. They will have to be careful though; godhunters are on their trail and time is a precious commodity when your adversaries are immortal . . .
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On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change her life. Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe.
\nIt was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons. As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan's relentless campaign to get her to come back.
\nBecause leaving is one thing, but staying away is another.
\nTense, beautiful and gut-wrenching, Nesting is an unforgettable story of motherhood, underpinned by love, hope and resilience.
A memory-eating, closet-dwelling beast escapes its confines; a Somali girl in a Donegal school is tougher than she seems; under a jasmine tree in Andalucía a woman waits for her stolen son; at the edge of a city, two brothers step unwittingly into a game that turns deadly. The scope and diversity of these stories knows no bounds, sitting somewhere between the real and imaginary.
\nWild Quiet contains a world viewed from unexpected angles, where the ordinary is rendered extraordinary and the extraordinary sublime. These are stories woven with compassion and humour, announcing the arrival of a fresh new voice in Irish literature.
\nIn this astonishingly innovative and bold collection, Roisín O’Donnell examines the hurts and triumphs of being human, and the wild, quiet moments that approach something like grace.
Alexander Hamilton was an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean who overcame all the odds to become George Washington's aide-de-camp and the first Treasury Secretary of the United States. Few figures in American history are more controversial.
\nIn this masterful work, Chernow shows how the political and economic power of America today is the result of Hamilton's willingness to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. He charts his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Monroe and Burr; his highly public affair with Maria Reynolds; his loving marriage to his loyal wife Eliza; and the notorious duel with Aaron Burr that led to his death in July 1804.
\nThe book was adapted into a Broadway musical - nominated for a record 16 Tony awards - which opened in London’s West End in September 2017.
Ron Chernow, the highly lauded biographer of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and Ulysses S. Grant, brings his considerable powers to bear on America’s first, and most influential, literary celebrity, Mark Twain.
\nBorn Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, under Halley’s Comet, the rambunctious Twain was an early teller of tall tales. He left his home in Missouri at an early age, piloted steamboats on the Mississippi, and arrived in the Nevada Territory during the silver-mining boom.
\nBefore long, he had accepted a job at the local newspaper, where he barged into vigorous discourse and debate, hoaxes and hijinks. After moving to San Francisco, he published stories that attracted national attention for their brashness and humor, writing under a pen name soon to be immortalised.
\nChernow draws a richly nuanced portrait of the man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune and crafted his celebrity persona with meticulous care. Twain eventually settled with his wife and three daughters in Hartford, where he wrote some of his most well-known works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, earning him further acclaim. He threw himself into American politics, emerging as the nation’s most notable pundit.
\nWhile his talents as a writer and speaker flourished, his madcap business ventures eventually forced him into bankruptcy; to economise, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exile in Europe. He suffered the death of his wife and two daughters, and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache, political crusades, and eccentric behavior that sometimes obscured darker forces at play.
\nDrawing on Twain’s bountiful archives, including his fifty notebooks, thousands of letters, and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures a man whose career reflected the country’s westward expansion, industrialisation, and foreign wars.
\nNo other white author of his generation grappled so fully with the legacy of slavery after the Civil War or showed such keen interest in African American culture. Today, more than one hundred years after his death, Twain’s writing continues to be read, debated, and quoted. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer’s talent and humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and often maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history.
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For nearly two decades, Jamie Warren has been running from darkness. He's haunted by a traumatic childhood and the guilt at having disappeared from his disabled brother's life. But then a series of unusual events reunites him with his estranged brother and their childhood friends, and none of them can deny the sense of fate that has seemingly drawn them back together.
\nNor can they deny the memories of that summer, so long ago - the strange magic taught to them by an even stranger man, and the terrible act that has followed them all into adulthood. In the light of new danger, they must confront their past by facing their futures, and hunting down a man who may very well be a monster.
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A landscape of frozen darkness punctuated by grim, gray days.
The feeling like a buzz in your teeth.
The scrape of bone on bone. . .
Paul Gallo saw the report on the news: a mass murderer leading police to his victims graves, in remote Dread's Hand, Alaska.
It's not even a town; more like the bad memory of a town. The same bit of wilderness where his twin brother went missing a year ago. As the bodies are exhumed, Paul travels to Alaska to get closure and put his grief to rest.
But the mystery is only beginning. What Paul finds are superstitious locals who talk of the devil stealing souls, and a line of wooden crosses to keep what's in the woods from coming out. He finds no closure because no one can explain exactly what happened to Danny.
And the more he searches for answers, the more he finds himself becoming part of the mystery . . .
Aaron Decker's life changes one December morning when his wife Allison is killed. Haunted by her absence - and her ghost - Aaron goes through her belongings, where he finds a receipt for a motel room in another part of the country. Piloted by grief and an increasing sense of curiosity, Aaron embarks on a journey to discover what Allison had been doing in the weeks prior to her death.
\nYet Aaron is unprepared to discover the dark secrets Allison kept, the death and horror that make up the tapestry of her hidden life. And with each dark secret revealed, Aaron becomes more and more consumed by his obsession to learn the terrifying truth about the woman who had been his wife, even if it puts his own life at risk.
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In the aftermath of a violent storm, a collective obsession is rapidly developing among the people of this quaint suburban neighborhood. Random, everyday items left scattered upon the lawns, the streets, and the shoreline all seem to call out to them. There is an item for almost everyone, and each item has a certain hold over the person who finds it - a hold that soon turns into unwavering infatuation. They hide their items from each other, obsess over them, and they will do anything - anything - to protect them.
\nA young boy finds himself the possessor of a strange and inexplicable power. Is the arrival of this power linked to the increasingly odd and dangerous behavior of the residents of Mariner's Cove? Has he been granted this power in order to thwart whatever is about to happen in this small, bayside community, or is there a more sinister purpose?
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When the mutilated body of a young woman is discovered in the desert on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the detective assigned to the case can't deny the similarities between this murder and one that occurred a year prior. Media outlets are quick to surmise this is the work of a budding serial killer, but Detective Bill Renney is struggling with an altogether different a secret that keeps him tethered to the husband of the first victim.
\nMaureen Park, newly engaged to Hollywood producer Greg Dawson, finds her engagement party crashed by the arrival of Landon, Greg’s son. A darkly unsettling young man, Landon invades Maureen’s new existence, and the longer he stays, the more convinced she becomes that he may have something to do with the recent murder in the high desert.
\nToby Kampen, the self-proclaimed Human Fly, begins an obsession over a woman who is unlike anyone he has ever met. A woman with rattlesnake teeth and a penchant for biting. A woman who has trapped him in her spell. A woman who may or may not be completely human.
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Andrew Larimer thought he left the past behind. But when he receives a late-night phone call from an old friend, he finds he has no choice but to return home, and to confront the memories - and the horror - of a night, years ago, that changed everything.
\nFor Andrew and his friends, the past is not dead, and the curse that has befallen them now threatens to destroy all that they've become.
Alora Anders’ paintings are sought after by wealthy collectors worldwide, and up until recently, she’s led the life she’s always dreamed of. There’s only one problem. She’s quickly losing her vision to a degenerative eye disease with no cure. Devastated, she falls into a deep depression, assuming her life is over. Worse, she must hire someone to help her get along in life with her impaired vision.
\nBodie Banks is a struggling young artist looking for a new lot in life. When she learns of a job as a live-in caregiver for a well-known artist, she jumps at the opportunity. It might be inspiring to work with a fellow artist. All her hopes are dashed when her new employer, Alora, is rude, angry, and anything but welcoming.
When Natalie Brewer finally forged the courage to leave her husband, Allen, she thought she’d be able to live life on her own terms. But to Allen, they are still married, and they are to remain that way till death do them part. When Allen begins to stalk her, Natalie does the only thing she can do - she runs.
\nHorse rancher Vaughn Ruger is having a bad day. Two of her best broodmares have escaped, and two of her ranch hands are no-shows. What’s worse, her ranch is already on the brink of going under, and just one more thing will send it all spiraling. With so many problems on her mind, she almost passes up the woman on the side of the road crying in her vehicle. Almost.
\nVaughn and Natalie have chemistry they can’t ignore, but neither is safe to act on it. They join forces to help each other, but the outside world keeps knocking at the door, threatening more trouble and making the love and the life they want together impossible.
Valerie Raffield’s dreams are about to come true. Her magazine, MisRule, is ready to launch. Only trouble is, she’s struggling to find an editorial designer who understands her vision.
\nWhen Lennox Falcone gets a nibble at her long stagnant résumé, she’s thrilled and excited to work remotely for Valerie. Things fall through when the MisRule team decides to go with another prospect, and Lennox is let down to say the least. But Valerie knows how talented Lennox is and keeps her on as a graphic artist. As they work closely together, their fascination with each other intensifies, and the MisRule team starts questioning the ethics of their relationship.
\nBy the time the launch comes around, Valerie’s desire is undeniable. But their first face-to-face meeting doesn’t go as planned, and as secrets are revealed and passions burn bright, Valerie’s heart and her business could be in jeopardy.
Luna Kirkman has been in the limelight since she was six years old. A child of Hollywood, she's known both great success and great struggle. Now, after a long stint in rehab, she's back on her feet. There's only one problem. Her love life. As she nears her fortieth birthday, her heart, as well as her management, want her to settle down.
\nSo when her manager sets her up with fellow actor and heartthrob, Beau Paget, Luna is game but a bit hesitant. Beau has the looks and the reputation she needs for her image, but it's his sister she's interested in.
\nChloe Paget hates everything Hollywood: the fuss, the fame and even the fortune. And for the most part, she avoids it at all costs. Unfortunately, her brother Beau is one of Hollywood's biggest stars. So she's less than thrilled to hear that he's dating Luna Kirkman, Hollywood's most notorious wild child.
\nBut as she tries her best to warn her brother off Luna, she discovers there's more to Luna than her image. A lot more.
Brynn Williams is out of prison, no thanks to Sergeant Kat Vander, who arrested her four years earlier. But Brynn is hopeful for a new future and excited to see her sister, who pulls up in a stolen car, high as a kite. Brynn feels used and trapped as they drive back to more family drama. But something happens on the way home, testing not only Brynn’s core as a human being, but her loyalty to her family as well.
Sergeant Kat Vander is one hell of a cop. She turns heads and leaves suspects shaking in their boots. So when she and her partner are ambushed and shot, the department is up in arms. But more surprising is who helped them after the attack. Brynn Williams belongs to the town’s most troubled family. She helped Kat, but now she’s on the run.
Can Kat find her, and more importantly fight her feelings for a known criminal?
Real estate guru Krista Wyler is soon at the mercy of the Arizona desert when she learns she has inherited her family's business, Wyler Ranch. Her aunt is dying and her uncle is no longer capable of making decisions. Krista reluctantly moves in, but her plan is to sell the ranch as soon as possible.
\nRae Jarrett, the strong, stubborn vet who has cared for the ranch as well as the horses, objects to her selling and offers her aid. Krista resists the help as well as her attraction to the mysterious vet, but decides instead to turn the ranch into a dude ranch. Soon city folk are knocking at the door ready to pay good money to get a chance to herd the Wyler cattle across Arizona. The plan seems full proof until Krista herself, along with Rae, has to set out on the trail with them.
\nThe journey leads to a life changing adventure neither woman could have foreseen and will never forget.
Growing older has hit youth softball club owner Hannah Carter across the face like a jilted lover. So much so that she’s let her long-time partner, Sasha, slip right through her fingers. Hannah has convinced herself things are better this way for everyone involved, that is until Sasha calls her, near death and pleading for her to come quickly.
\nSasha Bashton is trying like hell to move on with her life after the breakup, but dating someone new and throwing herself into her work doesn’t stop her from reliving Hannah’s warm smile and loving embrace no matter how much she wants to forget. When her chronic disease recurs, she’s rushed to the hospital fighting for her life. The only person she wants by her side is Hannah, but can she truly depend on her sticking around?
\nHannah has one last chance to show Sasha how wrong she has been and start fresh for a love worth fighting for. All she has to do is convince Sasha she's the right woman for her - the second time around.
Lillian Gray thinks she’s got it all under control. Work, sobriety, church visits, and aching over her ex take up most of her time. But her long-time friends insist on seeing her and continuously invite her to the local lesbian bar The Griffin. Lillian agrees to go, unknowingly placing herself in the path of someone who will shake up her carefully controlled world for good.
\nPersonal fitness trainer Audrey McCarthy is a heartbreaker. Love is the last thing on her mind despite the concern from her married friends. So when she collides with Lillian Gray in the “midnight room” one night at The Griffin, she’s left shocked, breathless, and hopelessly smitten. But Lillian isn’t willing to let go of the past or admit her feelings, especially for a heartbreaker like Audrey McCarthy who seems unwilling to change her gallivanting ways.
\nCan repeated trips to the midnight room change them both?
Danica Wallace, one of southern Louisiana’s top detectives, must solve a series of missing person cases in the small town of Sugar Mill Farm, and the lack of progress has her seeking answers from a bottle. Bones are discovered in a nearby sugar cane field and Danica fears the worst.
\nWhen Lyra Aarden, a beautiful and accomplished bioarcheologist, stumbles upon the remains, she’s sure the bones belong to more than one person.
\nDesperate for answers, Danica asks her former lover, forensic anthropologist Dr. Eleanor Stafford, to consult on the case. As Danica, Lyra, and Eleanor work to uncover buried secrets, they’re set on a dangerous collision course with a serial killer.
\nCan they solve the case, or will unexpected feelings and unwelcome jealousies lead them straight into the crosshairs of a killer?
Johnnie Hamilton has conquered a lot in life. An anxiety disorder, loss of her business, and homelessness have been difficult to overcome. But Johnnie has come through the other side to find success as an artist. Now, however, she's lost her creative drive and she's struggling to produce.
\nElaine Taylor has an interesting job. She's a \"creative practitioner,\" known to awaken her client's creative side by using many different approaches, including a sensual or sexual approach. Most of her clients are male and she likes it that way. Women are the last thing she wants in her life, having lost the most important woman she's ever known, her wife.
\nFearing she'll lose all she's worked so hard for, Johnnie takes her friend's advice and calls a lone number on a business card, steps into Elaine's office, and shakes up both their worlds forever.
A doctor in need of a new start.
\nA woman running from a killer.
\nA love story that could end in tragedy.
\nWhen Dr. Gianna Walford finds her girlfriend in bed with another woman, she needs a new start and Cliffside, a small seaside town in Oregon, is just the place. Getting to know her patients on a personal level and making old fashioned house calls is a nice change from hospital bureaucracy. On one of those house calls, she meets the beautiful but mysterious Kiera. She’s kind and unassuming, but extremely guarded and private. Intrigued, and determined to help Kiera’s ailing neighbor, Gianna makes numerous visits, only to discover more than she bargained for.
\nJenny McAllister witnessed a murder, escaped a killer, and reinvented herself in Cliffside as Kiera Davenport. So when Gianna arrives and interests her, first with her good looks and compassion, and then her relentless curiosity, Jenny is more than unnerved. With a killer searching and willing to do anything to silence her, she can’t let anyone close or her real identity will be discovered.
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Famed Hollywood actress Veronica Ryan arrives at a red carpet event with her wife Shawn. They are the world's most famous gay couple - beautiful, wealthy, and by all appearances, the happiest couple in the world. But things aren't always as they appear. And someone is out to dampen the parade.
\nA shot rings out and Veronica finds herself tackled to the ground by security, her wife lying next to her in a pool of blood. Kennedy Scott used to be the best behavioral profiler the FBI had, but she is haunted by a string of child murders no one can solve.
\nA single quote - Seek and ye shall find - was all she had to go on. The case has eaten her alive, and after her own family is threatened by an armed intruder, Kennedy retreats to be with them. But one phone call brings her back into the game. Veronica Ryan needs her help and the path may lead to the one who haunts her. The Seeker.
Corey Durand doesn’t trust easily and the rumors surrounding the devastating end of her last relationship have only just died down. All she wants is peace and quiet to run her ranch. But in moves her feisty next-door neighbor, Brin, and everything gets thrown into chaos. Brin’s younger, vibrant, and full of sass. Her five-year-old autistic niece loves Corey and the ranch, and Corey hasn’t figured out how to befriend the little girl while avoiding her aunt.
\nOne stormy night, everything changes. Brin’s fixer-upper house is damaged by lightning, and she doesn’t have the money to fix it. The town heartthrob has his gaze fixed on her and insists on helping. Trouble is, he pays more attention to Brin than the repairs. Corey has no choice but to step in and do the job right which sets off the town’s gossip mill - the very last thing she wants.
\nCorey and Brin will need to overcome wounds from the past, the heartthrob who can’t take a hint, and more than their share of salacious gossip to take a chance on love.
Nev Wakefield is happy working as a blacksmith on her sprawling ranch, until one fateful evening driving home, her past comes rushing back, literally running her off the road. Kinsley Padovano escapes to a spiritual retreat only to be nearly run down by Nev, a woman she never expected to see again.
\n \nNev and Kinsley share a history of heartbreaking loss. Twenty-five years ago, Nev’s twin and Kinsley’s best friend, Vivian, died in a plane crash, leaving Nev alone with parents too caught in their grief to notice her and spurring Kinsley toward a career as an aviation expert.
\n \nNow, Kinsley’s retreat is right next door to Nev’s ranch, and they’re thrust together as undeniable attraction becomes too irresistible to ignore. Can they overcome the pain of their past to turn fate around?
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Ronica Black - Turn of Fate, A.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856853705.3726, "size": 650154, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:24:21.003Z" }, "Ronica Black - Under Her Wing": { "title": "Under Her Wing", "author": "Ronica Black", "description": "Kassandra Haden loves working with kids, her quaint condo on the golf course, and most of all, her dog, Lula. She’s happy being alone, having convinced herself that people can’t be trusted. But when Lula gets lost, Kassandra’s thrown into a different world, one that insists she come out of her shell. As allured as she is frightened, Kassandra can’t seem to stay away from the dog shelter, and the devastatingly attractive owner seems to be the cause.
Jayden Beaumont isn’t used to taking no for an answer. Running a no kill dog shelter isn’t easy, but Jayden embraces it. She lives for her work and saves many lives in the process. But in doing so, she’s neglected her own, and it’s about to cost her big.
When Kassandra walks into Jayden’s shelter, two very different personalities collide. Can either woman open and trust in order to embrace the life they could have together?
All Riley Robinson wants is peace and serenity. She can’t wait to spend the winter at her new cabin in snowy, remote Northern Arizona. On the way Riley meets Zoe Mitchell, a secretive woman whose barely hidden vulnerability captures her curiosity and sparks her interest.
Zoe was doing just fine until without warning she becomes the focus of a stalker. With no idea who is following her and desperate to shrug off the sense of being watched, Zoe takes off to her grandfather’s old cabin. Unfortunately, the cabin hasn’t been used in years, and the snowstorm of the century is moving in. Zoe has no intention of taking chances with a beautiful woman she’s just met, but she can’t turn down Riley’s offer of help and a warm place to take refuge.
As they face the storm and the looming threat of a stalker, Riley and Zoey just might find love in the most unexpected of places.
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "LGBT - Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Ronica Black - Watching Over Her.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856860082.487, "size": 767841, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:24:21.087Z" }, "Ronica Black - When Love Comes Around": { "title": "When Love Comes Around", "author": "Ronica Black", "description": "Maya Sanchez never planned on starting over - not like this. After losing her wife in a tragic accident, she moves back to her Arizona hometown with her four-year-old daughter, determined to rebuild their lives. But their fixer-upper needs more than she can handle alone. Enter Nolan Wright - skilled contractor, ex-Army machinist, and exactly the kind of reliable help Maya needs. What she doesn’t need? The way Nolan makes her feel something she thought was long buried.
\nNolan is trying to move forward, too - one renovation, one day at a time. Helping Maya should be just another job, but from the moment they meet, the connection is undeniable. As attraction kindles, so do the secrets neither of them are ready to share.
\nFalling wasn’t part of the plan, but love doesn’t wait for perfect timing. Can they trust each other enough to build something real, or will the past tear them apart?
Healing, respect, and empathy are what the H&S Ranch promises when helping troubled juveniles. Madison Clark hasn’t had much trouble in allowing teens to help care for her recovering horses.
\nBut then in walks Jake, a know-it-all thirteen-year-old with a smart mouth and a strong penchant for trouble. What’s worse is what’s behind him - his uptight, opinionated lawyer aunt, Grace Hollings. Madison does her best to ignore her, but focusing solely on Jake isn’t always possible. Grace Hollings is convinced nothing can help her nephew, especially Madison Clark and her feel-good horse ranch.
\nUnfortunately, Jake’s presence there is court ordered so Grace does her best to keep an eye on him, and on Madison, who is way more than she originally gave her credit for. Her calm strength and good looks are powerful and just the tip of the iceberg, leaving Grace green with jealousy.
\nNot just because Jake is thriving and has taken to Madison over her, but because Grace is beginning to be taken by the ranch owner as well . . . Wholeheartedly so.
Doctor Chandler Brogan’s favorite things start with the letter S: Speed, Sex, and as she soon discovers when a cop pulls her over on her motorcycle for reckless driving . . . Sarah.
\nChandler is a clinical psychologist who focuses on sexual dysfunction, but her professional expertise has never made her personal life any easier. She spends more and more time searching for the ultimate connection, and when she fails, she escapes on her bike.
\nOfficer Sarah Monroe enjoys being in control, so much so that she can’t let down her guard enough to achieve the intimacy she secretly craves. From their first tumultuous meeting, the two women are drawn together in a battle of wills and a fiery sexual dance that neither can turn away from.
When sisters Lily and Della Pedley are persecuted for the shocking murder of their parents, they flee from their home in Cornwall to a remote and unnamed island in Scotland - an island known for its strange happenings, but far away from the whispers and prying eyes of strangers.
\nLily is terrified of what her sister will might do next, and she soon realises that they have arrived at a place where nothing is as it seems. A bitterness runs through the land like poison, and the stories told by the islanders seem to be far more than folklore.
\nDella settles in too easily, the island folk drawn to her strangeness, but Lily is plagued by odd and unsettling dreams, and as an annual festival draws nigh, she discovers that she has far more to fear than she could ever have imagined. Or does she?
\nChilling, atmospheric and utterly hypnotic, Small Fires is contemporary gothic novel that examines possession, female rage, and the perilous bonds of family - an unsettling reminder that the stories we tell can be deadly . . .
\n
A Rebel and a Traitor is the story of a rogue imperial consul who sought to forge a new nation in the middle of a war - and the mercurial spy chief who sought to destroy him by any means.
\nThe rogue consul was Sir Roger Casement, a decorated diplomat who turned his back on the British empire and instead joined the rising Irish cause at the turn of the 20th century. At the book’s centre is the manhunt for Casement led by intelligence officer Reginald ‘Blinker’ Hall, the legendary British spy chief who pioneered codebreaking, early mass surveillance and media manipulation.
\nAs he did for the critically acclaimed Killing Thatcher, master storyteller Rory Carroll has combed diaries, letters, police reports, memoirs, court transcripts, secret service archives and declassified government files in the US, Britain, Ireland and Germany to create a page-turning history, and a story that still echoes through Anglo-Irish relations. A Rebel and a Traitor raises profound questions about honour, courage and the price of patriotism.
\n
Killing Thatcher is the gripping account of how the IRA came astonishingly close to killing Margaret Thatcher and to wiping out the British Cabinet - an extraordinary assassination attempt linked to the Northern Ireland Troubles and the most daring conspiracy against the Crown since the Gunpowder Plot.
\nIn this fascinating and compelling book, veteran journalist Rory Carroll retraces the road to the infamous Brighton bombing in 1984 - an incident that shaped the political landscape in the UK for decades to come. He begins with the infamous execution of Lord Mountbatten in 1979 - for which the IRA took full responsibility - before tracing the rise of Margaret Thatcher, her response to the ‘Troubles’ in Ireland and the chain of events that culminated in the hunger strikes of 1981 and the death of 10 republican prisoners, including Bobby Sands. From that moment on Thatcher became an enemy of the IRA - and the organisation swore revenge.
\nOpening with a brilliantly-paced prologue that introduces bomber Patrick Magee in the build up to the incident, Carroll sets out to deftly explore the intrigue before and after the assassination attempt - with the story spanning three continents, from pubs and palaces, safe houses and interrogation rooms, hotels and barracks. On one side, an elite IRA team aided by a renegade priest, US-raised funds and Libya’s Qaddafi and on the other, intelligence officers, police detectives, informers and bomb disposal officers. An exciting narrative that blends true crime with political history, this is the first major book to investigate the Brighton attack.
\n
Artist's daughter Penelope Keeling can look back on a full and varied life: a Bohemian childhood in London and Cornwall, an unhappy wartime marriage, and the one man she truly loved. She has brought up three children - and learned to accept them as they are.
\nYet she is far too energetic and independent to settle sweetly into pensioned-off old-age. And when she discovers that her most treasured possession, her father's painting, The Shell Seekers , is now worth a small fortune, it is Penelope who must make the decisions that will determine whether her family can continue to survive as a family, or be split apart.
Listen. My one-time friend Maria did tell me once: \"Make your own paradise, Tibb, since this world is no sweet place for people like us.\"
\nBorn a vagabond, Tibb Ingleby has never had a roof of her own. But her mother has taught her that if you're not too bound by the Big Man's rules, there are many ways a woman can find shelter in this world. Now her mother is dead in a trick gone wrong and young Tibb is orphaned and alone.
\nAs she wends her way across England's fields and forests, Tibb will discover there are people who will care for her, as well as those who mean her harm. And there are a great many others who are prepared to believe just about anything.
\nAnd so, when the opportunity presents itself to escape the shackles society has placed on them, Tibb and her new friends conjure an audacious plan: her greatest trickerie yet. But before they know it, their hoax takes on a life of its own, drawing crowds - and vengeful enemies - to their door . . .
\nA Little Trickerie is blazingly original, disarmingly funny and deeply moving. Portraying a side of Tudor England rarely seen, it's a tale of belief and superstition, kinship and courage, with a ragtag cast of characters and an unforgettable and distinctly unangelic heroine.
\n
Once every generation, the Major Gods hold a Celestial Banquet, inviting chefs from all over the Continent to prepare mouthwatering fantastical feasts. The winner is awarded the fabled Peaches of Immortality, along with a lifetime of fame and fortune. The losers perish per the whims of the fickle gods.
\nHot-headed noodle chef Cai enters the competition with dreams of owning her own restaurant and supporting her impoverished Peninsula town. Along with the drunken Minor God Kama, her childhood crush-turned-friend Bo, and dreamy noble Seon, Cai must now compete against the Continent’s finest culinary masters in trials that range from hunting and serving up mystical sea serpents to preparing a magical omurice from the eggs of the legendary Jian bird.
\nBattling impossible odds and inconvenient feelings for both Bo and Seon, Cai is determined to prepare a feast fit for the gods - even if she loses her life.
At the news of her mother's death, Natalie Tan returns home. The two women hadn't spoken since Natalie left in anger seven years ago, when her mother refused to support her chosen career as a chef.
\nNatalie is shocked to discover the vibrant neighborhood of San Francisco's Chinatown that she remembers from her childhood is fading, with businesses failing and families moving out. She's even more surprised to learn she has inherited her grandmother's restaurant.
The neighborhood seer reads the restaurant's fortune in the leaves: Natalie must cook three recipes from her grandmother's cookbook to aid her struggling neighbors before the restaurant will succeed.
Unfortunately, Natalie has no desire to help them try to turn things around - she resents the local shopkeepers for leaving her alone to take care of her agoraphobic mother when she was growing up. But with the support of a surprising new friend and a budding romance, Natalie starts to realize that maybe her neighbors really have been there for her all along.
Exes Ward Dunbar and Camille Buhay thought they would never see each other again. They had broken up to pursue their dream jobs on opposite sides of the country - her to New York City, and him to Los Angeles. But years later, they unexpectedly reconnect in London, where they are interviewing for similar jobs.
\nThe spark they feel when they meet again - the attraction comes back like muscle memory, and they are reminded of what they had lost. When Ward and Camille discover they both got the job working opposing shifts, they vow to give their relationship another try.
\nWard starts the day shift and finds the immortal clientele unusual and dazzling. When he clocks out at the end of the day, he finds the door locked and himself trapped in the building. After a horrific first night shift contending with restless spirits and ghosts, Camille is also unable to escape.
\nIn their respective prisons, they discover that they’re able to talk to each other a few minutes before dawn. This fleeting encounter incites longing for each other, but their promise to be together feels impossible. Because they are caught in the middle of a war of the gods - and their choices will determine the outcome.
Newly minted professional matchmaker Sophie Go has returned to Toronto, her hometown, after spending three years in Shanghai. Her job is made quite difficult, however, when she is revealed as a fraud - she never actually graduated from matchmaking school. In a competitive market like Toronto, no one wants to take a chance on an inexperienced and unaccredited matchmaker, and soon Sophie becomes an outcast.
\nIn dire search of clients, Sophie stumbles upon a secret club within her condo complex: the Old Ducks, seven septuagenarian Chinese bachelors who never found love. Somehow, she convinces them to hire her, but her matchmaking skills are put to the test as she learns the depths of loneliness, heartbreak, and love by attempting to make the hardest matches of her life.
Aru Shah and her sisters--including one who also claims to be the Sleeper's daughter - must find their mentors Hanuman and Urvashi in Lanka, the city of gold, before war breaks out between the devas and asuras.
\nAru has just made a wish on the tree of wishes, but she can't remember what it was. She's pretty sure she didn't wish for a new sister, one who looks strangely familiar and claims to be the Sleeper's daughter, like her.
\nAru also isn't sure she still wants to fight on behalf of the devas in the war against the Sleeper and his demon army. The gods have been too devious up to now. Case in point: Kubera, ruler of the city of gold, promises to give the Pandavas two powerful weapons, but only if they win his trials. If they lose, they won't stand a chance against the Sleeper's troops, which will soon march on Lanka to take over the Otherworld.
\nAru's biggest question, though, is why every adult she has loved and trusted so far has failed her. Will she come to peace with what they've done before she has to wage the battle of her life?
Twelve-year-old Aru Shah has a tendency to stretch the truth in order to fit in at school. While her classmates are jetting off to family vacations in exotic locales, she'll be spending her autumn break at home, in the Museum of Ancient Indian Art and Culture, waiting for her mom to return from their latest archeological trip. Is it any wonder that Aru makes up stories about being royalty, traveling to Paris, and having a chauffeur?
One day, three schoolmates show up at Aru's doorstep to catch her in a lie. They don't believe her claim that the museum's Lamp of Bharata is cursed, and they dare Aru to prove it. Just a quick light, Aru thinks. Then she can get herself out of this mess and never ever fib again.
But lighting the lamp has dire consequences. She unwittingly frees the Sleeper, an ancient demon whose duty it is to awaken the God of Destruction. Her classmates and beloved mother are frozen in time, and it's up to Aru to save them.
The only way to stop the demon is to find the reincarnations of the five legendary Pandava brothers, protagonists of the Hindu epic poem, the Mahabharata, and journey through the Kingdom of Death. But how is one girl in Spider-Man pajamas supposed to do all that?
The Pandavas only have until the next full moon to stop the Sleeper from gaining access to the nectar of immortality, which will grant him infinite power. But how can Aru, Mini, and Brynne hope to defeat him without their celestial weapons? The Sleeper and his army are already plundering the labyrinth, and the sisters can’t even enter. Their quest to get in will have them calling on old friends, meeting new allies, and facing fearsome trials, like . . . performing in a rock concert?
\nWhen the moment of confrontation finally arrives, it’s up to Aru to decide who deserves immortality, the devas or the asuras. The most unexpected answer will come from a most unexpected place. More surprises and delights, gods and demons, and laughs and tears await in this immensely satisfying conclusion to the wild ride that began with the lighting of a lamp.
Aru is only just getting the hang of this whole Pandava thing when the Otherworld goes into full panic mode. The god of love's bow and arrow have gone missing, and the thief isn't playing Cupid. Instead, they're turning people into heartless fighting-machine zombies. If that weren't bad enough, somehow Aru gets framed as the thief. If she doesn't find the arrow by the next full moon, she'll be kicked out of the Otherworld. For good.
But, for better or worse, she won't be going it alone.
Along with her soul-sister, Mini, Aru will team up with Brynne, an ultra-strong girl who knows more than she lets on, and Aiden, the boy who lives across the street and is also hiding plenty of secrets. Together they'll battle demons, travel through a glittering and dangerous serpent realm, and discover that their enemy isn't at all who they expected.
War between the devas and the demons is imminent, and the Otherworld is on high alert.
\nWhen intelligence from the human world reveals that the Sleeper is holding a powerful clairvoyant and her sister captive, 14-year-old Aru and her friends launch a search-and-rescue mission. The captives, a pair of twins, turn out to be the newest Pandava sisters, though, according to a prophecy, one sister is not true.
During the celebration of Holi, the heavenly attendants stage a massage PR rebranding campaign to convince everyone that the Pandavas are to be trusted. As much as Aru relishes the attention, she fears that she is destined to bring destruction to her sisters, as the Sleeper has predicted. Aru believes that the only way to prove her reputation is to find the Kalpavriksha, the wish-granting tree that came out of the Ocean of Milk when it was churned.
\nIf she can reach it before the Sleeper, perhaps she can turn everything around with one wish.
\n
Careful what you wish for, Aru . . .
After Séverin's seeming betrayal, the crew is fractured. Armed with only a handful of hints, Enrique, Laila, Hypnos and Zofia must find their way through the snarled, haunted waterways of Venice, Italy to locate Séverin.
\nMeanwhile, Séverin must balance the deranged whims of the Patriarch of the Fallen House and discover the location of a temple beneath a plague island where the Divine Lyre can be played and all that he desires will come to pass.
\nWith only ten days until Laila expires, the crew will face plague pits and deadly masquerades, unearthly songs and the shining steps of a temple whose powers might offer divinity itself . . . but at a price they may not be willing to pay.
An ancient mystery. An unlikely union. For one young princess in a state of peril, a dangerous wish could be the only answer . . .
She is the princess of Bharata - captured by her kingdom’s enemies, a prisoner of war. Now that she faces a future of exile and scorn, Gauri has nothing left to lose. But should she trust Vikram, the notoriously cunning prince of a neighboring land? He promises her freedom in exchange for her battle prowess.
Together they can team up and win the Tournament of Wishes, a competition held in a mythical city where the Lord of Wealth promises a wish to the victor. It seems like a foolproof plan - until Gauri and Vikram arrive at the tournament and find that danger takes on new shapes: poisonous courtesans, mischievous story birds, a feast of fears, and twisted fairy revels.
\nNew trials will test their devotion, strength, and wits. But what Gauri and Vikram will soon discover is that there’s nothing more dangerous than what they most desire.
Once upon a time, a man who believed in fairy tales married a beautiful, mysterious woman named Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. He was a scholar of myths. She was heiress to a fortune. They exchanged gifts and stories and believed they would live happily ever after - and in exchange for her love, Indigo extracted a promise: that her bridegroom would never pry into her past.
\nBut when Indigo learns that her estranged aunt is dying and the couple is forced to return to her childhood home, the House of Dreams, the bridegroom will soon find himself unable to resist. For within the crumbling manor’s extravagant rooms and musty halls, there lurks the shadow of another girl: Azure, Indigo’s dearest childhood friend who suddenly disappeared. As the house slowly reveals his wife’s secrets, the bridegroom will be forced to choose between reality and fantasy, even if doing so threatens to destroy their marriage . . . or their lives.
\nCombining the lush, haunting atmosphere of Mexican Gothic with the dreamy enchantment of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a spellbinding and darkly romantic page-turner about love and lies, secrets and betrayal, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.
Séverin and his team members might have successfully thwarted the Fallen House, but victory came at a terrible cost - one that still haunts all of them. Desperate to make amends, Séverin pursues a dangerous lead to find a long lost artifact rumored to grant its possessor the power of God.
Their hunt lures them far from Paris, and into the icy heart of Russia where crystalline ice animals stalk forgotten mansions, broken goddesses carry deadly secrets, and a string of unsolved murders makes the crew question whether an ancient myth is a myth after all.
As hidden secrets come to the light and the ghosts of the past catch up to them, the crew will discover new dimensions of themselves. But what they find out may lead them down paths they never imagined.
A tale of love and betrayal as the crew risks their lives for one last job.
Fate and fortune. Power and passion. What does it take to be the queen of a kingdom when you're only seventeen?
Maya is cursed. With a horoscope that promises a marriage of Death and Destruction, she has earned only the scorn and fear of her father's kingdom. Content to follow more scholarly pursuits, her whole world is torn apart when her father, the Raja, arranges a wedding of political convenience to quell outside rebellions. Soon Maya becomes the queen of Akaran and wife of Amar. Neither roles are what she expected: As Akaran's queen, she finds her voice and power. As Amar's wife, she finds something else entirely: Compassion. Protection. Desire . . .
But Akaran has its own secrets - thousands of locked doors, gardens of glass, and a tree that bears memories instead of fruit. Soon, Maya suspects her life is in danger. Yet who, besides her husband, can she trust? With the fate of the human and Otherworldly realms hanging in the balance, Maya must unravel an ancient mystery that spans reincarnated lives to save those she loves the most. . . . including herself.
Prince Arris knows that marriage means murder. Thanks to a poorly worded wish to a sea witch, all one needs to rule the Isle of Malys is the heart and hand of the kingdom’s heir. Historically, this has been construed quite literally.
\nThus, Arris expects that the day after his marriage and murder he will wake up as a sentient tree alongside the rest of his predecessors. His only chance at a long life is finding true and lasting love. When Arris's parents announce a tournament of brides to compete for his hand and heart, a slew of eligible, lovely and (possibly murderous) bachelorettes make their way to Rathe Castle. Amidst glittering balls in ozorald caves, strolls through menageries of daydream trees and pearl crocodiles, tea time on glass boats and kisses that leave his head spinning, Arris cannot tell who is here out of love for him . . . or lust for power.
\nUntil he meets Demelza.
\nAs a veritas swan, Demelza’s song wrings out the truth. Forced into hiding, Demelza strikes a deal. Arris will provide her with safekeeping in exchange for her truth-telling song to sort through his potential brides.
\nWhile Arris is used to dodging death threats and Demelza is accustomed to fighting for her voice to be heard, to survive the tournament of brides requires a different kind of bravery. And perhaps the bravest thing one can do is not merely protect one’s life, but find the courage to chase a life worth living.
The town of Moon Ridge was founded 400 years ago and everyone born and raised there knows the legend of the young woman who perished at the stroke of twelve that very same night, losing the life she was set to embark on with her dearest love. Every century since, one day a year, the Lady of Moon Ridge descends from the stars to walk among the townsfolk, conjuring an aura upon those willing to follow their hearts’ desires.
\nThis year at Moon Ridge High, a group of friends known as The Coven will weave art, science, and magic during a masquerade ball unlike any other. Onny, True, and Ash believe everything is in alignment to bring them the affection, acceptance, and healing that can only come from romance - with a little help from Onny’s grandmother’s love potion.
\nBut nothing is as simple as it first seems. And as midnight approaches, The Coven learn that it will take more than a spell to recognise those who offer their love and to embrace all the magic that follows.
One fateful night in Sparta, a young slave girl encounters a mysterious, grey-eyed princess. Melantho and Penelope, though from different worlds, are instantly connected. But betrayal soon tears them apart.
\nYears later, on Ithaca's rocky shores, Melantho is sent to serve Princess Penelope and her new husband, Prince Odysseus. Hardened by slavery, Melantho vows to stay distant from Penelope. Yet, the undeniable pull between them proves stronger than ever.
\nAs war ignites Greece, Odysseus and Ithaca's men are called away and, in their absence, Melantho finds a new world opening up before her – one where women rule, where family can be found, and where love is finally given the space to bloom.
\nBut all wars eventually end and as Troy falls, Penelope and Melantho must face the King’s return and decide how far they will go to protect what matters most to them.
\n
Rhianne expresses her inner world through line and colour. This summer, though, back home in the west country, she is seeking distraction in heat and noise. Art school in London has ripped away her confidence and sense of better for now to be swept along by the hotel kitchen where she’s working, where the pressure is high and the dangers are more obvious. Sharp knives. Hot plates. Little time to think.
\nHer dad, Dominic, is concerned for Rhianne but relieved to have her close. Her step-mum, Melissa, is on alert, though trying to tread carefully. But then there’s Callum, just across the chef’s pass, with his controlled manner and intent gaze. There’s attraction. There’s everything that comes next.
\nFrom the acclaimed author of What Red Was, The Orange Room is about what happens when we are too afraid to see the people we love clearly, and too afraid to be seen. It’s the story of a tenacious young woman who - through her art, her courage, her determination - finds her way back to herself.
\n
When Kate Quaile meets Max Rippon in the first week of university, a life-changing friendship begins. Over the next four years, the two become inseparable. For him, she breaks her solitude; for her, he leaves his busy circles behind. But knowing Max means knowing his family: the wealthy Rippons, all generosity, social ease, and quiet repression.
\nTheirs is a very different world from Kate’s own upbringing, and yet she finds herself quickly drawn into their gilded lives, and the secrets that lie beneath. Until one evening, at the Rippons home, just after graduation, her life is shattered apart in a bedroom while a party goes on downstairs.
What Red Was is an incisive and mesmerising novel about power, privilege, and consent - one that fearlessly explores the effects of trauma on the mind and body of a young woman, the tyrannies of memory, the sacrifices involved in staying silent, and the courage in speaking out. And when Kate does, it raises this urgent question: whose story is it now?
When Poppy discovers unanswered messages from a charming stranger in her late sister’s dating app, she makes an impulsive choice: She’ll meet him, just once, on what would have been Dandelion’s fortieth birthday. It’s exactly the kind of wild adventure her vivacious sister would have pushed her toward.
\nJake is ready to find something real - and not least because his ex-wife’s twentysomething boyfriend has moved into their old family home. When he meets the intriguing woman who calls herself Dandelion, their connection is undeniable, and he can think of little else.
\nAs their relationship deepens, Poppy finds herself trapped in a double life she never meant to create. Every moment with Jake feels genuine, electric, and totally right - despite the fact they’re tangled in deceit. As the lines between grief and love blur, Poppy faces a choice: keep her sister’s memory alive through her lies, or risk everything for a chance at her own happiness?
\nWith sparkling wit and aching tenderness, debut author Rosie Storey gives us a modern love story about the courage it takes to live again after loss and finding hope in the most unexpected places.
Cornwall, 1910. On a remote tidal island, the Viscount of Tithe Hall is absorbed in feverish preparations for the apocalypse that he believes will accompany the passing of Halley's Comet. The Hall must be sealed from top to bottom - every window, chimney, and keyhole closed off before night falls. But what the pompous, dishonest Viscount has failed to take into account is the danger that lies within . . . By morning, he will be dead in his sealed study, murdered by his own ancestral crossbow.
\nAll eyes turn to Steven Pike, Tithe Hall's newest under-butler. Fresh out of Borstal for a crime he didn't commit, he is the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. His unlikely ally? Miss Decima Stockingham, the foul-mouthed, sharp as a tack, eighty-year-old family matriarch. Fearless and unconventional, she relishes chaos and puzzles alike, and a murder is just the thrill she's been waiting for.
\nTogether, this mismatched duo must navigate secret passages, buried grudges, and rising terror to unmask the killer before it's too late . . .
A trip to the library prompts one woman to question her fate in this galvanising short story.
\nFor a woman like Hadley, deemed not acceptable to procreate, there’s only one recourse. Unlicensed for motherhood, she can alleviate her grief and frustration at a “baby library,” where a curiously endless supply of infants is available for a two-week loan.
\nBut the borrowed life that serves as a temporary balm leads to a journey of self-discovery that will forever change the direction of Hadley’s future.
Since the publication of the groundbreaking Bad Feminist and Hunger , Roxane Gay has continued to tackle the big issues embroiling society - state-sponsored violence and mass shootings, women's rights post- Dobbs , online disinformation, and the limits of empathy - alongside more individual Can I tell my coworker her perfume makes me sneeze? Is it acceptable to schedule a daily eight a.m. meeting? In her role as a New York Times contributing opinion writer and the publication's \"Work Friend\" columnist, she reaches millions of readers with her wise voice and sharp insights.
\nWith an introduction in which Gay provides the connective tissues that link her groundbreaking writing, Opinions is a collection of Roxane Gay's best nonfiction pieces from the past ten years, addressing a wide range of topics - politics, the culture wars, civil rights, celebrities, and much more. Offering nuanced analysis that never shies away from difficult topics, this sharp, thought-provoking anthology will delight Gay's devotees and draw new readers to this inimitable talent.
Cambridge, 2018. Ana and Luis’s relationship is on the rocks, despite their many similarities, including their mothers who both fled El Salvador during the war. In her search for answers, and against her best judgement, Ana uses The Defractor, an experimental device that allows users to peek into alternate versions of their lives. What she sees leads her and Luis on a quest through Havana and San Salvador to uncover the family histories they are desperate to know, eager to learn if what might have been could fix what is.
\nHavana, 1978. The Salvadoran war is brewing, and Neto, a young revolutionary with a knack for forging government papers, meets Rafael at a meeting for the People's Revolutionary Army. The two form an intense and forbidden love, shedding their fake names and revealing themselves to each other inside the covert world of their activism. When their work separates them, they begin to exchange weekly letters, but soon, as the devastating war rages on, forces beyond their control threaten to pull them apart forever.
\nRuben Reyes Jr.’s debut novel is an epic, genre-bending journey through inverted worlds - one where war ends with a peace treaty, and one where it ends with a decisive victory by the Salvadoran government. What unfolds is a stunning story of displacement and belonging, of loss and love. It’s both a daring imagining of what might have been and a powerful reckoning of our past.
Savannah Grace is a huge star in Nashville. At least, she was. Her hit band Twice Struck topped the country music charts for almost a decade until her high profile marriage to her bandmate and co-writer publicly exploded. Now she’s fading from the spotlight and her own life, just trying to keep her head above water.
\nBrynn Marshall is a little lost. Dropping out of med school made her the black sheep of the family and now she’s floating around LA trying to find a sense of purpose. When she falls down on her luck, her best friend - indie musician Noah Lyman - refuses to let her wallow. After all, he’s just got his big break, co-writing with a megastar!
\nWhen Savannah enlists Noah to help her break out of country music and make a name for herself for once and for all, what better way to do it than to spend the winter in her secluded vacation home in the woods of Vermont? And what better way for Noah to help out a friend than to pretend he’s bringing along his wife?
\nAfter all, what could possibly go wrong?
Savannah Grace is on top of the world. She’s back to selling out stadium tours and winning Grammys, and she’s just arrived home from her honeymoon after marrying the love of her life . . . nothing could burst this bubble.
\nExcept, of course, her estranged family.
\nWhen her younger sister Cassidy shows up on her doorstep, in need of help and thoroughly - inexplicably - pissed off, the whole household gets turned on its end. Where did she spring from and why the heck is she so damn mad?
\nSavannah’s nanny Lane has grown all the way up, from a cute punk kid to a classic handsome heartbreaker, a long trail of short flings in their wake. They don’t have a second to waste on Cassidy, after all she’s rude, ignorant, hot-tempered and kind of a brat. It’s just . . . does their boss’s little sister have to be so hot?
\nOf course things could always get worse. Cassidy has one plan and one plan only: for her sister to turn her into a star.
Alison Hartmann is a woman with secrets no one wants her to keep. Gold Hill, with its idyllic setting is the perfect place to hide. Light-hearted Hope Sullivan doesn’t see it that way. What else is a small town for if it isn’t about strong bonds and close community?
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tOn a gloomy day by the lake, their lives collide, leading both women to wonder: is Gold Hill a haven or a bolthole? Can you ever really be safe?
ra Bennett is world-famous in Ribbonwood, population 907. She’s the woman you don't trust your husband with: a real-life femme fatale. If there’s a scandal in town, she’s at the center of it, ruining businesses, marriages, and egos everywhere she goes, with her sharp tongue and that body that makes you look twice. Besides . . . didn’t she more or less kill a man?
\nOllie Gabrielli left Ribbonwood right after high school, back when Lara was her arch-nemesis. The queen bee and the closeted soccer star: natural enemies. When she comes home for three months it's to recover from burnout and spend time with her chaotic family, not to reconnect with old classmates. Only somehow, she can’t seem to take her eyes off Lara. How did she only get hotter? And is she really everything they say she is?
\nSometimes, there’s a reason you should never try to go home.
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Rosalie Carlson is the person everyone turns to in a crisis. She’s kind, calm, caring and a social worker, after all. She’s got it all together . . . except that her personal life is kind of a disaster. Things can get a little hectic after all, when your complicated best-friendship is with a megastar like Savannah Grace.
\nWhen twenty-six year old Kinsey moved to Nashville, it was in the hopes of finding a creative partner and making it big. When she meets Cassidy Carver, musical sparks fly. It’s a chance meeting with a beautiful older woman however, that truly knocks her off her feet.
\nRosalie’s gorgeous - and there’s no denying the intense chemistry between them - but she refuses to consider even a single date with a young musician. Besides, Rosalie’s already given up on love, so what would be the point?
\nFighting this level of temptation is always a losing battle, but after one red hot minute they go their separate ways. It’s just lucky there’s no connection between their different worlds and no way they’ll ever cross paths again . . .
Eloise Silver is an actor in need of a big break. Now in her mid-thirties, her biggest credits to date are just one Australian soap opera and a series of ice-cream commercials. Oh, and that one time she played a real-life mob boss’s wife on prime-time television.
\nSuddenly, Estella Grant is no longer just the wife of a dangerous man. After leading a bloody coup she’s emerged as the leader of Melbourne’s biggest crime syndicate and she’s got one hell of a plan to execute. She’s got nothing to lose and an outsized reputation to help her in her reign of terror.
\nBut Estella’s actions have unintended consequences because the public just can’t seem to get enough of a beautiful, dangerous mob boss. Season Seven of Universe Below is announced and Eloise is promoted to the lead role.
\nWith her big break right on the horizon and her career hanging in the balance, Eloise decides that if she’s going to do the role justice, there’s only one thing left to do: try to get close to the most dangerous woman in the city.
Once upon a time, a hunter broke a vampire's heart . . .
\nAs the trials for Sangui City's throne reach their climax, Red finds herself at the centre of a millennia-old prophecy. As the newly awakened dhampir, she holds the power to reshape the future - or destroy it.
\nOctavia Beaumont, driven by her quest for acceptance, must confront the painful truths of her past to secure her place as ruler.
\nBut as ancient secrets unravel, she discovers that the greatest threat may come from those she trusted most.
\nWith demons rising and alliances shifting, Red and Octavia face their greatest challenge yet: saving a city on the brink of chaos while navigating the complexities of love.
\nTo claim victory, they must:
\nUnmask a villain hiding in plain sight
Decide if love can overcome betrayal
Make sacrifices that will echo through generations
As the boundary thins and magic surges back into the city, Red and Octavia stand . . .
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Octavia Beaumont, one of the original three vampires, is determined to run the city. Red, an expert hunter, is hell-bent on getting revenge on the vampire that turned her sister.
\nWhen deadly trials for the heir of the city begin, Red and Octavia are forced to work together. Octavia wants a crown. Red wants blood.
\nBut there’s only one first place. To win, they’re going to have to trust each other. But teamwork is not easy when their past is filled with betrayal . . . A betrayal Red can’t remember.
\nSomeone is lying. Someone has a secret. Everyone has a hidden agenda.
\nThe last thing Red and Octavia want to do is fall in love . . . But hearts remember, even when the mind doesn’t. To win the trials and get revenge . . . They must reveal a truth that will shatter their souls.
\nRemember a past that will break their hearts. And fight a war that will change the face of the city forever. Three tasks. Three choices. Three sacrifices. All of them have a cruel price. The question is, are they willing to pay it?
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Once upon a time, a vampire fell in love with a hunter . . .
\nThe trials for the heir of the city have begun, and the stakes have never been higher.
\nRed, a hunter, is struggling with her growing hunger for blood and the truth of her identity.
\nOctavia Beaumont, one of the original three vampires, is determined to win the trials and take control of the city.
\nBut as Red and Octavia navigate deadly challenges and political machinations, they must also confront the lies and betrayals that have shaped their past.
\nMemories have been stolen.
\nSecrets have been kept.
\nAnd the line between love and hate has never been more blurred.
\nAs the trials progress, Red and Octavia's bond grows stronger, but so does the target on their backs. Enemies lurk in every shadow, and even allies can no longer be trusted.
\nTo survive the trials and uncover the truth . . .
\nThey must decide how much . . .
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What if everything you thought you wanted was exactly what you didn't need?
\nInvestment banker Jessica Taylor has spent her entire life checking boxes:
Ivy League education
Corner office
London promotion pending
The last thing on her list is inheriting seven cats and a crumbling Victorian house from the great-aunt her family considered an embarrassment.
\nDr. Ali Ritchie knows about starting over. After her own devastating breakdown, she's rebuilt her life around healing wounded animals and keeping humans at arm's length.
\nBut there's something about the controlled banker slowly melting under the influence of seven demanding cats that makes Ali want to risk everything including her guarded heart.
\nAs litter boxes replace boardrooms and cat hair ruins designer suits, Jessica discovers that some of life's best gifts come with claws attached. But when the career opportunity she's worked toward her entire . . .
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Frankie Martinez is three months out of a breakup and completely fine.
\nShe says so.
\nBridge Cahill arrives at Frankie’s search and rescue training by pulling herself over the edge of an eighty-foot cliff. No rope. No harness. Her first act is correcting Frankie on the gender of a stray dog.
\nHer second is walking away without looking back.
\nBy evening, they are both at Rosie’s bar.
By midnight, somewhere considerably better.
Because some sparks do not wait.
\nBridge is in Elk Ridge for the season, training for a free solo climb that would make most people rethink their life choices. She travels light, keeps her secrets close, and reads people the way she reads rock, with a patience that feels like a warning.
\nFrankie teaches others how to approach wild things slowly, carefully, without startling them.
\nShe should have taken her own advice.
\nWhat begins as chemistry quickly turns into something harder to ignore. Between mountain rescues, high-risk training, and moments that blur the line between control and surrender, both women are forced to confront what they want and what they are willing to risk.
\nBecause some connections are not meant to stay temporary.
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She spent thirty years as Moscow's weapon. Now she's pointed at them.
\nSuzette Conner-Wakeman knows how to disappear people. She did it for the Russian government for three decades. Then she disappeared herself. Traded intelligence work for a vineyard. A wife whose touch still sets her on fire. The dangerous illusion of peace.
\nThen twelve refugee women vanish into illegal drug trials. No one's looking for them. No one cares.
\nSuzette cares.
\nWhat begins as a rescue becomes a war. Against traffickers. Against a pharmaceutical empire. Against the Kremlin itself. Old lovers resurface with guns drawn and unfinished business. Trusted allies reveal themselves as enemies. And the lines between seduction and strategy blur in ways that could get them all killed.
\nHow much of the monster she used to be is Suzette willing to resurrect? And how much of her heart can she risk when every stolen moment might be the last?
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Flight attendant Kristi has perfected the art of avoiding connections - one night stands in far-off cities are her specialty. But when she meets pediatric surgeon Fenna during a flight to Costa Rica, something shifts in her carefully guarded heart.
\nTheir passionate encounter was supposed to be nothing more than a memory, until fate brings them together again and again. Despite Kristi's determination to keep her distance, Fenna's warmth and compassion begin to crack the walls she's built around herself.
\nWhat Fenna doesn't know is that Kristi carries a devastating secret - haunted by her family's medical history, she's terrified of offering someone a future she might not have. And just as Kristi begins to open up, tragedy strikes Fenna's family, testing the fragile bond between them.
\nFrom high-altitude chance meetings to heartbreaking hospital corridors, their journey proves that sometimes the most broken hearts are the ones most worth rescuing. Will Kristi find the courage to embrace the love she deserves, or will fear rob them both of the chance at happiness?
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Former Russian operative Suzette, once the most dangerous seductress in Moscow’s arsenal, has traded the shadows for sunlight in her Provençal vineyard - with her fierce wife Amber at her side.
\nBut peace never lasts. When Yelena Federova, Suzette’s rival and former lover, arrives with an impossible proposition, Suzette is dragged back into the deadly game she swore she’d never play again.
\nThe mission: turn Dr. Nora Pelletier, a brilliant and beautiful tech billionaire whose AI breakthrough could shift the balance of global power.
\nThe deadline: six weeks.
\nThe reward: Suzette’s family’s safety - and the truth about her own past, buried deep in Moscow’s files.
\nTo succeed, Suzette must get closer to Nora than anyone ever has, uncovering not only her secrets but also her hidden desires. But seduction is a dangerous weapon - especially when lust turns into obsession and the line between love and betrayal blurs.
\nWhen desire becomes the game . . . who will win?
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Shannon McAllister runs search and rescue in the Colorado mountains with iron discipline and zero tolerance for small talk. She hasn't let anyone close in five years. Not because she doesn't feel things - because she does, and that's worse. She's made herself untouchable. It's worked so far.
\nTess Calder has been hired to decide whether Shannon's job should exist. She's the consultant nobody wants and everybody underestimates. Analytical, guarded, and so tightly wound she colour-codes her panty drawer, Tess doesn't do feelings. She does data. Data doesn't let you down, doesn't leave, and doesn't look at you the way Shannon McAllister looks at her when she thinks no one's watching.
\nTwo women who've perfected the art of keeping everyone at arm's length. One six-month audit that puts them in each other's orbit - and neither of them is prepared for what happens when the distance stops working.
\nA wildfire tears through the mountains, and through every certainty they've clung to. Now Tess has a report to write that could end Shannon's career - or destroy her own. And Shannon has to decide what terrifies her more: losing her job or letting someone stay.
\nMeanwhile, Tess's mother Colette - part chaos agent, part unwanted life coach, and entirely without boundaries - has arrived uninvited, unpacked her crystals, discovered Tess's most private possession, and set her sights on a captivating eighty-three-year-old grandmother named Yaya. You'll either love her or want to lock her in a cupboard. Possibly both.
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Ramón Lopez was born along the US–Mexico border but is determined to get out and embrace the American dream - and he’s not sure whether his complicated family is a help or a hindrance. The son of immigrants, as Ramón grows his admiration for his entrepreneurial father sours as he watches his dad’s dreams of success wither on the vine.
\nRamón’s mother is constantly preoccupied with his younger brother, who struggles with intellectual disabilities. And the outside world is rife with danger and temptations threatening to distract Ramón from his dreams of making it to New York and succeeding as an artist.
\nAs dreams clash with reality and values conflict with desires, Ramón finds the American dream within his reach - but will it demand too big a sacrifice?
\nAward-winning author Rudy Ruiz brilliantly captures the beauty and the danger of border life as Ramón struggles to understand his home and his place in the world. The Border Between Us is a stunning, compassionate story about a son’s fraught relationship with his father, the challenges of pursuing a creative life when you come from humble beginnings, and the power of embracing the whole of who you are.
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1883, West Texas. In the vast desert, a gleaming river snakes beneath the blinding sun. When the Rio Grande shifts course, the Mexican city of Olvido is stranded on the northern side of the new border between the United States and Mexico.
\nWhen a series of mysterious and horrific crimes grips the divided border town, a reclusive former Mexican lawman is lured out of retirement to restore order and save the lives of a growing number of abducted children.
\nIn the face of skeptics and hostile Anglo settlers, the war-weary charro, Solitario Cisneros, struggles to overcome not only the evil forces that threaten his town, but also his own inner demons. He is burdened by the turbulent darkness of a mystical curse that has guided his lonely destiny, until Onawa, a gifted and beautiful Apache-Mexican seer, joins his mission and dares him to change the course of both their lives.
\nA visionary neo-Western blend of magical realism, mystery, and horror, Valley of Shadows explores the dark past of injustice, isolation, and suffering along the US-Mexico border. Through luminous prose and introspective meditations, Ruiz sweeps readers away on a journey to another time and a remote place where the universally compelling forces of good and evil dance amidst the shadows of magic and mountains.
\nYou will ponder the most basic questions regarding the human condition: Is our destiny written for us? Can we rewrite our own history and future? As lonely as we might feel, are we ever truly alone? And, can love conquer all?
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As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor - and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.
\nNow, at twenty, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge of eviction. She needs a cash infusion - fast. When her estranged father, Jinx, shows up on her doorstep and asks to move in with her, she agrees in exchange for help with childcare. Then Margo begins to form a plan: she’ll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, and soon finds herself adapting some of Jinx’s advice from the world of wrestling. Like how to craft a compelling character and make your audience fall in love with you. Before she knows it, she’s turned it into a runaway success. Could this be the answer to all of Margo’s problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price?
\nBlisteringly funny and filled with sharp insight, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a tender tale starring an endearing young heroine who’s struggling to wrest money and power from a world that has little interest in giving it to her. It’s a playful and honest examination of the art of storytelling and controlling your own narrative, and an empowering portrait of coming into your own, both online and off.
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Brooke wants. She isn’t in need, but there are things she wants. A sense of purpose, for instance. She wants to make a difference in the world, to impress her mother along the way, to spend time with friends and secure her independence. Her job assisting an octogenarian billionaire in his quest to give away a vast fortune could help her achieve many of these goals. It may inspire new desires as proximity to wealth turns out to be nothing less than transformative. What is money, really, but a kind of belief?
\nTaut, unsettling, and alive to the seductive distortions of money, Entitlement is a riveting tale for our new gilded age, a story that confidently considers questions about need and worth, race and privilege, philanthropy and generosity, passion and obsession. It is a provocative, propulsive novel about the American imagination.
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A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong
Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G. H. are an older black couple - it’s their house, and they’ve arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area - with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service - it’s hard to know what to believe.
Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple - and vice versa? What happened back in New York? Is the vacation home, isolated from civilisation, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another?
Suspenseful and provocative, Rumaan Alam’s third novel is keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped - and unexpected new ones are forged - in moments of crisis.
This irresistible debut, set in contemporary New York, provides a sharp, insightful look into how the relationship between two best friends changes when they are no longer coming of age but learning how to live adult lives.
As close as sisters for twenty years, Sarah and Lauren have been together through high school and college, first jobs and first loves, the uncertainties of their twenties and the realities of their thirties.
Sarah, the only child of a prominent intellectual and a socialite, works at a charity and is methodically planning her wedding. Lauren - beautiful, independent, and unpredictable - is single and working in publishing, deflecting her parents’ worries and questions about her life and future by trying not to think about it herself. Each woman envies - and is horrified by - particular aspects of the other’s life, topics of conversation they avoid with masterful linguistic pirouettes.
Once, Sarah and Lauren were inseparable; for a long a time now, they’ve been apart. Can two women who rarely see one other, selectively share secrets, and lead different lives still call themselves best friends? Is it their abiding connection - or just force of habit - that keeps them together?
With impeccable style, biting humor, and a keen sense of detail, Rumaan Alam deftly explores how the attachments we form in childhood shift as we adapt to our adult lives - and how the bonds of friendship endure, even when our paths diverge.
Mark has a wife and two kids, a sense of purpose, financial security, and a fragile contentment.
\nHowever wistful his visions of the future, Mark knows who he is. But a summer trip with his abrasive brother-in-law and unhappy sister-in-law leave Mark questioning everything he thinks he knows about his family - and himself.
Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed. Struggling to juggle the demands of motherhood with her own aspirations and feeling utterly alone in the process, she reaches out to the only person at the hospital who offers her any real help - Priscilla Johnson - and begs her to come home with them as her son’s nanny.
Priscilla’s presence quickly does as much to shake up Rebecca’s perception of the world as it does to stabilize her life. Rebecca is white, and Priscilla is black, and through their relationship, Rebecca finds herself confronting, for the first time, the blind spots of her own privilege. She feels profoundly connected to the woman who essentially taught her what it means to be a mother.
When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca steps forward to adopt the baby. But she is unprepared for what it means to be a white mother with a black son. As she soon learns, navigating motherhood for her is a matter of learning how to raise two children whom she loves with equal ferocity, but whom the world is determined to treat differently.
Written with the warmth and psychological acuity that defined his debut, Rumaan Alam has crafted a remarkable novel about the lives we choose, and the lives that are chosen for us.
Anthony Peardew is the keeper of lost things. Forty years ago, he carelessly lost a keepsake from his beloved fiancée, Therese. That very same day, she died unexpectedly. Brokenhearted, Anthony sought consolation in rescuing lost objects - the things others have dropped, misplaced, or accidentally left behind - and writing stories about them.
\nNow, in the twilight of his life, Anthony worries that he has not fully discharged his duty to reconcile all the lost things with their owners. As the end nears, he bequeaths his secret life’s mission to his unsuspecting assistant, Laura, leaving her his house and and all its lost treasures, including an irritable ghost.
Recovering from a bad divorce, Laura, in some ways, is one of Anthony’s lost things. But when the lonely woman moves into his mansion, her life begins to change. She finds a new friend in the neighbor’s quirky daughter, Sunshine, and a welcome distraction in Freddy, the rugged gardener. As the dark cloud engulfing her lifts, Laura, accompanied by her new companions, sets out to realize Anthony’s last wish: reuniting his cherished lost objects with their owners.
Long ago, Eunice found a trinket on the London pavement and kept it through the years. Now, with her own end drawing near, she has lost something precious - a tragic twist of fate that forces her to break a promise she once made.
As the Keeper of Lost Objects, Laura holds the key to Anthony and Eunice’s redemption. But can she unlock the past and make the connections that will lay their spirits to rest?
George McGlory - recent widower, part-time librarian, pub quiz enthusiast and lover of loud shirts - witnesses a public health funeral and is deeply moved by the sight of the lonely coffin with no flowers and no mourners in attendance.
\nHe joins forces with Elena, a florist, Edwin, an undertaker, Sid, the owner of a bric-a-brac and second-hand furniture emporium, and Roxy his library colleague to form The Light a Candle Society and banish lonely funerals for good.
\nAs they honour the dead together, George reflects on his own life and the rifts within his family. Can he find the courage and humility to face the demons of his past and repair his broken relationships before it's too late?
For fifty years, Venetia Hargreaves’s world revolved around her husband. She built their life around his big career, with dinner on the table at six, a lovely home, and a dutiful son just as business-minded as his father. Now Venetia’s a wealthy widow left with a beautiful but empty home, an enviable bank balance, and a distinct feeling that she missed the boat. Once upon a time, she was a dance instructor who dreamed of opening her own ballroom school with a fellow teacher who won her heart. Instead, Venetia chose the safer path.
\nSo, at seventy-four years of age, Venetia declares her independence, first with a makeover, and then by adopting a new dog. But something is still missing . . . until on one of her dog walks by the river she passes by a building she remembers all too well. In her youth it was the spectacular Phoenix Ballroom, where she used to teach waltzes and tangos. These days it’s a community center and spiritualist church, funded by a mysterious benefactor who only pays for the upkeep.
\nEager to revive at least one meaningful thing from her past, Venetia buys the Phoenix Ballroom, and finds a supportive and loving community of lost souls who become a delightful multigenerational family-by-choice.
\nAs the ballroom regains its former glory, the community and Venetia’s humdrum life are revived as well . . . proving wonderful things can come from the darkest of places.
Tilly was a bright, outgoing little girl who liked playing with ghosts and matches. She loved fizzy drinks, swear words, fish fingers and Catholic churches, but most of all she loved living in Brighton in Queenie Malone's Magnificent Paradise Hotel with its endearing and loving family of misfits - staff and guests alike.
But Tilly's childhood was shattered when her mother sent her away from the only home she'd ever loved to boarding school with little explanation and no warning. Now, Tilda has grown into an independent woman still damaged by her mother's unaccountable cruelty.
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Wary of people, her only friend is her dog, Eli. But when her mother dies, Tilda goes back to Brighton and with the help of her beloved Queenie sets about unraveling the mystery of her exile from The Paradise Hotel and discovers that her mother was not the woman she thought she knew at all . . . Mothers and daughters . . . their story can be complicated . . . it can also turn out to have a happy ending.
Masha is drowning.
Once a spirited, independent woman with a rebellious streak, her life has been forever changed by a tragic event twelve years ago.
Unable to let go of her grief, she finds solace in the silent company of the souls of her local Victorian cemetery and at the town's lido, where she seeks refuge underwater - safe from the noise and the pain.
But a chance encounter with two extraordinary women - the fabulous and wise Kitty Muriel, a convent girl-turned-magician's wife-turned-seventy-something-roller-disco-fanatic, and the mysterious Sally Red Shoes, a bag lady with a prodigious voice - opens up a new world of possibilities, and the chance to start living again.
Until the fateful day when the past comes roaring back . . .
Arthur Connoway desperately wants to free himself from the monster inhabiting his mind. Instead, he is rapidly losing control of it following his mother’s death. In a last-ditch effort to feel whole again - and to lay his mother’s memory to rest - Arthur decides to return to the quiet bee farm he once called home, hoping their sacred honey can heal him in more ways than one.
\nEight years ago, Eva Moreau's flora magic caused a terrible accident, harming her father in the process. Now, she’s desperate to find a way to heal him, but her attempts only seem to do the opposite. If she could just learn to control her magic, she might be able to save her father and leave the past behind.
\nWhen Arthur returns to town looking for absolution, Eva once again loses control of her magic, putting everyone she loves in danger. Together, the pair decides to trek to the source of her family’s magic to find a cure for both Arthur and her father. But there’s a mysterious ghost haunting the forest, and it won’t let Arthur and Eva leave the woods without confronting the secrets of their past . . .
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A rich, immersive, funny and heartbreaking memoir of the charming bookseller who runs two tiny bookshops in the remote village of Manapouri in Fiordland, in the deep south of New Zealand.
\nRuth Shaw weaves together stories of the characters who visit her bookshops, musings about favourite books, and bittersweet stories from her full and varied life.
\nShe's sailed through the Pacific for years, been held up by pirates, worked at Sydney's Kings Cross with drug addicts and prostitutes, campaigned on numerous environmental issues, and worked the yacht Breaksea Girl with her husband, Lance.
\nUnderlining all her wanderings and adventures are some very deep losses and long-held pain. Balancing that out is her beautiful love story with Lance, and her delightful sense of humour.
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On a day that begins like any other, Hal receives a mysterious letter bequeathing her a substantial inheritance. She realizes very quickly that the letter was sent to the wrong person - but also that the cold-reading skills she’s honed as a tarot card reader might help her claim the money.
\nSoon, Hal finds herself at the funeral of the deceased . . . where it dawns on her that there is something very, very wrong about this strange situation and the inheritance at the center of it.
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April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford.
\nVivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends - Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily - during their first term. By the end of the second, April was dead.
\nNow, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison. Relieved to have finally put the past behind her, Hannah’s world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent.
\nAs Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April’s death, she realises that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide . . . including a murder.
Getting snowed in at a beautiful, rustic mountain chalet doesn’t sound like the worst problem in the world, especially when there’s a breathtaking vista, a cozy fire, and company to keep you warm. But what happens when that company is eight of your coworkers…and you can’t trust any of them?
When an off-site company retreat meant to promote mindfulness and collaboration goes utterly wrong when an avalanche hits, the corporate food chain becomes irrelevant and survival trumps togetherness. Come Monday morning, how many members short will the team be?
Lyla is in a bit of a rut. Her post-doctoral research has fizzled out, she’s pretty sure they won’t extend her contract, and things with her boyfriend, Nico, an aspiring actor, aren’t going great. When the opportunity arises for Nico to join the cast of a new reality TV show, The Perfect Couple, she decides to try out with him.
\nA whirlwind audition process later, Lyla find herself whisked off to a tropical paradise with Nico, boating through the Indian Ocean towards Ever After Island, where the two of them will compete against four other couples - Bayer and Angel, Dan and Santana, Joel and Romi, and Conor and Zana - in order to win a cash prize.
\nBut not long after they arrive on the deserted island, things start to go wrong. After the first challenge leaves everyone rattled and angry, an overnight storm takes matters from bad to worse. Cut off from the mainland by miles of ocean, deprived of their phones, and unable to contact the crew that brought them there, the group must band together for survival.
\nAs tensions run high and fresh water runs low, Lyla finds that this game show is all too real - and the stakes are life or death.
When a barrier between truth and illusion grows stronger, a family’s trust crumbles in this arresting short story by the number one New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin 10.
Leah has spent her formative years isolated on a remote island with her family. But their quiet existence, far from the devastated mainland, is cracking. Father, sensing a coming threat, demands that a wall be built. As the stone blockade rises, Father’s paranoia escalates. So does Leah’s dread that the violence the family left behind has found its way to their sanctuary.
When she stumbles across the advert, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss: a live-in nanny position, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten by the luxurious ‘smart’ home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.
\nWhat she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare - one that will end with a child dead and her in a cell awaiting trial for murder. She knows she’s made mistakes. But, she maintains, she’s not guilty - at least not of murder. Which means someone else is.
In this tightly wound story, Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins.
\nAt first, Lo’s stay is nothing but pleasant: the cabins are plush, the dinner parties are sparkling, and the guests are elegant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard.
\nThe problem? All passengers remain accounted for - and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong…
When the invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel - owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann - arrives, it’s like the answer to a prayer. Three years after the birth of her youngest child, Lo Blacklock is ready to reestablish her journalism career, but post-pandemic travel journalism is a very different landscape from the one she left ten years ago.
\nThe chateau on the shores of Lake Geneva is everything Lo’s ever dreamed of, and she hopes she can snag an interview with Marcus. Unfortunately, he proves to be even more difficult to pin down than his reputation suggests. When Lo gets a late-night call asking her to come to Marcus’s hotel room, she agrees despite her own misgivings. She’s greeted, however, by a woman claiming to be Marcus’s mistress, and in life-or-death jeopardy.
\nWhat follows is a thrilling cat-and-mouse pursuit across Europe, forcing Lo to ask herself just how much she’s willing to sacrifice to save this woman . . . and if she can even trust her?
Hired by companies to break into buildings and hack security systems, Jack and her husband, Gabe, are the best penetration specialists in the business. But after a routine assignment goes horribly wrong, Jack arrives home to find her husband dead. To add to her horror, the police are closing in on their suspect - her.
\nSuddenly on the run and quickly running out of options, Jack must decide who she can trust as she circles closer to the real killer.
Someone wants to murder Princess Melilot. This is sadly normal.
\nMelilot is sick of being ordered to go on dangerous quests by her domineering stepmother. Especially since she always winds up needing to be rescued by her more magically talented stepsisters. And now, she's been commanded to marry a king she’s never met.
\nWhen hideous spider-wolves attack her on the journey to meet her husband-to-be, she is once again rescued - but this time, by twelve eerily similar-looking masked huntsmen. Soon, she has to contend with near-constant attempts on her life, a talking lion that sets bewildering gender tests, and a king who can't recognise his true love when she puts on a pair of trousers. And all the while, she has to fight her growing attraction to not only one of the huntsmen, but also her fiancé’s extremely attractive sister.
\nIf Melilot can't unravel the mysteries and rescue herself from peril, kingdoms will fall. Worse, she could end up married to someone she doesn’t love.
Epheria is a land divided by war and mistrust. The High Lords of the south squabble and fight, only kept in check by the Dragonguard, traitors of a time long past, who serve the empire of the North.
\nIn the remote villages of southern Epheria, still reeling from the tragic loss of his brother, Calen Bryer prepares for The Proving - a test of courage and skill that not all survive.
\nBut when three strangers arrive in the village of Milltown, with a secret they are willing to die for, Calen’s world is ripped from under him and he is thrust headfirst into a war that has been raging for centuries.
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Behind the towering walls of Belduar, Calen Bryer and his companions stand in defense of the city and its new king. In over a thousand years, Belduar has never fallen. It has stood as a bastion of hope. But the Lorian empire are at its walls once more, and the Dragonguard are coming.
\nIn the North, with Faenir by her side, Calen’s sister Ella arrives at the port of Antiquar. She holds no fear of the unknown. She will see this through, no matter what - or who - gets in her way.
\nMeanwhile, at the embassy of the Circle of Magii in Al’Nasla, Rist Havel hones his newfound powers in preparation for the trials. Unbeknownst to Rist, he is being watched, measured, and judged. He was not taken into the Circle by chance. There is greatness in him. But great men can do terrible things.
\nAs Lorian forces land on southern shores and Aeson Virandr’s letters of rebellion find their way to the right hands, only the Knights of Achyron see the true danger. The danger that stirs in the darkness. The coming shadow will not stop. It will consume all in its path. It wants for nothing but blood and fire.
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In the Aravell woodland, Calen Bryer grapples with the fallout from the Battle of Aravell. The path forward is littered with choices that will bleed him dry. But he is a Draleid, he is a guardian, and he will always stand when others call. His sister, Ella, lies fragmented, her mind split between worlds, her fate unknown. But the blood of the wolf is strong.
\nHundreds of miles away, in the western villages of Illyanara, Dahlen Virandr leads the defense of Salme and all its inhabitants gathered from across the region. The Uraks are unrelenting, and they know only blood and death. If this is to be his end, he will enter Achyron's Halls as a warrior who would not yield.
\nBelow the mountains of Lodhar, Queen Kira waits in the dark while Hoffnar attempts to sieze control of the Freehold and lead the dwarves towards a new dawn of war. In Valtara, Dayne Ateres hunts those who betrayed his family, while Alina prepares her army to besiege the legendary Achyron's Keep. At the edges of the Burnt Lands, Rist Havel is offered a new path forward, one that few have ever trodden, one that could forge him into a mage of no equal.
\nWith the news that Ilkya and Jormun have fallen, along with their soulkin, Eltoar finds himself face-to-face with Salara Ithan - a remnant of his past life that he had long thought dead. With the Blood Moon in the sky, Kallinvar and the Knights of Achyron battle tirelessly against the Shadow, doing everything within their power to hold back the darkness.
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The city of Kingspass burns, and Calen Bryer's world has been shaken to its core. With Valerys at his side, Calen must battle his demons and push forward. There are people who need him, people who need what he must become, and he will not let them stand alone.
\nIn Loria, Ella struggles to understand the ancient power that flows through her veins. The world is changing around her and she is changing with it. Her journey has only just begun.
\nThousands of miles away, beneath the mountains of Lodhar, assassins move in the dark as the kingdoms of the Dwarven Freehold ready themselves for war. Not everything is as it seems. Dahlen Virandr and Belina Louna have no choice but to unravel the mysteries of the mountain before everything crumbles around them.
\nMeanwhile, in Al'Nasla, Rist Havel learns the true cost of becoming an Imperial Battlemage. He will question every truth he has ever been told. He has never been a fighter, never been the one people look to, but he will fight for those he loves no matter what it takes.
\nWith the Uraks ravaging the towns and villages of the North, Alina and Dayne Ateres prepare their people for war. They have been beneath a Lorian boot for too long. Valtara will be free. The wyvern of House Ateres will fly again, by blade and by blood.
\nAs the continent of Epheria descends into war and chaos, Kallinvar struggles to come to terms with an immense loss. Despite the hole in his heart, he has no choice but to stand and fight. The Shadow is coming, and the Knights of Achyron are the only ones powerful enough to hold back the tide.
\nUnbeknownst to all, another force is rising - a force long thought tamed. The balance of power is about to shift, and Epheria will never be the same.
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Newly laid off George’s internet bill is in his ex-boyfriend’s name. He’s got a spider-infested apartment, and two of the six dogs he’s walking in London have just escaped. It’s pure undiluted stress that sends him into a spiral, all the way to the year 1300.
\nWhen he comes to, George recognises the same rolling hills of Greenwich Park. But the luxuries and phone service of modernity are nowhere. In their place are locals with a bizarre, slanted speech in awe of his foreign clothes, who swiftly toss him in a dungeon. Despite the barbarity of a medieval world, a servant named Simon helps George acclimate to a simpler, easier existence - until a summons from the King threatens to send his life up in flames.
Almost every religion, spiritual practice, philosophy and person grapples with fear. The most repeated phrase in the Bible is \"Be not afraid.\" The ancient Greeks spoke of phobos, panic and terror. It is natural to feel fear, the Stoics believed, but it cannot rule you. Courage, then, is the ability to rise above fear, to do what's right, to do what's needed, to do what is true. And so it rests at the heart of the works of Marcus Aurelius, Aristotle, and CS Lewis, alongside temperance, justice, and wisdom.
\nIn Courage Is Calling, Ryan Holiday breaks down the elements of fear, an expression of cowardice, the elements of courage, an expression of bravery, and lastly, the elements of heroism, an expression of valor. Through engaging stories about historic and contemporary leaders, including Charles De Gaulle, Florence Nightingale, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Holiday shows you how to conquer fear and practice courage in your daily life.
\nYou'll also delve deep into the moral dilemmas and courageous acts of lesser-known, but equally as important, figures from ancient and modern history, such as Helvidius Priscus, a Roman Senator who stood his ground against emperor Vespasian, even in the face of death; Frank Serpico, a former New York City Police Department Detective who exposed police corruption; and Frederick Douglass and a slave named Nelly, whose fierce resistance against her captors inspired his own crusade to end slavery.
\nIn a world in which fear runs rampant - when people would rather stand on the sidelines than speak out against injustice, go along with convention than bet on themselves, and turn a blind eye to the ugly realities of modern life - we need courage more than ever. We need the courage of whistleblowers and risk takers. We need the courage of activists and adventurers. We need the courage of writers who speak the truth - and the courage of leaders to listen.
\nWe need you to step into the arena and fight.
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To master anything, one must first master themselves–one’s emotions, one’s thoughts, one’s actions. Eisenhower famously said that freedom is really the opportunity to practice self-discipline. Cicero called the virtue of temperance the polish of life. Without boundaries and restraint, we risk not only failing to meet our full potential and jeopardising what we have achieved, but we ensure misery and shame. In a world of temptation and excess, this ancient idea is more urgent than ever.
\nIn Discipline is Destiny, Holiday draws on the stories of historical figures we can emulate as pillars of self-discipline, including Lou Gehrig, Queen Elizabeth II, boxer Floyd Patterson, Marcus Aurelius and writer Toni Morrison, as well as the cautionary tales of Napoleon, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Babe Ruth. Through these engaging examples, Holiday teaches readers the power of self-discipline and balance, and cautions against the perils of extravagance and hedonism.
\nAt the heart of Stoicism are four simple virtues: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. Everything else, the Stoics believed, flows from them. Discipline is Destiny will guide readers down the path to self-mastery, upon which all the other virtues depend. Discipline is predictive. You cannot succeed without it. And if you lose it, you cannot help but bring yourself failure and unhappiness.
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For the ancients, everything worth pursuing in life flowed from a strong sense of justice - or one’s commitment to doing the right thing, no matter how difficult. In order to be courageous, wise, and self-disciplined, one must begin with justice. The influence of the modern world often tells us that acting justly is optional. Holiday argues that that’s simply untrue - and the fact that so few people today have the strength to stand by their convictions explains much about why we’re so unhappy.
\nIn Right Thing. Right Now., Holiday draws on fascinating stories of historical figures such as Marcus Aurelius, Florence Nightingale, Jimmy Carter, Gandhi, and Frederick Douglass, whose examples of kindness, honesty, integrity, and loyalty we can emulate as pillars of upright living. Through the lives of these role models, readers learn the transformational power of living by a moral code and, through the cautionary tales of unjust leaders, the consequences of an ill-formed conscience.
\nThe Stoics never claimed that living justly was easy, only that it was necessary. And that the alternative - sacrificing our principles for something lesser - was considered only by cowards and fools. Right Thing. Right Now. is a powerful antidote to the moral failures of our modern age, and a manual for living virtuously.
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Wisdom is central to a meaningful life. It gives us perspective, reveals knowledge and guides our path. Without it, our best qualities become our worst: courage turns to foolhardiness, self-discipline to cruelty, justice to empty moralising. We all aspire to be wise - but wisdom is earned.
\nIn this fourth and final instalment of his bestselling Stoic Virtues series, Ryan Holiday uncovers tried and true methods for cultivating wisdom. Drawing on lessons from heroes across history, including Marcus Aurelius, Abraham Lincoln, Maya Angelou and Joan Didion, he shows how to keep an open mind in times of division and disruption; to listen more than we talk; to think with nuance and ruthlessly question our own beliefs. Through cautionary figures like Elon Musk, he shows how dangerous intelligence can be without wisdom - and how we can all escape today's traps of tribalism, certainty and self-righteousness.
\nAre you open to listening? Are you willing to question? Are you here to learn? Wisdom is work. But it's worth it.
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As dawn breaks on All Souls Day, the lingering mists part to unveil an unending vista of serried gravestones. Between them looms a theatre like a haunted house and the sleek iron carapace of a steam train - the Pearl. On board are the cast, orchestra and crew of a travelling ballet company, performing The Apple and the Pearl.
\nAs he stumbles toward the restaurant car the lighting director, Zach, asks new recruit, Lara, “Have you ever worked in ballet before?”
\n“Have you had any contact with the supernatural?”
\nEveryone from the principal ballerina to the first violinist, from the wardrobe mistress to the newest members of the corps de ballet, have committed their lives to the perfection of the show. But every night they must also confront the malevolent glamour of their audience of Fae creatures only too eager to snatch them away into the Otherworld.
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Amid the chaos of a dying city ruled by colonisers, three rivals - a thief, a slumlord, and an heiress - race to find a hidden cache of magic that will decide the city’s fate.
\nIn the occupied city of Tejomaya, calor - a magical fossil fuel - is found only in the blood rains that fall from the sky. While a six-month drought has brought Tejomaya to a desperate standstill, rumors of a secret stash of magic propel three unlikely treasure seekers to risk everything.
\nTenacious and street-smart Zain Jatav has been forced to steal calor for her slumlord bosses for years. Finding the magic reserve might be her only key to freedom. But she’ll have to contend with Iravan Khotar, a slumlord himself and an ambitious revolutionary hoping to use the same magic to save his people from the mysterious illness devastating the slums - and to bolster a fight against their oppressors. Meanwhile, heiress Anastasia Drakos leads the ruling council of Tejomaya from the safety of a nearby island. With the hidden magic, she could finally take full control of the city and crush the slums beneath her unyielding fist.
\nAs Zain, Iravan, and Anastasia draw closer to finding the treasure, their paths tangle, and not for the first time - they met before, a decade ago, in a fire that destroyed each of their lives in different ways. Their reunion might bring the already-weakened city to its knees.
\nExploring the devastating mechanisms of power, this searing climate fantasy breathes life into a crumbling world hovering on the brink of total destruction.
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When the Institute’s invitation arrived at my doorstep, it felt like it had been inked in my blood, sweat, and tears.
\nAarya’s life plan has been set for as long as she can remember: finish high school with a bang, attend the best college she can get into, then land a prestigious biology research job. Her ticket to this dream is a one-year program at the Elizabethan Institute, the preeminent organisation for life sciences in the United States, currently on the cusp of revealing a major project that could transform the worlds of biology and medicine.
\nBut as Aarya tries to settle in to a school with sky-high academic expectations and research cloaked in mystery, it becomes clear that someone doesn’t want her there. As the scholarship student surrounded by rich, cutthroat peers who seem all too willing to torment her, she never expected to make friends, but the notes warning her to run rattle her to her core. She finds an ally in Sofia, a mysterious girl who claims to be the subject of closed-door experiments at the Institute and begs for Aarya’s help in figuring out what the Institute is really working on.
\nAs rumors of mutated flora and fauna in the nearby city circulate and a murder investigation rocks the Institute, Aarya will have to navigate Sofia’s growing paranoia and her own increasingly unreliable memory to determine which classmates she can trust―and which would rather see her dead.
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Li Ami was always on the outside - outside of family, outside of friendships, outside of ordinary magic. The odd and eccentric daughter of a former imperial magician, she has devoted her life to books because she finds them easier to read than people.
\nExiled to the outermost west of the Morning Realms, Ami has become the sole caretaker of her mentally ill father, whose rantings and ravings may be more than mere ramblings; they may be part of a dire prophecy. When her father is arrested for trespassing and stealing a branch from the sacred tree of the local monastery, Ami offers herself to the mysterious Beast in the castle, who is in need of someone who can translate a forbidden magical text and find a cure for the mysterious blight that is affecting the harvest of the land.
\nMeanwhile, as signs of magical corruption arise throughout the Morning Realms, Jin Zhara begins to realise that she might be out of her element. She may have defeated a demon lord and uncovered her identity as the Guardian of Fire, but she’ll be more than outmatched in the coming elemental battle against the Mother of Ten Thousand Demons . . . unless she can find the other Guardians of Dawn. Her magic is no match for the growing tide of undead, and she needs the Guardian of Wood with power over life and death in order to defeat the revenants razing the countryside.
\nThe threat of the Mother of Ten Thousand Demons looms larger by the day, and the tenuous peace holding the Morning Realms together is beginning to unravel. Ami and Zhara must journey to the Root of the World in order to seal the demon portal that may have opened there and restore balance to an increasingly chaotic world.
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Six months after the end of Wintersong, Liesl is working toward furthering both her brother’s and her own musical careers. Although she is determined to look forward and not behind, life in the world above is not as easy as Liesl had hoped. Her younger brother Josef is cold, distant, and withdrawn, while Liesl can’t forget the austere young man she left beneath the earth, and the music he inspired in her.
\nWhen troubling signs arise that the barrier between worlds is crumbling, Liesl must return to the Underground to unravel the mystery of life, death, and the Goblin King - who he was, who he is, and who he will be. What will it take to break the old laws once and for all? What is the true meaning of sacrifice when the fate of the world - or the ones Liesl loves - is in her hands?
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All her life, Liesl has heard tales of the beautiful, dangerous Goblin King. They’ve enraptured her mind, her spirit, and inspired her musical compositions. Now eighteen and helping to run her family’s inn, Liesl can’t help but feel that her musical dreams and childhood fantasies are slipping away.
But when her own sister is taken by the Goblin King, Liesl has no choice but to journey to the Underground to save her. Drawn to the strange, captivating world she finds - and the mysterious man who rules it - she soon faces an impossible decision. And with time and the old laws working against her, Liesl must discover who she truly is before her fate is sealed.
Jin Zhara already had enough to worry about - appease her stepmother’s cruel whims, looking after her blind younger sister, and keeping her own magical gifts under control - without having to deal with rumors of monsters re-emerging in the marsh.
\nBut when a chance encounter with an easily flustered young man named Han brings her into contact with a secret magical liberation organisation called the Guardians of Dawn, Zhara realises there may be more to these rumors than she thought.
\nA mysterious plague is corrupting the magicians of Zanhei and transforming them into monsters, and the Guardians of Dawn believe a demon is responsible.
\nIn order to restore harmony and bring peace to the world, Zhara must discover the elemental warrior within, lest the balance between order and chaos is lost forever.
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In nests high in the mountains, dragons and dragonbonded share their lives, thoughts, feelings, and ambitions.
\nPalon and her partner, the dragon Windward, are renowned among their nest for their flying skill. Their days are filled with everything she loves, especially riding the wind. Even being tasked with teaching their way of life to Tebah, a rebellious newly bonded teenager, can’t bring her down too much.
\nBut when treasures from the dragons’ hoards are found in Palon’s collection, her idyllic life comes crashing down. She battles to prove her innocence, while her every move is cast as further evidence against her. Tebah’s suspicion, homesickness, and defiance would be frustrating even in easy times. With Palon in the spotlight while her rivals smear her name at every turn and stir up plots of revenge, her teenage charge’s behavior proves dangerous.
\nDragon tempers shorten, and challenges and disputes shake the ground. Palon will have to trust more than just herself if she hopes to once more own the sky.
Jocasta's carved out a normal life at Beecher University - well, as normal as possible with a name like Jocasta and being the only child of Death.
\nShe has good friends and a messy situationship with her former TA. But her friends, her crush, and her classmates don't know the truth about who - or what - she is. They would be horrified to discover Jo must feed to survive - and she feeds on them. But she refuses to take lives, feasting instead on their disappointments, failures, and rejections. It's not a perfect system, but it works.
\nUntil a sexy stranger - and descendant of Lust - shows up on campus because Death just named Jo as his successor, making her a powerful ally and a massive target.
\nJo's safe little bubble is about to burst, but she will do anything to protect the people she loves. Even if it means becoming what she hates . . .
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Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray has dedicated her life to the study and prevention of ERS - a space-based condition most famous for a case that resulted in the brutal murders of twenty-nine people. When she's assigned to a small exploration crew, she's eager to make a difference. But as they begin to establish residency on an abandoned planet, it becomes clear that crew is hiding something.
\nWhile Ophelia focuses on her new role, her crewmates are far more interested in investigating the eerie, ancient planet and unraveling the mystery behind the previous coloniser's hasty departure than opening up to her.
\nThat is, until their pilot is discovered gruesomely murdered. Is this Ophelia’s worst nightmare starting - a wave of violence and mental deterioration from ERS? Or is it something more sinister?
\nTerrified that history will repeat itself, Ophelia and the crew must work together to figure out what’s happening. But trust is hard to come by . . . and the crew isn’t the only one keeping secrets.
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Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of 18th century Cairo, she’s a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trade she uses to get by - palm readings, zars, healings - are all tricks, sleights of hand, learned skills; a means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles. But when Nahri accidentally summons an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to accept that the magical world she thought only existed in childhood stories is real.
\nFor the warrior tells her a new tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire, and rivers where the mythical marid sleep; past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises, and mountains where the circling hawks are not what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass?a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound. In that city, behind gilded brass walls laced with enchantments, behind the six gates of the six djinn tribes, old resentments are simmering. And when Nahri decides to enter this world, she learns that true power is fierce and brutal.
\nThat magic cannot shield her from the dangerous web of court politics. That even the cleverest of schemes can have deadly consequences. After all, there is a reason they say be careful what you wish for . . .
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Daevabad has fallen.
After a brutal conquest stripped the city of its magic, Nahid leader Banu Manizheh and her resurrected commander, Dara, must try to repair their fraying alliance and stabilize a fractious, warring people.
But the bloodletting and loss of his beloved Nahri have unleashed the worst demons of Dara’s dark past. To vanquish them, he must face some ugly truths about his history and put himself at the mercy of those he once considered enemies.
Having narrowly escaped their murderous families and Daevabad’s deadly politics, Nahri and Ali, now safe in Cairo, face difficult choices of their own. While Nahri finds peace in the old rhythms and familiar comforts of her human home, she is haunted by the knowledge that the loved ones she left behind and the people who considered her a savior are at the mercy of a new tyrant. Ali, too, cannot help but look back, and is determined to return to rescue his city and the family that remains. Seeking support in his mother’s homeland, he discovers that his connection to the marid goes far deeper than expected and threatens not only his relationship with Nahri, but his very faith.
As peace grows more elusive and old players return, Nahri, Ali, and Dara come to understand that in order to remake the world, they may need to fight those they once loved . . . and take a stand for those they once hurt.
Nahri’s life changed forever the moment she accidentally summoned Dara, a formidable, mysterious djinn, during one of her schemes. Whisked from her home in Cairo, she was thrust into the dazzling royal court of Daevabad - and quickly discovered she would need all her grifter instincts to survive there.
\nNow, with Daevabad entrenched in the dark aftermath of the battle that saw Dara slain at Prince Ali’s hand, Nahri must forge a new path for herself, without the protection of the guardian who stole her heart or the counsel of the prince she considered a friend. But even as she embraces her heritage and the power it holds, she knows she’s been trapped in a gilded cage, watched by a king who rules from the throne that once belonged to her family - and one misstep will doom her tribe.
\nMeanwhile, Ali has been exiled for daring to defy his father. Hunted by assassins, adrift on the unforgiving copper sands of his ancestral land, he is forced to rely on the frightening abilities the marid - the unpredictable water spirits - have gifted him. But in doing so, he threatens to unearth a terrible secret his family has long kept buried.
\nAnd as a new century approaches and the djinn gather within Daevabad's towering brass walls for celebrations, a threat brews unseen in the desolate north. It’s a force that would bring a storm of fire straight to the city’s gates . . . and one that seeks the aid of a warrior trapped between worlds, torn between a violent duty he can never escape and a peace he fears he will never deserve.
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Bestselling author S. A. Chakraborty's acclaimed Daevabad Trilogy gets expanded with this new compilation of stories from before, during, and after the events of The City of Brass, The Kingdom of Copper, and The Empire of Gold, all from the perspective of characters both beloved and hated, and even those without a voice in the novels. The River of Silver gathers material both seen and new - including a special coda fans will need to read - making this the perfect complement to those incredible novels.
\nNow together in one place, these stories of Daevabad enrich a world already teeming with magic and wonder. Explore this magical kingdom, hidden from human eyes. A place where djinn live and thrive, fight and love. A world where princes question their power, and powerful demons can help you . . . or destroy you.
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Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, Charon has had only two murders. After years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface.
\nThen a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. Those festering secrets are now out in the open and ready to tear the town apart.
\nAs Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon. With the killer’s possible connections to a local church and the town’s harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town’s Confederate history.
Beauregard “Bug” Montage is an honest mechanic, a loving husband, and a hard-working dad. Bug knows there’s no future in the man he used to be: known from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida as the best wheelman on the East Coast.
He thought he'd left all that behind him, but as his carefully built new life begins to crumble, he finds himself drawn inexorably back into a world of blood and bullets. When a smooth-talking former associate comes calling with a can't-miss jewelry store heist, Bug feels he has no choice but to get back in the driver's seat. And Bug is at his best where the scent of gasoline mixes with the smell of fear.
Haunted by the ghost of who he used to be and the father who disappeared when he needed him most, Bug must find a way to navigate this blacktop wasteland . . . or die trying.
When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family - and the family business - together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger.
\nRoman, a financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, has some money to help buy his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he’s forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his himself, and his own particular set of skills.
\nRoman begins his work for the criminals while Neveah tries to uncover the long-ago mystery of what happened to their mother, who disappeared when they were teenagers. But Roman is far less of a pushover than the gangsters realise. He is willing to do anything to save his family. Anything.
\nBecause everything burns.
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Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid.
\nThe last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah’s white husband, Derek. Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss. Derek’s father Buddy Lee was almost as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy.
\nIke and Buddy Lee, two ex-cons with little else in common other than a criminal past and a love for their dead sons, band together in their desperate desire for revenge. In their quest to do better for their sons in death than they did in life, hardened men Ike and Buddy Lee will confront their own prejudices about their sons and each other, as they rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys.
As head phoenix keeper at a world-renowned zoo for magical creatures, Aila's childhood dream of conserving critically endangered firebirds seems closer than ever. There's just one glaring caveat: her zoo's breeding program hasn't functioned for a decade. When a tragic phoenix heist sabotages the flagship initiative at a neighboring zoo, Aila must prove her derelict facilities are fit to take the reins.
\nBut saving an entire species from extinction requires more than stellar animal handling skills. Carnivorous water horses, tempestuous thunderhawks, mischievous dragons . . . Aila has no problem wrangling beasts. But mustering the courage to ask for help from the hotshot griffin keeper at the zoo's most popular exhibit? Virtually impossible.
\nEspecially when that hotshot griffin keeper happens to be her arch-rival from college: Luciana, an annoyingly brooding and insufferable know-it-all with the face of a goddess who's convinced that Aila's beloved phoenix would serve their cause better as an active performer rather than as a passive conservation exhibit. With the world watching and the threat of poachers looming, Aila's success is no longer merely a matter of keeping her job . . .
\nShe is the keeper of the phoenix, and the future of a species - and her love life - now rests on her shoulders.
Fionamara is a smuggler. Antal is the reason her people fear the dark.
\nFi ferries contraband between worlds, stockpiling funds and stolen magic to keep her village self-sufficient - free from the blood sacrifices humans have paid to Antal's immortal species for centuries.
\nOnly legends whispered through the pine forests recall a time when things were different, before one world shattered into many, and the flesh-devouring beasts crept from the cracks between realities, with their sable antlers and slender tails, lethal claws and gleaming fangs. Now, mortal lives are food to pacify their carnivorous overlords, exchanged for feudal protection, and the precious silver energy that fuels everything from transport to weaponry.
\nWhen Fi gets planted with a stash of smuggled energy, a long-lost flame recruits her for a reckless heist that escalates into a terrorist bombing - and a coup against the reigning immortals, with Fi's home caught in the crossfire.
\nShe's always known the dangers of her trade - and of the power she's wielded since childhood, allowing her to see the secret doors between dimensions, to walk the Void itself. But nothing could have prepared her for crossing paths with Antal. For the deal she'll have to make with him, a forced partnership to reclaim his city that begins as a desperate bid for survival, only to grow into something far more dangerous.
\nA revolution.
\nAnd a temptation - for how sweet the monster's fangs might feel.
Akshaya is the hybrid daughter of a human mother and an alloy, a genetically engineered posthuman - and she’s the future of life on the planet Meru. But not if the determined Akshaya can help it. Before choosing where her future lies, she wants to circumnavigate the most historic orb in the universe - the birthplace of Earth.
\nAkshaya’s parents reluctantly agree to her anthropological challenge - one with no assistance from alloy devices, transport, or wary alloys themselves who manage humanity and the regions of Earth called Loka. It’s just Akshaya; her equally bold best friend, Somya; and a carefully planned itinerary threading continent by continent across a wondrous terrain of things she’s never blue skies, sunrises, snowcapped mountains, and roiling oceans.
\nAs the adventure unfolds, the travelers discover love and new friendships, but they also learn the risks of a planet that’s not entirely welcoming. On this trek - rapturous, dangerous, and life-changing - Akshaya will discover what human existence really means.
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Welga Ramirez, executive bodyguard and ex-special forces, is about to retire early when her client is killed in front of her. It’s 2095 and people don’t usually die from violence. Humanity is entirely dependent on pills that not only help them stay alive, but allow them to compete with artificial intelligence in an increasingly competitive gig economy. Daily doses protect against designer diseases, flow enhances focus, zips and buffs enhance physical strength and speed, and juvers speed the healing process.
All that changes when Welga’s client is killed by The Machinehood, a new and mysterious terrorist group that has simultaneously attacked several major pill funders. The Machinehood operatives seem to be part human, part machine, something the world has never seen. They issue an ultimatum: stop all pill production in one week.
Global panic ensues as pill production slows and many become ill. Thousands destroy their bots in fear of a strong AI takeover. But the US government believes the Machinehood is a cover for an old enemy. One that Welga is uniquely qualified to fight.
Welga, determined to take down the Machinehood, is pulled back into intelligence work by the government that betrayed her. But who are the Machinehood and what do they really want?
A thrilling and thought-provoking novel that asks: if we won’t see machines as human, will we instead see humans as machines?
For five centuries, human life has been restricted to Earth, while posthuman descendants called alloys freely explore the galaxy. But when the Earthlike planet of Meru is discovered, two unlikely companions venture forth to test the habitability of this unoccupied new world and the future of human-alloy relations.
\nFor Jayanthi, the adopted human child of alloy parents, it’s an opportunity to rectify the ancient reputation of her species as avaricious and destructive, and to give humanity a new place in the universe. For Vaha, Jayanthi’s alloy pilot, it’s a daunting yet irresistible adventure to find success as an individual.
\nAs the journey challenges their resolve in unexpected ways, the two form a bond that only deepens with their time alone on Meru. But how can Jayanthi succeed at freeing humanity from its past when she and Vaha have been set up to fail?
\nAgainst all odds, hope is human, too.
\n
She bursts into my life like a storm, and nothing is the same again. She seems so perfect, with her lilting laugh and her beautiful face. One by one, I watch as my friends fall under her spell.
\nOnly I seem to suspect something. Only I see that her smiles don’t reach her cold, furious eyes. And when I’m accused of things I didn’t do, when my home is vandalised, I know she’s behind it. But she only lets her mask slip when no one is looking, so if I say anything, I’ll look crazy.
\nSo when the baby shower comes around I’m there, sitting on a velvet sofa in a posh hotel room, surrounded by balloons. We share gifts, we pour small glasses of champagne, and she beams, her bump just visible under her bright red shirt.
\nBut that afternoon, I finally learn the unbelievable truth.
\nThere is no baby . . .
\n
It’s hard, meeting your ex after so much time apart. You remember the hurt, the tears and accusations, but you try not to show it. You smile politely, even while your heart beats faster.
\nYou watch as he looks down into the stroller, at the beautiful blond-haired blue-eyed baby kicking his little legs in the sunshine, whose innocent smile lights up your world.
\nYou see his face change. You know what he’s thinking.
\nThe next day he calls. His voice is shaking. He wants the truth. Is it his child?
\nYou hesitate, your throat dry, good and bad memories swirling in your mind. You’ve missed him so much… but can you ever trust him again?
\nAfter a sleepless night, you arrange to meet, agreeing that the most important thing is doing what’s right for baby Tom.
\nBut months later, when the sirens wail in the night, you have to admit: you never thought either of you would go this far . . .
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Why would you pretend your life is a dream when you’re living a nightmare?
\nI thought my sister was happy. I thought what we all thought: that Annie and Dom led perfect lives in a lovely cottage in a quiet village by the sea, with flowers at the front gate and an apple tree in the garden. Everyone knew them: generous, loving Dom, creative, joyful Annie.
\nBut I never saw Annie as she sat waiting for Dom well into the night. I didn’t see her smiling through her tears. I didn’t know what the perfect couple were hiding.
\nSo when sirens break the silence of the night and flames rise against the dark sky, and I get the call I never expected, I’m left with a simple burning question: who was to blame?
\nA brilliantly twisty tale of family secrets and the darkness that can lie behind closed doors.
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\"Christopher would never hurt anyone. Not intentionally. Even after everything that’s happened I still believe that . . . \"
Christopher Harris is a lonely boy. A boy who has never fitted in to his family. Who has always felt something was missing from his life.
Until one day, when he discovers a suitcase in his family’s attic. And a secret about his mother that changes everything.
What price would you pay for the perfect family?
Christopher finally has a chance at happiness. A happiness that he will do anything to protect . . .
You made a promise to your sister. It could destroy your daughter.
\n15-year-old Rosie lies in hospital fighting for her life. She’s trying to tell her mother what happened to her, and how she got there, but she can’t speak the words out loud.
\nRosie’s mother Toni has a secret. She had a traumatic childhood, and she and her sister Bridget made each other a promise thirty years ago: that they could never speak the truth about what happened to them as children, and that they would protect each other without asking for help from others, no matter what . . .
Rosie was Toni’s second chance to get things right: a happy, talented girl with her whole life ahead of her. Having lost her husband in a tragic accident, Toni has dedicated her life to keeping Rosie safe from harm.
But Rosie has plans that her mother doesn’t know about. She has dreams and ambitions - of love, of a career, of a life beyond the sheltered existence that her mother has created for her. But the secrets Rosie has been keeping have now put her life in danger.
In order to save Rosie, Toni may have to break her lifelong promise to her sister . . . and open doors to her past she hoped would remain closed forever.
\n
Her: I am on my way home, thinking only of the quiet, happy evening to come, when I see something impossible. I would recognise those gorgeous pale blue eyes anywhere. It’s him - the high-school boyfriend I adored . . . until the day he vanished without a trace.
\nI run towards him, my pulse racing. He turns, politely, a puzzled look on that familiar face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘Do I know you?’
\nI need answers. I’m certain he’s lying. I just have to prove it.
\nHim: Of course you recognised me. Always so keen, always trying to do right by everyone.
\nIt’s typical of my bad luck that we happened to run into each other.
\nI left this place for a reason - one you never knew. Now that I’m back I have plans, and I’m afraid, my dear, that you’re getting in my way . . .
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The end of our marriage was only the beginning . . . Last night, we celebrated our anniversary. Over candlelight, we talked about the children, our work, and I was so happy, and felt so loved. But the next morning, when I check my phone, there is a message. From a friend. And a string of photos appear of my husband, Will, with another woman: walking along the street holding hands. Going into fancy hotels. Standing at a window, his arms around her, her head on his shoulder . . .
\nI beg Will to tell me what’s going on. But all he can say is that it’s not what I think. As if the betrayal wasn’t bad enough, he won’t even be honest with me. And now there’s someone watching our house. Will is acting like a stranger and I think he’s following me. I can’t trust him anymore, and I desperately need to know who sent me those photos and why.
\nBut maybe Will is telling the truth. Maybe it’s not what I think. Because the more our pain stops us talking, and the more the two of us tear each other apart, the more I wonder if I ever knew him at all - and what I’ll have to risk to protect my children. nd when at last the secrets are revealed, will the truth save our family, or destroy us all?
\n
When the doorbell rings, I take one last look round the villa. The nuts and olives are in bowls; the white wine is chilling in the fridge; everything is ready for my old college friend, the guest I’m dying to impress.
\nWhen I open the door, Coco steps from the dusty street into the cool tiled hall, as effortlessly beautiful as ever. But then her face freezes in horror, her mouth falling open. I turn to see my husband Jeff behind me, his eyes wide, his cheeks pale.
\nAfter a moment, they both smile, pretending nothing happened at all. But I know what I saw.
\nThis holiday was meant to rescue my marriage, not ruin it.
\nBut the connection between my friend and my husband isn’t what I thought.
\nAll three of us have something to lose, and something to fight for.
\nAnd when the truth comes out, not all of us will survive . . .
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The night she moves in with Peter, she’s so happy, so exhilarated, so in love. Later, she will remember a much smaller feeling, a tiny one percent in her gut. And she will remember pushing that feeling aside . . .
Samantha Frayn doesn’t know why Peter Bridges picks her - a nobody with bitten fingernails and a troubled childhood behind her - but she falls quickly. He’s older, charming, likes fine wine and French films, and his beautiful home has real art on its walls.
Peter transforms Samantha’s life in an instant. He sees the better version of herself - the one she’s always wanted to be. It’s only normal that there’s a little friction, when she moves in, over domestic matters like where things are kept, or the proper times to eat, sleep and shower. She’s lucky to be with someone who can help her find a new job, move on from childish friends, and speak with greater sophistication.
But as Samantha notices, more and more, Peter’s temper, she starts to wonder if there might be consequences to breaking the rules of the world he has so quickly built around her.
And then she receives an anonymous note that makes her ask: is she the first woman to feel trapped by Peter? Is she being paranoid, manipulated, or could she be in danger?
You can tell the truth about your life, but someone needs to be listening. Someone needs to trust you. And someone needs to save you from the man you thought you loved.
Dick Raynes feared this day would come. Otis Parsons, a violent felon, has been released from prison, and Dick’s sister, Dee, is the one who helped put him there. Dick’s marriage is over, and his career is in shambles, so with nothing to lose, he sets out to do whatever it takes to keep Dee and her son safe. But Otis is just the beginning. Using his knowledge as a scientist to develop a formula able to predict those offenders most likely to strike again, he sets out to protect future victims the law is powerless to defend.
\nFBI agent Steve Patterson investigates crimes against those who have paid their dues for past mistakes, running a department he created after his son was killed by a vigilante mother who targeted the wrong person. Recognizing a disturbing pattern of untimely deaths in recently released felons, he sets out to discover who’s behind it. What he doesn’t expect is to find another chance at love - with the sister of the man he is chasing.
\nDick’s sense of right and wrong is tested as he pursues and neutralizes the most dangerous threats, while Steve makes it his mission to stop this vigilante serial killer before he is labeled a hero. Both men pursue a noble cause, but only one can prevail.
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London, 1923. Dragons soar through the skies and protests erupt on the streets, but Vivien Featherswallow isn’t worried. She’s going to follow the rules, get an internship studying dragon languages, and make sure her little sister never has to risk growing up Third Class. By midnight, Viv has started a civil war.
\nWith her parents arrested and her sister missing, all the safety Viv has worked for is collapsing around her. So when a lifeline is offered in the form of a mysterious ‘job’, she grabs it. Arriving at Bletchley Park, Viv discovers that she has been recruited as a codebreaker helping the war effort - if she succeeds, she and her family can all go home again. If she doesn’t, they’ll all die.
\nAt first Viv believes that her challenge, of discovering the secrets of a hidden dragon language, is doable. But the more she learns, the more she realises that the bubble she’s grown up in isn’t as safe as she thought, and eventually Viv must decide: What war is she really fighting?
Who is Vivien Featherswallow?
\nIs she The Swallow, the most wanted rebel in all of Britannia? Is she a Brasstongue on the cusp of translating a new language? Or is she just Viv, the girl who lost the love of her life after playing spy?
\nThough this war might have begun with bombs and teeth, it will be fought with tongues. And Viv will soon learn that everything she thought she knew - even about herself - might be a lie.
When eighteen-year-old Keller Hartman is recruited into the Legion’s most prestigious galactic unit, it’s a dream come true. He's worked hard for this. He’s ready to prove himself. The problem? His new partner - the beautiful, no-nonsense pilot Lament Bringer - wants nothing to do with him.
\nForced to work together under Legion orders, Keller and Lament team up with a motley crew of specialists to investigate a mysterious visionary who can predict catastrophes. As they begin to peel back layers, however, they realise there's more to the story than meets the eye. With threats mounting and secrets unfolding, Keller and Lament will need to trust one another in order to stop the dangers at play. But with trust comes other feelings - ones neither of them is prepared for.
\nWith the fate of the universe hanging in the balance, the only thing worse than failing their mission might just be losing each other.
Raisa of Upper Earth has only lived a life of privilege and acquiescence. Ever dutiful, she accepts her father’s arrangement of her marriage to Lein, Crown Prince of the corrupt, volatile lands of Lower Earth. Though Lein is a stranger, Raisa knows the wedding will unite their vastly different worlds in a pact of peace: an infusion of Upper Earth technology into Lower Earth will usher in the final age of enlightenment, ending war between humans forever.
\nNewly released from imprisonment, Nada of Lower Earth has found her own calling: disrupting the royal wedding. Convinced her cousin Lein’s alliance with Upper Earth will launch an invasive, terrifying form of tyranny, Nada sets out undercover to light the spark of revolution.
\nWhen Raisa goes missing a week before the wedding, all eyes turn to the rebels, including Nayf, Nada’s twin brother - a fugitive on the run. And when Nayf and Raisa meet, the long-simmering animosity they feel toward each other's worlds slowly burns away into something unexpected.
\nBut the Crown Prince wants his bride - and future - back. And he will go to the ends of the Earths to reclaim them.
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A marvel: something you find amazing. Even ordinary-amazing. Like potatoes - because they make French fries happen. Like the perfect fries Adam and his mom used to make together.
An oddity: whatever gives you pause. Like the fact that there are hateful people in the world. Like Zayneb’s teacher, who won’t stop reminding the class how “bad” Muslims are.
But Zayneb, the only Muslim in class, isn’t bad. She’s angry.
When she gets suspended for confronting her teacher, and he begins investigating her activist friends, Zayneb heads to her aunt’s house in Doha, Qatar, for an early start to spring break.
Fueled by the guilt of getting her friends in trouble, she resolves to try out a newer, “nicer” version of herself in a place where no one knows her.
Then her path crosses with Adam’s.
Since he got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in November, Adam’s stopped going to classes, intent, instead, on perfecting the making of things. Intent on keeping the memory of his mom alive for his little sister.
Adam’s also intent on keeping his diagnosis a secret from his grieving father.
Alone, Adam and Zayneb are playing roles for others, keeping their real thoughts locked away in their journals.
Until a marvel and an oddity occurs . . .
Marvel: Adam and Zayneb meeting.
Oddity: Adam and Zayneb meeting.
Janna Yusuf is so excited for the weekend: her brother Muhammad’s getting married, and she’s reuniting with her mom, whom she’s missed the whole summer.
\nAnd Nuah’s arriving for the weekend too.
\nSweet, constant Nuah.
\nThe last time she saw him, Janna wasn’t ready to reciprocate his feelings for her. But things are different now. She’s finished high school, ready for college . . . and ready for Nuah.
\nIt’s time for Janna’s (carefully planned) summer of love to begin - starting right at the wedding.
\nBut it wouldn’t be a wedding if everything went according to plan. Muhammad’s party choices aren’t in line with his fiancée’s taste at all, Janna’s dad is acting strange, and her mom is spending more time with an old friend (and maybe love interest?) than Janna.
\nAnd Nuah’s treating her differently.
\nJust when things couldn’t get more complicated, two newcomers - the dreamy Haytham and brooding Layth - have Janna more confused than ever about what her misfit heart really wants.
\nJanna’s summer of love is turning out to be super crowded and painfully unpredictable.
\n
How much can you tell about a person just by looking at them?
Janna Yusuf knows a lot of people can’t figure out what to make of her . . . an Arab Indian-American hijabi teenager who is a Flannery O’Connor obsessed book nerd, aspiring photographer, and sometime graphic novelist is not exactly easy to put into a box.
And Janna suddenly finds herself caring what people think. Or at least what a certain boy named Jeremy thinks. Not that she would ever date him - Muslim girls don’t date. Or they shouldn’t date. Or won’t? Janna is still working all this out.
While her heart might be leading her in one direction, her mind is spinning in others. She is trying to decide what kind of person she wants to be, and what it means to be a saint, a misfit, or a monster. Except she knows a monster…one who happens to be parading around as a saint…Will she be the one to call him out on it? What will people in her tightknit Muslim community think of her then?
In his training as a spy, Ro was warned: you will always be living a lie.
\nJumping into a Star Eater's mind in the first place requires a moment of perfect psychic connection, and he has studied all his life to comprehend their species. Admires them, respects them, is reverent at the idea of being one of them - the only species physiologically capable of mining the element needed for lightyear-spanning space travel. The species all others crave to know more of, but who have notoriously shared so very little. The species Ro's own small civilisation, with its dwindling resources and withering reach, needs to know more about.
\nIt will feel real, his elders impressed upon him. It will never be real.
\nBut Ro's certainty runs deep: he will be different. Ro will not be an imposter hiding the truth of his past, because his heart will be one of them. He will be one of them.
\nTo understand is to become. It never occurs to him that the mere act of understanding can destroy.
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Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor's soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.
\nUntil a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.
\nDisgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice - for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats.
\nApart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire.
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Anoor is the first blue-blooded ruler of the Wardens' Empire. But when she is accused of a murder she didn't commit, her reign is thrown into turmoil. She must solve the mystery and clear her name without the support of her beloved, Sylah.
\nSylah braves new lands to find a solution for the hurricane that threatens to destroy her home. But in finding answers, she must make a decision, does she sacrifice her old life in order to raise up her sword once more?
\nHassa's web of secrets grows ever thicker as she finds herself on a trail of crimes in the city. Her searching uncovers the extent of the atrocities of the empire's past and present. Now, she must guard both her heart and her land.
\nThe three women find their answers, but they're not the answers they wanted. The drumbeat of change thrums throughout the world.
\nAnd it sings a song of war.
\n
You know my name.
But you do not know me.
Your historians call me seductress, but I was always in love's thrall.
\nYour playwrights speak of my witchcraft, but I was gifted my talents by the gods.
\nYour poets sing of my blood-lust, but I was protecting my children.
\nThey cannot credit that a mere woman could be powerful, strategic, divinely blessed to rule.
\nDeath will silence me no longer.
\nThis is not the story of how I died. But how I lived.
\n
The Wardens’ Empire is falling. A vigilante known only as the Truthsayer is raising an army against the wardens. Sylah and Hassa must navigate the politics of this new world, all the while searching for Anoor.
\nAcross the sea, the Blood Forged prepare for war, requesting aid from other governments. Jond’s role as major general sees him training soldiers for combat, but matters of the heart will prove to be the hardest battlefield.
\nThe Zalaam celebrate the arrival of the Child of Fire, heralding the start of the final battle. Anoor’s doubts are eclipsed by the powers of her new god. Soon the Zalaam will set off on their last voyage - and few expect to return.
\n
Sylah dreams of days growing up in the resistance, being told she would spark a revolution that would free the empire from the red-blooded ruling classes’ tyranny. That spark was extinguished the day she watched her family murdered before her eyes.
\nAnoor has been told she’s nothing, no one, a disappointment, by the only person who matters: her mother, the most powerful ruler in the empire. But when Sylah and Anoor meet, a fire burns between them that could consume the kingdom - and their hearts.
\nHassa moves through the world unseen by upper classes, so she knows what it means to be invisible. But invisibility has its uses: It can hide the most dangerous of secrets, secrets that can reignite a revolution. And when she joins forces with Sylah and Anoor, together these grains of sand will become a storm.
\nAs the empire begins a set of trials of combat and skill designed to find its new leaders, the stage is set for blood to flow, power to shift, and cities to burn.
\n
Jules has been divorced from her ex-husband Leon for five years, but she still works alongside him at Gunk, the grotty student nightclub he owns in central Brighton. She spends her nights serving shots and watching, from behind the bar, as Leon flirts with students on the dancefloor. In the early hours of the morning, she paces home to sleep.
\nBut then Leon hires nineteen-year-old Nim to work the bar with Jules - Nim, with her shaved head and steady pour, her disarming sweetness and sudden distance - and Jules finds herself jolted awake. When Nim discovers she's pregnant, Jules agrees to help. As the months pass, and the relationship between the two women grows increasingly intimate and perplexing, it emerges that Nim has her own unexpected gifts to give.
\nNow, alone in her small flat, Jules is holding a baby, just twenty-four-hours old, who still smells of Nim. But no one knows where Nim is, or if she's coming back. What could the future - for Jules, Nim, and this unnamed baby - possibly look like?
Lahore, Pakistan. Then.
\nMisbah is a dreamer and storyteller, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match. After their young life is shaken by tragedy, they come to the United States and open the Cloud’s Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start.
\nJuniper, California. Now.
\nSalahudin and Noor are more than best friends; they are family. Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, they understand each other the way no one else does. Until The Fight, which destroys their bond with the swift fury of a star exploding.
\nNow, Sal scrambles to run the family motel as his mother Misbah’s health fails and his grieving father loses himself to alcoholism. Noor, meanwhile, walks a harrowing tightrope: working at her wrathful uncle’s liquor store while hiding the fact that she’s applying to college so she can escape him - and Juniper - forever.
\nWhen Sal’s attempts to save the motel spiral out of control, he and Noor must ask themselves what friendship is worth - and what it takes to defeat the monsters in their pasts and the ones in their midst.
\nFrom one of today’s most cherished and bestselling young adult authors comes a breathtaking novel of young love, old regrets, and forgiveness - one that’s both tragic and poignant in its tender ferocity.
\n
Laia is a slave. Elias is a soldier. Neither is free.
Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear.
It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do.
But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy.
There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier - and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realise that their destinies are intertwined - and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.
Growing up in the Kegari slums, AIZ has seen her share of suffering. An old tragedy fuels her need for vengeance, but it is love of her people that propels her. Until one hotheaded mistake lands her in an inescapable prison, where the embers of her wrath ignite.
\nBanished from her people for an unforgivable crime, SIRSHA is a down-on-her-luck tracker who uses magic to trace her marks. Destitute, she agrees to hunt down a killer who has murdered children across the Martial Empire. All she has to do is carry out the job and get paid. But when a chance encounter leads to an unexpected attraction, Sirsha learns her mission might cost her far more than she's willing to give up.
\nQUIL is the crown prince of the Empire and nephew of a venerated empress, but he’s loath to take the throne when his aunt steps down. As the son of a reviled emperor, he, better than anyone, understands that power corrupts. When a vicious new enemy threatens the survival of the Empire, Quil must ask himself if he can rise above his tragic lineage and be the heir his people need.
\nBeloved storyteller Sabaa Tahir interweaves the lives of three young people as they grapple with power, treachery, love, and the devastating consequences of unchecked greed, on a journey that may cost them their lives - and their hearts. Literally.
\n
Beyond the Empire and within it, the threat of war looms ever larger.
The Blood Shrike, Helene Aquilla, is assailed on all sides. Emperor Marcus, haunted by his past, grows increasingly unstable, while the Commandant capitalizes on his madness to bolster her own power. As Helene searches for a way to hold back the approaching darkness, her sister's life and the lives of all those in the Empire hang in the balance.
Far to the east, Laia of Serra knows the fate of the world lies not in the machinations of the Martial court, but in stopping the Nightbringer. But while hunting for a way to bring him down, Laia faces unexpected threats from those she hoped would aid her, and is drawn into a battle she never thought she'd have to fight.
And in the land between the living and the dead, Elias Veturius has given up his freedom to serve as Soul Catcher. But in doing so, he has vowed himself to an ancient power that will stop at nothing to ensure Elias's devotion - even at the cost of his humanity.
Picking up just a few months after A Reaper at the Gates left off . . .
The long-imprisoned jinn are on the attack, wreaking bloody havoc in villages and cities alike. But for the Nightbringer, vengeance on his human foes is just the beginning.
At his side, Commandant Keris Veturia declares herself Empress, and calls for the heads of any and all who defy her rule. At the top of the list? The Blood Shrike and her remaining family.
Laia of Serra, now allied with the Blood Shrike, struggles to recover from the loss of the two people most important to her. Determined to stop the approaching apocalypse, she throws herself into the destruction of the Nightbringer. In the process, she awakens an ancient power that could lead her to victory - or to an unimaginable doom.
And deep in the Waiting Place, the Soul Catcher seeks only to forget the life - and love - he left behind. Yet doing so means ignoring the trail of murder left by the Nightbringer and his jinn. To uphold his oath and protect the human world from the supernatural, the Soul Catcher must look beyond the borders of his own land. He must take on a mission that could save - or destroy - all that he knows.
Elias and Laia are running for their lives. After the events of the Fourth Trial, Martial soldiers hunt the two fugitives as they flee the city of Serra and undertake a perilous journey through the heart of the Empire.
Laia is determined to break into Kauf - the Empire’s most secure and dangerous prison - to save her brother, who is the key to the Scholars’ survival. And Elias is determined to help Laia succeed, even if it means giving up his last chance at freedom.
But dark forces, human and otherworldly, work against Laia and Elias. The pair must fight every step of the way to outsmart their enemies: the bloodthirsty Emperor Marcus, the merciless Commandant, the sadistic Warden of Kauf, and, most heartbreaking of all, Helene - Elias’s former friend and the Empire’s newest Blood Shrike.
Bound to Marcus’s will, Helene faces a torturous mission of her own - one that might destroy her: find the traitor Elias Veturius and the Scholar slave who helped him escape . . . and kill them both.
Gabriella Worrington, who has just moved with her family to a new San Francisco neighborhood, clashes with Seren Doyle, president of the local homeowner association. Their meeting is interrupted, leading to a fast-paced, eventful race across the country, with both the mob and the FBI nipping at their heels.
\nThe Chase, the first book in the Constellation series, is a stand-alone romance novel featuring two women confronted with a past they'd rather forget and secrets they'd prefer to bury, as they navigate the closeness that grows between them and the uncertain future that lies ahead.
The Deal is the second stand-alone novel in the Constellation series, and it takes place after the events of the previously released novel, The Chase. It is a glacial slow-burn contemporary romance novel, and a take on the 'fake relationship' trope.
\nGeneral Partnership Agreement:
E. G. Jones, (Partner 1) residing at 1214 Salix Rd, Pattern, TX, and Nicole Summers (Partner 2), residing at 2004 Ash Ct, Austin, TX (“the Partners”) agree as follows:
Fake Romantic Relationship:
1. Since October 14, 2023, the Partners have voluntarily associated themselves together in a fake romantic relationship for the purpose of Partner 1 joining the holiday celebrations at Partner 2’s family residence in Dallas, TX for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.
2. The assets of the Partnership include, but are not limited to, Partner 1 acting as the girlfriend of Partner 2 around the family of Partner 2 for the duration of this contract. Partner 1 shall receive a compensation of $10,000.
\nTerm of Partnership:
1. This partnership commenced in October 2023 shall continue until December 27, 2023, or until dissolved by mutual agreement of the parties or terminated by one Partner at any point. Payment shall be calculated based on term fulfilled at termination.
Sometimes fate doesn't follow your wishes. Gwendoline Dagon is set to become queen - a role she never wanted - after the unexpected death of her sister. She clashes with Amara Payne, High Mage and royal magical advisor, who is tasked with preparing Gwendoline for the throne.
\nAmara has no patience for Gwendoline’s rage, given she has dedicated her life to duty and the crown. The two women struggle to understand each other and have different ideas on how the future should play out, not just for themselves, but also for the entire kingdom.
\nAlong the way, they uncover hidden facets of themselves while navigating a world filled with political intrigue, magical lore, and societal expectations. They must learn to cooperate with each other as both outside and inside forces work to tear the kingdom apart.
\nFirelight is a tale of forbidden romance set against the backdrop of courtly schemes where duty clashes with desire - a narrative exploring whether Gwendoline and Amara can carve out their own destiny despite being entangled in webs woven by tradition and power struggles within Reshaya.
\n
Lucia Rossi is a gifted, intuitive, emotional artist who forges classical masterpieces and carries burdens that were never meant to be hers.
\nEnter highly controlled, brilliant museum art curator Penelope Blackwell who can practically taste colors and chases down the truth like it's her calling.
\nWhen a stolen masterpiece sets them on a collision course, buried betrayals force the women to choose between loyalty and truth, and vengeance and love. Can they reach a fragile future they never thought was possible?
\n
‘On the outside looking in,’ once perfectly described Temperance Worrington’s life until she met and fell in love with Rania Karam and Antoinette Joseph, a married couple who lives next door to Tempe’s grandmother.
\nAlthough none of them believes in a ‘price for happiness,’ their lives are forever altered on a stormy August morning when an accident portends to shatter their carefully crafted togetherness.
\nThe aftermath of this unexpected crash threatens to tear them apart as they each face and battle their greatest demons. Along the way, we learn how their love story came to be and discover what they stand to lose as they try to overcome the various troubles life throws at them.
\nWhile facing these obstacles, their relationship dynamic evolves - highlighting not only romantic love but also deep friendship among them. This dynamic trio navigates through various experiences including intimate moments shared between them or individually reflecting on past regrets or future aspirations.
\nUltimately, The Homecoming is about finding happiness in unexpected places - a testament to taking life less seriously while cherishing every moment spent with loved ones regardless of conventional boundaries.
\n
Actress Kathryn Johnson can’t believe the newest member of her TV show’s cast is the mysterious woman she kissed two years ago at a masquerade ball. Worse, she doesn’t even remember her!
\nFor aloof, logical Hannah Laine, joining Broken Time’s cast is a career milestone. The chilly reception from her infuriating co-star? Not part of the plan. But even as the two women constantly clash, they are drawn in by a chemistry neither of them is ready to name.
\nNow Kat’s carefully constructed walls are starting to crumble as she’s forced to decide whether to keep her heart safe or risk something with Hannah that feels so right it’s scary.
Honesty is a way of life for Claudia Khoury. So when it turns out that her fun-rebound is married to her new boss, she is at a loss as to how to deal with this unexpected curveball.
\nElizabeth Lancaster’s life flows along placidly - if someone were to ask her where she sees herself in ten years, she would give an exact and detailed answer, at least until her new employee derails her certain future.
\nClaudia’s revelations rip through Elizabeth’s life like a destructive whirlwind, tearing apart old bonds and creating new ones.
\nAfter a collision that leaves them with more questions than answers, the two women find themselves on an unexpected journey. In the end, they must decide how to move forward and what role to allow the other to play in their lives.
\nA Question of Sincerity is a spinoff of the stand-alone contemporary romance series Constellation, featuring two characters mentioned in the third novel, The Truce.
For almost a decade they were best friends. Inseparable. Then a betrayal tore them apart.
\nOver twenty years later, Amy Summers and Jess Daniels need to find a way to navigate their past as they are sent to Europe to handle the acquisition of a company.
\nAlong the way, they manage to strike a fragile truce, yet emotions run high as each blames the other for wrecking their friendship.
\nThe Truce is the third installment of the stand-alone contemporary romance series Constellation, featuring two characters readers met in the second novel, The Deal.
A mysterious stone figure of the goddess Ishtar, long-buried in the desert, bestows on US Army Lieutenant Ashton the power to move objects by her mind alone. Ash must learn to control this impressive power, before it controls her.
\nShe turns to her tough, steadfast lover Cleo, with talents of her own, to help Ash in her struggle to stay firmly rooted in her humanity.
The women seek a cause worthy of their skills, refusing to allow the destructive side of Ash’s ability to be used by any outside forces - military or mythical.
A hazardous rescue mission hurtles them back to the desert they’d left far behind, links their past and present, and just may be what Ishtar had in mind all along.
\n
This timeless and enduring Japanese classic from 1975 served as the inspiration for the beloved Studio Ghibli film, Spirited Away, and it's available for the first time to English-speaking readers. The story follows Lina, a sixth-grade girl who embarks on a solo train journey to spend the summer in a rural village. However, upon arrival, she discovers that the valley's might not exist!
\nThrough a mysterious encounter involving wind, mist, and a magic umbrella, she arrives at a grand house on a cobbled street. As Lina adapts to her new responsibilities around town, she learns more about friendship and herself than she previously thought possible.
An award-winning science writer discovers she’s faceblind, and investigates the neuroscience of sight, memory, and imagination - while solving some long-running mysteries about her own life.
\nScience writer Sadie Dingfelder has always known that she’s a little quirky. But while she’s made some strange mistakes over the years, it’s not until she accosts a stranger in a grocery store (who she thinks is her husband) that she realises something is amiss.
\nWith a mixture of curiosity and dread, Dingfelder starts contacting neuroscientists and lands herself in scores of studies. In the course of her nerdy midlife crisis, she discovers that she is emphatically not neurotypical. She has prosopagnosia (faceblindness), stereoblindness, aphantasia (an inability to create mental imagery), and a condition called Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory.
\nWhat Dingfelder learns about the brain captivates her. What she learns about the places where her brain falls short forces her to reinterpret major events from her past and grieve for losses she didn’t even know she’d had.
\nAs Dingfelder learns to see herself more clearly, she also discovers a vast well of hidden neurodiversity in the world at large. There are so many different flavors of human consciousness, and most of us just assume that ours is the norm. Can you visualize? Do you have an inner monologue? Are you always 100% sure whether you know someone or not? Do you know your left from your right? If you can perform any of these mental feats, you may be surprised to learn that many people - including Dingfelder - can’t.
\nA lively blend of personal narrative and popular science, Do I Know You? is the story of one unusual mind’s attempt to understand itself - and a fascinating exploration of the remarkable breadth of human experience.
\n
-In the future there is no disease. There is no war. There is no discontent. All citizens are complacent members of the Global Governance. But one summer is about to change everything.
Keeva Tee just turned fifteen. All of her dreams are about to come true. She’s about to make the trip to Monarch Camp to be imprinted with her intended life partner. One day they’ll have perfect kids and a perfect life. But in her happy, carefree life in the Ocean Community, something weighs on her mind. She hears whispers about “anomalies” - citizens who can’t be imprinted. No one knows what happens to them, but they never seem to come back.
When Keeva arrives at Monarch Camp, her worst nightmare becomes a reality - she is an anomaly. After they are imprinted, the people she loves begin to change, and she starts to doubt everything she’s ever believed. What if freedom and individuality have been sacrificed for security? And what if the man who solves all the problems is the very man who’s created them - and what if he isn't a man at all?
When Keeva finds a warning carved under a bunk bed she begins to understand: Nonconformity will be punished, dissent is not an option, insurgents will be destroyed.
Corith Fraine is a Floodmouth - her words can control water. Yet for those born with her rare elemental ability, paths forward are few, and Corith is one of the lucky ones. She has spent most of her life in a prestigious magic institution, training to one day achieve the highest possible honor for a member of her kind: the chance to serve one of the hundred noble houses.
\nWhen Corith learns she’s secured a post working for House Shearwater, a reclusive noble family living on a wave-battered island, she thinks her hard work has paid off. Until she discovers that their previous Floodmouth - Corith’s closest friend - mysteriously died in their service. And Corith is her replacement.
\nTo learn the truth of her best friend’s accident, Corith must unravel the dark conspiracies at the heart of Bower Island. Yet doing so will require contending with the island’s deadly tides and her enigmatic new employers - including the family’s brooding youngest son, Llir, who she finds herself equally drawn to and repelled by. With her loyalties pushed to breaking point, these treacherous waters may well pull Corith under . . .
-In the future there is no disease. There is no war. There is no discontent. All citizens are complacent members of the Global Governance. But one summer is about to change everything.
Keeva Tee just turned fifteen. All of her dreams are about to come true. She’s about to make the trip to Monarch Camp to be imprinted with her intended life partner. One day they’ll have perfect kids and a perfect life. But in her happy, carefree life in the Ocean Community, something weighs on her mind. She hears whispers about “anomalies” - citizens who can’t be imprinted. No one knows what happens to them, but they never seem to come back.
When Keeva arrives at Monarch Camp, her worst nightmare becomes a reality - she is an anomaly. After they are imprinted, the people she loves begin to change, and she starts to doubt everything she’s ever believed. What if freedom and individuality have been sacrificed for security? And what if the man who solves all the problems is the very man who’s created them - and what if he isn't a man at all?
When Keeva finds a warning carved under a bunk bed she begins to understand: Nonconformity will be punished, dissent is not an option, insurgents will be destroyed.
Is fifty-one too late to accept you're a lesbian?
\nWhen the sexuality she swept under the rug as a teenager refuses to stay hidden, Erin finally accepts who she really is, divorces her husband, and sets about starting a new chapter in her life. Perhaps a reunion weekend with her three best high school friends will help her sort out what she really wants now. She's especially looking forward to seeing Jodi, her not-so-secret crush whose kiss confirmed her teenage sexuality and sent her reeling. It can't hurt to see if the spark is still there.
\nJodi has been living out and proud since she moved away to go to college over thirty years ago. She's happy with her life and career, but she's a serial monogamist who always finds a reason to move on. She has no idea this reunion weekend has the potential to open old wounds.
\nErin hopes it's never too late to live as her true self. Can she convince Jodi to forgive her complicated past and accept her complex present after all this time?
\n
TJ knows she doesn’t fit in the ultraconservative Crusade of the Redeemer Church, no matter that her father is their chief of security, but leaving is difficult to say the least. Still, she has a plan. Until it gets shot to hell when her secret ex-girlfriend is taken to conversion camp where she will absolutely spill the beans. With his job on the line, her father sends TJ away until the storm blows over.
\nBailey split her childhood between Portland with her mom and Tulsa with her Patriot Army dad. But she’s stayed out of Oklahoma ever since they decided together it was too risky for her to be there. She strongly prefers the blue state culture of Oregon anyway. But when her dad calls her with a job offer she can’t refuse, she risks going back into the red to protect her childhood crush, TJ.
\nWhen TJ and Bailey get caught in the political crossfire, escape is the only plan. On the run and fighting for their lives is not the time to be falling for each other. But the danger is closer than either of them knows, and when TJ is betrayed by those she loves the most, it could spell the end of their chance at forever.
\n
Growing up in the USA as a child of South-Asian immigrants, Sahaj straddled multiple cultures. While reading self-help and going to therapy helped her make sense of the world and her psyche, she soon realised that the advice of white, western writers didn’t cater to her experience. Unlike the outside world, at home the idea of mental health was feared as a sign of weakness, often met with the question ‘But what will people say?’ And for many like her who are navigating two cultures at once, the traditional advice to just ‘set boundaries’ or ‘put yourself first’ is not possible, or even safe.
\nSince then, Sahaj has made it her mission to make therapeutic advice accessible and inclusive of the multicultural experience. Combining her personal story with research, insights from her personal and online communities, and practical advice, this book is a much-needed and revolutionary approach that enables multicultural people to show more compassion for themselves, for others and, above all, feel seen.
\n
From the outside, Alicia, Jessica and Norah might seem like ordinary women you'd meet on the street any day of the week. Sure, Jessica has a little OCD and Norah has some anger issues. And Alicia has low self-esteem that manifests itself in surprising ways. But these three have a bond that no one can fully understand.
\nIt's a bond that takes them back decades, to when they were girls, and they lived on a farm with a foster mother named Miss Fairchild. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed.
\nIn a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild, and they thought they were free. But the reach of someone with such power is long, and even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When bones are discovered buried under the farmhouse of their childhood, they are called in by the police to tell what they know.
\nAgainst their will, they are brought back to the past, and to Miss Fairchild herself. Darling Girls asks the questions: what are we capable of when in a desperate place? How much can we hide the demons inside us? And can the past ever truly be buried?
Fern Castle works in her local library. She has dinner with her twin sister Rose three nights a week. And she avoids crowds, bright lights and loud noises as much as possible. Fern has a carefully structured life and disrupting her routine can be . . . dangerous.
When Rose discovers that she cannot fall pregnant, Fern sees her chance to pay her sister back for everything Rose has done for her. Fern can have a baby for Rose. She just needs to find a father. Simple.
Fern's mission will shake the foundations of the life she has carefully built for herself and stir up dark secrets from the past, in this quirky, rich and shocking story of unexpected love.
Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is eighty-one years old. She's lived on her idyllic street for sixty years - longer than anyone else.
\nAside from being a curmudgeon who minds everyone else's business, few would suspect that Elsie has a past she's worked exceedingly hard at concealing - because when it comes to murder, no one ever suspects little girls or old ladies.
\nAnd Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, once a little girl and now an old lady, has a strange history of people in her life coming to a foul end.
Alice and her daughter Zoe have been a family of two all their lives. Zoe has always struggled with crippling social anxiety and her mother has been her constant and fierce protector. With no family to speak of, and the identity of Zoe’s father shrouded in mystery, their team of two works - until it doesn’t. Until Alice gets sick and is given a grim prognosis.
Desperate to find stability for Zoe, Alice reaches out to two women who are practically strangers, but who are her only hope: Kate, her oncology nurse, and Sonja, a social worker. As the four of them come together, a chain of events is set into motion and all four of them must confront their sharpest fears and secrets - secrets about abandonment, abuse, estrangement, and the deepest longing for family.
Imbued with heart and humor in even the darkest moments, The Mother’s Promise is an unforgettable novel about the power of love and forgiveness.
A twisty, compelling novel about one woman's complicated relationship with her mother-in-law that ends in murder . . .
From the moment Lucy met her husband's mother, Diana, she was kept at arm's length. Diana was exquisitely polite, and properly friendly, but Lucy knew that she was not what Diana envisioned. But who could fault Diana? She was a pillar of the community, an advocate for social justice who helped female refugees assimilate to their new country. Diana was happily married to Tom, and lived in wedded bliss for decades. Lucy wanted so much to please her new mother-in-law.
That was five years ago.
Now, Diana has been found dead, a suicide note near her body. Diana claims that she no longer wanted to live because of a battle with cancer.
But the autopsy finds no cancer.
The autopsy does find traces of poison and suffocation.
Who could possibly want Diana dead?
Why was her will changed at the eleventh hour to disinherit both of her adult children and their spouses?
Neva Bradley, a third-generation midwife, is determined to keep the details surrounding her own pregnancy - including the identity of the baby’s father - hidden from her family and co-workers for as long as possible. Her mother, Grace, finds it impossible to let this secret rest. The more Grace prods, the tighter Neva holds to her story, and the more the lifelong differences between private, quiet Neva and open, gregarious Grace strain their relationship.
\nFor Floss, Neva’s grandmother and a retired midwife, Neva’s situation thrusts her back sixty years in time to a secret that eerily mirrors her granddaughter’s - one which, if revealed, will have life-changing consequences for them all. As Neva’s pregnancy progresses and speculation makes it harder and harder to conceal the truth, Floss wonders if hiding her own truth is ultimately more harmful than telling it.
\nWill these women reveal their secrets and deal with the inevitable consequences? Or are some secrets best kept hidden?
Gabe and Pippa Gerard have just moved into their dream house: a cliffside cottage in a sleepy coastal town outside Melbourne. It’s a fresh start to their marriage, and the perfect place to raise their two young daughters. But the house’s perfect façade hides something more sinister: The Spot, where the tall cliffs have become a popular place for those wishing to end their lives. After talking someone down from the ledge, Gabe becomes a local hero, saving person after person… until one night, he doesn’t. And Pippa sees Gabe the moment after it happened, standing alone at the cliff’s edge, arms outstretched, palms facing out.
\nThe death is ruled a suicide - Gabe said it was a stranger devastated over her husband’s infidelity. But when Pippa discovers that Gabe knew the victim, she has more questions than answers. Plus, the woman’s husband swears she wouldn’t have jumped. Why would Gabe lie about not knowing her? Why would she have been at The Spot, if not to jump? And did she really jump . . . or was she pushed? As Pippa works to uncover the truth, the foundations of the life they’ve built begin to crack and their deepest secrets start to unravel.
Anna Forster, in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease at only thirty-eight years old, knows that her family is doing what they believe to be best when they take her to Rosalind House, an assisted living facility. She also knows there's just one another resident her age, Luke. What she does not expect is the love that blossoms between her and Luke even as she resists her new life at Rosalind House. As her disease steals more and more of her memory, Anna fights to hold on to what she knows, including her relationship with Luke.
When Eve Bennett is suddenly thrust into the role of single mother she finds herself putting her culinary training to use at Rosalind house. When she meets Anna and Luke she is moved by the bond the pair has forged. But when a tragic incident leads Anna's and Luke's families to separate them, Eve finds herself questioning what she is willing to risk to help them.
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "Romance" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Sally Hepworth - Things We Keep, The.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856859062.3699, "size": 700477, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:24:26.691Z" }, "Sally Hepworth - Uncharted Waters": { "title": "Uncharted Waters", "author": "Sally Hepworth", "description": "When Ella boards a sumptuous charter off the coast of Australia, she feels . . . dread. Her husband, Mac, the social butterfly who makes these wellness retreats so much easier to navigate, is stuck at work, leaving her exposed to the other passengers.
\nLuckily, she forms an instant bond with the charismatic Chloe, a newly single woman salving a broken heart. But as the friendship grows, Ella discovers they share more than the need for an escape, and their devastating connection has the power to forever alter their lives.
Tully and Rachel are murderous when they discover their father has a new girlfriend. The fact that Heather is half his age isn't even the most shocking part. Stephen is still married to their mother, who is in a care facility with end-stage Alzheimer's disease.
\nHeather knows she has an uphill battle to win Tully and Rachel over, while carrying the burden of the secrets of her past. But, as it turns out, they are all hiding something.
\nThe announcement of Stephen and Heather's engagement threatens to set off a family implosion, with old wounds and dark secrets finally being forced to the surface. A garage full of stolen goods. An old hot-water bottle, stuffed with cash. A blood-soaked wedding. And that's only the beginning . . .
\nJo Sorsby knows she is hiding from her past when she steps in to look after her uncle’s stationery shop. Glimpsing the lives of her customers between the warm wooden shelves, as they scribble notes with fountain pens and browse colourful notebooks, distracts her from the life she has left behind.
\nYet far from home, Jo feels adrift . . .
\nWhen she meets Ruth, a vicar running from a secret, and Malcolm, a septuagenarian struggling to write his first book, she realises that she isn’t alone.
\nIt’s the beginning of a friendship that can transform Jo’s life . . . if only she can let them in.
\n
When Janice starts cleaning for Mrs B - a shrewd and tricksy woman in her nineties - she meets someone who wants to hear her story. But Janice is clear: she is the keeper of stories, she doesn’t have a story to tell. At least, not one she can share.
\nMrs B is no fool and knows there is more to Janice than meets the eye. What is she hiding? After all, doesn’t everyone have a story to tell?
\n
One year on from the death of her husband, Emma feels no closer to moving forward with her life. Seeking distraction, she quits her job and begins working at the local garden centre.
\nHere, Emma begins to open up and finds herself attending boss Les’ talk on the Titanic. Intrigued, Emma sets out to research who would have arranged the flowers on-board.
\nAlongside her story unfolds the tale of a stewardess on the Titanic, who Emma can’t help but feel connected to . . .
\n
An archaeological dig on the wild Cornish cliffs was supposed to uncover ancient history. Instead, it has exposed a grave that was never meant to be found.
\nWhen human remains are found at the excavation site near Logan Rock in Treen, Cornwall, Detective Lauren Pengelly is called to investigate. These bones don't belong to some Bronze Age settler - they're the remains of a sixteen-year-old girl who vanished at a beach party in 1996, a night of bonfires, cheap cider and a killer who has gone unchecked for thirty years.
\nBut before Lauren and her partner, DS Matt Price, can unravel the truth behind the girl's disappearance, another body is found at the base of the cliffs. Someone is willing to commit murder to keep the past hidden . . . and they're not finished yet. As the body count rises, Lauren must untangle three decades of lies before the killer silences anyone who might expose the harrowing truth.
\n
When an attempted murder is linked to a string of unsolved sexual attacks, Detective Chief Inspector Whitney Walker is incensed. All those women who still have sleepless nights because the man who terrorises their dreams is still on the loose.
\nCalling on forensic psychologist Dr Georgina Cavendish to help, they follow the clues and are alarmed to discover the victims all had one thing in common. Their birthdays were on the 29th February. The same date as a female officer on Whitney’s team.
\nAs the clock ticks down and they’re no nearer to finding the truth, can they stop the villain before he makes sure his next victim will never scream again.
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Detective Lauren Pengelly and her partner Matt Price are called to investigate a grisly murder outside Penzance. They quickly identify the victim as Carmel Driscoll, a former police officer, and find a cryptic note reading “Ten Green Bottles” next to her body - words from an old English nursery rhyme.
\nWhen a second former officer is found murdered with the note “Nine Green Bottles” nearby, Lauren and Matt realise they could be dealing with a serial killer. As they race to uncover the deeper connection between the victims, they discover this quiet part of Cornwall harbours some dark secrets. The key could lie in a decades-old case, thought to have been buried long ago . . .
\nWith officers' lives on the line and rumoured corruption reaching the highest levels of the police, Lauren doesn't know who to trust. Could the killer be hidden in Lauren's force . . . maybe even within her team? And can she catch the monster before they strike again, or will she become the final verse in this twisted countdown?
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When a well-loved family of five are found dead sitting around their dining table with an untouched meal in front of them, it sends shockwaves throughout the community.
\nWas it a murder suicide, or was someone else involved?
\nIt's one of DCI Whitney Walker's most baffling cases, and even with the help of forensic psychologist Dr Georgina Cavendish, they struggle to find any clues or motives to help them catch the killer.
\nBut with a community in mourning and growing pressure to get answers, Cavendish and Walker are forced to go deeper into a murderer's mind than they've ever gone before.
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DCI Whitney Walker is in trouble. She’s been threatened with demotion if she screws up another case. So, when a killer starts murdering female students at the local university, she knows this is her chance to redeem herself.
\nForensic psychologist, Dr Georgina Cavendish, has spent her life inside the university walls, but when one of her students is murdered and she’s the one to find the body, she resolves to step out from behind her text books and put her skills to the test.
\nWhile the killer leads the police on a game of cat and mouse, Walker and Cavendish form an uneasy alliance. But will it be too late to stop the worst serial killer in Lenchester’s history?
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As the sun rises over a picturesque Cornish beach, Detective Lauren Pengelly makes a grim discovery while walking her border collies. A newly engaged couple lie dead in the sand. At first glance, it appears to be a tragic double suicide. But something doesn’t add up.
\nThe victims - popular university students Jasmine and Finley - seemed to have it all. But as Lauren digs deeper, she and her partner Matt Price unravel a complex web of secrets and lies. Finley’s gambling addiction was threatening to ruin everything, and Jasmine had an unwanted admirer. With a double murder to solve and suspects mounting, Lauren and Matt must navigate the close-knit community to find the answers.
\nAn empty ring box and traces of silk fibres found at the crime scene could be vital clues to cracking the case but when another life is on the line, have Lauren and Matt run out of time to catch the killer?
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fter a teenage boy is found dead on a Lenchester train, Detective Chief Inspector Whitney Walker believes they're being targeted by the notorious Carriage Killer, who chooses a local rail network, commits four murders, and moves on.
\nAgainst her wishes, Walker's boss brings in officers from another force to help the investigation and prevent more deaths, but she's forced to defend her team against this outside interference.
\nForensic psychologist, Dr Georgina Cavendish, is by her side in an attempt to bring to an end this killing spree. But how can they get into the mind of a killer who has already killed twelve times in two years without leaving behind a single clue?
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When an esteemed criminology professor is found lifeless at an international conference, it’s up to DCI Whitney Walker and forensic psychologist Dr Georgina Cavendish to unravel the mystery. The professor had unveiled “Death’s Shadow” - a ground-breaking but unsettling theory that could redefine the understanding of serial killers.
\nThe theory captivated yet unnerved scholars, leaving a lingering air of dread within the conference halls. When another delegate meets a gruesome end, it becomes horrifyingly clear that the conference has become a hunting ground. Is Death’s Shadow serving as a blueprint for a real-life killer, or has the professor’s intellectual arrogance unwittingly unleashed a monster? Time is running out.
\nAs the conference draws to a close, Cavendish & Walker must decode a mind warped by twisted logic. Lives hang in the balance - can they crack the case before Death’s Shadow strikes again?
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A string of mutilated bodies sees Detective Chief Inspector Whitney Walker back in action. But when she discovers the victims have all been grooming young girls, she fears a vigilante is on the loose. And while she understands the motive, no one is above the law.
\nOnce again, she turns to forensic psychologist, Dr Georgina Cavendish, to unravel the cryptic clues. But will they be able to save the next victim from a gruesome death?
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Private investigator Sebastian Clifford and his partner Birdie, step into the world of celebrity when a star of children’s TV turns to them for help. She’s being blackmailed by someone who knows about her murky past and she’s desperate to keep it hidden. But silence comes at a price, and it's one she can't afford to pay.
\nClifford, who knows better than anyone what it's like to be punished for one mistake, agrees to help. But, as they dig deeper, they discover that everyone has secrets, and some are dark enough to kill for. Can they find the blackmailer before it’s too late and save the reputation . . . and the life . . . of a beloved star?
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When a killer starts murdering lawyers in a prestigious law firm, and every lead takes them to a dead end, DCI Whitney Walker finds herself grappling for a motive.
\nWhat links these deaths, and why use a lethal injection?
\nAlongside forensic psychologist, Dr Georgina Cavendish, they close in on the killer, while all the time trying to not let their personal lives get in the way of the investigation.
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When private investigator Detective Sebastian Clifford is asked by his former society girlfriend to locate her fiance, who’s disappeared along with some valuable pieces of art, he’s reluctant to help. He’d left the aristocratic world behind, for good reason. But when his ex starts receiving threatening letters Clifford is left with no choice.
\nWith the help of his partner Lucinda Bird, aka Birdie, they start digging and find themselves drawn into London’s underworld. But it's hard to see the truth between the shadows and lies. Until a clue leads them in the direction of Clifford's nemesis and he realises they're all in more danger than he thought. The race is on to find the missing man and the art before lives are lost.
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As the sun sets into the sea over the pretty Cornish town of St Ives, a young woman, Freya Kempston, hasn’t returned home after a day out in the mall at St Austell. Panicking, her husband begs Detective Lauren Pengelly and her team to find her. Has Freya run out on her stable, loving marriage, or has something more sinister taken place?
\nGrainy security footage from the mall provides the first break in the case – capturing Freya talking intently with a well-known local mechanic on the day she disappeared. But when cornered, the mechanic denies even knowing her. It's a puzzle that Lauren and her new partner, Detective Matt Price , can't ignore. They scrutinise the video, hunting for missed clues . . .
\nJust as Lauren and Matt begin to untangle the man’s alibi, another woman vanishes after a late shift at the local supermarket. And then a third goes missing while at a nightclub in town. A shiver runs down Lauren’s spine when she realises they’re up against a serial predator, and he’s one step ahead of the police.
\nDigging deeper into the lives of the missing women, Lauren stumbles upon a series of concealed messages and covert meetings - a hidden life none of their families knew about. The three women were connected, bound by secrets that could hold the key to where they’re being held. The revelation sends Lauren and Matt on a heart-pounding race against time, knowing that with every ticking second there’s less chance of finding them alive . . .
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When Lenchester’s most famous sportsman is shot dead, DCI Whitney Walker and her team are thrown into the world of snooker.
\nShe calls on forensic psychologist Dr Georgina Cavendish to assist, but the investigation takes them in a direction which has far-reaching, international ramifications.
\nMuch to Whitney’s annoyance, a member of the Met’s fraud squad is sent to assist.
\nBut as everyone knows . . . three’s a crowd.
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When a murderer leaves a familiar pink scarf as his calling card, Detective Chief Inspector Whitney Walker is forced to dig into a cold case, not sure if she's looking for a killer or a copycat.
\nWith a growing pile of bodies, and no clues, she turns to forensic psychologist, Dr Georgina Cavendish, despite their relationship being at an all-time low. Can they overcome the bad blood between them to solve the unsolvable?
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When a series of suicides, linked to the Wellness Spirit Centre, turn out to be murder, it brings together DCI Whitney Walker and forensic psychologist Dr Georgina Cavendish for another investigation. But as they delve deeper, they come across a tangle of secrets and the very real risk that the killer will strike again.
\nAs the clock ticks down, the only way forward is to infiltrate the centre. But the outcome is disastrous, in more ways than one.
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Detective Lauren Pengelly has only been part of the Penzance police force for less than two years, but that’s enough time to know that the sleepy Cornish town doesn’t see many murders. So, when the bones of a woman with a hole in her skull are discovered behind a derelict cottage, she immediately assumes the worst. Rallying her team, Lauren is flooded with a strange sense of relief when the bones turn out to be almost twenty years old, not a recent victim.
\nBut it quickly turns to dread when she receives her second heart-stopping call of the day - a little girl, Isla, has been kidnapped from her nursery and seemingly vanished, despite strict security in the building. Are the two cases connected, or could the peaceful town of Penzance be harbouring more than one monster?
\nWith the help of Detective Matt Price, her newly arrived second-in-command, Lauren is certain the suspicious behaviour of Isla’s estranged father on the day of her disappearance is a critical clue. But when another little girl is taken, again from her nursery in the middle of the day, it’s clear Lauren and Matt are still dangerously far away from discovering the harrowing truth . . .
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Dawn Cross sits motionless in her recliner, her eyes staring sightlessly at the television screen. Death is no stranger to Silver Fern House . . . but when Detective Lauren Pengelly arrives at the scene, it’s clear she’s got a cold-blooded murder on her hands.
\nWhat should have been a routine investigation at a care home for former entertainers quickly becomes Lauren's most complex case yet. When a second resident is found dead and then a third is targeted, Detective Lauren Pengelly knows she's hunting a killer with a twisted agenda. Each death is different, but there's a pattern emerging that chills her to the bone.
\nAs Lauren and DS Matt Price dig deeper into the famous residents' pasts, they uncover secrets that some would kill to keep buried. In a building full of people who've spent their lives playing roles, everyone is a suspect and anyone could be the killer’s next victim . . .
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A serial arsonist is on the loose and as the death toll continues to mount DCI Whitney Walker calls on forensic psychologist Dr Georgina Cavendish for help.
\nBut Lenchester isn't the only thing burning. There are monumental changes taking place within the police force and there's a chance Whitney might lose the job she loves. She has to find the killer before that happens. Before any more lives are lost.
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When the body of a young woman is found by the coast in Land’s End, Cornwall, Detective Lauren Pengelly and her deputy Matt Price are first on the scene. Sophie Bethany Yates was well-known around the docks - a pretty girl from up the coast, always dreaming of something more. As locals jostle the barricades for a better look, whispers go round that Sophie’s boyfriend Samuel was more than capable of murder.
\nBut Lauren isn’t ready to close the case, even after Samuel can’t give a reliable alibi for the night Sophie died. Something about the crime scene feels off - a hunch confirmed when they find a tiny slip of paper hidden inside Sophie’s mouth, reading “Men must work and women must weep”. It’s a break in the case, but a confusing one. What does the cryptic message mean, and how come Lauren feels like she’s heard it before?
\nBut then another young woman is found on the sand, a curl of paper between her lips. Lauren knows they’re running out of time to catch the killer. As she begins to untangle the dark truth around what’s happening to these girls, she discovers a darker side to the scenic town - and to Sophie herself, who wasn’t all she seemed. Hiding in plain sight is a twisted killer, whose desperate plans mean nobody is safe for long . . . but can Lauren piece together the truth before they find her first?
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Ex-police officer Sebastian Clifford is quickly finding that life as a private investigator is never quiet. His doors have only been open a few weeks when DCI Whitney Walker approaches him to investigate the brutal attack that left her older brother, Rob, with irreversible brain damage.
\nFor twenty years Rob had no memory of that night, but lately things are coming back to him, and Whitney's worried that her brother might, once again, be in danger.
\nClifford knows only too well what it's like be haunted by the past, and so he agrees to help. But the deeper he digs, the more secrets he uncovers, and soon he discovers that Rob's not the only one in danger.
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The once tranquil woods in a picturesque part of Lenchester have become the bloody stage to a series of ritualistic murders. With no suspects, Detective Chief Inspector Whitney Walker is once again forced to call on the services of forensic psychologist Dr Georgina Cavendish.
\nBut this murderer isn't like any they've faced before. The murders are highly elaborate, but different in their own way, and with the clock ticking, they need to get inside the killer's head before it's too late.
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When the bodies of two teenage girls are discovered on a building site, DCI Whitney Walker knows she's on the hunt for a killer. The problem is the murders happened in 1980 and this is her first case with the new team. What makes it even tougher is that with budgetary restrictions in place, she only has two weeks to solve it.
\nOnce again, she enlists the help of forensic psychologist Dr Georgina Cavendish, but as she digs deeper into the past, she uncovers hidden truths that hurtle through the decades and into the present.
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Ex-police officer Sebastian Clifford had decided to limit his work as a private investigator, until Detective Constable Bird, aka Birdie, asks for his help.
\nTwelve months ago a young girl was abandoned on the streets of Market Harborough in shocking circumstances. Since then the child has barely spoken and with the police unable to trace her identity, they've given up.
\nThe social services team in charge of the case worry that the child has an intellectual disability but Birdie and her aunt, who’s fostering the little girl, disagree and believe she’s gifted and intelligent, but something bad happened and she’s living in constant fear.
\nClifford trusts Birdie’s instinct and together they work to find out who the girl is, so she can be freed from the past. But as secrets are uncovered, the pair realise it's not just the child who’s in danger.
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Ex-police officer, Sebastian Clifford, had never planned to be a private investigator. But when a scandal resulted in his London based special squad being disbanded, he finds himself kicking his heels. That is, until his cousin begs him to prove that her high-profile husband's recent death, following his involvement in the worst Ponzi scheme in recent times, wasn't a suicide.
\nClifford isn't sure how he can help, but the more he digs, the more curious he becomes. He has the ability to remember everything he's ever seen, which means he's the perfect person to untangle the layers of deceit.
\nHe meets DC Bird, a bored officer at Market Harborough CID, who insists on being part of the investigation or she won’t give him access to the records he’s requested. Clifford isn't happy. The last time he worked as part of a team it ended his career. But with time running out, he agrees and together they wade through the web of lies, all while hoping they find the truth before it kills them.
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Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a distribution warehouse, and asks him if he'd like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.
\nAlice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young-but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?
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Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A college student and aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind - and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend and comrade-in-arms. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Drawn into Melissa's orbit, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband.
\nPrivate property, Frances believes, is a cultural evil - and Nick, a bored actor who never quite lived up to his potential, looks like patriarchy made flesh. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expect.As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally even with Bobbi.
\nDesperate to reconcile herself to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances's intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new: a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment.
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Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.
\nPeter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties - successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women - his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.
\nIvan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.
\nFor two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude - a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.
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Connell Waldron is one of the most popular boys in his small-town high school--he is a star of the football team and an excellent student, and he is never wanting for attention from girls. The one thing he doesn't have is money. Marianne Sheridan, a classmate of Connell's, has the opposite problem. Marianne is plain-looking, odd, and stubborn, and while her family is quite well off, she has no friends to speak of. There is, however, a deep and undeniable connection between the two teenagers, one that develops into a secret relationship.
Everything changes when both Connell and Marianne are accepted to Trinity College. Suddenly Marianne is well liked and elegant, holding court with her intellectual friends, while Connell hangs at the sidelines, not quite as fluent in the language of the elite. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle each other, falling in and out of romance but never straying far from where they started.
And as Marianne experiments with an increasingly dangerous string of boyfriends, Connell must decide how far he is willing to go to save his oldest friend.
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Darcy Barrett has undertaken a global survey of men. She’s travelled the world, and can categorically say that no one measures up to Tom Valeska, whose only flaw is that Darcy’s twin brother Jamie saw him first and claimed him forever as his best friend.
\nDespite Darcy’s best efforts, Tom’s off limits and loyal to her brother, 99%. That’s the problem with finding her dream man at age eight and peaking in her photography career at age twenty - ever since, she’s had to learn to settle for good enough. When Darcy and Jamie inherit a tumble-down cottage from their grandmother, they’re left with strict instructions to bring it back to its former glory and sell the property. Darcy plans to be in an aisle seat halfway across the ocean as soon as the renovations start, but before she can cut and run, she finds a familiar face on her porch: house-flipper extraordinaire Tom’s arrived, he’s bearing power tools, and he’s single for the first time in almost a decade.
\nSuddenly Darcy’s considering sticking around to make sure her twin doesn’t ruin the cottage’s inherent magic with his penchant for grey and chrome. She’s definitely not staying because of her new business partner’s tight t-shirts, or that perfect face that's inspiring her to pick up her camera again. Soon sparks are flying - and it’s not the faulty wiring. It turns out one percent of Tom’s heart might not be enough for Darcy anymore. This time around, she’s switching things up. She’s going to make Tom Valeska 99 percent hers.
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Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman hate each other. Not dislike. Not begrudgingly tolerate. Hate. And they have no problem displaying their feelings through a series of ritualistic passive aggressive maneuvers as they sit across from each other, executive assistants to co-CEOs of a publishing company. Lucy can’t understand Joshua’s joyless, uptight, meticulous approach to his job. Joshua is clearly baffled by Lucy’s overly bright clothes, quirkiness, and Pollyanna attitude.
\nNow up for the same promotion, their battle of wills has come to a head and Lucy refuses to back down when their latest game could cost her her dream job . . . But the tension between Lucy and Joshua has also reached its boiling point, and Lucy is discovering that maybe she doesn’t hate Joshua. And maybe, he doesn’t hate her either. Or maybe this is just another game.
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Rosie Whittaker and her sister are up for some Galentine’s pampering at a day spa. Getting locked inside a flotation tank is so Rosie. Enter a firefighter hero determined to pry this luckless pearl out of her high-tech shell.
\nAll Rosie has to go on is a dreamy voice and a flirty sense of humor. Remain calm, Rosie. This could be what you’ve been waiting for. Is this the man she’s waited for her whole life?
A fox spirit avenges a teen girl by seducing her abuser. A shapeshifting woman finds herself chased through the woods by fox hunters; meanwhile, an assassination plot called Operation Fox Hunt unfolds against the last Queen of Korea. Chinese migrants hoping to make new lives as “paper children” in America find their pasts - and their hopes for the future - embodied in the foxes that haunt the harbor in 1900s Angel Island.
\nIn the nine tales of Ninetails, acclaimed poet Sally Wen Mao reimagines the fox spirit from Asian folklore - a shapeshifter, shaman, and seductress - as an icon of vengeance, solidarity and liberation. The characters of her stories are varied - from silicone sex dolls who come to life with new purpose, to women whose crushes manifest as stones - but they all reach for a common to find truth and belonging in a difficult world determined to consider them alien.
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War is coming. A war that will finally end the struggle between Kainordas and Fenvarrow, the lands of shadow and light. It is foretold that a blue-haired man will the the ultimate victor, and lead his people into a glorious age of dominance. The only problem is that there are two of them.
\nBel sets forth to retrieve the Stone of Evenings Mild, his sole chance to reunite with his darker half, Losara ... but the Stone has been stolen by an undead mage of questionable allegiance and is hidden in the lair of an insane dragon. Meanwhile, Losara grows dangerously curious about his other self, and devises a weapon so uncontrollable, it frightens even him.
\nHow can two men fulfil a fate meant for one? Will this infernal balance persist, or is there a way to bridge destiny's rift?
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The great warrior Rostigan wanders Aorn, weary of battle and unwanted renown. With him travels his lover, the minstrel Tarzi, who hopes she may soon witness further deeds from him worthy of song and tale. Despite Rostigan's reluctance to re-enter the world, she may get what she wishes for . . .
\nWhen they travel to the once magnificent city of Silverstone they discover it has been wrenched out of existence. Journeying onwards, they come to learn the disturbing truth. The land has descended into chaos for the Wardens, now craving destruction, have returned from their ancient graves and Lord Regret's malicious legacy grows ever stronger, corrupting the very nature of reality.
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The world is crumbling. Fissures crack the shaking ground, babes are born with twisted limbs and the taste of apples is just a memory.
\nRostigan and Priestess Yalenna must face those Wardens who remain bent on steeping the land in ruin and, somehow, close the growing Wound in the Great Spell. Standing in their way is a pitiless army commanded by a madman, a sky full of silkjaws and, worst of all, an old friend, once betrayed, whom they must now convince to join them again.
\nThere is only one thing for it - Rostigan must break an ancient oath and use powers he has dared not touch, powers that could tip the balance in favour of the spreading corruption. Caught in a web of his own deceit, he struggles to live with the lies he has spun, for if he cannot, Aorn itself may well be doomed.
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The lands of Fenvarrow and Kainordas have been at war ever since the gods of shadow and light shattered the Great Well of Souls. With forces evenly matched and equally driven, a stalemate has persisted for a millennium - until a prophecy foretells that a blue-haired boy will break the bloody balance forever.
\nMages from the opposing lands race to claim the newborn, but in a ferocious battle of magic, a terrible accident occurs - the child’s soul is ripped apart, then reformed as two separate babies. Each side seizes a child, uncertain if they now possess the one capable of ending the age-old conflict, or if destiny itself has been undone.
\nProphecy’s Ruin tells the story of the boys as they grow. Bel becomes a charismatic though troubled warrior, Losara an enigmatic and thoughtful mage - both powerful young men, yet incomplete. As they struggle to discover their place in the world and the shape of their futures, inevitably each has to ask the question: will he, one day, have to face himself?
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Ever since Scharlette’s parents gave her a name no one can really pronounce, she’s been stuck in a bit of a rut. She hates her job in airport security, making people take their belts off before they fly to exotic locations she can only dream about. She owns a small apartment with large repayments, drinks bargain bin red while she watches Star Trek, and misses her little sister, lost to an exploding sandwich press ten years ago.
\nScharlette fears she might live out her entire existence without doing anything or mattering to anyone. It still comes as quite a surprise when a handsome time traveller named Tomothy appears out of nowhere and verifies she is correct - that, according to his records, she doesn’t matter at all.
\nScharlette isn’t sure this news is as wonderful as Tomothy seems to think but, as he explains, since her life was to have no impact on the timeline whatsoever, Scharlette is free to travel time and space, and have amazing adventures with heedless abandon.
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As Scharlette journeys to the time travelling space station known as Panoptica, she has no idea how she’ll be received by its crazily futuristic inhabitants.
\nDo they know she’s a runaway from ancestral Earth? The first person-from-the-past ever to drop by and say hi? Oh, and that she helped foil an elaborate plot to stop their president from ever existing in the first place?
\nWill everyone want to give her a medal, maybe?
\nInstead President Charkie thanks Scharlette by asking her to save humanity from a terrifying alien race of vicious murderbugs known as the Germs. These sons-of-peaches will eviscerate anything they can fix their eyeball stalks on - and they’re harder to squash than ever, now that they’ve stolen Panoptician time travel tech.
\nScharlette isn’t sure that assigning such a monumentally important task to a woman with basically zero experience in galactic warfare is such a great idea. She isn’t sure about that at all.
\nThe Panopticians are sure though - they think it’s a great idea.
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Unfortunately for Scharlette, saving humanity from destruction has made her pretty popular - and to her great dismay, the people of Panoptica would quite like to make her president.
\nShe’d much rather attempt to rescue her little sister, lost to an exploding sandwich press ten years ago. Tomothy and trusty timeship Gordon are only too happy to help, and set to work pouring drinks and firing up the teleportals.
\nMeanwhile, a group of ambitious scientists have restored Earth’s prehistoric life, including T-Rexes, pterosaurs, and velociraptors - despite everyone knowing how that will turn out - to the custom built Planet Dinosaurs.
\nWouldn’t it be a terrible shame if Scharlette somehow winds up there? And if she does, will it hurt her election chances?
\nMost importantly, who’s been doing green poo on the stairs?
In this, the final volume of the Broken Well trilogy, an army of darkness marches on Kainordas, headed by the shadowmander, an unstoppable creature built from the souls of the dead.
\nIn Whisperwood a forgotten race stirs, their leader Corlas granted ancient powers by a banished god and the High Mage Fahren journeys with his old enemy Battu to the Morningbridge Peaks, to fulfil a task that shakes him to the bone.
\nMeanwhile, the warrior Bel rides with all the forces of light. He carries the Stone of Evenings Mild, his only means of drawing his shadowy counterpart Losara back into himself, to reunite their fractured soul. It seems the time has come to look oneself in the eye. The time has come for a reckoning.
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Becoming a millionaire isn’t just for the lucky few. According to Sam Dogen, the creative force behind the immensely popular Financial Samurai website and newsletter, the vast majority of people who are intentional with their finances can achieve millionaire status.
\nMillionaire Milestones will change the way you think about money - teaching you a wealth-building mindset and arming you with the facts and figures you need to hit your financial goals, without sacrificing your time and happiness. It’s a progressive strategy that you can adapt for any stage of your journey. In Millionaire Milestones, you'll learn how to:
\nSet simple, achievable financial goals by age and income. Maximize earning potential and avoid common pitfalls. Allocate your investments and manage risk. Create a lasting legacy of growing wealth
\nBut here’s the Your goal is not to become a millionaire just for its own sake. Your goal is to become a millionaire so you can do more of what you want, when you want, on your own terms. No matter where you are on your financial journey, Millionaire Milestones will teach you the simple steps you need to reach your seven figure dreams.
\nNow, let’s get growing.
Did you know that Alexander the Great was a sloppy drunk, William Shakespeare was a stoner, and George Washington drank a spoonful of opium every night to staunch the pain from his fake teeth? Or how about the fact that China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, ingested liquid mercury in an (ironic) attempt to live forever, or that Alexander Shulgin, inventor of no less than 230 new psychedelic drugs, was an employee of the DEA?
\nIn Human History on Drugs, historian Sam Kelly introduces us to the history we weren’t taught in school, offering up irreverent and hysterical commentary as he sheds light on some truly shocking aspects of the historical characters we only thought we knew. With chapters spanning from Ancient Greece (“The Oracle of Delphi Was Huffing Fumes”) and the Victorian Era (“Vincent van Gogh Ate Yellow Paint”) to Hollywood’s Golden Age (“Judy Garland Was Drugged by Grown-Ups”) and modern times (“Carl Sagan Got Astronomically High”), Kelly's research spans all manner of eras, places, and, of course, drugs.
\nHistory is rife with drug use and drug users, and Human History on Drugs takes us through those highs (pun intended) and lows on a wittily entertaining ride that uncovers their seriously unexpected impact on our past.
Though sparks flew between travel writer Oliver Popp and extroverted photographer Ricky Warner on their last assignment together, when they're teamed up again for a road trip, they agree to keep things low-key. But that's a little at odds with Oliver's new finding romance on the Oregon coast. The destination is a picturesque inn overlooking the Pacific. With the crashing waves below, it seems like an ideal spot for dramatic love connections.
\nCuriously, the other guests are innkeeper Mary Alice's large extended family, headed by a fabulously wealthy aunt, with various children, in-laws, husbands and wives, all vying to stay in her good graces . . . and her will. Then on the first night, settling into their room, Oliver and Ricky make an unsettling a dead man in their hot tub - one of Mary Alice’s tragically unlucky relatives who, from the looks of it, dropped in from the balcony above. The sheriff concludes it was an accident. Considering the circumstances of this odd family reunion, Oliver and Ricky have doubts.
\nWhen another body turns up, the vibes on what was supposed to be a relaxing getaway take an absolutely sinister turn. As family secrets, old grudges, and greedy motives come to light, Oliver’s sleuthing side is coming out. Who’s the next heir in line to die? As the suspects pile up, Oliver is certain of only one it’s no mystery that murder is bringing him and Ricky closer together . . .
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Autism is just another fact of life for twenty-four-year-old Oliver Popp. As long as he sticks to a comfortable itinerary planned well in advance, he gets by just fine as a staff writer for Offbeat Traveler magazine. But a curve ball drops into Oliver’s budding career when his first feature assignment takes him to Washington, D.C. to chronicle the latest tourism trends.
\nHis freelance project photographer is Ricky Warner, a gregarious and impulsively adorable shot of adrenaline. If the flirty gay photographer isn’t enough to unbalance shy Oliver from the get-go, there’s also an unsettling chance encounter with old acquaintance, Elise Perkins, and a congressional hearing that’s shaking up both the Capitol and an entrepreneurial billionaire. The unexpected distractions soon collide when a speeding car kills Elise. Funny how she just stared it down like she knew it was coming. Forget the National Mall and Mt. Vernon Square. Oliver and Ricky are game for something much more: solving a mystery and a murder.
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A son returns home to his dying mother and discovers not only the shocking identity of the absent father he’d always wondered about, but a woman whose life he never truly understood.
\nWhen 26-year-old Evan Klausner is suddenly called home to the secluded farmhouse where he was raised alone by his mother June, there is so much he does not yet the fact that his mother is dying; whether his biological father might really be Bob Dylan, whom Evan has revered since he was a teenager, and to whom Evan always has been told he bears an uncanny resemblance; the secrets of his mother’s life before he was born and what really drove her to this remote place, where he was brought up to believe in the healing, cathartic power of stories and, above all, of love.
\nIn this heartbreaking jewelbox of a debut novel, Sam Sussman writes one of the most tender and devastating mother-son relationships of our era. Caring for his mother in real time, helplessly watching her fail even as she finally begins to tell him the truths he has waited so long to hear, Evan comes to understand what a gift this extraordinary woman has bequeathed him.
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Meet Puck: the nonbinary, thirty-year-old mastermind behind \"Homewreckers\", a dating show that puts troubled couples through hell - with a little help from their exes. Used to being the one pulling the strings, it shocks Puck when their life undergoes a plot twist of its own and their college roommate Mia announces her engagement to her ex’s best friend, Damon. Having only recently broken up with longtime-boyfriend Zander, and never having had much in common with Damon (who lovesick Lena has always pined after), Mia’s news leaves her friend group reeling - and Puck’s mind whirling.
\nWhen they arrive for a week of wedding festivities at an upscale resort in the Appalachian forest, Puck immediately sees that Mia’s marriage will lead to misery, and takes it upon themself to save their friends by rearranging the couples - without anyone finding out. But as Puck comes up against a type-A maid of honor hell-bent on making this wedding happen, it becomes clear that they will have to deliver the greatest stunt of their career. If only they can take their eyes off the bridesmaid. After all, the course of true love never did run smooth . . .
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Jassyn, an elven half-breed, has spent his life trapped between roles - brilliant researcher of the fertility crisis, and an unwilling contributor to its solution. His body is property. His mind, weaponised. When he’s sent to a human realm to “tutor” a half-breed princess, it feels like a temporary reprieve.
\nUntil he learns the truth behind the assignment.
\nSerenna, Jassyn's new pupil, has spent her life clawing toward a single goal - elevation into the elven courts. But after her twenty-fifth birthday, everything fractures. A monstrous race emerges from the shadows, shattering the lies she was raised to believe. Half-breeds like her and Jassyn aren’t powerless. They were bred for magic and war.
\nInstead of a throne, she’s conscripted to a military academy where half-breeds are forged into weapons. Her survival depends on awakening her magic, enduring the training, and resisting the relentless gaze of its commander: Prince Vesryn, a shadow-wielding prince with too many secrets, too much power, and a tongue that cuts sharper than his blades.
\nWith war looming, Serenna must rise while Vesryn’s attention shifts from threat to fixation. But as Jassyn fights to protect her from the prince’s influence, his own chains tighten. And the path he takes may destroy more than just himself.
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After surviving an encounter with a race long thought extinct, Serenna, Jassyn, Lykor, and their companions rise as druids, bearing a boon powerful enough to tip the balance of a dying world.
\nTo wield it, they must first master the power of Cinderax’s gift before setting their sights on the next imprisoned dragon - Skylash, chained within the Crackling Maw, where lightning devours the sky itself.
\nBut across the world, the king hasn’t been idle. His armies march through the newly uncovered realms, hunting the remaining dragons. If Skylash falls, her elemental might will belong to the crown. Her freedom becomes a desperate race against war, ruin, and a tempest gathering fast enough to imprison them all.
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Serenna: Reeling in the wake of the wraith attack on Centarya, expanding fear of the future consumes Serenna’s thoughts. Training for the conflict to come, Prince Vesryn exploits new tactics to drive Serenna toward her untapped power. But she soon finds herself confronting a dilemma that takes her focus away from the impending war.
\nJassyn: Before processing his strange new magic and admitting to saving the life of a wraith, Jassyn must first address his own inner turmoil. Struggling to free himself from the clutches of Stardust, he seeks help from the most unlikely person imaginable.
\nLykor: In response to the unforeseen setback from the wraith’s assault, Lykor determines the next steps to ensure his people’s safety. He delves deeper into the secrets hidden in their ancient keep, hunting for something long forgotten that may hold the key to the wraith’s future.
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Barely surviving a battle with rogue wraith, Serenna races against time to save Fenn’s life. But he’s slipping away, fading with every heartbeat as he succumbs to grievous wounds.
\nJust as despair threatens to claim her, Vesryn rips through the veil of distance. Drawn by her presence through the bond, he portals directly into the wraith fortress.
\nBut the stars weave ruthless cruelty and their reunion is fleeting when Lykor appears. The coercion burned into his mind erupts at the sight of Vesryn, demanding the prince’s destruction. Bound by the king’s merciless command, Lykor is powerless, left with no choice but to strike.
\nFenn’s life isn’t the only one hanging by a thread - Jassyn lies abandoned, left for dead by Lykor’s hand after their brutal clash in the jungle.
\nEven if they escape unscathed, their battle is far from over. The remaining Heart of Stars must still be reclaimed, and ancient secrets wait to be unearthed on the other side of the world . . .
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Filled with passion, romance, betrayal, and divine magic, Black Salt Queen journeys to a gorgeous precolonial island nation where women - and secrets - reign.
\nHara Duja Gatdula, queen of the island nation of Maynara, holds the divine power to move the earth. But her strength is failing and the line of succession gives her little comfort. Her heir, Laya, is a danger - a petty and passionate princess who wields the enormous power of the skies with fickle indifference.
\nCircling the throne is Imeria Kulaw - the matriarch of a traitorous rival family who wields recklessly enhanced powers of her own - with designs to secure a high-ranking position for her son and claim the crown for her family. Each woman has a secret weakness- a lover, a heartbreak, a lie. But each is willing to pay the steepest price to bring down her rivals once and for all.
For five years, Caroline Chua has lived in exile from her home and family in Malaysia at a magical academy in New York City - far enough away that she can’t hurt the people she loves. That is until she is abruptly summoned home in an emergency - her beloved older brother, Aaron, who is next in line to become the Protector of the Island, has vanished. And now back in Penang, she can’t help but notice that things don’t feel the same as they once did and it’s unclear if she’s changed, or the island.
\nDespite her family’s desire to keep her close and the Council’s explicit instructions to stay out of trouble, stubborn, self-sufficient Caroline is hell-bent on saving her brother with or without anyone’s help. But when it turns out that Aaron has been kidnapped by vengeful ghosts with a centuries-old grudge, even Caroline must admit she’s in over her head and will need the help of the friends she had abandoned, including her first love, J.J.
\nThe ghosts’ goals are simple: break the barriers between the ghost and mortal realms during the Hungry Ghost Festival using Aaron to take the island’s magic, and cement their rightful place as the true - albeit dead - rulers of the island. With only seven days before the barrier weakens, Caroline is in a race against time to save her brother. But as enemies stack up, always one step ahead, Caroline can’t help but wonder if she’s strong enough for this battle. Or is she doomed to repeat the mistakes that sent her away all those years ago?
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Piper Mitchell
April 25th was the day I was born.
It was also the day I died.
Blood was still rushing through my veins. Oxygen was still saturating my cells. But for all intents and purposes, I ceased to be among the living.
Going back to New York for my sister's wedding was a mistake, but I made her a promise.
It would be a quick trip. Show up, say the right words, then I'd be gone. This time for good.
I didn't think anyone could understand what was taken from me that fateful day.
Not until I met him.
Mason Lawrence
I threw a football in front of eighty thousand people.
Mingling with the rich and famous was just another part of my job.
Nothing made me nervous.
Not until she walked off that plane and into my life.
She was broken. Shattered by some event she kept hidden under lock and key.
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The clues on her body failed to reveal her secrets - unlike the clues on my body that clearly publicised mine.
The clock was ticking, giving me only a few short months to uncover the true meaning of the flower branded into her flesh. Because if she got back on that plane, I knew it would be forever.
Gavin McBride
She blindsided me. Broke me. Shredded me.
And now she's back, thinking I did the very same thing to her.
\nSomeone is lying. It's not me. But the thing is - it's not her either.
\nWhen I reach out to her, I get more than I bargained for. Much more.
\nBaylor Mitchell
I was eighteen when he left me.
I found a way to survive. Without him. Without us. Without the future he promised.
\nNow, a chance meeting threatens everything I know to be true.
\nBut loving him again isn't worth the risk I'd have to take or the secret I'd be forced to reveal.
\nOr is it?
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I, Skylar Mitchell, will not fall in love.
I will not become attached.
I will not let myself feel.
Should be easy enough. Right?
\nThat is until I meet Griffin and Erin Pearce.
They have a perfect life. With the perfect house. And perfect jobs.
What they don’t have is the perfect baby.
I never counted on Erin becoming my best friend.
And I certainly never expected to fall for her husband, especially while being their surrogate.
I also never dreamed that fate would take everything away.
They wanted me to have their baby.
But I was never supposed to fall in love with Griffin . . . or was I?
A story about unconditional love, heartbreaking loss, and undying friendship.
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Since her brother took his life after WWI, Ruth Emeraldine has had one goal: to help those suffering from mental illness. Then she falls in love with charismatic Robert Apter - a brilliant doctor championing a radical new treatment, the lobotomy. Ruth believes in it as a miracle treatment and in Robert as its genius pioneer.
\nBut as her husband spirals into deluded megalomania, Ruth can’t ignore her growing suspicions. Robert is operating on patients recklessly, often with horrific results. And a vulnerable young mother, Margaret Baxter, is poised to be his next victim.
\nMargaret can barely get out of bed, let alone care for her infant. When Dr. Apter diagnoses her with the baby blues and proposes a lobotomy, she believes the procedure is her only hope. Only Ruth can save her - and scores of others - from the harrowing consequences of Robert’s ambitions.
\nInspired by a shocking chapter in medical history, The Lobotomist’s Wife is a galvanising novel of a woman fighting against the most grievous odds, of ego, and of the best intentions gone horribly awry.
Bea Abramovitz has a gift for math and numbers. With her father, she studies the burgeoning Wall Street market’s stocks and patterns in the financial pages. After college she’s determined to parlay her talent for the prediction game into personal and professional success. But in the 1920s, in a Lower East Side tenement, opportunities for women don’t just come knocking. Bea will have to create them.
\nIt’s easier for her golden-boy twin brother, Jake, who longs to reclaim all their parents lost after fleeing the pogroms in Russia to come to America. Well intentioned but undisciplined, Jake has a charm that can carry him only so far on Wall Street. So Bea devises a plan. They’ll be a secret team, and she’ll be the brains behind the broker. As Jake’s reputation, his heedless ego, and the family fortune soar, Bea foresees an impending crash that could destroy everything if she doesn’t finally take control.
\nInspired by the true story of a pioneering investment legend, The Trade Off is a powerful novel about identity, sacrifice, family loyalties, and the complex morality of money.
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When Jordan D’Amato becomes the first woman named head coach of a top-level men's college basketball team, journalist Caroline Beck is determined to get the story. After years of scraping her way into the world of sports reporting, Beck knows that snagging the first one-on-one interview with the elusive head coach could be her big break. But Jordan is wary of the media and the attention her historic new appointment attracts, especially as her boss makes it clear that it’s a temporary assignment - and if she doesn’t lead the team to victory, it won’t become permanent.
\nBeck's persistence, however, charms Jordan and she agrees to sit down for an interview. The two women have undeniable chemistry - but journalists definitely can’t fall for sources, and Jordan certainly can’t fully trust the ambitious reporter who has every reason to use her team secrets for the next big scoop. Though they both know it would ruin their reputations and likely also cost them their jobs if anyone found out they were romantically involved, they can't seem to stay away from each other.
\nWith the national tournament in sight and both of their careers on the line, they must decide whether to take the shot on their budding love story - or walk away from the risky game they’ve been playing for good.
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When Abby Cruz transfers to Insley University and joins the softball team, it seems the only thing she and Kate Hutchins have in common is their love of the game. Abby’s raw talent and reckless behavior threaten Kate’s carefully controlled world, especially when their coach assigns Kate the unwelcome task of tutoring her rival.
\nAs they learn to work together, they discover their differences are exactly what they’ve been missing off the field. Kate provides Abby with a sense of home after loss and grief. Abby, meanwhile, helps Kate embrace a freedom she’s never known because of her strict religious upbringing. As they chase a national title, it’s not long before the same love they have for the game grows for each other.
\nBut much like on the diamond, their relationship requires perfect timing. While they try and fail to get it right over the next decade, the game keeps bringing them back together - from Puerto Rico to Tokyo, through courtrooms, churches, and Las Vegas casinos - as they fight to shake the weight of generational curses. But when an alumni game returns them to their college field, they must decide if it’s really the love of the game calling them home, or the one in their hearts that they’ve never been able to let go.
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Tunuva Melim is a sister of the Priory. For fifty years, she has trained to slay wyrms - but none have appeared since the Nameless One, and the younger generation is starting to question the Priory's purpose.
\nTo the north, in the Queendom of Inys, Sabran the Ambitious has married the new King of Hróth, narrowly saving both realms from ruin. Their daughter, Glorian, trails in their shadow - exactly where she wants to be.
\nThe dragons of the East have slept for centuries. Dumai has spent her life in a Seiikinese mountain temple, trying to wake the gods from their long slumber. Now someone from her mother's past is coming to upend her fate.
\nWhen the Dreadmount erupts, bringing with it an age of terror and violence, these women must find the strength to protect humankind from a devastating threat.
\nIntricate and epic, Samantha Shannon sweeps readers back to the world of A Priory of the Orange Tree, showing us a course of events that shaped it for generations to come.
\nA standalone prequel.
It has been centuries since the Draconic Army took wing, almost extinguishing humankind.
\nMarosa Vetalda is a prisoner in her own home, controlled by her cold father, King Sigoso. Over the mountains, her betrothed, Aubrecht Lievelyn, rules Mentendon in all but name. Together, they intend to usher in a better world.
\nA better world seems impossibly distant to Estina Melaugo, who hunts the Draconic beasts that have slept across the world for centuries.
\nAnd now the great wyrm Fýredel is stirring, and Yscalin will be the first to fall . . .
\nA story of human resilience in the face of dire circumstances, Among the Burning Flowers leads readers through the gripping and tragic circumstances that pave the way for the opening of The Priory of The Orange Tree.
The year is 2059. Nineteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working in the criminal underworld of Scion London, based at Seven Dials, employed by a man named Jaxon Hall. Her job: to scout for information by breaking into people’s minds. For Paige is a dreamwalker, a clairvoyant and, in the world of Scion, she commits treason simply by breathing. It is raining the day her life changes for ever.
\nAttacked, drugged and kidnapped, Paige is transported to Oxford - a city kept secret for two hundred years, controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. Paige is assigned to Warden, a Rephaite with mysterious motives. He is her master. Her trainer. Her natural enemy. But if Paige wants to regain her freedom she must allow herself to be nurtured in this prison where she is meant to die.
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Paige Mahoney is outside the Republic of Scion for the first time in more than a decade - but she has no idea how she got to the free world. Half a year has been wiped from her memory.
\nAs she makes her way back to the revolution, her journey takes her to Venice, where she learns a dangerous secret - one that could change the face of the war between humans and immortals. Before she can return to London, she must help the Domino Programme unravel the sinister Operation Ventriloquist.
\nAnd it soon becomes clear that the one person who could recover her memories - Arcturus Mesarthim - might also hold the key to saving Italy.
A novella that bridges the third and fourth books.
\nPaige Mahoney and Arcturus Mesarthim have arrived in the Scion Citadel of Paris. Exhausted by her efforts against Scion, Paige has no choice but to remain in hiding, away from the revolution she started, so she can heal and come to terms with her mental and physical scars.
\nIn the confines of a safe house, Arcturus and Paige begin to reconnect after following separate paths for weeks. As they wait for contact from the mysterious Domino Programme - an espionage network operating in Scion - they remember their complicated past, and what brought them together.
Dreamwalker Paige Mahoney has eluded death again. Snatched from the jaws of captivity and consigned to a safe house in the Scion Citadel of Paris, she finds herself caught between those factions that seek Scion's downfall and those who would kill to protect the Rephaim's puppet empire.
\nThe mysterious Domino Program has plans for Paige, but she has ambitions of her own in this new citadel. With Arcturus Mesarthim - her former enemy - at her side, she embarks on an adventure that will lead her from the catacombs of Paris to the glittering hallways of Versailles. Her risks promise high reward: the Parisian underworld could yield the means to escalate her rebellion to outright war.
\nAs Scion widens its bounds and the free world trembles in its shadow, Paige must fight her own memories after her ordeal at the hands of Scion. Meanwhile, she strives to understand her bond with Arcturus, which grows stronger by the day. But there are those who know the revolution began with them - and could end with them . . .
Paige Mahoney has escaped the brutal prison camp of Sheol I, but her problems have only just begun: many of the survivors are missing and she is the most wanted person in London . . . As Scion turns its all-seeing eye on the dreamwalker, the mime-lords and mime-queens of the city's gangs are invited to a rare meeting of the Unnatural Assembly.
\nJaxon Hall and his Seven Seals prepare to take centre stage, but there are bitter fault lines running through the clairvoyant community and dark secrets around every corner. Then the Rephaim begin crawling out from the shadows. Paige must keep moving, from Seven Dials to Grub Street to the secret catacombs of Camden, until the fate of the underworld can be decided.
In the perilous heart of Scion London, a dangerous and valuable poltergeist is on the loose - and it must be caught before chaos erupts on the streets of the capital. Here, the clairvoyant underworld plays by its own rules, and rival gangs will stop at nothing to win such a magnificent prize.
Sixteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working for Jaxon Hall, the most notorious mime-lord in the city. He thinks she is hiding a powerful gift, but it refuses to surface. Maybe this is the opportunity she needs to secure her position in his gang, the Seven Seals . . .
A world divided.
A queendom without an heir.
An ancient enemy awakens.
The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction - but assassins are getting closer to her door.
Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.
Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.
Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.
Following a fierce battle for the Rose Crown, Paige Mahoney has risen to the dangerous position of Underqueen, ruling over the clairvoyant syndicate of London. But with vengeful enemies still at large, the task of stabilising the fractured underworld has never seemed so challenging.
\nAs Paige rallies her army of criminals, she continues to meet in secret with her former enemy, Arcturus Mesarthim. Should they be discovered, the fragile alliance with the Ranthen will fail.
\nBut all bets are off when Scion introduces Senshield, a deadly technology that spells doom for clairvoyants. Now Paige must race against the clock to stop her reign ending in blood.
You can’t buy a ticket for the Elsewhere Express. Appearing only to those whose lives are adrift, it’s a magical train carrying very rare and special cargo: a sense of purpose, peace, and belonging.
\nRaya is one of those lost souls. She had dreamed of being a songwriter, but when her brother died, she gave up on her dream and started living his instead.
\nOne day on the subway, as her thoughts wander, she’s swept off to the Elsewhere Express. There she meets Q, a charming, handsome artist who, like her, has lost his place in the world.
\nTogether they find a train full of wonders, from a boarding car that’s also a meadow to a dining car where passengers can picnic on lily pads to a bar where jellyfish and whales swim through pink clouds.
\nBut they also discover that the train harbors secrets - and danger: A mysterious stranger has stowed away and brought with him a dark, malignant magic that threatens to destroy the train.
\n\n
But in investigating the stowaway's identity, Raya also finds herself drawing closer to the ultimate question: What is her life's true purpose - and might Q be connected to it?
On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see a cozy ramen restaurant. And only the chosen ones - those who are lost - will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.
\nHana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike its other customers, for he offers help instead of seeking it.
\nTogether, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice - by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds.
\nBut as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own - and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.
A powerful, gripping YA novel about the insidious nature of racism, the terrible costs of unearthing hidden truths, and the undeniable power of hope.
\nSafiya Mirza dreams of becoming a journalist. And one thing she’s learned as editor of her school newspaper is that a journalist’s job is to find the facts and not let personal biases affect the story. But all that changes the day she finds the body of a murdered boy.
\nJawad Ali was fourteen years old when he built a cosplay jetpack that a teacher mistook for a bomb. A jetpack that got him arrested, labeled a terrorist - and eventually killed. But he’s more than a dead body, and more than “Bomb Boy.” He was a person with a life worth remembering.
\nDriven by Jawad’s haunting voice guiding her throughout her investigation, Safiya seeks to tell the whole truth about the murdered boy and those who killed him because of their hate-based beliefs.
\nThis gripping and powerful book uses an innovative format and lyrical prose to expose the evil that exists in front of us, and the silent complicity of the privileged who create alternative facts to bend the truth to their liking.
Rebellions are built on hope.
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Set in a horrifying near-future-United States, seventeen-year-old Layla Amin is forced into an internment camp for Muslim-American citizens with her parents.
With the help of newly-made friends also trapped within the internment camp, her boyfriend on the outside, and an unexpected alliance, Layla begins a journey to fight for freedom, leading a revolution against the internment camp's Director and his guards.
\nHeart-racing and emotional, Internment challenges readers to fight complicit silence that exists in our society today.
American-born seventeen-year-old Maya Aziz is torn between worlds. There’s the proper one her parents expect for their good Indian daughter: attending a college close to their suburban Chicago home, and being paired off with an older Muslim boy her mom deems “suitable.” And then there is the world of her dreams: going to film school and living in New York City - and maybe (just maybe) pursuing a boy she’s known from afar since grade school, a boy who’s finally falling into her orbit at school.
There’s also the real world, beyond Maya’s control. In the aftermath of a horrific crime perpetrated hundreds of miles away, her life is turned upside down. The community she’s known since birth becomes unrecognizable; neighbors and classmates alike are consumed with fear, bigotry, and hatred. Ultimately, Maya must find the strength within to determine where she truly belongs.
Aria Patel likes stability, certainty, predictability. It’s why she’s so into science. It's why she dumped her boyfriend before they went to different colleges because the odds were that something would go wrong, eventually. In a life that’s already so chaotic, why obsess over complicated relationships and shadowy unknowns when the scientific method gives you direction and a straight path to avoid all the drama.
\nBut there’s no avoiding anything when Aria finds herself suddenly falling through parallel universes and there’s no formula that can save her. She can’t explain why she’s been waking up in a new reality almost every day, or why Rohan, and a poem from her English class, seem to be following her through every new life.
\nAs Aria desperately attempts to find a way home, she eventually ends up stuck in a parallel world very similar to her own. She cherishes this new version of her family, and she finds herself unable to deny the yearning she has for Rohan . . . but it’s not her life or her Rohan. It belongs to another Aria, another girl, and unless Aria can get back home, she’ll have taken this happiness away from someone else forever. And she may never find her own.
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Michael Danvers’ life of self-imposed seclusion is interrupted when he receives a strange the unique opportunity to move into and beta-test a fully automated, state-of-the-art smart home.
\nA true marvel of modern innovation, the house is controlled by a sophisticated AI that ensures all routine tasks are taken care of, limitless forms of entertainment are just a voice command away, and nearly every physical need is met with efficiency.
\nBut soon Michael realises that what at first presented itself as a futuristic utopia may be quickly devolving into a technological prison.
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A sweeping and suspenseful novel of love and war, set in Japan during the final days of World War II, with a shocking historical premise: three atomic bombs were actually delivered to the Pacific - not two - and when one of them falls into the hands of the Japanese, the fate of a couple that has been separated from one another becomes entangled with the fate of this terrifying new device.
\nWar has taken everything from physicist Keizo Kan. His young daughter was killed in the Great Tokyo Air Raid, and now his Japanese American wife, Noriko, has been imprisoned by the brutal Thought Police. An American bomber, downed over Japan on the first day of August 1945, offers the scientist a surprising chance at salvation. The Imperial Army dispatches him to examine an unusual device recovered from the plane’s wreckage - a bomb containing uranium - and tells him that if he can unlock its mysteries, his wife will be released.
\nWorking in secrecy under crushing pressure, Kan begins to disassemble the bomb and study its components. One of his assistants falls ill after mishandling the uranium, but his alarming deterioration, and Kan’s own symptoms, are ignored by the commanding officer demanding results. Desperate to stave off Japan’s surrender to the Allies, the army will stop at nothing to harness the weapon’s unimaginable power. They order Kan to prepare the bomb for manual detonation over a target - a suicide mission that will strike a devastating blow against the Americans. Kan is soon confronted with a series of agonising decisions that will test his courage, his loyalty, and his very humanity.
\nAn extraordinary debut novel that is the result of twenty-seven years of work by its author, Daikon is a gripping and powerfully moving saga that calls to mind such classics as Cold Mountain. It is set amid the chaos and despair of the world’s third largest city lying in ruins, its population starving and its leadership under escalating assault from without and within.
Able God works for low pay at a four-star hotel where he must flash his “toothpaste-white smile” for wealthy guests. When not tending to the hotel’s overprivileged clientele, he muses over self-help books and draws life lessons from the game of chess.
\nBut Able’s ordinary life is upended when an early morning room service order leads him to interfere with Akudo, a sex worker involved with a powerful but dangerous hotel guest. Suddenly caught in a web of violence, guilt, and fear, Able must run to save himself - a journey that leads him into the desert with a group of drug-addled migrants, headed by a charismatic religious leader calling himself Ben Ten. The travelers’ dream of reaching Europe and a new life in a better place is shattered when they fall prey to human traffickers, suffer starvation, and find themselves on the precipice of death, fighting for their lives and their freedom.
\nAs Able God moves into the treacherous unknown, his consciousness becomes focused on survival and the foundations of his beliefs - his ideas about betterment and salvation - are forever altered. Suspenseful, incisive, and illuminating, The Road to the Salt Sea is a story of family, fate, religion, survival, the failures of the Nigerian class system, and what often happens to those who seek their fortunes elsewhere.
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This is the story of the peculiar and magical photo studio owned by Mr. Hirasaki, a collector of antique cameras. In the dimly lit interior, a paper background is pulled down in front of a wall, and in front of it stands a single, luxurious chair with an armrest on one side. On a stand is a large bellows camera. On the left is the main studio; photos can also be taken in the courtyard.
\nBeyond its straightforward interior, however, is a secret. The studio is, in fact, the door to the afterlife, the place between life and death where those who have departed have a chance - one last time - to see their entire life flash before their eyes via Mr. Hirasaki's \"spinning lantern of memories.\"
\nWe meet Hatsue, a ninety-two year old woman who worked as a nursery teacher, the rowdy Waniguchi, a yakuza overseer in his life who is also capable of great compassion, and finally Mitsuru, a young girl who has died tragically young at the hands of abusive parents.
\nSorting through the many photos of their lives, Mr. Hirasaki also offers guests one guests a second a chance to travel back in time to take a photo of one particular moment in their lives that they wish to cherish in a special way.
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Everything seems to be going well for Alex - she has her dream job as an intern on a popular investigative news program and is engaged to a man who is almost too perfect. Now her best friends are taking her on a surprise bachelorette weekend planned with Alex's unusual set of interests in mind: her obsession with the famous 666 Killer.
\nAlex and her friends get a thrill out of staying at the allegedly haunted hunting lodge in the Catskill mountains where a serial killer once stabbed his victim and wrote 666 on the walls in her blood. Though getting snowed in by a blizzard wasn't part of the plan, the three girls make the most of their celebration. Then Alex wakes up to find her friends have vanished, blood spattered all over their sleeping bags and on her hands.
\nWith no idea what happened, Alex worries the decade-old murder has come back to haunt them and she is the one to blame. Her recent prison interview with the 666 Killer seems to have stirred up past demons, throwing her friends into danger. The prisoner has always maintained his innocence, claiming the \"real killer\" was still out there.
\nHas the true 666 Killer finally returned? Or has the convict been scheming from his jail cell? Cut off from outside help, Alex must rely on her years of following true crime stories to try to solve the case and save her friends. But even she does not see the final, staggering twist coming, and the shocking truth just might kill her.
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In what passes for an ordinary day in a psych ward, Dr. Zoe Goldman is stumped when a highly unusual case arrives. A young African American girl, found wandering the streets of Buffalo in a catatonic state, is brought in by police. No one has come forward to claim her, and all leads have been exhausted, so Zoe's treatment is the last hope to discover the girl's identity.
When drugs prove ineffective and medical science seems to be failing, Zoe takes matters into her own hands to track down Jane Doe's family and piece together their checkered history. As she unearths their secrets, she finds that monsters hide where they are least expected. And now she must solve the mystery before it is too late. Because someone wants to make sure this young girl never remembers.
In the halls of the psychiatric ward, Dr. Zoe Goldman is a resident in training, dedicated to helping troubled patients. However, she has plenty of baggage of her own. When her newest patient arrives - a beautiful sociopath who murdered her mother - Zoe becomes obsessed with questions about her own mother's death. But the truth remains tauntingly out of reach, locked away within her nightmares of an uncontrollable fire. And as her adoptive mother loses her memory to dementia, the time to find the answers is running out.
\nAs Zoe digs deeper, she realises that the danger is not just in her dreams but is now close at hand. And she has no choice but to face what terrifies her the most. Because what she can't remember just might kill her.
\nLittle Black Lies is about madness and memory - and the dangerous, little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.
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Her patients are dying. Some are apparent suicides and others possible accidents, but rumors are flying that Dr. Zoe Goldman is an angel of death- intentionally helping hopeless cases go to a \"better place\"- or, worse yet, a dangerously incompetent doctor.
\nAs a new psychiatry fellow at the local correctional facility, Zoe is still learning the ropes while watching her back to avoid some dangerous prisoners. As the deaths mount up, Zoe is wracked with horror and guilt, feverishly trying to figure out what is going wrong and even questioning her own sanity.
\nWhat Zoe doesn't realize is that someone is targeting her patients to get to her. Someone who has access to her deepest secrets and fears. Someone who will stop at nothing to take everything Zoe has, even her life.
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Thatcher Hutton, a war-weary soldier on the way back to his cowboy life, jumps from a moving freight train to avoid trouble . . . and lands in more than he bargained for. On the day he arrives in Foley, Texas, a local woman goes missing. Thatcher, the only stranger in town, is suspected of her abduction, and worse. Standing between him and exoneration are a corrupt mayor, a crooked sheriff, a notorious cathouse madam, a sly bootlegger, feuding moonshiners . . . and a young widow whose soft features conceal an iron will.
\nWhat was supposed to be a fresh start for Laurel Plummer turns to tragedy. Left destitute but determined to dictate her own future, Laurel plunges into the lucrative regional industry, much to the dislike of the good ol’ boys, who have ruled supreme. Her success quickly makes her a target for cutthroat competitors, whose only code of law is reprisal. As violence erupts, Laurel and - now deputy - Thatcher find themselves on opposite sides of a moonshine war, where blood flows as freely as whiskey.
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Detective John Bowie is one misstep away from being fired from the Auclair Police Department in coastal Louisiana. Recently divorced and slightly heavy-handed with his liquor, Bowie does all that he can to cope with the actions taken (or not taken) during the investigation of Crissy Mellin, a teenage girl who disappeared more than three years prior. But now, Crisis Point, a long-running true crime television series, is soon to air an episode documenting the unsolved Mellin case. Bowie has been instructed by his unscrupulous boss to keep to himself his grievances and criticisms over the mishandling of the investigation.
\nBeth Collins, a senior producer on Crisis Point, knows what classifies as a great story and when there’s something more to be told. After working on the show for seven years researching, fact checking, and editing dozens of episodes, Collins is convinced that Crissy Mellin’s disappearance was not an isolated incident. A string of disappearances of teenage girls in nearby areas have only one thing in common: They took place on the night of a blood moon. In a last-ditch effort to find out the truth, Beth leaves New York City for Louisiana to enlist Detective Bowie in helping her figure out what happened to Crissy and find the true culprit before he acts on the next blood moon - in four days’ time.
\nAt the risk of their jobs and lives, Bowie and Collins band together to identify and capture a canny perpetrator, while fighting an irresistible spark between them that threatens to upend everything.
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Two years ago, Detective Mitch Haskell lost his wife to a vicious act of retribution, and has since attributed her murder two men: Roland Malone and the unidentified mastermind of the crime known only as Oz. Malone, a ruthless executioner and drug dealer who fronts as a restaurant owner, neutralises so cleanly that he doesn’t leave a trace. And he performs his handiwork at the biddings of Oz, the faceless kingpin of a drug trafficking operation whose name alone evokes terror.
\nObsessively vowing to avenge his late wife’s murder, Mitch has been on a downward spiral, jeopardizing his closest relationships and drinking excessively to numb his pain. After going one step too far, Detective John Bowie, his former best friend and now his boss, has forced Mitch to get therapy to sort himself out.
\nDr. Dylan Reede is immediately empathetic to the pain she senses beneath Mitch’s cavalier attitude and wisecracking. She’s determined to make the most of his mandated sessions. But from the moment Mitch breezes into her office, Dylan finds it a struggle to maintain the professional and personal boundaries that keep her own tragic past at a safe distance.
\nAs Mitch begins to close in on Oz and Malone’s operation, they’re prepared to stop him by any means necessary. And when it’s revealed that Dylan might hold the key to bringing them to justice, Mitch and Dylan’s irresistible attraction to each other may not only compromise both of them professionally, but place them in Oz’s bullseye.
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Cleary, North Carolina, is a sleepy mountain town - the kind of place where criminal activity is usually limited to parking violations. Not so, lately. Four women have disappeared from Cleary over the past two years. And there's always a blue ribbon left near the spot where each of the women was last seen. There are no bodies, no other clues, and no suspicion as to who their abductor might be. And now, another woman has disappeared without a trace.
\nIt is to this backdrop that Lilly Martin returns to close the sale of her mountain cabin, marking the end of her turbulent eight-year marriage to Dutch Burton, Cleary's chief of police. Dutch's reluctance to let her go isn't Lilly's only obstacle. As she's trying to outrun a snowstorm, her car skids on the icy road and strikes a man who emerges from the woods on foot. She recognises the injured man as Ben Tierney, whom she'd met the previous summer. They're forced to wait out the storm in the cabin, but as the hours of their confinement mount, Lilly begins to wonder if the greatest danger to her safety isn't the blizzard outside, but the mysterious man right beside her.
\nIs Ben Tierney the feared abductor? Or is he who he claims to be . . . her rescuer from harm and from the tragedy that haunts her?
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It was the publicity stunt from hell as far as Kirsten Rumm was concerned. She may have been writing the book about her late husband, aeronautical daredevil Demon Rumm, but she didn’t see the need to play host to the arrogant bad-boy actor starring in the film version’s title role. Still, for the good of the project, Kirsten agreed to share her beachfront home with the impossibly sexy screen idol.
\nAny other woman would do anything to be in her sandals, but Kirsten wasn’t falling for Rylan North, even if he did play his role of male lead to perfection. His down-home charm, his gentleness and virile charisma, might be seducing her in every sense of the word, but he was an actor, after all. Seducing an audience was his job. Rylan could have any woman he wanted. So why was he so desperately pretending to want her?
\nFrom the moment he saw her, Rylan North knew that Kirsten Rumm was the woman he’d been waiting all his life to cast as the star in his real-life love story. What did it matter if he was every woman’s fantasy if he couldn’t get Kirsten to so much as glance his way?
\nHe’d caught the look of past hurt behind her sky-blue eyes - a dark secret that shadowed the sparkle. Rylan was determined to find out what tragedy held this passionate woman back from a second chance at love even if it cost him his reputation, his career, and his life. But first he’d have to get Kirsten to act on her instincts . . . and to trust the flesh-and-blood man behind the fantasy.
Burke Basile is a cop with nothing left to lose. Haunted by his partner's death, his marriage and his career over, he focuses on his nemesis, Pinkie Duvall, a flamboyant attorney who helps killers evade justice.
\nBurke's shocking revenge centers around kidnapping Remy, the lawyer's trophy wife. But Burke hasn't planned on the electric attraction he'll feel for this desperate woman, who rose from the slums of New Orleans to marry a man she can never love.
\nNor can he predict the fierce duel that will explode as the clock ticks toward midnight on Fat Tuesday, when all masks will be stripped away - and Burke must confront his own terrifying secret.
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When her four year old daughter informs her a sick man is in their yard, Honor Gillette rushes out to help him. But that \"sick\" man turns out to be Lee Coburn, the man accused of murdering seven people the night before. Dangerous, desperate, and armed, he promises Honor that she and her daughter won't be hurt as long as she does everything he asks. She has no choice but to accept him at his word.
\nBut Honor soon discovers that even those close to her can't be trusted. Coburn claims that her beloved late husband possessed something extremely valuable that places Honor and her daughter in grave danger. Coburn is there to retrieve it - at any cost.
\nFrom FBI offices in Washington, D.C., to a rundown shrimp boat in coastal Louisiana, Coburn and Honor run for their lives from the very people sworn to protect them, and unravel a web of corruption and depravity that threatens not only them, but the fabric of our society
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Bellamy Lyston was only 12 years old when her older sister Susan was killed on a stormy Memorial Day. Bellamy's fear of storms is a legacy of the tornado that destroyed the crime scene along with her memory of what really happened during the day's most devastating moments.
\nNow, 18 years later, Bellamy has written a sensational, bestselling novel based on Susan's murder. Because the book was inspired by the tragic event that still pains her family, she published it under a pseudonym to protect them from unwanted publicity. But when an opportunistic reporter for a tabloid newspaper discovers that the book is based on fact, Bellamy's identity is exposed along with the family scandal.
\nMoreover, Bellamy becomes the target of an unnamed assailant who either wants the truth about Susan's murder to remain unknown or, even more threatening, is determined to get vengeance for a man wrongfully accused and punished.
\nIn order to identify her stalker, Bellamy must confront the ghosts of her past, including Dent Carter, Susan's wayward and reckless boyfriend - and an original suspect in the murder case. Dent, with this and other stains on his past, is intent on clearing his name, and he needs Bellamy's sealed memory to do it. But her safeguarded recollections -once unlocked-pose dangers that neither could foresee and puts both their lives in peril.
\nAs Bellamy delves deeper into the mystery surrounding Susan's slaying, she discovers disturbing elements of the crime which call into question the people she holds most dear. Haunted by partial memories, conflicted over her feelings for Dent, but determined to learn the truth, she won't stop until she reveals Susan's killer.
\nThat is, unless Susan's killer strikes her first . . .
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At a Texas county fair, amidst carousels and a bustling midway, children’s book author Elle Portman is enjoying a rare night out with her favorite her two-year-old son, Charlie. But just as they’re about to head home, the unthinkable a shooter opens fire into the crowd, causing widespread panic to erupt all around them.
\nAlso caught in the melee was corporate consultant Calder Hudson. Arrogant, self-centered, and high off his latest career win, he’s frustrated and confused when he wakes up in the hospital after undergoing emergency surgery on his arm. The doctor tells him that he was lucky - that as far as gunshot wounds go, he pulled through remarkably well. Others weren’t so lucky, which instills in Calder a furious determination to get justice . . . a goal shared by Elle.
\nTheir chance encounter at the police station leads to a surprising and inexplicable gravitation to one another, but even as the attraction grows, Elle and Calder can’t help but wonder if the unimaginable tragedy that brought them together is too painful and too complicated to sustain - especially while the shooter remains at large.
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Former Super Bowl MVP quarterback Zach Bridger hasn’t seen his ex-wife, Rebecca Pratt, for some time - not since their volatile marriage imploded - so he’s shocked to receive a life-altering call about her. Rebecca has been placed on life support after a violent assault, and he - despite their divorce - has medical power-of-attorney. Zach is asked to make an impossible choice: keep her on life support or take her off of it. Buckling under the weight of the responsibility and the glare of public scrutiny, Zach ultimately walks away, letting Rebecca's parents have the final say.
\nFour years later, Rebecca's attacker, Eban - the scion of a wealthy family in Atlanta - gets an early release from prison. The ludicrous miscarriage of justice reeks of favoritism, and Kate Lennon, a brilliant state prosecutor, is determined to put him back behind bars. Rebecca’s parents have kept her alive all these years, but if her condition were to change - if she were to die - Eban could be retried on a new charge: murder.
\nIt isn’t lost on Zach that in order for Eban to be charged with Rebecca’s murder, Zach must actually be the one to kill her. He rejects Kate’s legal standpoint but can’t resist their ill-timed attraction to each other. Eban, having realised the jeopardy he’s in, plots to make certain that neither Zach nor Kate lives to see the death of Rebecca - and the end of his freedom.
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Kerra Bailey is a TV journalist hot on the trail of a story guaranteed to skyrocket her career to new heights. Twenty-five years ago, Major Franklin Trapper became a national icon when he was photographed leading a handful of survivors to safety after the bombing of a Dallas hotel. For years, he gave frequent speeches and interviews but then suddenly dropped out of the public eye, shunning all media. Now Kerra is willing to use any means necessary to get an exclusive with the Major - even if she has to secure an introduction from his estranged son, former ATF agent John Trapper.
\nStill seething over his break with both the ATF and his father, Trapper wants no association with the bombing or the Major. Yet Kerra's hints that there's more to the story rouse Trapper's interest despite himself. And when the interview goes catastrophically awry - with unknown assailants targeting not only the Major, but also Kerra - Trapper realises he needs her under wraps if he's going to track down the gunmen . . . and finally discover who was responsible for the Dallas bombing.
\nKerra is wary of a man so charming one moment and dangerous the next, and she knows Trapper is withholding evidence from his ATF investigation into the bombing. But having no one else to trust and enemies lurking closer than they know, Kerra and Trapper join forces to expose a sinuous network of lies and conspiracy - and uncover who would want a national hero dead.
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When newswoman Britt Shelley wakes up to find herself in bed beside Charleston PD detective Jay Burgess, she remembers nothing of how she got there - or how he wound up dead. Burgess was one of four heroic city officials who risked their lives five years earlier to lead others to safety from a catastrophic fire. His lifelong friend, Raley Gannon, was later assigned to investigate.
\nBut Raley never finished the inquiry because one calamitous night his career was destroyed by scandal. Now, the news-woman whose biased reporting helped bring about Raley's downfall might be his only chance to vindicate himself and get justice for the fire's victims.
\nBut the more Raley and Britt discover about that fateful day, the more perilous their situation becomes, until they're not only chasing the truth but running for their lives.
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Rye Mallett, a fearless \"freight dog\" pilot charged with flying cargo to far-flung locations, is often rough-spoken, usually unshaven, and he never gets the regulation eight hours of shut-eye before a flight; but he does have a rock-solid reputation: he will fly in the foulest weather, day or night, and deliver the goods safely to their destination. So, when Rye is asked to fly into a completely fogbound Northern Georgia town and deliver a mysterious black box to a Dr. Lambert, he doesn't ask why - he just ups his price.
As Rye's plane nears the isolated landing strip, more trouble than inclement weather awaits him. He is greeted first by a sabotage attempt that causes him to crash land, and then by Dr. Brynn O'Neal, who claims she was sent for the box in Dr. Lambert's stead. Despite Rye's \"no-involvement\" policy when it comes other people's problems, he finds himself irresistibly drawn to the intrigue surrounding his cargo . . . and to the mysterious and attractive Brynn O'Neal.
Soon Rye and Brynn are in a treacherous 48-hour race to deliver the box before time runs out. With the hours slipping by and everyone from law enforcement officials to hired thugs hot on their heels, the two must protect their valuable cargo from those who would kill for it - that is, if they can trust each other.
Chase Tyler has been the object of Marcie Johns’s desire since grade school. But when it came time to settle down, the handsome, laconic cowboy chose another woman to be his bride. Life was good for Chase - until things took an abrupt and tragic turn. Ravaged by grief, Chase has become a lost and embittered soul, a man without purpose, compassion, or hope.
\nThen fate intercedes, reuniting Chase and Marcie, who was an unwitting player in Chase’s unfathomable family tragedy. Guilt weighs heavily on Marcie, but she’s also convinced that only the strength of her love can pull Chase back from the abyss. She’s willing to risk everything on a daring plan to rescue his business, save his life, and bring them together at last.
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Charismatic and easy on the eyes, Lucky Tyler is a born rebel. His romantic conquests have earned him his nickname, while his temper gives him his reputation as the family hothead. One night, he gets in a fight over a woman in distress, followed by a night of passion neither of them will soon forget. But the lady in question has a knack for disappearing. When news breaks of a suspicious fire at Tyler Drilling, Lucky is the prime suspect. Now the mystery woman is more than just the object of his obsession. She’s his alibi.
\nDevon Haines has tried her best to escape Lucky. Yet his bold pursuit and self-assurance are irresistible. In order to clear him of criminal charges, she must reveal her darkest secret; withholding her help could cost him everything he holds dear. Either way, she risks losing him forever.
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The youngest heir to her family’s oil fortune, Sage has always been the unbridled spitfire in the Tyler clan. Now, fresh out of college, she’s looking to settle down at last with her safe, upper-crust fiancé. Then into her life saunters Harlan Boyd, a rootless drifter recently hired for a Tyler Drilling Company project. Harlan’s just the sort of man Sage should avoid, but there’s something irresistible about the laconic cowboy that intrigues her.
\nWhen a financial crisis threatens to wreck Tyler Drilling for good, Sage and Harlan must channel their simmering chemistry into the task of saving the family business. But can she trust a man who shares her maverick spirit - and harbors long-held secrets of his own?
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Twenty years ago in the dead of night, four seemingly random individuals pulled the ultimate heist and almost walked away with half a million dollars. But by daybreak, their plan had been shot to hell. One of them was in the hospital. One was in jail. One was dead. And one got away with it.
Arden Maxwell, the daughter of the man who disappeared all those years ago - presumably with the money, after murdering his accomplice - has never reconciled with her father's abandonment of her and her sister. After countless personal setbacks she decides to return to her family home near mysterious Caddo Lake, and finally get answers to the many questions that torment her. Little does she know, two of her father's co-conspirators - a war hero and a corrupt district attorney - are watching her every move.
Ledge Burnet, a rebellious teen at the time of the heist, evaded his jail sentence by enlisting in the army. Now he's back in town to care for his ailing father - and to keep his eye on the county's corrupt district attorney, whom he suspects was the real murderer.
Although the two are bound to silence because of the crime they committed together, each has spent years waiting and hoping that the other will make a fatal misstep. But the arrival of their elusive accomplice's daughter, Arden, who may know more about the missing money than she's telling, sets them both on red alert. She ignites Ledge's determination to expose the D.A.'s treachery . . . and sparks a desire he wishes to deny.
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Only two survive the small plane crash in the Canadian wilderness miles from civilisation: Rusty Carlson, a real estate agent from Beverly Hills, who has never faced anything more perilous than L.A.’s rush hour traffic; and Cooper Landry, an embittered Vietnam veteran, who has endured the horrors of warfare and a POW camp.
\nRusty wouldn’t have believed herself capable of dragging her unconscious fellow passenger from the wreckage, but that was only the first challenge confronting her. The man himself is as hostile and unforgiving as the mountainous terrain in which they’re stranded. If they had a choice, they would go their separate ways. But they don’t. If they want to live, they must stay together.
Teamed against the harsh elements, injury, and a pair of conniving cutthroats, Rusty and Cooper must rely on each other in order to survive. In a one room cabin they find shelter. . .but, as winter closes in, they have no protection against the sexual attraction that becomes the real test of their fortitude.
Within those four rough walls, Rusty discovers that Cooper’s brusqueness arises from immeasurable heartache, and, to Cooper’s dismay, his credo of No romance, no love, no thanks becomes his desperate chant to ward against Rusty’s allure.
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After stumbling upon a chilling small-town secret in South Carolina, a determined public defender must protect herself - and her young son - from those who want them dead.
\nKendall Deaton pulls herself and her baby out of a wrecked car, and a mixture of courage and fear gets her to the top of a ravine, where she flags down help. But she doesn't dare reveal her true identity to the authorities. Instead, she plans her immediate escape, and her perilous flight begins.
\nKendall, the best public defender in Prosper, South Carolina, has stumbled upon a chilling town secret, turning her marriage to one of Prosper's most powerful men into a living hell. Now Kendall is a terrified mother trying to save her child's life, a reluctant witness who knows too much about an insidious evil . . . and a woman surrounded by forces that will stop at nothing to protect what is \"theirs.\"
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When August Caine receives a phone call from a Savannah attorney, she is blindsided by the news - her Aunt Helen has passed away. But how can that be, when August’s mother insisted Helen died in a car accident fifteen years ago? Determined to uncover the truth, August returns to the deep South, where the ghosts of her past - both real and imagined - await her.
\nPlagued by a memory splintered by her father’s unsolved murder when she was a child and further tangled by psychiatric treatments for the debilitating depression she struggles with, August realises her survival depends on unraveling the mystery surrounding her father’s death. This means returning to the one safe place she remembers from the childhood she has mostly locked away inside her Aunt Helen’s home, and the ghost tours they created together.
\nA chilling exploration of mental illness, mother-daughter bonds, and generational secrets, One Beautiful Year of Normal follows August as she pieces together the long-buried truths that shaped her family’s tragic past and confronts the question that has haunted her for Can the truth set her free, or will it unravel everything she thought she knew?
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For fans of stranger than truth stories, Sandy Schnakenburg is uncovering rattling and unprecedented revelations in this powerful memoir of love, secrets, and survival.
\nWhen Lee Metoyer is hired to be the new housekeeper, she has no idea that she’s about to become the anchor to a family in an abusive patriarch's home, setting a mystery in motion that will take decades to uncover. At the age of seventy-two, Lee falls ill and on her deathbed asks Sandy to write her story. The only problem is, Sandy doesn’t know the story.
\nEmbarking on a quest to honor Lee’s final wishes, Sandy takes an emotional and thrilling journey, unveiling shocking truths not only about her beloved housekeeper but also her own upbringing. As she digs further, she learns that Lee came to her family’s sprawling estate in Barrington, IL, harboring a secret past. For decades, she’s been in hiding. But Lee is not the only one with secrets; Sandy’s quest forces her to grapple with her own family history as well, and to finally confront the effects of the psychological abuse she suffered as a child.
\nBoth a chilling and exciting personal tale of love and survival, The Housekeeper’s Secret is a gripping saga that illuminates the resilience of the human spirit.
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An enchanting novel about a witch who has a second chance to get her magical powers - and her life - back on track, from the national bestselling author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches.
\nSera Swan was once one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Then she resurrected her great-aunt Jasmine from the (very recently) dead, lost most of her magic, befriended a semi-villainous talking fox, and was exiled from her magical Guild. Now she (slightly reluctantly and just a bit grumpily) helps Aunt Jasmine run an inn in Lancashire, where she deals with her quirky guests' shenanigans, tries to keep the talking fox in check, and longs for the magical future she lost.
\nWhen she learns about an old spellbook that holds the secret to restoring her power, she turns to Luke Larsen, a gorgeous historian who might just be able to help her unlock the book’s mysteries. Luke, who has his own reasons for staying at the inn, never planned on getting involved in the madcap goings-on around him and certainly had no intention of letting certain grumpy innkeepers past his icy walls, so no one is more surprised than he is when he not only agrees to help, but also finds himself thawing.
\nRunning an inn, reclaiming lost magic, and staying one step ahead of the watchful Guild is a lot for anyone, but Sera is about to discover that she doesn’t have to do it alone . . . and that the weird, wonderful family she’s made might be the best magic of all.
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Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka spends her days in her room in a care home outside Tokyo, relying on an electric wheelchair to get around and a ventilator to breathe. But if Shaka's physical life is limited, her quick, mischievous mind has no boundaries: She takes e-learning courses on her iPad, publishes explicit fantasies on websites, and anonymously troll-tweets to see if anyone is paying attention (“If I were to live again, I’d want to be a high-class prostitute”).
\nOne day, she tweets into the void an offer of an enormous sum of money for a sperm donor. To her surprise, her new nurse accepts the dare, unleashing a series of events that will forever change Shaka's sense of herself as a woman in the world.
\nHunchback has shaken Japanese literary culture with its skillful depiction of the physical body and unrepentant humor. Winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, it's a feminist story about the dignity of an individual who insists on her right to make choices for herself, no matter the consequences.
\nFormally creative and refreshingly unsentimental, Hunchback depicts the joy, anger, and desires of a woman demanding autonomy in a world that doesn't aways grant it to people like her. Full of wit, bite, and heart, this unforgettable novel reminds us all of the full potential of our lives, no matter the limitations we experience.
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Daisy Patel is a software engineer who understands lists and logic better than bosses and boyfriends. With her life all planned out, and no interest in love, the one thing she can't give her family is the marriage they expect. Left with few options, she asks her childhood crush to be her decoy fiance.
\nLiam Murphy is a venture capitalist with something to prove. When he learns that his inheritance is contingent on being married, he realises his best friend's little sister has the perfect solution to his problem. A marriage of convenience will get Daisy's matchmaking relatives off her back and fulfill the terms of his late grandfather's will. If only he hadn't broken her tender teenage heart nine years ago . . .
\nSparks fly when Daisy and Liam go on a series of dates to legitimise their fake relationship. Too late, they realise that very little is convenient about their arrangement. History and chemistry aren't about to follow the rules of this engagement.
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After her life falls apart, recruitment consultant Layla Patel returns home to her family in San Francisco. But in the eyes of her father, who runs a Michelin starred restaurant, she can do no wrong. He would do anything to see her smile again. With the best intentions in mind, he offers her the office upstairs to start her new business and creates a profile on an online dating site to find her a man. She doesn’t know he’s arranged a series of blind dates until the first one comes knocking on her door.
\nAs CEO of a corporate downsizing company Sam Mehta is more used to conflict than calm. In search of a quiet new office, he finds the perfect space above a cozy Indian restaurant that smells like home. But when communication goes awry, he's forced to share his space with the owner's beautiful yet infuriating daughter Layla, her crazy family, and a parade of hopeful suitors, all of whom threaten to disrupt his carefully ordered life. As they face off in close quarters, the sarcasm and sparks fly. But when the battle for the office becomes a battle of the heart, Sam and Layla have to decide if this is love or just a game.
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After a devastating break-up, celebrity-obsessed lawyer Zara Patel is determined never to open her heart again. She puts her energy into building her career and helping her friends find romance through the wedding season. She's never faced a guest at the singles table she couldn’t match, until she crosses paths with the sinfully sexy Jay Donovan.
\nFormer military security specialist Jay has no time for love. His life is about working hard, staying focused, and winning at all costs. When charismatic Zara crashes into his life, he's thrown into close contact with exactly the kind of chaos he wants to avoid. Worse, they're stuck together for the entire wedding season.
\nSo they make a deal. She'll find his special someone if he introduces her to his celebrity clients. But when their arrangement brings them together in ways they never expected, they realise that the perfect match might just be their own.
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It’s been a year since Simi Chopra’s motley crew pulled off a high-wire diamond necklace heist with the help of sexy rogue Jack Danger. After living it up on the reward money, they're back where they started, struggling to pay their bills. So when a Chicago Mafia boss demands they return the jewels - plus interest, or else - they need to get the team back together . . . and fast.
\nUnfortunately, Simi soon discovers that the necklace is in the hands of Jack's nemesis, a highly-skilled and supremely vengeful master thief who is not above a little blackmail to get even. (Did Jack really have to piss her off?) Now, the crew is forced into her working her con in order to get the necklace back.
\nAs if Simi needed any more complications while trying to rob a billionaire’s mansion, she and Jack are on the rocks, someone else is after her score, and a gorgeous detective is hot on her tail. Simi better be careful or she’ll end up in the less fun kind of handcuffs.
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Simi Chopra is on a bad-luck streak. She’s lost yet another job, her student loan debt won’t stop growing, her basement apartment is a certifiable flood zone, and now her best friend has been accused of stealing a multimillion-dollar diamond necklace. To put it lightly, she’s desperate for a break - that’s right when Jack waltzes out of the bushes and into her life.
\nJack is just as charming as he is mysterious. When he offers to help her find the missing necklace and steal it back, Simi jumps at the chance to clear her friend’s name and collect the substantial reward. But every good heist needs a crew. All she needs to do is transform a ragtag group of strangers into an elite heist crew, infiltrate a high-society wedding and steal the necklace from a dangerous criminal before the happy couple say “I do.”
\nMeanwhile the bride is keeping secrets, a detective with a slow-burn smile keeps showing up at her door, and the ultimate robbery might not be the wedding con, but the way Jack is stealing her heart.
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Somewhere in the Washington, D.C. area, a woman lies helpless in a box. Barely breathing. Buried alive. In Quantico, the FBI receives a coded message from the woman’s abductor. He wants to play a game: decipher the clues, save the girl. The FBI’s top cryptanalysts crack the code and Special Agent Meg Jennings and her K-9 partner, Hawk, scramble to the scene of the crime -too late. But the killer’s game is far from over . . .
Another message, another victim. The deadly pattern is repeated - again and again. As the body count mounts, Meg decides to break protocol and bring in her brilliant sister, Cara, a genius at word games, to decipher the kidnapper’s twisted clues. Meg knows she’s risking her career to do it, but she’s determined not to let one more person die under her and Hawk’s watch. If the plan fails, it could bite them in the end. And if it leads to the killer, it could bury them forever . . .
A thrilling standalone mystery featuring a San Diego florist grappling with post-traumatic amnesia. The only witness to a murder she can’t remember, her handwritten notes and razor-sharp wits are all she has to solve the crime - and save her life.
\nAfter surviving a terrible attack, Quinn Fleming has recovered in every way but one - her ability to retain new memories. Now, months later, it appears to the outside world as if the San Diego florist’s life is back to normal. But Quinn is barely holding on, relying on a notebook she carries with her at all times, a record of her entire existence since the assault. So when she witnesses a murder in the shadowy alley behind the florist shop, Quinn immediately writes down every terrifying detail of the incident before her amnesia wipes it away.
\nBy the time the police arrive, there’s no body, no crime scene, and no clues. The killing seems as erased from reality as it is from Quinn’s mind . . . until the flashbacks begin. Suddenly, fragments of memories are surfacing - mere glimpses of that horrible night, but enough to convince Quinn that somewhere, locked in her subconscious, is the key to solving the case . . . and she’s not the only one who knows. Somebody else has realized Quinn is a threat that needs to be eliminated. Now, with her life on the line and only her notes to guide her, Quinn sets out to find a killer she doesn’t remember, but can’t forget . . .
One arrow through the heart could be a tragic hunting accident. A second one, within days, looks more like a crime. That’s when Meg Jennings and Brian Foster of the FBI’s Forensic Canine Unit head to Georgia to investigate. With their dogs Hawk and Lacey, Meg and Brian are enlisted to follow the scent of a killer. At first, nothing seems to connect the two victims - a county commissioner and State Patrol officer. But the blood sport around the southern town of Blue Ridge is just beginning.
As the body count rises, the compound bow killer becomes even more elusive, appearing and vanishing like a ghost. However, with each new slaying Meg is beginning to suspect the grim design that’s escalating in the shadows. At its heart, a tragic event that reaches back nearly two centuries in Georgia’s history is now turning Blue Ridge into a hunting ground. But as Meg gets closer to solving the puzzle, the closer she is to stepping into the crosshairs of an elusive murderer with deadly aim, and motives as deep and dark as the woods . . .
Meg and Hawk are part of the FBI’s elite K-9 unit. Hawk can sniff out bodies anywhere - living or dead. When a bomb rips apart a government building in Washington D.C., it takes all of the team’s extensive search-and-rescue training to locate and save the workers and visitors buried beneath the rubble.
But even as the duo are hailed as heroes, a bomber remains at large, striking terror in a widening spiral of unpredictability. As more bombs are detonated and the body count escalates, Meg and Hawk are assigned to a task force dedicated to stopping the unseen killer. It will come down to a battle of wits and survival skills between Meg, Hawk, and the bomber they’re tracking to rescue a nation from the brink of chaos.
For Meg Jennings and her K-9 companion, Hawk, exploring the ruins of a deserted building is an exciting way to sharpen their skills without the life-or-death stakes they face as part of the FBI's Human Scent Evidence Team. But deep in the echoing rooms of an abandoned asylum, Hawk finds the body of an elderly woman. The victim couldn't have made her way into the derelict building on her own. Before forty-eight hours pass, Meg learns of more cases of elders found dead in neglected urban structures.
There's not enough evidence to link the deaths - yet. But Meg scents a pattern, and when she gets word of another senior gone missing, she and Hawk don't hesitate. Meg is sure a murderer is hunting the elderly, and she can prove it if she can just find a connection. It will take the expert coordination of her whole team, along with help from Clay McCord and Todd Webb, to uncover the means, let alone a motive. And to stop someone who has operated in the dark for so long, Meg will need to risk more than she has to give . . .
Chicago physical therapist Krista Evans finds that her clients rely on her life and love advice just as much as on her hands-on work, so why not share it on the live-streaming platform Twitch? Her friend Hailey Swanson, an inveterate gamer, is willing to help Krista build her presence and cohost a biweekly show. A Word from the Wise is born . . .
\nTaking real-time questions from chat participants proves more popular than Krista thought possible, and their follower count - and income - grow. But not all attention is wanted, as she soon discovers. An account with the username Chase547 becomes enraged when Krista and Hailey suggest he stop pursuing a woman who constantly rebuffs him. He amps up his efforts, even when he’s piled on by other followers, throwing their chats into chaos.
\nUnnerved by Chase547’s obsession, Krista turns to law enforcement, but the little information she’s able to give the Chicago PD isn’t enough to start an investigation.
\nSoon, Krista notices things missing at home and feels as if she’s being watched. And when Chase547 begins to leave clues in real life proving what he’s capable of, she begins to fear for her safety. Chase547 has more than one way to make his presence known - and this time it won’t be from behind a screen . . .
Keeping their search-and-rescue skills honed isn’t just a job requirement for FBI Special Agent Meg Jennings and her Labrador, Hawk - it’s essential to saving lives. A water search training weekend in the Boundary Waters area of Minnesota has attracted participants from all levels of law enforcement, each vying to win. The races are challenging, the rivalry is intense, and Meg is already under pressure when Hawk alerts to a scent in the water - and discovers the fresh body of one of Meg’s fellow competitors.
\nThe contest is called off, but Meg’s still feeling the heat. The victim had made an unfounded complaint about her, one that could cost Meg her job and see Hawk removed from her care. The field of suspects is daunting, and all of them are experts in throwing others off the trail. And though Meg’s team flies out to Minnesota to help uncover the truth, they’re on unfamiliar territory, pitted against a killer with the skills, and the motivation, to stay hidden in plain sight . . .
In the wake of a devastating hurricane, Special Agent Meg Jennings and her Labrador, Hawk - invaluable members of the FBI's Human Scent Evidence Team - have been deployed to Virginia Beach. They have their work cut out for them. Amid graveyards of debris, and the buried cries for help, the search and rescue operation begins. The most alarming discovery is yet to come - a teenage girl hiding in the Great Dismal Swamp. Shaken by the storm, she has reason to be scared. But this young survivor is terrified of so much more.
Her name is Emma - a disheveled runaway lost to the sordid underbelly of a Virginia sex-trafficking ring. Its leader has disappeared in the chaos - along with other victims. With so much evidence, and so many witnesses, seemingly washed away, Meg joins forces with Special Agent Walter Van Cleave to ensure no further harm comes to their vulnerable charge. They soon discover that this is no small-time localized syndicate. Its branches are rooted in some of the most influential powers in Virginia. Now as Meg's investigation digs deeper, she's making some very dangerous enemies. And one by one, they're coming out of the storm to stop her.
As long as there’s hope of finding life, no mission is too dangerous for Meg Jennings and her colleagues in the FBI K-9 unit. But locating the wreckage of a hijacked private plane high in the Elk Mountains of Colorado is treacherous in a multitude of ways - some of them impossible for even a seasoned team to predict.
\nThe plane, carrying the board of directors of Barron Pharmaceuticals, crashed on a rocky peak and was cleaved in two. Perilous weather means the rescuers have to ascend on foot, with their dogs unleashed in case of falls. It takes hours to locate the wreckage, but miraculously, Meg and Hawk find half a dozen passengers and crew still alive. The hijacker also survived, and has fled into the wilderness with the CEO’s son in pursuit.
\nAs soon as day breaks, the K-9 teams set out to find both men, and the dogs quickly pick up a scent trail. Meg has used her connections with an investigative reporter to learn as much as she can about the hijacker, hoping to use it when they apprehend him. But first, they must contend with the mountain’s savage fury, and an adversary who will destroy as many lives as possible rather than face justice . . .
FBI handler Meg Jennings and her search-and-rescue K-9 partner, Hawk, race to find survivors after a building collapses, and find that the stakes are higher than ever before.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThere are situations that fill even the most seasoned FBI K-9 handlers with shock and horror. Meg Jennings is preparing for another work day when she gets words of a catastrophic scene in downtown Washington, D.C. Part of a twelve-story condo building has collapsed, and the rest of the structure could soon follow. Every search-and-rescue worker and K-9 team is needed on-site immediately to find survivors - and assess the casualties.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tPutting aside her fears for her firefighter fiancé, who’s already inside the unstable building, Meg turns to the task at hand. If anyone is still alive within the rubble, she and Hawk, working alongside other K-9 teams, must find them. Every hour, every moment counts—and a wrong move could trigger a deadly chain reaction for those buried beneath. But beyond the present danger is a deeper threat, as evidence indicates that this wasn’t a random tragedy, but an act of domestic terrorism. And identifying the culprit and motivation, in time to stop another attack, means taking on an enemy with terrifying skills - and nothing left to lose.
Alexa Glock is teetering on a precipice, the ground threatening to open up beneath her - and it's not just the immediate peril of retrieving a long-lost hiker's skull, given up by a melting and dangerous glacier. She's spending a ski weekend with boyfriend DI Bruce Horne and his two daughters, and she couldn't be more terrified. An entire weekend trying to win over a sullen teenager and a preteen with obvious loyalties to Mom? She's more comfortable almost sliding to her death on an unstable glacier.
\nWhen she indeed finds herself dangling in a crevasse waiting for the experts to rescue her, she discovers a pelvis (wearing a red Speedo!) frozen in the ice, and the heartbreaking task of identifying multiple remains and bringing closure to families begins.
\nOnce safely back on terra firma, awaiting the arrival of Bruce and his dreaded daughters, Alexa follows the smell of smoke to a nearby pizza joint which has been completely destroyed by fire. When a body is discovered in the smoldering ruins, Alexa splits her time between fire and ice, working to identify a family's long-lost loved one and the charred remains of the fire victim. Then an avalanche during a snowboard competition leaves Bruce's oldest daughter missing along with the snowboarder she's been hanging out with.
\nAs Bruce and other rescuers race to find the missing teens, evidence begins to suggest that neither the fire nor the avalanche were accidents, and that the daughter's boyfriend might have information about both . . .
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Cape Kidnappers, New On a cliff overlooking the ocean and one of the largest gannet bird colonies in the world, American CEO Harlan Quinn has built his “Plan B” - a lavish estate, complete with an underground doomsday bunker. Cleaning staff finds a body in the house. It appears the victim died of natural causes but advanced facial decomposition leaves him unidentifiable. Forensic odontologist Alexa Glock is called in to identify the body via dental records.
\nTeeth never lie.
\nBut something odd in the deceased's mouth sets Alexa and the team on a new track - to find the murderer. As they work to narrow the suspect field, a second homicide - and a stolen cache of weapons from a locked room in the bunker - means they're deathly close to the truth.
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New Zealand's remote Milford Track seems the perfect place for forensic investigator Alexa Glock to reconnect with her brother Charlie, with whom she hasn't spent much time since they were kids. Their backpacking trip seems ill-fated from the start, though, when she must stop on the way to examine nine skeletons - most likely Maori tribespeople - whose graves have been unearthed by highway construction. Before she opens the first casket, a Maori elder gives her a dire “The viewing of bones can unleash misfortune to the living. Or worse.”
\nThough Alexa dismisses his words as superstitious, they soon come back to haunt her as the idyllic hike takes a sinister turn. First, Charlie is aloof and resentful of the time Alexa has spent at work. Then a rock avalanche nearly carries her away as it reveals the skeletal remains of someone who has clearly been stabbed to death. When a fellow hiker goes missing and is later found dead, Alexa has all she can do to focus on the science as she investigates two murders, while trying not to become the third victim.
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At first, Alexa Glock's initial case as a traveling forensic investigator seems straightforward - her expertise in teeth helps her identify the skeletal remains of a hunter found on the remote Stewart Island in New Zealand. But when she realises the bullet lodged in his skull was not self-inflicted, and then a second, shark-ravaged body washes up on Ringaringa Beach, it's clear that something dangerous is lurking in the beautiful waters surrounding the island.
\nThe disturbing sight seems to confirm what locals have hashed out in the pub: shark cage-diving, lucrative for owners and popular with tourists, has changed the great white sharks' behavior, turning them into man-eaters. Tensions between cagers and locals mount as Alexa dives into the harrowing case. While measuring bite patterns, she makes a shocking discovery that just might lead her to who - or what - is behind both deaths.
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Alexa Glock is at a crossroads, personally and professionally. Now that DI Bruce Horne, who said he loved her, won't deny he cheated on his ex-wife, how can Alexa trust he won't cheat on her? She and her abandonment issues need some space, so she throws her hat in the ring for a position far from New Abertay University in Scotland. Her professional crush, Dr. Ben Odden, is interested in her expertise in teeth. If he makes an offer, will Alexa bite?
\nMeanwhile, a human skeleton has been exhumed in a quaint former gold rush town in New Zealand. A benefactor believes that the bones are that of a Chinese gold miner, and she wants to repatriate the “hungry ghost” of her ancestor to China. Alexa is called in to examine the teeth and the secrets they contain. She didn't expect to discover a hole in the skull. When another skeleton is unearthed nearby and also shows evidence of a violent death, Alexa heads to the police station to open a cold case. Then, the town's beloved school principal goes missing.
\nAlexa is quickly recruited to assist with the search, and as she digs into both cases, the secrets she uncovers make her dangerously unpopular with those who want to keep the past buried - and perhaps Alexa along with it.
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When a body is found half-submerged in a Waiariki Thermal Land of Enchantment molten mud pot, forensics expert Alexa Glock, her specialty odontology, spots a way to prolong her stay in New Zealand. Her fellowship has ended and no one is waiting for her to return to the States. Men have never been her expertise, but teeth are. Other ways of identifying the body may have . . . melted away.
\nA determined Alexa barrels her way onto the scene and into the lives of Rotorua's finest, especially Detective Inspector Bruce Horne. There's something about his glacial blue eyes that gets under never-married Alexa's skin, even though she's sworn off men.
\nDanger lurks in “the land of the long white cloud.” The murder victim, a city councilman, had trespassed on a sacred island forbidden to Pakeha, or non-Maori, and Alexa must follow suit. The Maori community is incensed that the rules of tapu have been disregarded and the consequences are disaster, demonic possession, or death.
\nSay what?
\nAlexa doesn't believe in these three D's, but when she discovers an unorthodox death threat in her rented riverside Trout Cottage, she reconsiders. A second murder heats the case to the boiling point and reveals a molten mix of motives and suspects. At the heart of Molten Mud Murder is an age old debate: is the past better left undisturbed, or unearthed? And at what cost either way?
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Lenny has always known that his wife, Claire, is the love of his life. But somehow his marriage is in shambles, he's struggling with the kids, and a string of anonymous text messages are tormenting him, insisting that Claire is a liar.
\nClaire adores Lenny, but there's a lot she hasn't told him about the traumatic events that led her to him, and over the last few years she has gradually closed down. Now she's terrified that the horrors of her past might be about to put her entire family in danger.
\nHowever, it's only when new neighbors move in across the road that Claire and Lenny's carefully built facades start to rupture, for these strangers appear to know far more than they should about the couple's troubles. Over the next few days, the lies will be exposed, and everyone's lives will change forever, as the truth about Claire's past finally comes to light.
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Arabella Lane, senior executive at a children’s publisher, is found dead in the Thames on a frosty winter’s morning after the office Christmas party. No one is sure whether she jumped or was pushed. The one person who may know the truth is the newest employee at Parker & Lane - the office temp, Eleanor.
Eleanor has travelled to London to escape the repercussions of her traumatic childhood in outback Australia, but now tragedy seems to follow her wherever she goes. To her horror, she has no memory of the crucial hours leading up to Arabella’s death - memory that will either incriminate or absolve her.
As Eleanor desperately tries to remember her missing hours and uncover the events of that fateful night, her own extended family is dragged further into the dark, terrifying terrain of blame, suspicion and guilt.
Caught in a crossfire of accusations, Eleanor fears she can’t even trust herself, let alone the people around her. And soon, she’ll find herself in a race against time to find out just what happened that night - and discover just how deadly some secrets can be.
Six months ago, in an English hospital, a healthy baby wouldn’t take a breath at birth. Since then there have been more tragedies, and now the country is in turmoil. The government is clamping down on people’s freedoms. The prime minister has passed new laws granting authorities sweeping powers to monitor all citizens. And young pregnant women have started going missing.
\nAs a midwife, Emma is determined to be there for those who need her. But when her seventeen-year-old daughter Lainey finds herself in trouble, this dangerous new world becomes very real, and both women face impossible choices. The one person who might help is Emma’s estranged mother Geraldine, but reaching out to her will put them all in jeopardy . . .
\nThe Hush is a new breed of near-future thriller, an unflinching look at a society close to tipping point and a story for our times, highlighting the power of female friendship through a dynamic group of women determined to triumph against the odds.
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Rose once walked away from her daughter. Now she may be the only one who can save her.
\nFormer London police officer Rose Campbell has been estranged from her daughter, Lou, for almost a decade. But when Lou disappears from a remote beach in Western Australian - and the police suspect her of kidnapping the two young children in her care - Rose is asked to help bring Lou home.
\nThis is the final case in DSS Mal Blackwood's illustrious career - and there's a lot riding on it. The missing children are heirs to the Fisher property empire, and while their multimillionaire grandfather is breathing down Blackwood's neck, the media storm is intensifying. Faced with a deluge of evidence and accusations, Blackwood doesn't know who he can trust.
\nRose arrives in Australia intent on proving her daughter's innocence, but how can she be sure of that when she's no longer part of Lou's life? Meanwhile, as Blackwood begins to expose the Fishers' secrets, the investigation takes a dark turn. Shadows of the past gather around the Fishers, and Rose, and soon it's clear that every hour is critical. What has happened to Lou and the children? And can Rose and Blackwood find them in time?
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Lizzie Burdett was eighteen when she vanished, and Noah Carruso has never forgotten her. She was his first crush, his unrequited love. She was also his brother’s girlfriend.
Tom Carruso hasn’t been home in over a decade. He left soon after Lizzie disappeared, under a darkening cloud of suspicion, and now he’s back for the inquest into Lizzie’s death - intent on telling his side of the story.
As the inquest looms, Noah meets Alice Pryce on holiday. They fall for each other fast and hard, but Noah can’t bear to tell Alice his deepest fears. And Alice is equally stricken - she carries a terrible secret of her own.
Is the truth worth telling if it will destroy everything?
A moving coming-of-age memoir in the vein of Unorthodox and Brazen , about one young woman’s desperate attempt to protect her children and family while also embracing her queer identity in a controlling Hasidic community.
\nGrowing up in the Hasidic community of Brooklyn’s Borough Park, Sara Glass knew one painful what was expected of her and what she desperately wanted were impossibly opposed. Tormented by her attraction to women and trapped in a loveless arranged marriage, she found herself unable to conform to her religious upbringing and soon, she made the difficult decision to walk away from the world she knew.
\nSara’s journey to self-acceptance began with the challenging battle for a divorce and custody of her children, an act that left her on the verge of estrangement from her family and community. Controlled by the fear of losing custody of her two children, she forced herself to remain loyal to the compulsory heteronormativity baked into Hasidic Judaism and married again. But after suffering profound loss and a shocking sexual assault, Sara decided to finally be completely true to herself.
\nKissing Girls on Shabbat is not only a love letter to Glass’s children, herself, and her family - it is an unflinching window into the world of ultra-conservative Orthodox Jewish communities and an inspiring celebration of learning to love yourself.
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It’s a doozy of a bad day for Beverly Diamond when she catches her husband, Larry, in a compromising position with his secretary. What’s a DC suburban wife to do with a soon-to-be ex, two young kids, and no degree or financial support in 1962? Beat the louse at his own game, that’s what.
\nLarry runs the Maryland senatorial campaign for the incumbent candidate projected to win against his younger underdog opponent, Michael Landau. But Beverly has the pluck, political savvy, and sheer drive to push Landau’s campaign in a successful new direction, even if he already has a campaign manager who is less than pleased she has inserted herself into the race.
\nNow it’s rival against rival. She and Michael do make a great team . . . maybe in more ways than one. But with the election heating up, she needs to focus on one thing at a time. If Bev can convince Michael to go modern, pay attention to women’s issues, and learn how to dress himself properly, maybe she can show Larry exactly how much he has underestimated her their entire marriage - and make her own dreams come true in the process.
When Marilyn Kleinman is caught making out with the rabbi’s son in front of the whole congregation, her parents ship her off to her great-aunt Ada for the summer. If anyone can save their daughter’s reputation, it’s Philadelphia’s strict premier matchmaker. Either that or Marilyn can kiss college goodbye.
\nTo Marilyn’s surprise, Ada’s not the humorless septuagenarian her mother described. Not with that platinum-blonde hair, Hermès scarf, and Cadillac convertible. She’s sharp, straight-talking, takes her job very seriously, and abides by her own rules . . . mostly.
\nAs the summer unfolds, Ada and Marilyn head for the Jersey shore, where Marilyn helps Ada scope out eligible matches - for anyone but Marilyn, that is. Because if there’s one thing Marilyn’s learned from Ada, it’s that she doesn’t have to settle. With the school year quickly approaching and her father threatening to disinherit her, Marilyn must make her choice for her future: return to the comfortable life she knows, or embrace a risky, unknown path on her own.
Lily Weiss is her mother’s worst nightmare: thirty-two and single - the horror! She’s also a talented writer but hides behind a boring job at a science foundation. To her friends, she’s reliable and selfless, which is how she winds up a bridesmaid in five weddings in six weeks. Anything for her three best friends and two (younger) siblings, right? Even if her own love life is . . . well, she’d rather not talk about it. To keep her sanity, Lily needs a safe place to vent.
\nAnd so her anonymous blog, Bridesmania, is born. The posts start pouring out of her: all the feels about mom-zillas, her vanishing bank balance, the wicked bridesmaids of the west, high-strung brides-to-be, body-shaming dress clerks, bachelorette parties, and Spanx for days, not to mention being deemed guardian of eighty-eight-year-old Granny (who enjoys morning mimosas in the nude) for her brother’s destination wedding.
\nSo far the blog has stayed anonymous. But as everyone knows, few things online remain secret forever . . .
\nWhen all is said and done, can Lily help all five couples make it to happily ever after? And will her own happy ending be close behind?
It’s 1963, two years since Barbara Feldman’s husband died. Raising two kids, she’s finally emerging from her cocoon of grief. Not yet a butterfly, but she’s anxious to spread her wings.
\nThen one day her mother-in-law, Ruth, shows up on her doorstep with five suitcases, expecting a room of her own with a suitable mattress. Abrasive and stuck in her ways yet well meaning, Mother Ruth arrives without warning to help with the children. How can Barbara say no to a woman who is not only a widow herself but also a grieving mother? As Ruth’s prickly visit turns from days to weeks to what seems like forever, Barbara realises Ruth has got to go. But Barbara has an ingenious introduce Ruth to some fine gentlemen and marry her off as fast as she can.
\nSoon enough, something tells Barbara that Ruth is trying to do the same for her. At least they’re finding common ground - helping each other to move forward. Even if it is in the most unpredictable ways two totally different women ever imagined.
Four years into her marriage, Jenna is blindsided when her husband asks for a divorce. With time on her hands and her life in flux, she agrees to accompany her eccentric grandmother Evelyn on a road trip to the seaside Massachusetts town where much of their family history was shaped.
\nWhen they hit the road, Evelyn spins the tale of the star-crossed teenage romance that captured her heart more than seventy years ago and changed the course of her life. She insists the return to her hometown isn’t about that at all - no matter how much she talks about Tony, her unforgettable and forbidden first love.
\nUpon arrival, Jenna meets Tony’s attentive great-nephew Joe. The new friendship and fresh ocean air give her the confidence and distance she needs to begin putting the pain of a broken marriage behind her.
\nAs the secrets and truths of Evelyn’s past unfold, Jenna discovers a new side of her grandmother, and of herself, that she never knew existed - and learns that the possibilities for healing can come at the most unexpected times in a woman’s life.
Mia Almas has a secret. By day, she works at a respectable job as a media fact checker - a position her conservative, Arab grandparents approve of - and, by night, she takes to the stages of New York City comedy clubs. She holds herself back in a lot of ways, especially in the romance department, but being on stage lights her up and makes being a wallflower the rest of the time more bearable. That is, until Phaedra, her stylish and bold new neighbor, inspires Mia to take a few risks.
\nAs Mia pursues a forbidden romance with her boss, her standup gets better and bolder, leading to a surprise spotlight that exposes her secret gig. Horrified and worried that her rebellious act could mean big consequences for her reserved Palestinian-American family, Mia frantically dives into damage control. But all of her efforts to pull back from the spotlight expose a family scandal from the 1940s that could change everything . . .
\nEqual parts funny and tender, What Will People Think? is a heart-bursting exploration of what it means to discover and embrace the hidden parts of yourself, and how love in all forms can make you whole.
Held deep in a mountain refuge, Sylvia has been captured by the Urabi, who believe she can return their homeland to its former power. But after years of denying her legacy and a forbidden alliance with Jasad's greatest enemy, Sylvia must win the group's trust while struggling to keep control of both her magic and her mind.
\nIn the rival kingdom, Arin is caught between his father's desire to put down the brewing rebellion and the sacred edicts he's sworn to uphold. Arin must find Sylvia before his father's army, but his search will call into question the very core of Arin's beliefs about his family and the destruction of Jasad.
\nWar is inevitable and Sylvia cannot abandon her people again. The Urabi plan to raise the Jasadi fortress, and it will either kill Sylvia or destroy the humanity she's fought so hard to protect. For the first time in her life Sylvia doesn't just want to survive. She wants to win.
\nThe fugitive queen is ready to come home.
Ten years ago, the kingdom of Jasad burned. Its magic outlawed; its royal family murdered down to the last child. At least, that’s what Sylvia wants people to believe.
\nThe lost Heir of Jasad, Sylvia never wants to be found. She can’t think about how Nizahl’s armies laid waste to her kingdom and continue to hunt its people - not if she wants to stay alive. But when Arin, the Nizahl Heir, tracks a group of Jasadi rebels to her village, staying one step ahead of death gets trickier.
\nIn a moment of anger Sylvia’s magic is exposed, capturing Arin’s attention. Now, to save her life, Sylvia will have to make a deal with her greatest enemy. If she helps him lure the rebels, she’ll escape persecution.
\nA deadly game begins. Sylvia can’t let Arin discover her identity even as hatred shifts into something more. Soon, Sylvia will have to choose between the life she wants and the one she left behind. The scorched kingdom is rising, and it needs a queen.<
The seafaring humans of Kirkrell have always been plagued by finfolk - bloodthirsty fae who haunt the seas, sinking ships and cursing bloodlines. Yet it’s only by hunting magical whales that Kirkrell can prosper. Nineteen-year-old Annie is heir to the Fairfax Whaling Company, but their family's success came at a cost: a curse by which heartbreak turns Fairfaxes slowly into monsters. And six years ago, the shipwreck that killed Annie’s parents left her with scales spreading up her arms, claws sprouting from her fingertips.
\nThe love of her fiancé, August, salved her heart for a while - but when she learns August is maneuvering to take over the company, the curse worsens. Fearing her time is running out, she strikes a bargain with a disreputable young captain, half-finfolk and half-human Silas Price: on a voyage to hunt whales in the far north, Silas will take Annie to the finfolk queen, who can lift the curse in return for a promise to end whaling forever.
\nAs Annie, August and Silas sail north, she is determined to uphold her family’s legacy, but the threat of the finfolk tests her resolve. Lies corrupt her relationship with August; meanwhile a dangerous connection with Silas blooms - but he’s keeping secrets too, and his might be the most dangerous of all.
\nAs heiress, it’s Annie’s responsibility to deliver whale magic to her city. But as heartbreak looms, she must choose between saving herself and her family’s legacy - and hope it doesn’t cost her everyone she loves.
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Hidden deep in the mountains of Colorado lies the Inn at Havenfall, a sanctuary that connects ancient worlds - each with their own magic - together. For generations, the inn has protected all who seek refuge within its walls, and any who disrupt the peace can never return.
For Maddie Morrow, summers at the inn are more than a chance to experience this magic first-hand. Havenfall is an escape from reality, where her mother sits on death row accused of murdering Maddie's brother. It's where Maddie fell in love with handsome Fiorden soldier Brekken. And it's where one day she hopes to inherit the role of Innkeeper from her beloved uncle.
But this summer, the impossible happens - a dead body is found, shattering everything the inn stands for. With Brekken missing, her uncle gravely injured, and a dangerous creature on the loose, Maddie suddenly finds herself responsible for the safety of everyone in Havenfall. She'll do anything to uncover the truth, even if it means working together with an alluring new staffer Taya, who seems to know more than she's letting on. As dark secrets are revealed about the inn itself, one thing becomes clear to Maddie - no one can be trusted, and no one is safe . . .
Maddie thought her problems were over. She saved the Inn at Havenfall - a sanctuary between magical worlds - from the evil Silver Prince. Her uncle the Innkeeper is recovering from a mysterious spell that left him not quite human. And there are still a few weeks of summer left to spend with her more-than-friend Brekken.
But there’s more work to be done to protect the Inn - Maddie must put an end to the black-market trading of magical objects and open the Inn’s doors to the once feared land of shapeshifters.
As she tries to accomplish both seemingly impossible tasks, Maddie uncovers secrets that could change everything. What if saving everyone means destroying the only home she’s known?
Rose Cutler defines herself by her exacting standards. As an anti-racist, Jewish secular feminist eco-warrior, she is convinced she knows the right way to do everything, including parent her six-year-old nephew Nathan. When Rose offers to look after him while his parents visit Mexico for a week, her brother and sister-in-law reluctantly agree, provided she understands the rules - routine, bedtime, homework - and doesn’t overstep.
\nBut when Rose’s Newfoundland attacks and kills a corgi at the park, Nathan starts acting barking, overeating, talking to himself. Rose mistakes this behavior as repressed grief over the corgi’s death, but Nathan insists he isn’t grieving, and the dog isn’t dead. Her soul leaped into his body, and now she’s living inside him. Now Rose must banish the corgi from her nephew before the week ends and his parents return to collect their child.
Sebastian Walsh: twenty-four. Grad student at Lesiara University in the Mageus of Evocation program. Human. The first of his family to go to college rather than the military (and it goes over at family get-togethers about as well as you’d think).
\nElethior Tourael: also twenty-four. Also a grad student, but in the far more inferior Mageus of Conjuration program. Half-elf. The latest in a long line of Touraels to grace the hallowed halls of Lesiara U (what would the world do if the Touraels ran out of rich douches to lead their magical weapons manufacturing empire?) - and the other finalist for the Mageus Research Grant.
\nSebastian needs that grant to fund the last few months of research for his degree, after which he’ll get a job that actually helps people. He isn’t about to let anyone snatch this from him, least of all a snob who doesn’t even need the money because his family is loaded thanks to war profiteering.
\nBut there’s something worse than having a conceited academic nemesis steal grant money from you: you could be forced to work with him. Thio is secretive, broody, and his stunning biceps take up far too much shared lab space - but even as volatile as their partnership is, Sebastian just might find himself falling for his rival - and it could blow up his whole future.
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Orok Half-giant. Rawball defensive tank on the Philadelphia Hellhounds. Follower of Urzoth . . . only Orok’s tired of following the god of aggression.
\n\n
Alexo Cheerleader. Human? A dancer with a stadium’s worth of secrets.
\n\n
When Orok saves Alexo at a bar, fans go feral for the star athlete protecting the pint-size dude-in-distress. The Hellhounds propose that Orok and Alexo start a PR relationship to put a positive spin on Orok’s god. Orok is set to refuse and renounce Urzoth—but that wouldn’t let him see Alexo again.
\n\n
So, like a sap, he agrees.
\n\n
As Orok tries to drop the fake part of their fake-relationship, Alexo’s dangerous truths emerge. To save him, Orok will have to sacrifice far more than his divine association.
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Angra is alive, his Decay is spreading - and no one is safe.
Meira will do anything to save her world. With Angra trying to break through her mental defenses, she desperately needs to learn to control her own magic - so when the leader of a mysterious Order from Paisly offers to teach her, she jumps at the chance. But the true solution to stopping the Decay lies in a labyrinth deep beneath the Season Kingdoms. To defeat Angra, Meira will have to enter the labyrinth, destroy the very magic she’s learning to control - and make the biggest sacrifice of all.
Mather will do anything to save his queen. He needs to rally the Children of the Thaw, find Meira - and finally tell her how he really feels. But with a plan of attack that leaves no kingdom unscathed and a major betrayal within their ranks, winning the war - and protecting Meira - slips farther and farther out of reach.
Ceridwen will do anything to save her people. Angra had her brother killed, stole her kingdom, and made her a prisoner. But when she’s freed by an unexpected ally who reveals a shocking truth behind Summer’s slave trade, Ceridwen must take action to save her true love and her kingdom, even if it costs her what little she has left.
As Angra unleashes the Decay on the world, Meira, Mather, and Ceridwen must bring the kingdoms of Primoria together . . . or lose everything.
It’s been three months since the Winterians were freed and Spring’s king, Angra, disappeared - thanks largely to the help of Cordell.
\nMeira just wants her people to be safe. When Cordellan debt forces the Winterians to dig their mines for payment, they unearth something powerful and possibly dangerous: Primoria’s lost chasm of magic. Theron sees this find as an opportunity - with this much magic, the world can finally stand against threats like Angra.
\nBut Meira fears the danger the chasm poses - the last time the world had access to so much magic, it spawned the Decay. So when the king of Cordell orders the two on a mission across the kingdoms of Primoria to discover the chasm’s secrets, Meira plans to use the trip to garner support to keep the chasm shut and Winter safe - even if it means clashing with Theron. But can she do so without endangering the people she loves?
\nMather just wants to be free. The horrors inflicted on the Winterians hang fresh and raw in Januari - leaving Winter vulnerable to Cordell’s growing oppression. When Meira leaves to search for allies, he decides to take Winter’s security into his own hands. Can he rebuild his broken kingdom and protect them from new threats?
\nAs the web of power and deception weaves tighter, Theron fights for magic, Mather fights for freedom - and Meira starts to wonder if she should be fighting not just for Winter, but for the world.
Sixteen years ago the Kingdom of Winter was conquered and its citizens enslaved, leaving them without magic or a monarch. Now, the Winterians’ only hope for freedom is the eight survivors who managed to escape, and who have been waiting for the opportunity to steal back Winter’s magic and rebuild the kingdom ever since.
\nOrphaned as an infant during Winter’s defeat, Meira has lived her whole life as a refugee, raised by the Winterians’ general, Sir. Training to be a warrior - and desperately in love with her best friend, and future king, Mather - she would do anything to help her kingdom rise to power again.
\nSo when scouts discover the location of the ancient locket that can restore Winter’s magic, Meira decides to go after it herself. Finally, she’s scaling towers, fighting enemy soldiers, and serving her kingdom just as she’s always dreamed she would. But the mission doesn’t go as planned, and Meira soon finds herself thrust into a world of evil magic and dangerous politics - and ultimately comes to realise that her destiny is not, never has been, her own.
As a child, she committed unforgivable acts to free Grace Loray from King Elazar of Argrid. Now Elazar’s plan to retake the island has surpassed Lu’s darkest fears: he’s holding her and his son, Ben, captive in an endlessly shifting prison, forcing them to make a weapon that will guarantee Elazar’s success. Escape is impossible - unless Lu becomes the ruthless soldier she hoped never to be again.
\nVex failed to save Lu and Ben - and that torments him as much as his Shaking Sickness. With the disease worsening, Vex throws himself into the rebellion against Argrid. The remaining free armies are allied with the stream raider syndicates - and getting them to cooperate will take a strength Vex thought burned on a pyre six years ago.
\nImprisoned, betrayed, and heartbroken, Ben is determined to end his father’s rampage. Watching Elazar sway the minds of Grace Loray as he did those of Argrid, Ben knows he has to play his father’s game of devotion to win this war. But how can a heretic prince defeat the Pious God?
\nAs armies clash and magic rises, Lu, Vex, and Ben will confront their pasts . . . or lose their futures forever.
Adeluna is a soldier. Five years ago, she helped the magic-rich island of Grace Loray overthrow its oppressor, Argrid, a country ruled by religion. But adjusting to postwar life has not been easy. When an Argridian delegate vanishes during peace talks with Grace Loray’s new Council, Argrid demands brutal justice - but Lu suspects something more dangerous is at work.
Devereux is a pirate. As one of the outlaws called stream raiders who run rampant on Grace Loray, he pirates the island’s magic plants and sells them on the black market. But after Argrid accuses raiders of the diplomat’s abduction, Vex becomes a target. An expert navigator, he agrees to help Lu find the Argridian - but the truth they uncover could be deadlier than any war.
Benat is a heretic. The crown prince of Argrid, he harbors a secret obsession with Grace Loray’s forbidden magic. When Ben’s father, the king, gives him the shocking task of reversing Argrid’s fear of magic, Ben has to decide if one prince can change a devout country - or if he’s building his own pyre.
As conspiracies arise, Lu, Vex, and Ben will have to decide who they really are . . . and what they are willing to become for peace.
Samson Calthorpe’s curse has isolated him from everyone he has ever cared about. So, when the opportunity arises to break the curse, he grabs it. All he has to do for his freedom is risk his life and become a royal spy, using every bit of the skills and resolve he’s picked up on the streets of London to infiltrate the court of the Scottish Queen and uncover a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.
\nFor years, Alyth Graham has been protecting Mary Queen of Scots from threats both physical and magical, including the Queen’s own husband, Lord Darnley. Alyth is more than meets the eye though, the child of a fae prince and a human mother, she is among the most powerful protectors in Scotland: guardians sworn to defend against the Red Caps, a bloodthirsty fae clan . . . that Lord Darnley is in league with to overtake Scotland.
\nAs Alyth and Samson circle each other in the volatile and glamorous Scottish court, both seek to uncover threats to their own countries. They have one unifying link: their shared hatred and suspicion of Lord Darnley . . . and their undeniable pull towards each other. Using secret codes, hidden messages, and a little bit of magic, Alyth and Samson unravel a plot centuries in the making. Lord Darnley is only a pawn, and in this game, the queen takes all.
Fritzi is a champion. After escaping the clutches of Dieter Kirch, the sadistic leader of the witch hunters, Fritzi and Otto have taken refuge among the witches of the Black Forest. Fritzi is finally ready to assume her place on the council as the coven's goddess-chosen champion. Plagued by distrust and self-doubt, Fritzi throws herself into her duty to serve the goddesses . . . until she uncovers a powerful secret that could mean the very undoing of magic itself.
\nOtto is a warrior. He swears himself to Fritzi as her bonded protector, certain the peaceful unity of a witch and hunter will heal the wounds he helped make. But as the horrifying plot that threatens the Black Forest's magic comes to light, Otto will have to face his both his past and what it means to bind himself to a magic he does not fully understand.
\nShadows loom. Truths are revealed. And as dangers new and old arise, Fritzi and Otto must stand together against everything that threatens magic - even if the biggest threat might be the very bond they share.
Fritzi is a witch. A survivor of a brutal attack on her coven, she's determined to find her only surviving family member and bring the hexenjägers - zealot witch hunters - to justice for the lives they ended. To do this, she will need to take down their leader - Kommandant Dieter Kirch.
\n\t\t\t\t\tOtto is a hexenjäger and a captain, the second in command to Dieter Kirch - but that's just his cover. Years ago, the hexenjagers burned his innocent mother alive and since then, he has been planning a move against the witch hunters that tore his family apart. And now the time has come for them to pay for what they've done.
\n\t\t\t\t\tWhen Fritzi and Otto are unexpectedly thrown together, neither is sure they can trust the other, despite their common enemy. But all they have is one another, and they both crave revenge. As truths come to light and trust shifts, Fritzi and Otto uncover a far more horrifying plot at the center of the hexenjäger attacks . . . but their own growing feelings for each other may be the most powerful magic of all.
Two gods are dead. The Mother Goddess has returned. War is rising.
\nFleeing war-ravaged Deimos, Ash and Madoc sail across the ocean to their only possible allies: the water and plant gods. But when Anathrasa attacks on the way, Ash leaps to the defense - by using a power she didn’t know she had.
\nWhen Madoc made the fire and earth gods mortal, he inadvertently transferred their magic to Ash. Now, if Ash can get energeias from the other four gods, she would be powerful enough to end Anathrasa once and for all.
\nBut not all the gods want the Mother Goddess defeated. To stop her, Madoc will have to become the obedient son his mother always wanted, and Ash will have to take a merciless place among the gods.
\nTo defeat an immortal, Ash and Madoc must fight like gods - even if it means sacrificing their humanity.
Ash is descended from a long line of gladiators, and she knows the brutal nature of war firsthand. But after her mother dies in an arena, she vows to avenge her by overthrowing her fire god, whose temper has stripped her country of its resources.
Madoc grew up fighting on the streets to pay his family's taxes. But he hides a dangerous secret: he doesn't have the earth god’s powers like his opponents. His elemental gift is something else - something that hasn't been seen in centuries.
When an attempted revenge plot goes dangerously wrong, Ash inadvertently throws the fire and earth gods into a conflict that can only be settled by deadly, lavish gladiator games. The fights put Madoc in Ash's path, and she realizes that his powers are the weapon her rebellion needs - but Madoc won’t jeopardise his family, regardless of how intrigued he is by the beautiful warrior.
But when the gods force Madoc’s hand, he and Ash uncover an ancient war that will threaten more than one immortal - it will unravel the world.
Jackie's father, Jim, lives at Beckomberga. She takes the bus to visit him, though sometimes he refuses to see her and so instead she gets to know his fellow inmates: Olof, a man who has been there since he was a teenager, some sixty-three years; Sabina, wildly unconventional and beloved by Jackie’s father and their doctor; and others. Beckomberga is Stockholm’s famous, infamous mental hospital.
\nAn enormous, once-elegant building, it sits beside the most beautiful park, slowly falling apart. The doctor sometimes takes the residents for a night out - champagne in the backseat of the car, parties in town; he says: One night beyond the confines of the hospital makes you human again.
\nOver the years, Jackie’s family also falls apart, as her mother, Lone, tries to escape the oppressive hold Jim’s illness has on her, as Jim himself tries to escape in any way possible. What follows is an extraordinarily beautiful, stirring portrait of a family and the ways in which our flaws, yearnings, and the unreachable parts of ourselves shape those we love.
\nJackie bears witness to it all across time, with wisdom and aching clarity - Jim’s sadness and absence, Lone’s attempts to cope and then flee, the loneliness and wonder of Beckomberga, her own capitulation and erasure in the face of what they need.
History books have told us, in the decades following World War II, that Pearl Harbor was the only major attack on the United States’ home front. But this is not the whole truth. In The Dangerous Shore, leading researcher Sara Vladic unveils a much different story, one hidden away in dusty archives and behind press embargoes: Throughout the Second World War, German U-boats presented a very real threat to America’s eastern coastline, destroying ships, landing spies, and planning assaults on cities. With the country’s attention focused on the European and Pacific fronts, the U.S. would have been left undefended, if not for a ragtag bunch of characters who rose to the occasion.
\nComprised of misfits, rejects, and outlaws, this motley crew came from unexpected places. Among their ranks was the stalwart Gill Robb Wilson, leader of a barnstorming corp of volunteer civilian pilots; the brilliant Dayton engineer, Joe Desch; and the nearsighted yet \"clairvoyant\" Kenneth Knowles, commander of the Phantom Fleet, entrusted with ULTRA intelligence.
\nMeanwhile, the cooperation of Grace Buchanan-Dineen, a self-styled countess and German spy turned double agent, helped the FBI net even more spies. Notorious but all-American mobsters Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Socks Lanza struck deals with Naval Intelligence and kept watch over critical ports. Together their efforts turned the tide of war at home and saved thousands of American lives.
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Zoe’s always had a plan. Ballet has been her past, present, and future for so long that she’s never even considered otherwise. It’s been the escape she’s always needed. Yet when senior year arrives, it arrives with a feeling of uncertainty she never expected - and a paralysing fear about choosing the wrong future.
\nHanna’s rarely stayed in a place longer than a year. The greatest consistency she has is her piano playing, and her dad diving back into his Jewish faith every time her mom leaves on assignment. So when her senior year begins with yet another move to a new school, she’s not planning on putting down roots - she’s learned that hard way how that ends.
\nBut when the girls’ paths collide, everything they thought they knew is turned upside down. Their relationship could change them each forever - if they have the courage to let their worlds fall apart.
\nAn honest, messy, and very real approach to first love that focuses keenly on the queer and neurodiverse experience, Don't Forget to Breathe proves the power of overcoming fear to be wildly, truly yourself.
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Margo Zimmerman is gay, but she didn’t know until now. An overachiever at heart, Margo is determined to ace her newly discovered gayness. All she needs is the right tutor.
\nAbbie Sokoloff has her own gayness down to a science. But a flunking grade in US History is threatening her acceptance to her dream school. All she needs is the right tutor.
\nMargo agrees to help Abbie get her history grade up in exchange for “Queer 101” lessons. But as they spend more and more time together, Margo realises she doesn’t want just any girl - she wants the girl.
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Zera is a Heartless - the immortal, unageing soldier of a witch. Bound to the witch Nightsinger ever since she saved her from the bandits who murdered her family, Zera longs for freedom from the woods they hide in. With her heart in a jar under Nightsinger’s control, she serves the witch unquestioningly.
\nUntil Nightsinger asks Zera for a Prince’s heart in exchange for her own, with one addendum; if she’s discovered infiltrating the court, Nightsinger will destroy her heart rather than see her tortured by the witch-hating nobles. Crown Prince Lucien d’Malvane hates the royal court as much as it loves him - every tutor too afraid to correct him and every girl jockeying for a place at his darkly handsome side.
\nNo one can challenge him - until the arrival of Lady Zera. She’s inelegant, smart-mouthed, carefree, and out for his blood. The Prince’s honor has him quickly aiming for her throat. So begins a game of cat and mouse between a girl with nothing to lose and a boy who has it all. Winner takes the loser’s heart. Literally.
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No one can save her. In order to protect Prince Lucien d’Malvane’s heart, Zera had to betray him. Now, he hates the sight of her. Trapped in Cavanos as a prisoner of the king, she awaits the inevitable moment her witch severs their magical connection and finally ends her life.
\nBut fate isn't ready to give her up just yet. With freedom coming from the most unlikely of sources, Zera is given a second chance at life as a Heartless. But it comes with a terrible price. As the king mobilizes his army to march against the witches, Zera must tame an elusive and deadly valkerax trapped in the tunnels underneath the city if she wants to regain her humanity.
\nWinning over a bloodthirsty valkerax? Hard. Winning back her friends before war breaks out? A little harder. But a Heartless winning back Prince Lucien’s heart? The hardest thing she’s ever done.
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The duke of the powerful House Hauteclare is the first to die. With my dagger in his back.
\nHe didn’t see it coming. Didn’t anticipate the bastard daughter who was supposed to die with her mother - on his order. He should have left us with the rest of the Station’s starving, commoner rubbish.
\nNow there’s nothing left. Just icy-white rage and a need to make House Hauteclare pay. Every damn one of them.
\nEven if it means riding Heavenbreaker - one of the few enormous machines left over from the War - and jousting against the fiercest nobles in the system.
\nEach win means another one of my enemies dies. And here, in the cold terror of space, the machine and I move as one, intent on destroying each adversary - even if it’s someone I care about. Even if it’s someone I’m falling for.
\nOnly I’m not alone. Not anymore. Because there’s something in the machine with me. Something horrifying. Something . . . more. And it won’t be stopped.
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There are worse things than death.
\nWith the rise of Varia d’Malvane comes the fall of the Mist Continent. Cavanos is overrun by the brutal rampage of the valkerax, led by its former crown princess. Vetris is gone. Helkyris is gone. As each mighty nation falls, the grip of the crown princess closes around the throat of the world.
\nBut Zera Y’shennria isn’t out yet.
\nAlongside Malachite, Fione, Yorl, and her love Lucien, Zera seeks aid from the High Witches and the Black Archives, with the valkerax horde hot on their heels. Seemingly unstoppable, Varia can track Zera through her dreams, ensuring there is nowhere to run. Thankfully, an ancient book holds the key to stopping the incursion forever.
\nBut at what cost comes freedom?
\nAt what cost comes love?
\nAt what cost comes the end of the world, and the beginning of a new one?
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A shadow follows Sophie. Watching. Waiting. Her instinct tells her that it's someone she knows. But who?
\nThe man she met internet dating? The nurse caring for her ill mother? Or is her mother faking her illness?
\nThe only thing she knows is that she can't trust anyone. Sophie must delve into a dark history to reveal her stalker.
\nBut there are some stories that should never be told . . .
Lucy longs to be a wife. She craves the stability her older fiancé, Henry, provides. But Henry’s angry teenage son, Jacob, is looking for any opportunity to get rid of Lucy. When he catches her in a moment of weakness, he has all the ammunition he needs.
\nClaire can’t wait to marry Adrianna, but her stalker is making life difficult. After jury duty on a gruesome murder trial, someone starts sending her horrific crime scene photos. She’s convinced the brother of the man she helped to convict is behind them. And then an unwanted guest shows up at the wedding . . .
\nMila and her fiancé Rafael are picture-perfect. Young, beautiful, and rich, their winter wedding is set to be stunning. But Mila's past is coming back to haunt her. In fact, Mila isn’t even her real name.
\nOn Christmas Day, as the three brides arrive at their venue, the perfect storm hits, cutting every guest, invited or otherwise, from the rest of the world. One of the brides stumbles alone into the snow, her hands bloody from what she just did . . .
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Housemaid wanted.
\nSkills required: Discretion, and the willingness to go the extra mile.
\nIt seems like the perfect job. Great wages, accommodation provided, and all located within the walls of Highwood Hall, a stunning stately home owned by the Howard family. Not many little girls dream of becoming a maid, but this is an opportunity for me to get back on my feet. And for me to revisit my past . . .
\nBut I soon realise I've made a mistake. The strict housekeeper, Mrs Huxley, watches my every move, emerging from the shadows when least expected. Lord Howard's son, Alex, takes an interest in me, and as a former addict, I find myself drawn to him because I know he's bad for me.
\nThere's a general atmosphere of unease at Highwood Hall, from the narrow tunnels laced throughout the sprawling house, to the abandoned north wing, rumoured to be haunted. It's easy to imagine the secrets hidden within these walls, like the secrets I hold close.
\nOn my first day, I receive a mysterious package. I open up the pretty gift box to find a miniature doll version of me trapped inside a dollhouse. In this scene I'm dead, lying in a pool of red paint at the bottom of the perfectly recreated staircase. Someone sent this threatening diorama to me, but who even knows I work at the hall? And what do they want?
\nI know only one truth: my perfect job is turning into my perfect nightmare.
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Fran finds her standing by the swings. A little girl, Esther, no older than seven years old, by herself in the dead of night, her pretty but old-fashioned yellow dress covered in grass stains and her hair dishevelled. She says she's waiting for Father, and that strikes Fran as particularly odd.
\nAfter Esther is reunited with her family, Fran can't stop thinking about this pious child whose imaginary friend is God. Fran's instincts tell her something is very wrong. Why does Esther keep running away from home, and how did she get that bruise on her leg?
\nFran's husband warns her not to get too close, but one morning, Esther and her family disappear. Where did they go? Why did they leave their furniture behind?
\nFran knows in her gut that something terrible is going to happen to that child, and she can't stand by while it happens. No matter the cost.
\nAfter all, she found her. But can she save her?
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Jack is smitten with his neighbour, Audrey, but she’s already taken… and they’ve never met. Every morning, he watches Audrey make breakfast for her husband. She dutifully waves him goodbye from the window as he leaves for work. She’s a loyal, quiet wife, and there’s nothing Jack wants more than to be in her husband’s shoes.
\nBut when Audrey’s husband leaves her for another woman, he seizes the opportunity to insert himself into her life. After all, Jack knows everything about Audrey. He knows she likes to dance in her garden. He knows she’s almost always alone. He knows her every move because he’s been watching her through his telescope for months.
\nAnd there’s a room in his house just for her. He has it all prepared. There’s just one thing missing - Audrey.
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Faye Mathis has spent her life writing bestselling novels about identical twins who solve crimes together. But after she’s diagnosed with early-onset dementia, her world begins to blur around the edges.
\nThen a shocking photograph goes viral.
\nIt shows Faye wandering half-naked through the streets in the early hours. Her daughter insists it’s her. Faye is certain it isn’t. But how do you prove your innocence when you can’t trust your own memory?
\nAs disturbing coincidences mount - a woman claims to have seen her on the moors, her doors are found unlocked, and someone seems to be watching the house - Faye begins to wonder if she’s losing her mind or if someone is deliberately driving her mad.
\nWhen she uncovers a devastating secret about her past that shatters everything she thought she knew about herself, Faye must confront the terrifying possibility that the stranger haunting her might not be a stranger at all.
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In the summer of 2006, Emma Price watched helplessly as her six-year-old son's red coat was fished out of the River Ouse. It was the tragic story of the year - a little boy, Aiden, wandered away from school during a terrible flood, fell into the river, and drowned.
Ten years later, Emma has finally rediscovered the joy in life. She's married, pregnant, and in control again . . . until Aiden returns.
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Too traumatised to speak, he raises endless questions and answers none. Only his body tells the story of his decade-long disappearance. The historic broken bones and injuries cast a mere glimpse into the horrors Aiden has experienced. Aiden never drowned. Aiden was taken.
As Emma attempts to reconnect with her now teenage son, she must unmask the monster who took him away from her. But who, in their tiny village, could be capable of such a crime?
It's Aiden who has the answers, but he cannot tell the unspeakable.
Raeve’s thirst for vengeance continues to burn, as does her love for Kaan Vaegor - a staunch beacon from a past she’s yet to face. With Rekk’s blood still fresh on her hands, she learns the world will face its most devastating moonfall yet, forcing her to pick a path:
\nChase death.
\nOr life.
\nDesperate to save his kingdom from ruin, Kaan’s crown has never felt so heavy. His many larks to scattered friends and family remain unanswered, and time is running out.
\nAs allies merge and enemies surge with bloodlusting agendas of their own, secrets brew hot enough to burn, but none so mighty as the truth nesting within the icy depths of Raeve’s long forgotten past.
\nSomething . . . Other.
\nSomething with the knowledge to change it all.
\n
The Creators did not expect their beloved dragons to sail skyward upon their end. To curl into balls just beyond gravity’s grip, littering the sky with tombstones. With moons.
\nThey certainly did not expect them to fall.
\nAs a valued Elding Blade of the rebellion group Fíur du Ath, Raeve’s job is to kill. To complete orders and never get caught. When a renowned bounty hunter is employed by The Crown to capture a member of the Ath, Raeve’s world is turned upside down. Blood spills, hearts break, and Raeve finds herself at the mercy of the Guild of Nobles - a group of dual-beaded elementals who intend to turn her into a political statement. Only death will set her free.
\nCrushed beneath a mourning weight, Kaan Vaegor took the head of a king and donned his melted crown. Now on a tireless quest to assuage the never-ebbing ache in his chest, his hunt for a moonshard lures him into the belly of Gore’s notorious prison where he stumbles upon something that rips apart his perception of reality. A shackled miracle with eyes full of rage and blood on her hands.
\nThe echo of the past sings louder than the Creators themselves, and even Raeve can’t ignore the truths blaring at her from a warmer, happier time.
\nHowever.
\nThere’s more to this song than meets the eye, and some truths . . . They’re too poisonous to swallow.
\n
When thirty-nine year old Maria Forssmann wakes up in her seventeen-year-old body, she doesn’t know how she got there. All she does know is she has to get back: to her home in Bienville, Mississippi, to her job as a successful psychiatrist and, most importantly, to her husband, daughters, and unborn son.
\nBut she also knows that, in only a few weeks, a devastating tragedy will strike her husband, a tragedy that will lead to their meeting each other.
\nCan she change time and still keep what it’s given her?
\nExploring the responsibilities love lays on us, the complicated burdens of motherhood, and the rippling impact of our choices.
In a cabin in a wood,
\nA woman by the window stood.
\nGlancing out, she thought she heard
\nFootsteps, whistling, something stirred.
\nHiding here, she fears the night,
\nFor what’s done in the dark will come to light.
\nShe must run fast to escape her lie
\nOr she’ll be the next to die . . .
What happens when you discover you aren't who you thought you were? When the person you love is the person who must betray you. If fate is already determined - can you fight it? Lucas Gray is half Shadow Warrior, half human, and a member of the Brotherhood - a group of assassins tasked with killing the last purebred Hunter on Earth before she can fulfil a dangerous prophecy. The Hunter's name is Evie Tremain.
\nEvie Tremain is seventeen-years-old, a waitress and has just discovered she is the last in a long line of demon slayers - and an unwilling participant in a war between Hunters and unhumans that has raged for the last thousand years.
\n
We all know someone like Becca.
\nShe has the job everyone wants, a designer wardrobe, a hot-shot lawyer boyfriend, holidays to exotic locations. And she flaunts her perfect life all over social media.
\nIt drove her colleague Lizzie mad, but she couldn't stop looking. They were never really friends - and yet Lizzie knew everything about her.
\nOr did she?
\nWhen chance, and a terrible mistake, pulls Lizzie back into Becca's orbit years after they lost touch, she'll realise that you can't always believe what you see online . . . and that finding out the truth might be the worst thing you can do.
\nThere's no such thing as a perfect life. Only a perfect lie.
After a mugging exposes her unique ability, Lila decides to run to the only people she can trust - her brother and Alex. They live in Southern California where they work for a secret organisation called The Unit, and Lila discovers that the two of them are hunting down the men who murdered her mother five years before. And that they’ve found them.
In a world where nothing and no one is quite as they seem, Lila quickly realises that she is not alone - there are others out there just like her - people with special powers - and her mother’s killer is one of them . . .
Alex and Lila are on the run, desperately trying to stay one step ahead of the Unit, which is somehow tracking their every move. While Alex is determined to keep Lila safe and her ability secret at any cost, Lila's only thought is of finding a way back to California so she can rescue her brother and mother from the military base where they're being held.
Struggling to control both her growing power and her deepening feelings for Alex, Lila decides the time has finally come to stop running and start fighting. Together with Alex, Demos, and the others she's come to think of as family, Lila plans not only to save her brother and mum, but also to completely destroy the Unit and everything it stands for. But the plan requires Lila to return to California alone, and to make friends with the enemy - and in doing so, she risks losing everything: Alex, her family . . . even her life.
Fate brought them together. Now it’s threatening to tear them apart.
\nAs the last in a long line of demon slayers, Evie’s destiny is to end the war that has raged for centuries between humans and demons.
\nLucas, the half-human, half-Shadow Warrior who was sent to kill her, has betrayed his own Brotherhood and his family to fight alongside her.
\nWith an army of unhumans on their tail, Evie and Lucas are forced into an uneasy alliance with a group of rogue Hunters who offer protection and the promise of answers.
\nAs the past is untangled and the dark history of the Hunters revealed, Evie discovers that severing the realms is going to require a lot more than just fighting. It’s going to require a sacrifice - one that only she can make.
\nMore than realms will be severed.
Orla and Kate have been best friends forever. Together they’ve faced it all – be it Orla’s struggles as a new mother or Kate’s messy divorce. And whatever else happens in their lives, they can always look forward to their annual weekend away.
This year, they’re off to Lisbon: the perfect flat, the perfect view, the perfect itinerary. And what better way to kick things off in style than with the perfect night out?
But when Orla wakes up the next morning, Kate is gone. Brushed off by the police and with only a fuzzy memory of the night’s events, Orla is her friend’s only hope. As she frantically retraces their steps, Orla makes a series of shattering discoveries that threaten everything she holds dear. Because while Lisbon holds the secret of what happened that night, the truth may lie closer to home…
Lexi Winter is studying for her detective exams but her nemesis Vaughn is out there somewhere and her concentration is fractured. Just as she's wondering if her hypervigilance is tipping over into madness, Vaughn resurfaces and issues a challenge. Five people will be dead by the end of the month. If Lexi can identify and save the last one before the deadline, he'll turn himself in.
\nAs Lexi's colleagues scramble to untangle what it all means, Lexi is implicated deeper and deeper into the murders. On top of this, she begins to see a strange figure everywhere she goes. Branded as suffering from PTSD, Lexi's credibility is in tatters with her colleagues, but Lexi knows it isn't her mind that is the problem. A wicked game is afoot, and Lexi is just a chess piece in play - and she suspects that check mate will mean her death. There is only one thing that Lexi can do - play along, wait for the chance to strike back, and bring about the endgame . . .
\n
Ace hacker, ex-prostitute, Jack Daniels drinker and part-time vigilante Lexi Winter returns, now working with the police - mostly - with a new enemy in the target and an old foe at the back of her mind.
\nMost probationary constables would baulk at chasing a drug dealer into a train tunnel in the dead of night. Not Lexi Winter. She emerges injured but alive, to face the wrath of her boss. Lexi may now be in uniform, but she has as much trouble with authority as ever, and is quietly using her hacking skills to investigate a notorious drug-dealing Sydney crime family with links to her old prey, the paedophile Damon Vaughn.
\nMeanwhile, Detective Sergeant Finn Carson investigates a death on a Sydney building site . . . which oddly enough, leads him to the picturesque Wondabyne station on the Hawkesbury River, and Inspector Rachael Langley oversees an investigation that could tie it all together. Lexi holds the key . . . if only she'll toe the line . . .
\n
Lexi Winter is tough, street-smart and has stood on her own two feet since childhood, when she was a victim of notorious paedophile the Spider. All she cares about now is a roof over her head and her long-term relationship with Johnny Walker. She isn't particular about who she sleeps with . . . as long as they pay before leaving.
\nLexi is also an ace hacker, tracking and entrapping local paedophiles and reporting them to the cops. When she finds a particularly dangerous paedophile who the police can't touch, she decides to gather enough evidence to put him away. Instead, she's a witness to his death . . .
\nDetective Inspector Rachael Langley is the cop who cracked the Spider case, 18 years earlier - but failed to protect Lexi. Now a man claiming to be the real Spider is emulating his murderous acts, and Rachael is under pressure from government, media and her police colleagues. Did she get it wrong all those years ago, or is this killer is a copycat?
\nLexi and Rachael cross paths at last, the Spider in their sights . . . but they may be too late . . .
\n
Ace hacker, former sex worker and vigilante Lexi Winter is now a cop and not keen to revisit her criminal past. But when old friends invoke the wrath of a local motorcycle club - the same club Lexi herself used to work for - she races to help them the only way she undercover.
\nIf Lexi is to save a child's life, she is going to have to go back - back to a life she thought she had outrun. Back to the person she used to be. But her timing isn't great. Former club president Arthur Cronin has finished his long prison sentence and is out for revenge for the death of his wife and child. As he launches a series of bomb attacks on the club members who set him up and the cops who took him down, Lexi is caught in the middle.
\nTorn between old loyalties and new responsibilities, she must decide once and for all which side she's on, but even if she does decide to break free, are her old criminal friends ready to let her go?
\n
Twenty-five years ago, five heroes risked their lives to defeat the bone maker Eklor - a corrupt magician who created an inhuman army using animal bones. But victory came at a tragic price. Only four of the heroes survived.
Since then, Kreya, the group’s leader, has exiled herself to a remote tower and devoted herself to one purpose: resurrecting her dead husband. But such a task requires both a cache of human bones and a sacrifice - for each day he lives, she will live one less.
She’d rather live one year with her husband than a hundred without him, but using human bones for magic is illegal in Vos. The dead are burned - as are any bone workers who violate the law. Yet Kreya knows where she can find the bones she needs: the battlefield where her husband and countless others lost their lives.
But defying the laws of the land exposes a terrible possibility. Maybe the dead don’t rest in peace after all.
Five warriors - one broken, one gone soft, one pursuing a simple life, one stuck in the past, and one who should be dead. Their story should have been finished. But evil doesn’t stop just because someone once said, “the end.”
The natural magic of the classic The Island of the Blue Dolphins meets the danger and courage of The Hunger Games in this dazzling, intricate stand-alone fantasy novel set in award-winning author Sarah Beth Durst's beloved world of Renthia.
Life is precious and precarious on the islands of Belene.
Besieged by a capricious ocean full of malicious spirits, the people of the islands seek joy where they can. Mayara, one of the island's fearless oyster divers, has found happiness in love. But on the day of her wedding to the artist Kelo, a spirit-driven storm hits the island with deadly force.
\nTo save her loved ones, Mayara reveals a dangerous secret: she has the power to control the spirits. When the storm ends, she is taken into custody by the queen's soldiers and imprisoned with other women like her.
\nThey vary in age and social status, but to many they are heroes who will aide the country or witches that will sacrifice themselves trying. No matter who they are . . .
Terlu Perna broke the law because she was lonely. She cast a spell and created a magically sentient spider plant. As punishment, she was turned into a wooden statue and tucked away into an alcove in the North Reading Room of the Great Library of Alyssium.
\nThis should have been the end of her story . . . Yet one day, Terlu wakes in the cold of winter on a nearly-deserted island full of hundreds of magical greenhouses. She’s starving and freezing, and the only other human on the island is a grumpy gardener. To her surprise, he offers Terlu a place to sleep, clean clothes, and freshly baked honey cakes - at least until she’s ready to sail home.
\nBut Terlu can’t return home and doesn’t want to - the greenhouses are a dream come true, each more wondrous than the next. When she learns that the magic that sustains them is failing - causing the death of everything within them - Terlu knows she must help. Even if that means breaking the law again.
\nThis time, though, she isn’t alone. Assisted by the gardener and a sentient rose, Terlu must unravel the secrets of a long-dead sorcerer if she wants to save the island - and have a fresh chance at happiness and love.
When sixteen-year-old Calisa arrives at her great-aunt’s B&B in rural Vermont for the summer, she’s shocked to find a rundown inn rather than the cozy bed-and-breakfast she was expecting. Grumpy and eccentric, Auntie Zee is determined to keep anyone from messing with her beloved inn . . . even though she clearly needs the help.
\nTo convince her great-aunt to keep her around, Calisa sets to work fixing up the inn, enlisting extra help from the groundskeeper’s (handsome) son. But the longer she stays, the surer she is that there’s something strange about the B&B - and its guests. Something almost . . . otherworldly.
\nThe inn is keeping a magical secret - but to protect the place she’s come to love, Calisa must unravel the truth before it’s too late.
\n
In Sky Hawkins's family, leading your first heist is a major milestone - even more so than learning to talk, walk, or do long division. It's a chance to gain power and acceptance within your family, and within society. But stealing your first treasure can be complicated, especially when you're a wyvern - a human capable of turning into a dragon.
Embarking on a life of crime is never easy, and Sky discovers secrets about her mother, who recently went missing, the real reason her boyfriend broke up with her, and a valuable jewel that could restore her family's wealth and rank in their community.
With a handpicked crew by her side, Sky knows she has everything she needs to complete her first heist, and get her boyfriend and mother back in the process. But then she uncovers a dark truth about were-dragon society - a truth more valuable and dangerous than gold or jewels could ever be.
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Ever since twelve-year-old Julie Marchen helped defeat the fairy-tale world of the Wild, life's been about as normal as can be—for a girl whose brother is Puss-in-Boots and whose mom is Rapunzel.
After nearly taking over her hometown, the Wild is safely back where it belongs: right under Julie's bed. Then it suddenly spits out Julie's dad - Rapunzel's prince - and things take a seriously enchanted turn. He's gallant, he's handsome, and he's totally clueless about life in the 20th century! (You try teaching a five hundred year old prince how to text message.)
When Julie's daring dad dashes off to save a kidnapped Sleeping Beauty, she must embark on a magical cross-country adventure to bring him home, protect the family secret, and while she's at it, save the world! Because if she fails, everyone will spend eternity in a fairy tale.
Everything has a spirit: the willow tree with leaves that kiss the pond, the stream that feeds the river, the wind that exhales fresh snow . . .
But the spirits that reside within this land want to rid it of all humans. One woman stands between these malevolent spirits and the end of humankind: the queen. She alone has the magical power to prevent the spirits from destroying every man, woman, and child. But queens are still just human, and no matter how strong or good, the threat of danger always looms.
With the position so precarious, young women are chosen to train as heirs. Daleina, a seemingly quiet academy student, is under no illusions as to her claim to the throne, but simply wants to right the wrongs that have befallen the land. Ven, a disgraced champion, has spent his exile secretly fighting against the growing number of spirit attacks.
Joining forces, these daring partners embark on a treacherous quest to find the source of the spirits’ restlessness - a journey that will test their courage and trust, and force them to stand against both enemies and friends to save their land . . . before it’s bathed in blood.
The battle between vicious spirits and strong-willed queens that started in the award-winning The Queen of Blood and continued in the powerful The Reluctant Queen comes to a stunning conclusion in The Queen of Sorrow, the final volume of Sarah Beth Durst’s Queens of Renthia trilogy.
Queen Daleina has yearned to bring peace and prosperity to her beloved forest home—a hope that seemed doomed when neighboring forces invaded Aratay. Now, with the powerful Queen Naelin ruling by her side, Daleina believes that her dream of ushering in a new era can be realized, even in a land plagued by malevolent nature spirits who thirst for the end of human life.
And then Naelin’s children are kidnapped by spirits.
Nothing is more important to her than her family, and Naelin would rather watch the world burn than see her children harmed. Blaming the defeated Queen Merecot of Semo for the kidnapping, Naelin is ready to start a war - and has the power to do it.
But Merecot has grander plans than a bloody battle with her southern neighbors. Taking the children is merely one step in a plot to change the future of all Renthia, either by ending the threat of spirits once and for all . . . or plunging the world into chaos.
Not long ago, Daleina used her strength and skill to survive those spirits and assume the royal throne. Since then, the new queen has kept the peace and protected the humans of her land. But now for all her power, she is hiding a terrible secret: she is dying. And if she leaves the world before a new heir is ready, the spirits that inhabit her beloved realm will run wild, destroying her cities and slaughtering her people.
Naelin is one such person, and she couldn’t be further removed from the Queen - and she wouldn’t have it any other way. Her world is her two children, her husband, and the remote village tucked deep in the forest that is her home, and that’s all she needs.
But when Ven, the Queens champion, passes through the village, Naelin’s ambitious husband proudly tells him of his wife’s ability to control spirits - magic that Naelin fervently denies. She knows that if the truth of her abilities is known, it will bring only death and separation from those she loves.
But Ven has a single task: to find the best possible candidate to protect the people of Aratay. He did it once when he discovered Daleina, and he’s certain he’s done it again. Yet for all his appeals to duty, Naelin is a mother, and she knows her duty is to her children first and foremost.
Only as the Queen’s power begins to wane and the spirits become emboldened - even as ominous rumors trickle down from the north - does she realise that the best way to keep her son and daughter safe is to risk everything.
Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people. Thankfully, as a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she and her assistant, Caz - a magically sentient spider plant - have spent the last decade sequestered among the empire’s most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city’s elite.
\nWhen a revolution begins and the library goes up in flames, she and Caz flee with all the spellbooks they can carry and head to a remote island Kiela never thought she’d see again: her childhood home. Taking refuge there, Kiela discovers, much to her dismay, a nosy - and very handsome - neighbor who can’t take a hint and keeps showing up day after day to make sure she’s fed and to help fix up her new home.
\nIn need of income, Kiela identifies something that even the bakery in town doesn’t have: jam. With the help of an old recipe book her parents left her and a bit of illegal magic, her cottage garden is soon covered in ripe berries.
\nBut magic can do more than make life a little sweeter, so Kiela risks the consequences of using unsanctioned spells and opens the island’s first-ever and much needed secret spellshop.
There's only one dragon born every generation to protect their people. In reward for their protection, they are given a fated mate. But she must be found and mated before the last cherry blossom falls, or Ryu may just be the last of his kind.
A. is an amateur translator, living alone in an unforgiving, late-capitalist metropolis. Adrift and burdened by debt following a medical trauma, she makes rent caring for a young boy who is not and could never be her own. Her nights are spent on the dance floor, chasing spontaneous connection. There, she encounters N., who shares her numbed state and sometimes her bed.
\nAmong N.’s meager possessions, A. comes across a slim book about an unnamed foreign town of disappearing boys. The book, Field Notes, documents the stories of a community of mothers who assemble to mourn their missing sons together. A. is transfixed by this collective chorus of primal grief, the mothers’ preternatural strength, and their intuitive care for each other. When a near-assault stuns A. out of her inertia, she takes off for the city where Field Notes was written in search of its author and the end of his story. But A.’s digging leads her instead to the traces of a murdered poet, a mysterious woman whose legacy will intersect unexpectedly and pivotally with A.’s own life.
\nPoignant and profoundly humane, Mass Mothering is told through layered voices, written fragments, and recorded testimonies. It is a luminous story of the mutuality of grief, the aftershocks of violence in a globalised era, and the world-bending force of a mother’s love.
\n
Emma held the photo for a long moment before her eyes focused on the girl’s face. She dropped it and let out a muted cry.The girl in the photograph was Tessa.
\nTwenty-five years after losing her friend Tessa in a tragic accident, Emma’s life is happy and settled. She rarely thinks about the day that Tessa fell to her death, or the secret that she made Emma swear to keep just hours before. But when her marriage implodes, Emma and her daughter find themselves unexpectedly moving into the headmaster’s former cottage on the grounds of her old school - Denham House. And it’s here she finds the photograph: an explicit image of Tessa, looking directly at the camera.
\nBetween catching up with old friends Marlee and Clementine, who are home for a reunion, and the demands of single parenthood, Emma has plenty to distract her . . . but she can’t shake the image of the photograph. Or the thought that it’s proof of something she had long suspected: Dr Brownley, now headmaster, was involved with Tessa. Was it a mistake to keep quiet about what she knew?
\nMarlee and Clementine have their own complex feelings about returning to their hometown. And when Emma starts to question what really happened to Tessa, each woman must deal with the consequences of decisions they made all those years ago. Because the more Emma digs into the past, the more she discovers that everyone remembers it differently, and that the innocent schoolgirls she thought she knew are hiding some very big secrets.
Alfie's mum, Emilia, has been lying to him forever.
\nIt's only ever been the two of them in Ireland, but when Emilia's appendix explodes, she drops a bombshell: she has a family back in Australia and she and Alfie are going to meet them.
\nWhen Penny Bains opens the door of her Tasmanian farmhouse to a boy with an Irish accent claiming to be the son of her missing daughter, Emilia, her life is turned upside down.
\nAlfie needs to know who his father is, but the residents of the tiny town of Beggars Rock and his newly found cousin and great-aunts are all staying silent. As Alfie starts to uncover secrets that his family would prefer to keep buried, the one thing he discovers is that no one is willing to tell him the truth.
Desperate to escape a relationship gone bad, Annie Heston flees north to accept a job as a game warden in Lake Lumin, a picturesque town in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.
\nA cougar has been spotted in the area, and as Annie warns the community of the threat, she quickly discovers that not everyone in the tight-knit town is welcoming of outsiders, except for Daniel Barela, a reclusive carpenter who lives in the shadow of the mountain. They form an instant bond, though Annie soon comes to realise there is more to his past than meets the eye.
\nWhen the body of a young woman is found in the briars that border Daniel’s property, the peace Annie has found in Lake Lumin shatters. As she assists the local sheriff with the investigation, Annie must rely on her wilderness training and intuition to find a murderer hiding in plain sight.
When April and Leo’s house burns in the middle of the night, they escape with their two young children and the quiet knowledge that the fire is not the only thing threatening their family. They retreat to April’s childhood home in Dallas, where her spirited parents and siblings provide both comfort and complication.
\nAs the family reckons with the aftermath - grief, guilt, logistics, and memories scorched and intact - the fire exposes the cracks already forming in April and Leo’s marriage. The novel unfolds in alternating perspectives: from April, who feels the crushing weight of motherhood, marriage, and self-blame; from Leo, a high school history teacher shaped by a lonely, fractured childhood; from Deb, April’s generous and no-nonsense mother who has to contend with her husband’s recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis; and from flashbacks that trace April and Leo’s relationship from its earliest days of connection to the devastating decisions that led them here.
\nA family saga suffused with humor, longing, and heartbreak, The Burning Side is about what we inherit and what we choose, about forgiveness and the ache of being known. It is, above all, about the meaning of home and the costs of long love.
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Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching their marriage rise and fall.
\nWhen a shocking blow scatters their fragile trio, Georgette tries to distance herself from reminders of her parents. Years later, Lillian’s son comes searching for his birth family, so Georgette must return to her roots, unearth her family’s history, and decide whether she can open up to love for them - or herself - while there’s still time.
\nTold from three intimate points of view, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love.
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It is six months since the Arcadia set sail for the first time in forty years. But this wasn't the freedom the inhabitants were hoping for. Esther Crossland did what she had to do, but it has left a trail of destruction in her wake. Now the wrecked ship is abandoned. Its inhabitants are in exile, trapped in sprawling make-shift shelters made up of warehouse, tents, shipping containers.
\nEsther and Nik, architects of the rebellion, are on the run. Esther is in hiding, desperate to do something to help her people, and Nik seems to have abandoned all hope, on a journey taking him further and further from home. And neither of them want to face up to their true feelings about one another . . .
\nNot only that, there is a new villain in town. With the fall of Commander Hadley, it's left to the ruthless Admiral Janek to deal with the traitors, and her own past is beginning to catch-up with her.
\nThen the shaky ceasefire negotiated by General Lall, Nik's mum, falls apart. Nik and Esther find themselves in a world of betrayals and double crossings - a game of power, with no one to trust but themselves.
\nIt's time for the final showdown.
\n
Welcome to the Arcadia.
\nOnce a luxurious cruise ship, it became a refugee camp after being driven from Europe by an apocalyptic war. Now it floats near the coastline of the Federated States - a leftover piece of a fractured USA.
\nFor forty years, residents of the Arcadia have been prohibited from making landfall. It is a world of extreme haves and have nots, gangs and make-shift shelters.
\nEsther is a loyal citizen, working flat-out to have the rare chance to live a normal life as a medic on dry land. Nik is a rebel, planning something big to liberate the Arcadia once and for all.
\nWhen events throw them both together, their lives, and the lives of everyone on the ship, will change forever . . .
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The poignant, utterly original story of two women separated across time but united by the arrival of Halley's comet, as blazing and as daring as their stories.
\n1986. The Earthshine Soap Company has given Nona Dixon everything, from making her the brand’s first Earthshine Girl to launching her acting career. It also threatens to be the very thing that causes her to unravel when a group of Jane Does file a class action lawsuit accusing the company of putting harmful ingredients into their products. When Nona begins investigating Bertie Tuttle, the company’s third- generation owner, she uncovers a complicated history involving her benefactor and a mysterious woman named Opal Doucet.
\n1910. Seventy-six years earlier, Opal Doucet, a rural doctor’s wife, is pregnant, on the run, and desperate to get to Paris and to the charismatic spiritualist who supposedly communed with her first love. To save money, Opal goes to work in the Earthshine Soap factory as an Earthshine Girl where she uses her knowledge of medicine, and the spiritualist’s teachings, to prescribe cures to the women who’ve come down with mystery ailments. As she and Bertie Tuttle secretly partner in a labor strike intended to improve the working conditions at the factory, Opal must decide the cost of her own freedom.
\nGorgeously written and intricately constructed, Everything Lost Returns is a story of desire and friendship, guilt and redemption, and the power we have, in our own small way, to change the course of history.
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Twenty-five years ago, a young girl left home to walk to school. Her younger sister soon followed. But one of them arrived, and one of them didn’t. Her sister’s disappearance has defined Willa’s life.
\nEveryone thinks her sister is dead, but Willa knows she isn’t. Because there are some things only sisters know about each other - and some bonds only sisters can break.
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Twenty-five-year-old Emma Wilson, tall, blond, and rich, has an enviable life, but her father’s dementia makes it difficult to leave him and their home on Highbury Lane. With her future on hold, Emma turns to her neighbor and confidante, thirty-eight-year-old Dr. Georgia Kostigiris, for advice and comfort and to keep their little world tightly ordered.
\nAll that changes when Georgia's seventeen-year-old niece Cora comes to stay for the summer, invading Highbury Lane with her teen angst, big mouth, and knack for seeing things that Emma wished she wouldn’t. Like the way Emma and Georgia lean on each other. And the way Emma’s eyes track the sway of Georgia’s curving hips. Cora makes it impossible for Emma to ignore her feelings for Georgia, but it’s too complicated, and besides, she’s certain Georgia doesn’t feel the same. That’s how she ends up on a date with easy-breezy Bridget, mired in mixed signals.
\nEmma and Georgia are perfect for each other, but can they build a future when Emma is avoiding the life and love she truly desires?
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Annika Silberberg hates weddings, despite being a wedding dress designer with her own bridal salon. She doesn’t believe in lasting romantic love, cutting off dates when any of her girlfriends try to get too close. But when her sister Maia asks her to be co-maid of honor with Maia’s adorable best friend Gabi, Annika can’t refuse.
\nGabi Mendon doesn’t know how to date. After ending her eight-year relationship with Matt, her no-stress college boyfriend, she is out on her own for the first time in her adult life and finally ready to embrace her true sexuality as a lesbian. Only, she has no idea where to start. What’s an overthinker to do?
\nEnter Annika, renowned serial dater. What starts as a simple arrangement - Annika giving Gabi tips on queer dating and introducing her to the sapphic scene - quickly turns into hot secret hookups and nights spent getting to know each other better.
\nOver the course of Maia’s wedding year, from engagement party to dress fittings, to bachelorette and bridal shower, Annika and Gabi must decide if what they have is worth keeping, or if they need to rip out the stitches of their relationship at the seams.
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Modern dating is dead.
\nFinding a human connection online has become impossible. Enter Liv: a dating app that matches people with dead bodies. Somehow, it has taken the world by storm. Millions of users are convinced that life with a corpse presents a better alternative to conventional relationships.
\nFlailing against Liv’s popularity, venture capital superstar Tom Williamson - whose company is funding Liv - isn’t buying it. Mostly because dating an embalmed cadaver, let alone monetising it, is obscene.
\nBelieving that Liv is the future, Auden White, the insufferable “visionary” behind the app begins demanding more and more funding, quickly making enemies with Tom.
\nIt’s no secret that Tom struggles with people, dead or alive, but when he has a chance meeting with the woman who knows Auden (and his secrets) best, Mara Reed, he realises everything is about to change for all three of them.
\nWith Liv’s userbase growing by the day, the need for cadavers rapidly increases. Humanity might not want to connect with other living, breathing people anymore, but they do want to connect with something. What could go wrong?
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A dark and suspenseful novel of lies, betrayal, and identity - perfect for fans of Big Little Lies and Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror.
It was meant to be an evening to honour and celebrate Evelyn Caldwell's award-winning, career-making scientific research - but Evelyn has things on her mind.
Things like Nathan, her husband, who has left her for a younger, better, newer woman. A woman who is now pregnant - but shouldn't be - and is strikingly familiar. Too familiar to be a coincidence.
A woman who shouldn't exist.
“Come home.” Vera’s mother called and Vera obeyed. In spite of their long estrangement, in spite of the memories - she's come back to the home of a serial killer. Back to face the love she had for her father and the bodies he buried there.
\nComing home is hard enough for Vera, and to make things worse, she and her mother aren’t alone. A parasitic artist has moved into the guest house out back, and is slowly stripping Vera’s childhood for spare parts. He insists that he isn’t the one leaving notes around the house in her father’s handwriting . . . but who else could it possibly be?
\nThere are secrets yet undiscovered in the foundations of the notorious Crowder House. Vera must face them, and find out for herself just how deep the rot goes.
Ivy Gamble has never wanted to be magic. She is perfectly happy with her life - she has an almost-sustainable career as a private investigator, and an empty apartment, and a slight drinking problem. It's a great life and she doesn't wish she was like her estranged sister, the magically gifted professor Tabitha.
But when Ivy is hired to investigate the gruesome murder of a faculty member at Tabitha’s private academy, the stalwart detective starts to lose herself in the case, the life she could have had, and the answer to the mystery that seems just out of her reach.
Celia is so tired of being alone. All she wants is to have a family - to belong to someone. That's why she's going to Kindred Cove for the annual Salt Festival held by the secluded community that lives there. They promise that healing is possible. They promise that transformation is inevitable. There is no grief at Kindred Cove, because there is no suffering. Nothing is ever lost.
\nCelia knows that, at that mysterious island surrounded by that impossible, ever-growing reef - she will find herself.
\nShe’s ready to be healed. She’s ready to be transformed.
\nShe's ready to believe.
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Spread Me is a darkly seductive tale of survival from Sarah Gailey, after a routine probe at a research station turns deadly when the team discovers a strange specimen in search of a warm place to stay.
\nKinsey has the perfect job as the team lead in a remote research outpost. She loves the solitude, and the way the desert keeps her far away from the temptations teeming out in the civilian world.
\nWhen her crew discovers a mysterious specimen buried deep in the sand, Kinsey breaks quarantine and brings it into the hab. But the longer it's inside, the more her carefully controlled life begins to unravel. Temptation has found her after all, and it can't be ignored any longer.
\nOne by one, Kinsey's team realises the thing they're studying is in search of a new host - and one of them is the perfect candidate . . .
“That girl’s got more wrong notions than a barn owl’s got mean looks.”
Esther is a stowaway. She’s hidden herself away in the Librarian’s book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her - a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda.
The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.
Florence Grimes, age thirty-one, always takes the easy way out. Single, broke and unfulfilled after the humiliating end to her girl-band career, she has only one reason to get out of bed each day: her ten-year-old son Dylan. But then Alfie Risby, her son’s bully and the heir to a vast frozen-food empire, mysteriously vanishes during a class trip, and Dylan becomes the prime suspect.
\nFlorence, for once, is faced with a task she can’t quit: She’s got to find Alfie and clear her son’s name or risk losing Dylan forever - never mind that she has no useful skills (let alone investigative ones) and that all the other school moms hate her. Oh, and she has a reason to suspect Dylan might not be as innocent as she’d like to believe.
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Blackthorn Ashes was meant to be their forever home. For the first six families moving into the exclusive new housing development, it was a chance to live a peaceful life on the cliffs overlooking the Cornish sea, safe in the knowledge that it had been created just for them.
\nBut six weeks later, paradise is lost. Six people are dead. And Blackthorn Ashes is left abandoned and unfinished, its dark shadows hiding all manner of secrets.
\nOne of its surviving residents, Agnes Gale, is determined to find out the truth about what happened. Even if that truth is deadlier than she could have ever believed possible . . .
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On the surface, Lara Chorley and Ruth Hull have nothing in common, other than their infatuation with Michael Vokey. Each is writing to a sadistic inmate, sharing her secrets, whispering her worst fears, craving his attention.
\nDI Marnie Rome understands obsession. She's finding it hard to give up her own addiction to a dangerous her foster brother, Stephen Keele. She wasn't able to save her parents from Stephen. She lives with that guilt every day.
\nAs the hunt for Vokey gathers pace, Marnie fears one of the women may have found him - and is about to pay the ultimate price.
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Nell Ballard is a runaway. A former foster child with a dark secret she is desperate to keep, all Nell wants is to find a place she can belong.
\nSo when a job comes up at Starling Villas, home to the enigmatic Robin Wilder, she seizes the opportunity with both hands.
\nOnly her new lodgings may not be the safe haven that she was hoping for. Her employer lives by a set of rigid rules and she soon sees that he is hiding secrets of his own.
\nBut is Nell’s arrival at the Villas really the coincidence it seems? After all, she knows more than most how fragile people can be - and how easy they can be to break . . .
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Noah Jake has seen dead bodies before but when a young woman falls to her death from a London tower block, landing in the bonnet of his car, everything changes for him. Has he witnessed an accident, suicide, or something worse? Whichever, it affects him deeply.
\nLondon's young people are being trafficked into gangs, exploited, and killed. Thirteen-year-old Raffa Jordan was shot in the street, an innocent bystander in a gang war, or so it seems. It looks as if Samantha Haile is just the latest victim in the wave of violence sweeping the city. Only Noah feels the need to treat her differently, to chase down the truth of what happened that day.
\nMarnie Rome wants to help, but even she cannot grasp why Noah is risking so much for the sake of this stranger he never knew. As Marnie finally finds peace with her own past, she is faced with the far harder task of bringing Noah back from the brink of self-destruction.
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Two young boys.
Trapped underground in a bunker.
Unable to understand why they are there.
Desperate for someone to find them.
Slowly realising that no-one will . . .
Five years later, the boys' bodies are found and the most difficult case of DI Marnie Rome's career begins.
Her only focus is the boys. She has to find out who they are and what happened to them.
For Marnie, there is no other darkness than this . . .
It's winter, the nights are dark and freezing, and a series of seemingly random assaults is pulling DI Marnie Rome and DS Noah Jake out onto streets of London.
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When Marnie's family home is ransacked, there are signs that the burglary can have only been committed by someone who knows her. Then a child goes missing, yet no-one has reported it. Suddenly, events seem connected, and it's personal.
Someone out there is playing games. It is time for both Marnie and Noah to face the truth about the creeping, chilling reaches of a troubled upbringing. Keeping quiet can be a means of survival, but the effects can be as terrible as killing.
Trapped and alone in a remote house in the country, one woman must find a way to defeat a captor who has no intention of letting her go. The last thing she remembers is standing outside the empty house. One she was employed to pack, ready for removal. Her job is her life. It is her compulsion to take care of an owner’s precious possessions, to do whatever it takes to help them move on. Now she is cold, dirty, damp, trapped in its cellar with no chance of escape, miles from anywhere.
\nHis prisoner. And then he returns. Her captor believes she holds the answers to why a young girl was murdered a year ago. He refuses to let her go until she reveals her secrets. But he doesn’t know she has hidden depths, and an anger she works hard to control. The battle lines are drawn. They are the only two people who can solve the mystery of the dead girl, but when the truth is revealed whose life will shatter?
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Called to a woman's refuge to take a routine witness statement, DI Marnie Rome instead walks in on an attempted murder.
Trying to uncover the truth from layers of secrets, Marnie finds herself confronting her own demons.
Because she, of all people, knows that it can be those closest to us we should fear the most . . .
The young girl who causes the fatal car crash disappears from the scene.
A runaway who doesn't want to be found, she only wants to go home.
To the one man who understands her.
Gives her shelter.
Just as he gives shelter to the other lost girls who live in his house.
He's the head of her new family.
He's Harm.
And when Harm's family is threatened, Marnie Rome is about to find out that everything tastes like fear . . .
While enjoying a romantic candlelit dinner with her fiance, Ryan, at one of Seattle's chicest restaurants, Kailey Crane can't believe her good fortune: She has a great job as a writer for the Herald and is now engaged to a guy who is perfect in nearly every way. As they leave the restaurant, Kailey spies a thin, bearded homeless man on the sidewalk. She approaches him to offer up her bag of leftovers, and is stunned when their eyes meet, then stricken to her very core: The man is the love of her life, Cade McAllister.
When Kailey met Cade ten years ago, their attraction was immediate and intense everything connected and felt \"right.\" But it all ended suddenly, leaving Kailey devastated. Now the poor soul on the street is a faded version of her former beloved: His weathered and weary face is as handsome as Kailey remembers, but his mind has suffered in the intervening years. Over the next few weeks, Kailey helps Cade begin to piece his life together, something she initially keeps from Ryan. As she revisits her long-ago relationship, Kailey realizes that she must decide exactly what and whom she wants.
Alternating between the past and the present, Always is a beautifully unfolding exploration of a woman faced with an impossible choice, a woman who discovers what she's willing to save and what she will sacrifice for true love.
Seattle, 1933. Single mother Vera Ray kisses her three-year-old son, Daniel, goodnight and departs to work the night-shift at a local hotel. She emerges to discover that a May-Day snow has blanketed the city, and that her son has vanished. Outside, she finds his beloved teddy bear lying face-down on an icy street, the snow covering up any trace of his tracks, or the perpetrator's.
\nSeattle, 2010. Seattle Herald reporter Claire Aldridge, assigned to cover the May 1 \"blackberry winter\" storm and its twin, learns of the unsolved abduction and vows to unearth the truth. In the process, she finds that she and Vera may be linked in unexpected ways . . .
\nLena Westbrook, a perfectionist and workaholic, has carefully planned and orchestrated every detail of her life. So when her boyfriend of two years breaks up with her on the night she expects him to propose, she’s heartbroken and confused. Lena flees to her beloved aunt’s home on Seattle’s picturesque Bainbridge Island to lick her wounds and recalibrate. That night, she falls asleep in the guest house. But when she awakens the next morning, she’s no longer in a cottage nestled on the Puget Sound, but rather in a chic Parisian apartment - wearing an expensive silk nightgown in bed with a handsome French man who seems to think that Lena is his wife.
\nFrom the elegant neighborhoods of Paris to the charming landscape of Kinsale, Ireland, to the sparkling skyline of New York City, and many other unexpected destinations in between, each time Lena awakens, she finds herself somewhere else with someone else. In each experience, she’s given a glimpse of what life might have looked like had she chosen the “road not taken.” And as she becomes more clear-sighted about her past decisions, Lena begins to wonder, were any of these former romantic encounters actually . . . significant?
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Sarah Kendzior navigates a changing America as she and her family embark on a series of road trips, in a book that is part memoir, part history, and wholly unique.
\nIt is one thing to study the fall of democracy, another to have it hit your homeland - and yet another to raise children as it happens. The Last American Road Trip is one family’s journey to the most beautiful, fascinating, and bizarre places in the US during one of its most tumultuous eras. As Kendzior works as a journalist chronicling political turmoil, she becomes determined that her young children see America before it’s too late. So Kendzior, her husband, and the kids hit the road - again and again.
\nStarting from Missouri, the family drives across America in every direction as cataclysmic events - the rise of autocracy, political and technological chaos, and the pandemic - reshape American life. They explore Route 66, national parks, historical sites, and Americana icons as Kendzior contemplates love for country in a broken heartland. Together, the family watches the landscape of the United States - physical, environmental, social, political - transform through the car window.
\nPart memoir, part political history, The Last American Road Trip is one mother’s promise to her children that their country will be there for them in the future - even though at times she struggles to believe it herself.
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Clara Bishop hasn’t touched a piano since a concert hall fire nearly took her life a decade ago, ending her career as a rising star in the world of classical music. Significantly scarred and unable to play, she has turned away from everything and everyone associated with music, especially her ruthless mentor Madame, whom Clara blames for her injuries.
\nHer life is upended when Madame dies, leaving Clara an unexpected inheritance: an ornate nineteenth-century metronome with a cryptic message hidden inside. Convinced this is not a gift but a puzzle Madame wants her to solve, Clara comes to suspect that the unusual bequest is the long-lost metronome of the composer Aleksander Starza - a priceless object missing since 1885, when Starza was murdered by the brilliant female pianist Constantia Pleyel.
\nAs Clara works to uncover the metronome’s haunted past and protect it - and herself - from those who wish to obtain it, she discovers that nothing about Starza and his murder are what they seem. History has remembered Constantia Pleyel as an unstable artist who killed Starza in a fit of madness. The truth could rewrite the history of music - and give Clara the second chance she has been longing for.
Merry lives a simple life. For work, she writes cryptic crossword puzzles. For pleasure, she swims in the icy cold sea. And in between she keeps a careful eye on her neighbour, Lucas Manning, the son of her late best friend Julia.
\nOne day Lucas's wife reports him missing. Merry has known Lucas his whole life; he would never walk out like this. Bad things have always hovered around the Manning family. Lucas's abusive criminal father disappeared decades ago, and his brother Sean is in jail. But Lucas is different. A good man. He was the one who turned Sean in to the police, after all. Although Sean has spent every day since professing his innocence.
\nAs she begins to dig into Lucas's life, Merry forms an uneasy alliance with a private investigator doing the same. Gareth was hired by Lucas's employers, who are also desperate to locate him - and the sensitive work project he has absconded with. Merry might be a cryptic crossword mastermind, but reading people is hard.
\nWas she wrong about Lucas? Did the wrong brother go down all those years ago? This is no straightforward disappearing something much more sinister is at play. But as she get closer to the truth, Merry must confront her own dark past with the Manning family, which she has fought so long to keep buried. Who can she trust with her secrets?
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In Rufous and Calliope, Sarah Louise Butler takes readers deep into the rugged British Columbia Interior, where the mysteries of nature collide with the fragile threads of memory. Rufous Flanagan, a modern-day cartographer, embarks on a solo trek through an ancient mountain pass in search of the treehouse hideaway where he spent one memorable childhood summer on the run with his three older half-siblings and his twin sister, Calliope.
\nWith every step, the vast, untamed wilderness presents both a physical and emotional challenge, as Rufous must confront not only treacherous terrain, but the unravelling of his own mind. His memories - sometimes vivid, sometimes slipping away - become a map guiding him through towering forests, dry creek beds and smoke-filled skies.
\nYet, in this wilderness, not everything is as it seems. Echoes of the past lead Rufous on a journey that blurs the line between dream and reality. As the elements close in, this novel offers an unforgettable tale of survival, memory and the bond between siblings.
When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including - a few years later - all the attendant joy and labor of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.
\nAs Jane’s career flourishes, their marriage starts to falter. Throughout the upheavals of family life, Jane tries to hold it all together. That is, until John leaves her.
\nLiars is a tour de force of wit and rage, telling the blistering story of a marriage as it burns to the ground, and of a woman rising inexorably from its ashes.
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For Ruthie, the frozen town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is all she has ever known.
\nOnce home to the country's oldest and most illustrious families--the Cabots, the Lowells: the “first, best people” - by the tail end of the twentieth century, it is an unforgiving place awash with secrets.
\nForged in this frigid landscape Ruthie has been dogged by feelings of inadequacy her whole life. Hers is no picturesque New England childhood but one of swap meets and factory seconds and powdered milk. Shame blankets her like the thick snow that regularly buries nearly everything in Waitsfield.
\nAs she grows older, Ruthie slowly learns how the town's prim facade conceals a deeper, darker history, and how silence often masks a legacy of harm - from the violence that runs down the family line to the horrors endured by her high school friends, each suffering a fate worse than the last. For Ruthie, Waitsfield is a place to be survived, and a girl like her would be lucky to get out alive.
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Evie is the acting general manager of The Alexandra hotel in picturesque Cornwall, but she feels trapped in a life defined by others’ expectations. Just as she contemplates a fresh start, Abby arrives, sent undercover by the hotel’s owner to assess the staff and operations. But Abby is navigating her own struggles and longs to break free from the shadow of her mother.
\nAs the two women forge an unexpected friendship, they confront their fears and the threat of change looming over them. With the help of a charming chef and a gruff pub owner, they begin to embrace their true selves and the bonds that unite them. Will they find the strength to reshape their futures, or will the weight of the past hold them back?
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Running a five-star Cornish hotel should have been Evie Hamilton’s dream job. But restoring it to its former glory is going to take a miracle. All Evie has is grit, and a hoard of unruly staff who love to speculate about her love life. She needs back-up, and fast.
\nEnter Abby Jones. Parachuted in by the hotel’s umbrella company for the summer, Abby thinks Evie could be the best friend she never had. But Abby has her own agenda for being in Cornwall. If her real motives are uncovered, their friendship is going to melt away faster than an ice cream in the summer sun.
\nYet Abby’s arrival starts a chain reaction. With the help of a charming chef and a gruff pub owner, they begin to embrace their true selves and the bonds that unite them. But it’s not just the hotel’s five-star reputation that needs rebuilding - Evie and Abby will also have to brave tearing down their lives in order to reshape their futures . . .
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In the north of England, far from the intrusions of cities but not far from civilisation, Silvie and her family are living as if they are ancient Britons, surviving by the tools and knowledge of the Iron Age.
For two weeks, the length of her father's vacation, they join an anthropology course set to reenact life in simpler times. They are surrounded by forests of birch and rowan; they make stew from foraged roots and hunted rabbit. The students are fulfilling their coursework; Silvie's father is fulfilling his lifelong obsession. He has raised her on stories of early man, taken her to witness rare artifacts, recounted time and again their rituals and beliefs - particularly their sacrifices to the bog. Mixing with the students, Silvie begins to see, hear, and imagine another kind of life, one that might include going to university, traveling beyond England, choosing her own clothes and food, speaking her mind.
The ancient Britons built ghost walls to ward off enemy invaders, rude barricades of stakes topped with ancestral skulls. When the group builds one of their own, they find a spiritual connection to the past. What comes next but human sacrifice?
A story at once mythic and strikingly timely, Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall urges us to wonder how far we have come from the \"primitive minds\" of our ancestors.
An unflinching memoir about childhood, food, books, and our ability to see, become, and protect ourselves.
\nMy Good Bright Wolf is a memoir about thinking and reading, eating and not eating, privilege and scarcity, the relationships that form us and the long tentacles of childhood.
\nPushing at the boundaries of memoir writing, Sarah Moss investigates contested memories of a girlhood with embattled, distracted parents, loving grandparents, and teachers who said she would never learn to read. Then, by the time she was a teenager, Moss developed a dangerous and controlling relationship with food, an illness that continued to affect her as an adult, despite her professional and personal success.
\nIn My Good Bright Wolf, this bright light of contemporary literature explores the trap of postwar puritanism and second-wave feminism, the narratives of women and food that we absorb through our childhoods and adulthoods, and the ways in which our health-care system continues to discount the experiences of women, minorities, and anyone suffering from mental illness. With her characteristic commitment to finding the truths in stories, Moss examines what she thought and still thinks, what she read and still reads, and what she did - and still does - with her hardworking body and her furiously turning mind.
It is the 60s and, just out of school, Edith finds herself travelling to rural Italy. She has been sent by her mother with strict instructions: to see her sister, ballet dancer Lydia, through the final weeks of her pregnancy, help at the birth and then make a phone call which will seal this baby’s fate, and his mother’s.
\nDecades later, happily divorced and newly energised, Edith is living a life of contentment and comfort in Ireland. When her best friend Maebh receives a call from an American man claiming to be her brother, Maebh must decide if she will meet him, and she asks Edith for help.
\nRipeness by Sarah Moss is an extraordinary novel about familial love and the communities we create, about migration and new beginnings, and about what it is to have somewhere to belong.
Khamilla Zahr-zad’s life has been built on a foundation of violence and vengeance. Every home she’s known has been destroyed by war. As the daughter of an emperor’s clan, she spent her childhood training to maintain his throne. But when her clansmen are assassinated by another rival empire, plans change. With her heavenly magic of nur, Khamilla is a weapon even enemies would wield - especially those in the magical, scholarly city of Za’skar. Hiding her identity, Khamilla joins the enemy’s army school full of jinn, magic and martial arts, risking it all to topple her adversaries, avenge her clan and reclaim their throne.
\nTo survive, she studies under cutthroat mystic monks and battles in a series of contests to outmaneuver her fellow soldiers. She must win at all costs, even if it means embracing the darkness lurking inside her. But the more she excels, the more she is faced with history that contradicts her father’s teachings. With a war brewing among the kingdoms and a new twisted magic overtaking the land, Khamilla is torn between two impossible vengeance or salvation.
Get the Crow.
A man dies in a locked room, leaving a message written in blood and a lot of unanswered questions.
Lydia is still recovering from the fallout with her psychopathic cousin, but there are new threats to the Crows, and she must fight to maintain her position as leader of the Family.
Meanwhile, an actor has gone missing and Fleet is under pressure to find him fast. But there seems to be more to his tension than he is letting on . . .
Can Lydia solve the mysterious murder before she gets arrested for it?
Lydia has taken over as the leader of the Crow Family and is trying to keep the criminality to the bare minimum. DCI Fleet has told her he is ‘all in’ but there have to be limits and Lydia doesn’t want to find out what they are.
\nWhen the head of the Silver Family, Alejandro, drops down dead, Lydia needs to work out whether it was natural causes or murder. And fast.
\nLydia has made enemies of the Pearl King, Maria Silver, and her own uncle. Plus, her position at the top puts her in the sights of many more. Lydia has evaded death in the past, and is gaining greater mastery over her power every day, but now she isn’t just worried about saving herself . . .
\nCan Lydia find out what happened to Alejandro Silver before she runs out of luck?
Lydia Crow has long suspected there is more beneath London than just trains, but has never been keen to poke around in the dark. But when Paul Fox, powerful member of the Fox Family, blackmails her into taking a case, she has no choice.
\nInvestigating a suspicious death in a disused tunnel of the London Underground for her ex-boyfriend causes friction between her and DCI Fleet - and not the fun kind.
\nUncle Charlie is still pressuring her to work for the Family business, her ghostly flatmate is looking for answers about his own demise, and Maria Silver is out for blood. Preferably Lydia’s.
\nWith old alliances broken, it’s harder for Lydia to know who to trust. There is a big choice up ahead and it’s getting closer by the second. Lydia has to find a path in the darkness - and fast.
Lydia Crow is back.
After the turbulent events of The Magpie Key, Lydia is trying to adjust to life without her home. She is living in Uncle Charlie's house and learning what 'head of the Crow Family' truly means.
The four magical Families of London are playing nicely . . . for now, but a new threat has risen.
Lydia and DCI Fleet race against time to find a modern-day Jack the Ripper stalking the streets of Whitechapel. But all is not as it seems . . .
Black water, dark skies, a reckoning like no other
\nA new threat has sailed in on the tide and is haunting the waterways of London.
\nDCI Fleet is struggling to control his gift and can no longer tell reality from illusion.
\nMeanwhile, Uncle Charlie is making trouble from his prison cell, proving how hard it is to keep a Crow caged.
\nWorst of all, the truce between London’s four magical Families lies in ruins. If Lydia can’t rebuild it, and fast, all will be lost.
\nLondon is Lydia Crow’s roost . . . But for how long?
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Lydia is pulled into the Crow Family business by her shady Uncle Charlie. He has decided that Lydia needs to learn the truth about her infamous Family and to step into her role within it - whether she likes it or not.
\nAfter Lydia’s wrongful arrest, her relationship with DCI Fleet is decidedly rocky, but when a teenage girl goes missing from Highgate Woods she must put aside her emotions and work the case.
\nLydia is increasingly alarmed by Charlie’s methods, but is trapped by loyalty. Then a direct attack on the Crows raises the tension between the Families to boiling point, and the mysterious Pearl Family step out of the shadows.
\nCan Lydia restore balance to the magical Families of London without losing her soul?
After the explosive events of The Copper Heart, Lydia must deal with a secret service operative with murder in his heart.
\nThe mysterious Mr Smith has sent a professional assassin after Lydia and the bonds of blood are stretched to breaking point when it turns out to be someone very close to home.
\nMeanwhile, the head of the powerful Silver Family is demanding a favour and Lydia must comply or risk their fledgling alliance.
\nTo be strong enough to beat the odds stacked against her Lydia must delve deep into Crow Family lore, but what she discovers is far from a fairy tale . . .
\nIn a fight between two Crows, only one can win, but is Lydia willing to do what it takes to defeat her adversary?
London is Lydia Crow's city so when a man is found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge, she takes it personally.
\nDriven by her desire to improve her fledgling P.I. skills and an innate sense of justice, Lydia investigates. Even when it seems as if the Silver Family might be involved, Lydia refuses to back down.
\nThe Silver Family, who run the finest law firm in London, have a gift for persuasion. In the Bad Old Days it was said they could make a man jump off a roof by convincing him he could fly. But that's all in the past . . . Isn't it?
\nEverybody wants something from Lydia: Her Uncle Charlie wants her to join the infamous Family Business, her ghostly flatmate wants her to test her power, DCI Fleet wants a relationship, and the Silver Family want her to keep her nose out.
\nTrouble is, Lydia has never been much good at taking orders. And London in a heatwave is a dangerous place to be . . .
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Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven’s arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work?
\nAs Haven searches for her father’s sunken treasure, she begins to unearth a centuries-old tale of ancient sorcery and one woman’s quest to save her lover and her village by using the legendary art of stregheria, a magical ability to harness the ocean. Could this magic be behind Positano’s latest calamities? Haven must unravel the Amalfi Curse before the region is destroyed forever . . .
One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose - selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives. But when her new patron turns out to be a precocious twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardises Nella’s world and threatens to expose the many women whose names are written in her register.
\nIn present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. When she finds an old apothecary vial near the river Thames, she can’t resist investigating, only to realise she’s found a link to the unsolved “apothecary murders” that haunted London over two centuries ago. As she deepens her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning twist of fate - and not everyone will survive.
When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as the night-shift production assistant on her cousin’s ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show Haunt Sweet Home, she quickly determines her new role will require a healthy attitude toward duplicity.
\nBut as she hides fog machines in the woods and improvises scares to spook new homeowners, a series of unnerving incidents on set and a creepy new coworker force Mara to confront whether the person she's truly been deceiving and hiding from all along - is herself.
\nEerie and empathetic, Haunt Sweet Home is a multifaceted, supernatural exploration of finding your own way into adulthood, and into yourself.
In the Before, when the government didn't prohibit large public gatherings, Luce Cannon was on top of the world. One of her songs had just taken off and she was on her way to becoming a star. Now, in the After, terror attacks and deadly viruses have led the government to ban concerts, and Luce's connection to the world - her music, her purpose - is closed off forever. She does what she has to do: she performs in illegal concerts to a small but passionate community, always evading the law.
\nRosemary Laws barely remembers the Before times. She spends her days in Hoodspace, helping customers order all of their goods online for drone delivery - no physical contact with humans needed. By lucky chance, she finds a new job and a new calling: discover amazing musicians and bring their concerts to everyone via virtual reality. The only catch is that she'll have to do something she's never done before and go out in public. Find the illegal concerts and bring musicians into the limelight they deserve. But when she sees how the world could actually be, that won’t be enough.
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The baker's dozen stories gathered here (including a new, previously unpublished story) turn readers into travelers to the past, the future, and explorers of the weirder points of the present. The journey is the thing as Pinsker weaves music, memory, technology, history, mystery, love, loss, and even multiple selves on generation ships and cruise ships, on highways and high seas, in murder houses and treehouses.
\nThey feature runaways, fiddle-playing astronauts, and retired time travelers; they are weird, wired, hopeful, haunting, and deeply human. They are often described as beautiful but Pinsker also knows that the heart wants what the heart wants and that is not always right, or easy.
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Val and Julie just want what's best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all.
\nSoon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device.
\nBefore long, the implications are clear, for the family and society: get a Pilot or get left behind. With government subsidies and no downside, why would anyone refuse? And how do you stop a technology once it's everywhere? Those are the questions Sophie and her anti-Pilot movement rise up to answer, even if it puts them up against the Pilot's powerful manufacturer and pits Sophie against the people she loves most.
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As an African tightrope dancer in Victorian London, Iris is used to being strange. She is certainly a strange sight for leering British audiences always eager for the spectacle of colonial curiosity. But Iris also has a secret that even “strange” doesn’t capture . . . She cannot die.
\nHaunted by her unnatural power and with no memories of her past, Iris is obsessed with discovering who she is. But that mission gets more complicated when she meets the dark and alluring Adam Temple, a member of a mysterious order called the Enlightenment Committee. Adam seems to know much more about her than he lets on, and he shares with her a terrifying revelation: the world is ending, and the Committee will decide who lives . . . and who doesn’t.
\nTo help them choose a leader for the upcoming apocalypse, the Committee is holding the Tournament of Freaks, a macabre competition made up of vicious fighters with fantastical abilities. Adam wants Iris to be his champion, and in return he promises her the one thing she wants most: the truth about who she really is. If Iris wants to learn about her shadowy past, she has no choice but to fight. But the further she gets in the grisly tournament, the more she begins to remember - and the more she wonders if the truth is something best left forgotten.
Years ago, everything changed. Phantoms, massive beasts of nightmare, began terrorising the world. At the same time four girls, the Effigies, appeared, each with the unique power to control a classical element. Since then, they have protected the world from the Phantoms. At the death of one Effigy, another is chosen, pulled from her normal life into the never-ending battle.
\nWhen Maia unexpectedly becomes the next Fire Effigy, she resists her new calling. A quiet girl with few friends and almost no family, she was much happier to admire the Effigies from afar. Never did she imagine having to master her ability to control fire, to protect innocent citizens from the Phantoms, or to try bringing together the other three Effigies.
\nBut with the arrival of the mysterious Saul—a man who seems to be able to control the Phantoms using the same cosmic power previously only granted to four girls at a time - Maia and the other Effigies must learn to work together in a world where their celebrity is more important than their heroism.
\nBut the secrets Saul has, and the power he possesses, might be more than even they can handle . . .
For years, the elite secret society called the Enlightenment Committee has waited for the apocalyptic force known as Hiva to destroy the world as it has so many times before. What the Committee didn’t know, however, was that Hiva wasn’t an event - it was a person.
\nIris Marlow. An African tightrope dancer with no memories of her past. A girl who cannot die.
\nAt least, she couldn’t die. Until her own friends discovered her one weakness and murdered her once and for all. The world-ending threat she posed should be gone too, but there’s one more Hiva out there, and unlike Iris, this one has no love for humanity. In her absence, this Hiva has taken it upon himself to judge if humanity deserves to live.
\nBut when it comes to Hivas, the judgment is always the same. The ending is always total destruction. And while Iris is dead, she’s not gone - and after the betrayal that ended her life as Iris, she is now out for revenge.
\nThe world’s days are numbered. The Cataclysm has begun.
The world is in chaos.
\nAfter Saul’s strike on Oslo - one seemingly led by Maia herself - the Effigies’ reputation is in shambles. Now they’re being hunted by nations across the globe, grouped in with the very terrorists they’ve been trying to stop.
\nWith Maia’s resurrected twin, June, carrying out vicious attacks across the world, everyone believes Maia is a killer. Belle has gone rogue, Chae Rin and Lake have disappeared, and the Sect is being dismantled and replaced by a terrifying new world order helmed by Blackwell. As for Saul, his ultimate plan still remains a mystery.
\nAnd Maia? No one has seen or heard from her in weeks.
\nIt’s all somehow connected - Saul, Phantoms, the Effigies, everything. But if the Effigies can’t put the pieces together soon, there may not be much left of the world they’ve fought so desperately to save.
Amanda McKee is a psiot, an evolved subspecies of humanity with mysterious psychic powers. According to billionaire Toyo Harada and his secret research organization, the Harbinger Foundation, she has the ability to talk to machines, control technology, and even see into a secret parallel world that exists inside the Digital World. But Harada wants Amanda to keep that last bit under wraps - along with the fact that she’s his adopted daughter.
\nBut when a man from the twenty-seventh century named Matsuoka Sho appears, intent on killing her to save his future, she realises her days of hiding who she really is are over. Especially after Matsuoka gives her an ominous “One day, you and Toyo will destroy humankind.” At first, Amanda doesn’t want to believe it. But when techno-soldiers from the future kidnap her father and drag him into the Digital World, she has no choice but to follow.
\nGoing into the Digital World with her hot, time-traveling frenemy and fighting off mecha soldiers with her psiot powers? That’s one thing. But can she handle learning the truth about who Toyo Harada really is?
A young lady can take only so many injuries before humiliation and insult forge a vow of revenge . . .
\nThe year is 1862, and murderous desires are simmering in England. Nineteen-year-old Sarah Bonetta Forbes (Sally), once a princess of the Egbado Clan, desires one thing above all else: revenge against the British Crown and its system of colonial “humanitarianism,” which stole her dignity and transformed her into royal property. From military men to political leaders, she’s vowed to ruin all who’ve had a hand in her afflictions. The top of her list? Her godmother, Britain’s mighty monarch, Queen Victoria herself.
\nTaking down the Crown means entering into a twisted game of court politics and manipulating the Queen’s inner circle - even if that means aligning with a dangerous yet alluring crime lord in London’s underworld and exploiting the affections of Queen Victoria’s own son, Prince Albert, as a means to an end. But when Queen Victoria begins to suspect Sally’s true intentions, she plays the only card in Victorian society that could possibly cage Sally once again: marriage. Because if there’s one thing Sally desires more than revenge, it’s her freedom. With time running out and her wedding day looming, Sally’s vengeful game of cat and mouse turns deadly as she’s faced with the striking revelation that that the price for vengeance isn’t just paid in blood. It means sacrificing your heart.
\nLoosely inspired by the true story of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Queen Victoria’s African goddaughter, The Queen’s Spade is a lush and riveting historical thriller.
There’s nowhere to hide.
\nNot when you’re an Effigy. No matter where they go, Maia and the other Effigies can’t escape the eyes of the press - especially not after failing to capture Saul, whose power to control the monstrous Phantoms has left the world in a state of panic. It’s been two months since Saul’s disappearance, and there’s still no sign of him, leaving the public to wonder whether the Sect—and the Effigies - are capable of protecting anyone.
\nWhen Saul suddenly surfaces in the middle of the Sahara desert, the Sect sends Maia and her friends out after him. But instead of Saul, they discover a dying soldier engineered with Effigy-like abilities. Even worse, there may be more soldiers like him out there, and it looks like the Effigies are their prime targets.
\nYet the looming danger of Saul and this mysterious new army doesn’t overshadow Maia’s fear of the Sect, who ordered the death of the previous Fire Effigy, Natalya. With enemies on all sides and the world turning against them, the Effigies have to put their trust in each other - easier said than done when secrets threaten to tear them apart.
Iris Marlow can’t die. For years, she was tormented by her missing memories and desperate to learn her real identity. So when the mysterious Adam Temple offered to reveal the truth of who she was in exchange for her joining his team in the Tournament of Freaks, a gruesome magical competition, it was an offer she couldn’t refuse. But the truth would have been better left buried.
\nBecause Adam is a member of the Enlightenment Committee, an elite secret society built upon one fundamental idea: that the apocalypse known as Hiva had destroyed the world before and would do it again, and soon. But what the Committee - and Iris - never guessed is that Hiva is not an event. Hiva is a person - Iris.
\nNow, no matter how hard Iris fights for a normal life, the newly awakened power inside her keeps drawing her toward the path of global annihilation. Adam, perversely obsessed with Iris, will stop at nothing to force her to unlock her true potential, while a terrifying newcomer with ties to Hiva’s past is on the hunt for Iris.
\nAll Iris wants is the freedom to choose her own future, but the cost might be everything Iris holds dear - including the world itself.
Rae is a fantasy reader who's been transported to her favourite fictional world of swords and sorcery, castles and monsters. Playing the villainess, she thought she could change the narrative, but this version of the plot is far much more deadly than the one she knew.
\nHer friends are on the run: the Cobra shelters in an eerie manor haunted by dark secrets, while Emer and Lia stoke a revolution in the gutters. Undead armies roam the kingdom, raiders camp at the city gates, and the irresistible emperor - Rae's favourite character ever, now possibly the greatest monster in the land - wants her to be his evil queen.
\nWhat's a villainess to do? It's time for wicked bargains and fake engagements, in a fantasy where the most dangerous thing you can do is believe in someone.
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The Borderlands aren’t like anywhere else. Don’t try to smuggle a phone or any other piece of technology over the wall that marks the Border - unless you enjoy a fireworks display in your backpack. (Ballpoint pens are okay.) There are elves, harpies, and - best of all as far as Elliot is concerned - mermaids.
Elliot? Who’s Elliot? Elliot is thirteen years old. He’s smart and just a tiny bit obnoxious. Sometimes more than a tiny bit. When his class goes on a field trip and he can see a wall that no one else can see, he is given the chance to go to school in the Borderlands.
It turns out that on the other side of the wall, classes involve a lot more weaponry and fitness training and fewer mermaids than he expected. On the other hand, there’s Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle, an elven warrior who is more beautiful than anyone Elliot has ever seen, and then there’s her human friend Luke: sunny, blond, and annoyingly likeable. There are lots of interesting books. There’s even the chance Elliot might be able to change the world.
When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at living: a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of her favourite fantasy series.
\nShe wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. He’s impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she's not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor's tale.
\nSo be it. The wicked are better dressed, with better one-liners, even if they're doomed to bad ends. She assembles the wildly disparate villains of the story under her evil leadership, plotting to change their fate. But as the body count rises and the Emperor's fury increases, it seems Rae and her allies may not survive to see the final page.
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A bracing feminist chronicle of the history of the West told through seven texts, exposing where our most virulent ideas about women came from.
\nThe dangerous belief that granting women reproductive freedom poses a threat to “traditional” values is a myth that has long prospered in American politics, playing an especially vicious role in the development of totalitarianism in the West. How did such damaging ideas arise?
\nIn Reproductive Wrongs, acclaimed translator and cultural historian Sarah Ruden exposes how ideologies that oppress women and families in the service of power took hold. Ruden traces a sweeping history through her trenchant analysis of seven pieces of literature that, she argues, marked key inflection points across two thousand years. From propagandistic poetry written by Ovid in the early Roman Empire to the biography of an evangelical American “abortion survivor,” Ruden lays bare how doctrines of control over women were invented and propagated.
\nScathing and vital, Reproductive Wrongs unearths the evolution of a right–wing radicalism that endures to this day, when half of the US population is losing access to basic human rights.
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It's 1996, and alt-rocker Emma Cantor is on tour, with her sights trained on a record deal. Emma's got no lack of inspiration for her confessional songs, chief among them her mother Judie, a 1960s folk legend who is bitterly disappointed by Emma's choice to skip college.
\nEmma is baffled by Judie's coldness. Judie herself was only eighteen when she ran away to New York to pursue music, ahead of forming the influential folk duo the Singer Sisters with her sister Sylvia.
\nBut Judie has a long-kept secret about why she abandoned her music career at the peak of her success, which is about to unravel.
\nThis is an epic family saga that follows mother Judie and daughter Emma as they navigate the ups and downs of music stardom - asking what women artists must sacrifice for success.
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In the hot summer of 1965, Bostonian Franklin Warren arrives in Bethany, Vermont, to take a position as a detective with the state police. Warren's new home is on the verge of monumental change; the interstates under construction will bring new people, new opportunities, and new problems to Vermont, and the Cold War and protests against the war in Vietnam have finally reached the dirt roads and rolling pastures of Bethany.
\nWarren has barely unpacked when he's called up to a remote farm on Agony Hill. Former New Yorker and Back-to-the-Lander Hugh Weber seems to have set fire to his barn and himself, with the door barred from the inside, but things aren’t adding up for Warren.
\nThe people of Bethany - from Weber’s enigmatic wife to Warren's neighbor, widow and amateur detective Alice Bellows - clearly have secrets they’d like to keep, but Warren can’t tell if the truth about Weber’s death is one of them.
\nAs he gets to know his new home and grapples with the tragedy that brought him there, Warren is drawn to the people and traditions of small town Vermont, even as he finds darkness amidst the beauty.
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Long Island homicide detective Maggie D'arcy and her teenage daughter, Lilly, are still recovering from the events of last fall when a strange new case demands Maggie's attention.
\nThe body of an unidentified Irish national turns up in a wealthy Long Island beach community and with little to go on but the scars on his back, Maggie once again teams up with Garda detectives in Ireland to find out who the man was and what he was doing on Long Island.
\nAs the strands of the mystery lead Maggie to a quiet village in rural County Clare and back to her home turf, they also lead her in range of a dangerous and determined killer who will do anything to keep the victim's story hidden forever.
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For the first time in her adult life, former Long Island homicide detective Maggie D’arcy is unemployed. No cases to focus on, no leads to investigate, just a whole summer on a remote West Cork peninsula with her teenage daughter Lilly and her boyfriend, Conor and his son. The plan is to prepare Lilly for a move to Ireland. But their calm vacation takes a dangerous turn when human remains wash up below the steep cliffs of Ross Head.
\nWhen construction worker Lukas Adamik disappeared months ago, everyone assumed he had gone home to Poland. Now that his body has been found, the guards, including Maggie's friends Roly Byrne and Katya Grzeskiewicz, seem to think he threw himself from the cliffs.
\nBut as Maggie gets to know the residents of the nearby village and learns about the history of the peninsula and its abandoned Anglo Irish manor house, once home to a famous Irish painter who died under mysterious circumstances, she starts to think there's something else going on. Something deadly.
\nAnd when Lilly starts dating one of the dead man's friends, Maggie grows worried about her daughter being so close to another investigation and about what the investigation will uncover.
\nOld secrets, hidden relationships, crime, and village politics are woven throughout this small seaside community, and as the summer progresses, Maggie is pulled deeper into the web of lies, further from those she loves, and closer to the truth.
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It's November of 1965 and the second weekend of Vermont's regular deer season when Vermont State Police detective Franklin Warren is called out to what looks like an accidental shooting at The Ridge Club, an exclusive men's hunting and fishing club for congressmen, diplomats, judges, and titans of industry: a former ambassador has been shot while out hunting. With the war in Vietnam picking up speed on the other side of the world, Warren quickly realizes that many of the club’s members are powerful men who may have ulterior motives and connections in high places.
\nWhile Warren's suspicions about the club members build, his neighbor Alice Bellows is throwing a dinner party, preparing for Thanksgiving, and worrying about her pregnant friend and fellow widow, Sylvie Weber, whose due date is coming up. When Alice's old handler and friend, Arthur Crannock, unexpectedly shows up in Bethany, Alice begins to wonder whether his presence has anything to do with the death at the hunting club.
\nAs an early season snowstorm bears down on Bethany, knocking out power and phone lines and blocking the roads, Warren and his assistant, Trooper Pinky Goodrich, are trapped at the Ridge Club, likely along with a killer, and Alice, increasingly fearful that her past in the intelligence world is no longer in the past, will have to act fast to save Sylvie and her baby.
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Twenty-three years ago, Maggie D'arcy's family received a call from the Dublin police. Her cousin Erin has been missing for several days. Maggie herself spent weeks in Ireland, trying to track Erin's movements, working beside the police. But it was to no avail: no trace of her was ever found.
\nThe experience inspired Maggie to become a cop.
\nNow, back on Long Island, more than 20 years have passed. Maggie is a detective and a divorced mother of a teenager. When the Gardaí call to say that Erin's scarf has been found and another young woman has gone missing, Maggie returns to Ireland, awakening all the complicated feelings from the first trip.
\nThe despair and frustration of not knowing what happened to Erin. Her attraction to Erin's coworker, now a professor, who never fully explained their relationship. And her determination to solve the case, once and for all.
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After months of training, former Long Island homicide detective Maggie D’arcy is now officially a Garda. She’s finally settling into life in Ireland and so is her teenage daughter, Lilly. Maggie may not be a detective yet, but she’s happy with her community policing assignment in Dublin's Portobello neighborhood.
\nWhen she and her partner find former model and reality tv star Jade Elliot murdered - days after responding to a possible domestic violence disturbance at her apartment - they also discover Jade's toddler daughter missing. Shorthanded thanks to an investigation into a gangland murder in the neighborhood, Maggie’s friend, Detective Inspector Roly Byrne, brings her onto his team to help find the missing child.
\nBut when a key discovery is made, the case only becomes more confusing - and more dangerous. Amidst a nationwide manhunt, Maggie and her colleagues must look deep into Jade’s life - both personal and professional - to find a ruthless killer.
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There’s nothing Valerie Kwon loves more than making a good sale. Together with her cousin Charlie, they run V&C K-BEAUTY, their school’s most successful student-run enterprise. With each sale, Valerie gets closer to taking her beloved and adventurous halmeoni to her dream city, Paris.
Enter the new kid in class, Wes Jung, who is determined to pursue music after graduation despite his parents’ major disapproval. When his classmates clamor to buy the K-pop branded beauty products his mom gave him to “make new friends,” he sees an opportunity - one that may be the key to help him pay for the music school tuition he knows his parents won’t cover . . .
What he doesn’t realize, though, is that he is now V&C K-BEAUTY’s biggest competitor.
Stakes are high as Valerie and Wes try to outsell each other, make the most money, and take the throne for the best business in school - all while trying to resist the undeniable spark that’s crackling between them. From hiring spies to all-or-nothing bets, the competition is much more than either of them bargained for.
But one thing is clear: only one Korean business can come out on top.
Seventeen-year-old Yena Bae is spending the summer in Busan, South Korea, working at her mom’s memory-erasing clinic. She feels lost and disconnected from people, something she’s felt ever since her best friend, Lucas, moved away four years ago without a word, leaving her in limbo.
\nEighteen-year-old Lucas Pak is also in Busan for the summer, visiting his grandpa, who was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. But he isn’t just here for a regular visit - he’s determined to get his beloved grandpa into the new study running at the clinic, a trial program seeking to restore lost memories.
\nWhen Yena runs into Lucas again, she’s shocked to see him and even more shocked to discover that he doesn’t remember a thing about her. He’s completely erased her from his memories, and she has no idea why.
\nAs the two reconnect, they unravel the mystery and heartache of what happened between them all those years ago - and must now reckon with whether they can forge a new beginning together.
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Famed children’s author Dame Eleanor Kingman has summoned her family and friends to her exquisite manor house on the cliffs. They're celebrating her birthday - and her latest number one bestseller in her series of books based on a mother fox and her cubs.
\nBut the night before the party, Eleanor receives an email that threatens to expose the lie she’s kept up for over half a century.
\nSomeone knows her secret. Is it her estranged literary agent? Is it her ex-husband, to whom she no longer speaks? Is it the nanny she fired all those years ago, who always did have a knack for storytelling? Or is it one of her three daughters, all of whom have a stake in the publishing empire she has built . . .
\nWith a television crew arriving to film a documentary of her life, Eleanor needs to find out who sent the email - and preserve her legacy and multimillion-pound career.
\nBut when push comes to shove, and it's time to tell the truth, will anyone actually believe her?
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At twenty-six, Linli Feng is still trying to escape her mother Fanny’s orbit. But after three years of estrangement, just when Linli has been accepted into a prestigious graduate program, she is dragged back by Fanny’s latest medical catastrophe and forced to return home.
\nFor decades, Fanny has been addicted to plastic surgery, getting bargain procedures in the basements of LA’s bootleg beauty industry. Now Fanny’s disfigured face is in dangerous revolt, infected and collapsing yet again from black-market injectables.
\nBut even as Linli wades through the wreck of family finances and juggles her mother’s medical care, Fanny has another secret in store. Fanny has won a spot on America’s Beauty Extreme, a reality television competition in which botched plastic surgery addicts compete for reconstructive surgery as riveted audiences tune in.
\nWhen Linli attempts to rescue Fanny from the sinister subculture that has already claimed her mother’s face, she must at last confront the corrosive reality of American success that is at the fraught heart of their relationship.
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An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.
\nFrom trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.
\nSarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.”
\nCareless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade - told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.
1951, Singapore. Ten-year-old Josephina kills her abuser.
\nThis event becomes the defining moment in the lives of Josephina, her daughter Sithara, and her granddaughter Annie.
\nThe effects cascade through generations as Annie sets out across the world to discover what happened to fracture her family.
\nSet in Sri Lanka, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and London, Amma is a novel about how the past lives with us forever, and wherever we are.
\nWritten in sensuous, vivid prose, Amma is a story of the rich history and unknown future of the Sri Lankan diaspora - and of one family desperately trying to find peace.
When Cyra Griffin’s younger sister is murdered by a serial killer, Cyra knows better than to expect justice from the hands of the police department. With the investigation already dying its own slow death, Cyra follows the blood trail and finds her own way forward.
\nUsing insider information (don’t ask) Cyra infiltrates a support group for serial killers by pretending to be one herself in the hopes of finding the person who ended her sister’s life. Proving herself to them comes at a cost, but it’s one Cyra is willing to pay in the name of revenge.
\nUnfortunately, the dangerous men in the group aren’t the only obstacle in Cyra’s path for vengeance, and the further Cyra descends into the deadly world of serial killers, the harder it becomes to hold on to her own humanity.
\nThis dark, witty debut novel is a cunning homage to women’s wrongs that will have you wondering exactly how many monsters walk unseen among us.
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How can Anna Ellis, a geeky, brilliant, and hopelessly smitten cosmetic chemist possibly win over Craig Kimball, the man of her dreams - who also happens to be her boss? The answer is Craig’s empathetic (and handsome) CEO half brother, Marco. The makeup mogul knows Craig for the ridiculously competitive rival he is. Whatever Marco has, Craig wants. That can be Anna, if she’s game to play.
\nAll Anna and Marco have to do is pretend they’re falling in love and let the rumors begin. If the experiment in attraction works, a jealous Craig will swoop in and give Anna her happily ever after - if it weren’t for one hitch in the plan. There’s more to Marco than meets the eye. With every fake date, Anna’s feelings are starting to become dizzyingly real.
\nBlame it on chemistry. It’s unpredictable, exciting, and occasionally combustible. If Anna and Marco are really falling in love, who are they to argue with science?
With her sister’s medical bills mounting, Diana Parker can’t say no to a high-paying opportunity like this: accompany a wealthy couple to Aspen and nanny their precocious five-year-old son for three months. Necessary qualifications? She must know how to ski and teach math, speak fluent French, excel at social graces, and hold a master’s degree in childhood development. Who’ll be the wiser that Diana’s only skill is packing for Colorado?
\nSo far, so good - having a con woman for a mother has turned out to be a benefit, even if Diana has complicated feelings about telling lies. But she’s doing this for her sister. And the perks - like a ticket to a lavish charity fundraiser, a new gown, and a Prince Charming–adjacent earl named Griffin Windsor - are pretty irresistible. Diana can’t deny the Cinderella vibe.
\nWary of gold diggers and scandal, England’s most eligible bachelor is nevertheless falling for Diana, and sweeping the not-quite princess off her feet.
\nThe warmer their relationship becomes, the slipperier the slopes are for Diana. Sooner or later, she’ll have to come clean. When that happens, does an honest-to-goodness happy ending stand a chance?
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Princess Lia of Locris is the unlikeliest person to be Ilion’s defender. Once, she’d have gladly seen the entire adversarial nation burn. But much has changed. Ilion is home to too many innocents, including her sister. Besides, there is no escaping the goddess’s command. Lia is Ilion’s prophesied savior.
\nWith that mortal obligation come rules: She must never consummate her marriage to Xander, prince of Ilion, lest she lose her powers of divine magic when she needs them most. Physically bonded to share each other’s pain, these former enemies have grown from merely attracted to something more profound. But what future can they have when Lia’s destiny requires sacrificing her life?
\nAs enemies close in and war threatens everything they love, Lia and Xander must find a way to follow the goddess’s laws while also accepting the truth in their hearts - before the prophecy demands its final, fatal price.
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Hypnotist Savannah Sinclair is known for helping clients overcome their deep-rooted issues, from anxiety to addiction. But her nontraditional approach also attracts plenty of skeptics - including her high school nemesis and rival, Mason Beckett, who just so happens to be the boy who broke her heart.
\nMason’s life hasn’t gone according to plan. His latest novel was a flop, and the only gig he can land is writing a scathing exposé of his hometown hypnotist, Savannah. But in order to write an authentic article, he has to be a willing participant. Hypnosis is the last thing he he’s shedding his negative nature and opening himself up to new experiences . . . and when a fire alarm interrupts their session, Mason walks out into the real world entranced and sporting a sunny disposition and a tendency to say yes.
\nHypnotized Mason is fearless, revealing things he’s never told a soul, acting completely out of character, and leading Savannah on a frantic chase to keep him safe. He likes his new self. The problem is, so does Savannah. She can’t fall in love with a man who’s in a trance, but can she keep him still long enough to get him to snap out of it?
Rachel Vinson is a bridesmaid for hire: part confidante, part wedding planner, and one hundred percent pretend BFF. Discretion guaranteed. Her next gig is a destination wedding - livestreamed and sponsored - for an Instagram influencer. That means a paradise of new contacts, which could be a boon to her already booming business. If Rachel can keep the very handsome and slightly too interested best man at bay, that is.
\nHigh-tech entrepreneur Camden Lewis must know: Who is this gorgeous, intelligent, and mysterious woman? Too good to be real. Convinced she’s a corporate spy out to tank his company, Camden’s not letting her out of his sight. But the constant surveillance is also opening his eyes to things about Rachel that he likes. If she’s a spy, she’s certainly the cutest one he’s ever seen.
\nAs the week’s worth of wedding events march along, Rachel and Camden are learning almost everything there is to know about each other. Rachel’s made a career out of always a bridesmaid . . . but perhaps there’s a chance for her own trip down the aisle?
Madison Huntington is determined to live her dreams. That means getting out from under her family’s wealth and influence by saying no to the family business, her allowance, and her home. But on a teacher’s salary, the real world comes as a rude awakening - especially when she wakes up every morning on a colleague’s couch.
\nTo get a place of her own (without cockroaches, mold, or crime scene tape), Madison accepts a position as a roommaid. In exchange for free room and board, all she needs to do is keep her busy roommate’s penthouse clean and his dog company. So what if she’s never washed a dish in her life. She can figure this out, right?
Madison is pretty confident she can fake it well enough that Tyler Roth will never know the difference. The finance whiz is rich and privileged and navigates the same social circles as her parents - but to him she’s just a teacher in need of an apartment. He’s everything Madison has run from, but his kindhearted nature, stomach-fluttering smile, and unexpected insecurities only make her want to get closer. And Tyler is warming to the move.
Rewarding job. Perfect guy. Great future. With everything so right, what could go wrong? Madison is about to find out.
Princess Ilaria has had it up to her tiara with the paparazzi, her own wild reputation, and the public eye. Trading places with her assistant, Ilaria wants just one blissfully ordinary weekend. Then a handsome photographer with a sexy Scottish burr offers to be her guide.
\nSparks fly, but how long can they last? Ilaria’s secret has to come out - and it could ruin a perfectly serendipitous romance.
The meet-cute award goes to dog groomer Juliet Nolan. It’s one of Hollywood’s biggest nights when she volunteers as a seat filler and winds up next to movie heartthrob Noah freaking Douglas. Tongue tied and toes curling in her pink Converse, she pretends that she doesn’t have a clue who he is. It’s the only way to keep from swooning.
\nShe’s pretty and unpretentious, loves his dog, and is not a worshipping fan. No way Noah’s giving up on her, even if his affectionate pursuit comes with a bump: Juliet has a pathological fear of kissing and the disappointments that follow. What odds does romance have without that momentous, stupendous, once-in-a-lifetime first smooch? Patient, empathetic, and carrying personal burdens of his own, Noah suggests a remedy: they rehearse.
\nThe lessons begin. The guards come down. But there’s another hitch they weren’t betting on. As for that cue-the-orchestra-and-roll-credits happy ending? It might take more than practice to make it perfect.
Lia is the princess of Locris, a dying desert nation cursed centuries ago by an earth goddess - one still worshipped by the thriving and adversarial nation of Ilion. Every year, Ilion offers the goddess a sacrifice: two Locrian maidens forced to compete in a life-and-death race to reach her temple. In a millennium, no maiden has made it out of Ilion alive. This year, Lia is one of the hunted.
\nAn education in battle gives her a fighting chance, but the challenges are greater than she feared: Lia’s beloved but untrained sister Quynh has been put in the path of danger. The winding streets of Ilion itself have been transformed into a labyrinthine maze of countless choices and dead ends. And if the risks weren’t significant enough, Lia is reluctantly drawn to the commandingly attractive Jason, an Ilionian sailor she loathes to trust and desires like no man before.
\nThe tribute game is on. It’s up to Lia to lift the goddess’s curse, restore Locris to its former glory, and change the fate of every young woman destined to follow in her path.
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Lia is always prepared for battle, but being blackmailed into marriage by Prince Alexandros is a challenge too far. She has no choice. He’s holding her sister hostage to force her hand. But with this union built on betrayal and rage comes a contract. By the goddess’s law, the marriage must not be consummated. A relief to Lia. She’d rather commit regicide than fall into bed with a man she loathes.
\nThere is one other saving grace. Marriage gives Lia access to the palace and a chance to uncover the truth about the treasured eye of the goddess - and the magic it holds. But something inexplicable and impossible to ignore soon binds Lia and the prince. By night they walk in each other’s dreams, and by day they share each other’s pain.
\nAs longing and trust grow between Lia and Alexandros and inhibited desires are set free, outside forces rise against them, posing an ever-present danger. Not only to the throne but to their very lives.
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When calamity destroyed most of humanity, the Four Cities survived by carefully predicting and meticulously controlling everything in the survivors’ lives - even love. As part of this new normal, every four years the citizens face down Tabula Rasa, a process that wipes away their memories of each other.
\nBut nothing can be controlled completely, and love will always strive to be free.
\nA brave handful of Dreamers, aided by Eleanor the Crone, have repeatedly managed to find each other again after Tabula Rasa, proving that the desire to connect is eternal. Scientist Aris and musician Metis, star-crossed lovers, have found each other again . . . along with a clue to a hidden library that could contain the memories erased by Tabula Rasa.
\nAt long last, there is a chance for a brave, free, new world - if they can escape before the next reset.
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After the Last War destroyed most of the world, survivors formed a new society in four self-sustaining cities in the Mojave Desert. To halt extinction, everything in the Four Cities is carefully predicted and carefully controlled . . . even love. But how can you control love and freedom?
\nPreset weaves the tales of Eleanor, the Crone, and Eli, the Planner, before and after the creation of the Four Cities.
\nMuch has changed in the world and their relationship, but there are some truths that have yet to come to light. Fighting for change yet still loving her husband Eli, the scientist Eleanor travels to Elara, the lone city resisting fully bending to Eli’s control. There she must separate reality from lies, memories from desires, as she tries to piece together the truth about what is happening in the Four Cities.
\nBut the gulf between love and freedom, between the past and the now, between what we remember and what we strive to become can be as vast as the break between two hearts bound together. It is here, in the dark fissure left by loss, where Eleanor discovers the true cost that has been paid to save humanity.
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After the Last War destroyed most of the world, survivors form a new society in four self-sustaining cities in the Mojave Desert. In the utopia of the Four Cities, inspired by the lyrics of “Imagine” and Buddhist philosophy, everything is carefully planned and controlled: the seasons, the weather - and the residents.
\nTo prevent mankind from destroying each other again, its citizens undergo a memory wipe every four years in a process called tabula rasa, a blank slate, to remove learned prejudices. With each new cycle, they begin again with new names, jobs, homes, and lives. No memories. No attachments. No wars.
\nAris, a scientist who shuns love, embraces tabula rasa and the excitement of unknown futures. Walling herself off from emotional attachments, she only sees relationships as pointless and avoids deep connections. But she is haunted by a recurring dream that becomes more frequent and vivid as time passes.
\nAfter meeting Benja, a handsome free-spirited writer who believes his dreams of a past lover are memories, her world is turned upside down. Obsessed with finding the Dreamers, a secret organisation thought to have a way to recover memories, Benja draws her down a dangerous path toward the past. When Metis, the leader of the Dreamers, appears in Aris’s life, everything she believes falls to pieces.
\nWith little time left before the next tabula rasa, they begin a bittersweet romance, navigating love in a world where names, lives, and moments are systematically destroyed.
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A decade has passed since Ava spoke to Aliya. During the years of silence, Ava's life has remained at a standstill, while Aliya got the one thing they both wanted more than anything: a book deal. Forced back together at a mutual friend’s bachelorette in London, Ava returns to Aliya’s doorstep, desperate to unpack the truth of their shared history - and what they meant to each other.
\nWhen the two first met in the halls of their historic campus, their connection was electric. Aliya and Ava created a world of their own through the stories they wrote, influencing and borrowing from each other’s work. But when the end of college loomed, the real world began to pull them in opposite directions. Was their bond ever truly as strong as Aliya thought? And what would become of the stories they told themselves about each other?
\nWeaving together the friends’ past and present, Strange Girls is an ingenious portrait of a fraught friendship, and an exploration of the ties forged in the intensity of the college experience, and the scars left when they break.
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In a land ruled by fierce winged warriors known as eagle garudas, twelve-year-old Nargis is just a poor, lowly human, a Worm who hates the garudas that killed her parents. But even though she can’t fly - and her childhood attempt left her walking with a crutch - she is far from powerless. Nargis is a spirit able to coax small bits of wind, water, fire, and earth to do her bidding through song . . . well, sometimes.
\nWhen Nargis loses control of her power in a high-stakes kite fight, she is exiled. Cast into the desert, she discovers Mistral, an injured boy who turns out to be an eagle garuda, the prince of her enemies! He’s on a mission to take back his throne from a terrible vulture garuda. In spite of their mutual distrust, the two have no choice but to forge an unlikely alliance if they want to escape the desert alive.
\nAnd as Nargis and Mistral battle dangerous assassins, befriend crafty sky pirates, and sneak into the mysterious sky castle of Alamut, Nargis discovers she carries a family secret, one that could bring Monsoon’s rains back to the desert, but only if she’s willing to risk her life in the bargain . . .
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The port city of Hainak is alive: its buildings, its fashion, even its weapons. But, after a devastating war and a sweeping biotech revolution, all its inhabitants want is peace, no one more so than Yat Jyn-Hok a reformed-thief-turned-cop who patrols the streets at night.
\nYat has recently been demoted on the force due to “lifestyle choices” after being caught at a gay club. She’s barely holding it together, haunted by memories of a lover who vanished and voices that float in and out of her head like radio signals. When she stumbles across a dead body on her patrol, two fellow officers gruesomely murder her and dump her into the harbor. Unfortunately for them, she wakes up.
\nResurrected by an ancient power, she finds herself with the new ability to manipulate life force. Quickly falling in with the pirate crew who has found her, she must race against time to stop a plague from being unleashed by the evil that has taken root in Hainak.
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The steel city of Radovan is consumed by fire between. Stranded in its harbor is the crew of the Kopek, the survivors of a bioterror attack overseas. But they bear scars: their captain, Sibbi, has gone missing; Yat, their newest Weaver, is fighting for control of her own mind; and their Weaving powers are in a badly weakened state.
\nTo disable the technology that prevents the group from escaping, Sen and Kiada must plot their way through the ruins of the foreign capital, which is patrolled by a hostile militia, using wits alone. But to navigate through Radovan, Kiada will have to rely on her own history with the city - one she shares with a band of misfits dubbed Fort Tomorrow and their leader, Ari, a charismatic thief.
\nAri may hold the key not only to saving Radovan from complete annihilation, but the history of their world, which will come into play as the gods begin to unleash destruction on humanity and one another.
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Tucked away on a narrow side street in Tokyo is the Torunka Café, a neighbourhood nook where the passersby are as likely to be local cats as tourists. Its regulars include Chinatsu Yukimura, a mysterious young woman who always leaves behind a napkin folded into the shape of a ballerina; Hiroyuki Numata, a middle-aged man who's returned to the neighbourhood searching for the happy life he once gave up; and Shizuku, the café owner's teenage daughter, who is still coming to terms with her sister's death as she falls in love for the first time.
\nWhile Café Torunka serves up a perfect cup of coffee, it provides these sundry souls with nourishment far more lasting. Satoshi Yagisawa brilliantly illuminates the periods in our lives where we feel lost - and how we find our way again.
A lifetime of playing by the rules of female social conditioning is not what it’s cracked up to be for Nolan. The years of making herself smaller (literally and metaphorically); the sexual advances that led to more than she wanted; the bad marriage she fought like hell to keep; all the ways others questioned her identity or choices and she let it slide to keep the peace; her silence when requested; her body when desired - none of it worked. None of it protected her the way it was advertised to.
\nNolan noticed the same was true for the women around her and the women in history she read about. Across time and location, they were raised to be agreeable and “good.” Hyper-visible as sexual objects but invisible as full people. Living in a physical world created by men for men. Taking on the ultimate role of birth-giver and caretaker, yet seeing it remain an unsung act, even as it’s a God-like creation. Only in midlife did Nolan begin to realise she was capable of living outside these cages of conditioning so slyly insidious that they’re nearly invisible.
\nGood Woman elegantly probes the knotty conditions themselves, the costs of adhering to them, and what happens when one refuses to comply. The twelve stunning and unforgettable essays blend memoir, reportage, and history to create a collection that is alternately bold, brash, and explosive . . . and ravishingly tender, sensual, and joyous. Nolan takes aim at big and old ideas, and she does not miss. Hers is a testimony to witness and to savor.
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Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,” she finds peace and purpose in her life.
\nIn the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction - many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual - and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal” person excellently, more or less. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action . . .
\nA brilliant depiction of a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures we all feel to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.
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A collection of essays about growing up the daughter of Indian immigrants in Canada, \"a land of ice and casual racism,\" by the cultural observer, Scaachi Koul.
\nIn One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, Scaachi deploys her razor-sharp humour to share her fears, outrages and mortifying experiences as an outsider growing up in Canada. Her subjects range from shaving her knuckles in grade school, to a shopping trip gone horribly awry, to dealing with internet trolls, to feeling out of place at an Indian wedding (as an Indian woman), to parsing the trajectory of fears and anxieties that pressed upon her immigrant parents and bled down a generation.
\nAlongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of colour, where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision or outright scorn. Where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian cultures, forcing her to confront questions about gender dynamics, racial tensions, ethnic stereotypes and her father's creeping mortality - all as she tries to find her feet in the world.
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Scaachi Koul’s first book was a collection of raw, perceptive, and hilarious essays reckoning with the issues of race, body image, love, friendship, and growing up the daughter of immigrants. When the time came to start writing her next book, Scaachi assumed she’d be updating her story with essays about her elaborate four-day wedding, settling down to domestic bliss, and continuing her never-ending arguments with her parents. Instead, the Covid pandemic hit, the world went into lockdown, Scaachi’s marriage fell apart, she lost her job, and her mother was diagnosed with cancer.
\nSucker Punch is about what happens when the life you thought you’d be living radically changes course, everything you thought you knew about the world and yourself has tilted on its axis, and you have to start forging a new path forward. Scaachi employs her signature humor and fierce intelligence to interrogate her previous belief that fighting is the most effective tool for progress. She examines the fights she’s had - with her parents, her ex-husband, her friends, online strangers, and herself - all in an attempt to understand when a fight is worth having, and when it's better to walk away.
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Orphaned at a young age, Samara has been left under the care of her three horrible brothers for many long years. But just when she thinks she cannot take another day of their abuse, a handsome prince offers for her hand in marriage.
\nSamara's brothers agree to the wedding in exchange for a large dowry, but on her way to salvation in her new kingdom, her carriage is ambushed and she is rescued by Lore, the wicked Prince of Nightshade, who demands a favor in return. Samara believes that Lore's request is meant to punish her for her crimes against his kind . . . but punishment is only half of Lore's plan.
\nThe truth is that the Elven Prince has pined after Samara for seven long years. His power over poisons rivals none in the Enchanted Forest, but Samara is a new kind of toxin in his blood, and all he can think about. Can the Prince of Nightshade manage to find a remedy, or will he succumb to her love?
Hades, God of the Underworld, is known for his inflexible rule, luxurious night clubs, and impossible bargains. Use to control, he is not prepared to discover the Fates have chosen his future wife and Queen - Persephone, Goddess of Spring.
\nDespite her attraction to the god, Persephone, an ambitious journalism student, is determined to expose Hades for his cruel and ruthless ways.
\nHades finds himself faced with the impossible - proving his future bride wrong. Despite his efforts, there are forces who wish to keep the two apart and Hades comes to realise he will do anything for his forbidden love, even defy Fate.
Hades, God of the Dead, has finally made Persephone his in every way possible. With their wedding on the horizon, the couple should be ecstatic. But Demeter is wreaking havoc on their bliss by battering the whole of New Greece with erratic and dangerous weather. At the same time, Theseus continues with his agenda against the Gods, allying with the hate-group Triad in an effort to bring down all of Olympus.
\nHades refuses to allow anything to stop him from securing Persephone as his bride, but he must play a deep strategic game with the Gods of Olympus to safeguard their future. And it is not entirely clear which Gods are truly on his side.
Hades, God of the Dead, does not take sides or bend the rules. He makes no exceptions to these values - not for god or mortal, even his lover, Persephone, Goddess of Spring.
\nUsually, fear prevents retaliation.
\nBut not this time.
\nWhen Hera, Goddess of Women, approaches Hades with a plan to overthrow Zeus, he declines to offer help. As punishment, Hera sentences Hades to perform a series of labors. Each feat seems more impossible than the last and draws his attention away from Persephone - whose own tragedy has left her questioning whether she can be Queen of the Underworld.
Isolde de Lara considers her wedding day her death day. To end a years-long war, she is to marry vampire king, Adrian Aleksandr Vasiliev, and kill him.
\nBut her assassination attempt is thwarted and Adrian threatens that if Isolde tries to kill him again, he will raise her as the undead. Faced with the possibility of becoming the thing she hates most, Isolde seeks other ways to defy him and survive the brutal vampire court.
\nExcept it isn’t the court she fears most - it’s Adrian. Despite their undeniable chemistry, she wonders why the king - fierce, savage, merciless - chose her as consort.
\nThe answer will shatter her world.
All Gesela's life, her home village of Elk has been cursed. And it isn't a single curse - it is one after another, each to be broken by a villager, each with devastating consequences. When Elk's well goes dry, it is Gesela's turn to save her town by killing the toad that lives at the bottom. Except . . . the toad is not a toad at all. He is an Elven prince under a curse of his own, and upon his death, his brothers come for Gesela, seeking retribution.
\nAs punishment, the princes banish Gesela to live with their seventh brother, the one they call the beast. Gesela expects to be the prisoner of a hideous monster, but the beast turns out to be exquisitely beautiful, and rather than lock her in a cell, he offers Gesela a deal. If she can guess his true name in seven days, she can go free.
\nGesela agrees, but there is a hidden catch - she must speak his name with love in order to free him, too.
\nBut can either of them learn to love in time?
Isolde, newly coronated queen, has finally found a king worthy of her in the vampire Adrian. But their love for each other has cost Isolde her father and her homeland. With two opposing goddesses playing mortals and vampires like chess pieces against one another, Isolde is uncertain who her allies are in the vampire stronghold of Revekka.
\nNow, as politics in the Red Palace grow more underhanded and a deadly blood mist threatens all of Cordova, Isolde must trust in the bond she's formed with Adrian, even as she learns troubling information about his complicated past.
Estranged from her powerful family, Lilith Leviathan finds refuge in Nineveh, a district in the city of Eden devoted to sin. There, she uses her magic to steal for a living, attracting the attention of the five governing families as well as the church, which expects women to remain pious and silent. When Lilith comes into possession of a beautiful blade, she thinks all her worries are over . . . until her usual buyer dies while inspecting it.
\nFrantic, Lilith turns to the only man who can help Zahariev, head of the Zareth family and ruler of Nineveh. His currency is information, and his power is extortion, though he's always had a soft spot for Lilith. But when the dagger appears, he isn't sure he can protect her from what's to come.
\nTogether, they embark on a mission to discover the true power running their world. As their lives intertwine, Lilith realises Zahariev is more than just a friend, but their devotion to each other is a threat - to the truth, to the church, and to those who want to tear it all down.
Persephone, Goddess of Spring, never guessed a chance encounter with Hades, God of the Underworld, would change her life forever - but he did.
\nA fight for humanity and battles between gods, it's a world Persephone never thought she would see. To end the chaos, she must draw upon her darkness and embrace who she's become - Goddess, Wife, Queen of the Underworld.
\nOnce, Persephone made bargains to save those she loves, now she will go to war for them.
Persephone is the Goddess of Spring by title only. The truth is, since she was a little girl, flowers have shriveled at her touch. After moving to New Athens, she hopes to lead an unassuming life disguised as a mortal journalist.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tHades, God of the Dead, has built a gambling empire in the mortal world and his favorite bets are rumored to be impossible.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAfter a chance encounter with Hades, Persephone finds herself in a contract with the God of the Dead and the terms are impossible: Persephone must create life in the Underworld or lose her freedom forever.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe bet does more than expose Persephone’s failure as a goddess, however. As she struggles to sow the seeds of her freedom, love for the God of the Dead grows - and it’s forbidden.
Persephone and Hades are engaged. In retaliation, Demeter summons a snowstorm that cripples New Greece, and refuses to lift the blizzard unless her daughter calls off her engagement.
\nWhen the Olympians intervene, Persephone finds her future in the hands of ancient gods, and they are divided. Do they allow Persephone to marry Hades and go to war with Demeter or prohibit their union and take up arms against the God of the Dead?
\nNothing is certain but the promise of war.
Persephone's relationship with Hades has gone public and the resulting media storm disrupts her normal life and threatens to expose her as the Goddess of Spring.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tHades, God of the Dead, is burdened by a hellish past that everyone's eager to expose in an effort to warn Persephone away.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThings only get worse when a horrible tragedy leaves Persephone's heart in ruin and Hades refusing to help. Desperate, she takes matters into her own hands, striking bargains with severe consequences.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tFaced with a side of Hades she never knew and crushing loss, Persephone wonders if she can truly become Hades' queen.
Featuring a neurodiverse lead living with Tourette's syndrome, Ellie Marlowe is ready for a curtain call as her latest production sells out, but when the starring male lead drops dead, and everyone in the cast is a potential suspect or the next victim, she must catch a killer before they pull another show-stopping murder.
\nThe new production at Ellie Marlowe’s community theater could save her from financial ruin, but her overbearing lead, Reginald Thornton IV, is determined to antagonise every cast member. Nervous and with her Tourette’s syndrome flaring, Ellie is relieved when opening night seems to be going well. But then Reginald’s death scene at the end of the play turns out to be all too real.
\nThe state police write the death off as a heart attack, but several things don't add up and Ellie and her childhood friend, Bill Starlin, the local chief of police, begin investigating. When another person linked to the theater is attacked, they’re convinced a killer is on the loose.
\nAs Ellie and Bill reveal connections between cast members, they uncover dark secrets and must race to find the killer before it’s curtains for someone else.
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When Ben is recruited to locate an ancient manuscript which could save a dying child, he embarks on the deadliest quest of his life.
\nThe document is alleged to contain the formula for the elixir of life, discovered by the brilliant alchemist Fulcanelli decades before. But it soon becomes apparent that others are hunting this most precious of treasures - for far more evil ends.
\nWhen the secrets of alchemy hidden within the pages remain impenetrable, Ben teams up with beautiful American scientist Dr Roberta Ryder to crack the code.
\nIt seems that everyone - from the Nazis during WW2 and powerful Catholic organisation Gladius Domini - wants to unearth the secrets of immortality.
\nThe trail leads Ben and Roberta from Paris to the ancient Cathar strongholds of the Languedoc, where an astonishing secret has lain hidden for centuries . . .
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A sunken secret. A missing woman. A race against time. Former SAS major Ben Hope is relaxing at his home in Normandy when he hears the worst news of his life. His ex-girlfriend Dr Brooke Marcel has been kidnapped. Racing against the clock, Ben's frantic search for Brooke leads him from Ireland to the Spanish mountains and the rainforests of Peru.
\nWhat is the mysterious link between the kidnapping, the salvage of a sunken 16th-century Spanish warship and the secret activities of its wealthy discoverer? As the trail of wreckage and mayhem intensifies, Ben soon uncovers a web of intrigue, corruption and brutal murder. But will he be too late to find Brooke alive?
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When a sniper leaves Ben Hope’s friend fighting for his life, the former SAS major declares war on the men responsible. But what begins as a straightforward revenge mission gets complicated when a mysterious letter reveals Ben to be the real target.
\nAnd his isn’t the only name on a crazed killer’s list.
\nProfessor Anna Manzini has no idea she’s in grave danger from a man she’d thought dead. She’s on the cusp of a major discovery: the location of the lost Babylon idol, a golden statue of immeasurable value.
\nBut when word of Anna’s work reaches her enemies, it sets off a cat-and-mouse chase that will lead Ben and Anna halfway across Europe and into the heart of war-torn Syria.
\nTo reach the precious idol first, Ben must keep one step ahead of a powerful maniac. If he fails, it won’t just be Ben and Anna’s lives in danger, but the world.
\nWhile on a business trip to the UK, Ben Hope makes an impulse decision to attend a college reunion at his former university, Oxford. There he meets an old friend, Nick, now an internationally-renowned classical musician.
But storm clouds are soon once again brewing on Ben’s horizon. After Nick’s brutal murder in an apparent home invasion robbery, Ben is drawn into the mystery of a missing music manuscript that may be a lost work by the legendary composer Johann Sebastian Bach.
The hunt for his friend’s killers leads Ben across Europe, and into bloody conflict with even more dangerous people than he’d bargained for. As his quest unfolds, so does the shocking truth about the lost Bach manuscript, a secret dating back to the very darkest historical chapter of Man’s inhumanity to Man.
Does a reformed paedophile have a right to live?
\nThat's the controversial question many citizens of Oxfordshire are asking when a skilled, ruthless assassin starts targeting newly-released child sex offenders. Some want the 'paedo killer' locked up forever. Others think he's a hero. Either way, now it's DI Tom McAllister's job to catch the elusive murderer.
\nNot your ordinary police detective, Tom's a maverick outsider who always gets his man. But with the case spiralling out of control and the killer seemingly always one step ahead, he finds himself drawn into a deadly game of deception that threatens to destroy more than just his career. But the worst is yet to come, as the horrifying truth begins to emerge about the significance of the Cage . . .
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All Ben Hope wanted was a quiet drink in a peaceful Spanish bar. What he got instead was the kind of trouble that only a man like him can handle.
\nRaul Fuentes can’t accept that his sister, Catalina, took her own life. Ben isn’t convinced, but ghosts from his own past compel him to help Raul discover the truth.
\nWhat connects Catalina’s apparent suicide to the suspicious fate of three of her fellow scientists? And why do a gang of professional killers follow Ben and Raul wherever they go?
\nBen will soon discover the terrible truth, a fraudulent conspiracy to dupe all of humankind. And those responsible will soon find out they’ve met their match.
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It’s a snowy, peaceful Christmas at Le Val, the rural haven that is home to ex-SAS soldier Ben Hope and his associates. With most of the team away for the festive holiday, Ben, recovering from an accident, is one of the skeleton crew guarding the compound. That’s when a ruthless Corsican crime gang, knowing that Ben is injured and out of action, target the location for a violent raid.
\nWith help from his faithful canine companion, Storm, Ben thwarts the attack - but not before the raiders claim several victims among his best friends. Now he must embark on a personal revenge mission to catch the sole remaining killer, the psychopathic Petru Navarro.
\nBen’s quest takes him across France into the lawless gangland of Corsica, his only real lead a priceless historic gold cross that is now in Navarro’s hands. If Ben can find it, he’ll find his enemy. But taking down this murderous psycho is another matter . . .
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Kate, an attractive single parent, is in a desperate situation. Her young son Charlie suffers from a rare eye disease that will soon cause him to go blind unless he can receive the cutting-edge new treatment that's offered by just one private clinic in London. The cost is out of Kate's league and she needs to raise the cash - fast.
When her best friend suggests that she should find employment as a freelance female decoy, Kate initially rejects the idea. But realising what the potential earnings could mean for Charlie, she reluctantly goes to work, getting paid by female clients wanting to put the fidelity of their partners to the test. Business is good. It won't be long before Kate has the money she needs.
But after being hired by a wealthy new client to investigate a suspected cheating husband, Kate's world suddenly turns upside-down and she discovers too late that deception can have deadly consequences . . .
Life is good for ex-SAS soldier and rescue specialist Ben Hope. He’s found love, peace and happiness at last… That is, until a man he’s never seen before sits beside him on a plane, and makes him a proposal that turns his whole world upside down.
\nNow Ben must embark on a deadly mission to eliminate a former SAS comrade, the enigmatic, elusive and highly capable Jaden Wolf. If Ben fails, the people he cares about will die as punishment.
\nIn a high-speed chase across Europe, Ben gradually learns the terrifying and disturbing truth about the men who have ensnared him in their clutches. A dark Satanic cult exists within the halls of power, and the only way for Ben to save himself and his loved ones is to declare war on the forces of evil. But who will win?
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Ben Hope is trained to identify danger. So when he finds out that someone very important to him is working on a US container ship in the treacherous seas off the East African coast, he fears the worst. Within days the ship is hijacked by pirates. Taking matters into his own hands, Ben embarks upon the most daring rescue mission of his career . . . because this is no ordinary hostage situation.
\nThere is something on board the ship that’s more precious than life itself – and a bloodthirsty tyrant will kill to possess it. As events spiral out of control, Ben Hope’s skill and resourcefulness will be tested like never before. Ben would die to protect those close to him, but in a hostile environment, against ruthless warriors, even the ultimate sacrifice might not be enough . . .
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When ex-SAS operative Ben Hope decided to give up rescuing kidnap victims in favour of the Theology studies he abandoned years before, he should have known that fate would decide differently.
\nSearching for missing biblical archaeologist Zoë Bradbury, Ben finds himself embroiled in his riskiest mission yet. What is the ancient secret that Zoë uncovered? And just who is willing to do anything to protect it?
\nThe investigation leads Ben from Greece to the American Deep South and the holy city of Jerusalem, and he soon discovers that it's not just his and Zoë's lives on the line, but those of millions, threatened by a fundamentalist plot to gain ultimate power. The stakes are terrifyingly high as Ben races to prevent a disaster that could kick-start apocalyptic events as foretold by the Book of Revelation . . .
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A lost, aimless and hard-drinking Ben Hope has wandered back to his old haunt in Ireland. The ex-SAS soldier is searching for peace, but trouble soon appears when Kirsten Hall, a young journalist, is brutally murdered right in front of him. Unable to prevent it, Ben is driven by guilt to hunt down the killers. All he has to go on is a handful of clues from Kirsten’s research - but how can the journals of Lady Stamford, the wife of an English lord during the time of the Irish Great Famine, have put Kirsten in mortal danger?
\nBen’s quest for the truth leads him across the world and finally to Oklahoma, USA, where a deadly secret awaits. What connects the journals, a wealthy American politician and an intrigue surrounding the Irish famine?
\nWhat Ben uncovers is a shocking historical conspiracy linked to the deaths of some two million people: a veritable holocaust that time has all but forgotten. Those who are still profiting from the lies and corruption of the time, and who are ready to kill anyone to protect their secret, are about to pay . . .
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Has ex-SAS soldier Ben Hope finally got out of his depth?
\nThat’s the question Ben faces when the hunt for a missing girl takes him to China. He’s a stranger in a strange land - but he’s also the victim’s only hope. To make things worse, she’s almost family.
\nAs the pressure mounts, so does the gruesome death toll. With ruthless enemies in pursuit and an unlikely alliance with an enigmatic detective his only lifeline, Ben realises that this situation is far more explosive than even he’d bargained for. Suddenly it’s no longer just the missing girl’s fate depending on him.
\nAt the heart of the mystery lies an ancient secret dating back to China’s first emperor and the legendary Terracotta Army - a secret that people will still kill for, millennia later. Ben Hope has never turned his back on those in need, and he’s no stranger to tough odds. But can he survive long enough to discover the truth - and is he ready for the consequences?
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Mariani’s high-octane thrillers blending action, adventure, conspiracy and historical investigation have drawn a legion of readers.
\nTo his many thousands of fans, ex-SAS officer Ben Hope stands tall as a hero, a warrior, a protector of the innocent, a defender of those in need, relentless in his pursuit of those who exploit or do evil to others.
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An ancient fortune has lain hidden for thousands of years, one so powerful that men will kill to protect it. And only one man can unearth it . . .
\nEx-SAS operative Ben Hope is living a peaceful life in rural France - until a phone call from an old army comrade turns his world upside down. Eminent Egyptologist Morgan Paxton has been brutally murdered while working on the mysterious 'Akhenaten Project' in Cairo, and Colonel Harry Paxton wants Ben to find his son's killer.
\nBen is unable to refuse the request from the man who once saved his life - but when Harry asks him to avenge his son's death he's in dangerous territory. Made worse by the fact that he finds himself attracted to Zara Paxton, Harry's new bride.
\nCarving through the seedy Cairo underworld, Ben soon realises that there was more to Paxton's research than meets the eye as he is plunged into one double-cross after another. His mission leads him from Italy and Paris via the coast of Scotland to the banks of the Nile, climaxing in a tense showdown in the war-torn Sudanese desert.
\nAt the end of the trail lies the ultimate treasure, hidden away by three rebel High Priests during the reign of the 'Heretic' Pharoah Akhenaten - a collection so valuable that some will stop at nothing to possess it . . .
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Following a chance encounter with a terrified young woman in the streets of Paris, former SAS soldier Ben Hope finds himself hurled into a violent new mission involving murder, international terrorism and stolen historic artifacts.
\nA mission made even more perilous by the reappearance of an old enemy from Ben’s military past.
\nA man he knew and fought years ago. A man he thought was dead. Teaming up with the enigmatic ex-Delta Force warrior Tyler Roth, Ben travels from the seedy underworld of Paris to the islands of the Caribbean in his quest to piece together the puzzle. As the death toll quickly mounts, he unmasks a vicious terror plot that could bring about the slaughter of millions of innocent people.
\nMass destruction seems just a hair’s breadth away . . . and only Ben Hope can prevent the unthinkable.
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Whilst visiting a former SAS comrade in Italy, a distracted Ben nearly runs over a young boy - and unwittingly walks into his deadliest mission yet.
\nBen’s involvement with the boy’s family runs deeper as he witnesses their brutal murder at a gallery robbery. A seemingly worthless Goya sketch was the principal target in the bloodbath heist. Now it’s up to Ben to find out the truth behind the elusive painting.
\nWrongly accused of murder and forced to go on the run, he must get to the heart of the conspiracy while he still has the chance . . .
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Could Ben Hope have found peace at last?
\nThat’s the question he’s asking himself after his wanderings through Europe have led him to a remote medieval monastery in the French Alps. A haven of serenity, a place he wants to remain.
\nBut wherever Ben goes, trouble is never too far behind.
\nWhen a team of merciless killers invade his newfound sanctuary and slaughter the innocent monks, Ben’s revenge quest quickly draws him into a bewildering mystery of stolen treasure, deception and murder.
\nWhat is the truth behind the cache of gold bullion apparently hidden for centuries under the monastery? What is the significance of an ancient curse dating back to a cruel heretic burning in medieval times? What are the real ambitions of the enigmatic leader of an organisation of doomsday ‘preppers’ calling themselves Exercitus Paratorum: the Army of the Prepared?
\nAs he works to unravel the clues, Ben is confronted with a terrifying reality that threatens to devastate the world and reshape the whole of our future. The race is on to prevent the ultimate disaster, and there’s only one man who can do it.
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When twelve-year-old Valentina fails to return from a visit to her father in Moscow, alarm bells start ringing. Her rich and powerful family know there’s one man they can depend on to bring her back safe: former SAS major Ben Hope.
\nBut what starts off as an apparently straightforward case of parental child abduction quickly takes on more sinister dimensions as Ben travels to Moscow and starts to investigate the whereabouts of Valentina and her father, Yuri - a man with a hidden past not even his ex-wife knows about.
\nNow that past has caught up with him, it’s not only Yuri’s life that is in danger, but Valentina’s too. If Ben Hope can’t save them, nobody can.
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A centuries-old mystery. An accidental death. A conspiracy that may end in murder. Former British Special Air Service officer Ben Hope is running for his life. Enlisted by Leigh Llewellyn - the beautiful, world-famous opera star and Ben's first love - to investigate her brother, Oliver's mysterious death, Ben finds himself caught up in a puzzle dating back to the 1700s.
\nAt the time of his death, Oliver was working on a new book about Mozart. Though the official report states that Oliver died in a tragic accident, the facts don't add up. But as Ben and Leigh dig deeper, they find that Oliver's research reveals that Mozart, a notable Freemason, may have been killed by a shadowy and powerful splinter group of the organisation.
\nThe only proof lies in a missing letter, believed to have been written by Mozart himself. When Leigh and Ben receive a video documenting a ritual sacrifice performed by hooded men, they realise that the sect is still in existence today and will stop at nothing to keep its secrets.
\nFrom the dreaming spires of Oxford and Venice's labyrinthine canals to the majestic architecture of Vienna, Ben and Leigh must race across Europe to uncover the truth behind the Mozart conspiracy before they become its next victims.
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While secretly researching the bizarre discoveries of Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla many years earlier, physicist Claudine Pommier becomes the victim of a remorseless and cruel murderer who breaks into her Parisian apartment. Is he just a serial killer, or is there more to her death than the Paris cops believe?
\nMaverick American biologist Dr Roberta Ryder receives a mysterious letter from her friend Claudine and travels to Paris to see her, only to learn of her shocking death. Before she knows it, Roberta becomes the target of ruthless men with a deadly agenda that only the letter can unmask. She’s alone and vulnerable. But she knows someone - the only someone - who can help her.
\nBen Hope, ex-SAS soldier and Roberta’s old flame, now trying to retire to a life of peace with his fiancée Brooke, suddenly finds his life turned upside down by Roberta’s sudden arrival in England. She needs his help; he can’t turn her down. In a frantic race to Paris and halfway around the world, Ben and Roberta battle to uncover the mystery of Claudine’s research, with the killers just half a step behind. In the process they uncover a global conspiracy that will claim the lives of millions of people . . . unless Ben can stop it.
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When ex-SAS major Ben Hope is urgently recalled to the UK from his base in France to assist with a family crisis, little does he know that he’s about to be drawn into one of the most dangerous missions of his career: his son Jude has been accused of a brutal murder, and all the evidence points to his guilt.
\nTo prove Jude’s innocence Ben embarks on a wild chase, facing up against mysterious killers and piecing together a fragile web of clues. What connects an all-female criminal gang from the early 1900s called the Forty Elephants, a century-old vendetta and a shadowy government conspiracy that claimed millions of innocent lives?
\nAlong the way Ben teams up with his former acquaintance, rugged Detective Tom McAllister. They’re heading for a showdown in the wilds of Cornwall, and the villains have no intention of letting Ben come out of it alive . . .
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Retired army sergeant Boonzie McCulloch travels to the wintry Highlands of Scotland to help a relative in danger, but is soon deeper in it himself than he’d bargained for. Ruthless, controlling thugs are running amok across the region and will kill anybody to get their hands on a historic hoard of lost gold treasure.
\nBut the villains haven’t reckoned on what’s coming their way. Because when you mess with an old comrade of ex-SAS major Ben Hope, you’re bringing a whole world of trouble down on yourself. Once he gets started he won’t stop until he gets the job done. With Hope on the war path, the snowy Highland wilderness is about to warm up considerably . . .
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Even when ex-SAS major Ben Hope is taking a holiday, trouble seems to find him. What started as a relaxing trip to the Deep South spirals into a nightmare when he’s wrongly accused of a vicious murder and forced to go on the run.
\nTarget of a state-wide manhunt, the only way Ben can prove his innocence is to unearth a long-forgotten secret and track down the killers who slaughtered an innocent woman in a vendetta dating back generations. His quest takes him into the wild heart of Louisiana’s swampland, where all hell’s about to break loose. The bad guys will soon discover they made a big mistake . . .
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It’s Christmas, and on a trip back to the UK to try to sort out his stormy personal life, ex-SAS soldier Ben Hope runs into two old friends. Simeon and Michaela were once his fellow students at Oxford - now they are the Reverend and Mrs Arundel. Ben senses that Simeon is deeply troubled and frightened, but before the truth can emerge about his secretive research project concerning a mysterious, ancient ‘sacred sword’, both he and Michael are wiped out in a devastating road crash.
\nConvinced that his friends’ deaths were no accident, Ben is propelled on a global quest to unlock the enigma of the sacred sword. At every step, he is pursued by ruthless agents of the sinister organisation that will stop at nothing to acquire it. In the course of his investigations, Ben will discover an incredible secret, not just about the history of Christianity but about his own past.
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Only one man can foil a plot set to change the course of history . . . Ex-SAS soldier Ben Hope is enjoying life at Le Val, the facility in Northern France where he trains others in the dangerous art of hostage rescue, until a chance incident forces him to take on the role of bodyguard to the Swiss billionaire Maximilian Steiner.
\nThe victim of a recent abduction attempt, Steiner believes that a neo-Nazi terror group are bent on seizing a prized document from his personal collection - one that could support claims that the Holocaust never happened. But what initially seemed like a straightforward VIP protection job is turned upside-down by the appearance of a mystery woman from Ben's past. Could he be right about her, or is he losing his edge?
\nOn a quest across Europe, Ben finds himself embroiled in a deadly kidnap intrigue and a sinister project that has lain dormant since 1944. The stakes are global - and this time Ben is also fighting to protect the people closest to him . . .
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Under the fierce heat of the Australian outback, the laws of nature serve a rough justice. When a man vanishes deep in the Northern Territory, local police write it off. But his family suspect otherwise - and when the call for help goes out, Ben Hope and Jeff Decker are there to hear it.
\nBen’s instincts, honed by years of Special Forces missions, soon see the story told by a trail of bullet casings, rumours of a missing map and a lethal cocktail of greed, power and money.
\nThis savagely beautiful land holds a secret it won’t give up easily - and for Ben, discovering the truth will mean not only going up against a small army of hired guns and their twisted paymaster, but also surviving a place where the wilderness is as powerful as the weapons his enemies have trained on him.
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Where ex-SAS major Ben Hope goes, trouble always follows . . .
\nBen Hope is trained to identify danger. So when he finds out that someone very important to him is working on a US container ship in the treacherous seas off the East African coast, he fears the worst.
\nWithin days the ship is hijacked by pirates. Taking matters into his own hands, Ben embarks upon the most daring rescue mission of his career . . . because this is no ordinary hostage situation.
\nThere is something on board the ship that’s more precious than life itself - and a bloodthirsty tyrant will kill to possess it.
\nAs events spiral out of control, Ben Hope’s skill and resourcefulness will be tested like never before. Ben would die to protect those close to him, but in a hostile environment, against ruthless warriors, even the ultimate sacrifice might not be enough . . .
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Ben Hope is a magnet for trouble. Years since leaving the SAS, he can still feel when danger is stalking him. But stumbling across someone researching the Knights Templar seems like a problem for historians rather than his military skills.
\nIt’s only when a terrible twist of fate puts not just Ben but the people he loves in the firing line that he realises the battles of the past will soon wreak carnage in the present.
\nFaced with uncovering a mystery that strikes at the heart of Western civilisation, Ben might finally have unearthed the one secret that could take him down.
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It’s 2005: Ben Hope, recently retired from the military, is living in Ireland and using his SAS skills to find and rescue missing children.
\nBut when asked to take on the case of two boys who disappeared centuries ago, he walks away, little realising he’s lit a fuse that will not only destroy the life of someone he cares about, but also lead him on a journey that proves old secrets come with a very modern price.
\nBen must follow the trail across Europe, unravelling the mystery and dodging bullets as only he can. As the death toll ramps up, what is the connection between a murdered history professor, an English lord and a pretender to the Tudor throne - and can Ben find out the truth before the killers make him their next victim?
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People going missing in the remote wilds of India is not unusual. But when the son of a wealthy Delhi businessman is kidnapped just weeks after his brother fell victim to an alleged bandit attack in the mountains of Haryana, it raises eyebrows.
\nWith the local police doing close to nothing, there’s only one man for the job: ex-SAS major Ben Hope. But for Ben, this is no ordinary rescue case. Because this plea for help is coming from a special person from his past, who now has nobody else to turn to.
\nBen’s mission will take him into the heart of the arid Indian wilderness, pitting him against ruthless gangs and desperate men. But Ben is determined to save the day. Whatever it takes.
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When a devastating attack on billionaire Auguste Kaprisky leaves the old man clinging to life, a trail of bodies and no clues, his last surviving relative calls the only person she can trust to step up.
\nWith precious few leads, ex-SAS soldier Ben Hope must first switch from action hero to detective in order to unravel the mystery. His international quest soon attracts the attention of the faceless plotters, who swiftly make Ben their target.
\nAs Ben moves between Miami and the Bahamas, Rome to Berlin, his investigation seems only to bring him ever closer to death. And as he fights the odds, all questions lead back to one thing: the historic chess set, stolen by Auguste’s attackers, which once belonged to Napoleon.
\nWhat is the secret this chess set holds, and who are the all-powerful people who will seemingly stop at nothing to silence anyone who threatens to uncover their terrifying plan? Your move, Ben Hope . . .
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Every year since the Ashlords were gifted phoenix horses by their gods, they've raced them. First into battle, then on great hunts, and finally for the pure sport of seeing who rode the fastest. Centuries of blood and fire carved their competition into a more modern spectacle: The Races.
Over the course of a multi-day event, elite riders from clashing cultures vie to be crowned champion. But the modern version of the sport requires more than good riding. Competitors must be skilled at creating and controlling phoenix horses made of ash and alchemy, which are summoned back to life each sunrise with uniquely crafted powers to cover impossible distances and challenges before bursting into flames at sunset. But good alchemy only matters if a rider knows how to defend their phoenix horse at night. Murder is outlawed, but breaking bones and poisoning ashes? That's all legal and encouraged.
In this year's Races, eleven riders will compete, but three of them have more to lose than the rest - a champion's daughter, a scholarship entrant, and a revolutionary's son. Who will attain their own dream of glory? Or will they all flame out in defeat?
Three cultures clash in all out war--against each other and against the gods--in the second book of this fantasy duology that's sure to capture fans of The Hunger Games and An Ember in the Ashes.
The Races are over. War has begun.
Ashlord and Longhand armies battle for control of the Empire as Dividian rebels do their best to survive the crossfire. This is no longer a game. It's life or death.
Adrian, Pippa, and Imelda each came out of the Races with questions about their role in the ongoing feud. The deeper they dig, the clearer it is that the hatred between their peoples has an origin point: the gods.
Their secrets are long-buried, but one disgruntled deity is ready to unveil the truth. Every whisper leads back to the underworld. What are the gods hiding there? As the sands of the Empire shift, these heroes will do everything they can to aim their people at the true enemy. But is it already too late?
After taking control of House Brood, Ren and Theo dreamed of using their newfound influence to change the rest of Kathor, but now they find their efforts being countered by the other great houses, who have no interest in a world where they enjoy less power.
\nNo one understands that better than the Tin’Vori siblings. The return of their ancestral home was a decade in the making, but they’re eager to keep rising from the ashes. Nevelyn begins researching House Brood - and ends up face-to-face with an enemy that’s already slouching toward the gates of the city. The one enemy no one can a plague.
\nThe victims experience strange bruising, an unquenchable thirst, and a temporary disruption in magic. When doctors trace the illness to its source, they find another corpses placed in strategic locations around the city. As Ren leads the hunt for the culprits, she’ll find herself two steps behind a devious enemy whose sights are set on an unexpected the city’s magic.
\nSurvival will require every ounce of their skill, every bond old and new, or else the future Ren and Theo have worked to build will burn down with the rest of the world.
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When an airship's windmaster dies mid-flight, the crew and its passengers are swept out to sea by a violent storm. They crash on a desolate island, but they're not alone. A dragoness had been stashed in the hold. After escaping a damaged cage, it begins preying on the surviving travelers in the hopes of remaining free.
The stranded group's best chance of making it home alive is the young woman who smuggled the dragoness on board in the first place - and the mysterious teen boy who was led onto the ship in chains before takeoff. Both have secrets that could help them survive on the island . . . but those same secrets could deliver a death sentence if they ever make it home.
Ren Monroe has spent four years proving she’s one of the best wizards in her generation. But top marks at Balmerick University will mean nothing if she fails to get recruited into one of the major houses. Enter Theo Brood. If being rich were a sin, he’d already be halfway to hell. After a failed and disastrous party trick, fate has the two of them crossing paths at the public waxway portal the day before holidays - Theo’s punishment is to travel home with the scholarship kids. Which doesn’t sit well with any of them.
\nA fight breaks out. In the chaos, the portal spell malfunctions. All six students are snatched from the safety of the school’s campus and set down in the middle of nowhere. And one of them is dead on arrival.
\nIf anyone can get them through the punishing wilderness with limited magical reserves it’s Ren. She’s been in survival mode her entire life. But no magic could prepare her for the tangled secrets the rest of the group is harboring, or for what’s following them through the dark woods . . .
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Emmett Atwater thought Babel’s game sounded easy. Get points. Get paid. Go home. But it didn’t take long for him to learn that Babel’s competition was full of broken promises, none darker or more damaging than the last one.
Now Emmett and the rest of the Genesis survivors must rally and forge their own path through a new world. Their mission from Babel is simple: extract nyxia, the most valuable material in the universe, and play nice with the indigenous Adamite population.
But Emmett and the others quickly realise they are caught between two powerful forces - Babel and the Adamites - with clashing desires. Will the Genesis team make it out alive before it’s too late?
Desperate to return home to Earth and claim the reward Babel promised, Emmett and the Genesis team join forces with the Imago. Babel’s initial attack left their home city in ruins, but that was just part of the Imago’s plan. They knew one thing Babel didn’t. This world is coming to an end.
Eden’s two moons are on a collision course no one can prevent. After building eight secret launch stations, the Imago hoped to lure Babel down to their doomed planet as they left it behind. A perfect plan until the Genesis team’s escape route was destroyed.
Now the group must split up to survive the hostile terrain and reach another launch station. As both sides struggle for the upper hand, the fight leads inevitably back into space, where Emmett, his crewmates, and their new allies will fight one final battle for control of the Genesis ships. Win this time, and they’ll survive Babel’s twisted game once and for all. As the Imago world falls, this is the last chance to rise.
Emmett Atwater isn’t just leaving Detroit; he’s leaving Earth. Why the Babel Corporation recruited him is a mystery, but the number of zeroes on their contract has him boarding their lightship and hoping to return to Earth with enough money to take care of his family.
Forever.
Before long, Emmett discovers that he is one of ten recruits, all of whom have troubled pasts and are a long way from home. Now each recruit must earn the right to travel down to the planet of Eden - a planet that Babel has kept hidden - where they will mine a substance called Nyxia that has quietly become the most valuable material in the universe.
But Babel’s ship is full of secrets. And Emmett will face the ultimate choice: win the fortune at any cost, or find a way to fight that won’t forever compromise what it means to be human.
Ren Monroe is a wolf among lions. After infiltrating one of the greatest Houses in Kathor through her successful bond with Theo Brood, she finds Theo’s father is two steps ahead. He exiles Theo and isolates Ren, strategically working to break her unwelcome grasp on his son - and foiling Ren’s first step to enacting the revenge she’s been planning her whole life.
\nRen might have more resources than she’d ever imagined growing up, but she’ll still get nowhere without allies. Enter House Tin’Vori. Years ago, House Brood led an unprecedented raid to destroy a fellow House of Kathor. But a few siblings survived, and they haven’t forgotten the horrors waged against their family. Quietly, they’ve plotted their own revenge, waiting for the right moment to strike. And Ren Monroe might be their best chance.
\nLike fire, the Tin’Vori siblings are as dangerous as they are useful, both gifted in rare magics. Ren must decide how to unleash them against House Brood without hurting Theo in the process. Her feelings for Theo are growing past the boundaries of their bond, and Ren finds herself balanced on a knife’s edge, a breath away from immense power or utter ruin.
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On his way to New York to celebrate his impending literary success, Simon Burchwood is the prototypical American careerist: arrogant, egotistical, narcissistic. But a quick detour to Montgomery, Alabama to visit a childhood friend sends Simon on a bizarre journey, challenging his hopes and dreams of becoming a famous writer. The Meteoric Rise of Simon Burchwood is a character study that delves into the psyche of a man who desperately tries to redefine himself.
\nSimon is certain he is on the brink of literary stardom. Yet this brief sojourn in Montgomery challenges his haughty façade - and the “meteoric rise” that has continually eluded him. Expecting adulation from his childhood friends during his layover in Montgomery, he's instead met with indifference. Ready to finally leave his troubled past behind and move on to greater things, he invites his friend Jason - whose marriage is on the verge of divorce - to join him in New York. They quickly embark on a bizarre trip that is stranger than they could have ever imagined.
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Sammie & Budgie is a quirky, mystical tale of a self-doubting IT nerd and his young son, who possesses the gift of foresight. The boy's special ability propels his family on a road trip to visit his ailing grandfather, a prickly man who left an indelible stamp on the father and son. The three are connected through more than genetics, their lives intertwined through dreams, imagination, and longing. Simon works as a network administrator for a state government agency, a consolation after a promising career as a novelist flounders. He finds himself a single parent of two small children following the mysterious death of his adulterous wife.
\nFrom the ashes of his failed marriage emerges a tight-knit family of three: a creative, special needs son, a hyperactive, butt-kicking daughter, and the caring, sensitive father. But when his son's special ability reveals itself, Simon struggles to keep his little family together in the face of adversity and uncertainty. Sammie is a creative third-grader that draws adventures in his sketchbook with his imaginary friend, Budgie, a parakeet that protects him from the monsters inhabiting his dreams. Sammie is also a special needs child but is special in more ways than one. He can see the future. Sammie seemingly can predict events both mundane and catastrophic in equal measure. But when he envisions the suffering of his grandfather, the family embarks on a road trip to San Antonio with the nanny to visit the ailing patriarch.
\nSammie & Budgie is an illustrated novel brought to you from the quirky mind of writer and cartoonist Scott Semegran. The novel explores the bond between a caring father and his children, one affected by his own thorny relationship with his surly father, and the connection he has with his sweet son is thicker than blood, going to the place where dreams are conceived and realised.
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Recently divorced and his writing career in shambles, Simon Burchwood's life is a complete disaster. He reluctantly finds work as a computer support technician and resigns that his career as the next great American novelist will never come to fruition.
\nWhen he learns that his ex-wife abruptly moves to Dallas with his children, he embarks on a crazy road trip with a nerdy coworker and a hitchhiking punk rock girl and discovers the inspiration he desperately needs for his new literary masterpiece.
\nTake another trip with the one and only Simon Burchwood.
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This is the story of J. D. Wiswall, a sincere young man from a small town, who joins a state government agency in a data entry department comprised of quirky clerks. Quickly endearing himself to the diverse group in Unit 3, J. D. learns his coworkers have a pact to share the $10,000 prize if they win a cost-savings program for a suggestion that could save the government money, in turn helping them rise above their own personal struggles. A multimillion-dollar cost-savings suggestion is accidentally discovered by J. D.'s supervisor, the goof-off alcoholic Brent Baker.
\nThis lucrative discovery catches the attention of crotchety Governor Dwayne Bennett, a media-hungry demagogue, who turns the coworkers of Unit 3 into props for his selfish political reasons. The publicity surrounding the clerks piques the interest of a newspaper reporter, Esther Jean Stinson, whose investigative reporting threatens to reveal the governor's career-ending secret, as well as jeopardizes the prize that the clerks so desperately desire.
\nAlong with J. D. and Brent, the lives of the amiable coworkers in Unit 3 are revealed. There is Rita Jackson, the kind matriarch of her large brood, who spends her time outside of work caring for her five struggling children and thirteen wily grandchildren. Then there's Deborah Martinez, a single mother to a felonious son, who struggles to keep her head above her sinking financial woes. There's also Conchino Gonzalez, a quiescent giant of Mexican and Japanese descent, who street races at night to relieve worries about his ailing grandfather in Japan. Finally, J. D. has dreams bigger than his small hometown can provide, and Brent wants nothing more than to drop the bureaucratic routine to become a rock star with his bar band.
\nA few blocks away from the agency that houses Unit 3, Governor Bennett, a smarmy politician who whizzes around the Governor's Mansion on a gold-plated wheelchair, parades the unwitting clerks in front of the local media in an attempt to raise his sagging poll numbers. But reporter Esther Jean sees through the governor's bald-faced motives and uncovers secrets not meant to be revealed. Will her revelations keep Unit 3 from receiving their elusive prize?
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M. Savage - or Em, as she is called - has made a bewildering and ominous discovery. She and the other young people she was chosen to lead awoke in strange coffins with no memory of their names or their pasts. They faced an empty, unknown place of twisting tunnels and human bones. With only one another to depend on, they searched for answers and found the truth about their terrifying fate. Confronted by a monstrous enemy, they vowed never to surrender - and, by any means, to survive.
The planet Omeyocan may be the sanctuary Em and her comrades seek. But the planet for which they were created turns out not to be a pristine, virgin world. Vestiges of a lost civilization testify to a horrifying past that may yet repeat itself. And when a new enemy creeps from the jungle shadows, Em and her young refugees learn there’s nowhere left to run. They face a simple choice: fight or die.
In the midst of this desperate struggle, their unity is compromised from within - and a dangerous zealot devoted to a bloodthirsty god moves to usurp Em’s command, threatening to lead them all down a path to violent doom.
A teenage girl awakens to find herself trapped in a coffin. She has no idea who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Fighting her way free brings little relief - she discovers only a room lined with caskets and a handful of equally mystified survivors. Beyond their room lies a corridor filled with bones and dust, but no people . . . and no answers.
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She knows only one thing about herself - her name, M. Savage, which was engraved on the foot of her coffin - yet she finds herself in charge. She is not the biggest among them, or the boldest, but for some reason the others trust her. Now, if they're to have any chance, she must get them to trust one another.
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Whatever the truth is, she is determined to find it and confront it. If she has to lead, she will make sure they survive. Maybe there's a way out, a rational explanation, and a fighting chance against the dangers to come. Or maybe a reality they cannot comprehend lies just beyond the next turn.
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Pawns in a millennia-old struggle, the young people known only as the Birthday Children were genetically engineered to survive on the planet Omeyocan - but they were never meant to live there. They were made to be “overwritten,” their minds wiped and replaced by the consciousness of the monsters who created them.
Em changed all of that.
She unified her people and led a revolt against their creators. Em and her friends escaped an ancient ghost ship and fled to Omeyocan. They thought they would find an uninhabited paradise. Instead, they found the ruins of a massive city long since swallowed by the jungle. And they weren’t alone. The Birthday Children fought for survival against the elements, jungle wildlife, the “Grownups” who created them . . . and, as evil corrupted their numbers, even against themselves.
With these opponents finally defeated, Em and her people realised that more threats were coming, traveling from across the universe to lay claim to their planet. The Birthday Children have prepared as best they can against this alien armada. Now, as the first ships reach orbit around Omeyocan, the final battle for the planet begins.
On a remote island in Lake Superior, scientists struggle to solve the problem of xenotransplantation -- using animal tissue to replace failing human organs. Funded by the biotech firm Genada, Dr. Claus Rhumkorrf seeks to recreate the ancestor of all mammals.
By getting back to the root of our creation, Rhumkorrf hopes to create an animal with human internal organs. Rhumkorrf discovers the ancestor, but it is not the small, harmless creature he envisions. His genius gives birth to a fast-growing evil that nature eradicated 250 million years ago - an evil now on the loose, and very, very hungry.
Collected together for the first time, this omnibus brings new authors to the Alien universe. Across three epic novels, discover the origins of fan-favorite character PFC Jenette Vasquez and her family, fight extinction at the hands of Xenomorphs, and find the researchers of Pala Station courting disaster of . . . the Xenomorph kind.
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INFILTRATOR:
The official prequel to Aliens: Fire Team Elite from Cold Iron Studios.
Dr. Timothy Hoenikker arrives on Pala Station, a Weyland-Yutani facility. Lured there by the promise of alien artifacts, instead he finds a warped bureaucracy and staff of misfits testing the effects of Xenomorph bio-materials on living creatures. Unbeknownst to the personnel, however, there is an infiltrator among them whose actions could spell disaster.
\nAlso on staff is Victor Rawlings, a former marine who gathers together other veterans to prepare for the worst. As Pala Station receives a delivery of alien eggs, the experiments spin out of control, and only the former Colonial Marines stand between the humans and certain death.
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PHALANX:
Ataegina was an isolated world of medieval castles and rich cultures - vibrant until the demons rose and slaughtered ninety percent of the planet’s population. Swarms of lethal creatures with black husks, murderous claws, barbed tails and dreaded “tooth-tongues” rage across the land. Terrified survivors hide in ruined mountain keeps, where they eke out a meager existence. Skilled runners travel the treacherous paths between keeps, maintaining trade and sharing information. If caught, they die screaming.
Ahiliyah of Lemeth Hold is an exceptional runner, constantly risking her life for her people. When she and her closest companions discover a new weapon, it may offer the one last chance to end the demon plague. But to save humanity, the trio must fight their way to the tunnels of Black Smoke Mountain - the lair of the mythical Demon Mother.
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VASQUEZ:
Even before the doomed mission to Hadley's Hope, Jenette Vasquez had to fight to survive. Born to an immigrant family with a long military tradition she looked up to the stars, but life pulled her back down to Earth - first into a street gang, then prison. The Colonial Marines proved to be Vasquez's way out - a way that forced her to give up her twin children.
Raised by Jenette's sister Roseanna, those children - Leticia and Ramón - have been forced to discover their own ways to survive. Leticia by following her mother's path into the military, Ramón by embracing the corporate hierarchy of Weyland-Yutani. Their paths converge on an unnamed world, which some see as a potential utopia, while others would use it for highly secretive research.
\nRegardless of what humans might have planned for it, however, Xenomorphs will turn the planet into a living hell. Sarcastic, sexy, and action-packed, Vasquez brings generational heritage into the Alien universe in an explosive way.
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Homicide detective Bryan Clauser is losing his mind.
How else to explain the dreams he keeps having - dreams that mirror, with impossible accuracy, the gruesome serial murders taking place all over San Francisco? How else to explain the feelings these dreams provoke in him - not disgust, not horror, but excitement?
As Bryan and his longtime partner, Lawrence “Pookie” Chang, investigate the murders, they learn that things are even stranger than they at first seem. For the victims are all enemies of a seemingly ordinary young boy - a boy who is gripped by the same dreams that haunt Bryan. Meanwhile, a shadowy vigilante, seemingly armed with superhuman powers, is out there killing the killers. And Bryan and Pookie’s superiors - from the mayor on down - seem strangely eager to keep the detectives from discovering the truth.
Doubting his own sanity and stripped of his badge, Bryan begins to suspect that he’s stumbled into the crosshairs of a shadow war that has gripped his city for more than a century - a war waged by a race of killers living in San Francisco’s unknown, underground ruins, emerging at night to feed on those who will not be missed.
And as Bryan learns the truth about his own intimate connections to the killings, he discovers that those who matter most to him are in mortal danger . . . and that he may be the only man gifted - or cursed - with the power to do battle with the nocturnals.
A delirious and gripping story of fatherhood and masculinity, told through the reimagined destinies of Greek mythic figures Daedalus, Icarus, King Minos, and the Minotaur.
\nDaedalus of Crete is many things. The greatest architect in the world. The constructor of the Labyrinth that imprisoned the Minotaur. And the grieving father of Icarus - plunged into the sea as father and son flew from the grasp of the tyrannical King Minos.
\nNow that Daedalus is dead, he seeks to reunite with Icarus in the Underworld. Daedalus will confront any terror to see his son again - whether it be the vengeful spirit of Minos, the cunning Queen Persephone, or even the insatiable ghost of the Minotaur.
\nBut a shocking realisation follows in his wake. As Daedalus encounters the souls from his past, he begins to worry that his identity as a husband and father, mentor and friend was all a lie. And that the truth, stalking him in the labyrinth of his own heart, might be too monstrous for him to bear.
Regan loves, and is loved, though her school-friend situation has become complicated, of late.
When she suddenly finds herself thrust through a doorway that asks her to \"Be Sure\" before swallowing her whole, Regan must learn to live in a world filled with centaurs, kelpies, and other magical equines - a world that expects its human visitors to step up and be heroes.
But after embracing her time with the herd, Regan discovers that not all forms of heroism are equal, and not all quests are as they seem…
Nadya had three mothers: the one who bore her, the country that poisoned her, and the one who adopted her.
\nNadya never considered herself less than whole, not until her adoptive parents fitted her with a prosthetic arm against her will, seeking to replace the one she'd been missing from birth.
\nIt was cumbersome; it was uncomfortable; it was wrong.
\nIt wasn't her.
\nFrustrated and unable to express why, Nadya began to wander, until the day she fell through a door into Belyrreka, the Land Beneath the Lake - and found herself in a world of water, filled with child-eating amphibians, majestic giant turtles, and impossible ships that sailed as happily beneath the surface as on top. In Belyyreka, she found herself understood for who she was: a Drowned Girl, who had made her way to her real home, accepted by the river and its people.
\nBut even in Belyyreka, there are dangers, and trials, and Nadya would soon find herself fighting to keep hold of everything she had come to treasure.
Mary Dunlavy didn't intend to become a professional babysitter. Of course, she didn't intend to die, either, or to become a crossroads ghost. As a babysitting ghost, she's been caring for the Price family for four generations, and she's planning to keep doing the job for the better part of forever.
\nWith her first charge finally back from her decades-long cross-dimensional field trip, with a long-lost husband and adopted daughter in tow, it's time for Mary to oversee the world's most chaotic family reunion. And that's before the Covenant of St. George launches a full scale strike against the cryptids of Manhattan, followed quickly by an attack on the Campbell Family Carnival.
\nIt's going to take every advantage and every ally they have for the Prices to survive what's coming - and for Mary, to avoid finding out the answer to a question she's never wanted to know: what happens to a babysitting ghost if she loses the people she's promised to protect?
Everyone in the Bay Area knows about Blind Michael, the unseen, dangerous figure whose Hunt sweeps the Berkeley hills on full moon nights. He's a familiar hazard of life in the Kingdom of the Mists, and most people don't waste time worrying about him.
\nOctober \"Toby\" Daye certainly doesn't. She has better things to worry about, like paying the electrical bill on time. So it's understandable that she'd be upset when Blind Michael suddenly starts taking an interest in people that matter to her, like the youngest children of Mitch and Stacy Brown.
\nTasked to find the missing children, and with the stakes growing higher by the minute, Toby has few choices and fewer allies to help her through the dangers yet to come. With the Luidaeg's help and a candle to light her way home, there's a chance that she'll come through this latest danger . . . but the sudden appearance of her Fetch doesn't give Toby all that much in the way of hope . . .
It’s been almost a year since October “Toby” Daye averted a war, gave up a county, and suffered personal losses that have left her wishing for a good day’s sleep. She’s tried to focus on her responsibilities - training Quentin, upholding her position as Sylvester’s knight, and paying the bills - but she can’t help feeling like her world is crumbling around her, and her increasingly reckless behavior is beginning to worry even her staunchest supporters.
To make matters worse, Toby’s just been asked to find another missing child . . . only this time it’s the changeling daughter of her fellow knight, Etienne, who didn’t even know he was a father until the girl went missing. Her name is Chelsea. She’s a teleporter, like her father. She’s also the kind of changeling the old stories warn about, the ones with all the strength and none of the control. She’s opening doors that were never meant to be opened, releasing dangers that were sealed away centuries before - and there’s a good chance she could destroy Faerie if she isn’t stopped.
Now Toby must find Chelsea before time runs out, racing against an unknown deadline and through unknown worlds as she and her allies try to avert disaster. But danger is also stirring in the Court of Cats, and Tybalt may need Toby’s help with the biggest challenge he’s ever faced.
Toby thought the last year was bad. She has no idea.
Alice Price-Healy gave up her life for fifty years to focus completely on the search for her missing husband. The danger of focus like that is that it leaves little room for thinking about what happens after...and now that she's finally managed to find Thomas, she has no idea what she's supposed to do next. The fact that he comes with a surrogate daughter who may or may not have some connection to Alice's recently adopted grandson is just icing on the complicated cake.
\nSo the three of them are heading for the most complicated place in the universe: they're going home.
\nBut things on Earth have changed while Alice, Thomas, and Sally have been away. The Covenant of St. George, antagonised by Verity's declaration of war and Sarah's temporary relocation of an entire college campus, is trying to retake North America from the cryptids and cryptozoologists who've been keeping the peace for the past hundred years. And they're starting in New York.
\nAlice and company have barely been back for an hour before the Ocean Lady and the Queen of the Routewitches are sending them to New York to help, and they find themselves embroiled in the politics of dragons, kidnappings, and of course, the most dangerous people of all: family.
\nGetting \"back to normal\" may be the hardest task Alice has undertaken yet.
October Daye is finally something she never expected to be: married. All the trials and turmoils and terrors of a hero’s life have done very little to prepare her for the expectation that she will actually share her life with someone else, the good parts and the bad ones alike, not just allow them to dabble around the edges in the things she wants to share. But with an official break from hero duties from the Queen in the Mists, and her family wholly on board with this new version of “normal,” she’s doing her best to adjust.
\nIt isn’t always easy, but she’s a hero, right? She’s done harder.
\nUntil an old friend and ally turns out to have been an enemy in disguise for this entire time, and October’s brief respite turns into a battle for her life, her community, and everything she has ever believed to be true.
\nThe debts of the Broken Ride are coming due, and whether she incurred them or not, she’s going to be the one who has to pay.
When Rini lands with a literal splash in the pond behind Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, the last thing she expects to find is that her mother, Sumi, died years before Rini was even conceived. But Rini can’t let Reality get in the way of her quest - not when she has an entire world to save! (Much more common than one would suppose.)
\nIf she can't find a way to restore her mother, Rini will have more than a world to save: she will never have been born in the first place. And in a world without magic, she doesn’t have long before Reality notices her existence and washes her away.
\nGood thing the student body is well-acquainted with quests . . . A tale of friendship, baking, and derring-do. Warning: May contain nuts.
Sarah Zellaby is a Johrlac, a member of a species of psychic ambush predators colloquially referred to as “cuckoos.” Eight years ago, she survived the difficult, painful process of becoming a cuckoo queen . . . although not without costs. In the wake of her transformation, the man she loved was entirely erased from his own mind, forcing her to reconstruct him from the memories of the people who knew and loved him.
\nSarah has been struggling to come to terms with her actions ever since. But there's no one else on the planet with the power to hold her accountable - until the Johrlac authorities show up. It’s time for her to stand trial for what she's done, something which can only happen on Johrlar, home world of her species, where the population is controlled by a system of unyielding hiveminds and crime is punishable by erasure.
\nWith Sarah’s life on the line, her family will need to find a way to cross dimensional borders and survive a hostile, telepathic world in order to get her back - before the Sarah they know ceases to exist.
\nBut no matter what happens, actions have consequences . . . and Sarah Zellaby is about to learn that lesson the hard way.
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Just when Sarah Zellaby, adopted Price cousin and telepathic ambush predator, thought that things couldn’t get worse, she’s had to go and prove herself wrong. After being kidnapped and manipulated by her birth family, she has undergone a transformation called an instar, reaching back to her Apocritic origins to metamorphise. While externally the same, she is internally much more powerful, and much more difficult to control.
Even by herself. After years of denial, the fact that she will always be a cuckoo has become impossible to deny.
Now stranded in another dimension with a handful of allies who seem to have no idea who she is - including her cousin Annie and her maybe-boyfriend Artie, both of whom have forgotten their relationship - and a bunch of cuckoos with good reason to want her dead, Sarah must figure out not only how to contend with her situation, but with the new realities of her future. What is she now? Who is she now? Is that person someone she can live with?
And when all is said and done, will she be able to get the people she loves, whether or not they’ve forgotten her, safely home?
Verity Price is back on the West Coast and getting back into the swing of the family business: cryptozoology. She's rescuing cryptids from bad situations, protecting them from monster-hunters, and generally risking life and limb for the greater good, with her ex-Covenant partner/husband, Dominic, by her side. Her ballroom dance career is behind her . . . or so she thinks.
When Verity gets the call from the producers of Dance or Die, the reality show she almost won several years before, she finds the lure of a comeback impossible to resist, and she and Dominic are off to L.A. for one last shot at the big time.
Of course, nothing is that simple. When two of her fellow contestants turn up dead, Verity will need every ally she can find—and a couple she wasn't looking for—in order to navigate the complicated steps of both the tango and a murder investigation without blowing her cover. It doesn't help that her official family backup is her grandmother, Alice . . .
Things are starting to look up for October \"Toby\" Daye. She's training her squire, doing her job, and has finally allowed herself to grow closer to the local King of Cats. It seems like her life may finally be settling down . . . at least until dead changelings start appearing in the alleys of San Francisco, killed by an overdose of goblin fruit.
Toby's efforts to take the problem to the Queen of the Mists are met with harsh reprisals, leaving her under sentence of exile from her home and everyone she loves. Now Toby must find a way to reverse the Queens decree, get the goblin fruit off the streets - and, oh, yes, save her own life, since more than a few of her problems have once again followed her home. And then there's the question of the Queen herself, who seems increasingly unlikely to have a valid claim to the throne . . .
To find the answers, October and her friends will have to travel from the legendary Library of Stars into the hidden depths of the Kingdom of the Mists - and they'll have to do it fast, because time is running out. In faerie, some fates are worse than death.
October Daye is about to find out what they are.
When Jack left Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children she was carrying the body of her deliciously deranged sister - whom she had recently murdered in a fit of righteous justice - back to their home on the Moors.
But death in their adopted world isn't always as permanent as it is here, and when Jack is herself carried back into the school, it becomes clear that something has happened to her. Something terrible. Something of which only the maddest of scientists could conceive. Something only her friends are equipped to help her overcome.
Eleanor West's \"No Quests\" rule is about to be broken.
Ghoulies. Ghosties. Long-legged beasties. Things that go bump in the night . . . and that’s just the beginning. The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity - and to protect humanity from them. Enter Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she’d rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan while she pursues her career in professional ballroom dance.
\nSounds pretty simple, right? It would be, if it weren’t for the talking mice, the telepathic mathematicians, the asbestos supermodels, and the trained monster-hunter sent by the Price family’s old enemies, the Covenant of St. George. To complicate matters further, local cryptids are disappearing, strange lizard-men are appearing in the sewers, and someone’s spreading rumors about a dragon sleeping underneath the city . . .
\nA lifetime of training wasn’t enough to prepare Verity for what’s ahead - especially not Dominic De Luca, the Covenant’s newest operative. When a Price girl meets a Covenant boy, high stakes, high heels, and a lot of collateral damage are almost guaranteed.
Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they found their way home and were packed off to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.
This is the story of what happened first . . .
Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter - polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it’s because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline.
Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter - adventurous, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you've got.
They were five when they learned that grown-ups can’t be trusted.
They were twelve when they walked down the impossible staircase and discovered that the pretense of love can never be enough to prepare you a life filled with magic in a land filled with mad scientists and death and choices.
Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere . . . else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children. Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced . . . they change a person.
\nThe children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world. But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter. No matter the cost.
When Alex Price agreed to go to Ohio to oversee a basilisk breeding program and assist in the recovery of his psychic cousin, he didn't expect people to start dropping dead. But bodies are cropping up at the zoo where he works, and his girlfriend - Shelby Tanner, an Australian zoologist with a fondness for big cats - is starting to get suspicious.
Worse yet, the bodies have all been turned partially to stone . . .
The third book in the InCryptid series takes us to a new location and a new member of the family, as Alex tries to balance life, work, and the strong desire not to become a piece of garden statuary. Old friends and new are on the scene, and danger lurks around every corner.
Of course, so do the talking mice.
Sarah Zellaby has always been in an interesting position. Adopted into the Price family at a young age, she’s never been able to escape the biological reality of her origins: she’s a cuckoo, a telepathic ambush predator closer akin to a parasitic wasp than a human being. Friend, cousin, mathematician; it’s never been enough to dispel the fear that one day, nature will win out over nurture, and everything will change.
Maybe that time has finally come.
After spending the last several years recuperating in Ohio with her adoptive parents, Sarah is ready to return to the world - and most importantly, to her cousin Artie, with whom she has been head-over-heels in love since childhood. But there are cuckoos everywhere, and when the question of her own survival is weighed against the survival of her family, Sarah’s choices all add up to one inescapable conclusion.
This is war. Cuckoo vs. Price, human vs. cryptid . . . and not all of them are going to walk away.
This fourth entry and prequel tells the story of Lundy, a very serious young girl who would rather study and dream than become a respectable housewife and live up to the expectations of the world around her. As well she should.
When she finds a doorway to a world founded on logic and reason, riddles and lies, she thinks she's found her paradise. Alas, everything costs at the goblin market, and when her time there is drawing to a close, she makes the kind of bargain that never plays out well.
More than a century has passed since Asphodel Baker refined the process allowing her to imbue alchemically created life with power in a way no one else had ever been able to achieve. More than a century since she built the Impossible City on the ruins of Olympus, forging it from nothing more than imagination and spite, and penned it in plain view, enabling it to be read and cherished and believed by children the world over.
\nAnd now, so long after her exit from the world, the descendants of her dark alchemy - who exist in a reality that inches ever closer to the hellscape of her imagination - step into a place of birth, of discovery, of horror, to make amends for the sins of the past.
\nCan the gods of today defeat the evils of their maker, or will the legacy of the most powerful alchemist the world has ever known prove to be their undoing?
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For one bright, shining moment, Tybalt, King of Cats, had everything he had ever wanted. He was soon to set his crown aside; he had married the woman he loved; he was going to be a father. After centuries of searching for a family of his own, he had finally found a way to construct the life of his dreams, and was looking forward to a period of peace - or at least as much peace as is ever in the offing for the husband of a hero.
\nAlas for Tybalt and his domestic aspirations, fate - and Titania - had other ideas. His perfect world had been complete for only a moment when it was ripped away, to be replaced by hers. Titania, Faerie’s Summer Queen, Mother of Illusions and enemy of so many he holds dear, has seized control of the Kingdom, remaking it in her own image. An image which does not include meddlesome shapeshifters getting in her way. Tybalt quickly finds himself banished from her reality, along with the Undersea and the rest of the Court of Cats.
\nTo protect his people and his future, Tybalt must find the woman he loves in a world designed to keep her from him, convince her that he’s not a stranger trying to ruin her life for no apparent reason, and get her to unmake the illusion she’s been firmly enmeshed in. And he’ll have to do it all while she doesn’t know him, and every unrecognising look is a knife to his heart.
\nFor Tybalt, King of Cats, the happily ever after was just the beginning.
After four generations of caring for the Price family, Mary Dunlavy has more than earned a break from the ongoing war with the Covenant of St. George. Instead, what she's getting is a new employer in the form of the anima mundi, Earth's living soul made manifest, and a new assignment: to hunt down the Covenant agents on the East Coast and make them stop imprisoning America's ghosts.
\nAll in a day's work for a phantom nanny, even one who'd really rather be teaching her youngest charges how to read.
\nOne ghost can't take on the entire Covenant without backup, which is how she winds up on a road trip with the still-mourning Elsie and the slowly collapsing Arthur, both of whom are reeling in their own way from the loss of their mother. New allies and new enemies await in Worcester, Massachusetts, where the path of the haunting leads.
\nWith the anima mundi demanding results and Mary's newfound freedom at stake, it's down to Mary to make sure that everyone gets out of this adventure alive.
\nIt's been a long afterlife, but Mary Dunlavy's not ready to be exorcised quite yet.
When October is informed that Simon Torquill - legally her father, due to Faerie's archaic marriage traditions - must be invited to her wedding or risk the ceremony throwing the Kingdom in the Mists into political turmoil, she finds herself setting out on a quest she was not yet prepared to undertake for the sake of her future . . . and the man who represents her family's past.
With Blind Michael and his Hunt safely behind her, October \"Toby\" Daye is doing her best to settle back into a normal routine - or as normal of a routine as she can manage, with her personal Fetch now paying half the rent. Still, things seem to be mostly under control . . . until the events of a single night send everything reeling. Now, with the Queen of the Mists watching her back and the Lady of the Tea Gardens deathly ill, Toby has no choice but to get involved, no matter how much she wants to avoid it.
\nThe trials ahead will be some of the worst faced by Toby and her strange band of allies, and not even Tybalt will be able to escape totally unscathed. What's worse, the Luidaeg is unavailable to help them. This time, they're on their own. And people keep making Toby wear dresses, which is just adding insult to dangerous injury . . .
Toby Daye - a half-human, half-fae changeling - has been an outsider from birth. After getting burned by both sides of her heritage, Toby has denied the fae world, retreating to a \"normal\" life. Unfortunately for her, the Faerie world had other ideas . . .
\nNow her liege, the Duke of the Shadowed Hills, has asked Toby to go to the Country of Tamed Lightening to make sure all is well with his niece, Countess January O'Leary. It seems like a simple enough assignment-until Toby discovers that someone has begun murdering people close to January, and that if the killer isn't stopped, January may be the next victim.
Welcome to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go.
\nIf you ever lost a sock, you’ll find it here.
\nIf you ever wondered about favorite toy from childhood . . . it’s probably sitting on a shelf in the back.
\nAnd the headphones that you swore that this time you’d keep safe? You guessed it . . .
\nAntoinette has lost her father. Metaphorically. He’s not in the shop, and she’ll never see him again. But when Antsy finds herself lost (literally, this time), she finds that however many doors open for her, leaving the Shop for good might not be as simple as it sounds.
\nAnd stepping through those doors exacts a price.
\nLost in the Moment and Found tells us that childhood and innocence, once lost, can never be found.
As the youngest of the three Price children, Antimony is used to people not expecting much from her. She’s been happy playing roller derby and hanging out with her cousins, leaving the globe-trotting to her older siblings while she stays at home and tries to decide what she wants to do with her life. She always knew that one day, things would have to change. She didn’t think they’d change so fast.
Annie’s expectations keep getting shattered. She didn’t expect Verity to declare war on the Covenant of St. George on live television. She didn’t expect the Covenant to take her sister’s threat seriously. And she definitely didn’t expect to be packed off to London to infiltrate the Covenant from the inside . . . but as the only Price in her generation without a strong resemblance to the rest of the family, she’s the perfect choice to play spy. They need to know what’s coming. Their lives may depend on it.
But Annie has some secrets of her own, like the fact that she’s started setting things on fire when she touches them, and has no idea how to control it. Now she’s headed halfway around the world, into the den of the enemy, where blowing her cover could get her killed. She’s pretty sure things can’t get much worse.
Antimony Price is about to learn just how wrong it’s possible for one cryptozoologist to be.
Verity Price is doing okay. She's still working at the strip club, now re-imagined as a burlesque review, and she's managing to get through most of her days without getting blood on her uniform. The cryptid community of New York has accepted her, finally, despite her terrible taste in men - Dominic De Luca is still around, and their on-again, off-again relationship isn't the smartest thing she's ever agreed to.
\nStill, things could be a lot worse, and Verity knows it. She's been waiting for the other shoe to drop for a long time, as has her cousin and close friend, Sarah Zellaby, who just wants to get through Verity's journeyman years in one piece.
\nAs it turns out, that may be a little too much to ask.
Antsy is the latest student to pass through the doors at Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children.
\nWhen her fellow students realise that Antsy's talent for finding absolutely anything may extend to doors, she's forced to flee in the company of a small group of friends, looking for a way back to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go to be sure that Vineta and Hudson are keeping their promise.
\nAlong the way, temptations are dangled, decisions are reinforced, and a departure to a world populated by dinosaurs brings untold dangers and one or two other surprises.
\nA story that reminds us that finding what you want doesn't always mean finding what you need.
Politics have never been October “Toby” Daye’s strong suit. When she traveled to the Kingdom of Silences to prevent them from going to war with her home, the Kingdom of the Mists, she wasn’t expecting to return with a cure for elf-shot and a whole new set of political headaches.
Now the events she unwittingly set in motion could change the balance of modern Faerie forever, and she has been ordered to appear before a historic convocation of monarchs, hosted by Queen Windermere in the Mists and overseen by the High King and Queen themselves.
Naturally, things have barely gotten underway when the first dead body shows up. As the only changeling in attendance, Toby is already the target of suspicion and hostility. Now she needs to find a killer before they can strike again - and with the doors locked to keep the guilty from escaping, no one is safe.
As danger draws ever closer to her allies and the people she loves best, Toby will have to race against time to prevent the total political destabilisation of the West Coast and to get the convocation back on track . . . and if she fails, the cure for elf-shot may be buried forever, along with the victims she was too slow to save.
Because there are worse fates than sleeping for a hundred years.
October \"Toby\" Daye is settling into her new role as Countess of Goldengreen. She's actually dating again, and she's taken on Quentin as her squire. So, of course, it's time for things to take a turn for the worse.
\nSomeone has kidnapped the sons of the regent of the Undersea Duchy of Saltmist. To prevent a war between land and sea, Toby must find the missing boys and prove the Queen of the Mists was not behind their abduction. Toby's search will take her from the streets of San Francisco to the lands beneath the waves, and her deadline is firm: she must find the boys in three days' time, or all of the Mists will pay the price. But someone is determined to stop her-and whoever it is isn't playing by Oberon's Laws...
Alexander Price has survived gorgons, basilisks, and his own family - no small feat, considering that his family includes two telepaths, a reanimated corpse, and a colony of talking, pantheistic mice. Still, he’s starting to feel like he’s got the hang of things . . . at least until his girlfriend, Shelby Tanner, shows up asking pointed questions about werewolves and the state of his passport. From there, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to Australia, a continent filled with new challenges, new dangers, and yes, rival cryptozoologists who don’t like their “visiting expert” very much.
Australia is a cryptozoologist’s dream, filled with unique species and unique challenges. Unfortunately, it’s also filled with Shelby’s family, who aren’t delighted by the length of her stay in America. And then there are the werewolves to consider: infected killing machines who would like nothing more than to claim the continent as their own. The continent which currently includes Alex.
Survival is hard enough when you’re on familiar ground. Alex Price is very far from home, but there’s one thing he knows for sure: he’s not going down without a fight.
Things are looking up.
For the first time in what feels like years, October “Toby” Daye has been able to pause long enough to take a breath and look at her life - and she likes what she sees. She has friends. She has allies. She has a squire to train and a King of Cats to love, and maybe, just maybe, she can let her guard down for a change.
Or not. When Queen Windermere’s seneschal is elf-shot and thrown into an enchanted sleep by agents from the neighboring Kingdom of Silences, Toby finds herself in a role she never expected to play: that of a diplomat. She must travel to Portland, Oregon, to convince King Rhys of Silences not to go to war against the Mists. But nothing is that simple, and what October finds in Silences is worse than she would ever have imagined.
How far will Toby go when lives are on the line, and when allies both old and new are threatened by a force she had never expected to face again? How much is October willing to give up, and how much is she willing to change? In Faerie, what’s past is never really gone.
It’s just waiting for an opportunity to pounce.
October \"Toby\" Day is a former street kid and half-breed Daoine Sidhe who's practically made a career out of running away from things. She was raised in the Summerlands, last of the true fae realms, only to flee to the mortal world when she was a teenager, looking for a life she could call her own. For a while, it looked like she might even succeed. She found a place in the service of a local Duke, earned her position as a knight errant, fell in love, and thought the running was over.
She was wrong.
All too soon, all she wanted was the opportunity to run away from everything and fade into obscurity. Unfortunately for Toby, life is rarely simple for changelings, and her own talent for complicating things makes it impossible for her to disappear into the shadows. It probably doesn't help that she attracts trouble the way that candles attract moths, or that she's somehow managed to catch the eye of some of the most powerful people in the Kingdom of the Mists...
Seasonal Fears is the companion novel to Middlegame.
\nMelanie has a destiny, though it isn't the one everyone assumes it to be. She's delicate; she's fragile; she's dying. Now, truly, is the winter of her soul.
\nHarry doesn't want to believe in destiny, because that means accepting the loss of the one person who gives his life meaning, who brings summer to his world.
\nSo, when a new road is laid out in front of them - a road that will lead through untold dangers toward a possible lifetime together - walking down it seems to be the only option.
\nBut others are following behind, with violence in their hearts. It looks like Destiny has a plan for them, after all . . .
Something is rotten in Faerie. In the aftermath of Titania's reality-warping enchantment, things are returning to what passes for normal in the Kingdom in the Mists - until it's discovered that the royal vaults have been looted, and several powerful magical artifacts are missing. None are things that can be safely left unsecured, and some have the potential to do almost as much damage as Titania did, and having them in the wrong hands could prove just as disastrous.
\nAt least the theft means that Sir October “Toby” Daye, Knight errant and Hero of the Realm, finally has an excuse to get out of the house. Sure, she's eight and a half months pregnant, but that doesn't mean she can’t take care of herself. But with the sea witch offering to stand godmother to Toby's child, maybe there are greater dangers ahead for Toby and her family than it appears . . .
\nOld enemies will resurface, new enemies will disguise themselves as friends, and Queen Windermere must try to keep her Hero on the case without getting herself gutted by the increasingly irritated local King of Cats. Sometimes, what's been lost can be the most dangerous threat of all.
\n
October is very happy with her life as the second daughter of her pureblood parents, Amandine and Simon Torquill. Born to be the changeling handmaid to her beloved sister August, she spends her days working in her family’s tower, serving as August’s companion, and waiting for the day when her sister sets up a household of her own. Everything is right in October’s Faerie. Everything is perfect.
\nEverything is a lie.
\nOctober has been pulled from her own reality and thrown into a twisted reinterpretation of Faerie where nothing is as it should be and everything has been distorted to support Titania’s ideals. Bound by the Summer Queen’s magic and thrust into a world turned upside down, October has no way of knowing who she can trust, where she can turn, or even who she really is. As strangers who claim to know her begin to appear and the edges of Titania’s paradise begin to unravel, Toby will have to decide whether she can risk everything she knows based on only their stories of another world.
\nBut first she’ll have to survive this one, as Titania demonstrates why she needed to be banished in the first place - and this time, much more than Toby’s own life is at stake.
For Alice Price-Healy, finding her missing husband isn't just a mission: it's an obsession, the thing she has willingly given up every other aspect of her life to pursue. And after more than fifty years, she finally has confirmation that he might be alive out there. She may even have a direction. Now, if she can just keep herself from getting killed before she reaches her destination, she might be able to finish her seemingly endless quest.
\nAll she wants is a happy ending. That's the only thing the universe has never wanted her to have.
\nFifty years of running through dimensions without a lot of concern for making friends has left her with more enemies than allies, but she's still got a few places to turn, including Naga, the professor of extra-dimensional studies and giant snake-man she met when she was seven, Helen and Phoebe, the Ithacan satyrs, and Cynthia, the owner of the Red Angel Tavern.
\nWhere she can't turn is to her family, back on Earth and tired of her dimension-hopping obsession. They wrote her off as unreliable long ago, and are unlikely to join what looks like one more wild goose chase.
\nBut is it? Or is this the time Alice finally brings Thomas home to stay?
Antimony Price has never done well without a support system. As the youngest of her generation, she has always been able to depend on her parents, siblings, and cousins to help her out when she’s in a pinch - until now. After fleeing from the Covenant of St. George, she’s found herself in debt to the crossroads and running for her life. No family. No mice. No way out.
Lucky for her, she’s always been resourceful, and she’s been gathering allies as she travels: Sam, fūri trapeze artist turned boyfriend; Cylia, jink roller derby captain and designated driver; Fern, sylph friend, confidant, and maker of breakfasts; even Mary, ghost babysitter to the Price family. Annie’s actually starting to feel like they might be able to figure things out—which is probably why things start going wrong again.
New Gravesend, Maine is a nice place to raise a family . . . or make a binding contract with the crossroads. For James Smith, whose best friend disappeared when she tried to do precisely that, it’s also an excellent place to plot revenge. Now the crossroads want him dead and they want Annie to do the dirty deed. She owes them, after all.
And that’s before Leonard Cunningham, aka, “the next leader of the Covenant,” shows up . . .
It’s going to take everything Annie has and a little bit more to get out of this one. If she succeeds, she gets to go home. If she fails, she becomes one more cautionary tale about the dangers of bargaining with the crossroads.
But no pressure.
After Nancy was cast out of the Halls of the Dead and forced to enroll at Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children, she never believed she'd find her door again, and when she did, she didn't look back. She disappeared from the school to resume her place in the Halls, never intending to return.
\nYears have passed. A darkness has descended on the Halls, and the living statues who populate them are dying at the hands of the already dead. The Lord and Lady who rule the land are helpless to stop the slaughter, forcing Nancy to leave the Halls again, this time on purpose, as she attempts to seek much-needed help from her former schoolmates.
\nBut who would volunteer to quest in a world where the dead roam freely?
\nAnd why are the dead so intent on adding to their number?
All across the world, people look up at the moon and dream of gods. Gods of knowledge and wisdom, gods of tides and longevity. Over time, some of these moon gods incarnated into the human world alongside the other manifest natural concepts. Their job is to cross the sky above the Impossible City - the heart of all creation - to keep it connected to reality.
\nAnd someone is killing them.
\nThere are so many of them that it's easy for a few disappearances to slip through the cracks. But they aren't limitless.
\nIn the name of the moon, the lunar divinities must uncover the roots of the plot and thwart the true goal of those behind these attacks - control of the Impossible City itself.
Antimony Price is on the run. With the Covenant on her tail and her family still in danger, she needs to get far, far away from anyone who might recognise her - including her own mice. For the first time in a long time, a Price is flying without a safety net. Where do you go when you need to disappear into a crowd without worrying about attracting attention? An amusement park, of course.
Some people would call Lowryland the amusement park. It’s one of the largest in Florida, the keystone of the Lowry entertainment empire . . . but for Annie, it’s a place to hide. She’s just trying to keep her head down long enough to come up with a plan that will get her home without getting anyone killed. No small order when she’s rooming with gorgons and sylphs, trying to placate frustrated ghosts, and rushing to get to work on time.
Then the accidents begin. The discovery of a dead man brings Annie to the attention of the secret cabal of magic users running Lowryland from behind the scenes. They want the fire that sleeps in her fingers. They want her on their side. They want to help her - although their help, like everything else, comes with a price.
No plan. Minimal backup. No way out. Annie’s about to get a crash course in the reality behind the pretty facade. If she’s lucky, she’ll survive the experience.
Hundreds of years ago, the Selkies made a deal with the sea witch: they would have the sea for as long as she allowed it, and when the time came, she would call in all their debts at once. Many people assumed that day would never come. Those people were wrong.
When the Luidaeg - October \"Toby\" Daye's oldest and most dangerous ally - tells her the time has come for the Selkies to fulfill their side of the bargain, and that Toby must be a part of the process, Toby can't refuse. Literally. The Selkies aren't the only ones in debt to the Luidaeg, and Toby has to pay what she owes like anyone else. They will travel to the fabled Duchy of Ships and call a convocation of the Selkies, telling them to come and meet the Luidaeg's price . . . or face the consequences.
Of course, nothing is that simple. When Dianda Lorden's brother appears to arrest Dianda for treason against the Undersea, when a Selkie woman is stripped of her skin and then murdered, when everything is falling apart, that's when Toby will have to answer the real question of the hour.
Is she going to sink? Or is she going to swim?
It's hard to be a hero. There's always something needing October \"Toby\" Daye's attention, and her own desires tend to fall by the wayside in favor of solving the Kingdom's problems. That includes the desire to marry her long-time suitor and current fiancé, Tybalt, San Francisco's King of Cats. She doesn't mean to keep delaying the wedding, it just sort of . . . happens. And that's why her closest friends have taken the choice out of her hands, ambushing her with a court wedding at the High Court in Toronto.
\nOnce the High King gets involved, there's not much even Toby can do to delay things . . . except for getting involved in stopping a plot to overthrow the High Throne itself, destabilising the Westlands entirely, and keeping her from getting married through nothing more than the sheer volume of chaos it would cause. Can Toby save the Westlands and make it to her own wedding on time? Or is she going to have to choose one over the other?
Welcome to the Whitethorn Institute. The first step is always admitting you need help, and you've already taken that step by requesting a transfer into our company.
\nThere is another school for children who fall through doors and fall back out again.
\nIt isn't as friendly as Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children.
\nAnd it isn't as safe.
\nWhen Eleanor West decided to open her school, her sanctuary, her Home for Wayward Children, she knew from the beginning that there would be children she couldn't save; when Cora decides she needs a different direction, a different fate, a different prophecy, Miss West reluctantly agrees to transfer her to the other school, where things are run very differently by Whitethorn, the Headmaster.
\nShe will soon discover that not all doors are welcoming . . .
Toby thought she understood her own past; she thought she knew the score.
She was wrong.
It's time to learn the truth.
Kellen’s life as an outlaw spellslinger is about to get a lot worse.
\nIn Gitabria, a miraculous discovery draws spies from all over the continent willing to kill to get their hands on it. Swept up in the race for power, Kellen is forced to join the pursuit. But the invention holds a dark secret-one that could spark a war.
\n
Kellen and Reichis are settling into their new lives as protectors of the young queen and dealing with the constantly shifting threats to her reign and to her life. For the first time in his life, Kellen feels as if he's becoming the kind of man that his mentor Ferius had wanted him to be. Even Reichis has come to appreciate having a noble purpose - so long as no one minds him committing the occasional act of theft from the royal treasury.
But what seems to be a simple card game between Kellen and an old man is soon revealed to be a deadly game of wits in which a powerful mage has trapped the queen's spellslinger in order to kill him.
Knight's Shadow continues the series with a thrilling and dark tale of heroism and betrayal in a country crushed under the weight of its rulers' corruption.
A few days after the horrifying murder of a duke and his family, Falcio val Mond, swordsman and First Cantor of the Greatcoats, begins a deadly pursuit to capture the killer. But Falcio soon discovers his own life is in mortal danger from a poison administered as a final act of revenge by one of his deadliest enemies.
As chaos and civil war begin to overtake the country, Falcio has precious little time left to stop those determined to destroy his homeland.
The world is teetering on the brink of annihilation. The Lords Celestine and the Lords Devilish, celestial and infernal beings locked in an age-old enmity, have at last found the perfect battlefield for their apocalyptic Great Crusade: the mortal realm.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tCade Ombra, former Glorian Justiciar turned mercenary wonderist, leads a band of emotionally unstable mages in a desperate bid to prevent the impending clash of divine and diabolical titans. Failure will leave humanity to be conscripted into an eternal war, serving as foot soldiers doomed to oblivion.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe mission seems impossible, but Cade and the Malevolent Seven aren't exactly pacifists, so they're determined to bring peace no matter how many people they have to kill first. With wit as sharp as their blades and a moral compass that points only toward survival, they're ready to cut down anyone in their path to stop the war before it begins.
Picture a wizard. Go ahead, close your eyes. There he is, see? Skinny old guy with a long straggly beard. No doubt he's wearing iridescent silk robes that couldn't protect his frail body from a light breeze. The hat's a must, too, right? Big, floppy thing, covered in esoteric symbols that would instantly show every other mage where this one gets his magic? Wouldn't want a simple steel helmet or something that might, you know, protect the part of him most needed for conjuring magical forces from being bashed in with a mace (or pretty much any household object).
\nNow open your eyes and let me show you what a real war mage looks like . . . but you're probably not going to like it, because we're violent, angry, dangerously broken people who sell our skills to the highest bidder and be damned to any moral or ethical considerations.
\nAt least, until such irritating concepts as friendship and the end of the world get in the way.
\nMy name is Cade Ombra, and though I currently make my living as a mercenary wonderist, I used to have a far more noble-sounding job title - until I discovered the people I worked for weren't quite as noble as I'd believed. Now I'm on the run and my only friend, a homicidal thunder mage, has invited me to join him on a suicide mission against the seven deadliest mages on the continent.
\nTime to recruit some very bad people to help us on this job . . .
\n
Damelas Shademantaigne picked a poor night to flee a judicial duel.
\nHe has precious little hope of escaping the wrath of the Vixen, the most feared duellist in the entire city, until he stumbles through the stage doors of the magnificent Operato Belleza and tricks his way into the company of actors. An archaic law provides a temporary respite from his troubles - until one night a ghostly voice in his head causes Damelas to fumble his lines, inadvertently blurting out a dreadful truth: the city's most legendary hero may actually be a traitor and a brutal murderer.
\nWith only the help of his boisterous and lusty friend Bereto, a beautiful assassin whose target may well be Damelas himself, and a company of misfit actors who'd just as soon see him dead, this failed son of two Greatcoats must somehow find within himself the courage to dig up long-buried truths before a ruthless band of bravos known as the Iron Orchids come for his head.
\nOh, and there's still that matter of the Vixen waiting to duel him . . .
Kellen and Reichis have just finished fighting a duel in the desert when Kellen inadvertently smears blood on the Daroman flag - an act of treason for which the Marshals have no choice but to arrest him.
\nJust before he's put before the Queen to be executed, Kellen is given a strange piece of advice from one of his fellow prisoners: kill the Queen and he'll be given clemency by those who take power.
\nBut when Kellen comes face-to-face with the eleven year-old monarch, he realises she's vastly smarter than he expected - and in a great deal more danger.
How do you kill a Saint?
\nFalcio, Kest, and Brasti are about to find out, because someone has figured out a way to do it and they've started with a friend.
\nThe Dukes were already looking for ways out of their agreement to put Aline on the throne, but with the Saints turning up dead, rumours are spreading that the Gods themselves oppose her ascension.
\nNow churches are looking to protect themselves by bringing back the military orders of religious soldiers, assassins, and (especially) Inquisitors - a move that could turn the country into a theocracy. The only way Falcio can put a stop to it is by finding the murderer. He has only one clue: a terrifying iron mask which makes the Saints vulnerable by driving them mad. But even if he can find the killer, he'll still have to face him in battle.
\nAnd that may be a duel that no swordsman, no matter how skilled, can hope to win.
Four months after fleeing his own people, Kellen has discovered he's an even worse outlaw than he was mage. It doesn't help that his only allies are a swaggering card player and a thieving squirrel cat.
\nThen he meets Seneira, a blindfolded girl who isn't blind, and whose secrets get them caught up in a conspiracy of magic, blackmail and murder.
\nNow Kellen must find the mage responsible before the entire frontier falls victim to the mystical plague known as the shadowblack.
For an outlaw spellslinger, the only way to survive is to hide.
\nKellen's curse is growing stronger, promising a future of madness and murder. And now that the bounty hunter sworn to kill ever last shadow black have caught his trail, he knows his days are numbered.
\nDesperate, Kellen braves a barren desert to find a mysterious order of monks rumored to posses a cure. But there are secrets darker and more dangerous than Kellen expected, and the price of his salvation may be more than he's willing to pay.
\n
Kellen is moments away from facing his first duel and proving his worth as a spellcaster. There's just one problem: his magic is fading.
\nFacing exile unless he can pass the mage trials, Kellen is willing to risk everything - even his own life - in search of a way to restore his magic. But when the enigmatic Ferius Parfax arrives in town, she challenges him to take a different path.
\nOne of the elusive Argosi, Ferius is a traveller who lives by her wits and the cards she carries. Daring, unpredictable, and wielding magic Kellen has never seen before, she may be his only hope.
In the first of a new fantasy series by Sebastien de Castell, a disgraced swordsman struggles to redeem himself by protecting a young girl caught in the web of a royal conspiracy.
\nFalcio is the first Cantor of the Greatcoats. Trained in the fighting arts and the laws of Tristia, the Greatcoats are travelling Magisters upholding King's Law. They are heroes. Or at least they were, until they stood aside while the Dukes took the kingdom, and impaled their king's head on a spike.
\nNow Tristia is on the verge of collapse and the barbarians are sniffing at the borders. The Dukes bring chaos to the land, while the Greatcoats are scattered far and wide, reviled as traitors, their legendary coats in tatters. All they have left is the promise they made to King Paelis, to carry out one final mission.
\nBut if they have any hope of fulfilling the king's dream, the divided Greatcoats must reunite, or they will also have to stand aside as they watch their world burn.
A woman strives to overcome the traumas of her past to bring a new family together in an uplifting story about love, promise, and second chances.
\nAutumn, a mother-to-be, has an unsteady grip on the meaning of family. Her father abandoned her. She hasn’t seen her estranged mother in more than twelve years. And her marriage is crumbling.
\nAs Autumn struggles with painful memories of her childhood and fosters hopes for her own baby’s future, she must come to terms with the past to be the mother she and her child need her to be.
Nothing prepares Jaya, a New York journalist, for the heartbreak of her third miscarriage and the slow unraveling of her marriage in its wake. Desperate to assuage her deep anguish, she decides to go to India to uncover answers to her family’s past.
\nIntoxicated by the sights, smells, and sounds she experiences, Jaya becomes an eager student of the culture. But it is Ravi - her grandmother’s former servant and trusted confidant - who reveals the resilience, struggles, secret love, and tragic fall of Jaya’s pioneering grandmother during the British occupation. Through her courageous grandmother’s arrestingly romantic and heart-wrenching story, Jaya discovers the legacy bequeathed to her and a strength that, until now, she never knew was possible.
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“Love was a tightrope between freedom and control. He didn’t know how others seemed to walk it with ease.” This is the challenge Elom and his family face in the years before his unexpected death.
\nCaught between his well-meaning yet misapprehending family, his boisterous friends, and his self-assured partner Ben, Elom struggles to fit in. All he ever wants is to feel understood - but what does it mean to live authentically when the only thing changing faster than the world around you is the world within?
\nMoving between Accra, Glasgow and London, Selali Fiamanya’s extraordinary debut asks what it means to love and be loved in return. Before We Hit the Ground is an intimate portrait of a family, and one man’s struggle to find his place.
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Jasmine Cheng has grown up on stories spun by her beautiful, free-spirited mother. Together, they’re the Phoenix and Dragon. Jasmine’s father is the god Pangu, creator of the heavens and earth. Her mother may have boyfriends, but Jasmine chases them away. For her mother, love brings chaos, sleepless nights, and frightening episodes, and it’s Jasmine’s job to keep their home life stable - especially now that a social worker has started to keep tabs on them.
\nWhen the sudden arrival of Cal, her mother’s old flame, fractures their delicate world, events unfold that will send Jasmine on a cross-country journey to the West Coast - and into her past. Trapped in a tangle of fantasy and reality, Jasmine becomes determined to find the truth, even while her mother’s refusal to be honest drives a deeper wedge between them. Will the crack in their fantasy destroy her, or finally let the light in?
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The novel tells the story of two friends, Enero and El Negro, who take Tilo, the teenage son of Eusebio - their recently deceased friend - fishing to the Paraná River. While they drink and cook and talk and dance, they try to overcome the ghosts of their past and those of the present: their mood altered by wine and torpor.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThis intimate, peculiar moment connecting the lives of these three men also links them to the lives of the local inhabitants of this watery universe that runs by its own laws. There are losses, premature deaths . . . But there is also the stubborn vitality of nature: a bush covered with ancient trees, animals, birds; the river bearing life in its entrails, the people born and raised in this landscape which they protect tooth and nail against intruders.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThis story, which flows like water, talks about the love between friends, the love of a mother for her daughters, and the love of the islanders for their river and everything that lives in it. This masterful novel reveals once again Selva Almada's unique voice and extraordinary sensitivity, allowing its characters to shine and express in action what the depths of their souls harbour.
Once a promising alchemist, Helena Marino is now a prisoner - of war and of her own mind. Her Resistance friends and allies have been brutally murdered, her abilities suppressed, and the world she knew destroyed.
\nIn the aftermath of a long war, Paladia’s new ruling class of corrupt guild families and depraved necromancers, whose vile undead creatures helped bring about their victory, holds Helena captive.
\nAccording to Resistance records, she was a healer of little importance within their ranks. But Helena has inexplicable memory loss of the months leading up to her capture, making her enemies wonder: Is she truly as insignificant as she appears, or are her lost memories hiding some vital piece of the Resistance’s final gambit?
\nTo uncover the memories buried deep within her mind, Helena is sent to the High Reeve, one of the most powerful and ruthless necromancers in this new world. Trapped on his crumbling estate, Helena’s fight - to protect her lost history and to preserve the last remaining shreds of her former self - is just beginning. For her prison and captor have secrets of their own . . . secrets Helena must unearth, whatever the cost.
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When Shelby Dawson survives a harrowing attack that should have left her dead, she tries to move past it - for herself, and for her family. Fifteen months later, with the help of her best friend, Mackenzie, she finally feels safe again in the snowy Minnesota town she calls home. But when an anonymous note appears on her windshield bearing the same threats her attacker made, Shelby realises that her nightmare has only just begun.
\nAs new evidence surfaces, and a group of well-meaning senior citizens accidentally makes the case go viral online, the situation quickly goes from bad to worse. And with suspicious accidents targeting those closest to her happening all over town, Shelby can’t shake the feeling that she’s being watched. Fighting to stay one step ahead of disaster, she finds herself asking the question on everyone’s lips: Who attacked her that night?
\nBut Shelby isn’t the only one with questions. Mackenzie’s husband, Leo, vanished without a trace on that terrible night, and over a year later, no one knows why. Until a deep dive into his finances reveals a history of debts, mismanaged funds, and hidden accounts - one of which is still active. Their suspicion that Leo is still alive only complicates things further, though, and when another person connected to Shelby goes missing, she’s caught in a race against time before her attacker becomes a killer.
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Who wouldn’t want to live in Brighton Hills? This exclusive community on the Oregon coast is the perfect mix of luxury and natural beauty. Stunning houses nestle beneath mighty Douglas firs, and lush backyards roll down to the lakefront. It’s the kind of place where neighbors look out for one another. Sometimes a little too closely . . .
\nCora thinks her husband, Finn, is cheating - she just needs to catch him in the act. That’s where Paige comes in. Paige lost her son to a hit-and-run last year, and she’s drowning in the kind of grief that makes people do reckless things. Like spying on the locals, searching for proof that her son’s death was no accident. And agreeing to Cora’s plan to reveal what kind of man Finn really is. All the while, their reclusive new neighbor, Georgia, is acting more strangely every day. But what could such a lovely young mother possibly be hiding?
\nWhen you really start to look beyond the airy open floor plans and marble counters, Brighton Hills is filled with secrets. Some big, some little, some deadly. And one by one, they’re about to be revealed . . .
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Melanie Hale is a devoted mother to her two children, a diligent caregiver to her ailing mother-in-law and a trusted neighbor in their wealthy Louisiana community. Above all, she’s a loving partner to her wonderful husband, Collin.
\nThen there are the parts of herself that Mel keeps hidden. She’s exhausted, worried and unfulfilled. So much so that one night, after a writers’ group meeting, Mel begins an affair with a successful local author named Luke. Suddenly she’s transformed into a role she doesn’t recognise - a woman who deceives with unseemly ease. A woman who might be capable of just about anything.
\nWhen Mel finds Luke’s dead body in his lavish rented house, she realises just how high the stakes have become. Not only does she have to keep her affair a secret in order to preserve her marriage, but she desperately needs to avoid being implicated in Luke’s death. But who would want to kill him? Who else in her life is keeping secrets? And most terrifying of all, how far will they - and she - go to keep those secrets hidden?
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Those lucky enough to live in the elite lakefront community of Cloverhill Lakes are drawn to it for its safety and top-notch school district. The moms meet for coffee at the park while their kids play, they’re heavily involved in the PTA, and the summers are filled with chardonnay, brunch, sundresses, and backyard bonfires.
\nBut everything changes when Regan Hoffman’s car explodes at the annual Labor Day party. The wrong person is killed, but it was meant for her. As the carefully crafted walls of her community begin to crumble, Regan tries to keep it together - something made infinitely harder when she sees her dead husband . . . alive.
\nWhen a Cloverhill Lakes resident suddenly goes missing, dark secrets begin to surface from underneath the idyllic veneer of their beautiful community - and the truth threatens to destroy them all as Regan finds herself in a fight for her life.
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When Anna Hartley’s husband, Henry, calls her with a terrible, guilty confession, she can’t believe what she hears. It has to be a bad joke - the mild, predictable artist she married would never hurt a fly, let alone commit murder. But her confusion turns to horror when police find his body washed up on the banks of the Rio Grande.
\nDesperate for answers to the millions of questions his untimely death has raised, Anna checks in to The Sycamores, the run-down motel turned apartment Henry rented as an art studio. As she absorbs every bit of gossip the eclectic mix of residents are willing to share about her husband and each other, she begins to piece together a picture of a very different man than the one she married, and the life he led behind her back. The more she learns, and the less sense things seem to make, she finds herself wondering: Did she ever really know Henry at all?
\nBut Henry’s secrets aren’t the only ones; as Anna’s search for clues expands, Cass, the mysterious, jaded motel manager, seems more and more determined to keep Anna in the dark. And when threatening letters start appearing at her door, Anna has to decide what’s more important - the truth, or her own safety.
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Her world was shattered by the Empire of Masks.
\nFor the power to shatter the Masquerade,
\nShe betrayed everyone she loved.
\nThe traitor Baru Cormorant is now the cryptarch Agonist - a secret lord of the empire she's vowed to destroy.
\nHunted by a mutinous admiral, haunted by the wound which has split her mind in two, Baru leads her dearest foes on an expedition for the secret of immortality. It's her chance to trigger a war that will consume the Masquerade.
\nBut Baru's heart is broken, and she fears she can no longer tell justice from revenge . . . or her own desires from the will of the man who remade her.
\nHer world was shattered by the Empire of Masks.
For the power to shatter the Masquerade,
She betrayed everyone she loved.
The traitor Baru Cormorant is now the cryptarch Agonist - a secret lord of the empire she's vowed to destroy.
Hunted by a mutinous admiral, haunted by the wound which has split her mind in two, Baru leads her dearest foes on an expedition for the secret of immortality. It's her chance to trigger a war that will consume the Masquerade.
But Baru's heart is broken, and she fears she can no longer tell justice from revenge . . . or her own desires from the will of the man who remade her.
Tomorrow, on the beach, Baru Cormorant will look up from the sand of her home and see red sails on the horizon.
\nThe Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They'll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalise her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She'll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she'll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free.
\nIn a final test of her loyalty, the Masquerade will send Baru to bring order to distant Aurdwynn, a snakepit of rebels, informants, and seditious dukes. Aurdwynn kills everyone who tries to rule it. To survive, Baru will need to untangle this land’s intricate web of treachery - and conceal her attraction to the dangerously fascinating Duchess Tain Hu.
\nBut Baru is a savant in games of power, as ruthless in her tactics as she is fixated on her goals. In the calculus of her schemes, all ledgers must be balanced, and the price of liberation paid in full.
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The hunt is over. After fifteen years of lies and sacrifice, Baru Cormorant has the power to destroy the Imperial Republic of Falcrest that she pretends to serve. The secret society called the Cancrioth is real, and Baru is among them.
But the Cancrioth's weapon cannot distinguish the guilty from the innocent. If it escapes quarantine, the ancient hemorrhagic plague called the Kettling will kill hundreds of millions...not just in Falcrest, but all across the world. History will end in a black bloodstain.
Is that justice? Is this really what Tain Hu hoped for when she sacrificed herself?
Baru's enemies close in from all sides. Baru's own mind teeters on the edge of madness or shattering revelation. Now she must choose between genocidal revenge and a far more difficult path—a conspiracy of judges, kings, spies and immortals, puppeteering the world's riches and two great wars in a gambit for the ultimate prize.
If Baru had absolute power over the Imperial Republic, she could force Falcrest to abandon its colonies and make right its crimes.
With nothing but a limping ship and an outdated mask to her name, Wylla needs a big pay day. When the call goes out that a lucrative piece of tech is waiting on a nearby planet, she relies on all the swiftness of her prey animal instincts to beat other hunters to it.
\nWhat you found wasn’t your ticket out - it was my corpse wearing an AI mask. When you touched the mask, you heard my voice. A consciousness spinning through metal and circuits, a bodiless mind, spun to life in the HAWK’s temporary storage. I crystallised, and I was alive.
\nMasks aren't supposed to retain memory, much less identity, but the woman inside the MARK I HAWK is real, and she sees Wylla in a way no one ever has. Sees her, and doesn’t find her wanting or unwhole.
\nArmed with military-grade tech and a lifetime of staying one step ahead of the hunters, Wylla and HAWK set off to get answers from the man who discarded HAWK once before: her ex-husband.
A groundbreaking investigation into a string of unsolved murders at America’s largest military base, and what the crimes reveal about drug-trafficking and impunity among elite special operations soldiers.
\nTwo dead bodies were discovered in a forested area of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 2020. One, William “Billy” Lavigne, was a member of Delta Force, the most secretive “black ops” unit in the military. A long-serving veteran of America’s classified assassination program, Lavigne had done more than a dozen deployments, was addicted to crack cocaine, dealt drugs on base, and had committed a series of violent crimes before he was mysteriously killed.
\nThe other, Timothy Dumas, was a supply officer attached to the Special Forces who used his proximity to clandestine missions to steal guns and traffic drugs into the United States from abroad, and had written a blackmail letter threatening to expose criminality in the special operations task force in Afghanistan.
\nAs soon as Seth Harp, an Iraq war veteran and investigative reporter, begins looking into the double murder, he learns that there have been many more unexplained deaths at Fort Bragg recently, all with some apparent connection to drug-trafficking, as well as dozens of fatal overdoses.
\nDrawing on trial transcripts, police records, and hundreds of interviews, Harp tells a scathing story of narco-trafficking in the Special Forces, drug conspiracies abetted by corrupt police, blatant military cover-ups, American complicity in the Afghan heroin trade, and the pernicious consequences of continuous war.
Dr. Brahm Gibney never thought her grant on neutrino vectoring would lead her into a world of danger and intrigue. As she delves deeper into her research, she uncovers a mysterious source of particles hurtling through space, with a trajectory that could change everything.
\nMeanwhile, Chandler Mirren's dreams of a prestigious internship are shattered, leaving him stuck in a dusty library writing a research paper. But when he discovers a cryptic message in the journals of a renowned scientist, he realises he may have stumbled upon a groundbreaking discovery.
\nLieutenant Jack Avari's career in the Marines takes an unexpected turn when he's tasked with investigating a seemingly mundane theft. But as he probes further, he finds himself entangled in a high-stakes game of international espionage, with Earth's fate hanging in the balance.
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Set in a remote village in the North of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two sixteen year old boys meet and transform each other’s lives.
\nJames - a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old - is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realises how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasising about what lies beyond the village’s leaf-ribboned boundaries, beyond his autonomy, tenderness, sex.
\nThen, in the autumn of 2002, he meets Luke, a slightly older boy, handsome, unkempt, who comes with a reputation for danger. Abandoned by his parents - his father imprisoned, and his mother having moved to France for another man - Luke has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle at their farm just outside the village. James is immediately drawn to him, like the pull a fire makes on the air, dragging things into it and blazing them into its hot, white centre, drawn to this boy who is beautiful and impulsive, charismatic, troubled. But underneath Luke’s bravado is a deep wound - a longing for the love of his father and for the stability of family life.
\nOpen, Heaven is a novel about desire, yearning, and the terror of first love. With the striking economy and lyricism that animate his work as a poet, Hewitt has written a mesmerizing hymn to boyhood, sensuality, and love in all its forms.
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Alice Montgomery goes missing in 2015.
\nSeven years later, her best friend Hannah is bouncing from job to job, city to city, forever feeling the need to outrun something, but unsure what. With the niggling need to move nipping at her heels, Hannah decides to return home - a small coastal town in Western Australia - for the first time since she left, to help her mum after surgery and confront their fractured relationship.
\nWhen Hannah hears that Marnie Montgomery, Alice's mum, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, she is seized by terror that she will never know the truth of her friend's disappearance; whether she ran away, or met a different, darker fate. Hannah begins to ask questions, starting with Marnie, an addict and recluse, who has long been dogged by rumours that she was in some way responsible.
\nInsisting she had nothing to do with it, Marnie instead points the finger at a local teacher, Rachel Olney, haunted by broken dreams and the consequences of a single bad decision she made many years ago.
\nWhat unfolds is a tale of three women - Hannah, Marnie, Rachel - and a reflection on grief left unchecked; what it means to be a mother, a daughter; and all the terrible ways in which we can hurt one another. As the mystery of Alice dances on the periphery, it becomes ever clearer that this is a story centred not on a potential crime, but on those left behind by tragedy, desperately seeking closure that might not exist.
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When Jamie Prescott and her best friend Laurie attend a speed-dating event, Jamie expects to meet a roster of mediocre men and indulge in some street food afterwards. She doesn’t expect one of her dates to have his throat slit at their table during a blackout. When the lights come back on and there are more bodies on the floor, it becomes clear that speed dating can be a very dangerous pastime.
\nArmed with makeshift weapons and Jamie’s extensive knowledge of what NOT to do in a horror movie, the remaining speed daters try to find an exit while the killer adds to their body count. As the night progresses and Jamie comes face-to-mask with the murderer, she begins to suspect he is committing the slayings to woo one of the daters and turn her into his real-life Final Girl.
\nBut Jamie has a different love story in mind, and as she fights for her life, she can’t help but find herself ensconced in a love triangle with two of the other speed-daters. Will she survive the bloodshed to find her happily ever after? Or does this machete-wielding psychopath have another Final Girl in mind?
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They say to keep your friends close and your enemies closer . . . . Wrong.
Louisa's new best friend has it all - the house, the status, the money. But she's also hiding a dark secret. And as Louisa is drawn deeper into her friend's life, events take a chilling turn . .
It started out as a six little girls gliding and giggling at the ice rink to celebrate Natalie’s daughter’s eighth birthday.
\nBut by Natalie’s next head count, it’s turned into a crime scene. Six children went onto the ice - and now there are just five. Nobody saw her niece, Elle, being taken. Nobody saw the person in a cartoon costume lure her quietly away.
\nTraumatised by what happened on her watch, Natalie spends the next decade supporting her sister, Jo, as the years since Elle’s abduction tick by. But as the tenth anniversary approaches, Jo becomes convinced that someone is stalking her - someone who knows the truth about that day on the ice.
\nAs long-buried secrets start to surface, the sisters must relive the horror of losing Elle - and watch the world as they know it shatter before their eyes.
Kirstie Rawlings is jolted awake by a child crying. Racing upstairs to check on her new-born, she is plunged into every parents’ worst nightmare. She hears an unknown voice in the baby monitor, saying: ‘Let’s take the child - and go.’
In the bedroom, her daughter is safe asleep in her cot. Is the voice coming from a nearby house? But there aren’t any other babies living on her quiet country road . . .
Kirstie knows something isn’t right. She thought she could trust her neighbours, now she isn’t sure. As she unravels the secrets of the people living on her street, Kirstie’s perfect life begins to fall apart.
Because someone is hiding a terrible lie. And they will do anything to stop Kirstie uncovering the truth. But is the danger closer to home than she thinks?
From the moment I meet my new mother-in-law in her beautiful country house, she makes it clear I’m not welcome. Lilian Fletcher hates me for marrying her precious boy on a golden beach far away from her.
\nStarting our marriage living in the Fletchers’ family home is a nightmare. Lilian’s steely blue gaze follows me everywhere. Then the accidents start to happen, and I know she is behind them. It starts with small things, like a dropped birthday cake, a spilt glass of wine. But then my mother-in-law accuses me of something terrible. This woman is determined to get me out of her son’s life.
\nNow I wish I’d never met my handsome, clever husband. Or come to this luxurious house that feels more like a prison.
\nBut I have secrets too. And no-one knows who I really am . . .
Willow McAllister is desperate to start over. Quiet town. Blank slate. No attachments. When she meets her friendly new neighbour, Priya, it feels like a the start of something good.
\nAnd then there’s charming, funny, easy to talk to. Maybe she’s allowed a little happiness. Maybe she can trust again.
\nBut Willow’s instincts have been wrong before. And when she discovers that Gabe and Priya share a past, the cracks start to show. Willow can’t help wondering if Priya’s arrival next door really was by chance. Because coincidences like this? They don’t feel like coincidences at all.
\nIs she imagining the tension between them? Or ignoring something she shouldn’t?
\nSomeone is lying.
\nAnd Willow can’t afford to get it wrong again.
A chilling suspense story of wounded hearts and dark secrets.
Washed up on the beach, she can’t remember who she is. She can’t even remember her name. Turns out, she has an idyllic life - friends and family eager to fill in the blanks.
But why are they lying to her? What don’t they want her to remember?
When you don't even know who you are, how do you know who to trust?
It was supposed to be the happiest time of their lives. But for newlywed Stella, the dream honeymoon has turned into a nightmare overnight. Her perfect husband, Austin, has vanished without a trace.
\nAlone in Venice, Stella frantically searches for him. But as fear turns into confusion, she finds herself questioning everything she knows about the man she married. Has Austin really abandoned her, or has someone from his past finally caught up with him - the business partner he threatened to sue? The obsessive ex-girlfriend who refuses to let go? When Stella becomes convinced someone is following her, panic sets in.
\nAs hours turn into days and clues start to unravel dark secrets, a terrified Stella can’t help but ask herself: is her husband who she thought he was at all?
‘I’m sorry. Your daughter is missing . . . '
\nClaire Nolan receives a panicked phone call, telling her that her seven-year-old daughter Beatrice has gone missing on a trip to the local fair.
\nIt’s every mother’s worst nightmare. And it’s happening to her.
\nHer mother-in-law Jill was meant to be looking after Beatrice but the little girl disappeared in the hall of mirrors and, an hour later, she still can’t be found.
\nFrantic with worry, Claire races to the fairground. When she arrives, there are flashing blue lights and uniformed officers everywhere. In one moment, her whole world collapses.
\nDistraught and desperate to uncover the truth, doubts begin to creep in. Claire’s husband should have been with Beatrice but he changed their plans without telling her. And she’s never trusted Jill. Her mother-in-law has always preferred her son’s free-spirited first wife. Something just doesn’t add up and Claire starts to suspect those closest to her:
\nThe first wife.
The husband.
The mother-in-law.
Which one of them is lying? And who really knows where Beatrice is?
Tia never harmed anyone. So why does someone want to destroy her?
Tia is walking home with her children, along the lakeside of their quiet, safe town, when she realises something is wrong with her five-year-old daughter, Rosie. She seems troubled, not at all her usual happy self.
But when Tia finally coaxes Rosie to open up, she wishes she hadn’t. Because her sweet daughter asks a question Tia never thought she’d hear.
‘Mummy, why did you kill someone?’
Tia knows how rumours spread around her small town. She just can’t understand who would have shared such a horrible story. Or why.
It can’t have anything to do with what happened. Only her two best friends really remember that…
Tia thought she could trust Fiona and Kelly with her life. They’ve been through so much together. But when she’s sent photos of herself that could tear her whole world apart, she starts to wonder. Someone is determined to punish her. But who? And will her friends stand by her, or will the past destroy all of their lives?
‘Mummy, she’s gone…’
\n\n
Gemma Ballantine is getting ready for work one morning when her eldest child comes running down the stairs, saying the words every mother dreads.
\n\n
The front door is open. And her six-year-old daughter has disappeared.
\nFrantic with fear, Gemma starts a nail-biting search for her little girl.
\n\n
After what feels like forever, her mother-in-law Diane finds Katie wandering lost a few streets away. Relieved to have her youngest child back in her arms, breathing in the sweet scent of her hair, Gemma thinks the nightmare is over.
\nBut then her perfect family starts to fall apart.
\n\n
And she realises it’s only just beginning . . .
\nAlice and Seth are a perfect love story: the handsome doctor and his beautiful fiancée. They’re wealthy, well liked and made for each other - the envy of all their friends. Alice can’t wait for the day of their dream wedding. But when she arrives at the altar, she doesn’t recognise the man waiting to marry her.
\nWhen this stranger insists he’s Seth, her husband-to-be, the entire congregation seems to agree. Even her parents try to persuade Alice to go through with the wedding.
\nAs panic sets in, Alice’s world comes apart. Where is the real Seth, and why have all traces of him disappeared from her life? Fearing she’s losing her mind, she sets out to uncover the truth and escape the nightmare she’s living in. But with everyone around her convinced by the fake Seth, how can she ever hope to find the man she loves?
When Lizzy Beresford discovers a threatening letter addressed to her, the words on the old, tattered paper chill her to the bone. But who sent it? Living in pretty cottage in a quiet country village, Lizzy’s never made any enemies in her life . . .
Except her sister.
Lizzy hasn’t spoken to Emma in years. Not since the argument which tore their relationship apart. Would her sister really want to cause her harm after all this time?
As Lizzy receives more disturbing messages, she begins to doubt those closest to her - her boyfriend, her best friend, her neighbours.
Because the mystery sender seems to know everything about her. And after a series of malicious incidents, it’s clear they won’t stop until they’ve destroyed her life.
Lizzy knows she must confront her sister. But can she trust her? And will she realise the shocking truth, before it’s too late?
From the acclaimed author of Foreskin’s Lament , a memoir of the author’s attempt to escape the biblical story he’d been raised on and his struggle to construct a new story for himself and his family
\nShalom Auslander was raised like a veal in a dysfunctional family in the Orthodox community of Monsey, New the son of an alcoholic father; a guilt-wielding mother; and a violent, overbearing God. Now, as he reaches middle age, Auslander begins to suspect that what plagues him is something worse, something he can't so easily tell a story. The story. One indelibly implanted in him at an early age, a story that told him he is fallen, broken, shameful, disgusting, a story we have all been told for thousands of years, and continue to be told by the religious and secular alike, a story called \"Feh.\"
\nYiddish for \"Yuck.\"
\nFeh follows Auslander's midlife journey to rewrite that story, a journey that involves Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a Pulitzer-winning poet, Job, Arthur Schopenhauer, GHB, Wolf Blitzer, Yuval Noah Harari and a pastor named Steve in a now-defunct church in Los Angeles.
\nCan he move from Feh to merely meh? Can he even dream of moving beyond that?
\nAuslander's recounting of his attempt to exorcise the story he was raised with - before he implants it onto his children and/or possibly poisons the relationship of the one woman who loves him - isn’t sacred. It is more-than-occasionally profane. And like all his work, it is also relentlessly funny, subversively heartfelt and fearlessly provocative.
\n
In turn of the century England, the Jolivet family lives a charmed existence. Daughter of a wealthy vineyard owner and a French pianist, vivacious Marguerite, the eldest of three, loves spinning stories and entertaining her family’s well-connected friends. No one is surprised when she announces, at 18, that she intends to become an actress. Her sister, Inez, a virtuosa violinist, moves to London with her. Soon the two beauties are being celebrated in the highest social circles.
\nMarguerite takes the stage name Rita, and quickly draws the attention of legendary theater producer Charles Frohman. From the West End to Broadway, and then in the new medium of silent film, Rita is known for her “sultry eyes, her mystic smile,” and her star burns brighter with every role. While filming in Italy, she’s courted by a charismatic aristocrat and Rita feels on the verge of a life even better than her dreams. Inez, meanwhile, has already found love, and travels the world with her adored husband.
\nYet soon, war is raging across Europe. Rita, in New York for the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Unafraid, receives word from Inez that their brother is about to enlist. Hoping to see him before he departs, Rita books a ticket on the fastest steamer the RMS Lusitania. But the ship sails under a British flag, and the German government warns that all such vessels are fair game. Few believe Germany would risk attacking a ship carrying Americans, certainly not one as swift and imposing as the Lusy.
\nOnce aboard, Rita is delighted to discover both Charles and her brother-in-law as fellow passengers.The days pass in a haze of parties and pleasurable pursuits, and the comforts of the luxury ocean liner are almost enough to calm Rita’s ripples of unease. But as the ship nears Liverpool, every assumption will be tested, and Rita, her family, and the world, will be changed forever by the voyage’s infamous and catastrophic end . . .
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Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.
\nBut when she’s tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comrade’s kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her family’s future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be God’s will.
\nYet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear there’s more to this job, and the girl’s disappearance, than she was led to believe. For there’s always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more power . . . and the price might be your very soul.
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Amina al-Sirafi thinks she’s struck gold. Tasked with hunting down arcane artifacts for the council of immortal peris, she can savor the occasional rollicking adventure on the high seas with her cherished criminal companions while still returning home to raise her beloved daughter, Marjana. But when Raksh, the spirit of discord with whom she is reluctantly wed, provokes the council’s wrath, Amina is charged with a seemingly impossible quest: steal a spindle capable of rewriting fate from a mysterious sorceress on an island no one can escape.
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Forced to leave Marjana - who is increasingly frustrated at being peddled what are clearly lies about her mother’s life and her own past - Amina finds her mission almost immediately thrown into peril. But deadly storms, an erratic poison mistress, and old enemies are the least of her worries. For the peris’ story is unraveling, hinting at a far deadlier game whose rules Amina must swiftly puzzle out. A game that sets her against an adversary more cunning and powerful than she has ever faced.
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A game that not everyone on her crew wants her to win.
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On land, Eppie will never be anything more than the outcast girl who kissed the grocer’s daughter. But beneath the water’s surface lies a future and a society she could never imagine. Stolen from the shore, she is transformed. Eppie is stronger, swifter - and hungrier. Human flesh smells like heaven on earth, and Eppie is ravenous.
\nDespite the horror of her new appetites, Eppie learns to love this strange second life. The mermaid colony is mesmerising, and Eppie’s new sisters are fiercely loyal. When she meets Marie, a stunningly beautiful mermaid with a past as shadowed as her raven-black scales, Eppie finds she no longer needs to resist her deepest desires.
\nBut dark sails are on the horizon. The mermaid hunters are coming, and Eppie must decide whether to protect her new, monstrous family or leave it all behind for a chance to live above the waves once again.
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In this moving debut novel, set over the course of one transformative summer in the lush, beachy enclave of Block Island, a young woman reckons with love, loss, and the choices she must make to move forward.
\nAt seventeen, Ruth lost her mother to cancer, and her father, unable to handle his grieving daughter, shipped her off to Block Island with nothing but a name scribbled on the back of a Diana Beckett. Diana, a renowned photographer, took Ruth in for the summer, and Block Island became Ruth’s refuge, a place of beauty and creativity, a place where she could nurture her dreams of being a writer, a place where she could fall in love for the first time - with Diana’s nephew, Charlie.
\nNow, at twenty-seven, Ruth has spent the last ten summers living and working among the lucky few who get to vacation in this wealthy beach town, and the rest of the year just scraping by, yearning to return to the place where she feels safe and unburdened. But then Ruth’s world is upended by tragedy again. Desperate for an anchor, she reaches for the person she’s been pining for since she met him - Charlie - who has his own startling revelation to share.
\nAnd when another surprise comes in the form of a box left to Ruth by Diana, its contents raise questions about just how well she knew the two women who raised her. Torn between what to believe about her past, and what her future might hold, Ruth is faced with another choice: does she dare to rewrite her story entirely?
\nBoth a heartfelt coming-of-age story and a tender exploration of love and grief, set against a backdrop of golden dunes and seaside sunsets, June Baby shows us what it might look like to embrace a life shaped not by loss, but by possibility.
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The performers of the Playhouse are as worshipped as they are feared, their enchanting shows bending hearts, minds, and even reality itself. Vicious, godlike, lethal. Eighteen-year-old Riven Hesper knows the dangers better than anyone, after her own encounter with a Player resulted in a curse that is slowly killing her.
\nWhen the Playhouse announces the spectacle of a lifetime - a chance for one mortal to steal a Player’s immortality - Riven sees her last chance to live. Desperate for answers, she infiltrates the competition. There, she finds Jude, the Playhouse’s brilliant, merciless Lead Player, whose charm is as dangerous as his Craft, and strikes a deadly bargain to save her life.
\nBut with time running out and the Playhouse’s secrets unraveling into a disturbing picture, Riven faces a grim possibility: she might not be the hero of her story after all. In fact, she may be the villain.
\nBecause the Playhouse doesn’t just tell stories. It rewrites them.
\nAnd Riven’s might end in blood.
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Seventeen-year-old noble Will Arrex and her classmate Paige Tarrant were destined to be bitter rivals. Where Will is ice cold and painfully poised - everything an Arrex should be - Tarrant is a firecracker, unafraid to speak her mind.
\nEvery twenty-five years, students aboard the Eden Space Station are chosen by lottery to pilot the Laikas - a fleet of ships sent on exploratory missions, humanity's last hope to find a habitable world. As the only daughter of a powerful politician, Will was not supposed to be one of them.
\nWhen Will and Tarrant wind up piloting Laika 15 together, their mutual hatred begins to thaw. But all seems lost when they discover the Eden's darkest secret . . . Laika 15 was never meant to come home.
\nTrapped in the vastness of space on an impossible mission, Will and Paige must bridge the lightyears keeping them apart if they want to survive.
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Told through a series of conversations, helpful guides, easy tables and definitions, Making Bank invites young readers to discuss a subject that is easy to money. With her signature charm, Shannon Lee Simmons transforms the thornier aspects of finance into easy-to-understand concepts.
\nWhether it’s figuring out how to save for a senior-year trip, wondering what the heck inflation is or trying to wrap your mind around credit, interest and crypto, Shannon approaches every subject with expertise and empathy.
\nBy focusing on how to track, save, spend, enjoy and grow their money, Making Bank rebuilds young readers’ relationship with it - one skill at a time.
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They say there is happiness at the end of every love story, but they never truly mention the hardships it takes to get there.
With Cane, I’d been through hell and back, and now, I was going to be walking up the alter, promising my life to a man that I’d gambled everything for.
Some would call me dumb.
Some would deem me insane.
Others would say I was a fool in love.
But I knew what we were, and I knew what we had was real.
With every marriage, there is always something that can hold you back or make you think twice, and this something was going to be one of our biggest wars yet, or our greatest victory ever.
For Jolene “Jo” Baker, the least she can do for her adoring husband, Dominic, is give unwavering support for his North Carolina gubernatorial run. He is not only the love of her life, he's also helping her prove that she's far more than just a pampered trophy wife. With huge crowds showing up at Dominic’s speeches and the polls consistently in his favor, she's never been happier to stand proudly by his side . . .
\nUntil she and Dominic start seeing the same, strangely ominous woman turning up all along the campaign trail. Until their tour starts becoming a nightmare of botched events, crucial missed information, and increasingly dangerous “accidents.” Suddenly Jo can't get any answers from Dominic - or understand why he is acting so paranoid and terrified . . .
\nWhat Jo can do is start digging into his past - one she's never really questioned beyond his perfect image and dazzling accomplishments. What results is an alarming series of events that leave her Good friends turn into enemies, truths are revealed to be lies, and all clues lead back to one secret, shattering weekend that changes Jo’s entire life. With her world splintering into pieces, can Jo risk trying to set things right? Or will hiding the bitter truth by any means necessary destroy her as well?
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KANDY
I was left broken, my heart beating a little bit harder in order to survive. I'd tried picking up the pieces, but when it came to Cane, it was hard to let go.
The way we touched was special and we promised to never forget one another. I had him right in the palm of my hand--thought everything was perfect--but in the blink of an eye, he was gone, leaving me with no choice but to pretend that what we had never existed.
CANE
She was off-limits to me, but I pushed the boundaries anyway. Now, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, my career slowly but surely slipping out of my grasp, and ghosts from my past returning to make things much more complicated.
My love life had never meant so much to me until I met Kandy.
After being knocked down and left stranded, any sane man would have stayed far away, but I wasn't sane--not by a long shot.
I knew reality was harsh, and the universe had all the odds stacked against us. Despite it all, nothing was going stop me from making her mine again.
And if someone tried, they were going to have to go over my dead body first.
KANDY
When I was a little girl, Mr. Cane was my whole world.
He was perfect and handsome and the best thing to have ever happened to my family.
As I grew up, those feelings changed. I wanted him in every possible way, and I got what I’d been craving.
Then I learned things about him…dangerous things.
I was too stubborn to heed his warnings - too naive to see the complicated mess unfolding right in front of me.
My life was torn to shreds because of my desire for him, but how am I supposed to stop loving a man who still means so much to me?
CANE
I knew from the start that I should have stayed away from Kandy, but my stubborn heart wouldn’t let me.
I’ve done things I’m not proud of to get to where I am now, and because of it, monsters lurk deep within my shadows, ready to pull me under. She’s better off without me. I know it but still, I can’t let her go. She’s my girl. My everything.
I will fight for our love, even if it means losing everything I worked so hard for in the end.
Zaira doesn’t want a hero. She needs a weapon.
\nTo save her sister from a soul-devouring curse, she has to cross The Shallows - a nightmare landscape of ruined magic, shifting paths, and vicious creatures that eat people alive.
\nHer guide? Thane Valkor: sorcerer, assassin, walking red flag. His name clears rooms. His magic kills quietly. And whatever he’s really after, it’s not salvation.
\nHe promises to help. He might even mean it. But Zaira knows better than to trust a liar with a blade and ice in his veins. She just doesn’t have a choice.
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magine this:
Your husband is murdered on your wedding day.
Your gown is soiled in his blood.
You are taken hostage...
Treated like a caged animal.
The man behind your husband's murder is revealed.
His name is Draco Molina.
Draco has power. Respect. Wealth.
He is a savage beast of a man - dominant in every way.
Soon after, he makes you an offer that you can't refuse.
All you have do is submit to him, and in return you won't be punished.
He will reward you handsomely.
But if you disobey, you must be prepared to face the consequences.
What do you do when the most wanted man in the world . . . wants you?
A riveting novel of domestic suspense about the close relationship between two women: a severely troubled twenty-something and the mega-successful, billionaire CEO she's determined to destroy.
\nA brutal tragedy ended Ivy Hill's happy family and childhood. Now in her twenties and severely troubled, she barely has a life - or much to live for. Until the day she discovers the name of the woman who destroyed her world: Lola Maxwell - the mega-wealthy socialite with a heart, Miami's beloved first lady of charity.
\nAccomplished, gorgeous, and oh-so-caring, Lola has the best of everything - and doesn't deserve any of it. So it's only right that Ivy take it all away . . .
\nLittle by little, Ivy infiltrates Lola's elite circle, becomes her new best friend - and plays Lola's envious acquaintances and hangers-on against her. But seducing Lola's handsome, devoted surgeon husband turns into a passionate dream Ivy suddenly can't control. And soon, an insidious someone will twist Ivy's revenge into a nightmare of deception, secrets, and betrayal that Ivy may not wake up from . . .
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Years ago, I fell in love with a man named Maximilian Grant - tall, smooth talking, handsome as hell Maximilian Grant.
He was my everything - a man who could do no wrong - but then he did the one thing he promised he'd never do: he broke my heart.
Now, nearly four years later, I'm happily married to a man who has completely changed my life . . . but with my health hanging in the balance, I often wonder what his future entails because I know there is a possibility he'll have to live on without me. John, my husband, is the love of my life, and I have never questioned our love . . . that is until my past comes knocking at the door.
Every girl has that one guy - the one whom she can't seem to forget or completely let go of, no matter how toxic the relationship was, or how badly it ended. Well, this story is a little different.
This is the story of how Maximilian Grant went from being my toxic first love, to the man who ultimately saves my life.
And, trust me, this will not play out the way you think it will.
I am much more than meets the eye.
I am stronger, smarter, and I won’t stop until I’m on top.
He thinks he’s safe around me. He’s a fool to believe so.
What would I do if the most wanted man in the world wanted me?
The answer is simple.
Get rid of him before he dares get rid of me.
he world already knows who I am.
Destroyer.
Killer.
I am ruler.
I reign.
My kingdom, my family--I am in control.
I was never supposed to fall for her.
Power.
Beauty.
Strength.
She makes me vulnerable.
She could get me killed.
And I'll be damned if my heart is my weakness.
When it comes down to the kingdom and what I desire . . . the kingdom will always win.
KANDY
It was love at first sight when I met Mr. Cane.
He was handsome, broody, tattooed, and rich. For years, he’s been mine. He just didn’t know it.
I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with him, or for him to want me in the ways that he did.
None of it was ever supposed to happen, but after all we’ve done together, it’s too late to turn back now. A once harmless crush had blossomed into so much more.
CANE
When we first met, she was just a kid - my best friend’s daughter. A sweet, young girl with a big heart. But now, she’s a young woman who knows what she wants, and all she wants is me.
I’ve tried holding back, pretending the connection meant nothing, but my sweet candy cane made it impossible. If anyone finds out, I’ll be ruined. I’ve worked too hard to lose everything I’ve built. But there’s just something about her that tempts me, making me want to sacrifice just about anything to have her.
Samira Wilder has never had it easy, and when her latest lousy job goes south, things only promise to get harder. Until she unexpectedly meets a man who will change her life forever. Renowned pro golfer Roland Graham is wealthy, handsome, and caring, and Samira is dazzled. Best of all, he seems to understand her better than anyone ever has. And though their relationship moves a bit fast, when Roland proposes, Samira accepts. She even agrees to relocate to his secluded Colorado mansion. After all, there’s nothing to keep her in Miami, and the mansion clearly makes him happy. Soon, they are married amid a media firestorm, and Samira can't wait to make a fresh start - as the second Mrs. Graham . . .
\nSamira settles into the mansion, blissfully happy - until she discovers long-hidden journals belonging to Roland’s late wife, Melanie, who died in a tragic accident. With each dusty page, Samira comes to realise that perhaps it was no accident at all - that perhaps her perfect husband is not as perfect as she thought. Even as her trust in Roland begins to dwindle and a shadow falls over her marriage and she begins to fear for her own life, Samira is determined to uncover the truth of Melanie’s troubled last days. But even good wives should know that the truth is not always what it seems . . .
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From eldest daughter Shari Franke, the shocking true story behind the viral 8 Passengers family vlog and the hidden abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, and how, in the face of unimaginable pain, she found freedom and healing.
\nShari Franke’s childhood was a constant battle for survival. Her mother, Ruby Franke, enforced a severe moral code while maintaining a façade of a picture-perfect family for their wildly popular YouTube channel 8 Passengers, which documented the day-to-day life of raising six children for a staggering 2.5 million subscribers. But a darker truth lurked beneath the surface - Ruby’s wholesome online persona masked a more tyrannical parenting style than anyone could have imagined.
\nAs the family’s YouTube notoriety grew, so too did Ruby’s delusions of righteousness. Fueled by the sadistic influence of relationship coach Jodi Hildebrandt, together they implemented an inhumane and merciless disciplinary regime.
\nRuby and Jodi were arrested in Utah in 2023 on multiple charges of aggravated child abuse. On that fateful day, Shari shared a photo online of a police car outside their home. Her caption had one word: “Finally.”
\nFor the first time, Shari will reveal the disturbing truth behind 8 Passengers and her family’s devastating involvement with Jodi Hildebrandt’s cultish life coaching program, “ConneXions.” No stone is left unturned as Shari exposes the perils of influencer culture and shares for the first time her battle for truth and survival in the face of her mother’s cruelty.
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William Wooler is a family man, on the surface. But he's been having an affair, an affair that ended horribly this afternoon at a motel up the road. So when he returns to his house, devastated and angry, to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter Avery unexpectedly home from school, William loses his temper.
\nHours later, Avery's family declare her missing.
\nSuddenly Stanhope doesn't feel so safe. And William isn't the only one on his street who's hiding a lie. As witnesses come forward with information that may or may not be true, Avery's neighbours become increasingly unhinged.
\nWho took Avery Wooler?
In this family, everyone is keeping secrets - especially the dead. Brecken Hill in upstate New York is an expensive place to live. You have to be rich to have a house there. And they don't come much richer than Fred and Sheila Mercer. But even all their money can't protect them when a killer comes to call.
\nThe Mercers are brutally murdered the night after an Easter Dinner with their three adult kids. Who, of course, are devastated. Or are they? They each stand to inherit millions. They were never a happy family, thanks to their capricious father and neglectful mother, but perhaps one of them is more disturbed than anyone knew.
\nDid one of them snap after that dreadful evening? Or was it someone else that night who crept in with the worst of intentions? It must be. After all, if one of your siblings was a psychopath, you'd know.
\nWouldn't you?
When a beloved wife and mother disappears, a luxurious condo building transforms into a potential crime scene, and the investigation begins: Can the detectives find her before it's too late?
\nBryden and Sam have it all: thriving careers, a smart apartment in a luxury condominium, supportive friends and a cherished daughter. The perfect life for the perfect couple.
\nThen Sam receives a call at his office. Bryden - working from home that day - has failed to collect their daughter from daycare. Arriving home with their little girl, he finds his wife’s car in the underground garage. Upstairs in their apartment her laptop is open on the table, her cell phone nearby, her keys in their usual place in the hall.
\nExcept Bryden is nowhere to be seen. It’s as if she just walked out.
\nHow can she have disappeared from her own home? And did she even leave the building at all?
\nWith every minute that passes - and as questions swirl around their community - Bryden and Sam’s past seems a little less perfect, their condominium less safe, their friends, neighbours and relatives no longer quite so reliable . . .
One day, five lives, but whose hearts will be broken by nightfall?
\nIt started like any other day in the picturesque village of Weirbridge.
\nTress Walker waved her perfect husband Max off to work, with no idea that she was about to go into labour with their first child. And completely unaware that when she tried to track Max down, he wouldn’t be where he was supposed to be.
\nAt the same time, Max’s best friend Noah Clark said goodbye to his wife, Mya, blissfully oblivious that he would soon discover the woman he adored had been lying to him for years.
\nAnd living alongside the two couples, their recently widowed friend, Nancy Jenkins, is getting ready to meet Eddie, her first true love at a school reunion. Will Nancy have the chance to rekindle an old flame, or will she choose to stay by Tress’s side when she needs her most?
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What would you do if you had just twenty-four hours to change your life?
\nAilish Ryan has been in hiding since her husband’s affair ended their marriage. But when a friend forces her to face her new reality, will she choose to revisit the past or embrace a brand new future?
\nAilish’s daughter, Emmy, thought her boyfriend was nothing like her cheating father, but now she’s not so sure. As the hours pass, she turns detective to find out if she picked the right man, or if history is repeating itself.
\nGrandmother, Minnie Ryan is on a mission to deliver a very special gift to a lifelong friend. But will grit and a touch of divine intervention be enough to overcome the obstacles that fate is putting in her way?
\nDario Moretti has spent his whole life working in the family business, but now it’s in trouble and he’s all out of options. Will he have the strength to let it go, even if it means hurting the people he loves?
\nThe clock is ticking . . . but will twenty-four hours be long enough to heal four broken hearts?
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For forty years the fabulous Odette Devine has been a beloved matriarchal actress on Scotland’s longest-running TV show. Today she is broken, betrayed, and desperate to find out if this is her payback for a lie she told forty years ago.
\nA year ago today, Tress Walker’s husband was killed in a car accident, on the same day she gave birth to their baby. Reeling from the discovery that he was with his mistress, Tress has to choose whether to protect her fragile heart or open it to love again.
\nNoah Clark was devastated to discover his wife and his best friend were having an affair. Now the love of his life is asking for another chance to make their marriage work. But can there ever be a way back, once the trust is broken?
\nNoah’s sister Keli Clark has recently been ghosted by the man she loves. When a shocking message from a complete stranger reveals the reason why, Keli will have to decide whether to forgive, forget, or to make sure he pays.
\nTwenty-four hours. Four shocking secrets. One tumultuous tale of love, loss and second chances.
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When a rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and five hundred fellow refugees from Sri Lanka's bloody civil war reaches Vancouver's shores, the young father thinks he and his six-year-old son can finally start a new life. Instead, the group is thrown into a detention processing center, with government officials and news headlines speculating that among the \"boat people\" are members of a separatist militant organisation responsible for countless suicide attacks - and that these terrorists now pose a threat to Canada's national security. As the refugees become subject to heavy interrogation, Mahindan begins to fear that a desperate act taken in Sri Lanka to fund their escape may now jeopardize his and his son's chance for asylum.
\nTold through the alternating perspectives of Mahindan; his lawyer, Priya, a second-generation Sri Lankan Canadian who reluctantly represents the refugees; and Grace, a third-generation Japanese Canadian adjudicator who must decide Mahindan's fate as evidence mounts against him, The Boat People is a spellbinding and timely novel that provokes a deeply compassionate lens through which to view the current refugee crisis.
They have the best of intentions. What could go wrong?
\nClaire Talbot is the publicist at Children of the World, an international aid charity. Morally burnt out after decades working in reputation management, Claire is relieved to finally use her PR skills for good. Too bad the organization is on the verge of bankruptcy. In a last-ditch effort to keep them afloat, Claire arranges for an A-list actress to volunteer at one of their overseas orphanages. When the actress decides to adopt a baby and promises a massive donation, it seems as if Claire has single-handedly saved the day. But after a journalist digs into their operations and reveals a shocking crime, Claire and her colleagues must reckon with their complicity and all the ways their work abroad has harmed the very people they set out to save.
\nMoving between Children of the World’s headquarters in Toronto and their compound in Central America, Good Guys charts the charity’s rise and fall. Scathing yet compassionate, the novel is a thought-provoking exploration of power, philanthropy, and the lengths we go to for redemption. Emotionally engrossing, tightly paced, and sharply observed, it ultimately asks: Is it possible to do good in an imperfect world?
The age of magic has been over for nearly three centuries; finalised with the War of Harmony. Even the Gods willingly melt into forgetfulness, letting mortal life grow as it would, for good or bad. Not all the gods' had agreed unanimously. So, when a mortal man decides to release a banished god for his own purposes, nothing will ever be the same.
Kareina of Clan Gradyln has posed as her twin brother Karr (with the aid of minor forbidden magic) for over a decade, since Karr's disappearance and Kareina's kidnapping and torture. Even Caldier Hassid, her father, forgets her true gender. So, when Hassid agrees to a betrothal between Karr and Mayliandra, it's up to Kareina to figure a way out of it. Meanwhile, someone has brought the old god T'Dar from the depths of Bahalkar to bring back the old ways of chaos.
Mayliandra of Clan Bredwine, about to be given to the fierce Sher Karr, doesn't know if she should be happy for the opportunity to leave her home, where she's nothing but a servant; or, petrified her future husband will learn her secret. Although Mayliandra intends to do her duty to her clan, she can't help wishing Karr were his dead sister, Kareina.
A disgruntled Gradyln warrior, Belzan, is preparing to destroy the woman who severed his hand and banished him - and all those important to Kareina. Using the fear of the people of Kellshae as a catalyst to building his army, Belzan incites hatred of magic wielders, and the basic need of men to get their women under control.
\nGionne needs to bring Kellshae's first oracle to Zheirger Keep, but must traverse the unsettled land filled with angry magicked people, and the common people killing those with magic. The rift separating Gionne from Jahq never broached makes the situation difficult, as they're to work together on this matter. Time has Gionne wondering if she may have been rash in her actions to break up with Gionne. Hatred is tearing Kellshae apart. Is it too late to make amends before all hope is lost?
\nJahq hasn't spoken to Gionne for nearly three years, has barely left her rooms in the Keep. Now her mothers are asking Jahq to accompany Gionne from Gradyln to Zheirger. She knows this mission is important to Kellshae, and that her absence should make her disappearance afterward easier.
\nJahq accepts one former lesson above all: Gionne's rejection was worse for her than any monster Bahalkar spit up from its depths.
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Cornwall, 1854. The people of Roche have always whispered about the recluse in the black granite tower that looms above the moorland. But one young woman is driven to discover the truth behind the old tales.
\nHer life overshadowed by family tragedy, Mina Penrose escapes her lonely days by working at The Magpie, a cozy tearoom on the village’s edge. Lately she’s been seeing shapes in the sodden leaves that hint at the future. After one such omen, Mina stumbles upon a murdered man on the heath. Villagers immediately suspect Harker Tregarrick, a living, breathing mystery who never ventures beyond the bounds of his centuries-old estate.
\nUntil the day after the murder, when the handsome and compelling recluse visits The Magpie . . . leading to a meeting that will change both their fates. Captivated by a man around whom danger and rumors of death swirl, Mina has never felt more alive. Can she uncover Harker’s heartbreaking history - and the truth about the murder - before tragedy strikes again?
“You can never go home again,” the saying goes - but Hal, Athena, and Erin have to.
\nIn high school, the three were students of the eccentric Professor Marsh, trained in a secret system of magic known as the Dissonance, which is built around harnessing negative emotions: alienation, anger, pain. Then, twenty years ago, something happened that shattered their coven, scattering them across the country, stuck in mundane lives, alone.
\nBut now, terrifying signs and portents (not to mention a pointed Facebook invite) have summoned them back to Clegg, Texas. There, their paths will collide with that of Owen, a closeted teenager from Alabama whose aborted cemetery seance with his crush summoned something far worse: a murderous entity whose desperate, driving purpose includes kidnapping Owen to serve as its Renfield.
\nAs Owen tries to outwit his new master, and Hal, Athena, and Erin reckon with how the choices they made as teens might connect to the apocalyptic event unfurling over the Lone Star State, shocking alliances form, old and new romances brew, and three unsuccessful adults and one frightened teen are all that stand between reality and oblivion.
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They think they've killed the last of us . . .
\n981 AD. The Viking King of Dublin is dead. His young widow, Gormflaith, has ambitions for her son - and herself - but Ireland is a dangerous place and kings tend not to stay kings for long. Gormflaith also has a secret. She is one of the Fomorians, an immortal race who can do fire-magic. She has kept her powers hidden at all costs, for there are other immortals in this world - like the Tuatha Dé Danann, a race of warriors who are sworn to kill Fomorians.
\nFódla is one of the Tuatha Dé Danann with the gift of healing. Her kind dwell hidden in a fortress, forbidden to live amongst the mortals. Fódla agrees to help her kin by going to spy on Brian Boru, a powerful man who aims to be High King of Ireland. She finds a land on the brink of war - a war she is desperate to stop. However, preventing the loss of mortal lives is not easy with Ireland in turmoil and the Fomorians now on the rise . . .
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Over a hundred years after she went missing, Isolde, born to the family of a famous Irish king and a powerful immortal, inexplicably reappears.
\nHer mother's kin, the Descendants, are one of the two magical races of Ireland. But no Descendant can understand the reasons for Isolde's disappearance, and worse yet, she is giftless - born with no magical ability, a dangerous thing when the magic-rich Fomorians, ancient enemies of the Descendants, are growing in strength.
\nThe Fomorians no longer control any Irish kingdoms, but they still desire control over the mortal world. They seek to spread their dangerous webs wider by manipulating England's Norman lords to invade Ireland.
\nNot yet eighteen, Isolde's world is about to change for ever. But when death and destruction seem inevitable, her true worth will show itself, for Isolde is far more than she seems.
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Ireland, 1011 AD. Brian Boru is now High King of Ireland. His queen, Gormflaith, instructs their young son in his heritage - but only on his mother's side. For Gormflaith, an immortal Fomorian skilled in fire-magic, intends to finally defeat the Fomorians' hated foes, the Descendants, and establish control over Ireland. And if King Brian stands in her way, so much the worse for him . . .
\nFódla, the Descendants' spy in King Brian's camp, treads a wary path. She must protect her magically powerful young nephew from their leader, Tomas, who will do anything to achieve his aim of the Descendants returning to the mortal world and ruling Ireland. And Fódla is on dangerous ground, for she has broken one of the sacred rules of the she has fallen in love with a mortal.
\nAs the schemes of Gormflaith and Tomas come to fruition, the only possible outcome is war. Ireland has bled red and often . . . but the coming clash will be a battle for the ages. Strange alliances will form, old defences will fail, and the land will never be the same again.
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Ireland, 1000 AD. Gormflaith is unhappily married to Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, and although a queen she struggles with her limited position. As an immortal Fomorian with the secret gift of magic, Gormflaith has a burning desire: to find and destroy the hidden fortress of her sworn enemies, the Descendants, who seek to kill her kind at all costs. She begins to use her magical powers, and discovers she is more skilled than she ever realised . . . but can she control what she will become?
\nMeanwhile Fódla, the Descendants' healer, mourns her banished sister but clings to life as the guardian of her young nephew. She seeks a place of safety for them both, but he has secrets of his own that could threaten everything - and Fódla must do all in her power to keep him hidden away from those who would use him for evil.
\nWhen a mysterious man comes to King Brian's court, his presence could spell disaster or deliverance for both Gormflaith and Fódla - and for Ireland herself. For he is Tomas, an ambitious immortal with few scruples - and he will do anything to see his plans become reality.
\nSoon, mortals and immortals alike are drawn towards a bitter conflict that could decide the future of Ireland and all her people.
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Kea Petrova is dealing with more than her fair share of trouble.
\nAt just twenty-five years old, she’s the youngest of the five Hawaiian clan leaders living on the Homestead in outer Los Angeles, following catastrophic flooding that destroyed their islands.
\nKea struggles to keep her small clan afloat, scraping rent together through odd jobs and selling the Hawaiian-language spells she crafts. Life is difficult enough, but the murder of Angelo Reyes - a prominent LA activist - turns her world upside-down.
\nAngelo was killed by a death spell - something that can only be created in Hawaiian - so Kea quickly becomes the prime suspect, known for her unique spellwork. To clear her name, she must unravel the mystery behind Angelo’s murder and confront LA’s most powerful players, all while under the supervision of a dangerously attractive guard. The clock is ticking - can Kea save herself, her clan, and the Homestead before it’s too late?
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After the disastrous final American Superstar show, Lennon's world is plunged into darkness. Camila had left her, her parents disowned her, and the online smear campaign had her locked inside her apartment. Struggling to keep her head above water, Lennon realises she has to fake it until she makes it - no matter how hard that would be.
\nStill reeling from the abrupt dumping by Camila and trying her best to move on, Lennon throws herself into reviving her career and writing a hit album, all the while trying to hold together the heartbreak at the rejection of her parents and the loss of Camila.
\nShattered by her decision in New York to save Lennon's career, Camila continues to battle the fallout while trying to come to terms with her own demons, all while struggling to decide if the life of a performer is something she wants anymore.
\nRealising she made a grave mistake in leaving Lennon, Camila sets out to win back the one person who understood her most in the world while healing the darker parts of her soul.
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Gracie had it all.
\nHer band had just booked a national tour, she was finally off the waitlist for her dream dog, and her girlfriend had popped the question.
\nThe stars had finally aligned - until they didn’t. After a horrific accident, Gracie loses the last five years of her life, including her band, her dog, and her fiancée.
\nWhen her girlfriend wakes up from the accident asking for her college boyfriend, Ashley’s grand power-couple plans are put on hold. Confronted with a version of Gracie she had never known, Ashley is left with one question:
\nWhen your memory is lost, can the heart still remember?
Lennon Emery, an aspiring singer and closeted lesbian, auditions for a spot on the famous American Superstar, a singing competition that promises fame and fortune for the winner. Lennon's goal is simple, win the show and become the performer she was born to be, and then maybe her parents might finally be proud of her - all the while keeping her secret just that, a secret.
\nCamila Bianchi, child star turned wild party girl turned redeemed performer. Camila was finally coming out on top, her image rebrand finally allowing her to reap the rewards. She has one more deal to fulfill with her label before she would be free of their clutches - be a judge on American Superstar and mentor the hopeful singers. Falling for one of the performers was not part of the plan.
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Lennon Emery had done it! After securing a coveted spot on the American Superstar live shows, Lennon realises the hard part has only just begun. Nine weeks of live performances in front of thousands of people - if she makes it that far! You would think that nine weeks cut off from the real world and real problems would sound like a holiday, but with production playing nasty games and a contestant out for her blood, Lennon soon realises she’s signed up for more than she bargained for.
\nOf course, there was also the problem of her heart pounding crush on her mentor, Camila Bianchi. Still desperately maintaining her straight façade, Lennon’s desires are put to the test as she truly begins to question the secretive world she lives in.
\nStill trying to win back favor with her label, Camila is on the road with American Superstar as a mentor for the under thirties. Camila was doing everything right. Smiling when she had to, and building killer performances for her contestants. Everything was perfect - except for her infatuation with her contestant, Lennon Emery. Trying to maintain the boundaries they both agreed on, Camila is torn between doing what is right or going all in and taking what she desires most - Lennon.
\nA romance on the road never hurt anyone . . . right?
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In the wake of a violent rebellion, Cecilia and Xander are trapped behind enemy lines under the thumb of a cruel tyrant. It’s impossible to know who to trust with the culture of fear Vincent has instilled in the Argarian court. Clawing back the power he stole requires slow and careful progress. The vicious king needs them both alive for now, but one wrong move will land them in tower jails or worse.
\nOutside the castle walls, Evan enlists his network of spies to help his friends escape. But moving through town freely and accessing the castle grounds requires accepting help from an unexpected ally.
\nIn the heart of Vincent’s court, Rainer is rendered from an aching past he can’t remember and is desperate for the glorious future he’s been chasing his whole life. Torn between his duty, his honor, and his heart, Rainer must decide what he wants most and what price he’s willing to pay for it.
\nThey all walk a perilous line and one misstep will cost them their lives and the chance at the happily ever after they’ve fought so hard for.
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Memory Witch, Cecilia, is used to sacrificing for power. She’s exchanged her blood for memories, her pride for respect at court, and her forbidden and unrequited love for her guardian, Rainer, for the sake of her duty. It will all be worth it if she can complete the Gauntlet and release the power of the Lost God.
\nBut when the god of war attacks, sending the two kingdoms from simmering tension to open war, Cecilia and Rainer set out on one final perilous journey. They venture deeper into enemy territory than ever before, aided by a charming hunter who offers Cecilia a glimpse of the adventure and romance she’s always wanted.
\nAs the trio encounters vicious memory-stealing hunters, enchanted illusion forests, and meddling gods who speak in riddles, they draw ever closer to the pinnacle of the Gauntlet, and the sacrifice that Cecilia has been dreading. When faced with the most important magical exchange of her life, Cecilia must choose between her kingdom, and her heart, knowing one will be left irreparably broken.
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Cecilia is mired in grief. Haunted by the lives she took when fighting the god of war and the price she paid to take them, Cecilia knows winning one battle has only postponed the greater war.
\nA terrifying new power burns through her blood. Rainer’s heart-wrenching confession has her torn between old love for him and new love for Xander. Meanwhile, the enemy is regrouping with the enigmatic trickster god, Cato, at the helm - and Cecilia owes him a favor.
\nWhen the Argarian Army attacks and Cato kidnaps Xander, Cecilia turns to her godly half-siblings for aid. But the gods seem more interested in playing games than saving the realm. To rescue Xander, Cecilia must root out Cato’s weakness by diving deep into the gods’ world of favors, completing their tasks, and untangling their riddles before Cato collects on the debt he’s owed.
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Xander Savero is reeling from the loss of his family and the love of his life. But there’s no time for his broken heart when his kingdom is in peril. His cruel cousin is chipping away at Argaria’s borders, leaving a trail of violence in his wake, and that’s just the beginning.
\nThe fiercest opposition comes from within Xander’s own court, where nobles speculate about his parentage, commoners think he’s an outsider, and assassins wait poised for the moment he drops his guard. Xander strives to put an end to the upheaval by marrying a princess from a stronger, more established kingdom. His decision plunges the Argarian court into a chaotic three-week festival, at the end of which he will choose a bride.
\nBut more new faces at court mean more threats to Xander’s life, compelling him to call in reinforcements from old friends. Cecilia’s arrival is more hindrance than help, putting him face to face with the woman who shattered his heart, while he’s still picking up the pieces. Together, Xander, Cecilia, and their friends must fight against a series of ancient spells, a spy in their midst, and their own haunted pasts to take down their faceless enemy before Xander and the kingdom both fall.
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After narrowly escaping death at the hands of the Dames Blanches, Lou, Reid, Coco, and Ansel are on the run from coven, kingdom, and church - fugitives with nowhere to hide.
To elude the scores of witches and throngs of chasseurs at their heels, Lou and Reid need allies. Strong ones. But protection comes at a price, and the group is forced to embark on separate quests to build their forces. As Lou and Reid try to close the widening rift between them, the dastardly Morgane baits them in a lethal game of cat and mouse that threatens to destroy something worth more than any coven.
Evil always seeks a foothold. We must not give it one.
\nAfter a heartbreaking loss, Lou, Reid, Beau, and Coco are bent on vengeance more than ever before - and none more so than Lou.
\nBut this is no longer the Lou they thought they knew. No longer the Lou that captured a chasseur’s heart. A darkness has settled over her, and this time it will take more than love to drive it out.
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Célie Tremblay has always been a good girl: kind and beautiful, a daughter of whom every parent would be proud. She surprises the entire kingdom when she defies tradition to become the first huntswoman - including her new captain and fiancé, Jean Luc, who rules the huntsmen with an iron fist. He isn’t the only one concerned for Célie’s safety, however. Though her friends try to protect her from the horrors of her past, mysterious whispers still haunt her, and a new evil is rising in Belterra - leaving bodies in its wake, each one drained of blood.
\nDetermined to prove herself in her new role, Célie tracks the killer to the lair of Les Éternels - ancient creatures only spoken about in nursery rhymes - and catches the attention of their king, a monster who hides his plans for her behind beautiful words and sharp smiles. Now Célie has new reason to fear the dark because the closer he gets, the more tempted she feels to give in to his dark hunger - and her own.
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Two years ago, Louise le Blanc fled her coven and took shelter in the city of Cesarine, forsaking all magic and living off whatever she could steal. There, witches like Lou are hunted. They are feared. And they are burned.
Sworn to the Church as a Chasseur, Reid Diggory has lived his life by one principle: thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. His path was never meant to cross with Lou's, but a wicked stunt forces them into an impossible union - holy matrimony.
The war between witches and Church is an ancient one, and Lou's most dangerous enemies bring a fate worse than fire. Unable to ignore her growing feelings, yet powerless to change what she is, a choice must be made.
And love makes fools of us all.
Célie’s life is over. She took her final breath trying to save the people she loves - including the powerful and enigmatic vampire king, Michal, who refused to let her go. When Célie wakes, she cannot walk in the sun; she can hear her friends’ heartbeats and she craves their blood. Michal has cursed her to the eternal existence of a vampire.
\nBut Célie isn’t the only dead roaming the earth. Her sister, Filippa, has returned as a shadow of her former self, and other revenants are rising from their graves intent on revenge. The fragile balance between life and death has broken, awakening an even darker force - and he is coming for Célie, ready to claim her as his Bride. With the fate of their world at stake, Célie and Michal must set aside their searing attraction to mend the veil and right the balance, once and for all.
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Margrethe Amelia Linden (Daisy to her friends) is a young woman of gentle upbringing, some talent as a watercolorist, and firm opinions that often get her into trouble. Determined to find her missing father, in the summer of 1895 she sets out for the last place he was seen: the Wild West. It’s a rude shock when her younger sister stows away on the airship - such behavior no doubt the result of her unsuitable friendship with Maggie Polgarth and the Carrick House set.
\nOn the journey, friendship blooms between Daisy and Miss Emma Makepeace, who is traveling to the Texican Territories as a mail-order bride. When Emma begs the girls to delay their search by a day or two in order to stand with her at the altar, Daisy is delighted to accept.
\nBut the wedding day dawns on a dreadful discovery. Within hours the Texican Rangers have their man - but even in her grief, Daisy is convinced he cannot have killed her friend. She must right this terrible mistake before he hangs . . . and before the real culprit realises that two very observant young ladies are not going to allow him to get away with murder . . .
A lady of resources has the power to change the world - if she can stay alive long enough to do it.
\nLady Claire Trevelyan had been looking forward to glittering balls, congenial society, and relief from pursuit during her stay with Lord and Lady Dunsmuir in the Canadas. Well, perhaps not entirely. Being pursued by a handsome airship captain is rather diverting, especially when it appears her erstwhile employer, Andrew Malvern, is becoming much too distracted by a certain blond mechanic.
\nBut a shot fired in the night puts an end to such diversions, and instead plunges her and her orphaned band of children into a fight for their very survival. Between secret conversations at the highest levels of society and skullduggery in the diamond mines, Claire must discover who is behind a series of alarming attempts on her friends' lives - before her mother is compelled to make funeral arrangements yet again.
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Married eight months, Lady Claire Trevelyan and Dr. Andrew Malvern are blissfully working together on a new invention, and providing a home for a collection of street sparrows. Then Claire’s mother, the redoubtable Lady Jermyn, arrives with her family in tow and expects to stay indefinitely . . . Peony Churchill turns up on the doorstep with valise in hand . . . and raffish cousin Claude comes for a visit . . .
\nWhile separately any of these would be most welcome, together they are overwhelming. Claire and Andrew flee to Athena for a bit of breathing room. But the last thing they expect is to have their airship hijacked . . . with Claire’s little brother Nicholas still aboard . . .
Daisy Linden and her sister Frederica arrive by airship in Santa Fe, capital of the Texican Territories, determined to search for their missing father. But two surprises await them - the authorities’ baffling refusal to help, and a not-so-chance meeting with snake-oil salesman William Barnicott.
\nTo their joy, the Lindens find that their father has indeed been seen in Santa Fe. To their horror, it was an assignation with a cancan dancer in the dead of night. Now the dancer is missing - and their father seems to be the only suspect. There is nothing for it - Daisy and Freddie must find the girl, for only she can clear his name, and tell them where he might be now.
\nBut there are forces arrayed against them in Santa Fe . . . men in the shadows who have bet too much on a dancer’s disappearance to let two young ladies interfere and raise the stakes . . .
It is the event of the season - on Twelfth Night, the Dunsmuirs have invited the cream of London society to celebrate the marriage of Lady Claire and Andrew Malvern at a reception to which the Prince Consort himself is expected. Captain Ian Hollys brings his fiancée Alice Chalmers to London to attend and to meet his family - people who cannot see past her flight boots to the woman who stands by his side as an equal.
Now adjusting to life as a newlywed, seeing to her business affairs, and preparing the Mopsies to return to school in Munich, Lady Claire is settling into her new life with joy. When two young cousins of Gloria Meriwether-Astor arrive in London, the inhabitants of Carrick House are happy to welcome them. Sydney and Hugh Meriwether-Astor are completing a world tour, and the Dunsmuirs’ ball is just the thing to cap it off in splendid fashion. But Maggie learns that Sydney has his own plans for the family business - and they don’t include cutting off the supply of arms to the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias, as Gloria is determined to do.
It’s time for someone with a spine, an airship of her own, and reasons to put fields of air between herself and decisions about her future to pull up ropes and warn Gloria that betrayal is closer than she thinks . . .
Napoleon is determined to conquer the world with his steam-powered weapons. Nothing in England can stop him . . . except two young lady inventors.
\nIn 1819, France is surrounded by armies. With Russia in the north, the Karlsruhe Confederacy in the east, and a pirate kingdom in the south, Napoleon cannot break out, nor can the English Navy seem to break in. Europe teeters on the edge of a sword. Whichever side rules the air will win.
\nCeleste Blanchard, daughter of the Emperor’s disgraced Air Minister, is running out of time to develop an air ship that can carry his armies to England and restore her mother to glory. But on a daring and desperate test flight, she is blown off course . . . and washes up, half drowned, on the shores of Cornwall, in the heart of enemy territory.
\nLoveday Penhale, cosseted daughter of gentry, has her own inventions to build, even as pressure mounts to behave like a proper young lady and seek a husband instead of a design for a high-pressure steam engine. But when Arthur Trevelyan, heir to the neighboring estate, Gwynn Place, asks for her help in rescuing an unconscious young woman on the beach, Loveday discovers an aeronaut and an inventor as skilled as she is. Between them, a friendship blossoms, and Loveday wonders if they might even pull off the impossible and invent an air ship that will catch the eye of the Tinkering Prince Regent, who has offered a prize to anyone who can help England break the impasse. Celeste’s loyalties are torn in two. If she is caught working secretly for France, she will lose her friend, the love of an honorable man - and her life. But if Napoleon learns she has betrayed him, she will be executed on sight.
\nCan friendship prevail in the face of war? Or is there a third solution - one where everything hinges on the bravery and daring of a Cornish debutante and the Emperor’s aeronaut?
Hot on the trail of their missing father, Daisy and Freddie Linden step off the airship Iris in San Francisco de Asis. At the moment they discover their best clue to Papa’s whereabouts, an earthquake levels the city - and a disaster is the best time for a political coup.
\nThe forces of evil have two targets: May Lin, the river witch, and Carlos, the country’s handsome young ruler. She is sucked alive into a crevasse, having never told the prince she loves him. Carlos is abducted - with Freddie the only witness. The kingdom will descend into chaos unless someone can find them both - and Daisy and Freddie seem to be the only ones left standing.
Her father may have sacrificed his own life to save hers, but heiress Gloria Meriwether-Astor is finding it difficult to forgive him. After all, how many young ladies of her acquaintance will inherit wealth, beauty, and a legacy of arms dealing? Now the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias is about to declare war on the Texican Territory and Gloria simply will not allow it.
\nIn company with Alice Chalmers and the crew of Swan, along with a lost young Evan Douglas seeking reparation for his own sins, she takes to the air. Her intention - to stop the train carrying the final shipment of monstrous mechanicals into the Wild West. But they should have known that making a deal with air pirate Ned Mose in exchange for his help could never end well. What is a lady of principle to do? For the lives of thousands may depend on her ability to stop the war . . . even if it means losing everything and everyone she has come to love . . .
Gloria Meriwether-Astor’s belief in doing the right thing has carried her across the world and through dangers that would have felled a lesser woman. She believed that if she married the dashing Captain Fremont, she could approach the Viceroy of the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias with impunity. She could convince the prince to stop the war their fathers began, and then she could return to Philadelphia with her husband, her conscience clear at last.
\nSadly, belief and reality are two different things. The prince agrees to her proposal on one condition - that she annul her marriage and become his wife instead! Every woman has a threshold she will not cross. Gloria has come to love her riverboat captain, and the price of peace is simply too high. But when the evil stalking the pleasant gardens of San Luis Obispo de Tolosa claims its victim, the time for belief is over and the time to act - daringly, outrageously - is at hand. Do the witches hold the key to a way out of this trap?
\nAll Gloria has to do is take up the crown of roses and play for the highest stakes. All she has to do is become the iron dragon, and start a war of her own.
Gloria Meriwether-Astor, determined to end the invasion her father and a power-hungry diplomat started, has found safety with the witches of the river canyons in the Wild West. But how can one young lady without so much as a hat to her name challenge a kingdom? Confronted with the solution - marriage - she has two choices: accept the help she needs, or return to Philadelphia alone and a failure.
\nSo, in the company of riverboat captain Stan Fremont - the dashing rogue she must now call husband - she sets off for the capital to negotiate with the Viceroy. But with an entire country mobilising between herself and her objective, the attempt could mean her life - and the life of the one person she is beginning to care for . . .
How much must one sacrifice for the sake of friendship?
Lady Claire Trevelyan has had to deal with betrayal before, in small ways and large. But none is quite so painful as the belief that Gloria Meriwether-Astor had deserted her and her friends and left them to die under the waters of Venice. When she learns that Gloria has inexplicably vanished, she has no choice but to follow her heart and attempt to find the missing heiress.
But the decisions of the heart do not sit well with the gentlemen in her life, who had every reason to believe she planned to settle down at last - and suddenly Claire finds herself without a career, a fiancé, or the confidence in her own abilities that has carried her this far. Captain Ian Hollys is suffering from the megrims and cannot seem to recover from his dreadful experience as a prisoner. Alice’s dream of captaining her own ship in England is scuttled. Tigg is struggling with a revelation that has turned his life upside down - and may result in a betrayal more harrowing than any the flock has yet seen.
Will the bond of friendship that has brought Claire and the flock together be the very thing that separates them for good? Or will love tip the balance and prove that what really defines a gentleman of means is none other than a lady of resources?
The winds of change are blowing - Lady Claire is a big sister again with the arrival of little Caroline, and eight-year-old Nicholas is preparing to go to Eton. In an effort to make up for his less than heroic conduct at Holly Cottage, Nicholas's tutor Alden Dean offers to see the boy safely along his journey.
\nBut Nicholas never reaches Eton, and Alden Dean never returns. Old enemies have not forgotten old slights, and they’ve chosen the perfect moment to strike. Their aim: To force Claire and Andrew to give up the Helios Membrane, an invention that can change the fortunes of an entire country.
\nBut the Lady of Devices is not the only Trevelyan with wits and courage. As the danger mounts, can this ingenious and courageous family tip the balance between power and love, and save more than one life?
Lady Claire Trevelyan, left alone after the Arabian Bubble claims home and family, now leads the cleverest gang in the London underworld.
\nBetween outwitting a rival gang, inventing a device that will net her and her scientist employer worldwide fame, and keeping her mother from marrying her off, she can almost forget that a powerful lord wants to get closer . . . and can destroy it all . . .
Maggie Polgarth astonishes everyone at Carrick House when, in a bid for independence, she buys a plot of land and a cottage near Vauxhall Gardens. From one decision, change ripples outward in the flock. Maggie transfers her scientific studies from Munich to London, leaving Lizzie behind. Two of the street sparrows leave the Malverns’ protection to go with her to her new home. And most significant of all, she meets a man who is not only well educated but also kind and handsome.
\nBut the south bank gangs have not forgotten the Lady of Devices. If they cannot touch her, it’s only a matter of time before they take their revenge on someone closer to hand. Jake Fletcher McTavish will risk his own life before he allows anyone to harm a hair on Maggie's head. He’s not afraid of the gangs and he’s a dab hand in a fight. But how can he show Maggie that his feelings run deeper than those of a brother? And how can he protect her when she seems to prefer the company of her new suitor - a man who is everything Jake is not?
Daisy and Freddie Linden and their friends arrive in Port Townsend, only to be arrested as spies and brought before the most feared man in the Wild West - “Hanging” Judge Wilson Bonnell. But the unexpected intervention of an old friend plucks them out of the frying pan and tosses them into the glittering whirl of local society, where Freddie wonders if she could be in love at last. But they’re still standing too close to the fire - when a long-sought and familiar figure is spotted on the beach, bending over the lifeless body of the judge.
\nHave they finally located their beloved father, only to have him clapped in gaol by the Royal Canadian Airborne Police? In a dizzying descent from society belles to social pariahs, Daisy and Freddie now have only themselves to rely on. And they have less than a week to force the killer into the light before their beloved father hangs for a crime he didn’t commit.
London, 1889. Victoria is Queen. Charles Darwin’s son is Prime Minister. And steam is the power that runs the world. At 17, Claire Trevelyan, daughter of Viscount St. Ives, was expected to do nothing more than pour an elegant cup of tea, sew a fine seam, and catch a rich husband.
\nUnfortunately, Claire’s talents lie not in the ballroom, but in the chemistry lab, where things have a regrettable habit of blowing up. When her father gambles the estate on the combustion engine and loses, Claire finds herself down and out on the mean streets of London. But being a young woman of resources and intellect, she turns fortune on its head. It’s not long before a new leader rises in the underworld, known only as the Lady of Devices . . .
\nWhen she meets Andrew Malvern, a member of the Royal Society of Engineers, she realises her talents may encompass more than the invention of explosive devices. They may help her realise her dreams and his . . . if they can both stay alive long enough to see that sometimes the closest friendships can trigger the greatest betrayals . . .
Will a daring rescue put a wedding and a future at risk?
Lady Claire Trevelyan and renowned scientist Andrew Malvern are looking forward to domestic felicity in London when they are surprised by an unexpected visitor. A desperate and fugitive Alice Chalmers seeks their help - her ship has been seized in the Duchy of Venice and worse, her navigator Jake has been thrown into the dreaded underwater prison from which no one ever escapes. Even the innocent.
Lady Claire is about to embark on her career in Munich at the Zeppelin Airship Works. The Mopsies are beginning their final year at school. Andrew Malvern begins to despair of his fiancée ever choosing a wedding gown . . . but when help is denied from official quarters, the close bonds of friendship and shared adventure trump all these considerations with an urgency that cannot be ignored.
But there is a brooding evil waiting for them in Venice . . . an evil that would just as soon put an end to the flock’s interference once and for all. With an innocent friend’s unexpected return and a pair of secret agents who would prefer that women not become involved . . . the situation clearly calls for the inner resources of a lady of integrity.
Now sixteen, the twins Lizzie and Maggie are educated young ladies who have not been called “the Mopsies” in years . . . except by their guardian, Lady Claire Trevelyan.
\nWith the happy prospect of choosing their own future, the girls can leave their dodgy past behind, and Lizzie can bury her deepest childhood memories where they can do no harm. Upon her graduation from school, Lizzie is awarded an enormous honor - but can she pay the price?
\nIs she ready to be separated from Maggie and become the woman she believes she was meant to be - or will old habits tempt her into defiance and plunge her into disaster?
Book 6 in the Magnificent Devices series!
\nYou can choose your friends, but you cannot choose your family ... or can you?
\nUnder normal circumstances, Maggie and Lizzie would be delighted to meet their long-lost relatives and be reunited with those who had believed them dead, but when are the Mopsies' circumstances ever to be considered normal? With her half-brother Claude Seacombe, Lizzie travels to Cornwall to meet her mother's parents.
\nMaggie goes along, too, since she is part of the family . . . or so one might assume. But the more time she spends in her grandparents' clifftop mansion, the more she realises that something is not right, and the events surrounding her own mother's death are more mysterious - and dangerous - than anyone alive suspects.
\nFor an old nemesis is preying on the weak and proud, and no matter how well dressed or well educated a young lady might be, she cannot stand by and watch evil destroy a beloved cousin's future. Maggie must straighten her spine and plunge into danger for Lizzie's sake . . . and prove that no matter the name she bears, she is first and foremost what the Lady of Devices believes her to be . . . a lady of spirit.
An air voyage to remember turns into a disaster no one may survive.
With her orphaned charges, Lady Claire Trevelyan joins the Earl of Dunsmuir’s family on an airship voyage to the Americas. If she can stay out of Lord James Selwyn’s way until her eighteenth birthday, she will be of age and cannot be forced into marriage. What she doesn’t know is that Lord James is in the Americas, too, with Andrew Malvern closing in on him - and the wonderful device he stole.
But when a storm cripples the airship and air pirates swoop in like carrion birds, Claire and the children must live by their wits to make their way across a harsh landscape. Will Andrew ever see her again and right the wrong he believes he has done? Will Lord James succeed in his monumental thievery? And how exactly does Rosie the chicken evade the soup pot?
Daisy and Frederica Linden have tracked their missing father to Bodie, the most dangerous town in the Wild West, where bad men murder without guilt and single ladies are as rare and valuable as gold. Here they must depend upon the help of the society of absent friends, that secret network of boardinghouse keepers who know everyone’s business - and make secrets their stock in trade.
\nBut some secrets are fatal, and when the local matchmaker pays the price with her life on the night of the Autumn Ball, the ladies of the society beg Daisy and Freddie to help them find the killer of their fallen sister. Aided by Miss Peony Churchill, an intrepid family of aeronauts, and a Rocky Mountain Detective, the Linden sisters must see justice done and unmask a deadly conspiracy.
\nBut in a town where murder is more common than spiked absinthe, will they find themselves in the killer’s sights instead?
It is 1819, and Cornwall is agog at the daring of the two young lady aeronauts who, earlier in the summer, flew nearly to France and back in their homemade air ship. Much more is riding on Loveday Penhale and Celeste Blanchard’s new and improved vessel - they plan to win the Tinkering Prince’s prize, offered to anyone who can help England win the war against Napoleon.
\nTo their dismay, they must take two local gentlemen aloft to report on the ship’s capabilities. While Captain Trevelyan and Emory Thorndyke are welcome in drawing room and ballroom, their presence on the air ship proves disastrous. Wildly off course, Loveday barely manages to bring the vessel down safely - in France! Now it is up to the gentlemen to keep the newly designed ship hidden while Loveday and Celeste secure supplies for its repair from Celeste’s former home, l’Ecole des Aéronautes in far-off Paris.
\nBut much has changed since Celeste left the capital, and enemies lurk in its very walls. With her famous aeronaut mother dead in suspicious circumstances, and the flight school closed, there is only one thing to do - make up a story about her absence and approach Napoleon himself. He promptly makes Celeste his Chief Air Minister, and commands her to plan the invasion of England by air. Can she and Loveday stay alive in this nest of vipers long enough to help their stranded friends? Before they are unmasked as spies - and before their beautiful air ship is captured and used to attack England?
Daisy and Freddie Linden, having finally found their beloved father, are on the last leg of the journey they began so long ago. The only thing now in their way is the notorious gang of air pirates who haunt the archipelago between Port Townsend and Victoria. Corporal Kent of the Royal Canadian Airborne Police gallantly offers to escort the conveyance in an official airship, hoping against hope that Freddie will fly with him and give him an answer to a very important question.
\nBut Professor Linden and his daughters cannot bear to be separated, so William Barnicott and Davey become the corporal’s crew. The pirates’ hatred of the RCAP makes the airship a target - and they are barely clear of the mainland when they are shot down and held for ransom. The Lindens appeal to the RCAP with all speed, but during the mission Davey falls again into the pirates’ hands. Can Davey hang on long enough for the people he loves to come to his rescue . . . or is it the pirates who should fear one intrepid small boy?
When Lady Emilie Selwyn invites Andrew and Lady Claire Malvern to her very first country house party, Claire is delighted to offer her help - until she discovers that Peony Churchill is also on the guest list. But in supporting one friendship, perhaps she could repair another, and the rift between herself and Peony could be mended.
\nBut when Andrew and Claire arrive at the manor, an unexpected guest is among their number. A guest with violent connections to an old crime in Claire’s past. Revenge might be a dish best served cold, but Claire will not allow anything to chill dear Emilie’s first foray into society. Even if it means that the Lady of Devices must come out of retirement.
When Tom Oliver, a successful Canadian entrepreneur, is offered millions from a Silicon Valley company for his data analytics business, he believes his only challenges as he considers the offer will be deciding on next steps for his company and reconciling with his aloof wife. What could possibly go wrong?
\nThings escalate quickly when Tom is targeted by an unknown perpetrator and his inner circle of family and colleagues comes under scrutiny. Tom’s friend, homicide detective Jason Liu, strives to keep Tom safe while he investigates to find the truth. Who would want to murder a well-liked tech CEO at the top of his game, and why?
\nA progression of intriguing plot twists takes this bingeworthy thriller through business, politics, social media, interpersonal relationships, and even equestrian scenarios. When the dust has settled literally motivations become clear, and Tom discovers that while some relationships are worthy of long-term investment, others have expiration dates.
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Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding high on her recent victory that tore southern China from its Mongol rulers. Young, ambitious, and in possession of the Mandate of Heaven, Zhu believes utterly in her own capacity to do anything - endure anything - that will allow her to seize the imperial throne from the Mongols and crown herself Emperor.
\nBut Zhu isn’t the only one with imperial ambitions. Her neighbor, the former courtesan Madam Zhang, wants the throne for her husband - and her powerful kingdom has the strength and resources to wipe Zhu off the map. The only way for Zhu to defeat Madam Zhang is to gamble everything on a risky alliance with an old enemy: the beautiful, traitorous eunuch general Ouyang.
\nNearly mad with the grief and guilt of having killed his beloved Prince of Henan, Ouyang is alive for only one reason: to enact revenge on his father’s killer, the Great Khan. His instability soon threatens his partnership with Zhu, who has never felt grief in her life. Zhu can’t even imagine what kind of sacrifice could ever cause her to feel it. But all desire costs, and while Zhu has already paid with her body - the true price of her ambition will break even her ruthless heart.
In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies.
\nDesperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate. After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.
Magic lingers in the cozy town of Fair Glen, Illinois, and it’s up to the agents at the Bureau of Mystical Affairs to keep it in check. Monroe Bennett, a junior recruit at the Bureau, is ready to ace her first tracking down the source of a rogue love charm.
\nProtecting her charmed classmates, including the bureau director’s daughter Iris James, is top priority. But when Iris asks Monroe to fake date her to make her ex jealous, things get complicated.
\nMonroe believes in duty, not romance. Yet the more time she spends with Iris, the harder it is to ignore the very real sparks flying between them. Can Monroe protect herself from love long enough to solve this case, or will her growing feelings get in the way?
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In the waning years of the Azalea Dynasty, the emperor is dying, the land consumed by famine, and poetry magic lost to all except the powerful.
\nWei Yin is desperate. After the fifth death of a sibling, with her family and village on the brink of starvation, she will do anything to save those she loves.
\nEven offer herself as concubine to the cruel heir of the beautiful and brutal Azalea House.
\nBut in a twist of fate, the palace stands on the knife-edge of civil war with Wei trapped in its center . . . at the side of a violent prince.
\nTo survive, Wei must harden her heart, rely on her wit, and become dangerous herself. Even if it means becoming a poet in a world where women are forbidden to read - and composing the most powerful spell of all. A ballad of death . . . and love.
When Prince Xian was a boy, a white snake bit his mother and condemned her to a slow, painful death. The only known cure is an elusive spirit pearl - or an antidote created from the rare white snake itself. Desperate and determined, Xian travels to the city of Changle, where an oracle predicted he would find and capture a white snake.
\nSeven years ago, Zhen, a white snake in the West Lake, consumed a coveted spirit pearl, which gave him special powers - including the ability to change into human form.
\nIn Changle, Xian encounters an enigmatic but beautiful stable boy named Zhen. The two are immediately drawn to each other, but Zhen soon realises that he is the white snake Xian is hunting. As their feelings grow deeper, will the truth about Zhen’s identity tear them apart?
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Alexandra Tashen is a brilliant student, adoring daughter, merry wit, and exuberant prankster. After a blissful childhood on a Texas ranch, she learns the truth: She is a refusé, an illegal refugee smuggled into the Allied Nations as an infant.
\nEveryone from her birth region carries a harmless but detectable bit of viral DNA from a flu vaccine. If detected by the rapid genetic testing at security screens, Alex will be returned to the Federation and a likely death. Her adoptive father developed a gene therapy to mask her g-marker, but it is not fully effective. Every g-screen presents a nerve-racking one-in-ten chance of getting caught.
\nWhen her father goes missing, Alex abandons her cloistered academic life in San Francisco for a globe-trotting Commission in a desperate race to warn him of a trap that will destroy them both. As Alex dodges g-screens on her precarious and often-hilarious adventure, a love triangle develops between her and two men: Eric Burton, a commanding and disgraced intelligence officer, and his blood brother, Strav Beki, a charismatic and dangerously unhinged diplomat.
\nBetrayals mount and secrets unravel, building to the most confounding choices that people can face - choices between love, family loyalty, and moral obligation.
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As \"Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective,\" Charlotte Holmes has solved murders and found missing individuals. But she has never stolen a priceless artwork—or rather, made away with the secrets hidden behind a much-coveted canvas.
But Mrs. Watson is desperate to help her old friend recover those secrets and Charlotte finds herself involved in a fever-paced scheme to infiltrate a glamorous Yuletide ball where the painting is one handshake away from being sold and the secrets a bare breath from exposure.
Her dear friend Lord Ingram, her sister Livia, Livia's admirer Stephen Marbleton—everyone pitches in to help and everyone has a grand time. But nothing about this adventure is what it seems and disaster is biding time on the grounds of a glittering French chateau, waiting only for Charlotte to make a single mistake...
It all began with a ruined elixir and a bolt of lightning.
Iolanthe Seabourne is the greatest elemental mage of her generation—or so she's been told. The one prophesied for years to be the savior of The Realm. It is her duty and destiny to face and defeat the Bane, the most powerful tyrant and mage the world has ever known. This would be a suicide task for anyone, let alone a reluctant sixteen-year-old girl with no training.
Guided by his mother's visions and committed to avenging his family, Prince Titus has sworn to protect Iolanthe even as he prepares her for their battle with the Bane. But he makes the terrifying mistake of falling in love with the girl who should have been only a means to an end. Now, with the servants of the tyrant closing in, Titus must choose between his mission—and her life.
Being shunned by Society gives Charlotte Holmes the time and freedom to put her extraordinary powers of deduction to good use. As “Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective,” aided by the capable Mrs. Watson, she’s had great success helping with all manner of inquiries, but she’s not prepared for the new client who arrives at her Upper Baker Street office.
Lady Ingram, wife of Charlotte’s dear friend and benefactor, wants Sherlock Holmes to find her first love, who failed to show up at their annual rendezvous. Matters of loyalty and discretion aside, the case becomes even more personal for Charlotte as the missing man is none other than Myron Finch, her illegitimate half brother.
In the meanwhile, Charlotte wrestles with a surprising proposal of marriage, a mysterious stranger woos her sister Livia, and an unidentified body that surfaces where least expected. Charlotte’s investigative prowess is challenged as never before: Can she find her brother in time - or will he, too, end up as a nameless corpse somewhere in the belly of London?
Under the cover of “Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective,” Charlotte Holmes puts her extraordinary powers of deduction to good use. Aided by the capable Mrs. Watson, Charlotte draws those in need to her and makes it her business to know what other people don’t.
Moriarty’s shadow looms large. First, Charlotte’s half brother disappears. Then, Lady Ingram, the estranged wife of Charlotte’s close friend Lord Ingram, turns up dead on his estate. And all signs point to Lord Ingram as the murderer.
With Scotland Yard closing in, Charlotte goes under disguise to seek out the truth. But uncovering the truth could mean getting too close to Lord Ingram—and a number of malevolent forces…
In a pursuit that has spanned continents, Iolanthe, Titus, and their friends have always managed to remain one step ahead of the forces of Atlantis. But now the Bane, the monstrous tyrant who bestrides the entire mage world, has issued his ultimatum: Titus must hand over Iolanthe, or watch as his entire realm is destroyed in a deadly rampage. Running out of time and options, Iolanthe and Titus must act decisively to deliver a final blow to the Bane, ending his reign of terror for good.
However, getting to the Bane means accomplishing the impossible - finding a way to infiltrate his crypt in the deepest recesses of the most ferociously guarded fortress in Atlantis. And everything is only made more difficult when new prophecies come to light, foretelling a doomed effort . . .
Iolanthe and Titus will put their love and their lives on the line. But will it be enough?
Sometimes a workplace isn’t just a workplace but a place of safety, understanding, and acceptance. And sometimes murder threatens the sanctity of that beloved refuge . . .
\nIn the leafy suburbs of Austin, Texas, a small branch library welcomes the public every day of the week. But the patrons who love the helpful, unobtrusive staff and leave rave reviews on Yelp don’t always realise that their librarians are human, too.
\nHazel flees halfway across the world for what she hopes will be a new beginning. Jonathan, a six-foot-four former college football player, has never fit in anywhere else. Astrid tries to forget her heartbreak by immersing herself in work, but the man who ghosted her six months ago is back, promising trouble. And Sophie, who has the most to lose, maintains a careful and respectful distance from her coworkers, but soon that won't be enough anymore.
\nWhen two patrons turn up dead after the library’s inaugural murder mystery–themed game night, the librarians’ quiet routines come crashing down. Something sinister has stirred, something that threatens every single one of them. And the only way the librarians can save the library - and themselves - is to let go of their secrets, trust one another, and band together . . .
\nAll in a day’s work.
A most unexpected client shows up at Charlotte Holmes's doorstep: Moriarty himself. Moriarty fears that tragedy has befallen his daughter and wants Charlotte to find out the truth.
\nCharlotte and Mrs. Watson travel to a remote community of occult practitioners where Moriarty's daughter was last seen, a place full of lies and liars. Meanwhile, Charlotte's sister Livia tries to make sense of a mysterious message from her beau Mr. Marbleton. And Charlotte's longtime friend and ally Lord Ingram at last turns his seductive prowess on Charlotte - or is it the other way around?
\nBut the more secrets Charlotte unravels about Miss Moriarty's disappearance, the more she wonders why Moriarty has entrusted this delicate matter to her of all people. Is it merely to test Charlotte's skills as an investigator, or has the man of shadows trapped her in a nest of vipers?
Inspector Treadles, Charlotte Holmes’s friend and collaborator, has been found locked in a room with two dead men, both of whom worked with his wife at the great manufacturing enterprise she has recently inherited.
Rumors fly. Had Inspector Treadles killed the men because they had opposed his wife’s initiatives at every turn? Had he killed in a fit of jealous rage, because he suspected Mrs. Treadles of harboring deeper feelings for one of the men? To make matters worse, he refuses to speak on his own behalf, despite the overwhelming evidence against him.
Charlotte finds herself in a case strewn with lies and secrets. But which lies are to cover up small sins, and which secrets would flay open a past better left forgotten? Not to mention, how can she concentrate on these murders, when Lord Ingram, her oldest friend and sometime lover, at last dangles before her the one thing she has always wanted?
After spending the summer away from each other, Titus and Iolanthe (still disguised as Archer Fairfax) are eager to return to Eton College to resume their training to fight the Bane. Although no longer bound to Titus by a blood oath, Iolanthe is more committed than ever to fulfilling her destiny - especially with the agents of Atlantis quickly closing in.
Soon after arriving at school, though, Titus makes a shocking discovery, one that makes him question everything he previously believed about their mission. Faced with this devastating realisation, Iolanthe is forced to come to terms with her new role, while Titus must choose between following his mother's prophecies - and forging a divergent path to an unknowable future.
Charlotte's success on the RMS Provence has afforded her a certain measure of time and assurance. Taking advantage of that, she has been busy, plotting to prise the man her sister loves from Moriarty's iron grip.
\nDisruption, however, comes from an unexpected quarter. Lord Bancroft Ashburton, disgraced and imprisoned as a result of Charlotte's prior investigations, nevertheless manages to press Charlotte into service: Underwood, his most loyal henchman, is missing and Lord Bancroft wants Charlotte to find Underwood, dead or alive.
\nBut then Lord Bancroft himself turns up dead and Charlotte, more than anyone else, meets the trifecta criteria of motive, means, and opportunity. Never mind rescuing anyone else, with the law breathing down her neck, can Charlotte save herself from prosecution for murder?<
With her inquisitive mind, Charlotte Holmes has never felt comfortable with the demureness expected of the fairer sex in upper class society. But even she never thought that she would become a social pariah, an outcast fending for herself on the mean streets of London.
\n\t\t\t\t\tWhen the city is struck by a trio of unexpected deaths and suspicion falls on her sister and her father, Charlotte is desperate to find the true culprits and clear the family name. She’ll have help from friends new and old - a kind-hearted widow, a police inspector, and a man who has long loved her.
\n\t\t\t\t\tBut in the end, it will be up to Charlotte, under the assumed name Sherlock Holmes, to challenge society’s expectations and match wits against an unseen mastermind.
After feigning her own death in Cornwall to escape from Moriarty’s perilous attention, Charlotte Holmes goes into hiding. But then she receives a tempting offer: Find a dossier the crown is desperately seeking, and she might be able to go back to a normal life.
\nHer search leads her aboard the RMS Provence. But on the night Charlotte makes her move to retrieve the dossier, in the midst of a terrifying storm in the Bay of Biscay, a brutal murder takes place on the ship.
\nInstead of solving the crime, as she is accustomed to doing, Charlotte must take care not to be embroiled in this investigation, lest it become known to those who harbor ill intentions that Sherlock Holmes is abroad and still very much alive.
A bestseller in Japan - a beautiful story about shared self-discovery and friendship involving an unlikely group of students who decide to defy the odds and pursue a seemingly impossible goal together.
\nAfter shoplifting some bread one chilly March night, just before the start of a new academic year at Kansei University in western Tokyo, former high school track and field star Kakeru Kurahara runs through the city streets. Though he has grown disillusioned with the sport, he feels as if he could keep running forever . . . but to where, and for what? His revery is broken by a mysterious boy on a bike who has been following him, a fellow student at Kansei University named Haiji Kiyose, who also happens to be a runner.
\nImpressed by Kakeru’s agility, Haiji Kiyose persuades Kakeru to move into Chikusei-so, a run-down dormitory where he lives with eight other boys, including identical twins Jota and Joji, honor student Shindo, detail-oriented Yuki, trivia junkie King, Tanzanian international student Musa, nicotine-loving Nico, and manga otaku Prince. None of the students know that Chikusei-so is the historic home of the Kansei University Track and Field team.
\nAt Kakeru's welcoming party, Kiyose reveals his grand plan: assembling a 10-man team of runners to compete in the Hakone Ekiden, a legendary college marathon relay race. Except for Kakeru and Kiyose, the Chikusei-so gang aren't athletic - or interested in competing. But Kiyose’s enthusiasm wins them over and they agree to this crazy plan. Over the course of ten months, this ragtag team will put aside their differences to pursue an elusive dream . . . and gain so much more than they ever expected.
\nHeartfelt and inspiring, Run with the Wind is a thrilling celebration of what it means to run - for yourself, for others, and with the wind.
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A searing, electrifying debut novel set in India and America, about a once-in-a-lifetime friendship between two girls who are driven apart but never stop trying to find one another again.
When Poornima first meets Savitha, she feels something she thought she lost for good when her mother died: hope. Poornima's father hires Savitha to work one of their sari looms, and the two girls are quickly drawn to one another. Savitha is even more impoverished than Poornima, but she is full of passion and energy. She shows Poornima how to find beauty in a bolt of indigo cloth, a bowl of yogurt rice and bananas, the warmth of friendship.
Suddenly their Indian village doesn't feel quite so claustrophobic, and Poornima begins to imagine a life beyond the arranged marriage her father is desperate to lock down for her. But when a devastating act of cruelty drives Savitha away, Poornima leaves behind everything she has ever known to find her friend again. Her journey takes her into the darkest corners of India's underworld, on a harrowing cross-continental journey, and eventually to an apartment complex in Seattle.
\nAlternating between the girls’ perspectives as they face relentless obstacles, Girls Burn Brighter introduces two heroines who never lose the hope that burns within them.
In breathtaking prose, Shobha Rao tackles the most urgent issues facing women today: domestic abuse, human trafficking, immigration, and feminism.
Janavi and Sagar were never meant to end up married. Janavi is a wonderfully independent, young modern Indian woman. She works for an organisation in India that helps street children, often lost to the world of human trafficking. Sagar is a trained hydraulic engineer, an expert in dam construction. He is the least favorite son, his parents never able to forgive him for an unspeakable act from his past. Sagar seeks refuge in his daydreams of one day finding hidden treasures in the fabled Indian river, the Ganges.
\nYet the two are forced together into an arranged marriage which neither of them wants. Even worse, Sagar has already accepted a job in America, in a strange place called Montana, where he will be in charge of dismantling a dam.
\nMontana upends all their expectations. Sagar's white colleagues do not welcome him with open arms, and Janavi finds herself unable to forgive her sister who stayed behind in India whose betrayal led her to this marriage and this strange place.
\nWhen a colleague of Sagar's is found drowned, Sagar is the obvious scapegoat. But is this death one in a long history of people of color paying the price for the white man's arrogance and expansionism?
\nJust like the Ganges river that dominates Sagar's dreams, thoughout the novel runs short historical stories of settlers who conquered, both the west and India, who form the foundation upon which Sagar and Janavi stand.
A vibrant queer Jewish debut “teeming with heart, angst, love, and self discovery” about a young woman who, caught between the expectations of others and her own evolving desires, is forced to make a series of fraught life-altering decisions.
\nIt’s the summer of ’96 and best friends (and secret girlfriends) Hannah and Sam are driving across the country from Long Beach, New York, to the fabled queer paradise of San Francisco, free from the harsh gazes of their neighbors and the stifling demands of Hannah’s devout Orthodox Jewish mother. In San Francisco, they will finally be together as a real couple, out in the open, around other queer people. Even if the move means leaving behind Hannah’s beloved Bubbe.
\nWhen the financial strains of West Coast living push the girls to start stripping at The Chez Paree - yet another secret Hannah must keep from her family - Hannah feels trapped. Sam wants her at the club, but Hannah hates stripping nearly as much as she hates disappointing Sam. Then Hannah meets Chris, an older butch lesbian, who is immediately taken with her. Desperate to stay in San Francisco, but away from the leering men at the club, Hannah proposes an escort arrangement.
\nBut as Hannah falls deeper into Chris’ world and Sam starts to meet new queer friends, a rift forms between them. Without Sam, who is Hannah? And what becomes of San Francisco to Hannah alone - a space rich with queer possibility, or an intimidating, unfamiliar place, just as lonely as the one she’d left behind? An achingly tender and resonant story of survival, first love, and growing up queer in the ’90s, Girls Girls Girls is a piercing exploration of the choices we make in the thrilling and often confounding search for ourselves and home.
After years of fighting for her place in a world determined to break her, Briar Heartley has used her shapeshifting ability to forge herself into a highly skilled, fiercely intelligent, and relentless agent. But the shadow of her aunt's unsolved murder has never left her. When a drug investigation pulls her into the Central Intelligence Team in the Capital, she seizes her chance to return to the city she grew up in with hopes of opening up her aunt’s cold case. But one person still stands in her way.
\nFinn Allerton. A human who is her only match in intelligence and skill, has been her rival since her days at the academy. With his infuriating charm and smug, self-assured arrogance, Allerton is the last obstacle between Briar and the justice she’s been chasing for years. But behind the self-important front, Allerton is hiding a dark past of his own.
\nReturning to a city that has been the root of past trauma and anguish threatens to destroy them both before they even have a chance to solve the case. Forced into a fragile alliance, their rivalry shifts into a high-stakes partnership fueled by unresolved tension and growing desire. As they delve deeper into a web of deadly secrets in the seductive criminal underworld of the Capital, the chemistry between them becomes impossible to ignore - blurring the lines between hate, lust, and a dangerous new emotion neither of them can control.
\nCan they set aside their turbulent history to expose the traitor in their midst, or will their undeniable attraction become a fatal distraction in a city where trust is scarce and betrayal lurks around every corner?
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Alli Williams does NOT have a problem. Well, other than the fact that she’s been snatched away from her high-powered job and forced into an anger management program.
\nBea Thomas does have a problem. Well, two, no, make that three. Her ex-boyfriend has moved his new girlfriend into their shared flat, and Bea doesn’t even have a job to take her out of the house during the day.
\nBut when Bea’s friend Liz gets a dose of cosmic Karma, Bea finds herself set up as a yoga teacher at an anger management retreat. Where she runs into Alli. Literally.
\nIt’s hate at first glance. Alli thinks Bea is spineless, and Bea thinks Alli’s just plain rude. Except things keep getting hot and steamy, and there isn’t a sauna in sight. And when Bea’s devious boss starts to show his true colors, maybe there’s someone who can teach Bea to stand up for herself . . .
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Avery Alden is thirty four, a virgin, and an heiress. If inheriting a run-down inn outside of Oakview can be considered a legacy. She’s shy, grieving for her mother, and terrified of her future.
\nBut when Charlotte Barett, an English professor visiting from London, knocks on her door late one night, Avery thinks her luck might be about to change. Charlotte is attractive, confident, and, more importantly, interested. Or she might be. Maybe. Perhaps.
\nThe mysterious Charlotte is walled off and definitely hiding something about her past. But Avery thinks she’s the one who might finally get through to the cold professor. And Charlotte seems more than willing to help renovate the inn in return for a bed to sleep in.
\nAs feelings grow and sparks fly, Charlotte’s walls begin to crack. But when they finally come tumbling down, Avery isn’t sure she can deal with what lies behind them.
\nThe future is a scary place when you’re facing it alone. But what if you don’t need to be alone at all?
Dumped and depressed, Lil Bradley is left running her dream bookshop without her dream woman. All that's left of her fiancée is the half-finished coffee shop in the corner of the store. And then Riley Winters reappears. Riley is convinced that she's dying. So she's come back to Amberly, the home that she's been avoiding for fifteen years. And when she walks into Lil's store it's like turning back the hands of time. Except it's a clock that neither one of them really wanted to mess with. There's no way that they're about to recapture their history together.
\nIf only because Kayden, Lil's best friend and Riley's big brother, would never forgive them. Anyway, Lil's happy alone and Riley's busy dying. Until Riley's diagnosis isn't quite as fatal as she thought, and it turns out she came home for all the wrong reasons. But can she be persuaded to stay for all the right ones? Sometimes all it takes is a reminder of what's truly important to turn your life upside down . . .
Nic generally thinks no further ahead than the next meal, but even to her this is the perfect plan. Marry her best friend George and they'll both get access to his trust fund.
\nOkay, there are a few hitches. George's mother hates her for being Latina. She's gay, not straight. Oh, and then there's Klara. The wedding planner.
\nKlara gives her heart to every woman she meets, so it's no surprise that she harbors a crush on Nic. But her failing business needs this wedding and she can't afford to screw it up. So why can't she keep her hands off the blushing bride?
\nMoney, business, friendship, everyone's got something to lose. But when hearts are on the line, the stakes just can't get any bigger. Or can they?
Lydia Carlisle knows exactly what she wants: a job at a fancy medical practice to go along with that shiny new doctor’s degree. That’s what all her plans have been leading to, after all. But while she waits for the perfect position, she’s working as a locum to pay the bills.
\nCordelia Beckett is divorced, bitter, and absolutely certain about what she doesn’t want: anyone ever interfering in her life again. But her pregnant best friend has to pee every three seconds, and is a constant reminder of the life that Cordelia thought she’d one day have but now won’t.
\nWhen ambitious doctor meets cranky receptionist, they don’t exactly see eye to eye. But since Lydia is only temporarily in tiny Whitebridge, this really shouldn’t be a problem. Right?
\nUntil Cordelia and Lydia are left, quite literally, holding the baby. Oh, and living together too, because this is all Lydia’s fault and Cordelia refuses to run a daycare single-handed.
\nEverybody makes plans, and in Whitebridge those plans are everybody’s business. Lydia’s starting to think small town doctoring isn’t so bad. And Cordelia is (very slowly) beginning to thaw. The town thinks they could be perfect together. Until Lydia’s offered her dream job, Whitebridge is cut off by a natural disaster, and a high stakes emergency threatens everything Cordelia holds dear. This isn’t what anyone planned. But then, plans can change, can’t they?
Jazz Colton wants nothing more than a boring life. Escaping from a tumultuous past in California, she moves to Oakview seeking tranquility. She’s done with love, done with excitement, all she needs is a little calm and quiet, and her independence.
Lucy Ford has finally achieved her dream of becoming a police officer. Now that she has what she wants, she needs to deal with what she doesn’t want. And with a house full of stray cats, the one thing that Lucy doesn’t want is yet someone else to look after.
But when Jazz’s past begins to catch up with her, Lucy can’t stop herself from stepping in to help Jazz clean up the mess. And as much as Jazz doesn’t want to get attached, she just can’t stop the feelings that the beautiful cop elicits . . .
Sometimes the only way a relationship can work is through compromise. But can Jazz allow Lucy to chip away at her independence? And can Lucy allow herself just one more stray to take care of?
Under investigation after a fake harassment claim, Carson Maxwell washes up in Hartley, the tiniest town in the world, for one last-ditch attempt to save the career she loves.
\nBut when she meets dedicated nurse Katie Robinson, it begins to dawn on Carson that keeping to her company's strict no-fraternisation rule might not be as easy as she thinks.
\nKatie loves her town and is fiercely protective of the clinic that Carson is under instruction to close. And she's not above using her charms to persuade the strangely attractive accountant that the clinic is worth saving.
\nWhen country mouse and city mouse clash, the last thing they expect is to fall for each other. Too bad that everyone else in town thinks that they're the perfect match . . .
Fired, divorced, and broke, Piper Garland is all out of hope. Until she inherits a house in a village she's never heard of. A house that's all the way across the Atlantic.
\nBuilding contractor Camilla Fabbri spends her life pleasing others: her friends, her clients, not to mention her enormous Italian immigrant family. Which is probably why she's still single and living in a van on her parents' farm.
\nBut when Cam quite literally fishes a strange American tourist out of the village duck pond, everything she's ever known is turned upside down. An instant connection is formed, even if it's not one that either woman particularly wants.
\nSometimes the best things in life are the ones you don't plan for. And with a cast of six burly brothers, a mysterious penfriend called Twinkle Toes, interfering friends and grumpy neighbors, assorted ER staff, a slimy real estate agent, plenty of ducks, plus an enormous Great Dane, Piper and Cam are going to find that plans can only change . . .
Ella and Ema were the best of friends, and more, until that fateful night fourteen years ago. Escaping with her heart in shreds, Ella vows that she will never be happy again.
\nWhen a bad break up and her sister’s wedding lead Ella back to Oakview for the first time in over a decade, the last thing on her mind is Ema. But when her sister demands that Ella learn to dance before the festivities, the stars align and she unknowingly walks into Ema’s dance studio.
\nThe old sparks haven’t died, and before she knows it, the only thing Ella wants is to be swept back up into Ema’s arms. There’s only one problem: Cristof, Ema’s strangely accented dance partner.
\nAs tensions rise and the wedding grows closer, Ella’s trust issues begin to surface. Just who is she supposed to believe? Her beautiful best friend? Or the man who wants to snatch her away?
\nIn the space of five months, Alex Blakely has gone from party-girl traveler who never wanted to settle down, to house-owner and guardian to seven-year-old Libby. The responsibility terrifies her, she never wanted this.
In the course of a year, Kat Stein has gone from happily married second-grade teacher, to divorced, broke and hanging onto her job by a thread. The loss of her perfect life is devastating, she never wanted this.
And when travel-crazed hippy meets disciplined, strait-laced teacher, it's hate at first sight. Alex and Kat couldn't be more different, and neither is exactly living her best life. Until a rigged school election, a painful accident in the woods, and the re-appearance of Libby's mysterious father mean that the two are reluctantly bound together...
Getting everything you ever wanted is hard enough. But getting everything you never wanted? That's a whole lot trickier...
The deepest love can be forged from the darkest hatred.
\nWhen photographer Kate Steinhauser is asked to shoot Nat Lee, it should be the chance of a lifetime. After all, Nat is a household name, the face of a dozen brands, and one of the most recognizable models on the planet. But she’s also a demon from Kate’s past.
\nNat is a wild-child, her antics frequently headlining gossip sites. She’s also a bully, one whose actions still sting Kate twenty years down the line. But the opportunity is too great to give up. Besides, there’s no way Nat will recognise Kate. Not after so long.
Kate and Nat are inextricably linked by their past, and from the first click of the camera it’s clear that their futures are just as connected. But as feelings start to transform, and sparks start to fly, Kate can’t believe that time has changed Nat so much. And Nat’s relationship with hot-ticket actor Jake Allingham doesn’t help matters either.
Once in a lifetime you meet the person that completes you. But what if that person is your worst enemy? Everything should be keeping them apart, yet Nat and Kate just can’t function without each other. Or can they?
\nLeigh Hudson is about to lose her visa. After a tumultuous past, she finally thought she'd found a home in London. But if she can't find a visa sponsor soon, she'll be on the first plane back to the States.
\nRosie Fulton is a struggling market gardener. She dreams of owning her own nursery, but she's quite literally living in a shed.
\nWhen a chance meeting in a dirty pub convinces Rosie that she and Leigh were fated to be together, it dawns on Ice Queen Leigh that Rosie just might be her ticket to stay in the country.
\nAnd that should be that. Except . . . Leigh can't stop thinking about Rosie. And Rosie is still convinced that they were meant to be together. Sparks fly as their fake wedding nears until neither one is sure what's true and what's false anymore.
\nMarrying someone you love is simple. It turns out that not marrying someone you love is a whole lot harder . . .
Eleanor Brewster is a proper English lady with a crumbling manor to prove it, and one inconvenient problem: she needs to marry to keep her family estate.
\nDanni Franks is a no-nonsense farmer with a newly acquired (and deeply in debt) farm, a complicated family, and precisely zero interest in aristocratic drama.
\nBut when Danni’s tractor collides, literally, with Eleanor’s sports car, she somehow ends up engaged to a woman who considers tweed a fashion statement.
\nA fake marriage should solve both their problems: Eleanor keeps her home, Danni gets some much-needed stability, and neither of them has to worry about pesky things like romance. Easy, right?
\nExcept Eleanor is alarmingly good at making Danni’s heart race, and Danni is impossibly attractive in flannel. Throw in a scheming investor, a meddling best friend, and a horse with far too many opinions, and their arrangement might just turn into the love story neither of them saw coming.
When Oscar-winning actress Lilah Paxton torpedoes her career in spectacular fashion, she escapes to the sleepy English village of Bankton to lie low. But country life isn’t quite the cozy retreat she imagined. There’s mud, terrifying sheep, and absolutely no room service.
\nBlossom Baker, cheerful café owner and lifelong Lilah fangirl, always dreamed of meeting her idol. She just didn’t expect her to be such a grump. Or completely incapable of basic adulting.
\nDetermined to help Lilah find a new purpose (and keep her from starving), Blossom ropes her into small-town life, complete with community theater chaos, an overly friendly bull, and a whole lot of unexpected feelings.
\nBut love isn’t a script Lilah can memorise, and happily-ever-afters aren’t as simple as Hollywood makes them seem. Can she prove she’s finally ready for something real? And can a small-town barista really capture the heart of her teenage film-star crush?
\n
Journalist Hayden Wright's romantic trip to France isn't turning out quite as she expected. Not least because her girlfriend is now her ex-girlfriend and she's supposed to go it alone. Nevertheless, she's sure she's got the strength to be independent, right up until her cases don't arrive and she breaks down at the airport.
Which is when Nicolette Roche magically appears to save her skin. Well, her luggage, at least.
Nicolette is flighty, flexible, unreliable and... beautiful. Exactly what Hayden doesn't need in her perfectly planned life. But Hayden's a woman with a mission: to find Sydney Duchamp, a model who dropped off the face of the earth almost forty years ago. And Nicolette might just hold the key to the mystery.
A missing woman, a top job up for grabs, a relationship that redefines the word complicated, and a beautiful French woman. Hayden has more than enough on her plate. So she can't possibly fall in love as well. Or can she?
When prima ballerina Alena Langerova starts receiving death threats, she can't believe that anyone would want to hurt her. Why would a dancer provoke the wrath of an anonymous letter writer? And when her director hires ex-soldier Sam Weaver to be Alena's bodyguard, the dancer is furious. Having her privacy invaded and her independence ripped away mean that Alena hates Sam at first sight.
Sam's reeling from a job gone wrong, an incident that means she's practically unemployable in the security field. A contract with Alena could be enough to prop up Sam's failing reputation. The only problem? Alena doesn't want her there and refuses to follow her instructions, meaning she's a risk that Sam might not be able to afford to take.
Alena and Sam might be stuck with each other, but that doesn't mean they have to like each other. Unfortunately, the heart doesn't always listen to the head. And as danger races closer the two must decide just exactly what chances they're prepared to take.
Love has to be about compromise, but what if you've never had to compromise before? Career-oriented Alena and controlling Sam are the last people in the world willing to change themselves for love. There's no reason they should be together and every reason they should stay apart, but can Alena and Sam end up in each others' arms anyway?
After country music star Beth 'Harmony' Grey breaks down on-stage she literally crash lands in Alman. The tiny mountain town wasn't where the grieving widow planned on staying, but she finds the anonymity of small-town life both calming and healing.
Bookshop owner Skye Perry was never looking for a relationship or even company. But Alman's failing economy means that there's not a bed to be had in town, so when she's called on to offer her spare room to a car-crash victim she can hardly say no.
Skye wants to save her ailing town, Beth wants to go back in time to say one last goodbye to the only woman she thinks she can love. But both of them need a little something from someone else. And when emotions start to come into the picture, they'll need to decide whether they can put the past behind them and truly move on.
There's nothing Skye won't do to save her town, and there's nothing Beth won't do to hold onto the past. But love has a way of finding you whether you want it to or not. Can a heart heal to love again? Or are the scars of the past just too painful?
Ice queen hotel inspector Isla Seymour loves nothing more than her career. She’s demanding, critical, and terrible with people. Until a buy-out means she’s on shaky ground and about to take on what could be her last assignment.
\nHotel owner Katie Taylor is a washed-up singer with a heart of gold. A heart whose size means her tiny seaside inn is on the brink of financial ruin.
\nBut when an unlucky accident leaves Katie incapacitated, her friends step in to ensure Isla pays the price for hurting their beloved Katie. And suddenly, Isla and Katie are seeing far more of each other than either one bargained for.
\nSometimes you just have to ask for what you want. As soon as you discover what that is, of course. Broken arms, stray dogs, interfering bosses, ghosts, and the best found family a girl can hope for all add up to an unconventional love story that shows we all deserve to be loved, no matter who we are. The moral of the story? Never be trapped outside your hotel room without your towel . . .
Just because you don’t believe in love doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
\nLex Daniels is a self-proclaimed screw up. Twenty eight and deep in debt, she has plenty of demons and more than a little baggage. Her life is a collection of one night stands and running away, right up until she meets Abigail Keyes.
\nWidowed, intelligent, and beautiful, Abigail isn’t exactly Lex’s normal type. Suburban life makes Lex feel sick, and Abigail’s neat ranch house and steady career as a professor mean that the older woman embodies everything Lex has been trying to run from.
\nBut when Lex’s demons come knocking on her door, Abigail is the one that steps up. And Lex finds that she’s changing more than she thought possible. Maybe more than she feels comfortable with. Running away is Lex’s default setting, but she might be willing to stick around for Abigail.
\nIf you don’t believe in love, perhaps you just need the right teacher. But when Lex’s demons start haunting Abigail too, running away could be the only option...
\n
Meet Vivien Curtis, a divorced, depressed, reclusive true crime addict. All she wants is to be left alone, and for the kids to stay off her lawn.
\nUntil Alice Knowles appears. A young life coach hired by Viv's best friend Evie to get Viv back on her feet again, Alice wants nothing more than to meet Ms. Right, get married, and start adopting cats.
\nIt's hate at first sight when grumpy meets sunshine, but both women are keeping secrets. Viv sure isn't telling anyone about the weird fizzy feelings she gets when Alice is near. And Alice? Well, Alice isn't a life coach at all. Yeah, it's a long story . . .
\nSometimes we don't know what we want until we get it. And sometimes the hardest part of letting someone in is letting them walk away again . . . Or is it having the courage to face your mistakes and give things one last try?
For Annabel Taylor, romance is business. As the co-owner of an up-and-coming dating app, love is big money. But business means she's not willing to indulge in any romantic shenanigans herself.
\nIndy Chambers has a bucket list, and falling in love before she's thirty is just waiting to be checked off. But since she's never had a relationship last more than a date or two, that box doesn't look like it's going to be ticked any time soon.
\nWhen Annabel's flawless algorithm matches her with Indy, neither of them is exactly thrilled. But Annabel's business could depend on making their date a marketing success, and her algorithm could be just what Indy needs to finally find the love she's been searching for.
\nBefore long, #IndyAnna is trending on social media and the two are inescapably bound together, at least in public. But in private, they know that they're not the perfect match. They're too different, they want different things, they live different lives.
\nCan their differences bring them together? Or is Annabel's perfectly programmed algorithm less flawless than she thought? As the world watches their every move, Indy and Annabel have to decide what it really is they want. And maybe, just maybe, it's each other.
Plain Jane Clark has just about had enough. A string of temp jobs, a horrible house-mate, and a broken down car all add up to a serious need to change things up. Her rich sister's week-long resort wedding on romantic Hawkin Island might be just what Jane needs. Not that she intends to get into any trouble. Jane's far too busy taking care of other people to take care of herself.
As maid-of-honor, Jane's well aware that she'll be expected to dance with the best man. What she doesn't know is that there isn't a best man. There's a best woman. And when Araminta Devine strides into Jane's life, things will never be the same again...
Trix Winchester has been promoted to head of romance acquisitions for London’s leading literary agent. The problem? Trix hasn’t believed in romance for years.
\nKel Bradshaw’s looking for a sugar mommy to pay her way through art school. But she just can’t bring herself to be mercenary enough to trick someone into it.
\nSo when Trix shows up to her American half-sister’s wedding and Kel breaks up a fight between the two, it’s only a matter of time before they realize that they could be a match made in heaven. Kel’s playboy reputation makes her the perfect romance coach, and Trix, well, Trix has money.
\nThere’s only one rule: don’t fall in love. Because Trix is definitely not falling for any of those pesky romance tropes.
\nFake dating has never been so profitable. But with an evil half-sister, a psychologist for an estranged father, a cake shop owner who seems intent on poisoning her customers, and an interfering mail lady, that no falling in love rule is getting tougher and tougher not to break . . .
Sammie Troy just can't deal with her life anymore, so she sells all she's got, leaves her fiancé, and buys an RV. But when the runaway bride parks her truck in front of a small town bar the last thing she's expecting is Leo Bonham.
\nButch, sexy, and older, Leo is everything that Sammie has never wanted. Not least because she's female. And Leo isn't too pleased about meeting Sammie either. She's off relationships for good, and anyway, that huge RV is deterring customers.
\nSammie's too straight, too young, and too beautiful for Leo's taste. And Leo's too broken, too stubborn, and too old for Sammie's games. And yet the bubbling excitement between them can't be denied.
\nIt should have been just a stop on the road, just another customer, but somehow their lives got tangled together. Right up until one cuts the other free. An escape story turned into a romance, which turned into a tragedy. And the only way to get a happy ending is to leave the past behind . . .
The thief with a heart of steel. The victim with a heart of gold. It should be a recipe for disaster.
\nBut from the moment scam artist Mac tries to dine and dash from perfect Eleanor's restaurant, an undeniable connection is forged between the two women.
\nMac has scrimped, saved, and scammed her way through life. Eleanor has always been the good girl, the perfect student, girlfriend, and business owner. There's no reason on earth that they should belong together. Yet somehow, Eleanor ends up offering Mac a job. And that should be that. Until money starts to go missing . . .
\nOne is perfect: rich, well educated, her life mapped out. One is flawed: broke, street smart, her life in shreds. But together they could build a dream. As long as they can accept that opposites attract.
Falling in love with a cheerleader might be a cliché, but dumpy Del Romano just couldn't help herself. At least she was smart enough to keep her mouth shut about it until she could get the hell out of Briar's Glen to start her real life.
\nBree Hampton barely noticed the boring goth girl in algebra class. She had bigger fish to fry. Grow up, marry the quarterback, and get a big house up on the hill of Briar's Glen. A simple and achievable plan for the high school golden girl.
\nBut fifteen years later, Bree's charmed life has fallen apart around her ears. And things in Briar's Glen aren't looking too great. A teenager has gone missing, and now Bree's boss has disappeared too. Then a sexy stranger walks through the door of the shop. A stranger that might not be a stranger at all.
\nLife in a small town wasn't for Del. Too cramped, too conservative, too boring. But now, thanks to a phone call from her small-time criminal father, she's back in town. And things have changed . . .
\nThey say that you can't go home again. But what if they're wrong?
Frank Raines knows exactly what she wants from life: a wife, children, and a house with a lawn. And when her boss, Laura Bancroft, leaves her a half-share in not just the art gallery she works at but also a house, Frank thinks that everything’s going to plan. All she needs now is to find a wife.
\nHannah Layton hates Oakview at first sight. The only reason she’s taken time out of her busy schedule in New York is to check out the legacy that her Aunt Laura has left her. And when she finds out that she’s going to have to share, she’s far from pleased.
\nThey say opposites attract, but there has to be a limit. Foster child Frank can’t think of anything better than family. Disowned for her sexuality, Hannah can’t think of anything worse than family. But when big city woman and small town girl meet, sparks start to fly. Apparently, someone forgot to tell Cupid that potential partners should have at least one thing in common . . .
\nIt just can’t work. Ever. But the more Frank and Hannah try to deny their attraction, the worse things get. Everyone wants perfection, but life just doesn’t work that way . . .
When a tiny lie to her crush leaves barmaid Jules Hawthorne needing to learn to play the piano in just six weeks, she’s determined to get the job done. She’s got a prophecy to fulfill, after all.
\nEnter Billie Brooke, Whitebridge’s most famous resident, a professional musician who’s just mysteriously returned home with her tail between her legs and more baggage than a moving truck can handle.
\nBillie’s the only piano teacher in town. Which is unfortunate, since Jules can’t stand the sight of her. Agreeing to lessons with Billie is like signing a deal with the devil. A very sexy devil. One with luscious curves, piercing eyes, and the self-confidence of jell-o. One that Jules finds herself thinking about far more often than she should . . .
\nAs it turns out, Jules is just what Billie needs. And Billie? Well, she’s got a few hidden talents of her own . . . Throw in a loquacious four year old musical genius, a get-rich-quick entrepreneur sister (and her best friend), a scheming grandfather, a noticeably absent clairvoyant mother, and a few familiar faces and this could just be a love story for the ages. If Jules and Billie can stop sniping long enough to realise their true feelings, that is . . .
When Constable Matilda Ware is posted to Whitebridge, she knows exactly what she wants: a great experience to put on her already glowing CV.
\nSophie Farmer is the only daughter of Whitebridge’s dodgy garage owner. But she’s no less certain about what she’s looking for: a girlfriend that won’t be scared off by her dad or hulking older brother, Gio.
\nWhen Tilly and Sophie meet at the first rehearsal of Whitebridge’s new choir, it’s love at first sight. They both see stars, so everything should be great, right?
\nExcept Sophie doesn’t want her family to know about Tilly and Tilly doesn’t want to compromise her standing in the community. So they’re determined to stay firmly out of each other's way. Until they’re forced to sing a solo together.
\nThe path to true love doesn’t always run smoothly, especially when your dad might be the focus of your crush’s big new investigation. Throw in some drunken shenanigans, a dubious song about a monkey and a bowling ball, far too many interfering villagers, a familiar policeman with marital problems, and an elusive ring of car thieves, and this could be the one time that love doesn’t conquer all. Or maybe not . . .
Best-selling American crime novelist Adelaide Park is running away. Until an altercation with a tractor leaves her stuck in the little English town of Whitebridge with no driver’s license and nowhere left to run to.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWhitebridge bookstore owner Anthea Monroe has been dumped for the umpteenth time and has now officially sworn off women for good. She’s firmly focused on building up her failing business, thank you very much.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tFrom day one, Ant and Adelaide clash. But when an interfering agent pairs them together in a last, desperate attempt to save Adelaide’s career, they suddenly can’t escape each other.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tSometimes running away is the answer. A creepy big house, a disappearing woman, a writing retreat that looks a lot like house arrest, a trip to Vegas, an old people’s home that’s better than Club Med, a life-saving cat and a very, very odd best friend all come together to make sure that opposites really do attract. But in the end, Ant and Adelaide might not be so different after all . . .
When a heart attack nearly kills her, lawyer Holland Goldmann secludes herself in the country. All she wants is a quiet life. Until a stray dog sets her on a collision course with a beautiful young vet.
\nEmory Carter is fresh out of vet school and desperate to save her dead father's veterinary practice. But when she ends up getting sued, it looks like her dreams are shattered.
\nWhen ice queen lawyer meets ambitious young vet sparks start to fly. But it's all so wrong. Holland is too old and broken for this, and Emory is too busy failing at life. And yet the two just can't keep their hands off each other. Right up until tragedy strikes.
\nOpposites can attract, but can they build a life together? When lives are quite literally on the line sometimes the only thing you can do is believe in true love. Which might be a problem if you're a cold-hearted lawyer . . .
Every love story has a happy ending.
\nBut is it love if you don't even know her real name?
\nElle Baker is one step away from being fired from the journalism job she's wanted since forever. She needs a story, and she needs one badly.
\nAlya Goldstein is known for not only being super-successful, but also for being incredibly private. An interview that's impossible to get.
\nUntil a misunderstanding leads to Elle being hired as Alya's new assistant. It's the perfect way to get the story. Or it should be. But as Alya starts to finally open up, Elle finds that she's getting far more involved in this story than she really should be.
\nAs the lies spiral out of control, Elle's forced to face her past. Sometimes it's the lies you tell yourself that are the most damaging. Someone has to make Alya believe in happy endings, but is Elle in too deep to live happily ever after?
Danny Cooper thinks she’s as happy as she has the right to be. After all, as owner of Oakview’s failing animal shelter, she doesn’t exactly have a lot to offer a potential partner. And it’s been a long time since she’s hungered after a woman, that is until her new neighbor moves in.
Lena Travers is confident, rich, and beautiful, all the things that Danny thinks she isn’t. She’s also very, very mysterious. And Lena’s very first move is to threaten to report Danny’s beloved shelter for excessive noise. Despite that first impression though, Danny can’t help but have feelings for the girl next door.
But as the stakes begin to rise, Danny’s fear of taking risks gets the better of her. She’s not good enough for Lena, of that she’s sure. And with the fate of the shelter weighing on her mind, Danny makes a decision she might come to regret.
Sometimes you have to fight for what you want. But you can’t fight if you’re not willing to take risks. Besides, Danny isn’t sure that Lena is what she wants anyway. Or is she? And when the lives of her precious dogs are on the line, Danny makes what might be an unforgivable mistake.
Prim and proper Elizabeth Marks has the perfect life: a big house, the right friends, credit cards galore, and a handsome husband. Until the perfect man leaves her for another woman.
\nEnter Poppy Robbins, bubbly Canadian barista and eternal optimist. Elizabeth thinks Poppy’s just the person to help her wreak revenge on her cheating husband. Poppy thinks Elizabeth is seriously attractive. And only slightly crazy.
\nBut when Poppy moves in with Elizabeth and the plans for vengeance get more detailed, both women find that they can’t quite concentrate on the matters at hand . . .
\nSometimes, finding what you haven’t been looking for is just the ticket. And with Kaftan-clan theater directors, a very much not-dead body (or should that be a dead not-body?), interfering friends by the handful, and one homeless man with a heart of gold, plans can only go awry. Which for Elizabeth and Poppy might just mean that there can be a happy ending after all . . .
Eva Williams wants to save the world. So when she returns from sabbatical in Guatamala to find that the Oakview Nature Reserve is under threat she steels herself for a fight to the death to save it.
Grace Seymour is a woman in a man’s world. Anxious to take her father’s place as CEO of Seymour Construction all she needs to do is seal the Oakview Reserve project and she’ll achieve everything she’s ever wanted.
But as tensions on campus begin to rise, Eva and Grace find that their long-held ambitions are paling in comparison to the sparks that are flying between them. Sleeping with the enemy is on neither’s agenda, but some things are just inevitable...
Opposites might attract, but can they really build a relationship? And as time ticks down to the destruction of the nature reserve, who is willing to sacrifice their ambitions for love?
When Jaye Callaghan's dubiously clairvoyant best friend predicts that her soulmate is on the horizon, Jaye isn't exactly persuaded. But when she walks into Lanport clinic and meets Charlie, she starts to think that maybe her luck is changing.
\nCharlie Riley is a machine. Or she was. A top rated ER doctor with a mind like a trap, she shouldn't be doctoring in a small ocean-front resort town. She's mysterious, cold, and very, very sexy.
\nThis is supposed to be a match made in heaven, but there's a problem. Charlie doesn't believe in soulmates. Or clairvoyants. Or love.
\nIt's up to Jaye to persuade the ice-queen doctor that not only is love real, but that her soulmate is standing right in front of her. But as the stakes rise and the attraction between the two women grows hotter Jaye's faith in romance is shattered. Can Charlie help her put it back together?
\nBelieving in true love is hard, but maybe, just sometimes, it's enough to have someone else believe for you.
American high school teacher Ava Stanford has been betrayed in the worst way possible. So she takes a temporary job at a village school in England. She’s definitely not running away, but even she admits she’s got nothing to go home to.
\nSchool receptionist Hope Perkins is hardly at her peak. She’s a single mum, living with her own mother, and battling her ex for custody of little Alice. It’s not exactly the life she pictured in close-knit Whitebridge. Add in a new neighbor, who hates Hope’s cat, and things couldn’t get much worse.
\nBut when a miscommunication results in child-allergic Ava teaching six-year-olds, it soon becomes clear that the only thing standing between her and disaster is Hope. And as irritating, annoying, and downright rude as Hope finds Ava, she soon starts to develop other feelings too.
\nOpposites definitely attract, and with cats galore, children running riot, interfering mothers and blue-haired bookstore owners, it’s hard to escape Whitebridge unscathed. Because once a town adopts you, you’re there for good. Providing Ava finally lets down her guard enough to let Hope in, that is.
Spoiled heiress Hadley Rains has never committed to a thing in her life. Until her father cuts off her allowance and she's left with a point to prove.
\nProfessional nanny Florence Underwood has problems of her own. Her old-fashioned methods are out of style, and she's swimming in debt.
\nEnter the McLeod-Allen kids. Feisty, troubled, and reeling from the divorce of their parents, the kids need a nanny. But they end up with two.
\nWhen stern disciplinarian meets flighty brat, things really shouldn't go well. And they don't. Until a mysterious disappearance draws the two together.
\nOnly true opposites can create a perfect balance, but can either one of them realize what they have before it's too late?
Annie Harland is rich, successful, and very single. So when an invitation to her tenth high school reunion drops on her mat, she's determined to skip it. Until a drunk evening with her best friend results in an appointment with an escort named Robin.
Robin is supposed to be bookish, well-muscled, and the owner of a golden retriever. Robin is actually tall, curvaceous, and very, very female.
Things should have ended at their very first meeting. But for some strange reason, Annie can't stop seeing Ms. Wrong. And Robin is Ms. Wrong, if only because she's a Ms. and not a Mr.
What should have been a story of high school revenge has turned into a romance, and Annie's life is about to be turned upside down. But love knows no labels, or does it?
A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog.
\nWhen a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatised by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.
\nWhile others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.
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Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez’s ninth novel. The Vulnerables offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past.
\nHumor, to be sure, is a priceless refuge. Equally vital is connection with others, who here include an adrift member of Gen Z and a spirited parrot named Eureka. The Vulnerables reveals what happens when strangers are willing to open their hearts to each other and how far even small acts of caring can go to ease another’s distress. A search for understanding about some of the most critical matters of our time, Nunez’s new novel is also an inquiry into the nature and purpose of writing itself.
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A woman describes a series of encounters she has with various people in the ordinary course of her life: an ex she runs into by chance at a public forum, an Airbnb owner unsure how to interact with her guests, a stranger who seeks help comforting his elderly mother, a friend of her youth now hospitalised with terminal cancer.
\nIn each of these people the woman finds a common need: the urge to talk about themselves and to have an audience to their experiences. The narrator orchestrates this chorus of voices for the most part as a passive listener, until one of them makes an extraordinary request, drawing her into an intense and transformative experience of her own.
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“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches”: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva - stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that’s why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales.
\nIn the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay’s most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the same university where Minerva is now studying and became obsessed with her beautiful and otherworldly roommate, who then disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
\nAs Minerva descends ever deeper into Tremblay’s manuscript, she begins to sense that the malign force that stalked Tremblay and the missing girl might still walk the halls of the campus. These disturbing events also echo the stories Nana Alba told about her girlhood in 1900s Mexico, where she had a terrifying encounter with a witch.
\nMinerva suspects that the same shadow that darkened the lives of her great-grandmother and Beatrice Tremblay is now threatening her own in 1990s Massachusetts. An academic career can be a punishing pursuit, but it might turn outright deadly when witchcraft is involved.
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Welcome to Mexico City, an oasis in a sea of vampires. Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is just trying to survive its heavily policed streets when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life. Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, is smart, beautiful, and dangerous. Domingo is mesmerised.
\nAtl needs to quickly escape the city, far from the rival narco-vampire clan relentlessly pursuing her. Her plan doesn't include Domingo, but little by little, Atl finds herself warming up to the scrappy young man and his undeniable charm. As the trail of corpses stretches behind her, local cops and crime bosses both start closing in.
\nVampires, humans, cops, and criminals collide in the dark streets of Mexico City. Do Atl and Domingo even stand a chance of making it out alive? Or will the city devour them all?
Reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Mexico.
\nCarlota Moreau: a young woman, growing up in a distant and luxuriant estate, safe from the conflict and strife of the Yucatán peninsula. The only daughter of either a genius, or a madman.
\nMontgomery Laughton: a melancholic overseer with a tragic past and a propensity for alcohol. An outcast who assists Dr. Moreau with his scientific experiments, which are financed by the Lizaldes, owners of magnificent haciendas and plentiful coffers.
\nThe hybrids: the fruits of the Doctor’s labor, destined to blindly obey their creator and remain in the shadows. A motley group of part human, part animal monstrosities.
\nAll of them living in a perfectly balanced and static world, which is jolted by the abrupt arrival of Eduardo Lizalde, the charming and careless son of Doctor Moreau’s patron, who will unwittingly begin a dangerous chain reaction.
\nFor Moreau keeps secrets, Carlota has questions, and in the sweltering heat of the jungle, passions may ignite.
After receiving a frantic letter from her newly wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find - her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.
Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness. And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.
Yalxi, the deposed Supreme Mistress of the Guild of Sorcerers, is on a desperate mission. Her lover and confidant seized her throne and stole the precious diamond heart, the jewel that is the engine of her power. Yalxi sets out to regain her magic and find a weapon capable of destroying the usurper.
\nBut this will mean turning to unlikely allies and opening herself up to unpleasant memories that have been suppressed for many years. For Yalxi is no great hero, but a cunning sorceress who once forged her path in blood - and must reckon with the consequences.
\nSet in a fantastical land where jewels and blood provide symbiotic magical powers to their wearers, The Return of the Sorceress evokes the energy of classic sword and sorcery, while building a thoroughly fresh and exciting adventure ripe for our era.
1950s Hollywood: Every actress wants to play Salome, the star-making role in a big-budget movie about the legendary woman whose story has inspired artists since ancient times.
\nSo when the film’s mercurial director casts Vera Larios, an unknown Mexican ingenue, in the lead role, she quickly becomes the talk of the town. Vera also becomes an object of envy for Nancy Hartley, a bit player whose career has stalled and who will do anything to win the fame she believes she richly deserves.
\nTwo actresses, both determined to make it to the top in Golden Age Hollywood - a city overflowing with gossip, scandal, and intrigue - make for a sizzling combination.
\nBut this is the tale of three women, for it is also the story of the princess Salome herself, consumed with desire for the fiery prophet who foretells the doom of her stepfather, Herod: a woman torn between the decree of duty and the yearning of her heart.
\nBefore the curtain comes down, there will be tears and tragedy aplenty in this sexy Technicolor saga.
Mexico, 1917. On a farm during the violent tumult of revolution, a more immediate threat prowls in a short, emotional story about survival by the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic.
\nShe is the adventurer of the family. Her brother, the gentle dreamer. Even as they bond over folktales and hold each other close, their world has never felt so dangerous. Revolutionaries and pelones are in conflict, soldiers have turned into scavengers, and an escaped tiger has slipped up the mountain, looking for easy prey. As the darkest of legends becomes real, a young girl will do anything to save her brother’s life.
Baja California, 1979. Viridiana spends her days watching the dead sharks piled beside the seashore, as the fishermen pull their nets. There is nothing else to do, nothing else to watch, under the harsh sun. She’s bored. Terribly bored. Yet her head is filled with dreams of Hollywood films, of romance, of a future beyond the drab town where her only option is to marry and have children.
\nThree wealthy American tourists arrive for the summer, and Viridiana is magnetised. She immediately becomes entwined in the glamorous foreigners’ lives. They offer excitement, and perhaps an escape from the promise of a humdrum future.
\nWhen one of them dies, Viridiana lies to protect her friends. Soon enough, someone’s asking questions, and Viridiana has some of her own about the identity of her new acquaintances. Sharks may be dangerous, but there are worse predators nearby, ready to devour a naïve young woman who is quickly being tangled in a web of deceit.
1970s, Mexico City. Maite is a secretary who lives for one thing: the latest issue of Secret Romance. While student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite escapes into stories of passion and danger.
\nHer next-door neighbor, Leonora, a beautiful art student, seems to live a life of intrigue and romance that Maite envies. When Leonora disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman - and journeying deeper into Leonora’s secret life of student radicals and dissidents.
\nMeanwhile, someone else is also looking for Leonora at the behest of his boss, a shadowy figure who commands goon squads dedicated to squashing political activists. Elvis is an eccentric criminal who longs to escape his own life: He loathes violence and loves old movies and rock ’n’ roll. But as Elvis searches for the missing woman, he comes to observe Maite from a distance - and grows more and more obsessed with this woman who shares his love of music and the unspoken loneliness of his heart.
\nNow as Maite and Elvis come closer to discovering the truth behind Leonora’s disappearance, they can no longer escape the danger that threatens to consume their lives, with hitmen, government agents, and Russian spies all aiming to protect Leonora’s secrets - at gunpoint.
The lonely worlds of three very unusual siblings collide in this breathtaking tale of what it means to be human
\nIn a fictional near-future Korea, robots have integrated seamlessly into society. They are housekeepers and policemen, teachers and bus drivers. They are our lovers. They are even our children.
\nSiblings Jun and Morgan Cho haven’t spoken to each other in several years. The children of a celebrated robot designer, both are still grieving the loss of their brother Yoyo, the earliest prototype for what humanoid robots have now become - nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. But Yoyo was always bound for a darker purpose, and his absence has left a chasm in the siblings’ lives.
\nWhen a strange disappearance thrusts the siblings back together, neither of them realises that the investigation will not only force them to confront their fractured family’s past, but will also bring them back to Yoyo himself.
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Hong Kong is a city ablaze - its streets filled with protesters, its government in crisis, its people torn between rage and fear of what defiance might cost. At the center stands Superintendent Killian Tong, once a rising star in the police, now disgraced and haunted by a tragic accident at a protest. Exiled to a remote post, Killian is called back when a dismembered body is uncovered in a landfill. The gruesome murder could be his path to redemption - if he can withstand mounting pressure from superiors desperate to bury the truth, and the even more dangerous fractures within his own family.
\nHis beloved younger sister Jun refuses to speak to him, devoting herself to the protest movement. Once inseparable, the siblings now face each other across barricades, Jun’s fierce commitment pulling her closer to arrest and ruin.
\nAs Killian follows the murder trail into Hong Kong’s highest corridors of power, he must confront not only the city’s corruption, but the searing question at his When politics ignites a family war, can love survive the flames?
\nCity on Fire is both a taut thriller and a deeply human story of loyalty, betrayal, and the search for redemption in a city under siege.
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In the town of Newsands, painfully shy Alex is abandoned by his two best friends for the summer. But he unexpectedly lands a part-time job at Wonderland, a run-down amusement arcade on the seafront, where he gets to know the other teen misfits who work there. Alex starts to come out of his shell, and even starts to develop feelings for co-worker Ben . . . who, as Alex's bad luck would have it, has a girlfriend.
\nThen as debtors close in on Wonderland and mysterious, threatening notes start to appear, Alex and his new friends take it on themselves to save their declining employer. But, like everything in Wonderland, nothing is quite what it seems . . .
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It's 1994 and thanks to Section 28, there can be no mention of gay relationships in schools. When a school librarian leads Jamie to a disguised novel in the library that reflects his own confused feelings towards boys, he notices that he's not the only one who has checked the book out.
\nIn the margins of the pages, he and another student start to leave messages for each other, and Jamie starts to believe that he's not alone . . . and maybe also has a shot at finding love. That is, until the secret novel is discovered by the head teacher and all hell breaks loose.
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Poor Noah Grimes! His father disappeared years ago, his mother's Beyonce tribute act is an unacceptable embarrassment, and his beloved gran is no longer herself. He only has one friend, Harry, and school is . . . Well, it's pure hell. Why can't Noah be normal, like everyone else at school?
\nMaybe if he struck up a romantic relationship with someone - maybe Sophie, who is perfect and lovely - he'd be seen in a different light?
\nBut Noah's plans are derailed when Harry kisses him at a party.
\nThat's when things go from bad to utter chaos.
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Noah and Harry have gone from friends to boyfriends, but is Noah ready for the difference?
\nIt doesn't help that a group of French exchange students have descended on Little Fobbing - including sexy Pierre Victoire, who seems to have his eye on Harry. Meanwhile, Noah's paired up with a girl, who, outrageously, is German not even French!
\nBut that's not all: Noah's being followed! By mysterious strangers in a black car!
\nIs it because:
\nA. Noah's dad and secret half-brother have stolen gran's fake diamonds?
\nB. His PE teacher is getting suspicious cash infusions from Russia?
\nC. A drag queen is hiding out at Noah's house after a bare-knuckled drag feud?
\nD. Noah's made some questionable life choices involving protein powder?
\nE. Or NONE ALL OF THE ABOVE?!
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John Taylor, private detective with a difference, is back in the Nightside - that nightmarish realm hidden deep beneath London where it is forever 3 a.m.
\nThis time he must use his supernatural gifts to locate The Unholy Grail - the cup from which Judas drank at the Last Supper - before it falls into the wrong hands. All who touch the cup will be corrupted - but they will also gain tremendous power.
\nSo it's no surprise that Taylor isn't alone: angels, demons, sinners and saints are all determined to find The Unholy Grail, no matter what the cost. And it isn't long before they realise exactly who can lead them to it . . .
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Gideon Sable is a thief and a con man. He specializes in stealing the kind of things that can't normally be stolen. Like a ghost's clothes, or a photo from a country that never existed. He even stole his current identity. Who was he originally? Now, that would be telling. One thing's for sure though, he's not the bad guy. The people he steals from always have it coming.
\nGideon's planning a heist, to steal the only thing that matters from the worst man in the world. To get past his security, he's going to need a crew who can do the impossible . . . but luckily, he has the right people in mind.
\nThe Damned, the Ghost, the Wild Card . . . and his ex-girlfriend, Annie Anybody. A woman who can be anyone, with the power to make technology fall in love with her. If things go well, they'll all get what they want. And if they're lucky, they might not even die trying . . .
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It's supposed to be the happiest day of private eye John Taylor's life. It's a shame he's on the run from his bride . . .
\nEverything is finally falling into place for John Taylor. He has a new job as Voice of the Authorities in the Nightside and he's about to marry the love of his life, Suzie Shooter, the Nightside's most formidable bounty hunter. This new life, and the responsibilities that go along with it, mean it's time for Taylor to retire from the private detective business. But before he can say 'I do!' he has time for one last case.
\nBut, as always, nothing in the Nightside is straightforward and his final investigation ends with a price on Taylor's head.
\nNow the entire Nightside is against him, and his bride-to-be is after the bounty. Happily-ever-after is beginning to look like an unlikely ending for John Taylor.
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As long-buried memories from his hidden past begin to resurface, Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny feel compelled to return to the small country town where Ishmael crash-landed in 1963; the place where his memories began.
\nNorton Hedley is no ordinary town. Apparitions, sudden disappearances, sightings of unusual beasts: for centuries, the place has been plagued by a series of inexplicable events. Ishmael’s first task is to track down local author Vincent Smith, the one man he believes may have some answers.
\nIshmael and Penny aren’t the only ones seeking the mysterious Mr Smith. When their search unearths a newly-dead body in the local mortuary - a body that’s definitely not supposed to be there - Ishmael becomes the prime suspect in the ensuing murder investigation. His only hope of discovering the truth about his origins lies in exposing a ruthless killer.
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Unfortunately, Eddie’s had a falling out with his nearest and dearest - some of whom were trying to kill him, so he has a valid excuse. Now, he and his true love (and powerful witch), Molly Metcalf, are now in the employ of The Department of the Uncanny.
\nTheir Extremely Important Assignment is to attend Casino Infernale, an annual event held by the Shadow Bank, financiers of all global supernatural crime. Their mission: rig the game and bring the corrupt corporation crashing down.
\nBut at Casino Infernale, the stakes are high indeed - the winner takes all and the losers give up their souls . . .
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Lewis Deathstalker has succeeded at the impossible: he’s found Owen Deathstalker, presumed dead for the last two hundred years. Owen’s return strikes a crippling blow to the Empire as his military joins the rebellion. But Owen himself has a larger mission. He - and according to prophecy, he alone - must travel back in time to stop the steadily advancing Terror before the galaxy is destroyed, leaving his descendant Lewis in command of the growing rebel army.
\nEven as Emperor Finn Durandal’s empire is on the brink of annihilation from the Terror, he will do anything, no matter how evil, to retain power. Lewis is equally determined to take Finn down and restore the rightful ruler to the throne . . .
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During World War II, the Droods made a pact with some nasty buggers from another dimension known as the Loathly Ones, in order to defeat the Nazis. But once the war was won and the pact was fulfilled, the Loathly Ones decided that they liked this world too much to leave, and the Droods are the only thing stopping them from world domination.
\nUnfortunately, it seems that Eddie may not be able to trust every member of his family, and if he chooses the wrong horse to back, everything he - and the rest of humanity - holds dear will go up in smoke.
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Call him Ishmael . . . Ishmael Jones. He's used to keeping a low profile, living under the radar and on the dark side of the road. He makes his living solving mysteries and uncovering dark secrets some would prefer to stay hidden.
\nBut when he's invited by his employer - a man known only as \"The Colonel\" - to spend Christmas at the Colonel's sprawling country house, Ishmael Jones decides to come in from the dark for some holiday cheer.
\nJones arrives at the remote Belancourt Manor in the midst of a blizzard only to discover that the Colonel has gone missing. It soon becomes clear that the guests are harboring dark secrets - and that it will be up to Ishmael Jones to stop a savage killer.
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A rogue agent has come in from the cold and wants to spill his secrets. The Organisation wants Ishmael to find out if Frank Parker is who he says he is, what he really knows, and why he has emerged from the shadows after all this time.
\nIshmael heads to Ringstone Lodge in Yorkshire where Parker is being held to find that an atmosphere of fear and suspicion prevails. As he and his fellow residents are menaced by a series of alarming and inexplicable incidents, Ishmael sets out to prove that it's human trickery rather than any supernatural being behind the seemingly ghostly goings-on.
\nBut matters take an unexpected turn when one of their number is brutally murdered, and once again Ishmael must turn detective in order to entrap a twisted killer before they strike again.
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Death shall come on swift wings to whoever desecrates this tomb . . .
Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny have been summoned to remote Cardavan House, home of the world's largest private collection of Ancient Egyptian artefacts, for the unveiling of George Cardavan's latest acquisition: a bone fide Egyptian mummy.
When a bloodstained body is discovered beside the empty sarcophagus, Ishmael is dismissive of the theory that the mummy's curse is to blame. Instead he sets out to uncover the human killer responsible. But how can Ishmael explain the strange, shuffling footsteps that creep along the corridors? Who is playing games with them . . . and why?
Owen Deathstalker has a prophecy to fulfill. Just as the espers foretold, Owen tumbled an empire and witnessed the end of everything he believed in . . . all that’s left to do is die. But Owen has a few more scores he’d like to settle before his borrowed time is up.
\nThe Empire is besieged by nanotechnology plagues and AI invasions, while mysterious and horrific beings, known as “the Recreated,” descend from the Darkvoid. But right now, Owen’s only concern is rescuing Hazel d‘Ark from the vicious Blood Runners who abducted her.
\nHe’s already lost so much to become the leader and warrior he never wanted to be; he’ll be damned if he loses Hazel too. So one more time, Owen Deathstalker will step up and be the hero - for Hazel, and then for Humanity. One more time, he’ll call upon the gifts of the Deathstalker Clan to fulfill his destiny and face death. All while knowing that every “one more time” could be his last.
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Official hero of the great rebellion, Owen Deathstalker fought impossible odds to throw down the Empress Lionstone XIV and destroy the corrupt Empire. That should have been enough to be feted, honored, and finally retired. Unfortunately, the new Parliament has some different ideas. There's no rest for a Deathstalker.
\nAs newly appointed Imperial bounty hunter, Owen tracks down the most dangerous war criminals. His current target: Valentine Wolfe, depraved right hand of the Empress and so-called \"butcher of Virimonde.\" Valentine’s latest atrocities are both staggering and deeply personal to Owen, but revenge may have to wait.
\nHumanity faces extermination from enemies new and old, while the fledgling Parliament struggles to maintain control. Worse still, something is alive and beginning to stir in the Darkvoid. The odds are stacked against him again, but Owen Deathstalker will have to face his destiny one more time . . . or forever damn the future of mankind.
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To the Empire, Owen Deathstalker is an Outlaw. To the inhuman Hadenmen, he is the Redeemer. And to the underground, he is humanity’s last hope. Above all else, he is the last of a legendary warrior clan who is determined to bring down an Empire rotted by corruption, greed, and institutionalised slavery.
\nOwen will fire the first shot by breaching Golgotha, the heavily guarded home planet of the Empress and the location of her overflowing coffers. Besides enraging and embarrassing the Iron Bitch (one of the few perks of leading the revolution), robbing the Empire will help to fund the rebellion and garner support from the public.
\nBut starting a revolution is one thing. To win it, Owen and his companions will have to convince key planets to join the fight. Scattered across the galaxy, Owen’s band of misfits struggle to embrace their new roles as leaders while facing espionage, treachery, and the unexpected challenges of making their rebellion a reality.
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Owen Deathstalker doesn’t trust anyone, even his companions . . . especially his companions. But for the diplomatic mission to Mistworld, he’ll have to try. Representing the Golgotha underground, Owen hopes to bring the planet into the rebellion - their powerful psychic “espers” would be an invaluable asset. But that’s not Owen’s only reason for visiting Mistworld.
\nIn fact, everyone aboard the Sunstrider II has a secret agenda. While Owen looks for an information-gathering network that his father set up, all-too-perfect Jack Random seeks out former allies, volatile esper Jenny Psycho searches for information about her power, and ex-pirate Hazel d’Ark pursues an old vice. Of course, success won’t be easy and there’s little time to spare.
\nThe Empire’s recent esper attack already left Mistworld physically and politically exposed. Playing host to the leaders of the rebellion only makes the planet a juicier target and this time, the Empress will deploy her most ruthless weapon to crush Owen Deathstalker and the uprising, once and for all.
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The Iron Bitch - her Imperial Majesty Lionstone XIV - ruled the human Empire with fear. From peasants to masters of the galaxy's most powerful families, all were subject to the queen's unpredictable decrees of \"outlawing\" and death.
Owen Deathstalker, unwilling head of his clan, sought to avoid the perils of the Empire's warring factions but unexpectedly found a price on his head. He fled to Mistworld, where he began to build an unlikely force to topple the throne - a broken hero, an outlawed Hadenman, a thief, and a bounty hunter.
With their help, the Deathstalker took the first step of a far more dangerous journey to claim the role for which he'd been destined since before his birth . . .
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Eddie has been fatally poisoned. Not even his most powerful allies can save him. Certain death awaits, and Eddie is determined to find out who poisoned him before he succumbs.
\nEddie soon learns that there is only one person who could be behind the attack: Dr. DOA. Even the most formidable in the underworld are afraid to whisper Dr. DOA’s name, and no one knows where Eddie might find a man who operates in the darkest shadows. But Eddie has his heart set on revenge. With his health failing and time running out, he has to catch up to Dr. DOA before his time runs out.
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After the murder of the Drood Matriarch, the family finds itself vulnerable to evil. This time, it's a Satanic Conspiracy that could throw humanity directly into the clutches of the Biggest of the Bads . . .
The North Sea is bitterly cold, grey and unfriendly . . . and it's also home to a major threat to humanity. The interdimensional entity known as the Flesh Undying, a monstrous being of unimaginable power, is way out of the Ghost Finders' league, so JC Chance, Melody Chambers and Happy Jack Palmer have no choice but to accept an alliance with their evil counterpart, Project Crowley.
\nWhat they don't yet know is that the creature lurking in the seabed has already turned its eye upon the Ghost Finders - and dispatched an assassin with a deadly vendetta against them . . .
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Eddie Drood has lost everyone important to him. His parents mysteriously disappeared and no one else in his family seems to care. His beloved uncle, the last family member he could trust, has just passed away. And now his girlfriend, Molly Metcalf, is missing.
\nOn his own and without the protection of the Drood family, Eddie pieces together the truth of their disappearances: both his parents and Molly have been kidnapped by the mysterious Powers That Be. Eddie has to break a few Drood family rules and a few ancient treaties to follow them. He’ll have to risk everything to win their freedom, or lose their lives - and their souls - forever.
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It's no walk in the park for a Drood, a member of the family that has protected humanity from the things that go bump in the night for centuries. They aren't much liked by the creatures they kill, by ungrateful humans, or even by one another.
Now their Matriarch is dead, and it's up to Eddie Drood, acting head of the family, to figure out whodunit. Unpopular opinion is divided: it was either Eddie's best girl, Molly. Or Eddie himself. And Eddie knows he didn't do it.
The Carnacki Institute exists to \"Do Something\" about Ghosts - and agents JC Chance, Melody Chambers, and Happy Jack Palmer will either lay them to rest, send them packing, or kick their nasty ectoplasmic arses with extreme prejudice.
Their current assignment: investigate a major haunting deep underground at London's Oxford Circus Tube Station. Difficult - and dangerous - enough without the added interference of a pair of agents from the infamous Crowley Project whose mission is much simpler: eliminate Change, Chambers, and Palmer, whatever the consequences . . .
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The Ghost Finders are investigating a haunting at the long-abandoned Haybarn Theater, which is being renovated. But work has been thrown off-schedule by the some peculiar and unnatural activities. And after the potentially world-altering recent events of their previous assignment, the team thinks that a haunted theater (aren't they all?) will be a walk in the park.
Until they encounter the Phantom of the Haybarn—an ancient evil whose ability to alter reality itself will test the skills, science, and blind luck of the Ghost Finders to the limit.
A distress call was received from the private research centre of one of the biggest drug companies in the world. The police went in - and never came out. A national security team stormed the place. No-one'e heard anything further from them either.
\nNow it's in the hands of the Carnacki Institute's rising stars. They have the wrong equipement. They have no idea what awaits. And they have the clock ticking in the background. But they also have a secret weapon: JC's very lovely - and very dead - girlfriend . . .
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Ghostworld. Unseeli.
\nA dead world, at least since the Ashrai Rebellion ten years before. A world of metal trees crucial to the Empire, as crucial as Captain John Silence will one day be to the Empress. But not now. Silence botched the Empire’s response to the Rebellion, and bears the burden for a world wiped clean of all life, save its precious metal trees.
\nNow, Base Thirteen has gone silent, cut itself off from the Empire, and stopped its crucial shipments. Silence has to find out why, and clean up his mess, aided by the ESPer Diane Vertue and Investigator Frost. Behind each locked door on Base Thirteen, mystery and menace await.
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The Voice of the Nightside is dying, but he won't let a small thing like death stop him from making private eye John Taylor's life difficult . . .
\nFor once, Taylor has been hired for a simple task - all he has to do is to escort an elf across the Nightside. Well, it would be simple, if Walker, the powerful, never-to-be-trusted Voice of the Authorities, wasn't determined to interfere.
\nIt soon becomes clear that surviving the journey is going to be the least of John Taylor's worries: Walker is dying and he wants Taylor to be his successor. He's the obvious choice, the one man all the inhabitants of the Nightside know - and fear. The problem is, Taylor doesn't want the job. It comes with more trouble and enemies than he's willing to deal with. But Walker is set on his choice, and he'll go to great lengths to get his way . . .
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John Taylor is a P.I. with a special talent for finding lost things in the dark and secret center of London known as the Nightside. He's also the reluctant owner of a very special-and dangerous-weapon. Excalibur, the legendary sword. To find out why he was chosen to wield it, John must consult the Last Defenders of Camelot, a group of knights who dwell in a place that some find more frightening than the Nightside.
London Proper. It's been years since John's been back-and there are good reasons for that.
Ishmael Jones knows all there is to know about solving mysteries. Together with his love and partner in crimes, Penny Belcourt, he specialises in cases of the weird and uncanny.
\nLucas Carr went to Glenbury Hall, an old country manor house turned hotel. He signed in at reception, took his key, and went upstairs to his room. But he never got there. Somehow he vanished along the way, with not a single clue to suggest what might have happened to him.
\nLucas belonged to the same mysterious organisation that employs Ishmael and Penny, so they are sent in to solve the mystery. But when they arrive at grim and isolated Glenbury Hall, they discover it has a reputation as one of the most haunted old houses in England. None of the usual headless monks or walled-up nuns - just stories of lost souls that dance with the statues in the grounds; doors that won’t stay shut, and rooms that aren’t always there; and something that prowls the house in the early hours, endlessly searching. They say . . . it crawls.
\nDoes Lucas’ disappearance have something to do with the organisation or the Hall’s haunted past? Ishmael and Penny have to work their way through a series of mysterious clues and misleading suspects, uncovering secret after secret, before they finally arrive at a truth that no one suspected.
\nThe problem with history is that it’s not always content to stay in the past.
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Private eye John Taylor has survived war in the Nightside, but it has left a power vacuum . . . one just begging to be filled.
\nWelcome to the Nightside, the hidden netherworld in the heart of London, where the human and inhuman go to get their kicks, provided they're willing to pay the price in whatever currency the seller demands.
\nThe recent war has come to an end, but now there is no one in charge, and plenty of ruthless people who will go to absurd lengths to grab that power.
\nJeremiah Griffin, one of the last immortal humans, is one, but his plans are obstructed when his granddaughter disappears. It's no surprise when he calls on John Taylor to find her - after all, finding people is what he does - but the job is not as simple as it appears.
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Hellworld. Wolf IV.
\nIt’s the next stop for Captain Scott Hunter, who’d been given a choice. Get booted, or join the Hell Squads. For Russel Corbie, it was prison or the Hell Squads.
\nMegan DeChance was an ESPer, so for her the only other choice was death. That’s the kind of choice you’re given when your new job puts you on the frontlines of the dangerous unknown . . .
John Taylor is a private detective with a supernatural gift for finding things - people, property - but his latest case is different. This time it's personal.
\nLady Luck has hired Taylor to investigate the origins of the Nightside - the shadowy heart of London where time remains fixed at 3 a.m. But the further he delves into the history of the Nightside, the more Taylor learns about the great mystery in his own life: exactly who - or what - his mother is.
\nTaylor has been warned: when it comes to his mother, the truth can be dangerous. In fact, it can be downright catastrophic - not just for the Nightside, but for all of existence.
\nBut John Taylor is an investigator; finding things is in his nature. And now he's so close to discovering the truth he has always craved, it seems nothing will stop him. No matter what the consequences.
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Set high on top of Widows Hill, Harrow House has remained empty for years. Now, on behalf of an anonymous prospective buyer, Ishmael and Penny are spending a night there in order to investigate the rumours of strange lights, mysterious voices, unexplained disappearances, and establish whether the house is really haunted.
\nWhat really happened at Harrow House all those years ago? Joined by a celebrity psychic, a professional ghost-hunter, a local historian and a newspaper reporter, it becomes clear that each member of 'Team Ghost' has their own pet theory as to the cause of the alleged haunting. But when one of the group suddenly drops dead with no obvious cause, Ishmael realises that if he can find out how and why the victim died, he will have the key to solving the mystery.
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Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny are attending the re-opening of Tyrone's Castle, an ancient Cornish inn originally built by smugglers. Over dinner that night, the guests entertain one another with ghost stories inspired by local legends and superstitions. But it would appear that the curse of Tyrone's Castle has struck for real when one of their number disappears into thin air. And then another . . .
\nIs the inn really subject to an ancient curse? Sceptical of ghost stories, Ishmael believes the key to the mystery lies in the present rather than the past. But with no bodies, no evidence and no clues to go on, how can he prove it?
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Judgement Day has arrived for the inhabitants of the Nightside, and here to cast the first stone is God's very own agent of righteousness, the Walking Man.
\nThe Walking Man, God's enforcer on earth, has arrived, and brought Judgement Day with him. His sole mission is to rid the Nightside of sin and corruption - trouble is, that's exactly what the city was built on. It's a place where depravity rules, and where every dark desire can be fulfilled. If the Walking Man is allowed to carry out his indiscriminate purge, there'll soon be nothing - and no one - left.
\nSo the Authorities have hired private eye John Taylor to stop him, although that's likely to be easier said than done. Everyone knows that the Walking Man can't be killed, but if John Taylor doesn't find his weakness soon, he - along with the entire Nightside - will be facing God's wrath.
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Owen Deathstalker sacrificed everything to topple a corrupt empire and usher humanity into an age of peace and prosperity. Now Lewis Deathstalker, Owen’s descendant, carries on the family name and honor as a Paragon, warriors famed for their skill and heroism who dispense the king’s justice throughout the galaxy.
\nHowever, two hundred years have passed since Owen and his gang of heroes disappeared into legend, and the peace that the Deathstalker bought with his life is quickly coming to an end. Amidst political uncertainty, Lewis’s oldest friend, Douglas, ascends the throne and names Lewis to the archaic, and largely symbolic, role of King’s Champion. But Lewis quickly finds that he has all the bad luck of his famous ancestor and that his old allies have become his enemies.
\nSurrounded on all sides by plots and treason with the political situation spiralling out of control, Lewis is exiled from court in disgrace. Now it’s the new Deathstalker’s turn to save the empire with only a ragged band of allies as chaos spreads throughout the empire and threatens to end the golden age.
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Eddie recently suffered a slight case of death, but thanks for Molly, his best girl (who also happens to be a powerful witch), he managed to get over that right quick. Unfortunately, his family wasn’t so lucky - his family home, Drood Hall, was destroyed in his absence, and all of his relatives were killed.
\nHe’s not fond of being the Last Drood, but he soon realises that things aren’t exactly as they appeared. The home wasn’t destroyed; it was caught in a dimension engine, sending Drood Hall and everyone inside it into an alternate Earth, and replacing it with a burnt-out dopplegänger.
\nEddie’s family is out there - somewhere - all he has to do is find them.
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The name’s Bond. Shaman Bond. Actually, that's just his cover. His real name is Eddie Drood, but when your job includes a license to kick supernatural arse on a regular basis, you find your laughs where you can.
\nFor centuries, his family has been the secret guardian of Humanity, all that stands between all of you and all of the really nasty things that go bump in the night. As a Drood field agent he wore the golden torc, he killed monsters, and he protected the world. He loved his job.
\nRight up to the point where his own family declared him rogue for no reason. Now, the only people who can help Eddie prove his innocence are the people he used to consider his enemies . . .
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Judi Rifkin is one of the world's most successful collectors of the weird and unnatural. In a London underworld filled with criminals with very special talents, Judi is a force to be reckoned with.
\nAnd Gideon Sable - thief, rogue and chancer - owes her a very large favour.
\nJudi makes him an offer he can't refuse: steal her the legendary Masque of Ra, tucked up safe in a Las Vegas casino, and she'll wipe the slate clean.
\nThis isn't Gideon's first heist by a long shot. But with old grudges threatening to cloud his judgment, an unpredictable crew who don't entirely trust each other and a formidable supernatural security team guarding his target, this job might be a gamble too far . . .
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Mistworld.
\nThe day would come when it would be a key world in Owen Deathstalker’s Rebellion. Now, it’s as it’s always been, a world on the edge of the Empire, a lawless one, shielded from the outside by powerful ESPers.
\nA world where Leon Vertue can run his body bank, where a burglar like Cat has more to fear from other thieves than the Empress’ justice, a world where Investigator Topaz is determined to make her mark.
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Eddie Drood has finally cornered his archenemy after searching the galaxy end-to-end. But before Eddie can strike, Dr. DOA strands Eddie and his girlfriend, Molly Metcalf, in an alternate universe where the Drood clan have been systematically murdered.
\nThe key to their escape lies in this dimension’s eerie and abandoned Drood Hall. Among the ruins, Eddie and Molly discover a mysterious creature who may be able to help them get home in exchange for a favor only a Drood could honor. But Eddie must move quickly if he’s to put a stop to Dr. DOA definitively - all the while reckoning with the fatal poison spreading through his body.
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Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny have been despatched to assist a group of scientists who are investigating a mysterious black hole which has appeared on a Somerset hillside. Could it really be a doorway to another dimension, an opening into another world?
\nWhen one of the scientists disappears into the hole - with fatal consequences - Ishmael must prove whether it was an accident - or murder. But with no clues, no witnesses and no apparent motive, he has little to go on. Is there an alien predator at large, or is an all-too-human killer responsible? Only one thing is certain: if Ishmael does not uncover the truth in time, more deaths will follow . . .
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The Droods are all about control, making people do what they’re told for the greater good. The Nightside is all about choice: good and bad and everything in between. The Droods want to make the world behave. The Nightside wants to party. They were never going to get along.
For centuries, ancient Pacts have kept the Droods out of the Nightside, but now the Droods see the Nightside as a threat to the whole world. They march into the long night, in their armour, to put it under their control. All too soon, the two sides are at war. It’s Eddie Drood and Molly Metcalf against John Taylor and Shotgun Suzie.
The Drood Sarjeant-at-Arms and their Armourer against Dead Boy and Razor Eddie. More groups join in: the London Knights, the Ghost Finders, the Spawn of Frankenstein, Shadows Fall, and the Soulhunters. Science and magic are running wild, there’s blood running in the gutters, and the bodies are piling up.
Is anyone going to get out of this alive?
When Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny are asked to escort a VIP on the late-night train to Bath, it would appear to be a routine case. The Organisation has acquired intelligence that an attempt is to be made on Sir Dennis Gregson's life as he travels to Bath to take up his new position as Head of the British Psychic Weapons Division. Ishmael's mission is to ensure that Sir Dennis arrives safely.
\nHow could anyone orchestrate a murder in a crowded railway carriage without being noticed and with no obvious means of escape? When a body is discovered in a locked toilet cubicle, Ishmael Jones has just 56 minutes to solve a seemingly impossible crime before the train reaches its destination.
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Detective John Taylor must find an elusive singer known as The Nightingale. Her silken voice has inexplicably lured many a fan to suicide - and Taylor is determined to stop her, before the whole neighborhood falls under her trance.
\nBut to catch the swift-winged Nightingale, he'll have to hear the deadly music - and survive.
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The Preserve in Bath - the British Area 51 - is the secret government dumping ground for all things supernatural and out of space. It is one of the most heavily-guarded places in the world. However, it's not what protects it that makes it so dangerous but the things that are inside . . .
\nGideon Sable - master thief, con artist and self-proclaimed vigilante - faces a challenge he can't refuse. His client, the former Head of the British Rocketry Group, Professor Neil Sharpe, wants him to break into the Preserve. Once inside, Gideon and his crew of supernatural misfits can get any mystical artefact they desire out of the Preserve's collection. The catch? To reach it, they must go through the treacherous Box Tunnel complex and not only face trained guards and booby traps but steal something that can't normally be stolen - a ghost!
\nSharpe's obscure motive leaves Gideon uncertain and suspicious. The only thing he knows for sure is that he can steal anything with just the right amount of preparation - but will he be prepared enough to face whatever the Preserve holds, or will he find himself a permanent part of the government's collection?
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John Taylor was born on the Nightside, where it is always the hour of the wolf, where gods and monsters walk side by side and where every dark question ever asked can be answered - for a price. Unfortunately, the answer he'd long been seeking came with trouble: he found out his mother's true identity - and discovered that she created his home, the twisted, noir playground known as the Nightside. That means she has the power to destroy it. Turns out, she's also got the will.
\nTaylor's convinced that the key to stopping his mother lies deep in the past, in the days of the Nightside's creation, so that's exactly where he's headed. But travelling through time is a dangerous business, and the past can be a deadly place.
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Not everybody appreciates what the Droods do, which means an endless succession of assassination attempts and very few people to rely on. Things have been especially tough for Eddie recently - his parents are missing in action, his grandfather has been murdered and the future of his family lies in the iron grasp of the Lady Faire, an incredibly seductive, dangerous, and powerful being.
\nShe possesses an ancient object that can save the Droods, so, of course, Eddie needs to steal it from her. Easier said than done . . .
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After falling in love with the king’s intended, Lewis Deathstalker is now exiled, an outlaw from the empire he faithfully served for so long. With Lewis out of the way, former, Paragon Finn Durandal, has led a silent coup to wrest control from the king and set himself up as the power behind the throne.
\nBut Durandal is not the Empire’s biggest threat. The Terror that Owen Deathstalker prophesied nearly 200 years ago is almost upon them, and Owen is supposedly the only one who can save civilisation from unspeakable horrors. Lewis, unwilling to believe that the galaxy’s savior is dead, sets off to the darkest reaches of the Galaxy to find his lost ancestor.
\nLewis intends to retrace Owen’s footsteps and overturn every possible lead. But with Finn in control of the empire’s massive forces, he is outmanned and outgunned at every turn. Lewis must stay one step ahead of Finn’s ever-expanding reach if he has any hope of discovering Owen’s fate.
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Private eye John Taylor is facing his most dangerous foe yet: his mother. She created the Nightside, and now she intends to obliterate it.
\nThe Nightside is the supernatural heart of London, a dark place full of dark, shady characters, a corrupt place, where both dreams and nightmares come true, where anything can be bought for the right price, and where it is forever 3 a.m.
\nBut to private detective John Taylor the Nightside is home, and he won't allow his home to be destroyed - even if he has to defeat his own mother to save it.
\nHe may be the only person able to stop her from exterminating the Nightside, a place she created - but there's a prophecy which says no matter what action he takes, not only is the Nightside doomed, but the rest of the world will soon follow . . .
\nNothing is ever simple.
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John Taylor is a private detective. At least that's what his business card says, and it isn't completely untrue: Taylor is a private eye - or rather, he has a 'private eye', a supernatural ability to find anything that is lost. As a child of the Nightside, it's an ability he was born with.
\nBut it's been a long time since Taylor left the Nightside - that hidden netherworld in the middle of London where it is perpetually 3 a.m., where fantasy and reality co-exist - and he has no intention of returning.
\nThen Joanna Barrett arrives at his office; her teenage daughter is missing and she is offering a small fortune to find her. Yet it's not just the money that persuades Taylor to take on the job, for he knows exactly where the girl has gone . . .
\nThe Nightside. And to save her, Taylor must do what he vowed he never would, and once again descend into the hellish depths of his home.
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Their latest assignment sees JC and the team sent to a small country village, site of a famously haunted inn. At first, JC thinks that the spirits in the King's Arms are more the stuff of urban legend than anything that needs the Ghost Finders' expertise. But one story rings true: the tale of a traveller trapped in the inn by an unusual thunderstorm. She retired to her room for the night - and vanished.
\nTrapped by an unusual thunderstorm - like the one that begins raging outside shortly after they arrive . . .
\nAs the team investigates, they are forced, one by one, to face some hard truths about themselves, their relationships and the haunting itself - truths that may push Happy Jack over the edge into the madness he has always feared . . .
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Legendary Independent Agent Alexander King is on his deathbed, and he’s looking to bestow all his wisdom - and his priceless secrets - to a worthy successor.
\nTo decide who that’s going to be, King has summoned six of the best - including Eddie, of course - to give them his orders: The first to solve all five great mysteries is the winner. He figures that by the time they’ve finished backstabbing and betraying each other, there’ll be just one man - or woman - left.
\nUnsurprisingly, Eddie must be the last man standing, as King holds a secret that is extremely important to the Droods - the identity of the traitor in their midst . . .
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Although he hasn’t seen Robert Bergin for 40 years, Ishmael feels duty bound to respond when his old friend calls for help. Robert’s daughter Gillian is about to be married, and he is afraid she’ll fall prey to the ancient family curse.
\nArriving in rural Yorkshire, Ishmael and his partner Penny learn that the vicar who was to perform the ceremony has been found dead in the church, hanging from his own bell rope. With no clues, no evidence and no known motive, many locals believe the curse is responsible. Or is someone just using it as a smokescreen for murder? With the wedding due to take place the following day, Ishmael has just a few hours to uncover the truth.
\nBut his investigations are hampered by sudden flashes of memory: memories of the time before he was human. What is it Ishmael’s former self is trying to tell him . . .
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Welcome to the Nightside, that secret square mile located in the dark heart of London where the sun never rises and people can fraternize with every myth and monster imaginable.
John Taylor is a P.I. with the special ability to locate anyone or anything. The Unnatural Inquirer, the Nightside's most notorious gossip rag, has offered him a million pounds to find a DVD purportedto contain an actual recording of the afterlife. John doesn't know if it's true, but someone-or something-thinks so, and will stop at nothing to possess the disc.
The Organisation has despatched Ishmael and his partner Penny to Coronach House on the shores of Loch Ness where the secretive but highly influential Baphamet Group are holding their annual meeting. The Organisation believes an imposter has infiltrated the Group and they have instructed Ishmael to root him - or her - out. It's not Ishmael's only mission.
\nThe first agent sent by the Organisation has been found dead in her room, murdered in a horribly gruesome manner. Ishmael must also discover who killed his fellow agent, Jennifer Rifkin - and why.
\nDismissive of rumours that the legendary 'Coronach Creature' is behind Jennifer's death, Ishmael sets out to expose the human killer in their midst. But he must act fast - before any more Very Important People are killed.
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In a quiet London suburb, four university students participating in an experiment inside a reputed haunted house hold a séance that goes terribly wrong. What - or who - ever they summoned has taken their minds away, leaving them empty shells.
Enter the Ghost Finders, ready to confront an enraged poltergeist for the students’ very souls.
All in a day’s work - except the team doesn’t know that in another part of the city, a different entity has also breached the threshold between worlds. And this time what is at stake is not four lives - but the very existence of all humanity.
You can find everything you've ever dreamed of in the strange, old magical shop known as Old Harry's Place. The problem is, not all dreams are kind.
\nGideon Sable - legendary master thief, conman and well-dressed rogue - and his partner in crime Annie Anybody don't want to be shopkeepers, but when the enigmatic Harry decides to retire, he blackmails the pair into taking the store on.
\nBefore the grand reopening can happen, however, a menacing stranger arrives - with a rare and deadly item for them to appraise. A small piece of rock, with an unnerving aura, which 'Smith' claims contains the last echoes of the legendary sirens' song. Before they can find out more, however, Smith vanishes . . . leaving only the stone.
\nSome valuables are more trouble than they're worth. But before Gideon and Annie can work out if they've been set up, the stone is stolen from its impregnable hiding place. How? And why? Gideon only knows one thing for certain: no one steals from him and gets away with it . . .
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Legendary master thief and conman Gideon Sable must pull off an impossible heist to save his partner’s life.
\nGideon Sable specialises in stealing the kind of things that can’t usually be stolen. But these days the legendary master thief is officially retired from the caper game. Now, instead of pulling off elaborate heists with his crew of supernatural specialists, he runs a magical shop in the heart of London with his partner Annie Anybody. Still, he can’t resist occasionally going out in the night to steal things when Annie’s not looking. For old times’ sake - and for the joy of the con.
\nBut after one of his late-night illicit jaunts, Gideon returns to the shop to find that while he’s been stealing, someone else has been hard at work . . . stealing from him.
\n“I have taken Annie Anybody, reads the note on the countertop. If you ever want to see her again, you must find and steal Time’s Arrow. You have forty-eight hours.”
\nStealing the legendary Arrow isn’t a challenge; it’s certain death. But Gideon will stop at nothing to save Annie from their unknown enemy - with or without the help of his talented, terrifying former crew . . .
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Why do you do what you do? Why are some people and organisations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over?
\nPeople like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers might have little in common, but they all started with why. It was their natural ability to start with why that enabled them to inspire those around them and to achieve remarkable things.
\nIn studying the leaders who've had the greatest influence in the world, Simon Sinek discovered that they all think, act, and communicate in the exact same way - and it's the complete opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organisations can be built, movements can be lead, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.
\nAny organization can explain what it does; some can explain how they do it; but very few can clearly articulate why. WHY is not money or profit - those are always results. WHY does your organisation exist? WHY does it do the things it does? WHY do customers really buy from one company or another? WHY are people loyal to some leaders, but not others?
\nStarting with WHY works in big business and small business, in the nonprofit world and in politics. Those who start with WHY never manipulate, they inspire. And the people who follow them don't do so because they have to; they follow because they want to.
\nDrawing on a wide range of real-life stories, Sinek weaves together a clear vision of what it truly takes to lead and inspire. This book is for anyone who wants to inspire others or who wants to find someone to inspire them.
Beginning in 2024, yet set largely during the early 2000s, Sunset at Zero Point unfolds on a secluded Swedish island, home to a secret weapon lab that has been off-limits for years, evoking the bestselling works of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven.
\nStålenhag’s masterful storytelling and hyper-realistic art transports you to an alternate history revealing his most intimate work to date, delving into themes of masculinity, friendship, and sexuality through the lens of a queer science fiction tale. The story spans decades following two young men, stuck in the past and each other’s orbit, as fleeting moments become defining memories as they set out to explore the forbidden zone together.
\nSet against the backdrop of Stålenhag’s native Sweden and based on the alternate version of Mälaröarna outside of Stockholm, Sunset at Zero Point juxtaposes giant futuristic machines with the inner turmoil of its characters facing a social dystopia, crafting a narrative that is both visually stunning and emotionally resonant.
Over the course of a single week, a woman who is ready to die discovers an unexpected reason to live.
\nFollowing the deaths of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns to the English village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss.
\nHelen retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and habit. Then, one cold autumn night, a chance encounter with an abandoned pet mouse on the street outside her house sets Helen on a surprising journey of friendship.
\nSipsworth is a reminder that there can be second chances. No matter what we have planned for ourselves, sometimes the world has plans of its own. Simon Van Booy’s lyrical storytelling is a delight even as it will fill your heart.
Every September, the spirits of the dead return before vanishing four weeks later in a puff of green ash.
\nThe haunting has become a holiday – part Christmas, part Halloween, full of annual reckonings with the past. The ghosts aren’t real in any way that can hurt you, so it’s hard to tell the silent spectres from ashen commuters: they linger on train platforms, they crowd buses, they take up space on your sofa. The proper term these days is ‘people without pulses’.
\nThis year, four strangers prepare for a visit from their dearly departed. The season forces them to confront all the things that haunt them, not just their dead. As suppressed truths emerge from the shadows, each of them will end Ghost Month changed in ways they never imagined.
\nHappy Haunting.
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Strange things happen in Fell, New York: A mysterious drowning at the town’s roadside motel. The unexplained death of a young girl whose body is left by the railroad tracks. For Violet, Vail, and Dodie Esmie the final straw was their little brother's shocking disappearance, which started as a normal game of hide-and-seek.
\nAs their parents grew increasingly distant, the sisters were each haunted by visions and frightening events, leading them to leave town and never look back. Violet still sees dead people - spirits who remind her of Sister, the menacing presence that terrorised her for years. Now after nearly two decades it’s time for a homecoming - because Ben is back, and he’s ready to lead them to the answers they’ve longed for and long feared.
Vermont, 1950. There's a place for the girls whom no one wants - the troublemakers, the illegitimate, the too smart for their own good. It's called Idlewild Hall. And in the small town where it's located, there are rumors that the boarding school is haunted. Four roommates bond over their whispered fears, their budding friendship blossoming - until one of them mysteriously disappears . . .
Vermont, 2014. As much as she's tried, journalist Fiona Sheridan cannot stop revisiting the events surrounding her older sister's death. Twenty years ago, her body was found lying in the overgrown fields near the ruins of Idlewild Hall. And though her sister's boyfriend was tried and convicted of murder, Fiona can't shake the suspicion that something was never right about the case.
When Fiona discovers that Idlewild Hall is being restored by an anonymous benefactor, she decides to write a story about it. But a shocking discovery during the renovations will link the loss of her sister to secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the past - and a voice that won't be silenced . . .
1982. Viv Delaney wants to move to New York City, and to help pay for it she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel, in Fell. But Viv feels that something is wrong, something disturbing and haunting. And then she vanishes.
\n2017. Carly Kirk has never been able to let go of the story of her aunt Viv. She decides to move to Fell and take a job at the hotel - as a night clerk - to try to get to the bottom of the mystery.
\nBut Carly soon discovers that, before she vanished, Viv believed she was on the trail of something truly sinister.
\nAnd if Carly can't work out the truth soon, then she's in line to be the next victim . . .
\n
Alice and Niall used to be lovers, best friends and parents, in that order. Now they're no longer on the same page or even reading from the same book.
\nAnn thought when she and Ken retired, it would be their second spring. Instead, it feels more like an icy winter.
\nOrla is falling in love with boyfriend Paul , but her complicated past makes her unsure if she can ever be intimate with anyone.
\nThree couples find themselves telling a stranger about the most private part of their lives - their hopes, their disappointments, their awkward realisations. Can they learn to be honest with each other? And what life-changing decisions will be made when they do?
Amanda. Katie. Melanie.
\nThree wildly different women with one big problem - their impossible mother-in-law, Nancy.
\nWhen an unexpected crisis hits the family business, the sisters-in-law find themselves navigating stormy waters. Amanda is back in town and ready to reclaim her spot at the top. Katie, the feisty outsider, knows she'll never earn Nancy’s approval - and has stopped caring. Melanie, ambitious and savvy, is more than capable of running the business, if only Nancy would loosen her iron grip.
\nForced to confront messy truths about marriage, motherhood, succession and family loyalty, the three women soon realize their greatest strength might just be each other.
Things are finally looking up for Anna. Seventeen miserable years of marriage to man-child Connor have left her drained and ready for a new start. So when they separate, she couldn't be more thrilled to move in with James, a handsome lecturer who is everything her ex-husband is not: kind, thoughtful, and above all, reliable.
\nBut Anna and James's kids hate living with the loved-up couple and the new set-up. Their teenage daughters - one a studious high achiever and the other a cool rich girl unbothered by grades or exams - have nothing in common. And Anna's wild football-mad nine-year-old son declares war on bookish James.
\nNobody said step-parenting was easy; Anna and James are about to find out exactly how complicated it can be. With exes, new partners-of-exes and money all in the mix, home life is fast becoming a minefield and their new-found happiness hangs in the balance. Do they have what it takes to make their blended family work?
This is the story of Lylah Anwar, an assassin slave for the prominent Roman Empire. Bound by an ancient prophecy to the destiny of three mythical kingdoms, Lylah embarks on a journey of self-discovery and rebellion.
\nWith vengeance and wrath flowing through her veins, she is thrust into a brutal tournament pitting her against ruthless warriors in a deadly game of power.
\nAmid the bloodshed and the impossible mission she has been tasked with, blossoms a forbidden love, blurring the lines between destiny and duty.
\nBut with the empires on the brink of war and her traumatic past haunting her every step, will Lylah’s unbridled rage be her undoing - or the key to unlocking her true might?
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In a petrol-fuelled Roman Empire which never fell, Arrow, a gladiatrix turned governess must rescue the child she has loved as her own, a girl who could tear down the world.
\nWhen Livy is abducted during a devastating Godstorm, Arrow must unleash years of the gladiator training she'd sworn to forget in order to save her. Defying her owner, a heartless Consul, Arrow turns to her ex-lover and the illegal druid underworld in a desperate attempt to rescue the girl she has come to think of as her own.
\nHer search will take her across Londinium, a city of petrol-powered chariots, to the pagan Old Town, and eventually the edge of the known the Amazon, where destiny and destruction intertwine.
\nFacing battle and betrayal Arrow must reclaim her past as a killer - or risk everything for the child who calls her \"mother.\"
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Recent Dartmouth dropout Mei, in search of a new direction in life, drives a limo to make ends meet. Her grandfather convinces her to allow her customers to pay under the table, and before she knows it, she is working as a routine chauffeur for sex workers. Mei does her best to mind her own business, but her knack for discretion soon leads her on a life changing trip from San Francisco to Syracuse with a new client.
\nHandsome and reserved, Henry piques Mei’s interest. Toting an enormous black suitcase with him everywhere he goes, he’s more concerned with taking frequent breaks than making good time on the road. When Mei discovers Henry's secret, she does away with her usual close-lipped demeanor and decides she has no choice but to confront him. What Henry reveals rocks her to her core and shifts this once casual, transactional road trip to one of moral stakes and dangerous consequences.
\nAn original take on the great American road trip, Off the Books is a beautifully crafted coming of age story that showcases the resilience of the human spirit and the power of doing the right thing.
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It's eighteen-year-old Gita Desai's first year at Stanford University, and it's a miracle she's here and not already married off by her traditional Gujarati parents. She's determined to death-grip her good-girl, model-student rep all the way to medical school, which means no social life or standing out in any way. Should be easy: If there's one thing she's learned from her family it's how to chup-re - to “shut up,” fade into the background.
\nBut when childhood memories of her aunt's desertion and her then-uncle's best friend resurface, Gita ditches the books night after night in favor of partying and hooking up with strangers. Still, nothing can stop the nagging voice in her head that's growing louder and louder, insisting something's wrong . . . and the only way she can burst forward is to stop shutting-up about the past.
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Stella and Connie are strangers, brought together by two traumatic events - cruel twists of fate that happen thousands of miles apart. Stella lives with her mother, a smothering narcissist.
\nWhen she succumbs to dementia, the pressures on Stella's world intensify, culminating in tragedy. As Stella recovers from a near fatal accident, she feels compelled to share her trauma but she finds talking difficult. In her head she confides in Connie because there's no human being in the world that she feels closer to.
\nConnie is an expat living in Dubai with her partner, Mark, and their two children. On the face of it she wants for nothing and yet . . . something about life in this glittering city does not sit well with her. Used to working full time in a career she loves back in England, she struggles to find meaning in the expat life of play-dates and pedicures. Two women set on a collision course.
\nWhen they finally link up, it will not be in a way that you, or I, or anyone would ever have expected.
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In 1573, Countess Erzsébet Báthory gives birth to an illegitimate child. Secretly taken to a peasant family living in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, the infant girl is raised as their own. Years later, a young woman called Boróka - ignorant of her true history - is sent to join the Countess’s household.
\nTerrified of the Countess’s murderous reputation and the brutally cruel women who run the castle, Boróka struggles to find her place. Then plague breaches the castle’s walls, and a tentative bond unexpectedly forms between the girl and the Countess. But powerful forces are moving against the great lady whose wealth and independence threatens the king.
\nCan the Countess trust the women seemingly so close to her? And when the show trial begins against the infamous “Blood Countess” where will Boróka’s loyalties lie?
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A quaint seaside town in Kitakyushu, Mojiko is full of hidden delights. And one unexpected treasure is the 24/7 convenience store, Tenderness.
\nAt first glance, it’s a store like any other.
\nSure, it’s a bit odd that the handsome manager has his own fan club. And perhaps the customers are somewhat eccentric. But there’s a warmth about Tenderness that draws you in.
\nThe bright lights are always on. The employees know you by name. And the shelves are stacked with delicious treats, from strong hot coffee to sweet parfaits, egg sandos to ramen, crispy fried chicken to refreshing soba.
\nAfter a while, you get the feeling that whatever you need might just be waiting for you here . . .
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After a broken heart, Nagata Shino skips high school and meets her grandmother in an unexpected place.
\nPart-time store clerk Hirose Taro thinks of himself as a boring guy . . . until a beautiful girl begins to disrupt his daily life.
\nWhy did his best friend leave? Murai Mizuki faces reality and takes a courageous step.
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Song is a nobody - just a food delivery worker from a village in Northeastern China - but her son, River, is a little wonder.
\nAt the age of four, he toddled to a piano and tapped out his favorite song. At eight, he mastered Liszt's three Liebestraume; at ten, he blazed through the complete set of Chopin's études. And at every step, through the valleys of loss, illness, and poverty, Song is there to light his way - until finally, at the age of eleven, River is invited to study with a preeminent teacher in Beijing.
\nBut in the chaos of Beijing Railway Station on the busiest day of the year, Song faces every mother's nightmare: She loses her grip on River’s little hand and is unable to find him after a desperate, harrowing search.
\nOver the next days, weeks, and eventually, years, Song and River fight to forge a path back to each other as they carve out new lives that carry them farther apart. An evocative exploration of a mother’s love and a son’s yearning,
\nLittle Wonder takes us on an extraordinary journey through a modern Beijing that pulses with the music of humanity and its impossible - and impossibly brave - hopes.
\nAs every musician knows: You start in one key. You wander to other keys, strange and distant places. But in the end, you always come back home.
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Walter Lavender Jr. is a master of finding. A wearer of high-tops. A maker of croissants. A son keeping vigil, twelve years counting.
\nBut he wouldn’t be able to tell you. Silenced by his motor speech disorder, Walter’s life gets lonely. Fortunately, he has The Lavenders - his mother’s enchanted dessert shop, where marzipan dragons breathe actual fire. He also has a knack for tracking down any missing thing - except for his lost father.
\nSo when the Book at the root of the bakery’s magic vanishes, Walter, accompanied by his overweight golden retriever, journeys through New York City to find it - along the way encountering an unforgettable cast of lost souls.
\nSteeped in nostalgic wonder, The Luster of Lost Things explores the depths of our capacity for kindness and our ability to heal. A lyrical meditation on why we become lost and how we are found, from the bright, broken heart of a boy who knows where to look for everyone but himself.
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What begins as an eccentric English love story turns into one of the most dramatic adventures ever recorded . . .
\nMaurice and Maralyn couldn't be more different. He is as cautious and awkward as she is charismatic and forceful. It seems an unlikely romance, but it works.
\nBored of 1970s suburban life, Maralyn has an sell the house, build a boat, leave England - and its oil crisis, industrial strikes and inflation - forever. It is hard work, turning dreams into reality, but finally they set sail for New Zealand. Then, halfway there, their beloved boat is struck by a whale and the pair are cast adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
\nOn their tiny raft, their love is put to the test. When Maurice begins to withdraw into himself, it falls upon Maralyn to keep them both alive. Filled with danger, spirit, and tenderness, this is a book about human connection and the human condition; about how we survive - not just at sea, but in life.
She shares your name. It's how you meet the other Sally Jones, sparking an unusual friendship that you grow to trust, especially when your dad dies and your dream job is in danger.
\nSo when she disappears suddenly, you are worried she may be in danger.
\nAs you try to find her, you uncover a shocking truth about your friendship, which turns out not to be the chance encounter you once thought.
\nWas anything the other Sally ever told you real?
\nYou thought she was a friend. But she could bring your world crashing down.
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As friends gather for a hen weekend, they are all smiles, but cannot hide the web of tension that bubbles beneath the surface.
\nThe group was forever broken by the devastating loss of their childhood friend, Becca. The prettiest and most powerful of them all, her absence lies at the heart of this fractured friendship.
\nNow, decades later, someone wants to expose the truth about what happened, and will stop at nothing to reveal the secrets long since buried.
\nAs a dark storm gathers out on the moors, dangerous secrets and accusations threaten to explode between the group.
\nWill they all survive the fall-out?
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From Atlantic critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert, a blazing critique of how early-aughts pop culture turned women and girls against each other - and themselves - with disastrous consequences.
\nWhen did feminism lose its way? This question feels increasingly urgent in a moment of reactionary cultural and legislative backlash, when widespread uncertainty about the movement’s power, focus, and currency threatens decades of progress.
\nSophie Gilbert, a staff writer at The Atlantic and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism, provides one answer, identifying an inflection point in the late 1990s and early 2000s when the energy of third-wave and “riot girl” feminism collapsed into a regressive period of hyper-objectification, sexualisation, and infantilisation. Gilbert mines the darker side of nostalgia, training her keen analytic eye on the most revealing cultural objects of the era, across music, film, television, fashion, tabloid journalism, and more. And what she recounts is harrowing, from the unattainable aesthetic of Victoria’s Secret ads and explicit music videos to a burgeoning internet culture vicious towards women in the spotlight and damaging for those who weren’t. Gilbert tracks many of the period’s dominant themes back to the explosion of internet porn, tracing its widespread influence as it began to pervade our collective consciousness.
\nGilbert paints a devastating picture of an era when a distinctly American confluence of excess, materialism, and power-worship collided with the culture’s reactionary, puritanical, and chauvinistic currents. Amid a collective reconsideration of the way women are treated in public, Girl on Girl is a blistering indictment of the matrix of misogyny that undergirded the cultural production of the early twenty-first century, and how it continues to shape our world today.
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Eighteen-year-olds Ruben Montez and Zach Knight are two members of the boy-band Saturday, one of the biggest acts in America. Along with their bandmates, Angel Phan and Jon Braxton, the four are teen heartbreakers in front of the cameras and best friends backstage. But privately, cracks are starting to form: their once-easy rapport is straining under the pressures of fame, and Ruben confides in Zach that he’s feeling smothered by management’s pressure to stay in the closet.
\nOn a whirlwind tour through Europe, with both an unrelenting schedule and minimal supervision, Ruben and Zach come to rely on each other more and more, and their already close friendship evolves into a romance. But when they decide they’re ready to tell their fans and live freely, Zach and Ruben start to truly realise that they will never have the support of their management. How can they hold tight to each other when the whole world seems to want to come between them?
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It’s been two years since Maya's ex-boyfriend cheated on her, and she still can’t escape him: his sister married the crown prince of a minor European country and he captured hearts as her charming younger brother. If the world only knew the real Jordy, the manipulative liar who broke Maya’s heart.
\nSkye Kaplan was always cautious with her heart until Jordy said all the right things and earned her trust. Now his face is all over the media and Skye is still wondering why he stopped calling.
\nWhen Maya and Skye are invited to star on the reality dating show Second-Chance Romance, they’re whisked away to a beautiful mansion - along with four more of Jordy’s exes - to compete for his affections while the whole world watches. Skye wonders if she and Jordy can recapture the spark she knows they had, but Maya has other plans: exposing Jordy and getting revenge. As they navigate the competition, Skye and Maya discover that their real happily ever after is nothing they could have scripted.
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Princess Rosemary of Henland can’t afford distractions. She’s working tirelessly to repair her image following a scandal that lost the trust of both her country and her best friend. Unfortunately, when a beautiful and funny new student joins her boarding school, Rose finds herself quite distracted indeed.
\nAttending Bramppath College on a music scholarship, talented pianist Danni expects to be an outcast amongst the wealthy children of the elite, but she is pleasantly surprised to be taken in by the ex-best friend of the princess. The more Danni gets to know her new classmates, the more intrigued she becomes by Rose.
\nWhen somebody sees something they shouldn’t and rumors circulate throughout Henland, Rose and Danni must either find a way to deflect the ever-increasing eyes on their relationship, or end it altogether. Because one thing is clear: if Rose’s fragile reputation takes any more hits, the palace will do whatever they must to separate Rose and Danni. Forever.
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Will Tavares is the dream summer fling - he's fun, affectionate, kind ― but just when Ollie thinks he's found his Happily Ever After, summer vacation ends and Will stops texting Ollie back. Now Ollie is one prince short of his fairy tale ending, and to complicate the fairy tale further, a family emergency sees Ollie uprooted and enrolled at a new school across the country. Which he minds a little less when he realizes it's the same school Will goes to . . . except Ollie finds that the sweet, comfortably queer guy he knew from summer isn't the same one attending Collinswood High. This Will is a class clown, closeted - and, to be honest, a bit of a jerk.
\nOllie has no intention of pining after a guy who clearly isn't ready for a relationship, especially since this new, bro-y jock version of Will seems to go from hot to cold every other week. But then Will starts \"coincidentally\" popping up in every area of Ollie's life, from music class to the lunch table, and Ollie finds his resolve weakening.
\nThe last time he gave Will his heart, Will handed it back to him trampled and battered. Ollie would have to be an idiot to trust him with it again.
\nRight? Right.
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Ivy Winslow has the house to herself for a week while her parents are away. She’s planning to use this newfound freedom to binge-watch her favorite fantasy TV show, H-MAD, and hang out with her best friend, Henry. She’ll also have to avoid her former best friend-turned enemy (and neighbor), Mack. But things quickly go awry when Ivy wakes up to find Weston, the gorgeous, very fictional main character of H-MAD in her bedroom, claiming to be her soul mate.
\nIvy realises that her fanfic writing has somehow brought Weston as she’s imagined him to life. But it turns out that the tropes she swoons over in her stories are slightly less romantic in reality, and her not-so-fictional crush is causing some real-world problems. To figure out why Weston is here and what to do with him, Ivy decides to team up with Henry and (against her better judgment) Mack. But with Mack back in her life, Ivy starts to wonder if Weston, her “perfect guy”, is the one who’s truly perfect for her . . . or if that was someone else all along.
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Everyone in school knows about Locker 89. If you slip a letter in outlining your relationship woes, along with a fiver, an anonymous source will email you with the best advice you've ever gotten. Darcy Phillips, a quiet, sweet junior, is safe in the knowledge no one knows she's the genius behind locker 89.
\nUntil Brougham, a senior, catches her. The deal Brougham offers is tempting: in exchange for his silence - and a generous coach's fee to sweeten the deal - Darcy can become Brougham's personal dating coach to help him get his ex-girlfriend back. And as for Darcy, well, she has a fairly good reason to want to keep her anonymity. Because she has another secret.
\nNot too long ago, she abused locker 89 to sabotage the budding romance of her best friend, Brooke. Brooke, who Darcy's been in love with for a year now. Yeah. Brooke can't find out about that. No matter what.
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Lady Morgan surveys her life at an unhappy marriage and a vengeful husband determined to keep their son from his queen’s clutches, a true love she can’t be with, a jealous rival in magician Merlin who has the ear of Morgan’s half-brother King Arthur, and strange but wonderful powers of her own she is still exploring.
\nAs tensions rise within the castle, happiness seems an impossible dream until Morgan dares to break the shackles of expectation those around her insist upon. But this path to great joy comes at a terrible cost, and before long Morgan must understand it’s a price to be exacted in rich, red blood.
\nRising from the ashes of desperation, she emerges hard, crystalline and unforgiving - now she is Morgan Le Fay. And hate is in her heart . . .
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A powerful feminist retelling of the early life of Morgan le Fay, the famed villainess of Arthurian legend, this dazzling debut is the story of a woman both mortal and magical, formidable and misunderstood, told in her own words.
\nYoung Morgan of Cornwall lives a happy life in Tintagel Castle until King Uther Pendragon, with the help of the sorcerer Merlin, murders her father and tricks her mother into marriage. Furious, brilliant, and vengeful, Morgan defies her brutal stepfather, taking up a secret education, discovering a lifelong affinity with the healing arts, and falling in love with a man far beneath her station. However, defiance comes at a cost. Used as a bargaining chip in her stepfather’s war games, Morgan finds herself banished to a world of isolated castles and gossiping courts, amidst the machinations of kings, sorcerers, and men.
\nBut some desires are not easily forgotten, and the search for her independence is a quest Morgan cannot give up. As the era of King Arthur approaches, she must use all her wit, knowledge, and courage to fight against those who wish to deny her intelligence, crush her spirit, and control her body. But, in seeking her freedom, Morgan risks losing everything - her reputation, her loved ones, and her life.
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Grieving over a devastating loss, Morgan has retreated to the sanctuary of Belle Garde behind a veil of fairy magic, after swearing vengeance upon King Arthur and Camelot.
\nSteeped in her rage, she becomes a storm of retribution, battling to avenge her brother’s wrongs while trying to undo a terrible tragedy. But with her resurrection skills elusive and Camelot growing in glory and strength, Morgan is failing, her freedom under threat in the wake of her chaos and treasonous reputation.
\nAll appears futile, until her efforts bring news of scandal in the Royal Court, and Morgan is once again drawn inside Camelot’s golden walls. When an encounter with Arthur’s trusted knight, Sir Lancelot, sparks suspicions of Queen Guinevere’s adultery, Morgan falls deeper into obsession, the need to punish those who betrayed her driving her further away from her loved ones, and the woman she once wished to be.
\nAs the Age of Camelot darkens, and the forces of love, fate and truth collide, she must choose between her thirst for vengeance and the power to heal what is broken, and decide who Morgan le Fay truly is, in her own future and for all time.
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Kim Hani has retired from a life of devouring souls. She is, simply put, too full. Once known as the infamous Scarlet Fox, she now spends her days working in a coffee shop and annoying a particularly irritating, if unfairly handsome, trickster god as often as she can.
\nThat god is Seokga the Fallen. Exiled from the heavenly kingdom of Okhwang, he now begrudgingly resides in the mortal realm, working toward his redemption and suffering through his interactions with the particularly infuriating, if sneakily charming, gumiho barista at his favorite café.
\nBut when a powerful demon escapes from the underworld and threatens to end all of humanity, Okhwang’s emperor offers Seokga an enticing bargain: Kill this rogue creature, as well as the legendary and elusive Scarlet Fox, and he will be reinstated as a god. Hani, however, has no intention of being caught. Seokga might be a trickster god, but she has a trick of her own that he’ll never see coming: teaming up. As Seokga’s assistant, Hani will undermine and sabotage his investigation right under his overly pointy nose. Sure, she’ll help him kill the demon, but she certainly won’t allow him to uncover her secret identity while they’re at it.
\nAs the bickering partners track their case down a path of mayhem and violence, the god and the gumiho find themselves inescapably drawn to each other. But will the unlikely couple stand together to prevent the apocalypse, or will they let their secrets tear them - and the world - apart?
Seokga the No-Longer-Fallen is working on himself. Reinstated as a god, the trickster now attends much-needed therapy, even as he desperately searches for his lost love, Hani. But when the red thread of fate tangled around his finger - signaling Hani’s reincarnation - leads Seokga to a luxury cruise down the river of the dead, the woman he finds waiting for him isn’t Hani . . . she’s Yoo Kisa, and she has no memory of him.
\nYoo Kisa is exhausted with her afterlife. While she’d hoped the underworld would be peaceful, whoever she was in a past life racked up quite the karmic debt, and now she must pay it, working thanklessly aboard the SRC Flatliner. Even worse, the red thread wrapped around her pinky followed her into the underworld . . . and although her fated partner has found her, he seems to find her lacking.
After the destruction of her entire Talon gang, eighteen-year-old Shin Lina - the Reaper of Sunpo - is forced to become a living, breathing weapon for the kingdom’s most-feared crime lord. All that keeps her from turning on her ruthless master is the life of her beloved little sister hanging in the balance. But the order to steal a priceless tapestry from a Dokkaebi temple incites not only the wrath of a legendary immortal, but the beginning of an unwinnable game . . .
\nSuddenly Lina finds herself in the dreamlike realm of the Dokkaebi, her fate in the hands of its cruel and captivating emperor. But she can win her life - if she kills him first.
\nNow a terrible game of life and death has begun, and even Lina's swift, precise blade is no match for the magnetic Haneul Rui. Lina will have to use every weapon in her arsenal if she wants to outplay this cunning king and save her sister . . . all before the final grain of sand leaks out of the hourglass.
\nBecause one way or another, she'll take Rui's heart.
\nEven if it means giving up her own.
A prisoner caged within the walls of her own mind, the once-fierce assassin known as Shin Lina can do nothing but watch as a tide of blood and chaos sweeps across the Three Kingdoms. After all, Lina is the one who unleashed the malevolent Prophecy upon her world.
\nSo many secrets. So many lies. And it’s all her fault.
\nYet Haneul Rui - the immortal Dokkaebi Emperor who stole her heart - refuses to surrender. He alone leads the armies against the dangerous, serpentine Imugi. He alone wields his scorching fire atop blood-soaked battlefields, and he alone rallies his soldiers against a terrifying future of death and destruction.
\nNow the red thread of fate ties them all together in love and hatred - Rui, Lina, and the merciless Prophecy herself. And the more Lina fights against her destiny, the tighter the thread becomes.
\nFor they are bound in both life and death; to wound one is to wound them all. To kill the Child of Venom is to kill them all.
\nAnd soon, not even the wrathful gods themselves can stop their inevitable ruin.
Everyone thinks the Reaper of Sunpo - eighteen-year-old assassin Shin Lina - is dead. The only ones who know the truth are her cherished little sister and Haneul Rui, the icily gorgeous Dokkaebi Emperor, who she was sent to kill . . . and kissed instead.
\nNow, with the potent Imugi venom surging in her veins, Lina’s returned to right all wrongs. Already her body is changing, growing stronger, stealthier, and more agile, with serpentine scales she can call at will. She is living vengeance, seeking retribution for the massacre of the Talons. She’ll become the sword who cuts down the rival Blackbloods gang, along with their ruthless crime-lord leader. And when she is through, she will take the kingdom as her own.
\nBut there is a mysterious side to Lina’s growing power, a dark voice inside her that whispers and guides her as she slips through the shadows of Sunpo’s streets. One that warns her not to trust the Dokkaebi, especially Rui.
\nBecause if her destiny isn’t to love him . . . it must be to destroy him.
Sasha has had it. She cannot bring herself to respond to another inane, “urgent” (but obviously not at all urgent) email or participate in the corporate employee joyfulness program. She hasn’t seen her friends in months. Sex? Seems like a lot of effort. Even cooking dinner takes far too much planning. Sasha has hit a wall.
\nArmed with good intentions to drink kale smoothies, try yoga, and find peace, she heads to the seaside resort she loved as a child. But it’s the off season, the hotel is in a dilapidated shambles, and she has to share the beach with the only other a grumpy guy named Finn, who seems as stressed as Sasha. How can she commune with nature when he’s sitting on her favorite rock, watching her? Nor can they agree on how best to alleviate their burnout ( manifesting, wild swimming; drinking whisky, getting pizza delivered to the beach).
\nWhen curious messages, seemingly addressed to Sasha and Finn, begin to appear on the beach, the two are forced to talk - about everything. How did they get so burned out? Can either of them remember something they used to love? (Answer: surfing!) And the question they try and fail to ignore: what does the energy between them - flaring even in the face of their bone-deep exhaustion - signify?
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Meet Emma Corrigan, a young woman with a huge heart, an irrepressible spirit, and a few little secrets: Secrets from her boyfriend: I’ve always thought Connor looks a bit like Ken. As in Barbie and Ken.
\nSecrets from her mother: I lost my virginity in the spare bedroom with Danny Nussbaum while Mum and Dad were downstairs watching Ben-Hur.
\nSecrets she wouldn’t share with anyone in the world: I have no idea what NATO stands for. Or even what it is. Until she spills them all to a handsome stranger on a plane. At least, she thought he was a stranger . . .
\nUntil Emma comes face-to-face with Jack Harper, the company’s elusive CEO, a man who knows every single humiliating detail about her . . .
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Becky Brandon (née Bloomwood) adores Christmas. It's always the same - Mum and Dad hosting, carols playing, Mum pretending she made the Christmas pudding, and the next-door neighbours coming round for sherry in their terrible festive jumpers.
\nAnd now it's even easier with online bargain-shopping sites - if you spend enough you even get free delivery. Sorted!
\nBut this year looks set to be different. Unable to resist the draw of craft beer and smashed avocado, Becky's parents are moving to ultra-trendy Shoreditch and have asked Becky if she'll host Christmas this year. What could possibly go wrong?
\nWith sister Jess demanding a vegan turkey, husband Luke determined that he just wants aftershave again, and little Minnie insisting on a very specific picnic hamper - surely Becky can manage all this, as well as the surprise appearance of an old boyfriend and his pushy new girlfriend, whose motives are far from clear . . .
\nWill chaos ensue, or will Becky manage to bring comfort and joy to Christmas?
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From #1 New York Times bestselling author Sophie Kinsella, an irresistible story of love and empowerment about a young woman with a complicated family, a handsome man who might be “the one,” and an IOU that changes everything
Fixie Farr has always lived by her father’s motto: “Family first.” But since her dad passed away, leaving his charming housewares store in the hands of his wife and children, Fixie spends all her time picking up the slack from her siblings instead of striking out on her own. The way Fixie sees it, if she doesn’t take care of her father’s legacy, who will? It’s simply not in her nature to say no to people.
So when a handsome stranger in a coffee shop asks her to watch his laptop for a moment, Fixie not only agrees - she ends up saving it from certain disaster. Turns out the computer’s owner is an investment manager. To thank Fixie for her quick thinking, Sebastian scribbles an IOU on a coffee sleeve and attaches his business card. But Fixie laughs it off - she’d never actually claim an IOU from a stranger. Would she?
Then Fixie’s childhood crush, Ryan, comes back into her life and his lack of a profession pushes all of Fixie’s buttons. She wants nothing for herself - but she’d love Seb to give Ryan a job. And Seb agrees, until the tables are turned once more and a new series of IOUs between Seb and Fixie - from small favors to life-changing moments - ensues. Soon Fixie, Ms. Fixit for everyone else, is torn between her family and the life she really wants. Does she have the courage to take a stand? Will she finally grab the life, and love, she really wants?
Poppy Wyatt has never felt luckier. She is about to marry her ideal man, Magnus Tavish, but in one afternoon her “happily ever after” begins to fall apart. Not only has she lost her engagement ring in a hotel fire drill but in the panic that follows, her phone is stolen. As she paces shakily around the lobby, she spots an abandoned phone in a trash can. Finders keepers! Now she can leave a number for the hotel to contact her when they find her ring. Perfect!
Well, perfect except that the phone’s owner, businessman Sam Roxton, doesn’t agree. He wants his phone back and doesn’t appreciate Poppy reading his messages and wading into his personal life.
What ensues is a hilarious and unpredictable turn of events as Poppy and Sam increasingly upend each other’s lives through emails and text messages. As Poppy juggles wedding preparations, mysterious phone calls, and hiding her left hand from Magnus and his parents . . . she soon realises that she is in for the biggest surprise of her life.
Call Ava romantic, but she thinks love should be found in the real world, not on apps that filter men by height, job, or astrological sign. She believes in feelings, not algorithms. So after a recent breakup and dating app debacle, she decides to put love on hold and escapes to a remote writers' retreat in coastal Italy. She's determined to finish writing the novel she's been fantasizing about, even though it means leaving her close-knit group of friends and her precious dog, Harold, behind.
At the retreat, she's not allowed to use her real name or reveal any personal information. When the neighboring martial arts retreat is canceled and a few of its attendees join their small writing community, Ava, now going by \"Aria,\" meets \"Dutch,\" a man who seems too good to be true. The two embark on a baggage-free, whirlwind love affair, cliff-jumping into gem-colored Mediterranean waters and exploring the splendor of the Italian coast. Things seem to be perfect for Aria and Dutch.
But then their real identities - Ava and Matt - must return to London. As their fantasy starts to fade, they discover just how different their personal worlds are. From food choices to annoying habits to sauna etiquette . . . are they compatible in anything? And then there's the prickly situation with Matt's ex-girlfriend, who isn't too eager to let him go. As one mishap follows another, it seems while they love each other, they just can't love each other's lives. Can they reconcile their differences to find one life together?
Becky Brandon thought motherhood would be a breeze and that having a daughter was a dream come true: a shopping friend for life! But it’s trickier than she thought. Two-year-old Minnie has a quite different approach to shopping.
Minnie creates havoc everywhere she goes, from Harrods to her own christening. Her favorite word is “Mine!” and she’s even trying to get into eBay! On top of everything else, Becky and Luke are still living with her parents (the deal on house #4 has fallen through), when suddenly there’s a huge financial crisis.
With people having to “cut back,” Becky decides to throw a surprise party for Luke to cheer everyone up. But when costs start to spiral out of control, she must decide whether to accept help from an unexpected source - and therefore run the risk of hurting the person she loves.
Will Becky be able to pull off the celebration of the year? Will she and Luke ever find a home of their own? Will Minnie ever learn to behave? And . . . most important . . . will Becky’s secret wishes ever come true?
Katie Brenner has the perfect life: a flat in London, a glamorous job, and a super-cool Instagram feed.
Ok, so the real truth is that she rents a tiny room with no space for a wardrobe, has a hideous commute to a lowly admin job, and the life she shares on Instagram isn’t really hers.
But one day her dreams are bound to come true, aren’t they?
Until her not-so perfect life comes crashing down when her mega-successful boss Demeter gives her the sack. All Katie’s hopes are shattered. She has to move home to Somerset, where she helps her dad with his new glamping business.
Then Demeter and her family book in for a holiday, and Katie sees her chance. But should she get revenge on the woman who ruined her dreams? Or try to get her job back? Does Demeter - the woman with everything - have such an idyllic life herself? Maybe they have more in common than it seems.
And what’s wrong with not-so-perfect, anyway?
When twenty-eight-year-old Lexi Smart wakes up in a London hospital, she’s in for a big surprise. Her teeth are perfect. Her body is toned. Her handbag is Vuitton. Having survived a car accident - in a Mercedes no less - Lexi has lost a big chunk of her memory, three years to be exact, and she’s about to find out just how much things have changed.
Somehow Lexi went from a twenty-five-year-old working girl to a corporate big shot with a sleek new loft, a personal assistant, a carb-free diet, and a set of glamorous new friends. And who is this gorgeous husband - who also happens to be a multimillionaire? With her mind still stuck three years in reverse, Lexi greets this brave new world determined to be the person she . . . well, seems to be. That is, until an adorably disheveled architect drops the biggest bombshell of all.
Suddenly Lexi is scrambling to catch her balance. Her new life, it turns out, comes complete with secrets, schemes, and intrigue. How on earth did all this happen? Will she ever remember? And what will happen when she does?
Becky just can’t stop shopping, whether it’s stocking up on 3 for 2 offers, or buying an essential grey cardigan, or falling in lust with a pair of dreamy shoes. She knows she has to stop, and decides to follow her Dad’s advice: Cut Back or Make More Money. Except, Cutting Back seems impossible, and her attempts to Make More Money just get her into trouble. Her bank manager is sending her sterner and sterner letters, her credit cards are being declined, her Mum and Dad have no idea . . . what is she going to do?
\nWill Becky ever take control of her life, find love and regain the use of her credit card? It was the most fun book ever to write. I laughed and laughed, even as I was thinking that people might think I was insane. What I had no idea was how many Becky Bloomwoods there are out there in this world. They’re in every country, as far as I can make out. And lots of them are men.
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With her shopping excesses (somewhat) in check and her career as a TV financial guru thriving, Becky's biggest problem seems to be tearing her entrepreneur boyfriend, Luke, away from work for a romantic country weekend. And worse, figuring out how to pack light. But packing takes on a whole new meaning when Luke announces he's moving to New York for business - and he asks Becky to go with him! Before you can say “Prada sample sale,”
\nBecky has landed in the Big Apple, home of Park Avenue penthouses and luxury boutiques.
\nSurely it's only a matter of time until she becomes an American TV celebrity, and she and Luke are the toast of Gotham society. Nothing can stand in their way, especially with Becky's bills miles away in London. But then an unexpected disaster threatens her career prospects, her relationship with Luke, and her available credit line! Shopaholic Takes Manhattan - but will she have to return it?
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Becky’s life is blooming! She’s working at London’s newest big store, The Look, house-hunting with husband Luke (her secret wish is a Shoe Room) . . . and she’s pregnant! She couldn’t be more overjoyed - especially since discovering that shopping cures morning sickness.
\nEverything has got to be perfect for her baby: from the designer nursery . . . to the latest, coolest pram . . . to the celebrity, must-have obstetrician. But when the celebrity obstetrician turns out to be Luke’s glamorous, intellectual ex-girlfriend, Becky’s perfect world starts to crumble. She’s shopping for two . . . but are there three in her marriage?
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What’s a round-the-world honeymoon if you can’t buy the odd souvenir to ship back home? Like the twenty silk dressing gowns Becky found in Hong Kon . . . the hand-carved dining table (and ten chairs) from Sri Lanka . . . the, um, huge wooden giraffes from Malawi (that her husband Luke expressly forbade her to buy). Only now Becky and Luke have returned home to London and Luke is furious.
\nTwo truckloads of those souvenirs have cluttered up their loft, and the bills for them are outrageous. Luke insists Becky go on a budget. And worse: her beloved best friend Suze has found a new best friend while Becky was away. Becky’s feeling rather blue - when her parents deliver some incredible news. She has a long-lost sister! Becky is thrilled! She’s convinced her sister will be a true soulmate. They’ll go shopping together, have manicures together.
\nUntil she meets Jessica for the first time and gets the shock of her life. Surely Becky Bloomwood’s sister can’t . . . hate shopping?
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Life has been good for Becky Bloomwood: She's become the best personal shopper at Barneys, she and her successful entrepreneurial boyfriend, Luke, are living happily in Manhattan's West Village, and her new next-door neighbor is a fashion designer!. But with her best friend, Suze, engaged, how can Becky fail to notice her own ring finger is bare? Not that she's been thinking of marriage (or diamonds) or anything . . .
\nThe Luke proposes! Bridal registries dance in Becky's head. Problem is, two other people are planning her wedding: Becky's overjoyed mother has been waiting forever to host a backyard wedding, with the bride resplendent in Mum's frilly old gown. While Luke's high-society mother insisting on a glamorous, all-expenses-paid affair at the Plaza. Both weddings for the same day. And Becky can't seem to turn down either one. Can everyone's favorite shopaholic tie the knot before everything unravels?
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Becky is on a major rescue mission! Her father has vanished from Los Angeles on a mysterious quest with her best friend's husband. Becky's mum is hysterical; her best friend, Suze, is desperate. Worse, Becky must tolerate an enemy along for the ride, who she's convinced is up to no good.
Determined to get to the bottom of why her dad has disappeared, help Suze, contain Alicia, and reunite her fractured family, Becky knows she must marshal all her trademark ingenuity. The result: her most outrageous and daring plan yet!
But just when her family needs her more than ever, can Becky pull it off?
Becky Brandon (née Bloomwood) has stars in her eyes. She and her daughter, Minnie, have joined husband Luke in LA - city of herbal smoothies, multimillion-dollar yoga retreats, and the lure of celebrity. Luke is there to help manage the career of famous actress Sage Seymour - and Becky is convinced she is destined to be Sage's personal stylist, and go from there to every A-list celebrity in Hollywood!
\nBut things become complicated when Becky joins the team of Sag'’s arch-rival. How will charming and supportive Luke deal with this conflict? Is it possible that what Becky wants most will end up hurting those she loves most?
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Lara Lington has always had an overactive imagination, but suddenly that imagination seems to be in overdrive. Normal professional twenty-something young women don’t get visited by ghosts. Or do they?
When the spirit of Lara’s great-aunt Sadie - a feisty, demanding girl with firm ideas about fashion, love, and the right way to dance - mysteriously appears, she has one request: Lara must find a missing necklace that had been in Sadie’s possession for more than seventy-five years, because Sadie cannot rest without it.
Lara and Sadie make a hilarious sparring duo, and at first it seems as though they have nothing in common. But as the mission to find Sadie’s necklace leads to intrigue and a new romance for Lara, these very different “twenties” girls learn some surprising truths from and about each other.
Workaholic attorney Samantha Sweeting has just done the unthinkable. She’s made a mistake so huge, it’ll wreck any chance of a partnership. Going into utter meltdown, she walks out of her London office, gets on a train, and ends up in the middle of nowhere. Asking for directions at a big, beautiful house, she’s mistaken for an interviewee and finds herself being offered a job as housekeeper.
\nHer employers have no idea they’ve hired a lawyer - and Samantha has no idea how to work the oven. She can’t sew on a button, bake a potato, or get the #@%# ironing board to open. How she takes a deep breath and begins to cope - and finds love - is a story as delicious as the bread she learns to bake. But will her old life ever catch up with her? And if it does . . . will she want it back?
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Lottie just knows that her boyfriend is going to propose during lunch at one of London's fanciest restaurants. But when his big question involves a trip abroad, not a trip down the aisle, she's completely crushed. So when Ben, an old flame, calls her out of the blue and reminds Lottie of their pact to get married if they were both still single at thirty, she jumps at the chance. No formal dates - just a quick march to the altar and a honeymoon on Ikonos, the sun-drenched Greek island where they first met years ago.
Their family and friends are horrified. Fliss, Lottie's older sister, knows that Lottie can be impulsive - but surely this is her worst decision yet. And Ben's colleague Lorcan fears that this hasty marriage will ruin his friend's career. To keep Lottie and Ben from making a terrible mistake, Fliss concocts an elaborate scheme to sabotage their wedding night. As she and Lorcan jet off to Ikonos in pursuit, Lottie and Ben are in for a honeymoon to remember . . .
Eve is a successful novelist who wakes up one day in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. Her husband, never far from her side, explains that she has had an operation to remove the large, malignant tumour growing in her brain.
\nAs Eve learns to walk, talk, and write again - and as she wrestles with her diagnosis, and how and when to explain it to her beloved children - she begins to recall what’s most important to her: long walks with her husband’s hand clasped firmly around her own, family game nights and always buying that dress when she sees it.
\nRecounted in brief anecdotes, each one is an attempt to answer the type of impossible questions recognizable to anyone navigating the labyrinth of grief. This extraordinary novella is a celebration of life, shot through with warmth and humour - it will both break your heart and put it back together again.
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Calla knows how the lottery works. Everyone does. On the day of your first bleed, you report to the station to learn what kind of woman you will be. A white ticket grants you children. A blue ticket grants you freedom. You are relieved of the terrible burden of choice. And, once you've taken your ticket, there is no going back.
But what if the life you're given is the wrong one?
Blue Ticket is a devastating enquiry into free will and the fraught space of motherhood. Bold and chilling, it pushes beneath the skin of female identity and patriarchal violence, to the point where human longing meets our animal bodies.
Clara and Francis are in love, but nobody knows it. For months they have been stealing away from their respective lives, leaving no trace of their relationship behind. Their time together is always excruciatingly sweet and all too short. Until one day they wake up in an apartment neither of them recognises, with no memory of how they got there.
\nThe Other City is a self-contained sanctuary where adulterers live openly as couples. Here there are fountains and old town squares and perfect cafes with checkered tablecloths. Ripe fruits wait on the counter each morning, invisible threads bind each lover to the other, and their primary responsibility is to enjoy one another. Contact with the real world is impossible and the city’s whims are mysterious - but now those stolen afternoons can last forever.
\nHow much would you sacrifice for a life you never thought possible? And how long can you stay in paradise before the cracks start to show?
\nAn exploration of desire, novelty and choice, Permanence explores the tantalizing quandary of what, if anything, can withstand the daily toll of “forever”?
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King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. He has laid the barbed wire; he has anchored the buoys in the water; he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter. Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave. Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world.
But when their father, the only man they’ve ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day three strange men wash ashore. Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent. Can they survive the men?
A haunting, riveting debut about the capacity for violence and the potency of female desire, The Water Cure both devastates and astonishes as it reflects our own world back at us.
When Maggie Tang arrives as a transfer student at UC Berkeley in 2005, she has no idea how her life is about to change. In the hallway of her dingy apartment building, she meets Adam, Charles, Hari, and Priya, the friends with whom she’ll create Circle, the world’s first major social media platform. But navigating her creative ambitions alongside love and friendship isn’t so simple, and when they inevitably collide, Maggie exitsCircle in dramatic fashion.
\nA decade later, Maggie is struggling with a new venture when she receives an invitation to celebrate Circle’s tenth anniversary on a private European island, everyone back together again. While she’s still bitter about how things ended, her company desperately needs the publicity, and deep down, Maggie can’t resist the handwritten plea at the bottom - Come, please.
\nBetween boat rides and beach days, bit by bit the reunion begins to feel like old times. But the journalist writing a retrospective on Circle is eager for a scoop, which means they can’t tiptoe around the past forever. And when a new truth is revealed about their fallout all those years ago, Maggie will have to decide whether to run again or fight for this second chance with the people she once loved most.
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Lulu has always been taught that money is the ticket to a good life. So, when Shanghai’s most eligible bachelor surprises her with a proposal, the only acceptable answer is yes, even if the voice inside her head is saying no. His family’s fortune would solve all her parents’ financial woes, but Lulu isn’t in love or ready for marriage.
\nThe only people she can confide in are her two best friends: career-minded Rina, who is tired of being passed over for promotion as her biological clock ticks away; and Jane, a sharp-tongued, luxury-chasing housewife desperate to divorce her husband and trade up. Each of them desires something different: freedom, time, beauty. None of them can get it without money.
\nLulu’s wedding is their golden opportunity. The social event of the season, it means more than enough cash gifts to transform the women’s lives. To steal the money on the big day, all they’ll need is a trustworthy crew and a brilliant plan. But as the plot grows increasingly complicated and relationships are caught in the cross fire, the women are forced to face that having it all might come at a steep price . . .
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The Portuguese flag has been planted across Morocco, its empire ruling with an iron fist. But eventually, all empires must fall.
\nAicha, the daughter of a Moroccan freedom-fighter, was born for battle. She has witnessed the death of her people, their starvation and torture at the hands of the occupiers, and it has awakened an anger within her. An anger that burns hot and bright, and speaks to Aicha's soul.
\nOnly Aicha's secret lover Rachid, a rebellion leader, knows how to soothe her. But as the fight for Morocco's freedom reaches its violent climax, the creature that simmers beneath Aicha's skin begs to be unleashed. It hungers for the screams of those who have caused her pain, and it will not be ignored.
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One doomed love affair after another has made lovely Alex Walton swear off men. Now, she's determined to try something that maybe she can succeed a writing career. Little does she know that a chance meeting with a strikingly handsome stranger, a mysterious obelisk, and a lost kingdom will change her life forever. As Alex is about to discover, truth can be stranger - and far more dangerous - than fiction.
\nAfter three years inside a terrorist organisation, Phillip Turman is trying to rebuild his life. His first assignment is to pick up Alex Walton, the maid of honor for his best friend's wedding, at the airport. His second is to deal with his instant attraction to her. But his third may be the to keep Alex out of danger as his past - and her need to know about it - threaten to destroy their future.
Former Supreme Court clerk Avery Keene is back . . . trying to put the past behind her at a prestigious high-end law firm in Washington, D.C. Head down and focused on a new life, Avery is now working as an internal investigator when a high-profile client seeks her out. Camasca Enterprises has a big problem and a short runway.
\nThe tech company has developed a new integrated AI system poised to revolutionize the medical industry. To prove its potential, Camasca’s charismatic founder, retired Major Rafe Diaz, has picked a complicated delivering cutting-edge health care to his fellow veterans. The potential is staggering, but their prototype has been plagued by a series of disturbing anomalies - culminating in the mysterious death of a beloved Camasca engineer.
\nAvery and her colleagues, Jared, Ling, and Noah, are brought into the secretive company to investigate from the inside out. At the epicenter of a burgeoning, controversial industry, and with billions of dollars on the line, their task is to determine whether Camasca’s technical troubles and rising body count reveal something sinister at work.
\nIn Coded Justice, Stacey Abrams’s storytelling prowess is on full display - a deft combination of riveting twists and vibrant characters set against the fascinating landscape of the capabilities of artificial intelligence . . . and the moral boundaries that govern it.
Avery Keene is back, trying to get her feet on solid ground after unraveling a conspiracy that took down the President of the United States in While Justice Sleeps. But as the sparks of impeachment hearings and political skirmishes swirl around her, Avery is approached at a legal conference by Preston Davies, an unassuming young man and fellow law clerk to a federal judge in Idaho.
\nDavies believes his boss, Judge Francesca Whitner, was being blackmailed in the days before she recently took her own life, and he gives Avery a file, a burner phone, and a fearful warning that there are highly dangerous people involved. Moments later, Avery is shocked when she witnesses Davies being murdered.
\nAfter breaking the encrypted file Davies gave to her, Avery reveals a list of names - all federal judges - and, alarmingly, all judges on the FISA Court (the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court), also known as America's secret court. It is this body that grants permission to the government to wiretap American individuals or corporations suspected of terrorism.
\nAvery knows Judge Whitner had been extorted, but as she investigates the names and cases associated with other judges on the list she begins to see a frightening pattern - and she worries that something far more sinister may be unfolding.
Avery Keene, a brilliant young law clerk for the legendary Justice Howard Wynn, is doing her best to hold her life together - excelling in an arduous job with the court while also dealing with a troubled family. When the shocking news breaks that Justice Wynn - the cantankerous swing vote on many current high-profile cases - has slipped into a coma, Avery's life turns upside down. She is immediately notified that Justice Wynn has left instructions for her to serve as his legal guardian and power of attorney.
\nPlunged into an explosive role she never anticipated, Avery finds that Justice Wynn had been secretly researching one of the most controversial cases before the court - a proposed merger between an American biotech company and an Indian genetics firm, which promises to unleash breathtaking results in the medical field. She also discovers that Wynn suspected a dangerously related conspiracy that infiltrates the highest power corridors of Washington.
\nAs political wrangling ensues in Washington to potentially replace the ailing judge whose life and survival Avery controls, she begins to unravel a carefully constructed, chesslike sequence of clues left behind by Wynn. She comes to see that Wynn had a much more personal stake in the controversial case and realises his complex puzzle will lead her directly into harm's way in order to find the truth.
By day, seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan works as a lady's maid for the cruel daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for the genteel Southern lady, \"Dear Miss Sweetie.\" When her column becomes wildly popular, she uses the power of the pen to address some of society's ills, but she's not prepared for the backlash that follows when her column challenges fixed ideas about race and gender.
While her opponents clamor to uncover the secret identity of Miss Sweetie, a mysterious letter sets Jo off on a search for her own past and the parents who abandoned her as a baby. But when her efforts put her in the crosshairs of Atlanta's most notorious criminal, Jo must decide whether she, a girl used to living in the shadows, is ready to step into the light.
1918. Orcas Island, Washington.
\nLucy Nowhere has spent her eighteen years working on the vast estate of the eccentric shipbuilder who took her in after she washed ashore in a green canoe as a baby. But she has long wished for a life off the island, and in a matter of days, she is set to leave for college - and, for the first time, choose her own future.
\nThen she finds her employer’s severed head on the beach. Rumors swirl that a mischievous spirit and its minions, the sea wolves, have struck again. Lucy doesn’t believe in myths. She knows that a human—a human murderer - killed him. And when she is unexpectedly named heiress to the estate, she understands the next target is her.
\nHer closest friend, the estate’s vigilant young guard, begs her to escape while she can. But Lucy knows the only way she can discover who she is, and free the island of its curse, is to find the real killer - before she becomes the next victim.
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Los Angeles, 1932: Lulu Wong, star of the silver screen and the pride of Chinatown, has a face known to practically anyone, especially to the Chow sisters - May, Gemma, and Peony - Lulu's former classmates and neighbors. So the girls instantly know it's Lulu whose body they discover one morning in an out-of-the-way stable, far from the Beverly Hills mansion where she moved once her fame skyrocketed.
\nThe sisters suspect Lulu's death is the result of foul play, but the LAPD - known for being corrupt to the core - doesn't seem motivated to investigate. Even worse, there are signs that point to the possibility of a police cover-up, and powerful forces in the city want to frame the killing as evidence that Chinatown is a den of iniquity and crime, even more reason it should be demolished to make room for the construction of a new railway depot, Union Station.
\nWorried that neither the police nor the papers will treat a Chinese girl fairly - no matter how famous and wealthy - the sisters set out to solve their friend’s murder themselves, and maybe save their neighborhood in the bargain. But with Lulu’s killer still on the loose, the girls’ investigation just might put them square in the crosshairs of a coldblooded murderer.
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Valora Luck has two things: a ticket for the biggest and most luxurious ocean liner in the world, and a dream of leaving England behind and making a life for herself as a circus performer in New York. Much to her surprise, though, she's turned away at the gangway; apparently, Chinese people aren't allowed into America.
\nBut Val has to get on that ship. Her twin brother, Jamie, who has spent two long years at sea, is on board, as is an influential circus owner. Thankfully, there's not much a trained acrobat like Val can't overcome when she puts her mind to it.
\nAs a stowaway, Val should keep her head down and stay out of sight. But the clock is ticking and she has just seven days as the ship makes its way across the Atlantic to find Jamie, audition for the circus owner, and convince him to help get them both into America.
\nThen one night, the unthinkable happens, and suddenly Val's dreams of a new life are crushed under the weight of the only thing that matters: survival.
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San Francisco, 1906: Fifteen-year-old Mercy Wong is determined to break from the poverty in Chinatown, and an education at St. Clare’s School for Girls is her best hope. Although St. Clare’s is off-limits to all but the wealthiest white girls, Mercy gains admittance through a mix of cunning and a little bribery, only to discover that getting in was the easiest part. Not to be undone by a bunch of spoiled heiresses, Mercy stands strong - until disaster strikes.
On April 18, a historic earthquake rocks San Francisco, destroying Mercy’s home and school. With martial law in effect, she is forced to wait with her classmates for their families in a temporary park encampment. Though fires might rage, and the city may be in shambles, Mercy can’t sit by while they wait for the army to bring help - she still has the “bossy” cheeks that mark her as someone who gets things done. But what can one teenage girl do to heal so many suffering in her broken city?
Missouri, 1849: Samantha dreams of moving back to New York to be a professional musician - not an easy thing if you’re a girl, and harder still if you’re Chinese. But a tragic accident dashes any hopes of fulfilling her dream, and instead, leaves her fearing for her life. With the help of a runaway slave named Annamae, Samantha flees town for the unknown frontier. But life on the Oregon Trail is unsafe for two girls, so they disguise themselves as Sammy and Andy, two boys headed for the California gold rush.
\nSammy and Andy forge a powerful bond as they each search for a link to their past, and struggle to avoid any unwanted attention. But when they cross paths with a band of cowboys, the light-hearted troupe turn out to be unexpected allies. With the law closing in on them and new setbacks coming each day, the girls quickly learn that there are not many places to hide on the open trail.
This beautifully written debut is an exciting adventure and heart-wrenching survival tale. But above all else, it’s a story about perseverance and trust that will restore your faith in the power of friendship.
Faced with an unthinkable choice, Arvelle makes a magically binding vow to do the impossible: kill the emperor, an ancient vampire created by the god Umbros. But first, she must enter the Sundering - an arena where only the fastest, strongest, and deadliest survive long enough to be selected for the emperor’s elite guard.
\nShe quickly draws the ire of the Primus, the powerful figure charged with protecting the emperor. But the vampire under the armor is the last person Arvelle expects to encounter in the emperor’s court.
\nWith her brothers’ lives in the balance, Arvelle has no choice but to ally with the man who once shattered her heart . . . and with the emperor’s sadistic son, Rorrik - two vampires whose motives are impossible to pin down. Rorrik holds the key to understanding the powers Arvelle is developing - abilities that would put a price on her head if discovered by the emperor.
\nTo survive the arena and complete her mission, Arvelle must get to the bottom of a conspiracy that will change everything she thought she knew about herself - and the two vampires who are deeply entwined with her destiny . . .
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When Special Agent Nikki Hunt is called to a home on Bone Lake, she is devastated to find blood all over the floor and two young women who clearly fought for their lives. But the viciousness of the scene isn’t the only thing that strikes Nikki. The house was the scene of another murder twenty years ago. The killer was never caught. Is this a terrible coincidence, or have they struck again?
\nNikki’s team quickly identify the girls from their belongings in the bedrooms upstairs. They had a party the night they were killed, and Nikki realizes that one attendee, their friend Alexia , is missing . . .
\nDesperate to find Alexia, Nikki soon discovers that the only survivor of the original massacre, Matt Kline, still owns the house. She is instantly suspicious of him. But he claims he rents it out and hasn’t been there for years, and as Nikki looks into his dark eyes she sees her own terrible past.
\nWith time running out, Nikki and her team dig into Alexia’s life, and find out she was fascinated with the original Bone Lake case. Amongst her things, they find notebook after notebook about serial killers. Then Nikki is shocked to learn that Alexia was having a relationship with Matt. Has Nikki make a terrible mistake trusting a fellow survivor? And can she get the truth out of him, and find Alexia alive, before it’s too late?
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When construction workers unearth a girl’s skeleton in Stillwater, Minnesota, Special Agent Nikki Hunt is called to the scene by her boyfriend Rory. Nikki knows instantly that the girl was murdered, but she is shocked when Rory immediately recognises her. The victim was his childhood sweetheart, Becky, and he was the last person to see her before she went missing twenty-four years ago.
\nWith the love of her life now a potential suspect, Nikki is forced to take a step back from the case. But then her colleague Liam finds lies in Rory’s statement – it appears that Becky may have been carrying Rory’s child when she was killed. Despite this, Nikki still thinks he could be innocent, and knows she must find the real killer herself if Rory stands any chance of walking free.
\nWhen Nikki finds a potential link to two pregnant girls who were found murdered years before it’s clear that this is the most twisted killer that she has ever faced. And then another girl goes missing from Stillwater. Can Nikki unearth the truth and protect the man she loves? And will she find the missing girl in time to save her life?
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In the remote forests of Stillwater, Minnesota, you can scream for days and no one will hear you. So when the bodies of two fifteen-year-old girls are discovered frozen in the snow, Special Agent Nikki Hunt is sure the killer is local: someone knew where to hide them and thought they'd never be found.
Home for the first time in twenty years, Nikki sees that the whole town had been frantically searching for missing best friends Madison and Kaylee, and when she finds out who Madison’s step-father is, she becomes desperate to lead the case. John was once the person she trusted most in the world, who stood by her when she was just sixteen and her parents were murdered. Who supported her when she identified their killer, Mark Todd.
But when Nikki arrives at the Sheriff’s office, she’s confronted by protesters eager to see Mark freed. With new evidence that could clear his name, Mark has appealed his conviction and his brother Rory begs Nikki to take a look at what they’ve found.
Nikki knows she must focus on the killer at large, but Rory makes her wonder if she put her trust in the right people all those years ago. Are Madison and Kaylee’s deaths connected to her parents’ murders? And can she face up to her past before another life is taken?
When Special Agent Nikki Hunt receives a call on Christmas Day, she knows it can’t be good news. Seventeen-year-old missing teenager Kesha Williams has at last been found . . . her body floating in an icy forest lake, miles from her hometown.
\nAs Nikki rushes to the scene, she’s chilled to see the past repeating itself. Kesha disappeared from the mall where Nikki’s own little girl was targeted the year before. With Kesha’s grieving parents desperate for answers and the media out for blood, Nikki promises she’ll find Kesha’s killer no matter what it takes.
\nLocal police are convinced it was Kesha’s boyfriend, who was spotted disappearing from security cameras that day at the mall, but Nikki isn’t so sure. The dense marshes and unstable ground around the crime scene mean it’s nearly inaccessible from the road. Whoever took Kesha is a local, and this probably isn’t his first kill.
\nNikki’s worst fears are confirmed when the team find another grave on the shore - a second teenage girl, her body wound in a brightly coloured beach towel. Suddenly on the hunt for a serial killer, Nikki knows that an early break is the key to solving this case. But as the body count rises, will Nikki be able to find Kesha’s killer . . . or will he find her first?
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When six-year-old Abby and nine-year-old Thea are snatched from a crowd at a fireworks display, Detective Nikki Hunt is determined to return the sweet sisters, with golden curls and laughing smiles, to their desperate mother Britney . The last person to see them alive witnessed the girls being led towards the docks by someone they seemed to know.
\nAs Nikki begins her interviews, she’s shocked to learn that Britney has a dark secret . Ten years ago she ran away from Thea’s biological father, a man Britney claims was controlling and dangerous. Certain he must have taken the girls, Nikki urges the state troopers in nearby Thief River Falls to search the isolated ranch where he lives. But he is devastated to hear the girls are missing, and had no idea that Thea was even his daughter . . .
\nThen a witness comes forward claiming they saw a young boy clutching Thea’s little pink backpack at the fireworks. Nikki knows he’s the key to finding the girls alive, but she has no idea that someone on her team will do anything to keep his identity a secret. Unable to trust those closest to her, can Nikki unravel the truth and save Thea and Abby before their innocent lives are lost?
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Standing in the old farmhouse, Special Agent Nikki Hunt holds her breath as the smell of bleach overwhelms her. She can’t take her eyes off the blue baby toys scattered around the floor as her team examine the remains. A housekeeper and her three children disappeared from the property ten years ago. Do the bones belong to two of them? Did the other two survive?
\nBut before Nikki has a chance to investigate further, she receives a panicked call from the local sheriff begging for her help: fourteen-year-old Taylor Hall has gone missing. In the boy’s grand family home, Nikki finds his mother and father utterly distraught, but there are whispers about his mother’s drinking habit. Despite the younger children’s rosy cheeks, and the plates of homemade fudge, is this family hiding secrets?
\nWhile digging into Taylor’s life, Nikki spots a crumpled note sticking out of his locker at school. Her finger traces the exact date the housekeeper went missing from the old farmhouse, and a name: “Bailey”. Is this Taylor? As a child, did he survive what happened all those years ago? Or is someone playing a cruel game with Nikki?
\nThe truth about Taylor’s real family is deadlier than Nikki could imagine, and she will have to dig deeper than ever before to save him. Can she unravel the terrible events of the past and protect more than one innocent life before her time runs out?
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When Special Agent Nikki Hunt is called to the Boundary Waters near Stillwater, Minnesota, it’s not just the cold that shocks her to her core: the body of a young woman has been found frozen beside a remote lake. Nikki is devastated to see the victim is her childhood friend Annmarie, and she recognises the velvet ribbon tied in her hair as the hallmark of a serial killer who she has been hunting for years.
\nDesperate for justice, Nikki throws herself into the case. But she is shaken by what she finds at Annmarie’s home: a dead-bolt on her front door and a map in the spare room, with the locations of murdered women circled in thick, red marker. Did Annmarie know she was next? Then Nikki finds out that the killer has left a clue in Annmarie’s bedroom: a photo of Nikki’s mother that no one has ever seen. Has the murderer at large been in Nikki’s life since she was a child?
\nNikki soon realises that the key to unlocking this case is in her own family, but digging up the past could put her own daughter in danger. She has spent her whole life protecting the ones she loves, but to find this killer Nikki might have to risk everything . . .
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When the remains of two bodies are found in an open grave along a desolate highway in Stillwater, Minnesota, Special Agent Nikki Hunt knows exactly who they are. The bright blue jacket lying on the frozen earth belongs to Kellan Rhodes, the missing boy she’s desperately been trying to find for the last two days. The other body is his mother Dana, who had been Nikki’s lead suspect.
Although the wounds on Dana’s body suggest she murdered her son and took her own life, Nikki finds evidence that suggests she was a victim too. Dana was desperately trying to regain custody of Kellan, and Nikki finds boot prints at the scene that belong to someone else.
When another child is reported missing, local journalist Caitlin Newport claims the cases are linked: Zach Reeves was taken away from his own mother in a custody battle, just like Kellan was.
Caitlin once helped Nikki find out the truth about her own parents’ murders, but her desire for a story nearly cost Nikki her life. Now, Nikki must decide if she can trust Caitlin again, before time runs out to find the killer and bring Zach home alive . . .
Special Agent Nikki Hunt feels her chest tighten as she looks down at the body sprawled beside the lilac bushes. This morning, her ten-year-old daughter Lacey witnessed the murder of local mother Elle Harper. Out riding her bike, Lacey saw the killer escape from the house and rushed inside to protect Elle’s daughters Maisy and Maya.
\nNikki promises Lacey she’ll do whatever it takes to help the poor innocent girls who now sit in her house clutching their teddies. But before she has a chance to return them to the safety of their stepfather Tim, he’s reported missing. Local gossip suggests that fights between Elle and Tim had been spilling out of the farmhouse, and Nikki soon wonders if Maisy and Maya were ever safe in their own home.
\nBut just as Nikki zones in on her suspect, she realizes she’s too late. A body is pulled from the river, and Nikki’s heart shatters as Tim is pronounced dead. Nikki’s gut tells her that someone is targeting the whole family. But with this killer stalking her in the shadows, what sacrifices will she have to make to save them, and keep her promise to her daughter?
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Arriving in the quiet community of Mulberry Creek, Special Agent Nikki Hunt is shocked that amongst the chaos of costumes and fake, silver spider webs, a new mother called Kiania Watson has lost her life. A blooming rare flower placed carefully in her cold, bound hands. Nikki’s legs go weak: it’s the mark of a serial killer she’s met before.
\nNine years ago, Nikki fell in pursuit of a masked man who’d killed a young girl at a cabin in rural Minnesota. Seeing her cradling the bump of her pregnant belly, he’d spared her life. She was told he’d died in a shoot-out days later. But the pink flower only grows at that cabin: it’s a message to Nikki.
\nNikki’s team are quick to suspect Kiania’s abusive husband. But Nikki finds two further, similar murders in other states. Flowers were left in their palms when they died. Nikki’s heart breaks when she realizes all the victims were mothers to newborn babies.
\nDigging desperately into old case files, Nikki finds blood on a rock she secured nine years ago, which has never been tested. But not before receiving a desperate call that another woman has just been taken. This twisted killer is playing a deadly game, and Nikki must risk her own life if she has any chance of returning this mother to her child alive . . .
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Rushing to the scene of a homicide at a farmhouse surrounded by thick, dark woodland, Special Agent Nikki Hunt is shocked to find four victims. A mother and father have been stabbed, their son, Bryce, is fighting for his life, and a young woman’s body is lying near the front door, her wrists bound with heart-shaped bunting. Nikki has never seen such a complex scene, but despite recovering from her own painful loss, she will do whatever it takes to bring this killer to justice.
\nNikki soon identifies the woman as missing student Jessica Chandler and finds Bryce’s initials woven into the jumper she wore the night she died. It seems like they were a couple, and that the Webers were a happy family. So who would want them dead?
\nThe murders have all the hallmarks of a serial killer: all the evidence suggests the murderer was watching them, turned the security cameras off as they entered and fled the scene from the front door. But then Jessica’s friends tell Nikki she was uncomfortable around Bryce, and when two of Bryce’s friends go missing along Stillwater river, and the girlfriend is found, she claims her boyfriend tried to kill her.
\nAre Bryce and his friends hiding a dark side? Nikki knows she must dig deeper to find out their secrets, but can she uncover the truth before the killer takes another life?
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How to measure a life? After a career of service, retired four-star general Stanley McChrystal had much to contemplate. He pondered his successes and failures, his beliefs and aspirations, and asked himself, Who am I, really? And more importantly, who have I become? When I die, how will I be measured?
\nIn the end, McChrystal came to a conclusion as simple as it was the reality of who we are cannot be recorded in dates or accomplishments. It is found in our character - the most accurate, and last full measure, of who we choose to be.
\nOn Character offers McChrystal’s blueprint for living with purpose and integrity, challenging us to examine not just our deeds but who we become through them. Drawing from a lifetime of experience, he distills profound insights on setting and meeting standards, aligning actions with beliefs, and offers practical advice on overcoming obstacles and pursuing self-improvement.
\nAccording to McChrystal, character is not a trait inherited at birth, nor does it automatically come from education, position, or experience. Character, instead, comes down to a succession of choices, most mundane, several momentous, that reveal the deep truth of our capacity for virtue.
\nIn an era where understanding and upholding our ideals is more crucial than ever, On Character offers an inspiring roadmap for personal growth and integrity - a call to become our best selves, both as individuals and as Americans.
After pulling off the heist of the century, Professor Malago Browne and Pierre de Fermat are determined to hang up their protractors for good. But once you’ve been the most dangerous mathematician in the west, peace doesn’t come easy . . .
\nWhen three women approach Browne with a proposition, she can’t help but listen. Terrorised by a corrupt sheriff and his posse, the town need to hire the quickest and deadliest fighters they can find: in other words, mathmos.
\nTogether with six unlikely allies, Browne once again finds herself facing incalculable odds in a battle for the town, its people, and the fate of every mathematician in the Western States.
\nAnd seven isn’t always a lucky number . . .
Ten “Doc” Low is a medic with a dark past, riding the wastes of the desert moon Factus, dispensing medicine to the needy and death to those who cross the laws of the mysterious Seekers. Cursed by otherworldly forces, she stays alone to keep herself safe, and to keep others safe from her . . . But when she experiences a terrifying vision of conflict, and foresees the deaths of those she once called friends, she must drag herself back to the land of living to stop a war before it begins.
\nWith a rebellion brewing, the Accord’s grip on the Outer Moons weakening and a sinister tycoon buying up all the land in sight, Ten must find allies where she can and face the past, in order to save the future. Even if the cost might be greater than she could ever have imagined . . .
After forty years of wreaking havoc across the galaxy, the outlaw Nine Lives - AKA Former General Gabriella Ortiz - has finally run out of lives. Shot down into a backwater at the system’s edge, she is rescued by Deputy Air Marshall Havemercy Grey.
\nHav is a true soul, trying to uphold what is right in the heedless wastes. Hav is determined to see justice done. And Hav could sure use that 20-million bounty . . .
\nBut escorting the most dangerous fugitive in the system across the stars is no easy task, especially when decades of fire and destruction are catching up with her, and every gutspill with a pistol wants that payday. So when Ortiz offers a deal - to keep them both alive, as long as Hav listens to the stories of her lives - Hav can’t refuse.
\nThere’s just one catch: everywhere they go, during every brawl and gunfight and explosive escape, people say the same thing - don’t let her talk . . .
Ten Low is eking out a living at the universe's edge. An ex-medic, ex-con, desperate to escape her memories of the war, she still hasn't learnt that no good deed goes unpunished.
\nAttempting to atone for her sins, she pulls a teenage girl from a crashed lifecraft. But Gabriella Ortiz is no ordinary girl - she is a genetically-engineered super soldier and decorated General, part of the army that kept Ten prisoner. Worse, Ten realises the crash was an assassination attempt, and that someone wants Ortiz dead . . .
\nTo get the General off-world, they must cross the moon's lawless wastes, face military hit squads, savage bandits, organ sharks, and good old-fashioned treachery. But as they race to safety, something else waits in the darkness. Something ancient and patient. Something that knows exactly who Ten is, and what she is really running from.
Professor “Mad” Malago Browne - thief, killer, and one of the most wanted outlaws in the Western States - is trying to forget her bloody past and fight back against the tyranny of the Capitol, one maths lesson at a time.
\nThe only problem? Gold talks and mathmos everywhere are listening, selling their skills - and each other - to the enemy for the price of freedom. There’s only one person with the power to stop them: Browne’s old mentor, Carl “the Cannon” Gauss.
\nBut when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Browne and a rag tag faculty of numerates and renegades to do the impossible: unite the mathmos and bring the fight to the Capitol’s door, one last time.
\nLittle do they know the eleventh hour might arrive sooner than they think . . .
In the Western States, it doesn’t pay to count your blessings.
\nProfessor Malago Browne, once the most notorious mathematician in the west, has been trying to leave her outlaw past behind and lead a quiet life. But all of that changes when her former partner - the deadly and capricious Pierre de Fermat - shows up with a proposition of a lifetime.
\nOne last job, one last ride: a heist big enough to escape the tyranny of the Capitol forever.
Twenty-three-year-old Vanessa is adrift in London. A year out of university and marooned in a quietly deflating relationship, she can’t work out where her passion and creativity went - and on top of that, she is experiencing frightening visions, and an overwhelming sadness that doesn’t seem to belong to her.
\nThen something impossible happens: her best friend Mark, who vanished without a trace seven years ago, reappears, not a day older. As far as he is concerned, no time has passed.
\nShocked and confused but determined to help her friend make sense of what’s happening, Vanessa returns to Llangoroth, the rural town she left behind after he vanished. Torn between her responsibilities as an adult and the adventurous passion that Mark inspires in her, she must fight for him, and for herself, confronting painful memories and a terrifying pursuer who would rather see her friend dead than back in the world.
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Tattooed, pierced, and a bit of a mess, Maggie Moore is a surprising genius when it comes to words, a savant able to solve any linguistic puzzle. The top student in her forensic linguistics class, she’s tapped by local police to use her skills to decipher harrowing notes left by a stalker-turned-rapist - and succeeds brilliantly.
\nBut when the daughter of a local mayor is abducted, Maggie isn’t sure she’s the right person to help the police solve the crime. Given what happened to her best childhood friend, Maggie just might be too close to this one.
\nYet she knows the authorities in this rural south-Central Florida town cannot crack the case without her special skill. Along with her new best friend, a detective Jackson, Maggie begins to analyse the texts, emails, and verbal tics of various suspects . . . and comes to a disturbing conclusion that will rock this small community.
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British-occupied Palestine, 1946: Elderly writer Elias Lind isn’t convinced by reports that his scientist brother, Raphael, died in a concentration camp. Too frail to search for Raphael himself, Elias persuades a contact in the Jewish resistance to send someone in his place.
However, Lilya joined the resistance movement to help form a new state, not to waste her time on a fruitless chase across a war-ravaged continent at the request of a frail, most likely delusional, old man. As her comrades make their final preparations for a major operation, a bitter Lilya must accept her orders and embark on her journey to Europe. She is traveling as a member of the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, one of the largest aid organisations for Jewish survivors - many of whom survived the Nazis only to find themselves with no family or home to return to. If Raphael is alive, odds are she will find him in among the refugees trapped in displaced persons camps and prevented from immigrating to Palestine by the British.
Lilya’s search leads her from the hushed corridors of London’s Whitehall, home to the British Secret Intelligence Service, to the haunted, rubble-strewn strasses of Munich and Berlin. Visiting Föhrenwald, an overcrowded and underfunded DP camp, she makes a breakthrough. But Lilya isn’t the only person pursuing the missing man. Someone has been mirroring her every move - a dangerous adversary who will go to drastic lengths to find Raphael first.
Hawthorne Lane is the perfect place to live. Its tree-lined street and stately homes are the envy of the town. Every Halloween the residents of Hawthorne Lane come together to host their famous Fall Festival. But this year, someone won’t survive the night.
\nAs a murder investigation ensues, it quickly becomes clear there’s more going on behind closed doors on Hawthorne Lane than meets the eye. And four women, each with secrets worth killing for, find themselves at the center of it all.
\nThere’s Georgina, the perfectionist and reigning Queen Bee, who pays a high price for her elevated status. There’s Audrey, the bold and beautiful neighbor with the high-flying corporate career, but whose marriage is on the rocks. There’s Libby, the working mother who is struggling to come to terms with her recent divorce while parenting her teenage son. And finally, Hannah - the newcomer with a mysterious past that’s returning with a vengeance.
\nAs the clock ticks down to Halloween, their lives will cross in the most unexpected ways. And soon only one question remains: Who will pay the ultimate price for the lies they all tried so hard to bury?
A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life.
\nBy age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD - a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.
\nBoth of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.
\nIn this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don't move on from trauma - but you can learn to move with it.
\nPowerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body - and examines one woman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.
It starts with a class in an old movie theater.
\nFolklore 517: Local Legends and Urban Myths, taught by a woman called the Professor. Most students believe the Professor’s stories are just fiction, but Holland St. James has always been convinced that magic is real. When she tracks down a local legend named the Watch Man, who can supposedly tell you when you’ll die, the world finally makes sense. Except that the Watch Man tells her she will die at midnight tomorrow unless she finds an ancient object called the Alchemical Heart.
\nWith the clock ticking, Holland is pulled deeper into this magical world in the heart of Los Angeles—and into the path of a magnetic stranger. Everything about him feels like a bad idea, but he promises Holland that her sister sent him to protect her. As they chase clues and stories that take them closer to the Alchemical Heart, Holland realizes everyone in this intoxicating new world is lying to her, even this stranger. And if she can’t figure out whom to trust, not even the Alchemical Heart will save her.
After Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, betrays her, Evangeline Fox swears she'll never trust him again. Now that she’s discovered her own magic, Evangeline believes she can use it to restore the chance at happily ever after that Jacks stole away.
\nBut when a new terrifying curse is revealed, Evangeline finds herself entering into a tenuous partnership with the Prince of Hearts again. Only this time, the rules have changed. Jacks isn’t the only force Evangeline needs to be wary of. In fact, he might be the only one she can trust, despite her desire to despise him.
\nInstead of a love spell wreaking havoc on Evangeline’s life, a murderous spell has been cast. To break it, Evangeline and Jacks will have to do battle with old friends, new foes, and a magic that plays with heads and hearts. Evangeline has always trusted her heart, but this time she’s not sure she can. . . .
Scarlett Dragna has never left the tiny island where she and her sister, Tella, live with their powerful, and cruel, father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval - the faraway, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show - are over.
But this year, Scarlett’s long-dreamt-of invitation finally arrives. With the help of a mysterious sailor, Tella whisks Scarlett away to the show. Only, as soon as they arrive, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval’s mastermind organiser, Legend. It turns out that this season’s Caraval revolves around Tella, and whoever finds her first is the winner. Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance.
Nevertheless she becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic. And whether Caraval is real or not, Scarlett must find Tella before the five nights of the game are over or a dangerous domino effect of consequences will be set off, and her beloved sister will disappear forever.
Evangeline Fox ventured to the Magnificent North in search of her happy ending, and it seems as if she has it. She’s married to a handsome prince and lives in a legendary castle. But Evangeline has no idea of the devastating price she’s paid for this fairytale. She doesn’t know what she has lost, and her husband is determined to make sure she never finds out . . . but first he must kill Jacks, the Prince of Hearts.
\nBlood will be shed, hearts will be stolen, and true love will be put to the test.
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Stephanie Garber's limitless imagination takes flight once more in the colorful, mesmerizing, and immersive sequel to the bestselling breakout debut Caraval
A heart to protect. A debt to repay. A game to win. After being swept up in the magical world of Caraval, Donatella Dragna has finally escaped her father and saved her sister, Scarlett, from a disastrous arranged marriage. The girls should be celebrating, but Tella isn’t yet free. She made a desperate bargain with a mysterious criminal, and what Tella owes him no one has ever been able to deliver: Caraval Master Legend’s true name.
The only chance of uncovering Legend’s identity is to win Caraval, so Tella throws herself into the legendary competition once more - and into the path of the murderous heir to the throne, a doomed love story, and a web of secrets . . . including her sister's. Caraval has always demanded bravery, cunning, and sacrifice, but now the game is asking for more. If Tella can’t fulfill her bargain and deliver Legend’s name, she’ll lose everything she cares about - maybe even her life. But if she wins, Legend and Caraval will be destroyed forever . . .
For as long as she can remember, Evangeline Fox has believed in true love and happy endings . . . until she learns that the love of her life will marry another.
\nDesperate to stop the wedding and to heal her wounded heart, Evangeline strikes a deal with the charismatic, but wicked, Prince of Hearts. In exchange for his help, he asks for three kisses, to be given at the time and place of his choosing.
\nBut after Evangeline's first promised kiss, she learns that bargaining with an immortal is a dangerous game - and that the Prince of Hearts wants far more from her than she'd pledged. He has plans for Evangeline, plans that will either end in the greatest happily ever after, or the most exquisite tragedy...
It’s Great Holiday Eve Eve. Scarlett Dragna is planning a spectacular Holiday celebration for the city. Donatella is searching for the perfect gift. Julian is looking ridiculously handsome in green. And Legend . . .
\nWell, sadly Legend is not fond of the Great Holiday. Tella is hoping her perfect gift will change his mind. Unfortunately, she hasn’t found this perfect gift just yet. But it is Great Holiday Eve Eve . . . surely there’s some holiday magic swirling around.
\nWelcome, welcome back to the world of Caraval, where even holidays are not as they seem.
Sutton Layne is almost-forty and fabulous, with a happy marriage, three beautiful children, and a successful interior design business. But there’s plenty of chaos behind the scenes of early midlife. Her preteen son is going off the rails, her husband is bailing on the party he was supposed to throw her, and that thriving business? If she can’t land her next big client, it might all come crashing down. Then a surprise DM from someone in her past sends her spiraling into what-ifs. What if she settled down too young? Walked away from her big break? Never had her great adventure?
\nDespite her simmering mini-crisis, Sutton can’t wait for the birthday luncheon and pickleball tournament her friends have planned in her honor. But when an accident on the court knocks her out cold, she wakes up somewhere else . . . and is offered the chance to do it all over again. She can revisit her twenties - out of order and on her own terms. And this time around, anything cities, careers, friendships. Even love.
\nFrom star-studded Hollywood nights to the jungles of Nicaragua, from the heat of Coachella to the snowy summit of the Matterhorn, Sutton chases the life she fears she might have missed, with unexpected results.
\nWith a wink to the classic It’s a Wonderful Life, Twenty Something Else is a witty, wistful journey through the dreams we outgrow, the life choices that shape us, and the surprising detours that can lead us home.
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It’s been four years in prison since Jade Daniels last saw her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho, the day she took the fall, protecting her friend Letha and her family from incrimination. Since then, her reputation, and the town, have changed dramatically.
\nThere’s a lot of unfinished business in Proofrock, from serial killer cultists to the rich trying to buy Western authenticity. But there’s one aspect of Proofrock no one wants to confront . . . until Jade comes back to town. The curse of the Lake Witch is waiting, and now is the time for the final stand.
An American Indian woman’s past and future collide in unthinkable ways.
\nMillie Two Bears lives alone in a trailer in the heart of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. Since her husband went to jail, she’s been on the outs with the reservation. And it’s not just people she has to contend with.
\nNow the prairie dogs are moving in on her patch of land. When a strange woman comes into Millie’s life, and Millie’s rodent war escalates, a fateful confrontation with vengeance, secrets, and survival is just underfoot.
This chilling historical novel is set in the nascent days of the state of Montana, following a Blackfeet Indian named Good Stab as he haunts the fields of the Blackfeet Nation looking for justice.
\nIt begins when a diary written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall in 2012. What is unveiled is a slow massacre, a nearly forgotten chain of events that goes back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow, told in the transcribed interviews with Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar and unnaturally long life over a series of confessional visits.
December 12th, 2019, Jade returns to the rural lake town of Proofrock the same day as convicted Indigenous serial killer Dark Mill South escapes into town to complete his revenge killings.
\nFour years after her tumultuous senior year, Jade Daniels is released from prison right before Christmas when her conviction is overturned. But life beyond bars takes a dangerous turn as soon as she returns to Proofrock. Convicted Serial Killer, Dark Mill South, seeking revenge for thirty-eight Dakota men hanged in 1862, escapes from his prison transfer due to a blizzard, just outside of Proofrock, Idaho.
\nDark Mill South’s Reunion Tour began on December 12th, 2019, a Thursday.
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Thirty-six hours and twenty bodies later, on Friday the 13th, it would be over.
1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton - and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, the unfairness of being on the outside, through the slasher horror he lives but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography.
When high school senior Charlotte agrees to babysit the Wilbanks twins, she plans to put the six-year-olds to bed early and spend a quiet night studying: the SATs are tomorrow, and checking the Native American/Alaskan Native box on all the forms won’t help if she chokes on test day. But tomorrow is also Halloween, and the twins are eager to show off their costumes.
\nCharlotte’s last babysitting gig almost ended in tragedy when her young charge sleepwalked unnoticed into the middle of the street, only to be found unharmed by Charlotte’s mother. Charlotte vows to be extra careful this time. But the house is filled with mysterious noises and secrets that only the twins understand, echoes of horrors that Charlotte gradually realises took place in the house eleven years ago. Soon Charlotte has to admit that every babysitter’s worse nightmare has come true: they’re not alone in the house.
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Killer on the Road
Sixteen-year-old Harper has decided to run away from home after she has another blow-out argument with her mother. However, her two best friends, little sister, and ex-boyfriend all stop her from hitchhiking her way up Route 80 in Wyoming by joining her on an intervention disguised as a road trip. What they don’t realise is that Harper has been marked by a very unique serial killer who’s been trolling the highway for the past three years, and now the killer is after all of them in this fast-paced and deadly chase novel that will have your heart racing well above the speed limit as the interstate becomes a graveyard.
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Walking through his own house at night, a fifteen-year-old thinks he sees another person stepping through a doorway. Instead of the people who could be there, his mother or his brother, the figure reminds him of his long-gone father, who died mysteriously before his family left the reservation. When he follows it he discovers his house is bigger and deeper than he knew.
The house is the kind of wrong place where you can lose yourself and find things you'd rather not have. Over the course of a few nights, the boy tries to map out his house in an effort that puts his little brother in the worst danger, and puts him in the position to save them . . . at terrible cost.
You won’t find a more hardcore eighties-slasher-film fan than high school senior Jade Daniels. And you won’t find a place less supportive of girls who wear torn T-shirts and too much eyeliner than Proofrock, nestled eight thousand feet up a mountain in Idaho, alongside Indian Lake, home to both Camp Blood - site of a massacre fifty years ago - and, as of this summer, Terra Nova, a second-home celebrity Camelot being carved out of a national forest.
\nThat’s not the only thing that’s getting carved up, though - this, Jade knows, is the start of a slasher. But what kind? Who’s wearing the mask? Jade’s got an encyclopedic recall of every horror movie on the shelf, but . . . will that help her survive? Can she get a final girl trained enough to stop all this from happening? Does she even want to?
\nIsn’t a slasher exactly what her hometown deserves?
Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives.
\nTracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.
Like a gut punch, like a lightning strike, nearly seventy pieces of flash fiction in this expanded edition - featuring twenty previously uncollected tales, including ten original stories - from Stephen Graham Jones showcase the visceral bite of his prose and scope of his vision. From bungee jumpers to truck drivers, from childhood memories to orgies, these are vignettes of the extraordinary moments that make up ordinary days.
\nIn \"Animals I've Known,\" a golden retriever surrenders to the sensory pleasure of his waterfowl prey. A father ignores years of warning signs leading up to a tragic day at the beach in \"Seafood,\" while a burger joint serves up a heaping portion of nostalgia on a man's lunch hour in \"Solemn Burger.\" A moment of connection opens up a future of terrifyingly endless possibility in \"The Sadness of Two People Meeting in a Bar,\" and in \"When I'm Alone I Count Myself,\" a man has to live by a strict set of rules to keep his fragile world from crumbling around him.
Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He's a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he'll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong?
\nHow about everything.
\nThis spectacular can't-put-it-down novel is part war story, part love letter to small town America and the people who live there, and it features one of the most compelling and surprising duos in King fiction, who set out to avenge the crimes of an extraordinarily evil man. It's about love, luck, fate, and a complex hero with one last shot at redemption.
Evil is alive in Libertyville. It inhabits a custom-painted red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury and the teenage boy, Arnold Cunningham, who buys it from the strange Roland LeBay.
Helped by Arnold's girlfriend Leigh Cabot, Dennis Guilder embarks to find out the real truth behind Christine and finds more than he bargained for: from murder, to suicide, and a strange feeling that surrounds Christine -- she gets even with anyone that crosses her! Can Dennis save Arnold from the evil that is Christine?
Cujo used to be a big friendly dog, lovable and loyal to his trinity and everyone around him, and always did his best to not be a BAD DOG. But that all ends on the day this nearly two-hundred-pound Saint Bernard makes the mistake of chasing a rabbit into a hidden underground cave, setting off a tragic chain of events.
\nNow Cujo is no longer himself as he is slowly overcome by a growing sickness, one that consumes his mind even as his once affable thoughts turn uncontrollably and inexorably to hatred and murder. Cujo is about to become the center of a horrifying vortex that will inescapably draw in everyone around him - a relentless reign of terror, fury, and madness from which no one in Castle Rock will truly be safe . . .
The first scream came from the snowbound railwayman who felt the fangs ripping at his throat. The next month there was a scream of ecstatic agony from the woman attacked in her snug bedroom. Now scenes of unbelieving horror come each time the full moon shines on the isolated Maine town of Tarker Mills.
\nNo one knows who will be attacked next. But one thing is sure. When the moon grows fat, a paralyzing fear sweeps through Tarker Mills. For snarls that sound like human words can be heard whining through the wind. And all around are the footprints of a monster whose hunger cannot be sated. . . .
Welcome to Desperation. Once a thriving copper mining town in the middle of the Nevada desert, Desperation is now eerily abandoned. It’s the last place that travellers like the Carver family, bound for vacation, and writer Johnny Marinville, astride his Harley, would expect to be stopped and charged. But Desperation still has a local cop - a unique regulator who patrols the wilderness highway.
\nThe secrets buried in Desperation are as terrifying as the forces summoned to encounter them. A terrifying transformation is taking place and the travellers will soon discover the true meaning of desperation . . .
This gripping collection begins with “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” in which an unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge - the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award-nominee The Shawshank Redemption.
\nNext is “Apt Pupil,” the inspiration for the film of the same name about top high school student Todd Bowden and his obsession with the dark and deadly past of an older man in town.
\nIn “The Body,” four rambunctious young boys plunge through the façade of a small town and come face-to-face with life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. This novella became the movie Stand By Me.
\nFinally, a disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death in “The Breathing Method.”
Dolores Claiborne is suspected of killing Vera Donovan, her wealthy employer, and when the police question her, she tells the story of her life, harkening back to her disintegrating marriage and the suspicious death of her violent husband thirty years earlier. Dolores also tells of Vera’s physical and mental decline and how she became emotionally demanding in recent years.
\nGiven a voice as compelling as any in contemporary fiction, the strange intimacy between Dolores and Vera - and the link that binds them - unfolds in Dolores’s account. It shows, finally, how fierce love can be, and how dreadful its consequences. And how the soul, harrowed by the hardest life, can achieve a kind of grace.
Castle Rock is a small town, where word gets around quickly. That's why Scott Carey wants to confide only in his friend Doctor Bob Ellis about his strange condition he's losing weight without getting thinner, and the scales register the same whether he is in his clothes or out of them, no matter how heavy they are.
\nScott also has new neighbors who have opened a \"fine dining experience\" in town, although it's an experience being shunned by the locals: Deirdre McComb and her wife Missy Donaldson don't exactly conform to a lifestyle the community approves of. And now Scott seems trapped in a feud with the couple over their dogs dropping their business on his lawn. Missy may be warm and friendly, but Deirdre is as cold as ice.
\nAs the town prepares for its annual Thanksgiving 12K run, Scott begins to understand the prejudices the women face, and tries to help. Unlikely alliances form, and the mystery of Scott's affliction brings out the best in people who have indulged the worst in themselves and others.
Retired Detective Bill Hodges now runs a two-person firm called Finders Keepers with his partner Holly Gibney. They met in the wake of the 'Mercedes Massacre' when a queue of people was run down by the diabolical killer Brady Hartsfield.
\nBrady is now confined to Room 217 of the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic, in an unresponsive state. But all is not what it seems: the evidence suggests that Brady is somehow awake, and in possession of deadly new powers that allow him to wreak unimaginable havoc without ever leaving his hospital room.
\nWhen Bill and Holly are called to a suicide scene with ties to the Mercedes Massacre, they find themselves pulled into their most dangerous case yet, one that will put their lives at risk, as well as those of Bill's heroic young friend Jerome Robinson and his teenage sister, Barbara. Brady Hartsfield is back, and planning revenge not just on Hodges and his friends, but on an entire city.
\nThe clock is ticking in unexpected ways . . .
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“Riding the Bullet” is the story of Alan Parker, who’s hitchhiking to see his dying mother but takes the wrong ride, farther than he ever intended.
\nIn “Lunch at the Gotham Café,” a sparring couple’s contentious lunch turns very, very bloody when the maître d’ gets out of sorts.
\n“1408,” the audio story in print for the first time, is about a successful writer whose specialty is “Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Graveyards,” or “Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Houses,” and though Room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel doesn’t kill him, he won’t be writing about ghosts anymore.
\nAnd in “That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French,” terror is déjà vu at 16,000 feet.
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Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself - and his dad. Then, when Charlie is seventeen, he meets Howard Bowditch, a recluse with a big dog in a big house at the top of a big hill.
\nIn the backyard is a locked shed from which strange sounds emerge, as if some creature is trying to escape. When Mr. Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie the house, a massive amount of gold, a cassette tape telling a story that is impossible to believe, and a responsibility far too massive for a boy to shoulder.
\nBecause within the shed is a portal to another world - one whose denizens are in peril and whose monstrous leaders may destroy their own world, and ours. In this parallel universe, where two moons race across the sky, and the grand towers of a sprawling palace pierce the clouds, there are exiled princesses and princes who suffer horrific punishments; there are dungeons; there are games in which men and women must fight each other to the death for the amusement of the “Fair One.” And there is a magic sundial that can turn back time.
\nA story as old as myth, and as startling and iconic as the rest of King’s work, Fairy Tale is about an ordinary guy forced into the hero’s role by circumstance, and it is both spectacularly suspenseful and satisfying.
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One Past Midnight: The Langoliers takes a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Boston into a most unfriendly sky. Only eleven passengers survive, but landing in an eerily empty world makes them wish they hadn’t.
\nTwo Past Midnight: Secret Window, Secret Garden enters the suddenly strange life of writer Mort Rainey, recently divorced, depressed, and alone on the shore of Tashmore Lake - until the mysterious John Shooter arrives, pointing an accusing finger.
\nThree Past Midnight: The Library Policeman has his terrifying sights set on businessman Sam Peebles, who thinks he may be losing his mind. But another enemy lurks as well - the truth - and if Sam can find it in time, he might stand a chance.
\nFour Past Midnight: The Sun Dog comes in the form of a looming supernatural menace, appearing in every picture that young Kevin Delevan takes with his new camera. Pop Merrill, Castle Rock’s sharpest trader, aims to exploit it for profit - but this creature is a very dangerous investment.
Once again, Jessie Burlingame has been talked into submitting to her husband Gerald’s kinky sex games - something that she’s frankly had enough of, and they never held much charm for her to begin with. So much for a “romantic getaway” at their secluded summer home.
\nAfter Jessie is handcuffed to the bedposts - and Gerald crosses a line with his wife - the day ends with deadly consequences. Now Jessie is utterly trapped in an isolated lakeside house that has become her prison - and comes face-to-face with her deepest, darkest fears and memories.
\nHer only company is that of the various voices filling her mind . . . as well as the shadows of nightfall that may conceal an imagined or very real threat right there with her . . .
The little town of Castle Rock, Maine has witnessed some strange events and unusual visitors over the years, but there is one story that has never been told . . . until now.
There are three ways up to Castle View from the town of Castle Rock: Route 117, Pleasant Road, and the Suicide Stairs. Every day in the summer of 1974 twelve-year-old Gwendy Peterson has taken the stairs, which are held by strong (if time-rusted) iron bolts and zig-zag up the cliffside.
At the top of the stairs, Gwendy catches her breath and listens to the shouts of the kids on the playground. From a bit farther away comes the chink of an aluminum bat hitting a baseball as the Senior League kids practice for the Labor Day charity game.
One day, a stranger calls to Gwendy: \"Hey, girl. Come on over here for a bit. We ought to palaver, you and me.\"
On a bench in the shade sits a man in black jeans, a black coat like for a suit, and a white shirt unbuttoned at the top. On his head is a small neat black hat. The time will come when Gwendy has nightmares about that hat . . .
When Gwendy Peterson was twelve, a stranger named Richard Farris gave her a mysterious box for safekeeping. It offered treats and vintage coins, but it was dangerous. Pushing any of its seven coloured buttons promised death and destruction.
\nYears later, the button box re-entered Gwendy's life. A successful novelist and a rising political star, she was once more forced to deal with the temptations that the box represented - an amazing sense of wellbeing, balanced by a terrifyingly dark urge towards disaster.
\nWith the passing of time, the box has grown ever stronger and evil forces are striving to possess it. Once again, it is up to Gwendy Peterson, now a United States Senator battling the early symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease, to keep it from them. At all costs. But where can you hide something from such powerful entities?
Something evil has swept into the small western Maine town of Castle Rock on the heels of the latest winter storm. Sheriff Norris Ridgewick and his team are desperately searching for two missing girls, but time is running out to bring them home alive.
In Washington D.C., thirty-seven-year-old Gwendy Peterson couldn't be more different from the self-conscious teenaged girl who once spent a summer running up Castle Rock's Suicide Stairs. That same summer, she was entrusted - or some might say cursed - with the extraordinary button box by Richard Farris, the mysterious stranger in the black suit. The seductive and powerful box offered Gwendy small gifts in exchange for its care and feeding until Farris eventually returned, promising Gwendy she'd never see the box again.
One day, though, the button box shows up without warning - and without Richard Farris to explain why, or what she's supposed to do with it. The mysterious reappearance of the box, along with the troubling disappearances in Castle Rock, leads Gwendy home again... where she just might be able to help rescue the missing girls and stop a madman before he does something ghastly.
When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down.
\nMere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless.
\nHolly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver the shockingly twisted professors.
A collection of four uniquely wonderful long stories, including a stand-alone sequel to The Outsider.
\nNews people have a saying: 'If it bleeds, it leads'. And a bomb at Albert Macready Middle School is guaranteed to lead any bulletin.
\nHolly Gibney of the Finders Keepers detective agency is working on the case of a missing dog - and on her own need to be more assertive - when she sees the footage on TV. But when she tunes in again, to the late-night report, she realises there is something not quite right about the correspondent who was first on the scene. So begins 'If It Bleeds' , a stand-alone sequel to The Outsider featuring the incomparable Holly on her first solo case.
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Since his wife died, Ralph Roberts has been having trouble sleeping. Each night he awakens a little earlier until he's barely sleeping at all.
\nDuring his late night vigils and walks, he observes some strange things going on in Derry, Maine. He sees colored ribbons streaming from people's heads. He witnesses two strange little men wandering the city under cover of night. He begins to suspect that these visions are something more than hallucinations brought about by sleep deprivation.
\nRalph and his friend, widow Lois Chasse, become enmeshed in events of cosmic significance.
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College student Devin Jones took the summer job at Joyland hoping to forget the girl who broke his heart. But he wound up facing something far more terrible: the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and dark truths about life - and what comes after - that would change his world forever.
A riveting story about love and loss, about growing up and growing old - and about those who don’t get to do either because death comes for them before their time - JOYLAND is Stephen King at the peak of his storytelling powers.
In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, hundreds of desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes.
\nIn another part of town, months later, a retired cop named Bill Hodges is still haunted by the unsolved crime. When he gets a crazed letter from someone who self-identifies as the \"perk\" and threatens an even more diabolical attack, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on preventing another tragedy.
Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again.
Only Bill Hodges, with a couple of highly unlikely allies, can apprehend the killer before he strikes again. And they have no time to lose, because Brady’s next mission, if it succeeds, will kill or maim thousands.
Mr. Mercedes is a war between good and evil, from the master of suspense whose insight into the mind of this obsessed, insane killer is chilling and unforgettable.
Leland Gaunt opens a new shop in Castle Rock called Needful Things. Anyone who enters his store finds the object of his or her lifelong dreams and desires: a prized baseball card, a healing amulet. In addition to a token payment, Gaunt requests that each person perform a little “deed,” usually a seemingly innocent prank played on someone else from town.
\nThese practical jokes cascade out of control and soon the entire town is doing battle with itself. Only Sheriff Alan Pangborn suspects that Gaunt is behind the population’s increasingly violent behavior.
When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from a person threatening to “kill thirteen innocents and one guilty” in “an act of atonement for the needless death of an innocent man,” Detective Izzy Jaynes has no idea what to think. Are fourteen citizens about to be slaughtered in an unhinged act of retribution? As the investigation unfolds, Izzy realises that the letter writer is deadly serious, and she turns to her friend Holly Gibney for help.
\nMeanwhile, controversial and outspoken women’s rights activist Kate McKay is embarking on a multi-state lecture tour, drawing packed venues of both fans and detractors. Someone who vehemently opposes Kate’s message of female empowerment is targeting her and disrupting her events. At first, no one is hurt, but the stalker is growing bolder, and Holly is hired to be Kate’s bodyguard - a challenging task with a headstrong employer and a determined adversary driven by wrath and his belief in his own righteousness.
Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, this special edition of Stephen King’s critically lauded, million-copy bestseller shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work.
\n“Long live the King” hailed Entertainment Weekly upon publication of Stephen King’s On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have.
\nKing’s advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported, near-fatal accident in 1999 - and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery.
\nBrilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it - fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.
Rosie Daniels leaves her husband, Norman, after fourteen years in an abusive marriage. She is determined to lose herself in a place where he won’t find her. She’ll worry about all the rest later.
\nAlone in a strange city, she begins to make a new life, and good things finally start to happen. Meeting Bill is one; and getting an apartment is another. Still, it’s hard for Rosie not to keep looking over her shoulder, and with good reason. Norman is a cop, with the instincts of a predator. He’s very good at finding people, even if he is losing his mind.
\nFixed on revenge, Norman Daniels becomes a force of relentless terror and savageness, a man almost mythic in his monstrosity. For Rosie to survive, she must enter her own myth and become a woman she never knew she could be: Rose Madder.
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A supermarket becomes the place where humanity makes its last stand against destruction. A trip to the attic becomes a journey to hell. A woman driving a Jaguar finds a scary shortcut to paradise. An idyllic lake harbors a bottomless evil. And a desert island is the scene of the most terrifying struggle for survival ever waged.
\nThis “wonderfully gruesome” collection includes:
\n- “The Mist”
- “Here There Be Tygers”
- “The Monkey”
- “Cain Rose Up”
- “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut”
- “The Jaunt”
- “The Wedding Gig”
- “Paranoid: A Chant”
- “The Raft”
- “Word Processor of the Gods”
- “The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands”
- “Beachworld”
- “The Reaper’s Image”
- “Nona”
- “For Owen”
- “Survivor Type”
- “Uncle Otto’s Truck”
- “Morning Deliveries (Milkman No. 1)”
- “Big Wheels: a Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkman No. 2)”
- “Gramma”
- “The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet”
- “The Reach”
In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep; they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze.
\nIf they are awakened, and the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent; and while they sleep they go to another place.
\nThe men of our world are abandoned, left to their increasingly primal devices. One woman, however, the mysterious Evie, is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease.
\nIs Evie a medical anomaly to be studied, or is she a demon who must be slain?
To give birth to her 'chap,' demon-mother Mia has usurped the body of Susannah Dean and used the power of Black Thirteen to transport to New York City in the summer of 1999. The city is strange to Susannah . . . and terrifying to the 'daughter of none,' who shares her body and mind.
\nSaving the Tower depends not only on rescuing Susannah but also on securing the vacant lot Calvin Tower owns before he loses it to the Sombra Corporation. Enlisting the aid of Manni senders, the remaining katet climbs to the Doorway Cave . . . and discovers that magic has its own mind.
\nIt falls to the boy, the billy-bumbler, and the fallen priest to find Susannah-Mia, who, in a struggle to cope - with each other and with an alien environment - 'go todash' to Castle Discordia on the border of End-World. In that forsaken place, Mia reveals her origins, her purpose, and her fierce desire to mother whatever creature the two of them have carried to term.
\nEddie and Roland, meanwhile, tumble into western Maine in the summer of 1977, a world that should be idyllic but isn't. For one thing, it is real, and the bullets are flying. For another, it is inhabited by the author of a novel called 'Salem's Lot, a writer who turns out to be as shocked by them as they are by him.
It’s 1960 in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine. Ray Brower, a boy from a nearby town, has disappeared, and twelve-year-old Gordie Lachance and his three friends set out on a quest to find his body along the railroad tracks.
\nDuring the course of their journey, Gordie, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio come to terms with death and the harsh truths of growing up in a small factory town that doesn’t offer much in the way of a future.
\nA timeless exploration of the loneliness and isolation of young adulthood, Stephen King’s The Body is an iconic, unforgettable, coming-of-age story.
Thad Beaumont is a writer, and for a dozen years he has secretly published violent bestsellers under the name of George Stark. But Thad is a healthier and happier man now, the father of infant twins, and starting to write as himself again. He no longer needs George Stark and so, with nationwide publicity, the pseudonym is retired. But George Stark won’t go willingly.
\nAnd now Thad would like to say he is innocent. He’d like to say he has nothing to do with the twisted imagination that produced his bestselling novels. He’d like to say he has nothing to do with the series of monstrous murders that keep coming closer to his home. But how can Thad deny the ultimate embodiment of evil that goes by the name he gave it - and signs its crimes with Thad’s bloody fingerprints?
This volume sees gunslinger Roland on a roller-coaster mix of exhilarating triumph and aching loss in his unrelenting quest to reach the Dark Tower. A journey which means he must leave his faithful friends as he closes on the tower. His steps are followed only by Mordred, half-human, half-terrifying creature.
While pursuing his quest for the Dark Tower through a world that is a nightmarishly distorted mirror image of our own, Roland is drawn through a mysterious door that brings him into contemporary America. Here he links forces with the defiant young Eddie Dean, and with the beautiful, brilliant, and brave Odetta Holmes, in a savage struggle against underworld evil and otherworldly enemies.
Set in the 1930s at the Cold Mountain Penitentiary's death-row facility, The Green Mile is the riveting and tragic story of John Coffey, a giant, preternaturally gentle inmate condemned to death for the rape and murder of twin nine-year-old girls.
\nIt is a story narrated years later by Paul Edgecomb, the ward superintendent compelled to help every prisoner spend his last days peacefully and every man walk the green mile to execution with his humanity intact.
\nEdgecomb has sent seventy-eight inmates to their date with \"old sparky,\" but he's never encountered one like Coffey - a man who wants to die, yet has the power to heal. And in this place of ultimate retribution, Edgecomb discovers the terrible truth about Coffey's gift, a truth that challenges his most cherished beliefs - and ours.
Roland of Gilead is the Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which frighteningly mirrors our own, Roland pursues The Man in Black, encounters an alluring woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the Kid from Earth called Jake.
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents - telekinesis and telepathy - who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.
As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King’s gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don’t always win.
In a dystopian near-future, America has fallen on hard times. Sixteen-year-old Ray Garraty is about to compete in the annual match of stamina and wits known as the Long Walk.
\nOne hundred boys must keep a steady pace of four miles per hour day and night, without ever stopping. The winner gets 'The Prize' - anything he wants for the rest of his life. But the rules of the Long Walk are harsh and the stakes could not be higher.
\nThere is no finish line - the winner is the last man standing. Contestants cannot receive any outside aid whatsoever. Slow down under the speed limit and you're given a warning. Three warnings and you're out of the game-forever.
An eleven-year-old boy is found in a town park, hideously assaulted and murdered. The fingerprints (and later DNA) are unmistakably those of the town’s most popular baseball coach, Terry Maitland, a man of impeccable reputation, with a wife and two daughters.
\nDetective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland coached, orders an immediate and public arrest. Maitland is taken to jail, his claim to innocence scorned. Maitland has a foolproof alibi, with footage to prove that he was in another city when the crime was committed. But that doesn't save him either.
It’s a gorgeous midsummer afternoon along Poplar Street in the peaceful suburbia of Wentwort, Ohio, where life is as pleasant as you ever dreamed it could be. But that’s all about to end in a blaze of gunfire and sudden violence, forever shattering the tranquility and the good times here.
\nFor the physical makeup of Poplar Street itself is now being transformed into a surreal landscape straight out of the active imagination of the innocent and vulnerable Seth Garin - an autistic boy who’s been exposed to and possessed by a horrific, otherworldly force of evil, one with sadistic and murderous intent and who is willing to use whatever means necessary to grow ever stronger.
Kevin Delavan wants only one thing for his fifteenth birthday: a Polaroid Sun 660. There’s something wrong with his gift, though. No matter where Kevin Delevan aims the camera, it produces a photograph of an enormous, vicious dog.
\nIn each successive picture, the menacing creature draws nearer to the flat surface of the Polaroid film as if it intends to break through. When old Pop Merrill, the town’s sharpest trader, gets wind of this phenomenon, he envisions a way to profit from it. But the Sun Dog, a beast that shouldn’t exist at all, turns out to be a very dangerous investment.
Something was happening in Bobbi Anderson’s idyllic small town of Haven, Maine. Something that gave every man, woman, and child in Haven powers far beyond those of ordinary mortals.
\nSomething that turned the town into a deathtrap for all outsiders. Something that is buried in the woods behind Bobbi’s house. With the help of her friend, Jim Gardener, they uncover an alien spaceship.
\nAnd as they learn more about this strange discovery, the citizens of Haven begin to change: The townspeople are being welded into one organic, homicidal, and fearsomely brilliant entity in thrall to the Tommyknockers, who piloted the alien ship.
Several months have passed since The Drawing of the Three, and in The Waste Lands, Roland’s two new tet-mates have become trained gunslingers. Eddie Dean has given up heroin, and Odetta’s two selves have joined, becoming the stronger and more balanced personality of Susannah Dean. But Roland altered ka by saving the life of Jake Chambers, a boy who - in Roland’s world - has already died.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNow Roland and Jake exist in different worlds, but they are joined by the same madness: the paradox of double memories. Roland, Susannah, and Eddie must draw Jake into Mid-World and then follow the Path of the Beam all the way to the Dark Tower. There are new evils . . . new dangers to threaten Roland’s little band in the devastated city of Lud and the surrounding wastelands, as well as horrific confrontations with Blaine the Mono, the piratical Gasher, and the frightening Tick-Tock Man.
Roland of Gilead and his fellow pilgrims determine to reach the Dark Tower, but their quest is rife with confrontation, conflict and sacrifice - from a vast computer system which bargains in riddles to Roland's old enemy Walter and the wizard's glass.
Roland Deschain and his ka-tet are bearing southeast through the forests of Mid-World, the almost timeless landscape that seems to stretch from the wreckage of civility that defined Roland's youth to the crimson chaos that seems the future's only promise.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tReaders of Stephen King's epic series know Roland well, or as well as this enigmatic hero can be known. They also know the companions who have been drawn to his quest for the Dark Tower: Eddie Dean and his wife, Susannah; Jake Chambers, the boy who has come twice through the doorway of death into Roland's world; and Oy, the Billy-Bumbler.
“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,” writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life - both metaphorical and literal.
\nKing has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel “the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,” and in You Like It Darker, readers will feel that exhilaration too, again and again.
\n“Two Talented Bastids” explores the long-hidden secret of how the eponymous gentlemen got their skills. In “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny’s most catastrophically. In “Rattlesnakes,” a sequel to Cujo, a grieving widower travels to Florida for respite and instead receives an unexpected inheritanc - with major strings attached.
\nIn “The Dreamers,” a taciturn Vietnam vet answers a job ad and learns that there are some corners of the universe best left unexplored. “The Answer Man” asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.
\nKing’s ability to surprise, amaze, and bring us both terror and solace remains unsurpassed. Each of these stories holds its own thrills, joys, and mysteries; each feels iconic. You like it darker? You got it.
A dead body in the prayer hall of a mosque isn’t the best start to the day for anyone.
But for Detective Inspector Harold Porter it’s all in a day’s work - he’s a Murder Detective with the Metropolitan Police’s Homicide and Serious Crimes Command.
The problem is that DI Porter has been given a new partner - a young Muslim detective by the name of Mohammed Salim Nasri.
Nasri and Porter are both British and they are both cops, but they look at the world - and the case - from completely different viewpoints.
And when that case includes Islamic terrorists, acid-throwing fundamentalists and knife-wielding fanatics that can only mean problems.
As Porter and Nasri work to solve the murder case, MI5 is watching over their shoulders and one wrong move could mean a major terrorist incident exploding in the capital.
Spider Shepherd's MI5 Controller, Charlie Button, has gone rogue, using government resources to get revenge on the men who killed her husband. Spider is told to betray her.
\nWorse, he's asked to cooperate with his nemesis at MI6, Jeremy Willoughby Brown, in taking Charlie down. And he will have to cross the assassin, Lex Harper, currently on the trail of two Irish terrorists, who may be able to lead him to his ex-boss. Meanwhile, Spider's sixteen-year-old son is caught with drugs, expelled from school and threatened with prosecution.
\nBut the drug police offer Spider a deal: go undercover, unmask a local dealer and his son will go free. Spider has no option but to cooperate. But is he any better than Charlie, using work resources to resolve personal issues? There's little time to debate because another high profile mission is about to engulf him.
\nPresident Vladimir Putin is about to visit the UK and a father who lost his son on the downed Malaysian plane over the Ukraine holds Putin directly responsible for his death and wants revenge. Along with everything else, it's down to Spider to stop the assassination of a head of state on British soil.
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Andrea Hayes was one of the IRA's most deadly killers, until a misplaced bomb ripped a group of passing kids apart, and she left all that behind her. Now, years later, she's got a whole new life with a new family and her days of violence seem a distant memory.
\nBut then her daughter is kidnapped by persons unknown, and she is blackmailed into building a huge explosive device for them - target unknown. . .
Eddie \"Lucky\" Brennan is a professional killer. A gun for hire who has been leaving bodies across Chicago for more than a century.
\nLucky's long life isn't an accident. It's payment. Saved from death by a demon from Hell, he has spent the last hundred years repaying the debt, with murders.
\nNow the body count is rising, and the demon's ambitions have grown. This time, it isn't just about murder. It's about turning Chicago into the first foothold of Hell on Earth.
\nJack Nightingale is sent to stop the killings. But to bring down Lucky, he'll have to confront the demon behind him - and risk far more than his life.
\nBecause in the Windy City, there are worse things than dying.
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Terrorists have shot down a British helicopter in West Africa and taken the crew hostage. Their lives are on the line and the British government is refusing to negotiate. The pilot is Liam Shepherd, and only his father - Dan 'Spider' Shepherd of MI5 - can help.
\nShepherd and an SAS team fly out to the badlands of Mali to rescue the kidnapped Brits.
\nBut the mission takes Shepherd away from an investigation in a high security prison that is about to explode into violence. Hundreds of lives are at risk, and Shepherd is running out of time . . .
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Even deadlier than terrorists . . . are the men trying to stop them.
People-smuggling, counterfeit currency and attempted murder. It's all in a day's work for undercover cop Dan 'Spider' Shepherd. But what starts as a run-of-the mill investigation quickly turns into a matter of life and death when he uncovers a terrorist cell on a mission of death and destruction. The target: hundreds of passengers on a cross-channel train deep below the English Channel.
With the clock ticking and the explosives primed, Shepherd and his colleagues have to decide just how far they are prepared to go to save innocent lives. And they realise that to avoid catastrophe, they have to be even more merciless than the terrorists.
A violent South London gang will be destroyed if Dan 'Spider' Shepherd can gather enough evidence against them while posing as a ruthless hitman. What he doesn't know is that his work as an undercover agent for MI5 is about to intersect with the biggest terrorist operation ever carried out on British soil.
\nOnly weeks before Shepherd witnessed a highly skilled IS sniper escape from a targeted missile strike in Syria. But never in his wildest dreams did he expect to next come across the shooter in a grimy East London flat.
\nSpider's going to have to proceed with extreme caution if he is to prevent the death of hundreds of people, but at the same time, when the crucial moment comes he will have to act decisively. The clock is ticking and only he stands between us and Armageddon . . .
\n\n
Former SAS trooper turned undercover cop Dan Spider Shepherd knows there are no easy solutions in the war against terrorism. But when a killer starts to target pardoned IRA terrorists, Shepherd has to put his life on the line to protect his former enemies.
\nWhile he is undercover in Belfast, a grief-stricken Saudi whose two sons died under torture in the name of the War on Terror is planning to avenge their deaths by striking out at two people close to Shepherd. As the Muslim assassin closes in on his prey, Shepherd realises that the only way to save lives is to become a killer himself.\"
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The target - the Prime Minister. The assassins - hard-bitten jihadists with nothing to lose.
\nThe only man who can stop them? Dan \"Spider\" Shepherd.
\nBut Shepherd's reputation is also on the line - he helped get one of the jihadists into the UK during the final days of the War in Afghanistan.
\nNow he has to track down the man whose life he once saved.
\nBut the assassins aren't lone wolf killers - someone much more devious is pulling their strings.
\nAnd the clock is ticking . . .
\n
Jack Solomon is a messenger of death. Working in the fractured remains of Yugoslavia, his task is to identify the victims of ethnic cleansing and to tell families that their loved ones are never coming home.
\nYears of working in the killing fields have desensitised the former London policeman to the horrors of war, but when a truck containing twenty-six bodies is pulled from a lake, Solomon is unable to walk away from the case.
\nHe sets out to track down the only survivor of the massacre, a young girl on the run from the killers. Solomon's hunt for the last witness leads from the brothels of Sarajevo to the high-stakes world of London's internet prostitution - where he will discover that the killers are closer to home than he thinks . . .
\n
Dan \"Spider\" Shepherd is working for MI5, investigating Somali pirates with links to terrorism in Britain. Meanwhile, the crew of a yacht - including the prime minister's goddaughter - has been kidnapped by the pirates and are being held hostage in Somalia.
\nA covert operation run by MI5 hopes to kill two birds with one stone. Shepherd will go undercover on a container ship they know will be targeted by the pirates, and hopefully will discover not only where the yacht's hostages are being held, but also the ringleaders behind the terrorist plans.
\nBut at the same time, Shepherd is being hunted down by the Real IRA - and now that he's on the container ship, his family are alone and vulnerable.
\n
In the ninth book in the Dan \"Spider\" Shepherd series, the most wanted man in the world is dead-now those loyal to him seek revenge
\nWhen Osama Bin Laden is tracked down and killed by the Navy Seal operation in a highly protected compound in Pakistan, it's obvious there was a leak from within. After the source is revealed to be two students, Malik and Chaudhry-ex-Islamic fundamentalists recruited by MI5 to disguise themselves as British terrorists-they are immediately under threat from al-Qaeda, who have sent an assassin to torture and kill anyone they suspect to be the traitor.
\nWith the assassin closing in, Shepherd is drafted to teach the pair how to survive undercover, but it's a major challenge. Spider is used to playing undercover cop, not the handler. And when Malik and Chaudhry are recruited to stop a Muslim extremist group's terrorist attack on a London shopping center, he is forced to lie to them about the danger they are in. With his loyalties split, can he protect them before it's too late?
\n
Who can you trust if you can't trust the people tasked with protecting the nation?
\nMurderous jihadists have been crossing the English Channel, passing themselves off as asylum seekers. MI5 have been keeping them under surveillance, but what starts as a simple terrorist takedown goes badly wrong and dozens of innocent civilians are killed in the heart of London.
\nAnd the screw is tightened when a bomb takes out senior members of the Secret Intelligence Service.
\nSomeone within the security services has been working to their own agenda, and only Dan 'Spider' Shepherd can identify the bad apple. His search for the rogue agent takes him to Turkey and then to Dubai, where his masters order him to carry out a breathtaking act of revenge.
\n
MI5 analyst David White has always tried to be a good father, so when his daughters want to go to a music festival in Israel, he agrees to take them. But his world falls apart when his daughters are killed in the Hamas massacre that left 1,200 innocent civilians dead.
\nWhite is taken hostage down in the tunnels under Gaza, and Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd and a crack SAS team are sent in to rescue him.
\nSafely back in London, White is a changed man. He wants revenge for what happened to his family and sets out to kill the men who planned and financed the Hamas attacks.
\nAnd as White embarks on a vengeance-driven killing spree, Shepherd is the only man who can stop him.
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Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is used to putting his life on the line. Working for an elite undercover squad he has lied, cheated and conned in order to bring Britain's most wanted criminals to justice.
But when a powerful drugs baron starts to kill off witnesses to his crimes, Shepherd is given his most dangerous assignment yet. He has to go undercover in a top security prison, a world where one wrong move will mean certain death.
As Shepherd gambles everything to move in on his quarry, he soon realises that the man he is hunting is even more dangerous than the police realise. And that he is capable of striking outside the prison walls and hitting Shepherd where it hurts most.
Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is used to putting his life on the line. It goes with the turf when you're an undercover cop.
\nNow working for the Serious Organised Crime Agency, Shepherd is pitting his wits against the toughest criminals in the country. But when the man who once saved his life is kidnapped in the badlands of Iraq, thrown into a basement and threatened with execution, Shepherd has to decide whether his loyalties lie with his country, his career, or his friend.
\nShepherd and his former SAS colleagues realise that the hostage has been abandoned by the Government and that officially nothing is being done to rescue him. And with the execution deadline only days away, Shepherd knows that the only way to stop his friend being murdered is to put himself in the firing line in the most dangerous city in the world - Baghdad.
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Supernatural detective Jack Nightingale used to be a police negotiator in a previous life - back in the days before he confronted devils and demons for a living.
\nSo when a young woman embarks on a killing spree in a Houston mansion, Nightingale is the perfect choice to intervene.
\nBut there is nothing that Nightingale can do to stop the slaughter. And there is worse to come. More killings. More bloodshed. More young women with murderous intentions.
\nThe killings aren't random - a demon from Hell is orchestrating the massacres as part of a diabolical scheme. And the only way that Nightingale can stop the carnage is to put his own soul on the line.
\n
British doctor Raj Patel puts his own life on the line to treat the injured in war-torn Syria. His medical skills help casualties survive against all the odds.But Raj needs to rely on a completely different set of skills when he is taken hostage in a treacherous case of mistaken identity.
Billionaire big-game hunter Jon van der Sandt is driven by revenge - his family have been killed by jihadist terrorists and he wants his vengeance up close and personal. He has hired ex Special Forces hard men to snatch the ISIS killers from the desert and transport them halfway across the world to the vast wilderness of his American estate.
But they grab Raj by mistake, and once the killing begins it's too late to plead mistaken identity. To survive, he'll have to become as ruthless a killer as the man who is hunting him.
Las Vegas is known as Sin City. And what happens in Vegas usually stays in Vegas.
\nBut someone in the city has powers that allow them to strike anywhere in the world and take lives - for a price.
\nJack Nightingale has a track record of dealing with occult killers and so far he has always come out on top.
\nBut this time the only way to find the killer is to set himself up as bait. And this might be the time when his luck finally runs out.
\n
A group of professional killers, known as The Office, are carrying out hits for the Iranian government across the European continent, hitting targets amongst the wealthiest and most privileged.
\nAfter a slew of murders in London, MI5 decide that enough is enough. The Office must be destroyed, root and stem.
\nDan 'Spider' Shepherd, the secret service's most dangerous weapon, is tasked with infiltrating the organisation and unmasking its leader.
\nBut just how far is he willing to go in the name of justice . . . ?
\n
Friendships forged in the heat of combat can be stronger than anything.
\nSo when SAS trooper Matt Standing is told that the former Navy SEAL who saved his life is in trouble, he doesn't hesitate to go to his aid - even if that means flying half way around the world to Los Angeles.
\nNavy SEAL-turned-bodyguard Bobby-Ray Barnes has been accused of killing the man he was supposed to be protecting. Three other bodyguards were also killed and now Bobby-Ray is on the run.
\nThe dead client was a Russian oligarch with connections to the Kremlin. But who wanted him dead? And if Bobby-Ray wasn't the killer, who carried out the assassination and why is Bobby-Ray being framed? Standing is the only man who can answer those questions - providing he can stay alive long enough. For that he'll need the help of an old SAS friend, Dan 'Spider' Shepherd, and a ruthless network of secret service operatives.
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A killer is murdering Goths with brutal relish - skinning and butchering them. The cops aren't getting anywhere, so Jack Nightingale's nemesis, Superintendent Chalmers, asks him for help.
Nightingale discovers that the murdered Goths had one thing in common: a tattoo connected to a Satanic child-sacrificing cult called the Order of Nine Angels.
As Nightingale closes in on the killers, the tables are turned and he finds himself in the firing line, along with his friends and family. The Order will stop at nothing to protect their secrets; and Nightingale realises that there is nothing he can do to protect himself. Nor can he run, for the Order has connections across the world.
It leaves him with only one way to stop the carnage . . . and that's to take his own life . . .
Working undercover is all about trust - getting the target to trust you and then betraying them in order to bring them to justice.
But what do you do when you believe an undercover cop has crossed the line and aligned herself with the international drugs smuggler she was supposed to be targeting?
When a deep-undercover cop stops passing on intelligence about her target, MI5 sends in Dan 'Spider' Shepherd to check that she is on the straight and narrow.
Now two lives are on the line - and Shepherd discovers that the real danger is closer to home than he realised.
As Spider finds his loyalties being tested to the limit, an SAS killer is on a revenge mission in London and only Spider can stop him.
Mickey and Mark Moore are hard men who live by their own code and leaders of a gang that has made millions at the point of a gun. Now they're enjoying a life in the sun in Thailand.
\nDan 'Spider' Shepherd is sent to infiltrate the tightly-knit team of bank robbers. But when he does, he discovers that he has more in common with them than he first thought.
\nWhile he and his Serious Organised Crime Agency colleagues are plotting the downfall of the Moore brothers, a far more sinister threat is stalking the streets of London. A group of home-grown Islamic fundamentalist fanatics embarks on a campaign of terror the like of which Britain has never seen. Car bombs and beheadings are only the beginning . . .
\nAnd Shepherd is the only man who can stop them.\"
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New Orleans. They call it the Big Easy, but there's nothing easy about Jack Nightingale's latest case.
\nDead usually means dead, but corpses are coming back to life and carrying out targeted killings.
\nThe supernatural detective is called in to investigate, and he soon discovers that Voodoo is behind the spate of murders.
\nWhoever is making the dead rise obviously has a plan - a plan so heinous that even the Devils of Hell are concerned.
\nBut there are darker forces at work. And they have Nightingale in their sights. His life - and his soul - are on the line.
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Teenagers are being possessed and turning into sadistic murderers. Priests can’t help, nor can psychiatrists.So who is behind the demonic possessions? Jack Nightingale is called in to investigate, and finds his own soul is on the line.
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These are words that ended his career as a police negotiator. Now Jack's a private detective, struggling to make ends meet.
\nHis life is turned upside once again, the day that he inherits a mansion from a man who claims to be his father.
\nIt comes with a terrible warning: Nightingale's soul was sold at birth and a devil will come to claim it on his thirty-third birthday - just three weeks away.
\nJack doesn't believe in Hell, probably doesn't believe in Heaven either. But when people close to him start to die horribly, he is led to the inescapable conclusion that real evil may be at work.
\nAnd that if he doesn't find a way out he'll be damned in hell for eternity.
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What goes around, comes around. Jack Nightingale learned that as a cop and discovered that it was just as true in the world of the supernatural. His life changed forever on the day he failed to stop a young girl throwing herself to her death. Ever since, he's been haunted by thoughts that he could have done more to save her.
Now her cries for help are louder than ever. Is she trapped in eternal torment? Can Nightingale put things right? Or are the forces of darkness torturing and deceiving him in order to gain the ultimate prize - his soul? Nightingale will have to face down the powers of the police, south London gangs and Hell itself to find out. And evil is closer than he thinks . . .
In Jack Nightingale's world - where reality and the occult collide - sometimes the only way to fight evil is with evil.
\nA farmer walks into a school and shoots eight children dead before turning the gun on himself. It's a harrowing but straightforward case - until police search the man's farm and unearth evidence of dark Satanic practices. When the perpetrator's brother approaches Nightingale, adamant that his brother was set up, it's clear that something even more sinister lurks at the heart of the case.
\nAnd there are dark forces elsewhere. A young girl miraculously returns to life, claiming she's spoken to those from beyond the grave. Those in contact with her are dying hideous deaths . . . forcing Jack Nightingale to make the hardest decision he's ever faced.
\n\n
Mexico is famous for its rich culture, ancient ruins, dazzling beaches, and spicy cuisine.
\nBut there is a darker side to America's southern neighbour, with vicious gangs dealing in drugs. extortion, money laundering, human trafficking and contract killings.
\nJack Nightingale came across his fair share of villains when he worked for the Metropolitan Police in London.
\nBut nothing could prepare him for the evil that was waiting for him when he crossed the Rio Grande river and entered Mexico - an evil that is hunting for an immortal soul. A very special soul.
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Dan \"Spider\" Shepherd is sent undercover to investigate a group of policemen in the Territorial Support Group. Fed up with all the paperwork and the fact that the system is geared to support the criminals rather than the victims, they have started to act as vigilantes, planting forensic evidence to frame known criminals, and moving on to more drastic methods.
\nSpider is far from happy about deceiving fellow policemen, and things are complicated on other fronts for him too: his friend Jimmy Sharpe is tied up in an undercover investigation that is causing problems, and he's discovered an extremely disturbing film on his son's cell phone.
\n
Sally Page is an MI5 'footie', a junior Secret Service Agent who maintains 'legends': fake identities or footprints used by real spies. Her day consists of maintaining flats and houses were the legends allegedly live, doing online shopping, using payment, loyalty and travel cards and going on social media in their names - anything to give the impression to hostile surveillance that the legends are living, breathing individuals.
One day she goes out for a coffee run from the safe house from which she and her fellow footies operate. When she comes back they have all been murdered and she barely escapes with her own life. She is on the run: but from whom she has no idea. Worse, her bosses at MI5 seem powerless to help her. To live, she will have to use all the lies and false identities she has so carefully created while discovering the truth . . .
Jack Nightingale fights his battles in the shadows – in the grey areas where the real world meets the supernatural.
\nBut when he arrives in San Francisco to take on a group of Satanists bent on opening a doorway to Hell, the danger is out in the open and all too real. The Apostles - a Satanic coven using murder and torture to pave the way for a demon to enter the real world - realise that Nightingale is on their tail. And unleash their own brand of monsters to take him down.
\nWith Nightingale’s life - and his very soul - on the line, he has only days to stop The Apostles from bringing death and destruction to the entire world.
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Dan 'Spider' Shepherd's career path - soldier, policeman, MI5 officer - has always put a strain on his family. So he is far from happy to learn that MI5 is using teenagers as informants. Parents are being kept in the dark and Shepherd fears that the children are being exploited.
As an undercover specialist, Shepherd is tasked with protecting a 15-year-old schoolboy who is being used to gather evidence against violent drug dealers and a right-wing terrorist group. But when the boy's life is threatened, Shepherd has no choice but to step in and take the heat.
And while Shepherd's problems mount up at work, he has even greater problems closer to home. His son Liam has fallen foul of the Serbian Mafia and if Shepherd doesn't intervene, Liam will die.
Vicky Lewis is a force to be reckoned with: not yet thirty and already crew manager in the London Fire Brigade, she's destined for great things.
But when she enters a burning building to save a man's life and leaves it with catastrophic injuries, all that changes. She's shunted over to the Fire Investigation Unit, where she's forced to team up with cantankerous veteran Des Farmer, aka the Grouch.
When Vicky stumbles across the Grouch's off-the-books investigation into the fiery deaths of a series of young, blonde women, she decides to join him in his search for the truth.
The answer is close - perhaps too close. Vicky's already been burnt once, and now she's playing with fire . . .
Should we bring them back?
There are thousands of jihadi brides in refugee camps in the Middle East. Some of them were once British before they were stripped of their citizenship. Were they brainwashed or simply naive when they set out for Syria as teenagers? And, if they were allowed to return, would they pose a threat to our country?
Spider Shepherd is about to be sent on an extraordinary mission to the Syrian border by his MI5 boss. There he will have to decide which of the women he meets is still a threat, and if not, which of them has information useful to the Secret Service and can be allowed back. His are life or death decisions.
But there is one bride he must take back to the UK whatever her circumstances. She is the wife of a notorious ISIS bombmaker, Salam Jaraf. Jaraf is an asylum seeker who has information on terrorist cells in Britain. But the bombmaker will only tell MI5 what he knows if his wife and son are brought to him. But it soon becomes obvious that hostile forces are following Spider and Mrs Jaraf across Turkey.
Bringing this woman back from the warzone will become one of the most dangerous missions Spider has ever undertaken.
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There's only one thing more dangerous than a corrupt cop . . . and that's a corrupt cop with a gun.
When a group of armed police in an elite unit turn maverick and start to rip off drug dealers at gunpoint, undercover cop Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is given his most dangerous mission so far.
Shepherd is ordered to infiltrate the tight-knit team, to gain their confidence and to ultimately betray them.
Facing men with guns is nothing new for the former SAS trooper, but it's the first time he's had to investigate his own. And the job couldn't have come at a worse time for him.
As Shepherd finds himself in the firing line, he has to decide exactly where his loyalties lie.
Chris Hutchison is a man on the run. Imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, Hutch escapes from a British maximum security prison and starts a new life in Hong Kong. Then a ghost from his past catches up with him, forcing him to help a former terrorist break out of a Bangkok prison. Or face life behind bars once more.
Meanwhile the DEA wants to nail the vicious drug warlord responsible for flooding the States with cheap heroin. And decides to use Hutch as a pawn in a deadly game.
Hutch's bid for freedom takes him into the lawless killing fields of the Golden Triangle, where the scene is set for one final act of betrayal . . .
How can you follow orders if those orders are to kill a friend?
\nA Navy SEAL has gone rogue, selling his skills to the highest bidder as a professional assassin.
\nRyan French no longer cares who he kills so long as the price is right.
\nHis former bosses want him taken down, but they're not prepared to get their hands dirty so they need a Brit to do the job.
\nSAS trooper Matt \"Lastman\" Standing is a lethal killing machine with experience in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Plus he's worked with French in the past. It's not a mission he wants, but Standing made a bad choice in his past and it has come back to haunt him.
\nNow he's hunting French in the lawless Wild West forests of Humboldt County, where the US produces most of its legal - and illegal - cannabis.
\nBut French isn't the only predator in the wilderness - there are Mexican cartels, Russian Mafia and Hungarian gangsters - and Standing has to overcome them all to get to his target.
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The SAS are used to deaths during combat - it goes with the turf.
\nBut when one of their own is said to have committed suicide in Thailand, red flags are raised.
\nPete Green wasn't the sort of soldier who would ever take his own life - and no one is more sure of that than his twin brother, Davie.
\nDavie is determined to fly to the Land Of Smiles to find out what really happened to his twin brother. But if he is going to find out the truth he'll need help - the sort of help only SAS Sergeant Matt Standing can provide.
\nBut soon after they arrive they come under attack, leaving Standing to investigate on his own. There are clearly people who want to shut down all enquiries and Standing knows he will have to use all his SAS jungle skills to survive. This will be the toughest of assignments but nothing will come between him and the truth . . .
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He is one of the world's most ruthless terrorists, codenamed Saladin. He plans and executes devastating attacks and then, ghost-like, he disappears. Ten years ago he blew a plane out of the sky above New York - and now he's struck again, killing dozens in a London strike.
\nBut one of the latest victims is related to the acting head of MI5, who knows exactly who she wants on the case: Spider Shepherd. Dean Martin, a psychologically damaged former Navy SEAL, is the only person in the world who can identify Saladin. But Martin was killed ten years ago - wasn't he? Shepherd must find Martin and take him back to the killing fields on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
\nRevenge on the world's most wanted terrorist is long overdue, and Shepherd is determined to be the one to deliver it . . .
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In different parts of London, three recruits prepare for their first day at the Metropolitan Police's training centre at Hendon. All three had succeeded in getting into the police in spite of weaknesses. But on their first day, the assistant commissioner announces that he wants them to join a team of undercover detectives.
\nTheir brief? To become criminals; to work their way up through whatever criminal organisations they can get access to, and to collate evidence against the criminals they come across. Their target? One of the world's biggest drug dealers, Den Donovan, alias 'Tango One' - number one on HM Customs and Excise's List of most wanted criminals.
Three years later all the recruits are getting close to their target. Too close, perhaps, to remember the rules . . .
Children are killing themselves across the State of Tennessee. Is it a horrible coincidence, or are dark forces at work?
\nWhen supernatural detective Jack Nightingale learns that there is a mysterious list of children who are at risk, he takes the case, spurred on by the fact that he knows one of the names and that makes it personal.
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Nothing spreads like fear . . .
When a set of Russian oligarchs are assassinated in London, the Russian expat community become anxious. One man appeals to the British government for protection and MI5 assigns Spider Shepherd to the case. But he soon discovers that the killings aren't political - they're personal, and the assassin is much nearer than anyone could conceive.
And that's not the only score Spider must settle. Asked by a group of ex-colleagues to hunt down a former Taliban tyrant who has claimed UK asylum by assisting the British government, Spider is forced to decide between his sense of justice and his job.
For as he struggles to save the life of one man, he's on a path to extinguish another.
Two murders, thousands of miles apart: one in London, one in Bangkok.
\nThe bodies are brutally mutilated, an ace of spades impaled upon their chests. In Washington, a US senator receives photographs of the corpses. And realises that his past has come back to haunt him.
\nNick Wright is the detective trying to solve the mystery of the double killing. His hunt for a motive takes him to the Vietnam, where the American tunnel rats fought the dirtiest battle of the war against the Viet Cong.
\nBut his search places him in grave danger with a killer determined to protect the secrets of the tunnels. At whatever cost . . .
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Once a fearless SAS hero, Andy 'Deadman' Bird now battles the harsh streets of London after a catastrophic mission stripped him of his hearing, career, home, and marriage. His only solace is Tyson, his fiercely loyal and battle-tested dog.
\nWhen fate thrusts them into the path of a chilling alleyway murder, Andy and Tyson become the next targets. Who are these relentless hunters, and what dangerous secrets are they willing to kill for?
\nDesperate and cornered, Andy reaches out to his former brothers-in-arms - a team who owe him their very lives. But as they unravel a sinister web of organised crime and deadly political plots, who will be saving who this time?
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Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is used to putting his life on the line - for his friends and for his job with MI5. So when one of his former apprentices is kidnapped in the badlands of Pakistan, Shepherd doesn't hesitate to join a rescue mission.
But when the plan goes horribly wrong, Shepherd ends up in the hands of al-Qaeda terrorists. His SAS training is of little help as his captors beat and torture him.
Shepherd's MI5 controller Charlotte Button is determined to get her man out of harm's way, but to do that she's going to have to break all the rules. Her only hope is to bring in America's finest - the elite SEALs who carried out Operation Neptune Spear - in a do-or-die operation to rescue the captives.
Günter Zeitz, psychoanalyst-in-training and the son of a Catholic country doctor, and Josine Rosen, Sigmund Freud's patient and the daughter of a Jewish shipping magnate, first meet in 1924, in Freud's Viennese waiting room. As their intense affair develops, Freud arranges for Günter's appointment to the newly created Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Shortly after the move, their daughter Hannah is born. But less than a decade later, all their hopes and ideals are profoundly challenged by political realities so horrific that they are, initially, beyond comprehension.
\nA heartrending story of love in a time of hatred, an absorbing investigation into the Nazis’ exploitation of psychoanalysis, and a cautionary tale about self-deception and the failures of a people to recognise the lies of their charismatic leader, We Want So Much to Be Ourselves examines the ways science can be corrupted and one’s very identity transformed by historical circumstance.
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Set in a near-future climate-flooded England, divided into three countries.
\nKai, the charismatic leader of the tech-elite, entices the public with cutting-edge technology and a seemingly benevolent vision for the world. As part of the Resist and Regain movement, Beth and Naomi confront him head-on.
\nChallenging his child experimentation to accelerate evolution and his attempts to control the government, they risk everything for a more equal and transparent society. Can they stop Kai before it’s too late? Can Beth live with the suffering her activism will cause her family?
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An exuberant, hilarious, and profound memoir by a mailman in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, who found that working for the post office saved his life, taught him who he was, gave him purpose, and educated him deeply about a country he loves but had lost touch with.
\nSteve Grant was laid off in March of 2020. He was fifty and had cancer, so he needed health insurance, fast. Which is how he found himself a rural letter carrier in Appalachia, back in his old hometown.
\nSuddenly, he was the guy with the goods, delivering dog food and respirators and lube and heirloom tomato seeds and Lord of the Rings replica swords. He transported chicken feed to grandmothers living alone in the mountains and forded a creek with a refrigerator on his back. But while he carried the mail, he also carried a whole lot more than just the mail, including a family legacy of rage and the anxiety of having lost his identity along with his corporate job.
\nAnd yet, slowly, surrounded by a ragtag but devoted band of letter carriers, working this different kind of job, Grant found himself becoming a different kind of person. He became a lifeline for lonely people, providing fleeting moments of human contact and the assurance that our government still cares. He embraced the thrill of tackling new challenges, the pride of contributing to something greater than himself, the joy of camaraderie, and the purpose found in working hard for his family and doing a small, good thing for his community. He even kindled a newfound faith.
\nA brash and loving portrait of an all-American institution, Mailman offers a deeply felt portrait of both rural America and the dedicated (and eccentric) letter carriers who keep our lives running smoothly day to day. One hell of a raconteur, Steve Grant has written an irreverent, heartfelt, and often hilarious tribute to the simple heroism of daily service, the dignity and struggle of blue-collar work, the challenge and pleasure of coming home again after twenty-five years away, and the delight of going the extra mile for your neighbors, every day.
When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give, how could you not give it? If it was someone you truly loved?
\nTo be irrevocably in love with a vampire is both fantasy and nightmare woven into a dangerously heightened reality for Bella Swan. Pulled in one direction by her intense passion for Edward Cullen, and in another by her profound connection to werewolf Jacob Black, a tumultuous year of temptation, loss, and strife have led her to the ultimate turning point. Her imminent choice to either join the dark but seductive world of immortals or to pursue a fully human life has become the thread from which the fates of two tribes hangs.
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As Seattle is ravaged by a string of mysterious killings and a malicious vampire continues her quest for revenge, Bella once again finds herself surrounded by danger. In the midst of it all, she is forced to cs Seattle is ravaged by a string of mysterious killings and a malicious vampire continues her quest for revenge, Bella once again finds herself surrounded by danger. In the midst of it all, she is forced to choose between her love for Edward and her friendship with Jacob - knowing that her decision has the potential to ignite the ageless struggle between vampire and werewolf.
\nWith her graduation quickly approaching, Bella has one more decision to make: life or death. But which is which? hoose between her love for Edward and her friendship with Jacob - knowing that her decision has the potential to ignite the ageless struggle between vampire and werewolf. With her graduation quickly approaching, Bella has one more decision to make: life or death. But which is which?
When Edward Cullen and Bella Swan met in Twilight, an iconic love story was born. But until now, fans have heard only Bella's side of the story. At last, readers can experience Edward's version in the long-awaited companion novel, Midnight Sun.
This unforgettable tale as told through Edward's eyes takes on a new and decidedly dark twist. Meeting Bella is both the most unnerving and intriguing event he has experienced in all his years as a vampire. As we learn more fascinating details about Edward's past and the complexity of his inner thoughts, we understand why this is the defining struggle of his life. How can he justify following his heart if it means leading Bella into danger?
For Bella Swan, there is one thing more important than life itself: Edward Cullen. But being in love with a vampire is even more dangerous than Bella could ever have imagined.
\nEdward has already rescued Bella from the clutches of one evil vampire, but now, as their daring relationship threatens all that is near and dear to them, they realise their troubles may be just beginning . . .
She used to work for the U.S. government, but very few people ever knew that. An expert in her field, she was one of the darkest secrets of an agency so clandestine it doesn't even have a name. And when they decided she was a liability, they came for her without warning.
Now she rarely stays in the same place or uses the same name for long. They've killed the only other person she trusted, but something she knows still poses a threat. They want her dead, and soon.
When her former handler offers her a way out, she realizes it's her only chance to erase the giant target on her back. But it means taking one last job for her ex-employers. To her horror, the information she acquires only makes her situation more dangerous.
Resolving to meet the threat head-on, she prepares for the toughest fight of her life but finds herself falling for a man who can only complicate her likelihood of survival. As she sees her choices being rapidly whittled down, she must apply her unique talents in ways she never dreamed of.
When Isabella Swan moves to the gloomy town of Forks and meets the mysterious, alluring Edward Cullen, her life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. With his porcelain skin, golden eyes, mesmerizing voice, and supernatural gifts, Edward is both irresistible and impenetrable. Up until now, he has managed to keep his true identity hidIsabella Swan's move to Forks, a small, perpetually rainy town in Washington, could have been the most boring move she ever made.
\nBut once she meets the mysterious and alluring Edward Cullen, Isabella's life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. Up until now, Edward has managed to keep his vampire identity a secret in the small community he lives in, but now nobody is safe, especially Isabella, the person Edward holds most dear. den, but Bella is determined to uncover his dark secret.
\nWhat Bella doesn't realise is that the closer she gets to him, the more she is putting herself and those around her at risk. And it might be too late to turn back . . .
What happens if both the president and vice-president-elect die before taking the oath of office? The answer is far from certain - in fact, what follows would be nothing short of total political chaos.
\nShot down over Siberia, ex-Justice Department agent Cotton Malone is forced into a fight for survival against Aleksandr Zorin, a man whose loyalty to the former Soviet Union has festered for decades into an intense hatred of the United States.
\nBefore escaping, Malone learns that Zorin and another ex-KGB officer, this one a sleeper still embedded in the West, are headed overseas to Washington D.C. Noon on January 20th - Inauguration Day - is only hours away. A flaw in the Constitution, and an even more flawed presidential succession act, have opened the door to disaster and Zorin intends to exploit both weaknesses to their fullest.
\nArmed with a weapon leftover from the Cold War, one long thought to be just a myth, Zorin plans to attack. He’s aided by a shocking secret hidden in the archives of America’s oldest fraternal organisation - the Society of Cincinnati - a group that once lent out its military savvy to presidents, including helping to formulate three invasion plans of what was intended to be America’s 14th colony - Canada.
\nIn a race against the clock that starts in the frozen extremes of Russia and ultimately ends at the White House itself, Malone must not only battle Zorin, he must also confront a crippling fear that he’s long denied, but which now jeopardises everything. Steve Berry’s trademark mix of history and speculation is all here in this provocative new thriller.
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Luke Daniels is in London, between assignments with the Magellan Billet, when he receives a frantic call from an old friend. Jillian Stein is in trouble. She made a mistake and now her life may be in danger. She needs Luke’s help. Immediately. Racing to Belgium Luke quickly finds that she was right. A shadow team of highly-trained operatives are there on the hunt. Intervening, he finds himself embroiled in a war between two determined sides - one seeking the truth, the other trying to escape the past - a war that has already claimed one life and is about to claim more.
\nThomas Rowland is a Washington insider, a kingmaker, problem-solver, but also a man with a past. For him everything turns with what happened on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. What history has recorded is wrong. There is more to the story, much more, and Thomas Rowland is at the center of that terrible reality. But forces are working against him, and Rowland will do anything to keep the world from learning what actually happened on that fateful day, including killing Luke, Jillian and anyone else who might be a threat.
\nIn a race from Belgium, to Luxembourg, to the bayous of Louisiana and the Wyoming wilderness, to a final confrontation in the Bahamas, Luke Daniels confronts a series of shocking truths which not only rewrite history but will forever change his own life - as he comes face to face with the ninth man.
Rachel Cutler loves her job and her kids, and remains civil to her ex-husband, Paul. But everything changes when her father dies under suspicious circumstances, leaving behind clues to a treasure called the Amber Room, one of the most intriguing mysteries of the last century.
\nDesperate for the truth, Rachel takes off for Germany, with Paul close behind. Before long, they're in over their heads. Locked into a treacherous game with professional killers, Rachel and Paul find themselves on a collision course with the forces of greed, power and history itself . . .
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1945. In the waning months of World War II, Japan hid vast quantities of gold and other stolen valuables in boobytrapped underground caches all across the Philippines. By 1947 some of that loot was recovered, not by treasure hunters, but by the United States government, which told no one about the find. Instead, those assets were stamped classified, shipped to Europe, and secretly assimilated into something called the Black Eagle Trust.
\nPresent day. Retired Justice Department operative, Cotton Malone, is in Switzerland doing a favor for a friend. But what was supposed to be a simple operation turns violent and Cotton is thrust into a war between the world’s oldest bank and the CIA, a battle that directly involves the Black Eagle Trust. He quickly discovers that everything hinges on a woman from his past, who suddenly reappears harboring a host of explosive secrets centering around bitcoin. The cryptocurrency is being quietly weaponized, readied for an assault on the world’s financial systems, a calculated move that will have devastating consequences. Cotton has no choice. He has to act. But at what cost?
\nFrom the stolid banking halls of Luxembourg, to the secret vaults of Switzerland, and finally up into the treacherous mountains of southern Morocco, Cotton Malone is stymied at every turn. Each move he makes seems wrong, and nothing works, until he finally comes face-to-face with the Atlas Maneuver.
As a favor to enigmatic billionaire Henrik Thorvaldsen, Cassiopeia Vitt treks into Bulgaria's Rila mountains in search of a buried stash of exceedingly rare artifacts from a bygone civilization: the ancient tomb of a Thracian king.
\nBut when her presence is discovered by a shadowy group of Russians secretly mining the area, she needs a way out. Who to trust becomes the question, and her life depends on choosing the right option.
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Now, fifty years later, former Justice Department agent, Cotton Malone, must reckon with the truth of what really happened that fateful day in Memphis.
It all turns on an incident from eighteen years ago, when Malone, as a young Navy lawyer, is trying hard not to live up to his burgeoning reputation as a maverick. When Stephanie Nelle, a high-level Justice Department lawyer, enlists him to help with an investigation, he jumps at the opportunity. But he soon discovers that two opposing forces―the Justice Department and the FBI―are at war over a rare coin and a cadre of secret files containing explosive revelations about the King assassination, information that could ruin innocent lives and threaten the legacy of the civil rights movement’s greatest martyr.
Malone’s decision to see it through to the end ― from the raucous bars of Mexico, to the clear waters of the Dry Tortugas, and ultimately into the halls of power within Washington D.C. itself ― not only changes his own life, but the course of history.
Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Tom Sagan has written hard-hitting articles from hot spots around the world. But when one of his stories from the Middle East is exposed as a fraud, his professional reputation crashes and burns.
\nNow he lives in virtual exile - haunted by bad decisions and a shocking truth he can never prove: that his downfall was a deliberate act of sabotage by an unknown enemy. But before Sagan can end his torment with the squeeze of a trigger, fate intervenes in the form of an enigmatic stranger.
\nThis stranger forces Sagan to act - and his actions attract the attention of the Magellan Billet, a top-secret corps of the United States Justice Department that deals with America’s most sensitive investigations. Sagan suddenly finds himself caught in an international incident, the repercussions of which will shudder not only Washington, D.C., but also Jerusalem.
\nCoaxed into a deadly cat-and-mouse game, unsure who’s friend and who’s foe, Sagan is forced to Vienna, Prague, then finally into the Blue Mountains of Jamaica - where his survival hinges on his rewriting everything we know about Christopher Columbus.
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Former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone has received an anonymous note carrying an unfamiliar Web address. Logging on, he’s shocked to see Cassiopeia Vitt, a woman who’s saved his life more than once, being tortured at the hands of a mysterious man who has a single demand: Bring me the artifact she’s asked you to keep safe. The only problem is, Malone doesn’t have a clue what the man is talking about, since Cassiopeia has left nothing with him.
\nSo begins Malone’s most harrowing adventure to date - one that offers up astounding historical revelations, pits him against a ruthless ancient brotherhood, and sends him from Denmark to Belgium to Vietnam then on to one of the greatest archaeological sites in the world: the tomb of China’s First Emperor, guarded by an underground army of terra-cotta warriors, which has inexplicably remained sealed for more than two thousand years - its mysteries about to be revealed.
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BONUS: This edition contains a Cotton Malone Dossier, an excerpt from Steve Berry's The Columbus Affair, and a short story by Steve Berry, The Balkan Escape.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone has received an anonymous note carrying an unfamiliar Web address. Logging on, he’s shocked to see Cassiopeia Vitt, a woman who’s saved his life more than once, being tortured at the hands of a mysterious man who has a single demand: Bring me the artifact she’s asked you to keep safe. The only problem is, Malone doesn’t have a clue what the man is talking about, since Cassiopeia has left nothing with him. So begins Malone’s most harrowing adventure to date—one that offers up astounding historical revelations, pits him against a ruthless ancient brotherhood, and sends him from Denmark to Belgium to Vietnam then on to one of the greatest archaeological sites in the world: the tomb of China’s First Emperor, guarded by an underground army of terra-cotta warriors, which has inexplicably remained sealed for more than two thousand years—its mysteries about to be revealed.
An Interview with Cotton Malone by Steve Berry
Magellan Billet
De-Briefing Report
Agent Interviewed: Harold Earl “Cotton” Malone
Status: Retired (on special assignment here)
Interview Location: Café Norden, Copenhagen, Denmark
Subject: Recent incursion into the People’s Republic of China
Question 1: Your impressions of China?
Amazing. Here’s a culture that has been around for over 4,000 years yet is still struggling to identify itself. An ancient place, and that old-world feel is still there, especially in the areas I visited. I learned that well over 50% of the world’s great inventions and innovations originated in China--things like printing, the zero, the compass, the stirrup, the abacus, the seismograph, the rudder, the parachute, and masts and sails. The list is long. But, because of the country’s isolation, and the tendency of one emperor to eradicate all vestiges of those who came before him, the Chinese literally forgot what they had accomplished. Can you imagine?
The country is incredibly varied in geography and culture, it stretches more than 3,000 miles east to west, and it contains two of the world’s great deserts, the Gobi and Taklamakan, which I skirted. Some of the highest mountains on the planet rise from the Tibetan plateau in the south, which I visited. Maybe most impressively, 1.3 billion people live in China, so it’s the most populous place on the planet. But despite all that, the country remains tremendously fragile, its political culture is volatile and unpredictable, bound together only by force and fear. It would not take much to send it over the edge.
Question 2: Who was there, on the ground, with you?
Stephanie Nelle, head of the Magellan Billet, authorized the incursion, facilitated by a cooperating Russian agent known only as Ivan. Cassiopeia Vitt accompanied me, along with Viktor Tomas, a freelance agent I’d dealt with previously in a file titled The Venetian Betrayal. This time Tomas was covertly working with Karl Tang, China’s deputy premier. Cassiopeia and I have not worked together in a while, as my experiences in Germany and the Antarctic last Christmas (detailed in a file titled The Charlemagne Pursuit) and then in France (The Paris Vendetta) did not concern her. Her involvement here came as the result of a long term friendship with a Russian ex-patriot, Lev Sokolov, and the abduction of his son. There’s a file, The Balkan Escape, which explains in detail her connection with Sokolov.
Question 3: Are you able to offer any insight into the epidemic of child trafficking in China?
This is truly a major problem, which Lev Sokolov experienced firsthand.
Some estimate that as many as 70,000 children are stolen in China every year. Its one-child policy and a cultural preference for boys has fostered a vicious trafficking industry. Sons traditionally care for their parents and, of course, carry on the family name, so female fetuses are many times either aborted or abandoned. Incredibly, it’s illegal to abandon, steal, or sell a child in China, but not illegal to buy one. I learned that a young boy costs around $900 U.S. That’s a lot of money considering the average Chinese worker earns only about $1,700 U.S. annually. But people pay it. The government is doing something, but not nearly enough to stop it. Lev Sokolov was fighting an uphill battle, and that’s why he called Cassiopeia.
Question 4: What observations, if any, can you offer on Qin Shi’s tomb?
The tomb mound itself has stood in central China for over 2,200 years. It was once the size of the pyramid at Giza in Egypt. It took thousands of men over 12 years to complete the underground palace complex where Qin Shi is buried. His body still rests beneath the mound. The tomb itself is the size of a football field, topped by a jeweled ceiling representative of stars and a floor that depicts Qin Shi’s empire in three dimensions including mountains, villages, roads, and rivers, lakes, and oceans fashioned of mercury. It has remained unexplored, as no Chinese emperor or government has ever allowed anyone inside. The only written account of the interior was penned 2,000 years ago. A kilometer away stands the terra cotta army--an amazing collection of 8,000 unique soldiers, 130 chariots, and 670 horses, all arrayed in tight battle formation. That area is open to the public and its museum complex is extensively visited. Interestingly, when the terra cotta warriors were discovered in 1974, no one had any idea that they ever existed. Remember that practice of purging memories? The same thing happened here. The emperors who came after Qin Shi made sure that every detail of his existence was forgotten. Only in the past few decades has interest in the First Emperor been rekindled.
Question 5: What are your future plans?
To return to my bookshop and earn a living. But you never know what will happen next. I had a dream the other night that I was drawn back home, to the United States, for some reason. Odd I’d imagine that.
Cotton Malone teams with old heartthrob Cassiopeia Vitt on a dangerous mission to retrieve a priceless Chinese lamp from the third century B.C.E. in Berry's rousing fifth thriller to feature the ex-federal agent (after The Paris Vendetta). Two high-ranking Chinese government ministers, hard-liner Karl Tang and more liberal Ni Yong, both of whom are vying to be China's next premier, covet the lamp. Tang, in particular, has left a trail of bodies in his own quest for the lamp, which, unbeknownst to Malone and Vitt, contains the secret to how the country will surmount its biggest obstacle to future economic growth, its dependence on foreign oil. Berry layers his narrative with well-chosen, if sometimes overly detailed, doses of Chinese history. His action sequences, particularly a shootout inside the vast network of an underground tomb, often take too long to resolve, though the payoff in the end--a goose-pimple–raising showdown in a remote monastery--is worth the wait. (Nov.) (c)
Copyright © PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Tragedy has found Cassiopeia Vitt. The woman she admires most, Esmerelda Fontana, has been brutally murdered. Then Cassiopeia’s castle rebuilding project is viciously attacked and people are hurt. Are the two incidents related? The answer comes when her old friend, Nicodème L’Etoile, is threatened and she finds herself drawn into a tangled web of revenge that leads straight to the person she loves the most.
Cotton Malone.
And his life will depend on what she does next.
From the rocky coasts of northern Spain, to a medieval building site in France, and finally into Italy and the oldest surviving republic in the world, Cassiopeia must confront a devil from her past, a man obsessed with her destruction. The choices she has to make will be the toughest she’s ever faced. Life and death decisions that force her - to the end of forever.
The time has come for Cassiopeia Vitt to sell her ancestral home. It sits on a Spanish bluff by the Mediterranean Sea, and bears the name Casa de Hace Mucho Tiempo, House of Long Ago.
\nTrapped inside its walls are memories from a time when Cassiopeia was growing from a rebellious adolescent into a thoughtful young woman - regretful times when she often found herself estranged from her parents.
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Also inside are fifteen paintings, each one a masterpiece, together representing an investment in the tens of millions of euros - her father’s private art collection - which she intends to donate to museums. But when an art expert declares all fifteen paintings fake, and suggests that her father may have been involved with something illegal, she embarks on a quest to find answers.
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From a secret repository in Andorra, to a mysterious yacht in the Mediterranean, then finally onto the streets of Paris and a horrific reminder from World War II, Cassiopeia must battle every step of the way to stay alive - a fight that will finally bring her face to face with the truth about the House of Long Ago.
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Four United States presidents have been assassinated - in 1865, 1881, 1901, and 1963 - each murder seemingly unrelated and separated by time.
But what if those presidents were all killed for the same reason: a clause in the United States Constitution - contained within Article 1, Section 8 - that would shock Americans?
This question is what faces former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone in his latest adventure. When a bold assassination attempt is made against President Danny Daniels in the heart of Manhattan, Malone risks his life to foil the killing - only to find himself at dangerous odds with the Commonwealth, a secret society of pirates first assembled during the American Revolution. In their most perilous exploit yet, Malone and Cassiopeia Vitt race across the nation and take to the high seas.
Along the way they break a secret cipher originally possessed by Thomas Jefferson, unravel a mystery concocted by Andrew Jackson, and unearth a centuries-old document forged by the Founding Fathers themselves, one powerful enough - thanks to that clause in the Constitution - to make the Commonwealth unstoppable.
Two candidates are vying to become Chancellor of Germany. One is a patriot having served for the past sixteen years, the other a usurper, stoking the flames of nationalistic hate. Both harbor secrets, but only one knows the truth about the other. They are on a collision course, all turning on the events of one fateful day - April 30, 1945 - and what happened deep beneath Berlin in the Fürherbunker. Did Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun die there? Did Martin Bormann, Hitler’s close confidant, manage to escape? And, even more important, where did billions in Nazi wealth disappear to in the waning days of World War II? The answers to these questions will determine who becomes the next Chancellor of Germany.
From the mysterious Chilean lake district, to the dangerous mesas of South Africa, and finally into the secret vaults of Switzerland, former-Justice Department agent Cotton Malone discovers the truth about the fates of Hitler, Braun, and Bormann. Revelations that could not only transform Europe, but finally expose a mystery known as the Kaiser’s web.
Cotton Malone is back! Steve Berry’s new international adventure blends gripping contemporary political intrigue, Tudor treachery, and high-octane thrills into one riveting novel of suspense.
Cotton Malone and his fifteen-year-old son, Gary, are headed to Europe. As a favor to his former boss at the Justice Department, Malone agrees to escort a teenage fugitive back to England. But after he is greeted at gunpoint in London, both the fugitive and Gary disappear, and Malone learns that he’s stumbled into a high-stakes diplomatic showdown—an international incident fueled by geopolitical gamesmanship and shocking Tudor secrets.
At its heart is the Libyan terrorist convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103, who is set to be released by Scottish authorities for “humanitarian reasons.” An outraged American government objects, but nothing can persuade the British to intervene.
Except, perhaps, Operation King’s Deception.
Run by the CIA, the operation aims to solve a centuries-old mystery, one that could rock Great Britain to its royal foundations.
Blake Antrim, the CIA operative in charge of King’s Deception, is hunting for the spark that could rekindle a most dangerous fire, the one thing that every Irish national has sought for generations: a legal reason why the English must leave Northern Ireland. The answer is a long-buried secret that calls into question the legitimacy of the entire forty-five-year reign of Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch, who completed the conquest of Ireland and seized much of its land. But Antrim also has a more personal agenda, a twisted game of revenge in which Gary is a pawn. With assassins, traitors, spies, and dangerous disciples of a secret society closing in, Malone is caught in a lethal bind. To save Gary he must play one treacherous player against another—and only by uncovering the incredible truth can he hope to prevent the shattering consequences of the King’s Deception.
Praise for *The King’s Deception
“A Dan Brown-ian secular conspiracy about the Virgin Queen driving nonstop international intrigue.”—Kirkus Reviews*
Praise for Steve Berry
“Berry raises this genre’s stakes.”—The New York Times
“I love this guy.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child
“Forget Clancy and Cussler. When it comes to this genre, there is simply no one better.”—The Providence Journal
From the Hardcover edition.
Praise for *The King’s Deception
“A Dan Brown-ian secular conspiracy about the Virgin Queen driving nonstop international intrigue.”—Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Steve Berry
“Berry raises this genre’s stakes.”—The New York Times
“I love this guy.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child
“Forget Clancy and Cussler. When it comes to this genre, there is simply no one better.”—The Providence Journal*
Steve Berry is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of The King’s Deception, The Columbus Affair, The Jefferson Key, The Emperor’s Tomb, The Paris Vendetta, The Charlemagne Pursuit, The Venetian Betrayal, The Alexandria Link, The Templar Legacy, The Third Secret, The Romanov Prophecy, and The Amber Room. His books have been translated into 40 languages with more than 15,000,000 printed copies in 51 countries.
History lies at the heart of every Steve Berry novel. It’s this passion, one he shares with his wife, Elizabeth, that led them to create History Matters, a foundation dedicated to historic preservation. Since 2009 Steve and Elizabeth have traveled across the country to save endangered historic treasures, raising money via lectures, receptions, galas, luncheons, dinners, and their popular writers’ workshops. To date, nearly 2,000 students have attended those workshops. In 2012 their work was recognized by the American Library Association, which named Steve the first spokesman for National Preservation Week. He was also appointed by the Smithsonian Board of Regents to serve on the Smithsonian Libraries Advisory Board to help promote and support the libraries in their mission to provide information in all forms to scientists, curators, scholars, students and the public at large. He was named Georgia Author of the Year (2005) and has received the Royden B. Davis Distinguished Author Award and the 2013 Writers for Writers Award bestowed by Poets & Writers.
Steve Berry was born and raised in Georgia, graduating from the Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer University. He was a trial lawyer for 30 years and held elective office for 14 of those years. He is a founding member of International Thriller Writers—a group of more than 2,000 thriller writers from around the world—and served three years as its co-president.
For more information, visit www.steveberry.org.
Cotton Malone and his fifteen-year-old son, Gary, are headed to Europe. As a favor to his former boss at the Justice Department, Malone agrees to escort a teenage fugitive back to England. But after he is greeted at gunpoint in London, both the fugitive and Gary disappear, and Malone learns that he’s stumbled into a high-stakes diplomatic showdown - an international incident fueled by geopolitical gamesmanship and shocking Tudor secrets.
At its heart is the Libyan terrorist convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103, who is set to be released by Scottish authorities for “humanitarian reasons.” An outraged American government objects, but nothing can persuade the British to intervene.
Except, perhaps, Operation King’s Deception.
Run by the CIA, the operation aims to solve a centuries-old mystery, one that could rock Great Britain to its royal foundations.
Blake Antrim, the CIA operative in charge of King’s Deception, is hunting for the spark that could rekindle a most dangerous fire, the one thing that every Irish national has sought for generations: a legal reason why the English must leave Northern Ireland. The answer is a long-buried secret that calls into question the legitimacy of the entire forty-five-year reign of Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch, who completed the conquest of Ireland and seized much of its land. But Antrim also has a more personal agenda, a twisted game of revenge in which Gary is a pawn. With assassins, traitors, spies, and dangerous disciples of a secret society closing in, Malone is caught in a lethal bind. To save Gary he must play one treacherous player against another - and only by uncovering the incredible truth can he hope to prevent the shattering consequences of the King’s Deception.
For over a decade Cassiopeia Vitt has been building an authentic French castle, using only materials and techniques from the 13th century. But when a treasure is unearthed at the construction site - an ancient Book of Hours - a multitude of questions are raised, all pointing to an ancient and forgotten religious sect.
Once the Cathars existed all across southern France, challenging Rome and attracting the faithful by the tens of thousands. Eventually, in 1208, the Pope declared them heretics and ordered a crusade - the first where Christians killed Christians - and thousands were slaughtered, the Cathars all but exterminated. Now a piece of that past has re-emerged, one that holds the key to the hiding place of the most precious object the Cathars possessed.
\n
And when more than one person becomes interested in that secret, in particular a thief and a billionaire, the race is on.
King Ludwig II of Bavaria was an enigmatic figure who was deposed in 1886, mysteriously drowning three days later. Eccentric to the point of madness, in the years before he died Ludwig engaged in a worldwide search for a new kingdom. One separate from Bavaria, a place he could retreat to and rule as he wished. But a question remains: Did he succeed?
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tEnter Cotton Malone. Luke Daniels, Malone’s Magellan Billet protégé, has managed to infiltrate a renegade group on the trail of a 19th century deed that proves Ludwig’s long-rumored search bore fruit. A document that could not only secure Bavaria’s independence, but also change the balance of power in the modern world. The United States, China, and Germany all want it.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tIn a race across Bavaria for clues hidden inside Ludwig’s three fairytale castles, Cotton and Luke battle an ever-growing list of deadly adversaries all intent on finding the last kingdom.
September 1861: All is not as it seems. *With these cryptic words, a shocking secret passed down from president to president comes to rest in the hands of Abraham Lincoln. And as the first bloody clashes of the Civil War unfold, Lincoln alone must decide how best to use this volatile knowledge: save thousands of American lives, or keep the young nation from being torn apart forever?
The present: In Utah, the fabled remains of Mormon pioneers whose nineteenth-century expedition across the desert met with a murderous end have been uncovered. In Washington, D.C., the official investigation of an international entrepreneur, an elder in the Mormon church, has sparked a political battle between the White House and a powerful United States senator. In Denmark, a Justice Department agent, missing in action, has fallen into the hands of a dangerous zealot - a man driven by divine visions to make a prophet’s words reality. And in a matter of a few short hours, Cotton Malone has gone from quietly selling books at his shop in Denmark to dodging bullets in a high-speed boat chase.
All it takes is a phone call from his former boss in Washington, and suddenly the ex-agent is racing to rescue an informant carrying critical intelligence. It’s just the kind of perilous business that Malone has been trying to leave behind, ever since he retired from the Justice Department. But once he draws enemy blood, Malone is plunged into a deadly conflict - a constitutional war secretly set in motion more than two hundred years ago by America’s Founding Fathers.
From the streets of Copenhagen to the catacombs of Salzburg to the rugged mountains of Utah, the grim specter of the Civil War looms as a dangerous conspiracy gathers power. Malone risks life, liberty, and his greatest love in a race for the truth about Abraham Lincoln - while the fate of the United States of America hangs in the balance.
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The Knights of the Golden Circle was the largest and most dangerous clandestine organization in American history. It amassed billions in stolen gold and silver, all buried in hidden caches across the United States. Since 1865 treasure hunters have searched, but little of that immense wealth has ever been found.
Now, one hundred and sixty years later, two factions of what remains of the Knights of the Golden Circle want that lost treasure - one to spend it for their own ends, the other to preserve it.
Thrust into this battle is former Justice Department agent Cotton Malone, whose connection to the knights is far deeper than he ever imagined. At the center is the Smithsonian Institution - linked to the knights, its treasure, and Malone himself through an ancestor, a Confederate spy named Angus \"Cotton\" Adams, whose story holds the key to everything. Complicating matters are the political ambitions of a reckless Speaker of the House and the bitter widow of a United States Senator, who together are planning radical changes to the country. And while Malone and Cassiopeia Vitt face the past, ex-president Danny Daniels and Stephanie Nelle confront a new and unexpected challenge, a threat that may cost one of them their life.
From the backrooms of the Smithsonian to the deepest woods in rural Arkansas, and finally up into the rugged mountains of northern New Mexico, The Lost Order is a perilous adventure into the dark past of the United States, and a potentially even darker future.
The pope is dead. A conclave to select his replacement is about to begin. Cardinals are beginning to arrive at the Vatican, but one has fled Rome for Malta in search of a document that dates back to the 4th century and Constantine the Great.
\nFormer Justice Department operative, Cotton Malone, is at Lake Como, Italy, on the trail of legendary letters between Winston Churchill and Benito Mussolini that disappeared in 1945 and could re-write history. But someone else seems to be after the same letters and, when Malone obtains then loses them, he’s plunged into a hunt that draws the attention of the legendary Knights of Malta.
\nThe knights have existed for over nine hundred years, the only warrior-monks to survive into modern times. Now they are a global humanitarian organisation, but within their ranks lurks trouble - the Secreti - an ancient sect intent on affecting the coming papal conclave. With the help of Magellan Billet agent Luke Daniels, Malone races the rogue cardinal, the knights, the Secreti, and the clock to find what has been lost for centuries. The final confrontation culminates behind the walls of the Vatican where the election of the next pope hangs in the balance.
Cotton Malone is on the hunt for a forgotten 16th century Pledge of Christ—a sworn promise made by Pope Julius II that evidences a monetary debt owed by the Vatican, still valid after five centuries - now worth in the trillions of dollars. But collecting that debt centers around what happened to the famed Medici of Florence - a family that history says died out, without heirs, centuries ago.
\nWho will become the next prime minister of Italy, and who will be the next pope? Finding answers proves difficult until Cotton realizes that everything hinges on when, and if, the Medici return.
In the French mountain village of Eze, Cassiopeia visits an old friend who owns and operates the fabled Museum of Mysteries, a secretive place of the odd and arcane. When a robbery occurs at the museum, Cassiopeia gives chase to the thief and is plunged into a firestorm.
\nThrough a mix of modern day intrigue and ancient alchemy, Cassiopeia is propelled back and forth through time, the inexplicable journeys leading her into a hotly contested French presidential election. Both candidates harbor secrets they would prefer to keep quiet, but an ancient potion could make that impossible.
When Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile in 1821, he took to the grave a powerful secret. As general and emperor, he had stolen immeasurable riches from palaces, national treasuries, and even the Knights of Malta and the Vatican. In his final days, his British captors hoped to learn where the loot lay hidden. But he told them nothing, and in his will he made no mention of the treasure. Or did he?
\nFormer Justice Department operative Cotton Malone isn't looking for trouble when it comes knocking at his Copenhagen bookshop. Actually, it breaks and enters in the form of an American Secret Service agent with a pair of assassins on his heels. Malone has his doubts about the anxious young man, but narrowly surviving a ferocious firefight convinces him to follow his unexpected new ally.
\nTheir first stop is the secluded estate of Malone's good friend, Henrik Thorvaldsen. The wily Danish tycoon has uncovered the insidious plans of the Paris Club, a cabal of multimillionaires bent on manipulating the global economy. Only by matching wits with a terrorist-for-hire, foiling a catastrophic attack, and plunging into a desperate hunt for Napoleon's legendary lost treasure can Malone hope to avert international financial anarchy. But Thorvaldsen's real objective is much more personal: to avenge the murder of his son by the larcenous aristocrat at the heart of the conspiracy.
\nThorvaldsen's vendetta places Malone in an impossible quandary - one that forces him to choose between friend and country, past and present. Starting in Denmark, moving to England, and ending up in the storied streets and cathedrals of Paris, Malone plays a breathless game of duplicity and death, all to claim a prize of untold value. But at what cost?
The 16th Amendment to the Constitution is why Americans pay income taxes. But what if there were problems associated with that amendment? Secrets that call into question decades of tax collecting? In fact, there is a surprising truth to this hidden possibility.
Cotton Malone, once a member of an elite intelligence division within the Justice Department known as the Magellan Billet, is now retired and owns an old bookshop in Denmark. But when his former-boss, Stephanie Nelle, asks him to track a rogue North Korean who may have acquired some top secret Treasury Department files - the kind that could bring the United States to its knees - Malone is vaulted into a harrowing twenty-four hour chase that begins on the canals in Venice and ends in the remote highlands of Croatia.
With appearances by Franklin Roosevelt, Andrew Mellon, a curious painting that still hangs in the National Gallery of Art, and some eye-opening revelations from the $1 bill, this riveting, non-stop adventure is trademark Steve Berry - 90% historical fact, 10% exciting speculation - a provocative thriller posing a dangerous question:
\nWhat if the Federal income tax is illegal?
\n
Wrapping up his latest assignment for the Magellan Billet, Luke Daniels receives a surprise visit from the head of a former-CIA operation named Sommerhaus - a failed attempt to assemble an espionage network within the Ukraine on the eve of the Russian invasion. Sommerhaus ranks high on Luke’s list of painful regrets for it was during this mission that his friend, CIA case officer John Vince, was captured by Russian operatives and supposedly executed. But Luke is provided some shocking news. Vince is alive, in failing health, locked behind the walls of Russia’s brutal Solovetsky Island prison, and has a critical message he’ll give to no one but Luke. Needing no further convincing Luke vows to bring Vince home.
\n\n
However, just as he manages to extract his friend from prison Vince tragically dies and his final words are rambling and incoherent. Just bits and pieces. But enough to plunge Luke into a hunt for something lost since the 15th century. The legendary library of the first Tsar of All Russia, Ivan the Terrible.
\n\n
Within that priceless collection of rare manuscripts is the key to unraveling a modern-day cipher and stopping a secret Soviet satellite program that still exists. But Luke is not the only one on the trail. Others, both inside and out of Russia, want the library for a totally different reason - to re-start the Red Star program and finally unleash its destructive potential. Luke’s mission is clear. Find the lost library, solve the puzzle, and prevent Red Star falling.
History is being made and Miles Lord has a ringside seat. The people of Russia have voted to bring back the tsar, a ruler to be selected from the distant relatives of Nicholas II, who was murdered along with the rest of the Romanov family in 1918.
\nMiles has been asked to run a background check on one of the candidates. But excitement turns to terror when Miles is nearly killed by gunmen.
\nSuddenly, he is racing across continents with only a cryptic utterance by Rasputin, made at the time of the Romanov massacre, as his guide. The implications of this prophecy are earth-shattering - not only for the future tsar and mother Russia, but for Miles himself.
\n
The ancient order of the Knights Templar possessed untold wealth and absolute power over kings and popes . . . until the Inquisition, when they were wiped from the face of the earth, their hidden riches lost.
\nBut now two forces vying for the treasure have learned that it is not at all what they thought it was-and its true nature could change the modern world.
Cotton Malone, one-time top operative for the U.S. Justice Department, is enjoying his quiet new life as an antiquarian book dealer in Copenhagen when an unexpected call to action reawakens his hair-trigger instincts-and plunges him back into the cloak-and-dagger world he thought he'd left behind.
It begins with a violent robbery attempt on Cotton's former supervisor, Stephanie Nelle, who's far from home on a mission that has nothing to do with national security. Armed with vital clues to a series of centuries-old puzzles scattered across Europe, she means to crack a mystery that has tantalised scholars and fortune-hunters through the ages by finding the legendary cache of wealth and forbidden knowledge thought to have been lost forever when the order of the Knights Templar was exterminated in the fourteenth century. But she's not alone. Competing for the historic prize-and desperate for the crucial information Stephanie possesses-is Raymond de Roquefort, a shadowy zealot with an army of assassins at his command.
Welcome or not, Cotton seeks to even the odds in the perilous race. But the more he learns about the ancient conspiracy surrounding the Knights Templar, the more he realizes that even more than lives are at stake. At the end of a lethal game of conquest, rife with intrigue, treachery, and craven lust for power, lies a shattering discovery that could rock the civilized world-and, in the wrong hands, bring it to its knees.
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Now, fifty years later, former Justice Department agent, Cotton Malone, must reckon with the truth of what really happened that fateful day in Memphis.
It all turns on an incident from eighteen years ago, when Malone, as a young Navy lawyer, is trying hard not to live up to his burgeoning reputation as a maverick. When Stephanie Nelle, a high-level Justice Department lawyer, enlists him to help with an investigation, he jumps at the opportunity. But he soon discovers that two opposing forces―the Justice Department and the FBI―are at war over a rare coin and a cadre of secret files containing explosive revelations about the King assassination, information that could ruin innocent lives and threaten the legacy of the civil rights movement’s greatest martyr.
Malone’s decision to see it through to the end ― from the raucous bars of Mexico, to the clear waters of the Dry Tortugas, and ultimately into the halls of power within Washington D.C. itself ― not only changes his own life, but the course of history.
What is the Third Secret?
\nIt is rumoured to be a prediction so shocking that it has been locked away for over eighty years. Could this be what is drawing Pope Clement XV to the Vatican archive, night after sleepless night?
\nWhen Father Colin Michener is sent on a secret mission to the highlands of Romania, he is pitched into a vortex of suspicion, deceit, murder and forbidden passion. Suddenly, he is forced to face the very thing that has so distressed the Pope - and to unravel a mystery that will shake the world.
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In England to participate in the trial of suspected international terrorists, Justice Department agent Cotton Malone is mysteriously summoned to an audience with the Queen of England. A cryptic call has warned of looming danger to the ailing queen’s son and grandson - the next two heirs in line for the throne. And when the source of that ominous information, a notorious tabloid publisher, dies mysteriously, the royal family has reason to fear a genuine conspiracy.
\nBut they also suspect that the enemy lies within - and no one at Buckingham Palace, or even the nation’s own Secret Intelligence Service, can be trusted. Now it’s up to Malone to discover the truth. Matching wits with a power-mad politician and a vicious royal blue blood, he must race against time through the streets of London to the forbidden reaches of Iceland, all to stop a monstrous plot to seize the monarchy - one that stretches back to the time of Arthur.
In 323 B.C.E, having conquered Persia, Alexander the Great set his sights on Arabia, then suddenly succumbed to a strange fever. Locating his final resting place - unknown to this day - remains a tantalising goal for both archaeologists and treasure hunters. Now the quest for this coveted prize is about to heat up. And Cotton Malone - former U.S. Justice Department agent turned rare-book dealer - will be drawn into an intense geopolitical chess game.
After narrowly escaping incineration in a devastating fire that consumes a Danish museum, Cotton learns from his friend, the beguiling adventurer Cassiopeia Vitt, that the blaze was neither an accident nor an isolated incident. As part of campaign of arson intended to mask a far more diabolical design, buildings across Europe are being devoured by infernos of unnatural strength.
And from the ashes of the U.S.S.R., a new nation has arisen: Former Soviet republics have consolidated into the Central Asian Federation. At its helm is Supreme Minister Irina Zovastina, a cunning despot with a talent for politics, a taste for blood sport, and the single-minded desire to surpass Alexander the Great as history’s ultimate conqueror.
Backed by a secret cabal of powerbrokers, the Federation has amassed a harrowing arsenal of biological weapons. Equipped with the hellish power to decimate other nations at will, only one thing keeps Zovastina from setting in motion her death march of domination: a miraculous healing serum, kept secret by an ancient puzzle and buried with the mummified remains of Alexander the Great - in a tomb lost to the ages for more than 1,500 years.
Together, Cotton and Cassiopeia must outrun and outthink the forces allied against them. Their perilous quest will take them to the shores of Denmark, deep into the venerated monuments of Venice, and finally high inside the desolate Pamir mountains of Central Asia to unravel a riddle whose solution could destroy or save millions of people - depending on who finds the lost tomb first.
One by one the seven precious relics of the Arma Christi, the weapons of Christ, are disappearing from sanctuaries across the world.
After former Justice Department agent Cotton Malone witnesses the theft of one of them, he learns from his old boss, Stephanie Nelle, that a private auction is about to be held where incriminating information on the president of Poland will be offered to the highest bidder - blackmail that both the United States and Russia want, but for vastly different reasons.
The price of admission to that auction is one of the relics, so Malone is first sent to a castle in Poland to steal the Holy Lance, a thousand-year-old spear sacred to not only Christians but to the Polish people, and then on to the auction itself. But nothing goes as planned and Malone is thrust into a bloody battle between three nations over a secret that, if exposed, could change the balance of power in Europe.
From the tranquil canals of Bruges, to the elegant rooms of Wawel Castle, to the ancient salt mines deep beneath the earth outside Krakow, Malone is caught in the middle of a deadly war - the outcome of which turns on something known as the Warsaw Protocol.
Daniel Miller murdered fourteen people before he vanished.
\nHis wife, Carrie, now faces trial as his accomplice. The FBI, the District Attorney, the media and everyone in America believe she knew and helped cover up her husband's crimes.
\nEddie Flynn won't take a case unless his client is innocent. Now, he has to prove to a jury, and the entire world, that Carrie Miller didn't know her husband's dark side. But so far, Eddie and his team are the only ones who believe that she had no part in the murders.
\nWith his wife on trial, Daniel Miller is forced to come out of hiding to save her from a life sentence. He will kill to protect her and everyone involved in the case is a target. Even Eddie Flynn . . .
\n
Eddie Flynn used to be a con artist. Then he became a lawyer. Turned out the two weren't that different.
\nIt's been over a year since Eddie vowed never to set foot in a courtroom again. But now he doesn't have a choice. Olek Volchek, the infamous head of the Russian mafia in New York, has strapped a bomb to Eddie's back and kidnapped his ten-year-old daughter, Amy. Eddie only has forty-eight hours to defend Volchek in an impossible murder trial - and win - if he wants to save his daughter.
\nUnder the scrutiny of the media and the FBI, Eddie must use his razor-sharp wit and every con-artist trick in the book to defend his 'client' and ensure Amy's safety. With the timer on his back ticking away, can Eddie convince the jury of the impossible?
\n
They call him the King of Death Row. Randal Korn has sent more men to their deaths than any district attorney in the history of the United States.
\nWhen a young woman, Skylar Edwards, is found murdered in Buckstown, Alabama, a corrupt sheriff arrests the last person to see her alive, Andy Dubois. It doesn't seem to matter to anyone that Andy is innocent.
\nEveryone in Buckstown believes Andy is guilty. He has no hope of a fair trial. And the local defense attorney assigned to represent him has disappeared.
\nHot shot New York lawyer Eddie Flynn travels south to fight fire with fire. He plans to destroy the prosecutors case, find the real killer and save Andy from the electric chair.
\nBut the murders are just beginning.
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Two sisters on trial for murder. They accuse each other. Who do you believe?
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Alexandra Avellino has just found her father's mutilated body, and needs the police right away. She believes her sister killed him, and that she is still in the house with a knife.
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Sofia Avellino has just found her father's mutilated body and needs the police right away. She believes her sister, Alexandra did it, and that she is still in the house, locked in the bathroom.
\nBoth women are to go on trial at the same time. A joint trial in front of one jury.
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But one of these women is lying. One of them is a murderer. Sitting in a jail cell, about to go on trial with her sister for murder, you might think that this is the last place she expected to be.
\n\n
You'd be wrong.
\n\n
One dark evening on New York City’s Upper West Side, two strangers meet by chance. Over drinks, Amanda and Wendy realise they have much in common, especially loneliness and an intense desire for revenge against the men who destroyed their families. As they talk into the night, they come up with the perfect if you kill for me, I’ll kill for you.
\nIn another part of the city, Ruth is home alone when the beautiful brownstone she shares with her husband, Scott, is invaded. She’s attacked by a man with piercing blue eyes, who disappears into the night. Will she ever be able to feel safe again while the blue-eyed stranger is out there?
\n
Once a con artist, now a hotshot lawyer, Eddie Flynn's learnt that fast talk and sleight of hand are just as important in the courtroom are they are on the street. That's why Leonard Howell asks for Eddie's help when his 19-year-old daughter goes missing - he needs someone willing to break the rules.
\nBut what if the whole thing was a setup from the very beginning? With a client on trial for his life and the body count rising, the only question is which is deadlier - a man who keeps his oath or one who breaks it?
\nA missing girl, a desperate father and a case that threatens to destroy everyone involved - Eddie Flynn's got his work cut out.
\n
When David Child, a major client of a corrupt New York law firm, is arrested for murder, the FBI ask con artist-turned-lawyer Eddie Flynn to secure the case and force him to testify against the firm.
\nEddie is not someone who is easily coerced, but when the FBI reveal that they have incriminating files on his wife, he knows he has no choice.
\nBut Eddie is convinced the man is innocent, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. With the FBI putting pressure on him to secure the deal, Eddie must find a way to prove his client's innocence.
\nBut the stakes are high - his wife is in danger. And not just from the FBI . . .
\n
Hollywood actor Robert Soloman stands accused of the brutal stabbings of his wife and her lover, but he is desperately pleading that he had nothing to do with it. This is the trial of the century, and the defence want Eddie Flynn on their team.
\nThe biggest case Eddie has ever tried before, he decides to take it on despite the overwhelming evidence that Robert is guilty. As the trial starts, Eddie becomes sure of Robert's innocence, but there's something else he is even more sure of - that there is something sinister going on in the jury box.
\nBecause of this, he is forced to ask: what if the killer isn't on the stand? What if he's on the jury?
\n
Elly Parker had everything.
\nPerfect husband. Perfect apartment. Perfect friends and the perfect job.
\nAs an internet celebrity - famed for her random acts of kindness - everyone knew it.
\nSo when a betrayal causes her to lose it all, millions of people are watching.
\nBut even at her lowest, Elly will always help someone in need.
\nWhich makes her the perfect target for a sadistic game.
\nBecause as she soon learns, you can never trust a stranger - and a seemingly random encounter plunges her into a nightmare worse than she ever imagined.
\nThe only person she can turn to is conman turned trial lawyer Eddie Flynn, who must take on a case where nothing is what it seems. With the most cruelly ingenious mind manipulating events from the shadows, everyone is in danger - including Eddie and his family.
\n
Ruby Johnson is a nanny and maid to wealthy families in Manhattan's West 74th Street. She knows their routines. Their secrets. One night, on her way home, Ruby witnesses a neighbour's murder.
\nShe knows the victim. She knows the killer. She makes an anonymous call to the police and names the murderer. But Ruby didn't tell the truth . . . Because there's something wrong with Ruby Johnson.
\nEddie Flynn, conman turned trial lawyer, must defend an innocent man accused of this terrible crime. As Ruby's deadly game begins, one thing is certain. It won't be the last murder this witness is involved in . . .
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The year is 2070, and the New You Foundation claim to have found the ultimate answer to the climate crisis. They want human beings to transform themselves into Pleekas - perfect artificial replicas. Pleekas can go on for ever but won’t create waste or use the Earth's resources.
\nToo good to be true?
\nWhen a chance meeting leads young journalist Anders Jones to the sinister truth, he must risk everything to expose New You - if it’s not already too late . . .
She's got a magical hand cannon and is carrying God's sword. That makes her tough to beat, but when the devil himself sends the four horsemen of the actual impending apocalypse after her . . . let's just say all bets are off.
\nWith a demon at her side, who she's not crazy enough to trust, Anastasia is going after the missing armour of God.
\nIt would be an easier task if anyone on Earth knew where the angels hid it.
\nShe'll recruit help, but can she get to the armour before the horsemen get to her?
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The world knows nothing of the supernaturals among them . . . but that’s all about to change.
\nWhen Anastasia Aaronson stumbles across two hellish creatures, her body reacts by channeling magic to defend itself and unleashes power the Earth has forgotten.
\nBut as she flexes her new-found magical muscle, it draws the attention of a demon who has a very particular use for her. Now she must learn to control the power she can wield as a world of magical beings take an interest.
\nShe may be damaged, but caught in a struggle she knew nothing about, she will rise, and the demons may learn they are not the real monsters.
\nThe demons know she is special, but if they knew the truth, they would run.
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The death curse has fallen. The demons and angels have invaded the Earth. They plan to rule over humanity, but which side will win and can the people of Earth do anything to stop them?
\nBeelzebub and the demons are too powerful to be stopped.
\nGodfrey and the angels have an ancient weapon that can kill with a thought.
\nThe humans have pluck. Um, that might not get it done.
\nIn a magical war, conventional weapons are all but pointless, so all that stands between humanity and total annihilation is a handful of people with supernatural abilities - shifters and wizards, plus Anastasia Aaronson who just might be a demigod. Together they must find a way to fight back, a way to stop the false gods from taking over everything and everyone.
\nLuck is not on their side, neither is fate, but sometimes you just have to wing it and hope for the best.
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Hounded by the police, trying to learn a new job in a new town, and constantly picking up after her slob of a flat mate, Anastasia has all she needs on her plate - add being hunted by demons to the mix won’t help then. Whatever it is that makes her special, it’s attracting a lot of heat.
\nThe demons all seem to want her, but the ancient secret driving them to her might also hold the key to her survival. Trained to kill, naturally aggressive, and angrier than a bear with no breakfast, Anastasia is looking for a way to turn the tables on her captors. Trick her into being a demon’s slave - big mistake.
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Otto Schneider isn’t the kind of guy who bothers to seek permission.
\nThe demons have withdrawn from the mortal realm, the attacks have ceased, but while humanity dares to hope they may have gone for good, the irascible German wizard knows better.
\nIn the face of overwhelming odds, he’s going to do the dumbest thing possible . . . attack.
\nIn the wake of the destruction in Croatia, Otto is taking the fight to the demons and he’s not going alone.
\nIt’s a stupid strategy, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work.
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Zachary has a secret he tries to keep under wraps . . . if only people would let him. When he drifts into a remote farming community looking for work, the trouble starts before he orders breakfast.
\nNormally he would just avoid the trouble and move on, but there’s a girl. Not a woman. A little girl, and the men that want to dominate the village threaten her livelihood. And that just won’t do.
\nThere’s something very rotten in this community but digging into it brings him face to face with something more powerful even than him. Something ancient and unstoppable. He has no choice other than to fight, but who will walk away?
\nAs the false gods force their way into the realm of mortals, how many will rise to defend the Earth?
\nBe ready for war.
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Immortal wizard, Otto Schneider misjudged his deal with Daniel badly. Now he’s a demon’s puppet and, kidnapping people because he has no choice . . . or so the demons think.
\nForced to perform dread work or watch others suffer, he must bide his time, but millennia of being unopposed has made the demons complacent and they turn their back on him at their peril.
\nOtto intends to find a way back to Bremen, his wife, his new student, Katja, and everything he loves, but he cannot do it without help. Who can you trust when you are already in hell?
\nAmid a web of deceit and betrayal, our wizard must find a way to overcome the ancient magic that binds him and strike back against the demons who threaten to invade the Earth.
\nThe defender of Bremen is coming back and he’s bringing hell with him.
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A quiet town in the American Midwest is about to be rocked to its core.
\nAs three young sisters come to terms with what they are – being a witch is a real problem in a churchgoing, God-fearing family - a new neighbour with a mysterious past hints at trouble to come.
\nHowever, the scary woman stalking them could be the least of their worries, as their spellcasting draws the attention of something ancient and evil.
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Zachary has the shield of God. Anastasia wants it.
\nNeed I say more?
\nImmortal werewolf meets . . . well, whatever Anastasia is, head on.
\nIt’s about to get brutal.
No one knows about them. No one is ready. The false gods are coming.
\nIn seven days, I have to surrender myself to a demon. That was what I agreed to. That was the price to rescue a teenage girl.
\nWhat would you do with your last week? My plan to drink good whisky and relax got shot to hell within hours when the police, who hate me by the way, begged for my help. They have a murder with . . . strange circumstances.
\nI only need one look at the pictures to know they look like werewolf wounds. Could the killer we are chasing be my friend the snarky werewolf? I certainly hope not because I’m not sure he can be stopped.
\nAs I chase across Europe, with my time running out, the body count continues to rise. That’s not my only problem though. Clandestine organisation, The Alliance, are enacting their own agenda, which seems to include me whether I like it or not, the rescued girl’s father wants to sue me, and the demon I killed is back to get his revenge.
\nIt’s going to be a tough week.
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Home is where the heart is. Until someone shreds it beyond repair.
\nA blue-eyed demon killed Otto Schneider’s wife and vanished right before his eyes. Now the fury burning in him demands revenge and woe betide anyone foolish enough to stand in his way.
\nOnly trouble is Otto doesn’t know where to start.
\nNot until he walks into a freakish magical . . . thing, wearing a veil to look human. He’s on a missing person case when it happens, just a routine job that turns out to be anything but.
\nIt leads him to the home of a little girl who also just went missing, taken through a vanishing magical portal by a demon with blue eyes. He’ll stop at nothing to save the girl and make the demon pay, but there’s a whole load of things Otto doesn’t know. Like that he’s being watched for one.
\nSupernaturals might like to think they operate in the shadows, unknown and untraceable, but shadow government organisation, the SIA, know exactly who Otto Schneider is.
\nIt’s a shame for them they don’t know what he is capable of.
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Bob Bloomfield is, in the words of his best friend's wife, a 'selfish, arrogant a*sehole', who hasn't spent a great deal of time making friends in his 49 years on earth.
\nBut what if he could change?
\nWhat if Bob could stop the very thing that has made him the man he is, the death of his younger brother, Tom in 1986.
\nIf he could save Tom, could he save himself? . . .
\nAnd what if all it took was a phone call - to his childhood self?
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Ray might be about to die. But he’s sure as hell not going quietly . . .
\nFormer policeman Ray ‘Sugar’ Leonard is no stranger to bad breaks. But even Walter White never had to open up and share his feelings with a bunch of misfits like Ray’s chemotherapy group: a giant God-bothering Welsh bouncer, a sharp-suited wannabe Wolf of Wall Street, and a misanthropic, potty-mouthed little old lady.
\nCompared to that lot, getting mugged on his way home from the clinic was almost a relief.
\nBut Ray is not your average victim. And when his training kicks in and his would-be attacker winds up dead, he wonders, who else might be equally deserving of such summary justice? After all, he’s got cancer, what’s he got to lose?
\nThen Ray lets slip his new philosophy to the group and it soon becomes clear that he’s not the only one with murder in mind . . .
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On a fall night in 1954, in working-class Lindenhurst, Long Island, a woman goes alone to a bar filled with German speakers who’ve finished their shifts at different jobs - some at a groundbreaking new project run by a man named Leavitt. They are gathered to listen to the first game of the World Series between the New York Giants and the Cleveland Indians at the Polo Grounds. The game would make the history books because of “The Catch” at the outfield wall by Willie Mays.
\nBut Lindenhurst's new chief of police, Paul Beirne, can't think about baseball. Still struggling with the demons from his time as a POW in Japan during the war, he gets the call that a woman's mutilated body is found in a field north of Lindenhurst, near where a new cemetery is being constructed to accommodate the growing suburbs. There hasn’t been a murder in the village in decades, and on top of this horrific crime, there is a suspicious accident on the railroad tracks.
\nPaul turns to his friend Doc, a Holocaust survivor and who, like Paul, suffers from the horrors of his past. But Paul has personal horrors, too, that are outside the purview of war. Or so he thinks. In stark contrast to the whitewashed ideal Leavitt and others in Lindenhurst are trying to create, an evil as taken root in Lindenhurst. What Paul and Doc uncover will lead Paul to another murder, one committed two decades before, as past and present, family and world war, collide.
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The follow-up to Pinker's groundbreaking The Better Angels of Our Nature presents the big picture of human progress: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.
\nIs the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide.
\nThis progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature - tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking - which demagogues are all too willing to exploit.
\nMany commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
As a cognitive scientist, the ultimate subject of Steven Pinker’s fascination is how we think about each other’s thoughts about each other’s thoughts, ad infinitum. It sounds impossible, but Steven Pinker shows that we do it all the time. This awareness, which we experience as something that is public or “out there,” is called common knowledge, and it has a momentous impact on our social, political, and economic lives.
\nCommon knowledge, Pinker shows, can make sense of many of life’s financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions that come out of nowhere, the posturing and pretence of diplomacy, the eruption of social media shaming mobs and academic cancel culture, the awkwardness of a first date. But people also go to great lengths to avoid common knowledge - to ensure that even if everyone knows something, they can’t know that everyone else knows they know it. And so we get rituals like benign hypocrisy, veiled bribes and threats, sexual innuendo, and pretending not to see the elephant in the room.
\nIn exploring the paradoxes of human behaviour, When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows . . . invites us to understand the ways we try to get into each other’s heads, and the harmonies, hypocrisies, and outrages that result.
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It’s been a minute - or five years - since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends, and twenty-eight years since their graduation when their adult lives officially began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no closer to having their lives figured out. Though not for a lack of trying. Over the years they’ve reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living “funerals,” celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living - that their lives mean something, to one another if not to themselves.
\nBut this reunion is different. They’re not gathered as they were to bolster Marielle as her marriage crumbled, to lift Naomi after her parents died, or to intervene when Craig pleaded guilty to art fraud. This time, Jordan is sitting on a secret that will upend their pact.
\nThe Celebrants is a moving tale about the false invincibility of youth and the beautiful ways in which friendship helps us celebrate our lives, even amid the deepest challenges of living.
After years of trying to make it as a writer in 1990s New York City, James Smale finally sells his novel to an editor at a major publishing house: none other than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Jackie - or Mrs. Onassis, as she's known in the office - has fallen in love with James's candidly autobiographical novel, one that exposes his own dysfunctional family. But when the book's forthcoming publication threatens to unravel already fragile relationships, both within his family and with his partner, James finds that he can't bring himself to finish the manuscript.
Jackie and James develop an unexpected friendship, and she pushes him to write an authentic ending, encouraging him to head home to confront the truth about his relationship with his mother. Then a long-held family secret is revealed, and he realizes his editor may have had a larger plan that goes beyond the page . . .
Patrick O’Hara is back. It’s been five years since his summer as his niece Maisie and nephew Grant’s caretaker after their mother’s passing. The kids are back in Connecticut with their dad, and Patrick has relocated to New York to remain close by and relaunch his dormant acting career. After the run of his second successful sit-com comes to a close, Patrick feels on top of the world . . . professionally. But some things have had to take a back seat. Looking down both barrels at fifty, Patrick is single again after breaking things off with Emory. But at least he has a family to lean on. Until that family needs to again lean on him.
\nWhen Patrick's brother, Greg, announces he’s getting remarried in Italy, Maisie and Grant are not thrilled. Patrick feels drawn to take the two back under his wing. As they travel through Europe on their way to the wedding, Patrick tries his best to help them understand love, much as he once helped them comprehend grief. But when they arrive in Italy, Patrick is overextended managing a groom with cold feet; his sister, Clara, flirting with guests left and right; a growing rivalry with the kids’ charming soon-to-be-launt (lesbian aunt), and two moody young teens trying to adjust to a new normal, all culminating in a disastrous rehearsal dinner.
\nCan Patrick save the day? Will teaching the kids about love help him repair his own love life? Can the change of scenery help Patrick come to terms with finally growing up?
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Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out to Palm Springs for weeklong visits, or when he heads home to Connecticut for the holidays. But in terms of caretaking and relating to two children, no matter how adorable, Patrick is honestly a bit out of his league.
\nSo when tragedy strikes and Maisie and Grant lose their mother and Patrick’s brother has a health crisis of his own, Patrick finds himself suddenly taking on the role of primary guardian. Despite having a set of “Guncle Rules” ready to go, Patrick has no idea what to expect, having spent years barely holding on after the loss of his great love, a somewhat-stalled career, and a lifestyle not-so-suited to a six- and a nine-year-old.
\nQuickly realising that parenting - even if temporary - isn’t solved with treats and jokes, Patrick’s eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility, and the realisation that, sometimes, even being larger than life means you’re unfailingly human.
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Lily and the Octopus is a novel about finding that special someone to share your life with. For Ted Flask, that someone is Lily, and she happens to be a dog.
This novel reminds us how to love fiercely, how difficult it can be to let go and how the fight for those we love is the greatest fight of all.
Reminiscent of The Life of Pi and The Art of Racing in the Rain, with spins into magic realism and beautifully evoked universal truths of love, loyalty and loss, a hilariously sardonic and not altogether reliable narrator, and one unforgettable hound who simple wisdom will break your heart and put it back together again, Lily and the Octopus captures the search for meaning in death . . .
College professor Jesse del Ruth has been abandoned. Thirty years into their relationship, Jesse witnesses his husband Norman get out of bed late one night, walk into their Joshua Tree backyard, step into a strange beam of light and . . . disappear. How could Norman desert him after a lifetime together? Where did he go? And, most confoundingly . . . will he ever return? Jesse knew they were longing for something, both feeling stuck. But had Norman been so stuck that his only option was to leave Jesse behind?
\n\n
As Jesse struggles to understand Norman’s disappearance, he tries to piece together his new reality. Is he expected to wait patiently for a partner who may never come back? Or is this an opportunity for reinvention? He is, after all, alone for the first time in his adult life. Should he return to the classroom? Put in a pool? Get a dog? Call his estranged mother? What does it mean to be alone when you’ve always been one half of a whole?
\n\n
When Norman’s sister Lally lands on Jesse’s doorstep with an urgent request, Norman’s absence becomes even more profound. Add to Jesse’s grief and confusion a conspiracy-theorist neighbor, a strange man following him, and suspicions that he may have had a hand in Norman’s disappearance, and Jesse starts to crack under the pressure. With his husband missing and the world closing in, all eyes are on Jesse. Before he can understand how Norman could leave it all behind, Jesse must confront what it means to stay.
\n\n
In Take Me With You, Steven Rowley brings his resonant wit and emotional insight to an epic love story - an exploration of the forces that draw two people into the same orbit and the gravity that threatens to pull them apart.
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The seas have parted to reveal the remains of humanity's lost empire and opened a path from Shipwreck Island to the Enemy's City. Now only Ellie Lancaster and her orphan friends can prevent a terrible war.
\nAs Kate marches north at the head of her army, panic infests the City as the Enemy's strength grows. For the parting of the seas has also uncovered the Eternity Engine, a dreadful machine from before the Drowning, with the power to remake the world - or destroy it forever . . .
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The City is the only home that Ellie has ever known. She's always been told that there is nothing to see beyond the shores of her small, salty island.
\nThat is, until a mysterious boy washes in with the tide, trapped inside the belly of a whale.
\nThe citizens of the City believe he's ruled by the Enemy - the legendary god who drowned the whole world - come again to cause untold chaos. Only Ellie believes that the boy is innocent.
\nTo save him, Ellie must prove that he's not who they think he is - even if that means revealing her own dangerous secret.
Orphans Ellie and Seth have crossed an endless ocean in search of freedom and peace.
\nArriving on the shores of a colourful tropical island ruled by a mysterious queen, it seems they might just have found the perfect new home.
\nBut there is trouble brewing in paradise and soon Ellie and Seth find themselves caught up in a dangerous struggle for power - and forced to confront terrible truths from their past . . .
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Inspector Logan McRae is looking forward to a nice simple case - something to ease him back into work after a year off on the sick. But the powers-that-be have other ideas . . .
\nThe high-profile anti-independence campaigner, Professor Wilson, has gone missing, leaving nothing but bloodstains behind. There’s a war brewing between the factions for and against Scottish Nationalism. Infighting in the police ranks. And it’s all playing out in the merciless glare of the media. Logan’s superiors want results, and they want them now.
\nSomeone out there is trying to make a point, and they’re making it in blood. If Logan can’t stop them, it won’t just be his career that dies.
The great and the not-so-good are gathered at Skirivour Castle Hotel, in the heart of the Highlands, for the wedding of the year - but they weren’t expecting Detective Sergeant Roberta Steel to crash their party. And get horribly, horribly drunk.
\nThe whole valley’s been cut off by a massive thunderstorm and the phone lines are down, so when the father-of-the-bride’s body is discovered - decoratively impaled on a stag’s head in the hotel lobby - it’s up to DS Steel to find out whodunit. Which isn’t easy when you’ve got a monstrous hangover and only a world-weary sergeant and a halfwit police constable for backup.
\nWith no witnesses and every wedding guest a suspect, Roberta will need to use every one of her little grey cells if she’s going to catch the killer and get out of there alive.
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Detective Constable Ash Henderson has a dark secret . . .
Five years ago his daughter, Rebecca, went missing on the eve of her thirteenth birthday. A year later the first card arrived: homemade, with a Polaroid picture stuck to the front – Rebecca, strapped to a chair, gagged and terrified. Every year another card: each one worse than the last.
The tabloids call him ‘The Birthday Boy’. He’s been snatching girls for twelve years, always just before their thirteenth birthday, sending the families his homemade cards showing their daughters being slowly tortured to death.
But Ash hasn’t told anyone about Rebecca’s birthday cards – they all think she’s just run away from home – because if anyone finds out, he’ll be taken off the investigation. And he’s sacrificed too much to give up before his daughter’s killer gets what he deserves…
Someone’s preying on Aberdeen’s growing Polish population. The pattern is always the same: men abandoned on building sites, barely alive, their eyes gouged out and the sockets burned.
\nWith the victims too scared to talk, and the only witness a paedophile who’s on the run, Grampian Police is getting nowhere fast. The attacks are brutal, they keep on happening, and soon DS Logan McRae will have to decide how far he’s prepared to bend the rules to get a result.
\nThe Granite City is on the brink of gang warfare; the investigating team are dogged by allegations of corruption; and Logan’s about to come to the attention of Aberdeen’s most notorious crime lord . . .
When Detective Inspector Bell turns up dead in a crashed car, it’s a shock to everyone. Because Bell died two years ago. Or at least they thought he did.
\nNow Inspector Logan McRae has to work out where DI Bell’s been all this time - and what was so important that he felt the need to come back from the dead.
\nBut the deeper Logan digs, the more bones he uncovers. And there are people out there who’ll kill to keep those skeletons buried . . .
Acting Detective Inspector Roberta Steel has never been shy, but she’s finally retiring. After thirty years of policing Aberdeen’s underbelly, she’s all set for her twilight years to feature gardening gloves, afternoon tea, crosswords puzzles, and shouting at the telly.
\nSo, when a body turns up in a wheelie bin, it looks like an excellent way to round off her career and go out with a bang. But the Northeast of Scotland isn’t finished with her yet:
\nThere’s a violent protest to stop; far-right populist politicians, and sketchy government spooks; a by-election; drugs, dogs, and baby-doll nighties; and a desperate ex-colleague, begging her for help.
\nWith only her Queen Street Irregulars for backup, and the top brass desperate to get shot of her, these final few weeks might just be the death of her . . .
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A serial rapist is leaving a string of tortured women behind him, but while DS Logan McRae’s girlfriend, PC Jackie ‘Ball Breaker’ Watson, is out acting as bait, he’s trying to identify a blood-drenched body dumped outside Accident and Emergency.
\nLogan’s investigations suggest someone in the local bondage community has developed a taste for violent death, and he soon finds himself dragged into the twilight world of pornographers, sex-shops and S&M.
\nMeanwhile, the prime suspect in the rape case turns out to be Aberdeen Football Club’s star striker. Logan thinks they’ve got it horribly wrong, but Jackie is convinced the footballer’s guilty and she’s hell-bent on a conviction at any cost . . .
As a massive storm batters the Scottish coast, Gordon Smith’s home is falling into the North Sea. But the crumbling headland has revealed what he’s got buried in his garden: human remains.
With the storm still raging, it’s too dangerous to retrieve the bodies and waves are devouring the evidence. Which means no one knows how many people Smith’s already killed and how many more he’ll kill if he can’t be stopped.
The media are baying for blood, the top brass are after a scapegoat, and ex-Detective Inspector Ash Henderson is done playing nice. He’s got a killer to catch, and God help anyone who gets in his way.
It’s DS Logan McRae’s first day back on the job after a year off on the sick, and it couldn’t get much worse. Three-year-old David Reid’s body is discovered in a ditch: strangled, mutilated and a long time dead. And he’s only the first. There’s a serial killer stalking the Granite City and the local media are baying for blood.
\nSoon the dead are piling up in the morgue almost as fast as the snow on the streets, and Logan knows time is running out. More children are going missing. More are going to die. And if Logan isn’t careful, he could end up joining them.
Richard Knox has done his time and seen the error of his ways. He wants to leave his dark past behind, so why shouldn’t he be allowed to live wherever he wants?
\nDetective Sergeant Logan McRae isn’t thrilled about having to help a violent rapist settle into Aberdeen. Even worse, he’s stuck with the man who put Knox behind bars, DSI Danby, supposedly to ‘keep an eye on things’.
\nOnly things are about to go very, very wrong.
\nEdinburgh gangster Malk the Knife wants a slice of Aberdeen’s latest development boom. Local crime lord Wee Hamish Mowat has ominous plans for Logan’s future. And Knox’s past isn’t finished with him yet . . .
Welcome to the Misfit Mob . . .
It’s where Police Scotland dumps the officers it can’t get rid of, but wants to: the outcasts, the troublemakers, the compromised. Officers like DC Callum MacGregor, lumbered with all the boring go-nowhere cases. So when an ancient mummy turns up at the Oldcastle tip, it’s his job to find out which museum it’s been stolen from.
But then Callum uncovers links between his ancient corpse and three missing young men, and life starts to get a lot more interesting. O Division’s Major Investigation Teams already have more cases than they can cope with, so, against everyone’s better judgement, the Misfit Mob are just going to have to manage this one on their own.
No one expects them to succeed, but right now they’re the only thing standing between the killer’s victims and a slow, lingering death. The question is, can they prove everyone wrong before he strikes again?
It was supposed to be an easy job.
\nAll Detective Constable Edward Reekie had to do was pick up a dying prisoner from HMP Grampian and deliver him somewhere to live out his last few months in peace.
\nFrom the outside, Glenfarach looks like a quaint, sleepy, snow-dusted village, nestled deep in the heart of Cairngorms National Park, but things aren't what they seem. The place is thick with security cameras and there's a strict nine o'clock curfew, because Glenfarach is the final sanctuary for people who've served their sentences but can't be safely released into the general population.
\nEdward's new boss, DI Montgomery-Porter, insists they head back to Aberdeen before the approaching blizzards shut everything down, but when an ex-cop-turned-gangster is discovered tortured to death in his bungalow, someone needs to take charge.
Down by the docks, in the dead of night, a woman is hunted down and killed. For DS Logan McRae, it’s just the beginning of another nightmare.
\nAs the day dawns and the body count rises, Logan realises that this isn’t just an isolated murder. It’s far more disturbing than that.
\nA killer is on the loose and wreaking havoc - and Logan is running out of time to stop them.
When an offshore container turns up at Aberdeen Harbour full of human meat, it kicks off the largest manhunt in the Granite City’s history.
\nTwenty years ago ‘The Flesher’ was butchering people all over the UK - turning victims into oven-ready joints - until Grampian’s finest put him away. But eleven years later he was out on appeal. Now he’s missing and people are dying again.
\nWhen members of the original investigation start to disappear, Detective Sergeant Logan McRae realises the case might not be as clear cut as everyone thinks . . .
\nTwenty years of secrets and lies are being dragged into the light. And the only thing that’s certain is Aberdeen will never be the same again.
Detective Constable Angus MacVicar has just landed his dream job - transferred out of uniform and assigned to Oldcastle’s biggest ongoing murder investigation: Operation Telegram, hunting the 'Fortnight Killer'. Every two weeks another couple is targeted. One victim is left at the scene, their corpse used as a twisted message board. The second body is never seen again.
\nThis should be the perfect chance for Angus to prove himself, but instead of working on the investigation’s front line, he’s lumbered with the forensic psychologist from hell. A sarcastic know-it-all American, on loan from the FBI, who seems determined to alienate everyone while dragging Angus into a shadowy world of conspiracies, lies, and violence.
\nIt’s been twelve days since the Fortnight Killer last struck, and the investigation’s running out of time. Angus's shiny new job might just be the death of him . . .
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Sergeant Logan McRae’s team find a body dumped in the woods - but is it the missing businessman they’ve been searching for, or something far more sinister? It doesn’t help that his ex-boss is taking over the case, a new Superintendent has it in for him, and Professional Standards are looming.
\nEven worse: Aberdeen’s criminal overlord, Wee Hamish Mowat, is dying and rival gangs all over the UK are eying his territory.
\nThere’s a war brewing and Logan’s trapped right in the middle, whether he likes it or not.
A little girl’s body washes up just outside the sleepy coastal town of Macduff, kicking off a major manhunt. Officially, the investigation is out of Sergeant Logan McRae’s hands, but DCI Steel’s Major Investigation Team, drafted in from Aberdeen, is getting nowhere fast.
\nSteel is running out of ideas and time. She wants Logan back on her team, and doesn’t care how she gets him there.
\nOne thing is clear: there are dangerous predators lurking in the wilds of Aberdeenshire, and not everyone’s getting out of this alive . . .
It's been seventeen months since the Bloodsmith butchered his first victim and Operation Maypole is still no nearer to catching him. The media is whipping up a storm, the top brass are demanding results, but the investigation is sinking fast.
\nNow isn't the time to get distracted with other cases, but Detective Sergeant Lucy McVeigh doesn't have much choice. When Benedict Strachan was just eleven, he hunted down and killed a homeless man. No one's ever figured out why Benedict did it, but now, after sixteen years, he's back on the streets again - battered, frightened, convinced a shadowy 'They' are out to get him, and begging Lucy for help.
\nIt sounds like paranoia, but what if he's right? What if he really is caught up in something bigger and darker than Lucy's ever dealt with before? What if the Bloodsmith isn't the only monster out there? And what's going to happen when Lucy goes after them?
Detective Chief Inspector Roberta Steel got caught fitting up Jack Wallace - that’s why they demoted her and quashed his sentence. Now he’s back on the streets and women are being attacked again. Wallace has to be responsible, but if Detective Sergeant Steel goes anywhere near him, his lawyers will get her thrown off the force for good.
\nThe Powers That Be won’t listen to her, not after what happened last time. According to them, she’s got more than enough ongoing cases to keep her busy. Perhaps she could try solving a few instead of harassing an innocent man?
\nSteel knows Wallace is guilty. And the longer he gets away with it, the more women will suffer. The question is: how much is she willing to sacrifice to stop him?
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Aberdeen's own mother-daughter singing sensation are through to the semi-finals of TV smash-hit Britain's Next Big Star. But their reality-TV dream has turned into a real-life nightmare.
\nThe ransom demand appears in all the papers, on the TV, and the internet, telling the nation to dig deep if they want to keep Alison and Jenny alive.
\nTime is running out, but DS Logan McRae and his colleagues have nothing to go on: the kidnappers haven't left a single piece of forensic evidence and there are no witnesses.
\nIt looks as if the price of fame just got a lot higher . . .
Eight years ago, 'The Inside Man' murdered four women and left three more in critical condition - all of them with their stomachs slit open and a plastic doll stitched inside.
\nAnd then the killer just . . . disappeared.
\nAsh Henderson was a Detective Inspector on the initial investigation, but a lot can change in eight years. His family has been destroyed, his career is in tatters, and one of Oldcastle's most vicious criminals is making sure he spends the rest of his life in prison.
\nNow a nurse has turned up dead on a patch of waste ground, a plastic doll buried beneath her skin, and it looks as if Ash might finally get a shot at redemption. At earning his freedom.
\nAt revenge.
It’s not going well for Aberdeen's NE Division: half the force is off sick, all leave has been cancelled, someone has firebombed a hotel full of migrants and there’s a massive protest march happening this Saturday.
\nWith officers dropping like flies, Detective Inspector Logan McRae has to kick off a major murder investigation with a skeleton staff of misfits, idiots and malingerers until the top brass can arrange back-up from other divisions.
\nBut, as bad as everything seems, things are about to get much, much worse . . .
In Rooms for Vanishing, the violence of war has fractured the universe for the Altermans, a Jewish family from Vienna. Moving across decades, and across the world, the novel finds the Altermans alone in their separate futures, haunted by the loss of their loved ones, each certain that they are the sole survivor of their family.
\nSonja, the daughter, has gone in search of her husband, who has disappeared into London; Fania, the mother, is confronted with her doppelganger in the basement of a Montreal hotel; Moses, the son, is followed by the ghost of his best friend and eventually returns to Prague to make peace with the dead; and, finally, Arnold, the father, dares to believe that his long-lost daughter might be alive after he receives a message from an Englishwoman claiming to be Sonja. Through their stories, we come to see how - amid profound loss and the madness of grief - ghosts are made momentarily real.
\nSpellbinding and profound, Rooms for Vanishing explores the boundary between desire and reality; this is a singular work that masterfully considers the possibility of magic, and the dangerous and impossible hope for a different history.
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On a snowy December night, single mother Rebecca Carter drives her van into a snowbank to avoid hitting an elk on a desolate mountain highway. She is at the end of her rope, out of money and food. Still, she refuses help from a man in a pickup truck - Rebecca’s adolescent daughter, Moonflower, is on the run from a grisly secret, and the last thing they can afford is to be remembered by anyone they meet.
\nMeanwhile, Special Agent Marc Donner of the FBI has spent the better part of two years hunting down a gruesome serial killer who drains victims of blood before severing their spinal cords, leaving a trail of bodies throughout the American West. As Agent Donner’s investigation brings him closer and closer to where Rebecca and Moonflower are hiding out, in the foothills of Colorado, the life that Rebecca has fought so hard to hold together for her daughter becomes increasingly imperilled.
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El Paso, Texas: Rebecca Carter awoke on a morgue table with only two desires: to find her daughter, Moonflower; and to sate her gnawing hunger. Rebecca sets out on a desperate quest, fighting her murderous craving for blood, and pursued by a vengeful FBI agent.
\nAlone in the wild, Monica Carter survives on whatever small prey she can hunt down. But she needs more. One night, a young man lures her through the mountain scrub with the scent of human blood, promising he and his little brother will feed her and keep her safe. Somehow these brothers know her nickname - Moonflower - and the truth of what she is. She needs them - but can she trust them?
\nWhen FBI Special Agent Sarah McGrath learns that Rebecca Carter’s body has disappeared from the morgue, she’s on the next plane to El Paso. Rebecca is responsible for the death of her partner, and McGrath wants answers, but she never expected them to come from a shadowy figure within the Bureau . . .
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Sara Keane's husband, Damien, has uprooted them from England and moved them to his native Northern Ireland for a “fresh start” in the wake of her nervous breakdown. Sara, who knows no one in Northern Ireland, is jobless, carless, friendless - all but a prisoner in her own house.
\nWhen a blood-soaked old woman beats on the door, insisting the house is hers before being bundled back to her care facility, Sara begins to understand the house has a terrible history her husband never intended for her to discover.
\nThrough the counterpoint voices of two women - one modern Englishwoman, one Northern Irish farmgirl speaking from half a century earlier - Stuart Neville offers a chilling and gorgeous portrait of violence and resilience in this truly haunting narrative.
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Alison is mired in loneliness and grief. Freshly twenty-three and mourning the loss of her younger sister, who has drowned at sea, she’s moved out of her hometown and into a cramped apartment on New York’s Lower East Side. Now she’s living the cliché, barely making rent as a restaurant hostess and avoiding her roommates, while watching the bright, busy passersby from her bubble of grief. She doesn’t need originality; she just needs to be alive. So why does she feel she isn’t truly living?
\nUntil late one night, when she rounds the corner and sees a shape in the air - a ghost. And how strange, it looks like a fish. What is it? Alison knows, without hesitation: it is her beloved sister, finally returned to her side. Safe in a pickle jar filled with water, the ghost fish goes wherever Alison does: in an alcove at the restaurant; in a tote bag on the subway; in her room at night as her roommates chatter outside. She knows she has to keep her safe from the world, the way she didn’t before. She knows that, together, they will never be lonely again. But as Alison’s new life in New York begins to grow, and as she navigates the murky waters of dating, friendship, and desire, she must ask: what if her sister is keeping her away from a life outwardly lived?
\nWith tenderness and heart, stretching from New York, New York to Key West, Florida, Ghost Fish is a meditation on grief, loneliness, and the strange, kaleidoscopic ways we help ourselves - and those we love - through it.
Teddy Fay whisks away to join Peter and Hattie Barrington in Palm Springs. But his hope for a relaxing vacation vanishes when he attends a prominent actor’s annual birthday party, where he witnesses a heated squabble between two women, only for one of them to turn up dead the next day.
\nTeddy investigates who might be lurking in the shadows and uncovers a web of intrigue involving a sinister plan to take over a cutting-edge energy company. If he doesn’t act fast, valuable secrets risk falling into the wrong hands, but more importantly innocent lives could be in jeopardy.
\n
When Stone Barrington meets one of his clients, Trenton Sidney, for a sunset drink on Trenton’s new yacht, the last thing he expects is to be a victim of a shipwreck. As one of the four survivors of the incident but with little memory of the sinking, Stone finds himself diving straight back into work. His first task? To reach out to the beneficiaries in Trenton’s will.
\nBut when new evidence that points to foul play comes to light, Stone must probe the tragedy in more ways than one in order to uncover the identity of the perpetrator . . . before they find another lethal way to get themselves out of deep water.
\nWritten by Brett Battles.
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After attending an Arrington properties meeting at the group’s newest location, The Vineyard Arrington on Martha's Vineyard, Stone Barrington returns to New York City to catch up with his old friend Jack Coulter. Over lunch, Jack requests Stone’s help in settling his niece Sara into city life post-divorce.
\nAlways one to please, Stone takes Sara under his wing.
But when various men from Sara’s past start getting hurt, and Jack’s loved ones find themselves a target in a deadly scheme, it’s up to Stone to put the pieces together . . . before the shrouded conspirer manages to tear them all apart, permanently.
Written by Brett Battles.
\n
While filming on location in scenic Santa Barbara, California, Peter Barrington and Ben Bacchetti look to expand Centurion Studios' business by making a deal with a young Croatian tech billionaire. But when the magnate’s wife is kidnapped, Teddy Fay is brought in to assess the threat and recover the young woman.
\nAs Teddy unravels the threads of her disappearance, he quickly comes to find an old vendetta seethes at the center, one that puts them all at risk. And danger is lurking even nearer to home as an obsessive fan with perilous intentions weasels his way onto the film set. It’s only Teddy who can stop him from getting too close for comfort.
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Following a string of adventures, Stone Barrington is enjoying some downtime in New York City when a chance encounter introduces him to a charming new companion. Too bad she also comes with the baggage of a persistent ex-boyfriend intent on retribution.
\nAs Stone skillfully dodges each disturbance, it soon becomes clear that there is potentially an even more treacherous game being played behind the scenes. And when long-standing grudges resurface, Stone is brought back into the orbit of some familiar enemies. He must use all of his tricks - as well as those of a few old friends - to evade trouble before it's too late. But this time, danger just might catch him.
\n
While filming on location in scenic Santa Barbara, California, Peter Barrington and Ben Bacchetti look to expand Centurion Studios' business by making a deal with a young Croatian tech billionaire. But when the magnate’s wife is kidnapped, Teddy Fay is brought in to assess the threat and recover the young woman.
As Teddy unravels the threads of her disappearance, he quickly comes to find an old vendetta seethes at the center, one that puts them all at risk. And danger is lurking even nearer to home as an obsessive fan with perilous intentions weasels his way onto the film set. It’s only Teddy who can stop him from getting too close for comfort.
Finally enjoying some downtime in Santa Fe, Stone Barrington agrees to attend an art exhibit with a dear friend. There, he encounters an intriguing woman who is on the trail of a ring of art thieves. Always one to please, Stone offers his help.
\nFrom Santa Fe to Los Angeles, it quickly becomes clear that her investigation has links to Stone - particularly to rare Matilda Stone art, his mother’s paintings. And when old grudges come to light, Stone is forced to reckon with a familiar enemy. Stone must act fast before whoever is out to get him finally closes in on him . . . for good.
\nWritten by Brett Battles.
\n
When Peter Barrington and Ben Bachetti come under threat while working at a film festival abroad, Teddy Fay is lured to the glittering city of Macau to resolve the problem. He'll soon come to find that world of posh casinos, luxurious developments, and boundless wealth has a dark underbelly of crime and political intrigue . . . and that the biggest players behind the scenes may be far closer to home than anticipated.
\nWith international deals and private vendettas at stake, the villains behind the plot aren't about to let Teddy stand in their way. What they don't know is that this seemingly harmless film producer has more than a few tricks up his sleeve.
\n
Teddy Fay is back in Hollywood and caught in two tricky situations. First, a rising star at Centurion becomes the target of malicious gossip, and Teddy must find and neutralise the source before the situation gets out of hand - or becomes violent. At the same time, Teddy finds himself targeted by a criminal thug bearing a grudge.
It's a lot of knives to juggle, even for a former - CIA-operative-turned-movie-producer accustomed to hazardous working conditions. This time Teddy will need to leverage every bit of his undercover skills and fearless daring to stay one step ahead of his foes . . . or he'll find himself one foot in the grave.
Ever a man of mystery and intrigue, Teddy Fay has donned a new disguise - that of Mark Weldon, a stuntman and actor starring in Centurion Studios' newest film. When the picture's leading lady begins receiving blackmail threats, Teddy is in the perfect position to investigate, and it soon becomes clear that the villains have more in their sights than just money. Money they've got. What they need is prestige, the cache of a respected studio to lend authority and legitimacy to their artistic endeavors . . . and a little bit of vengeance in the bargain.
\nFrom the seedy hidden corners of Los Angeles to the glamorous Hollywood Hills, it will take every ounce of Teddy's cunning to save an actress's career, protect the studio, and finish filming Centurion's next big hit.
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When Teddy Fay receives a freelance assignment from a gentleman he can't refuse, he jets off to Paris on the hunt for a treasonous criminal. But as Teddy unearths more information that just doesn't seem to connect, his straightforward mission becomes far bigger - and stranger - than he could imagine. The trail of bread crumbs leads to secrets hidden within secrets, evildoers trading in money and power, and a global threat on an unprecedented scale.
\nUnder the beautiful veneer of the City of Lights, true villainy lurks in the shadows . . . and Teddy Fay alone can prevent the impending disaster.
\n
When President Kate Lee calls Stone Barrington to Washington on an urgent matter, it’s soon clear that a potentially disastrous situation requires the kind of help more delicate than even he can provide . . . and he knows just the right man for the job.
\nTeddy Fay: ex-CIA, master of disguise, and a gentleman not known for abiding by legal niceties in the pursuit of his own brand of justice.
\n
Stone Barrington's latest client is no stranger. Arrington Calder isn't just a former lover, this one-time heartthrob is the mother of Stone's son. Arrington, it seems, has been recently widowed by her actor husband, leaving her as the custodian of a fortune in Hollywood studio stock.
\nIntent on cashing in, his pretty ex asks Stone to handle the dull paperwork involved in the deal. There is nothing dull, however, about what Barrington encounters when he arrives on the Bel-Air scene.
\nNewly ensconced in his Santa Fe abode with a lovely female companion, Stone Barrington receives a call from an old friend requesting a delicate favor. A situation has arisen that could escalate into an explosive quagmire, and only someone with Stone's stealth and subtlety can contain the damage.
\nAt the center of these events is an impressive gentleman whose star is on the rise, and who'd like to get Stone in his corner. He's charming and ambitious and has friends in high places; the kind of man who seems to be a sure bet.
\nBut in the fickle circles of power, fortunes rise and fall on the turn of a dime, and it may turn out that Stone holds the key not just to one man's fate, but to the fate of the nation.
After returning home from a treacherous adventure, Stone Barrington is all too happy to settle back down in his New York City abode. But when he's introduced to a glamorous socialite with a staggering inheritance, Stone realises his days are about to be anything but quiet.
As it turns out, Stone's intriguing new companion has some surprisingly familiar ties and other far more sinister ones - including a nefarious enemy who gets too close for comfort. When it becomes clear that this miscreant will stop at nothing to get what he wants, and will endanger all whom Stone holds hear, Stone must step in to protect his friends and prevent a dangerous madman from wreaking havoc across the city.
Stone Barrington seems to have a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When Manhattan’s elite are beset by a series of clever crimes - and Stone is a material witness - he and his former partner Dino Bacchetti find themselves drawn into the world of high-end security and fraud, where insider knowledge and access are limited to a privileged few, and the wealthy are made vulnerable by the very systems meant to keep them safe.
\nAs Stone and Dino delve deeper into their investigation, they learn that the mastermind behind the incidents may have some intimate ties to Stone . . . and that the biggest heist is still to come.
\nStone Barrington and his friends are vacationing in Maine when their leisure is suddenly disrupted by extreme weather. To make matters worse, the inclement conditions allow for a menacing adversary to sneak in unnoticed and deliver a chilling message. Soon it becomes clear that the target of the incident is one of Stone's closest companions, and that these enemies have a grander scheme in mind.
From the bustling streets of New York City to the sun-drenched shores of Key West, Stone intends to nab the criminals that appear behind him at every step. But his search only leads him further down a trail of peril and corruption, and he'll soon find that at the end of the road is a more dangerous foe than he could have imagined . . .
After a rocky jaunt in Maine, Stone Barrington is settling back in New York City when an old client reaches out for help with a delicate matter. A feud they thought was put to rest long ago has reemerged with a vengeance, and reputations - and money - are now on the line.
\nAs Stone sets out to unravel a tangled web of crime and secrets, his mission becomes even more complicated when he makes an irresistible new acquaintance. In both the underbelly and upper echelons of New York, everyone has something to hide - and if Stone has learned anything, it’s that history has a way of repeating itself . . .
\n
Luxuriating in Palm Beach's winter warmth, Stone is stunned to recognise someone he thought was dead. Former client Allison Manning is alive and well - and suddenly very rich.
\nNow she needs Stone's help in squaring a charge of insurance fraud that's been hanging over her head for years - and in getting rid of a recently acquired stalker. Suspects abound, including an elusive writer, an enigmatic businessman, and Allison's devious former husband.
\nOnly Stone can thwart the sly and greedy plan to steal the millions of dollars at stake - and the crafty killer behind it . . .
Stone Barrington is back in Manhattan and pleased to receive an unexpected visit from his friend and sometime lover Holly Barker, now an assistant director at the CIA. For her part, Holly is glad to leave the staid, official environs of the capital for the dining and atmosphere of New York, but her sojourn isn’t only for pleasure. An explosive incident requires her immediate attention - and Stone’s investigative expertise.
But what initially appears to be a clear-cut case soon becomes increasingly complex - and dangerous. For in the secretive world of government intelligence, national interests all too often conflict with power grabs and turf wars, and extreme wealth allows even the most pursued rivals to slip through the cracks.
As Stone and Holly follow the trail from London’s posh embassy district to Manhattan’s Upper East Side, they learn just how well the most cunning plans can be disguised . . . and how far some people will go to wreak vengeance.
\nStone Barrington is getting some much-needed rest and relaxation in the Florida sun when trouble falls from the sky - literally. Intrigued by the suspicious circumstances surrounding this event, Stone joins forces with a sharp-witted and alluring local detective to investigate. But they run into a problem: the evidence keeps disappearing.
From the laid-back Key West shores to the bustling Manhattan streets, Stone sets out to connect the dots between the crimes that seem to follow him wherever he travels. His investigations only lead to more questions, and shocking connections between old and new acquaintances. But as Stone must quickly learn, answers - and enemies - are often hiding in plain sight . . .
After a dangerous adventure has him traveling up and down the coast, Stone Barrington is looking forward to some down time at his Manhattan abode. But when an acquaintance alerts him to a hinky plot being hatched across the city, he finds himself eager to pursue justice.
\nAfter the mastermind behind it all proves more evasive than anyone was expecting, Stone sets out on an international chase to places he's never gone before. With the help of old friends - and alluring new ones - Stone is determined to see the pursuit through to the end, even if it means going up against a foe more unpredictable than he has ever faced . . .
\n
When Stone Barrington travels to Los Angeles for the biggest political convention of the year, he finds the scene quite shaken up: a dazzling newcomer - and close friend of Stone’s - has given the delegates an unexpected choice, crucial alliances are made and broken behind closed doors, and it seems that more than one seat may be up for grabs. And amid the ambitious schemers and hangers-on are a few people who may use the chaotic events as cover for more sinister plans. . . .
\nIn this milieu of glad-handing and backroom deals, only the canniest player can come out on top . . . and it will take all of Stone’s discretion and powers of persuasion to arrange a desirable outcome.
\n
After a shocking loss, Stone Barrington is at loose ends, unsure if he wants to stay in New York and continue his work as a partner at Woodman & Weld. It comes as a welcome relief when he's summoned to Washington, D.C., by President Will Lee.
\nThe president has a special operation that calls for Stone's unique skill set, and it's a mission that will reunite him with his former partner in crime and in bed, Holly Barker.
\n
Stone Barrington hasn’t heard from his cousin, Dick Stone, in years. Then, an otherwise pleasant meal at Elaine’s is interrupted by the CIA with news of Dick’s death - apparently by his own hand. It seems that Dick Stone, a quiet family man who doubled as a CIA agent, methodically executed his wife, daughter, and then himself . . . or did he?
\nAppointed executor of Dick’s will, Stone must settle the estate and - with the help of his ex-partner Dino and friend Holly Barker - piece together the elusive facts of his cousin’s life and death as a CIA operative. At every step, Stone knows he is being watched by Dick’s family - and one of them just may be the killer.
\n
First there were roses and the notes in her mailbox signed simply, \"Admirer.\" Then, the accident. One minute Chris Callaway was one of Hollywood's brightest rising stars, starting a new picture that could send her career skyrocketing; the next, she was falling from the unfinished deck of her beautiful new Malibu beach house . . . waking up blind, uncertain whether she would ever see again.
An optimist and a fighter, Chris is determined not to let anyone know she can barely see. But neither Danny Devere, her hairdresser and confidant, nor Jon Larsen, the handsome young detective from LAPD's special stalker squad, can stop the notes that escalate into a chilling obsession. And only a clever trap can stop the madman from stalking her - with beautiful Chris Callaway as the deadly bait.
In Dead in the Water, Stone has barely arrived in St. Marks, a lovely Caribbean island nation, on a sailing vacation when something very strange happens: A beautiful young woman sails into the harbor, entirely alone on a large yacht. Before long she is under the intense scrutiny of local authorities in the very considerable person ofSir Winston Sutherland, the minister of Justice. The problem is, though she arrived alone, she had departed the other side of the Atlantic in the company of her husband, a well-known writer, who is no longer in evidence.
\nEvidence is what fascinates Stone Barrington, and before many pages have been turned, he is all that stands between the apparently innocent Allison Manning and the patently evil intent of Sir Winston, whose motives are unclear. What is clear is that the St. Marks' system of justice bears little resemblance to the American courts to which Stone is accustomed and that his smallest error could prove fatal to his client.
\nInextricably caught in a swirling storm of island madness and murder, made worse by a hurricane of sensational press coverage, Stone can hardly find the time to indulge his usual romantic inclinations, but he learns that, even under the intense illumination of a Caribbean sun, nothing is what it seems to be, and no one can be trusted.
\n
When an old acquaintance reaches out to Stone Barrington requesting assistance, the job seems easy enough. She needs an expert in an esoteric field, someone with both the knowledge and careful dexterity to solve a puzzle. But the solution to one small problem blows the lid open on a bigger scandal going back decades, and involving numerous prominent New Yorkers who would prefer the past stay buried.
\n
With this explosive information in-hand, Stone Barrington is caught between a rock and a hard place, his only options either to play it safe to the detriment of others, or to see justice done and risk fatal exposure. But when it comes to Stone Barrington, danger is usually just around the corner . . . so he may as well throw caution to the wind.
Upon returning to the states from a European jaunt, Stone Barrington makes the acquaintance of a stunning woman who seems like she could be an ideal candidate to meet some of his professional - and personal - needs. Before long, though, Stone is put to the task of protecting his new hire when New York City is rocked by a series of disturbing crimes, and it looks as if she might be the next target.
\n
In the city that never sleeps there's always a plot being hatched, and the only recourse is constant vigilance and a bit of luck. But if those defensive systems fail, Stone will have to go head-to-head against some of the most dastardly scum he's ever faced . . .
Feared and loathed for her poison pen and ice queen persona, Amanda Dart has made her share of enemies. Then the tables are turned. An anonymous gossipmonger is faxing Amanda’s personal and private peccadilloes to anyone who can read. Desperate to save her reputation, she enlists the help of New York lawyer and private investigator Stone Barrington to learn the identity of the faxer. And everyone in the world of tabloid journalism becomes a suspect.
\nBut the faxes don’t stop. In fact, they get worse. And Stone winds up with more leads than one man can handle, until Amanda takes matters dangerously into her own hands and turns the world of gossip on its head. As the circle of suspects shrinks, Stone discovers that even the most respected members of the social scene will stop at nothing - even homicide - to clear their sullied names.
\n
Hired to prove infidelity in an heiress’s marriage, Stone Barrington goes undercover. But the work turns dirty - and catastrophic - when the errant husband is found dead and the other woman disappears without a trace.
\nNow, Stone must clear his own good name and find a killer hiding among the glitterati of New York’s high society.
\n
Stone Barrington's latest lady friend is full of surprises, both good and ill. A sensual woman with unexpected desires, Stone finds her revelations in the boudoir extremely agreeable. But on the other hand, she also has some unfinished business with a temperamental man who believes Stone is an intolerable obstacle in the way of his goals.
\n
In a cat-and-mouse game that trails from sun-drenched Bel-Air to a peaceful European estate and the wild New Mexican desert, Stone and his friend remain just one step ahead of their opponent. But their pursuer is not a man who can stand to be thwarted, and tensions are mounting . . . and may soon reach the boiling point.
During an intense storm in Dark Harbor, Maine, a perplexing murder lands a dead man on Stone Barrington's doorstep. As secrets swirl around this mystery man's identity, Stone quickly sets out to unravel a web of cunning misdirections and lies.
\nSoon enough, he is embroiled in an elaborate game of cat and mouse between the CIA and nefarious foreign forces, including a bewitching new companion who comes under his protection. But when Stone's actions draw the attention of an old enemy, one who will stop at nothing to prevent the truth from getting out, Stone realises he may have finally met his match.
\n
When Stone Barrington embarks on a trip to Bel-Air to check in on some business and personal concerns, he expects a relaxing break from the fast pace and mean streets of New York. But trouble never takes a vacation, and it has a way of finding Stone.
\nA case that had seemingly been resolved has returned in full force - with lethal results. And this deadly situation makes for strange bedfellows when Stone finds himself teamed with the least likely ally . . . a gentleman of unique abilities, who can fly below the radar and above the law.
Stone Barrington is settling in for a stretch in New York when he receives news that demands immediate action. An old family matter has unexpectedly resurfaced, and Stone must decamp to the craggy shores of Maine to address the issue head-on.
There, Stone finds that a dual-pronged threat is hiding in plain sight among the stately houses and exclusive coastal clubs, and the incursion isn't easily rebuffed. These enemies have friends in high places, funds to spare, and a score to settle with Stone . . . and only the cleverest plot will draw them out into the open. From luxuriously renovated homes to the choppy ocean waters, the pursuit can only lead to an explosive end.
Stone Barrington’s newest client seems to be a magnet for trouble. A poised lady of considerable wealth, she’s looking for help discouraging the attentions of a tenacious gentleman. But no sooner does Stone fend off the party in question than his client becomes involved in two lethal crimes.
With suspects aplenty, Stone must probe deep into his client’s life to find the truth, and he discovers that the heart of the mystery may be a famous missing piece of history, a stunningly beautiful vestige of a bygone era. It’s a piece with a long and storied past and untold value . . . the kind of relic someone might kill to obtain.
Among the upper crust nearly everyone has buried a skeleton or two, and it will take all of Stone’s investigative powers to determine whose secrets are harmless, and whose are deadly.
Stone Barrington is enjoying a boating excursion off the Maine coast when a chance encounter leaves him somewhat the worse for wear. Always able to find the silver lining in even the unhappiest circumstances, Stone is pleased to discover that the authors of his misfortune are, in fact, members of a prestigious family who present a unique business opportunity, and who require a man of Stone's skills to overcome a sticky situation of their own.
The acquaintance is fortuitous indeed, for as it turns out, Stone and his new friends have an enemy in common. He's the sort of man who prefers force to finesse, and who regards any professional defeat as a personal and intolerable insult. And when Stone's sly cunning collides with his adversary's hair-trigger-temper, the results are sure to be explosive. . . .
\n
When he's apprised at the last minute of a mandatory meeting abroad, Stone Barrington rushes off to Europe for a whirlwind tour of business and, of course, pleasure. But from the start the trip seems to be cursed, plagued by suspicious \"accidents\" and unfortunate events, and some of Stone's plans go up in flames - literally.
Not a believer in coincidence, Stone sets out to learn the true source of his curious misfortune and finds that what appeared to be bad luck may, in fact, have been a warning. From the chic streets of Paris to the majestic Italian coast, Stone is pursued from all sides . . . but when the tables turn, the hunted may become the hunter . . .
\n
Stone Barrington is nearing his New York City abode when he stumbles into trouble. As it turns out, a new client is in danger - and with both business and the safety of the city at stake, he has no choice but to get involved.
When it soon becomes clear that a complicated scheme is being hatched, Stone will need to use his expertise and connections to unravel the clever plot. Though the source remains unknown, it’s just a matter of time before he and Stone must each show their hands. From ritzy Manhattan high-rises to the lush serenity of the Connecticut countryside, the game of cat and mouse can end with only one victor . . .
It started out as just another late night at Elaine’s, but it ended with Stone on the horns of a dilemma. Forced to represent a sleazy but clueless con man, Stone finds that what could have been a throwaway case instead leads right to Carmine Datilla, a powerful mob boss with a notoriously bad temper and long reach.
\nWith the help of his ex-partner, Dino, Stone investigates “Datilla the Hun,” and the rest of the mob family, encountering intrigue and danger at every turn. Will Stone finally take a stand, or will he end up at the bottom of Sheepshead Bay?
\n
When Stone Barrington finds his name on a hit list, he plans to lie low until the culprit is caught. But when this foe shows no signs of stopping until his deadly objective is realised in full, Stone is left with no choice but to face the problem head-on.
Armed and alert, Stone joins forces with his most savvy connections to catch the perpetrator before the next strike. But it turns out this scum is an expert at evasion in more ways than one, and the international cat-and-mouse hunt that ensues has Stone questioning if he has become the predator or the prey . . .
Barton Cabot’s intelligence career is even more top secret than that of his brother, CIA boss Lance Cabot. But following a random act of violence, Barton is suffering from amnesia - a dangerous thing in a man whose memory is chock full of state secrets. So Lance hires Stone Barrington to watch his brother’s back.
\nStone soon discovers that his charge is a spy with a rather unusual hobby: building and restoring furniture. The genteel world of antiques and coin dealers seems a far cry from Stone’s usual underworld. But Barton is a man with a past, and one event in particular is coming back to haunt his present in ways he’d never expected . . .
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It's not often that Stone Barrington finds a woman as accustomed to the jet-set lifestyle as he, so he's pleasantly surprised when he meets a gorgeous pilot who?s soon moving to New York, and available for closer acquaintance. Their travels together lead them from Wichita to Europe, but trailing them is some unwanted baggage: his new lady love?s unstable, criminal ex-boyfriend.
And while Stone is fending off his newest adversary, trouble is brewing on the international stage. Several enemy operatives are at large, and only a coordinated intelligence effort will have any chance of stopping their deadly plot. But the clock is ticking . . . and time has nearly run out.
Stone Barrington is settling in for some downtime in New York City when an anonymous enemy makes himself known. This nameless foe's threats hit close to home, and before Stone can retaliate, the fearsome messages turn into very real consequences.
With the help of old friends - and a lovely new tech-savvy acquaintance - Stone sets out to unravel the fatal agenda. But as the web of adversaries expands, Stone realises that no place is safe, and he'll have to flush out the mastermind before he and those closest to him are silenced for good . . .
As an eligible bachelor, man-about-town, and mover in the highest social echelons, Stone Barrington has always been the subject of interest and gossip. But when he's unwittingly thrust into the limelight, he finds himself scrambling to take cover.
\nBefore too long Stone's fending off pesky nuisances left and right, and making personal arrangements so surreptitiously it would take a covert operative to unearth them.
\nUnfortunately, Stone soon discovers that these efforts only increase the persistence of the most troublesome pests . . . and when he runs afoul of a particularly tenacious lady, he'll be struggling to protect not just his reputation, but his life.
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It’s a time of unexpected change for Stone Barrington. A recent venture has achieved a great victory, but is immediately faced with a new challenge: an underhanded foe who’s determined to wreak havoc at any cost. Meanwhile, when Stone finds himself responsible for distributing the estate of a respected friend and mentor, the process unearths secrets that range from merely surprising to outright alarming. And when a lethal beauty from Stone’s past resurfaces, there’s no telling what chaos will follow in her wake . . .
Ever a master of keeping cool under pressure, even Stone might have his work cut out for him this time . . . because when grand ambitions collide with criminal inclinations, the results may be more deadly than he could have anticipated.
Stone Barrington is back in New York, and after a rather harrowing sojourn in Key West, he's looking to stay closer to home and work on some simple divorce and custody cases for Woodman & Weld.
\nBut when he crosses paths with a fetching Broadway actress - and sometime lip model - Stone gets a little more deeply involved with business than he'd expected.
\nWhen his new lady love turns out to be a lady with a shady past, Stone and downtown cop Dino Bacchetti realise that her beauty may have an unusually high price. . . .
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In L. A. Dead, Stone finds himself caught between two alluring women-one who has been left at the altar and another who is suspected of murder. Stone is in the midst of plans to marry Dolce, the daughter of a New York mafioso, when he is suddenly called to the side of Arrington Calder, a woman he has loved and lost, but never forgotten. To her horror, Arrington believes she is about to be indicted for the murder of her husband, one of America's most beloved film stars.
\nWith both enemies and friends among the Hollywood A-list swarming around her, Stone is the only person she can trust to gather her defense. But how much does Arrington actually remember about the night of the murder? And can Stone really trust her? The evidence against her mounts, the trial date looms, and Stone's feelings for her return. But even he doesn't know what danger the truth will bring.
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Never one to avoid a glamorous vacation spot, Stone Barrington travels to Key West, Fla. Stone is supposed to track down Evan Keating, a young man whose signature is needed on documents allowing his father to sell the family business, except that Evan doesn't want to be found and when he is, doesn't want to sign the papers.
\nMeanwhile, there's always time to enjoy good food and romance. Stone and Dino Bacchetti, his former NYPD partner, eat a lot of conch, while a beautiful Swedish doctor, Annika Swenson, learns the hard way that being involved with Stone is the most dangerous job in America.
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It seems like just another quiet night at Elaine's. Stone Barrington and his former cop partner, Dino, are enjoying some pasta when in walks former client and all around sad sack Herbie Fisher...with a briefcase containing $14 million in cash.
Herbie claims to have won the money on a lucky lotto ticket, but he also says he needs a lawyer-and after a single gunshot breaks the window above his head and sends diners scrambling, Stone and Dino suspect Herbie might need a bodyguard and a private investigator, too.
Stone Barrington isn’t one to turn away in the face of danger, so when he witnesses a tricky situation underway, he jumps in to lend a hand. He never expected, though, that this favor would lead to a mutually beneficial business deal with a prominent gentleman who requires the ever-discreet services of Woodman & Weld.
\nBut in the ruthless corporate world no good deed goes unpunished, and Stone soon finds himself the target of a ragtag group of criminal toughs who don’t appreciate his interference in their dealings. From the isolated landscape of Maine to the white sand beaches of Key West, the trail of deception, theft, and murder will lead to a perilous confrontation.
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Everyone is always telling Stone Barrington that he's too smart to be a cop, but it's pure luck that places him on the streets in the dead of night, just in time to witness the horrifying incident that turns his life inside out.
Suddenly he is on the front page of every New York newspaper, and his life is hopelessly entwined in the increasingly shocking life (and perhaps death) of Sasha Nijinsky, the country's hottest and most beautiful television anchorwoman.
No matter where he turns, the case is waiting for him, haunting his nights and turning his days into a living hell. Stone finds himself caught in a perilous web of unspeakable crimes, dangerous friends, and sexual depravity that has throughout it one common thread: Sasha.
Stone Barrington has returned to Paris to attend to some business concerns, and finds himself embroiled in high-stakes trouble on both sides of the pond. An old enemy is still in hot pursuit, and this time he might have a powerful local resource on his side: a gentleman with his own ax to grind against Stone.
\nAnd back in the United States, the swirling rumor mill threatens to derail a project of vital importance not just to Stone but to the nation. Though Stone is no stranger to peril, never before has he faced threats from so many directions at once. . . .
\nWhen a slam-bang of a crime brings a beautiful new client into Stone Barrington's office, little does he know his association with her will pull him into a far more serpentine mystery in the exclusive world of art. It's a business where a rare find could make a career - and a collection - and mistakes in judgment are costly. And under its genteel and high-minded veneer lurks an assortment of grifters and malfeasants eager to cash in on the game.
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In the upscale world of New York City's luxury penthouses and grand Hamptons estates, it will take a man of Stone Barrington's careful discernment and well-honed instincts to get to the truth without ruffling the wrong feathers . . . because when it comes to priceless and irreplaceable works of art, the money and reputations at stake are worth killing for.
Holly's come to New York hot on the trail of Trini Rodriguez, a bad guy she thought she'd stabbed to death in an earlier adventure. He's currently wanted for (among other things) blowing up a dozen people by hiding bombs in the caskets of two of his earlier victims and detonating them at the funeral.
\nBut finding him won't be so simple: he's been placed in the FBI Witness Protection Program and is working with the Feds and the CIA to catch an Arab terrorist group trying to employ the Mafia in a money-laundering scheme . . .
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Stone Barrington is looking forward to some quiet time in New York City, until he is asked to transport precious, top-secret cargo across the Atlantic. Taking on the challenge, Stone flies off unaware of what - or who - he is bringing with him.
\nBut his plans to lie low are quickly spoiled when a dangerous dispatcher tracks down Stone and his tantalising mystery guest, intent on payback - and silencing anyone who poses a threat. From the English countryside to the balmy beaches of Key West, Stone is on an international mission to hide and protect those closest to him.
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After a series of nonstop adventures, Stone Barrington is eager for some peace and quiet in a rustic British setting. But no sooner does he land in England than he's beset by an outrageous demand from a beautiful lady, and an offer he can't refuse.
\nUnfortunately, Stone quickly learns that his new acquisition comes with some undesired strings attached - namely, a deadly mystery involving the complex relationships of the local gentry, and a relentless adversary who raises the stakes with every encounter.
\nStone's restful country vacation is looking like yet another troublesome situation, but with his tireless aplomb - and the help of a few friends - he is more than up to the challenge.
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Stone Barrington is called to Bel-Air to oversee an exclusive event that will gather the top echelons of the beau monde: Hollywood starlets, socialites, politicos, billionaires from overseas. It’s a task in which Stone has a personal stake, and one that is made all the more pleasurable - though somewhat more complicated - with the arrivals of two beautiful women with whom he’s intimately acquainted.
\nBut the grand occasion has also attracted a dangerous criminal group with sinister plans. The hunt to find them leads Stone into a complex web of deceit and misdirection, in a world where the intrigues of government intelligence collide with the clandestine machinations of the upper crust.
\nAs he draws nearer to his quarry, he realises that the stakes are higher than anybody could ever imagine . . . and that the enemies he’s seeking might just be hiding in plain sight.
Fresh off the runway at Teterboro, Stone Barrington arrives home to find an unexpected new client on his doorstep, anxiously soliciting his help. But everything is not as it seems, when the client reveals the true nature - and value - of his recent turn of fortune.
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From luxury New York high-rises to the sprawling New Mexico desert, his client is pursued from all angles . . . and Stone quickly learns that easy money isn't always so easy.
Upon returning from a dangerous coastal adventure, Stone Barrington is looking forward to some normalcy with the leading lady in his life. But when a grisly crime arrives on his doorstep, along with some suspicious new clients eager for his help, Stone realizes peace and quiet are no longer an option.
As it turns out, the mastermind behind the malfeasance rocking New York City and the nation's capital wields a heavy hand of influence. And when Stone is unable to recruit those closest to the case to his side, he is left with few leads and a handful of dead-ends. But with the help of important people in high places - and the expertise of alluring new friends - Stone is more than ready to rise to the occasion.
Stone Barrington is enjoying a round of golf in Key West when the game is violently interrupted--and it seems as if the target of the disturbance may have been one of his playing companions, the brilliant businesswoman behind a software startup on the cutting edge of technology. Soon, it becomes clear that this incident is only the first thrust in a deadly scheme to push the beautiful young woman out of the way and put her company's valuable secrets up for grabs.
From the sun-soaked Florida shores to an idyllic English country retreat, Stone embarks on a quest to protect his lovely new companion while searching for the mastermind behind the plot against her. But he may find that her enemy is far more resourceful - and dangerous - than he could have anticipated.
Rogue agent Teddy Fay has been considered dead for some time now. But President Will Lee thinks Teddy may still be alive. In a top-secret Oval Office meeting, Stone Barrington learns that he and his cohorts, Holly Barker and Dino Bacchetti, are being sent to the beautiful Caribbean island of St. Marks, courtesy of the CIA, to track down Teddy once and for all.
\nSt. Marks is a vacationers' paradise, but its luxurious beach clubs and secluded mountain villas are home to corrupt local politicians and more than a few American expats with murky personal histories. Stone and Holly soon discover that in St. Marks, everyone is hiding something - and that Teddy Fay may just be hiding in plain sight.
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Hired by an odd client previously unknown to him, Stone arrives in London, on a mission he thinks he understands, but doesn't. Soon he finds himself not only out of his territory, but out of his depth as well.
\nBaffled as he is by the behaviour of both his quarry and his client, Stone's life is further complicated by two, possibly three, murders and the affectionate attentions of two former lovers.
\nWhen the intelligence services of three countries become involved, he can only hang on for a wild ride and hope for a not-too-bumpy landing.
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After an eventful trip to Bel-Air and a reunion with his sophisticated (and very wealthy) former love, Arrington Calder, Stone Barrington is back in New York, and he's looking to stay closer to home and cash in on his partnership at Woodman & Weld.
But Aarrington has other plans for Stone . . . including introducing him to the child he fathered many years ago.
Stone Barrington’s newest client does not seem the type to bring mayhem in his wake. A polite, well-deported gentleman, he comes to Stone seeking legal expertise on an unusual - and potentially lucrative - dilemma. Stone points him in the right direction and sends him on his way, but it’s soon clear Stone hasn’t seen the end of the case. Several people are keenly interested in this gentleman’s activities and how they may relate to a long-ago crime . . . and some of them will stop at nothing to find the information they desire.
On a hunt that leads from Florida’s tropical beaches to the posh vacation homes of the Northeast, Stone finds himself walking a tightrope between ambitious authorities and seedy lowlifes who all have the same prize in their sights. In this cutthroat contest of wills, it’s winner-takes-all . . . and Stone will need every bit of his cunning and resourcefulness to be the last man standing.
Upon returning to the states from a European jaunt, Stone Barrington makes the acquaintance of a stunning woman who seems like she could be an ideal candidate to meet some of his professional - and personal - needs. Before long, though, Stone is put to the task of protecting his new hire when New York City is rocked by a series of disturbing crimes, and it looks as if she might be the next target.
In the city that never sleeps there's always a plot being hatched, and the only recourse is constant vigilance and a bit of luck. But if those defensive systems fail, Stone will have to go head-to-head against some of the most dastardly scum he's ever faced . . .
Stone Barrington is enjoying his usual dinner at Elaine's when his boss at Woodman & Weld, the law firm where Stone is \"of counsel,\" walks in, sits down, and hands Stone a check for one million dollars. It seems Stone's undercover dealings with MI6 have brought in a big new client for the firm, and they're willing to pay Stone a huge bonus and make him a partner.
But almost as soon as he's taken the deal, Stone gets wind of an impending scandal that might torpedo his big promotion: It may be that the lucrative new client whom he's introduced to the firm might be a Bernie Madoff in disguise . . .
Stone Barrington thought he'd heard the last of former girlfriend Arrington after she'd left him to marry Vance Calder, Hollywood's hottest star. The last thing Stone expected was a desperate call from Calder. Arrington has vanished, and her new fiancé wants Stone to come to LA and find her.
In a town where the sharks drive Bentleys and no one can be trusted, Stone soon discovers he's drowning in a sea of empty clues that take him from Bel Air to Malibu to Rodeo Drive. Running out of time and leads, he needs to keep his head above water and find Arrington fast, or end up swimming with the fishes himself.
Upon returning to New York City after a whirlwind British excursion, Stone Barrington is notified of a delicate situation within the country's administration, A close friend requires his expertise and subtlety to eradicate a destructive presence in a classified agency - only it soon becomes clear that this renegade was sent be a rival Stone has encountered before.
From the City of Lights to the rocky Maine coastline, Stone will need to summon all his wit and daring to halt the audacious plots threatening to reveal confidential . intel, and catch the evasive traitor at last. This enemy may be equipped with unlimited resources and devious schemes, but if Stone remains vigilant, justice may finally prevail . . .
Stone Barrington and several friends are vacationing in Florida when an extreme weather event puts a damper on their trip. Even worse, the hurricane-force winds blow a powerful, noxious politician straight onto Stone's doorstep. Though they part ways before long, Stone soon learns that he hasn't seen the last of his new acquaintance.
\nIt turns out that this official has some shady associates who may have destructive plans afoot, and Stone needs an entrée to the inside to figure out their scheme. With the fate of nations at stake, Stone must summon all of his fearless daring to put an end to the audacious plot . . . but this time he may be in over his head.
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Not long after Stone and his ex-partner Dino make the acquaintance of Billy Bob - a smooth-talkin’ Texan packing a wad of rare two-dollar bills - someone takes a shot at them. Against his better judgment, Stone offers Billy Bob a safe haven for the night but almost immediately regrets it. The slippery out-of-towner has gone missing and someone has been found dead - in Stone’s town house no less.
\nNow, Stone is now stuck between a stunning federal prosecutor and a love from his past, a con man with more aliases than hairs on his head, and a murder investigation that could ruin them all.
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In the wake of a personal tragedy, former CIA operative Teddy Fay - now a successful Hollywood film producer known as Billy Barnett - takes a leave of absence to travel and grieve, and lands in Santa Fe in the company of his friends Stone Barrington and Ed Eagle. There, fate hands him an unexpected opportunity to exact quiet revenge for his recent loss, from a man who helped to cover up the crime.
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But when his enemy wises up to Teddy's machinations, a discreet game of sabotage escalates to a potentially lethal battle. From the arid splendor of the New Mexico desert to the glamour of Hollywood's rolling hills, it will take all of Stone Barrington's diplomacy and skill to maneuver for Teddy's advantage while keeping innocents out of the crossfire.
Stone Barrington is no stranger to schemes and deceptions of all stripes - as an attorney for the premier white-shoe law firm Woodman & Weld, he’s seen more than his share. But when he travels to Europe under highly unusual circumstances, Stone finds himself at the center of mystery that is most peculiar, even by his standards.
\nTwo unexpected invitations may be the first clues in an intricate puzzle that will lead Stone deep into the rarefied world of European ultra-wealth and privilege, where billionaires rub elbows with spies, insider knowledge is traded at a high premium, and murder is never too high a price to pay for a desired end . . .
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When a hedge fund billionaire hires Stone Barrington to talk some sense into his wayward son, it seems like an easy enough job; no one knows the hidden sins and temptations of the ultra-wealthy better than Stone. But as Stone and his erstwhile protégé, Herbie Fisher, probe deeper into the case - and an old one comes back to haunt him - he realises that even he may have underestimated just how far some people will go to cover up their crimes . . . and plan new ones.
From Manhattan’s mahogany-paneled law offices to its modern penthouse lofts and dimly lit nightclubs, the trail of entrapment and murder leads to a shocking act that no one could ever have anticipated.
Stone Barrington and his latest paramour are enjoying a peaceful country retreat when their idyll is broken by an unwelcome stranger. He was sent by an enemy, someone who'd be happy to silence Stone and all his collaborators for good . . . only it's soon clear that Stone is not an easy man to target.
But with boundless resources and a thirst for vengeance, this foe will not be deterred, and when one plot fails another materializes. Their latest plan is more ambitious and subtle than any they've tried before, and the consequences could remake the nation. With the country's future in the balance, Stone will need to muster all his savvy and daring to defeat this rival once and for all.
Dino Bacchetti, Stone's ex-partner, now the head of detectives in the 19th Precinct, is not immune either, and the Two men must pool their resources to protect those close to them.
\nStone's former love, Arrington, now married to movie star Vance Calder, is back, too, and face-to-face with a new woman in Stone's life, one with a Mafia bloodline who may be as dangerous as she is beautiful.
\nStone and Dino begin to trace their tracks from years before, looking for clues that might lead them to the brilliant killer. From a premier table at the legendary Elaine's to dark back alleys where Armani-clad mobsters with the latest lethal accessories dwell, this nail-biting suspense tale takes Stone on a life-and-death hunt that twists and turns till the very end; a gripping thrill ride that will test him as no case has ever done before. Racing to find a killer, Stone can only pray that his worst fears won't be realised.
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Antonio Moro lost everything to the Leviathan League. Now he's alone in a city on an Arctic island fighting the ruthless, global pirates with the chance to be the artist he always wanted to be. Unfortunately, he thinks it’s a cover story for his real purpose - spying on sympathisers.
\nWhen things look bleak, he discovers an unusual ally. His new personal assistant program, Par Augustus. It’s insolent, extroverted, moody, and a not-quite-legal nascent A.I.
\nTogether they create a secret rebellion from unlikely recruits to defend the island from ideological pirates with entitlement and guns, and capitalist pirates with entitlement and money.
In a US facing growing food shortages, stark inequality, and a growing fascist government, three perfectly normal young women are about to find out that they share a great deal in common. Their creator, the gifted geneticist Peng, made them that way - before such things were outlawed.
\nRumors of a virus make their way through an unprotected population on the verge of rebellion, only to have it turn deadly. As the women fight to stay alive and help, Peng races to find a cure - and the cover up behind the virus.
Over two hundred years after the first colonists landed on Pax, a new set of explorers arrives from Earth on what they claim is a temporary scientific mission.
\nBut the Earthlings misunderstand the nature of the Pax settlement and its real leader. Even as Stevland attempts to protect his human tools, a more insidious enemy than the Earthlings makes itself known.
\nStevland is not the apex species.
Forced to land on a planet they aren't prepared for, human colonists rely on their limited resources to survive. The planet provides a lush but inexplicable landscape - trees offer edible, addictive fruit one day and poison the next, while the ruins of an alien race are found entwined in the roots of a strange plant.
\nConflicts between generations arise as they struggle to understand one another and grapple with an unknowable alien intellect.
Stevland, the dominant sentient lifeform of Pax, has clandestinely sent some of its progeny to Earth. To explore, to spread, to report back.
\nSince their germination, Earth has been a powder keg. Human rebellion, robot uprisings, and global pandemics have created chaos, distrust, and deaths.
\nAs more and more conflicts break out across Earth, Stevland's children work in the background, in an attempt to control human behavior and perhaps, bring peace to the planet. Stevland took control of Pax. Earth shouldn’t be too difficult . . .
A group of Victorian women, shipwrecked on an island in a parallel universe, fight for change.
Thirty \"surplus\" mothers from asylums, workhouses, and the streets of Victorian England are shipwrecked on an island in an alternate universe. To survive, they must create a new society amid the lethal black sands and mysterious beasts.
How will they shake off the patriarchal chains that bound them and raise their children to be free? How will Betty, who longs to be back under the guidance of her master, survive, as the community evolves? And who is watching them?
After thirty years of friendship, Pam dreams of her perfect retirement with Nancy, Shalisa, Marlene, and their husbands - until their husbands pool their funds for an investment that goes terribly wrong, and their dreams of beachfront condos and a sunny, carefree retirement vanish. The golden years are looking as dreary as their marriages.
\nBut when one husband dies in a freak accident, the other three women are shocked to see his widow rebound with a huge life insurance payout and a new life in Florida. In the aftermath, the women discover that their husbands have identical, seven-figure life insurance policies. A new dream forms, and this time, it involves a hitman.
\nMeanwhile, their husbands have a secret retirement plan of their own. So, when things begin to go awry, they fear their own scheme may have backfired . . . with deadly consequences. The husbands scramble to stay alive, but they may not be fast enough to outmaneuver their wives.
\nWhat follows is a high-stakes tale of cat and mouse, both laugh-out-loud funny and unbearably tense, while ultimately a bighearted look at marriage, friendship, and middle-age.
Growing up on the moon, Xingyin is accustomed to solitude, unaware that she is being hidden from the feared Celestial Emperor who exiled her mother for stealing his elixir of immortality. But when Xingyin’s magic flares and her existence is discovered, she is forced to flee her home, leaving her mother behind. Alone, powerless, and afraid, she makes her way to the Celestial Kingdom, a land of wonder and secrets.
\nDisguising her identity, she seizes an opportunity to learn alongside the emperor's son, mastering archery and magic, even as passion flames between her and the prince. To save her mother, Xingyin embarks on a perilous quest, confronting legendary creatures and vicious enemies across the earth and skies. But when treachery looms and forbidden magic threatens the kingdom, she must challenge the ruthless Celestial Emperor for her dream - striking a dangerous bargain in which she is torn between losing all she loves or plunging the realm into chaos.
\nDaughter of the Moon Goddess begins an enchanting, romantic duology which weaves ancient Chinese mythology into a sweeping adventure of immortals and magic - where love vies with honor, dreams are fraught with betrayal, and hope emerges triumphant.
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After her perilous quest to free her mother, Xingyin thrives once more in the tranquility of her home. But her fragile peace is threatened by the discovery of a strange magic on the moon and the unsettling changes in the Celestial Kingdom as the emperor tightens his grip on power. While Xingyin is determined to keep clear of the rising danger, the discovery of a shocking truth spurs her into a treacherous confrontation.
\nForced to flee her home once more, Xingyin and her companions venture to unexplored lands of the Immortal Realm, encountering legendary creatures and shrewd monarchs, beloved friends and bitter adversaries. With alliances shifting quicker than the tides, Xingyin has to overcome past grudges and enmities to forge a new path forward, seeking aid where she never imagined she would.
\nAs an unspeakable terror sweeps across the realm, Xingyin must uncover the truth of her heart and claw her way through devastation - to rise against this evil before it destroys everything she holds dear, and the worlds she has grown to love . . . even if doing so demands the greatest price of all.
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A stunning, standalone romantic fantasy filled with dangerous secrets, forbidden magic, and passion, of a young ruler who fights to protect her kingdom.
\nAs the heir to Tianxia, Liyen knows she must ascend the throne and renew her kingdom’s pledge to serve the immortals who once protected them from a vicious enemy. But when she is poisoned, Liyen’s grandfather steals an enchanted lotus to save her life. Enraged at his betrayal, the immortal queen commands the powerful God of War to attack Tianxia.
\nUpon her grandfather’s death, Liyen ascends a precarious throne, vowing to end her kingdom’s obligation to the immortals. When she is summoned to the Immortal Realm, she seizes the opportunity to learn their secrets and to form a tenuous alliance to safeguard her people, all with the one she should fear and mistrust the most: the ruthless God of War. As they are drawn together, a treacherous attraction ignites between them - one she has to resist, to not endanger all she is fighting for.
\nBut with darker forces closing in around them, and her kingdom plunged into peril, Liyen must risk everything to save her people from an unspeakable fate, even if it means forging a dangerous bond with the immortal . . . even if it means losing her heart.
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Sue Lynn Tan’s highly acclaimed, bestselling Celestial Kingdom duology is expanded with this new compilation of stories from before, during, and after the events in Daughter of the Moon Goddess and Heart of the Sun Warrior, all from the perspectives of beloved characters and illustrated by Kelly Chong.
\nReturn to the Immortal Realm, a world of gods, magic, and legendary creatures - and embark upon new adventures of valor, danger, and love.
\nTales from the Celestial Kingdom collects nine spellbinding stories - two previously published, seven original, including the epilogue to the duology - set in the enchanting world of Sue Lynn Tan’s stunning debut. Filled with magic and mythology, friendship and love, these stories intertwine through the past, present, and future of the two novels, told from the perspectives of multiple characters, including Chang’e, Shuxiao, Liwei, and Wenzhi.
\nWith beautiful illustrations from Kelly Chong throughout, these wondrous tales make the perfect complement to Sue Lynn Tan’s breathtaking series.
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Hannah has done everything to make sure her life is safe and secure. A long way from her unstable childhood growing up in foster care, she’s content with her sweet, little, messy apartment and her satisfying job as a social worker. She quietly worries that, aged 36, she might never fall in love. But otherwise her life is where she wants it to be.
\nUntil, encouraged by her best friend to join a dating app, she meets Alex. He’s irresistibly handsome. He loves the same music as her. The same food as well. They both dream of travelling the world but agree they’d be equally happy escaping to a cottage by the beach in Devon. Both of them would love to own a Labrador one day. It’s like he’s made for her. It’s like he’s too good to be true.
\nHannah’s friends aren’t so sure about him. But Hannah thinks he’s perfect.
\nWhich is good. Because Alex knows she’s perfect for him too. In fact, she’s exactly the girl he’s been looking for . . .
\nAnd nothing Hannah’s done to make her life safe will ever be enough.
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You can never truly know what goes on behind closed doors . . .
\n“My darling son, Sam, is marrying his childhood sweetheart and I couldn’t be prouder of the man he’s grown into. Walking out on his abusive father all those years ago was the best thing I ever did. And today he stands, tall and handsome, saying ‘I do’ to my dream daughter-in-law. If I hadn’t pushed them together all those years ago, he might never have found a girl as perfect as Lauren. It’s true what they say, mother always knows best.
\nBut weeks later, Lauren is dead and police cars fill the driveway of their idyllic countryside home. As they question Sam, I sense he’s hiding something. Why won’t he look me in the eye? And who does he rush off to meet as soon as the police are gone? Desperate, I do what every good mother would do: I let myself into Sam and Lauren’s bedroom. What I see, I will never be able to forget. My son’s beautiful new wife was hiding a dangerous secret. Can I clear my son’s name? And could my life be in danger now too?”
Then: Morning light shines into the nursery, casting shadows across the pale pink walls and wooden cot in the middle of the room. She opens the door expecting to hear the soft coo of her daughter Sofia stretching herself awake. But the room is silent. The cot is empty. Her little girl has vanished . . .
\nNow: Twelve years have passed, but Emily will never forget the night her life changed forever and she’s happy to have her daughter back beside her. A teenager now, Sofia, who was once a star student, is getting into trouble at school and she’s started asking questions about when she was a baby, but Emily can’t tell her what really happened the night she went missing. Nobody would understand why Emily did what she did, and if anyone ever found out, she could lose her daughter forever.
\nBut when Emily catches Sofia messaging a stranger online, and as she reads the last message received, her heart pounds in her chest.
\nYour mother isn’t who you think she is.
\nDays later, Emily returns home to find the house silent. She checks every room but Sofia has vanished, again. She shudders as she remembers that night in the nursery. Has her past finally caught up with her? And is she already too late to save her precious daughter?
Marianne has a life others dream of. A beautiful townhouse on the best street in the neighbourhood. Three bright children who are her pride and joy.
Sometimes her past still hurts: losing her mother early, growing up in foster care. But her husband, Simon, is always there. A successful surgeon, he’s the envy of every woman they’ve ever met. Flowers, gifts, trips to France: nothing is too good for his family.
Then Simon says another woman’s name. The way he lingers on it, Caroline , gives Marianne a shudder of suspicion, but she knows it’s nothing – she can’t entertain this flash of paranoia.
In the old days, she’d have distracted herself by excelling at work, but Marianne left her glamorous career when she married. She’d speak to a friend, but she’s too busy with her children and besides, Simon doesn’t approve of the few she has left.
It’s almost by accident that Marianne starts to learn more about Caroline. But once started, she can’t stop, because what she finds makes her wonder: is the question she should be asking not ‘should she be jealous’, but . . . ‘should she be scared?’
When a dream trip becomes your worst nightmare . . .
\nYou’ve been excited about this getaway for months - at last, a chance to reconnect with your husband at a secluded island resort. But when he unexpectedly calls you from the beach, you hear the urgency in his voice. Something is very wrong.
\nThe beautiful waitress from the restaurant last night has been found lying dead in the sand. And the police want to question your husband about it.
\nSure, you saw him glance at her over dinner a few times, but you know he didn’t have anything to do with the poor girl’s death. So why is he asking you to lie to the police that he was with you all night? And where did he go in those missing hours?
\nWhen he returns to your beautiful sea-view suite, things get heated and he accuses you of being jealous, just like he always does. Yes, the waitress was overly flirtatious with your husband, but you didn’t actually wish her any harm. Not really.
\nCan you trust the man you married . . . or are you the one who can’t be trusted?
Twenty years ago, student Daisy Harrington went out for the evening and never came home. Her body was found a week later. The killer was caught. Case closed.
\nNow, on what would have been her fortieth birthday, her five university housemates are invited to a weekend gathering. None of them want to go. But none of them can refuse - the invitation makes it clear that if they don’t attend, the past they’ve spent two decades hiding will finally come to light.
\nBecause the man convicted of Daisy’s murder was innocent. And one of the five has known this all along. As the weekend unfolds, the truth threatens to finally be revealed . . .
\nThey all wanted Daisy dead, but one wanted it more. The question is . . . who? And why?
Lucy has a lovely husband, a job she adores as a teacher, and a house on Mulberry Avenue that she’s decorated just the way she wants – from the floaty curtains and the softest bed linen, right down to the perfectly-chosen velvet cushions on their comfortable sofa. Life isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty close.
She’s also got Amber. Her newest friend and neighbour. They’ve got so much in common. Even if Amber’s life sometimes seems a lot more glamorous and exciting, she shares Lucy’s down-to-earth sense of humour, and Amber seems so interested in Lucy and her life, it’s like they never run out of things to talk about.
But then Amber starts acting strangely, claiming her life isn’t all it seems, talking about how she thinks she might be pregnant, and confiding in Lucy that she’s started getting threatening messages.
She’s scared, and the only person she can turn to is Lucy. She wants to stay at Lucy’s house until things calm down.
Lucy wants to protect her friend. But can she really trust Amber? Because sometimes other people are not all that they seem. Sometimes they have secrets. And they’d do anything to keep them . . .
YOU: My handsome husband Tom. You've given me everything our beautiful son and our perfect new seaside home. I want to trust you, but I know you haven't been honest about why you really wanted to move here. I haven't been honest with you either.
\nME: I make a secret promise as Tom kisses me and pours a glass of ice-cold wine to toast the first night in our dream house: I'm going to forget about his past. For the sake of our son, I'll keep this family together, no matter what.
\nHER: Chloe is the only friend I've made since the move. I love our long lunches, even though she asks prying questions about my marriage. Tom hates me spending time with her, but I ignore his warning to stay away. I've seen the way he looks at her. It's better to keep your enemies close.
\nYou may think you know what's going on in my marriage, but you'll be wrong. Only three things are true: Someone is a liar. Someone is in danger. Someone is a killer.
Mira is a desperate young woman, hired by a wealthy single mother to tutor her lonesome son, Yuchan. But Mira is not who she presents herself to be; she is haunted by the death of her own family and motivated by the dark pulse of vengeance. Yuchan was cruel to Mira’s mother. A kind of cruelty she can’t ever forgive.
\nAnd then there is Jiwon, the boy’s mother, a bad mother, Mira thinks - or so Jiwon tells herself she must not be.
\nBut as Mira spends more time in the family’s sprawling home, she begins to suspect Yuchan is not the culprit she’s after. Someone else in the family has been pulling the strings. Someone with a deviant plan she can’t begin to imagine.
\nStructured around four different letters and journal Mira's, Jiwon's reply, Yuchan's younger brother's diary entry and, finally, Mira's own written recollection. Each new section brings us deeper into a web of cruelty, consequence, and closer to the truth.
After a lonely childhood, Clara Thorne is finally living \"happily ever after\" as the magically-gifted gardener for the town of Moss. Sure, her closest companion is a surly hedgehog, and she's forever stuck on the first line of her novel, but she has a home. That is, until The Goddess chooses Clara for an important quest-travel to the cursed town of Dwindle and grow them a garden. In less than a month.
\nOnly Clara's hiding a terrible secret: her magic doesn't work outside Moss. Worse, The Goddess has assigned the absurdly sexy, annoyingly cheerful Hesper Altanfall to keep her safe. Clara would rather eat thorns than accept help - especially since Hesper insists that Clara's magic is bound to her heart, not her home.
\nNevertheless, the two can't help growing closer as they traverse enchanted woods and share tavern beds. But with an ancient evil threatening from the shadows, saving Dwindle will require more than enchanted crops. Clara will need to unearth a magic she's always believed impossible.
\n
Last seen under Loran’s command, Emere is now a member of the Commons Council. While giving a speech in the Capital, he survives an assassination attempt - and now must team up with the Ministry of Intelligence to discover who is behind it.
\nArienne is on a mission to find out what really happened to Mersia. The land - destroyed a hundred years ago by a mysterious weapon known only as the Star of Mersia - is devoid of life, populated only by ghosts. But when she arrives at the ruined city of Danras, Arienne finds more than she expects.
\nOne hundred and seventy years ago, Yuma is the Chief Herder of Danras, looking after the city’s aurochs every summer. After being punished for disobeying the Demon King, she meets Lysandros, who is on a mission to establish diplomatic relations between the Empire and the states of Mersia. But is there a cost of doing business with the Empire?
Powered by the corpses of sorcerers, the Empire has conquered the world. It claims to have brought peace and stability to its conquered lands, but some see that peace for what it is - a lie - and will give everything in the fight against it.
\nLoran is desperate for revenge after the Empire killed her family, so much so that the swordswoman climbs the volcano where the legends say an ancient dragon slumbers and leaps in. She finds that the legends are true, and Loran leaves the mountain with a sword made of dragon’s fang and a great purpose before her.
\nCain arrived in the Imperial Capital lost and orphaned, and it’s only thanks to the kindness of a stranger-turned-mentor that he survived on the city’s streets. When his friend is found murdered, he will leave no stone unturned to find those responsible, even if it means starting a war.
\nArienne’s future has never been in question - born a sorcerer, she’ll be a Power Generator for the Empire upon her death. But when she starts to hear the voice of a powerful necromancer in her head, she realizes the only thing more terrifying than dying for the Empire is never getting to truly live in the first place.
\nWhen peace is a lie, there is power in truth - and as Loran, Cain, and Arienne hunt for answers in their own lives, any one of their small rebellions could be the stone that brings the Empire toppling down.
When Mercy Chan washed up on the shores of Hong Kong with no family, no money, and no memories, she was thrust into the horrors of World War II. She only survived by hiding in Kowloon Walled City, an infamous, ghost-infested slum full of lost and traumatised civilians. Since the end of the war, she has rebuilt her life and found work with the local triad as a ghost-talker, dealing with the angry and bitter spirits who haunt this place. These days, the filthy gutters and cramped alleyways of Kowloon feel like home.
\nBut the past she can’t remember won’t let her go. An unusually powerful ghost has infested Kowloon’s waterways, drowning innocents and threatening the district. Unnervingly, it claims to know Mercy - and her forgotten childhood. As Mercy is drawn into a deadly cat-and-mouse game with this malignant spirit, she begins to realize that the monster she fights within these walls may well be one of her own making.
\n33 years before, mere days ahead of the Japanese invasion, Sung Siu Yin and her mother flee Hong Kong, intending to hide out on her mother's ancestral island home. It’s beautiful, tranquil, and remote. . . but also inhabited by ghosts ever since the entire village drowned in a storm many years ago. Still, it’s better than living under occupation.
\nBut as the war drags on and isolation sets in, Siu Yin is increasingly drawn into the island's grim past - a past that may still have a hold on the present. There is a darkness lurking beneath that idyllic ocean, and it has been waiting many years for someone to return.
\n
One night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the beach. He’s carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later Louisa is found washed up by the tide, barely alive. Her father is gone, presumed drowned. She is ten years old.
\nIn chapters that shift from one member to the next, turning back again and again to that night by the sea, Susan Choi's Flashlight chases the shockwaves of one family’s catastrophe. Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past.
\nHer father, Serk, an ethnic Korean born and raised in Japan, lost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to the DPRK. Her American mother, Anne, is estranged from her family after a reckless sexual adventure in her youth. And then there is Tobias, Anne’s illegitimate son, whose reappearance in their lives will have astonishing consequences.
\nWhat really happened to Louisa’s father? Why did he take Louisa and her mother to Japan just before he disappeared? And how can we love, or make sense of our lives, when there’s so much we can’t see?
Freddie Gellar didn't mean to get half the rival high school arrested. She’d simply heard shrieks coming from the woods, so she’d called the cops like any good human would do. How was she supposed to know it was just kids partying?
\nExcept the next day, a body is found. And while the local sheriff might call it suicide, Freddie's instincts tell her otherwise. So, like the aspiring sleuth (and true X-Files aficionado) she is, Freddie sets out to prove there's a murderer at large.
Winnie Wednesday has gotten everything she thought she wanted. She passed the deadly hunter trials, her family has been welcomed back into the Luminaries, and overnight, she has become a local celebrity.
\nThe Girl Who Jumped. The Girl Who Got Bitten.
\nUnfortunately, it all feels wrong. For one, nobody will believe her about the new nightmare called the Whisperer that's killing hunters each night. Everyone blames the werewolf, even though Winnie is certain the wolf is innocent.
\nOn top of that, following her dad's convoluted clues about the Dianas, their magic, and what happened in Hemlock Falls four years ago is leaving her with more questions than answers.
\nThen to complicate it all, there is still only one person who can help her: Jay Friday, the boy with plenty of problems all his own.
\nAs bodies and secrets pile up around town, Winnie finds herself questioning what it means to be a true Wednesday and a true Luminary - and also where her fierce-hearted loyalties might ultimately have to lie.
Hemlock Falls isn't like other towns. You won't find it on a map, your phone won't work here, and the forest outside town might just kill you.
\nWinnie Wednesday wants nothing more than to join the Luminaries, the ancient order that protects Winnie's town - and the rest of humanity - from the monsters and nightmares that rise in the forest of Hemlock Falls every night.
\nEver since her father was exposed as a witch and a traitor, Winnie and her family have been shunned. But on her sixteenth birthday, she can take the deadly Luminary hunter trials and prove herself true and loyal - and restore her family's good name. Or die trying.
\nBut in order to survive, Winnie enlists the help of the one person who can help her train: Jay Friday, resident bad boy and Winnie’s ex-best friend. While Jay might be the most promising new hunter in Hemlock Falls, he also seems to know more about the nightmares of the forest than he should. Together, he and Winnie will discover a danger lurking in the forest no one in Hemlock Falls is prepared for.
\nNot all monsters can be slain, and not all nightmares are confined to the dark.
The year is 1876 and Eleanor Fitt has a lot to worry about. Her brother has gone missing, her family has fallen on hard times, and her mother is determined to marry her off to any rich young man who walks by. But this is nothing compared to what she’s just read in the newspaper:
\nThe Dead are rising in Philadelphia.
\nAnd then, in a frightening attack, a zombie delivers a letter to Eleanor . . . from her brother.
\nWhoever is controlling the Dead army has taken her brother as well. If Eleanor is going to find him, she’ll have to venture into the lab of the notorious Spirit-Hunters, who protect the city from supernatural forces. But as Eleanor spends more time with the Spirit-Hunters, including their maddeningly stubborn yet handsome inventor, Daniel, the situation becomes dire. And now, not only is her reputation on the line, but her very life may hang in the balance.
With supernatural forces, epic romance, and a mysterious Egyptian city, Eleanor and her team are set for an adventure they will never forget.
\nIt has been a tumultuous time for Eleanor Fitt since life as she knew it in Philadelphia came abruptly to an end. Although the Spirit-Hunters- Joseph, Jie, and Daniel - have helped her survive, Eleanor has lost just about everything.
\nAnd now, Jie is missing - taken by the evil necromancer Marcus. Eleanor is determined not only to get her back but to finally end this nightmare. To do so, she must navigate the hot desert streets of nineteenth-century Egypt amid the rising Dead, her unresolved feelings for Daniel, and her volatile relationships with Joseph and Oliver, her demon. And it won't be easy. Because Allison, her friend from Philadelphia, has tagged along, becoming strangely entangled in Eleanor's mission.
\nIt will take all of Eleanor's powers of black magic, and all of Daniel's and Joseph's trust, to succeed. But there will be a price.
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Winnie Wednesday’s future is looking bright. Hemlock Falls is no longer hunting the werewolf, she and Erica Thursday are tentative friends, and Winnie finally knows exactly where she stands with Jay Friday.
\nWith everything finally on track, Winnie is looking forward to the Nightmare Masquerade, a week-long celebration of all things Luminary. But as Luminaries from across the world flock to the small town, uninvited guests also arrive. Winnie is confronted by a masked Diana and charged with an impossible task - one that threatens everything and everyone Winnie loves.
\nAs Winnie fights to stop new enemies before time runs out, old mysteries won't stop intruding. Her missing father is somehow entangled with her search for hidden witches, and as Winnie digs deeper into the long-standing war between the Luminaries and the Dianas, she discovers rifts within her own family she never could have imagined.
\nWhat does loyalty mean when family and enemies look the same?
After an explosion destroys his ship, the world believes Prince Merik, Windwitch, is dead. Scarred yet alive, Merik is determined to prove his sister’s treachery. Upon reaching the royal capital, crowded with refugees, he haunts the streets, fighting for the weak - which leads to whispers of a disfigured demigod, the Fury, who brings justice to the oppressed.
When the Bloodwitch Aeduan discovers a bounty on Iseult, he makes sure to be the first to find her - yet in a surprise twist, Iseult offers him a deal. She will return money stolen from him, if he locates Safi. Now they must work together to cross the Witchlands, while constantly wondering, who will betray whom first?
After a surprise attack and shipwreck, Safi and the Empress of Marstok barely escape with their lives. Alone in a land of pirates, every moment balances on a knife’s edge - especially when the pirates’ next move could unleash war upon the Witchlands.
Safi and Iseult, the legendary Cahr Awen, must heal the final Origin Well. But first, they'll have to actually reach it--and time is not on their side. With ancient figures rising from the past, with the Raider King's armies gathering for war, and with the magic at the heart of everything dying too fast, all of the Witchlands is on the brink of collapse.
\nTo succeed, Safi and Iseult will have to call on every favor owed and every ally they've ever made, from Prince Merik Nihar to the Bloodwitch Aeduan and beyond. Yet all who fight for the Cahr Awen will soon discover that Eridysi's Lament is not the prophecy they believed it was - and their journeys are only just beginning.
War has come to the Witchlands . . . and nothing will be the same again.
\nIseult has found her heartsister Safi at last, but their reunion is brief. For Iseult to stay alive, she must flee Cartorra while Safi remains. And though Iseult has plans to save her friend, they will require her to summon magic more dangerous than anything she has ever faced before.
\nMeanwhile, the Bloodwitch Aeduan is beset by forces he cannot understand. And Vivia - rightful queen of Nubrevna - finds herself without a crown or home.
\nAs villains from legend reawaken across the Witchlands, only the mythical Cahr Awen can stop the gathering war. Iseult could embrace this power and heal the land, but first she must choose on which side of the shadows her destiny will lie.
Florrie Butterfield - eighty-seven, one-legged, and of cheerful disposition - believes there can't be any more adventures or surprises in life to experience. Yet one midsummer’s evening, there’s an accident at Babbington Hall - the adult residence where she lives - so shocking and strange that Florrie is suspicious; is this really an accident? Or is she being lied to? Is she, in fact, living alongside a potential murderer?
\nIn her efforts to learn the truth, Florrie is forced to look back on her own life, with all its passions and regrets; she must confront her own bloody secret - and, at last, forgive herself. Above all, Florrie learns, through the help of her new friend, Stanhope, that you’re never too old to have the life you’ve always dreamed of. When it comes to love, it’s never too late.
Turtle is scavenging a drowned town when she saves a stranger’s life. There’s something special about Kai - an attraction she’s never felt before. She would do anything to see him again. But Turtle can never truly be with Kai, because Kai is Normal, and Turtle is one of the Mer, kids whose genes were illegally hacked before birth and who now have working gills as well as lungs. Turtle lives on an old cruise ship with the other Mer in order to be close to the water she needs to survive.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tYet she sneaks away and lies to her friends to spend more time on land with Kai. And the pull of the shore grows even stronger when Turtle reconnects with her sisters and learns that her father, who has been in prison for having her genes modified, has escaped and may be hiding out nearby.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWhen scientists come up with a way for the Mer to surrender their gills and live as Normals, Turtle faces a terrible choice. Turtle loves her life with her Mer friends, but she desperately misses her family. And then there’s Kai . . . Should she give up her Mer community and their way of life, along with the joy of living freely under the sea? Or give up the guy she’s falling for . . . and any hope of reconnecting with her family?
At the dawn of the twentieth century in Paris, Samantha Harker, daughter of Dracula’s killer, works as a researcher for the Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena. But no one realises how abnormal she is. Sam is a channel into the minds of monsters: a power that could help her solve the gruesome deaths plaguing turn-of-the-century Paris - or have her thrown into an asylum.
\nSam finds herself assigned to a case with Dr. Helena Moriarty, daughter of the criminal mastermind and famed nemesis of Sherlock Holmes and a notorious detective whom no one wants to work with on account of her previous partners’ mysterious murders. Ranging from the elite clubs of Paris to the dark underbelly of the catacombs, their investigation sweeps them into a race to stop a beast from its killing rampage, as Hel and Sam are pitted against men, monsters, and even each other. But beneath their tenuous trust, an unmistakable attraction brews.
\nIs trusting Hel the key to solving the murder, or is Sam yet another pawn in Hel’s game?
\n
Six days before Samhain—the night when the veil between worlds is thinnest - Samantha Harker, daughter of Dracula’s killer, and Dr. Helena Moriarty, daughter of the famed criminal mastermind, are thrown into their next the mysterious disappearance of two Society field agents in Ireland. Only this time, the Royal Society is sending Jakob Van Helsing to keep an eye on them.
\nSam and Hel may have solved the Paris case, but that doesn’t mean the Society trusts them. Sam has the power to slip into the minds of monsters, and Van Helsing has sworn to kill her at the first sign of corruption. And if Hel can’t prove her father’s existence, she’ll soon go down for his crimes.
\nTheir investigation takes them from the crumbling ruins of Ireland’s untamed wilds to the occult societies of the rich and powerful. The connection between the Sam and Hel is electric, but as they fall deeper into each other’s orbit, their secrets only multiply. For Hel, it’s the sins she committed when she was her father’s pawn. For Sam, it’s a plague of death omens, mysterious black feathers, and a siren song no one else can hear. And then comes a chilling revelation that is poised to shatter The agents who disappeared were each haunted by a ghost. And so, it seems, is Sam.
\n
Detroit, 1960. Lila Pereira is two years old when her angry, abusive father has her mother committed to an asylum. Lila never sees her mother again. Three decades later, having mustered everything she has - brains, charm, talent, blond hair - Lila rises to the pinnacle of American media as the powerful, brilliant executive editor of The Washington Globe. Lila unapologetically prioritises her career, leaving the rearing of her daughters to her generous husband, Joe. He doesn’t mind - until he does.
\nBut Grace, their youngest daughter, feels abandoned. She wishes her mother would attend PTA meetings, not White House correspondents’ dinners. As she grows up, she cannot shake her resentment. She wants out from under Lila’s shadow, yet the more she resists, the more Lila seems to shape her life. Grace becomes a successful reporter, even publishing a bestselling book about her mother.
\nIn the process of writing it, she realises how little she knows about her own family. Did Lila’s mother, Grace’s grandmother, die in that asylum? Is refusal to look back the only way to create a future? How can you ever be yourself, Grace wonders, if you don’t know where you came from?
\nSpanning generations, and populated by complex, unforgettable characters, Like Mother, Like Mother is an exhilarating, portrait of family, marriage, ambition, power, the stories we inherit, and the lies we tell to become the people we believe we’re meant to be.
\n
In August 1976, Sophia “Phee” McKean is 15 years old - an only child, smart, bookish, mature for her age. After a terrible family tragedy, she’s trying to find her way in the unfamiliar town her mother has chosen for their new home, and in a school where she knows no one.
\nPhee longs to fit in, and feels as if her wish has been granted when beautiful, talented Holly Miller befriends her. Holly is a gifted violinist, and her family has deep roots in the small-town community. She and her parents welcome Phee with open arms.
\nAt first Phee brushes off the oddities that seem to surround the their meandering, confusing house and its strange noises; the disorienting visions and missing time she sometimes experiences in their company. But Holly has a troubled older brother who seems bent on tormenting Phee.
\nAs he grows bolder - confronting her, frightening her - Phee begins to glimpse the mysterious darkness he inhabits, and realises the Millers are keeping fantastical secrets.
\n
I’m finally in a good place. A steady job. A lovely home. With Jason, the love of my life. Reliable, kind, honest Jason - I trust him completely.
\nBut if one person can lead Jason astray, it’s his best friend.
\nAnd now he’s on our doorstep. Desperate for help. As usual.
\nI beg Jason not to get involved. His friend is always getting him in trouble. But what he wants this time could destroy everything we’ve built.
\nAnd I’m the one who’ll be left to pick up the pieces.
\nCan I protect him from his best friend?
\nHow far will I go?
Beth wants to love her new home on a quiet suburban street. She wishes she could make friends with her beautiful neighbour Oksana. She longs for a new group of friends. Welcoming neighbours to visit. Coffee dates and dinner parties.
\nBut life here feels so closed. Then Beth runs into Oksana’s garden one day to fetch her runaway dog, and she sees something shocking that makes her wonder who her new neighbours really are.
\nA girl in the window.
\nA pale desperate face.
\nA hastily scribbled sign bearing only two words.
\nHELP ME.
\nWho is the girl? What are the neighbours hiding?
\nSometimes, it’s the most perfect neighbours that hide the most terrible secrets.
Then:
Ten-year-old Daniel witnesses his friend being murdered by the boy’s father, and dumped in a canal.
Terrified of his friend’s father, scared he won’t be believed by the police, Daniel convinces himself that it was all a nightmare.
\n\n
Now:
Daniel is plagued by memories of that night.
The frightened scream.
\nThe splash of something heavy hitting the water.
\nWhat really happened that night?
\nDaniel has to find out the truth. His new girlfriend, Poppy, promises to help him.
\nBut the more questions they ask the more they dredge up.
\nSome things are better left hidden under the surface.
\nIs a deadly past destined to repeat itself?
\n
Michelle can’t believe this is her life. That she’s escaped her dreary 9-to-5 in London and landed a PR job here. In the towering headquarters of Kimia Pharmaceuticals in Reykjavik, Iceland.
\nIt’s too bad her coworkers don’t want to be friends. They’re all young, beautiful - and determined to freeze Michelle out of their whispered conversations.
\nBut researcher Lars isn’t like the others . . .
\nMichelle steps into the elevator with him and is struck by the hunted look on his face. The doors close - and seconds later, they judder to a sickening halt.
\nThat’s when it happens. Lars locks eyes with Michelle. Thrusts a folder into her hands.
\nThis is evidence. Hide it . . . I discovered something and I’ll be silenced because of it.
\nMichelle’s already run from her past. This time, she’ll be running for her life . . .
Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.
There is one other person in the house - a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.
Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scott is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees - and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods.
\nOne snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their mids - and the path of her life is changed forever.
\n
Nicola Marter was born with a gift: when she touches an object, she sometimes glimpses those who have owned it before. When the gallery she works in receives a wooden carving she can see the object’s history and knows that it was named after the Firebird, the mythical bird that inspires an old Russian fairytale and was once owned by Russia’s famed Empress Catherine.
Nicola’s investigation into the Firebird’s origin draws her into the 1715 world of Anna Logan and leads her on a quest through Scotland, France and Russia, unearthing a tale of love and sacrifice, of courage and redemption.
1613: King James - sixth of Scotland, first of England, son of Mary, Queen of Scots - has unified both countries under one crown. But the death of his eldest son, Henry, has plunged the nation into mourning, as the rumours rise the prince was poisoned.
\nAndrew Logan’s heard the rumours, but he’s paid them little heed. As one of the King’s Messengers he has enough secrets to guard, including his own. In these perilous times, when the merest suggestion of witchcraft can see someone tortured and hanged, men like Andrew must hide well the fact they were born with the Sight.
\nHe’ll need all his gifts, though, when the king sends Andrew north to find and arrest Sir David Murray, once Prince Henry’s trusted courtier, and bring him a prisoner to London to stand trial before the dreaded Star Chamber.
\n
The first time Julia Beckett saw Greywethers she was only five, but she knew that it was her house. And now that she’s at last become its owner, she suspects that she was drawn there for a reason.
As if Greywethers were a portal between worlds, she finds herself transported into seventeenth-century England, becoming Mariana, a young woman struggling against danger and treachery, and battling a forbidden love.
Each time Julia travels back, she becomes more enthralled with the past . . . until she realises Mariana’s life is threatening to eclipse her own, and she must find a way to lay the past to rest or lose the chance for happiness in her own time.
Although it goes against her workaholic nature, literary agent Lyn Ravenshaw lets herself be whisked off to Wales for the Christmas holidays by her star client, flamboyant children's author Bridget Cooper. She suspects Bridget has ulterior motives, but the lure of South Wales with its castles and myths is irresistible. Perhaps a change of scene will bring relief from the nightmares that have plagued her since the death of her child.
\nLyn immerses herself in the peace and quiet of the charming Welsh village, but she soon meets an eccentric young widow who's concerned her baby son is in danger - and inexplicably thinks Lyn is the child's protector.
\nLyn's dreams become more and more disturbing as she forms a surprisingly warm friendship with a reclusive, brooding playwright, and is pulled into an ancient world of Arthurian legend and dangerous prophecies. Before she can escape her nightmares, she must uncover the secret of her dreams, which is somehow inextricably located in a time long ago and far away . . .
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In 1921, infamous Italian poet Galeazzo D'Ascanio wrote his last and greatest play, inspired by his muse and mistress, actress Celia Sands. On the eve of opening night, Celia vanished, and the play was never performed.
Now, two generations later, Alessandro D'Ascanio plans to stage his grandfather's masterpiece and has offered the lead to a promising young English actress, also named Celia Sands-at the whim of her actress mother, or so she has always thought. When Celia arrives at D'Ascanio's magnificent, isolated Italian villa, she is drawn to the mystery of her namesake's disappearance-and to the compelling, enigmatic Alessandro.
But the closer Celia gets to learning the first Celia's fate, the more she is drawn into a web of murder, passion, and the obsession of genius. Though she knows she should let go of the past, in the dark, in her dreams, it comes back . . .
Archaeologist Verity Grey has been drawn to the dark legends of the Scottish Borderlands in search of the truth buried in a rocky field by the sea.
Her eccentric boss has spent his whole life searching for the resting place of the lost Ninth Roman Legion and is convinced he's finally found it—not because of any scientific evidence, but because a local boy has \"seen\" a Roman soldier walking in the fields, a ghostly sentinel who guards the bodies of his long-dead comrades.
Here on the windswept shores, Verity may find the answer to one of the great unsolved mysteries of our time. Or she may uncover secrets someone buried for a reason.
1205 - the town of Chinon is beseiged by enemies of King John, and his young Queen calls upon a trusted servant to conceal her treasured jewels.
\nEmily Braden is intrigued by the medieval story of Queen Isabelle, and cannot resist when her cousin Harry, a historian, suggests a trip to the white-walled town of Chinon, nestling in France's Loire Valley. But when Harry vanishes and Emily begins to search for him, she stumbles across another intriguing mystery - a second Isabelle, a chambermaid during the Second World War, who had her own tragedy, and her own treasure to hide.
\nAs Emily explores the ancient town of labyrinthine tunnels, old enmities, and new loves, she finds herself drawn ever closer to the mysterious Isabelles and their long-kept secrets.
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Autumn, 1707. Old enemies from the Highlands to the Borders are finding common ground as they join to protest the new Union with England, the French are preparing to launch an invasion to carry the young exiled Jacobite king back to Scotland to reclaim his throne, and, in Edinburgh, the streets are filled with discontent and danger.
\nWhen a young widow, Lily Aitcheson, comes forward to collect her lost husband’s wages, former soldier Adam Williamson is assigned to investigate her petition and the veracity of her claim. As Lily tells her story, Adam has only days to discover if she’s being honest, or if his own feelings are making him blind to the truth. But sinister figures lurk in the background - is Adam being used as a pawn in an increasingly treacherous game?
\nTold in dual timelines, The Vanished Days is a captivating story of intrigue, adventure, romance - and the bold courage to hope when it seems all hope is lost.
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In the spring of 1708, an invading Jacobite fleet of French and Scottish soldiers nearly succeeded in landing the exiled James Stewart in Scotland to reclaim his crown.
\nNow, Carrie McClelland hopes to turn that story into her next bestselling novel. Settling herself in the shadow of Slains Castle, she creates a heroine named for one of her own ancestors and starts to write.
\nBut when she discovers her novel is more fact than fiction, Carrie wonders if she might be dealing with ancestral memory, making her the only living person who knows the truth-the ultimate betrayal-that happened all those years ago, and that knowledge comes very close to destroying her . . .
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Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive.
\nHalf-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape - but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.
\nMia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water.
\nThen Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.
On a cold, dark night, two cars collide . . .
\nInside the vehicle at fault, Jennifer Ashby survives with barely a scratch. In the wreckage of the second, the occupants are not so lucky. Jennifer's good character helps her escape jail, but she is traumatised by the event.
\nDesperate for a change, and with her marriage buckling under the stress, she convinces her husband Jon to move to the beautiful but wild Daintree region, far away from family and friends.
\nAs Jon spends long hours at his new job and Jennifer makes plans to absolve her lingering guilt, cracks begin to form in their idyllic new life. Will the shadow of their past continue to haunt them? Will their dark secret be exposed?
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As newlyweds, Molly and Robin made the Hummingbird Inn into a trendy destination for queer travelers in the quirky mountain town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. But when their career ambitions drove them apart, the young couple separated, handed over the property’s upkeep to a management firm, and never looked back.
\nSeven years later, Molly and Robin return to the Hummingbird Inn for very different reasons. Molly is an artist on the rise who's [SD1] been commissioned to create pieces in Eureka Springs; Robin is a celebrity chef whose restaurants have gone belly up. Both feel entitled to their shared property, furious that the other refuses to leave, and resort to a series of escalating pranks in the hopes of scaring the other off.
\nWhen neither woman budges, they resolve to renovate the bed and breakfast, sell it, and at last go their separate ways. But their work to restore the inn’s vintage charm reignites memories - and chemistry - that make it hard to say goodbye.
\nTender, charming, and heartwarming, Bed and Breakup is a small-town lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers romance that explores how some dreams, no matter how dusty or broken, deserve a second chance.
With her twenty-ninth birthday approaching, Gray is determined to meet someone, settle down, and build the loving, accepting family she’s always wanted - and didn’t grow up with. But having just moved to New Orleans for a new job working for a demanding boss, and with her last first date a decade in the past, Gray has no idea how to go about finding her future spouse.
\nWhen her best friend Cherry suggests Gray look for answers from Madame Nouvelle Lune, an astrologer, Gray’s skeptical. But she’s also desperate. So when Madame encourages her to look to the stars, she finds herself in Cherry’s kitchen, mapping out a plan: go on a date with someone of each sign before her birthday, when Saturn will make its first return to the same celestial alignment as her birth (a major turning point in every person’s life, she’s learned).
\nAs Gray moves through this quintessentially queer dating challenge while juggling her new job, she learns a lot about the Zodiac - and even more about her own needs, desires, and sense of adventure. Even when it begins to threaten everything she thinks she believes, Gray is determined to finish what she started while the planets are still on her side.
A people-pleasing baker tries to find her place as a bridesmaid-for-hire . Will she finally find her happily ever after - and her own voice?
\nAmy, a semicloseted queer baker and bartender in mid-2010s Oklahoma, has spent a lifetime putting other people’s needs before her own. Until, that is, she’s fired from her job at a Christian bakery and turns her a one-off gig subbing in for a bridesmaid into a full-time business - thanks to her baking talents, crafting skills, and years watching rom-coms and Say Yes to the Dress. Between her new gig and meeting Charley, the attractive engineer who’s just moved to Tulsa, suddenly Amy’s found something - and someone - she actually wants.
\nHer tight-knit group of chosen family is thrilled that Amy is becoming her authentic self. But when her deep desire to please kicks into overdrive, Amy’s precarious balancing act strains her relationships to the breaking point, and she must decide what it looks like to be true to herself - and if she has the courage to try.
Celeste Muldoon is alone when the Big One finally hits, because, for the first time ever, her best friend stood her up after school. Nicky and Celeste share a birthday, matching tattoos, an obsession with the upcoming Mars mission, and pretty much everything else. So why did he ghost her on the day she needed him most?
\nAs the quake’s death toll rises and days pass, Nicky and Celeste’s parents fear the worst. But Celeste doesn’t buy it. He couldn’t be dead. Nicky’d spent their senior year selling essays to rich kids and was about to get caught. He’d told Celeste about his plan to vanish, to reinvent himself and escape the disaster he’d created. The quake would be perfect cover.
\nBut she can’t convince anyone that he could still be alive. Only Meo, a mysterious stranger who was somehow mixed up with Nicky, seems to believe, but Celeste has every reason to distrust him - even if her heart races whenever Meo shows up.
\nWhen Celeste finds Nicky’s notebook, it sends her and Meo on a quest across the broken city, up the coast through towns sheltering quake refugees, and eventually all the way to Florida, where the mission to Mars is about to lift off.
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Petula has avoided friendship and happiness ever since tragedy struck her family and took her beloved younger sister Maxine. Worse, Petula blames herself. If only she'd kept an eye on her sister, if only she'd sewn the button Maxine choked on better, if only . . .
\nNow her anxiety is getting out of control, she is forced to attend the world’s most hopeless art therapy class. But one day, in walks the Bionic Man: a charming, amazingly tall newcomer called Jacob, who is also an amputee. Petula's ready to freeze him out, just like she did with her former best friend, but when she’s paired with Jacob for a class project, there’s no denying they have brilliant ideas together - ideas like remaking Wuthering Heights with cats.
\nBut Petula and Jacob each have desperately painful secrets in their pasts - and when the truth comes out, there’s no way Petula is ready for it.
Frances Partridge, fifty-five, is a beloved children’s author. Geraint Blevins, forty-one, is an auto mechanic and devoted family man. Parker Poplawski, twenty-three, is just starting her career as a wardrobe assistant on a hit TV show. What do these people have in common?
\nNothing, that’s what. Until each of them reaches a breaking point and snaps in spectacular fashion. They meet in a court-mandated anger management three very different people, forced to spend a lot of time together, who slowly end up bonding and helping one another in unexpected ways, whether it’s to move on or to exact revenge.
\nLighthearted, timely, and funny, Snap is Nielsen at the top of her storytelling game, delivering flawed but relatable characters whose heartaches, foibles, and choices will make you cringe as you laugh out loud.
A queer, Caribbean, anti-colonial sci-fi novella, inspired by the Count of Monte Cristo, in which a betrayed captain seeks revenge on the interplanetary empire that subjugated her people for generations.
\nVirika Sameroo lives in colonised space under the Æerbot Empire, much like her ancestors before her in the British West Indies. After years of working hard to rise through the ranks of the empire’s merchant marine, she’s finally become first lieutenant on an interstellar cargo vessel.
\nWhen her captain dies under suspicious circumstances, Virika is arrested for murder and charged with treason despite her lifelong loyalty to the empire. Her conviction and subsequent imprisonment set her on a path to justice, determined to take down the evil empire that wronged her, all while the fate of her people hangs in the balance.
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It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.
\nThe odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined - every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute . . . and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.
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Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol - a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.
\nMuch to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest that she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.
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Everyone in the Underland has been taking great pains to keep The Prophecy of Time from Gregor. Gregor suspected it says something awful but he never imagined just how awful: It calls for the warrior's death.
\nNow, with an army of rats approaching and his mom and sister still in Regalia, Gregor the warrior must gather up his courage to help defend Regalia and get his family home safely. The entire existence of the Underland is in Gregor's hands, and time is running out. There is a code to be cracked, a mysterious new princess, Gregor's burgeoning dark side, and a war to end all wars.
With two prophecies fulfilled, Gregor is now focused on the Prophecy of Blood, which calls for Gregor and \"the princess,\" Boots, to return to the Underland to help ward off a plague. His mom agrees to let them go - on the condition that she travels with them.
\nWhen they arrive in the subterranean city, the plague is spreading - and one of Gregor's family is stricken. Only then does he understand his role in the prophecy. He must summon all his power to end the biological warfare, or the warmblood creatures of the Underland will die.
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Now, in the fourth book in Suzanne Collins's New York Times bestselling series, Gregor is drawn into a crisis. For generations, rats have run the mice - or \"nibblers\" - out of whatever lands they've claimed, keeping them on the move. But now the mice are disappearing, and the young queen Luxa is determined to find out why.When Gregor joins her on a fact-finding mission, the true fate of the mice is revealed.
\nIt is something far more sinister than Gregor or Luxa had imagined - and it points the way to the final prophecy he has yet to fulfill. Will Gregor's role as warrior be put to the test?
Months have passed since Gregor first fell into the strange Underland beneath New York City, and he swears he will never go back. But he is destined to be a key player in another prophecy, this one about an ominous white rat called the Bane. The Underlanders know there is only one way to lure Gregor back to their world: by kidnapping his little sister, Boots.
\nGregor's quest reunites him with his bat, Ares, and the rebellious princess, Luxa. They descend into the dangerous Waterway in search of the Bane, and Gregor knows what is at stake. If he does not fulfill the prophecy, his life, and the Underland, will never be the same.
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When eleven-year-old Gregor falls through a grate in the laundry room of his apartment building, he hurtles into the dark Underland, where spiders, rats and giant cockroaches coexist uneasily with humans. This world is on the brink of war, and Gregor’s arrival is no accident.
\nBut Gregor wants no part of it - until he realises it’s the only way to solve the mystery of his father’s disappearance. Reluctantly, Gregor embarks on a dangerous adventure that will change both him and the Underland forever.
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Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before - and survival, for her, is second nature.
\nWithout really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.
Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss's family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.
\nIt is by design that Katniss was rescued from the arena in the cruel and haunting Quarter Quell, and it is by design that she has long been part of the revolution without knowing it. District 13 has come out of the shadows and is plotting to overthrow the Capitol. Everyone, it seems, has had a hand in the carefully laid plans - except Katniss.
\nThe success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss's willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels' Mockingjay - no matter what the personal cost.
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When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?
\nAs the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.
\nBack in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.
\nWhen Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.
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As a professional finder, Fergus Ferguson is hired to locate missing objects and steal them back. But it is rarely so simple, especially after his latest job in Cernee. He's been recovering from that experience in the company of friends, the Shipmakers of Pluto, experts at crafting top-of-the-line AI spaceships.
\nThe Shipmakers have convinced Fergus to finally deal with unfinished business he's been avoiding for half his life: Earth. Fergus hasn't been back to his homeworld since he was fifteen, when he stole his cousin's motorcycle and ran away. It was his first theft, and nothing he's stolen since has been anywhere near so easy, or weighed so heavily on his conscience. Many years and many jobs later, Fergus reluctantly agrees that now is the time to return the motorcycle and face his family.
\nUnfortunately, someone has gotten to the motorcycle before him. And before he can figure out where it went and why the storage unit that held it is now filled with priceless, stolen art, the Shipyard is attacked. His friends are missing, presumably kidnapped.
\nAccompanied by an untrustworthy detective who suspects Fergus is the art thief and the sole friend who escaped the attack, Fergus must follow the tenuous clues to locate and save his friends. The trail leads them to Enceladus, where Fergus plans to go undercover to the research stations that lie beneath the moon's thick ice sheet deep in a dark, oppressive ocean.
\nBut all movement and personnel are watched, and the limited ways through the thick ice of the moon's surface are dangerous and highly monitored. Even if Fergus can manage to find proof that his friends are there and alive, getting out again is going to be a lot more complicated than he bargained for.
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Fergus Ferguson has been called a lot of names: thief, con artist, repo man. He prefers the term finder.
\nHis latest job should be simple. Find the spacecraft Venetia's Sword and steal it back from Arum Gilger, ex-nobleman turned power-hungry trade boss. He'll slip in, decode the ship's compromised AI security, and get out of town, Sword in hand.
\nFergus locates both Gilger and the ship in the farthest corner of human-inhabited space, a gas-giant-harvesting colony called Cernee. But Fergus' arrival at the colony is anything but simple. A cable car explosion launches Cernee into civil war, and Fergus must ally with Gilger's enemies to navigate a field of space mines and a small army of hostile mercenaries. What was supposed to be a routine job evolves into negotiating a power struggle between factions. Even worse, Fergus has become increasingly - and inconveniently - invested in the lives of the locals.
\nIt doesn't help that a dangerous alien species thought mythical prove unsettlingly real, and their ominous triangle ships keep following Fergus around.
\nFoolhardy. Eccentric. Reckless. Whatever he's called, Fergus will need all the help he can get to take back the Sword and maybe save Cernee from destruction in the process.
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Fergus Ferguson, professional finder, always knew his semi-voluntary exile wouldn’t last, but he isn't expecting a friend to betray him. One of the galaxy’s most dangerous space pirates, Bas Belos, wants him, and what Belos wants, he gets. Belos needs help finding out what happened to his twin sister, who mysteriously disappeared at the edges of space years ago, and he makes Fergus an offer he can't refuse.
\nMysterious disappearances and impossible answers are Fergus’ specialties. After he reluctantly joins Belos and his crew aboard the pirate ship Sidewider, he discovers that Belos is being tracked by the Alliance. Seeking to stay one step ahead of the Alliance, Fergus and Belos find themselves marooned in the middle of the Gap between spiral arms of our galaxy, dangerously near hostile alien territory, and with an Alliance ship in hot pursuit.
\nThat’s just the beginning of the complications for Fergus’ newest - and possibly last - job. The puzzle is much bigger than just Belos's lost sister, and the question of his future, retirement or not, depends on his ability to negotiate a path between aliens, criminals, and the most powerful military force he's ever encountered. The future of entire planets hangs in the balance, and it remains to be seen if it's too big for one determined man and his cranky cat.
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Forty years ago, the world nearly ended.
\nBe is an old robot who was there, and doesn’t want to think about what happened, or what role they played in that conflict. They have settled into a life of isolation in the abandoned ruins of an old mill in the former New York Botanical Gardens, disinterested in what has happened in the outside world since they stepped away from the war. Someone out there, though, has not forgotten about them, and when they are attacked, their person vandalized, one of their legs stolen, they set out to find the thief accompanied by a cyborg dog and a human mechanic.
\nThe world has changed, but the recovery from the war is uneven and faltering, and Be begins to suspect a malicious hand trying to rekindle the old conflict and finish what was started. In order to stop them, Be needs to come to terms with both their own past and who they have become, and how everything and everyone else they knew has changed in their absence. Being left alone is no longer an option, and peace may be impossible.
\nThis is a story about coming to terms with your past, with who you’ve become and who you still want to be: a tale of resilence and hope, an ode to those struggling to become whole in a world half-broken.
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Fergus is back on Earth at last, trying to figure out how to live a normal life. However, it seems the universe has other plans for him. When his cousin sends him off to help out a friend, Fergus accidently stumbles across a piece of an ancient alien artifact that some very powerful people seem to think means the entire solar system is in danger. And since he found it, they're certain it's also his problem to deal with.
\nWith the help of his newfound sister, friends both old and new, and some enemies, too, Fergus needs to find the rest of the artifact and destroy the pieces before anyone can reassemble the original and open a multi-dimensional door between Earth and a vast, implacable, alien swarm of devourers. Problem is, the pieces could be anywhere on Earth, and he's not the only one out searching.
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The trailblazing scientist who pioneered the concept of sophisticated communication between trees returns with a book that places nature’s own cycles of renewal at the center of a powerful vision for the future of our forests.
\nWith her bestselling book Finding the Mother Tree, forest ecologist Suzanne Simard introduced the world to the profound intelligence and interconnectedness of trees. Now, with When the Forest Breathes, she uncovers the ways that nature’s deep-rooted cycles of renewal can ensure the longevity of threatened ecosystems.
\nRaised in a family of loggers committed to sensible forest stewardship, Simard has watched as timber companies leave forests at higher risk for wildfires, water crises, and plant and animal extinction. But her research has the potential to chart a new course. The forest, she reveals, is a symphony of finely honed cycles of regeneration - from mushrooms breaking down logs to dying elder trees passing their genetic knowledge to younger ones - that hold the key to protecting our forests. Working closely with local Indigenous communities, whose models of responsible forestry have been largely dismissed, Simard examines how human interventions - particularly destruction of the overstory's mother trees - endanger new growth and longevity. If we can honor the tools that trees have honed for sharing intergenerational wisdom, she argues, we can protect these sacred places for many years to come.
\nAs she considers how older living things facilitate the conditions for new growth to flourish, Simard faces parallel rhythms of loss and regeneration in her own life, watching her two daughters grow into adults and savoring her final days with her ailing mother. Animated by wonder for our forests and the intricate practices of caretaking that have long sustained them, When the Forest Breathes is a vital reminder of all the natural world has to teach us about adaptability, resilience, and community.
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Tatum Masterson never went through The Program. She never had her memory stripped, never had to fight to remain herself. But when Weston, her longtime boyfriend and love of her life, was taken by handlers, she hoped he’d remember her somehow - that their love would be strong enough.
It wasn’t.
Like all returners, Weston came back a blank canvas. The years he and Tatum spent together were forgotten, as well as the week when he mysteriously disappeared before The Program came for him.
Regardless of his memory loss, Tatum fights to get Weston to remember her. And just as they start to build a new love, they hear about the Adjustment - a new therapy that implants memories from a donor. Despite the risks, Tatum and Weston agree to go through the process. Tatum donates her memories from their time together.
But the problem with memories is that they are all a matter of perspective. So although Weston can now remember dating Tatum, his emotions don’t match the experiences. And this discrepancy is slowly starting to unravel him, worse than anything The Program could have done.
And as the truth of their life together becomes clear, Tatum will have to decide if she loves Weston enough to let him go, or to continue to live the lie they’d build together.
“Anger-management issues.”
That’s how they classified Savannah Sutton after she stuck a pencil in her ex-boyfriend’s hand because he mocked her little brother, Evan, for being disabled. That’s why they sent her to Brooks Academy - an alternative high school that’s used as a temporary detention center.
The days at Brooks are miserable, but at home, life is far more bleak. Savvy’s struggling to take care of her brother since her mom left years ago, and her alcoholic dad can’t be bothered. Life with Evan is a constant challenge, but he’s also the most important person in the world to Savvy.
Then there’s Cameron, a new student at Brooks with issues of his own, a guy from a perfect family that Savvy thought only existed on TV. Cameron seems determined to break through every one of the walls Savvy’s built around herself - except if she lets herself trust him, it could make everything she’s worked so hard for fall apart in an instant.
And with her aunt seeking custody of her brother and her ex-boyfriend seeking revenge, Savvy’s fighting to hold all the pieces together. But she’s not sure how much tighter she can be pulled before she breaks completely.
How do you go back to a life you can't remember?
Tatum Masterson learned this after years of being monitored by The Program. She witnessed it when her boyfriend, Wes, came back changed, erased. And now, even the newest \"cure\" has a heavy cost - one she and Wes paid.
The Adjustment came into Tatum's life just when she thought she needed it most, a promise for Wes to get back his forgotten memories. But when the procedure went wrong, a revelation shattered everything Tatum thought she knew.
Now, with no one left to trust, Tatum must find out what really happened last summer. And with the help of the boyfriend she lost, Tatum will have to dig into the past and future of The Program and its handlers.
And discover the true cost of a cure.
In a world before The Program . . .
Quinlan McKee has spent her life acting as other people. She was a closer - a person hired to play the role of the recently deceased in order to give their families closure. Through this process, Quinn learned to read people and situations, even losing a bit of herself to do so. But she couldn't have guessed how her last case would bring down her entire world.
Quinlan McKee’s job as a closer taught her to read people and situations, even losing a bit of herself to do so. But she couldn’t have guessed how her last case would bring down her entire world. Now, the only person Quinn has left is Deacon, her best friend and the love of her life. Except Deacon’s been keeping secrets of his own, so Quinn sets out alone to find Arthur Pritchard, the doctor who’s been trying to control her life.
When Quinn finds Arthur’s daughter, Virginia, she learns the truth about his motives. The good doctor believes Quinn is the first step to curing the growing epidemic of teen suicides. But how can Quinn trust someone who plays God with other people’s memories? As Quinn struggles to hold onto her sense of self through world-upending revelations, she must separate truth from lies to make the best decision for everyone’s future.
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It’s been weeks since Mena and the other girls of Innovations Academy escaped their elite boarding school. Although traumatised by the violence and experimentations that occurred there, Mena quickly discovers that the outside world can be just as unwelcoming and cruel.
\nWith no one else to turn to, the girls only have each other - and the revenge-fueled desire to shut down the corporation that imprisoned them. The girls enroll in Stoneridge Prep, a private school with suspect connections to Innovations, to identify the son of an investor and take down the corporation from the inside.
\nBut with pressure from Leandra, who revealed herself to be a double-agent, and Winston Weeks, an academy investor gone rogue, Mena wonders if she and her friends are simply trading one form of control for another. Not to mention the woman who is quite literally invading Mena’s thoughts - a woman with extreme ideas that both frighten and intrigue Mena.
\nAnd as the girls fight for freedom from their past - and freedom for the girls still at Innovations - they must also face new questions about their existence . . . and what it means to be girls with razor hearts.
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The girls of Innovations Academy escaped the confines of their unethical school, fought against the system protecting predators who targeted girls for harassment, and they’re not done yet. They’re still not free.
\nReeling from one revelation after the next, Mena and her friends begin to unwind the truth of their existence and, as a result, their destiny. The men from Innovations Corporation still hunt them, the woman who created them still wants control over them, and worst of all, Mena realizes that through all her pain, all her tears, the world of men has not changed.
\nThere is no more time to hope for the best. The girls know they are in a battle for their lives, a war for their very existence. The girls of Innovations Academy have sharpened their sticks to fight back, they have fought for justice with blood from their razor hearts. And now, the girls will choose their true nature . . . and how they define their rebel souls.
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The Girls of Innovations Academy are beautiful and well-behaved - it says so on their report cards. Under the watchful gaze of their Guardians, the all-girl boarding school offers an array of studies and activities, from “Growing a Beautiful and Prosperous Garden” to “Art Appreciation” and “Interior Design.” The girls learn to be the best society has to offer. Absent is the difficult math coursework, or the unnecessary sciences or current events. They are obedient young ladies, free from arrogance or defiance. Until Mena starts to realize that their carefully controlled existence may not be quite as it appears.
As Mena and her friends begin to uncover the dark secrets of what’s actually happening there - and who they really are - the girls of Innovations will find out what they are truly capable of. Because some of the prettiest flowers have the sharpest thorns.
In the quaint town of Nightfall, Oregon, it isn't the dark you should be afraid of - it's the girls.
\nTheo and her brother, Marco, threw the biggest party of the year. And got caught. Their punishment? Leave Arizona to spend the summer with their grandmother in the rainy beachside town of Nightfall, Oregon - population 846 souls.
\nThe small town is cute, when it’s not raining, but their grandmother is superstitious and strangely antisocial. Upon their arrival she lays out the one house rule: always be home before dark. But Theo and Marco are determined to make the most of their summer, and on their first day they meet the enigmatic Minnow and her friends. Beautiful and charismatic, the girls have a magnetic pull that Theo and her brother can't resist.
\nBut Minnow and her friends are far from what they appear.
\nAnd that one rule? Theo quickly realizes she should have listened to her grandmother. Because after dark, something emerges in Nightfall. And it doesn’t plan to let her leave.
\n
Deep in the Everglades, there was once a luxurious and legendary hotel enjoyed by the wealthy elite. Until one mysterious night when a fire tore through the building, killing a young socialite and casting blame on a local dock worker. Soon after, the hotel vanished, swallowed up by the wetlands like it never existed at all.
\nUntil now.
\nWhen a powerful hurricane unearths the ruins of the long-forgotten hotel, the past is dragged back to the surface as clues to the devasting truth about the night of the fire are revealed.
\nIt’s the truth that die-hard local Noa and her friends have been chasing for years in the hopes of clearing their ancestor’s name and pushing back against the rich families trying to force them out. With the help of Jamie, the rebellious son of a wealthy businessman, Noa and her crew begin a desperate fight for the justice they deserve.
\nIt won’t be easy. Because the wealthy control just about everything on Paradise Coast - including the truth. And they will do whatever it takes, even kill, to make sure the past stays buried.
\n
Sloane knows better than to cry in front of anyone. With suicide now an international epidemic, one outburst could land her in The Program, the only proven course of treatment. Sloane’s parents have already lost one child; Sloane knows they’ll do anything to keep her alive. She also knows that everyone who’s been through The Program returns as a blank slate. Because their depression is gone - but so are their memories.
\nUnder constant surveillance at home and at school, Sloane puts on a brave face and keeps her feelings buried as deep as she can. The only person Sloane can be herself with is James. He’s promised to keep them both safe and out of treatment, and Sloane knows their love is strong enough to withstand anything. But despite the promises they made to each other, it’s getting harder to hide the truth. They are both growing weaker. Depression is setting in.
\nAnd The Program is coming for them.
\n
In a world before The Program . . .
\nQuinlan McKee is a closer. Since the age of seven, Quinn has held the responsibility of providing closure to grieving families with a special skill - she can “become” anyone.
\nRecommended by grief counselors, Quinn is hired by families to take on the short-term role of a deceased loved one between the ages of fifteen and twenty. She’s not an exact copy, of course, but she wears their clothes and changes her hair, studies them through pictures and videos, and soon, Quinn can act like them, smell like them…be them. But to do her job successfully, she can’t get attached.
\nNow seventeen, Quinn is deft at recreating herself, sometimes confusing her own past with those of the people she’s portrayed. When she’s given her longest assignment, playing the role of Catalina Barnes, Quinn begins to bond with the deceased girl’s boyfriend. But that’s only the first of many complications, especially when Quinn finds out the truth about Catalina’s death. And the epidemic it could start.
\n
Sloane and James are on the run after barely surviving the suicide epidemic and The Program. But they’re not out of danger. Huge pieces of their memories are still missing, and although Sloane and James have found their way back to each other, The Program isn’t ready to let them go.
Escaping with a group of troubled rebels, Sloane and James will have to figure out who they can trust, and how to take down The Program. But for as far as they’ve come, there’s still a lot Sloane and James can’t remember. The key to unlocking their past lies with the Treatment - a pill that can bring back forgotten memories, but at a high cost. And there’s only one dose.
Ultimately when the stakes are at their highest, can Sloane and James survive the many lies and secrets surrounding them, or will The Program claim them in the end?
Twelve-year-old Calista Wynn will lose her ability to speak with the dead on her thirteenth birthday. And with only a few weeks left, children have started going missing.
\nWhen Calista meets The Tall Lady - an angry spirit with a grudge against Calista, her family, and the entire town - she knows she’s found the ghost responsible for the disappearances. It’s up to Calista, the only one who can see The Tall Lady, to stop her.
\nIf she doesn’t, Calista won’t just lose her powers . . . she’ll lose everyone she has left.
Justice might be satisfying, but revenge is far sweeter.
\nComputer programmer Rachel Portola has a target on her back. She’s developed a top-secret program and her boss, Justin McKinney wants it and the millions it will bring on the open market. Even if it means murder.
\nWhen Rachel’s plane crashes and she and her friends are forced to hike through the Alaskan wilderness to survive, she thinks the worst is over. Rachel can finally focus on her attraction to her best friend Claire and the unexpected love they share.
\nBut Justin’s not giving up. Armed with only her instincts and a sharp knife, Rachel’s in for the fight of her life to protect what’s hers. The odds are impossible, the future looks bleak, and with everything that matters on the line, Rachel’s not letting anything get in her way.
\n
Bitsy Hanover has blocked the memory of her childhood friend’s abduction. Now, thirty years later, Hallie Lynn’s body has been found under a cluster of juniper trees just outside Savannah, Georgia. Bitsy wants to help, but she can’t face revisiting the terror and trauma of that night. Relentless questions from the beautiful investigator, Cecilia McConnel, only make it worse.
\nFBI investigator Cecilia McConnel needs to know who killed Hallie Lynn. It’s personal. If only Bitsy Hanover would have tried harder to remember more details, the police could have found Hallie Lynn and taken her home to her mother. McConnel has nurtured her resentment and anger toward Bitsy for so long it’s a natural part of her, like breathing. But the unthinkable has happened. She’s falling in love with Bitsy, and it’s turning her world upside down and complicating everything.
\n
Security specialist Rachel Portola and her wife, Claire, have begun to rebuild their lives and hope for their future. Rachel has made a promise to stay far away from danger, but her loyalties are tested when two of her team go missing while searching for Eshee Yumiko, the woman who will stop at nothing to see Rachel suffer.
\nRachel must find a way to become the hunter rather than the hunted and put an end to Eshee’s vendetta. But all Claire sees are Rachel’s broken promises, and her obsession to keep them safe by putting herself in peril may be the very thing that tears them apart for good.
\n
All Rachel and Claire want is a peaceful life together, but danger strikes, threatening to shatter their hopes and dreams, putting their hearts, and their lives in jeopardy.
\nEshee Yumiko, head of SeaBridge, seeks revenge for the damage Rachel’s computer program trigger has caused, vowing to get even, no matter what it takes. Derrick refuses to accept Claire’s relationship with Rachel and her continued rejection of his advances. His escalating fixation on her slowly turns into a deadly obsession no one sees coming.
As their worlds collide, and choices come back to haunt them, Rachel and Claire realize that a strong love demands a strong heart.
In the same week, Marlen and Hilda’s family receives two significant pieces of news: One, Marlen has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Two, a cosmic blast is set to render humanity extinct within a matter of months. It seems the coming Christmas on their Saskatchewan farm could be everyone’s last.
\nPreparing for the inevitable, they navigate the time they have left together. Marlen and Hilda channel their energy into improbably prophetic works of art. Hilda’s elderly father receives a longed-for visitor from his past. Hilda’s preteen nephew goes missing, and his mother refuses to believe the world is ending. All the while, Hilda’s daughter struggles to find her way home from Berlin with the help of an oddly familiar stranger. For everyone, there’s an unsettling feeling that this unprecedented reality is somehow something they all remember.
\nAs the planet holds its collective breath to see what happens next, the family - amid chaos, denial, acceptance, and hope - determines to live every moment as if it is their last. Because, well, it just might be.
\n
When Mackenzie, Sunna, and Maude move into a converted rental house, they are strangers with only one thing in common - important people in their lives have “ghosted” them. Mackenzie’s sister, Sunna’s best friend, and Maude’s fiancé - all gone with no explanation.
So when a mangled, near-indecipherable letter arrives in their shared mailbox - hinting at long-awaited answers - each tenant assumes it’s for her. The mismatched trio decides to stake out the coffee shop named in the letter - the only clue they have - and in the process, a bizarre kinship forms. But the more they learn about each other, the more questions (and suspicions) they begin to have. All the while, creepy sounds and strange happenings around the property suggest that the ghosts from their pasts might not be all that’s haunting them . . .
Will any of the housemates find the closure they are looking for? Or are some doors meant to remain closed?
For more than two decades, Sy Montgomery - whose The Soul of an Octopus was a National Book Award finalist - has kept a flock of chickens in her backyard. Each chicken has an individual personality (outgoing or shy, loud or quiet, reckless or cautious) and connects with Sy in her own way.
\nIn this short, delightful book, Sy takes us inside the flock and reveals all the things that make chickens such remarkable only hours after leaving the egg, they are able to walk, run, and peck; relationships are important to them and the average chicken can recognise more than one hundred other chickens; they remember the past and anticipate the future; and they communicate specific information through at least twenty-four distinct calls.
\nVisitors to her home are astonished by all this, but for Sy what’s more astonishing is how little most people know about chickens, especially considering there are about twenty percent more chickens on earth than people.
\n
Aster believes she is a normal teenage girl - she is very wrong . . .
\nTeenager Aster barely escapes with her life when her adoptive father is killed in a shooting. Suddenly finding herself under the protection of a special US military unit, she learns that blood tests indicate that she's not even human. Unsure who or what she might be - or if any of this is true - Aster's first instinct is to flee.
\nUnfortunately, she soon finds she is caught between two warring sides: on one, her mortal enemies, the alien Trackers, and on the other, the American government.
\nThen, from the most unexpected quarter, she finds someone offering to help her - someone her instincts tell her can't be trusted . . .
\nNow Aster can be certain of just two things: her blood is more vital than she ever knew and the fate of the world rests upon her survival.
\n
Over 99 identical generations, Mia’s family has shaped human history to push them to the stars, making brutal, wrenching choices and sacrificing countless lives. Her turn comes at the dawn of the age of rocketry. Her mission: to lure Wernher Von Braun away from the Nazi party and into the American rocket program, and secure the future of the space race.
But Mia’s family is not the only group pushing the levers of history: an even more ruthless enemy lurks behind the scenes.
A darkly satirical first contact thriller, as seen through the eyes of the women who make progress possible and the men who are determined to stop them . . .
When advertising executive Carole Veilleux loses it at Booker’s donut shop and bites Booker on the arm, it’s about the most interesting thing to happen in the small city of Marquette, Michigan, in years.
\nBut that’s only the beginning of the story. Carole and Booker find their minds merging, in a collective that extends to include Carole’s husband Shivansh and local doctor Evelyn Schlapp. The four of them become the beginning of something larger and stranger than they could ever have imagined.
\n
We always thought the biggest threat to humanity would come from the outside.
\n\n
We were wrong.
\nAs the human race picks up the pieces of destruction left behind, a new world order emerges. New alliances are formed. Old divisions are strengthened. And, with a power struggle fuelled by the threat of mutually assured destruction, nothing is certain.
\nAt a time when the world's nations should have been coming together, they have never been more divided.
\nWith the human race teetering on the brink of total war, Rose, Vincent and Eva must choose sides. But doing the right thing might mean making the ultimate sacrifice.
\n
A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.
\nSeventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved - its origins, architects, and purpose unknown. Its carbon dating defies belief; military reports are redacted; theories are floated, then rejected.
\nBut some can never stop searching for answers.
\nRose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top secret team to crack the hand’s code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the provenance of the relic.
\nWhat’s clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unraveling history’s most perplexing discovery - and figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result prove to be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?
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For 3000 years Mia's family has shaped Earth's history to push humanity to the stars, making brutal, wrenching choices along the way.
\nAnd now, in the year of 1968, Mia finds herself about to help launch the first people into space. She can't take them to the stars, not quite yet. But with her adversary almost upon her, and with the future of the planet at stake, it's becoming clearer that obeying the First Rule is no longer an option.
\nFor the first time since her line's first generation, Mia will have to choose to stand her ground, knowing that the overwhelming odds mean that she risks not only her bloodline, but also the future of the human race.
\n
A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.
\nSeventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved - its origins, architects, and purpose unknown. Its carbon dating defies belief; military reports are redacted; theories are floated, then rejected.
\nBut some can never stop searching for answers.
\nRose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top secret team to crack the hand’s code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the provenance of the relic. What’s clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unraveling history’s most perplexing discovery - and figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result prove to be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?
\n
Tucked away in an old building at the end of a narrow alley in Kyoto, the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can only be found by people who are struggling in their lives and genuinely need help. The mysterious clinic offers a unique treatment to those who find their way it prescribes cats as medication. Patients are often puzzled by this unconventional prescription, but when they “take” their cat for the recommended duration, they witness profound transformations in their lives, guided by the playful, empathetic, occasionally challenging yet endearing cats.
\nThroughout the pages, the power of the human-animal bond is revealed as a disheartened businessman finds unexpected joy in physical labor, a young girl navigates the complexities of elementary school cliques, a middle-aged man struggles to stay relevant at work and home, a hardened bag designer seeks emotional balance, and a geisha finds herself unable to move on from the memory of her lost cat. As the clinic’s patients navigate their inner turmoil and seek resolution, their feline companions lead them toward healing, self-discovery, and newfound hope.
It’s time to revisit the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul.
\nThough it’s a mysteriously located clinic with an uncertain address, it can always be found by those who need it. And the clinic has proven time after time that a prescribed cat has the power to heal the emotional wounds of its patients.
\nThis charming sequel introduces a new lovable cast of healing cats, from Kotetsu, a four-month-old Bengal who unleashes his boundless energy by demolishing bed linens and curtains, to tenacious and curious Shasha, who doesn’t let her small size stop her from anything, and the most lovable yet lazy cat Ms. Michiko, who is as soft and comforting as mochi.
\nAs characters from one chapter appear as side characters in the next, we follow a young woman who cannot help pushing away the man who loves her, a recently widowed grandfather whose grandson refuses to leave his room, the family of a young woman who struggle to understand each other, and an anxious man who works at a cat shelter seeking to show how the most difficult cats can be the most rewarding.
\nThis moving, magical novel of interconnected tales proves the strength in the unfathomable bond between cats and people.
Bryony and her sisters have come down in the world. Their merchant father died trying to reclaim his fortune and left them to eke out a living in a village far from their home in the city.
But when Bryony is caught in a snowstorm and takes refuge in an abandoned manor, she stumbles into a house full of dark enchantments. Is the Beast that lives there her captor, or a fellow prisoner? Is the house her enemy or her ally? And why are roses blooming out of season in the courtyard?
Armed only with gardening shears and her wits, Bryony must untangle the secrets of the house before she - or the Beast - are swallowed by them.
When forger Slate is convicted of treason, she faces a death sentence. But her unique gift for sniffing out magic (literally) earns her a reprieve - of sorts.
\nAlong with a formerly demon-possessed paladin named Caliban, her murderous ex-lover, and an irritating sexist scholar, Slate sets off on a mission to learn about the Clockwork Boys, deadly mechanical soldiers from a neighboring kingdom who have been terrorising their lands. If they succeed, rewards and pardons await, but first they must survive a long journey through enemy territory to reach Anuket City. And Slate has her own reasons to dread returning to her former home.
\nSlate and her crew aren’t the first to be sent on this mission. None of their predecessors have returned, and Slate can’t help but feel they’ve exchanged one death sentence for another. Her increasing closeness to Caliban isn’t helping matters: for the first time in a long while, Slate might actually care about surviving.
\n
Healer Anja regularly drinks poison.
\nNot to die, but to save - seeking cures for those everyone else has given up on.
\nBut a summons from the King interrupts her quiet, herb-obsessed life. His daughter, Snow, is dying, and he hopes Anja’s unorthodox methods can save her.
\nAided by a taciturn guard, a narcissistic cat, and a passion for the scientific method, Anja rushes to treat Snow, but nothing seems to work. That is, until she finds a secret world, hidden inside a magic mirror. This dark realm may hold the key to what is making Snow sick.
\nOr it might be the thing that kills them all.
Pray they are hungry.
\nKara finds these words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring the peculiar bunker - only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities.
\nBut these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts . . . and the more you fear them, the stronger they become.
“Mom seems off.”
\nHer brother's words echo in Sam Montgomery's ear as she turns onto the quiet North Carolina street where their mother lives alone.
\nShe brushes the thought away as she climbs the front steps. Sam's excited for this rare extended visit, and looking forward to nights with just the two of them, drinking boxed wine, watching murder mystery shows, and guessing who the killer is long before the characters figure it out.
\nBut stepping inside, she quickly realises home isn’t what it used to be. Gone is the warm, cluttered charm her mom is known for; now the walls are painted a sterile white. Her mom jumps at the smallest noises and looks over her shoulder even when she’s the only person in the room. And when Sam steps out back to clear her head, she finds a jar of teeth hidden beneath the magazine-worthy rose bushes, and vultures are circling the garden from above.
\nTo find out what’s got her mom so frightened in her own home, Sam will go digging for the truth. But some secrets are better left buried.
Oliver was a very minor mage. His familiar reminded him of this several times a day.
He only knew three spells, and one of them was to control his allergy to armadillo dander. His attempts to summon elementals resulted in nosebleeds, and there is nothing more embarrassing than having your elemental leave the circle to get you a tissue, pat you comfortingly, and then disappear in a puff of magic. The armadillo had about wet himself laughing.
He was a very minor mage.
Unfortunately, he was all they had.
After years of seeing her sisters suffer at the hands of an abusive prince, Marra - the shy, convent-raised, third-born daughter - has finally realised that no one is coming to their rescue. No one, except for Marra herself.
\nSeeking help from a powerful gravewitch, Marra is offered the tools to kill a prince - if she can complete three impossible tasks. But, as is the way in tales of princes, witches, and daughters, the impossible is only the beginning.
\nOn her quest, Marra is joined by the gravewitch, a reluctant fairy godmother, a strapping former knight, and a chicken possessed by a demon. Together, the five of them intend to be the hand that closes around the throat of the prince and frees Marra's family and their kingdom from its tyrannous ruler at last.
Marguerite Florian is a spy with two problems. A former employer wants her dead, and one of her new bodyguards is a far too good-looking paladin with a martyr complex.
\nShane is a paladin with three problems. His god is dead, his client is much too attractive for his peace of mind, and a powerful organisation is trying to have them both killed.
\nAdd in a brilliant artificer with a device that may change the world, a glittering and dangerous court, and a demon-led cult, and Shane and Marguerite will be lucky to escape with their souls intact, never mind their hearts . . .
Stephen's god died on the longest day of the year . . .
\nThree years later, Stephen is a broken paladin, living only for the chance to be useful before he dies. But all that changes when he encounters a fugitive named Grace in an alley and witnesses an assassination attempt gone wrong.
\nNow the pair must navigate a web of treachery, beset on all sides by spies and poisoners, while a cryptic killer stalks one step behind . . .
\n
He's a paladin of a dead god, tracking a supernatural killer across a continent. She's a nun from a secretive order, on the trail of the raiders who burned her convent and kidnapped her sisters.
\nWhen their paths cross at the point of a sword, Istvhan and Clara will be pitched headlong into each other's quests, facing off against enemies both living and dead. But Clara has a secret that could jeopardise the growing trust between them, a secret that will lead them to the gladiatorial pits of a corrupt city, and beyond . . .
Piper is a lich-doctor, a physician who works among the dead, determining causes of death for the city guard's investigations. It's a peaceful, if solitary profession . . . until the day when he's called to the river to examine the latest in a series of mysterious bodies, mangled by some unknown force.
\nGalen is a paladin of a dead god, lost to holiness and no longer entirely sane. He has long since given up on any hope of love. But when the two men and a brave gnole constable are drawn into the web of the mysterious killer, it's Galen's job to protect Piper from the traps that await them.
\nHe's just not sure if he can protect Piper from the most dangerous threat of all . . .
\n
When Gerta’s friend Kay is stolen away by the mysterious Snow Queen, it’s up to Gerta to find him. Her journey will take her through a dangerous land of snow and witchcraft, accompanied only by a bandit and a talking raven. Can she win her friend’s release, or will following her heart take her to unexpected places?
\nA strange, sly retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s \"Snow Queen,\" by T. Kingfisher, author of \"Bryony and Roses\" and \"The Seventh Bride.\"
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Young Rhea is a miller’s daughter of low birth, so she is understandably surprised when a mysterious nobleman, Lord Crevan, shows up on her doorstep and proposes marriage. Since commoners don’t turn down lords - no matter how sinister they may seem - Rhea is forced to agree to the engagement.
\nLord Crevan demands that Rhea visit his remote manor before their wedding. Upon arrival, she discovers that not only was her betrothed married six times before, but his previous wives are all imprisoned in his enchanted castle. Determined not to share their same fate, Rhea asserts her desire for freedom. In answer, Lord Crevan gives Rhea a series of magical tasks to complete, with the threat “Come back before dawn, or else I’ll marry you.”
\nWith time running out and each task more dangerous and bizarre than the last, Rhea must use her resourcefulness, compassion, and bravery to rally the other wives and defeat the sorcerer before he binds her to him forever.
When Selena travels to the remote desert town of Quartz Creek in search of her estranged Aunt Amelia, she is desperate and short of options. Fleeing an unhappy marriage, she has exactly twenty-seven dollars to her name, and her only friend in the world is her dog, Copper.
\nOn arrival, Selena learns Amelia is dead. But the inhabitants of Quartz Creek are only too happy to have a new resident. Out of money and ideas, Selena sees no harm staying in her aunt's lovely house for a few weeks, tending to her garden and enjoying the strange, desolate beauty of the desert. The people are odd, but friendly, and eager to help Selena settle into her new home.
\nBut Quartz Creek's inhabitants share their town with others, old gods and spirits whose claim to the land long predates their human neighbours. Selena finds herself pursued by disturbing apparitions, visitations that come in the night and seem to want something from her.
\nAunt Amelia owed a debt. Now her god has come to collect.
A dark retelling of the Brothers Grimm's Goose Girl, rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic.
\nCordelia knows her mother is unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms, and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend - unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him. But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t sorcerers.
\nAfter a suspicious death in their small town, Cordelia’s mother insists they leave in the middle of the night, riding away on Falada’s sturdy back, leaving behind all Cordelia has ever known. They arrive at the remote country manor of a wealthy older man, the Squire, and his unwed sister, Hester. Cordelia’s mother intends to lure the Squire into marriage, and Cordelia knows this can only be bad news for the bumbling gentleman and his kind, intelligent sister.
\nHester sees the way Cordelia shrinks away from her mother, how the young girl sits eerily still at dinner every night. Hester knows that to save her brother from bewitchment and to rescue the terrified Cordelia, she will have to face down a wicked witch of the worst kind.
Halla has unexpectedly inherited the estate of a wealthy uncle. Unfortunately, she is also saddled with money-hungry relatives full of devious plans for how to wrest the inheritance away from her.
\nWhile locked in her bedroom, Halla inspects the ancient sword that's been collecting dust on the wall since before she moved in. Out of desperation, she unsheathes it and suddenly a man appears. His name is Sarkis, he tells her, and he is an immortal warrior trapped in a prison of enchanted steel.
\nSarkis is sworn to protect whoever wields the sword, and for Halla a most unusual wielder he finds himself fending off not grand armies and deadly assassins but instead everything from kindly-seeming bandits to roving inquisitors to her own in-laws. But as Halla and Sarkis grow closer, they overlook the biggest threat of all the sword itself.
\n
There's a princess trapped in a tower. This isn't her story.
\nMeet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right?
\nBut nothing with fairies is ever simple.
\nCenturies later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He's heard there's a curse here that needs breaking, but it's a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold . . .
After their terrifying ordeal at the Usher manor, Alex Easton feels as if they just survived another war. All they crave is rest, routine, and sunshine, but instead, as a favor to Angus and Miss Potter, they find themself heading to their family hunting lodge, deep in the cold, damp forests of their home country, Gallacia.
\nIn theory, one can find relaxation in even the coldest and dampest of Gallacian autumns, but when Easton arrives, they find the caretaker dead, the lodge in disarray, and the grounds troubled by a strange, uncanny silence. The villagers whisper that a breath-stealing monster from folklore has taken up residence in Easton’s home.
\nEaston knows better than to put too much stock in local superstitions, but they can tell that something is not quite right in their home . . . or in their dreams.
What Moves the Dead is a gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
\nWhen Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania.
\nWhat they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.
\nAided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.
Alex Easton does not want to visit America.
\nThey particularly do not want to visit an abandoned coal mine in West Virginia with a reputation for being haunted.
\nBut when their old friend Dr. Denton summons them to help find his lost cousin - who went missing in that very mine - well, sometimes a sworn soldier has to do what a sworn soldier has to do . . .
Fourteen-year-old Mona isn’t like the wizards charged with defending the city. She can’t control lightning or speak to water. Her familiar is a sourdough starter and her magic only works on bread. She has a comfortable life in her aunt’s bakery making gingerbread men dance.
\nBut Mona’s life is turned upside down when she finds a dead body on the bakery floor. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona’s city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. And in an embattled city suddenly bereft of wizards, the assassin may be the least of Mona’s worries . . .
The year is 1899 and Sonia Wilson is a scientific illustrator without work, prospects, or hope. When the reclusive Dr. Halder offers her a position illustrating his vast collection of insects, Sonia jumps at the chance to move to his North Carolina manor house and put her talents to use. But soon enough she finds that there are darker things at work than the Carolina woods. What happened to her predecessor, Halder’s wife? Why are animals acting so strangely, and what is behind the peculiar local whispers about “blood thiefs?”
\nWith the aid of the housekeeper and a local healer, Sonia discovers that Halder’s entomological studies have taken him down a dark road full of parasitic maggots that burrow into human flesh, and that his monstrous experiments may grow to encompass his newest illustrator as well.
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Slate and her crew have arrived in Anuket City, the city of artificial marvels where Clockwork Boys are created. But the secret of their existence is as mysterious as ever.
\nSlate has a history in Anuket City, history which just won’t leave her alone. And her increasing attraction to Caliban is driving her up the wall. Caliban is, of course, too noble to do anything about it.
\nAs Slate's history in the city grows more entangled with their mission, the group's chances of survival seem to be getting ever slimmer. If they're to stand a chance of destroying the Clockwork Boys, Slate must confront her past, and find a way to stop it from killing them all.
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Ropa Moyo is a wannabe magician, can speak to the dead, and has officially given up being an intern. Leaving Scottish magic behind, she now works for the English Sorcerer Royal. But just as she adjusts to working for the English, an old enemy reveals a devastating secret about her Gran, and Ropa’s world falls apart.
\nOutraged, she rushes home, but finds her grandmother dead - murdered - with no killer in sight. What’s more, she’s the prime suspect. In her quest to find the true murderer, Ropa becomes caught in the dark tendrils of a cult, hell-bent on resurrecting an ancient power. Ropa must use her wits, her magic, and call in all favours to stop the ritual - and clear her name.
Ropa Moyo is no stranger to magic or mysteries. But she’s still stuck in an irksomely unpaid internship. So she’s thrilled to attend a magical convention at Dunvegan Castle, on the Isle of Skye, where she’ll rub elbows with eminent magicians.
\nFor Ropa, it’s the perfect opportunity to finally prove her worth. Then a librarian is murdered and a precious scroll stolen. Suddenly, every magician is a suspect, and Ropa and her allies investigate. Trapped in a castle, with suspicions mounting, Ropa must contend with corruption, skulduggery and power plays. Time to ask for a raise?
Ishara Ming is the sole survivor of the Essex, a spacefaring whaler destroyed by the legendary Ballena. Left with a damaged memory chip and a missing arm, Ishara has vowed to avenge the twenty-three lives lost to the rogue Mech-Operated Bio-Integrated Spacecraft (MOBIS), an autonomous spacecraft containing an intricate blend of mechanical hardware and code-controlled bacteria.
\nTo take on the Ballena, Ishara assembles a crew of capable misfits, including her first mate, Quinn, the girl who makes Ishara's heart stumble over its own beats. Quinn has always believed in her, even when the rest of the system thinks she’s a delusional captain who hallucinated the Ballena.
\nThat is, until Augustus, a handsome ship mech with his own reasons for revenge, convinces Ishara to let him join the crew. He’s armed with a specialised tracking system Ishara can’t refuse, but there’s something familiar about him she can’t quite shake. Torn between Quinn’s cautious guidance and Augustus’s encouragement, Ishara issues increasingly risky orders. But one too many brushes with death will force her to choose between her newfound family or the vow to avenge her old one - and the two closest to her she can't help but fall for.
\nInspried by Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, this retelling brings a much-needed modern update to a beloved classic.
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After a painful divorce, Mathilda “Mat” Kincaide has one clear vision. Ascend the throne of her family’s cherished chain of bookstores. Yet a mysterious troublemaker lurks in the heart of her store, intent on derailing Mat’s every ambition. She can’t be distracted, even if the new hire with her sizzling librarian appearance and saucy glances tempts Mat to bend her no relationship rule.
\nCamdyn Stone is a gifted writer. Or at least she was. With a looming deadline, Camdyn must complete a manuscript before Christmas or face financial ruin. Working at Kincaide Books is a refuge for this self-doubting one-hit-wonder. If only Camdyn could find inspiration for her next book in someone other than her sexy new boss.
\nIn a whimsical bookstore, with eccentric patrons and a snarky cat, Mat and Camdyn must work together to save the Kincaide legacy.
\nBut will they find love along the way?
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After a messy divorce, Dr. Rowan Colchester finally embraces her true self. A passionate encounter with a younger woman shakes her world. But when she discovers the complicated connection between them, she knows a future together is not in the cards.
\nInspired by the loss of her father, Dr. Simone Doucette dreams of being a humanitarian. But when the pressure proves too much, she takes a job in the ER of a small Cape Cod hospital to put the pieces of her life back together. The last thing she expects is for her new boss to be the one-night stand she can’t forget.
\nAs fate - and scandal - pull them together, Rowan and Simone must fight not just for love, but for the hospital’s survival and the soul of their tightknit community. With careers, reputations, and hearts on the line, will they risk everything for a second chance?
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Librarian Bennet Webb’s dream trip to Bath was supposed to be perfect, a literary pilgrimage to honor Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, topped off with a proposal from her longtime boyfriend. Instead, Bennet finds herself alone in the city of her dreams. That is until she meets an unexpected companion who changes everything for the better.
\nAlice Higgins is a waitress by day, aspiring novelist by night, and sworn enemy of all things Austen. But when a flustered yet adorable American tourist stumbles into the restaurant where she works, Alice is surprisingly willing to reconsider her views.
\nSoon the pair strike up a transatlantic book swap. Alice will read Bennet’s beloved classics, and Bennet will try Alice’s contemporary picks. What begins as a literary experiment turns into a connection that deepens with every page. Could the love stories they share lead to a happily ever after they never expected?
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Holly Lovelace is a multi-millionaire tech genius and the CEO of her own company. But if she can’t come up with a brilliant innovation and convince her investors that she’s back in tip-top shape by the end of the year, Holly could lose everything she’s worked so hard to build.
\nIvy Winters is a social worker on an island that’s a vacation paradise during the summer months but suffers from a lack of economic opportunity and the scourge of addiction the rest of the year. When the promise of a huge grant falls through, Ivy loses hope of helping her community.
\nWhen Holly and Ivy meet, sparks fly, but it’s hardly smooth sailing. After their one-night stand ends in disaster, both decide they’d rather spend the cold months ahead sleeping alone. However, it soon becomes undeniable that each woman possesses something the other needs. Working together, they just might get what they want and find the love of a lifetime along the way, but only if their own insecurities and secrets don’t destroy them first.
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Joni Fisher is facing economic ruin. The once successful advice column she runs with her mother is on the brink of cancellation, and it’ll take a miracle to turn things around. Joni’s last-ditch effort to save her job and preserve her mother’s legacy is The Love Project, a web series she’s developing to bring the Help Me Henrietta franchise alive for a new generation. All she needs is a willing victim . . . er, star.
\nHope Alvarez dreams of falling in love, but she’s always suspected she’s different. Physical attraction is a foreign language to her. After her only prospect for a meaningful relationship falls through, Hope has to face the fact that she’s completely hopeless when it comes to love. Can her favorite advice columnist, Henrietta, save her from a lonely future?
\nAs the series gets underway, fans swoon for the lovable yet unlucky Hope, and they’re not the only ones. Joni is smitten, too. But she’s been down that road before, vowing never again to fall for a straight woman who will keep her forever in the friend zone. Except, what if she’s been reading the situation all wrong? Helping Hope make sense of her identity might save Joni’s job, but will it also bring her love?
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Julianna Bristol is on the brink of success as her fledgling video game design company goes after the opportunity of a lifetime. But her ex-husband is intent on making her fodder for late-night comedy. When she unexpectedly gains custody of her nine-year-old niece, everything in Julianna’s exquisitely planned life changes in the blink of an eye.
\nSadie Culpepper is out of work and drowning in debt. She’s as unable to commit professionally as she is romantically. A last-minute nanny gig offers a lifeline, but making it through the summer working for the woman the late-night hosts call Permafrost might take everything she’s got.
\nTheir mutually beneficial business arrangement is threatened as the magnetic pull between them grows stronger with each passing day. Both women are forced to confront their deepest fears and insecurities. Julianna is drawn to the younger Sadie in ways she never imagined possible. And Sadie, scarred by past heartbreak, struggles to trust again, especially with her heart and financial security on the line.
\nWill they have the courage to defy convention and seize their chance at happiness? Or will they succumb to the pressures of society, letting go of the one thing that could save them both?
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In a small town teetering on the brink of collapse, will one woman's arrival seal a factory’s fate or open the floodgate for love and redemption?
\nElle Robinson's world is literally swept away when a raging flood sends her car careening toward certain doom, only to be rescued by Angela Lane - a spirited, self-reliant, and unexpected savior who pulls Elle back from the edge of calamity.
\nIn the aftermath of their brush with mortality, passions ignite between the two women, mirroring the uncontrollable rise of the floodwaters. However, fate has a wicked sense of humor.
\nAs the storm of their one-night stand recedes, a startling revelation emerges. Angie learns that Elle is the ambitious young business consultant whose arrival could signal the demise of Angie's cherished family cheesemaking business. Will this city girl bring more destruction than the flood? Or could she evolve into the improbable business partner Angie has been waiting for?
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Just when she least expects it, Lizzie’s harmonious life starts to unravel.
\nWith the twins turning one and the start of a new semester, Lizzie should be in the mood to celebrate, but the last person she wants to see makes a sudden reappearance in her life.
\nTo complicate matters more, Lizzie’s wife, who is usually the rock in the Petrie household, is navigating her own crisis.
\nWhile Lizzie wants to stay strong and provide the support her wife needs, there’s a reason everyone calls her clueless.
\nIs Lizzie strong enough to survive her own issues while also being there for her wife, or will this be Lizzie’s breaking point?
\nWhat happens when a prickly cat lady runs into the new dog owner next door?
\nBrittny Parker, an American graduate student, is moving to London with her lovable Boston Terrier, Cooper, in time for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the 2012 Olympics. Could life get any better? How about adding a super sexy woman next door? The problem is her snooty neighbor is not a dog person. In fact, she despises Cooper from the moment he knocks her over and sends her groceries spilling all over the ground.
\nPrin Jones is a native-born Londoner whose most successful relationship is with Francesca, her Persian cat. With a bakery to run and an unpleasant ex-girlfriend to dodge, the last thing Prin needs in her life is an obnoxious American and her poorly trained dog. But it becomes almost impossible not to run into Brit at every turn.
\nWhen Francesca and Cooper decide to become balcony friends, and Prin’s twin sister takes on the role of enthusiastic matchmaker, Brit and Prin decide to give each other a second chance. All they need is one date to see if there might be something more between them.
\nIt should be easy, right? But somehow everything keeps going hilariously and disastrously wrong.
\nCan two women from different worlds meet in the middle to become more than neighbors?
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Lizzie’s about to expand her family. But can she reconcile with the one she already has?
\nLizzie is terrified about becoming a parent. But when she and her pregnant wife find out that they’re having twins, her anxiety reaches a whole new level.
\nWith two babies on the way, Lizzie attempts to patch things up with her estranged father and brother. To her surprise, Lizzie’s father has his own plans to grow the family tree.
\nWhen Lizzie’s brother reacts strongly to their father’s secrets, Lizzie wonders if they’ll ever come together as a unified family. How can she possibly survive parenthood when her own family is about to fall apart?
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What do you do when love strikes at the worst possible moment?
\nDagny is convinced she’s about to get engaged while on holiday in England. What she doesn’t expect is getting dumped. To make matters worse, it happens on Christmas Eve.
\nAllison receives an assignment from her boss that will make Allison’s journalistic career. The investigation will call for one thing: her complete dedication to the story and nothing else.
\nThe two meet on Christmas Eve night, and while Allison is brimming with joy, Dagny wants nothing to do with anyone. However, what’s worse? Being alone on a holiday or spending it with a stranger neither will probably ever see again?
\nThere’s one major problem. They just might be perfect for each other despite the terrible timing.
\nIs it kismet or a curse?
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Lizzie Petrie can’t quite believe she’s approaching middle age.
\nIt’s summertime and Lizzie is determined to have the best summer yet.
\nJust as long as no one acknowledges that on July fourteenth she’s turning forty. She can’t kick the thought that getting older is a failure on her part. And it’s dangerous, too. She tweaks her neck simply trying to make toast.
\nThe problem is, Sarah seems determined to throw a surprise birthday bash despite being warned not to.
\nWill Lizzie survive turning 40?
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As soon as Rory Price’s plane touches down in Britain for her two-year work contract, she has big plans to see and experience everything she can. The one thing that isn’t on the twenty-seven-year old’s agenda is a relationship.
\nTell that to her matchmaking British friend who sets Rory up on a coffee date on her first full day in the new country.
\nImogen Wright doesn’t want any more complications in her life. The only thing she’s considering committing to is adopting a dog.
\nTheir blind date starts off disastrous, but there might be more than meets the eye.
\nWill the two headstrong women continue to clash, or will they see what’s so obvious to their matchmaking friend?
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Josie Adams had a brilliant speechwriting career in American politics - until a scandal destroyed everything. Unsure what to do with the rest of her life, she moves home with her mother in the Cotswolds. Journalist Harriet Powell ditched London after getting sacked and divorced within six months of each other. She hopes to find peace in the village, but after meeting Josie, Harry's world will never be the same.
\nWhile the two don't see eye to eye on the professional front, it's hard to deny their connection, even if Josie's mum is determined to set Josie up with anyone who isn't Harry. Can the two conquer their personal and professional struggles to let the other in?
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Hannah Taylor, a rising country music sensation, stands on the brink of superstardom. But beneath the glitz and glamour, she harbors a secret, one that could shatter her carefully crafted image and jeopardise her career. In a city where conformity is key, being a queer woman is a battle she fights every day.
\nShelby Montgomery is a small-town nobody, striving to provide a better life for her young son. With dreams deferred and a husband who vanished when the going got tough, Shelby's life is a constant struggle. Working tirelessly at a local diner, she dreams of a brighter future but knows she needs a stroke of luck to change her life.
\nFate takes an unexpected turn when Hannah stumbles into Shelby's diner, drawn in by the irresistible aroma of Shelby's famous peach cobbler. What starts as a chance encounter soon evolves into a life-altering Hannah asks Shelby to become her personal chef on a nationwide tour. It's an offer that could upend both of their lives, challenging them to confront their fears and desires.
\nAs they crisscross the country, a powerful connection begins to bloom between them. But in a world where secrets can destroy, Hannah and Shelby must confront their deepest fears. Will they risk it all for a love that defies the odds and find the acceptance they both crave?
\nIn this passionate tale of love, music, and self-discovery, Hannah and Shelby must choose between the safety of the shadows and the brilliance of the spotlight. Can their love story become the chart-topping hit they both deserve, or will a secret tear them apart forever?
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Gina Mitchells has a problem. The assistant professor is in charge of her college’s Pride festival committee, and the celebrity grand marshal they’d painstakingly recruited has just blown up the internet with a major scandal. Messing up the festival could ruin her chance to be approved for tenure. There’s exactly one famous person Gina knows who could save the day as a last-minute replacement.
\nThe problem? The woman is Gina’s ex-girlfriend, and to say the relationship did not end well is an understatement.
\nSophia Rossi has starred in so many squeaky-clean holiday romances since moving to Hollywood that everyone calls her the Queen of Christmas. An important new contract has her filming in a quaint New England town, but there’s a catch. It’s Sophia’s hometown, and surviving a month with her meddling, relationship-obsessed mother and sisters might be too much for Sophia’s sanity to bear.
\nWhen Gina reappears in Sophia’s life with a proposition, Sophia has one of her own. It’s a match made in heaven, if only they can get over their past heartbreak long enough to convince everyone they’ve rekindled their old spark. But can this fake relationship lead them to a second chance at love?
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Lizzie is starting to figure out life, right when fate decides to destroy every facet of her world.
\nAfter the birth of her son and adopting a daughter, Lizzie learns her latest book deal is toast. But that’s not all. External forces are out to ruin Lizzie’s career and reputation, threatening her ability to support and protect her wife and four children. But who is behind the attacks? And why?
\nSimultaneously, a mom-bully has set her sights on Lizzie and a crackpot social media group is spreading malicious rumors about Lizzie.
\nAs Lizzie’s world crumbles around her, she can’t burden her wife, since Sarah is struggling to recover from a caesarean. Lizzie turns to a new friend, but will they be able to stop the destruction before Lizzie loses everything she’s worked so hard to get?
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Historian Lizzie Petrie remains nothing more than a lesbian in her bitter mother’s eyes. The suppressed hurt of that superficial assessment means she still catches herself off guard when thinking of Sarah as her wife. The couple has endured the fallout of Lizzie’s insecurities and set-up house in Fort Collins, Colorado. Now their relationship is about to be tested again.
\nWhen her wife announces she wants to have a baby, Lizzie panics. A baby? The thought of sucking an egg from her ovary and implanting the resulting embryo into Sarah’s womb terrifies her. Lizzie constantly worries if she’ll make a good mother.
\nJust when she starts to make peace with the idea, Lizzie’s estranged family enters her life again. The news is anything but good, and she finds herself wondering how to make amends with her aloof mother, stranger of a father, and self-centered brother.
\nDeep down, Lizzie is more loving and caring than she ever gives herself credit. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to open a woman’s eyes to her full potential. But at what price?
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Lizzie Petrie doesn’t know how people manage parenting, friendship, or life.
\nWatching four children is hard work. This is something Lizzie’s wife, Sarah, knows about. She’s been doing it for six years.
\nAs the kids grow older, Sarah is reaching her breaking point and pleads with Lizzie to do more to pitch in. Lizzie is certain she can do it on her own.
\nLizzie is wrong.
\nWhen Sarah goes back to work full-time, Lizzie reaches the end of her rope. Her solution? Installing a secret bunker in the basement. The only problem is preventing Sarah from finding out when the construction project turns out to be just as hard as everything else in Lizzie’s life.
\nCan Lizzie hold it together or will everything crumble down around her, including her marriage?
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Elizabeth “Lizzie” Petrie has it all. She’s rich, beautiful, intelligent, and successful. None of this matters to her mom. Les-Bi-An. That’s all her mom sees.
\nEven though Lizzie insists her mom’s antagonism does not bother her, Lizzie distances herself from her entire family. When her brother, Peter, calls her out of the blue to announce he’s getting married, Lizzie’s entire life changes drastically. Peter’s fiancée wants to bring the lesbian outcast back into the family. Will this desire cause Lizzie to lose everything dear to her?
\nSarah, Lizzie’s girlfriend, is ecstatic about this change in Lizzie’s personal life. Sarah, the hopeless romantic, wants it all, including settling down with the fiercely independent Lizzie.
\nCan Lizzie be tamed? And can she survive her family and all of their secrets?
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The holiday season can be a crazy time for a normal family - and Lizzie's family is anything but normal.
\nWhile Lizzie's wife is determined to plan the perfect Christmas party, every guest seems intent on wrecking the festivities. And one in particular is out to destroy the entire Petrie clan.
\nLizzie does everything in her power to save the holiday, but the harder she tries to control the unruly guests, the more things unravel.
\nWill Lizzie survive the holidays with all the Petries under her roof?
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Lizzie Petrie had a wake-up call and decided that the upcoming year would be the perfect time to revamp her life.
\nThe problem is nothing ever goes the way Lizzie hopes.
\nIt’s not like her family intentionally tosses roadblocks in her path, but when you have four young children, simple plans get hijacked.
\nWill the Year of Lizzie end disastrously?
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Lizzie Petrie doesn’t know how to handle life in the best of times.
\nWhen COVID-19 strikes, flipping her entire world upside down, she deals with it in true disastrous Lizzie fashion.
\nUnbeknownst to Lizzie, her wife invites family to move into their home for the lockdown, making it difficult for Lizzie to find breathing room and to give her brain space to put the pandemic into terms she can understand.
\nUnfortunately, COVID isn’t the only life-altering situation Lizzie is grappling with.
\nAs she begins to question everything about her life, Lizzie tries to keep her feelings bottled up.
\nWill being trapped with her family and thoughts break her, or is this the start of a new adventure?
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Despite Lizzie’s attempts to hide from her family, circumstances pull her even deeper into the complicated Petrie web.
\nAfter a disastrous family Christmas, Lizzie’s friends and family seek her counsel, dragging Lizzie back into their orbit. With a brother facing prison time, a family feud, the possibility of raising her niece, and the desire to have another child, Lizzie’s one step from constructing a moat to block out the world.
\nWill Lizzie crack or dig deep to prevent the collapse of the family?
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Lizzie Petrie thought she’d gotten her life under control, but everything seems to be unravelling right before her eyes. As COVID-19 starts to recede, Lizzie has new battles to fight in epic Lizzie fashion.
\nWhether it involves getting the twins ready for kindergarten, the threat to the planet, or starting a new media company, Lizzie is being pulled in so many directions she doesn’t know which way is up. There’s one fear in particular that’s threatening to upend her world as she knows it.
\nIs Lizzie strong enough to conquer the A-word, or will it be the thing that wrecks her grasp on reality?
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The north is at peace, secured by murder and betrayal and the plotting of treacherous kings. As half the northern nobility gather in Ilithor for the wedding of Princess Amilia Lukar and the traitorous King Hadrin, Elyon Daecar finds himself drawn into a plot he never expected. One that may see him soar.
\nFreed from the clutches of the sinister Cecilia Blakewood, Saska travels south in the company of her giant protector, Sir Ralston, and the crew of the Steel Sister. Making for the city of Aram, she finds her journey hindered by the simmering war, as more of the riddle of her past is unraveled.
\nar to the south, tensions boil as the Patriots of Lumara continue to stir violence, slaughtering any northman they can find. Jonik and his allies fight back, as the former Shadowknight discovers the truth of his purpose. A holy duty awaits him. But first, he’ll need an army . . .
\nAt the twin tombs, north and south, the world begins to tremble. Amron Daecar limps into the white wilderness, in search of his salvation, and a world away Lythian Lindar is drawn into a world of monsters and gods. All is connected. The past and the future. The gifts of the fallen gods.
\nThrough the ages their actions echo. And titans will rise again.
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After the fall of the great Vandarian fortress of Dragon’s Bane, Elyon Daecar gathers his army in the Lakelands to the north. They have suffered a great defeat. Heroes and friends have fallen. Yet with the Windblade in his grasp, Elyon will not yield. From east to west and north to south, he will take the fight to the enemy, and soar.
\nAfter finally meeting with her grandmother in Aram, Saska - born of Light and Steel and Sea - has discovered the truth of her sire . . . and the great fate that now awaits her. It is much to place upon her shoulders. Much to expect of one so young. Ahead of her lies a great journey, and a great challenge . . . yet she needn’t face it alone.
\nThe Shadow Order is no more. Jonik, Ghost of the Shadowfort, has unearthed the terrible truth of its founding. An order born of need…required to do terrible things. As his company begin to disband, Jonik finds himself stranded, driven by a noble purpose, battling with his demons. As the darkness gathers around him, he must fight to stay in the light. If he fails, he will fall . . . to the ruin of all.
\nAt the heart of Vandar, Amron Daecar prepares to defend the southern coast against invasion, while his oldest and dearest friend, Lythian Lindar, returns at last to the lands of his birth. Meanwhile, in the south of Tukor, a once-mad king returns, his heart restored to a holy path. And further east, in the Highplains of Rasalan, his granddaughter strives to return to her homeland after the destruction of the city of Thalan.
\nAcross the north, the dragons swarm, sent forth by the will of Agarath. In the days to come, their lord and master will show his face. A face of calamity and dread, to cover all the land in shadow. If the darkness is to be repelled, the forces of light must rise up to meet it. From the pits of the earth, ancient creatures are coming forth, as the world begins to return to one of gods . . . and monsters.
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War rages in the north. As the Varin Knights march to join Tukor in their conflict against Rasalan, Elyon Daecar finds himself embroiled in a world of secrets and lies. Mutiny is threatened. Madness festers. Treachery is never far away.
\nSaska has one goal - assassinate Lord Kastor. Posing as a captured servant girl, she infiltrates the Kastor warcamp to face her demons, but before long finds herself hopelessly out of her depth. Enemies close in, old and new . . . and history has a habit of repeating itself.
\nDriven by the whispers of a long dead god, Jonik seeks a new purpose as he’s pursued by the order he betrayed. His journey will take him south, across the paths of men and monsters. Some seek to slay him; others to help guide him. And all the while his legend spreads.
\nWith the Warrior King plotting to take full control of the north, sinister forces stir in the south. Some fight to stall war, others seek to incite it, as chaos and calamity threaten to engulf all the world. Kings will fall, champions will rise, secrets and prophesies will be unearthed.
\nThe next great Renewal approaches, they say. But will it be the last?
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Elyon and Saska have been reunited at last - now the hard work begins. Training as they travel, they must put aside their desire in the face of their duty. The heir of Varin has one blade only. One of five. And the others are moving.
\nTrapped in the depths of the earth, Jonik must find his way out to salvation. He is not alone. Pursued by a horde of hungry creatures, he has only the light of Vandar to protect him. A light and a power that might just awaken something else. Something ancient . . . and colossal.
\nFollowing victory over the Agarathi at Blackfrost, Amron Daecar weighs up his options. A part of him would gather all his strength and strike at once at the heart of the enemy, yet the wiser course is consolidation. The last of the titans are waking, he knows - in the shadow of their conflict, they must prepare.
\nAcross the world, the pieces are moving, nudged here and there by the fingers of fate. Ranulf, Robbert, Emeric, Lythian, and many others will play their part. Whether they know it or not, all are pieces of a bigger puzzle, threads of a tapestry weaved through time. There will be tragedy. There will be sacrifice. There will be moments when all seems lost.
\nYet the night is darkest just before the dawn. And they must work together to bring the light.
\n
The Great Calamity has returned, destroying all in his wake. Reeling from the destruction of King’s Point and the death of his uncle, Elyon Daecar makes at once for Varinar to discern the state of the city. What he finds gives him small cause for hope. Through the spreading darkness, thin shards of light remain. They must act quickly lest they close forever.
\nSaska’s time in Aram has run out. With the city safe from the coalition of Lords Krator and Kastor, she sets her sights on her journey north, bidding her dying grandmother farewell. She has no choice now but to embrace her fate and harden her heart to her purpose. In a world falling to ruin, she will need all the help she can get. And friends old and new will be there to give it, not always in ways she wants.
\nFreed from the grip of the Nightblade at last, Jonik sets out in the service of a new master. His fate as foreseen by the Far-Seeing Queen has been met, yet a new destiny awaits him. One that will take him to places he never knew existed.
\nThe weather of the world is changing. To both north and south, cataclysmic events are unfolding across land and sea. In this dying world kings are made and princes tested, exiles fight to restore their honour. Ancients rise, creatures swarm, men whisper of the waking of titans . . .
\nAnd in the heart of Agarath, a demigod broods. Spreading forth the dark will of his master.
\n
In the heart of Vandar, as dark forces close in, Elyon, a gifted Bladeborn, fights for his family’s survival.
\nIn the war-torn northlands of Tukor, a servant girl with a mysterious past is forced on the run, propelling her on a journey that will change her world forever.
\nFrom the Shadowfort, a secret power is unleashed, one that will set into motion a series of events that will bring the world to its knees.
\nWith the world on the verge of chaos and countless lives at stake, a new First Blade must be selected, but obstacles stand in the way. Alliances are broken. Enemies are born. Only the strong will survive.
\n
Following the fall of a beloved prince, division brews across the north. Elyon Daecar, freed of the Warrior King’s cells, rides to Dragon’s Bane to defend the border of Vandar against an incoming Agarathi horde. He must become a prince, and a champion, to his people. But will it be enough?
\nHaving finally arrived in Aram, Saska finds herself a captive yet again, this time by the sinister Sunlord Elio Krator, the man once betrothed to her mother. When a Tukoran army arrives to siege the great fortress of Eagle’s Perch, Krator marches to defend it, taking Saska with him. If she is to survive, she needs to escape. And she won't be able to do it alone.
\nWith his old master in chains, Jonik and his men sail north, intent on the destruction of the Shadow Order, and most of all, its mysterious king. Along the way, they face triumph and tragedy, as ancient secrets are unearthed.
\nAware now of the dreaded rise of Eldur, Lythian Lindar strives to find answers, while returning from the Icewilds, Amron Daecar marches back into his kingdom, with a long-lost Blade of Vandar in his grasp. In the days to come, the world will need its heroes. Old prophesies are coming true, and the shadow of doom is spreading.
\nBut can anyone stand against it?
\n
They failed. Evan and Cyrus risked everything to keep the Uprising from attacking the unarmed Union, but something went terribly wrong. Evan’s home has been invaded by soldiers who are killing government officials and occupying the homes of her fellow citizens. Captured by the Uprising, Evan fights for her life and her sanity, desperate to escape so she can find Cyrus and her family.
\nReeling from an unexpected discovery, Cyrus is adrift until he uses his Uprising training to find a way to fight back against the invading force the only way he knows how. With the help of old friends and new, they will do whatever it takes to protect each other and those they love, even if it means sacrificing being together, their way of life, and even their very lives.
\n
Fighting back is twice as hard when battling on two fronts. Living in an encampment in the Ruins, life is harsh for most Unis in the Resistance, but for Cyrus and the other Ruins survivors, it's just more of the same. While training for their ultimate mission to take down the Uprising, tragedy strikes, turning Evan's and Cyrus's world upside down.
\nBefore they can recover, they discover someone in their ranks is working against them.Facing tougher odds than they ever imagined, the group realises the only hope they have of saving the world they know is to find help. When no one is above suspicion, even accomplishing everyday tasks is fraught with danger, but seeking out reinforcements could mean the end of the Resistance and all of them along with it.
\n
Heartbroken, grief-stricken, and wracked with guilt, seventeen-year-old Evan Taylor returned to the Union, leaving behind the boy she loved. Now, she and her friends must find a way to do the impossible - warn the citizens of the Union about an impending rebel attack without alerting the government and risking retaliation against her friends in the Ruins.
\nWhen every move Evan makes is thwarted, it soon becomes clear she's being watched. Faced with a daily fight to stay one step ahead of her pursuers, she returns to the Ruins. But life in the Ruins has its own dangers, and soon she’s fighting a different battle - to stay alive long enough to discover the truth.
\n
Seventeen-year-old Evan Taylor has an easy, privileged life in the Union. What she doesn’t have is any idea what to do with the rest of her life. She only knows she wants to do something meaningful, to make a difference in the lives of others.
\nWhen she’s kidnapped and taken into the Ruins as a pawn in a dispute involving her boyfriend, Bryce, her ideal world is turned upside down. What she learns while in the Ruins shakes her faith in everything she’s ever known, from Bryce, to her family, and even the Union itself. Now Evan must choose whether to stay with Cyrus, the sexy, resourceful survivor who believes she’s in the Ruins for a reason, or return to the only life she’s ever known.
\nBut when she stumbles upon a dangerous plot that threatens both worlds, her decision could tear her apart.
\n
Recovering from a near-fatal gunshot wound, eighteen-year-old Evan Taylor must find a way to stop the Uprising, an underground movement committed to destroying the Union, before her homeland is attacked. After spending the last four months in the Ruins trying to get back to the only girl he's ever loved, nineteen-year-old Cyrus needs to get past his jealousy over Evan's involvement with Bryce or risk losing her again.
\nTogether, Evan and Cyrus join with their friends to devise a plan to save both the Ruins and the Union, but when the pressure’s on, bickering and infighting threaten to undermine their goals. New information revealing a weakness in the Uprising is uncovered, forcing them to act quickly or risk losing everything.With the help of old friends and new allies they set out to make history, but it might just take a miracle for everyone to make it out alive.
\n
Newlyweds Brett and Emily Larson move into their dream home, an idyllic farmhouse deep in the Adirondacks. Their whole lives are ahead of them . . . and Emily has just found out she’s pregnant.
\nBrett is digging up the old cow pasture to create the perfect garden. His shovel hits a rock. But as he scrapes the soil away, he realizes it’s something else. A bone. And there’s another one.
\nEmily comes out from the kitchen with iced tea. She crouches over the bones. ‘They look human,’ she says. ‘That one’s a leg bone. A femur.’
\nBuried with the bones is a tin box containing a handwritten note. On it is a name and a number: Dr Rhea Runic. 411.
\nThe Larsons have unearthed something bigger and darker than they could ever imagine. Threatening everything they’ve built: their marriage, their lives, their future family.
\n
Newlyweds Brett and Emily Larson have just moved into a new home deep in the countryside, and are overjoyed when Emily finds out she’s pregnant.
Then they discover human bones in their garden.
As the police start to investigate, three things become clear:
The bones are recent.
They are not here by accident.
They are a message.
When the police put three photographs of known criminals on the Larsons’ kitchen table, the couple realize the danger may be closer to home than they think.
As the situation escalates, can Brett and Emily keep one step ahead to protect themselves - and their unborn child?
Who is murdering female college students and can they be stopped?
\n
The victims are linked by their participation in an unusual psychology experiment. Leading the investigation is Detective Dana Gates. She has a past no one talks about and a husband and daughters she hardly ever sees. She’s a dedicated, by-the-book investigator. And now a serial killer is ripping through the local college campus, and everything she knows is going to change.
Her police partner, Robert Hamill, is a wild card. Unmarried, no kids, Hamill is Dana’s polar opposite. But as the case progresses, their differing methods threaten to tear them apart. Hamill breaks with procedure to uncover a list naming potential victims, but the two detectives must work together to stop any more girls from turning up dead.
Suspects range from a college professor to an award-wining author, a handyman pot dealer to a student seemingly possessing strange mental gifts, and yet the real culprit could be right under their noses. In the final showdown, Dana is left with nothing but her instinct, her will to live – and maybe a special gift of her own.
A woman’s body is found floating in a sultry Florida mangrove. She has no ID and there is no indication of cause of death. Who is she? Why was she murdered?
Rookie detective Tom Lange couldn’t have got a more difficult first case. The only thing he’s got to go on is the woman’s butterfly tattoo. His boss, Lauren Blythe, piles the pressure on and the medical examiner won’t tell him what he needs to know.
Meanwhile Tom’s neighbour Alicia has an abusive boyfriend who Tom clashes with in a way that will have far-reaching consequences.
The body leads Tom on a trail of seedy clubs, narcotics, and danger which is close to home. In a tumultuous ending with a massive twist, Tom’s world is turned upside down.
A hurricane is due to hit Florida hard. Two men take the opportunity to rob an expensive home. Surprised by neighbors, the burglars kill two people . . . and seven-year-old girl, Lemon Madras disappears.
\nAgent Tom Lange is taken off suspension and brought in to find her.
\nSelected for his street smarts and toughness, Tom gets a lead on a suspect and a possible location deep in the Florida Everglades.
\nBut why was the home targeted in the first place and why does no one seem very concerned with the girl’s safety?
\n
Katie Calumet is on an early-morning run when she hears a baby crying. The park is deserted, and there’s no one in the street. She follows the cries, but then everything goes black. When Katie wakes up, she’s blindfolded and her hands and feet are bound.
Detective Justin Cross takes on the case, but with the trail leading into endless dense forest, and a failing marriage weighing on his mind, finding Katie is his most challenging case yet - not least because the Calumet family are keeping secrets of their own.
Justin and Katie face a race against time that will push them both to their very limits. As Justin works day and night to discover who took her and why, Katie fights desperately to escape from her kidnappers and the forest that surrounds her . . . Can Justin find her before it’s too late?
Callie has a great life, living in a ten-acre home in the Adirondacks with her husband, Abel. Their son is away at college and Callie, a writer, is content living a relatively secluded life.
\nThen Abel skids off the road into an icy lake. No one heard anything. No one saw anything.
\nBut Abel is left in a coma in a Vermont hospital.
\nThings seem bad but they’re about to get even worse.
\nNow Callie is getting calls from a woman who claims to know more about the accident.
\nCallie is skeptical, though a few things do line up, and she’s always wondered why her husband was where he was at the time of the accident.
\nThen every spouse’s worst nightmare: police tell Callie her husband is a suspect in the disappearance of two teenage girls.
\nCallie will do whatever it takes to clear his name. But is she really ready for the truth about her husband . . . ?
A brutal abduction. Two scared kids. One desperate fugitive.
Struggling with the guilt she feels for shooting and killing a man during her freshman case, Special Agent Shannon Ames is thrown back in the deep end when former federal prosecutor Lucy Donato goes missing.
The case takes a surprising turn when Lucy’s bookish husband Bob is caught on camera fleeing the state with his two small children. Has he done something to his wife? Is he a danger to the kids?
There’s definitely something off about Bob, because it soon becomes clear he isn’t stopping for anyone. He’s smart, he’s ruthless, and he steamrolls over anyone who gets in his way.
Desperate to protect the kids, Shannon pursues Bob cross-country, following a trail of stolen cars, brutal bar fights, and dangerous drug dealers. But something isn’t sitting right with her - why would a meek office worker suddenly blaze a trail of chaos across several states? What does he want? Where is he going?
The answer to those questions is truly shocking and puts Shannon at the heart of a case she’ll never forget . . .
A serial killer in New York’s South Bronx district is targeting clients of local sex workers. The victims, all male, are either burned alive or beaten to death.
\nWith the body count mounting and no real leads, the FBI decides to put someone in undercover.
\nEnter rookie agent Shannon Ames. Suited for deep cover work because she is single, without family ties, Shannon is young enough to pass herself off as a working girl. More importantly, she is smart, energetic, and determined - her superiors know she’ll do whatever it takes to crack the case.
\nBut spending her nights on the streets as she hunts for the killer takes its toll. Shannon’s personal life is falling apart, her strong moral core is being tested as never before. She begins to feel as if the case is eating her alive.
\nAnd as it becomes clear that she herself is on the killer’s radar, Shannon realises she’s up against something truly terrifying - a monster who wants to see her forever marked with his sign of evil.
\n
A week ago, my new neighbor was murdered in exactly the way described in the first book.
\nHer name was Naomi Sheller. I’ll never forget the first time I saw her - frozen in the middle of the grocery store, eyes wide with terror.
\nDays later, she’s found dead in the woods. Her husband, Eric, is led away in handcuffs.
\nThe second book has another murder in it. And the victim sounds exactly like me.
\nWe moved here from New York City to raise our daughters somewhere safe. But now I think I made a terrible mistake.
\nThe police don’t believe me. My husband thinks I’m paranoid.
\nBut I’m not.
\nBecause whoever sent these books . . . knows exactly where I live
Two beautiful young women are found strangled, their bodies meticulously washed and groomed. The only thing they have in common - both worked as reporters for local TV stations.
A coincidence? Or something more sinister?
Rookie Special Agent Shannon Ames is assigned to the case and soon impresses with her brilliant intuition and startling ability to think outside the box.
But as Shannon takes a more prominent role in the investigation, she finds herself drawn into a deadly dance with a master of deception, a serial killer whose victims all work in media - journalists, influencers, reporters.
Shannon’s superiors are convinced it’s part of some grand attack on the free press, but she has a hunch these killings are much more targeted. And she follows that hunch - straight into the heart of darkness . . .
When a social worker is brutally murdered, Detectives Mike Nelson and Lena Overton are straight on the scene. But with a long list of potential suspects, can they work out who’s next before the killer strikes again?
It’s Lake Haven’s first murder in eighteen years, and the community is terrified - especially Bobbi, who was not only supposed to be on duty that night, but also has the same long dark hair as Harriet and drives the same blue car. Now Bobbi lives in constant fear that the murderer will be back for her . . .
When Mike and Lena make a link to a missing-persons case and uncover a wide-spread grudge against social services, they know they’re close to uncovering the killer - but can they connect the last few dots and stop him before he takes another victim?
A quiet Manhattan street. Kristie Fain is walking to the train when she is snatched by a couple of strangers.
\n
Special Agent Shannon Ames has just been reassigned to the New York Field Office, the biggest in the country. Since Kristie Fain is an aide to a US Senator, Shannon and her FBI team are given the case. It’s immediately clear it’s anything but straightforward. Fain’s boyfriend, a rich Peruvian musician, is hiding something. Senator Nickerson’s staff are cooperative, but don’t seem to be sharing all they know. And who is the mystery man, masquerading as a cop, beating up potential witnesses?
As Shannon gets deeper, she finds herself caught up in a web of lies and deceit. Someone powerful is pulling the strings and they will do anything - including murder - to stop her investigation.
This time, she can’t afford to play by the rules. If she does, Kristie Fain will die. So Shannon risks everything to save the young aide. And finds herself trapped - with no way back.
FBI Agent Shannon Ames is headed to the North Country for some much-needed R&R when a sudden ice storm traps her in the small hamlet of Long Lake, NY. But the storm isn’t her only problem - as she rolls into town she finds a body by the side of the road.
\nAs Shannon begins to investigate, she realizes she’s not the only person trapped here - there are two vicious killers stalking the town. With no way in or out, it’s up to Shannon to stop them before they hurt someone else.
\n
On her drive to work, Heather Moss gets a phone call which will turn her life upside-down. The caller knows where her kids are, what they are wearing, and even what Heather is doing herself at that very moment. If she doesn’t do what he wants, her two little girls will die.
Then an inmate dies in the county jail. He was a witness who could have brought down notorious criminal Mario Palumbo.
Special Agent Tom Lange is trying to get his life back together after losing his brother Nick. He thinks Palumbo was responsible for the inmate’s death and maybe Nick’s too.
Tom desperately wants the evidence to point to Palumbo, but it doesn’t all add up, and soon there are more victims.
Can Tom capture a serial killer and protect Heather? He faces a terrible choice between the truth and justice.
In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots--fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They're a family, hidden and safe.
\nThe day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled \"HAP,\" he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio-a past spent hunting humans.
\nWhen Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio's former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic's assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.
\nAlong the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: Can he accept love with strings attached?
\n
Set on Kentucky’s Blood River, a Sheriff’s Deputy investigates the death of her ex-fiance, whose brutal occultist murder strongly resembles a similar murder decades ago.
\nDeputy Sheriff Alicia Moore is thrust into the center of a chilling murder investigation when she discovers a victim identifiable only by his hauntingly familiar tattoo - her name inked onto the knuckles of her ex-fiancé, Jake.
\nYears earlier, Alicia’s father, the then-Sheriff, had arrested a teenage occultist for a nearly identical murder, believed to be driven by the suspect’s worship of demonic entities. Now, with Jake’s murder mirroring that past crime, doubts arise about whether the true culprit was ever caught. The mystery deepens with the arrival of Lucas Masterson, a Criminology PhD student studying the confluence between religious trauma and occult crime, who is eager to lend his expertise to the investigation.
\nAs Lucas delves into the case, his profound knowledge of the town’s grim history and his outsider perspective strain the local social fabric, while Alicia grapples with her suspicion towards his unsettling familiarity with the crimes. Caught between her strained relationship with her father, the community’s watchful eyes on a female deputy, and her own harrowing ties to the case, Alicia must navigate a maze of potential occultists, convicts, corrupt officials, and clergy to prevent a gruesome history from repeating itself once again.
\nFor what lies at the heart of Blood River - is it an ancient malicious force seeking to harm the townfolk, or is there a deeper prejudice in a town that continues to punish women in a way that it does not punish the men?
\n
When a child goes missing in Edinburgh's darkest streets, young Ropa investigates. She'll need to call on Zimbabwean magic as well as her Scottish pragmatism to hunt down clues. But as shadows lengthen, will the hunter become the hunted?
When ghosts talk, she will listen . . .
Ropa dropped out of school to become a ghostalker. Now she speaks to Edinburgh's dead, carrying messages to the living. A girl's gotta earn a living, and it seems harmless enough. Until, that is, the dead whisper that someone's bewitching children - leaving them husks, empty of joy and life. It's on Ropa's patch, so she feels honor-bound to investigate. But what she learns will change her world.
She'll dice with death (not part of her life plan), discovering an occult library and a taste for hidden magic. She'll also experience dark times. For Edinburgh hides a wealth of secrets, and Ropa's gonna hunt them all down.
Ropa Moyo’s ghostalking practice has tanked, desperate for money to pay bills and look after her family she reluctantly accepts a job to look into the history of a coma patient receiving treatment at the magical private hospital Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments. The patient is a teenage schoolboy called Max Wu, and healers at the hospital are baffled by the illness which has confounded medicine and magic.
\nRopa’s investigation leads her to the Edinburgh Ordinary School for Boys, one of only the four registered schools for magic in the whole of Scotland (the oldest and only one that remains closed to female students).
\nBut the headmaster there is hiding something and as more students succumb Ropa learns that a long-dormant and malevolent entity has once again taken hold in this world.
\nShe sets off to track the current host for this spirit and try to stop it before other lives are endangered.
Otherland. Surrounded by secrecy, it is home to the wildest dreams and darkest nightmares. Incredible amounts of money have been lavished on it. The best minds of two generations have labored to build it. And somehow, bit by bit, it is claiming the Earth's most valuable resource - its children.
\nOnly a few have become aware of the danger. Fewer still are willing or able to take up the challenge of this perilous and seductive realm. But every age has its heroes, and unusual times call for unusual champions:
\nRenie Sulaweyo, a teacher and the backbone of her family, proud of her African heritage, has fought all her life simply to get by. She has never wanted to be a hero. But when her young brother is struck down by a bizarre and mysterious illness, Renie swears to save him. When people around her begin to die, she realises she has stumbled onto something she is not meant to know, a terrifying secret from which there is no turning back.
\n!Xabbu is a Bushman, come to the city to learn skills which may save the spirit of his tribe. With the heart of a poet and the soul of a shaman, he will journey with Renie on this quest into the very heart of darkness.
\nPaul Jonas is lost, seemingly adrift in space and time. As he flees from the bloody battlefields of World War I to a castle in the sky, and onward to lands beyond imagining, he must not only evade his terrifying pursuers, but solve the terrible riddle of his own identity.
\nFourteen-year-old Orlando is also the invincible barbarian Thargorm, but only in his imagination. However, youth and frailty are not enough to get you excused from saving the world.
\nAnd Mister Sellars, a strange old man on a military base, a prisoner of both the government and his own body, may be the greatest mystery of all. Is he part of The Grail Brotherhood? Does he oppose them? Or, as he sits like a spider at the center of a vast web, does he have ambitions of his own?
\nThe answers will only be found in Otherland.
\n
A war fueled by the powers of dark sorcery is about to engulf the peaceful land of Osten Ard - for Prester John, the High King, lies dying. And with his death, the Storm King, the undead ruler of the elf-like Sithi, seizes the chance to regain his lost realm through a pact with the newly ascended king. Knowing the consequences of this bargain, the king’s younger brother joins with a small, scattered group of scholars, the League of the Scroll, to confront the true danger threatening Osten Ard.
Simon, a kitchen boy from the royal castle unknowingly apprenticed to a member of this League, will be sent on a quest that offers the only hope of salvation, a deadly riddle concerning long-lost swords of power. Compelled by fate and perilous magics, he must leave the only home he’s ever known and face enemies more terrifying than Osten Ard has ever seen, even as the land itself begins to die.
The kingdoms of Osten Ard have been at peace for decades, but now, the threat of a new war grows to nightmarish proportions.
Simon and Miriamele, royal husband and wife, face danger from every side. Their allies in Hernystir have made a pact with the dreadful Queen of the Norns to allow her armies to cross into mortal lands. The ancient, powerful nation of Nabban is on the verge of bloody civil war, and the fierce nomads of the Thrithings grasslands have begun to mobilise, united by superstitious fervor and their age-old hatred of the city-dwellers.
But as the countries and peoples of the High Ward bicker among themselves, battle, bloodshed, and dark magics threaten to pull civilisations to pieces. And over it all looms the mystery of the Witchwood Crown, the deadly puzzle that Simon, Miriamele, and their allies must solve if they wish to survive.
But as the kingdoms of Osten Ard are torn apart by fear and greed, a few individuals will fight for their own lives and destinies--not yet aware that the survival of everything depends on them.
My name's Bobby Dollar, sometimes known as Doloriel, and of course, Hell isn't a great place for someone like me - I'm an angel. They don't like my kind down there, not even the slightly fallen variety. But they have my girlfriend, who happens to be a beautiful demon named Casimira, Countess of Cold Hands. Why does an angel have a demon girlfriend? Well, certainly not because it helps my career.
\nShe's being held hostage by one of the nastiest, most powerful demons in all of the netherworld - Eligor, Grand Duke of Hell. He already hates me, and he'd like nothing better than to get his hands on me and rip my immortal soul right out of my borrowed but oh-so-mortal body.
\nBut wait, it gets better! Not only do I have to sneak into Hell, make my way across thousands of miles of terror and suffering to reach Pan- demonium, capital of the fiery depths, but then I have to steal Caz right out from under Eligor's burning eyes and smuggle her out again, past demon soldiers, hellhounds, and all the murderous creatures imprisoned there for eternity. And even if I somehow manage to escape Hell, I'm also being stalked by an undead psychopath named Smyler who's been following me for weeks. Oh, and did I mention that he can't be killed?
\nSo if I somehow survive Hell, elude the Grand Duke and all his hideous minions and make it back to the real world, I'll still be the most hunted soul in Creation. But at least I'll have Caz. Gotta have something to look forward to, right?
\nSo just pour me that damn drink, will you? I've got somewhere to go.
\n
The High Throne of Erkynland is tottering, its royal family divided and diminished. Queen Miriamele has been caught up in a brutal rebellion in the south and thought to have died in a fiery attack. Her grandson Morgan, heir to the throne, has been captured by one of Utuk’ku’s soldiers in the ruins of an abandoned city. Miriamele’s husband, King Simon, is overwhelmed by grief and hopelessness, unaware that many of these terrible things have been caused by Pasevalles, a murderous traitor inside Simon’s own court at the Hayholt.
\nMeanwhile, a deadly army of Norns led by the ageless, vengeful Queen Utuk’ku, has swept into Erkynland and thrown down the fortress of Naglimund, slaughtering the inhabitants and digging up the ancient grave of Ruyan the Navigator. Utuk’ku plans to use the Navigator’s fabled armor to call up the spirit of Hakatri, the evil Storm King’s brother.
\nEven the Sithi, fairy-kin to the Norns, are helpless to stop Utuk’ku’s triumph as her armies simultaneously march on the Hayholt and force their way into the forbidden, ogre-guarded valley of Tanakirú - the Narrowdark - where a secret waits that might bring Simon’s people and their Sithi allies salvation - or doom.
\n
An epidemic of comatose children has led Renie and her San friend !Xabbu into the net and to a series of dream worlds created as palaces by the corrupt aspiring immortals, the Grail Brotherhood. Two of those children, Orlando and Fredericks, have become adventurers in their ownright, while their parents' lawyer Ramsey follows real-world money and lesbian cop Calliope tracks a serial killer with serious ambitions to become an angry god.
\nIn this volume, adventures take place in a mythic ancient Egypt and a rambling Gormenghast like house before all the virtual adventurers meet where they were always destined to, before the walls of Troy.
\n
The Hayholt is besieged by the Norns. Once the home of their immortal brethren, the Sithi, now capital of the kingdom of men, the fabled castle is under attack. And as the world is distracted by this strike against humankind, the Norns' deathless witch-queen Utuk'ku turns towards the mysterious fateful valley called Tanakirú - the Vale of Mists.
\nMeanwhile, Queen Miriamele hurries to save the Hayholt and capture the treacherous noble Pasevalles, but arrives to discover the traitor has escaped.
\nAnd inside Tanakirú, Vale of Mists, the bond between Prince Morgan and Nezeru, a renegade Norn, has become something deeper and stranger than either of them could have anticipated. They journey ever deeper to the heart of the valley's mystery, encountering wonder and horror, and come face to face at last with the ancient secret that has kindled the Norn Queen's war - a secret that will destroy immortals and humans alike.
\n
A small band of adventurers has penetrated the veil of secrecy that prevents the uninitiated from entering Otherland. But having broken into the amazing worlds within worlds that make up this universe, they are trapped, unable to escape back to their own flesh-and-blood bodies in the real world.
\nAnd as dangers and circumstances split their party into small, widely scattered groups, their only hope of reuniting lies in returning again and again to the River that flows - in one form or another - through all the worlds.
\nBut the odds seem to be completely against them as they - and the one outsider with whom they might join forces - become hopelessly lost in realms where an Ice Age tribe's fears can only be quenched in blood . . . where insects are as large and deadly as dinosaurs . . . where they are caught in the war between a man made of straw and one made of tin . . . where cartoon ads take on a life of their own . . . where humans strive to survive in the aftermath of an alien invasion . . . and where one among their party is actually The Grail Brotherhood's most terrifying weapon - a sociopathic killer who has never failed and whose current mission is to make certain that not even one member of this little invasion force lives long enough to reveal the truth about Otherland to the people of Earth . . .
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A group of adventurers searching for a cure for comatose children find themselves trapped in a sequence of virtual worlds, the only opponents of a conspiracy of the rich to live forever in a dream.
\nNow, they are forced to make an uneasy alliance with their only surviving former enemy against his treacherous sidekick Johnny Wulgaru, a serial killer with a chance to play God forever.
Southmarch Castle is about to be caught between two implacable enemies, the ancient, immortal Qar and the insane god-king, the Autarch of Xis. Meanwhile, its two young defenders, Princess Briony and Prince Barrick, are both trapped far away from home and fighting for their lives.
\nAnd now, something is awakening underneath Southmarch Castle, something powerful and terrible that the world has not seen for thousands of years. Can Barrick and Briony, along with a tiny handful of allies, ordinary and extraordinary, find a way to save their world and prevent the rise of a terrible new age-an age of unending darkness?
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At the uppermost edge of the northern kingdoms, towers shrouded in mist, lies Southmarch Castle. For hundreds of years it has remained hidden from the affairs of empire. Now its isolation can protect it no more. Southmarch is under siege; from both its neighbours, without, and the more insidious enemies who would destroy it from within.
\nEven further to the north, within the ancient walls of Qul-na-Qar, in a land of silence and gloom, the Twilight People gather to hear Ynnir, the blind king, pronounce the dark fate of human kind. In the south, the Autarch, the god-king who has already conquered an entire continent, now looks to extend his domain once more.
\nIt is upon Southmarch that the armies advance, and to its people that darkness will speed.
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A year ago, the March Kingdoms were at peace, and the Eddon family held the throne. Now the family has been shattered. King Olin Eddon is a prisoner in a faraway land, and Olin's heir Kendrick is dead--slain by treachery and dark, bloody magic.
With their father and brother taken from them, the royal twins Barrick and Briony have done their best to hold the kingdom together, but now Barrick has been captured in a failed war against the immortal Twilight People and Briony has been forced to flee.
Behind the Shadowline, Prince Barrick is lost and spellbound in the land of the fairies, while Princess Briony finds both allies and deadly enemies in unexpected places far from the land of her birth.
During their desperate journeys the twins discover that even a land's rulers may know little of its true history, and that both families and nations can hide dark and terrible secrets.
But even if Barrick and Briony survive learning the astonishing truths at the heart of their own family and of Southmarch itself, they must still find a way to do the impossible: they must reclaim their kingdom and rescue their home and people from a multitude of powerful enemies--from traitors, tyrants, a god-king, and even the angry gods themselves.
A year ago, the March Kingdoms were at peace, the Eddon family held the throne, and all was right in Southmarch Castle. Now the family has been shattered. King Olin Eddon is a prisoner and his heir is slain. The royal twins Barrick and Briony have done their best to hold the kingdom together, but now Barrick has been captured and Briony has been forced to flee the castle.
\nOld magics are stirring beneath the ancient castle and behind the Shadowline, and the machinations of gods, fairies, and mortals threaten to spread devastation across the entire world.
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Bobby Dollar thinks he's seen it all - after all, he's been to Hell and back again. Literally.
But he has another thing coming. Sleeping Late on Judgement Day will find Bobby back in his adopted hometown of San Judas, California, trying to stay out of trouble... and failing. His love life is still a mess, there are one too many people who have it out for him, and drowning his sorrows in a nice glass of whisky won't keep the demons at bay forever.
Bobby's going to have to pull himself together and make a few tough decisions before time runs out. The problem is, time could run out at any moment. In the final Bobby Dollar novel in Tad Williams' groundbreaking epic fantasy trilogy, fallen angel Bobby Dollar will finally be forced to confront the one problem he can't talk his way out of: his own.
It is a time of darkness, dread, and ultimate testing for the realm of Osten Ard, for the wild magic and terrifying minions of the undead Sithi ruler, Ineluki the Storm King, are spreading their seemingly undefeatable evil across the kingdom.
With the very land blighted by the power of Ineluki’s wrath, the tattered remnants of a once-proud human army flee in search of a last sanctuary and rallying point - the Stone of Farewell, a place shrouded in mystery and ancient sorrow.
And even as Prince Josua seeks to rally his scattered forces, Simon and the surviving members of the League of the Scroll are desperately struggling to discover the truth behind an almost-forgotten legend, which will take them from the fallen citadels of humans to the secret heartland of the Sithi - where near-immortals must at last decide whether to ally with the race of men in a final war against those of their own blood.
As the evil minions of the undead Sithi Storm King prepare for the kingdom-shattering culmination of their dark sorceries and King Elias is drawn ever deeper into their nightmarish, spell spun world, the loyal allies of Prince Josua desperately struggle to rally their forces at the Stone of Farewell. And with time running out, the remaining members of the now devastated League of the Scroll have also gathered there to unravel mysteries from the forgotten past in an attempt to find something to strike down their unslayable foe.
But whether or not they are successful, the call of battle will lead the valiant followers of Josua Lackhand on a memorable trek to the haunted halls of Asu'a itself - the Sithi's greatest stronghold.
Thirty years ago Ineluki, the Storm King, was destroyed and his armies scattered. Osten Ard has been at peace ever since, ruled by Simon Snowlock, kitchen boy made king, and Miriamele, King Elias' only child. But now age weighs upon their reign. Simon's dreams have deserted him, old allies die and betrayal and assassination threaten. His son and heir John Josua is years dead and his grandson, Morgan, is a wastrel. A journey of redemption and discovery beckons in the darkening world.
\nAnd in the frozen North, in Nakkiga, the mountain fortress, Ineluki's ally, the Norn Queen, wakes from her deep, decades-long sleep and tells her followers that she will sleep no more. Humanity must be destroyed. Her sorcerers will bring a demon back from death, her warriors will seek the world for living dragon's blood . . .
\nAnd finally the greatest artefact of all, the Witchwood Crown, will be hers.
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As the long-lost heir to the Jinn throne, Alizeh has finally found her people - and she might’ve found her crown. Cyrus, the mercurial ruler of Tulan, has offered her his kingdom in a twisted exchange: one that would begin with their marriage and end with his murder.
\nCyrus’s dark reputation precedes him; all the world knows of his blood-soaked past. Killing him should be easy - and accepting his offer might be the only way to fulfill her destiny and save her people. But the more Alizeh learns of him, the more she questions whether the terrible stories about him are true.
\nEnsnared by secrets, Cyrus has ached for Alizeh since she first appeared in his dreams many months ago. Now that he knows those visions were planted by the devil, he can hardly bear to look at her - much less endure her company. But despite their best efforts to despise each other, Alizeh and Cyrus are drawn together over and over with an all-consuming thirst that threatens to destroy them both.
\nMeanwhile, Prince Kamran has arrived in Tulan, ready to exact revenge . . .
Juliette’s short tenure as the supreme commander of North America has been an utter disaster. When the children of the other world leaders show up on her doorstep, she wants nothing more than to turn to Warner for support and guidance. But he shatters her heart when he reveals that he’s been keeping secrets about her family and her identity from her - secrets that change everything.
Juliette is devastated, and the darkness that’s always dwelled within her threatens to consume her. An explosive encounter with unexpected visitors might be enough to push her over the edge.
From bestselling and National Book Award-nominated author Tahereh Mafi comes a stunning novel about love and loneliness, navigating the hyphen of dual identity, and reclaiming your right to joy--even when you're trapped in the amber of sorrow.
\nIt's 2003, several months since the US officially declared war on Iraq, and the American political world has evolved. Tensions are high, hate crimes are on the rise, FBI agents are infiltrating local mosques, and the Muslim community is harassed and targeted more than ever. Shadi, who wears hijab, keeps her head down.
\nShe's too busy drowning in her own troubles to find the time to deal with bigots.
\nShadi is named for joy, but she's haunted by sorrow. Her brother is dead, her father is dying, her mother is falling apart, and her best friend has mysteriously dropped out of her life. And then, of course, there's the small matter of her heart--
\nIt's broken.
\nShadi tries to navigate her crumbling world by soldiering through, saying nothing. She devours her own pain, each day retreating farther and farther inside herself until finally, one day, everything changes.
\nShe explodes.
At long last, the wedding day has arrived.
\nThe Jinn queen and the enigmatic ruler of Tulan are to be married in a magical, enchanted ceremony - but Cyrus, tethered by a blood oath to his bride-to-be, can find nothing to celebrate in this union. He’s falling ever more deeply in love with the one person oathbound to kill him.
\nSworn to an ancient, unbreakable magic, Alizeh can only fulfill the prophecy to free her people by ensuring Cyrus dies by her own hand. And Cyrus is forced to await his end all while Prince Kamran inches closer, ready to take his place by Alizeh’s side.
\nThe countdown to murder coils tensions ever tighter, but the historic wedding has already drawn deadly attention. To prepare for war and protect her people, Alizeh must finally discover her magic - and outrun the enemies trying to stop her.
\nAlizeh and Cyrus, along with Kamran and their friends from Ardunia, must flee on dragon-back to begin the perilous journey into the legendary mountains of Arya, where a firestorm of revelations, magical discoveries, and fresh allies awaits them. Every allegiance will be tested, every darkness uncovered, and when the shattering secrets of the Tulanian king are finally revealed . . .
\nNothing, and no one, will be the same.
Juliette now knows she may be the only one who can stop the Reestablishment. But to take them down, she'll need the help of the one person she never thought she could trust: Warner. And as they work together, Juliette will discover that everything she thought she knew-about Warner, her abilities, and even Adam-was wrong.
Juliette Ferrars. Ella Sommers. Which is the truth and which is the lie?
\nNow that Ella knows who Juliette is and what she was created for, things have only become more complicated. As she struggles to understand the past that haunts her and looks to a future more uncertain than ever, the lines between right and wrong - between Ella and Juliette - blur. And with old enemies looming, her destiny may not be her own to control.
\nThe day of reckoning for the Reestablishment is coming. But she may not get to choose what side she fights on.
Rosabelle Wolff had a plan. Now she wants revenge. To save her sister she needs to get back home and destroy the system that created her. Rosabelle’s greatest strength is her ability to deaden her mind and body; it’s the only way to survive the surveillance state of Ark Island. But lately her heart has been beating harder; her thoughts are spiraling; her defenses are coming undone.
\nAnd there’s only one person to blame.
\nJames Anderson had a plan. Now he has nothing but problems. Rosabelle might be the ally they need in a fight against The Reestablishment, but no one wants to trust an enemy assassin. It doesn’t help that Rosabelle’s not much of a talker, doesn’t work well in groups, and kills people on instinct. Taking her side has cost James nearly everything - but keeping her alive might help save his world.
\nIf only he could convince his older brother.
\nAaron Warner Anderson has a headache. Something dark is coming, and Rosabelle’s arrival is just a prelude. In her, he sees shades of himself he can’t trust, and he can no longer get a read on the girl. She’s a dead battery, emanating no emotional feedback. At least not until James walks into a room . . .
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The girl with the power to kill with a single touch now has the world in the palm of her hand.
Juliette Ferrars thought she’d won. She took over Sector 45, was named the new Supreme Commander of North America, and now has Warner by her side. But when tragedy strikes, she must confront the darkness that dwells both around and inside her.
Who will she become in the face of adversity? Will she be able to control the power she wields, and use it for good?
With the heat of a kiss, the walls between Alizeh, the long-lost heir to an ancient Jinn kingdom, and Kamran, the crown prince of the Ardunian empire, have crumbled. And so have both of their lives.
\nAlizeh, the heir to the Jinn throne, is destined to free her people from the half-lives they’ve been forced to live under human rule. When Kamran, the heir to the human throne, falls in love with her, he’s forced to question everything he’s been taught about Jinn.
\nKamran’s grandfather lays dead at the hand of Cyrus, ruler of the neighboring kingdom of Tulan. Cyrus has stolen Alizeh away to his homeland and plans to marry her there, giving her everything she needs to become the Jinn queen - and when she assumes the throne he will have fulfilled his own bargain with the devil.
\nAlizeh wants nothing to do with Cyrus’s deal or the devil. But without a way to escape Tulan, and with the fulfillment of her own destiny tantalizingly close, she’ll have to decide whether she can set aside her emotions to become the queen her people need.
\nKamran, meanwhile, is picking up the pieces in Ardunia. Facing betrayal at every turn, all he knows is that he must go to Tulan to avenge his grandfather. He can only hope that Alizeh will be waiting for him there - and that she hasn’t yet become the queen of Tulan.
To all the world, Alizeh is a disposable servant, not the long-lost heir to an ancient Jinn kingdom forced to hide in plain sight.
\nThe crown prince, Kamran, has heard the prophecies foretelling the death of his king. But he could never have imagined that the servant girl with the strange eyes, the girl he can’t put out of his mind, would one day soon uproot his kingdom - and the world.
Juliette has escaped to Omega Point. It is a place for people like her - people with gifts - and it is also the headquarters of the rebel resistance.
She's finally free from The Reestablishment, free from their plan to use her as a weapon, and free to love Adam. But Juliette will never be free from her lethal touch.
Or from Warner, who wants Juliette more than she ever thought possible.
In this exhilarating sequel to Shatter Me, Juliette has to make life-changing decisions between what she wants and what she thinks is right. Decisions that might involve choosing between her heart - and Adam's life.
James Anderson had a plan. Or half of one. All that matters is that he managed to do what his older brother, the famous Aaron Warner Anderson, never did: infiltrate Ark Island, the last refuge of The Reestablishment. In the past decade no outsider has breached the stronghold of the authoritarian regime, but James is in. In a prison cell, sure, but as far as James is concerned, a win is a win.
\nIt’s been ten years since the fall of The Reestablishment. Ten years since the notorious duo - Juliette Ferrars and Aaron Warner Anderson - led a worldwide rebellion and established the New Republic of the West. But after a decade of unsettling quiet, The Reestablishment is ready to make a devastating move, and they have the perfect person for the job.
\nRosabelle Wolff had a plan. She always has a plan. On Ark Island, where constant surveillance is packaged as security, even emotions must be experienced with caution. A trained assassin, her every movement is monitored by synthetic intelligence - and when she’s given an order to kill, she never hesitates.
\nBrimming with pulse-pounding action and torturous romance, Watch Me is an explosive journey through a dystopian landscape where enemies-to-lovers has never felt more impossible. Step into a beloved and breathtaking world that demands an answer to a desperate question -
\nWho are we when no one is watching?
Welcome to The Cherry Blossom Bookshop, a haven for book lovers that only appears during the fleeting cherry blossom season. Nestled amidst the bloom of delicate petals, you’ll find a sanctuary for those burdened by regrets and past sorrows. Here, Sakura, the mysterious young owner, and her wise calico cat, Kobako, patiently await the arrival of souls in need of solace and healing.
\nTold over four seasons, each visitor to the bookshop holds a book that bridges their past and present, guiding them towards understanding and acceptance. Within the antique charm of the shop and the soothing aroma of freshly brewed coffee, Sakura and Kobako help their guests confront their lingering sadness through the power of stories, enabling them to move forward with renewed hope.
From the day she was born, Tamara Yajia entered the world on a wave of absurdity. She was the newest member of a family no one would call normal, from her grandfather the salami obsessed poppers salesman, to her mother, the OnlyFans model. Not only will her family try anything once, like moving to the United States and opening a food stand named Sexy Chicken; they'll try anything multiple times, like moving back to Argentina, then back to the United States, all while Tamara manages to achieve some success as a preteen child actress after a jaw-dropping performance where she strips down to a garter belt in front of a crowd of rabbis.
\nThe road doesn't get easier for a twelve-year-old Argentinian Jew trying to make it big in Orange County. The disappointment of giving up her childhood career as a performer makes for a rather tumultuous coming of age. But through grit, hustle, and a series of creative endeavors like joining a girl band, and performing her own one-woman show, Cumming of Age, Tam has made it through, and she's ready to spill some shit-figuratively and literally.
\nFeaturing an unlikely combination of comedy and tragedy, generational struggle, and filthy sex jokes, Tamara Yajia's debut memoir is the messy, blazing story of a young Argentine trying to survive while holding on to her confidence, ambition, and sense of humor.
Nona McKinley raised three boys in the Hester Gardens section of Medford, Michigan, an impoverished community divided by those who follow their faith in God and those who turn to crime to survive. With her drug dealer husband behind bars and her eldest son shot to death at eighteen, Nona has devoted herself to ensuring her other children escape their brother’s fate.
\nHer second son Marcus is on the right path. He's a valedictorian heading to an Ivy League school. He can get out.
\nBut then, strange things start happening to Nona and other mysterious footsteps are heard when she’s alone, people have phantom encounters in the streets, unattended appliances go off at all hours. Even more concerning is the state of Nona’s living sons. Her youngest, Lance, is hanging around with a bad crowd, and Marcus becomes moody and secretive. Sometimes he even seems to act like a different person entirely.
\nNona has her secrets too. Her affair with the married church pastor has been weighing on her conscience, but that’s not the only guilt haunting her. She fears that someone - or something - is seeking revenge for an act she made in a moment of weakness to protect her family. And now everyone in Hester Gardens must pay the price . . .
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In BROKEN HARBOUR, a ghost estate outside Dublin - half-built, half-inhabited, half-abandoned - two children and their father are dead. The mother is on her way to intensive care. Scorcher Kennedy is given the case because he is the Murder squad’s star detective. At first he and his rookie partner, Richie, think this is a simple one: Pat Spain was a casualty of the recession, so he killed his children, tried to kill his wife Jenny, and finished off with himself. But there are too many inexplicable details and the evidence is pointing in two directions at once.
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Scorcher’s personal life is tugging for his attention. Seeing the case on the news has sent his sister Dina off the rails again, and she’s resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family, one summer at Broken Harbour, back when they were children. The neat compartments of his life are breaking down, and the sudden tangle of work and family is putting both at risk . . .
It’s a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die.
\nCal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, more or less: he’s built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he’s gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey’s long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat.
\nCal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn’t want protecting. What she wants is revenge.
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When he was twelve years old, Adam Ryan went playing in the woods with his two best friends. He never saw them again. Their bodies were never found, and Adam himself was discovered with his back pressed against an oak tree and his shoes filled with blood. He had no memory of what had happened.
\nTwenty years on, Rob Ryan - the child who came back - is a detective in the Dublin police force. He's changed his name. No one knows about his past. Then a little girl's body is found at the site of the old tragedy and Rob is drawn back into the mystery. Knowing that he would be thrown off the case if his past were revealed, Rob takes a fateful decision to keep quiet but hope that he might also solve the twenty-year-old mystery of the woods.
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On a cold night in the remote Irish village of Ardnakelty, a girl goes missing. Sweet, loving Rachel Holohan was about to be engaged to the son of the local big shot. Instead, she’s dead in the river.
\nIn a close-knit small town, a death like this isn’t simple. It comes wrapped in generations-old grudges and power struggles, and it splits the townland in two. Retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper has friends here now, and he owes them loyalty, but his fiancée Lena wants nothing to do with Ardnakelty’s tangles. As the feud becomes more vicious, their settled peace starts to crack apart. And when they uncover a scheme that casts a new light on Rachel’s death and threatens the whole village, they find themselves in the firing line.
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Still traumatised by her brush with a psychopath, Detective Cassie Maddox transfers out of the Murder squad and starts a relationship with fellow detective Sam O'Neill. When he calls her to the scene of his new case, she is shocked to find that the murdered girl is her double. What's more, her ID shows she is Lexie Madison - the identity Cassie used, years ago, as an undercover detective.
\nWith no leads, no suspects and no clues to Lexie's real identity, Cassie's old boss spots the opportunity of a lifetime: send Cassie undercover in her place, to tempt the killer out of hiding to finish the job.
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Retired detective Cal Hooper moves to a remote village in rural Ireland. His plans are to fix up the dilapidated cottage he's bought, to walk the mountains, to put his old police instincts to bed forever.
Then a local boy appeals to him for help. His brother is missing, and no one in the village, least of all the police, seems to care. And once again, Cal feels that restless itch.
Something is wrong in this community, and he must find out what, even if it brings trouble to his door.
The photo on the card shows a boy who was found murdered, a year ago, on the grounds of a girls’ boarding school in the leafy suburbs of Dublin. The caption says, I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.
Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to get a foot in the door of Dublin’s Murder Squad - and one morning, sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey brings him this photo. The Secret Place, a board where the girls at St. Kilda’s School can pin up their secrets anonymously, is normally a mishmash of gossip and covert cruelty, but today someone has used it to reignite the stalled investigation into the murder of handsome, popular Chris Harper. Stephen joins forces with the abrasive Detective Antoinette Conway to find out who and why.
But everything they discover leads them back to Holly’s close-knit group of friends and their fierce enemies, a rival clique - and to the tangled web of relationships that bound all the girls to Chris Harper. Every step in their direction turns up the pressure. Antoinette Conway is already suspicious of Stephen’s links to the Mackey family. St. Kilda’s will go a long way to keep murder outside their walls.
Holly’s father, Detective Frank Mackey, is circling, ready to pounce if any of the new evidence points toward his daughter. And the private underworld of teenage girls can be more mysterious and more dangerous than either of the detectives imagined.
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Being on the Murder squad is nothing like Detective Antoinette Conway dreamed it would be. Her partner, Stephen Moran, is the only person who seems glad she’s there. The rest of her working life is a stream of thankless cases, vicious pranks, and harassment. Antoinette is savagely tough, but she’s getting close to the breaking point.
Their new case looks like yet another by-the-numbers lovers’ quarrel gone bad. Aislinn Murray is blond, pretty, groomed to a shine, and dead in her catalogue-perfect living room, next to a table set for a romantic dinner. There’s nothing unusual about her—except that Antoinette’s seen her somewhere before.
And that her death won’t stay in its neat by-numbers box. Other detectives are trying to push Antoinette and Steve into arresting Aislinn’s boyfriend, fast. There’s a shadowy figure at the end of Antoinette's road. Aislinn's friend is hinting that she knew Aislinn was in danger. And everything they find out about Aislinn takes her further from the glossy, passive doll she seemed to be.
Antoinette knows the harassment has turned her paranoid, but she can’t tell just how far gone she is. Is this case another step in the campaign to force her off the squad, or are there darker currents flowing beneath its polished surface?
One night changes everything for Toby. A brutal attack leaves him traumatised, unsure even of the person he used to be. He seeks refuge at the family's ancestral home, the Ivy House, filled with cherished memories of wild-strawberry summers and teenage parties with his cousins.
\nBut not long after Toby's arrival, a discovery is made. A skull, tucked neatly inside the old wych elm in the garden.
\nAs detectives begin to close in, Toby is forced to examine everything he thought he knew about his family, his past, and himself.
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Set in Jim Crow Florida, follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.
\nGracetown, Florida
June 1950
Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.
\nRobbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.
\nThe Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.
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It has been fourteen years since King Stephen seized the English throne. England is fraught with tensions. Loyalties are uncertain, and magic is a force in the land. Follow the story of the Pendragon sisters and the men who will help them wrest England from the forces of evil.
\nThe King’s Favorite: Fearing her \"gifts\" will be used to defeat her sister Matilda, Elspeth Pendragon escapes the Black Mountain priory that has sheltered her and her sisters since their father's death, only to find herself indebted to, of all men, a Scotsman, whose loyalties are in question . . .
\nA Winter’s Rose: Facing the grim prospect of a forced marriage to a feckless minion of King Stephen's, Rosalynde, the defiant youngest daughter of Morwen Pendragon takes matters into her own hands. With the help of her mother's spell book and a stolen wimple, she disguises herself as a plain, matronly nun and flees her loveless fate . . .
\nFire Song: Praised for her beauty and grace, deep down, Seren Pendragon fears a tempest rising inside her. Her mother is a witch, her sisters are in peril, and she has been promised to a beast of a man who's already murdered one king. When she and her youngest sister seize the opportunity for escape neither realises how much their struggle will cost, and it will take a tragedy to unleash Seren’s inner fire and true nature.
\nLord of Shadows: Rhiannon’s destiny is fated from the moment of her birth. She and her dewine sisters must defeat an ancient evil, or Britain itself will go the way of Avalon. Her sisters and their champions have set the stage for a final, epic battle against the Witch Goddess Cerridwen, but Rhiannon can only fulfill her destiny if she can win the heart of the Lord of Shadows, the man who holds her prisoner.
\nThis set includes four complete novels in a limited-time collection.
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Gillian Frazer needs something to change. Her marriage has failed. Her job has lost its meaning. She seeks external forms of comfort too often. And then her grandmother, the only real parental figure in her life, finds herself in the hospital, sequestered in her own mental prison.
\nIn search of change, Gillian decides to return to her grandmother's ranch, a home that has been in the family for generations and looks as though it hasn't been updated in nearly as long. As she brings the house into this century, Gillian embarks on a journey of discovery. Of the grandmother she didn't know as well as she believed. Of the culture that left its mark on even the strongest of women. Of the town that harbored more secrets than any one community should hold. And of the person Gillian has allowed herself to become.
\nGillian's journey of discovery will lead her to a place where the past is redefined, the present requires reevaluating, and the future depends on her ability to distinguish the truth from everyday lies.
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To Daya Wijesinghe, a bruise is a mixture of comfort and control. Since her parents died in an accident she survived, bruises have become a way to keep her pain on the surface of her skin so she doesn’t need to deal with the ache deep in her heart.
\nSo when chance and circumstances bring her to a roller derby bout, Daya is hooked. Yes, the rules are confusing and the sport seems to require the kind of teamwork and human interaction Daya generally avoids. But the opportunities to bruise are countless, and Daya realises that if she’s going to keep her emotional pain at bay, she’ll need all the opportunities she can get.
\nThe deeper Daya immerses herself into the world of roller derby, though, the more she realises it’s not the simple physical pain-fest she was hoping for. Her rough-and-tumble teammates and their fans push her limits in ways she never imagined, bringing Daya to big truths about love, loss, strength, and healing.
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Perpetually awkward Nima Kumara-Clark is bored with her insular community of Bridgeton, in love with her straight girlfriend, and trying to move past her mother’s unexpected departure. After a bewildering encounter at a local festival, Nima finds herself suddenly immersed in the drag scene on the other side of town.
\nMacho drag kings, magical queens, new love interests, and surprising allies propel Nima both painfully and hilariously closer to a self she never knew she could be - one that can confidently express and accept love. But she’ll have to learn to accept lost love to get there.
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This is definitely not how Maya wanted to spend the summer - depressed at her once-beloved cabin in Spruce Lake, and unable to avoid seeing her lifelong best friend, Rashida, after confessing her woefully unrequited love to her last year. Maya can’t decide if she wants to escape, or convince Rashida they’re still meant to be.
\nGabe is sent to Spruce Lake by her mom in hopes she stays out of trouble. Gabe is NOT excited to be here. She does NOT like nature. She does NOT want to spend her summer in a tiny town with outdoorsy environmentalist types.
\nGabe is pretty sure she’ll be spending this entire summer bored and alone . . . until she meets Maya. Together, they hatch a fake-dating scheme to make Rashida jealous and convince Gabe’s mom that Gabe has turned a wholesome new leaf.
\nBut as the plan plays out, and Gabe and Maya contend with protests, a relentlessly concerned community, and romantic twists, they start to realise that their assumptions about friendship and love might have led them completely astray. Can they find their way through this mess without hurting each other in the process?
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Cassie Perera is a star student in St. Luke's junior class. But the new school year brings an unwelcome surprise - the return to St. Luke's of Cassie's former friend, Ben, who left a few years ago after a homophobic bullying incident Cassie knows she didn't do enough to prevent.
\nStill harboring guilt from her inaction, Cassie decides, in her usual, overzealous way, to team up with the neighboring public school to found an underground Gender and Sexuality Alliance - as a complicated strategy for making things up to Ben. Secretly, Cassie is also tempted by the possibility of opening up about her own sexuality for the first time.
\nAs Cassie’s new friends urge her out of her comfort zone, she unlocks a kind of joy and freedom she’s never felt before - even as she struggles to balance these experiences with her typical tightrope of being the perfect daughter, student, and Catholic.
\nCassie’s perfectly curated life unravels into turmoil, but can she embrace the mess enough to piece together something new?
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A stray cat brings together five strangers over the course of one fateful summer in this heartwarming novel about love, found family, and the power of connection.
\nNúria, a single-by-choice barista with a resentment for the “crazy cat lady” label, is a member of The Meow-Yorkers, a group in Brooklyn who takes care of the neighborhood’s stray cats. On one of her volunteering days, she starts finding Post-It notes from a secret admirer at the spot where her favorite stray lives - a black cat named Cat. Like most cats, he is rather curious and sly, so of course he knows who the notes are from. Núria, however, is clueless.
\nAre the notes from Collin, a bestselling author and self-professed hermit with a weakness for good coffee? Are they from Lily, a fresh-out-of-high school Georgia native searching for her long-lost half-sister? Are they from Omar, the beloved neighborhood mailman going through an early mid-life crisis? Or are they from Bong, the grieving widower who owns her favorite bodega? When Cat suddenly falls ill, these five strangers find themselves connected in their desire to care for him and discover that chance encounters can lead to the meaningful connections they've been searching for.
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The Four Realms - Life, Death, Light, and Darkness - all converge on the city of dusk. For each realm there is a god, and for each god there is an heir.
\nBut the gods have withdrawn their favor from the once vibrant and thriving city. And without it, all the realms are dying.
\nUnwilling to stand by and watch the destruction, the four heirs - Risha, a necromancer struggling to keep the peace; Angelica, an elementalist with her eyes set on the throne; Taesia, a shadow-wielding rogue with rebellion in her heart; and Nik, a soldier who struggles to see the light - will sacrifice everything to save the city.
\nBut their defiance will cost them dearly.
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In the aftermath of the chaos and tragedy of Godsnight, the heirs find themselves struggling to recover and determine their next moves. But when Phos, the god of light, stages an attack on their realms in a bid for cosmic control, the heirs decide to take the fight to Phos in Solara, the realm of light.
\nBut once in Solara, they discover a realm terrorized by the myth of the Sunslayer who has been targeting those in Phos's bloodline. In order to forge a delicate truce in an attempt to buy time, Nik, Rian, and Julian set off to capture the Sunslayer; while Angelica, Risha, and Dante remain in the city to search for a way to defeat Phos for good.
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A cataclysmic battle to save the city of Nexus has left the four noble heirs scattered across the four realms.
\nTaesia, the shadow-wielding rebel of House Lastrider, and Nikolas, the solider son of House Cyr, have been cast into Noctus, the realm of night. But they are not alone. The dangerous and unpredictable god of light has traveled with them, and he will do anything in his power to destroy Noctus once and for all.
\nRisha, the peace-loving necromancer of House Vakara, has finally found her way to Mortri, the realm of death. But she still cannot help the wayward spirits trapped in Vaega, nor does she have any idea how to get herself and her friend Jas home. All she knows is that no mortal can survive for long in Mortri. And the creatures that walk the realm of death don't take kindly to the living.
\nAngelica, the stubborn elementalist of House Mardova, finds herself alone in Vaega. With the other three heirs vanished, it is up to her help keep the city of Nexus from unraveling. But Angelica secretly suffers from a sickness that her goddess left in her veins. And when she is sent on a delicate diplomatic mission, she knows that any sign of weakness will have disastrous repercussions for her family, her city, and her dreams of the throne.
\nAll will encounter old friends and new enemies as they attempt to restore the balance of the world. But as the gods grow stronger, they'll need more than their powers and their wits to survive.
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Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her \"head-for-the-hills bag\". In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard.
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.
Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.
Refugee, criminal and linguist Sean Wren is made an offer he knows he can’t refuse: life in prison, “voluntary” military service - or salvaging data in a long-dead language from an abandoned ship filled with traps and monsters, just days before it’s destroyed in a supernova. Data connected to the Philosopher’s Stone experiments, into unlocking the secrets of immortality.
\nAnd he’s not the only one looking for the derelict ship. The Ministers, mysterious undying aliens that have ruled over humanity for centuries, want the data - as does The Republic, humanity’s last free government. And time is running out.
\nIn the bowels of the derelict ship, surrounded by horrors and dead men, Sean slowly uncovers the truth of what happened on the ship, in its final days . . . and the terrible secret it’s hiding.
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Having escaped the dangers of the Nameless with the Philosopher Stone data, Sean thought his troubles were over. Until he gets a call for help from his sister Brigid - his long-dead sister.
\nBrigid is sparse on the details, but she needs Sean to go to the Republican city of Illin to retrieve something called a “Purifier” for her. Reeling from the desperate hope that his sister is alive, Sean aims for Illin, dragging his new companions, Tamara Gupta formerly a Republican soldier, and Indigo, the Minister responsible for the destruction of Sean's home, into the fray.
\nBut as usual, Sean hasn't quite thought this through. The three of them are all wanted by Republican authorities, and Illin happens to be on the same planet as Sean’s old friend Senator Ketel. Y'know, the one who blackmailed and nearly murdered Sean. With every move Sean makes he discovers more intrigue, more people on his tail, and more ways that his little adventure could be the spark for war between the Republic and the Ministers. And to what end? Is it really his sister, a chance for family, and safety, on the other side?
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One boy's ability to summon demons will change the fate of an empire . . . The epic conclusion to the fantasy trilogy described as 'Harry Potter meets Lord of the Rings meets Pokemon'.
After the thrilling cliffhanger at the end of book two, we rejoin Fletcher and his friends in the ether, where they must undertake a mortally dangerous quest, all the while avoiding capture by enemies and facing foes more terrifying than anything they have yet encountered.
But this is nothing compared to what truly lies ahead for Fletcher, as his nemesis, albino orc Khan, is on a mission to destroy Hominum and everything and everyone that Fletcher loves.
In a realm of monsters and warriors, Cade is an unwilling contender in a deadly tournament controlled by the brutal alien overlord Abaddon.
Cade may have won the first round but the fight isn’t over yet. For his next battle he must duel a seven-foot-tall, clawed monster - the reigning champion of an alien race.
Desperate for anything that may give him an advantage, Cade sets off on an expedition into the jungle to scavenge weaponry to help him win. But there he is captured by gladiators, and before he knows it he finds himself participating in a deadly new game where the prize is his freedom.
Cade has managed to survive the duel with the Hydra Alpha - barely. But the Games are far from over.
\nBy order of their cruel and mysterious overlord, Abaddon, Cade and his friends are sent off to war against the Greys, a humanoid race who have far surpassed humans in technology on their home planet. This attempt to move up the leaderboard, however, leads Cade to a game-changing revelation: The Pantheon - the millennia-old alien masterminds behind the Games - have a weakness.
\nWith the right artifacts scavenged from the land of Acies and a heavy dose of courage and luck, Cade has exactly one chance to end their tyranny forever. But if he fails, the lives of his friends - and the survival of Earth itself - will be forfeit.
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Throughout history, people have vanished with no explanation. A group of teenagers are about to discover why.
Cade is settling into a new boarding school, contemplating his future, when he finds himself transported to another realm. He soon discovers their new world is populated with lost remnants from the past: prehistoric creatures, ancient relics, and stranger still - people. Overwhelmed by his new surroundings, Cade has little time to adjust, for soon he and his fellow classmates are forced to become contenders in a brutal game, controlled by mysterious overlords.
But who are these beings and why did they choose these teens? Cade must prepare for battle . . . because hiding is not an option.
Can an orphan captive learn the secrets of the Dragon Riders to stand up and avenge his people?
\nJai lives as a royal hostage in the Sabine Court - ever since his father Rohan, leader of the Steppefolk, led a failed rebellion and was executed by the very emperor Jai now serves.
\nWhen the emperor’s son and heir is betrothed to Princess Erica of the neighboring Dansk Kingdom, she brings with her a dowry: dragons. Endemic to the northern nation, these powerful beasts come in several forms, but mystery surrounds them. Only Dansk royalty know the secret to soulbonding with these dangerous beasts to draw on their power and strength. This marriage - and the alliance that forms - will change that forever.
\nBut conspirators lurk in the shadows, and soon the Sabine Court is in chaos. With his life in danger, Jai uses the opportunity to escape with the Dansk handmaiden, Frida, and a stolen hatchling. Hunted at every turn, he must learn to cultivate magic and become a soulbound warrior if he has any chance of finding safety, seizing his destiny . . . and seeking his revenge.
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On trial for a crime he did not commit, Fletcher must face the Inquisition who will decide his future - the process is gruelling, lead by those who will do anything to see him suffer and haunted by ghosts from the past with clues to Fletcher's tragic origins.
\nBut Fletcher has little time to dwell on these new revelations when the king announces a deadly challenge to the graduating students at Vocans. One that involves entering Orc territory to complete a risky mission. With loyal demons by their sides, commoners and nobles, dwarves and elves must overcome barriers of class and race and work together to triumph. The reward: a fortune in gold, the safety of an empire and PEACE.
\nWith the entire empire watching, Fletcher has much to prove, but there are those out to get him and it soon becomes clear that there's a traitor in their midst, trying to thwart the mission and create unrest within the Empire.
\nWith everything stacked against him, Fletcher must use everything in his power to fight his way to victory.
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When blacksmith apprentice Fletcher discovers that he has the ability to summon demons from another world, he travels to Adept Military Academy. There the gifted are trained in the art of summoning. Fletcher is put through grueling training as a battlemage to fight in the Hominum Empire’s war against orcs. He must tread carefully while training alongside children of powerful nobles. The power hungry, those seeking alliances, and the fear of betrayal surround him. Fletcher finds himself caught in the middle of powerful forces, with only his demon Ignatius for help.
As the pieces on the board maneuver for supremacy, Fletcher must decide where his loyalties lie. The fate of an empire is in his hands.
When stable boy Arcturus accidentally summons a demon and becomes Hominum's first common summoner, he becomes the key to a secret that the powerful overlords would do anything to keep hidden.
\nWhisked away to Vocans Academy so he can be kept watch over, Arcturus finds himself surrounded by enemies. But he has little time to settle in before his life is turned upside down once again, for Hominum Empire is in turmoil.
\nRebellious intent simmers among the masses, and it will not be long before it boils over. Arcturus must choose a side . . . or watch an Empire crumble.
Jai dreams of being a dragon rider. He dreams of freedom from the Sabine Empire and a world in which he can lead his people, the Kidara, to freedom. But even though he has his dragon, Winter, she is still growing, just as he’s still growing in his own power. And the road to victory is even more fraught than he had hoped . . .
\nBecause even when he finds a tribe on the Great Steppe, they are not his people. They are the outcasts, the Tainted, and he finds that he knows little of the political intricacies that take place in these vast grasslands. He is a stranger amongst his own kind, for Jai’s uncle rules, and is loath to cede power to his nephew.
\nBut the legionaries and Gryphon Guard of the Sabine Empire are wreaking havoc against the other tribes of the Great Steppe, and Jai is forced to learn a lifetime’s worth of knowledge in a matter of months. From levelling up his magic, to becoming a true warrior, saving the woman he loves, and strengthening his bond with Winter, Jai is a dragon rider with a massive weight on his young shoulders. And his greatest hope is that the shoulders of Winter will soon be strong enough to help carry him.
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An aching love story and literary debut about two strangers whose paths converge in a series of seemingly chance encounters and shared histories
\nOn a bus moving across rural landscapes from town to town, two young people are escaping with nothing to hold except hope. She has committed a horrifying act for which there will certainly be retribution. He is staggering from a devastating discovery. They will find each other and attempt to move forward, even as their grief leaves wounds on their new beginnings.
\nBut the talons of the past have dug deep and the wounds have not yet healed. Moving back and forth in time, from the fragile bonds of this new relationship to the lives they lived before, The Ones We Loved tenderly reveals characters whose ways of loving are inherited and channeled into the lands they inhabit, the people they care for and the present they cling to.
\nTold in the rhythms of oral retellings practiced in Zimbabwe, where a ngano (story) - its melodies, pauses and lifts - creates a call-and-response with the audience, The Ones We Loved is about the homes we leave behind, the lonely voices that find us and the painful consequences of experiencing a love that has never known how to let go.
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When his grandfather dies, a boy named Jay travels south with his family to the property he left them, a once flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. The trees are diseased, the fields parched from months of drought.
\nStill, Jay’s father, Jack, sends him out to work the land, or whatever land is left. Over the course of these hot, dense days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan, the local son of the farm’s manager, different from him in every way except for one.
\nOut in the fields, and on the streets into town, the charge between the boys intensifies. Inside the house, the other family members confront their own regrets, and begin to drift apart. Like the land around them, they are powerless to resist the global forces that threaten to render their lives obsolete.
\nAt once sweeping and intimate, The South is a story of what happens when private and public lives collide. It is the first in a quartet of novels that form Tash Aw’s masterful portrait of a family navigating a period of great change - a reimagined epic for our times.
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Scarlett vowed she’d never step foot in Brackson prison again. Yet here she is, back in her hometown, dragging disgruntled dogs into the hell her father once called home.
\nThe Pups in Prison rehabilitation program is her uncle’s passion, but his recent heart attack means he’s laid up and she’s filling in. She’s surrounded by inked necks and barbed wire . . . and awful memories she can’t shake. She knows she’s the reason her marriage is falling apart. She’s been running from that knowledge like she runs from the surname that links her to her father’s crimes.
\nShe didn’t expect to find solace in an unexpected prisoner.
\nEmery is intense yet kind. Strangely intuitive. She shouldn’t look forward to their dog-training sessions, even if this alluring inmate shines a light on parts of herself she thought she hated.
\nBut when she discovers why he was incarcerated and violence hits too close to home, Scarlett’s forced to face that forgiveness is more than spoken words and that coming undone is the first step to stitching yourself back together.
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In a Britain fuelled by stories, the knight and the witch are fated to fall in love and doom each other over and over, the same tale retold over hundreds of lifetimes.
\nSimran is a witch of the woods. Vina is a knight of the Queen's court. When the two women begin to fall for each other, how can they surrender to their desires, when to give in is to destroy each other?
\nAs they seek a way to break the cycle, a mysterious assassin begins targeting tales like theirs. To survive, the two will need to write a story stronger than the one that fate has given to them.
\nBut what tale is stronger than The Knight and the Witch?
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Exiled by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless waters - but is now little more than a decaying ruin.
\n\t\t\t\t\tPriya is a maidservant, one among several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers. She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, so long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides. But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne. The other is a priestess seeking to find her family. Together, they will change the fate of an empire.
Malini has claimed her rightful throne as the empress of Parijatdvipa, just as the nameless gods prophesied. Now, in order to gain the support of the priesthood who remain loyal to the fallen emperor, she must consider a terrible Claim her throne and burn in order to seal her legacy - or find another willing to take her place on the pyre.
\nPriya has survived the deathless waters and now their magic runs in her veins. But a mysterious yaksa with flowering eyes and a mouth of thorns lies beneath the waters. The yaksa promises protection for Ahiranya. But in exchange, she needs a sacrifice. And she's chosen Priya as the one to offer it.
\nTwo women once entwined by fate now stand against each other. But when an ancient enemy rises to threaten their world, Priya and Malini will find themselves fighting together once more - to prevent their kingdoms, and their futures, from burning to ash.
The prophecy of the nameless god - the words that declared Malini the rightful empress of Parijatdvipa - has proven a blessing and curse. She is determined to claim the throne that fate offered her. But even with the strength of the rage in her heart and the army of loyal men by her side, deposing her brother is going to be a brutal and bloody fight.
\nThe power of the deathless waters flows through Priya’s blood. Thrice born priestess, Elder of Ahiranya, Priya’s dream is to see her country rid of the rot that plagues it: both Parijatdvipa's poisonous rule, and the blooming sickness that is slowly spreading through all living things. But she doesn’t yet understand the truth of the magic she carries.
\nTheir chosen paths once pulled them apart. But Malini and Priya's souls remain as entwined as their destinies. And they soon realise that coming together is the only way to save their kingdom from those who would rather see it burn - even if it will cost them.
The Ambhan Empire is crumbling. A terrible war of succession hovers on the horizon. The only hope for peace lies in the mysterious realm of ash, where mortals can find what they seek in the echoes of their ancestors' dreams. But to walk there requires a steep price.
\nArwa is determined to make the journey. Widowed by a brutal massacre, she's pledged service to the royal family and will see that pledge through to the end. She never expected to be joined by Zahir, the disgraced, illegitimate prince who has turned to forbidden magic in a desperate bid to save those he loves.
\nTogether, they'll walk the bloody path of their shared past. And it will call into question everything they've ever believed...including whether the Empire is worth saving at all.
Myung and Laleh are keepers of the whale of babel. They roam within its cosmic chambers, speak folktales of themselves, and pray to an enigmatic figure they know only as 'Great Wisa'. To Laleh, this is everything. For Myung, it is not enough.
\nWhen Myung flees the whale, she stumbles into a new universe where shapeshifting islands and ancient maps hold sway. There, she sets off on an adventure that is both tragic and transformative, for her and Laleh. For at the heart of her quest lies a mystery that has confounded scholars for the truth about the mad sisters of Esi.
\nFables, dreams and myths come together in this masterful work of fantasy by acclaimed author Tashan Mehta, sweeping across three landscapes, and featuring a museum of collective memory and a festival of madness. At its core, it asks: In the devastating chaos of this world, where all is in flux and the truth ever-changing, what will you choose to hold on to?
Maya's life is safe, predictable, quiet . . .
\nShe spends her days at the same job she's been at for years, her evenings watching Bollywood movies with her parents and her Saturday nights eating out at the same restaurant with her childhood best friend.
\nWhen Maya meets Noah on the Underground, for twenty glorious minutes her life becomes exciting. Until he jumps off the train, accidentally leaving behind a notebook containing a list of thirty things he wants to do before he turns thirty.
\nCrushed by the abrupt ending to what could have been her happily ever after, Maya challenges herself to work through the items on his list, secretly hoping that whilst climbing out of her rut and (quite literally) climbing mountains, she may find Noah as well as herself. Instead, she meets Zakariya; an annoying suitor brought to her by her parents via a dodgy marriage CV.
\nBut how can a flawed, real life person ever compare to the man in the notebook?
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Pauline, a young chambermaid who works at the legendary Mapes Hotel in Reno, Nevada, is asked to step in for a colleague and clean Suite 614. Although she was told the rooms were empty, a dazed, sleepy woman appears before her. This is Mrs. Miller, aka Marilyn Monroe, whose stay in Reno coincides with the breakdown of her marriage to Arthur Miller and the filming of what was to be her last film, The Misfits.
\nSet in the American West in 1960 where the mustang horses run wild, an unexpected friendship unfolds between the most famous movie star in the world and a young cleaning woman whose life will be changed forever through the course of a few weeks. A testament to the enduring power of female friendship and a reimagining of a side of Marilyn Monroe that has never been seen before.
Author Clarissa Katsef is struggling to write her next book. She’s just snagged a brand new artist residency in an ultra-modern apartment, with a view of all of Paris, a dream for any novelist in search of tranquility. But since moving in, she has had the feeling of being watched. Is there reason to be paranoid?
\nOr is her distraction and discomfort the result of her husband’s recent shocking betrayal? Or is that her beloved Paris lies altered outside her windows? A city that will never be quite the same, a city with a scar at its center?
Stuck inside, in the midst of a sweltering heat wave, Clarissa enlists her beloved granddaughter in her investigation of the mysterious, high tech building even as she finds herself drawn back into the orbit of her first husband who is still the one who knows her most intimately, who shares the past grief that she has never quite let go.
Paris, France: 1860’s. Hundreds of houses are being razed, whole neighborhoods reduced to ashes. By order of Emperor Napoleon III, Baron Haussman has set into motion a series of large-scale renovations that will permanently alter the face of old Paris, moulding it into a “modern city.” The reforms will erase generations of history - but in the midst of the tumult, one woman will take a stand.
\nRose Bazelet is determined to fight against the destruction of her family home until the very end; as others flee, she stakes her claim in the basement of the old house on rue Childebert, ignoring the sounds of change that come closer and closer each day.
\nAttempting to overcome the loneliness of her daily life, she begins to write letters to Armand, her beloved late husband. And as she delves into the ritual of remembering, Rose is forced to come to terms with a secret that has been buried deep in her heart for thirty years.
\nThe House I Loved is both a poignant story of one woman’s indelible strength, and an ode to Paris, where houses harbor the joys and sorrows of their inhabitants, and secrets endure in the very walls . . .
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The Rain Watcher is a powerful family drama set in Paris as the Malegarde family gathers to celebrate the father's 70th birthday. Their hidden fears and secrets are slowly unraveled as the City of Light undergoes a stunning natural disaster. Seen through the eyes of charismatic photographer Linden Malegarde, the youngest son, all members of the family will have to fight to keep their unity against tragic circumstances.
In this profound and intense novel of love and redemption, De Rosnay demonstrates all of her writer's skills both as an incredible storyteller but also as a soul seeker.
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
\nParis, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond.
\nAs she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
This stunning new novel from Tatiana de Rosnay, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Sarah’s Key, plumbs the depths of complex family relationships and the power of a past secret to change everything in the present.
\nIt all began with a simple seaside vacation, a brother and sister recapturing their childhood. Antoine Rey thought he had the perfect surprise for his sister Mélanie’s birthday: a weekend by the sea at Noirmoutier Island, where the pair spent many happy childhood summers playing on the beach. It had been too long, Antoine thought, since they’d returned to the island - over thirty years, since their mother died and the family holidays ceased.
\nBut the island’s haunting beauty triggers more than happy memories; it reminds Mélanie of something unexpected and deeply disturbing about their last island summer. When, on the drive home to Paris, she finally summons the courage to reveal what she knows to Antoine, her emotions overcome her and she loses control of the car.
\nRecovering from the accident in a nearby hospital, Mélanie tries to recall what caused her to crash. Antoine encounters an unexpected ally: sexy, streetwise Angèle, a mortician who will teach him new meanings for the words life, love and death. Suddenly, however, the past comes swinging back at both siblings, burdened with a dark truth about their mother, Clarisse.
\nTrapped in the wake of a shocking family secret shrouded by taboo, Antoine must confront his past and also his troubled relationships with his own children. How well does he really know his mother, his children, even himself? Suddenly fragile on all fronts as a son, a husband, a brother and a father, Antoine Rey will learn the truth about his family and himself the hard way.
\nBy turns thrilling, seductive and destructive, with a lingering effect that is bittersweet and redeeming, A Secret Kept is the story of a modern family, the invisible ties that hold it together, and the impact it has throughout life.
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From one of Moldova’s most celebrated writers, The Summer My Mother Had Green Eyes is a complex coming-of-age story unraveling the fragile, complicated, redemptive relationship between a mother and her son.
\nAleksy still remembers the last summer he spent with his mother in Northern France. At eighteen, eager to fly the nest and escape a family still grief-stricken by the death of his sister years earlier, these lazy months in the countryside are akin to torture. And then, his mother tells him she’s dying.
\nFourteen years later, at the urging of his psychiatrist, Aleksy relives the memory of the summer when everything changed, shaken once again by the emotions that besieged him when they arrived in that small French village. For fans of Claire Keegan and Elena Ferrante, this is a story of reconciliation, of three months in which mother and son finally lay down their weapons to make peace with each other and with themselves.
Three months ago, Lena Nguyen’s estranged twin sister, Cambry, drove to a remote bridge sixty miles outside of Missoula, Montana, and jumped two hundred feet to her death. At least, that is the official police version.
\nBut Lena isn’t buying it.
\nNow she’s come to that very bridge, driving her dead twin’s car and armed with a cassette recorder, determined to find out what really happened by interviewing the highway patrolman who allegedly discovered her sister’s body.
\nCorporal Raymond Raycevic has agreed to meet Lena at the scene. He is sympathetic, forthright, and professional. But his story doesn’t seem to add up. For one thing, he stopped Cambry for speeding a full hour before she supposedly leapt to her death. Then there are the sixteen attempted 911 calls from her cell phone, made in what was unfortunately a dead zone.
\nBut perhaps most troubling of all, the state trooper is referred to by name in Cambry’s final enigmatic text to her sister: Please Forgive Me. I couldn’t live with it. Hopefully you can, Officer Raycevic.
\nLena will do anything to uncover the truth. But as her twin’s final hours come into focus, Lena’s search turns into a harrowing, tooth-and-nail fight for her own survival - one that will test everything she thought she knew about her sister and herself . . .
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After years of excuses, Tess has finally agreed to go caving with her best friend Allie. Their lives have diverged sharply since high school - Allie is a self-made travel influencer, while Tess is a shy (and claustrophobic) legal assistant struggling to pay for law school. Maybe she’s a little jealous of Allie's globe-trotting life. Who wouldn’t be?
\nAs Tess and Allie descend into the depths, they realise they’re not alone. A stranger who claims to be a fellow caver harasses them. Confident, take-no-shit Allie insults the guy - and he retaliates. Soon, Tess is trapped inside a narrow crawl space hundreds of feet underground, fighting to stay alive.
\nTwenty-four hours later, as a hospitalised Tess recounts her harrowing story of survival, the detective interviewing her shares new and shocking secrets about Allie's true past. Together, they begin to suspect the brutal attack wasn’t so random after all.
\nWho was Allie, really? Why did this man target them? And did Tess really leave the danger behind when she escaped the cave?
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On her way to Utah to see her dying mother, college student Darby Thorne gets caught in a fierce blizzard in the mountains of Colorado. With the roads impassable, she’s forced to wait out the storm at a remote highway rest stop. Inside, are some vending machines, a coffee maker, and four complete strangers.
Desperate to find a signal to call home, Darby goes back out into the storm . . . and makes a horrifying discovery. In the back of the van parked next to her car, a little girl is locked in an animal crate.
Who is the child? Why has she been taken? And how can Darby save her?
There is no cell phone reception, no telephone, and no way out. One of her fellow travelers is a kidnapper. But which one?
Trapped in an increasingly dangerous situation, with a child’s life and her own on the line, Darby must find a way to break the girl out of the van and escape.
But who can she trust?
When Lauren and Ryan’s marriage reaches the breaking point, they come up with an unconventional plan. They decide to take a year off in the hopes of finding a way to fall in love again. One year apart, and only one rule: they cannot contact each other. Aside from that, anything goes.
\nLauren embarks on a journey of self-discovery, quickly finding that her friends and family have their own ideas about the meaning of marriage. These influences, as well as her own healing process and the challenges of living apart from Ryan, begin to change Lauren’s ideas about monogamy and marriage. She starts to question: When you can have romance without loyalty and commitment without marriage, when love and lust are no longer tied together, what do you value? What are you willing to fight for?
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.
\nSelected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.
\nAs the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.
\nThen, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.
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Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular. But by the time she retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Grand Slam titles. And if you ask Carrie, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father, Javier, as her coach. A former champion himself, Javier has trained her since the age of two.
\nBut six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record be taken from her by a brutal, stunning player named Nicki Chan.
\nAt thirty-seven years old, Carrie makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record. Even if the sports media says that they never liked the Battle-Axe anyway. Even if her body doesn't move as fast as it did. And even if it means swallowing her pride to train with a man she once almost opened her heart to: Bowe Huntley. Like her, he has something to prove before he gives up the game forever.
\nIn spite of it all, Carrie Soto is back, for one epic final season.
Everyone knows Daisy Jones & the Six.
\nThey sold out arenas from coast to coast.
\nTheir music defined an era and every girl in America idolised Daisy.
\nBut on July 12 1979, on the night of the final concert of the Aurora tour, they split. Nobody ever knew why. Until now.
\nThis is the whole story, right from the beginning: the sun-bleached streets, the grimy bars on the Sunset Strip, knowing Daisy’s moment was coming. Relive the euphoria of success and experience the terror that nothing will ever be as good again. Take the uppers so you can keep on believing, take the downers so you can sleep, eventually.
\nWonder who you are without the drugs or the music or the fans or the family that prop you up. Make decisions that will forever feel tough. Find beauty where you least expect it. Most of all, love like your life depends on it and believe in whatever it is you’re fighting for.
\nIt’s a true story, though everyone remembers the truth differently.
Elsie Porter is an average twentysomething and yet what happens to her is anything but ordinary. On a rainy New Year's Day, she heads out to pick up a pizza for one. She isn't expecting to see anyone else in the shop, much less the adorable and charming Ben Ross. Their chemistry is instant and electric. Ben cannot even wait twenty-four hours before asking to see her again. Within weeks, the two are head over heels in love. By May, they've eloped.
\nOnly nine days later, Ben is out riding his bike when he is hit by a truck and killed on impact. Elsie hears the sirens outside her apartment, but by the time she gets downstairs, he has already been whisked off to the emergency room. At the hospital, she must face Susan, the mother-in-law she has never met and who doesn't even know Elsie exists.
\nInterweaving Elsie and Ben's charmed romance with Elsie and Susan's healing process, Forever, Interrupted will remind you that there's more than one way to find a happy ending.
Malibu: August 1983. It's the day of Nina Riva's annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over - especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva.
\nThe only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud - because it is long past time for him to confess something to the brother from whom he's been inseparable since birth.
\nJay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can't stop thinking about promised she'll be there.
\nAnd Kit has a couple secrets of her own--including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.
\nBy midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family's generations will all come bubbling to the surface.
\nMalibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them . . . and what they will leave behind.
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At the age of twenty-nine, Hannah Martin still has no idea what she wants to do with her life. She has lived in six different cities and held countless meaningless jobs since graduating college. On the heels of leaving yet another city, Hannah moves back to her hometown of Los Angeles and takes up residence in her best friend Gabby’s guestroom. Shortly after getting back to town, Hannah goes out to a bar one night with Gabby and meets up with her high school boyfriend, Ethan.
\nJust after midnight, Gabby asks Hannah if she’s ready to go. A moment later, Ethan offers to give her a ride later if she wants to stay. Hannah hesitates. What happens if she leaves with Gabby? What happens if she leaves with Ethan?
\nIn concurrent storylines, Hannah lives out the effects of each decision. Quickly, these parallel universes develop into radically different stories with large-scale consequences for Hannah, as well as the people around her. As the two alternate realities run their course, Maybe in Another Life raises questions about fate and true love: Is anything meant to be? How much in our life is determined by chance? And perhaps, most compellingly: Is there such a thing as a soul mate?
\nHannah believes there is. And, in both worlds, she believes she’s found him.
A breathtaking new love story about a woman unexpectedly forced to choose between the husband she has long thought dead and the fiancé who has finally brought her back to life.
In her twenties, Emma Blair marries her high school sweetheart, Jesse. They build a life for themselves, far away from the expectations of their parents and the people of their hometown in Massachusetts. They travel the world together, living life to the fullest and seizing every opportunity for adventure.
On their first wedding anniversary, Jesse is on a helicopter over the Pacific when it goes missing. Just like that, Jesse is gone forever.
Emma quits her job and moves home in an effort to put her life back together. Years later, now in her thirties, Emma runs into an old friend, Sam, and finds herself falling . . .
Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?
\nMonique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.
\nSummoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ‘80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.
David Federman has never felt appreciated. An academically gifted yet painfully forgettable member of his New Jersey high school class, the withdrawn, mild-mannered freshman arrives at Harvard fully expecting to be embraced by a new tribe of high-achieving peers. Initially, however, his social prospects seem unlikely to change, sentencing him to a lifetime of anonymity.
Then he meets Veronica Morgan Wells. Struck by her beauty, wit, and sophisticated Manhattan upbringing, David becomes instantly infatuated. Determined to win her attention and an invite into her glamorous world, he begins compromising his moral standards for this one, great shot at happiness. But both Veronica and David, it turns out, are not exactly as they seem.
Loner turns the traditional campus novel on its head as it explores ambition, class, and gender politics.
Conor O’Toole has never been anywhere as casually glamorous as Cutters Neck, a gated community near Cape Cod. It’s a sweet deal for the summer: free lodging in a guest cottage in exchange for tennis lessons, luxuriously far from the cramped Yonkers apartment he shares with his diabetic mother.
\nIn this oceanfront paradise, however, new clients prove hard to come by, and Conor has bills to pay. Then a sharp-tongued divorcée appears, offering him double his usual rate. Soon he realizes Catherine is expecting additional, off-the-court services for her money, and Conor tumbles into a secret erotic affair unlike anything he’s experienced before.
\nDespite his steamy flings with a woman twice his age, he simultaneously finds himself falling for the artsy, outspoken girl he met on the beach. Conor somehow finds a way to manage this tangled web - until he makes one final, irreversible mistake.
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The Minton family is in crisis. After losing his job, father Marcus begins stockpiling cans, running evacuation drills and digging a doomsday bunker in the back garden. At the same time, the Minton daughters are unravelling in their own ways - Chantale is being haunted by dreams of disaster, and Briar’s obsession with a missing classmate draws her deeper into the seductive world of a UFO cult. Meanwhile, no one is aware of the devastating diagnosis their mother has been desperately trying to keep hidden.
\nThen, on the morning of the eldest daughter’s wedding, an extinction-level event tears the world apart, and the Mintons must fight their way through a devastated city - back to safety, survival, and each other.
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“Don't let the white man take the house.”
\nThese are the last words King Solomon says to his son before he dies. Now all four Solomon siblings must return to North Carolina to save the Kingdom, their ancestral home and 200 acres of land, from a development company, who has their sights set on turning the valuable waterfront property into a luxury resort.
\nWhile fighting to save the Kingdom, the siblings must also save themselves from the secrets they've been holding onto. Junior, the oldest son and married to his wife for 11 years, is secretly in love with another man. Second son, Mance, can't control his temper, which has landed him in prison more than once. CeCe, the oldest daughter and a lawyer in New York City, has embezzled thousands of dollars from her firm's clients. Youngest daughter, Tokey, wonders why she doesn't seem to fit into this family, which has left an aching hole in her heart that she tries to fill in harmful ways. As the Solomons come together to fight for the Kingdom, each of their façades begins to crumble and collide in unexpected ways.
\nTold in alternating viewpoints, Long After We Are Gone is a searing portrait on the power of family and letting go of things that no longer serve you, exploring the burden of familial expectations, the detriment of miscommunication, and the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children.
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A compelling debut that glows with bittersweet heart and touching emotion, deeply interrogating questions of family, redemption, and unconditional love in the sweltering summer heat of Savannah, as two people discover what it means to truly forgive.
\nIt's been eight years since Sara Lancaster left her home in Savannah, Georgia. Eight years since her daughter, Alana, came into this world, following a terrifying sexual assault that left deep emotional wounds Sara would do anything to forget. But when Sara's father falls ill, she's forced to return home and face the ghosts of her past.
\nWhile caring for her father and running his bookstore, Sara is desperate to protect her curious, outgoing, genius daughter from the Wylers, the family of the man who assaulted her. Sara thinks she can succeed - her attacker is in prison, his identical twin brother, Jacob, left town years ago, and their mother are all unaware Alana exists. But she soon learns that Jacob has also just returned to Savannah to piece together the fragments of his once-great family. And when their two worlds collide - with the type of force Sara explores in her poetry and Jacob in his astrophysics - they are drawn together in unexpected ways.
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This lyrical runaway Swedish hit follows a reclusive, elderly couple who cross paths with a pair of twentysomething newcomers in a small mountain town, revealing an unexpected, shared history and the reclamation of a nearly extinct culture.
\nMeet Má eccentric, eighty-five years old, and facing a cancer diagnosis. She’s determined to keep the truth about her illness from her husband Biera, while also finding someone who can take care of him once she’s gone.
\nMeet a new transplant to the village, recently engaged to Mimmi, and mourning the death of his mother. One day, when Kaj unexpectedly finds a box of Sámi - the indigenous people of Scandinavia - handicrafts belonging to his mother, he unlocks something he never anticipated, something that will change his life for years to come.
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When private investigator Matthew Hill picks up the call from his wife, Sally, his world comes crashing down. Their eight-year-old daughter, Amelie, is missing. One second, she was there, the next, she was gone.
\nIt’s the very nightmare they’ve been dreading. Long ago, Matthew left the force after a woman blamed him for her son’s death, promising that he too would one day feel her pain. It’s a threat that’s hung over his family ever since, and now it’s Amelie’s picture on the news.
\nMatthew knows how these things go - the longer their daughter is missing, the less hope there is of finding her alive.
\nAs the clock ticks and a canal is searched, he and Sally must reckon with their greatest fear . . .
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On a train with her husband, miles from home and their four-year-old son, Ben, Sophie receives a chilling phone call. Two boys are in hospital after a tragic accident. One of them is Ben.
She thought she could trust Emma, her new friend, to look after her little boy. After all, Emma’s a kindred spirit - someone Sophie was sure she could bare her soul to, despite the village rumours. But Sophie can’t shake the feeling that she’s made an unforgivable mistake and now her whole family is in danger.
Because how well does she know Emma, really? Should she have trusted her at all?
Time is running out. Powerless to help her child, still hours from home, Sophie is about to discover the truth. And her life will never be the same.
It’s their daughter’s graduation and Rachel and Ed Hartley are expecting it to be one of their family’s happiest days. But when she stumbles and falls on stage during the ceremony, a beautiful moment turns to chaos: Gemma has been shot, and just like that, she’s fighting for her life.
\nPI Matthew Hill is one of the first on the scene. A cryptic message Gemma received earlier in the day suggests someone close to her was about to be exposed. But who? As Matthew starts to investigate, he finds more and more layers obscuring the truth. He even begins to suspect the Hartleys are hiding something big - from him and from each other.
\nWhile Gemma lies in hospital in a coma, her would-be killer is still out there. Can Matthew unravel the family’s secrets before the attacker strikes again?
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When Ella Longfield overhears two attractive young men flirting with teenage girls on a train, she thinks nothing of it - until she realises they are fresh out of prison and her maternal instinct is put on high alert. But just as she’s decided to call for help, something stops her. The next day, she wakes up to the news that one of the girls - beautiful, green-eyed Anna Ballard - has disappeared.
A year later, Anna is still missing. Ella is wracked with guilt over what she failed to do, and she’s not the only one who can’t forget. Someone is sending her threatening letters - letters that make her fear for her life.
Then an anniversary appeal reveals that Anna’s friends and family might have something to hide. Anna’s best friend, Sarah, hasn’t been telling the whole truth about what really happened that night - and her parents have been keeping secrets of their own.
Someone knows where Anna is - and they’re not telling. But they are watching Ella.
It seems like an ordinary Wednesday, until the phone rings. A mysterious caller with a chilling threat. Journalist Alice Henderson hangs up, ready to dismiss it as a hoax against the newspaper. But the next Wednesday, the stalker makes another move - and it becomes clear that this is all about Alice.
\nSomeone wants her to suffer, but for what? Her articles have made her a popular local champion - could it be her past rather than her work that’s put her life in danger? Alice is determined not to give in to fear, but with the police investigation at a dead end, her boyfriend insists on hiring private investigator Matthew Hill.
\nWith every passing Wednesday the warnings escalate, until it’s not only Alice but also her family in the stalker’s sights. As her tormentor closes in, can Alice uncover what she’s being punished for before the terrifying threats become an unthinkable reality?
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It was their darkest secret. Three schoolgirls made a promise - to take the horrible truth of what they did to the grave.
\nThirty years later, Beth and Sally have tried to put the trauma behind them. Though Carol has distanced herself from her former friends, the three are adamant that the truth must never come to light, even if the memory still haunts them.
\nBut when some shocking news threatens to unearth their dark secret, Beth enlists the help of private investigator Matthew Hill to help her and Sally reconnect with estranged Carol - before the terrible act they committed as teenagers is revealed.
\nBeth wishes she could take back the vow they made.
\nBut somebody is watching and will stop at nothing to ensure the secret stays buried. Now, with her beloved family in peril, can Beth still keep the promise?
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After a betrayal that sent their marriage into freefall, Hannah and Sam are desperate for a fresh start with their eight-year-old daughter Lily - and where better than picture-perfect Owl Cottage in beautiful Cornwall. But something about the holiday home stirs dark memories for Hannah . . .
\nWhen she finds dead creatures on the doorstep and hears mysterious knocks at the door, Hannah can’t help wondering whether someone is messing with her - or whether the past she’s been running from has finally claimed her sanity.
\nAs the disturbing events at Owl Cottage seep out into the local community and the police become involved, Hannah turns to Sam for help, but when he dismisses her worries, she wonders if she was wrong to ever trust him. Are the memories making her paranoid, or is this something more sinister than she dares imagine?
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The history is thus: The once-Druid Brona, seduced by his pursuit of dark magic, was forever transformed into the Warlock Lord - whose evil would be the downfall of the Four Lands and the death of the Races.
\nAgainst him, the Elven King Jerle Shannara wielded the fabled sword that bore his surname and triumphed. Or so it was believed. But though the Dark Lord was driven out . . . he was not destroyed. The Druid Allanon knows only too well the prophecy passed down to him by his late master: that eventually the Warlock Lord will return.
\nNow, after hundreds of years, that day seems imminent. And the time is at hand for the Sword of Shannara to once more be brought forth from its sanctuary to serve its ancient purpose. All that remains is for a blood descendent of the Elven house of Shannara to carry the blade into battle.
\nWith ever more portents of doom on the horizon, Allanon must seek out the last remaining Shannara heir, who alone will bear the burden of defending the Four Lands’ destiny. But with agents of darkness closing in from behind, unexpected enemies lying in wait ahead, and treachery encroaching on every side, there can be no certainty of success. Nor any assurance that this desperate quest will not be the Druid’s last.
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As a Knight of the Word, John Ross has struggled against the tireless dark forces of the Void for twenty-five years. Ross is driven by dreams that show the world reduced to blood and ashes by the Void and its minions. But for all his power, John Ross is only one man, while the demons he battles are legion.
\nThen Ross learns of the birth of a rare and dangerous creature formed from the very essence of wild magics. If he can discover its secret, the creature will be an invaluable weapon against the Void. But the Void also knows its value, and will not rest until the creature has been corrupted - or destroyed.
\nDesperate, Ross turns to Nest Freemark, a young woman with magical abilities of her own. And there they prepare to face an evil more ancient and powerful than anything they have ever encountered.
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As the crew aboard the airship Jerle Shannara is attacked by evil forces, the Druid’s protégé Bek Rowe and his companions are pursued by the mysterious Ilse Witch.
\nMeanwhile, Boh is alone, caught in a dark maze beneath the ruined city of Castledown, stalked by a hungry, unseen enemy. For there is something alive in Castledown.
\nSomething not human.
\nSomething old beyond reckoning that covets the magic of Druids, elves, even the Ilse Witch.
\nSomething that hunts men for its own designs: Antrax.
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Logan Tom is doomed to remember the past and determined to rescue the future. Far behind him lies a boyhood cut violently short by his family’s slaughter, when the forces of madness and hate swept our world after decadent excesses led to civilisation’s downfall. Somewhere ahead of him rests the only chance to beat back the minions of evil that are systematically killing and enslaving the last remnants of humanity. Navigating the scarred and poisoned landscape that once was America and guided by a powerful talisman, Logan has sworn an oath to seek out a remarkable being born of magic, possessed of untold abilities, and destined to lead the final fight against darkness.
\nAcross the country, Angel Perez, herself a survivor of the malevolent, death-dealing forces combing the land, has also been chosen for an uncanny mission in the name of her ruined world’s salvation. From the devastated streets of Los Angeles, she will journey to find a place - and a people - shrouded in mystery, celebrated in legend, and vital to the cause of humankind . . . even as a relentless foe follows close behind, bent on her extermination. While in the nearly forsaken city of Seattle, a makeshift family of refugees has carved out a tenuous existence among the street gangs, mutants, and marauders fighting to stay alive against mounting odds - and something unspeakable that has come from the shadows in search of prey.
\nIn time, all their paths will cross. Their common purpose will draw them together. Their courage and convictions will be tested and their fates will be decided, as their singular crusade begins: to take back, or lose forever, the only world they have.
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Five hundred years have passed since the devastating demon-led war that almost exterminated humankind. Those who escaped the carnage were led to sanctuary by the boy saviour known as Hawk: the gypsy morph. But now, the unimaginable has come to pass: the cocoon of protective magic surrounding the valley has vanished.
\nWhen Sider Ament, last surviving Knight of the Word, detects unknown predators stalking the valley, and Trackers from the human village of Glensk Wood, find two of their own gruesomely killed, there can be no doubt: the once safe haven of generations has been laid bare.
\nTogether, the young Trackers, the aging Knight, and a daring Elf princess race to spread word of the encroaching danger. But suspicion and hostility among their countrymen threaten to doom their efforts from within, while beyond the breached borders, a ruthless Troll army masses for invasion. Standing firm between the two, the last wielder of the black staff and its awesome magic must find a successor to carry on the fight against the cresting new wave of evil.
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The Four Lands has been at peace for generations, but now a mysterious army of invaders is cutting a bloody swath across a remote region of the land. No one knows who they are, where they come from, or what they are after - and most seem content to ignore these disturbing events.
\nThe only people who sense a greater, growing threat and wish to uncover the truth are society's outcasts: an exiled High Druid, a conflicted warrior, a teenage girl struggling to master a prodigious magic . . . and a scrappy young orphan, improbably named Shea Ohmsford.
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Shea Ohmsford has had quite enough of quests. A year after surviving a harrowing odyssey, he is still plagued by troubling memories and dreams. A mysterious trafficker in spells and potions provides a restorative nostrum for the stricken Shea . . . along with a warning: Shea will break his vow to never again leave Shady Vale. And then the potion-maker’s prophecy comes to pass.
\nA thief, adventurer, and notoriously charismatic rogue, Panamon Creel unexpectedly appears in the Vale with a request for his long-time friend, Shea - journey into the untamed Northland, infiltrate the stronghold of a sinister dealer in stolen goods, and capture a precious artifact: the sacred Black Irix. Creel wishes to return this treasure to its rightful owners. Shea cannot refuse such a just cause. But what lies behind the black castle walls they must breach? And will this quest truly be their last?
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A year has passed since Ben Holiday bought the Magic Kingdom and claimed his throne - despite the machinations of the wizard Meeks. Three loyal friends have come to his aid: the incompetent Court Wizard, Questor Thews; the court scribe, Abernathy, a talking dog; and the lovely Willow, who is sometimes a tree.
\nWhen Ben dreams that a former partner, Miles Bennett, is in grave trouble, he travels back to Earth - only to find Miles in the best of spirits. But his return to Landover is not so uneventful: not only has Willow disappeared and Questor's books of magic been destroyed, but no one seems to recognise Ben himself. Looks like the magic kingdom is in real trouble . . .
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Long ago, many dangerous creatures were locked behind a magical barrier, bringing peace and prosperity to the land. But now those barriers are eroding, and generations of embittered prisoners are about to escape.
\nWar seems inevitable . . . unless a few brave souls can stem the tide. While some venture into the forbidden lands, others must undertake a perilous quest - a quest whose success will mean the death of a young girl who has barely even begun to live, but whose failure will have unimaginable consequences.
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At nineteen, Auris Afton Grieg has led an . . . unusual life. Since the age of fifteen, she has been trapped in a sinister prison. Why? She does not know. She has no memories of her past beyond the vaguest of impressions. All she knows is that she is about to age out of the children’s prison, and rumors say that the adult version is far, far worse.
\nSo she and some friends stage a desperate escape into the surrounding wastelands. And it is here that Auris’s journey of discovery begins, for she is rescued by a handsome yet alien stranger. Harrow claims to be Fae - a member of a magical race that Auris had thought to be no more than legend. Odder still, he seems to think that she is one as well, although the two look nothing alike. But strangest of all, when he brings her to his wondrous homeland, she begins to suspect that he is right. Yet how could a woman who looks entirely human be a magical being herself?
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After taking up his enchanted sword against the dark sorcerer Arcannen, Paxon Leah has become the sworn protector of the Druid order. Now a critical hour is at hand, as a beloved High Druid nears the end of her reign and prepares to pass from the mortal world to the one beyond. There is little time for Paxon to mourn his friend and benefactor before duty summons him. For in a distant corner of the Four Lands, the magic of the wishsong has been detected. Paxon must accompany a Druid emissary to find its source - and ensure the formidable power is not wielded by the wrong hands.
But danger is already afoot in the village of Portlow. Gentle traveling minstrel Reyn Frosch possesses the uncanny gift, and curse, of the wishsong. And now his coveted abilities have captured the malevolent interest of none other than Arcannen - whose quest for power is exceeded only by his thirst for vengeance. The lone survivor of a brutal assault on a notorious pirate city, the sorcerer is determined to retaliate against the Federation’s elite military guard - and use the devastating power of the wishsong as his ultimate weapon.
It’s been two years since Auris escaped from the sinister Goblin prison and learned of her heritage as one of the Fae. She is now happily partnered with her Fae lover Harrow and deeply bonded with her new family. All seems to be going perfectly - until, somehow, the Goblin attacks begin again. Someone, it seems, has not forgotten that Auris exists and seems determined to retrieve her . . . but who? And why?
\nAs Auris begins to dig deeper in the mystery, old friends and new enemies appear, and Auris begins to realise that her still-shrouded past must contain the answers she needs. But even she does not suspect how far down the rabbit hole she is about to go until Harrow is taken and an impossible ransom demand is issued. Then, with two new companions at her side, Auris must attempt to unlock the remaining secrets of her past. For if she cannot, she will never see Harrow alive again.
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To the scions of Shannara have fallen three tasks: Par Ohmsford has recovered the fabled Sword of Shannara. This he has accomplished, but the Federation's Chief Seeker has planted an awful thought in Par's mind - that he himself is Shadowen, the very evil he seeks to destroy. Wren is in the Westland, seeking out the elves. And in the Northland . . .
\nWalker Boh has been commanded by the shade of Allanon to find the lost city of Paranor and recreate the Order of Druids, disbanded for three hundred years. To achieve this he must find the Black Elfstone, but the gem is in the hands of an ancient being of timeless evil - the Stone King. Beset on all sides by enemies, and from within by his own self-doubt, Walker Boh sets out on his part of the perilous quest.
\nA quest that will end in success - or the complete destruction of all he holds dear.
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Wren Ohmsford, Scion of Shannara, came from the Westlands, where she lived the life of a Rover. Now she, like her kinsmen, Par and Walker Boh, has been called upon to help the shade of Allanon fight the totalitarian power of the Federation. She must find the Elves, who disappeared from their strongholds more than one hundred years ago . . .
\nBut even knowledge of the Elves is hard to find - only a blind, wise woman of the West knows something of their location. On her advice, Wren and her Rover companion, Garth, journey to the coast of the Blue Divide, where they build a fire and let it burn for three days. With the unexpected help that their blaze attracts, they reach the isle of Morrowindle and near their goal - to find the last of the Elves.
\nBut they also find dangers such as they could not have imagined, and Wren will make a discovery that will change her life for ever.
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Ancient Evil threatens the Elves: The ancient tree created by long-lost Elven magic, is dying. When Wil Ohmsford is summoned to guard the Amberle on a perilous quest to gather a new seed for a new tree, he is faced with the Reaper, the most fearsome of all Demons. And Wil is without power to control them . . .
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Across the ruined landscape that is America - hopelessly poisoned, plague-ridden, burned, and besieged by demon armies bent on exterminating all mortal life - two pilgrims have been summoned to serve the embattled cause of good.
\nLogan Tom has journeyed to desolate Seattle to protect a ragged band of street urchins and the being known as “the gypsy morph,” who is both mortal and magical, and destined to save mankind unless he is destroyed.
\nLikewise, Angel Perez has her own quest, one that will take her from the wreckage of Los Angeles to a distant, secret place untouched by the horrors of the nationwide blight - a place where the race of Elves has dwelled since before man existed. But close behind these lone Knights of the Word swarm the ravening forces of the Void.
\nAs the menacing thunder of war drums heralds the arrival of the demons and their brutal minions in Seattle, the young survivors who call themselves the Ghosts are forced to brave the dangerous world of gangs, mutants, and worse to escape the invasion. And Logan Tom must infiltrate a refugee compound to rescue Hawk, the leader of the street urchins, who has yet to learn the truth about who and what he is.
\nMeanwhile, Angel Perez has joined an equally urgent mission: to find the Ellcrys, a fabled talisman crucial to protecting the Elven realm against an influx of unspeakable evil from the dread dimension known as the Forbidding.
\nBut Angel and her Elf allies must beware - for a demon spy, with a monstrous creature at its command, walks among them.As the legions of darkness draw the noose tighter, and the time of confrontation draws near, those chosen to defend the soul of the world must draw their battle lines and prepare to fight with, and for, their lives. If they fail, humanity falls.
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Horrified by the misuse of magic they had witnessed during the First War of the Races, the Druids at Paranor devoted themselves to the study of the old sciences, from the period before the collapse of civilisation a thousand years before. Only the Bremen and a few trusted associates still studied the arcane arts. And for his persistence, Bremen found himself outcast, avoided by all but the few free-thinkers among the Druids.
\nBut his removal from Paranor was not altogether a terrible thing, for Bremen learned that dark forces were on the move from the Northlands. That seemingly invincible armies of trolls were fast conquering all that lay to their south. That the scouts for the army - and its principal assassins - were Skull Bearers, disfigured and transformed Druids who had fallen prey to the seductions of the magic arts. And that at the heart of the evil tide was an archmage and former Druid named Brona!
\nUsing the special skills he had acquired through his own study of Magic, Bremen was able to penetrate the huge camp of the Troll army and learn many of its secrets. And he immediately understood that if the peoples of the Four Lands were to escape eternal subjugation they would need to unite. But, even united, they would need a weapon, something so powerful that the evil magic of Brona, the Warlock Lord, would fail before its might . . .
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One of the most iconic structures in the Four Lands is Paranor, the fortress home of the Druid Order. Legend holds that it was erected by an Elven leader known as Galaphile Joss. But who was this Galaphile, and how and why did he choose to establish this center of magic and learning?
\nWithin these pages we meet the real Galaphile, following him from a friendless teenage orphan stranded in the Human world to a powerful adult and master mage, studying under the infamous recluse, Cogline. We learn of the forces that shaped him - those he loved, and those he lost; those who aided him, and those who stood against him.
\nThroughout it all, Galaphile’s goal is a noble one: to bring order to a chaotic world, and to make life better for those trying to survive it. To this end, he commences building the citadel which will one day be known as Paranor with the aid of the King of the Silver River. But there is one other who seeks dominion over the Four Lands - and for far less virtuous ends.
\nFor this foe has been corrupted by an ancient evil - one that will not only reach out and touch Galaphile’s nearest and dearest, but also echo down through the centuries, sowing the seeds for some of the darkest times the Four Lands will ever face.
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Eighty years into the future, the United States is a no-man’s-land: its landscape blighted by chemical warfare, pollution, and plague; its government collapsed; its citizens adrift, desperate, fighting to stay alive.
\nIn fortified compounds, survivors hold the line against wandering predators, rogue militias, and hideous mutations spawned from the toxic environment, while against them all stands an enemy neither mortal nor merciful: demons and their minions bent on slaughtering and subjugating the last of humankind.
\nBut from around the country, allies of good unite to challenge the rampaging evil. Logan Tom, wielding the magic staff of a Knight of the Word, has a promise to keep - protecting the world’s only hope of salvation - and a score to settle with the demon that massacred his family. Angel Perez, Logan’s fellow Knight, has risked her life to aid the elvish race, whose peaceful, hidden realm is marked for extermination by the forces of the Void.
\nKirisin Belloruus, a young elf entrusted with an ancient magic, must deliver his entire civilisation from a monstrous army. And Hawk, the rootless boy who is nothing less than destiny’s instrument, must lead the last of humanity to a latter-day promised land before the final darkness falls.
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Legend has it that Paxon Leah is descended from the royals and warriors who once ruled the Highlands and waged war with magical weapons. But those kings, queens, and heroes are long gone, and there is nothing enchanted about the antique sword that hangs above Paxon’s fireplace. Running his family’s modest shipping business, Paxon leads a quiet life - until extraordinary circumstances overturn his simple world . . . and rewrite his destiny.
When his brash young sister is abducted by a menacing stranger, Paxon races to her rescue with the only weapon he can find. And in a harrowing duel, he is stunned to discover powerful magic unleashed within him - and within his ancestors’ ancient blade. But his formidable new ability is dangerous in untrained hands, and Paxon must master it quickly because his nearly fatal clash with the dark sorcerer Arcannen won’t be his last. Leaving behind home and hearth, he journeys to the keep of the fabled Druid order to learn the secrets of magic and earn the right to become their sworn protector.
But treachery is afoot deep in the Druids’ ranks. And the blackest of sorcery is twisting a helpless innocent into a murderous agent of evil. To halt an insidious plot that threatens not only the Druid order but all the Four Lands, Paxon Leah must summon the profound magic in his blood and the legendary mettle of his elders in the battle fate has chosen him to fight.
It has been 130 years since the events of the Heritage of Shannara series, and the Free-born and the Federation are still at war. The story follows a quest organized by Walker Boh, the last surviving Druid. Thirty years ago, the Elven prince Kael Elessedil led an expedition in search of a legendary magic which was said to be the most ancient and powerful in the world.
\nThirty years later, Kael is found floating in the sea of the Blue Divide; a map is found with him, covered with mysterious symbols. Walker is the only man who can read them.
\nBut there is another: the Ilse Witch, a beautiful but twisted young woman who is as practiced in magic as Walker himself. She will stop at nothing to possess the map and the magic it leads to. To stop her, Walker must find the magic first.
\nThus begins the voyage of the sleek, swift airship, the Jerle Shannara. The company chosen by Walker must fly into the face of unknown terrors while the Ilse Witch and her dark allies pursue.
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Twenty years have passed since Grianne Ohmsford denounced her former life as the dreaded Ilse Witch. Fulfilling the destiny predicted for her, she has established the Third Druid Council and dedicated herself to its goals of peace, harmony among the races, and defense of the Four Lands. But despite her devotion to the greater good as Ard Rhys, the High Druid of Paranor, Grianne still has bitter enemies.
\nEven her few allies - chief among them her trusted servant Tagwen - know of the plots against her. But they could never anticipate the sudden, ominous disappearance of the Ard Rhys, in the dead of night and without a trace. Now Tagwen joins Grianne's brave young nephew, Pen Ohmsford, and the wise, powerful elf Ahren Elessedil on a desperate and dangerous mission of search and rescue - to deliver the High Druid of Shannara from an unspeakable fate.
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Five years have passed since the cataclysmic events of Running With the Demon. John Ross, Knight of the Word, sworn to fight the eternal battle against mankind's demons, has moved on. Ross's years spent in the fight against the Void have taken their toll. He has lost his spirit, his belief and now it seems he has lost his magic. Working in a hostel for homeless children, his life is now spent fighting a battle in which he feels he might actually make a difference.
\nBut Nest Freemark, whose involvement in those events five years ago shattered her childhood, is about to be drawn once more into the mythic world of the Void and the Word. For she has learnt that John Ross is in great danger from a demon like no other. If she can not warn him in time - and persuade him to take up his staff of magic once more - the battle may be lost forever . . .
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As the Four Lands reels under a brutal invasion from across the sea, spearheaded by a nation determined to make this land their own, our heroes must decide what they will risk to save the integrity of their home. For as one group remains to defend their homeland, another undertakes a perilous journey across the sea to the homeland of the invaders, carrying with them a new piece of technology that could change the face of the world forever.
For both groups, the stakes could not be higher. For those who remain, one of their key allies has been banished to the Forbidding: a demon-filled prison from which there is no escape. And the one who sent him there now stalks the land with a fearsome demon at her side, determined to seize what power she can. While across the sea, a small band of heroes has been shipwrecked far from the land they seek.
Can a young girl free her mentor in time to stop an invasion? And can a strange new science reach a foreign shore in time to alter the fate of two nations . . . providing the device even works?
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Landover was a genuine magic kingdom, complete with fairy folk and wizardry, just as the advertisement had promised. But after he purchased it for a million dollars, Ben Holiday discovered that there were a few details the ad had failed to mention. Such as the fact that the kingdom was falling into ruin.
\nThe barons refused to recognise a king and taxes hadn't been collected for years. The dragon, Strabo, was laying waste to the countryside, while the evil witch, Nightshade, was plotting to destroy no less than everything. And if that weren't enough for a prospective king to deal with, Ben soon learned that the Iron Mark, terrible lord of the demons, challenged all pretenders to the throne of Landover to a duel to the death - a duel no mere mortal could hope to win.
\nBut Ben Holiday had one human trait that even magic couldn't overcome. Ben Holiday was stubborn.
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For five hundred years, the survivors of the Great Wars lived peacefully in a valley sanctuary shielded by powerful magic from the blighted and dangerous outside world. But the enchanted barriers have crumbled, the borders have been breached by predators, and the threat of annihilation looms large once more. Sider Ament, bearer of the last black staff and its profound power, devoted his life to protecting the valley and its inhabitants - and, in his final moments, gave stewardship of the black staff to the young tracker Panterra Qu.
\nNow the newly anointed Knight of the Word must take up the battle against evil wherever it threatens: from without, where an army of bloodthirsty trolls is massing for invasion; and from within, where the Elf king of Arborlon has been murdered, his daughter, Princess Phryne Amarantyne, stands accused, and a heinous conspiracy is poised to subjugate the kingdom.
\nBut even these will pale beside the most harrowing menace Panterra is destined to confront - a nameless, merciless figure who wanders the devastated land on a relentless mission: to claim the last black staff . . . and the life of he who wields it.
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The Morgawr is a centuries-old sorcerer of unimaginable might, who feeds upon the souls of his enemies. With a fleet of airships and a crew of walking dead men at his command, he is in relentless pursuit of the Jerle Shannara. His goal is twofold: to find and control the fabled 'magic' of Parkasia, and to destroy the Ilse Witch (his disciple) to keep her from using the magic to destroy him.
\nBut she has already paid a heavy price for her actions. When Walker Boh persuades the witch to use the Sword of Shannara, she is exposed to its awesome power and forced to confront the truth of her horrifying deeds as the Ilse Witch, causing her to flee deep into her own mind. She has only one protector: her brother Bek, who is determined to redeem her.
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Princess Mistaya Holiday hasn t been fitting in too well at Carrington Women s Preparatory. People don t seem to appreciate her using her magic to settle matters in the human world. So when she summons a dragon to teach a lesson to the snotty school bully, she finds herself suspended.
\nBut Mistaya couldn t care less - she wants nothing more than to continue her studies under Questor the court magician and Abernathy the court scribe. However, her father Ben Holiday, the King of Landover, has rather different plans in mind for her. He thinks he ll teach her about perseverance and compromise by sending her to renovate Libiris, the long-abandoned royal library. How horribly dull.
\nBut before long, Mistaya will long for the boredom of cataloguing an unfeasible number of derelict books - for deep within the library there lies a secret so dangerous that it threatens the future of Landover itself . . .
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Twenty years ago, Terry Brooks turned fantasy fiction on its head with The Sword of Shannara, the first fantasy novel to make the mainstream bestseller lists, and the first in an unbroken string of thirteen bestselling books. Now, in Running with the Demon, Brooks does nothing less than revitalise fantasy fiction again, inventing the complex and powerful new mythos of the Word and the Void, good versus evil still, but played out in the theater-in-the-round of the \"real world\" of our present.
\nOn the hottest Fourth of July weekend in decades, two men have come to Hopewell, Illinois, site of a lengthy, bitter steel strike. One is a demon, dark servant of the Void, who will use the anger and frustration of the community to attain a terrible secret goal.
\nThe other is John Ross, a Knight of the Word, a man who, while he sleeps, lives in the hell the world will become if he fails to change its course on waking. Ross has been given the ability to see the future. But does he have the power to change it?At stake is the soul of a fourteen-year-old girl mysteriously linked to both men. And the lives of the people of Hopewell. And the future of the country.
\nThis Fourth of July, while friends and families picnic in Sinnissippi Park and fireworks explode in celebration of freedom and independence, the fate of Humanity will be decided . . .
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Three hundred years have passed in the Four Lands. The Federation now controls all of the Southland. In the West, the Elves have vanished. In the East, the dwarves are enslaved. Par Ohmsford has retained some of the magical powers of his ancestors, although he does not fully understand the way they work. He is troubled by dreams of Allanon, the Druid whose fate has always seemed linked with that of the Ohmsfords.
\nBut when he is told of the Shadowen, the greatest danger ever to threaten the Four Lands, he embarks upon a perilous quest - to meet the shade of Allanon and to carry his message to the other Scions of Shannara.
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Auris’s adoptive sister Char has always been the baby of the family - a position that grates on Char, especially when everyone insists on telling her exactly what to do and how to do it. But Char is certain that her headstrong, impulsive behavior, the quality her family sees as her greatest weakness, is actually her greatest the willingness to instantly brave danger and leap to the rescue when anyone she loves is threatened.
\nChar knows she will never grow into the woman she was meant to be under her family’s loving but repressive eye, so a month before she turns fifteen, she runs away and joins a Human pirate crew in the warm southerly regions of her world. Then, three years into her pirate career, her captain - the man she is convinced she loves - is captured by the leaders of the slave trade he has been fighting. When Char leaps in to rescue him, she finds herself thrust into an adventure that will uncover secrets she never suspected about herself, one that will maybe, finally, teach her to look before she leaps.
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The Four Lands are under siege. Wielding a magical ability virtually impossible to combat, mysterious invaders defeat the most fearsome Troll armies, then focus their savagery on the Druid order - and all hope seems lost.
Eventually the invaders reveal a more human face, but understanding their motives in no way mitigates the brutality of their actions. Dar Leah, once the High Druid’s Blade, has crossed paths - and swords - with their ruthless leader before. So he knows that if any hope exists, it rests in the hands of the Druid Drisker Arc, now trapped inside vanished Paranor.
As Drisker races to find the ancient knowledge that could free him, Dar goes in search of Tarsha Kaynin, the young woman blessed with the powerful gift of the wishsong, whose magic could draw Drisker back into the world of the living. But little do they know that what appeared to be a formidable invading force may only be the forerunner of a much larger army - one intent on nothing less than total conquest.
The mysterious, magic-wielding Druid order has existed for long ages, battling any evil that threatens the Four Lands and struggling to be understood and accepted by outsiders. But their hopes of building goodwill are dashed when a demon's murderous rampage at a peace summit leaves their political opponents dead casting new suspicions upon the Druids and forcing them to flee from enemies both mortal and monstrous.
\nPaxon Leah, the order's appointed protector, knows that blame lies with Arcannen Rai, the vile sorcerer he has battled and defeated before. But there's no time to hunt his nemesis, if he is to lead the wrongfully accused Druids to their sanctuary. It is a quest fraught with danger, as a furious government agent and his army snap at their heels, and lethal predators stalk them in the depths of the untamed wilderness.
\nBut Arcannen is playing a deeper game than Paxon realises. Paxon's sister possesses a powerful magic that the sorcerer longs to control but Arcannen has not reckoned with the determination of his own estranged daughter, Leofur, who is also Paxon's devoted lifemate. Leofur sets out on a perilous quest to thwart her father's desires while the vengeful Arcannen conjures his blackest magical skills, determined to destroy them all . . . and claim the most powerful of magics for his own.
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The Skaar have arrived in the Four Lands, determined to stop at nothing less than all-out conquest. They badly need a new home, but peaceful coexistence is not a concept they have ever understood. An advance force under the command of the lovely princess Ajin has already established a foothold, but now the full Skaar army is on the march - and woe betide any who stands in its way.
But perhaps the Skaar victory is not quite as much of a foregone conclusion as they all assume. The Druid Drisker Arc has freed both himself and Paranor from their involuntary exile. Drisker's student, Tarsha Kaynin, has been reunited with Dar, chief defender of what is left of the Druid order, and is learning to control her powerful Wishsong magic.
If they can only survive Tarsha's brother and the Druid who betrayed Drisker Arc, they might stand a chance of defeating the Skaar. But that is a very big if...as Tarsha's brother now carries the Stiehl--one of the most powerful weapons in all the Four Lands, and is determined to take his revenge on everyone he feels has wronged him.
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For reasons known only to himself, the King of the Silver River has charged young Penderrin Ohmsford, barely more than a boy, with the daunting task of rescuing his aunt, Grianne, Ard Rhys of the Druid order, from her forced exile in the terrifying dimension of all things damned: the Forbidding. With the noble dwarf Tagwen and the prodigal elven princess Khyber Elessedil by his side - and with the outcome of the bloody war between the Federation and the Free-born at stake - Pen has accepted his mission without question. But not without risk . . . or sacrifice.
\nBecause Shadea a’Ru, the ruthless Druid responsible for imprisoning the true Ard Rhys and usurping leadership at Paranor, has sent her agents and assassins in relentless pursuit of Pen and his comrades. And in securing the talisman he needs to breach the Forbidding, Pen has paid a devastating price. Now if the Free-born forces - already decimated by the Federation’s death-dealing new weapon - should fall, Shadea’s domination of the Four Lands will be assured. Nothing short of Pen’s success can turn the tide.
\nBut Pen’s challenge grows greater when he learns that his parents, Bek Ohmsford and Rue Meridian, have fallen into Shadea’ s hands. He must try to help them - but once within the walls of Druid’s Keep, where Shadea’s minions and dark magic lurk at every turn, Pen’s survival is far from assured. Yet it will all pale in comparison to the horrors that wait inside the Forbidding - horrors poised to break free upon the Four Lands when the time is right . . .
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It begins with a dire call - right before his father disappears and his skyscraper home's doors explode inward.
\n\"Go into the Red Zone. Go to Street Freaks.\" his father directs Ashton Collins before the vid feed goes suddenly silent.
\nThe Red Zone is the dangerous heart of the mega-city of Los Angeles; it is a world Ash is forbidden from and one he knows little about. But if he can find Street Freaks, the strangest of aid awaits - human and barely human alike.
\nAs Ash is hunted, he must unravel the mystery left behind by his father and discover his role in this new world.
\nLong ago, the wars of the ancient Evil had ruined the world and forced mankind to compete with many other races - gnomes, trolls, dwarfs, and elves. But in peaceful Shady Vale, half-elfin Shea Ohmsford knew little of such troubles. Then came the giant, forbidding Allanon, possessed of strange Druidic powers, to reveal that the supposedly dead Warlock Lord was plotting to destroy the world.
\nThe sole weapon against this Power of Darkness was the Sword of Shannara, which could be used only by a true heir of Shannara. On Shea, last of the bloodline, rested the hope of all the races.Soon a Skull Bearer, dread minion of Evil, flew into the Vale, seeking to destroy Shea. To save the Vale, Shea fled, drawing the Skull Bearer after him . . .
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The descendants of the Elven house of Shannara have all completed their quests: Paranor, the Druid's Keep, has been restored; the Elves have been returned to the Four Lands; and Par Ohmsford has found what he believes to be the legendary Sword of Shannara. But their work is not yet done. The Shadowen still swarm over the Four Lands, poisoning all with their dark magic, and their leader is determined to prevent the scions of Shannara from sharing the knowledge that will end the sickness.
\nTo this end he sets his traps. For Walker, he will dispatch the Four Horsemen; for Wren, he sends an untrue friend; and for Par, he devises the most terrible fate of all...The charges given by the shade of the Druid Allanon seem doomed to failure - unless the Shannara children can escape the traps being laid for them, and Par can unlock the secret of the Sword of Shannara.
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Loyal to none but herself andlethal even to those closest to her, Shadea a'Ru now holds sway as High Druid of Paranor - her ascension to power all but unchallenged in the wake of Grianne Ohmsford's sudden, mysteriousvanishing. Only Shadea and her catspaw - the treacherous Prime Minister Sen Dunsidan - know the secret fate of the true Ard Rhys . . . for it was they who engineered it, by means of dark magic. And nowGrianne languishes in the fearsome and inescapable netherworld called the Forbidding.
\nTheir bloodless coup a success, the corrupt pair, and their confederates within the Druid Council, seeks to maketheir dominion over the Four Lands absolute - with the aid of a devastating new weapon. But it could all be undone if Grianne's young nephew, Penderrin, succeeds in his frantic quest to rescue her. Shadea's airship-borne minions and the relentless assassin under her command continue their fierce pursuit of Pen and his comrades.
\nEluding death is only half the battle for Pen. To breach theForbidding and bring Grianne back to the natural world means finding the fabled Tanequil . . . and the talisman it alone can provide. That means journeying into the Inkrim-a dreaded region thick with shadows andhaunted by harrowing legends. It also means striking a bargain more dire than Pen could ever imagine. But there can be no turning back. For in her unearthly prison, the Ard Rhys faces a demonic plight too hideous tocountenance . . .
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Horris Kew, conjuror and confidence-trickster, has returned to the Magic Kingdom of Landover, and a chorus of disapproval immediately assaults Ben Holiday's ears. Both Questor Thews, the Court Wizard, and Abernathy, the Court Scribe (currently, magically transformed into a dog) urge Ben to lock him up or exile him.
\nFair as ever, Ben decides to consider the problem rather than act immediately. Alas, this leads to disaster, for Horris's return is not what it seems, and Ben soon finds himself in deadly peril. Only his lady, Willow, holds the means to save him. But Willow has disappeared on a mysterious mission of her own . . .
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When the world was young, and its name was Faerie, the power of magic ruled - and the Elfstones warded the race of Elves and their lands, keeping evil at bay. But when an Elven girl fell hopelessly in love with a Darkling boy of the Void, he carried away more than her heart. Thousands of years later, tumultuous times are upon the world now known as the Four Lands. Users of magic are in conflict with proponents of science. Elves have distanced their society from the other races. The dwindling Druid order and its teachings are threatened with extinction.
\nA sinister politician has used treachery and murder to rise as prime minister of the mighty Federation. Meanwhile, poring through a long-forgotten diary, the young Druid Aphenglow Elessedil has stumbled upon the secret account of an Elven girl's heartbreak and the shocking truth about the vanished Elfstones. But never has a little knowledge been so very dangerous - as Aphenglow quickly learns when she's set upon by assassins. Yet there can be no turning back from the road to which fate has steered her. For whoever captures the Elfstones and their untold powers will surely hold the advantage in the devastating clash to come.
\nBut Aphenglow and her allies - Druids, Elves, and humans alike - remember the monstrous history of the Demon War, and they know that the Four Lands will never survive another reign of darkness. But whether they themselves can survive the attempt to stem that tide is another question entirely.
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His extraordinary - and deadly - skills have earned Garet Jax renown and infamy as the man called the Weapons Master. Rootless, solitary, and endlessly sought after, he roams the Four Lands, loyal to none but himself . . . and whomever can afford his services as warrior, assassin, and avenger for hire.
\nBut Lyriana is unlike any who have come to him before: as beautiful as she is bold, as enigmatic as the distant city she is desperate to save, and possessed of an intangible, irresistible allure that entices even the hardened Garet Jax more than any amount of gold or silver ever could. But the challenge she comes bearing may give even the celebrated Weapons Master pause.
\nThe remote city of Tajarin, Lyriana’s home, is being laid to waste by an immensely powerful and boundlessly evil warlock of the deadliest order. With the populace enslaved and no champion to stand against the invader, Tajarin will soon be wiped from the map - perhaps only the first city to fall.
\nWhatever hope exists rests in the deft hands, lethal blades, and unerring instincts of Garet Jax. With righteous fury in his blood, and feelings he has never before known in his heart, he will face the most dire of enemies, and dare the blackest of fates, for the mysterious woman at his side - whose deepest secrets have yet to be revealed.
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Horror stalks the Four Lands. The Ildatch, ancient source of evil, has stirred to life. It sends its foul Mord Wraiths to make war on all living things and bring about, at last, Mankind's destruction. Once again Allanon, Druid Protector of the Races, must seek the help of a descendant of the Elven King, Jerle Shannara.
\nBrin, daughter of Wil Ohmsford, has been born with the magic of the Wishsong, which alone can open a way to the Ildatch. Reluctantly, she joins Allanon on his perilous journey east. Meanwhile her younger brother, Jair, learns that Brin will fail and die unless he can reach her in time. As Brin walks blindly into the trap the Ildatch has set, Jair's only hope of reaching her in time is to travel through the very heart of evil . . .
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For centuries the Four Lands enjoyed freedom from its demon-haunted past, protected by magic-enhanced borders from the dark dimension known as the Forbidding and the profound evil imprisoned there. But now the unthinkable is happening: The ancient wards securing the barrier between order and mayhem have begun to erode - and generations of bloodthirsty, monstrous creatures, fueled by a rage thousands of years in the making, are poised to spill forth, seeking revenge for what was done to them.
Young Elf Arling Elessedil possesses the enchanted means to close the breach and once more seal the denizens of the Forbidding in their prison. But when she falls into the hands of the powerful Federation’s diabolical Prime Minister, her efforts may be doomed. Only her determined sister, Aphen, who bears the Elfstones and commands their magic, has any hope of saving Arling from the hideous fate her captor has in store.
Meanwhile, Railing Ohmsford - desperate to save his imprisoned brother - seeks to discover if his famed but ill-fated ancestor Grianne is still alive and willing to help him save the world . . . no matter the odds or the consequences.
With peace reigning in the Magic Kingdom at last, Ben Holiday is finally free to lie back and enjoy the finer things in life - like watching his daughter grow, which she does by leaps and bounds. Born a seedling and nourished by soil from Landover, Earth and the fairy mists, Mistaya is a unique child, fully as dazzling as her mother, the sylph, Willow - but fiery and impatient with those who can't keep up with her lightning-fast development. But Ben's idyll is not to last.
\nThe dark and pitiless Rydall, king of lands beyond the fairy mists, arrives at the gates of Sterling Silver. His armies are ready to invade if Ben will not accept his challenge: to face and defeat seven different champions of Rydall's choice. And accept he must, for Mistaya has been snatched from her guardians by foul magic and only Rydall holds the key to her fate . . .
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Ben Holiday, the High Lord of Landover, is back in his rightful place. The evil wizard Meeks has finally been dealt with, and all seems well with the world. But, even in a Magic Kingdom, peace never lasts long.
\nIt was all Questor Thews' fault, really - whether the inept Court Wizard would like to admit it or not. His bumbling attempt to return Abernathy from the body of a dog to his original human form, resulted in the Court Scribe being transported to Earth, to be replaced by a multi-coloured bottle. Furthermore, Abernathy was wearing the High Lord's medallion at the time, without which Ben's powers are drastically reduced.
\nBen and Willow set out to find Abernathy, which means following him to Earth. Which means leaving Questor in charge.
\nAnd that's when things start to go horribly wrong . . .
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Emma Oxley and Nellie Yarrow have been inseparable their whole lives. Ever since they reinvented themselves, changing their names and wiping clean their digital footprints, they have made a game of following wherever the next adventure leads and challenging themselves to thefts, street cons, and mind games.
\nAdhering to only two rules - they will only swindle men, and only ones who deserve it - Emma and Nellie are secure in their reputation as the most trustworthy swindlers on the European black market. Until suddenly, they must play to save their own lives.
\nBlackmailed into stealing a priceless bracelet from a high-security exhibit, Emma will reexamine everything she believed to be true. This heist takes her far beyond her comfort zone . . . and she and Nellie will need allies among the glitzy bejeweled gathering in London in order to survive. Will they be able to do the right thing before it’s too late?
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Penny and Tate have always clashed. Unfortunately, their mothers are lifelong best friends, so the girls’ bickering has carried them through playdates, tragedy, and more than one rom-com marathon with the Moms. When Penny’s mother decides to become a living donor to Tate’s mom, ending her wait for a liver transplant, things go from clashing to cataclysmic. Because in order to help their families recover physically, emotionally, and financially, the Moms combine their households the summer before senior year.
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So Penny and Tate make a pact: They’ll play nice. Be the drama-free daughters their mothers need through this scary and hopeful time. There’s only one little hitch in their plan: Penny and Tate keep almost kissing.
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It’s just this confusing thing that keeps happening. You know, from time to time. For basically their entire teenaged existence.
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They’ve never talked about it. They’ve always ignored it in the aftermath. But now they’re living across the hall from each other. And some things—like their kisses—can’t be almosts forever.
Rural PI Mel Tillman knows this well. She's seen her fair share of bloody cases and botched cover-ups. But killing with someone? That is a different kind of mess all together, and Mel's got real experience with it.
\nNo one's heard from Toby Dunne since Chloe Harper's sweet sixteen party - because the birthday girl and sixteen-year-old Mel buried him so deep in the backwoods, no one's ever finding him. Mel loses little sleep over it - Toby had been terrorising them.
\nWhat she does lose sleep over is Chloe, the girl with whom she survived that horrible night in the woods. Chloe, the girl she fell in love with. Chloe, the girl who disappeared and hasn't been seen in more than six years.
\nTasked with locating Chloe by her family, Mel can't resist the call of a good chase, or finding the one who got away with her heart (and with murder). When Mel finds an armed and vigilant Chloe living off-grid in a highly booby-trapped patch of Canadian wilderness, she realises that Chloe had been expecting someone other than her ex to come looking for her. The thing that's kept Chloe going for years is that she's kept Mel safe by running. Now, the truth must come out as they run for their lives once again.
\nBecause when they buried Toby Dunne in the backwoods, they buried something else, too. Something Toby took. And the powerful family he stole it from? They'll do anything to get it back.
High school is over, but Nora O'Malley's life isn't, which is weird now that her murderous stepdad Raymond is free.
\nDetermined to enjoy summer before her (possibly) imminent demise, Nora plans a ten day backpacking trip with Iris and Wes. Her plans hit a snag when Wes's girlfriend tags along. Amanda is nice, so it's not a huge issue - until she gets taken. Or rather, mistaken . . . for Nora. All because of a borrowed flannel.
\nNow Raymond has a hostage. Nora has no leverage. Iris has a spear and Wes is building boobytraps. It'll take all of their skills to make it out of the forest alive.
\nThere are three problems: Someone is lying. Someone is keeping secrets.
\nAnd someone has to die.
Nora O’Malley’s been a lot of girls. As the daughter of a con-artist who targets criminal men, she grew up as her mother’s protégé. But when mom fell for the mark instead of conning him, Nora pulled the ultimate con: escape.
\nFor five years Nora’s been playing at normal. But she needs to dust off the skills she ditched because she has three problems:
\n#1: Her ex walked in on her with her girlfriend. Even though they’re all friends, Wes didn’t know about her and Iris.
\n#2: The morning after Wes finds them kissing, they all have to meet to deposit the fundraiser money they raised at the bank. It’s a nightmare that goes from awkward to deadly, because:
\n#3: Right after they enter bank, two guys start robbing it.
\nThe bank robbers may be trouble, but Nora’s something else entirely. They have no idea who they’re really holding hostage…
Picking up months after akiss transformed Darling into the long-lost Phoenix and every House regent into their empyreal form, Darling struggles to make sense of her destiny as a legendary creature. How can she, an orphan with no family, truly be the one to reunite the fractured houses and bring about peace, if she can't control the magic of her new Phoenix body?
\nTalon Goldhoard, still in love with Darling but wounded by her betrayal, is tasked with ending the vicious war that his family instigated. With the Phoenix reborn, Talon is hopeful that the bloodshed will end swiftly. Instead, the kingdom grows more fraught, with the threat of violence ever present - especially from dark, conniving forces within the walls of his own House Dragon.
\nAs Chaos reigns, Talon and Darling must find their way back to each other to not survive but save the kingdom. Can Darling harness the power of the ancient magic that runs through her blood to bring about a new peace? Or will the fury that House Dragon fueled for a hundred-year war be too strong to break?
Darling Seabreak cannot remember anything before the murder of her family at the hands of House Dragon, but she knows she owes her life to both the power of her Chaos Boon and House Kraken for liberating her from the sewers where she spent her childhood. So when her adoptive Kraken father is captured in battle, Darling vows to save him - even if that means killing each and every last member of House Dragon.
\nTalon Goldhoard has always been a dutiful War Prince for House Dragon, bravely leading the elite troops of his brother, the High Prince Regent. But lately his brother's erratic rule threatens to undo a hundred years of House Dragon's hard work, and factions are turning to Talon to unseat him. Talon resists, until he's ambushed by a fierce girl who looks exactly like the one his brother has painted obsessively, repeatedly, for years, and Talon knows she's the key to everything.
\nTogether, Darling and Talon must navigate the treacherous waters of House politics, caught up in the complicated game the High Prince Regent is playing against everyone. The unlikeliest of allies, they'll have to stop fighting each other long enough to learn to fight together in order to survive the fiery prophecies and ancient blood magic threatening to devastate their entire world.
Hal was once a knight, carefree and joyous, sworn to protect her future queen Banna Mora. But after a rebellion led by her own mother, Caleda, Hal is now the prince of Lionis, heir to the throne. The pressure of her crown and bloody memories of war plague her, as well as a need to shape her own destiny, no matter the cost.
\nLady Hotspur, known as the Wolf of Aremoria for her temper and warcraft, never expected to be more than a weapon. She certainly never expected to fall in love with the fiery Hal or be blindsided by an angry Queen’s promise to remake the whole world in her own image - a plan Hotspur knows will lead to tragedy.
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Banna Mora kept her life, but not her throne. Fleeing to Innis Lear to heal her heart and plot revenge, the stars and roots of Innis Lear will teach her that the only way to survive a burning world is to learn to breathe fire.
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These three women, together or apart, are the ones who have the power to bring the once-powerful Aremoria back to life - or destroy it forever.
Iriset is a prodigy and an outlaw. The daughter of a powerful criminal, she dons her alter ego Silk to create magical disguises for those in her father’s organisation, but she longs to do more with her talent: to enhance what it means to be human by giving people wings, night-sight, and other abilities; to unlock the possibilities of gender and parenthood; to cure disease and even to end mortality itself.
\nEverything changes when her father is captured and sentenced to death. To save him, Iriset must infiltrate the palace and the empire’s fanatical ruling family. There, she realises she has a chance - and an obligation - to bring down the entire corrupt system. She'll have to entangle herself in the lives of the emperor and his sister, getting them to trust and even to love her.
\nBut love is a two-way street, and Iriset’s own heart holds the most mysterious and impenetrable magic of all.
A kingdom at risk, a crown divided, a family drenched in blood.
The erratic decisions of a prophecy-obsessed king have drained Innis Lear of its wild magic, leaving behind a trail of barren crops and despondent subjects. Enemy nations circle the once-bountiful isle, sensing its growing vulnerability, hungry to control the ideal port for all trade routes.
The king's three daughters - battle-hungry Gaela, master manipulator Reagan, and restrained, starblessed Elia - know the realm's only chance of resurrection is to crown a new sovereign, proving a strong hand can resurrect magic and defend itself. But their father will not choose an heir until the longest night of the year, when prophecies align and a poison ritual can be enacted.
Refusing to leave their future in the hands of blind faith, the daughters of Innis Lear prepare for war - but regardless of who wins the crown, the shores of Innis will weep the blood of a house divided.
Iriset - prodigy, outlaw, now sunderer - has broken the Moon-Eater god’s prison at the heart of the empire. But the consequences of her actions land her in a city of monsters where the heretical magic of human architecture is freely practiced, and the only person she knows - and can trust - is Lyric, the emperor she’s lied to and loved in equal measure.
\nAs scheming kings and capricious gods drive them towards different extremes, they soon realise that to find their way home, they must remake the world . . . at the risk of breaking it forever.
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Dr. Jo Ness prefers jellyfish to people. Her best friend, Aldo, was the exception, but he died seven months ago. So she spends her days hidden away at an underfunded aquarium with her specimens and a draft of the jellyfish guide she and Aldo had been working on together. His voice is alive in the notes in the margins, and it’s enough. Almost.
\nUntil she receives a call from Nadia, one of the few other humans she’s loved but whom she hasn’t heard from in years, asking for her help. Nadia tells her a grand tale of a giant jellyfish terrorising her tiny island off the coast of Maine and sends a grainy video of the creature. Frankly, the footage looks fake, but Jo drops everything to fly across the country to see Nadia again, and to find this supposed sea beast. She couldn’t save Aldo, but perhaps she can help Nadia.
\nBut when Jo arrives on Shattering Point, Nadia is nowhere to be found, and the islanders she meets each have something different to say about the creature they’ve dubbed Clementine . . . a jellyfish who changes all who see it.
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Ever since art gave life to bloodthirsty shadows, creative works have been forbidden and the talented creators sacrificed to the Sinless - the immortal royals who feast on human blood in return for their protection.
\nInana’s secret storytelling nearly got her killed once, and she’ll be damned if she’s ever caught again. With a bounty on her head, she keeps to the city’s dark underbelly where she earns a meager living from thrill-seeking patrons desperate to hear her illicit fiction. Until Dominic, a Shadowbane, catches one of her performances . . .
\nDominic is a half-Sinless monster hunter as fearsome as his prey. But to complete his hunt, he needs an artist to summon the shadows . . . he needs Inana. Dominic delivers an ultimatum: serve him or he’ll claim her bounty. When survival is all Inana has left, the choice is clear. At least until she can betray him and leave him for dead.
\nAs their tense alliance leads them into the heart of danger, dark secrets unravel - about each other, their world, and the threats they face. But the greatest risk of all is the desire growing between them. There’s something more sinful than lust at play, and it could bring the world to its knees.
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Told with deadpan humor and brutal honesty, this debut novel follows Vietnamese-American Linh Ly’s unraveling as she reckons with the traumas of both her past and present, perfect for fans of Joan is Okay and Luster .
\nWhen 27-year-old Linh Ly’s recently-divorced mother begins dating a coworker, Linh is determined to make sure he is worthy of her mother. She’s seen the kind of men her mother ends up with - she grew up watching her unreliable and volatile alcoholic father as her mother worked two jobs to make ends meet. Linh is certain that her mother can’t do this on her own, but what begins as genuine worry quickly turns obsessive.
\nFollowing her mother and spying on her dates becomes part of Linh’s routine, especially after a university shooting at Linh’s work that leaves her feeling adrift - at least her mom’s dating life gives her something to focus on. Linh doesn’t exactly have a life of her own (dating or otherwise) and figures the best course of action is action - not how she handled the curl up in a ball and wait it out.
\nLinh is slowly forced to reconcile the image of her mother from her childhood with the woman she’s getting to know as an adult. Growing up Vietnamese in the middle of Texas with a broken household taught Linh a certain guarded way of living - one she never quite left behind.
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Talasyn was left on the steps of a Sardovian orphanage as a baby. All she has ever known are the Hurricane Wars, as her people fight for freedom from the tyranny of the Night Emperor Gaheris. But are they her people? Talasyn dreams of one day finding where she comes from - her true place, family, and the source of the Lightweave magic that flows through her veins like sunlight.
\nAlaric of House Ossinast, Master of the Shadowforged Legion and Gaheris’s only son and heir has been forged into a weapon by his father. Tasked with obliterating the Sardovian Allford alliance with the strength of his armies and mighty Shadow magic, all Alaric can see is their extinguish all threats to the empire.
\nThat is until he sees Talasyn burning brightly on the battlefield with the magic that killed his grandfather, turned his father into a monster, and ignited the Hurricane Wars. He tries and fails to kill her, his now greatest enemy slipping through his fingers. But a greater threat is coming. One that will overshadow the Hurricane Wars.
\nWill these mortal enemies be able to come together to confront it or is everything that has been fought over for so long about to be destroyed?
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After a lifetime of war, Alaric and Talasyn were thrust into an alliance between their homelands that was supposed to end the fighting; however, being married to their sworn foe feels far from peaceful. Now Talasyn must play the part of Alaric’s willing empress while her allies secretly plot to overthrow his reign. But the longer the couple are forced together, the harder it becomes to deny the feelings crackling like lightning between them. When the time comes to act, can she trust him, or must she ignore her heart for the sake of so many others?
\nAs the master of the Shadowforged Legion, Alaric has trained for battle all his life, but marrying a Lightweaver might be his most dangerous challenge yet. With tensions between nations churning, he needs to focus on the greater threat - the Moonless Dark, a cataclysmic magical event that could devour everything. Only he and Talasyn can stop it, with a powerful merging of light and shadow that they alone can create together. But saving their world from this disaster is a mere preface to his father’s more sinister schemes, and his wife is a burning flame in the darkness, tempting both his loyalties and his desires.
\nThe Hurricane Wars aren’t over. It’s time to choose what - and who - to fight for. The world holds its breath amidst a whirlwind of new magic and old secrets that could change everything.
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On the night of Easter Eve 1989, 12-year-old Hanna’s older brother Erik and some friends go to the infamous Mount Verity, where there is a cave that, according to legend, was used in the witch trials in Östergötland during the 17th century. Rumor has it that whoever does not tell the truth and goes down into the cave will disappear into the mountain. Erik never comes home that night.
\nOver the years, Hanna and her childhood friend Marcus develop an increasingly symbiotic relationship, until life takes them in different directions. He pursues an academic career, while she fails to get into art school, feeling uncertain about her path and doubting her talent. When Hanna finally becomes a successful artist, she cannot let go of what it has cost her. What justice decided that she was allowed to live while Erik vanished? What is there left to believe in when the worst has happened? And can the story of Mount Verity be more than a fable?
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The classic fantasy world of The Malicarn has been brought to life on the big screen in a series of epic movies, almost entirely populated by characters in total belief that their sham fantasy lives are real.
\nA fan-favorite actor finds himself doubting the studio's work, but the world of The Malicarn has an almost unstoppable momentum, and bringing freedom to a population who already believe themselves to be free won’t be as easy as he thinks.
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In the prairie town of Andwhen, Minnesota, a small congregation doesn’t know if they’ve been blessed or cursed when the ashes administered during an Ash Wednesday service won’t wash off. This event leads Basil, a “gentle giant” of a teen, to make a secret vow to save his family through prayer and fasting. His family is in a difficult place, stricken by a recent farming accident and his mother’s decade-long confinement to a state mental hospital.
\nBasil keeps his struggles secret from his two outsider friends, Lukas and Morgan (the three self-identifying as “a gay, a goth, and a giant”). When the trio discovers what may be the centuries-old remains of a Viking explorer in a local meadow, the find brings its own complications, as folk history clashes with the agendas of online racists. Meanwhile, Basil’s unrelenting commitment to his fast erodes the life he thought he knew, and the world around him sharpens with razor-edged clarity.
\nAshes to Ashes explores the stories we tell ourselves about our families and our larger histories, blending elements of Norse saga with a fine-grained examination of rural Midwestern life at the start of the pandemic. This is Thomas Maltman’s most ambitious novel yet, mixing forms and eras to reveal the lives and struggles of the teens and adults of Andwhen, Minnesota.
Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles - a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.”
\nTia knew that to their neighbors her family was strange, but she also couldn't risk exposing their secret lifestyle to police, doctors, teachers, or anyone outside of their church. Christians were called in scripture to be “in the world, not of it.” So, she hid in plain sight as years of abuse and pain followed. When Tia realised she was the only one who could protect her children from becoming the next generation of patriarchal men and submissive women, she began to resist and question how they lived. But in the patriarchy, a woman with opinions is in danger, and eventually, Tia faced an urgent and extreme stay and face dire consequences, or flee with her children.
\nTold in a beautiful, honest, and sometimes harrowing voice, A Well-Trained Wife is an unforgettable and timely memoir about a woman's race to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.
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Sasha Cruz knows types. As a booked-and-busy casting agent, she’s always casting - at happy hour, the post office, the grocery store, everywhere. She’s all about finding the perfect person to slot into the perfect role. What she doesn’t do, however, are relationships. Too much energy, not enough time. Men find her intimidating, and she likes it that way.
\nBut when Sasha’s seated next to a mysterious, broodingly handsome Italian man on the way to a work trip in Paris, sparks fly - but they miss the chance to exchange contact information. Now, convinced that she’s lost out on her soulmate, Sasha is on a manhunt to find Seat F.
\nSasha enlists her work friend for help in the search, but when she accidentally emails the entire global company, colleagues around the world begin looking for Seat F, too - with some finding love along the way. Meanwhile, Sasha takes matters into her own hands, hiring a smoldering detective who complicates matters in unforeseen ways.
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Talented A-lister Cate Whitney is the gorgeous middle-aged movie star almost every lesbian has a crush on.
\nRachel Janssen, an introverted medical physics student, is no exception. So when her celebrity crush starts filming near her Vancouver apartment, she can’t believe her luck.
\nA chance encounter with Cate leads to a little swooning, small-talk, and a shock offer to help the star as a science consultant on her Marie Curie film. And, wait, could Cate actually be flirting with Rachel?
\nHowever, as the chemistry sizzles between them, Rachel struggles with the harsh reality of being linked to a famous actress. Paparazzi keep dragging her into the spotlight when all she wants is to be taken seriously in her medical career.
\nIs falling for a superstar too much to handle? Even if sexy Cate Whitney is the one everyone wants? Even if she’s everything Rachel needs?
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Meela has just returned from the Massacre - the annual attempt to wipe out the mermaids threatening her people’s survival. After forming an unlikely connection with Lysi, a mermaid she was trained to kill, Meela is determined to stop the war between humans and merpeople for good. She knows of a legendary weapon that could bring peace if she uses it against King Adaro, ruler of the Pacific Ocean. But her people have plans for future Massacres and refuse to help her uncover it.
\nWhile Meela works in secret to unearth the Host of Eriana, Lysi is held captive under Adaro’s tyranny. Sent to the battlefront, Lysi joins forces with a band of rebels that could either bring her freedom - or have her executed for treason.
\nSeparated by the vast Pacific Ocean, Meela and Lysi must find a way to defeat King Adaro and end the war that has been keeping them apart.
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Meela and Lysi have unleashed Sisiutl, legendary two-headed serpent of the Pacific Northwest. It was supposed to be an ally that would help them win the war. Instead, it has fallen under the control of King Adaro, ruler of the Pacific Ocean. If Meela and Lysi can’t stop him, Adaro will use the deadly serpent to rid the oceans of mankind.
\nWith the American military using catastrophic weapons of their own to retaliate, Meela and Lysi must make peace between humans and merpeople before one race destroys the other. The journey will risk their lives and put their relationship to the test - but the vengeance that has been consuming Meela’s thoughts, day and night, might prove even more dangerous.
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A mermaid’s supernatural beauty serves one purpose: to lure a sailor to his death.
\nThe Massacre is supposed to bring peace to Eriana Kwai. Every year, the island sends its warriors to battle these hostile sea demons. Every year, the warriors fail to return. Desperate for survival, the island must decide on a new strategy. Now, the fate of Eriana Kwai lies in the hands of twenty battle-trained girls and their resistance to a mermaid’s allure.
\nEighteen-year-old Meela has already lost her brother to the Massacre, and she has lived with a secret that’s haunted her since childhood. For any hope of survival, she must overcome the demons of her past and become a ruthless mermaid killer.
\nFor the first time, Eriana Kwai’s Massacre warriors are female, and Meela must fight for her people’s freedom on the Pacific Ocean’s deadliest battleground.
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How far would you go to live the life of your dreams? Would you fake-date your total opposite while trapped on a road trip together? A charming, fake-relationship lesbian romance about being bold and taking chances.
\nA camper van, a camera, and the open road are all laidback Carol Lavoie wants in life - and she’s using her career as a social media video creator to fund her adventures. The problem is, if she can’t work out how to get more followers soon, she’ll have to give it all away.
\nMinimalist vlogger Ruby Hayashi has over a million followers who watch her meticulously edited takes on cooking, van living, and her cute rescue dog. She exists in a world of perfection that is getting boring and badly needs an injection of fresh energy.
\nWhen Coral and Ruby team up for a road trip to boost their audiences, it’s a clash of opposites in what could be the change they both need. As they hit the Oregon coast, what they don’t count on is how their enthralled followers start rooting for their favorite lesbians to get together.
\nCould faking a relationship for the cameras be the key to going viral and boosting their careers? But even if they make peace with lying to their fans, for how long will their hearts be able to tell the difference between fake flirtation and real love?
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Avery is finally going on the winter excursion to the Yukon she’s been planning all year. Dog sledding, ice fishing, the Northern Lights . . . It’s going to be amazing! Then her boyfriend dumps her the night before the trip. Worse, she gets paired up with the only other solo traveler in the group: Summer, her ex-girlfriend from high school.
\nUnlike Avery, who has a plan for everything, Summer lives a nomadic life - free, spontaneous, with no time for relationships. There would be no point in rekindling what they had - not when the last time ended so badly.
\nStuck in a tiny yurt together and forced to partner up for activities, Avery and Summer must find a way to get along. But what if, amidst all that ice and snow, they also discover a flame that was never extinguished.
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From the time she was born, Sigrid has only ever been ordinary. Being paired at birth with a plain horse - instead of the powerful winged mare of a valkyrie - meant there would be no warrior path for her. No riding the skies, no glory among the nine worlds. Just the simple, unremarkable life of a stable hand.
\nEverything changes when a terrible enemy ambushes Vanaheim and Sigrid sees a vision of herself atop a mythical stallion, leading the valkyries into a harrowing battle. Finally, she can grab her future with her own two hands and become the hero of her own story . . . if she dares.
\nBut her destiny is tied up with Mariam, a fallen valkyrie who’s allied herself with the very enemy Sigrid is trying to stop.
\nNow Sigrid has left ordinary behind as she begins a journey with the beautiful - if treacherous - valkyrie, each step bringing her closer to answers . . . and to awakened feelings for Mariam.
\nOnly, the life Sigrid has escaped may have been paradise compared to the one she’s racing toward. Because her destination is the realm of the dead: the gates of Hel.
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Sigrid may be the last surviving royal of Vanaheim, but she’s more warrior than princess. Her world is collapsing under the onslaught of their enemies, who are ripping apart Sigrid’s home and everyone in it. Even astride Sleipnir, her legendary eight-legged horse, Sigrid can’t fight the darkness unleashed by the Night Elves. And at any moment, the god Loki could unleash chaos upon them all . . .
\nWith the fate of nine worlds perilously close to breaking, there’s only one way to restore the balance: by restoring Vanaheim’s gods-given magic. But doing so means undertaking a journey that’s not only treacherous but nearly impossible.
\nWith her beloved Mariam by her side, Sigrid must find a way to unite all the worlds . . . including Helheim.
\nIt will take courage.
It will take strength.
Most of all, it will tempt Sigrid to draw upon the thing she fears most: the darkness inside her own heart. Because the only way to take on a god - and win - will be to raise an army from the most fearsome corners of the nine worlds.
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Being both a valkyrie and a princess isn’t turning out quite the way Sigrid imagined. The other valkyries still treat her like a stable hand. Her relationship with Mariam is less “long-distance” and more “worlds apart.” And lately, she’s been wondering if Sleipnir, her new horse, isn’t making her a little bit . . . well, evil.
\nBut Sigrid’s first official valkyrie mission sends ripples through the Nine Worlds. She’s attracted the wrath of not only the Night Elves but their sinister king, who wants nothing more than to bring darkness down on everyone. Worse yet, Loki might just be interfering with the balance of light and dark . . .
\nWhen war threatens the shores of Vanaheim and her friends are in danger of being exiled, Sigrid makes a deal with the new queen. She will ride Sleipnir against their enemies and use his might to defeat them, even as he pulls her closer to that line between good and evil.
\nWhat she becomes will either save everyone . . . or unleash disaster upon them all.
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When Hannah accidentally breaks an ancient spell and binds herself to Julia Moreau, a powerful witch who was cursed to an enchanted sleep a century ago, the reluctant duo must hunt down Julia’s old coven to sever the bond.
\nBut Julia is a sanguine witch who draws her power from the life force of others. To keep them both alive, Hannah must allow Julia to feed on her essence - a ritual that grows more intimate with every repetition, blurring the line between necessity and desire.
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Benny Abbott and Joy Moore host one of the most beloved podcasts in the world. Each week, they delight listeners with a different “against all odds” survival story, gleefully finding the weird, life-affirming humor in near-death experiences. Since their first episode on Joy’s experience with severe narcolepsy, they’ve been the best friends everyone wants to befriend - and thanks to the meticulous management of Joy’s husband, Xander, they’ve built a lucrative empire.
\nThe problem is, their next survival story may be their own. When Benny arrives at Joy and Xander’s one morning to record, he finds shattered glass and an empty house. The one clue shedding light on the couple’s disappearance is the incomplete, previously unseen first draft of Joy’s memoir. Benny will stop at nothing to find them, even as the police zero in on him as their prime suspect.
\nMillions of devoted listeners think they know the “real” Benny and Joy. But as the hours tick by, and the odds seem increasingly stacked against Joy and Xander being found alive, not even the most devoted fans could guess the terrible secrets their favorite famous BFFs have hidden from the world - and from each other.
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Mary B. Addison killed a baby.
\nAllegedly. She didn’t say much in that first interview with detectives, and the media filled in the only blanks that mattered: A white baby had died while under the care of a church-going black woman and her nine-year-old daughter. The public convicted Mary and the jury made it official. But did she do it? She wouldn’t say.
\nMary survived six years in baby jail before being dumped in a group home. The house isn’t really “home” - no place where you fear for your life can be considered a home. Home is Ted, who she meets on assignment at a nursing home.
\nThere wasn’t a point to setting the record straight before, but now she’s got Ted - and their unborn child - to think about. When the state threatens to take her baby, Mary must find the voice to fight her past. And her fate lies in the hands of the one person she distrusts the most: her Momma. No one knows the real Momma. But who really knows the real Mary?
\nIn this gritty and haunting debut, Tiffany D. Jackson explores the grey areas in our understanding of justice, family, and truth, and acknowledges the light and darkness alive in all of us.
Kaylani is a born-and-bred Brooklyn girl. She expects to feel like a fish out of water spending the hot and sticky summer on Martha's Vineyard with family friends, the Watsons. But her mother insists, especially since Kaylani still spends long hours on the phone with her imprisoned father.
\nThe Watsons live in the town of Oak Bluffs, a place with a rich Black history that fascinates Kaylani. Though the Watsons' daughter, London, is snobby and unfriendly, Kaylani ends up connecting with some other kids in the town, who show her around. The beach IS really nice, and there's good ice cream to be had. Maybe there's something to Martha's Vineyard . . .
\nBut then a shocking murder - or was it a drowning? A shark attack? - rocks the community to its core.
\nKaylani is determined to solve the mystery but in order to do so, she will come face-to-face with sinister truths and shocking secrets that promise to forever change her life as she knows it.
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Korey Fields is dead.
When Enchanted Jones wakes with blood on her hands and zero memory of the previous night, no one - the police and Korey’s fans included - has more questions than she does. All she really knows is that this isn't how things are supposed to be. Korey was Enchanted’s ticket to stardom.
Before there was a dead body, Enchanted was an aspiring singer, struggling with her tight knit family’s recent move to the suburbs while trying to find her place as the lone Black girl in high school. But then legendary R&B artist Korey Fields spots her at an audition. And suddenly her dream of being a professional singer takes flight.
Enchanted is dazzled by Korey’s luxurious life but soon her dream turns into a nightmare. Behind Korey’s charm and star power hides a dark side, one that wants to control her every move, with rage and consequences. Except now he’s dead and the police are at the door. Who killed Korey Fields?
All signs point to Enchanted.
Biggie Smalls was right. Things done changed. But that doesn’t mean that Quadir and Jarrell are okay letting their best friend Steph’s tracks lie forgotten in his bedroom after he’s killed - not when his beats could turn any Bed-Stuy corner into a celebration, not after years of having each other’s backs.
Enlisting the help of Steph’s younger sister, Jasmine, Quadir and Jarrell come up with a plan to promote Steph’s music under a new rap name: The Architect. Soon, everyone in Brooklyn is dancing to Steph’s voice. But then his mixtape catches the attention of a hotheaded music rep and - with just hours on the clock—the trio must race to prove Steph’s talent from beyond the grave.
Now, as the pressure - and danger - of keeping their secret grows, Quadir, Jarrell, and Jasmine are forced to confront the truth about what happened to Steph. Only each has something to hide. And with everything riding on Steph’s fame, together they need to decide what they stand for before they lose everything they’ve worked so hard to hold on to - including each other.
Out from under her overprotective parents, Jordyn is ready to kill it in prelaw at a prestigious, historically Black university in Washington DC. When her new roommate’s brother is released from prison, the last thing Jordyn expects is to come home and find the ex-convict on their dorm room sofa. But Devonte needs a place to stay while he gets back on his feet - and how could she say no to one of her new best friends?
\nDevonte is older, as charming as he is intelligent, pushing every student he meets to make better choices about their young lives. But Jordyn senses something sinister beneath his friendly advice and growing group of followers. When one of Jordyn’s roommates goes missing, she must enlist the help of the university’s lone white student to uncover the mystery - or become trapped at the center of a web of lies more tangled than she can imagine.
When Springville residents - at least the ones still alive - are questioned about what happened on prom night, they all have the same explanation . . . Maddy did it.
\nAn outcast at her small-town Georgia high school, Madison Washington has always been a teasing target for bullies. And she's dealt with it because she has more pressing problems to manage. Until the morning a surprise rainstorm reveals her most closely kept secret: Maddy is biracial. She has been passing for white her entire life at the behest of her fanatical white father, Thomas Washington.
\nAfter a viral bullying video pulls back the curtain on Springville High's racist roots, student leaders come up with a plan to change their image: host the school's first integrated prom as a show of unity. The popular white class president convinces her Black superstar quarterback boyfriend to ask Maddy to be his date, leaving Maddy wondering if it's possible to have a normal life.
\nBut some of her classmates aren't done with her just yet. And what they don't know is that Maddy still has another secret . . . one that will cost them all their lives.
Marigold is running from ghosts. The phantoms of her old life keep haunting her, but a move with her newly blended family from their small California beach town to the embattled Midwestern city of Cedarville might be the fresh start she needs. Her mom has accepted a new job with the Sterling Foundation that comes with a free house, one that Mari now has to share with her bratty ten-year-old stepsister, Piper.
\nThe renovated picture-perfect home on Maple Street, sitting between dilapidated houses, surrounded by wary neighbors has its . . . secrets. That’s only half the problem: household items vanish, doors open on their own, lights turn off, shadows walk past rooms, voices can be heard in the walls, and there’s a foul smell seeping through the vents only Mari seems to notice. Worse: Piper keeps talking about a friend who wants Mari gone.
\nBut “running from ghosts” is just a metaphor, right?
\nAs the house closes in, Mari learns that the danger isn’t limited to Maple Street. Cedarville has its secrets, too. And secrets always find their way through the cracks.
Teia Carthan abandoned her morals long ago, and now there’s nothing she won’t do to stay alive. So far she has survived her parents’ deaths, the ire of the Council, and innumerable attempts on her life, orchestrated by Jura, her half brother and soon-to-be king of Erisia. Teia’s rare control over two elements marks her as both an outsider and a formidable opponent - but once Jura is crowned king, there will be no way to survive him. Not for Teia, not for anyone.
\nWhen Jura moves to crush the rebellion that seeks to overthrow the monarchy, Teia sees one last opportunity to ensure her own safety. She can infiltrate the rebels, locate their base . . . and betray them to Jura, trading their lives for her own.
\nYet when Teia meets the rebels, she gets far more than she bargained for. And when she gains not only their trust but their friendship, she begins to have doubts. Perhaps the rebels are right. Perhaps the Golden Palace should be torn down and the monarchy destroyed.
\nBut then again - what if there is another possibility? What if Teia were on the throne instead?
\n
Six months ago, Teia Carthan seized the throne against all odds. She sacrificed everything - her morals, her friends, even the spark of love - to hear the whisper of her new Highness.
\nNow, Teia sets sail across the Dark Sea to warn her cousin, the Shaylani emperor, of a threat that could doom the Five Cornelius Lehm lives, and he’s planning to raise the Serkawr. But as she begins a furious journey across Shaylan, Teia knows she needs help to defeat Lehm - even if it means working with the very rebels she betrayed to claim her crown.
\nTrust is a fragile thing, and Teia crushed it beneath her heel. Can she earn the Dawnbreakers’ friendship once again? Or will the consequences of her treachery win out, dragging all she’s fought for like a wave to the depths?
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Trouble finds Jacob Burn. Kicked out of his house, out of his comfortable life, out of everything that is familiar, even turned away from his circle of criminal friends and interesting enemies. Two years after he saved an ungrateful city from a mad angel, thwarting the plans of every powerful faction in Veridon, Jacob is still trying to pull his life together. And still trouble finds him.
\nA bad job goes worse, and soon old enemies present themselves as allies, and former friends set themselves against Jacob as he tries to put the dead to rest and the living to justice. Everything gets more difficult when he's appointed by the Council to investigate the rise of the cog-dead, while some hold him personally accountable, and others in the city work to use the chaos to their advantage.
Captain-turned-criminal Jacob Burn is the unlikely survivor of two zeppelin crashes. The first destroyed his career as a pilot, disgracing his nobleman father and ending his life of privilege. But the second threatens to destroy Burn's whole world - Veridon, an ancient terraced city reborn through The Church of the Algorithm's recent advances in mechanics, technology, and cog-work.
\nMoments before the Glory of Day wrecked, a former underworld associate of Burn's handed him an unusual and complicated cog for safekeeping. But the artifact-cog quickly draws Burn unwanted attention - too much of it, from too many of Veridon's most powerful factions, casting doubt on even his closest allies.
\nA far more dangerous and unpredictable enemy has also joined the manhunt, carving a bloody trail across the city, while Burn's frantic search for answers only leads to more questions. At the heart of it all, the mysterious cog, which hides a secret potent enough to shake Veridon to its very core, and recast Burn's entire existence.
Eva Forge is the last paladin of a dead God. Morgan, God of battle and champion of the Fraterdom, was assassinated by his jealous brother, Amon. Over time, the Cult of Morgan has been surpassed by other Gods, his blessings ignored in favor of brighter technologies and more mechanical miracles. Eva was the last child dedicated to the Cult of Morgan, forsaken by her parents and forgotten by her family. Now she watches as her new family, her Cult, crumbles all around her.
\nWhen a series of kidnappings and murders makes it clear that someone is trying to hasten the death of the Cult of Morgan, Eva must seek out unexpected allies and unwelcome answers in the city of Ash. But will she be able to save the city from a growing conspiracy, one that reaches back to her childhood, even back to the murder of her God?
Tensions flare between north and south, and hatreds erupt into war. Yet the conflicts of men are quickly overshadowed by a far greater threat.
\nCreatures long kept confined rise from below, spreading destruction on an unimaginable scale.
The flames of war are fanned by the Celestial Church, whose inquisitors and holy knights seek to destroy the pagans wherever they are found. A secret cabal creates unexpected allies, and pursues its own dark agenda . . .
While Malcolm Blakley seeks to end the war before all of Tenumbra is consumed, his son Ian searches for the huntress Gwendolyn Adair, and finds himself shadowed by the totem of his family, the Iron Hound. Gwen herself becomes allied with the pagans, and wrestles with the effect of having been bound to a god.
The Celestial Church has all but eliminated the old pagan ways, ruling the people with an iron hand. Demonic gheists terrorize the land, hunted by the warriors of the Inquisition, yet it's the battling factions within the Church and age-old hatreds between north and south that tear the land apart.
Malcolm Blakley, hero of the Reaver War, seeks to end the conflict between men, yet it will fall to his son, Ian, and the huntress Gwen Adair to stop the killing before it tears the land apart. The Pagan Night is an epic of mad gods, inquisitor priests, holy knights bound to hunt and kill, and noble houses fighting battles of politics, prejudice, and power.
On the eve of battle, an army tears itself apart from within. A new, unassailable force rises from the slaughter, with the power to raise the dead and harness wild gods. Malcolm Blakley's fighters flee the battlefield, alliances shift and fail, and Malcolm himself is once more running for his life. Soon he will find new allies, as deadly as those he opposes, and just as trecherous.
\nIn far-off Houndhallow, Gwen Adair and Ian Blakley's pagan and celestial followers attempt to overcome their differences, but the consequences are sure to be deadly. And the vow knight Elsa LaFey searches the wilds of Tenumbra for the key to end the war once and for all - the power of the winter vow. But time is running out, and the ultimate confrontation approaches.
Politico Magazine’s chief political correspondent provides a rollicking insider’s look at the making of the modern Republican Party - how a decade of cultural upheaval, populist outrage, and ideological warfare made the GOP vulnerable to a hostile takeover from the unlikeliest of insurgents: Donald J. Trump.
\nThe 2016 election was a watershed for the United States. But, as Tim Alberta explains in American Carnage, to understand Trump’s victory is to view him not as the creator of this era of polarization and bruising partisanship, but rather as its most manifest consequence.
\nAmerican Carnage is the story of a president’s rise based on a country’s evolution and a party’s collapse. As George W. Bush left office with record-low approval ratings and Barack Obama led a Democratic takeover of Washington, Republicans faced a moment of reckoning: They had no vision, no generation of new leaders, and no energy in the party’s base. Yet Obama’s forceful pursuit of his progressive agenda, coupled with the nation’s rapidly changing societal and demographic identity, lit a fire under the right, returning Republicans to power and inviting a bloody struggle for the party’s identity in the post-Bush era. The factions that emerged - one led by absolutists like Jim Jordan and Ted Cruz, the other led by pragmatists like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell - engaged in a series of devastating internecine clashes and attempted coups for control. With the GOP’s internal fissures rendering it legislatively impotent, and that impotence fueling a growing resentment toward the political class and its institutions, the stage was set for an outsider to crash the party. When Trump descended a gilded escalator to announce his run in the summer of 2015, the candidate had met the moment.
\nOnly by viewing Trump as the culmination of a decade-long civil war inside the GOP - and of the parallel sense of cultural, socioeconomic, and technological disruption during that period - can we appreciate how he won the White House and consider the fundamental questions at the center of America’s current turmoil. How did a party once obsessed with national insolvency come to champion trillion-dollar deficits? How did the party of compassionate conservatism become the party of Muslim bans and family separation? How did the party of family values elect a thrice-married philanderer? And, most important, how long can such a party survive?
\nLoaded with explosive original reporting and based off hundreds of exclusive interviews - including with key players such as President Trump, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, and Reince Priebus, among many others - American Carnage takes us behind the scenes of this tumultuous period as we’ve never seen it before and establishes Tim Alberta as the premier chronicler of this political era.
The award-winning journalist and staff writer for The Atlantic follows up his New York Times bestseller American Carnage with this timely, rigorously reported, and deeply personal examination of the divisions that threaten to destroy the American evangelical movement.
\nEvangelical Christians are perhaps the most polarising - and least understood - people living in America today. In his seminal new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta, himself a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor, paints an expansive and profoundly troubling portrait of the American evangelical movement. Through the eyes of televangelists and small-town preachers, celebrity revivalists and everyday churchgoers, Alberta tells the story of a faith cheapened by ephemeral fear, a promise corrupted by partisan subterfuge, and a reputation stained by perpetual scandal.
\nFor millions of conservative Christians, America is their kingdom - a land set apart, a nation uniquely blessed, a people in special covenant with God. This love of country, however, has given way to right-wing nationalist fervor, a reckless blood-and-soil idolatry that trivialises the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
\nAlberta retraces the arc of the modern evangelical movement, placing political and cultural inflection points in the context of church teachings and traditions, explaining how Donald Trump's presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated historical trends that long pointed toward disaster. Reporting from half-empty sanctuaries and standing-room-only convention halls across the country, the author documents a growing fracture inside American Christianity and journeys with readers through this strange new environment in which loving your enemies is “woke” and owning the libs is the answer to WWJD.
\nAccessing the highest echelons of the American evangelical movement, Alberta investigates the ways in which conservative Christians have pursued, exercised, and often abused power in the name of securing this earthly kingdom. He highlights the battles evangelicals are fighting - and the weapons of their warfare - to demonstrate the disconnect from Contra the dictates of the New Testament, today's believers are struggling mightily against flesh and blood, eyes fixed on the here and now, desperate for a power that is frivolous and fleeting.
\nLingering at the intersection of real cultural displacement and perceived religious persecution, Alberta portrays a rapidly secularizing America that has come to distrust the evangelical church, and weaves together present-day narratives of individual pastors and their churches as they confront the twin challenges of lost status and diminished standing.
\nSifting through the wreckage - pastors broken, congregations battered, believers losing their religion because of sex scandals and political schemes - Alberta If the American evangelical movement has ceased to glorify God, what is its purpose?
The inventor of the World Wide Web explores his vision’s promise - and how it can be redeemed for the future.
\nPerhaps the most influential inventor of the modern world, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a different kind of technologist. Born in the same year as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, he famously distributed his invention, the World Wide Web, for no commercial reward. Its widespread adoption changed everything - transforming humanity into the first digital species. Through the web, we live, work, dream, quarrel, and connect.
\nIn this intimate memoir, Berners-Lee tells the story of his iconic invention, exploring how it launched a new era of creativity and collaboration while unleashing powerful forces that imperil truth and privacy and polarize public debate. With his trademark humor and candor, he recounts how he arrived at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, as a young engineer, and soon came up with the astonishing idea of adding hyperlinks to the then-nascent Internet. His goal was to unleash a wave of creativity and collaboration for the benefit of all - a goal he’s pursued to this day.
\nPeppered with rich anecdotes and amusing reflections, This Is for Everyone is a gripping, in-the-room account of the rise of the digital world. As the rapid development of artificial intelligence brings new risks and possibilities, Berners-Lee also offers a crucial guide to the decisions ahead - and shows how our digital lives can be reengineered for the sake of human flourishing rather than profit or for power.
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From the Big Bang and the evolution of the genetic code to the birth of consciousness, this is the extraordinary story of the chain of events that led to human life on earth.
\nHave you ever wondered why you exist? What had to happen for you to be alive and conscious? Scientists have come a long way in answering this question, and this book describes what they have found out. It also examines whether our existence was inevitable at the universe’s birth 13.77 billion years ago - or whether we are just incredibly lucky.
\nThe book is aimed at readers who are interested in science but are not experts. Written in an entertaining and accessible style, the narrative begins by describing how scientists discover facts before taking the reader on a journey from the Big Bang to the creation of the human genome.
\nCovering physics, astronomy, chemistry, earth sciences, the emergence of life, evolution, consciousness, the rise of humanity, and how our personalities are moulded by genes, chance, and the environment, the journey explains how the universe started as point of intense energy that over time, in our corner of the universe, resulted in our wonderful planet - and in you.
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Danger lurks as the air grows colder and threats lie in the shadows at every turn. While the rest of their fellowship seeks safety, Bea and Cad team up with a small group of survivors to travel to the Citadel of Knowledge, pursuing answers to their world’s darkest mysteries.
\nBut their journey reveals even more secrets. Until an unexpected ally shines a light in the darkness, providing a clue to a mystery from long ago . . . and a beacon of hope for the future.
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Deep in the heart of the planet Irpa stands the Salty Pig’s House of Tonics & Tinctures, home of the wise Pig Wizard and his adopted granddaughter, Bea. As keepers of the Endless Flame, they live a quiet and peaceful life, crafting medicines and potions for the people of their once-prosperous world.
\nAll that changes one day when, while walking through the woods, Bea meets Cad, a member of the Galdurians, an ancient race thought to be long-extinct. Cad believes that if anyone can help him find his missing people, it’s the Pig Wizard.
\nBut when the two arrive home, the Pig Wizard is nowhere to be found - all that’s left is the Jar of Endless Flame and a mysterious note. Fearing for the Pig Wizard’s safety, Bea and Cad set out across Irpa to find him, while danger fights its way out of the shadows and into the light.
\nWill these two unexpected friends find the beloved Pig Wizard and prevent eternal darkness from blanketing their world? Or has Irpa truly seen its last sunrise?
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After a battle that nearly cost them their lives, Bea and Cad awaken in the hidden settlement of the Arsai, mysterious creatures who can glimpse into the future. The Arsai's vision paints a dire picture for their planet, as the bird Kest Ke Belenus - now awoken from a restless slumber - threatens to destroy all the Lights of Irpa. Desperate for a solution, Bea and Cad seek out the help of a water spirit known as Lorgon, whose ancient wisdom may help them find a way to take down Kest and save Irpa from utter destruction.
\nBut when their time with Lorgon presents more questions than answers, Bea and Cad must decide what's more important . . . stopping Kest or uncovering the truth.
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With humanity facing imminent extinction, Centauri Project scientists use technology originally designed for interstellar travel to send a test subject ten millennia into Earth’s future. Marooned in an uninhabited wilderness, microbiologist Nicholas Hindman searches for evidence of remnant populations. He has a protocol to follow and is determined to do so to the bitter end - though he knows he’s probably searching in vain, stranded on an uninhabited planet silently orbiting the sun.
\nMeanwhile, back in 2068 AD, a devastating hyperpandemic has quelled all talk of interstellar travel and thrown the future of humanity into grave doubt. Four surviving members of the Centauri team board a vintage solar-powered sailing yacht for a harrowing journey in search of a second test subject. Their destination is a small volcanic island north of Sicily rumored to harbor that rarest of creatures: a woman capable of getting pregnant, thereby ensuring this generation of Homo sapiens isn’t the last.
\nBut first they must make it halfway across the post-apocalyptic globe, risking heatwaves, oceanic megastorms, murderous gangs, deranged cult leaders, a volcanic eruption, and the dangerous microbes that continue to circulate through the planet’s atmosphere.
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Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place - middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They’re exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work.
\nProblem is, they’re not alone.
\nSo begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism.
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Dale Ravenhall is part of a small network of telepaths spread throughout North America. Although they can communicate with each other across hundreds of miles, if they get within twenty miles of each other, the mental pressure is fatal.
\nTheir situation requires them to be a cautiously tight-knit community, but when one of them is murdered, things begin to unravel . . .
En route to far-off stars, Toby’s consciousness has a crucial mission: inhabit his clone long enough to repair a spaceship, then zip back to Earth. He’s done it a million times, more or less. OK, twelve times. It should only take a few hours.
\nUntil he wakes up in jail. And he’s not alone.
\nHis fellow prisoners: a cadre of alien soldiers. His prison: an ethereal boundary that will imprison their spirits until their bodies die. His jailers can’t even see him. But their pet cat (er, iguana cat?) can - and it’s got a serious case of the zoomies.
\nWith humanity’s place in the odd and ever-widening universe riding on Toby’s choices, it’s time to saddle up for a ghostly game of cat and mouse.
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This lyrical runaway Swedish hit follows a reclusive, elderly couple who cross paths with a pair of twentysomething newcomers in a small mountain town, revealing an unexpected, shared history and the reclamation of a nearly extinct culture.
\nMeet Má eccentric, eighty-five years old, and facing a cancer diagnosis. She’s determined to keep the truth about her illness from her husband Biera, while also finding someone who can take care of him once she’s gone.
\nMeet a new transplant to the village, recently engaged to Mimmi, and mourning the death of his mother. One day, when Kaj unexpectedly finds a box of Sámi - the indigenous people of Scandinavia - handicrafts belonging to his mother, he unlocks something he never anticipated, something that will change his life for years to come.
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Silje Marie and her wife Helene have two young sons, Olav and Henry - each conceived with the help of a different sperm donor. When Helene takes the children on summer vacation, Silje Marie stays behind to pack up their family home ahead of a renovation. But the solitude offers more than just time to sort through old belongings - it opens up a space for all the thoughts she's kept buried.
\nAlone for the first time in years, the house still and silent, Silje Marie begins to question the choices that have shaped their family. She is haunted by the forbidden thought that she feels a different bond to each of her sons: an unspoken distinction she cannot ignore. And then there is the other mother: a woman she has met in secret, whose son bears an uncanny resemblance to Henry.
\nThe Other Mother is a fearless and darkly absorbing portrait of a woman in crisis. In spare, deeply affecting prose, Tina Åmodt explores the complexities of parenthood, biology and queer lives - and the enduring question of what it means to be a mother.
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Monica Campo is pregnant with her first child when, moments before being wheeled into emergency heart surgery, her mother confesses a long-held Monica’s father is not the man who raised her. But when her mother wakes up and begins having delusional episodes, Monica doesn’t know what to believe - whether the confession was real or just a channeling of the telenovela her mother watches nightly.
\nIn her despair, Monica wants to speak with only one her ex-boyfriend of five years, Manny. She can’t help but worry, though, what this says about her relationship with her fiancé and father of her unborn child.
\nMonica’s search for the truth leads her to a new understanding of the the early eighties when her parents arrived from Cuba on the famous Mariel boatlift, and the tumultuous seventies, a decade after Castro’s takeover, when some people were still secretly fighting his regime - people like her mother and the man she claims is Monica’s real father.
\nTell It to Me Singing is a story that takes readers from Miami to Cuba to the jungles of Costa Rica and, along the way, explores the question of how and to whom we belong, how a life is built, and how we know when we’re home.
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In the spring of 1995, Nate Cartwright has lost everything: his parents are dead, his older brother wants nothing to do with him, and he's been fired from his job as a journalist in Washington DC. With nothing left to lose, he returns to his family's summer cabin outside the small mountain town of Roseland, Oregon to try and find some sense of direction. The cabin should be empty.
\nIt's not.
\nInside is a man named Alex. And with him is an extraordinary little girl who calls herself Artemis Darth Vader.
\nArtemis, who isn't exactly as she appears.
\nSoon it becomes clear that Nate must make a choice: let himself drown in the memories of his past, or fight for a future he never thought possible.
\nBecause the girl is special. And forces are descending upon them who want nothing more than to control her.
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In the ruins of Caswell, Maine, Carter Bennett learned the truth of what had been right in front of him the entire time. And then it - he -was gone.
\nDesperate for answers, Carter takes to the road, leaving family and the safety of his pack behind, all in the name of a man he only knows as a feral wolf. But therein lies the danger: wolves are pack animals, and the longer Carter is on his own, the more his mind slips toward the endless void of Omega insanity.
\nBut he pushes on, following the trail left by Gavin. Gavin, the son of Robert Livingstone. The half-brother of Gordo Livingstone.
\nWhat Carter finds will change the course of the wolves forever. Because Gavin's history with the Bennett pack goes back further than anyone knows, a secret kept hidden by Carter's father, Thomas Bennett.
\nAnd with this knowledge comes a price: the sins of the fathers now rest upon the shoulders of their sons.
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In Nova City, there are people capable of feats that defy the imagination. They're called Extraordinaries.
\nThere is Shadow Star: a protector who can manipulate darkness in his quest to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
\nHis arch-nemesis is Pyro Storm: an Extraordinary capable of controlling fire who is bent on bringing Nova City to its knees.
\nAnd then there's sixteen-year-old Nicholas Bell: who isn't Extraordinary in the slightest.
\nHe's Shadow Star's number one fan, writing fan fiction of their adventures together and dreaming of a day where he too dons a costume and fights crime. Too bad ADHD isn't a superpower, otherwise Nick would be golden.
\nInstead of stopping villains and their convoluted schemes of global domination, Nick must contend with starting his junior year, a father who doesn't trust him, and a best friend named Seth, who may or may not be the love of Nick's short, uneventful life. It should be enough.
\nAnd it is . . . until a fateful encounter with Shadow Star forces Nick to realize his true destiny. He's tired of being ordinary, and he'll do whatever it takes to become something more.
\nSomething Extraordinary.
\n
Through bravery, charm, and an alarming amount of enthusiasm, Nick landed himself the superhero boyfriend of his dreams. Now instead of just writing stories about him, Nick actually gets to kiss him. On the mouth. A lot. But having a superhero boyfriend isn’t everything Nick thought it would be - he’s still struggling to make peace with his own lack of extraordinary powers.
\nWhen new Extraordinaries begin arriving in Nova City - siblings who can manipulate smoke and ice, a mysterious hero who can move objects with their mind, and a drag queen superhero with the best name and the most-sequined costume anyone has ever had - it’s up to Nick and his friends Seth, Gibby, and Jazz to determine who is virtuous and who is villainous.
\nAnd new Extraordinaries aren’t the only things coming to light. Long-held secrets and neglected truths are surfacing that challenge everything Nick knows about justice, family, and being extraordinary. Which is a lot to handle when Nick really just wants to finish his self-insert bakery AU fanfic.
\nWill it all come together in the end or will it all go down in flames?
\n
All Robbie Fontaine ever wanted was a place to belong. After the death of his mother, he bounces around from pack to pack, forming temporary bonds to keep from turning feral. It’s enough - until he receives a summons from the wolf stronghold in Caswell, Maine.
\nLife as the trusted second to Michelle Hughes - the Alpha of all - and the cherished friend of a gentle old witch teaches Robbie what it means to be pack, to have a home.
\nBut when a mission from Michelle sends Robbie into the field, he finds himself questioning where he belongs and everything he’s been told. Whispers of traitorous wolves and wild magic abound - but who are the traitors and who the betrayed?
\nMore than anything, Robbie hungers for answers, because one of those alleged traitors is Kelly Bennett - the wolf who may be his mate.
\nThe truth has a way of coming out. And when it does, everything will shatter.
\n
School’s out for the summer and a raging, malevolent heat has blanketed Nova City. Dark, twisted, probably evil shadows have drenched the doorsteps of her good people’s homes. And Nicholas Bell - fanboy, hero, ADHD-haver - is being super dramatic again.
\nBut honestly, Nick’s life is pretty much perfect. Yeah, it’s hot out, but he finally gets to team up and train with his steamy superhero boyfriend to bring justice, protection, and disaster energy to the people of Nova City. It’s everything he’s ever dreamed of!
\nWith graduation on the horizon and his future unknowable, Nick focuses on enjoying the present. Seth, Jazz, and Gibby are busy setting up headquarters for Lighthouse, their hero team. Nick’s dad has partnered with former chief of police Rodney Caplan to start a new private investigation agency. And Nick’s mother, the superhero known as TK, is right there at Nick’s side. Where she’s always been.
\nHasn’t she?
\nBut something’s off. It’s not just Simon Burke running for mayor and campaigning to “cure” Extraordinaries. And it’s not even the rumors that Nick’s ex-boyfriend and villain-in-the-making Owen Burke has escaped.
\nSomething else isn’t right, and Nick will need all his friends and loved ones together to uncover the truth before Nova City falls prey to the Burke family.
\nA truth that will reveal a traitor in their midst and burn through their lives like a wildfire.
\n
A magical island. A dangerous task. A burning secret.
Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.
When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.
But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.
An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place - and realsing that family is yours.
Josiah Erickson wants to be a movie star. The problem with that is so does half of Los Angeles. But he’s on his way, what with memorable roles as a TV show background cadaver and a guy in a commercial for herpes medication. All he needs is his big break. And that break may come in the form of a novelist who goes by the enigmatic name of Q-Bert.
\nQ-Bert, who is ready to make his directorial debut in a film Josy would be perfect for. Q-Bert, who Josy may or may not have a friend-crush on, and potentially something more. Being demisexual can be confusing.
\nFrom the City of Angels to the small mountain town of Abby, Oregon, Josy will give his all to make sure his dreams come true - even the ones he never thought possible.
\n
Gustavo Tiberius is not normal. He knows this. Everyone in his small town of Abby, Oregon, knows this. He reads encyclopedias every night before bed. He has a pet ferret called Harry S. Truman. He owns a video rental store that no one goes to. His closest friends are a lady named Lottie with drag queen hair and a trio of elderly Vespa riders known as the We Three Queens.
Gus is not normal. And he’s fine with that. All he wants is to be left alone.
Until Casey, an asexual stoner hipster and the newest employee at Lottie’s Lattes, enters his life. For some reason, Casey thinks Gus is the greatest thing ever. And maybe Gus is starting to think the same thing about Casey, even if Casey is obsessive about Instagramming his food.
But Gus isn’t normal and Casey deserves someone who can be. Suddenly wanting to be that someone, Gus steps out of his comfort zone and plans to become the most normal person ever.
After all, what could possibly go wrong?
On a temperate morning in 1954, Mike wakes up in the idyllic town of Amorea.
\nAmorea is perfect.
\nMike works his dream job at the local bookstore, where he leads lively discussions of literature with the local women’s club. At the diner, the walls are plastered with beaming photos of the residents, and all the staff know his order - especially Sean, the waiter who has a special smile just for Mike and, after years of anticipation, is ready to take the next step in their burgeoning romance.
\nEverything is perfect.
\nBut the edges of the town are beginning to fray. Odd things catch Mike’s attention, things no one else seems to notice or care about. There are no children or parents in Amorea and no one who’s left town for the far mountains has ever come back. There are subjects in the diner photos that only a few people can remember.
\nOne night, Mike wakes up to a stormcloud of uncanny starlings blackening the sky. And soon enough, he begins to question whether his name is even Mike.
\nAs violent memories of another life interfere with everything good about Amorea and Mike loses hold on his identity, he will do whatever he can to keep Sean from the darkness that is coming.
\nNothing here is perfect, but there is someone worth saving.
\n
Gordo Livingstone never forgot the lessons carved into his skin. Hardened by the betrayal of a pack who left him behind, he sought solace in the garage in his tiny mountain town, vowing never again to involve himself in the affairs of wolves.
\nIt should have been enough.
\nAnd it was, until the wolves came back, and with them, Mark Bennett. In the end, they faced the beast together as a pack . . . and won.
\nNow, a year later, Gordo has found himself once again the witch of the Bennett pack. Green Creek has settled after the death of Richard Collins, and Gordo constantly struggles to ignore Mark and the song that howls between them.
\nBut time is running out. Something is coming. And this time, it’s crawling from within.
\nSome bonds, no matter how strong, were made to be broken.
\n
Arthur Parnassus lives a good life built on the ashes of a bad one.
\nHe’s the master of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six dangerous and magical children who live there.
\nArthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. He is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department In Charge of Magical Youth. And there’s the island’s sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children.
\nBut when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.
\nAnd when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home - one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name that Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from - Arthur knows they’re at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.
\nWelcome back to Marsyas Island. This is Arthur’s story.
\nSomewhere Beyond the Sea is a story of resistance, lovingly told, about the daunting experience of fighting for the life you want to live and doing the work to keep it.
\n
When a reaper comes to collect Wallace Price from his own funeral, Wallace suspects he really might be dead.
\nInstead of leading him directly to the afterlife, the reaper takes him to a small village. On the outskirts, off the path through the woods, tucked between mountains, is a particular tea shop, run by a man named Hugo. Hugo is the tea shop's owner to locals and the ferryman to souls who need to cross over.
\nBut Wallace isn't ready to abandon the life he barely lived. With Hugo's help he finally starts to learn about all the things he missed in life.
\nWhen the Manager, a curious and powerful being, arrives at the tea shop and gives Wallace one week to cross over, Wallace sets about living a lifetime in seven days.
\n
Husbands Don and Rodney have lived a good long life. Together they’ve experienced the highest highs of love and family, and lows so low that they felt like the end of the world.
\nNow, the world is ending for real. A wandering black hole is coming for Earth and in a month everything and everyone they’ve ever known will be gone.
\nSuddenly, after 40 years together, Don and Rodney are out of time. They’re in a race against the clock to make it from Maine to Washington State to take care of some unfinished business before it’s all over.
\nOn the road they meet those who refuse to believe death is coming and those who rush to meet it. But there are also people living their final days as best they know how - impromptu weddings, bright burning bonfires, shared meals, and new friends.
\nAnd as the black hole draws near, among ball lightning and under a cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky, Don and Rodney will look back on their lives and ask if their best was good enough.
\nIs it enough to burn bright if nothing comes from the ashes?
\n
Ox was twelve when his daddy taught him a very valuable lesson. He said that Ox wasn’t worth anything and people would never understand him. Then he left.
\nOx was sixteen when he met the boy on the road, the boy who talked and talked and talked. Ox found out later the boy hadn’t spoken in almost two years before that day, and that the boy belonged to a family who had moved into the house at the end of the lane.
\nOx was seventeen when he found out the boy’s secret, and it painted the world around him in colors of red and orange and violet, of Alpha and Beta and Omega.
\nOx was twenty-three when murder came to town and tore a hole in his head and heart. The boy chased after the monster with revenge in his bloodred eyes, leaving Ox behind to pick up the pieces.
\nIt’s been three years since that fateful day - and the boy is back. Except now he’s a man, and Ox can no longer ignore the song that howls between them.
\n
From renowned neuroscientist TJ Power comes a revolutionary new approach to our mental and physical health.
\nDo feelings of low mood, lack of energy, or a struggle to focus stop you from living your best life? In The DOSE Effect, Tj Power unlocks the science of happiness by showing us how to harness four key chemicals in the brain:
\nDopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, and Endorphins.
\nGrounded in cutting-edge neuroscience, this transformative guide reveals how common feelings like stress, anxiety, and depression are directly linked to imbalances in our brain chemistry, often triggered by our rapidly changing, modern lifestyles.
\nPacked with simple, practical tools, The DOSE Effect shows you how to take back control. It equips you with the knowledge and skills to thrive in today’s fast-paced world, offering strategies to build resilience, cope with stress and feel more fulfilled.
\nSo why wait? Let The DOSE Effect guide you toward a happier, healthier, and more productive you.
Anaya Sebeya is missing.
\nBefore her disappearance, Anaya was a brilliant a rising star. Invited to a prestigious writing residency at Günter Huis, an eerie colonial mansion on the slopes of Devil’s Peak, Anaya was supposed to craft the next great African literary masterpiece - and so were four other young, emerging writers, all competing for the grand prize. But Anaya never made it home.
\nWhen a sensationalised true crime podcast about Anaya emerges, claiming to reveal everything that happened at Günter Huis, her sister Ranewa is both skeptical and furious. But with each surreal episode, Ranewa begins to piece together a truth worse than she ever could have imagined . . .
\nAt Günter Huis, Anaya’s nightmares consume her. Time slips away from her. Günter Huis inflicts distorted visions and terrible supernatural visitations, pushing Anaya to tell a story no one dares. But exorcising the house’s endless cycle of evil requires a sacrifice that neither Anaya nor her fellows are ready to make.
\n
In the walled city of Kos, corrupt mages can magically call forth sin from a sinner in the form of sin-beasts – lethal creatures spawned from feelings of guilt.
Taj is the most talented of the aki, young sin-eaters indentured by the mages to slay the sin-beasts. But Taj’s livelihood comes at a terrible cost. When he kills a sin-beast, a tattoo of the beast appears on his skin while the guilt of committing the sin appears on his mind. Most aki are driven mad by the process, but 17-year-old Taj is cocky and desperate to provide for his family.
When Taj is called to eat a sin of a royal, he’s suddenly thrust into the center of a dark conspiracy to destroy Kos. Now Taj must fight to save the princess that he loves - and his own life.
Taj is headed west, but the consequences of leaving Kos behind confront him at every turn. Innocent civilians flee to refugee camps as Karima's dark magic continues to descend on the city. Taj must return, but first he needs a plan.
With Arzu's help, Taj and Aliya make it to the village of her ancestors, home of the tastahlik - sin-eaters with Taj's same ability to both battle and call forth sins. As Taj comes to terms with his new magic, he realises there are two very different groups of tastahlik - one using their powers for good, the other for more selfish ends.
Aliya is struggling with her own unique capabilities. She's immersed in her work to uncover the secret to Karima's magic, but her health begins to mysteriously deteriorate. With the help of a local western mage, Aliya uncovers her true destiny - a future she's not sure she wants.
As Taj and Aliya explore their feelings for each other and Arzu connects with her homeland, the local westerners begin to question Taj's true identity. Karima is on his heels, sending dark warnings to the little village where he's hiding. Taj will have to go back and face her before she sends her mostly deadly weapon - Taj's former best friend, Bo.
In the 2050s, Earth has begun to empty. Those with the means and the privilege have departed the great cities of the United States for the more comfortable confines of space colonies. Those left behind salvage what they can from the collapsing infrastructure. As they eke out an existence, their neighborhoods are being cannibalised. Brick by brick, their houses are sent to the colonies, what was once a home now a quaint reminder for the colonists of the world that they wrecked.
\nA primal biblical epic flung into the future, Goliath weaves together disparate narratives - a space-dweller looking at New Haven, Connecticut as a chance to reconnect with his spiraling lover; a group of laborers attempting to renew the promises of Earth’s crumbling cities; a journalist attempting to capture the violence of the streets; a marshal trying to solve a kidnapping - into a richly urgent mosaic about race, class, gentrification, and who is allowed to be the hero of any history.
Veteran and private eye Boubacar doesn’t need much - least of all trouble - but trouble always seems to find him. Work has dried up, and he’d rather be left alone to deal with his bills as the Harmattan rolls in to coat the city in dust, but Bouba is a down on his luck deux fois, suspended between two cultures and two worlds.
\nWhen a bleeding woman stumbles onto his doorway, only to vanish just as quickly, Bouba reluctantly finds himself enmeshed in the secrets of a city boiling on the brink of violence. The French occupiers are keen to keep the peace at any cost, and the indigenous dugulen have long been shattered into restless factions vying for a chance to reclaim their lost heritage and abilities. As each hardwon clue reveals horrifying new truths, Bouba may have to carve out parts of himself he’s long kept hidden, and decide what he’s willing to offer next.
\nFrom the visionary author of Riot Baby and Goliath, Harmattan Season is a gripping fantasy noir in the tradition of Chandler, Hammond, and Christie that will have you by the throat - both dryly funny and unforgettably evocative.
It’s been five years since the Biafran War ended. Ify is now nineteen and living where she’s always dreamed–the Space Colonies. She is a respected, high-ranking medical officer and has dedicated her life to helping refugees like herself rebuild in the Colonies.
Back in the still devastated Nigeria, Uzo, a young synth, is helping an aid worker, Xifeng, recover images and details of the war held in the technology of destroyed androids. Uzo, Xifeng, and the rest of their team are working to preserve memories of the many lives lost, despite the government’s best efforts to eradicate any signs that the war ever happened.
Though they are working toward common goals of helping those who suffered, Ify and Uzo are worlds apart. But when a mysterious virus breaks out among the children in the Space Colonies, their paths collide. Ify makes it her mission to figure out what’s causing the deadly disease. And doing so means going back to the corrupt homeland she thought she’d left behind forever.
A missionary in nineteenth-century Africa suffers a chilling crisis of faith in a short story about deliverance, friendship, and metamorphosis. Nathaniel is a well-intentioned, if naive, British cleric feeling blessed to educate a West African village about the benevolent power of God.
\nBut as slavers encroach, Nathaniel’s endeavor is daunted by the realities unfolding on the beautiful homeland of his congregation. It seems the Devil has power too.
\nWhat follows for Nathaniel is a profound spiritual upheaval as he questions his purpose and even his humanity.
Rooted in foundational loss and the hope that can live in anger, Riot Baby is both a global dystopian narrative an intimate family story with quietly devastating things to say about love, fury, and the black American experience.
Ella and Kev are brother and sister, both gifted with extraordinary power. Their childhoods are defined and destroyed by structural racism and brutality. Their futures might alter the world. When Kev is incarcerated for the crime of being a young black man in America, Ella - through visits both mundane and supernatural - tries to show him the way to a revolution that could burn it all down.
The year is 2172. Climate change and nuclear disasters have rendered much of earth unlivable. Only the lucky ones have escaped to space colonies in the sky.
In a war-torn Nigeria, battles are fought using flying, deadly mechs and soldiers are outfitted with bionic limbs and artificial organs meant to protect them from the harsh, radiation-heavy climate. Across the nation, as the years-long civil war wages on, survival becomes the only way of life.
Two sisters, Onyii and Ify, dream of more. Their lives have been marked by violence and political unrest. Still, they dream of peace, of hope, of a future together.
And they're willing to fight an entire war to get there.
The Longe siblings are really botching their parents' American Dream.
\nSola Longe, eldest daughter, estranged from the family, is secretly back home in Chicago for the first time in a decade. She’s a newly single and recently disgraced influencer trying to quietly put her life back together again. The other three Longe siblings aren't doing much better.
\nAnjola is in love with her best friend, who just got engaged to someone else; Karen, a college junior and the baby of the family, is grappling with her sexuality and self-image; and Ola, the golden child with a baby of his own on the way, is questioning his marriage and how to raise a Black son in America.
\nSola’s unexpected return sets them on a crash course towards each other, and when the four siblings find themselves together again at their Nigerian immigrant parents' Thanksgiving table, a decade’s worth of secrets and a lifetime of resentments explode to the fore.
\nIn the wreckage of their fateful reunion, each Longe is forced to reckon with the past, take stock of what really matters, and find a way back to each other. Big-hearted, hilarious, and poignant, Leave Your Mess At Home is an insightful debut about forgiveness, unconditional love, and becoming who you want to be, asking the what do we owe to our families, and what do we owe to ourselves?
\n
Oak Drive can be found nestled tidily in an unassuming English town. Its uniform front gardens overlook a midsized common which the street's residents survey with quiet, some might say smug, pride.
\nThis is the sort of place where it pays to sweat the small stuff, and let the big things look after themselves. Bins should be placed back in their right positions in a timely fashion and paintwork should share the same tasteful but muted palette.
\nSometimes, however, the big things do not look after themselves - and all hell can break loose in sleepy suburbia.
\nCommon Decency chronicles the lives and interactions of the street's residents as they band together to save a beloved oak tree from destruction at the hands of ruthless developers.
\nAs tensions rise and repressed neuroses and resentments seep out, the secrets of Oak Drive threaten to shatter the well-ordered veneer, revealing some rather more unsettling truths. . .
\n
When a Russian superweapon is let loose under the waves, it's up to President Jack Ryan to find a countermove.
\nUS intelligence says there's something going on in Russia. While their land forces have been decimated by corruption and incompetence, the Navy seems to be pouring money into some secret project.
\nAnalysts are stumped, until the knot is untangled by one particularly bright young woman at the Office of Naval Intelligence - Katie Ryan, the youngest daughter of President Jack Ryan. Like her father, she sees patterns where other don't, and she's determined that the Russians are about to launch a super missile sibmarine, the Belgorod.
\nNow the race is on to determine where the sub is and whether it poses a threat to the continental US. Written by Brian Andrews & Jeffrey Wilson.
\n
For decades, Taiwan has been a thorn in the side of the Chinese government. New Chinese President Li Jian Jun is done fooling around. He's devised a secret military operation to take the island.
\nOnly one man knows how to stop Li's bloody plan for reunification: Minister of Defense Qin Haiyu. Fearing for his life and the safety of his family, Qin covertly makes contact with the CIA in Beijing and signals his desire to defect to the West. To get Qin out, John Clark creates an international task force reminiscent of Rainbow Six and goes undercover in mainland China.
\nMeanwhile, Lt. Commander Katie Ryan is deployed to the tip of the spear on the destroyer USS Jason Dunham to defend Taiwan. Threatened by an encircling Chinese armada, she's under pressure to find a flaw in the invaders' plan for her father to exploit. For his part, President Jack Ryan may have the power of the entire US military at his disposal, but what he really needs are Li's secret plans from Defense Minister Qin so he can stave off a war.
\nBecause America's Defense Protocol could lead to a game of mutual destruction that could cost the lives of thousands of young soldiers, sailors, special operators . . . and his daughter.
\n
Luanda, Angola
\nAn American intelligence team on a routine mission is wiped out. The sole survivor: Kyle Ryan, youngest son of President Jack Ryan.
\nBut the massacre of his colleagues is just the prelude to an even more devastating conflict - a deadly military coup in the central African nation. The next step is a shocking escalation, the seizure of the American Embassy and the taking of numerous hostages including the ambassador and the younger Ryan.
\nAs US forces fight insurgents street by street in the African capital city, Lieutenant Katie Ryan leads the effort to untangle the mystery behind the coup and the identity of the plotters. Is it the Chinese government? Is it a corrupt Angolan general? Or is there a darker force pulling the strings?
\nIn the White House Situation Room, President Jack Ryan and his National Intelligence Team anxiously await the answers. He may have a full Marine Expeditionary Unit at his command, but the full executive power of the presidency is useless if they can't find the target.
\nOne thing's for sure, Kyle and his fellow hostages sit at the center of the bullseye - human shields to deflect an American response. Jack Ryan has faced many challenges as President, but solving this problem is no one-man job. It's going to take all three of them to get through this.
\n
Jack Ryan Jr. is in a world of trouble. When a benign surveillance operation takes a deadly turn, Jack finds himself locked in a struggle with an unseen enemy bent on destroying the Campus. The chase leads Jack to the South China Sea where a midair collision between aircraft from rival nations threatens to serve as a flash point for the entire region. As Jack frantically tries to put the pieces of the conspiracy together, the Campus is hit with a crippling attack. When the dust settles, Jack is one of the few operators still standing and the Campus’s de facto leader. But the fight is just beginning.
As tensions escalate, Jack’s mysterious adversary executes a brilliant campaign to paralyze the American government even as China inches closer to invading Taiwan. With the odds stacked against him and no help in sight, Jack and his shattered team must stop the world’s two remaining super powers from stumbling into war even as the noose around the Campus grows ever tighter.
Every operation has a cost.
This time the bill might just be too much to pay.
Jack Ryan Jr is on a simple job. An all-expenses paid trip to Israel in exchange for a of couple hours easy work, reporting back to an old friend at the CIA. What could be easier?
\nJack is here merely as an observer, but as he settles into his work in the market, he sees the glint of a knife, and throws himself in front of a woman and her young son under attack.
\nCover blown, he finds himself the target of trained killers. Alone and outgunned, Jack will have to use all his skills to protect the life of the child.
\n
The quiet of a Texas night is shattered by the sounds of screeching brakes, crumpling metal and, most shockingly, rapid gunfire. The auto accident Jack Ryan Jr thought he witnessed turned out to be a professional hit. Jack may be too late to save the victim, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to let the hitters escape justice.
\nHe’s got just one lead - a meeting the victim was going to. When Jack shows up instead, he’s drawn into the seedy underbelly of a small, Texas town and the cold case of a college student who vanished from its streets.
\nJack is left with nothing but questions. Who wants it to look like the victim was drunk? Why does someone want an innocent witness killed? And most of all, what’s a team of South African hitmen doing in the Lone Star State?
\nHis quest for answers will take Jack from a quiet Texas road to the middle of an international conspiracy and may just cost him his life.
\n
When the leader of North Korea is catastrophically injured, his incapacitation inadvertently triggers a “dead-man’s switch,” activating an army of sleeper agents in South Korea and precipitating a struggle for succession.
Jack Ryan, Jr. is in Seoul to interview a potential addition to the Campus. But his benign trip takes a deadly turn when a wave of violence perpetrated by North Korean operatives grips South Korea’s capital. A mysterious voice from North Korea offers Jack a way to stop the peninsula’s rush to war, but her price may be more than he can afford to pay.
Jack Ryan, the former president of the United States, is out of office, but not out of the loop about his brainchild, the Campus, a highly effective, counter-terrorism organisation that operates outside the Washington hierarchy.
\nBut what Ryan doesn't know is that his son, Jack Ryan, Jr., has joined his cousins, Brian and Dominic Caruso, at the shadowy Campus. While a highly effective analyst, young Ryan hungers for the action of a field agent.
\nThe Campus has now turned their sights on the Emir, the number one terrorist threat to western civilisation. A reclusive figure and mastermind of vicious terrorist acts, the Emir has eluded capture by the world's law enforcement agencies.
\nBut now with the help of ex-CIA agent John Clark and pro Marine Colonel Ding Chavez the Campus is in on the hunt. The mission: to bring the Emir in dead or alive.
\n
Jack Ryan Jr is enjoying some R&R when an attempt is made on his life. He survives, but learns that another attempt is imminent. Jack sets out to find out who wants him dead, and why.
\nWithout the resources of The Campus - the elite agency from which he is on a leave-of-absence - but with the help of an investigative journalist, Jack embarks on his own secret campaign to uncover the truth about Rostock, a shadowy security firm based in Germany. But what can one man do against all Rostock's might?
\nThe world is about to find out.
\n
On a routine intelligence mission in Tehran, Jack Ryan, Jr., meets his oldest friend, Seth Gregory. As they part, Seth gives Jack a key and a perplexing message.
\nThe next day Jack is summoned by two men who claim Seth has disappearedwith funds for a vital intelligence operation. Insisting Seth has turned, they leave Jack with a warning: If you hear from Seth Gregory, call us immediately.
\nBut they don't know Jack. He won't abandon a friend.
\nJack soon finds himself lost in intrigue, lies, and betrayal where no one is who they seem to be - not even Seth.
It starts with the destruction of a US Coast Guard cutter and the loss of her entire crew. But the USCG Claiborne was on an innocuous mission to open a sea lane between an oil field off the coast of Guyana and the refineries of southern Louisiana. The destruction of the ship, tragic as it is, won't stop that mission from continuing.
\nSo who would sacrifice twenty-two men and women just to slow down the plan? That's the question plaguing Jack Ryan Jr. He's in Guyana to work a deal to get his company, Hendley Associates, in on the ground floor of this new discovery, but the destruction of the Claiborne and the kidnapping of the Guyanese Interior Minister make it clear that there's a malignant force working to destroy Guyana's oil industry.
\nIt's up to Jack to identify the killers before they draw a bead on him, but how can he do that when the line of demarcation between friend and foe is constantly shifting?
\n
The vibrant economy of the new Vietnam is a shiny lure for Western capital. Companies are racing to uncover ideal opportunities. Not wanting to be left behind, Hendley Associates has sent their best analyst, Jack Ryan, Jr., to mine for investment gold. And he may have found some in a rare earth mining company - GeoTech.
\nBut a trip with a Hendley colleague to the Highlands to observe the company’s operations takes a treacherous turn when their helicopter is shot down. Some things haven’t changed, and Vietnam is still the plaything of powerful neighbors. The Chinese are determined to keep Jack from finding the truth about what exactly is being processed at the isolated factory.
\nNow Jack is in a race for his life. He’s got to stay one step ahead of a pack of killers while supporting his wounded friend. He’ll get no help from the government, because in the jungle, it’s the shadow state that rules.
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A string of savage murders in the United States seems unrelated until the FBI makes a shocking discovery: a decade ago, all of the murder victims were involved in a raid to eliminate the Umayyad Revolutionary Council, a vicious terror group that - were it not for John Clark and the Campus - would have perpetrated the most devastating attack against critical American infrastructure in history. Now it appears they're back, with a next-generation leader hell-bent on revenge.
\nMary Pat Foley, Director of National Intelligence, greenlights an op for the Campus to cut the head off the snake. Clark taps ex-Delta commando Bartosz \"Midas\" Jankowski to lead a kill team deep into the mountains to snuff out the charismatic terror leader. But when the hunters become the hunted, it's up to Jack Ryan Jr. to avert disaster amid a deadly power game of nations vying for control of the disputed region.
\nOn a rapid covert ingress from neighbouring India, he'll traverse the Himalayan wilderness with a rifle on his back and a tough Mujahadin fighter by his side. Jack knows time is growing short - he must save his team and lead them into position to be the first to hit terminal velocity.
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President Jack Ryan is used to dealing with military threats to the American people, but how do you protect them against perfectly counterfeited pharmaceuticals? Patients in hospitals, clinics, and at home are dying when the drugs they need for survival turn out to be ineffective copies.
\nAn corrupt pharmaceutical billionaire has spent millions supporting radical groups while using the chaos they engender to cover his money-making schemes, but for a man with such towering ambitions, the only real goal is power. To get that, he'll have to eliminate the only impediment in his path - Jack Ryan. The question is, how do you attack the most closely guarded man in the world?
\nFor a man who has built his fortune on underhanded dealings and misdirection, the answer is as simple as it is shocking: he'll have to kidnap the First Lady.
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Father Pat West, S.J. was a buddy of the young Jack Ryan when they were both undergraduates at Loyola University. Father West left a comfortable job in the philosophy department at Georgetown to work with the poor in Indonesia. Now he's been arrested and accused of blasphemy against Islam.
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President Ryan is desperate to rescue his old friend, but he can't move officially against the Indonesians. Instead he relies on the Campus team to find out who is framing the priest.
There's one other twist to the story. President Ryan discovers a voicemail on his private cell phone from the priest warning about a coming attack against America . . .
For a century, the Panama Canal has served as the path between the seas. Control of this vital waterway is the difference between free trade and chaos in world markets.
So when Panamanian President Rafael Botero asks for a show of support against the socialist opposition, his old friend President Jack Ryan can’t turn down an invitation to visit the country, but what seems like an ordinary opportunity to preach the values of democracy quickly turns into a nightmare when a full-blown coup d’état erupts.
President Ryan and his Secret Service team are cut off and out of communication. In Washington, the Vice President is coordinating a military response, but there's still one more obstacle.
One of the main forces behind the coup is the ruthless criminal organization known as the Camarilla. They’ve had their tentacles deep inside the plot to overthrow the government. All of their hard work has just presented them with an unexpected opportunity they can’t resist - the chance to kill President Jack Ryan.
President Jack Ryan preaches caution when the prospects for a Persian Spring excite the rest of the world. His is the lone Western voice urging watchfulness.
\nAs he says, \"Sometimes it's better to have all the bad guys all in one place where you can keep an eye on them rather than scattered around the Middle East.\"
Meanwhile, the Campus has been trailing a major international arms dealer whose business has waxed as the power of the Ayatollah has waned. Now the change of regimes in Iran has opened up formerly unimagined possibilities to him. Possibilities that may lead to a new balance of power in the region.
As America is outmaneuvered by an increasingly bold President Zhou of China, Jack Ryan depends on the operatives of the Campus secret intelligence agency to plug the gaps between diplomacy and negotiation.
\nBut as an international summit approaches, Ryan must face Zhou alone.
\nWhat he doesn't know is that the secret mastermind plotting conspiracy and destruction has had the leader of the free world in his sights all along . . .
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1985: For Jack Ryan, the Cold War is burning hot.
\nA top secret F117 aircraft crashes into the Nevada desert. The Nighthawk is the most advanced fighting machine in the world and the Soviets will do anything to get their hands on its secrets.
\nIn East Berlin, a mysterious figure contacts the CIA with an incredible offer: invaluable details of his government's espionage plans in return for asylum. With the East German secret police closing in, someone will have to go to behind the Berlin Wall to investigate the potential defector. It's a job Deputy Director James Greer can only trust to one man - Jack Ryan.
\nRyan is a former Marine and a brilliant CIA analyst, but this time he's in enemy territory with a professional assassin on his tail. Can he get the right answers before the Cold War turns into a Red Winter?
\nTwenty years after Tom Clancy's classic novel Red Rabbit, this is white-knuckle prequel introduces a never-before-seen Jack Ryan at the beginning of his career.
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When brilliant and eccentric scientist Liu Wangshu disappears from his apartment in China, the Ministry of State Security is furious, and certain they know what's happened: a defection to the Americans.
\nPresident Jack Ryan knows how valuable an asset Liu would be - the inventor is responsible for much of China's recent technological progress, with his latest project rumoured to be the biggest yet. The problem is that none of Ryan's team have any idea where Liu is.
\nAnd what's worse, Ryan discovers that China is already watching them closely: a mole, code-named SURVEYOR, has managed to infiltrate US intelligence, with a terrifying level of access.
\nThe new Cold War is about to get very hot indeed . . .
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Decades ago, as a young CIA analyst, President Jack Ryan, Sr. inadvertently uncovered the existence of a KGB assassin, code-named Zenith. He never found the killer.
\nIn the present, President Valeri Volodin has risen to power in the Russian republic. But the foundations of his empire are built on a bloody secret from the past, and he'll eliminate anyone who comes close to that truth.
\nWhen an old friend of the Ryans is poisoned by a radioactive agent, the trail leads to Russia. And for Jack Ryan, Jr. it's time to finish what his father started . . .
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Russia is hurting. It's economy is tanking and its 'adventures' abroad have proved costly. President Volodin knows that his own survival depends on restoring Russian pride.
\nWhen a series of explosions, assassinations and attacks rock the global order, only one man in the West recognises the true cause of the chaos: American President Jack Ryan.
\nWith Russian troops massing on Europe's borders, President Ryan cannot use military might without escalating conflict and playing into Volodin's hands. Instead he turns to his covert intelligence agencies.
\nThey must uncover, infiltrate and neutralise each and every threat. But time is running out. And this war is about to go global . . .
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International stalemate with North Korea continues into its seventh decade. A young, untested dictator is determined to prove himself by breaking the deadlock. His plans hang on the country's nuclear ambitions, a program previously impeded by lack of resources.
\nHowever, there has been a dramatic change in the nation's economic fortune. A rich deposit of valuable minerals have been found and, coupled with their nuclear capabilities, the money from this will make North Korea a dangerous force on the world stage.
\nThere's just one more stage to this perfect plan . . . the elimination of the president of the United States.
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Jack Ryan, Sr. has made a tough choice. He's running for President of the United States and giving up a peaceful retirement to help his country in its darkest hour. But he doesn't plan on the perfidy of his opponent who uses trumped up charges to attack one of Ryan's closest comrades, John Clark.
\nNow, Clark engages in a desperate struggle across three continents. He must travel the world, staying one step ahead of the authorities, and a shadowy organization tasked to bring him in, all while trying to find the man who fingered him for a crime he never committed.
Meanwhile, the Campus, the top secret off-the-books intelligence agency, faces its most implacable foea renegade Pakistani general who plans to unleash a wave of terror that will restore the Caliphate.
With John Clark missing, Jack Ryan, Jr., Ding Chavez, and Dominic Caruso must race against the clock to foil the terrorists' plans and interdict the loose nukes which are the key to this unholy campaign.
Dominic Caruso. Nephew of President Jack Ryan. FBI agent and operator for The Campus, a top secret intelligence agency that works off the books for the US government.
\nEthan Ross was a mid-level staffer for the National Security Council. Now he's a wanted fugitive on the run with a micro-drive that could wreck American intelligence efforts worldwide. The CIA is desperate to retrieve the drive, but so are the Russians and various terrorist groups, all of whom are closer to catching the fugitive.
\nOnly Caruso stands in their way, but can he succeed without the aid of his Campus colleagues?
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Jack Ryan moves back into the Oval Office and is immediately faced with an international threat.
\nChinese President Wei Zhen Lin has been forced to agree with the expansionist policies of his General, and they have declared the South China Sea a protectorate and planned an invasion of Taiwan.
\nThe stakes are dangerously high as the Ryan administration attempts to thwart Chinese ambitions, facing missiles and cyber attack. Jack Ryan, Jr. may just be the wild card that his father needs. One problem: someone knows about the intelligence agency, and may be about to blow their cover sky high.
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A U.S. Navy Commander is attacked in a crowded restaurant while on leave. How did the assassin know his exact location?
\nIn Tehran airport, a Canadian businessman is taken away to be interrogated. A CIA operative for over a decade - why has his cover now been blown?
\nA massive information breach has compromised America's intelligence agencies and around the globe, the noose is tightening.
\nAnd the only man who can stop it, is the one closest to the danger: President Jack Ryan.
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The CIA’s deepest secrets are being given away for a larger agenda that will undermine the entire Western intelligence community. Director of National Intelligence Mary Pat Foley wants it stopped but doesn’t know who, how or why.
Jack Ryan, Jr., is dispatched to Poland on a different mission. The clues are thin, and the sketchy trail dead ends in a harrowing fight from which he barely escapes with his life.
If that’s not bad enough, Jack gets more tragic news. An old friend, who’s dying from cancer, has one final request for Jack. It seems simple enough, but before it’s done, Jack will find himself alone, his life hanging by a thread.
If he survives, he’ll be one step closer to finding the shadowy figure behind the CIA leak and its true purpose, but in the process, he’ll challenge the world’s most dangerous criminal syndicate with devastating consequences.
\n\n
Finally taking a well-earned break, Jack Ryan Jr is taken by surprise when he runs into old flame Renee Moore in a scenic Barcelona café.
\nCuriously, Renee is not so pleased to see him. Distracted, she says she's waiting for someone and can't talk. She promises to call him later, and sends him out onto the street.
\nWhich is when the bomb goes off.
\nThere's nothing he can do to save Renee. But as he cradles her, she utters one last word with her final breath: Sammler
\nWho, or what, does she mean? What trouble has Renee got herself into? When every thread Jack pulls threatens to make the situation ever more dangerous, he realises he's stumbled into an international conspiracy that might be more than even he can handle.
\nBecause Renee isn't the first to die. And she won't be the last . . .
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On a break between missions, Jack Ryan Jr is asked by his mother to visit Sarajevo and track down a girl whose life she saved during the Bosnian War. Finally, he thinks, life might be quietening down.
\nThat's until he meets Aida - grown from a child into a beautiful and selfless woman. Jack finds himself drawn to her, not to mention impressed by her dangerous work helping Syrian refugees enter Europe.
\nBut the region is increasingly unstable, and just as Jack lets his guard down, Aida is violently kidnapped by the Serbian mafia.
\nWith no official status, Jack's pleas for help fall on deaf ears, and he realises he must act alone to save the woman he loves. But as the simmering tensions threaten to bubble over, Jack will soon discover Bosnia is a dangerous place to fly solo . . .
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When Jack Ryan Jr is sent to Singapore on what seems a routine administrative task, he worries he's being sidelined in the war on terror. But it soon becomes clear there's more to the mission - and his unassuming new partner, Paul Brown - than meets the eye.
\nWith North Korean missile testing in full swing and a deadly cyclone bearing down on the island nation, Brown and Ryan are tasked with uncovering a mole threatening an entirely new kind of warfare. And it soon becomes clear someone is willing to kill to cover their tracks.
\nAs they race against time to escape both the murderous storm and a team of trained assassins, they must fight against power, prestige, leverage and blackmail to prevent the launch of another worldwide nuclear arms race.
\nAnd they might not make it out alive.
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For years, ex-Navy SEAL Maxwell Moore has worked across the Middle East and behind the scenes for the Special Activities Division of the CIA, making connections, extracting valuable intelligence, and facing off against America's enemies at every turn.
\nWhen Moore arrives at a rendesvous to take charge of a high-ranking Taliban captive, the meeting takes a horrific turn that neither Moore nor any of his bosses saw coming. Barely surviving, he tries to bring to safety a Pakistani colonel with information about the debacle, only to have that mission fall prey to forces more powerful and cunning than any he has faced before. Undaunted, and with failure not an option, Moore continues his quest for the truth, leaving many dead in his wake-killed by those for whom secrecy is the ultimate weapon.
\nAnd then . . . a shocking revelation: Two of the greatest threats to the security of the United States have forged an unholy alliance. After years of planning, the Taliban has come to terms with a vicious Mexican drug cartel for which they will supply opium. For the cartel, it is a matter of money, power, and ultimate control of the drug trade. But for the Taliban, it is an opportunity long awaited: to exploit the cartels and bring the fire of jihad to the hearts of the infidels.
\nIt is up to Moore, and his team, to infiltrate and dismantle the drug cartel, even as they hunt for those who would bring the ultimate terror and destruction to the streets of America.
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The White House is stunned when the Secretary of Commerce is killed in a plane crash in Turkey. President Jack Ryan isn't ready to write this off as a simple accident. Not only has he lost a good friend, but the Secretary was on an important mission: on the surface he was making an appearance at an economic conference, but the CIA was also using the flight as cover to extract an important asset from the Middle East.
\nSoon, Lt. Commander Katie Ryan and her team are working with the investigators to find the cause of the tragedy, but one shocking revelation changes everything. There were supposed to be 16 people on the plane, but there are only 15 bodies.
\nThe quest for answers will lead the team deeper and deeper into a quagmire of lies and deception that will force President Ryan to face an unprincipled enemy with global ambitions.
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Newly elected as President, domestic pitfalls await Jack Ryan around every corner. Now, in Moscow, someone may have tried to take out the chairman of the SVR - the former KGB - with a rocket-propelled grenade. Even more disturbing is the potential identity of the assassin. Were they political enemies, the Russian Mafia, disaffected former KGB? Or, Ryan wonders, is something far more dangerous at work here?
\nHe is right to wonder. For even while Russian investigators pursue the case, forces in China are moving forward with a plan of truly audacious proportions. If they succeed, the world as we know it will never look the same. If they fail . . . the consequences may be unspeakable.
\nJohn Clark crossover.
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In a rolling sea off the coast of South America, a target disappears in a puff of green light. In the Soviet hills of Dushanbe near the Afghanistan border, an otherworldly array of pillars and domes rises into the night. To the two greatest nations on earth, no contest is more urgent than the race to build the first Star Wars missile defense system, and no one knows that more than the two men charged with assessing the Soviets' capabilities: Colonel Mikhail Filitov of the Soviet Union, an old-line warrior distrusted by the army's new inner circle of technocrats, and CIA analyst Jack Ryan, hero of the Red October affair.
\nEach must use all his craft to arrive at the truth, but Filitov gets there first - and that's when all hell breaks loose. Because Filitov, code-named Cardinal, is America's highest agent in the Kremlin, and he is about to be betrayed to the KGB. His rescue could spell the difference between peace and war, and it is up to Jack Ryan to accomplish it - if he can - as, in a breathtaking sequence of hunter and hunted, Filitov's life, and Ryan's and that of the world itself literally hang in the balance.
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Colombian drug lords, tired of being harassed by US law enforcement agents, have assassinated the American Ambassador and the visiting head of the FBI. Their message is leave us alone. But they have pushed too far. The decision is made to send undercover teams into Colombia.
\nBack in the USA, men armed with the most sophisticated tools their country can devise prepare to take the fight to the enemy. But does anyone know who the real enemy is?
\nJack Ryan and CIA field officer John Clark must find the answer. They expect danger from without, yet the greatest danger of all may come from within.
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Razio Yamata is one of Japan’s most influential industrialists. He has devised a plan to cripple American superiority and elevate Japan to a position of dominance on the world stage. His motivation is to pay off a debt of honour to his parents and bring low the country he feels was responsible for their deaths - America. All he needs is a catalyst to set his plan in motion.
\nWhen the faulty gas tank on one Tennessee family’s car leads to their fiery death, an opportunistic US congressman uses the occasion to rush a new trade law through the system. The law is designed to squeeze Japan economically. Instead, it provides Yamata with the leverage he needs.
\nAs Yamata’s plan begins to unfold, it becomes clear to the world that someone is launching a fully integrated operation against the United States. There’s only one man to find out who the culprit is - Jack Ryan, the new President’s National Security Advisor.
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The US President, along with most of the Cabinet and Congress, is dead. Dazed and confused, the man who only minutes before had been confirmed as the new Vice-President of the United States is told that he is now President.
\nPresident John Patrick Ryan.
\nWith stunning force, Ryan's responsibilities crush on him. He must calm an anxious and grieving nation, all while attempting to reconstitute a Cabinet and a Congress with the greatest possible speed.
\nBut that is not all. Both within Washington DC and across the globe, there are those eager to act on the animosity towards the United States and others from Jack Ryan's past that harbour a grudge towards the new President himself. Soon they will present Jack Ryan with a crisis so big even he cannot imagine it.
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Silently, beneath the chill Atlantic waters, Russia’s ultra-secret missile submarine, the Red October, is heading west.
\nThe Americans want her. The Russians want her back. With all-out war only seconds away, the superpowers race across the ocean on the most desperate mission of a lifetime.
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As an American in London on vacation with his family, Jack Ryan never imagined his quick thinking would prevent an assassination attempt on Britain's royal family and earn him the gratitude of an entire nation - and the scorn of an ultra-left-wing faction of the IRA. Irish terrorist Sean Miller and his followers in the Ulster Liberation Army intend to make sure Ryan pays for his interference in blood. But he's not the only one they're after . . .
\nWith the lives of his pregnant wife and young daughter in mortal danger, Ryan accepts a role as a CIA analyst in order to find Miller and shut down the ULA. Going head to head with a ruthless terrorist is a fool's errand, but Jack Ryan is the kind of man who will do whatever it takes to protect his family . . .
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Newly named head of an elite multinational task force, John Clark faces the world's greatest fear: international terrorism. And following each terrifying new outbreak - the ghosts from his own past.
\nThe challenge of a new mission is just what Clark needs, but the opportunities come faster than he expected. Hostage-taking at a Swiss bank. The kidnapping of an international trader. Carnage at a theme park in Spain. Each incident seems separate, yet the timing disturbs Clark.
\nIs there a connection? Is he being tested? Or is there a bigger threat out there, from terrorists so extreme that no government is ready to admit their existence?
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Jack Ryan. The early CIA days . . .
\nWhen young Jack Ryan joins the CIA as an analyst he is thrust into a world of political intrigue and conspiracy. Stationed in England, he quickly finds himself debriefing a Soviet defector with an extraordinary story to tell: senior Russian officials are plotting to assassinate Pope John Paul II.
\nThe CIA novice must forget his inexperience and rely on all his wits to firstly discover the details of the plot - and then prevent its execution. For it is not just the Pope's life that is at stake, but also the stability of the Western World.
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Peace may finally be at hand in the Middle East, as Jack Ryan, Deputy Director of Intelligence for the CIA, lays the groundwork for a plan that could end centuries of conflict. But ruthless terrorists have a final, desperate card to play: a nuclear weapon hidden somewhere in the United States.
\nWith one terrible act, distrust mounts, forces collide, and the floundering U.S. president seems unable to cope with the crisis. With the world on the verge of nuclear disaster, Ryan must frantically seek a solution - before the chiefs of state lose control of themselves and the world.
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Just before Jack Ryan stepped down as US President, he created a secret organisation designed to operate in areas where the CIA and FBI couldn't go - able to use any and all means to neutralise terrorists who threatened America.
\nNow his son, Jack Ryan, Jr, is part of that organisation and he's on the front line when a group of Islamic terrorists backed up by Colombian drug smuggles strike at the heart of American society. With no conventional way to hit back at the shadowy ringleaders, it's left to Jack Ryan Jr to take on the terrorists the only way he knows how . . .
\nIntroduction/crossover of Jack Ryan Jr.
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His code name is Mr. Clark. His work for the CIA is brilliant, cold-blooded and efficient . . . But who is he really?
\nIn a harrowing tour de force, Tom Clancy shows how an ordinary man named John Kelly crossed the lines of justice and morality to become the CIA legend, Mr. Clark.
\nIt is an unforgettable journey into the heart of darkness. Without mercy. Without guilt. Without remorse.
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Boy-made-good Téo Erskine is back in the north London suburb of his youth, visiting his father - stubborn, selfish, complicated Vic. Things have changed for Téo: he's got a steady job, a brand-new car and a London flat all concrete and glass, with a sliver of a river view.
\nExcept, underneath the surface, not much has changed at all. He's still the boy seeking his father's approval; the young man playing late-night poker with his best friend, unreliable, infuriating Ben Mossam; the one still desperately in love with the enigmatic Lia.
\nLia's life, on the other hand, has been transformed: now a single mum to two-year-old Joel, she doesn't have time for anyone - not even herself.
\nWhen the unthinkable happens, Joel finds himself at the centre of a strange constellation of men - Téo, Vic, Ben - none of whom is fully equipped to look after him, but whose strange, tentative attempts at love might just be enough to offer him a new place to call home.
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When Saul Keng Hsiu and his wife, Mei Lee, move from China to the United States to take possession of a 160-acre homestead bequeathed to them by a distant relative, all they have are the possessions on their back, some hidden gold, and a pocketful of chrysanthemum seeds. After a rocky start and a long, harsh winter, the couple find themselves successfully raising chrysanthemums and livestock, and soon after, a daughter, Mara.
\nBut when representatives from the US Army Corps of Engineers buy an acre of the Hsiu’s farmland and begin building a missile silo, the inexplicable starts to Mara can commune with the animals on the farm, Mei develops a hidden talent for augury, and the chrysanthemums become impervious to everything. When the Hsius learn that the project on their farm is an effort to make America’s nuclear deterrent invulnerable, they see firsthand the long arm of power and empire.
\nIn the years and generations that follow, increasingly impacted by the silo and its residue, the Hsius experience strange, wondrous, and tragic events on their farm. An ambitious epic and an ode to the beauty and glory of our connection to the natural world, Babylon, South Dakota upends the idea of \"strangers in a strange land\" to become a classic American story. It is a daring novel about how choices reverberate across generations and asks us what we owe to one another.
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A brilliant new talent writing from lived experience makes his debut with this irresistible and original story in the vein of Young Mungo and Hang the Moon, that pierces the beautiful, brilliant, and lightning-quick mind of a teenage girl growing up with undiagnosed ADHD in working-class Scotland.
\nIn the blazing hot summer of 1994, there’s nothing for Cora Mowat to do but hang around in empty parking lots. Stuck in her Mom’s small house and tired of her own restless mind, she’s desperate to break free of the limits of Fife but unsure of what the future holds - if it holds anything at all for a girl like her trying to find her way in the world.
\nAfter her mother invites a new man to live with them, tensions quickly rise in the cramped house. Gunner is kind but strange, too - a one-eyed shoplifter with more than a few hidden secrets. But when tragedy strikes shortly after, Cora rebels against her small-town existence in search of love, acceptance, and a path to something good. If only she can learn to navigate her grief and everything she thinks she knows about who she is and what she might be capable of, she may finally find the way forward.
\nIn this extraordinary debut, drawn from experience but written with riotous imagination, Tom Newlands explores a teenage girl’s coming-of-age in post-industrial Scotland and what it means to yearn for a life that feels out of reach. Vibrant, lyrical and fiercely funny, Only Here, Only Now is a story of identity and family that shines with hope and resilience.
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Efren “Chino” Flores has just moved back to the Bay Area from Seattle, jumping from sublet to sublet. In Washington, he was a beloved middle school biology teacher with a loving wife, and a child on the way until a stunning loss changed his life. Now, he’s working temp jobs, terrified of commitment, and struggling to put himself back out into the world.
\nBut there to nurture Chino is a coterie of new and old friends and lovers who form a protective web around him. Closest to him are Metal Matt, a red-haired metalhead with a soft spot for Courtney Love and a rangy dog named Sabbath, and Mike and Kay, a couple whose literary edge is matched only by the success of their secret OnlyFans account. As Chino begins to date more men and women - and to open himself up again to love - his bonds with other people grow both rich and profound. Like a fern blooming in the wake of a forest fire, new life comes after even the most devastating upheaval.
\nWith gorgeous, heart-rending detail and a seemingly infinite catalogue of tender, unexpected interactions, Tomas Moniz has created a striking mosaic of desire and belonging that will appeal to fans of Garth Greenwell, Jaquira Díaz, and Patricia Lockwood. An anthem to both queer and platonic love, All Friends Are Necessary evinces the wonder of friendship and the joy of giving yourself up to the essential force of community.
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Set in early 1980s Poland against the violent decline of communism, a tender and passionate story of first love between two young men who eventually find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide - a stunningly poetic and heartrending literary debut for fans of Andre Aciman, Garth Greenwell, and Alan Hollinghurst.
\nWhen university student Ludwik meets Janusz at a summer agricultural camp, he is fascinated yet wary of this handsome, carefree stranger. But a chance meeting by the river soon becomes an intense, exhilarating, and all-consuming affair. After their camp duties are fulfilled, the pair spend a dreamlike few weeks camping in the countryside, bonding over an illicit copy of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room.
\nInhabiting a beautiful natural world removed from society and its constraints, Ludwik and Janusz fall deeply in love. But in their repressive communist and Catholic society, the passion they share is utterly unthinkable.
\nOnce they return to Warsaw, the charismatic Janusz quickly rises in the political ranks of the party and is rewarded with a highly-coveted position in the ministry. Ludwik is drawn toward impulsive acts of protest, unable to ignore rising food prices and the stark economic disparity around them. Their secret love and personal and political differences slowly begin to tear them apart as both men struggle to survive in a regime on the brink of collapse.
\nShifting from the intoxication of first love to the quiet melancholy of growing up and growing apart, Swimming in the Dark is a potent blend of romance, post-war politics, intrigue, and history.
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When Zelie seized the royal palace that fateful night, she thought her battles had come to an end. The monarchy had finally fallen. The maji had risen again. Zélie never expected to find herself locked in a cage and trapped on a foreign ship. Now warriors with iron skulls traffic her and her people across the seas, far from their homeland.
\nThen everything changes when Zélie meets King Baldyr, her true captor, the ruler of the Skulls, and the man who has ravaged entire civilisations to find her. Baldyr’s quest to harness Zélie’s strength sends Zélie, Amari, and Tzain searching for allies in unknown lands.
\nBut as Baldyr closes in, catastrophe charges Orïsha’s shores. It will take everything Zélie has to face her final enemy and save her people before the Skulls annihilate them for good.
Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zelie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls. But everything changed the night magic disappeared.
\nUnder the orders of a ruthless king, maji were targeted and killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Now, Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.
\nDanger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers - and her growing feelings for the enemy.
After battling the impossible, Zélie and Amari have finally succeeded in bringing magic back to the land of Orïsha. But the ritual was more powerful than they could’ve imagined, reigniting the powers of not only the maji, but of nobles with magic ancestry, too.
Now, Zélie struggles to unite the maji in an Orïsha where the enemy is just as powerful as they are. But when the monarchy and military unite to keep control of Orïsha, Zélie must fight to secure Amari's right to the throne and protect the new maji from the monarchy's wrath.
With civil war looming on the horizon, Zélie finds herself at a breaking point: she must discover a way to bring the kingdom together or watch as Orïsha tears itself apart.
A freak accident comes on the heels of a startling revelation - laying bare the foundation of a marriage, and a husband is left to grapple with the aftermath.
\nA poetry professor at a small college in Asheville, NC, Asa Flowers, comes home one stormy evening to find his wife Betsy inexplicably distraught. As the evening goes on, the couple end up in a heated argument that sends Asa to sleep out in their garage apartment for the first time in twenty-five years of marriage. The next morning, he wakes to blue sky and an altered world.
\nUnfolding over a few tense weeks and told from multiple points of view, this novel explores how a tragedy can assume as many shapes as the people it touches. Asa finds himself reckoning with torn feelings about his marriage and confusion about how to proceed in his complicated relationships with his adult children. As he gradually absorbs revelations - so much he didn't know or understand during his long marriage - he finds himself drawn uneasily toward a new world, one in which he must shed much of his old identity if he is to survive, and more important, rededicate himself to being a father.
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The indelible cat heroine of this unexpected tale recalls her life with “the Mustache,” her beloved owner. Trapped in a one-way mirrored box, displayed in a classroom for people who must contemplate her fate as part of their training to become \"Emotional Support Humans,\" she weaves a self-soothing paean to the poetry, music, and creature comforts she shared with her Mustache - the best products of a society that has gone off the rails in its violence and intolerance.
\nThe trainees in the room, a motley crew our kitty describes with a novelistic flair of her own, are assigned to consider what they feel about her. They also argue about whether there’s really a cat in there, or are they just being manipulated? Their daily required quizzes, reproduced in each chapter, are as poignant and witty as our narrator herself; meanwhile, the mystery of her cat-kidnapping is revealed to us, along with her potential next move on a more spectral plane.
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Grace Lisa Vandenburg counts. The letters in her name (19). The steps she takes every morning to the local cafe (920). The number of poppy seeds on her orange cake, which dictates the number of bites she'll take to eat it. Grace counts everything, because that way there are no unpleasant surprises.
\nSeamus Joseph O'Reilly (also a 19) thinks she might be better off without the counting. If she could hold down a job, say. Or open her cupboards without conducting an inventory, or leave her flat without measuring the walls. Grace's problem is that Seamus doesn't count. Her other problem is . . . he does.
\nAs Grace struggles to balance a new relationship with old habits, to find a way to change while staying true to herself, she realises that nothing is more chaotic than love.
Meet Ella Canfield, highly qualified evolutionary biologist. Attractive, if a little serious-looking in those heavy glasses - but then she's about to put her career on the line. Dr Canfield is seeking funding for a highly unorthodox research project. She wants to prove that an extinct animal still roams in one of Australia's most popular national parks.
\nMeet Daniel Metcalf, good-looking, expensively dishevelled millionaire. Quite witty but far too rich to be taken seriously. He heads the Metcalf Trust, which donates money to offbeat scientific research projects. He has a personal interest in animals that don't exist. Problem number There is no such person as Dr Ella Canfield. Problem number Della Gilmore, professional con artist, has never met anyone like Daniel Metcalf before. Someone is going to take a fall.
It is 1939 and Australia is about to go to war. Deep in the working-class Melbourne suburb of Richmond it is business - your own and everyone else's - as usual. And young Kip Westaway, failed scholar and stablehand, is living the most important day of his life.
\nAmbitious in scope and structure, triumphantly realised, this is a novel about one family and every family. It is about dreams and fights and sacrifices. And finally, of course, it is - as it must be - about love.
Henry has ended his marriage to Caroline and headed off to Noosa with Mercedes’ grade three teacher, Martha.
\nCaroline, having shredded a wardrobe-full of Henry’s suits, has gone after them.
\nCraig and Lesley have dropped over briefly from next door to catch up on the fallout from Henry and Caroline’s all-night row.
\nAnd Janice, Caroline’s sister, is staying for the weekend to look after the girls because Janice is the sensible one. A microbiologist with a job she loves, a fervent belief in the beauty of the scientific method and a determination to make a solo life after her divorce from Alec.
\nThen Craig returns through the bedroom window expecting a tryst with Caroline and finds Janice in her bed, Lesley storms in with a jealous heart and a mouthful of threats, Henry, Caroline and Martha arrive back from the airport in separate taxis - and let’s not even get started on Brayden the pizza guy.
\nJanice can cope with all that. But when Alec knocks on the door things suddenly get complicated.
Brisbane, 1975: Andie Tanner's world is small but whole. Her mum is complicated, but she adores her dad and the kennel of racing greyhounds that live under their house. Andie is a serious girl with plans: finish school with her friends, then apprentice to her father until she can become a greyhound trainer, with dogs of her very own.
\nBut real life rarely goes to plan, and the world is bigger and more complex than Andie could imagine. When she loses everything she cares about - her family, her friends, the dogs - it's up to Andie to reclaim her future. She will need all her wits to survive this new reality of secrets and half-truths, addictions and crime.
Gia Williams is living her dream as a successful travel magazine columnist. Gia’s Gems, featuring a single, thirty-something lesbian who travels around and finds the little gay gems in each town she visits, is the best gig ever, right? There’s just one problem. Gia is agoraphobic, and she hasn’t left her house in years. Gia’s Gems is a complete photoshop fake.
\nLindsey Speyer is a huge fan of Gia’s Gems, so imagine her disappointment when she accidentally stumbles upon Gia’s secret. Not knowing what to do with the information, a friend talks Lindsey into turning the tables on Gia. Gia must come to Lindsey’s economically struggling Midwestern town and feature it in her next article . . . or else.
\nGia just needs to get through one week with one beautiful and captivating blackmailer in a quirky little town she’s never heard of. What could possibly go wrong?
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The glitz and glam of Hollywood are just an illusion, and everyone knows celebrities and paparazzi mix as well as oil and water.
\nRylee Callison is one of the best paparazzi in Hollywood. A-List actress McKenzie Gomann hates the press after a series of photos create unwelcome trouble for her. When they meet, the attraction is undeniable, but Rylee is keeping a big secret to protect and provide for her family. When McKenzie finds out that Rylee is not only a member of the paparazzi, but the paparazzo who took the scandalous photographs of her, the heat between them turns ice cold.
\nCan the magic of Hollywood set the stage that brings them back together, or are happy endings only for the movies?
Taylor Braxton needs to get married, then divorced, with no strings attached.
\nTaylor, a physical trainer, has just inherited her grandfather’s B&B on Maui, but there’s a catch. She can’t have the deed until the day after her one-year wedding anniversary. She’d rather stick a fork in her eye than get hitched, but the B&B is a dream come true. So all she has to do is find a woman who will agree to fake a marriage. How hard can it be?
\nJayden Wheaton could use a year in paradise to help her recovery. After a crippling accident, she hires Taylor in the hope of gaining back some mobility. When Taylor casually mentions her dilemma, Jayden jumps at the chance, hoping the warm island temperatures will help with her chronic pain. A marriage masquerade in exchange for a year in Paradise? Yes, please. After all, it’s not like either of them are looking for romance, so there’s zero chance of their feelings complicating the arrangement. Right?
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A beautiful Cupid, a runaway arrow, and a love that defies the stars . . .
\nHannah is the number one Cupid on Archer Island six years running. She is beautiful, confident, and she never misses her mark. Ever. But on one fateful day, with her magical arrows drawn on two would-be office lovers, the unthinkable happens. Hannah misses her second mark, and she only has seventy-two hours to fix the mishap.
\nPayson Martin's life is as unfulfilling as her job at a Las Vegas TV station. When a temp is suddenly assigned to her, she's not sure what to make of Hannah, the striking woman who seems more interested in pushing her toward her co-worker than doing her job.
\nBut the more time Hannah and Payson spend together, the more they begin to fall in love. Cupids are simply not allowed to fall for anyone, let alone someone meant for another. Loving Payson will mean giving up her duties and homeland, but is missing her mark the best mistake Hannah has ever made?
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Jamie Carr recently inherited her aunt’s struggling vineyard, nestled in the picturesque hills of Northern California. With help from Jamie's slightly out-of-control best friend, Kali, and her aunt’s surviving lover, Kate, the vineyard is about to get a makeover.
\nBeing stuck on a fifty-acre vineyard for over a century can be a bit mind-numbing, especially for Ruth, the resident ghost, who never wanted to be there in the first place. Fortunately, as time has passed, so has the ownership of the property, and if the three friends who now live in the old Victorian house are any indication, things are about to get much more interesting.
\nIntrigued and entertained, Ruth decides to introduce herself to Jamie on a beautiful full moon night. The attraction that surges between them is immediate . . . but seriously, a relationship with a ghost? That’ll never work.
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Dear animals,
\nI hereby invite all of you to come and visit me. But if nobody comes that's okay too.
\nThe hedgehog is feeling rather lonely, so one day he decides to invite all the other animals for a party. But the hedgehog is also rather a shy, reserved animal, and is terribly worried about doing or saying something he shouldn't, and about all the things that could go wrong.
\nWhat if nobody comes? What if too many of them come? What if the elephant shows up and breaks all the furniture? Will anyone be able to hear the hedgehog talk above the frog's croaking? Maybe inviting the others over wasn't such a good idea after all . . .
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A pathbreaking new way to examine US history, through the lens of a bestselling video game.
\nRed Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II , set in 1911 and 1899, are the most-played American history video games since The Oregon Trail . Beloved by millions, they’ve been widely acclaimed for their realism and attention to detail. But how do they fare as recreations of history?
\nIn this engaging book, award-winning American history professor Tore Olsson takes up that question and more. Weaving the games’ plot and characters into an exploration of American violence between 1870 and 1920, Olsson shows that it was more often disputes over capitalism and race, not just poker games and bank robberies, that fueled the bloodshed of these turbulent years.
\nAs such, this era has much to teach us today. From the West to the Deep South to Appalachia, Olsson reveals the gritty and brutal world that inspired the games, but sometimes lacks context and complexity on the digital screen. Colorful, fast-paced, and dramatic, Red Dead’s History sheds light on dark corners of the American past for gamers and history buffs alike.
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No one appears more surprised than Hailey Gelman when she comes under suspicion for the murder of her soon-to-be ex-husband Jonah. Hailey - nicknamed Sunshine by her mother for her bright outlook and ever-present smile - has always tried to do what is expected of her and is regarded as the family peacemaker. But is anyone, including Hailey, who she has always seemed to be?
\nThe months leading up to Jonah’s death have been fraught, including a bitter separation and a messy custody battle over their young daughter, Maya. When Hailey files a motion to relocate to Florida so she can be near her family, Jonah retaliates and the divorce begins to spiral dangerously out of control.
\nSherry, Hailey’s mother, will stop at almost nothing to keep Jonah from getting what he wants. Nate, Hailey’s impetuous and protective older brother, has tried to keep his distance, but he can’t stand to see his little sister suffer. And then there’s Solomon, the patriarch, who is keeping a secret that threatens the stability and security Sherry has worked so hard to maintain. Soon, they are forced to reckon with who they are as individuals and as a family, and just how far they will go for each other.
\nInspired by a true story, We Would Never is a gripping mystery, an intimate family drama, and a provocative exploration of loyalty, betrayal, and the blurred line between protecting and forsaking the ones we love most.
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The ripples from a breakup radiate outwards from the room where a married couple once loved each other, and a bizarre Lonely Hearts advert sets off a train of tragicomic events that lead to an inevitable conclusion.
\nTove Ditlevsen’s final novel - published a year before her suicide in 1976 - is a masterful conclusion to a great work of a blackly funny and devastating tour-de-force that pulses with life even as it journeys towards death.
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When Tara Connelly is released from prison after serving eighteen months on a drug charge, she knows rebuilding her life at thirty years old won’t be easy. With no money and no prospects, she returns home to live with her siblings, who are both busy with their own problems. Her brother, a single dad, struggles with the ongoing effects of a brain injury he sustained years ago, and her sister’s fragile facade of calm and order is cracking under the burden of big secrets. Life becomes even more complicated when the cop who put her in prison keeps showing up unannounced, leaving Tara to wonder what he wants from her now.
\nWhile she works to build a new career and hold her family together, Tara finds a chance at love in a most unlikely place. But when the Connellys’ secrets start to unravel and threaten her future, they all must face their worst fears and come clean, or risk losing each other forever.
\nThe Connellys of County Down is a moving novel about testing the bounds of love and loyalty. It explores the possibility of beginning our lives anew, and reveals the pitfalls of shielding each other from the bitter truth.
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When twenty-nine-year-old Sunday Brennan wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital, bruised and battered after a drunk driving accident she caused, she swallows her pride and goes home to her family in New York. But it's not easy. She deserted them all - and her high school sweetheart - five years before with little explanation, and they've got questions.
\nSunday is determined to rebuild her life back on the east coast, even if it does mean tiptoeing around resentful brothers and an ex-fiancé. The longer she stays, however, the more she realises they need her just as much as she needs them. When a dangerous man from her past brings her family's pub business to the brink of financial ruin, the only way to protect them is to upend all their secrets - secrets that have damaged the family for generations and will threaten everything they know about their lives. In the aftermath, the Brennan family is forced to confront painful mistakes - and ultimately find a way forward, together.
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When Kyle McCray gets word his father has suffered a debilitating stroke, he returns to his hometown of Potsdam, New York, where he doesn’t expect a warm welcome. Kyle left suddenly two and a half years ago, abandoning people who depended on him: his father, his employees, his friends - not to mention Casey, his wife of sixteen years and a beloved teacher in town. He plans to lie low and help his dad recuperate until he can leave again, especially after Casey makes it clear she wants him gone.
\nThe longer he’s home, the more Kyle understands the impact his departure has had on the people he left behind. When he’s presented with an opportunity for redemption as the coach of the floundering middle school hockey team, he begins to find compassion in unexpected places. Kyle even considers staying in Potsdam, but that’s only possible if he and Casey can come to some kind of peace with each other.
\nFull of love and hope, What Happened to the McCrays? takes an intimate look at both sides of a failed marriage and two people who must finally confront the awful pain of their past or risk being consumed by it.
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The unnamed protagonist is born into a brutal childhood filled with unspeakable cruelties; the Boy only survives through a powerful magic that intervenes moments of need.
\nWhen he escapes, a circus troupe welcomes him into their chosen family and the Boy begins to imagine a life beyond survival. He discovers a new, whimsical potential for his magic and eagerly apprentices under the circus’s conjurer - only to realise his gifts far outstrip his mentor’s illusions. As the Boy’s ambition takes control of his magic, he becomes the Magician, but at a cost. Looming is a primal threat, determined to end the Magician, his magic, and all he holds dear, forever.
\nWith the immersive horror of Gerardo Sámano Córdova and the fairytale cadence of Helen Oyeyemi, Tracy Lynne Oliver’s Magician welcomes readers into a spellbinding world of twisted patriarchal darkness and a powerful survival magic that threatens to consume everyone, including its wielder.
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Darwin, 1942, and as Japanese bombs rain down, motherless Molly Hook, the gravedigger's daughter, turns once again to the sky for guidance. She carries a stone heart inside a duffel bag next to the map that leads to Longcoat Bob, the deep-country sorcerer who put a curse on her family.
\nBy her side are the most unlikely travelling companions: Greta, a razor-tongued actress and Yukio, a fallen Japanese fighter pilot. Run, Molly, run, says the daytime sky. Run to the vine forests. Run to northern Australia's wild and magical monsoon lands. Run to friendship. Run to love. Run. Because the graverobber's coming, Molly, and the night-time sky is coming with him. So run, Molly, run.
All Our Shimmering Skies is a story about gifts that fall from the sky, curses we dig from the earth and the secrets we bury inside ourselves. It is an odyssey of true love and grave danger, of darkness and light, of bones and blue skies; a buoyant, beautiful and magical novel abrim with warmth, wit and wonder; and a love letter to Australia and the art of looking up.
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How will you ever know how the story ends, if you let the story go?
\nNoah Cork has just published the scoop of a a white-hot true-crime book about the cold-blooded killer who slipped an unfolding murder mystery into his mailbox. But if this is his moment of triumph, then why is the tin roof being ripped from the walls of his reality? Why are skeletons standing upright in his closet? Why do people want to run him over in the street? And why does his wife keep writing a cryptic message across the bathroom mirror?
\nAs a severe storm heads towards Brisbane, Noah is hurtling headfirst into a swirling storm of secrets. He must now cling for dear life to the only story that ever really mattered. He must hold on to the truth. He must hold on to the story. He must hold on to love.
\nDark, gritty, hilarious and unexpected, Gravity Let Me Go is Trent Dalton's deeply personal exploration of marriage and ambition, truth-telling and truth-omitting, self-deception and self-preservation. It's a novel about the stories we want to tell the world and those we shouldn't, and how the stories we keep locked away are so often the stories that come to define us.
\nIt's the story of a murder.
\nIt's the story of a marriage.
\nIt's the story of a lifetime.
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'Mirror, mirror, on the grass, what's my future? What's my past?'
\nA girl and her mother are on the lam. They've been running for sixteen years, from police and the monster they left in the kitchen with the knife in his throat. They've found themselves a home inside an orange 1987 Toyota HiAce van with four flat tyres parked in a scrapyard by the edge of the Brisbane River - just two of the 100,000 Australians sleeping rough every night.
\nThe girl has no name because names are dangerous when you're on the run. But the girl has a dream. Visions in black ink and living colour. A vision of a life as a groundbreaking artist of international acclaim. A life outside the grip of the Brisbane underworld drug queen 'Lady' Flora Box. A life of love with the boy in the brown suit who's waiting for her in the middle of the bridge that stretches across a flooding and deadly river. A life far beyond the bullet that has her name on it. And now that the storm clouds are rising, there's only one person who can help make her dreams come true. That person's name is Lola and she carries all the answers.
\nBut to find Lola, the girl with no name must first do one of the hardest things we can sometimes ever do. She must look in the mirror. A big, moving, blackly funny, violent, heartbreaking and beautiful novel of love, fate, life and death and all the things we see when we look in the mirror. All of the past, all of the present, and all of our possible futures.
\n'Mirror, mirror, please don't lie. Tell me who you are. Tell me who am I.'
What would happen if dreams came true?
\nIt's said that the world is made of dreamers. Which is a lovely thought and all, except for when those dreams come with a foretelling of the future. In order to find out what she really wants, Fiona MacAuliffe has spent her life running from who she truly is. Determined to ignore her gifts in order to make her own way in the world, Fi long ago said goodbye to her family's pub in Grace's Cove and set off to follow her heart.
\nLittle does she know that it is her heart that will betray her when she returns home.
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Other people's voices, that is. As a pub owner with an extra special gift, all Cait Gallagher craves is a moment of silence. That, and to own the building her pub is housed in along with the heart of the building's landlord, Shane MacAuliffe. Though she is irresistibly drawn to Shane, her vulnerabilities cause her to put up a tough exterior. When the two butt heads, more than sparks fly, and Cait finds herself trembling on the precipice of love.
\nShane has watched Cait for years. Stubborn, beautiful, and with a trim body that he is dying to get his hands on, Cait is it for him. And yet, she continues to infuriate him by walking away from his kiss. Every time. At his wits' end, Shane doesn't know what to do to make Cait his own.
\nUnapologetic and fiercely proud, Cait must conquer her insecurities and reveal her true self to Shane or face losing everything.
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Grace O’Brien lives an unapologetic life - one where she uses magick and attitude alike to live exactly as she pleases. With talents far beyond what most can comprehend, Grace dances through life with verve and enthusiasm.
\nBut it isn’t all magick and mirth. A secret haunts Grace through the darkest hours of the night. For in her heart lies the soul of a fierce pirate queen, one that has loved and weathered unequivocal loss. Now, as she hopes once more for true love - a love that was promised to her - it seems that Grace might not always be able to get everything that she desires.
\nFrom the moment that Dylan Kelly sailed into Grace’s Cove, the town captured his heart. Pulled by an invincible need to move to the village, Dylan changes his entire life to finally focus on his passion project. When Dylan runs headfirst into the indomitable force that is Grace O’Brien, he battles both his attraction and his ethics in order to pursue the one thing that matters most to him - building his legacy.
\nAs centuries blur and souls collide, Grace must come to terms with the fact that she can’t control everything - even her heart.
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An ancient book, a power untouched, and a heart unloved lead Keelin O'Brien from her graduate studies in Boston to a small village on the coast of Southern Ireland. Determined to unearth the secrets lying hidden in the enchanted waters of the cove, Keelin has little time for a surly Irishman who infuriates her during the day and haunts her fantasies at night.
\nInexplicably drawn to the woman who has stepped from his dreams and into his world, Flynn fights a stubborn battle against his increasing attraction for Keelin. Forces unknown have better plans for the two.
\nOnly the secrets of the cove can show Keelin who she really is, the beauty of her mysterious power, and a love that will break the bounds of what she knows.
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Famous psychic, Iris Moon, seeks refuge in Grace’s Cove after her boyfriend betrays her and sells a fake story to the tabloids. With her business and reputation unfairly shattered, Iris hopes to find space to heal and figure out how to move forward.
\nLittle does she expect to find love.
\nKane Wallace, known to the world as bestselling author, K.L. Wallace, takes one look at Iris, stranded at the airport without a rental car, and knows she needs a hero. Never one to resist a damsel in distress, Kane convinces Iris to hitch a ride with him to Grace’s Cove. Fresh from heartbreak himself, the two commiserate over bad break-ups and fresh starts. With a budding friendship blooming, Kane drops Iris off and desperately hopes to see her again.
\nIris wants nothing to do with men. But much like a lost puppy, Kane keeps finding his way back to her. Soon, Iris finds herself falling for Kane, and is faced with the question of whether she can open her heart to love again.
\nTogether, can Iris and Kane learn that in every ending lies a new beginning?
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Morgan McKenzie has been on her own since she ran away from a nightmarish foster home at the age of sixteen. Afraid to put down roots again only to be hurt once more, Morgan prefers to be constantly on the move. Until she is inexplicably pulled to the small Irish town of Grace's Cove.
\nBefore she knows it, Morgan is settling in and forming relationships for the first time in her life. Determined to keep her walls up to protect both her heart and the touch of magick she carries, Morgan fights against her growing attraction for the town's golden boy, Patrick Kearney.
\nPatrick can't keep his eyes off of Morgan. Since the moment he saw Morgan across the dance floor at Keelin's wedding, Patrick has been lost. Pulled in by her beauty and vulnerability, Patrick's frustration grows as his advances are continually rebuffed.
\nAs Morgan rebels against her feelings for Patrick, she is swept into a battle against her own worst demons.
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Niamh Kearney has one goal in life - to finish out her schooling so she can help children with extra-sensory abilities like her own. Niamh leads a private life, and only her closest friends and family knew of the secrets she holds. When a handsome and very famous rugby player stumbles his way into her life - quite literally, that is - it only takes one date for Niamh to determine that she can never have a future with this man. Celebrity magazines, flashy cars, and fancy restaurants hold zero interest for Niamh.
\nWilliam “Mac” MacGregor is Ireland’s darling and a favorite of the gossip magazines. As a star rugby player, he is constantly followed by paparazzi and lives his life in the limelight. Not that he particularly enjoys the attention. Mac’s difficult past, and his own deeply buried secrets, makes him cautious about letting anyone get too close.
\nUntil he meets Niamh that is. Instantly taken with the warmth in her eyes, her instinct to nurture, and the sense of rightness he feels when he’s with her - Mac must convince Niamh to look past his reputation and to see him for who he really is.
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Admitting mistakes isn’t easy. And for hardheaded Margret O’Brien, it’s virtually unheard of.
\nWhen Margaret comes back to Ireland for her daughter’s wedding, she is forced to face her past. She just didn’t expect to be doing it thrown upside down over a devastatingly handsome and exceptionally angry Irishman’s shoulder. Yet Sean Burke can still make her toes curl with lust.
\nTwenty-eight years, two countries, and years of hurt stand between Sean and Margaret’s chance at love.
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Kira Delaney is a free spirit - following the whims of her creative heart as her photography career whisks her around the world. For the first time, Kira is taking a much-needed sabbatical from work to return to Grace’s Cove to run her mother’s art gallery. But six months is a long time to stay in one place, so she’ll need a distraction - like the handsome stranger with the great aura who wanders into the gallery one day.
\nBrogan McCarthy wants to escape the demons of his past. Having recently lost the only person who’d ever stood for him in his life, Brogan comes to Grace’s Cove to clean out his Gran’s cottage and decide what his next steps in life are. The last thing he expects is to be derailed by a witchy-eyed woman who enchants him at first sight.
\nNow, it’s a race against the clock to see who can figure out their lives first - and if trusting someone is the greatest weakness of all.
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Aislinn is used to living life on her terms. As an artist with an extra-sensory gift, she allows her moods, and those of the natural world, to inspire her paintings for her gallery set in small town Grace's Cove. Running her business as she pleases, Aislinn has danced around serious commitments her whole life.
\nWhen Dr. Baird Delaney moves his psychiatry practice to town and stops by her shop to pick up some prints for his office, Aislinn's world tilts. Irresistibly drawn to his presence, yet convinced that the uptight doctor is a poor match for her free-flowing artistic soul, Aislinn is torn.
\nBoth Aislinn and Baird will have to suspend their beliefs as they tumble headfirst into a messy, unrepentant love that challenges both to accept each other unequivocally.
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As a gifted healer, Fiona O’Brien has led a magickal life, though most certainly not an easy one.
\nBorn and raised in the small town of Grace’s Cove, Fiona faces undue criticism and scrutiny from the town’s elite and religious sectors. When Fiona is credited with healing the daughter of one of the town's leading families, the local priest demands she be arrested and put on trial. The charge? Witchcraft.
\nOnly the love of a warm-hearted man with a booming laugh - and the kindness of strangers - will help her win a battle against closed minds and moral hierarchy. Through it all, Fiona holds on to her faith that light must prevail against the dark. And when Fiona is given a choice - one which will forever change the fabric of her life - she learns that she must know heartbreak to truly understand her gift.
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A chance job offer in Scotland gives Willow Barlowe an excuse to escape the predictable life her overly controlling brother, Miles, wants for her. Excited to start fresh as a fashion intern for the local kiltmaker, Willow lands in small town Loren Brae brimming with sunshine and hope. Until she discovers that her new boss is none other than Ramsay McMillan, her brother’s best friend, and the grumpiest man this side of the Atlantic. Never mind the ghost Highland coo that haunts the castle, nor the supposedly bewitched waters of Loch Mirren, Willow refuses to work under Ramsay’s watchful eyes, certain he’s reporting back to her brother.
\nRamsay Kilts is home to one of the last remaining traditional kiltmakers in Scotland, Ramsay McMillan. Loyalty, continuity, and tradition are important to Ramsay - as is his privacy. After a family betrayal, Ramsay keeps his walls up, running a veritable kilt empire with as minimum fuss as he can. Enter Willow Barlowe - his new intern, good friend’s little sister, and a veritable thorn in his side. If the thorn is made of sunshine and sparkles that is.
\nAs the two clash, Ramsay must decide if loyalty is really more important than love?
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Faelan Fletcher never stays in one place too long. She knows what happens when a town turns against someone like her. But something about Loren Brae feels different. The land hums with old magic. The people watch her too closely. And the wounded fox at her side refuses to leave.
\nLuch Carmichael recognizes power when he sees it. A doctor by trade, a guardian by blood, he knows Faelan isn’t just the new vet - she’s something more. But she keeps her secrets locked up tight, refusing to trust the very place meant to welcome her. And in Loren Brae, turning away from magic is never an option.
\nThe loch is restless. The old ways are waking. And Faelan will have to decide - keep running, or stand and fight for the first place that’s ever felt like home.
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Orla Clarke is a master builder with a secret - she can see ghosts. Tasked with building Common Gin’s newest distillery in Loren Brae, Orla faces more than just architectural challenges. Haunted by her past as an orphan and the spirits that have followed her since childhood, Orla’s talent for building walls extends to her heart. She’s brilliant at solving problems on the construction site, but when it comes to matters of love, she’s always kept her distance.
\nEnter Finlay Thompson, the charming and driven director of the distillery project. Determined to breathe new life into the old stone building, Finlay is equally passionate about gin as he is about profits. Betrayed by family, and untrusting of relationships, he can’t help but be entranced by the pint-sized powerhouse overseeing the build-out of the distillery. With mysterious things happening around Loren Brae, the more Finlay puts himself in Orla’s path, the more he is drawn to the quiet builder with luminous eyes.
\nAs spirits bring secrets to light, Orla and Finlay must confront their deepest fears. Can they build a future together, or will their haunted pasts keep them apart forever?
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Kaia Bissett came to Scotland for a fresh start. No entanglements. No mistakes. No mixing business with pleasure. But one impulsive, scorching night with a stranger shatters that promise - especially when the stranger turns out to be Thane Blackwood. Her new landlord, and apparently, her biggest rival.
\nThane built his empire with his own hands. His forge. His rules. He has no room for distractions - especially not Kaia, the fiery metalsmith who refuses to back down. When she lands a commission for the grand iron gates at Common Gin, he steps into the ring, determined to beat her. Sparks fly - on the anvil and off.
\nBut Kaia’s past isn’t done with her. She’s heir to an ancient order, bound to protect Loren Brae from the Kelpies that stalk its waters. Magick stirs in her blood, wild and untamed. And Thane? He won’t let her fight alone.
\nSteel clashes. Desire burns. But can they forge something stronger, or will the fire consume them both?
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The knight was supposed to be a man. Not me, Sophie MacKnight, a marketing associate from California.
\nThis must be a practical joke that the Scots play on visiting Americans. Because otherwise I’ve inherited a haunted castle in Scotland, along with one irritatingly sexy Scotsman, who would be delighted if I turned tail and ran.
\nFrankly, I thought I would fly here, sell the heap of bricks, and head back home to a life that I…well, I was comfortable with at the very least. Instead, the people of Loren Brae are in trouble, and it appears that as the new owner of the castle, I’m next in line to reinstate the magickal Order of Caledonia. Which means, first, I have to learn to believe in magick. And secondly, I have to train to become a knight.
\nAnd my trainer? None other than Lachlan Campbell, the grumpiest man I’ve ever had the annoyance of meeting. It’s a toss-up who is pricklier, Lachlan, or his kilted Chihuahua, Sir Buster. Not only does Lachlan think that I can’t hack it, but he also resents my claim on his castle.
\nIf only he didn’t look so devastatingly hot in his kilt. Now, I’m stuck proving myself to him, all while trying to figure out how to help my new friends in Loren Brae. Sparks fly as our swords meet, and we battle our rising attraction for each other. Who will win in this (Highland) game of love?
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I draw the line at serving people grasshoppers for dinner.
\nAs luck would have it, on the same day I quit my job as head chef at Suzette’s, a fine-dining restaurant in Boston, I was offered an opportunity to open a restaurant at a castle in Scotland.
\nBut now that I’m here in Loren Brae, I’m not so sure this city girl can hack it. The nights are too quiet - with no horns honking or insults being hurled - and everyone knows my business.
\nAnd on the first day of my new life? I meet the hottest man I’d ever seen before.
\nMunroe Curaigh. Owner of Common Gin, a dedicated nerd, innately shy, with the biggest golden retriever energy of any man I’d ever met. He immediately appoints himself my protector and I’d be annoyed if his kisses weren’t so wickedly hot. Still waters run deep, and all that.
\nSpeaking of still waters . . . it appears that Loch Mirren is haunted by murderous Kelpies and the people of Loren Brae need my help.
\nThat’s right. It turns out that I’m descended from a long line of Kitchen Witches and Loren Brae needs me, Lia, a chef from Boston, to help save them from an ancient curse.
\nSo what’s a girl to do? It’s time to sharpen my kitchen knife, pull out my recipe book of spells, and get to work - or this tiny village in Scotland that I’m quickly falling in love with will be in danger.
\nThat is, if I can come up for air from Munroe’s decadent kisses.
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She’s out of second chances.
He’s out of patience.
And in Loren Brae, the truth never stays buried.
\nAfter a WitchTok fiasco brands her the Heartbreak Witch, Liora flees home to lick her wounds. But when she uncovers her Gran’s grimoire, the secrets inside may explain everything she’s ever gotten wrong about her magick.
\nEnter Torin, the gruff forester whose relationship she once destroyed. A miscast spell binds him to honesty, making it impossible for him to lie. With the town watching their every move, a fake relationship seems like the only way to keep questions at bay. Except Torin’s unfiltered truths cut straight to Liora’s heart.
\nNow, as the constellations shift and the Kelpies close in, Liora must decide - stitch a new future with the man who cannot lie - or lose her magick for good.
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Shona Scott would much rather putter in her garden than deal with brides that get hysterical over floral arrangements. Fed up, she quits the wedding business and renovates a small cottage on her property for holiday rentals. Without the weddings crowding her calendar, Shona will finally get some time to explore a newfound talent. An unexplainable one, at that.
\nOwen Williams lands in Scotland for a family wedding, only to prolong his trip after his best friend has a terrifying accident on the waters of Loch Mirren. A documentary filmmaker, Owen’s quest for the truth drives him to Loren Brae, determined to uncover the secrets of what lies in the loch. When Owen books Shona’s cottage, he’s thrust into an unexpected attraction for the beautiful gardener who is determined to keep him at arm’s length.
\nAs Shona’s magic unfolds, she must do everything in her power to hide the secrets of Loren Brae from Owen, even if it means ignoring her own heart.
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In this sweet sapphic romance about two foodies in love, Vivi meets Lan while studying abroad in Vietnam and they spend the semester unraveling their families' histories - and eating all the street food in Sài Gòn.
\nIn Sài Gòn, Lan is always trying to be the perfect daughter, dependable and willing to care for her widowed mother and their bánh mì stall. Her secret passion, however, is A Bánh Mì for Two, the food blog she started with her father but has stopped updating since his passing.
\nMeanwhile, Vietnamese American Vivi Huynh, has never been to Việt Nam. Her parents rarely talk about the homeland that clearly haunts them. So Vivi secretly goes to Vietnam for a study abroad program her freshman year of college. She’s determined to figure out why her parents left, and to try everything she’s seen on her favorite food blog, A Bánh Mì for Two.
\nWhen Vivi and Lan meet in Sài Gòn, they strike a deal. Lan will show Vivi around the city, helping her piece together her mother’s story through crumbling photographs and old memories. Vivi will help Lan start writing again so she can enter a food blogging contest. And slowly, as they explore the city and their pasts, Vivi and Lan fall in love.
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After a tragedy rips her life apart, Carina Marshall is looking to reinvent herself in her mother’s homeland of Jamaica. With her new gig as the au pair for the wealthy and powerful Hall family at Blackbead House, Carina wants nothing more than to disappear into their world of mango trees, tropical breezes and glamorous parties.
\nAt first, Blackbead House seems like the perfect escape. Carina’s job is pretty easy, her boss is very welcoming and her new friends, especially the handsome and charismatic Aaron, help to ease the loneliness she’s felt for a long time.
\nBut new beginnings don’t come easy. Because Carina isn’t who she says she is, and Blackbead House already knows . . .
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At what point in time does a memory exist?
\nSet in the coastal Pacific Northwest in 1994, Afterglow is a mind-bending psychological journey that follows Edyn, a troubled 32-year-old man who remembers nothing before three years ago except for a haunting vision atop a grassy hill, where a mysterious woman speaks her last words.
\nAs the fragments of Edyn's hidden memories are unlocked, disturbing new flashbacks break through; glimpses of a ruined world that feels like it shouldn't exist. Meanwhile, a powerful entity from beyond reality invades his fractured mind, whispering secrets and pulling him toward an unfathomable truth that could shatter everything.
\nWhat Edyn discovers will push him to the edge of memory, the limits of time, and the furthest stretches of imagination.
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Deathbringer is ready to be the next assassin for the NightWings. If he can just convince them to send him along on one mission with his mother, Quickstrike, he'll prove that he can help the NightWings decide who wins the war between the dragon tribes of Pyrrhia.
\nBut when their mission takes an unexpected turn, Deathbringer has a terrible choice to make . . . one that will change his path forever, and perhaps alter the course of the entire war . . .
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The dragonets struggle to fulfill the prophecy and - somehow - end the war.
\nIt all comes down to this: The Dragonets of Destiny must finally bring the epic war to an end, reconcile the seven tribes, and choose the next queen of Pyrrhia . . . and make it out alive.
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Snowfall didn't expect to be queen of the IceWings at such a young age, but now that she is, she's going to be the best queen ever. All she has to do is keep her tribe within IceWing territory, where it's safe - while keeping every other tribe out, where they belong.
\nIt's a perfect and simple plan, backed up by all the IceWing magic Snowfall can find. That is, until a storm of unidentified dragons arrives on her shore, looking for asylum. The foreigners are completely strange and, Snowfall is certain, utterly untrustworthy.
\nBut as she escorts the miserable new tribes out of her kingdom, Snowfall is forced to reconsider her plan. Maybe she can only keep her tribe safe . . . if she's willing to risk everything.
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Like all the dragonets of destiny, Starflight has always wanted to see his home - but he's also been afraid of his fellow NightWings. Starflight doesn't have mindreading powers like his tribe, and he doesn't understand why they're so secretive. No one has ever even seen the NightWing queen.
\nBut now Starflight is the dragonets' only hope - he must find a way to negotiate with his fellow NightWings to free the RainWing dragons they've captured, and perhaps end the war in Pyrrhia altogether. Starflight is the smartest of the dragonets . . . but is he brave enough to speak up? Or will he falter in his mission, and accidentally betray them all?
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Qibli knows Darkstalker must be stopped. And he knows he could stop him - if he had magic. With even a sliver of the ancient dragon's all-powerful scroll, Qibli could rewrite history the right way: end war forever; make every dragon happy; perhaps even cast a very small spell so that everyone would like him . . .
\nInstead, as Darkstalker's dangerous influence spreads across Pyrrhia, entrancing or killing every dragon in the seven tribes, Qibli can only grasp the small animus objects he's borrowed from Turtle. With some clever thinking, Qibli's talons finally hold the power to make a difference. But prophecies are not easy to rewrite. Can Qibli be the magical force Pyrrhia needs, or will he be the one to bring Jade Mountain - and his family, his friends, his whole world - crashing down?
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The Wings of Fire series soars back in time to the origin of Pyrrhia's most dangerous dragon: Darkstalker. Three dragons. One unavoidable, unpredictable destiny. This is the beginning . . . of the end.
\nIn the SeaWing kingdom, a young prince learns he is an animus - capable of wonderful magic that comes with a terrible price. In the mind of a NightWing dragonet, a thousand futures unfold - and almost all of them, she knows, lead to disaster and destruction. And under three full moons and the watchful eyes of his NightWing mother and IceWing father, the most powerful dragon Pyrhhia will ever know is clawing his way out of his egg. Darkstalker, the dragon who will change the world forever.
\nLong before the SandWing war, lifetimes before the Dragonet Prophecy . . . darkness is born.
Six-Claws is a happy and industrious SandWing, always working hard and loyally for his queen. So when the youngest SandWing princess, Blaze, wanders off during a sandstorm, Six-Claws doesn't think twice before trying to rescue her. But it turns out that loyalty isn't always enough to stay safe in the Sand Kingdom . . .
\nBefore the war of SandWing succession, there were three SandWing princesses . . . and a queen.
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The seven dragon tribes have been at war for generations, locked in an endless battle over an ancient, lost treasure. A secret movement called the Talons of Peace is determined to bring an end to the fighting, with the help of a prophecy - a foretelling that calls for great sacrifice.
\nFive dragonets are collected to fulfill the prophecy, raised in a hidden cave and enlisted, against their will, to end the terrible war. But not every dragonet wants a destiny. And when the select five escape their underground captors to look for their original homes, what has been unleashed on the dragon world may be far more than the revolutionary planners intended . . .
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In the shadow of wings . . . humans fight for survival.
Ivy doesn't trust the Dragonslayer. He may be her father and the beloved ruler of Valor, but she knows he's hiding more than the treasure from the sand dragon he killed two decades ago.
Leaf doesn't trust dragons. They're the reason his favorite sister, Wren, is dead, and now he'll do whatever it takes to slay even one.
Wren doesn't trust anyone. She swore off humans after her village tried to sacrifice her to the dragons. She only has one friend, a small, wonderful mountain dragon named Sky, and they don't need anyone else.
\nIn a world of dragons, the humans who scramble around underfoot are easy to overlook. But Ivy, Leaf, and Wren will each cross paths with dragons in ways that could shape the destiny of both species.
\nIs a new future possible for all of them . . . one in which humans can look to the skies with hope instead of fear?
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Peril has been loyal to Queen Scarlet, who used her fatal firescales to kill countless dragons in the SkyWing arena. Now, Peril is loyal to Clay, the only dragonet who has ever been her friend. So when Scarlet threatens Jade Mountain Academy, Peril sets off to find her former queen, stop her, and save the day, no matter what it takes.
\nThere's just one problem: a strangely persistent SeaWing, Turtle, insists on coming along, too. Turtle is worried about his friends, who left to search for Scarlet and haven't returned. Peril is worried that she might accidentally burn Turtle - or burn him on purpose, for being so annoying - and frustrated that she keeps saying and doing the wrong things. She can't escape her firescales, and she can't escape her reputation as the deadliest dragon in Pyrrhia.
\nSo when she's offered a chance to trade everything for a second chance, Peril has to decide who she's really loyal to . . . and whether her own scales might actually be worth saving.
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Luna has always wanted to change the world - to fix it, to free it - even if she’s never actually known how. Now that all of dragon - and humankind are in mortal danger, Luna is flying back home to Pantala with a team of dragons on a rescue mission, determined to be brave and useful.
\nBut saving a continent isn’t as easy as a prophecy makes it sound, and “facing a great evil” definitely requires more than the fiery silk that Luna is uniquely able to create.
\nAs she fights her way to the abyss that hides the dark roots poisoning Pantala, Luna must uncover a long-buried secret and unite her friends, her enemies, and her own powers. If she doesn’t, she won’t get to change the world. She’ll have to say goodbye to it - forever.
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Glory knows the dragon world is wrong about her tribe. After all, she isn't “as lazy as a RainWing” - she isn't lazy at all! Maybe she wasn't meant to be one of the dragonets of destiny, as the older dragons constantly remind her, but Glory is sharp and her venom is deadly . . . except, of course, no one knows it.
\nWhen the dragonets seek shelter in the rain forest, Glory is devastated to find that the treetops are full of RainWings that no dragon could ever call dangerous. They nap all day and know nothing of the rest of Pyrrhia. Worst of all, they don't realise - or care - that RainWings are going missing from their beautiful forest.
\nBut Glory and the dragonets are determined to find the missing dragons, even if it drags the peaceful RainWing kingdom where they never wanted to be - in the middle of the war.
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Growing up in the hives, Cricket has always had a million questions. Why are trees forbidden, even in art? Why do her parents seem to hate her? And the biggest, most dangerous and secret question of all: why is Cricket immune to Queen Wasp's powers? Whenever the queen takes control of all the HiveWings, speaking through their mouths and seeing through their eyes, Cricket has to hide, terrified of being discovered.
\nNow she's hiding again, wanted for stealing the Book of Clearsight along with her new SilkWing friends, Blue and Swordtail, and the fierce LeafWing, Sundew. The fugitives need answers, and fast, in order to prevent a LeafWing attack. But Cricket has more questions than ever. How can she stay hidden and discover the queen's deadliest secret? And if she does succeed - can a powerless dragonet really do anything to topple a regime and stop a war?
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For centuries there have been rumors of another continent on the dragons' planet - another land far across the ocean, populated by tribes of dragons very different from those we know.
\nBut there's never been any evidence, and most dragons dismissed the rumors as fairy tales. Until now. Because it turns out the stories are true. And the other tribes are coming.
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The lost heir to the SeaWing throne is going home at last . . .
\nShe can’t believe it’s finally happening. Tsunami and her fellow dragonets of destiny are journeying under the water to the great SeaWing Kingdom. Stolen as an egg from the royal hatchery, Tsunami is eager to meet her future subjects and reunite with her mother, Queen Coral.
\nBut Tsunami’s triumphant return doesn’t go quite the way she’d imagined. Queen Coral welcomes her with open wings, but a mysterious assassin has been killing off the queen's heirs for years, and Tsunami may be the next target. The dragonets came to the SeaWings for protection, but this ocean hides secrets, betrayal - and perhaps even death.
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Peace has come to Pyrrhia . . . for now. The war between the tribes is finally over, and now the dragonets of the prophecy have a plan for lasting peace: Jade Mountain Academy, a school that will gather dragonets from all the tribes and teach them to live together, perhaps even as friends. Moonwatcher isn’t sure how she feels about school, however.
\nHidden in the rainforest for most of her life, the young NightWing has an awful secret. She can read minds, and even see the future. Living in a cave with dozens of other dragons is noisy, exhausting - and dangerous. In just a few days, Moon finds herself overwhelmed by her secret powers and bombarded by strange thoughts, including those of a mysterious dragon who might be a terrible enemy.
\nAnd when someone starts attacking dragons within the academy, Moon has a choice to make: Stay hidden and safe? Or risk everything to save her new friends?
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It's no secret that Sundew wants to destroy the HiveWings. It's her life's mission to exact revenge on the tribe that tried to wipe out the LeafWings and ripped every tree from the surface of Pantala.
Every tree, that is, except the wild and dangerous Poison Jungle, where the surviving LeafWings have been hiding since the war. Hiding, plotting, and waiting for a dragon like Sundew, who is uniquely qualified to bring down the Hives.
There are dark secrets in the jungle, though-some that Sundew is keeping, and some that she's only just beginning to discover. And now that a new war is upon them, Sundew and her friends must unearth the oldest secret in the jungle - even if what they find has the power to destroy them all.
Fierceteeth knows she could have been a dragonet of destiny. She's a much better NightWing than that weird brother of hers, Starflight. Her dreams of glory have been painfully scorched, though, and now Queen Thorn is holding her and Strongwings, waiting to put them on trial.
\nFierceteeth just wants a chance to tell her side of the story - before it's too late.
In these brand-new short stories, fans will meet old friends and new ones, uncover shocking secrets, and learn more about the terrible challenges that will test all dragonkind . . .
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For every villain, there is a hero . . . Turtle isn’t one of the heroes he reads about in stories. If he were, he’d use his animus powers to help Pyrrhia - instead of keeping his abilities a secret, even from his own sister. Now that Darkstalker, the sinister and impossibly old dragon from Pyrrhia’s most notorious legends, has returned, Turtle knows his own role is simple: hide. And stay hidden.
\nThe more he watches Darkstalker from the shadows, the more Turtle knows that someone needs to stop the powerful dragon. A real hero. But Turtle is running out of time to find one, which means . . . he might have to try to save the day himself.
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Winter has been a disappointment to his royal IceWing family his whole life. When his sister, Icicle, runs away from Jade Mountain Academy, fleeing terrible crimes and possibly planning to commit more, Winter knows that they both need a second chance to make things right - if only he can find her.
\nWinter’s new clawmates, Moon, Qibli, and Kinkajou, won’t let him make this dangerous journey alone. They don’t seem to understand that IceWings, the most superior of all dragon tribes, can fix their own problems. When their search leads the dragonets straight into Queen Scarlet’s vicious talons, Winter is grateful to have some help. But even the bravest dragons can’t follow him to the Ice Kingdom, where he’ll have to face the greatest threat of all: his own family.
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A lonely hut in the woods.
\nA murder house.
\nA hidden chamber.
\nA mysterious shrine.
\nA home in flames.
\nA nightmarish prison . . .
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Each of the buildings in this book tells a chilling story. Each one is part of a puzzle. Look closely . . . and you'll see that everything is connected. All leading to a revelation so horrifying you won't want to believe it.
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Millions have become addicted to solving Uketsu's dark mysteries. Strange Buildings is the strangest, and darkest, of them all.
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A writer fascinated by the macabre is approached by an acquaintance who is considering purchasing a second-hand house in Tokyo. With its bright and spacious interior, the home seems perfect. But looking closer, the building’s floor plan reveals a mysterious \"dead space” hidden between the walls. Seeking a second opinion, the writer shares the floor plan with an architect friend only to discover more “strange spaces” dotted across the house.
\nWhat are these mysterious “strange spaces” and why do they exist - are they really there, or is there something off with the floor plan? Who is the home’s former resident who suddenly disappeared?
\nThe freelance writer and his architect friend can’t resist the challenge of solving the riddle of these puzzling floor plans . . . and the terrifying plot behind it all.
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The spine-tingling bestseller that has taken Japan by storm - an eerie fresh take on horror, in which a series of seemingly innocent pictures draws you into a disturbing web of unsolved mysteries and shattered psyches.
\nAn exploration of the macabre, where the seemingly mundane takes on a terrifying significance . . .
\nA pregnant woman's sketches on a seemingly innocuous blog conceal a chilling warning.
\nA child's picture of his home contains a dark secret message.
\nA sketch made by a murder victim in his final moments leads an amateur sleuth down a rabbithole that will reveal a horrifying reality.
\nStructured around these nine childlike drawings, each holding a disturbing clue, Uketsu invites readers to piece together the mystery behind each and the over-arching backstory that connects them all.
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Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea novels are some of the most acclaimed and awarded works in literature - they have received prestigious accolades such as the National Book Award, a Newbery Honor, the Nebula Award, and many more honors, commemorating their enduring place in the hearts and minds of readers and the literary world alike.
Now for the first time ever, they’re all together in one volume - including the early short stories, Le Guin’s “Earthsea Revisioned” Oxford lecture, and a new Earthsea story, never before printed.
With a new introduction by Le Guin herself, this essential edition will also include fifty illustrations by renowned artist Charles Vess, specially commissioned and selected by Le Guin, to bring her refined vision of Earthsea and its people to life in a totally new way.
He was a fully grown man, alone in a dense forest, with no trail to show where he had come from and no memory to tell who - or what he was. His eyes were not human eyes. The forest people took him in and raised him almost as a child, teaching him to speak, training him in forest lore, giving him all the knowledge they had.
\nBut they could not solve the riddle of his past, and at last he had to set out on a quest to Es Toch, the City of the Shing, the Liars of Earth, the Enemy of Mankind. There he would find out the truth about himself . . . and a universe of danger.
Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilised universe.
\nTo do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life - Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Anarres, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.
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In Victoria on a former prison colony, two exiled groups - the farmers of Shantih and the City dwellers - live in apparent harmony. All is not as it seems, however. While the peace-loving farmers labor endlessly to provide food for the City, the City Bosses rule the Shantih with an iron fist.
\nWhen a group of farmers decide to form a new settlement further away, the Bosses retaliate by threatening to crush the \"rebellion.\" Luz understands what it means to have no choices. Her father is a Boss and he has ruled over her life with the same iron fist. Luz wonders what it might be like to make her own choices. To be free to choose her own destiny. When the crisis over the new settlement reaches a flash point, Luz will have her chance.
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Ged is the older experienced Archmage of Roke investigating with young prince Arren of Enlad a mysterious disappearing of magic. Mages can no longer do spells. They adventure far to the south, and are led to the dragons' islands in the west.
\nGed closes the wound in the world, but it takes all his power to do so. Magic on Earthsea uses the power of true names. There is a balance between light and dark, male and female, and life and death.
The winner of the National Book Award, Ursula K. Le Guin has created a profound and transformational literature.
\nThe award-winning stories in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea range from the everyday to the outer limits of experience, where the quantum uncertainties of space and time are resolved only in the depths of the human heart.
\nAstonishing in their diversity and power, they exhibit both the artistry of a major writer at the height of her powers and the humanity of a mature artist confronting the world with her gift of wonder still intact.
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At the far end of our universe, on the twin planets of Werel and Yeowe, all humankind is divided into \"assets\" and \"owners,\" tradition and liberation are at war, and freedom takes many forms. Here is a society as complex and troubled as any on our world, peopled with unforgettable characters struggling to become fully human.
\nFor the disgraced revolutionary Abberkam, the callow \"space brat\" Solly, the haughty soldier Teyeo, and the Ekumen historian and Hainish exile Havzhiva, freedom and duty both begin in the heart, and success as well as failure has its costs.
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A classic science fiction novel by one of the greatest writers of the genre, set in a future world where one man's dreams control the fate of humanity.
In a future world racked by violence and environmental catastrophes, George Orr wakes up one day to discover that his dreams have the ability to alter reality. He seeks help from Dr. William Haber, a psychiatrist who immediately grasps the power George wields. Soon George must preserve reality itself as Dr. Haber becomes adept at manipulating George's dreams for his own purposes.
The Lathe of Heaven is an eerily prescient novel from award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin that masterfully addresses the dangers of power and humanity's self-destructiveness, questioning the nature of reality itself.
Genly Ai is an emissary from the human galaxy to Winter, a lost, stray world. His mission is to bring the planet back into the fold of an evolving galactic civilisation, but to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own culture and prejudices and those that he encounters. On a planet where people are of no gende - or both - this is a broad gulf indeed. The inventiveness and delicacy with which Le Guin portrays her alien world are not only unusual and inspiring, they are fundamental to almost all decent science fiction that has been written since.
\nIn fact, reading Le Guin again may cause the eye to narrow somewhat disapprovingly at the younger generation: what new ground are they breaking that is not already explored here with greater skill and acumen? It cannot be said, however, that this is a rollicking good story. Le Guin takes a lot of time to explore her characters, the world of her creation, and the philosophical themes that arise.
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The wizard Alder comes from Roke to the island of Gont in search of the Archmage, Lord Sparrowhawk, once known as Ged. The man who was once the most powerful wizard in the Islands now lives with his wife Tenar and their adopted daughter Tehanu. Alder needs help: his beloved wife died and in his dreams she calls him to the land of the dead - and now the dead are haunting him, begging for release. He can no longer sleep, and the Wizards of Earthsea are worried.
\nBut there is more at stake than the unquiet rest of one minor wizard: for the dragons of Earthsea have arisen, to reclaim the lands that were once theirs. Only Tehanu, herself daughter of a dragon, can talk to them; it may be that Alder's dreams hold the key to the salvation of Earthsea and all the peoples who live there.
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The Earth colony of Landin has been stranded on Werel for ten years--& ten of Werel's years are over 600 terrestrial years. The lonely & dwindling human settlement is beginning to feel the strain. Every winter - a season that lasts for 15 years - the Earthmen have neighbors: the humanoid hilfs, a nomadic people who only settle down for the cruel cold spell.
\nThe hilfs fear the Earthmen, whom they think of as witches & call the farborns. But hilfs & farborns have common enemies: the hordes of ravaging barbarians called gaals & eerie preying snow ghouls. Will they join forces or be annihilated?
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A world shared by three native humanoid races - the cavern-dwelling Gdemiar, elvish Fiia, and warrior clan, Liuar - is suddenly invaded and conquered by a fleet of ships from the stars.
\nEarth scientist Rocannon is on that world, and he sees his friends murdered and his spaceship destroyed. Marooned among alien peoples, he leads the battle to free this new world - and finds that legends grow around him even as he fights.
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A collection of five magical tales of Earthsea, the fantastical realm created by a master storyteller that has held readers enthralled for more than three decades.
\n\"The Finder\", a novella set a few hundred years before A Wizard of Earthsea, when he Archipelago was dark and troubled, reveals how the famous school on Roke was started.
\nIn \"The Bones of the Earth\" the wizards who first taught Ged demonstrate how humility, if great enough, can rein in an earthquake.
\nSometimes wizards an pursue alternative careers - and \"Darkrose and Diamond\" is also a delightful story of young courtship. Return to the time when Ged was Archmage of Earthsea in \"On the High Marsh\", a story about the love of power and the power of love.
\nAnd \"Dragonfly\", showing how a determined woman can break the glass ceiling of male magedom, provides a bridge - a dragon bridge - between Tehanu and The Other Wind.
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Years ago, they had escaped together from the sinister Tombs of Atuan - she, an isolated young priestess; he, a powerful wizard. Now she is a farmer's widow, having chosen for herself the simple pleasures of an ordinary life. And he is a broken old man, mourning the powers lost to him through no choice of his own.
Once, when they were young, they helped each other at a time of darkness and danger and shared an adventure like no other. Now they must join forces again, to help another in need - the physically and emotionally scarred child whose own destiny has yet to be revealed.
Once a culturally rich world, the planet Aka has been utterly transformed by technology. Records of the past have been destroyed, and citizens are strictly monitored.
\nBut an official observer from Earth named Sutty has learned of a group of outcasts who live in the wilderness. They still believe in the ancient ways and still practice its lost religion - the Telling.
\nIntrigued by their beliefs, Sutty joins them on a sacred pilgrimage into the mountains . . . and into the dangerous terrain of her own heart, mind, and soul.
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When young Tenar is chosen as high priestess to the ancient and nameless Powers of the Earth, everything is taken away - home, family, possessions, even her name. For she is now Arha, the Eaten One, guardian of the ominous Tombs of Atuan.
\nWhile she is learning her way through the dark labyrinth, a young wizard, Ged, comes to steal the Tombs' greatest hidden treasure, the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. But Ged also brings with him the light of magic, and together, he and Tenar escape from the darkness that has become her domain.
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Ged was the greatest sorcerer in Earthsea, but in his youth he was the reckless Sparrowhawk.
\nIn his hunger for power and knowledge, he tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tumultuous tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.
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Centuries in the future, Terrans have established a logging colony & military base named \"New Tahiti\" on a tree-covered planet whose small, green-furred, big-eyed inhabitants have a culture centered on lucid dreaming. Terran greed spirals around native innocence & wisdom, overturning the ancient society.
Humans have learned interstellar travel from the Hainish (the origin-planet of all humanoid races, including Athsheans). Various planets have been expanding independently, but during the novel it's learned that the League of All Worlds has been formed. News arrives via an ansible, a new discovery. Previously they had been cut off, 27 light years from home.
The story occurs after The Dispossessed, where both the ansible & the League of Worlds are unrealised. Also well before Planet of Exile, where human settlers have learned to coexist. The 24th century has been suggested.
Terran colonists take over the planet locals call Athshe, meaning \"forest,\" rather than \"dirt,\" like their home planet Terra. They follow the 19th century model of colonization: felling trees, planting farms, digging mines & enslaving indigenous peoples. The natives are unequipped to comprehend this. They're a subsistence race who rely on the forests & have no cultural precedent for tyranny, slavery or war. The invaders take their land without resistance until one fatal act sets rebellion in motion & changes the people of both worlds forever.
Kumar Murty, a distinguished mathematician and scholar deeply rooted in the Indian teachings of Vedanta, brings over four decades of expertise in mathematics as a revered professor at the University of Toronto and Director of the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences. Surrounded by brilliant minds in the realms of math and science, Murty has witnessed the untapped talents within each student who crossed his classroom threshold.
\nEmbark on a quest to unlock the boundless capabilities of the mind with insights that seamlessly blend scientific rigor with spiritual wisdom. Drawing from his dual expertise in science and philosophy, Murty illuminates the interconnectedness of mental acuity and spiritual enlightenment. The Science of Human Possibilities is a beacon of inspiration tailored for anyone yearning to unearth their latent gifts.
\nThis compelling narrative transcends boundaries, exploring themes such as the art of learning, navigating uncertainty, fostering discipline, shaping identity, honoring tradition, and embracing enlightenment. Through Murty’s reflections as a Mathematics Professor intertwined with profound Vedanta teachings, readers are guided to realize the infinite potential inherent in the human experience, empowering individuals from all walks of life to evolve and flourish.
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The precarious equilibrium among four Londons has reached its breaking point. Once brimming with the red vivacity of magic, darkness casts a shadow over the Maresh Empire, leaving a space for another London to rise.
\nKell - once assumed to be the last surviving Antari - begins to waver under the pressure of competing loyalties. And in the wake of tragedy, can Arnes survive?
\nLila Bard, once a commonplace - but never common - thief, has survived and flourished through a series of magical trials. But now she must learn to control the magic, before it bleeds her dry. Meanwhile, the disgraced Captain Alucard Emery of the Night Spire collects his crew, attempting a race against time to acquire the impossible.
\nAnd an ancient enemy returns to claim a crown while a fallen hero tries to save a world in decay.
Kell is one of the last Antari - magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black.
\nKell was raised in Arnes - Red London - and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see.
\nUnofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they'll never see. It's a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.
\nAfter an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.
\nNow perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive.
It has been four months since a mysterious obsidian stone fell into Kell's possession. Four months since his path crossed with Delilah Bard. Four months since Prince Rhy was wounded, and since the nefarious Dane twins of White London fell, and four months since the stone was cast with Holland's dying body through the rift - back into Black London.
Now, restless after having given up his smuggling habit, Kell is visited by dreams of ominous magical events, waking only to think of Lila, who disappeared from the docks as she always meant to do. As Red London finalises preparations for the Element Games - an extravagant international competition of magic meant to entertain and keep healthy the ties between neighboring countries - a certain pirate ship draws closer, carrying old friends back into port.
And while Red London is caught up in the pageantry and thrills of the Games, another London is coming back to life. After all, a shadow that was gone in the night will reappear in the morning. But the balance of magic is ever perilous, and for one city to flourish, another London must fall.
Where there are ghosts, Cassidy Blake follows ... unless it's the other way around?
Cass thinks she might have this ghost-hunting thing down. After all, she and her ghost best friend, Jacob, have survived two haunted cities while travelling for her parents' TV show.
But nothing can prepare Cass for New Orleans, which wears all of its hauntings on its sleeve. In a city of ghost tours and tombs, raucous music and all kinds of magic, Cass could get lost in all the colourful, grisly local legends. And the city's biggest surprise is a foe Cass never expected to face: a servant of Death itself.
Cass takes on her most dangerous challenge yet . . .
This is a story about hunger.
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1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
A young girl grows up wild and wily - her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.
This is a story about love.
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1827. London.
A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow - but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.
This is a story about rage.
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2019. Boston.
College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.
This is a story about life - how it ends, and how it starts.
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Ever since Cass almost drowned (okay, she did drown, but she doesn't like to think about it), she can pull back the Veil that separates the living from the dead . . . and enter the world of spirits. Her best friend is even a ghost.
\nSo things are already pretty strange. But they're about to get much stranger.
\nWhen Cass's parents start hosting a TV show about the world's most haunted places, the family heads off to Edinburgh, Scotland. Here, graveyards, castles, and secret passageways teem with restless phantoms. And when Cass meets a girl who shares her \"gift,\" she realises how much she still has to learn about the Veil - and herself.
\nAnd she'll have to learn fast. The city of ghosts is more dangerous than she ever imagined.
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Everything casts a shadow. Even the world we live in. And as with every shadow, there is a place where it must touch. A seam, where the shadow meets its source.
\nOlivia Prior has grown up in Merilance School for girls, and all she has of her past is her mother’s journal - which seems to unravel into madness. Then, a letter invites Olivia to come home - to Gallant. Yet when Olivia arrives, no one is expecting her. But Olivia is not about to leave the first place that feels like home, it doesn’t matter if her cousin Matthew is hostile or if she sees half-formed ghouls haunting the hallways.
\nOlivia knows that Gallant is hiding secrets, and she is determined to uncover them. When she crosses a ruined wall at just the right moment, Olivia finds herself in a place that is Gallant - but not. The manor is crumbling, the ghouls are solid, and a mysterious figure rules over all. Now Olivia sees what has unraveled generations of her family, and where her father may have come from.
\nOlivia has always wanted to belong somewhere, but will she take her place as a Prior, protecting our world against the Master of the House? Or will she take her place beside him?
Kate Harker is a girl who isn't afraid of the dark. She's a girl who hunts monsters. And she's good at it. August Flynn is a monster who can never be human. No matter how much he once yearned for it. He has a part to play. And he will play it, no matter the cost.
\nNearly six months after Kate and August were first thrown together, the war between the monsters and the humans is a terrifying reality. In Verity, August has become the leader he never wished to be, and in Prosperity, Kate has become the ruthless hunter she knew she could be.
\nWhen a new monster emerges from the shadows - one who feeds on chaos and brings out its victim's inner demons - it lures Kate home, where she finds more than she bargained for. She'll face a monster she thought she killed, a boy she thought she knew, and a demon all her own.
Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.
Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was: a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.
Being a Keeper isn't just dangerous - it's a constant reminder of those Mac has lost, Da's death was hard enough, but now that her little brother is gone too, Mac starts to wonder about the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive, the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece together what remains, the Archive itself may crumble and fall.
Once, there were four worlds, nestled like pages in a book, each pulsing with fantastical power, and connected by a single city: London. Until the magic grew too fast, and forced the worlds to seal the doors between them in a desperate gamble to protect their own. The few magicians who could still open the doors grew more rare as time passed and now, only three Antari are known in recent memory - Kell Maresh of Red London, Delilah Bard of Grey London, and Holland Vosijk, of White London.
\nBut barely a glimpse of them have been seen in the last seven years - and a new Antari named Kosika has appeared in White London, taking the throne in Holland's absence. The young queen is willing to feed her city with blood, including her own - but her growing religious fervor has the potential to drown them instead.
\nAnd back in Red London, King Rhy Maresh is threatened by a rising rebellion, one determined to correct the balance of power by razing the throne entirely.
\nAmidst this tapestry of old friends and new enemies, a girl with an unusual magical ability comes into possession of a device that could change the fate of all four worlds.
\nHer name is Tes, and she's the only one who can bring them together - or unravel it all.
When Addie La Rue makes a pact with the devil, she trades her soul for immortality. But there's always a price - the devil takes away her place in the world, cursing her to be forgotten by everyone.
\nAddie flees her tiny hometown in 18th-Century France, beginning a journey that takes her across the world, learning to live a life where no one remembers her and everything she owns is lost and broken. Existing only as a muse for artists throughout history, she learns to fall in love anew every single day.
\nHer only companion on this journey is her dark devil with hypnotic green eyes, who visits her each year on the anniversary of their deal. Alone in the world, Addie has no choice but to confront him, to understand him, maybe to beat him.
\nUntil one day, in a second hand bookshop in Manhattan, Addie meets someone who remembers her. Suddenly thrust back into a real, normal life, Addie realises she can't escape her fate forever.
The Near Witch is only an old story told to frighten children. If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely, and always looking for company. And there are no strangers in the town of Near.
\nThese are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life. But when an actual stranger - a boy who seems to fade like smoke - appears outside her home on the moor at night, she knows that at least one of these sayings is no longer true. The next night, the children of Near start disappearing from their beds, and the mysterious boy falls under suspicion.
\nStill, he insists on helping Lexi search for them. Something tells her she can trust him.
\nAs the hunt for the children intensifies, so does Lexi's need to know - about the witch that just might be more than a bedtime story, about the wind that seems to speak through the walls at night, and about the history of this nameless boy.
\nPart fairy tale, part love story, Victoria Schwab's debut novel is entirely original yet achingly familiar: a song you heard long ago, a whisper carried by the wind, and a dream you won't soon forget.
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Last summer, Mackenzie Bishop, a Keeper tasked with stopping violent Histories from escaping the Archive, almost lost her life to one. Now, as she starts her junior year at Hyde School, she's struggling to get her life back. But moving on isn't easy - not when her dreams are haunted by what happened. She knows the past is past, knows it cannot hurt her, but it feels so real, and when her nightmares begin to creep into her waking hours, she starts to wonder if she's really safe.
Meanwhile, people are vanishing without a trace, and the only thing they seem to have in common is Mackenzie. She's sure the Archive knows more than they are letting on, but before she can prove it, she becomes the prime suspect. And unless Mac can track down the real culprit, she'll lose everything, not only her role as Keeper, but her memories, and even her life. Can Mackenzie untangle the mystery before she herself unravels?
Kate Harker and August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city - a city where the violence has begun to breed actual monsters. All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father, who lets the monsters roam free and makes the humans pay for his protection.
\nAll August wants is to be human, as good-hearted as his own father, to play a bigger role in protecting the innocent - but he’s one of the monsters. One who can steal a soul with a simple strain of music. When the chance arises to keep an eye on Kate, who’s just been kicked out of her sixth boarding school and returned home, August jumps at it.
\nBut Kate discovers August’s secret, and after a failed assassination attempt the pair must flee for their lives.
Trouble is haunting Cassidy Blake . . . even more than usual.
She (plus her ghost best friend, Jacob, of course) are in Paris, where Cass's parents are filming their TV show about the world's most haunted cities. Sure, it's fun eating croissants and seeing the Eiffel Tower, but there's true ghostly danger lurking beneath Paris, in the creepy underground Catacombs.
When Cass accidentally awakens a frighteningly strong spirit, she must rely on her still-growing skills as a ghosthunter -- and turn to friends both old and new to help her unravel a mystery. But time is running out, and the spirit is only growing stronger.
And if Cass fails, the force she's unleashed could haunt the city forever.
Sydney once had Serena - beloved sister, betrayed enemy, powerful ally. But now she is alone, except for her thrice-dead dog, Dol, and then there's Victor, who thinks Sydney doesn't know about his most recent act of vengeance.
Victor himself is under the radar these days - being buried and re-animated can strike concern even if one has superhuman powers. But despite his own worries, his anger remains. And Eli Ever still has yet to pay for the evil he has done.
Victor and Eli started out as college roommates - brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognised the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.
Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find - aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge - but who will be left alive at the end?
Reclusive forensic artist Macy Sheridan agrees to work one final case she hopes will solve the mystery that's haunted her for years. The only things blocking her from achieving her goal are a perfect facial reconstruction and Detective Leigh Monroe, a woman who reminds her of the past and challenges her future.
\nLeigh Monroe has lost her lover, her livelihood, and her home, but she chooses to look on the bright side. What else could go wrong? Then she meets rude, solitary Macy Sheridan. But Leigh discovers that Macy's façade is a mask, yet as real and untouchable as the forensic reconstructions she so meticulously creates.
Newly promoted police captain Bennett Carlyle considers being project manager for the new district substation the way to prove her worth in the male-dominated upper ranks of the department. But when the first girl she loved returns as the architect with little understanding of the operational needs of a police station, Bennett's career and her heart could face permanent damage.
\nArchitect Kerstin Anthony believes the new police substation will be the springboard to her own firm and the necessary resources to care for her mother. When she confronts the girl she kissed in high school, now a tantalizing police officer with unrealistic expectations about the new facility, Kerstin's path to success becomes littered with unexpected hurdles.
\nAlong with tight deadlines, budget restraints, and architectural challenges, she has to battle both past and present feelings for the woman she was torn away from years ago.
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Special Ops Agent Rafe Silva has always been a dedicated soldier, content in the military and jetting from one mission to the next. Her life is structured and clear of emotional entanglements until an old friend requests she provide protection for an industry whistle blower.
\nJana Elliott had found her ideal career and a second home within the corporate environment of Alumicor until a coworker dies and Jana suspects the company is covering up a deadly secret. When she starts investigating, her boss quickly shuts her down. Jana is determined to uncover the truth even if it means risking her life. Her friend’s suggestion of a bodyguard seems like overkill, but then Rafe Silva shows up and their irresistible attraction changes everything.
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DEA Agent Colby Vincent is working an undercover assignment in which homeless veterans are being used to deal drugs. She’s forced to work without the support of fellow agents or friends and is challenged by her attraction to a woman she suspects is involved in the case.
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Adena Weber is trying to maintain her late father’s law firm and legacy, part of which is the homeless resource center Colby is investigating. She’s always followed the rules and adhered to her boundaries until a new homeless woman wanders into the center.
Colby and Adena choose to keep secrets that complicate their jobs and ultimately jeopardise the possibility of a life together.
Police officer Loane Landry gives up professionally and emotionally when gunrunners kill her lover in an explosion. She blames herself and vows to seek answers and revenge - in or outside the law. Good guys never win, and bad guys never pay. But when the woman she loved returns very much alive and in desperate need of help, Loane must decide if she can endure the pain and memories of deceit in order to keep them both alive.
\nATF confidential informant Abigail Mancuso is charged with gathering information on a gunrunning syndicate camouflaged as a gentlemen’s entertainment business. Before arrests are made, something goes terribly wrong, and Abby is forced into a deep cover assignment for which she is unprepared.
\nThe only person she trusts is the woman she lied to about everything. How can she put Loane’s life at risk by asking for her help?
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Hired gun Lennex Chambers expects to provide a simple escort service to philanthropist Sara Ambrosini, but nothing is as simple as it seems, especially love. Lennex Chambers is a disillusioned hired gun who longs for a connection with life beyond her sat-phone and assignments she can't share with anyone. Her boss lines up a cushy escort job to Africa to give her time to refocus. But the country she loved as a child holds memories she isn't ready to face.
\nAdding to her ambivalence about returning is the immensely attractive Sara Ambrosini, head of Ambrosini Philanthropic, who sees everything through the rose-colored glasses of wealth and privilege. Lennex's task is to provide security for Sara until they reach the future site of her primary school for tribal children in the bush country.
\nBut Lennex soon discovers that Sara's stubbornness and independence aren't the only obstacles to the success of her assignment. Nothing is as simple as it seems, especially love.
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Possibility, love, vigilance, even fear can be captured in a whisper. But what if it's the only clue to solve a crime? Detective Rae Butler inherits a series of assaults that seem to have no connection beyond the suspect. But when she encounters Audrey Everhart and her unexplainable insights, Rae is torn between what she knows and how she feels.
\nMayoral publicist Audrey Everhart is haunted by nightmares and by the cop determined to invade her privacy for answers. Is Audrey's nightmarish vision the answer to Rae's prayer?
For Frankie Strong, results mean more than sticking to the rules, until she runs heart-first into Evan Spears.
\nUS Marshal Evan Spears commands a federal task force of seasoned agents who track and capture dangerous fugitives around the world. When Evan is forced to take on DEA Agent Frankie Strong, a free spirit with unorthodox methods, she sees nothing but trouble for the team, the mission, and her future.
\nFrankie just wants to locate the murder suspect and prove her worth, but Evan seems determined to block her. To catch the killer they must learn to work together, but their attraction blurs the lines between professional and personal.
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The cure for grief is action, but is it worth the risk? Greer Ellis is a hard-working homicide detective who excels at her job and values her reputation and her privacy. Since the death of her partner two years ago, work is the only thing that interests her.
\nUntil Eva Saldana, an internationally renowned journalist comes to town looking for answers in her brother’s death. Eva is convinced the overdose label so hastily applied to his case is not only wrong but is also a cover for murder. When evidence seems to point to a fellow officer, Greer is torn between her quest for the truth, allegiance to her profession, and her growing desire for Eva.
\nBut is the risk they must take to be together justifiable?
Lieutenant Jazz Perry finds a young girl wandering the downtown streets alone late at night. As the child becomes attached to her, Jazz is reminded of her own experiences in foster care and takes a personal interest even when she knows she should maintain professional distance.
\nSocial worker Emory Blake is good at her job helping children in challenging situations. She believes in the system and knows it works if you let it. When Jazz starts interfering in the case and bypassing the rules, Emory is torn between her responsibilities and an unwelcome attraction she can’t deny.
\nWhen on the job responsibilities collide with desires of the heart, becoming personally involved is the only choice.
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Detective Jordan Bishop is tasked with protecting Neela Sahjani, abortion doctor, stem-cell researcher, and member of the new conservative state government - a walking contradiction and a complication Jordan can’t afford. When Neela seeks an emotional connection, Jordan tries to distract her from the darkness of her past with the only thing she has to offer - sex.
\nNeela is struggling to keep her job in an administration that no longer supports her vision while also caring for her aging mother and researching a cure for her mother’s disease. The last thing she needs is a detached, risk-taking police officer looking over her shoulder.
Sydney Cabot doesn't trust uptight attorney Regan Desanto, who is assigned to defend her in a civil suit, and the feeling is mutual - but Syd's career is in the balance and her libido is sending signals that are impossible to ignore.
\nCity Attorney Regan Desanto moved to town a year ago after her partner of twenty years dumped her for another woman. All she wants is to be near her ailing grandmother and to work ordinary, boring municipal cases until she can get her life back together.
\nBeat officer Sydney Cabot is a chronic serial polyamorist who craves the adrenaline rush on and off the job. She has never wanted to be or tried to be faithful to one woman. When Syd is slapped with a wrongful death suit, Regan, the most uptight, controlling, and monogamous woman Syd has ever met, is assigned the case.
\nThey don't much like each other, but they have to work together - and what's even more of a challenge, they have to figure out how to defuse their growing attraction.
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Lieutenant Alex Troy is caught in the paradox of her life - to hold steadfast to her professional oath or to protect the woman she loves. Assigned to the Vice/Narcotics Division, Alex is given the dangerous but career-building mission of catching the city's most notorious and elusive drug lord, Sonny Davis. She has to assemble the perfect team of officers to pursue the man suspected of killing numerous coeds with the poison he peddles.
\nKeri Morgan is young, enthusiastic and alive in ways that Alex can barely remember, and Keri has a reason of her own to want Sonny Davis dead. Before justice can be served, Alex and Keri are caught in a web of love, duty, vengeance and desire that will change both their lives.
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Jeri Wylder is a dedicated police officer doing her job, paying her way, and looking for Ms. Right, until a call at a drug house goes terribly wrong. She’s suspected of a crime she didn’t commit and is forced to do two things that go against her beliefs: see a therapist and prove a fellow officer is corrupt.
\nSimone Sullivan is trying to save her historical apartment complex and its occupants from redevelopment, but someone wants to see the building destroyed. When Jeri arrives on her doorstep after a vandalism incident, Simone’s life takes a turn that challenges her personally and professionally.
\nSimone is the woman Jerri has been waiting for her entire life. Love would be a lot simpler if the threat of arrest wasn’t hanging over her head. But when the perpetrator sets their sights on Simone, Jerri will risk everything to save her.
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Helen Appleby just wants a quiet life. Recently released from prison for the manslaughter of her partner, she's trying to forget her past mistakes - all of them - to rebuild her life and move on.
\nWhen she decides to open a bookshop, she’s certain this is the perfect new start. Here, amongst the quiet shelves of her shop and between the covers of her books, she can hide away from the real world and begin again. The world of books the perfect place to find happiness - even if it is all lies.
\nAs she settles into life as an apparently timid bookseller, it seems that someone is determined to sabotage Helen's new life and ruin everything she's built.
\nBut Helen has killed once before. And to protect her future, she could be willing to kill again . . .
Still in shock after the tragic death of husband Richie, Cassie Macreddin hopes that her new home, historic Hindon House, is the place where she can heal her pain and hide her secrets.
\nCassie soon realises that not everyone is pleased at her arrival and that someone is actively trying to make her leave Hindon House . . . but who? And why?
\nAs events escalate, Cassie must fight to save her home . . . and maybe even her life.
How much do you trust your partner?
\nOne cheating man. Four angry women. One crime of passion.
\nSuccessful Misty is happy living with her perfect boyfriend until he tells her he is leaving.
\nElegant Gwen is excited about the new man in her life until she discovers he’s been lying to her.
\nAngry Babs has the love of her life lured away, first by Misty then by Gwen, and she wants revenge.
\nLong-suffering Dee is a wife who takes her wandering husband back every single time.
\nWhen the lives of these four women collide, the results are deadly.
\nOne thing is for certain, the consequences of lying will be murder . . .
When Jodie, a nurse with a long-held secret, starts dating Flynn she believes the past is firmly behind her.
Little does she know that Victor Hill, a man from her childhood, has been following her for years and thinks it’s time he makes his presence felt . . .
Oblivious to the evil lurking behind her, Jodie is certain that nothing can spoil her life, but a call from the manager of the nursing home where she works changes everything.
Then the discovery of a parcel tied to her front door rocks her world further and as everything begins to crumble around her, she wonders who she can trust.
Is the man from her past responsible for her torment or does someone much closer to home have Jodie in their sights?
Detective Garda Sergeant Mike West and his partner answer an emergency call from St Monica’s church and discover a dead body suspended from the beams in front of the altar.
\nThe victim’s fingerprints show that the man is Ian Moore, recently released from prison after serving time for rape. Revenge seems like the obvious motive for his murder, but the list of suspects grows as the case takes an unexpected twist.
\nIs the killer someone who believes they are doing God’s work?
\nWith pressure from archbishops, bishops, priests and Inspector Morrison to get the case solved quickly, West and his team have their work cut out . . .
Detective Garda Sergeant Mike West could do with a break. He’s had his fill of complicated cases and wants nothing more than to settle down with his fiancée. But life has a habit of getting in the way . . .
\nTwo new cases come in: A hit and run where the family of the victim act suspiciously and a missing woman who is found dead from natural causes until the post-mortem suggests foul play.
\nWith an investigation into both cases going nowhere, the last thing West or his team need are further complications – they certainly don’t need human body parts turning up but that’s what they get.
\nEverybody avoids using the words . . . serial killer.
\nWith no motives, no clues and contradictory evidence, is West destined to fail this time?
When Detective Garda Sergeant Mike West and his partner, Garda Andrews, are called to a suspicious death they are shocked to find the small body of a child abandoned in a suitcase.
\nWho is she? No child has been reported missing.
\nTheir search reaches outside Ireland but without success and soon another dead body takes their attention. There is a surfeit of suspects this time, but as the case evolves, the two detectives are stunned where it leads.
\nMeanwhile, someone is making trouble for Edel Johnson, and she is forced, eventually, to ask West for help.
\nCan West sort personal problems, solve professional cases and restore peace to Foxrock?
A murder followed by a series of random, motiveless crimes leave Detective Garda Sergeant Mike West and his team puzzled.
\nWhen Edel Johnson arrives at the scene of a crime Mike is taken aback, more so when he discovers she is now working with a victim support group. He has feelings for her, but he is the garda who investigated her husband's murder, and their relationship is complicated.
\nWith crime in Dublin’s suburbs at an all-time high, and his superiors breathing down his neck, West doesn't need the distraction. But someone wants Edel out of the way, and it's up to West to find out who . . .
The woman he loves is living in his house, in his spare bedroom. It should be simple, but it isn't. He has a solution. A romantic weekend away, in a lighthouse on Clare Island.
\nA stunning place, a beautiful woman. What could be more perfect?
\nWhen one of the islanders dies in a bizarre and a tragic accident, West is roped in to help. But it isn't an accident, and there is more than one suspect.
\nThere's also more than one secret. Can West solve the case before someone else dies?
When Detective Garda Sergeant Mike West is called to investigate a murder in a Dublin graveyard, suspicion immediately falls on a local woman, Edel Johnson, whose husband disappeared some months before. But then she disappears.
\nEvidence leads West to a small village in Cornwall, but when he checks in to an Inn, he finds Edel has arrived before him. Her explanation seems to make sense but as West begins to think his suspicions of her are unfounded, she disappears again.
\nIs she guilty? West, fighting an unsuitable attraction, doesn't want to believe it. But the case against her is growing. Back in Dublin, his team uncover evidence of blackmail and illegal drugs involving Edel’s missing husband. When another man is murdered, she, once again, comes under suspicion.
\nFinally, the case is untangled, but is it the outcome West really wants?
When Natasha meets Daniel, she knows her life is made. Rich, handsome and charming, Daniel will make the perfect husband. Even if she won’t make the perfect wife . . .
\nShe is thrilled when Daniel suggests an all-expenses paid cruise for Natasha, her friends, Barbara, Tracy Ann and Michelle, and their husbands. What better way to show everyone that Natasha has finally made it?
\nBut as the ship sets sail, she learns that far from being the perfect husband, Daniel has terrible secrets that are about to be revealed. And each of the wives has their own reasons for wanting him dead.
Cara Jenkins is a successful author about to embark on her thirtieth novel. But as she sits at her desk to write, she realizes that she has no ideas left. And as the pressure mounts for her to deliver, she begins to fear that her career is over.
\nThen the letters start.
\nAt first, they seem harmless. But as the messages grow darker, Cara becomes convinced that someone is watching her, waiting for their moment to strike.
\nHer husband, Artie, dismisses the notes as stupid pranks, but Cara feels them pulling her back to a past she can't escape. With no easy answers, Cara does what she does best and begins to write. But the more words that come, the more fantasy and reality begin to blur and soon her imagination, and her accusations, begin to run wild.
\nWith reality blurring into fiction, Cara struggles to see the truth. Is someone really watching her, or is her unravelling mind feeding her paranoia? And how will this story - her story - end?
\nThis time her deadline has never felt more deadly . . .
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Sally Ride became a household name as the first American woman in space, but a wealth of equally impressive women have come after her.
\nAmerica's Women Astronauts spans 45 years and 61 astronauts to shares the triumphant histories of women who made space for themselves in a male-dominated field.Valerie Neal, emerita curator in the Department of Space History at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, offers a culturally insightful history of the experiences of women astronauts, the challenges they've faced, and their distinctive stories.
\nCollectively, they've flown on every operational spacecraft, completed more than 100 space shuttle missions and more than 20 long-duration stays on the International Space Station and Russian Space Station Mir, and continue to prove themselves in present-day space exploration efforts.
\nThe book includes 30 black-and-white photographs to complement the historical account. With its sweeping look from the first women astronauts to Christina Hammock Koch, assigned to the first Artemis mission to the Moon slated for 2024, there is no comparable space history book. America's Women Astronauts is an inspiring tribute to unsung women's history.
Examining the cultural belief that our animal instincts are to be corrected or corralled, nature advocate and rewilding facilitator Vanessa Chakour explores our inner and outer landscapes through the lens of wild animals.
\nHow can wolves, misunderstood in myths but vital to ecosystems, teach us to rewrite dangerous stories and respect nature’s wisdom? How do the peaceful coexistence strategies of black bears offer insights into sharing resources? How can the engineering feats of beavers guide us in fostering regenerative building solutions and vibrant ecosystems? What can the loyal partnership of seahorses teach us about nurturing and love?
\nIn Earthly Bodies, Vanessa draws parallels from struggles she has weathered in her own life to those endured by twenty-three wild animals - from wolves to sea lions - exploring our unease of feeling like prey; challenging the entrapment of our limiting beliefs; contextualising the turmoil of fractured landscapes; and affirming our primal ache to belong.
\nVanessa’s pivotal encounters with creatures in sync with their primal rhythms and demands illustrate the necessity of relying on the intelligence of gut instinct; of the magnetic pull of attraction; of the body’s mandate for restorative rest; and of the sacred bonds of love. We often cut ourselves off from identifying with wild animals - like wolves, foxes, bats and bears, and other animal relatives - out of fear, ignorance, disgust, or misunderstanding, yet our earthly human bodies can lead us in our pursuits of pleasure, love, wonder, healing, and connection.
\nWith each section containing an aspect of injured animal’s return home to their natural habitat, and - in our case - to an embodied, instinctual self, Earthly Bodies meditates on how this journey from enclosures, to rehabilitation, to soft release, and finally to homing raises questions about our humanity. In so learning, we understand how we might benefit from embracing our own animal nature to gain deeper self-actualisation, find common ground with our fellow animals, and learn to thrive together.
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Living in El Nido, a privileged community in the hills east of Berkeley, is supposed to mean you’ve made it. So when Jin Chang moves there with his wife and daughters after years of scraping by, he hopes it will finally be the end of his bad luck. What his family doesn’t know is that he’s bending the rules for one final scheme: to make it big in real estate.
\nNext door, Blair Belle prides herself on her progressive politics. After all, she treats their new nanny, Ana Rodriguez, and her daughter like family - even if she doesn’t know them all that well. But she can’t help but feel skeptical of the new neighbors, especially when she begins to suspect that Jin’s plans might interfere with the Belle’s own luxury development.
\nJin’s teenage daughter Jane can tell her dad is keeping a secret, but she’s also struggling to navigate El Nido’s cliques. Tasha Washington has always felt isolated, too, as one of the only Black girls at the school. In the wake of a coyote attack, Jane and Tasha bond. Together, they hatch a plot to expose the town’s hypocrisies.
\nThe shockwaves will rock their own families. As fire season escalates, and the roaming coyote continues to unleash chaos, the characters become embroiled in a series of scandals that will change El Nido - and their own fates - forever.
\nUrgent, riveting, and deeply heartfelt, full of sharp wit and keen empathy, Coyoteland is at once a delicious suburban drama and an unflinching exploration of our current moment.
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Noche is a Lechuza by night, an ethereal jet-black owl who guides the dead to the after. Except now, Noche cannot bring herself to escort her dead girlfriend, whose soul is fading the harder Noche holds on - an aching romance about first and second loves and finding the strength to let go.
\nDeath waits for Estrella (Noche) Villanueva. In her human form, she is a lonely science girl grieving the tragic accidental drowning of her girlfriend, Dante Fuentes. At night, she is a Lechuza who visits her dead girlfriend at the lake, desperate for more time with her. The longer Dante’s soul roams the earth, the more likely it is that she will fade into the unknown, lost forever, but Noche cannot let go . . .
\nThat’s when a new kid comes to town, Jax, another science nerd like Noche. They connect in a way she can’t ignore, seemingly pulled together by an invisible thread. For the first time, Noche begins to imagine a life without Dante. As Noche’s heart begins to beat for two people, her guilt flares. Then, she finds herself at risk of losing both Jax and Dante, and Noche is forced to question her purpose as a lechuza and everything she has ever believed in.
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It’s 2015 and Maxine Thomas, the founder and creative director of the cult makeup company Reveal, has just been suspended by her own Board for a scandalous transgression. Housebound in her New York City apartment, where she awaits the verdict on her future, Max recounts her version of the events that have brought her to this moment.
\nFrom her start as a precocious suburban child in the eighties to her decades as a workaholic visionary, Max proselytises a sheer, dewy look - cosmetics through a female gaze - all while battling sexist investors, the whiplash of cultural change, and the mounting pressure to keep her sexuality a secret. But when Max’s story catches up to her present, she must contend with the cost of true transparency. Who has she become in her relentless pursuit of success? And what will happen if she loses it all?
Despite all of the odds, Joan achieved the impossible. She reset the timeline, saved her family - and destroyed the hero, Nick.
\nBut her success has come at a terrible cost.
\nShe alone remembers what happened. Now, Aaron, her hard-won friend - and maybe more - is an enemy, trying to kill her. And Nick, the boy she loved, is a stranger who doesn’t even know her name. Only Joan remembers that there is a ruthless and dangerous enemy still out there.
\nWhen a deadly attack forces Joan back into the monster world as a fugitive, she finds herself on the run with Nick - as Aaron closes in.
\nAs the danger rises - and Nick gets perilously closer to discovering the truth of what Joan did to him - Joan discovers a secret of her own. One that threatens everyone she loves.
\nTorn between love and family and monstrous choices, Joan must find a way to re-gather her old allies to face down the deadliest of enemies, and to save the timeline itself.
After Joan's failed attempt to save the world, Eleanor now rules over a cruel new timeline where monsters live openly among humans, preying on them and subjugating them.
\nNick -once a hero to humans, and Joan's first love - is tormented by the choice he made to save her over the timeline itself. And Aaron - the ruthless heir to a powerful monster family - now finds himself in a world where monsters have power beyond imagining while his feelings for Joan grow.
\nWrenched between love and rivalry, the three of them must negotiate their fractured pasts to survive the new world and restore what was lost. Because only they remember that there was once a better timeline.
\nBut how will they defeat a whole world of monsters with control over time itself?
It should have been the perfect summer. Sent to stay with her late mother’s eccentric family in London, sixteen-year-old Joan is determined to enjoy herself. She loves her nerdy job at the historic Holland House, and when her super cute co-worker Nick asks her on a date, it feels like everything is falling into place.
\nBut she soon learns the truth. Her family aren’t just eccentric: they’re monsters, with terrifying, hidden powers. And Nick isn’t just a cute boy: he’s a legendary monster slayer, who will do anything to bring them down.
\nAs she battles Nick, Joan is forced to work with the beautiful and ruthless Aaron Oliver, heir to a monster family that hates her own. She’ll have to embrace her own monstrousness if she is to save herself, and her family. Because in this story
\n. . . she is not the hero.
When her stepfather is arrested, aspiring artist Ceci moves back to her mother’s hometown of Santa Aguas, an eccentric small town steeped in the legend of La Cegua, the specter of a wronged witch who appears on lonely roads at night, luring untrustworthy men to their deaths.
\nCeci and her mother take up residence in the abandoned manor of the Sevilla family, rumored to have been cursed by La Cegua, where she begins to uncover a past that seems to be connected to her mother. The more she learns of the Sevillas, the more Ceci finds herself forming a strange affinity with the feared Cegua, who she suspects is the one inspiring her paintings of a mysterious door in the forest.
\nWhen the very door Ceci has been painting appears in the woods, she decides to venture through it with her new friend, Jamie. Together, they discover a well, guarded by the statue of a veiled woman. A well for granting wishes. The well of La Cegua.
\nWhat starts off as harmless fun quickly escalates into something sinister when Ceci realises that the wishes are putting the people she loves in danger and testing her own penchant for vengeance. After learning others are also searching for the well, Ceci must confront the truth of her mother’s past and prevent La Cegua’s wishes from being used for the wrong reasons. Ceci knows too well how much people will sacrifice for power. Every wish has its price, and La Cegua never forgets the ones who have wronged her.
After the War of Kinds ravaged the kingdom of Rabu, the Automae, Designed to be the playthings of royals, took over the estates of their owners and bent the human race to their will.
\nNow, Ayla, a human servant rising the ranks at the House of the Sovereign, dreams of avenging the death of her family . . . by killing the Sovereign’s daughter, Lady Crier. Crier, who was Made to be beautiful, to be flawless. And to take over the work of her father.
\nCrier had been preparing to do just that - to inherit her father’s rule over the land. But that was before she was betrothed to Scyre Kinok, who seems to have a thousand secrets. That was before she discovered her father isn’t as benevolent as she thought. That was before she met Ayla.
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Convicted of murder at seventeen, infamous killer and true crime celebrity Orianna Negi has always maintained her innocence.
\nOrianna has a blind spot over that fateful she can't remember what happened. Forensic psychologist Annie Ledet is tasked with unlocking the truth.
\nOrianna grew up in Eden Falls, ruled by the insular Wyclerc dynasty and its ruthless patriarch , Amos. As their sessions progress, Annie reaches into Orianna's past to a shattering realisation . . . Scandal. Sex. Power. Race. And murder. Between guilt and innocence lies a fallen Eden.
Treacherously slain in battle but denied the peace of death, Sir Rollo Iron-Arm walks the earth as an undead knight, cursed to an eternity of torment.
\nThe curse has one imperfection: it fails to chain his will, leaving him free to defy the darkness.
\nInstead, he chooses to protect his people from horrors that rise up to consume them. Although he is doomed to a lonely existence, Rollo determines to wage a one-man war against the powers that seek to control him and devour his land. He will use his damned state, turning it against his masters in ways they could never foresee.
\nCan the Forsaken successfully defy the powers of night - or will they drag his very soul into the abyss?
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U.S. Marine Sergeant Jake Bayard did when he has to cancel a hot date to board a transport plane to the South Pole, which is hijacked by aliens with hostile intent to Earth.
\nBayard escapes into tunnels deep under the ice and stumbles upon advanced technology that teleports him to Epsilon Eridani.
\nDesperately alone and on the run, Bayard falls back onto his combat training, soon discovering that these aliens keep human herds for meat. That’s it. He enlists some of the downtrodden and declares war against the hungry oppressors.
To Jake Bayard’s amazement, he meets a Homo habilis: a five-foot, hundred-pound, hairy hominid that was supposed to have gone extinct 1.65 million years ago.
\nPhilip is no moronic precursor to man but a member of the elite, extraterrestrial Institute, needing help leaving Earth. The problem is that Philip is a liar, a sneak and a diabolical genius using the Traveler for his own ends.
\nOut in the stars, Bayard discovers a conspiracy backed by ancient military tech and run by the little hominids bent on conquering everything, including Earth.
\nWhat can one Marine stranded on a deadly alien planet do against an army of technologically superior soldiers?
\nBayard is about to find out.
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Star Watch defeated the Swarm Invasion Fleet, but at a terrible cost in destroyed star systems, smashed battleships and billions of dead. In the aftermath of the costly victory, chaos threatens as worlds leave the Commonwealth of Planets, face mass starvation or succumb to increased piracy.
\nThe war against the Swarm Imperium has just begun. Humanity needs unity or each planet will fall alone.
\nBrigadier O’Hara of Star Watch Intelligence stumbles onto a secret conspiracy. Someone is trying to destroy the Commonwealth from within, and they have an alien artifact of incredible power.
\nO’Hara summons Captain Maddox. Although she fears to lose him, she knows that Maddox and his crew have the best chance of finding the hidden enemy. If the captain fails, the Commonwealth will be powerless to stop its destruction. What O’Hara doesn’t know - it would probably break her heart if she did - is that she has just sent Maddox into the most harrowing battle of his career.
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At Omicron 9, Professor Ludendorff unearthed artifacts of the fabled Old Ones. During a meeting in a subterranean chamber, a portal appeared and aliens attacked, perhaps to kidnap the professor or grab the artifacts. Maddox’s new intuitive sense gave him just enough warning. He saved Ludendorff and rushed into the portal to forestall any more assaults - and thus began his lonely odyssey from one strange place to another.
\nMaddox eventually found a Builder potential unit, and they resolved to work together. But the unit betrayed him and then Victory, taking them to a system where Maddox had already been, one behind an impenetrable barrier and possessing an ancient power.
\nMaddox and Victory were outmatched and outgunned, facing aliens wielding super-science weapons. But if the captain ever wanted to see his wife and daughter again, and stop Lisa Meyers from her ongoing genocidal plans against humanity, he was going to have to solve an eon-old mystery and defeat every extraterrestrial bastard that got in his way.
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Across the lonely depths of space from their spiral arm, Leviathan has begun infiltrating agents into Star Watch as a prelude to invasion.
\nOne team has cloned a kidnapped Captain Maddox, intending for the clone to take his place on Victory.
\nThe first Maddox learns of this is when his clone unfreezes him on a spaceliner. Maddox and his clone decide to team up. They’re 8000 light years from Earth, forced to play a desperate game of survival while hunted by the cybernetic Soldiers of Leviathan.
\nMaddox is determined to warn Star Watch about the coming invasion.
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We fought the invading New Men to a standstill and defeated the alien Destroyer sent to obliterate Earth.
\nThe worst should be over, but it’s not.
\nPerfect android replicas are impersonating high-level officials so trust is failing. Worse, the New Men have found allies with an impenetrable stealth technology.
\nThis time, however, Earth is going on the offensive. Admiral Fletcher is headed to “C” Quadrant with a Grand Fleet. He’s to liberate the captured planets and find the enemy homeworld. What he isn’t supposed to do is die.
\nThe only one who can save humanity has been grounded. Captain Maddox is under suspicion because he’s half New Man. But he’s not going to stop. He’s found something unbelievable. Now, he needs Starship Victory - an ancient, alien spacecraft - the AI Galyan, Meta, Sergeant Riker and the others to help him tear the greatest secret of all from the enemy.
\nMaddox and his crew must succeed or humanity will drown in a sea of human extinction.
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Earth needs a miracle. Out of the Beyond invade the New Men, stronger, faster and smarter than the old. Star Watch sends a massed battle fleet to stop them.
\nIt’s a disaster. Admiral Fletcher barely escapes annihilation by heading at sub-light speed for a nearby star system. His battered ships are running out of food, fuel and missiles. He knows the New Men will use jump gates, waiting for him six months from now at his destination.
\nStar Watch Command frantically searches for a way to rescue the vessels. Earth has an ancient alien starship in the Oort cloud, with a suspicious AI refusing to cooperate with the scientists. The vessel has powerful weapons - if anyone could figure out how to make them work after ten thousand years.
\nStar Watch summons Captain Maddox, an unorthodox Intelligence officer who makes things happen. He is given command of Victory and told to fix the ancient weapons, rescue Fletcher’s ships and help them battle home again.
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The Sovereign Hierarchy of Leviathan leaves nothing to chance. Their strategists are the greatest in the galaxy, utilizing the tiniest details. Before unleashing the perfect invasion, they send Senior Dax to Earth. The cyber spy will assassinate the Lord High Admiral, throwing Star Watch into panic as one after another of their highest officials die hideous, unstoppable deaths.
\nMaddox realises his grandmother, the Iron Lady, is next. Hell, no! While the rest of Star Watch dithers, he breaks into a maximum security prison in Antarctica, freeing Becker from stasis. Becker is humanity’s strongest telepath, once a terrifying agent of aliens who almost overthrew the Commonwealth.
\nCan Maddox trust Becker or find the lever to force the telepath’s help? This is the beginning of a secret war of spy vs. spy and weird tech as Maddox seeks to stop an alien invasion from starting because he knows it cannot be beaten.
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A silver pyramid in space ten thousand years old . . . The secrets of the mysterious New Men . . . A war like no other . . . Starship Victory - Earth’s ancient, alien spacecraft - has won a smashing victory against the New Men, driving them from “C” Quadrant.
\nOn their way home, Captain Maddox and his crew run into a vast machine trapped inside an ion storm. Maddox doesn’t know it yet, but the meeting isn’t an accident. There’s a traitor aboard ship, implementing a secret plan, threatening to destroy everything Star Watch has achieved against the New Men.
\nNow begins a deadly race as Captain Maddox, the crew and Galyan are pitted against the masters of a centuries-old conspiracy. Human existence lies in the balance.
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An escape pod drifts through deep space - inside is a broken pilot with a warning from another dimension.
\nHe’s Keith Maker, a preman escaped from the master race. In his universe, the New Men conquered the Commonwealth, enslaving everyone. Now the Dominion has breached the wall between realities to conquer this one.
\nStar Watch has never faced an enemy so brilliant, fearless, and ruthless - armed with weapons that slice through shields.
\nBut these New Men have never faced Maddox.
\nAnd he’s not about to let this dimension fall without a fight.
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It finally happened. Commander Thrax Ti Ix created a hyper-spatial tube for the Swarm Imperium. Across thousands of light-years, a vast armada of warships is heading for Earth to burn the homeworld down to its bedrock as the Swarm begins its genocidal campaign against the human race.
\nNo one - not the New Men, the Spacers, the Wahhabi Caliphate or Star Watch - has faced such staggering odds. Alone or united, it makes no difference.
\nCaptain Maddox has a last-ditch plan. He’s returning to the null region of last voyage to grab the ancient Destroyers hidden there. But an immortal entity of evil cunning haunts the vessels. If it escapes its prison . . . Maddox will have made things infinitely worse.
\nThis time, mankind needs a miracle.
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His code name is Nostradamus, and he’s an ancient alien super-intelligence awakened by pesky humans crawling upon his planet. He decides to use these low-grade morons, testing some, making the special ones his agents and sending them into Star Watch to make the military organisation his own.
\nIt’s an insidious assault from within, run by a creature with fantastic predictive powers against what he considers an infantile species.
\nCaptain Maddox and the crew of Victory catch a glimpse of the secret menace in the Tau Ceti System. They race back to Earth to report. But Nostradamus’s web is already closing in. It may already be too late.
\nExcept . . . Maddox, Galyan, Valerie and Professor Ludendorff refuse to give up on those they love. The secret war against humanity has a new set of champions, hardened veterans willing to challenge an alien that can predict their every move.
\nDo Maddox and his crew stand a chance against the super-alien and the full weight of Star Watch turned against them?
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This may be Victory’s eeriest voyage yet as the starship plunges into a bizarre nebula of weird compacted gases. They’re hunting for Valerie Noonan, last seen at the destroyed Adok homeworld searching for survivors.
\nThe nebula holds dark secrets, ones that fight back with mass hypnosis and heavy lasers, seeking the crew’s enslavement and worse. Maddox desperately needs his new intuitive sense and fighting skills as he negotiates the treacherous space reefs, alien deceit and sinister technology. And he risks everything for what his AI companion Galyan desires most.
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We learned a terrible secret last voyage, the Swarm exists. It has a monstrous imperium, expanding, evolving and receiving incredible Builder tech.
\nCaptain Maddox heads into the Deep Beyond to find the Swarm Imperium. We must know the worst so we can prepare against the deadliest species in the galaxy.
\nThe captain and his crew battle loneliness and the terror of the unknown as they hunt through the stellar darkness. They’re thousands of light-years from home, from any help. What they find threatens their sanity and unity. It’s going to take the best Maddox and the ancient AI Galyan has to offer to pull the crew together. They have to save the starship from what waits in the galactic darkness or the human race will die.
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Last voyage, Captain Maddox entered a distant star system with a Swarm fleet. The sheer numbers were staggering, a 100-1 advantage against all human spacecraft. If the highly aggressive, racist insects gained hyper-spatial tube technology - allowing them to cross a thousand light-years in seconds - it would mean Armageddon for Earth.
\nStar Watch desperately needs something powerful to offset the annihilating Swarm numbers. As if on cue, Professor Ludendorff declares he has discovered the whereabouts of ancient Builder technology, a tech so potent it could defeat the Swarm.
\nStar Watch takes the bait, ordering Captain Maddox to find the lost planet holding the ancient technology.
\nLudendorff has a plan involving androids to lure his arch rival - Methuselah Man Strand - to his doom.
\nThe crew of Starship Victory knows nothing of this and thus blindly enters a web of intrigue and danger. The captain will need the AI Galyan, Valerie and Riker like never before. Humanity’s hope against the coming Swarm holocaust rests on the outcome.
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The strategists of Leviathan are cunning and devious. They also fear Captain Maddox because of his unusual luck, his ability to turn sure odds into a disaster for them. Before Leviathan begins its invasion of the Commonwealth, they want Maddox neutralised. Thus, using elaborate deception, the strategists convince Star Watch that ancient doomsday weapons lie in the Aquila Rift.
\nIt’s a region of space 700 light years from Earth. Thick molecular clouds and dense gases hide its stars and planets. As expected, Star Watch sends Victory and Maddox into the rift. There, the trap springs, and Maddox finds himself battling ancient entities, while the crew faces interment that could last until the universe itself runs down. Leviathan has stirred dreadful forces in its effort to kill Maddox, forces that could mean the end of everything if Maddox and his crew fail to survive a lonely and haunted ordeal in underspace.
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Captain Maddox is marooned on a harsh alien planet 6000 light years from Earth. He struggles alone, desperate to survive, knowing that failure will forever cost him his wife and daughter.
\nBut there’s more at stake than Maddox’s life. In the planet is a relic of unimaginable power and the secret to the Builders’ demise. The Mastermind has sent Iris, his human lover, and a team of intelligent canine killers, to retrieve the relic for his greatness.
\nHere, in a strangely dampened star system, the crew of Victory faces its cruelest challenge, battling entities thousands of years old to end a war begun long ago.
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Long ago, the Builders ruled the stars, using a unique super-science to create marvels and wonders. But the Builders vanished - no one knows why - leaving many of their treasures hidden throughout the galaxy.
\nNow, Captain Maddox and arrogant New Men learn about the fabled Library Planet. Legend holds it’s an ancient repository of Builder knowledge. The side that plunders the planetary vaults first will surely become the premier power in the Orion Spiral Arm.
\nThe race is on, but with many unforeseen dangers including deadly ghost-ships, possible time-travelers and cunning spies - others desire what lies inside the Library Planet.
\nThis will prove a desperate struggle as puny humans led by Captain Maddox try to wrench an advantage for Star Watch, and as a grim menace of unparalleled horror slowly unfolds before them.
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The Swarm is coming.
\nThis time, enemy science vessels study us as Hive Masters gather hundreds of thousands of starships for an avalanche invasion.
\nInstead of facing massed bug fleets in hopeless battle, we have a desperate plan: use a Builder nexus, create a hyper-spatial tube and send suicide-ships thousands of light-years into Swarm territory. There, our ships must find and destroy the nexuses that are the only way back home, all in order to stop the bugs from using the nexuses to reach Human Space.
\nDespite the grim mission, Captain Maddox is determined to bring his people back. But deep in the Sagittarius Spiral Arm, disaster strikes. All alone in the stellar night, the crew must face a primordial alien that even the Builders feared and the Swarm avoids.
\nNow begins a deadly battle as Maddox, the crew and Galyan are pitted against a horror of legendary evil as a Swarm battle fleet waits to annihilate the victor.
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Ten thousand years ago, a single alien super-ship survived an annihilating battle. Its dying crew set the AI on automatic to defend the smashed rubble of their planets. Throughout the lonely centuries - goes the legend - the faithful vessel continued to patrol the empty battlefield, obeying its last order.
\nIn the here and now, Earth needs a miracle. Out of the Beyond invade the New Men, stronger, faster and smarter than the old. Their superior warships and advanced technology destroy every fleet sent to stop them. Their spies have infiltrated the government and traitors plague Earth’s military.
\nCaptain Maddox of Star Watch Intelligence wonders if the ancient legend could be true. Would such an old starship be able to face the technology of the New Men?
\nOn the run from killers, Maddox searches for a group of talented misfits. He seeks Keith Maker, a drunken ex-strikefighter ace, Doctor Dana Rich the clone thief stuck on a prison planet and Lieutenant Valerie Noonan, the only person to have faced the New Men in battle and survived to tell about it.
\nMaddox has to find a place hidden in the Beyond and bring back a ship no one can enter. If he fails, the New Men will replace the old. If he succeeds, humanity might just have a fighting chance . . .
\n
Androids used to mingle among us, pretending to be human. Then an alien puppet-master altered their programming. Unknown to us, androids began leaving human society, burning their clothes and peeling off their skin to reveal the chrome-colored bodies underneath.
\nThey gathered in a system were a star had exploded, blowing away the atmosphere of a Jupiter-like planet. The supernova had hurled heavy metals against the remaining core. The androids are mining supermetals that can turn ordinary ship weapons and shields into invincible armaments.
\nThe altered programming includes human genocide, which will start with a murderous attack on Earth.
\nLuckily, Captain Maddox finds the enemy system. But during a space battle, something happens to hurl Victory thousands of light-years away into the Scutum-Centaurus Spiral Arm. The crippled starship will take years to reach home again. Long before that, Earth will be a radioactive ruin.
\nNow begins a desperate journey in hostile space that will stretch everyone as Maddox strains to reach the Lord High Admiral in time with knowledge about the coming android attack.
\n
Star Watch stands guard over the Commonwealth, having defeated New Men, massed Swarm fleets and android attackers. The victories have cost lost ships, slain crews and smashed star systems. The accumulated damage means that Star Watch now strains to keep order as political instability, increased space piracy and rebellions stretch the stellar organisation to the limit.
\nHumanity desperately needs peace so Star Watch can rebuild and regroup.
\nUnfortunately, Lord Drakos is searching the Beyond for a splinter Swarm colony world. The New Man believes he is a Napoleon of the stars. But he needs a fleet to prove it. Intelligence thinks Drakos hopes to make a pact with Thrax Ti Ix, assembling a fleet of renegade New Men and hybrid Swarm creatures, a fleet that will attack humanity.
\nPlan A has Captain Maddox capturing Drakos before he can find Thrax. Plan B means Star Watch will have to risk sending a fleet into the Beyond.
\nFor Maddox this is also a voyage of discovery, as he learns the identities of his mother and father.
\n
Task Force 3 is Star Watch’s elite deployment unit against any surprise threats to the Commonwealth.
\nA mysterious enemy appears 40.7 light years from Earth. Task Force 3 deploys but fails to defend a populated planet against a massive alien Annihilator. Then the task force is sucked through a rip in the space-time continuum, disappearing with the enemy.
\nThis is a nightmare situation. How do you defend against an evil that can appear anywhere and uses technologies beyond our comprehension?
\nThe crew of Victory is ordered to find the answers, and if possible rescue the lost task force.
\nCaptain Maddox, Valerie and Galyan face their most horrific and mind-numbing challenge yet, crossing boundaries they didn’t know existed.
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In the stillness of space, several asteroids disappear in the 82 G. Eridani System. Time passes and space wavers, and the missing asteroids reappear. They’re traveling at near-light-speed for the single populated planet. Nuclear-tipped missiles from the lone battleship fail to stop the asteroids, which crash against the planet, turning it into rubble and killing the 650 million inhabitants.
\nSomeone has found and now tested the perfect planet killer, an ancient device that turns asteroids and icy planetesimals into world-destroying projectiles. Earth is a mere twenty light-years away. But who’s to say the hidden weapon will head there next? It can go anywhere in the Commonwealth and destroy any world.
\nStar Watch is desperate, employing every ship, every scientist and everyone, including the crew of Victory, to defend the planets.
\nCaptain Maddox, Professor Ludendorff and others must put aside every difference and concentrate on finding a weakness in the ultimate weapon, one they can exploit. Otherwise - the alternative is too stark to contemplate. It is time to pull together and think and fight like never before.
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There are reports that hijacked Star Watch personnel are released onto a jungle planet in the Beyond. There, New Men hunt them down like animals with high-powered rifles and killer dogs.
\nCaptain Maddox would check that out, but he’s grounded on Earth and Galyan refuses to let anyone else use Starship Victory.
\nValerie goes in a Patrol scout with Keith at helm and the newly young Riker as security.
\nThey stumble onto an ancient conspiracy that started long before humanity was rooting around for tubers on Earth. Somehow, it’s related to what the New Men are doing on the jungle planet.
\nValerie will do everything she can to save her hijacked crew from this evil, although she’s alone in the Beyond in an escape pod that is running out of air. If she fails, God help us all.
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A nuclear attack in the Persian Gulf wrongly implicates Jake Bayard. Everyone seems to be hunting for him. Bayard flees to Garm, an ice age world full of sabertooths, dire wolves, mammoths and Neanderthals.
\nUnfortunately, Institute Homo habilises are also there: extraterrestrial, crafty, small and deadly hominids. They’ve enslaved the Neanderthals to mine for dreaded alibite.
\nIt’s a Spartacus moment for Bayard. The Institute hominids hate him for what he did in the Chaunt System last journey. He’s as good as dead unless he can lead the Neanderthals in a successful slave revolt. But how do you defeat an enemy far smarter than you, more ruthless and holding all the cards? Bayard is about to show the brainy creeps.
\n
Jake Bayard led tormented Neanderthals in a successful slave revolt on the planet Garm. But when the Corporation owners fled, they took all the women with them.
\nThe Neanderthals are blaming Bayard for their lack of mates, and every day that passes is making the lonely brutes angrier. Bayard needs a solution fast or his former friends are going to string him up. He decides to risk a raid onto Saddoth where millions of Ophidians eat and keep herds of meat Neanderthals. He can only take nine with his traveling power - nine to free nubile females for the Neanderthals of Garm.
\nThat’s only the first of Bayard’s difficulties, in this, the culminating book that uncovers the ancient mystery of Mu and a conspiracy that has spanned seven thousand years.
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Alvor the Sleek - a Krekelen shape-shifter - hates Jake Bayard because the Galactic Marine slew the others of his plotting brood. Bayard wants to wring Alvor’s neck because the alien tricked him into teleporting to deadly Canopus instead of Saddoth to help his friend.
\nBayard’s teleportation opens the way for Alvor to reach Canopus so he can board an ancient, orbital sleeper ship and collect a cargo that should give the Krekelens ultimate victory everywhere.
\nWell, that’s fine. After dealing with prehistoric supercrocs, kamikaze air-cyclists and 900-pound hominoids with .75 caliber six-shooters, Bayard just needs a minute alone with Alvor to fix everything. First, though, he’s going to have to find the devious alien who can literally look like anyone.
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Earth becomes too hot for Jake Bayard. Too many shape-shifting aliens and people, including those on his own side, are trying to capture him in order to use his star-traveling abilities for their own greedy ends.
\nBayard flees to Kaldar, a world devastated by atomic war and lousy with mutated rat-men and the Dark Brotherhood. At first, he’s just trying to stay alive. Then, he uncovers a mystery, one that, incredible as it seems, reaches all the way back to Earth. It could mean the alien enslavement of everyone, which means that Bayard is fighting for more than just his own survival.
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The world may be on a precipice but Sol, fresh from Tucson-desert rehab, finally has an answer to the question that has dogged her since childhood. And not a moment too soon. With aviation grinding to a halt in the face of global climate meltdown, this is the last chance to connect with her absentee father, a US marine stationed in Okinawa.
\nTo mend their broken past Sol and her lovelorn friend Kit must journey across poisoned oceans to the furthest reaches of the Japanese archipelago, a place where sea, sky and earth converge at the forefront of an encroaching environmental and geopolitical catastrophe; a place battered by the relentless tides of history, haunted by the ghosts of its past, where the real and the virtual, the dreamed and the lived, are ever harder to define.
\nIn Dreamtime Venetia Welby paints a terrifying and captivating vision of our near future and takes us on a vertiginous odyssey into the unknown.
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After the incident last year, Greta Riley Green is looking for reinvention - a fresh start - and a job at Hyper Kid Magic Land, the local amusement park, seems like the perfect way to forge a new path . . . no matter what it takes.
\nSo when fate pulls Greta into Mercy Goodwin’s orbit, it feels like things are looking up. Beautiful and confident, Mercy dazzles audiences daily. And at the first party of the summer, she picks Greta to confide in. Mercy has a secret to share, if Greta will just meet her the next day. It’s a sign that Greta’s truly fitting in.
\nOnly, when the time comes, Mercy is a no-show - as she is everyday after that - and Greta knows something’s wrong. She can’t help thinking back to the night of the party. Did Mercy seem upset? Terrified, even? Could she be in trouble? It wouldn’t be the first time a talented young performer came to a sinister end at Hyper Kid . . .
\nOf course, Greta has her own issues with the past, and the more she uncovers Hyper Kid’s secrets, the more her own threaten to surface. This job was meant to be a reboot, a summer without trouble. But trouble, it seems, finds Greta, and her past - and the bloody past of Hyper Kid - is about to catch up with her.
A real-life historical figure, the woman known as Malinalli, Malintzin, La Malinche, Doña Marina, and Malinalxochitl was the Nahua interpreter who helped Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés communicate with the native people of Mexico. When indigenous leaders observed her marching into their cities, they believed she was a goddess - blessed with the divine power to interpret the Spaniards’ intentions for their land. Later, historians and pop culture would deem her a traitor - the “Indian” girl who helped sell Mexico’s future to an invader.
\nIn this riveting, fantastical retelling, Malinalli is all of those things and more, but at heart, she’s a young girl, kidnapped into slavery by age twelve, and fighting to survive the devastation wrought by both the Spanish and Moctezuma’s greed and cruelty. Blessed with magical powers, and supported by a close-knit circle of priestesses, Mali vows to help defend her people’s legacy.
\nIn vivid, compelling prose, debut author Veronica Chapa spins an epic tale of magic, sisterhood, survival, and Mexican resilience. This is the first novel to reimagine and reinterpret Malinalli’s story with the empathy, humanity, and awe she’s always deserved.
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The faction-based society that Tris Prior once believed in is shattered - fractured by violence and power struggles and scarred by loss and betrayal. So when offered a chance to explore the world past the limits she's known, Tris is ready.
\nPerhaps beyond the fence, she and Tobias will find a simple new life together, free from complicated lies, tangled loyalties, and painful memories. But Tris's new reality is even more alarming than the one she left behind. Old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless. Explosive new truths change the hearts of those she loves.
\nAnd once again, Tris must battle to comprehend the complexities of human nature - and of herself - while facing impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice, and love.
Outside the last city on Earth, the planet is a wasteland. Without the Archive, where the genes of the dead are stored, humanity will end.
\nPassing into the Archive should be cause for celebration, but Antigone’s parents were murdered, leaving her father’s throne vacant. As her militant uncle Kreon rises to claim it, all Antigone feels is rage. When he welcomes her and her siblings into his mansion, Antigone sees it for what it really is: a gilded cage, where she is a captive as well as a guest.
\nBut her uncle will soon learn that no cage is unbreakable. And neither is he.
On the eve of Earth’s destruction, a young scientist discovers something too precious to lose, in a story of cataclysm and hope.
It’s only two weeks before an asteroid turns home to dust. Though most of Earth has already been evacuated, it’s Samantha’s job to catalog plant samples for the survivors’ unknowable journey beyond.
Preparing to stay behind and watch the world end, she makes a final human connection.
As certain doom hurtles nearer, the unexpected and beautiful potential for the future begins to flower.
Cyra is the sister of the brutal tyrant who rules the Shotet people. Cyra’s currentgift gives her pain and power - something her brother exploits, using her to torture his enemies. But Cyra is much more than just a blade in her brother’s hand: she is resilient, quick on her feet, and smarter than he knows.
Akos is the son of a farmer and an oracle from the frozen nation-planet of Thuvhe. Protected by his unusual currentgift, Akos is generous in spirit, and his loyalty to his family is limitless. Once Akos and his brother are captured by enemy Shotet soldiers, Akos is desperate to get this brother out alive - no matter what the cost.
The Akos is thrust into Cyra's world, and the enmity between their countries and families seems insurmountable. Will they help each other to survive, or will they destroy one another?
A decade ago near Chicago, five teenagers defeated the otherworldly enemy known as the Dark One, whose reign of terror brought widespread destruction and death. The seemingly un-extraordinary teens - Sloane, Matt, Ines, Albie, and Esther - had been brought together by a clandestine government agency because one of them was fated to be the “Chosen One,” prophesized to save the world. With the goal achieved, humankind celebrated the victors and began to mourn their lost loved ones.
Ten years later, though the champions remain celebrities, the world has moved forward and a whole, younger generation doesn’t seem to recall the days of endless fear. But Sloane remembers. It’s impossible for her to forget when the paparazzi haunt her every step just as the Dark One still haunts her dreams. Unlike everyone else, she hasn’t moved on; she’s adrift - no direction, no goals, no purpose.
On the eve of the Ten Year Celebration of Peace, a new trauma hits the Chosen: the death of one of their own. And when they gather for the funeral at the enshrined site of their triumph, they discover to their horror that the Dark One’s reign never really ended.
In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue - Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is - she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.
During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are - and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen.
But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.
No world is like the other. Within this masterful collection, each setting is more strange and wonderful than the last, brimming with new technologies and beings. And yet, for all the advances in these futuristic lands, the people still must confront deeply human problems.
\nIn these six stories, Veronica Roth reaches into the unknown and draws forth something startlingly familiar and profoundly beautiful.
\nWith tales of friendship and revenge, plus two new stories from the Carve the Mark universe, this collection has something for new and old fans alike. Each story begins with a hope for a better end, but always end with a better understanding of the beginning.
\nWith beautifully intricate black-and-white interior illustrations and a uniquely designed . . .
The lives of Cyra Noavek and Akos Kereseth are ruled by their fates, spoken by the oracles at their births. The fates, once determined, are inescapable.
Akos is in love with Cyra, in spite of his fate: He will die in service to Cyra’s family. And when Cyra’s father, Lazmet Noavek - a soulless tyrant, thought to be dead - reclaims the Shotet throne, Akos believes his end is closer than ever.
As Lazmet ignites a barbaric war, Cyra and Akos are desperate to stop him at any cost. For Cyra, that could mean taking the life of the man who may - or may not - be her father. For Akos, it could mean giving his own. In a stunning twist, the two will discover how fate defines their lives in ways most unexpected.
One choice can transform you--or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves - and herself - while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.
Tris's initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable - and even more powerful.
Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.
WHAT'S RIGHT IS RIGHT.
\nSonya Kantor knows this slogan - she lived by it for most of her life. For decades, everyone in the Seattle-Portland megalopolis lived under it, as well as constant surveillance in the form of the Insight, an ocular implant that tracked every word and every action, rewarding or punishing by a rigid moral code set forth by the Delegation.
\nThen there was a revolution. The Delegation fell. Its most valuable members were locked in the Aperture, a prison on the outskirts of the city. And everyone else, now free from the Insight's monitoring, went on with their lives.
\nSonya, former poster girl for the Delegation, has been imprisoned for ten years when an old enemy comes to her with a deal: find a missing girl who was stolen from her parents by the old regime, and earn her freedom. The path Sonya takes to find the child will lead her through an unfamiliar, crooked post-Delegation world where she finds herself digging deeper into the past - and her family's dark secrets - than she ever wanted to.
\nWith razor sharp prose, Poster Girl is a haunting dystopian mystery that explores the expanding role of surveillance on society - an inescapable reality that we welcome all too easily.
Elegy Ahn did not ask for destiny to find her.
\nShe is happy with her life as a soldier, defending her small country from the Talusar, a powerful nation who worships a deadly Fever. A fever that blesses half of its victims with mysterious gifts.
\nBut then she’s summoned to hear a prophecy - her, and the most ruthless of Talusar generals, Rava Vidar. Brought face to face, they learn that one of them will lead their people to victory over the other . . . but they don’t know which. And at the center of both of their fates: a man. A man that, Elegy is told, she will fall in love with.
\nIn just one day, Elegy’s old life - her job, her purpose, and her future - is over. She and Rava are destined to collide, with the fate of their nations hanging in the balance. And when they do, only one will be left standing.
\nElegy intends to make sure it’s her.
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When Dymitr is called back to the old country for the empty night, a funeral rite intended to keep evil at bay, it's the perfect opportunity for him to get his hands on his family's most guarded relic—a book of curses that could satisfy the debt he owes legendary witch Baba Jaga. But first he'll have to survive a night with his dangerous, monster-hunting kin.
\nAs the sun sets, the line between enemies and allies becomes razor-thin, and Dymitr’s new loyalties are pushed to their breaking point.
\nFamily gatherings can be brutal. Dymitr’s might just be fatal.
Traveling faster than light, the transport ship Redundancy is cut off from communication as effectively as an ancient ocean liner. The isolation suits crew member Ace Vance just fine - she’s got nowhere else to be.
\nBut when a wealthy passenger turns up dead during a routine voyage, Ace will have to connect with the passengers and crew to uncover the truth. Tragedy will strike again - it’s only a matter of time.
Pain is Dymitr’s calling. His family is one in a long line of hunters who sacrifice their souls to slay monsters. Now he’s tasked with a deadly mission: find the legendary witch Baba Jaga. To reach her, Dymitr must ally with the ones he’s sworn to kill.
\nPain is Ala’s inheritance. A fear-eating zmora with little left to lose, Ala awaits death from the curse she carries. When Dymitr offers her a cure in exchange for her help, she has no choice but to agree.
\nTogether they must fight against time and the wrath of the Chicago underworld. But Dymitr’s secrets - and his true motives - may be the thing that actually destroys them.
Yolanda Avila, a former LAPD cop-turned private investigator, blames herself for her mother’s death in a road rage accident. It was her fault. The perpetrator was a suspect she’d pursued in an unrelated case, someone she should’ve caught by tracking down a license plate number. Any good detective would’ve done that. But she got cocky, thought she’d catch him by following clues from a stupid dream instead. The only salve against the guilt eating at her now is Yolanda’s vow to reject that juju crap.
\nBut when her godson Joey is kidnapped, his parents are suspected of murder, and a stalker threatens her wife Sydney to warn Yolanda off the case, she must deal with more than just the facts. She must confront the juju to overcome her guilt and deal with pent-up grief - or risk losing yet another loved one.
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Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him.
\nBut his attempts to become a respected member of the community are constantly put under threat: by his own conscience, when, owing to a case of mistaken identity, another man is arrested in his place; and by the relentless investigations of the dogged Inspector Javert.
\nIt is not simply for himself that Valjean must stay free, however, for he has sworn to protect the baby daughter of Fantine, driven to prostitution by poverty.
Space Habitat Altaire is the premier luxury resort in low Earth orbit, playground of the privileged and the perfect location to host reunions for the Rochford Institute. Rochford boasts only the best: the wealthiest, most promising students with the most impressive pedigrees. Complete with space walks, these lavish reunions are a prime opportunity for alumni to jockey for power with old friends and rivals - and crucially, to advance their applications to live in an exclusive Mars settlement. Earth is dying, and only the best deserve to save themselves.
\nAboard the Altaire for a 25th reunion, finance magnate Ava pursues the truth about her brother’s murder during their senior year. Laz, ambassador and political scion, hopes to finally win Ava’s heart. Sloane, collecting secrets to conceal his family’s decline, angles for a key client. And Henry, heir to a healthcare empire, creates an unorthodox opportunity to get to Mars in a last-ditch effort to outrun a childhood secret.
\nWhile these erstwhile friends settle scores and rack up points, they fail to notice the other agendas developing at the Space Habitat Altaire. Their own futures aren’t the only ones at stake - “the best” will soon regret underestimating those they would leave behind on Earth.
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Journalist Jamie Vega is Sleepless: he can’t sleep, nor does he need to. When his boss dies on the eve of a controversial corporate takeover, Jamie doesn’t buy the too-convenient explanation of suicide, and launches an investigation of his own.
\nBut everything goes awry when Jamie discovers that he was the last person who saw Simon alive. Not only do the police suspect him, Jamie himself has no memory of that night. Alarmingly, his memory loss may have to do with how he became Sleepless: not naturally, like other Sleepless people, but through a risky and illegal biohacking process.
\nAs Jamie delves deeper into Simon’s final days, he tangles with extremist organizations and powerful corporate interests, all while confronting past traumas and unforeseen consequences of his medical experimentation. But Jamie soon faces the most dangerous decision of all as he uncovers a terrifying truth about Sleeplessness that imperils him - and all of humanity.
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Nick Collins vows to uncover the truth behind an accusation of murder, but as the trial progresses, the only truth he discovers is that his big-city client doesn’t stand a chance against small-town beliefs. If the accused is found guilty until proven innocent, the real killer could still be out there, and there won’t be any heroes left to catch them.
What if the only way to reclaim reproductive freedom was to rewrite the very nature of birth itself?
\nTen years after Roe v. Wade is overturned, twenty-two-year-old biologist Larkin finds herself unexpectedly pregnant in a country where choice is no longer an option. Initially uncertain, she embraces motherhood - until a devastating diagnosis changes everything. Trapped by Tennessee’s strict abortion laws, she is forced to carry her baby to term, only to endure the heartbreak of losing her hours after birth.
\nYears later, Larkin joins a radical scientific movement that could change a groundbreaking technology that replaces gestation with incubation, allowing women true control over their reproduction. When she uses it to bring her second daughter, Ava, into the world, she believes she has finally reclaimed her autonomy. But as Ava grows and begins to question the very choice that created her, Larkin is challenged in ways she never imagined.
\nAva is a powerful, emotionally charged exploration of motherhood, bodily autonomy, and the far-reaching consequences of restrictive legislation. In a future shaped by loss and innovation, mother and daughter must confront the ultimate what does it truly mean to have a choice?
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Dovey didn’t expect to fall in love after the age of 200, yet she can’t stop thinking about Grant “Gib” Barlow, the gorgeous FBI agent who helped her crack her last case. A romance with an unbound is obviously a terrible idea, but for Gib, it could be fatal - because Dovey’s employer, Elric Ostergaard, arguably the most powerful mystic in the world, also happens to be her longtime lover.
\nAlas, Dovey’s efforts to steer clear of Gib become impossible when her best friend, fellow mystic, and unapologetic romantic, Ursula Göransdotter, tricks them into a lunch date - during which Gib is alerted that a fellow agent has been murdered in his own home. The state of the crime scene, and of the body, seem to defy logic - but Dovey immediately recognizes the Crushing Spell, which could only be cast by a supremely powerful mystic - like her boss. When another agent is killed in the same manner, Dovey races to find Elric for answers.
\nMeanwhile, the FBI body count rises, and it becomes clear that a rogue mystic is targeting the unbound agents, but why? What ensues is another missing magical trinket, a tense confrontation with Elric, a shocking discovery about Gib, and grave danger to all involved - forcing Dovey to navigate realm-crossing love triangles, supernatural power struggles - and ultimately, her own surprisingly vulnerable heart . . .
Dovey Van Dalen has a gorgeous day planned for her 200th driving her new Porsche, admiring the cherry blossoms abloom in her adopted city of Washington DC, and a little pampering. But her boss has other ideas. A powerful artifact has been stolen, and he fears it’s causing chaos in the unmagical world . . .
\nThe rich and connected Ariti family has suffered a string of suspicious deaths, with no signs of foul play. Yet each member has died in the way they feared most. As the enchanting agent most skilled at blending in with mere mortals, Dovey must find answers and retrieve the dangerous trinket. There’s just one unexpected by the time Dovey arrives at the art gallery where the Ariti patriarch died, FBI agent Grant “Gibs” Bartholomew has taken control of the scene.
\nDovey needs his cooperation to investigate - but she’ll have to hide her abilities, and her true objective, from a man who uncovers deceptions every day. And as they inch nearer a deadly truth, both will face danger even the spellbound would be lucky to survive . . .
Dr. and Mrs. Henry Brier, with three young children, possess all the trappings of a perfect life . . . except Henry is having yet another affair. Without warning he abandons the family for his mistress and a new house on the other side of town.
\nShifting perspective between Henry, Lora, and their eldest child, Josie, this brisk, short novel focuses on the effect of convenient lies and discovered truths, narrating the financial and emotional fallout of Henry’s betrayal. Interwoven with vivid snapshots of Midwestern life in the 1950s and 60s, we come face to face with a woman unable to comprehend the nature of her struggle, trying to nurture and provide for her children, and a daughter who tries to make sense of what she sees and feels.
\nEvoking the works of Anne Tyler and Elizabeth Strout in theme and style, Fatherland portrays the complexities of family life in the aftermath of deception.
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Grace Woodhouse has left a lot behind. She used to have a great friend group, an amazing girlfriend, and a right foot set to earn her a Division 1 football scholarship - before she came out as trans. As senior year begins, Grace is struggling to find her place in early transition, new social circles, and a life without football.
\nBut when her skills as the best kicker in the state prove to be vital, her old teammates beg her to come out of retirement, dragging her back into a sport - into a way of life - she thought had turned its back on her forever.
\nWhen a chance meeting cracks the door to college football back open, she has to decide how much of herself she's willing to give up for the game she loves.
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Scientists and artists, politicians and celebrities regularly cite Viktor Frankl as one of the most important authors every person should read. Hailed as “an enduring work of survival literature” by the New York Times, Frankl’s account of his time in the Nazi concentration camps - and his insights into our ability to find meaning despite great adversity - has offered solace and guidance to generations of readers since it was first published in 1946.
\nThis fully repackaged edition will delight Frankl followers old and new seeking to enrich their understanding of life’s purpose. Today, as we face new challenges and an ever more complex and uncertain world, Frankl’s classic work continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living, in spite of all obstacles.
In the final weeks of a fierce presidential campaign, a motorcade carrying candidate Josh Alexander is shattered by a car bomb. Soon after the attack, Alexander is carried to victory by a sympathy vote, but his assailants have not been found.
\nWhen CIA director Irene Kennedy and Special Agent Skip McMahon receive damaging intelligence on Washington’s most powerful players, they call on Mitch Rapp - the one man reckless enough to unravel a global network of contract killers on an explosive mission that leads back to the heart of our nation’s capital . . . and the inner sanctum of the Oval Office.
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Mitch Rapp is a gifted college athlete who just wants retribution for the Pan Am Lockerbie attack. He trains six months intensely with other clandestine operatives, under CIA Operations Director Thomas Stansfield and protégé Irene Kennedy, to stop terrorists before they reach America.
\nThe assassin leaves a trail of bodies from Istanbul across Europe to Beirut, where he needs every ounce of skill and cunning to survive the war-ravaged city and its deadly terrorist factions.
April 2011: On a remote mountaintop overlooking the remains of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, Azad Ashani witnesses a Quds Force demonstration of a capability meant to upend America’s war in the Middle East. Ashani, director of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security and Irene Kennedy’s former back channel to the Iranian government, recognizes the demonstration’s true significance, and the nation-ending conflict it will provoke. Alone, Ashani stands no chance of preventing this rush to madness.
But with the help of one man, he just might.
In Washington, DC, CIA director Irene Kennedy briefs the president that the operational window to kill or capture Osama bin Laden at his recently discovered compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan is rapidly closing. But before he’ll authorize a commando raid on Pakistani soil, the president demands irrefutable proof of bin Laden’s presence.
Proof he trusts just one man to provide.
Preventing a looming war in the Middle East while delivering justice for the nearly 3,000 Americans killed on 9/11 would be a big ask for anyone.
Mitch Rapp isn’t just anyone.
Mitch Rapp hates owing anyone a favor -especially when it’s the world’s most powerful crime lord. But when Damian Losa calls, Mitch is honor-bound to answer.
\nThe Syrian government appears to have created a highly addictive new narcotic that it plans to distribute throughout Europe. It’s a major threat to Losa’s business and he’s determined to send someone to keep him on top by any means necessary.
\nRapp is the perfect choice for the mission. Not only does he have extensive experience operating in the Middle East, but he’s also entirely expendable.
\nAs he crosses into war-torn Syria, Rapp quickly discovers a shocking truth. The new drug isn’t being produced by Damascus to prop up the government’s collapsing finances. Instead, it was created by Russia’s asymmetrical warfare unit, not for profit but as a weapon against the West.
\nWith far more than Damian Losa’s interests at stake, Rapp devises a desperate plan that forces him and his team onto a battlefield where the United States is virtually powerless and allegiances shift almost hourly. Further, if Russia uncovers their plot, it will set off a confrontation between the two countries that could change the course of human history.
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For more than a decade, CIA superagent Mitch Rapp has been on the front line of the war on terror. Now, he’s on a race against time to save one more life - his own.
\nThe influential father of a slain terrorist demands retribution for the death of his son at Rapp’s hands. In the tangled, duplicitous world of espionage there are those, even among America’s allies, who feel Mitch Rapp has grown too effective at his deadly job. They have been looking for an excuse to eliminate the number one counterterrorism operative, and they are determined to seize the chance with an explosive international conspiracy.
\nNow the hunter is the hunted, and Rapp must rely on his razor-sharp instincts for survival - and justice - as he unleashes his fury on those who have betrayed him.
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Mitch Rapp signed up to be an assassin.
\nA lone wolf who hunts and kills his nation’s enemies on their turf.
\nNow, he has a new mission.
\nWhen Mitch’s target - a Pakistani chemical weapons scientist for hire - is snatched from the streets of Verona, the American Assassin must penetrate the jihadi cell responsible for the brazen kidnapping before they can make use of the scientist’s deadly expertise.
\nBut Mitch isn’t the only one interested in the scientist.
\nThe Pakistani represents an existential threat. A threat that will fray alliances, force enemies to seek common ground, and resurrect long settled vendettas. As the events triggered by the kidnapping cascade out of control, Mitch Rapp must stop the chain reaction before the Middle East reaches critical mass.
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America is reeling from the national blackout that swept the nation, continuing to dig out of the power outage. And the new president is unlike any Mitch has worked with in the past; he is extremely dictatorial and sees cracks in America's democratic institutions that he believes can be exploited to put his family in power permanently.
\nAs Mitch backs away from the new president, he, in turn, questions Rapp's loyalty. Mitch decides to take a much needed break and moves to his house in Cape Town, where he gets pulled into a job with Nicholas Ward, the world's first trillionaire. It has been discovered that there is a mole in the CIA who's been digging through their systems for information on Ward so, after thwarting an attempt to kidnap him Uganda, Mitch makes it look like the abduction was successful. The hope is that this will give Rapp the freedom to track down the person who has been able to gain such deep access into the CIA's mainframe.
\nRapp, completely cut off from the agency, must uncover the identity of the mole and deal with him. But the situation is deeper and more complex than he ever could have imagined, involving the President of the United States himself.
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After 9/11, the United States made one of the most secretive and dangerous deals in its history - the evidence against the powerful Saudis who coordinated the attack would be buried and in return, King Faisal would promise to keep the oil flowing and deal with the conspirators in his midst.
\nBut when the king’s own nephew is discovered funding ISIS, the furious President gives Rapp his next mission: he must find out more about the high-level Saudis involved in the scheme and kill them. The catch? Rapp will get no support from the United States.
\nForced to make a decision that will change his life forever, Rapp quits the CIA and assembles a group of independent contractors to help him complete the mission. They’ve barely begun unraveling the connections between the Saudi government and ISIS when the brilliant new head of the intelligence directorate discovers their efforts.
\nWith Rapp getting too close, he threatens to go public with the details of the post-9/11 agreement between the two countries. Facing an international incident that could end his political career, the President orders America’s intelligence agencies to join the Saudis’ effort to hunt the former CIA man down.
\nRapp, supported only by a team of mercenaries with dubious allegiances, finds himself at the center of the most elaborate manhunt in history.
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Returning from a covert mission, Mitch Rapp was publicly hailed by the president for his role in the fight against terrorism. After years of working in the shadows, Rapp was caught in the media spotlight - and marked for death by virtually every terrorist in the world. Now a CIA advisor, Rapp is ready to battle terror far from the front lines.
\nWhen a Navy SEAL team in the Philippines is ambushed, all evidence points to a leak within the US State Department. And a greater threat lurks - a ruthless assassin working for the most powerful men in the Middle East, who are bent on igniting a world war. With the world watching, Rapp must hold back the flames of Armageddon.
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Counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp and his colleague Mike Nash may have finally met their match. The CIA has intercepted two terrorist cells, but a third - led by a dangerous mastermind determined to become al-Qaeda’s new leader - is believed to be on the loose. With such a terrifyingly deadly enemy out there, Rapp needs the best of the best by his side and he believes he has that with Nash.
\nTogether, they have made careers out of meeting violence with extreme violence and have never wavered in the top-secret fight against the war on terrorism. Both have been forced to lie to virtually every single person they care about, and both have soldiered on with the knowledge that their lethal tactics have saved thousands of lives.
\nBut certain leaders on Capitol Hill are pushing to have men like Rapp and Nash put on a short leash. And then one spring afternoon in Washington, DC, everything changes.
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In the year since the CIA fully trained and then unleashed him, Mitch Rapp has been steadily working his way through a list of men, bullet by bullet.
\nHis latest target takes him to Paris but in the split second it takes the bullet to leave Rapp’s silenced pistol, everything changes. The tables have turned, and Rapp finds himself brutally outnumbered. In the same instant, he has become a liability.
\nOperating on his own and outside the control of his handlers, it soon becomes clear that nothing is more dangerous than a wounded and cornered man. Because if anyone can survive and come out on top, no matter whom he must kill to get there, it’s Mitch Rapp.
\nThe stakes are higher than they’ve ever been as Mitch Rapp embarks on the journey that will turn him into America’s most deadly asset.
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Joe Rickman has spent the last eight years running the CIA’s clandestine operations in Afghanistan, working with every disreputable figure in the Islamic Republic. When he suddenly goes missing, the initial assumption is kidnapping, but Mitch Rapp knows certain things about his old friend that gives him pause.
\nWhen he’s ordered to find Rickman, no matter the cost, Rapp knows his mission will be an exceptionally dangerous one. With the Taliban, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia all vying for a piece of the war-torn state and the FBI dispatching their own special agent to investigate, Rapp is facing his most difficult assignment yet.
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A toxic presidential election is underway in an America already badly weakened by internal divisions. While politicians focus entirely on maintaining their own power and privilege, ISIS kidnaps a brilliant French microbiologist and forces him to begin manufacturing anthrax. Slickly produced videos chronicling his progress and threatening an imminent attack are posted to the Internet, intensifying the hysteria gripping the US.
\nISIS recruits a Mexican drug cartel to smuggle the bioweapon across the border, but it’s really just a diversion. The terrorist organization needs to keep Mitch Rapp and Irene Kennedy distracted long enough to weaponize a deadly virus that they stumbled upon in Yemen. If they succeed, they’ll trigger a pandemic that could rewrite the world order.
\nRapp embarks on a mission to infiltrate the Mexican cartels and track down the ISIS leader who he failed to kill during their last confrontation. But with Washington’s political elite increasingly lined up against him, he knows he’ll be on his own.
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Just as Washington, DC, prepares for a grand Memorial Day tribute to the veterans of World War II, the CIA receives intelligence about a potential major terrorist attack. Racing to Afghanistan, Mitch Rapp leads a commando raid on an Al-Qaeda stronghold in a remote border village - and defuses plans for a nuclear strike on the nation’s capital.
\nBut Rapp knows, in the face of a new kind of enemy, nothing is what it seems - and it’s up to him alone to avert a disaster of unimaginable proportions.
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With President Anthony Cook convinced that Mitch Rapp poses a mortal threat to him, CIA Director Irene Kennedy is forced to construct a truce between the two men. The terms are simple: Rapp agrees to leave the country and stay in plain sight for as long as Cook controls the White House. In exchange, the administration agrees not to make any moves against him.
\nThis fragile détente holds until Cook’s power-hungry security adviser convinces him that Rapp has no intention of honoring their agreement. In an effort to put him on the defensive, they leak the true identity of his partner, Claudia Gould. As Rapp races to neutralise the enemies organising against her, he discovers that a new generation of assassins is on her trail. A killer known to intelligence agencies only as Legion.
\nThe shadowy group has created a business model based on double-blind secrecy. Neither the killer nor the client knows the other’s identity. Because of this, Legion can’t be called off nor can they afford to fail. No matter how long it takes - weeks, months, years - they won’t stand down until their target is dead. Faced with the seemingly impossible task of finding and stopping Legion, Rapp and his people must close ranks against a world that has turned on them.
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Mitch Rapp is used to winning.
\nBut the CIA operative finds himself chasing false leads from continent to continent in an effort to keep Pakistani nukes from falling into the hands of terrorists. Together with friend and colleague Scott Coleman, Rapp struggles to prevent the loss of these lethal weapons, particularly because Russia is also interested in the nukes, though not for the same reason as Rapp and Coleman.
\nSoon, it becomes alarmingly clear that the forces in Moscow are bent on fomenting even more chaos and turmoil in the Middle East, and Rapp must go deep into Russian territory, posing as an American ISIS recruit. There, he uncovers a plan much more dangerous and insidious than he ever expected, one that could have far-reaching and catastrophic consequences.
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No longer willing to wait for the international community to stop its neighboring enemy, Israel brings down Iran’s billion-dollar nuclear program in an ingeniously conceived operation. The attack leaves a radioactive tomb and environmental disaster in its wake, and has Iranian president Amatullah calling for blood - American blood.
\nSeeing opportunity where others fear reprisals, Mitch Rapp devises a brilliant plan to humiliate Iran’s government and push the nation to the brink of revolution. But when a back-channel meeting between CIA director Irene Kennedy and her Iranian counterpart goes disastrously wrong, Rapp is locked in a showdown with a Hezbollah mastermind in league with Amatullah - and he is given twenty-four hours to do whatever it takes to stop unthinkable catastrophe.
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Less than a week after a series of deadly explosions devastated Washington, DC, key officials are up in arms over whether to make friends or foes of the clandestine elite counterterrorism operatives that stepped between the enemy and countless American lives. Not for the first time, Mitch Rapp finds himself struggling to illustrate the realities of national security to politicians who are content to sit on the sidelines.
\nMeanwhile, three al-Qaeda terrorists are still at large, and Rapp has been unofficially ordered to find them by any means necessary. No one knows the personal, physical, and emotional sacrifices required of the job better than Rapp. When he sees his colleague Mike Nash cracking under the pressure, he makes a call he hopes will save his friend, assuage the naysayers on Capitol Hill, and get him one step closer to the enemy before it’s too late.
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When Russian president Maxim Krupin discovers that he has inoperable brain cancer, he’s determined to cling to power. His first task is to kill or imprison any of his countrymen who can threaten him. Soon, though, his illness becomes serious enough to require a more dramatic diversion - war with the West.
Upon learning of Krupin’s condition, CIA director Irene Kennedy understands that the US is facing an opponent who has nothing to lose. The only way to avoid a confrontation that could leave millions dead is to send Mitch Rapp to Russia under impossibly dangerous orders. With the Kremlin’s entire security apparatus hunting him, he must find and kill a man many have deemed the most powerful in the world.
Success means averting a war that could consume all of Europe. But if his mission is discovered, Rapp will plunge Russia and America into a conflict that neither will survive.
The confirmation of Dr. Irene Kennedy as the CIA’s new director explodes into chaos as a deadly inside plot to destroy her and prematurely end the president’s term emerges. Meanwhile, a dangerous world leader gains power in the nuclear arms race, leading Israel to force the president’s hand with a chilling ultimatum.
\nWith the specter of World War III looming, the president calls on top counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp, but with only two weeks to take out the nukes, Rapp is up against a ticking clock - and impossible odds.
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When Joe “Rick” Rickman, former golden boy of the CIA, steals a massive amount of the Agency’s most classified documents in an elaborate betrayal of his country, CIA director Irene Kennedy has no choice but to send her most dangerous weapon after him: elite covert operative Mitch Rapp.
\nRapp quickly dispatches with the traitor, but Rickman proves to be a deadly threat to America even from beyond the grave. In fact, mysterious tip-offs are appearing all over the world, linking to the potentially devastating data that Rickman managed to store somewhere only he knew.
\nIt’s a deadly race to the finish as both the Pakistanis and the Americans search desperately for Rickman’s accomplices, and for the confidential documents they are slowly leaking to the world. To save his country from being held hostage to a country set on becoming the world’s newest nuclear superpower, Mitch Rapp must outrun, outthink, and outgun his deadliest enemies yet.
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Taking politics into their own hands, a group of highly-trained killers embark on a mission of shattering brutality. It is time the people made the politicians pay for their unfulfilled promises.
\nThe next day, America awakens to the devastating news that three of their most powerful and unscrupulous politicians have been violently murdered. And the assassins are not finished.
\nIn the media frenzy that follows, the killers release their demands. The country’s leaders must restore power to the people, or they will all meet the same fate as their colleagues. Not even the President is safe . . .
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When diplomacy fails and military intervention is inappropriate, our leaders sometimes take a third option and Mitch Rapp has been assigned just such an “unofficial” task - targeting a German industrialist who is supplying a notorious terror sponsor.
\nBut when the mission is dangerously compromised, Rapp realizes he’s been deemed an expendable asset in a power struggle on home turf: the battle over who will become the successor of the dying CIA director. But no one counted on Mitch Rapp’s return . . . or how far he’ll go to find out who set him up.
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When Mitch Rapp captures ISIS's top technology expert, he reveals that he was on his way to meet a man who claims to have the ability to bring down America's power gird. Rapp is determined to eliminate this shadowy figure, but the CIA's trap fails.
The agency is still trying to determine what went wrong when ISIS operatives help this cyber terrorist do what he said he could - plunge the country into darkness. With no concept of how this unprecedented act was accomplished, the task of getting the power back on could take months. Perhaps even years.
Rapp and his team embark on a desperate search for the only people who know how to repair the damage - the ones responsible. But his operating environment is like nothing he's experienced before. Computers and communication networks are down, fuel can no longer be pumped from gas stations, water and sanitation systems are on the brink of collapse, and the supply of food is running out.
Can Rapp get the lights back on before America Descends irretrievably into chaos?
The stately calm of a Washington morning is shattered when a group of terrorists descends, killing dozens and taking nearly one hundred hostages as they try to infiltrate the White House. The Secret Service immediately evacuates the president to an underground bunker - and while officials argue over how best to negotiate with the enemy, Mitch Rapp, the CIA’s top counterterrorism operative, moves stealthily among the hidden corridors and secret passageways of the nation’s capital to save the hostages before the terrorists reach the president.
\nBut there’s someone waiting in the wings, someone within the Washington elite, who is determined to see Rapp’s rescue mission fail.
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In November 2021, an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the United Kingdom capsized in the Channel causing the death of 27 people on board. Despite receiving numerous calls for help, the French authorities wrongly told the migrants they were in British waters and had to call the British authorities for help. By the time rescue vessels arrived on the scene, all but two of the migrants had died.
\nThe narrator of Delecroix’s fictional account of the events is the woman who took the calls. Accused of failing in her duty, she refuses to be held more responsible than others for this disaster. Why should she be more responsible than the sea, than the war, than the crises behind these tragedies? A shocking, moral tale of our times, Small Boat reminds us of the power of fiction to illuminate our darkest crimes.
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Amerigo Jones grows up poor but surrounded by love in Jazz Age Kansas City. A precocious young dreamer, he longs for the college education that his parents could not have. But as Amerigo begins to venture further away from his doting mother and father, he encounters a world marred by prejudice, where amid the bustle and the beauty, violence and injustice stalk the streets.
Such Sweet Thunder is a majestic and unforgettable child's-eye-view of Jim Crow America from a powerful chronicler of American family life.
On an otherwise unremarkable morning, the residents of a small town in Massachusetts all receive the same alert:
\nBALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
\nConfronted with the options of fight or flight, planning or panicking, the people of Beckitt are stripped to their basest instincts and revealed as their truest selves. Russ squeezes his family into the bathtub, leaving his own survival in question; Nina sends an unforgivable text to her daughter; Milly confesses her unrequited love; and David hits the gas, speeding away from his wife and child.
\nThen the second message comes in:
\nFALSE ALARM. PLEASE DISREGARD. ALL CLEAR.
\nFirst comes relief, then comes the reckoning, as each person is forced to face the unforeseen aftermath of decisions they thought might be their last.
\nVincent Yu’s searing debut follows this eclectic cast of characters over a period of many years, suggesting that the conflicts the missile exacerbated were simmering under the surface long before, and proving the ripple effects of the false alarm will be felt for years to come.
\nAn urgent, fiercely heartfelt exploration of relationships in all forms, Seek Immediate Shelter explores the balance between love and loyalty, betrayal and forgiveness. What choices would you make if you thought your life were on the line? And if you survive, can you ever redeem yourself?
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Millennial expat couple Anna and Tom are living the dream in Berlin, in a bright, plant-filled apartment in Neukölln. They are young digital creatives, freelancers without too many constraints. They have a passion for food, progressive politics, sexual experimentation and Berlin's twenty-four-hour party scene. Their ideal existence is also that of an entire generation, lived out on Instagram, but outside the images they create for themselves, dissatisfaction and ennui burgeon.
\nTheir work as graphic designers becomes repetitive. Friends move back home, have children, grow up. An attempt at political activism during the refugee crisis proves fruitless. And in that picture-perfect life Anna and Tom feel increasingly trapped, yearning for an authenticity and a sense of purpose that seem perennially just out of their grasp.
\nWith the stylistic mastery of Georges Perec and nihilism of Michel Houellebecq, Perfection, translated by Sophie Hughes, is a sociological novel about the emptiness of contemporary existence, beautifully written, brilliantly scathing.
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An unconventional memoir of conjuring the uncertain past and a long-lost homeland, and a vital document of one family’s journey through world history.
\nWith the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, the U.S. war in Vietnam ended, but the refugee crisis was only beginning. Among the millions of people who fled Vietnam by boat were Vinh Nguyen, along with his mother and siblings, and his father, who left separately and then mysteriously vanished.
\nDecades later, Nguyen goes looking for the story of his father. What he discovers is a sea of questions drifting above sunken truths. To come to terms with the past, Nguyen must piece together the debris of history with family stories that have been scattered across generations and continents, kept for decades in broken hearts and guarded silences.
\nThe Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse takes readers on a poignant tour of disappeared refugee camps, abandoned family homes, and the lives that could have been. As the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War approaches, this powerful memoir is timelier and more important than ever, illuminating the stories, real and imagined, that become buried in the rubble of war.
Emma Page grew up the black sheep in a bookish household, raised to believe fine literature is the only worthy type of fiction. Her parents, self-proclaimed “serious” authors who run their own vanity press, The Mighty Pages, mingle in highbrow social circles that look down on anything too popular or mainstream, while her sister, Jess, is a powerful social-media influencer whose stylish reviews can make or break a novel.
\nHiding her own romance manuscript from her disapproving parents, Emma finds inspiration at the family cottage among the “fluff” they despise: the juicy summer romances that belonged to her late grandmother. But a chance discovery unearthed from her Gigi’s belongings reveals a secret that has the power to ruin her parents’ business and destroy their reputation in the industry - a secret that has already fallen into the hands of an unscrupulous publishing insider with a grudge to settle.
\nNow Emma must decide: As much as she’s dreamed of the day her parents are forced to confront their own egos, can she really just sit back and watch The Mighty Pages be exposed and their legacy destroyed?
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When Sage’s best friend Marshal asks if she would be his wife, she is prepared to spend the rest of her life helping his political campaign. Sage understands the life she is walking into and has come to peace with what it means for her.
\nAfter an unfortunate incident, Jayden must move back home. Luckily her twin, Marshal, offers her the guest house on his property. Jayden accepts, wanting nothing more than to provide a safe place for her nine-year-old daughter, Lila, while she reevaluates her life.
\nSage and Jayden get off to a rocky start, but while Sage finds herself battling her carefully constructed walls, Jayden struggles to hide her growing feelings for her twin’s fiancée.
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AJ Beckett is just trying to get Parker, her seven-year-old autistic daughter, through life in one piece. As a paramedic, AJ puts others’ needs above her own; in her personal life, she keeps everyone an arm’s length away. That distance disappears when a chance run-in with actor Melanie Cooper leaves her sticky, angry, and fed up.
\nMelanie Cooper has just signed her last movie. The media keeps portraying her as cold and hard to work with, and Mel has absolutely nothing more to give. As she begins to imagine a new life, a challenging part of her past comes back on the scene, determined to cause problems for Mel.
\nAfter a series of coincidental meetings, AJ battles her desire for control while Mel struggles with trust. Despite the challenges and complications, Mel finds herself drawn to the Beckett ladies, and AJ can’t deny their connection, either.
\nFalling in love has never been so sweet.
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Cam Porter is a charter pilot living a quiet life in the small island town of Sitka, Alaska. She’s spent most of her adult life avoiding any kind of affection and has put off romantic relationships. Her small but mighty family circle includes her exuberant dog Goose who gets her through the days between doing what she loves most, flying.
\nSkyler Callaghan had to leave Sitka while she was still attending high school. Despite the time and distance, a childhood crush on her best friend’s older sister never went away - a little fact she almost forgot about until an unplanned trip back home reminds her.
\nWhen the two women find themselves stranded in the Alaskan wilderness, it isn’t exactly the setting Skyler always dreamt of when she pictured nights with Cam. She tries to put her feelings aside for the sake of her sanity and survival but she feels herself being drawn even closer to Cam. As things start to shift between them, Cam has to decide if she can learn to trust and let go.
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After a disastrous live-streamed proposal, singer Aspen Lake limps to her beachfront Malibu cottage to take a much needed time-out and reevaluate her life. Unfortunately, even the calming ocean isn’t enough to bring back the music that once played in her mind.
\nZoey Estrada comes from a musically gifted family, but it’s always something she’s had to work hard at. When she is forced to leave college and come home, she struggles with where the next chapter in her life should take her. Luckily her mom provides some direction when she drags her to work in her landscaping business.
\nAn unexpected encounter leads to something neither woman is ready for. As Aspen and Zoey get closer, they must try and figure out what comes next. Can they continue to grow together, or are they destined to be an unfinished song.
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Throughout her life Sybil Van Antwerp has used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings around half past ten Sybil sits down to write letters - to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.
\nSybil expects her world to go on as it always has. A mother, grandmother, wife, divorcée, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realises the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.
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Ten years after Sofia was killed in a tragic accident, her college ex Caroline and her former roommate Brooke almost have what they’ve always wanted. Caroline is on the precipice of scoring funding for her feminist tech startup. Brooke is newly engaged and starting her dream job at a prestigious prep school. But unless the two best friends can cheat fate a second time, one night’s secrets could unravel everything.
\nWhen Caroline gets threatening comments on her company’s Instagram and Brooke receives a sinister email with ominous photos attached, all from “Sofia,” their carefully constructed facade begins to crumble. And when one of their last connections to “Sofia” turns up dead, they must decide how far they’re willing to go in order to survive.
\nThe devil’s in the details, and the tiniest mistake could prove fatal. Just one thing is certain: nothing is as it seems in this sinister series of events, and readers will never guess where this rabbit hole of revenge will lead. Prepare to have your allegiances shift along with every twist and turn. What was set in motion long ago is hurtling toward a jaw-dropping conclusion that will shock even the most hardcore thriller fans.
Emma and Agathe are sisters. They were thick as thieves when they were young but have always been as different as can be. Agathe, the younger sister, is disorderly, chaotic, and fiery. Five years older, Emma has always been the more mature sister, the defender, the protector, the worrier. Their relationship as adults is scarred by a tragedy that transformed their happy, ordinary childhoods into something much more complex and challenging.
\nFor a long time, Emma hasn’t wanted to be involved in Agathe’s life. But then they must return together to the Basque Country, to the house of their adored grandmother, to empty out her home and in the process to reconcile, to remember, and to pour out what is in their hearts.
\nThe story alternates between Agathe and Emma’s childhood and their present day, with everything in between, and readers see them as young girls, teenagers, young women, mothers, wives, partners, individuals, sisters. This is a story that encompasses whole lives, complex lives, women’s lives, asking all the while how the scars of the past can be healed and what, in the end, is a good life.
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A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same.
\nRunning steadily through the book is Vivian Gornick's exchange of more than twenty years with Leonard, a gay man who is sophisticated about his own unhappiness, whose friendship has 'shed more light on the mysterious nature of ordinary human relations than has any other intimacy' she has known.
\nThe exchange between Gornick and Leonard acts as a Greek chorus to the main action of the narrator's continual engagement on the street with grocers, derelicts, and doormen; people on the bus, cross-dressers on the corner, and acquaintances by the handful.
\nIn Leonard she sees herself reflected plain; out on the street she makes sense of what she sees.
\nWritten as a narrative collage that includes meditative pieces on the making of a modern feminist, the role of the flaneur in urban literature, and the evolution of friendship over the past two centuries.
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Nobody in Manhattan eats better than Bernice Black. It’s 1972, and she is the city’s busiest restaurant critic, juggling her fiance and his two young sons with demands of fine dining. Bernice talks fast, walks faster, has a razor-sharp wit and no patience for anything - or anyone - that gets in her way.
\nWhen she stops by the famed restaurant of her favorite chef and mentor, Laurent Tirel, early one morning, she stumbles across a horrific scene in the Laurent's severed head, perfectly preserved in a flawless mold of jellied aspic.
\nHer meeting with the cops assigned to the case proves only one thing–they know nothing about food or the seedy underworld that BB Black has made her home. With layoffs looming, Bernice makes the gamble of her career - she promises her editor she can catch Laurent’s killer before the week is out.
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I’ll Take You There centers on Felix, a film scholar who runs a Monday night movie club in what was once a vaudeville theater. One evening, while setting up a film in the projectionist booth, he’s confronted by the ghost of Lois Weber, a trailblazing motion picture director from Hollywood’s silent film era. Lois invites Felix to revisit - and in some cases relive - scenes from his past as they are projected onto the cinema’s big screen.
\nIn these magical movies, the medium of film becomes the lens for Felix to reflect on the women who profoundly impacted his life. There’s his daughter Aliza, a Gen Y writer for New York Magazine who is trying to align her post-modern feminist beliefs with her lofty career ambitions; his sister, Frances, with whom he once shared a complicated bond of kindness and cruelty; and Verna, a fiery would-be contender for the 1951 Miss Rheingold competition, a beauty contest sponsored by a Brooklyn-based beer manufacturer that became a marketing phenomenon for two decades. At first unnerved by these ethereal apparitions, Felix comes to look forward to his encounters with Lois, who is later joined by the spirits of other celluloid muses.
\nAgainst the backdrop of a kaleidoscopic convergence of politics and pop culture, family secrets, and Hollywood iconography, Felix gains an enlightened understanding of the pressures and trials of the women closest to him, and of the feminine ideals and feminist realities that all women, of every era, must face.
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Corby Ledbetter is struggling. New fatherhood, the loss of his job, and a growing secret addiction have thrown his marriage to his beloved Emily into a tailspin. And that's before he causes the tragedy that tears the family apart.
\nSentenced to prison, Corby struggles to survive life on the inside, where he bears witness to frightful acts of brutality but also experiences small acts of kindness and elemental kinship with a prison librarian who sees his light and some of his fellow offenders, including a tender-hearted cellmate and a troubled teen desperate for a role model.
\nBuoyed by them and by his mother's enduring faith in him, Corby begins to transcend the boundaries of his confinement, sustained by his hope that mercy and reconciliation might still be possible. Can his crimes ever be forgiven by those he loves?
In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years.
\nMeet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies.
\nWhen she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before she really goes under.
In middle age, Anna Oh - wife, mother, outsider artist - has shaken her family to its core. After twenty-seven years of marriage and three children, Anna has fallen in love with Vivica, the wealthy, cultured, confident Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her professional success.
Anna and Viveca plan to wed in the Oh family's hometown of Three Rivers in Connecticut, where gay marriage has recently been legalized. But the impending wedding provokes some very mixed reactions and opens a Pandora's Box of toxic secrets--dark and painful truths that have festered below the surface of the Ohs' lives.
We Are Water is an intricate and layered portrait of marriage, family, and the inexorable need for understanding and connection, told in the alternating voices of the Ohs--nonconformist Annie; her ex-husband, Orion, a psychologist; Ariane, the do-gooder daughter, and her twin, Andrew, the rebellious only son; and free-spirited Marissa, the youngest Oh. Set in New England and New York during the first years of the Obama presidency, it is also a portrait of modern America, exploring issues of class, changing social mores, the legacy of racial violence, and the nature of creativity and art.
A fundamentalist Islamic army is on the march in the Middle East, and the fight to stop the spread of madness will take everything the American military can muster.
Two months ago, a new leader arose in the Islamic world, the Mahdi--or the Chosen One. He has rallied fundamentalist Muslim forces across the Middle East who have driven deep into Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Standing against them is an allied force made up primarily of the American military.
It's a desperate fight. From armored battles in the desert to American carriers desperately dodging waves of cruise missiles, the Mahdi proves to have many tricks up his sleeve.
Marine Lieutenant Sam Erickson is in the thick of the fighting. He and his company have fought their way from a landing on the Mediterranean shore to the outskirts of Cairo. Now he finds himself at a critical juncture, but can he make the sacrifices necessary for the greater good?
In the tradition of Red Storm Rising and Red Metal , an American military force fights a desperate battle against an overwhelming enemy.
\nWhat started as a military coup in Pakistan has ignited South Asia and threatens to spread to the world's largest democracy in India.
\nAmerican and British allies struggle to rescue Western civilians who have been cut off in Islamabad. What starts as a desperate race turns into a grim siege.
\nBut the fate of a few innocents pales in comparison to one inescapable Pakistan is a nuclear power and some of those weapons are unaccounted for.
\n
Number 47, a fourteen-year-old slave boy growing up under the watchful eye of a brutal master in 1832, meets the mysterious Tall John, who introduces him to a magical science and also teaches him the meaning of freedom.
", "series": null, "seriesOrder": null, "tags": [ "Historical", "Young Adult" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Walter Mosley - 47.jpeg", "mtime": 1767856846183.7524, "size": 538617, "cachedAt": "2026-02-06T08:25:19.168Z" }, "Walter Mosley - All I Did Was Shoot My Man": { "title": "All I Did Was Shoot My Man", "author": "Walter Mosley", "description": "Seven years ago, Zella Grisham was arrested for illegal possession of a firearm, assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, and grand theft. After two years of fruitless negotiations, Zella was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, mainly because she refused to give up her accomplices in a $6.8 million heist from Rutgers Assurance Corp.
But Zella had played no part in that heist. PI Leonid McGill had planted the evidence. All Zella had done was shoot her man, her cheating husband Harry Tangelo, when she'd caught him in bed with her best friend. That was a long time ago, and McGill has regrets. So he hires a hotshot attorney to set her free.
Zella's big regret is that she tried to kill Tangelo. McGill agrees to track him down but the trail leads back to Rutgers Assurance, and the man who paid McGill to plant the evidence is found dead. As Zella is hounded and an attempt is made on McGill's life, the detective realises the case is more complicated than he had ever imagined - but can he live long enough to sort it out?
In New York, if you have a problem no one else can solve, you call Leonid McGill.
Ex-boxer, hard drinker, in a business that trades in cash and favours, McGill's an old-school P.I. working a city that's got fancy all around him.
When McGill is approached by a small-time office manager, he declines the case. He has better things to do than track down the man's long lost cousin, who is about to inherit millions. But then McGill's office is broken into, and his potential client is found dead. Soon, McGill finds himself drawn into the underbelly of an establishment family, and a Pandora's box of secrets and lies.
Taking you from the moneyed haunts of Uptown to the shady corners of Downtown, Mosley is the Chandler of Obama's America, and one of the finest crime writers in the world.
Set in 1964, Easy is on a mission to lure Brawley Brown back to his mother. But not only is Brawley bad, he's big and not so easily swayed, especially since joining the Urban Revolutionary Party, a political group wary of strangers.
\nAdd to that a cache of stolen guns, secret government investigators, a payroll heist, several murders, problems with his son, and everybody lying about everything, plus his own crushing guilt over the apparent death of his best friend, and you've got Easy behind the eight ball once again.
Joe King Oliver’s beloved Grandma B has found a tumor, and at her age, treatment is high-risk. She’s lived life fully and without regrets, and now has only a single, dying wish: to see her long-lost son. King has been estranged from his father, Chief Odin Oliver, since he was a young boy. He swore to never speak to the man again when he was taken away in handcuffs.
\nBut now, Grandma B’s pure ask has opened King’s heart, and through his hunt, he gains a deeper understanding of his father as a complicated, righteous man - man defined by women, a man protected by women, a man he wants to know. Although Chief was released from prison years ago, he’s been living underground ever since. Now, King must not only find his father, but prove his innocence, and protect the future of his entire family.
\nSimultaneously, King finds himself in a moral bind. Marigold Hart, the wife of a powerful Californian billionaire, has gone missing, along with their seven-year-old daughter. Orr is brutish and dangerous, and King realises after locating her that it’s in her best interest to stay hidden. But are his motives pure? There is something magnetic about Marigold; he can’t help but want her near.
1961: For most black Americans, these were times of hope. For former P.I. Easy Rawlins, Los Angeles's mean streets were never meaner . . or more deadly.
\nOrdinarily, Easy would have thrown the two bills in the sleazy shamus' face - the white man who wanted him to find the notorious Black Betty, an ebony siren whose talent for all things rich and male took her from Houston's Fifth Ward to Beverly Hills.
\nThere was too much Easy wasn't being told, but he couldn't resist the prospect of seeing Betty again, even if it killed him . . .
\n
Easy Rawlins, L.A.'s most reluctant detective, comes home one day to find Easter, the daughter of his friend, Christmas Black left on his doorstep. Easy knows that this could only mean that the ex-marine Black is probably dead, or will be soon. Easter's appearance is only the beginning, as Easy is immersed in a sea of problems. The love of his life is marrying another man and his friend Mouse is wanted for the murder of a father of 12.
\nAs he's searching for a clue to Christmas Black's whereabouts, two suspicious MPs hire him to find his friend Black on behalf of the U.S. Army. Easy's investigation brings him to a blonde woman, Faith Laneer, whose past is as dark as her beauty is bright. As Easy begins to put the pieces together, he realizes that Black's dissappearance has its roots in Vietnam, and that Faith might be in a world of danger.
It is 1969, and flames can be seen on the horizon, protest wafts like smoke though the thick air, and Easy Rawlins, the Black private detective whose small agency finally has its own office, gets a visit from a white Vietnam veteran.
\nThe young man comes to Easy with a story that makes little sense. He and his lover, a beautiful young woman, were attacked in a citrus grove at the city’s outskirts. He may have killed a man, and the woman and his dog are now missing. Inclined to turn down what sounds like nothing but trouble, Easy takes the case when he realises how damaged the young vet is from his war experiences - the bond between veterans superseding all other considerations.
The veteran is not Easy’s only unlooked-for trouble. Easy’s adopted daughter Feather’s white uncle shows up uninvited, raising questions and unsettling the life Easy has long forged for the now young woman. Where Feather sees a family reunion, Easy suspects something else, something that will break his heart.
Picking up where his last adventures in Rose Gold left off in L.A. in the late 1960s, Ezekiel Easy Rawlins finds his life in transition. He s ready finally to propose to his girlfriend, Bonnie Shay, and start a life together. And he s taken the money he got from the Rose Gold case and, together with two partners, Saul Lynx and Tinsford Whisper Natly, has started a new detective agency.
\nBut, inevitably, a case gets in the way: Easy s friend Mouse introduces him to Rufus Tyler, a very old man everyone calls Charcoal Joe. Joe s friend s son, Seymour (young, bright, top of his class in physics at Stanford), has been arrested and charged with the murder of a white man from Redondo Beach. Joe tells Easy he will pay and pay well to see this young man exonerated, but seeing as how Seymour literally was found standing over the man s dead body at his cabin home, and considering the racially charged motives seemingly behind the murder, that might prove to be a tall order.
Between his new company, a heart that should be broken but is not, a whole raft of new bad guys on his tail, and a bad odor that surrounds Charcoal Joe, Easy has his hands full, his horizons askew, and his life in shambles around his feet.
It is the Summer of Love and Easy Rawlins is contemplating robbing an armored car. It's farther outside the law than Easy has ever traveled, but his daughter, Feather, needs a medical treatment that costs far more than Easy can earn or borrow in time. And his friend, Mouse, tells him it's a cinch.
\nThen another friend, Saul Lynx, offers him a job that might solve Easy's problem without jail time. He has to track the disappearance of an eccentric, prominent attorney. An assistant, of sorts, the beautiful 'Cinnamon' Cargill is gone as well. Easy can tell there is much more than he is being told . . .
\nRobert Lee, his new employer, is a suspect in the attorney's disappearance. But his need overcomes all concerns, and he plunges into unfamiliar territory, from the newfound hippie enclaves to a vicious plot that stretches back to the battlefields of Europe.
\n
In Los Angeles of the late 1940s, Easy Rawlins, a black war veteran, has just been fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Monet, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.
Joe King Oliver was one of the NYPD's finest investigators, until, dispatched to arrest a well-heeled car thief, he is framed for assault by his enemies within the NYPD, a charge which lands him in solitary at Rikers Island.
\nA decade later, King is a private detective, running his agency with the help of his teenage daughter, Aja-Denise. Broken by the brutality he suffered and committed in equal measure while behind bars, his work and his daughter are the only light in his solitary life. When he receives a card in the mail from the woman who admits she was paid to frame him those years ago, King realises that he has no choice but to take his own case: figuring out who on the force wanted him disposed of - and why.
\nRunning in parallel with King's own quest for justice is the case of a Black radical journalist accused of killing two on-duty police officers who had been abusing their badges to traffic in drugs and women within the city's poorest neighborhoods.
\nJoined by Melquarth Frost, a brilliant sociopath, our hero must beat dirty cops and dirtier bankers, craven lawyers, and above all keep his daughter far from the underworld in which he works. All the while, two lives hang in the balance: King's client's, and King's own.
When friend of the family and multi-billionaire Roger Ferris comes to Joe with an assignment, he’s got no choice but to accept, even if the case is a tough one to stomach. White nationalist Alfred Xavier Quiller has been accused of murder and the sale of sensitive information to the Russians. Ferris has reason to believe Quiller’s been set up and he needs King to see if the charges hold.
\nThis linear assignment becomes a winding quest to uncover the extent of Quiller’s dealings, to understand Ferris’ skin in the game, and to get to the bottom of who is working for whom. Even with the help of bodyguard and mercenary Oliya Ruez - no regular girl Friday - the machine King’s up against proves relentless and unsparing. As King gets closer to exposing the truth, he and his loved ones barrel towards grave danger.
January 1970 finds Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, LA's premier Black detective, at 50 years of age despite all expectations. He has a loving family, a beautiful home, and a thriving investigation agency. All is right with the world . . . and then Amethystine Stoller, his own personal Helen of Troy, arrives. Her ex-husband is missing. A simple enough case. But even as Easy takes his first step in the investigation he trips. He falls into the memory of things past. Little things, like loss, love, a world war, and a hunger that has eaten at him since he was a Black boy on his own on the streets of Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe missing ex, a young white man named Curt Fields, is found dead. Easy's only real friend in the LAPD, Melvin Suggs, has gone into hiding rather than allow his femme fatale wife to go to the gas chamber. And that's only the beginning.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tEasy finds himself pressed into a reckoning. All of his success cannot succor his heart. The 1970's have ushered in new expectations of men and women, Black and White, and Easy has to make a choice that will almost certainly hasten a permanent descent, one that might sunder his soul.
In spite of remarkable differences, Eric and Tommy are as close as brothers. Eric, a Nordic Adonis, is graced by a seemingly endless supply of good fortune. Tommy is a lame black boy, cursed with health problems, yet he remains optimistic and strong.
\nAfter tragedy rips their makeshift family apart, the lives of these boys diverge astonishingly: Eric, the golden youth, is given everything but trusts nothing; Tommy, motherless and impoverished, has nothing, but feels lucky every day of his life.
\nIn a riveting story of modern-day resilience and redemption, the two confront separate challenges, and when circumstances reunite them years later, they draw on their extraordinary natures to confront a common enemy and, ultimately, save their lives.
Projecting a near-future United States in which justice is blind in at least one eye and the ranks of the disenchanted have swollen to dangerous levels, Mosely offers nine interconnected stories whose characters appear and reappear in each others' lives.
\nFor all its denizens, from technocrats to terrorists, celebs to crooks, \"Futureland\" is an all-American nightmare just waiting to happen.
One of the most acclaimed writers working today, Walter Mosley spins magic once again in this beautiful novel that explores the lives of Black characters and one remarkable family through a lens both universal and unique. It touches on the lives of those whose deepest thoughts and motivations are seldom explored - including the neurodivergent, the incarcerated, and the immigrant tortured by their past - characters who will stay with you and change how you see the world.
\nGhalen, a brilliant young Black man, is the son of two seemingly mismatched parents. His mother, a gifted scientist, whose own mother expected her to exceed all the achievements in her family, and his father, a gentle cook at a small vegetarian restaurant, whose idiosyncratic nature shows the young woman a radically different love and understanding of life, despite his inexperience and lack of education.
\nHis parents’ grand love story starts it all off, setting us up to follow Ghalen and his family so deeply, that each new twist and turn feels personal.
\nThe journey through Ghalen’s coming-of-age tale, as he ventures out into the world, is marked with peaks and valleys and such a drive that you can’t help but strap in for it all, while not wanting it to end.
\n
In the beginning . . . there was Ezekiel \"Easy\" Rawlins and Raymond \"Mouse\" Alexander - two young men setting out in life, hitting the road in a \"borrowed\" '36 Ford headed for Pariah, Texas. The volatile Mouse wants to retrieve money from his stepfather so he can marry his EttaMae.
\nBut on their steamy bayou excursion, Mouse will choose murder as a way out, while Easy's past liaison with EttaMae floats precariously in his memory. Easy and Mouse are coming of age - and everything they ever knew about friendship and about themselves is coming apart at the seams . . .
Detective Easy Rawlins has settled into the happy rhythm of his new life when a dark siren from his past returns and threatens to destroy the peace he’s fought for.
\nThe name Easy Rawlins stirs excitement in the hearts of readers and fear in the hearts of his foes. His success has bought him a thriving detective agency, with its first female detective; a remote home, shared with children and pets and lovers, high atop the hills overlooking gritty Los Angeles; and more trouble, more problems, and more threat to those whom he loves. In other words, he’s still beset on all sides.
\nA number of below-the-law powerbrokers plead with Easy to locate a mysterious, dangerous woman - Lutisha James, though she’s gone by another name that Easy will immediately recognize. 1970s Los Angeles is a transient city of delicate, violent balances, and Lutisha has disturbed that. She also has a secret that will upend Easy’s own life, painfully closer to home.
A convention-defying novel by bestselling writer Walter Mosley, John Woman recounts the transformation of an unassuming boy named Cornelius Jones into John Woman, an unconventional history professor - while the legacy of a hideous crime lurks in the shadows.
\nAt twelve years old, Cornelius, the son of an Italian-American woman and an older black man from Mississippi named Herman, secretly takes over his father's job at a silent film theater in New York's East Village. Five years later, as Herman lives out his last days, he shares his wisdom with his son, explaining that the person who controls the narrative of history controls their own fate.
\nAfter his father dies and his mother disappears, Cornelius sets about reinventing himself - as Professor John Woman, a man who will spread Herman's teachings into the classrooms of his unorthodox southwestern university and beyond. But there are other individuals who are attempting to influence the narrative of John Woman, and who might know something about the facts of his hidden past.
Engaging with some of the most provocative ideas of recent intellectual history, John Woman is a compulsively readable, deliciously unexpected novel about the way we tell stories, and whether the stories we tell have the power to change the world.
A mystery caller sends Leonid McGill to an uptown address 'just to check a girl's okay'. There's no explanation - just a name - Angelique - a reward, and the chilling knowledge that he's working for Rinaldo Alphonse, the most feared man in New York. What LT finds is a crime scene.
\nA girl lies with her face blown off, her assassin felled by a knife. But the dead girl isn't the one LT was sent to find, and her killer's injuries don't make sense. The next day Alphonse comes calling: LT must find Angelique before the assassin's assassin tracks her down. Alphonse isn't the only one who wants a bit of LT's time - the NYPD, finding his appearance too convenient, think they can finally put away the thorn in their side. But why do so many people want a piece of the apparently normal, clean-living Angelique?
\nAnd why is the mafia coming after McGill, linking his sons - shy Dmitri and streetwise Twill - to the escape of a sex trafficked Belarussian girl? As both plots career towards a thrilling finale, McGill must put his street know-how and book of lethal contacts to the test, while haunted by the re-appearance of a face from his crooked past and his wife Katrina's continued infidelities.
\n
Ptolemy Grey is ninety-one years old and has been all but forgotten-by his family, his friends, even himself-as he sinks into a lonely dementia. His grand-nephew, Ptolemy's only connection to the outside world, was recently killed in a drive-by shooting, and Ptolemy is too suspicious of anyone else to allow them into his life. until he meets Robyn, his niece's seventeen-year-old lodger and the only one willing to take care of an old man at his grandnephew's funeral.
But Robyn will not tolerate Ptolemy's hermitlike existence. She challenges him to interact more with the world around him, and he grasps more firmly onto his disappearing consciousness. However, this new activity pushes Ptolemy into the fold of a doctor touting an experimental drug that guarantees Ptolemy won't live to see age ninety- two but that he'll spend his last days in feverish vigor and clarity.
With his mind clear, what Ptolemy finds-in his own past, in his own apartment, and in the circumstances surrounding his grand-nephew's death-is shocking enough to spur an old man to action, and to ensure a legacy that no one will forget.
We thought we'd seen the last of Easy Rawlins at the end of BLONDE FAITH. But it takes more than an oncoming car to stop LA's finest PI.
\nAs Easy wakes from his coma, the last thing he needs is an investigation. But a friend's son is in trouble and old habits die hard. So Easy wades into the squats, clubs and LSD dens of Sunset Boulevard, trying to find the missing boy, Evander. What he discovers will take him on a journey into the dark underbelly of 1960s culture, where Evander's disappearance is only one piece of a far larger puzzle . . .
Watts is smoldering in ruins-and the cops are on Easy Rawlins's doorstep. Easy expects the worst, as usual. But, incredibly, they're asking for his help. A redheaded woman known as Little Scarlet had sheltered a man during the riots. Witnesses later saw him fleeing her building; not long after, Little Scarlet was found viciously murdered.
\nNow, with his old friend Mouse at his side, Easy follows the case's single clue across Los Angeles. The missing man is the key, but he's only the beginning. Hidden in the heart of the city is a killer whose red-hot rage is as fierce as the fires that rocked L.A.
November 1963: Easy's settled into a steady gig as a school custodian. It's a quiet, simple existence - but a few moments of ecstasy with a sexy teacher will change all that.
\nWhen the lady vanishes, Easy's stuck with a couple of corpses, the cops on his back, and a little yellow dog who's nobody's best friend. With his not-so-simple past snapping at his heels, and with enemies old and new looking to get even, Easy must kiss his careful little life good-bye - and step closer to the edge . . .
His name is etched on the door of his Manhattan office: LEONID McGILL, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. It’s a name that takes a little explaining, but he’s used to it. “Daddy was a communist and great-great- Granddaddy was a slave master from Scotland. You know, the black man’s family tree is mostly root. Whatever you see aboveground is only a hint at the real story.”
Ex-boxer, hard drinker, in a business that trades mostly in cash and favors: McGill’s an old-school P.I. working a city that’s gotten fancy all around him. Fancy or not, he has always managed to get by - keep a roof over the head of his wife and kids, and still manage a little fun on the side - mostly because he’s never been above taking a shady job for a quick buck. But like the city itself, McGill is turning over a new leaf, “decided to go from crooked to slightly bent.”
New York City in the twenty-first century is a city full of secrets - and still a place that reacts when you know where to poke and which string to pull. That’s exactly the kind of thing Leonid McGill knows how to do. As soon as The Long Fall begins, with McGill calling in old markers and greasing NYPD palms to unearth some seemingly harmless information for a high-paying client, he learns that even in this cleaned-up city, his commitment to the straight and narrow is going to be constantly tested.
Charles Blakey is a young black man whose life is slowly crumbling. His parents are dead, he can't find a job, he drinks too much, and his friends have begun to desert him.
\nWorst of all, he's fallen behind on the mortgage payments for the beautiful home that's belonged to his family for generations. When a stranger - a white man - offers him $50,000 in cash to rent out his basement for the summer, Charles needs the money too badly to say no. He knows that the stranger must want something more than a basement view.
\nSure enough, he has a very particular - and bizarre - set of requirements, and Charles tries to satisfy him without getting lured into the strangeness. But he sees an opportunity to understand the secrets of the white world, and his summer with a man in his basement turns into a dark game of power and manipulation.
\n
In this new mystery set in the Patty Hearst era of radical black nationalism and political abductions, a black ex-boxer self-named Uhuru Nolica, the leader of a revolutionary cell called Scorched Earth, has kidnapped Rosemary Goldsmith, the daughter of a weapons manufacturer, from her dorm at UC Santa Barbara.
\nIf they don't receive the money, weapons, and apology they demand, “Rose Gold” will die-horribly and publicly. So the FBI, the State Department, and the LAPD turn to Easy Rawlins, the one man who can cross the necessary borders to resolve this dangerous standoff.
The beloved Ezekiel Rawlins now has a steady job as senior head custodian of Sojourner Truth High School, a nice house with a garden, a loving woman, and children. He counts the blessings of leading a law-abiding life, but is \"nowhere near happy.\"
\nEasy mourns the loss of his best friend, Mouse. Though Easy tries to leave the street life behind, he still finds himself trading favors and investigating cases of arson, murder, and missing people. People who can't depend on the law to solve their problems seek out Easy.
\nA bomb is set in the high school where Easy works. A man's daughter runs off with his employee. A beautiful woman turns up dead and the man who loved her is wrongly accused. Easy is the man people turn to in search of justice and retribution. He even becomes party to a killing that the police might call murder.
Leonid McGill's spent a lifetime building up his reputation in the New York investigative scene. His seemingly infallible instinct and inside knowledge of the crime world make him the ideal man to help when Phillip Worry comes knocking.
Phillip \"Catfish\" Worry is a 92-year-old Mississippi bluesman who needs Leonid's help with a simple task: deliver a letter revealing the black lineage of a wealthy heiress and her corrupt father. Unsurprisingly, the opportunity to do a simple favor while shocking the prevailing elite is too much for Leonid to resist.
But when a famed and feared assassin puts a hit on Catfish, Leonid has no choice but to confront the ghost of his own felonious past. Working to protect his client and his own family, Leonid must reach the heiress on the eve of her wedding before her powerful father kills those who hold their family's secret.
Joined by a team of young and tough aspiring investigators, Leonid must gain the trust of wary socialites, outsmart vengeful thugs, and, above all, serve the truth -- no matter the cost.
Errol is awakened again by a strange prank caller asking for him by name and claiming to be his father--who has been dead for several years. It feels like a surreal call from the grave, until Erroll hears the unmistakable sound of a handset being put down on a table.
\nCurious, and not a little unnerved, he sneaks into the graveyard where his father is buried. What he finds there will change his life forever. But once Errol's been touched by the Wave, a presence infecting the planet, can anything be the same again?
The economy has hit the private-investigator business hard, even for Leonid McGill. Lately, he is getting job offers only from the criminals he's worked so hard to leave behind.
\nMeanwhile, his personal life grows ever more complicated: his favorite stepson, Twill, drops out of school for mysteriously lucrative pursuits; his best friend, Gordo, has been diagnosed with cancer and is living on his couch; his wife has taken a new lover, and seems to be endangering the McGill family; and his girlfriend, Aura, is back in his life but intent on some serious conversations.
\nSo how can McGill say no to the beautiful young woman who walks into his office with a stack of cash? She's an artist, she says, who escaped from poverty via a marriage to a rich art collector who keeps her on a stipend. But she tells McGill that she fears for her life, and that she needs his help to make sure she doesn’t meet the fate of her husband’s first two wives.
McGill knows better than to believe every word a potential client says, but this isn't a job he can afford to turn away, even as he senses that - if his family's misadventures don't kill him first - sorting out the truth in her story will propel him to confront some surprising, even shocking, truths.
The police don't show up on Easy Rawlins's doorstep until the third girl dies. It's Los Angeles, 1956, and it takes more than one murdered black girl before the cops get interested. Now they need Easy.
\nAs he says: \"I was worth a precinct full of detectives when the cops needed the word in the ghetto.\" But Easy turns them down. He's married now, a father - and his detective days are over. Then a white college coed dies the same brutal death, and the cops put the heat on Easy: If he doesn't help, his best friend is headed for jail.
\nSo Easy's back, walking the midnight streets of Watts and the darker, twisted avenues of a cunning killer's mind . . .
Deena Wood’s life has fallen apart in the aftermath of losing her beloved mother, her marriage, and her prestigious job at an Atlanta law firm. She needs what the Geechee people of coastal Georgia call a “dayclean,” a fresh start.
\nShe returns to her childhood home in Brunswick, Georgia, to heal. But her return is anything but the respite she thought it might be. To make peace with all her loss, she often drives through the city. One day, she unwittingly finds herself on the oceanfront property of a loner widower who is fighting to keep land that has been in his family since the end of the Civil War. He threatens her and warns her to never return.
\nBut shortly after, he disappears, and his very expensive property is quickly put up for sale. Curious about what has happened to the man, Deena digs into his disappearance and finds a family legacy at risk. What starts out as a bit of curious snooping, turns into a deadly game of illegal land grabs and property redevelopment in poor and rural communities with dark and powerful forces at work.
\nWithout realising it, Deena finds herself caught up in a nightmarish scheme that threatens her community and her family. She’ll need help and finds it in a close but unlikely source because she knows she must do whatever it takes to stop the sinister forces at play before she becomes their next target.
\n
Three years into her graduate studies at a demanding Boston university, the unnamed narrator of this nimbly wry, concise debut finds her one-time love for chemistry is more hypothesis than reality. She's tormented by her failed research - and reminded of her delays by her peers, her advisor, and most of all by her Chinese parents, who have always expected nothing short of excellence from her throughout her life.
\nBut there's another, nonscientific question the marriage proposal from her devoted boyfriend, a fellow scientist, whose path through academia has been relatively free of obstacles, and with whom she can't make a life before finding success on her own.
\nEventually, the pressure mounts so high that she must leave everything she thought she knew about her future, and herself, behind. And for the first time, she's confronted with a question she won't find the answer to in a What do I really want? Over the next two years, this winningly flawed, disarmingly insightl heroine learns the formulas and equations for a different kind of chemistry - one in which the reactions can't be quantified, measured, and analysed; one that can be studied only in the mysterious language of the heart.
\nTaking us deep inside her scattered, searching mind, here is a brilliant new literary voice that astutely juxtaposes the elegance of science, the anxieties of finding a place in the world, and the sacrifices made for love and family.
\n
Joan is a thirtysomething ICU doctor at a busy New York City hospital. The daughter of Chinese parents who came to the United States to secure the American dream for their children, Joan is intensely devoted to her work, happily solitary, successful. She does look up sometimes and wonder where her true roots lie: at the hospital, where her white coat makes her feel needed, or with her family, who try to shape her life by their own cultural and social expectations.
\nOnce Joan and her brother, Fang, were established in their careers, her parents moved back to China, hoping to spend the rest of their lives in their homeland. But when Joan’s father suddenly dies and her mother returns to America to reconnect with her children, a series of events sends Joan spiraling out of her comfort zone just as her hospital, her city, and the world are forced to reckon with a health crisis more devastating than anyone could have imagined.
\nDeceptively spare yet quietly powerful, laced with sharp humor, Joan Is Okay touches on matters that feel deeply resonant: being Chinese-American right now; working in medicine at a high-stakes time; finding one’s voice within a dominant culture; being a woman in a male-dominated workplace; and staying independent within a tight-knit family. But above all, it’s a portrait of one remarkable woman so surprising that you can’t get her out of your head.
\n
Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,” says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign” wife.
\nSome years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?
\n
Singapore, 1972: Newly independent, a city of immigrants grappling for power in a fast-modernizing world. Here, gangsters are the last conduits of the gods their ancestors brought with them, and the back alleys where they fight are the last place where magic has not been assimilated and legislated away.
\nLoner schoolgirl Adeline Siow has never needed more company than the flame she can summon at her fingertips. But when her mother dies in a house fire with a butterfly seared onto her skin and Adeline hunts down a girl she saw in a back-alley barfight - a girl with a butterfly tattoo - she discovers she’s far from alone.
\nAng Tian is a Red Butterfly: one of a gang of girls who came from nothing, sworn to a fire goddess and empowered to wreak vengeance on the men that abuse and underestimate them. Adeline’s mother led a double life as their elusive patron, Madam Butterfly. Now that she’s dead, Adeline’s bloodline is the sole thing sustaining the goddess. Between her search for her mother’s killer and the gang’s succession crisis, Adeline becomes quickly entangled with the girls’ dangerous world, and even more so with the charismatic Tian.
\nBut no home lasts long around here. Ambitious and paranoid neighbor gangs hunt at the edges of Butterfly territory, and bodies are turning up in the red light district suffused with a strange new magic. Adeline may have found her place for once, but with the streets changing by the day, it may take everything she is to keep it.
Calla thought that her boyfriend breaking up with her in a text message was the worst thing that could ever happen to her. But just two weeks later, her mother died in a freak accident, and life as she knew it was completely over. With her father heading to California for a new job, they decide that Calla should spend a few weeks with the grandmother she barely knows while he gets them set up.
\nTo Calla's shock, her mother's hometown of Lily Dale is a town full of psychics-including her grandmother. Suddenly, the fact that her mother never talked about her past takes on more mysterious overtones. The longer she stays in town, the stranger things become, as Calla starts to experience unusual and unsettling events that lead her to wonder whether she has inherited her grandmother's unique gift.
\nIs it this gift that is making her suspect that her mother's death was more than an accident, or is it just an overactive imagination? Staying in Lily Dale is the only way to uncover the truth. But will Calla be able to deal with what she learns about her mother's past and her own future?
\n
After her tumultuous summer in Lily Dale, Calla has decided to stay, hoping to unearth more about her mother’s untimely death.
\nAs she starts school at Lily Dale High and begins to explore her relationships with Jacy and Blue, her visions begin to occur with greater urgency. There may be a killer on the loose, and he may be after Calla for her role in solving his first victim’s disappearance.
\nNow that Calla believes in her ability, can she learn to use it properly before it leads her into more danger?
\n
Investigative genealogist Amelia Crenshaw solves clients' genetic puzzles, while hers remains shrouded in mystery.
\nNow she suspects that the key to her birth parents' identities lies in an unexpected connection to a stranger who's hired her to find his long-lost daughter. Bracing herself for a shocking truth, Amelia is blindsided by a deadly one.
\nNYPD Detective Stockton Barnes had walked away from his only child for her own good. He'll lay down his life to protect her if he and Amelia can find out where - and who - she is. But someone has beat them to it, and she has a lethal score to settle.
\nAmelia and Stockton's entangled roots have unearthed a femme fatale whose family tree holds one of history's most notorious killers. And the apple never falls far . . .
\n
Now that Calla has accepted her ability to communicate with the Other Side, she’s desperate to connect with the one spirit whose energy she can’t seem to feel anywhere: her late mother. As ominous supernatural signs imply that the devastating loss might not have been an accident, Calla sets out to uncover the truth, convinced that a shadowy stranger may hold the key. But she gets more than she bargained for when she stumbles across a shocking secret about her mom’s past—one that will change Calla’s own future forever.
", "series": "Lily Dale", "seriesOrder": 3, "tags": [ "Paranormal" ], "cover": "/coverimages/Wendy Corsi Staub - Connecting.jpeg", "mtime": 1773108722058.921, "size": 488015, "cachedAt": "2026-03-10T02:20:23.842Z" }, "Wendy Corsi Staub - Dead Silence": { "title": "Dead Silence", "author": "Wendy Corsi Staub", "description": "Staring into his frightened blue eyes, investigative genealogist Amelia Crenshaw Haines vows to help this silent little boy who is unable - or unwilling - to communicate his past. Though her own roots remain shrouded in mystery, she relies on tangible DNA evidence to help fellow foundlings uncover theirs . . . until a remarkable twist of fate presents a stranger bearing an eerily familiar childhood souvenir.
NYPD Missing Persons Detective Stockton Barnes has spent his career searching for other people’s lost loved ones and outrunning a youthful misstep. Now a chance encounter with a key player from that fateful night leads him on a desperate quest to locate the one woman he’s ever regretted leaving - unless a savage killer finds her first.
As Amelia and Barnes uncover intertwining truths - and lies - the real horror emerges not in crimes already committed, but in evil yet to come . . .
After finally learning who was behind her mother’s death, Calla still doesn’t understand why it happened. Somewhere out there, someone seems to share the powerful psychic abilities that allow Calla to see not only into the past, but to the Other Side - someone who apparently doesn’t want to be found. Will Calla’s journey lead to the closure she's been searching for, or will it force her to accept yet another loss and forever wonder what might have been?
\nAs new mysteries unfold and old ones are solved, this spine-tingling series continues. With an eye-catching new look, Wendy Corsi Staub’s fans will not be disappointed.
\n
I know who you are.
\nWhen Elizabeth Baxter reads these words, her world crashes. Five years ago, she was Hollywood superstar Mallory Eden - until a mysterious stalker turned her life into a nightmare. Now she hides in the small town of Windmere Cove, Rhode Island, living in fear, constantly looking over her shoulder . . .
\nThen her house is ransacked. The phone rings, and no one is on the other end . . . And very soon Elizabeth realises she's being hunted again. Her only peace is the solace she's found in the arms of Harper Smith. She longs to tell him the truth - and then she learns of his own secret past . . . a past that connects to Mallory Eden's.
\n
On prom night, Caroline Winterfield walked away from the ruins of an abandoned mansion called Haven Cliff and into the woods . . . never to be seen again. Only her three best friends know what really happened. But a secret is a secret, and a promise is a promise - even when it shatters lifelong friendships.
\nOn the twenty-fifth anniversary of that night, Midge, Kelly, and Talia reunite at Haven Cliff, now a gleaming architectural jewel. But they aren’t alone. Someone is watching. Someone who knows what really happened to Caroline - and to the man who now lies dead a stone’s throw from where she was last seen.
\nPolice detective Midge knows she’s dealing with a murder the moment she sees the item clutched in his lifeless hand. Only three other people in the world would grasp its significance. That means Kelly and Talia are either involved or in danger, because Caroline is long gone . . . or is she?
\n
Lily Dale, New York, is a sleepy, summer resort. A population of psychics and mediums lives within its gates. It is also the place where Julia Garrity and Kristin Shuttleworth formed a fast friendship - one broken only by death.
\nOn Halloween night fifteen years ago, Kristin saw something in a house on Summer Street that would haunt her until the end of her days. Since then, Julia has watched both Kristin and her mother fall prey to whomever - or whatever - lurks there.
\nNow Kristin’s blind six-year-old daughter, Dulcie, has come to live in Lily Dale - at that very house on Summer Street. Appointing herself protector, Julia is determined to coax the secrets of the house out into the light, to discover what the little girl “sees” roaming its halls . . . before the murderous force residing there claims them both.
\n
MAY, 1968
On a murky pre-dawn Mother’s Day, sinister secrets play out miles apart in New York City. In Harlem, a church janitor finds an innocent newborn in a basket. In Brooklyn, an elusive serial killer prowls slumbering families, leaving a trail of blood and a twisted calling card. Cloaked in lies, these seemingly unrelated lives - and deaths - are destined to intersect on a distant, blood-soaked day.
OCTOBER, 1987
Reeling from shocking personal discoveries, two strangers navigate a world where nothing is as it seems. Amelia Crenshaw embarks on a search to discover the truth about the birth mother who abandoned her, never suspecting she’s on a collision course with a killer. Detective Stockton Barnes, a brash young NYPD detective, trails a missing millionaire whose disappearance is rooted in a nightmare that began twenty years ago.
The past returns with a brutal vengeance as a masked predator picks off victims whose fates intertwine with a notorious murder spree solved back in ‘68 - or was it?
As the city sleeps in the early hours of September 10, 2001, the killer waits and watches, unaware of the cataclysm to come. Even the nightmare of 9/11 will not postpone his private reign of terror.
\nAllison Taylor adores her adopted city, New York, loving every minute of the invigorating urban hustle. But on a bright and clear September morning, the familiar landscape around her is savagely altered - and in the midst of widespread chaos and fear, a woman living upstairs from her is found, brutally slaughtered and mutilated.
\nFor Allison . . . for her neighbor, James \"Mack\" MacKenna, desperately searching for news of his missing wife . . . for homicide detective Rocky Manzillo, hunting for a monster called \"The Nightwatcher\" amid the smoking ruins of a devastated city, this tragic day will hold a special horror. Because a different kind of terror has entered their lives . . . and it's coming to claim Allison Taylor as its next victim.
\nAllison Taylor MacKenna feels as though she's awakened at last from a ten-year-long nightmare. But her darkest hour has yet to come . . .
\nNestled in the warm, domestic cocoon of loving husband and family, Allison finally feels safe - unaware that a stranger's brutal murder on a Caribbean island is the first step in an intricate plan to destroy everything in her life.
\nFor seasoned NYPD Detective Rocky Manzillo, the signs are clear that something terrible has emerged from the shadows: a murder victim left without a face and a faded photograph that yields a startling connection.
\nNow, as Allison's murky memories of a troubled childhood creep back to light, a cunning predator who shares her history prepares to enact a horrifying retribution - and won't stop killing until Allison faces a shocking truth . . . and pays the ultimate price.
\n
Ten years after the catastrophe, a great fallen city has risen again. Ten years after, a horror begins anew . . . or never truly ended.
\nThe nightmare of 9/11 is a distant but still painful memory for Allison Taylor MacKenna - now married to Mack and living in a quiet Westchester suburb. She has moved on with her life ten years after barely escaping death at the hands of New York’s Nightwatcher serial killer.
\nThe monster is dead, having recently committed suicide in his prison cell, but something is terribly wrong. Mack has started sleepwalking, with no recollection of where his nighttime excursions are taking him. And here, north of the city, more women are being savagely murdered, their bodies bearing the Nightwatcher’s unmistakable signature.
\nSuddenly Allison must confront a devastating truth: her life is in jeopardy once again . . . and quite possibly from the man she trusts and loves.
\n\n
J.J., Molly, and Leila had once been inseparable, but it’s been a long time since college, and life - not to mention distance - have disrupted the former roommates’ friendship. When the three reunite for a birthday weekend in Las Vegas, the lottery ticket they buy on a whim has the winning numbers - giving them a billion-dollar windfall. Shell-shocked, they turn to Shea Daniels, a “sudden wealth manager,” who promises to guide them through the pitfalls of having more money than they’d ever imagined.
\nThe trio travels to a secluded California mansion, where Shea and her staff cater to their every whim, promising to teach them to navigate their newfound wealthy lifestyles with ease. The house is luxurious beyond their wildest dreams - and purportedly cursed, the last place a missing movie star was seen alive.
\nTheir weekend turns to terror when they discover they are trapped - roads blocked and communication disrupted by the wildfires raging around them. And when history repeats itself and one of them disappears - the one who’s holding the billion-dollar ticket - the others must face the fact that either their friend has betrayed them . . . or a predator is lurking.
\n
Three years ago, Bella dumped her best friend Kerry to follow her dreams of becoming an influencer. It worked; she is Such a Lucky Girl, famous for her epic manifesting glow-up and dedicated to helping other girls be \"lucky,\" too. She's living the dream - success, sponsorships, and fame. She burned her old life to the ground and never looked back.
\nLeaving Kerry behind. Alone. Angry.
\nWhen Kerry picks up a vintage self-help book on shadow work, she's fascinated by the suggested rituals. Get back at those who have wronged her? Yes, please. She has one person in mind, and that girl is smiling at her millions of followers, having forgotten Kerry long ago. But there's something attached to the book, something dark and ancient, and Kerry and Bella may not be ready for what is about to be unleashed.
\n
In a god-blessed realm where old ghosts lay resting but not gone, Thora remains the most haunted.
\nNow queen of Isjord, she’s helped her kingdom thrive back into its once glorious days that old kings had tarnished with greed and a need for power. For ten years, Thora has ruled with a steady reign, but one that has always been doubted by a few who still wish to see old kings take her throne. When the new queen of the Islines rises to lay claim on Isjord as a true heir of pure Krigborn blood, many begin taking her side.
\nThe old will fight the new. And the new will face the old, which was buried in shallow graves.
\nMuch will be at stake as Iskyla Krigborn begins crawling through the foundations that Thora tried hard to set. But the closer they get to her, the darker and thicker the shadows around her become, the nearer and angrier their master grows. Strangers once friends now become allies who will raise ice and the dead as aid to the new threats of war.
\nWhile peace slips away into the hands of greed, which Ice Queen will lose control of it first?
\n
In a god cursed realm, where rage is the food of war, Snowlin was already satiated.
\nNow a prisoner of her father again, she has no choice but to play gambit for the sake of the people she loves. With only three pieces away from forming the Octa Virga, the Winter King prepares his armies of monsters and humans to overtake the realm and claim it as his own - crown himself a God. But his daughter lays the chessmen to play one last game of deceit.
\nWho will move first?
\nA pawn can be a queen, but a queen can never be a pawn.
\nAnd a king who has lost his queen will do everything to claim her back.
\nAn alliance like no other forms in Numen to face the inevitable war. The odds knew no favour to the wicked or kind in Numengarth, but there were no odds to favour the wicked or kind as the realm awaits to see which Guardian will remain at the end of it all.
\nFlame or lightning.
\nWhile eyes are blinded by power, who will lose grasp of it first? The greedy King or the cursed Queen?
\n
In a god blessed realm, where lies are the weapon of rulers, Snowlin held perhaps the sharpest blade there was.
\nAfter falling for a lie and ruling over another, Snowlin starts revealing her dealing hand. Two queens and a joker. Isjord hanging by her carefully woven threads deep in her father’s council, and Adriata pushed to the corner of her mercy, she awaits. But first she must stop Isjord from taking Adriata before her. Reborn as their demon, she unmasks long hidden fear and returns to take her seat along the Night King as his Queen, much to everyone’s displeasure.
\nHis suffering was always her plan. Earning her was his.
\nWhose will fail first?
\nA new revelation inevitably ties Snowlin to the Obscur Asteri, forcing a new bargain to be struck between the two. The odds knew no favour to the wicked or kind in Numengarth, but the wind, sky and thunder favoured her as she ensues a quest to find Aurora’s sceptre pieces before her father and put an end to the war he’d started long before her creation, that of ultimate destruction.
\nWhile leading the game of crowns, which king will she sacrifice first? Her father or her husband?
\n
In a god blessed realm where greed is the faith of rulers, Snowlin’s existence was perhaps the greediest act of all.
\nBorn the forbidden child of two Aura, magical beings possessing god-gifted powers, she carries a burden of title. Prized a weapon of destruction by her father and hunted as a monster of carnage by others. The odds knew no favour to the wicked or kind in Numengarth, but Snowlin turned human, powerless, and a disappointment to the creator who intended to wield her in his claim for power over the continent.
\nAfter twelve years disparaged into exile, she sets to return and claim what the realm owed her: revenge on both her father and the night king who hunted to take more than her life.
\nTake and destroy were her plans. Use and bargain were his.
\nShe returns to find the rapacity of serpents lingering in the air and at her expense once again. Snowlin, now arranged to wed her nightmare for a political agreement, begins adjusting plans.
\nWhile caught in a game of crowns, what would she choose to become? Pawn to the winter king or queen to the night king?
\n
Carlyle is a heavenly being who works as an agreement facilitator in the time outside of time. Here human beings are allowed to read the scrolls of their lives prior to their births. His first clients Julia and Nellie Jolicoeur - twins destined to be born on the cusp of the millennium in New York City - readily agree to their scrolls.
\nWhen Carlyle is given the opportunity to read them, he is shocked. Who would agree to such things? And why would the Designer require it of them? In answer to his questions Carlyle is sent down to earth to observe the twins live out their scrolls. This will take him into the workings of imperfect families, through the trauma of 9/11, across the United States and into the depths of human trafficking. He will experience Julia and Nellie’s losses, loves, traumas and triumphs as they grow from infants to children to young women and beyond.
\nThe Agreements is an unforgettable saga stretching across eternity and dipping into time to explore the divinely breathed depth of the human spirit and the unfathomable intricacies of our connections to one another and to God.
\n
Cannabis kingpin Burl Spoon has reigned over the Jackson County area for three decades, building a powerful backwoods empire. But behind a well-run organisation, his personal life is crumbling - his daughter can’t stay clean; his son has hated him since coming out; and after enduring years of infidelity, his wife is straying too. The only person not on his payroll who still adores him is his six-year-old granddaughter, Chelsea.
\nWhen his daughter overdoses on heroin laced with fentanyl and one of his employees is murdered, Burl’s retaliation against Clovis Begley, the patriarch of the heroin-dealing family involved in both deaths, is inevitable. As Burl’s plan spirals into a firestorm of vengeance that threatens the safety of his granddaughter, his drive for revenge conflicts with his longing for redemption.
\nOn the brink of losing everything, Burl must find a path between retribution and protecting what’s left of his family.
\n
Once there was a prophecy that a chosen one would rise to defeat the Eternal Khan, an immortal god-king.
\n\t\t\t\t\tBut the prophecy was wrong.
\n\t\t\t\t\tNow Jian, the former chosen hero, is just an ordinary young man trying to find his own way. But he may yet have an extraordinary destiny, because he joins forces with Taishi, his grumpy grandmaster, who instructs him in the ways of her family's powerful war art. Jian still has a long way to go before he can become her heir, so she recruits a band of elderly grandmasters who come out of retirement to whip him into shape and help with this one last job.
\n\t\t\t\t\tAnd there are others who are also seeking their own destiny, like Qisami, an assassin on a secret mission to protect a powerful noblewoman from her enemies. But as Qisami goes undercover to complete her mission, she takes on a new identity that gives her something she never had before: friendship, found family, and new purpose.
\n\t\t\t\t\tSali also thought her fate was laid before her. She was supposed to be looking for the next Eternal Khan and now finds her clan exiled from everything she's ever known. As she leads the survivors in search of a new home, Sali discovers that she's something she never thought she could be: a leader and a revolutionary.
\n\t\t\t\t\tBecause sometimes destiny is grander than any prophecy can foresee. And the greatest destiny of all is the one you choose for yourself.
A hero once believed to be the chosen one must find a new path with the help of a band of unlikely allies.
\nOnce in a faraway kingdom there was a prince prophesied to be the Chosen One, who would defeat a great villain, the Eternal Khan, and save the kingdom.
\nBut then the Eternal Khan died . . . and the prophecy was broken.
\nFor Jian, the fated prince, this could have been a moment to succumb to despair. But instead, he chose to create his own destiny.
\nHe studied under his curmudgeonly but beloved mentor to become a great warrior. And he banded together with some unlikely allies whose courage and determination match his own - such as Sali, a gruff warrior who is also forging a path apart from the one her culture created for her.
\nBecause some heroes aren't simply born legends - they choose to become legendary. And great heroes do not stand alone, but are stronger together.
It has been foretold: A child will rise to defeat the Eternal Khan, a cruel immortal god-king, and save the kingdom.
\n\t\t\t\t\tThe hero: Jian, who has been raised since birth in luxury and splendor, celebrated before he has won a single battle.
\n\t\t\t\t\tBut the prophecy was wrong.
\n\t\t\t\t\tBecause when Taishi, the greatest war artist of her generation, arrives to evaluate the prophesied hero, she finds a spoiled brat unprepared to face his destiny.
\n\t\t\t\t\tBut the only force more powerful than fate is Taishi herself. Possessed of an iron will, a sharp tongue - and an unexpectedly soft heart - Taishi will find a way to forge Jian into the weapon and leader he needs to be in order to fulfill his legend.
\n\t\t\t\t\tWhat follows is a journey more wondrous than any prophecy can foresee: a story of master and student, assassin and revolutionary, of fallen gods and broken prophecies, and of a war between kingdoms, and love and friendship between deadly rivals.
Convicted criminal
James Griffin-Mars is no one's hero. In his time, Earth is a toxic, abandoned world and humans have fled into the outer solar system to survive, eking out a fragile, doomed existence among the other planets and their moons. Those responsible for delaying humanity's demise believe time travel holds the key, and they have identified James, troubled though he is, as one of a select and expendable few ideally suited for the most dangerous job in history.
James is a chronman, undertaking missions into Earth's past to recover resources and treasure without altering the timeline. The laws governing use of time travel are absolute; break any one of them and, one way or another, your life is over. Most chronmen never reach old age; the stress of each jump through time, compounded by the risk to themselves and to the future, means that many chronmen rapidly reach their breaking point, and James Griffin-Mars is nearing his.
\nOn a final mission that is to secure his retirement, James meets Elise Kim, an intriguing scientist from a previous century, who is fated to die during the destruction of an oceanic rig. Against his training and his common sense, and in violation of the chronmen's highest law, James brings Elise back to the future with him, saving her life, but turning them both into fugitives. Remaining free means losing themselves in the wild and poisonous wastes of Earth, somehow finding allies, and perhaps discovering what hope may yet remain for humanity's home world.
\n**
Time Siege, a fast-paced time-travel adventure from award-winning author Wesley Chu
\nHaving been haunted by the past and enslaved by the present, James Griffin-Mars is taking control of the future.
\nEarth is a toxic, sparsely inhabited wasteland - the perfect hiding place for a fugitive ex-chronman to hide from the authorities.
\nJames has allies, scientists he rescued from previous centuries: Elise Kim, who believes she can renew Earth, given time; Grace Priestly, the venerated inventor of time travel herself; Levin, James's mentor and former pursuer, now disgraced; and the Elfreth, a population of downtrodden humans who want desperately to believe that James and his friends will heal their ailing home world.
\nJames also has enemies. They include the full military might of benighted solar system ruled by corporate greed and a desperate fear of what James will do next. At the forefront of their efforts to stop him is Kuo, the ruthless security head, who wants James's head on a pike and will stop at nothing to obtain it.
\n
Seth Beauman can't sleep. He stays up late, calling strangers from his phonebook, hoping to make a connection, while his wife, Maeve, sleeps upstairs. A crossed wire finds a suicidal Hadley Serf on the phone to Seth, thinking she is talking to The Samaritans.
But a seemingly harmless, late-night hobby turns into something more for Seth and for Hadley, and soon their late-night talks are turning into day-time meet-ups. And then this dysfunctional love story turns into something altogether darker, when Seth brings Hadley home . . .
And someone is watching . . .
Five days in the history of a small rural town, visited and infected by darkness, are recounted by Evil itself.
\nIt's a small story. A small town with small lives that you would never have heard about if none of this had happened. Hinton Hollow. Population 5,120.
\nLittle Henry Wallace was eight years old and one hundred miles from home before anyone talked to him. His mother placed him on a train with a label around his neck, asking for him to be kept safe for a week, kept away from Hinton Hollow. Because something was coming.
\nNarrated by Evil itself, Hinton Hollow Death Trip recounts five days in the history of this small rural town, when darkness paid a visit and infected its residents. A visit that made them act in unnatural ways. Prodding at their insecurities. Nudging at their secrets and desires. Coaxing out the malevolence suppressed within them. Showing their true selves.
\nMaking them cheat.
Making them steal.
Making them kill.
Detective Sergeant Pace had returned to his childhood home. To escape the things he had done in the city. To go back to something simple. But he was not alone. Evil had a plan.
The threat of nuclear war is no longer scary. This is much worse. It's invisible. It works quickly.
\nAnd it's coming.
\nThe scourge has already infected and killed half the population in China and it is heading towards the UK. There is no time to escape. The British government sees no way out other than to distribute ‘Dignity Pills' to its One last night with family or loved ones before going to sleep forever . . . together. Because the contagion will kill you, and the horrifying news footage shows that it will be better to go quietly.
\nDr Haruto Ikeda, a Japanese scientist working at a Chinese research facility, wants to save the world. He has discovered a way to mutate a virus. Instead of making people sick, instead of causing death, it's going to make them . . . nice. Instead of attacking the lungs, it will work into the brain and increase the host's ability to feel and show compassion. It will make people kind.
\nIkeda's quest is thoughtful and noble, and it just might work. Maybe humanity can be saved. Maybe it doesn't have to be the end.
\nBut kindness may also be the biggest killer of all . . .
\n
Nine people arrive one night on Chelsea Bridge. They’ve never met. But at the same time, they run, and leap to their deaths. Each of them received a letter in the post that morning, a pre-written suicide note, and a page containing only four words: Nothing important happened today.
\nThat is how they knew they had been chosen to become a part of the People Of Choice: A mysterious suicide cult whose members have no knowledge of one another.
\nThirty-two people on that train witness the event. Two of them will be next. By the morning, People Of Choice are appearing around the globe; it becomes a movement. A social media page that has lain dormant for four years suddenly has thousands of followers. The police are under pressure to find a link between the cult members, to locate a leader that does not seem to exist.
\nHow do you stop a cult when nobody knows they are a member?
Maeve has everything. A high-powered job, a beautiful home, a string of uncomplicated one-night encounters. She’s also an addict: A functioning alcoholic with a dependence on sex and an insatiable appetite for killing men.
\nWhen she can’t find a support group to share her obsession, she creates her own. And Psychopaths Anonymous is born. Friends of Maeve.
\nNow in a serious relationship, Maeve wants to keep the group a secret. But not everyone in the group adheres to the rules, and when a reckless member raises suspicions with the police, Maeve’s drinking spirals out of control.
\nShe needs to stop killing. She needs to close the group.
\nBut Maeve can’t seem to quit the things that are bad for her, including her new man . . .
\nA scathing, violent and darkly funny book about love, connection, obsessions and sex - and the aspects of human nature we’d prefer to hide - Psychopaths Anonymous is also an electrifyingly original, unpredictable thriller that challenges virtually everything.
Claire Beacham returns from a busy day at work to a parcel on her doorstep - no note, no label. As a politician, she's used to being suspicious of anonymous hate mail but today she's too tired to worry. She opens it, finding a gruesome surprise inside. A severed head falls to her kitchen floor; the rich, red drip of blood on her hands.
\nIt is clear to Claire and those around her that this terrifying package is a message. But who sent it, and why?
\nIt's Claire's first delivery - and won't be her last.
\nDI Finn cannot enjoy the gentle return to his role in the Murder Investigation Team of the Metropolitan Police that he planned. Someone is targeting Claire and with every message comes another casualty. With the clock ticking, DI Finn and DC Mattie Paulsen must wade through the depths of the murky political sphere before the bodies start piling up.
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Single mother Jenna arrives on the tranquil shores of Athelsea fueled by the desperate hope to find Chloe, her teenage daughter who’s disappeared from their London home. She has no idea why - all she knows is that Chloe had changed in the previous two weeks, haunted by something, or someone, and the ferry ticket here is the only clue she has.
\nAs she explores the village and interacts with the locals, Jenna soon realizes a macabre secret is being hidden in plain sight. A dark legend of a vengeful woman called the Bone Queen is spoken of in hushed tones amongst the villagers, some of whom are frantically trying to suppress the tale that has long terrorised their lives.
\nAs Jenna starts to learn more about the Bone Queen and her previous victims, the village’s grip on reality begins to loosen and no one can say for sure who, or what, is responsible for the deaths and disappearances on Athelsea. Suffering from what she can no longer distinguish between paranoid hallucinations or real manifestations, Jenna must act quickly before Chloe is next . . .
\nThe Bone Queen has left her mark, and one day she’ll collect.
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When a development in South London catches fire mid-construction, a close-knit team of fire fighters runs in to save a man spotted at the window.
They come out without a body. They quit the service. They plan never to speak to each other again.
Five years later one of them is set alight at his own wedding. Soon after, a second is found, nothing but a smoking corpse. It appears that someone knows what they did that night. What they chose over their duty. And there are still three men left to burn . . .
DI Alex Finn and his new partner DC Mattie Paulsen are an unlikely pairing, but they need to discover who is behind these killings before the next man faces the fire.
2009
During a summer heatwave, teenagers are going missing. Junior officer Alex Finn takes the case and fears that the disappearances are linked. In a race against the clock to find and rescue the children alive, Finn and his team are only partially successful. Two of the children are saved, but they were too late for Oliver.
And the killer got away.
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2023
DI Alex Finn is still tormented by the cases of his youth - none more than so than the 2009 kidnappings. And it seems someone else has not forgotten either. They want answers after all this time, and with a gun in their pocket and their sights set on Alex, they'll do anything to get what they're after . . .
Sadie Nicholls has been found dead, brutally and strangely murdered, in her South East London flat. Her little boy is missing.
\nDI Alex Finn and DC Mattie Paulsen know that, in the case of a missing child, it's the first 24 hours that count. They don't have many left to find out where Sadie's son might be and the identity of her killer. Why would anyone want a struggling single mother, loved by many, dead?
\nBut when they realise a similar crime was committed at the same house nearly 20 years ago, a question is on everyone's lips: is this more than just a coincidence?
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'Leave your daughter with me, or I will kill you both'
\nIt felt like a normal Friday evening before Karl and his daughter Leah were ambushed by a figure in a blank mask. At knife point, Karl is forced to make an impossible choice. Stay and die, or walk away from Leah and take this thug's word that they both will live.
\nShould Karl trust a villain and leave his daughter with a knife at her throat? Could he ever live with himself if he did?
\nIt's not long before more seemingly unconnected and innocent people across London are offered a deal in exchange for their life. More blood is spilled, more families shattered, and more people are left to suffer with the consequences of their decisions.
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Cyrus Barker is undoubtedly England's premiere private enquiry agent. With the help of his assistant Thomas Llewelyn, he's developed an enviable reputation for discreetly solving some of the toughest, most consequential cases in recent history.
\nBut one evening in 1888, Robert Anderson, the head of Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigation Department (CID), appears at Barker's office with an offer. A series of murders in the Whitechapel area of London are turning the city upside down, with tremendous pressure being brought to bear on Scotland Yard and the government itself.
\nBarker is to be named temporary envoy to the Royal Family with regard to the case while surreptitiously bringing his investigative skill to the case. With various elements of society, high and low, bringing their own agenda to increasingly shocking murders, Barker and Llewellyn must find and hunt down the century's most notorious killer.
\nThe Whitechapel Killer has managed to elude the finest minds of Scotland Yard - and beyond - he's never faced a mind as nimble and a man as skilled as Cyrus Barker. But even Barker's prodigious skills may not be enough to track down a killer in time.
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When an Italian assassin's body is found floating in a barrel in Victorian London's East End, enquiry agent Cyrus Barker and his assistant Thomas Llewelyn are called in to investigate.
\nSoon corpses begin to appear all over London, each accompanied by a Maf ia Black Hand note. As Barker and Llewelyn dig deeper, they become entangled in the vendettas of rival Italian syndicates - and it is no longer clear who is a friend or foe.
In 19th century London, Cyrus Barker and his associate Thomas Llewelyn are renowned private enquiry agents, successfully employed by the highest levels of Her Majesty's government as well as private citizens. Their success, however, has led to their acquiring a powerful group of enemies, many of whom are determined to have their revenge.
\nAt least one of those enemies is responsible for a bombing of their offices that puts Cyrus Barker into the hospital and endangers Thomas Llewelyn's rapidly forthcoming nuptials. To add to the confusion, Barker's long-lost brother Caleb turns up on the rubble of their doorstep not long after the not-quite-fatal bombing.
\nUnsure of Caleb and warned about him by Barker, Thomas reluctantly accepts Caleb's help both with a new case that comes in as well as trying to pinpoint which of Barker's enemies is making a move against them. As Thomas works his way through their enemy list, someone else is winnowing down that list: one by one those enemies are dying.
\nWith time running out - and his bride-to-be reconsidering their marriage - Llewelyn must (with the sick-bed bound Barker's help) uncover the killer and the plot before it's too late.
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In June of 1893, the future Nicholas II travels to London for a royal wedding, bringing with him his private security force and his ballerina mistress, Mathilde Kchessinska.
\nRumored to be the target of a professional assassin known only as La Sylphide, and the subject of conspiracies against his life by his own family who covet his future throne, Nicholas is protected by not only private security, but the professional forces of both England and Russia.
\nAll of these measures prove inadequate when Prince George of England is attacked by an armed anarchist who mistakes him for Nicholas. As a result, Barker and Llewelyn are brought in to help track down the assassin and others who might conspire against the life of the tsesarevich . The investigations lead them down several paths, including Llewelyn's old nemesis, the assassin Sofia Ilyanova.
\nWith Barker and Llewelyn both surviving separate attempts on their lives, the race is on to find both the culprit and the assassin they hired. Taking them through high society (including a masked ball at Kensington Palace) and low, chasing down motives both personal and political, Barker and Llewelyn must solve the case of their life before the crime of the century is committed.
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Private Enquiry agent Cyrus Barker, along with his partner Thomas Llewelyn, has a long, accomplished history - he's taken on cases for Scotland Yard, the Foreign Office, and even the crown itself, fulfilling them all with great skill and discretion.
\nNone of those cases, however, are as delicate and complicated as the one laid before him by a delegation of men who, thirty years before, fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War.
\nThese men want to revive the Confederacy with a warship promised to the Rebels from the British Government in 1865. To get it now, they're threatening to reveal the long-secret treaty with the Confederacy. Barker is hired to use his connections to discreetly bring their threats to the Prime Minister.
\nWith a web of prominent, if secret, supporters throughout England ready to through their support to their efforts to wage war anew on the United States, the delegates are just waiting for the warship to begin their plans. But some of the men are not who they claim to be, and the American government has their own team watching, and waiting, for the right moment to take action.
\nAs this fuse on this powder keg of a situation grows ever shorter, it's up to Barker & Llewelyn to uncover the real identities and plans of these dangerous men.
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Some years ago, Cyrus Barker matched wits with Sebastian Nightwine, an aristocrat and sociopath, and in exposing his evil, sent Nightwine fleeing to hide from justice somewhere in the far corners of the earth.
\nThe last thing Barker ever expected was to encounter Nightwine again - but the British government, believing they need Nightwine's help, has granted him immunity for his past crimes, and brought him back to London.
\nNightwine, however, has more on his mind than redemption - and as Barker and Llewellyn set out to uncover and thwart Nightwine's real scheme, they find themselves in the gravest danger of their lives.
Private Enquiry agent Cyrus Barker has just about seen it all - he's been attacked by assassins, his office has been bombed, and evil-doers have even nearly killed his dog. But never before has a potential client dropped dead in his office.
\nWhen Roland Fitzhugh, Member of Parliment arrives to consult Barker and his partner Thomas Llewelyn, he falls to the floor, dead, upon entering. As they soon learn, he's been poisoned with a cyanide laced raspberry tart, and the adulterated tarts also take out an entire family in the East End. Labelled the Mad Pie Man by the press, Barker and Llewelyn are hired by former Prime Minister William Gladstone to find out who has targeted the House of Commons's newest member.
\nBut before they can even begin, they find themselves the latest target of this mad poisoner - with Barker's butler poisoned with digitalis and dozens of diabolic traps discovered at their home. On the run from their unseen adversary, Barker and Llewelyn must uncover the threads that connect these seemingly random acts and stop the killer before they and their closest friends and family become the latest casualties.
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Cyrus Barker, along with his former assistant and now partner Thomas Llewelyn, is the premier enquiry agent in all of 19th century London, and beyond. They've thwarted the designs of villains and crooks off all sorts, helped Scotland Yard crack their most challenging cases, and worked for the Her Majesty's Government at the very highest levels. But nothing has been quite as challenging and dangerous as the latest case that comes to find them.
\nIn 1893, a volunteer at the British Museum makes a startling discovery. When examining a mummy in the museum's collection, he discovers there is a giant ruby in the shape of a heart buried in the chest of the mummy. Even more startling, the mummy might well be Cleopatra.
\nThe following morning, the volunteer is found floating in the Thames and the ruby has gone missing. Hired by the victim’s wife to learn the truth behind his death, Barker and Llewelyn find themselves in the crosshairs - now they must avoid a violent street gang, a ruthless collector, and the British Museum itself in order to find the killer and safeguard the gem.
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When two people are murdered during a secret government conference on a secluded island estate, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker must find the killer among the guests before it’s too late.
At the request of Her Majesty’s government, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker agrees to take on his least favorite kind of assignment - he’s to provide security for a secret conference with the French government.
The conference is to take place on the private estate of Lord Hargrave on a remote island off the coast of Cornwall. The goal of the conference is the negotiation of a new treaty with France. The cover story for the gathering is a house party - an attempt to introduce Lord Hargrave’s two unmarried sons to potential mates.
But shortly after the parties land at the island, Lord Hargrave is killed by a sniper shot, and the French ambassador’s head of security is found stabbed to death. The only means of egress from the island - a boat - has been sent away, and the means of signaling for help has been destroyed.
Trapped in a manor house with no way of escape, Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, must uncover which among them is the killer before the next victim falls.
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When Barker and Llewelyn are hired to find a girl from the upper classes who has gone missing in the East End, they assume her kidnapping is the work of white slavers. But when they discover five girls have been murdered in Bethnal Green, taunting letters begin to arrive in Craig's Court from a killer calling himself Mr. Miacca.
\nBarker fears that Miacca might be part of the Hellfire Club, a group of powerful, hedonistic aristocrats performing Satanic rituals. He must track the fiend to his hideout, while Llewelyn confronts the man who put him in prison.
\nDodging muckrakers, navigating the murky Thames under cover of darkness, and infiltrating London's most powerful secret society.
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Private enquiry agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn receive in the mail an unexplained key stamped with the letter Q. Barker, recognising it for what it is, uses the key to unlock an anonymous door in the alleyway, which opens to an underground tunnel leading to Downing Street.
\nThe Prime Minister has a small task for Cyrus Barker. A Foreign Office agent stole a satchel in Eastern Europe, but was then himself murdered at Charing Cross. The satchel contains a document desperately wanted by the German government, but while the agent was killed, the satchel remains in English hands. With a cold war brewing between England and Germany, it's in England's interest to return the document contained in the satchel to its original owners and keep it out of German hands.
\nThe document is an unnamed first century gospel; the original owner is the Vatican. And the German government isn't the only group trying to get possession of it. With secret societies, government assassins, political groups, and shadowy figures of all sorts doing everything they can - attacks, murders, counter-attacks, and even massive street battles - to acquire the satchel and its contents, this small task might be beyond even the prodigious talents of Cyrus Barker.
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In The Limehouse Text, Barker and Llewelyn discover a pawn ticket among the effects of Barker's late assistant, leading them to London's Chinese district, Limehouse. There they retrieve an innocent-looking book that proves to be a rare and secret text stolen from a Nanking monastery.
\nWhen they take it to Ho, Barker's favorite restaurateur, for inspection, they discover that it contains lethal martial arts techniques forbidden to the West. With the political situation between the British Empire and Imperial China already precarious, the duo must safeguard the text from a snarl of suspects with conflicting interests -- and track down a killer intent upon gaining the secret knowledge.
\nProwling through an underworld of opium dens, back-room blood sports, and sailors' penny hangs while avoiding the wrath of the district's powerful warlord, Mr. K'ing, Barker and Llewelyn take readers on a perilous tour through the mean streets of turn-of-the-century London.
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When a Japanese diplomat is murdered, and Cyrus Barker is the prime suspect, Barker and sidekick Llewelyn must work against the clock to find the real killer.
In London of 1890, the first Japanese diplomatic delegation arrives in London to open an embassy in London. Cyrus Barker, private enquiry agent and occasional agent for the Foreign Service Office, is enlisted to display his personal Japanese garden to the visiting dignitaries.
Later that night, Ambassador Toda is shot and killed in his office and Cyrus Barker is discovered across the street, watching the very same office, in possession of a revolver with one spent cartridge.
Arrested by the Special Branch for the crime, Barker is vigorously interrogated and finally released due to the intervention of his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, and his solicitor. With the London constabulary still convinced of his guilt, Barker is hired by the new Japanese ambassador to find the real murderer.
In a case that takes leads Barker and Llewelyn deep into parts of London's underworld, on paths that lead deep into Barker's own mysterious personal history, Old Scores is the finest yet in Will Thomas's critically acclaimed series.
Private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker, along with his partner Thomas Llewelyn, has a long, accomplished history - he's worked with all aspects of society, from the highest (including the Crown and the government) to the lowest (various forces in London's underworld). He's been the target of murder attempts, character assassination, bombings and attacks upon his closest associates but never has he and his agency partner Thomas Llewelyn faced such destruction and potential disaster.
\nThe sudden collapse of a railway tunnel in the East End of London kills dozens and shuts down services all over the city. Meanwhile, a mysterious beggar calling herself “Dutch” guides Barker and Llewelyn to an attempt by a powerful aristocrat to take over London's criminal underworld.
\nWith a missing heiress and a riot at a women’s shelter acting as distractions designed to stop the duo from getting to the truth, Barker must relentlessly fight to reach the trust while Llewelyn wonders how a simple beggar woman can be the catalyst for such destruction.
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An atmospheric debut novel set on the gritty streets of Victorian London, Some Danger Involved introduces detective Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, as they work to solve the gruesome murder of a young scholar in London's Jewish ghetto.
\nWhen the eccentric and enigmatic Barker takes the case, he must hire an assistant, and out of all who answer an ad for a position with \"some danger involved,\" he chooses downtrodden Llewelyn, a gutsy young man with a murky past.
\nAs they inch ever closer to the shocking truth behind the murder, Llewelyn is drawn deeper and deeper into Barker's peculiar world of vigilante detective work, as well as the heart of London's teeming underworld.
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Victorian enquiry agent Cyrus Barker and his young assistant Thomas Llewelyn, first introduced in Will Thomas's critically acclaimed debut novel Some Danger Involved, are back with a new mission in To Kingdom Come.
\nWhen a bomb destroys the Special Irish Branch of Scotland Yard, all fingers point to the increasingly brazen factions of Irish dissidents seeking liberation from English rule. Volunteering their services to the British government, Barker and Llewelyn set out to infiltrate a secret cell of the Irish Republican Brotherhood known as the Invisibles. Posing as a reclusive German bomb maker and his anarchist apprentice, they are recruited for the group's ultimate plan: to bring London to its knees and end the monarchy forever.
\nTheir adventures take them from an abandoned lighthouse on the craggy coast of Wales to the City of Light, where Llewelyn goes undercover with Maire O'Casey, the alluring sister of an Irish radical. Llewelyn again finds himself put to the test by his enigmatic employer as he is schooled in the deadly science of bomb making.
A brave girl flees a ghoul while trying to save her town in this lively, fast-paced companion to Goblin Secrets.
\nKaile lives in Zombay, an astonishing city where goblins walk the streets and witches work their charms and curses. Kaile wants to be a musician and is delighted when a goblin gives her a flute carved out of bone. But the flute’s single, mournful song has a dangerous consequence: It separates Kaile and her shadow. Anyone without a shadow is considered dead, and despite Kaile’s protests that she’s alive and breathing, her family forces her to leave so she can’t haunt their home.
Kaile and her shadow soon learn that the troublesome flute is tied to a terrifying ghoul made from the bones of those who drowned in the Zombay River. With the ghoul chasing her and the river threatening to flood, Kaile has an important role to play in keeping Zombay safe. Will Kaile and her shadow be able to learn the right tune in time?
In the town of Zombay, there is a witch named Graba who has clockwork chicken legs and moves her house around - much like the fairy tale figure of Baba Yaga. Graba takes in stray children, and Rownie is the youngest boy in her household. Rownie’s only real relative is his older brother Rowan, who is an actor. But acting is outlawed in Zombay, and Rowan has disappeared.
\nDesperate to find him, Rownie joins up with a troupe of goblins who skirt the law to put on plays. But their plays are not only for entertainment, and the masks they use are for more than make-believe. The goblins also want to find Rowan - because Rowan might be the only person who can save the town from being flooded by a mighty river.
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Captain Tova Lir chose a life as a courier rather than get involved in her family’s illustrious business in politics. Set in humanity’s far future, hiring a planetary courier is essential for delivering private messages across the stars.
\nEncouraged by friends, Tova begins mentoring baby bots, juvenile AI who are developmentally in their teens, and trains them how to interact within society, essentially becoming their foster mom. Her latest charge, Agatha Panza von Sparkles, named herself on their first run from Luna to Phoebe station. But on their return, they encounter a derelict spaceship and a lurking assassin, igniting a thrilling chase across the solar system.
\nTova and Agatha’s daring actions leave Agatha’s mind vulnerable, relying on Tova’s former AI pupils for help. As Tova starts gathering her scattered family around her, she is chased through the solar system by forces who want her captured and her family erased.
Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he’s offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into a web of duplicities and betrayals.
\nAs Gabriel’s reluctant initiation takes hold, he is drawn deeper into the shadows. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthless MI6 handler, he becomes ‘her spy’, unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, it will be the revelations closer to home that change the rest of his story.
1963, Guatemala. The country is in turmoil, with a presidential election looming and a charismatic, left-wing ex-priest and trade union leader predicted to win. United Fruits, a giant American corporation responsible for a large percentage of the country’s GNP, meanwhile, is not pleased by this prospect. Neither is the CIA. Amid the uncertainty, Gabriel Dax arrives on orders from his MI6 handler Faith Green, who has tasked him with assessing the fallout from the election.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tUpon arrival, Gabriel meets Frank Sartorius, the local CIA agent. Despite Sartorius’s genial manner, Gabriel suspects something untrustworthy brewing under the surface. Soon, a political assassination with suspicions of Mafia involvement leads to riots, and Dax escapes to Europe, thinking he will finally return to his normal life as a travel writer. But when Green compels him to investigate some shady characters in West Berlin, it becomes clear that an even greater danger is afoot as the magnetic young President Kennedy prepares to arrive for a state visit. A gripping novel of politics and spy craft with dramatic twists and turns, The Predicament shows Boyd to be one of our most masterful contemporary storytellers.
In City of Margins, the lives of several lost souls intersect in Southern Brooklyn in the early 1990s. There’s Donnie Parascandolo, a disgraced ex-cop with blood on his hands; Ava Bifulco, a widow whose daily work grind is her whole life; Nick, Ava’s son, a grubby high school teacher who dreams of a shortcut to success; Mikey Baldini, a college dropout who’s returned to the old neighborhood, purposeless and drifting; Donna Rotante, Donnie’s ex-wife, still reeling from the suicide of their teenage son; Mikey’s mother, Rosemarie, also a widow, who hopes Mikey won’t fall into the trap of strong arm work; and Antonina Divino, a high school girl with designs on breaking free from Brooklyn.
\nUniting them are the dead: Mikey’s old man, killed over a gambling debt, and Donnie and Donna’s poor son, Gabe. These characters cross paths in unexpected ways, guided by coincidence and the pull of blood. There are new things to be found in the rubble of their lives, too. The promise of something different beyond the barriers that have been set out for them. This is a story of revenge and retribution, of facing down the ghosts of the past, of untold desires, of yearning and forgiveness and synchronicity, of the great distance of lives lived in dangerous proximity to each other.
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After Brooklyn mob widow Rena Ruggiero hits her eighty-year-old neighbor Enzio in the head with an ashtray when he makes an unwanted move on her, she embarks on a bizarre adventure. Taking off in Enzio's '62 Impala, she retreats to the Bronx home of her estranged daughter, Adrienne, and her granddaughter, Lucia, only to be turned away by Adrienne at the door. Their neighbor, Lacey \"Wolfie\" Wolfstein, a one-time Golden Age porn star and retired Florida Suncoast grifter, takes Rena in and befriends her.
\nWhen Lucia discovers that Adrienne is planning to hit the road with her ex-boyfriend Richie, she figures Rena's her only way out of a life on the run with a mother she can't stand. But Richie has massacred a few members of the Brancaccio crime family for a big payday, and he drags even more trouble into the mix in the form of an unhinged enforcer named Crea. The stage is set for an explosion that will propel Rena, Wolfie, and Lucia down a strange path, each woman running from something and unsure what comes next.
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Some worship him and some want him dead, but either way, tensions run high when \"Ray Boy\" Calabrese is released from prison. It's been sixteen years since Ray Boy's actions led to the death of a young man. The victim's brother, Conway D'Innocenzio, is a 29-year-old Brooklynite wasting away at a local Rite Aid, stuck in the past and drawn into a darker side of himself when he hears of Ray Boy's freedom. But even with the perfect plan in place, Conway can't bring himself to take the ultimate revenge on Ray Boy, which sends him into a spiral of self-loathing and soul-searching.
\nMeanwhile, Alessandra, a failed actress, returns to her native Gravesend after the death of her cancer-stricken mother, torn between the desperate need to escape back to Los Angeles as quickly as possible and the ease with which she could sink back into neighborhood life. Alessandra and Conway are walking eerily similar paths--staring down the rest of their lives, caring for their aging fathers, lost in the youths they squandered - and each must decide what comes next.
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Amy was once a party girl, but she now lives a lonely life, helping the house-bound to receive communion in the Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn. She stops in at one of the apartments on her route, where Mrs. Epifanio, the elderly woman who lives there, says she hasn’t seen her usual caretaker, Diane, in a few days. Supposedly, Diane has the flu - or so Diane’s son Vincent said when he first dropped by and vanished into Mrs. E’s bedroom to do no-one-knows-what.
Amy’s brief interaction with Vincent in the apartment that day sets off warning bells, so she assures Mrs. E that she’ll find out what’s really going on with both him and his mother. She tails Vincent through Brooklyn, eventually following him and a mysterious man out of a local dive bar. At first, the men are only talking as they walk, but then, almost before Amy can register what has happened, Vincent is dead.
For reasons she can’t quite understand, Amy finds herself captivated by both the crime she witnessed and the murderer himself. She doesn’t call the cops to report what she’s seen. Instead, she collects the murder weapon from the sidewalk and soon finds herself on the trail of a killer.
Gravesend, Brooklyn, 1986: Risa Franzone lives in a ground-floor apartment on Saint of the Narrows Street with her bad-seed husband, Saverio, and their eight-month-old baby, Fabrizio. On the night her younger sister, Giulia, moves in with Risa to recover from a bad breakup, a fateful accident occurs: Risa, boiled over with anger and fear, strikes a drunk, erratic Sav with a cast-iron pan, killing him on the spot.
\nThe sisters are left with a choice: notify the authorities and make a case for self-defense, or bury the man’s body and go on with their lives as best they can. In a moment of panic, in the late hours of the night, they call upon Sav’s childhood friend - the sweet, loyal Christopher “Chooch” Gardini - to help them, hoping they can trust him to carry a secret like this.
\nOver the vast expanse of the next eighteen years, life goes on in the working-class Italian neighborhood of Gravesend as Risa, Giulia, Chooch, and eventually Fabrizio grapple with what happened that night. A standout work of character-driven crime fiction from a celebrated author of the form, Saint of the Narrows Street is a searing and richly drawn novel about the choices we make and how they shape our lives.
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After several years of silence and seclusion in Beetlecreek’s black quarter, a carnival worker named Bill Trapp befriends Johnny Johnson, a Pittsburgh teenager living with relatives in Beetlecreek. Bill is white. Johnny is black. Both are searching for acceptance, something that will give meaning to their lives. Bill tries to find it through good will in the community. Johnny finds it in the Nightriders, a local gang. David Diggs, the boy’s dispirited uncle, aspires to be an artist but has to settle for sign painting. David and Johnny’s new friendship with Bill kindles hope that their lives will get better.
\nDavid’s marriage has failed; his wife’s shallow faith serves as her outlet from racial and financial oppression. David’s unhappy routine is broken by Edith Johnson’s return to Beetlecreek, but this relationship will be no better than his loveless marriage. Bill’s attempts to unify black and white children with a community picnic is a disaster. A rumor scapegoats him as a child molester, and Beetlecreek is titillated by the imagined crimes.
\nThis novel portraying race relations in a remote West Virginia town has been termed an existential classic. “It would be hard,” said The New Yorker , “to give Mr. Demby too much praise for the skill with which he has maneuvered the relationships in this book.” During the 1960s Arna Bontemps wrote, “Demby’s troubled townsfolk of the West Virginia mining region foreshadow present dilemmas. The pressing and resisting social forces in this season of our discontent and the fatal paralysis of those of us unable or unwilling to act are clearly anticipated with the dependable second sight of a true artist.”
\nFirst published in 1950, Beetlecreek stands as a moving condemnation of provincialism and fundamentalism. Both a critique of racial hypocrisy and a new direction for the African American novel, it occupies fresh territory that is neither the ghetto realism of Richard Wright nor the ironic modernism of Ralph Ellison. Even after fifty years, more or less, William Demby said in 1998, “It still seems to me that Beetlecreek is about the absence of symmetry in human affairs, the imperfectability of justice the tragic inevitability of mankind’s inhumanity to mankind.”
Barbarian Days is William Finnegan’s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life.
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Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our noses - off the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships forged in challenging waves.
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Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites-only gang in a tough school in Honolulu. He shows us a world turned upside down for kids and adults alike by the social upheavals of the 1960s. He details the intricacies of famous waves and his own apprenticeships to them. Youthful folly - he drops LSD while riding huge Honolua Bay, on Maui - is served up with rueful humor. As Finnegan’s travels take him ever farther afield, he discovers the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissects the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, and navigates the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity.
A few nights before Halloween, as Cork O’Connor gloomily ruminates on his upcoming birthday, he receives a call from his son, Stephen, who is working for a nonprofit dedicated to securing freedom for unjustly incarcerated inmates. Stephen tells his father that decades ago, as the newly elected sheriff of Tamarack County, Cork was responsible for sending an Ojibwe man named Axel Boshey to prison for a brutal murder that Stephen is certain he did not commit.
Cork feels compelled to reinvestigate the crime, but that is easier said than done. Not only is it a closed case but Axel Boshey is, inexplicably, refusing to help. The deeper Cork digs, the clearer it becomes that there are those in Tamarack County who are willing once again to commit murder to keep him from finding the truth.
At the same time, Cork’s seven-year-old grandson has his own theory about the investigation: the Windigo, that mythic cannibal ogre, has come to Tamarack County . . . and it won’t leave until it has sated its hunger for human blood.
When the body of a beautiful high school student is discovered on a hillside four months after her disappearance on New Year’s Eve, all evidence points to her boyfriend, local bad boy Solemn Winter Moon. Despite Solemn’s self-incriminating decision to go into hiding, Cork O’Connor isn’t about to hang the crime on a kid he’s convinced is innocent.
In an uphill battle to clear Solemn’s name, Cork encounters no shortage of adversity. Some - like bigotry and bureaucracy - he knows all too well. What Cork isn’t prepared for is the emergence of a long-held resentment from his own childhood. And when Solemn reappears, claiming to have seen a vision of Jesus Christ in Blood Hollow, the mystery becomes thornier than Cork could ever have anticipated. And that's when the miracles start happening.
The Quetico-Superior Wilderness: more than two million acres of forest, white-water rapids, and uncharted islands on the Canadian/American border. Somewhere in the heart of this unforgiving territory, a young woman named Shiloh - a country-western singer at the height of her fame - has disappeared.
\nHer father arrives in Aurora, Minnesota, to hire Cork O'Connor to find his daughter, and Cork joins a search party that includes an ex-con, two FBI agents, and a ten-year-old boy. Others are on her trail as well - men hired not just to find her, but to kill her.
\nAs the expedition ventures deeper into the wilderness, strangers descend on Aurora, threatening to spill blood on the town's snowy streets. Meanwhile, out on the Boundary Waters, winter falls hard. Cork's team of searchers loses contact with civilization, and like the brutal winds of a Minnesota blizzard, death - violent and sudden - stalks them.
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Desperately avoiding the professional hit men who have already put a bullet in his leg, Cork finds sanctuary outside the small Michigan town of Bodine. But while he’s hiding out in an old resort owned by his cousin Jewell DuBois, a bitter widow with a fourteen-year-old son named Ren, the body of a young girl surfaces along the banks of the Copper River. And then, soon after, another teenager vanishes.
\nInstead of thwarting his assassins, Cork focuses on tracking a ring of killers who prey on innocent children - desperate to catch them before anyone else falls victim. But as his deadly followers close in, Cork realises he’s made an error any good man might make - and it may be his last.
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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
To Stephen O’Connor, Hamlet’s dour observation is more than just words. All his life, he has had visions of tragedies to come. When he experiences the vision of a great bird shot from the sky, he knows something terrible is about to happen. The crash of a private plane on Desolation Mountain in a remote part of the Iron Lake Reservation, which kills a United States senator and most of her family, confirms Stephen’s worst fears.
Stephen joins his father, Cork O’Connor and a few Ojibwe men from the nearby Iron Lake reservation to sift through the smoldering wreckage when the FBI arrives and quickly assumes control of the situation. What seems like the end of the O’Connors’ involvement is, however, only the beginning of a harrowing journey to understand the truth behind the Senator’s death. As he initiates his own probe, Cork O’Connor stumbles upon a familiar face in Bo Thorson, a private security consultant whose unnamed clients have hired him to look quietly into the cause of the crash. The men agree to join forces in their investigation, but soon Cork begins to wonder if Thorson’s loyalties lie elsewhere.
In that far north Minnesota County, which is overrun with agents of the FBI, NTSB, DoD, and even members of a rightwing militia, all of whom have their own agendas, Cork, Stephen, and Bo attempt to navigate a perilous course. Roadblocked by lies from the highest levels of government, uncertain who to trust, and facing growing threats the deeper they dig for answers, the three men finally understand that to get to the truth, they will have to face the great menace, a beast of true evil lurking in the woods - a beast with a murderous intent of unimaginable scale.
The ancient Ojibwe healer Henry Meloux has had a vision of his death. As he walks the Northwoods in solitude, he tries to prepare himself peacefully for the end of his long life. But peace is destined to elude him as hunters fill the woods seeking a woman named Dolores Morriseau, a stranger who had come to the healer for shelter and the gift of his wisdom.
\nMeloux guides this stranger and his great niece, Cork O’Connor’s wife, to safety deep into the Boundary Waters, his home for more than a century. On the last journey he may ever take into this beloved land, Meloux must do his best to outwit the deadly mercenaries who follow.
\nMeanwhile, in Aurora, Cork works feverishly to identify the hunters and the reason for their relentless pursuit, but he has little to go on. Desperate, Cork begins tracking the killers but his own skills as a hunter are severely tested by nightfall and a late season snowstorm. He knows only too well that with each passing hour time is running out. But his fiercest enemy in this deadly game of cat and mouse may well be his own deep self-doubt about his ability to save those he loves.
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When a charter plane carrying Cork O’Connor’s wife, Jo, goes missing in a snowstorm over the Wyoming Rockies, Cork must accept the terrible truth that his wife is gone forever. But is she?
\nIn Heaven’s Keep, celebrated author William Kent Krueger puts his intrepid hero through the most harrowing mission of his life. After many days filled with grief, two women show up at Cork’s doorstep with evidence that the pilot of Jo’s plane was not the man he claimed to be. It may not be definitive proof, but it’s a ray of light in the darkness surrounding Cork’s loss.
\nAgreeing to investigate, he travels to Wyoming where he battles the interference of forces determined to throw Cork off the trail - permanently. At the center of all the danger and deception lies the possibility that Jo is not really dead and that, somewhere along the labyrinthine path of his search, Cork will find her alive and waiting for him. With deft plotting and writing that satisfies as much as it thrills, Heaven’s Keep gives readers an adventure not soon forgotten.
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Cork O'Connor is a man beset with troubles, some of them of his own making. But he's a bend-not-break man: an admirable man. And he needs to be, for it's winter in hardscrabble Aurora, Minnesota. The blizzard that buries the small lakeside town also buries some ugly things with it. Like nasty secrets and brutal murder. So here's Cork, who used to be sheriff, who used to have a wife who loved him, who used to have a purpose to his life, sort of stumbling into situations that bewilder him to the nth.
\nThere's the apparent suicide of Judge Parrant. Suicide? Judge Parrant? Not that cantankerous old misogynist. There's also a missing boy, a good and responsible boy, with no reason in the world for him to have run away. Then there are the murky goings-on over at the casino, where gambling is producing so much wealth for the Native American population that they've begun calling it “the new buffalo.” And finally, there's the windigo, a spirit so malevolent that it can unnerve even those who don't actually believe in it.
\nAlmost despite himself, Cork is soon behaving like the lawman he no longer is, looking for answers that are very hard to find.
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Aurora is a small town nestled in the ancient forest alongside the shores of Minnesota’s Iron Lake. In the summer of 1963, it is the whole world to 12-year-old Cork O’Connor, its rhythms as familiar as his own heartbeat. But when Cork stumbles upon the body of a man he revered hanging from a tree in an abandoned logging camp, it is the first in a series of events that will cause him to question everything he took for granted about his hometown, his family, and himself.
\nCork’s father, Liam O’Connor, is Aurora’s sheriff, and it is his job to confirm that the man’s death was the result of suicide, as all the evidence suggests. In the shadow of his father’s official investigation, Cork begins to look for answers on his own. Together, father and son face the ultimate test of choosing between what their heads tell them is true and what their hearts know is right.
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Since the violent deaths of his wife, father, and best friend all occurred in previous Novembers, Cork O’Connor has always considered it to be the cruelest of months. Yet, his daughter has chosen this dismal time of year in which to marry, and Cork is understandably uneasy.
His concern comes to a head when a man camping in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness goes missing. As the official search ends with no recovery in sight, Cork is asked by the man’s family to stay on the case. Although the wedding is fast approaching and the weather looks threatening, he accepts and returns to that vast wilderness on his own.
As the sky darkens and the days pass, Cork’s family anxiously awaits his return. Finally certain that something has gone terribly wrong, they fly by floatplane to the lake where the missing man was last seen. Locating Cork’s campsite, they find no sign of their father. They do find blood, however. A lot of it.
With an early winter storm on the horizon, it’s a race against time as Cork’s family struggles to uncover the mystery behind these disappearances. Little do they know, not only is Cork’s life on the line, but so are the lives of hundreds of others.
Back in the saddle as sheriff of Tamarack County, Cork O’Connor is lured to the nearby Ojibwe reservation on what appears to be a routine call - only to become the target of sniper fire. Soon after, he’s called to investigate a mutilated body found perched above the raging waters of Mercy Falls. The victim is Eddie Jacoby, a Chicago businessman negotiating an unpopular contract between his management firm and the local Indian casino.
Sparks fly when the wealthy Jacoby family hires a beautiful private investigator to consult on the case. But once Cork discovers an old and passionate tie between one of the Jacoby’s sons and his own wife, Jo, he begins to suspect that dark, personal motives lurk behind recent events. Murder, greed, sex, and jealousy hide around every corner in this maze of danger. But somewhere beneath the turbulent Mercy Falls lies the truth - and Cork is determined to find it.
With his family caught in the crosshairs of a group of brutal killers, detective Cork O’Connor must solve the murder of a young girl.
\nDuring a houseboat vacation on the remote Lake of the Woods, a violent gale sweeps through unexpectedly, stranding Cork and his daughter, Jenny, on a devastated island where the wind has ushered in a force far darker and more deadly than any storm.
\nAmid the wreckage, Cork and Jenny discover an old trapper’s cabin where they find the body of a teenage girl. She wasn’t killed by the storm, however; she’d been bound and tortured before she died. Whimpering sounds coming from outside the cabin lead them to a tangle of branches toppled by the vicious winds. Underneath the debris, they find a baby boy, hungry and dehydrated, but still very much alive.
\nPowerful forces intent on securing the child pursue them to the isolated Northwest Angle, where it’s impossible to tell who among the residents is in league with the devil. Cork understands that to save his family he must solve the puzzle of this mysterious child whom death follows like a shadow.
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New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were selling out at the soda counter of Halderson’s Drugstore, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a grim summer in which death visited frequently and assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.
\nFrank begins the season preoccupied with the concerns of any teenage boy, but when tragedy unexpectedly strikes his family - which includes his Methodist minister father; his passionate, artistic mother; Juilliard-bound older sister; and wise-beyond-his-years kid brother - he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal, suddenly called upon to demonstrate a maturity and gumption beyond his years.
\nTold from Frank’s perspective forty years after that fateful summer, Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. It is an unforgettable novel about discovering the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God.
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Not far from Aurora, Minnesota (population 3,752), lies an ancient expanse of great white pines, sacred to the Anishinaabe tribe. When an explosion kills the night watchman at wealthy industrialist Karl Lindstrom’s nearby lumber mill, it’s obvious where suspicion will fall. Former sheriff Cork O’Connor agrees to help investigate, but he has mixed feelings about the case. For one thing, he is part Anishinaabe. For another, his wife, a lawyer, represents the tribe.
Meanwhile, near Lindstrom’s lakeside home, a reclusive shipwreck survivor and his sidekick are harboring their own resentment of the industrialist. And it soon becomes clear to Cork that danger, both at home and in Aurora, lurks around every corner . . .
Private investigator Cork O’Connor finds himself caught in the middle of a racial gang war that’s turning picturesque Tamarack County, Minnesota, into a battlefield.
\nWhen the daughter of a powerful businessman dies as a result of her meth addiction, her father, strong-willed and brutal Buck Reinhardt, vows revenge. His target is the Red Boyz, a gang of Ojibwe youths accused of supplying the girl’s fatal drug dose. When the head of the Red Boyz and his wife are murdered in a way that suggests execution, the Ojibwe gang mobilizes, and the citizens of Tamarack County brace themselves for war, white against red.
\nBoth sides look to Cork O’Connor, a man of mixed heritage, to uncover the truth behind the murders. A former sheriff, Cork has lived, fought, and nearly died to keep the small-town streets and his family safe from harm. He knows that violence is never a virtue, but he believes that it’s sometimes a necessary response to the evil that men do.
\nRacing to find answers before the bloodshed spreads, Cork himself becomes involved in the darkest of deeds. As the unspeakable unfolds in the remote and beautiful place he calls home, Cork is forced to confront the horrific truth: violence is a beast that cannot be contained.
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On Memorial Day, as the people of Jewel, Minnesota gather to remember and honor the sacrifice of so many sons in the wars of the past, the half-clothed body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast.
\nInvestigation of the murder falls to Sheriff Brody Dern, a highly decorated war hero who still carries the physical and emotional scars from his military service. Even before Dern has the results of the autopsy, vicious rumors begin to circulate that the killer must be Noah Bluestone, a Native American WWII veteran who has recently returned to Jewel with a Japanese wife. As suspicions and accusations mount and the town teeters on the edge of more violence, Dern struggles not only to find the truth of Quinn’s murder but also put to rest the demons from his own past.
\nCaught up in the torrent of anger that sweeps through Jewel are a war widow and her adolescent son, the intrepid publisher of the local newspaper, an aging deputy, and a crusading female lawyer, all of whom struggle with their own tragic histories and harbor secrets that Quinn’s death threatens to expose.
\nBoth a complex, spellbinding mystery and a masterful portrait of midcentury American life, The River We Remember is an unflinching look at the wounds left by the wars we fight abroad and at home, a moving exploration of the ways in which we seek to heal, and a testament to the enduring power of the stories we tell about the places we call home.
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The disappearance of a local politician’s teenaged daughter is major news in Minnesota. As a huge manhunt is launched to find her, Cork O’Connor’s grandson stumbles across the shallow grave of a young Ojibwe woman - but nobody seems that interested.
\nNobody, that is, except Cork and the newly formed Iron Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police. As Cork and the tribal officers dig into the circumstances of this mysterious and grim discovery, they uncover a connection to the missing teenager. And soon, it’s clear that Cork’s grandson is in danger of being the killer’s next victim.
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On the Fourth of July, just as fireworks are about to go off in Aurora, Minnesota, Cork O’Connor and his new bride Rainy Bisonette listen to a desperate voicemail left by Rainy's son, Peter. The message is garbled and full of static, but they hear Peter confess to the murder of someone named Rodriguez. When they try to contact him, they discover that his phone has gone dead.
The following morning, Cork and Rainy fly to Coronado County in southern Arizona, where Peter has been working as a counselor in a well-known drug rehab center. When they arrive, they learn that Peter was fired six months earlier and hasn’t been heard from since. So they head to the little desert town of Sulfur Springs where Peter has been receiving his mail. But no one in Sulfur Springs seems to know him. They do, however, recognize the name Rodriguez. Carlos Rodriguez is the head of a cartel that controls everything illegal crossing the border from Mexico into Coronado County.
As they gather scraps of information about Peter, Cork and Rainy are warned that there is a war going on along the border. “Trust no one in Coronado County,” is a refrain they hear again and again. And to Cork, Arizona is alien country. The relentless heat and absence of water, tall trees, and cool forests feel nightmarish to him, as does his growing sense that Rainy might know more about what's going on than she's willing to admit. And if he can't trust Rainy, who can he trust?
During a blizzard one bitter winter night, just days before Christmas, the car belonging to the wife of a retired local judge is discovered abandoned on a rural county road in Tamarack County. After days of fruitless searching, there is little hope that she’ll be found alive, if she’s found at all.
\nCork O’Connor, the ex-sheriff of Tamarack County, notices small things about the woman’s disappearance that disturb him. When the beloved pet dog of a friend is brutally killed and beheaded, he begins to see a startling pattern in these and other recent dark occurrences in the area. And after his own son is brutally attacked and nearly killed, Cork understands that someone is spinning a deadly web in Tamarack County. At its center is a murder more than twenty years old, for which an innocent man may have been convicted. Cork remembers the case only too well. He was the deputy in charge of the investigation that sent the man to prison.
\nWith the darkest days of the year at hand, the storms of winter continue to isolate Tamarack County. Somewhere behind the blind of all that darkness and drifting snow, a vengeful force is at work. And Cork has only hours to stop it before his family and friends pay the ultimate price for the sins of others.
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In the summer of 1932, on the banks of Minnesota's Gilead River, the Lincoln Indian Training School is a pitiless place where Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to Odie O’Banion, a lively orphan boy whose exploits constantly earn him the superintendent’s wrath. Odie and his brother, Albert, are the only white faces among the hundreds of Native American children at the school.
\nAfter committing a terrible crime, Odie and Albert are forced to flee for their lives along with their best friend, Mose, a mute young man of Sioux heritage. Out of pity, they also take with them a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy. Together, they steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi in search for a place to call home.
\nOver the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphan vagabonds journey into the unknown, crossing paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an enthralling, bighearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole.
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Happy and content in his hometown of Aurora, Minnesota, Cork O’Connor has left his badge behind and is ready for a life of relative peace, setting up shop as a private investigator. But his newfound state of calm is soon interrupted when Henry Meloux, an Ojibwe medicine man and Cork’s spiritual adviser, makes a request: Will Cork find the son that Henry fathered long ago?
\nWith little to go on, Cork uses his investigative skills to locate Henry Wellington, a wealthy and reclusive industrialist living in Thunder Bay, Ontario. When a murder attempt is made on old Meloux’s life, all clues point north across the border. But why would Wellington want his father dead? This question takes Cork on a journey through time as he unravels the story of Meloux’s 1920s adventure in the ore-rich wilderness of Canada, where his love for a beautiful woman, far outside his culture, led him into a trap of treachery, greed, and murder.
\nThe past and present collide along the rocky shores of Thunder Bay, where a father’s unconditional love is tested by a son’s deeply felt resentment, and where jealousy and revenge remain the code among men. As Cork hastens to uncover the truth and save his friend, he soon discovers that his own life is in danger and is reminded that the promises we keep - even for the best of friends - can sometimes place us in the hands of our worst enemies.
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Cork O’Connor is sitting in the shadow of a towering monolith known as Trickster’s Point, deep in the Minnesota wilderness. With him is Jubal Little, who is favored to become the first Native American elected governor of Minnesota and who is slowly dying with an arrow through his heart.
\nAlthough the men have been bow-hunting, a long-standing tradition among these two friends, this is no hunting accident. The arrow turns out to be one of Cork’s, and he becomes the primary suspect in the murder. He understands full well that he’s been set up.
\nAs he works to clear his name and track the real killer, he remembers his long, complex relationship with the tough kid who would grow up to become a professional football player, a populist politician, and the lover of the first woman to whom Cork ever gave his heart. Jubal was known by many for his passion, his loyalty, and his ambition. Only Cork knows that he was capable of murder.
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When the Department of Energy puts an underground iron mine on its short list of potential sites for storage of nuclear waste, a barrage of protest erupts in Tamarack County, Minnesota, and Cork is hired as a security consultant.
\nDeep in the mine during his first day on the job, Cork stumbles across a secret room that contains the remains of six murder victims. Five appear to be nearly half a century old;connected to what the media once dubbed \"The Vanishings,\" a series of unsolved disappearances in the summer of 1964, when Cork's father was sheriff in Tamarack County. But the sixth has been dead less than a week. What's worse, two of the bodies, including the most recent victim, were killed using Cork’s own gun, one handed down to him from his father.
\nAs Cork searches for answers, he must dig into his own past and that of his father, a well-respected man who harbored a ghastly truth. Time is running out, however. New threats surface, and unless Cork can unravel the tangled thread of clues quickly, more death is sure to come.
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When the body of a teenage Ojibwe girl washes up on the shore of an island in Lake Superior, the residents of the nearby Bad Bluff reservation whisper that it was the work of a deadly mythical beast, the Windigo, or a vengeful spirit called Michi Peshu. Such stories have been told by the Ojibwe people for generations, but they don’t explain how the girl and her friend, Mariah Arceneaux, disappeared a year ago. At the request of the Arceneaux family, Cork O’Connor, former sheriff turned private investigator, takes on the case.
But on the Bad Bluff reservation, nobody’s talking. Still, Cork puts enough information together to find a possible trail. He learns that the old port city of Duluth is a modern-day center for sex trafficking of vulnerable women, many of whom are young Native Americans. As the investigation deepens, so does the danger.
Yet Cork holds tight to his higher purpose - his vow to find Mariah, an innocent fifteen-year-old girl whose family is desperate to get her back. With only the barest hope of saving her from men whose darkness rivals that of the legendary Windigo, Cork prepares for an epic battle that will determine whether it will be fear, or love, that truly conquers all.
“My mom just shot me!”
\nThe whisper comes through a 911 call.
\nThen a gunshot.
Then silence.
Minutes later, former FBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas finds herself in an unthinkable position.
Hunted by the police.
Vilified by the media.
Framed for murder.
A dead man in her trunk. A face she’s never seen. A crime she didn’t commit. Someone has set the perfect trap - and Eva Rae walked right into it.
\nWith only her boyfriend Matt by her side, she must outrun the law while doing what she does best: hunting a killer. But this one is different.
\nThis one knows her.
Watches her.
And stays one step ahead of every move she makes.
The noose tightens with every move she makes. Someone wants her life destroyed. And they’re not stopping until it is.
\nAnd this time, the killer isn’t just one step ahead - they’re already inside her life.
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Diane Matthews lost everything when her daughter Angela died in a mysterious accident.
\nBut when Angela's husband, Will, is arrested for her murder three years later, Diane's world is turned upside down again.
\nDesperate and seeking answers, she turns to an unlikely source - FBI agent Eva Rae Thomas, who quickly becomes embroiled in the case.
\nAs she delves deeper, Eva Rae uncovers shocking inconsistencies in the evidence against Will and sets out to clear his name.
\nBut as she faces off against a corrupt detective and fights to uncover the truth, she realises that this small town may hold more secrets than she ever imagined.
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When Detective Billie Ann Wilde receives a desperate call that five-year-old Emma Wilson is missing, she rushes to the family home. But inside the picture-perfect house surrounded by Florida marshlands, she finds no children’s clothes or toys, no photos of the innocent child Emma’s mother Marissa describes. Billie suspects Marissa Wilson is hiding from someone.
\nIt’s a race against the clock to find Emma. But Marissa refuses to tell Billie anything about her past, and before long, she also disappears . .
\nAnd then Billie realises who Marissa is.
\nShe’s the ten-year old girl Billie failed to find in her first ever case fourteen years ago. The leads went cold because Billie made a fatal mistake.
\nAs more bodies turn up in the same marshlands, Billie must revisit her past and face up to her demons to find Marissa and her child. But she is unknowingly putting herself in the path of a terrifying serial killer . . .
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When twelve-year-old Sophie Williams went on a Girl Scout summer camp, she never returned home. Three months later, her body is found inside her sleeping bag in the most frequented area of Cocoa Beach, and the town is outraged. The girl isn't just any child. She's the town's most beloved surf idol, and it was believed that she could be the next Kelly Slater.
\nAs another child, the son of a well-known senator is kidnapped, and the parents receive a disturbing video, FBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas - who has just returned to her hometown, divorced and out of a job - plunges into the investigation, breaking her promise to her children not to do police work again. Local law enforcement, with her old flame Matt Miller in charge, are the ones who ask for her help in a case so unsettling that only she can solve it. But the deeper they dig, the deadlier it becomes for Matt and Eva Rae.
\nSoon, everyone she holds dear is in grave danger as this case hits a little too close to home.
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Detective Billie Ann Wilde assesses the couple sitting awkwardly on plastic chairs in her interview room, certain she knows exactly what has happened to little Madison Harris. She was supposed to come home on the school bus, but her cold body was found in local marshlands, and as her mother cries desperately, her stepfather, John, barely looks up. And they found Madison’s blood in John’s car . . .
\nWith John arrested, Billie is certain she has put a killer behind bars, but it’s not long before she hears the heart-shattering news that another girl is missing. Sweet ten-year-old Kayla has also vanished on her way home from school, and with John in custody, it couldn’t have been him. Billie’s only lead is gone.
\nAt Kayla’s house, Billie finds tracks leading to the gnarled trees surrounding the marshes. She races through the wetlands and sees a pale shape floating on the surface of the water. As Billie cradles Kayla’s half-drowned body, desperately hoping she got there in time, she winces when she sees a mark freshly carved into Kayla’s skin.
\nCertain the intricate star-shaped branding is the key to unlocking the case, Billie shares it with Madison’s mother, who instantly recognizes it as the symbol of her old church. Is there danger hidden behind those private, imposing walls? As another mother finds her little girl gone, Billie will have to fight harder than ever to unlock the truth and save another innocent from being marked by a monster . . .
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A quiet evening in Cocoa Beach turns into a nightmare when FBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas's peaceful family night is shattered by a bloodcurdling cry from the garage.
\nThirteen-year-old Elijah-Matt's estranged son-emerges from the shadows, terrified: his grandmother has been missing for days, her phone abandoned, and blood staining the closet floor.
\nUnwilling to trouble them, Elijah hid . . . until now.
\nDetermined to find the truth, Eva Rae and Matt set out to uncover what really happened to the woman they thought they knew. Was she losing her grip on reality, or was someone hunting her?
\nTheir questions explode into terror when Eva Rae discovers a second victim - a woman savagely murdered in her own home - and senses an impossible link between the two crimes.
\nWhen a woman collapses on Eva Rae's doorstep, battered and silent, the profiler realises the stakes are deadlier than she ever imagined-and the answers lie buried in a decades-old secret.
\nAs Eva Rae pieces together clues from the past, the killer closes in once more.
\nIn a pulse-pounding showdown, long-buried traumas and twisted vengeance clash with a mother's fierce love and a family's fragile bonds.
\nRevenge is a shadow that reaches across generations. Justice, however, may demand the ultimate sacrifice.
\nCan Eva Rae save a grandmother, stop a killer, and keep her fractured family from falling apart? Or will the darkness claim them all?
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Rushing towards the tall trees in the distance, Detective Billie Ann Wilde can already hear the sobs of those gathered at the scene of the murder of a young child. And when she spots the little boy’s pale skin and beautiful blond ringlets, her heart catches in her chest. It’s Billie’s own nephew, Charlie, whose life has been taken.
\nBillie is immediately told she can’t work on Charlie’s case, but nothing will stop her finding justice for her brother, Peter. Seeing Peter for the first time in years, he looks nothing like the happy-go-lucky teen she grew up with. She’s shocked to her core when, with a trembling voice, he confesses to Charlie’s murder. But Billie is determined to defend him, she knows he’s not a killer.
\nSneaking into the case files, desperate to save Peter from a terrible fate, she finds a link between his other young son and the murder weapon. Is Peter taking the fall to protect the only child he has left? Then Billie gets a call from an unknown number that turns her blood to ice. Her heart splits as she recognises the cry of her own son, Zach. The killer has taken him . . .
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Peter and Mary Marshall went on a vacation with their son and daughter but returned without their children. They went missing from their hotel room one night while the couple was downstairs in the restaurant for dinner. They never saw them again. Ten years later, the Marshalls have put the murder of their children behind them, moved to a different state, and had another child, a son. When he disappears during a vacation trip to Florida, the parents are suddenly in the limelight again. Public opinion seems to be that this can be no coincidence.
\nThese things don’t happen twice to the same people, do they? Former FBI-profiler, Eva Rae Thomas is doing well in her life, and things are calm until an FBI agent suddenly shows up, asking for her help with the case of the missing child. The kidnapper seems to have a message for Eva Rae since she was the one who supposedly solved the case ten years ago. As she digs into the disappearance of the boy, racing to save the child’s life, she realises this psychopathic killer lurking in the shadows has unfinished business, and he’s not stopping till his debt is paid in full.
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What if a stranger told you that she believed your child is about to be killed? What if that woman was an ex-FBI profiler with a disputable reputation? Would you believe her? Eva Rae Thomas is chasing down a vicious killer, but no one will believe he even exists.
\nIf there are no unexplained dead bodies or missing persons, then how can there be a killer on the loose? What they don’t understand is that the perfect murder is the one that doesn’t look like murder. Can Eva Rae convince local law enforcement to help her with this case before the killer strikes once more? Or will she have to take matters into her own hands - again?
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Seventeen-year-old Lexi and her rich friends arrive at an adults-only resort in Turks and Caicos, determined to escape their parents - and indulge in sun, sand, and wild nights.
\nBut when a playful flirtation at a foam party goes too far, Lexi flees back to her room, certain she’s being followed. Moments later, she vanishes into the darkness of the beach without a trace.
\nLocal authorities dismiss her disappearance as teenage drama. But vacationing FBI agent Eva Rae Thomas can’t ignore the chilling details: surveillance footage featuring a notorious millionaire playboy, desperate denials that sound a little too sincere, and a group of privileged friends whose stories don’t quite match.
\nAs turquoise waters conceal dark secrets, Eva Rae races to uncover whether Lexi fell prey to a predator - or to something far more personal.
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It was supposed to be the happiest day of her life when her kidnapped daughter returned, but it wasn’t.
\nFourteen years ago, Clarissa Smalls was born, and a few hours later, she was taken from the hospital. Kidnapped. Her mother searched desperately for her for years, but she never found her.
\nUntil now.
\nWhen Clarissa Smalls is suddenly found in the swamps of central Florida, badly bruised and confused, it causes much joy and celebration in her family, especially with her mother, who has waited fourteen years to see her baby girl again. Little did she know that this day would end up being the worst in her life. Because Clarissa doesn’t want to know about her mother, she refuses to talk to anyone and won’t tell the police what happened to her.
\nWhen another baby girl is kidnapped from the same hospital, in the same manner, the police believe it’s the same kidnapper that took Clarissa. Suddenly, time is of the essence to make her answer the many questions that are piling up.
\nWhere was she for fourteen years?
\nWho took her?
\nWhy won’t she tell them who her kidnapper is?
\nThe FBI brings in former profiler Eva Rae Thomas to help them in this peculiar case. Eva Rae Thomas knows the girl’s mother very well and is willing to go to great lengths to help her out, even though the two of them share an unpleasant history. In addition, Eva Rae's sister recently came back into her life after being kidnapped thirty-five years ago, so the FBI hopes that she can contribute with a deeper understanding of the situation and maybe get through to Clarissa.
\nLittle could she have known that soon she would wish that she never got involved in this, as the case becomes very personal for her.
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Ex-agent Eva Rae Thomas is on the run. The past month she has done things she never knew she was capable of while hunting for her kidnapped daughter. Eva Rae has risked everything, her career, her newfound love, her freedom. She’s looking for the man they call the Iron Fist. The trail has led her to Miami.
\nMeanwhile, Miami is under attack. Hundreds of passengers in the Metrorail are exposed to a deathly nerve gas on a peaceful Monday morning. When Eva Rae Thomas sees her daughter on the surveillance footage from the attack, she knows it is no coincidence. But by the time she uncovers the chilling truth of how it is all connected, it might be too late.
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Eva Rae Thomas never imagined her skills as an FBI agent would be needed to save her own flesh and blood. When her newborn granddaughter vanishes from the hospital nursery, Eva's badge and gun aren't enough - she'll need to become the very criminals she's hunted.
\nPosing as an inmate in a maximum-security prison might get her killed, but it's her only lead. The clock ticks as Eva Rae follows a twisted trail from prison cells to the glittering casinos of Las Vegas, where she discovers the kidnapper's true identity.
\nSomeone from her past wants more than revenge - they want to destroy everything Eva Rae loves.
\nWith a bullet in her side and a baby's life in her hands, Eva must make an impossible choice that will test the limits of what a grandmother will sacrifice for family.
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Has former FBI-profiler Eva Rae Thomas finally gotten herself in deeper than she can handle? When the body of Nancy Henry is pulled out of the water of Sykes Creek by two local fishermen, they soon realise she’s not dead. Not yet.?
\nBefore she disappeared, Nancy Henry appeared to have everything: a successful husband who adored her, two beautiful children, a modeling career, and a charming home in south Merritt Island with a heart wreath on the door. Now that she is back five years later, everything has changed. Her husband is with another wife, and her children are almost grown. Everywhere she turns, people are telling her the same thing: We thought you were dead. What happened to her??
\nNancy claims she doesn’t know where she has been. She remembers nothing after a blow to her head. She doesn’t want to talk to the investigation team lead by former FBI-profiler Eva Rae Thomas, who has agreed to help with this bizarre case.?
\nThe sheriff’s office soon wants to give up on the case, but Eva Rae doesn’t quite believe in quitting. She sees fear in Nancy Henry’s eyes that makes her believe she is lying to them, maybe to protect herself.?
\nWhat secrets is she carrying??
\nTo get to the truth, Eva Rae must get to the bottom of what really happened on that night five years ago when Nancy Henry disappeared from her home in what looked like a home intrusion. But the past isn’t always easy to dig up, especially not when someone wants it to stay hidden and will go to great lengths to make sure it does.?
\nSomeone obviously tried to kill Nancy Henry. Will they come back to finish what they started?
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She thinks she's going away for a relaxing weekend.
She is wrong. Very wrong.
When FBI agent Eva Rae receives an invitation to a private island for the 20th birthday party of Mark, the son of a friend from her mother's group, she jumps at the chance for a weekend of beach, sun and a drink in her hand. Her excitement quickly turns to horror when the next morning reveals Mark's lifeless body in the ocean.
\nAll eyes turn with suspicion toward Eva Rae's daughter Olivia, who was spotted passionately kissing the birthday boy under the moonlight the night before.
\nOlivia refuses to talk about what happened and soon she becomes the main suspect. But not on Eva Rae's watch.
\nAs local police interrogate the partygoers, dark secrets from the island's past begin to emerge.
\nTen years prior, a young woman, Isla, was brutally murdered there. Her boyfriend, a poverty-stricken teen, confessed to killing her out of jealousy and went to prison.
\nIt turns out Isla was Mark's sister. And the boyfriend has just been released.
\nSoon Eva Rae faces off against the deranged killer, determined to end the reign of terror and protect her daughter at all costs.
\nIn a shocking act of bravery, she exposes the killer's twisted motives and unveils dark secrets from both past and present in order to bring justice to those whose lives have been shattered by a decade long cycle of revenge and deception.
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Sarah Chapman is angry at her husband. She’s also drunk . . . very drunk as she drives down their street, ready to face him.
\nWhen a neighbor hears the commotion and rushes to help, he finds her inside, gun still in her hand, and her husband, Steven, dead in the bed.
\nSarah is arrested and taken away but claims to be innocent.
\nThe only one who believes her is FBI profiler, Eva Rae Thomas.
\nShe knows Sarah personally, and as she looks at the evidence in the case, she is convinced that Sarah is telling the truth, even though she was highly intoxicated when the event occurred.
\nBut the detective on the case is determined to have her convicted for the murder.
\nAs more bodies turn up, only Eva Rae Thomas sees the connections and soon starts a race against time to prove Sarah is innocent and to catch the real murderer before it’s too late and her own family is targeted.
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It is a dream come true for ten-year-old Becky when her parents take her and her younger sister on a cruise to the Bahamas.
\nBut nothing is how it is supposed to be when her parents can’t stop fighting, and soon the trip turns out to be a true nightmare.
\nWhen she and her sister disappear as the ship is about to dock in Coco Cay, it also becomes a puzzling mystery.
\nHow do you disappear on a cruise ship?
\nWhy can’t they be found?
\nCould they have fallen overboard?
\nFBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas is flown in to assist on this bizarre but very time-sensitive case.
\nThe parents both claim to know what happened to their children. Each of them blames the other for kidnapping them.
\nWho is telling the truth?
\nMeanwhile, the passengers are not allowed to leave the ship as the search continues, causing tension to rise onboard. It becomes a race against time as a frustrated Eva Rae Thomas tries to find out what happened in the hours up until the disappearance of the two children.
\nWhen one of the children is found dead, she realises this is more than a simple case of a parental dispute.
\nThere’s a killer onboard.
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What would you do if your brother was accused of a horrible crime, and you were certain he didn’t do it? Life is not done throwing Eva Rae Thomas curveballs. A phone call turns her life upside down - once again. The call is from her father, the man she hasn’t seen in thirty-six years, not since he kidnapped her sister in a supermarket. Now, he is back in Florida, and he needs her help.
\nHer younger brother - who she didn’t know existed - has been arrested on Amelia Island. The boy is in a coma after being shot by an officer during the incident. But his father doesn’t believe the police, and he asks for Eva Rae’s help to prove it. At the same time, a serial killer is planning one of the most horrific mass killings in history. Will Eva Rae find it in her heart to help her father after what he did to her? Will facing him again set her free or pull her under?
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When the mother of two, Arlene Wood, crashes her car against a tree at four in the morning, the case seems pretty straightforward.
\nBut evidence found in the remains of the car soon raises the question of whether this was really an accident.
\nShortly after, her husband is taken in and later convicted of having murdered his own wife. But many questions remain unanswered.
\nWhy was Arlene driving in the middle of the night? Why did she leave the house, her husband, and her sleeping children, get into her car, and drive away? Was she meeting someone?
\nA friend?
A lover?
A killer?
Six years later, fresh out of training, FBI-profiler Eva Rae Thomas is new on the job when she stumbles upon something that suddenly blows this case wide open.
\nBut can she persuade anyone to reopen the case when even the husband is convinced that he is guilty?
\nAnd will she be able to do it in time before this killer strikes again?
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A girl falls from the penthouse floor of an apartment in Washington, D.C. Media Mogul Richard Wanton owns the apartment and is seen standing on the balcony when the girl falls. He is accused of killing her, but the FBI is struggling to find enough solid evidence to convict him. They have a witness, someone who was in the apartment when it happened, but she doesn’t want to talk to them. She’ll only speak to one person, ex-FBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas. The problem is, Eva Rae Thomas has no interest in talking to her.
\nAs a matter of fact, she’d rather see this woman dead than have to face her. But Eva Rae Thomas isn’t someone who can leave a case alone, especially not when she starts to ask questions and things aren’t adding up. As she digs in deeper - with the entire world watching - she soon finds herself in too deep and realises she can’t trust anyone’s motives. But by then, it is too late, and the killer is already tracking her down.
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A discovery of bones on a windswept beach, the disappearance of a young woman, and a detective whose secrets are about to come out . . .
\nSummoned to a crime scene swarming with people, Detective Billie Ann Wilde is devastated to find a woman's broken bones abandoned in a suitcase on the sand of a popular Florida beach. And Billie's blood runs cold when she reads the name “Danni” handwritten on the luggage tag in black ink: the name of Billie's own best friend.
\nRushing over to Danni's home, Billie is relieved to find her alive, preparing dinner for her two young daughters. So whose bones are in the suitcase? And why was Danni's name at the scene?
\nFor years, Billie has worried that the dark secrets in her past might put her loved ones in danger, and soon her connection to the case is confirmed. Another set of bones is found at a busy local mall. With shaking hands Billie reaches out to read the luggage tag where another name is written in black ink: but this time, it's Billie's own name. And now, Danni has gone missing . . .
\nCan Billie face up to the past and unravel her connection to this twisted killer? Or, with two young women already gone, is it too late for Billie to save Danni's life?
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Rachel Baker, a devoted mother of three, disappeared one Monday morning after dropping off her children at daycare. Her car was found on the side of the road, but there's no trace of her anywhere.
\nSoon, the questions start piling up:
\nWhat happened to her?
Would she leave her children just like that?
Was the husband involved?
When they find out she was planning to leave her husband, the question arises whether he killed her because she wanted to leave or if her sister helped her disappear. Who tells the truth, and who hides an ugly secret?
\nFBI Agent Eva Rae Thomas is in the middle of renovating her house with her boyfriend, Detective Matt Miller, when she is called in to assist with this strange case.
\nShe knows Rachel, as their children are best friends, and has no problem taking over, trying to find her friend and fellow mom.
\nBut when Rachel's body turns up in a storage unit, and Eva Rae digs deeper; she realises this killer is especially vicious and determined not to be found.
\nMeanwhile, the husband and mother-in-law fight over the right to the children, and things soon turn ugly as secrets are gushing out of the closet on both sides, one darker than the next.
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It is a typical Tuesday morning. Scott Benton gets up, kisses his girlfriend Sarah goodbye, and goes to work. But when he returns home from work later in the afternoon, his girlfriend of two years is gone. And just like that, Scott’s life is turned upside down. The police are after him, thinking he hurt her. His friends and family have turned their backs on him, thinking the same.
\nMeanwhile, there is one thing Scott can’t stop thinking about. Two months ago, Sarah told him that he should go looking for her if she ever turned up missing. Former FBI-profiler Eva Rae Thomas has enough on her plate as it is: a newborn baby, an upcoming marriage, and a house not big enough to fit them all. On top of it, she takes in a young girl who is in serious trouble, only adding to the strain on her family life.
\nWhen Scott Benton shows up and tells her she’s his only hope in finding his girlfriend, Eva Rae is inclined to say no, but she can’t get herself to do it. Scott and Eva Rae used to date for a brief period in high school, and Eva Rae isn’t the type of person who just can stop caring about someone. Especially when they have nowhere else to turn. As the investigation deepens, Eva Rae Thomas finds out what it is from her past that Sarah was so afraid of, and she’ll need all of her profiling skills in the race against time to find the girl before it is too late.
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Four women went on a weekend of fun to Miami. Four best friends who were inseparable.
\nNo one returned.
\nFBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas is called in to help when the second body is recovered from the trunk of a burnt-out car in the swamps outside Miami.
\nSoon, she realises she is hunting down a serial killer unlike any other she has encountered, who will next come after someone she loves.
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Three girls disappear on prom night at the local high school. One of them is the prom queen. FBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas is chasing her long-lost sister when detective - and boyfriend - Matt Miller asks her to join the investigation of the three girls’ disappearance.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThey were last seen walking home together after the dance. When the body of a young girl shows up in her backyard, Eva Rae knows she can no longer watch from the sidelines, and soon she realizes not only is she involved in this investigation, she’s also this killer’s target.
When 19-year-old Meg Briggs wakes up after having a crazy party with her friends, she finds a girl in the pool.
\nDead.
\nWho is this girl?
\nHow did she end up in the pool?
\nWas she even at the party?
\nEven more strange is when they pull her out of the water, Meg realizes the girl looks very familiar. As a matter of fact, she looks just like her.
\nLike an identical twin.
\nBut Meg has no twin, at least none that she knows of, and no one at the party knows this girl or can say where she is from.
\nWhat is Meg’s mom hiding from her?
\nFBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas is caught in distress at home with her children and between the two men in her life when she is asked to help out on the case.
\nWho killed Meg’s identical twin and why? And where did she come from?
\nAs Eva Rae Thomas digs deeper into the story, she can barely believe the revealed secrets, secrets so cruel that someone is ready to go to great lengths to keep them hidden.
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Vivian is a cosmopolitan Taiwanese-American tourist who often escapes her busy life in London through adventure and travel. Johnny is a 15-year-old Irish teenager, living a neglected life on the margins of society.
\nOn a bright spring afternoon in West Belfast, their paths collide during a horrifying act of violence. In the aftermath, each is forced to confront the chain of events that led to the attack.
\nInspired by true events, this is a story of the dark chapters and chance encounters that can irrevocably determine the shape of our lives.
The Chu siblings haven’t seen each other in years but when they’re told that their ailing mother is scheduled for an operation next month, they agree to visit her together. Then their mother makes an odd before seeing her, they must go on a road trip together to the Grand Canyon.
\nThirty years ago, a strange incident had aborted a previous family road trip there. No one’s ever really spoken about it, but during this journey, the middle-aged Chu siblings have no choice but to confront their childhood experience.
\nTogether, Bonnie, Kevin, and Alex travel along Route 66 - but as the trip continues, they realise the Great American Road Trip may not be what they expected. Facing their own prejudices and those of others, they somehow learn to bridge the distances between them, the present-day, and their past.
Upward Bound is not a place anyone dreams of spending their days. The dreary adult daycare center for Los Angeles's disabled community is, for many of its clients and staff, a place of last resort. This includes Carlos, a young aide who lost his mother as a boy and now works there alongside his beloved sister Mariana; Jorge, the gentle nonspeaking giant whom Carlos seeks to befriend (and prevent from escaping); Tom, a beautiful young man with cerebral palsy, who pines for Ann, the summer lifeguard at the center's pool who feels out of her depth; then there's Dave, Upward Bound’s director who came to L.A. to pursue an acting career but now channels his passion into staging an overly ambitious holiday show starring the center's irrepressible clients.
\nFraming these intertwined narratives - and connecting them in surprising, shattering ways - is the riveting and sometimes ironic testimony of Walter, a recent community college graduate who, after a family tragedy, must return to the company of his disabled peers.
\nIn Upward Bound, Woody Brown has created an indelible, authentic, and profoundly moving group portrait of autism and other disabilities, all illuminated by his empathy, sly sense of humor, and enormous gifts as a novelist. With remarkable sophistication, insight, and creativity, Brown depicts a community too-often invisible in literature and society.
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Meera is one of five women who each hold a part of the defeated goddess of death and chaos within them. When the group’s high priestess is murdered, Meera and her three remaining spirit sisters must undergo the Waning ceremony for the second time. Only one of them will be chosen to serve as a vessel for the goddess again. She will become high priestess and mother of witches. The other three women will die trying.
\nAs Meera strives to survive the ceremony, she must also contend with the greed of the noble class and the faith her fellow Endzone laborers have put in her. Will she be able to kill the king and end his oppressive regime or will the king be successful in his quest to birth a new evil into the world? With only three months left until the Waning, time is not on Meera’s side.
\nSet in the desert kingdom of Ile-Oja, the waning reimagines aspects of Yoruba culture and spirituality to create a dazzling world unlike any other.
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Growing up in Connecticut adopted twins Drita and Petrit (aka Pete) had no connection to their Albanian heritage. Their lives were all about Barbie dolls, the mall, and roller skating at the local rink. Though inseparable in childhood, their paths diverged as teenagers; Drita was a good girl with and good manners who was going to go to a good college, Pete was a bad boy going nowhere fast. Even their twinhood was not enough to keep them together.
\nFast forward to their twenties and Drita has abandoned her graduate studies to move home and take care of their mother, giving up her dreams for the future. She hasn’t heard from her brother in three years when Pete’s girlfriend and their son show up unexpectedly without him and in need of help. Realising that his child may offer the siblings a second chance at being family, Drita becomes determined to find Pete. But what she ends up discovering - both about their connection to their Albanian roots, the war in Kosovo, and the story of their adoption - will surprise everyone, and will either be the thing that brings them together, or tears them apart for good.
\nFrom the award-winning author of Brass, Everybody Says It’s Everything tells the story of a family both fractured and foundering, desperate to connect with the other and the world at large, but not knowing how.
After suffering devastating loss and making drastic decisions, Zetian finds herself at the seat of power in Huaxia. But she has also learned that her world is not as it seems, and revelations about an enemy more daunting than Zetian imagined forces her to share power with a dangerous man she cannot simply depose.
\nDespite having vastly different ideas about how they must deconstruct the corrupt and misogynist system that plagues their country, Zetian must join this man in a dance of truth and lies and perform their roles to perfection in order to take down their common enemy, who seeks to control them as puppets while dangling one of Zetian’s loved ones as a hostage.
\nWith political unrest and perilous forces aiming to undermine Zetian at every turn, can she enact positive changes as a fair and just ruler? Or will she be forced to rely on fear and violence and succumb to her darker instincts in her quest for vengeance?
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When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected - she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.
\nTo tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way - and stop more girls from being sacrificed.
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1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn’t. By 1998 Anita’s name has been all but forgotten - certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret.
\nBut when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita’s story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist.
\nMoving back and forth through time and told from the perspectives of both women, Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love, and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the rarefied world of the elite.
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SPRING, 2007
\nAt twenty-six, Alicia Canales Forten feels smothered by her future. She’s in a long-distance relationship, living at home with her mother’s beliefs, saving up for her wedding to a future doctor. But after Alicia ventures out one night in the neighborhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, she finds herself lured by the siren song of youth and possibility that the striving crowd of creatives holds, and moves in.
\nNo one embodies this milieu more than La Garza, a larger-than-life, up-and-coming fashion designer whose epic house parties fuel neighborhood lore. La Garza’s life, observed by Alicia from her apartment across the street, seems to hold the allure and fearlessness Alicia has never dared to imagine for herself.
\nBut when Alicia’s wealthy banker cousin moves to the neighborhood, she finds herself increasingly drawn into both his and La Garza’s precarious lives.
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Against the backdrop of a potentially life-changing presidential election and a looming once-in-a-generation fiscal crisis, Last Night in Brooklyn explores the dark compromise of the American Dream for people of color living, unknowingly, in the twilight of a cultural moment. It is a story about everything money can buy - and the destruction of what it can’t.
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It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo, are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan's powerbrokers.
\nDespite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1%, but she can't seem to find her own . . . until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets . . .
\nTwenty-seven years ago, their mother, Blanca, a Young Lord-turned-radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.
\nSet against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife and the very notion of the American dream - all while asking what it really means to weather a storm.
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It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be - led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season.
\nEva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house - a spoon, a knife, a bowl - Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation - leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva - nor the house in which they live - are what they seem.
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A collection of three books treasured by users of the great library at HogwThe Coin follows a Palestinian woman as she pursues a dream that generations of her family have failed at: to live and thrive in America. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys in New York, where her eccentric methods cross conventional boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler and the two participate in a pyramid scheme reselling Birkin bags, the value of which \"increases, year by year, regardless of poverty, of war, of famine.\" The juxtaposition of luxury and the abject engulfs her as she is able to con her way to bag after bag, preoccupied by the suffering she knows of the world.
\nEventually, her body and mind go to war. America is stifling her - her willfulness, her sexuality, her ideology. In an attempt to regain control, she becomes preoccupied with purity, cleanliness and self-image, all while drawing her students into her obsessions. In an unforgettable denouement, her childhood memories converge with her feelings of existential statelessness, and the narrator unravels spectacularly.
\nEnthralling, sensory, and uncanny, The Coin explores materiality, nature and civilization, class, homelessness, sexuality, beauty - and how oppression and inherited trauma manifest in every area of our lives - all while resisting easy moralising.
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Contemporary Japanese legend Yasuhiko Nishizawa makes his English-language debut with this slick, funny murder mystery which adds a sci-fi twist to an age-old murder in a wealthy family with an inheritance at stake.
\nHisataro, a young member of the wealthy Fuchigami family, has a mysterious ability. Every now and then, against his will, he falls into a time-loop in which he is obliged to re-live the same day a total of 9 times. Little does he know how useful this ability will be, until one day, his grandfather mysteriously dies . . .
\nAs he returns to the day of the murder time and again, Hisataro begins to unravel its secrets. With a sizeable inheritance up for grabs, motives abound, and everyone is a suspect. Can Hisataro solve the mystery of his grandfather’s death before his powers run out?
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After losing multiple contracts, Shuichi must make restitution to his company. Faced with this large, unanticipated debt, the trip to Paris he and his wife have been planning for a year must be canceled. Traveling to Europe was more than a vacation; it offered the hope of reaching their teenage daughter who has stopped going to school and will not leave her room. Feeling despondent and directionless, Shuichi believes he’s the unluckiest person in Japan.
\nThen a strange taxi mysteriously appears at his door. The driver promises to take Shuichi not to a destination he needs, but to where his next opportunity will be. With nothing to lose, he settles into the backseat and embarks on a series of magical rides that will teach him surprising life lessons, including how luck is not inherent - it’s an investment built over time and even over generations.
\nA compassionate and uplifting fable, The Lucky Ride will make you reconsider what’s important, how to be more present in your life, and empower you to create happiness not just for yourself but for those to come.
In this Korean mythology inspired sapphic fantasy, a young woman with shadow magic is awakened after a thousand years to heal her nation and her own troubled memory, even as she falls for the sister of a saint she killed in her past life.
\nAccording to legend, the Soldier drowned entire kingdoms in darkness.
\nYet, the Soldier was only a girl, robbed of her will and raised as a weapon for her power-hungry father. When she awakens years later, freedom takes the form of a hidden life and a new name: Shadow.
\nAs war brews and magical dead zones devour the natural world, Shadow is captured and pulled back into court life by her immortal father’s new prodigy, Scarlet, a diabolical woman obsessed with her sister’s murder. A murder Shadow herself committed in a past life.
\nShadow’s control over darkness holds the key to restoring the balance of their world, but a serpentine court hides greed, corruption, and her father’s new plot to resurrect his fading magic.
\nIf she’s to survive and save her nation, Shadow will have to hide her past and rely on the woman who captured her - even as they unwind the legends that brought them together and face their growing attraction.
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Decades from now, the world is run by an authoritarian state called Qin. In Qin, every citizen is fitted with a Mindbank, an intracranial device capable of not only recording but transferring memories between minds. The technology gives birth to a new economy, referred to as Memory Capitalism, where anyone with means can relive the life experiences of others. It also unleashes opportunities for manipulation - memories can be edited, marketed, and even corrupted for personal gain.
\nWhen a man inherits his deceased mother’s Mindbank - a collection of memories from before, during, and after the global war that landed Qin atop the international food chain - he’s unsure what he’ll find inside, or whether the Party has gotten to her memories first, altering the experiences she left for him. Either way, he is adamant that he must share them with the world before they are destroyed forever, even if the cost of doing so is his own life.
\nPowerful and provocative, These Memories Do Not Belong to Us is a kaleidoscopic look into the ways in which governments and media manipulate history and control our collective imagination. It encourages us to see beyond the sheen of convenient truths to unearth real stories of struggle, sacrifice, and love that, despite all odds, refuse to be eradicated.
On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses - until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten.
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her wiring as the last way of preserving the past.
A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss.
In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt’s family. Tomoko’s aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home - and handsome, foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company - are symbols of that status.
\nThe seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens, and even an old zoo where the family’s pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion - Tomoko’s dignified and devoted aunt, her German grandmother, and her dashing, charming uncle who confidently sits as the family’s patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko’s cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling.
\nIn this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko’s life, which she looks back on briefly from adulthood at the novel’s end. Behind the family’s sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand - her uncle’s mysterious absences, her German grandmother’s experience of the second world war, her aunt’s misery.
\nRich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time - and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.
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The Archipelago of the Sun finds Hiruko still searching for her lost country, traveling around the Baltic on a mail boat. With her are Knut, a Danish linguist; Akash, an Indian in the process of moving to the opposite sex; Nanook, a Greenlander who once worked as a sushi chef; Nora, the German woman who loves Nanook but is equally concerned with social justice and the environment; and Susanoo, a former sushi chef who believes he is responsible for the entire group.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBut weren’t they originally supposed to sail to Cape Town, and then on to India? Puzzled by this sudden change in route, which no one seems to remember anything about, they encounter long dead writers (Witold Gombrowicz, Hella Wuolijoki) on board, plus a cast of characters from literature, art, and myth.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAs the very existence of Hiruko and Susanoo’s homeland is called into question, Susanoo meets the mythical princess he will marry, and Hiruko tells the others that she herself will be a house in which everyone can live. Though the trilogy comes to its end, their journey seems likely to continue.
Hiruko, a former citizen and a climate refugee herself, has a job teaching immigrant children in Denmark with her invented language Panska (Pan-Scandinavian): ‘homemade language. no country to stay in. three countries I experienced. no time to learn three different languages. might mix up. insufficient space in brain. so made new language. homemade language most Scandinavian people understand’.
\nHiruko soon makes new friends to join her in her travels searching for anyone who can still speak her mother tongue: Knut, a graduate student in linguistics, who is fascinated by her Panska; Akash, an Indian man who lives as a woman, wearing a red sari; Nanook, an Eskimo from Greenland, first mistaken as another refugee from the land of sushi; and Nora, who works at the Karl Marx House in Trier. All these characters take turns narrating chapters, which feature an umami cooking competition; a dead whale; an ultra- nationalist named Breivik; Kakuzo robots; uranium; and an Andalusian bull fight.
As Hiruko - whose Land of Sushi has vanished into the sea and who is still searching for someone who speaks her mother tongue - and her new friends travel onward, they begin opening up to one another in new and extraordinary ways. They try to help their friend Susanoo regain his voice, both for his own good and so he can speak with Hiruko - and amid many often hilarious misunderstandings (some linguistic in nature) - they empower each other against despair.
\nCoping with carbon footprint worries but looping singly and in pairs, they hitchhike, take late-night motorcycle rides, and hop on the train (learning about railway strikes but also packed-train-yoga) to convene in Copenhagen. There they find Susanoo in a strange hospital working with a scary speech-loss doctor. In the half-basement of this weird medical center, they also find two special kids washing dishes.
\nThey discover magic radios, personality swaps, ship tickets delivered by a robot, and other gifts. But friendship - loaning one another the nerve and heart to keep going - sets them all (and the reader) to dreaming of something more . . .
Ola Olajide, a celebrated journalist at Womxxxn magazine, is set to marry the love of her life in one month’s time. Young, beautiful, and successful - she and her fiancé Michael are considered the “couple goals” of their social network and seem to have it all. That is, until one morning when they both wake up to the same message: “Oh my god, have you seen The List?”
\nIt began as a crowdsourced collection of names and somehow morphed into an anonymous account posting allegations on social media. Ola would usually be the first to support such a list - she’d retweet it, call for the men to be fired, write article after article. Except this time, Michael’s name is on it.
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Former Academician Anna Kim's research into AI cost her everything. Now, years later, the military has need of her expertise in order to prevent the destruction of their AI-powered fleet.
Rick Riordan Presents Yoon Ha Lee's space opera about thirteen-year-old Min, who comes from a long line of fox spirits. To keep the family safe, Min’s mother insists that none of them use any fox-magic, such as Charm or shape-shifting. They must appear human at all times.
\nMin feels hemmed in by the household rules and resents the endless chores, the cousins who crowd her, and the aunties who judge her. She would like nothing more than to escape Jinju, her neglected, dust-ridden, and impoverished planet. She’s counting the days until she can follow her older brother, Jun, into the Space Forces and see more of the Thousand Worlds.
\nWhen word arrives that Jun is suspected of leaving his post to go in search of the Dragon Pearl, Min knows that something is wrong. Jun would never desert his battle cruiser, even for a mystical object rumored to have tremendous power. She decides to run away to find him and clear his name. Min’s quest will have her meeting gamblers, pirates, and vengeful ghosts.
\nIt will involve deception, lies, and sabotage. She will be forced to use more fox-magic than ever before, and to rely on all of her cleverness and bravery. The outcome may not be what she had hoped, but it has the potential to exceed her wildest dreams.
While on a mission to cement peace between the Sun Clans and the Thousand Worlds, Min the fox spirit and her ghost brother Jun get stranded on a death planet with Haneul the dragon spirit and Sebin the tiger spirit. To survive, the young cadets will have to rely on all their wits, training, and supernatural abilities. And let's not forget the Dragon Pearl . . .
\nThis thrilling conclusion of the Thousand Worlds trilogy, told in alternating points of view, will put you under a delightful spell as it transports you to worlds full of both danger and wonder.
Hwa Young was just ten years old when imperial forces destroyed her home, among the rebel clans of the Moonstorm. Now, years later, she is a citizen of the very empire that orphaned her, dreaming of getting back out among the stars and piloting a lancer - the fleet’s deadliest, most advanced fighting craft.
\nWhen a rebel attack leaves Hwa Young stranded on an imperial starship, her dreams become a reality. A military ship has no space for civilians, and the fleet badly needs lancer pilots - and Hwa Young and her friends are quick to volunteer for the demanding programme.
\nBut training is nothing like what they expected, and secrets - like the fate of the fleet’s previous lancer squad, and deeper truths about the rebellion itself - are mounting up. When Hwa Young uncovers a conspiracy that puts their entire world at risk, she’s forced to choose between a past she’s put behind her and an empire she no longer trusts.
To win an impossible war Captain Kel Cheris must awaken an ancient weapon and a despised traitor general.
\nCaptain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for using unconventional methods in a battle against heretics. Kel Command gives her the opportunity to redeem herself by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a star fortress that has recently been captured by heretics. Cheris's career isn't the only thing at stake. If the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next.
\nCheris's best hope is to ally with the undead tactician Shuos Jedao. The good news is that Jedao has never lost a battle, and he may be the only one who can figure out how to successfully besiege the fortress.
\nThe bad news is that Jedao went mad in his first life and massacred two armies, one of them his own. As the siege wears on, Cheris must decide how far she can trust Jedao - because she might be his next victim.
\nShuos Jedao is unleashed. The long-dead general, preserved with exotic technologies as a weapon, has possessed the body of gifted young captain Kel Cheris.
\nNow, General Kel Khiruev's fleet, racing to the Severed March to stop a fresh enemy incursion, has fallen under Jedao's sway. Only Khiruev's aide, Lieutenant Colonel Kel Brezan, is able to shake off the influence of the brilliant but psychotic Jedao.
\nThe rogue general seems intent on defending the hexarchate, but can Khiruev- or Brezan - trust him? For that matter, can they trust Kel Command, or will their own rulers wipe out the whole swarm to destroy one man?
Shuos Jedao is awake.
\n. . . and nothing is as he remembers. In his mind he's a teenager, a cadet - a nobody. But he finds himself in the body of an old man, a general controlling the elite forces of the hexarchate, and the most feared - and reviled - man in the galaxy.
\nJedao carries orders from Hexarch Nirai Kujen to re-conquer the fractured pieces of the hexarchate on his behalf. But he has no memory of ever being a soldier, let alone a general, and the Kel soldiers under his command hate him for a massacre he can't remember committing.
\nKujen's friendliness can't hide the fact that he's a tyrant. And what's worse, Jedao and Kujen are being hunted by an enemy who knows more about Jedao and his crimes than he does himself . . .
It has been two months since Hwa Young and her lancer squad turned on the Empire and joined the clanner rebellion, at a terrible cost. Hwa Young is desperate to rescue her dearest friend, left in the Empire's clutches when the squad fled, but that goes against the orders of her commanding officer in the rebellion - who is also her long-lost heart-mother, Aera.
\nLoyalties are strained and battle-lines blur when an enemy lancer pilot reaches out to Hwa Young in secret, revealing deeper forces at work both in the Empire and among the clans. When a saboteur wrecks one of the lancers, Hwa Young wonders: is there anyone, Empire or clan, she can truly trust?
Sebin, a young tiger spirit from the Juhwang Clan, wants nothing more than to join the Thousand World Space Forces and, like their Uncle Hwan, captain a battle cruiser someday. But when Sebin's acceptance letter finally arrives, it's accompanied by the shocking news that Hwan has been declared a traitor. Apparently, the captain abandoned his duty to steal a magical artifact, the Dragon Pearl, and his whereabouts are still unknown. Sebin hopes to help clear their hero's name and restore honour to the clan.
\nNothing goes according to plan, however. As soon as Sebin arrives for orientation, they are met by a special investigator named Yi and his assistant, a girl named Min. Yi informs Sebin that they must immediately report to the ship Haetae and await further instructions. Sebin finds this highly unusual, but soon all protocol is forgotten when there's an explosion on the ship, the crew is knocked out, and the communication system goes down.
\nIt's up to Sebin, three other cadets, and Yi and Min to determine who is sabotaging the battlecruiser. When Sebin is suddenly accused of collaborating with the enemy, the cadet realizes that Min is the most dangerous foe of all . . .
Siriwathi Perera doesn’t quite know where she’s going in life. She never expected to be a taxicab driver in New York City, struggling to make ends meet and still living with her parents at twenty-eight. The true-crime podcasts that keep Siri company as she drives don’t do much to make up for the legal career she imagined for herself, or the brother she’s grieving.
\nWhen public defender Amaya Fernando gets into her cab, they make a quick connection through their shared Sri Lankan roots. Siri, whose social circle is limited to her grade-school best friend, Alex, thinks things might finally be looking up with this new potential friendship. But she’s suddenly dropped into her own true crime when she discovers her next passenger murdered in the backseat, and she has to call Amaya sooner than she’d expected.
\nPinned as the obvious and only suspect, and desperate to clear her name, Siri chases down leads across the boroughs of New York City with Amaya’s help. But with her court date looming, they have just five days to find out who really killed the midnight passenger - or Siri’s life will be over before she can even truly live it.
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On the outskirts of Rainbow Town, there is an old, abandoned house. They say that if you send a letter detailing your misfortunes there, you could receive a ticket. If you bring this ticket to the house on the first day of the rainy season, you'll be granted entrance into the mysterious Rainfall Market - where you can choose to completely change your life.
\nNo one is more surprised than Serin when she receives a ticket. Lonely and with no real prospects for a future, Serin ventures to the market, determined to create a better life for herself.
\nThere, she meets a magical cat companion named Issha and they search through bookstores, perfumeries, and fantastical realms while Serin tries to determine what her perfect life will look like.
\nThe catch? Serin only has one week to find her happiness or be doomed to vanish into the market forever.
\nAnd all the while, a shadow follows quietly behind them . . .
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With unparalleled psychological precision, master of crime and suspense fiction You-Jeong Jeong weaves a domestic nightmare centered on Yuna Shin: wife, mother, sister - and covert narcissist.
\nEveryone in Yuna’s life is desperate to keep her happy: her partners, parents, and terrified six-year-old daughter. Even when she’s not blaming or hitting, the threat of her mood keeps her family from bonding, touching, or even speaking long enough to realise she’s playing them against each other.
\nBut when little Jiyoo’s feverish memories of loons hint at a troubling crime, Yuna’s estranged sister and guilt-ridden husband begin to reconstruct her movements, the unexplained tragedies in Yuna’s history, and the lies she’s told for years. For the first time, Yuna’s traumatised family members will have to confront the truth of her depravity and learn that no one - no matter how young - is safe from her wrath.
\nAfter all, Yuna believes that happiness requires subtraction. And she wants nothing less than perfect happiness.
“Do you know what happens if you laugh while crying? Hair grows out of your butthole.”
\nIt was a constant truism Youngmi Mayer’s mother would say threateningly after she would make her daughter laugh while crying. Her mother used it to cheer her up in moments when she could tell Youngmi was overtaken with grief. The humorous saying would never fail to lighten the mood, causing both daughter and mother to laugh and cry at the same time. Her mother had learned this trick from her mother, and her mother had learned this from her mother before it had also helped an endless string of her family laugh through suffering.
\nIn I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying, Youngmi jokes through the retelling of her childhood as an offbeat biracial kid in Saipan, a place next to a place that Americans might know. She jokes through her difficult adolescence where she must parent her own mother, who married her husband because he looked like white Jesus (and the singer of The Bee Gees).
\nAnd with humor and irreverence and full-throated openness, she jokes even while sharing the story of what her family went through during the last century of colonialism and war in Korea, while reflecting how years later, their wounds affect her in New York City as a single mom, all the while interrogating whiteness, gender, and sexuality.
\nYoungmi jokes through these stories in hopes of passing onto the reader what her family passed down to The gift of laughing while crying. The gift of a hairy butthole. Because throughout it all, the one thing she learned was one cannot exist without the other. And like a yin and yang, this duality is reflected in this whip-smart, heart-wrenching, and disarmingly funny memoir told by a bright new voice with so much heart and wisdom.
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In the early 20th century, China is a land undergoing a momentous social and cultural shift, with a thousand-year-old empire crumbling and the nation on the brink of modernity. Against this backdrop, a quiet man from the North embarks on a perilous journey to a Southern city in the grip of a savage snowstorm. He carries with him a newborn he is looking for the child's mother and a city that isn't there.
\nThis is a story of two a man who finds unexpected success after having journeyed to the hometown of the woman who abandoned him; and the woman he is searching for, who mysteriously disappeared to embark on her own eventful journey.
\nThis is a story about vanished crafts and ancient customs, about violence, love, and friendship. Above all, it's a story about change and about storytelling itself, full of vivid characters and surprising twists - an epic tale, as inexorable as time itself and as gripping as a classic adventure story.
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Yuan Yang, the first Chinese-born British MP, tells the stories of four Chinese women striving for a better future in an unequal society.
\nFrom June, who dreams of going to university rather than raising pigs, to Sam, forced into hiding as her activist peers are lifted from the streets, this is a singularly immersive portrait of a rapidly changing nation - and of the courage of those caught in the swell.
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Abandoned by her parents when her Omen stain appeared, Sozo survives the streets through her secret weapon: her ability to conceal her curse. It's a rare talent that her shadowy mentor, Esp, sees as the key to infiltrating and competing in the Decade Race of Stars.
\nThe race is deadly, but the prize is irresistible: a single wish for anything. Esp dreams of using it to reshape the world, and Sozo convinces herself the risk is worth it, but keeping her stain hidden - and her monstrous side in check - is harder with every challenge, especially when sunny Naqi enters the picture, offering her kindness and friendship she was never allowed.
\nAs Sozo fights to survive the race, doubts creep in. Should she claim the wish for Esp no matter the cost? But what if it hurts Naqi?
\nWith monsters lurking inside and out, Sozo must decide whose future she's fighting for and if she's willing to pay the ultimate price.
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Mitch and Yonko haven’t spoken in a year. As children, they were inseparable, raised together in an orphanage outside Tokyo - but ever since the sudden death of Mitch’s brother, they’ve been mourning in their private ways, worlds apart. In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, they choose to reunite, finding each other in a city undone by disaster.
\nMitch and Yonko have drifted apart, but they will always be bound together. Because long ago they witnessed an unspeakable tragedy, a tragedy that they’ve kept secret for their entire lives. They never speak of it, but it’s all around them. Like history, it repeats itself.
\nYuko Tsushima’s sweeping and consuming final novel is a metaphysical saga of postwar Japan. Wildcat Dome is a hugely ambitious exploration of denial, of the ways in which countries and their citizens avoid telling the truth - a tale of guilt, loss, and inevitable reckoning.
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They left Earth to save humanity. They’ll have to save themselves first.
\nIt is the eve of Earth’s environmental collapse. A single ship carries humanity’s last hope: eighty elite graduates of a competitive program, who will give birth to a generation of children in deep space. But halfway to a distant but livable planet, a lethal bomb kills three of the crew and knocks The Phoenix off course. Asuka, the only surviving witness, is an immediate suspect.
\nAsuka already felt like an impostor before the explosion. She was the last picked for the mission, she struggled during training back on Earth, and she was chosen to represent Japan, a country she only partly knows as a half-Japanese girl raised in America. But estranged from her mother back home, The Phoenix is all she has left.
\nWith the crew turning on each other, Asuka is determined to find the culprit before they all lose faith in the mission - or worse, the bomber strikes again.
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In Earth's not too distant future, seas consume coastal cities, highways disintegrate underwater, and mutant fish lurk in pirate-controlled depths. Skipper, a skilled sailor and the youngest of three sisters, earns money skimming and reselling plastic from the ocean to care for her ailing grandmother.
\nBut then her eldest sister, Nora, goes missing. Nora left home a decade ago in pursuit of a cure for failing crops all over the world. When Skipper and her other sister, Carmen, receive a cryptic plea for help, they must put aside their differences and set out across the sea to find - and save - her. As they voyage through a dying world both beautiful and strange, encountering other travelers along the way, they learn more about their sister's work and the corporations that want what she discovered.
\nBut the farther they go, the more uncertain their mission becomes: What dangerous attention did Nora attract, and how well do they really know their sister - or each other? Thus begins an epic journey spanning oceans and continents and a wistful rumination on sisterhood, friendship, and ecological disaster.
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Maya Hoshimoto was once the best art thief in the galaxy. For ten years, she returned stolen artifacts to alien civilisations - until a disastrous job forced her into hiding. Now she just wants to enjoy a quiet life as a graduate student of anthropology, but she’s haunted by persistent and disturbing visions of the future.
\nThen an old friend comes to her with a job she can’t refuse: find a powerful object that could save an alien species from extinction. Except no one has seen it in living memory, and they aren’t the only ones hunting for it.
\nMaya sets out on a breakneck quest through a universe teeming with strange life and ancient ruins. But the farther she goes, the more her visions cast a dark shadow over her team of friends new and old. Someone will betray her along the way. Worse yet, in choosing to save one species, she may condemn humanity and Earth itself.
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“Everyone enters relationships with imperfections and negative patterns that block the flow of love, but when you embrace growth, the new harmony within you will flow into your relationship.”
\nLove enters our lives in many forms: friends, family, intimate partners. But all of these relationships are deeply influenced by the love we have for ourselves. If we see our relationships as opportunities to be fully present in our healing and growth, then, Yung Pueblo assures us, we can transform and meet one another with compassion instead of judgment.
\nIn How to Love Better, Yung Pueblo examines all aspects of relationships, from the rose-colored early days when you may be hesitant to show your full self, to the challenges that can arise without clear communication, to dealing with heartbreak and healing as you close a chapter of your life. The power of looking inward remains at the core of Yung Pueblo’s teachings. Ego and attachment can become barriers in a relationship, so the more self-aware you become, the more you can support both your partner and yourself.
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Nagi Hayakawa is facing an impossible choice. Should she agree to marry her boyfriend, despite being ill and not knowing how many years she has left to live, or should she protect him from future heartbreak by refusing? Desperate for advice from the one person no longer there to give it - her mother who died years before - she reserves a table at the Chibineko Kitchen.
\nWhen she takes her first bite of the miso-marinated tofu and rice, prepared for her by the restaurant's young chef, Kai, the gulls outside fall silent and the air grows hazy.
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In a remote seaside town outside of Tokyo, Kotoko makes her way along a seashell path, lured by whispers of an enigmatic restaurant whose kagezen, or traditional meals offered in remembrance of loved ones, promise a reunion with the departed.
\nWhen a gust of wind lifts off her hat, she sees running after it a young man who looks like her recently deceased brother. But it’s not her brother; it’s Kai, the restaurant’s young chef, who returns her hat and brings her to the tiny establishment, where he introduces her to Chibi, the resident kitten, and serves her steaming bowls of simmered fish, rice, and miso soup - the exact meal her brother used to cook for her.
\nAs she takes her first delicious bite, the gulls outside fall silent, the air grows hazy, and Kotoko begins a magical journey of last chances and new beginnings.
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How do computers and robots change the meaning of being human? How do we deal with the epidemic of fake news? Are nations and religions still relevant? What should we teach our children?
\nYuval Noah Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today's most urgent issues as we move into the uncharted territory of the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarised than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.
\nIn twenty-one accessible chapters that are both provocative and profound, Harari builds on the ideas explored in his previous books, untangling political, technological, social, and existential issues and offering advice on how to prepare for a very different future from the world we now live in: How can we retain freedom of choice when Big Data is watching us? What will the future workforce look like, and how should we ready ourselves for it? How should we deal with the threat of terrorism? Why is liberal democracy in crisis?
\nHarari's unique ability to make sense of where we have come from and where we are going has captured the imaginations of millions of readers. Here he invites us to consider values, meaning, and personal engagement in a world full of noise and uncertainty. When we are deluged with irrelevant information, clarity is power.
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Yuval Noah Harari envisions a near future in which we face a new set of challenges. Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century and beyond - from overcoming death to creating artificial life.
\nIt asks the fundamental questions: how can we protect this fragile world from our own destructive power? And what does our future hold?
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For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI - a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?
\nNexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.
\nInformation is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity.
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Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari is an extraordinary exploration of humanity's history from the dawn of our species to the present day. Harari delves into our evolution, offering insights into the cognitive revolutions that allowed Homo sapiens to rise above other animal species. Traversing through various stages of human development, he examines the Agricultural Revolution, the unification of humankind through the advent of shared myths, and the Scientific Revolution that continues to reshape our world today.
\nHarari challenges readers to reconsider everything we thought we knew about being human. He poses profound questions about what makes us brilliant and what makes us deadly, navigating through our triumphs and the dark corners of our collective history. Earth has existed for 4.5 billion years, and within a mere fraction of that time, Homo sapiens have conquered it, leaving indelible marks on our planet and its future.
\nIn this bold and provocative book, Harari skillfully blends historical facts with scientific theories to explore the journey of our species. He provides a comprehensive narrative that spans millions of years and looks into the future, asking where we are headed as a species at the brink of the 21st century.
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A bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history, and power.
\nMay 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.
\nSoon a Taiwanese woman - who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name - is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is.
\nDisguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.
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Azzan is a beekeeper in a rural community in Oman. Devoted to tending his bees and searching for wild hives, he encounters Thamna, a lone shepherd woman, on a mountain slope and is captivated by her and her honey-colored eyes.
\nAcross the breathtaking vistas of Oman’s remote mountains and plains, Azzan’s troubled past and present unfold. A disappointment to his family, he turns to drink, and ultimately discovers the healing power of his beekeeping, before an accident in which he loses all.
\nZahran Alqasmi’s masterful novel thrums forward with a subtle momentum. His lucid, poetic writing conveys a visceral sense of time and place, of the fragile ecologies inhabited by both bees and humans alike, in this intense and compelling novel of loss and hope.
When Ama’s straitlaced boyfriend, Nathan, invites her to his secluded upstate New York cabin for the weekend, she can’t say no. It’s a chance for them to escape the city’s distractions, share intimate secrets, and take their relationship to a deeper level.
\nBy day, it feels like the perfect love story. But when Ama is awakened by strange events, she starts to wonder if she really wants to know everything about Nathan.
A moving memoir by a survivor of anti-Muslim violence in contemporary India that delicately weaves political and family histories in a tribute to India's vibrant multiethnic society and the resilience of its women and minorities, especially in the face of growing religious extremism.
\nIn 2002, Zara Chowdhary was sixteen years old and living with her family in Ahmedabad, one of India's fastest-growing metropolises, when a gruesome anti-Muslim pogrom upended her world. Instead of taking her school exams, she is put under a three-month lockdown with thousands of others, fearing for their community and their lives. The chief minister in the state at the time Narendra Modi, accused of fomenting anti-Muslim violence, would become prime minister of India and lead a government committed to eroding the rights of India’s 220 million Muslims.
\nIn The Lucky Ones , Chowdhary weaves the past and the present of her multigenerational Muslim family, juxtaposing the horrific violence of rising fascistic forces on the streets with the more mundane violence of patriarchal Indian joint families at the dinner table. Through the stories of sisters, daughters, and mothers raising each other, Chowdhary shows how women hold this world together with their ability to forgive, find laughter, and offer grace even as the world they know, and their place in it, is falling apart.
\nWith lyrical clarity and intimacy, The Lucky Ones is a poetic remembrance of how a country’s promise of a multi-ethnic secular democracy can so easily dissolve and descend into extremism. Chowdhary’s story is a protest against the erasure of India's Muslims, a testimony of a lost girlhood, and a testament to her family and country's entwined lives.
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In a mythical Scotland of long ago, a goddess’s mortal surrogate dies in childbirth and leaves behind a vindictive firstborn daughter who seethes in the shadow of her new divine sister, leading to a violent clash that leaves both sisters imprisoned in separate worlds.
\nMillennia later in San Francisco, sheltered, isolated twenty-three-year-old Marceline is desperate for a job, longing for a temporary escape from her controlling, toxic husband, Baxter. One evening, a magical café appears after a nasty fight. Run by a quirky, mysteriously feathered woman named Lucretia, her partner, Kilda, and a gentle Tahitian man named Sylvan, the café holds the safety, comfort, and companionship Marceline has craved. Upon learning that the café’s door is a protected portal that opens to those in need, she joins the cafe’s staff behind Baxter's back.
\nUnfortunately, soon after Marceline has found her safe haven, the portals to the café begin closing one by one and the cafe’s sourceless light goes from warm and honeyed to dim and shadowy. Evil is looming that will endanger not only the café but the world at large; if Marceline is to protect herself and her newfound family, she must choose herself for good and escape her marriage once and for all . . . or say goodbye to her hard-fought freedom forever.
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The newly nameless narrator of Make Sure You Die Screaming has rejected the gender binary, has flamed out with a vengeance at their corporate gig, is most likely brain damaged from a major tussle with their now ex-boyfriend, and is on a bender to end all benders.
\nA call from their mother with the news that their MAGA-friendly, conspiracy-theorist father has gone missing launches the narrator from Chicago to deep red Arkansas in a stolen car. Along the way, the narrator and their new bestie - a self-proclaimed “garbage goth” with her own emotional baggage (and someone on her tail) - unpack the narrator’s childhood and a recent personal loss that they refuse to face head-on.
\nAn unflinching interrogation of class rage, economic (im)mobility, gender expression, and the rot at the heart of capitalism, Make Sure You Die Screaming is the loud, funny, tragic, suspenseful road trip novel of our times.
The Abadi Family saga begins when a modern-day Romeo and Juliet story between a Palestinian and a Jew ends in predictable tragedy. The family flees to America to mend, but encounters only more turmoil that threatens to tear the family apart.
\nIn the wake of the 1967 Six Day War, Tamar Abadi’s world collapses when her sister-in-law is killed in what appears to be a terror attack but what is really the result of a secret relationship with a Palestinian poet. Tamar’s husband, Salim, is an Arab and a Jew. Torn between the two identities, and mourning his sister’s death, he uproots the family and moves them to the US.
\nAs Tamar struggles to maintain the integrity of the family’s Jewish Israeli identity against the backdrop of the American “melting pot” culture, a Palestinian family moves into the apartment upstairs and she is forced to reckon with her narrow thinking as her daughter falls in love with the Palestinian son. Fearing history will repeat itself, Tamar's determination to separate the two sets into motion a series of events that have the power to destroy her relationship with her daughter, her marriage, and the family she has worked so hard to protect.
\nThis powerful debut novel explores Tamar’s struggle to keep her family intact, to accept love that is taboo, and grapples with how exile forces us to reshape our identity in ways we could not imagine.
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With the breakup of her marriage, a once famous actress of the Yiddish theater travels to Tel-Aviv to revisit the apartment she once shared with her husband, Max. Soon after, she finds herself at the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Apparition Hospice in Jaffa, a sanitorium, run by a group of nuns.
\nUnclear as to how she got there, she begins to piece together the events that led her to this moment. From New York to Tel -Aviv, and the Siberian gulag, The World Between explores the landscape of a marriage, friendship, loss, and the way childhood war trauma bleeds into every aspect of the characters’ lives.
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Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. He has been unable to paint since his mother’s ghost has begun to visit him each evening.
\nAs his grandmother’s sole caretaker, he spends his days cooped up in their apartment, avoiding his neighborhood masjid, his estranged sister, and even his best friend (who also happens to be his longtime crush). The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria.
\nOne night, he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z, who dedicated her career to painting the birds of North America. She famously and mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths.
\nIn fact, Laila Z’s past is intimately tied to his mother’s - and his grandmother’s - in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z’s story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his own community that he never knew. Realising that he isn’t and has never been alone, he has the courage to officially claim a new name: Nadir, an Arabic name meaning rare.
\nAs unprecedented numbers of birds are mysteriously drawn to the New York City skies, Nadir enlists the help of his family and friends to unravel what happened to Laila Z and the rare bird his mother died trying to save.
\nFollowing his mother’s ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along.
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In this literary thriller, two friends, born in the 1980s, seek to understand the experiences of their parents and grandparents during one of the most turbulent periods in Chinese history and the terrible crime that connects their families.
\nCheng Gong and Li Jiaqi go way back. Both hailing from dysfunctional families, they grew up together in a Chinese provincial capital in the 1980s. Now, many years later, the childhood friends reunite and discover how much they still have in common. Both have always been determined to follow the tracks of their grandparents’ generation to the heart of a mystery that perhaps should have stayed buried.
\nWhat exactly happened during that rainy night in 1967, in the abandoned water tower? Zhang Yueran’s layered and hypnotic prose reveals much about the unshakable power of friendship and the existence of hope. Hers is a unique fresh voice representing a new generation of important young writers from China, shedding a different light on the country’s recent past.
Enter the world of an elite Chinese couple: a life of luxury; wealth; and around-the-clock service, which includes their trusted nanny, Yu Ling. Slipping in and out of the shadows, meticulous in her care of their only son, she has served the family for years and knows their secrets. But little do they suspect that Yu Ling has secrets of her own.
\nIn the pressure-cooker political environment of China, the fates of even the most powerful families can reverse overnight. When the family becomes the subject of a government investigation, their fortunes crumble, and the nanny is left to make a series of life-changing choices. How far will she go to claim her due?
Olivia and Candace are dead, both casualties of Violet’s deadly game of Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board. McKenna and Mischa are the only ones left, and having failed to locate and destroy the source of Violet’s power, her curse still abounds, eager to claim more lives.
What does Violet want? And how can she be stopped? Armed with a mysterious package containing clues, as well as a little help from the beyond, McKenna hopes to end this once and for all…before it’s too late.
Junior year is shaping up to be the best of McKenna Brady's life. After a transformative summer, McKenna is welcomed into the elite group of popular girls at Weeping Willow High, led by the gorgeous Olivia Richmond. For the first time in a long time, things are looking up.
But everything changes the night of Olivia's Sweet Sixteen sleepover. Violet, the mysterious new girl in town, suggests the girls play a game during which Violet makes up elaborate, creepily specific stories about the violent ways the friends will die. Though it unsettles McKenna, it all seems harmless at the...
McKenna has managed to rid Violet of the curse claiming the lives of so many in Willow, Wisconsin, but evil still plagues the town.
\nMcKenna’s friend Mischa now carries the curse, and when it comes for her family, she pledges revenge on those she deems responsible for their deaths . . . including McKenna and everyone she holds dear.
The shadow of Godolia's tyrannical rule is spreading, aided by their giant mechanised weapons known as Windups. War and oppression are everyday constants for the people of the Badlands, who live under the thumb of their cruel Godolia overlords.
\nEris Shindanai is a Gearbreaker, a brash young rebel who specialises in taking down Windups from the inside. When one of her missions goes awry and she finds herself in a Godolia prison, Eris meets Sona Steelcrest, a cybernetically enhanced Windup pilot. At first Eris sees Sona as her mortal enemy, but Sona has a secret: She has intentionally infiltrated the Windup program to destroy Godolia from within.
\nAs the clock ticks down to their deadliest mission yet, a direct attack to end Godolia's reign once and for all, Eris and Sona grow closer - as comrades, friends, and perhaps something more . . .
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In a land impoverished by a war that started before she was born, Kiena has provided for her mother and brother by becoming one of the best hunters in the kingdom. But when a lifelong friend with connections recommends her to the king to track down a runaway princess, her life gets turned upside down.
\nFinding the princess is easy.
\nDeciding what to do in a conflicting mess of politics and emotions . . . not so much.
It's six years after an infection turned a majority of the population into ferocious, zombie-like creatures that hunt during the day, forcing the living into a nocturnal state of existence.
\nSurvival is a continuous struggle when it's hide or fight, and the creatures aren't the only threat in a wasted America.
\nSometimes fighting is the only answer.
Audrey Caplan knew what she wanted. It was simple, really: get the spot as captain of her college soccer team, and focus on school. That was it, and with her aptitude for structure and discipline, it'd be easy to ignore distractions. At least it would've been if Morgan Bailey hadn't shown up. If there was one thing Audrey's bulletproof restraint wasn't prepared for, it was an annoying, adorable show-off with a heart of gold.
Lula Mortiz may be a bruja with healing powers, but after her family's battle in Los Lagos, she feels broken in a way she can't seem to fix. Then tragedy strikes when a bus crash leaves her friends and her boyfriend, Maks, dead.
\nDesperate to reclaim normalcy, Lula invokes a dark spell to bring Maks back. It isn't until she hears that all of the bodies from the crash have gone missing that she realises something is wrong. Lula has unwittingly raised an army of casi muertos - creatures between the living and dead - and they're hungry for freedom . . . which they can only achieve if Lula dies.
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Reeling from betrayal at the hands of the Whispers, Renata Convida is a girl on the run. With few options and fewer allies, she's reluctantly joined forces with none other than Prince Castian, her most infuriating and intriguing enemy. They're united by lofty goals: find the fabled Knife of Memory, kill the ruthless King Fernando, and bring peace to the nation. Together, Ren and Castian have a chance to save everything, if only they can set aside their complex and intense feelings for each other.
\nWith the king's forces on their heels at every turn, their quest across Puerto Leones and beyond leaves little room for mistakes. But the greatest danger is within Ren. The Gray, her fortress of stolen memories, has begun to crumble, threatening her grip on reality. She'll have to control her magics--and her mind--to unlock her power and protect the Moria people once and for all.
\nFor years, she was wielded as weapon. Now it's her time to fight back.
Renata Convida was only a child when she was kidnapped by the King's Justice and brought to the luxurious palace of Andalucia. As a Robari, the rarest and most feared of the magical Moria, Renata's ability to steal memories from royal enemies enabled the King's Wrath, a siege that resulted in the deaths of thousands of her own people.
Now Renata is one of the Whispers, rebel spies working against the crown and helping the remaining Moria escape the kingdom bent on their destruction. The Whispers may have rescued Renata from the palace years ago, but she cannot escape their mistrust and hatred - or the overpowering memories of the hundreds of souls she turned \"hollow\" during her time in the palace.
When Dez, the commander of her unit, is taken captive by the notorious Sangrado Prince, Renata will do anything to save the boy whose love makes her place among the Whispers bearable. But a disastrous rescue attempt means Renata must return to the palace under cover and complete Dez's top secret mission. Can Renata convince her former captors that she remains loyal, even as she burns for vengeance against the brutal, enigmatic prince? Her life and the fate of the Moria depend on it.
But returning to the palace stirs childhood memories long locked away. As Renata grows more deeply embedded in the politics of the royal court, she uncovers a secret in her past that could change the entire fate of the kingdom - and end the war that has cost her everything.
The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low or empty, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers - even for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held onto so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed, leaving them with more questions than answers.
\nSeven years later, her gifts have manifested in different ways for Marimar, Rey, and Tatinelly’s daughter, Rhiannon, granting them unexpected blessings. But soon, a hidden figure begins to tear through their family tree, picking them off one by one as it seeks to destroy Orquídea’s line. Determined to save what’s left of their family and uncover the truth behind their inheritance, the four descendants travel to Ecuador - to the place where Orquídea buried her secrets and broken promises and never looked back.
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Ariel del Mar is one of the most famous singers in the world. She and her sisters—together, known as the band Siren Seven - have been a pop culture phenomenon since they were kids. On stage, wearing her iconic red wig and sequined costumes, staring out at a sea of fans, is where she shines. Anyone would think she’s the girl who has everything.
\nBut lately, she wants more. Siren Seven is wrapping up their farewell tour, and Ariel can’t wait to spend the summer just living a normal life - part of a world she’s only ever seen from the outside. But her father, the head of Atlantica Records, has other plans: begin her breakout solo career immediately, starting with a splashy announcement on a morning talk show.
\nThe night before, Ariel and her sisters sneak out of their Manhattan penthouse for a night of incognito fun at a rock concert in Brooklyn. It’s there that Ariel crosses paths with Eric Reyes, dreamy lead singer of an up-and-coming band. Unaware of her true identity, Eric spontaneously invites her on the road for the summer. And for the first time in her life, Ariel disobeys her father - and goes with him.
\nCaught between the world she longs for and the one she’s left behind, can Ariel follow her dreams, fall in love, and, somehow, find her own voice?
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Nothing says Happy Birthday like summoning the spirits of your dead relatives. Alex is a bruja, the most powerful witch in a generation . . . and she hates magic. At her Deathday celebration, Alex performs a spell to rid herself of her power.
\nBut it backfires. Her whole family vanishes into thin air, leaving her alone with Nova, a brujo boy she can't trust. A boy whose intentions are as dark as the strange marks on his skin. The only way to get her family back is to travel with Nova to Los Lagos, a land in-between, as dark as Limbo and as strange as Wonderland . . .
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Rose Mortiz has always been a fixer, but lately she’s been feeling lost. She has brand-new powers she doesn’t understand, and her family is still trying to figure out how to function in the wake of her amnesiac father’s return home. Then, on the night of her Deathday party, Rose discovers her father’s memory loss has been a lie.
As she rushes to his side, the two are ambushed and pulled through a portal to the land of Adas, a fairy realm hidden in the Caribbean Sea. There, Rose is forced to work with a group of others to save Adas. Soon, she begins to discover the scope of her powers, the troubling truth about her father’s past, and the sacrifices he made to save her sisters.
But if Rose wants to return home so she can repair her broken family, she must figure out how to heal Adas first.
Salama Kassab was a pharmacy student when the cries for freedom broke out in Syria. She still had her parents and her big brother; she still had her home. She had a normal teenager’s life.
\nNow Salama volunteers at a hospital in Homs, helping the wounded who flood through the doors daily. Secretly, though, she is desperate to find a way out of her beloved country before her sister-in-law, Layla, gives birth. So desperate, that she has manifested a physical embodiment of her fear in the form of her imagined companion, Khawf, who haunts her every move in an effort to keep her safe.
\nBut even with Khawf pressing her to leave, Salama is torn between her loyalty to her country and her conviction to survive. Salama must contend with bullets and bombs, military assaults, and her shifting sense of morality before she might finally breathe free. And when she crosses paths with the boy she was supposed to meet one fateful day, she starts to doubt her resolve in leaving home at all.
\nSoon, Salama must learn to see the events around her for what they truly are - not a war, but a revolution - and decide how she, too, will cry for Syria’s freedom.
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Seventeen-year-old Jihad Dabbagh has always seen life with a heightened sense for colors, one of many magical blessings the women in her family possess. But Jihad's gift changes depending on her mood. When depression sets in, the world is a colorless oasis, and in the wake of her mother's sudden death, the world has become a permanent shade of grey.
\nBroken by tragedy, Jihad's family doesn't believe her color loss. Her father sends her to the elite Braxton Academy to finish her senior year. There, Jihad's name and hijab put a target on her back. Her haven comes in the form of an old sketchbook carved from a tree in her hometown in Syria - a country she only knew through her mother's stories. Jihad hasn't picked up a brush in over a year, but finds herself channeling the colors of her hurt, pain, and grief as she paints the story of her mother's journey in Syria.
\nWhen graffiti of that same mural starts magically popping up all over New York, her art goes viral and the world takes notice, the threat of legal consequences is imminent. To reclaim her voice, Jihad will have to paint a new future for herself and Braxton, guided by the resilience of her mother's story.
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A heartbreaking tale of a family and an impossible love, torn apart by secrets and traditions in late-20th-century Cairo.
\nIn a tight-knit Levantine Christian family in 1960s Cairo, Tarek's entire life is written in advance. He'll be a doctor like his father, marry, and have children. Under the watchful eye of the family's strong women, he starts to do just that - until a patient's son, Ali, enters his life and turns it upside down. The two men's unsayable relationship sparks a series of events as dramatic as the Six-Day War and assassination of President Anwar Sadat playing out in the background.
\nThe turn of the millennium finds Tarek living as a doctor in Montreal. Someone is writing about him and to him, piecing together a past he wants only to forget. But who is the writer of this tale? And will Tarek figure it out in time?
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